MMO

Starting Over Already

Kluwes2 Comments

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?

Kluwes3 Comments

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

Kluwes5 Comments

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.

Home is Where the Crafting Stations Are

Kluwes1 Comment

I am not a builder. That specific mechanic that is so prevalent in sandbox games is not something I take time out to focus on. This tends to be a detriment when I play these types of games with others who are builders. They want to spend time making things look pretty where I just want to run off and engage with the rest of the game. But when I’m on my own, I do as I please.

I have played Trove 6 years now and my cornerstone (personal housing space) looks like this:

It used to have walls but I go rid of those…easier to access all the stations on the go.

My house in Chimeraland is looking much the same. Now you will notice it has walls and even a second story! This is partly out of necessity, I built my house on a slope so there is only so much space I can expand to on one level. Putting in some stairs unlocked way more space to expand on the second level. The walls on the first floor are there because it looked weird without them. On the plus side I can run up the walls to the second level and crawl through the windows on either side of the house. Accessibility to my crafting stations is a must.

I like Chimeraland’s building system better than the voxel based building system of other sandboxes. Each piece needs to touch another piece and they snap together like Lego. It’s the same kind of system No Man’s Sky uses as well for base building. Using walls, floors, and roofs instead of cubes/blocks makes it easier to male things look nice without much effort. 

While my house, aka the crafting station conglomerate, isn’t very homey my Foaming Waters, my chosen starting area, has started to feel like home. Here and the surrounding areas are where I have been spending the majority of my time in Chimeraland.


This location has provided everything I’ve needed so far in the early stages of the game. To the east is a pleasant valley in between two mountain peaks. Here ore spawns are plentiful and there are even a couple totems not too far from my house.

Sometimes the forest catches fire!

To the south is a small forest where I do my logging. It is down the slope from the house but it doesn’t take too long to get there. This seems to be where the majority of my neighbors have decided to build their homes. There’s also a lake further south to fish when I’m so inclined.

To the west are more mountains with more ore, fossils, and a variety of gathering nodes. There’s also one lone house I can see from my second story way off to the west. Otherwise, I seem to be the only one to build up here thus far.

I suspect anywhere you land is going to be a good starting area. Some maybe more than others but given the choice to land anywhere in the world there has to be some harvest-able nodes to get started. I’m guessing this is why nodes aren’t locked behind life skill levels but instead give an increased chance to drop higher level materials.

I have roamed a bit outside the Foaming Waters. I recently trekked all west to Serpent Beach where I found a teleport there. I’ve also gone 15 miles north to a humanoid village located in the Isle of Mist for one of the tutorials. I didn’t stay too long and haven’t been back since.

I’ve been focusing mostly on leveling up my housing to unlock more crafting and utility stations. Currently I’m at housing level 8 and this is where I’ve hit a wall with the resources available in my area of choice. To get to level housing level 9 I’ll need crystals which have to be mined from the bottom of the sea which means I’ll at least need to get back to Serpent’s Beach. Luckily it’s only a teleport away. It also means I’ll need an underwater mount of some sort.

That’s what I’ll be aiming for next!

Taking It All In

Kluwes2 Comments
This totally looks like an efficient way to hatch an egg

Somehow I’ve gotten to level 25 in Chimeraland and I’m still doing the tutorial. It’s not from lack or trying. I’ve done everything Bell, has asked. I’ve built a house, I’ve gathered materials, I’ve learned to craft, I’ve learned about equipment, and pets, and on and on. But there is still more to learn. She just wants me to do more.

Bella now has me building a Base which is a separate thing from my home. But I might be able to use base parts in my house? I’m not sure yet. It’s at least a place to grow the saplings I’ve been getting from gathering plants. But again, I’m not sure what I have to do to get them to grow. I bet Bella will tell me eventually.


This tutorial is very similar to a lot of other mobile games I’ve played. Specifically of the free to play rpg/gacha game variety. System menu upon system is thrown at you in rapid succession. You’re shown how to do it, usually with a big “TAP HERE” icon, and it’s never talked about again. Then you’re on to the next thing.There’s not much depth in the explanation regardless of how much or little depth there is to any given system. 

At least Chimeraland let’s me ignore the tutorial whenever I don’t feel like doing it. I’ve found this helpful to get a grasp on things after I’ve felt like I’ve done too much at once. I look around the menus, I take some time to go out and gather or craft something that looks interesting. Or I’ll wander around looking for a cool beast I haven’t seen yet. I only start the tutorial up again when I find something I want to do but can’t figure out how.

