mapleguy30
Dalayan Beginner
Classic MMOs are pretty much dead. Battered. Beaten. Six-feet under. Only a small niche of gamers actually prefers polygons of cardboard oceans and pixelated sand. But when all hope seems lost, there is one last gasp, last ditch, and final swing for the fences. The result: emulation. Shards of Dalaya is an emulation of a late 90’s powerhouse MMO that captivated the hearts and hours of countless gamers. But how does it stack up when put to the ultimate test?
Upon starting Shards of Dalaya, a character creation screen seemingly out of the MMO carved-in-stone dictionary awaits you. Pick from the regular fantasy races (human, elf, dwarf, ogre, etc) and select one class from the holy trinity (tank, healer, damage). The game then dives you head first into its custom-made lore, which is surprisingly a breath of fresh air considering it is emulation. “The Dream” is where each character awakens and begins their path through Dalaya. The gods, deities, specializations (good vs. evil, lawful vs. chaotic) are all wonderfully thought out and lend themselves to many entertaining quests. Factions are an exciting branch of progression, as you can closely align yourself with a group of NPCs who upgrade your character in return for completed tasks and events.
Leveling is very linear, aside from your choice of a few zones, from level 1 to 55. At this point, you can instead use experience gained from killing monsters and completing quests to purchase AA (Alternate Advancement) skill points for your character. There are about 500 AA’s which increase your character’s health, attack power, regeneration, and class-specific abilities like cool-down timers. Although there is some decision-making present in spending AA’s and leveling between 55 to 65, it is ultimately a very linear progression for your class archetype. Upon reaching level 65, your character is able to join in the main, 18-man“raid game” of Shards of Dalaya. There are approximately 13 tiers of difficulty and gear which guilds compete for and farm (kill repeatedly until all members of the guild have the loot from it.) Gear is the single most important facet of SoD, skill is almost irrelevant. Since there are no instances in SoD, these shared zones and tiers of bosses operate on a typical 5 day spawn rate. This can make progression for individuals and guilds extremely slow.
However, there is another way to advance your character besides gear. You may use your experience to fill “tomes” which enhance one aspect of your character’s abilities. Provided your character is over-capped on statistics like STR, DEX, CHA, there are tomes to enhance those stats. There are class specific tomes that make single abilities better, such as druid damage shield enhancements, or necromancers returning mana to their group upon getting a kill shot. There are about 30-40 useful tomes to pile experience into that are attainable without raiding upper tier zones (which are currently the only place to attain many useful tomes).
Now that your character is level 65, maxed out on AA’s, completed all available deity- and faction-specific quests, and filled numerous tomes of experience, what is there to do besides raid? Well, you could earn a lot of platinum (1.2 million, to be sure) to buy the best available charm in the game. Most top end players have them, but to the regular player this seems like kind of a backhanded feature that was thrown in to give players who don’t raid something to work towards. You can make money by tradeskilling, or selling farmed items to players, but this is problematic since the market economy is so sketchy and small. To efficiently create platinum, you need to already be well geared and have access to good buffs. This is the first major misstep of Shards of Dalaya.
As an alternate path of progression, there are 6-man raid zones that can reward you with gear. The first of which, Cyrtho Malath, is an excellent and suspenseful labyrinth of hallways filled with terrifying, giant snake-humanoids. The best part of this option is that regular monsters, and not just bosses, drop gear that could be a big upgrade for you and your friends. Unfortunately, difficulty (in the form of gear-check) ratchets up rather quickly, and progressing on 6-man content alone is very difficult without some gear from 18-man content. So if you want to get to the end-game of SoD with just your 5 buddies, you may run into a wall unless you find 13 other palatable players.
Another path and fun time-sink for the level 55-65 player is the wonderful bounty system. You are a contracted bounty hunter who kills in a certain specified area until a bounty event begins, which will provide a fun little challenge for a group (or a good duo), resulting in bounty tokens which you can exchange for extremely nice gear and upgrades. As you rank up as a bounty hunter, you can gain more powerful tokens which can purchase even better gear. This is the easily the most accessible and gratifying system within Shards of Dalaya. (Although, in another misstep, you cannot progress anywhere near the end-game still with only bounty gear).
Joining the raid game is a different sort of experience in this MMO. The player base is very small (about 150-200 dedicated) and everyone sort of knows each other like a small town, including the developers and administrators. Top guilds are essentially the developers of the game, as they are wont to incessantly whine and cry over small changes that happen to the game. But since it’s such a small player base, there is a good opportunity to develop content with a lot of feedback from players. This opportunity is obliterated when the attitude of players on game’s forums comes across as entitled and bratty. This game is free and the only real cost is the players’ and developers’ time. Although it can be a different sort of experience to join the ranks of the raid guilds and crawl slowly through each tier of content for months and years, I recommend playing the game with good friends and small groups for maximum enjoyment.
Those are your options for how to spend your remaining time in Shards of Dalaya. At the end, the bottom line for your individual progression is how good your gear is. There is pretty much zero customization available for your class archetype. Skill won’t help you much in this game, not nearly as much as play time will (getting to 65, filling 500 AAs, filling the normally attainable tomes, and purchasing the best charm could take you about over 6 months if you take a break to at least shower once a day. After that, you may be lucky enough and have enough time to progress through the raid game, have a well-geared 6-man crew, or work your way up the bounty ranks.
