Systems vs Story, and PvP

I’ve put a bunch of time into Archeage over the last week, and it’s been interesting to see what that game is doing systemically vs narratively. Archeage is, at the meta level, a sandbox within which you can forge your own path. What this means is that there are massive systems in place to give you things to do. By necessity, this means that the narrative takes something of a back seat. There’s limited time to make a game, so you lose some fidelity in the process.

ArcheAge_Logo

Archeage quests fall into a handful of categories: “main story”, “local area”, “travel”, and “busywork”. These are in descending order of quality– the main story quests have voiced cutscenes, a focus on story, and (generally speaking) interesting mechanics at work. The “local area” quests are the side stories, the location-based “what’s going on in this specific area” quests that you’re used to from WoW’s hub-and-spoke model. Travel quests are just that– an excuse to move you from one place to another. Often referred to as FedEx quests, these are used to guide people to the next bit of relevant content, so you aren’t lost and wondering where it might be worthwhile to go next. The last set of quests, the busywork quests, are the straight “kill X” quests– go here, fight mobs, done.

I mentioned that Archeage is a systems game, and you can see it in how their quests are delivered. The “busywork” quests, where you just go out and kill mobs, tend to come from bounty boards or are “hidden” quests– you hit the bounty board (which is a daily) and go do your fighting, and as soon as you kill your last mob, you get the rewards and can move on, no going back to a questgiver and unnecessarily chatting about how you’ve “done us all a great service by thinning the [monsters] in this area”. The game doesn’t waste time with unnecessary storytelling, focusing those efforts instead on the stories it wants to tell. These aren’t always amazing, but they tend to be worth reading. I’m legitimately curious where my main story is going, and I’ve had a few quests in areas that make me want to know more about the world.

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That having been said, in terms of pure quest content, Archeage is lighter than many games– by cutting out unnecessary storytelling, it also removes a lot of story content that would be in other games. This is where the sandbox comes in. A game with a lot of interlocking systems that are all working in tandem becomes a story engine; your experiences with the systems become stories you write yourself. It’s also where the PvP comes in, and why it’s important. Almost everyone I’ve talked to that has avoided the game cites “open-world PvP” as their reason not to play. Given the kinds of PvP experiences you get in games that aren’t systemically driven, this is wholly understandable. A lot of people hear “open-world PvP” and imagine wandering around flagged in Stranglethorn Vale, where they’re at risk of being killed at random for some other player’s jollies, and possibly camped and griefed as well, because it provokes a reaction (and given WoW’s mechanism for rezzing, is very easy to do).

Here’s why good systems matter: In WoW, when you die, you have to run back to your body as a ghost and resurrect at low health and mana, then spend some time recovering, or you resurrect at a graveyard at a severe “convenience” penalty. If someone kills you in PvP, in the open world, they are almost certainly assured a second kill if they simply wait around for a bit– the death system and the PvP system are aligned such that this is not only possible, but easy and rewarding. This is systemically rather bad. Compare to a game like Archeage: You die, you are returned (whole!) to a graveyard, and given a significant (10%) stat boost as a pick-me-up after death. Graveyards have a “safe zone” around them, so you can resurrect and restore yourself even if your killer(s) are standing around. You can teleport out of the area and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Rather than death and PvP being disconnected systems, they interlock in such a way as to minimize grief.

archeageportal

To tie this into the storytelling, we can look at those FedEx quests. One extremely popular activity in Archeage is running trade routes. You create a bundle of trade goods and carry them to a different location than you made them in to sell. Some areas want different trade goods than others, and the farther you travel to deliver the goods, the better the reward is. Furthermore, there are significant systems built up around this mechanic– multiple types of vehicles exist to help you cart around goods, and simply carrying goods around slows you immensely, so while you’re carrying a trade pack, you’re vulnerable. You can put down a trade pack at any time, anywhere in the world, but other players can steal it if you do so. As a result, there are different kinds of trade runs: reliable but low-paying ones that run through safe territory and lucrative but dangerous ones that deliver across long distances through contested zones. These are FedEx quests, delivered to you without even quest text for context, and in a game like WoW or FFXIV, they would be incredibly boring. You’d autorun from one location to the next and resent the game every step of the way.

In Archeage, there are decision points to be made. There’s risk in a simple delivery, which makes the event more interesting. The systems in place in the game turn a boring delivery quest into an event that’s both repeatable and potentially interesting every single time. They also bring players together: some groups run trade caravans, bringing large groups of armed players to defend a big group of traders, often covering very long distances for maximum rewards. Smaller groups of players may travel in groups, one or two traders with an armed escort.

