As I’ve written before, I’m pretty much stuck in on Craftopia. The seamless world update has done a lot of good for the sandbox and made it a pretty regular part of my gaming diet. So it’s with that in mind that I take a few moments – a month to be precise – to take my usual Choose My Adventure format of recounting my experiences and apply it to Some Assembly Required.
After all, this game is about building back the world after its destruction as well as building bases, so it totally fits. And just to illustrate that point, I’m going to discuss how I moved my game world into the Industrial Age, which actually ended up being a bit more involved than I had expected it to.
In case you didn’t read through that piece I linked to earlier, just know that the overarching progression mechanic in Craftopia is earning certain keys from dungeons to unlock the next age of the world’s history, which in turn means that additional items can be crafted, whether that’s weapons, armor, building pieces, or food items. By the time I had finished off my original impressions piece, I was on the cusp of moving towards the Industrial Age and its subsequent unlocks, like firearms and several pieces of automation.
But first, I had to get two keys. Easy enough on the face of it, but the steps to get there were pretty involved. And most of those steps were granted through a quest NPC that’s been my guide to this point.
The overall beats that I brought up earlier were pretty much the same in that I had to provide materials or crafted items, then head to the next dungeon, then use the key earned from that dungeon to progress the world. In order to get to the Industrial Age, I had to get two keys this time, which meant a pair of dungeons to plumb. On the face of it, that feels a bit like needless padding, but then again I’ve enjoyed the dungeons and the crafting to this point, so what’s bad about doing this twice?
The first dungeon that I had to get through was actually pretty simple enough. The ultimate objective was to fight a boss called Lizard Gunner, which is just what it sounds like on the tin, while the dungeon he was hiding inside was basically a series of combat rooms. Nothing to write home about necessarily, but also still enjoyable. If you care to see how that all plays out, there was a livestream of that entire adventure.
The second dungeon and the path towards it were a bit more involved. First, I had to explore a new area and find my usual questgiver, which meant I had to fight against my wanderlust urges. Most of the time I won, but there were more than a few instances where I diverted. This wasn’t really helped out by the fact that I wanted to stubbornly fight a dragon that was 20 levels above me because I thought my skills would see me through.
The other major thing I ran in to was the fact that I had to make 20 electronic circuits ant 20 piles of scrap parts. Again, on paper, that doesn’t seem like a lot, but this was actually a pretty beefy ask because the 20 items that I needed to turn in had a couple of lower level material requirements, and those requirements asked for a lot of raw materials, like hundreds of ore.
Once again, this kind of felt a bit like needless padding at first blush, but I tried my best to lean into the whole task and use it as a means to feed that earlier wanderlust urge. This kind of helped me out, as over time I started to stop paying rapt attention to the masses of iron and copper I needed and more kept focusing on opening the map. These activities were extremely entertaining, such as the aforementioned dragon fight. I also did my best to take it in bite-sized pieces instead of trying to run full speed into the next objective. That just felt like an avenue to Burnout Town.
Eventually, I did indeed gather up all of the ores I needed to make the things I had to turn in. This then led me into some higher-level fights against fire goblins, and then to the next dungeon itself, where I had to face some small combat rooms, a few interesting platforming segments, and a griffon fight at the end.
This dungeon definitely felt a lot more like the ones I wanted to see more of. The platforming sections weren’t the most mind-blowing, but they were still more than engaging enough, and the combat segments let me test out using a dual wield combat style instead of the usual weapons I had grown accustomed to.
By the time I got to the griffon fight, however, it was all suddenly very serious business. I haven’t lost to a dungeon boss in this game yet, but this one very nearly got me to that point; its movements were kind of erratic, I had resolved to use a bow and arrow in order to land headshots on a flying foe, and it was just about on par with me in terms of level, meaning I wasn’t really about to mindlessly click through the encounter. In fact, I had to use more than a couple of abilities, such as the shield spell I use. I even had to swap out from my bow to melee because the magical arrows I can generate tapped me completely of mana.
I managed to emerge victorious, but not without a healthy dose of respect for the griffon fight and for the game itself. I definitely feel like I’ve turned a sort of corner with the game in terms of its challenge level, and having opened up the Industrial Age, I now have to perhaps consider how to set up automation like resource gathering stations or automated crafting. I also have to make myself better armor; this little short skirt ensemble my character is rocking right now isn’t quite cutting it.
That was this time through in Craftopia. Next time around, I think I’m going to focus on making my base of operations a little more presentable and dressed up. It’s been too utilitarian for too long and I would like to see that change.
MMO designers construct thrilling worlds, but MMO players also build some amazing content within them! Some Assembly Required highlights player-generated content, from events to housing to quest-creation systems. There’s creativity galore out there, and we travel the MMOverse to find and share it.
