Thursday 31 March 2011

Kraken at off-hours Darkfall

I'm feeling compelled to write this because I want to try to keep the blog active and all the stuff that has happened in-game, I would normally write about, has taken place a few days/weeks ago and I don't remember very well. So:

Yesterday, I fell asleep at an unusual time: 7pm. Not being used to fall asleep so early - even before dinner time (that's right you nordic people, dinner is at 8pm! ..not at 15.00 or 16.00), I woke up at 2.30 am. After taking care of some urgent business I go to the computer and my character is still by Darkmoore's quarry where I had left it... Tiax is online and the master scrub talker Thane as well.

Get on vent and Tiax suggests going after zie Krakens and I immediately think of GOLD... So me and thane ride south to Imrathir and board the ship Tiax had spawned, all ready to make some profit. I'm already thinking what great blog entry and screenshots, us killing a few krakens at 3 or 4 am, will provide.

We get to spawn, Tiax goes to try and pull the big tenctacular beast but it doesn't come. I always tend to think of bugged spawns when this happens but someone else could also have been trying to make a buck at that happy hour time. So we just port back and log off (bye 10k gold... sniff).

Not much of a post... but it could have been :)






EDIT 6th August, 2012:
Adding the strategy to kill the Kraken in case, you found this entry by chance:

Strategy consists of having one man on the water taking the damage from the Kraken and pulling him to the boat. As the bait has a shield, he doesn't take much damage from the Kraken's attacks and prevents the ship from being damaged. Steps:
1) Sail on the ship until the Kraken spawns and attacks it
2) Move the boat away from the spawn and stop the ship when the Kraken stops following (this will prevent the ship from taking damage, so you can concentrate on killing)
3) Get a man on the water (with shield, stamina pots and stuff for transfer spells) to go after the Kraken
4) The Kraken will eventually turn back to attack the man-bait
5) The man-bait should swim towards the boat and when the Kraken is upon him, just block his attacks (do not turn your back on the Krazen, zie is evillll)
6) The people on the boat should shoot the cannons (uses blackpoweder) and makew pew pew on zie Kraken
7) The Kraken will go close to the ship, attacking the man-bait, but will turn back as it is on the border between his domains and otherwise
8) It is the job of the man-bait to go "get" the Kraken back again, otherwise he will lose aggro and move away or unspawn
9) The man-bait should use pots, food and transfer in-between Kraken attacks to regain his stats

This results in a smooth and easy killing where you have your boat stationed with the cannons calmly shooting at the overgrown tentacular mammoth.

Wednesday 23 March 2011

Thoughts on Role-Playing, Hyperion Alliance and Kingdoms [ramble alert!!!!]

