It really bums me out that the server can only be hosted on a windows machine. My game server is more than capable, but it's fairly dedicated as a Linux box at this point. I'm gonna look into a VM.
There's some content in AC I never saw, might be fun to explore a bit. Looking at it, it'd be trivially easy to lower some of the numbers, and make the boss encounters require less people...
Interest?
Edit: Man, this emulator is a resource hog right now. Probably not gonna fly.
It really bums me out that the server can only be hosted on a windows machine. My game server is more than capable, but it's fairly dedicated as a Linux box at this point. I'm gonna look into a VM.
There's some content in AC I never saw, might be fun to explore a bit. Looking at it, it'd be trivially easy to lower some of the numbers, and make the boss encounters require less people...
Interest?
Edit: Man, this emulator is a resource hog right now. Probably not gonna fly.
You might want to wait a bit before spinning up your own server for public consumption. A lot of the content on the GDLE "official" servers is hacked together and not part of any package they've put up for download. Once they get through the Throne of Destiny content (currently at 60% done) they'll wrap up that stuff so you can make a server that's got more fleshed-out content.
edit: killed Browerk with a bunch of other folks and an admin leading the charge. Poor mobs were outnumbered at least 5-to-1!
Just FYI to anyone who stopped paying attention to the scene after the Phat servers got taken down, there's a highly functional server that's available to play on right now. Links to everything on the actual youtube page.
Yup. GDLE. I don't know what they are, they seem to have come out of nowhere. I wonder if they're related to the emulator that was C&D'd.
They just (Christmas day) released a content patch that brings the game up to the state where it was at Throne of Destiny launched, which many say was the golden age. They still have a few years of content to re-implement (TOD was 2005, Society revamp was 2008 which IIRC was the last major change to the game) but apparently, well, yeah.
AC is playable again.
Here's a "Misconceptions" FAQ from reddit:
There seems to be a lot of confusion about what is going on in the AC emulation world so I would like to set some things straight.
First, these projects are not official in any way. These projects are for educational purposes and proof-of-concept only. There are player-run servers and you do not have a "right" to access any of them. All of these servers are free to play, and do not require any form of donations or subscription fees. Rules are set per-server and discretion is up to the admins of each server. You can be denied access at any time and for any reason, even if someone just doesn't like you.
Second, there are two different emulator projects, GamesDeadLol Enhanced (GDLE) and AC Emulator (ACE). Both projects are completely open-source, and both are still in constant development, meaning they are NOT finished. This means that things can change at any time, items/gear can (and will) be lost, they could shut down due to lack of interest, server wipes may happen, etc.
There is a third project geared to pre-ToD era content, requiring a custom client and .dat files, called Classic Dereth.
Thwarg-Launcher comes out of the box with 7 default servers:
Reefcull - A PvE GDLE server with the goal of end-of-retail emulation.
Hightide - A PvP GDLE server with the goal of end-of-retail emulation.
GDLE Test Server - A test environment for the Reefcull and Hightide servers with the latest features.
Fizzle Classic - A PvE Classic Dereth server, requiring custom classic .dat and client.
Seedsow - A PvE Classic Dereth server, requiring custom classic .dat and client.
Snowreap - A PvP Classic Dereth server requiring custom classic .dat and client.
GamesDeadArena - A PvP Arena server that is completely custom that starts everyone off at the same level, with the same skills and gear, with only a PK arena and a starter area. There's no gear, no mobs, no leveling, just pure PvP.
There are currently no publicly hosted ACE servers.
Links to the Discord (basically a big chat room with rules, setup instructions, and more, specific to each server) for any of these can be accessed at any time through the launcher by clicking the blue Discord icon next to the server name in Advanced View.
Third, you don't have to play on the default servers and you can make whatever kind of server you want. You can play by yourself or you can run a server just for you and your friends. These emulators do not require an insane PC to run. You can run them on just about any PC built in the past 10 years, easily. You can probably run a server for you and your 10 closest friends with that old laptop you have sitting in your closet and a 10/10 mbps connection. You can add any server you want to Thwarg-Launcher!
Content (meaning npcs, quests, mobs, items, xp rewards, etc. NOT skills and server features) is independent of any server, and exists in a (mostly) emulator-agnostic project, called Lifestoned and is only current through the ToD expansion, which was released in July 2005.
I see a lot of posts about how people would love a "pre-DM server" or a "126 cap server" or a "server without houses" and all sorts of other suggestions that are already possible in the current emulation sphere.
