Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
I tried playing a bard for a bit but honestly I'm at a point where I feel like I'm not making any significant progress.
There is no metric on which I can make any progress. There's no 'carrot'. I felt like I was making decent progress mining this morning when the xp gains from mining were higher (due to the rarity changes) but those were completely rolled back. I had given our weaponsmith a bunch of the zinc I had (from before those changes) during that hour and we made arrangements to work towards level 10 gear (for both of us) but the rollback meant I never gave him that zinc. And the fix to the gathering tools meant that everyone was in a rush to start Apprentice tier gathering and crafts - negating every levelling plans I had made during the downtime.
I now have a level 12 tank and a level 13 bard, and I feel like I have no abilitiy to progress. Two of the most needed grouping classes - but there's no new PoIss in The Anvils and so everything is so hotly contested and full that there's just no hope. Especially since I'm undergeared. Level 10 gear is just not accessible (not even low tier common basic gear). It takes literally hundreds of mats and several gold. None of which I have.
I've been a pretty stauch defender of the grindy/hardcore nature of this game - but I'm definitely in a place where I can't find meaningful ways to progress. Maybe the game isn't for me... but honestly if this game isn't for me then it's probably not for enough people to survive. I come from Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot era gaming - I'm no spring chicken looking for the next dopamine shiny.
What might help is more commissions geared to my level. I've been accepting everything on the comission board but that got old real fast.
I'll check back in when you add Summoner. Half my guild seems to want to play summoner so maybe they'll need a tank then, but as it is right now you are at a strong risk of losing the player attrition battle.
mobs just north of my location at the camp are spawning in at level 1, I believe they should be level 8-9
First process the ore. That's 30 copper to use the machine and 30 copper for the useless component you added. So that 60 copper for 1 processed ore.
Then you have to make another component or buy a component another 30 cp. Then 30 copper to make the item.
You need at least 10 fragments so that's 6 silver in ore then another 60cp.
Where does a beginner crafter get that, quests don't give you enough. On top of that you need hundreds if not thousands to get to next tier
It's like Intrepid wants to suck every bit of fun out of crafting
CRAFTING
still needs to be fixed, Novice stuff is now easer but also harder to get, needing regents for every part now makes things more expensive and the curse of "If it's not Epic/Legendary it's useless" is still in effect. Crafting novice gear should be super easy and cheap because people are just starting out, and needing more at the lowest level is bad because people won't try out the crafting. I know the crafts I will do at Launch but i might change it up just to make that all crucial money for low levels. The value isn't having large guilds that can gather endless resources and thus find the permeant spawning Lego spots (yes they still are in game) the value is the RANK of the crafters, right now it's still exceptionally hard to craft Apprentice/Journeyman gear with the recipes I have notice.....however thank you for making every Artisan craft just as complicated as Cooking/Farming...with that being said...
THANK YOU FOR MAKING A FARMING RECIPIE THAT DOESN'T REQUIRE POOP! I SWEAR I HEARD THE ANGELS HALLAJUAH CHORUS WHEN I READ THAT!!!!! this makes farming novice finally obtainable. Also THANK YOU for making woodchips...just woodchips, the inventory needed for seperate woodchips was silly and now that all wood makes woodchips thank you so much!!! but thank you for bringing all the artisan ship classes to the same level, so...yea i guess it's ok to add the stuff ya did.
