MMO

More Light, More Light!

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Last week, I upgraded my last piece of Crystal 5 gear to max which is a big step in my Shadow Hunter’s progressive. It also means I now need to gather new materials in the Long Shade Adventure world, which is the current end game area of Trove, to upgrade all my gear to Mystic tier.

I popped my head into the Long Shade to see how much damage I’m doing and it’s not nearly as much as I thought it’d be. I can do damage, and I can kill dungeon bosses but it requires using a health flask to activate my Martial Emblem to do 250% increased damage for 3 seconds. It’s slow going. I also don’t feel quite right checking out new (to me) content without Blades.

So while I wait for him to catch up in the upgraded gear department, I’ll busy myself with squeezing out some more damage.

The best way to increase my damage, now that my gems and gear are fully upgraded, is to increase my Light stat.

I know it increases damage but I didn’t know what it actually did until I read the wiki. The Light stat, decreases the effect of the Darkness stat of enemies. Great ,what’s darkness? Darkness, it turns out, is just damage reduction that only applies to enemies. Light comes from gear, gems, collected dragons, the star chart and Geode Mastery. I’m currently sitting at 11.6k light the majority of my missing light is from Geode Mastery.

That’s because I’ve been avoiding Geode for years.

Geode is a separate game mode, where you wander around a cavern collecting crystals and materials to craft upgrades to Geode specific modules. The more you upgrade your gear the longer you can survive in the cavern and the deeper you can go to find rarer materials.

I have mostly ignored Geode for the majority of my Trove career because it is a slow and tedious game mode but every level of Geode Mastery provides 10 light. I’m currently at 60 out of 100 Geode Mastery so I’m over halfway there!

The good news is, I only need crystals from Geode. Every other material needed to upgrade modules or craft collectables for mastery can be bought off the player market. It’s not cheap, but it saves a ton of time and I generate a decent amount of flux by just running dungeons to complete my daily star bar that I can log in for 20 minutes a day and have enough flux for materials.

On Mondays, the daily bonus includes triple crystal drops, so I’ve spent a few Monday nights on Geode runs. As a result, I was able to upgrade my Vacuum module (which sucks up all of the crystals in an area) to max. Not only does this increase the range but it has the added benefit of doubling all crystals collected by the vacuum.

I didn’t realize, until yesterday, that the majority of Geode Mastery comes from craftable collectibles and not, as I previously assumed, leveling up modules. I, wrongly, assumed I had crafted most of this stuff years ago. I have many costumes, allies, and tomes to craft that will give quite a significant boost to my Geode mastery. This was a relief because, compared to the modules, they’re all relatively cheap to craft. The only bottle neck, again, is crystals.

Now that I’ve been doing it regularly, Geode isn’t as bad as I thought. It’s something different to do to break up a play session and it works just as well for listening to a podcast. There’s also a chance to loot Crystal piniatas which sell for 40k a pop. So there’s some money to be made there as well. At least enough to cover the next upgrade/collectable!

Ten Years of Trove

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The past month I’ve been back in Trove. I tend to revisit the game every summer to see what’s been added. Surprisingly, the game still gets at least one big update every year despite being run by Gamingo for the last 6 years or so. At this point, Trove’s been a Gamigo game longer than it was a Trion game.

The game turned 10 years old this year and there’s a month long, Sunfest event going on with a lot of rewards including new mounts styles and allies. Who would have thought it would have lasted this long? I’m pleasantly suprised every year that passes that Trove has evaded maintenance mode.

It’s hard to believe I’ve been playing Trove for a decade. For better or worse, it’s been my game. The one I come back to when I don’t know what to play or I want something to do while I listen to a podcast. It’s grind heavey, it’s got time gates for almost all of the progression, but nothing quite gets me in a flow state like Trove. It’s by far my most played game on Steam by multitudes. It’s mindless but it’s fun. Where else can you ride a shark who shoots lasers out of it’s head? Or a hot dogs with legs?

