Early Reflections in Forsaken World

Forsaken World is an interesting game. On one hand it's kinda bland and overly simplistic, on the other, exceedingly complex and downright overwhelming. You can create a character, play, and not worry much about the variety of complicated other things (I didn't find the talent tree till I was lvl 18…) and still manage to kill things without dying. It almost seems too easy. Granted, I've only played a toon to level 30, so I'm not sure how much things change at that point regarding ease of playing (or staying alive) as once you hit lvl 30, you are now in open season for pvp (on the pvp servers, of course).

On the other hand, it's very complex. Item stats aren't… simple. At least, not at first glance. There are all kinds of ways of customizing and boosting items to make them stronger and more effective. The pet system is something I'm still trying to figure out. Thankfully, I found this great article here to help me get the grasp of it instead of being overwhelmed by the sheer number of stats and numbers when I mouse over my pet. No, I'm not particularly mathematically inclined >.> And yes, once you know what you are looking at it isn't nearly as intimidating. But until you do…

The weirdest thing to get used to (other than the whole mouse debacle) was the fact that mobs spawn nearly instantly after being killed. It had me rather freaked out at first, as I'm used to other games where once your past the starting zone, everything wants to eat you for dinner. It was strange to be able to stand side by side with the baddies and they didn't even blink an eye in my direction, even though I'd just taken down their friends and former incarnations.

 

There is only one thing that has utterly vexed me thus far in this game. You get your toon to level 20, head out to the new zone (the Sea of Oblivion), and start to pick up quests. As you collect these quests there are some that you are warned against taking. Partly, because there is no "super easy mode" on them, but also in that you need to use two Socialite skills, persuade and intimidate. If you don't have those skills, you most likely won't be able to do (finish) the quests.  How right and proper of them to warn us of trying to do something we could potentially end up wasting our time on.

My advice is this: IF you really want to do these quests before you out level the zone, start in on the daily quests that will level up your Socialite profession immediately when you get it at level 20.

As it happened for me, I didn't get to the Sea of Oblivion until I was already level 24. I did some quests, and then realized it might be fun to do the special quests. I admit that a great part of that comes from my "do every quest in a zone" mentality.  I tend to be completionist. I didn't realize at level 20 (which is when you first get the Socialite profession) how important this new profession would be so had ignored it until then.

I investigated, and found the only way to get my skill up was to do a daily from Rio, or get lucky while doing the "Life in the Harbor" daily quests with wish cards. It took me four days (of only doing these dailies) to get my skill up to Socialite 2, and I leveled three times from 25-28. I was rather disappointed when I realized I still couldn't learn the persuade and intimidate skills until Socialite 3.   >.<  Granted, it becomes easier at that point as you can do another daily, but I still haven't reached it and I'm level 30 (and yes, I have just been doing the daily quests).

 It seems to me it would have been much wiser to allow us to have the Socialite skill either earlier on, or move the persuade and intimidate skills to be obtainable at an earlier level.  Unless the whole point is to learn about it and then go back when you have finally learned them and are a higher level than the zone?