With what seems like the final stress test before release over (after being extended by two hours); the long wait for release it coming very nicely to a close. I played for the main four hours, played a good bit of structured player vs player and world vs world. I also made a few new characters. The stress test seemed very near release; the culling of textures and objects was fixed, there was next to no connection issues or lag, the "report bug" button was gone and we were getting our "Hero's Band" accessory in the mail for each character. There were still a few issues however, certain skills in the world vs world maps would teleport the player to the centre of the map, in the water and on many people's cases; the performance could still be improved. All in all, the release is looking good! Right, onto todays topic - The Mystic Forge.
The Mystic Forge
The Mystic Forge is, in essence, a crafting location. When you activate the forge; you are given an interface with four spaces for items, all of these spaces must be filled for the mystic forge to craft an item for you. I tried the mystic forge located within the heart of the mists in last nights stress test and it does appear to be a fairly random process, put four items in, get a random item out.
"...legendary weapons, these are special weapons which have all sorts of effects which make the weapon obvious to see by other players."
There is however a group of specific crafting recipes which allow players to craft specific items of their choice. With the random recipes there is a chance to get a much better item than any of the items placed within the forge, for example, if four mini-pets were placed within the crafting slots of the forge; a rare mini-pet could be the outcome of the craft. The forge is also used as an end-game tool to keep players wanting to play the game, it does this by having specific crafting recipes which can be bought from an NPC in Lion's Arch using skill points as the currency. It works like this; you get a skill point each time you level up and when the level cap is reached; you continue to gain experience and technically level up but without gaining a higher level but only getting a skill point. I think this is an amazing idea since players will be able to play anywhere they want within the world of Tyria while still being able to move toward buying the recipe they want. The recipes you can buy contain legendary weapons, these are special weapons which have all sorts of effects which make the weapon obvious to see by other players.You might ask, "what's the mystic forge actually doing". Well, there has been a small amount of lore surrounding the Mystic Forge to explain what is occurring when the items are placed into the forge and an item is returned. The forge is meant to hold the imprisoned djinn Zommoros who comes from the continent of Elona, if you offer him the four gifts within the forge, he will create new items for the heroes of Tyria. That's all for the mystic forge, happy crafting and I shall be back tomorrow for the next topic.
