Darkfall Postcard 4: The Mummy

Hey! Today I've explored a nearby dungeon and I found this sarcophagus. The whole dungueo has a egiptian theme and it looked pretty nice. I know that lately I haven't written much but it's mainly because I'm not playing much. I've had some very bad dancing high ping days and moreover, I've been gathering and crafting like a crazy man to get my wisdom to 40 and buy TrueForge. I think I'm gonna get it today, so... more adventures coming soon!

Darkfall Postcard 3: The Battlehorn

What a beautiful beast! I've never had one of this very precious creatures but, man, they look nice. From the Darkfall Spotlight in the Forums, it sure looks like Av is trying to improve the graphic quality of Darkfall and that is good. But I gotta say that in this game, graphics are not the real issue. Anyway, any imrpovement is appreciated.

Darkfall Postcard 2: Erruk Cartier Bresson

I've taken this screenshot trying to simulate the famous picture from Henri Cartier-Bresson but it's tricky. My alliance mate Forgotten One was actually frozen in mid-air when i took the shot (more like Frozen One! Jajaja What a joke! ;-P). Well, can Darkfall be artistic?

Enter GM

I've had my first encounter with one of the Game Masters of the game. In a wilderness bank, that now look much better being little settlements, I spawned my mount but I guess it went under the world. I sent a GM report and very soon someone named GM Artyamisa contacted me in the chat and told me she had my mount. Very soon, the invisible entity traded with me and gave me my mount back. That went well! I really hope I don't need to make any other report but in the case I do, I hope they are as diligent and nice as she was.

First Kill!

Yup! Today I got my first kill. It was not very epic but it was the first. I was going to my usual title quest mob spot when I saw someone killing the skeletons. After so much run & hide, today I decided to try to kill that guy. I advanced slowly and when he was looting a weapon rack, I attacked him. I was surprised to see that he had very low health and I quickly killed him. Wow, what an AR for a short battle. When I'll have to battle for a long time I'll die of a heart attack. Fortunately, he carried a mount, precious mount and a good amount of reagents aswell. After I went to bank it, slowed my heart down and went back to the skeletons I finally killed all the 300!! So yes, today it was a good day.

PS: Forgive the bad writing, despite my spoils I'm not inspired today...

Notes Patch February 17

We've got a new patch! The complete Patch Notes here. Here are some thoughts about them:

"Improved server anti-cheat checks in place"
First, instead of improved the word was hardcore. Well, I just hope this is really true and hackers leave this game forever. You gotta hate them.

"More wildlife monsters added: moose, kangaroo, rabbit, porcupine, beaver"
Yeay! When will I be able to train my own kangaroo, Av? I want a boxing kangaroo now!

"Added spawn effect to monsters & Tweaked mount spawn effects & All bows in game have been remade as the first step in an ongoing effort to revamp the graphics of all weapons"
That might be good visual enhacements and I'm happy about it. But I'd like to see some engine improvements in this matter. Instead of revamped bows, make shadows work right with the landscape. No more rock shadow from outside inside a cave. Make floor bloodstaints stay there instead of projecting on the character.

After all, it's not a very big patch and my hopes are in the improved anti-cheating system. As someone in the forums said, I'm pretty sure that Av is saving the big stuff for the next expansion that might come on Darkfall aniversary, 26 february. Unfortunately, I think that if they were going to release the big expansion the 26th, a little over a week from now, they wouldn't have released this patch today. But we'll see. A man can dream.

Darkfall Postcard 1:

Here starts a series of posts where I will simply post some images of  Darkfall landscape. The world design is one of the best things of this games and it encourage to explore just because of the beauty, originality or weirdness of some places. Well, I'll post some nice images of those places as I find them. Enjoy!

Skilling Weaponsmith

This is some kind of data post. Nothing fancy ;-P. I really want to use better knives than I do now, so today I decided to make 30 Mahirim Carvers and after some long minutes I've gone from 10 weaponsmith to 19. Not bad. Taking that everytime is harder I think I'll have to make 60 or so to make it to 25, and then probably 200 or more to get to 50. We'll see.
Is it too long? Too Short? I don't really know but it sure is too boring.

Run & Hide

Today I've had a very nice play sesion. It didn't end well but it was plenty of fun and I've had lots of Adrenaline Rush. It started when I was going to farm some mobs for weapons. When I got there I hear noise of battle and I keep going very slowly on my Aradan mount. I see one guy, human I believe, who seems about my level for his armour and time to kill the mob. Heart pumping, I move to a nice position and start my stealthy aproach hoping to jump on him when he's injured from battle. But unlucky me, instead of going back for ONE more round, that's all I needed because I was ready, he runs away and I miss my chance.
The good part was that I could farm the mobs and that's what I do. After 3 or 4 kills, I hear a sound and I see mounted Ginger Magician, a famous forumwarrior who has a powerful character. Quickly I spawn my mount and start running because I know I can't handle Ginger. Obviously, he pursues. In a risky movement, because I could have tried to get to Tughry, actually I should have tried to get there. Well, anyway, in a stupid movement, I go inside some mountains, I really don't know how to call them but it a was a small location with high and sharp "hills", it looks as a narrow maze by a little lake. Unfortunately for me, I ended up riding around the shore of the lake where Ginger could and did shoot my mount dead. I keep on running with some distance between Ginger and me. Very close by, there was a village and quickly go there and get myself inside a house to hide. I call for some alliance help and meanwhile I can hear Ginger doing magic, probably buffing himself. I wait trying to see something through windows but I can only hear him. I wait and I wait and suddenly I can't hear him anymore. I'm thinking about trying to leave or recall I hear some steps and in three seconds there's another guy, Daniel Prez going into the player's house where I'm hiding. We battle, first inside the house, then outside, but he's a better fighters, and knows better than I do how to run away and turn to attack quickly a lot better than I do. So, he kills and ganks me. The end.
Jejeje. It really was fun and for a second I really thought I could survive and bank those beautiful and needed Revenant Daggers but well, I didn't. Another thing to point out is that I was wearing my lowest ready bag so, it's not a really big deal.

