Archeage

Archeage is an upcoming F2P open world sandbox MMO that is currently in closed beta
http://www.archeagegame.com/en/



Ive been wanting to play this MMO for awhile and i got into the 2nd closed beta event that they had on the weekend
I started writing this post when i was level 11 but my opinion kept changing as i played and i spent much more time playing this than i normally would, almost all my free time this weekend went into playing this otherwise i wouldve had this post out much sooner
I ended up at level 20 so here are my impressions of the game

Keep in mind that the screenshots here are taken at medium/low (so that my computer could get 50ish fps under normal conditions), on high or better the game would look much better

Faction/Race
There are 2 factions, each faction has 2 races, the factions start on 2 different large islands
Your choice of faction effects the main quest story, your starting island, and who your enemy is (the opposite faction)
Your choice of race effects a tiny racial bonus (each race has a different one, its a very small difference), your starting city, the language you speak, and some of the story quest, different races also start with different mounts (but any race can get any mount later)
You can also travel to any city/island even to the enemy factions cities, but anyone from the enemy faction can attack you while you are in enemy territory and you cant communicate with any of them until you learn their language (everything they type is converted into gibberish until you learn the language they speak which is a complicated/high level process)

Classes
You start out by choosing 1 of 6 "classes"
Battlerage: this "class" is similar to a warrior
Sorcery: basically a mage
Archery: obviously a ranger/archer bow user
Vitalism: a priest type "class" that heals and buffs
Shadowplay: basically a rogue
Occultism: which is like a warlock or necromancer, it debuffs and deals damage over time, can also life steal and summon undead

Now this isnt your actual class, that why i put class in quotes, those "classes" are just a pool from which you chose skills as you level up, at level 5 you can chose another "class" to add a pool of skills which lets you mix and match "classes", and at 10 you can add a third "class"

So for me i started with battlerage since i wanted to play a tank that steals life (i planned to get occultism later), then at level 5 i was given the option of those but it added in 4 support "classes" to pick from
Defense: standard tanking skills like aggro generation, health/armor buffs and some self healing too
Songcraft: which is like a bard from games that have bards, it can create auras that buff groups
Witchcraft: which disables and knocks back enemies, can also break disabling effects
Auramancy: which is really weird and probably the most useful one, its like a hybrid of the other 3, it has a bit of everything but isnt the best at any of them, but it also has a blink ability in it which makes up for it

I picked battlerage and saw defense at level 5 so i picked that, then at 10 i picked occultism, you can change your skills around, you can reset the ones you already have for 10 silver per skill point, so if you have 5 points in battlerage it costs 50 silver to reset that "class" so that you can redistribute those points either back into battlerage in a different way or into 1 of your other 2 "classes"
You can also change yout class completely for a fee based on level (it starts off low) but when you do the thing you switch to starts at level 10, so like if i wanted i could drop defense (which is level 20) and take auramancy which would start at level 10 even though im level 20, so completely switching your class is possible but you will have the skills of someone that is level 10 if you do (with the items of someone that is w/e level you are when you do this), because of that i would switch classes completely after level 15
All of those combine together to give you your class, so in my case with battlerage, defense, and occultism my class is a doomlord, if i picked vitalism instead of occultism i would be a paladin, theres over 100 combinations of this so theres over 100 classes


The skill trees arent trees either, if you have the required level to get something you can get it, you dont need to get prerequisite skills, there are passive skills that need a certain number of skill points spent in a tree before you can get them though, but its still not a tree

Combat


Its a tab targeting system, its like GW2 though where you dont need a target to activate stuff (and you can move while doing most things, unless it specifically says movement breaks it like for channeled spells) and where it feels like your hits are actually hitting even though you dont have to aim or anything
Some classes do have a doge skill or the ability to jump/teleport a few meters away

There is a very complex combo system, some skills will have an effect on an enemy, for example a slow, then after that there are skills that can combo with that slow that will make the skill do more damage and possibly even add another effect (like a stun)
It took me a long time to get the hang of the combo system, if i play another class i would have to go through the same process of getting the hang of that classes combos
Some of them are obvious, but some combo with other "classes" so sometimes you wont see a combo

Id say its really good for tab targeting, way better than ESO, on par with GW2 id say the combo system is better than gw2s combo system, and the combo system puts it over wildstars combat in complexity but still not as good in terms of action, so in someways its better then wildstars combat in others its not as good

Death has an EXP penalty, you can get some exp back with gold (the price depends on level) by praying at an altar, before level 10 you can die as much as you want with no penalty at all

Questing


Most of the quests are your standard type of delivery and kill quests, but they have little details which make it more fun somehow, like you have to deliver a mare to a stable and when you do the mare shows up in a basket on your back and you walk slower idk why but that made that quest feel better, normally a delivery quest where you walk slower is a pain in the ass, but with that little detail (and the fact that the place you had to go was close) it didnt feel like a chore to do, there are others too, like you have to collect wood for someone but you actually chop trees down, and you can see other players chopping trees down, the trees actually fall like they should, that little detail makes that collection quest feel more real and makes it better imo
Nothing is instanced, when someone does something for a quest it effects everyone else, so you might have to wait for something to respawn or reset for you to do it



There are group events, called elite quests, the only 1 ive done had hundreds of people, i was in a 50 man raid for it (which is the maximum you can have in a raid) and there were 3 other raids there, 2 of the others were also full, and its not the type of event that needs hundreds of people, a single party could do it, so it lasts like 5 seconds, i guess its because of the weekend beta and how everyone is just starting out
Quests like this are tied to in game time, game time is faster than real time
1 minute in the game is 10 seconds in real time
6 mins game time = 1 min real time
6 hours game time = 1 hour real time
So a full day in game is 4 hours in real time

