Now that I’m back together with the Inquisition crew I was with on EU (no more fairy wings for Inq), it’s back to small-clan activity in the same big alliance (INQ is allied with VAMP/NEM). For me that really is the best of both worlds. I get to once again game with cool people that I actually want to talk to in vent, while also being a part of all the ‘big kid’ stuff that the alliance does.
Due to our current location, northern Yssam, we are in close proximity to five different villages, four of which can be captured by cannon fire from a boat. The income from capturing such a village is not massive enough to draw the attention of clans like VAMP or Nemesis (a village gives between 220-550g an hour for 6 hours. Killing the fire dragon gets you 50k+, although that requires 20+ people all agreeing to come and shoot 300ish arrows for little/no personal gain), but a clan like INQ certainly sees the benefit of capturing those villages when possible.
As mentioned, four of those villages are near the ocean, and so rather then swim out and capture them with siege hammers, it’s much easier/faster to sail a ship out and fire some cannons. This meant building a ship, which includes gathering a lot of wood/iron/gold to build the ship modules, and then getting/buying an astrolabe. The astrolabe is a rare drop either from leenspar chests or certain mobs. As luck would have it, someone in our alliance got one as a mob drop just as we were looking to buy one, and we were able to purchase it for a good price.
As you build ship modules your shipbuilding skill increases, but in order to even reach 25 skill (the first tier above 1) you need a hefty amount of resources, so we just decided to craft the smallest war ship (a Pinnace) to have something to play around with and test out. Here is a forum thread with some information about ships. If you look at the ‘all ships’ link, the Pinnace is the second ship from the top left (yup, it’s a little guy compared to the big ships).
The Pinnace is a fast ship, which means should we encounter trouble while out on the water we will likely be able to get away, but it also only has three cannons (one on each side and one in the rear). This means you can’t really chase a ship (no front cannon), but you can defend yourself while being chased (one rear cannon), and that in a straight up fight you are going to be outgunned (just for comparison, the biggest ship has around 20+ cannons per side. One volley of that would likely cripple the pinnace). Currently the more damage a ship takes, the slower it sails. Repair shards can be used by anyone on board who has them, so naval combat in DF is a mix of positioning to fire your cannons, having enough of a crew to man those cannons and also repair the damage you take, and keeping enemies off the your deck, as anyone in the water can climb up and try to overtake your boat. Obviously, the bigger the boat, the bigger the crew needed for max efficiency, not to mention the bigger risk/investment/gain from using the larger ships.
Due to the cannon placement on the Pinnace, this also means we can only use one cannon at a time to shoot at village stones, which is not ideal but still works. It takes just under 50 shots to capture a village, which even with one cannon is much faster than using siege hammers, not to mention the boat crosses water much, much faster than swimming. The next ship up, the Sloop, is our next target due to the fact that it has two cannons on one side that we could use to capture villages, while still not being terribly expensive. It requires 25 shipbuilding, which we should reach building the modules needed for the ship itself.
Perhaps once everyone in Inq feels comfortable enough with their characters (coming back just recently, everyone is focused on skilling up at the moment), we will take our boat out and cause some coastal trouble against other cities/hamlets, seeing if we can’t stir up a fight, or we could bring our ship out to help capture a sea fortress with the alliance. Either way, good times ahead.
(DarkFall-related post disclaimer/reminder. If you click the image link near the top-right of this page and buy a DarkFall account, I get paid 20% of the client cost. If you believe this taints my views and reporting on DarkFall, your opinion is wrong.)
Edit: Some pictures of us on the Pinnace, courtesy of Paragus Rants, co-SG of Inquisition.
I'm the guy on the cannon to the left.
Side view that gives a good sense of scale. Remember this is the smallest warship in the game.
Our brave crew out in the open seas!
Hardcore Casual 
Damn you and your cool Darkfall stories!
To be fair the devs vision really has made Darkfall stand out from the crowd and makes reading MMO adventures a bit different from your ‘cleared naxx’ ‘grinded half a level in Ice claw’.
Without trying to sound too pathetic I wish Darkfall had an ‘easier’ mode. I do like a challenge but I’ve just found Darkfall a really unforgiving place. I have enjoyed my time in the game thus far but I’ve kind of accepted Im just not very good at it.
Alas Im a sheep not a wolf :( , one thing I think you should create an article on is the community in Darkfall. I have seen a number of people slate the community and write them off as cretins however Im pleased to say the experience I’ve had is very much the direct opposite and I’ve witnessed probably the most tight knit community in any MMO I’ve played with people giving encouragement and advice.
Its weird, whilst I’ve not ‘connected’ with Darkfall as a whole I will miss playing it when my sub is up and hey if nothing else I now have a lot of respect for the dedication and actual skill involved with the player base.
