New Video Game Technology!

Beginning with a couple of great points and a firm lede, this well-rounded story from The Onion thrust itself into my attention. No one can lick the Onion when it comes to sliding a story right down the middle. However, this is a news event that can't be constrained by such flimsy coverage, demanding to bust out into wider view. Enjoy!

Darkfall Day 29-33

Lots of play days to write about but for short times each. I've done a lot of farming this week to put myself into position for some spell practice. Right now my Greater Magic is 30.1 and I need to get to 50 for elemental schools. My next training push will probably get me to just 40 unless I can buy a shitload of reagents. Otherwise I'm herb gathering and farming my friendly neighborhood trolls to gather what I need.

In more interesting developments I had my first experience as part of what I might charitably call a gank squad :) A couple of my clanmates needed to pay off their alignment debt to get blue again, so we formed a little group of four and went hunting in Mahirim lands. I've been the victim of such gank squads more often than I care to think about in the newbie areas of human and elven lands. A group of enemies on mounts will swing through and kill a few folks, loot, and move on. I don't get too upset about it as long as it's spread out enough that I get something done in between. Now I've been on the other side.

The basic tactic was to go to a mob camp, most often goblins, and kill whomever we found there. The goal was more to get my clanmates the alignment credit for having killed them than to gather loot or anything, though we picked up a little of that. Sounds are often the giveaway that someone is fighting nearby and can even provide a clue as to how many there are. We dismounted for our attacks, although I've been attacked by mounted groups plenty of times. Dismounting let us use bows and magic, though. So we'd sneak up on someone and chase them a bit till they were dead. Oddly enough, we'd sometimes kill one to find another still fighting goblins. Got to be more aware of your surroundings, friends :)

The more exciting part was when, near an NPC town and emboldened by the towers there, a good sized group of Mahirim organized a counter-attack. We'd retreat, draw a few out, and charge back in, killing as we went. My magic got a good workout throughout this. All that practice leading trolls with Mana Missile also paid off as I was able to kill a couple of folks who were doing their best to dodge the slow-assed spell. I probably did more damage with the area-of-effect splash damage provided when the spell hit the ground or a nearby object.

We also would attack lone gatherers as we travelled through the wilderness, confirming the wisdom of my usual practice to keep a mount nearby and get moving at the first sound of appraoching hooves whenever I gather in the middle of nowhere.

Overall it was a fun experience and I know with greater certainity now that most often when I get ganked, it's nothing personal.

Stats: Week 6

• Strength: 27.7
• Vitality: 26.2
• Dexterity: 20.5
• Quickness: 30.5
• Intelligence: 27.7
• Wisdom: 32.5

Notable Skills:

• Spell Chanting: 1.1
• Adept: 1.3
• Greater Magic: 30.1
• Durable Spells GM: 10.5
• Rend: 36.0
• Beacon: 26.8
• Unburden: 15.2
• Heal Other: 14.3
• Infliction Shield: 5.1
• Lesser Magic: 76.0
• Durable Spells LM: 46.1
• Mana Efficiency LM: 41.1
• Quicken Spells LM: 10.2
• Magic Missile: 65.8
• Heal Self: 54.5
• Health to Mana: 30.2
• Lay on Hands: 28.2
  
• Mana to Stamina: 16.6
• Magic Shield: 12.9
• Launch 5.3
  

• Logging: 89.8
• Mining: 47.6
• Herbalism: 36.6
• Sprint: 64.2
• Rest: 58.4
• Run: 53.5
• Riding: 45.2
• Armor Proficiency: 46.4
• Clubs and Maces: 23.2
• Armored Casting: 22.6
• Rigor: 28.8
  

Another Patch Day

Patch notes today start out ho-hum and then get REALLY interesting. (By the way, always patching on Fridays? WTF?)

