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.