I like an open floor concept


Figuring out how to level up my house was my first run in with this. Unlocking crafting stations, building parts, and all other sorts of stuff are tied to the housing level. It turned out to be a very simple menu that I would have eventually found on my own…probably…but it was nice to be shown too. It’s based on the number of build points you have and requires some materials to increase the level in case you were curious.

As it turns out, Bella gets a bit tired of talking sometimes. Every once and a while the tutorial quest will ask me to go do explore on my own for a few minutes. The equivalent of the game telling you it’s busy and to entertain yourself or play outside or something. As I’ve gotten farther in to the game that time has gone up from 5, to 15, now to 30 minutes.

An amusing hobby indeed.


Not to worry though, Bella’s  got some friends in the tutorial menu and each of them, presumably, has their own set of tutorials. So if I’m itching for more tutorial while my other tutorial is on a smoke break I’ve got more tutorials I can do!

I’ve clicked through some dialog and each one seems to be there to explain something a bit more depth. One is focused on how to raise your power rank, one is focused on gathering, and one wanted to send me 15 miles away to a humanoid town to get some quests. I’ve left these alone for the most part. 

These plains don’t look all that dusty

The constant tutorial doesn’t bother me too much. It’s there when I want it but can otherwise be ignored. I’m not nagged to do it if I simply choose not too. Completing it showers me with items and materials and lots and lots of currency as well. Sometimes it’s nice to be guided a bit when I don’t feel like sandboxing.

I do wonder if I’ll get to a point soon where Bella will leave me and I’ll know it all. There’s a lot going on in the game already so I can’t imagine how many more systems/menus there are to explain. Maybe Chimeraland takes the adage that the leveling process is the tutorial and the real game starts at the level cap a bit too seriously…

We shall see.

Chimeraland First Impressions

Kluwes2 Comments

I was faced with a rather interesting choice once I completed character creation. Where did I want to be born in the world? There are two continents to choose from and the game let’s you know the choice isn’t permanent. You can travel to the other continents at any time. Not having to commit to an area of the map when I have no idea what I’m doing will probably lead to a lot less character re-rolls.

There doesn’t seem to be  a difference between the two. One was labeled “hot”. I took that to mean more populated rather than the climate but whose to say at this point. Wanting to be where the people are, I picked that one and was presented with a 3D map of the continent. I chose a nice little spot at the foot of the Eastmound Benevolent Mountains. It just seemed like a place a small cow creature should start out.

Then I was unceremoniously ejected in to space. I found my character hurtling to the ground like I was dropping for a battle royale. 

Thanks Bella!

After landing gracefully on my feet I started following the tutorial. If you’re familiar with mobile game tutorials you know how this works. A few lines of dialogue from your friendly, neighborhood, NPC guide followed by an overlay showing exactly where to click/tap/what button to press to open a menu or do a thing. There are cutscenes with a voiced narratoion sprinkled in to explain the more involved systems.

Our friendly NPC guide is in Chimeraland is Bella. So far she has walked me through everything from opening my inventory to capturing monsters with a crossbow and everything in between. Each “quest” finished offers a reward. Sometimes it’s equipment I need to complete the next step of the tutorial, sometimes it’s money, and sometimes I have no what the item used for. That’s ok because I seem to be getting a lot of everything.

Inventory is plentiful. There’s 400 inventory slots and you start out with a large carrying capacity. It looks like carrying capacity can be increased further by leveling up. Which is great for me, I’m a “let’s pick up everything” sort of player if a game allows me to be. 

By far, my favorite part about the inventory are the tabs for each category of item. It’s nice not having to search through the entire inventory to find something. Especially now when I have to hover over each item to see what it does.

In case anyone was wondering…

There doesn’t seem to be much of a story which is fine since I’m not playing a sandbox for the story line. Bella tells me that she was the one who shot me out in to space. Thanks for that Bella…She also tells me there were some people who killed and ancient go thousands of years ago and that there is some sort of war going on now. Oh, and I’m the destined one because of course I am. Destined for what? She never really explained that.

I’m most excited about the gathering system so far. I’ve always liked gathering as an activity in games. I find it relaxing wandering around and collecting stuff. I think that’s due to my early exposure to Runescape where the majority of the game was gathering to craft and/or to sell to other players so I could buy nice looking armor. Likewise, I always use Runescape as my ideal standard for a gathering system. I like when numbers go up and I like when I can progressively gather better things.

