Wednesday, October 26, 2011

[Quest Guide] Shadow of Glory

Hello there,

Fossiker's Plains Map
Today I went back to Forsaken World. I had a friend of mine drop by my house and he asked me about the game. It seems I might get a healer to play with me once again! Anyway, I got myself back in the game and decided to do some Life in the Harbor dailies to finally reach level 50. One of these quests was 'Shadow of Glory' which was new to me and it had no auto-walk links for me to click. The only thing in the description was something about the owner of a Villa which had a painting that Henry wanted for his collection.

Cutting to the chase, here is what you need to do.

First, go to Chiffon Villa. If you are in Freedom Harbor just catch the teleporter to Fossicker's Plain.

Looking at Shadow of Glory
There you will find a ruined Villa. Enter it and there's a couple of paintings you can click on. Both give you Collection: Footpring Cards which you can instantly add since you can click the paintings again and get another copy. The Shadow of Glory collection card, however, not only allows you to finish the Life in the Harbor quest it also gives a quest of its own which takes you to Niachilo (the scholar dude in Freedom Harbor).

Once you get back to the Freedom Harbor just deliver the quest to Henry for your daily grinding and back to Niachilo which doesn't give you a follow up although he does mention there's more to learn about it.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

A status update

Hello everyone,

If anyone is following my blog you probably have noticed I haven't posted anything in awhile. There's two reasons for that. I've started a new job 1 month and 2 weeks ago which has been sucking all my energy, but in a good way. And I've also acquired Dawn of War II which has been occupying what little free time I have left. I plan on getting back to Forsaken World soon and check what new stuff is there. Until then.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

[Pets] Journeys Guide

Recently we saw introduced into the game the ability to send our pet on Journeys. Once this was implemented in the game I decided to try it out and see what was available, how it worked and what could I get out of it.

So here is how it works. When you open your Pet Panel, if your pet is recalled, you can click on a new button located on the pet frame of each of your pets (in the picture, this is marked with a number 2). You can only send out one of your pets into journeys. This means there's no profit in being a Tamer.

Once you send one of your pets in a journey he disappears from the Pet Panel and shows up on the Pet Journeys panel. The Pet Journeys panel can also be opened with the Journeys button on the Pet panel (the number 1 in the picture).

All you have to do on the Pet Journeys panel is to select one of the available Journeys and click the OK button which is next to the Recall one. It isn't showing because I already have my pet on a Journey, as you can see from the green bar with the countdown timer at the top.

Once the Journey ends you will have another button show in the Pet Journeys which says "Rewards". Click it and you will get the rewards your pet collected during its journey.

To have your pet available to you once again (i.e. be on the Pet panel) you need to press the Recall button on the Pet Journeys panel.

That's it for basic interface.

Journey Requirements
All Journeys require companion points, at least one daily try available and a certain amount of time. Some journeys also require special items.

Companion points are specific to Journeys, this means you can only spend them by sending your pet on journeys. They have no other value, as far as I know. The amount of points each journey requires is listed on a column in the Journeys list. So use these wisely. You can get more companion points by:
  • Trading Interaction points for Companion points. This is done using the exchange interface in the Pet Journeys panel. So keep that in mind when spending your companion points.
  • Spiritual Whistle or Hick's Whistle. I haven't yet acquired one so I don't know exactly how to obtain these. I'll update this post once I find out more about it.
Each Journey has a certain real time duration. This value also shows up in a column in the Journeys list.
  • Daily tries. This means you can only do this Journey this amount of times today. This value can be affected by your own daily tries on certain quests, such as Cooking Tutorial, God's Trial, etc. This is the last column in the Journeys list.
  • Pet scrolls. These are a new variety of items and are required by some Journeys. There's the following scrolls available: Pet's Trial Scroll, Pet's Elemental Scroll, Pet's Fissure Scroll.
  • Other requirements such as Explorer's Guild scrolls or Lionheart Scrolls.

Generating Interaction Points

This is a tricky one. First of all, interaction points are a per pet stat. You can check the amount of interaction points your pet has by checking the mood (marked in yellow on the picture to the right). You gain 1 interaction point every 5 minutes while your pet is summoned and only that pet gains those interaction points. This is pretty much a very good reason why you should have your pet summoned at all times.

How to do Journeys

I haven't tried them all but I've tried a few already. I will update this post as soon as I have more info on other Journeys.