• New color systems for names that delineate clan members, allies, warring clans, racial enemies, etc, much easier. This one has been needed from the launch of the game. I remember being totally confused at my first siege. It's gotten a little better over time just as I've become more acclimated, but this is a big and logical change.
• Trade channel! I like to keep an eye on the Alliance chat because that's all we've had as a trade channel and I'm often trying to buy gear and sell resources. Downside of that is you have to watch other people's inane chatter mixed in. That's their right, of course (it's a CHAT channel after all), but I really don't care to see any more Chuck Norris jokes, tyvm. My only fear is that they'll start to use the new Trade channel for the exact same shit because that's where the "audience" will be. You certainly see a lot of that in WoW. Still, thanks for the Trade channel, AV!
• Killing party members is just like killing anyone else. This was needed because the existing system allowed you to kill party members with no penalty. This was a newbie trap, but more importantly it discouraged people teaming up in newbie areas for fear of that trap. This should help.
• Launch now requires a reagent. I just got the spell, so now it will be a lot harder to level it up, but I think it's a fair change. It a useful higher-level GM spell. I'm not going to complain just because it makes my life harder. That would be carebear and all, doncha know? :D
  

Darkfall Day 26-28

Another light week and weekend for DF as I ended up playing another game Friday night and working in the yard all day Saturday. I enjoy DF and the sense of making progress, but I'm glad I can say I'm not addicted :D If you read the Darkfall forums (I recommend not), you see a lot of newer folks worried about being so far behind those who started earlier, not to mention those who have macroed and exploited their way higher. I can understand their concern, but it's a wide-open game and you can make of it what you want at any skill level. Sure you'll get ganked and attacked in unfair numbers by people with greater skill and equipment, but it's far from a constant. Mostly you need to vary your activities so that when the PK activity seems particularly high you can retreat to a city and do some quiet gathering and crafting.

As is probably dismally clear from my slowly progressing stats, I'm not too worried about it myself. Yes, I still do some "magic practice." At first I would cast my two starting spells over and over until I ran out of mana then do some logging until my mana regenerated, repeating the process again. As my magic skills have increased to the point of being useful, I've gained a lot more skill while actually fighting monsters in PvE. Now I will do "magic practice" when I'm fairly close to the next level to grind it on up. With the Lesser Magic spell Health the Mana, I'm able to extend my mana a lot longer and continuously cast for a longer time, so I no longer alternate that with gathering. With a judicious use of potions and healing spells, I can carry that on for awhile without macroing. In fact, I think rotating my spells as I do and casting those whose recast timer has just refreshed as soon as I'm able has allowed me to progress at a satisfying rate in a short amount of time.

I finally reached 25 in Greater Magic, which allowed me to purchase Spell Chanting, a little more powerful school of magic. Its first spell is one that minimizes spell failure, but it doesn't last very long right now. I'll probably put it in my training rotation, but not use it much in the field until I can improve its duration. Having Spell Chanting will eventually allow me to learn Arcane Magic, one of the two highest schools, as I understand it.

I also reached 75 in Lesser Magic this weekend. That one snuck up on me so that I only had to grind a few points to reach it. Using the spells in action in PvE (and also to some extent in gathering) has raised the skill in a natural way that's a lot less painful than sitting around casting at a wall :) Getting to 75 LM let me pick up the Launch spell, which is mighty handy, and a supplementary skill to make Lesser Magic spells cast faster. That's good news because Heal Self is Lesser Magic, as is Mana Missile, my current bread-and-butter attack spell. I've also started using Magic Shield more, which mitigates some damage. With my Durable Spells LM skill much improved, the duration on the shield is much better than at first, so I'll continue to work on that.

