Theme

The Nameless Lands is still in beta testing, but several brave souls have risked the journey for the thrill of discovery. To its credit, the layout of the land is strongly themed, unlike the other game segments except, perhaps, Aleria. This adds greatly to the illusion of traveling a strange and wonderous land, full of adventure. I thoroughly enjoyed walking and mapping the segment, and intereacting with the various NPCs. You are basically an invader in a border region of Nork. The segment is accessible by talking to an NPC in Frore Town, who teleports you into a vast lake.

When you first enter the land, you are non-hostile with most of the inhabitants except the undead and perhaps a couple of rogue forest dwellers. Even a small character can walk about the surface in relative safety. The inhabitants do view you a bit suspiciously, and so there are no IH or loot traders available, and succor twigs work in few places.

There are at least seven competing factions and what you do can affect your status with each (enemy, neutral, friend.) Six of them are recognized by NPCs called Diplomats, who will tell you your status with each: Cabervale, Oogletown, Bandits, Nameless One, Graine, Miners. There is also a forest faction, but they are not recognized by the diplomats.

Game Features

An attempt at dynamic lighting and day/night effects doesn't work quite well. It tends to lag even a strong computer, and the radius effect looks crude. You will probably want to play with the lighting feature turned off.

Although you can walk about using the old 16bit graphic front end, most terrain features will not show up. You want to donwload and use the new 24bit graphics FE. There are a lot of neat terrain features and many places are cool looking.

NPCs are chatty, and monsters like to taunt you, and this adds to the fantasy effect of the game. The monster phrase list is still a bit limited and in some cases not appropriate, but at least the talk system is in place. I hope the game operators make better use of this feature.

Monsters/Skilling/Leveling

Monster balance is still a bit of an issue, although it is greatly improved since the segment opened. Critters tend to hit hard, and yield a lot of experience and skill. You can do OK leveling solo if you are of the highest skill. But Cobrahn remains your best bet if under level 50. As in the other segments, mentalists are the leveling masters, so party with a couple while they use their psionic "tricks".

There are some areas that can be exploited for solo skill, but I expect these to be fixed in time. In parties and in the right areas, skilling is good as the per kill skill cap appears to have been raised or removed in the segment. It is an EXCELLENT segment for skilling secondary skills with a party. Some general hunting areas still need to have monster hit points lowered or experience/skill greatly increased, but the game operators have been good about adjusting things in this area.

The experience distribution system in place for party hunts is horrendous. "Smaller" players can see huge cuts in experience, and the party as a whole sees nasty cuts starting at a party size of 4. But the entire segment is geared for party hunting. The reality of Drakkar is that there is no practical distinction among players once they reach skill 30, regardless of level, and all experience levels require the same amount of experience points.

Quests

I do not want to post spoilers with the segment so new as it might ruin the fun for some players, but feel free to PM me if you want more detail, or visit channel 50 in DZ Chat. The big quest discovered so far is the one to pop the level 50 cap. But even after the cap is lifted for a level 50, they will receive experience only when killing Nameless Land critters. I think this is a good restriction at this point to prevent a flood of level 51's from returning to Cob to level up. It appears that one needs 600meg experience to advance each level above 50.

A potentially huge problem with the segment quests is the incredible amount of tedious hunting needed to perform most of the quests. The need to gather certain rare items over and over and over again goes beyond what most players will find fun and acceptable, except for the most hard core among us. Since the current player base in the segment consists of several hard core players, the perception of the segment might be a bit skewed. Personally, more often than not, I find myself fatigued and more than a bit bored after an evening's play.

You will find BIG level limits on gear. While I am all for level limits, the current limits in place, like the party experience system, are ignorant of the reality that skill is the determining factor for high level play, not experience level.

As a general statement, quests need players of high skill, ragerdless of level, yet players in the level 30 to 40 range cannot use most of the gear discovered so far. Also, the quest gear has been a disappointment given the level, difficulty and enormous tedium needed to do most of the quests. Basically, the gear quest setups go against a time-honored tradition in Drakkar: if you are big enough to be of real help on the hunt, then you are big enough to use the gear.

If you are not over level 40, then be prepared to hunt Nameless mostly to help complete quests and obtain gear for friends and guildmates who are. The segment needs a lot of work in this area.

Loot

Loot tables have not been properly setup in the segment. Loot drops are rare, and when they do occur is it very low level nork coins and gems. It is not a place to coin. Game operators are aware of this, but has a low priority as there are other segments one can go to for loot.

Gear

Some critters will drop their weapon when searched, but most do not. It is mostly junk, even by Nork standards, except for some bows. A few critters drop bows that exceed the damage potential of what is available in Nork. The bows do not tie and can be brought back to Nork. There is a glowing, proning bisento that occasionally drops, but its damage is very disappointing. I suspect this will change sometime before production release. It would be nice to see how skill 30 works with the halberds wielded by some of the guards and giants. They certainly hit mighty hard with them!

Abilities