Playing Lost and Found in Rift

I did it!  I found my old level 42 cleric in Rift! He was buried away in a "trial" server with about 10 other characters. I just needed to shift my "Shard" at the selection screen and track him down.  Once I did that and renamed him, it was as simple as shifting him over to a playable shard.

I loaded him up, logged in and found myself in the beautiful wintry world of Iron Pine Peak. Looking at the map also told me I was over-leveled to be in this location, so all was well . . . I could mostly wander around and not have to worry too much about getting into a scrap I couldn't handle. I even killed a cat while not knowing my skill points were all reset.

Iron Pine Peak . . . that's a pretty decent sized chunk of land to explore!

Then pressing B for bags revealed something terrifying . . . a 9 year old stash of goods where I had no idea what was what.  If you're an old time gamer that loves to revisit MMOs, I'm sure you've felt the same panic and fear.  What in the world is going on here? Oh no . . . Buff Scrolls?!?! Crafting Supplies?!?! HELP!

What in the world are these full bags and mishmash-ed skill bars? I'm terrified!

My ability bars were a tragic mess and come to find out I needed to completely respec my character.  It was an absolutely terrifying 10 minutes that resulted in me finding a lot of lost and forgotten items. I imagine it's like someone renting a storage shed, leaving the country, and coming back nine years to find a pile of strange microwaves and coffee pots they had completely forgotten about.

My favorite "lost coffee pot" that I found was a cosmetic pet I had named "Lil' Wally" since I bought a card that came with him at Walmart. I think it's a frog?

Yes, you're alone, but you've got a frog and a pixie, so things can't really be that bad can they?

I ended up choosing an "easy" build with a healer pet and we spent some quality time killing mobs and completing quests in my immediate vicinity . . . things like winter wolves, mountain cats, evil cultists, fire elementals, and six-legged basilisks.

It was a good couple hours of fun last night re-experiencing this old world.

It seems an unlikely place to find a fire elemental, but what the hey.

And I must say . . . my dude could totally be in a fantasy K-pop band with his purple faux-hawk and perfectly pixie-like features. LOOK AT THIS HOTNESS!

go ahead . . . swipe right.

I also spent some time just "looking around" at things, like this swirling Air Rift (at least I think it's an Air Rift?) in the cold mountain tops. giant swirling chunks of rock with uber looking Griffons prowling around. Wow!  Just super visually stunning . . . especially since I bumped my graphics up from Low to Ultra. I could have never experienced this game in all its splendor on my old rig, that's for sure.

Really this should be video footage to show how amazing this swirling meteor field looked.

I'd say I still need to experiment with all my skills a bit before I can say this character is fully ready to rock in a level appropriate zone, but I had fun wandering around here and rediscovering things like my mechanical horse mount and Lil' Wally.

I think I at least have another couple play sessions in me for Rift. No pressure, just a big world to explore and more lost things to find. Sounds like fun, right?

Happy dueling

Was there a Rift between us?

The other day I decided to download and check out a "now" older MMO, good ol' Rift.  You remember Rift, right?

Look, a Rift that's undulating like a giant octopus in the sky!

Sure you do! So did I! I was there during "Beta 5" for Rift and it was full of people, and Twitter was annoyingly barking out screenshots for every achievement you made. It was crazy, and it seemed like anyone who was anyone was out there playing Rift.  I even made a special blog I was going to devote to Rift that . . . never really took off. Oh well. Let's just forget I mentioned that.

2011 was a crazy time when MMOs were still all the hotness and the term "WoW-killer" was a thing.  Every new MMO that came out was going to be the next WoW-Killer and promised to be full of fun and interesting people . . . and they were! They just didn't kill WoW. That time really felt like the peak of MMO production to me. What did we get out of that time frame? SWTOR! GW2! AoC! LOTRO! ESO! and so many more cool acronyms!

I'm not sure what happened to my old (level 40? level 50?) character, but it's probably hiding on either a different account or a different shard. Either way, kicking up a new character and running through the old intro zone was almost exactly as I remembered it, but with a few differences.

