Istarian storage buildings: A capacity list

One of the key parts of playing Istaria is having your own plot of land to work on - and one of the key advantages a good plot gives you is buildings that can hold more equipment and resources.

There used to be a really good resource over at Gamersinfo.net website that listed al the buildings you could create in Istaria, listing how many resources were required and what capacity it would give you once you'd built it. However, sadly that site has completely changed format and the info is no longer there.

Below I've put together a basic list of all the storage buildings you can make in game and what their capacity is. There is a much more detailed list at the Crimson Dawn guild's very useful website, but it is a little hard to navigate if you just want these basics. Hopefully this will be useful for someone other than me!

Structures are listed in the following way: Bulk capacity (number of items) name (item type restrictions, or tiers of resources required on old structures)

The ones that are 'Tier 1' etc will require up to that tier of resources to create, so if you need the storage space pronto don't over extend yourself! you can always upgrade later, although you'll need somewhere to put the items in the mean time when you do so.

I would highly recommend taking at least one Tier 1 Human House (small, easy to make and good capacity ratio, if a bit ugly!) and the T2 Human Guildhouse (probably the best size to capacity ratio).

1,200 (10) Cloth Tent (T1)

3,600 (30) Dwarven Small House (T1-2)

6,600 (55) Dwarven Large House (T1-3)

7,200 (60) Fiendish Large House (T1-2)

4,800 (40) Human Hut (T1)

7,200 (60) Human Large House (T1-3)

7,200 (60) ?? Human Medium House (T1-2)

6,000 (50) Saris Medium House (T1-2)

8,400 (70) Saris Manor House (T1-3)

3,000 (25) Saris Tiny Hut (T1)

6,000 (50) Sslik Medium House (T1-2)

2,400 (20) Tier 1 Human House

4,800 (40) Tier 2 Human House

7,200 (60) Tier 3 Human House

9,600 (80) Tier 4 Human House

12,000 (100) Tier 5 Human House

14,400 (120) Tier 6 Human House

18,000 (150) Human Guildhouse (T1-2)

7,200 (60) Tier 1 Human Guildhouse

14,400 (120) Tier 2 Human Guildhouse

21,600 (180) Tier 3 Human Guildhouse

28,800 (240) Tier 4 Human Guildhouse

36,000 (300) Tier 5 Human Guildhouse

43,200 (360) Tier 6 Human Guildhouse

100 (50) Tier 2 Human Library (forms only)

150 (75) Tier 4 Human Library (forms only)

200 (100) Tier 6 Human Library (forms only)

22,000 (4) Tier 3 Storehouse (food only)

34,000 (4) Tier 5 Storehouse (food only)

20,000 (1) Tier 1 Human Silo

32,000 (1) Tier 2 Human Silo

44,000 (1) Tier 3 Human Silo

56,000 (1) Tier 4 Human Silo

68,000 (1) Tier 5 Human Silo

80,000 (1) Tier 6 Human Silo

Check out Istara at www.istaria.com

High level hunting in Istaria: Murial vs the Aegis

For this week's blog, I thought it'd be nice to look at a few in-game high level battle images. Over the next month or so I'l be mainly concentrating on taking a new character through its paces, but this gives you a pictorial idea of what things look like when you're nearer level 100 than level 1!

I'd like to thank my guild mate Murial for the screenshots. That's her, standing over the freshly killed body of a Blight Hound, one of Istaria's nastier inhabitants. Murial's got multiple level 100 skills, which is one of the great features of Istaria. Many games only let you level one class, or perhaps two plus a couple of crafting skills. In Istaria, you can pretty much be everything all in one character, although they do make it tough.

Firstly, you will only get all the strengths of the one adventuring class you have currently selected: skills from other classes will either work at half strength, or not at all. Secondly, you have an overall rating that goes alongside your current adventuring level. This rating affects how much experience points you need to go up a level, and is adversely affected by the total amount of adventuring levels you have. So, the more you multi-class, the longer it will take to level up.

Some of these shots were taken on a high level hunt with two other members of our guild, Universal Soldiers - Neuvitas Silver and Vici Legends - with 'art' along for the ride. It's a lot more fun to hunt in groups and you get experience bonuses for fighting multiple enemies, so it works out well that way too. Groups can be big as well, where they are often restricted in other MMORPGs.