Lifestoned can be used to create your own custom content. Changes will exist only in your own sandbox environment without fear of leaking into the main repo unless they are submitted for review. Only end-of-retail changes will be accepted into the main repo. All custom content will be rejected.
Do you want a server that starts on the Vesayen Isles, and you can never leave? Do it. Do you want a server that disables all housing? Do it. Do you want a server that doesn't have rares but has everything else? Do it.
Dereth is your oyster and you can custom-mold your own experience with just a bit of work. Look at the GamesDeadArena, which is something a lot of people have wanted for a long time and serves as a no-risk, level playing field, PvP server for bragging rights and was made by one person.
Reefcull will NEVER be a level 126 capped server. Hightide will NEVER be a pre-ToD server. GamesDeadArena will NEVER be a PvE server. The goals of these servers are all listed in their descriptions in the launcher. They are what they are, and if you want to make your own and spread the word to get people to play on your server, you are more than welcome to do so. Just start your server, tailor the settings and content to your own desire, and start telling people about it.
Lastly, while you CAN set IP limits on your own server, or make all accounts manually to limit connections, you cannot stop Decal or Macros. It is impossible to do so, and even with a team of people enforcing the rules 24/7 by doing "UCM checks", you will still have people using them. Decal has been a part of the game for 15 years. Good luck with that.
So yeah. There's a server agnostic content databse called Lifestoned that has all the content up to ToD. Sounds like other than that, it's pretty feature complete.
Is anyone here even half serious about maintaining a server?
I'll do so if the GDLE / Lifestoned projects get to end of retail. There's a reddit server that's running on a free Amazon Cloud host (apparently) so running one is apparently pretty darned cheap. (Again, WB screwing over the fandom hits home -- if they can do this on a AWS T2 Micro Free instance, then running one of the retail sized servers would have been a few bucks a month at most.)
As it stands apparently there's a fairly good, active one on Twarg-Launcher -- Reefcull, which hopes to imitate end-of-retail (so Jan 2017) AC -- so it wouldn't do much good to fragment the community as it stands.
I am concerned that there are C&D's coming, however.
KiTA on
0
ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
Mostly just the "items for friends" style stuff. But I've read cases where people try to call out the admins for supplying rares/majors/epics to people and getting their characters deleted.
There's also quite a few reports of people just randomly dying while in a preferred hunting spot.
I think that's Reefcull. You can get a live view of all players, what landblocks are loaded, and where certain monsters have spawned (or maybe just where data packets showed them as having spawned during retail?)
I'd be interested in trying to build a levelless server. AC is at its best when you're powerful enough to just roam around, because there are tons of things will check you, even at max xp and max gear.
So looking a bit into the Lifestoned / GDLE stuff, reading in their website and talking on the Reefcull discord, it's interesting what they're doing.
You know how AC had monthly content updates? Updates that made small iterative changes to the world, with big sweeping changes being significantly rarer? And how they had a website that detailed those on Turbine's side, and sites like TheJackCat and AC Wiki that did detailed, near autistic-level writeups for every single tiny change?
That's how they're re-implementing the game. For example the latest big release was the Throne of Destiny patch, which they implemented by starting with the original launch game and implementing each change listed on the various sites, one at at time, in order, until they hit ToD.
There are some changes they had to do out of band, due to the client version being stuck at end-of-retail -- for example, about halfway through the game's life they re-balanced melee changing it from being weapon type focus (sword / spear / mace / dagger / etc) to weapon class focused (heavy / light / finesse). At that time the original game went through and re-did all the quest weapons to be heavy/light/finesse, and then still later re-balanced those because almost everything was a "light" weapon other than weapons that were originally swords. The skill changes et all were implemented in the client itself so they had to hit them earlier than they "should" have.
I always liked the last melee skill changes, it's nice they were finally able to make that template more varied and enjoyable. Kind of a reverse SWG thing.
I like ACE's structure better, plus it looks infinitely easier to set up on linux. The content gulf is not something I'm sure I want to deal with. Might want until at least TOD is all up and polished a bit.
My main was a 3 school melee, but man, by end of retail melee couldn't keep up. If they ever brought it back officially I'd go Void Summoner or Summoner Archer.
It's interesting that the GLDE guys suggest dual field for "tanky melee" in lieu of 2 handed for high dps melee. I'm wondering if the Shield skill isn't implemented, or if I vastly overestimated how good Shields were.
By 250+ you could get your melee D to a point where you evaded so many hits, your shield wasn't actually doing much work. I always played shield melee, because I enjoyed the indestructible tank character in AC. For a very long time melee was so far behind mages and archers it was comical. Took so much gear and bullshit to get on the same level.
I didn't play at the very end, so I don't know how bad it got. I stopped right around the time summoning went in.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
I got tired of the rerolling bullshit pretty early on. I did it once to add Item to my bow user, and then tried again to set up my sword guy with three school but gave up and went back to the item only build. It was still fun, I was never going to compete on the high end and I was ok with that.
It took me a long time to be able to run melee on the ground in places like GY or DI, and do Aerbax.
The gear requirement was ridiculous.
0
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
You don't know true pain unless you played melee on Darktide while Godmode was around.
Single players could take on 10+ people and not die. Since it wasn't even easy to do, it actually demanded some respect. Though not the stats they had only because of exp chains.
I never played the game when there was this melee revamp. I played UA and then an Axer. UA was always viable in PVP because the Hollow UA weapon could hit so hard due to the bonus damage UA got from skill. Also having the fastest swing animation allowed them to stick to anything but the best jump spinners.
They opened a new server today. HarvestBud, with a 3 concurrent connection limit. Apparently Reefcull had people botting entire fellowships at a time in popular leveling areas.
Edit: So this is amusing:
That's my original AC character, Daija. My first MMORPG character. I've been going through and recreating him on the two servers to at least reserve the name and... the hairstyle there? It's not available.
When the game launched it had 4 hairstyles -- That European type one, a simple ponytail, bald, and a very short hairstyle with bangs.
When ToD launched, there were 3 more added -- a shorter version of the European one, a spiky anime hair style, and one with poofy bangs.
In updates throughout 2010 and 2011 they added a Barber system, as well as re-did the hair system a few times. When they re-did the hair system in 2011 they made the original hairstyles unavailable, with the idea that you were supposed to use the Barber to pick a new hairstyle. But I don't think I ever did. So Daija, since he was a launch character and never changed his hairstyle, he might have been downright unique as far as AC characters go. At the very least, he can't be remade, heh.
A few misc changes. Incremental stuff. They're prepping for the first post-TOD content update.
So when the game ended, I was so certain that it was coming back that I made a reddit thread talking about Tier 8 Melee. I was convinced they would do the right thing and the game would have been up again in a few weeks, and I wanted to know how I should fix my main character.
2 years later, and my hope has shifted to "Gosh, I hope the emulator gets to end of retail before they get destroyed by WB lawyers... this time."
I recently made a new thread asking much the same thing. Just how would you make a Melee character survive in the endgame content, where stuff was dominated by a Mage or Archer (with Archers being FAR beyond Mages).
Well.
GLDE has a one sentence newbie guide that suggests:
High Damage Melee: Two Handed Combat, train MeleeD/Healing/Item/ManaC.
Tank Melee: Heavy or Finesse and Dual Wield, train MeleeD / Healing / Item / ManaC
Which goes against what I had always heard -- namely, that Shield was basically mandatory. It's only early ToD -- so the Shield buffs that came late in the game were probably not in. The Shield skill itself wasn't brought in until Feb 2012, 7 years after Throne of Destiny, so... is it just a matter of the oddities with GDLE being "ToD, with the Masters of Arms weapon changes" (due to the client having that stuff hard coded in)?
Well, some discussion later...
Heavy vs 2Handed vs Light vs Finesse
Heavy, 2Handed, and Light have the same issue -- they all require Strength. This spreads your innate stats across 3 stats -- Str/Coord/Quick. Compare to Finesse, which spreads it across two (Coord/Quick). Therefore, despite Finesse doing less damage than the others, it's actually the stronger skill, because you can lower your innate Strength in lieu of increasing End/Focus/Self, which will allow you to increase your Focus instead, which will give you significantly higher magic and summoning abilities.
Light is the worst in the game, because it has all the problems of Heavy, but lacks the damage. The skill point discount isn't worth it. 2Handed is good, but lacks defense. It's good for farming, vs finesse's high end PVE. Heavy does the huge damage with good defense, making it the PVP skill.
Shield, Dual Wield
Dual Wield is good while leveling, due to extra damage. The importance of defense being absolute balls to the wall maxed out doesn't come up until tier 7 / tier 8 zones. But Shield -- Spec Shield, specifically -- is important for the 25% mage reduction shields when the enemies start chain casting the Level 7/8 war spells. This is basically mandatory in highest end content. Getting there, well, that's most of the game, where Dual Wield is good.
Dual Wield weapon defenses do not stack, apparently. The left weapon provides the MeleeD mod, the right weapon provides to Attack (to hit) mod.
2Handed can't use either, but makes up for it by having the highest DPS out of the melee skills AND is an AOE melee ability -- each attack cleaves.
The Builds
Shaydryn on Reddit suggested two builds, with the caveat that almost no one single boxed at the highest end content. Having a pocket, VTank controlled, mage or archer or whatnot was kinda expected.
Version 1 is "probably better for overall solo play," with Version 2 allows you to cast Life Debuffs on the enemies, meaning you can multiply your damage output.
So, yeah. I have a new plan for my main character.
If the retail game had survived, I was going to use the newgame+ mode thing they implemented in the last few patchesfinal patch of the game (Enlightenment) to drag him through the various specs -- Mage, Archer, Void Mage, back to Melee -- in order.
KiTA on
+2
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
That is odd, because even way back in the day when you didn't have so many options, dagger and melee D magic D was the de facto defensive build for all those reasons. Especially in pvp, where it made you a pain for both melee and casters instead of just one or the other.
Shields never really did enough honestly. Especially when the way the math worked, it was so easy to become near unhittable with the defensive skills. Also because of how armor worked and you could reduce the shit out of damage with item magic buffs (either casted on on the equipment)
0
ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
Also because Dagger was cheap, skill points wise. You could really spread out the rest of your skill points and specialize things.
I played a dagger during the triple strike bandit hilt era.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
I remember finding out Gertarh was going to get killed off a few days before the patch. I bought three packs of daggers from him and sold them for a killing.
I remember finding out Gertarh was going to get killed off a few days before the patch. I bought three packs of daggers from him and sold them for a killing.
Dito. I think I paid for my entire AC time with those daggers.
Some things are still fairly buggy, and a TON of the admin commands are just placeholders.
I also really question the design logic here for ACE. All things in the world must exist in the mySQL database. But it's not a trivial task to add something, you have to create the weenie, then go to several different tables and apply attributes to the weenie. So to make an NPC, you have to touch 5 or 6 different databases, memorizing ints the entire way.
Meanwhile, GDLE uses a mysql db to hold the world items, but also supports loose json files. Meaning you can create a custom item or world object in a discrete file, reload your world, and have it available. It's much easier to generate content this way, and way less of a headache to troubleshoot.
I think ACE made a major misstep in not supporting loose files. It stymies the ability to create custom content until someone creates a tool to easily interface with the databases in an AC friendly way. I know my way around mysql, but the current setup certainly doesn't seem fun to code in. It's easy to go in any change existing things, lowering hp values, increasing damage values, etc. Changing the numbers isn't hard, adding new ones just doesn't seem fun. Lifestoned, a great tool for creating AC content, outputs json files that are then getting added to the databases used by these pieces of software. I've tried asking around, but a lot of the community seems kind of put out if you weren't contributing from the beginning.
Edit: All that aside, I did have a blast running around looking at my old haunts. Content is only up to ToD, so there's still a ton missing, but I'm probably gonna toodle around in a private world for a bit. AC was always a fairly solo game for me. I never played with all the huge melee combat changes, so it might be fun to start a dude at 50 and kill stuff/pick up things.
Anon the Felon on
+1
ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
That's pretty much all I want to do. Go in, get the Sword of Lost Light, maybe the Silfi of Crimson Stars, run around the archipelago for a while. Even climb the TouTou lighthouse. Just revisit the old haunts.
That's pretty much all I want to do. Go in, get the Sword of Lost Light, maybe the Silfi of Crimson Stars, run around the archipelago for a while. Even climb the TouTou lighthouse. Just revisit the old haunts.
So for me, I really wanted to come over the ridge and see Fort Teth. I plan to hunt around the dires overland a bit just for funsies because it's so funsies.
Turned in a paper today for a class where I wrote about Asheron's Call and how the allegiance system was unique compared to typical guild structures. Made me realize how much I miss the game, and also how much older I am than other students here who probably have never even heard of the game.
So I'm setting up bots and stuff, and trying to figure out where I should have bots tied to, which lead me to hunting down the top tier loot drops based on the content that's in. Hilariously, VoD is the high drop area right now. Most of the dungeons that drop 7/8 aren't in, and neither are the mobs, but VoD is spawned up to 220, which is t7.
Color me happy, this is my second favorite era of AC hunting (Dark Isle being the best).
Edit: whoa, so I had a major bug in my installation, and didn't find out until recently. I've redone everything and now we're firing on all cylinders. Lots of little bugs suddenly vanished, I've kind of redoubled my interest. Started messing with the db and unlocked mansions for regular sale (no more rank req), increased XP rates, etc.
Edit2: Is there any interest? I could harden my VPN and let a few people on to play. I plan to have a 24/7 buff and portal bot up, and I'll probably keep the world DB up to date with limited downtime.
Anon the Felon on
0
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Having never played AC1 or 2 I found this incredibly fascinating.
I was an EQ guy at the time, but I am now a bit saddened I never got the chance to check it out.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
0
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
You should be sad. Asheron's Call was so much a better game than EQ and I still think it was a shame that MMOs as a whole went in EQs direction instead of ACs.
In case anyone was waiting for void magic and/or summoning to be usable on the new servers... void magic and/or summoning can be used on the new servers now (have been since late July, actually). Pets continue to be the game-breaking murder machines they were in retail.
Posts
No. That's no fun.
I'll probably play for a while, do the Sword of Lost Light quest line, and leave again for a few years.
There's some content in AC I never saw, might be fun to explore a bit. Looking at it, it'd be trivially easy to lower some of the numbers, and make the boss encounters require less people...
Interest?
Edit: Man, this emulator is a resource hog right now. Probably not gonna fly.
You might want to wait a bit before spinning up your own server for public consumption. A lot of the content on the GDLE "official" servers is hacked together and not part of any package they've put up for download. Once they get through the Throne of Destiny content (currently at 60% done) they'll wrap up that stuff so you can make a server that's got more fleshed-out content.
edit: killed Browerk with a bunch of other folks and an admin leading the charge. Poor mobs were outnumbered at least 5-to-1!
Yup. GDLE. I don't know what they are, they seem to have come out of nowhere. I wonder if they're related to the emulator that was C&D'd.
They just (Christmas day) released a content patch that brings the game up to the state where it was at Throne of Destiny launched, which many say was the golden age. They still have a few years of content to re-implement (TOD was 2005, Society revamp was 2008 which IIRC was the last major change to the game) but apparently, well, yeah.
AC is playable again.
Here's a "Misconceptions" FAQ from reddit:
So yeah. There's a server agnostic content databse called Lifestoned that has all the content up to ToD. Sounds like other than that, it's pretty feature complete.
I'll do so if the GDLE / Lifestoned projects get to end of retail. There's a reddit server that's running on a free Amazon Cloud host (apparently) so running one is apparently pretty darned cheap. (Again, WB screwing over the fandom hits home -- if they can do this on a AWS T2 Micro Free instance, then running one of the retail sized servers would have been a few bucks a month at most.)
As it stands apparently there's a fairly good, active one on Twarg-Launcher -- Reefcull, which hopes to imitate end-of-retail (so Jan 2017) AC -- so it wouldn't do much good to fragment the community as it stands.
I am concerned that there are C&D's coming, however.
That's unfortunate to hear. What kind of abuse?
There's also quite a few reports of people just randomly dying while in a preferred hunting spot.
http://www.thwargle.com/derethMaps/derethMaps.html
I think that's Reefcull. You can get a live view of all players, what landblocks are loaded, and where certain monsters have spawned (or maybe just where data packets showed them as having spawned during retail?)
You know how AC had monthly content updates? Updates that made small iterative changes to the world, with big sweeping changes being significantly rarer? And how they had a website that detailed those on Turbine's side, and sites like TheJackCat and AC Wiki that did detailed, near autistic-level writeups for every single tiny change?
That's how they're re-implementing the game. For example the latest big release was the Throne of Destiny patch, which they implemented by starting with the original launch game and implementing each change listed on the various sites, one at at time, in order, until they hit ToD.
There are some changes they had to do out of band, due to the client version being stuck at end-of-retail -- for example, about halfway through the game's life they re-balanced melee changing it from being weapon type focus (sword / spear / mace / dagger / etc) to weapon class focused (heavy / light / finesse). At that time the original game went through and re-did all the quest weapons to be heavy/light/finesse, and then still later re-balanced those because almost everything was a "light" weapon other than weapons that were originally swords. The skill changes et all were implemented in the client itself so they had to hit them earlier than they "should" have.
I like ACE's structure better, plus it looks infinitely easier to set up on linux. The content gulf is not something I'm sure I want to deal with. Might want until at least TOD is all up and polished a bit.
This build, probably: http://acpedia.org/wiki/Summoning_Archer
Or this build: http://acpedia.org/wiki/Tugaker_Mage
It's interesting that the GLDE guys suggest dual field for "tanky melee" in lieu of 2 handed for high dps melee. I'm wondering if the Shield skill isn't implemented, or if I vastly overestimated how good Shields were.
https://treestats.net/Harvestgain/Daija
I didn't play at the very end, so I don't know how bad it got. I stopped right around the time summoning went in.
The gear requirement was ridiculous.
Single players could take on 10+ people and not die. Since it wasn't even easy to do, it actually demanded some respect. Though not the stats they had only because of exp chains.
I never played the game when there was this melee revamp. I played UA and then an Axer. UA was always viable in PVP because the Hollow UA weapon could hit so hard due to the bonus damage UA got from skill. Also having the fastest swing animation allowed them to stick to anything but the best jump spinners.
Edit: So this is amusing:
That's my original AC character, Daija. My first MMORPG character. I've been going through and recreating him on the two servers to at least reserve the name and... the hairstyle there? It's not available.
When the game launched it had 4 hairstyles -- That European type one, a simple ponytail, bald, and a very short hairstyle with bangs.
When ToD launched, there were 3 more added -- a shorter version of the European one, a spiky anime hair style, and one with poofy bangs.
In updates throughout 2010 and 2011 they added a Barber system, as well as re-did the hair system a few times. When they re-did the hair system in 2011 they made the original hairstyles unavailable, with the idea that you were supposed to use the Barber to pick a new hairstyle. But I don't think I ever did. So Daija, since he was a launch character and never changed his hairstyle, he might have been downright unique as far as AC characters go. At the very least, he can't be remade, heh.
A few misc changes. Incremental stuff. They're prepping for the first post-TOD content update.
So when the game ended, I was so certain that it was coming back that I made a reddit thread talking about Tier 8 Melee. I was convinced they would do the right thing and the game would have been up again in a few weeks, and I wanted to know how I should fix my main character.
2 years later, and my hope has shifted to "Gosh, I hope the emulator gets to end of retail before they get destroyed by WB lawyers... this time."
I recently made a new thread asking much the same thing. Just how would you make a Melee character survive in the endgame content, where stuff was dominated by a Mage or Archer (with Archers being FAR beyond Mages).
Well.
GLDE has a one sentence newbie guide that suggests:
High Damage Melee: Two Handed Combat, train MeleeD/Healing/Item/ManaC.
Tank Melee: Heavy or Finesse and Dual Wield, train MeleeD / Healing / Item / ManaC
Which goes against what I had always heard -- namely, that Shield was basically mandatory. It's only early ToD -- so the Shield buffs that came late in the game were probably not in. The Shield skill itself wasn't brought in until Feb 2012, 7 years after Throne of Destiny, so... is it just a matter of the oddities with GDLE being "ToD, with the Masters of Arms weapon changes" (due to the client having that stuff hard coded in)?
Well, some discussion later...
Heavy vs 2Handed vs Light vs Finesse
Heavy, 2Handed, and Light have the same issue -- they all require Strength. This spreads your innate stats across 3 stats -- Str/Coord/Quick. Compare to Finesse, which spreads it across two (Coord/Quick). Therefore, despite Finesse doing less damage than the others, it's actually the stronger skill, because you can lower your innate Strength in lieu of increasing End/Focus/Self, which will allow you to increase your Focus instead, which will give you significantly higher magic and summoning abilities.
Light is the worst in the game, because it has all the problems of Heavy, but lacks the damage. The skill point discount isn't worth it. 2Handed is good, but lacks defense. It's good for farming, vs finesse's high end PVE. Heavy does the huge damage with good defense, making it the PVP skill.
Shield, Dual Wield
Dual Wield is good while leveling, due to extra damage. The importance of defense being absolute balls to the wall maxed out doesn't come up until tier 7 / tier 8 zones. But Shield -- Spec Shield, specifically -- is important for the 25% mage reduction shields when the enemies start chain casting the Level 7/8 war spells. This is basically mandatory in highest end content. Getting there, well, that's most of the game, where Dual Wield is good.
