Browser Games Blog

Introducing SECT

2009-10-06T10:42:00.000+08:00

Thanks Zloj for leaving a comments on my last blog post, and that had made me playing SECT for a while.

SECT is quite a simple Facebook style game. You played as a sectant, which you have 4 classes to choose: Fighter, Psychic, Contractor and Landlord. You gain experience point by doing missions and by fighting other sectants. Earning enough experience will earn you levels, with enough levels you can buy new items and new mission are available. You will also gain statistic point during level-up, which of course would make you stronger as you go. Quite a simple game and fun game.

To be successful in SECT, you have 2 main directions to go. If you are a kind of static player and would like to avoid conflict as much as you can, you should focus on adding up your PHY and PSY energy when leveling, and stack up your defense when choosing your items. This will enhance you to complete your mission and avoid loosing battles when others attack you. If you are a kind of aggressive player and would like to fight others and gain glory in the game, you should focus on building up your stamina and HP when leveling up, and stack up your attack when choosing your items. This will help you have more resources to fight others, and win a battle during attack. Just remember not to go middleway, this will bring you nowhere...

The most important aspect for you to be success, is by inviting more sectants. You can do so by adding the sect codes of other sectants who are already playing the game. Also you can give your invitation links to your friends who are not already playing. By inviting players outside the game, you can gain credit points which you can buy some exotic items in the game. Here is my invitation link, or called widget in the game:

Hope you enjoy!

What makes a successful browser game?

2009-05-19T15:31:00.002+08:00

There are more and more browser games built to the market each day. Some of them becomes successful one, while some of them do not and disappear into dust. Actually what makes some of them successful and distinguish with the others?

There are several criteria to determine whether a browser game can be successful, namely:

Overall game idea
Graphics and game play
Game community
Ability to make a player come back at least twice each day
The way to make profit from the game

The first 2: overall game idea, graphics and game play are just too obvious.

A successful game must have a great idea. For the vast amount of browser games in the market, some of them are quite similar. There are large amount of Travian clones or OGame clones out there. To be a successful one, there must be some new and amazing idea to make itself a different and make the players think that they are playing a new game.

Of course, for the technology nowaday, the graphic is very important. No one will like to stay on with the game any longer if the graphic is poor and cannot convey enough of the game idea and feel.

Surely game play is a very important criteria too. Whether the game is easy to learn, the player is easy to grow, whether the interaction with the game world is smooth, inter-player interaction is interesting...etc. is very important for people to like the game. Game balance is the most important too. Whether in the game world, the weak one can ever be catch up with the strong players; whether new player have a chance to survive when all the experienced players had established their character/base. This is always one of the hardest part to maintain in a successful online game.

In the next few post, I will talk one by one about the other ingredient for a successful browser game, which are actually equally important, if not more, as game idea, graphic and game play.

Zorg Empire launched! O Game gone?

2009-02-12T14:24:00.003+08:00

Zorg Empire, a new space online browser strategy game, was launched on 25 Januaray, 2009. I was excited to give a new try to this game, and surprisingly found that it has exactly the same interface with the famous online browser space game OGame, with a little bit improvement.

I had stopped playing OGame for a while, and I was surprise when I go to what is the previously the URL of OGame - http://www.ogame.com - that the domain name no longer belongs to the famous space game. Looks like the domain name is bought by some domain name selling business.

The new incarnation of OGame - Zorg Empire - now appear as a brand new game, with restarted players and new community. I will play it a while too, and will update you all with new experience and news of this game. Stay tuned!

Legacy of Holy Castle: Disaster...

2008-10-17T11:07:00.003+08:00

On the 15th October, Wednesday, The Legacy of Holy Castle had made major change to the game during the maintenance period. Here are the changes as announced by the admin:

The adjustments of The Legacy of Holy Castle:

Occupancy. Currently the winner of the attack will get 75% gold and 25% food within 24 hours from the loser instead of 50% gold and 50% food.
Units. The price decreases greatly for level 3 units.
Hero's quest. The experience from adventure will increase greatly.The gold and wood from adventure will be canceled.
Battle experience. The experience from battle will be adjusted to avoid some improper behavior.

Most of these changes had made this once nice game impossible to play, especially the occupancy rule.

