Gathering slate is a process of walking around randomly until the icon flashes up, then backtracking to find exactly where to gather it. Slate is found dotted along shorelines, but there is no indication of exactly where a slate node is located, except for an icon that appears only when you are standing right on top of one. For example, early in the demo you have to gather slate to make stone blades. The resource-gathering system is cumbersome. ATITD proves that there is actually a good middle ground between purely social “chat rooms” and purely combative PvE/PvP games. No combat, although there is PvP in the form of competing for achievements.(“Product quality” seems to be a good way to add depth to crafting – SW:G uses this too – but obviously it complicates the server since it can’t treat all instances of an item type as fungible). For instance, you can grow grapes and make wine, but first you can try cross-breeding grape strains to get seeds with better growing properties, and during the growing season you take a series of actions to “tend” the field, which affect the final quality of the wine produced. The starting-island tutorial is basic but I read some fascinating things about advanced crafting on the wiki. You gather resources (modeled nicely and placed throughout the world) and build tools (also nicely modeled) to transform them into ever more complex products. Basically the entire game is about making stuff. Unfortunately the UI is really annoying so I won’t put more time into it. I just downloaded and played the starting-island portion over about three hours. I’ve been meaning to try A Tale In The Desert for a while now, since it’s a fairly successful MMORPGs with a truly deep crafting system (the other one being Star Wars: Galaxies, which won’t install for me anymore).
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