Buying all those new skills and spells left me broke with less than 80 gp to my name, so I went to my trusty logging and was able to gather enough to sell for 1200 gp. It required a quick trip to human lands again to sell it, but I needed to turn in some quests over there anyway. I also got to hang around Copperdale a bit which has a big graveyard right near town and lots of skeletons. I fought Dire Zombies for a quest and took me awhile to kill the requisite four because they kept ganging up on me. It was a nice challenge, though, and I felt competent at least, using a variety of spells as well as obstacles and geography to good effect. Unfortuantley, I doubt I'd still be much of a challenge for a guy with a polearm, but soon I think I'll be far enough along in magic to hold my own. That's the plan anyway :)

The other interesting thing that happned this week is that my clan got a city in a realtively peacful way through our alliance. So I've moved out there and will get to team up with my clan mates more, I expect.

Stats: Week 5

These were my stats going into last weekend. As I've mentioned before, this is probably boring for other people, but I've found it interesting to look back at the progress over time. Trying to resist the urge to plot them on a graph :P

• Strength: 27.0
• Vitality: 25.7
• Dexterity: 20.5
• Quickness: 29.5
• Intelligence: 26.8
• Wisdom: 31.4

Notable skills:

• Spell Chanting: 1.0
• Adept: 1.0
• Greater Magic: 25.0
• Durable Spells GM: 1.0
  
• Rend: 33.4
• Beacon: 23.1
• Heal Other: 1.0
• Unburden: 1.0
• Lesser Magic: 72.0
• Durable Spells LM: 43.8
• Mana Efficiency LM: 38.1
  
• Mana Missile: 63.4
• Heal Self: 51.8
• Health to Mana: 25.6
• Lay on Hands: 22.8
• Mana to Stamina: 13.4
• Magic Shield: 6.3

• Logging: 85.2
• Herb Gathering: 57.8
• Mining: 47.6
• Herbalism: 36.6
  
• Sprint: 62.4
  
• Rest: 56.4
• Run: 52.0
• Riding: 41.7
  
• Rigor: 27.0
• Clubs and Maces: 22.4
• Armor Proficiency: 45.3
• Armored Casting: 21.0
  

Also Left-handed Midget Eskimo Lesbians May Now Stand on One Foot

There was another quick patch today apparently, the patch notes for which contain one of the oddest bugs I've ever heard of:

A bug not allowing male Mahirim characters to fire magic missiles in water is fixed

For those keeping score, that's one gender among two, one race among six, and one spell among hundreds...in the water. But glad to know it's fixed :P

Tasos Responds

Tasos, the lead development person for Aventurine (yeah, I'm too lazy to look up his actual title), has responded to some of the issues brought up in the recent MMORPG.com interview with alliance leaders.

Having read several interviews with Tasos, and of course his own posts, I get this mixed sense of him as being blunt and unapologetic on the one hand while arrogant and dismissive on the other. I tend to lean towards the idea that he's just a blunt person, which is a good thing, I think. He could certainly be more politic, but then you'd get a lot more bullshit out of him, so I'll take the bluntness.

At any rate, I think the developers' continued explanations about cheating in the game are interesting. As someone who's worked in public relations and politics for awhile now, I can believe that cheating via third-party programs and hacks is a far smaller and better managed problem than it would seem from the community chatter. Here's part of what he says in the interview:

It's very often that we see reports about specific players using exploits, and them being used over and over as examples to show how exploits are rampant in the game, and yet we know that these particular guys have already been banned. They are referenced for weeks though to illustrate how rampant cheating is in Darkfall. We don't like the idea of a hall of shame for our players however.

We take reports about cheaters very seriously, but please keep in mind that most of complaining is highly exaggerated, even bogus, and a lot of it is coming from the people making and promoting these programs, from players who are banned already, by players who are using the cheats, by people with an agenda, by people who aren't even in the game, and others who are just jumping on the bandwagon.

Most player reports of cheaters are about players who are not actually cheating. Our own GMs get reported very often if that's an indication. People that lose fights, in the heat of the moment often assume their opponent wasn't fighting fair. Very good players are often accused of using hacks.

Even with all the mistaken reports of people exploiting and the multiple characters per account, there are actually few names reported, and few screenshots or videos of people cheating. If cheating was rampant then we would expect to see reports with specific player names everywhere. It's all really about perception.

