Sigurd
Banned
- Joined
- Dec 25, 2003
- Messages
- 911
Now I finally have ToA on the US servers, I thought it might be helpful to people still stuck in the monkey-run servers if I answered a few questions on the expansion... first I'll cover a few pros and cons of this second expansion pack...
Pros:
Graphics - the trees in particular have been changed for the good, and basic landscapes spruced up once more, to the point where I almost got lost in camelot hills because of the differences
New Areas - in particular Stygia (the Egyptian based area) but all of them really, are beautiful, and make the original DAoC areas look like a child's cartoon.
Underwater - being able to swim underwater is fun, for a small price you get a potion with 3 charges that last 30 minutes (these enable you to breathe underwater until the timer runs out) and increase swim speed too. Fighting is... different... you'll have to fiddle with your view a bit.
Races - as a lot of websites already have the stats listed, I won't go into those. The looks of these races, however, are of a high standard - the Frostalf I was a little disappointed with as there is only one decent face (imo) and the females look like muppets, but the Shar are nice - think Darth Maul with more spikes - and the Half Ogres were a great suprise... easily the best looking of all "big" races, something which is very hard to tell from screenshots (yes their faces are ugly, but they're half-ogre... it's not like you'd expect an ogre to win Mr. Universe) and the animations, especially for the Half Ogre are great - so nice that I found myself wishing I didn't need armour with my new mercenary, as he looked better without.
Travelling - there are many new options to travel in ToA - boat, shark, free genie teleport and supposedly flying mounts, which I've yet to come across. Sharks can be found in all of the main ToA towns, underwater next to the docks. I've yet to use one myself, but they're supposedly very useful. Boats are rarely used for basic travel between lands in ToA, their chief purpose is to be used to get from SI to ToA and the Haven in ToA to one of the main towns, which all have genie teleporters (called djinn or something pretentious) these teleporters are great, because they allow you to teleport between the main ToA towns or to your frontier portal keep free of charge - and without a load screen (this doesn't mean this is instant, it still takes a bit of time to load)
Cons:
Difficulty - this is DAoC on hard mode. Nothing in ToA is easy, or quick - journeying alone anywhere can be dangerous, even within sight of the towns. Expect to spend a lot of gold buying back con...
Artifacts - they look great, they are great, but damn are they annoying to get. First, you must find the actual artifact. This is a time consuming and dangerous process - for example, to obtain the Crocodile Tooth you must kill a chap called Itet - on allakhazam it lists him as being killable by one full group. After much imploring, I gathered a group around me and off we trundled to find Itet and other monsters for other people's artifacts. After a great deal of searching, we came across Itet. Someone said something about attacking him underwater being easier (not mentioned on allakhazam) so we swigged our water potions and jumped in... only to find one eager beaver in our group had already dashed after Itet, apparantly intent on getting the credit so he would be able to use the artifact. Itet killed him quickly, then butchered the group one by one, chasing the survivors to the nearest town, where he butchered the inhabitants and was finally killed by a high level NPC guard and several groups. Now this was just to get the item - once obtained you must find three scrolls (or varients such as "journal" - each part will have Name's Notes, 1 of 3) which drop off specific kinds of monsters after some time farming. Easier, you might think? Perhaps, if you can: reach the place alive, farm mobs that are often orange/red solo, have a decent range pull, and are prepared to sit for 6 hours or so for some of the rare scrolls. Once all 3 scrolls are obtained, you may activate the artifact... providing, apparantly, you have the "credit" for the encounter - this I have not experienced yet so I can't shed any light on it. Once activated, you can begin the joyful task of levelling your artifact - an artifact usually takes an average of 2 hours per level, so that's 20 hours of fun before you can get full use out of your artifact - add that to the hours spent farming scrolls, finding the artifact etc... getting bored yet? You will...
