The Secret World

Best thing ever! Another friend decided to join us. I sent him an invite for a 24 hour pass, and he downloaded during the day and was just making a character when Kevin and I got on for the night to run around Kingsmouth some more. We did some quests, which took us to the fortune teller, who is now our favorite character, and her quests took us down to Norma in the Wispwood.

The best thing about it was that by the time my other friend got to Kingsmouth and was ready to party up, we were running The Vision. We just followed him through the Raven quest, then we all started doing the Vision. Even though he was probably 10-15 SP behind us, and god knows how many AP, he had no more trouble with the mobs we were fighting than we did. In fact, I probably took more damage than he did.

So he went from doing the tutorial to adventuring with us in about an hour, and it wasn't like he was out of his depth at all. Good work TSW team! You made it easy for new players to join slightly less new players.

Hooray, I got all my lair bosses thanks to a friend! I already have the Solomon Island and Transylvania region bosses, so I just need to scrounge up the blueprints for the Egypt region boss and then I'll get a sweet jacket. I will keep it lovingly aside my Monster Slayers' jacket for killing all the rares.

Two new sub/lifer hats out and they own

Aaaaaaand got my last region boss and my jacket and title!

Probably at this point all that's left for me to do is await content updates and finish grinding out my custom tank and healing sets and glyph upgrades. I've done all the rates, lairs, and region bosses, all the Master Planners, and all the lore and mission achievements and I'm 100% on both the aux wheel and the skill wheel. In theory I could farm signets, but in practice, fuck that. And there's the five-minute raid achievement, I suppose, but I've already cleared the raid a few times and my interest in doing it again in any timeframe is limited, nor do I especially want to grind it repeatedly for 10.5 upgrades. I can help New Bees through stuff and experiment with builds, and maybe I can grind out an AR healing set but doing it right is very, very expensive.

Whelp. I've been revisiting Solomon Island while playing along with two friends I introduced to the game right after the New Year, and having a blast, as are they. Both have gotten into the game in somewhat different ways, but with the same level of enjoyment. Both are avid gamers, but neither are real good at min/maxing. Okay, they are not even that good at standard play/maxing, to be honest, and I'm a bit worried about how they are going to adapt to mid-game play without the comfort of levels to easily increase your character's power.

But they're hanging in there so far. One of the guys just came to the crashing realization that the premade Decks found on the Wheel are all crap (I told him). Plus, the obvious doesn't always work. Just last night we visited the Blue Mountain Quarry with his 4600 Hit Point, QL6 character and, after the carnage was over, sat down and discussed why more Hit Points always is not a good strategy for a deck in this game. He did get it, rebuild his deck for a better balance between Hit Rating and Hit Points and then all was better.

My main is still only half way through the Carpathians. I've never ran a Nightmare, or even an Elite.

Isn't the quarry meant for QL10 anyway? I remember it being wildly inappropriate for characters passing through Blue Mountain, and the mobs there drop signets.

It is, but a group of three/four Ql6/7s can barely squeak by, and it is a good place to practice group builds and tactics. But I should also mention that part of the after fight discussion was realizing that Very Hard and Devastating actually *mean* something in the quest descriptions...

I'm not really sure what I want to be building towards... I started off playing Elemental/Guns and completed the Polarizer deck, which was a lot of fun. Then I decided I needed some more survival, so I switched to Guns/Blade and finished the Maverick deck. Then I decided that, yes, the premade decks are crap, so I used a Blade/Claw survival deck, the "My First 60" one.

Now I'm not sure where to go. I like the survival of Blade/Claw, but I really enjoy Elemental. I'm wondering if I can make a viable solo/survival deck out of Elemental/Claw or Elemental/Blade? And I also want to be able to shift to a pure DPS build if I want to group up. Does any of this make sense? I've done almost everything in Kingsmouth including a Polaris run, just about to head to the next zone. (Well I didn't finish the one with the guy stuck in the bear trap because forget that noise.)

