Last night I had completed all of the missions in my starter town of South Burb. This has been really exciting because several missions in my log book has me traveling to nearby camps and towns.
The first place that I went to was Embry Crossroads. In this town I didn't want to get sucked in to more missions until I totally cleared out my log book. Because one of the missions was related to my storyline I did some follow-up missions before that portion was completed and my next storyline mission isn't for another couple of levels.
Once I completed what was in Embry Crossroads I then set off to the southwest to a smaller place called Mumford. Between the horseback riding from South Burb to Embry Crossroads and then Mumford the vastness of FE is starting to dawn on me. This place is BIG! I believe the area that I'm covering is perhaps an eighth of the area in sector 1. If that's the case then there's a lot more to explore plus the lands in three other sectors. There's a lot to look forward to.
When I got to Mumford I turned in the mission that got me there. This time around I had started to accept all of the available missions that I was able to find. As I went off to complete them it quickly became evident that Mumford is another starter location. Instead of mobs at my current level of 6 they were actually of a lower level. This made killing them very easy and the missions were ending quickly. This I didn't mind because of the rewards involving more tradeskill manuals.
One of the missions involved some salvaging. While searching for scrap iron I went ahead and salvaged and scavenged anything that was in the vicinity. This lead to a nice supply of tradeskill items that I had then banked before turning in the mission.
At this point in the game I'm only level 6. Some players will view that as a fail because I had logged a lot of hours and have only gone so far. I believe the top level now is 45, so I've got a ways to go. Regardless I do appreciate taking my time and enjoying the game for what it is. Reading through the FE forums leads me to believe that there is a lot of Dev involvement to address discrepancies in the game. However in a few days my 10-day free trial will end. That is a disappointment to me when I was hoping to get a rifle and scope and be that devastating sniper that I had hoped to become. With two games that I'm already subscribed to (WoW & EVE) I'm leery of picking up a third. Should I decide to play further I'll have to cancel one of those two games. However I'm cautiously optimistic that I will be doing exactly that. FE is getting under my skin...
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Days Four, Five and Six: FE is starting to grow on me
Anytime that you can start a ten day mmo free trial leading up to a major family holiday is always a good idea…
Sarcasm aside what time that I’ve devoted to FE has been quite enjoyable. When comparing it to other recent mmo’s I find it to be more complete upon initial launch. While not a perfect game and lacks polish its upside is difficult to ignore.
What I've discovered about the game revolves around the crafting. Initially it's overwhelming as you do get plenty of manuals for various crafted items. When you use the manuals additional items that you can craft get added to your recipe list. As you do more crafting missions (which there are not enough of) the whole process becomes clearer. For crafting materials you can purchase from a vendor but that can be expensive. Instead it's best to go and salvage or scavenge what you need for the crafted item. This is where it appears daunting because it's not immediately clear where you can find items like weak botanical chemical. However after some trial and error I found that they got a better drop rate if you scavenge from plants (with a name like that it should have been obvious. I blame the spiked hot butter rum).
There are ten different crafting categories
taken from fallenearth.wikia.com
* Armorcraft: Making all manner of clothes and armor.
* Ballistics: Making rifles, pistols, crossbows, zip guns, submachine guns and assault rifles, and their associated ammunition. Note that these are not the only types of ranged weapon, but some of the known types.
* Cooking: Creating food that can help increase player performance primarily through the recovery of hit points and stamina faster (characters who don't have some food in their gut and a quenched thirst are going to be able to act fine, but will find their time spent recovering from injuries or exhaustion much longer).
* Geology: Allows the player to harvest minerals from mining nodes and to refine metals into higher-grade components.
* Medicine: Making first aid kits, anti-venoms, radiation treatments, etc.
* Mutagenics: Covers the creation of mutation injectors and other devices that support the use of mutations, such as gamma restorers.
* Nature: Making poisons, collecting materials from plants and animals, refining tradeskill components, etc.
* Scavenging: Allows for harvesting materials from the piles of junk that dot the Grand Canyon.
* Science: Making acids, sniper scopes, batteries, cars, refining tradeskill components, etc.
* Weaponry: Making clubs, knives, baseball bats, and other killing implements that are used up close and personal.
Within each category there are numerous recipes that requires skill levels to advance and create higher level crafted items. One of the things that I like about FE crafting is that you can queue up several items which will be crafted while you do other things. While riding my horse I was able to queue up several recipes to make additional bolts for my crossbow. Although this makes crafting convenient the caveat is that depending on the difficulty of the crafted item determines how long the wait is. In WoW you can queue up 25 items to be crafted and each items takes several seconds to make. In no time you've got all 25 crafted items to auction off or whatever you intend for them. That doesn't occur in FE. Recently I crafted three items for a quest and each one took a bit over eight minutes to make. So nearly a half hour later I was able to go and turn in a crafted mission when the items were made.
