A Token Effort

Introducing...

The Community Token System

Wait! What? What the heck is that? 

You may well ask. Here, I'll let Angeliana, Senior Community Manager for EverQuest II explain. 

Got that? Good, because I'm not sure I have.

As far as I can make out, it's a new reward system for participating in events. Sometimes inside the game itself but mostly on social media. 

There's one running already, Can you guess what it is?

No, you can't. You'd be all day trying. It's an anagram competition in which you have to unscramble the names of ten NPCs. Here, have a go. See how you do.

• ovine roofgarden
• bermilksop nostril
• age hypo thorp
• alvina vibes
• ashton kneecapped
• celery mayo
• balking bilgegregg
• adrea hemoglobin
• atomize hats
• alga stung

No? Me neither. I've been playing this game since 2004 and none of those is ringing any bells. And do you know why? Because, like any rational person, I don't pay any attention to the names of NPCs. 

Why would I? I'm not going to hang out with them or call them up on the phone. Either they want me to do something or they serve a function. Why would I need to know the full name of a bank teller or a shopkeeper? Maybe, if it was on a name badge, I might know their first name but would I remember it for next time? 

In fact, I have all overhead names in EQII set to Mouseover so I only ever see them when I specifically target someone. I don't need all that visual clutter and cruft.

Looking at the anagrams, several of which are really good, I suspect Angeliana, or whoever came up with the list, enjoys making anagrams out of peoples' names in real life. I've known people who do that, some of them quite compulsively. 

People who aren't engaged with the whole anagram concept but want to make some kind of puzzle tend just to randomize the names or words into gibberish. True afficionados make new words and often try to make them as funny as they can or fit them somehow to the personality of the name's owner. That's clearly what's going on here.

Obviously, I won't be sending in my answers because I don't have any. If I did, though, I'd be sending them directly to Angeliana in a Private Message, which seems quite an odd way to go about it, although I guess you can't have people just posting the unscrambled names on a forum thread.

Except I have seen other games do similar puzzles and use exactly that form of response, which always suggests the whole thing is actually a giveaway, not a competition at all, like all those codes you can type in to get freebies that are supposedly special rewards for doing something in particular but which get re-posted on third-party websites and social media and work for absolutely anybody. Not that I ever uses any of those...

In contrast, this is a genuine competition. There are only thirty prizes and Angeliana is going to select them randomly using  a "Wheel Of Names", which she says like it's a thing we all know. She's even going to record herself doing it "to show validity of the wins."

It all seems remarkably complicated to me, especially for a couple of tokens to spend in a gift shop. Maybe Ogor the Ogre (Even Ttobey isn't buying that name.) sells really good stuff, though, like the endgame raid gear Shintar was telling us you can get for another new token feature in Star Wars: the Old Republic. 

Yeah, he isn't, though. I was curious so I went to have a look at what he's got to offer. He was very easy to find. He's in Qeynos and Freeport (Because in Norrath it's standard practice to be two places at once if you're an NPC.). I never have a clue where any new NPC is likely to set up their stall in Qeynos but in Freeport it's always down by the docks or in the charmingly-named Execution Plaza (Political prisoners executed every hour, on the hour, since 2004.)

Better yet, you can ask a guard and get directions. They used to just swivel on their heels and point but now they still do that but also send a glowing trail right to the person you're looking for. I tried it just now and Ogor was literally about  fifty feet from where I was standing, so that was embarassing.

As you can see, he is not doling out raid gear for a token or two. He hasn't got any useable gear at all. Someone more cynical than me might say he hasn't got anything useful at all.

He's got a lot of house items, which is always nice but nothing so special you could imagine anyone wanting to unscramble a whole bunch of anagrams, then type the results into a chatbox in the hope of winning a lottery to get enough tokens to buy two of them. And remember, this is "a bit harder of an event", which is why you get two. Mostly, I can only assume, you'll be getting just one. If you're lucky.

Other than that, Ogor has a couple of quite nice petamorph wands, some decent appearance-slot robes, a couple of illusion items, some fireworks, two vanity pets and a peculiar-looking ground mount in the shape of a wolf wearing a saddle and bridle. The wolf looks like there's moss growing on it, too.

This is all the same sort of stuff that routinely gets given away in holiday events, of which, as I've noted before, Norrath has a plethora. It appeals to a very specific demographic that seems to make up a significant proportion of forum posters and quite possibly of the playerbase as a whole. I can't remember exactly when it happend but at some point in its twenty-year history, EQII became a game suited mostly for absolutely obsessive min-maxers at one end and completist collectionists of fluff at the other, with not an awful lot of room for anyone inbetweeen.

The latter are going to see some merit in the new Community Token System, I'm sure, although collectors and decorators tend to be picky. The endgame statisticians are presumably going to ignore it entirely. Whether there's much cross-over between the two factions I wouldn't care to speculate.

I don't think I'd go out of my way to earn tokens for any of Ogor's stock. If I happen to acquire any, though, I won't complain. I'd quite like those petamorph wands. 

I suppose it's going to depend mostly on what the events are like. I note that as well as competitions and similar events on the forums or Discord, Guides can also hand out tokens as rewards in the game itself. I haven't seen a guide event for a while but it's nice to know they still exist and also that Guides now have a way of encouraging players to join in with ad hoc events rather than just re-running the familiar Guide Quests (Not that those aren't always welcome - you can get some nice bags that way.)

Angeliana does also say that "From time to time, he will even get some items added" so we can hope for better, later. I very much doubt he'll ever have anything more than cosmetics to give away, though.

And that's fine. When I first read the forum post announcing the new feature I did worry for a moment that it was a replacement for Panda! Panda! Panda!, which does give some very good gear for the minor effort of some extremely easy questing.

The supposed lore explanation "Ogor the Happy, wants terribly to be an adventurer. Alas he cannot, so he needs you to get him some Norrathian Fables and bring them to him. In turn, he will let you choose from a plethora of items he happens to have sitting around." does make his motivation sound remarkably similar to Yun Zi's. I suspect that has more to do with lack of imagination than anything else. It's also how Qho's super-annoying gathering questline is explained.

Also, I just proved myself a liar by remembering their names immediately, without having to look anything up. I guess some NPCs do familiarize themselves over time after all.

Good luck getting a funny anagram out of either of their names, though!  

