Archive for November, 2009
Runes of Magic: Tiering Guide
Tiering your gear is an important aspect of Runes of Magic. For each tier, you gain stat boosts. I’ve been playing the game a year and have only tiered a couple items. I planned on doing more later, but never got around to it…yet.
This is a small guide to help you understand and start tiering your equipment, be it boots, swords, etc…
- For every tier you add to a piece of equipment, you raise that equipments base damage, or defense by 10%. Taking a hammer, sword, bow, etc… from tier 1 to tier 4 will grant a 30% increase in damage, over base damage.
- To actually change the tier of a piece of equipment, you’ll need to use the Arcane Transmuter that every player gains access to at level 10. You find it by opening your bag, and selecting the corresponding button below your item slots(It’s near the button that looks like a gift). You’ll also need to prepare mana stones and fusion stones to complete the process of tiering. Fusion stones can be bought in-game or through the Item Mall. In-game you will find vendors selling fusion stones, and the Item Mall sells Purified Fusion Stones. The only way to gain a mana stone is by creating it yourself from fusion stones or buying one in the auction house. No in-game vendors sell mana stones.
- The difference between in-game fusion stones, and the Item Mall’s purified fusion stones:
Fusion Stones: All Fusion Stones come with at least one predetermined low level stat and two random stats determined after purchase (note: the two random stats may end up being blank, giving you a Fusion Stone with only one bad stat), so anytime you create a Mana Stone with a Fusion Stone, the best you can end up with is a Mana Stone that has one bad stat in addition to whatever unique stats were on the piece of equipment that you chose to transmute with your Fusion Stone.
Fusion Stones with only one bad stat, meaning your two randoms turned out to be blank, are fairly uncommon, and you will typically end up with a stone that has three bad stats attributed to it.You can imagine that after creating three Mana Stones via the more common Fusion Stones, you could be left with a pool of stats that has nine unique bad stats. This means that regardless of the good stats available in the pool, your equipment will end up with six of the nine bad stats.
The trick here is to make sure that the bad stats are all duplicates of each other, which means that all three Fusion Stones used in creating Mana Stones must have the exact same three bad stats.
Unfortunately, you can’t buy Fusion Stones from vendors that come with the same three specific bad stats; at best, one stat will always be random, and you won’t know what it will be until after you buy it. The best thing you can do is either buy three matching Fusion Stones from the Auction House, or buy a few from the vendor and then try to hunt down two more matching ones from the Auction House. Remember, the stats must be identical in type and tier for them to be considered duplicates of each other; a Stamina I, Stamina II, and Stamina III will not be considered duplicates, and can all be transmuted onto a single piece of equipment.Purified Fusion Stones: Purified Fusion Stones solve this bad stat problem, by allowing you to create a Mana Stone with only the stats that you want it to have, i.e. those stats on the equipment that you transmute the Purified Fusion Stone with to make the Mana Stone. This way, you can create a pool of stats that only has six great unique stats to draw from, which ultimately gives you a piece of equipment with six great stats.
so you buy the stones one way or the other. You are now ready to create a mana stone. What was all that business about 3 mana stones? Well When you want to increase the tier of a mana stone which in turn will increase the tier of your equipment, and continue to maintain the stats that you want, you’ll need to do things in 3′s. Because in order to increase tiers of a manastone to say tier 4, you will need three teir 3 mana stones, and you want them to have all the same stats, so that’s why we talked about using three fusion stones with identical stats.
Let’s say you make your very first mana stone. You’ll need a piece of equipment, which you will lose, and then you need a fusion stone. put these two items into the Arcane Transmuter. You will need to spend charges that you can buy using Phirius Tokens, or bought from the Item Mall. Phirius Tokens are tokens, same with charges. No difference in what a charge is whether you buy it in-game or from the Item Mall. Phirius Tokens are, of course, an in-game currency you get from mainly doing daily quests.
You hit transmute and you get 1 mana stone with the tier that the equipment, you used, was. You also get the stats from the fusion stone.
