Silk
Well-Known Member
Continuation of first thread..
Ascenscion
So last night I chose which class I wanted (you pick one of two at level 10, depending on your starting class) and I opted for gladiator which is a plate wearing melee dps class with the ability to offtank. I was taken to the capitol (Pandemonium) and completed my ascencion quest. A short cinematic (If I'm honest, it was a little underwhelming) and voila; wings! Also got a nice present from my trainer, a shiny 2h sword which does a lot of damage.
I was surprised that there was no immediate option to fly and a tutorial on it. Instead, you then get sent to the next zone and it's there that you get a little "?" popping up explaining flight. Oh I forgot to mention, there is an in-game tutorial, similar in concept to wow's but we have moving pictures and audio to explain things easier. The tutorial can be turned off of course.
Flight
Controls are easy enough. Since you bind ascend, descend, flight and landing on keys I was thinking "this is going to be a nightmare". But thankfully once you've taken off, you can use mouselook to steer any direction you please. Similar to wow flying, but you don't turn "instantly", you turn naturally, so your avatar turns to face the direction rather than snapping to it. You can "sidestep" mid air, and you can still autorun.
You start with the ability to fly for a minute, and receive a warning when you are running out of time. The flight bar recharges at a decent enough speed. I am led to beleive that flight times and possibly flight bar recharge times improve as you level, with items, and by pvp'ing end game thus improving your wings via ranking.
One gripe about flying so far is if you run forwards, jump into the air and hit flight, it doesn't continue momentum (which lets face it would be awesome), but rather stops dead mid-air for the wings to unfurl. I'm not sure if it then commences autorun after the wings are out, as I was being impatient and pressing buttons when my movement stopped. Will test this later. Also I think I am probably "doing it wrong" as I've seen vids of people jumping off cliffs then gliding without said momentum stoppage. Could be I am hitting "take off" instead of "glide", will try tonight and update accordingly.
Edit: You can glide from running without losing momentum but only works well when gliding from high ground to low. Not found a way to take off and fly upwards without the loss of momentum.
Also I sometimes have issues with the camera refusing to turn around when I hold LMB, whilst gathering. Using RMB works fine, I guess this might be a mini-bug.
Flight combat
I don't think you're expected to do this a lot at the early level, given the short flight time. However, there's nothing to stop you unfurling your wings to do ground combat; advantageous to do so in my case as I get a passive 10% strength bonus whilst flying. One flaw I found (or perhaps it's by design) was that depending on your angle and height, the mob flees. I need to try this out a bit more to work out if I'm flying too high etc.
Combat so far doesn't feel overly different to what it did without wings. But that's no bad thing, I have to say combat in Aion feels more natural and enjoyable than most mmo's. I'll have to try a caster as well to say if the same rings true.
Pandemonium
Thought I'd talk a bit about the capitol. It's very much a case of exploring if you want to and trying things out. On the map there are colour coded sections pointing you in the right direction for merchants, training, tradeskills etc. so you're never completely lost. I haven't found a way to ask for directions, but haven't really needed to as things seem to be in logical places. e.g. All the trainers are in the one temple. Unsurprisingly I found the auction house and bank in what is labelled "gold temple". I found various tradeskills to try (covered in a later section). Pandemonium is a very large, well presented city, and for some reason loads in about a 10th of the time it takes me to load Dalaran in wow. As always I have at least one gripe; you can't fly here! I guess they have their reasons. Also a gripe Solemn found: Apparently you can only mail one item at a time unless we are missing something.
Found somethng out about the bank (called warehouse in this game): there are several slots which are shared across your account. So you can effectively trade anything you want across your own players. So far everything in the game has been bind on equip, not sure if that changes later. And if an item is soulbound, not sure if you can put it into these slots. I shall of course try it out..
Tradeskills
I'm very much new to these and who knows, at higher levels it could end up being one of those games that makes you cry with tradeskill failures (because yes you can fail and yes the mats do go poof). But so far I'm enjoying it. I've picked cooking and alchemy. As far as I'm aware there are no limits to which skills you take, but you can only reach mastery in two.
There seems to be a common theme with all tradeskills. You find the main NPC, and he always has an optional quest associated with the tradeskill - worth doing as the reward is a recipe. He will train you for a fee. And he will offer you work. The latter is quite awesome because you can basically skill up without leaving the town. e.g. The first work order you get will be to craft x items, and you'll be given the reagents. Should you fail, drop the quest and start again - bear in mind you are gaining skill points for free. Once you reach a skill of 10, the next highest work order will be available (as well as the first one, which remember, is free if you want a few more skill points). The second work order onwards do have a cost associated because they provide the main set of reagent but then you must purchase something e.g. on cooking I had to buy some salt to cook up some clams.
