I know that many people are curious to know more about DarkFall. I'm not intending to have a go at previous games, but in my eyes AOC and WAR have failed, not because the games were bad, but because they didn't have enough depth to captivate players.

Darkfall is everything that you want in a game. It's exciting, it's dangerous, it's fun, it's hard, it's deep, it's challenging, and the graphics are actually good. You have to get used to it, it's like every new game, you start off being a newb, not knowing the controls, not knowing anything, and you judge it from day 1 without giving it a try. You can't try this game and understand it in 1 day. It took me at least 7-10 days to get into it, and I must say, now I'm really loving it, it really is one of those games.

Everything in this game has a purpose, every action has a requirement and a consequence. It's not endless and mindless Keep after Keep after Keep, or renown farm. Dying in this game matters, no insta res and sometimes you get insta decaped. In AOC and War we really had fun and dominated within the remit of the game, but trust me, those games have nothing on this game, I say this will all honesty, right now we have 5-6 active players, and we will never be a high zerg guild, I know many of you want challenging exciting PVP, if you can just put those games out of you mind and join us, you will understand what I'm talking about.

Let me categorise this game for you.

Economy
This game has a thriving ecomony, and the reason is everything decays and breaks. When you are mining your pick will decay, when you are taking damage your armour decays, your weapons decay, food gets used and so do pots. And nothing is mass purchased from vendors, you have to craft and make everything. Of course you can loot some items, but almost all the stuff that you will need is crafted. So the economy is thriving, and yes you can play this game and just be a crafter and have fun. The crafting is deep and complicated, and yes it says "Crafted by yournamehere" so you can build your reputation as a armoursmith if you want.

If you want to buy something, you don't troll an AH and hope to ninja at good price, its all done through racial channel, and being close to someone matters, yesterday i wanted to buy 2 mounts, but i was quite far, then the guy replied to me, sorry you are too far, i have a closer customer. Even trading can be dangerous, you have to be careful if you are being setup, everything is personal, face to face transactions (old school economy).

Skill Levels
There are no player levels, you chose the skills you want and you level them by using them. And the power doesn't increase much as the skill increases, maybe like 10% overall, increasing your skill lvl, gives you the chance to buy some new skills at certain skill levels 25,50,75,100 and maybe open up different trees, like in magic you need lessar magic 50 before you can start on greater magic, and greater magic needs to be 25/50 depending on which futher magic you want to progress. Any advanced skills above 75 will decay if not used, and people have said there is a soft cap, which will make its extremely hard, if not impossible to lvl up everything to 100, so you have to pick and chose what you want to focus on.

With combat weapons, its 0-100 thats it, so you basic requirements are bow, a 1 handed weapon and a two handed weapon. However, with items like bow and arrows, you don't equip a bow and arrow and that's it, you actually use arrows, so you have to plan how many you will use, 10 arrows = 10 shots, 100 arrows = 100 shots etc. Last night i died and lost 200 arrows, now thats a lot, so you have to use your head and play accordingly. You don't buy arrows, you have to craft them, another thing to think about. The same goes for magic, advanced spells require reagents, which works the same way as arrows, you cant just have everything in your inventory no risk no loss, you have to plan and prepare for every encounter. Ye its a pain to level, but the dynamics of the game makes perfect sense and works too.

Combat
Combat in this game is directional, kind of like AOC. You have to be close to melee, magic takes time to reach its target so it can be dodged or avoided, arrows "arc", so when you are far you have to shoot above the target. Mounted combat is "tehsex" and its not easy. You don't dismount people, to dismount them you have to kill the mount. On a mount you can only use 1handed sword and shield, and only on mount you get 360 view, kinda like war. Let me say again, MOUNTED COMBAT WORKS and is not a joke, its actually beneficial to be on a mount 50% of the time, you just have to be careful when they start targeting your mount.

Melee view is 3rd person, but only chase cam, magic and bow is first person only. But you will have to switch weapons regularly, depending on the situation, if you are chasing you will use magic or arrows, if you are up against a caster, or generally you will melee. With melee you can parry, which uses stamina (which is like action bar) this reduces 70% of incoming damage, or 90% if you have a shield.

Combat relys heavily on sound and position. When you want to scout places, you have to crouchwalk, go slowly and make no noise, you can hear everything from far, you can see everything from far, there is no view distance limit, so the other day, davo and i were on top of a mountain and we saw 50-100 horses ride past us about maybe 1500 metres away underneath us, it was an awesome sight, shame i didn't screenshot it. You can hear crafters, miners, swimmers, magic... just everything.

Player Cities
This game isn't built around keeps scattered all over the place which you boringly endlessly farm. No.... this game is built around player cities, there are hamlets around the map which you can claim and build upon, this becomes your hub, where you guild (especially multi racial guilds) will afk, craft, 1v1, just be a guild and bind to. Since starter cities are racially aligned, where enemy races can't enter, the guild city actually becomes very important for many guilds, its very similar to SWG, where the core of the activity was in the guild city.

From what I've been told, for advanced crafting you need a high level player city, and you get a bind location and bank in a player city, so it really becomes your city. Cities can be raided, and thats where the PVP is, you want to pvp, just go to someones city and fight.

There is a system for challenging and attacking cities, something to do with challenging and then they have a 4 hour period to prepare or something, i'm not 100% sure, wizard will have tons more info, but it really works, and cities are being raided, defended and captured all the time. If you don't have enough people to defend, then you make alliances and pay mercenary guilds, its that simple yet intricate.

PK'ing
This is one controvercial topic, so let me clear it up. There are 6 races, but effectively 3 sides.

1. Humans/elves/dwarfs
2. Wolves/orcs
3. Dark elves

Now the races are natural enemies... What does that mean??? It means when a wolf kills or decaps another wolf, he will take an alignment hit. If your alignment goes negative, so -100 to 0 to 100, then you will go RED. So if you have 80 alignment, and you kill another wolf or orc, your alignment will go to 72. You won't be red... you just have less alignment.

When you hit someone from your racial alliance, you go GREY, grey means other players can attack you without taking an allignment hit. This is when you need to be careful when pve'ing in newb zones. If you target an npc, hit your racial ally by accident you will go grey for 10 seconds, if you don't hit another racial ally for 10 seconds you go blue again. If you do hit someone twice in 10 seconds, you will remain grey for 2minutes. So for 2minutes you will be grey, and other players of the same racial alliance can attack you and kill you without taking an alignment hit.

Ok the gist is, you can be ganked, but are more likely to be ganked if you are grey. If you are red, you can't go into starter cities and everyone can attack you without taking an alignment hit, you don't gain alignment if you are red and continuously die... So how to you gain alignment??? Simple, you have to kill or decapitate your racial enemy. So if a wolf kills a darkelf, his alignment goes up, until it caps at 100.

What does this mean, in boss, we are running around on about 80+ alignment, so when we see players from our own race who we think might have loot, we gank them, its as simple as that. This is why you can't be careful anywhere. Now if you do gank your own racial alliance, a guild may make war with your guild, and this is the fun part, if you are at war with another guild, then the guard towers don't work when you get ganked in cities, if they attack you, and you don't go grey. So you can be ganked by that guild and vice versa everywhere. This is almost identical to guild vs guild war in SWG. You can kill farmers, afkers, crafters anyone from that guild anywhere... Its scary, and its fun... there is no safe place, sometimes a guild might just declare war on you just to kill you inside a starter city so the towers won't kill them, but you can't abuse the war system, i'm not 100% sure, but you can't turn it on and off like a switch.

PVP
This game is all about PVP, pve is to gear you for PVP, and the PVP here is anything and everything goes. You can naked rush people, you can mount rush people, you can kill people when they are pve'ing in a dungeon, its basically like ettenmoors or AOC, but better and harder. 3 skillfull players can take on 6-7 and win, if they have the right gear and are skilled, the pvp is all about skill, positioning, surprise, sounds, using the environment to your advantage, using pots at the right time. Gear and weapons only give you a 10-25% advantage, nothing more. So a naked person can kill a fully gear person if he is better skilled, no problem at all.

Mounted pvp is awesome... you have to try it to see. There are huge raids, there is small pvp, there is ganking, there are sieges, city captures, this game has it all. When you PVE high end PVE, you are prepared to PVP, because there is a high chance you will come across players, you have to be ready. Its a bit wierd to get used to, but when you do you will surely love it... Don't judge this game just by playing it for 1 hour, its impossible to know how good it is like that.

