The Ruins of Kunark - What's New?
What's New in Kunark
The zones: The new zones in Kunark are all massive. This is the first thing I noticed when I was playing the game. Even with my adventurous spirit, it was about a week into the game when I finally was able to walk all the way around a zone (it was Warsliks Woods), and it took me over an hour to do so. I wasn't even mapping, just looking. According to grid coordinates, each of the outside zones is at least the size of Western Plains of Karana from the original, although they feel much larger and more in-depth.
The zones have a lot more detail and depth to them then the original zones do. There are little "subzones" in each zone, which are small areas, either lairs of monsters or small catacombs, that exist within the larger zone. These are usually tunnels underneath the zone (or at least the ones I've found are). These usually involve something completely separate from the zone above, and I think some of the ones I went into were not populated yet.
The zones also line up logically. This may be a geek mapping pet peeve that I've had for a long time, where all these supposedly contiguous areas have dimensions that don't make sense with each other and simply don't line up, but in the expansion they do. It goes so far as, if you're in Cabilis and you zone from west to east, your /loc in both is the same. Very impressive...
The gameplay: The gameplay from one perspective isn't changed at all. By this I mean that nothing has changed about grouping or anything that would seriously affect how you play the game. There are some minor, helpful tweaks that they have put in in preparation for the expansions release that are nice. Many of these consist of fixing prior glitches or interface problems. For instance, barbarians can now have shields (they always could, they just wouldn't show up as wearing them). The interface is more useful in that I can drop armor on my image on the right in the inventory screen and it pops onto my character (this may have been there before, but I never noticed it). The more significant changes I will outline below.
Quests: Quests are pretty much of the same type as they were in the old days - go get me this and bring it back to me. What has changed (that I've noticed) is that the quests have become more class restricted and also more dependent on the trade skills. The class restrictions occur because most of the quests involve you handing in some item that you got when you started the game. The trade dependency is kind of disturbing, since it seems like a heavy-handed attempt to make people value trade skills. What this means is that, in order to do a certain quest, you will have to perform some sort of trade action on it. As an example, one of the early necromancer quests involves using a sewing kit to mend a tapestry (which you then turn in with a necro item to get the next item). One of the other non-class restricted quests I've seen requires both blacksmithing and cooking (at least) to complete. Apparently the reward is quite good, but at what cost?
Items: Being only 9th level, my main character hasn't had the opportunity to find many new items. What he did find were many new sorts of items sold by vendors that should make everyone's life better. First and foremost is that now you can purchase inexpensive newbie-class weapons of the various types to use. These are better than the rusty weapons we all grew up using, and are very inexpensive (e.g. the 1H blunt weapon cost about 3 gold). This makes a nice step between the rusty weapons and regular weapons, which cost several platinum each.
Kunark is also a vast area. There are new survival-oriented equipment, including items that supposedly allow you to decant water and food while in the vast territories. While the iksar get foraging, many others don't and I think these items will help a great deal (although I haven't been able to afford one yet). There are also several new types of armor that you can buy, although they don't seem to have many advantages over the old types (which are also sold), at least as far as I've seen.
Monsters: The monsters in the expansion are much more powerful. The expansion was definitely designed with higher level characters in mind. My character (only 9th level) can only run about 3 minutes into any zone before everything around him is tombstone to him. I wouldn't recommend bringing any character over here from the main continent until they are at least mid-teens, because you will likely find nothing to hunt, and everything you do is very near areas patrolled by the Iksar.
The Iksar: Last but not least are the Iksar themselves. The Iksar are a reptilian race with many benefits to start out with. They have ultravision (I think), which means they can see in the dark passably well. They start out with a swimming skill of 100, with no cap that I've seen so far (my character is over 140 currently). They can be either Necromancers, Shadow Knights, Shamans, Warriors, or Monks. They get the ability to Forage, almost a necessity in this vast area. And they are possibly the only race that is truly safe in their home town of Cabilis.
Above are the details on what you can look forward to in the expansion...