MMO Fallout

[Update 10/2/15: A game update has rendered some of this list obsolete.]

The previous Top 5 tips for DarkScape has been insanely popular, but recent updates have made several options on the list either already obsolete or about to be obsolete. With that in mind, and considering I am further in the game than last week, I decided to go back and produce five more tips for survival in DarkScape.

5. Stay On Top Of Updates/Plans

 

This one is pretty important. Since content updates aren’t coming to DarkScape for a fair amount of time, you might be inclined to ignore patch notes during content updates. This isn’t advisable. For instance, if you didn’t check the patch notes you may not be aware that entering the abyss no longer skulls players, or that a toolbelt has been added, or why your interface has been set to retro by default after an update.

Right now Jagex are performing some heavy tweaks to the game in response to player feedback, tweaking certain features to make them easier in some areas and harder in others. If you don’t keep watch on update notes and particularly discussion on the developer streams (which you can find summaries of on the DarkScape subreddit), you won’t just be at a disadvantage against the game, but you’ll be at a disadvantage against other players.

It also helps to keep up with the forums to know what content is currently broken, because there is a fair amount of it (see #2). For further reference, the DarkScape wiki is slowly being populated.

4. Tier Bank Trading Made Easy

Three tiers of danger means three separate banks, each with their own supplies, each irretrievable in other areas. While DarkScape would like you to believe that moving items between banks is a matter of sheer danger, the truth is that there are enough routes to go down that finding one or two with minimal risk of player interaction, let alone players looking to randomly kill you, is pretty good.

When trading between low and medium risk areas, the closest route I’ve found is between Lumbridge and Al Kharid. Starting out at the Lumbridge Grand Exchange, you can head south and over the bridge to Al Kharid, reducing the amount of time spent in medium-tier areas. The level range in the low-risk portion of the travel only goes up to six while you spend, at most, six or seven seconds in the mid-risk zone before reaching the bank, which itself is patrolled by three guards in a very enclosed space. When trading back, just be aware that the medium-tier area extends to the end of the bridge on the Lumbridge side rather than the city entrance as it was when you came in.

For moving items to high risk zone, one of the safest routes that I’ve found so far is between Varrok and Canifis. If you haven’t been through the area before, you’ll need to kill a level 30 monster before you can proceed, but the travel from Varrok to Canifis is one that is sparsely populated with players and even less so with player killers. Cities like Ashdale, Zanaris, and Al Kharid have more open areas and lack choke points that pk’ers can nab you in, making them rife for smuggling goods between zones.

Initially this spot was supposed to discuss easy access to high-threat areas, due to the fact that the game automatically identified any zone as high risk until labeled otherwise. Areas like Death’s office offering easy access to your high risk bank have been fixed.

3. RuneSpan For Runecrafting/Nexus For Prayer

Runecrafting in DarkScape is a long, difficult, and dangerous affair, even more so before Jagex updated the Abyss so that it no longer skulls players effectively taking them out of towns for a full five minutes. If you’re looking at training runecrafting with a focus on pure experience, your best bet is to take on the RuneSpan activity. Available right off the bat at level 1 runecrafting, RuneSpan offers far better experience than it has any right to in DarkScape. Starting off at level 1, I managed to make my way to level 39 within an hour. Bear in mind, these experience rates are coming from a member with member experience rates, with no bonus experience.

While the entirety of RuneSpan is high threat (no guards, no limits on combat), I’ve found very little combat going on outside of the random troll. The time and resources required to move about in RuneSpan for the relatively low amount of players present makes player killing in the area a massive waste of time, even for the dedicated troll. Runecrafters in the area are more interested in crafting than killing. Which isn’t to say it is safe, I was killed once while writing this piece. After today’s update, your points are redeemed upon death.

Compared to RuneSpan, the Nexus is a lot more popular and prone to player killers coming in and ruining your day. That in mind, the mini-game is not far from the Lumbridge respawn point and is generally filled with enough other players that you should be able to slip around relatively unnoticed. Unlike Runespan, however, your experience at the Nexus is capped and will eventually come to an end. Once you receive 37 thousand experience, not counting the extra experience from bones, the event will no longer grant prayer experience.

On the plus side, thirty seven thousand experience will get you to level 40 assuming you begin the Nexus at level 1.

2. Taking Advantage of Oversights

DarkScape is (to the best of my knowledge) officially considered “experimental,” another name meaning any issues that should have been considered have not, leaving players at the mercy of Jagex to eventually fix them. In this case, if you were looking to finish your achievement diaries or a number of quests, look again. While Jagex has been rolling out updates to fix these oversights, DarkScape’s restrictions on teleporting left players literally unable to complete quests because the game won’t move them with the quest rewards in their inventory.

But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t currently existing oversights that can be taken advantage of before they are fixed in the coming weeks/months. For instance, right now it is extremely easy to craft blisterwood weapons assuming you finish the quest line required to craft them. Jagex has detailed plans to make blisterwood weapons much more difficult and costly to craft, as right now they are high-tier equipment that can be mass produced with little effort (other than the quest line). 

There are plenty of things to take advantage of outside of that example, including how easy it is currently to smuggle items between risk zones (see above). Keep an eye on the forums for other shortcuts.

