I’ve been really enjoying Allods Online the past two day of CBT#2. I’ve come across a lot of interesting things and gained new insights that I want to share with you guys.
Rest Experience
This has had me perplexed since I first started playing. Allods Online uses a rest experience system called “Fatigue”. In this system, each day you are alloted a certain amount of “Fatigue” that you can earn (Russian player told me 50% of your level). For the sake of explanation I’m going to make up numbers. Let’s assume that every day at 7am PST you are given 1000 fatigue. That 1000 fatigue can be earned as you quest and kill monsters. It fills up as a blue bar inside of your exp bar which fills up with purple (normal) exp. As you accumulate blue you are able to buy it from the innkeeper for a small (undisclosed at this time) fee.
This system, in a way, rewards everyone each day with a nice pool of potential rest exp but at the same time does not reward those who continue to exp beyond their fatigue pool. Let’s say that I had 1000/1000 fatigue and I need 2,000 exp to level. I earned 1000 exp and 1000 fatigue thus leveling me me but reducing my fatigue pool to 0/1000. Now if I continue to level today I will not gain that blue exp, thus making what I do essentially have as effective. I’m not penalized, I’m just not rewarded for continuing to play. This definitely slows progression down for the hardcore players who want to exp for 10 hours a day. Tip: Do not turn in quests when you have no more fatigue to use up. Quests generate a lot of exp. If you turn in a quest for 500 exp you’re going to get an additional 500 exp in “blue” exp. Confusing, I know. Play til level 10 and hover over your exp bar and look at the second line. You should pick it up eventually.
Stats
How many of you think combat is waaaay too slow or that you miss, get evaded, or simply don’t do damage to mobs? Chances are you messed up your stats. It is crucial that you 1) Understand what type of character you, 2) Hover over each stat to see what it does, and 3) Know how you want to play your character. Oh, and 4) If you’re a Warden, your stats are all fubar and make no sense (but I can explain that if you have any questions).
In many games people see the STR stat and think “Max str and pwn!” but in Allods you have to think about Finesse and Expertise as well. Without Finesse your damage will be reduced ~40%. Without Expertise you’ll never actually connect with the mob.  If you’re a caster, Intelligence increases your damage like STR for a melee and Perception lowers your chance to be resisted.
Just because I want to help Wardens (I am one who suffers from bad stat allocation), aside from what they say they do, here’s how our stats work for melee:
INT = STR
Perception = Expertise
Wisdom = Finesse
That’s for us AND our pets. I know, the tooltips state otherwise. In fact, the stat names themselves were translated incorrectly. Reading a translated guide will probably have you scratching your head.
So regardless what class you are, make sure you’re thinking before you just dump all those points into a stat. In Allods Online you NEED to balance your stats and consider the necessity that each brings to your character’s success. Messing up isn’t permanent, but it will cost you — either real money to buy the respec or finding/buying the item in-game.
Talent Grid
Now that I am level 10 I have unlocked the Talent Grids. These are 3 additional sections for talents that open up allowing you to specialize three different ways. You raise these skills with rubies that you purchase from your trainer. They’re somewhat costly (1g for the first) but this appears to be the bread and butter of character progression. At first glance it makes you sense. There are multiples of some abilities and blank spots on the grid. The multiples are there because if you choose to get the same ability again it levels it up. The blank spots are there because you can buy a blank spot (thus getting no bonus or ability) in order to move your grid in that direction.
For this to make any sense, play around with this talent calculator to get a feel for how the grid moves as you invest rubies. It’s in Russian, but you’ll get the idea.
Dungeons
I did my first Dungeon today. I went to Oreshek which is a level 10 dungeon in Lightwood (League zone). It was fun! I had three quests to go in that rewarded me with decent upgrades. The dungeon itself dropped nice loot from random kills and bosses. It was actually a semi-hard place. We had a Psionicist who could mez one target which made it a lot easier. There is one boss in particular that reminds me of something you’d run across in oldschool Molten Core. It’s a healing intensive fight because the boss will randomly root someone and set the area around that person on fire. That person has to be healed or he’ll die. So not only is the boss doing mega dmg to the tank but to the people being lit on fire as well. Make sure you have good heals and you spread out on this boss or you’re toast… literally.
