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.
Alpha Two Phase III Progression Feedback - Week One
The first week of Alpha Two Phase III is almost in the books, and we want to know how things are feeling! We are looking for feedback on the following: (Please be as detailed as possible)
- 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?
- Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
- Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
- 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?
Do not feel limited by the list above. Feel free to share anything you’d like to as you’re testing progression. If possible, please share your feedback here by end of day Monday, September 1, 2025 as we will be compiling feedback for our development team on Tuesday.
Thank you so much for being part of our development journey.
0
Comments
Well the biggest problem is that you had scrolls that put people wildly ahead in levels, added more PvP events, then nerfed the scrolls, and added back increased drop rate. With the mix of the new PVP toggle system with everyone accidentally flagging. lvl 15s+ with decent gear cause of increased drops can essentially 1v8 lvl 12s who are behind because of the huge deficit with the random patch in the middle of the game that benefitted the no lifers and nerfed everyone else. Everyone is not on par with each other. Add that with bugs and other features that are not ironed out. like post 2.5 changes that are completely borked. I would have been fine you delaying till November for harbringer update.
My gaming laptop is strong enough to handle Witcher 3, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Cyberpunk 2077 and many others games with fps 60+ on medium settings, but it's not strong enough to handle phase 3 of alpha Ashes of Creation. Fps drops down to 10-15 at lower settings, freezing all time so I couldn't do any testing. I think it's important thing because mostly people all around world have same type of computer as me. Mine is with gpu nvidia gtx3060
Well, intro is the same which is nice, pick up some glint, few pieces of gear and your steed. Few quests lock if your bags are full, even resetting, the dialogue locks and cannot be fixed on our end. Outside that, the cost of crafting is pretty high for Novice, but doable if you grind. Dislike that you've locked tools and such to particular crafters and force them to reach levels so we can make upgraded tools. Dislike we have options for mounts cosmetics and other cosmetics, have info on your site about 'bundles' and to be on the lookout but yet don't offer any to us in P3, so why have options we can't use, that makes no sense. Nodes shouldn't level from lions crafting areas unless all nodes benefit. Should be gathering/harvesting/killing in those nodes that level it and the crates system.
Honestly the game feels amazing for me. One of the biggest issue we run into was the PvP flag. Currently you have to either set it to always having to hold a button to attack an enemy. Or risk being bait fagged by someone and then killed. The toggle flag system was so so much better.
Thank you for all the work you are putting into this game for us, we forget sometimes how hard you all work, but we really do appreciate it.
I feel like a lot of stuff should have been ironed out on the PTR before P3. drops suck I hear static nodes are back so once again some people are way ahead of the rest of the server. Crafting is still not all that enjoyable, I got like 1 drop in 9 levels. And while hunting grem for 4 hours I got one green carcass womp Womp.
Pace - Definitely feels slower, though this time around I've done alot more crafting than last phases so this is mostly why.
Power - A noticeable decrease considering that we are forced to sit with cruddy gear until we find a crafter or get a drop (Which have been REDUCED, only just today have you increased some of them back up). Not having access to buy BASIC gear from vendors has absolutely slowed down everything.
Bottlenecks - Gear for the above reasons, and then how EXPENSIVE the vendor items are, specifically for Processing. They are at best double the cost of processing, at worse they can triple it. Alot of these weapon or armour recipes are requiring 4g+ of JUST vendor bought materials, not including any manually farmed ones like Copper, Zinc and etc. Absolute downgrade from before, barring making us need less materials from various other professions.
Grind - Grind is the game, doesn't really seem all that much different from P2 from what I can feel.
Most Satisfying -
- Actually being able to craft gear without NEEEDING 50 other people.