Welcome Back. Now Get To Work!

It's a testament both to the compulsive pull of survival game mechanics and the specific way they've been implemented in Once Human that, despite having other things I'd rather have been doing, and despite the glorious sunshine streaming through my window, I just spent the last two hours making a new character and playing through the early stages of the game, as far as Deadville. I only meant to log in for maybe ten or fifteen minutes to get some screenshots of the Returning Player rewards for a post but things kind of spiralled, in what I suppose I ought to see as a good way.

It was fun, anyhow. I mean, it wasn't very productive. I could much more usefully have spent the two hours tidying the house or starting to get the garden back in shape or working on another music video or just taking Beryl out for a walk in the sunshine (Although she wouldn't have thanked me for that, having had one walk already and not being the most active of dogs...)

I didn't do any of that, though. Instead I spent the first fifteen minutes finishing making my new character, having already spent half an hour on her last night. I already knew I was in trouble, even then. 

There's a handy Save option for appearance so I didn't have to start over from the beginning. I was trying to get a character that didn't look like my other one, which is why I ended up with someone with blue hair and a big scar. The problem as always is that if I don't feel right about a character from the start I'm very unlikely to keep playing them and the range of looks that make feel comfortable is quite narrow. If i make anyone that doesn't look quite a lot like all the other characters I make in all the other games, chances are I won't stick with them.

That braid is going to have to go. And you need to dye your hair...

I think I did alright with this one. She feels like I know her a little already. I certainly know the opening tutorial by now, having played through it at least half a dozen times. It's very good but it's not short. Even tabbing through all the dialog it took me about twenty minutes to get through.

And that's not the only reason it turns out coming back to Once Human isn't quite as simple as Starry would like to have you believe. This dev team has always had the most back-assward, over-complicated way of doing things and that hasn't changed a jot. I notice the game now has a Mostly Positive rating on Steam, which seems quite appropriate. I'm all but certain if they'd made the choices at the start that they've slowly and grudgingly made over the course of the first year, that rating would be Very Positive instead but they like to do everything the hard way.

All I was trying to do was get the rewards and take some pictures so my first choice was to log in my one existing character and claim them with her. I was also looking forward to moving her to the new scenario that allows access to the full map, the original areas plus those added in the Way of Winter. My further plans would then have been to stay on that server indefinitely, now the option to do so exists.

Except it doesn't. Not yet. Here's a detailed explanation of how it works now and how it's going to work later. Even after a competent journalist has gone through the whole thing and reframed it in clear, concise terms, I still find it confusing. 

Gimme the good stuff!

As far as I can tell, you have to pick a server and play through whatever Scenario it's running up to the end, when you would normally be forced to leave. That usually takes around six weeks or so. When it  happens, you still get kicked to Eternaland as always but, after kicking your heels there for a couple of hours, you can indicate you'd like to go back to where you came from, rather than choosing a new server or Scenario as you always had to before.

Once you're back where you started, you just need to make sure you log in at least once a month to avoid being kicked off the server for good. Later in the year that grace time will be extended to once every six months. 

All well and good but my character didn't have server to go back to. She's been in the limbo of Eternaland since before Christmas, which was when I last logged in. 

No problem. I just needed to pick a new Scenario and go from there. So I looked for the one where the whole map was open and... I couldn't find one. For a very good reason: one doesn't exist... yet. 

The full map will only be available with the "Endless Dream" Scenario, which is due to arrive "this year". It seems I've come back a tad early. Oh, well...

The jacket is some kind of reward too but for what I'm not sure.

Also, I ought to mention that the Endless Dream seems like it might be more of an endless nightmare:

"You might find yourself engulfed in darkness or afflicted with strange vulnerabilities—becoming unusually weak, flammable, or even explosive."

That wasn't quite what I had in mind when I envisaged a permanent server I could call home for the foreseeable future. Even so, if that's what it takes...

For the time being, though, I've gone very much the opposite way in my return to the game: E-Z Mode.

I looked at all the available Scenarios and decide that if I was going to start over, I might as well do it properly. So I re-rolled on a Novice server. 

I hadn't seen much point making new characters before, what with having to start over from scratch every couple of months anyway, but things have changed. Not only can we now have as many as ten characters on a single account (I seem to remember it was just one to begin with and then it was three but don't quote me on that.), they now all share a number of benefits on an Account-held basis, not just currencies but also blueprints, mods, accessories and most importantly - cosmetics.

No more wandering around for days with no pants! No more looking like Jethro from the Beverley Hillbillies in your full Rustic crafted gear! As soon as I got past the introduction and into the game proper I got a series of pop-ups telling me all the shared stuff I was now entitled to use and the first thing I did was give my new character a new look.

Aww! Now we can't see your blue rinse.

And what that made me realize was that I've never put nearly enough effort into finding or buying cosmetics. There didn't seem to be all that much point before; once I get a look I like, I tend to stick with it so there's not a lot of point building up an extensive wardrobe. Now, though, I can have as many as ten looks I like and stick with all of them.

I'm probably not going to go that far but I am re-motivated to go hunting for new things to wear and I'm very happy to know I can do it on my high-level character, where it will be relatively easy, and my low-level characters will reap the benefits. 

There doesn't appear to be any limit to the number of times you can share things or to the number of characters who can use them, either, although presumably once currency is spent by anyone, it's gone. I ought to check if two characters can wear the same hat at the same time, I guess. I'll try and remember to test that next time I log in.

And that will be soon, I imagine, partly because I had a really good time playing again this morning but also because some of those Welcome Back rewards are time-limited until you complete a Reward track to make them permanent.

I have fifteen days to do that. Will I? 

Well, let's just say one of the rewards is that giant cat I used to have, right back at the start. I've always wanted that back.

A Shattering Experience In EQII

I've been neglecting EverQuest II of late. That's how I came to miss the opening of the new update, Shattered Overture. It arrived a couple of days ago, together with this year's pre-expansion event, Fractured Skies.  

Last summer we got the Myths and Monoliths update in August and the Secrets of the Sands expansion prequel in September. This year it's a two-for-one package.  Does it mean anything? 

Maybe. Ask me again when I've finished the whole thing. What with spending every available gaming minute in Dawnlands (Eighty hours played and still counting.) it was only this morning that I got around to taking a look at the update, trying to read the runes for the expansion. 

