31st Patch thoughts

A new patch has arrived and it has brought some changes, most are good and some are bad. The new fishing nets for ships are cool but the amount of loot you receive for them is just too low, classic Av style. I mean what's the point in giving a player who has managed to build a boat a damn R0 bow? It doesn't make any sense! I'm pretty sure, Av will increase it soon enough because they always do it like that. I guess they're cautious and that's a good thing but yesterday, when I looked at the fishing box and saw the Short Bow I didn't know what to do, cry or laugh.
The most controversial change is the way you go from red to blue. Now, you need to spend 1k per point and wait a day for every two points. So, if you're -60 alignment, you'll have to spend 60k over a month to get your alignment to 0. This harsh way to go back to blue magnifies the holes in the alignment system (Sea Towers, sieges with roamers or mercenaries, a blue and a red attacking you, etc...).
In a month or so, if you see a clanned blue player he is either a) someone who has not PvPed since patch (Booooh), b)someone who goes through the Chaos Church thingy (good for him) or c)someone who does acrobatics not to deliver the final blow to any blues neither ganks any blues (ergo, a bad partner for a fight("I'm dead. Oh, wait I've just killed this guy. Noone has ganked him?" "Oops, sorry, he was an ork")).
This system needs many tweaks still and I hope Av realizes that.

Exploit

In yesterday's Sea Tower Sun did it again. They used once more the exploit of spawning a ship in front of the enemy's ship (our ship in this particular case) to make it stop so they could board it. What bothers me the most is how so many people  thinks this is not an exploit when the definition is pretty clear: "An exploit, in video games, is the use of a bug or design flaw by a player to their advantage in a manner not intended by the game's designers."
First of all, IMO, this will remain an exploit until Aventurine says otherwise and it might happen, but until then, I think it's pretty obvious that Aventurine did not intend naval combat to be like that.
Surprisingly, some Sun players have said that Darkfall has many exploits and lots of players uses them. Well, I don't but in any case, this excuse sounds to me like they know it is an exploit but don't care so much.
The second excuse I've been reading a lot is that Naval Warfare is boring, chasing a ship and all but then I wonder why do they come to the Sea Tower at all. I don't find Naval Warfare boring at all and yesterday, I was looking forward to it
The worst of it all hasn't arrived yet though. Aventurine won't fix this in time and won't do anything to prevent this exploit. Then, everyone will start using it because if they don't, they're in disadvantage. Unfortunately, not everybody can spawn ships left and right, so Naval Warfare will be used less and less.
I also find it surprising how few Sun have spoken to say that they don't like this tactic. Is winnig that sweet?

Not what I'd like, again.

Yesterday, there was a new GM event in Agon. The first part of it involved some Flag Hunting and there were hints to deduce the location of each flag. That part was not a huge success, probably because there were few Flags in a big world with a lot of players and, probably too, because you only needed to claim them, not defend them or guard them, just take them and then go back to safety. The second part of the event happened in the center, below the great fortress. I was curious, so I took a scrub gear bag and I went there. GMs had spawned three GM controlled Demons but, of course, as soon as I got there, two other players, even more scrubby than me, killed me while the GM Demons were trying to hit them with fireballs, unsuccesfully. Apparently, later on, some organized groups arrived and there was a hell of a PvP session while the Demons ate popcorn.
This time around, I wasn't expecting it but I'd like to see, from time to time, enemies putting everything aside to fight the greater evil. I hope Av wasn't expecting the players to team up against the mobs because that would mean they don't understand the current status with Agon and I want to believe they do.
I still think that events are a great way to create a narrative for Darkfall and I'll keep my eye on them to see if they improve, change or adapt. Let's hope they do!