After the previous paragraphs it's obvious that I'm getting into the crafting. That is by design as I delved into FE it was with the intention of having a crafter. That isn't what I focus on when I play the game though. Instead I have been doing a lot of missions from my starter town of South Burb. I look forward to completing the South Burb missions and branching out to explore other areas of sector 1. Documenting that phase and sharing it will be coming shortly.
Sarcasm aside what time that I’ve devoted to FE has been quite enjoyable. When comparing it to other recent mmo’s I find it to be more complete upon initial launch. While not a perfect game and lacks polish its upside is difficult to ignore.
What I've discovered about the game revolves around the crafting. Initially it's overwhelming as you do get plenty of manuals for various crafted items. When you use the manuals additional items that you can craft get added to your recipe list. As you do more crafting missions (which there are not enough of) the whole process becomes clearer. For crafting materials you can purchase from a vendor but that can be expensive. Instead it's best to go and salvage or scavenge what you need for the crafted item. This is where it appears daunting because it's not immediately clear where you can find items like weak botanical chemical. However after some trial and error I found that they got a better drop rate if you scavenge from plants (with a name like that it should have been obvious. I blame the spiked hot butter rum).
There are ten different crafting categories
taken from fallenearth.wikia.com
* Armorcraft: Making all manner of clothes and armor.
* Ballistics: Making rifles, pistols, crossbows, zip guns, submachine guns and assault rifles, and their associated ammunition. Note that these are not the only types of ranged weapon, but some of the known types.
* Cooking: Creating food that can help increase player performance primarily through the recovery of hit points and stamina faster (characters who don't have some food in their gut and a quenched thirst are going to be able to act fine, but will find their time spent recovering from injuries or exhaustion much longer).
* Geology: Allows the player to harvest minerals from mining nodes and to refine metals into higher-grade components.
* Medicine: Making first aid kits, anti-venoms, radiation treatments, etc.
* Mutagenics: Covers the creation of mutation injectors and other devices that support the use of mutations, such as gamma restorers.
* Nature: Making poisons, collecting materials from plants and animals, refining tradeskill components, etc.
* Scavenging: Allows for harvesting materials from the piles of junk that dot the Grand Canyon.
* Science: Making acids, sniper scopes, batteries, cars, refining tradeskill components, etc.
* Weaponry: Making clubs, knives, baseball bats, and other killing implements that are used up close and personal.
Within each category there are numerous recipes that requires skill levels to advance and create higher level crafted items. One of the things that I like about FE crafting is that you can queue up several items which will be crafted while you do other things. While riding my horse I was able to queue up several recipes to make additional bolts for my crossbow. Although this makes crafting convenient the caveat is that depending on the difficulty of the crafted item determines how long the wait is. In WoW you can queue up 25 items to be crafted and each items takes several seconds to make. In no time you've got all 25 crafted items to auction off or whatever you intend for them. That doesn't occur in FE. Recently I crafted three items for a quest and each one took a bit over eight minutes to make. So nearly a half hour later I was able to go and turn in a crafted mission when the items were made.
After the previous paragraphs it's obvious that I'm getting into the crafting. That is by design as I delved into FE it was with the intention of having a crafter. That isn't what I focus on when I play the game though. Instead I have been doing a lot of missions from my starter town of South Burb. I look forward to completing the South Burb missions and branching out to explore other areas of sector 1. Documenting that phase and sharing it will be coming shortly.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Day Three: Whole lotta nothing...
After work we went out for a company Christmas dinner. After getting home we watched a movie and called it a night. I'll try to do more FE tonight.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Day Two: Slowly Moving Outward
As of last night I'm in South Burb and slowly branching out from the starter town. Since my play time was limited I wanted to spend that availability to grind out a few missions.
Unlike World of Warcraft (WoW) finding a mission giver is not immediately obvious. In WoW the big exclamation point that’s highlighted yellow can easily be seen from a distance. In Fallen Earth (FE) the quest icon is blends in with the drab environment. What I discovered was that it was quicker to spot those icons on the mini-map as they were green and stood out better. As long as I kept that mini-map zoomed out it was easy to run around to the mission givers. After accepting a mission they are immediately tracked with objective summaries available on the right-side of the screen. Perhaps there’s a UI setting that’ll allow me to track more than one at a time. If not then this needs to be addressed. Another gripe that I found is that I was unable to pan the regular map. However this might be an available feature as someone in the Help chat channel did explain how to pan your map around. Ugh, I wish that I had caught what that was.
So far I’m still becoming familiar with the environment. This weekend it would be in my best interest to do more exploration of my immediate area and its NPC residents.
