A beginner guide to Enderal : How not to die too much.

February 20, 2019 — Leave a comment

Enderal’s long awaited dlc Forgotten Stories finally released on Steam on Valentine’s day. Enderal is a total conversion of The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, it does not have any connection to Skyrim other than the fact that it uses Skyrim’s engine and some of the gameplay mechanics. For people that haven’t played the original Enderal, they might feel unprepared for the new systems and how difficult the gameplay might seems. Thankfully, once you understand how the game is meant to be played, it becomes much easier.

When you first play Enderal, you will notice that the leveling system is quite different. Instead of getting levels by leveling your skills, you will instead receive experience by completing quests, defeating enemies and crafting. Leveling up will award you Learning and Crafting points that you can then use via learning/crafting books of the skill of your choice. Using the book will increase the skill that it applies to and use a learning or crafting point. Leveling up will also let you choose to increase your health, stamina or mana as well as giving you a memory point that you can then use on different perks trees. The main issue that new players might run into is that the Learning and Crafting books can get quite expensive to buy from vendors and while they can be found in the game world, there is definitely not enough out there to get you maxed out.  The other thing that players will notice is that combat is hard; enemies are strong and using potions/magic will increase your arcane fever which can eventually kill you, while this can be kept under control, it can be a bit overwhelming at first.

enderal menu

Hero menu

So how do you go about getting your skills and gear in a good place that the main quest doesn’t become too hard? From my own experience, I found that the best way is to go out there and explore. Exploring and defeating enemies in dungeons will give you plenty of experience,gear and money for your skill books. Dungeons will often have special equipment that are part of a set: these pieces of gear will give you more bonus the more pieces of the set you use and can be very useful as you progress through the main story. However, it can be easy to go to a zone that has enemies that are too difficult. Unlike it’s predecessor, Nehrim, Enderal’s map doesn’t show you the level of each zone. Zones on the map separated via a red dotted line.

enderal map

Map of Enderal

Below is my order of the zones from easiest to hardest:

1.The Sun Coast (except for Fogville)

2.Heartlands, Western Cliff, Farmers Coast

3.Whisperwood /Fogville

4.Dark Valley, Goldenforst, King’s Mountain Pass

5.Crystal Forest,Frostcliff Mountains

6.Thalgard, Powder Desert

 

You will probably be able to go through the main quest without too much exploring until the second act which start with the “Fragments of the Past” quest. At some point in that act you will be going to Fogville which can be too hard if you are too low level or don’t have good enough gear. This is where taking the time to explore the zones and do quests for experience becomes more important. Good preparation will make the exploration worth it, Enderal is full of wonderful vistas and interesting dungeons and stories that will keep you busy for hours!

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Your pennies is one of your most valuable resource and you should not be afraid to use it. Before each trip, get into the habit of spending most of it on some potions, ambrosia, teleport scrolls and extra skills books. Then when ready, go clear out the zones above for experience and loot, I highly suggest to do the zones from easiest to hardest. The experience is good enough that you will get a couple of levels while you are out there and the enemies will still be challenging. If you are not against using the console, adding some carry weight and turn on the option to see all the dungeons (unexplored of course) will allow you to go on a full trip of each zone before you go back to Ark to get new supplies. I would suggest to at least clear up the 2 first sets of zones before starting the 2nd act of the main quest and from then on, clear up the other zones as you need them to advance. Honestly the game world is interesting enough that clearing up most of the map before finishing the story is worth it. Quests are also a nice way to get experience.

The game is hard but it feels like it was build in a way that it encourages you to get the rewards from exploring for an easier but still challenging gameplay. With good preparation, you will make it.

Anthem VIP demo thoughts

January 26, 2019 — Leave a comment

I pre-ordered Anthem on a whim a couple months back after watching the dev team streams. Like other people, I was a bit skeptical about the game but it seemed interesting enough that I was willing to give it a chance. I got to play the alpha and was pleased by what I saw back then. Now with the VIP demo out and having spend around 10 hours on it. I think it is time to share my thoughts on it.

The demo consist of a couple of missions and access to one stronghold ( think of it as a dungeon that you run for loot). You can also access freeplay which is part of the open world with a couple of events scattered in. I focused on the Colossus javelin since I am a fan of characters with tanking abilities.

