Project Gorgon -- I joined a guild!

It's been a cool few days in Project Gorgon. I finally decided to get serious about joining a guild and found one pretty easily from message board searching. After that, I was given an escort around the more dangerous parts of the world by one of the guild leaders and treated to just a taste of the high-level experience.

There's a vast desert out here in Project Gorgon where you have to keep drinking water to hydrate or it can lead to being slowed and dying. If you have empty bottles there are a couple of wells and lakes that you can find out here to keep replenishing.

Our main objective in the desert was to farm Desert Raksasha for gear that we would turn in to an NPC in a hut that teaches what my guild leader called the most important skill in Project Gorgon (pffft, obviously he hasn't read my seek objective post ;) ): Augmentation. For with this skill, you can add effects to any piece of gear! By doing so, as I understand it, it will raise the rarity of any item.

Gotta say, it was pretty cool just not being out there in the world all by myself! Actually running around Project Gorgon with other people. wow!

During our tour around the world I was shown a "back door" to the place where all the high level people hang out: Red Wing Casino. This place is chock-full of training NPCs and side games. I was absolutely overjoyed to find out that you can actually play match-3 inside of Project Gorgon, and it pays pretty good too! At least for a low level shmuck like me.

The game behind the match-3 isn't too overly complex. It uses the same kind of Extra Turn/Bonus Turn mechanic found in games like Puzzle Craft 2 or Gems of War. As you match gems you work your way toward earning "one" of the pieces, which turned out to be super handy for me. I actually earned some string, which allowed me to learn the skill "Tame Cat." Now all I need is another piece of string so I can actually tame a cat LOL. 

Not that I don't absolutely love my fire rat pet I recently picked up in Etibule. If there's one thing that's cool for animal handlers like me, you can upgrade your first rat to a fire rat quite quickly after moving out of the demo and into the paid game. 

For now I continue to grind away at the quests in Etibule while sticking mostly to Animal Handling, Shield, and Fire Magic, but there are SO MANY combat skills that I would love to play around with: Mentalism, Bard, Necromancer, Staff Fighting, Unarmed fighting, Sword, Bow, and on and on.  

If there's one thing that'll keep you grinding in this game, it's the sheer number of abilities you can learn.

Happy Dueling!

Recent Convert: Why I purchased Project Gorgon

These past few days I have been completely engrossed in Project: Gorgon. You know that scary feeling when you sense you really like a game and then slowly by slowly it starts eating away at all your time. yeah. I've got it bad recently.

I think it's partly because the demo does a good job of making you feel great leveling up those initial skills. So far I "maxed out" . . . or rather "demo maxxed out" the following skills to 15:

• Unarmed 
• Like martial arts . . . just swinging with your fists
• Sword 
• Like stabby stabby
• Skinning 
• After you kill things, you take their pelts
• Shield 
• Like bashy bashy
• Pathology 
• heh. After you kill something, you use an autopsy kit to analyze how it died
• Mycology 
• Gathering mushrooms
• Foraging 
• Picking up stuff from the ground
• First Aid 
• Using healing kits
• Fire Magic 
• Casting fireballs like a madman
• Endurance 
• Like taking a beating
• Archery 
• Like shooty shooty
• Animal Handling 
• taming a rat, naming it suzie, and somehow leveling to a 16 in this skill because of a hidden "bonus"?
• Arthropod Anatomy 
• . . . basically I killed a lot of spiders and looked at their guts

With all that said . . . I'm now ready to convert to paying player, which I think should be an entirely different experience . . . at least I hope.

At the end of the day, MMOs should be about the group and the guild. I mean, yes, soloing MMOs is something we all do, but I believe what we all hope ends up happening is that we find a solid group of people that want to play with us so that we win together.

It should be about taking on tough dungeons and hard bosses with a bunch of new and interesting people, and that's what I expect to happen.

The reality here is that server population seems to be small and it seems to be a very solo friendly MMO.

I also suspect there is a leveling curve where the speedy experience you were gaining from 1-15 goes away, and now the game slows way down.