Once your castle is occupied, your gold production drop to 25% for a whole 24 hour period. You lose the ability to rebuild yourself and is not able to attack others to gain back what you lost. This had made the game a boring game during these 24 hours, and easily make the player lose interest. After 24 hours, it is quite probably you will be occupied again due to the inability to rebuild. A player being occupied the first time would sooner or later quit the game.

The Hero's quest rule had made the occupancy rule worse. As before the patch, you can gain gold by adventuring which compensate a bit on your lost in battle and occupancy. Now you had lose your another ability to gain resources.

The battle experience had dropped a lot, which make your hero even more difficult to grow. This would make late comers even harder to catch up with the already top player, which separate the strong and the weak apart more. Weaker players will always be a farm and has no chance to survive.

I am deeply disappointed with the change in this once great game. If these changes are not reverted for a week, I would probably say goodbye to Legacy of Holy Castle as well.

The Legacy of Holy Castle Guide: The Importance of Formation

2008-09-22T22:05:00.005+08:00

Never under-estimate the importance of formation in The Legacy of Holy Castle. For the same number of units that can handled by your hero and the same number of defensive building you have, how you place your buildings and your units is the only factor that you win or lose a battle.

My castle was attacked everyday recently and it is a very good chance for me to experiment with several defensive formation.
I tend to rely quite a bit on the usage of defensive buildings, especially the self-detonating towers, as they can deal quite some amount of damage to enemy units. Putting the line of self-detonating towers right at the front has the advantage that they can destroy quite an amount of enemy units right at the beginner, weaken them so that they can deal less damage to our units. The disadvantage is that if the enemy knows your formation, he can produce weak units with amount 1 at the frontline to take the damage from the self-detonating tower, which can waste your self-detonating towers.

That's the reason why I put a line of elite hoplites the front to take down weak units first, and allow stronger units next taken down by the line of self-detonating towsers.

Next are the ramparts and the arrow towers. Putting arrow towers right behind the rampart as the ramparts are extra strong in defense. When the enemy units take several rounds to destroy your ramparts, they had already taken up quite an amount of damage from the arrow towers and the archers.

Putting hoplites and self-detonating towers around your hero is important, as whether your hero survives determine the win or lose of the battle. These are the last line of defense, so that any enemy units approaching your hero should be taken down by the body guards.

This formation has proven effective for some time. It had an disadvantage though, is if your enemy is patient enough to give you consecutive attacks, your defense building will finally all broken down, and he can finally occupy your castle...

Do you have any good formation to suggest? If so, feel free to leave a comment.

Nation States

2008-09-04T22:21:00.003+08:00

Nations States is quite an interesting and special game, which can't find other games with the same genre on the market.

Nations States is a nation simulation game created by Max Barry and based loosely on his novel Jennifer Government. The game play is simple, you are the ruler of a country. Everyday there will be a political issue come up at your nation, and your prime ministers and advisors would have several argument over the issue. As a ruler, you need to make decision on the issue, based on your ideal and political standpoints. Your country will gradually evolves based on your political direction. There are several attributes that will evolves: ecomonics, civil right and political freedom.

There is no competition in this game, the country will never war against each other. It is only simulation. This game is quite relax and you need only login once per day for choosing your solution towards the political issue.

Here is my nation, if anyone of you is interested:
http://www.nationstates.net/riviatin

And here is the URL to the game:
http://www.nationstates.net/

FallenSword Beginner's Guide Part 6 - Killing the right monster

2008-09-04T22:15:00.002+08:00

In FallenSword, if you want to optimize the experience gain, besides optimizing your usage of stamina, you need to make sure you are killing the right monsters.

For experience point gain by killing monsters, you get 120% experience point gain for killing a monster 1 level higher or above you; you get 100% experience point gain if you are killing a monster at the same level as you; you get 75% experience point gain for killing monster a level lower than you; and you get 50% experience point gain for killing monster 2 levels lower than you.

Therefore if you are at a map with several different monsters with different level, you need to always check the monster level by viewing them. If possible, always kill the monster at least the same level as you, and ignoring the monsters with level lower than you in the same space, unless the map is running out of monsters.

