Dark Age of Camelot: Shrouded Isles Updated Preview

We've been fortunate enough to be admitted to the beta test for Mythic Entertainment's upcoming online RPG expansion Shrouded Isles, which will add new playable races, classes, and new areas to explore to Mythic Entertainment's fantasy online role-playing game. The last time we checked in on the expansion, we took a preliminary look at the new races and features. Now that we've had a chance to play the game in beta, we've got a better idea of what to expect from this expansion.

Right off the bat, Shrouded Isles will improve on the way Dark Age of Camelot looks. It may not seem terribly obvious at first--at least until you approach a body of water. Developer Mythic Entertainment recently signed a deal with graphics-card manufacturer Nvidia so that Shrouded Isles will feature graphical enhancements supported by Nvidia's latest graphics technology, including the company's recently announced GeForce FX graphics processing unit. As a result, Shrouded Isles will feature improved reflective surfaces as well as pixel and vertex shading. But you don't have to be a 3D graphics expert to appreciate Shrouded Isles' improved graphics. You can just take a look at the expansion's colorful new magic effects or stand next to a river, because the expansion will feature shimmering animated water, easily the best we've seen in an online RPG to date.

Shrouded Isles' improved graphics, which will take advantage of both Nvidia's GeForce FX features and an updated version of NDL's NetImmerse game engine, are also reflected in the game's environments. Your characters will now cast fully animated shadows wherever they run, jump, or fight, and the game's developers have also seen fit to include impressively huge architecture in outdoor areas, like the humongous trees of Hibernia's Grove of Domnann, which provides shelter for new characters. Though towering castle keeps aren't new to Dark Age of Camelot--each of the three realms' huge capital cities was present in the game at launch--players have generally come to expect a brief loading time when exploring them. However, they won't experience any kind of delay when leaving the high-walled keep town of Caer Gothwaite in Albion for the nearby docks.

Of course, Shrouded Isles won't just be about appearances--the expansion will also offer new races and classes to play as. For instance, in Albion, you may choose to play as the iconnu race, a group of pale-faced, diminutive humanoids who had previously lived underground, carrying out the will of the dark lord Arawn in his subterranean domain. However, in Shrouded Isles, the evil and powerful enchantress (and half sister of the fallen King Arthur) Morgan La Fay has seized the kingdom of Avalon, the brand-new Shrouded Isles zone for Albion and also the seat of Albion's most ancient magics. As a result, the iconnu have ascended to the surface world to join the Britons, Saracens, Avalonians, and highlanders of Albion in fighting back this new threat. Though small in stature, the iconnu are exceptionally intelligent and dexterous and make excellent candidates for the expansion's new Albion classes, the necromancer and the reaver.

Shrouded Isles will not only feature a new playable race for each of Dark Age of Camelot's three realms, but it will also have two new player classes for each realm (for a total of six). In Albion, you will be able to play as either a reaver or a necromancer. The reaver class is based on the fighter base class. The iconnu, Briton, and Saracen races can become reavers and will be able to wear medium armor and use Shrouded Isles' new "flexible weapon" class, which will include whips, flails, and morningstars, as well as limited combat magic granted to them by the dark lord Arawn. These same three races may also choose to play as disciples, a new base class that leads to the advanced necromancer profession. Necromancers are bizarre characters that not only summon undead creatures such as zombies and skeletons to do their bidding, but also channel all their magic through these undead vessels. When necromancers summon an undead minion, they themselves become insubstantial shades, and their undead wards are the ones that cast the necromancer's spells, which can drain the essence from an enemy and transfer it into the necromancer's pool of available spell power.

New Adventures, New Adventurers

In the rough and inhospitable land of Midgard, you will be able to play as a member of the new valkyn race, a tribe of hairy, hunchbacked, claw-fingered humanoids whose savage appearance reflects their equally savage ancestry. The valkyn are an offshoot of the morvaltar, a race of feral humanoids that has seized control of Aegir--the new Shrouded Isles zone and the ancestral home of Midgard's trolls and kobolds. The trolls, dwarves, kobolds, and Norse humans have grudgingly accepted these fearsome creatures into their midst. Possibly as a result of their feral heritage, the valkyn are unusually dexterous and agile and can readily apply to be one of Midgard's two new character classes, the savage and the bonedancer.

The savage class, which can be joined by valkyn, troll, kobold, or Norse fighters, is a powerful melee class that will rival the already formidable dual-weapon-wielding Midgard berserker in damage and ferocity. Savages can wear only light studded armor, but since they prefer to fight with their hands, rather than with weapons, they generally affix crude manual weapons to their hands and leap at their enemies, and their hand-to-hand fighting skill lets them deal bonus damage by occasionally striking with both hands at once. In contrast, the bonedancer class, which is open to mystics of the valkyn, kobold, and troll races, lets you summon undead companions to fight for you. At low levels, bonedancers may only summon an undead commander--a powerful zombie that puts up a decent enough fight--but at higher levels, bonedancers may also summon auxiliary undead creatures, which will, interestingly enough, follow only the orders of the undead commander, essentially composing a battalion of undead creatures that report to the bonedancer that summoned them.

And in the verdant land of Hibernia, the once-peaceful druids are faced with a new challenge. The sacred woodland paradise of HyBrasil has come under attack by a race of malevolent creatures called the Fomorians--creatures that apparently seek to extinguish the influence of nature throughout all of Hibernia. As a result, the mythical sylvan people, a race of tall, slender creatures of exceptional strength and intelligence that resemble nothing so much as trees given human form with rough, barklike skin, have emerged from HyBrasil to form an alliance with the Hibernian Celts, elves, lurikeen, and firbolg.

Sylvan, firbolg, and Celts can all join the new Hibernian character classes that Shrouded Isles offers. By choosing the new way of the grove, a new basic class, these races may eventually become animists or valewalkers. Animist characters can summon multiple natural creatures to do their bidding, each with different tactical uses in battle. For instance, "turret" pets are stationary and fire off damaging magic at any enemies that approach. In contrast, valewalkers bear some comparison to the friars of Albion--they're cloth-wearing fighters who, in true druid fashion, carry huge scythes into battle and may use some limited forms of magic to increase their own strength or make their scythes deal more damage.

In addition to new character classes and races, Shrouded Isles has a new, dynamic audio system based on the game's ambient sound generator. Basically, Shrouded Isles pieces together the background music you're listening to based on where you are and what time of day it is, which helps lend some character to Dark Age of Camelot's pretty but often plain-looking outdoor areas. In addition, the new graphics engine provides for more-realistic-looking trees and vegetation so that outdoor areas seem more like riverbeds and foothills than generic scenery.

From what we've seen so far, Shrouded Isles seems to be shaping up nicely. Exactly how well the different races and classes will fit in with Dark Age of Camelot's realm-versus-realm combat system remains to be seen, but each of the new character classes certainly seems interesting enough to be worth a try. We'll find out for sure when Shrouded Isles is released in December.