Wasteland Diaries: To-do list

You would think that someone who had four characters that have been sitting at the level cap for months would be out of things to do. It's simply not so. I have plenty to do, and much of it isn't even directly related to PvP. I have been keeping myself quite busy in Fallen Earth, especially since I have been in-game so little these past few weeks. The time I have been logged in has been well spent. A lot of my time is spent crafting consumables like food, drinks and medicine to support the PvPing, but thanks to the magic of offline crafting, it doesn't matter. Most of it takes place while I sleep. It's the chips and materials that require interaction on my part.

By saying I'm staying busy, I'm not referring to the new "golden age" of PvP revival we are currently experiencing in and around Haietta (and even Park City, to some degree). I'll spare everyone the PvP-oriented post this week and concentrate on some of the more carebearish things I've been doing lately. So if you are thinking about coming back, or you're wondering what else to do once you hit level 50, maybe this post will give you some idea of what you could be doing. After the cut I'll let you know what I've been up to in Fallen Earth when the PvP is waning.

Although I have four level 50 clones, none of them is at the AP cap yet. In fact, only one is within even 50 of it. I'm not the kind of player who does every mission or checks a wiki to find every AP mission available. I spent too much time cruising through the PvP zones and looking for trouble. The random AP that are supposed to be awarded (there is a small chance) for doing the things one would normally do (i.e., crafting, scavenging and PvPing) are far too elusive. I haven't seen one yet. I don't want to go back and find all the AP I missed along the way, either. Luckily, there is now a group of repeatable AP quests (and it's not a bug this time).

The repeatable AP quests I am referring to are the road rallies. These are timed races-against-the-clock. The better the time, the better the reward. I really don't care about the chips and the paint kits you get; I'm after that delicious AP. You navigate your way through a series of checkpoints, so fast-travel won't help. And some of the checkpoints are home to some of the wastelands nastiest denizens. The last checkpoint on the Deadfall Flyer course is a nest of about a hundred creepers. I nearly died my first time through that one. So far I'm really liking the Trader's Flat to Deadfall run. I usually make it in about 18 minutes, and it gives me two AP. So now, instead of fast-traveling when I need to go to Los Alamos, I drive.

Another thing you can never have too much of is storage space. It's nice having the utility vault, but it's only accessible in one place, so I use it for food. My sector vault is where all the common materials (on my crafter) and my ammo and consumables (for my PvP clones) are stored for convenience. But that vault, especially on my crafter, gets very full, very quickly. Luckily, there are few solutions. You can buy more storage space from the Fallen Earth store. That's the quickest and easiest way. The second way is to purchase vault expansions with Reward Points. Reward Points are given to you for every month that you are subscribed, and the amount you get increases every month that you stay subscribed. It can take some time to get all the expansions this way. But you can also score cool stuff like the gas mask pictured below with said points. The third way is an adventure unto itself.

The craftable vault expansions were a brilliant idea, if keeping me busy is the goal. Here is how it works: There are four different expansions, two sector and two barter vault expansions. To build all four, you will have to craft an item from all 10 tradeskills. You will also have to have every tradeskill maxed. OK, that's the easy part. Next you will need the 10 books that hold the recipes. The veteran mobs in Deadfall drop them. Some of them are rarer than others. For example, I still need the General Science book. It's selling on the auction house for 60 red chips. Yeah, I'm going to wait for that price to drop a bit.

I got about half of the books from the faction veterans and the other half from the auction house. The nice thing about it was that I was getting faction reputation as well as the insanely generous loot that the vets drop. And I was getting these books that I needed. I was essentially killing three birds with one stone. The piles of loot I got from farming these guys for the books paid for stacks and stacks of PvP consumables. Thanks, veteran mobs. With Park City and Haietta in perpetual contention, I've lost my unlimited supply of such things as edible meat. I'll have to stock up the next chance I get. That's where the extra storage space comes in handy. See what I did there? It all comes back to PvP.

Fallen Earth originally appealed to me because of the PvP. I envisioned player conflict to be the only unlimited, non-repetitive content in the game. Aside from roleplaying, it really is. Again, the storage expansions are handy for roleplayers as well. If you strive to collect all of the clothing and accoutrements in the game, you are going to need some serious storage space. PvPers and roleplayers have a lot more in common with one another than is readily evident. I digress.

I still have some plans to respec my Pistoleer into a melee/healer, and I'll need to get a bunch of skill books and injectors for him. I need to get all of the mutations for the two that I didn't do the mutation-flip on, and a few hundred AP to fill in between the four of them. My crafter just finished the cooking research (torturous) and still has to finish his mutagenics books (worse than torturous). I need to start a recruitment drive for KAOS and help Exile get back up to speed. I've got plenty to do in the coming weeks. I never expected to be rushing around so that I would be ready for Sector 4, but considering the skills and mutations are going to be the next major change, there's no need to panic. They work fast, but not that fast.

I'll be back here next week, hopefully with some interesting war stories to tell. Even if there isn't a shred of PvP action this coming week, I'll stay pretty busy with the logistics. Until next week, watch out for nests of salivating creepers.

Ed Marshall has been playing Fallen Earth since beta and leads the KAOS clan. Wasteland Diaries is his weekly column that covers all aspects of Fallen Earth: PvE, RP and PvP. To contact Ed, send an email to edward@massively.com, find him on the official forums as Casey Royer, or hunt him down in the wastelands as Nufan, Original, Death Incarnate, and Knuckles Mcsquee.