Let’s start by something that I more or less care about: the graphics, while I like pretty games, it does not really affect my view of it. With that said, Anthem looks pretty good. I run on a GTX 1070 and was able to run the game at high settings with no issues (would rarely go under 60 fps), Ultra settings got my fps as low as 45. The water looked bad in certain spots. No graphical glitches that I can remember and the character animations looks pretty good.

You can customize your javelin via the forge which is right next to your javelin area where you start your missions. You have 2 weapons slots with different options, you do not seems to be limited on what guns you can use. There was no way to directly mod the weapon via those slots.  You have 6 components slots which you use to enhance different things such as your armor, melee damage, guns, ammo etc (you only have access to 2 slots in the demo).  Below you can see an example of what it looks like, the power of the component seems to affect Javelin health and power but not the main buff of the component. The 3 other buffs below the main one were random so I had multiple Melee Inscription component that had different buffs.

components

You also have 3 ability slots ( your ultimate could not be changed in the demo), they work a bit similar to the components slots in the fact that it will give you some random buffs but which one you equip will affect what ability you have access to. Be aware that at the time of the demo, the forge was the only place where you could see a description of what your abilities do, I was unable to find a way to look at it while in a mission which I was not a fan of.

skills

There is also a crafting section where you can craft your own gear, I was able to get some blueprints by completing challenges with the corresponding weapon. With embers found in freeplay and missions,  I was able to craft rare equipment, the main components do not change, only the embers did depending of the rarity you were going for.

craft

You also have access to customization of your javelin inside the forge, you can change the colors and parts of your javelin. I got a feeling that you will be able to buy different customization parts via micro-transactions.  If the Coins currency found in the demo is it then thankfully you are able to get them when playing with others or completing challenges.

The gameplay feels pretty good, the gunplay is fun and combat mechanics are pretty satisfying. The Colossus took some time getting used to but after messing with it for a while, I felt comfortable with it. I was pleased that fights were not just bullet-sponge type enemies which is something that bothered me with The Division, especially at harder difficulties. It helps to have a diverse group however as it will allow you to do combos with other javelins abilities. There is mechanics to the fights so you might have to find weakpoints and avoid certain mechanics by jumping/flying or hiding behind obstacles. The fights are challenging and figuring out the mechanics and strategies and finally beating the enemy felt great. The normal missions were easier than the stronghold in my opinion which I was not expecting, not sure how I feel about that yet. Freeplay seems to be the place to get resources and events will give you some as well as gear, experience from events seemed minimal.

Part of the HUD and other menus could be better. Lack of waypoints in certain parts of missions was frustrating and the game could definitely use a minimap or a better compass. My squad and I got separated on multiple occasions in freeplay and the compass was useless since it could not track players very far, we had to pull up the big map to find each other. Like stated earlier, not being able to view your abilities in mission is a big oversight in my opinion.  Getting in missions with a squad requires you to get in your javelin first so if your squad leader tries to start a mission, you will need to get in it first before you see that they are setting up an expedition. I wish they would just add a notification on your screen that let’s you know that the leader is starting a mission so they do not have to tell you via voice chat ( there is no text chat in the game that I could see).  Since I use discord for my squad, this was more or less an issue for me but I don’t think not including a text chat is the best idea, especially for a game that was pushed as being better in a squad for harder content.

I cannot speak much about solo play since I only played in a squad but it definitely feel like coop will be the preferred way to play. The game performed well for me for the most part, I had a few issues connecting but it was resolved within 30 minutes. I started playing 7 hours after the demo started but I know that some people had issues logging in when it launched. It seems to have gotten better as time went on but I have a feeling that if the open demo runs into the same issues, the official launch will likely be rough.

I was pretty satisfied with the demo, HUD and the menus were probably the bad and ugly part of it but not a deal breaker for me. Gameplay was great and I feel that as long as Bioware does good content for it and release it at a good pace, the game will have a decent sized audience. It might end up more a loot grindy game a la Diablo so it might not be for everyone. As far as I am concerned, it will be part of my gaming rotation.

We got a blog

January 26, 2019 — Leave a comment

Welcome to my blog! I am known as Littleork but you can call me Eve (pronounced Ev), I am a twitch streamer that mainly plays co-op looter games. I am the type of gamer that do not care so much about graphics but just love loots and the grind. I used to almost only play World of Warcraft and open world but I have since became more interested in looter shooter games such as Warframe and The Division. I have a tendency to only play a couple of games but I play rather hardcore. This is where I will be sharing my views on games that I play and the new content that they receive. Hopefully I can learn how to do this properly. Stay tuned!