It also helps that Blades is just as enamored with it as I am. The best online game to play are the ones your friends play right? Trove brought the Welp Squad together nearly 10 years ago too. It was the first game we all played together and we played it almost exclusively that first year.We branched off to other games but we still get together every weekend to play games and that all started with our weekly shadow tower runs in Trove, back when those were the end game content. The squad doesn’t play this one together, outside of Blades and I, but those were some of my fondest gaming memories.

I’ve gotten a lot done in the past month. I hit 45k Power Rank which gives me a chance of getting Crystal 5 Gear from the Gearcrafter’s Vaults. It’s a low chance, but I typically get 1-4 chests per dungeon so they add up quick. I was able to get all 3 pieces of Crystal 5 Gear for my Shadow Hunter and I’m only one upgrade away from maxing them all out. There’s one more tier of gear, Mystic, but I’m waiting to figure out how that all works until Blades catches up with my progression.

I’ve also done some work on my Geode Mastery which I’ve been avoiding, pretty much since Geode came out. Geode is this mining mini game, there’s no combat, and it’s really slow, but Geode Mastery grants Light which increases your damage. So it’s kind of a must do at some point. I’m at that point now, it’s not so bad, but I’m only doing it a little at a time so I don’t burn out on it. I’m currently working on maxing out my Vaccumm so I can get crystals faster, which will in turn, make getting Geode Mastery even faster.

Blades and I have also been leveling up our Club. We’ve had the Club for 9 years but never knew how club xp worked. Leveling up the club grants access to fixtures that provide bonuses for everyone. It turns out, you get club xp from completing adventures from the club, something we had never done. We’ve been working on it this month and have even recruited a few people to join too. We’re up to level 6 and we’ve got a few fixtures in place. I think we might make it to level 7 before the xp requirement gets too high for two people to make any meaningful progression.

I’m planning on playing regularly until the end of the month when the anniversary event ends. Then I think I will have had my fill of Trove, that is, until next year!

This Week In Screenshots: Set to Music

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I’ve been listening to the Heart of Thorns soundtrack on the way to work this week. Only the first handful of tracks though, because I’ve found some can lead to some spoilers. I can, in fact I probably will, write a whole post on how I got into listening to game soundtracks on their own but…this is not that post. Just something short and sweet for Saturday.

Heart of Thorns has some great music and I thought it would be fun to match up some screenshots I took to the tracks I’ve enjoyed this week.

Hope you’re having a great weekend!

The Pact Laid Waste

The Jungle Provides

Jaka Itzel

Far From Home

Tarir, the Forgotten City

Into the Jungle

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I got a solid start in Heart of Thorns this week. I started the main story and ventured through the first two zones: Verdant Brink and Auric Basin. Neither of which I’ve fully explored yet. The story picks up right where the Living World Season 2 leaves off, naturally. There’s enough of a recap where I would have probably figured out what was going on if I didn’t go through Season 2 but I’m sure glad I did.

The first thing I noticed about this expansion? It’s freaking hard! Well, harder than Central Tyria was, for sure, and a bit harder than Dry Top and the Silverwastes. I did a quick Google search to see if this was the case or I was rusty after picking the game back up after a couple months. Google confirmed that Heart of Thorns is, indeed, harder than the core story. Apparently, it used to be even harder too! But I don’t mind, it’s forcing me to pay attention to what each new enemy does. Thematically, it makes sense too because we’re dropped in behind enemy lines on their home turf.

The zones are beautiful. I have a so, so, many screenshots! I really dig the untamed forest vibe with the lush greens and the tree filtered sunlight….amazing. Plus we’ve got frogs everywhere. Big frogs. Small frogs. Tree Frogs!

I’ve always heard how wonderful HoT’s vertical maps are. I thought I had some idea of what a vertical map was. Let me tell you, Verdant Brink was rough before I unlocked the gliding mastery. One minute I’d be happily cruising down a hill on my raptor, the next minute I’d be falling off a cliff to my death. It certainly made those first few moments in the jungle memorable.