First of all you should select your pet with the highest level, the best quality (between normal, green or blue) and the most Talent levels. This is because the time required for each Journey is reduced by a certain percentage based on these 3 things. You can check how much each thing affects the time of each Journey by hovering over each of the icons I signaled with the numbers 4, 5 and 6 on the picture above.

At least once a day you should do the Lone Adventure or Pet's Odyssey. I've tried the Pet's Odyssey and, just like it says on the tooltip info when you hover over it, it just gives a chance to get an Advanced Pet Essence when comparing with the rewards from the Lone Adventure. But, from my personal experience, Pet's Odyssey has a better chance to give good rewards. Here's my results:
  • 4x Lone Adventure netted 6 Newborn Energy Potions, 1x Pet Elemental Scroll
  • 4x Pet's Odyssey netted: 2x Pet Elemental Scroll, 2x Pet Fissure Scroll
As soon as you have a Pet Trial Scroll, a Lionheart Scrolls and 100 Companion Points don't even think about it. Immediately send your pet on a God's Trial Journey. The amount of experience is far greater than doing the run yourself, even with the Lionheart Scrolls and all.

What Journeys should I do on a daily basis

So, to sum it up, try to do the following Journeys on a daily basis:
  1. Pet Odyssey or a few runs of Lone Adventure to get a chance of earning Pet Scrolls
  2. God's Trial Journey. If you have the Pet Trial scroll, Lionheart scroll and 100 companion points (exchange interaction points if you need to) then do the God's Trial Journey. Plenty of experience.
  3. Run Girl Run. Do this if you require Recharging Star Shards. It's 25 companion points, so you can't do this everyday unless you get a hand on some points on top of exchanging for interaction points.



Sunday, August 7, 2011

[Profession Guide] Scavenger and Armorsmith

I finally reached level 40 and was anxious to try out two new professions. This meant that I had to freeze one I already had and pick up Scavenger and Armorsmith. I chose those two because Scavenger is necessary for Armorsmithing.

I'll cut right to the conclusion by saying that Armorsmith, unless something still eludes me, is definitely not something to have unless you have lots of Gold Coins to spend. Scavenger on the other hand is very handy for money making. And with the money you make from scavenging quest rewards or cheap items from the auction house you can make enough Gold Coins to buy the items you need.


Freezing a Job

Just like it says, freezing a job means the job will be frozen and you get a Job Point to spend wherever you want. A frozen job means you cannot gain more Job Experience but you also don't lose any progress/recipes you had for that Job. To freeze a Job you need Wisdom Fruits. As fair as I know there's only two ways to obtain these:
  • Eyrda Boutique (costs 120 eyrda leaves to buy one)
  • Certain quests and on some Achievement Trophies.
Once you have your Wisdom Fruit just open your Job interface and click the Freeze button on the bottom-right of the Job panel. After that just select the Job you wish to freeze. I chose fishing simply because it's boring and consumes too much energy too easily. Besides, there is no real profit in fishing. More so if you compare it with Botany. The only real alternative would be to freeze Mining, but since I will be needing mining once I start Jewelcrafting at level 45, that wasn't an option.


Scavenger

This is a very useful profession. You can turn green quality items (as long as they have a level requirement above 40) and blue quality items (above level 30) into useful stuff for Armorsmithing and Weaponsmithing.

Green quality items level 40-49 are turned into a random set of 2 splinters. There are 4 types of splinters:
  • Illyfue Splinter
  • Mylvada Splinter
  • Vyda Splinter
  • Tytan Splinter
Level 30-39 Blue quality items are turned into a random set of 2 splinters and 2 prisms. The Prisms have also the same name as the splinters:
  • Illyfue Prism
  • Mylvada Prism
  • Vyda Prism
  • Tytan Prism
I usually just sell at the Auction House whatever I got. I have a series of rules to set my prices. First, I always check the market to see how much I can get from an item. Then I have certain minimum prices for items. So if the market is too low I don't put them for sale. If the market is REALLY low I even buy the items and stock up. I usually put the splinters for sale between 10-20 silver each and the Prisms between 30-50 silver. This gives me a 20 silver income on greens and around 80 silver on blues. So as you can see, if I can buy blues under 60 silver and greens under 10 silver, I do it. The rest is just profit.


