The Vulmane starting area is called Spirit’s Rest and it definitely has the feel of a wilderness outpost.  The surrounding land is beautiful to look at and I instantly preferred this area over the Kojani style.

The first questgiver I see is Swiftfang Kover.  He gives a couple quests that have me kill some whelps located right outside the camp and to steal food from the Broken Fang gnoll camps.  They each gave a few copper and experience points.  There is also a general goods vendor that gives a quest called Young Bear Pelts.  The title says it all.  I killed a few bears and brought back the pelts for a few copper and experience.

Ghostclaw Grimaw has a couple quests as well.  He is too old to harvest the spirit blossom herbs anymore, so he sends me out to harvest some for him.  Once that is completed he sends me to see my spellcaster trainer who is located inside a tent.  She tells me the basics of being a spellcaster and gives me my level 2 spell Piercing Roots I.

I am then sent off to a cave northwest of camp to assist the Spiritragers found within.  Spiritrager Volsar tells me the history of the Vulmane and gives me The Essence of Souls quest.  I had to kill some Seething Souls and collect a Seething Essence.  I thought the essence would be found on the corpses of the souls, but it turned out that I had to click on a wooden stake leaning out from a wooden wall to get it.  Doing this gave 40 copper and 78 experience points.

Spiritrager Jalgresh wants me to do the Hunt The Soul Eater quest.  The Soul Eater is a big crab found in various spots within the cave.  This quest gives 10 copper 78 experience and Ghostclaw Boots.

The last quest in the cave is given by Spiritrager Jurkar, which is Soul Suffering.  This required me to kill Splintering Souls, which are little balls of light that are found throughout the cave.  I got 40 copper and 78 expererience for doing it.

Back at the camp, Nighthunter Karnor gives the Broken Fang Alpha quest.  After killing an Alpha Gnoll the quest gave 80 copper and 158 experience.  It also had a selectable reward and I chose the Ghostclaw Greatstaff.

There were many other quests in the area that I completed, but I won’t go into detail on them here.  They were all easy to do solo and gave various quest rewards.  One quest of importance, however, came from a piece of parchment that dropped off of the Alpha gnoll.  It is named Bloodhowler Plans and I have to take the parchment to a Vulmane in the next town I am to visit – Dahknarg.  This is another quest hub for the low level adventurer.  I will detail some of the happenings there in another post.

I personally prefer the Vulmane starting area over the Kojani area.  I like the look and feel much more.  It could be because it is more of a wooded, country-type area instead of the open, island area of Kojan.  I also liked the quests better and I think the quest rewards were much better, especially for quests giving armor.

–Wolfen

I frequent a very popular gaming message board.  Many of the members there decided to start up a Vanguard guild on the Xeth server.  I was asked several times to make the switch so I finally gave in and jumped from Seradon to Xeth.  Since Vanguard doesn’t have a character transfer service, I had no choice but to start over from scratch.  I decided to do things a little differently this time around.

I loved playing the druid, so that stayed the same.  What changed was the race I played and the continent that I started on. This time I chose to play a Vulmane druid.  Vulmane’s are wolf-like creatures that basically look like humans with wolf heads.  I have to say that the Asian “spirit” theme on Kojan was starting to wear a bit thin, so I felt that switching races and continents would be a nice change. As you will see in forthcoming posts, I greatly enjoy  Thestra over Kojan.  That surprised me because I always hear great things about the lands of Kojan. For me personally, however, I enjoy the quests and the scenery much better in the Vulmane starting areas.

Some things will obviously be a re-hash of what my druid did before.  The spells will be the same, but the quests and the lands I do them in will be vastly different.  This will allow me to report on the differences between the two starting areas so that others have a better idea of where they might want to start.  I thought about trying a different class, but I was having too much fun with the druid.

So a new chapter begins.  Let’s see how well it goes.

Even though I consider my first night playing the game smoother than anticipated, the game does have some glaring flaws and glitches. The first of which is unless you have a decent gaming computer with a good video card, you will not get the best gaming experience out of Vanguard. The game has been greatly optimized since beta, but it still has a long way to go.

The game still stutters and hitches, even with my Nvidia 8800GT card with 512mb of video RAM. It is very smooth when I’m out in the country by myself, but it really slows down when you get nearer the cities. This is with the base options set to High. Vanguard’s graphic design is based on realism, and you pay a heavy price for making things look as real as possible. I prefer this style of graphics, so the occasional hitch or stutter doesn’t bother me at all. There is a wide range of graphical options, so it would be easy to lower the settings to make it play better on slower machines.

My half-elf druid started on the Kojan continent, which is a series of islands. The culture is Asian-based and leans heavily towards a Samurai style. The inhabitants worship a way of life known as “Jin” that permeates everything they do. There is a “good” Jin known as Lao’Jin, and an “evil” Jin known as Ra’jin. The two Jins are at war with one another, each trying to become the dominant way of life.

Most quests during these early levels almost always have something to do with Jin. In fact, as I continued to gain levels, the Jin quest line became more and more heavy-handed. I am now level 11 and I can say that I am completely tired of the subject of Jin. I hope a new type of quest line starts soon, because I need a new subject to keep my attention.

With that said about the long Jin quest line, the bad also comes with some good. There is a wealth of quests and I never lacked for something to do. I still have many quests in my quest log at level 11. I just wish they all didn’t have something to do with Jin.

My druid plays like a cross between a wizard and a standard druid. I have big nukes and powerful damage over time spells. I can root and snare, which allows for solo kiting. Small heals help if I get beat on. So far, I really enjoy this style of character. It seems to have the best of both worlds. Time will tell if it stays this way as I level up.

The world is massive, beautiful, and fun. It is also very under-populated. Even with just four servers, it is obvious that most players gave this game a wide berth. I also average two crashes to the desktop each night, so the developers still have much to do.

My next postings will get back to my gaming adventures. I will detail the good along with the bad, of which I have encountered plenty of both. You will get the true opinion of a so-called “veteran noob,” so that the average player can get an idea of what to expect when playing this game.

–Wolfen