Ayba and Oric are on a very, very slow climb from level 18 to 20. When there are no Blackburrow, Runnyeye or Warrens groups, they spend their time in Western or Northern Badlands, hunting bandits, gnolls or corrupted animals. It’s dangerous in Northern Badlands though, roaming hill giants and griffons aren’t fun. So we sat [...]
Archive for April, 2009
Oric vs. Tralkh the Scavenger
Posted in Oric, Ramón's Characters on April 29, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Choices, and the incapability to reach one
Posted in Ramón's Characters on April 27, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Oric and Ayba hit a wall recently. Kicking down the door at Runnyeye and setting all the furniture on fire did help their exp bars, but it’s rather slow since then. Moments like this make me create alts; I’m guilty of now having a ranger, cleric, wizard, bard, enchanter, paladin and shadow knight. But the [...]
SoD Innovation No. 2: Mansion of Portals
Posted in Game Design on April 24, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Travel in SoD takes quite a while, if you’re not turbocharged by a bard, sniffing wolf juice or wearing some nice travelling gear. EverQuest had the same problem, and last I hear, they solved it by giving players some clickable travel items? Anyhow. Shards of Dalaya has a different approach. A scary approach. Can be [...]
Really good writing in SoD
Posted in Game Design, Oric, Ramón's Characters on April 20, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Where EverQuest’s story doesn’t seem to offer much background for the Vah Shir beyond “we be moon cats”, SoD’s writing in the vah newbie area is really, really good. Each named vah (mostly merchants and guild leaders) has their own character traits, but they all share some catman-like habits. Despite that, the writing never gets [...]
We dominated Runnyeye
Posted in Oric, Ramón's Characters on April 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Bimboof, Elbane, Ayba and I completely destroyed Runnyeye (well, down to the demons) today. And there were several pieces of Gemweave armor for Oric as well He finally gets past his crappy chainmail. And this is armor he can actually carry, he was breaking his back with the other stuff. Here’s a random, neon-laden screenshot: [...]
The pain of being stranded
Posted in Game Design, Oric, Ramón's Characters on April 19, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Ayba and Oric recently went on a world-wide history lesson quest. Very rewarding, and that’s all I’ll say about it What wasn’t so great was that toward the end of the quest, we got stuck in Goblinskull Mountains and Freeport for over an hour. We weren’t sure which ships travel where, and when. One ferried [...]
SoD Innovation No. 1: The Adventuring Band
Posted in Game Design on April 19, 2009 | 6 Comments »
I am not absolutely sure that this was never done in any other game before, but to me it’s an innovation. In SoD, you can gain experience while offline, or while in an antirely different place than your friends, or while shopping at vendors. This works through Adventuring Bands. You invite the people you like, [...]
Famous things from the depths
Posted in Oric, Ramón's Characters on April 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
It was a true celebrity meeting down in the Newport sewers today. First Nibbler the shark showed up and was quickly turned into sashimi, leaving behind a Shark Hide Bracer. An upgrade for Oric! And then Ratstink showed up to have his ears torn off, including a nice earring. The earring we sold, though. Icky [...]
An unexpected meeting
Posted in Oric, Ramón's Characters on April 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Ayba and Oric wanted to head to the Newport sewers to help the local Newport guards with the rat(ling) problem. While looking for ratlings, Oric bumped into Botbot the cleric, who was trying to find out where the heck the smelly gnolls are down in the sewers. He needs to pull five of their teeth [...]
A night at the gnolls
Posted in Oric, Ramón's Characters on April 15, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Ayba and Oric headed deeper into Blackburrow for the first time ever. A group was quickly assembled: Zoky, Dregonix, Rusheeth and Nagrow, in various constellations. We were really too low to be down there, so the gnoll casters got us several times. Sorry, Zoky Once we’re past level 10 or so, I think we can [...]
