Dransik
                  Found at www.dransik.com

                      Reviewed by Sue

For a long time I've had the urge to play an online RPG. When Alex
talks about EverQuest, I can feel my sword hand twitching. Let me
at those monsters! I want to explore hundreds of virtual square
miles of unknown territory. But it all comes down to time which
always seems to be in short supply for me these days.

Then I heard about Dransik. Alex was just installing it when we
were having one of our weekend chats. Oh, he said, it looks like
Ultima. I liked the sound of that. And the fact that I could
download and install a ten-day trial version appealed even more.
There was a risk of getting hooked but maybe ten days play would
exorcise my RPG demons that wanted to get online ...

The program is quite large, but thanks to broadband I downloaded
it in record time from the Dransik site. I used GetRight to be
able to resume the download if I had to cancel for some reason.

Installation was painless. Once the program had installed, I was
prompted to create an account and give my personal details. I was
given a password and invited to log in.

A minor point. Your account name is case sensitive ... so if your
account is Sue, typing sue gives a 'this account doesn't exist'
message. It took me a while to catch on to this. I expect the
password is the same.

There were four game servers to choose from. Primordia and Magic
and Mystery are player vs player (PvP) with looting. The Test
Server said 'test new features, frequent wipes'. I decided I could
have enough problems without that. The Krythan Inception is
Non-PvP. That sounded more my cup of tea. I entered the game ...

Stirring music! A few files were downloaded. The game was
initialised. Four boxes appeared on the screen. Each allows you to
create a new character. There are three races to choose between,
two sexes, and three professions, each with sub classes.  I
created a human fighter and was given 5 points each in strength,
dexterity, intelligence and constitution. I had 7 more points to
divide between these. Once done, I selected Journey Onward.

Yes, it does look like Ultima 5 or 6. You move using the arrow
keys or using the right mouse button. To attack you press the A
key and left click a target. Double clicking on items on items or
NPCs 'uses' them or, for NPCs, starts a conversation. As soon as
you start the game, you're told to find your patron Aelfwyn who
has important information for you.

Aelfwyn is right in front of you and welcomes you to Silvest,
gateway to the Kingdom of Krythan.  He's the vassal of King Lotor.
There are other NPCs you can question, and books to read to find
out about the land. I read a few then went outside to explore.
Almost immediately I saw a bat. I went into attack mode. While
trying to work out what to do next, more bats turned up. Pretty
quickly I was overwhelmed and died. Blast.

Fortunately, when you die, you're resurrected at a spawn gate with
your items intact. This only happens up to level 10 because your
patron protects you. He also restricts you to an area close to
your starting point.

Before I tried again, I re-read the 'how to kill stuff'
instructions.  Press A for attack mode, left click on monster.
Okay, I got that sussed. If I got surrounded, I still died but I
could pick off two snakes or 3 bats, say, and survive. What's more
I'd get lots of goodies. Bats give bat wings (food), sometimes
gold (do bats have pockets?) or leather. Snakes give snake meat.
You can sell any or all of these for gold so you can buy stuff you
DO want such as better weapons and armour, or runes if you're a
mage . more on that later.

As in all RPGs you have to watch your stats and eat or rest when
you need to. If you just wait, your health goes back up.  To eat
food you double-click on the item, just as with actioning any item
or person, then click on yourself.

Time passes in Dransik. Day turns to night and the woods get a lot
more spooky. If you log off, and come back, of course time has
passed while you've been out of the game. I didn't find much to do
at night, not without dying, so tended to play in the day time,
then stop at night. A minor annoyance, if you don't do anything
for a while, you get logged off the server.

If you don't want to be a fighter, you can try a trade. I
mentioned earlier that you can create four characters. It's worth
knowing that you can't delete any until 7 days have passed. Since
the demo only lasts 10 days, don't be too quick to fill up all
available character slots. There are lots of different
professions. Having seen some nice arable land south of the city,
I decided to try being a farmer.

Poof! I arrived in the land again. I was human again so started in
the same town. This time I was carrying a scythe, shovel and three
lots of seeds including wheat as well as few torches etc. I used
my shovel to dig a hole and planted a seed.  Sometimes it took and
grew. Other times it didn't and I lost the seed. The wheat grew in
several stages. First there were long shoots, then it grew taller.
When it was very high, I thought it was time to harvest it but
now, I had to wait until it ripened and went a nice gold colour.
Then I could use my scythe to cut the wheat. The second time I
harvested some, I damaged the crop and lost it again. You gain
skill points even if planting or harvesting fails so it's worth
persisting.  When some of your crop is ready to harvest, a message
pops up to tell you, which is very handy if you've wandered off.
The wheat keeps growing so I left it, and went to the farmers'
shop.

