Reviewing earlygame

I had a plan set in my mind for when 2.1 dropped: play through all of the quests (with a bunch of SDs and world events on the side) and review them, while also suggesting changes in places. I can't really do this, though, as I'm about to spend, like, 2-3 weeks out of town, and I cannot bring the Minecraft because why would you do that. I also don't have the patience to wait, so for this thread, I'll review specifically earlygame.

Spoiler: King's Recruit

Same old, same old. Still a little clunky if you're redoing it, because of all of the unskippable dialogue and slow followers. But it's still noticeably polished, especially with that opening cutscene.

To my delight, you can still grind XP on the ambient mobs, and I nearly got to level 2 before getting bored and moving on. To my chagrin, a good portion of the rather pretty map is blocked off by permanent script barriers.

Said ambient mobs are pretty interesting. It's a good choice to give them custom models to demonstrate to new players that Wynn is aiming to avoid regular models. Grooks (even the zombies on the Trail) having super-knockback is also pretty cool - another practical demonstration, this time of enemy variety.

Boss fight was okay. It's not really a 'chase', though, when you're just thrown waves of enemies instead.

Spoiler: Misc. quests

Poisoning the Pest: Works now. It was a fun surprise to discover that you're not teleported out of the mainmap when you enter the little farm, although annoyingly you still are for the boss fight. That crate of rat poison should probably be removed.

Enzan's Brother: Unchanged. It's still fine.

Cook Assistant: Dialogue's new, and... clunkier than before. Nothing remarkable, it's still just a fetch quest.

Maltic's Well: Basically entirely the same, except for two changes: one, the Well Witch is much cooler, and two, the Beast is added, which is very funny and I am all for it. Alas, the Witch is still... pretty easy, honestly, she isn't a difficult boss.

Lava Springs: Still bog-standard. The Heart is a hilariously easy boss, although seeing its name be big was cool. This wasn't updated at all. Also, the Heart's armor stand kept moving upwards, I saw the nametag go up. Wonder how far up it could have gone.

Spoiler: Caves & Discoveries

• Pigman Barbeque - It's fine. I did notice, as I went in, that the title is extremely slanty, even when I go down to 70 FOV. It's weirdly distorted.
• Corrupted Passageway - Seeing the cave title on this surprised me, but upon investigating, I found it was still an SD. It now being a cave as well makes sense given how it has a chest, but it's still a little odd to me. Probably because of how easy it is to find the SD. Weirdly, it's easier than it used to be. Probably the lack of a ton of extra enemies spawning in.
• I noticed at this point that Barbeque had handed me an identified item while Passage gave me an unidentified, and additionally that the end chest cutscene is much slower.
• A Hero's Origin - I puzzled around the location for a while, assassinating a ghost and investigating an emerald block. I succeeded eventually and marveled at the new ghost walk. The ghost beckoning you at the start is pretty cool, and the ghost soldiers guarding Witherhead's grave at the end are also pretty cool.
• Roots of Infestation - Cave's fine, but I was struck by a massive bout of lag as I entered. It's release weekend, the lag is severe.
• Old Growth Rot - The marauding lag struck again, and I was irritated once more by the grammatical error in the falling spike message. (It should be 'has', not 'have', it's referring to a singular spike instead of all of them.)
• Watchmen - The tower updates are very good and I love them all. The vision updates - also splendorous, and the note at the first tower to look for the other three is extremely good for new players. Noticed a cute pottery in one of the Nivla towers, pretty cool.
• I've just noticed I skipped over a bunch of the caves. It's fine. They were barely changed.
• Hex Keep Gateway - Only noticeable change is that the LEVEL 20 AREA! note has been removed, which makes sense. Still the same.
• Bak'al's Destruction 2 - Firstly, there's a 3 now? How long's that been a thing? Secondly, are there seriously going to be ghost soldiers outside every Wynn Plains discovery? Thirdly, why is it that, when I go in here with Aledar, he blocks half of the shots? He should despawn.
• Sunken Shipwreck - Still vulnerable to the Head-In-Block breath restore, IE you use a 1.13 dive to put yourself right up against a ceiling or air block, which, presumably due to the server partially running pre-1.13, refills your air bar. I don't need the Breathing Helmet, and that is very good.