Before I logged in I scanned the sketchily-edited press release (Poor verb tense consistency in paragraph one; mismatched singular/plural in paragraph two. The whole thing reads like a first draft and a rushed one at that.) and watched the extremely short trailer. Twenty seconds. Now that's concise.

I only had it in mind to check out the pre-expansion event. I was going to get some screenshots and gather enough background for a post. In the end, I spent a couple of hours doing not just the whole of the Fractured Skies questline (It's short, as the pre-expansion stories always are.) but also the first of the two Shattered Overture solo dungeons, Shattered Unrest. 

I also took a ridiculous number of screenshots (Almost seventy!) documenting most of the quest dialog and all of the rewards and boss drops. I do this almost every time I play any new content in EQII in the mistaken belief that I'll use the pictures in whatever post I write. It's crazy behavior. Can you imagine this post with seventy screenshots, almost all of them showing nothing but item stats and NPC speech bubbles?

 

See what I mean? No-one wants that. Forget all that finnicky detail. Is any of it fun and/or worth doing? Also, does the prequel reveal anything about the setting or theme of the expansion?

Yes, yes and kinda. 

Fractured Skies is a classic EQII expansion prequel event but for my money it's a pretty decent one. They almost always follow the same pattern: your character gets a letter asking them to go see someone, somewhere about something. Sometimes a reference is made to your high standing in Norrath and your past history of saving the world from existential threat. Other times, as now, you're just some adventurer who might be at a loose end.

When you get to wherever it is, whatever crisis precipitated the call has already ended but there's a lot of mopping up to do. Either a Big Name In Norrath (Firiona Vie, The Duality...) or cabal of self-appointed busybodies (The Far Seas Trading Company, The Concordium...) wants you to investigate how the crisis arose and what ought to be done about it.

You spend anything from a few minutes to a couple of hours, wandering around the general area looking at stuff and talking to people about what happened. While you're doing it, creatures related to the mysterious event (Golems, Elementals, Undead...) attack you for no apparent reason. 

You report your findings to whomever and get sent somewhere else to do much the same again, probably several times. All of your research uncovers very little of substance but you get some kind of hint about where the crisis originated. Usually a very vague hint.

When you're done, whoever thinks they're in charge asks you to keep on looking at the same stuff you already looked at, collect the same things you already collected and kill the same things that keep on attacking you. These are your repeatable quests that hang around for as long as there is left to go before the expansion arrives.

If you're only an adventurer you do those until either you have enough faction to buy all the stuff in the prequel faction shop that interests you or you go mad from boredom, whichever comes first. If you're a crafter, you also get to make a bunch of stuff for the busybodies, who always seem to have run out of something because they failed to secure any kind of working supply chain before setting up their camp.

This year's event follows that pattern precisely but I found it considerably more interesting than the cut & paste format might suggest, partly because it's very well done of its kind but also because there are some evocative call-backs to the very start of the game.

In the prequel, chunks of debris come crashing down from space, bringing back memories of The Shattering, when the moon Luclin exploded.  We never got to see that event, which occured immediately prior to the launch of EQII but now we don't just get to hear the locals speak of it again, we also share some of their terrible experiences as the rocks literally crash down around us as we go about our investigations. 

As well as the scares, I also had to laugh when one the residents of Thundering Steppes couldn't remember the ridiculously pompous name this year's know-it-alls have chosen to go by. They're calling themselves the Sky Watcher Sodality. Is it any wonder people find it hard to remember?

The crisis this time causes considerably less damage than the Shattering, but there's still a tidal wave from the impacts in the Shattered Seas (Always lot of shattering and fracturing going on in Norrath...)  and a significant number of casualties. The rocks that hit the shoreline along Thundering Steppes leave a weird turquoise stain and stir up some powerful undead as collateral damage but they also seem to have brought some previously unknown "metallic creatures" with them. Could it be a clue?

During the investigation someone has a vision of bird-people doing something or other. They look like owls, which immediately puts everyone in mind of the Hooluk, a race of owl-like bird-folk who live on several of the sky islands from EQII's second expansion Kingdom of Sky. The suspicion, naturally, is that it's pieces of those islands that have crashed to earth. Muggins here gets sent to check it out.

Once again, I found it quite amusing that none of the Hooluks I spoke to had any idea what I was talking about because as far as they were concerned nothing had happened. I particularly enjoyed the fobbing-off I got from one of the owls, who was quite obviously ready to promise me anything just to make me go away and leave him in peace.

I had a good time doing the short series of quests, partly because they are short and to the point but mostly because I found them quite nostalgic. They're full of call-backs to Norrathian history, something that works well on me, since I've been there for almost all of it. 

I suspect players with little grounding in the lore and legend of the game might find the whole thing a bit dull but at this point there's little chance of anyone like that having to force their way through to the end. There surely can't be anyone left playing the game who isn't deeply invested in it.

I wouldn't call any of this fan service so much as the developers both knowing their audience and also having been at this as long as most of the players. EQII is a job for life, whichever side of the screen you're on.

As for what the prequel might tell us about the expansion... not a lot in my judgment. Something has blown up and crashed down but the obvious candidate seems to have been ruled out. The metal blobs don't remind me of anything I've seen before and I can't remember if I've encounterd Hooluks anywhere other than Kingdom of Sky. We're going to have to wait until someone with a better memory than me figures it out. 

So much for the prequel. What about the update? Well, curiously that seems to tie in with the same theme with similar metallic creatures appearing in both. That's something I really wasn't expecting. I guess it explains why the two launched together.

There's very little backstory for this one, so far anyway. Dr. Arcana has managed to bugger up one of his tomb-raiding expeditions and somehow managed to deconstruct the Estate of Unrest in doing it. I should confess at this point that I have absolutely no fricken' clue who Dr. Arcana is. He turns up at every Public Quest, handing out extremely powerful items for "artefacts" retrieved but why he wants them or what he does with them I have no idea.

Once more, there's a raised eyebrow and a subtle wink in the quest dialog as Arcana admits he hasn't been entirely forthcoming about his motives in the past. He isn't this time, either, but at least he's willing to have a proper conversation for once.