Armorsmithing

I will be very brief since I chose not to continue this profession. First, you have to spent 70 silver for each recipe. Each recipe (at level 1) has the following requirements:
  • 3-6 splinters of a certain type
  • 3-6 splinters of another type
  • 6 Red Quicksilver Ore
  • 10 Vigor (YES! 10!)
The recipes are not for Blue Quality items, it's for Green Items. And as far as I understand it, you have a chance at creating a Blue quality item each type you create a new item. This would put the cost, in terms of Gold Coins, for each item in the range of 66 silver up to 1 gold and 20 silver. Sure, you might do awesome stuff but I'm not sure how this profession could turn into an actual profit.

Friday, July 29, 2011

[Quest Guide] Knowledge Quiz

There is a daily which you can do 3 times a day once you reach level 3 Socialite. You can get it at Rio and it involves going to the Library, talk to Niachilo and answer one of this questions about some lore. This obviously requires a cheat sheet or some sort of nerd wish to know by heart tons of Lore about Forsaken World. If you are that kind of person, read no further. If you are like me, lazy and just want to finish dailies fast, then read on.

Once you reach Niachilo and chose to start the Quiz he will ask you the answer to a certain Story (which is numbered from 1 to 10) about a certain Theme (which is named just like one of the sections bellow). So just use the text bellow (taken from the http://www.eyrdaian.com) to check the right answer.

Abyss

  1. Revenge: To avenge his sister
  2. Into the Darkness: Shadow Dragon
  3. Portal: He got caught up in a Doomsday Cult
  4. Ghoul: Human Mage
  5. In the Darkness: A song for the lost and damned
  6. Wordplay: He is a braggart
  7. Good and Evil: View Evil
  8. Ocean: A Pirate Ship
  9. Birth: Duke of Debate
  10. Ferryman: The Third Boatman

Anecdote

  1. Frog: A frog
  2. Wrist Blade: A bandit
  3. Mob: Growth, Time, and Death
  4. Deception: a thief
  5. Foul Books: You may use magic at your will, for a price
  6. A Day: Farmer
  7. Mirror: The people who is the most beautiful woman in the world.
  8. Path of Glory: Knight
  9. Deal: Wealth and Power
  10. Dream: Day dream can not come true

Dark Sea

  1. Seasons: Worrying Is Bad For You Health
  2. Oath: No, he doesn’t.
  3. Hitman: His Lover
  4. Butterfly: Retribution
  5. Tombstone: Paradise Singer
  6. Weeping: In dark, humid swamps
  7. Charisma: She’s motivated by love
  8. Bird: berghaans and Phoenix
  9. Tangle: Things that cause us pain may also help us
  10. Half Wit: You can’t make everyone happy all the time

Inferno

  1. Seek: A sword
  2. Love: Old man and his former lover
  3. Discussion: Love can not be found,because it depends on luck
  4. Time: The past can guide the future
  5. People: We will destroy ourselves
  6. Soul Lost: A concubine
  7. The Past: Mummy
  8. Fish: He was killed by the city guards at the gate
  9. Weapon: Expectations are not always reality
  10. Blank Paper: To be left blank and untouched

Night Tale

  1. Black Cat: A supernatural entity
  2. Flesh: Human Meat
  3. Keep Secret: Dead men tell no tales
  4. Assassination: Arrogant people will be defeated by carelessness
  5. Devil: Wint
  6. Breed: Immortality
  7. Bloody Wealth: A Naga
  8. Happiness: He falls victim to chemical induced-ignorance
  9. Emir: Disrupting tradition will result in revolution
  10. Death: I enjoy what I’ve become… I can’t wait to share this gift.

Song of Daylight

  1. Beginning: A love letter
  2. Teeth: The main character
  3. Cherish: Nicolas
  4. Rabbit: A Large Wolf
  5. Day and Night: Storm Legion
  6. Mortal: Hind sight is always 20/20
  7. Glory: To Protect the Nobility
  8. A Letter: Pan
  9. Revival: Marquis of Voidcairn
  10. Blindness: Yes he does

Wanderer

  1. Thief: Light Protecting Clothes and easy hiding weapon
  2. Risk: Mole, Jackal
  3. Quest: No
  4. Prophet: Skylark , he is aware
  5. Mummy: Killed while protecting the village
  6. Treasure: To become immortal
  7. Flea: Aschir
  8. Remember Her: Killed Anna and gave the corpse to John
  9. Sin: They joined to avoid being killed
  10. Adventure Log: No He Didn’t