You can of course skill up from your own recipes too. In alchemy I've not yet found all the mats but am able to make healing potions if I want. In cooking I've made a plethora of fried fish and clams. Yey statfuds! However, work orders seem to have another purpose; sometimes you are given a new recipe as a reward. Having not found another way to get recipes, I suspect quest rewards, work order rewards, or auction house are your options.
Edit: You can also buy reipes from the vendor in the same room.. didn't realise they ahve multiple tabs/categories.. do'h! thanks to Solemn for finding this.
I should also mention there seems to be a chance of creating a higher quality version of the item you are crafting; when making food I ended up with a seperate stack of better quality food which lasted longer. This is fine for cooking but for smithing I suspect it would lead to players only buying the higher quality items, or being reluctant to pay much for standard quality. We shall see.
There is a singular room for each tradeskill, and animated tables that you use to cook/brew/craft/whatever. Each room has it's own music. I have to say it's a lot of fun standing there cooking with eggs and stuff bouncing around all over.. you actually feel like you are cooking. Your avatar whips out a frying pan, chucks salt into it and generally seems to be enjoying herself. Attention to detail like this is what I really like about the game so far.
Gathering
Gathering professions are not trained, you start off with a basic one and when you evolve you gain a further one (allowing you to gather essence from mid air). I'm still learning but as far as I'm aware there's stuff all over for you to pick up. I found clams, fishies in the sea, plants, ore, stuff in the sky. All there for the taking. When you mouseover one, it tells you what skill is needed to get it. Your gathering skills raise as you use them. And each node can be used 2-4 times, for multiple items and if you are lucky multiple skillups. You don't have to worry about carrying a pickaxe, or swiss army knife, you just right click and gather stuff.
New Summary
Aion must be doing something right because I can't wait to play tonight.. even though I know my character will be wiped I'm having so much fun
Impossible to know if it's going to have as much longetivity as wow or what end game is like, or even how grouping works but right now I can hapilly say I want to level up several characters and tradeskills. Because it's fun to play, which is really the main point of any game; right?
My next update will cover grouping and instances, as I haven't really encountered them yet.
Ascenscion
So last night I chose which class I wanted (you pick one of two at level 10, depending on your starting class) and I opted for gladiator which is a plate wearing melee dps class with the ability to offtank. I was taken to the capitol (Pandemonium) and completed my ascencion quest. A short cinematic (If I'm honest, it was a little underwhelming) and voila; wings! Also got a nice present from my trainer, a shiny 2h sword which does a lot of damage.
I was surprised that there was no immediate option to fly and a tutorial on it. Instead, you then get sent to the next zone and it's there that you get a little "?" popping up explaining flight. Oh I forgot to mention, there is an in-game tutorial, similar in concept to wow's but we have moving pictures and audio to explain things easier. The tutorial can be turned off of course.
Flight
Controls are easy enough. Since you bind ascend, descend, flight and landing on keys I was thinking "this is going to be a nightmare". But thankfully once you've taken off, you can use mouselook to steer any direction you please. Similar to wow flying, but you don't turn "instantly", you turn naturally, so your avatar turns to face the direction rather than snapping to it. You can "sidestep" mid air, and you can still autorun.
You start with the ability to fly for a minute, and receive a warning when you are running out of time. The flight bar recharges at a decent enough speed. I am led to beleive that flight times and possibly flight bar recharge times improve as you level, with items, and by pvp'ing end game thus improving your wings via ranking.
One gripe about flying so far is if you run forwards, jump into the air and hit flight, it doesn't continue momentum (which lets face it would be awesome), but rather stops dead mid-air for the wings to unfurl. I'm not sure if it then commences autorun after the wings are out, as I was being impatient and pressing buttons when my movement stopped. Will test this later. Also I think I am probably "doing it wrong" as I've seen vids of people jumping off cliffs then gliding without said momentum stoppage. Could be I am hitting "take off" instead of "glide", will try tonight and update accordingly.
Edit: You can glide from running without losing momentum but only works well when gliding from high ground to low. Not found a way to take off and fly upwards without the loss of momentum.
Also I sometimes have issues with the camera refusing to turn around when I hold LMB, whilst gathering. Using RMB works fine, I guess this might be a mini-bug.