He sends us into the shattered (Oh yes, I said shattered!) estate, now scattered in fragments across some kind of peach-colored void. He wants us to retrieve his lost artifacts along with some strange crystals he spotted there, when he was busy wrecking the joint. Getting them involves riding flying discs from exploded room to exploded room and fighting five (I  think it was five...) boss mobs.

I was expecting this to be a slog; it was anything but. My Berserker is decently geared for solo instances at this stage of the expansion cycle but by no means as well set up as he could be. Usually new content like this is tuned slightly above his comfort level. This time the regular mobs turned out to be very easy to dispatch and the bosses, with one exception, fun to fight and fast to kill.

The trash mobs dropped so quickly I thought I'd risk the first boss without even looking to see if anyone had written a walkthrough yet. Usually I like a bit of a hint about the tricks bosses employ before I take them on but I was feeling lucky. 

It all went swimmingly. I tanked and spanked Ferroc, who appeared to be a bull made of iron. I think he sumoned some help at one point but I just kept AEing like a good berserker should and barely even noticed. After that I worked my way through Crogyn (Giant beetle.), The Gooey Gobdrop (Exactly as it sounds.), Gildilisk (A drake, I think...) and finally The Bonecleaver (Looked like a robot to me.)

Every one of them I tanked and spanked. There were messages about each of them doing something but I just ignored it and kept on thumping. Nothing untoward happened until The Bonecleaver and even then I didn't change tactics. It just took ten times as long.

Old boney has a buff called Level The Playing Field that he gives himself at about 80% health. It almost completely protects him from all kinds of status effects, which are the source of the majority of damage players dish out. You can still hurt him but all your attacks do is their basic damage. I think he also does some kind of minor power drain too, just to be a pain.

The buff is dispellable so the idea is clearly that you take it off him every time he casts it. Unfortunately, Bereserkers don't get any form of Dispel Magic and I didn't have any items on me that could cast it either. I thought maybe my merc would handle it but either he doesn't have the spell or he was too dim to use it.

The upshot was that I had to grind the bastard down one lousy per cent at a time. It took me about twenty minutes. The upside was that I was never really in any danger. At one point I just left my Berserker and merc auto-attacking while I tabbed out to look the fight up in case there was something I was missing. No-one had written it up so I had to carry on as I was.

It was worth it. All the bosses in the instance drop Fabled gear that's a significant upgrade to anything I'm wearing. Everything is at least 425 Resolve with the best piece I got hiting 435. The portmanteau quest for doing the whole thing netted me a Fabled Prestige item rated 440.

Gear like that will give me a definite leg up but of course, it won't last long. We're on the ever-moving EQII gear train, where no item ever lasts more than a few months and anything you get at this time of year, at least as a solo player, is going to be replaced twice before Christmas. If that's not your bag then you're playing the wrong game.

Before I explore the second instance, the dramatically-named Imprinted Memory: Origin of the Fellfeather, I'll have to take all the Augments out of the pieces I'm replacing and put them in my new armor instead. I'm also going to have make up my mind whether to use the hatchet and dagger that dropped, switching from my two-hander to dual wield, or whether to go sword-and-board with the hachet and my new shield. Decisions, decisions.

And I'll have to remember to keep playing EQII. Every time I do, I have a good time so I'm  not sure why I keep forgetting to go back. At least when Panda Panda Panda starts up again I'll get a reminder once a week.

Oh, and while I remember, there's also a freebie floating around. As I logged in I got a pop-up offering me an EverQuest II 2023 Welcome Windstrider Crate. It was packed!

Inside I found a full set of Runed Windstrider appearance armor complete with staff, a Stormfury Trawler illusion that makes you look like a cyclops and a Trusted Guardian vanity pet that turns out to be another dog. That's my second EQII dog of the summer.

I wondered what had prompted such generosity so I looked it up. Apparently there was an event for Labor Day that I'd missed completely. Until September 25, every account, F2P included, is entitled to the crate I got (One per character) so don't miss out. 

Members are also supposed to get a one-per-account crate with a bunch more stuff including a Jumpa-Lope Windstrider mount that "flies with its ears". I'm a member and I didn't get one. I'm going to have to look into that.

Look In The Envelope

Guild Wars 2's Lunar New Year festival ends today, although at time of writing it's still running. The boom will come down whenever ArenaNet release the weekly Tuesday update, something that happens any time from three in the afternoon to eight in the evening, where I live.

As I wrote, back on January 11, I was a little late to the party this year, what with not actually playing the game on the regular any more, but once I'd been made aware it was happening, I was diligent in not missing a single day. Not that I did much while I was there, nor intended to. 

Other than running a few races for the fun of it, if they happened to be up when I arrived, all of my efforts were concentrated on buying every Lucky Envelope I was allowed on each of three accounts, then transferring all of them onto my main account to open. Just doing that took me fifteen or twenty minutes a day, easily.

For once, I didn't cash out as I went along but kept everything in my bags 'til the end. That means for the first time ever I'm actually able to see exactly what I got and how much money I made - or lost.

I opened all the envelopes in the Silverwastes, a map with a permanent 30% bonus to magic find. Lucky Envelopes are one of the very, very few openables to benefit from that generally useless stat so it's theoretically worth making some effort to raise it when opening them. 

For the first week and a half or so, I really didn't try all that hard. I ran a booster or two and had some MF food up but my magic find was somewhere around 450. It's generally reckoned it has to go over 500 to make much of a perceivable difference. About halfway through the run I grabbed some banners and boosts from various sources and by the last day I was running more than a hundred points higher. 

I finally topped out at 569 although it would have been twenty points  more if I'd taken the right accessory out of the bank. I was wearing the wrong one the whole time. It's not a large enough sample to be statistically significant, I'm sure, but subjectively it definitely did seem that my luck improved once my MF passed 500.

In the three weeks I was doing the event I received a ton of festival food and fireworks, the total amount of which I haven't bothered to tally. Nor have I worked out the value on the Trading Post should I choose to sell. I could do that. It's almost all tradeable. Most of it goes for coppers but some of the food is quite valuable so the total would run into a few gold, I'm sure.

I also acquired enough sparks of luck to add three percentage points onto my permanent magic find. MF is a fairly arduous stat to raise after about two hundred or so, so that's a not-insignificant jump. I also got three small lucky envelopes every day for a daily achievement whenever I opened the big ones. Those all gave minor rewards too but I didn't keep a track of what I got. Nothing significant, that's for sure.

