You Take The Train, I'll Take The Bus This Time: Transport Options In Neverness To Everness

Hethereau is without doubt the biggest video-game city I've ever visited. I've seen it compared to Grand Theft Auto's Los Santos but since I've never played GTA5, I can't say if there's any validity in the comparison or, if there is, which might be the larger.

It certainly feels a lot bigger than Genshin Impact's Mondstadt  or Liyue or Wuthering Waves' Jinzhou, anyway. And it also feels a lot more like a real city, by which I guess I mean a city you might find in the world in which we all live, something that makes it feel almost disturbingly convincing at times. 

I keep getting the feeling it's somewhere I might have been, once. Even though much of the architecture has a South-East Asian look to it, there are streets and plazas that remind me quite strongly of some Spanish cities I've visited.

With a city this big, there needs to be some way to get around. I haven't been playing remotely long enough to produce any kind of Travel Guide To Hethereau but I can offer a few anecdotal experiences. 

Walking, Running and Sprinting: 

The obvious way to start exploring any city is on foot. In the real world, that almost always means walking but in game-cities the default pace is usually a steady lope or a gentle jog. No-one walks when they can run.

In Neverness To Everness, you run unless the game decides you ought to walk. I was surprised, several times, to find my pace dropping to a stately stroll when I entered certain buildings, vehicles or specific outdoor areas. If there's an option to walk voluntarily, I haven't found it yet but I imagine there must be, assuming they have role-players in Hethereau.

Sprinting definitely does come under the direct control of the player. Just hold down Shift. As you'd imagine, it requires stamina, the amount of which you have left is shown in a tiny, unobtrusive, diminishing arc next to your character. So far I haven't run out of stamina before I chose to stop sprinting so it's a generous allocation compared to too many games, where you run out of puff before you reach the end of your front path.

Climbing: 

You can climb just about anything. Buildings, fences, vehicles, you name it. If it goes up, you can climb it like Spider-Man. This also use stamina but once again it seems unlikely you'll run out before you reach the top or at least some intermediary flat space, where you can rest a moment and refill your stamina bar.

Swimming:  

Also an option although the only time I've had to use it was when I fell off a parapet trying to snatch an Oracle Stone from a raven. (It's a thing. Don't ask. We'll get to it here, some day, I'm sure.) Swimming uses stamina too and again it gets you a lot further than it would in many other games I've played.

In other water-related travel news, there are boats in the harbor but whether or not sailing is going to be an option I couldn't say. We can but hope!

Gliding: 

Gliding is available almost from the start. There's a very brief moment where a tip pops up to tell you all you need to do is hold RMB but it passes so quickly you might miss it altogether. In fact, I might have imagined it. 

I think I discovered I could glide when I jumped off a roof and tried to turn in mid-air and found I was hanging from an anomaly that appeared to be keeping us both in the air by flapping its ears. I also think I'm meant to know who or what the anomaly is. I'm pretty sure we were introduced at one point. You can get different glider skins but the default is this little fellow and he's fine. 

Unlike sprinting, climbing and swimming, gliding doesn't use stamina so you can stay aloft as long as you can find more air below you. There's also no falling damage so it's 100% safe as far as I can tell. Don't sue me if it's not!

Driving:  

This is supposedly a big part of the game but after about three or four hours play the only motorized transport I've got is a scooter. It's a really smart, red one, though. Looks like a classic 1960s Lambretta to me. 

I'd love to tell you how I got it but I have absolutely no idea. I was just jogging through the city last night when I noticed an option of some sort had popped up. I didn't read it very carefully and I can't remember what it said but I do know that after I clicked it, I had a scooter and I still do.

Maybe it pops up the first time you go near enough to one. There are plenty parked on street corners around the city. Or maybe it comes after you've done some quest or entered some area or spoken to some NPC. It'd be lovely to explain how it happened but I can't. I guess I could look it up... ah, yes, it's part of the Prologue questline, apparently. 

The scooter is pretty easy to ride although cornering is... interesting. I found out about the prison system in NTE by crashing my bike into something when I missed a turn. The bike was fine but I picked up some Warrant points for damaging public property. Get enough of those and it's a spell in the pokey for you. Or, more importantly, for me!

Traveling By Train: 

In common with quite a few games I've enjoyed, Neverness To Everness lets you get around by train. Unlike almost every one I can think of, though, that doesn't mean clicking on something that looks like a train or a train station and being teleported to the next stop. 

It doesn't even mean entering a train, sitting down and being treated to a cut-scene of your journey. In NTE it really does mean getting on a train and sitting down (Or standing up, if you prefer.) while the train rattles along the tracks in real time.

I have played other games where that happens but the difference here is that the train is an actual, physical object in terms of the gameworld. You can climb up on top of the carriage and ride outside for the whole journey. I've done it. You can jump off anywhere along the way, too. And that!

The train comes complete with other passengers, opening and closing doors, realistically lengthy stops at every station and not at all helpful announcements. Just like the real thing except you don't have to pay and no-one asks to see your ticket. Well, if you don't have to pay, I guess you wouldn't need a ticket... 

Taking The Bus: 

This is the one that floored me. As you jog around the city, you'll see lots of bus stops, often with people waiting for a bus. Sometimes you'll hear an NPC complaining the bus is late or they've missed it. I thought this was flavor and it is but that doesn't mean there isn't a real bus service.

I only found out because I decided to sit down at a bus stop and take a screenshot. I thought it would look cool. As I was framing the shot, a bus pulled up at the stop. I looked at it, expecting it to pause and then move on. Maybe an NPC might even get off. But no, the doors opened and the bus stayed there.

So I got on. I mean, why wouldn't I? The bus, unlike the train carriage, is a bit of a tight fit. The camera didn't like me swinging it about so it was hard to get a decent angle but I was able to sit down inside and get a shot of me through the window, riding the bus. 

I think this is a first. I can't remember any game I've ever played, on or offline, single or multiplayer, that let me ride in a bus. Not that it's been my great ambition but still...

The bus isn't quite as realistic as the train. You can't get up and walk out the door when it stops or I couldn't, anyway, although that might have been the camera. Maybe it is possible and I just couldn't manage it. What I had to do instead was press "F", which deposits you on the sidewalk, just like it does when you want to get off your bike. 

I don't know if you can jump on top of the bus like you can the train and street-surf through town. I haven't tried it. Yet. I can't see why not, though.