The dungeon took 30 minutes and it felt like a Dead Mines/Wailing Caverns type place (except not so tank and spank). Having a low level dungeon worth doing is really cool and I hope that each region has a nice big dungeon that is worth running at least a couple of times.
That’s all for now! I’m about to ding 11 and after I finish up these quests I’m moving to the next region (11-20?) Silvaria.
wow that talent grid thing is really cool, so you said you were guilty of bad stat allocation how’d you fix it, start again ? or just start dumping points in the right places after you realized?
i noticed people complaining about the combat speed, but i wasn’t having a problem (gibberlings warrior). i allocated my stats according to what i felt i needed as opposed to what sounded sexy. i upped my luck a couple points for crit, and put the rest in expertise and finesse. what a difference. i connect often and when i crit, they go down hard. most fights last 15-30 seconds, with the very longest lasting around 45-60 seconds (streak of misses or being dodged, no crits). not much of a departure from any other MMOG i’ve played in the last few years, WoW included.
i’m impressed with this game. nice ambience, cool environments, interesting music, beautiful art design, runs smoothly, combat is fluid and fun. even the early quests manage to be interesting, even if they are the same old “go here kill this” crap we’ve all been doing for ten years.
looking forward to trying out a paladin and an inquisitor (or whatever the empire priest is called).
I thought when you bought your fatigue, the entire fatigue pool was open again. So you could essentially get 1000, turn it in, and then go get another 1000 to turn in again.
Nope, how it works (or should work, assuming you’re not bugged) is how I described. You have a pool of fatigue awarded you every day like clockwork and you can acquire that pool, or deduct from it, by questing/killing. I earn fatigue from my pool at a 1:1 ratio.
Sounds fun… and that werewolf looks awesome!
Question about the dungeons – are they instanced (like in WoW) or open/public like in EQ and EQ2 (i.e. full of multiple groups)?
Instanced dungeons to my knowledge.
That Unicorn looks evil….
One question.. How did you do your stats as a Warden Keen?
Did you put 1 point in luck, then next level 1 point in finess, and so on and repeat? or could you explain it to me :p
@Glowy: I messed mine up. 😉 I did most into intel from 1-7 then realized perception was good to have. Turns out wisdom is your finesse.
Never put into STR, Finesse, or Expertise as a Warden because, like mentioned in the blog entry, our stats are difference.
At launch I think I’m going to keep my Wisdom(Finesse) and Perception(Expertise) and Luck evened out and all high with gear making up for intel when it lacks. Ultimately those 4 stats are all crucial to a melee warden.
If you’re more interested in being a caster warden, just go Int, Perc, and Luck.
Yeah i figured out that too.. i read some on the US forums about different classes.. and i found a warden guide that said our stats are different.. but not how to do it right haha. I’m going as a Melee Warden too. And i thought that
i could just add everything into Luck and have 80% crit, but it turns out that thouse 39 points you put in that 1 stat till level 10 – doesn’t make any difference.. my crit chance was still 5% even when i added all into luck from level 5-7.
and when i added points into int i couldn’t notice any difference in my damage numbers. I don’t know if it’s a bug or that it only matters past level 10 as a few on the forums stated.
I’m assuming for Gibberling warriors – Agi = Str?
Just curious… This is based on reading the description for them.
@killergnomie: Nah, I don’t believe race alters stats. As a warrior you’ll want STR but you’ll also want finesse if you want to actually do damage and expertise if you actually want to hit the enemy. STR will end up just being a modifier for damage.
Ya, I stuck my initial 3 points in luck/expertise and finesse… But I just thought I read somewhere that Gibberling Brawlers utilize their Agility etc…. Sounded like they were saying they rely on agility over strength so was making sure that didn’t mean Agi = Str for that class/race combo.
