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Answers for the Forsaken World Searches – II

With my characters at level 44, I thought it was time to follow up on my previous post on the issue and answer some more of the questions people who end up here after searching for information about Forsaken World seem to have, judging from the keywords used. Then again, it’s also time to do it because yesterday was the first time I seriously weighed the frustration the game causes against how sorry I’d feel for all the work so far if I’d quit. The frustration lost, but just barely, so don’t think it’ll be long now. Then again, this moment came after about three weeks back when I played Perfect World International, but it was three or four more weeks until I actually quit, and since it only came after about seven weeks now, who knows how long it will really be… But the rule remains that me and MMO games really don’t get along, so the end result is inevitable and I knew that all too well even before deciding to start playing.

By far the most common questions are about the locations of elite monsters, for gem shards, the Fleet of Myth merchants and gearing up in general. Out of those, I think I need to say a little about the first, since I didn’t cover it in the previous post: If you want the exact locations of elites, go look on some sites dedicated to the game, such as those I linked to in the previous post or some of the better guild sites, but I quite frankly don’t see why you’d need them. Elites are always in an area where other monsters of the same type also are, usually in a spot that can be indentified in some way, such as next to a landmark or somewhat more unusual object or in a cul-de-sac, they’re slightly bigger, aggressive and don’t wander around. And each of them seems to have just two possible spawn spots on the first maps, though I’m finding more starting from Lunagrant Woodland, and the spots are usually close to each other. It’s really not hard to find them, and you generally only need to know of one or two to get what you need anyway.
As for the other two common issues, all I can think to add to my previous post is that there are some other Fleet of Myth merchants on top of the “main” ones, those I noticed so far being one that wanders on the road in front of Fort Rotulor and one that stands on a pier in the Sea of Oblivion area, on the side with the Water Observatory and very close to an elite spawn spot. The first one sells all of three items, but the second is extremely important to artisans, weaponsmiths and armorsmiths, because he seems to sell pretty much every blue recipe for those professions. Otherwise, though I think I covered gearing up well enough already, I forgot to mention that, as far as I know, off-hand items can only be obtained through crafting, or of course by purchasing them from artisans, as they can’t be bought from any NPC and no monsters or bosses drop them.

The fourth most common question deals with an issue I haven’t bumped into so far. I may be able to answer, but since I’m not perfectly sure I understand I’d rather not, and won’t say what it’s about either so I won’t have even more people coming here for that answer. So let me move on to the fifth, which is another weird one, specifically the location of Charlie’s Tavern. Admittedly, it can be a bit confusing if you look at the map because for some reason it’s listed as Toteu’s Tavern, but you can get a quest the moment you end up in Freedom Harbor to go to the Tavern, so just click the target’s name and get there. But if you want details, it’s on a ship moored in Freedom Quay, next to the Fleet of Myth merchants and Matthew the teleporter. In the previous post I was saying that these NPCs are next to it, assuming everyone knew where the Tavern was, but it seems I was wrong.

