Hey everyone,

I started playing again a few days ago, having played at launch but leaving because of all the issue's the game had I decided it was time for another go at Darkfall. I deleted my old character as I wanted to start fresh and here are my experiences from the first week:

My adventure started off with getting the standard goblin quests to get some loot and money,  so I went out with my noob sword and started killing some, the first thing I noticed was that the AI atleast had not changed and they still run in strange paterns at high speed and the goblins kept ganging up on me, still I managed to kill a few and it was not long before I got my first staff and started using my mana missiles. Straight away I noticed the fast skillups that I was receiving, this has definetly improved and made the experience for a new player a lot better, as new skills would be gained fast. All in all I had a very good time killing these goblins , even though the AI is lacking , and made quite a decent amount of loot.

So after having sold the spoils of goblins I had enough cash to get a two handed sword, I also received a bow and some arrows, time for another round, once more I should note that the skill ups go extremely fast and after less then a full week my 2 handed and archery are both at level 60!

To contrary believe the Darkfall community in game is the best I have ever experienced, I asked a few questions and people helped me out a lot better then your average helpdesk :-) , someone actually came all the way from the human lands to craft me a set of armor, for free (I am an elf). I also made a few hundred gold and was ready to ride around on a new mount, I asked in trade if someone was selling and I got 2 mounts for the price of 1 from a player as a welcome present to Darkfall Online.

So I was ready to go on my first adventure in the big scary, yet beautifull world of Agon. The graphics arent the best graphics in the game, but it works and you will find yourself enjoying many a beautifull scenery in Agon.  The world is perhaps a bit too big though because I didnt come across many players in the open Wild. Which was OK for now because I didnt wanted to lose my precious mount (which I eventually did anyway: keep reading).

After Riding out I decided to go towards the sea and follow the coast towards the North to the Wolflands, I found a lot of mobs who where wandering around ruins and deserted villages, many I could actually kill, which wasnt the case when the game first launched. So I made quite a bit of loot from this, also the Chaos Chests are a very fun additon, these chests spawn randomly and can have quite good loot inside, I found 3 of these and made around 500G from them! I considered returning and banking my loot, but I was halfway already and was eager for my first PvP experience, which I found in the Mahirim lands, another starting player was killing Goblins, this is what went down:

I was on a hill observing this player killing goblins, I crouched to a tree quite close to him while he was in fight, (and had like 4 crouched walking skill ups in the process!) , the moment he attacked a new Goblin I took my bow out and started shooting at him, a few well aimed arrows and he was at half health when he started coming towards me with his sword raised. I took quite a few hits and noticed another Goblin came after me aswell, so we both had goblins attacking us now. I changed my weapon to my 2handed sword and managed to kill the person, although my HP was also almost fully gone. For a second I thought Victory untill I noticed the Goblin that was first attacking my foe also attacked me now, I quickly opened the grave stone and saw a mount inside the players corpse, my adrenaline actually skyrocketed (appears to happen quite often in Darkfall), I took what  I could and started running......it was futile....I died against the Goblins and was teleported back to the elven city, losing all my gear and 2 mounts in the proces. Afterwards I had a good laugh about it with the player I fought and we parted our ways.

I can go on telling stories, but to sum it up, the game has improved a lot, but still needs a lot of improving! Perhaps the new Expansion this month will sort it out even further? Is the game without its faults? Not by a long shot. Is the game fun? Well if you like Sandbox style games, PvP and freedom to do whatever you want, then yes!

Hope you enjoyed the read and if anybody wants to message me ingame: Ladrann Drako, noob elf.

Greetings!

Ladrann

Good read, although I disagree with a lot of your conclusions.

Have fun.

 good job dave man

AI in darkfall is not the best but is different on other game the AI is hit the player who get the agrro run back when are low HP and nothing more

Thanks for sharing that. I love hearing people's stories about their experiences in Agon. Just started playing at the beginning of last month myself, and having a great time with the game.

Strix it is not required of you to agree/disagree with his experiences upon returning to the game. That's why they're called his experiences.

Hehe, good read. Next  time don't be so greedy and you may live to the next day.

