I completed the initial story arc for this portion of the Secrets of the Obscure (SOTO) expansion. First off (IMHO), this feels more like a Living World Season than an actual expansion since more parts of the story (and new maps) will be released for the next 3 quarters (to complete the entire expansion content).
Overall, I felt that it was okay (the fight in the last chapter was an annoying death hopping one for my character). The Kryptis Rift aspect is so-so IMHO. The really annoying part is whatever change they made to the client because my cursor keeps disappearing during combat (and I’m using the faux-action combat setting) where often times, I end up swinging at empty air.
The skyscale aspect is still a grind (maybe not as bad as the original) to permanently unlock it for all maps outside of SOTO. I finally found an abandoned egg after the 14th nest (it’s RNG when hitting up all of the different locations), and am just going to buy the 12 pieces of skyscale food from the trade post (versus the time gated aspect of crafting it). There’s still a bunch of other tasks as part of the collection though. As far as the flight mastery goes, I have 4 out of the 7 completed. Since the content is coming in pieces, leveling up masteries is a lot slower (I remembered going at a decent clip with the masteries in Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire). Regardless, this part of the game is something that I can work towards now that I’ve completed this part of the campaign.
As far as the maps currently released, they are also okay. There’s a lot of verticality involved and initially required creative gliding from higher spots to get to some of the archipelago (with more of the flight masteries unlocked as well as the updraft generator from the rift mastery category), exploration is much easier. I have around 98% of the current map completed (in terms of point of interests, vistas, waypoints).
One thing that began to stick out to me, was the lack of proper conveyance for some quest progression. Like for unlocking the Wizard’s Tower, it wasn’t really clear that I needed to complete SOTO events (or hunts) and/or running the event for the keys (and whenever I was playing, that event was not going off). Since I was playing blind, I ended up spinning my wheels for the first few days until I finally relented and watched several playthrough videos.
Unfortunately, the videos I watched didn’t really highlight this either since some folks happened to unlock the tower after completing that huge meta event. So I initially thought that meta was the key to progressing. So I happened to be playing when that event went off on Saturday evening, but the event failed to be completed. I did come across another playthrough video that showed them doing the key event with Mabon and Lyhr. However by this time, my optional complete events bar was almost full, and I finally filled it after doing a Kryptis Rift event. After that, it was relatively smooth sailing with each chapter.
My character is in really bad shape though as far as gear (I don’t even have legendary or ascended gear for example). I have no idea about the relic system yet (or elite spec). Which was why I originally planned to start a new character (and use the level 80 boost) since you can’t simply respec to another class. But then I remembered a lot of stuff like map completion isn’t account wide (and that I would need to re-explore all of that stuff). The first time around was fun, but I don’t really want to go through that again at this time.
As for the new dailies/weeklies system, I’m ambivalent about it (compared to long time players who play everyday) since except for the period when I was playing it everyday for a few months in 2019, I missed out on a lot of the rewards from the old system anyway. And I expect that to be the same as of current since I don’t see myself playing this as often until the next major content of the expansion is released. Maybe once I get the skyscale permanently unlocked, that might keep me engaged a bit with exploring the other maps (especially the Heart of Thorns map since there are a lot of point of interests and mastery points I’ve yet to pickup).
Still, this new expansion with the skyscale angle, got me re-engaged with the game during a time when I no longer have any main game that I’m playing (since I want to keep the filler games like Genshin and Honkai, just that), and I’m yet undecided on whether or not to stick with ArcheAge once the consolidation to the free-to-play legacy business model is completed. I may pickup the End of Dragons expansion once I complete the permanent skyscale unlock since that is a lot of exploration content. Overall (at least this part of the expansion), I give it around a 7.5 (out of 10).