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This also builds a reason to PvP, rather than just for jollies. It *can* happen anywhere, but because there are good reasons to do it, it’s pretty rare for it to actually happen anywhere. To put it another way, in 25 levels, I have seen precisely zero PvP. There’s no one griefing newbies, there’s no one waiting on the road to gank someone twenty levels below them, nothing. There’s no reason to do so, not when you could be getting real rewards elsewhere.

I’ve often commented that I feel like WoW has poisoned the well on a number of gameplay mechanics– certainly the latest difficulty with flying mounts should say something about how you need to come up with a system for things, rather than just “hit a button, fly wherever you like”. Flight in WoW has serious problems; it’s essentially a GM cheat code that every player gets to use. There’re no systems governing its use, no skills to pick up or decisions to make: just hit button, fly effortlessly. Now they’ve realized how much of a problem that is but can’t throttle it back; their playerbase is raging over the suggestion that they might not be able to have GM cheat codes anymore.

Gms

It may seem frustrating to put friction in a system, but it’s that friction that makes the environment that much more compelling, and makes even little things meaningful and interesting. PvP is just a system, it’s effectively that wandering Devilsaur that you didn’t see that aggros you and kills you. The difference between good PvP and bad PvP is what happens next. What do you lose, besides time? What can you do to prevent it happening again? If, as in WoW, the answer is a catch-22 between “take a 10min break with an awful debuff” or “get corpse camped”, that’s a bad decision. If you can more easily wipe your hands clean and move on, it’s that Devilsaur– just say “welp” and move on. You might run into another one again, but it’s unlikely to become a permanent fixture in your playtime.



Source: Digital Initiative
Systems vs Story, and PvP

Job Training Part 1: Starting Physical Jobs

This week I’ll be going over the various jobs in FF5, and some things that might be helpful to know if you get them. I’ll be starting with the more physical classes available at the start. The fiesta starts roughly a week from today (sign up right here), and I’ll be going over all 20 jobs, so hopefully someone finds this helpful. If you do, go thank Kodra for the idea. I’ll be following one of the game’s conventions here: Abilities preceded by an exclamation point are command abilities, the others mentioned are passives.

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Knight

KNIMaster of hitting things with swords, the Knight also has good defense. This is the only fiesta class that can equip Knightswords, which are the strongest weapons near the end of the game. Their innate command, !Guard reduces all physical damage the Knight takes to 0 for a turn. They also have the innate passive Cover, which causes them to take single-target physical attacks directed at low-health teammates. Their most notable other ability is Two-Handed, which allows you to hold a variety of weapons (swords, katanas, axes, and hammers) in two hands, which means you can’t use a shield but attack for roughly double damage. They also have the Equip abilities for shields, armor, and swords, which can be a nice boost for other classes.

  • If you never run from battle, Knights are the only class in the fiesta that can use the Brave Blade, the numerically strongest weapon outside of the bonus dungeon. It’s a long road, but the payoff can be very worth it.
  • !Guard makes knights immune to physical attacks. Cover causes them to take physical attacks for low-health party members. A knight and a trio of low-health allies can therefore be completely immune to physical attacks. Anything that’s berserked will just use physical attacks. Use your imagination here.
  • Two-handed is nice, but don’t forget you can use a shield when defense is more useful. The Aegis Shield grants immunity to petrification and has a 1/3 chance to block most magic attacks, and the (very late game) Genji Shield has 50% evasion by itself. Even if your knight has no use for these, other classes can benefit from Equip Shields.

Monk

MNKIn the fiesta, Monk is most notable for tearing the early game to shreds, but falling behind as you get awesome weapons late in the game (unless you level a lot more than is usually necessary). Their innate command, !Kick, is the only one in the game that can’t be given to other jobs. It makes a physical attack on all enemies (ignoring row if you’re playing the mobile version). They have the innate passive of Counter, which causes them to sometimes attack enemies that hit them with physical attacks. Monks can also learn other commands: !Chakra gives a small heal that also cures poison and blind, and !Focus causes the character to charge for a turn before striking for double damage. Finishing off the class gives you a set of HP+ abilities, finishing with HP +30%. Monks already have a lot of HP, but this can be a big help to classes that have unfortunate HP situations, like Bard, Dancer, and Red Mage.

