Documenting my Adventure in Allods Online (Level 20)

Siveria 'Stone Giants'
Siveria 'Stone Giants'

Siveria 11-17

Leveling in this zone is what cemented my desire to play at launch.  Lightwood was a solid question location from 6-10, but it was the first area and I wasn’t sure how connected it all felt.  Several times I wandered around without a direction.  Siveria really changed that for me.  A story runs throughout this zone fueled by the stories interwoven throughout the game by the World Mysteries.

The content is also well done.  Questing  is familiar but not repetitive.  There is a balance of killing, looking, delivering, interacting, and other forms of quest-to-level content.  It didn’t stop.  I think thats a key component in Allods.  I don’t feel rushed and I don’t feel lost once reaching Siveria.  It’s a linear game, but within the linearity there is this sense of purpose that weaves you throughout the areas so that you don’t feel too much like you’re going in a straight line.

Siveria introduces the first desire for me to max rep with the faction of the region.  The Molotovka rep starts in the first quest hub you go to and continues for your entire stay (up to about level 18).  To gain rep, enough for maxing out, you’ll need to do some repeatable quests.  Most people choose to repeat the tiger charm quest, but this can be tough if the area is crowded.  Obtaining these rewards by level 15 is helpful because you’re going to start wanting your stats boosted up.  Rings and hats at level 15 are a huge boost and will make you feel incredibly powerful for a least a little while.

Keen in Siveria
Keen in Siveria

Frozen Frontier 17-19

My...family?
My...family?

Just north of Siveria, this zone is comprised of several little allods (islands).  Like the northern area of Siveria, most of Frozen Frontier is in a white out blizzard and very cold.  So cold in fact that you get a debuff on some of the allods that damages you over time.  You either have a HoT buff like mine or you use the elixirs gained by questing to counteract the effect.  In this zone you’ll be questing for the Gibberlings.  The quests here felt a little more “Kill x of this” or “Bring me X of these from those”, but they’re fun and deliver a very nice story.

Traveling between the Allods is done in these magical bubbles that act like automated flight points.  You’ll be doing a lot of traveling in this zone between them which does eat up some time.  Staying organized and doing all the quests on an allod that you can before going to another or heading back to turn in quests is ideal.

Frozen Frontier offers the first opportunity that I’ve seen to kill mobs for rep.  The Gibberlings are trying to survive out in this frigid wasteland and they’ve made several enemies such as Harpies, Werebears, Trolls, and even Dragons.  Killing mobs and doing repeatable quests will give you experience and reputation.  I found myself picking up the repeatable rep quest every time I went back to the quest hub.  Reaching max rep with the Gibberlings was much quicker and more natural than the Molotovka’s.

It felt like several big developments in the story took place in this zone and while I wasn’t here for very long, the area upgraded several pieces of my gear and gave me a great sense of completion for my snowy adventures.

Darkwater's Dungeon in the distance
Darkwater's Dungeon in the distance

Darkwater 18-2x

Castle Blight
Castle Blight

After questing in two frozen wastelands, this forest, even a dark and scary one, is a welcome sight.   Darkwater is the next step I made in my questing adventure.  This zone is home to the Kanians (Humans) and yet another rich story arch which you should be able to pick up on from the screenshots.  The town outside Castle Blight is troubled by ghosts and all sorts of problems that revolve around a story that I have only begun to unfold.

This zone has lots of bandits and evil possessed creatures.  Thus far I have doing quests from only one of the quest hubs, but I have already explored half the zone doing them.  There is an enormous ‘World tree’ type thing near the southern part of the zone where Elves has set up a base.  Darkwater has a teleport node to Tenebra which is the home of the Elves.

Now that I am level 20 I can not progress any more this beta phase.  I’m not going to work on any more quests until the next phase because I want this to feel like a natural progression.

Once the next phase begins I will be looking for groups to run the Castle dungeon as well as the two outdoor raid bosses I’ve come across in quests.   I’m expecting Darkwater to last me until about 23.  I already have several quests wanting to send me to Tenebra, but I’ve heard that Holy Lands are where you level at 23.  Perhaps Tenebra is higher level or maybe Darkwater ends sooner than I think.  Either way, I’m excited.  Each zone has been more enjoyable than the last and the game is continuing to get more fun every time I level up.   I will bring you guys my continued adventures at the start of the next beta phase.

darkwaterforest darkwatertreants

  • And your Warden Guide? I could use that right now!

