Last week OTG had a planned event to take down the red dragon on Cairn. We had a nice turnout (I believe we had 40ish), and after about 30 minutes we took the beast down. The fight itself is fairly similar to the red dragon in DF1, although this one seems to bounce people around more and hit a little harder. He downed a bunch of people, sent others flying off cliffs, and we learned that the Primalist bubble ability does not block his fireballs. Good times all around, and decent loot (30k gold and a bunch of rare mats, I think). His death animation, where he falls out of the sky, is pretty sweet, as is the giant tombstone he leaves behind.

Right after the event we got out three boats and set sail for Niff (top right island), passing by Ruby (bottom right). At some point I got knocked off a boat and had to swim the rest of the way (woops), but while sailing the group encountered three players on another ship (the one with the cannon!) and took it over. We seem to have the pirate thing down.

Our time on Niff was brief but extremely entertaining. The main ‘issue’ was the overabundance of PvP. Anytime a group went out to PvE, PvP would find them, and even though many times we ended up on the winning side, it still delayed gaining prowess and completing feats. Furthermore, the area was so hot that our less developed characters had a tough time getting anything done, and they really wanted (and needed) to work on prowess to become ‘viable’.

We did have some great fights on Niff though, from a 20v15ish battle that went back and forth for close to an hour, to some great small-scale (3v3 and such) fights over mob camps. We certainly have plans to return and do some roaming when more of us are ready.

The rapid move to Niff caused an issue for some of our more casual member, who either got left on Cairn or just had a tough time getting anything done on Niff. With that brought to light, we have decided to concentrate the clan in the city of Kvit, which comically enough we claimed by accident on the second day of the game being live. We are currently building up Kvit, and already have expanded the number of bind spots available, though we still need more (zerg yo). More on the city and its impact on the clan in a different post, but I’ll just say it’s been great.

With most of our membership relocated to either the city itself or the nearby safezone NPC city, we regularity have multiple groups of 3-5 working different mob spawns or simply patrolling the area for PvP. One spawn in particular, Ogre Bullies just to the south of our city, sees a ton of traffic, and we have become increasingly good at fending it off without losing a lot of farming efficiency.

Personally I’ve been involved in a number of battles over an ice elemental spawn, and just in that short amount of time I think my PvP skills have greatly improved (up from terrible to pretty bad). Prowess-wise I’m at 24k, and I feel like I’m basically there in terms of character power. Gear-wise I’ve started using banded and r30 weapons more regularly. I also finally stopped being lazy and rebound a bunch of functionality to my mouse, because I might as well use those 11 buttons if I have em (g700 ftw).

When DF1 launched I had a blast in part because the game felt so new and fresh compared to everything else in 2009. This time around, that “new game smell” is less a factor, yet I’m having more fun than I’ve had in years because most of the warts that DF1 had have been removed, and I’m playing the kind of MMO I love the way I want to play it (mix of PvE and PvP, heavy on clan-based interaction) without the game punishing me for doing so. I’m progressing at a pace I’m very happy with, I don’t feel like others are miles ahead, and I don’t see the inevitable “game over” screen or 180 gameplay turn on the horizon.