It depends very much on what content you're doing, yes. Blade brings a good deal of what you need to the table; Blade Flourish + Breakdown will give you most of what Escalation + Intensity does, for example. You forfeit two more impairs, however; you can get away with two if you don't glance, but glances can happen and in some NMs that will mean a wipe. (Offloading that job to DPS or healer will mean making them less effective.) It also means no Chaotic Pull; I am not entirely sure how you would do Ankh NM without it. I wonder if you can stand on the edge between Klein and one of the reapers to hold it. Persistent ground AOEs are also nice; it is typical to drop Crimson Theatre for Clearing the Path once you're out of the early NMs so that you can apply Debilitate (Clearing the Path + 12 Gouge + Shoot 'Em Up), and if you do that moving out of Chaos means no ground AOE. Useful for add fights and several other purposes. I also think you will have trouble holding aggro off well-geared DPS since some of those Chaos abilities you're foregoing have built-in increased threat. For me and a lot of others, hardmode MMO content like this is about the satisfaction of a job well done. You can probably get through NMs the way you're doing it. But I want to do it well and fast and smoothly. For me, once you're not doing story stuff anymore, MMO repetition is about personal improvement -- not in gear, necessarily, but in ability. Who's your pocket tank, anyway? Wonder if I've played with them.
Demonite, he was having issues and had a fit when he found that (before the patch) had to spec chaos to get it done. I can agree that once the game itself is over it takes something to keep going, some pride on perfection. I always go for how absurdly can I get this done. Doing things the wrong way and backwards has always been my method. Like my current focus build ,which shouldn't work but does. It did take quite a bit of ripping passives in and out before I got there and I can completely sympathize with anyone finding the entire thing annoying. I haven't gotten into nightmare , just get to hear the by chatter. Not very interested at this point. So I will let you talk from the endgame perspective (and learn a bit myself).
Been pretty busy the last couple of day, haven't had a chance to post much, but as an aid to the beginning player, I'd like to repost this link to tswguides.com. Their "Blue Mountain Specials" got me through the beginning game, as they are builds optimized for the early levels. One thing to keep in mind is that, like all MMO's there are many ways to play and have a good time. For instance, I see nobody here has even mentioned that now we have a stage, and stage gear to allow people to put on *plays* in the Secret World. Let me emphasize that I am not just talking about a raised platform to do what you want with, but an area where special stage props can be activated and used to act out a story. Crazy. But great. Inigima is definitely the person to listen to for end game, as, I must confess, have not ran a nightmare dungeon yet, or even finished the last area in Transylvania. It's just too much fun to stay in the lowbie areas running alts and helping out newbies in the dungeons and such. And my favorite alt is running an AR/Pistol build, which is absolutely crap as far as synergies go, but looks way cool. As Ryslin was speaking of, I find it fun to put her through the same dungeons and missions that I have already completed with my somewhat better optimized main (Sword/Fist and Fist/Blood) just to see how she can work it out.
And the End of Days has finally ended, and apparently since pretty much everyone who is prone to such things discovered the glaringly obvious exploit and used it nonstop to score thousands of K'in and thus invalidate the contest, everyone is a winner. We all get the Bird and title. Thanks (/sarcasm). It occurs to me that from my body of posts that it appears I didn't enjoy the End of Days. Actually, I did, but I have developed characters across all "levels." It was pretty frustrating to new characters, and I am glad it is over so I can now guide some of my friends into the game without that constant distraction. Correction: Bug not Bird. The Bug was the award, the Bird you have to buy with K'in
I am glad the event is over. I enjoyed parts of it -- the quests, the Road to Xibalba -- and I got a lot of AP out of farming Mayans in a raid (farming for real, with a tank and healer and weapons, not ward exploiting). But as a whole it was poorly designed. Nonstop Mayan spawning is annoying for established players and potentially lethal for new players, and the K'in prices for the robe and the bird were outlandish. The Harbingers were buggy as hell -- nothing quite like the entire area being blanketed in invisible Filth that instantly killed you. The "top 100 get the ak'ab pet" was always a stupid idea and would have resulted in acrimony even if there hadn't been an exploit. Giving everyone the pet and the title were the best possible resolution. No one gets punished for an exploit Funcom was very closed-mouth about their plans to address, and everyone gets a couple shinies. A friend gave me a bird. That was nice. I can't imagine I would have