FE is still getting a few lingering bugs worked out. In a way it's like the early days of WoW, which is understandable when FE is still among the new kids on the MMO block. What I find is that I sometimes get stuck and when that occurred I happened to be riding my horse. You do have an unstuck button, but the caveat is that you must be standing and not riding a horse (in these stuck situations I had to log out and then back on to resolve it; it is rare). There are other little things that make the game less fluid than WoW. However after numerous MMO beta participation and game release playing I'm used to that and am willing to tolerate it as long as it's an issue that's addressed through a patch.
One of the highlights about the game is the crafting and I haven't done a whole lot in that regard. This weekend I'll take a break from mission grinding and try my hand at crafting. One of the MMO blogs that I follow the writer said that's his goal for the weekend in FE is some crafting with a goal to manufacture a motorcycle. I should look into that too.
After playing somewhere between 3-4 hours I'm only level 2. That's not a knock on the game though. So far I'm not too concerned with leveling and feel that it's not emphasized as what you must do to enjoy the game. However, I do notice my low level being a hindrance when going up against some mobs that are three or more levels above me. They wipe the floor with me.
Anyway, I'll keep playing and will keep you in the loop. Hopefully a week from now I'll have a clearer picture of what the game offers and will be able to provide a more informed opinion. In closing the game still has me intrigued and I'm compelled to explore it further.
Unlike World of Warcraft (WoW) finding a mission giver is not immediately obvious. In WoW the big exclamation point that’s highlighted yellow can easily be seen from a distance. In Fallen Earth (FE) the quest icon is blends in with the drab environment. What I discovered was that it was quicker to spot those icons on the mini-map as they were green and stood out better. As long as I kept that mini-map zoomed out it was easy to run around to the mission givers. After accepting a mission they are immediately tracked with objective summaries available on the right-side of the screen. Perhaps there’s a UI setting that’ll allow me to track more than one at a time. If not then this needs to be addressed. Another gripe that I found is that I was unable to pan the regular map. However this might be an available feature as someone in the Help chat channel did explain how to pan your map around. Ugh, I wish that I had caught what that was.
So far I’m still becoming familiar with the environment. This weekend it would be in my best interest to do more exploration of my immediate area and its NPC residents.
FE is still getting a few lingering bugs worked out. In a way it's like the early days of WoW, which is understandable when FE is still among the new kids on the MMO block. What I find is that I sometimes get stuck and when that occurred I happened to be riding my horse. You do have an unstuck button, but the caveat is that you must be standing and not riding a horse (in these stuck situations I had to log out and then back on to resolve it; it is rare). There are other little things that make the game less fluid than WoW. However after numerous MMO beta participation and game release playing I'm used to that and am willing to tolerate it as long as it's an issue that's addressed through a patch.
One of the highlights about the game is the crafting and I haven't done a whole lot in that regard. This weekend I'll take a break from mission grinding and try my hand at crafting. One of the MMO blogs that I follow the writer said that's his goal for the weekend in FE is some crafting with a goal to manufacture a motorcycle. I should look into that too.
After playing somewhere between 3-4 hours I'm only level 2. That's not a knock on the game though. So far I'm not too concerned with leveling and feel that it's not emphasized as what you must do to enjoy the game. However, I do notice my low level being a hindrance when going up against some mobs that are three or more levels above me. They wipe the floor with me.
Anyway, I'll keep playing and will keep you in the loop. Hopefully a week from now I'll have a clearer picture of what the game offers and will be able to provide a more informed opinion. In closing the game still has me intrigued and I'm compelled to explore it further.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Day One: 10-Day trial
I played Fallen Earth a bit more last night and did the new player experience tutorial quests. Prior to that I had a chance to choose a career path with sub-categories on what I'd like to pursue. So I chose the crafting with pistols/rifle subcategory. The zone is called South Burbs. Once I got to the South Burbs a woman had me run around to meet other players who instructed me how to use my abilities and mutations. Afterward I retrieved a horse and was told to ride around to surrounding camps to get crafting training. So it was interesting.
The fighting is different. You equip your weapons whether that's a 2x4 board for melee, pistols or crossbow (starter "rifle"). Of these weapons you hit CTRL-# to equip the proper weapon that you want. As you go out to fight mobs you select your target and then hit the TAB key to switch over to combat mode. Your pointer then changes to target mode. While fighting you activate your skills and click on your target with your mouse to execute your attacks. After they've been defeated you hit TAB to get out of combat mode and then you can right-click on your dead mob to collect loot. You can then right-click on them a second time to harvest crafting items from them.
As you defeat more mobs and complete quests you earn action points (I'm assuming that's what AP stands for). With those points you raise the level of your skills. Since I want to focus on being a rifleman for sniping from a distance, in my points distribution there are pre-set builds that you can select for your career. After choosing rifleman the interface highlighted for me desired points in specific skills to make me more efficient at becoming that sniper.
