Darkfall Online

It’s almost nightfall, and the shadows are running long between the tree line and the ridge that’s holding back one of the larger Goblin encampments near town.  I find a deeper shadow to rest in, one that falls between a fine node of iron that I need, and a tree that blocks enemy view in the direction of Mirendil and Nagast.  Groups of Alfar and Mirdain having been coming in from the South in short bursts for the last two hours.  The only Alfar that found me I killed as she thought she was sneaking up on me.  We Mahirim may not see as well as the Alfar with the heat of the sun bearing down, but I heard her trying to stealth in from the West a mile away.

Mahirim Caster

As her dark blue face peered around my tree I planted my two handed axe in it.  Instead of the unaware miner she was looking for she found an armed Mahirim warrior crouched and ready.  Her body skipped across the ground and into a small stream, where I suppose it still rots.  I now have the polearm she intended to kill me with, as well as her skin.  I may craft that into a bag to keep her gold in.  I hope it keeps the deep blue pigment it has now, as I find it very appealing.

Now with the iron I came for in hand, I will begin the run back to Red Moon.  I’ll be crafting my new axe as well as cooking up some Alfar meat I just came by.  The sun has set, and the moon is full in the sky.  I feel my pace quicken, and I know under these conditions no one would dare attack me.

And…scene.

Yeah it sounds corny, but that little mining expedition felt exactly the way I wrote it.  The smallest of tasks in Darkfall can very quickly turn into a struggle as epic as any Dungeon in another game.  The fight I mentioned with the Alfar female was tough, but she attacked all wrong.  She didn’t realize when I went behind the tree I put up my mining pick and equipped a Mahirim Waraxe that I made.  She moved in too close too fast and got her shit pushed in.  Had she attacked with spells or a bow to soften me up first she could have moved in with her big polearm and really been a threat.  She had a throw away store bought item though, and my crafted axe was far superior.

Folks have been asking how my Darkfall experience has been going, and I hesitate to give an honest impression because I don’t want people to get the wrong idea.  If you are about building up items to make yourself more powerful, only to have PVP under very specific circumstances then you will hate Darkfall beyond my ability to tell it.  This game is about skills.  In-game skills and twitchy mouse and keyboard skills.  A poor player with the best equipment in the game could be taken down by 3 skilled players with characters that were minutes old.  Crafting is king, and if you are not yourself a weaponsmith, armorsmith, and/or bowyer you need to know one.  The process of crafting can even be epic, like my mining trip.  The thing is you should never leave town with more than you are prepared to lose, so it takes a while to build up a good nest egg.

Looks like rain in Dogtown

This game is for me.  I think that many TC will find it is for them as well.  The old UO players will feel at home very quickly, and I hope others find something new in the game.  This is not a World of Warcraft clone with PVP in it.  This is more like Quake than WOW.  The interface is foreign in the extreme, and the largest learning curve will be adjusting to it.  There is a tutorial when you log in that is actually very helpful and if you skip it you will be lost without hope.  After 4 or 5 hours of play I began to feel more comfortable with the interface and things began to smooth out.  The interface isn’t clunky, it’s just alien.  As with most things it will eventually become reflex actions.

Darkfall is a true sandbox.  There were starter quests that help get some cash in your pocket but in the end you will be in the world for your own purposes.  You don’t work for The Argent Crusade, you work for you and your guild and that’s it.  If your guild has a direction and you are an active participant then there is literally no end to what you can do in this game.  If you need the game to push you in a particular direction or give you things to do then you will be bored out of your mind.

You have an alignment that can go up or down depending on whom you kill, but it is flexible and if someone gets lippy just kill the shit out of them and take their stuff.  You can build your rep back up by killing racial enemies.  There was a guy following me around looting my kills as they fell.  I let him do that for 20 minutes.  Then I killed the shit out of him and took all MY stuff back.  I turned grey and he reported the murder.  He then began screaming in the area that I killed him and I was a PK.  From 5 different people I heard “Good you fucking looter I hope he skinned you”.  Folks walked past me with cheers despite the fact I was grey.  I turned blue again soon enough and fixed my rep in time.

The land shortly after sunset

Darkfall is scaled down, gritty, unforgiving and hardcore.  If you screw up there are consequences, and on the flip side if you are victorious the spoils are many.  Friends are important, and I’ve seen people go out of their way to help others because they know it is likely in the near future they will be helpless or dead and need someone to lend a hand.  I died to a band of Gnolls with 3 sets of armor in my bag and got a tell from a nearby player who looted all my stuff and held onto it for me.  He gave me his coords and I got my stuff back.  This guy goes on the friends list and stays there.  It paid off because I walked past him needing a res on the way back and he got it.  Karma is big here.

Darkfall is not ready for primetime.  Their billing system is limited in the extreme so they can only sell a few copies per day (little over 1k copies per day 5 days a week).  There is currently only one server and it feels solid, so the billing badness is in no way spilling over into the server quality.  The Devs say when they get the new billing system in place they will open sales more freely and begin growing out servers.  When this will be is anyone’s guess.  I hope they take it slow because from what I’ve seen Darkfall could be the home PVPers have been looking for since UO, and it seems the game developers are determined to do this right.  I for one think it is worth the wait.