PS: I've harvested the enlighted bushes but nothing out of the ordinary. No Steedgras ofc.

Stats & Skills: Five weeks

(Click to enlarge)
This is my character review after 5 weeks of playing Darkfall. As I have previously stated I'm not an ultra hardcore player but I do play more than casual. I've been playing nearly everyday for a couple of hours and some days, weekends mostly, 3 or 4 hours.
My goals right now are getting Archery and Knives up to 75 so I can get masterys and all; and my Great Magic to 50 to start messing with other magic schools.
Well, nothing more to say. What do you think?

PS: I gotta improve my image editing skills ;-P

The Mistery of the Lights

Guys, check it out! The mistery grows! If you take a second look at the picture, you'll see that the three set of lights are close to some bush and there are two types of lights, three colored lights and two white lights. Maybe the lights are indicating wich bush hasn't been harvested for a while? Or they mark the bushes that have the highest chance to drop steedgrass? Who knows? I haven't harvested any of the lighted bushes yet, but as soon as I do it, I'll report what they dropped.

Blood Scrolls and other links

Some good news!! Today the Darkfall Blood Scrolls webpage has gone online! There will be recorded all the important events happening in Agon. For the moment, there's only The Rise of the Ul'Tanneks, in the EU side that is, the first and old event finished a while ago. I'm hoping that soon Av will update the webpage with the lattest event, the second one, Trinkets of Blood and that the next event will happen soon rather than later. I'm a low level character at the moment, but I just wanna see it and be there.
In addition to Blood Scrolls link, you'll find two more links, the official page of the game and the link to Darkfall Forums. Oh, ho, ho! The Darkfall Forums are another game entirely, with its own set of rules, famous characters and so on. It's really funny to read and you can learn so many things, unfortunately it has its good share of annoying people and sometimes it seems that everybody there are more interested in insulting each other than discussing the different aspects of the game.

Home, new home

First of all, I wanna say that today I've checked if the lights were still there and they weren't! So... what the hell were they?
Today I've also made another long trip by myself to go our new home. Recently, my clan (CotP) has allied himself with another alliance (Guardians) and so, we are now part of one of the big alliances. It was nice to arrive to Hal'Kali and find so many green people. That felt good, really good. And Hal'Kali looks very nice and seems pretty difficult to take over so... everything's ok! Now I gotta become familiar with the surroundings. Keep in touch!

Have you ever seen the lights?

Today, while travelling I've seen these three colored floating lights in Mahirim lands and it's another first time for me in Darkfall. I'm sure they are nothing but atrezzo at the moment but we can sure hope. ;-) Anyway, in my short time in Agon I've travelled quite a lot and I've never come across them since today. I wonder what are they supposed to be. Have you ever seen the lights?

¡¡First real PvP!!

¡Yes! Finally, yesterday, I decided  to attack another player. It was a quiet evening near a wilderness bank with its tower, its two NPC and few noobs gathering around. You know, typical newb wilderness bank close to newb city. I got there and I quickly saw a red guy crouchwalking towards another mahirim who was mining some ore. Without thinkin a lot about it and encouraged by the 4 or 5 mahirim newbs around me, I start shooting at him before he can reach the mining buddy. Quickly, the other mahirim notices what happens and lots of mana missile starts flying towards the human female. I tried to get close while still dodging her arrows but, man, her archery is a lot better than mine and, even if I think I hit her more than she hit me, after 5 o 6 arrows I'm dead. When I got back there, she was gone and so was my equipment.
Anyway, it was fun!!

Some nice empty places

 I've got Fraps with the intention of making videos soon. For the moment, I use it to take nice screenshots like this one. The place you see afar is a great pire, like in Lord of the Rings. The sad thing is the place is empty, no mobs, no npc, nothing. I hope that Av is going to use this place and many other like this one (like a lonely meteor in the middle of nowhere) in some Player Events. Supposedly, soon is going to start a new website that will tell the Dynamic-Lore. I'm eager to see it and try to contribute as I can.

Inventory and Tidiness

I really like the inventory system in Darkfall. It's basically about weight and encumbrance but it also has the tidy factor. You can be more effective if you have your bag and your bank tidy and in order than if you just place everything in the center. I'm a tidy little wolf so when I find that many bags or my whole bank has been messed up because of some ping or crash issue, I don't like it at all. I don't think that inventory config it's a really hard thing to improve. Items in bank or backpack need another variable with the coordinates of their position. Maybe it's not that easy. Well, probably it's no that easy but it would improve the game experience. Someday I'll show how do I set my stuff.