The Saga of Ryzom

A few days back I received an email stating that Ryzom is alive again! It died twice, but it is back again. I had played it for a few weeks 3 years ago but got pulled back into City of Heroes. So when I got this email I decided download it and play the completely free trial account. Of course I twisted Lani's arm to join me as well. Somehow we missed each other, but yesterday evening we were both there. Despite not having seen Lani it was still a joy to make my first steps again into a once familiar territory.



The game does look its age, and despite being 3 years old it could use more polish on the UI. But the characters are looking good, and they move around very smooth. The wildlife is even better. A wide range of creatures occupy the world all with quite distinctive movement. And the whole futuristic/alien planet feel works quite well.



The character progress is set in four categories. Fighting, Magic, Foraging and Crafting. At time of creation you can give your character an edge in one of these four categories. But it doesn't really lock you in. In fact, the whole character set up / progression is very close to Geek's Towards a deep skill system. You can combine multiple powers into new ones, and with every 5 or 10 levels in progress in any of the four categories new 'powers' become available at the various trainers.



I don't know (nor recall) how it all worked. I think when I originally played the game I didn't get high enough to really figure it all out. And maybe I was just not hardcore enough to do it :)

The screenshots are not made by me since for some reason I can't figure out where the game is putting them, or whether it actually created them. So I just grabbed some screenshots from here. I am sure even better screenshots can be found elsewhere. But even better would be if you all just sign up and join us. You can do all that here.

I had already my moment of evilness. One of the first tasks I got send to do was to kill a few Yubos. They are cute little wombats. Like most creatures in Ryzom they are kind of curious. So when I was standing around in their area they started noticing me and a couple of came towards me and even went as far as standing of their hind legs begging me to be pet. But unfortunately I only had a knife and a acid spell. But the other yubos didn't mind so much I killed their buddy.



I haven't seen them yet, but I recall their are predators around as well. They will be hunting the poor yubos as bad as me. And probably think I am pretty tasty as well. Good thing there are things to look forward to :)