I like the way the mastery system is laid out here. In the base game, the masteries nice, ok Auto Looting is very nice, but they felt like something to passively unlock while I was doing other things: i.e the main story post 80 or the living world stuff.

Masteries in Heart of Thorns, at least so far, unlock more features for getting around. Gliding helps you get places you couldn’t before, learning how to use the bouncing mushrooms let’s you get places you couldn’t before, the Exalted lore helps you navigate the world. Actually, I’m not sure on that last one, it least let’s you use the teleports in Tarir, which saves a few staircases!

I’m looking forward to getting that next mastery unlock to explore more than. I feel more inclined to explore in this expansion. That could be because I ran through Central Tyria so many times before but, I’m taking my time here.

In addition to masteries, I also like that the story (again at least so far) is broken up into a few missions and then a pause to unlock a new mastery. This has given me a chance to get familiar with the maps, hone my skills against the enemy types in the jungle, and run around and participate in events. It’s has some nice pacing to it, I haven’t felt like I’ve been itching to get back to the story before I’ve unlocked the next mastery.

I had read that the Hero Points were geared more towards multiple people completing them than the hero points in Central Tyria. They do provide ten hero points instead of one which might explain that. I thought I would have a problem completing these, but every time I started one up, there was always one or two people who came along and helped out. I’m looking forward to unlocking the Dragonhunter Elite spec and playing around with that!

This Week In Screenshots: On My Way To Heart of Thorns

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I find myself in that precarious Blaugust situation where the scheduled posts have run out, it’s late, and I haven’t written a word yet. While I’m not explicitly going for 31 posts (it’s more of a low-key thing), I didn’t want the streak to end so early. So, as is the long standing tradition here at Many Welps, it’s time to pull out the ol’ Saturday screenshots post!

I spent this week back in Guild Wars 2 finishing up the Living Story Season 2. Over the winter, the game had finally clicked for me after starting a new Sylvari Gaurdian. I ran him through the core story, up through the Living World Season 1 content, and about half way through Season 2 before quietly drifting away.

Finishing season 2 is the farthest I’ve gotten a character over the years. Despite that, I’ve owned Heart of Thrones and Path of Fire for what feels like forever. I played enough Path of Fire to get the Raptor mount when it first came out but I’ve never stepped foot in Heart of Thorn’s I’m excited to see what lies ahead!

Starting Over Already

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I’ve been enjoying my time in Elder Scrolls Online the past few weeks. High Isle is such a pretty zone; I’m constantly stopping to take screenshots. It hasn’t been too bad starting out in the latest chapter either. The story seems pretty self contained so far. I’m sure prior knowledge might enchance it somewhat but I’m having no issue following along. So then why did I decide to roll another character and start in the base game?

My general rule of thumb is my first character in any MMO is going to be a practice child. It’s the one I’ll use to figure out the game and when I think I have basics down, roll a new character. I wasn’t 100% sold on the Dragonknight class after the first few levels. A melee range mage is a cool concept but after 18 levels it just wasn’t clicking for me. As I did some research around the class I found it was a very good DPS and tank but one of the worst healers. If I’m going to eventually venture out to group content I’m going to want to heal. With all that in mind the urge to re-roll got stronger and stronger.

ESO seems like the kind of game you’ll only want to run one character through in it’s entirety. I’m enjoying the quests and exploration the most right now but that’s because it’s new to me. I don’t think I’d have the same excitement retreading quests and zones I’ve already done before. I set out to make a character I could play for the long term.

I did some more research on classes this time around. After running through a good chunk of High Ilse I became enamored with the High Isle Druids and their lore. I wanted to make one of my own so I made a Breton Warden. Now me and my bear companion can roam around Tamriel and have a much better healing kit for when I eventually want to try dungeons.

