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.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Darkfall Needs Slavery
I've just made a new post on Darkfall's Suggestions forum for a new feature I think is necessary for the game. Check it out.
PvP and Skill-based Systems Don't Mix
I've long been a fan of RPGs that use skills instead of classes. For one thing, they usually offer more ways to develop a character. Want to be a wizard who uses a sword? Go for it! I also like the idea that you progress in the skills you use and that quests can be more about completing the objective than sopping up every stray experience point. The Elder Scrolls games are a good example, though they do incorporate some level-based mechanics. Ultima Online as it originally debuted was also purely skill-based. Since they're taking so much inspiration from UO, it's no surprise that Darkfall is also a skill-based system.
I'm starting to think, however, that skill-based systems and PvP are a bad mix. Maybe Darkfall just does it poorly, I don't know, but it doesn't seem to be working out well. Part of the problem could also be that players have seen and experienced a lot of MMOs since the advent of UO and our expectations are different now. Here's a few of the problems with skills and PvP as I see it.
The Grind:
In a skill-based RPG that's focused on PvE, like Oblivion, you progress in your skills as you use them against computer-controlled foes. There's little incentive to sit in a town and use the same skill repetitively just to increase it when you could be out raising your skills while having fun. In fact, in Oblivion the monsters level up as you do to provide a suitable challenge, so there's sort of a disincentive to grind skills.
By contrast, because Darkfall is focused so heavily on PvP, there's a great incentive to "grind" skills to a higher level so that you can be competitive with the other players who might want to kill you or who you might want to kill. Magic is particularly bad in this regard as in its earliest stages it's simply not competitive with a guy in armor wielding a polearm. But grinding, to put it mildly, isn't fun. It's makework, a time-sink. It sucks. You could go out to a camp of monsters and PvE to raise those skills, but you're at far greater risk of getting killed by other players who come looking for inexperienced characters to kill. You can also "spar" with clanmates, which can be more fun and provides an incentive to join with other people. This works well for melee skills.
The need to grind out skills is why we see ridiculous things like people running in place against a wall in town for hours, or swimming against a wall, or splashing around in acid pools to raise their resistance, or (as I have done) casting Mana Missile over and over again at trees.
Character Diversity:
One of the fun things about PvP is seeing the different tactics people use, even if you're on the losing end of those tactics. That's assuming, of course, that the tactics are a clever use of positioning, character skill, and player skill and not just some abuse of game mechanics. In early UO, though, the PvPer's PvPer was the tank mage, a guy in full armor who also used magic. There was also the naked-with-a-halberd guy. But for all the freedom of the skill-based system, there were a lot of folks who were practically identical. They had to be to be competitive.
Maybe it's just the infant state of Darkfall, but I'm seeing the same thing. If you want to do PvP and do it right, you need to be in full armor and wielding either a polearm or a two-handed sword. You also have to use bows, both for closing action and for giving chase. Unless you've progressed to the elemental schools, magic is probably out of the question. Oh, Heal Self and Mana Missile can come in handy, as will Mana to Stamina. I'll do another post on the problems with magic in Darkfall. The point here is that, for all the skills made available, there's really only one or two "builds" that work.
I dearly hope this changes over time. Darkfall is already geared towards the "nasty, brutish, and short" mindset. If the only thing that's viable is butchers in full plate, it's going to be a tedious game.
Endgame:
I don't know about the MUDs that preceded it, but in UO I don't remember there being a concept of the "endgame." This is the idea, particularly prevalent in World of Warcraft, that the real action happens after your character's level and/or skills are maxed out. Everything leading up to that is a series of hoops you jump through to get to the endgame. To me, this seems to be a perversion of the idea of fun. I'm glad there's more content and higher level action to look forward to, but if I'm racing through a game to get to that content, then I'm spending an awful lot of time going through the paces before I get there. I kind of have this idea that a game should be fun from day one and that it ought to offer fun all along the way.