been able to bring myself to farm that much, farming as much as I did was very boring. I opened hundreds and hundreds of Mayan remains and I still don't think I ever got close to enough to afford the bird on my own. (I did give away 90 or 100 remains to a goon who needed K'in since I already had everything, and sold a few stacks on the auction house. If I had opened all of them I still don't think I would have had enough.) I laid down the law on the offsite goon forums for TSW yesterday. I am really tired of "helping" people through elites and consequently pretty much soloing the dungeons. I took three goons and a pubbie to elite Hell Raised yesterday. One of the goons said he could heal, so fine, I will tank. He showed up wearing about 70% tank gear. The pubbie did 800 DPS or so, most of the goons about 300. The pubbie switched to healing after noticing I was barely getting healed (I'm Nightmare-geared, so we got through anyway), which was nice but lowered our group DPS; Machine Tyrant took forever. Another of the competent goons took some new people to do beginner Nightmares. They pulled DPS in the 400 range. I don't care if you want to try new stuff or whatever, and I don't care if your DPS isn't top-tier, but so help me god I am not going to put up with your shit if you aren't even going to try. We make resources available to these idiots, we make ourselves available to answer questions or help with builds, we do everything we can to help them do well. So help me god I am done propping up 300 DPS morons. My time is too valuable.
All I know of the end of days event was that when I went to Kingsmouth for the first time on Friday I got ganked by some Mayan mummy or something, and I couldn't kill it, and it kept attacking me each time I respawned. So that wasn't much fun at all.
There was a Xibalban that spawned that was immediately hostile; if you couldn't kill that then I don't know what to tell you. It was approximately as dangerous as a fruit fly. It dropped a quest and if you picked up that quest it stopped spawning. After that, the game would continue to spawn Servants of One Death/Seven Deaths/Nine Nights, which were non-hostile unless attacked; if you kept killing them, it would spawn in increasingly strong ones until you started getting ones with 277,000+ HP. Again, all non-hostile unless attacked. Anyway, the event should be over now. No more Mayans.
There were a few reports on the forum about folks who didn't see the remains drop, or didn't pick up the quest because it wasn't overtly in your face. Some even lost the remains because they later paused the quest and did something else. This caused them to be stuck in perpetual loop with the aggro zombie, and if that aggro zombie was around OTHER zombies from the event , you got creamed. I did roll a newbie during the event and the first Xibalban is rough for a literal fresh out of agartha, in fact I died to it. I was -thinks- hammer and .. something. I only had the first two hammer skills. I couldn't kill it til I got to the sherrif and enough ap to have at least 4 skills. Note that I had the entire here are your newbie weapons and gear kit thing, so I wasn't in crap talismans. So I easily identify with those saying that first zombie kicked their behind. You know what annoys me about the exploitness line? There are no less than three different quests 2 of them in kingsmouth that teach you to pull mobs into wards. Why -wouldn't- we try that with these annoying grindtastic mobs? Not to mention that because the bags were sellable, you didn't even have to do the grind yourself. You could get your friends to farm for you, buy them whatever .. open and walla points for you. The points were awarded per bag opened. They best make sure the next event mobs are no where near wards , nor pullable to them. Our pets die at the wards for @#$%@ sake cus our pets are akin to familiars. Exploit my behind... next time don't teach me how to do it Funcom. (for the record the three quests are, pull the zombies into the church. Setup the wards in the graveyard, pull the familiars into innsmouth academy wards.. there are probably more that I am not remembering off hand)
There was another way a newbie could get himself in a bad state. A typical player is going to click on all the new stuff in his inventory to see what it will do, especially if there is not an informative tooltip. One of the items you could get from Remains was, I forget the exact name, Charred Runes? But anyway, if you clicked it, nothing particularly noticeable happened, except that now you were a zombie magnet. All zombies would aggro you instantly. Even some of the newbs that noticed the little icon over their status bar identifying the "buff" didn't know you could just right click it to make it go away. Why would they? Okay. Full disclosure. I did exactly the above, but I was playing a high enough level character that it was an irritation, not a show stopper. I just thought it was how the event was set up. But I got to wondering why *other* people weren't being constantly attacked... And yes, for Funcom to have quests set up that require the same mechanic that could be used to exploit another quest... Has the term "Epic Fail" been overused yet?
