Age of Conan - Level 40 brings some privileges

Hey all,

Sorry for being late with a post, but I seemed to have a small bout of stomach flu or something...not even well today. But, I just had to write a bit about the gaming fun going on in the trio.

This past weekend we hit level 40. With that came the fact...first of all, that we could ride horses. The next change was that we were able to start crafting.

Something I need to point out is that since I started playing Age of Conan, I never pursued crafting.

I wanted a game I did not think about crafting for one simple reason.

I always end up hating crafting in these games.

The only game that even came close to me to be a fun crafting game was The Witcher. This just consisted of basic combining of ingredients to create potions and was fun.

Games like Lord of the Rings Online (horrible, slow, tedious, press a button and go have coffee kind of crafting) or Everquest 2 (the mini game which proved to be fun at first, ended up becoming a reason to not adventure and ruined the overall feel of the game) just made me hate crafting overall.

Age of Conan has finally changed this in me (and is just another reason AoC continues to make other MMO's flounder in my eyes).

One good reason the crafting works is thanks to patch 1.05, gear is viable when crafted (at lower levels). The gear that you can craft that is part of your standard recipes are actually pretty decent greens.

Alchemy potions and food are VERY viable (including the 4 hour foods, which when used do not disappear when you die and persist for the full 4 hours...eat and forget).

Finally, you are only required to craft a few recipes to complete jobs for the crafting supervisors (the people responsible for the various duties of crafting like Alchemy, Armorsmith, etc), then thats it.

Craft a few pieces of armor, weapons, food...and I really do not need to keep doing it so that I keep my level matching the level of crafting.

In so many words, I do not need to gather say 100 jobs, then start crafting so that my crafting skill keeps up with my level.

This tedious type of crafting is what killed it for me in previous MMO's. If I am taken away from my main game to craft all the time to make sure I keep up with the joneses, then I usually give up.

Here, I craft if I need something, then I can forget about it (at least until level 50 now..). Hooray.

As an added bonus, for gear (armor and weapons) the gem cutting is a unique aspect to add the attributes you wish.

This is proving to be a pain in my rear when we find gear, and how unviable this gear is from just trash found on mobs.

Look at this nice comparison to see. (click on image then use the image magnifier on the page that follows)

This is a green chest piece drop. Look at the stats very carefully. Now look at the types of armor. A priest for example wears light armor, and requires either Constitution or Wisdom as attributes (for health and damage of spells as well as effective healing)...yet, these junk drops persist.

Why would a Heavy Armor piece have Wisdom? Not a single class that uses heavy would "require" Wisdom (some say the Dark Templar at times acts as a healer and this will affect it...but really, the DT is proving to be a better off tank, and this drop would be thrown away eventually).

Thus, thanks to the "gem" crafting, you can pick and choose the attributes to an extent to place in the correct armor piece or weapon as you so desire.

All pieces crafted have gem slots, so this is pretty cool!

The biggest part of this that amazes me the most? How my son loves it. He is actually quite pleased with crafting and said to me "This is so fun. I feel like I can actually do something that actually helps you guys by making these things."

WoW. He is awesome I tell ya.

He is also interested in finding the "rare" recipes now to try and make some cooler stuff also.

Oh yea...there are some great rare items that rock..look at this piece for example that I never knew existed until I looked at rare recipes..

Blacksilver Tasset

Another rare armor piece that looks more unique than most.

Anyways, my son has gotten really good with using the Trader to sell his junk and is using it to search out new gear and supplies he needs to craft.

He has also gotten persistent in going out and gathering the resources to make crafted goods.

The adventuring (and resource gathering) has taken a new turn with the intro of our horses, which allows us to get to places much quicker.

We really blasted away this weekend to get to 40, and we are so excited about heading to our new zones (Field of the Dead and Noble District), and experimenting..

One experiment consisted of bringing my 80 in and taking the group through an epic field to hit up bosses for blue gear drops.

When you do a field on Epic, the bosses 100% drop more unique rares, and can usually lead to either a good piece to wear or a selling piece on the Trader, which has built up the funds for the guild we created.

I think having this "set" group to adventure with creates a more pleasant atmosphere to game in and it is showing in how fast we hit level 40...and everyone is ready to go on.

Well, thats it for now...hopefully will post some more later this week.

Cheers