I finally got to log into Fallen Earth tonight, only to found South Berg was more or less deserted. I guess the hardcore gamers have all moved on to more challenging areas, and we casuals just don’t all log in on a weeknight.

I loved it. I’m not being as anti-social as that sounds, really. After all this *is* a post-apocalyptic world and (it seems to me) population should feel a bit sparse. Plus stocking up on harvesting materials was so much easier than it was when the place was crawling with players. For example, there’s a quest to mine scrap copper from a quarry in South Burg. If memory serves, I needed 10 bits of scrap copper for that quest and I think it took me about 30 minutes to do on the weekend. There was *so* much competition for the limited nodes that as soon as one popped, 3 or 4 players would jump on it. Tonight in about 15 minutes I harvested ~40 bits of scrap copper and could have done more if my pack hadn’t grown too heavy.

Then I set up a ton of crafting jobs. 10 batches of zip gun ammo, a bunch of “fried chicken” (really fried crawler meat, but it tastes just like irradiated chicken! Which is not to be confused with Prairie Chicken, a specimen of which is shown below), a fingerless glove for myself (I’d made one before, not realizing “fingerless glove” was literally 1 glove, so my poor dude is running around with 1 fingerless glove and 1 hand wrap) and 3 pairs of moccasins (to skill up armor-making — if anyone needs a pair let me know). I’m going to estimate that’s about 3 hours of crafting time.

With that done, I decided to jog over to Mumford, another starter town. See, as you gain experience you get APs (I forget what that stands for… Achievement Points maybe? Attribute Points?). You spend these to bump up your stats and skills. But some quests give you bonus AP, and every starter town has different quests that give these bonus AP. So min/max characters are going to do each of the 9 starter towns to wring out every bit of bonus AP they can. I don’t know as I’ll go that far but I’m still working my tradeskills and am happy noodling around in ‘easy mode’ so I’ll at least do Mumford and maybe North Burg.

On the way there I found a nice patch of Woolly Cactus (Cactus is a miracle plant in Fallen Earth. There’s burning cactus that gives acid, water cactus that gives tainted water, cactus cactus that gives cactus and the woolly cactus that gives wool.) and Cotton Plants, so I harvested those and marked the spot on my map for later. Then a decent patch of copper and finally a crashed plane with lots of salvage opportunities, once I took care of the Blade Dancers loitering about. Hey by then I had a few batches of zip gun ammo and that stuff gets heavy. May as well indulge in a bit of target practice and cut down the riff-raff in the area! By that time my pack was full again so I trudged into town. LOTS of work to be done there, but after dumping some extra ore and other heavy items in the bank, I logged for the night.

To a lot of people, this is going to sound like a really dull night of gaming, but to me it was really enjoyable. I love scraping together the odds and ends I need to craft something, and of course I love exploring and finding things.

Crafting in Fallen Earth happens in real time. When you set up your crafting UI to make something, you get a display of how long it’ll take to make. Stuff I’m making now (crossbows, zip guns, clothing) generally takes 8-10 minutes to make. Once you start the process, you can go do whatever you want. Hunt Bladedancers, scavenge for materials, or even log off.

I’m surprised at how much impact this system has on me.

Now this is all going to be old hat for EVE players, I know, since EVE characters study skills in a similar way.

I just laugh at myself when Angela lets me know dinner is ready and I say “Just a sec…have to start building a new crossbow!” because I don’t want that down time wasted. 🙂 I’m sure this urge to log in constantly and set up crafting queues will ease with time, but for now it’s making me feel ‘connected’ to the game in a way that most MMOs don’t.

I didn’t get much chance to play last night, since I was watching Monday Night Football, but I did log in to start making a medium level zip gun for myself.

One important tip I’ve learned too late. [Just to be clear, I read this on the forums late last night and haven’t personally tested it yet, but the knowledge seemed accepted by the community so I assume its true.] If the difficulty of an item is no more than 30 less than your skill level, you’ll earn skill points making it. I, based on years of MMO crafting, figured I needed to make “white” items (items with a difficulty level similar to my skill level) in order to maximize progress, leaving the “green” stuff behind. This got expensive because all the ‘white’ stuff was pretty complex and required lots of mats, some of which I need to buy from an NPC vendor.

