First Impressions: Eden Eternal

The game also features a crafting system, but it's presented in a somewhat unique manner. You don't actually gather the materials or craft the items yourself. Rather, you purchase (and perhaps find, I'm not certain on that) scrolls, which operate essentially as work orders for particular materials. For instance, you might buy a Mining Map that will yield 20 copper ore and three pure crystals (as seen above). You submit these work orders, along with a small fee, to an NPC, who then goes to work gathering the materials for you. Success is based on chance. Sometimes you'll get all the items listed on a work order, sometimes only part of them (like, say, 10 copper ore when the work order listed 20), and sometimes nothing at all. This is both a blessing and a curse in that it saves a great deal of time, as the NPC will continue to gather your materials for you even if you're off questing or even logged out entirely, but you run the risk of not getting all of the materials from a given work order, forcing you to sink more money into scrolls and gathering fees to get the materials you need.

Item production itself works in much the same way. Once you have your materials, you buy a blueprint for the item you want crafted and take it to an NPC, who crafts it for you. The blueprint is consumed in the process, so you have to buy a new one each time you want something crafted. Clearly, crafting is meant as a means of personal enhancement and not as a money-earning activity, which is somewhat odd but not altogether unwelcome, since at the very least the items you can have crafted are incredibly useful.

You can also use Fortification Scrolls to fortify your items, which essentially increases their defense (in the case of armor) and attack (in the case of weapons) capabilities as well as grants special stats such as +crit to daggers and the like at higher fortification tiers. There is a risk involved, however, as fortification past tier 4 has an alarmingly high chance of failure. Fortification failure results in the piece of equipment you're attempting to fortify being destroyed entirely, so it's certainly not for the faint of heart. There are items available, however, that can keep the item from being destroyed in case of failure in addition to some very rare items that will guarantee success.

Lastly, we come to the item shop. As someone who is militantly against the "pay-to-win" variety of free-to-play titles, I'd be remiss if I didn't cover this at least briefly. While the cash shop is currently incomplete (there are two entire sections listed as "coming soon"), what is currently being sold is far from game-breaking. There are a few convenience items, such as Portal Stones (which allow you to teleport directly to your quest objectives), Safety Stones (which prevent the destruction of a piece of equipment in case fortification fails), Gathering Aids (which increase the chance of success when having materials gathered), and remote bank and auction house access. You can also purchase dyes for your armor, health and mana potions, and larger backpacks.

Still, almost all of these items are obtainable over the course of normal gameplay in one fashion or another. For instance, each player earns some freebie items every five character levels, and dyes, Gathering Aids, and other cash-shop items can be acquired by completing certain quests. Players are also able to sell and trade cash shop items that they've purchased, so it's entirely within the realm of possibility to acquire these items without spending a cent. Of course, it's obviously more convenient if you buy them, but that's ultimately what it boils down to: The cash shop is convenient, but it doesn't unbalance the game. Granted, the game is still in closed beta, so any number of things could be added to the cash shop between now and launch.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised (shocked, really) by how much I enjoyed my time in Eden Eternal, and I urge you to remember that this is by no means a complete account of what the game has to offer. I was unable to delve into any of the group dungeons, partake in PvP, join a guild, get to know the pet system in-depth, or check out guild towns. From what I got to sample, however, the game seems to be incredibly well-polished despite its closed beta status, which means that the team has plenty of time to take care of the small bugs and annoyances that do exist. I can honestly say that I'll be keeping Eden Eternal on my hard drive, at least for now, so that I can see how the game evolves and plays out on the road to launch.