In a PvP game like Darkfall, the endgame is really the ability to be maximally effective in player v/s player conflicts. For some it includes large-scale clan warfare, city building, and conquest. For others it's just being able to wtfpwn anyone they come across. Either way, it means that developing your skills, rather than being the game, is all the shit you have to do before you can play the game. Shadowbane, although a class-based game, had a similar mindset; if you hadn't reached the maximum level, you couldn't really be competitive with those who had. Ergo, get there as fast as possible.
In addition to these issues, Darkfall also has the problem that they've implemented their skill system in an inconsistent and unsatisfying way. For most of the skills, it's hard to see the benefits that higher levels accrue to the basic functioning of the skill. For many of the skills, you only see significant improvements at the 25, 50, and 75 skill point levels, and the main benefit of attaining higher skill levels is that they allow you to purchase different, augmentative skills. This is really a level-based system in drag, without the classes, cross-bred with the worst aspects of a skill-based system. I get the feeling that Darkfall's developers were more enamoured of the idea of a skill-based system than the reality of it. The result, at this point, appears to be an unholy mess.
Darkfall also violates one of the most fundamental ideas in good RPG design: give the players interesting choices to make that have consequences. We often see this is single-player games as it applies to quest branching and the choices you need to make at each level. But I think the principle should hold true for MMORPGs as well or they're not really RPGs at all. As it stands, Darkfall has no caps on skill or stat points, so every character can learn every skill and max out every stat. I presume this is slated to be changed, but that's where we are right now. Further, they've removed the restrictions that prevented someone skilled in Air magic, for instance, from learning Earth magic (and the same for Fire and Water) so that those choices no longer have any meaning either. It's great that Darkfall is a "sandbox" and you can choose anything you want, but being able to choose everything simultaneously makes those choices meaningless.
As a fan of skill-based RPGs, I hate to say it, but I'm starting to think they don't make good PvP MMOs.
I'm starting to think, however, that skill-based systems and PvP are a bad mix. Maybe Darkfall just does it poorly, I don't know, but it doesn't seem to be working out well. Part of the problem could also be that players have seen and experienced a lot of MMOs since the advent of UO and our expectations are different now. Here's a few of the problems with skills and PvP as I see it.
The Grind:
In a skill-based RPG that's focused on PvE, like Oblivion, you progress in your skills as you use them against computer-controlled foes. There's little incentive to sit in a town and use the same skill repetitively just to increase it when you could be out raising your skills while having fun. In fact, in Oblivion the monsters level up as you do to provide a suitable challenge, so there's sort of a disincentive to grind skills.
By contrast, because Darkfall is focused so heavily on PvP, there's a great incentive to "grind" skills to a higher level so that you can be competitive with the other players who might want to kill you or who you might want to kill. Magic is particularly bad in this regard as in its earliest stages it's simply not competitive with a guy in armor wielding a polearm. But grinding, to put it mildly, isn't fun. It's makework, a time-sink. It sucks. You could go out to a camp of monsters and PvE to raise those skills, but you're at far greater risk of getting killed by other players who come looking for inexperienced characters to kill. You can also "spar" with clanmates, which can be more fun and provides an incentive to join with other people. This works well for melee skills.
The need to grind out skills is why we see ridiculous things like people running in place against a wall in town for hours, or swimming against a wall, or splashing around in acid pools to raise their resistance, or (as I have done) casting Mana Missile over and over again at trees.
Character Diversity:
One of the fun things about PvP is seeing the different tactics people use, even if you're on the losing end of those tactics. That's assuming, of course, that the tactics are a clever use of positioning, character skill, and player skill and not just some abuse of game mechanics. In early UO, though, the PvPer's PvPer was the tank mage, a guy in full armor who also used magic. There was also the naked-with-a-halberd guy. But for all the freedom of the skill-based system, there were a lot of folks who were practically identical. They had to be to be competitive.