Because the career that I chose is crafting oriented I'd like to focus on ballistics so that I can manufacture my own weapons. There's a lot of different crafting available. You can even craft vehicles (which I'm sure is high level for your Mad Max interceptor) and I believe that depending on your faction there are different types of vehicles. One thing that I'm uncertain of is if you're able to branch out into other crafting specialization. I have to imagine that we can. It would suck if all that I can focus on is ballistics when I can simply cook food. Since one of my tutorial new player experience missions was to cook some food that seems to imply that you can diversify your crafting ability.
When you choose quests it's pretty easy. After they are in your journal there's a red X appearing on your map and mini-map. You then go there and you find your waypoint or mob for your quest. These days that's a nice feature. Speaking of quests, so far I've liked reading through them to understand what's going on. This is different from WoW where I click on the quest giver and accept the quest without really reading the quest notes.
Now that I've put in about two hours into the game my initial impressions haven't changed. This is a nice little game to play. The graphics does appear outdated and the landscape is sparse, so this does make it good for framerate. So far I haven't experienced anything negative like a crashed client. From what I've read in the game forums the population initially was huge on the one server that the game is hosted on. However after the first month the subscribers dropped off dramatically. That's no surprise as the WoW tourists came, saw and left. This game is not designed like WoW in that there are no huge end game raids or anything like that. I get the impression most end game is mostly comprised of pvp.
The fighting is different. You equip your weapons whether that's a 2x4 board for melee, pistols or crossbow (starter "rifle"). Of these weapons you hit CTRL-# to equip the proper weapon that you want. As you go out to fight mobs you select your target and then hit the TAB key to switch over to combat mode. Your pointer then changes to target mode. While fighting you activate your skills and click on your target with your mouse to execute your attacks. After they've been defeated you hit TAB to get out of combat mode and then you can right-click on your dead mob to collect loot. You can then right-click on them a second time to harvest crafting items from them.
As you defeat more mobs and complete quests you earn action points (I'm assuming that's what AP stands for). With those points you raise the level of your skills. Since I want to focus on being a rifleman for sniping from a distance, in my points distribution there are pre-set builds that you can select for your career. After choosing rifleman the interface highlighted for me desired points in specific skills to make me more efficient at becoming that sniper.
Because the career that I chose is crafting oriented I'd like to focus on ballistics so that I can manufacture my own weapons. There's a lot of different crafting available. You can even craft vehicles (which I'm sure is high level for your Mad Max interceptor) and I believe that depending on your faction there are different types of vehicles. One thing that I'm uncertain of is if you're able to branch out into other crafting specialization. I have to imagine that we can. It would suck if all that I can focus on is ballistics when I can simply cook food. Since one of my tutorial new player experience missions was to cook some food that seems to imply that you can diversify your crafting ability.
When you choose quests it's pretty easy. After they are in your journal there's a red X appearing on your map and mini-map. You then go there and you find your waypoint or mob for your quest. These days that's a nice feature. Speaking of quests, so far I've liked reading through them to understand what's going on. This is different from WoW where I click on the quest giver and accept the quest without really reading the quest notes.
Now that I've put in about two hours into the game my initial impressions haven't changed. This is a nice little game to play. The graphics does appear outdated and the landscape is sparse, so this does make it good for framerate. So far I haven't experienced anything negative like a crashed client. From what I've read in the game forums the population initially was huge on the one server that the game is hosted on. However after the first month the subscribers dropped off dramatically. That's no surprise as the WoW tourists came, saw and left. This game is not designed like WoW in that there are no huge end game raids or anything like that. I get the impression most end game is mostly comprised of pvp.
First post
excerpt from an email to a friend...
BTW - I am testing a new mmo. The game Fallen Earth has been out for several months now. It's the post apocalyptic mmo. Lately several blogs that I follow the writers are talking about their experience in the game. They really like it. That was a change from their initial impressions. But now the efforts put together by this small group of mmo developers are winning these players over. The game has an initial 10 day free trial period. You sign up, they email you a trial serial key and give a link to download the client from. The initial client is around 500 MB in size and it starts the initial install. After the install the rest of the client is downloaded and that's a bit over 4 GB. I started it last night and it finished this morning. Before coming in I did the initial starter quest chains that got out you of the underground facility. It's been interesting and pretty intuitive so far. You should check it out.
BTW - I am testing a new mmo. The game Fallen Earth has been out for several months now. It's the post apocalyptic mmo. Lately several blogs that I follow the writers are talking about their experience in the game. They really like it. That was a change from their initial impressions. But now the efforts put together by this small group of mmo developers are winning these players over. The game has an initial 10 day free trial period. You sign up, they email you a trial serial key and give a link to download the client from. The initial client is around 500 MB in size and it starts the initial install. After the install the rest of the client is downloaded and that's a bit over 4 GB. I started it last night and it finished this morning. Before coming in I did the initial starter quest chains that got out you of the underground facility. It's been interesting and pretty intuitive so far. You should check it out.
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