So for all that TSW earned my love last week, this week it did some really stupid things.

We decided to go to the Hippie Camp and do those quests. Apparently even in the middle of a zombie apocalypse people still want weed, and the hippies are happy to help. There's a movie that plays.

Now I'm a fat, white guy playing a woman. My friend is also a middle-aged white guy playing another woman. We're sisters! In the movie, a southern sounding woman in a belly shirt and daisy dukes makes all sorts of sexual innuendo to my character. No mention is made that she's a lesbian, or that I am. It was just the usual assumption that the player will be a straight male and somehow be titillated over the idea of the girl-shaped polygons coming on to him.

My character was offended, but she just stood there (like usual) while this trailer trash pawed her.

Then we go on the mission, which turns into a solo instance! Hey guys, I signed up to play with my friends. Why do you keep separating us? Presumably the game knows that I'm grouped, perhaps a warning that this is a solo mission?

So we all go to do the mission alone, and at the end, the trailer trash betrays me and takes the macguffin. She makes a bigdeal that she's not who she seems to be and about how we'll meet again and it will be under very different circumstances. Then she runs away.

My new objective is to leave the instance. I make my way to the entrance, and the woman who just ran away is standing by the door! Hey, we meet again! Except now you're just standing there not reacting to me when I click on you! I guess those are different circumstances.

WTF? Couldn't you have run her into a monster closet? It's just sloppy to run her to the entrance and let her stand there like a puppet with cut strings.

Then we go do some other quest, we finish a tier and get XP, and suddenly my phone rings. It's the head of the templars saying I should drop what I'm doing and go back to London. I have to leave Kingsmouth? My buddy who started with me got the same call at the same time, but my buddy who started late is just wondering what's going on. I get to put my current mission on pause and accept another mission Right Now, but I can also press cancel. Hmmmm.

I accept the mission. Kevin presses cancel. I have to leave Kingsmouth, go to London, then New York, and do another solo mission while Kevin and Chris finish the mission we started together.

I finish the mission and the Templar head says go back to what you were doing. WTF? It was just a random mission thrown in to fuck up our group.

TSW, why do you want to break up our group?

It's okay to be offended by Cassie. She works hard at to be offensive, and to be honest I don't think she cares if you are lesbian or not either.

I've seen that bug where Cassie just stands there. It's a bug. She didn't use to do that.

As for that faction mission? You can always just not accept (and no, the game doesn't make that clear). Just click "no" and go about your business until you have time to take care of it, then head to your faction headquarters. You'll be able to pick it up there.

As for breaking up the group, you don't actually have to disband, although you do go to separate instances. I also play grouped with friends, and the comment, "We should split up, cover more ground that way" has become an oft spoken catchphrase.

Hey, if you see DiscoDave, Mir-0, or DePope running around, give a wave. They are always glad to help out and answer questions, and Dave and Mir-0 are still hanging around Solomon Island...

The min/maxers will club me, but you can make a working solo build out of *any* two choices -- you're just going to have to spend more points, and be willing to go outside those choices for passives. I have a good working Survival build from Elemental/Claw working right now, and in fact can function as an all-right healer for the Solomon Island level dungeons. The trick is to use Elemental for your DPS, and Claw for your heals. I was using Elemental/Blood, but the lack of self healing was killing me, and I was being called on to group heal more and more and frankly Claw is better for that at that level.

I'm a min/maxer and I agree with you. Min/maxing only matters for Nightmare dungeons.

Just started playing this, unfashionably late to the party. I've currently got Kalpa, bemusedly with the Dragon* on Arcadia, bumbling about Kingsmouth. Early impressions are that things are certainly a bit janky and unpolished, but the setting's charm makes up for a lot of that.

*The whole silent-character thing for him in particular I'm choosing to view as someone desperately, desperately tripping high as a kite, and fighting hard to appear normal. He's clearly in over his head even as he's out of it, having nightmares about bees flying into him and then moments of lucidity in a trashed apartment before various weirdos start babbling at him. And if a faction making you hallucinate shotgunning zombies in a subway if you have an orgasm isn't terrorism, I don't know what is.

