Outward Definitive Edition | War Was Imperative
Chronicon| A Fresh Start
It has been a few years now since I’ve played Chronicon. It’s one of those ARPGs I’ve told myself at some point I would return to see how development went on it. While reviewing quite a long list of games I realized Chronicon announced that the game is fully finished and outside of small bug fixes that was it.
I can’t think of the last time I’ve seen a game developer announce they are fully done and moving on to other things. That was mind-blowing enough that I decided it was time to jump into the game and start a new character.
I have not played Chronicon since 2019. While I have not bought any of the DLCs. I’m rather excited about the adventures I end up getting up to. I also recall very little about the game itself at least for now. Other than that, I had a lot of fun the last time I played it.
It’s got quite the dungeon-crawling feel to it. I ended up picking the class, Warlock. At least for now, I’m going to mainly focus on going for fire damage. I think I can have quite a lot of fun with that.
While I did have a couple of items placed away in the shared bank from the level 100 character I use to play. Outside of just taking some lower-level bags and any gems and currencies, I have in storage and on my character (as that is shared as well. I’ll be mostly playing as a fresh start.
Granted that will save me some time if I ever get into a bind gear-wise while leveling up. You can gamble the crystals for gear, use it to re-roll stats on gear, and do many other things you would expect in a modern-day ARPG.
The game has a couple of different difficulty options. The nice thing is I can in theory jump into any one of these at any time. However, even the game hints I should not be going near legendary difficulty till at least level 50 with some decent gear.
Certain kinds of rarity items can only start dropping once you are on the higher difficulties. On top of that what they consider to be True legendary you can only get at level 100. So there is going to be quite some grinding level whiles before I start putting much of a thought into gear.
I ended up starting on Normal. My main reason behind this is that it turned out to be how I recall things. The first couple of levels as you can expect in quite many ARPGs these days can be a bit painful and slow till you unlock some further skills and have some gear.
My main goal, for now, is just to grind through all the different acts of the game. While everything scales with you as you level depending on the difficult setting you have selected. I’d rather just have everything unlocked so I can travel almost anywhere I need in the game.
Once I have done that I will need to find somewhere to sit down and just grind in. At some point, I’ll be focusing on bosses to get a decent gear set before moving towards more of the end-game system in Chronicon. For now however that going be a ways off.
Two things that never get old in Chronicon are the loot explosions and clearing out massive hordes of creatures. This game nails those aspects in quite an amazing way once you have some decent skill combos and gear to follow up with.
Starting however it was going to be a bit tricky. The first pack of creatures I ran into almost finished me off. Thankfully I’m not playing in hardcore mode. As it would not be that much longer before I would end up getting killed.
No shock to me I was quite rusty at this game. the starting skill for Warlock also sucks. I had to be careful in what I was getting aggression on let alone attempting to pull for the first few levels.
Chronicon has quite a skill tree system. There are four different types of magic my warlock can focus on. Along with a masteries branch as well. While I put my first point into the corruptor tree. It did not take long after looking through them all to go quite heavily into Demonologist for the time being.
I ended up selecting wanting to level up Burning Hells and anything that appeared it would benefit from as my early-on area of effect damage skill. This skill would start like a low and slow burn. Later on, it will be ripping through packs of creatures like they are nothing.
After working out some stuff and coming up with a bit of a game plan. It was time to dive head-deep into piles of creatures. It would still end up being a little while of slow and painful leveling before things got into their step.
Even more so when I ran into a pack of one to three crown creatures. You can think of them as elites. They can drop some amazing stuff if you survive. I ended up burning through a couple of healing potions to get the job done.
Since I’m not in any rush to get anywhere in this game I’ll be taking things a bit slow. Any side area dungeon areas I find I’ll be diving right into for the most part. The game is kind enough to label them as blue on the map.
One of the first side dungeons I found ended up being a Reeking Cellar. Not a place I would normally want to find myself in. I was however on this day looking for a bit of trouble to get into. Many times these side little dungeons can be quite small. As is the case with this one.
Small dungeons like these can pack quite the punch. Between being loaded with creatures you can find chests and puzzles as well for some amazing loot. There is usually some kind of named creature at the end of them to finish off as well.
Many of these side areas will also be a part of side quests. So they can be a great way to have some extra fun and loot a bit more loot for your time spent. While some might sit in the same min/max area for grinding. That would get boring after a while trying to get to level 100 that way.
This dungeon also had a crystal puzzle towards the back. While I forget at this time how to solve most of them. It did not take long to recall I just needed to click on the red crystal and wait for the next one to click. After so many, I’d beat the puzzle and get a nice phat chest to loot.
The puzzle also happened to be trapped. On solving it a massive horde of zombie-looking creatures spawned in to try and kill me. Thankfully my area of effect damage did some amazing work on them quickly.
Final Thoughts
While not a massive start. It did take a little bit of trying to get back into this game. It is far more complex than first meets the eye. Sometimes it’s best to spend some time coming up with some kind of plan than just charging into battle and ending up dead.
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Chronicon.
