You're Not Making It Easy To Come Back, Blade & Soul.

It took the best part of two days but I did finally get Blade & Soul to run. I don't know what NCSoft did to make the new launcher so pernickety but I'd have to say I preferred the old one. It just worked. 

Anyway, after downloading something like 250GB of data to get a final install of 66GB I was eventually able to press play and actually have the game start but even then the wait wasn't over. Logging in seemed to take forever. It was probably only about five minutes but in the context of getting into an online game that is forever. 

Do you know how many things I can think of in five minutes that I need to do more than I need to play an old video game , NCSoft? You really don't want to give me that much time to reconsider my choices.

I stuck it out. I mean, I'd given the thing hours already. What's another five minutes? 

When I got in I did not find myself where I expected I'd be. Usually, when I log out of an MMORPG - or an RPG for that matter -  I try to leave the character I was playing in a comfortable spot. If they have a home, my first choice is to take them there. Otherwise I like to leave them in a town or city where they can carry on with normal life.

No room to claim this one.

If I have to leave them wherever they were adventuring, either because it would be too much trouble to get them back there next time or because I had to log out suddenly and unexpectedly, I at least try to leave them in a safe place that looks reasonably sheltered from inclement weather. It seems like the least I could do.

When I logged in Meldra Mye, my main character in Blade & Soul, she woke up in a bush. I couldn't even see her for leaves. I must have been in a real hurry when I logged out, however long ago that was.

I say "Main". I could almost say "only". I do have one other character but I only made her to try out a max-level buff I got for free. As you might expect, getting a max level character that way does not also instantly grant you the ability or knowledge to play one, something I remember people complaining about in EverQuest as far back as the turn of the millennium, when one of the worst insults you could hurl at someone was to accuse them of having bought their character on EBay.

Of course, after more than a year away, I have no idea how to play my regular character either, which was why, the moment I got into the game, I was pleased - and impressed -  to see a link to a New and Returning Player Guide.  Unfortunately, I was a lot less impressed after I'd finished reading it.

As a guide, I'd have to say it's both barebones and overly specific. It tells you a lot of things that are extremely obvious just by looking at your character, such as what "type" your equipment is. A "weapon" is a "weapon", you may be surprised to learn, while a ring or a necklace is an "accessory". 

I could probably have figured that out for myself, along with what kind of stats each slot supports, just by mousing over them and reading the tool-tips. Conversely, telling me a type of item "enhances the ability of certain skills" doesn't really tell me anything at all.

At the other extreme, the guide seems determined to portray the entire game as a series of instanced dungeons and raids, all of which it lists by name and required group size, along with a detailed account of what loot you can get there. I'm not saying that's not meaningful information but it's extremely reductive. Of all the time I've played Blade & Soul I doubt more than ten percent has been spent in dungeons. There's a huge, fascinating open world to explore. Why would I want to go inside?

There's a hugely more comprehensive and wide-ranging guide on the forums, written by a player called HungiBungi. It's fairly up-to-date, having been written at the end of last year, and yet the OP still needed to post a second guide six months later because there'd been a substantive change to the gear upgrade path. Such is the way of online games but at least the currency of the updates and commentary on them suggests a game that's still in active development, with an equally active playerbase.

In the moderately unlikley event I end up playing Blade & Soul "seriously" again (I use the word almost ironically - I have never played B&S in a way anyone in their right mind would call "serious". What I mean, I guess, is "regularly", although even that would be pushing it...) then I'll defnitely be referring to Hungi's guide. 

It's much more likely that I'll just log in a few times, claim all the stuff that's waiting for me (It's a lot!), try on any new clothes, summon any new pets, take some screenshots and call it a day for another few months. That tends to be the way it goes in just about every MMORPG I used to play, don't play any more but still haven't quite given up on.

In the case of Blade & Soul, though, there is a slightly enhanced possibility of my doing a little more than the bare minimum. The world, as I said earlier, is vast and quite beautiful. My character is full of personality and charm. There's a plot that I was quite enjoying back when I could remember what it was and the combat isn't bad for an action MMO. 

All of that works in the game's favor. What works against it is the precipitous re-learning curve common to almost all MMORPGs but also the aforementioned lengthy log-in time, which does put me off firing the game up unless I'm also willing to put in a good session to make the effort worthwhile. 

And then there's the almost Norrathian time it takes to get from one place to another.

Blade & Soul does have some kind of instant travel, at least I seem to remember something to do with map-clicking, but how it works is something I need to re-learn. This time, when I found I didn't have enough bag space to claim most of the stuff that was waiting for me, I could neither remember where the nearest bank was not how to get there if I did.

No room for this pet, either.

If there's anything that acts as a bigger drag anchor on enthusiasm for returning to a former MMORPG than full bags you have no idea how to empty, I don't know what it is. Icons you no longer know the meaning of and combat skills you no longer remember how to use are bad, sure, but if I can't get my bags sorted I'm probably never going to get far enough to need to know how to hit anything anyway.

In this case, I'd only really come back to try on my new gear and take some pictures and I haven't even been able to do that yet. I managed to put on one new outfit, the one at the head of the post, but the rest I could only look at in the dressing-room.

I didn't help myself. I somehow managed to claim one complete outfit twice on the same character despite a clear warning about it requiring some currency I didn't recognize to transfer to other characters on the account. That was how I filled up most of my minimal free inventory slots. It's also why I wanted to find the bank so urgently.

When I work out where the bank is and how to get there (Always assuming Blade & Soul is a game that has a vault system. They don't all, you know.) and I've had time and opportunity to get myself sorted, perhaps I'll be in a position to post a proper fashion show. Until then, this is going to have to do.

Also maybe I'll finally write something about the actual game. I maintain Blade & Soul is a lot better than it ever seems to get credit for being and would almost certainly be more to the taste of many Western MMO gamers than the average import, if only anyone noticed it existed.

Then again, maybe it's just that I like having a giant cartoon cat that follows me about. I mean, it's living the dream, isn't it?

Wherever I Make My Bag, That's My Home.

Time for a quick progress report on New World. Just on my own progress, that is, not on how the game itself is coming along. For that you could do a lot worse than check out Belghast's detailed and insightful overview of the problems Amazon have ahead of them if they want to keep anyone once Endwalker arrives.

It's interesting to see how expectations have changed. It's long been the received wisdom that the imminent arrival of a World of Warcraft expansion was likely to spell slow times for every other mmorpg but I'm not sure I can remember many instances of expansions for any other game signalling a similar slump, or not in any mmorpg I was playing at the time, anyway. It usually took the launch of a much-anticipated new triple-A title to pull enough attention to notice, not a mere expansion to one that was out there already. 

