Venomancy in Perfect World -- In and Out of the Tutorial

So, my friend Tessanna from Runes of Magic really loves Perfect World, and since it's a game I've never tried, I decided to give it a go. The TL:DR is that I've been wanting to like this MMO, but so far . . . it's been a real battle for me to fall in love with it, and it hasn't happened for me yet. 

Why haven't the McElroy bros done PWI for Monster Factory yet?

It might just be that I'm tired of old MMOs after Runes of Magic to be honest. While playing this game, in the back of my mind I kept saying, why would I play Perfect World, when I could just as easily play Swords of Legends?

I mean, the double jumping with no fall damage, the flying dragon mounts, the quest flow, the NPC camera shifts during dialog, and just the overall Eastern MMO vibes . . . it all just seemed to be done better in a more modern MMO, and that's Swords of Legends.

Flying around on the back of a weird fish dragon is pretty epic

Also, you know what I hate? I absolutely hate gender locking class choices in MMOs. It's an immediate turn off for me. Out of all the classes available to me in Perfect World, the one that matches me the most seems to be the Venomancer. Right?  1- It's a pet class. 2- It's all about poisoning your foes. 3- I could be The Friendly Venonmancer!  It just makes sense.  The part that doesn't make sense is that I have to be female.

On my way to becoming a Demon?

It shouldn't bother me. I mean, it doesn't really bother me in the Diablo series, but then again there's a difference between Diablo where I'm taking an avatar's journey through a story and an MMO where it's my customized avatar taking my journey through multiple stories.

As for the Perfect World tutorial, it does its job.  By the time it's over, you'll have fought several cool looking bosses, flown on the back of a dragon to travel around a map, gained your basic skills, and will have been introduced to how to complete quests and follow POIs. 

Perfect World's tutorial was perfectly fine . . . other than really making me feel separated from the rest of the game. It was very much a solo game experience. I ran into only maybe 3-5 people while I was logged on? One guy was endlessly farming mobs afk.  Everybody else was just seen in passing. Nobody was sync'ed up with me on my quest path, so it all felt a bit empty and void?  That's typically the problem with older MMOs: Where's all the people?

Death to Drunk Monkeys!

I wish I would have fallen in love with my character by the end of the tutorial, but I didn't. The monkey pet that the Venomancer gets is pretty good, and it holds agro super well against the big bosses.  Outside of the bosses though, your pet seems lame.  

Also, because I'm a Venomancer I can turn into a fox?  I should love that since I spent so much time in Project Gorgon as a fox, but honestly I didn't even see the benefit of doing so.  Two shots of poison killed pretty much everything that wasn't a boss while being a fox just seemed to hamper my dps and put me in harm's way.

There also seems to be some method of taming new pets, but I couldn't figure it out. There's just something I'm not getting about this class yet.  I probably should go read a whole bunch of guides, but why does that not sound fun like it usually does? I think maybe I'm just not in the mood to learn a new, um, old, MMO right now.

If you've got some thoughts that would change my mind, I'm listening!

Happy Dueling!

Caving in to the New World

So it went down a bit like this . . . New World launched around 6 months ago and it was HOT. Everybody was talking about New World. New World this, New World that. It's kind of like how it is now with Lost Ark. 

As for me, being how I am, I took a solid pass to New World because why would I ever play the hot, new game of the moment? Me?  Play the latest and greatest game and write about it on my blog?  NEVER!  If you're over here at The Friendly Necromancer looking for a play-by-play of Elden Ring, you've come to the wrong spot.

Side note, wouldn't it be amazing if I did a play-by-play of Elden Ring and posted about it on my blog?! 

Anyway, the buzz has died down and most of the heavy surge of players who were there at launch have left, so I figure New World is fair game for The Friendly Necromancer to write about.

The whole reason I bought this game is my friend from Runes of Magic, one Tessanna . . . or (since that name was taken in New World) "Tereayna." Tereayna bought New World back when it was all the hotness and just never played the game. Now was the time she chose to try it, and because of that, $40 later I was in! LET'S DO THIS!

