ArcheAge – Calleil Diary, Water-Faring Days

Previously on Calleil Diary: First Five Days, Next Four Days.

Calleil Day 10, Tuesday

After I got home from work, I built my Harpoon Clipper ship! It took about 1700 Labor in total, by the way, which was just about everything I had at the time. Oh also I believe it cost 10 gold just to set up the dry dock, which was an unexpected cost. The order of packs you need to use is Lumber, Iron, then Fabric. And then for some reason there are three steps of simply spending 25 Labor Points each.

I sailed around Feuille Sound for a while looking at the water, wondering what to do. I passed a few blood stains but didn’t encounter any people and hardly any beasts. The clipper wasn’t as fast as I thought it would be, but it sure beats a rowboat. I hope it sails at the same speed with a trade pack. Anyway now I can troll the coastline looking for people with trade packs in rowboats like everyone else did in Alpha. (Actually I’d be more likely to defend the rowboat people from others if I saw somebody accosting them, but I probably need to level up to 50 before I try anything like that.)

Unfortunately now that I have a Clipper I feel like I’m “finished” with ArcheAge. Once you have a farm, a house, and a boat, you’ve got the basics covered. I have about 100 gold but I don’t really have anything to buy. And leveling to 50 is not all that appealing because I haven’t heard of anything to do at 50 except PvP. I don’t even think there are any dungeons or raids at 50. At least I’ve never heard anyone talk about them.

Anyway it’s much, much more challenging to “level up” your crafting proficiency. You can get your class up to 50 in a week, but it looks like it will take years to get your crafting proficiencies up to the maximum levels. So I guess I will do Blue Salt Brotherhood quests for a while and grow different things.

Calleil Day 11, Wednesday

Long work day, so I didn’t do much that was productive. I think I completed one Blue Salt Brotherhood quest.

But I did get out my Clipper and sail around for a while, and I learned a few things. Firstly, the ocean is HUGE. By which I mean the space between the Eastern and Western continents and the Northern continent. I didn’t encounter a soul in that vast space, and it seems like a chance encounter would be pretty rare. Even if there was a chance encounter between two players, both of you would probably be AFK.

Secondly, it’s easy to avoid the sea creatures in a Clipper. You can outrun the big Jellyfish and smaller Seabugs. If you sail straight through a bunch of Seabugs, some of them will jump up on your boat and attack you, but they will eventually disengage if you keep sailing away from them. They hit for a decent amount of damage, though, so I wouldn’t recommend sailing straight through them.

Thirdly, there are the people you might encounter on the ocean. Most of these people are not friendly. I had a quest to discover Freedich Island which is just about smack in the middle of the ocean. So that was my first task. I sailed up there without incident and got close enough to fulfill the quest log. As far as I could tell, there were no followup quests after that. But I disembarked and wandered around to see what was actually on the little island. The answer is almost nothing except a trade run destination in the center, and of course all the players hanging out there to defend it. I didn’t get close enough to actually talk to any of the NPCs, because I got killed by some red dudes pretty quick.

And that’s when I learned the penalty for dying in PvP: Absolutely nothing! If you die to a PvE mob, you lose a little bit of experience and you have to pray to the priestess and spend some Labor Points to get it back, and also wait for your stats to recharge. If another player kills you, you don’t lose any experience and your stats are right back at full. Wow. Talk about a carebear PvP game. :) No wonder people like it so much. You can just throw yourself into anything with zero risk. (Unless you’re carrying a trade pack, of course. See below.)

(I haven’t yet learned if you gain anything for killing another player, other than bragging rights. Honor points I guess but I have no idea what they’re for. Probably buying stuff that makes you better at killing people.)

So I got back on my boat and sailed around some more. I sailed all the way up to the Auroria continent, which took forever. I approached the coast of Nuimari, and then the game said I had gone into an area that wasn’t complete and promptly teleported me all the way back down to Freedich Island. Nice. That’s when the realization that the Northern Continent hasn’t yet been released sunk in. Not sure what they’re waiting for. Anyway I sailed back down to Nuia without incident.

After that I did a relaxing donkey trade run from Gweonid down to Two Crowns. (Out on the ocean I felt like I had to constantly scan my surroundings for threats. On a donkey, there’s nothing to worry about. Well, technically not nothing but it’s like worrying about getting struck by lightning or hit by a meteorite.) While I was on the dock in Two Crowns, I decided to see how long it would take me to sail back, thinking that perhaps I could cut some time off this particular trade run by using the ocean.

To make a long story short, it is faster, but the risk is considerably higher. I passed two other Clippers on the boat trip from Two Crowns up around the peninsula of Cinderstone Moor, and into the Fueille Sound. Both of them immediately turned to follow me as soon as they saw me. The first one was someone of my own faction who doggedly pursued me all the way around Cinderstone Moor. Fortunately both our ships had the same speed, so we stayed roughly the same distance apart the entire time. (I can’t understand how that was fun for him, but whatever.)

The second Clipper I encountered was inside Fueille Sound, and this boat was red and obviously looking for victims. Again, he wasn’t able to catch up to me until another Clipper happened to come sailing across my path, forcing me to turn to avoid hitting him broadside. I did a complete circle and of course my pursuer caught up to me, at which point I noticed there were two of them on the boat. I thought I was going to die, but thankfully they bungled the boarding process. One of them started firing arrows at me and tried to jump on my boat, but he fell in the water. The other guy stepped away from the steering wheel and tried to come after me too, but I just kept sailing. I lost about 25% of my health but got away from them again while they scrambled to get back on their boat. I think they lost interest after that because I didn’t have a trade pack.

So I guess the lesson I learned is that while you’re actually on the ocean and sailing at full speed in a Clipper, you’re relatively safe from getting killed and losing a trade pack. But when you arrive at your destination and somebody is still chasing you, you’re going to be pretty vulnerable getting off of your boat. Still, even with the relative safety of the ocean, I think I’m going to invest in whatever that fuel is that gives you a speed boost, just in case. If I can find it.

Calleil Day 12, Thursday

Decided to experiment with carrying trade packs on my Clipper. First of all I can report that trade packs do not slow down Clippers in any way, which is awesome.

Second of all, as I suspected, Clippers do not in any way help with your safety once you arrive at your destination. I went to Austera in the Solis Penninsula, the same trade run destination that you have for the Scarecrow Farm quest, to see 1) How long it would take by clipper and 2) How much gold it would make. Unfortunately as soon as I got off my boat and started up the stairs I spied not one but three red dudes hanging around there on the pier coming down to meet me. At that point there’s not much you can do. I couldn’t have gotten back on my boat fast enough to get away, and I certainly can’t defeat 3 opponents. I only targeted one of them but he was 5 levels higher than me, so naturally I didn’t live very long and lost my trade pack. I didn’t care about losing that money but it sucked that I didn’t get to see how much the Trader would have paid for it. It probably doesn’t matter because of the high risk factor anyway.

By the way, it took me about 20 minutes to get from Gweonid to the ocean by donkey and then about another 15 minutes to sail down to Austera.

Other than boating around for the fun of it, I don’t have any pressing goals right now. I sort-of kind-of want to build a Farm Cart just so I have one, but I feel like finding a Thunderstruck Log is going to be a pain. Other than that I’m just doing those Blue Salt Brotherhood farming quests and occasionally heading back out to Cinderstone Moor to level.