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Review | Cryofall | Sponsored
Cryofall is a sci-fi survival MMO where you can team up with friends on a PvE or PvP server for building a base, farming, and even building mechanized battle armor. Players progress through the game by earning learning points from performing actions to unlock higher tiers of technology. With the ultimate goal of being able to take down a boss, having the dominant PvP team on the server, or just have a fun time building a massive base among other things.
I ended up playing on a PvE server with a couple of friends. I have never been the biggest fan of PvP as that can tend to slow down being able to progress in a timely manner in a game. Cryofall is in early access so some things do feel like they need balancing and more game content is needed. I managed around 100 hours played but that is a bit excessive and included afking a lot while I had long crafting queues running.
Base And Outposts
One of the fundamentals no matter what type of server you are playing on is getting a base setup rather quickly. The location became quite key where there tends to be a tradeoff of having quick access to one thing over another. Not to mention you need storage and crafting stations.
To be able to claim land in Cryofall is not that hard when the servers are fresh. You just need to find a free area and have the resources to place a claim. Early on you can place a land claim tier 1 and from there you can upgrade it further if there is room. This requires the player to unlock construction at the higher tiers and acquire the needed resources to upgrade.
I found after inhabiting an area for a short while many other players build around us in no time. The area became quite crowded a few days into a fresh server. We were somewhat lucky that the player who started the group claimed several areas around us so we could expand out our base later on.
While you can have more than one land claim there is an upper limit. I choose to not claim anything near our main base while leaving that to other players in our group. Instead, I ended up making what I call outposts or just tier I land claims in key positions around the map where we could get use out of them.
There are several different kinds of biomes the player could choose to build a base in. From living in the harsh desert where you can build oil pumps but finding food and dealing with hard enemies at the start is an issue. Then you have places such as the tropical forest where aggressive monsters are seldom and food is abundant.
The main base area we selected was quite handy for our needs. It was on a lake for quick farming for fish or water. It was also next to a beach for easy access to sand, along with, clay nodes near. Not to mention there where 11 different areas we could quickly reach to go mining on. Many of these mines spots we could go on a route and pick up four or more of the spots before they would respawn with resources.
The biggest downside to where we selected was it’s more for early game. Across the map is where the game's boss spawns, the volcano for farming crystals and the desert or swamp for acquiring petroleum with oil pumps. Running to our outpost in the desert took over 5 to 10 or even longer when I did no have a hoverboard and required several trips daily to keep our base powered and fueled.
Speaking of power this is one area of the game I felt needs some rework. It’s fine if you are living in an area where you have access to place oil pumps to farm petroleum for converting into gas and plastic production. If you are not however and are nearing the end game technology-wise it’s a pain to keep your base powered all the time.
Even with having three gas-powered engine generators and three backup steam generators that were powered from charcoal to top us off or to help when we were too tired to make the oil rig run. Power was an endless struggle once members starting using end game weapons that required charging up to power banks to power the weapons. Not to mention running everything else we had like mineral processing plants, electronic furnaces for smelting, lighting, freezers, oil refineries, oil cracking plants, and lithium salt extractors.
It’s clear Cryofall needs a better energy production for the player to use. The end game was solar panels which decay over time, cost a lot to make, and on average would take four of them to just run one machine. They suck and it does not feel like an end game energy production that is very useful for most.
Outside of that, the base we made on a PvE server meets our needs quite well. We had around four lands claims near our main base with three of them combing together and we could connect the walls between them if we wanted. Lots of storage containers, and space for everything we ever needed. So much I could not zoom out to see it all to get a single screenshot of it.
Mining, Gathering, and Farming
This game has a very heavy focus on gathering resources. If you are not idle you are more than likely out mining some rocks or tending to the farm among other gathering activities. End game crafting can take a lot of resources for building vehicles, weapons, ammo, armor, and buildings.
I ended up joining the game after they had a major patch that was apparently to reduce the amount of grinding this game has. I found for the most part it to be enjoyable but I’m the kind of person who finds it relaxing to go out and mine until my inventory is filled to be fun.
Early game is like most games out there. You will need a pickaxe for mining rocks, minerals, and metals. An ax for cutting down trees of all sorts and sizes. Along with a watering bucket for watering the crops on the farm, you have created. That is not really where this game shines when it comes to these activates.
The fun part is when you get up into tier III and beyond industry and can craft industrial drones. These drones can be sent out to farm rocks, minerals, clay, trees, and quite a few other things. Depending on your tier level of your controller you can control three or four of these drones at a time and they even last for a while.
Not to mention once you get other technologies like a hoverboard, are wearing an A.R.A.R.T. suit for gear or better and can command four drones at once while you take things out with a plasma rifle. Well, you just look like a badass and all the lower-tech tier players get a bit jealous.
The only thing cooler is if you are rocking one of these. They are however purely for combat. They are not for farming unless you are on a PvP server I suppose or hunting if you could call it that. They are also slow and guzzle power like some smash energy drinks.
