Recently The Secret World joined the massive hordes of MMO’s that have switched over to a F2P model. For 30 bucks, I figured it was worth checking out, so I spent a day downloading and started myself a new character. While I can say that there are many minor annoyances which I will get into later, TSW definitely lives up to the fun, and I can only say: I wish I’d picked it up sooner.
Since I got to shoot a handy assault rifle in my introduction to the game, I figured I’d stick to that, and set myself up a Templar gunslinger and started exploring. There’s a ton to explore, and I really enjoy stumbling across pieces of lore as I roam across the landscape. With plenty of main quests, side quests, and the dungeon or two under my belt, I thought I was flying pretty fancy. Until I discovered that I didn’t exactly have a game-plan for my skills, and absolutely no idea what the hell I was doing.
You see, you get these fancy scroll wheels which are awesome. You can have up to 7 active and 7 passive abilities, and through expert management and some luck you can create a powerhouse for anything imaginable.
Unless you suck yourself into a survivability build which can’t damage a kitten, but isn’t exactly a healer either. And you never take the repeated hints from the loading screens to equip a secondary weapon. Oops.
So I rolled a new character thinking I could give myself some much needed time to re-evaluate. And when I did I discovered this *cough, cough* completely hidden panel on the left of my ability screen with all kinds of nifty starter builds to get me started. This time, I’m not finding myself sucked into some metaphorical jackrabbit hole of possibilities because I’m choosing to pace myself. Stick to the main build until I’ve firmly mastered enough other skills to create myself a complete (and hopefully) effective build. And if not, I can just load my starter deck back up. Yay!
I’ll admit, I still haven’t found a use for a shop yet except as a repair depot, but hopefully that knowledge will come to me one day. Until then, I’m currently working on mastering the crafting system, an on-the-road do-it-yourself creation shop that can be done in the comfort of any glade that you’ve cleared of the minions of shadow.
My only major gripe is the amount of time I spend criss-crossing various locales as I pick up new main quests while completing side quests, and really…isn’t there a way to coordinate these?! I’m also a little spastic in my fear that I’ll overlook some vitally awesome quest that happens to be lying in the mud somewhere, or buried under a decaying carcass, but I’m busy enough thus far not to be too anal-retentive and actually find a quest database to cross reference my completed list with all the possibilities.
The other thing I’m having a bit of trouble with is the numerous (and male-oriented) quest scenes. While I think it’s cute that so many women desperately want to make me lose focus through sultry inneundo (good luck with that ladies), it does get old after awhile. Why isn’t that cute cowboy trying to give me an affectionate shoulder squeeze and suggesting after all this mess is cleared up we can start a nice ranch somewhere, huh?
All in all, it’s a really enjoyable game so far, and has a wonderfully gritty, modern feel. While I can’t say I’m home, it’s definitely a step in the right direction!
Jaded Alt 
It’s a really fun game and I had a great time playing it. Are there still people leveling through it? There weren’t alot of people in the low level areas when I last played a few months ago.
Definitely still leveling! Think there’s been an uptick of new players with the F2P model going in, so there’s enough folks to run the early dungeon missions.
TSW is hands-down my favorite MMO. I’d still be playing if my wife and buddy felt the same way, but neither wanted to do end game. We did play through the whole game – every quest we could find in every zone, including the issues that came out while we were still sub’d. I loved that game, so I’m glad to hear you’re liking it.
I’m hooked so far 🙂 The leveling experience is a blast, I just hope end-game holds up!
I like the quest layout a lot, I think it’s very clever, but then I’m an explorer type 🙂
Combined with the the way you only have slots for the overall story, one main mission, and three minor ones, it pulls you through the world in loops, where when you finish a quest there’s almost always another one lying around to pick up somewhere close to where you ended up, which moves you onward to where another quest completion lands you near another place to pick up a mission, or where the overall story was sending you anyway. Eventually you loop back to near one of the NPCs you’ve already met, and that’s when you grab their second (or third) main mission, and off you go again in another direction.
If the person you got the quest you just finished from is half-way over the side of the map, and you don’t have a quest to head back in that direction, your almost certainly supposedly to be looking around where you are rather than heading back to that original NPC.
(Note, there was a bug over the weekend where the setting for turning on the quest tracker wouldn’t stick after restarting the game, but today’s patch claims to have fixed it).
The Council of Venice guys, as well as doing repairs, are where you spend your sequins, of which you get 1-2 from doing each mission. They have tend to have some blue weapons and gear from the top end of the equipment range of the zone/area they’re in. Sometimes it’s worth checking their counterparts in the next area along to see if you can get a better deal.
The general advice on re-rolling is don’t, unless you’re unhappy with your character’s Secret Society, or their sex, rather than their build. That’s because most quests are repeatable, and you’ll eventually want most skills in most weapons (especially the passive skills) anyway, so even if your build is so bad you have repeat stuff to get the points for the build you really want, there’s no particular advantage on doing that repetition on a new character instead of your existing one. Not that it matters much if you’ve only just stepped out of the Hollow Earth onto Solomon Island.
The other secret hidden tab on the right of the skill wheel (as opposed to the secret hidden tab you already found on the left) has a search engine for all the the descriptions of all the skills, so you can go mad looking for all the effects on the skills you could get next that trigger off the effects of the skills you already have 🙂
I don’t actually remember anyone (outside the Dragon intro, and I’m pretty sure he was male) putting the moves on my female character, other than Cassie..?
TL;DR: Stuff! 🙂
Cassie and Dragon chick on chick action so far :p
Once I rerolled I discovered it was rather pointless as you’ve mentioned. I just ended up doing the same quests, and I could have just done them again on the original character and had double the love. However, I didn’t mind doing a redo on the appearance so it worked out ok 😉
I really found myself doing poorly coordinating my main/side quest missions together, but I’m hoping that’s a personal problem that I’ll get better at managing! Fortunately I started *before* the quest bug, or that’d have been a major complaint. I’ll be glad when I don’t have to turn on my dodge/quest option every time I log in for sure!
Much later, when you have tons of cash hanging about, you can go to the barber shop and the plastic surgeon to change your looks. The merchant guys also sell the consumable toolkit you need to make potions. (Specifically the Apothecaries do.) You can make ones for defensive or offensive uses. Once you’ve been through an area and have gone past the blue items being of interest, you can also spend your tokens on casting toolkits. A casting toolkit allows you to reskin your weapons.
A random helpful tidbit for you – you can use death as a means for moving around the map. When you die the anima well is a drop down menu, so you can choose a different one to rez at. You can also die using /reset, although I warn you, death teleporting can get expensive.
The latest issue is really fun, although I fell off the top of the train many many times. 🙂
Hmmm… I’ve been wanting to try this but I prefer to try before I pay – is there a demo? It’s not I’m cheap (well, maybe a weebit frugal), but more importantly the old lappy doesn’t always run the things I’d like to play – Av
I can always send you a “trial” key. It lasts for 72 hours. I just need an e-mail address to get it your way 🙂
Hey that’s really nice of you! I’d *love* to see if it runs. Have heard good things about it. Is there a private way I can send you my email (I’m bit thick about some aspects of the web)
Yep, just hit the contact link at the top of the page, and you can send me a private e-mail 🙂
Heh! That simple! (will do :)) (once family is settled for the weekend)