Darkfall Day Ten
David X. Messer has a day in Darkfall in which he Gets Things Done.
The plan for the day was simple enough. The slaughter of twenty or thirty goblins for money. Yes. I am that shallow. I was short the 250g that I needed to get the taming skill and thus have a go at crafting my first mount. I had already been gifted two mounts by the Clan at this point, but I like to be as self sufficient as possible and this "you can do everything" attitude that Darkfall has to crafting had really sucked me in. Besides, it was either this or todays post was going to be another "spent all day fishing".
So off to my favourite goblin spawn and it turned out the goblins had other ideas. I charged into the a pack without a second thought and immediately had my ass kicked by a couple of goblin shaman and two goblin scouts. Not exactly how I'd wanted this evening to start, but it taught me a valuable lesson about getting over confident. I wasn't in WoW anymore. Despite this initial set back it didn't take me long to raise the 250g I needed and I ported back to the Clan hamlet. Much like the goblins however, this didn't turn out the way I'd planned. The Clan channel piped up with news of a raft trip to some offshore islands to pick off some slightly harder mobs for my level, and would I like to come along? Damn right I'd like to come along.
Five of us went off on a raft headed for distant isles, with the promise of some loot and cash, the perfect antidote to crafting and skill gathering overload of the past week or so. During the twenty minute or so trip on the raft I installed vent and got onto the Clan vent server, and also took a bit of time to work out what the game hotkey was for taking screenshots. For the rest of the evening I was happily tapping alt-h (hide UI) and alt-s (take screenshot) but more on this later.
Today's valuable lesson would be that when traveling by raft, one should always pack a fishing rod. Luckily I'd brought mine, and the time quickly passed until we came on our first island. This went a bit quickly. There was some kind of giant, we killed it and waited for the respawn. And waited. And waited. And then off on the raft again to another island. The thing about group combat seems to be that although my skills possibly weren't as high as the rest of my party, I was still able to contribute in some form, and have a good time without feeling like I might as well not be there. I kept pressing alt-s, and noticed I wasn't getting any feedback that anything actually happened, but didn't think much of this as we'd arrived at another island. Minotaurs this time, no match for 5 people on a mission, off to another island and a couple of cairn giants which quickly turned into five cairn giants who wiped the floor with 3 of our party (including me) which signaled the end of our little trip. The two survivors managed to recover our gear so we didn't actually lose anything. One of my Clan remarked that, at least we didn't wipe to another player and had our gear stolen. I think being PK'd would have been less embarrassing, but that's just me!
I began to spot a pattern as to how the evenings mob combat was going to go, but still, now I could go and buy that taming skill and make my first mount! I headed for the nearest city, bought the taming skill, got my tamer's whistle and steedgrass out of the bank. I had all I needed. The first couple of attempts failed, but I didn't lose the steed grass which was nice, and then I had my first mount! Feeling quite pleased with myself I decided to treat myself by exploring a little and taking some more screenshots, but before I could leave the city, the Clan channel burst into life again. Something about Sea Serpents...
Just three of us this time, on the hunt for Sea Serpents. Apparently it'd been mentioned in the forums that theres a rare drop from them that's quite useful, but really that wasn't why I was there, the idea that there's mobs actually in the sea just opened my mind as to what it's possible to do with a map in an MMO. Suddenly the sea wasn't a waste of space, it was valuable territory where you can actually do something with it. As it turned out the serpents were easy game, the first two dropped without much effort. Again, despite my relative n00bness I felt like a useful member of the group which was a great feeling. I think part of that is the combat. In WoW you have a whole raft of eye candy type skills when you're in the higher levels, but as far as I can tell basic combat looks exactly the same no matter what level you are. So even if the rest of the group were doing more damage than me the gear/skill gap didn't feel that big.
We scouted around for some more serpents and on our travels we spotted a sunken city which looked pretty stunning. The taller parts of the buildings just coming out over the suface of the water. I hit alt-s a lot to take screenshots. Third time lucky with the combat, but not getting the drops we'd turned out for, we ported back to the hamlet. Here I was given my share of the loot in gold and we went our separate ways.
Oh, and about those screenshots. Turns out that despite the fact theres an input binding (left alt+s) for taking screenshots, it doesn't actually do anything. One of the many work arounds suggestd in the forums is to use a 3rd party app and do it that way, which I shall install for next time. Seems a bit odd to me that you'd even mention a screenshot option in the key bindings if it doesn't work, but I wasn't going to let that dampen what had been a really fun evening.
Posted by Drew Shiel at November 19, 2009 2:14 PM
