After roaming the world of Agon for a bit and having a lot of fun doing it, I thought it would be a good idea to answer the question: How far can a noob get in a month? So, here is an overview of my Darkfall character after four weeks for play.
Play Time
In terms of video gaming, I never know what to call myself anymore. I think the disturbingly large array of jewel cases and dusty game boxes will attest to the fact that I am not a casual gamer. On the other hand, I don’t fit the hardcore PvP or raider mode either. I play between 2-4 nights a week, 3-4 hours a night.
Activities
I spend a lot of time teamed with one or two people hunting relatively easy spawns — trolls, hags and mercians. I rarely harvest during my prime-time, but on the weekends, or if I am home during the day (rarely), I try to get some semi-afk mining in. I don’t PvP much, as my chances 1v1 are slim. However, I do try to help my clan during city defenses and on the one siege in which they have been involved since I joined. As a rule, I don’t macro skills, or use a bloodwall. I certainly want my skills to increase, but I want to do so by experiencing the game.
Skills and Stats
I have tried to focus on raising my magic skills as quickly as possible. I have had mixed success. At the beginning of your career, your magic is pathetically weak and you can blast a full bar of mana at a goblin and not kill him. This is great for skilling up, but bad for winning the combat. As your skill increases, you get access to better magic, but that magic starts to require reagents. Reagents are pretty costly and are one of the first things taken from your corpse when you are killed, so you never seem to have enough.
Nonetheless, I am pretty happy with where my skills are at this stage in the game. I feel I am making steady progress and starting to turn the corner to where I can be useful in a fight. My main goal is to get Fire Magic up as quickly as possible. Once I got Greater Magic to 25, I took a quick detour into Witchcraft, but decided that Witches’ Brew could wait because I needed to melt someone. Once I got GM 45 or so… my progress seemed to slow to a crawl, mostly because I could not go anywhere with reagents in my backpack without getting killed. Anyways, here are my notable magic skills.
- Lesser Magic: 85 (Mana Missile: 54, Heal Self: 49)
- Greater Magic: 51
- Fire Magic: 25 (Firebolt: 25)
- Witchcraft: 28 (Needles: 34)
I also do a fair bit of melee focused (as it seems almost everyone is) on Greatswords.
- Greatswords 54 (Power Attack 35)
- Rigor 30
- Parry 6
- Gank 1 (As you can see, I’ve never had the chance)
I also gather, but it is not a main focus for me most nights. Most of my gathering is done on the weekends, or on a weekday when I am off work. I then do some semi-afk gathering while dealing with the kiddies, or some chores. I am mostly crafting swords with weaponsmith, and I just bought alchemy to make staffs.
- Mining 70
- Logging 49
- Skinning 45
- Weaponsmith 25
- Alchemy 3
As far as stats go, most of my stats are 25-27 except for Dexterity… which is a disappointing 21 after one month. I assume that archery is the best way to increase Dex because nothing else seems to do so. Unfortunately, my archery has suffered due to my focus on skilling up magic. My hit points also seem a bit slow to move. I have a whopping 212 hit points.
Gear
I still use crap gear most of the time. I wear a mix of studded and banded on most sorties and carry r10 swords and r0 staffs. Not very impressive, I know. I am slowly working up some crafting skills to make better swords and staffs, but my progression has slowed somewhat because I have limited time to gather materials. I am loathe to ask my guild for help because frankly, I am not that useful a guild member at the moment, and it is likely that any items I get will get stolen in a day or two. For the most part, I will continue with whatever I can salvage or create and things will slowly get better.
PvP
My PvP record is a blazing 1 win and 50 losses. Oddly enough, I think I am doing pretty well because I know others who started about the same time I did with double the number of deaths. I am still at the stage where most small-scale PvP encounters end in my demise (and the loss of all my reagents). Still, in my last 1v1, I got my assailant down to about 1/3 of his health before dying and the last duel I was in both of us stopped when we were at 25% hits. I feel that my skill is increasing and I am getting better at surviving in the frantic dance that is 1v1 PvP.
