Level 50 Elixir Sale and musing on the great divide

Khrylasis-Kondha Desert

Today, June 17, 2018, is the last day of a 33% off sale on the Level 50 Elixir.  It’s an elixir that lets your character skip to level 50 from any level below 50, as long as there is at least one character on your account who has already achieved level 50 via doing the quests.  Since I much prefer the worlds at the beginning through Dragonspyre, I can’t imagine wanting to do this…

You receive credit for all the required (main story) quests through level 50/Dragonspyre and all the training points you would have received for regular quests.  As far as I can tell, if you want the training points from Prospector Zeke, you’d have to go back through each world, pick up the quest and collect all the items — which would include having to do some of the dungeons you skipped in order to get access–just as you would if you completed all the levels.

You also receive:

• Advanced School Band (Ring)
• Advanced School Boots
• Advanced School Charm (Amulet)
• Advanced School Conical (Hat)
• Advanced School Deck
• Advanced School Edge (Athame)
• Advanced School Robe
• Advanced School Wand
• Level 48 School Pet
• Enchanted Broom Mount (Permanent)

To me the fact that this elixir exists and people who actually want to use it, points up a big divide in the game.  It started off basically as a game for kids.  Parents started participating and enjoying it so KI started touting it as a family game.  I gather when enough adults started participating, some clamor for tougher quests, dungeons, etc. started growing.

In trying to have a game for both children and adults, KI has wound up in a dilemma between keeping the game for its original target audience (children) or keeping the interest of adults who want a more challenging game.  Everything after Dragonspyre seems to me to be more aimed at those who want a tougher game.

Celestia isn’t too bad and the early stuff in Zafaria is more or less just a somewhat tougher version of what came before.  And they’re LONG.  Every world from this point forward seems to go on forever.  Then you get to the first version of Belloq, in Zafaria, and from that point on you periodically have to negotiate dungeons where the bosses have tricks requiring study and prep ahead of time.  And periodically there are more types of spells to learn to negotiate.

I’m not sure how many players fall into the camp I’m in.  I’m an adult who arrived at the game through children and stayed because I enjoyed it.  I have no interest whatsoever in being some kind of computer game champ at any level and no interest at all in learning how to play some of the MMO games for adults that I gather are much tougher than this.

I play to relax and have fun and I like the ease of the early stages because it suits my interest level.  I’ve been playing the game now for over 5 years and I don’t have a single character who’s reached the highest level.  Two wizards at level 93 have been stuck near the end of Azteca for a year.

I’m about to have to figure out the tricks of two of the last dungeons and, frankly, I just don’t wanna.  I’m also reluctant because I know the next world involves learning yet another set of spells and learning new strategies and, again, I don’t wanna.  Add in that the screen shots I’ve seen of Khrysalis look like it’s another world where you’re in the dark, which I also don’t like and….  Now I have two more wizards in the 80’s who are at the Mangrove Marsh stage of Azteca and I’m not moving them along either.

I’ve kind of decided I might try to finish Azteca and get far enough into Khrysalis to hit level 100 and get those great level 100 spells and then just leave it at that. I get KI wanting to keep the interest of the folks who want to be challenged but I’d love to see a study that follows up on players who stay and players who go.  I wonder how many other people they’ve lost because they DON’T want that much challenge.  I suspect I’m not alone among adults playing a kids’ game BECAUSE it’s easier and just for fun.

I’ve been wishing they could divide the game and give you a choice at the end of Dragonspyre whether you want the challenge game, which would let you go through the game as currently played or whether you want to keep the game more similar to the level of difficulty in the first 50 levels.  Or possibly they could make the challenge path even harder while easing up on the easy path.  Not that the health of opponents couldn’t keep going up, but just dispensing with the tricky dungeons and having to learn as many more spells/strategies.  I’d go for the easy in a heartbeat.

In the meantime, my guide to the game and this blog give me a good excuse to keep starting new wizards, playing through some early stages and deleting to start again.  Always gives me more things to note and write about.  And avoid the tricky, challenging stuff.