I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt on this one because I know how people are, especially the rabid Darkfall community. Game mechanic exploits are something else altogether, and he does address that as well, but I'm willing to believe there's less outright hacks than players may think.

Darkfall Day 23-25

Mostly stuck around the elven lands this weekend, alternating among farming trolls, killing zombies, and gathering, with a little magic practice thrown in for good measure.

I've gotten pretty good at handling the PvE at the level of monsters I'm dealing with. Using Mana Missile has three basic tactics you can use depending on what the monsters are doing: if they're coming right at you or running directly away you can spam it over and over; if they're moving at an angle towards or away from you, you can gauge windspeed, relative humidity, and the average walking speed of a fully-laden Greek troll and try to lead the monster enough with it to actually hit them; or, if they're moving erratically, as they often do, you can make a wild guess and try to hit the ground near them so they at least suffer splash damage. So you hit one try out of five and count yourself lucky. The Mana Efficiency - Lesser Magic skill is helpful since you end up wasting so much mana.

Of course, I've continued to use my mace and its skill level is slowly creeping up. Melee involves constantly circling around the monster to avoid its spells, a tactic that is surprisingly effective, as is jumping up and down a lot when you're at a distance and they're casting at you.

I don't mean to suggest I don't enjoy the PvE, because I do, but it's something like building a house with nothing but a pipe wrench.

At any rate, I've been able to gather a good bit of spell components, which I then burn slowly raising my spell levels. The most recent patch made it so that you can't gain skill while wielding the newbie staff. The main advantage of using the newbie staff is that it can't be broken. So it's a minor inconvenience, but now I have to stock up on real staffs to use while skilling up, ones that break occasionally. Fortunately my friends the trolls also drop a good many staffs, so I'm not hurting for any.

On the PvP front, I'm still aggressive only in the noblest of ways: a true sign of the carebear :P For instance, two new, no-clan players starting attacking a third at a zombie camp the other day. He wisely ran off, but I attacked and killed them both (with some help from the zombies, of course). This is less a testament to my uber skill than to their lack of same. Still, it was satisfying, and the would-be victim and I teamed up and chatted for several hours. So don't let anyone tell you that Darkfall is all survival of the fittest.

I also ran across a pair of Alfar hunting players around the same area. I was able to creep along behind them without drawing their attention, shadowing them as they moved in to kill some humans and elves. I arrived to find one at low health standing over the grave of a victim, but I didn't see the other. Still, having little on me, I figured I'd give it a go, though I'd never survive two players who know what they're doing. I was able to sneak up behind and kill the one character after a brief chase in which the skeletons of the area were helpful. I saw his friend briefly, but he slunk away. I figured my time was short until he made a counter-attack, but the same skeletons who were so helpful earlier were now in my way getting to his loot. I was able to grab some of it, but was fighting off skeletons when the two came back. I can't imagine where they were bound that the one I killed could make it back so quickly. The nearest chaos stone is a good hike up the river, and as far as I can tell they were never mounted. But anyway, as I predicted, two-on-one was my downfall and I lost what I'd looted from him, but nothing really of my own except some resin I had on me and some random pieces of armor I was wearing that I'd got off some goblins.

But each time I engage in PvP I'm learning a little more. I'm using mainly Mana Missile still, a weak weapon if ever there were one, but ranking it up has helped expand the area of effect and damage from it. Still, it's nothing compared to an archer with a bow, so accurate and fast. I'm hoping the attack spells in the elemental schools, should I ever get to them, will finally put me on a par with them.

Stats: Week4

I didn't get to play much this week and missed Friday night entirely due to a bad connection. Here's where I'm at for this week.

