Trion is taking on Minecraft and SoE’s Landmark with their own brand of sandbox cuteness with Trove, a voxel building multiplayer, online sandbox game. Graphically more akin to Minecraft than Landmark, Trove provides a different color of sandbox for players that enjoy the building game with some fighting, collecting and crafting thrown in for the fun of it.
Each player gets five classes to swap between. A Knight, a Gunslinger, a Fae Trickster, a Dracolyte and announced at PAX Prime 2014, a Neon Ninja. They are exactly what you think they are; namely, tank, ranged fighter, wizard, dragon fire mage and a rogue. Each can be customized with looks and gear and levels up separately. A sixth is in the works and will likely be revealed closer to launch.
Exploration, Discovery and Crafting are Trove’s trinity and all the tools provided and the supportive systems created allow players to do any or all of the three activities.
Exploration
Where will you go? There is a capital city with connected worlds (biomes) that you can travel to, and a list that helps you find other worlds and player created structures to visit. Anything in the world except for the core of the capital city – and player owned plots (known as cornerstones) – can be destroyed and/or built on. In fact, your home plot follows you and can be placed where ever you are adventuring for the quick return home to regain health at your rejuvenation station. With exploration comes adventure and players can choose to enter auto-generated dungeons, explore the diverse biomes with their associate dangers or simply sight-see, jumping from cornerstone to cornerstone.
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Discover
What will you find? Visiting other builds can be fabulous fun. In the demo, we visited a cornerstone with pathways made of musical blocks – which can be stacked to make chords – and walked down, activating the blocks and playing the maker’s composition. At another, we found an adventure dungeon and at yet another belonging to a club (Trover’s version of player guilds), an elaborate mag-rail system with loops and jumps. We could have jumped off at any time, but why? Fighting also helps you discover things as different treasures and crafting resources drop off NPCs.
Crafting
What will you build? Will you build out your cornerstone? Help your club (and you can belong to up to five) build up the club cornerstone, crafting stations or portals? Build a dungeon complete with side-quests and monsters? What about mounts (cars, unicorns, and more) or equipment for your characters or for sale? Trove will have a submission system for player creations. Once approved and released into the player market, other players will be able to buy items, explore the dungeons and rate them. There are also plans for “profit sharing” whereby players will get a cut of the profits from the sale of their product.
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Other Features and Details
Trove may be a voxel builder but there is still quite a bit of customization available. Barbershops are available for changes in face and hair, bodies can be transmogrified with different looks. Equipment can be boosted.
Players who enjoy adventure will have a chance to discover more items. Each critter you kill gains you one point of “magic find” to a cap of 50. So the higher the stat, the more likely you find items. However, when you die, you lose them all. Gravity works in a different way in Trove. There won’t be any falling damage, but structures will “float” in the air when supports are removed, so floating cities can be built.
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MMO-esque style play is what sets this game apart from Minecraft. Players can adventure together in the dangerous open worlds, and indeed, the classes are your typical RPG fair with abilities that complement each other.
Mounts are either purchased, unlocked, crafted or dropped by monsters. Almost everything though, can be traded. So a player wanting a cash only mount could trade for it. Trove’s mounts range from dinosaurs to unicorns to a Booster Seat – an easy chair on jets – and more.
Trove is a stand alone PC game and currently in Alpha. Eventually, it will be free to play. Players wanting early access can pay for the privilege, but they will receive the same amount of cash shop currency to purchase items in the store. A September 25th closed beta date was announced at PAX. There will be an end of Alpha wipe, but early adopters will be provided 1.5x the money invested during their time in Alpha to spend in the cash market. Players wanting to get into closed beta can obtain a key from any of the key giveaways that will happen at any given number of sites or purchase early access. Trove's come a very long way in the past year, and it'll be interesting to see just where Trion takes it from beta to launch. Keep your eyes peeled for more impressions later this month.
