blacqmath

Hello, 

I do not know who to contact or who to address but hopefully these comments do not go unseen. I am a person who is aiming to become a 2D concept artist in the future but currently lacks the degrees and other qualifications to become one at this moment in time. That aside I am aware that experience in industries is incredibly valuable so i was wondering if there is any positions like an internship or something along those lines?

so apparently you people still play this game huh?

*Laughs*

Ok, so I'm not a new player. Far from it. I played this game periodically between 2007 and 2011 and just got back a few weeks ago. I noticed the app that is in beta, and got intrigued that I'd be able to play the game on the toil.. on my mobile.

Here's some observations that I made coming back:

Levels

When I got my account back, I had gained a whooping ~150 levels. I jumped from around level 550 to level 703. While this is pretty damn cool, I also quickly realized the downside. All my gear was useless for my level. I didn't have enough gold to buy any meaningful equipment. My location on the world map (Some level 500-something map) did no longer make sense.

In the end I joined a guild, borrowed their gear, portalled back to Krul Island and found my way. But ironically it wasn't cool to level up 150 times. There's a lot of content that I'll never really get to play, and it took some effort to get back into it. I would not have minded one bit, if there had been a cap, maybe after a month, where I simply couldn't gain any more XP, no matter my XP gain per hour.

Getting started with the app

I absolutely LOVE the app. In many ways it's even better than the browser version. Getting started was not easy though. On my end I needed to recover my old account. That actually went smoothly. Then I helped my wife create an account. She never played before. So she downloaded the app, and was told you couldn't create an account there. OK, it is a beta after all. So we went to a computer and created an account for her. Done. But on the app, she kept being logged in with some kind of guest account. It took us a while to figure out how to actually link her app to her Hunted Cow account and set a player name for her. That experience can become smoother, and you likely know this already.

Finding help

Not having played the game for almost 10 years, I figured I should find some 'getting started' material. I was quite pleased to find the "Guides" section under "Resources". I was however immediately less impressed when many of these pages returned 404 or similar. But at least the essential help still exists: The wiki, which really could use some updates, levelling guides which are essential and the ultimate fallen sword guide which largely works as one could hope for. The "Guides" menu on Fallen Sword could really use a clean-up though.

Using the app

Fallen Sword is a big game. Not just the world, but also in terms of what you can do. I was impressed with how well this was fitted into the app. It's actually easy enough to navigate and works very well. Even in the details, it's a very nice UI. I was impressed that there was a specific layout just for Summon Shield Imp for example. There are also things that I would find natural to have, which doesn't exist, but again the app is in beta. Few examples:

• I'd love to get a notification to remind be to pray to a god, or to remind me that my stamina is maxed.
• I would love if log messages were more interactive. On a message like "Player <playername> sent you <amount> gold for the Buff Package '<packagename>'" I would like to be able to click playername to see the player, or packagename to see the package I'm selling.
• Oh and I miss the game stats. 300 is online. You're in rank 4.500 today. Overall though: I'm very impressed with the app. My wife thought it looked cool as well.

Using the browser

• It took me a while to figure out that the menu was broken, and that I didn't see everything the menu had to show. It might be because I'm using the new Edge (Chromium) browser. I reverted to the old theme for an easy fix. Later i found out that Fallen Sword Helper solved the display issue.

Getting my wife started

She finally managed to link her accounts and was all set up. I was thrilled to see she was put in a tutorial area. That didn't exist the last time I played. To my dismay, she didn't get to mountain path before she had a lot of questions.

• ​She got confused about movement in "Murky Goblin Depths" because the area looks unlike any other.
• She never realized that she received items that she could equip
• She wasn't sure how to proceed with the quests she was given (And to be fair, she's not one to just experiment away until she gets it)
• She didn't know what to do after finishing the last quest in Mountain Ravine (Go to Mountain Path, start exploring!)
• She had no idea where to put skill points and stats after reaching level 2

Later on I realized that she never realized the fundamentals. Namely that:

• You have a pool of stamina, it drains when you move or attack, and you get some back every hour
• When you attack something, you get to go first. Oh, and it's turn based.
• To kill something you at least need ATT > DEF and DMG > ARM
• Your gear breaks over time
• You lose XP and money if you die
• The main purpose of the game (at least at your level) is to level up and do quests
• You might not always have quests to complete, in which case you will need to grind

Why she might give up

One thing left me unimpressed. A thing that is not really specific to the app, nor the browser version. It'll likely be the reason my wife, god forbid, will go back to play some shitty match-3-game.

