Beckett Gaming

Since my last post a few weeks ago, my Herald (HoX) is now 50. Leveling is reasonably swift and 2 levels a day playing for a few hours is certainly possible. At level 40 you can get your first mount which I finally got at level 48 when I could afford it. The mount has a nice graphic…the horse runs over to you and you put your foot in the stirrup and get on board. It looks like it was filmed in real life and rotoscoped into the game. You have a choice of colors for the horse at the vendor and like WoW, you must purchase a riding ability tome first.

Level 60 gets you a better one…I hope so as this guy is marginally faster than running (it seems). So far I haven’t grouped much, soloing most of the time which is fine with me. Seems like raids, etc. are at end game, level 80. It will be awhile before I get there as I’m doing dual-duty playing AoC and Lich King Beta. I do enjoy AoC, however and look forward to jumping in the game. One odd thing (to me) is repeatable quests in the Tarantia Noble area. This is an area of noble’s home which you enter as a private instance to do a quest. I think every few hours the quest is repeatable and the game recognizes that you’ve leveled since the last time you were there and appropriately raises the npc’s and critters’ levels. In IM, a guildie told me that he went to these quests 2x daily to level and get good drops. It’s a different way to grind towards 80, but the npc’s are challenging and not a push over. There are also minor puzzles, like climbing up ivy-clad walls to reach the upper levels of the houses that seem otherwise inaccessible. One other thing worth mentioning is the personal storage. Instead of buying larger and larger bags, like WoW, you get one bag as basic storage. When you can afford it, you buy one other bag, say with 8 extra slots. You can purchase larger bags as you go and the new bag will replace your extra one as long as the new one has more slots than the old, i.e. a 12 slotter purchased will replace your 8 slotter, a 16 will replace the 12, etc. At my level, the only way to make game $ is to have a lot of storage, come back to a town and sell gear you can’t use. Game $ is important for mounts and other needs as you go but not really for gear as the drops are plentiful enough for your personal equipment. I’m learning as I go and most of my questions are answered in guild or in OOC chat. I’ll come back around level 60 and post again.
- Eric Bloom, a long time gamer and the lead vocalist of Blue Oyster Cult