The announcement of the return of Hyperion and various other posts/hapenings have made me think more of the state Darkfall is in and the urge to ramble a bit on what Role-Playing is to me and its' application in Darkfall. As an introduction, I'm a very light Role-Player in the sense that I have never gotten "into character" mode and talked in a way that is completly foreign to me. I can tone down or cut the use of acronyms and text simplifcations like "wtf", "u", "pwn", etc., in order to give it a more realistic aspect, but I've never RPed in a hardcore fashion where I pretend to be someone else entirely. For me, RPing happens when a clan creates a cool ranking structure, where each rank is logical and brings a reason of existence to the other ranks (they are interconnected in a meaningful way). Another example is when someone creates fan art or makes a cool RPish video that stands out from the normal ones that exist in such ambundance, when someone creates a nice story based on the Lore, etc. In Eve-Online, one didn't need to RP because, symply playing the game itself, created its' own RPing stories. Backstabbing, robbery, scams, territorial fights, investments, etc., all this belonged to the normal life of the Eve universe with players creating their own never-ending and unfolding stories by simply playing the game. This situation, in my opinion, is RPing in its' purest form: without any effort whatsoever. In Darkfall, things are not the same. Maybe it's from the lack of players (compared with launch) that doesn't allow for the same type of drama to take place, maybe it's because of the lack of official lore, maybe it's because of the level of independence players enjoy from each other, maybe it's because of the lack of sand in the box. Giving a practical example, when there is a bank scam, it's because someone used an identical name to an officer and tricked another one to promote him. I consider this to be a very artificial and game-breaking way of stealing a bank. The problem is not so much the fact that a clan bank is stolen, but rather the way the theft is committed. In Eve, the background of hard-driven and ruthless capitalist corporations makes this a familiar scenario. In a fantasy setting... not so much. Of course the way players act is uncontrollable and the reason why we all love MMORPGs so much. I don't want RP enforcement ever to be needed, as players' liberty of action should be preserved, in a general sense. Noone can be forced to play or act in a way they don't want/like/feel like. I understand those who just want to loggin with some friends and go kill other players, grief them if necessary and just have fun,not caring for organization. However, the game and the devs can budge and nudge parts of the game to provide a better and more meaningful experience. And these nudges don't even need to be in-game. For example, if you go to DF clan discussion, you will see all sorts of insults thrown around with some hardcore language. If this type of posting was better controlled and kept in check, I think it would reflect positively in-game. Of course, I am assuming that the game developers want this. Other things devs could do have already been talked about in the forums, ranging from apparently simple stuff like clan rank customization to more complex like player cities' designs chosen by the builders (no pre-placed buildings). In short, give more liberty to the players to decide/edit things to shape their own lore and support and acknowledge the diversity of clan/player types, in the game.


Returning more to the Hyperion Alliance and to the Rex Quonderam thead (where I've posted some friendly jabs) [ramble break] I went to check what the thread name meant and it refers to: "King Once" (as in, who was "once king"). It most probably came from: "Hic jacet Arthurus, Rex quondam, Rexque futurus", Here lies Arthur, King Once, and King in the Future (there are other suggestions/interpretations for the latin phrase and for the translation but they do not deviate much) [/ramble break] one must acknowledge that Darkfall has lived far too long without any sort of RP. So, when you encounter such a blown-out RPing thread, it almost looks misplaced or out of context. What also worries me in these types of organizations, is that RPing a Kingdom always seem provide all the fun to the King and none to the "serf". Let's all RP this stuff but the ones stuck with the lowlife roles are the ones getting the raw end of the deal. One could also argue that in a normal clan, the leader also has more fun since he is also behind the curtain, pulling the strings, so this thought might not have much merit. I'm not saying that Hyperion is like this, but I bet it is the general perception many might have. Remembering Darkfall beta and launch days, the idea I got is that Hyperion existed as a civilized and organized mega power and then, the others were divided into neutral and the mindless hateful barbarians, who had no regard whatsoever for the names they chose, the way they talked, etc etc. So one seems to have had on one end, civilization and on the other, l33t chaos. (I'm sure non-Hyperion might have felt that Hyperion was a huge menacing zerg who just kept gobbling up holdings and land) This seems to be a very simplistic and narrow-minded way for a server to exist as we can't have only 2 extremes co-existing because, eventually, one of them will succumb.


This ramble has been going on for a few days now, in the blog edit mode, and I'm getting a bit tired of it... so I'll just end saying that Kingdom-style organization is something that sounds attracting and regarding lore, a plea:


Aventurine hasn't promoted/developed lore much, for reasons beyond my imagination. I would presume it wouldn't cost much to have one employee writing lore for the game or as theluntary moderators for the forums, maybe you could also find voluntary lore writers. AV could just feed them tids and bits of what they have planned for Agon's background and have them fashion legends and myths around it. This would greatly help find other meaning for in-game actions, besides hate or getting off on killing someone else. Please AV, give us more lore (and some quests to go along with it btw!).

Tuesday 22 March 2011

Malus Spiritus - me is wrong

So after having been to Qiqa, invited by Malus Spiritus, to verify that they were not cheating or exploiting, I did just that and verified that indeed, they weren't exploiting.

