Can't Complain

Gamers can be a superstitious bunch. In the glory days of EverQuest inumerable charms and rituals were passed on from guild officer to new recruit when a rare spawn was proving to be rarer than expected. Or, in the case of the Ancient Cyclops or Quillmane, exactly as rare as expected

Of all the supposed cure-alls, perhaps the one that I've heard invoked most often of all across many games, is the cantrip of complaint. The theory is this: that only when you finally snap and humiliate yourself with a tirade of self-pity over your terrible bad fortune will the damn thing finally pop, purely to embarass you.

The trick of it is to hold off until the frustration genuinely boils out of you, uncontrolled. Faking it won't fool the rng gods. 

Maybe it was that. 

Or maybe, as Argent Defender and Wilhelm both dropped into the comments on yesterday's post to point out, it was the change Iron Gate made in today's patch:

* Missing Moder spawn location in some worlds fixed (NOTE: For existing worlds "genloc" command needs to be run manually in a local game with dev commands enabled to generate new locations, this is only needed if your specific world has this issue, this is not very common)

I spotted that before I logged on a few hours ago. The patch was described as "small" but it had quite a few interesting changes, several of which related directly to posts I've made over the past few weeks.

Inventory didn't get a boost but storage did, with the reinforced iron chest increasing in size to a couple of dozen slots. I'll be making a few of those to reduce the chest clutter that's already out of hand in my more popular homes.

The entrance to the sunken crypt was tweaked "to stop tombstones getting stuck", which was exactly what happened to me. And the console commands I used to fix my own problem when it did are being pushed out of general view behind an optional "launch argument". 

I knew what one of those was. I've used them in EverQuest and Guild Wars 2. I had to google to find out how to apply one in Steam. I thought I'd better do it even though I had no idea whether my difficulty finding Moder was down to the "not very common" bug. It seemed worth a try, at least.

Of course, after I'd done it I was none the wiser. I checked what the "genloc" command does before I applied it and although the explanations were vague it seems it just resets all the data. It doesn't add anything to your map. Clearly you need to run it to add a spawn marker that never existed in the first place but it doesn't solve the problem of finding it. You just know now that it is there. Somewhere.

I suspect that particular bug wasn't the cause of my problems anyway. As this reddit thread explains, the problem people were reporting was that when they found the vesigir it didn't add a location to their map. I just couldn't find the vesigir.

Still, I did it anyway because why not? I was happy the devs changed the console code from "imacheater" to "devcommands". Makes the whole thing feel a bit less uncomfortable. Not that it could be construed as "cheating" when the patch notes tell you to do it, but still.

With that out of the way it was off to carry on with the search. I'd made a deal with myself that I'd give it no longer than today and tomorrow. If I still couldn't find the vesigir after that, I'd use the trick that opens the entire map (not in your actual game). I'd squint at the screen and put my fingers over my eyes and hope to spot Moder's spot without spoiling anything else.

Luckily I didn't need to take that chance. After a couple of false starts, one or two more unsuccessful mountain trips and several distractions along the way, I found myself sailing along the coast of yet another island. In the middle was the biggest mountain I'd seen yet. It was huge. If that didn't have a black tower then sod it. Nothing would.

I only found it by mistake, naturally. I was heading for a different island entirely, one I'd just clipped in a previous voyage but hadn't investigated. Everything was going well. The wind was with me. Visibility was good. And then the fog came in.

Fog in Valheim, like every weather condition, is no joke. I couldn't see anything. I slowed down so as not to run aground on an unseen shore. Land would probably mean either plains or swamp and both would be deadly in thick fog. And then the wind swang around to the west.

By the time I could see where I was going I was a good way from where I'd meant to be but there was land ahead so I changed my plan. Flexibility is important. As the longship flew across the waves I was stunned to see a giant mountain peak looming out of the distant haze. Better yet, it was just the tallest of a range that went on further than I could see.

All along the shore were plains. I ran parallel to the coast, looking for a patch of meadow or black forest but the plains stretched on and on. Finally, just as I was reaching the southernmost tip of the island, I spied a tiny patch of green. Meadows!

Of course, there was a massive draugr village right where I beached the boat because why wouldn't there be? I did consider clearing it out and making it my base but I'd already spent enough time on displacement activities for one session. (Did I really need to dig out an underground bunker for the portal on that last island?). 