I more or less went broke doing this, when I could’ve been skilling up making (“green”) crossbow bolts or zip-gun ammo, both of which require very few mats, and mats that are cheap to buy and easy to harvest. I think zip-gun ammo requires 2 bits of scrap copper — even if you have to buy it, NPC’s sell scrap copper for 7 chips (at least, that’s the cost in South Burg). Really common vendor trash loot from mobs (teeth, feathers and junk) sell for 2 chips each, so it just takes a couple kills to get enough chips to buy mats for a batch of zip-gun ammo (and if you’re harvesting you can sell tainted meat and random bio chemicals you get off your kills for even more).

🙂 I think Fallen Earth is under my skin. I can’t wait to put more time into it.

That’s a nice feeling to have, given that it was more or less a spur-of-the-moment purchase for me.

That’s my day 2, not the game’s day 2. Thursday we were out and about and I didn’t get a chance to play. But last night I played for 5-6 straight hours, which for me is a huge block of time. I rarely play an MMO for more than an hour straight.

I’m happy to say I didn’t experience a single crash, lag was vastly reduced (though there is still work to be done there) and spawn rates of resources and mobs seemed to be ratcheted up (or maybe folks had just moved on from the starter area).

I’m still learning, still finding my way. My character has made it to level 4. Part of the reason for his slow growth is my spending so much time crafting and learning how to do things, but part of it also seems to be a generally slower leveling pace in Fallen Earth than we’ve become used to. And this is no loot-fest. So far I’ve found a head-wrap thing, a pair of moccasins, a t-shirt and a wood plank that acts as a 2-handed club. That’s the total of dropped, usable loot so far. Mind you I’ve crafted some better items.

Crafting feels like so big a part of the game that I wonder what it’s like to play as a non-crafter. Between harvesting things, fiddling with recipes, and doing crafting-oriented quests I’d wager 70% of my play time last night was devoted to crafting. Luckily I enjoy crafting. The system here is unusual because crafting takes time. If you’ve played EVE Online, crafting here works like skill leveling there. It takes real time and you can log off and crafting will continue. At low levels most stuff is really fast, but one item I made took 10 minutes of real time (I’m told there are items that can take weeks). You can speed that up a bit by standing at a crafting station, which makes for these weird tableaus of characters standing stock still around a station for long periods of time. If you’re not in a hurry, you just start the crafting and go about your business. As you run around hunting things or doing fetch and carry quests, the crafting happens automagically in your pack. I imagine my character working on his ‘project’ during times he stops for a rest or to wait for an enemy patrol to pass by.

I still love the feeling of South Burg, the starter area I’m in. The music is right out of a western and at times the game will look like an Old West MMO. Then you’ll turn and see the sun setting behind the shattered remains of an elevated highway (see below) or an ATV will ride past, or you’ll run into a huge mutated bug. Then you remember where you are.

It’s a rich role-play environment for me. A lot of players have done a great job with their names (though it bugs me, as it always does, that “The Older Gamers” guild is here with their guild tag — it always breaks immersion for me). Most other guilds have fitting names for the setting: Soldiers of Fortune, Old Timers Guild, Rangers of the Fall…that sort of thing. Pretty small percentage of out-of-setting names, but given the world there’s a lot of leeway.

(When I say role-play, I mean my style of role-play which is probably not yours. Some day I’ll do a post on this. But I mean I ‘fall into’ the game and start thinking internally in terms of being the character, not playing a game. When a game really grabs me in this role-play way, I’ll completely forget the real world is around me. It’s being “in the zone” or “feeling Flow” or whatever you want to call it, only doing it as my character. That to me is what role-play in an MMO is all about. Your definition most certainly is very different and I understand that.)