Thanks for the update! Oh btw, I’ve been meaning to ask you… where does the Pscionist class fit in with the other casters? Is the Pscion play like a controller class (lots of CC etc…)? I’m assuming they are not the glass cannon (that is the mage) and they are definitly not the pet/caster class. I was just curious where they fit in.
At least they changed some of the stats descriptions, because on CB1 “Mercy” and “Faith” didn’t make much sense (they were supposed to increase Healing or something, but they actually ignore Wound Complexity, from what I understand now)
Man I tried this last night, it felt to much like I was playing wow all over again, just couldnt get into it.
@Killergnomie: The Psionicist in my group today was DPS’ing and using his mind powers to “mez” adds so we fought one at a time. Great addition to the group.
Managed to play a couple of hours tonight, before Mrs Bhagpuss’s monitor died and I spent the rest of the evening fiddling with it, then finding an old CRT monitor and hooking that up. So glad I never throw anything away in real life as well as in game!
Anyway, most impressed. But then, I was fairly impressed with Runes of Magic for about two days. Nevertheless, this is properly translated into good, idiomatic English and it looks really quite gorgeous, neither of which I could say about RoM. It’s also pretty funny, which is a bonus.
I’ve started with a gibberling Warden. I don’t know if this is changed from CB1, but you shouldn’t really go wrong withthe stats because the ones that are important for your class are highlighted in green. They are indeed the same ones Keen says. I am just putting points evenly into those and so far (Level 5) things are fine.
I can see the key problem for me is going to be bag space. (What, really? There’s a surprise). If I do get intoplaying Allods when it goes live, expanded bags/vaults will be where they get money off me.
I’m an 8th level human League warrior. I’ve been putting most of my points in Expertise because over time, I noticed I was getting a considerable amount of misses. Some classes may not think this is a big deal but with Warriors, they almost have like a combo setup where each attack leads to another corresponding one. Therefore if you miss one attack, it can screw up your entire combo. Right now, at 8th level, I think I’ve put enough in Expertise and I’ll probably start putting some in Finesse next.
With regards to dmg, I’m doing pretty good (seems solid and fast compared to lower levels). Getting a good idea of the combo stacks so as to optimize dmg output as well. BTW most gear that drops usually has lots of STR on it, so I don’t really see much need in putting points in that stat (at least right now).
Wonderwyrm: I know what you mean about it seeming like WoW, particularly doing the quests and that feeling of “grinding” starting to hit you. Hopefully they’ll introduce the PvP soon, as that’s where I’ll probably be spending my time, assuming they pull it off well. It does sound promising, so I’m crossing my fingers.
Other than that, the elite quests where you need to group up to kill the creature were definitely challenging and enjoyable (i.e. Damned Soul elite creature quest that takes like five minutes to kill).
Yea I am playing a Ranger and I finally have the DPS going up. Seems I had missed out on the fact that Rangers can set up their quiver with a stack of special attacks that can then be used at a later time and they help tremendously. I have to check out some of the other classes now to see if i was mistaken about their damage output because I misunderstood the combat mechanics.
As a caster (Summoner) I have been pumping perception like crazy and I am a killing machine. Lowering that resist is so important.
I was one of those people that messed up my stats too… did some messing around with them tonight and came up with some interesting results.
First of all, I’m a pally, so my primary stats are strength, finesse, expertise, and luck. First few levels I plugged all my points into strength, didn’t work out well.
Just for fun, I decided to max out my finesse (went from about 10% armor penetration to between 35% and 55% depending on what I had on) and I saw a HUGE damage increase. My big attack went from 50-90 damage to 150-250. My spam attack went from 10-35 to 35-70. This was on different types of mobs, all at my level (10). My miss rate jumped from 5% to 10%, but the damage increase made up for that. Glancing blows went from 5% to about 15%, but even when my attacks got blocked/parried they were still doing much more damage than before. Basically, I’ve disregarded luck and strength and kicked ass ever since.