Browser-based games market becomes serious

2008-08-28T09:41:00.002+08:00

A news from Forbes yesterday talks about several browser-based games are going to launch and funded by large business like Time Warner's and Dell. One of the famous title that was coming is the "Quake Life", which is a remake of the once top title "Quake III".

More and more development companies, even Google, is becoming aware that the browser-based game market is a flourishing one.

It looks like that we are going to have a bloom era of browser-based online gaming!

For a complete story, please visit the Forbes news here:
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/08/25/xbox-firefox-quake-tech-personal-cx_cm_0826firefox.html

FallenSword Beginner's Guide Part 5.3 - Gaining Stamina

2008-08-24T02:03:00.002+08:00

Unfortunately, there is not many ways to increase your rate of stamina gain in FallenSword, and all of them involves FSP upgrades.

The first and most straight-forward way, is your +1 Stamina Gain (per hour) in the Upgrade section. Each of them costs 25 FSP, and there is a maximum of 25 upgrades.

The second way, is to have your guild building the Endurance Shrine structure. This would increase +5 stamina gain per hour every upgrade for every member in the guild, with a maximum of 3 upgrades.

With the above 2 upgrades, you can have an increase of 40 stamina gain per hour, added up with your basic 50 stamina gain per hour, you can get a maximum of 90 stamina gain per hour in total.

Another way to gain stamina, is with the +25 current stamina upgrade, which costs 1 FSP each. Therefore you can simply buy a lot of stamina using FSP after you had used up your pool during hunt.

FallenSword Beginner's Guide Part 5.2 - Saving Stamina

2008-08-19T15:51:00.005+08:00

In FallenSword, besides managing your stamina by controlling your hunting frequency, knowing how to save your stamina is also very important.

As we mentioned earlier, both walking the map and killing monsters require the use of stamina. Therefore, so as to save as much stamina as possible, you have to walk the map as little as possible and use as little as possible stamina to kill a monster as possible.

The minimum stamina needed to kill a monster is 1. Yes, therefore we always want to kill the monster in 1-hit, so as to save the stamina. As we have discussed earlier in The Combat, to kill a monster in 1-hit, we always need to calculate Attack vs Defense, Damage vs Armor. If your Attack score is always higher than the monster you are killing and your Damage score is higher than Armor + HP of the monster you are killing, you can maintain 1-hit kill. Actually this is quite easy to be accomplished in the early stage of the game, as long as you always keep having the best items for your level, which we will talk later. Offensive buffs like Fury, Berserk and Dark Curse are also very important at higher level to maintain 1-hit kill.

Besides minimizing the stamina to kill, you need to minimizing the steps you walk the map. It is not easy, especially at low level. Try walk the map systematically, in a way you can remember where did you walked already, so as to avoid stepping in the same square for duplicate times. If you found that the whole part of the map is having no monster, probably someone is just hunting in front of you. In this case, try to move to another end of the map, until you see at least 4-5 monsters in a square.

When you are at higher level, when you can hunt around 10-20k gold per hunting, I will highly recommend you to buy the Doubler skill from Lv 200+ players. Having a Doubler skill means you use double (or triple if it is x3, quaduple if it is x4) stamina to kill a monster, with a double (or triple or quaduple) experience point gain. This allows you killing less monsters with the same stamina and having the same XP gain; in order word, less walking on the map. Animal Magnetism is another useful one, which increase the probability that a monster is regenerated at your square, which will also decrease your walking.

Of course, Adept Learner (increase % XP gain) and Librarian (increase chance of double XP gain) is the two most important skills to maximize your speed of level up, which I will recommend you to buy from higher level players as soon as you can afford this; or get it from the guild.

FallenSword Beginner's Guide Part 5.1 - Stamina Management

2008-08-19T15:43:00.003+08:00

As we have blogged earlier, in FallenSword, managing your stamina is a key to success.

At the very beginning, when you did not have any special item and not in any guild, you got a maximum of 500 stamina. The stamina generation rate is 50/hour. That means in 10 hours your stamina will overflow. Therefore, in order not to waste any stamina, you need to hunt at least once per 10 hours, or 2.5 times a day.

After level 10, probably you are a member of a guild. If your guild has the Endurance Shrine, your maximum will increase, at a maximum of 620. If your guild got the Tranquil Retreat, your stamina regeneration rate will increase as well, to a maximum of 70/hour.

