Continuing his journey through The Secret World, Gazimoff visits The Savage Coast. From abandoned amusement parks and Illuminati academies, through to crafting his way to victory, find out what he discovered.

Tooling Up

By the time we left Kingsmouth, our skill and ability points were already heavily sunk into an Elementalist-Shotgun Magus build. While spending those skill points in higher skill brackets allowed us to use higher Quality Levels (QL) of gear, our inventory was swimming in a mix of useful items and useless junk. Although offloading everything to a vendor is one option, we chose a different route: turning our inventory into a drinks bar and vending machine!

Our first step was putting some order into the dumping ground, using a couple of nifty features. The interface UI supports creating and labeling new bags of any shape and size, allowing us to sift and sort our stuff. As a bonus feature, it’s possible to lock any bag (say consumables) to the UI, providing an instant button bar of any size and shape.  

Having quick access to an assortment of drinks and drugs is useful, but being able to craft a better set of weapons and talismans helps tremendously in the fight against darkness. Luckily, The Secret World throws the tools and materials at you. Consumables and weapons can all be disassembled into materials, which can then be remade into something else with the help of a toolkit. No more scrounging around for mining nodes or rare herbs.

Just to make sure nothing goes to waste, it’s also possible to transform lower quality crafting materials into higher quality versions, and vice versa. Instead of having to sell all your old gear, simply disassemble it then upgrade the materials to help make the next version. As long as you have the tools for the job, you’ll have a constant supply of new gear. Just make sure to save some money for repair bills! 

Training Is Over

While Kingsmouth serves as an introduction to The Secret World, the gloves come off in The Savage Coast. By this time you’re expected to be able to hold your own in a fight, with both the skills and the gear to handle some of the tougher challenges. Even so, areas like the Atlantic Island Park are a great reason to start making friends and building small groups. 

Aside from other players, your best companion through The Secret World is a paper notebook and pen. A solution to one puzzle from early on in the game might crop up later; a sequence of numbers on a poster might be the combination to a lock elsewhere. While there are red herrings that play you while you play the game, good notes will save you from hours of frustration.

Some mysteries are solved: it turns out that fast zombies are track and field athletes, unable to give up their training regime in undeath. But while some villains are unmasked, such as the Boogeyman and Jack-o-Lantern, we can’t help but feel that these are just minor evils in a much wider scheme. With other secret factions like the Phoenicians making their presence felt, our adventure seemed much more than a simple clean-up job.

If Kingsmouth was the opening chapter in a descending horror story, then The Savage Coast is where the full extent of the nightmare is revealed. This isn’t some simple zombie invasion, where humanity will eventually prevail and push back against the hordes of undead. Instead, Solomon Island is the epicenter of a range of competing nightmares, all fighting against each other for their chance to devour the world. The only thing holding all of them back is the thin line of secret societies.

Gareth “Gazimoff” Harmer, Staff Writer