Category: Fallen Earth

With Fallen Earth back online after a half-year (!) of the servers being down, you just know I had to get back on this old favorite and have some weird post-apocalyptic fun. It’s been a very long time since I played, so a fresh character was the best way to go. I need to relearn all of these systems anyway. So I rolled up a new Syperia, skipped her over the tutorial, and got into the action.

I went with Midway as a starting town because a wastelander can never have too many crafting recipes. Right now, I’m simply using knives for combat while methodically working through the crafting quests in the area and snarfing up materials.

Fallen Earth’s mutated hermit crabs using CRTs for shells is never not amusing to me.

I’m also a big fan of these little… skits? that play out in various areas. This one had two guys talking about and chasing a hen while discussing whether or not to put a lifenet collar (which would bring it back to life on death) on it for cockfighting purposes.

I won’t lie — the nostalgia factor was very powerful coming back to this game. Fallen Earth has a special, weird place in my heart among MMOs, and despite all its jankiness, it’s still a fun game to its core. Shame it didn’t get more of a following, but I’m glad it’s still alive.

The combat is a clicky action fest — serviceable, but not as tight nor as engaging as tab-targeting. I do like to make a challenge out of seeing how many headshots I can do and if I can down a character before it reaches me, though.

As I continued with Midway quests, I thought about the rumored Unity remake. Yeah, I know that the odds of it ever getting done and being of interest to a wider spectrum of players is incredibly low, but it’s about the only hope this game has for a future besides “merely continuing to exist on the goodwill of Little Orbit.” Better graphics couldn’t hurt, sure, but what’s far more important is more responsive gameplay and better optimization.

Sometimes I end up with some half-finished posts involving games I’ve stepped away from for the time being, so instead of sitting on these forever, I’m putting a couple together for your reading enjoyment today!

At this point in Fallout 76, this character is the one that I’ve played the longest and progressed the furthest. It’s actually a great feeling to be past a lot of the well-trod content and into some new territory, especially as I push up into the 40s.

I kind of bounce around between main quests rather than solely stick to one arc. So I’ll do some Responders, some Overseers, some stuff for the Raiders/Foundation, and so on. It all needs to get done in the end, so changing it up is solely for variety’s sake.

Hey, who’s ready to take a vertibird ride down to The Pitt to find a hellhole even worse than this place? Me! Me!

Now let’s switch over to WoW Classic for a bit. Hey look at that — it’s pretty much the only spot in Desolace that’s sunny and full of color! Nice to have a bit of that in this zone, it’s such a relief after so many grey kodo and kodo bones.

As I near level 40, I have to note that my general enthusiasm for Classic — right now — is not nearly as high as it was a couple months ago. It’s still a very chill and relaxing experience as I follow my quest guide and cruise through the original game, but there’s a difference between that and “compelling.” There was a stretch of time I couldn’t wait to log back in, and now the scales have tipped more in retail’s favor. I’m not giving up on Classic (I hope I’m not!). It’s just where I’m at right now.

I’ve been a little down on myself for slacking off and not pushing myself toward goals I set, so by gum, I was determined to at least meet my goal for Fallen Earth this month, which was to wrap up Clinton FARM quests. Shouldn’t be hard at all, just needed to nudge myself out of my gaming routine to get to it.

Starting off, I finished up a round of doctor training on a bunch of patients. Bandages, drugs, medical bill, the whole works. Nothing about this seems sanitary, but eh, you use what you got.

Then a quick mandatory sunset pose before riding off to butcher a bunch of Blade Dancers. And then poachers. For some reason, the poacher mobs all bunched up and then trained on me:

So yeah, I died.

I thought I was making good progress, scratching out quests left and right, until one led me to a mine… where there were about 15 or so new quests waiting. That isn’t always a bad thing, unless, of course, you’re trying to wrap up an area. In which case it becomes, “C’mon, man!”

Yeah, this seems like a good idea right here. “And they never found the body” will be in my obituary, I bet. Down in the darkness, I bash my way to level 9.

This mutant’s hitting all of my bingo card entries — monocle, gas mask, turban, bandolier.

This fight was tricky, mostly because I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t realize until about a half-minute in that I wasn’t doing any damage. Rather, I was — but the toxic barrels in the room were healing him. So I had to do something very unnatural, which was to ignore the boss slashing my back and focus on cleaning the barrels and healing myself. Once that was done, pow, I could kill him.

And that’s Clinton FARM!

It’s been a little too long since I meandered across the wasteland in Fallen Earth, so I got in a bit of time this past week. When I logged in, I was gratified to see my clan — in the middle of the day during a lunch hour! — still quite alive and chatty.

