The Secret World

For new guys, my suggestion is to rerun that first zone twice and get your chosen wep skills up to AR 10 as soon as possible. You are gonna need it in Blue Mountain

karmajay wrote:

For new guys, my suggestion is to rerun that first zone twice and get your chosen wep skills up to AR 10 as soon as possible. You are gonna need it in Blue Mountain :)

That's one user tip that never seemed to catch on. You dont want to spread your points out at first. Put a couple or so in the secondary, but the rest should go into your starting primary weapon. If you start spreading them out to early you're gimping yourself. If you do that you're around AR 8-9 as you enter Blue Mountain and dont have to rerun. Especially not if you run that starting dungeon a couple of times.

Personally i like that this game doesnt hold your hand and allows stuff like this, but pretty sure im in the minority.

I finished the storyline and never took any of my weapon skills beyond 9. I still recommend not increasing your skills beyond what you need to equip the best thing you have.

http://chronicle.thesecretworld.com/...

One tidbit I found useful is that the higher level weapon skills aren't any more powerful than the low level skills. They're just more specific. So don't feel like you have to push for the high level skills to be effective in combat. TSW is really all about synergies between skills, so you have one skill that sets a certain state on an enemy and then others that do extra stuff when used on an enemy with that state set. A really good skill selection will have all skills interacting for greater effect based on how they modify you and the enemy you're fighting.

Well, I never used AR in my build and that may have been the difference. I mainly used sword/Electric powers.

karmajay wrote:

Well, I never used AR in my build and that may have been the difference. I mainly used sword/Electric powers.

thats what i use

I am finding that there really isn't anything more satisfying than pump action for a dual builder. It doesn't do a lot of single target damage but if you get a bunch into the cone it adds up significantly. And when combined with that AR Targeted AoE skill, you make really quick work of peon groups.

I even like it for single hardened targets because it is the fastest way to get 2 resources maxed so that you can use the big single target finishers. You have to be careful with pump action tagging adds but once you have used it for a while, you know how to maneuver with it to limit that chance.

The fist passive that does a HoT is a no brainer. It isn't huge but it adds up over time and probably contributes about 25% of your hp as a heal over big fights against hardened targets.

So I currently have this cycle that sees me play until something frustrates me, put it away for a day or a day and a half, look something up on the internet, and then have me foaming at the mouth to dive into the game for another 4-5 hour binge.

It IS a very good game. It is a very innovative mmo. And probably, no definitely a far better game than the number of people playing it. And I fear that the content updates are only maintaining the current players or slowing the bleeding due to a ton of competition.

I think a paid (inexpensive, digitally distributed) expansion should be in the works to drum up more players. Where they would go, I don't know. I guess more weapon types but that may already confuse new players more. It is not Eve-like in its learning curve but the ability wheel doesn't become straight forward until at least 10-15 hours of play.

New zones and dungeons are a sure bet (as they are the priamry feature of content updates). Would they allow solo dungeons, lfg finder, dynamic events or instant adventures? I am a big fan of all of those for sure.

I bet alternate looks for existing decks would be a hot ticket item. Or creating cross faction looks for existing decks (Illuminati Magus, Dragon Grifter, Templar Martial Artist, etc)

Housing? Home dimensions?

I never got my black boots btw. I am pretty upset about that...

They weren't in the store? Mine were in there along with a bunch of other stuff I've never bothered to redeem.

The next big update was supposed to be Tokyo. It is supposed to be another full zone the size of Solomon Island/Egypt/Transylvania but has obviously gotten delayed.

The problem is that TSW is very story focused and players can always go through story content faster than developers can create it. Because of that I'm not sure a story-focused MMO is possible.

Oops, I didn't look for them in the store. Duh, me.

Yeah, I forget what the tab is called but one of them holds all your special and reward items. They don't automatically show up in your inventory/dressing room.

Oh lol I forgot to pull them when I was on. Wonder if they are still there...

Got my monster kill xp potion from the store but could not find my black boots.

Oh and I finally unlocked the Commando deck and completed my first Templar faction task that triggered once I had enough xp to go up in faction rank. (which netted me the swanky templar initiate outfit, I believe)

I know you guys recommended to stay in Kingsmouth as long as possible but do the ability points flow more freely in the next area? I'd like to round out the first tier of the ability wheel.

Oh jeez. I can see it now. Altitis will take another form in this game for me where I spend years and never leave Kingsmouth. Constantly crafting tier 3 weapons and switching between starter decks... NOOOOOoooooo!

fangblackbone wrote:

Got my monster kill xp potion from the store but could not find my black boots.

Oh and I finally unlocked the Commando deck and completed my first Templar faction task that triggered once I had enough xp to go up in faction rank. (which netted me the swanky templar initiate outfit, I believe)

I know you guys recommended to stay in Kingsmouth as long as possible but do the ability points flow more freely in the next area? I'd like to round out the first tier of the ability wheel.

Oh jeez. I can see it now. Altitis will take another form in this game for me where I spend years and never leave Kingsmouth. Constantly crafting tier 3 weapons and switching between starter decks... NOOOOOoooooo!

Unless things change drastically since i was last in game and you already have a deck you're past the point where you should be able to leave Kingsport. Just do the story quests (blue icon i believe) and they'll lead you on out.

fangblackbone wrote:

I know you guys recommended to stay in Kingsmouth as long as possible but do the ability points flow more freely in the next area? I'd like to round out the first tier of the ability wheel.

