Darkfall Beta Leak, Videos

I have posted three videos on YouTube today. You can view the first one here.

A Beginner Guide for Testers

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Starting out in Darkfall

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A beginner’s guide for testers

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When you enter Darkfall for the first time, you will spawn in the starting village you selected in the character creator. All races have three starting villages each.

You spawn next to a guard tower, so you are reasonably safe here. The guard towers will fire at anyone entering its range with an evil or rogue alignment. Currently the damage of the guard towers are a little low, and it will be increased slightly over the next few weeks.

The interface

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The first thing you want to do is to arrange the interface to your liking, and maybe try out different video settings.

You bring up the GUI-mode by RIGHT-CLICKING your mouse. You close it again with another RIGHT-CLICK.

In your backpack you will have three different starting weapons – a club, a sword and an axe. You equip one of them by either double clicking it or dragging it to the weapon slot of your paperdoll. You will always respawn with these three weapons. They can not be sold, destroyed or lost.

Everything else on your character will be left on your grave when you die, and can be looted by anyone.

Always make sure to keep your bank vault well stocked with equipment or gold. You will never lose items in your bank vault.

To perform any attacks, you need to unsheathe your weapon. This is done by pressing R. Pressing R again will sheathe your weapon.

When your weapon is sheathed, you are in 1st person view. When your weapon is unsheathed (i.e. when you are in combat mode), your view changes to 3rd person view if you are holding a melee weapon, and stays in 1st person (but with hands and weapon visible) if you are using a ranged weapon, such as a bow or a magic staff to cast spells.

To cast a spell you need a staff. You can either find a staff on a monster, or buy it from an NPC vendor.

Most active skills in Darkfall follow the load and fire principle. You select the skill of spell you want to perform (drag the ones you use more often to the hotbar for convenience), then press the LEFT mouse-button to perform the action.

Getting quests

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Next to the bindstone where you spawn for the first time, is an NPC Councelor.

You interact with all NPCs, bank vaults, mail boxes, gravestones, ships, mounts, cannons etc. by pressing the F (use) button.

Remember to sheathe your weapon (press R) before you interact.

When you talk to the Councelor, he will have tabs for buying, selling and quests. Pick the quest tab and accept all quests he is offering.

Once you have gotten the quest to kill goblins, an indicator on your minimap will show where some of the closest goblin camps are.

Monsters

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Monsters in Darkfall are tough. Try to fight one monster at a time if possible, and always watch your stamina and hitpoints. If you are in trouble, RUN.

Sprinting

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You can run faster by pressing LEFT SHIFT to sprint. Sprinting will drain your stamina, so keep an eye on your stamina bar. Getting attacked by a monster or player with almost no stamina is not good.

Going Rogue

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When you target/look at another player, if his name is in blue, he has a positive alignment to you. Attacking him will make you a Rogue. When you are in Rogue-mode, your name will appear in brown to other players, and they can kill you with no penalties. If you kill a blue player, your alignment will drop, and if it drops enough you will turn red to other players, and they will be rewarded with positive alignment for killing you.

Red players will be auto-attacked by guard towers.

Looting a grave

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To loot a grave, sheathe your weapon (press R), target the grave and press use (F) to open it. Items can now be dragged from the grave to your backpack.

Resting

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To rest, sheathe your weapon (press R), then use the Rest skill (which you can drag to the hotbar from the skills list). This does NOT make you rest yet, it simply loads the skill. Left click to start resting. A ‘zzz’ icon will appear at the top of the screen and you will see your character in 3rd person view, sitting down. You can mouselook and arrange your bags etc. without breaking out of rest.
To stop resting, use the Jump key (space by default).

If you have any food, eating before you rest will increase the recovery rate.

Chatting

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/say (default) - talk to people in your immediate vicinity
/say_global - talk to everyone on the server. This is a temporary chat command that will be removed before release
/msg firstname lastname - sends a private message to another player. The message will show up in its own tab, and by switching to this tab you open a private conversation with each other.

If you are a veteran gamer you should now be ready to start, otherwise keep reading!

FIRST STEPS IN DARKFALL – A WALKTHROUGH

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Does it sound all a bit too much to learn? It’s actually quite easy once you get used to it. Let’s bring all this information together with a short walkthrough.

Step 1 – Initial preparations
You have just created your character, and have appeared just outside the gate of the village that you chose as starter location. You will see a clanstone (i.e. bindpoint) and the NPC that gives the starter quests.

Under the System messagebox there is a ‘Chat’ button. Click on it to open the public chat bar. If you want to type a message to all, type /say_global then your message. If you want to start a private conversation, type /msg then the player’s name and last name followed by your message

You don’t see your character yet (since you aren’t in combat mode). Right click. This brings up the utility windows, such as paperdoll, backpack, etc. A links menu on the top left allows you to access options, journal, minimap, etc. Click now on minimap to open it, if it’s not open already in the top right corner. Leave it there, it will be handy shortly to find where the monsters are.

