No Cap On Whining

And furthermore, why are new players stuck at the same lower cap?

And why can't I create a new character to play with friends who want to try it out?

And why do you have to do ridiculous shenanigans like this to maximize your prestige gains? http://www.reddit.com/r/Skyforge/comments/3c9wxs/how_to_maximise_your_prestige_gain_within_the/

And

And

And

And

They See Me Cappin', They Leavin'

I really think Skyforge is shooting itself in the foot by giving players a reason to stop playing every week as soon as they hit the weekly caps after a few days.  Cap reset Tuesday night and I was coming up on the Spark of Insight cap by Thursday night without premium.

"Work on orders" is not a proper answer to this.  Orders have two paths of progression: upgrading temples & chapels and raising adepts.  The former has two components: temple/chapel level and quality.  Temple and chapel levels have the most impact on both your prestige level and your character's stats but it is capped by the currency cap because holy texts are tied to currency.

So once you're at cap you're not going anywhere in terms of upgrading temples and chapels.

Temple and chapel quality require both credits (limited by cap, obviously)--and quite a lot of credits--and components received from missions available every other day.  So okay, there's a reason to log in every other day as long as you want to keep playing.  If you're not saving some credits in reserve, any progress on quality ends with the currency caps too.

Then there's raising adepts and ranking up your order, neither of which have an appreciable impact on your prestige or character.  In fact, the only direct relation they have that I'm aware of is that higher ranks allow for higher temple levels, except that just by sending adepts on missions regularly I've extremely outpaced the speed of my temple development.  The only way this would be a hindrance to progression is if someone never bothered with missions until they hit temple level caps.  Elsewise, order rank only seems to affect max level of adepts, level of daily adepts available to recruit, difficulty of missions, and number of adept slots.

You could, very very very easily, never "work on orders" and not lose out on much just by maintaining them for a few minutes every couple days and/or regularly on the few days of the week you're logged in full time.

So let's talk about the reason behind the caps.  Apparently according to devs (or so I'm told), it's meant to slow player progression into the endgame to give them more time to work on content.  It's a novel idea which I was okay with until the second week now where I kind of just wish I could explore the game unhindered.  If I really think about it, I'd rather reach the cap quickly and have nothing to do and then concern myself with minute character development than hitting caps in a few days.  I can FEEL it draining my enthusiasm for this game and that's very disturbing and frustrating that a game seems like it's okay with that.  My interest in it survives pretty conveniently right now that there isn't something else that wants my full-time attention.

I want to see where the story goes, I want to see where the gameplay goes, I want to see what the endgame is like, and I'd rather the thing between me and all of those not be that my numbers refuse to go up after a certain point.

I'd rather hit an empty endgame in a few weeks than hit an empty game 4/7 days of the week for months.

Dungeoneering

DF and HT guides forthcoming.  I've done DF twice and both times I got into groups that were stuck at the area with the trash that you have to sneak by (effectively at the end of the instance) and the one HT I had collapsed mysteriously AFTER the first boss was killed.

Mare Sacro Monastary Dungeon Guide

Mare Sacro Monastary (MSM) is the first "Group" Adventure, ie 5-man dungeon, you'll gain access to as you progress in prestige in Skyforge.

Like most areas you gain access to for the first time, Skyforge seems alright with dumping you right into an Impossible rating version of the dungeon--don't do this if it's your first time and be sure to manually drop it down to a lower-star difficulty to get your feet wet.  Group Adventures in this game are no joke and will wreck unorganized random groups, so you want to take the challenge at a reasonable pace your first couple times.

Entrance

Going in, the first several pulls are primarily groups of swarm mobs.  They're not difficult to handle but CAN do damage quickly so be prepared to pop shields.  Also, beware as you cross each bridge, as 1-2 kelps will jump up along most of them.

1st Gate

This pull can be pretty serious and is where most unprepared groups are going to hit a wall.  The swarm mobs need to go down ASAP but targets after that are a bit of a crapshoot.

Icy Abyss Kelps hit hard and will pursue the tank in melee range.  On occasion, it will pull in all nearby players and then create a bubble around itself which will burst, damaging players nearby after a short delay.  Everyone pulled in needs to get away from it quickly.

Roaring Waves Naiads are simple ranged enemies.  They can be kind of LOS'd behind the planters visible in the above screenshot, but they may path right up onto them.

I would recommend the tank grab all mobs and kite the Icy Abyss Kelp.  I would also recommend killing it first before the Naiads to simplify the encounter but any order is mostly fine.

Labyrinth

The next area has this kind of grid-y layout with groups of enemies at each corner of the yellow triangle, single kelps scattered throughout, and 3 patrolling Icy Abyss Krakens.  2 of the Krakens patroll each of the vertical lanes and one patrols east-west across the middle-top lane.

Make sure, before pulling any groups and while fighting, that you are aware of where the Krakens are so that you don't pull them also.  When and if you can pull them safely, they only take a minute or two to take down.  I usually grab the horizontal one and then one of the vertical ones to have a clear path.

Incidentally, the Krakens actually do eventually respawn if you spend too much time in the area.

I usually pull this west group first and, as you can see, from the west corner (as opposed to a lot of groups that like to pull them towards the gate).  This gives you a LOT more options for LOSing them for the pull and breathing room to kite.

Icy Abyss Naiads are rough and can shut down groups if you're not careful.  Their big ability to watch out for is when they have a bubble forming above them; they will launch projectiles that will deal damage and trap the hit player in a bubble--which can be chained to deadly results (often if multiple players are standing near each other).

