MMORPG

Rescuing Tradesfolk

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I guess I am digging into Enshrouded as a primary game… after saying that I was mostly casually playing it on the side. The Path of Exile league is winding down a bit, and we are a ways out from the launch of Last Epoch so I am finding myself gravitating towards this game more and more. Last night I pretty much only played it and as a result made a ton of progress. They recently added a hide HUD option in the menu, but I really wish it was something that I could hotkey quickly as the game can generate some really breathtaking vistas. That is a general comment though, because I wish ALL games had a hide UI button that was easily hotkeyed or better yet… have the ability to configure in-game screenshots that by default hide the UI. I don’t remember which game had that but I loved it.

Mostly I have been focused on collecting the various tradespeople from around the map so that I can flesh out my trade hall. At the moment I have unlocked the Blacksmith, Alchemist, Hunter, Carpenter, and Farmer… with Carpenter probably being the most difficult to get to. I’ve been using the waypoint tower that I unlocked as a way of gliding down toward various map objectives and at least getting part of the way there. I’ve also been using the fact that I could craft flame altars cheaply as a method of creating a waypoint network to get around the map quickly. Unfortunately, I seem to have reached the point where I can no longer place down any more of those. I am not sure if that number goes up as I upgrade my primary altar or if it is a fixed number of “bases” you can have around the world.

I guess I will have to reassess where I have placed them. Unfortunately, I built a bit of a base near the one furthest to the west, so that one is probably stuck where it is currently. The others are just a flame altar without anything build around them, and in theory I really need to move one of those to the north. That is the direction I need to explore now because apparently that is where I can find clay. I need clay in order to craft the Kiln that the Carpenter is requesting, which in theory should unlock additional stuff that I can craft. I also have a slew of fetch quests for the various tradespeople that I already have, and in theory, should probably focus on those now to unlock additional recipes. I also need to find a more reliable source of tar than just crafting campfires and letting them burn out.

I veered off the Tank path a bit in my character build in order to pick up some utility abilities. Double Jump is something that pretty much makes EVERY game better, and Enshrouded is not an exception to that rule. In theory, going forward I would probably rush that ability because it makes that much difference while trying to traverse dangerous areas. I think Double Jump is probably as far into the Survivor tree as I want to go for the moment and there are still a number of beefy abilities in the Tank tree that I want to pick up. I like that I can pretty easily respec my character completely by spending some of the runic coins that you get off monsters and from salvaging weapons. One of my bases is next to the spot where a legendary sword can be obtained, so in theory, if I ever get short I can just go there and keep looting that sword to salvage it.

Speaking of weapons… I’ve picked up a number of very nice items along my travels. In truth, the only one of these I can say for certain where it comes from is the Wailing Blade, which started a neat dialog with the Smith because apparently he crafted it. I found it originally because this video showed up in my YouTube feed, and in truth, it is pretty straightforward to get early on and I leaned on it heavily for some of the harder areas I have been adventuring in. I am not sure if the Wand or Bow are from fixed locations because they are named similarly to green or blue quality weapons, so I think I might have simply hit the jackpot there. One thing that I did not appreciate early on is just how good wands are in this game. They auto-target things… making them super freaking easy to kite mobs while plinking away at them. The range is really short so if you want to snipe… you still need a bow but once you equip your bow in the ranged slot you can access it from whatever weapon you have equipped currently by holding down Q.

Other than that I have been starting to do some renovations on my keep. I am trying to make it a bit less “big generic stone box” so I will likely be spending some time trying to improve the outside now. The main crafting hall works pretty well and I ended up replacing chunks of the wall with wood just to vary the appearance a bit. The little annex I built off the side was originally just a way to have an entrance on the other side of the building but I’m contemplating closing it in and opening it up to the inside and turning it into a treasure vault. I just unlocked magic boxes when I rescued the Carpenter and those allow you to draw from those boxes automagically when you are crafting in your base. So in theory I am going to want a room with nothing but a ton of boxes in there, potentially one box for every item type. Having it off the room where I spawn into the keep would be extra handy because it would mean depositing loot is pretty straightforward.

