The Arcane Transmutor Unleashed

Today I would like to explore the wonders of a nifty little tool called the Arcane Transmutor.  Some people easily overlook this due to the fact that they don't completely understand how it works, and I'll admit that at first I was a little reticent myself.  My first experiments with the Transmutor led to some strange results.  So I decided that I needed to get myself better educated.

Well low and behold, I was able to find two great videos on youtube that did a magnificent job of explaining in a somewhat interactive way how to make better use of this excellent device.  So without further ado, here they are!

I will add to this post a few additional directions of my own that I hope will clarify some of the using of the Transmutor.

Windmill

For those of you who have yet to run into this place beware! It is singlehandedly the most confusing place I've been into. Who would have thought that a Windmill could house such an intricate basement...

For ROM neophytes the Windmill is basically the first big instance in the game. Oh sure you have a few small instances you have to run into to satisfy certain quest requirements, but this one is not the kind you go into alone or with just two of you. I say this for a couple of reasons.

I could certainly try and give you the details of how to go about this, but someone has already written a very clear guide on how to run through the instance so instead of trying to repeat things, I'll point you in the right direction. Thanks to Captainrussia for his Windmill Guide.

We had a group of six mid 20s and were able to full clear the whole instance in about 40 minutes. I will say that I hate mazes, and if you are looking for variety, this instance will not really provide it, but if you have the patience to wade through the instance many times, the rewards are significant (as mentioned in the guide, you could end up being able to craft some really spiffy gear).

After finishing the instance and getting some of the drops necessary for crafting, I broke down and bought some extra resources on the AH and was able to craft 3 out of the 4 basic Ventis pieces (crafted the Boots, Robe, and Leggings). The hardest resource to gather for these sets is by far the Elemental Crystals, which are crafted using the drops from the end boss Hodu Hammertooth. You can sometimes find a few of these crystals on the AH, but they don't come very cheap. Still it beats running the instance 100 times.

I'll post some screenshots when I get a chance.

Quick new announcement...

Frogster announced at E3 that they are planning to release Chapter 2 of the saga with the elven lands. You'll be able to play the new Elven race and they are also introducing two new classes, but they haven't been announced yet.

Here is a video of the announcement

New features will also include pets that you can summon to help you in your fights, along with a level cap raised to 55 (although they are preemptively raising the cap to 52 in August), with a host of new monsters and new instances. They are also plan a revamp of the graphics and sound for the whole game, which could be a nice added bonus (especially for the much needed sound track that is still somewhat lacking).

For all this you will have to wait until September 2009...

Got to the official ROM page for the announcement.

ROM Live

Since a video speaks more than a bunch of words I wanted to show a couple video that give you a feel for what Rune of Magic looks like beyond simply talking about features.

Check these out at your liesure.

The official Cinematic Trailer for the Game (watch in High Def if you can)

The official ROM Trailer video with game footage

Here is a nice little video that showcases the game and a few of the features

There are many many more videos on youtube for you to browse on if you want to check out things like PvP, instances, guild castles...

See you in game!

Features

OK, I'm back today to discuss ROM features. ROM has been ushered as one of the best free to play free to play (f2p) MMORPG out there, and if you go to MMORPG.com you could check it out in the game list and see that it is indeed rated quite well by the community.

It has also been dubbed as a WoW clone, and who can blame them for that. After all WoW is simply the most knowledgeable game in it's genre out there and itself has used elements from other games in the genre to build a great user experience. What this does for ROM however is immediately put anyone who's played WoW at ease about the user interface since they will know how to use it. This would probably make up for the fact that the tutorial in ROM is somewhat lacking.

I will enumerate the features and give some feedback on each.