Boothing It: 

And finally there's the Booth network, NTE's form of instant travel. Dotted all over the city are structures that look almost identical to the classic red K6 telephone box, as found all over Britain until mobile telephony rendered public telephones irrelevant. You have to visit these and activate them, after which you can 'port from one to another. 

Or so the game tells you. I've activated a few but I haven't used any yet. I'm having far too much fun exploring on foot, by bike, on the train and by bus. Why would I want to miss out on all of that, just to save a few minutes?

At the moment, in fact, I'm not even particularly interested in following the plot or developing my character. I just want to explore this fascinating city for myself, without any agenda or purpose other than the fun of seeing something new. Plenty of time to get on with the plot when it all starts to feel a bit too familiar.

That might take a while... 

Stoned Again

We're enjoying some very pleasant Spring weather here just now, which was why Mrs. Bhagpuss and I came to be driving out on a sunny March morning last week to take a look at the standing stones at Stanton Drew. There's no shortage of ancient stoneworks within a short drive of where we live and we've visited quite a few but this one was new to us both.

It's unfamiliar to a lot of people, apparently, despite being possibly the third largest stone circle in Britain, after the far better-known Stonehenge and Avebury. Julian Cope, ex-lead singer of the Teardrop Explodes and self-styled Modern Antiquarian, called it "undervalued" and it's certainly under-visited, especially when compared to its two big rivals.

We only thought to visit it because we'd recently been to the village to look at a nursing home for my 93 year-old mother. She's gone somewhere else but the home she didn't move into is right next to the stones so we thought we'd go back for a closer look.

And you can have as close a look as you'd like. Climb all over the things if you want. No-one's gojng to stop you. 

The three competing pre-historic attractions stand orders of magnitude apart in terms of access, with Stonehenge on one side of a massive barrier, literally and financially, with the other two a long way outside.

Stonehenge is fully enclosed and zealously guarded, thanks to decades of varying use and abuse, everything from would-be druids holding solstice ceremonies to the Convoy staging pitched battles with the police. 

As a child, I visited the henge on a school trip. I seem to remember it was already sufficiently commercialized even then to feature a gift shop but we were allowed to touch the stones and there was no fence around them, or at least not in my memory. 

Now you have to book in advance and pay almost £30 just to get inside the main fence as far as the next security cordon, where ropes keep you at a distance from the stones themselves. It's £3 to park your car, too.

If you want to walk among the stones, inside the circle, you'll need to buy the full "Experience". That'll cost you £70! And even then you still don't get to touch anything.

Avebury is a lot more relaxed and it's free, too, although if you use the car park it'll set you back £7. Plenty of free parking in the village, though, or there was when we last went, which admittedly was over a decade ago. You can wander up to the stones and lay on hands, too, which to my way of thinking is pretty much the whole point.

Visiting Stanton Drew costs £1 and that's only if you're honest. There's a box on the gate and you're trusted to drop a coin into it as you go through. If you don't, no-one's going to know because there's no-one there. 

Even with a nominal entrance fee it's still cheaper than Avebury because there's a free car park. The pound goes to the local farmer who owns the land on which the stones are sited. It's a working farm and there are sometimes livestock in the fields, which is why no dogs are allowed. (Avebury is dog-friendly.)

 The size of the car park gives you some indication of the number of visitors the circle at Stanton Drew sees. I'd guess you could get eight cars in it, if everyone parked very carefully. The morning we went, there was just one other vehicle there but a few more people wandered in on foot. It's the kind of place that attracts neo-hippies and ancient history buffs alike but the history buffs tend to come in cars.

Because we had Beryl with us, we had to take it in turns to go to the stones. It's a surprisingly long walk, not least because the stones are bigger than you think, so they look closer than they are.

When I went in, there were a few other people strolling about, moving from monolith to monolith, taking pictures. One guy was lying on one of the stones, his feet higher than his head, taking a photograph of another. 

As I said, if you want to climb up the stones and sit on top eating an ice cream, there's nothing and no-one to stop you. You'd have to bring your own ice-cream, though. There's no gift shop.

The whole place is extremely chill. Laid back. Relaxed. On a gorgeously warm, sunny Spring morning it's hard to think of anywhere more so. I'd have liked to have had a thermos of coffee and a good book with me. I'd have lain down on one of the flat stones and basked.

With Beryl not being allowed past the gate, we couldn't do anything like that, sadly, so we went to the pub instead. And in the pub garden are three more standing stones, a thousand years older than the circle, so it's said, although how they're dated I don't know.

Those stones are known as The Cove and I didn't take any pictures of them. They're big, though, I can tell you that.

We had a coffee in the pub garden while Beryl frolicked in the grass. Didn't take any pictures of that, either. Sorry.

And then we came home. It was a fine morning's edutainment, although really, for me, the main pleasure of visiting pre-historic sites goes to the senses rather than the intellect. I like to touch them and imagine a connection to the deep past. 

I used to hug trees when I was a teenager. Too much prog rock, I expect. Lucky I grew out of that. Bloody hippies!

When you play games in which stone circles frequently feature, though, it is interesting to see such places up close. If nothing else, it gives some context.

I'm surprised the Druids of Norrath haven't installed any gift shops. Then again, now I come to think of it, I think there might  be the occasional vendor hanging out at one or two. I guess the barbed-wire fences are only a matter of time.

Do It Again!

I've left it a bit late for a post today so let's hope this is going to be as short as I think it should be. Doesn't always follow that when I have nothing much to say, I don't take long saying it.

The post is about EverQuest Online Adventures again because apparently that's what I play now - a decades-old, discontinued game for a console three generations out of date, reanimated as a grey-market PC emulation. I mean, it's not like anyone's made any new games since 2003, so it makes sense, right?

But that's where the mouse-pointer finds its way now, whenever I feel like playing a video game. I played yesterday and I played today. Couple of hours each time. These days that's a lot for me. 

And did I get much done? 

Hah! Has anyone played this game? Wouldn't be asking that if you had, I bet.

No, I did not get much done, thank-you. Not by any reasonable estimation. And yet it felt like I did. 

Sound familiar? It will if you ever played EverQuest or one of its contemporaries, back in the days before MMORPG players began to value their time. An awful lot of doing nothing and then feeling smug about it. Or furious. One or the other, depending how many times you died.