Click on Skills, and under general skills find ‘Rest’. Drag it to the ‘0’ (zero) slot of the hotbar (you’ll see how to use it in a moment). Equip one of the 3 starter weapons by dragging it from the backpack to your paperdoll.

Right click again – the utility windows will disappear. Press R to unsheathe your weapon. Now you can see your character!

Step 2 – Moving around
Time to familiarise yourself with the basic movement keys:

W,S,A,D move you forward, back, left, right
Space – Jump
Left shift – Sprint (it consumes stamina but you run much faster)
C – crouch (npcs have more trouble spotting you)

Remember that you can remap these and all other keys in Options, which is an item of the menu that you can see when you right click.

Step 3 – Get the starter quests
Run up to the NPC. To interact with him, you must first sheathe your weapon, if you are in combat mode (press R to sheathe/unsheathe).
Press F to interact with the guy. You will see a window where the last tab is Quests. Go to that tab and take the two quests available.
You will now see on the minimap (that you opened in step 1) the locations of the nearest goblins. Start running there.

Step 4 –Combat
Unsheathe your weapon (press R - you’ll now be in 3rd person view) and left click to hit your target. Note that you do NOT autotarget or lock target. You have to actually be facing towards your enemy and be aiming at it/her/him in order to hit. Keep an eye on your stamina bar so that you always have enough to sprint away if you are in too much trouble.

Step 5 – Loot
Let’s assume that you defeated your enemy. After a few moments, a tombstone will appear instead of its body. Sheathe your weapon (press R), then target the tombstone and press F to use it. Drag its contents to your backpack.

Step 6 – Rest
Walk out of the way of the spawn to avoid surprises, then sheathe your weapon if you were in combat mode (press R). Press 0 (we had dragged the Rest skill to this slot in step 1). Rest is now loaded, as you can see by the small campfire icon under the hotbar. To start resting, left click. You will see your character sitting down. When your life and stamina bars are full, press space to jump up.

Congratulations, you’ve learned the ropes of getting by in Darkfall, and are now ready to discover more by yourself, such as how to use magic, crafting, archery, and so on. If you are ever in doubt on how to do something, don’t forget to ask in general chat. People are happy to help and there’s usually a Dev at hand to answer most questions.

Blog Comments Fixed

I noticed today that the comments on the blog were not working. I fixed the issue and anyone that wants to can post comments now!

Darkfall Beta Patch Notes

Build 117 Notes - 2/06/09

A new patch has been released.

Fixes and updates in this patch includes:

• An exploit where a player could sprint for a very long time has been fixed
• Gold requirement for crafting Repair Shards has been removed
• All monsters was dumbed down as a test in the last patch. This has been reversed.
• Many monsters will now respawn faster.
• Some of the lag problems that some players experienced have been fixed
• Some rare client crashes have been fixed.
• Several world building updates
• More monster loot has been added.

Build 116 Notes - 2/05/09

A new patch has been released.

This is mainly a build to fix some harvesting issues that was introduced in build 115.

In addition this has been fixed:

• Number of reagents for casting Eldritch Sphere in Lesser Magic has been reduced
• Spell Description for Lay On Hands has been updated.
• Heavy duty logging has been reduced more to prevent FPS drop.

Build 115 Notes - 2/05/09

A new patch has been released.
This is mainly to address some server issues, but a couple of other things managed to get in.

Fixes and updates in this patch includes:

• Lay On Hands in Lesser Magic has been fixed so you can't parry it.
• Lightning Bolt in Air Magic has been tweaked
• Run skill has been fixed so it skills up much faster
• You can now skill up in crouch, so that you can sneak up on your enemies at a faster pace.
• Block/Parry will now skill up a bit faster
• If there are any errors when starting the game, they should all be reported back to you.
• The problem some testers experienced with stuttering should now be much better. (We are doing some heavy duty logging on the client to catch the last few remaining client side bugs)
• A transparency slider has been added to all GUI windows, so that you can choose transparency level of each individual window.
• Updates to the world

Please note:
We have increased the hitpoints of all Clan Structures, so for the people who have built Clan Cities this will make them appear damaged.

Darkfall Beta Leak Report, Part 1

Darkfall Report. Part 1.

First login.

The thing that I noticed when I logged into Darkfall for the first time was that the graphics were actually pretty good. They weren't great, and I don't like the art direction, but the actual graphic quality is decent.

The thing that I didn't like right away was that all of the races look like caricatures of player models. Everything is oversized and ugly. If the rest of the game world was done in this oversized art style it would make sense, but since it's just the character models. They look out of place.

One other visual complaint that I have is the fact that when models are in front of each other they get this black outline around them. You can see what I mean in the screenshot to the right.



So I created my character and logged in.

