EQN:Landmark Beta Starts March 26th!

The Non-Traditional leashing seems promising

The AI is very basic still but it shows some promise. The aggressiveness and leashing seems to be set on a per mob basis and the deeper you get the more aggressive and longer leashes they seem to have. There also seems to be a pretty sizable range in health/damage dealing ability that seems somewhat individual to the NPC and not static across the types.

How does the combat feel? I am a combat whore. I must know.

The AI is pretty basic but the combat actually feels pretty okay at the moment. Its pretty simple but so far the weapons are pretty interesting and the ones I have tried have a pretty good feel to them. Its an active combat system along the lines of wildstar but at least currently you have to watch the tells of the NPC to tell when to dodge and not big telegraphs all over.

Melee is a bit tough at the moment as a lot of the critters have some anti Melee defenses like the abominations gas cloud. The daggers are really fun and look sweet but I need to get a good set of gear for them. With something like daggers you likely want something that leaches shields/health.

I tend to find myself fliping between weapon types on the fly depending on what type of thing I am facing and what I need. You for sure are going to want at least one melee and one ranged weapon. In caves its pretty common to be in a vertical shaft with chompers or abominations on small ledges where it would be suicide to try to melee fight them.

One type of critter the goblin looking guys are actually the one type that is a lot nastier to range than it is to melee attacks. For those guys I typically break out my sword or my sword and shield although you have to watch out goblins have a big punch attack that sends you flying back a bit and that killed me a couple times.

Jump on a ledge, it's their natural enemy. They just stand around and you can rain arrows.

Rough and early AI aside, combat is fun.

Are there only caves on the surface? I've been trying to find anything in the underground layers and I just pulverize around only finding dirt. How do you go about getting tin? Just port to different islands and run around the layer 3 area hoping to find some? It seems they made the materials a lot rarer than before.

GrizzlyCl_sl said:

Are there only caves on the surface? I've been trying to find anything in the underground layers and I just pulverize around only finding dirt. How do you go about getting tin? Just port to different islands and run around the layer 3 area hoping to find some? It seems they made the materials a lot rarer than before.

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The ones that used to touch the surface are gone for the moment. The fastest way to get to the cave systems at the moment is go to the portal spire. Click the teleport stone and it will have a new option for local locations. Click that and it will show you 5 layers the lower the layer in theory the harder the stuff and the better the loot although thats not always the case currently. The reason the surface connecting ones are not there at the moment is they did not want to force any claim wipes again until the big wipe for open beta.

GrizzlyCl_sl said:

Are there only caves on the surface? I've been trying to find anything in the underground layers and I just pulverize around only finding dirt. How do you go about getting tin? Just port to different islands and run around the layer 3 area hoping to find some? It seems they made the materials a lot rarer than before.

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As far as I know there actually aren't any surface caves right now. You either have to dig yourself, or use the spires to travel in between island tiers. Once you're in a lower tier, you need to use your ore/ground sounder items to find other caves as the entry areas will eventually close up and not go anywhere. If you have a weapon out you can clip your camera through the walls to see caverns, etc. Makes finding them easier, but sometimes you do have to pulverize in one direction for 200 yards or so. I ended up finding an enormous cavern with some druid rings in the center. It had 3 or 4 chests around it and the entire cavern was blanketed in slags and chompers. Very dangerous for a solo player so I TP'd out after grabbing the chests.

Ya the clipping plane with weapon equipped is super helpful. I've found two ruins now but niether had any chests. However, on the second ruin my game crashed and I logged back in falling through the world all the way down to tier 5 and died. I respawned in the graveyard and there was a chest in there!

I have two armor steal items, the ring with +5% max armor temp shield on crit, the first sword with armor heal and the 10s cd +300 armor heal per close mob. I just circle strafe everything and have had no problems.

Is the RNG still in place for all crafted items? I've made a miner pick and the first sword. Both were blue and niether can be upgraded. Do you have to just craft a bunch and hope for the best to get higher tier items?

I believe they removed RNG gear, at least for now. They have an upgrade system, but I believe it's mid-transition to a more robust system.. It's hard to tell what is going to stay or not, at this point, but they seem to have lots of pieces they're still adding in

jesus, they need to slow all of that shit down and give movement and combat at a somewhat feeling of weight. its like teflon-coated goose shit on a slip n' slide.

The combat speed is really not any worse than something like wildstar at the moment its more than wow but not much different than the more actiony MMOs out there already.

kaid_sl said:

The combat speed is really not any worse than something like wildstar at the moment its more than wow but not much different than the more actiony MMOs out there already.

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Whatever it's like or isn't like, if it stays like that, I'm not touching it.

kaid_sl said:

One type of critter the goblin looking guys are actually the one type that is a lot nastier to range than it is to melee attacks. For those guys I typically break out my sword or my sword and shield although you have to watch out goblins have a big punch attack that sends you flying back a bit and that killed me a couple times.

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I got on and toyed around with the new combat. I got some regeneration armor off of some mob and with that and the sword's 'E' command that restores armor I had little trouble just standing there and face-tanking pretty much any mob in tier 5 tunnels. Even a couple of mobs in the case of an add were not too difficult. I also tried some archery and it was also alright; either way I'm probably looking at focusing on one or two weapon sets for a mix of melee/ranged.

One thing about the goblin's 'falcon punch' that you mentioned is that they can easily juggle you down a hole or into boom shrooms. In that sense, they are far more dangerous than just their normal melee damage would imply. I haven't noticed any social behavior from the mobs at all. They will just stand there and let the guy next to them die if you don't directly agro them. They will also not attack each other so the AI is really simple at this point. I expect that they will expand on this in the future. For example, the Chomper plants try to eat goblins, or anything moving might set off the boom shrooms.

overbyte_sl said:

I got on and toyed around with the new combat. I got some regeneration armor off of some mob and with that and the sword's 'E' command that restores armor I had little trouble just standing there and face-tanking pretty much any mob in tier 5 tunnels. Even a couple of mobs in the case of an add were not too difficult. I also tried some archery and it was also alright; either way I'm probably looking at focusing on one or two weapon sets for a mix of melee/ranged.

One thing about the goblin's 'falcon punch' that you mentioned is that they can easily juggle you down a hole or into boom shrooms. In that sense, they are far more dangerous than just their normal melee damage would imply. I haven't noticed any social behavior from the mobs at all. They will just stand there and let the guy next to them die if you don't directly agro them. They will also not attack each other so the AI is really simple at this point. I expect that they will expand on this in the future. For example, the Chomper plants try to eat goblins, or anything moving might set off the boom shrooms.

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Yup there is no social agro at the moment. The AI is real basic and agro managment is pretty much first person who hits a thing is tanking that thing. And yes the falcon punch is one of the most dangerous of the NPC attacks because it brings the exploding shrooms and chasms into play.

The current mobs are pretty much a test bed for monster spawning code/basic pathing and basic combat mechanics.

On the off chance anyone still cares, they just put up a small update to theBlueprint. The major point being that the game's going into open beta in a month/month-and-a-half timeframe.

Saw that....not sure how well it will be. (Still many bugs imo)

Randin_sl said:

On the off chance anyone still cares, they just put up a small update to theBlueprint. The major point being that the game's going into open beta in a month/month-and-a-half timeframe.

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This baby aint stoppin now!

Well assuming the plan is still to go full steam on EQN now that EQL open beta begins, I guess we can expect to see EQN now.