I was doing a bit of light questing and crafting in Fallen Earth and I was again reminded of one of the reasons I enjoy the game. The quests are of course things like kill x of this, go loot this, go ferry this, craft this ect. but I’ve NEVER had a problem with those types of quests. That’s the genre. It’s like getting mad at First Person Shooters because they are first person view. Maybe it’s just not the genre for you in that case.
Anyway, I met a member of the banking faction in Fallen Earth and he has a little quest for me. Some of their special paper, paper they had made by a skilled craftsman that is very hard to forge apparently, hasn’t shown up. It was guarded by several men but none of them showed up either. I ride out into the desert and discover several boxes filled with the paper. That’s weird, I figured if they were robbed the paper would have been stolen. That’s when the smell hits me and I follow my nose to a pile of dead bodies hidden by the tall grass. Sure enough, these are the men that were sent to protect the paper shipment. In the clinched fist of one man there is a small chain, like a necklace, which I take back with me, along with the paper, and show it to the banker. Does the man bow his head and mourn the death, secretly happy that he didn’t lose any money? Nope, instead he demands blood. Why? Nothing got stolen I say, and he tells me that nobody F*&*s with the BANK!
I’m sent out to track this man down. The tracking quests in this game involve you heading out to an area marked on your map, then it tells you a new area, and you go to that and so on until you find the person you are hunting. Sure, it’s just filler but I like it, makes it feel like I hunted the guy down. I of course kill the man, who apparently didn’t care about the paper, he’s just crazy and wants the bank to suffer.
Anyway, I’m off to find some wood to make a tent pole for a CHOTA officer, then I’ve got to gather some materials to make some poison resistance medicine for my future romp through the scorpion filled desert. Wish me luck.
Manifest Pixel 
When you get some time, I’d love to hear about the graphical differences between now and when you last played. I remember there being some news about upgrades they made to the game engine, just curious how much of a difference it makes.
We can talk in more depth on Raptr whenever you’re on next, but I’ll talk a little bit about it here. When I FIRST played Fallen Earth it was a week after it had come out, and it looked pretty bad. The worst part was the “Grass circle” as I called it. Basically you could see to the horizon, but the grass only extended about 20 feet in any direction, so you had a constantly moving ring of grass around you.
Since then they have made MANY graphical improvements and if your computer can handle it, it’s downright beautiful at times. There are “wow…that’s amazing!” moments such as when the sun is setting and you come over a hill and it slams into you, tinting the world a purple orange color.
They still have some things to improve, such as the melee animations (coming in a patch they’ve said), and the occasional graphic glitch, but it really is a pretty game now.
This is coming from someone who thought the first incarnation was horrendous. It was the worst graphics I had seen on a new game in years, but it’s improved so much I can’t even explain it without using pictures and video. Maybe I’ll make a comparison if I can find some old pictures.
I played briefly at launch as well and I remember it being pretty rough. I didn’t realize there were doing work in the animations, that’s good news.