1. Free2play: no monthly fees, free to download: the nicest aspect of this is no monthly fees and a free download, however beware the client is big and will take quite some time to download and update
2. Extensive dual class system with six primary classes and a selectable secondary class: This is actually a very nice feature as it gives each player a nice mix of skills and elite skills to create a more customized character, and it's entirely voluntary as to whether you choose to dual class or not, but there are many advantages to having a dual class, including the elite skills which can be very useful (more about dual class skills in the skill section).
3. Over 1000 quests and comprehensive quest series with continuous storyline: While there are indeed a lot of quests, there really are only two starting areas, which means that as a dual class character it can be easy to simply go through all of that content with a single character, making any alt experience a little repetitive.
4. Integrated into an enthralling background story: Yes, there is an interesting background, but it kind of gets a little lost in the shuffle and while there is an Epic quest line that you can try and follow to get a little more immersed, the shear amount of side quests and dailies that are in game can make you easily loose track of what the overarching story is supposed to be.
5. Freely accessible game world in atmospheric 3D: The graphics are quite good for a f2p mmorpg. They aren't the best out there, but they are good enough to make for a pleasant player experience. One of the things that is still quite lacking is the sound track. They have decent background music, but are missing a lot of the environmental sounds and effects resulting from player actions that could add a lot to the immersion. The good news is that I read a recent post from a GM saying it was something they were working on.
6. Instanced and persistent dungeons: In this area ROM provides a mix of solutions. They have instances for specific unique monsters you need to kill in order to achieve goals for important quests (some of the on your Epic quest line mentioned above). these instances are typically fairly small and can be played with a couple players of the appropriate level. Then they have the larger instances that have multiple bosses in them and require a larger group of the appropriate level to go through. The kicker about these is that they provide you with nice loot, but also crafting supplies for specific recipes. The sad thing about them is that there probably aren't enough of them (so far I've seen one per region). Now the interesting thing about that is that it's usually fairly easy to find a group for them since everyone is trying to do the same instance.
7. Individually developed skills and spells: The skill/spell system ROM has is based on a talent point (TP) system. a player acquires tps through killing mobs and leveling and then uses these tps to increase specific skills/spells based on his/her gameplay style. This provides with a nice way to customize your character but also forces you to choose a certain path as you will not have enough tps to max every skill/spell you acquire as you level up. One thing that is interesting about skills though is that they are split into two tabs: general skills, and class skills. Each character class has a collection of general and class skills, however when dual classing you only have access to the class skills of the primary class you have chosen. So for example as a Mage/Priest I can have access to Mage general and class skills, but only priest general skills. The nice thing is you can switch over to Priest/Mage by going to town and then have access to Priest general and class skills but only mage general skills.
8. Armor sets with special bonuses: Always nice to be able to collect a whole outfit that provide you with additional bonuses. The only thing about this is that earlier in the game you'll see a lot of people looking alike because they are all wearing the same armor set. Still, it makes for a cool coordinated outfit.
9. Dynamic item system: Upgrades with hundreds of runes: This is where ROM really shines. They not only have a socketing system for items allowing you to add runes into items to customize them a little, but they also have something called the transmutor that allow you to strip magic bonuses from certain items and slap them onto others. Done with the old staff you were using but really liked the bonuses it provided? Rip those off the staff and slap them onto the new shiny staff you acquired.
10. Activatable PvP system (Player vs. Player duels) with arena battles and guild wars: I haven't partook in any PvP so can't really say much about it. I would however say that ROM is probably better suited for PvE than PvP. For a good PvP experience I prefer Warhammer Online.
11. Mounts: various unique mounts: Another place where ROM makes me happy is that you don't have any level requirement to be able to use mounts. Now most mounts you get aren't permanent, but you can rent horse from stables in town for 2 hours at a time and go about your business. Alternatively ROM uses an item shop with a system of diamonds to purchase mounts more long term or even permanent mounts. But that is purely optional (although they do have some really cool looking mounts and if you feel like supporting the company for the product they offer, then pay real cash for a cool looking permanent mount is a good way to do it).