Maybe it's just the infant state of Darkfall, but I'm seeing the same thing. If you want to do PvP and do it right, you need to be in full armor and wielding either a polearm or a two-handed sword. You also have to use bows, both for closing action and for giving chase. Unless you've progressed to the elemental schools, magic is probably out of the question. Oh, Heal Self and Mana Missile can come in handy, as will Mana to Stamina. I'll do another post on the problems with magic in Darkfall. The point here is that, for all the skills made available, there's really only one or two "builds" that work.
I dearly hope this changes over time. Darkfall is already geared towards the "nasty, brutish, and short" mindset. If the only thing that's viable is butchers in full plate, it's going to be a tedious game.
Endgame:
I don't know about the MUDs that preceded it, but in UO I don't remember there being a concept of the "endgame." This is the idea, particularly prevalent in World of Warcraft, that the real action happens after your character's level and/or skills are maxed out. Everything leading up to that is a series of hoops you jump through to get to the endgame. To me, this seems to be a perversion of the idea of fun. I'm glad there's more content and higher level action to look forward to, but if I'm racing through a game to get to that content, then I'm spending an awful lot of time going through the paces before I get there. I kind of have this idea that a game should be fun from day one and that it ought to offer fun all along the way.
In a PvP game like Darkfall, the endgame is really the ability to be maximally effective in player v/s player conflicts. For some it includes large-scale clan warfare, city building, and conquest. For others it's just being able to wtfpwn anyone they come across. Either way, it means that developing your skills, rather than being the game, is all the shit you have to do before you can play the game. Shadowbane, although a class-based game, had a similar mindset; if you hadn't reached the maximum level, you couldn't really be competitive with those who had. Ergo, get there as fast as possible.
In addition to these issues, Darkfall also has the problem that they've implemented their skill system in an inconsistent and unsatisfying way. For most of the skills, it's hard to see the benefits that higher levels accrue to the basic functioning of the skill. For many of the skills, you only see significant improvements at the 25, 50, and 75 skill point levels, and the main benefit of attaining higher skill levels is that they allow you to purchase different, augmentative skills. This is really a level-based system in drag, without the classes, cross-bred with the worst aspects of a skill-based system. I get the feeling that Darkfall's developers were more enamoured of the idea of a skill-based system than the reality of it. The result, at this point, appears to be an unholy mess.
Darkfall also violates one of the most fundamental ideas in good RPG design: give the players interesting choices to make that have consequences. We often see this is single-player games as it applies to quest branching and the choices you need to make at each level. But I think the principle should hold true for MMORPGs as well or they're not really RPGs at all. As it stands, Darkfall has no caps on skill or stat points, so every character can learn every skill and max out every stat. I presume this is slated to be changed, but that's where we are right now. Further, they've removed the restrictions that prevented someone skilled in Air magic, for instance, from learning Earth magic (and the same for Fire and Water) so that those choices no longer have any meaning either. It's great that Darkfall is a "sandbox" and you can choose anything you want, but being able to choose everything simultaneously makes those choices meaningless.
As a fan of skill-based RPGs, I hate to say it, but I'm starting to think they don't make good PvP MMOs.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Stats: Week 2
This week I switched from swords to maces, but I haven't had much time to train it. Gathering skills are bringing in the spell components I need to raise my Lesser Magic (primarily resin and sulphur) and some money.
- Strength: 22.7
- Vitality: 22.1
- Dexterity: 20.0
- Quickness: 23.5
- Intelligence: 22.1
- Wisdom: 23.8
Notable Skills:
- Lesser Magic: 44.6
- Mana Missile: 40.8
- Heal Self: 27.9
- Durable Spells LM: 24.4
- Armored Casting: 10.2
- Logging: 57.0
- Mining: 32.2
- Armor Proficiency: 30.3
- Clubs & Maces: 7.5
- Sprint: 39.4
- Run: 35.2
- Rest: 35.0
- Swimming: 32.1
Friday, March 27, 2009
Patch Day
Ah, I remember when the mere phrase "Patch Day" would bring shudders of fear to UO players everywhere. Alas for my misspent youth.