In the twenty-one days I kept up with the event I bought five hundred and four Lucky Envelopes at a cost of one gold piece each. Here's what I got back, not counting the food, fireworks and luck:

Cash Items

• 13 Ornamental Gold Trophies - (8g 88s 88c) - Total Value 115g 55s 44c
• 519 Golden Rabbit Figurines - (88s 88c) - Total Value 461g 28s 72c

Total Value 576g 84s 72c

Useable Items

• 8 Lucky Rabbit Lanterns
• 4 Minis of Festival Lantern
• 3 Superior Runes of Fireworks
• 2 New Year's Weapon Chests

The rabbit lanterns, a back item with stats, can be upgraded into Golden Rabbit Statues but you only need one lantern per statue. I'll be making some of those at some point because the appearance is actually quite nice, for once. As for the rest, they don't sell for much now but as the years pass they tend to go up in value so I usually hang on to them. (And then never sell them but that's a different issue altogether...)

The minis are nice but absolutely worthless. There are tens of thousands for sale at 3 copper a time. The runes are decent and sell for over a gold each but I already have quite a few. They'll go in the bank.

The pick of the bunch is definitely the two weapon chests, if only because neither the box nor the weapons it contains is tradeable. If you want the skins, this is the only way you're going to get them. And, as it happens, the skins aren't bad. 

I chose the staff, called First Night's Spark, which is a cluster of red firecrackers on a stick. It goes
rather well with my Elementalist's current outfit and fits her style as a fire mage. I'm saving the other chest for now. You get to choose one weapon per chest and there are two skins left I don't have. I haven't decided which I want first yet.

All in all I'm pretty satisfied. I came out just over 70g ahead on the deal after the full three weeks. I could have made considerably more by just selling the envelopes on the Trading Post but then I wouldn't have got the two weapon skins or had the fun and excitement of opening the envelopes. Seems like a fair trade-off to me.

One thing I have come to believe as a direct result of the event and my rection to it: at this stage of my mmorpg career I almost prefer login rewards and free gifts to actually playing the games, at least when it conmes to games I know well already. I was incentivized to return to GW2 only by the prospect of opening these envelopes and every evening I found myself actively excited to do it. 

As numerous posts here over the past two or three years can attest, I can often find more to say about these kinds of giveaways than I can about the gameplay. I've often claimed to be able to see the positive side to lockboxes and as time goes on it's becoming harder and harder to deny that in many ways it's the boxes I like best about the games I play. I wouldn't ever pay a cent to open one but if they come free I'd rather open boxes than kill monster, most days.

Luckily for me, there seems to be no shortage of free boxes to open and no sign of the flow drying up any time soon. I've done opening envelopes in GW2 for now so imagine I won't be logging in there again for a while but I'm sure another game will pick up the slack soon enough.

If not, it's only a day until the next Amazon Prime giveaway. There'll be a post about that, too, I'm sure.

The Never-Ending Advent Calendar That Is Noah's Heart

Back when I began posting about Noah's Heart, right after the global rollout at the end of July, I talked a lot about how little of the game I understood. It wasn't a problem. I enjoyed waking up in the dark and groping my way towards the light. It gave me the chance to learn new things and learning is always fun. 

In one early post I wrote "As this series of posts about Noah's Heart develops, I'm sure I'll end up talking about some of its myriad systems in detail but for now I'm barely capable of remembering what they all are. There are so many I'd struggle even to list them, let alone describe them or explain how they work or what they do."

I also noted "With luck, Noah's Heart might last me all month." So far it's lasted sixteen weeks and there's no sign of it stopping. You'd think by now I'd be pretty much up to speed with all those systems and mechanics, right?

Yeah, well, I'm not. Not even close. Despite the game's thorough and detailed tutorial and exemplary in-game explanatory notes, even now I feel there's probably more I don't understand than I do. With that in mind, I thought for a moment I might try for the improbable and list the full range of systems, complete with explanatory notes. 

Then I thought about it again and decided I wouldn't. It was a wise choice.

Instead, I thought I'd just skip through the opening screens, the ones I see every day when I log in for the first time, describing the various options that appear before I even get into the game proper, just to give an impression of the levels of complexity and engagement the game demands. That wouldn't take too long, surely?

There's the very first screen that appears after the server connection is established. Looks simple enough, doesn't it? So simple, I've never really looked at it closely before. 

Now that I do, I realise I have no clear idea what either "Current EXP" or "Active EXP" mean.  My character is some way into Level 87, where she's racked up 3074087/4200000 so this must be something different. I'm thinking "Current EXP" is just the generic header for the two items next on the list, Active EXP and Fatigue but honestly I'm not even sure of that.

I do know I get Active Experience points from doing Daily Activities but those, as indicated, are the ones with a maximum value of 200 points per day. I had no idea there was another tally running that capped at 480000 and I have no clue what it could be. 

As for the Today's Activity listings, of which there's just a smallish subset on show (And I have no idea if the selection indicates anything specific.) I make sure to max those daily because they give solid rewards and I need those Activity Points to trigger another set of rewards that fuel the narrative Seasons. It's painless enough; they're mostly things I would be doing anyway.

As you may have spotted, I skipped over Fatigue. Fatigue is a resource that gets mentioned periodically in the game. It's a requirement to do certain things but what those things might be I couldn't tell you without looking it up. 

Whatever they are, it doesn't look like I'm doing them because as the screenshot makes plain, I have Fatigue to spare. Literally. 2715/960, to be exact. How I acquired a surplus or what having more Fatigue than the apparent max implies, once again, I couldn't hope to explain.

We're already getting into deep water and we haven't gotten past the Welcome screen yet! It's a screen I barely glance at most days, anyway. I just click that "Return" arrow in the bottom right, at which point the giant envelope you see above appears in front of me.

This is a relatively recent innovation. It's been around for a few weeks. I think. Actually, now I try and remember, I can't recall exactly when I first saw it. 

I do know what it's supposed to be; it's a letter from Ave. Ave is the one Phantom who seems to have some idea who my character might be (The PC has amnesia because of course they do. It's an mmorpg, isn't it?) Ave is also the Phantom who gives the PC a "Mirror", a piece of arcane tech that looks suspiciously like a mobile phone and which acts as a kind of portal to many of the major mechanics and systems in the game. 

