Making your own way

Levelling up is a complex process in Fallen Earth.

The freeform design of character building means that a new level, in itself, isn't really that significant. It's all about the AP, the points which you allocate to stats and skills and which are accrued in small but regular increments during the progress toward each new level. As a result of this there's rarely any time when a player doesn't have the option of allocating a few more points to their build, making small adjustments as they go or shifting focus without the need to either respec or wait until the next new level is achieved.

There's any number of MMOs where a new level can be a non-event, offering no new skills or other opportunities to customise a build, and even those that do offer new decisions to be made at every level – like City of Heroes – tend not to do so between levels, so the constant engagement of Fallen Earth is refreshing.

Skills are raised at a cost of 1AP, and stats at a cost of 5AP. This means early on the focus is likely to be on raising skills... except the upper limit of those skills is defined by stats. At a certain point, and if you focus on just a few skills it'll be sooner rather than later, you need to start putting points into stats to avoid your skills falling behind.

Especially if you're crafting, and unless you're relying on an already levelled up crafter to supply your gear, you will be crafting.

Crafting is one of the areas where Fallen Earth absolutely shines. Virtually every item in the game can be made by players, and the crafting system is as deep and as complex as that implies. It's also vitally important from the very start of the game, since if you keep your crafting skills up to par the gear you make will always be better than the gear you can acquire by other means. If you rely on quest rewards (rare) and random drops (rarer still) to gear up then you'll very soon be bringing a knife to a gun fight, and it won't be a very good knife.

Skill alone isn't enough. A weapon that was cutting edge at one time will feel increasingly underpowered as you continue to level up, and the same applies to armor. To stay ahead of the curve it's essential to keep raising crafting skills to make new and better weapons and armor, and to do so means putting AP into those stats that set the limit on crafting skills. Stats that are, often, not the same as those needed to raise the limit on combat skills.

Everything is interconnected. Choices have to be made, and the way AP are accrued means that those choices are being made often and the player is constantly engaged in the building of their character.

All of which is to say that Fallen Earth has a well deserved reputation as a game with a steep learning curve. Very little is handed to you on a plate, and there are no rails on which you must run. Every character's experience of the wasteland will be different, and every character – in terms of stats and skills and gear – will be different too.