Secret World Legends

The combat has lost a lot of the complexity of the original, but it does seem smoother with improved controls (the original had reticle combat as well, but it didn’t work well.)

Loot wise it’s kind of crappy, but so was the original. With Legends the hardcore endgame items are behind a pay gate (you can trade fake money currency for real money currency) though it should only matter for raids and some such.

On the plus side, there are various QoL and UI improvements, and all the paid DLC content from TSW will be available free eventually. If you like people, Legends is fairly busy at the moment, so it’s easy to get a group. Small pop cap in non-hub instances, so you don’t encounter herds of players while questing. Not that it’s an issue in the original anymore.

Yeah, the dungeons in Secret World were really cool. I actually remember some of them, which is more than I can about any MMO that isn’t called Guild Wars 2.

Are they doing anything to adapt dungeons to Legends? Making them soloable? Or just scrapping them? I want to fight Cthulhu again.

-Tom

Far as I know they’re in and the only change is to get any loot you need “dungeon keys” that you only get so many of per day (but more of them for patrons).

They may have borrowed from NWN, but I do not think they’ve played it.

Playing NWN I would almost always get some loot from doing dungeon runs. So far after 26 keys spent in TSW I’ve gotten exactly 0 items, just “Distilled XP”.

Knowing that the chances of getting anything is so low (0% from my playthroughs) and that the keys are so limited, I’m liable to just not do any dungeons at all.

Yea, the original is better in most regards. Even has a lot less shitty UI.

Good to hear they increase inventory size… it is ridiculously small. I had a quest take up 10 inventory slots, that meant I only had 15 free. The cost of upgrading inventory was huge as well. Even in LOTRO you could spend a lot of ingame money easily obtained to upgrade the inventory many many times before you needed to use ‘space bucks’, and by that the you have probably earned some from questing.

That’s one of the coming changes, that you are guaranteed a weapon at the end of a dungeon a day.

There’s now also a “Story mode” for dungeons where you and two others (no trinity roles required) basically go in for some gentle sightseeing.

My biggest gripe is the simplified combat. The ability wheel in the original made for some interesting builds.

I do miss the wheel just because it was so unique - not that I actually understood it or could make my own deck out of it.

Gunslinger is pretty easy. Spam left mouse for AoE, spam right mouse for single target. Switch if you run out of energy on one or the other. Hit Flourish sometimes. Get Unload and use it sometimes.

A much better post about how to use pistols (with blade, not shotgun, alas) here:

I take back my wish for a Funcom single player Cthulhu mythos game. My faith is flagging.

There is a new mode for dungeons, “story mode.” These are the same dungeons, but they have been vastly toned down in difficulty. They’re for any three players, with no tank or healer really required. The activity finder usually puts a group together within 30 seconds.

The elite and nightmare modes await at level 50.

This changes on July 5th, with the upcoming patch. You’ll actually be guaranteed to get real loot ;)

My understanding of the loot system was that any piece of equipment can become top of the line loot with xp and fusion. Maybe not BiS (I assume those only drop from pay caches), but raid-level anyway.

Those are some very nice changes indeed! I wonder if they intentionally release with as hard a paywall as possible, so when they ease up, they seem to be listening to their costumer base?

Oh, man, that’s hilarious, Razgon. You might be on to something!

-Tom

I miss the big wheel of abilities and the various websites that allowed you to plan builds. A couple of hours in and it feels like I have no real way to intelligently chose what to buy.

Yea, the good thing about the wheel was that you could see everything at once. now I need to go back and forth between pages to check out stuff.

You have to go through multiple pages in Secret World classic, too. Skill bars are on one page of the interface, the AP wheel is on another.

Still not wild about most of the changes but I just love the core game so damn much.

I noticed one change I do like, though: investigation missions are now a separate slot, so you can have one on the backburner while you go whack zombies for an action mission (or sneak around in a sabotage mission).

Kinda wondering what’s up with caches. I get that free key every day and the impression I got from the thread on SA was that the caches themselves dropped all the time, but I haven’t seen any at all. Maybe it hits at higher levels or something?

Caches drop from level 15 and up.

That would explain it. Just hit 12 last night.

I haven’t seen a cache either.

Does anyone else think there are fewer side quests? Or are they just invisible until you reach certain levels or stages in the region quests? Between the lack of (visible) quests and the very long resetting of quests for f2p people I feel like I’m on rails.

I’m seeing new quests open up as I level up, and (in Kingsmouth anyway) it seems like everything I remember from TSW is still there - at least based on what’s listed in the achievements tab. I typically only see quests that are up to a level or two above me, and as I level up I can go back to certain NPCs and find more available.

I’m also quickly learning that I’m probably too stupid for this game. The need to use references outside of the game to solve some of the puzzles is kind of trippy and hard to remember - I’m used to finding everything I need within the game. Granted, there is no shortage of spoilers out there so I’m never stuck but that feels like cheating, even if it hurts no one but my pride.