Flight combat
I don't think you're expected to do this a lot at the early level, given the short flight time. However, there's nothing to stop you unfurling your wings to do ground combat; advantageous to do so in my case as I get a passive 10% strength bonus whilst flying. One flaw I found (or perhaps it's by design) was that depending on your angle and height, the mob flees. I need to try this out a bit more to work out if I'm flying too high etc.
Combat so far doesn't feel overly different to what it did without wings. But that's no bad thing, I have to say combat in Aion feels more natural and enjoyable than most mmo's. I'll have to try a caster as well to say if the same rings true.
Pandemonium
Thought I'd talk a bit about the capitol. It's very much a case of exploring if you want to and trying things out. On the map there are colour coded sections pointing you in the right direction for merchants, training, tradeskills etc. so you're never completely lost. I haven't found a way to ask for directions, but haven't really needed to as things seem to be in logical places. e.g. All the trainers are in the one temple. Unsurprisingly I found the auction house and bank in what is labelled "gold temple". I found various tradeskills to try (covered in a later section). Pandemonium is a very large, well presented city, and for some reason loads in about a 10th of the time it takes me to load Dalaran in wow. As always I have at least one gripe; you can't fly here! I guess they have their reasons. Also a gripe Solemn found: Apparently you can only mail one item at a time unless we are missing something.
Found somethng out about the bank (called warehouse in this game): there are several slots which are shared across your account. So you can effectively trade anything you want across your own players. So far everything in the game has been bind on equip, not sure if that changes later. And if an item is soulbound, not sure if you can put it into these slots. I shall of course try it out..
Tradeskills
I'm very much new to these and who knows, at higher levels it could end up being one of those games that makes you cry with tradeskill failures (because yes you can fail and yes the mats do go poof). But so far I'm enjoying it. I've picked cooking and alchemy. As far as I'm aware there are no limits to which skills you take, but you can only reach mastery in two.
There seems to be a common theme with all tradeskills. You find the main NPC, and he always has an optional quest associated with the tradeskill - worth doing as the reward is a recipe. He will train you for a fee. And he will offer you work. The latter is quite awesome because you can basically skill up without leaving the town. e.g. The first work order you get will be to craft x items, and you'll be given the reagents. Should you fail, drop the quest and start again - bear in mind you are gaining skill points for free. Once you reach a skill of 10, the next highest work order will be available (as well as the first one, which remember, is free if you want a few more skill points). The second work order onwards do have a cost associated because they provide the main set of reagent but then you must purchase something e.g. on cooking I had to buy some salt to cook up some clams.
You can of course skill up from your own recipes too. In alchemy I've not yet found all the mats but am able to make healing potions if I want. In cooking I've made a plethora of fried fish and clams. Yey statfuds! However, work orders seem to have another purpose; sometimes you are given a new recipe as a reward. Having not found another way to get recipes, I suspect quest rewards, work order rewards, or auction house are your options.
Edit: You can also buy reipes from the vendor in the same room.. didn't realise they ahve multiple tabs/categories.. do'h! thanks to Solemn for finding this.
I should also mention there seems to be a chance of creating a higher quality version of the item you are crafting; when making food I ended up with a seperate stack of better quality food which lasted longer. This is fine for cooking but for smithing I suspect it would lead to players only buying the higher quality items, or being reluctant to pay much for standard quality. We shall see.
There is a singular room for each tradeskill, and animated tables that you use to cook/brew/craft/whatever. Each room has it's own music. I have to say it's a lot of fun standing there cooking with eggs and stuff bouncing around all over.. you actually feel like you are cooking. Your avatar whips out a frying pan, chucks salt into it and generally seems to be enjoying herself. Attention to detail like this is what I really like about the game so far.
Gathering
Gathering professions are not trained, you start off with a basic one and when you evolve you gain a further one (allowing you to gather essence from mid air). I'm still learning but as far as I'm aware there's stuff all over for you to pick up. I found clams, fishies in the sea, plants, ore, stuff in the sky. All there for the taking. When you mouseover one, it tells you what skill is needed to get it. Your gathering skills raise as you use them. And each node can be used 2-4 times, for multiple items and if you are lucky multiple skillups. You don't have to worry about carrying a pickaxe, or swiss army knife, you just right click and gather stuff.
New Summary
Aion must be doing something right because I can't wait to play tonight.. even though I know my character will be wiped I'm having so much fun
Impossible to know if it's going to have as much longetivity as wow or what end game is like, or even how grouping works but right now I can hapilly say I want to level up several characters and tradeskills. Because it's fun to play, which is really the main point of any game; right?
My next update will cover grouping and instances, as I haven't really encountered them yet.
