Lets Do a bit of Leveling!

After spending most of the weekend running trade goods from one trade manager to another, and doing some sporadic fishing in between that, I decided that I wanted to at least make an attempt at leveling up and completing some of the combat quests I had on me (which honestly is not that many, I think I have 2 combat quests out of the 13 that I am currently working on).

One of my main quests was to summon a sort of mini-boss on a beach. The quest was marked as co-op, and level 13. I decided that it was probably more of a recommendation than a hard rule, and I was instantly thankful for the 105 health potions I had on my hot bars. The cool down timer on those is relatively short and were very handy during this battle. It wasn’t difficult per say, but until you learn some knowledge about the creature you’re fighting, you can’t see their health bars so you’re not really sure how combat is going. I just continued to cast my spells and down my health potions all the while hoping that I was making progress in the fight. Eventually I won, and I earned myself a neat little chest filled with goodies, including a new weapon and an item to expand my inventory by one. I also managed to get a nice chunk of experience.

My second combat quest sent me further away from Velia than I had ever traveled before and even though there’s no ‘fast travel’ option in game what they do allow you to do is auto run to the quest locations (in most cases, not all). I absolutely love this feature, it allows me to not get completely lost while still taking in the sights and exploring. If I want to stop to investigate something I happen to be running past, I can.

My quest wanted me to defeat 100 goblins, and then I also picked up a sub-quest that wanted 50 of those goblins to be fighters. Out of all of the systems I’ve been exploring and learning about, combat is probably the most boring. Looting items is also quite a drag, unless there’s a better method that I haven’t found yet, you need to go to each body / object and spam R to loot. I miss AOE looting, and I’m not sure why in some instances it doesn’t register that I’ve hit the R key and I have to hit it a few more times in order to pick up the object.

It’s not that combat is boring per say, it’s just not where this games forte lies (IMO, everyone is of course going to have a difference of opinion on this). I’d rather be gathering, crafting, fishing, or doing trade runs. Thankfully all of those other systems also give you experience, just not quite as much as combat seems to give. That’s fine, it’s a nice change of pace even if it’s not my favourite thing to do. There are so many options that combat doesn’t have to be the one thing that decides whether or not I’m going to play.

I picked off the goblins one by one (and sometimes it was a fight of three or four against me) and found myself sitting at level 15 with almost 20 hours played. I can hardly believe it. Sure, some of those hours are from AFK fishing while I tried to catch an elusive sardine, and others are just from me going AFK to deal with real life, but the majority of my time in game has been spent actually playing it – and it’s a wonderful feeling.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!