Allods Online Forum

I don't know much about Warden and Healer. However, Healer has usually been a good class through the years. During some patches it has even been really overpowered, both in PvE and PvP. The class I do know about is Summoner. The Summy has been a very good healing class in recent patches and had very good sustainability if you made a dps/off-heal hybrid. However, they've nerfed the Summy real bad, at least until you get decent gear, so leveling up a Summy is a real pain in the a**.

Since the P2P server is pretty much dead, you'll have to be prepared for a long and lonely leveling process. Summoner would therefore not be my choice in this case, I would pick the Warden or Healer. Warden might have better dps and easier to level, but I'm not sure.

The P2P server really is that empty, yes. If you want to get an idea of how empty it actually is you can go check out the various threads regarding the subject in the P2P server section.

FP2 has a markably higher population, but it's quite low there as well unfortunately. You might however see some players from time to time in various questing areas and the main cities are always populated. At max level however there will be some people on the P2P server, and even more on the FP2 server, so if you don't mind leveling up in a ghost world then it's fine either way I guess.

If you want to play on the FP2 server on a competitive level and don't want to get totally rekt, you will indeed have to get a bunch of items from the cash shop. There are many items that are very necessary in order to be competitive and to improve your offense and defense in general.
However, if you don't really care for PvP, or don't mind getting crushed by heavy cash shoppers, the FP2 server would probably be your best choice.

Also if you actually don't mind paying a monthly fee, you can play the FP2 server and buy "Artifacts", it's a new thing added to the cash shop which let's you rent most of the necessities for improved offense/defense. When the rental period is over, you'll receive fragments which can later be combined in to the complete item to actually get it permanently.

So this technically means that you'll pay a monthly fee for some months, then you'll probably have most of the stuff permanently and you can perhaps spend a smaller fee a month on crystal chips to improve your runes and, if you're lucky, get even more improved stuff from RNG-boxes.

Most people would say that you will have to spend a fortune on the game in order to get all items needed for competitive and enjoyable gameplay. However, I don't think this is the case anymore as long as you don't want to be the absolute best on the server. I mean, there will always be players that are better than you because they have played Allods since beta pretty much and have spent so much money over the years that they have pretty much all the best stuff from the cash shop. But again, if you would pay a monthly fee on cash shop items you'll eventually get there as well, it will just take a little while.

If you're 100% against this however and you rather play where everyone is on an equal level, and you don't mind the extremely low population, go for the P2P server, for sure.

Quoted from "Firun"

I don't care for PvP.

Okay, at least this doesn't completely rule out playing on F2P.

Quoted from "Firun"

My life is stressful enough, I prefer to do PvE and derive my meta-PvP from silently beating others in the meters / rankings.

Sadly, not gonna happen on the F2P. Meters count numbers and cash shop items greatly inflate numbers.

It's pretty much this:

Stats (mainly gear, but also cash shop potions) > Cash shop multipliers to damage/healing values coming directly from stats (runes + patronage) > everything else (including player skill)

Applies mostly to PvP, but don't expect to be beating significantly more "cashed" people on the meters unless you outgear them.

You should know that the game has been stripped of a very large potion of challenging and fun PvE content with 6.0 and 7.0 updates, both on F2P and P2P, but I guess if you haven't seen and experienced it yourself, you have nothing to miss or cry over.

I know I won't be back until they recognize their mistake and revert this atrocity. (Astral changes)

Quoted from "Firun"

Are there hard limits as to what I can do without a certain amount of cash shop items?

Reverse. There's a hard cash shop limit. If you achieve it, you shouldn't be excluded from any future PvE content.

I won't be able to tell you what is it exactly as I abandoned F2P the very first day P2P appeared (years ago).

Quoted from "Firun"

Does this game contain upgrade items with a % chance (hate is no word for what I think about such systems)?

It does not, however there are "cursed items" that drop in addition to regular items. They are useless until uncursed (subtract stats instead of adding). They can be uncursed with scrolls purchasable in the cash shop. Also there's that dreaded "+" sign allowing you to multiply crucial resources by spending cash shop currency - that's nasty. Paying players progress faster.

This rubbish is completely non-existent on the P2P.

Quoted from "Firun"

However I'm not quite sure how much I want to get into Allods on a competitive level at all. I find that with my limited time I have a very hard time finding guilds / pugs with my skill level that are fine with few hours a week which leads to me abandoning the idea of progressive raiding altogether. I suppose Allods won't be much different.

On F2P time is pretty much directly interchangeable with money, just like in real life. If you hate it about real life, you will hate the game's F2P model. I know I do.

I know I would choose empty P2P over this sickening model any day.

Just a bit more info about hard limits and raids : there used to be some gear/cs check bosses in 6.0 raids, but it's not the case anymore in 7.0 given they reversed the model : you need raids to gear now, before you geared to beat the raid.

You unlock each raid & difficulty with your gearscore - and it's not very difficult to gear up in allods.
Once inside, understanding the tactics and applying them properly is usually sufficient to complete it.
Each raid comes in 3 flavors (easy which you can tag daily, normal & hard which you can do weekly).

As expected, the higher the difficulty, the more you need coordinated groups, proper formations with support/special skills and a decent knowledge of your class in addition to tactics.

There are a few healer addons that you can download, but these days you don't even really need to.

The game comes with its own raid plate that pops up every time you join a raid. It lets you click on individual raiders and can be repositioned around the screen and customized as you like it.

https://alloder.pro/files/file/277-healer/

This one might help you, can be customized to do stuff on players depending how you click on them. But like Kissy said, the current raid plate shows enough info usually.

Cheers, and welcome to allods

I would say this game can definitely be enjoyable enough with the PvE content, cosmetics system, events and socializing. When it comes to PvP, there are also different ways to do this without the need of all the best cash shop items. You can do guild dominion for example which would require your whole guild to work well together, and if one or a few people would be heavy cash shoppers it wouldn't make as big of a difference as in normal battleground PvP. You can infiltrate League camps together with friends or guild. You can do PvP out in the open world where you wouldn't always encounter people with lots of cash shop items. Etc, etc.

So my point is, the need for a lot of cash shop items is quite small to actually be able to enjoy the game. Back in the days during my prime time in Allods, I loved this game, and I still remember all the fun moments we had. I remember the dungeons and raids we did together and the guild battles we had in different forms. I also really enjoyed the open world PvP. Even back in this time the game was considered P2W and I owned even fewer items from the cash shop than I do today, and I was still able to enjoy it a lot.

My one and only advise to you is to try out the game. If you like it, you may wanna support the developers and at the same time provide yourself with some extra goodies and spend some money on the game. Then if you wanna do it on a monthly basis or spend a lot of money at once is up to you.

Btw, if you decide to play on the FP2 server and you want someone to level up with, I might join up with you on a reinc I've wanted to max up a new class for quite a while.