Darkfall Day 11-14

Several days to catch up on here with some interesting action having taken place.

On Saturday I made two trips from Ymir's Tear, the dwarf capital, to one of the elven starter cities. The first trip was to buy some armor and try out a different area. But I neglected to bind there, so when I died fighting trolls, I ended back up in Ymir's Tear. I decided to make the trip again since it wasn't too bad the first time and I had wanted to explore more down there.

I rode my horse in an almost direct line southwest across the mountainous lands of the dwarves, through the browning and parched forests of the Mahirim, down into the lush water-coursed woodlands of the elves. I had been told that the interior of Agon was a more dangerous place, but the world is so vast and empty at this point that I hardly saw anything threatening, and those I did see were easily outrun. It certainly makes for a quicker trip than skirting the coasts as I tried to do when travelling from the human lands to our alliance city.

On my second trip, I decided to try some mining along the way. I'd seen lots of metal nodes in quiet, out-of-the-way places on the first trip. Ore sells for a good amount more than timber, is always in demand, and the mining of it also provides me sulphur for my spells.

I decided to try something that might have proven stupid, but in fact worked out perfectly. Instead of despawning my mount, I kept it standing right next me in case I needed to make a quick getaway. This could have been bad if a) my client crashed and I lost the mount or b) someone snuck up on me and stole it or killed it. As it was, I picked spots that were either well concealed or conversely in wide open areas where I could see anyone coming.

As it happened, I was stumbled upon by other players twice. Mining makes a distinctive stacatto sound that can be heard from a good ways off. It can be hard to use only sound to pinpoint the miner, but it'll get you in their general area. The first time I heard hoofbeats coming from over a ridge. Possibly they weren't headed towards me, but I decided not to risk it. I hopped on my horse and sped away. The second time, much further away, I also heard the hoofbeats first and looked up to see a rider headed towards me, Mahirim I believe, but a good ways away. I quickly mounted back up and sped away and there was no use in his chasing me firther, so he peeled away in another direction.

I was sure to take my time and look around a lot while I mined, in case anyone did try to sneak up on me, but I was lucky in that regard. So my test-run on mining worked out fairly well and at the end of my trip I was able to make about 300 gold from the ore I'd collected.

The second notable event of the weekend was accompanying my clan on PvP raids. I'm not sure why we were attacking the particular hamlets and cities we did, but I take it we were harassing some foes. I'm not sure you really need a reason, but when you get to the level of clan warfare, usually there's some political considerations involved.

This was my first experience of large scale skirmishing outside of the city siege I participated in. The general tactics seemed to be to ride en masse towards the target habitation, dismount close by, and run in and kill anything that moved. When the atackees managed to organize a concerted defense, we'd mount up again and ride a ways off while they chased us. This would most often result in the defenders becoming strung out and unorganzied, so we'd dismount and counterattack again. This went back and forth for awhile. Eventually I got killed and had to run back, which wasn't a lot of fun, but my clanmates had saved some of my gear.

We also attacked a city. I won't talk too much about the tactics there, but suffice it to say some thought went into planning both a suprise attack and an escape route. In this battle, I actually had the chance to use my magic some. There were defenders up on the walls shooting down into the city where we were slaughtering their comrades. I was able to send Mana Missiles up at them to keep them harried and forcing them to focus on me for a bit. This was another case where the splash damage from the spell worked in my favor, because although they were dodging, I could hit them with some of the area of effect damage. I also got to kill a couple of guys who were fleeing and picked up some alignment points for that, the first I've earned in the game. I even finished one guy off with the gank skill.

Another satisfying part of this battle for me was after we retreated a bit and regrouped. I was able to use the Lay on Hands spell to help some of my clanmates and our allies regain health faster. I'm finding that magic is fairly useless when the melee is hot and heavy, as you're just as likely to hit your own folks, but this support and artillery role can be effective.

But of course I got killed again, so that was it for me for awhile. Overall, I had fun, but just like the real army, there was a lot of "hurry up and wait" among the action. I don't feel like I contributed a lot, but through experience and increasing my magic skills, maybe I'll get the hang of it.