A (very) late review of Siptah
So… Just finished my third run at Siptah. Playing with a friend, strictly PVE. Never cared for the pvp anxiety of logging in and seeing all my time spent wiped out by someone else. After completing the original map I just wanted another awesome place to explore, live and breathe Conan in. And Siptah was… awesome! One of the most enjoyable gaming experiences I’ve had. Beautiful, mystical, with some flaws bust mostly a totally amazing experience!
The first run there were four of us, I think. Spawning on the western side of the map. Our first real base was located on the large island in the southwest part. Oh man… it was a scrappy sandstone construction. But it was built near a beautiful lake! And every time I logged on my heart was racing from fear.
You see, nearby there was this one skull mountain lion that used to jump out of the bush and one-shot me and my friends to instant death. Some parts of my memory might be a bit foggy from time passing, but carved in stone is the memory of me trying to reach my corpse to get my gear back, and then finding myself clinging to a mountainside waiting for the purring death below me to lose interest. Might have spent an equal amount of time clinging to stone as chopping at it with my pickaxe.
Then we could tame animals! I have a fond memory of my first boar pet. Saved me when a bunch of skeletons ganged up on me at the great bridge near the western green land. It’s high pitched “screeeee”-sound, as it rammed itself into the skeleton and saved me, will stick with me forever.
Then we ventured inland and… people were falling from the sky! Great storms dropping humans in masse. This was interesting, but then when Siptah got populated with real human camps it came to life! I thoroughly enjoyed raiding camps, looking for suitable worker thralls. It gave a new edge to exploring.
And exploring…. The vaults. First time entering I was struck by their beauty. I never returned to any instance on the original map as much as I’ve been vault -raiding. However, the deep one vaults still give me the creep. Swimming below and running out of air stirs some strange emotion of primal fear in me. And getting out of a pool noticing no thrall followed you from it, while being rushed by evil fish-men didn’t exactly calm me down. Still, the vaults are an amazing experience.
Encouraged by better gear we ventured to the centre. We built a base on the ridge south of the central tower. I wandered there prepared with my thrall and resources to build a well. (There was a lake but way off, and guarded by a lot of lynx,) Got to be prepared, and I had heard about things in the storm coming for your throat. Some swift teamwork later and we had a small army guarding the only entrance to our home. Safe, and with a wonderful view from a, some time later, constructed balcony on the top of the ridge.
Speaking of the storm. One fond memory is creating a demon-dragon trap in it. There is a place where two dragons spawn during the storm. Slightly south of it we build a U-shaped construction and filled it with ten thralls armed to the teeth. When the demon-dragons spawned we taunted them and then made them hunt us straight into the smooth kill box we had created. Worked like a charm!
Horses. Did I mention horses? Perhaps nothing unique for Siptah, but the addition of horses was a true quality of life addition. And I know that Conan himself might not have agreed here, but “The open steppe, fleet horse, (sadly no) falcons at your wrist and the wind in your hair is best in life.” Going on a horse made the experience of traversing the open world of Siptah so much more beautiful.
Then came the green land in the west, and the red land in the east. The undead cities. Immensely cool structures, each different from the other but still ruled by the undead. Wandering around, looking for secrets, finding the bosses. Just great!
Then, finally, the isle in the south was added. The pools of the grey ones might be one of the coolest things I’ve experienced. And going “figurine hunting” to add up a big stock of them and then spending some time summoning stuff at the pools was awesome. The thrill of getting a new recipe kept me going for a long time! And the stygian camps, and ships (!) strewn around the new area added spice to the exploration phase.
However, I must admit that I didn’t really like the dark lands in the western part of the new area. It was just too dark for my taste. The citadel was awesome (! Again) but exploring the surrounding in the foggy darkness just tore at my mental health somehow.
And the tower at the centre… The pounding heart when entering, and the sadness when realizing it is just a cookbook filled with recipes, nothing more.
Almost forgot… The surges, my guilty pleasure. And opening a cage hoping for a good thrall, but mostly getting the ones ready to backpack their way through Europe…
Much more can be said about my experience on this marvellous island. But I will stop here with my conclusions about the good, the bad, and the missed opportunities (since Siptah doesn’t seem to get more love from the devs.)
The good:
- It’s a wonderful island. Topography, the camps (looking at you Bastard´s stand), the northeast docks with skeleton bosses. It’s a true and diverse beauty. Hats off to the map designer.
- The vaults. Varied and wonderful! Before the thrall level requirements changed I often took new thralls to the goblin vault for their first level 10 journey.
- The pools. THE POOLS!
- The crafting. The vault recipes and the delving bench added new things to experience. The, relatively, easy accessibility to more recipes from the pools and the tower was a bonus.
The bad:
- The inflation. One early source of power fragments was the northeastern docks with five skull bosses dropping power fragments. Best farm in the game! But then with the summoning pools we quickly had hundreds of them.
- The inflation (later addition). The change to weapons, making self-crafted ones so much weaker than epic ones took away from the wonders of the vault recipes, and recipes in general. The thrill of getting a new weapon recipe from the pool was quickly changed to “meh”.
- The inflation. Surge one skull bosses dropping epic weapons meant that we left each surge with a cartload of epics. Kinda goes against the point of stopping epics from being repaired to encourage exploration.
- The inflation. Why run to the forge of the grey ones in the southwest dark land, when the grey ones drop so much weapons by just killing them? And after the epic weapon change, why try to gather grey one weapons at all?
The missed opportunities:
Siptah had so much potential, and with smaller addons it could have grown even more awesome.
- Lack of new figurines. Adding new bosses to summon (hire an intern to make them!) would have prolonged the interest for it.
- Lack of new recipes. Adding a few each big patch would prolong the interest (again, taking in an intern or two to work on small projects would generate big interest.)
- Lack of mystery in the loot. First time I stumbled upon a Cairn of the first men I thought it was a cool place. But just getting some gold from the chest didn’t really inspire me to return there (for more than just exp for my thralls). There could have been recipe-parts. For example, you need recipe-parchment A,B and C to build object X (a demon potion?) or D,E,F,G,H to build armour Y (that would disintegrate after a set amount of time).
- Lack of mystery…. Same thing with vaults. Add something that connects them. Gather parts from five vaults to build… something nice for your base?
- Lack of mystery… the undead cities. Put in some connected parts, rewarding you for hunting down all the bosses.
- The centre tower. What happened to Siptah? What’s really hidden in this tower? It could be the vault of vaults! Perhaps needing fragments from all the other vaults to construct the key for it?
In conclusion. Playing on Siptah (now three times completed) has been an AWESOME experience. Don’t let my “bad / missed opportunity” points above discourage you. The good parts and strong affection I have for it totally surpass all the negative parts. It saddens me that it, most likely, won’t expand any more. More isles, recipes, connected things, the door to the tower basement… will have to stay in my dreams. But playing, and re-playing Siptah has still been one of my most amazing gaming experiences ever.
If I can manage to get this right I will end this wit a pic of the latest camp, with a living and thriving church of Jhebbal! (I hid a barkeep behind it so people will walk in and sit on the benches during sermon.)
I don’t know if anybody read this far, but if you did… What’s your experience of Siptah?
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