It’s almost done: save for one last plot our little family of four has now claimed a pretty huge chunk of land for our houses and farms in ArcheAge Unchained. Whether the neighbors like it or not, we’re controlling the hood now. Booya!
The only plot inside the marked area that isn’t ours yet is a medium farm right behind my chalet. We’re confident that we’ll get that too sooner or later – even if we’ll have to make the owner an offer he can’t refuse…
All houses except mine are already upgraded to provide additional functionality. They have two seed beds each, allowing to sow and reap fifty seeds of the same kind in one chunk. This is really great as it saves quite a bit of time and many, many mouse clicks. Lakisa’s farmhouse also has an animal pen, which basically functions like the seed beds, just for animals.
Instead of the pen Merl’s house has an automated mining drill for gathering rocks and ore. Both farmhouses also have a workbench for bulk-processing grown raw materials like grain and such.
Even in its default state my chalet was quite a big untertaking due to its size and the corresponding amount of resources needed.
We’re now concentrating our efforts on upgrading it to an apothecary, which will give us another two special workbenches, one for bulk-processing construction materials like rock, ore and wood, the other providing special recipes for chefs (Lakisa’s profession) and alchemy (which I specialize in). Then our empire will be complete…for now anyway.
This is a prime location, too: the next village, and thus access to the most important NPC services, is but a stone’s throw away, and since it’s right at the lake (you can see its shore in the bottom right corner of the pic above) the view is great too.
In addition to our ‘main hood’ we also have another three medium farms and a small cottage on the other side of the lake – you’ve seen pictures of those in earlier posts – and as of yesterday Tristron even has a large farm a bit farther out.
So whichever project we might want to tackle in the future – we’re more than prepared.
The game’s not only about playing farmville though. Some goals we also pursue, like upgrading our rather slow starting mounts into their faster and generally better gallant versions, also require stuff that can’t be grown on a farm or crafted at a workbench.
Some materials only drop in dungeons, for example.
The dungeons we’ve run until now were quite enjoyable, if a bit wonky mechanics-wise here and there. For instance, one boss becomes immune to damage regularly. You then have to pick up some explosive barrels dropped by adds, bring them to him and ignite them. As a result a bunch of stalactites is supposed to drop onto his head, removing his immunity for a while. Pretty basic stuff if you’ve run MMO dungeons before. Only that, more often than not, his shield just wouldn’t go away no matter how many barrels we dropped at his feet. After the third wipe or so we got him down, even though we hadn’t done things any differently.
Apart from that though, pretty fun. The enemies aren’t the only dangers awaiting unwary adventurers either…
Fortunately not every dungeon in the game is a literal one. By now we all have visited enough dank caves for a lifetime, haven’t we? Beating up baddies in broad daylight is a very welcome change of scenery indeed.
This one even has bridge bosses that move, some whenever you press the right button, others all on their own…
There are some more dungeons we haven’t seen, let alone cleared yet, so there’s ought to be much fun ahead still.