The first thing you'll probably notice from these images is the foreboding atmosphere in the backgrounds and the stark, broken lands on which they're walking. In Istaria, all players are essentially on the same side (although some dragons may dispute that) - all races have joined together to fight the threat that faces them all: the 'withered aegis'.

Areas blighted by the aegis are left dead and lifeless and are the most dangerous in Istaria. Yup, you guessed it - that's where the hardest adventurers head and where the best rewards are to be had. While Istaria does use a lot of the clichéd fantasy races and trappings, such as elves, dwarves etc, many of the races and creatures you fight are unique to the game.

Here's a good example - a winged Kwellen Berserker in classic 'before' and 'after' poses! The red beam you can see on the creature is showing this is the chosen target - this can really help on a crowded battlefield, where a creature may be stunned and you don't want to hit it and break the effect.

Something else you may get from the pics is that the graphics are hardly up there with the latest games. This is simply a fact - Istaria wasn't released yesterday and will never look like it was. However, the sky effects are top notch, the music atmospheric and the spell sounds and effects really add to combat. It's also a challenge - something many games nowadays shy away from in their desperate attempts to reach out to the lowest common denominator.

What's more, it's a challenge all the way through the levels. Istaria can be pretty unforgiving right down at low level, although you can still use the cheaty methods of power levelling found in all games, if you want to. But if you're looking for a challenge, you'll often find that fighting a single creature of your level will be a tough fight, and a single mistake could see you taking a dirt nap.

Fights can be incredibly frenetic and exciting, especially when you're grouped. All the normal MMO group combat rolls are available, with tanks, ranged damage dealers and healers on show - plus everything in between and combinations of them all. Here Neuvitas goes hand to hand with another Kwellen Berserker, while Murial casts from range. As a druid, she can both heal deal out some hefty damage, but her armour isn't the best, so letting someone else stand toe-to-toe makes sense - although I'm not sure Neuv here would agree!

And as I say, however bad ass you may be, there's always something wandering around Istaria that will bring you crashing back down to earth. Complacency can get you too - I've often been fighting a series of golems, only to suddenly to attack a named boss that looks the same and been dad before I knew it. I'm not sure Murial knew what she was getting into when she picked on Dalknor here, but the outcome is plain to see...

That said, there isn't much of a death penalty in Istaria: you get some stat reductions that, when they stack, can slow you down pretty hard. However, you don't lose items, or have to return to your corpse - you just need to take a bit of downtime. However, in a game that's as good on crafting as it is in adventuring, there's always something else to work on.

If you're interested in looking into the game Istaria, visit the official website at www.istaria.com

Wurm vs Istaria: and the winner is... (part 2)

OK, it isn't tomorrow... that's Christmas for you. Things went a bit nuts and suddenly it's January. Anyway, back to the review.

Crafting

This is a a trump suit for both games - it's a big part of what makes me return to Istaria every time and the thing that drew me to Wurm in the first place (along with the promise of a sandbox game).

These are two tricky games to compare as they take very different approaches to crafting. Wurm is about as hardcore as a game could get: crafting isn't an option, it's quite simply the only way to survive. You start out with a backpack full of tools and away you go: want a cart? Build it. Want a house? Build it. And when I say build, I mean from the ground up.

And it's really, really tough. Starving is a genuine problem, if it gets dark you simply can't see (unless you can build some sort of light source) and everything degrades - fast. Add this to pretty bad graphics and average sound, you might be thinking it's a write off. However, somehow, it's hugely compelling. You soon forget the mind-numbing dullness of the actual thing you're working on, because of the complexity and difficulty of the task. It's an odd feeling when you give out a "yes" and pump your fist at making a very poor quality weapon blade - only to then lose it when trying to fix it to the handle.

While I really enjoyed the challenge of the game (I could go into the fact that the game itself tells you next to nothing - you spend as much time asking advice and looking things up on the Wurmpedia as you do actually doing anything, which I loved) it does take it too far at times. For example, I built myself a lovely wooden shed to live in and have started surrounding it with a stone wall. This took a lot of time in itself, but the next day I had to repair everything - which again took ages. This becomes a bit annoying, to say the least, and if you're not going to invest a lot of hours in the game you're going to struggle. You can get around this to a point by grouping and joining up with a town, but as in any relationship, it's give and take - if you don't put in the work, others will lose faith in you.