I keep finding little critters to pet while gathering. I must pet them all!

Chimeraland’s gathering system definitely has numbers going up. Each skill, mining, logging, plant gathering, fishing, scavenging, needs to be leveled up. While the level doesn’t seem to effect the nodes I’m able to hit I think it affects the resources I’m able to extract from the node. Each gathering skill also has a skill tree which is something I don’t think I’ve seen before. There are skills for getting more resources per hit, getting better resources, and spending less energy on hit.

The energy thing concerns me a bit. Each time you use a gathering skill it spends 4 energy from the pool. This is per action so each swing of the axe depletes 4 energy. Energy regens at 100 energy per 10 minutes. In theory, there is a max amount that can be gathered in a given time frame and then I would need to wait to do more. I’m not sure how this will ultimately affect the game play. For one, the energy pool is huge, starting out at 10,000 energy points. The tool tip says that there are foods that restore energy and that the *base* energy recovery rate is 100 per 10 minutes. Which leads me to believe that the base energy recovery rate can be increased and that I can find energy restoring food eventually.

I sure hope so, because as I log back in while writing this post to check some things, it looks like energy only recovers while you’re online.

That’s a rather large bird

I’m honestly surprised with how stable my connection here. I’m assuming all of the servers are in the SEA region and I’m in the US. I haven’t gotten disconnected or felt the game was lagging at all. A couple hours in to the game I experience rubber banding maybe once but nothing that’s made it unplayable. I’ve had worse lag playing Trove.

There’s so much to write about this game and I’ve only played one time. I’ve played survival sandboxes before and have the basic mechanics down. But the way Chimeraland works these systems in with MMO progression has been very engaging so far. It feels familiar but different and a little esoteric all at the same time.

Chimeraland – Creating Weird and Wonderful Characters

Kluwes4 Comments

Chimeraland is a game that wasn’t even on my radar until a few weeks ago. That’s when I started reading Bhagpuss’s recent posts about it. It sounded like there was a lot of fun to be had with the myriad of systems in the game and the huge world in which it takes place.

At first I thought the game was region locked. I was under the impression that this was a mobile only game. So when I went to try and download it on my android tablet I got an error that it wasn’t available in my country. A quick return to the game’s web page showed me I missed the big “Download on the PC” button . The mobile version appears to be only available in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines while the PC version had a global release. Which is just as well, I’d much rather play on PC.

It didn’t take long to download or update the game. I thought the launcher crashed at one point while it was trying to patch but, it turns out, I was just being impatient. Once the game launched I had no issues making an account and getting logged in.

There are currently 14 servers in Chimeraland to choose from. All but two of them were flagged as busy. The last two had a “recommended” tag on them. The first one I couldn’t register a character on because there wasn’t enough room so I went for the other recommended server. Then it was time to create my character.

There are 16 races to choose from in Chimeraland. Well, more like 12 since four of the races are different flavors of Human. I’m not sure why anyone would want to play a human when there are so many other weird and wild races to choose from. I mean just look at some of these!

And that’s not even all of them!

The character creator has two different modes, free and precise. Free has you choose your race, age, and gender through a wheel interface. I found this pretty frustrating to use (maybe it’s better on mobile?) so I switched to precise which is your typical character creator.

I love a game with non standard race selections. When the opportunity arises I will go out of my way to pick something I’ve never had the chance to play before. So after looking through all the races I settled on the Octolow, a little, jacked, squid man. But as I started playing through the tutorial I realized that I had held back a bit and I could go weirder. I wanted to explore that a bit more. I deleted the squid man and went back to the character creator.

There are two things I learned from deleting my first character. You get one character per server and after deleting a character you can create a new one but have to wait 48 hours to delete the new one if you’re unhappy with it.

Back to character creator, I chose the one race that I knew I had never played before and might, possibly, never get the chance to play again. The Mudrake, the giant, only vaguely humanoid, fish woman. So started my hour long fight with the character creator to make this thing look good enough to play it.

Chimeraland has one of those character creators with a lot of sliders. I’m not a fan of these because they give the illusion of a lot of customization but in reality it’s really hard to make anything look good. You can have a million sliders for different parts of the face but when there’s only one face model it’s going to be either just slightly different or horrific nightmare fuel.