Whisper

  1. Mask: The blood of their companions
  2. Quotes: Earthly treasures are easier to come by than those of the heart
  3. Last One: The Bard
  4. Key Weapon: Human Mind
  5. Treasure Map: You can’t rely on a treasure map
  6. Prisoner: YES
  7. Last Opportunity: One that allows the wearer to transforms into a roach
  8. Belief: A stone statue
  9. History: Yes
  10. Unable: Get humans to stop fighting each other

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

[Quest Guide]: A Puppet Returned

This was my first special quest and I hit a snag when I found it. These quests require you to read the NPC texts carefully. Know the world and where some NPC are located. So here is a guide for this one. I found it on the Forsaken World Forum

Part 1

  1. go to a Grocer npc in freedom harbour (open map M and scroll down for Grocer npc and double click to auto route ; very easy to find Toodle the little clown on the way to the Charlie's ship)
  2. buy scissors ( Misc. the 2nd tab from goods category) - 20 soul-bronze-coins
  3. give it to Susan [Freedom Harbor 57 52, 0 -6] on the alley behind the alchemy tutor.

After that , wait around 1 min. or come back later to take the puppet
Repeat for another puppet if you see message on quests 2/3 about turning in puppets.
After you done 2nd time puppet go back to Annie from Oblivion area.
Note , not all puppets are required , Anne will need the male puppet i think, other puppets left u can store in bank if need later or delete them, I saved them in bank just in case. Later if i dont find a use of them i will delete them .

Part 2

Crab's Bauble 0/1 - After you turned in the puppet quest , for 2nd part , teleport back to Freedom Harbor , look on world map in Kalaires Plain for Lake of Clemency . Go there and kill Freshwater Crabs (lvl14-15) , the Bauble drop is random. Can be droped from 1st crab or after more than 15 crabs

Part 3

Cod Fishing ( Cod fish 0/3 ) - Bring to Anne 3 Cod.Cod fish can be bought from AH or free from Fishing job (lvl2) near Fishing tutor on that lake or from players afk shops.If you have an alt char with Fishing job i suggest you to start fish 3 cod and send them to your char when you start A Puppet Return
(mail takes 1 hour to receive it and 5 soul silver)

Part 4

A Single Lavender ( Lavander 0/1 ) - Bring to Anne 1 Lavender . Lavender ( lvl 1 botany herb) can be farmed in Kalaires Plain map , bought from AH or players shops.

Reward :
~2 gold (untradable coins)
~12k Exp
-Leff's Letter (dont know a use of this yet)

Monday, July 18, 2011

[Profession Guide] Socialite

Raising socialite skill isn't easy. I also had a hard time understanding how to get the Persuade and Intimidade skills which you should notice begin to be sort of a requirement to some quests once you reach level 20.

Raising Social Skill

In order to even learn the Persuade and Intimidate Job skills (don't confuse these with the ones you can use in NPC dialogs) you need to be a Level 3 Socialite, which is no easy task. The best way to raise social skill, which means earning social experience, is by doing the following Rio daily quests:
  • Scent of the Heart (requires level 1, gives 10 Social skill)- I haven't yet done this one. It requires a female and a male character. The female obtains a certain perfume. The male then needs to obtain the same perfume and give it to the female. Then she uses the perfume near the male character. Or something like that. As an extra benefit you learn special actions/emotions once you do this quest. One of them (kiss) is required for some quests. So I suggest doing these in a bunch
  • Wish Card (requires level 1, gives 10 social skill) - You can do these only as part of the Life in the Harbor dailies you get from Henry. Sometimes you can get lucky and get 2 or 3 in a row, but don't rely on these to do steady level up of your social skill.
  • Negotiations (requires level 2, gives 90 social skill) - You can do these by simply talking with some NPCs. It will be a major help reaching level 3.
Personally I only did Negotiations and Wish Card quests. I tried the scent of her heart but most of the times I found impatient female characters who didn't bother explaining me what to do and since I was still waiting for some real life friends to join me on Forsaken World I decided not to bother too much with it.

