Starfield | Securing The Scientist
Taking A Look At Forgotten Artifacts
Forgotten Artifacts is an ARPG dungeon crawler that uses Enjin’s wallet as a ERC-1155 asset on Ethereum. It is in Pre-Alpha and it does feel like a lot needs to be done. With that said curiosity got the better of me. So I thought I’d take a little sneak peek.
You have a town to explore with NPCS accepting items as turn-ins for quests. A couple of dungeons to run as well. There are still some things left to be desired such as your own personal storage is just a box in the middle of town. It will be fun watching this game evolve over time.
Town Of Talmuth
The town of Talmuthis is where you access everything from. It has a bunch of NPCs in it that you can turn items into for quests. It’s where you access the different dungeons. Along with changing out your equipment load or even engaging with event NPCs.
I got a feeling they are still working on building this area out. That was rather hinted from the start when it was talking about how your player chest was just out in the open and you really need a house to store your items.
One of the bigger uses for Talmuth is the number of NPCs all scattered around the place. They each have a bunch of different quests that are looking for certain items. They reward anything from artifact weapons to other questing materials. Most artifacts in this game have a very limited supply drop and you can see further about them from their main website.
This game does run events from time to time as well and the Talmuth tends to be the starting place. During Christmas, Santa would randomly show up some days and allow you to collect a gift which for me was uncommon blockchain items. There are also summing events that get announced on their Twitter page that require high rarity items to craft a portal to fight a giant boss or other things for loot. Which I did not even attempt as I would get wrecked!
The other big part is giving you the access points to the different dungeons to run. They are grouped next to each with some space between them for the most part. The practice dungeon is all by itself and separated from the rest.
It was also a place where they show things like leaderboards for the number of runs in a couple of dungeons. Along with any other special achievements, players have earned from the early days. There are quite a few things to explore and discover in town.
Overall the town of Talmuth serves as a focal point for quite a lot of things for Forgotten Artifacts. I personally love dungeon crawlers that use a single town to add in all the other elements the game needs when you are not off adventuring in a dungeon.
Dungeons
They have a couple of different types of dungeons. A Practice Dungeon where I played in as it cost nothing to enter. Then you had the kind where you do need to buy or loot Adventure Stones sold by the developers. The first dungeon type you get almost nothing that you get to keep while the others you get any blockchain drops you can carry out with.
Players can have access to a very wide range of weapon types to be used in these dungeons as well. That they have either looted, earning from a quest reward or bought off the market. I’ve been personally using an uncommon two-handed sword that I looted. There is always that hope of running dungeons and getting end game rarity items to drop. There are many different types of weapons to be used such as bows, axes, and so forth. Some of these weapons depending on their rarity have a very limited supply and could become worth a lot one day.
Adventure Stones
For the most part to be able to run dungeons you need to pay the entry fee of one Adventure Stone. The adventure stones themselves sell for $5 for 10 adventure stones at the lowest pack from the developers. With the best deal being 280 adventure stones for $80. With each dungeon run costing between 50 cents to 29 cents. You can buy them with Paypal or a whole host of different cryptocurrencies such as ETH.
While you can also trade in certain items to the right NPC to get some adventure stones that is not something you will start off doing. They can also drop while in the dungeons but they are quite a rare drop as I’ve not seen any myself.
It is also from my understanding of talking with a number of very early players to this game that there was a time where there were no costs to run the dungeons. Some appear to have loaded up with a lot of weapons and quest supplies. This was before my time as I’m not a founder so I can’t be quite sure myself. So that is just something to keep in mind.
Practice Dungeon
While the practice dungeon is free to run you also can’t carry out any blockchain items either. It can also be quite challenging if you are just starting off the game as you won’t be making it alive to the end of the exit.
The allure to me when I first starting running a couple of Practice Dungeons over a month ago was the fact if you looted an adventure stone and where able to beat it you got to keep it. The downside is if anything amazing dropped that was a blockchain item you are SOL as they were only temporary drops and you don’t get to keep any of them.
While this can technically create an opportunity to play this game for free. The reality this dungeon is more for higher geared players to test their setup against a wide range of monsters without risking an adventure stone in the process. We can also see from the leaderboards that almost no one who can finish it even runs it.
I ran it over a dozen or so times and got brutally murdered! It’s cool it’s there. This is just not a place someone with a starting weapon should think they have a chance at completing. It is at least a great place to try out the game for free and see what it has to offer before spending anything.
If I was a player with a higher level weapon I would see the practice dungeon as a place to warm up before going on a long grinding spree in the other dungeons. With all the dogging, and challenges that wait in there, that seems to be rather suited to be a warm-up dungeon.