Tereayna was adorable, y'all.  For the first couple hours of the game she ran around without a mouse using the mousepad to play. At one time she was training like 7 mobs behind her, and I was like . . . OK HERE WE GO! 

Run Tereayna, Run!

As for me, Stingite is sporting his classic mohawk in New World and after finding a Fire Staff, I was kind of in my element. Not gonna lie, the game so far has been just as fun as everyone said it would be. It just feels new and good, and the graphics are fantastic. I love how I have to aim my shots to hit, and I also love that the game is somewhat forgiving when I just barely miss.  I guess I'm just used to competitive shooters. 

I guess I answer to Gilander Dempsterfire? COVENANT FOR LIFE!

Can I just say how cool fishing is in this game?  The mini-game is really really good and captures a lot of the tension from trying to wear down a fish's strength while simultaneously trying to not snap your fishing line. It's one of the best fishing systems I've messed with to date.

Reeling in the big one!

Also, it might be the heavy use of violin and adventurous sounding music, but New World's music is giving me serious Valheim vibes. (Side note, I should try playing Valheim on my new computer here -- I bet it's a better experience for me.) 

So there you have it. I'll be logging in to new World with my buddy Tereayna and playing from time to time. So far I'm having fun with the game.

Daddy needs a new pair of boots

Happy Dueling!

Sheesh, Runes of Magic! Enoch already!

Over the past couple days I've had some time to quest through the next island of the Shamtaem Archipelago known as Enoch.  You know, Noah's great grandfather from the Bible.  Just kidding -- I'm sure the zone in Runes of Magic has no relation . . . unless for some reason this entire zone is somehow taken into heaven and never seen again because it's just that good. . . until then, no relation.

Nebula Woods Camp, in the Nebula of Enoch

No Enoch plays out pretty much in the same way that Tasuq and Korris did.  You start out by going to help Kerley Hill set up a camp yet again (which is already set up of course), and then uncover more nefarious plots by the Inexorable League. 

Kerley is again on the hunt to analyze the spatial transfer of the area. Right outside that first Nebula Woods Camp are hidden Angren "lionesses" known as Lurkers.  Invis mobs are a total pain to deal with, but after a few minutes you just come to accept that every 30 footsteps you're going to run into one until you're about 100 paces outside of camp.

Silent but deadly?

Angren are to Runes of Magic as Vah Shir are to Everquest or as Charr are to Guild Wars. You know . . . conflicted war-torn lion people.  The people in the Nebula Woods Camp are convinced their anger has something to do with the Inexorable League, so you know what that means . . . it's cat person killing time!

Don't worry, cat person killing time doesn't last long, instead it turns into cat person HELPING time. Just down the road from the Nebula Woods camp is the Jadefang Outpost where the friendly "Leonine people" of the Angren race are chilling. 

It's Angren vs. Angren out there! We must even the odds!

As it turns out this entire tribe of Angren was living in Northern Janost Forest (remember that place?), and they and a faction of Elves known as the Jyr'na were both transported to the island through some kind of magic.  When they arrived at Korris, the welcoming party there was . . . you guessed it . . . the Inexorable League.

Kadnis!  She's a plant demoness!

Kadnis from the Inexorable League cast a big nasty spell and now a good chunk of Enoch known as the Twilight Marsh is shrouded in Eternal Darkness. Half the of the Angren and elves fell to dark magic, and the other half are stubbornly good, which is good news for us since they will give us plenty of quests and gold to line our coffers in exchange for our assistance.

Twilight Marsh in perpetual darkness. Like my brain around 11pm, but all the time.

Eventually you'll make your way past another camp of NPCs, who send you into the Twilight Marsh -- it's scary in there, and then you end up in the Azure Lake area, which is a breath of fresh air.  There's another really stellar daily quest here where you capture "adorable mutant" flowers.  I also "won the game" when I found the cutest quest item the Runes of Magic offers . . . a little frog.

it's cute

Yup,  that's right. I can finally stop playing Runes of Magic, this frog has won the game for me.

