First Weekend

Sarg01

 

I finagled a pre-order last week. Played a little on launch day, but the desync issue made it almost impossible to get anything done that involved killing. I was able to run down a PK that had fled the goblin spawn, which got me just enough gold to buy some harvesting tools and a basic staff which let me cast spells. I was able to level some gathering skills and form a decent stash of materials that would come in very handy later.

 

Anyhow, after the 30-hour downtime to fix the desync issue (3 days later, it does appear to have been dealt with) things got a little more serious. It was very hard to get anything done with the newbie quest spawns overrun with players. The nature of the newbie quests encourages kill stealing and loot jumping. Those of us who were more cautious and actively trying not to hit other players had an extremely tough time. However, with no funds, no equipment (you start with just a sword) and no knowledge of where to find mobs that a newbie could kill, we were largely left with little choice but to stay there.

 

Eventually, I got far enough in the newbie quest to have picked up a slightly-less-crappy sword, a buckler-style shield and a few pieces of padded armor as well as about 50 gold. Up to this point, things really hadn't been going that great - too many players around to fight goblins, not powerful enough to fight orcs or hobgoblins, which were the only other spawns I could find (turns out later I made the mistake of exploring in the direction of another newbie-town, so I moved from one camped newbie-zone to another) - without enough money to buy equipment that would make a difference or even any new spells. I did have the padded armor, but fear of losing it and being completely back to square one meant not wandering into the deep wilderness without first stashing it in a bank. Even my trusty gathering tools started to break and replacing them would eliminate what little gold I did have.

 

However, everything was about to change. Noticing a player announcing that he was looking to buy iron ingots for 5g a piece, I bought some tongs for 40 of my total 50 gold and turned my big pile of iron ore from day 1 into a not-quite-as-big-but-still-nice pile of ingots. A few minutes later I was down 80 ingots, but up 400 gold. This made all the difference in the world. Now able to wear equipment with a little more confidence of being able to replace it, I was able to find a nice spawn of zombies, that while dangerous, I could take down with my sword so long as I used hit-and-run tactics. A couple of good kills here meant OK loot, and that kept the gold flowing in.

 

It's all about gold in Darkfall. The difference between a skill at 1 and a skill at 24 is negligible - I ground some things pretty hard (my mana missile skill is almost to 50) and the improvements (from 7-9 points per cast up to 9-11 points) were underwhelming compared to the work invested (you have no idea). However, if you can keep decent equipment on and use some tactics, you can take out mobs you wouldn't be able to kill in a straight up fight. The basic missile spell is good for making the enemy run around like crazy - I won't call it "pull"ing because they rarely run right at you - and you can separate them from their friends that way. This is important because they don't seem to spawn individually. There's either none, or a lot, with no real middle ground.

All in all, it's a lot more fun once you have several hundred gold, and there's always a skill to grind.

absolut187

Good review, thanks!

 

 

daarco

Those first noob hours are almost "horrifying". No gear and no clue what to do. But it seems as the world economics are beginning to rise now : )