Good Morning Folks! Lately, I have been playing an excessive amount of Enshrouded. At this point I’ve put in around 50 hours and last night I hit the current level cap of 25. I still have a ton of the map that remains in the “fog of war”, and there are still some deadly shroud areas that I cannot adventure into until I upgrade my flame altar one more time. On the building front I have been slowly working on digging underground and at this point have dug out a basement and a sub-basement. I am contemplating starting to move some of my crafters down to this area because with all the bits and bobs associated with each of them the current crafting hall is getting a bit busy. In my travels, I have happened upon a few extra crafting machines so I have been setting them up down there just so I can produce more of the time-gated crafts at one time.
I also set up a new bedroom for myself down in the first basement area. I dug a little room off to the side and have set up some stone-themed furniture down there which is capable of getting my comfort level up to 36. As I can craft more of this stone-themed set I will probably replace the bookcases and then build out some armor and weapon storage in this room. Similarly, I am contemplating digging another side chamber and moving where my magic chests are to a more sheltered area underground. Not that there are really the accouterments of setting up a proper treasure room, but it would be nice to build some sort of hidden vault since there are doors for that functionality in the game. I might swap up the entrance to this bedroom with one of the stone “secret” doors.
Last night in my travels I found a golden chest that spits out max-level gear. For the uninitiated, almost everything in the Enshrouded world respawns on a timer. Currently, that timer is 30 minutes, but if you log out and back in… it refreshes all of those timers. So when you find one of these gear chests, you can in theory farm it over and over and over… which I did. I set up a flame altar just outside of the room with the chest and then played the logout and back in the game until I ran out of lockpicks. I will likely run around today and farm up a bunch more metal scraps and then repeat the process until I have gotten the gear that I want. I am always on team… get the best gear and then finish out the adventure.
Here is a map for how to get to the cave that I found the chest in. Like I said it requires lockpicks so you will have to bring a bunch of those with you. I photoshopped two screenshots together so that I could highlight the location of the two nearest spires. Essentially there is just this cave on the side of the hill and inside there is a ton of iron. There will be a rubble-covered wall, that stands out like a sore thumb because the rest of the cave is limestone and iron nodules. Dig through the wall and the chest will be on the other side. I placed my Flame Altar just outside of the chamber where the chest spawns so that I could keep the rubble wall open and not have to dig it out every time. You are going to need to have your Flame Altar upgraded to level 5 as you will have to cross through some areas that were previously deadly shroud to me at level 4. There are some areas you will need to skirt that are still deadly shroud but I did not have to pass through any of them.
There are a whole slew of armor sets that can drop from this chest. The fancy set that I have been wearing in these screenshots is called the Gloom Monarch set, and is sort of a generic survival/melee damage sort of affair. It looks very DeathKnight-ish which I dig, and I have yet to find anything akin to a proper pure tanking set. The other set that I keep getting is something more akin to a caster set that looks kinda like the Heavensward Black Mage armor from Final Fantasy XIV. Even though this appears to be a max-level chest, all of the armor is dropping at level 23 instead of level 25.
It also has a whole slew of weapons that can drop and I think I have seen most of the loot table at this point in either Epic or Legendary qualities. Essentially my goal is to get the sword and bow in legendary quality so it will have five affixes on it. I’m keeping one of everything that looks vaguely interesting and then sharding the rest for upgrade coins. I really wish that armor could be salvaged but apparently, the only option there is to delete it… which seems wasteful. The main reason that I landed on Nova for my main weapon is that it gives off almost as much light as a torch which makes exploration that much easier since I don’t have to keep swapping to my torch so I can see. The wand also has a decent amount of illumination, but not quite as much as the sword.
Also in my travels last night, I happened upon what is apparently the best glider in the game. This thing is ridiculously fast, almost too fast to actually control your flight. It was the top of a sun temple and I had to fight a giant bird in order to get it. In theory, you could probably loot the chest without killing the bird, but since I was up there I figured might as well get some more “chicken” and feathers. I figure I will farm out the orange versions of the weapons I like the best and then start gathering up the materials needed to upgrade my flame altar all the way to level 6. After that, I think the goal will be to uncover every corner of the map that is currently veiled. Past that… I guess we enter the TRUE endgame… which is crafting some more bases and maybe taking over one of the NPC towns for myself.
The post Iron Cave Chest Farm appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
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.
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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.
The post Enshrouded Early Thoughts appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Tonight we have a bunch of not entirely related topics, but there is at least a minor theme of how you end something is extremely important. Bel talks a bit about his experiences with the latest brand name beta in the form of Division 2. From there he also shares some frustrations with the way Assassin’s Creed Origins is ending which leads its way into a larger discussion about what makes a satisfying game ending. We talk about what this means for passive media and how it might be different for interactive media. We then get into a discussion about progression systems and why fixed ones often times feel better than completely random ones. Finally we have some assorted digression about us looking forward to Anthem as a non-PVP mmo that somehow leads its way to FFXIV housing?
