Belphagore, the guild member who donated a large house to serve as our guild hall, gave me the deed to his old house. Like what!!??!! I had to purchase an item from the Cash Shop called an Appraisal to facilitate the transaction. Luckily, I had some left. It’s not the house design that I wanted but this beggar certainly won’t try to be a chooser.
YES! I have a house
It’s one of the smallest lot sizes but who the hell cares. I’m also too broke to furnish it but that doesn’t matter either. My plan was to take up carpentry but lacking a house or adequate space to plant trees that idea fell by the wayside.
I had a great time in ArcheAge this past weekend. I believe a key to that is being willing to participate in all that the game has to offer beyond the safe PVE. I did a little bit of everything minus dungeons. The list of things I want to do and can do keeps me busy for as much time as I want to invest. I've purposefully reservesed seeing dungeons until release and have long since begged off PVE. However, I did a few quests over the weekend to gain more leveling XP. A guild member has a great level 40 cloth chest piece for me that I'm very close to claiming.
Too Little Tiime
Alone I was able to complete one trade pack turn in on the other continent but it was SO close. I barely escaped an attempted attack. Too close for comfort, I did the remaining 4 on my side of the pond. I still used my ship to sail across to that side of the coastline before using my donkey the rest of the way. The trip isn’t bad. I talk in voice chat or listen to a podcast along the way. But it sure would be nice to have a farm wagon. With one, I could have done it all in a single trip. When the game releases, getting a farm wagon will be a priority after securing land.
Last week I mentioned that I’d given up on owning a cottage in ArcheAge because of the click-war participation needed to get one at this stage. I used the components I’d assembled to build a ship instead. After all, it’s only alpha and I didn’t see the need to spend more time on the affair.
Not everyone in our very small guild felt the same way. In fact, Belphagore decided not only did he want a bigger house, he wanted to find a spot for the largest house and turn it into a guild hall. Hrm. The only place remotely possible to acquire a lot of that size was going to be in contested territory – PVP enabled land. He’d found a spot that he wanted and had negotiated terms with nearby pirates who run a Home Owner’s Association that patrolled that region. Even so, he would need help securing the spot before other players.
He let us know earlier in the day that he’d need help at roughly 10 PM EST. When the call came out that it was time to go, we teleported to his house and followed him to the location. We arrived 30 minutes or so early to establish our presence. I was level 36 at this point, wearing level 20 gear. More on the gear story later. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t straying too far from our level 50s.
Land ownership is a hard won accomplishment on a mature server. You either fight for it (click war) to have it for 0 gold or you pay through the nose to another player. As the time drew near, others started gathering on the property Belphagore intended to claim. They were from our own faction so communication (chat) was possible. He let them know that he was going to claim this spot and had cleared it with OutCry, the local pirate guild.
Having given up on the idea of owning a house in ArcheAge, I turned my attention to building a Clipper. The Clipper is the introductory ship used for transcontinental transportation. Its speed also makes it popular as a Pirate ship, where it’s used to harpoon targets. That’s tackling for EVE Online players. *smile*
After running a few quests to replace the Gilda I’d spent on a house design, I went to Mirage Isle to purchase the Clipper design which costs 50 Gilda. From there it was easy street for me. I’d been saving all of my lumber, iron ingots and cloth to build a house and furniture. Now I could use those same components to build a ship instead.
The process begins by erecting a building dock. This is achieved by “placing” the design along a shoreline large enough to accommodate a fully constructed ship. In addition to the ship design, you need 10 lumber, a certificate and 10 gold, just to place the dock.
Once your dock is constructed, you have 6 days to build your boat before the dock itself becomes attackable, meaning that other players can come along and destroy it. That wasn’t going to be a problem for me, I had all of the necessary components in my warehouse. It was merely a matter of crafting them into packs, bringing them to my construction site and adding them. Adding them to the location goes through a construction/crafting animation for several seconds.
Unless you have a farm wagon, you can only be in possession of one trade pack at a time. If you put a trade pack down anywhere other than on your property, it can be stolen by another player. Farm wagons have crates to hold trade packs. Larger ships do as well. The ability for one person to transport multiple crates is extremely useful for larger production farmers. Unfortunately, due the the rarity of one of their necssary components, wagons are VERY expensive to craft.
Not owning a farm wagon, I had to craft each trade pack, transport it to the site, apply it and rinse/repeat. If you have friends or guild members online you trust, you can have them carry and apply packs with you. I was close enough to the necessary crafting stations that making the 3 trips by myself wasn’t enough of a bother to ask for help.
Within 30 minutes or so, I had put up my construction site and built a ship! SAHWEET! I'd built on the river not far from where I farm. Once it was completed, I itched to take her out into open waters. Sailing in AA is beautiful and relaxing. It's what I’d hoped I’d do in Vanguard but was so disappointed by my beta experience, that my preorder went unopened.
I initially sailed around the safe area to get my bearings. Later that evening I decided to do a trade run on my own, in my new shiny ship. Here again, I went to the furthest trade vendor in an uncontested zone. As such, it was smooth sailing. With nothing to lose, I sailed back using a shorter route through PVP/pirate space.
I wasn’t very concerned. I’d decided in advance that I’d de-spawn the ship if anyone attacked and fight it out in the water. The worst that could happen is that they’d kill me but so what. There’s no profit in that for them.
Along the way, I had a 3 ship collision. I’m not sure if they were pirates trying to box me in but waived off when they realized there was no cargo? OR was is it merely 3 very skittish captains, trying to race inland to avoid the other two but we all picked the same destination. Whatever the case, we detangled our ships and each went about our business.
Last night was a very rewarding gaming experience. I got to do something very cool, see stunning sights in a relaxing atmosphere, enjoy myself along the way and chaching my bank account. I’m not sure it gets much better than that in a virtual world.
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