Story

The main quest has a story that is presented to you in cut scenes like GW2 did, but its more like just 1 still picture for each story bit that it zooms in or out on where as gw2 would move between pictures, the narrator in those is voice acted and is the only time you get voice acting for quests, they feel like placeholders for an actual cut scene because the narrator will just describe locations and actions to you rather than showing those locations or actions, but i dont think they are placeholders

The story itself is pretty good though, just wish it was presented better, sometimes theres not even a epicure, its just a black screen with the narrator talking, im not sure if my game bugged out of if its actually like that

Mounts/Boats/Gliders/Vehicles
You get a mount at level ~7, a boat at level ~8, and a glider at level ~13 the quest to get a mount involves raising the mount from a baby to an adult, its not as cool as it sounds, but its still not bad

You can call your mount whenever you want and can jump on and off it whenever you want, it can even be out while your in combat, your mount acts like an npc while its out, other players can get on it, it can wear armor and gain exp, it has its own set of skills that unlock as it levels up, its kindve like a pokemon, the one you start with cant fight, but you can attack while you ride it (not with your normal skills, but with a special mounted attack that deals bonus dmg and knocks the enemy down)
Also mounts will follow you at all costs, ive seen mine swim underwater to stay with me, or dive off cliffs to keep up while i fly on the glider, but they dont teleport to you as far as ive seen, if it cant follow you for w/e reason it will just unsummon itself
You can have multiple mounts at a time but you can only have 1 of them out at a time, when you get new ones they have to be raised from a baby and will always start at level 5
There is a reason for having multiple mounts, donkeys move faster while carrying a trade pack (which ill talk about in the economy section below) but are slower than other mounts for just riding around normally


The boat can be summoned next to water the same way a mount can be, its a physical object that exists in the world, you can climb on it and on other player's boats, you can crash them into eachother, you can ride on other player's boats (without even getting in, just stand on it) and they can take damage/can be attacked, they can also be stolen but you can just unsummon the boat if you see someone stealing it (its still yours, they can just drive away with it)
It has its own handling too, you cant just turn, you have to row it and wait for it to get into position (your first boat is a crappy row boat, im sure better boats have better handling)
It seems to exist forever which ive never seen an MMO do before, i left mine on the shore after crossing a lake, i went back to that same area (not intentionally i finished what i was doing and was just heading back to town and happened to go back the same way i came) and saw it sitting there 20 mins later
Normally in MMOs stuff that players summon vanish after 5-10 mins but boats and even mounts seem to be real objects that exist in the world as if they were put there all along
Higher level boats can have weapons like cannons on them and other equipment like a telescope for seeing other boats, and scuba gear for diving underwater, and you can fight other players in ship to ship combat on the sea, theres a huge sea that you can sail in with unmarked islands to discover, the whole area is open pvp
It even has a light on the front that you can turn on and off and it actually does make seeing at night easier
In fact you can turn any light on and off, the lights all around towns, other players boat lights, i spent 10 mins going around a small town to turn off every light just to see what would happen (either nothing happens or another player turned on 1 of the lights i turned off and ruined it)

Your mount and boat can exist at the same time and you can even put your mount on your boat and have it ride the boat with you

The glider you get at level 13 from a quest sucks, it can barely turn and is slower than your mount, at level 20 you can upgrade it to a much better one (faster than your mount and able to gain height sometimes) for 1 gold 50 silver and 75 labor (ill talk about currency below)
Also it has a limited flight time, 2 minutes, after 2 mins it stops working and if you are in the air when that happens you drop from the sky, i found this out the hard way (i didnt notice the timer in the buff area)
Gliders dont work properly when your out at sea, strong sea winds blow you around so its harder to control, but you can glide to an enemies boat and fight them on the deck

You can craft a car, but its really hard and expensive to do, the cars are like boats in that they physically exist in the world, they handle like you would expect cars to handle
Also you can flip them

All of this makes mounts/boats/cars feel like real things rather than just a movement speed buff

Community/Crime
People are surprisingly nice, im genuinely shocked at how nice they are, faction chat is the global chat, and it is what you would expect, people arguing and complaining, but outside of that people are willing to help eachother
The way the game handles who gets credit for killing a mob is dumb, its the old school way of the first person/party to deal damage to an enemy claims that that enemy as theirs and anyone else that deals damage to it is ignored for quest purposes, but people will party up when near a boss mob that is required for quest progression, in my experience with other games that have this system people will try to just steal the mob asap, but here people are actually cooperating to get things done


I have no idea what im doing, but 2 ships full of people sailing out to sea has got to be something cool right

I was just wondering around doing quests and came upon a group of people (like 30ish) that were on 2 different boats (higher level boats called clippers) i hadnt seen a clipper before so i rowed over to it in my scrubby rowboat to check it out and when i jumped onto their ship they invited my to their guild and raid which i just joined cause w/e its a beta weekend event guilds dont matter and asked what they were planning, they just answered with "murder" so i had no idea what was going on or where we were going but i was like ok i guess ill just go with this, i can recall back to my quest area for free whenever i want if things go poorly or if its boring
We ended up sailing across the sea where we had a ship to ship pvp battle it was our 2 ships vs 2 other ships which was really fun (i was severely underleveled for this, but managed to not die and even stole the enemies boat for a bit) we won that we and continued sailing to the main pvp island where we only encountered a few players which just ran away in fear of our group, i later found out they were just doing a trade route (which ill talk about in the economy section below) to get gold for the guild so i didnt get anything for helping, though later on i was able to use the guild farm land (which ill talk about in the farming section below) so it was worth it, even if i didnt get that it was still worth it just for the fun of that ship to ship battle