In order not to waste any stamina, you need to keep the frequency of hunting as (Maximum stamina) / (Stamina Generation Rate).

Therefore, in order to avoid being "labourous" in hunting, usually our first upgrade to our character using FSP would be increasing the maximum stamina.

Fallensword News: Potion Crafting and Item Creation Launched

2008-08-14T02:13:00.002+08:00

The new potion crafting and item creation function in FallenSword are launched on 11 August. It is quite a big addition to the game indeed. It allows players from various level get access to the higher level skill with high buff levels.

There are a few steps to craft a potion.

First you need to obtain a recipe. Currently the recipes are available in the shops in certain area, mainly the low level areas. If you are lazy to go back to the low level areas or want to save the stamina for doing so, you can buy a recipe from other players in the auction house. I find it worth the price, as stamina is far more expensive.

Next you need to get a potion bottle. Current it is available in the Hugards Tent in Fire Chasm level 1, which is a very low level area. This potion bottle are available in the auction house under "quest items" as well.

Finally you need the resources to create the potion. This resources are mainly drops from killing monsters. Again you may get them from the auction, as many players had took the time to hunt them.

When you get everything, voila! You can go to the menu option Actions -> Inventing to create your potion. At first you only get an average chance of success. If you have the high level potion crafting buff, you can increase the chance of successfully create a potion.

Currently the potion can be sold with a good price in the auction house as well.

The Legacy of Holy Castle Quickstart Guide

2008-08-13T00:18:00.002+08:00

I have just played 2 days of The Legacy of Holy Castle, and now I have 40 castle area, 158 credits and 53 units and 3 heroes. I am not sure whether this is treated as successful, I guess this is not too bad.

First of all, when you just started playing the game, finish the "Novice Quest". This will guide you through the main parts of the game and give you several gold and food rewards. At the end of the quests, you will have 50 archer units as the reward.

After that, keep upgrade your silver mine. It is never too much, as gold is very essential to your success in The Legacy of Holy Castle. Besides the silver mine, remember to build a tavern early, this is used for recruiting heroes.

After you got your tavern, recruits 2 heroes, 1 with high body statistics (high VIT, STR, AGI) and 1 with high intelligent (WIS). As wood is also very essential for the game, you have to always keep 1 hero busy with lumbering. Choose your high WIS hero for this job, as high WIS is account for high wood yield.

For your main hero, always keep him adventuring, killing enemies in the Village. This will gain him experience point and thus higher statistic and better for PvP. More important, he will have chance to gain crystal drop from the battle field. These crystals, can be combined to synthesis hero items, or can be sold for gems in the market place (auction).

For the other hero, which with high body statistics, you can keep him half of the time adventuring, and half of the time lumbering (depends on your need of wood for building).

When you found the upgrade cost of silver mine becomes much higher than Field upgrade cost, you can upgrade the fields as well. Although food is not much used during the protected period, the food can be sold at the marketplace for gold.

Remember to use the marketplace wisely, always exchange materials, goods that you are in need most to keep your pace of upgrade high.

The Legacy of Holy Castle

2008-08-11T21:17:00.004+08:00

Just started playing another interesting browser-based strategy type of multiplayer game - The Legacy of Holy Castle.

I found that I like this game very much. At the beginning I thought this is just another clone of Travian. After I play a few hours, I found The Legacy of Holy Castle has more interesting elements than simply empire building and warring against each other.

I like The Legacy of Holy Castle's concept of hero. Although there is also heroes in Travian-like strategy, but there are more role-playing element introduced in The Legacy of Holy Castle. The hero can perform many different tasks - he can chop wood for your kingdom, he can go out and search resource and rare elements for you, he can be trained to gain experience, he can even go out to adventure and gain the experience point to level up. During adventure, he can defeat various enemy, and he can get items dropped (mostly crystals which can be used to craft other items). The experience point earned can be used to buy ability points which futher strengthen up the hero.

The Legacy of Holy Castle has less graphic interface and besides the hero battling interface, most parts of the game is text-based, which in my opinion, is quite clean and good-looking.

FallenSword Beginner's Guide Part 5 - The Stamina

2008-08-09T01:03:00.002+08:00

The optimization of stamina is the most important player skill in FallenSword. If you can manage your stamina well, you are successful in FallenSword.

