Okay so I'm gonna go over some stuff I jotted down, add some screenshots and go over some stuff, and then give my honest opinion about how its going as of right now.

Okay so after watching the intro CS, which was basically a little history lesson about gridania, you learn its 5 years after dalamud crashed into the world. The game starts much like normal 14, you enter the city, you do some quests for the adventuers guild to start you off. As soon as I'm done, I bolt outside to poke stuff with my lance, because I want to get a feel for the new battle system. Outside its full, jam-packed with people killing level 1 mobs. I was actually incredibly surprised that there was very little lag, and how stable everything was. So I commence to slaying Squirells, ladybugs, and funguars, and get up to level 4.



So your probably curious what 1 and = are on the keybinds. 1 is just autoattack, and = is actually a new ability for all classes called Sprint. It takes all of your current TP and gives you a speed buff. The more TP use, the longer the buff lasts. With all the slaughtering going on, I noticed, your HP regens in battle, albeit slowly, as does your TP. Both regen slowly during battle, which I thought was awesome. Combos also still exsist. Once I got to level 6, I learned Vorpal thrust, to combo with my True thrust. Sadly, I'm unsure if there will be any more directional ability moves. None of the skills available at the moment have to be done from a certain direction.

After a bit of exploration I found an alcove behind a waterfall, and found a big boulder in there. so I decided to try out my jumping abilitys, with awesome results.



So after a bit of adventuring, I decide to return to town to try some quest. Holy Moley, there are ALOT of quests, and I mean ALOT. Now, they aren't very contrived quests, they are very reminiscent of WoW. Lots of "Kill 3 ground squirells" or "Bring this potion to my friend". I'm on the fence with the quests, simply because they remind me so much of WoW. People tend to skip the dialouge and go straight to the content and then back from the reward. But overall, this type of questing good, yes and no. Yes, Its nice to have stuff to do besides leve's all the time and you can earn some gear/gold/exp on the side. No, because they are like chips, you can easily eat them all in 30 minutes if you wanted to.

Anyways.. running around doing various quests and I bump into none other than Yoshi-P himself! Sorry I don't have a screenshot cause I was trying to tell him I loved the alpha in JP with my translator and he was gone shortly after.

So that was pretty much my time in a nutshell. My final thoughts… Its freaking amazing. I have gripes with the UI, there being to many windows ect, but thats all minor. The battle system isn't as complicated as it was in 1.0 YET. I'm hoping they add more to it later as it is still in alpha. but all in all, I was very impressed with what I've seen. If you have any questions I'll try to awnser what I can. and I'll follow up with some other random screenshots in another post.

nice info lyasa!, my interest rating got +1 now!

Yoshi P would be disappointed in you breaking the NDA :P

That said, looks nice!

I'll update this thread tommorrow with crafting/gathering stuff, and w/e else I can fit in.

Day 2 of Alpha. I didn't get to the gathering, but I did manage to get in some crafting time, leatherworking to be exact. With my abundance of skins from yesterday I decided I should do leatherworking since I had materials to start. Sadly I wasn't able to go right into it as I needed to be lvl10 in my starting class, so I set out to get my lancer up to lvl10. I found a nice camp with some anole's and got comfotable for some grinding.

Got to level 10, went on my way to do the lvl10 lancer quest. Was failry simple, did that got it out of the way. I then averted my gaze to finally getting my first crafting class. I make my way to the Leatherworkers guild and sign up. They give me my first tool and send me on my way.

Well, I must say crafting is quite a bit better. This is one area I was never fond of in 1.0, but I have to say I quite like it now. The few things I noticed were..
1.) Crafting takes less time. Progress and durability are still there much like 1.0, but they are lower or higher based on the item your making. Lower level items require less progress, than higher level items. Example. a Peice of Animal skin to make a leather, only needs 11 progress, as opposed to Leather boots, that need 60 progress.

2.) Recipie Log. This thing is amazing. No more having to remember recipies or look them up. If you can make it, its in the Recipie log, and adds new recipies to the log as you level up. This is by far my favorite thing.

3.) Leveling is much better. Making a brand new item yields a bonus if its your first time. So making your first pair of Fingerless Leather gloves for example, will yield you double exp. then go back down of course after your done.

So after I dabbled in that, and ran out of mats, I decided I should go get more. So I don my lancer gear and head out into the wilds again. I decided to do some quests on the side and boy oh boy did I have fun. I bumped into a Clay golem.. apparently these things are only allowed to be summoned during umbral era's or so the NPC told me anyways.He is quite cool.


Eventually my questing let me open up my inn room and the leve desk. I did my first leve, and boy oh boy are they difficult. I did one, mind you I had it set to +1 or 1 star. and I was fighting lvl9 anoles. Well I was lvl 11 at the time. I got uttterly wrecked. I feel they are more for groups of people exping now, than for soloing, but I could be wrong. I'll have to do more research with leves. In the end it was a good day, I made it to lvl12 lancer, and lvl6 Leatherworker, and got my AF gear for lvl15 (Its an alpha treat). So I'm pleastly happy. I'll post more screens in the following posts of my wanderings ect. I'll update my day 3 tommorrow and hopefully have info on gathering.