This past weekend I achieved my next in-game goal of owning one of the new Farm Cart vehicles. Whew! It took a concentrated effort to raise the 200 gold needed just to purchase the most expensive part of the necessary crafting components, a Thunderstruck log. I ended up emptying my bank of 150G + Workmen’s Compensation potions to meet the asking prices.
The log was only part one. Next I had to purchase the FC design from the General Merchant for 50G and buy the materials for the engine and shaft off the Auction House before I could craft it. I didn’t realize I needed to make the wheels, engine and shaft too. All in, the vehicle costs roughly 300 gold and that’s on the low side. The TS logs are increasing in price little by little as more people need/want them.
I’m back to being a pauper but not for long. With the FC I can transport 3 trade packs per run. I did 3 runs of 3 on Sunday, which should result in roughly 60 gold on the low side. That said, each run takes longer than 1 run on my clipper but is faster than 3 separate runs, so it all evens out. For the next few sessions I’ll do 2 runs of 3 to build up my bank account again then return to doing only 3 packs per day so I can get back to other things such as questing, exploring and FINALLY having the labor to start working on a primary crafting profession.
Big WOOT to The Immortal Imperial Legion and all the members who contributed to the huge effort of acquiring and constructing our first shared house - guildhall. The components needed to construct this size house is no simple endeavor.
The GH is located in one of my favorite locations in game. A little island between Solzreed and Two Crowns. I'd taken pictures of the island during Alpha with its former inhabitants. Its really lovely at night.
We were the first to place a house design here and complete the construction. Unfortunately, our effort to secure the rest of the island for our guild fell a bit short. We have two other un-constructed properties here but riff-raff have also moved into the neighborhood. They are guilds that are known PKers - gank members of our own faction. I've already had a few of them attempt to gank me on my sailing route from Solzreed to Two Crowns when I sailed too close to the island while in route.
I suspect they'll make for interesting uncleaned bed-fellows. I'm certain drama will be involved with lots of salacious stories to tell. I'll keep you posted. *Smile* I need a better picture of the hall itself than I was able to get that day. Overly excited, people dragged their clippers on shore, on all sides of the dang thing.
I’ve been playing ArcheAge now for almost two weeks. In the last couple of days, the outrageous queues have abated for most people. Thus far the solution has been a combination of Trion performing daily server restarts to rout AFK bots, more servers, additional capacity on existing servers, better AFK detection, aggressive assault campaign on bots and gold spam and more restrictive acceptable AFK conditions. As a Patron, my 3 to 4 hour queue has reduced to 20 to 30 minutes if I log in before primetime NA. Primetime has gone from 5 to 6 hours, down to 1 to 2 hours for Patrons.
I sometimes feel as though I’m scurrying all over the place trying to achieve my AA goals while also having fun. My game play experience is precisely what I expected it to be minus the queue drama. And I have no regrets about having purchased the Archeum Founders pack to gain access to alpha and I will be subscribing once the paid subscription time bundled in that package has expired.
Farming
Although I wasn’t able to acquire property in any of my preferred locations, due to the game crashing while I was in route causing me to land in a 6 hour queue, I’m relatively happy with what I was able to claim. Both of my 16x16 houses are constructed and producing my smaller harvestable items such as grain, cotton, chickens and grapes. My 8x8 farm in Solzreed produces lumber and olives. Between those three properties, I manage all of the components I use to craft trade packs, which are the lion’s share of my income.
My primary focus at the moment is to save up enough gold to craft the new Farm Cart. Having one will be a huge time-saver as it would let me transport three trade packs at once. As the demand for the rare Thunderstuck log needed to craft the item out paces availability, the prices will skyrocket. Right now a smaller percentage of the player base can afford to own/craft such an item so the asking price is under 200 gold but won’t stay that way much longer.
Something new – Livestock
All during Alpha the only livestock I raised where chickens and the occasional turkey or pig for leather. This time around I’ve invested in more costly livestock for two reasons. First is that I started off wearing cloth and decided to pursue tailoring as a profession. You can create more fabric faster and easier by using wool than cotton. Wool also sells for more on the Auction House if you’d like to sell some of your surplus for gold.