It's what I consider to be an admirably creative, lore-appropriate re-purposing of a function lesser creative teams would happily palm off to the Escape menu. Noah's Heart is very good at that sort of thing.

One of the most endearing aspects of the game for me, for example, and a contributory factor to why I've stuck with it this long, is the way all the Phantoms act like imaginary friends, sending in-game mail and having conversations with my character, both sides of which are fully scripted. It's like your toys came to life - and not in a stabby way. 

Opening Ave's letter reveals

Where to begin? 99Letter means nothing to me. It can't surely be the 99th letter she's sent me, can it? That would be almost as long as I've been playing and I could have sworn I didn't start getting them for several weeks. I could be wrong about that, though. In fact, I probably am.

The date and the weather are straightforward enough. Noah's Heart has a more than averagely complex weather system that includes weather forecasts and some interactive elements, so I guess it's something worth mentioning when you write. I know I always do the same when I email someone but then Mrs Bhagpuss would say I was obsessed with the weather. Does say, actually.

The greeting, "Dear Adventurer" seems oddly impersonal. The game routinely interpolates the player character's name into quest text and NPC dialog and Ave regularly talks to me directly, so you'd think she'd be a bit less formal when she writes.

As far as I can tell, the whole "fortune-telling" bit is pure flavor and I've been largely ignoring it but as I think about it now, I'm wondering if it might actually reflect things I've done in the game recently. Yesterday I did make and place a new piece of furniture in my house. I also acquired the dye I needed to finish making the outfit from the pattern Charlie gave me, which, of course, I immediately set as my new look.

That does seem suspiciously relevant to the two entries flagged "Appropriate", although it's an odd fortune that tells you your past. I'll have to read these more carefully from now on and see if there's a pattern. As for the "Avoid" message, I have absolutely no clue what Ave's talking about. No, really!

Finally, along the bottom are the "Accumulated Rewards", each with a description giving what appears to be a label number. Not the faintest clue what that implies. As for "Today's Attachment", I believe that's the two items you can see overlaying the Starlight Guide at the top of the image; one is 90000 gold, the other... I have no idea what that is.

So much for the letter itself. Down the left of the screen you can see four subsections: Welfare, On Sale, Event and War Order. Each of those opens a menu, the one displayed in the shot being "Welfare". Each of the items in those menus opens another window, which may or may not then offer even more options. I'd go through them all but we'd be here all day.

Instead, I'll give you a count. Twenty-four. Two dozen subsections, branching directly from the initial four. Fortunately, everything that's immediately relevant is highlighted by a red dot. I like the red dots. They mean I don't have to think too hard.

As you can see from the shot, I have three highlighted items listed under Welfare: Noah's Heart Carnival, Treasure Bay and Push Pack. As you can also see, the Midday and Evening benefits listed under Gulf Stream Tea House, each of which provides 50 Fatigue, are both flagged "Not the time yet".  

Even if it were the time, I'd get a message telling me I couldn't use them, because as we've already established, I am about as far from being fatigued as its possible to be. I have never once been able to claim a free welfare meal since the game began. Whether that means I'm doing something right or something wrong I couldn't say.

How about the Noah's Heart Carnival, then? That sounds like it ought to be fun. And it is, in a way, but really it's more a record of fun I've already had. It's a list of some things you can do each day to earn rewards, in addition to the regular dialies and weeklies. I never make any effort to chase these additional targets but I often end up completing most of them anyway just by playing normally.

Then there's Treasure Bay. Treasure Bay is a currency exchange. You can spend one in-game currency, Diamonds, to buy another, Gold. I always have more gold than diamonds so I just take my free gift of 30,000 gold every day and move on.

Lastly, Push Pack; even though it's always highlighted, I never click this one. It refers to something you can do on a mobile device. Noah's Heart is cross-platform so if I had a device that would run it I could log my account in there and claim whatever it is you get. I don't so I can't and I probably wouldn't bother anyway. 

I'll skip over the other three main options. (On Sale,  Event and War Order, in case you'd forgotten.) This is already running long. Just take it on trust they're full of more buttons to click to get free stuff and things to go and do to get even more free stuff.

With all that out of the way, finally we get to the actual game screen, which, as you can see, is yet another nest of icons and red blobs. It's at this point the futility of trying to explain the systems and mechanics of Noah's Heart in a single blog post becomes impossible to ignore.

I did a quick count of the actions available through the various windows and menus that open from the twenty or so icons in the image above. It comes to more than a hundred and fifty. Luckily, most of them don't require much more from me than that I notice the red dot, click on it and click again on whatever it points to.

That's simple enough and, to me at least, entertaining. I like clicking things to get stuff and in Noah's Heart there's rarely a click that doesn't come with a reward of some sort. Where things start to get tricky is in the systems and mechanics that require I make a choice. 

Pretty much everything that affects character progression, team-building and generally playing the game as a game requires both thought and knowledge. It's not a lucky dip where every dip's a win. You can't just blithely click away any more - or I guess you could but you'd come to regret it later.

Maybe another time I'll attempt to explain, to myself as much as anyone else, exactly how some of those systems work. Before I do that, though, I'm going to have to find out. 

Wish me luck. I'm going to need it.

Lifting The Veil On New World's Halloween Holiday

Halloween, as I'm sure I must have mentioned many times, is not my favorite holiday. Just calling it a "holiday" seems weird. No-one gets time off from work to celebrate, do they, except maybe witches and warlocks. Except isn't it their busiest work day?

I guess we could do with a new word for these sorts of quasi-historical affairs that have been hijacked by the manufacturers of cheap plastic tat. Festival, celebration, plain old event... none of the regular labels quite fit any more.

Where I come from, Halloween didn't really become much of holiday (I'm sticking with that for now.) until I was an adult out of college, although perhaps it would be more accurate to say I never saw anyone celebrate it until then. It certainly existed before that as a cultural moment, not just an archaic throwback. There was a xenophobic attempt to deny it as an American import following the success of E.T., but that movie didn't even introduce trick or treating to these shores, let alone the rest of it.

I had heard of Halloween before I grew up. I think I first came across the concept in an Agatha Christie novel I read when I was in my early teens (I forget which one but it was written in the 1950 or '60s.) and I vaguely remember someone in my primary class having a Halloween party, to which I don't believe I went. I just didn't know it as anything anyone paid much mind.

