Age of Conan - multiplayer

Since Tortage is a relatively small city, surrounded by multiple environs that are large in their own right, the best strategy is to accept as many quests here as possible before running off to a new area. Many hunting quests are similar and, particularly in hunting ground areas like White Sands Isle and the Acheronian Temple, you can easily tackle multiple quests simultaneously. And this may sound like MMO Tactics 101, but hunting grounds are excellent places to group with other players. Not only do these areas attract tons of other players, but you’ll also grind through these busywork missions faster and with fewer fatalities.

Another reason to group with players is the bane of public questing: spawn camping. Solo players can expect to join queues to kill boss characters like Pict chieftains and giant plants. While you’re all standing around twiddling your virtual thumbs and waiting for your target to respawn, you might as well come together for the common good of moving on to the next quest.

For more social players, finding compatible characters and groups is easy. You can search for players by region, race, class, and level range via a utility built into the game’s interface. Forming a guild is off-limits until you reach level 20, but once you do, you’ll open up even more multiplayer options like building player cities and siege battles (which we’ll cover later this week).

At this early stage of the game, there aren’t any of the big dungeon raids or giant monsters to kill that normally necessitate forming a group. So, while it’s great to have the option of switching to multiplayer mode anytime during your first 20 levels of advancement, it’s a bit disappointing that you have to grind through a couple levels of pubic quests just to move ahead in the more interesting single-player story line. Would King Conan settle for slumming on the beach killing crocodiles when fate beckoned? Neither would we.

On to Day 3 - Tortage Island guide

May 13, 2008