It seemed to me they were, but they weren't, so I apologize for being wrong and posting difamatory information.

Fail Event, Fail Siege, Fail exploit - Qiqa

As usual, I find it very boring to type regularly on the Blog but the idea of having a place where some adventures are written down for future memory, interests and compells me to keep writing. That and Utar Usher, the non-fuctioning microphone dorf, reminding me I need to write more!

So, I'll talk about his past weekend. It all started (for story-telling purposes) with me organizing an alliance Tournament for Saturday. It would be fun, have a prize and garner eternal glory for the victor! But, apparently people have lives and almost noone could make it on Saturday... so I ended up changing the event to Sunday.

I should stress that Children of the Forest used to be the owners of the holdings in the alliance but as it was decided that Equilibrium would be the new owner, we had been transfering the holdings from CotF to us. Long story short, we had already sold 2 hamlets and were left with Darkmoore city, where we reside, and Qiqatak hamlet in snowy Niflheim subcontinent.

On friday, a bunch of Equilibrium guys, me included, rode to Qiqa to siege it from CotF.

[story break]
I had just lived briefly in Niflheim, in Lost Untilik, when I was a member of Azure and which is already explained in a previous post. But for those of you who haven't memorizes my entire blog yet: I hated it at the time, everything was white white white, and us/me lost at the edge of the known land, in the middle of nowhere. At the time, it was with relief that I logged in Lost Untilik to find myself being zapped by the towers and chased away.
[/story break]

Well, this time, I found the continent much better! I still hate all the white but I really liked the mobs and the short weekend I spent there made me think it would be a nice resort to come PvE a bit. Soooo, on Friday we place the siege and on Saturday we win the hamlet. And on Sunday, alliance Tournament!! WRONG

We were sieged by an alt clan of Malus Spiritus clan. So, the Tournament got cancelled :( Apparently, I also have a life and couldn't be online on Saturday night, but on the next day, I login in Qiqa and there are a few Equilibrium guys around. Near lunch time, GMT (yes, lunch time is a scientific hour), there are 5 or 6 of us geared and we decide to go check White View, a Chaos city, to see what those guys are up to. As we ride out, we see them coming in and they roll us. These guys are good players, even if infantile delinquents. We have just a few guys who are on par with them, which is not enough.

So, I get bindcamped a lot at Qiqa, in the afternoon. They only have 1 guy chasing, so I use the 2 minute protection, to run in one way (with the bad guy following me), while my mates run afterwards on the other direction. It's some fun 30 minutes of me running out and getting killed (the guy must of really loved me). And Qiqa hamlet is a cave surrounded by white plains, so it's kinda hard to escape properly.

Anyways, I'm sure the guy was just bored and I eventually managed to escape. Interestingly, in many of my deaths, I would respawn having "fallen off the world", a very known and even common bug in Darkfall. While I am standing inside the cave walls, I notice 2 Malus Spiritus' guys resting inside the walls as well, fully geared. It seems they exploit this heavily and I recorded them standing there, getting inside the wall, getting outside the wall,... maybe they are the same guys who loot graves in Sea Towers, under the terrain. I contacted a GM who said they would look it up and ofc they won't do anything. It's not so much the fact that they won't do anything that bothers me but the fact that they will never tell me how their "investigation" went. Bad service .p

Regarding the siege itself, we managed to gather 17 players, which is less than I expected, with a lot of newbs and semi-newbs (much like myself) there. We ride to Qiqa and we get rolled by almost an even number of guys from their part. I should stress #2 that we did not ask any other clan in the vicinity to bind at their holding or for any help, and not for a lack of oportunity. If we are a RAC alliance, we try to be RAC all the way, inspite of the consequences.

We had allso previously decided, the hamlet would only be worth 1 push and after dieing, we go back to our lives.

In short, this postponed the event; we lost the siege and Malus Spiritus seem to be a bunch of retarded teenagers who don't mind exploiting.