The best part about the community, and the reason i made a section for community, is the player ran trials, the game has a legal system thats ran by players, you can turn on a frenzy mode by hitting ctrl+f, and in that mode you can attack anyone even your own faction, steal anything, but doing so means you commit a crime and if a player reports that crime you get crime points, at 50 crime points your next PvP death sends you to a trial where 5 players are randomly selected to be a jury (you need to be level 30 and opt in for jury duty to be on a jury) and will decide if you are guilty or innocent
The punishment is jail time, the time you spend in jail is determined by your crime points, so more points = more time, ive seen as little as 3 mins in jail and as much as 432 minutes in jail
If you are found guilty you are teleported to a prison, in jail you cant use skills but you can talk to other players that are in jail you can escape from the prison too if you want but you still wont be able to use skills even after you escape so the only reason to escape is if you want to craft/harvest while waiting for your jail sentence to end



Almost everyone is found guilty, its a guilty until proven innocent system
If your crime points reach 300 you become a pirate and are an enemy to everyone, even NPCs in your own faction, there is a pirate island someone in the sea where you will be accepted though

Housing

Most house are still under construction as players gather resources

You cant get a house unless you are pay a monthly subscription (which is called being a patron), but you can buy that with gold, its not in the beta yet so i dont know how expensive it would be but its probably super expensive

Houses can be placed in housing areas, they arent instanced, housing areas are all over the world, the smallest house takes 15 gilda stars, 200 stone and 200 wood to fully build, you have to pay taxes to keep your land
If you put it in a PvP area the tax is determined by whoever owns that territory, yeah you can own territories, if you put it in the non-pvp area the tax is really low for level 30+ players but would be hard for low level players

You can put crafting stations/chests in your house, as well as a farm next to it, farms let you grow stuff for crafting (ill talk more about farming in the farming section below)

Economy/Currency/Items
The game has 4 types of currency

1. Gold, this is your standard gold, you earn it with quests and from selling items/doing trade routes, it buys most things

2. Gilda Stars, these are earned from story quests/trade routes, they buy speciality items from mirage island, these items are generally very powerful/high level or just cool looking

3. Honor Points, this is gained from killing players from the enemy faction in a pvp area, you can buy top tier mats, weapons, armor and mounts with honor points but they are expensive

4. Labor Points, labor is the most important currency and its not even really a currency, you get 5 labor every 5 minutes while youre online, its used to craft everything and to identify items/open loot bags, its used to harvest/gather resources as well, its more like a fatigue system than a currency but i count it as a currency because you spend it like one (like 2 iron and 3 stone costs 10 labor for example)


Mobs dont drop items, they will very rarely drop a rare item which is sometimes an upgrade to your stuff but most of the time they just drop coin bags instead, these coin bags replace junk items/white items that mobs normally drop, the ones you would sell for gold anyway, so it technically saves a step, but the problem is that they take labor to open, 2 labor per bag at level 20 so you will never gain labor points if your doing quests and opening these bags, in fact you can lose labor from just opening bags the 5 labor per 5 mins isnt always enough to support the bag opening
This means you can never harvest resources or craft items, the only way to do it is to leave your game running while your doing something else and gain that 5 labor while you arent playing (since you only get it while online)
The game wont kick you for being afk so it seems like this is what the devs intend people to do, but i think its really stupid, getting rid of the labor requirment on those bags would help a lot, but you would still want to leave your game running so i feel like they should just redesign the system completely
You can also level your mount while afk by auto-running in circles, so thats what i would be doing right now if this wasnt a beta that was ending in a few hours, i would have my comp running the game with my donkey running in circles to get labor points and a higher level donkey when i get home
There is also another major problem with labor points that i will get into in the business model section below


We are all using an airship to do a trade route faster

You can make a lot of gold by doing trade routes, for these you craft a trade pack out of useless thing, like you can make cooking oil out of olives and azaleas(it doesnt have to be azaleas any plant will work since you processes the petals into something else, azaleas are just the cheapest), this cooking oil has no use to anything other then being traded to an npc gold trader
Trade packs slow your movement speed significantly, donkeys are the only mount that let you move faster, you get a donkey for free after the 2nd or 3rd crafting quest
You have to take the trade pack to another area to get gold for it, the farther you take it the more gold you get, the game has a teleportation system that lets you open a portal to anywhere youve already been (other players can jump through that portal to follow you too) but when you have a trade pack on you cant use that system so you have to manually get to your location by using carriages/airships



Ive done 3 trade routes for quests, and made a 13 gold profit from it, you dont get the gold right away though, the game mails it to you 22 hours after you complete the route (with 5% interest), i guess it would be too easy to abuse if you got it right away because you could turn that gold into even more gold very quickly
The gold you get is also effected by how many people are using that trade route, the more people trading cooking oil the less gold you get for selling cooking oil, so 5 gold is the minimum you get from these things (since everyone is doing the quest i did the trade route was over saturated) im sure a trade route that isnt being used that much can get 10+ gold, and the ones that go across the sea would be even more

The game has an auction house, right now its basically unusable because people are setting crazy high prices, if i wanted to buy 15 olives (olives are only used in that 1 trade route, they are worthless for anything else) it would cost me about 40 gold, where as growing the trees myself only cost 1 gold, 70 labor and you only get 5 gold from that trade route anyway so yeah its unusable lol
Every item is like that, iron costs 1 gold for 5 where you can get 2 for 5 labor
Im hoping it will be better at release and that this is just because of the beta weekend, but its possible that the labor system can cause prices like this since it does cost labor to get those items and labor is annoying/time consuming to get
If the prices are like this about a week after release then it is the labor system that causes it and it will almost certainly kill the game

Inventory space is pretty generous, though i think you can fill it very quickly with all the random crafting mats that you end up with

