And more new stuff for higher level players
But besides the tweaked interface and new race, there’s plenty more new content for the new and advanced player. Probably the biggest addition for high level characters is the new Instanced Dungeons which you can only enter as a party and limit the number of times you can go in each day. The idea here is to avoid having to spawn monsters every few minutes to keep up with new parties hitting the dungeon. So the dungeon refreshes every few hours, which some would argue makes it easier to play but, from seeing Zak playing with his guys, it’s obvious that these are a serious challenge anyway.NCsoft have also added tougher grind areas for the higher level players. This is important because, as your character’s level increases, the experience needed for the next level becomes bigger but you gain less experience from the lower level stuff… Adding in tougher grind areas means that although leveling up will still be slower than when you started, it’s not slowed because of a lack of points to be had.
Click for larger imageNow I’m not going to go into all the new items that have been added to the game because, to be frank, there’s too bloody many. In the main the new stuff is armour, jewellery and clothing but unlike the new dungeons, there’s something here for every level of player. For example, Zak’s Elven Elder is B grade meaning he can wear B, C or D grade armour (or none at all). But there’s some new shirts in the market that, whilst being undershirts, are actually D grade armour. Now he’s lobbed a few Enhance D Grade Armour (EAD) Scrolls on his new shirt he’s got himself a very reasonable addition to his armour rating.
At the Clan level, there’s some new bracelets available to high powered clans that can now make those in teir own castle, but they’ll be out of reach of most players. It’s worth mentioning that lots of these new items aren’t droppable and can’t be sold, so you’re stuck with just your character being able to use them.
Click for larger imageSpeaking of clans, by far the most important change is to the Market Trading system as you no longer have to constantly check stock of items you’re selling. This is actually a big thing, especially for the player who crafts or manufactures stuff people want to buy. The big change is how items can be stacked. Previously, you’d lay out your wares and then have to check to see if anyone has bought them and if so, restock manually. So if you’re an avid player, your PC would be on all the time and you’d be checking to see what’s been sold and needs refilling.
But now you can stack up items such as scrolls or spell books, letting other players buy as many as you have rather than only putting 4 or 5 on display, you can now shove all 50 up for sale and let players buy what they need. Basically, it’s a major arse ache that has been completely removed.
Click for larger imageNext up is a new set of Attributes, which is aimed squarely at the top players. Basically, it’s a set of elemental Attributes for them to enhance their armour and weapons. Each of the Attributes has an opposite, so Fire enchanced armour is less effective against a Water enhanced weapon and vice versa. But seeing as Zak doesn’t have a character up to S grade, we’ve no idea how good these are… and Kamael Hair Coat is hardly going to get there anytime soon either.
The Quests have had an overhaul as well with 26 news quests added, mainly for the higher level players, but a lot of the old quests have a had a revamp, making them more accessible and less of a chore. For example the "An Ice Merchant's Dream” quest now allows you to decide the number of quest items to be traded with material items. Zak reckons this makes a big difference as he’d given up on that quest but is now having another crack at it. Me? I’m just trying not to die a lot.
Click for larger imageBut in researching the changes for this review I did find one slightly major flaw with all these updates and that’s in the Library on the Lineage web page. Good lord, when was this thing last updated? Seriously, as a resource for the new player who, as I was, might be a bit embarrassed about asking dumb-as-hell n00b questions, why the hell isn’t the Library up to date?
In fact, Zak has put it more succinctly than I ever could:
“The Library on the Lineage web page doesn’t reflect many of these changes. The Striped Cotton shirt that I risked buying for example... it was a D grade item and I'm B, so I knew I could use it, but couldn't find it in the Library. It just ain’t there! But it IS on the Kamael update page. Frankly, that's piss poor. There are now LOADS of items and weapons that don't show on the Library, so new players who haven’t been around that long it will feel totally left out, as the library is way out of date. Even some of the items have changed names and for Dwarfs (dorfs) crafting these items, it's very complicated. Someone needs slapping!”
Take heart Zak. From the look of it NCsoft do react to player feedback so maybe if we holler loud enough they’ll do something about it. I hope so because although the library is invaluable to the novice player, the fact it’s out of date and has some stuff incorrectly named did actually confuse the hell out of me.
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