I went back into that solo dungeon for another mission and she was still standing there.

As far as Cassie's offensiveness, see #1reasonwhy for why I'm bumming that she's there and she's a sex toy.

Played last night and spent as much time in solo dungeons as we did running around together. I'm still waiting for an instance where we can all play together as a group. We progressed the main story mission finally, and then we were told that we weren't experienced enough to continue, so we're back to running around Kingsmouth looking for missions.

I'm hoping that we don't have to repeat missions just to grind out enough AP and SP to continue. I'm not big on repeating missions.

My character's Cassie-instance is likewise just mutely parked by the entrance for both the solo missions that went into that area. (It reinforces my "my character is tripping balls" theory of his motivations and muteness. Just maintain, just got to maintain, oh god that cop's looking at me funny...)

It reminds me of one of City of Heroes' longstanding bugs with hostage-rescue (and the mirroring villainside 'kidnapping') instanced missions. You'd lead the npc with terrible follow AI to the entrance, they'd have a "thanks!" or "don't hurt me!" line of text and mission would complete, but then they'd usually just randomly run back into the instance. I think it was only in the last year or so of the game's existence that it got patched so they'd leave through the door. With the added weird twist of the instance map being repeatable thru the plot progression.

It's a bizarre design decision to force those missions to be solo only, without the ability to keep a group in them.

When I played this game for about a month or so I have to say maybe 5% of my time (and I'm being generous) was spent in a solo instance. Those instances lasted maybe 10mins on average and were pretty far spread out. I'm wondering if that much has changed since August or maybe some of you are being overly critical.

That really shouldn't be necessary. As far as I can tell the whole of Solomon Island is built with the idea that you are new and are going to be trying out various decks and builds and "wasting" points all over the place. I've played through it multiple times with three characters and never had to repeat a quest that I didn't want to. (After all, it's just good manners to carry Andy more ammo every time you run by that truck.)

But it *is* pretty easy to max the main story before you're ready. For story purposes I think you're supposed to do all the main quests in an area first before you do all but the first couple of Story Quests, since they are really *all* story quests and advance the plot and lore. But yeah, it's pretty easy to overrun said story. I did that by accident in Blue Mountain the first time through, and although it messed up the timeline a bit, there was no problem with me going back and doing the things the end quest assumed I had already done.

My group has gotten so used to, "We better split up here, cover more ground that way" that we were shocked to enter an instance in Egypt where that *didn't* happen. We didn't know what to do with ourselves for a minute there...

Now that I think about it, a good percentage (probably over 5%) of the Main Story Line is solo, so a good strategy is to save those for when you are on alone and do one of the dozens of landscape quests for when friends are around. That and the five man "dungeons," which are truly one of the shining points of this game. Don't have five men? Well, 9 out of 10 PUGs I've joined up with in this game have been really, really cool. Your mileage may certainly vary, but I have little hesitation with filling out a team from the LFG tool, or just asking on general chat.

Don't forget meet-up. Works for many of the solo missions, you go in first then your friend meet -up with you and walla you are both doing the mission.

I have discovered that the Illuminati intro bits are my favorite of the different starting points.

Also, when the good doctor cheerfully encourages you that you should totally look up a jaguar tripping, that you really should!

I really like the way they folded ARGish elements right into the game, things like the Orochi Group having a website that I've used once for an investigation mission, a youtube video of a snippet of an NPC's occult lecture, etc.

Technically, she's actually meant to be a skilled deceiver and manipulator wearing the 'sex toy' act and trope as a disguise to fool a couple of critical people. The whole act she puts on in front of the asshole who gives you the mission is for his benefit, not yours, as you later find out - but I don't blame you in the slightest for being bothered by it. I was similarly nonplussed when she tried it with my female Templar. Well, I was nonplussed period, but for exactly the same reason.