12. Epic crafting system with the chance to improve existing items: The crafting system is failry simple to learn, but it can get a little tedious. Leveling crafting is a slow process and I find that some professions are not as useful as others. For example, as a cloth user I thought tailoring would be a good place to start, but quickly realized that set items I got through quests far outperformed anything I could craft, so I switched over to carpentry to craft me some nice weapons. The improve existing item part is that almost every item you craft has multiple tiers to it, and one of the ingredients for a higher tier item is that lower tier item. So you can craft a practice staff of magic and in turn use that staff to create a staff of magic and in return use that staff to make a staff of wizardry. The higher level tier the heftier the requirements on resources, so you won't see many high tier items.
13. Housing from the beginning: personalization of houses through
    individual furnishing: Player housing is nice, since you get a free trunk which adds to storage for your stuff. It's also the place where you switch primary and secondary classes. Yes it can be furnished, and one of the important aspects of that is that it can be furnished with work benches that are used for the different craft skills. The trick is to get a guild together and have a single player in the guild put all of those benches in their home so everyone can easily find a place to craft.
14. Guild houses in special zones: Guild Castles are something that you get as you level your guild (more about guild leveling later). I haven't explored this much yet, so I can't tell too much, but the one thing I do know is that once you have a guild castle you can declare war against other guilds that have castles and generate battlegrounds where one guild fight another with one castle on one side and the opposing castle on the other and a big brawl in the middle as you try to take on the other guild's castle. A new feature that did come out with guild castles is that they provide some in game bonuses to player in the guild. I don't know exactly what those are yet, so more to come on these.
15. Reputation system: This is strictly for PvP servers I believe, where a player can gain some reputation as a bad guy killing other players, and players who kill these kinds of player-killers can gain good reputation. there are bonuses associated to being on both ends of the spectrum.
16. Scalable user interface based on the users preference (development of ones own add-ons possible): As I mentioned earlier the UI is very familiar to the genre and curse.com has a nice line of addons that can be used to customize the ui to fit your needs.
17. Auction house: auction off and purchase in-Game items: Like any good mmorpg there is an auction house system. The trick is that the search feature is key sensitive so you need to make sure you capitalize words to get what you need. Also, Curse has a really useful addon for the autction house. Get it, use it, love it!
18. Teleporting possibilities per runes: Beyond the typical recall button that takes you back to a specific place, ROM uses a few other tools for immediate transporation. Most of which use the item shop items (but you get some of these items free as you progress through the game which is kind of nice). My favorite aspect of this is the ink system. You can use these special ink pots (you only get a few for free so use them sparingly) to mark a spot anywhere in the world. Then you can use transportation runes that allow you to immediately teleport back to that spot regardless of where you are. Again there runes are obtained from the item shop, but you get a decen tamount of them for free from the goody bacg they give you after the tutorial. What I do is create a mark in every new zone I go, so I can teleport from zone to zone easily.

Well, that's it for features. If you haven't tried ROM yet, it's worth the try especially since it's free!

The adventure begins...

Here we go again on another adventure, but this time it's in the land of Taborea. After my various stints in pay to play MMOs, I've decided to try and explore the world of f2p. Actually it's not really the first time I have tried f2p. I have had a short experience with Shayia, but was overall not entirely impressed with some of the grinding aspects of the game.

You may be wondering how I chose the title of the blog. Well it turns out that the word cantique is a reference to a short poem or song that used to be sung in the middle ages, and Taborea is the land in which you find yourself if you decide to join us in Runes of Magic. So I thought it would be fitting to name it thus, since I plan to make short posts about my experience with the game.

The truth is that I have actually been playing it for a little bit already, but only recently decided to actually blog about it. The first character I created was a Mage/Priest (level 20/19) on the Artemis server who goes by the name of Jandlor.

Here is a screenshot of him in his earlier ages

Anyway. I'll be jumping online tonight for a little more adventuring. More posts to come.