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An Unfortunate Question; Should I continue playing?
A long time ago (yeeears), I used to play this game—but I quit upon realizing the relative futility of developing a combat-oriented character without funneling money into the game. I asked something related to this a while ago, but, the more I play, the more the concern is coming back:
Let's say that I manage to tri-trans ($20-2,000 lessons, ~Level 75 bound credits, gold-bought credits)—will I stand a chance against these people who are spending multiple-hundreds of dollars buying items and lessons to beef themselves up? That is, how much of an advantage do these things give you?
Currently, I'm playing a Jester and I'm really enjoying the game. Yes, the RP, expansive maps, GUI, etc. are factors of my enjoyment, but, behind all of that, is the motivation to eventually engage in combat with other players. When I hunt, I do so specifically to maximize my gold-income so that I may trans one of my skills. The idea of being able to make use of the huge array of possible abilities, geared specifically for Adventurer-to-Adventurer combat, excites me. My playing and enjoying the game is fueled by my anxiously charging towards a combat-viable character.
I plan to spend $20 on 2,000 lessons. I might even spend more on other credits—but the price of everything is so steep that I'm discouraged from doing it at all. I just finished reading a thread on some artifact earrings which, apparently, cost $250. I see artifacts which cost 1,000 credits ($300). I see people selling relatively simple things (specifically, +1 Dexterity for [i]twelve days[/i]) for 35 credits ($17), etc.
Unfortunately, I am not willing to even consider spending that kind of money for singular in-game items. If that unwillingness creates a glass ceiling, the motivation behind my playing this game will pretty promptly die. It seems, at least from the forums, like a solid proportion of the fighters are.
Unfortunately, I am not willing to even consider spending that kind of money for singular in-game items. If that unwillingness creates a glass ceiling, the motivation behind my playing this game will pretty promptly die. It seems, at least from the forums, like a solid proportion of the fighters are.
Let's say that I manage to tri-trans ($20-2,000 lessons, ~Level 75 bound credits, gold-bought credits)—will I stand a chance against these people who are spending multiple-hundreds of dollars buying items and lessons to beef themselves up? That is, how much of an advantage do these things give you?
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To get the full effect of the game you pretty much have to sink money into it or grind your way up over the long-haul.
Just get the monthly subscription for $25 a month, it's not that expensive and will let you build up your skills/etc considerably faster without having to sink money into the high dollar packages.
To fight at a high level in this game, you don't need artifacts, but you do need the health (3,800 minimum, but a lot more if you plan to fight against people with artifacts. Around 4,800+ would do) and basic skills. People will tell you transcendent Survival is necessary - it isn't. Just get your class skills and learn up to tumble in Survival.
Hi, @Illnamiss.
Over the course of the past ten years or so, I think that I've spent a couple of thousand on Achaea. @Santar is completely correct in this instance: you will need to either sink money into the game or grind your way up over the course of a long time to "get the full effect of the game", by which I think that he means combat.
That said, the parts that I enjoy the most out of the game have not revolved around combat, or been made possible by my monetary investment in the game.
As for competition in the game, hmm. Artefacts (these items that you speak of) do open up avenues that may not have been available before to you. That said, combat has taken an interesting turn over the past couple of years in the favour of group combat. In group combat, the number of abilities that are useful to you and your team decreases greatly, and there is a role for nearly everyone to play. Even some random newbie necromancer with a trigger to report targets located with SENSE to a party channel can be greatly useful. Making and throwing bombs, as well. The list is really quite surprisingly extensive.
My advice to you is to talk with someone like @Hasar or @Xer in Mhaldor that has a great top-down view of combat, and can give you some ideas for ways to participate in group combat with minimal expense. As time goes on, you will be able to slowly add things to your repertoire at a rate that makes sense to you and your budget.
As for ways to earn credits, I highly agree with Santar that the $25/month subscription is a great value, as are the lesson packages now. Additionally, I will recommend things like guiding and mortal building to earn credits. Finally, House and City credit sales, combined with hunting are wonderful. Hunting starts becoming pretty profitable around level 75 or so.
There are also several alternative ways to gain credits that don't involve spending actual money.