When I was a child, it was mostly our local holiday, Guy Fawkes Day that was an absolutely huge deal around that time of year. Second only to Christmas in anticipation and excitement and falling on November 5th as it does, it tended to eclipse Halloween to the point of invisibility. Over the decades, the two adjacent celebrations seem to have equalled out to a large degree, with Halloween taking over as the smaller, more personal option, all parties and kids out with their families after dark, while the myriad back garden bonfires of my childhood have retreated to municipal parks and sports grounds for organized displays, taking with them most of the intimacy with danger that made bonfire night so thrilling in the first place.

Elsewhere, Halloween rules unchallenged and supreme. Every mmorpg has to have its own version, often the biggest in-game holiday of the year, almost always at least the second-biggest, after whatever they call Christmas in imagineland.

I've done most of them to death by now, EverQuest II's "Nights of the Dead" and Guild Wars 2's "Shadow of the Mad King" especially. I'm not saying I no longer have any interest in them at all but I certainly don't feel any stirring desire to log in and run through the card all over again.

I'm always up for a new take on the old themes, though, so when I logged into New World and saw the orange, autumn leaves, drifted into piles in all the corners of the town, along with the inevitable, obligatory carved pumpkins carefully placed in prominent positions, I knew I'd have to take a closer look. Then Tyler Edwards dropped by the comments to let me know there was a Halloween World Boss and people were zerging it, which put the witch's cap on things for me.

I logged in for an hour last night to figure out how things might work in Nightveil Hallow. I was quite optimistic. Amazon Games seem to have a good handle on how to do seasonal and holiday events. The last couple I've visited have been well-designed - fun to play and rewarding as well.

This one appears to buck the genre trend in that it's relatively small and compact. Unless I've missed something, it consists of a single, introductory quest, which isn't even mandatory, and the aforementioned World Boss, the demonic "Baalphazu, Marquis of Terror".

Baalphazu spawns, repeatedly and quickly if last night is anything to go by, in any one of half a dozen mid-high level zones, Brightwood, Ebonscale Reach, Weaver's Fren, Great Cleave, Edengrove, and Mourningdale. I only saw him in Ebonscale, where he's confined to a specific, partly enclosed area. I imagine it's much the same in every zone where he appears, making the fight quite localized and unlikely to disturb people going about their regular business.

This guide recommends grouping up and people were forming parties in general chat but there's no requirement to do so. I picked up the quest from Salvatore, standing next to the giant, bubbling green cauldron in town, then watched the map until I saw the icon appear to say Baalphazu had landed.

It took me a while to get to him. Fast travel is trivially cheap now but the locations are still fixed and not always convenient to where you need to be in a hurry. The fight lasts a few minutes, though, so there's time to get there before it's all over. 

My first time, there weren't that many people. Those who were there seemed nervous to begin but after a bit we got started on the supporting cast, pumpkinites of various kinds and strengths. Killing a bunch of those seemed to agravate their Lord, who materialised in the center of the clearing and launched into whoever was closest.

The fight was a bit of a blur. I was trying to take screenshots - always a mistake - and as a melee character I had no option but to get in close. I didn't actually die but I had to retreat out of range far more often than I closed in to attack, to the point that when the boss finally fell I got no credit.

I wasn't bothered. It was just a recce to see how things worked. The next time Baalphazu arrived I was much more aware of his attacks and the need to dodge them but more importantly someone was putting out an impressive amount of AE healing, meaning I didn't have to rely on my health potions and their lengthy cooldowns.

I wouldn't say the fight was fun, exactly. It was a typical world boss zerg battle - a couple of dozen players in a scrum at the feet of a giant creature you could barely see for the light show. I like those kinds of fights so it suited me. It lasted about eight minutes, something I can say with a certain precision because it just so happened I got the ten minute warning from GeForce Now just after it began. 

It certainly added another layer of tension, knowing I was going to be forcibly excluded from the server when the on-screen timer reached zero. Fortunately, we had our target on the ground with a couple of minutes to spare. I just had time to check that, this time, my quest had updated and then I was back at desktop.

I left it at that for the night but this morning I logged back in and did the hand-in. The rewards were crafting patterns, gold and event currency, but also  - much to my surprise - all of the reputation required to buy anything in the event store. I was expecting to have to grind that rep out somehow, something that's been a longstanding feature of the game, including previous holiday events, but apparently rep grind is another thing we don't have to worry about in Aeternum any more.

I was also very surprised to see how affordable pretty much everything in the store is. It's true, you'd need to kill a lot of Baalphazus to earn the tokens to buy everything but after just the quest and one kill I already have enough to buy literally any one of the things on sale. 

There's some good stuff in there, too - GS 600 weapon patterns that would be a huge upgrade for me, for a start, plus some striking outfits and a house pet I'd quite like. Enough to persuade me to zerg the boss a few times more before the event ends, for sure, although it's true I never need much persuasion to join a zerg.

The real problem, as I found out when I went to make a hatchet from one of the patterns I got out of the loot chest, is that you need 150 skill in the relevant crafting discipline. Mine's nine. Bit of work to do there, then.

What I'll most likely do is buy the patterns I want and stash them. I did the same for the winter event. One thing I'm not short of in Aeternum is storage so hording is always an attractive option. Then, if I ever get back to playing regularly, I'll have a handy, moderately achievable goal to work towards in raising my crafting skills.

Whether I ever will play regularly again is a matter that's largely out of the hands of the Amazon Games development team. It's going to have a lot more to do with how much time I can find for any games at all. Free time seems to be at a ridiculous premium right now for someone who only works a couple of days a week but that's how its.

All in all, though, Nightveil Hallow looks like another good holiday event for New World and another solid Halloween effort for the genre. In other New World news, I also completed the access quest for the new zone, Brimstone Sands (It only takes a few minutes.) so that's where I'll be going next.

Read all about it here, I imagine, but not until next week. I'm taking the weekend off  blogging because, sadly, I'll be working instead.

Let's Tink Again (Like We Did Last Summer)

Not to rehash my own joke but it's Jubilee weekend here in the UK and by complete coincidence (I'm guessing...) it's also the week EverQuest II kicks off its very own Summer Jubilee. There's a pun in there somewhere involving EQII and Elizabeth II, Q(ueen) but I'm not going to be the one to try and dig it out.