  • Don’t forget that !Chakra cures poison and blind. It’s nice to be able to clear blind and restore a bit of health in the same turn, since blind in FF5 pretty much makes physical classes entirely useless.
  • Monks hit twice, which means that enemies that counter will counter twice. Alternate solutions may be required for enemies that deal most of their damage via counters, like Garula. (Don’t forget that monks can Counter too!)
  • Late in the game, Monks can use the Kaiser Knuckles accessory, which brings their endgame damage up to respectable levels. You can get one of these in the Undersea Trench, and more as a drop from the Steel Fist enemies.
  • The monk passive Barehanded grants the unarmed damage of a monk, and it’s particularly useful on mage classes, to give them an early source of damage output. It doesn’t make them any less squishy, so keep an eye on their HP if you put them in the front row.

Thief

THFThief isn’t the strongest class in the game, but it does have a lot going for it. Their most notable feature is their innate command, !Steal, which does what you’d expect. It’s useful for healing items, money-making, and access to a variety of equipment that’s difficult or impossible to get otherwise. They have multiple innate passives: Sprint speeds up movement, Vigilance entirely prevents back attacks, and Find Passages shows hidden passages. Their other learned commands are !Mug, which steals along with an attack, and !Flee, which will instantly run from any battle where you could run normally. Sadly there’s not much here for other classes, as you get the full benefits of all of the thief’s passives with a single thief in the party. The only exception is Artful Dodger, which can grant the thief’s agility (which is the highest in the game) to whoever you equip it on.

  • Poltergeists in the Fire-powered ship have Hi-Potions, well before you can buy them. this is conveniently right before a boss that’s extremely difficult for thieves. Stock up!
  • Elixirs are a rare steal from the Zu enemy, near Karnak. These are kind of annoying to stock up on, but it’s easier than most other methods of getting them.
  • Gilgamesh has 4 pieces of Genji Armor to steal (gloves on the boat, helm in the castle, shield and armor in the final dungeon). This is mostly only useful if you have a job that can wear heavy armor, but Blue Mages can use the shield.
  • The enemy Objet d’Art (found in the basement of Castle Bal) has the Twin Lance as a rare steal, and this is an absurdly powerful weapon for a Thief or Ninja at the point you can get it. It’s reasonably good through the rest of the game, but suffers versus enemies with high defense.

Blue Mage

BLUBlue Magic is one of the best all-around toolboxes in the game, with the obvious downside of having to learn your abilities from enemies. Their innate command is !Blue, which allows casting any blue magic learned by the party. Their innate passive is Learning. As long as a character with Learning is affected by a Blue Magic spell, it will be learned when you win the battle (the character in question does not need to be alive). The other blue magic abilities are !Check, which shows enemy HP, and !Scan, which also shows level, weaknesses, and any status effects. Notable Blue magic spells include the Aero series (damage spells), Vampire (hp absorb based on caster’s missing health), White Wind (party heal based on caster’s current health), Death Claw (reduces an enemy to single-digit HP and causes paralysis), and Level 5 Death (kills all enemies with a level divisible by 5). This is one of my favorite classes in the game.

  • Before you advance the plot near the start, there are 3 Blue magic spells available immediately: Moldwynds in the Wind Shrine have Aero, Black Goblins (also in the Wind Shrine) have Goblin Punch, and Steel Bats in the pirate cave have Vampire.
  • Goblin Punch is similar to attacking normally, except that it never misses and does full damage regardless of position. This mostly means that Blue Mages can still hit things while being back-row casters. As an added bonus, Goblin punch can be used with the Excalipoor to do damage based on its listed attack rating.
  • Learning defensive Blue Magics (most notably White Wind and Mighty Guard) requires some way to charm or confuse the enemies into casting them on you. The jobs that can do this reliably are are Bard, White Mage, Red Mage, and Beastmaster. Dancers have a 25% chance to use confusion when they use !Dance, and any class can do similarly with the Dancing Dagger.
  • Level 5 Death ignores immunity to death and can kill any non-undead enemy with a level divisible by 5. Notable bosses that fall into this category are Adamantoise, the launchers in the Soul Cannon fight, and the revived form of Archeoaevis. It’s also useful for gaining AP from the Objet d’Art enemies in the basement of Castle Bal.

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Tomorrow I’ll be covering the squishy mages. As a reminder, more victories means more money for Child’s Play, so I hope this helps!