Istaria is a much lighter crafting experience. Nothing degrades or breaks, and you can't fail to make an item - if you put the time in, you'll get what you wanted. The tough side can be getting hold of the materials: even at lower levels, some of the resources are in tricky areas so you may need some friends to hand or at least a few levels of adventurer training to get by.

The graphics are far better in Istaria, but that is paid for by a much less pliable world. The resources are always in the same place and you can only build in areas designated for the purpose - you buy a plot and build on it, or you work on a community project (or of course an item). In Wurm, you can go to bed with your house in a forest and wake up in a field with a road going by.

The processes are much simpler in Istaria too - instead, they are more repetitive. However, while much of the gathering process defines grinding, again it is strangely compelling. I think the reason for this is that you can often do it 'afk', which really appeals to me. Like Eve, where your character ticks over without you being there, it's the same kind of feeling: if you want crash bang wallop, you can put on your armour and fight stuff. If not, you can mine some ore while chatting.

Both games let you find a spot and build on it to your heart's content. One looks better, while the other is way more hardcore, but importantly both work really well. How games with vast budgets manage to screw crafting and house ownership up so badly compared to these much lower budget offerings amazes me.

In the end, I'm forced to call it a score draw on crafting. Both do a fantastic job of creating a crafting environment that feels worthwhile without forcing you into a crappy quest structure designed only to mask the pointlessness of what you're doing (hello World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings!). Few other games have achieved this level of quality (arguably only Eve Online and the original incarnation of Star Wars Galaxies), so bravo. For anyone keeping score, that's 2-1 to Istaria. I'll look at community and extras next - and that may actually be tomorrow!

Istaria - www.istaria.com

Wurm - http://www.wurmonline.com/getting-started

My incredibly selfish Istaria wishlist - the Top 5

I know, it's selfish, but every MMO player has a personal list of things they'd love to see in game soon er rather than later. Here's mine:

1) Recall points: In Istaria (as in many MMOs), your character can 'bind' themselves to a spot and return their any time at the press of a button. However, you can only be bound to one place at a time. With a beautiful plot on the edge of the village of Darvus, it's not practical to make it my recall point because it's in the middle of nowhere, and I have to run a mile to the nearest portal (think Stargate-style teleporters that take you to other points in the world). It would be great if we could have a home recall as well as one other - perhaps we could do a cool quest to get the privilege once we get a class to level 100, for example, as a reward for our dedication to the cause :)

1b) OK, I know giving myself a cheaty extra wish already is a bit much, but its a kind of cover for the fact 1 is a little unlikely (and probably hard to implement). If not a second recall point, please, devs, could you at least put an 'out' portal in Darvus? Our neighbours have them and we're sick of being poor relations, especially on Order where Darvus is way more developed than the likes of Elmnic nearby.

2) Resources: While we're on the subject of Darvus, it would be nice if a few more nodes could appear nearby. One of the main things that makes Istaria great is the crafting, and making buildings that help people work on various crafting skills. My plot now has everything a young woodsman or weaver needs to ply their trade on the local elm and kenaf. However, the unpopulated local village of Elmnic (which also has an out portal, I may add!) gets nearly all the elm trees. Share the love around, please.

3) NPCs: NPCs, or non player characters, play an essential part in any MMO - they give out quests, buy and sell items, act as guards and gate keepers etc. Sadly, a couple of NPCs are missing in the region of Spire's Shadow, a key area to work on maple trees. While its certainly not a game breaker (top tip - jumping off Spire's Apex gets you pretty close - just be careful of the lake!) it surely wouldn't take much time to get these lazy buggers back to their posts so that we can attune to these landing pads. And bring back Seldon, even if its only for a week. I've still got a note to give back to him from about five years ago!

4) Structures: There have been persistent rumours of new buildings for players to build - non-human versions of many of the common structures such as houses, workshops and silos would be a great start. This would add so much to the landscape and give a much needed boost to players who have been around a long time. Istaria is very much built on players building on their plots and this area could do with a bit of love. Which leads me to the most important request...