Farming/Crafting
You can grow pretty much any crop you can think of, you can raise livestock too and either collect stuff that it produces (like eggs from chicken, milk from cows, or grapes from a grape vine) or just butcher it for meat or chop it down for wood (chopping trees that youve grown seems to be the only way to harvest wood)
You can plant/raise livestock pretty much anywhere, but doing it outside of designated areas leaves it up for grabs, any random person can steal your crops/livestock (it counts as a crime)
Crops/livestock take a few hours to grow, my wheat took about an hour of real time and my grape tree and turkey took about 3 hours, i couldve made the turkey mature faster if i had fed it grain, but i didnt have the wheat at the time (which is the only reason i started to grow wheat but growing wheat at the same time as raising a turkey doesnt work, you need the grain ahead of time)
Olive trees take a day to grow and will produce olives every 14 hours, i think they might be the slowest ones

There are 2 types of designated farming areas


Public Farms, which are free to use and will protect your stuff for 24 hours, but they are heavily overcrowded right now, after 24 hours your stuff can be taken by anyone (it doesnt count as a crime in this case), you can only plant certain things there i havent seen any that allow for trees


Private Farm Plots, these will protect your crops/livestock for as long as you own them, you can place in housing areas, but like houses you need to be a patron and pay taxes with in game gold to keep your farm plot, the game gives you the stuff you need to make a farm plot in a quest at level 12 but you cant actually use it unless you are a patron

Since im not a patron i hid a little farming area under some trees next to a small town (far enough away that people wouldnt go out there), it stayed untouched for about 5 hours, my turkey matured, my little wheat crops grew and my grape tree produced grapes and i was able to harvest everything and it was all going well, so i thought that area was safe enough that i could expand my crops/live stock so about 10 hours later i went back to scale up production but someone had come and cut my grape tree down
There were red footprints where my tree was and i was able to report a crime when i saw it, so i reported my grapes as being stolen, hopefully that guy goes on trial one day and that crime comes up and its the reason someone decides hes guilty
The guild i ended up in had some guild land where i was able to plant safely so that seems to be the best way to do it, you only need to worry about guild members stealing your stuff there, which doesnt seem to happen (though most of the guild doesnt know it exists)


Crafting is very straight forward, theres a list of stuff you can make and the list tells you what mats you need to make those things, as you farm and craft your crafting levels increase
You can make armor/weapons as well as upgrade gliders, a full set of armor costs 700 labor points to make so you are better off not crafting armor until you are very high level

You can get iron/stone from a mine, they are infinite, they just keep respawning, and livestock/plants/trees are renewable and infinite as well
The only thing limiting you from having infinite resources is your labor

Business Model
The game is f2p with an optional subscription called "patron status", patrons get 5 labor points every 5 minutes even while offline and 10 labor points every 5 mins while online, they can also own land for houses/farms, get bonus exp and can post items on the auction house
The ability to own land and post items on the auction house are the only things i would want from patron status, currently you cant buy it from the auction house (they say you will be able to though)
It costs $15 a month

I understand why f2p players cant own land, there would literally be 0 land available if they could (there already is no land available in every housing area ive seen), but they should be able to post at least 1 item at a time to the auction house


Theres also a cash shop that offers exp boosts, labor points (its not a boost, you just instantly get labor points), bag/bank space, cosmetic stuff, all the standard things you would find in a cash shop really
The ability to buy labor point like that makes it somewhat p2w, since you can easily convert labor into weapons/armor/gold, so while i think its fair enough for f2p players the labor system allows people to potentially p2w
Theres no in between VIP status like some games have, you know like spending $5 in the cash shop gives some other bonus benefit
It seems like 1 month of patron to get you started is what they want people to do, so they get that $15 up front, that might be what i do, cancel it before the next month as i hate paying monthly for these things
Hopefully they change the labor system though as i like the idea of having an illegal farm hidden away rather than just having a safe place to plant (with the exception of trees that take a day to grow)


Theres also a red bikini, the bikini bottoms are sold separately

Conclusion


I really enjoyed my time with this game, i had a lot more fun with this than i did with wildstar/elder scrolls online, it has its issues, mainly the labor system, but its still pretty good

I will definitely play it at release, i may even get patron for a month, ill see how it goes, if i get in a guild like i did this time with a safe place for my trees/livestock i probably wont
Joining a decent guild seems to be required, i may have gotten lucky this time since if this wasnt a beta i would be set for the rest of the game with what this guild is letting me use
Ill try to find them at release

The game is more of a hybrid than a sandbox, in other sandbox games they just throw you in and say go, here its more like a standard mmo at the start with quests to help you get started and ease you in, then a sandbox as you level up with the pvp and trade routes

Also shadowplay seems to be the best "class" to pick for pvp, when i play at release ill probably pick that and 2 other things, im thinking of going archery/shadowplay/songcraft or maybe archery/shadowplay/vitalism some sort of dps/support hybrid rather then a tank/support hybrid like i usually like to play



Bonus screenshots:

Spoiler:

Sites will start doing giveaways tomorrow so if you want a key you should keep a look out for 1
If i get one im giving it to slayer since hes the only one that seems to want to play this

Heres a list of some of the sites that will be giving keys away:

   Alienware
   Razer
   Rixty
   MMORPG.com
   Curse
   TenTonHammer
   NowGamer
   Gamona
   PCGamesN
   MMOHuts
   onRPG
   BrowserGames.de
   Free2Play.chip.de
   Games.de

I wont be playing this weekend (unless i end up with a bunch of keys, but even then) because i want to wait until release since beta characters will be wiped


Some tips for if/when you play

You will get a quest that wants you to craft improvised armor from stuff you collect from mobs at some point, dont bother doing it as it takes 700 labor total to complete it (which is a ton of labor) and the armor you get from normal quest rewards a bit later are as good (slightly better) than that so you can save 700 labor by skipping that quest line (in fact you shouldnt craft armor/weapons at all until much higher level)

Grow barely or wheat as soon as you get the quest that explains public farms to you, the quest doesnt require grain but having grain for later is really important for feeding livestock (also theres a 2nd public farm area behind the one the quest takes you too, it should have more space as people never bother to go over there since the quest told them to go to that one)

