I got to play yesterday

[NoSkill 1]

Hello everyone, I would like to talk about my actual experience in game yesterday.

I was able to get into the game around 6pm Mountain and play until roughly midnight. We saw the server version move from 2 to 4 to 4.1 to 4.2 and back to 4.1. There was a period of time (right before 4) where the servers were the most stable.

Anyways, i was able to do the early survival thing; punch trees, gather rocks, craft tools, kill animals, fish, and finally build a raft. I disconnected a few times but I was able to quickly "rejoin Atlas". By the end of the night I was slowly making my way west out of the starting zone where I finally succumb to lag in the form of scurvy. 

Atlas has a lot of promise hidden behind very serious connectivity issues. Once we are able to spread the server load a bit things will improve and I continue to have hope that the patches will improve things (even if the last 3 have only made things worse in game).

In closing I want to offer some in game as well as "launch day" tips..

In game:

You can only drink fresh water. This is found near the starting town. When you first join a server press "m" (open map) and then "+" (zoom in map) on the number pad and get a look at where the starting town is. The water pit is right outside the gate. A second way to get fresh water is to go prone (x) on green ground and punch the ground. This launches a timing mini game where you have to click at the right moment 3 times and poof: fresh water.

 

You can't craft anything until you level up. I recommend trying to kill as many chickens and parrots as you can to get the first level. Punching trees and rocks gives experience and resources but also hurts the player and is slow going. How ever you gain the experience, once you are level one make tools and begin to free farm. Fibers and flint seem to be the ones I always run out of.

 

There will be an arrow in the bottom right of the icon for what ever food you gather. This will match with one of your vitamin needs on the lower right. Plants like thyme give green, fish gives blue, berries and fruit give orange, and meat gives pink. If you you end up with a deficiency your character will get sick. It is a slow and painful death.

 

You get your raft by talking to an NPC on the pier of the NPC town. He makes you pay wood and fiber and thatch for it (I think). Anyways, once you pay the fee your raft is ploped down in the water in front of you. The raft is controlled by the sail only so point your sail in the direction you want to go. Eventually the body of your raft will fall in line with the sail. Kind of like driving in halo; point the camera (the sail) which way you want the body to eventually turn. In the top right you have a little graphic of your ship. The sail shape is sort of a horse shoe. If that horse shoe is red you will not be going to sea today. Move your sails until it turns green. google "sailing tacking"

 

Build a bed for your raft. Don't even set sail unless you have a bed on your raft.

 

Okay now for some out of game tips. I have been through quiet a few MMO launches, all the way back to the days of Dark Age of Camelot, and in the process I have come up with some guidlines for increasing my chances of getting into the game while others run into a queue.

 

#1 Identify the primary source of information. Figure out who knows first and who knows best what is happening with the servers and then pay attention to what they say. For instance, yesterday, between 3-6 the servers were down even though there were some streamers playing. I knew the servers were down and it wasn't worth spamming the reconnect button because I followed https://twitter.com/Jatheish and https://twitter.com/sailtheatlas?lang=en . When this message came out: https://twitter.com/Jatheish/status/1076610440728363009 I knew it was time to start spamming reconnect.

The same is going to be true later today. Don't bother pressing reconnect until the update comes from Jat/sailatlas. The game is broke right now. Spend time with your friends and family, clean the kitchen and walk your pets, take care of your responsibilities so in 4 (probably going to be 6 or 8) hours when the game works again you can just focus on playing.

 

#2 Figure out how to connect to your server as quickly as possible. This one is a little more tricky. If you look at this map: https://pocketdevs.org/map/ you can see all the green freeports and if you zoom in you can see their name such as "west equatorial freeport." That will be the name of the Server/Instance (Not sure what the best thing to call it is). For exmaple, the NA PVP server is broken up into a bunch of regions, each region can have 150 players in it. In order to connect you have to first connect to a region that allows new players, aka a freeport.

If you don't have a free port picked out, open Atlas, hit join new atlas, select your server and uncheck the box at the bottom that says "show atlas map". In the top right change the sort mode to "players" and the order to desending. This way when the patch drops you'll be able to quickly find a low population shard.

Either way your goal is to patch, open atlas, and connect to your server before 10,000 other people try to do the same thing. Try your best to avoid the lawless regions.

 

Some final thoughts...

 

What we are dealing with right now is very serious server connection issues. The worst thing about server connection issues is that they make everything else look equally broken. The best thing about server connection issues is that it is POSSIBLE that they can be solved by a silver bullet patch aka. 4 hours of down time. I can't say for sure that this upcoming downtime is going to fix everything but it is possible.

Once these issues are resolved we can better evaluate Atlas as a game. If you are ON THE FENCE about if atlas is a good game, I very strongly encourage you to step away for a week or two. You aren't going to get behind, you aren't going to miss out on content. You are going to miss the hair pulling frustration of an MMO launch.