Gotta love this first Rift boss battle in the Rift Tutorial  

The first big difference of course was that the game didn't have as many new players like me running around in the tutorial area.  That's to be expected. Rift is a nine-year-old game at this point and from the looks of their community landing page, all that's being talked about are the new mounts and things in the shop. I'm just happy to see the game servers are still running and I can log on and play for free.

The second thing I noticed was that it all seemed a bit easier than it was when I was playing back in 2011.  Agro radius was smaller, and things didn't feel like they presented as big of a challenge as they did back at the day.  That's also to be expected.  When something is too punishing too quickly, people just tend to check out of the game and say #sorrynotsorry #ImAudiHere.

The third thing that had changed was ME . . . great, I feel old now. Thanks a lot, Rift! But, seriously, I've changed a lot as a person and as a game-consumer, but that said . . . the actors were all standing in the right spots and I was there playing the hero of the game, Mr. Ascended himself.

I remember chain whip guy and in my memories, he's a lot scarier than this with more adds.

It was good to log in and at least look at the starting area of Rift again. I'm not sure if I'll keep poking around or not, but it's good to see this is still alive and kicking.

Here's to you, Rift!  Here's to you.

Happy Dueling

Project Gorgon: So Long and Thanks for all the Grapefish?

I've played Project Gorgon to the point where now I feel like ranting about stuff, so . . . you know what? I might just be done writing about my beloved indie MMO darling for a bit and instead leave it happily on the shelf as a good memory. It's probably time to just write about something else.

Yes, a ghost town in a harsh environment can be a happy memory!

Looking back, I wish I would have done that with DCUO, but I played it to the point where logging on made me feel ill, which is a shame . . . it's a wonderful MMO with tons of great memories for me. What a great game that is, but I'll probably never log on again. I *can't* log on to DCUO now without getting a pit in my stomach.

Sure it gives me a stomach ache, but it's still a great game!

To sum up my Project Gorgon rant . . .since I know you're curious:

1) Cooking isn't a fun skill. As much fun as cooking evil bacon that talks to you sounds like it is . . . overall the skill is tedious with a lot of running from zone to zone without much joy mixed into the ingredients.

• Free counter-argument: Lots of skills in Project Gorgon are joyless and you picked this one to be the bad guy?

• Free counter to counter-argument: Yup. Stuff that and your 100 different ingredients into a limited inventory space!

2) The fairies are coming, and they'll be getting two free max level bee/wasp pets that I paid many 1,000's of councils to obtain and many 100's of hours to level. To make matters worse, they also get free ice knives . . . so . . . it's like my exact build I've been playing, only cheaper and better. So much for uniqueness?

• Free counter-argument: No one is actually going to be playing AH / Knives build, and the pet will just help with power-leveling what people really want to play. 

• Free counter to counter-argument: Sigh. Is that supposed to make me feel good that people won't be playing my build?

3) I don't know if I have the stamina to level 2-4 more combat skills, even though there's a hat for the deer class that turns them into a unicorn (but still you're a brown deer-looking unicorn . . . you don't turn white and have a rainbow trail shining behind you . . . I may have unreal expectations here tbh).

• Free counter-argument: Look yo, you gotta branch out and find some new combat skills . . . THERE'S SO MANY!!  Also, unicorns with rainbow trails are for losers.

• Free counter to counter-argument: If loving unicorns is wrong, then I'm the King of the wrong, baby!

King of the Wrong, riding proudly into the sunset!

So now what? I don't know, but what I do know is that I'm The Friendly Necromancer, and that definitely means you'll hear from me again.

I wouldn't say I'm completely giving up on Project Gorgon . . . just . . . slowing down a bit and switching gears. I've learned a lot by playing it and made some truly quality friends. The people in my guild are top notch and my in-game buddies awesome. If there's anything that will keep me logging in, it's those guys. Community is definitely a strong suit in Project Gorgon.

Hang in there my friends and thanks for reading along.

Happy Dueling!