No endless boring scenarios and pvp instances, this is real world pvp, real world danger, and you have to be ready to be ganked at every corner, darkfall is a dirty world, with cruel people, and its exactly the type of world that generates the emotions we want

Looting
This game is about loot, but not just loot, looting other players, that is the biggest risk to death, you will lose absolutly everything, except your starter weapon. When you respawn you will have no health/mana, just max stamina. Also when you do respawn you will have an immunity shield on your head, which will disappear if you unequip your weapon, so withall that stamina, you have plenty of time to run away and not get camped.

When you die, you are incapped on the floor for about 2 minutes, in that time the enemy has to deathblow you / decap you / gank you. When you are ganked, you will respawn at your bind location with nothing. Then a tombstone will appear at your corpse, and they can open it like a bag and remove everything. If they don't or die to npcs, you can run back and take your stuff back and theirs (this has happened to me many times).

If you don't want to farm resources, how about farm people farming the resources??? if you don't want to craft armour, how about killing people who have nice shiny armour??? if you don't want to buy a mount, how about stealing a mount when someone brings it out??? yes all this is possible + many many many times more...

Banking
Everyone gets a bag with a weight limit, if you go over weight with too many items, you slow down, but tbh, you will never fil you bag so you can't move, because of the PK'ing.

When you bank something, it's safe and there are banks scattered around the world, in most cities and places where there are quest npcs. From what i've seen, there isn't a bank limit, not sure if this will change, but its awesome, you can store up everything... no limit in bank, you organise it how you want, and have everything you want. If you want more organisation, then you can buy/loot bags and put stuff in them, you can have as many as those too.

Money isn't a drag bar, its like a loot item, but with gold coins, and when you drag stuff from bags, you can split it and it will have its own unique spot, it doesn't auto stack, when you move stuff, but will if you drop it near a similar item.

Healing
Everyone can heal themselves in two ways, using lessar magic healself, which is a small hot lasts only 5 seconds with a cd and uses up a lot of mana. Or with health pots, which are similar heal over time. If you want to regen your stats, you have to unequip your weapon and rest and you can take food to speed it up.

Healing others in this game is untested... Because you need a ridicolously high level of magic skill, in a magic tree which is mostly unrelated to doing damage. So when i get there, i will let you know, however in some PVE, you need 3-4 healers, from what wizard has said, who will spam heals on a single target. Also healing others like almost every advanced magic requires reagents, like arrows for a bow.

This game isn't about 1 shot heals, and who has the best healer wins or how many healers another group has, you have to rely on your wit and canny and the limited healing that you have. If you are gonna die you either fight to the death or run, and running is possible... I'll tell you why.

Crowd Control
There is almost NO crowd control. NO annoying stuns, NO annoying aoe knockdowns, NO spam cc chain stun newby caster types. The CC in this game is limited, and requires skill to use. Eg. I have a launch where i can launch myself and a friend 10meter in the air, so I can use that to escape and jump over a wall... or melee has a single target knockback at weaponskill 25, but you have to right on top of them to use it. When you hit someone with an arrow from the back for a very very very split second, they will slow a little, almost unnoticible, but enough to chase them down, especially if they are running out of stamina and in a straight line. That's folks, nothing to see here... At last a free flowing game, where you can escape because you run in the right direction, and not like a headless chicken.

Mounts
Apart from the awesome sex of the mounted combat, there are at least 6 mounts in this game, 1 for each race, but totally interchangable, so when loot a horse, you can use it, or sell it. They don't have durability, but they can be killed when you are riding them, and stolen when you dismount or bring your mount up.

Mounts exist as a seperate entity, so you have to unequip your weapon, bring your mount out, which is instant cast, then USE it to get on it. When you dismount, you unequip, dismount, now this is the challenge, it takes 3 seconds to store a mount. In that 3 seconds, someone can run up to your mount and USE it and steal it, that simple. you have to be careful when using mounts, you become a prime target, however if you can afford it, then having many mounts on your is a sure way to escape, just make sure you don't run out of stamina, otherwise you are dead either way.

In conclusion
I've said an awful lot, and I'm not saying this game is perfect, but after experiencing many many things, i can say that I've not had this much fun in a game since I started SWG. Everything is perfect, and the world is full of people, the client is very very stable, and the queue time problem has been fix (full world no queues).

I don't think people in Boss are newbs, otherwise I wouldn't want you to join me, join us again and lets dominate once more. This game really is awesome sexiness, you won't regret it... Just give it a chance!!! If you have any questions just ask, and when you come, i'll try and help you as much as i can.

