You Don't Want To Do It Like That!

Just a short post today (He says, optimistically...) following on from yesterday's report on the purchase of my new island getaway. 

Once I'd gotten all my other responsibilities out of the way last night, I logged back into EverQuest II to see if I could figure out how you go about building a house from scratch. I knew it was possible, or at least I thought it must be, even though I'd never seen it done. I imagine there are plenty of self-builds I could visit but I haven't been to see another player's house for many years. 

Also, it's generally a bad idea to go check out what other people are doing with their houses in EQII, at least if you have any plans to do something with your own. Some of these people are seriously good. It can be discouraging.

All I knew was that I'd seen any number of crafting recipes for Blocks and Windows and similar essentials of the trade. I'd always assumed they had to be there for those players who'd found decorating an insufficient outlet for their inner architect. What else could they be for?

Hmm. That sounds like a set-up. As though I was leading up to saying I'd found out all those recipes were in the books for something else entirely. No, sorry. Just some thoughtless phrasing. They're exactly what they seem.

As it happens, I have a max-level Carpenter on my team, so it was easy enough for me to take a look at what they make. I do, in fact, have several max-level crafters at my disposal - Sage, Alchemist, Jeweller, Weaponsmith, Carpenter, Tailor. I think that's the lot. So far, anyway. I'll probably have the full set some day. I could do with a Provisioner, I know that much...

It can feel like a real grind to get a crafter to the cap from scratch but once you've done it it's pretty easy to stay up to date. It's far easier to knock off those five extra levels every second expansion than it is to catch up as an adventurer. 

The first three on that list I picked because between them they make spells and skills for all classes. That's very important if you're going to solo. Makes you pretty much self-sufficient. Spells and skills can get very expensive.

Weaponsmith, though? That one I picked mostly because I'm an idiot. It's pretty much useless. I would never pick it now but it's what my Berserker does and at this stage I'm stuck with it. I chose it for him for roleplaying reasons and also because I thought it would be cool to make swords and stuff. It's not. And I don't even role-play, so what was that all about?

My Inquisitor, on the other hand, is a Carpenter for good reason. Carpenters make boxes. Everyone always needs boxes. Can't have too many boxes. And they make furniture. I thought it would be very handy to have someone who could help me decorate all those houses I keep buying. 

And it would. In theory. Only, the someone in question usually ends up being whoever put whatever it is I need I need up on the Broker.  For peanuts. 

Here's the irony. Other than skills and spells, most crafted items are so cheap and plentiful it feels like a self-indulgence to make your own. And who wants to stop and craft when you're about to do something more interesting? 

One of the perks of being a Member is access to the Broker from anywhere. It means I can usually just grab whatever I want the moment I need it. And often for barely more than the cost of the fuel and the mats, if I made it myself.

It's not the cost so much as the time. If I do decide to make something for myself, first I have to log in the character that can do it, always assuming I can remember who that is. Then I have to get that crafter to my Berserker's Mara house, which is where I keep all the crafting mats, hundreds of thousands of them, and where I have all the crafting stations set up. 

Unless it's my Berserker doing the job, which it never is because no-one wants the crappy weapons he can make, just getting to his house means a trip to a city, because you have to be in a city to access housing at all, then to the particular crafter's own house, because that's where the portal to the Mara home will be, and then finally to Mara itself.

All of that takes a while, what with loading times. And then sod's law dictates that one of the mats needed will turn out to be something I haven't got in store. I mean, I have a vast hoard of them but EQII is over twenty years old. There are a lot of different crafting materials now. And even if I have the mats, I might not have bought the book with the right recipe. There's a lot that can go wrong, just making something that should be simple.

So, what with all of that and a few other little wrinkles, mostly it always seems faster and easier all round just to let someone else do the work, then pay them whatever pittance they're asking. On the odd occasions that what I want isn't up for sale or if it's heavily overpriced, then I make it myself. Sometimes, when I can be bothered, I even make a bunch of spells and skill and put them up for sale. That can be a real earner.

So, anyway, dragging myself back to the point, crafting is a thing I know how to do. I'd just never had the need to make bricks before. But how hard could it be? 

I woke my Carpenter up, got her to Mara, plonked her in front of the woodworking bench and told her to get on with it. She opened her Recipe books and started looking for "bricks". And there weren't any.

