Wasteland Diaries: What you did wrong with your first Fallen Earth character
Any time a new game comes out, many players feel the obligation to be the first to explore new areas, conquer new bosses or get their character to max level. This may not be everyone's play style, but it's usually important to note that these players do this with little or no guidance from guides or wikis, and they often end up doing something wrong along the way.
Fallen Earth is a game that is set up to trickle information to you slowly as you progress. Since the tutorial area was revamped just before launch, it's been easier to learn the right way to do things... that is, if you've read the pop-up tips. Even at 5 months after launch, there is still very little information out there about the specifics of the game. There are wikis and informational fansites, but in most cases, their owners seem to have caught a case of the Shiva virus themselves.
So in this week's Wasteland Diaries, I'm going to take a fun look at the top 5 things you probably did wrong on your first character. It might be too late for many of you, but that's why there are four character slots. Spoken like a true alt-a-holic.
You know you're doing it wrong when you...
5. Waited for your crafted items to finish.
In Fallen Earth, crafting takes time. It takes a lot of time. Yet, the solution to this is offline queues that update even when you're not in the game. If you ever sat around in a crafting facility, waiting patiently for that 15 minute timer to wind down, then you know the frustration. Instead, you should be spending your play time to gather materials, and set up your crafting queue just before you log off for the night. You'll come back the next day feeling like it's your birthday with a bag full of new shinies.
4. Never repaired broken items.
Do me a favor. Go in game, press G and tell me what you see. If there are bright red boxes in your "Gear" screen, then you're doing it wrong. You may have also noticed small bars under some of your gear, varying from yellow to orange. If you see these under your gear icons, then they need to be repaired. You can buy a repair kit from the appropriate vendor for each type of item (armor, weapon or ballistics).
3. Ignored the main questline.
While the main "You're Dying" questline isn't required to play the game, it gives you a pretty good idea about what the game is all about. What caused many early players to skip this questline was a bug fairly early on that glitched the quest, making advancement impossible. The quest was fixed after a patch, but many players had already moved on and forgot about picking it back up.
2. Stuck with Old Nag.
Back in my day, we didn't have Old Nag. We had to walk barefoot up mountains of scrap to gather the materials to build our first horse, and we liked it! After a revamp to the tutorial fairly early following launch, a new starter horse was introduced as part of a quest reward. The problem is, some players didn't realize that this horse is only a starter horse, and they can get much, much better. The fuel-efficiency, storage capacity, health and general stats of the higher-level horses improve dramatically, so while the Old Nag is better than walking sometimes, you should start looking at upgrading as soon as you can. Hey, whatdya know! We wrote a guide about that, too.
1. Mismanaged your Action Points.
Some might argue that there is no "perfect" way to gain and spend your AP, but most will say it's a science. You earn Action Points through combat, special quests, crafting or just leveling. On average, you're supposed to gain about 20 AP per level, and those points are quite precious -- at least until they implement a respec option. This is where character planning and research comes in handy. You can't really spread your AP around on every attribute and skill, expecting to become masterful at any one aspect. Plus, once you get to Sector 2, you'll find a whole new branch of Mutations that opens up using even more of that precious AP. You need to decide what you want to do early on, or save your AP for when you do figure it out. Check out this handy forum thread on character building for some helpful tips.
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Is there something about Fallen Earth that confuses you? Have a question about the game's lore, mechanics or something else? Leave your questions as a comment here or email me at shawn at massively dot com and I'll answer them in a future installment of Wasteland Diaries.