Every action in FallenSword requires stamina. Each step you walk on the world map require 1 point of stamina in the horizontal and vertical directions (N, S, E, W), and 2 points of stamina in the diagonal directions (NE, NW, SE, SW). When you kill monsters, each hit to the monsters require 1 point of stamina; that is, if a monster requires 3-hit to be killed, 3 points of stamina are used. Using skills require stamina as well: most skills use about 10 points of stamina. Some skills, like the Dark Curse and Treasure Hunter, require more than 10. PvP requires stamina as well, each PvP combat will use up 10 points of stamina minimum no matter how many hits you deal to your enemy, and you can do 100 stamina kill if you really want to hurt your enemy.

Being said that, getting stamina in FallenSword is not easy, and it is the ultimate goal of every FallenSword players. Every character starts with 500 maximum stamina and gains 50 stamina per hour.

The next 2 chapter we will talk about how to save your stamina and how to earn your stamina respectively.

FallenSword: The new Legendary Set, Cu Sith Set

2008-08-09T00:51:00.002+08:00

Just tried out the new FallenSword Legendary Set, the Cu Sith Set, which is a Lv 150 set.

This set is what we called a "Suicidal Set", which contains of only Attack and Damage, but no Defense, Armor and HP. With this set on, unless you get a exceptional high Armor item with the other components, or else you will be rather low on armor. That's why it is suicidal, either your opponent die in 1-hit, or else it is you who die.

If you are a risk player, this can be quite a nice set, as this is the only set at around Lv 150 which provide 1-hit except the Santork set which was out last Christmas.

FallenSwords News: 2 Million players reached and the Legendary Event again!

2008-08-07T02:45:00.003+08:00

Congratulations for FallenSword to reach 2,000,000 registered players today!

Again, for celebrating the event, there is a Legendary Event.

These are the creatures for this Legendary Event:

Zachorzi the Plagued (Legendary)
Sighted: Paladir Forest East
Recommended Level: 20

Cu Sith (Legendary)
Sighted: Ekloren & Gadrel Swamps
Recommended Level: 150

Cacus (Legendary)
Sighted: Falagi & Angel Caves
Recommended Level: 250

Chariot of Fire (Legendary)
Sighted: Buring Sands & Selari
Recommended Level: 350

Jorogumo (Legendary)
Sighted: Dark Forest & City of Xinderoth
Recommended Level: 500

Again, the Hunted Cows didn't learnt the lesson from past Legendary Events... the site had down for a few minutes and become very laggy now... :-(

FallenSword News: High level skills released this week and the fight against scammer

2008-08-05T19:15:00.002+08:00

FallenSword has post a news on the latest news box that they are still tweaking the new potion craft skills and they are estimating that the new high level skills announced earlier will be released this weekend. Also there will be a separate backpack for storing herbs which would be the components for crafting potion.

There is another news posted today that FallenSword has stopped the selling of guilds due to large amount of guild-selling scammers. Also begging and borrowing of gold and FSP is no longer allowed in the Shoutbox and FSBox. Looks it is quite a nice announcement, as those guild-selling and begging messages in the FSBox are very annoying.

Tagoria

2008-08-01T11:33:00.002+08:00

Tagoria is quite an interesting browser-based multiplayer role-playing online game. In the game, you play as a character in the land of Tagoria. You can gain experience and level up by 2 means: by doing PvP and by killing monsters. Besides simply level up, you can buy training points - which are assigned to Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Stamina, Accuracy - by using amber stones which is the currency in Tagoria.

In the beginning, you would probably like to gain experience and amber stone by killing other players. As the premium feature is available for free for the first few days of playing, you can easily choose players that are weaker than you to kill. After killing a few players, you have gained a level and owned some amber stone to buy training point, you can start doing quests and kill monsters in the Mountain.

You got a number of action points and quest points everyday, so you would probably just need to play 15-30 minutes a day. Tagoria would be quite a leisure game which would not need a lot of intensive care and attention like most of other online games. Tagoria would be suitable for you if you are a leisure player.

One nice feature of the game is you are able to work in a Farm, so that you can gain amber stones automatically while you are offline.

