So it’s November 1^st and you’re probably wondering where on Earth is Issue #8 of The Secret World? After all, it did say October 2013 on the Issue 8 poster.

One of the first things we found out while attending the tour of Issue 8 with Joel Bylos, Funcom’s Creative Director and Tor Egil Andersen, Funcom’s Communications Manager, was that Issue 8 will be delayed a week. The reason – the difficulty levels of Scenarios that needed to be re-adjusted. As of last Wednesday, the Scenarios in the easiest Normal Mode were “incredibly hard” according to Bylos. After giving one of them a try, we unanimously agreed that taking an extra week is a very smart move indeed. The Secret World has always been a game that has valued quality over quantity and that is something that is definitely appreciated by their loyal player base.

The Scenarios are incredibly hard at the moment, even on Normal, which is supposed to be the most simple difficulty. We’re just adjusting the balance, a little bit which is why we need to delay it this extra week. We feel that it’s pretty ready in every other way. We’re quite confident in the way it feels, in the way it plays. – Joel Byos

Bylos emphasized that this Issue has been mainly focused on the end-game players. It is hoped that the new additions to the game will provide the end-game players with plenty to do in the game for the foreseeable future.

So we found out lots and lots of good stuff about Issue 8 and be warned on entry that the article below contains many spoilers! Ready? Here we go……

 

AUGMENT WHEEL & AUGMENTS

Let’s start off by explaining the lore behind the Augment System. In Joel Bylos’ own words:

“When you are a musician, and you become very good at playing music, you still might need a tuning fork to be able to tune your voice to the right pitch. You still might need a metronome to get the right timing. As players became more advanced in their ability to use anima, they start to know when they’re slightly off pitch with their magic… So the idea behind these augments is to create a tuning fork for the anima. It allows you to tune in your abilities to the perfect pitch to get the maximum efficiency out of them.” – Joel Bylos

Augments and Augment wheel will only be accessible to you after you run your first Scenario. Until then, you won’t even see the Augment wheel. Green Augments (most common ones) will be dropped in their attuned state already, so you won’t need to craft them. Higher quality Augments will need to be crafted before being consumed. All augments will be tradeable, so it’ll be interesting to see how TSW’s economy will be impacted by that. The rarest of Augments will have a higher drop rate in the Nightmare versions (last sentence edited).

The Augment Wheel wasn’t searchable using the Ability search function when we attended the tour, something which might change later on. As you will notice from the screenshot above, there are no Augments attached to the auxiliary weapons at the moment, but there are plans to add them sometime in the future. There are no plans to be adding Augments to the passive abilities as they are directly tied to active abilities already. Every Augment skill increase will cost you 30 skill points, so to learn an augment from level 1-5 will cost you 150 skill points per completely learned Augment. As you progress through the Scenarios, you will be able to start carrying more and more Ability Points (AP), eventually bringing it to a grand total of 515 points, which is the cost of the most expensive Augment. The cheapest one will set you back about 125 APs.

 

COUNCIL OF VENICE

After getting to know the Augment wheel, it was time to enter the Council of Venice Chambers. You can access it by continuing from the Transylvania branch or you can simply take a short cut and jump to it from the Seoul entrance.

As you zone in, a cut scene will play during which you will find out a bit more about the Council, an organization in decline, plagued by bureaucracy. Kind of like The Secret World’s version of the United Nations. The current map of Venice is limited to the Council chambers, but there are plans to make this map bigger in the future. More info on Venice will be released over time, but what we can tell you right now is that Venice will get its own special issue after Tokyo. The map of Venice will eventually grow in size to a map “bigger than London, but not as big as Kingsmouth“. You will also get to see more of Venice in Issue #9, before you head to Tokyo.

In addition to the three factions we are already familiar with, Templar, Illuminati and Dragon, you will encounter representatives of another three factions in the Council Chambers. We will learn more about them in time. They will not be playable factions though. You can see the logos of the new factions in the screenshots below.

 

SCENARIOS – RANDOM VERSION OF DUNGEONS

Now for the fun stuff! Scenarios are accessed at the far end of the Council of Venice chamber. You need to pick up the mission that is found above the console. It’s a tutorial on how the Scenarios work, so make sure you take a look at it first. After that, you can choose which Scenario you would like to play. Group leader initiates the Scenario by choosing the Scenario parameters.

There is currently only one objective, Seek and Preserve. Eventually there will be more than one objective type of a Scenario. Scenario objectives to be released next will be The Occult Disturbance and The Escape. They will be added to the game sometime in the future.

Currently, there are three Scenario locations available, The Hotel, The Mansion and The Castle. Each location comes in three modes (Normal, Elite, Nightmare), as well as three group sizes (solo, duo, group). Solo size can be done by one player or up to five as it has a soft cap. This allows players below QL10 green to complete Scenarios with a bit of help from their friends. Normal mode is geared toward QL10 green, Elite mode toward QL10 blue and Nighmare mode toward QL10.5 purple players. It is worth noting that the solo group size in the Nightmare mode has no soft cap. You’re on your own with this one!

