When you think it's over... it's not.

I knew my grinding was not really over because I still had to level many magic spells so they are as effective as they can be but, after having Archery and Daggers kinda maxed out, I decided to stop worrying about the magic grind and just watch it slowly increase while I'm casually playing with my wolf. That decision is not written in stone because after losing a battle to a high magic character I'm always thinking: "I gotta level my damn rays". Despite that, my resistance to grinding is very low so I grind my magic for a day and already feel exhausted and go back to PvEing or PvPing for fun.
After thinking about it for a long time and discussing it with several clanmates, I've decided to start another grind: Greataxes. If you are asking why, you are not playing this game. Daggers are very underpowered and it doesn't look like Aventurine is giving them any love soon.
I've already accepted I'll never be a great fighter in Darkfall due to its own system. Too many buttons gets too chaotic for me. I'm more a "few tools with many uses" kinda guy (still waiting my Battlefield World (Bad Comany 2 + Darkfall FTW!)). Despite accepting that sad true, I won't stop trying to get better and I'm sure that using Greataxes is a good way to improve my combat efficency. Right now, my Greataxes skill is at 33 so I still have a long way ahead of me. But that's fine, as long as noone starts developing Battlefield World, I'm staying in Agon for a very long time.
The good news? In the latest patch, Av has increased skill gains across the board, so maybe it won't take as long as it took to level Daggers.

Comment on 21st January Activity Report

Thank god those weekly activity reports are back! They're so juicy!
This week's report is quite something, check it out here. Tasos starts with good news about Meditation, basicly it'll be cheap and there will be new ways to get meditation points. I've stopped all the meditation until this happens of course.
Tasos goes on teasing the upcoming expansion and the first thing he says is:

The next expansion has two prongs: one involves a complete overhaul and dramatic streamlining of the world and complete redistribution of all its features. The second prong has to do with a competitive component on a completely level playing field for all players.

I'm very interested in the second part. What does that mean? I've started a thread in forums to gather people's thoughts about it. There's a number of interesting options but, taking into account the first part pointing at a map remake, it looks like Av is completely upgrading the combat system to a point where all previous skills are rendered useless. This seems quite radical, and so is a server wipe, my second option, but the sentence itself is quite radical aswell. It could also be a 4th combat mode besides Melee, Archery and Magic, I don't know, Martial Arts maybe?, Black Powder Guns? Who knows? I'm surely curious.
The tease continues with more interesting bits like city upgrades, major changes to the crafting system, reducing the grind, hacking prevention and some other stuff. For me, this first two sentences are the more interesting without a doubt. It looks like we'll have a changed map when the expansion hits, with redistributed mobs and resources going the regionalized way. But now, it also looks like we might have a serious change in combat mechanics. Can you imagine Darkfall working like Warband? How would you feel if there was a server wipe? Are you excited to skill up another combat option?

Comment on 14th of January update

Four days ago, Tasos made an update on Darkfall. Tasos spotlighted the support team banning some people for gold-selling related stuff. He also said the meditation skill will improved with cheaper prices, quicker timers, more skills and free meditation points for not yet known reasons. The next and last subject is what shines the most. Tasos politely asked for some feedback on an idea their working on:

The topic: Consider armors and clothing working to enhance certain specific abilities like for example magic, melee, archery vs. hindering or even blocking others during their use.

Well, well, for starters, the examples are kinda already ingame. It's called Encumbrance. The don't enhance or block but their encumbrance marks what is it best suited for. Most people on ForumFall has shouted yes and some of them in full rage-mode. I've been trying to find something about the topic that doesn't involve melee, archery or magic because of the encumbrance thingy but since everything is combat in Darkfall it's hard. I guess some clothing might enhance Riding, Sailing or some stuff like that. But I don't like the idea of an armor that gives bonus to melee and hinders archery and magic and so on. That's too rigid, like a way to force differentiation. I'd like to see Elemental Robes or Armor, Riding and Sailing Clothes, Crafting Robes...
Anyway, for me, the best that could happen armor-wise is that your whole encumbrance should affect your running and sprinting speed. That would really be awesome!