I'll let you know.

Some of the main selling points have been:

1- Oodles of skills and combinations of skills to play with. I love finding layers of complexity and this game seems to have that in spades. Want to play as a staff and shield character? You got it! And while you're holding your staff and shield, gear that is staff and shield centric will drop for you from enemies. Genius!

2- Quirky charm. I covered this in the last post I made about Project Gorgon, but this game has oodles of quirky charm.

3- Good Danger Balance. It's very easy to get overwhelmed by enemies in the dungeons, but at the end of the demo . . . can I just say how happy I was to find firewall as an ability? It solves a lot of soloing problems. Also, I wasn't severely punished for dying. They hit a good balance. Imagine Everquest without any xp loss.

4- Nice people. There were guides and people actually chatting with me in the Demo channel. They were respectful, and I totally appreciated their help. I'm sure I'll run into jerks . . . as is the nature of all online games, but so far it's been pretty jerk free.

5- The price is right. That's 40 bucks well spent with no monthly fee. Thumbs up!

6- Demo Level cap at the right spot. I was given a solid sip of Project Gorgon in the Demo. I wasn't given access to all the classes and skills, and I want to play with those as well. In essence . . . decision time has come.

7- Nostalgia trip. Yeah. The graphics remind me a lot of Everquest. You know I have a lot of love for the Everquest. It's like I'm playing a new game with an old familiar skin.

See you in Eltibule! (Um . . . That's the paid area where I have 2 quests waiting to turn in)

Happy Dueling!

Cragheart says, "Gloomhaven Good!"

If you've never played a game of Gloomhaven, yet know someone who shelled out the money for this beautiful game, do yourself a huge favor and get in on that good stuff! This game is absolutely amazing. It plays a bit like D&D the board/card game. Rich. Full. Years of fun in a box.

Now that the sales pitch is over, lemme catch you up on the Gloomhaven game that I'm a part of. I play a class known as the Cragheart. He's basically an earth elemental.

. . . and when I play Cragheart, I go ahead and role play him just a bit speech impaired, e.g., Cragheart always talks about himself in the third person. Cragheart talks in small sentences. Cragheart usually look out only for self and friends. Cragheart fun at parties! Cragheart hunt demons!

Every character you play in Gloomhaven has a life goal. My personal life goal is to slay one of every kind of demon, like so:

Once I complete that set of demons, then Cragheart will retire, the group gets some reputation, I unlock a new character class, and I then start a new character out at level one.

Our gang of four dads has been playing this game typically about three hours every other week, and we haven't really even scratched the surface of the game. I have slayed, however, 4 of my 6 demons. So there's that at least. Now to just get my hands on a Frost Demon and a Night Demon . . .

The game board and pieces are absolutely beautiful. It comes in a gigantic box that you almost have to buy a whole separate organization system for, just to keep it all straight. 

Every time I play this game, I can't help but think our sorry dad butts are not the intended target. It feels like this should be permanently set up in some college dudes dorm, and they play it every night while studying. Maybe playing the game that way you'd actually get done with your campaign by the end of the year?

Regardless. I can't recommend the game enough. If you ever get invited to play Gloomhaven, know what you're getting in to and embrace it because it's a great game that you should absolutely play if you're tuned in to the Dungeons and Dragons vibe.

Happy Dueling!

Seek Objective: Best gosh darn skill in Project Gorgon?

In the comments to yesterday's posts, Bhagpus mentioned that he had never discovered the skill for orienting yourself to a goal in Project Gorgon (kind of like a quest arrow). To be honest, I wasn't ever paying attention good enough the first time it happened to know how it happened!

So, I went information hunting on the Googles because after deleting my first character, my new character didn't have this skill, and I've been seriously missing it; although, I am really getting to know these NPCs in Serbule after spending around 6 hours stumbling around here.

Anyway, after some poking around, I finally found the skill in question buried within the Foraging skill, which makes sense I guess. A lot of the early quests have you hunting for wood and berries and apples. A skill that helps point you toward those items would be great.