You can sell wheat grain for 31gp a sheaf. I sold one lot, then
went into the next room, the grinding mill. I ground up one sheaf
of wheat and 8 bags of flour appeared in my backpack. I sold these
for 32gp, 8 each. Then I sowed some grapes and pecan and collected
their harvest. I must admit it wasn't very interesting, so I went
back to my fighter and beat the wotsit out of some more monsters.

I was by now on Day 6 of my trial. Time to try magic! I created a
female Night Elf. She started in a gloomy stone hall in
Whisperdale in the Darkwood Forest. Here I met Lord Vezryl, the
ruler. He gave me a similar speech to Aelfrwyn. I had a wand and a
nature rune. I fitted the rune into a space on the wand and found
I could activate it and cast a bless spell but apart from that I
was stuck. I had no money or weapon except my wand. I couldn't
work out what to do to get more money.  No, a mage's life is not
for me either. I'm a fighter, me!

Back to my warrior. By now I'd got up to Level 3, had bought a
better weapon and armour and was going after skeletons, kobolds
and higher level monsters. I did accidentally fall into a dungeon,
got beaten up by snakes, couldn't find the exit and died! Hey ho.
There were lots of skeletons there so I wasn't the first idiot to
do this.

I thought I should try a PvP realm before my time ran out so I
logged into Primordia. Here I created an orc fighter. The start
was similar but in yet another location - talk to the patron, go
out and kill stuff. Here I found spiders and bats. Spiders gave
spiders' legs and string ... how odd. They were only level 1 but
really packed a punch. I'd got used to being level 3, it was hard
being a weakling again. No-one attacked me, nor did I see anyone
else being attacked despite the PvP. There's probably a rule
against picking off newbies.

So I went back to my strongest character and non-PvP. By this
point, I still hadn't got brave enough to leave the protected
area, though I did find the place where the big outdoors started.
Nor had I found any quests. The time had come to enter the great
outdoors! I went to see my patron and asked to be freed from his
patronage. I then stocked up on healing potions and trotted off
down the road!

At the next city, Varg, I met Raglhak who offered to train me in
sword combat. He gave me a practice sword and told me to go and
kill one snake, one kobold and one orc then return to him.  Night
was falling but I killed several snakes and thought (foolish me)
that I could dash over and quickly kill a kobold and an orc before
it got dark. I was ambushed by about 5 kobolds and an orc. I
killed one kobold, then the rest of them killed me. Bummer.

Having taken myself out of my patron's protection, death now meant
something very different. Reappearing at the spawn gate, I found
I'd lost near enough everything I had been carrying except for the
pathetic practice sword Raglhak had given me. Luckily I'd left my
gold in the bank. I headed back to where I'd died, which I could
see on the map as a large cross. I knew that I'd be able to loot
my body and get back my goodies, but I didn't know how long my
corpse would be there for. So though it was pretty dark by now, I
headed off with my silly practice sword.

On the way back, I met the monsters who'd killed me before.  They
killed me a second time. Though I wasn't sure, I assumed this
meant that my original dead body would be replaced by this new one
which wasn't carrying anything. I logged off for a while, went
back when it was daylight and by luring as many of the kobolds to
the guards as I could, managed to whittle down the group of
monsters to a more manageable number so that I could bump off the
orc. A message popped up to tell me I'd completed the quest and I
headed back to Raglhak who gave me enough experience that I went
up a level and also put my sword skill up to 8!

It wasn't long after this that my free account expired. Yes, I was
sorry. I was also glad to get my life back because I'd been on
there every spare moment I'd had.

The cost of Dransik varies according to how long you sign up for.
If you join for a year, it's $89.95, $7.50 a month. There are
prices for 6 and 3 months too, and the most expensive is just
paying for one month in advance which is $9.95.  That's still only
œ6.33/month which I think is very good value.

Having said this, I won't be joining . not yet anyway. I enjoyed
my time online but I haven't got the time needed to dedicate to it
and play properly. Good fun while it lasted and, who knows?  One
day I may well be back! In the mean time, why not try it yourself?
Just don't blame me if you get hooked.


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