Here is the game link so that you can try this out:
Tagoria

The default language of the game is German, remember to select the English flag at the top right corner of the browser to switch your language if you are an English speaker. Enjoy!

Imperial Ages News: Gunpowder Age Launched

2008-07-27T13:33:00.003+08:00

The Gunpowder Age, which is the second age promised by Imperial Ages, is launched yesterday.

Here is the requirement to upgrade to the Gunpowder Age:

City Hall lvl 20 (in the lvl 20 City Hall you can make the upgrade to the second age)
2 Villages
Population 600 minimum total for your account
30,000 Gold, 30,000 Iron, 30,000 Wood, 30,000 Stone
10% of the cost of all troops you have in your villages.

The resources needed for the upgrade is taken in equal percentage from all the villages of the player. The benefit of the upgrade is stronger troop which increases the speed by 1. Also they promised that in later stage there will be new building which increases the merchant capacity.

For a complete story, please visit the Imperial Ages Blog: http://www.imperialages.com/blog/

FallenSword News - High level skills announced on the FallenSword forum

2008-07-25T11:01:00.002+08:00

Yesterday 24 July, the FallenSword development team had announced the new high level skills on the FallenSword Forum. The new skills ranges from Lv 400 up to until Lv 800. It seems that the development team is prospecting the players are going to reach those high levels fast and soon.

Here are the list of the new skills, duplicated from the forum post:

Offence:

400:
Keen Edge: 0.01% per point to your attack in PvP for each complete set.
Spectral Knight: Link to Shatter Armour. 0.1% chance to reduce targets armor by 100%. Need 100 in Shatter Armour to unlock.

500:
Arterial Strike: Linked to Spectral Knight. Gain additional XP for every additional round of combat. Enhanced by Master Summoner.
Death Dealer: For every 5 kills in a row, without dying, you get +1% extra Damage to a Maximum of 20%. 10% @ 50, 15% @ 100 & 20% @ 150. De buffs as soon as you are defeated in combat.

600:
Savagery: 0.1% chance that your Defensive stats are added to Attack and your Armour Stats are added to your Damage.

700:
Chi Strike: 0.1% chance to add HP total to Damage.

800:
Shield Strike: 0.1% that your defence stat is reduced to Zero and your Damage is doubled.

Defence:

400:
Counter Attack: Uses 0.25% extra stamina (rounding up) to add 0.25% to both Attack & Damage.
Summon Shield Imp: Creates an Imp which can absorb 100% of damage. 24 Hour time out. De buffs if hit more than the level allows. Level 50 = 1 round of combat, 100 = 2, 150 = 3.

500:
Vision: Lights up dark realms. (Upcoming feature.) No damage to creatures in the dark.
Fortitude: Defensive Stat is added to HP. Lvl 50= 3%, 100= 7%, 150= 10%

600:
Flinch: 0.1% chance to decrease enemies Attack by 10% @ 50, 15% @ 100 & 20 @ 150.

700:
Terrorise: 0.1% chance to decrease enemies Damage by 10% @ 50, 15% @ 100 & 20 @ 150.

800:
Nightmare Visage: 0.1% chance that your Attack will be reduced by 5% @ 50, 10% @ 100 & 15% @ 150. This is then added to your Defence.

Special:

1:
Quest Finder: Increases the chance that Quest Items will drop.

400:
Potion Crafter: Increases chance of success when crafting potions. Have to gather Herbs with Herb Gather (see below) then go to an Alchemist. Make potions according to recipes.
Herb Gatherer: Allows you to gather herbs for creating potions. Herbs be dropped by Creatures.

500:
Potion Crafter II: Further increases your chance of successful potion creation and can increase potency (duration).
Master Summoner: (To be used with Spectral Knight and/or Shield Imp.) Level 50 = 10%, 100 = 20% & 150 = 30%. Increases to Summon potency by increasing the chance of the relative skills being invoked.

600:
Reflection: On a 0.1% a percentage per point of the Creatures damage is reflected upon itself. 50 = 10%, 75 = 15%, 100= 20% & 150 = 25%

700:
Light Foot: 0.05% chance to use no stamina while moving on the world map.

800:
Mesmerise: 0.1% chance to reduce a Creatures Armour & Defence by 50%.