The last stop off in Enoch is a terribly unforgiving area that's densely packed in with enemies called the Demon Bastion.  I've died here plenty of times just running around . . . just trying to talk to a quest giver even.

Why . . . just why?

Side note, listen up designers . . . never . . . NEVER EVER EVER . . . never put mobs next to a quest giver.  You may be thinking . . . oh! It'll be a fun challenge to get over there and talk to the NPCs with these two enemies just standing here right by them. DON'T YOU DO IT.  Just don't.  Ever.

A lot of the quests in this area simply have to do with trying to figure out what the Inexorable League is up to in the area and once again leads to a dungeon zone (as is the reoccurring theme in the Shamtaem Archipelago islands). 

Some day I shall visit the Sun Temple of Eternal Sleep, but for now it's off to Vortis, our next destination in Runes of Magic.

Behold the entrance to the Temple of Eternal Sleep. The very place my brain wishes to be at 11pm.

Happy Dueling!

Of Korris! It's no problem in Runes of Magic

And just like that . . . another island in the Shamtaem Archipelago has been cleared of quests by the Vampire slash Telekinetic known as Stingite in that crazy MMO known as Runes of Magic. 

Korris . . . it's like a poptart. Frosting on the top half, and Regrets on the bottom half.

Well, I cleared it all but two quests up there near the entrance to Ice Blade Plateau.  That's a dungeon. I'd just need to convince a group of high level friends to go clear it with me before I could really call Korris complete, but this is close enough for jazz.

Korris is kind of an interesting island. For some reason, half of the island is covered in snow and the other half is a jungle.  

Hillwatch camp down in southern Korris. They watch hills here.

Why's it so crazy?  Well, I blame the League of Inexorable Gentlemen! That's right, the Inexorable League continues to be our main antagonist as we travel through the end zones of Runes of Magic.

It's freezing up here in Northern Korris. She really needs to put on a jacket.

As it turns out, The Inexorable League was conducting experiments on creatures in the Shadow Camp of Tasuq to "measure their spatial magic adaptability" . . . whatever that means. Seriously, some of these quests are like reading a technical manual on how to gaslight players. 

Said . . . what?!

Basically, the Inexorable League won over the cyclops and minotaur tribes to their cause. The cyclopes are just power hungry. The minotaurs involvement was a bit more . . . hard to understand. Because of this, the good guys, aka the Hand of Balance, need your help with all kinds of crazy stuff in Korris.

One of those crazy stuffs is a great daily quest that my guildie, Misstreat, showed me, and I've been running circles in Korris ever since. Minong Marluqi in the Icefog Camp wants you to take Fluctuation Sensor readings in two locations, one down in the warm area of Korris, and one in the cold area of Korris. Yes, you are playing a fantasy game, and no, this isn't Star Trek; although, I gotta say, a Fluctuation Sensor kinda sounds more sci-fi than fantasy.

That's "Minong Marluqi" or "M&M" for short.

Run that quest 10 times a day and you'll end up with 8.3 million exp and 1.1 million gold. Easy stuff.

All in all, I enjoyed questing through Korris.  The difficulty in the game keeps ratcheting up and sure enough Korris is a bit more difficult than Tasuq, but with the passing of time and a couple premium currency purchases, I'm staying ahead of the curve and surviving the best I can.

I like the variety of enemies you can find in this zone and who doesn't love killing cyclops, right?

Just LOOK at that cute, little stupid face! 

To be honest, and I'm pretty sure you can tell this by my lack of posting lately, I've been busy and haven't been playing a ton of Runes of Magic. Currently the hot thing to do in game is to (once again) farm Coins of Petals. You can turn in 800 coins a day for 8 orbs of 5 million peak experience. Crazy, right? Even crazier, this event is going on all month. This all seems to be part of their 13th anniversary for the game. woot!