Been quiet a while here, but this is still my MMO of choice. Finished the story line with my main a couple weeks back, and would now be working on the three Elite dungeons but instead my time has been occupied in running alts with my lower level friends that got a late start in the game. They are still loving it, and having a blast.

Yes, I know I could just downgear my main and do all right at lower levels, but it just doesn't *feel* right. Instead, my main is the benevolent dictator of our cross faction cabal, only called in when *serious* twinking is needed...

Oh, and the next DLC Last Train to Cairo looks interesting. If you follow their twitter ARG there have been hints of Doctor Who, Indiana Jones, Nazi fighting, trains, and the whip is the next Auxiliary Weapon coming up...

I have been playing this exclusively when I have game time on the PC that can run it. (I have the parts to upgrade my other PC but haven't found the time yet.) I just finished the Savage Coast missions -- other than the instance -- and I bought all the inner ring skills. I know it's not the most effective way to build but I like options. I've planned out a Sword/Elemental Affliction soloing build that I'll be working towards for the next, oh, 570 AP or so.

We just started the Savage Coast stuff this week. We found our first monster that we basically couldn't touch. It had its own cave, and we started fighting it as usual. Then we noticed we were barely scratching it and we were all about dead.

So we tried to run away, and died.

Then came a period of yakkity sax corpse runs where one of us would draw it away while the others grabbed our bodies, then we'd draw it away while the first person got his body.

It was great. I mean, if your Maine coastline has been invaded by servants of the Elder Gods, we should be running the fuck away, right? I'm sure there's some build or deck that will take it down in three seconds, but it was nice to find something that was just, "Fuck you, I'm a monster."

Ha. That's the Sleeping One? You are not supposed to kill it.

The closest I ever got to griefing in this game was hanging around his cave watching newbies run up and just start attacking that thing, while cheering for the guys who ran up, obviously examine him first, then run away screaming. (Note, I did not examine him either the first time I found him. However, I was alerted to his presence by the sudden demise of one of my buddies who nobly threw himself between the Sleeping One and me.)

Not to get into spoiler territory, but that creature is part of a "sneaker" quest, made all the more difficult by the fact it is not labeled as such. But two things: He's known as the Sleeping One for a reason, and the mission could very well be completed by children....

This is currently on sale at Amazon for $20 + $10 in Funcom points or whatever. Pretty good deal so I bought it so I can hit zombies with a hammer and hear bad new england accents proclaim things "wicked."

I kind of want to try this but I haven't liked an MMO that I've tried in a looong time. I'm pretty sure my 20 bucks will be wasted if I do. I wish they were still offering that 3 day trial. :(

Want a buddy code?

Good for 24 hours total game time.

Definitely!

My recruiting thing still says they are good for 72 hours?

Even better.

SpoofyChop PM me your email and I'll get an invite out to you tomorrow...

Yeah, I still have a bunch of those too.

I'm at the registration page and I'm trying to use my average sized brain to understand why the f&#king hell Funcom needs *my home address* in order to let me *try* their video game.

</rage>

Should I just put in a fake address?

[EDIT]

I put in my work address. I hate this kind of shit.

Can somebody explain to me why I need 15 GB of stuff in order to play the first 72 hours of TSW?

[EDIT]

I don't remember when I got so grumpy but I think it was after I turned 36.

for some odd reason, funcom has been charging me $5 a month for something, but I checked my account it's all disabled.

Because you aren't downloading any less of the client just because you're time-limited.

Now, if you're wondering why the download is 15GB, or why it expands to 30GB+, or why it downloads so goddamned slowly... there I cannot help you.

So what server should I be starting on?

Doesn't matter a whit. You can group with anyone of any faction on any server for anything except PvP, and PvP sucks and you shouldn't do it.

Man the stealth missions in this game are really goofy, I know they added them in in a patch but really stretching what you should attempt to do with this piggy engine.

So far I am very impressed with this. I'm in Kingsmouth at the moment and I find the slavish devotion to Lovecraft a little over the top but also well done.

So how do I "friend" you all?