Project Gorgon: Enduring the Axiom of Semi-Real Hassium

Project Gorgon continues to be the quirkiest MMO I've ever played, even at current end game. Likewise, it continues to be frustrating, difficult, and yet rewarding all at the same time.

Lemme break down a few things that are happening in my game as of late.

1- The constant grind of daily quests. 

This is absolutely necessary for me at this point in my game.  If it wasn't for my guild running the Daily Dungeons and Daily Fae Realm hunts, I don't think I could continue on because they are worth anywhere from 10k councils ~ 20k councils (including loot) each. You need that money to fuel skill advancement and at the high end of the game, it gets EXTREMELY costly.

Though I call them a "grind," it is a fun chance to be social in game. They are fun for that for sure . . . especially when we're running a guild group where everyone seems to know each other and feel a bit more relaxed.

I don't know if I've ever broken down the daily quests in a blog post before, but basically . . .

A- You take a daily quest from an intelligent mantis in the Casino named Qatik

Remember kids, hats = friendly mantis.

Qatik offers you new excursions everyday to the far off locations of The Winter Nexus (full of trolls and ogres), The Wolf Caves (full of, you guessed it, wolves), The Dark Chapel (full of occultists and dragon roaches aka droaches), and The Yeti Cave (full of bad graphics . . . and yetis).

Daily Excursions are basically group encounters for 3-4 players around level 40-50: Wolf Caves and Yeti Cave being the easiest, Winter Nexus is a step above those, and The Dark Chapel is the most challenging of the bunch.

B- You also get the daily quests offered to you by Agrashab in the Fae Realm

He's a friendly giant! Rich too!

Agrashab is a Troll God, who has an avatar of himself  hanging out in the Fae Realm.  Every day he sends you out to complete a new bounty of "kill 10" elite mobs.  These are typically enemies you wouldn't want to face alone in the Fae Realm. the payout again is between 10k and 20k councils (including loot) each . . . it also pays in the form of Royal Jelly, which is a needed component in leveling your skills to 80.

Do a dallop of dailies! Now don't be shy!

~~

2- Surveying, Mining, and Geology ftw.

The Developers of Project Gorgon once again turned on the double Surveying bonus event this weekend and once again we were all running around clicking on maps and hunting down gems and precious metals.

I took this opportunity to really work hard on my mining skill because I have a strong need for Superb Metal for Superb Thowing Knives, which is the current cream of the crop best metal (and throwing knife) in the game.

Because of this I was able to see exactly how the game switches things up at high level. Last time I talked about Surveying, I was kinda mid-skill level range.

BY THE WAY . . . huge props to the people who invented the Survey Helper app. As long as you have two monitors, this method of tracking your surveys is an absolute time saver. I talked a lot in that last blog post about taking time to arrange surveys in a path. Survey Helper kind of made that an unnecessary step for me and I cut my surveying time in half.

At low level you're clicking on maps and running to clearly defined locations on said maps to gather a few goods.

At high level you're clicking on similar maps but instead getting a "guess-timate" of where you'll find a "motherlode" of metal. The crafting components needed for the motherlode maps also creates a barrier. For the Ilmari Desert maps, you need magic sand, which is a pain in the kiester to obtain. You basically have to farm evil Raksashas out in the desert and hope for a rare drop. For the Gazluk motherlode maps, you're going to need something known as Semi-Real Hassium.

"A warm crystal that seems to constantly grow and shrink" eh?

So, in the real world "Hassium" is a metal that only exists in microscopic quantities and only lasts a few seconds. There's no commercial use and it's only made in scientific studies by bombarding isotopes of lead and iron. I had to look it up.

In Project Gorgon, Semi-Real Hassium (whatever that is) is only available from a still-to-be written NPC fox named Fluffikins.

 . . . building favor with an NPC I don't know much about . . . yup . . .

. . . can I just end my blog post there? "only available from a still-to-be written NPC fox named Fluffikins"? 

Well bless that little fox's heart . . .  and all the cute little tombstones around him . . .

