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.