Let me see if I can remember just what I did achieve in those two, two-hour sessions...

About as bright as it gets in Steamfont, believe it or not.

I started off by going to see if I could solo the Level 5 Gnome Magician Class Quest. The one the guy who gave it to me said I'd need a group for. 

Actually, what he said is that I'd need the help of some other apprentices because if EQOA is anything it's a role-playing game. More self-consciously so than EQ, I'd say. Everyone seems to be very much in character there. The NPCs, that is. Not the players.  

The quest asks you to go kill some Mindwhippers. To the best of my knowledge, the Norrath I'm familiar with doesn't have any of those so I had no clue what they might be, let alone where. The quest guy seemed to assume I'd know, being a local. 

He did give me some extremely vague directions but nothing I could use. I'd already done a lot of running around. I won't dignify it by calling it "exploring". I hadn't seen any mindwhippers so I thought I'd at least try and save myself a little trouble by looking the quest up online. 

From a few sources I found out that Mindwhippers are wasps. Why they're called something so dramatic I have no clue. Are they wasp enchanters? It's possible, I suppose. I also got a rough travel plan on how to get to them, which boiled down to "Go out of the West gate, turn West and keep heading West". 

So of course I went out of the East gate.

That wasted about a quarter of an hour. Once I'd figured out the problem, I went back in and then out the other gate and glory be I found the damn things! Took me another ten minutes but there they were. Most of them conned red but one was yellow so I thought I'd give it a go.

• First pull, it killed the pet. I ran away and lived. 
• Second pull, I tried to root the wasp, it came after me, I ran away and lived. The pet didn't.
• Third pull, I got killed by a roaming red con wasp before I even finished casting. 
• Fourth pull, I sent the pet in and nuked. I got the wasp quite low before I got aggro. The wasp came at me, but I thought I still might be able to take it so I stood my ground and kept nuking. I was wrong.

At that point I decided the guy had been right all along and I'd need some help. Or else some levels. 

Anyone know if he was always called Q`Anon?

I was also fed up to the back teeth of it being dark all the frigging time so I thought I'd go exploring and see if it got any lighter anywhere else. I was Level 5 and I didn't seem to lose any xp on death or gain any xp debt and there's no corpse recovery in EQOA so it seemed like a good time for a roam.

Using Right Button as a kind of radar I headed South, threading my way through the increasing number of aggressive red mobs - Large Spiders, Fire Ants, some sort of bear, a few wolves, a Decaying Skeleton and eventually something very unexpected - a Dragoon. 

Dragoon in Norrath is a rank peculiar to Dark Elves. These Dragoons turned out to be guards outside the DE home city of Neriak. 

At that point I hadn't begun to come to terms with the extremely different topography of this new Norrath. Since then I've studied the map in the Prima Guide and I have a slightly better understanding of the layout but at the time I came across the Dragoons I was very confused.

I stopped and took alook at the map (Out of game, of course. There is no in-game map.) and saw that Klick`Anon is in the far North-East, directly above Neriak, which is directly above Freeport. That last pairing is the same as in the Norrath I'm used to but in that one the gnomish city is on a different continent altogether.

That gave me the idea of finding my way into Freeport, where I thought I could at least register with the Coachman so I could get a ride next time. That's something EQ never had but which EverQuest II, which came out a year after EQOA, did - point-to-point, safe travel by NPC mount. I even thought I might bind in Freeport, since they have a Magicians' Guild there, along with something approximating an actual day-night cycle.

Unfortunately, I overshot the entrance to Freeport by what must have been several relative miles, ending up deep in the Desert of Ro. I only figured that out when it was too late, after something killed me and I woke up back in Klick.

Somewhere in the desert,
where if it isn't exactly blazing sunlight,
you can at least see where you're going.

That was the end of my first session.  No material gains maybe but plenty of valuable new knowledge acquired. That's why it felt so satisfying.

Today, I thought I'd finish that trip to Freeport. To spoil a good story, I never got there. I didn't even get as close as the last time. Somehow, whereas the previous day I'd been able to avoid all the dangerous mobs, today I kept getting jumped on in the dark by ants, spiders and things I never saw coming.

After a couple of deaths, I did a bit of googling to see if  there was an easier route. There wasn't, but there was another coach station near a village on the way to the Elf starting city, Fayspire. It looked like it might be an easier trip, so I changed my travel plans and went there instead.

Tried to go there, I should say. All the advice is to "follow the road" but I never saw any road. My screen is so dark I can barely see the trees in the forest let alone whether I'm running on a paved surface or just dirt and pine needles. Another hour of wandering around in the dark, hammering RB and getting killed a couple more times and I'd had enough. 

If you're frustrated by things you can't change, concentrate on something you can. I couldn't get the screen any brighter (I tried...) and I couldn't kill the mobs that were killing me but I could kill weaker ones and level up and with enough of that, maybe I'd be able to survive a few more hits and run away more effectively.

I spent the next half-hour or so grinding light and dark-blue cons back in the starting area until I dinged Level 6. That was astonsihingly enjoyable. I didn't realise how much I'd missed it. 

My new clothes.
(Image auto-leveled so you can see them.)

Once I'd dinged, most of the mobs went green or light blue so I moved outside the walls and went looking for slightly tougher prey. I found enough dark-blues to be going on with but once again I ran foul of some aggressive red con ants and got myself a free port back to bind. 

Which was fine. I was loaded down with insect body parts and bits and pieces of rat and snake. I needed to get shot of it all anyway. I sold it all to one vendor and checked another for new spells. 

Nothing more until Level 8 it seems, so I spent my money on a full set of vendor armor instead. It added a lot to my armor class although I very much doubt that will mean much to an angry red-con. Still, if it helps me run an extra few yards before I fall over, it might be the difference between life and death.

I re-summoned and re-buffed my Water Elementaling for what seemed like the twentieth time and went out to carry on grinding xp, which was when I discovered Level 6 is the point at which xp debt kicks in. Took me half a dozen kills to clear my debt before I started making real xp again. It also made me a lot more cautious, which slowed things down a bit more.

A bubble into Level 6, Mrs Bhagpuss announced it was tea-time so I stopped and after tea I started writing this but once I've finished, there's a very strong possibility I'll log back in and grind some more. If I can get to Level 8 and buy the next pet, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to take those Mindwhippers without outside assistance and probably survive the trip either to Freeport or Fayspire, too.

