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The "How to play without questing" guide to Archeage
This is a "how to level while minimally questing" guide I'm going to post since a lot of people are under the mistaken impression that "the game starts at 30".
Bookmark this. Print this. Save this. Sticky this. Whatever you want so that you don't think you cant really play this game until you hit 30. By the end of this post, you'll realize how completely false that statement is.
For starters, to say the "game starts at 30" is a simple way people have of saying, you'll be in the clear with all the major questing, levels and heartaches behind you by level 30. This doesn't mean you can't enjoy the game before that, or that you have to quest non-stop up until 30. It's very possible to play this game from the beginning while almost entirely avoiding any of the quests.
There are 2 ways to view this game; one is the mindset that it's a sandbox MMO and the other is that it's a themepark MMO. They're both wrong. This game might make people think they started playing a themepark MMO much like WoW, Rift or LotRO when they first see a person with a golden "!" over their heads. This is a trap people fall into and it's not entirely the game's fault, it's just a decade's worth of conditioning from other popular games. The reality is, those quest markers aren't mandatory and I'm going to give you a brief rundown on how you can avoid many of those and really "get into the game" without being remotely close to level 30.
A brief key:
Mirage Isle - a non-PvP merchant island people can go to to buy advanced gear, furniture, houses, boats, etc.
Gilda - the currency spent on Mirage Isle... a few things can still be bought for regular gold though.
Specialty products - Easy-to-craft items that can only be crafted in certain places in certain areas but sell for alot of gold or Gilda when traded large distances.
(Assuming my basic starting areas in the Western continent and playing a human.)
When you start, you'll see lots of NPCs and some will have the standard "!" indicating a quest. Follow these! I promise that these are simple quests that you can complete with a 2 minute window each. Don't kill random mobs, don't look to farm anything, just do the quest and end it.
Within a couple of levels you'll see a green "!" or "?" appear above some NPCs. These are storyline quests. If you're looking to avoid questing, avoid these for now.
Shortly after starting you'll have a quest to raise a horse. Take this quest. You get your first mount and it makes travel easy, especially for the upcoming parts.
In a completely unrelated quest chain in the next area (pretty sure you don't need to actually finish all the questing in starter zone in order to see the NPCs who give the quest) you'll see your first Brotherhood quests. Ignore every other quest except these!
This simple chain of quests will reward you with your first garden zone. Claim it and then find a location to place it.
There are 3 more quests in this chain after you get your garden - follow these. these will teach you about trade packs and specialty goods. The 5 or so gold they each reward will also be good money for this level, plus the exp gained for trading in general.
After one very long, difficult journey overseas, you'll be rewarded with a larger garden zone. Place this.
Congratulations! You're now about 1/2 way to being self sufficient. You now have 2 options - one requires questing, one does not.
Non- quest route:
Find more specialty goods recipes you can now grow on your farm and craft at the respective stalls - press "O" and look for them under "Commerce" for the ingredients list of items you need to start growing.
Make friends, join a guild, or pay someone to take you and your trade pack overseas to trade them in at a Gilda trader who will reward you with Gilda for each pack you turn in.
Once you have 50 Gilda, buy yourself a Clipper blueprint from Mirage Isle. Build the ship and then start your own trade runs.
Quest route:
Go back to the story NPC's with the green "?" and follow only, exactly what they tell you to. Try not to get sidetracked by other quest givers who are not story related. In addition to this, the ONLY OTHER QUEST NPC's YOU SHOULD FOLLOW are the temple healers who occasionally have a pathetically easy daily quest for you that reward a Gilda upon completion.
The storyline quests are mostly "go here, talk to this person" or "go here and kill this one target" types of quests. Even a non-combat build can easily accomplish most of these tasks with ease.
Once finished, you should have the Gilda needed for a Clipper. You should also be only about level 15 at this point, if you stuck only with the story line/mount quests. You can also buy a glider on Mirage Isle if you don't want to quest for one.
