How to play in new update

[Rumblebore]

If you go into game here are some tips to things now that there is death, monsters and new materials, processes, etc.

Gear:

You can make beginning gear at the forge with some stats on it, which you can do at the hub. You can also make basic weapons there too and experiment with their use and the new heads up UI when you have a weapon equipped.

Key difference with equipped weapons: Your 2 mouse buttons are tied to theweapons 2 effects so maeuvering your cross hairs is mouse rolling and your WASD movement keys. Takes getting used to.

Better Gear:

Droped and crafted, but not a common drop. This means killing monsters. Killing monsters is hard when you are in effectively newbie gear.

- - - - - Tips to Better Gear and Monsters: - - - - -

1) Keep moving with any type of weapon. Sure, Bows and Mage Staffs are great but some of those beasties attack from range too and they HURT you a heck of a lot more than you hurt them. Keep moving to avoid the incoming attacks. Obviously a true tactic to meleeing also.

2) To get drops you likely need to be in the tiered caves. I will cover this later, but you need to get to a Hub to be able to transfer to the caves. Not accesible from the Claim at this time.

3) Ether Shards - these are now the essential ingredient to all crafting, even to converting mined "snow" material over to "water" material, if you can believe that logic. Did you detect my sarcasm in saying that? I hope it came across.... Anyways, these ES's drop from beasties, chests and can be mined from Ancient Earth deposits. I will include a tip to EASILY mine up tons of AE deposits and ES later. Drop rate from beasties is in the ones to 10's amounts (like 1 to 20-30ish).

4) Monsters drop gear (uncommon, have not got one in the 10-ish beasts i was able to kill) and also other things like recipes, accessories, props and other materials.

5) Ok here is the "I HATE THIS SO FAR" part - In order to make gear of any worth you MUST get dropped gear so you can SALVAGE it down to Aspects, which are crafting components to make the better gear. That means you cannot make the better gear unless you go into game and hunt for drops first. I am currently lousy at combating the beasties so this is a chore ATM to make this crafting possible. In a game where the emarging economy is currently trading because no in-game economy exists (selling drops for coin, buying from Merchant Bubba at the Hub), your only option is to find someone in game who might be willing to set you up or trade your Wonder Hat of Energy (+10 Power/Mana - this is fictional) for a Buff Hat of Strength (+10 STR, also fictional) which just dropped or go out and PHARM, PHARM, PHARM. I do not mind pharming materials, to make gear, but not gear to Salvage into materials to make material. <sigh> - the trials of Beta testing...

6) Gear and Keywords: If the dropped gear you find share a common KEYWORD like Physical, Affliction, Fire, Radiance, etc., then salvaging them together at the same time produces ESSENCES of Might, Frailty, Molten, Light, etc. Combining these with recipes for gear needing them makes even better gear. So, unless you trade around, the answer is PHARM....etc.

7) I hope you have a pulverizer, because finding materials underground in the caves makes this the essential way to travel to the nodes. Let me know if you need one.

8) METAL/STONE/GEM materials: The gear & weapon recipes ALL need a gem of some kind. The STONE that you mine, Metals and Gems too, all have converted to new ones. One example is Amethyst is no longer mined. It is renamed Amethyn and MADE from combining Diamond and Ruby together in quantity. Wait, a real existing gemstone is Manufactured (essentially) from rubies and diamonds? Yep.

TIERED CAVES

Tiers 1-5 are in game and mats are resourced to those tiers. Ruins can be found, biome effects with each Tiered Cave. They are RANDOMIZED. Read up on this system in the Dec 17th Update notes. They cover it fairly well.

Ether Shards easily found:

Make a Sounder

Go to the Sea Shore and swim underwater. No you cannot drown, yet.

Use the Sounder. Only the Gem Agate and Ancient Earth will be detected.

Go to the Earth deposits and mine away. 1000's of E-Shards per hour. Stock up.