And today, a patch to Darkfall, including...
Too late for Orks R Us, I suppose, but we're early yet in the life of this monster, so it's good to see the siege mechanics being fixed. I'm sure many more gremlins still lurk in there to bite us.
Other changes seemed to involve mainly graphics issues, which will no doubt piss of the forum-dwellers; it's not like the graphics are the worst of the issues they face, but then I suppose Aventurine's artists have to have something to contribute. Tweaks to Arcane Magic and Necromancy could be more interesting. I wonder if anyone has reached these highest level spell schools yet? There were probably Known Issues with these schools that Aventurine held off fixing until players advanced that far. If no one has reached them yet, I would imagine they will soon.
And today, a patch to Darkfall, including...
About siege mechanics: A few days ago a siege ended without the expected result. We investigated why this happened and discovered a combination of unrelated errors were responsible. Everything associated with this has been corrected so it won't happen again. We want to thank everyone for their feedback on this incident.
Too late for Orks R Us, I suppose, but we're early yet in the life of this monster, so it's good to see the siege mechanics being fixed. I'm sure many more gremlins still lurk in there to bite us.
Other changes seemed to involve mainly graphics issues, which will no doubt piss of the forum-dwellers; it's not like the graphics are the worst of the issues they face, but then I suppose Aventurine's artists have to have something to contribute. Tweaks to Arcane Magic and Necromancy could be more interesting. I wonder if anyone has reached these highest level spell schools yet? There were probably Known Issues with these schools that Aventurine held off fixing until players advanced that far. If no one has reached them yet, I would imagine they will soon.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Darkfall Day 9 & 10
Day 9 was more gathering and spell practice at our clan alliance city.
On Day 10 that city was lost.
One of the things that drew me to Darkfall, despite not caring much for wide-open, free-for-all, full-loot PvP, is the potential for political intrigue and siege warfare. Amusingly, a certain section of the playerbase thinks the game should be about solo PKs killing solo newbies and taking their shit. Fortunately for me, there's a great number who are already engaged in building cities, alliances, and the engines of war. Never mind that our clan and its alliance were just on the losing end of the the latter.
A large alliance helped one of the allied clans attack and capture our allies' city from its stalwart defenders. When I got the news that the attack would be taking place in a few short hours, I made sure to hurry home after work to participate. The outcome was, to my mind, vitually pre-ordanined; I didn't expect us to hold the city, really, not in the face of overwhelming odds. Ironically, by careful study of the rules of war laid out by the game's developer, our undermanned alliance did actually win the contest by capturing the attackers' home village while they were just starting their attack on us. Perhaps that reads a little convoluted, and in fact the rules are full of various suppositions and mitigating clauses. Short version: attack another city but lose your own first and you've lost. Defenders win.
So if we won, how did we lose? Because of a little ruse de guerre called a "fucking bug." Ah, I'll let wiser men debate the finer points. Simply put, the pertinent rules didn't work. And so, fat saved from fire, it was promptly dropped back into the coals.
This is not to say that the attacker's wouldn't have won otherwise. The taking of their home village was a desperate gambit, one that, miraculousy, should have paid off. But kudos to them anyway for amassing a larger and better prepared force.
The siege, or raid, was both awesome and suckified. Seeing the defenders arrayed along the battlements in their armor was very cool. Raining arrows and spells down on the attackers as they finally arrived across the narrow isthmus connecting the city to the land was thrilling. Being in and amongst the chaos of the fray was fun. What sucked: frame rates that made it seem like we were playing a slideshow instead of a game and that also made it nearly impossible to aim at anything; client crashes when respawning after deaths (25% of the time for me); the inability to tell friend from foe unless you happened to know all of the names of the two-dozen-or-so clans involved in the melee; and the lack of a freaking door on the city, making all the walls and fortifications moot.