Optional route for non-farm owners:
If you seriously want to avoid quests, even for the farms, you can find a secluded hilltop/valley/out-of-the-way location and plant as many plants as you like or can afford. They may or may not have been stolen by the time you're ready to harvest them, but you don't need a farm to plant them this way. The farm only offers protection for them.
PvP:
Is there from level 1. Walk yourself to the edge of a safe zone, cross into the "red" zone and you'll find all the PvP you can sink your teeth into. No need to quest, no need to "wait until 30". Be warned, though, that you will be killed by just about everyone in one hit unless you gain yourself a few levels.
Living dangerously:
Your housing, farms, quests and crafting don't have to take place in safe zones. There are towns and cities in war zones that offer the same thing as most towns and cities in safe zones. You can easily spend your entire game in a war/PvP zone and never step foot in s safe zone again if you wanted to.
Luckily, the guards will take care of you most of the time in a city... but beyond that... good luck!
So you see, the sandbox really is there. You can play this game like you would WoW and be content with questing all the time, or you can play this game like you would Darkfall and always have eyes in the back of your head. This game is truly a sandbox in that it allows you to chose which style of play you want. You can even climb mountains and glide across entire continents if that was your dream; there's really no boundary or "off limits" while you're on the marked portions of the world map; the unmarked portions just warn you about being dangerous and teleport you back to the edge again.
When the game goes live, you'll rarely see me picking up a quest at all. While people are getting sucked into this endless quest chain, I'll be building 2 farms, making a boat and placing a house before they even get to the "magic 30". Levels are easy to come by, it's everything else in this game that's the challenge.
And yes, this will work for the other races and factions since they all follow the same basic guidelines, just not sure about the specifics of where and who for those others.
Comments
F2P players won't have the labor points to avoid questing, and the green quests are gilda stars that you need for a decent boat for your trade pack runs to get your large farm. Also you have to be level 10 before you can start the small scarecrow quest and a quest you have to do before you can do the mount quest.
The quests are not anything spectacular but since no one is going to start with labor points for doing other stuff and the F2P people really are not. The Questing gives you something that you can do that is not labor point intensive. Also you can't use workman's compensation till level 15 to get a jump on the labor points either.
So skipping the green story quests is really going to slow you down, not to mention you get pots and food and exp and money and also armor sets and weapons by doing some of the other quests.
While paid subscibers will have an easier time getting into the sandbox early on, It is not advised to skip the story quests at all. It is better to find a list of the quests and their rewards figure out what you want to run to level 10 and get your small farm started, the questing part gives you something to do where you are not spending lp like crazy so you can get started with your farm when you get it.
The quests and storyline can be boring and all but there are advantages to running the more important ones.
I know it's not advisable. Skipping the storyline quest is pretty much shooting yourself in the foot for the enjoyment of the pain. Some people complain about the quests non-stop though. How boring they are, how "grindy" they are, etc.
Getting to level 10 is also easy to do, especially with the first few quests. You could, however, kill mobs, chop trees or harvest ore for the exp. Labor will be your only obstacle. Still, if you're one of those people dead-set against the idea of questing, maybe spending a few hours chopping trees will be more rewarding then dealing with the quests?
The only reason I wrote this is to dispell the idea that "the game starts at 30". The game starts whenever people get out on their own and start it, it will just be much slower going until they hit certain milestones.
You mean "free to try"? Right?
Dark Age of Camelot was never "free". Ultima Online was never "free". Everquest was never "free". People didn't complain back then, why complain about it now?
Because the MMO marketplace has changed, duh.
In its present model ArcheAge is "free to try out". If you want to have actually fun playing most of its serious features (crafting etc.) long-term, you will need a patron account. Possibly even supplemental Labor Point refills.
Your guide is decent for those who pay, but largely inapplicable for those trying it out f2p.
Umm this is not what this topic is about. I merely made a suggestion to add an edit since this guide won't benefit free to try or free to play players. It isn't a complain but a suggestion.
This and you will quest because all the Sandboxy stuff he describes needs time and you will quest because it's the most effective use of your time while waiting for the Sandboxy stuff to catch up to your pace.
