The queue ended up taking a little longer than fifteen minutes, but I didn't mind. It gave me time to get myself situated at the table. Because I always had a headset on, and a controller in hand, I needed to know where everything was located all of the time. I could have toggled on the front headset camera, but I would rather just feel around my table blind for the things I wanted.
I opened up a bag of chips and an energy drink which I almost immediately knocked over. I had to get my bearings straight, so I felt around for the corners of my desk and adjusted myself.
Once the queue got down to five more players I watched the number intensely. I was excited to play the game of course, but my heart wasn't beating out of my chest. The number rolled over to zero and the area started to load in. The loading screen had a calibration adjustment mini-game to play in the minute or two it took for shaders to compile. It always did this when loading between zones too. For me, it was so fast I only ever played it when logging in after graphic driver updates.
I played around with the cursor, catching little falling crystals. I didn't know the time, but they were supposed to represent Aechel Shards, which was cosmetic item shop currency. Aecheland didn't have microtransactions, but it did operate on a monthly subscription model called the "AecheLicence". Let's just say that Aechel Studios was always on-brand with their naming conventions.
Loading into the game on launch was a surreal experience. The starting zone was in a location just outside of the game's starting city. It was right outside of the woods I could never remember the name of. I was only ever there once. When I was playing the alpha, this was a tutorial island kind of deal. Between the alpha and beta, they finalized progression with their instanced dungeons, and the overworld got a larger scope. This was contentious with the player base who didn't like how bland open-world games had gotten over the previous decades. Developers ensured everyone that the terrain was sculpted largely by hand. Only dungeons would be procedural.
The tutorial was pretty basic and did a terrible job of teaching new players nuanced knowledge that was critical to gameplay. Thankfully, the community was less toxic than most, and absolutely massive. There was a comprehensive wiki that was constantly updated from the first minute someone stepped into a unique dungeon.
An NPC informed me on how to use my controller and headset. Confirmed, I could look left, right, up, and down with my thumbstick by following this cute flying mouse creature; Miru. My girlfriend at the time, Anya, had so many plushies, stickers, and vinyl figures of the little guy. He was inescapable even outside of the game.
The tutorial followed up by attacking a small group of enemies, which was admittedly pretty difficult to solo my first time through. With this build, and my Homing Bolt seeking the nearest enemy to me, it was a cakewalk. I navigated through the woods and the opening sequence toward the city where there was an entry boss fight. This was here to make sure you learned how to dodge and parry correctly. I had to do neither of those things, as I simply circle-strafed and kept hitting the right trigger on my controller. The Homing Bolts took care of the rest.
I already felt that this build was going pretty well, but that fight cemented it for me. I had sustainable damage, and if I could get my movement speed up I could abuse strafing with some of the slower-moving and turning bosses.
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After the tutorial was formally over, I was awarded with my first set of equipment. The armor was quite good as the set bonus from each piece is additive. Together it would give me a twenty percent increase in projectile speed. Since my main attack was a projectile, it would get to the target sooner. I would have to rely on equipment to help impose afflictions on enemies. My stats weren't going to be able to do that for me, since my Veil was low.
The Boltcaster was the Mystic Deadeye's signature weapon, a magic gun that was a fusion between an assault rifle and a wizard staff. It was sick to see in my character's hands, but for me was ever only a stat stick. The more affix effects I could stack onto it the better. Someone online told me I would be better off having two one-handed weapons because I would have more total affixes to work with. However, the two-handed weapons had more affixes available to them, and existing affixes were twice as strong.
4% Projectile Fire Damage was not just four percent more fire damage from my weapon. Rather it meant that extra fire damage was added to all projectile attacks I made; Including Homing Bolt. The goal was to get as many of these elemental damage types as I could. With just a little bit of damage in every type, I could virtually damage over time any enemy. Assuming I survived a battle long enough.
The game's starting city, Lethol, was about a 5-minute walk out of the wood. Along this path, Aecheland did its best to show all of the amazing sights and sounds a player might encounter. This was a holdover from the beta, and they never ended up streamlining that experience. I didn't mind it much as I would walk down that path sometimes to meet up with new guild joiners. They were always excited as I was logging in for the first time.
At the front entrance of the city were a couple of over-leveled guards placed there to protect the gate. Enemies rarely made it up to Lethol outside of random events or players kiting them up there to stay alive. If you attacked a player within the city, the guards would also react. Even though Lethol was a PvP safe zone, the same logic was used for all of the guards. There was always someone online trying to convince a fresh player to attack the guards for a "special reward". It was our game's "alt+f4".