I thought on the beginning that AI is overdone and they could quit all that running around, but next I realized that mobs just mimic the players behaviour...The only thing we are missing now are jump shooting mobs ;)

As much the AI is not perfect, I have to see yet better AI in a MMO game. What often spoils the fun is HP of some mobs. There are still mobs with insane health advantage over players, no wonder people exploit their AI or completly ignore part of spawns.

PS

DF is far from being finished, but as much my love/hate relationship goes I will find it hard to go back to any other standard MMO. In fact I am planning to go back to DF soon to judge the six month changes myself.

Originally posted by Cecropia

Thanks for sharing that. I love hearing people's stories about their experiences in Agon. Just started playing at the beginning of last month myself, and having a great time with the game.

Strix it is not required of you to agree/disagree with his experiences upon returning to the game. That's why they're called his experiences.

Note my phrasing. I didn't disagree with his experiences, but with the conclusions he presents at the end.

Originally posted by StrixMaxima

Originally posted by Cecropia

Thanks for sharing that. I love hearing people's stories about their experiences in Agon. Just started playing at the beginning of last month myself, and having a great time with the game.

Strix it is not required of you to agree/disagree with his experiences upon returning to the game. That's why they're called his experiences.

 

Note my phrasing. I didn't disagree with his experiences, but with the conclusions he presents at the end.

Part of being amazingly right is being EXPLICT in WTF you are talking about.

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

Originally posted by StrixMaxima

Originally posted by Cecropia

Thanks for sharing that. I love hearing people's stories about their experiences in Agon. Just started playing at the beginning of last month myself, and having a great time with the game.

Strix it is not required of you to agree/disagree with his experiences upon returning to the game. That's why they're called his experiences.

 

Note my phrasing. I didn't disagree with his experiences, but with the conclusions he presents at the end.

 

Part of being amazingly right is being EXPLICT in WTF you are talking about.

If you can't read the OP's message and identify that he/she tells the story of his/her comeback and then comes to a few conclusions (most of which I disagree, as I wrote before), then you should spend less time playing and more studying.

I don't even know what's the drama. I liked the post, posted my opinion and then told him/her to enjoy the game. What's the big deal, really? Did I suddenly lose some basic grasp of language and unwittingly flamed/trolled the OP?

Take your meds, people.

Originally posted by Ladrann

I can go on telling stories, but to sum it up, the game has improved a lot, but still needs a lot of improving!

Thank you for this excellent post, Ladrann.  But other than the skill-ups coming faster (which is definitely an improvement) what other things can you list that justify your "the game has improved a lot" evaluation?

Originally posted by indiramourn

Originally posted by Ladrann

I can go on telling stories, but to sum it up, the game has improved a lot, but still needs a lot of improving!

 

Thank you for this excellent post, Ladrann.  But other than the skill-ups coming faster (which is definitely an improvement) what other things can you list that justify your "the game has improved a lot" evaluation?

Is that all you extracted from his writing ? c'mon put more effort into.

Without reread OP i can remember he found out the chaos chests to be a very good addition and also he fought some mobs he couldn't fight back in his first DF experience...That makes an improvement in rewarding PvE and exploring and just out of my head from reading OP 1 time..

AI, not the best, but the smartest. WOW AI are worst. They attack, you, when they almost die, they only call one friend. Only 1. Then.

DF AI are the smartest i ever seen. They attack you, even if they are healty enough, they will call all the friends around so they can come with with an other or a max of 3 other monsters. But, what is lacking is when those monsters try to kill a player that use range. Now, they are stupid.

Originally posted by indiramourn

Originally posted by Ladrann

I can go on telling stories, but to sum it up, the game has improved a lot, but still needs a lot of improving!

 

Thank you for this excellent post, Ladrann.  But other than the skill-ups coming faster (which is definitely an improvement) what other things can you list that justify your "the game has improved a lot" evaluation?

If he quit the first month then it was likely that hes talking about bugs, stability, new stuff to do, better PvE rewards, etc.

Thanks for all the replies, its good to see that a lot of people enjoyed my post.