It shows how far Final Fantasy XIV has come in this last year. We all know some of the reasons why it's happened but it also marks Square Enix's game out for the second time as something exceptional in the history of the genre. Not only is it one of the very few mmorpgs ever to come back from a truly disastrous launch, not just to survive but to prosper, but it may be the only one since WoW to have experienced consistent growth thereafter, to the point that interest is in the game is still rising at the launch of its fourth expansion.

In fact, when it comes to Western mmorpgs, the only two I can think of that have done anything similar are WoW itself and EverQuest, which was on its seventh expansion and still growing when Blizzard came along to steal its lunch money. 

Sunrise over the gasworks.

What FFXIV is doing is reframing a narrative that hasn't really changed in fifteen years. It's not a game that suits my tastes but I do find its developmental and commercial arc intriguing. It's going to be very interesting to see what the medium and long term effect of both FFXIV's extended commercial success and New World's demonstration that an audience still exists for the right new entrant into the market means for future development within the genre.

In the short term I think we can feel fairly safe in saying there will be a general downturn in interest in everything that isn't Endwalker. New World will slip back into the pack of also-rans as server merges take whatever headlines the game gets. Focus will shift to shoring up the kind of issues Bel was highlighting in his post, in the hope of winning back some ground when the new expansion shine eventually fades from Square's flagship moneymaker.

Which is all very well but what about me? Didn't I say I was only going to report on my own progress? Yes, I did, what there is of it. It isn't all that much. 

Not because I haven't been playing. I have, every day, usually for at least three or four hours. Steam tells me I've racked up nearly 165 hours since launch although these days all of them are via the truly excellent GeForce Now, which has completely altered, for the better, my New World experience.

Ten days ago, when I gave my last update, I was level 46 after 142 hours played. Twenty-three hours more has gained me a whole three levels. I'm now level 49. Over seven hours a level. That is slow.

I also still don't have a house, although I've had all the necessary requirements to buy one in most of the towns I could bear to live in for quite a while. So what have I been doing with all that time?

It keeps me fit, at least.

Mostly getting my Armorsmithing to 100 so I could make one bag to fill the extra bag slot I got at level 40. Yes, it's taken me almost ten levels and probably about thirty-six hours just to make a bag. 

The good news is, tonight I finished it! I spent all evening on the last part, getting the final mats I needed after I dinged 100 Armorsmith. It took me three hours, about half of which was running from one town to another. 

I'd estimate that "running from one town to another" accounts for at least a third of my played time, with "running from one quest marker to another" taking up perhaps another third. It would not be entirely unfair to characterise New World as an orienteering simulator. Most of my time is spent opening and closing a map and running from one marker to another, veering off course every few yards to go and check out something interesting.

I can readily see why this isn't to everyone's taste but it suits me. I spent most of this evening jogging up and down the roads between Brightwood, which has tier four and five crafting stations and Weaver's Fen and Restless Shore, which don't but which are where I have a lot of bulk crafting mats in storage. 

In something of a faux-Catch 22, I couldn't carry all the mats at once because the mats I needed were the ones to make the bag that would expand my carrying capacity sufficently to carry all the mats I needed. So I had to make a few trips. 

I also had to cut a lot of hemp and skin a lot of animals along the way for some different mats I also needed and that inevitably led me into areas where I found other mats I didn't need right now but knew I'd need another day so I had to grab those too, which meant I didn't have room for the ones I was planning on moving from one town to another...

Fingers crossed...

And so on and so on. Every session for the last week or so has been a bit like that. And I have to say I've enjoyed it. I had the Cricket World T20 on the radio a lot of the time and when there wasn't a game on I sometimes had a drama or comedy from Radio 4 Extra in the background. I can think of plenty of worse ways to spend an afternoon. 

It was getting to the point where I really wanted that bag, though, so I was very happy when, about an hour ago, I stood in front of the Outfitting Station in Brightwood and clicked Craft. I was even happier when I saw the result. 

I got probably the best version of the bag I could have made. I'd used the best resources I had available so I 'd done all I could but there's a hefty helping of luck in New World's crafting so you never quite know. Rng rolled me a nice Rare quality result but better yet it rolled me the two best random perks - Extra Pockets and Luck.

A while ago a bag like that would have sold for quite a bit. I wasn't going to sell mine but I was curious what it might go for so I checked the Trading Post. In Brightwood, a bag like that sells for around 2,000 coin. It sounds like a lot, when you consider that I only have 20k after all these weeks, but the rune you need to make this bag costs 1500 coin on its own so there's only about 500 coin profit in it for the crafter.

The days of getting rich making bags are long gone but at least I can make upgrades for the ones I'm using. If I can make a couple more like the one I just made I should be able to get my carrying capacity to more than 1,000, which seems like a lot although I'm sure I'll soon fill it up.

Yay!!

According to this helpful video, the maximum carrying capacity currently possible is 1,665 but I'll worry about that when I'm sixty. Or more likely I won't. The whole "max your gear score" endgame does not appeal.

With the bag in the bag I can get back to working on my Mourningdale standing, something that's slipped down the agenda of late. I'm still determined to buy my first, half-price house there, although as time goes on I'm starting to wonder if I should. 

I'm about to ding fifty and I can already see quest markers popping up in Ebonscale. Maybe that would make a better use of my one discounted ticket. And then there was the huge surprise I got today when I logged in and opened the map.

Every day, when I get into the game the first thing I do is check which faction owns which territory. It makes no practical difference to me but I like to keep up to date. At least, it hasn't made any practical difference for weeks. 

The last time anything material to my gameplay occured was when territory trading gave my faction, Marauders, their second territory, Restless Shore. Since the only other place we owned was the extremely high level and positively repulsive Reekwater, any synergies were entirely notional. I do spend some time in Restless Shore but it makes no difference to me whther we own it or not and I haven't been to Reekwater since the one visit I made weeks ago just to see if it was as bad I imagined. (It was worse.)

Yes, but who'll own it tomorrow?

Today, when I opened my map, I was stunned to see three green splodges instead of the regular two. Overnight we'd taken a third territory and this time it wasn't some outlier no-one else wanted. It was Brightwood.  

Brightwood is a decent territory. It's central and close to the three non-player-owned higher-level areas in the North. It also has a plethora of high-tier crafting stations because it's been well-cared for by the previous owners. Lots of people go there to trade and craft. It's not as popular as Everfall or Windsward but it's no hick town.

