On Monday, we covered the news that Elder Game’s Project Gorgon, still nestled in early access, was finally reaching the “new stage of the game’s development” that justifies an optional VIP subscription. The goal, the studio said, was to offer useful things to subbers – like offline leveling and more inventory – without inching over into pay-to-win territory.
The sub rolled out earlier this week, but there was much more to the patch that’s worth noticing. Players also got a major upgrade for the unarmed skill, a new win-game mail system, optimizations, UI tweaks, adjustments to solo monsters, and the new skills: autodidactism – that’s the one for leveling offline – and non-fiction writing, which is basically the way the skills books are crafted for offline learning in the first place. In fact, non-VIP players can actually make these and sell them to VIPs for actual use, which is a pretty clever way to bridge the two groups.
“As you can imagine, there are many limitations to this skill, and one of them is that VIPs must find the necessary books to hang out with. And where do these textbooks come from? The new Non-Fiction Writing skill! There are new NPCs in Rahu (Hirochi and Wintria) who can help you unlock the skill, provided you have at least level 50 in Calligraphy. Non-Fiction Writing is done via offline hangouts, each of which takes two real-time days. The resulting books can then be used by VIP players who meet the requirements of the book. Each textbook is for a certain skill and a certain level range. To write the book, your level in the book’s skill needs to be 25 higher than the book. In addition, your level in Non-Fiction Writing has to be at least as high as the book’s level. So to write a level 11-20 Sword book, you’d need level 11 in Non-Fiction Writing, and level 36 in Sword.”
EG does note that books can’t go over level 60 right now but will increase to within 25 levels of the caps as they continue increasing.