I was asked what I think has improved exactly?  Well the general PvE and exploring experience  has improved significantly, which is what most new players will be doing. This leaves many players with a good first impression of the game.

Also as already noted the skill ups is a great improvement, because now there isnt such a huge gap between the new players and the veterans, training bow and sword / you can get these skills up to 90 / 100 pretty quickly and then you are able to compete with other players. This is atleast what I am doing, not focussing on magic all too much and getting swords and bow up first.

Also there are ofcourse a lot less bugs, have yet to see an exploiter / hacker / macroer (which there were tons of at launch). Another thing I noticed is the swarm of new players joining the game, there are many starting Darkfall, which is good, because with a world so big, you need a healthy population.

About the AI they are indeed smart in a way, but also kind of weird sometimes, although they do give a fun fight, and in the end, it is all about the fun.

Regards,

Ladrann

considering the style of combat in the game is way more technically complex I think the AI is probably better than any other MMO. its very hit and miss, but still. I have seen mobs do stuff even players can pull off like jump over my arrows :P

main problem is with a ranged attacks and good use of enviroment you can kill any mob, but thats the same in oblivion, fallout 3 or any sandbox shooter.

Nice write up.

Reminds me of all the fun you can have while your still running around learning the game.

No word of a free trial yet?

I would give the game another shot if there was, but I'm definitely not dropping fifty bucks without knowing what I am getting myself into. It's not alot of money, but that is beside the point, I simply don't wish to be duped by another lackluster title.

Hopefully they put one out soon, I'm sure it would bring a few more subs in, and I would be glad to buy the NA retail and pay a monthly if I knew it was worthwhile beforehand.

I have a story to share. I'm not the best at telling stories but I'll try.

I had finished all the goblin killing in the mahirim starter area. I had advertised in the channel that I was interested in joining a clan. I got to join one after a short while. After that I went to a place east of that which is inhabited by trolls. The very leader of the clan came to me and gave me a bag filled with staves, armor, swords and all kinds of things a new player would be very greatful to get. As I started trying to kill the trolls I noticed that they were a lot tougher than me and that I wouldn't be able to solo it. Shortly after, another adventurer arrived, a mahirim aswell, and we started killing the trolls together. We did this for maybe an hour or so. After about an hour had passed I got very low on hp due to several trolls. My mahirim friend started attacking me and consequentially killed me and took all my stuff I had gathered + the stuff I had been given by the clan leader. I respawned in the mahirim spawning place and just laughed, wtf really.

Originally posted by mo0rbid

I have a story to share. I'm not the best at telling stories but I'll try.

I had finished all the goblin killing in the mahirim starter area. I had advertised in the channel that I was interested in joining a clan. I got to join one after a short while. After that I went to a place east of that which is inhabited by trolls. The very leader of the clan came to me and gave me a bag filled with staves, armor, swords and all kinds of things a new player would be very greatful to get. As I started trying to kill the trolls I noticed that they were a lot tougher than me and that I wouldn't be able to solo it. Shortly after, another adventurer arrived, a mahirim aswell, and we started killing the trolls together. We did this for maybe an hour or so. After about an hour had passed I got very low on hp due to several trolls. My mahirim friend started attacking me and consequentially killed me and took all my stuff I had gathered + the stuff I had been given by the clan leader. I respawned in the mahirim spawning place and just laughed, wtf really.

Haha yeah, that happened a few times under the month i played, both from my side and people i partied with. "Watch your back. Even your closest ally could stab you in the back" 

Im glad to see that Darkfall is going in the right direction. I might try out the trial (when it comes) to see which improvements. Or just sub for a month. I've had plenty of fun in this game even though the bugs and hackers (i were in SSR for those who knows who they used to be) And we met plenty of hackers. But alas! I had fun, which is really the only thing that matters.

It seems that i should have an eye on Darkfall still.

Cheers

- Atyor, former member of Silver Sun Republic

Did you happen to notice how that mob is able to use obstacles? Trees rocks sometimes but rarely water etc.