Increasing performance

Well, my new mouse has arrived and I have already set the bindings accordingly. Now I need to get used to it and that might increase my PvP efficency. I already know I won't be in the Top10 PvPers of Agon (still waiting for Battlefield World to accomplish that :-P) but to really enjoy this game I need to win some combats. There are a number of factors in winning a combat including gear, stats and skills; unfortunately I got none on my side. Due to being poor (damn meditation!) I can't ride around in good gear because I need to save it for sieges or clan events. Moreover, I'm realizing that Knives are severely underpowered and I can't afford using R60 knives all the time to compensate for that. Isn't Aventurine going to show the love? I hope they do but I'm not expecting it. So, should I start leveling Great Axes or what? I don't want to do that but I'd also like to be a competent player aswell. Playing Darkfall is like a marathon, it's a long run, so we'll see what the future holds for me. Maybe I'll win the Jackpot and I'll be able to ride my Runners in my infernal set with my r60 weapons. One can dream...

Activity rising!

I think nobody saw that one coming. In the latest Activity Report by Tasos, many awaited changes have been already announced and some of it may come today in a new patch. Unfortunately, there's no Patch Notes yet but looking into the Report, it's easy to get some clues, so let's carry on with it.
The AR starts with massive area redesings and it seems Human lands are already done. It's nice to know that worldbuilders are still working to improve the beautiful Agon but in my opinion, it's already a great world. The bit that caught my attention is this: "clan city layouts are being scrutinized at the moment". Does this mean clan city changes, possibly somethin more dynamic or player chosen? That would be nice...
Tasos also explains some incoming additions to Meditation like more skills and, wait for it, attributes. Obviously, Tasos is not feeling the love with Meditation but hopefully, with time and few tweaks, people will start to see what do they have under their noses.

As far as the newbie experience goes, we’re going to help that along quite a bit with a total approach to character progression, an example of some of the actions we’ll be taking is increasing drop rate and frequency of attribute consumables and spell books.

I can just hope I'm lucky enough. But I know I'm not.

We got to see a demonstration of the new political map. We’ve talked about this before but we didn’t mention that the map will also mark locations of player vendors with details on what they sell.

That is a very nice addition and it will make player vendors something really meaningful. I bet Vendor Booth prices are rising as we spe... as you read and I write. Tasos can't say nothing really interesting about the new GUI yet and by now, I'm so used to the current one that I don't need many changes.

The designers are undertaking the massive task of  redesigning the newbie experience and working on a total monster classification, redistribution and localization based on the lore. This is part of an overall strategy of localizing resources.

Well, well, this is a big one. It seems like Darkfall is going the way of the regionalization but maybe they just want the resources to be localized so people need to travel more and trade more. Mob redistribution is very likely a first step and I'm eager to see where is this going.

There are alignment system changes coming as we’ve mentioned before. These are a complete approach on improving the alignment system and solving certain inherent issues surrounding it like for example a  new approach to improving alignment,  making it more meaningful with changes such as locking reds out of alliance, racial, and trade channels, adding a chaos chat open to everyone.

I certainly hope those alignment fixer are not reduced to simply being locked out of several chat tabs. Any player getting zapped by player city towers should become grey for every player in that clan so they can defend their cities without losing alignment. Or something.

There are also upcoming changes to sieging and PvP,  like addressing one man clans declaring war on everyone, the one siege limit against one clan, self sieging etc. Some of these fixes are coming in the next patches. There are more changes to improve PvP and massive battles like for example changes to spells like confusion, pungent mist and eye-rot going in tomorrow’s patch.

I believe those changes are the crown's jewels right now. "The one sige limit against one clan" and other sieging system tweaks are a very demanded feature that can change the political status of Agon. A little nerf to all those blinding spells are also great news, not only because they were a bit OP but because I don't have them yet! Jajajajajaja! Well, I was going to buy Confusion in a couple of days.
After a few ship-related changes (protection from swimmers, hell yes) and the announcement of today's patch, the last activity report of 2010 ends. Now, he can only wait for the patch notes and the servers to go online. And tomorrow...