But to make this quirkier . . . Fluffikins will barter for Semi-Realm Hassium in exchange for yellow glowing gems that will give you "a mysterious illness" that causes you to die if you stay in contact with it long enough.

Don't mind the radioactive gems right near the water well . . . nothing to see here.

. . . seriously, can you sense the frustration of this yet?

But you first have to make Fluffikins like you by giving him large amounts of this radioactive gem . . . or egg-based foods . . . or small metal figurines.

. . . sigh. I'm not kidding.

All the while, you're in the high-level zone of Gazluk, which has a cold atmosphere that eats away at your body temperature and is full of mobs (I'm looking at you cold-magic using skeletons) that shoot beams of energy that also steal your body temperature. Dropping to zero usually means a slow death.

. . . foot starts tapping anxiously

This is the only place you can mine these radioactive crystals, and you can only mine a spawn of them once every 24 hours.

 . . . THROWS KEYBOARD! DUMPS DESK! LEAVES ROOM VIOLENTLY!

Layers . . . upon layers . . . upon layers of complexity and barriers. Do you see that?!

That said, I managed to get my first two semi-real Hassium just this morning.  I may end up actually mining after 3 days of favoring up Fluffikins and dying repeatedly to radiation sickness and cold exposure.

~~

 3- Leveled up and Unlocked!

A- Endurance . . .Figuratively and Literally. 

In the midst of all these dailies endeavors. I managed to open up my player stall again and sell a bunch of stuff the past few days. This money coupled with the money I earned from daily quests I was able to purchase my Endurance level up just last night for 260k councils, which left me at a grand total of 700 councils to my name late last night.

B- Knife Fighting 88!

Here's what's left of the checklist of Knife Fighting Synergy levels:

1. Cooking level 10
2. Cooking level 60
3. Fishing level 35
4. Fishing level 65
5. Orcish language level 25
6. Sword level 25
7. Sword level 55
8. Unarmed combat level 33
9. Unarmed combat level 55

Notes since the last time I talked about Knife Fighting synergy levels:

• The new Sun Vale fishing made getting to level 65 in fishing a breeze.
• Sword 55 and Unarmed 55 were definitely grinds, but the combat exp buffs from a couple of Saturday Poetry Jams really helped.  I basically wandered about aimlessly in the Fae Realm while letting my pets do the majority of the heavy lifting until the deed was done.
• The guild has been hitting Gazluk Keep lately after our dailies were done, and this allowed me to finally grind up enough experience to hit that 25 Orc Language.  It's not easy to do. Period.

So all that's left is Cooking level 60.  I'd love some tips if you got any!  It seems to be a scary impossible slog to get to that level.  Please leave any suggestions you might have in the comments.

whew.

Happy Dueling!

Project Gorgon -- The Pen Makes the Sword Mightier?

Lately I've been messing around a lot with the Calligraphy skill in Project Gorgon. What's that? Well it's a writing skill you originally pick up from a Dwarf named Sammie Grimspine. Sammie's an old soldier that had an "accident" that forced her out of the Military.

1- Yes, Project Gorgon has a female dwarf.
2- I think it's pretty safe to assume the "accident" is that she's a (spoiler) werewolf. During a full moon in game she turns into a wolf. LYCANTHROPY! GASP!

I picked up the Calligraphy skill several months ago but never really did much with it at the time. I do remember being a little disappointed when I tried to write a book in game and not being able to since my Calligraphy skill was low. 

As of last week, I decided to raise that skill up to some more respectable levels . . . and especially so that I could contribute a dad joke to the weekly Poetry Jam that happens on Saturday afternoons.

My dad joke made me level up in Bard, Oratory, and Performance . . . call me William Stingspear.

Come to find out, the Calligraphy skill is amazingly easy to train . . . pretty much like the Meditation skill only easier. All this skill really takes to level up is money to buy ink and paper! Unlike Meditation it doesn't even take time . . . you just buy 25 ink (the maximum you can buy at a time) and spam click the crafting button until you get to level 13 . . . where you buy Advanced Ink and once again spam click until you get to level 19. Wash rinse repeat. Just find the easy recipes and come with money to burn on ink.