Spoiler: Main Questline

Kinda good now that I'm actually interested in playing it. Ope becomes an Alekin Citizen when he reaches his tree, I notice. I also notice that the barrier in the little spider cave remains down after you complete the quest, which is awesome.

I went on to do Mushroom Man, which was murdered by intense lag. Unimaginable lag. Fathomless levels of lag. I classed, which fixed some of it. I then noticed that the shroom stealer spiders still have old models, and that the quest is as stinky as it used to be.

Tunnel Trouble! Not officially part of the questline, but it's incredibly important. And lookie! Miner Linton has an actual personality! Fun! Drale is presumably pretending to be a hardcore Bovemist, considering his dialogue is out of sync with his actual lore. (They aren't 'sacred' cows, they're people!)

The 'free the cows' segment is now just silly, especially with the lag making the cutscenes comically slow. No trouble in this less-interesting version of the quest. Like the new Linton personality, but Drale's still... off. Could use a bit of tweaking, he could.

Elemental Exercise... hm. It's excellent attention to detail that Tasim now uses the actual Warrior spells - all four, as far as I can tell. (He also has his own battle theme!!) The summoner looks pretty good. My only complaint is that it's fairly obvious that this, like a lot of other quests in the earlygame, is a blatant tutorial, and although the earlygame questline is no longer necessary (since it doesn't gate Infested Pit anymore), it's still somewhat of a pain that such a significant number of earlygame quests are literally just... tutorials. Extended tutorials.

I noticed in EE and Taking the Tower that the dialogue options have been broken. It used to be that you'd be able to select a dialogue option even if you were already on the corresponding hotbar slot, but that's not working anymore. Also, the Raging Tower - pretty easy.

Spoiler: Sewers of Ragni & Decrepit Sewers

Even the build updates make this quest better, and the new transitions (although they're for everywhere) also help. The updated bats fit with Wynncraft's new mob goals, although they're actual Minecraft bats. The staggering Witherhead is a pretty good silhouette, and Jenprest's various warnings about DS are also good.

I think most of the dungeon quests probably need updates, now. Without the plot being rewritten - which it hasn't been - Sewers of Ragni, already tenuously connected to its dungeon, is now just sort of Eh. It's just another bland earlygame quest. Arachnid's Ascent is similar. Most of the other dungeon quests are pretty good, though, because they actually go into the lore of their dungeons.

The Skeleton Reaper's good, the DS music in the sewer works (although I don't know when that was added), but it's still just sort of a middling quest now, a relic of older times. The dialogue changes are all pretty good, although honestly, you don't need to give even more implication that Witherhead is Bob's mother. It's clear enough if you look, without Jenprest heavily implying it.

DS still DS. Minor build changes, including some from last update. I love that they've fixed the grammatical error in Witherhead's first dialogue, and I also love how the souls of the skeletons you slay go to the door. Oddly, the second Witherhead dialogue is gone, and it also looks like the parkour room's been updated. It's even got two weirdly visible blocks at the bottom!

If the sewer scavengers now have souls (and contribute to doors), that's pretty sweet. I notice that all the enemies are weirdly slow - I think it's lag. They're also weirdly weak. My dagger is level 2, and yet I'm melting the regular DS enemies - despite the fact that dungeons are meant to be difficult now. I'm level 7, so it's not that I'm overleveled. (I successfully tricked two enemies into fighting each other - fun that they will aggro each other if you get some friendly fire going.)

New Witherhead, though? Aside from the extreme lag, and the fact that the music starts too early (during her 15-second-long awakening), she's actually pretty interesting. Her old fight is completely gone - no more bow. Instead, long telegraphs, purple vomit everywhere, and a lot of cool attacks. Me likey! (She nearly killed me with her charge a few times. I think it's rude that it redirects.)

