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My first week in DFO
Well I described my first 24 hours and it's been a week now so,
Base statistics:
Well I found out after joining a clan that you need to increase your base statistics (forgoten the exact term), Strength, Vitality, Dexterity, Quickness,Intelligence and Wisdom. Increasing these will boost your Health, Stamina and Mana. They also increase other aspects of life in DFO such as Strength will increase Stamina then health and grant a bonus to weapon damage. Intelligence will increase spell strength, mana and resistance to mental attacks.
Now to increase these statistics you have to flex those abilities, for instance I'm a melee orientated Ork so I do alot of manual labour to increase strength and Vitality. Which means chopping trees and mining from rocks, the fastest method and most dangerous is to go out there and kill stuff!
Title Quests:
A good way to get your characters skills up is to go to your racial capital and get a title quest from each NPC. You get kill X amount of Y or harvest X amount of Y and Z type missions. This you'd do anyway to raise your stats and skills so take the quests and when done you get a large cash reward and the option of taking a buff to one of your statistics. You keep these buffs (I think they're permenant) but can only use one at a time and can only change once every 24 hours.
So for instance I want to skill up on my great axes (Orks will get a bonus in the expansion for them) by killing Goblins which will increase my base stats improving my health and stamina and damage with weapons. I take the strength title quest as that requires me to kill alot of Goblins so I get a 2k gold bonus and a title (Brawny) at the end which gives me a stat bonus to strength and I've skilled up.
You can have as many active quests as you wish (I believe) so just get them all and play if you're a casual.
Mounts:
You get mounts by harvesting a certain grass once you have that you can lure and tame a mount (not sure how this works). Each race has it's own mount type and there are a wide variety, also you have mounted combat in DFO. Anyone can have a mount and ride it from day one, no special skills are required but you get better at riding the more you do it like every activity in DFO.
Gathering:
Gathering is actually pretty relaxing, I tool up stand in front of the resource node, a tree, rock, bush or a lake (there are others and all trees/rocks/bushes you see ingame can be harvested from, even mushrooms!). Then click the action button and my char gathers until my stamina runs out or the resources are used or my tool breaks. So I can go and get a cup of coffee whilst gathering and increasing my stats and earning gold at the same time! There are plenty of nodes in DFO and a large amount of resources in each.
PvP:
Well this has mostly consisted of me dieing in 1v1s, I was part of a large clan battle where an enemy clan challenged someone in our alliance for a hamlet. The challengers were given a deed to that shard (resource node and hamlet?) and he had to keep it and stay alive and online for four hours straight. We had to hunt him down and kill him. If we failed then I was told there'd be a siege where we have to defend.
Well we killed the shard holder and I stayed alive (wrote about it on these forums), it was rather quick but exciting. However so far in game I'm not really powerfull enough to fend off most lone players that are looking for PKs, but it hasn't been a big deal getting killed and I haven't been griefed by anyone.
PVE:
There are alot of mobs but DFO is a big place, this map may give you some idea click. PVE is fun, I'm using a variety of weapons which are Great Axe (2 handed), Mace and shield and bow and arrows. Great axe does the most damage, mace does less but you can parry by pressing "v" with the shield. Bow and arrows are the hardest as it's tough to hit them at range and you have to replenish the arrows as if you equip 10 arrows that means you have 10 shots.
The AI is different to any I've encountered in an MMORPG and quite refreshing. It isn't possible to do the standard aggro one drag it/kill it then rinse/wash/repeat for the rest. You aggro one he doesn't always run straight to you, he may kite you with a bow and arrow or magic, he may run into attack then run off and change to bow and arrow. Also if you see the NPC then he can see you and will attack, there is no secret scripted range before mobs see you and get aggro.
Also Mobs drop what you see on them or what those mobs would use in combat, so no swords from pigs or helmets from rats.
Summary:
I'm still enjoying DFO, the clan help me out everyday with advice or anything i need. I'm still getting Pk'd but it's no big deal and I'm not being griefed. In fact I'm finding DFO rather relaxing, the combat system is just intuative and the gathering is laid back and stress free. Compare to games such as AoC or EVE it's just far more relaxing, in EVE you are killed (not often though) you may spend 30 minutes (if you're lucky) to over an hour getting set up again whereas DFO you can be quickly ready to go (if you have the gear in the bank). AoC made everything stressfull from button mashing combat to repetative gathering, DFO has cut that out.