More Meditation thoughts

Well, after reading stuff like this I can say without a doubt that the new Meditation skill is a ver interesting addition to the game. It could surely be a little bit faster, cheaper and include the intensifies in one way or another (I'm pretty sure those fixes are coming while we speak) but the system works as intended. The Meditation skill is a very nice way to avoid the boring and useless grind. You will still need to level the spells but at least you won't be spending a lot of time skilling useless and unwanted spells to get those you want. Also, it's aimed at noobs and that's why vets or forumwarriors are complaining so much.
Despite that, the real issue with Meditation is not the system itself but the imposibility to compete with macroing in terms of gain and efficency. The problem is that macroing is ingame gameplay and offline skilling can never be as good as ingame skilling. Macroing is the true pain in the ass.
Despite an idea I have (diminishing experience returns over time when doing the same stuff), I realize that eliminating macroing is a very hard task to accomplish and so, reducing the Gap between vets and noobs might be the only way to make it something not really needed, and even though that, I'm sure some people would still macro.
Meditation works good and I only hope the tweak it a bit and add the intensifies and some other skills. It's actually a nice step to reduce the gap but it's still too big if you ask me. I red somewhere that 20 NEW members couldn't take a vet down in NA and that's just stupid.

I'd like to be a Tibetan Monk to meditate for free!

First of all, sorry for the last few days of inactvity. There has been a big change in my RL, a good one, and I've been readjusting my shit. I hope I'm back for real now despite having Fallout New Vegas screaming for some of my game time.
Anyway, today is a patch day and a very awaited one because it includes the new and shiny Meditation skill to skill your magic schools while online. First, at forums an awful lot of people is already QQing because they believe it's too expensive and because it doesn't skill the intensifies, stats and such. The problem is right now people only knows about the whole price for maxing out any school but they don't know how many points are spent every hour or how many points you need to skill from 49 to 50 for example. That's the information that really matters.
I believe this system has been created thinking about all those lengthy grinds using slow level and useless spells to get other spells. Now, after patch, you don't need to grind Beacon to get Telekinesis if you know what I mean. Of course, you'll have to use your newly acquired and useful spell to increase your stats and intensifies but you won't be using Beacon for that long. Instead of that you'll be able grind using the spells you want to use.
I've also started to use the Meditation skill and a fairly quick overview showed that 5000 points seem to last for 24 hours aprox and you need a month to skill an elemental school from 50 to 100 so right now it seems like gold farming is more important than ever but if you play regularly enoguh you should be able to gain more gold than points are spended.
Well, all in all, this post title still aplies and we'll have to wait until someone makes proper testing to know exactly how this Meditation skill truly works. Anyway, I expect Av to lower a bit the gold cost of Meditation pretty soon.

The grinding need.

From time to time, I feel the need to grind something. It might be my magic, which still has a lot to go, or some crafting to be able to make my own stuff. Grinding magic is very much a serious need because I won't feel completed until I can bubble, blind and stormblast away as nearly everybody else can do. On the other hand, the crafting grind is not really a need. In my situation, with Lux Arcana Trading System and lots of friendly clannies to help me out, I only need to farm gold so I can buy whatever I need. Despite that, sometimes I feel the urge to grind Weaponsmithing, Bowyer, Alchemy or Armorsmithing so I don't need to bother Clan Merchants with all the stuff a player needs to go PvE or PvP. Also, if you can use everything to get from mobs and chests to craft your own stuff, you won't spend so much money in buying it but that's not the reason behind my urges. The reason is that I can and that I need the final crafted object, whatever it is. This two realitites makes me want to be able to do it. It's that simple. The Skill System in Darkfall promotes grinding or at least, that's how I feel about it.

I'll fight unitl I win... or run.

Keegar, fellow clanmate, complained the other day about how every fight ends up being a persecution and at least, he's able to run to and from someone. In Agon, a lot of people and most of the fighters have several bunnyhoping spells and they use it. The good chance to escape they provide has changed the classic: Victory or death to something less epic like Victory or Escape. Unfortunately for the less developed characters out there, me being one, when there's no chance of victory there's no chance of escape either so we still fight to the end. The ability to escape should be in Darkfall no doubt, my rant, as other times before, is about the amount of escaping spells a veteran character has. I hope prestige classes change that but somehow I doubt it. If everything remains the same I will keep saying: Freedom means nothing without choice and consecuences.