I had been super neglectful picking up apples along the way and so kind of just let my foraging skill sit by the wayside.  Big mistake. I also made a big discovery, sawing random wood in the wilds is not part of the "woodworking" or "carpentry" skill, it's considered . . . dun dun dun . . . foraging.

So I bought a saw from Therese in Serbule Keep for 75 gold and went to work! Gathering wood was netting a ton more Foraging experience than picking up random eggs or harvesting apples and the necessary level of 5 to unlock "Seek Objective" was mine!

You can see the ability "Seek Objective" in the top left hand corner of the screenshot above. You have to slot that on your action bar to the left side of the screen, highlight a quest in your quest log, and then see if it works. Some quests, it just doesn't work. Others, money!

Apparently this skill gets an upgrade when you hit 15th level in foraging. At that point the skill is called "Objective Orienteering" and puts a path down on the ground for you.

Looks like I have a lot of foraging to do!

Happy Dueling

Quirky like a Gorgon

So I decided to sit down and really give Project Gorgon another go after my first foray since posting about it during Blaugust and discovered more of its strange quirks, and there are plenty!

Initially I just wanted to make it to the quirky looking giant hand sticking out of the ground. spoilers . . . I made it there, and then I just didn't stop playing.

Yup! I got sucked into the world and I was running around town doing quests getting completely lost when the best thing happened. I somehow unlocked a button that worked like a quest arrow. You click it, and it spins you around in the direction of your next main quest objective. GAME CHANGING!

. . . and this is Project Gorgon . . . quirky . . . any normal game would just give you a quest arrow, but in this MMO, you have to stumble around enough until the game says . . . yeah, ok . . .you have no clue what you're doing so . . . here you go. Amazing.

Eventually I found a quest that took me deep into a quirky brain bug dungeon where I immediately got into trouble by pulling too many enemies at one time. I dove into my backpack mid-battle looking for any possible health potion. I clicked on a big red potion . . . and . . . bam. I'm suddenly a pig. At full health mind you, but I still manage to die. And when I come back to life, I'm still a pig.

Come to find out I drank a potion that permanently turns you into a pig.

. . . and this is Project Gorgon . . . quirky . . . digging deeper into what exactly happened there, apparently you can just play the game as a pig or a cow or a deer or probably other mundane things. To turn myself back into a regular player character I'd need to farm pigs for a long time to gain a rare drop that is an "un-pig potion." Crazy! 

Even crazier was that every NPC in the town was simply talking to me as if I was some crazy pig. I had to earn faction with them. When I talked in "Demo" chat, it came out in pig language.

. . . and this is Project Gorgon . . . quirky! So I embraced my inner pig and ran to a random dungeon. When I tried to enter it said the entrance was blocked and that I should find another way in, so I ran behind the portal and clicked on the doorway . . . and immediately got stuck inside geometry. I could have filed a ticket, but instead I just deleted the character and started over. Why not?

This time I hit newbie island LIKE A BOSS! I did the hidden objectives of blowing up the training dummy. I went into the lower levels of the dungeon there. I even fought a giant headed skeleton that permanently changes your head into giant size unless you kill him . . .and yes . . . for awhile I had a ginormous head on my character and had to find someone to help me kill him.

. . . and this is Project Gorgon . . . super quirky. There's an NPC in the town who seems to give interesting "hourly" quests (not daily . . .hourly), and that jerk had me doing things like using only the kick button to kill enemies, jumping off of cliffs to hurt myself, and all manner of quirky nonsense.

So now I'm headed to another dungeon to gather up spider legs. I'm sure the experience will be equally as quirky as the time I talked to the blacksmith who said the dwarf who runs the stable wasn't very good in bed. At least I hope the experience is quirky. Because as I'm quickly finding out: it wouldn't be Project Gorgon if it wasn't quirky.

I'm talking praying mantises that wear purple hats type of quirky . . . keep it up and I may put down the money to buy this game!

Happy Dueling