In its suckitude, the siege reminded me much of those in Shadowbane, which were always insane lagfests once you got above 40 characters on the screen. Last night we had probably a couple hundred, maybe more. I turned down all of my video and audio settings, but it didn't help.
As for me, I died 8 times. I didn't have much equipment to start with, so after the first death it was mainly a matter of running around and trying to attack the enemy with Mana Missile and my newbie staff, although I did try to melee a bit. Having nor armor, though, I tried to keep my distance. I'd look for players sitting down trying to recover their health and stamina, or those relatively low on health. I'd peridodically find a quiet corener outside the walls and rest myself. And at some point, when an alliance commander suggested it, I used my brief time of post-respawn invulnerability to block those smashing our clanstone with siege hammers, to not much effect.
All in all I'm glad I participated. It was about what I expected, which is to say a fun-filled lagfest, even if I did die a lot. Aventurine is going to have to get the siege system worked out if they expect the game to survive for long. It's not much fun to fight by strobe light, and it's no fun at all to play by the rules and get shafted anyway.
As a further irony, this is the city I spent all day getting to on Sunday through many perilous adventures. Now I'm based in the dwarves' capital city. Nice knowing ya, dear city, I guess.
On Day 10 that city was lost.
One of the things that drew me to Darkfall, despite not caring much for wide-open, free-for-all, full-loot PvP, is the potential for political intrigue and siege warfare. Amusingly, a certain section of the playerbase thinks the game should be about solo PKs killing solo newbies and taking their shit. Fortunately for me, there's a great number who are already engaged in building cities, alliances, and the engines of war. Never mind that our clan and its alliance were just on the losing end of the the latter.
A large alliance helped one of the allied clans attack and capture our allies' city from its stalwart defenders. When I got the news that the attack would be taking place in a few short hours, I made sure to hurry home after work to participate. The outcome was, to my mind, vitually pre-ordanined; I didn't expect us to hold the city, really, not in the face of overwhelming odds. Ironically, by careful study of the rules of war laid out by the game's developer, our undermanned alliance did actually win the contest by capturing the attackers' home village while they were just starting their attack on us. Perhaps that reads a little convoluted, and in fact the rules are full of various suppositions and mitigating clauses. Short version: attack another city but lose your own first and you've lost. Defenders win.
So if we won, how did we lose? Because of a little ruse de guerre called a "fucking bug." Ah, I'll let wiser men debate the finer points. Simply put, the pertinent rules didn't work. And so, fat saved from fire, it was promptly dropped back into the coals.
This is not to say that the attacker's wouldn't have won otherwise. The taking of their home village was a desperate gambit, one that, miraculousy, should have paid off. But kudos to them anyway for amassing a larger and better prepared force.
The siege, or raid, was both awesome and suckified. Seeing the defenders arrayed along the battlements in their armor was very cool. Raining arrows and spells down on the attackers as they finally arrived across the narrow isthmus connecting the city to the land was thrilling. Being in and amongst the chaos of the fray was fun. What sucked: frame rates that made it seem like we were playing a slideshow instead of a game and that also made it nearly impossible to aim at anything; client crashes when respawning after deaths (25% of the time for me); the inability to tell friend from foe unless you happened to know all of the names of the two-dozen-or-so clans involved in the melee; and the lack of a freaking door on the city, making all the walls and fortifications moot.
In its suckitude, the siege reminded me much of those in Shadowbane, which were always insane lagfests once you got above 40 characters on the screen. Last night we had probably a couple hundred, maybe more. I turned down all of my video and audio settings, but it didn't help.
As for me, I died 8 times. I didn't have much equipment to start with, so after the first death it was mainly a matter of running around and trying to attack the enemy with Mana Missile and my newbie staff, although I did try to melee a bit. Having nor armor, though, I tried to keep my distance. I'd look for players sitting down trying to recover their health and stamina, or those relatively low on health. I'd peridodically find a quiet corener outside the walls and rest myself. And at some point, when an alliance commander suggested it, I used my brief time of post-respawn invulnerability to block those smashing our clanstone with siege hammers, to not much effect.