I’ve also spent a bit of time trying to craft out some living quarters and something resembling a proper bedroom. Most of this was to get my comfort buff up a bit, but also because it felt like I needed something down here. I am looking forward to whenever I can craft some bookcases or something like that. I just unlocked the ability to make rugs so I am probably going to focus on getting one of those which I think will bump up that buff a bit more. All in all I find myself going through phases of serious crafting and other phases where I am adventuring. I need to figure out where best to park some of my flame altars to make farming resources a bit easier.

Enshrouded Early Thoughts

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We seem to be living in a bit of a renaissance of “survival” games, and I am going to use that term loosely here. If you hate combat and want to do the comfy squishy parts of a survival game you have something like Palia. If you were a 90s kid and are obsessed with catching them all, then you have PalWorld. Then there is Enshrouded which is a bit of a harder nut to crack when it comes to actually giving you the elevator pitch. What if Minecraft but with solid combat and an actual point beyond the crafting? What if Valheim but with a clear quest progression system and actual NPCs? While most people seem to be talking about PalWorld, I was drawn to the lesser-known new survival game because what I had seen of it interested me. It seemed like it was drawing some upon classical MMORPG roots with a fixed well-designed world, quest progression throughout it, and something akin to a proper loot chase.

So the quick summary of this world is that the general populace was tempted by this magical drug called the Elixir, and dug too deep rending the world seeking it. These deep wells unleashed upon the land a curse in the form of the Shroud, which is a fog that spreads in the low-lying areas of the world and becomes fatal after too much exposure. The ancient people created the forge born… and I am not entirely certain if we are a created being or just someone who has been locked away for safekeeping. Whatever the case we are spat out of this weird cauldron-looking thing and have to make our way through the world with nothing more than a crappy pair of pants. This starts the normal sequence of events you always do in a survival game where you collect some twigs to cobble together tools and then start harvesting ever-increasingly more difficult items to build the very best of everything.

The world is divided into essentially two different areas. There are the highlands that are not impacted by the Shroud, or at least not as impacted. These serve as the relatively safe area, and it is on of these that you are prompted to build your first base. From here you can harvest the basic resources needed to get started… wood, stone, assorted plant matter, fur, and food. You are also near a number of ruined former towns where you can start to scavage things like cloth and metal bits. All of this is in theory to prepare you to delve down into the shrouded areas and get more rare and dangerous resources. The game has a day/night cycle and during the night… some hostile things spawn in like these weird shroud-infected zombie things. They are slow-moving and relatively easy to deal with and honestly serve as a great resource for dropped weapons and such.

Then there are the shrouded areas, which are more dangerous to traverse and generally have some sort of visual occlusion in the form of an ever-present fog. You are usually going to encounter more of the shroud zombies here but also might encounter more difficult things as well. When you enter a shroud it starts a timer which you can see at the top of the above screenshot. When it ticks down you end up taking fatal damage and dying. When you die you end up dropping a tombstone of a sort and lose some of your resources. I am not entirely certain what the line in the sand is for what gets dropped versus what stays on your character. It does not seem to impact your actual gear loadout, but does seem to impact a lot of the resources you have gathered. You have to find your way back to your tombstone to loot everything. One interesting thing of note… I died underground and my tombstone was spawned up on the surface. Not sure if this is intentional to make it easier to gather your stuff or just a bug given that this is an early access game, but I am hoping it was intentional.

I’ve heard this referred to as the “Dark Souls of Survival Games” which is a bit off to be honest. Dark Souls means a lot of things to a lot of different people. For me at least it is “Dark Souls” about challenging combat and some sort of mechanic that trades healing your character back to full for respawning the entire world as a result. At this point, I have taken down the first boss but it was over the weekend and I did not think to take any screenshots. Instead, I am linking to a gameplay video of someone fighting it. The only comparison to Dark Souls is that when the enemy hits you… it deals a LOT of damage, like a disproportionate amount of damage. However, you have a bunch of different ways to heal yourself back up to full health in the form of bandages which are cheap and easy to make, potions that are rarer but more impactful, and the ability to have three food buffs ticking on your character that greatly increase your natural health regeneration. Instead of Dark Souls, the combat feels more like New World did when that game was new and before we had really good gear to soak damage. Anyways the above video shows a bunch of combat if you are interested.