My first character made it far enough in to High Isle that restarting there wasn’t appealing. High Isle aslo seemed more geared toward later game characters with dailies, world bosses, and a substantial card game which screams I’ve done everything in this game already and now I just want to play cards.. It makes sense though seeing as this is the latest expansion for the game. With that in mind I elected to experience things from the beginning and chose to start in Stros M’Kai. By the time I get back to High Isle the story won’t be as fresh.

I met Captain Kaleen and Jakarn here, two prominent characters in High Isle. I knew I’d seen them somewhere before!

Stros M’Kai is a much smaller zone than High Isle was which was probably to be expected now that I think about it. One of the things that struck me though was how much the quest structure differed here than in High Isle. In High Isle, every side quest felt like it’s own adventure with multiple quests in the chain. Here in Stros M’Kai the side quests are one off “go here, do the thing, come back” type of quests but there are more of them scattered around. I much preffer the side quest structure from High Isle. I do wonder if this will come back in the base game or if that structure will return once I’m in to Morrowind.

I’m also surprised to see that this base game started zone is just as pretty as High Isle was. I think it’s the lighting

While the zone is smaller I’m not trying to complete each zone before I move on. Finding all of the Sky Shards and Wayshrines is enough for me right now. I’m very much in to the seeing the story and doing quests and don’t want to kill my enthusiasm by trying to complete zones right now. I completed the main quest in Stros M’Kai and am off to the Orc island of Betnikh.

I Guess I’m Playing Elder Scrolls Online Now?

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I’ve been searching for a new game to play for a whilenow. So much so that I was going to write a whole post about the few games I was deciding between. Then Friday happened and I had to make some decisions about what I really wanted to play.

ESO was alreading on the list of games I was leaning towards. . I’ve kept it perpetually installed because it’s giant (98 GB). It stares at me from my desktop waiting patiently to be played again. Over the years, I have tried over and over to get in to it but never made it too far. The classes confuse me and the combat is weird. But I love the story teliing and the world exploration so every once and a while I will boot it up to see if this time is the time it sticks.

The ongoing Quakecon Sale on Steam cemented my decision. The Elder Scrolls Online Collection: High Isle, which includes the latest expansion and all of the previous ones, was 35% off. Sure I could have just played the base game, which I already own, but I figured it wasn’t that expensive to pick the whole game up all at once.

This also solves one of the issues I have with MMOs I’ve repeatedly tried to get into: doing the same starter zones over again. With High Isle, and the Complete Collection in general, I can start somewhere I’ve never been before. In this case, creating a new character and skipping the tutorial, something I’ve also done a few times over the years, plops you right in to the latest expansion.

I was originally planning on starting in the base game once again but, like I said, skipping the tutorial doesn’t give you a choice. I was curious about starting other places so I did go back and play the tutorial on another character. It’s completely changed since the last time I played it. For the better, I might add. At the end, you can pick to start in any of the Chapters but the character I wanted to play was already in High Isle.

That’s where my journey begins this time around. I’m helping Lady Arabell Davaux find the missing delegates to a peace conference that’s being held on High Isle. Thanks to the few times I’ve run the base game starting zones I know what the Three Banners War is which, so far, seems to be the only prerequsit to follow the story.

Starting at the end may seem like an odd choice. I was going to jump back to the base game to get the whole story but High Isle is so pretty. I wanted to get out there and see more of it as soon as I arrived.

The plan is to push through and see if I can get used to the combat enough to really get in to the game (as long as I’m having fun of course). I have a habit of jumping ship when things are too different. Sometimes I want to play a new game without having to learn something new you know? But I have also found that sticking things out for just a little bit, even if their weird, can help get me over that hump and find enjoyment. Which is where I’m heading with ESO right now. The classes and combat are starting to make more sense now that I’ve been playing for a few days.

We shall see how this goes, I could be playing for a few more days or it could become my new game. only time will tell.

