My First 20 or 50 Hours in the New Life is Feudal MMO

My first 20 hours in the brand new, currently closed beta of Life is Feudal MMO- were… interesting to say the least. It began with a lovely character creation screen, having me choose a race of human, as well as allocate my skills. Being unobservant as I often am, I chose based upon the aesthetic of each race. Then I selected my skills, which apparently are affected by the race of your choice- I decided I wanted to be a generalist.

Well, one thing that’s important to note, is you have a skill cap, which only allows you to actually master up to 4 skills (about 400 points in total) well before I discovered that, I found I was as far away from the Guild base I wished to join as possible. So I started running, hitting CAPSLOCK to run, and numlock so I didn’t have to do anything. I pointed myself in the direction I wanted to go, and took of running.

I promptly got hungry, my health bar dropping to about 50, when I’d only made it about a quarter. So, naturally- I stopped and looked for some roots or berries to eat. Instead a random wolf ate me.

I imagine I tasted poorly, being nothing but a rendered blob, but that didn’t stop the next two wolves whom both decided I would be tasty. After those three lives, which I lost skills each death to- I stopped by this trading post, and the kind gentleman whom owned that plot of land offered to feed me and help me train up my skills, even give me some coin and gear to help me on my way.

So I spent literally hours, moving sand from one spot to another, just so he could get his orchard at the right height. Unfortunately for me, while I had gone AFK for a few moments to grab a snack, I was eaten. By a wolf.

Finally I spawned vaguely near where I wanted to go. Desperately I ran to the north, ignoring my need for food, fleeing the wolves, bears, and naked sling wielding players I ran into.

Finally I made it to the glorious land of the Armitage Empire, so I hopped on their discord, chatted briefly, and was admitted to the guild.

I didn’t particularly like it as it was hard for me to personally engage. So I leveled some skills, deforested a 50x50 meter area using tools I made, and left with nothing but some of their food, leaving the guild to join another that I had become acquainted with.

This guild, and the one I’m currently with- is called The Band of the Red Hand, the leader notably referencing one of my favorite book series, the Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan. This caught my eye, I asked to join, and thusly I was recruited into the guild. Yay! I got quickly engaged, and was a mere ‘recruit’. Meaning I had no access to anything in our claim, but I was a member of the guild all the same. It took me three days of doing random things, and attacking a rival clan whom stole our gold mine- to finally admit me as a full member. From recruit, to…. Dadum; A Peasant.

I was crushed, my hopes and dreams shattered, the world ending… Oh, never mind, that was the local server dropping. Again. This happens because the whole MMO is essentially a few score of servers all running in tandem, running a different chunk of the map, and our server happens to be a tad overloaded, and unstable.

But back to the fun bits, now a full member, I gear up with some great armor and a decent two-handed sword, which I took to our enemies, the scoundrels known as Valaria. Those golden individuals are the ones we raided in the past, who literally have been sustaining their claim merely to troll us. Needless to say, we have had a habit of slaughtering them for this insolence.

That aside, the biggest mystery, has been trying to figure which other Guild has been supplying them resources, because there’s no way they were sustaining it otherwise.

It’s been irritating. Besides this, the game is a massive grind, to up my smelting skill to a 60 required three things, me to up my masonry skill to a 60 first, and to obtain that, my Artisan skill had to achieve a 60 as well. As well as the five hours or so I spend on getting all of these skills up, which is time consuming and painful to do. But I wanted to be a smith. Combat is similarly demanding, as is the game overall. It ‘encourages’ team play, in the sense that you can build a small shack by yourself easily enough, and that’s about it. But with a decent group, you can build a fortress in a few weeks.

Overall, on the non-professional review today, the game reminds me of a medieval EveOnline, in the mostly player-based everything.