My current focus is cleaning out the quests at Clinton FARM, one of the starting towns. I’ve always liked this one for its focus on helping to heal and rescue people. It’s a good focus for roleplay that changes up the usual murder hobo status quo. Most of the quests have to do with saving someone and playing doctor, and I’m all for that.

Of course, a little murder hoboing comes into play, especially when I had to spend 10 minutes roaming a bandit camp looking for various medical supplies to respawn. Hey, it’s not my fault when they rush at me looking for a fight, only to get Mr. Baseball Bat to the cranium!

Enjoying that legendary Fallen Earth sunrise. The nuclear dust gives it a romantic glow.

With everything in this MMO, you have to be patient. Absolutely nothing is highly responsive to input, from movement to combat to quest interactions, so getting used to that little delay is important. It often feels like you’re queuing up actions and then waiting a few seconds to watch it all play out.

While I would love a far more responsive game, I can’t deny that there’s something calming about being forced to slow down and meet the game’s pace rather than demand that the game meets mine. Since so much of Fallen Earth involves taking your time — gathering items, traveling, crafting — this pace fits the tone.

I will recommend that when in Clinton FARM, you head to the firehouse and spend 10 minutes or so watching the question-and-answer session between a firefighter and her gung-ho if ill-informed trainees. Lots of comedic gold in that discussion.

With Midway’s quests all wrapped up (at least, the ones I could do there — I have another dozen or so that are breadcrumb quests to other locales), I headed out on the second leg of my starter town tour by going up to Clinton FARM. It wasn’t that long of a trip, all things considered, although I did prolong it by doing a lot of scavenging along the way.

Despite the name, Clinton FARM isn’t really a farm. It’s more of a training ground for emergency services. It reminds me a lot of the Desert Rangers in the original Wasteland, how there was still this post that was teaching people to defend, heal, and help. There are a lot of quests here that involve straight-up killing, but also some that include being a medic. I think there’s one quest that’s called something like “Try not to vomit” that has you poking around a cadaver for a while learning about causes of death. NPC in that room was wearing a mask. What’s wrong with me?

While I was here, I had to visit the bunker bar. I had forgotten about this until I saw it! It’s this underground tavern that’s not instanced — you climb down a ladder and it’s this big complex underground. What I used to love is that it had Fallen Earth’s two gambling minigames, slots and blackjack. Right now I think only slots work, as some of the features of this game aren’t activated, but it was nice to revisit this old stomping ground.

Otherwise, I’ve been gobbling up the quests, laughing at the weird scripted humor of the NPCs, and generally slamming my way through crowds of mobs with my baseball bat. Now that I have seven levels under my belt, I’m a little above starter town content and don’t have to worry too much about dying to anything.

Other than simply doing all of the quests for the sake of questing (and a bit more leveling/AP generation), my main goal with this town is to rack up a lot more in the way of crafting supplies. I need to get a whole raft of tradeskills up there, and that can be really expensive to powerlevel if you don’t have the mats.

After a crazy busy month in which I’ve only been able to give Fallen Earth the passing time of day, I’ve managed to enjoy some lengthier play sessions in the wasteland.

And yeah, I’m STILL at Midway. I keep thinking I’m done there, and then I find more quests and have some more crafting to do and need to scavenge mats for said crafting… it feels like it never ends. There’s like seven (I think) starter towns, and by gum, I’m going to do them all.

It’s all still a re-learning process in which I keep making stupid errors or find myself flummoxed until I figure out the answer. For example, the other day I wanted to trade up my starter fireman axe for a pair of swanky skinning knives. I’m not melee, but I like having that backup in case I want to save on ammo or run out. But the second I started fighting with my knives, I realized I was doing practically no damage to mobs.

I nearly died before I could change over to my rifle and get some breathing room. After that came some evaluation — what’s going on here? What I didn’t realize is that all of the starter gear (which is fairly decent) has incredibly low stat requirements. The knives, on the other hand, required some investment into the melee skill to be effective. Some AP spent there, and bingo, I’ve got workable dual knives.

One factor that’s really upped my interest level is the fact that I finally found a great clan. It’s perfect for me — chatty, supportive, and not so big that you get lost in the crowd. They’ve been tolerating my silly questions, and we’ve enjoyed getting to know each other as newfound friends. Our clan leader even said that Fallen Earth was her very first MMORPG, which is probably not something most people could lay claim to.

Hey, it’s Thanksgiving! Have I told you that I’m thankful for YOU for reading all of my weird ramblings? Thanks for letting me be a part of your day, because I enjoy putting these posts out there for entertainment and maybe a little bit of information.