Source: Ashs Adventures
Job Training: Part 1

Bethesda Just Won E3

It is nights like last night that make me realize I am wired just a little bit weird.  Last night while the world seemingly was watching the season finale of Game of Thrones, I was tuned into the E3 2015 festivities over YouTube and eventually twitch.  It started early in the evening with the 2015 Nintendo World Championships, and concluded later with the phenomenal Bethesda Softworks showcase.  E3 is this miraculous time of bottled hope, that seems to pump up the heart of a gamer about what might be or at least what could be.  If you did not have a chance to watch it, I highly suggest you check out the Nintendo Championships.  It was equal parts charming, and thrilling… and when we finally got to the heads up match between the last two contestants I have to say I was literally tense for them.  The hoops that they were asked to jump through were just silly, and in the proud tradition of the Nintendo Championship… they were in fact forced to play a “game” they had never seen before.

Doom 4

doom_e3_2015_6_Unwilling_Caco The real excitement however started when the Bethesda showcase began.  When a game company shows off its wares at one of these shows, it is a rarity that there are so many different titles that I care about coming from the same place.  Doom will always hold a special place in my heart, because in theory it was the game that really sold me on the power of PC gaming.  I remember my parents getting so damned frustrated with me for tying up the phone lines as I dialed into a friends computer to play the game cooperatively.  I remember spending hundreds of hours creating my own levels and imagining what my own version of the game might bring.  I devotedly played the derivatives like Heretic and the oddball narrative spinoffs like Strife, because I literally could not get enough of the game.  The problem being that with Doom there also comes a lot of disappointment, and strange decisions like that god awful movie.

The problem is that ID Software for whatever reason lost its way.  The last Doom game shipped in August of 2004 and we have had to endure a decade of waiting.  There was this period of time where ID seemed to forget what made its games great in the first place, as it curiously focused instead on building more complex engines…  than creating interesting games.  That wait however is apparently nearing its end, because last night we got to see Doom 4 in all its glory, and I weep at the system I will need to have to play it in all its glory.  The game play was saw was this gorgeous carnal ballet of demons and zombies erupting into red volcanoes of gore and blood on the screen.  It seemed to capture everything that made Doom amazing, and strutted its stuff with a level of technical detail that I am just floored by.  What makes me even happier is it seems this time they did not forget that it was ultimately multiplayer that made the Doom franchise famous.  They showed off this awesome new tech that will maybe once again make level creation simple enough that anyone can pick up the map builder and start making awesome things.  The builder also seems to support the creation of game play modes themselves, so I am really hoping that we once again start to see some innovation from the community in moving the FPS genre forward.

Dishonored II

dishonored-the-brigmore-witches-wallpaper-2 If Doom was not enough, moments later the folks from Arkane Studios took the stage to talk about the leaked announcement of Dishonored 2.  Dishonored holds a special place in my heart because it is in theory a “stealth” game that I actually loved playing.  Granted this is because it allows you to play the game in a way that takes all sneaking about and stealth game play out of the mix.  The awesome thing is, it apparently also plays extremely enjoyably for the folks who do want to stealth about and have a zero body count.  It is one of the few games that both myself and Tamriello raved about when it was released, so quite honestly I was going to snatch up whatever game came from them next regardless of its hype.  All of that said it looks like the continuation of the original Dishonored game is going to be amazing.  One of the most interesting features of the first game is the interaction of the character Corvo Attano and his “charge” Emily Kaldwin.  As you play through the game, your actions effect the upbringing of Emily.  If you play the part of a bloodless hero she focuses on the good things in life, or if you are like me and go for 100% bodycount… she focuses on the death, destruction and carnage.

In Dishonored II the trailer shows us that dear Emily has apparently followed in your footsteps and takes up the role of righting wrongs at the point of a sword.  Ubisoft really needs to watch what Arkane is doing because they are fucking nailing it.  They are giving us both an awesome and interesting male lead, but an equally interesting female lead.  To make things even better it seems that they are apparently not just carbon copies of each other.  Both Emily and Corvo will have unique abilities and game play styles that will cause you to approach the level design slightly differently.  In theory this means that you have at least two fresh play through of the game, and four if you are trying to get a bloodless victory on each and a full body count victory as well.  Personally I am likely going to play through twice because there is no way I can somehow stomach playing through this game in a full on stealth fashion.  If my actions in the last game “raised”Emily… I would not want to meet her in a dark alley, because I am certain “my” Emily would be a brutal and heartless killing machine.