Making a Return to Temtem

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It’s been two years since I’ve played Temtem. The last time was just after Blapril 2020. . Logging back in to an MMO after an extended period of time is always tough. I had a party full of Temtems of which I had a vauge idea as to why they were there and what they did. I had a storage full of other Temtems of varying levels, most of the lower variety, which I assumed is why they were there. I also had a log full of quests and, after looking at the map, couldn’t figure out where they were suppose to lead to or where I had to go to finish them. I made the executive decision to ignore those completely.

I spent my first few hours running around this grassfield looking for fights. Brother was the one who mentioned he wanted to play the game again and his Tems were around level 30 already. Mine were not and I had some under level 25. I catching up to do. I got most of my Tems to 30 with my water type Tem, Umishi, falling just short at 29. I put the Cowards Cloak on him which is an XP share item since most of the Temtems in the feild were Nature type. Water and Nature don’t mix.

Umishi did evolve in to Ukama at some point in my leveling. I learned that 50 SV is considered a perfect stat which can change when a Temtem evolves. Ukama ended up with 50 SV in Special Defense. I have no idea if that’s good or not but I got an achievement for it so it’s something!

One of the nice thing about co-op is that if your partner hasn’t fought a trainer yet you get to fight them and obtain the rewards again. The partner battles are interesting. Each person gets to use their first 3 Tems to create a team of 6. I didn’t realize this until I summoned one of Brother’s Tems and wasn’t able to control it the rest of the battle. You still retain your own team of 6 outside of battle and can swap out Tems that have been knocked out or aren’t looking good into the combined team for the next battle.

This week we took on the second Dojo Leader, Rawiri. This is the Fire type Dojo and much like Sophia the trainers and Dojo leader here have multiple types of Temtems. For this Dojo, eveyone had a mix of Fire and Nature types which is clever. Fire is weak against Water but Water is weak against Nature so, yes, you can bring your Water Tem out to knock out the Fire tem but it’s going to get beat up by the Nature Tem as a result. It forces you to come up with a strategy other than exploiting the type weakness to win.

My character appeared without clothes in this battle for some reason

After beating Rawiri, we continued on with the main quest. We had some technical difficulties with a cable car that was suppose to take us to another zone. Somehow I ended up spawning outside the cable car and got stuck. I rebooted my game but wasn’t able to see my co-op partner anymore. In an effort to see if we could interact at all I challenged him to a Casual Battle. It was a close fight, coming down to my final Temtem and Brother’s (PancakeJohnson above) final two. I lost but my last Temtems put up a valiant effort.

After the battle we were able to see each other again. We tore off to the next zone, anxious to find some new Temtems and explore again. We found a tube that appears to lead to a housing sector. When talking to the real estate agent they let us know that the volcano next door was currently active and they wouldn’t sell us a plot. Maybe when we get further in the story this will open up. I wasn’t expecting housing in a game like this but I’ll definately be trying it out once I have the ability, and money, to get a plot.

We did get to the zone the main quest wanted us in. There was a whole host of trainers to fight along the way and a few new Temtems we hadn’t seen yet. At one point, we ended up on a detour without a place to heal our Temtems with a bunch of trainer fights. I’m not sure how, maybe we’re still a little over leveled, but we made it though a gauntlet of fights with a few Temtems still hangin1g on. At the end of the night we rushed the detour to get to a healing station.

I’m looking forward to playing some more and seeing if I can russel up any new Temtems. I sure won’t be waiting another two years to play again, especially with the game’s launch right around the corner.

Trove Sunrise is Live

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It’s always a pleasant surprise when Trove gets a major update. Since it was squired by Gamigo I just assume every update is it’s last and yet here we are in 2022. Last week, Trove released it’s Sunrise update which brings a new class, a new biome, a new difficulty tier, and a new tier of gem to power up your classes. You can read the full patch notes here.

As is tradition, the new class can not be obtained by using a class coin which means the few that have been sitting in my inventory for years will continue to gather dust. Trove has a habit of making each new class difficult to obtain gating them behind large resource grinds unless, of course, you just want to buy it.