• Strength: 25.9
• Vitality: 24.7
• Dexterity: 20.3
• Quickness: 28.5
• Intelligence: 24.8
• Wisdom: 28.6

Notable Skills:

• Greater Magic: 17.6
• Lesser Magic: 63.0
• Durable Spells LM: 37.6
• Mana Efficiency LM: 29.2
• Rend: 25.6
• Mana Missile: 56.1
• Heal Self: 43.8
• Armored Casting: 17.5
• Logging: 78.1
• Mining: 47.6
• Sprint: 56.3
• Rest: 52.5
• Run: 47.3
• Rigor: 21.8
• Clubs and Maces: 19.1
• Armor Proficiency: 41.4

Darkfall Day 21 & 22

I haven't played much DF this week. My weeknight gaming is fairly limited anyway and I've had other things to do. I picked up where I had left off in my journey from elven to human lands and did some mining along the way. I did skirt around some player towns and saw a few people around, but being mounted it wasn't much of an issue. I did have one player shoot some Mana Missiles my way, but since he was on foot I wasn't too worried about it.

Arriving in human lands with a load of ore, but bound to the elven city of Iriendir still, I decided to put the ore up for sale in either human or elven lands. Usually when you're looking to buy or sell items in-game the practicalities of travel limit you to one area. You will occasionally see players advertising their items offering to travel anywhere for bulk sales. So I made an arrangement to sell my ore...back in eleven lands. I had originally travelled to human lands to do some PvE in some locations I knew about, but the more I thought about my experiences in both human and elven lands and compared the two, I decided I'd probably rather be in elf lands anyway. So when the sale was made for Mir Bellith, I was happy to recall back to my bindstone and walk over to make a nice bit of gold. I donated the proceeds from that sale, as well as a bit more, to my clan for the eventual acquiring of a city. My play style doesn't make me the best of clan members, I imagine, but I do try to contribute to the cause when I can.

Otherwise, I did a little PvE with zombies near the elven cities to gather ash for my spells. There I was able to coexist peacefully with some other players who were there for similar reasons. I don't know if it's because of where I am in my progression or something about the people drawn to the elven lands, but I've found them a lot less cut-throat than in the human starter areas.

I was killed once by a couple of mounted orks, and that experience got me thinking again about predation. I can't quite bring it all together in my head, but there's some analogy to be made there with natural selection and migration patterns and predation. Maybe more than an analogy; perhaps even a parallel dynamic in the virtual world of what happens in the real world. Although the incidence of predation is significant, and it occurs most frequently at known places, it still behooves players to frequent those places if they're gathering more resources than they're losing.

Since death isn't permanent for characters in Darkfall, what's really at stake in any death is time. Time is converted into certain resources -- such as reagents, gold, armor, weapons, ore, timber -- that can be taken away in the event of a death. When the character loses those resources, what's really being lost is the time the player invested in gathering those resources. It also takes time to replace them. Some items may also be very rare, in which case the amount of time it would take to replace them can vary widely depending on luck. Players who bank frequently when gathering resources (such as by farming monsters) are banking their time, past and future. They can then exchange those resources for those gathered by other players in order to maximize their time.

With a PK attack, the player can feel frustration, anger, and shame, but what they're really losing is time. If they're converting their time into banked resources at a higher rate than they're losing them to PKs, then it makes sense to continue to frequent the very same places the PK are known to hunt. There's probably even a mathematical formula you could apply to the situation drawn from real-life studies of animal predation. For instance, if a herd of prey animals is migrating and stops at a certain watering hole, that's a place that can also be used by predator species to find their prey. So the behavior of the prey animals who habitually return to that watering hole would have to result from some quantifiable relationship between the benefits they get from using it and the costs of losing one of their members to a lion attack, for instance. There doesn't even need to be a conscious calculation, just a working out of the numbers naturally. In the case of farming monsters at known camps, there's simply a greater chance of losing some portion of your time and resources to PKs. You have to take that into account.

On the behavior of the predators, there also has to be some give-and-take. If they hit the same spot over and over repetitively, they may very well push the situation to a breaking point at which the prey (players) no longer go there at all. That could mean, as one example, that the predators have to spend more time looking for their prey and less time actually harvesting them. So whether they do so consciously or not, those PKs who run a circuit of camps or alternate their activities may be more successful than those who return to the same place consistently.