After the game loaded I tried to look around but mouse look was so laggy that I had to adjust my settings before I could even start playing. Pressing mouse2 brings up the menu and a mouse cursor so you can click on the options. Clicking mouse2 again goes back to the default crosshair view.

Ok, so "Smooth mouse look" is on by default. That would explain the laggy feeling. Nope, still lagging, but not as bad. Next thing that I did was turn down the graphics settings. I have a Quad Core Intel processor and an 8800 GT video card. Not top of the line, but I haven't had any issues running Lord of the Rings at almost full settings and Darkfall's graphics are subpar to LOTRO. So this surprised me.

Once I got the graphics optimized I had to fix the keybindings. The default setup is... odd. Ok, now that that's done let's explore.
I equipped my leaf blade and started runni... er... walking around town. What's this? No running?

*Checks keybindings*

Ah. Ok, there's a sprint button. Holding down the sprint button makes you run faster. From what I could tell it doesn't really lower your stamina much, if at all, unless you are fighting, so that's good, I suppose. It's kind of a pain in the neck holding down a button all the time though.

So I ran around town a little bit, checked out the merchants. Lots of potential equipment to purchase, but I have no gold right now. Hey look, there's someone sitting on the ground! I know that there are guard towers in the starting towns so I figure I am going to die when I attack this guy, but what the hell, I'd like to see what happens. I sneak up behind the person and stick my sword into his back. As soon as I did that the guard towers started shooting laser beams. Really? Laser beams? After a few shots I fall unconscious and then I lost connection to the server.

When I logged back in I was at 100% health so I ventured off into the wilderness to find something / someone to kill.

(Sorry I don't have any screenshots of me fighting right now, I was trying to get some tonight but the game kept disconnecting me.)

After literally 10 minutes of running around I find 2 guys killing a goblin. I guess this is a goblin camp so I wait around for respawn. No respawn for 5 minutes so I ventured off over a nearby hill. Here I found some trolls. Or, more accurately, some trolls found me. I manage to kill one and try to run away from the 2nd. Luckily I still have a little bit of stamina left and am able to sprint away.

Now I'm just standing near a tree waiting for my health to recover. Nothing is happening. I assume there's a rest button or skill so I go looking through the skill list. Bingo, "Rest".
I drag the rest skill into the hotbar, click the corresponding number, click mouse1 and voila I'm resting. Supposedly you are very vulnerable in this mode so I was constantly looking around me to make sure no one was close.

But wait, nothing is happening still. It's been about 10 seconds and I still haven't regained any... oh.. wait. I think I just saw a microscopic sliver of health regenerate. Let me wait a few more seconds. Yep, it's regenerating all right.

A good 2 minutes later I'm about 90% full on health and stamina so I get up and go back to the troll area. I loot the gravestone (what, no corpse?) of the troll and get 18 gold. Wow. Some of the weapons I saw were hundreds of gold. Are you kidding me? So I go find another troll and engage it. Everything is going good until it's about to die. The troll suddenly turns and takes of running, so I chase after it. I manage to catch up to it by sprinting up almost all of my stamina. I just have enough for a few hits to kill it. I'm currently about 50% health and 0% stamina. As I'm looting the gravestone another troll comes out of nowhere and starts bashing me with his fists.

Oh yea, another thing. I haven't seen any monsters use weapons yet, but they all have weapons when they die.

Anyway, I can't do anything. I'm completely out of stamina so it kills me. I lie on the ground dying for a few minutes and then someone comes along and revives me. "Thanks!" I say.

Back to resting. 5 minutes later I'm full on health and stamina. So, right now I have been logged into the game for almost a hour and I have made 18 gold.

That was my first day. I was pretty bored at this point so I logged off.

My thoughts:

The game is slow. I mean sssllllooooowwwwww. Everything in the game feels like a grind.
Looking for monsters takes a long time, fighting takes a long time. The game is heavily group focused (it has to be, it's next to impossible to solo anything) but I could not find an easy way to start a group or to find members. It also strikes me as odd that a seemingly group focused game has group friendly fire.

Darkfall has a very old school MMO feel to it. I don't mean that in a good way. You get thrown into the game with no direction at all and just kind of fumble around until you can figure some things out. UO it definitely is not. First off, in UO you could start your character with at least 1 decent skill and two ok skills and earn enough gold by yourself the first hour to at least afford a GM katana and some GM leather armor from a local player merchant.

At the rate I was going it was going to be 7-8 hours of game time to even buy an upgraded weapon. Hardly the disposable equipment the game was supposed to have. But, of course, I'm still a noob and it very well might get easier as I start to gain skills. These are just my first impressions of the game.

I didn't really have fun the whole time I was logged in. Maybe Darkfall isn't going to be the game for me but I will continue to make an attempt at least to continue these blog entries.

First Post

I just got everything set up for my blog. I will start posting some leaks from the Darkfall beta soon.