RuneScape: Dragonwilds First Impressions

Today I have teamed up with our fellow writer Jeremy to tell you all what we thought about the game RuneScape Dragonwilds Early access! 

With the name RuneScape it's not hard to imagine very low poly nostalgic graphics, and leveling up skills in an mmo setting; however, Dragonwilds is doing more of their own Valheim take on the franchise.

(Disclaimer, we received free keys for this game)

Story:

Jeremy: Dragonwilds takes place in Gielinor, the same universe as the RuneScape MMO, but on a different continent. Ashenfall, as a continent, feels completely different from the original continent. The RuneScape connection to me feels somewhat superficial. They took the names of quests and skills from the MMO and repurposed them, and some familiar characters from the MMO appear in Dragonwilds. One of the most iconic quests from the original game, Dragon Slayer, serves as the foundation for Dragonwilds’ central mission. Ashenfall is riddled with dragons, and the main focus of the game in this state is a big, green dragon named Veigar.

The Wise Old Man (maybe the most familiar character from the overall RuneScape franchise) sets you off on the classic fantasy tale to slay the dragon. You are tasked with finding Cathan, an adventurer who went out prior to your arrival. On your journey, you confront and investigate tribes of goblins who worship Veigar as a god, and you find that poor Cathan was killed. It is a long, winding journey, just like Dragon Slayer is in the MMO, culminating with the killing of Veigar. But, it is set up for a larger scale story to persist beyond that, with a Queen Dragon who serves as an overall villain in the background.

Gameplay:

Jonsku: Dragonwilds is a survival crafting adventure action game very similar to Valheim in its core. You run around gathering materials, food, resources to not only survive but also to power up and make new tools to fight the increasingly more dangerous enemies.

As you do gather and fight you will level up that specific skill for example if you pick up wood or chop down trees you gain more efficiency in woodcutting. As you gain more of any said skill they will eventually reward you with some massive buffs, fighting will give you new combos and later on new spells that will help you out a lot like enchanting your melee weapon with fire or wind. More or less any activity you do will level up a different skill, this includes making food and building a house or just crafting in general and all of them have some milestone rewards which typically are spells or new passives or new recipes.

What makes Dragonwilds different from its inspiration source Valheim is the Rune magic system. Early on in the tutorial missions (highly recommended for both new and old players of this genre) you will get tasked to mine runic stones from magical sources that appear a bit all over the world and with these you first make a rune altar crafting table and then you can craft different elemental runes in large quantities like wind, fire etc. These runes are used in all of your spell casting in both utility and combat, one of the early spells you gain for example is called "windstep" which allows you to do one high jump to reach hard ledges or to slow down your fall, or one of my personal favorites is from the mining skill tree named "rocksplosion!" As the name suggests it explodes any mining source while still giving you all the mining xp and materials.

The game also has three distinctive classes you can choose between, you have your typical warrior who is melee focused, usually has a shield that you can parry enemies with and learns weapon enchanting spells as they get stronger.

The ranger is a more long range focused class that snipes enemies with their trusty bow at hand and if need be sneaks up to the enemy for some quick stabs with their dagger.

Last but not least you have the mage, they use the crafted runes as ammo to either shoot fireballs or wind attacks (currently) to overwhelm their enemies before they get close. There is no dedicated mana system in this game, it's all about making enough runes for your needs.

As of writing this impression the game hasn't gained any major updates yet to support the ranger or mage skill trees yet, but the icons are there so we just have to wait patiently for them.

One last major thing gameplay wise I want to mention is a spell you learn at the end of the tutorial named "ocular eye." This spell allows you to go into what I can only describe as a creative mode point of view and fly around in a small area where your character is standing. It makes it very easy to build your house and the game even allows you to "ghost build" the entire house before you even gather any materials. It's really easy to plan out the full house and fix mistakes in both height and depth. Similar to Valheim the house needs to be built solidly so that it can become as big as you want it to be, if there isn't a proper foundation it will crumble to pieces.