Spoiler: Arachnid's Ascent & Infested Pit

I started with the Pit. It was... underwhelming. The only update to any room (other than removing the Hanging Man and removing tokens) that I could see was in the end. Arakadicus has an awesome model, but alas, she was... boring. The fight was eh. She mostly just threw out a small number of weak enemies, moving around slowly and jerkily (the latter because of ambient lag particles), and the fight boiled down to just spamming Multihit, waiting, then doing it again. Her spiders weren't a threat, she wasn't a threat, and the arena had nothing interesting in it. Defeating her wasn't hard, just slow, and she barely ever hit me - the few times she did, I got a major hit flinch (the loud noise and blindness), but as far as I could tell, I didn't actually take that much damage, and it was easily fixed.

Arachnid's Ascent... still annoying. Admiral Aegis' slow walk through the barracks is painful when, even at this level, you can easily have 20 or 25% WS, plus your movement spell. Traveling along the intended route (instead of the much-quicker Alekin cart) reveals that Nemract has modeled zombies, despite the fact that nowhere else thus far has had these. The road is long, filled with middling monsters, and ends in the warrens.

Arachnid's Ascent now seems just sort of extraneous. It's just sort of... there. It doesn't need to be, but if it was removed, Mushroom Man would have to go, too. And you can't just remove these old quests! They're old! And Yahya's a meme! You'd have to edit Shattered Minds and Legendary Island too!

The interior of Mt. Wynn hasn't been updated - and, for that matter, none of the spiders in the two quests and dungeon that are specifically about spiders have been updated. All of the spiderlings and spiders in Mt. Wynn and Infested Pit (excluding Arakadicus and her minions), as well as the shroom-stealers in Mushroom Man, are normal spiders, despite the fact that the custom model is right there. Bizarre, honestly.

Spoiler: Nemract Quests

• Pit of the Dead: Should have an alternate start at the Pit itself. Hasn't been updated and is consequently real crap.
• Grave Digger: I love the new crypt segment. Getting ambushed by gargoyles was awesome and the whole area around the cathedral is beautiful now. It's been massively improved overall and is now a great experience.
• Cluck Cluck: Updated Cluckles is, surprisingly, not very difficult at all. The telegraphs are good.

Spoiler: Adventure

XP still needs serious rebalancing in the early game. Gain seriously outweighs need. To alleviate this in my earlygame escapes, I used /gxp. Halving my XP gain resulted in fixed issues.

Not having Wynntils (too lazy to update it) is quite jarring. Good for the review, not so good for actually playing. The most jarring thing is the lack of gammabright on a hotkey; I suppose Wynn must have brightness issues.

After getting some items from wandering around, killing mobs and doing a cave, I discovered that, delightfully, I had enough emeralds to identify the ones I wanted! Emerald gain is clearly balanced correctly to item gain. I found myself with a number of useful items that made me stronger, a surprising number of which had bonuses to loot and XP gain. For some reason (coincidence or game design?), I didn't find items that were weapons I couldn't wield. Interesting. (This was, in fact, coincidence - I found two spears along with two daggers in Corrupted Passageway's chest.)

Zombie Grooks fly into the air. Makes sense, still a shock to see that as I ascend Therck's stairs. They also bounce far away and visibly heal. Interesting. They seem to be... very slow. Everything is slow when you scroll.

Enemies in general seem a lot tougher now. Good. Even with an upgraded weapon I was still having issues fighting basic enemies.

I traveled to the first Watchmen tower. Build updated! It's very good. There's a lot of new ruins strewn over Ragni's plains - which is also good. The new scene up there is also pretty good - the darkness and ghost scout are quite nice, and it's good that you're directed to find the other towers.

I used my scroll to return to Ragni and sort out my items - I'd picked up a number I didn't need, such as T1 emerald pouches, which are worthless. (During 2.0, I set up my future 2.1 Assassin with a T7 pouch and 1/35 horse, as preparation.) While there, I found and squished a bug.

Minor bug (not the squishable kind): when identifying my Spiketop, along with a Morph-Topaz and high-level dagger, the Spiketop instantly IDed in my inventory while also being in the Identifier's. Removing the Identifier's Spiketop caused it to vanish.

As I journeyed towards Katoa Ranch, I noticed that the render distance had been improved. I'd also noticed this at the beginning of the adventure when journeying towards Cevalus' farm. I also noticed that nighttime lighting is really poor, and that my Spiketop had a poor roll, which was exceedingly pricy to fix, so I didn't.

