Stuck at the start - can't get into Blood River

So I appeared near a cave with a couple of corpses, with a map showing a town, Bloodriver, nearby. I circled the town and got a couple of quests 'explore the elder's hut' and 'talk to the gatekeeper', but I can't get into the town? There's no one on the outside to talk to, except some elves on the bridge who attack me.

Looking at a couple of videos on Youtube and they are transported by the Oracle to inside the town at the start, is my game bugged and I need to restart?

 

Greetings @tokabi and Welcome to Novia

Normally you start inside Bloodriver. But there was a bug, which should be solved. Please restart the game and do the download.
When starting, you can choose to be at your last position (Hopefully inside Bloodriver) or on the overworld map.

If the intro was skipped by accident (or this former bug) and you can't get into the town safe, I recommend to delete the character and start from beginning!

 

What Paladin said.

The starting scenes change constantly, I am pretty confident you can get into the town even when closed, but it is bit tricky for new players and you are not really supposed to As you are not far in the story update/restart and possibly starting new character would be preferable solution.

 

Thanks, I decided to delete and restart and went to Highvale this time, and it seems to have a similar issue. I started on a bridge immediately outside the gate with a couple of elves, and from the quest it gave me it sounds like I'm supposed to be on the other side of the gate.

I've noticed that where I actually am and where the map shows I am aren't the same place (i.e. i could be on a path and the map would show me to the side, or I could be by a corpse but the map marker is a way away) are these issues connected?

 

Pah, what a pain! The starter areas are brand new, the Devs separated off the starter tutorials from the early steps of the story quests to simplify things and get a better flow for new players as, as you are finding, SOTA is a steep starting curve.

However, we seem to be having an awful lot of bugs with the new areas.

The Devs have gone home for tbe weekend, and this is speculation, but in fixing this issue for Blood River, maybe, just maybe, they weren't aware of a similar issue in Highvale, maybe even the third starter area, Solace Bridge?

I hate to suggest it, but given all of above, if you want to play over the weekend, maybe restart (again) but try Blood River or siege of Solace Bridge?

Good luck, let us know how you are getting on.

 

i had the same problem at blood river. (i've bugged it.) go along the wall of the town until you get to the bridge, then kick the gate down and enter the town. to start where you were supposed to and pick up the start of the tasks, you'll want to go a little south of the gate and down the stairs to the docks.

 

I've tried all three now and Solace Bridge actually started me at a inactive lunar rift. The map icon is the wrong way around, which is a little disorientating, but otherwise everything seems to be working, so far...

 

I had that on my list to check out when the test server was up to test but didn't have the time and was happy fishing. It's another reason they should test things more throughly before pumping live. I wonder how many new people came across the same the same issue and just deleted the game entirely.

 

Yea that is my worry. Such a shame, these new starter areas are such a good idea, in theory. I would have maybe waited a release and let us test them very hard and also maybe go FTP at the same time as we are sure they are polished. This seems to be creating a very poor impression and I feel sorry for newbies, but more for myself who wants the game to be a huge success, the recent Steam reviews are desperate and its recurring themes - confusion, performance, dialogue. memory overhead etc.

 

So true @Steevodeevo , player retention is all about whooing the player from the start and it doesn't seem to be working yet. We should have had time to test out the new player areas with quests and all. Many of the bugs, but obviously not all would have been caught than and not needed as many patches after it rolled out.

We have been saying this for years, no need for them to listen now.