With a weekend where I had a healthy (or unhealthy, depending on who you ask) amount of gaming time behind me, DarkFall was the title that received the most time, while both Blood Bowl and Warhammer Online got their share as well. Both BB and WAR are good 1-3 hours games, where after 1-2 matches in BB, or a few scens or some oRvR in WAR, I’m basically done until the next day or so. Perfectly fine for both, even with the $15 a month for WAR, but I do like having a ‘main’ title at all times, and DarkFall currently fills that spot.

I’m playing DarkFall primarily solo on NA, while from day one I was all about my old clan Inq on EU. I’m also doing a lot more PvE/crafting on NA, while on EU we PvP’ed almost nightly. In a way, thought I’m far less of a noob in DF on NA than I was on EU, I’m playing the game from a ‘new’ players perspective, and just overall seeing the content AV has provided before going full-bore into the content players provide. (PvP and siege stuff) So far it’s been very entertaining, and I’m getting a great feel for the changes the last patch/expansion made. The more I play, the more I’m seeing the impact that patch made, and it’s without question an excellent addition/change.

Even as I focus more on PvE/crafting, it’s still within the context of DarkFall, which means that while I might not go out and find PvP, PvP finds me. Whether it’s a roaming PK group hitting mob spawns, running across a rogue red player in the wilderness, or jumping an enemy guild member in an NPC town, most days something PvP happens. In addition, a city owned by an enemy guild is located within a 5 minute walk from my current NPC city, so at any time I can go all ‘ninja’ on them and try to gank their afk people without the rest of them finding me. Usually the cat-and-mouse game ends with me dead on the ground, but it’s all very low risk / high reward for me (I usually go in junk armor/weapons), plus it’s just fun to mess with them and watch as they run around looking for me (the system provides a “player has entered your city” notification to the owner of the city).

One “I’m an idiot” moment just happened recently, as I was happily gathering towards the second wisdom title quest only to realize the quest itself counts CRAFTING mats, not turning them in. Needless to say, when I brought 100 ingots, 200 wood, and 200 food all good and ready to the NPC, he was not interested in the materials, but was looking to give me credit whenever I CREATED an ingot, wood, or cooked food.  I had decided not to pick up the quest initially because I did not want it spamming me whenever I got iron/wood/food, figuring it worked the same way as the first one. Reading comprehension FTL. Back to the drawing board on that one, but at least now I know I get to keep the mats (the first phase of the quest had you turn raw materials in), and using just some of the iron/wood, I was able to get my armorsmithing up and make some banded armor for myself.

And that armor, with it’s high durability due to it being crafted, will be a nice addition to my PvE game, which currently consists of fighting mobs in what seems to be a forgotten dungeon (I have yet to see a single player enter it, and the entrance is a bit hidden). The nice thing about this particular dungeon is that most of the mobs I fight are casters, which drop lots of spell reagents and also skill up the various magic resistance skills as I fight them. They also have a chance to drop a veilron key (2000 gold, 2-3 magic items), and the dungeon itself contains a veilron chest, making turning in a key nice and easy. The usual PvE trip for me goes until I either break too much gear to remain efficient, a key drops and I cash it in, or my bag is overloaded with loot. Recall, sell, bank, profit. As my skills increase, my downtime between killing the mobs decreases, so as time goes on my efficiency is improving. Currently I’m only able to fight one of the two ‘rooms’ in the dungeon, and look forward to when my skills/gear reaches the point of being able to handle the tough spot.

As everything stands right now, I have plenty of short to midterm goals ahead of me, and I know that at any point I can jump in and get more involved with the PvP/Politics aspect as well.