If your group is having trouble with the Icy Abyss Naiads I strongly recommend simply targeting it first.

I like to pull the east group from the opposite side.  This group is relatively easy.

For this last group I clear out all the spare kelps on the side of the map that's convenient depending on which vertical Kraken was cleared out.  This pull is the same as the one before the 1st Gate, sans swarm-types.  Like previous pulls there's plenty of room for kiting.

Gauntlet => Cetus

This section has another 3 groups of mobs along with an extra quirk: starting from the second turn (the path leading directly to Cetus), groups of kelps continually spawn from Cetus and march down that hall.  If you pull smart, this is only really an issue for the last pull.  Be aware that any kelps that spawn and reach the end of the hall will just sit there if not pulled and then slowly die, so you can wait for waves to despawn before moving forward.

The first pull is pretty easy, just one Foamy Tides Ong and some kelps.  The thing to watch out for with Foamy Tide Ong is for when they start to spin around; they will start to do huge damage in melee range.

Second pull is an ong with 2 support kelps.  I strongly recommend pulling these back around the corner to where the first group was to avoid having to deal with the spawning kelps.

Third pull is a bit trickier unless you pull them far back around the corner, then it's just mostly dealing with Icy Abyss Naiad shenanigans while you take down the ongs.

Before moving on to Cetus, I recommend waiting for a wave of kelps to pass and then blitz straight for the boss, picking up kelps along the way, instead of stopping to fight them, because if you do you will start to get bogged down by rapidly spawning waves as you approach.

Cetus himself is pretty benign, the real trouble is with the intermittently spawning kelps, which can do real damage if they're not managed.

A lot of my troubles tanking this fight have been solved by simply kiting full time and picking up adds as they spawn.  It makes the fight very safe for everyone.

Leida the Conquerer

I recommend clearing out all the kelps in the courtyard leading up to Leida just to minimize the risk of extra accidental pulls during the boss.

Leida is a pretty simple fight.  The first, most immediate thing to watch for is geysers that will spawn beneath players and then erupt, dealing large damage if they're not avoided.  Second, at 15x and 7x HP, Leida will create a shield and spawn two Naiads.  The shield reduces damage to the boss and deals damage to anyone standing inside it; to break it, both Naiads need to be killed.

The two Naiads spawn at opposite sides to the left and right, which can make them tricky to pick up.  Often, one may wander into Leida's shield, in which case they need to be pulled out (with either abilities or manually--can retreat a bit into the courtyard).  If you can get threat on both quickly, you can cause them to cluster up by moving into the recess on the right/west that you can see in the background of the above screenshot.

Elsewise she's pretty easy to shred down, putting an end to MSM.

Skyforgin' and Tankin'

Been playing a lot of Skyforge the past week.  It's fun enough to fill my current MMO void while I'm still taking jaunts into Heroes of the Storm and Trove (since the Steam release I've had two separate groups of gaming buddies get into it).

Skyforge is a Russian MMO, and like a lot of foreign MMOs there is an awful lot that is either not explained very well period or not explained very well probably due to poor translations.  And like a lot of second- or third-string MMOs the external resources for the game are really poor when they exist at all, so I'd like to do what I did with this blog way way back when I started it circa Guild Wars 2 and try to collect information and strategies until someone else picks up the torch with a bit more organization and competence.

I can begin by talking a little bit about tanking so far, since that what I have modest experience with in MMOs and have been doing mostly in Skyforge.  I've only had access to Paladin so far.  Threat is very easy to get and hold and you have plenty of tools to get it and hold it and get it back if you need to.  As I get into the 4k+ prestige range though I'm starting to notice a lot of enemies--especially normal trash mobs--in normal+ level Adventures are tuned to completely squash you if you're not on the ball.  And this isn't entirely in terms of fight mechanics; a modest size group of Swarm-type mobs can and will wreck your shit if you aren't popping regular shields and your group isn't fast enough with the damage.

It gets worse in Group Adventures where you start having to treat every trash pull like you're approaching a boss.  Which is frustrating because the bosses, by contrast, are pretty well tuned for group play--for the most part.  Not having regular healing can really make things frustrating.  Maybe I'm doing things wrong or maybe I keep getting stuck with incompetent supports (I haven't played support enough to understand how viable or essential their role is, but I really should) but I switch off to DPS every so often to try to see how other tanks are behaving and I see the same kinds of issues.

One thing I've noticed that has helped, and have noticed other tanks catching on to, is that kiting enemies seems to be one of the safest ways to do things.  For example, pretty much all issues I had handling the pre-boss mini-boss of Mare Sacro Monestary were resolved by getting threat on the boss, picking up adds whenever they spawned, and running in a big ring around the outside of the room while the group blasted everything.  The gauntlet portion of the last boss of Daren Facility seems to virtually require a similar strategy.  Threat is not difficult to manage so you don't need to be constantly poking enemies, and enemy pathing is kind of strange; enemies don't seem to want to pass through each other and, when swarming, will gather around you in a circle--which is frustrating on many levels but can be abused to limit the number of enemies attacking you at once.  Also, ranged enemies seem to react very poorly to being LOS'd and may often sit there just staring at you from around the corner instead of attacking anyone.

This game very very desperately needs some way to mark targets; choosing which targets to kill first is a huge problem in this game.  Good and bad parties in this game can be distinguished by something as simple as whether or not everyone has the same sense in picking targets.

Anyways, that's all for now.  I'm going to do a writeup on MSM as soon as I've run it again to get accompanying screenshots.