Comment on the 25th Feb. Activity Report

As usual, last activity report is bitter-sweet. You'll see there's a lot of sweetness in it but there's also many bitter things. Let's get going.
Aventurine keeps updating and improving Agon's geography and apparently, they're nearly done for real now but I'd expect to see that in the upcoming game-changing expansion and not one day before. For me, Agon's already quite pretty but "the redistribution of everything" is a key change. Right now, Yssam and Cairn are too good while Niffleheim is kinda bad. That could also mean a regionalization of resources but we shouldn't take that for granted. Tasos keeps expanding on new models, mobs, weapons and props that we've been hearing about for quite a long time. More of everything is good, there's no discussion about it but I'm more concerned on the current systems than in the supposed lack of variety in armor, weapons and mobs out there.
The alignment changes they've announced seem very cool but it looks like it won't be enough. Aventurine has said nothing about defending your clan city without going red, healing reds and stuff like that. We can just hope Aventurine will make alignment a meaningful feature.
The new GUI is a very awaited improvement and everyones is just praying so Av can improve its performance. The new tools (political map and vendor information) are also cool. BUT, no news on chat bubbles. I want to be able to cry for mercy or swear on someone's grave or just ask for some quiet conversation. Mmmm well.
Probably, the bit that has made every player happy is the fix to the player lag. Noone thought Aventurine could fix that so, if they truly do, 10 points for them!
Tasos also speaks of a new light system that looks very good even in low settings. Does that mean compulsory shadows for everyone? If that doesn't mean shitty performance, it's also great news. I really really want to sneak up from the shadows.
Besides a very vague statement about the conquest system and a mention to Quest Rewrite, there's only the new armour system to comment. There's been a lot of discussion in Forum's around what is this system going to bring to the table but nobody really knows yet. I'm not very excited about it but I guess we need to wait for more information.
The bitter part is the lack of updates or even mentions about the Prestige Classes. Have they been completely scrapped? Are they coming? Not a word since months ago. I'm hoping for a lot from those PC and well, I know I'm not the only one. A word about it would be nice, Av.

Toad's Tongue: Sun Overshining

Zagenda has one holding left but noone knows when or if Sun is going to siege it from them any time soon. In the meantime, the amount of hatred towards Sun seems to be increasing. Why? Well, last night they did pull a very nice tactic in the Sea Tower but the problem is not the tactic itself but the fact that with their numbers is really hard to win them. Currently, Sun has good players with really good gear plus more people than any other clan. Even more so, if any clan plans to siege a Sun holding they better have a lot of gold to hire mercs because it won't probably work any other way.
Sun members are probably enjoying this whole situation because they are winning their combats (winning is always fun even if you do close to nothing) and all this rage towards them is probably making them a closer bunch. The rest of the server is also enjoying theirselves because this game is so great but it's also a MMORPG and a lot of people doesn't like the presence of such a force that noone can take by himself.
So, what can we expect from the future? Well, Sun might downsize a bit to decrease the hate that is currently building up or enough people will decide that's it, create an even bigger alliance to take them down. If neither of this happen, well, Sun will remain the USA clan in Agon for a long time.

No more Titles

Today I've finished my Title quests. Well, not really, I still got the Rank 3 Intelligence Quest to do but I gotta kill 10 mobs of Deathless, Crypt Guards and something else and I'm surely not gonna do them like I did the previous ones. I've only done the title quest because I had my Greataxes skill to grind (I also got the Mastery already!). This way, killing low-end mobs can be kinda profitable if you take into account the 2k-3k prize you get and the bonus itself. BUT anyway, this title quest are very grindy and, more important, very uninspired.
We're all used to the "Kill X goblins" quest and they're an easy and quick way to get something done for some players but Quest, Title or not, should be better and funnier. Right now, there's not a lot of tools to create better quests but despite that, they can be improved. There could some kind of choice involved, puzzle solving and some other stuff. Darkfall has the potential to become a great game but for that to happen, there are many things that need to be improved and a lot of content to be added. Title Quest are surely one of those things.

Siege Report: Skogul and Quarendel 14th February

The day before yesterday, Lux Arcana sieged Skogul from Small Unnamed Alliance and, in retaliation they countersieged Quarendel. So yesterday night, we had a double siege on our hands! When the time was upon us, we rode to a cave near Skogul where one of our siegestones was placed. There we spawned three stronboxes to create a tighter bottleneck and three cannons to blow it to kingdome come. After a while, SUA camed and the standoff ensued with lots of spells and cannonballs flying around. Due to some confusion I was in one of these cannons but low-fps and no preparation make it very hard to hit the bottleneck properly. Then, they full blinded us and made a Battlehorn Charge that succeeded in creating chaos among our lines. I was so confused that I died at the damn cannon before I could disengage from it. They wiped us there.
Back in Andruk, we regeared and started to port over Skogul again but when I managed to port, there were already several combats, one of them with a fleeing ship, around me and one minute after the cancellation of the porting was called. I was with 5 or 6 other people, in different mumble channels, and when the order to regroup in Andruk once again was called everyone just tried to run for his life. I managed to get away with my second siege bag and to recall to Andruk unharmed. When I arrived there, people was already out of the city taking those Quarendel siegestones to protect our hamlet. Unfortunately, they didn't even tried to take it and after some destruction, we just went back to Andruk.
From the player perspective, it wasn't a great siege: we lost the offensive, a nice siege bag or two per player and, above all, it was really short. But I think that as a clan, we learned some nice stuff today. I'm eager to try and take the hamlet again.