Second, I’m to be able to produce my own yarn, often needed to craft furniture in the carpentry profession. Buying yarn on the AH can be VERY expensive since it’s also used by Handicraft, in fishing rods and to make bows. In order to craft yarn you need fur from goats, bears and yatas. None of which are cheap to purchase and feed. Bears cost 4 gold a piece from the Livestock merchant. All of these need to be fed ‘combined feed’ which is 3-5 gold per 100 on the AH.
For these larger animals I’m using my 16x16 in Gwenoid Forrest, where I also use half the plot for trees. I sell half of what I harvest in raw form, crafted items or in its processed form depending on which yields the best profit on the AH that day. The other half I use for my own crafting needs.
Crafting
I haven’t been doing a lot of crafting yet. I’m using all of my labor and the vast majority of my time earning the gold I need for the farm cart. However, I was able to craft a full set of tier 2 green quality cloth for my character. And when I decided to see if I liked the class better wearing plate, I was able to do the same. For this reason, I find the crafting in AA to be immensely rewarding.
It still amazes to me that the very first time I walk to a crafting station to make gear, I can make a full set that has better stats than my questing armor and weapons. Yep, I’m diggin’ the removal of creating 1k foozles of crap before I can make the “good stuff”. That said, the components at T3 and above are harder and more expensive to obtain but remains rewarding in my eyes.
Don’t get me wrong, some professions such as Alchemy and Cooking will feel like a grind because of the amount of items you must create to progress. However, the items you’re creating are desired and will sell on the AH. You’ll also want and NEED to be using them yourself when you’re doing instanced content. From what I’ve seen, there are no throw-away crafting recipes in AA.
Wide Open Spaces
AA feels big, wide open and full of possibilities. Until a couple of days ago I was running trade packs on my donkey and using my rowboat to travel from Solzreed to Two Crowns. The opens waters are a very scary place in a rowboat, let me tell ya! I don’t see Jellyfish that often on this particular route but just one would be a problem in a rowboat.
It’s the other players that pose the biggest threat in a wee sailing vessel. I’ve had players attempt to glide off nearby rock formations to catch me. I’ve had players in Clipper sized ships attempt to harpoon me, in order to drag me out to where they can gank me for the pack or capsize me for giggles. Luckily, no one was successful. I knew going out in a rowboat with a trade pack was taking my life into my hands so I tried to keep it to off hours as much as possible.
Using the rowboat is much faster than the land route and as I said, I am racing the gold. A couple of days ago I decided to put in the time to earn the Gilda Stars needed to purchase a Clipper ship and suck up grinding out the materials to construct another huge item. I was pretty worn out on it from doing two houses in such a short span of time. Not to mention that caring for 4 different properties consumes a lot of time and labor.
On Monday I decided to suck it up and get it over with as fast as possible. By Tuesday I was building my Clipper and able to head out on trade runs in a safer manner. That hasn’t’ stopped gank attempts – from above and on the water. For now the gods are in my favor and I haven’t suffered any losses.
Minus the long queue times, most of the irritating launch issues have been resolved. The queue is more stable albeit 1 hour wait at 7:30 AM eastern and upwards of 4 to 6 hours hours starting as early as 4:30 PM eastern. Being disconnected while in game allows a 10 minute grace period for logging right back in without a wait.
A hotfix was applied during live game-play last night to correct the issue people were having where all of their characters were missing from the character select page, leaving them no recourse but to restart the game and re-enter the queue. OUCH! True story, happened to me twice. *sigh*
We also received an in-game notification that walking or riding in circles still counts as AFK and you will be kicked from the game after 45 minutes. They're also going to apply the same 45 minute AFK timer to players who are logged in but sitting at the character select screen to help alleviate the queues.
Questing, Farming and Stuff
I can’t say that I’m back into the rhythm I’d established in Alpha yet. I placed my 16x16 farm the other night because I just can’t produce enough wood on the 8x8. I may move it to Auroria whenever that opens. At the moment, however, I need 300 lumber for my daughter’s house, 300 lumber for my clipper and can’t do any carpentry because of the other two. I’m not going to do carpentry as my primary profession this time around but I still enjoy crafting my own furniture. The proficiency requirements are low for the introductory items. But as things stand, I simply can’t spare the lumber.