Hope to add screenshots or videos at a later time. Cheers :)

Thursday 17 March 2011

Money, Tower and Alliance

As usual, I haven't been posting that often so I have semi-old events to talk about.

First things first: moneh! --> I resubscribed to Darkfall for 3 months, taking advantage of that 29,95€ deal. I had first subscribed using a 6 month deal. Then I quit and when I came back I subscribed for one month. Oddly enough, the automatic recurring subscription was able to withdraw money from my account for a 2nd month (it shouldn't have been able to, due to reasons I don't want to have the work of writting about). So now, I just resubbed for 3 months.

Last Sunday, I went to the northern sea tower with the rest of my alliance. It was cool to ride around in "big" numbers and we had a cool new addition: Imperial Dreams. They are a bunch of guys that got tired of Eve-online and have just started playing Darkfall. So there are like 20-30 1/2 week guys running around (with the same funny last name, no less). All of them belong to well-aligned races so they came with us to the northern tower. If their experience was the same as my first tower, they must of been all excited because it's a new experience and everyone else looks much stronger than them. And then... entering a ship (probably for the first time)... pretteh! And then... cannons to shoot! Sexeh!

We start out a bit bad but it is ok, because we are going to end pretty worser. By badly, I mean we ran into the kraken... no big deal. We surround it, while having the ship repaired and the new guys having fun shooting the cannons. As we set again our bearings towards the Tower, we see a ship coming behind us and gaining terrain. Also, it was shooting at us due to having a forward cannon... that's right... here comes SUN. We try to cannon them down, to no avail, while they keep getting closer.

After being boarded by what looked like 15 guys in Infernal/Dragon armour, we were pretty much all dead in 1 minute. It wasn't a very fun Tower experience, which is OK with me as I am already used to disappointment in-game :) But felt a bit sad for the new guys. Anyways, more will come and they must be used to dieing in Eve already!

Good news is they have joined our little Auros worshiping alliance of good-doers! I hope they fit in with us and don't isolate themselves as they are probably a very tight-knit group of players, who are starting out in a new game. So, I'm not expecting most of them to move to Darkmoore anytime soon.
A secondary positive outcome from this, is that my bruised epeen Ego is great! I feel like a powerful player! :D

Tune in for updates. This Saturday I'm trying to organize a Mounted Combat Tournament with a 10k gold prize to the winner. Let's see how that goes!

Sunday 6 March 2011

Sooooo, this Saturday I logged in at around 5 pm GMT. Bored and without knowing what to do, I talked with my mate Epoxy (we call him 'fat dorf' because he is a fat dwarf) and we decided to ride from Darkmoore to the Ork lands in search of PvP.


Needless to say, we found more chaos chests riding from one side of Agon to the other, than players. This becomes even more tragic as we only found one chaos chest.

We enter into Ork territory and near one of the NPC cities, we find a guy PVEing. I quickly dismount my fast mount and start attacking him with magic spells which completly miss him. It then goes on to melee and my health starts going down fast and I start healing and running away while Epoxy takes over. Then, the bastard gets on my FAST MOUNT and ditches for the NPC city. We're arrowing him down careful not to take down the mount but the guy manages to escape with 2% of life. Very pissed!! (only fast mount I had)

Epoxy very rudely calls me a noob and that I should of unspawned my mount (as he had done). But this is where I think opinions differ. If we are going in for a kill, we shouldn't lose time unspawning the mounts, amiraite?

Anyways, bummed out that I rode all the way to Ork lands and all I got, was my fast mount stolen, we run to the chaos bank to get slow mounts. We go around the rest of the NPC holdings and we see only 1 player but he has newb protection. We end up going to the hamlet Aldan Enak from Pain Killers and there is an afk guy in robes, who we proceed to kill. What a sad first kill :(

We go to the nearby village where I purchase another fast mount and some other stuff. We talked about going down to Andruk (LA) to see if we finally got some PvP, even if it was just to probably get killed. But I had to leave and we just port back to Darkmoore.

