This time I'm not running against the clock.
As I come to the end of the first twenty four hours of my new run of Fallen Earth I'm level 13. Looking back on my last run I'm only one level ahead of where I was last time at this point, which at first glance is surprising because this time around I've had an xp buff running the entire time, since premium status has been activated for all players. Last time I didn't have that until around 72 hours in.
The benefits of premium status aren't inconsiderable - higher xp gain, faster scavenging and crafting times, and most importantly a much larger crafting queue, allowing for up to thirty items to be queued up a once.
(In theory. In practice it's only rarely that I've got the mats on hand to do that many in a row, but it's useful for queuing up multiple crafts of things like food and drink, gunpowder and bullets.)
Over time I expect I'll accrue a lot more xp from crafting than I did last time around. Back then I ignored several of the crafting skills altogether - mutagenics and construction from the start, and I dropped several of the others later on - whereas now I'm working on them all, though I'm still prioritising the ones that are most essential early on, which are armorcraft, ballistics, cooking and science.
So combined with the increased xp gain I should be levelling considerably faster this time, except I'm not really because it's balanced out by the slower pace I'm taking. I'm less concerned about how efficiently I'm using my time in-game, which has led to several long rides back and forth across the southern half of Sector One, mostly to obtain crafting materials.
I've spent less time doing actual quests, having skipped over almost all of the available missions in the main hubs except for the main questlines, and quests for a couple of NPC factions that I mostly didn't do last time. All of this has undoubtedly slowed my xp gain down.
But I'm in no rush. Not this time.
Returning to Fallen Earth after two years... well, it's probably not the longest I've ever been away from the game, but the circumstances of this return make it different. Before I could have come back at any time, but for the last two years the game has been offline and I had no idea if it was ever coming back.
I'll admit I didn't think it would. I've never doubted that Little Orbit wanted to bring the game back, but it's one thing to want to do something, and another to actually be able to do it.
I'm glad I was wrong about that. The return of Fallen Earth turned out to be exactly what I needed to shake me out of my longest gaming lull in years, and as I've alluded to in the past that can have a positive effect on other aspects of my life as well.
So thanks for that, Little Orbit. Thank you for bringing LifeNet back online.
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