One of the more interesting things about Enshrouded is that it has a proper MMORPG-style talent tree rather than a more sparse tech tree as found in the majority of survival games. There is a sphere grid of a sort with different paths of evolution and the freedom to go down multiple at the same time to sort of create your own mangled multiclass. I know absolutely nothing about their magical system but I can craft wands and saves and have even seen a spell drop… so it seems to “exist” but “finger wiggling” is not my forte. I am doing what I always do and focusing down the tank tree which at least currently seems to be focused on parrying an attack to stun the target and then follow up with a massive “merciless attack”. Mostly I just want to “embiggen” my health poor and armor stats to make combat a bit more forgiving.

The progression of the game seems to focus on two things. Firstly saving NPCs from shrouded areas or from hostile camps, and then setting them up in your base to allow you to craft better items. The second is that you can destroy Shroud Roots which will remove the shroud of areas of the world opening where you can more safely travel. You can also build up your flame altar which allows you to have a bigger buildable area in the world and allows you to spend more time in the shroud before taking fatal damage. There are also other bits and bobs that you can craft that make your base more “comfortable” which gives you a much better-rested bonus while you are out in the world. It seems there is also a bit of a “Metroidvania” system in the game where certain machines allow you to unlock access to new areas of the game. For example, I have built a glider and a grappling hook, both of which allow me access to areas that were not previously.

Another thing that I find interesting about the game is that your character progression is separate from your world state. I’ve been spending most of my time playing privately, but I can flip over to “host” mode if I want to let a friend of mine join me in my world. I can also join a public server that has a persistent world state or even host a dedicated private server. I’ve not done any of these things, but when I flip over into “host” mode it seems to adopt the current state of my world, and my guess is if I joined someone else’s game I would be living in their world for the time being only bringing over what I had in my inventory. Mostly I dig the flexibility with these various options because when I want to progress on my own I can, but also then later join up with friends to do shenanigans.

I’ve only played about six hours of the game so far, but I have a spiffy “Keep on the Borderlands” to show for it. Resources seem pretty plentiful, to be honest, and everything respawns pretty quickly so you can keep harvesting the same bushes, rocks, and trees… or just start digging a hole into the ground looking for stone that way. That is my own real complaint so far is that the excavation systems seem to be a bit “squishy” and my brief foray into trying to dig out a basement was less than successful as I kept having to stop to rest after depleting my stamina. If you have tried to dig into the ground in Valheim you would be familiar with this problem and maybe that is just a thing with voxel terrain. Instead, I closed in my bottom floor and just built up allowing me to still have a basement feel.

A lot of the early game has been a progression through the normal tech tress of improving your gear. Right now I have a full set of metal gear that I have crafted which was opened up by saving the Blacksmith and then building a Charcoal Kiln and Forge. I had to spend quite of time going to a nearby hostile scrapper village in search of metal scraps which I then turned into sheets of metal to craft into armor. You can kit yourself in a full set of cloth gear pretty quickly, then I progressed into fur armor, and finally metal. My hope is that as I go forward it will start looking a little less haphazard and broken down as it does currently.

There are also world drops that follow the standard blue, purple, orange progression scheme. For example, I got this purple sword to drop when I took out the first world boss, and I was able to spend down this runic coin currency with the blacksmith in order to level up the weapon and unlock a bunch of bonus traits. You tend to get those coins from killing zombies and cultists so you could in theory farm up enough of them to fully kit out your gear. I had gathered enough by the time I found this weapon to fully unlock it, but it burned through most of my reserves of that currency. In theory if you wanted to always have the best of everything unlocked you would probably need to make a concerted effort to go farming.

