Conan Watch #5

Nadine Velazquez

Still hanging in there, maintaining my traditionally slow and steady advance through the mid levels of the game. Pinged a whopping 56 today, but I'm starting to hit the content gaps that people have been whining about for months already.

Level 50 basically means advancing to the Eiglophian Mountains, but while arriving in previous hubs has meant a quest log chock-full of XP-tastic quests, they've turned out to be a bit thin on the ground here. In the lower valley you get the usual run-of-the-mill kill quests, fighting cannibals in the 51-52 range. So far so good. There are "Wanted Posters", essentially repeatable bounty hunts which are the same as Vanguard's "Missives", but which give a pitiful XP reward. It's not long until you run out of quests in the lower valley, and head up the hill. The odd thing is, the mobs suddenly jump to the 54-57 range, and then further up still they're 58-60+. It would be nice if there was more to do in the lower valley, to at least get you up to speed with the next section. Having to beat mobs and especially bosses with their associated adds 5+ levels above you gets old fast. And then when you're done with those mobs, you're still several levels short of the next destiny quest (60), and the subsequent hubs.

Adding new zones to provide extra content is, of course, a substantial undertaking. What's odd about the mountains is that while an alternative 50+ zone would be nice it wouldn't hurt to simply add a few more quest lines within the existing zone.

So now I'm at 56, the next quest in my log is to beat a 60 boss within a camp of level 60 Vanir, which is just slightly beyond what my poor Priestess is capable of. At least solo. But then if I coasted through it in a group, what next? I'd still be a few levels down on where I need to be to progress to the next zone.

Even before I hit the mountains, and after the relatively good Field of the Dead, I made a new Guardian to pass the time. She had a pretty fun time in Tortage, although it wasn't particularly exciting the second time round. I miss the multiple, varied starting zones Vanguard offers. Unfortunately I'm not that keen on the Guardian class itself, at least not so far. It seems strange that the primary tank class in the game has absolutely no self-heals or buffs so far. Naturally they can take a lot more punishment than a clothy healer, but it's all a bit one-way. No heals, not great DPS, it's all about getting and holding aggro which is fair enough, but in a game which is fairly solo-oriented before end-game it doesn't feel like a particularly rounded class. While I wish the Priest of Mitra was a better healer, the fact is it works pretty well as a solo class.

Anyway if I can't be bothered to push through the final stages of the mountains, I might head back to Conall's with the Guardian and see how it develops.