Persuade and Intimidade Skills


You get these skills from the Socialite Tutor.Pierre Dannika for example, which is right next to Rio. There is a catch though, which I only found out after reaching Socialite Rank 3: you need to have thirty social contribution to learn each one. That's right... social contribution. I thought I had to volunteer at the hobo Christmas dinner or something but no. There is only two ways to obtain social contribution and that's:
  • Enter instances with a party. It doesn't need to be a pre-formed party. You need to finish the instance however. And I'm not entirely sure how the social contribution points are awarded. Probably having people finish quests and stuff adds a bit more. If you do God's Trial frequently you won't have a problem with lacking social contribution.
  • Finish Quell the Elements quests with a party. Once again, I'm not sure it needs to be a party of more than 2. I still need to try this out. This quest is given in Sea of Oblivion and requires you to kill a bunch of elemental monsters (usually 20).
You can check your social contribution points by opening you character pane, then opening the Reputation pane, clicking the Personal tab and checking the Contribution value. Hovering the mouse over the Contribution gives you some help on how to get more of it and how to use it.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

[Tanking Guide] Your First Instance - Fort Rotulor


To join an instance just go to your Party Settings panel, select Fort Rotulor from the list and click apply. As you can see in the panel you can only do each instance a limited number of times per day. For example, Fort Rotulor can be done 5 times each day.

Fort Rotulor is your first instance. At level 15 you can go there and I recommend going there as soon as you feel ready. I did it at level 22 and it was just too easy. Although I would suggest going there with at least 3 items from the Defender Set (the one you get from Obsidian Shards) so you have some defense.

There's 2 bosses and only a large room with monsters. The last boss only shows up after a few minutes of entering the instance. There is nothing significant about the two bosses. A bit of AoE, specially from the last one. If you need more information on what to expect from the instance you can visit the Forsaken World Wiki which has a lot of information on this instance.

So since there is nothing to explain about the bosses I'm going straight for tanking basics. Depending on your level you'll be lacking on some skills. The first skill and most important that you will need on all instances is... a healer. I'm serious, you will need heals. If you have a Priest in your party then he is the best candidate but Vampires and Bards are good alternatives. Make sure you have a dedicated one which brings food and mana pots with him. If he starts asking for Mana Pots right after the first boss or if he keeps letting you under 50% on the first boss, then consider leaving that party and try another.

The other skills are the ones you learn from Cain, your trainer. The most important ones are:
  1. Mental Focus.
  2. Counter Strike
  3. Blessing of the Stoneman
  4. Hard Smash



Mental Focus

This is your most important buff. It grants you extra threat and has some synergies with other skills. Make sure you have this buff up all the time. If you ever start losing threat and your target starts focusing on other players it probably is because you forgot to keep Mental Focus up.
Another wonderful thing about this buff is the other buff (Fury) you gain by having it up combined with monsters attacking you.




Counter Strike
This is the skill I use most. Hard smash is good, specially if you have Mental Focus up and it's cooldown is reduced to 3 seconds but it's a bit of mana waste unless you are struggling with threat or want to do some DPS on a boss or something. For this reason only, I stick to using Counter Strike a lot more than Hard Smash. It has 3 main advantages over Hard Smash:
  1. Gives you a free stack of Fury, which is great when you want to quickly build those 10 stacks of fury.
  2. Does around 50% more damage than Hard Smash. Also, with talents, it has the same cooldown (3 seconds). pretty short cooldown.
  3. Gives you another Buff: Guardian Mode. This gives you more defense at the expense of attack. It is a direct trade of X points of defense in exchange for X points of attack. Very much worth it and something to keep at 3 stacks when doing any boss.
For mana conservation I suggest using it when Guardian Mode is about to end.

Blessing of the Stoneman
This is your typical 30 minute buff. Gives you a bit more of defense and damage reduction. Make sure to have it up, specially before a boss fight. But apart from that it's not a critical buff, like Mental Focus.

Hard Smash
A damage skill. Nothing much more to add about it. Use it whenever you want to build some quick threat or when you want to bring a monster down faster.

A Last Note
Make friends with the good healers you find and also good and friendly players. Good Damage Dealers are hard to find too. They will be the ones you want to poke to join your party when you are online.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Jobs, Vigor and Energy


To learn new Jobs in Forsaken World you need Job Points. You get these by following main quests and at a certain point you get one Job point as quest reward. You will get a total of 6 Job points as you level up.

Your first three Job points come from talking to Alberti the Job Tutor. He will give you a quest which rewards 2 Job Points. You will need to answer correctly to 2 questions he makes in order to get the third Job point. The correct answers are always the bottom choices. The next Job point you get at level 20 after following the main quests until General Sutherland sends you to talk to Marrick in order to reach another map zone (Sea of Oblivion).

