After toying around a bit with a Progen Warrior and a Jenquai Defender, I’m back with good ole Burrowowl the Terran Tradesman. With the exception of a few boring traderuns (to keep my funds up and my “trade” xp ahead of my combat xp) I’ve been quite impressed by how that game is keeping and holding my interest.

I am easily distracted by bright, shiney objects. When playing Anarchy Online or Asheron’s Call (my previous MMORPGs) even exploring around the impressively vast playfields was rather… tedious. Both had lovely vistas, and some suprising terrain features, but there was something missing.

I think I may had determined what was missing in AO and AC but in’t so much of a problem in E&B: Danger. When warping from navpoint to navpoint through charted territory (or while being guided by somebody whose charts are up to the task) everywhere is safe. Brand new character? No problem, go wherever you want to. But heaven help you if you stop in the wrong place.

Most Sectors have a rather widely varying array of bad-guys wandering around. Stop off at one navpoint in Asteroid Belt Alpha (Sol System) and you’ll be dealing with Combat Level 4-8 Araxias and Piscenes. A mere four navpoints away are clusters of Combat Level 12-18 Red Dragon Pirates.

As a matter of scale, when you are a Combat Level 10 character, a combat level 18 Red Dragon is likely to have your ship disabled faster that you’ll be able to enter warp again (even without navigation, free-warping takes a couple seconds). This means that if you’ve itching to get from cl10 (Combat Level 10) to cl11, you may have to warp or sneak past a bunch of cl23 baddies to find a good hunting area. It also means that if you’re kiting badguys you may accidentally end up in a nest of far nastier badguys ready to hand you your ass.

As a result, simply filling out my charts (hitting the navpoints that my scanners have picked up and looking for others) and occasionally locking horns with what I run into has kept me interested since shortly before the game launched.

Additionally, most usable items you can loot from the wreckage of your foes is manufacturable, adding a strong tinkering aspect to the game. I dig it.