Case in point:

I’m not brave enough to use this as my character model

With a lot of finagling the sliders I was able to get the legs proportional to the body, and the body just small enough that it wasn’t clipping through the preview clothes. The real challenge was the tail which is a separate “accessory” and not part of the character model. No matter what I did it never quite looked like it was part of the Mudrake. More like it was glued on to the back. Also, the body, “hair”, and tail are different parts that don’t share colors so I had to match the colors on all three. These colors are on a slider and there’s no hex code or match button so I had to do it by sight.

Once I thought I had her looking pretty good I started the game. After I spawned I realized a glaring mistake: the head was too big. I looked like some sort of rubbery fish mascot and I just knew I couldn’t play looking at that, always thinking about it, having to stare at it…Unfortunately, I couldn’t play on the recommended server for 48 hours since this was my second character in 48 hours.

The in-game name generator ladies and gentleman

I chose a busy server and created a Cowdoo just so I could play the game this weekend. Sure, the Cowdoo isn’t as exotic as some of the other races, but I’ve never played a tiny, bipedal, cow in any game thus far so I’d call that a win.

I haven’t decided if I’ll keep playing on the busy server or re-create my Cowdoo on the recommended server when my timer is up. I’m really not sure if it’s jut recommended because it’s new or if there’s another reason for it. I did play for a few hours yesterday to get acquainted with the game but that’s a post for another time!

One more for the road!

Finishing Up fallen Earth’s Sector 1

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve gotten into a nice rhythm with Fallen Earth. At first, I was playing it all of the time, but after a week and a half, I started to space my sessions out a bit more. I have this tendency to get really into a game and then abandon it a few weeks later. But I’ve done my best to stick with it and venture around. It’s not my main game but it is something I’m playing at least once a week. Having a friend along who is also playing has been helping me keep my interest.

My focus has shifted a bit from crafting all of the things to doing all of the quests. I was chasing the “You’re Dying’ quest around Sector 1 which serves as the main story quest to move the plot along. That is until I hit a spot where I could not reasonably survive so it was back to the towns to do quests and level up for me. My questing took me through Old Kingman, where bandits were holed up in an abandoned prison, it took me to Coppermine where bandits had holed up in a mine, it took me to Pass Chris where bandits probably were holed up in something. There’s a theme here in the Sector1 towns.

Watchtower also had a mine, also filled with bandits, but it was also being attacked by Sandworms. Lots and lots of sandworms. The main questline here had me looking around for the best way to get rid of the sandworms. We settled on sprinkling radioactive dust on them. Bad for the worms, probably also bad for the people of Watchtower.

Throughout my travels, I had acquired some better armor, a nice combat vest, a very protective blue, plaid shirt, and most recently a leather skirt that offered more protection than the pants I was wearing. I was also able to considerably upgrade my pistols. They can shoot actual bullets now instead of pellets.

The pistol path is rough for a character just starting out. I saw several people talking in global chat about how pistols were really for your second or even your third character. Not only do I have to craft two of every weapon upgrade but they eat through ammo like no other. But they look cool and do a decent clip of damage so I live the pistol lifestyle. I haven’t had too much of an ammo issue thus far the upgrades for the guns themselves are really what’s hard on my chips.

After Watchtower, I decided to take another crack at the “You’re Dying” quest. I ended up in an underground bunker filled with mutants. Apparently, these are sentient beings, not just grotesque cannon fodder. They trade, they talk, they even take people as slaves. But I was sent to mow them down, rescue some slaves, and take their stuff!

The Toro Bend facility is quite large and I died multiple times trying to complete various quests within it. There was a room where degraded clones kept spawning every few seconds. At one point I walked into the room and was chased around in a circle by 30 plus enemies until they backed me into a corner and sent me back to a respawn point.

Lucky for me, there were two other people in the place who also needed to complete the “You’re Dying” quest. Once we teamed up, everything was much easier to deal with. It’s like I’m playing a multiplayer game or something…

The next part of “You’re Dying” wants me to travel to Sector 2 and leave the barren desert behind. I’m approaching level 20 and I feel it’s the right time to leave. I’m constantly three to five levels higher than every enemy around me at any given time. I’m not sure if this is how the game was or if this is the result of the boosted XP from the Commander Aura everyone is getting. Either way, it doesn’t stop a couple level 15 mutants from chewing through my health bar.

I don’t remember much about Section 2 other than there are trees there and it looks a little better than Sector 1. I apparently made it all the way to Sector 3 before the shutdown but I don’t remember a difference between 2 and 3. I guess, I’ll see when I get there.