I’ve been enjoying the beta so far, and since US got the rested xp fix and EU not I can’t force myself to log on to the EU beta atm, it’s just so slow ><
Anyways, have you got the guild up and running ingame Keen ?
@Proximo
The guild on the League side was set up yesterday afternoon. 😉
@Kyato
Yeah I was similar in that I put most of my stats till 10 in expertise and the majority of the gear I had on had high Finesse. Don’t think that’s the case now and things seem to kill a little slower..
@Warden
Great, I’ll be buzzing you guys ingame tonite then.
Btw whats the name of the guild ? 😛
@Proximo
For the Beta Keen went with the WAR guild name of Happy Fun Guyz.
i have a scout and my problem is that my white damage isvery low, checking the combat log i saw that is because the npcs parry 40%-50% of my damage, is there any stat to low the amount of damage that the npcs parry?
btw im not liking scout, when you have arrows in your quiver you are god, 6 shoots later you are out of arrows and your damage sucks :/
(sorry for double post)
keen i think that you are wrong about the fatigue bar, is like heartlessgamer said in the 3th post at least for me.
when you visit the innkeeper your fatigue bar is 0/2000 and you can still earn 2k more, visiti the inn, earn 2k, visit the inn, etc…there is no limit per day
i have played only 1 day and im only lvl 9 so i could be wrong but i think that is how it works
@Crow
Scouts use the same stats as warriors and paladins it would seem.
Strength – Increases damage
Finesse – Armor Piercing
Expertise – Increases Hit Chance
Luck – Increases Crit Rate
Finesse I would think would increase your white damage by reducing how much NPCs are parrying.
i think that finesse is to reduce the amount of damage that your opponent’s armor absorb, not parry. something like WoW
Keep in mind that the vast majority of your stats is going to come from gear. What you choose when you level is important for the early levels, but gear overshadows it completely if you keep up on it. Stat build refers to gear choices as much as anything.
You get a total of 39 stat points to distribute from leveling. if you focus that in 1 stat, that will be 39 out of hundreds of points in that stat at 40. If you spread it out, there is less noticable of an effect.
Rangers, what are your thoughts on the queuing up arrows in the quiver?
At first I was loving the idea. The idea of planning out a strategic order in my quiver is cool, but in practice it can be a little annoying. After every fight, I have to stand there while I load up X arrows. Maybe it’d be a little nicer if I could do it on the move while I’m running towards my next kill.
Just curious what others are thinking, or maybe if I’m doing it wrong some how.
I have been playing a Ranger mostly in CBT2 and I love it. I dont mind that I have to stand still for a few seconds to queuing up arrows. Not that big of a deal to me. I will probably be playing a Ranger when the game goes live, having too much fun right now.
Buddydude, sounds like they need a macro system so you can bind a key to quickly implement a set order of your choosing.
Im gonna give it another try, diffrent class this time:P
@Nollind You’re right, a way to prep situational quiver sets would be handy and add to the fun, but it still requires the standing around part. I play MMOs with a small tight crew that tends to move pretty quickly, and I’m just worried about a situation like we’re running a dungeon and I don’t have enough time between fights to “lock and load”. I could just ask them to slow down though 🙂
BTW, I checked out your site from an earlier post, and from someone else in the field, you’re a hell of web designer. Impressive stuff.
This sounds like a fun game. Ill definately try it out. I got a beta key from Massively dot com.
btw beware of seizures with all the warden lightning bolts
Quick posts as im playing atm, the game has gotten a lot better, tried a demonoligist, once you get ur pet and put some stats up, combats a lot quicker
the pet is quite sturdy as well
Hey Keen!
Thanks for the awesome review yet again! I am glad to hear you are enjoying it so much. Would you mind if I posted a link to this article up on our New site?
Thanks!