That's because they're called "blocks", apparently. She had a ton of recipes for those. They start at the bottom and go all the way up the leveling ladder. I have far more high-end mats than low, thanks to most of my gathering being done at the cap, so I started her making Shadow Stone blocks. 

One at a time. Boy, was it slow! I figured it would take me hours to make enough for a house that way. And then I remembered a Tradeskill AA, one I'd never seen the point of before: Mass Production. I could see the point of it now, alright.

I'd never bothered to take that AA but luckily EQII is an extremely flexible MMORPG - if you know how to play it. Many years ago, they added the option to set and save multiple AA builds. For free, too. Convenient and generous. Time to take advantage.

I opened the AA panel, swapped to a blank Profile, spent the necessary AAs in the Prestige Tradeskill line and presto! The means of Mass Production were mine.

I wasn't sure how it would work but it turned out to be extremely user-friendly. You just select how many of an item you want to make from a drop-down menu. It goes up in fives as far as a hundred. Then you do a single combine and it makes the lot in one go. Talk about a time-saver!

I made a hundred Shadow Stone blocks and fifty half-blocks. Just to get started. I thought I might need some doors and windows too, so I had a look through the books for those and... 

Couldn't find any. I could find plenty of frames but nothing to put in them. I still haven't. I need to do some research on that after I finish this post. There must be some.

I made a few frames anyway, then took everything to the bank to pop it into Shared Storage so my Warlock, the one with the island, could pick them up and get started on building his new mansion.  

That went... well it went somewhere. Downhill fast, mostly.

The good part is that hundreds of stone blocks apparently weigh nothing at all so moving them wasn't a problem. They also stack, so neither was storage. The Warlock picked up his blocks, took them to his island, picked out a nice spot and started placing them.

There were just two problems. First, the stack itself. Great for transporting blocks, not so good for placing them. Or that's what I thought. It transpires, as I later worked out, that you can place the whole stack and one will peel off automatically, leaving the rest back in your bags. But I didn't know that then.

I started splitting the stacks and putting the blocks into his bags individually, which was slow and annoying. And guess what? The Warlock's bags were almost full even before I started. 

I know! Who would ever have thought? Anyway, splitting stacks isn't just slow and annoying. It's also fiddly and tedious. I did about twenty and I'd had enough. More than enough. 

Second problem, worse than the first. The blocks are quite small. Not as small as bricks but still not what you'd call big. You'd need an awful lot to make a house. 

It was starting to look like an impractical project or at least not a fun one. Still, I'd started and I was at least going to make some kind of hut before I finished. 

And I did. I made a hut. A small, ugly hut with no door and no windows, just the holes where they ought to go. The walls weren't the least bit straight. The flat roof that didn't even sit flush on the walls. The doorway was too small even for a Ratonga. Along with many other shortcomings I won't embarrass myself by mentioning. When I'd finished, even the flying snake wouldn't have lived there.

Here's the thing about EQII. It's an old game. Newer games, particularly all the many survival titles, tend to have a mechanic where all the pieces snap together. You might have a bit of trouble getting the system to line them up just how you want but once you do - Bingo! They snap together like magnets. A perfect fit. 

Sometimes you get a grid to make it even simpler. It's easy and it's fun. 

EQII has nothing like any of that. From Mrs. Bhagpuss's time as a competitive decorator, I vaguely remember there was a third-party add-on you could use to line things up and change angles but that required math. I know she hated using it. It certainly wasn't EZ-Mode. The very opposite, if anything.

Building in EQII is hard. It requires a lot more skill and application than I'm used to providing. Even Landmark was easier than this. 

And yet, I persisted. In fact, I really got into it. Building in games is hellish addictive. Time passed fast as I placed my blocks by hand. It was not, sadly, time well-spent.

My blocks did not line up. It didn't help that the ground sloped. Or that my pet flying snake kept getting in my way and I couldn't work out how to dismiss it. The whole thing was a disaster and yet I couldn't leave it alone. In the end, I only stopped because Beryl barreled in and started jogging my arm to make me pay attention.

About the best I can say for my first attempt at building a house hut is that I learned some things. Things I applied with only a very minor degree of success in my second attempt. What those things were, though, and what my second home looked like, will have to wait for another post because this one's long enough already. And then some.

This could turn into a series. We'll all just have to hope that doesn't happen.