Once something gets between you and them they either turn around or decide to alter their path around it and they rarely attack at full speed if they don't have full eye contact with you while coming around it and this is dependable of your action speed, hitting it etc as it seems. pay attention to the stronger unit of the mob to realize this. Other weaker units often act as decoys to draw you near and then the stronger ones to flank you.

it's not strange behavior, it is very clever design but it's not quite there yet in terms of fine tuning and I don't have any idea how they did it.

That's just the starter mob.

Imagine what they can do updating all the other mobs as time passes and all the new staff they re going to put in.

Originally posted by leone2nd

Did you happen to notice how that mob is able to use obstacles? Trees rocks sometimes but rarely water etc.

Once something gets between you and them they either turn around or decide to alter their path around it and they rarely attack at full speed if they don't have full eye contact with you while coming around it and this is dependable of your action speed, hitting it etc as it seems. pay attention to the stronger unit of the mob to realize this. Other weaker units often act as decoys to draw you near and then the stronger ones to flank you.

it's not strange behavior, it is very clever design but it's not quite there yet in terms of fine tuning and I don't have any idea how they did it.

 

That's just the starter mob.

Imagine what they can do updating all the other mobs as time passes and all the new staff they re going to put in.

Facing 2+ mobs i ll try to bring one mob in the line of fire of the others but these litle fuckers obviously "know" about that and the oe i try to put in the middle sidesteps to open line of sight for his friend and/or the other try to find the position with free sight on me. I ll make a mini game out of these on how many friendly fire hits  the mob infront me receives.

Originally posted by DarthRaiden

Originally posted by leone2nd

Did you happen to notice how that mob is able to use obstacles? Trees rocks sometimes but rarely water etc.

Once something gets between you and them they either turn around or decide to alter their path around it and they rarely attack at full speed if they don't have full eye contact with you while coming around it and this is dependable of your action speed, hitting it etc as it seems. pay attention to the stronger unit of the mob to realize this. Other weaker units often act as decoys to draw you near and then the stronger ones to flank you.

it's not strange behavior, it is very clever design but it's not quite there yet in terms of fine tuning and I don't have any idea how they did it.

 

That's just the starter mob.

Imagine what they can do updating all the other mobs as time passes and all the new staff they re going to put in.

 

Facing 2+ mobs i ll try to bring one mob in the line of fire of the others but these litle fuckers obviously "know" about that and the oe i try to put in the middle sidesteps to open line of sight for his friend and/or the other try to find the position with free sight on me. I ll make a mini game out of these on how many friendly fire hits  the mob infront me receives.

I had situations when cooperating mobs hit each other while trying to land a hit on me, healed me instead of comrade or even did the finishing blow on one of their almost dead friends. Darkfall's AI may be annoying and in some cases exploited, but it is still the best in the MMO genre.

Darkfalls AI is by far the best try I have seen in any MMO so far.

Sure it can be exploited and sure there are ways to bug it out. but if you try to fight the mobs without trying to bug them it can be a great fight with them teaming up on you grouping up retreating attacking and pretty much doing everything PCs do.

Every patch so far has improved the NPCs and made them smarter and harder to bug. its still possible to bug quite a fewe mobs but its a lot less and a lot harder now than before. I can't wait to see just how good the AI will be in a years time.

Nice to see that the post is still alive and kicking. About the AI, I do actually have to agree that it is pretty good. Fact is the Goblins are still weird but I had some more adventures this weekend, including visiting a Dungeun and receiving some nice loot from a Selentine chest at the end of the dungeun. The AI tries to use tactics against you, which sometimes makes it look rather weird, but also gives one hell of a fight many times as they try to circle you, hide behind buildings and request friends for help.

I played through most of the weekend (my girlfriend was not really happy with that but so be it :-P ) and had a lot of new adventures, I will once again write some down to give people a better view of what Darkfall can be like:

First of all a real life friend of mine joined in so now we were 2 guys strong, and ready to explore far beyond the starter towns. I set myself some goals before playing Darkfall, one of those goals was to get a raft and explore the (huge) sea that surround the many islands and the main continent of Agon. The durability of the armor which I got as a welcome present was all but gone now, so firstly I went to gather some Iron Ore and start crafting me and my friend a new set of banded armor, after which we were ready for battle.