Someone by the name of Judy Thompson left a comment on today's post at TAGN in regard of World of Warcraft, saying "you can’t go back and do it over". I read that right after I'd been thinking just the opposite. 

EQOA thus far really does feel going back in time. It's not exactly like doing it over but it's the closest I've come since the first time I played on a retro server, many years ago. Maybe closer. 

The trick is that it's the same but also different. A lot of the skills and knowledge are transferable but not so many that it feels straightforward or obvious. There's a lot of learning to be done and also some unlearning. 

I guess what I'm saying is that it's familiar but not over-familiar. How long that feeling will last remains to be seen but it's a good one to have, while it lasts. 

Things Begin To Take Shape In Stars Reach

Playable Worlds is running a fairly extensive round of pre-Christmas testing for Stars Reach. There's a two-hour test every day, Tuesday through Friday this week, with a double helping on Wednesday for some reason. The majority of the tests are in EU-friendly time-slots, too, mostly falling around teatime and extending into the early evening.

I was planning on waiting for the Thursday or Friday tests, when I'd be home all day and wouldn't have to come back from work and jump straight in, but as it happened everything aligned perfectly yesterday for a full, uninterrupted two-hour session. We'd finished eating and Beryl had stuffed herself to the point of collapse so she was flat out on the bed for once, sleeping.

I'd actually forgotten there was a test on but when I sat down at my PC a few minutes after seven and logged into Steam, the first thing I noticed was a 1GB update for Stars Reach. That jogged my memory, so as soon as the patching was done, I logged in.

The server was up and completely stable. All the disconnection issues and lag of the early tests seem to be over. There are also no wipes going on at the moment so my character was available and where I'd left her. Which would have been good if I'd had any idea where that was.

I seemed to be on the side of a hill, somewhere on the edge of the map. I imagine I got interrupted and logged out wherever I happened to be at the time. Not that it makes a lot of difference at the moment. I don't know where anything is in relation to anything else anyway.

The three available planets are all pretty small, maybe the size of something like The Feerrott or possibly Rathe Mountains in EverQuest, although with a great deal more verticality. If there was a map it would be very easy to find your way around but as it is you have to rely on landmarks, a dubious process in a world subject to terraforming and strip-mining at every turn.

I am just now beginning to recognize a few semi-permanent features, like the high plateau with the weird, ghost-trees or the big lava lake, but I'm a little hazy yet even about which planet I'm on. I can tell if I'm on the Desert planet right away but the Temperate and the Jungle look very much alike in certain areas so I find it quite easy to confuse them.

This time I was on the Jungle planet when I woke up. I think. I'm basing that mostly on an observation I made later, after I'd been into space and swapped planets. I remembered Wilhelm talking about a co-operative attempt to build a city using the new construction tools, something that was happening on the original, temperate planet so, when I came down from orbit to see a grid-like pattern of new buildings, I guessed that must be where I'd landed.

Traveling through space to get from one world to another was a first for me. Or rather, it was the first time I'd gone into space with the deliberate intention of using it as a transit station. I've been space-mining before and ended up back on a different planet from where I started but that was by accident. 

This time, I wanted to go to a different "zone" so I looked for the blue beam of light that spears into the sky to let you know where the spaceport is, gravity-hopped across the map to get to it, then took the space-lift to the asteroid belt. Once there, I went outside the docking bay, looked around for another blue laser beam, found one, engaged my jet-pack and flew across to it so I could go back down to earth.

As a means of getting from one zone to another, it's a very odd process if you stop and think about it. I have to assume it's purely for the pre-alpha and forms no part of the eventual plans for travel in the live game. Also, if there's a way of telling which portal goes to which planet, I don't know what it might be. Making the beams of light a different color for each would be a start.

This sort of transport system is exactly the kind of thing that's great fun to discover and come to terms with when it's new but which quickly turns into a complete pain when you have to do it every time you want to get anywhere. It's something many developers have had to come to terms with as players lose patience with the exact, same mechanics that once enthralled and enchanted them. Never has the old saw about familiarity breeding contempt had greater currency than in the life-cycle of an MMORPG.

The reasons I wanted to travel to another planet were twofold: firstly, I'd finally achieved my longstanding goal of mapping all sixty-four out of sixty-four Survey Points. Only took me about half a dozen attempts. And I didn't even use the mapping tool, mostly because I was too mean to spend 400 xp points on it when I only had a handful of points to find.

The second reason I wanted to go somewhere new was to see if anyone was dancing. Stars Reach has a bizarre means of health and stamina recovery, something Raph has carried over from Star Wars Galaxies, where it was both popular and made at least some sort of sense. In Stars Reach it's still popular with ex-SWG players, of whom there are many in the testing program, but to anyone who hasn't drunk from that particular jug of Kool-Aid, it makes absolutely no sense at all.

As I understand it, the way it works is that you stand near another player while they're dancing and that somehow heals you and restores your stamina. In SWG it would have happened in a Cantina or some kind of bar or club and the healing would have been done by a character of the Entertainer class, which definitely has a kind of logic to it. I can imagine someone, getting back to town after a long day of murder-hoboing, kicking back with a beer while watching a little pole-dancing to de-stress and unwind.

In Stars Reach, though, it's just standing next to some random guy in a camp, jigging about on his own. How that's supposed to lighten anyone's load I'm not really sure. Still, whatever gets your HP back, right?

Hit points and stamina recover on their own but only up to the max, which falls every time you die or do other things I'm not entirely clear on. I believe the cap does go back up on its own as well, albeit very slowly, but I'm not a hundred per cent sure about that. The new tutorial was trying to explain it to me when I foolishly closed it to do something else and then found I couldn't open it back up again. I sent a bug report about that because I do think you ought to be able to pause a tutorial at will, not just have the one shot at it.

I needed to go stand next to someone doing the space rhumba for a while because I'd knocked a lot off my health and especially my stamina with all the running away I'd had to do while I was map-making. The change to leashing has very much made running away the preferred means of dealing with unwanted attention from aggressive wildlife. I only died twice this time and both were when I stayed to fight.

You may die less often that way but bouncing across the increasingly rugged landscape like a runaway spacehopper does lead to a certain amount of unavoidable physical trauma all on its own. By the time I got my last Survey Point I was battered, bruised and bleeding but, having covered the entire map, I was also aware there was hardly anyone else there and of the people who were, no-one was holding an impromptu dance party.