Summer Jubilee incorporates three events and the first of them is Tinkerfest (The other two being Oceansfull and Scorched Sky). Relocated from midsummer, it's been polished till it gleams.

Judging by what I've seen so far it's better than ever, impressive when you consider it was already one of the top holidays in EQII's extensive calendar. It's also long been one of my personal favorites. I read the official announcement with interest and enthusiasm. 

Credit for some of that has to go to new Community Manager, Accendo. When he first arrived I wondered if he might be a little brusque, especially after the exceptionally affable Dreamweaver. For all I know, he might be a regular demon in ding-dongs with players, always a risk (Just ask RadarX), but in prose he has a strong, confident style and a sense of humor that amuses me more often than not. I'll take it.

For regular Live servers, there's a lot to dig into, all of it handily detailed in the press release:

• New adventure quest!
  • Blood, Sweat, and Gears offered by Tickni Kerplooie at Gnomeland Security in Steamfont Mountains for players level 120+.
• New tradeskill (tinkering) quest!
  • Gearing the Competition offered by Navier Stokes at Gnomeland Security in Steamfont Mountains.
• New dungeon with solo and heroic versions!
  • Innovation: Tinkerer's Trial [Heroic] and [Solo]
• 11 New Merchant Items sold by Myron in Gnomeland Security, including a new mount!
• New Tradeskill recipe book, "Tinkerfest Blueprints 14.0” sold by Myron in Gnomeland Security in Steamfont Mountains. The recipes require Shiny Tinkerfest Cog obtained as quest rewards or harvested, and other low level harvestables as components.

Special Ruleset servers get whatever subset matches their current timeframe and whatever rewards don't break their local zeitgeist, as per usual. 

I'd like to say all the regular events, quests, collections and achievements are back as well but I'm not absolutely sure if that's true. There's a slight element of ambiguity in "Lots of stuff is returning for this year's event too including achievements, recipe books, collections, quests, and more." "Lots" isn't a synonym for "All" but I imagine I'm reading more into the choice of words than Accendo intended. 

I made straight for Tinkerfest Central - Gnomeland Security in Steamfont - where I hoovered up every quest I could find. Some of them I recognised, some I didn't, but that happens at most festivals, whether there's anything new or not. I can't remember every quest I've ever done in EQII. There must be thousands! 

Most had blue feathers indicating repeatable content, something that's probably going to turn out to be important given the new Jubilee currency, the Copper Jubilation Medal. I had a good browse through the inventory of the Jubilee vendor I found, hanging around the East Freeport Docks later. Anyone taking this event seriously is going to need hundreds of medals to buy everything they want.

The rewards are very tempting, too. Lots of great housing and appearance items as always but also some very nice stat gear, at least for a solo player. The big ticket item is the 340 Resolve bracer trailed in the original announcement but there's also 300 Resolve gear for all armor classes. I imagine there'll be a full set of that by the time all three events have arrived. 

There's also a dog. That got me wondering if there had been dog pets in the game before. I'm sure there must have been. The dog model has been in the game from the start. I imagine they've always been there but I just never noticed, me being more of a cat person. 

Now we have a dog of our own I'm seeing dogs in all kinds of places I never saw them before, like on my lap while I'm trying to play EQII. It wouldn't matter so much if she didn't like to rest her chin on my mouse arm. 

Fortunately, EQII is relatively easy to play one-handed. I managed to grab all those quests and pick up a load of the Shiny Tinkerfest Cogs lying all over the place. The cogs are the Tinkerfest-specific currency, the event having vast amounts of buyables independent of the Jubilee. No doubt the same will apply to the other two festivals so it's just as well the quests reward both kinds. 

As soon as Beryl changed position, allowing me the use of both hands, I mapped to the other center of Gnomish activity, the Dropship Landing Zone in Moors of Ykesha to look for the the portal to the new, non-combat instance of Plane of Innovation. I wanted to do the tradeskill quest given to me by Navier Stokes back at Gnomeland Security. There's a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in Tinkerfest, always was, but even without All Access travel perks it's easy enough via the handy temporary portals the gnomes install for the occasion.

I've been around Plane of Innovation many times but sightseeing always feels better when nothing's trying to rip your arms off. I had time to look at the architectural details for once. 

The quest itself was very good, assuming you like EQII quests, which, obviously, I do. I'd pretty much have to, still to be playing after all these years. It follows the classic gather, craft, install sequence, where you spend ages wandering around picking up materials before knocking them into something on a local crafting device, before following a glowing trail around the zone, sliding the doohickeys you've created into the correct slots.  

No-one could claim this kind of content is challenging but it sure is relaxing. As a very, very bad tinkerer, I appreciated the huge Tinkerfest crafting boosts, the absence of negative effects to counter and the easy skill-ups. I didn't notice whether the quest was repeatable but if it is I might grind it out a few times until the recipe goes grey, just for the tinkering points.

There's a narrative thread relating to the possible induction of the first ever Froglok to the Ak`Anon Tinkerer's Guild. I found it oddly intriguing. It started me wondering just which races are capable of tinkering these days. I have a suspicion it's all of them. I know it used to be a purely gnomish skill back in EverQuest but I can't recall whether Ratongas could always tinker in EQII or whether that was a later concession.

Of all the races, you'd think the most obvious candidate after Gnomes would be Dwarves. I don't believe I've ever played a Dwarf in EQII, or not for any meaningful amount of time, at least. Frogloks would come a long way down any list I ever made but then I try not to think about frogloks at all if I can help it.

I'll have to give it some more thought as I work my way through the rest of what Tinkerfest has to offer. Next up is the new adventure quest, Blood, Sweat and Gears, followed by the Solo dungeon, the Tinkerer's Trial.   

I hope that one's not too tough. I always think holiday instances should be lenient but if the drops are competitive with current content it'll probably have to be at least as challenging as a regular Visions of Vetrovia instance, probably more so than the ones in the basic storyline since they're already beginning to fall behind.

I don't have all that long to get everything done, either. Even though the Summer Jubilee runs all summer (Well, duh!) Tinkerfest is only with us for a couple of weeks. The gnomes shut up shop on June 15.

I'd better get on with it, then.