If I want to take my tier 3 sword to tier 4, I could use a combination of buying fusion stones from AH and from a vendor to get 3 identical fusion stones(to ensure My finished sword will have the stats I want and expect). I then can buy any old piece of equipment regardless of what it is. It could be cloth, plate, boot, belt, etc… The important thing is what tier it is. I can buy tier 3 items so I will need 3 of them. I buy them from a vendor, and put on piece of equipment in the AT with one fusion stone, and create a mana stone. I do this two more times with the other fusion stones and pieces of equipment I don’t want(but have the tier I want), and then I end up with 3 identical mana stones all of tier 3. That’s why I wanted tier 3 equipment. The mana stones used that tier. So now I have 3 tier three mana stone that I put into the AT and create 1(one) teir 4 mana stone.
To finish, NOW I can use the good sword that I don’t want destroyed, and likewise I want the new tier as well as the new stats. I put the tier 4 mana stone and my good sword into the AT and create a new sword that has gone from tier 3 to tier 4 and has the stats I want.
This process is the same regardless of tiers. If I want to go from tier 9 to tier 10, I go through this process. Unfortunately what you will discover, is that you can’t simply by junk equipment that is tier 9, from any vendors in game. I believe the highest tier is 3, sold by vendors, so anything above that requires creating equipment a tier higher(that will be your junk equipment you’ll lose). This whole system can become increasingly expensive with all the fusion stones, equipment pieces, and charges you’ll need to make a higher tiered good piece of equipment you want to keep.
Here is a simple item cost for taking what you will need to take an item from tier 3 to tier 1o
To create one tier 10 item(from tier 3):
Requires 6561 fusion stones (~13,122,000 gold)
Requires 6561 pieces of tier 3 equipment (~10,386,063 gold)
Requires 9841 Arcane Transmutor charges (19,700 diamonds or 2,953 days of dailies)
Don’t let this table scare you too much. Yes if you do the calculations of how much diamonds cost in real world dollars, it can be frightening. However, I personally have had guild mates who’ve never spent a real world dime, and have achieved tier 10 equipment in around 1-2 months. There are many finer subtleties to the game than just transmuting, and it’s hard to accurately place value and determine a static value-x-time chart for every player to do this. Simply, there is just too wide a window of variables to accurately nail this down as to what it will cost you in time, fun, play time, and money(whether real or in-game gold).
As you probably are wondering now, yes, there is a lot of factors that come into play when you consider all the different types of stats in the game that are possible to add to fusion stones. There are rules to what can and cannot be added. You can’t have identical stats, for one thing. I will save the details on stats for another time though.
The number of tiers is also expected to be unlimited. I say expected because to date(a year after the game started), the first server has just made the first tier 11 piece of equipment. I don’t even think anyone of my server has tier 11 yet.
I know I went through a lot of repetition and over explaining with this guide, but I feel it is important when trying to grasp the concept and rules for the first time. Many people have woes about the process, and it can be confusing when trying to get help from multiple sources and reason it on your own.
Garfield Meets Runes of Magic
This was posted by a creative player on the official RoM forums.
Runes of Magic Diary: To the Tune of "I've beeeen working on the RAILrooaaad…"
Posted by Jeremy S. in Gaming Tuesday, 24 November 2009 23:45 No Comments
My Character’s adventures through RoM…
Is Inaccessiblity Choking the MMO Market?
Posted by Jeremy S. in Gaming Monday, 23 November 2009 15:54 3 Comments
I recently downloaded the Allods beta. I still haven’t recieved an email with a beta key, but I wanted to get the game installed and patched so I’d be ready to jump in. I installed to get a corrupt file warning that fixing didn’t correct. I uninstalled and tried 2 more times before redownloading. The new download was the same. I checked the forums to find a large thread that had various techno-babble that “might” help solve this problem for some people. It is now the next day and I’m redownloading so I can attempt one of these manual fixes.
This is a typical scenario for many free to play MMORPGs.
For me and some of my past game jounalism acquaintances, we always loved to discuss the business side of the gaming industry as much as the games themselves. I came to a personal belief that one of World of Warcraft’s biggest claims to fame is its accessibility. The game is extremely approachable by many demographics.