I'll use my wife as the example here.

After teaching her the fundamentals, she actually did pretty well for herself. We joined a guild together, she geared up, gained some levels, did a few quests, sold stuff in the auction house.

With regular intervals however, she would be stuck or have questions. I realized over time that there was a pattern to it. I realized this, because on every occasion, I would answer the same thing: Let me look that up for you. Let me find that for you. The issue is that the game is not self-contained. You need to look outside the game every so often.

If a quest is not self-explanatory, you will need to look it up on the ultimate fallen sword guide (Where do I get this Quest Item? A shop. OK. Where do I find this shop? Area X. OK. Where do I find area X? Realm Y. OK. How do I get to Realm Y? You need the guide for all of this. It should have been in the game, and my wife will keep asking me until she gets annoyed and drops the game.

In the same vein she will ask about gear. What gear can I get for my level? Is there anything that's better than what I'm wearing? Well, you can search the auction house, but that's half an answer. Instead I resort to leveling guides on the wiki to find what's good. The ultimate guide can serve as lookup as well. But both things are still external to the actual game, be it browser version or app.

I soon started levelling myself, and found that I couldn't really do this on my phone; I needed the extra tabs with external help. The wiki so that I could see where I was going, how to get from A to B. And the guide, mostly to look up quests and items. I don't have that on the phone, and thus I'm back to playing on my laptop, rather than on the t... On my phone.

Why I might keep playing for a while

I definitely still need a laptop to level up and kill mobs. I can't live without the wiki or UFSG in the current game. But I do find that I keep swapping between mobile and laptop. The app makes it incredibly easy to check in once in a while, update your auctions, check your log, chat, pray, monitor your stamina gain and so forth. I definitely want to see this app finished. See if it draws in new players, see if you will add anything that might pull me away from my laptop entirely. The game was always fun. But it did require a lot of open tabs and a computer. If one day it might only require a mobile phone with 1 app installed, then I'm here for a long time.

I hope all of this feedback is useful for something. I loved this game back in the day, and kind of still do. It's unique in so many ways and always was. I love the improvements you've made. The buff market blew me away. The app is a such a cool upgrade to a browser game that I thought would die, but which now again has a chance. I'm really looking forward to see what will happen after the beta. Happy developing!

Managed to avoid buying an fsp for 1,000,000 gold in the new listing section of the fsp market

I did, however, buy one from the bottom for 300,000 before seeing there was a page 2

net savings of 700,000 gold so, i got that going for me

Thanks for the help. I was able to get out

I am stuck in the forgotten forest and have no clue how to get out. Anyone can help?

Actually, you have to accept the quest to get in....

I voted Andor.

It was those reach-arounds that clinched the vote...

**Sigh** 

It seems not some players are unable to equip armors, rings, etc.  I would like to see the creators to fix this.

And the reward is barely worth equipping.

It arrived together with Risen Warrior, an even worse target.

Risen Mage is the perfect target for Angelic miners and mages. Just get 52K Def vialed then Hurt it down to 3 - 5 "normal" hits or casts. For us that is now around 38 Hurts. Doubler does NOT cost double AP with Hurt, so you kill it for around 40+ AP. That is about 28,000,000 XP/AP. Without doubler that's around 17,000,000 XP/AP. Even at level 160,000 that is still about 130 levels for 1 usp per 15 minutes doubler.

Actually they did find time to fiddle with Gothador. Remember the time you could enter the lottery multiple times by fast hitting the enter-key? They fixed the bug nobody complained about.

Wow, this is just so...pathetic.

It would be great if I could see my frickin' character avatar.  But HC has soooooooooo many more important things to do than waste time on Gothador.  

Time to put Infinity far behind us