Really good review Amrix.

I must say I have gone from hating the game, seriously absolutely loathing it and finding it as the most frustrating thing I've ever played to loving it. I haven't even done a lot of 'real' pvp yet, but for one thing playing with Boss again (as opposed to playing by myself), has got me real interested in DF once again.

I think my enjoyment was epitomized last night as Maz and I were exploring and stumbling across a player in the distance, stalking around to try and get to a good ambush point and launching our attacks. Worked even better when Amrix joined us and we ganged a herbalist against a tree, boxed him in and took all his herbs he gathered.

Conquest


The rules for conquest have been finalized.

Here is the real deal straight from the horse's mouth:

Definitions


All Cities and Hamlets have CityPoints associated with them.
This is calculated by the potential of the City or Hamlet; e.g. a City with a potential Wonder will have a high CityPoint score while a small Hamlet will have a small CityPoint score.

A City or Hamlet is either owned by a Clan or it is Neutral.
All Cities and Hamlets start out as Neutral.

A Clan can be in only one Conquest Challenge at a time.

A Clan owned city is conquered when the Clan Stone or Clan Hamlet is destroyed.

You get CityPoints by destroying Clan Stones.

Claiming a Neutral City

In order to claim a neutral city you need to:

1. Be in a Clan
2. Have the rank of General or higher
3. Be within the city/hamlet limits (You will get a message that you are crossing the city boundary)
4. Not be in a Conquest Challenge with another clan
5. Have a Clan Shard in your backpack (These can be bought from various vendors)
6. Double click the Clan Shard in your back pack
7. Congratulations your Clan is now the new owner



Note: A Clan can claim only 1 Neutral City every 24 hours.

Conquering a Clan owned City/Hamlet when your Clan also owns Cities/Hamlets


In order to start a challenge against a Clan owned City/Hamlet, these preconditions has to hold true:

1. You must be in a Clan
2. You must formally declare WAR against the city owners (Or they must have done so against you)
3. You must have the rank of General or higher
4. You must be within the city/hamlets limits
5. You must have a Clan Shard in your backpack
6. The Clan you are about to challenge must not be in another Conquest Challenge
7. Your Clan must not be in a Conquest Challenge
8. Double click the Clan Shard in your back pack
9. Congratulations you have now initiated a Conquest Challenge



A City vs City conquest consist of 2 Stages:

Stage1:


Stage 1 lasts 4 hours.

The City that was issued a challenge against is invulnerable for these 4 hours.


All cities and hamlets belonging to the attackers will be vulnerable in this period.
Anyone (including Mercenary clans, allies etc.) can help the defenders by attacking the attacker's Clan Cities/Hamlet Stones.
If a Clan City/Hamlet Stone of one of the attackers Cities is destroyed during this time, ownership is transferred to the defenders.

A Conquest Challenge can end during this period if:

1. The total sum of CityPoints lost by the attackers exceed the CityPoints of the Defender's Challenged City. Defenders WIN.
2. The attackers have lost their last City/Hamlet. Defenders WIN.
3. A formal Peace Treaty between the Attacker and the Defender is negotiated. It's a DRAW.


If none of these conditions have been met during the 4 hour period then Stage 2 of the Conquest will commence.

Stage2:


Stage 2 lasts 2 hours.

During this stage the challenged City/Hamlet will become vulnerable.

All the Attacker's Cities/Hamlets will remain vulnerable.

A Conquest Challenge will end during this period if:

1. The total sum of CityPoints lost by the attackers exceed the CityPoints of the Defender's Challenged City. Defenders WIN.
2. The attackers have lost their last City/Hamlet. Defenders WIN.
3. A formal Peace Treaty between the Attacker and the Defender is negotiated. It's a DRAW.
4. The attackers destroy the Defender's City Clan Stone. Attackers WIN.


If, after 2 hours, there is no outcome the Conquest Challenge will result in a timeout. This means it's a draw.

Conquering a Clan owned City/Hamlet when your Clan does NOT own any Cities/Hamlets


When you do NOT own any Clan Cities/Hamlets you have to put up a “wager” in Gold for the Clan who owns the city. The exact amount has to do with the number of CityPoints of the City/Hamlet you are about to challenge.
You will get the “wager” back only if you WIN the Conquest Challenge.
If you do NOT win the challenge this amount of Gold will be transferred to the Clan that owns the City when the Challenge is over. This also happens in a DRAW.

