ArcheAge can be overwhelming at first (as in one of the betas, when you are trying to see as much as possible, decide on classes, races, etc., and also get your head around a very complicated farming and crafting system). There is just so much to do, so much to see, that it seems impossible to evaluate the game over a single weekend. We purchased the Archeum packages as soon as they were available and I’ve had a lot of time to try different classes, explore various areas and learn about as many aspects of the game as possible. Since ArcheAge is such a deep, at times very complex game, that time has been essential and was well worth the cost of the pack (all of the perks and currency are going to be pretty nice as well, but more about that later).
Rolling a Character
Ideally, you’ll be able to get into several beta events. With 120 class combinations you’ll want to try several. All of the races have racials that will actually matter in game, such as the Elf swim speed increase and longer underwater breathing which I am very partial to. Each race has a different starting area and unique mount, and although the quests are pretty typical MMO fare they all manage to convey the characteristics of that race.
With a few caveats, I love the character customisation area. There is a distinct lack of darker skins, which bothers me a bit as someone who normally plays darker-skinned characters. There isn’t a way to customise your body. Aside from that, there is a wealth of facial customisation – for someone like myself who can spend hours building the perfect face, it’s wonderful. And saveable, which is the most important thing for beta! In the lower right-hand corner of the screen is a button that will allow you to name and save your presets.
A Place To Call Home
One of the more important activities (and one of the most rewarding) in ArcheAge is farming and crafting. This system happens to be in flux right now as Trion tries to Westernise the game. To a lot of players, said “Westernisation” seems to involve balancing their desire for you to buy things in the shop versus the players’ desire to just have a good time, and hopefully they’ll find a midpoint that stops short of an Allods-level cash grab. Hint: just look up “labor points” on the forums. :)
Since housing and land are not instanced in ArcheAge, and there are limited amounts of it, early access is going to be a land grab. People will be levelling as fast as possible in order to get land for farms and houses staked out. I would suggest watching all of the cutscenes and enjoying the beauty and richness of the early game in beta so that you can haul ass at launch. Once land is gone, it’s gone. Remember the land rush scene in Far and Away? Yep, that’s exactly what launch is going to be like, so stop and smell those early flowers in beta.
Friends and Family
It is worth doing some research into guilds prior to the game launching: get to know people, find the right group and be sure to meet up and say howdy at some point during the beta weekend. In this game having the right guild is going to be very important, as much of what you want to do will be made much more pleasant and easier with a group. If you know that you’re interested in farming and doing trade runs, for example, it’s much easier and MUCH more fun to do that first trade run across the sea with your guild, preferably in a ship. I did mine solo, and it took two tries (I lost my first pack to a bunch of sea bugs). The second one I did by swimming the whole way in stealth, which took frickin’ FOREVER.
Although I am by nature a solo MMO player, I’m putting my anti-social preferences aside for this game. You’re going to need a group of people to play with some of the time – and you’re going to want it, as you’ll have some of the most riotous, hysterically fun experiences ever with them.
You can also form a family, which means that you can share each other’s property, work each other’s farms and so on. This comes in handy as you can share chores, pool LP (labor points, you’ll come to know more about labor points than you ever wanted to in AA) and so on.
Gathering
You don’t need to train gathering skills, so from level one if you see a tree, cut that sucker down. Pick that flower, mine that node. They all give XP, but also use labor points, so use your discretion if you find that you’re running low. Many of the plants you see will be useful for the first trade quests, so I always gather everything I can. You can’t harvest other people’s farms, but if they plant in the wild you can gather their crops. Be warned, though, that a jury system exists in ArcheAge and most trial juries seem to regard stealing crops or uprooting trees as being a crime worse than piracy. If you uproot trees in the wild you won’t get XP but you will occasionally get a sapling, which you can save and then plant on your own land.
Mounts and Ships
There are some pretty cool mounts in game, and you should have your first one by level five or so. If you’re brave, you can cross the sea and buy a mount from the opposite faction, which is always a hair-raising and exciting experience. Mounts level up with you and have their own XP pool, so make sure that you have a pet out when you’re fighting or on foot. At level 20 you’ll be able to get your first battle pet to fight by your side, and he levels up the same way. Quite early on you’ll get a rowboat from one of the quests, keep that in your inventory. You can do your first trade run in the rowboat, but it will be both slow and dangerous.
You can buy mount armor from any stablemaster, which provides speed and health boosts. Upgrade as you level your pet.
Lions and Tigers and…PvP
ArcheAge is in part a PvP game, there is no denying that. However, if you aren’t comfortable with PvP it is entirely possible to level to cap without participating…you will be missing a lot of the fun, though! There isn’t any on-land PvP at all until you reach level 30, and after that you’ll be levelling through areas which are sometimes at war, sometimes at peace. The seas, however, are always PvP. One of the elements of the game that I am decidedly unfond of is same-faction killing (PKing), which I personally think is the lowest form of PvP. Gankers and griefers aside, though, you’ll rarely experience something as exciting as trying to take a tradeship through hostile waters with friends. :)
Have Fun!
I normally don’t do a lot of these posts anymore, but I wanted to for ArcheAge. Like many longterm MMO players I’ve fallen out of gaming a bit while remaining nostalgic for that first love, that game where you realised that you could blow an entire evening, an entire weekend, immersed in that world. I think (I hope) that AA is going to be that game for me. This is going to be my home, and I hope that you love it as much as I do.