I didn't have any more luck on the next planet. There were more people around, for sure, but they all seemed very busy, doing whatever it was they were doing. This building-focused phase of testing seems to be making everyone a lot more intent on leaving their mark on the world, although most of the marks in question seem to come in the form of huge, gaping, jagged holes it's all too easy to fall down. I did that. Several times.

As yet, I haven't made any serious attempts of my own to get to grips with building. I did, by sheer chance, manage to find my Homestead again, the one I placed last time then promptly lost. It was satisfying to find it was still there, a small sign of permanence in a very impermanent world.

I'd also put it in a really stupid place so the moment I found it I tore it down. I haven't found a new place to put it yet. I'm going to have to give that a lot more thought before I go in for any serious home-making.

So far, there's precious little evidence I can see of any major architectural projects in progress. Unlike Landmark in even its very earliest public incarnation, when vastly impressive structures sprouted from the ground almost immediately, construction in Stars Reach seems more a proof-of-concept than a system anyone's going to spend a lot of time with purely for creative reasons. Then again, that might say as much about the current cadre of testers as it does the tools they've been given.

What I did run into, once again, was one of those odd, shrine-like affairs with small, golden statues of animals. I think those are part of the infrastructure, not anything players can make or place, but what they're intended to suggest is beyond me. It's nice to find them, all the same. Evidence of any sort of non-player-made lore or civilization is thin on the ground at this stage of development.

Even though I had no interruptions this time around, I still ended up logging out ten minutes before the server came down. As a player, I felt I'd achieved quite a lot, having mapped one planet and half of a second and used the accrued xp points to fill out quite a large chunk of the skill matrix. I also sent in a few bug reports so I was reasonably comfortable I'd fulfilled my responsibilities as a tester.

Speaking of testing Stars Reach, as opposed to just playing it, the testing process for me seems like it's reaching a kind of plateau. I'm vaguely familiar with the controls, I have reasonable facility with their usage and I'm not running into that many bugs. I suspect the part of the game I'm still entrenched in has been fairly thouroughly tested by now. I'd need to move on to new things to start running into problems.

As a player, I'm in two minds over what to do next. I've explored most of the three planets. I can get around with an approximation of efficiency and do much of what I want to do at the basic survival and exploration level without too much difficulty. That's all good.

To progress further is going to require actual effort and I'm not sure how I feel about that. As I wrote in a previous post, Stars Reach seems to start with a presumption that players (And therefore testers.) will want to create goals for themselves and find much of their motivation and pleasure in working towards achieving them - with the emphasis on the work part. 

That really isn't me or not any more. I don't much like the buckle down and grind it out approach in live games, where there's full persistence and progression, so the appeal of doing it in a testing environment where wipes are frequent isn't at all clear. 

Housing is a great example of my problem. I love building homes in games but once I've done it I tend to enjoy living in them. Otherwise, what was ther point? Even when I run out of space to build or decorate, I'm still more likely to learn to put up with an overstuffed, chaotic home than tear it down and start over. 

The exception to that would be Valheim, where building a base was an integral part of the fast-transit system. That did motivate me sling a string of shacks across the landscape and once I had the walls up, I couldn't leave well alone. It's why I have literally dozens of half-built homes there and also why I logged twice as many hours in the Viking afterlife sim than any other non-MMO I've ever played.

Maybe when Stars Reach goes live in a few years, I'll do the same there. For now, though, while I'd love to explore how the building tools work, I don't have the energy or the commitment to put hours into it, knowing I'll have to start over again in a week or a month or whenever it is the next build lands. 

Similarly, I enjoyed mapping one planet but I can't say I'm getting anything like the same satisfaction out of mapping a second. Things that are fun to do once or twice don't always stay fun forever.

I'm aware this is a test not a game and that having fun isn't the point. Some degree of fun is, however, necessary if I'm going to want to do it at all. At the moment I am still enjoying myself and being able to write posts like this is motivation enough but I'm close to the point of having said most of what I have to say about what there is of the game so far, or at least about the part of it I'm willing to take the time to discover.

That was apparent this time, when I decided to stop before I had to. It won't put me off playing again. I just need to think ahead a bit and have some prepared goals in mind. Paradoxically, while I know I'd have more fun if the servers were up all day, so long as they're only up for a couple of hours, that couple of hours can feel too long, especially when I have no particular purpose in mind.

There are quite a few more things I'd like to fiddle around with other than housing. I'd like to see if filling out the combat tree makes standing my gorund a viable option, for a start. It'd be nice not to have to run away every time.

I'd like to look at the crafting options more closely too, not least because there is an alternative to watching people dance I ought to be making more use of. You can make plasters out of bananas that restore a large amount of health. If I could figure out how to make those it would be a big help. Maybe there's a recipe that restores stamina, too. It's not that I want to be anti-social but you can't always find a dancer when you need one.

So there. Seems like I do have a few attainable goals after all. When's the next test?

Throne And Liberty - A Waypoint-And-Click Adventure

Here's the thing about Throne and Liberty. One of the things. The graphics are gorgeous but the world itself really isn't. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Solisium was a beautiful place, once. Not any more. At least that's what the disembodied voice that sounds like a slightly bored student reading to the class from a set text strongly implies. 

The voice starts up each time you open a new waypoint. The camera spins up and around, a swooping spiral to give you an aerial view of the stretch of the map you just revealed. Meanwhile, the unnamed tour guide recites two sentences - it's always exactly two - telling you what you're gawping at and why it looks so bad.

Usually it's because there's been some kind of war. One group of wizards scrapping with another, most likely. Or an attempt at colonization that met heavy resistance from the indigenous occupants. Werewolves, orcs, goblins. Anyone dumb enough to get in the way of progress. Sometimes there's no proximate cause. The land just seems to have been exploited for its natural resources then abandoned.

Actually one of the more attractive views, believe it or not.

I find it hard to think of another MMORPG, survival game or open world RPG I've played that looks so unremittingly bleak. By the time I'd completed my project of opening every accessible waypoint (There was just one I couldn't get to and that only because it's on an island to which access is only given at a point in the storyline I haven't yet reached.) I'd seen nothing but deforestation and desertification on the imperial scale. 

