The gates were opened and the hordes descended upon the Test Server last night. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve seen more than a single instance of Mercy Island, but the population forced two more instances to keep up with the load. Upon logging in, there was a swarm of freshly minted Spiders and Widows running amok, looking for teams, spamming broadcast, and generally having a good time. So, here’s how the three hours I spent on test unfolded.

Follow up:

First thing was to log in Aurvandil [Level 50 Brute] otherwise the VEAT isn’t active. That killed about a minute to log in & log out. Then was the choice, Wolf Spider or Widow? I went with Wolf Spider to start with, since I’m aiming for Crab Spider. I picked up Single Shot [other choice was Punch] and my secondary pick was Wolf Armor [fear my 3% damage resist]. Costume choice was limited to one of three Arachnos designs: Wolf Spider, Crab Spider, Bane Spider. The only difference between Bane and Crab was the lack of a backpack on the Bane. Most costume slots as two options to pick from, some better than others. Wolf Spiders for example can choose the Wolf helm or the Mu Mystic helm. I kept Cyber Spider as close to stock looking as possible, except for coloration, which ended up being dark red and white. That burned about 30 minutes while I looked at costume options, fiddling with coloration and design.

No tutorial for you, the game dumps you right into Mercy Island with a new VEAT only contact. A quick mission and then he sends you to one of the other Mercy contacts, Burke or Kalindra. At level five you get another mission from him, this time with a familiar face from Breakout. Once that is completed, you get another contact that goes active at level 10. So, I ran the first contact mission, which was to insert my name on the list for Operation Destiny. A bit underhanded, but hey, sometimes you just got to break the rules. And you get to stomp on other Arachnos that are in the way. Once that was finished, I took Burke as my first contact and started with his missions.

And then came the recruiting call. Feeling a bit adventurous, I took the bait and hooked up with a team. As you might expect, it was a group of Spiders and Widows. And then we rolled. Everything in our path. We hit a few snags, such as bad pulls or people jumping out ahead to check around a corner & pulling two groups. That was small fraction of the run, most of the time was mowing down Snakes and Arachnos. In a group with the Tactical buffs going, it was a cakewalk for the most part. Spiders and Widows aren't exactly the toughest things in the world, so I'm seriously thinking about picking up the medicine pool. Looking at just the base performance, I'm thinking that NCSoft got it right with this Epic Archetype.