So... nobody wants to pay for a game anymore?
So you play a game free of charge.
Don't like the limitations.
Then complain on a public forum about how bad the game is?
Logic... fails....
Nothing wrong with paying for a game monthly. I gladly pay for it.
----
But you are saying you can play the game sandbox only. That is simply not true EVEN IF YOU ARE PATRON.
There is one major omission here and that is that just about everyone is going to want to do the quest that gains you your first glider.. On the Nuian side this is around lvl 13 if you're following all the quests, although you can do it at lvl 10 if you're being selective and skipping non essential quests. I'm not familiar with the Harani side but presume it's similar.
After that, it's up to you. Lvl 30 is only relevant if you are only interested in the PvP part of the game and ignoring everything else. If so, you are stuck with doing quests to level and It's around then the questline will send you into PvP zones. Personally, I'm not the slightest bit interested in PvP so my main in beta had finished with questing at lvl 18 and my first alt at lvl 22. After that, I concentrated on building a clipper and getting large farms for both and all further XP came from farming, crafting and trading.
However, I'm playing with patron status so am free to spend my time on that side of the game. A F2P player would find it much harder to ignore quests.
Archeage is primarily a faming, crafting and trading game with optional PvP for higher level players. This guide is fairly good for people who have bought founders packs but people trying to play for any length of time as F2P will struggle without doing most of the quests and once they've finished them, only PvP is left as a major focus. I'm sure there are better games than Archeage if that's what you are looking for.
Your reply is twice as informative.
UHM!!! YEA!!!
If you think sub'ing this game is going to get you better play results, think again.
I'd rather be fishing in real life.
Finally got to play this game for the first time in CB4 and really enjoyed it. I only followed the green story quests and explored, mining and chopping trees as I found them. In no time at all I found myself at lvl15. I imagine if I had of kept going I would have hit lvl30 within a day.
Farming, crafting and trading looks likely to take most my attention, leveling will be a side issue which will probably happen with me not paying any real notice to it.
I guess you are calculating with Alpha and Beta rules? You will be up for quite the challenge then. You will NOT start with 5000 LP nor will your limit be 5000 LP. You start with Zero and your limit will be 1000. This limit then is raised by 10 for every 100 LP spent. Will be interesting to follow you progress building all that stuff "before anyone gets 30". Keep us posted how it works out.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Actually in beta we started with 0 lp and max was already 5k. Nothing says that we won't have the same at release, which actually makes more sense then what we got at the start of Alpha. Closed Beta was the release build not alpha, devs said so in the pre beta livestreams. Next, Open Beta will have the release build. Even if in alpha you get the updates before beta doesn't mean that everything is the same.
He never once said it was the quickest. He is only saying that it is quite possible to level up without questing. Questing is by far the fastest way to level in this game, nobody is arguing that........
because those games DID not even claim to be FREE,like archeage does.it claims to be ftp,but it is NOT.you cannot own a farm unless your a sub.tree and pelts can only be had with a farm,ergo most craft is not even possible,unless you buy from ah.
here is a little fun fact about lp-if you play 8 hrs and have a sub you make 10*12*8+5*12*16=1920 lp a DAY,assuming you log off for the 16,if you stay logged on you make 2880.for ftp if you log off the 16 you make 5*12*8=480 if you can stay logged in you make 1440.another is this is per ACCOUNT,so there is really no point in making a second char on an account but buy a sub for a second account.after all even if your not logged in your 2nd account makes 5*12*24=1440 lp a day.so basically lp is a way to not only make you get a sub,but make seperate accounts,as a way to pile up lp.
I think you missed the first part of the sentence and the context of it.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
You don't need labor points unless you are going to craft
Incognito
www.incognito-gaming.us
"You're either with us or against us"
AA is F2P.
Can you download and play the game for free? Yes.
Can you experience all the game has to offer and be all you can be without paying a sub? No.
I don't remember the game ever being advertised as "play and experience 100% of what the game has to offer for free."
I do remember the game being advertised as "Free to play"...which it is.