1. Only Use What You Can Lose

This one likely goes without saying, but always play with the mentality that you will probably be killed and lose whatever you are carrying. That said, you don’t necessarily want to go out constantly with just a weapon/tool and no armor or food on you, you’ll just be easy pickings for even the least equipped killers. This is where welfare equipment, gear that is cheap and can be easily replaced, comes into play.

If you’re making a decent amount of money, you can go to shops or the Grand Exchange and buy your welfare gear in bulk. If not, your best bet may be to level up relevant skills (mining/smithing, crafting, fletching) and use the resources you gain leveling in order to build the equipment you’ll be using for your own protection. While it won’t deter everyone, a player wielding just a weapon is less likely to attack a decked out player with full armor and weapons of his own, and you’ll be better equipped to fight back/run away and get to a safe zone.

A few of your inventory slots should be dedicated to food to survive or teleportation to quickly escape, but be aware that teleportation is slower in DarkScape than it is in RuneScape, you can still be killed even using rune-based town teleports.

DarkScape is out and that only means one thing: Prepare to die a whole lot, and lose your items. Since DarkScape isn’t just RuneScape with open world PvP, MMO Fallout has put together some opening tips for players looking to make a start in this new world.

5. Get A Head Start

If you’re anything like me, it’s been so long since you’ve been a low level in RuneScape that you are unaware of what conveniences are available for new players. Go to Burthorpe and talk to Mary Rancour in the building above the Heroes guild and ask her for free stuff. She’ll give you a dwarven army axe, a multi-tool that will come in handy with the toolbelt disabled. The dwarven army axe acts as a steel-tier hatchet, pickaxe, as well as a needle, tinderbox, chisel, knife, and a low level weapon. She’ll also give you a steel full helmet, combat potions, and teleport tablets.

You can pick up various free items at vendors all over RuneScape. Right off the bat, you can complete activities like the god statues which give a massive head start in slayer/prayer experience as well as construction. Beginner quests Shadow Over Ashdale, Demon Slayer, and Blood Pact can be completed for good starter equipment, not to mention combat experience. If you lose any of these items, you can always go back and pick them up again for free.

4. Know Your Bank Restrictions

Banking in DarkScape is miles away from that in RuneScape and even Old School. Unlike its standard counterparts, your bank in DarkScape is split up into three areas: low threat, medium threat, and high threat. Adding onto that, you’re going to find bank space very limited: 100 spaces per zone, less if you’re a free player. Not only are the banks separated, but so are the Grand Exchanges. You cannot home teleport between areas with any items on your person, and you can’t use rune-based teleports between threat zones.

What does this mean? Effectively, it means your goods can only be transported in the area they were found. To bring your gear to higher/lower threat zones, you’re going to need to walk it over the border and hope that nobody kills you in the process. Banks within those zones are shared, meaning you can gather resources in Varrok, home teleport to Taverly, retrieve the items from your bank, walk them over White Wolf Mountain, and store them in Catherby to retrieve in Ardougne. You can’t, however, bank something in Lumbridge and then retrieve it in Seer’s Village.

Part of the goal is to create three separate economies and create a new form of income, by allowing players to move items from zones where they are cheaper to zones where they are more valuable. It also means spending a fair amount of time hauling goods between zones. That being said, players should still go through the new-character process of unlocking lodestones as quickly as possible. Energy is back to how it was a few years ago, meaning it recovers very slowly. You’ll need the lodestones for easy travel.

3. Resources Have Been Moved

If you haven’t started DarkScape yet and are already planning your leveling route, don’t bother. In creating three distinct threat zones, Jagex also took the time to relocate resources around with the higher tier goods resting comfortably (or not so comfortably) in high threat areas. For example, you won’t find lobster or harpoon spots in Catherby anymore, those are gone. Where did they go? You’ll need to find them, or wait until guides start popping up.

For people looking to quickly level up, the shuffling of resources is sure to put a wrench in your operations.

2. Be Wary of Griefers

DarkScape’s respawn mechanic currently makes the game very open for griefing. In some cases, players will sit in banks that have easily accessed second floors (stairs/ladders) and come down to the main bank area to attack someone before quickly moving upstairs. Since the game allows you to change your respawn point, many players have taken to repeatedly assaulting banks, either in the hopes of killing players or with the goal of simply disrupting your banking.

One popular method of griefing at the moment is to run into a bank with an active skull and retribution, a prayer spell which causes the player to explode upon death. The player is immediately killed by guards and explodes, damaging the players around him. Said player then respawns nearby and starts the process over again.

1. Be Very Mindful Of Where You Click

The presence of PvP everywhere (and I do mean everywhere) has made the game very dangerous, even for those who don’t necessarily want to go around killing everyone they see. In DarkScape, banks and most towns are patrolled by very powerful guards, level 138, certainly high level enough to take on most of the playerbase at this time. Guards will immediately attack, stun, and instantly kill players who are skulled (those who attacked other players).

What this usually leads to is an incident where a player will enter the bank, misclick and accidentally attack another player, and then immediately die. If you accidentally attack another player, your odds of getting out of the bank without dying are quite slim, meaning you lose everything you were carrying on you and respawn somewhere else. When getting back into town with a big haul, always be mindful that you are essentially one click away from losing it all.

To mitigate this, you can do two things: Turn on one-button mouse or always right click to bring up the context menu before you bank. Left clicking to bank in a crowded (or even not so crowded) area is playing with fire, and you’re liable to get burned.