The Solarian is a physical damage bow class with a Phoenix companion. I can’t comment on how hard this one is to obtain as I don’t have an interest in crafting it right now. I suppose I could have trialed it but I’m not exactly hurting for classes right now. It does look cool though.

The Sundered Uplands is a new biome that’s been added to Adventure Worlds. This is a multi leveled biome with flying restrictions and slightly tougher enemies. The Flight Suppression Field is an interesting gimmick. It forces you to slow down a bit while running or, more likely, jumping from dungeon to dungeon. If it gent’s too annoying there is a scroll that can be bought at the outposts to turn it off for a bit along with a bunch of other temporary buffs.

Both the new class and the new biome are nice additions but what I was really interested in was the Crystal Gems and the Uber-11 difficulty worlds.

Crystal Gems are a new tier of gem above the old Stellar Gems. These gems can be leveled up to 30 where their predecessors stopped at 25. But fear not, you don’t have to re-level all of your gems. There’s a Crystal Gem Converter in the shop that will convert one max level Stellar Gem to a level 25 Crystal gem.

The catch is that they’re expensive. One converter will run you 15,000 cubits or 1,500 credits ($10 yikes!). If you’re playing everyday without the Patron Pass you can obtain 900 cubits a day. That’s roughly one gem converter every 2 and a half weeks. With 12 gems to convert we’re looking at just shy of 7 months to get all of your gems converted for one class. Good luck if you want to do that for more than one class, I sure don’t. With patron it’s a bit better. You can get 1 gem converter every 8 days and you’re looking at 3 months to get all gems converted.

Or you could pay $120…

You could argue that you might find some nice Crystal Gems along the way and you can level them up yourself. But for those of us who have spent our career in Trove perfecting our gems and getting the stats just so it’s going to be quicker to get the converters than start over from scratch.

I had 45k cubits sitting unused in the store so I was able to get all of my Chaos Gems up to Crystal tier and increase my light on my Shadow Hunter. Which brings us to our last and final addition with this update. Uber-11 world difficulty.

To get in to Uber-11 30,000 PR and 6,000 light are required. Before I converted my Chaos Gems I was sitting around 5.5k light on my Shadow Hunter. I was able to push it over 6k to be able to check out Uber-11.

I learned quickly that the 6k light was a bare minimum. I was expecting a difficulty spike but I wasn’t expecting to do almost zero damage to regular mobs and no damage at all to bosses. Light in Trove is basically armor penetration. You can have all the damage in the world but if you can’t get through their armor it doesn’t matter.

This was a bit frustrating I wanted to be able to do the new content without putting in more work than I already had in old content. Looks like I’ll be needing to go back to delving for Crystal 4 gear if I’m going to be able to kill anything in the new difficulty tier. I guess in a way that’s a good thing as it gives me something to work towards

Sunrise brings a good chunk of content to Trove and I’m glad the game is still seeing updates. I’m personally not interested in playing much at these days but when I do inevitably get back in to it I’ll have plenty to do!

Finding the Fun in Lost Ark

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I’m going to start this off by saying I knew very little about Lost Ark before it was announced it was coming to the West last year. Even after the announcement I didn’t do a whole lot of research into what the game was about. I tend to avoid hyping myself up or consuming a bunch of content about games I can’t play yet. All of this is to say, I knew very little about what to expect going in.

Over the weekend I put 8 hours into it. To give some context, after 8 hours I’m level 23 and have just entered Luterra. There are whole systems I haven’t seen or unlocked yet but I thought now would be a good time to capture my initial impressions.

I thought Lost Ark would grab my attention more than it has. I like MMOs, I like ARPGs, so combining the two should be right up my alley. Right? I don’t find myself with a burning desire to play but I keep launching it when I have some free time. The question on my mind over the course of this weekend is: Where is the fun? What’s compelling me to continue to play the game?

