PK: Parallel Kingdom: Age of Ascension: a FAQ
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Parallel Kingdom: Age of Ascension: a FAQ
by Tobias D. Robison tobyr21@gmail.com
My Websites are:
precision-blogging.blogspot.com
May 23, 2013
Please, please, email comments and corrections to: tobyr21@gmail.com . For example, I'm indebted to Shawn McGowan (SAShawn) for several corrections and improvements below, added on May 23, 2013.
Do
you
like to read fantasy novels, or
do you have a friend who does? Please visit my website, RavensGift.com, for a
good
read, a good etext, or a good audio podcast book. My current novel is
called: Raven’s Gift.
Are you spending too much time sitting at your computer? You may be delighted to read my new help-yourself book, Quantum Walking to Fitness, available in all eformats at Smashwords.
I believe that the developers of Age of Ascension (AoA) gave us a lovely gift when they added AoA to PK. You can earn gold in the air faster, and more easily, than you can earn it on the ground. Whether you wish to play the air in the way I recommend, or in some more conventional way, I hope my suggestions will help you to get oriented in the sky.
My goal is to earn almost 30,000 gold in an hour’s play in the air; even more gold if I catch a few construct ships. Another way to put it is that I hope to earn 30,000 gold in the air without refueling.
Here’s the basic idea of AoA: you buy an airship. You can upgrade it in many ways, which have considerable costs. Some of the raw materials that you need are in the sky. You can upgrade the raw material sources, and there are more serious costs involved. To balance all these new costs, and to entice you into the sky, there’s a lot of gold waiting for you up there.
Suppose you are not interested in PvP combat in the air, and you do not wish to find the most fearsome possible enemies in the sky. In that case, you can ignore many of the ship upgrades, and spend the sky-gold you earn elsewhere.
Airship combat in the sky, like combat on the ground, presents you with enemies suitable for your own capabilities. The more you upgrade your airship, the more powerful your enemies become. The PK software cannot be entirely scientific about this process, so you can be sure that some upgrades will make it easier to kill the enemies you discover, while other upgrades could present a greater challenge. My goal – and you might make this your goal – was to find some upgrades that would make combat in the sky easy. I found a combination that works (more about this below). I intend to make no more airship upgrades. I won’t buy more cannons. I’m happy with the combat I have.
The combat available to me brings in gold faster than I can earn it on the ground. I fight enemies in the air to raise gold that I spend: not on airship improvements, but on new items to improve my game on the ground.
Do you like to read fantasy novels, or do you have a friend who does? Please visit my website, RavensGift.com, for a good read, a good etext, or a good audio podcast book. My current novel is called: Raven’s Gift.
Are you spending too much time sitting at your computer? You may be delighted to read my new help-yourself book, Quantum Walking to Fitness, available in all eformats at Smashwords.
Investigating the sky and getting started is a lot of fun. It’s quite different, and you should expect some confusion while you’re getting the hang of things.
You may want to be at a pretty high level to go up into the air. I recommend getting to level 40, either first, or soon after; but I suspect you can do fine at level 30.
First, travel on the ground to find a sky port. Take to the air with your griffin and hunt for the elements you need to unlock the sky port. You will hardly be able to kill anything. Just concentrate on finding the “elements” you need to unlock things. Your griffin will seem to move slowly, but that’s because a game circle in the sky covers more area than a circle on the ground. Once you have unlocked a sky port, you can launch your airship.
The game helps you to find sky elements. Around the edges of your current sky circle, you will see tiny icons. They point to where you can find things. For example, a tiny fire in a tiny edge circle tells you that you have enough fuel to reach a cloud where you can harvest a fire element. A much larger circle at the edge tells you that the item is only one or two circles away.
An ‘x’ over an element (such as fire or water) tells you that you do not have enough fuel to reach that item. An ‘x’ over other icons, such as the island icon, or a refueling icon, tells you that either it is too far away, or that you have not unlocked it. The islands (etc.) that you have unlocked will be in pretty green circles (at least, mine are green).
These “edge” icons will help to orient you in the air. For example, each time you take off from the same sky port, you will use the edge icons to find the same mines and refueling stations that you want to visit every time.
You can also – rarely – get one of the five elements by defeating an elemental enemy. But be patient; at the beginning, your airship will find battle quite a challenge. (Don’t be afraid of defeat; the penalty is not too great.)
You will have to decide what to do about unclaimed islands. You can upgrade them to provide yourself with a source of income, or perhaps so that they will produce materials you desire for other upgrades. If you wish to find islands you can claim for yourself, I suggest that after you build your airship, you should travel – on the ground – to some sky port in a relatively unpopulated area. Wherever few people have rarely flown, there’s a lot to discover and claim.