I have no idea whether we took it by force or whether there was some kind of deal but the fact that my faction owns Brightwood means I need to rethink my housing plans. I definitely don't plan to make it my personal home but if we're likely to keep it for a while then it wiuld be very useful to have one of my three permitted houses there.

All of which means I have to keep my money in my pocket for now. I have the funds to buy two houses and the standing to live in any of the towns that interest me right now. Except Ebonscale. I'd have to start from scratch there.

If it wasn't for the "50% off first purchase" deal I'd just buy a cheap place in Brightwood but because of that one-time offer I can't in good conscience do that. I almost wish the half-price starter home leg-up had never been put in the game in the first place.

How ungrateful is that? Honestly, there's no pleasing some people. I don't know how the developers put up with us, sometimes. No wonder they make us run everywhere. It's no more than we deserve.

Simon Says "Now Stay Down!" - How To Beat The Amrine Excavation Expedition Without Really Knowing How.

Today, I played New World for six hours. That's the longest I've played in one day since launch. I think the game's beginning to sink its hooks into me. 

It wasn't one unbroken six-hour session. It's been years since I played anything for that long; probably well over a decade. It was two lengthy sessions, though, about two an a half hours in the morning, three and a half after lunch. That's more than I've played any game in one day since Valheim. 

I spent most of those six hours questing. I did do quite a bit of gathering and a little crafting too but I was trying to focus on quests because I'd found myself on the wrong side of not one but two progression roadblocks. I wanted to get past both of them and I'm very pleased to say I did. Eventually.

The first was Destiny Unearthed, a stage in the main story quest and also the point at which New World pulls a Final Fantasy XIV and plays the ever-popular forced grouping card. At least, that's what I suspected was going to happen, although in New World you never quite know what to expect.

Despite having had a lot more issues with queues than I have, Belghast is much further ahead than me. He posted details of his experience recently when, having gathered some friends to help him with a quest that looked like it was going to send him into what he believed would be a higher-level area, flagged for parties of five, it turned out the mobs he actually needed were on the far side of all that and readily soloable.

I had a similar experience a few levels back. I was working on another step in the Azoth Staff sequence. The item I needed was deep in a ruined temple infested with mobs several levels higher than me. The area was flagged as suitable for mid-20s and I was sill in my teens. 

I was very skeptical about being able to fight my way to where the quest marker was telling me I needed to go but it tuned out I was being over-cautious. In the event, all I needed to do was put my head down, barrel past everything at a dead run, click on a glowy object deep inside a crypt, get an instant update and leg it out again with a dozen angry undead lurching after me.

The update I needed today was in much the same place on the map but by the way the quest was worded I felt fairly sure I wouldn't be able to get away with the same ruse twice. It looked like I was going to have to go into an "Expedition", which is what Amazon have decided to call dungeons in their game. 

I'd rather they hadn't done that. Expeditions are something I associate with EverQuest's infamous Gates of Discord expansion. I still have nightmares.

Following the map marker took me to the shimmering blue curtain that delineates the entrance to an instance. It wasn't looking good but even then I thought there was an outside chance it might be something I could solo. I'd gone through a similar curtain around level eight or nine and that one had led to a solo instance. 

I clicked on the zone-in to see if the same thing would happen again. No such luck. 

The Amrine Excavation is an instanced dungeon intended for a minimum of three players of Level 25 or above. You can go in with more people than that, up to five, but not with fewer. The door won't open unless you have a) an Azoth Staff b) a key and c) at least three people.

I had the staff and I had the key. The questline gives you both of those. What I didn't have were the people and I wasn't at all sure I wanted them. There were a couple of people hanging out by the entrance but I had chat switched off so if they were trying to put a group together I wouldn't have known about it.

I wandered away for a bit to have a think about it. I'm by no means unwilling to PUG things like this but if I'm going to go down that road I like to be decently equipped, have a basic idea what my class does in a group and be at or above the recommended level for the content. In this case I had, knew and was none of those things. 

When devs throw you this kind of irritating curveball there are only a couple of ways you can go, assuming you still want to carry on at all: buckle down and join a group, even if you don't feel ready or go away and do other stuff until you do. The other options are quit following the storyline (entirely possible in New World as far as I can see) or quit playing altogether.

Since I neither wanted to quit the game nor to cut myself off from the narrative (It's quite interesting) it was going to have to be one of the first two. And since I had, at that moment, not the slightest clue how people were going about forming groups (there's no automated matchmaking and no dedicated LFG channel) it seemed like as good a time as any to find out.

I switched my chat on and went back to the entrance to see if anyone was trying to put a group together. Someone was. It was about as old school an experience as you could hope for. Or hope never to see again, depending on how you feel about these things.

One player asked in area chat if anyone wanted to do the dungeon. Someone else said yes, they did. Then I said "I'll join if you have room" and after about thirty seconds an invite appeared on my screen.

We had three people, enough to start, but thankfully the leader said "Let's get some more. It's better with five". As the lowest level and the least sure of what I was doing, I felt the more people I could hide behind the better. 

The next part really brought back some memories. We all stood about for ten or fifteen minutes. One guy decided he needed arrows so he ran back to town. Someone else wanted to join but realized he was flagged for PvP. That meant he had to run back to town too, because you can only take the flag off in safe zones and you can't join a PvE group with it on.

I had to afk for a while but I felt pretty safe doing it. Nothing was going to happen any time soon. By the time I got back there was a discussion going on about whether someone's friend would come and join us to make up the full five but before that got very far another player arrived and asked if we were going in, so we took him instead. Then we had to wait for the guy who'd gone to get arrows to finish up whatever he was doing...

We got there in the end. Someone opened the instance and everyone went inside. My PC took forever to load the zone and by the time I got there the rest of them were in the second room, fighting. I caught them up and joined in and my PC decided it really didn't want to have anything to do with all the spell effects and suchlike so I had to open options mid-battle and drop my graphics to Low. 

After that everything played smoothly enough. The game looks good even at low fidelity so I was happy. 

Well, I was until we got to the first boss. My inventory had been close to full when we zoned in. I found myself Encumbered on the very first chest we looted.

I spent the entire run shuffling through my packs, discarding anything I could bear to ditch (Wave bye bye to 400 fibres.) and salvaging everything I looted that I didn't equip on the spot. I still couldn't pick up even half the stuff that dropped.

