Enshrouded and Things to Do

I have been wondering what to write about Enshrouded as we have eased into it.  We have, honestly, been moving too fast to really do much step-by-step posting the way I did with Valheim back in the day or Conan Exiles earlier this year.  But that is really a positive sign.

It means that we’ve kind of jumped into the game and moved forward with it.  It seems to have clicked with us, at least for the moment.  So now I am thinking about why that is, and it feels like it fills the niche of there being things to whether just one of us is online or if we all show up.  And there is even some variety in what to do when we’re all there… though right now, “all” is just three of us.

Also, while the game very much points you in the direction of things to do, it also opens up quite a few parallel paths while also leaving around a pile of options that you will likely want to pursue on your own… all of which has made me want to spend more time playing the game rather than writing about it.

There has been some base building naturally.  I started out with just a simple building, then Potshot found a better location and built up a first run at a base.

That location lacked some critical items and Potshot had read up that it was optimal to take over some of the ruins that had a well and some fields for farming nearby.  That led us off to a place called Woodgard where we took over a shambles of a place and then cleaned up it.

It didn’t look that good when we arrived but things got cleaned up.  The base is the center of crafting, which is enabled and enhanced by the survivors you find.  The first few quests you get are about finding the first couple of survivors.

Then they in turn hand you more quests to find more survivors or ingredients to unlock recipes or items to enable additional crafting stations which further opens up what you can make.

And all of that has to go somewhere, plus the survivors need beds and a roof over their head, so a base of some sort was in the cards.  Meanwhile the quests seem to multiply.

And, just in case you have forgotten about the quests, the survivors around you base won’t hesitate to remind you about their desires.

So when we all get together we tend to head out and knock out some quests.  Quests are also server based rather than individually focused.  When you uncover another quest it pops up on everybody’s list and when they are completed they are finished for everybody, so it is best to do them as a group so everybody gets the xp.

Leveling is a bit slow so we always seem to be headed into locations a few levels ahead of us, which means going in force smooths things out.  There are locations in the shroud to clear.

Those often have the advantage of rewarding skill points.

All of which means progression and specialization.  I’ve gone down the tank path to stand up in front on our adventures… though I diverted a bit to grab double jump in another section, that being handy when out exploring… while Potshot has started working on some casting and healing and Ula some DPS related skills.

We even did our first dungeon, a place called the Hollow Halls up in the hills south of our base.

It was a bit of a struggle, but it was also very nicely put together dungeon.  Enshrouded has its share of puzzles to get through that are enjoyable.  We wiped several times not far from the end of the run in a room where we managed to get overwhelmed several times.  I think we were a little low level, or maybe too small of a group, for that part… but we managed to persist and push on through to the end.  The game is good about putting a respawn point and a repair station in between encounters.  We repaired a lot.

And when nobody else is on, there is always stuff to do.  There are the plants to tend, resources to gather, things to craft, pets to tame (we have goats and rabbits so far and need to go find a cat and the dog that our survivor keeps going on about), and places to explore.  It is really a nicely put together, interesting world to run around.

That is the thing about a hand crafted world versus procedural generation, you end up with something that often feels more real… and contains much fewer oddities.  Not that there isn’t a bit of camera clipping in the terrain and such still.  So I run around looking for new places.

Wouldn’t you know it… that isn’t a river but tar… and there was a big monster living in it.  Better go back to visit it when we’re all online again.