Darkfall News

Aventurine released some information today about the future of Darkfall and some clarifications on what is and is not permitted in the game.  First, to the future:  Darkfall is slated to open a North American server within the next month or two – according to third party sites it is slated for July but Aventurine is not putting a hard date on it just yet, but I’d be willing to bet July is a good guess.  A North American server is sure to be a big hit for Darkfall as there are a lot of people who refused to play on a European server due to lag issues.  I myself do play on EU-1 and have a ping of about 200ms, which isn’t game breaking but it does put you at a disadvantage given Darkfall’s FPS style combat.

Along with the news of the North American server they also released a bit of information on character transfers from EU-1 to the new NA server.  Character transfers, as promised, are going to be permitted but not for a few months after the servers launch.  The idea here is likely to allow new NA players to catch up in skills a bit to the characters being transferred.  Also, those players who do decide to transfer their character over to the new server will not carry with them any items, the player will come over naked and without assets – only bringing with it their skills.  

This is big news – mainly because a lot of players in the early days of EU-1 are actually North Americans who would love to play on a North American server but whom have also amassed a large amount of skills and wealth by abusing broken game mechanics that have since been repaired.  Many of these “rich” guilds which would have made the move previously will likely now stay on EU-1, which will probably serve to keep most of the exploited skilled characters on EU-1 as well.  Those, like me, who do not have much in the way of material assets but do have decently raised skills will either re-roll a new character on the NA release or wait a couple of months (using that time to raise our skills even more) and then transfer when allowed.  I’ll probably go for the latter of those two myself.

The other bit of news coming from Aventurine has to do with exploiting in the game to raise skills even further.  This includes AFK macro’ing, unattended running or swimming to raise skills or using geometry exploits; ie getting inside walls, rocks, etc to kill mobs without threat of retaliation.  Also, it kind of goes without saying but third party programs are also not allowed to be used with Darkfall.  They have clarified a bit and suggested that voice communications and image software (ie Fraps) is allowed to take screenshots or videos in game.  They have made no clarifications to things like the G-15 keyboard or other macro’ing software.  I would guess that the G-15 should be safe considering if you own one, you’ll have the software running.  The other macro software I would say is use at your own risk.

The last bit of information to pass on is going to be a happy one for some people – use of scripts to quickly Loot a corpse is now a bannable offense.  I’ve never run into this my self, but if I had I’d imagine I’d be just as unhappy as anyone.  The idea of looting in Darkfall is it is supposed to take time to loot.  Just the other day I killed a harvester right outside of his city and saw a pack of his clansmen riding toward me.  I knew I didn’t have enough time to loot him dry so I just planned on grabbing one or two things, including that nice stack of wood and make good my get-away (read more on that a little later).  That to me was more exciting that just quickly clicking once and emptying everything into my inventory.  It adds a certain element to the game of risk and reward.  Do I stay longer and get more and risk death or do I grab what I can and make a clean get-away?