Pros and Cons:

Jeremy: The game is beautiful and runs really smoothly for being in early access. The building process is easy to learn and difficult to master, with intuitive mechanics, but lots of quirks that require careful planning to make sure the building you’re imagining will actually stand. The rate at which you become hungry and thirsty is way too rapid. I felt like I had to eat and drink every couple of minutes while I was trying to build and harvest lumber. The combat feels good and smooth, but is lacking depth. The skills are not satisfying to level up like they are in the MMO, because the abilities that are gained from leveling up don’t feel substantial. In the MMO, when you would finally unlock the next woodcutting axe or pickaxe, you could immediately feel the increased efficiency in your work.

Jonsku: I do agree with Jeremy that currently even if it’s fairly easy to get food and water it just drains really fast compared to its inspiration source. I have talked a lot about the game being like Valheim and arguably some could even go as far as to call it a clone of it. However, I do think Dragonwilds distinguishes itself enough to not be a blatant clone and I do hope the developers keep on making it more different from its inspiration source overtime.

In my opinion the combat wasn't as smooth as I would have liked, first it doesn't feel good to parry or to hit/shoot enemies, there is a certain "oomph" missing when you hit them or a sound effect that makes it feel epic to get that perfect parry. In fact the sound effect used to hit enemies makes it feel like you're slapping them more than hitting them with a weapon. Granted this could be because it is an early access but I do hope it gets changed as the game evolves.

The game does run well even in multiplayer for an early access game but when looking at your fellow adventurer it can be a bit "janky" is the word I would use. Its not a major issue and doesn't ruin your gameplay but it can be a bit distracting to see haha.

Developer feedback:

Jeremy: The penalty for death feels harsh. I spent a long time gearing up and farming resources to take on the first Vault. I had the best gear that I could have at my level. Because the Vault doesn’t allow you to build a fire inside to cook more food or purify water, I got stuck with low hunger/thirst meters after trekking all the way from my base to the Vault. Dying in the Vault and having to run all the way back felt horrible and like a massive waste of my time. I feel like an MMO style graveyard would make sense, something closer to the Vault than my base.

Jonsku: I feel that the inventory and weight is just too small, this happens to be a very typical problem these kinds of games have but in Dragonwilds it becomes a problem very early on because of how much materials you need to gather to make a house alone. Also a very popular feature in the game Core keeper (in the same genre) is that the crafting stations automatically use the items inside storage chests near them instead of the player having to carry everything in your inventory and go through all of your chests one by one. This should be in Dragonwilds and the feature of pressing one button to stack all of your items from your inventory into chests as long as you're close enough to them.

Inventory management isn't fun if it feels like a chore to sort it, highly recommend developers looking into Core keeper, Terraria and modded Valheim for inspiration.

Also give combat a bit more of a "oomph" when you hit enemies, it should feel satisfying to beat up cows! . . . Not a sentence I thought I would say haha.

Closing thoughts:

Jonsku: RuneScape Dragonwilds has a very promising base game even this early on. Despite all of my issues I brought up I have honestly had a blast with it and I am impatiently waiting for updates so I can adventure even further with friends. I would say though that if the game is worth in its current form and asking price heavily will depend on if you like this genre (which I do). However, if you're unsure I would say wait a few updates before you deep dive into it yourself, but I can definitely recommend the game as is already.

Jeremy: I agree with Jonsku. The game is certainly promising, and plays well, but I’d advise at least waiting until the Ranged and Magic skill trees are added to give you a bit more variety in combat. I would also love to see more of the iconic RuneScape flavor added to the game, just to further differentiate it from Valheim. The MMO has an epic fantasy, yet cheeky British feel to it, with their trademark dry humor and some satirical elements that could do wonders to help Dragonwilds feel a bit more unique. I’d also love to see more of the famous weapons and armor sets migrate from the MMO over to Dragonwilds.

You can check out the game on Steam.

Trailer: