In the last edition of Four Winds, I covered the opening hours of my journey through Throne and Liberty. Overall, the tutorial island did a good job at introducing me to all the basics of character movement and the game’s unique approach to a class system.
But of course, the tutorial was barely even a scratch on the surface of this game. As my character arrived in beautiful Kastleton, I knew that there was a lot of stuff to learn, but I was excited to dive into every single mechanics detail that this game offered. My goal was to have fun and to really understand the systems after all. So even though I’m already capped, I took this game much slower than I usually would in other MMOs – and I’m glad I did. My time with the first 20 levels was a rich learning experience filled with wolves, player events, and spooky dungeons.
Arriving in Kastleton
As I arrived on the dock, so did the other players, of course. I played on launch day, and it was packed. I loved seeing all the players running around, warping in and out of town and going about their business.
But as eager as I was to leave town and just go full on murderhobo up in this beezy, I needed to show some restraint and actually do the main quest to unlock the features and level up. I’m here for the mechanics, so I really love how I could just skip story so easily in this game. As soon as I talked to a story NPC, I was able to just blaze through dialogue because of how responsive the story skip button was. I never knew how much I needed a super responsive skip button, but it made a difference – just as fast as I could press the escape key.
But don’t worry; a voiceover summarizes what the storybeat I just skipped was about, so that even folks who ignore the story will have at least some idea of what’s going on. The way this game tells its story makes sense for an MMO, and it never felt like I had to interact with the story. It should honestly be in every MMO.
Anyroads, back to the game. For me, even though I tried to take things slowly, the first 26 levels still went by fast. The main story quest gave a ton of experience, and if I treated it as I treat my usual MMOs, I would’ve probably been able to get to level 50 in like maybe 10 hours of gameplay. I did hear from players that it’s possible to get to 50 in four hours! So, just know that even if you try to go slowly, it’s a quick leveling process.
For the first leg of my leveling journey, I opted to go with the Spellblade, which wields a wand and daggers. I thought it was a pretty cool combination; I admit I chose it for the flavor. It’s a fast playstyle, and the wand provided some damage-over-time spells and heals. It’s a weird combo to say the least, but that’s why I went for it. I wanted to play weird!
Going through the main story, I eventually found myself outside of town and in familiar biomes for early game, farmlands, beaches, and grassy plains. Each area provided some interesting sights and sounds, but it wasn’t until I reached the Blackhowl Plains did I tumble into the first major system of Throne and Liberty.
My first bite on the events
There’s nothing too special about questing, but as I arrived in the Blackhowl Plains, I was introduced to one of the main systems of the game: events. Guild Wars 2 players will be familiar with this since they’re mechanically similar. At specified times, a 20-minute event will start. For many new players, it’ll be one where players will need to turn in as many wolf pelts as possible. Obviously, this is an MMO, so that involves killing wolves. While it’s a PvE-focused event, there’s a competitive aspect to it: The top three players are rewarded with special mounts, items, and bragging rights.
These events come in different flavors too: Some are PvE-focused, others are PvP focused, and they usually have some form of progression linked to them. The game provides a schedule for when the events start, so players will know when certain events happen ahead of time. Events will stay relevant throughout the leveling journey and endgame, so depending on a player’s goals, these events will stay a normal part of day-to-day gameplay.
After my initial playthrough of that event, I moved on. I really wanted to get through the story relatively quickly to get to dungeon content. And finally, after working through the story and zones, I was introduced to my favorite activity: abyss dungeons, the game’s equivalent to open-world dungeons.
On the precipice of the abyss
I wasn’t an MMO player back in the days when open world dungeons were a common thing. I remember living vicariously through others when I read about their experiences in EverQuest’s open-world dungeons and the god-killing escapades of Final Fantasy XIÂ players. By the time I jumped into the MMO scene in 2004, MMOs were transitioning away from that type of content in favor of instanced dungeons.
So when I found myself standing before the massive gates of a dungeon filled with undead, I was pleasantly surprised and a little confused:Â “Wait… is this dungeon an open-world dungeon?”
In my initial foray into the dungeon’s first floor, I found level 20 monsters. I had just hit level 20 when I found out about this dungeon, so I was just about there in terms of my level. Unsurprisingly, the monsters were tough for a level 20 dagger/wand wielder. I fought through a few of the rooms, but eventually I had to beat a hasty retreat because it wasn’t exactly a viable way to level through the dungeon, and I didn’t have the dungeon currency to make it a worthwhile activity. Not then, anyway.
Much like the events, the abyss dungeons will stay relevant into endgame, and during my leveling many of these abyss dungeons were mainly there to introduce the system to players. Through them, I learned about how abyss tokens work, the aforementioned dungeon currency. Think of them as a “soft lock” on the dungeons. Players won’t be barred from entering the dungeon and killing mobs if they do not have abyss tokens, but having tokens will increase the gold, EXP, and loot quality dramatically.
A certain number of tokens are consumed with each monster kill, and then players gain the currency from doing events, running instanced dungeons, and doing daily quests. At level 50, players can hold a maximum of 20,000 tokens, so you can hoard them a bit. I found that in endgame, this roughly translates to about an hour of killing mobs inside one of these dungeons. These add up pretty quickly too.
The abyss dungeons are meant to be tackled with a team. During my early leveling in these dungeons, I determined that a duo is fine, but when players tackle the tougher ones, a full team with a tank and a healer are best so that parties can pull a whole room and nuke them down just as in the olden days.
Knowing my role
At around level 20, I started noticing my build was lagging. Battles were taking longer to resolve, and I just felt as if I was underperforming. I needed to start upgrading my gear, but that also meant I needed to start using my materials. I had to make a decision: should I stick with my purposefully odd choice of a dagger/wand, or should I choose to become a tank or healer?
Ultimately, I decided to make that swap and chose to become a wand/staff, the best healer combination. But why? Was it because I felt that I wanted to trade fun for efficiency? Was it because I wanted to get into parties faster?
Actually, it was neither. The $20 outfit I bought from the store the zeptosecond it unlocked for me looked like it would best fit a healer. So, I went healer! Join me next time as I explore the intricacies of gear upgrades and weapon masteries!
The four wind tiles in Mahjong open all sorts of winning combinations for players of this ancient game – and the “Asian” MMO subgenre is just as varied as the many rulesets in Mahjong. Join Massively OP’s Carlo Lacsina here in our Four Winds column as he covers the diverse assembly of MMOs imported from the East!