Gather a full stack of water (99 buckets) from a well when you can and just carry it around with you, water is needed for planting crops and saves a bit of time

Theres an area in two crowns (its like a level 30 area, but should be fine at low level if you stick to the roads) that has infinite grapes, use the map to get there and youll see an area called orchard, the grapes are there (it makes the trade pack quest easier), alternatively there is actually a nursery to grow grapes in white arden (you can grow a few trees there)
I found both of these after completing that quest the hard way

Theres an area in dewstone plains that has infinite iron/stone, you will get there through questing, its called construction site, you shouldnt go there when at low level because there are mobs there, you should be about level 15ish to safely mine there

At level 20 use a portal to go to mirage isle, go to the glider section and buy the 3 glider upgrades that cost gold, use those with your glider at a carpenters station to get a really good glider for a relatively cheap price

You can leave the game running to generate labor points while your afk, theres no afk time out d/c, they may change this, i saw rumors of them temp banning people that do this but i did it last beta and it was fine (and if you dont do it you wont have enough labor to do everything you want to do so you should be able to do it)
Like i said in my main post, its a dumb system

You can craft hereafter stones at a stoneworking station, they require a bunch of labor but the mats to craft it are easy to get, it costs 75 labor for 3 hereafter stones, they make getting around a lot easier, you can use the recall ability to only need 1 hereafter stone per trip if you set it up right, so like if your farm is at your recall point and you want to get grape from two crowns you use a stone to go there, get the grapes then recall back to the farm for free, then you can ride your mount the rest of the way
This will probably make more sense after you play for a bit

You can stop doing trading quests after you get a donkey as a reward from 1 of them, the next 2 only give you a large farm, and you cant even use the large farm as a f2p player so theres no point unless you just want to clear the quests away

Theres a map of the world that shows useful info
http://map.guildblacksails.com/

Its faster to ride your mount than it is to use public transportation, with the exception of certain airship routes, you can guess which ones based on that map
If you have a trade pack on then obviously public transport is faster (even with the donkey)
And you can jump off air ships at any time to go somewhere that the airship flies over



Some of these tips only apply to the nuian side (the side i played), all the locations will only work for the nuian side

Archeage releases on September 16th, the head start for people that bought founders packs starts on today (1 hour ago from the time of this post)
I plan to play on the server named Aranzeb on the Nuian side


They made a few changes for release
They reduced the number of total characters you can have to 2 (with the ability to buy up to 6 from the cash shop) this limit even applies to subscribers, if i had subbed id be pissed right now, the benefits you get for being a sub suck (also im really glad i tested classes in beta)
They added in an item that lets f2p players post stuff on the auction house, but they made it non-tradeable, meaning you cant buy it from the auction house and have to spend real money for it which is BS, they allow labor pots on the auction house but not that, makes no sense
They added APEX which allows you to buy a sub with gold, but the sub cost is greater than what you get from getting 1 APEX, so you need 2 APEX to become a sub (and you end up with left over credits, but not enough to actually buy anything worthwhile with)

And you can use APEX to buy the auction house thing, so you dont need to spend real money for it but APEX will be insanely expensive (150+ gold each is my guess), APEX is basically a consumable that gives you cash shop currency to spend on anything in the cash shop
The costs should be something like this:

Spoiler:

Now that ive done a rough estimate on the costs, getting patron the free way just doesnt seem worth it to me, the only reason youd want patron is for the land, and all your land would be dedicated to maintaining patron, so you end up in a grinding cycle, 1 APEX might be worth it, over the course of a month, maybe longer, just to be able to post on the auction house
Even with a better trade that makes double the gold for each one, you have to spend money on the saplings/seeds/livestock which can get expensive with higher quality trade routes so the net gain isnt actually double and the total time would end up being something like 20 hours instead of 25


I really want to like this game but i feel like the business model is all wrong, its even more apparent to me now that ive played a bit of swtor again
The gameplay is fun enough to make me not care about the almost certainly broken business model that they have, at least for now, hopefully they realize it within a few months and fix it

Archeage's release has been and is still a mess, queue times are at least 1 hour across all servers (on average its 2-3 hours), theyve been opening new servers to try and fix it but the new servers just fill up and have ques as well
They locked down creating new characters in the older servers, including Aranzeb
They've taken the servers down for maintenance several times, its down even as i post this

It feels like they have no idea what they are doing, opening new servers is a terrible solution (for the players, potentially really good for them), population will drop a few weeks from now and those servers will become empty, they cant just merge servers with the way land works so they will most likely make paid character transfers



On a good note, APEX was 24 gold last i checked, so 48 gold = 1 month subscription, though i dont think activating the subscription is a good idea right now, even sub players have long ques and have to put up with the constant downtime due to maintenance
You can buy it from the auction house now and wait to activate it, thats my plan, though with the que and the amount of downtime the servers have i dont think ill be able to get 50 gold while the price is still that low
Im only 25% of the way there

My estimated math from last post in practice is
solzreed trade run = 3 gold (many many people are doing it so the price went way down)
apex = 24 gold = 8 trade runs
sub = 48 gold = 16 trade runs = 1920 labor + 8 hours of traveling
You need 9 grape trees to do 1 run every 3 hours (assuming your trees arent chopped down by someone) so theres 48 hours of total waiting if you harvest the trees once every 3 hours + the 8 hours of actually doing the trade run
Using that trade route probably isnt worth it, in fact i dont think any trade route would be worth it right now, it might be better to just harvest raw mats and sell them to players in the trade chat

All i have to say is this better be one fucking amazing game after all this shit. Fucking downloading the game and a launcher and patching ~ 3 hours and waiting in queue ~2 hours i still wasn't able to play. EVERY TIME I TRY TO GETTON MY NEXT CLASS STARTS BEFORE Q TIME ENDS.