I'm working on a "Things I like/Things I don't like" list for a future post. The sheer quantity of loot is definitely going in the "Don't Like" column. You very definitely can have too much of a good thing, particularly when you have to lug it all around with you.

The five of us plowed through room after room. If you're interested to know what was there, there's a reasonably exhaustive walkthrough here. I certainly didn't get much chance to take any screenshots. I'd also have to say I didn't see an awful lot of the detailed mechanics until we got to the final Boss, the bathetically-named Simon Gray. 

Before we did the Poltergeist boss, Foreman Nakashima, our healer said "Worst boss next" but if he was any different to any of the others, or even some of the regular mobs, I didn't notice. I did get stunned a couple of times but it didn't seem to matter. 

At this level New World seems fairly forgiving of group make-up. We didn't have a tank at all. We had a a main healer and someone else was putting down some back-up heals when they weren't DPSing. The rest of us were just gung-ho, in there, hacking away. It was only on Simon that it all fell apart.

I had read the strats on him before going in so I knew he was going to call a lot of adds and throw up on us and that the adds would eat his vomit to heal themselves. I had a dog like that, once. 

There was some discussion before we started about tactics. As PUGs go, this one was chill, friendly and chatty. I didn't say much but only because I was fighting the UI. The chat interface is another mark in the Bad column for me. It was a pleasant experience socially, anyway, even they all probably went away thinking I must be the shy, retiring type.

It's always a good sign when no-one leaves after a wipe. We wiped with Simon at about 60% on our first try. There was talk of kiting him and using ranged attacks but since at least two of us had no ranged attacks, me being one of them, that didn't really happen.  

I did learn how to dodge effectively, though. In the two dozen levels up until then I'd never needed to bother. It's a nasty, inelegant, unsatisfying sort of dodge compared to the balletic leaps and rolls I'm used to in Guild Wars 2 but it's effective enough if you get the timing right. 

For all my successful dodging, I still got killed and so did everyone else. We wiped with Simon at about 50% that time. Getting better. And again no-one quit. Or even complained.

Third time's the charm, they say, although in my experience of PUGs like this sometimes it's more like tenth time. Not today, though. On the third try we did indeed manage to kite the Boss around fairly effectively, deal with most of the adds and slowly whittle down his health until finally he exploded.

The game was quick to congratulate us on having finished the instance but luckily I'd read ahead so I knew I wasn't finished just yet. I still had to find the item I'd come in for in the first place, loot it and update my quest. If I'd missed that I'd have had to do the whole thing over again with another pick-up group and it almost certainly would not have gone so well. And don't think I haven't done that before, either... 

As an introduction to dungeoneering in New World I'd have to say it was a decent one. I'm still strongly against mandatory group stages in mainly soloable quest lines but at least I can now complain about it from a position of authority. 

As for the mechanics of the group experience, it felt more like a GW2 dungeon than anything: frenzied, chaotic, messy, freeform. I think much of that might be down to our not having had a proper tank. The classic trinity does seem to be in place but on the flimsy evidence of one run in a low-level dungeon, it looks like there's quite a lot of flexibility.

I was just glad to get it done. I'll bet there are more compulsory group stages to come but for now I can forget about having to look competent. I think I got away with it this time but I don't want to push my luck.

The other significant quest I wanted to get done today was much more straightforward. I'd topped out on reputation for my chosen faction a couple of levels back, when I'd hit the point where you have to do a trial to get promoted to the next rank. The problem was, the NPC who gives the quest didn't believe I could do it. I was Level 23 when I went to talk to her but she wanted to see my Level 25 papers before she'd let me risk my neck.

That's going in the "Don't Like" column, too: all these arbitrary caps and gates. For a supposed sandpark there are a lot of rules and regulations. It seems to me that if I can do the stuff that leads up to a quest I ought to be given the chance to attempt the quest itself. If I get my head handed to me, so what? We fall down, we get back up. That's Aeternum.

When I did get the quest at last, having dinged twenty-five on the hand in for the Azoth staff one, it was something of a doddle. By far the hardest part was getting across the annoying planking onto the ship where the Captain I had to kill was waiting. I fell off three times. Died once because I got stuck in a box. There was swearing.

Killing the captain, when I finally got to him, was no problem. I could easily have done it a level earlier, when I first asked for the assignment. I'd say I told you so but none of the meatheads in the Marauders is going to listen. Maybe I should have joined the Syndicate after all.

With those two roadblocks cleared, tomorrow I can get on with something much more important. I have the money to buy a house. Now I just have to decide which town I want to live in. I have the standing to become a householder in Monarch's Bluff but I think I might prefer the etrnal autumn of Everfall.

I guess that means more questing. It never ends, does it?

Pick It Up And Pack It In

For weeks now I've been nothing but positive about Valheim. It's probably past time I mentioned something I don't like. The inventory.

I count myself something of an afficionado, if not an expert, on lugging stuff about in games. I consider inventory management to be a significant gameplay element in its own right. I'm on record as someone who spends whole Sundays sorting their banks and loves it.

The last time I remember having this much trouble with my bags was in the Allods beta. Even the stingiest free to play titles, the ones that rely on bag sales in the cash shop to keep the servers up, don't stint on space the way Valheim does.

Thirty-two slots is all you get. It's possible there are games with fewer but I'm willing to bet that in none of those games does every piece of armor you're wearing and every weapon you're weilding take up one of your valuable slots. 

Let's look at what's in my bags right now. I haven't prepared this. I just logged in, took a screenshot of what was there and logged out again. 

Top row: 

Slot 1 - Poison Resist Mead. Absolutely essential to have on a hot key if you're venturing into the swamp. You do not want to be opening your inventory and scrabbling around looking for a potion just as the last one runs out and an ooze appears out of the gloom right next to you.

Slot 2 - Bow - Arguably you might manage without hot-keying the bow since it's situational but I like to have mine handy so I can take down trolls and drakes as soon as they attack. I also like to pop every deer that doesn't see me coming, since I can never get enough meat (ironic, since I've not eaten meat in real life since the late 1980s).

Slot 3 - Mace - This is one I could swap for something more useful. I made it to fight Bonemass but then I never used it. And I've never used it since, either. 

Slot 4 - Axe - Until I made the Silver Sword, the axe was my main weapon. Even now it's almost as good and of course it also cuts down trees. I'm always going to need my axe close at hand.