One thing I did notice while running practice dungeons is it seems to be a much higher drop for heal potions (750+ heal) and finding healing alters (1k heal). Quite a lot of runs I felt like I had a chance until I got much deeper into the dungeon. Where the 2k health a player has and my amount of damage was just not going cut through the monsters guarding the gate to the next floor.
Health is a very important thing to manage. It is also something you can’t regenerate without a health potion, healing alters or very high-end items that only a couple of players even have like Arkor's Ring of Revenge. Once you are out you are dead and that ends the fun. While this was just a practice dungeon and these items I had did not count there is still some thought of what could have been if I made it further in the real dungeons.
Adventure Stone Dungeons
For dungeons that cost adventure stones, you have three that you can run Echoing Cavern, Macabre Crypt, and Haunted Catacomb that have different varying degrees of difficulty. They all have a similar format that the only way you can escape with the items you have looted is by reaching the exit gate on the fourth floor. Getting killed or leaving without doing so will result in no loot.
The Echoing Cavern dungeon can be completed with just your starting weapon. It tends to have lots of opportunities to heal, the gate to each floor has very easy guards to kill. More times than not if you are struggling with being low on health it’s worth clearing out each floor looking for heal potions. The monsters are also rather straight forward and you can just hack and slash them to death usually in one or two hits without much thought.
Macabre Crypt is where the difficulty steps up a notch. All gates are locked until you clear out the monsters guarding it before you can advance to the next floor. You may or may not find healing potions or alters on each floor. Monster density is higher where you can find yourself having to fight multiple monsters at once. I’ve personally yet to beat this dungeon myself I can make it to the fourth floor at best.
Finally, you have Haunted Catacomb. I’ve never been in there as I expect certain death and a loss of an adventure stone. Since I only bought ten stones in total I didn’t feel like tossing one away to see how this dungeon fares.
In all of these dungeons uncommon and up blockchain items can be looted and kept if you escape alive. These drop from killing monsters and looting special glowing chests. The catch here is each run you only have four inventory slots and your weapon slot to carry things. There has been an instance where I get more drops then I could carry out and I have to decide what gets left behind.
With this limiting factor in place running the higher dungeons does not always mean getting better loot. They just have much higher chances with more monsters to kill, bigger zones, and finding chests to loot to come away with a chance at better stuff.
For the most part, you get a lot of quest supplies that can be turned into certain NPCs if you get all the required items. Many times you can craft a better weapon or higher tier materials. They have over time nerfed weapons and other artifact drop rates as they want more reliance on questing with the NPCs for items.
Areas are also filled with breakable objects such as creates, bookshelves, and other stuff along the way. These tend to drop your temporary items like healing potions, energy potion (energy is used for second more powerful attacks and also regenerates on its own back up to 500), and explosive ball (a bomb that you can toss to deals 500 damage just don’t get killed by it!). Along with a very small chance of looting an adventure stone as well.
There are quite a few different title sets, monsters to encounter and loot to be found. With a little luck, you will make it to the fourth floor and get to escape with a couple of blockchain items. Maybe it will be a weapon but chances are some quest materials at the very least.
Enjin blockchain On ETH
To even play this game you need to link it to an Enjin wallet which is a mobile-only wallet. Enjin itself is into a lot of things around gaming. They do web hosting, guild stuff, and even have their own cryptocurrency.
There is also a massive market place with over 60 games listed in one spot called enjinx. Where items get listed and sold in Enj coin.
Forgotten Artifacts also supports The Multiverse within Enjin. This has a bunch of games where very special items are accepted into a bunch of other games. The game seems to be rather open to having quite a few other games items accepted in. One Multiverse asset they accept is the Epochrome Sword which people are asking over a thousand dollars for.
Since they are on Enjin they use batch sending of blockchain items to players. This does mean there is some delay after you have an item and have received it. The more active the game becomes the quicker items get sent out. The queue itself can be viewed along with any pending items you have from the Forgotten Artifacts website under the account tab.
The wallet and the ecosystem they are looking to build is interesting. Take a screenshot of QR codes to link accounts to a game, buy game assets, and so forth sounds promising. Will be interested to see how this develops over time.
Final Thoughts
As far as blockchain games go I am super excited for the future of this game even more so since it’s a genre I enjoy playing. With it being in a pre-alpha state there are quite a few things left to be desired still that you find in more traditional arpg and dungeon crawler games. It will be interesting to see what traits from those genres end up making it into Forgotten Artifacts as they further develop.
This also marks my first game played on Enjin. I am considering checking out some other games as they appear to have quite a few over there. I have not explored very deep many aspects of the Enjin wallet yet myself.
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Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about the game Forgotten Artifacts
This game is in Pre-Alpha