Right now I am pretty happy with the game, but I am also not really paying it as my “main” game yet. I am always somewhat hesitant to dive too deeply into an early-access title. I remember going super hard with Valheim and essentially burning myself out before a lot of the later features even went into the game. I don’t really want to do that with Enshrouded, and quite honestly at some point I should pick back up Valheim and see what all has changed. This is probably something I am going to quietly play on the side and if some of my friends end up picking it up, I might dive in to see how the group play works. Right now it seems like the game has a lot of promise though. For now, I think I am staying out of the Palworld discourse because Pokemon were never really my thing. This, however, lands firmly in my wheelhouse.

Rikti Invasions

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Last night I decided to play some City of Heroes, in part because Thalen created a SuperGroup yesterday and I was hoping to potentially get an invite. That did not happen, but what did… is I experienced something that I am guessing I had pushed out of my memory. I was hanging out in the highest level end of King’s Row because it was much easier to solo than Steel Canyon. I had just rounded a corner when I noticed that a bunch of bombs had spawned with what looked like countdown timers. A few minutes later… there was a massive wave of players rushing towards me and before I knew it I had been invited into a raid group for whatever nonsense this held. I had completely forgotten that City of Heroes had zone-wide events.

What proceeded was about thirty minutes of nonsense where I targetted whatever I could get my hands on… and made my way through waves of mobs that were way too high level for me. The splash healing of my party though kept me alive and well throughout the entire event. Per the patch notes on the Homecoming forum, apparently, the Rikti Invasions will keep going through January 23rd when the next maintenance happens. I guess maybe I need to actually start reading chat, because I have been playing this game with the entire chat window minimized and slowly working my way through quests and doing some random combat. Last night though was a heck of a lot of fun and I would happily join in this nonsense again in the near future.

I realize I am playing on Everlasting the Roleplaying server, but I was pleasantly surprised by just how chill everyone seemed to be and how much actual roleplay was happening. Granted I myself am not a huge roleplayer but I always try and respond in kind. I tend to roll on Roleplay servers when possible because the players end up feeling like they are much more community-minded, and last night absolutely made me feel like Everlasting was the correct choice for me. You have to figure that the folks playing Homecoming are folks who missed the special magic that City of Heroes had over other MMORPGs so just from that alone they are probably going to be on their best behavior. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much fun I am having and how close to my memories of the game the actual experience ends up being.

At this point I am level 16 nearing level 17 and am hanging out in Steel Canyon. I’ve continued to follow this build guide that I found linked via the wayback machine to the old forums. It isn’t exactly the Katana/Regen scrapper that I played at release but it also isn’t super far off. One of the things that I want to do for my own benefit is to start collecting City of Heroes resources that still exist around the web and create a tools page as I have for other games. At a minimum I want to create a copy of that wayback machine page so that if I lose it, it will still exist in some form on my infrastructure. There are so many resources that I remember having… that just do not exist anymore. For example, I remember zone level guide maps that showed which factions and what level ranges were in each area. I would love to have those back so I am going to do some digging to attempt to unearth some of these things.

One of the things that I dig about this server is that pretty much everything that cost money at one point is free. You can move your characters freely between servers and it seems like you can also respec your character as often as you like. On the character select screen it shows that we have access to 1000 character slots which also seems similarly silly. I need to dig up what sort of support infrastructure this game has because I would not mind chipping some money towards the product. I feel like I am getting more than enough enjoyment out of it that I should at least make a one-time donation if not a reoccurring one. This is not how I expected to be spending January… but I am having a blast all the same.

The Path Abandoned

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Morning Folks! I am technically in holiday mode this morning and as a result, getting up and around far later than normal. However, I decided to go ahead and make a post given that I had something I wanted to talk about. Over the weekend we recorded our podcast as normal, and one of the subjects we discussed was the recent news about the City of Heroes Homecoming server officially getting a license from NC Soft… and thereby gaining the legitimacy that no emulator server project has gained to date. This made me and several other members of the podcast nostalgic about this game, and as a result Sunday morning I got everything up and running and took my first steps into Paragon City since 2020. We are rolling on the Everlasting server and I believe my handle is @Belghast so if you find your way over there say hello.