I left for a bit to go do something else. When I came back, I discovered a 160-player long queue, moving at a glacial pace. When I'd been trying to log in the previous times, it either took a really long time to establish connection (but then I got in), or there were no issues. (Writing this reminded me that I got the Dodo pet, but that, due to stupid game design, pets don't auto-spawn when you log in, and every time you enter a class, you need to resummon the pet.)

I left, came back some time later. Position #69. Still a while away from actually playing the game. Once I got back in, I set off once again, before getting distracted by the new hotbar looking pretty good, as well as the weirdness that comes from checking inventory while on horse. (Why does the horse have my jewelry on?)

I went to check out the Dead Mage Cave, died. The death screen is good. I don't think I lost anything, but it's hard to tell. While riding back I noticed coordinates on the top right of my screen - good addition. (Reminds me, again, that I no longer have Wynntils' raw XP display. Would be nice if I did.)

I reached Decrepit Sewers and marveled at the build touchups. Amazing job. It's beautiful now. I got distracted by beating up the scarecrow in Katoa Ranch, but this was a minor obstruction in my goal of completing one of the asinine early quests. (The Grook improvements are just marvelous.) The whole area around DS is just astonishingly good, and the music hasn't even been changed, which is great. (I was rather scared that they'd ruin every track with new instruments, but Wynn hasn't done that! Excellent!)

Instead of immediately challenging the Decrepit Sewers, I decided to continue with the main questline for a bit to get a couple levels and gear bits. Nivla Forest doesn't have quite the same astonishing beauty as the Ragni plains, but it's definitely been touched up. The new spiders are pretty good, and I love how their corpses stick around. Honestly, they should stick longer, it's a great touch to fight through mountains of spider corpses.

...That new hotbar is really good, I love it, I cannot get over it. It's so cool!

As I wandered through the woods, I was struck by the sheer magicality. I don't know where it's coming from - probably the various UI updates - but even places without any apparent build updates just look so much better. (Might have been the Nivlan Beauty I ran into, which was a phenomenal element.) I was also struck by a Fungal Parasite, which killed me nearly instantly. Those spider fungus gangs are pretty dangerous. Helps that I don't have much gear. (I'd suggest making the fade to black much quicker - same time looking out over your corpse, but not a full second watching the light die, and teleporting back.)

Alas, world events are few and far between. Checking the content book revealed all were inactive.

I cleared the shockingly easy DS (it feels like the difficulty has not been upped) and returned to Ragni, noting that I hadn't had any issues with my teleport scroll's charges. I suspect those will be more of a constraint during fest season. I also notice a lot of weird temporary inventory glitches. Probably lag, but my whole inventory is getting rearranged when I use my horse.

While searching for caves, I ended up in the Maltic plains and was once again floored. This is amazing. The lag, not so much, but the builds are awesome. I cannot describe them well enough, there are no words. There's a lighthouse!!!!!!!!!!! This is amazing. (The island being from the Sky Islands makes sense, but it also implies that someone from the Sky Islands may have come over here - which, in itself, starts to make my brain connect the floating coastal island, my onetime headcanon that a Sky Islands angel came to Wynn and contributed to Bovemism, and some other peoples' theory that the strange outposts in the ocean were Avos constructions...) I did get some weird lag that skipped half the dialogue, though.

FOX!!!!!

Trekking through the Ragni plains, I'm struck by the thought that this is all just unbelievably amazing. New player retention will be through the roof when you can spend hours just wandering around. To be fair, I'm having a really good time in significant part because I've slashed my own XP gain, which was definitely a good move. I may have gone a bit too harsh on it, but the result is that I'm seeking out content bit after content bit and seeing extraordinary sights along the way.

Now more or less finished with Ragni (with only a few caves remaining that I ignored), I moved on back to the main questline, only to be stopped in my tracks by an incredible amount of lag. Players were shouting about spell fails and a quest simply broke from lag. I also lamented several things while managing my gear, such as having bought a dungeon dagger only to get a superior unIDed dagger of the same level, and that said dagger had no powder slots, so I couldn't put my cave fire and water powders on it.