    My Animist (just dinged 12) is in Siveria and enjoying it a lot, but then I love snow zones. So far I haven’t even noticed the storyline (and I read every single quest thoroughly). Mrs Bahgpuss, however, is two levels ahead of me on the Empire side and keeps hinting that SOMETHING BIG is happening. Not sure if I am just being thick and missing it, or if I have missed some crucial quest or what, but so far I haven’t spotted any continuing plot elements at all.

    I have a bit of a problem with repeatable quests, namely I almost never do them. I am happy to grind faction by killing mobs all day long. I come from an EQ background where you might easily expect to kill several thousand mobs to raise a faction far enough just to get past being kill on sight, but somehow I balk at doing any quest more than once. It just seems wrong. Although if it was a quest to hand in goblin ears or gnoll teeth, say, I’d do it 50 times without a qualm.

    Hmm, I might need to work on the psychology behind this.

  • yeah, lets all get our panties in a knot for a WoW clone.

    geeez. How is this superior in any way to WoW?

  • “Siveria introduces the first desire for me to max rep with the faction of the region.”

    I’m normally not at a level to utilize the faction gear yet when I enter a new zone, so I normally do at least the first round of regular quests in the area. By the time I’m done those, I’m pretty close to reaching the right level to use the faction gear, so I do the repeatable quests then. Thus the repeatable quests both help me raise my character level and my faction rep. Usually the faction grind is less than an hour, so it’s definitely worth it considering what you’re getting in return. They most definitely are no where near the brain numbing faction quests you have to do for WoW which most definitely can take forever (i.e. hours or days)

    “geeez. How is this superior in any way to WoW?”

    Toot: Not sure if you’re being serious or sarcastic, considering the numerous posts / comment on this game on the site so far. While it would most definitely be considered a WoW clone, it’s definitely not WoW because there are so many little improvements to the game that it’s so much more enjoyable (not to mention the polish is almost superior to WoW in my opinion). Let’s put it this way though. If you hate WoW, you’ll probably hate Allods. If you liked a lot of what WoW offered though but hated certain aspects of it, you’ll probably like Allods a lot.

    What’s amazing is that this is just the PvE we’re talking about. If the PvP is just as good or better (especially due to all the various forms of it), this game is going to seriously rock.

    Again though, this is only our viewpoint from the beta. We’re definitely not sold but things are looking very very promising.

  • Some people are amazing…not. Since when does a game have to be “better” than WOW. Beside which “better” is very subjective. It might surprise you to realize that there are people in the world who got tired of playing WOW. Even “if” an art style reminds you of WOW that doesn’t mean it is WOW, so it’s essentially new and enjoyable content to it’s players.

  • My feeling so far is that Allods looks like WoW but plays like early Everquest.

    It has one feature that I haven’t yet seen anyone mention, something that has always been one of the very best things about EQ and which I can’t recall seeing in any other mainstream MMO:

    Vendors sell back things that other players have sold them.

    Not just A “Buyback” of things YOU sold them, although they offer that option too. No, all vendors have a “Resale” option which gives you two screens of stuff they’ve recently bought from whoever was passing. I think it’s limited to useable items (armor, weapons, jewellery etc.) although I haven’t tested it.

    Slow-paced combat, long fights, very wide variety in difficulty between mobs of the same level, slow travel, highly aggressive mobs that roam across roads, very powerful mobs in low level zones capable of one-shotting a character of zone-appropriate level, quests that send you into highly dangerous areas, required grouping to complete some quests even at very low levels and now vendors selling back dropped items. It could be 2001 all over again!

  • “Vendors sell back things that other players have sold them.”

    Shhhhh! Don’t tell anyone! Keep it a secret! 🙂

    Hehe, we actually relayed this on the K&G Forums the other day but, ya, hasn’t been mentioned in posts or comments until now.

    I think this is what people need to realize. While it may look and even play like WoW initially (i.e. typical MMO components), once you get out of the starting zone, you start noticing all these little things that add up to make a much better gameplay experience than even WoW itself.

