By Will Borger
Everything clicked once I could start dropping nukes.
I wrapped my last Zero to Hero a couple of days ago, and I’m still thinking about the journey. But that’s not the subject of this write-up. You’ll hear from me one more time in a couple weeks, after the whole thing has marinated a bit. Right now, dear readers, I’d like to catch you up on what’s happened since you last heard from me in… May. Whoops. Time and tide, and all that.
Last time on Zero to Hero, we were at rock bottom. We were losing a lot, I didn’t know what I was doing, we were trying to find the right build… It was a lot. But as I said in May, I didn’t expect to stay at rock bottom forever.
Sometimes, the fix you need comes from somewhere you don’t expect. In this case, though, it was someone. I had no shortage of expert advice - I was playing with Lewpac, Bogul, Shozen, and Tazzik, after all - but the suggestion that changed my ever-lovin’ Albion life came from Meletriss, who, after one show was over, suggested I try out Lightcaller. I had no idea what a Lightcaller was, but I did know that Great Curse staff wasn’t working for me. As the old saying goes, I’ll try anything once.
When I play a game, one of two things tends to happen: I either find my character/class/weapon almost immediately and stick with it forever, or I fumble around for a while until something clicks. With Albion, there was a lot of fumbling. We started with a Longbow, moved to a regular Bow, tried out the Great Curse Staff, and, eventually, settled on the Lightcaller. But I never would have gotten there without Meletriss. We only spoke a few times during my run on AlbionTV, but she changed the trajectory of the show with one simple suggestion. Funny how that works out. Thanks, Mel.
Lightcaller wasn’t a plug-in and play, either. The early games were… rough. You wanna see someone do 10,000 damage on a Lightcaller? Watch my early games. I wasn’t managing my stacks well, using my auto-attacks to set up my Q, switching at the right times, landing my Ws, you name it. You want a primer on how not to play Lightcaller? Watch my first few games.
But it’s amazing what a couple of examples can do. One day, after he was tired of me doing less damage on Lightcaller than his cat did while walking across his keyboard, Lewpac had me watch him play a couple games with the Lightcaller. We went over positioning, using the auto-attacks to set up the Q, when to switch, using defensives, and so much more. And seeing it in action, I finally understood.
I’ve said it before: I’m a fighting game player, and playing that genre taught me how I improve: practice. I’m decent at games when I first pick them up, but if I actually want to improve, I have to put in the time, watch replays, see what the pros do, and so on. I have a lot of respect for people who can pick something up and immediately be good at it. But that’s never been me.
Bird had the thing all the other things I’d tried since the Bow had lacked: it was fun. So I knew what I needed to do. Stick with the bird.
And slowly but surely, the numbers started to go up. 15,000 damage. Then 20,000. And by the time my last show happened, 30,000, pretty reliably. That’s a story for the final piece, though.
Picking one build and sticking with it unlocked Albion’s arena for me. Once I knew and liked what I was doing each game, it became easier to form a stable gameplan, and once I had that, I had to think less about what I needed to be doing, and more about what the other team was doing, and how I could coordinate with my team to beat it.
I’ll stop there for now. I want to save some stuff for a couple weeks from now, and I want to spend a little more time in Albion before I give my final thoughts. But in my experience, every competitive game has the one thing that unlocks it for you, whether it’s a weapon, character, class, or something else entirely. For me, it was the Lightcaller Staff. And that’s when I finally understood Albion, and when everything started to click. All hail the pigeon.
Stay tuned for the final piece in this series, and watch Will’s journey unfold live on AlbionTV every Saturday at 19 UTC!