Normal and Elite modes of The Hotel Scenario will be free and available to all the TSW players, while the Nightmare mode will need to be bought separately. The regular DLC (downloadable content) will contain all three locations with all three difficulties. The other two locations will be available for purchase separately with all three difficulty levels included in the bundle.

So once you enter the Scenario parameters, you will enter one of the VR (Virtual Reality) simulators. A very cool computer voice will guide you through everything. Incidentally, the computer voice is done by the same actress who does voice overs for Kirsten Geary. If you are playing in a group size, the Scenario will not start until all members of your group are inside the VR simulator. Once you are…. it’s “Beam me up Scotty”

 

I have to say, this is where the true fun begins. This is the part that will have you think rethink your group strategies and tactics, not to mention your build/s. It’s very fun and very hectic at first. Running around trying to free the survivors, guiding them to safety, all the time defending them from various mobs that spawn around you. You will get brief few moments of down time that you can use to re-group, but they don’t last very long. Certain Scenarios will require more than one build, such as DPS and/or leech or heal. You might even need to switch between them on the fly. The Gear Manager has apparently been fixed so this should make the process of switching builds less painless.

During the Scenario, monsters will drop various pick-ups along the way that you can use to give you power-ups, sprint boost or additional healing powers. You can also find bombs and mines throughout the scenario map that you can use to thin the mobs. Once laid down, make sure you don’t get caught in the blast as it will damage you too!

All in all, Scenario should take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes to complete. Rewards are based on the number of survivors left at the end. There are 4 prize levels: Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Failure. Failure gives you no rewards, with Platinum giving out the highest rewards. Each level also gives out different amounts of new tokens, the Aureus of Initiation. During the tour, we completed The Mansion Scenario. At first we were doing extremely well, but then a random sniper decided to shoot at us from the top of the Mansion, drastically slowing down our movement ability. In addition, scores and scores of Spectres started flying through the walls and slow moving zombies decided to occupy the outside. Yes they move slow, but have tons of HP and they explode when they get to a survivor, so be mindful of that. We finally had to concede defeat when it came to the inside of the Mansion and scrambled to protect the survivors outside. It was a hectic and dramatic fight. Heck, darn nearly heroic if you ask me. We counted our lucky stars that we had infinite health and couldn’t die. BTW, if you do die during the Scenario, you will re-spawn and can re-join the fight. In the end, we were left with only 4 survivors, which won us the Bronze grade. Not much, but hey, it was our first time doing it, with decks unfamiliar to us. That just means we’ll need a lot more practice when Issue #8 actually gets released and we’ll be more than happy to continue practicing *wink*.

 

Back to some more facts about the Scenarios. They have an 18-hour cool-down. With all the different parameters, you will be able to run 12 Scenarios per day, which is more than plenty to keep you occupied and providing you don’t fail, also give you a fair amount of Aureus of Initiation (or as we’ve come to lovingly call them – Oreos!) that you will need in order to purchase the certification needed to enter Tokyo. On each side of the console where you choose your Scenario, are two vendors that sell various purple gear, Augment Amplifier kits, new clothing pieces and the needed Council’s Seal that will certify you are have completed the training necessary to enter Tokyo.

RANDOM BITS & PIECES – TOKYO

Now, we did get a few pieces of information about Tokyo, which so many players are more than eager to enter. You won’t have access to a lot of Tokyo in the beginning of Issue #9. You’ll push back the Filth in the Whispering Tide Event into Tokyo, but not all the way to where it comes from. Certain events that you perpetrate while you’re in Tokyo will lead to unlocking the next part of Tokyo. The last 3^rd part (Issue #11) will eventually let us see the Orochi tower and dungeons and “various other things”. Current plan is for the dungeon to be made into a dungeon and raid mode. As for how it will be arranged when it comes to DLCs and free stuff is still being worked on.

RANDOM BITS & PIECES – PvP

Priority for PvP at the moment is bug fixes and to raise the PvP to a certain quality level. After that, there are plans for entire Issue dedicated to PvP only. When that will be coming out is not clear at this point and depends on many different things, but the important thing is that there are lots of plans for it, so patience is a virtue and it will be rewarded. There is a thread currently on the Forums that deals just with providing player feedback regarding the PvP. So if you do have an idea, please post it there.

 

RANDOM BITS & PIECES – NEW OR COMPLETED OUTFITS

 

First outfit – The Whispering Tide Event Carapace of the Immaculate Machine

Second outfit – The Whispering Tide Event Custodian

Third outfit – The Whispering Tide Achievement Award

Fourth outfit – Issue #8 vendor in the Council of Venice Chamber

 

So there you have it folks! Issue #8 is just around the corner and from what we’ve seen during the tour, it will surely prove to be a big hit with the players, especially the end-game ones who will be thrilled to have something new to do in the game. As mentioned previously, this Issue was made with them in mind and I believe they will not be disappointed. Even thought there will undoubtedly be a few players who might burn through this new content extremely quickly, on the whole, this new Issue will definitely keep the player’s interest firmly focused on the game for a while to come.

They say, good things come to those who wait! TSW community has already proven its maturity in being patient, valuing quality over quantity, providing constructive feedback and developers have been listening and taking note. This Issue has definitely hit the high standard that Funcom has maintained with The Secret World.