On the prey side, that's another factor that can be taken into account. If a camp's been recently hit, what are the chances that the same PKs will visit it again soon? That doesn't rule out other predators coming by, but my own experience at monster spawns is that actual PK visits are often spaced out enough to allow the prey characters enough time in between to keep the site a profitable one in respect to the gains v/s loses.

That reminds me of the situation where a police officer has a motorist pulled over on the side of the road. If the goal of the other drivers is to go as fast as they can without getting pulled over, to me it doesn't make sense to slow down drastically at the sight of a cop giving another guy a ticket. Sure, if you're going excessively fast you want to slow down so as not to get his attention. But otherwise, his attention is on the driver he's dealing with at the moment, so why slow down from 65 to 55? Of course, there could be another police cruiser just over the hill, or I've even seen one cop with another cop "pulled over." But most of the time that's the only cop for miles and he's effectively out of action for a period of time. So although psychologically you've just seen a cop and are tempted to slow down, the odds of seeing another any time soon are low: time to speed up :)

To bring that back to PK activity, there's a calculation that needs to be made, perhaps as just a rough estimation, of whether that spot is a good one to return to. In many cases, it can be. Having just been hit, the players trying to farm the camp for resources may find they're looking at a PK-less period in which they could collect back or even exceed whatever resources they lost. On the other hand, if the PKs are persistent, it could make more sense to go elsewhere or switch to another activity.

This all assumes, of course, that the would-be "prey" characters have little chance of fighting back. This is often the case because PKs tend to hunt weaker characters and, further, time their attacks when their target's health, stamina, and mana may be low. They also prefer odds no worse than 1-on-1 and often climb to 4-on-1, with similar disparities in gear and experience between them. PKs are not brave or resourceful people; they're pragmatists and opportunists. That's not necessarily a slam against them, but more a description of the ecological niche they fill. And of course it's not equating PvPers with PKs, though there is often overlap among them.

Anyway, these are the kinds of things I think about while fighting those nasty trolls, zombies, and such.

Alliance Leaders Speak

Another great article from Paragus at MMORPG.com. This time he "interviews" leaders of the top Darkfall alliances.

Close Range

I think Darkfall has been beaten for title of most hardcore game. There's even a playable demo.


Hot New Video Game Consists Solely Of Shooting People Point-Blank In The Face

Darkfall Day 17-20

At this point in my little Darkfall life, certain things have become common enough to seem unremarkable: a bit of gathering timber and ore; selling these to get money; spending said money on armor and other equipment; losing aforementioned armor and equipment to a PK (Player Killer); chasing away other would-be PKs from newbie areas. These things in themselves make up a lot of the fabric of my gameplay and have thus become unremarkable. And so, though I therefore won't remark on them often here and in the future, you can be sure they form the background noise on which these more interesting experiences take place.

It also becomes, over a weekend, hard to keep track of what happened when, so I'll just relate a few interesting bits, not necessarily in order.

One afternoon in the elven city of Iriendir I had been fighting trolls for quite awhile and decided to do some mining for ore. There's a cluster of four or five nodes all together at the foot of a log bridge right on the edge of town and in my comings and goings I'd noticed no one had been there in awhile, so the nodes were probably ripe for the harvesting. So I got my pickaxe and went to work. Before very long, however, several armored people showed up and one began to attack me; not the token swing to provoke me to attack, but a good four of five whacks. I ran into the relative safety of the area guarded by the towers and banked my stuff.

It appeared on returning that a group of about five members of one clan had decided to "own" the metal nodes. They even had one member perched atop the bridge with a bow to keep other people away. This was all apparently right outside the radius of the town's guard towers because these were humans and dwarves and elves attacking people with impunity.

