Ember Sword's 'Ultra Deep' Dungeon is a Ferocious Group PvE Encounter | Preview

mmorpg.com:

It has been about 6 months since thelast alpha test for Ember Sword concluded. Over the past 3 years, the plucky team at Bright Star Studios has come a long way from their offline Unity-built demo. With some industry veterans running the show, a brand-new engine taking the reins, and an aggressive testing schedule leading the charge, Ember Sword has finally started to take shape with their latest dungeon “The Ultra Deep”. Earlier this week, a small band of journalists were invited to the Bright Star Studios office in Copenhagen to test their mettle against the difficult dungeon ahead of the broader alpha test set to release on the 27th through the 29th of October. As I sat down to have some hands-on time with the game I was excited to find what has changed and how the game has progressed in the past 6 months.

For those unfamiliar with Ember Sword, the game boasts a sandbox fantasy world, with a weapon-based skill system, MOBA-like combat, and a purely player driven economy. It has also adopted the use of blockchain to build a premiere Web3 MMORPG, the likes of which hasn't been seen to this degree before in the Web3 space. I was able to grill the Bright Star team on each of these features, and the multitude of interviews that explain those systems in more detail are on the way. It would be easy to deviate into the variety of systems that Bright Star plans to innovate, but the main purpose of my visit was to garner some hands on time with the Ultra Deep dungeon – so buckle up for some raw impressions.

Prior to our play test, we were warned that Ultra Deep has been tuned to be challenging. From my previous tests in Ember Sword I was very familiar with the combat system and the subtle challenges to some of the larger enemies