As I mentioned before, there are a few things that attracted me to FW. Lil things that I've never seen in other MMOs. I'll try to list all of them, but I'm certain to forget a few.
As a disclaimer, I'm not saying these features are exclusive to FW. For all I know most of these may be in WoW, haven't played WoW in centuries.
First, we have to take a look at the interface:
If you've played WoW before, most of that will look familiar to you. Also you can drag and drop most of the interface to your liking.
Note: some classes have 1 extra bar, which i will refer to as their gimmick bar. that bar will keep track of whatever is special about that class. An example would be the soul bullet clip for marksman.
Now, the features i like:
Auto Routing
When you hover the mouse on a quest, a description will show up, often, the description will contain green text, whether it's the objective or the person you turn in the quest to.
Clicking that green text will auto route you to it, and
usually, your character will avoid obstacles and will get there by itself. If for any reason you have to break the auto routing (like to collect a resource) you can resume the travel by pressing Z.
Note: You may check where auto routing is taking you by checking the map (M) as the route and destination become visible on it. handy to sometimes manually take a faster route.
Exp Aid
I love this, but it's 2 sided. When you don't play a character for at least one day or just don't gain much experience on that day, the game stores a certain amount of experience into exp aid. The amount of exp aid one can obtain depends on one's level, and can be used whenever the player wants, if used at all.
When you use exp aid, you have to pay for it, and it will turn part (if not all) of the empty part of the exp bar green. While there's green in the exp bar, any experience you earn from any source will give an extra 50% exp.
Exp aid, at one point, can cost a lot, however, under level 40, I'd say it's almost always worth it. You can also specify how much of the exp aid you want to unlock and the game will let you know the exact cost of it.
Promotional exp
This isn't constant, but lately it feels like it.
When I started playing FW, there wasn't any bonus exp. However, for months now, the game has had either "2x exp bonus from monsters" or "3x exp bonus from quests" or both!
Right now, the "3x exp bonus from quests" is because the international version of FW hasn't been able to implement some event or quest that from what I heard is meant to give player a bunch of exp daily. So this is their way of saying "our bad, have extra exp"
"2x exp bonus from monsters" is active on weekends only, but seems that it'll be active every weekend from now on.
Note: this is having the side effect of creating what is known as the level 30 noobs, players level up way too fast in the early game and start doing instances without even having a level 10 set.
Lionheart Scrolls
These scrolls give 30 mins of double monster exp, and the game gives them to you and encourages you to use them for the daily event "God's Trial", which is specifically a mass exp event to help level up.
You can get at least 1 every day from Naichilo by doing the study quest (which basically just involves talking to him, using an item, and talking him again.).
Here's the thing though, these scrolls stack up to 7 hours and 30 mins, and the effect can be paused. Use up all the ones you can use, and pause the effect til you need it.
May elaborate more on God's Trial on a future post.
Help
Under the character life bar, you'll find a "?" which is the help, and when i was starting out, and still now, i find this so useful.
I recommend to look at the help every time you level up because the content for the help is level based.
It will tell you whenever you have new skills to learn, what new events you can join, what instances you should do at your level, what monsters you can handle, what jobs became available to you and what maps you should hang out in.
On the side you can specify how long you got to play, and the game will recommend you quests/events for optimal reward/exp for that amount of time.
Event schedule
Again, the content depends on your level. Simply shows you the schedule of events for the day and tells you what prizes you can earn.
It's not the event scheduler itself that i like, but the fact that there's events all the time in this game.
Supposedly there's events that happen once a week, but i tend to have bad timing and miss those. I should check the schedule more often.
Those Special events have really really good and sometimes unique prizes.
Praying
Another minor thing, but i do like it. This game's lore revolves a lot around gods and celestial signs. As such, every hour of the day has it's celestial sign.
When you make your character, you have to specify it's birthday. That determines his native sign and it's lucky signs. Those only come into effect when praying.
What does praying do? well every hour you can pray, and it'll randomly give you a buff, but the incentive is that you can get rare and precious items for the first 4 times you pray on a day. Those first 4 times will also give you some exp.
You know you can use pray whenever the top center orb shines.
I think something happens in the month you character's birth date is on, but i'm not sure so don't quote me on it.
Crafting / Harvesting
FW does this wonderful thing where, sometimes when preparing a potion or cooking, it will generate "accidents".
"Well crap! what does that mean?" you may be thinking.
It's actually a good thing that makes no sense. If an accident happens while crafting, it means you'll get 2 or more of the item. The most I've seen is accidentally crafting 6 potions instead of just 1.I do find it funny that your character can, with 1 fish and 2 spices, accidentally create 6 fish steaks. Defies explanation.
It's like winning a mini prize.
In a similar fashion, Whenever you harvest resources like plants and metals, there's a rather big chance you'll get more than 1 of it. In fact, getting 4 at a time isn't all that uncommon.
Map
Again, a tiny detail, but the map and mini map are very useful in many ways.
The map allows you to mark points on it with a name, a note if you will. These can be used to save the location of either resources, monsters or important NPCs.
Those locations become listed on the side and can be clicked to auto route to.
The mini map is especially useful for harvesting resources.
With it's various levels of zoom, you can observe resources near you, and by pointing at them, you can see if they're the ones you looking for. Saving you the trouble of visually checking each and everyone of them.
There's other details i rather like about the game, but this list is really long as it is .But I'll mention that i started using the auction house recently, and it's really good. wish it had more filter options, but it's very affordable to auction anything, and you can find great deals on it.
Bitten is often surprised by how nice most of the people playing are, there's sometimes a jerk around, but for the most part, nice people.
If you're interested in playing with us, we're on the server [EU] Illyfue.