So that's it for Korris and it's now on to Enoch.  I've already quested through the main line there, but I still have to conquer those sidequests . . . should be fun!

Happy Dueling!

A quick plug for Inscryption!

My oldest child bought me Inscryption for Christmas, and I've been meaning to drop some thoughts here about this fantastic deck builder / puzzler indie game, but first let me allow you to be creeped out by this aesthetic . . .

He just wants to hug me . . . right?!

Just to put it out there right up front, it's really good. point blank. All of my kids have played it, and have done their best to keep me spoiler free. Half the fun is hearing them whisper around me to keep stuff a secret.

Anyway, Inscryption is a 4-lane card battler with a ton of conditions, randomness, and boss play to make it well worth your time and money. Originally released in October 2021, I'm late to the Halloween party, but I'm glad I've now had a chance to experience its unsettling kind of fun.

The developer behind Inscryption is the same Daniel Mullins Studios that brought us The Hex and Pony Island. The Publisher is Devolver, the same group behind great games like Loop Hero and Exit the Gungeon, among a plethora of other great Steam games.

Now that that's all said . . . If you don't want any spoilers . . . stop reading . . . just go get the game and be happy with your purchase. For the rest of you . . . whooo boy.

I struggled on the first act of this game for a long time until I got an undying squirrel totem from the woodcarver, and it was just too much power. It carried me right through that final boss with no issues at all.  I don't know if I could have done it without that totem to be honest. I've got so many "stingite" death cards that it was humbling seeing them all attacking me on that final fight.

So many squirrel cards . . .

After the first act, you're treated to a series of YouTube-like videos from a content creator who ends up finding an old floppy disk from the 90's buried in the forest with the Inscryption game on it (playing into the 16-bit aesthetic as well).  It definitely has the whole Blair Witch Project vibe going for it, but not without making fun of itself in the process.

Green screen and all!

The other interesting portion of the game comes from when you press the back button enough times that you stand up away from the game table and look around your capture's cabin.  Herein are several small minigame puzzles that will give you advantages in the actual game.

All the things the arcane eye sees!

Apparently there are three acts total to this game, and I've only managed to get half way through the second act, so . . . I still have a lot to explore here.

Anyway . . . just had to plug this card game in case some of my readers hadn't played it yet. Good times and highly recommended.

Happy Dueling!

Tougher than Tasuq in Runes of Magic

It's my 3-month-a-versary in Runes of Magic, and I'm very much sitting in end game currently with a 100 mage / 100 rogue / 100 knight character, but of course, being 100 isn't all that's needed to dominate trash mobs in the end game "string of islands" known as the Shamtaem Archipelago. It's basically Hawaii, but full of mobs that will kill you faster than swimming in a bloom of jellyfish.

The islands get tougher as you travel along them from west to east, and Tasuq is the first you encounter as you travel there from the Moorlands of Farsitan. Just to make sure you're tough enough to handle this zone, you basically HAVE to complete the main quest lines found in Splitwater Coast and Farsitan. I learned this the hard way by having someone teleport me into Tasuq directly hoping to find some new quests there while I was busting my butt trying to level during a bonus exp event.  When I got there, it was quest-less.

If, however, you get to Tasuq by following the "Spirits of Despair" quest line, you'll soon unlock a bunch of quests along the way. For me, my plan has always been to get as far as I can in this quest line on my Mage half and then go back through with my Rogue half and catch all the side quests. So far my mage half has moved past the islands of Tasuq and Korris . . . and is currently sitting at the very end of Enoch about to go into Vortis.  The only island left after that would be Chassizz. That's it . . . That's end game for Runes of Magic.

Peeping in on the Shadow Camp of Tasuq

At the end of every one of these islands is a quest that asks you to go into the dungeon instance associated with the island.  So far, I've just been skipping these. I heard, however, that perhaps a full group of our guildies could do the end dungeon on Enoch . . . if we could ever coordinate a time to actually go through that matches everyone's schedules.  That's the tricky part.  (We're all a bunch of busy adults that live all over the globe.)