Master Levels - Mythic went a little psycho with these. I sailed for Atlantis, arrived, ported to the Havens (one useless starter area isn't enough for Atlantis, so Mythic designed two...) and spoke to a friendly NPC - who proceeded to give me a list of what I must do to obtain Master Level 1. Perhaps the best comparison of this would be for those of you who read the Discworld series, in the Last Continent where Death asks for a list of the dangerous animals in XXXX... and gets buried under a pile of books. Yes, it really is that long. Every time I thought "ok, I'll be off to look for.." the NPC would say... "and then you can kill..." and my heart sank. You see, there are (I believe) 10 Master Levels, and each one has 10 steps, most requiring a small (or large) zerg to complete. Much merriment will be had, I imagine, from getting to ML10, by which time you will probably have hired someone to kill whoever contemplated the Trials of Atlantis expansion. I know no-one in my server who has bothered to do more than a couple of Master Level steps, most people preferring to stick to artifacts (which are, shockingly, a relatively simple goal compared to Master Levels)
Finally, there is The Lag. ToA lag, as it is lovingly known amongst our server's residents, occurs all the time. You can be running happily through a zone of purple, aggressive monsters, stuck to your bard and trusting them to see you through, when suddenly everything freezes and you regain control in time to see a 12 foot lamb-headed lunatic swinging a club at your head. This happens to at least one person every few minutes or so, although fortunately the monsters are usually low enough to pull off... if not, group wipeout, and everyone praises ToA again. At first I thought the lag was due to the new graphics, as I for one can't bare to play the game on anything less than maximum graphics quality, but after fiddling with the settings I realised... it's the lack of zones. You see, ToA is zoneless. Just like a new realm, unless you're in a dungeon (presumably) you won't need to zone, and with all these new special effects and beautiful scenary, your graphics card will be chomped rather badly. Of course it does help lowering the settings, but not as much as it should...
Overall, ToA didn't really shock me. I had heard of the bad and good parts in advance, and was prepared for nearly everything except the toughness of the monsters (I really think Mythic should fire the person who thought up invisible monsters...) and the ridiculous nature of artifacts... nontheless, it remains a must for all DAoC fans if only for the graphics/new races.
Pros:
Graphics - the trees in particular have been changed for the good, and basic landscapes spruced up once more, to the point where I almost got lost in camelot hills because of the differences
New Areas - in particular Stygia (the Egyptian based area) but all of them really, are beautiful, and make the original DAoC areas look like a child's cartoon.
Underwater - being able to swim underwater is fun, for a small price you get a potion with 3 charges that last 30 minutes (these enable you to breathe underwater until the timer runs out) and increase swim speed too. Fighting is... different... you'll have to fiddle with your view a bit.
Races - as a lot of websites already have the stats listed, I won't go into those. The looks of these races, however, are of a high standard - the Frostalf I was a little disappointed with as there is only one decent face (imo) and the females look like muppets, but the Shar are nice - think Darth Maul with more spikes - and the Half Ogres were a great suprise... easily the best looking of all "big" races, something which is very hard to tell from screenshots (yes their faces are ugly, but they're half-ogre... it's not like you'd expect an ogre to win Mr. Universe) and the animations, especially for the Half Ogre are great - so nice that I found myself wishing I didn't need armour with my new mercenary, as he looked better without.
Travelling - there are many new options to travel in ToA - boat, shark, free genie teleport and supposedly flying mounts, which I've yet to come across. Sharks can be found in all of the main ToA towns, underwater next to the docks. I've yet to use one myself, but they're supposedly very useful. Boats are rarely used for basic travel between lands in ToA, their chief purpose is to be used to get from SI to ToA and the Haven in ToA to one of the main towns, which all have genie teleporters (called djinn or something pretentious) these teleporters are great, because they allow you to teleport between the main ToA towns or to your frontier portal keep free of charge - and without a load screen (this doesn't mean this is instant, it still takes a bit of time to load)
Cons:
Difficulty - this is DAoC on hard mode. Nothing in ToA is easy, or quick - journeying alone anywhere can be dangerous, even within sight of the towns. Expect to spend a lot of gold buying back con...