The Chaos Luck

I think I've already explained that but on my first three days of Darkfall I found a Chaos Chest with 10k gold on it. At the time, I thought I got the best possible reward from a Chaos Chest since 10k gold was a lot of money for me. I managed to buy every skill for the first two months without farming efficency, just playing the game.
After that, some months ago, I got a Nexus Exit which was cool. And nothing else. Ever. I mean I've got plenty of low gold and low gold plus a major potion but nothing better than that.
Today, after a long farming session, on my way to the bank I see a Chaos Chest and I think: Should I just go to bank not to risk the 2k+ I got on me or...? Surely I went after the Chest hoping today was my lucky day. I can say that already, it wasn't. A hundred meter away, I see another one and even before claiming it I was thinking, this will be shitty too and in front of the bank I'll find the lucky third one. Of course, that second one was also crap, less than 100g, but the third one is just few meters away. Excited I go for it and guess what, less than 100g again. A bit bitter, I follow my way and just in front of the bank I find a fourth Chaos Chest in less than 5 minutes. Guess what? Less than 100g, AGAIN.
Ok, I'm surely unlucky but come on, those damn Chaos Chest could do better than that. Some time ago I posted a Suggestion in ForumFall about Chaos Chest increasing their reward over time if not claimed. I still think it's a great idea and it doesn't seem very difficult to implement. Anyway, Av, please, make Chaos Chest better. No more 53g, make it 300g at least or something. Finding a CC, going for it with illusion to get that miserable amount of gold is just discouraging.

Comment on the 4th February Update

Despite Darkfall Arena main mistery is still that, a mistery, last Tasos update was pretty juicy. Let's take a look.
 First of all, this week, we're supposed to get a new patch with some very nice features like serious bug fixing, bank permisions and War Deccs expiration times. There's been a lot of discussion about those last two features: some say the world is over because of it and some others believe it's an improvement, I'm obviously in the second group but, like always, we'll have to wait and see how's it done.
It seems Aventurine is working hard on Darkfall Arena but they have a lot of balancing issues to adress with all the new Armor System and still no news about Prestige Classes (I'm starting to think Aventurine won't include them in Darkfall Arena).
Then there's this:

There’s also a lot of work being done on the point system of the competitive structures of Darkfall Arena. I understand this might not mean anything to you yet,  but it’s what we’re working on at the moment and this part by design is dependent on player input.

If you combine it with last update's: The second prong has to do with a competitive component on a completely level playing field for all players. What do you got? I still have no idea but if it's dependent on player input, I guess Av will explain better soon enough.
Aventurine is also looking to improve Darkfall's Crafting System and that's very good news but I guess they won't turn it into old SWG system or add minigames, so I'm not that excited despite new mats and salvaging looks pretty good.

We’re also looking at changes in enchantment, including possibly being able to mix different quality materials using gems.

You already can mix different quality materials in enchantment, don't you?

Fishing boats will fish more than just fish and the things they pull out of the water may lead to new options.

Content FTW!
Tasos finishes this update, generally teasing the new expansion as making Darkfall look like a different game. Well, I don't want it to be different but there's a couple of areas where Darkfall needs serious work to become a GREAT MMORPG. IMHO, those areas are content, sand, PvP Balance and Grind.

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!

Siege Report: Vranghorn 16 January

Well, yesterday, Lux Arcana succesfully sieged Vranghorn from Harbringers of Nithron alliance (Black Phoenix, Black Team, Goodfellas and RunAway). The sieged started in our now usual Big March where all our active members ride or run together towards the objective. After a little detour, our melee guys, fully buffed, lead a charge to the top of a mountain riding their Battlehorns with all the rest sprinting behind them. I gotta say it was the charge was awesome and those who did it enjoyed it very much despite some very low fps here and there. It's a shame that such moments are not as good as they could be with better performance.
When I arrived up there I started shooting arrows to the enemies and sacrificies to my clanmates but, outnumbering them and after the battlehorn charge we got rid of them pretty fast. I think we didn't loose nobody in that first fight. After that, everything was quiet for some time but then, they started to hit the siegestone and there we went to defend it. We were late but managed to interrupt them when the stone was at 5% health. Very soon we started attacking the bindstone with cannons and minutes later, a Get Good group attacked. My group was slightly up the mountain yet and tried to flank them but they went straight to us. It was actually quite good because the cannons had time enough to destroy the bindstone before Get Good was able to create serious havok.
Moments later, we regrouped from the long chase the Get Good members offered us and started sprinting towards Andruk because some people had lost all their mounts in the fights. In Andurk, SUN hitted us a bit but we even managed to split the siege loot and I received some needed stuff before I logged. All in all, a very nice evening with nice fights and a victory!