In group PvP I fare a little better. I have fought through one siege and several smaller town defenses. I fare ok in these combats, mostly because there is lots of room to hide and I tend to stay back and either play support, or follow my betters into combat. As I stated earlier, I am hoping that as my Fire Magic increases, my value in these situations will increase.
Overview
After one month, I consider myself reasonably successful for the time I have put into the game. I could stand to practice my sword fighting a little more, both from a character and player skill perspective, because I am still not competitive in a small PvP situation. I am happy with my magic progression though. Even with the cost (and infinite steal-ability) of reagents, I am closing in on the bigger hitting fire AoEs.
As far as PvE, I still find hunting monster spawns fun and have finally reached a point where easy spawns are actually easy for me to solo. I would love to have more time to gather and craft because that would help my overall gear situation… but smacking monsters is way more fun.
I presume the regents are the thing a mage risks compared to a warrior risking his armour and sword. Gotta risk something, in other words.
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It’d be good if the game rated you on general survival and resource gathering, so you could see that your skill is progressing.
No almost everyone is a hybrid..No mage class or Warrior class (unless you roll with bloodcrafted plate and destroyer but still, everyone have utiltiy magic that needs regs (unless you gimping yourself).
Of course there are people who like to cast 24/7 but still they need to be geared with weapons and decent armour bone/scale/plate mix.
I never expect to kill someone in pvp unless rolling out with +50 rank sword/bow/ melee weapon. And fucking don´t get me started on how much a good staff cost..
@Callan S. – Yes, reagents are needed for most spells. I’ve not seen any pure mages or pure warriors. Everyone is a hybrid, but some have focused more on one or more of the traditional melee, archer, or mage roles.
The game tracks some survival information along with the resource gathering skills’ progress. It keeps detailed information on PvE, PvP, “Ganks”, and “Revives”. Some use the PvP history to identify targets for “justice” in the future ;)
That’s a nice writeup, and its good to hear DF has not broken you as you learn the game. Starting magic that early in a new characters life is a tough choice, because like you mentioned regs get expensive.
Are you hunting trolls at all? I noticed you are a human, and if you go to an NPC just east of Copperdale on the little island, she has a repeatable quest to hunt trolls for an hour. You get paid per troll, and trolls themselves drop some regs, making them perfect for working on your fire magic (they tend to drop a decent amount of sulfur). The NPC’s area is protected by a zap tower, and the trolls are just a quick walk south.
Good writeup Cmag. I have been considering DF since they opened the NA server.
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I seems like such a big commitment to me. Call me Joey Cheapo but 50+ USD and 15 sub seems like an a lot of a game I might not go longterm with.
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Does it remind you of Oblivion:TesIV at all? The graphics look like it when I see screens and video’s. And yes I did watch Syncaine’s raid video. It was cool.
Syncaine: Magic is a killer on the bank account. Every time I miss a Firebolt, I think, “8g wasted” :)
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As far as trolls go, I am currently living in Longmarch and there is a nice troll spawn within 2 minutes walk, so it is nice. However, I didn’t think about the quest. I might have to try that just to get the extra cash out of the deal. Thanks for the idea.
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Ink: I skirted around buying DF for quite a while after reading Paragus’ stuff back on MMORPG.com. The game sounded good, but I did not like the mentality of “macro skills up and then PvP.” I like my PvE gameplay too. If I want a straight PvP game, I can play Call of Duty or Modern Warfare.
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So far, everything about Darkfall, from the graphics, to the environments, to the combat, has been a pleasant surprise and most of the macroing skills (some still do, I think) is gone because it is often more useful to skill-up doing PvE.
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Overall, a really good game for anyone tired of the themepark concept. I only hope that the next updates will make an even better game.
Ah Longmarch, that’s your problem :) That city is know as an ‘easy’ target, hence you get a lot of PKs. Even a few days bound in Copperdale and farming that troll spawn I mentioned will build your bank account up a bit (or at least let you break even while working fire magic). Not to say that Copperdale is PK-free, but it’s no Longmarch, plus you have the NPC zap tower to save you as well.
A month is longer than I can hack at most MMOs!