I’m into my fourth week of Fallen Earth and even though I’ve been flailing about in different directions I’m still having a blast. So far I’ve cruised through the tutorial at level 40 only to be chucked into the outside world and slapped back down to 1; I had a mini odyssey in search of a pub quiz; I’ve also taken my first steps on my journey to being a master crafter.
One thing that I had ignored is my APs. I did have them explained to me during the turorial, but I’ve been so tunnel-visioned that they completely slipped my mind. Fallen Earth APs are the currency of character development, you earn them through certain quests and levelling up. You spend them on your skills and stats. It takes 1 AP to raise a skill by one point and 5 to increase a stat.
I had 20 APs to spend so set about doing so, but what to spend them on? There is a drop down menu on the AP window with various builds for you to pick from. I picked riflemen and was given some suggestions for where to allocate my points. I spent them all on stats as these determine the maximum levels for your skills.
With my points spent, I went off in search of adventure. I decided to complete all the quests in my home town of South Burb as some quests offer APs as a reward. Some of them offer tradeskill books too, so doing everything would get me off to a great start. Then the plan was to do this and then to hit all the other towns in tier 1 and lend a hand to the townspeople, a bit like the Littlest Hobo.
At the end of my South Burb adventuring, I had learned how to make a wide variety of tradeskill categories: Clubs, knives, sports gear, tools, crossbows, zip guns, acids, dye, belts, gloves, jackets, hats, pants, baking, brewing, frying, grilling, basic geology, pathology, refine bandages and horsefeed – and that’s only half of it. I was also sporting the latest in post-apoc apparel: Headwrap, handwraps, shorts, loafers, 3D glasses. What can I say? Some people just got style.
I left South Burb at level 5, with 94 APs to my name and few quests in my journal directing me to different towns. I picked Mumford as my next stop. On my way there I discovered two things: First, that it’s always a good idea to visit the bank before heading out of town. I tried to do a bit of scavenging on the way and had no room left in my inventory; I was burdened down with stacks of scrap rubber, scrap iron and scrap plastic, weak adhesive, weak biological chemical, dilute acid, carrots, apples, fuzzy potatoes, gasoline and a variety of tainted meats among other things. Stock-keeping is giving me a headache as I’m trying to keep all tradeskill items. Being able to craft everything is too good an opportunity to pass up.
The second thing I discovered is that I want a car. Somebody drove past me in one and I’m not ashamed to say I went a bit weak at the knees – luckily I was sitting down anyway so no harm done. Sometimes in an mmo, if I see a cool piece of gear or a mount I admire it and then abandon all hope of getting one for myself. I mean, I barely have enough time to play let alone grind raids or enough rep to acquire such gems. In Fallen earth though, I know that if I see it, I can make it myself too. So now I have a new goal: Get myself a sweet set of wheels.
Just outside Mumford is a structure with three glass domes and corridors connecting them. Mumford is also the site of a crashed satellite so I was expecting a bit of a science theme there. A lot of the quests turned out to be quite combat oriented and as rewards for some of them I received a fair bit of ammunition for my rifle.
Even though my mission statement is to become a sharp-shootin’ rifleman, I had long since ran out of ammunition and was reduced to melee fighting like some kind of savage. Although I did get a guilty pleasure out of this as I really like the hand to hand weapons. My current set up is a fire poker and a lawnmower blade I’ve also been seen dual-wielding a corkscrew and a kitchen knife. I love how the weaponry in FE is of the down-and-dirty variety – you can keep your plus 1 maces, give me a decent household object any day. Even when I eventually I had plenty of ammunition, I was still bludgeoning and uncorking the occasional mob.
On one of my visits to the website, I read a piece of news about a clan (Fallen Earth’s guilds) called T.E.M.P.S – To Ensure More People Stay. They were highlighted in the state of the game letter and sounded quite interesting. Their mission is to help new players find their way in the game. I decided to keep an eye out for them with an eye to joining up. During my time in Mumford I got a guild invite from them. Normally any right minded person would decline any kind of invite from a player who hadn’t even said hi first, but as it was T.E.M.P.S. I decided to give it a whirl. So far I’ve still been soloing, but I’m determined spend some time in the upcoming weeks exploring the social side of the game.
After a while, I had completed all the Mumford missions. I had gained a few more APs, but not really enough to make it worth the time spent clearing out mobs a few levels below me. At first it was fun to take on a few bandits at once and come away without a scratch, but after a while I was looking for more of a challenge. However, as there is a finite amount of APs in the game, I didn’t want to miss out on the ones from the starting towns. Luckily the internet is made for dilemmas like this and I had no problems finding sites with lists of the missions that give you APs. That’s certainly going to make things a lot easier. Plus I can press on with higher level content and come back for those points later.
The few tradeskill books I received as quest rewards were mostly of the low level variety that I already had, so a move on to the next tier of content was definitely on the cards, especially if I want to learn new skills and build my own auto.
So I was ready to leave Mumford for new pastures. I had a couple more upgrades to my gear and a few more APs; I was ready for more adventure. One thing I’m quite sad about though, is that I’ve had to ditch my 3D glasses. I noticed that they were giving me a penalty to my perception stat – inexcusable for a rifleman like myself. While they did offer me a boost to my Psionic Resist stat, none of the scum I had been fighting seem like the Scanners type so I decided to ditch the specs. Oh well, time to level up my skills and maybe see if the game will let me craft myself a pair of Ray-bans.