It might have been depressing if I hadn't been feeling so pleased with myself for finding a way to the last waypoint I needed. it was situated high on a butte, right in the middle of a camp filled with very aggressive orcs, something I discovered the hard way. 

I tried the direct approach first. It did not go well. I gave it some thought and decided something more subtle was required. The camp was bordered on the seaward side by some high cliffs. There was a village at the foot of the mountain range. I'd already opened a waypoint there so I ported in and started to clamber up the rocks.

I know you can't see any orcs but I assure you - they are there!

Throne and Liberty lies at some point mid-way between games like Genshin Impact or Wuthering Waves, where you're encouraged to use your parkour skills to climb anything you can see and much more movement-restrictive games like Guild Wars or the first version of Final Fantasy XIV, where you couldn't reliably step over a low kerb. 

I wouldn't go so far as to say that in Solisium, if you can see it, you can get to it. There are a fair number of invisble barriers as well as the very obvious visible ones I mentioned in a previous post. By and large, though, I've found that if something looks like you should be able to climb it, you probably can. With some effort. And a lot of bunny-hopping.

It took me a while to work my way right to the top of the crag overlooking the orc encampment but I managed it eventually. And it was fun. Climbing in open world games generally is.

What was more surprising was how nice it all was up there. A liminal space, where nothing happened and no player was expected to be. In contrast to the bleak, blasted wasteland below it was all lush, green alpine valleys, flush with trees, grass as fresh and flat as a well-tended lawn. All it needed was a few birds singing, the sound of distant goat bells and and a log cabin or two to make it the perfect holiday destination.

In retrospect, I realize I should have taken some pictures but at the time I was laser-focused on not falling off or getting stuck. It's quite easy to get stuck in Throne and Liberty, which is presumably why there's a button in the UI to move you to a safe spot when it happens. I've had to use it already and I imagine I'll be using it again soon enough.

Glide down, grab the WP, port out. Easy Peasy.

Once I'd morphed into a hawk and glided down to the final waypoint I was a bit stuck on what to do next. That's the problem with goals. Once you achieve them you have to come up with more.

Since I didn't have any bright ideas, I did what anyone would do in a dull moment and went back to following the plot. Or what passes for one in this game.

Chris Neal at MassivelyOP described the storylines in T&L as "barely connected little adventures", which seems entirely fair, based on what I've seen so far. It's an unusual approach. I believe there is some kind of over-arching narrative concerning some devious organization called the Arkeum and its nefarious plans but as yet those plans, whatever they may be, have remained firmly in the background.

In the foreground of the chapter I completed last night was some kind of Goblin insurrection. I had a quest that asked me to kill a Goblin Shaman so I got started on that and it turned into a whole series of quite interesting escapades involving the little green nuisances. 

There was one part where the whole lot of them attacked a tower and I had to run ahead up the steps setting magic traps to blow the little buggers to bits. That was fun but not so much as when I met a bespectacled researcher who looked not unlike Velma Dinkley from Scooby Doo and who had some similarly cartoonish ideas on how to infiltrate the goblin councils.

Okay, she doesn't really look like Velma. It's just those glasses.

She morphed me into a goblin because that's a thing people can do and I scuttled over to listen to them whooping themselves up for a riot with a lot of speechmaking and dancing. I had to dance, too. I got four new buttons on my hot-bar and everything.

I never figured out how that worked. It was the usual match-the-moves deal but I couldn't figure out the tells. It didn't matter in the end because there was no fail state. I just kept pressing all the buttons and eventually I somehow convinced the gobbos I was one of them. Then they all ran off, leaving their secret plans on the floor for me to grab because now we really were in an episode of Mystery Incorporated.

So, I enjoyed that. I also liked the side-quest, where a blind girl asked me to look at her painting and tell her what I saw. She was concerned because it had been freaking everyone else out. I'm not surprised. It turned out to be a portal to some infernal realm so they were right to be concerned.

The realm was also an instance of some sort but I didn't investigate further. I don't think I'm up to anything much more than basic overland questing right now, for the simple reason that I've intentionally made no effort whatsoever to upgrade any of my skills or gear since I started. I've been running a little experiment to see how far I can go without engaging with any of the progression systems other than simple leveling but I'm afraid it's going to have to stop.

She's not spooky at all, is she?

Level 20 seems to be the cut-off point. Experience comes very quickly in Throne and Liberty. When I returned to questing last night I was Level 12 and when I logged out not much more than ninety minutes later I'd just dinged twenty. 

Allocation of xp seemed unpredictable. For the most part it dripped in steadily and predictably but there were two occesions when I gained a full level for not doing anything much at all, presumably when I completed some quest stage or other. 

At one point I finished a long sequence to find myself a few percent shy of a level and I was delighted to find it was acceptable to go kill a couple of random goblins to make up the difference. How deliciously traditional - and satisfying - that felt. More games should allow players who enjoy it to grind xp grind from killing mobs instead of questing.

I did a bit of both and once again, I found myself having fun. There's nothing very original or special about Throne and Liberty but it does seem to have that old-fashioned MMORPG feel to it, the sense that you can just go out there and do stuff that doesn't particularly matter and it will keep you entertained for a while. 

You can quest, sure, but you don't have to if you're not really feeling it. There are other options. That's a wheel that maybe needed some re-inventing.

One original feature of the game is the perpetual NPC commentary. I kinda like it.

It also helps that no-one's claiming the fate of the world rests on your shoulders or telling you you're the Chosen One. At most you might be one of a whole load of chosen ones but not a particularly special example of the breed. A lot of people have star stuff in them. You're just one of many. You should probably do something with your talent but it doesn't have to be right now, just when you get around to it. That feels liberating, appropriately.

In the end I only stopped because the main questline had just taken me into a solo instance and I was getting my backside handed to me repeatedly by the mobs in the first room. It was apparent that starting gear and skills weren't going to cut it thee so I called it a night.

I still don't think I'll be staying with Throne and Liberty for long. I imagine that soon enough, or more likely all too soon, it'll turn into the regular upgrade grind they all do. That's mostly what I was hoping to avoid by not upgrading anything at all.

Still, the upgrade process in most of these games starts out as enjoyable and achievable. It's only later, when the improvements cease to be significant and the mechanics become both time consuming and costly, that the whole enterprise turns into a chore. I'm hoping it'll be a good while before that happens and until it does I'm quite looking forward to the ride.