Moving on, let me quickly go through the other issues mentioned several times, though noticeably less than the ones listed above…
If the launcher won’t start, open Task Manager and see if you have a process called patcher.exe in there. If it is, end it and try again, as sometimes it simply decides to freeze for no reason. If you keep trying to open it without ending the previous frozen process, it will just keep freezing each and every time until you either go to end all of the frozen instances of patcher.exe or reboot. If you have any other problem that has to do with the game not starting, really, check the forums. There are plenty of topics there about it, some even set to “sticky”, which can offer some solutions. They don’t seem to work for all, but they do appear to work for many. Just know that the game uses an outdated engine and therefore will have issues with new hardware and software, so you may notice worse performance with a new and powerful CPU and video card than with older ones and should expect some odd behavior under Windows 7 or any 64-bit operating system. Some people were saying that the engine the game’s based on is no less than eight years old, so go figure…
About the artisan job, as I said above, it’s very important because, as far as I know, it’s the only way to get off-hand gear into the game. But, like any crafting job, it’s notoriously difficult to level. Unlike weaponsmith and armorsmith, you can level it without actually producing gear, since you can make medals, but it also requires far more job experience to gain a level than those do. For example, if you just want to take it to level 2 by crafting medals, you need to make 125 of them, which means mining or buying exactly 1875 copper!
Another issue had to do with crafting, more or less in general, and yet another with soul gems. Yes, crafting gear is very difficult in this game. Not only do you need a lot of basic materials, but some very rare ones as well every single time you try to craft something. For artisan, you need the rare soul gems or the even rarer soul crystals, depending on whether you want to make green or blue gear, while for weaponsmith and armorsmith you need various items that can only be obtained by scavengers, so you need something to be broken apart in order to make something else. Now don’t ask me where can one obtain soul crystals because the only ones I saw so far were being sold for utterly insane prices, but some monsters can, extremely rarely, drop soul gems, and it also seems that you can earn some if you do the Battle on the Auriana (or Harbor Crisis) event plenty of times. I only got exactly one soul gem so far, after killing a Desert Robber, but there is a forum topic that points out the other options.
Next, there seem to be some questions about the Harbor Guide (or Find the Place) daily quest… Really don’t know what’s there to ask about that. You get the picture and the locator and, if you know where the place in the picture is, you go there and activate the locator. Something like a piece of parchment will appear, slowly spinning in the air, in the exact spot where you should activate it when you do, so if you’re close but not close enough for it to count you’ll be able to see just where you need to stand. Otherwise, if you don’t know where the spot is, you can keep activating the locator and it will tell you in which direction it is, so you can then check the map and try to figure it out better. There aren’t too many spots you can be sent to find, maybe around 12 or so, but it provides some experience and helps you get some footprint cards.
And now come the questions about leveling… Quite frankly, I’ve been having these characters since the open beta launched, made them as soon as the servers were up, and I’m just level 44, so don’t expect any advice on how to level quickly from me. In fact, what you’ll get from me when it comes to that is raised eyebrows and various phrases along the lines of “stop and smell the roses”. But, if you insist, of course the main way to level is God’s Trial. Do that every day, with a Lionheart Scroll active the whole time you’re inside, and you’ll go a long way, at least until level 40 or so. Past that, do your daily quests, look in the quest finder and go through everything with “Experience” as type, starting from those with a starting level closest to yours and working your way down through the rest if you still have time, and then you also have kill orders and, after level 30, the random adventurer quests and adventurer’s guild scrolls. And, since somebody was specifically wondering about leveling a vampire quickly, all I can tell you is that you’ll need a huge amount of drinks and possibly also mana potions, because vampires are outstanding at taking care of themselves and doing a whole lot of things alone, but they do so slowly, burning mana like crazy if you try to do anything quickly.
Lastly, people seem to also be wondering about the merchant job and merchant runs. All the merchant job does is allow you to learn merchant skills, which will allow you to earn more from merchant runs. As for those runs, it seemed to me that the little tutorial received during the first one should be enough for anyone to understand what they need to do, as long as they pay attention. You simply buy an item sold cheaply by one merchant and sell it to another who buys it at a high price, so you need to learn what the best places to buy and sell are and also keep an eye on the price variations, as they can make a difference even if they generally seem minor. You can’t teleport using normal trackstones and can’t use Town Portal while on a merchant run, and I believe you can’t join instances either, so know your way around and keep going from one merchant to the next until you hit the goal listed in the trade tab in your inventory. At that point, head back and talk to Christopher, who’ll see what profit you made, deducting the starting capital he gave you from your funds at the end. The reward consists of soul coins, merchant job experience and Mercury reputation and depends strictly on the profit you made, not being fixed per run or anything else along those lines. Keep in mind that you can store somewhat more than the goal, but can’t keep buying after you meet the goal, so if you want to truly make the most of it, try to complete one trade when you’re just short of the goal, being able to do another in order to take yourself to the maximum possible profit and therefore the maximum possible rewards.

Meant to go through some of those that were mentioned less too, but this is far too long already so I’ll continue some other time perhaps.

1 Comments

  1. Xtincshn says:

    re: merchant run

    before lvl 40 at least, if you max your profit (12,000 on first run, 26,000 on second run) you will always get [1 gold] and [2 gold 45] silver respectively. Combine this with the first 10 free life quests and you make about 5 soul gold/day (plus whatever comes from other quests).

    This is useful to know specifically after level 30 as it means you get enough soul gold to buy a mount, just doing these quests, in 6 days (less, of course, when adding in Sea of Oblivion quests you’ll start doing). Coincidentally, that corresponds to the life-span of the free starter mount! So, typically, I save my mount quest until I’m level 30 (the 20s level so fast with the 3x xp anyway), so I have it for my early merchant runs.

    Of course, I’m an alt-aholic with one toon for every class and 5 at lvl 30+ and been playing about 3 weeks, so your priorities and play style may vary from mine.

    September 1, 2011 @ 6:14 PM

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