Artifacts - they look great, they are great, but damn are they annoying to get. First, you must find the actual artifact. This is a time consuming and dangerous process - for example, to obtain the Crocodile Tooth you must kill a chap called Itet - on allakhazam it lists him as being killable by one full group. After much imploring, I gathered a group around me and off we trundled to find Itet and other monsters for other people's artifacts. After a great deal of searching, we came across Itet. Someone said something about attacking him underwater being easier (not mentioned on allakhazam) so we swigged our water potions and jumped in... only to find one eager beaver in our group had already dashed after Itet, apparantly intent on getting the credit so he would be able to use the artifact. Itet killed him quickly, then butchered the group one by one, chasing the survivors to the nearest town, where he butchered the inhabitants and was finally killed by a high level NPC guard and several groups. Now this was just to get the item - once obtained you must find three scrolls (or varients such as "journal" - each part will have Name's Notes, 1 of 3) which drop off specific kinds of monsters after some time farming. Easier, you might think? Perhaps, if you can: reach the place alive, farm mobs that are often orange/red solo, have a decent range pull, and are prepared to sit for 6 hours or so for some of the rare scrolls. Once all 3 scrolls are obtained, you may activate the artifact... providing, apparantly, you have the "credit" for the encounter - this I have not experienced yet so I can't shed any light on it. Once activated, you can begin the joyful task of levelling your artifact - an artifact usually takes an average of 2 hours per level, so that's 20 hours of fun before you can get full use out of your artifact - add that to the hours spent farming scrolls, finding the artifact etc... getting bored yet? You will...
Master Levels - Mythic went a little psycho with these. I sailed for Atlantis, arrived, ported to the Havens (one useless starter area isn't enough for Atlantis, so Mythic designed two...) and spoke to a friendly NPC - who proceeded to give me a list of what I must do to obtain Master Level 1. Perhaps the best comparison of this would be for those of you who read the Discworld series, in the Last Continent where Death asks for a list of the dangerous animals in XXXX... and gets buried under a pile of books. Yes, it really is that long. Every time I thought "ok, I'll be off to look for.." the NPC would say... "and then you can kill..." and my heart sank. You see, there are (I believe) 10 Master Levels, and each one has 10 steps, most requiring a small (or large) zerg to complete. Much merriment will be had, I imagine, from getting to ML10, by which time you will probably have hired someone to kill whoever contemplated the Trials of Atlantis expansion. I know no-one in my server who has bothered to do more than a couple of Master Level steps, most people preferring to stick to artifacts (which are, shockingly, a relatively simple goal compared to Master Levels)
Finally, there is The Lag. ToA lag, as it is lovingly known amongst our server's residents, occurs all the time. You can be running happily through a zone of purple, aggressive monsters, stuck to your bard and trusting them to see you through, when suddenly everything freezes and you regain control in time to see a 12 foot lamb-headed lunatic swinging a club at your head. This happens to at least one person every few minutes or so, although fortunately the monsters are usually low enough to pull off... if not, group wipeout, and everyone praises ToA again. At first I thought the lag was due to the new graphics, as I for one can't bare to play the game on anything less than maximum graphics quality, but after fiddling with the settings I realised... it's the lack of zones. You see, ToA is zoneless. Just like a new realm, unless you're in a dungeon (presumably) you won't need to zone, and with all these new special effects and beautiful scenary, your graphics card will be chomped rather badly. Of course it does help lowering the settings, but not as much as it should...
Overall, ToA didn't really shock me. I had heard of the bad and good parts in advance, and was prepared for nearly everything except the toughness of the monsters (I really think Mythic should fire the person who thought up invisible monsters...) and the ridiculous nature of artifacts... nontheless, it remains a must for all DAoC fans if only for the graphics/new races.