Scrub grass, weeds, bare rock, dead trees... this place has it all!

I can definitely say that, when I sit down at my desk and contemplate what game I'd like to play, Throne and Liberty is the one that comes first to mind just now. It's not the best. It's not even my favorite. It's just new and it has that indefinable whatever that calls to me when I see the Play button there on Steam.

I am going to have to do something about gearing up but I find, somewhat to my own surprise, that I'm actually looking forward to it. It'll mean reading a lot of tool-tips but I can do that. And then I'm going back in that cave to teach those wizards a lesson. 

Plus, hopefully, make some money. Waypoints stop being free to use at Level 30 and the rate xp comes in in this game, I could easily knock off another ten levels by the end of the day.

After that, who can say. I don't even know what the level cap is. Maybe I'll get there, maybe I won't. I would like to get far enough into the storyline to gain access to that forbidden island, at least. 

It'd be a shame not to open that last waypoint, now I've gotten this far.

Seeing Solisium - One DC At A Time

I've been playing Throne and Liberty more than I expected and less than I'd like. 

After Helpie went home (That's them departing in a burst of light up above.) I gave up on following the quests and started racing around the map in wolf form, trying to open all the waypoints. It turned out to be much more fun than questing. Unfortunately, the whole thing is horribly unstable still in spite of all the patches and hot fixes so I keep getting disconnected and dumped to desktop. I won't really know how much fun the game can be until that stops.

Another annoying factor are the barriers. I've run into several. They show up as shimmering walls of force that block the way. 

I'm not sure whether they mark areas that aren't in the game yet or whether you have to be a certain level or have reached a specific stage in the storyline. There's no useful information in game to tell you, although when I arrived at the bridge in the screenshot above, I overheard a conversation between a guard and a merchant trying to cross that suggested political unrest or possibly military action had led to the gates being closed.

Travel in general is pleasing. There's no stamina or other drain to stop you running at wolf speed all the time. Better yet, as an otter you can swim forever, a very welcome change from all those games where you run out of breath and start to drown before you've swum the length of a kiddie's paddling pool.

Flying is the exception. It takes stamina to rise, making flight mostly a long, downhill glide. At least you don't fall out of the air when you run out of puff. I've seen worse.

Once you get away from the places you're supposed to be, where everything's happening and everyone is milling about getting under each others' feet, the world feels surprisingly empty. Not empty of interest - there's a lot to see just about everwhere- just empty of life.

I spent maybe an hour between disconnects, exploring the extensive shoreline and the deep ravines and river valleys. I saw shipwrecks and towers along the sand, platforms and rope bridges between the high rock stacks. I saw doors in the cliffs and statues among the scrub. What I didn't see were animals or monsters or people.

And then suddeny I didn't see anything at all because the fog rolled in. I vaguely knew there were weather effects in the game - winds that could blow you off your feet - but I'd heard nothing about the thick fog that makes it all but impossible to see where you're going.

I remain to be convinced of the gameplay value of weather effects that impede vision or movement. Leaving aside the obvious inconvenience to the player, it seems unlikely a culture whose least members are able to change shape at will would put up with not being able to see clearly in fog or darkness. Maybe there's a bat-form waiting to be discovered.

There's no sign of it in the wilds but in the more populated regions, Solisium has a serious litter problem. Everywhere you go there are pieces of paper lying about. I've played plenty of games that use this kind of incidental, incremental storytelling but I struggle to think of one with the sheer number of collectable texts Throne and Liberty employs.

I've been trying to read them all but the quality is variable. Some are quite interesting. Some are clearly designed only to be stored, not studied. Whenever I come across systems like this in a game I find myself wondering about the designer or developer who had to sit in an office coming up with all this stuff. Sometimes you can feel the glee as the unknown writer relishes the chance to let their imagination rip; sometimes you feel the dead weight of another endless afternoon spent on a thankless, meaningless chore.

My current plan consists of trying pick up as many pieces of paper as possible while unlocking every waypoint in all the areas I can reach. It's something I often used to do in games just for the fun of it. It's been too long since I ignored the demands of nagging NPCs in favor of just getting out there and seeing the world.

For that alone, Throne and Liberty has been worth it so far. If Amazon or NCSoft or whoever's responsible can fix the damn servers so I can stay online for more than half an hour at a time, I'll be happy to play a little longer. I still don't think it's going to be a lot longer but who knows? 

I guess we'll just have to wait and see. 

I seem to be saying that a lot these days.

Social Climbing

So much has happened in Nightingale since I last posted about what I've been doing there, I hardly know where to begin. I suppose I really ought to try to keep to a topic and make some coherent points about the game but really I just want to go "I did this! And then I did that! It was awesome!", like a ten-year old kid telling you about a trip to the adventure park.

Which is pretty much what Nightingale is, come to think of it: a trip to the adventure park. There's a lot of climbing up things and jumping off, for a start. It took me a while to get the feel of both of them, but once I got comfortable with the Climbing Picks and the Umbrella, there was no stopping me. 

They're both slightly more awkward to use than similar options in other games but they work wonderfully when you get the hang of them. They both also have the enormous benefit of being dual use items. Triple in the case of the Umbrella.

The picks make pretty good weapons, which is a big help when you pull yourself over the lip of a cliff and suddenly find yourself staring up at a bear. The Umbrella is a glider but it also keeps the rain off, very important in a game with a deleterious "Wet" condition, and also the sun, which can be even more dangerous in the desert, where you get "Hot" in very short order if you step out of the shade.

Speaking of the desert, I've been spending a lot of time there lately and boy is it harsh!  It's one of the most deserty deserts I've seen in a game, all flat, barren sand, blazing sun and nothing much moving anywhere. I find it quite mesmeric.

The picks are absolutely vital in the desert, something I would not have predicted. The storyline has you making a portal to a Desert Herbarium Realm in search of one Nellie Bly, who supposedly can help you on your quest to get back home to Nightingale. But first you have to find her.

It's a Tier 2 realm, meaning you'll probably want to have upgraded all of your gear to Refined quality, although if you've upgraded the stuff you got from Twitch drops, that probably still has the edge. That campaign has been extended, by the way, and if you already got the drops once, you can get them again. I did. I'm going to give them to Dora.