So we went out into the Wilderniss , towards the Alfar lands to the east ( we were eager to fight some new Alfar players) , we were not far out before we found another Chaos chest, ofcourse it was looted and received 500 gold, a nice start. We travelled further towards the East and to my suprise the world seemed a lot more populated this time, we found many new elfs questing and killing mobs. We got chased away from a small Troll encampment by a few of our elf brethren, apparently they did not respect our racial bonds as much as we had hoped, the only thing they saw was blood, our blood ofcourse (and perhaps our new shiny banded armor?) , many arrows flew over our heads and they tried to kill our mounts, luckily we managed to get away with our mounts bleeding and at 30% health.

We found a nice place to rest under a tree which was hollow from underneath, it was time to recover from our wounds and discuss our strategy on what to do next? We healed our mounts and decided to travel further along towards the East. After riding for around 5 minutes we saw a huge tower in the distance, it seemed to be a huge castle! We could not resist checking it out, although we did not trust it, such a huge castle but no banners flying gracefully at the highest of towers? Something was off, and upon entering the castle we heard many frightening sounds of magic being cast. We climbed upon a wall and what we saw was a spectacle:

A group of 5 Alfars (all red, which means enemies) where slaughtering these Human NPC's living in the fortress, the Alfar used magic I had never even seen, Fireballs and weird skulls flying in the air, which made really creepy sounds. Knowing we were out matched and out skilled we quickly turned back and got away without them ever knowing we were there. We started having doubts about our decision to PvP in the Alfar lands, we thought we had seen enough for now, and being the noobs we are we travelled back to the Elf lands for some treasure hunting. Our plans changed drastically after finding a Chaos chest in the wilds, I looted it and to my suprise I found something big in my backpack! I looked what it was and apparantly it was a housing item, called a Cupboard!

Not really knowing what it was worth I quickly ran a price check and was told the item sells for 10K, immediately I started dreaming about a mighty raft floating around the Sea! We recalled and sold the item for the price of 10.000 gold in a mather of minutes. Upon which I asked in Trade chat if anybody was selling rafts, I received a few replies and was able to buy a raft for the price of 1.5K, on to the sea!

We also wanted to explore some dungeuns and we both took 1 Selentine chest key with us, we mounted up and headed West towards the sea, it was only a good 5 minute run and after arriving I pointed at the salty water and spawned my raft for the very first time! It was definetly a feeling of accomplisment and sailing around in Agon is a lot of fun! We explored some Islands, killed some mobs, ran from some mobs aswell ofcourse and finally saw a purple blinking portal in the distance along the shore. I parked my raft nicely in the sand and put it in my bag, unto our first dungeun!

The dungeun was beautifull from the inside, with broken statues, small huts and a sinister feel about it, it reminded me a lot of Oblivion Dungeuns, only if I would die here, I would actually lose something (my precious raft!), we encountered a stange lizard like mob and were able to beat it 2vs1, we entered another chamber with something that looked like a big temple, there were about 4-5 of these lizards wandering around the temple, just as we wanted to turn back we spotted a chest at the highest point of the temple! A selentine chest, with a few meters next to it a portal back to the outside, we ran for it, looted the chest and got some awesome named armor and staffs from it and ran through the portal back to safety! We recalled and banked our new loot, wondering what new adventures would await us in Agon.......

Thanks for reading and hope to see you in Agon!!

Originally posted by Ladrann

Nice to see that the post is still alive and kicking. About the AI, I do actually have to agree that it is pretty good. Fact is the Goblins are still weird but I had some more adventures this weekend, including visiting a Dungeun and receiving some nice loot from a Selentine chest at the end of the dungeun. The AI tries to use tactics against you, which sometimes makes it look rather weird, but also gives one hell of a fight many times as they try to circle you, hide behind buildings and request friends for help.