Slot 5 - Hammer - It has to go there because that's where it goes. Same applies to the axe and the pick. I've played so many hours of Valheim I have strong muscle memory for the tools and weapons I use most. If I try putting them inside the pack I just keep pressing the old keys before I'm consciously aware I'm going to do it and whatever's in those slots gets used instead. Which is very annoying if it happens to be a consumable.

Slot 6 - Silver Sword - I was loathe to stop using the axe but when you move from iron to silver there's no new axe recipe, or not that I've found. When I looked at the sword and saw it did the same damage at level one as the iron axe does at level four, plus extra "spirit" damage on top, I knew I'd have to make one and learn how to use it. 

The main problem was where to put it. Until then slot six had always belonged to my hoe. I still end up waving my sword about when all I mean to do is flatten some ground. It's infuriating.

Slot 7 - Pickaxe - See Slot 5.

Slot 8 - Iron Sledge - This is a slight indulgence. I could probably get away with having the sledge deeper in the pack because once again it's situational. The thing is, it's also fun to use, extremely effective on skeletons and blobs, highly efficient on gangs of greydwarves and good for clearing brushwood and small trees. If I put it away I'd only keep getting it out again.

Second row:

Slot 1 - Obsidian arrows - If you're going to use a bow you're going to need to carry arrows. Highlighted in blue because I've selected them as the ones I want to use.

Slot 2 - More obsidian arrows - Usually I only carry one stack but I'd just made some new ones and these were left over.

Slots 3 - 7 - Free space!

Slot 8 - Medium Health Mead - Always carry some of these. If for any reason I get out of my depth or a blob jumps me in the meadows (it happens) one of these can save my life. And has. Many times.

I would, obviously, prefer to have my health potions on a hot key but when I did I kept drinking them by mistake. I used to keep them in the top row, slot three, where the mace is now, but my fat fingers would sometimes start me glugging when I was aiming to grab my axe or my bow, so I reluctantly had to put them deeper in the pack. I always keep them in the current position so I don't have to waste a moment searching for them in an emergency.

Third row:

Slot 1 - The miner's helmet thing. I forget the Norse name for it. I was using it constantly in the swamp but not so much now I'm mostly in the mountains. Still not going to go anywhere without it, obviously.

Slot 2 - Wishbone. I thought I'd only need this when I went looking for silver. Then I found out you can find sunken chests with it in the meadows and iron in the swamp. I'm at the annoying stage where if I'm not wearing it I feel like I might be walking right over something. Even though what's in the chests isn't all that interesting I'm not ready to give it up just yet.

Slot 3 - Sausages - Always need sausages. Nuff said.

Slot 4 - Cooked Meat - See Slot 3.

(At this point I should mention that both those meat products are in the wrong place. I usually keep whatever three foods I'm using in the bottom row on the right, where the raspberries are. I must have moved them for some reason. I'll put them back where they should be when I log in).

Slot 5 -6 - More free space!

Slot 7 - Cultivator. I'd really prefer to hotkey this. I use it a lot and it's very annoying to have inside the pack. I have to open inventory, select the cultivator, close inventory, then right-click to select function to use it. Then to stop using it I either have to select another tool (even if I don't need to use one) or re-open inventory and de-select the cultivator. It gets on my nerves.

Slot 8 - Hoe. See slot 7.

Bottom row:

Slots 1 - 4 - Armor. Never not going to need that.

Slot 5 - Strength belt. I always used to have this selected. Then I got the wishbone. You can only use one magical doodad at a time so it's a choice between the two of them. I tend to have the wishbone on until I hit the three hundred weight limit then swap to the belt. 

Slot 6 - Raspberries. My third food. Just happens to be raspberries because I was exploring and that's what I was able to forage along the way. 

Slot 7 - Coal. The one thing in this snapshot that totally should not be there. I imagine I happened to walk in range of the kiln at some point and some coal flipped itself into my bag without me noticing. Or I burned some meat and didn't spot it when I picked it up. Or maybe I killed a surtling somewhere. Whatever, it shouldn't be in my bags.

Slot 8 - Crypt Key. Essential during the iron age for getting the gates open on sunken crypts. Arguably I could keep it in a chest somewhere now I'm on silver but it's surprising how many times I end up in a swamp without meaning to. It would be very awkward to run into a crypt to escape a horde of draugr and find I couldn't get the gate open.

So there it is. Out of thirty-two possible slots I'm carrying twenty items I'd consider to be essential and a couple more I'd really rather hang onto, thanks. It means I'm operating at all time with an effective free inventory of just ten slots.

In almost any other game I've played, all my armor, my trinkets, the weapons I was using and any ammunition they needed would be stored on my character doll, not in my inventory. In many games there would be dedicated, non-general-inventory slots for crafting tools, potions and food as well.

And yet, even if we had all of that in Valheim, the game would still have the meanest space allocation I've ever seen! Thirty-two slots! Even if more than half of them weren't being taken up with things that should never be there in the first place, that's pathetic!

I might (might...) accept it if it was done as a point of principle. If there was some gameplay intent behind it, like the way Darkfall supposedly made players rummage through their inventory so as to add tension to PvP. Or if it was in the service of "realism", as in those games where objects have both weight and size and you have to fiddle around trying to get them all to fit.

But Valheim doesn't do any of that. You can walk around with enough wood to build a couple of decent-sized houses and a longboat if you want. Or enough stone to build a tower. Realism has absolutely nothing to do with it.

I think it's just bad design, pure and simple. The game needs a proper paper doll for the character and it needs more basic inventory space. 

In gameplay terms it would also benefit hugely from character inventory being included in progression. We should be able to make packs that increase our carrying capacity the way we can already make bigger chests to increase static storage.

I imagine all of this will come in time. Valheim seems so finished, so feature-complete, it's very easy to forget it's not just in Early Access but that even Early Access has only just started.

There are plenty of things about Valheim I don't look forward to seeing change as the demands of more and more players mean compromises are made but I do look forward to having more room in my bags. 

That can't come soon enough.

Dancing By The pool

Here's a little thing I forgot about World of Warcraft's free trial (aka Starter Edition): if you don't pay, you don't get to use the mail.

In a game with no shared bank facilities, where the normal means of passing items from one character to another on the same account is by posting them, that seems a little harsh. You'd have thought they might restrict mail to just your own characters. What harm could that do?

I found out the hard way when I logged my new Vulpera Hunter into Orgrimmar last night. Attentive readers may remember I'd prepped for the cancellation of my subscription by making several new characters and sending them thirty-slot bags and pocket money. 

It wasn't until I went to open my inventory that I remembered something. When I'd made the new fox I'd sent her the stuff but she'd never gotten around to taking it out of the mailbox. And now she can't. Bummer.