Least Satisfying -
- Tank as a whole, it's just bad and has gotten 10x worse since early phase 2 from what I last played. I quite literally have nothing good to say about the class beyond that it's just a slightly tankier Fighter. Even at end game with max gear you're still forcing tanks to be exclusively evasion tanks unless their Reflect is up. Tank just doesn't feel tanky, against Phy or Mag. Myself and other players don't want to play Dark Souls, otherwise we'd just play Dark Souls.
- Action cam healing, for the most part this is okay, but with Judgement specifically it's the most irritating skill to use to HEAL. Since you cannot simply untarget enemies in action cam mode, which often leads to me simply swapping out of action cam to use that heal.
- Being unable to bind Action Cam and Non-Action Cam actions to same buttons, this is nearly doubling the number of keybinds that I need, and without macros to fix this it's getting pretty abysmal since I'm FORCED to swap in and out of Action Cam because of several heals.
- F-Keys don't always align with the party/raid list. IE, Self = F1, Party1 = F4, Party2 = F3, Party3 = F2
- Action Cam's targeting defaulting to whomever is roughly infront of you is just painful and has gotten me killed several times, start casting a heal only to realize that the game force targeted some rando's horse 20yards away to be my defensive target.
2. Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
3. Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
5. What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
I enjoy the combat .
Frustrating- not having mats availiable to craft especially when not geting any drops. and not having level appropriate gear drop. I have only had 1 piece of gear drop. lots of recipies but no mats. I enjoy crafting but I dont want to spend 2 to 3 hours of grinding mats for 1 piece of gear that will last 10 levels. you got to pick which way to make it work drops or more mats. I like both because you can craft better. but it is nice to see a piece of gear pop up in the loot window
- So far, it seems pretty normal. I do a mix of artisan skills, quests, and grind, and it feels pretty good to me.
- I'm still lower level (10), but I made my own starter gear, and it feels just right.
-Coin is an issue, especially with artisan stuff. We're supposed to get to JM on 4 skills. I usually do 2 processing, 1 gathering, and 1 craft. With the amount of coin it takes to process materials, it will be SUPER hard for us casual(ish) players. This should be addressed.
-So far, so good. Grinding for coin is absurd, but when mixed with quests and artisan stuff, it's bearable. The grind for coin is a bit too much for sure.
-Satisfied with progression in general at this point...again, though, the cost of processing is way too high, especially for novice level.
Loved doing construction crates, by the way!
After that, I decided to change to fishing and carpentry. I thought to make fish oil, but that is nasty expensive, so I am just turning the common fish into fillets for a tiny profit to the vendor since no one wants that. For carpentry I am just getting into it by collecting the wood to mill, but I tried to turn some heroic basalt into something else by grinding it to sand, that worked well, but I think the price for that is a bit expensive....
Finally, the node (Winstead EU) does not have all the crafting stations. Just a couple are there, even though the marketplace is unlocked and it says novice stations are unlocked? It makes it difficult to craft when you have to run down to the different crafting outposts.
I don't know what I should do with my hour of game time anymore... I can't complete any goals in that amount of time because I have to run all over the place in order to craft the basics, and no one wants to buy the novice outputs anyway because they are all leveled out of it before anything is online. Why are the crafting tables spread out all over the place anyway? It's not that way over at the new starting point in the anvils... Theirs is all neat in a single location.
Thr best part is the ability to run wherever I please, and gather what I see, uncontained by level gates (I can be sneaky around the bad guys haha). I love the mounts, the views, the battles, and the vision. I am in general highly enjoying testing the environment!
By far, the most frustrating part is the current hunting system. When is that getting fixed out of the placeholder form?! It is icky, very, very icky. Just have the mons drop a carcass! Put it on their loot table, everything else can stay the same until you are ready to implement the next step of it.
- Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
I think the biggest issue I have is that nodes not having the initial crafting stations around them making all nodes viable. The day 1 experience where nodes are patches of grass with nothing in them means everyone congregates around these crafting stations out in the wild and doing a full craft requires different stations far away form each other being very inconvenient.- At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
When I realized going anywhere in the game besides the crafting stations next to the two starter areas was unviable because nodes aren't independently viable to start leveling at. E.g. you cant go to a node in the turquoise sea and start building your character due to no crafting stations or vendors.- What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
Not being able to just go to any node on the map that I think looks interesting and start building my character like I can outside lionhold.- At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
Probably when I realise how difficult to find some resources will be...But I don't play in group grind cause I hate to stay in the same spot killing the same mobs for hours....- What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
most satisfying : gathering, comission rewards, combat flow, lawless zonesmost frustrating : Crafting station locations, storage locations, inventory space for mats/storage, skill design variety, mob desync animations/position sometime
●Yes gear is MUCH better. Getting a drop is wayyyy more rewarding now and crafting actually has value which makes the economy fun to engage in. I think recipes need to be fixed for anvil. 2nd division is useless because it's riverlands craft only. Recipe drops i think should be more common for novice gear. But I am enjoying the crafting alot more than phase 2.
●Bottleneck is the storage. I think the smaller storage is great because you need to prioritize. But having stacks max out at 20 in storage is silly. Maybe 3x or 4x like 80/80 or 60/60 would make it better for gathering. Cause with money bottleneck, which i like because it makes you think about what you want to craft instead of just max crafting everything you gather. But storing materials for later use is a hassle with such limited storage amounts.
●I like grind, old-school mmorpgs baby. Keep the grind, increase the grind. There is a reason games like old school rune scape are still so popular. People hitting rocks for months just to get the next level. I think AoC needs more grind. I want max level anything to be near impossible to achieve. It makes for a better long term gaming experience when you put in the work your rewarded but at the same time, that little bit of extra magic power doesnt make you god. Your still defeatable just got more stats. That's what I loved about original lineage 2. Getting to 74 verse 75 wasnt a huge difference in power, but people still wanted to grind that level.
exploring is fun to an extent.
the grind is fun, but I am afraid at how grindy it will get past level 15.
Storage-------
The storage is a great way to force people to focus on what they want to farm. Just going out and grabbing every thing you see is kind of boring. Being able to see someone else farm rocks while you farm flowers is cool.
Item drops --------
I like the drop rate of gear. It makes crafting feel impactful, and you can grind for the currency to buy it from a crafter, and crafting the gear cots a lot of coins, which keeps the price of stuff low.
Bottleneck--------
The bottle neck I had with crafting was the processing itself. splitting the crafting station by a giant mountain felt bad. Having to cross the anvil mountain 3 or 4 times to craft an item (as someone who is new and didnt know what it takes to craft something) was way to pointless grindy that almost make me say f crafting.
Crafting in anvils------
It would also be nice to be able to buy the basic tools with normal quality from a vender so that you can carry a spare with you. Once the towns get going, you will be able to just buy them from a settlement, but at the very start, that is not an option.
Crafting onboarding---------
Also, you might be good to add a tip saying that you can repair them at any vender, so that new players wont have to delete the item and run back to bonfire to get a new one. (i wont admit that I made that mistake)
It might be good to have an npc in the 2 crafting towns have a dialog/quest that informs the player that there is another crafting town with the missing crafting stations.
Hunting---------
Hunting seems a bit too rare to level up. I could not find any first lvl birds to capture. All I was finding were raptors, wolves, and deer.
Lumberjack-------
gathering wood was way more profitable to gather. Wood is more common, gives more xp, and more items per harvest. Since all the gather items sell for 10c each, it was better to farm and sell wood instead of the other gather options.
I think it would be better to have them the same so that you can choose what to focus on based on what you want to craft instead of just having to focus wood.
Crafting item rarity --------
It was really nice being able to get a legendary resource and saving it to craft a legendary item.