1. Becoming a Guide
2. Becoming a Mortal Builder
3. Winning a bardic/artisinal prize
4. Offering some service, such as drawing, creative design, or coding for people
5. World events such as the Great Hunt
Another note, a House/City is another good alternative for credits if you haven't already joined one. They often have credit sales at discounted prices for their members. Some also award credits as prizes for events or completing requirements within the organization.
If you don't want to spend money, it's probably more challenge. You'll have to be pretty hardcore to meet that challenge. But it's far from impossible.
I think there is a very important distinction here.
You will find that artefacts tend to have a much bigger impact if group combat is your focus. There's clear advantages to being able to maximise your survivability when you might have upwards of three, four, seven people hitting you at once. For one v one combat (which I believe is what you're interested in at a guess), if you get to around level 90 you will find yourself capable of dealing with most people you will come up against. Jester is a good option here, as they're probably the biggest example of a class that needs to focus on not being put in critical situations to survive. These critical situations are where defensive artefacts tend to help people survive, but as a jester you'll want to avoid those situations entirely.
That isn't to say there aren't artefacts that are exceptionally useful for a jester, but I would say you're playing one of the classes (possibly the best class) for going at it with the least investment after class skills to be viable.
If you're very serious about wanting to be good at combat, you'll likely also end up as a dragon at some point (as its essentially a free new class and as a general rule most people just end up there over time), which will also open a lot of doors for you, given the significant increased gold generation potential (and dragon is another class that is exceptionally potent without any investment at all outside of the time to get there).
Will you be able to stand up to the people with tons of arties? Not if they are good fighters, no. Skill still plays a massive role in combat though and you can comfortably work your way up to decent Midbie fighter with those $20 and kill some artied people who are not great fighters. It is harder, but doable.
Your class choice will have a massive impact on this of course as some classes just scale that much better with artefacts while other are less affected by them. Affliction classes in general have less to gain offensively from artefacts but defence usually suffers.
For example, you can double stab very fast without an artie dirk as Serpent, just slightly slower than someone with a Thoth's Fang. But to do it you need to go full on DEX build meaning you will be squishier and easier to kill. Apostate also gains very little offensively from arties, at least directly. Yes if you are tankier you can focus more on offence than defence but with those types of classes you can not just spend yourself to victory and in those classes, unartied people can shine.
You would probably not be a top tier combatant without some investment, be it time or money, but you can do damn well if you are willing to raise your skill as a combatant and work hard at that.
Despite having spent plenty of money on achaea, I look at it like this. Every friday I hide away in my room instead of going out to the clubs saves me about 50-100$
To many of us, this is not simply a 60$ one shot game that you will throw away or try to resell later. This game involves us and our time more than any other game would, so is this a game? Not really, it's more like a hobby of sorts.
I'm sure there are plenty of other things that you could do the math for and come out with large numbers like that, which really 3k in ten years is tiny...
Data plans usually cost around 30$ more than standard cell plans! 360$ a year.
I bought a starbucks 3 times a month for a total of 13$, 156$ a year.
Buy a Monster energy drink every time I fill up my tank of gas. 3$, 540$ a year.
Now, if you can compare Achaea with some other hobbies, let's say DND.
Playing DND cost me a total of 85$ to start out, and that was buying the books USED. As I continued to play, I'd buy an additional book for a friend, some figurines, or the new crazy books when they came out.
You know what those extra dnd books did? added new weapons and skills that made me crazy OP. cost me 50$. Sounds like an artifact to me.
Also, I played Warhammer... you want to talk about a money sink...
TL:DR
Money is for two things, living and having fun. Decide where you want to put it, but don't sit there and cry about it.
honestly you only need to make a big money investment if you plan on fighting people who have also made big money investments. there's plenty of people with almost no artefacts that are interested in PvP. just LOOK at people before you spar them and refuse spars with artefacted people. stay in your lane etc.
Wat!? I thought money was for hoarding and dying with.
Seems to me that the underlying question is "Can I win Achaea without paying?", with the premise that, to some extent, you see winning as 'being the best combatant'.
I honestly think that the OP entirely misses the point of Achaea, but what the hell do I know? Even that said, I still think the answer to the (paraphrased) question is 'Yes, if you're willing to commit to that goal'.
