MMO Fallout

I suppose it’s a good thing that I murdered every single prisoner in the prison, considering the dead guards and smashed doors, this place probably isn’t suitable for holding any of them for the foreseeable future. The prison will also find itself lacking in a warden, seeing as how I killed the traitorous bastard on the roof of his own building. Since we’re on the topic, you might want to renovate the exterior, I don’t know how but there are a few escaped prisoners hiding out in the house across the street. Maybe send someone to clean that up, or let me do it.

Games like Eldevin and RuneScape have an odd ability to convince us to power our way through what is probably the same kind of grind that we would reject had it been foisted upon us in any other MMO. The lure of vast riches and a growing pile of resources to turn into finished products or dump at a nearby vendor in return for cash to spend on creating more stuff and stabbing more powerful beings in the face is exactly the carrot that hangs just a few inches out of reach on the grind treadmill, but close enough that we think we’ll get it if we just keep running. It is the charming world, beautiful soundtrack, living environment filled with other players all meandering about with their own tasks that make such a grind not just bearable, but actually enjoyable.

Giving my impressions on a game like Eldevin is difficult as breaking the game down into its individual mechanics would provide an inaccurate detailing the overall experience. Eldevin’s saving grace is in the sense that while the game does require a great deal of grind, it perhaps doesn’t feel as pointless as other games where the reward is often just seeing your experience bar tick up. Nearly every action in Eldevin has a purpose, from killing creatures to level up your skinning for resources to use for cooking and making armor, to finding equipment useful for vendoring to afford the catalyst items needed in the second stage of crafting.

The world of Eldevin is one that is brimming with life. Granted, once you give the world a deeper look, you see a bunch of NPCs following pre-scripted paths and animations. Still, it’s a nice touch to walk through town and see people hauling boxes around, city guards going down their paths, guards coming off duty and changing after their shift, etc. It is pretty basic at its core, but a sad reminder as to how little effort other games put into making their world feel more alive rather than a gallery for lifeless quest vendors and merchants.

Crafting is centered primarily around harvesting nodes and turning said products into goods at a station. If crafting is supposed to be a gold sink, Eldevin does it well. Most, if not all, recipes require an item that can only be purchased from vendors at a cost of anywhere from ten copper to five silver (five hundred copper). The slow process of gaining crafting experience can be alleviated slightly through a number of daily quests available for each profession. Players are able to level any skill to its maximum level (40), but you might want to focus on just one or two.

Combat, on the other hand, is where Eldevin meets standard MMO fare. The player has access to melee, range, and magic no matter what class you choose at the start, and combat is dealt through auto attack and specials. Health and mana can be replenished in combat with potions or out of combat with the various food items you can cook or buy. Combat is rather smooth and responsive, although the camera is restrictive and can get in the way, and special attacks have a habit of cancelling out your auto-attack.

Eldevin’s cash shop may be an issue, and not in the sense of pay to win. For a game focused on collecting mass amounts of resources, the fact that Eldevin sells extra inventory slots and bags will be a cause for concern for some. Alternatively, you could criticize the cash shop for selling certain items like health potions for in-game gold because the game delivers them directly to your inventory. There are multiple currencies on the cash shop, not all of which I fully understand at the time of writing and all but one are obtainable in-game.

Alternatively you can subscribe to Eldevin for $7 a month and receive experience boosts as well as a stipend of cash shop currency. I used mine on buying sacks that can be filled with gathered items, and filled them with wheat, meat, hides, and basil. Still, I find Eldevin oddly charming in the same way that RuneScape caught my attention years ago, and considering that I’m still playing the latter a decade later, I have a feeling that I’ll be sticking around in Eldevin for a long time to come.