Offline Skilling revealed and Community Feedback

There's a couple of new information bits that have recently surfaced and I'd like to comment on them. The first one is an interview from ZAM and the second, a new activity report about community feedback. The most interesting part of the interview is this one:

ZAM: You recently announced that you're incorporating offline skilling for some of the “tedious” tasks. Could you tell us more about this feature and give some examples of which skills might be included?

Flambouras: This will be a work in progress. In a nutshell: players can buy meditation points and use them to raise skills while they’re offline. The skills we’re starting with are the magic schools only. Not the spells, just the schools. We’ll expand on this with frequent updates.

Magic schools offline skilling is a very good thing but now some new questions rise: Will it skill the intensify, duration and so on from the skilling school? There will be gains in INT while doing so? I think the answers to both questions is NO. I believe AV wants to make online skilling more effective than offline but that will leave macroing as the most efficent way to skill up. Anyway it will be great to skill Witchcraft and Spell Chanting.
The activity report is not full of information but it's something. The newbie experience sure needs to be improved but I hope they don't dumb the game with those simbols ! on top of quest givers. The crafting fundamental changes look good even if we don't know nothing about them, I just hope crafting becomes something more engaging than it is now.

Additionally, new trade route missions feedback and information was discussed along with future sea fortress changes, on making them go live during peak hours. Solo player combat mechanics and party mechanics were also brought up with feedback on the solo player experience and recommendations on how to make solo players more self-sufficient. Party number limits were also mentioned.

This ^ is also good news, all of it and so are mount upgrades and ship power improvements. I was very surprised to see that they call the proxy clans an exploit when siege mechanics are so flawed. What do you want us to do AV? With current server population and many clans having many holdings what else is there to do? I'm not happy either with this:

We agree that as far as alignment goes, going red is too forgiving when it needs to be more of an active decision with implications for the player.

The problem with alignment goes beyond it being too forgiving. The problem is that you can red by defending your holding while a guy healing and buffing a red can stay blue. Alignment has many issues and before tackling the penalty for being red you need to fix them.

The feasibility of player housing in or around NPC cities, or auction houses were also brought up. Feedback on the economy was presented and a lot of it is consistent with our development plans.

Does this mean that there will be player housing in or around NPC cities? And auction houses? I sure hope so. Well, something is something, uh?

Offline Skilling System

Yesterday, Tasos posted another of those beloved Activity Report and that one contained a very important new. Av is planning to implement an Offline Skilling System to "curbing macroing, giving newer players a better chance to close the gap, and to cut down on some of the tedious repetitive tasks that exist in the game". There already are several threads in forums about this key subject. Most of the people think it's a good adition to the game but some others fear it will empty the world because everyone would like to do offline skilling.
First of all, we still don't know how are they gonna implement this, we only know they'll "start with a small amount of skills and gradually expand it, and obviously many skills won't be included" in the beginning. Knowing how Av works, initially, the offline gain will be very little and only on several skills hard to level like melee and maybe buffs.
This seems like a very good idea and I surely hope it works but as with everything else, we'll have to wait, see and then, rant on forums.

Bunnyhoping

From time to time, a new thread appears on the forum about this subject. Right now, you can find those about it. I think having bunnyhoping in Darkfall is a good thing because it increases the game's possibilities but I agree with those that say : "It's too easy, everybody just jumps away." Because they really do, in Frostbourne we have many lonely or small group raiders that are really hard to catch because of bunnyhoping. It has several problems, one of them is the amount of spells that you can use to bunnyhop. There's simply too many. If they were limited so no player can have them all, it would be an start. Bunnyhoping wouldn't be so useful and the player should think when to use it. The "Death from falling damage issue" is also very important here, if it were implemented players could still bunnyhop at any time but they could not do it when they are very low on health. Aventurine has said they don't want to add this precise cause of death in Darkfall so maybe, they can adjust it somehow so death from falling only applies when bunnyhoping. Within the current system, there could be a global cooldown between them but maybe it already exists (I only have shrapnel for the moment), in that case it's not enough.
The bunnyhop thing and those climbing spells are a good thing, I really think so. The problem with them is the lack of a skill, not spell, to do something similar; the amount of spells that let you do it and the fact that every player can have all of them. Having some kind of physics is great, overuse it's not.