One of the most interesting things about being back in City of Heroes, is this game is a snapshot of what the evolution of an MMORPG looked like before the world changed. This was the game that me and my circle of friends were playing when we all started getting into the World of Warcraft beta process. This was the last game we played before that title stole our attention for the next several years. After the launch of World of Warcraft, the formula for what an MMORPG was changed forever to shift to adapt to what that game was doing. However, in City of Heroes you can see the slow steady progress of what came before culminating in this exceptionally polished product. This was the best the genre had to offer and had so many ideas that were well ahead of their time like Mentoring and Bolstering to raise or lower the character level to make sure that you could always group with your friends. It also had these amazing open area “raid” zones that were way too tough to tackle alone, but if you gathered up a group of friends you could run around and fight baddies for hours.

The mission structure was also revolutionary for the time. Instead of a single quest… you had chains of quests that were related and felt like you were investigating a case. You might start with tracking down clues by killing baddies in the open world, which would then lead you to a hideout… and eventually maybe even to take you to the lair of a boss for that faction before eventually wrapping up that chain and leading you to a new contact. It isn’t that quests did not exist before, or even quest chains… but the entire experience had more narrative cohesion. You were a hero and you were fighting back against the evils that sought to decimate this fair city. On top of that these instanced areas required strategy to get through them… you might have to learn how to work your way through a “pulling puzzle” and figure out which enemies you could single pull to ultimately lower the amount of damage you were going to take when you eventually had to charge forth out of the shadows.

Another aspect of the game that was somewhat revolutionary is that it had some proper build craft. Every level you either got to choose a new ability or add sockets to your existing abilities… this allowed the player to pick and choose how to evolve their character over time. For example I am playing a version of what I played at launch… the Katana/Regeneration Scrapper each of those aspects dictating what type of build I can craft with it. You chose a primary power pool, a secondary power pool, and a base class that dictated what your ultimate role in combat would be. I remember this being an extremely solo-friendly character back in the day, and I managed to dig up a build that I am loosely following from the now long-defunct official forums.

I am not sure if I am just drifting by on a wave of nostalgia, or if this game is far better than I remember it being. So many aspects of combat from the superb sound design to the gravity of your attacks… make combat feel more “meaty” for lack of a better term as opposed to a lot of other hotbar combat games. World of Warcraft really gets a lot of credit for making combat feel immediate and visceral… but City of Heroes was doing this as well. The class design also stems from an era before the holy trinity of DPS, Healer, and Tank… and includes a lot of crowd control and pulling mechanics to add more strategy to approaching every combat puzzle. I remember I used to have an ability called “Teleport Other” I believe, that would allow me to yoink a single mob out of a pack and silently pull them over to me. That way I could whittle down the strongest member of a pack making it a bit easier for when I pulled everything else.

I only made it to level eleven yesterday, but I had way more fun than I was expecting to. Legitimately City of Heroes is a better game than even my rose colored vision seemed to remember. There have been a number of times on the podcast where we have wondered what MMORPGs would look like if World of Warcraft had not been the runaway generational success that it was. I think playing City of Heroes gives you a pretty decent idea of what a best-in-breed game looked like from that time. I remember at the time it legitimately was one of the best-selling games and was breaking records… that only got eclipsed in scale by the launch of World of Warcraft. Somewhere around here I still have the comic books that we used to get in the mail from our paid subscription.

If this post made the nostalgia well up inside of you like the podcast did for me this weekend, I am thankful to say that the process of getting everything up and running is straightforward. As someone who has jumped through some nonsense hoops before to play on emulated servers… this is as simple as setting up an account on the Homecoming forums, setting an in-game password, and then downloading the installer. Because this is an older game, the total footprint is about 5 gb which should not be an awful download from a modern internet connection. That is smaller that a lot of mobile games these days, to be honest. There are even folks who have been successfully playing it on the Steam Deck which is pretty sweet.

If you make your way over to the Everlasting server feel free to say hello. I’ve set up a private area on the Super Dungeon Friends discord for City of Heroes. At some point, I need to rework the auto-role menu, but for the short term ping me if you want access to it.