You can spend these Job points in the professions recommended by the New Player tutorial (Botany, Cooking and Alchemy), completing the quests the Rosemason gives you. But you can ignore them and save the Job points for other professions. If you are indeed a new player, such as me, I honestly recommend sticking to these professions. They give you the basic consumables you will need to keep leveling.

There's an excelent Guide for professions on the Forsaken World Forums, made by cashholder11. I really recommend checking this out.

You can learn Botany, Cooking and Alchemy from the Tutors at Freedom Harbor's Craftsman Fair (check picture for location on the map).



Gathering Job: Botany and Fishing

Botany is a simple farming Job. You will walk around the world and collect plants. These are a good source of Player Money if you sell them at the Auctioneer. So, if you are a noob like me, don't forget to gather those plants once you come across them. Use some to get experience in alchemy, if you wish to keep/learn that profession and sell the rest at the Auction House.

Unlike World of Warcraft, where fishing was quite boring and demanded your full attention, in Forsaken World you can just go to a fishing zone and click the fishing skill. Just sit back and watch your character fish wonderful things. But there is a catch, of course. Each fishing will cost you Energy, so you can't just fish forever.

Crafting Jobs: Alchemy and Cooking

These are your professions for creating consumables: potions, food and drinks. Alchemy makes potions which you can use during combat, such as mana or health restoration. Cooking makes things to restore mana or health outside of combat. At the first levels I recomend using the mana and health 50.000 restore potions you receive on your first 5 levels. These will despawn after just 1 week and I doubt you'll be going through them under that time unless you are a really hardcore player. Still, you should get familiar with crafting potions and food for your later leveling since you will need a certain Job Level to learn some recipes. In order for you to avoid some crafting pain later on I really recommend that you keep doing some crafting while leveling so you don't fall back too much.

Vigor and Energy

Vigor is used to make things, so it's a vital part for all crafting Jobs in Forsaken World. Once you access the crafting window of one of your crafting professions, which you can access by clicking on your Job icon on the top-right of your screen and clicking on the crafting profession button you wish, you can start doing any of those recipes you have. For each one you spend ONE vigor point. You will be limited daily by the amount of vigor you have and how fast you can get it.

Energy, is used for gathering professions: fishing, botany, mining. You consume 1 energy for every plant you collect or every time you hook your fishing pole. You can get more than one item each time you collect a plant, though.

Since you restore vigor/energy at a rate of 12 per hour while playing and 3 per hour while offline (with a limit of 8 hours offline), you will restore at least +24 vigor/energy up to +264 per day (if you played 24 hours, of course). So far I haven't seen an automatic logout mechanism, so there's nothing preventing you from leaving the game open while online and restore your vigor/energy to full in just a few hours.

I've read that there's also the possibility of vigor/energy restoration potions, but I haven't been able to encounter these yet.

Happy crafting and gathering!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Gear, Obsidian (Ruby, etc) Shards and Identifying Items

As soon as you get to level 15 and open your Reward Box you'll get 12 Obsidian Shards. Well, you might wonder what they are for and it took me a while to find out. They are used to BUY gear. If you play World of Warcraft, they work almost like Badges/Emblems. To buy the gear you need to go to Freedom Quay, the Pier in the south-east side of Freedom Harbor, just before Charlie's boat.



Shards

Beware, you will also spend Soul Coins to purchase the gear. For Obsidian gear you will need 4 shards for each piece of gear and you can get: Chest, Hands, Legs, Waist and Boots. There's 3 vendors: Beginner, Standard and Advanced. The beginner, which is the one you will first talk to, sells gear for Obsidian, Ruby and Sapphire Shards, you can select the type of shard from the Tabs on the left side of the vendor window. I recommend getting the gear as soon as you can. These are excellent gear pieces and will give you a serious boost to your damage and defenses. One catch though, to take full advantage you will need to use Scroll of Sages to unveil the hidden attributes. You can still wear unidentified gear but you will not gain any of the hidden attributes. You will notice an item has hidden attributes because it will say "Unidentified".

Gear Identification

One thing you need to know about Gear identification. The stats discovered by your identification scroll are random. This means that you can re-identify gear. I haven't done it yet, but you get an interface to do so at your Blacksmiths and Armor smiths in Freedom Harbor. To use a scroll you simply right-click it and then use the mouse pointer to click the item you need to identify.