That was why I ended up playing my new Goblin Warlock instead. It was touch and go whether she'd have bags and gold either. I remembered that I had logged her in but I also recalled running around Kezan for so long, searching without success for the bank, that I'd given up and logged her out back where she'd started. 

I thought I'd better check whether she was in the same predicament. Luckily it turned out she'd at least collected her mail before leaving. Since she was out I thought I might as well play her. 

So I did. And it was fun. A lot of fun. Back in 2013 I described the Goblin starting zone as "a fascinating place... genuinely laugh-out-loud funny" and I see no reason to alter my opinion. I'm not absolutely sure I've played through all of WoW's starting zones but of all the ones I can remember Kezan is by far the most entertaining. 

In that post I also wrote "had I known I was going to be expelled from it so abruptly and terminally at around level five I would have taken a lot more trouble to explore it in depth", something I found myself thinking again last night. I did manage to spend a little more time poking around under the elevated highways, down in the slums where the poor folk live but I still think I need to make another goblin and go poke around some more. 

Here's the thing about WoW. It applies to a lot of mmorpgs, come to think of it. A huge amount of work goes into the starting zones and the character, personality and culture of the races that live in them. And then most of that work is just thrown away.

About the only races that seem to retain some measure of consistency are the ones designed as comic relief. Gnomes, goblins and talking rats, usually. (The Asura in Guild Wars 2 are a bizarre hybrid of all three). They're the short ones who speak funny and make ridiculous machines that frequently blow up in their faces. That seems to be a joke that never grows old for developers. 

All the other races, no matter how different they start out, tend to clump up into one heroic (or villainous) blur as they diasporate around the world. (Yeah, that's not a word. Just go with it).

I'd very happily play a version of WoW that focused most of its attention on the goblins and their culture. It's plain to see from the brief time we get to spend in Kezan that there would be no shortage of material. There's enough conniving and backstabbing and plotting to fill dozens of storylines. You don't need external threats with a culture like theirs. 

Except this is heroic fantasy so the external threat to end all external threats turns up before you make level five. Nothing like a dragon attack to put some fire under you. Then a volcano goes off and the island sinks so that's the end of that.

It's all go but I'm not sure any of it tops the quest where you cruise around town in a convertible, picking up your crew to go party. Seriously, that's the game I want to play. I want to get to know my guys, hear their back stories, blag our way into parties and onto private yachts, make it on the scene. 

In the short time before the volcano erupted I got to drive a car, win a footbomb match, dance by the pool and get dressed up fit for a red carpet premiere. Not to mention rob a bank and blow up my own house. Nothing's going to match that. It's all downhill from there. 

I ended up comatose on a raft with nothing left but my good name. In a place that eerily reminded me of the new starting zone, Exile's Reach. Remember that first quest there, where the Murlocs have stolen a bunch of stuff and you have to go get it back? Well this is like that, only instead of Murlocs, it's monkeys.

Levels zip by all too fast in the free lane. My goblin was already level seven when I left her, sitting at the top of some stairs, staring out across the waves to where her homeland used to be. She'll be level ten by the time she gets to Orgrimmar and her life will be half-way over. 

I just hope she can find the bank.

Cruel Garrison

Time for a very quick update on what I've been up to in World of Warcraft. Dithering, mostly. My monthly subscription falls due in five days and I haven't yet decided whether to cancel. 

I re-subbed back in October with the intention of checking out the Shadowlands pre-patch, the level squish, Chromie Time and the new tutorial zone, Exile's Reach. I did all of those, wrote a bunch of posts about it and generally had a pretty good time. 

The plan had also been to open up access to the Vulpera allied race, make a fox and level that character to the cap but what with one thing and another I ended up levelling a goblin shaman first, all the way from character creation to the pre-Shadowlands level cap of fifty, something I definitely hadn't expected to find myself doing. After that I didn't quite have the determination to push the fox to fifty, mostly because the EverQuest II expansion arrived when she was about ten levels shy.

When Reign of Shadows appeared in early December I didn't stop playing WoW altogether but my hours dropped to a bare minimum. I was still logging in but almost entirely to keep my ricketty garrison working on hexweave bags. 

 

Even so, that took more time than I expected. I'd imagined it would be like EverQuest's Overseer, just a few clicks on the UI each day, but it seems Blizzard intended something a lot more hands-on. Making bags required me to keep my tailor supplied with sumptuous furs, while upgrading just the few buildings I needed to get the operation up and running cost gold I didn't have. 

I found myself out hunting wolves and cat-people for their fur for an hour or so almost every other day and making repeated forays into old raid instances to make money. For the last two months I've played WoW every day and while I've been there, that's all I've done. 

At first it was fun. Then it became a habit. Now it's starting to feel like a chore. I guess it's the WoD experience in microcosm. And I'm beginning to realize it's also all been a bit... pointless.

First I noticed that hexweave bags can reliably be bought for between 250g and 300g on my server. Using my garrison I can make a bag every other day or so for free but I can make enough gold to buy three or four bags in just the time it would take me to gather the fur. 

It's more satisfying to make them, in theory, but that satisfaction wears off after the first half-dozen or so. I'm at the point now where I feel I might as well just do a bunch of old raids once a week and buy my bags.

 

More significantly, I realized eventually that having an Alliance character with a garrison isn't going to help my Horde characters with their inventory issues. Blizzard take their faction split a lot more seriously than most other developers. Since one of the main reasons I was doing this in the first place was to put thirty slot bags on my Vulpera hunter I clearly didn't think it through.

Of course, I have Horde characters who could build garrisons of their own. And that sounded like a fairly attractive option until I realized something else. Garrisons are unique to the character that quests for them, not the account or even the faction on that account. 

Since my end-game here is to be capable of supplying big bags on demand to any new characters I make and play under the free-to-play rules after I cancel my subscription, what I should have done was send one Alliance and one Horde character, under level twenty, to start a garrison and then be very careful not to let them level too far to be able to keep using it. 

I'd already confirmed on my other free account that you don't need to subscribe to have a garrison and that under the new levelling rules you can get the quest at level ten. Today I spent half an hour getting my level fifteen druid from Stormwind to Shadowmoon Valley just to make absolutely sure she couldn't use the garrison I already had. I've found that no matter what online guides tell you about WoW you never really know for sure until you test it in game.

