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My Trial Experience
Zolgar
Member Posts: 533
So I've been playing on and off the last 3 days or so, and I just now finished the Island questline and am at level 10-99.99% to 11. It's been a wonderful experience and I'm glad I decided to give it a shot. Just felt like sharing my views, feelings, and experiences with others.
Graphically, It looks good. I was honestly not expecting it to look as good as it does (max settings @ 1600x900 resolution). It's not "the most graphically advanced game that will change your outlook on life the second you see it", but it more than gets the job done. It's also aesthetically pleasing (to me), and I always find myself just looking around and exploring the different (although limited, I'm sure, due to what's on the island) landscapes.
Here's a nearly 360 degree look at the some of the island: 1 2 3 4
As far as the animations go, I feel they are decent. They're not near life-like, but again, I feel it gets the job done fairly well.
Combat wise, it feels pretty standard. You got your hot-bar's, and skills to place on them. There's also finishing moves and and counter moves, which is kind of an interesting feature.
I like the skills system, and how the more you use one type of weapon, school of magic, ect, the more profficient you become with it. I LOVE the attribute system though. Being able to put points into Strength, Constitution, Vitality, etc is very nice, and allows the player to customize their character's strength and weaknesses, even if it's only "number wise".
I haven't done anything to do with crafting yet, so I don't know much about it. I did happen to see players chopping down tree's, which is enough to grab my interest. I'll probably play around with that over the next couple of days though.
Now we come to my favorite, and most aggrivating part. The difficulty. Now I played solo the whole time, and played as a Necromancer, so I was perhaps a bit extra squishy, but there were quite a few parts that I thought I'd NEVER get past. For example, I went into the Earth Den at level 5, and I died so many times. Mostly from pulling more than 1 or 2 Hobgoblins/Imps. I finially got to level 6 though, bought my level 6 abilities, went back, and it was a piece of cake. I still took damage like crazy, but so long as I used my abomination, along with other abilites (fear, keeping Sneer toggled on, etc) I did fine. I also had the same problem at the Temple at level 9. If I got more than 2 people on me/abomination, it'd be pretty much over. Hit level 10, came back, and had no problems. Also, just have to add, being able to graft parts onto the Abomination is pretty damn awesome. Anyways, while it may be because I have a squishy class, or I just suck, but it's nice to play a MMO where I have to pace myself, and where I can die easily.
In conslusion, it's been great so far, and it isn't as dead as I was led to believe, as I've found people on at any time I've logged in. Hell it's 6:12AM (eastern time), and the last few hours I've been on, there's been quite a few people playing and chatting back and forth. Once pay day rolls around, I'll be picking this up for sure.
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Comments
Very interesting, thanks.
Playing: Darkfall New Dawn (and planning to play Fallout 76)
Favourite games have included: UO, Lineage2, Darkfall, Lotro, Baldur's Gate, SSX, FF7 and yes the original Wizardry on an Apple IIe
Just attempted the crafting (outfitting). Now, I've not crafted much in MMO's, but this seems fairly in-depth, or perhaps I just haven't got the hang of it yet. None the less, it interests me, so I'll be trying it out more later on, after some much needed sleep.
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Well, in my experience IoD is soloable on a Paladin, as they already get healing and have the good defense of a tank.
One should absolutely do Harvest, Crafting and Diplomacy on IoD to full extend before moving on. You always get great starter gear for these on IoD (not available anywhere else) and its much easier to do than in the rest of the game.
If I may give a tip for class choice:
Warrior - Just avoid. DK and Pal are just as good tanks and War ist definitely the worst of all solists with NO trick whatsoever, neither for kiting not for healing themselves. Raids: best tank raid dps (only relevant for timed fights) but having Bards ist much more important for that and DKs arent too shabby in this area.
Dread Knight - Possibly the best solist. Gets Area Lifetap and very useful utility such as a shorttimed Invis and a snare+fear for fearkiting. Raids: nothing special, but still a great tank for most occasions, except see Pal.
Paladin - Not as good as DK but still good solist (less dps, no utility, no fearkite). Good emergency healing. PvP: Great spike dps thanks to point system. Raids: important melee aggro debuff that helps to up melee dps, immunity to fear (important for the final boss of APW, the dragon).
Rogue - Rather avoid. Second best dps, kiting reportedly still possible thanks to runspeed selfbuffs, but kinda hard. Most unpopular class in the game. Raid utility: Can feed aggro to tank.
Ranger - Can specialize to either Ranged or Melee. Useful utility, healing spells are almost useless though. Raid: best stance kicker (only alternative is Monk).
Monk - Second worst solist after Warrior. Raids: great explorer thanks to Fake Death; essential for certain fights. Also second best stance kicker.
Bard - Kiter and toolbox. Raids: extreme damage boost (very important to have 3 bards for 18 man, or 4 bards for 24 man). Adding a Bard to your group gives like +60% and more damage boost and they themselves do good damage too. Also they have the ability to sleep or enchant mobs.
