- 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
Friday, April 24, 2009
Another Patch Day
Patch notes today start out ho-hum and then get REALLY interesting. (By the way, always patching on Fridays? WTF?)
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
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.
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
- 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
Thursday, April 16, 2009
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:
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
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:
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.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
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
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