Sometimes, you just do it for the looks.
Our Monday night Secret World crew decided to break into two groups, with mine going back to one of the Hell dungeons (I get the names all mixed up in my head) to farm some gear. Considering we had a brand-new healer, we actually redeemed ourselves pretty well. Lots of boss-smacking, heroic posing, and funny comments on TeamSpeak.
My big get of the night was a hammer drop that wasn’t a numerical improvement, but it definitely was an upgrade in the looks department. I wasn’t that fond of my “meat tenderizer” hanging off my back, but this new beast? It’s wicked awesome. It’s got glowy runes and a flanged head that looks like a metallic spider up and died at the end of it. I feel proud to wield it.
I was really hoping that Issue 8 was going to drop this week. Maybe it will. But I’m nervous, because Halloween is coming fast and Funcom better get on the ball.
So in the meantime, I have a lot of side projects in the works for my main character. I have set a goal to have her fully explore the world and finish all of the main quests that I guess I sped past. And yeah, that means Cost of Magic, and every time someone talks about that with raspy pain in their voice and tears in their eyes, it makes me want to do it all the more.
Issue 8 just looks like it’ll have so much for us to do: the Cat God quest chain (must get my filth kitty!), the League of Monster Slayers book, and the new scenarios/augments. It’s safe to say that the community is just starving for this content. I’m not that enthralled with the Whispering Tide event going on right now, especially the “dump crafting mats here” portion. Maybe it’ll pick up more steam later on, but it’s not that much of a diversion.
Bio Break 
Your ‘club’ reminds me of the crazy weapons in Vagrants Story…oh that is a flashback!
Cost of Magic should definitely be done at least once. Some people actually like this mission and have the repeatable speedrun down to a science. Others, like me, have cursed the designers names repeatedly and vowed never ever to run it again.
Woah, I’ve never done Cost of Magic. I’ll have to look that up! My only side mission right now is tracking down all the rare spawns, but I’ll probably put that on hold when issue 8 comes out. Although, I only have 10 left…
Also love the your outfit, I am guessing that is a templar uniform?
For the Cost of Magic i basically see two groups:
1. Those who did it exactly once, tried to run it like a “regular” open world mission and died numerous times. (Been there, doen that the first time. Even the memory still hurts! ) They spend a lot of time learning to do the jumping test (or even after failing a lot grouped up with somebody who is trained and got completed the step by just being close enough when the player who can do the jumping completes the step) but decide never to do it again.
2. Those who pondered the mechanics of the mission or at least checked out a guide on how to do it. Then ran the mission a few times for training and now know that they can get a huge ammount of XP (and thus AP) from this mission without any fighting and thus in very short time.
Up to some degree, i understand group 1. The first time i did the Cost of Magic, tier 2 and 3 killed me a lot. (Mostly tier 2). I did not count, but a it felt like i died aproximately 873 times, give or take a dozen. Then at tier 4 i spent like 3 hours learning the jumping. The trick is remember that you don’t have mass in TSW. If you hit the forward button, you are at full speed instantly, so hitting forward and jump in quick succession (while having sprint active) already gives you maximum jump range, which is exactly the range from one spot to the next in the jumping challenge.
Once you learned how to do it, you automatically switch to group 2, i would think. I heard that some players manage to do the mission in 7 minutes, my fastest run (when i took the time) was 12 minutes. You can get a lot of AP in a very short mission and thus reduce the AP grind a lot, what’s not to like about this?
Next to that by running and jumping through minefields with mobs chasing you or doing some precision jumping you practice controling your character. According to my experience everybody who’s good at running the cost of magic also performs rather well at the “dodge this and that” mechanics of nightmare dungeon boss fights. I can not decide if this is connected or if it just shows that the players in question are dedicated and practiced both challenges a lot.
It’s the Magus deck outfit… thanks!
Hey, I’m not a complete n00b healer. 😉 It was a nice run though. 😀
Oh, I thought you were switching to a healing build for the first time. My bad.
I added several abilities in an effort to be more effective, having unsuccessfully attempted to heal an elite once before. But I was teasing you, referring to my history as a healer in other games. The funny thing is that my first advanced deck was the Preacher, which I had expected to be a healing deck. Once I realized it wasn’t, I was too far along to stop. Then it seemed like KoM needed more tanks, so I took up hammers for a while. Dortmunder is a mess of disparate abilities really.
My big get was just finishing the Elite. :)Always a pleasure running with you guys.
I’ve run Cost of Magic twice now — 1st time was “back in the day” and the 2nd time was a few weeks ago during the double AP weekend. 1st time I realized pretty quickly that I needed to just dodge around and not fight anything, but it was still somewhat annoying. 2nd time I knew in advance to just dodge combat and let the mines deal with the train behind me. Went a lot smoother. If I weren’t now at wheel full I’d probably farm it for the AP, and once Augments are in, I’ll probably add it in to the rotation.
Gratz on the mace! I use that hammer appearance myself. Love it!
That’s the hammer look my Templar alt has used since it first dropped! (Hell Fallen, btw.)
Cost of Magic isn’t so bad. Just bring a big helping of patience for stealth missions and jumping puzzles.
Are issue #8 and the Halloween event actually tied together? From everything I’ve read, I was assuming they were separate. While they’ve indicated that issue 8 should be out by the end of the month, I have a feeling that they’ll roll out the Halloween event first (probably right after the current field step wraps up, which should be today or tomorrow). This is just my two cents, of course.
The Cost of Magic is a blast, honestly. I was mildly frustrated (tier 4 was the worst), but my first time only took me about 40 minutes (with 20 of them just for tier 4). After I did that, though, I realized I could just calmly (CALMLY) try to finish the steps and finish it all up in about 20 minutes. The only time I fight anything is during tier 3, and the few baddies circling the toxic lake really aren’t hard.
The two events are separate, but the devs have indicated that the coming patch will drop both the Halloween event (“free), and the augments/scenarios (DLC).
Is the Secret World worth getting? I tried beta and my computer hated it, so I have not tried it since it went live but I loved the concept.
It’s worth getting from a gameplay standpoint. But if you haven’t upgraded your hardware, you might still have a problem playing it.