Cleric - Tankish healer with great general healing spells and great general buffs, but no extra buffs like runspeed and a general mana regeneration problem. Five specialisations: Preservation (stance with +15% block and immunity to stun as well as other defensive abilities), War (extra melee damage), Death (extra magic damage and fearkite abilities), Peace (Invis, instant root capability, and Deaggro skills) and Purity (additional Anti-Undead melee damage and Poison protection). Raids: General buffs, Tank heal (Invention) for ~10k HP instant heal with low mana useage and 8 sec recast make the Cleric the important standard tank healer for many fights.
Shaman - A **load of buffs, debuffs, and dots. Three specializations: Bear (Tankish with extra melee buffs for Endurance Regen), Wolf (Melee DPS with extra good Runspeed, second best to Druid, and Melee buffs), Phoenix (Magic DPS with Energy Regen buff, second best to Psionicist). Raids: Buffs, great general healing especially if constant over long times.
Disciple - Second candidate for best solist. Monk version of a healer. Manaless healing. Raids: Manaless healing (important against some bosses). Neither the weak FD nor the weak Stance kicking of Disciples work in raids much, though.
Blood Mage - Mage version of a healer. Cant kite but thanks to strong lifetaps quite deadly in 1vs1 soling. Frankly probably the worst solist of all healers (trouble against groups of mobs and total inability to kite) but extreme fun nevertheless. Raids: Extremely helpful thanks to hitpoint sharing with tank (takes away part of the damage on the tank). Some great defensive buffs. Also great, possibly best dps on any healer. Can disenchant and disrupt spells.
Sorcerer - Best dps in game and the proverbial glass cannon. Some great selfbuffs, too, which allow kiting. Raids: Elemental Resistance Buffs, reflect and avoid a single spell buffs (those are mana expensive, slow cast, and love to kill beneficial spells). Can disenchant and disrupt spells. Also has elemental immunity buffs, but I never saw them used in a raid.
Druid - Best spike dps in game. Also emergency healing and various other tricks such as dropping all aggro. Otherwise nice dps thanks to dots. Raids: can disenchant. Also other tricks like can make whole raid work without mana for a short time (very important against one APW mob).
Psionicist - CC magician. Relies on dots and can control up to 3 adds at a time. Raids: Best Mage buffs. Can sleep, best enchanter, can feed mana to Clerics or whoever needs it, can feed aggro to Tank.
Necromancer - Third and last candidate for best solist. A special bag of tricks. Pet class with large range of damage over time abilities, the ability to fearkite, and the second best Fake Death ability after Monks. Two specializations: Shadow or Lich. Lich is Raids: can sleep, can fake death (only useful for wipe survival), and gets a "meat" buff that gives extra Str and HP for dropping some mana and Int (most important HP buff in the game). In APW, they also get the opposite buff that gives extra Int and Mana for Str and Mana. Note that its usually enough if someone dualboxes the Necromancer for getting the meat buff; they dont really need to be inside the raid force itself.
Also special tips for races:
If you go any tank, you may consider Qaliathari human. Their special ability is the only racial ability I am aware off that actually matters in raids.
If you go Cleric, I strongly recommend Highelf. Getting +3 Wis (for +7 Wis per level, starting at level 10) and an ability to regain mana is uber helpful on a class that has mana problems. Granted, getting +5 Vit per level from any of the four human races (instead of +4 Vit on any other race choice) is another very tempting choice.
Thats the only two instances I know of where race really makes a difference.
How is the player housing and ship building? Are they instanced areas, or out in the open "world"? Is there a lot of customization, or just bland?
Thanks
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In my experience, Vanguard's difficulty isn't really due to the fact that the game is hard but rather the fact that you're constantly having to solo group quests because there's no one around to help you.
All open world. No instancing here. My complaint about housing is that it is quite expensive. It is something they have left for end game where I would have reccomended it be feasible for a level 25 character to own a house.
I disagree. The usual "bad pull" is far more punishing in Vanguard than it is in other games (depending on the class you play of course). The game's monsters are indeed quite tough for an unequipped nooby.
Nope, housing isnt instanced. Its done in special areas. You need to buy a plot and have to pay a regular fee for it. You also need to have 3 crafters - one Mineralogist, a Blacksmith (Weapon- or Armorsmith, doesnt matter), and unless you do Kojan, you also need an Outfitter (Leatherworker or Tailor) and get a ton of materials to build any house.
Ship crafting is done by Carpenters. They also need some materials from Blacksmiths and Outfitters in order to finish the product. Tier 5 ships need advanced APW access (i.e. you need to be able to get quite deep into that dungeon).
No customization for houses. You choose the Tier (3 to 5, higher of course is larger and more inventory) and the style (need to match the continent). Alternatively, you can make a guild hall, but its super expensive (30 gold per week cost vs 60 silver per week for a normal house plot) and well beyond what you can farm for yourself. Its easy to pay for if you raid on a regular basis, though.
Tier 3 ships can have different colors.
Tier 4 ships also have different choices for the figurehead.
Haha. Good one.
For crafting a house all on your own, you need at least 3 crafters (Mineralogist, any Blacksmith, any Outfitter).
Except I think Kojani dont need an Outfitter.
You also need to have the level and the faction (cant start the house quests without enough faction) and the harvest and ideally also the mass production manuals for a substantial speedup of the crafting process.