The spreading of the Good News continues, and after a bit of 'normal' MMO play in Age of Conan, my own personal story picks up again, at level 30, with a very sarcastic seer chap on the docks of Khemi taking it on himself to supervise my ascent to glory, fame, and hopefully no small amount of lamentation of the women!
Being left to one's own devices for a whole ten levels is a bit of a jarring break, to be honest, after the rather personal attention of the first twenty levels in Tortage. Personally, I don't mind that much, and am the sort of person who quite likes The Normal MMO Experience; whimsical odd-jobbing from outpost to outpost, with plenty of legwork, allowing me to take in the zones. Quite liking Khopsef Province, an excellent example of the Desert Type Zone, and have yet to find the need to head to the other two zones of my level, over in Aquillonia and Cimmeria. Probably saving those for alt purposes, I think. Strangely enough, my one trip to the other two capital cities, I found them very cold places, visually, and mildly uncomfortable to wander about in. I think I may have acclimatised to a computer game climate region, which is a bit odd.
Level 30 came without me really noticing actually, but I can see how the large gaps in Destiny might annoy or upset the player who is less accustomed to How Things Are Done in MMOs, and I'm sure a lot of AoC's 700k are folks from Outside. Strangely enough, I found the opposite problem actually.
The day came, and I headed for the Seer. He sent me off to a cave atop a huge rock that I'd seen but wasn't allowed into before. Climbing wall fun, and a spectacular view from the top. It's a solo instance, which was a bit of a disappointment, as largely, I'm duoing my way through Hyboria. Once inside there is Trouble With Demons, and the ensuing Cultist Clearance turned out to be quite a tricky affair in the end, with patrols, and fiendish linked aggro with a melee chap and a couple of casters. It's all aimed at a L30 player, but...I don't know what went wrong really. Sloppy play from having been beating on low blues and greens for the last five levels or so, perhaps. It may be that I was actually wrong about Armour Stats Mattering (see previous AoC posting). Wrong? Me? Outrageous! Saying that, I was mostly dressed in L20 gear which perhaps might have had something to do with what followed.
I zoned in, made all sorts of brash claims to the token NPC at the entrance, then Hellstepped (Charged) directly into the first cluster of cultists, bellowing my usual battlecry ("Hello! Can I interest you in the Word of Xotli?" FWOOSH!). This usually works, and in a satisfyingly spectacular manner, but these cultists were made of sterner (and more flame-retardant) stuff. I bounced off, and then received a terrific beatdown. ("No..." WHUMP! "...you can't..." SPLUT! "...interest us..." MASH! "...in Xotli...")
I think they were especially annoyed that I'd caught them just as they were about to sit down to Sunday lunch, but whatever the reason, I died. Which was a bit of an anticlimax, frankly. Here I am, in my Special Story Place, being all Special and Heroic, and full of Destiny, and I'm dead. I guess not everyone gets to be the Hero and anyway, I tend to gravitate to the Vizier role where I roleplay at all.
Grumbling that my Destiny is in the hands of an inept Itemisation Designer, I got up at the shrine and got stuck in to a less than Heroic game of attrition. "All Aboard The -60%DP Express", as we say in Guild Wars, which gets the job done, but does nothing for dignity. The rest of the instance was indeed quite well done, but by then I had a good old grump on, and wasn't really in a position to appreciate the thing, and since there is only one way out, through, I couldn't even go away and come back and try it in a better mood, and set of equipment. (Or indeed, come back after to try again)
There was a light at the end of the tunnel, with the final Demon boss, as being sometimes a Demon myself, I like nothing more than a bit of Hot Demon On Demon Action, and by the time I'd got that far in, I was starting to find my feet again, so the latter part of it all didn't go so badly. On the whole though, as I played through, I was mostly thinking, "I can't wait to get out of here and back to the game", which was a shame.
I'm back out now and playing Normal MMO again, and while many would be annoyed to learn that nothing new happens on that front until L50, I find myself quite glad, to be honest.
Looking ahead, I'll soon be big enough to play in Black Castle. I have no idea what that is, but LFGs for that, and oddly enough, The Chicken Handler (An epic, er, poultry husbander, whose chicken you have to steal), make up almost all the OOC chat I've seen, so it's clearly a popular venue. Looking forward to seeing what it's about, and of course, moving upward in levels to the next Adventure Zone. I like the Province, but there's always time to see somewhere new...
Bug O the Week: I have a spell called Flame Lash. It's quite neat, causing each following melee hit to cause a damage buff to stack up. It also sets my hands on fire. Which is neat, but they then never go out. While some people grind a ridiculous amount of Destroyer Cores in GW for this privilege, I'm not quite so impressed, and it makes visits to the bookshop terribly fraught...