I played through most of the weekend (my girlfriend was not really happy with that but so be it :-P ) and had a lot of new adventures, I will once again write some down to give people a better view of what Darkfall can be like:

First of all a real life friend of mine joined in so now we were 2 guys strong, and ready to explore far beyond the starter towns. I set myself some goals before playing Darkfall, one of those goals was to get a raft and explore the (huge) sea that surround the many islands and the main continent of Agon. The durability of the armor which I got as a welcome present was all but gone now, so firstly I went to gather some Iron Ore and start crafting me and my friend a new set of banded armor, after which we were ready for battle.

So we went out into the Wilderniss , towards the Alfar lands to the east ( we were eager to fight some new Alfar players) , we were not far out before we found another Chaos chest, ofcourse it was looted and received 500 gold, a nice start. We travelled further towards the East and to my suprise the world seemed a lot more populated this time, we found many new elfs questing and killing mobs. We got chased away from a small Troll encampment by a few of our elf brethren, apparently they did not respect our racial bonds as much as we had hoped, the only thing they saw was blood, our blood ofcourse (and perhaps our new shiny banded armor?) , many arrows flew over our heads and they tried to kill our mounts, luckily we managed to get away with our mounts bleeding and at 30% health.

We found a nice place to rest under a tree which was hollow from underneath, it was time to recover from our wounds and discuss our strategy on what to do next? We healed our mounts and decided to travel further along towards the East. After riding for around 5 minutes we saw a huge tower in the distance, it seemed to be a huge castle! We could not resist checking it out, although we did not trust it, such a huge castle but no banners flying gracefully at the highest of towers? Something was off, and upon entering the castle we heard many frightening sounds of magic being cast. We climbed upon a wall and what we saw was a spectacle:

A group of 5 Alfars (all red, which means PK's) where slaughtering these Human NPC's living in the fortress, the Alfar used magic I had never even seen, Fireballs and weird skulls flying in the air, which made really creepy sounds. Knowing we were out matched and out skilled we quickly turned back and got away without them ever knowing we were there. We started having doubts about our decision to PvP in the Alfar lands, we thought we had seen enough for now, and being the noobs we are we travelled back to the Elf lands for some treasure hunting. Our plans changed drastically after finding a Chaos chest in the wilds, I looted it and to my suprise I found something big in my backpack! I looked what it was and apparantly it was a housing item, called a Cupboard!

Not really knowing what it was worth I quickly ran a price check and was told the item sells for 10K, immediately I started dreaming about a mighty raft floating around the Sea! We recalled and sold the item for the price of 10.000 gold in a mather of minutes. Upon which I asked in Trade chat if anybody was selling rafts, I received a few replies and was able to buy a raft for the price of 1.5K, on to the sea!

We also wanted to explore some dungeuns and we both took 1 Selentine chest key with us, we mounted up and headed West towards the sea, it was only a good 5 minute run and after arriving I pointed at the salty water and spawned my raft for the very first time! It was definetly a feeling of accomplisment and sailing around in Agon is a lot of fun! We explored some Islands, killed some mobs, ran from some mobs aswell ofcourse and finally saw a purple blinking portal in the distance along the shore. I parked my raft nicely in the sand and put it in my bag, unto our first dungeun!

The dungeun was beautifull from the inside, with broken statues, small huts and a sinister feel about it, it reminded me a lot of Oblivion Dungeuns, only if I would die here, I would actually lose something (my precious raft!), we encountered a stange lizard like mob and were able to beat it 2vs1, we entered another chamber with something that looked like a big temple, there were about 4-5 of these lizards wandering around the temple, just as we wanted to turn back we spotted a chest at the highest point of the temple! A selentine chest, with a few meters next to it a portal back to the outside, we ran for it, looted the chest and got some awesome named armor and staffs from it and ran through the portal back to safety! We recalled and banked our new loot, wondering what new adventures would await us in Agon.......

Thanks for reading and hope to see you in Agon!!

thanks for the great story.

One thing, red isn't aplied on pk exclusively, there is a more dark red and a more light red  one for PK and te other for racial enemy, if you were human (iam assuming) and you run into Alfar you faced the racial enemy red.   That doesn't mean those alfars  kill their own although Alfars probably tents to do these most of the time..

However red signals enemy  and you did good to avoid conflict :D