The Q isnt around anymore during the day, from like 2am-5pm theres no Q, but from 6pm-12am there is a Q and i havent tested 1am-2am, at least during the week this is true
Its a lot better than it was, its definitely worth playing now, unless the only time you can log on is during that Q time cause during that time the Q is like 40mins to an hour

The Q isnt for processing people logging in (though everyone in the Q is trying to log in) the Q is there because the server is 100% full of people and you have to wait for them to either get kicked or log out before you can get on


The price of APEX is climbing, last i checked it was at 44 gold
But ive decided that APEX and patron status isnt as necessary as i originally thought so ive abandoned my original plan of dedicating everything to getting APEX and am just going to use that gold to make a ship

Public farms are way more useful than i initially thought so you dont need to be able to own land to do trades
I used this to figure out what trades were best: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QNBlc4_WQj3x6DAIHhfIAbWshclZl86C9_w65SZ63nU/htmlview?pli=1&sle=true#gid=0
And even the highest quality stuff that you cant grow on a public farm trades for about the same as the stuff you can make from stuff you can grow on a public farm, its all about the distance you take the goods and not about the quality of the goods, the other benefits of having my own land arent worth it to me, most are just convenience

Ive been doing gweonid dyed feathers to marianople for 6 gold per run, the mats are cheap quick and easy (they are infinite, so you only need to put them down once a day and you can harvest them for the rest of that day, easily getting enough mats to do 3 or more runs a day), and the route itself is lazy (though it does take awhile, depending on where the carriages are it can take between 20mins or up to an hour of traveling, most of it is on autorun or riding a carriage so i just do something else while keeping an eye on it)

The trade is almost always at 130% so its always 6 gold, its really weird because the gweonid-sandeep trade is at 70% and is also worth 6 gold (slightly less than 6) at 70% yet everyone keeps doing that one (the percentages change based on how many people are doing that trade, 130% is the maximum, meaning very few people are doing that trade so its worth more, and 70% is the lowest meaning that everyone is doing that trade so its worth less)
Sandeep is harder to get to than marianople and the marianople trade is worth 50ish silver more so i dont get why people arent doing it, but im not complaining, more gold for me

Once i get a ship im going to keep doing the same trade, since ive looked through all the others and this one is by far the easiest to get the mats for, but im going to take a hopefully faster route with the ship, im going to try to take the river from lilyut out into the bay, down the coast and up another river to marianople
The river in lilyut sucks, its really small and shallow and has water falls along it that probably make taking a larger ship impossible (i tested it with the rowboat and was only just barely able to do it), and the river into marianople seems to be far down with the land to the sides of the river being cliffs with no way out (i havent explored the whole river yet) so i dont know if it will work, ive never seen a larger ship on either of those rivers so i dont think it will work

I can almost make the ship, im missing 40 logs, 11 gilda stars and like 1k labor
If i had tried to log in earlier, before the Q, id probably only need the stars, maybe the labor depending on how much labor pots are right now (last i checked they were 9 gold) so im really close
You need 330 logs, 330 iron, 300 wool, 10 gold, 50 gilda stars and about 1700 labor total to make a ship if anyone else wants to build one too
I spent 21 gold for the mats which may be the cheapest you can possibly get them (the iron and wool was dirt cheap, like 7 gold for 500 iron and 4 gold for 300 wool, but the logs are crazy expensive 200 = 10 gold, and thats the cheapest ive seen logs, 2 days ago it was 27 gold for 300 logs)
Farming the mats yourself takes way too much labor to actually do so you have to buy them (the labor cost to manually farm 300 of each is nearly 5k labor, and thats not counting the 1700 labor that you need to put all this together to make the ship)



Once i get my ship you guys should come with me to explore the sea, we will most likely be murdered and my ship destroyed since we are low level, but it should be fun

I got my ship on sunday and took it for a journey to the edge of the world across the sea

So here is the tale of my adventures across the sea on sunday

I began my journey from the coast of dewstone, right after having completed the construction of my ship
As i left the coast line i was attacked by a level 31 almost as soon as i got out into the pvp area, he harpooned my ship so i couldnt run away, he jumped across to my ship, we began fighting on the deck of my ship as it continued forward dragging his ship behind us
The fight was more even than i thought it would be but i began to lose so i CCed him in a bubble and jumped to his ship, disengaged the harpoon and started to sail off with it
He tried to glide to his ship but the rough sea wind blew him back to my ship
He started chasing me, now in my ship, he was melee and im ranged so every now and then id let go of the wheel and fire off a fireball so his hp wouldnt regen, eventually my hp regened enough that i was able to start a direct fight with him again and won
It was epic and gave me way too much confidence going forward

I harpooned his ship to mine and continued my journey, now with 2 ships

I found a tropical island with 3 houses on it, along the shore was a huge farm of banana trees, i began harvesting the bananas not really sure what i would do with them
As i collected them the owner of 1 of the houses was there and began attacking me
Being only level 27 i didnt stand a chance against this level 50 so i glided to my boat, grabbed the scuba gear and dived under the water hoping he couldnt follow me to the bottom of the ocean
He gave up in his pursuit and stole my boat, luckly i was still close enough to unsummon it
I thought i would drown now, since the scuba gear was part of my boat before i put it on i thought it would desummon as well, but it didnt and i was fine, I managed to sail off leaving that level 30 guys ship behind

I continued my journey to the edge of the world now with just my own ship again

I encountered 2 level 50s on a fishing boat, they were on the enemy faction, i kept my distance watching them, waiting to see if they did anything when i approached, they seemed to be AFK fishing automatically
I slowly came closer and closer, my plan was to kill them and steal the fish, i dont know what i planned to do with the fish, i didnt think the plan through that far, but it seemed fun so i jumped across to their boat
But it was a trick, they werent afk, they just lured me into a false sense of security, they attacked as soon as i landed on there ship, i jumped into the water and went into stealth, they didnt bother to follow and just continued to fish