For the first time in my MMORPG-playing life, I decided I would grief them. What they were doing was within the rules, but what I decided to do was as well. I decided I'd just attack them over and over again until one of us got sick of it. So I banked everything but my permanent newbie weapons and went on the attack. I ran in and blasted the one who'd attacked me with no regard for my own survival; after all, I was close to my bindstone and would lose nothing, unless I happened to kill one, in which case I'd take the hit to alignment happily. I certainly caused confusion and of course died fairly quickly. When I returned a short while later, some other fighting had apparently gone on because several of them were in poor health. I attacked again, running after one of them who, near death, ran into the protection of the towers. Heedless of the towers, I continued to fire on her until I was dead (and she, unfortunatley, was not).

On my third foray out, I decided to cross the river and shoot at them from across its expanse to at least get in some more shots with my Mana Missile. However, on returning I found the whole crew gone. I'm guessing that another clan who makes Iriendir they're semi-permanent base of operations finally drove them off, but I can only guess. At any rate, they were gone and I got back to mining. The disruptions to their plans meant that they didn't actually get much mining done, it appeared, because I was able to drain most of them of resources. I certainly don't mind sharing nodes with others, but trying to dominate them in that way was arrogant and unnecessary. Fortunately, the game gives the players the ability to correct such situations themselves.

On another occasion near the same town I was attacked by two orks using mostly Mana Missiles. I wasn't able to flee very far before dying, but came back with the intention of seeing where they went. As luck would have it, I found them not far away battling another human player, so I joined her. They weren't very well coordinated and kept switching targets. If they'd concentrated their attacks they might have fared better. But as is often the case in Darkfall, those who approach a 2-on-1 or even 4-on-1 situation with confidence are at a lost when the odds are evened up. We killed and looted them both and I got back what I'd lost to them earlier, more or less.

Of course, I also got killed a couple of times by PKs, so it wasn't all win all the time. But in between these disruptive events, I got a lot of PvE fighting done at the troll camp and managed to collect enough bone to use as a spell component to work my Greater Magic up to 18. The next plateau for it is 25, at which time I'll get some new spells.

Two odd occurences also happened. One was the single Alfar who probably could have easily killed me since I was fighting trolls naked and was at low health. But fortunately she was part of my clan's alliance and I even had the chance to help her a bit later. Then there's the Alfar who killed me and revived me afterwards, leaving with a salute. 'Tis a strange world, this Agon.

I also revived other friendly players when they died to the trolls and had them do the same for me. For once there was some comradarie among the anonymous players hard at work slaughtering trolls. Which goes to show that Darkfall can be a civil place and not always the shark tank it often is.

Toward the end of my weekend I decided to ride towards the human lands to visit there again. As I've found before, the cross-country treks can be quiet and interesting, with the occasional fleeting sighting of another player in the distance. I had to log out halfway there, so I'm anxious to see if I can finish the journey successfully.

Stats: Week 3

I'm closing in on 75 Logging, at which time I'll need to decide whether to go for Logging Mastery. At 100 it takes 2 seconds off the 10 second logging attempt, which doesn't sound like much, but is 20% shorter every time. But the skill costs 500gp and it would probably take a long time to get to 100, so the benefits would be much smaller for the near term. Something to think about anyway.

• Strength: 24.6
• Vitality: 23.6
• Dexterity: 20.2
• Quickness: 27.2
• Intelligence: 23.4
• Wisdom: 27.6

Notable Skills:

• Greater Magic: 3.2
• Rend: 6.1
• Lesser Magic: 55.2
• Durable Spells LM: 32.2
• Mana Efficiency LM: 18.7
• Mana Missile: 49.4
• Heal Self: 37.2
• Logging: 71.7
• Herb Gathering: 46.2
• Mining: 37.9
• Armored Casting: 14.2
• Armor Proficiency: 37.5
• Clubs and Maces: 15.5
• Sprint: 51.0
• Running: 44.0
• Riding: 38.5
• Rest: 48.9

Patch Day

Ah, another patch day is upon us. And what is this I see? Magic lovin'!

