Project: Gorgon – Learning to do All the Things… Including Death

After the big 1.0 update for Project: Gorgon I went in and played a bit more.

Project: Gorgon – It Lives!

On Friday night I was definitely feeling the pain of the launch announcement rush.  They had cranked up the number of mobs spawning, but there were still parts of the first island where you couldn’t hit a mob that just spawned because it would be dead before you could target it.

In those locations, especially close to the dock where you first land, the increased spawn rate wasn’t covering the need.  But then, further out, where there were fewer people, the spawn rate meant a bunch of mobs showing up and killing you pretty quickly.

Skeletons a poppin!

All of this reminded me of a Python quote:

Blimey, this redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought!

–Dennis Moore

So it goes.  This will all be alleviated by the second… and now third… server as well as when the initial rush subsides.  But on Friday it was all one server.

Back and new I wasn’t sure where to go or what to do.  Sure, that tower right above the dock seemed like an obvious stop.  And, later on, I would figure out that it was a place to start, because that is where Elmetaph is, who has some intro quests.  The problem, for me, was that his name plate did not stand out at all relative to the mass of people in the tower.  There is, to my old eyes at least, no differentiation in font size or coloration.

His name in a small group

And the quick answer to that image is that he is obviously taller than everybody else, is dressed different, and when you mouse over him the cursor changes… which is all correct.  But I took that screen shot after the new server went up and the crowds at the original server subsided a bit.

On Friday night he was more like this.

You’d think he was one of the Beatles

In that scrum it was hard to even get your cursor to select him, so I initially gave up. [I later found the ability to turn off player name plates, which made NPCs much easier to find.]

I spent time wandering around killing mobs when I could.  I had, whenever I had rolled up this character, picked up a full set of moldy armor and a sword.  Or maybe they just gave it to me after a pwipe or update?  I don’t know.

Anyway, I quickly noticed that just fighting things gained me points toward my sword skill and endurance and, every so often, would add a new skill to my bar.

A nice new way to slay

One of the other things going on with the Friday night rush was people dropping gear all over.  You do not appear to be able to destroy or trash or whatever stuff in your inventory, at least not on the starter island, which led to people just tossing stuff all over.

Dropped gear all over

There were even some upgrades.  I did see that I needed to do some unarmed combat in order to equip some of it.  That necessitated learning how to equip and unequip gear, which isn’t just a matter of dragging it back and forth from your inventory.  Your equipped gear remains in your bag, with a little “E” superimposed to let you know its status.

I managed to unequip my sword after a couple tries and went after some easy stuff using the punch skill.  That leveled up my unarmed skill fairly quickly and got me the Kick skill, which I could use while I had my sword equipped to keep the ball rolling on that.

I also grabbed a shovel from the barrel and started burying my corpses, which upped my compassion skill.  Not sure what that does, but I figured I had better level up all the things, just in case.

Eventually, however, I decided I was missing something and went to the wiki to look up the starter zones, Anagoge Island, where it was quite clear I needed to go talk to Elmetaph in the tower.  This got me a quest to go find some amethysts, which I already had due to the killing of things, which was followed up by attuning myself to the teleport pad on the island, which seemed to be the way out of the starter zone.

I don’t know why I was in a hurry to get out of the starter zone.  I tend to regret such haste.  But what else was I going to do.

I did that, then went back and found out I had been attuned to that pad as my home spot, so needed to gather some info so Elmetaph could attune me to a remote pad so I could go there.  That meant finding four obelisks, which on a small island should have been easy, but I swear I went around the island five times before I finally spotted the fourth one.

In search of that I ended up down in the records facility, which had its own puzzles to solve… I only caught fire once due to failing at simple math (don’t add them, subtract them)… which also got me some additional skills and a bow and a stack of arrows.

Soon I was killing mobs, doing an autopsy, skinning their corpses, and burying them.

I am a regular Jack Klugman

I started to grumble a bit at people who didn’t loot their corpses… if they were going to leave them there at least let me practice my skills as a medical examiner.

I also wandered into Lawara, who has tasks of her own and, more importantly, is in the camp where the porridge is served.

Lawara and the food pot

That pot was important because the game was absolutely on my ass about eating.  At one point, when I had low health after a fight I went to /sit thinking maybe that might help with health regen… and got a pointed dialog popping up that said we don’t sit here for regen, we eat food.  Go find some food.

So I was happy to eat the porridge, if only to get the game off my back.  It was getting to be like my grandmother.  Are you hungry?  You haven’t eaten anything.  You should eat, you’re so thin and look at how slow your health bar fills up.

I am assuming I’ll learn some cooking skills at some future point.  I was grabbing crabs out of the water, which increased my fishing skill, in the hope of making my own awful porridge some day.

Eventually I stumbled upon the last obelisk and, having written down the numbers in the correct order as I had noted them in my quest notebook, relayed them to Elmetaph.  He asked if I was sure, and I said I was, and then he attuned me and sent me back to the teleport pad to try it out.

I did and… it sent me to Gazluk, a bitterly cold place where I was immediately warned I would freeze to death shortly.  So maybe I got the obelisk sequence wrong.

Oh dear, I have none of that

But I did not have to worry about the cold for very long as a I was slain almost immediately by a wandering horrific ghost, who one-shotted me.

Eww, removed my organs?

The respawn point on death was not very close to the teleport pad, and it felt like I needed that teleport pad to get back.  It looked like the pad was far enough away that I would most likely freeze to death before I could get there.  I certainly did not get close on several attempts.

Running back to the pad on the map

This was hindered by the fact that everything in the zone… the wiki says it requires combat skills of 70-80 to survive… killed me in one or two blows.  Polar bear, mountain goat, they all had my number.

So I died a bunch of times.

The respawn point was next to a portal, but when I went through that I ended up in the Kur Mountains, also freezing and also way above my ability to cope with.

Fearing I may have wrecked that character, stuck in the snow in a Groundhog Day death cycle, I logged off and did some things around the house.  Later I came back and decided to go to the Kur Mountains because at least that was different.

I died there as well.  But when I died it respawned me near a portal that said it would send me to Elibule.

Travel to Eltibule? Yes please!

On the far side of that portal I was at least not freezing.

I was at an outpost with a teleport pad, so I went to that and… well… my only skills were to bind to a pad and recall to the pad to which I was bound… and my bind point was back in Gazluk.  So I checked the wiki again and Eltibule was connected at its south end to Serbule, which is the zone where you go after the starter island.

I now had some hope.

Of course, Eltibule was also too high level for me and I died a couple of times on the way, learning to steer clear of all mobs… though I did pick up some random gear on the ground.

Potshot had logged on my then and had a character in Serbule, so I made it a goal to get to him.  You can’t group up or friend list somebody not nearby, so that would have to wait.  After some mild misadventures, I made it to the portal.

Travel to Serbule? Sure thing!

I got in sight of the main town in the center of the map, at which point we were close enough to group up.

Is the princess in this castle?

Then I could see Potshot on the map.

Visible on the map now

I had to run around the wall to find a door, eventually going in the south entrance, where I found a teleport pad and immediately bound myself to it.

I think this is where I should have ended up in the first place, had I not mis-entered the code.

Anyway, I took the long way to the next zone by misadventure, though at least I arrived at my planned destination.  It was all very good for my cartography skill.  I got a lot of updates for that.  And, of course, my dying skill.

Now to figure out what to do now that I have arrived.