So, the other day Naithin from time to loot posted about Asheron’s Call, a relatively old MMORPG that looked quite interesting and I ended up signing up for it on a private server (it seems) with a nice community. Welcome to Late to the Party #2! This time, it’s about a game that came out in ’99, just like me. :)
So, in Asheron’s Call, you basically roam the world of Auberean but you’re only roaming the continent of Dereth which spans around 1000 km². It’s a lovely world that looks quite old-school-ish, I guess, but then again, it is old-school and I’m just a youngster. You create a character at the beginning by selecting one of several heritages and by setting up your “class”, gender, face, body, and skills. What’s interesting is the fact that you don’t have traditional classes but have to use points to invest them into different Attributes:
Primary attributes:
Strength (Muscular power – melee combat damage and carrying
capacity)
Endurance (Healthiness – affects Health and Stamina)
Coordination (Character reflexes – no idea what it does but my mage
has no need for it anyway)
Quickness (Agility, I guess – it basically determines how fast you run
and attack in combat)
Focus (Ability Power – the more focus, the better you perform at magic
and other mental skills)
Self (Willpower – affects your mana)
As for points, I went for a Battle Mage (as Naithin, a pro at AC, recommended it to me), using 10/100/10/10/100/100 for my primary attributes – or rather a side recommends that but I put fewer points into Endurance and more into Strength so that I can carry more items.
The Secondary attributes, Health, Stamina, Mana, can be increased later on, manually, with experience points.
My Battle Mage specializes in War and Life Magic. War Magic is my damage, basically, while Life Magic is used to buff myself. There’s a way to basically create infinite mana. When I’m low on mana and health, I just heal myself, then use “Stamina to Mana IV” to convert half my Stamina to Mana, then I use a bit of my Mana to cast “Revitalize Self IV”, leading to me gaining more Stamina again. After that, I cast “Stamina to Mana IV” again, gaining nearly full Mana back at the cost of Stamina which regenerates automatically. Afterwards, I use “Revitalize Self IV” again and got more Stamina again and only am at 212/220 Mana again (basically full). This is made possible due to my Mana Conversion-Skill that makes my spells more efficient and lets me use them while using less Mana. “Revitalize Self IV” replenishes my Stamina by quite a lot while costing me 30 Mana but with Mana-Conversion, I’m gaining more Stamina but lose less Mana, leading to me having basically infinite amounts of Mana.
I really like “strategies” like this (though I’d consider it an exploit, even though the server-admin told me that it’s meant to be this way).
Speaking of the server-admin, spigot, he’s quite a friendly guy. I talked to a few people on the server yesterday and they all are really cool and quite friendly, even when I’m a complete newbie to the game. It was interesting to see them engage with me even though I’m a complete noob. They brought me to different dungeons where I was able to kill enemies while still gaining a considerable amount of experience points without dying. To prevent me from dying, they also used buffing-spells on me, making me quite resilient! It was really enjoyable to grind those small dungeons while talking to all these guys on their discord server.
If you’d like to join Naithin and me on that server, I’ve linked Naithin’s post above and will link the Reddit-post here as well, though it’s also linked on Naithin’s post. I highly recommend reading Naithin’s post as it’s well written, as always, and quite fun to read :)
I soon will post again about this game as I highly enjoyed it and as there’s a lot more to discover about it but for the time being I’ll leave it here since I’m running low on time… I’ve only levelled to Level 26, so far, and I’m nowhere near the level I’d like to be at! :) But yeah, there’s more to come soon! The next few posts being about my journey for the fishing rod, cow tipping and other fun things I did. :D
Have a nice day! :)
This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.
If you see this article anywhere else other than Indiecator.org… then this article has been stolen. Please let me know of this via E-Mail. Other than that, feel free to stop by my Twitch streams!
Indiecator 
The x to y conversion spells in life are fantastic, so much you can do with them. You can convert anything to any other thing. Stamina to Health is fairly amazing if you get into a pinch, but of course if you’re making that trade you better not be low on mana — since you’ll need to Revitalise Self again before you can Stamina to Mana.
So what makes it not an exploit basically, as that it is very tactical — you’re making in the moment trade-off decisions.
When you’re not being stressed by having a horde of angry enemies in your face, that’s all good and well and easy. When you do? Decide well. Decide quickly. And when you’re casting these conversions and revitalising or healing as needed — you’re not damaging that enemy.
So if you’re low on health, maybe a drain health is better than a direct heal or conversion. Two jobs for the price of one. But then if you’re getting low on Mana again — better sort that out so you can keep going! :D
Good post in any case, Magi!
I’m looking to do more of a complete starters guide, but I’m struggling to pull myself away long enough to write the thing. Haha.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks Nait!
As for Drain Life: I find it not that good since the damage and healing all aren’t that great tbh. Anyhow, at the moment, I’m leveling to train the Creature-Magic, before I put more points into Life. My War Magic seems to be good enough for now but my Life Magic sometimes fizzles, resulting in mana loss with no conversions. So, I need to level Life and Mana Con^^
LikeLike
Drain is an interesting mechanic to weave into your play. It does do less straight up damage than War — but unlike war it doesn’t require direct Line of Sight.
It IS capped too though by the amount of the resource that is missing of the resource you’re trying to drain. e.g., if you’re full health and try to drain health — it won’t do anything.
But if you like living on the edge and went HP -> Mana, and then drained… Well, that would do quite a bit.
Drain also scales on the amount of the resource in question the monster targeted has left too. So after a few drain casts against a single stat, the ‘Harm’ spell line becomes more useful instead. Harm doesn’t give you any, but it does take it away from the enemy. And like Drain, doesn’t require Line of Sight, so works through walls etc.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ooh, interesting! Well, I gotta try different stuff out and may even make a post about it :)
LikeLike