Sorry for the lack of posts lately, a nice combo of a week off and DarkFall will do that. Hopefully things will return to a more normal posting schedule, but no promises.
DarkFall has remained my primary focus, far surpassing my expectations of the game. My guild, Inquisition, is still growing and we continue to establish ourselves as a serious presence around Moonclaw. The political landscape continues to shift almost daily, with alliances forming and crashing, and the two zerg alliances are still growing (Hyperion and Goons). Always entertaining is the fact that both sides claim to be ‘anti-zerg’ alliances, created to stop the advance of the other. The Goons, now anti-zerg; I’m sure all EVE players are having a good laugh at that one.
While the plate armor rain cloud continues to avoid me, I have acquired a solid amount of scale and banded armor, along with a nice collection of rank 30-40 weapons. The combination of being more comfortable in PvP, bringing better gear/skill, and working better with guildmates as a team means our kills/death ratio is only getting better, and we are bringing down more high-value players. The major difference now is skilled bow shooters bringing down enemy mounts. A few of our players are getting rather amazing at this, and once someone is on foot, it’s only a matter of time before we run them down. Mounted combat is itself an art, both solo and in groups, and we again have been working on tactics to minimize friendly fire and bring a target down quickly. DarkFall gets the feeling of bringing someone down from your mount perfectly; it’s brutally satisfying.
Outside of PvP combat (which is tops from any MMO I have played), DarkFall gets other things right as well. Crafting is simple yet necessary, and coordinated in a guild can really help everyone out in a noticeable way. Gathering is something you can get done between downtime, or as something to do with a 30 minute stretch. It’s not any better or worse than in other resource nod systems, but the open PvP setting increases the value and challenge of resources, especially in high traffic areas like our guilds hamlet. This goes hand-in-hand with establishing your area is a costly one for Pks. Once you bring them down a few times, they tend not to come around again, making things safer for your crafters and gatherers. It’s a player-driven game, and the players are still shaping its early foundation. So far, things have been getting more interesting each day.
Hardcore Casual 
How open is the beta? How does one get an invite. Bored with WoW, and interested in trying something new…
Poor Robert. Darkfall has launched, but is in limited release. You have to be lucky enough for Aventurine to grant you the right to purchase their holy grail.
“How open is the beta? How does one get an invite. Bored with WoW, and interested in trying something new…”
Uh-Oh
Good to know Darkfall seems to be doing well, there were major mixed messages in the first days of release with some people saying it was either the best game in the world or others saying that it was completely unplayable (in terms of combat). Anyway, hopefully over the next few months it will become more open and more refined, hopefully even servers outside of Europe… But that is too high of an expectation of course atm, but that is one of the far-future goals I’d like to see for a game like this.
LOL – tinman needs to look up the definition of satire.
Long live Hyperion!
Ah friendly fire. That is the real anti-zerg mechanic.
@Werit,
How have Adventurine been about patching and interaction with the player base? Have they been forthcoming ?
I finally bought the game last friday. I played a Mirdain saturday but deleted it and created a dwarf, because it will stay closer to where my clan stays.
Sunday, with my dwarf, created that same day, I fought some battles with my clan at Yssan. Our guild is allied to Imperium.
I killed two players, sadly one was from my clan, friendly fire with my newbie sword.
After the battle our clan fought a dragon. Everyone using magic missile for kill it… except me, I don’t had a staff, character too much new and had no time for compelte the quest for get a staff or kill a shaman goblin for one.
I run naked after the dragon only with my newbie sword while the dragon run from one player to other because it was hit by magic missiles. When I helped to raise a clan mate fallen, the dragon finally run after me and toasted me…
[believe me, it was the funniest thing I made at a MMORPG at the last 7 years… maybe be funnier than the naked run from Freeport to Qeynos I made at EQI]
A good thing with the game is that EVERYTHING you do, you can get a skill up. From my adventures at sunday I get a good skill up at swiming and running, that will be usefull later.
Monday night, after work, I get some quests completed at Eirhjelm. Tonight I will continue to complete more quests for get some gear and more skills.
Nice to read a DFO related blog. Keep up the good writing and have fun in the world of Agon. Should we once meet, be prepared. ;)
DEB
The combat definitely takes skill, and I couldn’t be happier!
One thing to note about some of the reviews; I have read a couple that said the sound was horrible, however, I wonder if they even used some form of surround sound? I unplugged my headset the other day and tried my basic speaker setup…I was unable to tell where the sounds were coming from around me, and it felt overwhelming and crappy. My point being, if you want to get into Darkfall, try and get either a surround-sound speaker setup, or a decent headset.
@Syncaine – I still haven’t been able to farm the steed grass / 100 ore I owe you, but if needed, I still have the mount / armor I can give back to you. Otherwise, I will get that grass / ore to you ASAP. I’m still grinding out skills and getting some basics out of the way – I’m not to the resource gathering stage of character development yet. I did mine 100 stone, but was unable to smelt it down to ore with tongs – I’ll have to research more on that. Thank you again for fronting me the armor / mount so I could check out mounted combat – it was a blast and I’m already skilling up sword & board because of that expedition.
@Joao – For 100g you can purchase another starter weapon (staff) and then you can still cast lesser magic spells even after death and getting looted. I would also recommend, for 20g, trading in your original starting dagger for something else since the dagger range sucks.