There are all sorts of clever tie-ins to keep us interested in playing both on the ground and in the air. For example, you will need acorns and Roc Eggs to upgrade mines in the air.
Your griffin can explore and explore, but it can only carry one element. Your airship can make a limited number of circle jumps (perhaps 7 to 11) before it runs out of fuel. You can refuel by paying food. You can also refuel for gold or oil at sky refueling stations. If you have time to keep playing and use up that fuel, you can cover the cost of refueling by defeating more sky enemies.
Here's an important tip: the "buff" you get by mining or picking up an aether element when you already have one is ver valuable: your next three circle jumps will use less fuel than one normal jump.
When you are out of fuel (or sooner if you wish), you click on your ship and “dock”. You will be back at the sky port where your air trip began. I believe that the only way you can travel from one sky port and land somewhere else, is to travel from one sky port to another. (To perform this feat, you will need to find sky ports pretty close together, or else you will make refueling stops to get from one sky port to another.) Over time there will be more and more sky ports, making air travel easier.
Four hours - at most - after you dock, your ship will be fully fueled for takeoff.
Good news: When you unlock a fueling station and refuel there, you can load up twice as much fuel as you started with, and then travel farther. (There's a serious cost for double-fueling. If you intend to make a long flight, the enemies you kill will make your "investment" worthwhile.)
Good news: Flying inside a circle to fight foes does not seem to use any fuel at all. If you decide to do a lot of fighting in every circle you visit, you can spend a lot of time playing PK in the air.
Spectacularly Good News: Once you have bought an airship, you can fly it out of ANY sky dock. Just travel on land until you find another sky dock, and fly from there. (You can also select a location with a sky dock from your estates list and immediately launch.)
Good News: Once your airship gives you an edge in battle, air-fighting is fun. Here are two suggestions about how to upgrade, to get a battle advantage. (Remember that as you upgrade, PK will upgrade the power of your enemies in the sky.) Be cautious about improving your airship, and test it in the sky after each improvement. Alternatively, you might try exactly what I have: I upgraded to a Brawler airship, and it now has three guns: a starter (light weight), a pummeler (mid weight), and a trueshot (heavy weight). SAShawn reports that a Tank with 1 Spike (LW), 1 flamethower (MD),1 Shock and 2 Fireballs (HW) is a KILLER.
Here’s one more bit of advice about air travel. Sometimes it is good to travel through a few circles to gather elements, then “dock” and re-launch, to go to an island where you wish to use the newly found elements. The fuel cost of docking and relaunching is the same as the cost of moving to the next circle in the air.
As usual for PK, the things that you can fight in the air behave differently to keep you on your toes. Here is some combat advice:
When you have a big combat advantage in the sky, you will enjoy leaving your airship stationary while it mangles an enemy. But remember that in the sky, just as on the ground, you improve both your attack and defense by moving. The following is also true both in the sky and on the ground: if an enemy that you are attacking has few HP left but isn’t quickly dying, it usually will die at once, if you move decisively away from it.
You cannot HEAL in the sky. But you can try to run away inside your current circle until a foe gets tired of attacking. There are several different kinds of clouds. Use the info button to find out what each can do for you, as some of them help in combat. And notice that when you try to steer elementals into Gale Clouds, they will usually avoid them.
Combat will take hit points and damage your ship, but you can repair quickly while not fighting, and your enemies do not heal (there are exceptions: many water elementals regenerate).
After combat, you should recover as follows (do both of these):
- Click on your manifest and pay gold to repair.
- Wait until your airship recovers its HP.
Your rewards for combat are:
- Levitation energy, which you need for many upgrades.
- Gold, sometimes liberally rewarded.
- Rare monster drops, mostly rings, when you fend off boarders.
By the way, PK offers a fascinating new way to relate airplay to groundplay. If you have a shovel, you will discover that you can now uproot some plants and replant them elsewhere. (For example, there is a use for Oleander in the air, so you might want to move a few bushes to a place that you often visit.) “Uprooting” spends levitation energy. I can’t wait to find out whether I can uproot a thistle plant; I suspect we can’t.
When you fight something in the sky, you hope for one of three results:
1. You destroy the enemy and get a reward.
2. The enemy that you are fighting “boards” your ship. You then click on the scissors icon above your ship (yes, I know, it's not really an image of scissors...) and select “fend off boarders.” The result will seem like a tiny dungeon, in which you fight creatures. Fleas and Malkoha are easy to kill. Valkyries are a little tougher.