I think I'm safe in saying I don't think it was really intended to work this way, however. The result you get from one click of the crafting button is an hour-long buff that gives you access to combo moves in Sword and sometimes an additional buff that would be of aid to offensive powers. In other words, I think you're supposed to slowly level this as you're playing though the game so you have access to the buffs while you play . . . and especially if you're a sword user. 

The buff I'm particularly trying for is at 55 Calligraphy skill. it provides an 8% damage buff to all piercing attacks. I NEED MOAR DAMAGE! I'll take it any way I can get it.

When I think about it, Calligraphy really is the yang to the Meditation skill's yang. They both use very common to find ingredients. They both open access to combo moves (Meditation gives Unarmed combo moves). The difference is that Meditation's buffs are all defense based.

BTW, I highly recommend you at least train up to Meditation 39 for the fire resistance debuff. It can be quite handy for fighting those fire Droaches in the Dark Chapel and Fae Realm. If you keep going up the Meditation path you can eventually get a nice +30 health boost buff for your character as well.

Sigh. This is my only Droach screenshot . . . at least Buzz and I did ~3600 damage on that one.

Meditation buffs are really worth it, but I'm not sure if the Calligraphy buffs really have that much pizazz.

Personally I'd like to see the devs revisit Calligraphy a bit to give it more flair since, you know, according to the wiki page it was one of the first 25 skills in the game.

Imagine if it did things like caused your core attacks to also cause burning or proc interesting debuffs on the enemy instead of just scaling the percent of one damage type. NEEDS MOAR PIZAZZ! It'd be great if the Calligraphy skill also opened up combo skills for players wielding two knives *cough* like me. Jus' sayin'.

The Pizzazz is a favored work appliance after all . . .

Once you hit level 50 in the Calligraphy skill, you have to move on from Sammie and seek out a higher level trainer in Rahu named "Ufkar." Unfortunately for some players, he also happens to be enemies with another Raksasha named Kohan. If you gain favor with Kohan, you lose favor with Ufkar . . . and vice versa. Kohan happens to train some pretty awesome Sigil Scripting and Gadgeteering skills.

A month ago or so I had favored up Kohan a little bit so he'd sell me a Gadgeteering skill around Christmas time so I could give mint candy canes out for free under the Serbule Christmas tree. Whoops!

So yesterday after hitting the level 50 cap, I switched to . . . CARPENTRY, WHAT?!?! WHY CARPENTRY? It makes sense, honestly, for two reasons:

1- Ufkar likes Capentry items as gifts, so I crafted and gave him 100 wooden crates.
2- Carpentry is a great complimentary skill for both Meditation and Calligraphy because you can craft meditation stools to increase the duration of your Meditation buffs, and you can craft calligraphy benches to increase the duration of your Calligraphy buffs.

Did you get lost in that maze of skills? I certainly did! 

While at the end of the day it's questionable if that 8% piercing buff will really be worth it, you know what was worth it? Handing out gag books to my guild mates during silent times and inserting my first book into the Project Gorgon library, which just happens to be a cut and paste of one of my first blog posts about Project Gorgon when I was playing the Demo.

There you go . . . that's really all I originally wanted to do anyway. :)

Happy Dueling!

Project Gorgon Player Interview: Gettin' Gabby with Yaffy!

I've got a pretty fun read today from a VIP (that's "Very Important Player") in Project Gorgon. This particular player has been around since the days of Project Gorgon's Alpha and is extremely helpful to the new players of Project Gorgon over on the officially unofficial Discord.

Read on for the Q&A!

Sneaking a Screenshot with Yaffy in Serbule.

~~
Q: Hi Yaffy! Players from Project Gorgon will recognize you from being a mod on the Player Run Discord and also from your years of participation on the Project Gorgon forums, but for those who may not have heard from you, can you introduce yourself and talk about how you became so involved in the P:G community?