The Player Skill

Yesterday I started a thread called "How important is player skill?" with a poll included. Everybody knows that in Darkfall, player skill is an important factor in any outcome; at least, more important than many other games. Despite that, my feeling is that player skill is not important enough. The poll I did is far from perfect but its results are interesting anyway. Right now, 130 players have already voted in the poll and 43.85% thinks "Player Skill is quite important but not like gear or character skill" The second place goes for " Player Skill is the most important factor in Darkfall" with 36.92%. Clearly, as already said, we players know Darkfall is a game where player skill really matters but apparently, there's more people whou would like it to matter even more than those who think that it's important enough as it is.
I guess that most of the people who voted for the second option are players who have been playing Darkfall for some time and are still appalled by the amount of grinding they still have ahead before reaching the vet status. Yep, in a MMORPG, a complex system, most variables affect several things and the grind is a very important element in this discussion. The other two factors in play here, are Gear and Character Skill and both of them are quite grindy. The gear grind is not really bad because there aren't many parts in it, you only need to grind for armour and weapons but the Character Skill grind, what we call The Grind with caps, is just too long.
One of the best solutions in my opinion is to use the health gain system in every skill and stat in the game. Any Skill or Stat now increase faster at lower levels and its bonus or effect per point decreases at high levels. What if Darkfall combat involved the same amount of player skill than Battlefield 2? That would be great.

A nice list of features for My Perfect Darkfall

Today I've discovered a new MMORPG that's still in beta phase. This game, Xsyon, includes many features I'd like to see in My Perfect Darkfall. I'm gonna comment on some of the best with some changes to make them work with Darkfall:

Resources

Players rely heavily on natural and found resources: lumber from trees, leather from animals, grass, scrap materials and rare objects of the lost modern civilization.

-Constantly changing resources can be renewed or depleted.

-Availability dependent on season and weather conditions.

-Resources can be claimed by clans.

-A large variety of resources with individual properties. Different woods, cloths and metals have properties that affect crafted items.

Skills

Players start the game with a selected set of skills. They gain new skills by learning from other players or by uncovering knowledge in books from the past.

-Skills increase with use.

-Skills decrease over time if not used.

-Skills are affected by many external factors.

-Many actions are dependant on several skills.

Creatures

-No set creature spawns or re-spawns. Animals multiply based on the current creature population.

-Creatures gain experience and power, potentially evolving into legendary beings.

-Creatures can overrun areas or be depleted.

-Creatures gravitate towards different areas based on mood and weather.

-Creatures can be tamed and ridden.

-Creatures possess realistic loot. If you see armor or a weapon on a creature you can take it. Animals can be carved up for raw materials.

-Creatures are a primary resource for crafters.

 

There are more features than that and I recommend taking a look at it even if it's only to dream a bit. Apparently, many of those features are not in the beta yet but the idea looks very cool.

I think Darkfall 2010 will polish everything already in-game and besides some more content, it will start to add more tools to improve Darkfall's sandbox. After Darkfall 2010 I hope Aventurine will start working towards making Agon a nice emulation of a realistic fantasy world, if you know what I mean. If Darkfall retains it's arcade/action feeling about combat and improves the rest so Agon feels like a true world, it'll become king of MMORPG.

Disabling Shot and one handers

One of the first things I discussed with my newb friend was which melee weapon would he be using. He said he wanted to use 1h swords plus shield as his main weapon. Unfortunately I had to tell him that all the one hander are severely underpowered partly because of Disabling Shot. First of all, there's some balance to be done because noone uses mounted combat anymore and people uses the 1 hander so they can block with the shield when caught in a bubble. I haven't done any tests so I don't exactly know how underpowered it really is but the fact that anyone can disable you ability to block at any time, even if you are not blocking at that precise moment, is very bad for weapon balance. Also, even if Av has been ninja tweaking the weapons balance if we players don't know that something is viable again, we won't use it and the game will loose variety. On the other side, I'm a knive user, both in PvE and PvP, and I use this weapon because I like it so Anthas might just do the same thing. What's your opinion on this subject? What would you recommend Anthas to do?

Fighting the Ice Dragon!

