Too Soon? Too Late? Never Mind!

Sometimes it doesn't exactly pay to be too quick off the mark. Most of my questions about the arrival of Welcome Windfall Crates were answered in a news item on the official EverQuest II website just a few hours after I posted on Tuesday. 

Not all of them, mind you. There's no clear explanation of why Daybreak chose to hand out these particular freebies at this particular time, other than a bland "These are our gifts to you for being part of our community", followed by "Again, we can't thank you enough for being so passionate and dedicated to EverQuest II!"

I don't know, maybe it's because I studied English Literature at university, something that's given me a lifelong tendency to expose every last cereal packet and pizza delivery flier to close textual analysis, but I can't help noticing that "Again". What are they re-iterating or re-emphasizing there? Also, who exactly are they thanking? Have they read their own forums lately? It's not so much passion and dedication there as entitlement and oblivion.

Anyway, let's not pick holes in the fabric. Let's just look at the cut of the cloth.

As I extrapolated, the Welcome Windfall Crate that pops up on screen as soon as you log in right now is indeed available, nay unavoidable, for all accounts, free to play included. It's per character, too, so it really is about as universal as you can get.

We pretty much knew that but when I posted a couple of days ago we did not know the offer was time-limited. It very much is. The exact moment when the crates stop popping is "June 20, 2022 at 11:59 p.m. PDT." so although you have a while, I wouldn't leave it too long. 

So much for the fine print. More importantly, what about that other crate, the one I hadn't spotted when I wrote the previous post?

The Members Only crate is called the Welcome Windfall Subscriber's Crate and for reasons that are not immediately clear to me it's hidden away in the Claim window, where you won't find it unless you look. There's no in-game notification, neither in a MOTD or the mail nor any kind of pop-up.

Neither is the offer mentioned in the news ticker on the launcher or anywhere I could see other than on the website iself, which seems odd. On the other hand, I did get an email, telling me all about it, which is the main reason I'm here, posting about the offer today.

Inside the Subscriber's Crate you'll find a mount, a Vah Shir Heritage bundle and an Overseer crate. 

The Vah Shir would appear to be next in line in the seemingly endless procession of racial "heritages", each of which offers packs containing cosmetic armor and weapons, boosters, currencies and sundry other odds and ends. You can buy these in the cash shop but you can also get them for nothing by doing the daily Overseer Heritage mission. I do mine every day and as a result I have more cosmetic armor than I know what to do with. Literally.

The Overseer crate contains two Celestial quality agents, both new to me. They have three traits each and they don't duplicate. They're excellent additions to the roster for anyone who takes Overseer seriously.

Finally, there's the mount. Visually it's nothing special, using the same model as the various Clothwork Pegasuses (Pegasi?) already in the game. The colors may be slightly different but not enough to stand out.

Statwise, however, the Dreamdash Clothwork Pegasus is likely to be an upgrade to whatever a casual or solo player is riding. My Berserker is using Orita Skyquaker, the final reward from the VoV Tradeskill Signature questline. The new mount has better adventuring stats at Level one than Sqyquaker has at max level, although naturally it lacks the additional crafting and gathering bonuses.

It's very much worth claiming but be aware, as I was not when I claimed mine, that unlike the Welcome Windfall Crate, the Subscriber's Crate is strictly one per account. The items it contains are all Heirloom, so it's no big deal if you claim the whole lot on the "wrong" character, but it'll save you some housekeeping if you take the trouble to do it on the right one.

This offer is also time-limited, although the detail on that is less clear than it could be. The announcement says that the offer for both crates expires on June 20th but presumably once the Subscriber's Crate is in /Claim it will stay there forever. Everything else does.

I think what it means is that you'd have to log in before the cut-off for your account to populate Claim with the Subscriber Crate, after which you'll have as long as you'd like to take it out. It's an automatic process, so you'll get the crate in /Claim whether you want it or not, so long as you log in on any characer on the account before the twentieth of June. 

Most people paying a sub would do that anyway, if only because you also have to make the effort to log in to claim your free Daybreak Cash every month, but just in case anyone forgets... well, don't forget! I think that's about all I have to say on the subject for now but if any new information comes to light, since it seems EQII is currently my mmorpg of choice once again, I'm sure you'll hear about it.