Not long ago Trion announced that any players who hadn’t logged in to Trove since August 1st would lose their names if they didn’t log in before March 7th. What’s more, there were also goodies in store for those who did log in before that date. I of course completely forgot the deadline but remembered I needed to log on and finally did on Saturday this past weekend. I guess I’ve at least logged in since August because my name was not forfeit and I ended up playing for several hours over the weekend. The game is still just as fun as ever, even more so I would imagine as I have yet to try many of the additions introduced since last I played.
What I have done since I stopped playing was log back in every time Trion introduced a new class to the game so that I could purchase the class with either cubits or one of the free class coins I had amassed. The last one I bought was the Chloromancer, one I could have received for free but I wasn’t interested in downloading Rift just for that so I used cubits instead. When I logged in on Saturday I decided to try out the new class I purchased but never played.
One of the first things I noticed is that the zones were no longer separated by levels but rather by something called “Power Rank.” When opening up my character sheet I realized they had removed the way gear and class level interacted. Before, you had a base level earned through XP like a traditional MMO but then additional levels added to that depending on gear. So my Dracolyte was base level 20 but 32 with gear. Now the Power Rank takes the place of those additional, gear dependent levels.
The Chloromancer
The class itself was a lot of fun. The Chloromancer has two types of plants that it can place on the ground, both of which must “grow” either naturally (which is quite slow) or at a faster rate from your main attack that also functions as a heal for allies. The first plant you can place does area damage wherever it is located. You can place several on the ground at once creating a garden of death once they all come to full bloom. I found I had to kite the mobs around in a circle so that they would stay in my death bed of roses. The second plant you unlock will explode once it has fully grown healing allies and damaging enemies caught in the blast. The final skill has the Chloromancer tossing out a barrage of both types of plants.
Because Trove is having a double XP event (I think until the expansion?), I leveled the Chloromancer quickly, reaching level 10 within 20-30 minutes. This was partly due to the fact that the new power rank system allowed me to enter higher level zones than I otherwise would have been able to before due to the stat bonuses applied to my character from my mastery rank. The downside was that it was easy to enter a zone way too difficult for my gear level. After level 10 I switched over to my favorite class, the Tomb Raiser, who has been perpetually stuck at level 19 since I stopped playing regularly. Within another 30-40 minutes I was able to get him to level 20 making him my second at the cap. Later on this weekend I logged back in and got the rest of the classes up to at least level ten including the ice sage, revenant, bommeranger, lunar lancer, and the pirate captain.
Play it cool, Frosty. We’re getting out of this joint.
Not everything in Trove was a welcome return however. In the brief time that I played, I noticed that chat was absolutely horrible and I eventually turned global chat off. In all my time during beta I never once saw anything approaching the typical MMO chat standard of vulgarity, toxicity, and prejudice. Now, the game seems to have attracted the same crowd as every other MMO. And it’s a shame too because this was the game I wanted to play with my son once we got a second PC. We still might but I will definitely be disabling global for him just as I did for myself.
I don’t know how much more time I’ll spend in Trove (at least a few weeks?) but it’s good to know the game is still alive and kicking and still just as fun. It’s unfortunate to see how the Steam crowd (yes, I’m blaming Steam) has degraded what was once a friendly community but I’m sure bastions of humanity exist somewhere in the game if one only knows where to find them. However the game is still beautiful, the new classes are well designed with unique themes and abilities, and jumping 40 times in a row is still just satisfying as it ever was. With an expansion just around the corner, it’s a good time to get back in to Trove.
But my princess was in another castle 😦
Waiting For Rez 