That's a good point, I forgot about the Charred Runes. I had asked someone on Mumble about them, learned not to bother using them, and promptly forgot they existed. Fun fact: Charred Runes were supposed to both make zombies immediately hostile and also significantly increase the spawn rate, in order to make it easier to farm them for remains. But instead they only did the first part, because Funcom. So there was only downside to using them, no upside at all.
-burns the dictionary- Look I try , but I am not perfect. Cope. I wrote that half asleep in a rant. That said, The charred runes were supposed to increase spawn? Then the whole darn thing was broke from the start. Not that dealing with the end dude would have been any easier, in a group we were routinely letting him despawn the first day so that we could farm faster. He wasn't worth the fight. Funcom, always something interestingly insane about whatever is going on.
Wow, I only logged on once and played for a night, and the event is over and I get a shiny? Woot! My friend and I are planning on playing one night a week, and that's pretty much all I've got time to spare for an MMO. I haven't really been able to do MMOs because I'm not willing to log on and play every night, or all weekend, so I make friends, don't log on, and the next time I'm on they're 5+ levels above me. Second night of playing is tonight! Back to Kingsmouth, and this time my friend and I know how to group, so hopefully we'll find each other.
Numbers are out, b2p was a success at least for now. Funcom is still combining and restructuring. Starting to feel like that rumor about EA might have teeth.
Which one's that? If it's about EA being poised to buy Funcom, well, my surprise is boundless. Truly.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/funcom-confirms-studio-closures-layoffs-6402231 Now we know why dev hands changed, cant keep Ragnar if there is no norway office.
I must still be missing something. I saw no mention of the Norway office closing. And isn't Funcom based there? Not to downplay this, but this *is* still just the restructuring that was mandated back when TSW tanked. It was no secret it was coming, and, frankly, might end up being a positive thing. Not if you are the one losing your job of course.
Yeah, this has been planned for some time. It isn't necessarily a good sign, but it isn't necessarily a bad sign either. For the company, that is, not for individuals.
Ok so I was wrong (Like this is a surprise) .. seems funcom consolidated to Oslo. I am not sure how I feel about that entirely. It seems a good deal of the TSW staff were in Montreal. Que sara.
I think they were only in Montreal because of the significant tax breaks offered by the Quebec government. The logistics of trying to coordinate a split dev team like that must have been truly awful -- this might be a blessing in disguise for them... Oh who am I kidding? Consolidation doesn't mean much when you have lost almost all your devs...
So I'm getting started in TSW and I'm not sure about how to follow the different quest lines. I've done all the ones marked "normal" from the contacts in the police station and the church... am I supposed to tackle a "hard" mission now or did I miss something?
I had the same issue- but it seems that Hard is just sort of harder- as long as your gear gets upgraded as you up your stats, hard is fine- it is those nasty read DEVASTATING ones that will kill you.
Also, while you're out doing quests, you should run into other quests that lead you to other quests, and so on. Things chain all over the place.
Unless something's marked "Devastating" or similar, or you're having trouble, pick up a quest and do it. When you finish you should be no more than 50 feet from another quest. Beta testers were told to report it as a bug if this was ever not true. Also, more info on upcoming Veteran additions to reward subbers/lifers: http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=66105 Sounds pretty good to me.
Oh, no, I'm not having trouble finding quests in general. I just had this expectation that I should finish all of the "Normal" difficulty quests before moving on to the "Hard" difficulty quests. That's how I play WoW and LOTRO for the most part -- tackle the green stuff, then the yellow, then the orange if I've got any.
It still sounds like you might be missing something. As folks have said above, TSW eschews the hub system embraced by pretty much everybody else, and it can take a while to get used to. You're supposed to circulate around the map instead of doing everything at a particular location. Sometimes it can take a couple of orbits to clear all the normals, and then most of the hards should be shifted down by then. And I've been reading Joel's proposed subscription benefits too. Veeeery interesting....