Fallout 4

fallout4tractor If all of the above was not awesome enough…  we all were waiting anxiously for more tidbits of news about the latest game in the Fallout franchise.  The Fallout fans out there were absolutely not disappointed, as the floodgates opened with information about the new game.  This game is apparently set in Boston as has been long rumored, and for the first time we get to see the world “before the bomb”.  They showed a few minutes of the character creation segment of the game, and the events leading up to being forced to go into Vault 111.  I am really happy with the way they are doing this, but one of the confusing parts about the demo was that people seemed to be excited that you can create a female Vault Dweller.  Far as I remember you have always been able to choose to create a female vault dweller, or at the very least you have been able to since the birth of the modern Fallout series with 3.  That confusion aside the new system looks great and I should be able to create a Vault Dweller I am happy with.  The world out there to explore looked phenomenal, and I got flashbacks to the moment I set foot of the vault into the Washington wasteland for the first time.

fallout4modweapons What was even more amazing however is when they started going into the systems.  Apparently this time around we are going to be able to fully mod out our weapons and our armor to create brand new items that don’t exist out in the world.  Each component is modular and changes the function of the items they are attached to, and while they spent a lot of time creating brutal versions of Laser and Plasma rifles…  all I could sit there and imagine were the awesome shotguns I would ultimately create.  This was not all of the awesome however, in that they showed this amazing modular housing system that was like the next version of what was made possible with the Skyrim Hearthfire system.  In the trailer they showed these insane bases that they had built using the system allowing us to essentially create our very own “Megaton”.  This is playing down my alley because I always spend so much time kitting out my player housing in the Fallout games, because it allows me to have a place to be a packrat.  After showing all of this goodness, to have me salivating… they did the ultimate mic drop.  Apparently this is all going to be available this November 10th.  I should probably give warning to everything that I know… because I will not be seen or heard from for at least a month.

Missing the Point

Now is where I am going to diverge from the full on “fanboyism” for a bit to comment on something I have seen said so many times.  I do not know who Fierydemise is, but the above comment was retweeted into my timeline.  I have no problem with this person, and my commentary isn’t really directed at them, but instead something I have seen for years.  When a traditional Bethesda “Fallout” or “Elder Scrolls” series game is released, there is a group of people that seem to go into them expecting a deeply tailored narrative experience.  Quite honestly if that is what you are looking for you might be missing the point.  These style of open world sandbox games are not really about being told a story, but instead giving you a launch pad and a creative engine for you to wander off and tell your own story through your interaction with the world.  I love them so much because they give me the freedom to enter a world without deep narrative shackles.  They don’t care one bit if I wander off in the opposite direction the in game indicator is telling me to go, and find my own experience out in the wasteland.

fallout4supermutant There are so many games out there that give you a very “on rails” narrative experience, and in each of them I try my damnedest to ignore it… and tell my own story.  I appreciate these games so much because I don’t have to ignore anything.  They give me little nuggets of story when I crave it, but also the insane hardcore explorer porn of going off and conquering an uncertain world.  It has been said that these games sacrifice fidelity for freedom of exploration, and I am completely fine with that.  I guess for me maybe it comes from cutting my teeth playing games in an era essentially “before stories”.  It also helps that I am far more combat drive in a game than story driven, and often times finding myself frustrated when getting bogged down in a series of cut scenes.  There have been so many times when I have waited for games to “open up” and let me “do my own thing”.  With Bethesda titles, I know the moment the character creation is over… that they are going to let me off my leash to go bounding madly into the distance and cause havoc.  These games are designed specifically for me, and people like me… and please don’t try and shackle them with deep narrative.



Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
Bethesda Just Won E3

Delving the Sewers

Bloody Happy Place

ARCHEAGE 2015-06-14 01-03-43-47 Last night we were down a handful of people with Thalen and Grace being gone, but by that same token it is mostly a cast of original AggroChat folks.  Kodra is back from his traveling and it was awesome to get to spend the night hanging out with him again.  We have all been spending quite a bit of time in ArcheAge as we have been taking a break from Final Fantasy XIV right before the launch of Heavensward.  We talk about our further impressions of the game, and Kodra talks about his since he quite literally just started today.  From there we talk about our expectations for the coming launch of Heavensward and how Ashgar and I apparently have enough faith in the release of this expansion to have taken the day off work.  From there we meander into talk about the upcoming Four Job Fiesta, and how all of our listeners should really take Ashgar’s money, since he has put up $5 for every AggroChat listener to defeat the game during the event.  There was talk of Wildstar and Tam injuring himself, but we had a grand time just chatting about the games we had been playing.