5) Community projects: Please keep these coming! If I had to define one thing that made Istaria great, this would be it. There should always be community projects to work on - I've not been involved in the last few, as I've been working hard on my own plot, but some of the best times I've had in game have been on them. They bring people together, introduce new content and get people talking - all the good stuff. And if you can throw in random spawns of Withered Aegis (Istaria's bad guys) so the adventurers can get stuck in too, more's the better.

Learn more about Istaria at the official website, Istaria.com

Making a crafting game for fun and profit

When Istaria (then Horizons) launched in late 2003,things went downhill pretty fast after a decent amount of hype pre-launch. If nothing else, it proved their was a market for a certain type of game if done right – one where crafting was king.

What makes Istaria stand out (other than playable dragons) is the importance of crafting, both in terms of item building and community projects/player-owned plots. But like all MMOs seem to start out, the original team had a grand plan covering everything to player versus player (PvP) combat, but somewhat surprisingly – as release loomed – it was PvP that was shelved.

It's interesting to look at the pay monthly MMOs that have stuck around longest. Ultima Online (1997) was the first truly massive MMO, going over 100,000 subscribers, and has a good mix of crafting, property ownership and combat – both PvE (player versus environment, meaning the game's AI) and PvP. The same can be said of Eve from a sci-fi game perspective. Both should be applauded for squeezing it all in.

Like Istaria, Star Wars Galaxies and Ryzom also feature crafting as a truly important game mechanism. However, most other MMO stalwarts (EverQuest 1 & 2, Dark Age of Camelot, Final Fantasy, Anarchy Online, City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online) concentrate almost solely on combat. Sure, they all have crafting to some extent, but it could largely be withdrawn without having any serious affect on the overall outcome endgame.

Most people thought Istaria would fold, but while a string of combat orientated games perished, it hung in there. Star Wars Galaxies was hugely anticipated and an almost complete disaster. So little worked it wasn't even funny, but it's still going. Ryzom also had its problems, and a lot of people barely even noticed its arrival, but again a core of players stayed loyal. That these crafting games stayed afloat while many combat-centric ones perished is no coincidence – put simply, crafters hang around. So why hasn't someone really nailed this game mechanic?

It could be argued that games such as The Sims Online, A Tale in the Desert or even Second Life have, to a certain extent, taken chunks of this audience away. However, a great game where the emphasis was on community, combat and expansion through crafting could be a real hit.

Start at point A, which is surrounded by a hostile environment. Adventurers must keep the wildlife at bay, while crafters expand the parameters of the settlement – something akin to Harry Harrison's Deathworld books comes to mind. The larger the settlement becomes, the better technology is available, allowing for bigger and better items to be manufactured – but these need new structures and equipment to make them in, so more expansion is required. Being part of that would be amazing.

Playing a bit of Wurm Online the other day really made me wonder what could be done by a half decent dev team with a reasonable amount of cash to spend on a game that was aimed at a sizeable niche, instead of world domination. Wurm is Java based, can be played for free and looks bloody awful, but has more imagination in one of its badly rendered barrels than the recent slew of showy WoW-a-likes have in their wholly vacuous worlds.

Istaria doesn't give you the freedom Wurm does, or some of its other really hardcore sandbox aspects, but its still so far ahead of the competition in some crafting/world manipulation respects – six years after release – it's hard to believe.

Have a look at Istaria by heading to Istaria.com

You can check out Wurm Online at WurmOnline.com

Defending Istaria: What's an MMO; and why I play this one

I've dabbled in a lot of MMOs over the last 10 years (scroll down for a definition), but the one I've spent most time with is Istaria, formerly known as Horizons. It has an extremely chequered past, and now a relatively small user base, but it's still the game I find most endearing. I'm sure I will lambaste it for its faults another day.

Istaria looks like a typical fantasy MMO. It was launched in 2003 and, despite several changes in ownership and a string of seemingly terminal issues, it has outlived many of its rivals. A key reason for its longevity is a dogged insistence from those passionate about the game that it will survive. But why? Quite simply, it has a couple of pretty special qualities which, when interwoven, make it unique.