The fun is certainly not in following the story. It’s kind of bland and a bit generic. I’ve read every line of dialogue and the only thing I can tell you is there’s a priest looking for a powerful artifact and a demon keeps popping up to ruin his day. My character seems to be, at best, a side kick. Which is weird because at the start I was told I was the chosen one…I’m always the chosen one!

It reminds me a lot of the story in Black Desert. It seems exists as a back drop to a long tutorial, unlocking more systems as it progress, rather than provide an interesting narrative.

I’m always excited when this guy shows up. He seems to be the one voice actor having any fun.

Then there’s the side quests, which I’m not sure why they exist. Typically, I would expect the side quests to flesh out the theme of the zone and add a little flavor or some lore. Maybe even offer a diversion from the main quest. But the side quests are as much on rails as the main story. In most cases, they’re just on the way to the next main quest. I

There seems to be three types of side quest. Go kill X% of enemies, go collect X amount of things from enemies, go pick up something off the ground. Which, to be fair, is your typical MMO quest structure but the number of things you have to do for each quest are very small. They also offer so little lore/story and are so short and uninvolved that the rewards could be rolled in to the main quest line and I wouldn’t miss them at all. It feels like the only reason they are in the game is because MMOs have side quests and this is an MMO.

The fun doesn’t seem to be in the exploring the world either. At least not yet. The zones are filled with enemies who either don’t attack are easily outrun on a mount. They’re not an obstacle and certainly don’t pose a threat at all. There doesn’t seem to be much on the maps besides the designated quest markers and teleport areas. There are vistas to unlock and seeds to find in each zone so there are things to search for if you’re so inclined. I feel like these are something I’ll probably come back to rather than actively pursue right now

Everything else is just kind of there. The time’s I’ve veered off the main quest path I haven’t run into anything interesting

Am I training Agility in Runescape or playing Lost Ark?

Where I’ve found fun is in the combat. That’s really where Lost Ark is shines. I was expecting a sort of MMO Diablo and instead found myself in isometric Tera.

The control layout is kind of weird but pretty intuitive after getting used to it. It’s kind of like playing League of Legends with an extra row of buttons or a side scrolling brawlers like Dungeon Fighter Online and Closers. It let’s me pull off some nice looking combos with relative ease as long as I hit the right buttons. I have the first row down pat, it’s the second row that I’m miss clicking a lot right now.

When I first looked at the skill tree I was a bit overwhelmed with the amount of skills. But now that I’m level 23 there seems like there are just enough skills to keep things interesting. Since you can’t put all of the skills on your bar at once there’s some experimentation to be had on what skills work well together. There’s also enough options to switch things out and keep combat fresh.

There are also a ton of classes with “advanced” classes that look like they all play differently. It’s going to be hard to not roll some alts as I try to finish the main quest on my Shadowhunter.

Along with the combat, the dungeons are one of my favorite parts of the game right now. I find exploring the dungeons way more fun than exploring the world zones. For one, the enemies are actually an obstacle to overcome and sometimes even a threat. There’s also a strong urge to see what’s down this hallway that is clearly not the direction I’m suppose to go.

I’m glad that there’s an option to do the dungeons with people or solo. I did the first dungeon with matchmaking and found myself lagging behind the rest of my party. I tried the next one solo and on the hard difficulty just to see if I could and I haven’t been back to matchmaking since. I’m sure there will be a reason to party up as I get later in to the game but for now it’s nice to take my time through each new dungeon.

Oh, and the soundtrack for this game is awesome. I find myself in zones just listening to the music for a bit before I move on. It’s free to listen to over on Lost Ark’s Korean site here if you’re in to that kind of thing.

I’ll still be playing Lost Ark for a while. I would like to see the other systems I haven’t unlocked yet and progress to the end of the main story to see how the game pans out in the long run. I haven’t looked through the cash shop enough to see what kind of issues might reside there but for now I’m happy to continue to play the game for free and see what else is out there in Arkesia.