All in all I'm glad I participated. It was about what I expected, which is to say a fun-filled lagfest, even if I did die a lot. Aventurine is going to have to get the siege system worked out if they expect the game to survive for long. It's not much fun to fight by strobe light, and it's no fun at all to play by the rules and get shafted anyway.
As a further irony, this is the city I spent all day getting to on Sunday through many perilous adventures. Now I'm based in the dwarves' capital city. Nice knowing ya, dear city, I guess.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Darkfall Day 8 - Part II
Making your way into the interior of Yssam is what I imagine stepping into the Yucatan is like. But with Raptors. There are fascinating ruins that look like something from Central America but haunted by the shades of fallen elves...and other things. The mountains all around are green and jagged. The valleys are filled with large strange flowering plants that look like they might eat you.
We found out about the Raptors close-up as a couple came to gnaw on us. And we stumbled across a goblin village near a desolate clanstone whose warriors were tough and agile. Fortunately we didn't have too much trouble evading them once it became obvious our Mana Missiles weren't going to do the trick.
As we made our way along the southern coast, we began to hear the sounds of logging, so we switched to crouch-walking through the high grasses and slipping behind trees. At one point Valucis scouted ahead and came sneaking back when he realized there was someone directly on the other side of the tree he was leaning against casting spells and buffing up! Could be they were macroing, and at any rate I suspect now they might have been part of our alliance, but we had no way to know at the time. With one of us naked but for newbie weapons and the other not a lot better off, we decided to practice discretion.
Night fell and we crept along in a purple darkness, sure that some wandering clan would come upon us and send us back to the clanstone. At one point we stopped, Valucis behind a large rock, me behind a tree, and the sounds of someone walking through the forest seemed awfully near. Just as we were ready to move along, Val lost his connection again and had to reboot his computer. Sucked for him, I'm sure, but being the guy sitting there behind a tree waiting for him to come back was no picknick either ;) When he got back, we decided to sprint along and put some distance between us and the sounds of active habitation.
As the sun rose, we finally made our way back to the coast and prepared to head south. I'm not sure if it was then or after we had swam a ways from island to island that we came upon a clanstone near a beach. I do remember that we were glad to be able to bind again further along into our journey so that if we died we at least wouldn't have to make such a long trek back.
It was then that we stumbled on the Mahirim. He was red and naked and at low health, having respawned, I suppose, at the very clanstone we were travelling to. Without a word spoken we both attacked, sending a fierce volley of Mana Missiles at him. For such a big dog he was very quick. He dodged our slow spells fairly easily, and ducked behind a large tree. We ran around it from different sides, but it seemed he'd given us the slip, and quickly, too. All around the little cove we looked, to no avail. But as I was walking back to the clanstone, there he was, hidden behind a tree. A master move, really. He'd given us the slip and set us up for an ambush while gathering his health back. Out came the newbie pole arm, slashing at us mericlessly. We dodged in an out and tried to flank him but were getting hit an awful lot and not doing enough damage back to panick him. I was getting to the worse of it and dove under the water to escpae for a moment. It sounded like he might be behind me, but then I saw Valucis's health meter dropping. I came up for a quick breath and dived again to come around curve or rocks and try to get some health and mana back.
Unfortunately Val went down. I felt bad about saving my own skin, but he rightfully pointed out that I was the one that still had something to lose, including my mount. Still, I would like to be able to say we hung tight and focused our attacks, but it didn't happen. With more practice maybe we'll be formidable. At this point, we got whacked by a naked Mahirim.
Val had bound to the clanstone there, so he respawned in short order, only to be chased again. I tried to get on land and mount to use my horse as a weapon, but they were taking the chase southwards across the water, hopping from small island to outcropping. So I swam in that general direction and tried to coordinate with my clanmate to gather back together. I believe he had a second death then, but swimming and diving, we were finally able to reconnect.