Total overall experience review: 6.5/10*
What do you think? Feel free to discuss below. Thanks for reading.
Upon starting Shards of Dalaya, a character creation screen seemingly out of the MMO carved-in-stone dictionary awaits you. Pick from the regular fantasy races (human, elf, dwarf, ogre, etc) and select one class from the holy trinity (tank, healer, damage). The game then dives you head first into its custom-made lore, which is surprisingly a breath of fresh air considering it is emulation. “The Dream” is where each character awakens and begins their path through Dalaya. The gods, deities, specializations (good vs. evil, lawful vs. chaotic) are all wonderfully thought out and lend themselves to many entertaining quests. Factions are an exciting branch of progression, as you can closely align yourself with a group of NPCs who upgrade your character in return for completed tasks and events.
Leveling is very linear, aside from your choice of a few zones, from level 1 to 55. At this point, you can instead use experience gained from killing monsters and completing quests to purchase AA (Alternate Advancement) skill points for your character. There are about 500 AA’s which increase your character’s health, attack power, regeneration, and class-specific abilities like cool-down timers. Although there is some decision-making present in spending AA’s and leveling between 55 to 65, it is ultimately a very linear progression for your class archetype. Upon reaching level 65, your character is able to join in the main, 18-man“raid game” of Shards of Dalaya. There are approximately 13 tiers of difficulty and gear which guilds compete for and farm (kill repeatedly until all members of the guild have the loot from it.) Gear is the single most important facet of SoD, skill is almost irrelevant. Since there are no instances in SoD, these shared zones and tiers of bosses operate on a typical 5 day spawn rate. This can make progression for individuals and guilds extremely slow.
However, there is another way to advance your character besides gear. You may use your experience to fill “tomes” which enhance one aspect of your character’s abilities. Provided your character is over-capped on statistics like STR, DEX, CHA, there are tomes to enhance those stats. There are class specific tomes that make single abilities better, such as druid damage shield enhancements, or necromancers returning mana to their group upon getting a kill shot. There are about 30-40 useful tomes to pile experience into that are attainable without raiding upper tier zones (which are currently the only place to attain many useful tomes).
Now that your character is level 65, maxed out on AA’s, completed all available deity- and faction-specific quests, and filled numerous tomes of experience, what is there to do besides raid? Well, you could earn a lot of platinum (1.2 million, to be sure) to buy the best available charm in the game. Most top end players have them, but to the regular player this seems like kind of a backhanded feature that was thrown in to give players who don’t raid something to work towards. You can make money by tradeskilling, or selling farmed items to players, but this is problematic since the market economy is so sketchy and small. To efficiently create platinum, you need to already be well geared and have access to good buffs. This is the first major misstep of Shards of Dalaya.
As an alternate path of progression, there are 6-man raid zones that can reward you with gear. The first of which, Cyrtho Malath, is an excellent and suspenseful labyrinth of hallways filled with terrifying, giant snake-humanoids. The best part of this option is that regular monsters, and not just bosses, drop gear that could be a big upgrade for you and your friends. Unfortunately, difficulty (in the form of gear-check) ratchets up rather quickly, and progressing on 6-man content alone is very difficult without some gear from 18-man content. So if you want to get to the end-game of SoD with just your 5 buddies, you may run into a wall unless you find 13 other palatable players.
Another path and fun time-sink for the level 55-65 player is the wonderful bounty system. You are a contracted bounty hunter who kills in a certain specified area until a bounty event begins, which will provide a fun little challenge for a group (or a good duo), resulting in bounty tokens which you can exchange for extremely nice gear and upgrades. As you rank up as a bounty hunter, you can gain more powerful tokens which can purchase even better gear. This is the easily the most accessible and gratifying system within Shards of Dalaya. (Although, in another misstep, you cannot progress anywhere near the end-game still with only bounty gear).
Joining the raid game is a different sort of experience in this MMO. The player base is very small (about 150-200 dedicated) and everyone sort of knows each other like a small town, including the developers and administrators. Top guilds are essentially the developers of the game, as they are wont to incessantly whine and cry over small changes that happen to the game. But since it’s such a small player base, there is a good opportunity to develop content with a lot of feedback from players. This opportunity is obliterated when the attitude of players on game’s forums comes across as entitled and bratty. This game is free and the only real cost is the players’ and developers’ time. Although it can be a different sort of experience to join the ranks of the raid guilds and crawl slowly through each tier of content for months and years, I recommend playing the game with good friends and small groups for maximum enjoyment.
Those are your options for how to spend your remaining time in Shards of Dalaya. At the end, the bottom line for your individual progression is how good your gear is. There is pretty much zero customization available for your class archetype. Skill won’t help you much in this game, not nearly as much as play time will (getting to 65, filling 500 AAs, filling the normally attainable tomes, and purchasing the best charm could take you about over 6 months if you take a break to at least shower once a day. After that, you may be lucky enough and have enough time to progress through the raid game, have a well-geared 6-man crew, or work your way up the bounty ranks.
Total overall experience review: 6.5/10*
What do you think? Feel free to discuss below. Thanks for reading.