But I will stress, needing 250+100+50 of something to make 1 Journeyman item is silly. remember this isn't FFXIV now everyone can have max level every crafting so the value shouldn't be the rarity of the item but the crafter who crafts it. Even at higher levels it should be easy to craft a base level common item but making it rarer/higher tier is on the crafter/resources put into the item; they can use better/rarer materials but still the crafting of a base common item should still be easy. yes this means you might need to code a whole new system, but it need to be changed cause right now...and I will stress through Cooking, needing 64 Weeping Willow and almost 1 gold to make 1 Apprentice level item is silly needing 55silver in regents...and another almost Gold in crafting fees to make a single Journeyman is also silly and this is Cooking I read swords that needed hundreds of wood/copper to make 1 thing. needing 1 Gold just in crafting costs/regents not counting how much the wood/copper would cost or the time needed to gather (IF YOU CAN GATHER IT YOURSELF) locks crafting....base level crafting of Apprentice/Journeyman to guilds, even large guilds and locks out the casual players/guilds out of this...not to mention the Master/GM tier stuff with if the math works is like 10-100Gold worth of materials (not counting vendor upcharges) I kind of have an idea of a system that could work if yall want to talk about it.
GATHERING
for some reason seems easier/more rewarding....but....but apparently Static nodes still exist, but the Hunting and Fishing is random...why can't those be used the same way across the board? thing with the Certification and tools help rarity like it seems to do with Fishing
Novice=Common/Uncommon (very very slim chance for Rare to drop)
Apprentice=Uncommon/Rare more frequent (Heroic can drop)
Journeyman=Rare/Heroic More common (Epic can drop)
Master=Heroic/Epic more common (Legendary can drop)
Grandmaster=Epic/Legendary more common (Artifact can drop now)
This makes the level of the Gatherer more important than just standing in a spot all day and chopping a tree, also if you can't unlock Epic and Legendary till Journeyman level it eliminates the "if its not Epic/Lego we don't want it" mentality that is happening and makes all the tiers of the resources important, makes the gatherer more important and it levels the playing field for casuals/small guilds have with larger guilds because its all about the gatherer, if you have someone who only wants to gather for a guild then they have just as much of a chance of getting rare mats as a very large guild, just now it's a numbers but again this isn't FFXIV and not everyone will be a Master/Grandmaster gatherer so they will be in high demand regardless of guild status because only they can get the Epic/Legendary/Artifact crafting mats needed for rarer gear
QUESTING
Honesty seems really rewarding, the new quests and the old seem to have better rewards so my solo play is more questing than it used to be, very good job! keep doing Questing like it has been in this stage. Specific quests that yield specific rewards are great epically for better then starting but not as good as crafted gear.
A lot of changes brought in by P3, a lot of exploits and most importantly a lot of frustration in the community in the direction the game and this phase has gone.
Just a simple, yes this has happened, yes these changes happened, here are the discussion we are thinking for the future and here is what we are going to do in the mean time.
How did you find the levelling pace from level 0 to your maximum level (too fast, too slow or just right)? What made you think this?
Lv 8 ATM, seems legit.
Did your character's power (equipment, skills, stats) seem adequate for the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
With ultra-basic equipment it's just “okay” I guess, nothing truly fancy. Could have been much better if i had been able to craft something ...at least let me loot something from mobs (in 8lvls i found 1 T1 ring and 1 T1 green pair of boots not even for my class)
Were there any obstacles (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progress? Share the details.
At what point, if there was one, did the progression start to feel tedious rather than fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
Across lv8, when i tried to improve my gear but there was NO WAY i could find what i needed ... so I switched for "animal handling/taming/breeding" (whatever the name is) but, to my surprise, i can't find any trainer and there was NO WAY to know it unless roaming aimlessly around the map.
What was the most satisfying and most frustrating part of progression for you?
I have yet to find anything truly “satisfying”, but the most frustrating things (ATM) are:
Enjoy.
"How did the pace of leveling feel from level 0 to your highest level (too fast, too slow, or just right)? What made it feel that way?"
- We're in general level 15-18 now, though we've had a gathering/crafting oriented focus. We feel like the leveling phase is alright, and we're very happy to see how much experience one can get from simply gathering... We have one person in our community that has only done group content ONCE with us (due to irl time limitations), but yet he managed to *gather* himself up to level 10. This is amazing, keep that up!
"Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?"