I swam back to my boat, waved to them as thanks for not killing me, and continued my journey

I altered course to see the kraken, the biggest and most difficult world boss in the game, i arrived to find a guild of at least 500 people, the goon squad, trying and failing to kill the boss
My guild is at war with the goon squad, so i expected to die, but they were so focused on the boss that they didnt care about me sailing around the edges of the battle
I watched as they all wiped, with a few trying to sail away, but the kraken finished most off, only about 20 or so survived
They seemed to be planning to regroup and try again, so i stayed there waiting for them to come back with an amazing plan
I was planning to attack the kraken a fraction of a second before they did, the first person to attack a mob gets full credit for the kill when that mob dies in this game, so if i hit it first, and they killed it i would get all the loot
So i waited and they returned, i unsummoned my boat and went into stealth with the scuba gear on so they wouldnt notice me, i began moving toward the kraken, i needed to be 25 meters away from it for it to be in range of my attacks, but as i approached it began to attack, i fired off a fireball and got the first hit then used my drop back ability to get out of range
But the goons saw me under the water and promptly murdered me

I respawned, summoned my boat, and continued my journey

As i approached the egde of the world i was attacked by sea bugs, they are like beetle crabs, the were level 35 and were too much for me to kill, but i was able to take their hits and sail far enough away from their start point that they stopped attacking me and went back to their starting point
I crossed the edge of the world and got a warning about the area being too dangerous and that i had 10 seconds to go back
I didnt care, i continued forward ignoring the warning, the timer hit 0 and i was teleported back to the respawn point

My ship however was not teleported back, and was now lost at sea, i was too far away to unsummon it, i asked my guild how to get a ship back from the edge of the world and was informed that it despawns after 10 mins on its own if i dont use it, so i recalled back to gweonid forest to craft a trade pack to do a trade run with my new ship, i figured it would take about 10 minutes to get to the river where id start the ship part of the route

By the time i got to the river with my trade pack my ship had despawned as i thought it would, i summoned it, began sailing down the river but that river isnt meant for larger ships so i used the harpoon to swing myself over waterfalls, it was fun but ridiculous and slower than if i had just gone by land, i eventually got stuck completely and had to use the rowboat for the rest of that river until i reached the sea

I summoned my ship again at the sea and began the short trip to marianople, as i got to the river i needed to go up into marianople i began to get greedy, my journey to the edge of the world went really well, surely i could do a trade route to the other continent right

So i changed course and began the journey to mahadevi on the other continent

As i left the coast i was attacked again, it was a level 17 firing a cannon at me, i figured he mustve stolen that boat somehow and was just messing around, so i ignored him and continued
The cannon did more damage then i thought it would, even though hes only level 17 the cannon is part of a ship that is equal to mine
I asked him to stop but he didnt respond, so i had no choice but to murder him
With the trade pack on my back i couldnt jump across to the ship he was using, so instead i did something similar to what i did against that level 30, where id let go of the wheel, let the ship continue forward and attack with my spells, i used all my cool downs and easily killed him but as i did 2 level 50s and a level 46 unstealthed on the deck of their ship and started gliding to me in an ambush that i was really impressed with
I took the wheel and went as fast as a i could to get away from them, luckliy i was far enough away at the start that they couldnt catch up and i escaped as they swam back to their ship

I continued my journey to mahadevi, really glad to be a ranged class

About half way between the continents i came upon a large navel battle, both sides had 1 of the big ships, with multiple cannons firing at eachother with a lot of smaller normal ships fighting, they were all from the enemy faction and in the same guild, they were typing in chat but since i havent learned the other factions language yet i couldnt see what they were talking about, i thought it was some kind of friendly duel, or practice fight, since they were the same guild in the middle of no where doing this, but they were sinking eachother ships and they arent cheap to fix so it seemed more like a guild civil war of some sort which ive never seen in an mmo

I watched from about 150 meters away as they fought, the battle was impressive and entertaining
Suddenly i was being attacked from the side, i was so focused on their battle that i forgot how much danger i was in if any of them came after me, i tried to run away but more ships cut me off so i turned toward the battle and went straight into it hoping i could weave my way through the cannon fire and get by without them really noticing, as i went toward the battle i saw them cease fire on eachother, and was very afraid, so i turned away from the battle, and sailed past a ship, scrapping along the side, he jump across and I CCed him into the air with my bubble and sailed the ship out from under him which at that point i didnt know would happen, the other time i used bubble on a ship the ship had come to a stop, i just desperately tried anything but luckly it worked, i thought i could get away, but both of the big ships fired every cannon they could at me and my poor ship couldnt withstand the barrage so it was destroyed, i somehow survived, but without a ship i was quickly ganked from all sides and killed

I respawned on the enemy continent, i was really sad that my new ship was destroyed and my trade pack stolen so i just recalled back to dewstone and logged out ending my journeys

I was able to repair it for 11 gold later on
If i had just gone to marianople like normal i wouldve made 6 gold, but instead i lost 17 (my trade pack was eventually sold for 8 gold, not where i was trying to take it, but in cinderstone, i have no idea why they took it there, i got 1.5 gold for crafting the pack, so its good to know that even when your pack is stolen you still get a cut from the sale)



This is the most fun ive had in an MMO ever, even more fun than DAOC or UO, and i havent even done group stuff yet

I think ive fixed the issue i was having with this game, it started crashing a lot after a patch so for a couple days i wasnt able to really play, but i think ive resolved it now, the game runs much better now too, though i didnt test any PvP


Auction house prices are weird, some things are dirt cheap, like labor pots only being 5 gold each, or expansion scrolls to add inventory/bank clost being only 7 gold each (each gives 10 slots)
Meanwhile other things are sky rocketing, apex is nearly 70 gold now, a couple days ago i saw it for 51 and thought the price just spiked a bit and id wait till it went back down to 43, because that happened sometimes, prices would spike during peak times and drop during the early morning, but no its just constantly increasing in price