Yeah! Yesterday night, Lux Arcana went to fight the new Ice Dragon in a game first experience we are very proud of. It all started at server up after patch maintenance when Vorax said he found the mighty beast. I log on just in time to see my clanmates leaving Frostbourne to kill it. When me and other last minute additions were very close to them we start hearing fucks, woah, awesome and other things like that and very soon we would discover what was so nice. There are some very nice videos that show what is the Ice Dragon capable of and his great animations and this long thread in which Maejohl explains the whole story from his point of view. This new Dragon is really tough and in our first trip we weren't really ready and we couldn't make his health go down so, unfortunately I was not present when we joined up with Zagenda to finally slay the Ice Dragon. The bad news is that the loot is not as good as the Dragon is but his new animations and general colorful and engaging gameplay are very good news for Darkfall. The video i'm gonna embed shows nearly the whole fight, enjoy it!!


Ice Dragon Slain - WATCH IN HD

FINALLY!

Finally! We have the expansion notes and they are frigging cool! In http://www.darkfallonline.com/expansion/0910.html, you can see the nice presentation behind the new expansion called Hellfreeze but I'm gonna comment on the extended version in the first link. Let's see!!!
NEW TERRAIN: Well, Tasos and co have been trying to get the hype up on this one but nobody has cared a lot. We'll see if it's truly as good as they say.
CHARACTER DEFAUL VIEW: Another surprise, I didn't know this was even considered but I guess it will be nice. We'll see on that one too.
NEWBIE DUNGEONS AND PROTECTION: Dungeons are a great idea but the reduction of the protected time maybe not so much. I feel one hour is a very short time but, well, I had no protection and everything was fine.
PLAYER VENDORS: Well, this is some improvement but also a small step. Without a bubble for the vendor, it will remain the same.
BALANCE: Every little fix about balance they've written down seems good to me but maybe I would have liked some more tweaking in other areas. Maybe that's included in the "many other things" section.
REVAMPED DUNGEONS: I've never liked the concept of "dungeon", it reminds me of my first and worst role playing sessions where the only thing we did was roll dices and not telling a story. Anyway, dungeons can be fun in Darkfall and I guess they are gonna be more important from now on.
NEW SHIPS: Hell, yes! I can make a Ship now. Those cheap ships will encourage naval combat. There's also the ship strongboxes that you can deploy in a ship. All good additions for those sea lovers.
NEW MOUNTS: Another hell, yes! As you can see, both of them look very nice and I can't wait to ride a Runner. Actually, now my problem as a mahirim is what to choose, the runner or the bear?
FUN HULKS AND FUN FLAGS: Ok, let's see. At first reading, it seems it can be very funny to make race tracks but my problem with them is that they also seem pretty limited. Sooner or later, people will get bored from Fun Hulk races, then what will any player use them for? You can't use them for mounted races or even foot races. This feature is not as sandboxy as it looks like but I guess we'll have to wait and see if anyone comes up with something.
PLAYER USE FLAGS: On the other hand, the Use Flags can be used to create all sort of games and they can probably be used for other things aswell.
TREASURE MAPS: Nice idea, more content and more stuff to do.
VILLAGE REVAMP: Well, the expansion notes don't say that the reward has been improved but I hope it has. If not, I think Village Capping will remain a underproductive activity. You need several people to destroy the stone in less than an eternity so...
CLAN JOURNAL and SOCIAL MANAGER: Little steps. In the right direction but little.
WORLDBUILDING: Agon is great already and they're making it even greater. Nice!
MONSTERS: This is the real deal in this expansion. Hellfreeze includes new mobs, revamped mobs, new AI, revamped loot tables, new special abilities and more. Mobs are going to skill up whenever they kill a player. I guess that it's also a little step towards a more complex PvE experience but right now, I don't think that'll have much effect. Right now, monsters don't survive a lot. Maybe they're lucky and manage to kill a player, but the next on is most likely gonna kill it.
DYNAMIC MONSTER ENCOUNTERS AND EVENTS: I swear to god that in one of the post for the next days I was going to ask for this. The random events in games like Fallout saga are so important for inmersion and a key element in getting some fun out of exploring.
OPTIMIZATION: Let's hope that's for real.

That's it fellas! Enough? Too little? Too much? I think this looks like a solid expansion to me and it has a good feel. Some of those expanison notes feel like little movements to make some pieces fit so other and better systems can be implemented in the future. I'm very excited about the new mounts, ships and monsters. What do you think of it?