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...

Back and winning!

Yup, I'm back. My hollidays have been very nice and I managed to stay away from everything Chirstmas-related so, I'm happy and feeling strong. Right now, I'm waiting for a new mouse that's supposed to arrive very soon and with it, I sincerely hope to increase my PvP effectiveness a bit.
In my second game session after Xmas, I managed to win my first 2vs1! It was in a dungeon and my opponents were not really strong but nevertheless I really enjoyed it! I hope I can repeat it soon. For now, I'm happy to be back.

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.

Event comentary: Dead be comin...

Yesterday evening, there was a server event involving GM controlled mobs attacking three racial capitals. The result of it was somewhat dissapointing yet fun, let me explain. My problem, I think shared with my clanmates, is that I wanted the event to be what it could be in a typical fantasy story; every ork and mahirim putting aside their grudges or problems to combat the undead hordes. But, this is Darkfall and player freedom is one of its best features and so, any player can play the event as they see fit. Another problem in this kind of events is the alignment system combined with zap towers. If you put all these together its pretty obvious that the event was not going to unfold as I pictured it.
We players didn't have an ETA on the event so a group of Luxers waited in Flaming for a long time. In that time, players were slowly coming and although some of the were orange to us, clans at war, there were no fighting. It seemed it was going down as I imagined at that time (I'm pretty sure that's what tricked me). There was even a Samurai Pizza Cat there, a clan we've been fighting a lot these days, Deltus. But someone talked to him and some kind of truce was agreed. Aero Greenduda, a known griefer appeared there and tried to create havok but he was very soon taken care of.
Then some more members of SPC came to Flaming Skull and they did attacked us. Later I talked with one of them Invictus and they didn't know nothing about the truce with Deltus. Because of that, we really didn't react upon it, we were there for the event not to fight SPC and some of our members died in the chaos. Then each and evey player there jumped over the graves and completely looted them despite being from supposed friends for the event if you know what I mean. That should have shattered my illusions but they didn't.
Finally, we regrouped in a spot far from the growing amount of players gathering around the bank and waited for the mobs. When they did come, true chaos ensued. Players unwillingly hitting other players and getting zapped, GM controlled and strong mobs hitting everything, unclanned blues ganking downed players and wardecced players rezzing other wardecced players ( ;-) at Kaputtmacha ), Lux and SPC fighting each other around the Sun Exarch... it was very funny but not what I wanted nor expected. I finally died to Invictus the more active player in Luxers killing before and during the event, lost a PvE bag but later on, managed to ninja loot a Blue Tail Runner and a Mysterious Essence, a special object dropping from that particular mobs. I still got no clue what to do with that but I hope it's cool.
When the event was over, on my way back to Andruk, I sent a tell to Invictus out of curiosity and I'm glad I did. Invictus attacked us because he could do so without getting zapped, we're at war after all, and without Luxers around, his chances to get loot increased; a perfectly valid reason! Also, Invitcus said he thought that Aventurine was looking for exactly that kind of PvE-PvP chaos but I'm not completely sure about it. As I have previously said, Agon is a too agressive world and that's gonna make it hard for Devs to tell a coherent story. Obviously, the "Dead be coming" can now be translated into a nice story with great enemies fighting together undead hordes among strangers, backstabbing and nobility included but... I don't know, I guess I'll have to wrap my head around this kind of dark and mercyless world we play in and, from now on, acknowledge that in Agon nothing happens like in fairy tails o happy fantasy stories. I guess Agon is more like Westeros than Middle-Earth and Darkfall has more in common with A Song of Ice and Fire than it has with The Lord of the Rings.
All in all, it was fun and, most importantly, something very different to what we're used to in Darkfall so I hope Aventurine keeps it up and announce another event where Mysterious Essence holders become giant dragons to kill and destroy everything in their path :-P.

Darkfall blog is active

Like hell it is! These last few days there has been a lot of posts in Darkfall Blog. There has been a Ship post spotlighting the uniqueness of ships in Darkfall, a new comic from TinyTyke and a post about trading and how to get anything you need. Also, we got to see the new Arthain models for the whole family and I gotta say it's quite impressive, those Arthain human-dogs are really scary and another community feedback post with some nice information about coming changes like: one hander and shield being more useful, ship protection against swimmers and smaller treasure maps plus some long-awaited changes like die from fall damage being discussed. All in all, very interesting reading for Darkfall players.
Also, in the Darkfall Blog has appeared some vague information of a new server event that could be part of something bigger. Dead be comin... is the "title" for the event that is supposed to happen today. I'll try to be there and report whatever happens. It might be very good fun!