- No, most certainly not. Moving up from initiate gear to adept has been a hassle, and we're sitting at about one to two weapon each + accessories each and we're approaching radiant levels quickly. That is DESPITE us being very gather/crafting oriented this time around. Leatherworking specifically has been eating an absolutely comical amount of resources.... "99 oak + 25 daffodils" for a book along with "75 ash, 30 oak, 20 daffodil"-bows." ... And thats the basic stuff. Don't ask me about the bronze stuff or the 169 banyan BOARDS!-bow.....
"Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details."
- Gold. Processing to get gear bled us dry quickly. Even though we never buy any materials (we farm everything farmable ourselves), we are CONSTANTLY broke due to crafting costs alone
"At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?"
- We are fine with grindy, but being *forced* to grind thousands of materials of decent quality to just be able to actually play the game (we needed gear to grind at the POIs) is a chore. It feels like it is necessary, not just optimizing.
What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
- Most satisfying: When we came together as a community to gather materials: and when we finally got our gear pieces from all that effort. Exploring the tropics was so much fun as well!
- Least satisfying was sending: "More ash and daffodils" as gathering message for like the 5th day in a row, yet feeling forced to do so because we could not really progress without said gear.
Progression did feel grindy when I had to play solo. Solo play is punishing in this game and the buddy I play with feels that way a lot and is turned off by that. I think if it wasn't so geared towards grouping and solo players could grind and play quests and actually progress without having to group it would be better for me and my friend. A lot of my time playing is after work when I want to just relax and either gather or cook, or even combat but when I have to spend most of that time looking for people or trying to solo and xp goes too slow or I get destroyed it can be frustrating.
I also love crafting but the UI seems to hold me back from it in this game it's also confusing to know what I need in order to make certain things.
Thank you, keep up the great work!
LvL 15 - If i was new, or didn't know how to effectively grind mobs, or knowledge of the best grind spots for certain levels, it would have a been a drag. So a new player who is fumbling around due to a lack of "what to do" would feel far to slow. Someone with a bit of knowledge, would find it honestly just right. and of course it doesn't take a genius to realise if you have an alt, you could level up a new character very fast with xp boons, gear ect which would put the leveling at very fast.
All above is from solo leveling experience
Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
Definitely not - now i know there is a big debate happening right now in the community about gear drops vs crafting etc:
However i would like to say that the Drops i was getting through leveling was minuscule, and even then it wasn't drops my character needed. Not one! On top of that even with the amount of recipes i was receiving, i wasn't getting anything for my character.
Therefore i still had craft all my gear, buy all my recipes to stay relevant with my mob grinding as a solo player.
Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
Bottlenecks for me, were little to no drops of recipes for the crafting profession i had chosen to focus on. making me spend all my money on recipes.
dragging out my leveling and crafting experience. Basically everything is too dam expensive at low levels - the sentiment across the community right now.
At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
Grinding for not only materials for gear but then the copious amount of silver/gold needed to gear due to poor Recipe drops not being specific to at least your current focused profession. Has been mention in the forums before that recipe drops could be a choice from a certain profession, therefore helping to alleviate some of the gold cost in buying recipes which would help out with this bottleneck affecting majority of the community and solo players.
I'm level 15, as a solo player, it's been fun, quests are starting to work(sort of) you can feel it slowly heading in the right direction
Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
Gear???? Not even close, I'll elaborate below.
Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
Everyone complained in phase II about crafting being a bottleneck, and you INCREASED the difficulty in crafting. I understand needing reagents for crafting, but DAMN, farming and cooking were in a terrible spot in phase II, so I thought I'd try: Hunting, Tanning, Leatherworking this phase, only to find out that everything is 3x the cost now, and got forbid you try and make some of your processing fees back by "vendoring" processed items that don't sell. Level 21 hunting, level 6 tanning, level 4 leatherworking, impossible to make gold to fund processing/crafting. Please do better
At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
Now, mid-teen levels, where it's unrealistically expensive to craft your initiate gear.