 

This time I could have saved myself the swim. She couldn't even see the damn thing. It exists in some other plane of reality, apparently. I spent the next half hour porting back to talk to Chromie then heading back to Shadowmoon to get the necessary quests.

That was just for proof of concept. I'd have to do the same again with a horde character and then I'd have to level up the garrisons and the necessary buildings and keep farming the furs and I'd have to fund all of that with characters in their teens. It makes absolutely no sense and I'm not going to do it.

A better plan might be to use the remaining five days of my sub to make enough gold with my Horde and Alliance level fifty characters to buy enough hexweave bags for everyone. That would be far, far easier and an ideal project for keeping my hands busy while I listen to the second England-Sri Lanka Test Match.

That's sorted then. Grind some gold, buy some bags, cancel the sub, go back to playing for free. Only...

I've been wondering whether I ought to buy Shadowlands. I've read a lot about it and it sounds pretty good for someone who enjoys levelling. I'd probably get a month or two's solid entertainment out of it and it's looking likely I'll be at home for about that long before I get the call to go back to work.

So, I'm dithering, as I said. Shadowlands is tempting but I haven't really finished with Reign of Shadows yet. It would make more sense to concentrate on finishing one expansion before I start on another. 

Or I could just let the sub roll on for another month and decide later. That's how they get you, isn't it? 

Well, it's how they get me, anyway.

Tested By Research: EverQuest

Storage space. It's always been an issue in EverQuest, hasn't it? Not so much in your bank. These days vault space is positively generous. On your character. That's where it's a problem.

Remember all those stories from the early days? Enterprising low-levels hanging around the entrances to dungeons, offering to carry your loot back to town and sell it, for a fee? That really happened. Small bags filled up fast with stuff that didn't stack. Going to a vendor took too big a chunk out of the time you had to hunt. Worse, if you were the healer or the tank, everyone else had to stop until you got back.

Over the years things haven't got much better. Oh, there's more loot that stacks now, for sure, but plenty still that doesn't. And quest items and crafting mats, they must have grown by orders of magnitude. EQ's industry-standard loot window makes deciding what to pick up and what to leave so much easier but the old problem still remains. Those bags just fill so fast.

It's why one of the key features of every Collector's Edition these days is a capacious 100% weight reduction bag. Forty slots seems to be the current gold standard. You can buy them in the cash shop, too., although they're not cheap and there are restrictions on how many you can have.

I've never really made much of an effort to upgrade my inventory in EverQuest. Mostly I just buy the cheap ten-slot tinker's toolkits, the so-called Deluxe Toolbox, but last time I took a serious run at leveling my Magician I did try to do something to avoid that endless series of Sophie's choices between making xp or making money.

The mage was already off to a flying start with the two twenty-four slot Heroic Satchels of the Adventurer that came with the free boost to 85 she got when Heroic Characters were added to the game. I'd also invested in a couple of gigantic, player-made thirty-two slot Extraplanar Trade Satchels for her. There's always someone selling those in the Bazaar for a very reasonable price. Even though they only hold items flagged "tradeskill", there are a lot of those and some of them sell for plenty, so I like to scoop them all up as I go.

There's more in there than just the bags but face it, that's what you're paying for.

The rest of her bag slots were filled with a variety of ten-slot containers and one twelve-slotter. In total she had one hundred and seventy-four inventory slots - and they were all full. Time to do something about it.

Except, of course, in EverQuest you can't just do something as simple as buy bigger bags.

Well, okay, fine. That's exactly what you can do, if you have the money. But bags, as I've already suggested, don't come cheap, either in or out of game. And even if you have the money and are willing to spend it, it's still not that simple. Really. Nothing in Norrath ever is.

I looked at the Bazaar to see what was on offer. Various crafters can make bags of diferent sizes and there were plenty up for sale. Bottom of the line, a few 12-slots at around 4k plat. My price range but a couple of extra slots here and there weren't going to make much difference.

Then there were the tailormade expandable bags. Those were all twelve slots too but you could make them biger, somehow. I vaguely remembered it from the last time, when I decided it was all too complicated to be bothering with.

How it works is this: a tailor with very high skill makes a bag that has twelve slots. There are a whole bunch of them with fancy names - Legendary, Supreme, Flawless, Transcendent - but they all have just the twelve slots. These bags are both tradeable and expandable. Anyone, regardless of crafting skill, can buy one and combine it with a vendor-sold reagent to create a No Trade 14, 16, 18 or 20 slot bag.

This will make sense later. Maybe.

Yes, it's already sounding complicated but there's more. When I said anyone could do the combine I should have said "anyone who's bought and read the correct book on how to do it". Or scribed the necessary recipe, if you prefer to be less lore about it.

I must have spent at least an hour researching how to do it. Not nearly long enough, as it turned out. First I read a couple of guides on the general principles, Fanra's being the clearest of them. Then I had to investigate the source of all the necessary books and reagents, most of which seemed to have been introduced at different times and in different expansions.

There didn't seem to be much point buying the smaller bags. The reagent seemed to be the same for all of them. Someone was selling the Transcendent, which expands to twenty slots, for 10,500 plat each, while the rest were between six and eight thousand. Anything but the biggest seemed like a false economy.

Naturally, by the time I'd decided on the biggest bag, the person selling it for ten and a half grand had logged off, so I ended up paying twelve thousand instead. By this time I'd also realized I had an unexpanded Supreme bag in my inventory already. That goes to sixteen slots. The reagents cost more than two thousand five hundred platinum each so I was already getting close to twenty grand for two bags. I only had around 90k in total, earned over several years, and I had spells to buy, too. Two bags it was, at least for now.

Buying the reagent was easy. A vendor in Plane of Knowledge sold that one. One of the recipe books was on another vendor nearby but according to a couple of guides I'd read, for the other I'd need to go to somewhere called Shards Landing. I'd never even heard of it but some further research sugested I could get there by way of the Befallen dungeon in the Commonlands. At least I knew where that was.

Looking back, I think I was lulled into a false sense of security by the familiar names, the very low-level entry point and the knowledge that the vendor I was looking for was in the service hub of some expansion or other. The due diligence I failed to apply was which expansion, what level cap and whether the overland/underground route I was proposing to take had been the normal entry point at the time.

Had I taken the trouble to read it up, I would have discovered that Shard's Landing was introduced as part of the Rain of Fear expansion in 2012, when the level cap was raised to one hundred. It's a zone intended for levels 95 to 97. More significantly, the zone through which I meant to travel to get there, the Chapterhouse of the Fallen, was a dungeon, recommended for characters at level 100. By which, of course, they meant groups.