I put a crest on my ship sail
The item you need for a crest costs 9 gold from the auction house currently, you can use any image you want for the crest as long as its 256x256 and is named ucc.png in the archeage folder
You can also use an editor in the game to design a crest, the item that costs 9 gold isnt consumed in that case, but you need 5 extra gold to make a crest stamp
You can use the stamp as many times as you want
The image i used was the one that the guild im in uses

After i put it on i noticed that less people attack me, its not like people couldnt see what guild i was in before, the guild name always shows, so having the guild crest doesnt make people realize your in that guild so at first i thought it was weird that people attack me less often
But now i think it has to do with the same thing as lynching the guy that has no avatar in epic mafia, remember that, people see you have the default crest on your ship and think along the same lines as that where killing you is fine cause "w/e hes some random noob killing him wont matter and will be easy", but by just having a pic it protects you from 90% of people that are sailing around looking to kill someone

Its made trade routes less exciting, in fact they are just boring now, not only is there almost no danger in it anymore, ive streamlined the process so that its basically an automatic thing

1. Look at current trading values
2. Buy the mats for the most profitable trade from the auction house if the price of buying them is reasonable
3. Buy labor pot from auction house and use it
4. Do 8 trade routes back and forth across the bay
5. Wait 24 hours
6. Collect profit (anywhere from 20 to 50 gold profit)
7. Repeat

Ive also figured out that the most gold you can make in a single day from trade routes is about 200 as a free to play player, it requires many hours of doing trade routes, youd need to do 32 trade routes per day to get that much, 16 at the start of the day, a 12 hour break, then another 16 (8 trade routes take about 2 hours of nothing but sailing/walking)
Even as a subscriber that amount only goes up to 400 gold per day, and requires the same thing in addition to extreme micromanagement as you need to harvest your farm constantly, if you just buy mats from auction house like f2p players instead of farming then that number goes down to about 300 gold per day

Even with a merchant ship or farm cart, very high tier items, it doesnt change the amount you can make per day, it just makes doing the trade routes take less time, instead of doing the route 32 times you only need to do it 11 times with farm cart (the time saved by using a farm cart is off set by the fact that a farm cart is slower than a ship and cant go over water), or 2 times with merchant ship
A farm cart costs roughly 400 gold, merchant ship costs 1200 right now (adding up the costs of all the stuff that goes into it), you can get a merchant ship for less gold by using gilda instead, but it requires 400 gilda, which is an insane amount



Im not going to stop trading for awhile, its good gold but not fun anymore, going to go back to questing to level up, im the lowest level of the active players in my guild, although they are being hardcore about it getting to 50 really fast, they wont even recruit people that are under level 40 anymore
They intend to make a castle in the future, they said its abour 3k gold total, they are getting the gold together, taking donations, to buy the stuff thats needed for it, i feel like i have to donate towards that since the only thing ive done to help them was mutually beneficial and helped me more than it helped them

I bought apex at 60gold, it seems like its just going to keep getting more expensive and i wanted to make sure i got the thing to be able to sell in the auction house before it was crazy expensive so i just went for it, i tried to sell that creepy doll you get from a quest that seems to have no purpose:

As well as some sheet music and some random pants i found
None of it sold, but i was able to sell a pet revival pot that you get from a quest for 7 gold as well as a bunch of random extra bits of mats from different trade routes so the auction house thing is well worth it
I spent the rest of the credits on expansion scrolls which i just used for myself (i originally planned to sell them, but they are useful so why not) all total the ability to sell on the auction house ended up costing about 35 gold

I also made a bunch of sheet music
Sheet music lets you play music on an instrument in game
I made the attack on titan op, the dango song from clannad, mirai nikki's op, FF7's victory music, the song of storms from ocarina of time, and the game of thrones op, the 2 i tried to sell where the song of storms and attack on titan's OP just to see if they would sell
I may have gone a bit overboard, that all cost 11 gold and like 1k labor to make
My proficiency in artistry (the skill required to play and compose songs) isnt high enough to do everything i want, i would need at least 10k in artistry which would be a huge investment into something that isnt actually helpful (every 1k points costs roughly 15 gold and 1200 labor, so getting it to 10k is crazy) so im just going to stop there

I also did the quest to be a juror:

Theres a que to be on a jury after you do the quest and it takes forever, it took so long that in the 5 hours that i played today i didnt get jury duty
It might be because i murdered a guy though, after this pic was taken i had to murder someone of my faction and i think it reset my place in the que or something, hopefully it doesnt screw up my ability to serve on the jury, im pretty sure criminals cant be jurors but its only 1 murder so w/e

And i glitched out my ship with the harpoon gun, you can use the harpoon to drag your ship across land, i dragged mine to the solzrean gate, these 2 huge rock pillars with the intention to climb the big one with my ship using the harpoon gun, it failed, but i glitched it out so that it launched me high into the air:

I dont think its possible to get this high without some kind of glitch or having the insanely rare glider that can gain altitude
I tried to do it again but it wouldnt work
I landed on top of the big one and theres actually something up there

I also broke into prison. yeah into, i just wanted a prison uniform, but breaking into prison immediately gets you sentenced to time in prison so i got stuck in there for about half an hour and in the end i didnt even get a prison uniform because there were no crates left


And last thing, the game gets much much harder after level 33, not only does it send you to an open pvp area for all your quests, but the mobs in that area are significantly better, they have more skills, including stun and poison, they move and attack faster, and they have skills that jump to you, so as a ranged mage having them suddenly jump to me makes it much harder, from 1-33 i had no issue with any fight except for sharpwind mines, but now i have to rest after awhile and i have to use more of my skills too
Luckly though i just got to lvl 35 and unlocked an OP skill that boosts my damage of all spells by about 50% so its not as bad now, but its still harder