What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
Most satisfying moment was ONE of the most frustrating parts and that was finally saving up enough gold to buy a raptor(155% speed) only to realize that they're slower than a horse(135%speed). The rest of the frustration comes from PROCESSING, at least make the vendor sell price the base cost of processing our mats, I don't care if it's 1-1 (reagents + processing fee), it doesn't need to include the "gatherable" cost. Also, tier 2 & 3 processed items should "vendor" for much more than tier 1 items. They should also reward more citizen rep, and citizen currency.
Thank you for your time, and I do feel as though it's much more of a game than when I began testing many months ago.
In the beginning the top players got the radiant weapon drops from carphin, by the time the slightly less competitive players like myself got into carphin you effectively removed drops from POI, so there is no way for any of us to catch up with these players any time soon. This effectively makes the PvP aspect of the game uninteresting. Why would fight against players with double the Power that I have with no option of catching up?!?
Lowering drop-rates a couple of weeks after a fresh start is just as bad a broken economy (if not even worse - at least it feels worse).
Another aspect that feels frustrating is the massive asynchronisity between player levels and settlement levels. If you push hard it's no problem to get to 25 in under a week. While the only thing you can realistically craft are Apprentice Weapons and gear.
A potential solution I can think of is to organize the player leveling system, like the gathering system: By default the character would be able to level up to level 10, then the settlement needs to be progressed to the stage where we can craft apprentice weapons, which also unlocks an "Character level apprentice certificate", which allows you to continue to level 20, and so on. I believe tying the character progression to the settlement progression would make settlement progression more meaningful, even the Plainfield for players to have access to the same gear through crafting as well as farming drops and it would also act as a catch up mechanic for players who can't play the game full-time. This incentivizes PvP, since more players would be in a similar power range as well as incentivizing crafting high quality gear in each tear, while the settlement progresses to the next tier.
Join KDS through our discord https://discord.gg/7zpynu3z9m , message Gen.Prometeu and he'll take it from there.
I agree on that nerfing the drops after just a few people of the community was a mistake. That quite literally just put the rest of the community behind and making any way of catching up completely impossible.
Not sure I am okay with the certificate for character level tied to nodes. A ton of character progression is already locked to nodes (crafting, processing and gather as well as storage space, market place etc) - forcing yet another - and probably the most important - character progression feature to be bottlenecked by nodes feels like it would be a huge mistake, imo.
I’ve played since Phase 1 and actively tested every phase. I also follow discussions on the forums, Discord, and within my guild. Based on that, I’d like to share feedback on several systems.
1. **Lawless Rotating POI:**
**Problem:**Great idea, but higher levels dominate, discouraging lower-level players.
**Solution:**Scale players to the zone level when entering POIs, similar to Warhammer Online RvR lakes where stats were normalized. This keeps fights competitive while still rewarding progression.
2. **Progression Balance:**
**Problem:**Character leveling, node leveling, workstations, and professions feel out of sync.
**Solution:**Add progression gates. Example: Valheim locks stronger mobs behind progression milestones. Ashes could:
Restrict higher-level mobs until nodes reach higher stages.
Require better gear tiers to fight stronger mobs, naturally syncing systems.
3. **Gear, Loot, and Crafting Viability:**
**Problem: **By late Phase 2, crafting was irrelevant; loot farming dominated. Costs were too high, making crafted gear unappealing.
**Solution:**
Make most loot common/uncommon, with rares only from bosses/named mobs (like Guild Wars 2).
Reduce crafted gear costs (vendor add-ons, resources).
Goal: crafted common gear should be more accessible than dropped common gear, making crafting core to progression.
4. **Caravan and Crate System:**
**Problem:**Caravans are expensive, high-risk, and not worth it compared to solo crate runs. Players default to mounts + crates, making caravan content rare.
**Solution:**
Reduce caravan creation costs.
Increase caravan profit on success.
Increase crate risk: attackers who kill a crate carrier shouldn’t flag red; mounted crate runs should be much slower. This balances risk/reward and makes caravans a viable, central system.