The Secret World: Quickstarter

I'll be publishing my review of The Secret World on Monday.  In the meantime, here are a few things that those of you who preordered should probably know to get you on your feet more quickly.  This pre-empted what I had posted for today, given the fact that these tips will be more useful now, and would not particularly be useful after a day or two.  Here you go.








1) The preorder items are not in a mailbox.

Don't look in here

To get your preorder items, go to Kingsmouth.  That's right, you can't get them in the starting area.  You have to complete the tutorial, and go to Kingsmouth.  From there, open the in-game store (the comma key, ",").  The top icon is "Claim Items."  Here, you have to claim your items one at a time, and right now they're taking 30-45 minutes to deliver because of the volume of people getting them.  It's a slow, painful process, and to boot, the items are not identified by weapon type or weapon picture.  That's right -- you have to guess.  To save you time, here's a quick chart of the items I was able to snag before I had to run to work.

Weapon Type	Weapon Name
Assault Rifle	Special Issue 51
Blood Focus	Tome of Babel
Chaos Focus	Shadow-Play
Elementalism Focus	Babylonian Battery
Fist	Furies
Hammer	Iconclast
Pistol	Wagtails
Shotgun	Star Spread
Sword	Dreaming's Edge

2) The preorder items are indeed Q0 items that are equivalent to high-end Q1

Let me axe you about chainsaw zombies.

This does mean you don't need to worry about gearing in Polaris.  Resist that temptation!  You'd be missing out on content, and that's really what this game is about.  You can always double back and not be particularly overpowered while questing in Savage Coast, but this game is beautiful specifically because of its nuances (see point 5).  I'm planning on running Polaris as "Och" on Sunday afternoon.  If you're in the early release, feel free to join!

3) A bug is starting many Dragon players in New York.
To get back to Seoul, find the portal to Agartha.  To do this, find the warehouse, and there's a dug-out tunnel in a corner behind a red door.  From there, turn around -- there should be portals to Seoul, London, and New York, in order from left to right.


4) General Chat is unified
People in every location see the general chat window.  That means you're probably going to want to leave general chat very quickly.  It may even be cross-server general chat -- I have not confirmed this yet.  Also, please don't post spoilers in general chat.  A good bit of the fun in this game is figuring puzzles out.  If someone asks, and you're being helpful, send them a tell.  If someone asks, and you're trolling, don't.


5) Resist the urge to skip content.
What makes this game special is the quests -- investigations, details, and things you'd miss if you skipped or asked for answers.  Try to find the answers to puzzles on your own.