Saturday 18 January 2003

Pic of the day: Oh my Goth! Dark Age of Camelot just goth darker!

Shrouded Isles, first impression

Dark Age of Camelot just got darker. I got the Shrouded Isles expansion pack.

The local game shop gave up on importing it here to Norway, but luckily I have friends in the USA. One of them, Skye, bought this expansion pack for me and air-mailed it here. (I bought a game for him too.) Amazon.com doesn't sell the expansion, or indeed the original game, outside the USA. Here in Europe, a French company called GOA has the exclusive right to run DAoC servers, and so only their slightly modified version of the game is sold around here. The European game is a bit behind in development, so no Shrouded Isles here until around the end of February. And it wouldn't work on the American servers anyway, including the only cooperative DAoC server in the world, where I use to play.

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When I say that Dark Age of Camelot just got darker, I don't just mean that there is now more of it. No, it also seems Mythic has hired in a group of Goths to make this expansion. For instance, the new race in Albion is white-skinned, dressed in black by default, they worship the god of the underworld, and their trainers are found in the catacombs under the church ... Oh, and their starting town is a new one, called: Gothwaite. Not to mention that one of the new classes is the necromancer, who becomes a shade and does all his work through zombies.

In Midgard, the new race is a kind of savage, related to trolls but more agile and less monumental in size and strength. Nothing particularly Gothic about that ... except that one of the two new classes is the bonedancer, who can control up to 4 different skeletons in battle.

In Hibernia, the new race is Sylvan, a kind of humanoid tree with feather-like leaves in various colors of summer and autumn. There is nothing particularly Goth about them ... except the scythe wielded by one of the two new classes, the valewalker.

So far I've played a pale-skinned disciple to level 4; by then the sheer Goth-ness of it all made me take a break from it. The necromancer is however probably still the most powerful class in the whole game, if you can stand being represented by a Goth and a slobbering zombie.

The Sylvan was great fun however. I played a valewalker to level 7 before I broke off to write this. Most, possibly all, of the new classes are slightly more powerful than the original. I guess this makes sense when you have paid $30 extra. More important to some of us, they usher in new forms of gameplay. The walkers are fairly traditional melee (close combat) characters ... except they only wear cloth. They can however specialize in protective magic that makes their cloth stronger until, at the end of their career, it is better than plate armor. Provided they spend enough points on it, of course, which means less for weapon skill and parrying. An interesting decision.

The other Sylvan class is even stranger. The animists control giant mushrooms that do their bidding. The mushrooms don't move about, so you have to make the enemy come to you. Once they do however, there are plenty of different mushrooms to choose from. Some do direct damage (through toxic clouds), others protect the player character with defensive spells. I've seen this class in action but not played it yet. It is certainly original.

The bonedancer of Midgard seems to be little more than a souped-up spiritmaster (from the same realm), except they control skeletons instead of ghosts. Oh, and there are 4 different types of skeletons to control, including a healer and an archer. Still, it seems less original than the rest. I guess I shall have to try one to find out ...