That looks new. Let's poke it and see what happens.

I got to Befallen and saw a great, blue stone outside the entrance. You could hardly miss it but I'd never seen it before, which strongly suggests it's been more than eight years since I last visited Befallen on a Live server. I've been there plenty of times on various Progression and TLE servers, as well as Tipa's recreation of the dungeon in Neverwinter, but evidently it's been nearly a decade since I last visited the original.

I clicked on the crystal because who wouldn't? In I zoned. It was dark. Very dark. I was so taken with just how dark it was, I stopped to take a selfie, because I have a post brewing about how infuriating dark zones are and how developers seem to be in love with them in a way I'm convinced players are not.

I took a few steps down the first corridor and spotted a couple of undead mobs of some description barrelling towards me. I just had time to con them and see they were dark blue (dark blue for danger is the motto these days) before I found myself flat on my back, dead.

It was at this point I remembered I'd suspended my cleric mercenary a couple of hours back so she wouldn't keep charging me money just for standing around. Not that I think she could have done much to keep me up but at least I might have got a rez , assuming they didn't kill her, too.

All my lovely raid buffs, gone, along with my pet and his buffs, his weapons and his armor. Once, that would have been a blow but these days it's just a matter of letting the game idle in the background while I play something else until the sleet of MGBs fills it all back up again. As for the lost xp, its just a case of paying an NPC in the Guild Lobby to summon my corpse and wait for my Merc to give me a 90% rez. One Overseer quest is going to replace that tenfold.

The lost time, though, that you never get back. Also, at 101 a summoning stone now costs over a thousand plat. Dying may not be the shock of ice water it once was but it's still something you very much want to avoid if at all possible. And that was an extremely avoidable death.

Seriously, does anyone enjoy playing in the dark?

Chastened, needing to wait to let my buffs build back up, I turned to more research. And guess what? It turns out that if I'd been paying attention I'd not only have realized the route I was planning was a suicide run but I'd have found out I didn't need to go to Shard's Landing at all!

The bloody vendor who sold me the first recipe book also sells the other one! It was there in front of me if I'd only scrolled down. And I only found that out after another unecessary, if unfatal, side-trip to the housing district, Sunset Hills, where I mistakenly thought yet another vendor might be able to hook me up. He did have a bag-expanding recipe book, just not the one I wanted. I bought it anyway. Might as well cover all the options.

Eventually I had everything I needed: the unexpanded bags, the reagents and the scribed recipes. I turned to the loom, standing handily beside the vendor, and made the first combo. It worked! Twenty slot bag!

I swapped some stuff around to empty the other unexpanded bag. I searched for the recipe, hit "Combine" and... it didn't work! No sixteen slot bag! Why? No idea. I checked everything, all the names. Just as it should be. The reagent was outlined in green, showing it was right, but the bag itself was rimmed in red, meaning it wasn't. Why? I don't frickin' know!

At this point I could have done some more research. Or I could have asked in game. People love to show how clever they are. If I'd made and obvious error someone would have been delighted to point it out to me. Instead, I noticed the loom has an "Experiment" option. It lets you put any combination of items inside and see if they make something. In the old days, if they didn't, everything you had in there would be destroyed but they'd changed that long ago. Or I hoped they had.

Clearly having learned nothing from my trip to the Chapterhouse, I manually moved the reagent and the bag into the loom and pressed Combine again, because why prep? And this time it worked. Why? No more idea than before. Don't know and, quite frankly, don't care. Sixteen slot bag, baby!

They look so lovely, empty.

So now I had eighteen more slots than I started with but I knew I could do better. In the course of my research I'd spotted that one of the options available on the loyalty vendor is a sixteen slot box.

The loyalty system is yet another thing I've never really paid much attention to in EQ. Like everything else in the game it's unfeasibly complex and confusing and I could probably fill a whole post trying to explain how it works it but for the time being let's just say I've accrued a lot of tokens and never spent any of them.

The box is about the most expensive thing on the vendor and normally I'd balk at blowing such a big chunk of my resources on something as basic as a bag that only gives me an extra four slots above what I already have, but...

The thing I never knew about the Loyalty system is, you keep getting get tokens even when you're free to play.And you get more tokens than F2P players if you're account is flagged "Silver", meaning you paid your five dollars for the upgrade, back when that was an option, which I did. So I've been building up my tokens all this time even though I didn't know it.

Except, I haven't, because the other thing I never knew about the loyalty system is that there's a cap! You can't have more than 5760 tokens no matter what your account status might be. And guess how many I had? Well, actually I had 5772. I don't know how that happened.

Never mind how! Now I have a new sixteen slot box and 4044 loyalty tokens. That'll teach me not to pay attention to the small print. I probably ought to log in all the other accounts and check those, now I come to think of it. It's like a license to spend money!

In game, they expand perfectly. On the blog, not so much.

Last of all, I went out to finish up a very long quest I had in my journal. I must have started it five years ago, when it was level-appropriate solo content and hard work but after the magician's recent growth spurt it looked like a nice, relaxing toddle to the end of the session. The final reward was a twelve-slot bag. Not much of an upgrade but twelve has always been bigger then ten.

Another half-hour and there I was, two dozen inventory slots better off than when I began. It had only taken me most of the day and cost me about twenty thousand plat.

I was in the groove, though, so I figured I might as well carry on and get the new level 101 Air pet spell, seeing as how my old one had snuffed it, along with all the buffs I'd gotten him.

I'll spare us all the painful details of how I paid for a teleport stone to the wrong Katta Castellum and spent twenty minutes running around the zone, looking for a spell vendor who wasn't there. Or the time I wasted sailing the wrong way on the wrong boat through Buried Sea, trying to find the Tempest Temple, and how eventually I had to swim there. No one died and its all a bit embarassing and we've all done it, haven't we? Let's move on...

It was around eight in the evening when I swapped over to Guild Wars 2 to do my dailies, leaving magician, new pet and merc to soak up buffage in the background. EQ plays very nicely in a closed window. You can leave it up all day and scarcely know it was there.

I'd been playing for about eight hours, on and off, all day really, mostly reading stuff and running about, the longest EQ session I can remember. It was great! I had a fantastic time. Can't wait to do it again, only this time I'm going to go somewhere very easy and make some fast money. I know some spots where the mobs carry high-value gems and my new pet will all but one-shot them.

I'll have that 30k I spent back in no time if everything goes to plan. And if there's one thing I know about EverQuest, it's that everything always goes exactly to plan...