The ability point rewards go up in each area, but so does the difficulty. If you are having trouble with the mobs in an area you can always go to an earlier map and grind out some more points to tweak your build.

half price today only $15 on steam.
i beta tested this back in the day but didn't bother with it due to subs.

now free so I'm signing up.
/cheap

groan wrote:

half price today only $15 on steam.
i beta tested this back in the day but didn't bother with it due to subs.

now free so I'm signing up.
/cheap

I don't think that's cheap. Personally, I find subscription fees ridiculous nowadays. Both TSW and GW 2 are excellent products that don't require subscriptions.

I just got this game for Fathers Day and am having fun with it. Quick question - is there a pet build? Either an engineer themed turret build or a Necromancer/warlock style character?

The closest thing I found to "pets" were a couple of short duration drones you could summon with the pistol skills. Of course those usually only lasted about the length of a regular fight so not a real pet in the standard sense.

jdzappa wrote:

I just got this game for Fathers Day and am having fun with it. Quick question - is there a pet build? Either an engineer themed turret build or a Necromancer/warlock style character?

There's no true pet build in the sense of warlock/witchdoctor/necro type pets. The closest thing to pets are basically AOE or pulsing effects, there are only a few such abilities in the game, located under uh.. shotgun and elementalism I believe. Someone who has actually used these abilities can probably provide more insight on the mechanics.

The Illuminati grifter is the "turret build". It has 3? turrets from shotgun and 3 manifestations (turrets) from elementalism. There are also summoned drones that last a bit longer. (I believe in pistols?) However, most summons last 10-20 seconds and require max built up resources (5). So you can't open with them (major bummer) and it will take ~3-4 seconds to build up resources to summon 2 (one shotgun, one elemental).

There is a warlock deck but it doesn't involve pets.

I think it is a giant void that should be filled sooner rather than later to have more traditional combat summons (pets and turrets). I.E. pets that last until recalled and turrets that are either builders or an elite skill that is neither builder nor consumer but has a longer cooldown and does good damage/heal.

There is a lot of opportunity here as there are already abilities with chain effects, damage shield procs, absorb shields, absorb shields with heals, time delayed explosions, etc. All ripe for implementation in turrets. Plus there are dash, pull, aoe knock back, states (hindered, weakened, afflicted, impaired) that would benefit more permanent summons.

I suppose they could add pets/turrets as auxiliary weapons, I don't really think they have any intention of adding new primary weapons or new trees to the existing weapons, though.

Yeah that would make a mess of things for sure if they tried to add more primary weapons or new blocks on the ability wheel.

Well maybe they could further split the inner wheel from 2 to 3 and add some abilities in there. That would be a lot of work though if they planned to do all the primary weapons at once.

Or maybe they could add a smaller side wheel or another section to the skill point tree.

I wish they'd do an AoC2 with the TSW ability system. (which would piss off a lot of people I know because I would prefer TSW's combos to AoC's)

I have an interesting side note here:

In SWTOR I prefer the story missions but like most others, pretty much loathed or was completely bored by the non story missions.

In TSW I have the luxury of redoing missions I like and I really like the side missions I do try. (I know the ones where I have to write things down to puzzle solve I avoid like the plague but most other ones I enjoy) But the story missions while I do like them, aren't much more involved than the side missions and I do prefer the mechanics and cut scenes of the SWTOR ones.

So I wonder if we could have our peanut butter and chocolate by having either SWTOR story added to TSW or TSW side missions added to SWTOR...

Oh and while TSW does have running around, it is much longer in SWTOR and TSW has a better sprint system.

TSW also makes better reuse of the zones.

You can improve your sprint speed in TSW too; it's something you buy at your faction HQ.

fangblackbone wrote:

Oh and while TSW does have running around, it is much longer in SWTOR and TSW has a better sprint system.

The final straw for me, that made me unsub SWTOR, was the running around. My last night playing, I had to go to Coruscant, run a long ass way through an area that didn't allow vehicles, talk briefly to the NPC, run back to my ship, fly over to another planet, travel a long ass way through boring areas well below my level so I didn't even have some risk to make it interesting, talk briefly to the NPC, travel all the way back to the shuttle to my ship, fly back to Coruscant and run back to the NPC I spoke with first. Almost a half an hour of running (all my insta-travel abilities were on cooldown) for a few minutes of really amazingly pointless dialogue. And at that point I logged out of the game, and never went back.

Some of the TSW missions in the first area had some tedious travel, but nothing like that.

Quick question about secondary weapons:

Do they factor in to the damage you abilities do and do the stats on them (penetration, crit rating) apply as well?

I.E. I have the inner wheel of shotgun, elemental and assault rifle filled out. I want to test blood magic (exsanguinate looks scrumcious) and pistols. So I was thinking of putting them in the secondary weapon slot. But in order to equip ql4 I need to spend 6 skill points for each. Well and find a ql4 weapon.

There was some advice to not spread yourself too thin so I am worried about either spending the points I will need (I don't really mind some grinding as there are some really nice quests but I'd like to avoid it) or if I use a ql1 or ql2 weapon in the secondary slot, it will gimp my damage so that I won't be able to quest where I am.

My practice has been to drop back a few areas to build up a secondary set of skills. That way you can start out with the lower skills and weapons and not get zorched.

Just finished the last Templar Deck, only Panoptic Core left.

Shalalm "Taos" Baskur

Apparently a feat worthy of a double post!

Overachiever.

Actually I would do the same thing if my mmo add allowed me to play the same game for more than a week at a time.

Speaking of which I just started playing again last night.