Dual Wield weapon defenses do not stack, apparently. The left weapon provides the MeleeD mod, the right weapon provides to Attack (to hit) mod.
2Handed can't use either, but makes up for it by having the highest DPS out of the melee skills AND is an AOE melee ability -- each attack cleaves.
The Builds
Shaydryn on Reddit suggested two builds, with the caveat that almost no one single boxed at the highest end content. Having a pocket, VTank controlled, mage or archer or whatnot was kinda expected.
Version 1:
10 Strength / 100 Endurance / 100 Coordination / 100 Quickness / 10 Focus / 60 Self (Augmented from 10)
SPEC Finesse, Magic Defense, Melee Defense, Shield, Summoning
TRAIN Item/Life/Creature, Healing, ManaC
Version 2:
10 Strength /10 Endurance/ 100 Coordination / 100 Quickness / 100 Focus / 60 Self (Augmented from 10)
SPEC Finesse, Life, Magic Defense, Melee Defense, Shield
TRAIN Item/Creature, Healing, ManaC, Summoning
Version 1 is "probably better for overall solo play," with Version 2 allows you to cast Life Debuffs on the enemies, meaning you can multiply your damage output.
So, yeah. I have a new plan for my main character.
If the retail game had survived, I was going to use the newgame+ mode thing they implemented in the last few patches final patch of the game (Enlightenment) to drag him through the various specs -- Mage, Archer, Void Mage, back to Melee -- in order.
Shields never really did enough honestly. Especially when the way the math worked, it was so easy to become near unhittable with the defensive skills. Also because of how armor worked and you could reduce the shit out of damage with item magic buffs (either casted on on the equipment)
Dito. I think I paid for my entire AC time with those daggers.
Even just porting into the academy was a huge nostalgia bomb. My head's already running through a few pieces of custom content I'd like to create.
I also really question the design logic here for ACE. All things in the world must exist in the mySQL database. But it's not a trivial task to add something, you have to create the weenie, then go to several different tables and apply attributes to the weenie. So to make an NPC, you have to touch 5 or 6 different databases, memorizing ints the entire way.
Meanwhile, GDLE uses a mysql db to hold the world items, but also supports loose json files. Meaning you can create a custom item or world object in a discrete file, reload your world, and have it available. It's much easier to generate content this way, and way less of a headache to troubleshoot.
I think ACE made a major misstep in not supporting loose files. It stymies the ability to create custom content until someone creates a tool to easily interface with the databases in an AC friendly way. I know my way around mysql, but the current setup certainly doesn't seem fun to code in. It's easy to go in any change existing things, lowering hp values, increasing damage values, etc. Changing the numbers isn't hard, adding new ones just doesn't seem fun. Lifestoned, a great tool for creating AC content, outputs json files that are then getting added to the databases used by these pieces of software. I've tried asking around, but a lot of the community seems kind of put out if you weren't contributing from the beginning.
Edit: All that aside, I did have a blast running around looking at my old haunts. Content is only up to ToD, so there's still a ton missing, but I'm probably gonna toodle around in a private world for a bit. AC was always a fairly solo game for me. I never played with all the huge melee combat changes, so it might be fun to start a dude at 50 and kill stuff/pick up things.
So for me, I really wanted to come over the ridge and see Fort Teth. I plan to hunt around the dires overland a bit just for funsies because it's so funsies.
But... Uh, the thing about Tou-Tou...
Color me happy, this is my second favorite era of AC hunting (Dark Isle being the best).
Edit: whoa, so I had a major bug in my installation, and didn't find out until recently. I've redone everything and now we're firing on all cylinders. Lots of little bugs suddenly vanished, I've kind of redoubled my interest. Started messing with the db and unlocked mansions for regular sale (no more rank req), increased XP rates, etc.
Edit2: Is there any interest? I could harden my VPN and let a few people on to play. I plan to have a 24/7 buff and portal bot up, and I'll probably keep the world DB up to date with limited downtime.
Having never played AC1 or 2 I found this incredibly fascinating.
I was an EQ guy at the time, but I am now a bit saddened I never got the chance to check it out.
Oddly enough in that same video he even says later on that EQ came before AC.
I think it's easy water to muddy, since AC was such a sleeper in general while EQ was so loud.