A: Hi, I’m Yaffy! I’m a bit of an older player, but nowhere near as veteran as some of the older members of the Project Gorgon community. I stumbled into this game back in Alpha when it was recommended to me by someone else.

I didn’t start the game being interested in the community, but as you play PG you end up getting pulled into the community one way or another! It’s hard to explain, but one moment I was just some random player and then suddenly I had a lot of people asking me to join their group! I guess a big contributor to it was that I really like to help out other players and I really liked trying to figure out how the game worked on a mechanical level, so soon enough a lot of people were asking me for advice on the game.

~~
Q: What characters do you play and although it's a bit like asking which child is your favorite, which of your characters is your favorite?

A: Obviously my favorite character to play as is Yaffy! But I still enjoy playing on my alts, Yaf, Yaffster and Yaffy Taffy. If you couldn’t guess, I’m very good at names.

I focus mostly on my main, Yaffy, but my alts are very important to me as well. Playing on them lets me see the game from angles I missed on my main. For example, I’ve purposefully avoided permanent character altering choices on my main character, so my alts are there so I can try out things like Druid.

~~
Q: Project Gorgon is filled with fun ways to explore and experience the game, what's your favorite pastime in game?

A: My favorite pastime in Project Gorgon is theory crafting builds. I love to think of specific challenges and purposes and trying to create a build around it, or taking two skills and trying to work out the best build I can think of from it. This comes in handy too because a lot of players like to ask me for advice on how to build their characters, and I’m always more than happy to help.

~~
Q: Is there a build you've never tried, but would like to give it a shot?

A: This is a bit of a hard question because over my time of playing there are a lot of builds I would have loved to try out, but major skill changes overtime mean I’ll never get the chance to try it again.

If I could play ANY build at any point in time, it would have to be low-armor Werewolf/Unarmed. It was a build a friend of mine and I made a long time ago which took advantage of low armor mechanics on unarmed to potentially hit for 25 thousand damage in a single hit! I never tried it because I refused to make my main a werewolf and he never got around to it, so we’ll never see how good the build might have turned out. Nobody else ever came up with the idea either it seems so it’ll forever be lost in time now.

In current Project Gorgon I’ve been thinking about making a Sword/Shield build. Sounds boring right? But the thing is that usually I play tanking sets, and tanking in Project Gorgon is in a really really tough spot right now, and I think that Sword/Shield has the potential to be the best tank available right now along with very good solo capabilities IF it’s built properly. Nothing is really stopping me from making it right now but I’m personally biding my time to see if anything happens with the game first before I make the commitment.

~~
Q: Seeing this community grow and change through the years, would you say there is a constant with people who tend to gravitate to this game?

A: One pattern I’ve picked up very quickly is that most of the people who play Project Gorgon and stick around are older folks. It wouldn’t surprise me if the average age of the current playerbase was around 30-40! This isn’t a bad thing though, because it means most of the community is generally very chill and mature, which is probably a big reason why a lot of people like the community.

~~
Q: What's one feature and one bug that you'd like to see added to and fixed in Project Gorgon in 2020?

A: Now this is a very VERY hard question, because as someone who takes the game’s mechanics very seriously and has played for a long time, there’s a lot of things I would like to see changed or added, and in very specific ways.

If we want to keep things to “Features”, I think the biggest feature I want to see added would be armor smithing, so we can create our own armor sets. However, I specifically want to see armor smithing with meaningful mitigation options for players. One of my biggest gripes about Project Gorgon is how hard it is to build defense against certain attacks because the options simply don’t exist, which makes tanking (My favorite role) incredibly limited (Aka. Play Shield or die). The developers have teased “Tanking armor sets” a while back, so I want to see armor smithing as a solution to this problem which has plagued the game for a while.