As far as I know there's only 3 ways to obtain a Scroll of Sages:
  • The Fishing Event, which requires you to visit Nousen the Big-Eye in Fossicker's Plain. I believe this is the only way to farm the scrolls.
  • Quests. You get them as reward for some quests but this is far from a decent place to get these scrolls when you need them.
  • Buy them from other players, which includes using the Auction House.

Armor sets and Gear Choices

You will notice that the items from the Shard vendor have special attributes when you equip more than one item of each set. Use this to plan your gear choices. You will get Chest at level 10, Pants at level 12, Waist and Gloves at level 14, Boots at level 15. This repeats at level 20 for Ruby shards. Meaning you will get the Ruby Shards Chest at level 20, Legs and Shoulders (the new item!) at 22, Gloves and Waist at 24 and Boots at level 25. So if you are getting close to level 20, you might want to skip buying the Chest (since you'll get it as soon as you hit 20) and buy the rest of the Obsidian set. In order to maximize your set bonuses you should only switch to the next set if you have at least 2 pieces of it, so you don't lose any set bonuses for nothing. This is only valid, of course, if you have the full set and just want to upgrade to the next tier one.

The most important stat for Protectors, as far as I understand them so far, is Defense. This is equivalent to Armor in World of Warcraft and judging by some very basic tests I did it has a huge effect on how much damage you get hit for. For example, losing 20% of my armor resulted in getting hit for something around 30 instead of 3. So when upgrading sets you should also make sure you get that 3-set bonus as far as possible without losing the 3-set bonus from your previous gear set.

That's all about Gear and Shards. Check out my next post coming very soon!

Monday, June 20, 2011

Beginning a Protector

Hello,

I recently decided to give Forsaken World a try since I had to depart from my beloved World of Warcraft due to my demanding job, all my side projects and not wanting to spend €12 a month on a game I was getting tired of. So I started my first character, a warrior which is now level 19 and a mage which is level 11. I started playing with my cousin and since he created a healer I just felt it was my duty to create a TANK.

In this blog I will tell my story and the challenges I came across while venturing as a complete n00b in the lands of the Forsaken World.

In Forsaken World universe, probably because it is still new, you don't find a lot of HELP like you have in games such as... World of Warcraft. Most of the help information around the internet is spread around dubious forum posts, general purpose blogs or fan sites which are too general specially since I'm just a beginner. So this is why I decided to start this.

So here we go, let us make a mighty Protector in the Forsaken World. We start in the server selection screen. You can select any server but one with a low PING is probably better. If you are playing with friends you need to make sure to start all on the same server.



After selecting the Server you need to log in. If you don't have an account you can easily create one. Once you have logged in you are presented with the character creation screen. Here you just press "Create" on the bottom-left of your screen and you're ready to begin. Protectors are unique to a special race called Stonemen and as the name suggests they appear to be made of stone (which is handy for a TANK). Also in the initial screen, before pressing the "Create" button, you should be aware of the REALM selection list. This is a list of REALMS on the server you previously picked. You also need to select the same server as your friends if you wish to venture together. You can still invite to parties and talk to them, but you won't be able to see them in the world and as far as I know you won't be able to fight the same creatures.

Creating a character is simple and doesn't take much time if you aren't too picky on how your character looks. I believe the random button deliberately tries to make your character as ugly as possible. Once you have created your character you return to the character selection screen where you can select one and press "Start".

Two things you need to be aware when you begin:
  1. The amazing auto-walk which, in my opinion, is an awesome thing specially if you are like me and believe your time playing should be doing things instead of just walking from place X to place Y to deliver a quest. Nothing like a toilet break while your character goes from one quest zone to another.
  2. The start up tutorial is very good and will give you a decent overview of things. So if you're like me and skip a lot of quest texts and stuff, be a bit patient and make an effort to read the tutorial pop-ups and info text just to get a grip on the game basics.

One more thing about the auto-walk. It tries to find the shortest path between you and your selected objective. To activate this you can:
  1. Open the map (M key) and click anywhere on it.
  2. Mouse over a quest, wait for the pop-up text to appear and then click any of the bright-green text that shows up. Beware that it can either be your objective or the person that gave you the quest.
That's all for now. Keep doing the initial quests until you are level 10. After that things get a bit trickier and there is a lot of information to absorb. But I will leave that for following posts.

Enjoy the Game