The only thing you 'need' artefacts for (and it depends on your class, and how clever/committed to learning you are) is dueling. In groups, you can have a hell of a lot of fun without, and be useful. There are a handful of classes for which artefacts unlock offensive potential (diadems for certain classes, artefact weapons for some, tuning forks, etc. etc.), but by and large, you can get by just fine without them. Honestly, the cleverness of Achaea lies in the notion that to beat artefacts, you usually have to get artefacts (depending, again, on your cleverness/commitment). Stick to groups and you'll be fine.
Thanks very much for your answers, everyone. I really appreciate them, and did not expect such extensive, detailed responses and suggestions.
Sadly, I think that this is enough to discourage me from playing the game entirely. My tastes mix pretty badly with the character-development (combat wise) mechanics of this game. I've already put in a lot of time for the few days I've been playing, and the idea of being severely disadvantaged in combat—not because my strategies, reaction times, or methods are bad—but because I haven't payed as much money as my opponent, is not something I really want out of a game.
Perhaps I'll try again, years from now, haha.
This isn't a single player game @Illnamiss. People can be extraordinarily generous sometimes. I got a lot of help, there are city/house credit sales, you can win credits in a variety of events both player-hosted and admin-hosted, and you don't even need to be trans everything to fight. While you aren't going to kill Jhui with only trans curses, you are capable of killing 95% of the people in the game with only trans curses (and even some people with $20k+ spent on the game can't kill Jhui).
Combat isn't the only aspect of the game at all, and I think you'll be missing out if you let something like this dissuade you. The roleplay is unparalleled in any other game. In most games, you'll just be on a rollercoaster type ride where your choices have few impacts. In Achaea, every decision can monumentally change your character - from deciding to chat with Orzaansyn to trying to rescue a kidnapped newborn. You just can't get that depth elsewhere. Credits aren't a very good reason to miss out on that.
In any case, I always felt like it was much more rewarding to win a fight with fewer lessons and fewer artifacts than my opponent had, it felt extremely satisfying and they couldn't just say I won because of my artifacts.
After reading through these comments I see a little more light at the end of the tunnel. It looks like I am going to get to enjoy playing a game where not everything is based around obtaining an "epic set of armor" after pounding on a boss for untold minutes. I see, of course, that in some smaller scale that can be part of the experience but thankfully not all of it.
I feel it's odd that only Makarios has mentioned that Jester is a great class to go unartied. I don't know of any artefacts that are considered "necessary" for Jester combat, and a Jester's finishers err toward locks and JitB, which don't care how artied your opponent is. Because Jesters' offense doesn't depend on damage or even speed, as long as a Jester can survive long enough, (Which can be difficult against artied opponents, but not unreasonably so) he can kill anyone he wants to, artied or unartied.
Unless Jester is somehow completely different from the last time I fought one. Then someone will have to enlighten me as to why and what artefacts are required to be a good Jester.
tl;dr
I didn't read the posts
I don't think you know what a pyramid scheme is.
I was far to suspect I had this power.
You can play the game without dropping huge sums of money that would leave you as a hobo on the streets. Probably the -best- package (spending wise) is the Iron Realms elite where you gain credits and lessons also you have a hunting bonus which is also nice. You also get a bit extra through the elite if you decide to buy them on the site.
It's been stated before, but if you were to become a guide you could also make weekly credits just from helping the new players out.
Achaea is a hobby, think of what you'd like your character to do and go for it.
Also remember that combat isn't based on what artefacts and such that the person has it is based on skills.
I used to write articles for the IRE website (And some were posted to Achaea) to gain some extra credits. KEep your eyes pilled for ways to earn credits IG and also OOC. You never know what might happen.
I know this thread is a bit old by now, but I think the 'I've played a few days and it doesn't look like I can be the best combatant' is the biggest mistake here. There's no way someone can play for a few days and understand the nuances of combat, either one-on-one or in groups, and experience IS a big deal. It's not as if no combat happens outside of people decked with artefacts, but like - say - World of Warcraft, group combat is what actually matters in Achaea, and that's down to group synergy and knowing your skills. Dueling is a good form of practice learning those skills, but coming into the game saying, 'My singular reason for playing is to stand up one-on-one to anyone and beat them, and if I can't guarantee doing that I'm out' is kinda dumb.