A change of routine

These past few days I've been back in Mahirim lands to do some questing and advance a bit some Title Quests. In Frostbourne I did little PvE and it wasn't very rewarding. I could get a very income of money, some R40 knives, some Q1 mats to skill Enchanting and that's it. Back at my race territory I was able to do some quest that even with their limited reward got me some very nice and useful items like catalysts, lots of Q1 mats, selentine ingots, major potions and gold. It has served to clear my mind aswell and now I want to do some PvP again. I still got a big way to become a true warrior but my magic skills are slowly catching up and little by little I'm getting there.
In newb lands I've been seen some people, it's not empty neither full. I can only imagine how nice will this cities look when there's lots of mahirims and orks wandering around. I'm sure that will improve player relationship aswell and give more meaning to being blue. We'll still waiting for the expansion but it sure seems close now and a lot of people is already making unofficial lists of expected features in forums.
Many of you will know that NEW is back. After Torinar left and disbanded the clan, Kimoshu Grakenshalmn, a player from Canada formerly playing in US1 decided to transfer to EU1 to help recreate it with some important and welcomed differences.
Can you imagine the expansion comes today? Or do you think they'll announce it in advance?

Siege Report: Skaranibben 26th September

Yesterday, Lux Arcana was sieging Pandora's Skaranibben in return for their Ichan Siege three weeks ago. Some problems with LA forums delayed this siege until yesterday. The siege started pretty good, we had some good tactics and were a lot of people. Unfortunately, it went down pretty bad. The first fight were in a tunnel, Pandora were waiting for us at the end of the tunnel in a very big cave. The battle started with a lot of confusions blinding me for a very long time. I don't know why I felt I could advance a bit but I obviously shouldn't because other clan mates were moving in the other way. I soon was dead and ganked. Once again, I was not paying attention enough at the minimap and the position of other clanmates. My character is not that strong to survive kamikaze attacks and that's what I did there without fully knowing. I really need to be more cautious and fight among my group and mostly behind the hard and tough meleers. In the second and final fight we were the ones in the cave in they were coming from the tunnel. Our mistake was to let them in the cave, we should have hold our positions at the end of the tunnel, going to any side of the tunnel's mouth to heal and buff and slowly killed them one by one.  From my personal perspective, as soon as Pandora entered the cave in full force I was completely lost. I don't have the cold blood needed to survive in such uncomfortable situations, yet. When pursuing a fleeing enemy (stupid action, we was far and I was low on health) someone killed me with a couple of hits in the back and ganked.
We have learned a lot from this fight and a lot of discussion is still ongoing at the clan forums. I hope this makes us stronger and a better figthing force. One of the bery good things about Darkfall is its deep fighting gameplay that encourages a good strategic organization for the group and in-battle tactics for every individual. So, there will be always some room for personal and clan improvement. And that's pretty nice!

A happy escape

Yesterday I went for some PvE with some clanmates: Franko, uiskaM and Ankan. We wento down to a dungeon where we hunted some high level mobs, Menhir Sentinel, with classic tank and healer tactic. Our first recall didn't went very well for three of us. We were on top of a rock while Franko was recalling with all the loot from behind it. Then a stupid mob saw us and we three had to leave the recall but fortunately Franko could finish it. After that we decided to go to the exit and rode back to Frostbourne but then some zZzZz appear, I only could see Ellianor but Ankan said we had seen at least 2 of them. Right now, two zZzZz mean a tough battle and we decided to run. After the loading screen I quickly mount up and start riding looking my back. Lucky me, I fell in a hole. I hid there, I heard the sound of the enemy mounting and riding and I'm already thanking my wolfi gods when I goddam Windgraive found my hole and started hitting me. I jumped out of the hole and I saw the enemy, maybe Ellianor maybe not. Once again, I turned around and started riding but the Windgraive kills my mount. Some shrapnel and bunnyhop down later, when I looked back there were no enemy signs. I don't know what happened there but I'm surely grateful. After a too long recall I arrived home and among other stuff I received 3k gold, a portal shard, two r60 Greatclubs, a pair of full plate leggings and some nice enchanting mats. You gotta love this kind of stuff.