I found that playing WoW was about as easy as playing a game on my Playstation 2. I just pop the disc in and I’m practically up and running. It had me thinking of all the people that aren’t playing other MMOs because they take more effort on the users part. Many people aren’t some determined MMO lot that is accustomed to this, or even understand how MMOs work at all. They just know that it’s a game that looks fun and would like to try it.
I consider myself to be averagely skilled with computers and am still reaching a frustration level cap with getting Allods to work.
Runes of Magic, my current favorite game, is not without this problem. We see new posts from new players daily on the official forums with errors and other problems just getting the game started.
Two good friends of mine, who aren’t really MMO players as much as they are video game players, loved WoW but they’ve told me they want stuff to work period. If they are buying a game, if it doesn’t work it’s total and utter useless junk to them. These are guys who’ve owned every gaming system imaginable and have played PC games for over 10 years.
I played the Vanguard trial over a year ago. I had extensive problems and confusion over Sony’s Station.com site with registration, getting ID codes, and the like. Personally I went through it and loved the game, and plan on playing in the future, but I’m one of those determined type that will go the extra mile and know how to.
MMOs in general are not always as easy to play as console games. Adding a flood of free to play MMOs with constant corrupted file problems can immediately make a persons decision of whether they will ever play that game or not.
Have you had mainly friendly experiences with MMOs? What games do you think do a great or poor job with handling accessibility?
Should companies start beefing up tech support and waiting longer to put out well tested downloads, and making user experience smoother and more easily understood. Or is this too fine a line where people have it too easy and just need to put the work in, if they want to play?
Alganon First Impressions: Human Soldier to Level 8
Posted by Jeremy S. in Reviews Thursday, 19 November 2009 01:21 5 Comments
The Alganon beta is very laggy at times. This is no doubt exacerbated by my bad wireless connection. Even though I was getting booted, and had to slow down my progression due to lag, It was a good experience. After 8 levels, I was able to get many quests under my belt, study a few skills, if that’s what they are calling it because there are other skills that you get through leveling, and delved into crafting a bit all while seeing a good sized chunk of the extremely large starting zone.
My first 4 levels were filled with acquainting myself with the game and world. Creating a character seems average to any other MMORPG. Not super in-depth, but not shallow either. You can pick hair, face, all that jazz. Unique is the family names you choose from. Each race has 5 families to choose from. These are an attempt to help group players to other like-minded players. Each family is related largely to one field of combat or study. There’s an adventuring family, a crafting family, and so on.
I took a human soldier which starts me in Asheran Forest. It’s a gigantic zone, and has the most pleasantly diverse terrain I’ve ever seen. The layout for all the terrain seems natural, full, varied, and never gives a feeling of repetition(Hey I saw that exact shape and size boulder 2 kilometers back). There are some nice animations with swarms of bugs, tree tops gently swaying in the breeze, and other little incidental novelties that actually felt like it brought the world more to life. This zone is also immense. I could only hazard a guess that it may be like taking the zone Stormwind, from WoW, and quadrupling it in size. It’s a colorful world. It has a cartoon-ish look, but high texture and water details make it look sharper, more focused, and a bit less cartoon-y than WoW.
Quests are standard, nothing new here. fetch, kill, find are the norm. Tutorial based quests will get you accustomed to the controls, and your surroundings. There’s a built in quest tracker, to find where you need to go. Some may think this takes away immersion or is too easy. For a first time player I found it very helpful, as the zone is huge and easy to get lost in.
I clicked my study icon to get started with what I could. It’s a time based skills system that lets you select from about 3 studies after character creation, and as you study, more will open up. I found it fine. I started with bladesmanship, then went to crafting related studies. I was only level 5 when I did the novice craftsmen which completed within one play session. It opened up specific craft related studies such as natural oils, alloy, etc… I chose alloy, and suddenly it’s taking 24 hours to get that study. I felt that it was a huge jump from the first level of studies I took. I am not at all familiar with EVE and its time-based skills, so I will have to have some more…uh, time with this part of Alganon.