I love DF too. It’s really a fun game and much better than I’d expected. The only thing I’d like to add is that crafting is good but gathering is about the most boring thing you could do in one game. You can’t look around, for good reason, but what it amounts to realistically is staring at the face of a rock for 20 minutes and playing the click-wait-click game. It’s not meant to be easy but it sure as hell can’t be meant to be fun either.
I don’t necessarily hate it because it *does* work during downtime but I don’t necessarily think it’s something people would choose to do if they had another option for supplying their crafting.
Personally, I’d be happy if they added a little more complexity to the crafting system to break up the monotony. It’s one of those promises they made pre-release so hopefully they will.
The Hyperion alliance is not as solid as one might think, due in part to infighting between clans of the alliance. There has been a lot of tension over which clan will gain control of a city after it has been sieged. A few of the Hyperion clans are very greedy, and many are getting fed up with it. I feel that things could implode any day now.
@Lucian: If you would like to enhance sound qualitiy regarding range and direction just go to: options -> audio -> Maximum Number of 3D Sounds (default 8) -> 256 (if you have a medium soundcard) or more.
The game now will make a way more differences between directions and distances of sounds.
Hope that helped.^^
DEB
… 3D Sounds (default 8 ) -> 256 (if you …
Please kill smileys. Kill them all. You … kill!
Wickidd, are you in a Hyperion guild?
@Doc – Thanks for that tip; I’ll try it tonight when I get home.
@Lucian – I bought it monday. I bought a newbie two hand hammer and a newbie staff. I don’t had them sunday because I had just created my dwarf, so no time and no money. But I helped my clan to help Hyperion to conquer that city at Yssam anyway. My clan is Anhanguera, a brazilian clan.
I bought too taming (500gp), harvested some steedgrass and have a mount. I intend to buy both armorsmith (500gp) and weaponsmith (500gp)skills when I have enough money. Money is not hard to come, if I farm zombies the money come fast and I get some low quality gear for I use. The problem is escape PK when I am farming alone. While I am at the dwarf area, my clan is at Yssan, farming and waging war. So, I am trying everything solo for now.
I can too farm goblins or skelies, but the problem with these mobs is that they are too much camped, too many players farming them or completing quests that need them killed. So, sometimes is hard to find one and there is a lot of competition for kill one goblin.
I too will buy a third newbie weapon slot, possibly an one handed axe (RP reasons) or a sword (better range than axe?).
I will see how I develop my character. I am geting up my self heal and lesser magic skills, I intend to buy greater magic and it need 25 skill at lesser magic for be possible to be bought. I want to get spell chanting for be a healer, I hope that can be useful at battles. Certainly I will be a crafter, I want to make armor and weapons.
The problem now is see what I need to do. There are a lot of things the game offer, pratically is possible to do everything, so it is hard to choice what to do first.
@Paragus: I am and I completely agree with what Wickkid says. Hyperion has a LOT of internal conflict and is getting to the point of inmanagability. There’s a lot of awesome players in it but when one clan doesn’t know another clan is part of the alliance, that’s where conflicts begin.
@Joao Carlos
You really should consider meeting up with your guild as soon as possible. Trust me, I had one or two newcomers to the game in my guild who had the same attitude and they did not last long. Go meet with your guild, and go out farming with them if you want the best chance of survival.
One a side note, me and some of the other people in Inquisition sailed to Yssam on a raft a few nights ago, and that jungle was crawling with people. It is like the Viet Nam of Agon ;)
@Raegn, I hope you’re right. I suspect that this won’t resolve itself until the NA server launches though. Hyperion will stay behind and have free reign over the vacated territories left behind by people who transfer. If it is going to break up, the European players better hope it happens before then.
Interresting survey: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/stateofvgamer_040609_fnl1.pdf
Notice the number of US WoW players: 1.8 million. (I think this is US numbers only)
@Paragus
Well, my clan policy is that new players can stay at the newbie areas one or two weeks. However, can be hard to a Mirdain move across all continent to Yssam, because it is not easy when you are a dwarf and the dwarf area is closer to Yssam…
I intend to make the quests at the newbie dwarven cities, that bags are usefull. Too it is going easier to kill the goblins and I go kill them naked, my armor is inside the bank. Maybe because I am hiting them harder or because I am gaining more hp.
Yssan is a tropical jungle. Viet Nam can be a good analogy, it is happening a war there, Hyperion is decided to conquer all player cities there. The jungle can be used for surpirse attacks and for hide from the enemy. If you return there maybe you find me there at this weekend. My name in game is Dustin Greenleaf, I will go there for fight some PvP with my clan this weekend and maybe make some mayhem in the name of Hyperion.
@Swift: Interesting report for sure, just wish they had more PC games info, other than that pre-installed card games are big.
@Lucian: No worries man, I have plenty of mounts and armor now. I did not want you to miss out on a PvP trip, that’s all. Keep the stuff for now, and whenever you get an extra mount or a nice rank 30+ 1h sword, just get back to me then. Again though no rush.
Hey syncaine if a wolfman in darkfall was looking for a decent guild with a certain blogger in it where would he apply? >.>
@Bill
http://www.inqguild.com might be a good place to start :) We have a few bloggers in the guild apparently.
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I will be purchasing DF today hopefully, I was wondering is there more than 1 server to join if so which is better and are there any recommendations on which guilds to join? I love pvp btw and I am an avid gamer that plays everyday.