  • Seems more quest oriented like WoW. But I have only been up to lvl 12th. Keen has been to 20, so he would have a better idea.

  • @Bhagpuss

    Cool, I haven’t seen vendors selling back anything yet. What vendors do that?

    I disagree on the fights being hard. I’ve been playing with a friend who is now 1-shotting every other thing he fights of equal level. If you screw your stats up or have gear with the wrong stats fights can take some time. But properly geared characters with the right stats can burn through content.

    @Idunaz

    Grinding is punished in Allods online by the fatigue system. After your fatigue is maxed out for the day, experience gain is cut in half. Its both a mechanic to force players to log out as it is to encourage players to go do something else.

    @Toot

    Any game that can clone WoW is a keeper in my book. WoW is one of the best games I’ve ever played and I’ll gladly play more games that can emulate its best features.

    Allods is not perfect or close to the best game I’ve ever played, but its pretty damn good and does enough differently (like Astral ships) that I think about playing Allods and not wish I was off playing WoW (which is why I couldn’t play RoM).

  • @Heartless

    All vendors do. There’s three tabs at the bottom of each vendor. Goods, Buyback and Resell or something like that.

    @Idunaz

    I made 20 shortly after Keen since I decided to do the repeatable reputation quests rather than regular quests so I can speak that it is quest orienented and…
    it’s exactly what Heartless stated. And if you burn through quests after your fatigue is done it seems that you will have to grind and trust me it can suck. 😉

    I know that there are some people in Darkwater at 20 still doing the quests and all I can think is they are going to pay for it later on when CB3 goes live..

  • @Heartless

    Fights aren’t hard, they are long. That’s what I like about them. It depends a lot on what you fight, as well as on your stats. For example, if my Animist fights a level 12 tiger in Siveria the fight is fast, furious and over in seconds. If he fights a Level 12 yak about 50 metres away the fight takes 2-3 minutes.

    They both give exactly the same xp. I prefer fighting the Yaks. I like to watch the fight play out over a good length of time. My current bugbear with modern MMOs is that combat is way too fast, so Allods is really hitting the spot.

    I also don’t care about the Fatigue. Every game has rested xp, which I prefer to ignore. It only comes into play when I am struggling to play a game I’m not enjoying, usually because I am trying to get over some gameplay hump to reach greener pastures ahead (trying to get out of Burning Crusade content into Northrend, for example).

    At least at the moment I am enjoying the fighting in Allods enough not to care in the least whether I am getting full, half or no xp for it. Maybe once the novelty wears off that’ll change, but I hope not.

  • Just read on forums that in open beta in Russia, zone chat now costs real money to use. Think you have to buy a megaphone or something from online store. Several Russians on american allods forums asking us to complain because they feel the company would listen to u.s./euro more than them. Keen do you have any info on this?

  • Anyone know of a good Empire guild? As much as I would love to play with you Keen, I just can’t get into the League. Probably for the exact same reasons you like League. Oh well. Having fun so far.

  • @Roman09: That information is wrong. The Russians just got a patch that requires them to get an item to speak in chat, but it is free. It’s designed to stop spammers. There is no guarantee that this will make it into the NA release.

  • Just thought of something, I know in beta you can have be on both sides, will they keep that?

  • I doubt it Bubbaqimby. They probably are just allowing that now since we are in beta and they want to make it easier to test both sides (without having to delete characters etc…).

  • I’m curious what races there are… I tried looking it up, but I couldn’t find any info on that (Or maybe I just suck at looking things up).

  • @Danath

    League:

    Kanian – Human
    Gibberling – Otter trio
    Elf – Fairies

    Empire:

    Xsomething – Human
    Arisen – Undead
    Orc – well orc.. 😛

  • I’ve been struggling to log on lately. I’m level 16 and had planned on hitting 20 so that I could quickly get to the Holy Lands in the next beta to try out PvP, but I’m not really enjoying the game anymore.

    I enjoy the quest text and the feel of the world, but the actual quests and combat has become extremely repetitive. I play a mage and every fight has used the same three spells since level 5, fireball, fire arrow and the shock spell. Maybe a freeze if two enemies come.