All in all, a pretty bad experience that so many people go through on a daily basis, in search for balanced PvP.

At night, me and 3 others go to a dungeon for a bit and we managed to get 5k gold each + other stuff, which was nice. I know it's not a lot for a lot of people but it is enough to satisfy me, specially when you are usually getting killed/losing stuff more often than not :)

All in all, Darkfall on a Saturday experience!

Saturday 5 March 2011

Rosalynn and Pandora

So, I haven't been posting anything new. It's because I get really motivated and excited when I start something new and then I have a hard time commiting to it, but I'll try to kick-start stuff again. I also had put in my mind that the blog would have screenshots so as to make it more interesting and I think it's part of the reason why I haven't posted earlier. It's too much of a hassle for my weak and feeble brain to manage screenshots, so I'll just make text-only posts at will.

Equilibrium wise, we and the rest of the alliance have moved to Darkmoore. We are currently trying to sell some hamlets because we don't need so many holdings and to concentrate people.

Our best neighbours for life are the french Le Clan Neanais and I gotta give special focus to Krytcheck who loves to visit us for tea. LCN own all the houses (I think) in the nearby village of Savaril, so they have an easy access to us. They have more and better developped characters I think, so we tend to lose more often than we win, but it's still good PvP practise and what would DF be without raiders?

Moving on to yesterday's events, I was going to meet up with some of the alliance buds at the elven capital, when I see a blue noob being killed by NPCs outside the town. I rezz him and I notice he is a recruit of Brothers of War. Who is the person that belongs to BoW that I absolutely hate for her pesky comments in DF forums? Rosalynn Goushall.

The recently ressurected recruit PMs me, saying thank you and I tell him no problems and to tell Rosa she is a bitx :D which he promptly does.

Rosa PMs me and we have a very nice and civil conversation, so I have stopped disliking her, although I must remain wary of forumfall .p Anyways, the big lesson here is that people and opinions CAN CHANGE! You might really hate someone and then have a change of heart 6 months later.

After this lovely episode, I meet up with the rest of the alliance guys (we were 8 in that group I think) and we head out to Ultimatum's city. We only find 2 naked guys in the city and their mine was empty. Then we went to Issar Ruins from The Horde... empty.

We check a nearby dungeon and a chaos bank... empty.

We proceeded to Svartfjord from Lost Legion and on the way we find 2 Pandora PvEing. They mount up and run on different directions. We chase the left one and we kill him.

We had thought about checking Sunthrone but with the warning given, the slim chance we might have had of winning was close to nill now. So hapilly we get back on our way to Svartfjord. We find another Pandora running there and we chase him. The guy cowardly disconnects (mental note for the future: Pandora members disconnect to avoid a fight they think they will lose) and we are left staring at the guy on the mount, not being able to hit him.

Then mayhem starts as +/- 2 guys were still in the hamlet and we start hearing a lot of noise. Not understanding what is going on, we go back to the hamlet and it takes a while to understand that we are being attacked (the tower is zapping everyone, everyone is moving around, making it very hard to distinguish what is happening).

It was Pandora with maybe 5 guys? (at the time we were probably 6 because some had disconnected). We fight for a while and end up dead. Hurrah \o/ riding around all evening to find noone and just die at the end in quite a lame way. At least my power of riding surged for the first time (that's right god damn it!) :p

I think 2 things went wrong:
- It was such a surprise (I gather) for the guys that were attacked inside the hamlet that they didn't say anything on Teamspeak
- We, as a group, should of grouped up just north of the hamlet so we could have a clear view of the enemies and not be trapped around buildings and zap towers

I mourn the loss of my dawnrazor :( Down to 1 now, so I'll need to get busy again. I know it's not much but I'm very cheap :)

So that's what happened yesterday. I hope I'll continue to narrate my adventures and that it is interesting to you guys.

Cheers!