Haha sorry, just reporting what I’m doing, and DF makes it easy to make day-to-day stuff sound interesting. At least now you know I’m not making this stuff up to make the game sound good :)
I hear you about the easy mode though, it does take some time to get up to speed and ‘comfortable’ with combat, plus the time it takes to get a character to a level that offers you a bit more freedom in terms of mobs you can kill and fights you can influence (any player can join any clan fight, but the more skills you have the more utility you bring).
You don’t think you can balance both DF and FE though? The nice thing about character progression in DF is that its permanent, so even if you only do a few days of mob hunting or gathering per week, it will add up over a month or two, and when you DO have more time to ‘get serious’, you will have a better character to do so with.
Im not sure mate because as you will appreciate both games are very immersive and I find myself disappearing for hours on end then the envitible sleeping in for work the next day….. not good.
For all the criticism I do give WoW it was good for a quick hourly fix of gaming. Which in relation to Fallen Earth or Darkfall I find near impossible.
When my suns up I wont be doing an AoC and deleting it from my harddrive, its shown me enough to tell me I will return at some point.
Sorry ‘Inevitable ‘ and ‘sub’
Christ my typing and spelling is shocking these days!
True, if you are going to dive in full-bore into FE, not much time for anything else. I’m more or less doing that with DF as well.
How expensive is it to just buy a ship versus building up all the skills necessary to make one? Seems almost like you guys are dilly-dallying. Or is naval warfare the name of the game now?
It depends on the seller really, not a whole lot of boats get sold atm on NA1. Someone just yesterday was selling a Sloop for 165k, which aside from being way more than the clan can currently afford, is just a steep price in general.
One ‘problem’ currently is that iron/wood prices have gone through the roof, which makes everything related to those resources more costly as well. The last expansion has shaken things up quite a bit, as most mobs now drop more gold, and everyone is trying to figure out exactly what everything is worth again.
But aside from cost, we just don’t have the manpower to bring out anything much bigger than the Sloop, and overall we are not looking to expand the clan much. We are very much in a building up process right now, while still getting our noses in bigger activity due to our alliance.
I’m gonna need to get into a clan here soon. Right now I’m just building myself up and trying to do the +2 stat quests. I’ve got quite a bit of armor/weps/even mounts (plus the ability to make mounts) but I still don’t feel okay about going lone ranger in the middle of Agon, the couple times I have were fun but it is a dangerous world, that is certain. I’m thinking about joining the Ork only clan (whose city is perdy close to Yssam iirc) just to have a city that isn’t a newb town to run to if needed, not to mention something to defend, I really liked defending when I was with Murder Herd on EU. It’s too bad they allied up and are currently living off someone else’s nipple instead of their own. Meh!
‘Its too bad they allied up and are currently living off someone else’s nipple instead of their own. Meh!’
Haha epic comment, I about choked on my coffee
I thought they left/got booted from BFTA? But yea, odd to see MH ally with people, but without serious numbers going it alone is rather rough.
I don’t know and that’s why I left. I was trying to get access to their DF forum for like a week to know what the fuck we were doing and it never came so I said fuck em. The good people that made that guild what it was aren’t even there anymore (though the PvP captain just returned). I liked what it was just not what it is.
What sucks is I don’t think there are any clans out there that aren’t allied with people. It’s hard enough differentiating bad guys with good guys in a big fight, I’d really hate it if I had to watch out for like 10 other guilds.
Plus the leaders are real weird as they were made out to be during release times. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did LARP as I know at least one guy who was in it the same time as me did. It seems like theres a picture of the female guild leader with all these guild members that aren’t her boyfriend (who is the other guild leader) and I think one of them is even moving in lol. Sounds like WoW drama waiting to happen, I know.
One of many reasons people love to mess with MH more than most clans in DF.
I think you are a really dislikeable chap. Reading your blog posts about your adventures in Darkfall and everywhere else I noticed that you tend to first have the time of your life in any given online game claiming you are with the coolest guys on the planet and few days later you are leaving and insulting the people and games you cherished shortly before.
Maybe the Murder Herd noticed this as well and did not want to have such a person in their ranks?
‘I think you are a really dislikeable chap’ a tad harsh is it not lol
I think his comments are usually funny to read as is his blog. Try winding your neck in a tad would be my advice.
Claiming I am with the coolest guys on the planet? Murder Herd is the only guild I have been in since I played Dark Age of Camelot at release and I was invited to join by one of their members in the Darkfall IRC while waiting for the store to open up. Pretty much a lot of what you said is just made up BS, I don’t think you’ve read more than two of my posts because I don’t group with people (thus can’t claim to be with the coolest people ever, and not being able to badmouth anyone) and I play pretty much every MMO for at least the free month before I stop. Troll more fagor.
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