Sounds like mana and stamina regen a lot faster, and Rest makes it a lot faster still. Also, they lowered some mana and stamina costs for spells. Some tweaks to higher spell schools as well, but since I've not used them yet anyway, nothing too exciting for me there.

Maybe this grindy route to greatness won't be impossible after all. :)

Darkfall Day 15 & 16

Tuesday I did a little gathering. Not much magic practice this week as I need to farm up or buy some bone so I can get to work on Greater Magic. I did get the chance to spar with a new player and work up my melee skills a bit, but I really have to make that a priority this weekend. I'm not enamored of the melee in this game, but I'll need it to survive.

Last night I was planning to do some PvE for a change when the call came that our clan and its alliance were involved in a siege on another city. Our task was to defend the attacking city throughout its window of vulnerability. This is a feature of the siege system that makes the attacker's city itself vulnerable before and during the siege on the target city. It was important to ensure that the battle didn't end before it could begin.

Riding in a war party can be one of the most fun things I've experienced in Darkfall. All around you are warriors in armor, bristling with weapons, helmets topped with Romanesque plumes. The thundering of hoofbeats drowns out every other sound; I'd hate to be a lone crafter in the forest and hear that sound coming over the hill! On a long journey, though, the excitement of the war party can dull to that of a tedious expedition, especially when the romance of the thing is interupted by people losing their connections, lagging up at server boundaries, etc. I even had the peculiar experience of seeing a comrade's mount countinue on up a hill while he sat suspended in the air!

Meeting up with others of our clan, our war band eventually numbered somewhere around 20. We got to the attacker's city in plenty of time to set ourselves up on top of a building to act as snipers guarding the clanstone. Unfortunatley, there were some enemies who were bound to the city's clanstone (not sure what the story is there) who made a nuisance of themselves for the hours preceeding the attack and during it as well. I say unfortunately, but at least it gave people something to do.

I think I've compared warfare in Darkfall to the real thing before, only in the sense that everything is "hurry up and wait." There is a lot of tedium, especially on defense it seems. In this case, it took quite awhile for anyone to show up and try to attack the city we were defending and even then they didn't advance far enough into the city to make it to our position. Most of our guys ended up back on the ground to meet the attackers at the city gates where the latter were stymied most of the attack. Me being fairly useless in melee, I stayed with the rest on the building to watch the clanstone and occassionaly fire a Mana Missile down on the harrassers. A few attackers did make it through to the clanstone and proceeded to hit it with siege hammers, but the combination of arrows and Mana Missiles raining down on them ended that pretty quickly. I feel a little bad for the city defeders who were on foot and attempting to engage the hammer-wielders because they must have gotten caught in some furious crossfire.

The most interesting part was when some of the attackers managed to get on top of a tower and send a salvo of Mana Missiles at us. I used the Magic Shield spell to some effect, and the cover around, while returning fire. Pretty quickly some defenders made their way up the tower and ended the brief magical battle. The experience does confirm for me, though, that at this stage of the game magic is most effective as an artillery of sorts, best practiced from some height and distance.

Speaking of artillery, this was an alfar-style city and the cannons were pretty cool to see in action :) I've been on the receiving end of cannon fire and I know it can be intimidating. When the shots land, they really shake the screen and make a lot of noise. Plus they seem to have a decent sized area-of-effect. Glad I was inside the city this time.

The pre-emptive attack never got anywhere and after the target city became vulnerable it was essentially done. I ended up joining my clanmates on the ground, prowling around outside the walls. We killed a few stragglers and I picked up a little more positive alignment. But two of us also ended up chasing a lone enemy into a counter-attack and got killed. So what was almost a death-free PvP experience for me ended with a death after all. Lost some scraps of armor and a handful of reagents I'd not had to use. I ended up back at the elven city where I'm currently bound, so that was it for me.

Overall an interesting night with not a lot of action, but the attack was succesful, I hear, so our allies picked up a new city! Which, I expect, will be lost and won again many times over.