Choose My Adventure: The steady yet simple walk through AdventureQuest 3D’s zones

I’m going to be honest: I’m having a surprising time figuring out how I feel about my time in AdventureQuest 3D right now. I will confirm that I’m not hating the time I spend in the game, which is good to report, but I also am not entirely sure that I’m having a great deal of fun either.

I still have more time to consider how I feel about my adventuring in the game and how it’s all come across to me before we close out this shared little romp, but right now I suppose that what I’ve been doing can be summarized as “incredibly inoffensive.” I get that might not exactly come off as particularly effusive, but I actually don’t mind it, honestly! And I think that has a lot to do with timing.

See, recently I’ve been feeling rather worn down on a physical level. I’m not ready to say I’m aging out of gaming just yet, but I also have to reconcile the fact that a lot of my physical reaction and ability feels like it’s starting to wane. I still have plenty of fact-action titles that I enjoy and can play reliably, and I do contend that keeping that going has staved off some degradation, but I am also feeling as though most MMORPGs and multiplayer titles are becoming a little too frenetic. And that’s where AQ3D has been coming in.

Case in point: switching classes. The polls closed on a tie between the Necromancer and Oracle, and on a coin flip the Necromancer won out. While this is still in the mage bucket of classes in the game, I was still hoping for this to sort of be different enough without deviating too much from how the base Mage in the game felt to play. And sure enough, that was definitely the case; like other classes in AQ3D, the Necromancer was incredibly rotational, but just enough of a shift that I had to pay attention a little bit.

I was concerned that the Necro was going to be a pure pet class, meaning I was going to have to put up with what I worried was Artix Entertainment’s inability to have particularly good NPC pathing (it’s something I’ve experienced a few times already), but nope! The skeleton I get to summon is effectively just there long enough to add a little bit more DPS to my otherwise typical rotation of two other spells. Combat can effectively be boiled down to pressing 3 and 2 enough to work up resources to summon the skelly with 4 again, but it was pleasantly rhythmic.

I guess where some of my complaints fall is in the hyper-simplicity of the class against some mobs. As I was moving through the Greenwood story line, for example, I elected to face off against a giant word boss that had spawned, hoping that perhaps a few of the other players who were roaming around the area would come in to help. For a long while, I was able to withstand the boss’ attack, though I also didn’t have enough DPS to have any major impact on his HP bar. Luckily, as I expected, a few other folks rushed in to make up the difference. The point being I’m not really sure I should be able to mostly survive against an on-level enemy intended for a group of players.

But I digress. When I did get into some latent group action by helping beat up holiday monsters, taking on that world boss, and whaling on the current frosty fight that’s going on in the game right now, I felt like I was contributing enough damage while also applying some utility with the added debuffs that my rotation provided. Plus I had the ultimate skill that basically let me summon a temporary tank skeleton. As far as what little group play I’ve experienced, the Necromancer has turned out to be a solid choice.

I also appreciate too how the class has made moving through the zone stories I have been through entertaining but low-stress. It did get a little mindless through most of the time I was in adventure zones, but I also was ready for some relaxed MMO gaming as well, and even when I went into a dungeon solo with level scaling engaged, I was able to move through it all without too much difficulty, needing to only drink a couple of potions during the run. It’s not an auto-battler, at least.

Right now, I’m liking things. I guess that’s the best way to describe my feelings right now. AQ3D is likable. It’s charming. It’s got enough MMO gameplay where I’m not totally bored but it also isn’t really pushing my limits, let alone getting too near to them. But sometimes that’s just what an ol’ fuddy-duddy needs.

So with that in mind, it’s time for us to continue on this serene yet simple journey through AQ3D. I’m going to continue following last week’s poll choice of moving through the main story, but I’m at a point where there are a few zone choices that I can make right now, all of which are kind of in the same level spread. And that means it’s poll time.

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Polling will close at 1:00 p.m. EST on Friday, December 19th. In the meantime, I think I’m going to poke at a little more of an active MMO. Y’know, just to try to keep myself sharp. Or sharp-ish.

Welcome to Choose My Adventure, the column in which you join Chris each week as he journeys through mystical lands on fantastic adventures – and you get to decide his fate. Which is good because he can often be a pretty indecisive person unless he’s ordering a burger.