Since everyone could craft everything, it felt like it was normal to be filled with legendary gear. Which is great for low levels. I am interested in how the end game will look once you add the raid crafting drops for the best gear. Getting that legendary key crafting item is going to feel even better than getting a legendary gear piece from a boss.
the basic item gather rarity felt like it was in a good slot. But if feels like it might be like graded pokemon cards. Only legendary items will be worth a ton and the rest will just get sold to the venders.
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?
The pace of leveling felt just right. At first, the lack of hand-holding indicators that most MMOs have made things feel a little confusing, but once I got used to reading and understanding the system, it became quite intuitive. The leveling curve makes sense because the game encourages you to support the development of a node. I’m currently level 13 and still using novice gear, so leveling too fast wouldn’t really help if the nodes don’t advance and allow better crafting. Many players might see it as grindy, but I think it’s appropriate and rewarding, especially since the tutorial-style quests provide good experience boosts and some gear along the way.
Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
So far, the biggest sense of progression comes from learning new skills rather than from gear upgrades. I’ve swapped out some pieces with quest rewards or basic crafted items, but the difference in damage or healing hasn’t been very noticeable—mostly just a bit more HP and mana. I expect to feel a bigger jump once I move to the next tier of weapons. Right now, character progression feels more tied to skills than to gear.
Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
Yes, the main bottleneck is tied to node restrictions. You are essentially forced to remain in one of the starting nodes because that’s where novice crafting stations exist. I understand the need for a starter area where you do tutorial quests and craft basic gear, but once you reach around level 6–10, it feels limiting not to be able to move to another node and build it up. Other regions often lack even basic NPCs to sell, repair, or store items, and enemy levels can jump suddenly from 13 to 30, which blocks smooth progression.
This also creates competition and overcrowding for resources in the starting areas, making it frustrating to gather materials and level professions. For example, trying to collect grem carcasses or deodfil plants often turns into a bottleneck because too many players are farming the same limited spots.
On top of that, once you finally help a node advance, having to move to a different node and start progression from scratch—while being at a clear disadvantage compared to already established nodes—breaks the feeling of a free, sandbox world that should reward exploration and choice.
At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
Progression started to feel grindy when farming rare materials for higher-quality gear. The effort required to gather them felt disproportionate compared to the minimal improvement the crafted gear provided. Gathering can also feel frustrating because lower-tier resources are often surrounded by too many aggressive mobs with long aggro ranges. For example, having to kill several grems, a goblin shaman, and a couple of wolves just to collect a single flux plant breaks the flow and makes progression feel more like a chore than a reward.
What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
The most satisfying part has been leveling up to unlock new abilities. Since leveling isn’t too fast, each new level feels like a real achievement rather than something handed to you. It gives strong motivation to keep progressing.
The most frustrating part has been gathering—specifically farming rare materials that don’t provide much payoff for the effort, and not feeling any real progression while leveling gathering skills. I assume professions will eventually get active and passive abilities, but right now, the gathering system feels unrewarding and even punishing at times.
A tank with 1500 health after the fights over to return his health takes everything than some. my big healing spell judgment doing 300 health (8s cd), mends doing 30 with 5 charges 150, 200 with the rapid succession. Concentrating wave only doing 30-40, flash cure x 3 only doing between 30-50. And with resplendent beam the first guys only get 60ish health. Mind you I was 8 and the tank was 10 but if I used everything I'm only scratch a third of his health. Not to mention we got into pvp and it's basically useless, a mend healing 30 by the time I click it and it gets to the intended target, a short bow puts out double the damage in less time. The cast time of judgment use to be the most exciting part of the game, the risk vs the reward. cause when that big heal hit and it brought them back from nothing it was euphoric, but because it took so long you were on edge wondering if it was going to make it on time. Now I'm using it every 8 seconds cause it's the only one that has any output.
That being said with two healers works just fine but really never needed two healers till raid groups in earlier phases. Optimal group was 1tank,1heal,2bard,4dps but I guess now it's 1tank 2heal,2bard, 3dps which is odd cause you got like 5 dps classes fighting for 3 spots