New Player Experience

Hi everyone. I just started playing not long ago (and I'm really enjoying how the game has progressed so far). I was going to make a bug report but it's really a group of issues so I'll just detail it out here. If this is the wrong section let me know.

Here's how it went, as well as I can remember:

After character creation I started out in Solace Bridge and then went to Solace Bridge Outskirts.

I think I did all of the quests in that area, and moved on to Soltown. I got a quest to go to Ardoris and deliver a letter to the captain there. And Arabella asked me to use the Lunar Rift and speak to Gawain in Highvale.

The Ardoris quests led me to the Shuttered Tower, which is in a Tier 4 area and I died instantly. So I went to Highvale (after getting lost and a lot of waiting I figured out the Lunar Rift - I guess the idea is it's fast travel but takes the same amount of time as walking?).

I can see "Gawain, Dying Knight" on the map but he is not in that spot or anywhere on the map as far as I can tell.

I went back to Arabella. This time she did not mention Gawain. I asked about my "quest" and the "virtues." She said "Truth is not your path" and something about the Titan of Love being missing. When I asked about Courage she again said I should go to Highvale.

I did ask around if this was a bug and I've been given a lot of advice on what I'm doing wrong. I've been told to travel here or there on the map to start certain questlines. I was told I'm supposed to ignore Arabella and not talk to her until I've completed some other quests (it wasn't clear when it's ok to talk to her). I've been told not to do quests at all until I'm a higher level, and that I should just grind all the different areas for a while. I've been told that I should have just picked one Path, and also that I should do parts of all of them until I'm high enough level to continue one of them.

The challenge with all of this is, I just went where the game led me. Something is clearly not working right. Why did the quest I was on jump from "too easy" to Tier 4? Most of all, how is a new person to know which NPCs not to talk to, which quests to do or not, and where to go next without asking on Discord or the forums?

So it looks like I can't continue the Courage or Love quests and "Truth is not my path." What now? Maybe a GM can reset something f0r me. Right now all I can do is grind but after about 7 or 8 levels with no quests that's getting pretty old. I think I've done all the side quests in Ardoris as well.

Anyway, that's my experience, I hope it's useful feedback. Thanks to those of you who genuinely tried to help out. If you need more details about any of it, please ask.

 

Yes, unfortunately that is SotA. Completely confusing, strange, frustrating and not what you would expect from a story driven single player narrative.
Unfortunately I can't help you as I am as confused and frustrated as you with the quests and the story.

I really don't know how something like this can pass QA. The devs should have experience in creating quests and a single-player narrative yet what we have now is something I would maybe expect from someone's first steps without having any experience.
And I really don't know if this can be salvaged until release.

 

there's highvale and there's the battle of highvale, and it seems like some flag for giving you one and not the other is bugged. a possible workaround:

 

Yes, thanks I saw that but I thought I'd include it here as part of the feedback. Where should I be getting the quest to go speak the Lord Marshall in Resolute in the first place?

edit: I'm not sure how to quote the other quote, but you get the idea.