The reticle-based combat is taking some getting used to. It isn’t as slick as the same sort of combat was in Tabula Rasa. Middle mouse button puts you into targeting mode. Buttons fire/attack. Ctrl+# switches weapons. But at the end of a battle you have to switch out of targeting mode to loot (or I haven’t found the way to do it while keeping the reticle up). It’s easy to forget to do that and shoot a round into the ground, which matters since ammo is something finite that you have to buy or make. It’s hard to hit someone right in front of you with a crossbow (my weapon of choice for now until I can get my hands on a rifle) and I’m conflicted about that. Part of me thinks that’s realistic since its a fairly unwieldy weapon and any enemy would certainly circle around you preventing you from bringing it to bear (which is what they do in game). But part of me things it’d be easy to jam the point of the bolt into a bad guy’s belly and pull the trigger.

Happy thoughts. Anyway, I do think the combat could use some on-going refinement and polish. Switching from targeting mode to non-targeting mode doesn’t feel quite as crisp as it should to me. But it gets the job done, for now.

Anyway, I need to go. I have to mine some copper in order to make myself a second zip gun, and the early scavenger catches the worm, as they say.

I still think most modern MMO players would be somewhat horrified if they tried Fallen Earth, but there seems to be a decent sized community of pre-order players in-game. (There’s only 1 server: Icarus Studios clearly knows they’re building a niche MMO.) I’m hoping there’ll be enough of a population to keep the devs in beans and bacon (or canned dogfood and green milk, to keep the terminology in-game) so they can continue to grow the game. I’d love to see housing added. In such a crafting-heavy game, being able to set up a lean-to surrounded my trip-wires and such just seems a natural fit.

Today was the launch day for Fallen Earth pre-order customers. Which is kind of strange since I guess the game is now launching Sept. 22nd? So we get almost 13 days of Early Access. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.

The launch hasn’t been perfect, but launches are such a small part of the long-term experience of an MMO that I’m not going to dwell on that. And Fallen Earth isn’t for everyone. If you think EQ2 is too complex, or if you don’t like to have to read tutorial screens, you’re going to *hate* Fallen Earth. It’s old school in a lot of ways, which means frankly lots of sharing data with other players and lots of figuring things out.

I’m enjoying the heck out of this aspect, frankly. I feel like I’ve stepped back 10 years in some ways. Actually, if you have fond memories of killing birds to harvest their feathers to make arrows to hunt with in Ultima Online, then you should give Fallen Earth a look.

The graphics aren’t state of the art, but the music is awesome and some of the voice talent is quite good. The ambiance works if you take the time to read quest text (or listen in the case of spoken quests). It’s a post apocalyptic world set in the Grand Canyon area. Lots of people ride horses and it has a kind of Old West vibe in some ways (the music really helps there).

I laughed when I got a quest to literally kill ten large rats because I know how many people would sniff with disdain at encountering such a quest, but the fact is I was hunting the rats even before I got the quest. Hunting them and harvesting the corpses to get meat and chemicals for crafting. So adding a quest to what I was already doing was just a bonus.

But yes, this is the kind of game where you start out weak and poor enough that harvesting rat meat is worth your time.

In fact so far my time has been split 3-ways. 1 part roaming around, getting the lay of the land and figuring out how the game works, 1 part hunting various animals to harvest crafting materials, and 1 part doing quests.

As a pre-order bonus, I got an ATV. It appeared in the form of a key in my inventory. Once I used that key, up popped an ATV. But gas is expensive and I really didn’t need to travel very far. I figured I’d be better off walking for now. I didn’t want to just leave my ATV sitting around where who knows what might happen to it, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get it to change back into a key in my inventory.

I finally found out that this can’t be done. So what to do with this ATV? Find a garage. Where’s the garage? Well someone told me it was on the outskirts of town, so I had to roam around until I finally found it, and then I parked the ATV there. Other pre-orders got a horse, and the garage also offered stables. (BTW, the horse seems a lot cooler than the ATV, but the ATV has more storage space.)

If that level of ‘reality’ sounds tedious and annoying, then you’ll hate Fallen Earth. But if you’re ready for a bit of a step back to a time when MMORPGs were a bit different, a bit more opaque but in many ways richer for being more opaque, then keep watching this space as I dig deeper into the game. I think I’m going to throw my lot in with the Vistas, a sort of post-apocalyptic Greenpeace offshoot. They can teach me to shoot with a rifle AND to farm. A good combo for us lone wolf types.