My friend and I have been circulating around Kingsmouth and done a fair number of quests while ignoring the main story quest. We're at tier 2 of 18 on that one and it just says "Find other survivors and learn about the fog." So last night we decided maybe to make some progress on that one and had no idea what to do. We've talked to all sorts of people. We've been to the airport and the skate park. We've done everything in the junkyard. I suppose we can go back to the hippie campground and do some of those. When we make the story quest primary there isn't an arrow to show us where to go or anything. Also, since my inventory is getting full I tried to disassemble some stuff to no avail. I've got two Chaos shields that won't even go into the slot, and every set of pistols I have won't disassemble. And what's with my starter pistols? I can't sell them, disassemble them, or destroy them. Am I stuck with them for all eternity? And CSPariah, we've done anything that comes our way in terms of quests and had no real problem. We've done Very Hard and been fine. At first we were avoiding things that conned red, but now we know that as long as you don't get mobbed by a bunch of them, you can take down some pretty fierce beasties. Last night I got tired of avoiding the mud men near the airport and just said, "Fuck it, I'm shooting this guy." We took him down without a problem.
I completed that one totally accidentally... I think you might need to talk to all the people who are marked on the map, or possibly just the woman in the far southeast corner -- I ran up to her and that's how I completed it.
When Sheriff Bannerman is starting that quest by telling you to go around and check on survivors, she mentions three names. Unfortunately, those names aren't copied into the Mission Journal so if you just didn't catch them or are skipping the cut-scenes (gasp!!!) you're kind of screwed. All three are folks you'd normally interact with just by running around and following other quests, but it's totally possible to see them and have moved on *before* Bannerman gives you that mission. So, anyway, the names of the three she wants you to check are As a good point, sometimes the main story quest is done best by putting it on the back burner, so to speak. Normally, the other quests will eventually put you in the proper area to notice some little thing that clues you in to the next part. Otherwise you'll just be beating your head against a wall and going, 'How would I have known that??" Oh, can't you delete your beginner weapons? I'll go check, but I was pretty sure you could, maybe after a certain faction level or something. You can always just put them in your bank. And are you sure you are disassembling the other stuff correctly? You put things to break apart in the lowest box, the one you get the results from if you are building stuff. And even if you can't break them down, you can always sell them to Venders.
Cant disassemble any quality level 1/2 quest rewards. This was done to prevent folk from inadvertently screwing themselves. They may have gone a step further with the unable to delete. I know you cannot sell the initial weapons given and thus have to drag it out and manually delete. The rule of thumb is there should be some sort of quest wherever you END a previous quest. It might not be immediately obvious that it is there, and by the time you get into the desert the whole concept of hub gets very thin. I find that as you get there you are led along more by small kill all of X quests that are found on whatever might be laying around. Or you get a deliver this to X... to take you to someone. My original routine for Kingsmouth is to literally circle it. I pick up something from the sherriff, I head in that direction say I got the get supplies that takes me down to the shore .. I can grab a box to be delivered, and a severed hand wile I am down there.. wander over to the diner, then I am heading back up tword the church. Three out of four times the mail from that post vehicle down there will send you to where you need to be.. for instance if you are significantly along in the local quest it will send you to where you haven't been.. maybe out to the junkyard or to the OTHER side of the bay. The whole game sorta works on that principle. Find something ..follow it, something along your route or at the end will take you somewhere else. You may feel that you aren't progressing the story but you are , well as long as you went into the sherriff's office and got the next stage (find people.. dawning of an endless night p2)
Should be able to at least delete them by dragging them out of your inventory. If you can't, petition a GM with /petition and they'll sort you out. Watch out for Nightmare and especially Lair mobs. They'll have buffs on them, you can see in advance; the Kingsmouth Lair is just north of the airport. You can handle most things that are a bit above you, but I promise you you cannot handle Lair mobs.
And they added this intense warning when you enter a lair, your screen goes funky, loud noise and it feels -very- dangerous all of a sudden
I won't copy the whole Game Director Letter here, since most of it is stuff we already know, but I have to say I was somewhat surprised to hear the creative team was being relocated to Raleigh, North Carolina. Nothing wrong with Raleigh, really (some disclosure here, I'm a southerner but not from North Carolina -- got family there though), but I hope these guys are ready for some culture shock. And I hope they like BBQ.