DFO is a frontier and I've barely scratched the surface of a world filled with underground lakes, cities on volcanos, clans with man o wars, sea battles and massive sieges. Yes the world is sparsly populated as there aren't many players, or atleast that's how it seems. Though most of the players are out doing high level things, not living out of starter cities doing title quest like me. Though that doesn't stop a few marauding around for some easy kills!
I haven't seen any speed hacking or macros so far, very different from what was written about at launch. It seems Aventurine cracked down on it and banned many players.
DFO has player cities/hamlets/farms/mines, open world sieges and naval warfare and the coming expansion will be offering larger housing player vendors and roaming wildlife. All with FFA PvP and full loot. Many players seem to cry for this on these very forums, but I don't see them playing DFO, perhaps they're unaware of DFO? Or maybe they just like crying, I don't know.
Aventurine is actually a down to earth company that gets things done and talks to the playerbase, it must be something to do with being an indie company with a small niche playerbase.
Well that's all i can think of off the top of my head, I haven't been doing that much but in my first week I've found a clan got alot of help and partaken in a large battle. There was no lag and I have an average fps of around 80-100 and ping of 40-60, large scale battles are smooth as is most of the game, you may get very occasional lag spikes (every couple of hours at most). I've done plenty of gathering (can do work IRL at the sametime!) and learning how to use bows and arrows and enjoying the game.
Maybe I'll go to E3 next year ... I'll leave you with this,
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
Comments
Nice job mate, after my first week I was sold, haven't been able to drag myself away from the game since.
To be honest, it never was that bad. Since launch I have seen 2 definite hackers. Since launch. And I haven't seen those guys since. So I think you got trolled on that point. Most people who try Darkfall think it's a lot better than the forum trolls make it out to be, in my experience being pleasantly surprised is a common reaction.
Great post, Im in the same boat as you, have been folowing DF on these forums over the past years and finally decidet to give it a try, and I havent been able to pull my self away from the computer when I get home from work.
I am a huge fan og UO and SWG and have tryed merely all titles on the MMO market, well westerne market that is and leaving out the free ones.
And now I have it, a game that can occupy me for hours, im allso working on my title quests, even gone so far as to have DF running on my laptop while I work, having it set to harvesting and tabbin in once and a while to restart or change node.
The MMO gamer equation:
Social skills + anonymity = skill + toughness divided by actual ability.
Good read.
Ive just started DF back up and enjoying myself
To be honest, it never was that bad. Since launch I have seen 2 definite hackers. Since launch. And I haven't seen those guys since. So I think you got trolled on that point. Most people who try Darkfall think it's a lot better than the forum trolls make it out to be, in my experience being pleasantly surprised is a common reaction.
Hacking and exploits were very bad, but Aventurine seems to have been very good about trying to take care of them
"I think they are now, especially after having put a better community liaison in place, but there definitely weren't before. You're seeing the benefits of almost a year of work post launch. The game has changed (for the better) and Aventurine seems to have, too."
On a side note, I think it's interesting that there's a new Polarisation account who's obviously a fan of the game vs. the old Polarization who was one of it's biggest skeptics.
~Ripper
To be honest, it never was that bad. Since launch I have seen 2 definite hackers. Since launch. And I haven't seen those guys since. So I think you got trolled on that point. Most people who try Darkfall think it's a lot better than the forum trolls make it out to be, in my experience being pleasantly surprised is a common reaction.
Hacking and exploits were very bad, but Aventurine seems to have been very good about trying to take care of them
"I think they are now, especially after having put a better community liaison in place, but there definitely weren't before. You're seeing the benefits of almost a year of work post launch. The game has changed (for the better) and Aventurine seems to have, too."
On a side note, I think it's interesting that there's a new Polarisation account who's obviously a fan of the game vs. the old Polarization who was one of it's biggest skeptics.
~Ripper
And a new tenspotting.
What a wonderful joy it is to see those names put to good use, after their less then stellar origins.
While the game is no where near as bad as some have made it out to be, no game ever is, that part is pretty off putting to me. Different strokes I suppose.
Good review again. Lots of useful info to make an informed decision.
Come on Zym we had the same thing in Shadowbane.
Awesome write up, glad you are enjoying yourself. Love to pictures too.
Highlander forever!
dam now i really really wanna try this game out, guess ill mull over getting the 87 dollar 6 month game/sub pack, in december when my budget will allow for such an expenditure