As for a bug I’d like to see fixed? One of the most terrifying bugs in the game exists with the “Easy drop” option, which lets you drag items out of your bag onto the screen to drop them quickly. This feature is really handy, especially for someone like me who usually tries to manage inventory quickly. However, if you try to drop items repeatedly like this too quickly, sometimes it will drop the first item in your inventory instead of the thing you actually wanted to drop (Even if said first item isn’t actually visible). Combine this with the fact that sorting your inventory puts equipment in the first slots and you can see how awful this bug can be. I’ve lost some good gear because the bug made me drop it and I didn’t notice until it was too late.

~~
Q: What's the best piece of advice you can give new players to Project Gorgon?

A: Take your time and take it easy! It’s as simple as that. Some people who start PG might be too used to other MMORPGs, because it feels like they’re trying to get things done as fast as possible and are too worried about “Missing” things or “Losing progress”. Project Gorgon is not a game you need to rush and is a lot more fun when you just do whatever you feel like doing. You’re always making progress in PG one way or another, even if you decide to swap skill sets twenty times. Just keep playing the same character and you’ll get somewhere eventually.

Oh, also make sure to use the auto-run button. Trust me, it’s a life saver. Bind that thing to middle mouse or something because I can’t imagine life without it.

~~

Q: What do you feel is the most over looked skill in Project Gorgon and why should people check it out? (Please say it's gender studies)

A: One skill that I think doesn’t receive enough love is Sigil Scripting. I don’t know why, but it’s probably one of the least used skills despite being something you can pick up quite early. When I was leveling it was such an amazing skill, letting me solo enemies I normally couldn’t or farming significantly faster and easily paying for itself. Its applications might be a bit specific for efficient use but when it shines it’s great. For a quick summary, fire sigil is the best and lets you farm mobs really fast (1st floor Kur Tower is an excellent spot to use it), healing sigil is good for soloing tough elites/enemies, acid can be good if you place it where enemies can’t reach it (Ex. On top of Rahu houses) and lightning is worthless so don’t use it.

~~
Q: What other games have you enjoyed playing in the past?

A: I have a bit of a history with fighting games, but in terms of games similar to Project Gorgon I generally love sandboxy games. One of my favorite games is Elona, which looks like an incredibly bizarre and niche Roguelike game at first, but once you get into it you’ll find there’s a game with tons of incredibly well designed mechanics and ideas behind it. One of the reasons why I’ve been interested in PG is because it shares some of those ideas (Through pure coincidence I’m sure).

~~
Q: If you were to guess, how much different do you think Project Gorgon will look when it finally launches out of beta?

A: I’m honestly not sure! It’s hard to say because the game goes through such serious changes all the time, and I’m sure we’ll be getting many more by the time it’s out of beta. I can only hope that said changes are done well. I think that to an outsider or casual player, the full release will probably look pretty similar to the beta, just with prettier graphics (Assuming the devs hire an art team) and some obvious additions like mounts, but how the game plays as a whole could be changed radically just with a few decisions from the developers and I don’t think I can confidently answer how.

~~
Q: Anything else you'd like to mention to fans of Project Gorgon?

A: Have fun, join the Discord and never trust a werewolf.

~~

Thanks so much to Yaffy for taking the time to answer a few questions for the readers of The Friendly Necromancer today! It was my pleasure to interview this very helpful player of Project Gorgon.

Happy Dueling!

Project Gorgon: Providing a "Stable" Environment for your Pets

I ran into a really cool player of Project Gorgon the other night who recognized me from my blog. Mr. 7!  One of the questions he had for me was concerning my Fae Bee pet, Buzz Tightrear.

The question was . . . Do I like him?

My response was yes and especially because I'm a poison damage build, but I don't like him if I'm going up against a poison resistant enemy.  If I am, Buzz is useless.

That said, if I am going against a poison resistant enemy, I typically switch to my fire rat pet, Bernie.  Yup, a fire rat . . . that same fire rat that crawls across the Eltibule hillside. And I switch my kit up so that I'm no longer using poison knife skills and instead am using more Slash type skills.  You can quickly do that through the power of loadouts. (Pro Tip: Click that little star icon on your button tray skill bar and level a few skills to 50.)