As promised in the show I also posted a picture of the absolutely amazing Fred from Scooby Doo cosplay by Kodra over on AggroChat so you should totally check that out.  The title of the show comes from the fact that I am apparently a sick and twisted bastard.  One of the happiest moments I have in video games is when I am zoned out and just mindlessly slaughtering stuff for loot and prizes.  This is the reason why I have always been able to grind up levels in video games so effectively and why I so insanely over leveled the various JRPGs I have played.  Last night while recording the podcast I found myself cheerfully wrecking undead for a good hour of the time we recorded.  I slip into this mode from time to time and just got lost in the motion of combat, and as a result I end up over leveled almost all of the time.  It is a happy place…  just a very bloody happy place.

Beach Racing

ARCHEAGE 2015-06-13 14-13-28-18 ArcheAge is this collection of really strange systems, and I feel like I have only scratched the surface of figuring them out.  Yesterday my friends and I took a trip to Mirage Island, which is this strange second life esc showroom allowing you to buy crafting patterns for all sorts of random stuff.  The awesome thing about it however is that you can test drive most of them.  So Tamrielo and I went off on a tour of the island on the roadsters.  The only problem you have a very limited around of time to use it….  and we did not realize that before running off out into the ocean.  There is a giant track around the island… and part of it is a sandbar that cuts out into the middle of hte ocean.  The problem is…. this island is really freaking huge.  I crashed out of the game that apparently dropped me out of Mirage Island, but poor Tam I don’t think he made it around the sandbar before it despawned the roadster.  Luckily we had mounts so at least we didn’t have to walk back home if we got stranded.

The biggest problem I am having with ArcheAge is it seems like there are dozens of currencies that I am accumulating but I have no clue where to spend them.  I thought maybe Mirage Island would give me some idea, but I didn’t really find any traditional vendors.  Some of the kiosks required various currencies that I had not found yet, but I didn’t find any that took any of the ones I actually had.  The takeaway is that ArcheAge is a really strange game.  I am still liking it but I don’t feel any closer to actually understanding it.  The system I want to try and figure out how is that supposedly you can tame named bosses in the world and turn them into combat pets.  There is a tiger in one of the zones I have encountered and I am kinda hoping I can figure out how to trap it.  I remember in alpha I got some sort of a fox pet as a drop and it was insanely fun to run around with.  Not that it was sturdy enough to tank for me, but it did add some additional damage.  Who doesn’t like additional damage right?

Delving the Sewers

ARCHEAGE 2015-06-13 18-12-38-83 A few days ago I stumbled into the first dungeon of the game in the sewers under the City of Towers.  I managed to sneak my way through the dungeon, carefully pulling mobs and cleared my way to the first boss…  only to get my face rocked.  However the trash leading up to that boss dropped some really nice items.  Since I have massively out leveled my friends I figured I would revisit the dungeon when some of them got closer to my level.  So last night after the podcast we thought we would give the place another shot.  Unfortunately after getting Kodra and Tam out there, it looks like the 3 man dungeon had a minimum level requirement of 18.  So at this point I was sitting at 27, and Tam at 20… so we decided to try and work our way through it.  The first room or so was pretty easy because both of us are dual wielding blenders.  The first boss however…. ended up to be just as much of a challenge with the two of us as it was solo.  We managed to make it through it however with both of us extremely low in health.

The second boss was significantly easier mechanically, but involved me running around like a madman and kiting him for a bit while Tam finished him off.  Then we got to the final boss… and quite frankly it rocked our worlds.  It took lots of rethinking the situation and a series of I think ten attempts before we finally just barely managed to defeat the encounter.  Quite honestly I have no clue how someone would manage to do this dungeon at 18 with three people, when we technically over leveled the hell out of it.  This makes me super anxious however to try the next dungeon, because it was an awesome challenge.  The dungeon design like much of the game reminds me of an older era of MMOs.  There were moments when I was taken back to the mob density and layout of the dungeons in Dark Age of Camelot.  We had to very carefully pick our way through the targets and use line of sight to pull things back in order to make sure we only got the one target we needed.  The game is far better than I gave it credit for… and I am hoping to piddle around on the side for awhile.

Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
Delving the Sewers