My first 5 levels kept me pretty close to the starting area, and then the quests lowly moved me further down a road to the town of Greenvale. At level 6 I found out I could have already been crafting at level 1. So I jumped in, asked developer chat a few questions and got started. There’s honestly not much I can say beyond “If you’ve played WoW, you know everything you need to know about Alganon crafting”. It doesn’t just look the same, you’ll feel like you’re playing WoW at times, if not for the graphical differences, with all the similar movements you’ll be going through.
Crafting is the same system used in WoW. It looks like they ripped it out of WoW, put it in Alganon, and just renamed items, recipes, and ingredients. That’s not saying it’s bad, I think it speaks more volume to say “It’s familiar” and I’ll get to that more in a bit. I found a blacksmith, purchased mining, and blacksmithing. I then went out mining which was a pleasurable experience. This is a one-click gathering system. You get a tracker. In my case I could locate ore, but there was a small extra perceived sense of hunting on my part. Even when you near a node, it can take some looking for. It may be behind a tree or rock, or just hiding down in a depression in the ground. It also could be nicely placed amongst some mobs requiring some skill to reach if you are equal or even above the mobs level. Some clicks landed me copper, limestone, and sometimes a jewel along with the others. The most I ever received from one node was 2 copper, 1 limestone, and 1 jewel.
There’s a vendor in town selling some reagents that you’ll need to go along with the ore when crafting. I also found, with the beginning recipes, you’ll quite often also need to refine the ore and get some drops from mobs to create the item(s).
From level 7-8 I went on more quests which sent me further along the zone. I was done crafting for the time being, after feeling used to it, and I wanted to see more of the great graphics in the zone. There are plenty of hubs with lots of NPC’s. Many of them just stand there, but they all have voiced greetings for you. The houses are nice. I always love many buildings you can go into. Just like the terrain, the buildings are varied in size and shape. Asheran Forest lends itself to log cabins and small wooden houses. There’s a few 2-story houses that I explored. This is where the camera flaws really showed up.
I found myself constantly zooming in and out, whether in the forest or in town. The trees are so lush with wide tops, and the camera doesn’t snap below them, so any trees in your way will have to be avoided by zooming in. Same goes for inside a building. There seems to be an attempt at camera snapping, as you enter a buildings doorway then turn right or left it snaps to the characters back just fine, and you can easily rotate around to get the interiors layout. But many times, especially in the multi-storied buildings you have to zoom in to avoid staring at the floor above you.
The most unique and exciting feature in the game, to me, is the Library. It’s simply defined as an in-game repository of information on everything in the game. It’s not simple though, as it has everything. If WoW had this, it would be like taking Thottbot, and WoW Armory, smashing them together, and then letting you access that info all without alt+tab’ing out. There’s also a slew of Alganon world lore to look up. It’s a very nice interface.
Apart from crafting being identical to WoW, the difference for Alganon is how they plan to get items into players hands. They’ve said that they plan on balancing the really good weapons and armor between crafting and drops. You’ll be able to get that Uber Green Glowing Demon Sword+1 from a series of challenging crafting tasks, or from a challenging raid. It sounds like they are trying to create a dichotomy of equality. That is to say, it seems they’re trying to create equal feelings of work and time invested for both the crafter and raider after the same item. I’m very curious to see how this plays out. Unfortunately no instances are available in the beta. Any real world testing will have to wait until after the game’s launch.
To sum up, I felt the game was very polished visually. The server snags and lags quite a bit right now, but that’s to be expected in beta this young. It plays very much like WoW in many respects. I felt torn whether I should dislike this or not. You could almost disassociate yourself from the graphics and you could simply believe you found some brand new zones in WoW. I never used the term WoW clone before so I do not use it lightly now. The interfaces from crafting looked ripped directly from WoW, as does a few other interfaces, and also the way you interact within those interfaces. Ultimately it doesn’t make me dislike the game in the least. It’s not a bad thing to be a clone. And it really has it’s own look graphically. At the end of reaching level 8, I find that apart from the knowledge base called the Library, there isn’t much in the way of innovation. I don’t need innovation when a game uses many approved standards of play that agree with me. I find myself wanting to play more to see how beautiful the rest of the world is, if nothing else, and to see how the crafting implementation will affect the player base and my enjoyment level of crafting.