Harvesting Safely

Getting ganked happens in darkfall, it happens a lot.

My character has progressed a little bit now, I can make banded armor and have made myself a full set, I have a mount (and was about to trade for another when server went down). Plenty of arrows and a lot of cheap backup weapons should I need them.

Since I got the mount I haven't been ganked yet, though thats partially due to luck and me getting wiser about my actions it is also because a mount is a great escape tool. The biggest survival tip I can give in darkfall is to have a couple mounts with you. This of course raises your risk level (I wear my best stuff pretty much all the time now), but greatly reduces the frustration of trying to play the game naked.

I'm still working on getting my character 'pvp ready', yes I know you can pvp right out of the gate and do ok, but it is smart to tip the odds in your favor as much as possible, ergo I'm working on a lot of pve stuff right now with the goal of eventually being strong enough not just to pvp but to be able to sustain myself from it.

Other than having a mount, the 'strategies' I've developed so far are mostly about how to survive while harvesting or hunting, the obvious stuff is to keep your health/stamina up so you can't be taken by surprise. I also have found the hard way, that when harvesting around town (safest option) and everything runs out but you need more. If you are going to risk leaving the 'safety' of the guard towers, you are much much better off finding somewhere out of the way to harvest at than doing it nearby.

In the orc area at least, if I take the time to go to a spot thats a ways out of town, and not by a popular mob spawn, I can harvest in peace fairly regularly.

When you first start out, you are likely to see nodes just a little ways outside the guard towers reach, and you may think it's safe because you can run to the towers if you are in trouble, WRONG. Do not harvest from nodes near town but outside guard tower range, you are asking to be ganked when you do this.

I also find it useful when in those out of the way spots, to turn my speakers up, and pay very close attention to any unusual noises, this combined with a mount will steer you clear of a lot of hassle.

All of this is just risk minimizing though, to do well at this game you have to plan for and accept setbacks, they will happen.

On a final note, my alignment is still at 10, I really want to build this up so I have the option to gank my own race when needed, but no luck yet.

(edit) speaking of setbacks, there was a short rollback when the server came up, so even though I had dismounted a couple minutes before the server went down (and so thought I was safe) my mount was gone. I finished the trade for my second mount, which is now again my only mount :) easy come easy go.

Predator and Prey

Actually, right now I'm about 90% prey.

Got the game yesterday (woot!), and have been having the time of my life so far. Even something as simple as fishing turns out to be a nerve wracking experience looking around constantly worrying someone is going to come along and gank me for my fishing pole :)

I started as an elf, thinking I'd go bow and daggers to max my dex gains, but it honestly was too rough for me. The elf area was covered with people and aside from getting ganked by alfar a few times I also got it from other elves here and there (I don't think it helped that I designed my elf to look like an alfar, blue skin white hair etc).

Not the most illustrious start for a wanna be solo pk'er. But right now I am focusing on pve efforts to build my character up before engaging in hunting people. So, after a few hours of elf, I rerolled as an orc. Mostly because I've read the orc's are the race with the fewest people playing, and also because I liked their stat distribution.

I've been doing much better as orc, it really is a less populated area, I've been ganked a few times by roving human/dwarf gangs but they are few and far between right now, and I haven't been attacked by another orc yet, the population seems to stick together a little bit more because of their low numbers, which is good for me.

I haven't been macro'ing at all, and my orc is at around 25 lesser magic, a decent amount of 1h and 2h blunt, mana missle and heal self also are around 25. I've bought armorsmith and started making armor for myself and also picked up bowyer and am going to work on making arrows next. After that I plan on taking the next 500 gold I get to buy taming so I can harvest my own mounts,

I'm looking to be as self-sufficient as possible so working on a lot more crafting stuff than I do in most games (usually I do little to none). I am concerned about whether a soft-cap will eventually give me troubles for being so jack-of-all trades though. I want to do alchemy as well to make my own potions etc etc.

Not a well written post, just an update of my progress that I'm spitting out during the server downtime :)