You also can farm well over a dozen different kinds of corps on a farm. I did not find it that interesting in trying to gather different seeds, keep them watered, fertilize, and harvest them within a couple of days. It can take a couple of hours or much longer for crops to grow. Thankfully mid-game you usually have water sprinklers crafted to do the bulk of the labor required.
Many times the fun part of the gathering was exploring new areas to find resources you needed. There are a few things that can only be found in certain biomes like different kinds of herbs used in medicine. Then you had other things like salt could be extracted from ocean water or salt nodes that could be found in the desert.
Despite the fact, I must have farmed ten of thousands of copper ore by now alone among the other kinds of ore. I still find it fun to send drones out and clear a mining spot in no time flat. Add in the random monster to fight to clear the area out and a bunch of other players all rushing to get the resource they want. It’s still fun.
Technology Tiers
Progression in this game is based around earning learning points by performing actions and spending them to unlock technology. There is quite a lot to unlock from main branch trees to picking a specialization within a group to focus on.
While I’m at a point now where I have just about anything I would want. The best way to go early on was having people all focus on just acquiring a few different technology types. Generally, most people will all end up having the basics like construction and industry and work on getting those up to tier V. The more specialized technology like cybernetics, vehicles, and food canning can be delegated out to others that want to focus them.
Cryofall even rewards players with some learning and experience boosts with a well-rested bonus for being offline each day. This was a nice way to help those less active not fall so far behind. They could log in and go out hunting or mining to use up that bonus. The bonus itself was not consumed by time spent online but by earning learning points.
Combat And Hunting
Combat in this game can get externally expensive and consume a large amount of the resources you have. Since everything decays in this game on the use or from getting hit things like guns and armor will only last so long. Not to mention bullets have to be created and the higher tier ones are quite crazy to craft. Along with needing to bring medical supplies to heal up and recover from whatever you ran into.
One of the best ways I found to farm a lot of learning points fast was to go out hunting. While early game you might go out with melee weapons like a machete. Mid game you tend to be using guns that require ammo to be crafted. End game you are charging power banks to shoot lasers to melt the face of your enemy if you are not rocking a mechanized battle armor.
I would also say not all weapons are worth using. While there is a tier V heavy rifle, for instance, I hated using it. It requires .300 armor-piercing ammo. Which the recipe for 10 ammo is something like 5 steel (5 iron, 5 charcoal, 5 flux powder ( sand, potassium nitrate)), 5 copper, 40 formulated gunpowder( 40 nitrocellulose powered (40 fiber, 4 nitric acid (20 sulfuric acids, 4 water))), water, 12 solvent (3 industrial chemicals (ash, salt, mineral oil, lithium salt), sulfur, potassium)). Yep, I gave up trying to list everything and the exact amounts for each craft in the recipe needed for the exact amounts. You would think it be the best weapon ever for quickly taking out an armored target like a scorpion. While it has a long-range I preferred the medium-range plasma rifle which was cheaper and quicker to kill them.
Cryofall usually had a bit of a tradeoff between having to craft a bullet or using power banks to supply energy for the weapon. This came in the form of how expensive the gun was to craft. Energy weapons cost Pragmium to craft which is a highly completive resource to gather, along with, needing gold ingots. While the traditional weapon’s most expensive cost was rubber in most cases and just low tier ores.
On the PvE server at least when you died you would be given the option to respawn at your bed if you had one. You took some decay on anything you had equipped and had a nasty debuff for a short while. You did not drop any items so the decay tended to be the biggest cost when you did get killed.
In total there are 23 different kinds of creatures and some of them have nasty debuffs that will kill you over time. From bleeding damage to radiation damage among other things. Depending on what you were fighting and were you where you best come prepared with some medical supplies to heal up and combat any negative effects you take on. Otherwise, you know you are dead if you don’t have the health to wait out the tick damage and can only watch while you slowly take damage over time.
There is also one boss currently in the game called the Queen with many more planned in the future. This tends to be where having a mechanized battle armor to do combat in comes into play. While there was a group of the same people always running the boss when it spawned on the server I was on. I just never had the time or was far away. They were at least always open to having others on the server join in. Which I have a feeling is not something you would see on every server.
A lot of the resources from hunting were not always needed. The early game drops like bones and fur you had a large need for. The late-game though this still feels like an area that needs some work. Outside of a couple of drops I mostly went hunting for the learning points or I was just in a very hostile area farming other stuff and needed to clear things out.
Final Thoughts
While this game is in early access and it has quite a lot to offer. Some areas did feel like they need some balancing or further content to give it some depth like power. There were also some aspects I did not go into a lot of detail for as fishing, cooking, exploring, running ruins, and the social aspects of it being an MMO.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar. Screenshots are from the game Cryofall. If you are thinking about getting this game and are looking to support me further consider using my Epic Games creator code: enjargames at checkout or using this referral link to be sent to the store's pages.
Disclosure: As a creator in the Epic Games’ Support-A-Creator Program, I may receive a commission from certain purchases.
Discloser: This game was in early access at the time of writing this.