Crafting

In the majority of MMOs, crafting is reduced to a pretty dull and ultimately pointless exercise. Systems are rarely well thought out, items rarely of any use to anyone, and the whole thing is an exercise in futility – only the top end items are ever worth anything, and these levels take ridiculous amounts of dedication to achieve.

Horizons is one of the rare games that makes crafting worth bothering with, especially due to the ability to buy a plot of land and actually build on it to your own specifications. As in other games, you can make better quality items as you gain levels – however, unlike other games, many items cannot be bought and have to be made (including all building materials), meaning crafters will always be gainfully employed - even high level crafters needs some low level materials, leaving room for young crafters to chip in and be genuinely useful. Star Wars Galaxies and Eve also make a good stab at this.

The sandbox

Many gamers are waiting for a 'proper' sandbox game, defined as a non-linear open ended gaming experience where the world alters due to player action and interaction. Eve is probably the closest right now, with the likes of Horizons, Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies a little further from the mark. For example, you can head off to anywhere in the world pretty much straight away, so exploring can be immediate. You might not last long, mind...

I really don't think I can stomach another completely non-sandbox title, unless it's like Lord of the Rings Online, which has fantastic quest and story implementation. Games such as World of Warcraft funnel you from a to z via every letter in between, rarely offering much of a challenge or need for interaction. While this continues to be the case, my monthly fee will go to Istaria: my plot of land is used by others crafters, I help others build their plots, I go on joint hunts to gather items that we actually need to use, not just to sell for coin or to 'level up'. I've had enough of that, thanks.

The setting

While some of your typical fantasy genre trappings are in evidence (dwarves, elves, undead etc), there is enough theme and originality to give Istaria its own flavour. Some of the creature animations are fantastic and there are some great original races. Its very thin on deep quests, but those it does have include a good dose of humour and challenge.

Yes, there are plenty of the kill 10 badger type quests so derided in MMOs, but this is often tempered by the fact that killing creatures offers actual rewards more tangible than the experience - for example, it may have body parts you need to make a certain spell, or be harvested for resources.

Dragons

Yes, you can play a dragon. But a nice touch is that you can't just dive in and fly – you start out as a small dragon and, through questing, follow a story arc to become a fully fledged ancient. Few other MMOs offer a reward of this magnitude, especially as all the other races (human, elf etc) have no way to fly at all and cannot visit certain areas of the world.

Dragons tend to attract role players too, which adds a nice flavour to the game often lacking in others. A lot of people are drawn to Horizons simply because they want to play a dragon. As no other game out there really does this right, these people tend to stay, despite the game's problems.

Multi-classing

I'm not sure anyone has actually done it, but in theory a single Istaria character could attain level 100 in every class in the game (excluding dragon classes, which are separate). For a humanoid class, this is 28 different adventuring schools and 19 crafting schools. Enough to keep anyone occupied...

To put this in context, most games give you perhaps two classes, one adventurer and one crafting; if you want to try out other classes, you need to make another character. Even then you are often limited to a small amount of characters per account (or per server). Istaria's wealth of options certainly appeals to me, and many others.

What's an MMO?

MMORPG (often shortened to MMO) is hardly the catchiest abbreviation in the world, but standing for 'massively multiplayer online role playing game' it could well be the geekiest.

Essentially, they do what they say on the tin: they are role playing games (RPGs) you play online along with thousands of other players. Some of the biggest computer RPG franchises now have online versions, including Final Fantasy and Warcraft. Game genres range from fantasy, sci-fi and super hero through to real life historical settings. They can be free, browser based games or huge multi million selling behemoths (recent figures suggest World of Warcraft, the biggest game on the market, has 11.5 million monthly subscribers). It's a massive industry.

The games tend to follow a basic format: you create a character (sex, race, look, profession, perhaps skills) and set out as a weakling with the aim of gaining experience to progress levels and become stronger, just like in a solo RPG. however, this is normally made easier by grouping with other players and joining a guild (the MMO version of a social group). You can do quests, fight creatures, make items, anything the game decides will help you progress – even kill other players' characters (although this isn't a part of Istaria).

To find out more about Istaria, visit www.istaria.com