How Would You Like Your Grind? : TSW

I finally hit the wall in The Secret World. I ran full-pelt into it about half-way through Carpathian Teeth, the final overland zone. Until then I'd dealt with anything that gave me trouble by over-gearing. When Blue Mountain asked more of me than I was prepared to give I went to Egypt and used some techniques seldom employed since the glory days of Everquest to shift my average quality level from 4/5 to 6/7.

Crows beat drops every time

I found Missions that didn't ask me to kill anything. I experimented to find out which mobs I could already manage with the gear I had, then farmed them for the upgrades they dropped. I found spots where I could pull the mobs I couldn't solo to guards who would help but leave me with the credit and the loot.

Long before I was anywhere near finished with Egypt I was visiting the lower reaches of Transylvania trying the same tricks to gear myself up still further. I dabbed back and forth between the two for several weeks until one day I realized I was dressed almost entirely in Q10. Top of the shop.

Q10 green, that is. Not good enough. Deep into Transylvania the mobs come thick with health and packed with tricks. I can can kill them but there's no fun in it. Different builds helped some but nowhere near enough. I need better gear and that means Blues.

Don't do it! Oh, wait, no falling damage...

That's the poorly-kept secret in the The Secret World: for all the ballyhoo about bringing the thinking back, for all the immersion, atmosphere and aesthetics, for all the great stories, voice acting, cut scenes, even for the ever-whirling wheel of skills, in the end it all comes down to gear.

At least there's a choice of how to go about getting gussied up in Blue:

Dungeons come in three flavors: Normal, Elite and Nightmare. Normal and Elite dungeon bosses and sub-bosses (Nameds, as I still like to call them) drop specific Blue quality items. TSW Loot has a handy searchable database. Nightmare Nameds drop Purples but we don't need to worry our pretty little heads about those yet. Or ever.

Since the drops are boss-specific it's the old run a dungeon back-to-back until the thing you want drops and you win the roll. With TSW's classless skill system, anyone could potentially "need" anything so good luck with that!

PvP gets you White and Black Marks of Venice which can be spent at vendors in your faction headquarters for both Blue and Purple gear. You need a lot of them. The playerbase took about half a nano-second to realize that the most efficient way to do this would be for each faction to follow the others around The Fusang Project capping mission objectives in a formal dance. That gets you seven Black Marks of Venice every 30 minutes and the dance never ends. KIASA runs you through the dance-steps here. It's more amusing to read about than it is to do.

CoV Sequins come from doing missions. This is the easiest way to get blue gear so naturally the best you can get doing it is Blue Q9 and then not for all slots. The highest weapon is Blue Q8 and I'm still using it.

Crafting can, in theory, get you very nice Blue gear. What's more, you get to pick your own stats. It sounds ideal but there's a but. Each item you craft requires a Toolkit of the appropriate type and said Toolkit is consumed on use. Toolkits are mainly found as dropped loot from mobs. The quality of the Toolkit dictates both the Quality Level and color of the item you craft, so if you want a Q10 Rifle (guess who wants one of those) you need a Blue Q10 Weapon Toolkit. You can guess how often those drop. No, guess again, you guessed too high. Waaaay too high.

Luck  features in the crafting option but like the cheese it also stands alone. There are random Blue drops at all Quality levels. I had a couple in New England but none since. The chance of one dropping and it being something you'd use really don't bear thinking about. Sanity check required.

Auction House Ah, we all end up here in the end. I presume in theory anything could turn up on the A.H. but as I write there's not a single Q10 Talisman on sale that isn't green. Plenty of blue weapons, though. At a price.

So, however you mix and match it, you'll have to take your portion of grind. Grinding through the same dungeons, grinding round Fusang Projects, grinding repeat missions, grinding mass slaughter or grinding wealth. The degree of grind isn't unreasonable or unrealistic but much though I like grind when it's of my choosing, this isn't the kind of grind I'm looking for.

I've thoroughly enjoyed my time in The Secret World. There's no doubt I'll be back for more. For now, though, I'm done. Playing, that is. Can't promise I won't have more to say.