From what I see, I think the offensive skills will become the popular ones as players are still striking to hit the monsters with as few hits as possible in the high levels. Also it looks like that potion will become a more and more important element in the game, and the potion crafting skills can become the next wave of popular skills.

What do you think? Leave a comment if you have some idea.

FallenSword Beginner's Guide Part 4 - The Auction House

2008-07-24T00:32:00.001+08:00

In FallenSword, items are very important for a character, much more important than the ability scores and other thing.

Once you get through level by killing enough rats in the mountain path, simply equipping items dropped by monsters is not enough. To be aquaintence enough to kill monsters at the same level of you, you must get the optimize items for your level.

So, not by monsters, where do we get these items? The answer is the auction house.

The Auction House is the platform where the players sell their used items, and here is where you are able to get a bargain buy for the item you needed.

Remember, never rush. Use the sort function to sort the minimum "Buy Now" item from the list, and buy it with a fair price.

To best utilize the search function, you must click the "Search Preference" link below the search box and put in the item level that you are looking for so that you have a good idea of what items are available and at what price are they selling.

Once you level up again and is ready for the items of the next level, remember do not throw them away too. Try to sell them for a good price in the auction house, so that you will have the gold to buy later items as well.

FallenSword Beginner's Guide Part 3 - The Combat

2008-07-21T10:20:00.002+08:00

In Fallensword, your character has 5 core ability points, Attack, Damage, Defense, Armor, and Hit Point (HP).

When there is a combat, either when you are killing a monster, or during PvP, which one is winning is calculated based on these abilities of you and your opponent.

Whether you hit your opponent is based on your Attack score vs. your opponent's Defense score. If your Attack is higher than your opponent's Defense, with a variance of +- 5%, you successfully hit your opponent. This calculated has not yet taken into account special bonus such as Dodge bonus.

Whether you kill your opponent with your hit is based on your Damage score vs. your opponent's Armor + HP score. If your damage is higher than your opponent's total of Armor + HP, with a variance of +- 5%, you successfully kill your opponent. Again this has not yet taken into account special bonus such as Piercing Strike, Critical Hit and Reinforced Armor.

FallenSword Beginner's Guide Part 2 - Assigning your Skill Points

2008-07-13T23:25:00.002+08:00

The other reward that you will gain when your Fallensword character level up is 5 skill point. Which you will assign to your Skills. The Skills page can be reached by clicking "Skills" at your left Panel.

The assigning of these skill points is also important, and will be vital when your character level up.

There are 3 types of Skills - Offense, Defense, and Special.

Most of the low level Defense skills are not useful. You may skip that. For the first 150 levels, Offense and Special skills will be useful to you.

Remember, these skills will not be useful to you if you assign only a few skill points to it, so you will have to make sure you are focus on 1 skill until you have full rank for it at Lv 20 (100 points). Never diversify your skill points.

If you are playing mostly alone, I will advise you not to use your skill points at all for the first 25 levels, you can retain your skill points for later use. At level 25, take Adept Learner, which increase your experience point (XP) gain from killing monster. This will increase your rate of level up. After that, skills in the order of Treasure Hunter (Lv 40), Library (Lv 75, yes, you retain skill points until Lv 75), then Berserk and Fury.

If you are playing with a group of friends, you may consider splitting the task of Offense and Special Skills amoung yourselves. The offense path can be Enchanted Weapon, Fury and Berserk. Rage is not so useful.

The first Defense skill that can be useful to you is Enchanted Amour, which can be taken at Lv 75.

FallenSword Beginner's Guide Part 1 - Setting your Ability Points

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When your Fallensword character level up, you got 2 "level up points" to add to your character, which can be assigned to five abilities: Attack, Damage, Defense, Armor and HP. Assigning these "level up" points can be quite important to your character.

Fallensword is a damage-based game. That is, damage is the most important ability in this game, period.

There is a gold rule of assigning these ability points to your character - attack : damage = 1:3 in the first 20 levels; and from level 21 onward, assign all ability point to damage.

You won't know the importance of these in the first few levels. This would become vital during level 100 onward. Not enough damage means your can't kill the monster in 1-hit, which means you are not optimizing your use of stamina.

You will ask, how about my Defense, Armor and HP? The answer is Item. All these abilities can be easily made up by having appropriate items at your level.