The last part of our journey brought us, drenched in seawater and blood, to the northern peninsula that was our destination. We ended up approaching the city from the south across a narrow bridge beneath imposing walls with ivory spikes and dark towers. The place felt immense and not a little confusing. As we approached the city's clanstone, Valucis kissed it, and I can't say I blame him one bit.
An epic journey, my friend.
We found out about the Raptors close-up as a couple came to gnaw on us. And we stumbled across a goblin village near a desolate clanstone whose warriors were tough and agile. Fortunately we didn't have too much trouble evading them once it became obvious our Mana Missiles weren't going to do the trick.
As we made our way along the southern coast, we began to hear the sounds of logging, so we switched to crouch-walking through the high grasses and slipping behind trees. At one point Valucis scouted ahead and came sneaking back when he realized there was someone directly on the other side of the tree he was leaning against casting spells and buffing up! Could be they were macroing, and at any rate I suspect now they might have been part of our alliance, but we had no way to know at the time. With one of us naked but for newbie weapons and the other not a lot better off, we decided to practice discretion.
Night fell and we crept along in a purple darkness, sure that some wandering clan would come upon us and send us back to the clanstone. At one point we stopped, Valucis behind a large rock, me behind a tree, and the sounds of someone walking through the forest seemed awfully near. Just as we were ready to move along, Val lost his connection again and had to reboot his computer. Sucked for him, I'm sure, but being the guy sitting there behind a tree waiting for him to come back was no picknick either ;) When he got back, we decided to sprint along and put some distance between us and the sounds of active habitation.
As the sun rose, we finally made our way back to the coast and prepared to head south. I'm not sure if it was then or after we had swam a ways from island to island that we came upon a clanstone near a beach. I do remember that we were glad to be able to bind again further along into our journey so that if we died we at least wouldn't have to make such a long trek back.
It was then that we stumbled on the Mahirim. He was red and naked and at low health, having respawned, I suppose, at the very clanstone we were travelling to. Without a word spoken we both attacked, sending a fierce volley of Mana Missiles at him. For such a big dog he was very quick. He dodged our slow spells fairly easily, and ducked behind a large tree. We ran around it from different sides, but it seemed he'd given us the slip, and quickly, too. All around the little cove we looked, to no avail. But as I was walking back to the clanstone, there he was, hidden behind a tree. A master move, really. He'd given us the slip and set us up for an ambush while gathering his health back. Out came the newbie pole arm, slashing at us mericlessly. We dodged in an out and tried to flank him but were getting hit an awful lot and not doing enough damage back to panick him. I was getting to the worse of it and dove under the water to escpae for a moment. It sounded like he might be behind me, but then I saw Valucis's health meter dropping. I came up for a quick breath and dived again to come around curve or rocks and try to get some health and mana back.
Unfortunately Val went down. I felt bad about saving my own skin, but he rightfully pointed out that I was the one that still had something to lose, including my mount. Still, I would like to be able to say we hung tight and focused our attacks, but it didn't happen. With more practice maybe we'll be formidable. At this point, we got whacked by a naked Mahirim.
Val had bound to the clanstone there, so he respawned in short order, only to be chased again. I tried to get on land and mount to use my horse as a weapon, but they were taking the chase southwards across the water, hopping from small island to outcropping. So I swam in that general direction and tried to coordinate with my clanmate to gather back together. I believe he had a second death then, but swimming and diving, we were finally able to reconnect.
The last part of our journey brought us, drenched in seawater and blood, to the northern peninsula that was our destination. We ended up approaching the city from the south across a narrow bridge beneath imposing walls with ivory spikes and dark towers. The place felt immense and not a little confusing. As we approached the city's clanstone, Valucis kissed it, and I can't say I blame him one bit.
An epic journey, my friend.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