So, I paused my Mage's trailblazing and took a break to go back to finish Tasuq with my Rogue half and as of yesterday, Tasuq has been cleared save one or two quests that involve the Vale of Rites (that's the dungeon for Tasuq).

 . . . ignore the tombstone between Repear's Horn and Vale of Rites

When you enter the zone you begin in a place called Silver Streak Camp. The Hand of Balance has set up camp here with merchants and guards. Your main point of contact here is a dashing fellow named Ayden Highlander, the Primary Chairman of the Silvershadow Adventures' Guild. Runic Energy and Spatial Magic have been sensed from this string of islands, and you're perfect for the job of investigating and nullifying threats to Taborea. Go get 'em!

Merchants-a-plenty in Silver Streak Camp

As it turns out, the Hand of Balance aren't the only ones interested in this weird Spatial Magic, there's a group of nefarious evil-doers named the "Inexorable League" led by a demonic sounding Mazzren the Reaper. Every time I read "inexorable league," I can't help but think of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." Anyway, you'll be running into all kinds of inexorable league enemies on Tasuq as they've set up camps all over the central part of the island.

There's the Dust Camp, which sits in area known as the Dustbowl, where experiments the inexorable league has done with this runic spatial magic is causing that portion of Tasuq to become a desert-like canyon. 

Oh no, Inexorable League, what have you done to Hawaii?!

 

There's the Shadow Camp in the Tasuqian Boscage where you'll also find lots of enraged wildlife like panthers, boars, and deer with poofy tails.

Then there's the Reaper's Horn itself, which is a large ominous castle.  That's right, the inexorable league has been here long enough to build a giant castle . . . and so have the good guys apparently as the Grey Citadel is our turf.  

A look inside the Grey Citadel

The Gray Citadel has TONS of quests once you unlock them.  Really the majority of your sidequests all come from the Silver Streak Camp and the Gray Citadel. 

One of the really interesting things here is the re-appearance of elite enemies that are incredibly dangerous. You can even find elite enemies that are boosted with enemy effects like Tenacious, which gives them a 100 percent HP increase. If a battle with some of these elites goes on too long, they'll just hit you with a massive 25k hit or two, and that's a quick trip back to the binding stone.

I would say that Tasuq is the first of your end game "gear checks" as you proceed along the islands the Shamtaem Archipelago. Enemies here are level 98ish and it only gets harder from here. I'm finding that end game gearing is really a money game as you tier up, stat up, and level up each one of your gear items by using mana stones and jewels, all available for sale in the item shop for premium currency.

I've geared up my mage, I'd say about 1/2 of the way to where I'd like him to be. He's currently sitting at around 75,000 hit points with mostly Tier 6 gear that has been raised to +7.  My staff is up to +14 or so as well. All my Jewelry is still Tier 5 as well as my back item.  

The cost of getting gear up to the max of Tier 20 seems to be 100 percent a whale hunter's delight. I mean, 3 Tier 6 mana stones is roughly 90 cents worth of premium currency (let's round up to a dollar to keep the math clean).  3 Tier 6 mana stones equals one Tier 7 mana stone.  Therefore you'll need 3 dollars worth of premium currency to go up to Tier 7.  9 dollars for Tier 8.  27 dollars for Tier 9.  81 dollars for Tier 10.  You get the sequence . . . and that's for ONE piece of gear. 

I don't know . . . maybe I don't have the full picture on gear costs and I've never seen anybody with a tier 20 piece of gear because if you do the math, isn't that like 4.5 million dollars for one piece of gear?  That can't be right, can it? No . . . I gotta be looking at this wrong . . . THAT CAN'T BE RIGHT?! Please someone educate me in the comments if I'm not looking at this right.

Anyway, all I really care about is that I have gear that's good enough that I can do well in instances with my guild mates, and as I said before, I feel like I'm about 1/2 way there from really what feels like spending a minimal amount of money.