In order to initiate a challenge against a Clan owned City/Hamlet while your Clan does NOT own any Cities/Hamlets, these preconditions have to hold true:

1. You have to be in a Clan
2. WAR must be formally declared between the two parties.
3. You must hold the rank of General or higher
4. You must be within the city/hamlets limits
5. You must have a Clan Shard in your backpack
6. The Clan you are about to challenge must not be involved in another Conquest Challenge
7. Your Clan must not be in a Conquest Challenge
8. Your Clan must have enough Gold in the Clan Vault to Challenge the City/Hamlet
9. Double click the Clan Shard in your back pack
10. Congratulations you have now initiated a Conquest Challenge
11. The person who initiated the Challenge is now the Challenger



The Challenger becomes a target for the Defending Clan.
His location will show up on all the Defender's members world and mini maps.
The Challenger is incapable to teleport, and if he logs out for whatever reason the Challenge is lost.

A No City vs City Conquest Challenge consists of 2 stages:

Stage 1


Stage 1 lasts 4 hours.

The Challenged City is invulnerable in these 4 hours.

A Conquest Challenge can end during this period if:

1. The Defenders KILL the Challenger. Defenders WIN.
2. A formal Peace Treaty between the Attacker and the Defender is negotiated. This means a draw.


If none of these conditions have been met during the 4 hour period then Stage 2 of the Conquest will commence.

Stage2:


Stage 2 lasts for 2 hours.

During this stage the challenged City/Hamlet becomes vulnerable.

A Conquest Challenge will end during this period if:

1. The Defenders KILL the Challenger. Defenders WIN.
2. A formal Peace Treaty between the Attacker and the Defender is negotiated. This means a draw.
3. The attackers destroy the Clan Stone of the Defender's City. Attackers WIN.


If, after 2 hours, there is no outcome the Conquest Challenge will result in a timeout. This means a draw.

NOTE: The Gold deposited by the Attackers will always go to the defenders unless the Attackers win.


Destroying a Clan Stone


A Clan Stone can be destroyed using this equipment:

* Siege Hammers (2 Handed Weapon)
* Different types of Battle Spikes (thrown weapons)
* Dynamically deployable Cannons
* Warhulk Weapons
* Ship cannons



When a City has changed ownership:

* If a bank is present, it's automatically destroyed, and the new owner will have to haul new building modules across the land to build it. These modules are heavy and if you overload, you can not use runestones or other means of teleportation.
* All members of the previous Clan currently bound to the City will be booted out
* The record of this Challenge will live forever.





Other information regarding cities

* You can only destroy one building per day. The only things exempt from this rule are:
1. Walls
2. Palisades
3. Decorations
4. Clan City Cannons
* You can disable buildings at all times.
* Disabling a building that has a local bonus (Gives attribute bonuses to all Clan Members when they are within the city limits) associated with it, will cause the Clan Members to lose the bonuses
* Disabling a Wonder will cause the global bonus to be removed
* Disabling Houses and Barracks will decrease the number of people able to bind at the city.
* All buildings can be repaired using repair shards and a repair hammer
* Different Cities have different abilities:
* There are 9 unique Wonders located in 9 different cities. These give Global bonuses to all members of the Clan that own it.
* Warhulks can be crafted only in certain cities.
* Coastal cities and hamlets may have harbors you can build Ships at.
* Mines producing a variety of resources can be found in various cities.
* Every city is laid out and strategically positioned for warfare

Nice review amrix .


And thx wizard for that informations i was needing them .

Thanks for all the info guys. can't wait to have a blast at this game. Gutted that I wont be able to get online when the next batch of sales is open on Monday

I just hope more are available on Tuesday or sometime during the week.

calvin (my irl friend) ain't playing, i think he wanted to flog his acc for cheap, let me know if you want me to talk to him

Cheers Amrix. That's certainly an option if I dont manage to get my account up and running in the next week. How much does he want for it?

I assume you are free to delete characters and start again. Would be daft not to be able too.

ye free to delete and make new chars, i don't know how much, but i think something between 10-20, as there is a couple of weeks left or so, this offer is open to any newb who cba to register his own acc, just let me know

Sounds like a good deal. I can give him £15 for it. I assume Paypal will be the method. Have a word with him for me and see what he thinks.

Any news? I gotta get out of WAR asap after todays debacle.