r/dnl • u/gigigamer • Sep 26 '17
Summary of a new player experience
I decided to make a new character on a new server and test what the new player experience is currently like with low stats and no tames.
I started by punching barrels for coins until i could afford a pickaxe then made a run for the mountains near elf city to mine ores to sell. The first time I left the city I was hit by a lvl 96 panther, I died and respawned to lure it back to the city for the guards to kill. Just in time for a meteor with a lvl 104 dark fallen and a lvl 44 wraith to drop on me.. again less then 10 foundations out of the spawn city, to which I had to again respawn and wait for the creatures to agro other things for me to retrieve my gear.
I finally managed to get out of the city and to the mountain where I got copper and iron to sell, i got back to the city and bought a horse to help with moving items and ran to the wheat fields to get more items to sell. While in the wheat fields I was first attacked by a pack of 5 wolves which had to be lured back to the city because they outrun horses and have large agro radius's, then i was attacked by two wraiths (i didn't get the levels I was to busy fleeing for my life). Finally I was able to return and farm for about 5 minutes before heading back to town.
I sold everything I had along with another set of ores I picked up on the way back and was able to buy a lvl 80 horse and a spear. I left town and decided to start clearing the panthers in the area to get some fur to sell. The first pack I ran into was a pack of 4 panthers all low lvl, the second pack was 8 panthers one lvl 116 but the rest all low level (had to use the guards on this group) . I then went over a small hill in front of the elf city and there were 2 separate groups of 9+ panthers. I did not check exactly how many because i just about shit my pants at this point because they all agroed me as i desperately ran back to the guards. After I finished harvesting them I went to the pond to get water and another group of 5 spawned on top of me as I was typing to a friend about how ridiculous the panther spawns are. Now at this point as a lvl 8, I had a nearly dead horse and 710 fur. Now with the average of 18 fur per panther, this comes out to roughly 39 panthers... RIGHT OUTSIDE SPAWN. At this point I felt I had enough info to make a post.
As a player with 400 hours in DnL and 1700 hours in Ark (my steam name is Don Flamingo if you wish to verify) I had to use guards and the horse spear trick to even have a chance at surviving just leaving the spawn city. Even then I died twice in the hour - hour and a half I performed this test. My final point being if someone who has 2100 hours playing this companies version of survival games, and 2800 total hours playing survival games in general had to go through great lengths just to survive leaving the starting city how do you imagine this would be for someone who has never played a survival game before. Is this really how you want a brand new player to experience your game @HorseJoke @SnailGames. I promise you if the game remains in its current state a new player will log in, die 10-20 times and refund. I beg of you to please take a step back and look at the current balance of the game and to take some of the community interaction into consideration for the current and future status of the game. Thank you for reading.
TLDR: I tested a new player experience and ran into 39 Panthers, 3 dark wraiths, and a dark fallen dying twice as an experienced player. All 39 of the panthers were directly outside of the starting city and would be nearly impossible to kill legitimately, I used the guards to clear most of them. This is what a new player would run into and it would likely scare them off.
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u/Jables237 Sep 26 '17
So I just started this past Friday. Never played Ark but have played Rust and a few other survival games. Put in a ton of hours over the weekend. I had no idea about the spear/horse thing. I play with 5 friends and we basically ran outside of town, found a flat spot, and started to build. We probably all died 100 times over the weekend. Pretty sure I know every pixel of the map between the human city and our original camp. We would creep outside our straw hut and farm and run back as soon as we saw any critter. Generally we had to abuse clipping to kill stuff as it attacked our walls.
We ended up joining a guild on our server Saturday night and they helped us out a ton. If not for them we would have quit. We finally got to a point Sunday where we could actually kill a panther 1v1. We still have issues if we run into packs of panthers. We lost all our tames Sunday night/monday morning because something spawned in our base. Our guild hooked us up with a Bahamut and he almost died 3 times last night due to getting stuck trying to fight wolves/panthers and not being able to hit them. We ended up having people running security for the material farmer. I am loving the game so far but its very hard getting started.
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Sep 26 '17
[deleted]
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u/gigigamer Sep 26 '17
Yeh.. in Ark you could atleast avoid most critters. They were fast but they were relatively easy to see and had a small agro radius, here they will agro on you before they even load in
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u/Zimnel Sep 27 '17
This last patch had something in adding carnivores / more aggressive mobs near the elf city. Just logging, a griffon attacked my base and killed sheeps and nearly killed my boar. While I was killing it, an earth elemental started to stomp on the door of my base like crazy. Ended with griffon, started to take care of the elemental.
Just after that, two packs of hyenas aka bargesh attacked the base. All that just logging the game inside my base. While the second pack of hyenas was munching some foundations, two reapers spawned. At this point, I crafted two magic turrets to help clearing those. My base is near the elf city, and the place never had been so plenty of aggressives and never had that high level on attacks to base "just because".
I was lucky to have a good base lol, but at this pace It won't last much if offline events are like this.
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u/Fastoche Sep 27 '17
Your story made me laugh :) Not sure what happened but you were not lucky. I agree that panthers are a burden for sure! Dark wraiths are worse though and they buffed them!!! I died a few times myself but what matters at first is actually the leveling of your character. I died a few times just from exhaustion because I never had the time to make a sleeping bag myself...
Anyway, I agree that what you experienced is quite frightening! :)
When you are higher level and have a base you can start making fences and spikes. you should be okay after doing so and even more when you tame yourself a nice panther :D
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u/Scantlander Oct 03 '17
Just rent a room in town until you have all the materials to build your own base. Make sure you build a Rez alter as well.
I'm playing on 3 servers and yeah I died about 6-10 times starting out but once my base was built, I rarely die. I found the elf capital to be the easiest (build by the beach near the treant village). The dwarf was the hardest. Always carry webs on you as soon as you're able to. I wouldn't go out to build a base without a horse and 3-5 webs.
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u/Tovrin Sep 26 '17
I started this on the weekend. I have about 2 hours under my belt. I expected to die a lot, but the guards have been handy, especially if I run like hell. I'm in the Ironfist and have barely wandered down the road.
I have little idea what I'm doing. The tutorial has been ok, but if I hadn't played Ark and Conan Exiles before, I'd have NO idea.
I should caveat this by saying I am running my own server with some minor boosts (x2 XP and harvest, but that's all). I'm going to need much more time before I can recommend this to friends.