3. You get to board the enemy ship (e.g., a Construct Ship) that you are fighting. Again, the result will seem like a tiny dungeon in which you fight creatures. The onboard construct creatures are a challenge.
At the end of monster combat in the air, be ready to act fast when PK tells you that you have been successful and will soon be flying again. The last monster-boarder you killed may drop something valuable; if so, you have about three seconds to pick it up before it is too late. [SAShawn states that you do not have to rush to pick up a last-moment drop; you will find it in your inventory anyway. I look forward to verifying this.]
When you buy a ship, your inventory gets a “manifest”. Even in the air, you can click on the manifest and pay to repair your ship. You will earn much more gold than the repair cost, if you defeat your enemies.
There are many operations you can perform for your airship. Some are initiated from your manifest, and some when you click on a sky port. You will get used to which is which. In general, you will decide what items you need for a purchase or an upgrade, and then you will decide to buy it, or you will take your airship out and mine (or transform) what you need. For example, you can buy “rods”, but you can also transform elements into rods at some locations in the sky.
One of your many options is to manage the crew member(s) on your ship. When you fight boarders or board another ship, your crew members will show up to fight beside you. If you are near level 40, your crew will strike you as pitifully weak. But eventually you might have to face monsters in the sky that make a well-armed crew worth the upgrades. I think your crew acts like a pet, in that after it dies, some hours will pass before you see it again. And bear in mind that during a battle you can click on a crew member and heal it. [SAShanw disagrees, and he is probably right. He says If your crew member(s) die(s) during a flight, they shall not appear again to your side unless you relaunch. I think that "Return to Landing Marker" also brings back any fallen crew members.]
Do you like to read fantasy novels, or do you have a friend who does? Please visit my website, RavensGift.com, for a good read, a good etext, or a good audio podcast book. My current novel is called: Raven’s Gift.
Are you spending too much time sitting at your computer? You may be delighted to read my new help-yourself book, Quantum Walking to Fitness, available in all eformats at Smashwords.
Spoiler alert!
The remainder of this text advises you how to fight the elementals. You might prefer to figure this out by yourself.In general, while you fight one group of an elemental, the other elementals in your circle will not join the fight, even when you push right through them with guns firing. There are exceptions. Griffins and Construct ships will attack if you are too close, and some elementals will attack if you recently fought them, even if you fought them in the previous circle. Water elementals are the most likely to remember and bear a grudge.
Another general rule is that your cannons are stupid, and they will fire at everything in the group you are attacking. Most of my advice (below) has to do with concentrating your cannon fire where it will do the most good.
If a fight is going badly, try to run away and run away in the current circle. The elements you are attacking may give up, and then you can repair your ship’s HP before continuing the fight.
When you see that any elemental has lost almost all of its HP, try moving on top of it to finish it off quickly. That tactic works for me, possibly because of my choice of guns.
Water Elementals are easy to attack. They don’t move very much. Just bang away at them. But look out for regenerating elementals. These are much easier to kill when you get them alone. After you kill a group of water elementals, note that other water elementals may spontaneously attack you. And there may be one member of the current group hiding at the edge somewhere, ready to pummel you if you get close.
Fire Elementals: I hate to fight these guys and I sometimes leave them alone. The way to fight them is to run away, around the edges of the circle. If you do this right, your enemy fire elementals will usually be offscreen, but your ship’s guns will still hit them. Running keeps you from being hit by the emberlings they generate, saving you hundreds of HP.
Lightning Elementals: They generate many shocklings. Destroying shocklings earns gold, but I think it’s more important that shocklings distract your cannons. To focus on the elemental, run away from it slowly. If you run away too fast, shocklings will litter the entire circle and distract your cannon fire.
Aether Elementals: These have their own way to distract your cannon fire: they create two fake clones when attacked. As soon as you see those clones, run to the opposite side of the circle. The Aether elemental will follow you, but its clones won’t, and the elemental will take all your cannon fire.
Wind Elementals: These are fun to fight. You may be able to kill them by moving into their midst, opening fire, and not moving again. However it is more efficient to chase them. Always chase after the longest red bar – the wind elemental with the least remaining life.
Happy hunting, and again, please, email comments and corrections to: tobyr21@gmail.com
Do you like to read fantasy novels, or do you have a friend who does? Please visit my website, RavensGift.com, for a good read, a good etext, or a good audio podcast book. My current novel is called: Raven’s Gift.
Are you spending too much time sitting at your computer? You may be delighted to read my new help-yourself book, Quantum Walking to Fitness, available in all eformats at Smashwords.
- Tobias D. Robison tobyr21@gmail.com
https://precision-blogging.blogspot.com
Get my new book, Quantum Walking to Fitness at Smashwords