I’m doing my self-declared minimum of 3 trade pack turn-ins per day to generate a steady influx of gold. Depending on what I produce and where I take it, this activity nets me 18 to 20 gold a day. So far, I’ve spent it all that same day on seeds, saplings and livestock. I’ve indulged in luxury purchases such as a mailbox and other knickknacks for my house since I can’t spare lumber to craft furniture. I’ve loaned others gold and am buying Hereafter Stones because I haven’t done any mining since grinding out the 600 pieces of raw stone I needed for my first house. I’m NOT looking forward to doing that part again for the second one. Hence I haven’t been mining to get stone for Hereafter Stones either.
I spurged on a mailbox and decorative planters outside my house
Wolf Pet for All
Last night I reached the point of questing in Marianople. And yes, I was saddened riding through the place I'd hope to place my house or at the very least, my 8x8 farm. This is without a doubt my favorite theme for a zone. Oh well, shit happens. Next.
While questing I reached the point of getting the wolf battle pet. I'm not personally a fan of the battle pets. Mine was more often a hassle than a help. It has been suggested that might have been because I was a plate wearing class in alpha. At the time, my pet felt like it was more working trying to keep him alive than fighting by myself. This time I'm cloth so we shall see.
Justicar vs. Paladin
For the moment I’m playing a Justicar instead of my beloved Paladin and I’m digging it. Justicar is Occultism + Vitalism + Defense. Paladin is Battlerage + Vitalism + Defense. As you can see, it’s only a 1 tree difference and I pick the same skills in the two common trees for both variants. The major difference is one plays as caster and thus wears cloth, while the other is melee in plate.
I can heal effectively in either but I’m starting to enjoy the ranged combat and movement available with the Occultism tree. I have enough of the skills now to pull 2 to 3 mobs - with care, and immobilize them, DOT one and kite them around once they’re free until I DPS them down. Pulling multiple mobs is not as face-roll as I’ve experienced in other MMOs. A “missed” hit, ill-timed cast or unexpected re-spawn can mean your crumpled corpse laying at the feet of a Nui Priestess and a portion of your XP down the drain.
Level 30
The leveling is as fluid as what I experienced during Alpha. I’m just out doing my thing and the levels come. Now that I have properties secured and 3 out of 4 are producing materials, I’m integrating questing into my gaming sessions. Albeit at least ½ of my time is consumed by farming and turning in trade packs. If/when I can craft the new farm cart, my transportation time will be reduced by 1/3. I would be able to transport 3 trade packs in a single trip which would be very sweet indeed.
With the weekend rapidly approaching I will easily hit mid 30s before it’s all said and done. I’ve also run Sharpwind Mines a few times. SM is the first instance you encounter on the West faction and my first instance ever in the game. Being the only cloth wearer in our party, I made out like a bandit the first time through. I upgraded 3 pieces of armor and got a ring. Between the next two runs I looted another ring, an arcane ring (purple), arcane staff and necklace. WOOT! Sarzan made off with a sweet upgrade to his bow too. Good loot in SM. It’s a must do once you hit Dewstone Plains. Parties are always spamming for more participants. Go to the portal to find a group if you’re guild or friends aren’t available.
Roundup
I’m enjoying ArcheAge as much as I thought I would. Our guild is growing at a steady pace with more misfits joining our merry band. We’re helpful snarky jokesters which works great for me. I’m looking forward to experiencing the content and zones I intentionally skipped in alpha and seeing how the PVP enabled questing zones work out.
Purchased an aquarium & fish for the inside until I can spare lumber to craft furniture.
While the vast majority of property plots in ArcheAge are gone, there is still an opportunity to trip across open spots for 8x8 farms. Six days after the land rush began in head-start, Sarzan was able to find a few open spots in northern Two Crowns. WOOT!! Don’t give up on finding 8x8 farm spots. MANY PEOPLE awkwardly placed 16x16 house designs to hold a location until they completed their 16x16 farm quest. As those are swapped out gaps may appear.
Keep Your Eyes Peeled
I’m already starting to see what appear to be abandoned 8x8 farms in many areas. They have nothing on them or have a couple of diseased livestock and nothing else. Right by my house in Windshade there are a few farms like this, seemingly abandoned since the 2nd day of head-start. Not everyone can sit in a queue for 2 to 3 hours and still have time to play. They may have decided to wait until things calm down or have jumped ship to another server already. Farms that may have been abandoned will start to be available for demolition in a couple of weeks so keep checking on them by using the property information icon.
Keep it Moving
Putting down a total of ten items in public farms (2 olive trees, 2 grape trees and 6 chickens) will let you accumulate the produce needed for the first couple of Blue Salt trade quests. Alternating between only gathering eggs from the chicken vs.slaughtering them for timmed meat, will help you produce the trade packs created in Solzreed (Lacton) that return 6+ gold per pack. Do that twice per day and you have a steady income of gold coming in while you quest and continue looking for a permanent location of your own.
Be a Family
A lot the luxury housing locations are still available to be claimed. Our guild placed one down on Tuesday. Right now we’re the only house on the whole island because people are still focused on the two farms. However, if you're playing with friends, you can work together toward acquiring a medium or larger house design.
Every house has land around it for farming but remember to place it diagonally for maximum acreage. You can’t trade Gilda Stars. However, you can turn in trade packs for Gilda Stars instead of gold and have a single person desginated to perform the turn-in.
Work together to get materials for trade packs using Public Farms. Have a specific person designated to turn them into the NPC so they can accumulate the Gilda Stars needed. Be very careful about dropping packs down. Anyone can pick it up if you’re not on your own property. Make sure the designated person is prepared to pick it up immediately!! Turn your packs into the Gilda Star trader - win! Team work can get you property that is still out of reach for most single players. This is an excellent social and game activity for a static group of players or small guild. BTW the drop pack options is the Basic section of you Skills Window (press K) and drag it to a hotbar.
You'll need to continue working together to amass the materials needed to construct the house. Once it's up have the "owner" create a family and set the permissions to family. Voila, now all of you can utilize the land around the house for farming.
The past few days I've seen a string of players on trial baffled as to what they've done. It's happened so much recently that it became a topic of discussion in guild voice chat. Our opinions ranged from people are lying to avoid guilty convictions or they're plain stupid. Their rap sheet is right there stating all of their crimes. No one is put on trial without having done something.
A statement made by a defendant on trial late last night made everything come together. Their defense was that they hadn't committed any crimes. They'd only harvested from illegal farms. And there's the rub. There are NO ILLEGAL FARMS in ArcheAge. Technically, they're unprotected farms. Players have dubbed them 'illegal' but to the game mechanics those items below to a specific player. If you take them and are reported by that player (you leave footprints), you earn crime points.
After earning 50 crime points you're a criminal in the AA justice system. You will be whisked away to stand trial the next time you die in PVP, which is highly likely in a game with nonconsencual PVP.
At this point in the game, people are desperate for the resources needed to build the large farms, houses, ships and land vehicles. People who don't own protected farms are farming out in the wilds. And for a variety of reasons, players are stealing from each other's unprotected farms. This is nothing new to experienced players who understand the repercussions.
To new players, who thought it was a free ride, uh not so much. Juries are handing out some stiff penalties. I've seen them going up to 100 minutes, which must be served logged into the game. Spending 100 minutes in jail after sitting in a queue for 120 to 240 minutes bites. But no one cares when you whine. Don't do the crime, if you can't do the time. *snicker* I couldn't resist that one.
With an influx of players coming into ArcheAge who may have little to no experience with the game, I thought I’d do a post of the more common questions I see asked in Faction chat. I’ll try to be as concise as possible since it’s a long list.
Class System
There are ten combat archetypes in AA. Each class is a combination of three. There are NO gear or weapon restrictions based on your class. However, the stats on the 3 types of gear are better suited to certain combinations than others. And some skills require specific weapons like the Battlerage Bash skill needs a shield.
You’ll pick your first combat tree when you create your character. The next one comes at level 5 (I think) and the 3rd at level 10. None of this is permanent. For a fee, you can change your combat trees any time you wish, by visiting a Nui Priestess. You can respec your trees – choose different skills, by using the reset icon at the bottom of the Skills Window (press K).