I’m also thankful that in 2021, we have Fallen Earth back. I won’t lie — time has been so limited this month and my attention so drawn to LOTRO that I haven’t been able to really dive deep into this game as I want to. But I am happy that I can jump in a few times a week to saddle up, explore the wasteland, and work on quests and crafting.

Speaking of saddles, one of my early goals for this character was to upgrade her transportation. Initially, the game gives you an “Old Nag” horse that’s pretty awful, all things considered. It has low stamina (fuel), and when that runs out, your horse isn’t useful for much.

While a lot of other people like to put themselves through hell trying to create an ATV or motorcycle, I agree with the camp that says “horses are better.” Sure, you get them in all fantasy MMOs, but they absolutely rock in Fallen Earth. Not only do they fit the western motif very well, but they’re relatively easy to make better versions — and cheap to feed and operate. I “crafted” a horse and then upgraded it to a riding horse with much better stamina and — yay — a larger inventory. I love being able to load the beast up with extra ammo and other stuff I don’t want counted against my inventory weight.

And there’s the world-famous Fallen Earth sunset. It’s worth waiting for just the right angle of the setting sun to grab that screenshot.

Going back to an old game that you used to play a whole ton but haven’t played in many years feels a lot like jacking into the matrix and being overwhelmed by all of these familiar sights, sounds, and features. That’s how it’s been in the first couple weeks of Fallen Earth’s return.

I can’t rightly remember the last time I regularly played the game, but my brain nevertheless unlocked the memories vault and gave me an information cascade in those first few days. A whole lot more came back to me, from systems to the endearingly awkward pattern of combat, than I would have actually expected. This was quite helpful, because instead of flailing around without understanding the unique setup of this game, I could get to actually adventuring.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had nearly the normal amount of gaming time lately than I’d hoped, so Fallen Earth sessions have been infrequent and sporadic. Still, I’ve really liked jumping onto my character and having her work on leveling up tradeskills and start to go through Midway’s quests. And oh! the joy of queuing up crafting — Midway has a whole lot of crafting quests — and watching the timers clock down on multiple projects is still very satisfying.

There’s no rush to get through any of this, I know. Looking at the map, I’d really like to thoroughly explore all of Sector 1’s towns, go through the quests, and really get my build in a good shape before moving on. One of my more immediate goals is to start work on “crafting” a much better horse than the one I’m using. I’m actually very happy to use horses in this game, versus motorcycles and ATVs, because I feel they really fit the western motif.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to enjoy the great atmosphere and relaxed pace of this title. I don’t have any delusions that Fallen Earth is going to take off big in any way, but if a few new people check out what makes this truly special — and if the game keeps running for the indefinite future — then I’ll be satisfied.

Forget my birthday and Christmas — I already got the best present I’m going to get this year, I can tell. Last Thursday, Little Orbit activated Fallen Earth Classic, and just like that, we’re back in the apocalypse after two years away.

It was surreal to see the launcher working and heading to the character creator, but it didn’t really sink in that all of this was happening until I got into the game and saw the global discussion celebrating and chatting:

It outright destroyed my morning’s productivity, not that I was playing, but that I kept alt-tabbing over to read more of the excitement and questions in global chat. Man, I’ve missed this MMO, and it’s a true joy to have it back again — even if it’s the same old janky version. At least it’s free without any of the free-to-play restrictions or lockboxes, which makes it an even greater gift.

Starting back out again, I elected to go through the tutorial because (a) it’s been two years, after all, and I needed a refresher course, and (b) I want to fully document a playthrough from the start on this character. So the tutorial is kind of a prologue, putting you at Hoover Dam a few years before the rest of the game. I’m a clone, created to be harvested for parts, who is now trying to escape while two factions are fighting around me.

Sniping — and combat — is still a lot of fun, even if the game doesn’t register hits as fast as they’re performed. It’s that signature jank that we love.

After getting blown up in the tutorial, the game flash-forwards four years as my next clone awakens in the wasteland with a mission to find some solution to the failing cloning tech. Also, I’m going to stomp some mutant ants, but that goes without saying. I picked Midway as my resurrection location, and off I go!

I find it kind of funny that due to the ever-increasing resolutions of monitors, I had to pick “extra large” for font sizes just to read them comfortably. Also, I may be getting old.

This. This right here is when it REALLY hit me that I was playing Fallen Earth again. Getting above ground and seeing that oh-so-familiar western tableau, the cacti, the random mobs and nodes lying around. Oh, and the trademark broken monorail. Always wanted to ride that thing.

In any case, I took some time to simply run around, mine ore, and beat up a whole bunch of bad guys to get into the groove once more. I also got a start on crafting some ammo and bandages for the long road ahead. At least I have a rifle, pistol, and axe, which is a whole lot more in terms of weapons than the game used to start you out with!