[darklordsarumon9]

Greetings all. After a quick impulse buy I found myself to be the proud owner of The Division on pc. Im just gonna jump into this & share a few thoughts.

Character making - very standard selection of both male & female white, white model 2, african american and asian template. You can add tattoos & scars. Was expecting a bit more.

The 'campaign' mode - Goes up to level 30. Pretty fun leveling. Story is what you would expect terrorists this, mutated ebola that, good guys turn bad mischief. Getting max (story) level of 30 can be achieved within maybe 10 hours if you rush missions. There is a base of opperations where you'll need to gather supplies which fuel expansion of the medical, tech and security wings. What really shines in the story is the collecting of intel. There are 263 assorted pieces of missing person data, phone recordings, crashed drones and more to be found that really make you feel for the general public as they struggle to survive the dollar bill flu. Most enjoyable part of the single player for me was hunting these down.

Life after level 30 - Once you've hit 30 its time for the real grind. Where The Division shines and falls into absurdity is the Dark Zone, a free for all PVPVE area. Better loot can be found inside but must be extracted since its contaminated. Extraction is a somewhat simple matter of calling in the heli, waiting the 90 seconds for it to arrive, killing a few guards that spawn then placing your loot on the rope. Simple enough until rogue agents come along. You can at any moment 'go rogue', aka pvp. So while you wait for that heli a group of four guys can come along, kill you and take half your loot. Invintory space is limited to nine items in the Dark Zone. When youre killed by rogues you drop all your items, half become public loot available to be taken and the other half are private which sit there until you reach them. Going rogue is a fun idea in theory but usually ends up with lots of low level players being camped for items. The zones feel empty most of the time like there should be more mobs/have quicker spawn timers. Biggest problem with Dark Zone isn't the random rogue killing you it's Division Tech. High end crafting materials which are highly sought after and just as scarce. Vendors sell high end crafting blueprints for both Phoenix Credits (end game currency) and Dark Zone money but you need Dark Zone rank to acquire them. The best gear becomes available for purchase at DZ rank 50. Lots of complaints of that being "too hard" to achieve, I played mostly solo and was able to make rank 54 in about 35 hours.

Non DZ end game - Phoenix Credits baby. End game currency that drops from named mobs or after completing story missions on higher difficulty. The grind for these is the worst IMO. Named mobs will drop 3 or 4 credits, while daily missions will award 15-30. These can be run as many times as you'd like but only does the first completion of the day award the extra credits. When all end game blueprints cost 80+ credits the grind takes hold real quick.

(final notes to be added later)