I made Refined versions of most of the rest of my gear but it was a faff (Cf the post linked above.) and I was trying to save on mats, so I left out a couple of things I thought I wouldn't need, like the Sickle and the picks. As it happens, even if I 'd wanted to replace my Simple Climbing Picks, I wouldn't have been able to. I hadn't noticed then, but I didn't have the recipe for the Refined ones. Unlike most of the others, it didn't come with the upgraded crafting station.

Worse, I was trying to keep my bags as clear as possible so I could fill them up with loot in the new Realm, so I didn't even bring my old picks along. That turned out to be a major error of judgment.

Since Nightingale uses procedural generation to create a unique version of each Realm when you crank the handle on the portal, I can't say for sure whether Nellie Bly is always to be found hiding away on a completely inaccessible plateau, surrounded on all sides by sheer, eighty meter cliffs, but that's where she was in my Realm. 

I knew where to look because quest NPCs are marked on the map, albeit in the vaguest fashion possible. I could see her marker but I couldn't figure out how to get to it. It looked like it was up on top of this gigantic pile of rocks but it could equally have been in a cavern hidden somewhere inside or even a cave beneath. 

I spent a good hour trekking all the way around the giant mesa, looking for a way up, in or through; a road, a track, a path, some crumbling sandstone steps - anything. There was nothing. Nothing but blank rock.

It looked like I was going to have to climb the damn thing. I contemplated the idea of going back and getting my Simple Picks or, better yet, making some Refined Picks, which would presumably make it easier, somehow. Luckily, I didn't immediately map back to Abeyance Realm home because while I was still wandering about the sands, I ran into an Essence Trader, who just happened to be selling the recipe to make the Refined Picks.

That confused me. Didn't I have them already? It tells you in the sales window if you've already got something and greys it out so you can't waste your Essences. The Refined Picks weren't greyed out, which is how I discovered I didn't have the recipe. 

In retrospect, I wonder if the whole point of not giving you the recipe for the Refined Picks up front is to clue you in to the fact that you're going to have to climb the cliffs to find Nellie. That would mean she's up there in all Realms. Or else I'm reading too much into it, which is always a safe bet.

Anyway, that's where my Nellie was and I did indeed have to buy the recipe, portal back home, scrape up the mats, make all the subcombines, then make the picks and come back.

Boy, it was some climb! As I mentioned, Nightingale is one of those games with multiple buffs that all stack. You need a lot of stamina to climb or you will fall and break your leg. Breaking limbs is a thing in the game. A very annoying thing. 

You might even get really unlucky and die, if you fall really far. Done that. Didn't like it much. Don't recommend it.

Luckily, you can buff up your stamina in all kinds of ways. I ate a bunch of different meats and berries and almost doubled mine before I began the ascent. It was enough, although only just. 

Once I'd found her, Nellie had plenty to say. Not out loud, because so far Puck is the only character with a speaking part. Everyone else communicates in writing. I won't give too much away but suffice it to say Nellie does not have the answers you're looking for...

...but she knows someone who might. Isn't that always the way with these things? And don't they all have just one little thing they want you to do for them before they'll tell you where to go next? Actually, you'll be lucky if it's just the one.

The next stop on the story train is Victor. I won't tell you his last name. Maybe you can guess. One of Nightingale's more corny design choices is bundling in as many familiar 19th century personalities as they've been able to glean from their battered copy of Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia. They don't make any differentiation between actual people and fictional characters, either. 

I have an exceptionally high tolerance for whimsy but even I find it a bit much when someone tells me the device they're working with was designed by Nikola Tesla and Marie Curie, working in tandem. Victor, naturally, turns out to be exactly who you think he's going to be, unless of course you thought he might be Victor von Doom, which wouldn't have been that much of a stretch, given some of the other people who turn up.

Naturally, Victor doesn't live in the same Realm as Nellie. I mean, why would he? Sure, it would be convenient for anyone trying to find him but if you had the power to spin up private realities all your very own, wouldn't you go live in one, too?

At least he doesn't live on top of a cliff. No, he lives on top of a tower. Nice little set-up, actually. Two rooms and a balcony. I'd take it as a holiday let, especially with all that glorious sunshine because, yes, it's another Desert Realm, the wrinkle this time being that it's a Desert Astrolabe Realm, not a Herbarium.

I had to go home and make the cards first, before I could go there, of course. And since I hadn't finished with the Realms attached to my two existing Portals, I had to make a new Portal, too. That's three so far.

The whole thing is starting to remind me of Valheim, where I ended up with more portals than I could keep track of with a map. Fortunately, you can rename Portals in Nightingale, so at least I won't have to put up a whole bunch of hand-made wooden signs this time.

One of those earlier Portals just goes to a Realm I made as an experiment. I was farming that one for T1 Essences but I don't really need those any more, especially with the 500 or so I already have, so I suppose I could let that map go and re-purpose the Portal when I need to find the next link in the chain.

The other one, though, I want to keep. Bass Reeves lives there and I'm kind of in the middle of a deal with him. He's a lawman, tracking down a fugitive. I'd never heard the name before so I didn't think anything of it when I met him, but wouldn't you know, last night I noticed a show on one of the streaming services about the real life Bass Reeves. 

He was"a runaway slave, gunfighter, farmer, scout, tracker, and deputy U.S. Marshal" according to Wikipedia. Even when you don't know who people are in Nightingale, it turns out you're supposed to. I'm going to have to start googling everyone from now on. (Oh, look! Here's Nellie!)

I got sent to find Reeves by Wilhelmina Sasse, who doesn't appear ever to have been anyone other than herself. She's a journalist and she wants to know what Bass is up to. He's told me because I did some stuff to get him to trust me but he swore me to secrecy and now I have to decide whether to keep my word or sell him out to the gutter press for a handful of silver. (Actually, essences, but that doesn't have the same resonance.)

This is one of those inflection points, where you can tell you're playing an Early Access game. For all Nightingale's many merits, there are a lot of those. You can choose to keep Bass's confidence and not tell Wilhelmina what she wants to know, but if you do, there's no way to finish the quest. It just sits there, giving you the fish eye.

I'm leaving it like that in the hope that they eventually patch in an ending for those of us who value honor over personal gain. Or just don't trust the press.

Meanwhile, I'll be busy working on the shopping list of components Nellie wants for her machine. Victor's just the start of it. I'm sure every other bugger I run into will want something, too. Just as well I'm not planning on going anywhere for a while.

Forty-seven hours and counting...