This conversation got me thinking about the pets I currently have in my stable, and it also made me wonder if most people know that each pet has a special trick and a damage type to it? I have to admit it took me awhile to really figure out what was going on with my pets and how to use them.

Animal Handling Tip 1: 

After charming a pet, target it and look at it's damage type and any special abilities. You do this by targeting them and clicking on the "i" in a circle.  Here's what happens when I do this with Buzz.

The deets on a Fae Bee pet.

You can see that buzz has high evasion, think armor. He's immune to poison damage. He only deals poison damage. He does a Poison Damage Over Time for his big attack. His special trick is a debuff Poison Vulnerability that's a ranged attack.  You also see that I really don't want to pit him toe to toe with mobs that do crushing, fire, and cold damage. Psychic and nature damage don't harm him much.

This is actually what makes you incredibly special as an animal handler. Unlike a person that solely specializes in one type of damage, you can own a whole stable of pets that specialize in a variety of damage types. The downside of course is you have to level all those pets up and keep them happy.

Here's a look at the rest of my stable.

The Blinding Wasp does piercing damage and applies a piercing debuff. 

The Fae Bear does slashing and crushing . . . serious crushing. 

Fire rat does fire damage, reduces rage, and applies a fire DOT. 

Freeze Wasp does cold damage, slows enemies, and poisons. 

Grimilkin is all about armor, slashing, crushing, and . . . fleeing

Looking at my stable, my pets do the following damage types:

• Fae Bee Pet = Poison
• Grimilkin = Slashing
• Blinding Wasp = Piercing
• Fire Rat = Fire
• Freeze Wasp = Ice
• Fae Bear = Crushing

I still have room in my stable for one more pet.  I hear that "Hissy" the giant red cat is a crown jewel for Animal Handlers . . . I may have to get that.

Animal Handling Tip 2: 

Click on your pet and use that big "Check" button to inspect it. There's a lot of interesting information in that window.  Here's how Buzz was looking earlier this morning.

Let's break down that information line by line.

Owner, Health, Armor are all pretty explanatory

Pet Level: 80 is the current maximum level for a pet . . . even if your animal handling skill is higher than 80.  That's just the way it is.

Bond Level: Per the wiki entry on Animal Handling. "As you fight alongside your pet, its Bond Level increases. A new pet will begin with a Bond Level of 0, or a pet you receive from another player (not yet available in-game). For each Bond Level, pets' base damage increases by 1 or 2, max health increases by 4, and max armor increases by 1."

Happiness: Basically, if you let your pet die, they lose happiness. If they lose happiness, their experience gains slow down.  Make sure you're always feeding and petting your pet between combat when you can.

Enthusiasm: Per the wiki entry on Animal Handling. "Pet Enthusiasm is boosted by its owner's equipped items. Enthusiasm determines the chance for pets to critically hit enemies. Higher Enthusiasm is required to critically hit higher level monsters. If a pet performs a critical hit, the pet's direct damage is increased by 25% (for cats), 40% (for bears), or 50% (for rats)."

I don't have any information on critical hit damage boost for bees. If someone knows the answer, you should update the wiki!

Unfortunately I don't have all my mods built out to really increase enthusiasm on my pets.  I'll get there eventually. Um, Animal Handling Tip 2.5 . . . get gear mods to increase enthusiasm for your pets. ;) I should do that myself.

Animal Handling Tip 3:

Don't let your pet die and always have a back up pet when you're in combat.  If you see your pet is about to go down, do your best to not let him die.  In fact, it's better to click on the "x" button under his health bar to dismiss him before he does.  Always have a secondary pet summon ready to go if you get in trouble like this.  The first two buttons on my side skill bar are always related to summoning pets.

This side bar is what I use for group play.

Animal Handling Tip 4:

Unnatural Wrath is your friend . . . even if it's a pain in the butt to have those Anchor Runes. I've recently been playing more and more with Unnatural Wrath, and the damage you can get out of your pets is impressive.

~~

And that's all I can really think of for now. Feel free to share your insights in the comments below.

Happy Dueling!