Happy Dueling!

Has Runes of Magic Lost their Friggen Minds? Ding 100 AGAIN!

So I log on yesterday and my guildmate, Eni, immediately barks in chat, "Sting, do the event." Therefore, I immediately went to work collecting 100 Coins of Petals, clicked over to Veranas Channel 1, and turned in my 100 coins . . . what came back to me was a 50,000,000 exp orb and 10 1,000,000 talent point orbs. The real shocker came when I saw that turn in could be done . . . 10 TIMES EACH DAY!! That's just insanity.

It's . . . real . . . and . . . beautiful?

So I start thinking to myself, where can I find the largest concentration of low level enemies with the fastest respawn time? I started going around to a few old haunts in Northern and Southern Janost, and they were ok, but they weren't great. Then for some reason I remembered an instance that I've soloed through several times called The Heart of the Ocean.

The Heart of the Ocean is a great instance. You have to complete a quest chain to gain entrance, and I had already done that a month or so ago. The Peak quests I've been doing lately have been really wanting to send me in to battle against the fourth boss there, so I'm pretty familiar with the layout.

Loopy Dungeon is Loopy!

In between the third and fourth boss there's a group of 12 fish warriors blocking your way. Come to find out, these warriors respawn . . . it might actually be the only group in the entire dungeon that does this. If you run the easy instance of the dungeon, only 8 of the warriors respawn, but if you run the normal instance, all 12 respawn.

Thank you for stacking up in a nice AoE right there

Typically none of these respawns drop loot, but during the event, all of them drop a Coin of Petals. So, here I sat and nuked ,and looted, and nuked, and looted, and etc. until I had all 1000 Coins of Petals that I needed.

Roasted Ayum Initiate!

It was boring but effective. The next thing I knew, I was back in Varanas Channel 1 and talking to Frank. (Now that's a good Event NPC name: Frank).

Frank and Friends in Varanas Central Channel 1

Frank gave me back 9 more 50 million experience orbs and 90 more 1 million talent point orbs. I switched my class to my often forgotten 3rd class choice of Knight and made 10 clicks to bring my knight level from 43 to 89 in the span of less than 10 seconds.

It's hard to explain the feelings I felt in that moment. It was a reflection on all the time I spent to get my Mage from 43 to 89 . . . all the quests . . . all the begging for help . . . all the time . . . and really all that I had learned.  Here I was a level 89 knight who had never even played the game as a knight. No, all I ever really wanted from this game was to play as a Mage/Rogue vampire.  That's it.

This morning, I logged on and did the same thing and went back to Frank with another 1000 Coins of Petals. Five more clicks and my knight was level 100.  Five more clicks beyond that, and I had earned maybe half of a peak level.

To be honest, gearing 3 classes for one character seems like it's going to be a lot of work and money. I'm able to survive in Korris with my current gear on the Mage, but my Rogue is still wanting . . . I haven't even thought about gearing a Knight.

Look, I don't want to say that's WHY this event exists (to get a player to the part of the game where they'll spend more money), because if that's the case, they really should have made 1.5 exp the standard exp gain rate in the first place (as I've argued before). 

Overall, this game feels like a multiboxer's delight.  I can't tell you how many people call their characters "toons" in this game, and while that typically gets under my skin because it belittles the time you put into developing your "character." An event like this seems to naturally encourage making multiple level 100 (I'll go ahead and say it) "toons." Throw away characters you can just add to your personal army. Really, it's not odd to see a pile of characters sitting on top of each other with the same name only with a slight variation -- imagine StingiteA, StingiteB, StingiteC, StingiteD, and StingiteE all riding a 7 person bone dragon mount together.  Yeah, I don't like thinking about it either.

I don't know. It's weird. I can't even believe the event rewards are so good right now.  I guess if you really want a max level character in Runes of Magic without all the pains of actually leveling, yesterday was your day to log on and start playing. Not to worry though! You have a full week.  This crazy event is running through January 27th.

Happy Dueling!