Kate
Allods Online Community Manager
I just got the Arisen Occultist’s mirror self ability and I gotta say I love it. I find it funny people are attacking you Keen for being positive about this game when it is obvious its a good game.
@Kate: As always, feel free to link away. 🙂
@The Crow: I’m not wrong. You do have a limit per day. Let’s simplify it a bit though for explanation.
Let’s consider fatigue as pizzas.
Every day 10 pizzas are delivered to my house at 8am.
When they arrive I have eaten +0/10 Pizzas.
I decide to eat one. I am now +1/10 Pizzas. I eat 2, +2/10. I can visit the innkeeper and say “Okay, I’ve eaten +2 of the 10 pizzas delivered today, reward me!” or I can do it after 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or go once I’m +10/10 pizzas eaten. I’m not limited on how many times I can go to the innkeeper in a day, but once I have eaten all those pizzas, I have to wait until tomorrow before I can eat any more pizzas — because I have no more left.
Pizzas (or fatigue) is given to you each day at server reset (or just some time, I don’t know when). This allotment can accrue even if you don’t play, which is why some of the people who played CBT#1 have seemingly unlimited rested exp since it gathered for over a week.
“I find it funny people are attacking you Keen for being positive about this game when it is obvious its a good game.”
The anonymity of the internet makes a blogger easy prey to a trolls far superior wisdom and intellect.;)
“you’re a hell of web designer”
Buddydude: Thanks for the compliment but I really feel I’ve only achieved 60% to 80% of my potential yet. That said, I’m actually looking for community relations work in the games industry right now (got an interview next week for one). In effect, my passion really isn’t so much about building websites, as it is about building communities around them. In the future, I’ll probably build a new personal site that focuses more on my community background, relaying things I’ve been researching and discovering over the years (aka “Everything In Life, I’ve Learnt From Games”, hehe!).
Ok this is fricken weird. I’m already in the beta because I got a beta key from the MMORPG.com website. Yet I just got an invite to the Allods Beta in my inbox for…get this…CBT #1!!!?? It even shows the dates from Nov 10 to 24th. Weird!
I’ve been playing the Russian version, I seem to hit a wall after you move away from the noob area, creatures are harder to kill and too long to level.
There seems to be a character wipe (or just my characters were wiped) on the Russian servers, so I must re-level…really annoying!
The Talent Grids look like fun… License boards from FFXII anyone?
Enjoying the game, but the insanely small bag does not have enough slots to complete even the basic quests. I am constantly dropping items to pick up other required items. That will basically force most players to purchase a larger bag from the shop.
You can get bigger bags in-game through quests.
I’ve been playing since the start of cbt1 and I really like the game. I’m playing a level 17 warrior (I also have a lvl 10 scout a lvl 10 summoner and a lvl 8 warden) As far as the rested exp cap it does exist but I’ve only hit it once in cbt2 so it’s a rather high cap. If you hit the cap then start working your alt as you will need one! For professions I recommend gathering for your main and the associated crafting for the alt. Keep in mind that luck also effects your chance for a glancing blow (1/2 damage) so you can’t ignore it ether.
Hey im looking 4 a guild melee warden build do you mind helping me with that i’d luv im only lvl 4 atm but dont wanna mess up still you kno haha… thx 🙂
I find the game just as well and i completely agree with some of the stat builds. I have a ranger lvl 9 almost dinged to 10 but main stats that i use are – expertise, finesse and some str its good so far with a 10% chance to miss and nearly 30% to crit 🙂
wait no… not finesse lol i meant luck xD
I agree that building a char can be super difficult. I find it best to know what kind of char I want to play first and then build off of that, such as warrior: you can be paired, 2h or sword and shield. If you pick sword and shield, there are clearly some skills you won’t need to get and that goes for the other specs as well. Picking your end game role is seriously crucial. As far as stats go. I still dump all of my stats into luck every level and I haven’t had a problem with that so far. Good advice Keen, thanks for the posts. 😀