    I think the problem is that you often go through a number of levels where you get no new abilities. The way the skill tree works, you can either pick abilities that may not complement your build, or else you save up points to increase the effectiveness of abilities you already have. So for example, I haven’t had a new ability in 4 levels as I’m saving the points to increase the rank of my current ones as it makes more sense doing that rather than pick something for the sake of having something new. I had the same issue in Warhammer where you would go numerous levels without getting any fun toys. There’s no excitement getting the next “ding” as you just passively increase your traits.

    The talents are mostly passive traits also, so one rarely gets new abilities from those trees. I dunno, maybe it’s the mage class, but I’ve found the combat terribly repetitive, fire arrow, fireball, fire arrow, shock shock shock. Even though the mobs can be tough and the combat can take a while, it’s just not…interesting anymore. I’m hoping maybe it’s beta burnout as I do enjoy the quest stories but literally have to force myself to go out and kill yet another 20 mobs to complete it.

  • Hmm so the title “Allods” essentially means “Islands”. I find myself wondering if there will be a renaming here to help takeup in the West as “Allods” just means nothing in English.

    “Islands” at least has some resonance with the setting it seems..for me it certainly now conjures up the image of islands floating in an Astral Sea.

  • So do you have to go into contested territory after lvl 23 ? is there anyway to play this came similiar to a WOW PVE server ? I like some PVP here and there, but not while leveling, and only when i am in the mood for it.

    Thanks
    D

  • It could happen that their is an alternate to open world pvp post lvl 23, but since the beta cap is 20 at the moment I have no way of checking fro myself. 😛

  • @thedog: Ive heard it’s a pvp world post-23, but there are areas where you’ll see much less pvp.

    @intruder313: Allods comes from the lore I believe, not necessarily from Russian or anything. It won’t be changed.

  • How do you heal in this game? I’ve always used macros or add-ons to do it in WoW, but it doesn’t look like there will be anything like that. We got a raid group together for that elite troll in the cave in the League starter area and I basically had to keep asking for updates on his health because I was too afraid to switch off the tank to see.

  • “We got a raid group together for that elite troll in the cave in the League starter area and I basically had to keep asking for updates on his health because I was too afraid to switch off the tank to see.”

    If you mean how can you see the health of the monster you’re fighting while maintaining healing focus on the tank, just do the following. Click and focus on the tank, so as to keep him focused. Then utilize your keyboard keys for heals instead of using your mouse (i.e. key 1, 2, 3, etc). Finally hover your mouse over the boss, which will put an indicator for it in your bottom right corner of your screen. Thus you can see the health of the tank and the health of the monster you’re fighting at the same time.

    Unfortunately if you want to attack the monster while healing the tank, you have to switch over quickly to attack and then switch back again. Be nice if you could simultaneously select both an offensive and defensive target similar to Warhammer Online.

  • Ha, I love the fact that there’s a “Keen Family” 😀

    I know this has probably been answered a hundred times before (my memory sucks) but when’s the Western release date?

  • It was supposed to be around the last week of this year but they’re extending CBT#2 for a week. I’d put my money on sometime early January. Open Beta is supposedly the same as “release” since it persists according to the Russians.

  • @Nollind

    Thanks for the tip.

    @Keen

    I’ve heard that characters from CB will be wiped, but those created during OB will persist. Any confirmation on your end?

  • Here is the question…how is the grouping?

    The Dungeon Finder WoW just released has to be the best feature i have seen in a game. Allods sounds very cool (even more with references to old EQ) but there has to be some availability on the solo player to do groups for dungeons and such.

    Is there a LFG channel or anything of this nature?

  • Grouping in the dungeon I did and for the group quests was great. In our version we have now I am not aware of a LFG channel and certainly not a feature like WoW’s dungeon finder.

    It’s very solo friendly. It’s like WoW. You can solo 1-80 and never group once. You’ll miss out on stuff though. You’ll also not get as good an experience in PvP as those who group.

  • It’s confirmed there will be a CBT3 as well though. They mentioned they will be giving prizes away in it. Thus if CBT2 ends the 21st, CBT3 probably won’t start for a week or two after that (i.e. Jan 1). Add on a couple of weeks for CBT3 plus another couple of weeks downtime (which occurs after each test period) and I don’t see Open Beta starting till the late part of January or early February. That’s my best guess.