When everything's new, and you don't have a map, and you're slow and there's adventure everywhere you go, the world feels... a lot bigger. It's nice. But after some final faffing (and seeing, again, the spider warrens, which are amazing) about, it's off to Detlas.

Custom enemies attacked along the road. The skeletons are pretty excellent (although their model should be used more), and the repeat of the Goliath fight from King's Recruit was too - although it's slightly irritating that, during the telegraph of the smash attack, the Goliath will suddenly snap to attack towards you near the end of the telegraph, instead of whatever direction it was actually aiming. A crow landed nearby as I felled it and moved on.

New builds, new awesome. Road is bright and cool, and there's ruins everywhere because this province has suffered a thousand years of war. At Detlas, I buffed my XP gain because I'm out of the horrendous early-level territory and have started actually lagging behind the main questline's levels.

I faffed about a bit more, and was notified by my content book that Approaching Raid, a world event, was active. I took a while to locate it, since the book's glitched and doesn't produce beacons or even any coordinates, but eventually, I did find it.

I fought with another player, only to get murdered. The other player proceeded to fail the raid out of an inability to prioritise the important enemy over the endless mob of regular ones, so I got nothing. World Events seem somewhat poorly balanced in this respect - failures are costly, since after you fail one, you have no indication of when it'll come again, or how long that'll take.

Faffing about, I kept on seeing people complaining of bugs in shouts. I noticed the same bugs - issues with powder and key stacking. It's like the old key doublestacks (one for quest rewards, other for guardian drops), but so much worse, and more annoying. I'll have to rearrange my bank after it's fixed.

While heading to the Raging Tower, I got sidetracked. First, by unique-model IP Guardian, second, by a world event in the Roots of Corruption. A fiery pit, full of blazing flora. It killed me and my partymate, so that was also a fail. At least it wasn't because of an apathetic level 20.

After clearing that, I found myself with an inventory stuffed with powders and unIDeds, including half a dozen unIDed Morph-Topazes. I also have, at this point, half an LE, without having pulled any money from my account bank. Loot and emeralds are clearly both plentiful, especially with many caves updated to have additional emerald rewards. Even a common chest might have half an emerald block, and nothing else.

I attempted the Roots world event again. Died. Again.

Stable Story brought me to Ternaves. Which is AWESOME! Also. It's definitely got a pretty unique aesthetic, and it's just cool now. Feels sort of like some sort of tournament camp. Religious place, you can tell from the ambient religious citizens. That's cool! Environmental storytelling is good!

Finishing the earlygame questline, I dropped my GXP to 0 and set off to do some more quests. I was reminded, traversing the savannah, that Relic Guardian loot is trash and needs to be improved, and additionally that quest beacons are broken.

Bremminglar has been updated. It looks neat, which is sad, because Bremminglar is one of the most irrelevant towns in the game. I probably won't ever go to it again this run, since Bob's Lost Soul and Reincarnation haven't been updated. Thus, I instead went to Approaching Raid and got oneshot by the boss, because World Events are garbage.

Headed over to Nemract. Like the outskirts, the cathedral is of course awesome, but I was surprised to discover that Nemract itself wasn't updated. The crypt is... very awesome, I love it. Maybe a few too many emerging zombies. Big Tom was good, and indicated to me that that zombie brute model is going to be used a lot.

Spoiler: Overall Suggestions

• Cook's Assistant is still crap.
• Sewers of Ragni and Arachnid's Ascent don't need to exist, and they feel odd now without gating their dungeons. Arachnid's Ascent in particular is just weird, because its actual gameplay - Mt. Wynn - is just sort of shoehorned in, being an underwhelming end to the problem Mushroom Man set up.
• World Events might need a bit of tweaking, they're rather difficult and occur irregularly and with little warning, making it annoying to attempt one again. One would also think that people would want to teleport all over the world to get to these world events, which presumably means they'll be using a lot of scroll charges.
• There are a number of weird little bugs hanging around that'll need to be found and squished over the coming weeks. The most notable one is my inventory getting rearranged when I'm on a horse.
• The item stack glitch has become much worse and needs to be fixed.

I'll be continually updating this main post as I play.

Current review of earlygame: SICK [at 50% xp gain]

 

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