This flexibility allows you to play different classes using the same character. You’ll just need to carry different types of armor and weapons. Using a good skill builder website will show you skill combinations to help you maximize your output.
PVE Death = Lost XP
If you die in PVE you lose XP. The amount lost is reduced if you’re resurrected by a player. If you want to recover the XP, you can do so for a fee, by interacting with the Nui Priestess where the game resurrected your body. This is the same NPC used to change out combat trees.
Mini Map
The mini map can’t be moved. You can however, use the S, M & L icons on the top left to change the size. You can also have map icons displayed or not, by using the gear icon which is also top left. Open the map itself (M key) to select which icons you want displayed. Changes made on the map are reflected in your mini map. Right-click the map to zoom out to the world view.
Quick happy post after all the weekend drama. Today I completed building one of my two houses. I'm first in my housing province to get their house constructed. It's pretty much all I've been focused on since placing down my farm and securing the location with a design.
Every time I had labor available I mined ore under water to avoid the crush, made sure to stay on top of harvesting trees on my farm while doing trade pack chickens on the public farm. I only did questing when I was completely out of labor. I had everything ready to go by this afternoon except for 20 pieces of lumber. Anxious to be done with it in case there was crash/authentication/queue nonsense, I decided to purchase the lumber from the Auction House.
600 stone and 300 pieces of wood later, BAM my first house is finished! My second house is diagonally behind this one.
Well the ArcheAge head start has had more than a few issues. Yes, it’s a new MMO so we can expect problems on the first day of access. If leveling was all that was at stake, I don’t think the outrage would be as great. However, if you’ve been following ArcheAge, you know that owning PROPERTY is a huge component in crafting, the economy and your ability to earn gold.
The Rub
Many, if not ALL of the players who purchased a package that included the head start, did so in order to secure property which is a limited resource in AA. Via a Blue Salt quest line, the game actually incentivizes players to have two farms for a period of time, even though the landmass can’t support everyone having even one. Hrm.
You can also purchase various house designs via an in game currency called Gilda Stars. So if you follow the trade pack quest line to get your two farms and purchase a house design, the average player has fairly quick access to acquiring 3 pieces of property. INSERT DRAMA HERE.
Endless sea of unconstructed houses & farms placed within a couple of hours of head-start
What We Expected
Anyone who played Alpha or Beta knew there would be a land rush. If you wanted to have a chance at securing anything at all, let alone a convenient location, you had to be there at the start of the game aka head-start. I expected and our guild also discussed in advance, that everyone’s first priority was to complete the first farm quest ASAP. Race by all the content that wasn’t necessary then loop back later if you wanted to do so.
I expected it to be crowded. I expected lag and occasionally being disconnected from the game. However, I didn’t realize how many people had purchased head-start packages. I was sitting at the server selection screen within minutes of the servers going live and every server was high population.
I spent a moderate amount of time in Open Beta trying out pure caster combinations. After much experimentation and trying every permutation that was caster with healing, I landed on Justicar (Occultism, Vitalism and Defense). Necromancer was a close second but was trumped by being able more easily swap into Paladin.
Paladin is still my favorite so far. However, I might level caster since I always heal in groups and it would eliminate needing a second set of gear until I hit max level. At max I would only have to level one skill tree and I know where and how to obtain a full set to level 50 starter gear.
Beyond messing with classes, I was interested in how quickly I could acquire two farms and a house in my preferred zones. Even being on a high population server with queues during day one, by level 18 I had all three exactly where I wanted them. SAHWEET!
I think things will work out the same for launch given that I have a head-start. I know many alpha players skipped OB but then there were thousands of players who will be F2P only and unable to own propery. Crossing my fingers the odds remain in my favor. Getting property won't be the issue. It's more that I have my heart set of favorite settings.
Knowing the ropes, I also knew what crops to plant in order to quickly start earning gold. This was very helpful to advancing crafting and being able to afford to purchase the materials needed to build my house as soon as I had the gilda stars to acquire the design.
Head-start is a few days away and I can't wait. This video, done by another player, sums up part of my lovefest with AA - the world itself. The sense of wonder, exploration and joy of discovery is pure delight. No video can fully capture what it feels like to be, walk, glide and sail in these lucious landscapes but it comes close.
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