Throughout the whole of this very, very long search I've been extraordinarily careful. Being so far from home makes corpse runs a truly terrifying prospect. I've been assiduous about establishing beachheads, planting portals before exploring, staying well-fed, not going outdoors at night. 

I've even taken to carrying a spare boat since the time I stepped through a portal and came out the other end to find a troll trying to smash it with a tree-trunk. You can never get totally stranded because if worst comes to worst you can destroy your bed and get yourself killed to force a respawn back at the big altar on the starting island. 

But who wants to die? Not me. And by taking proper precautions in this whole lengthy enterprise I believe I've only died two or three times in about a week. And all of those were when I kept pushing on far longer than I should have. Mostly I haven't done that, which is unusual for me. Maybe I'm not too old to learn new tricks after all.

Once I was set up in a house the draugr weren't using, with my portal installed, secured and working, I set off to find the mountain. It was big enough. You'd think it would be easy enough to see. 

Yes, well, it wasn't. It seems to be an oddity of Valheim that you can see the heights from the ocean but not from the land. All those trees get in the way. 

There were only a couple of choices. One of those was through the plains so I took the other. I was expecting more plains to appear at any moment, or if not plains then swamp, but the country remained joyously forested as I pushed further and further north. And then there it was, looming majestically ahead. The big mountain.

There was a tiny strip of plain to cross but it was empty of life. In moments I was leaping up the snow-covered slopes in the peculiar bunny-hopping fashion that passes for mountain-climbing in Valheim. Wolves came at me from all directions but wolves stopped being any kind of threat long ago. When you've climbed as many mountains as I have you learn to swat them down without breaking stride.

Drakes are even less of a threat but a lot more of a nuisance. If you ignore them they just keep coming and all that screaming and blue lightning is distracting. I stopped and potted them as they arrived. Their frost glands I left where they fell. I have stacks of those back at home.

Night was begining to fall and I was still in the foothills. Wooden shelters are worthless in the snows. Drakes and golems destroy them in moments. I looked for a solid rock face and took out my pick. A cave is both safe and comfortable. One day I'm going to dig myself a really big one and make a proper mountain retreat.

The next moning I set off again, onward and upward. I was almost at the summit when I thought I saw something unnatural. Something made. 

At last! A black tower. Only the second I'd ever seen. It was small and in bad shape. There were figures moving around near the base. Draugr. 

That threw me. I was under the impression all the towers were populated only by skeletons. They own the tower franchise in Valheim or so I thought. Some people even refer to the black towers as "skeleton towers". 

Draugr it was, though. Two of them. I popped one with a single arrow. His companion, around the corner, didn't even notice. When he wandered back into view I popped him as well. So much for them.

I scree-surfed down to the tower. Even before I slid to a halt I could see the tell-tale red glow inside. A vesigir. Yes!

I was so determined to record the event I took a screenshot before I even clicked on it, which was tempting fate. Imagine if a golem had arrived just then and chased me off before I'd used the stone to mark my map. Imagine if I'd died.

It didn't happen. I didn't die then or on the way back to the cave, where I spent another night, or on the journey back through the black forest, although a deathsquito did chase me into the trees. (I turned and blapped him with my silver sword and that was the end of him). 

Before any of that I explored the mountain range some more, curious to see if there were any more black towers. I found one. It didn't have a vegisisr.

Looking at it in the round, I'm sure I wasn't bugged. I just had very bad luck in the number of towers my seed generated. And in the vegisirs in the few there were. I agree with Asmiroth that it's a weakness in the design.  I don't mind the exploring. I enjoy it. But you can have too much of a good thing.

Now it's on to the fight itself. Well, once I get there. It's another long journey but that's okay.

Moder's altar is further to the north again. Further than Bonemass was. Further than I've ever been. But at least I know where I'm going, now. That makes all the difference.

Under The Sea

For once, when I sat down to write today's post I had something specific in mind. Of course, that meant I ended up writing about something else entirely. I often don't know what I'm going to say until I hear myself say it and it's not much different when I write.

Rather than forget about the post I'd originally intended or even save it for tomorrow, I thought I'd just get on and do it. So here it is. Two posts in one day. Blame Valheim.

The original theme was going to be continual discovery and the way not looking stuff up on the interweb keeps everything fresh. You can see that's how the original post starts out. Where it was heading, though, was towards a couple of things you could almost call tips. Or spoilers.

I'm sure anyone who's been reading the wiki or following game guides will know both of these already but I discovered them for myself and I'm very happy I did. If anyone reading this wants to do the same, I guess they'd better leave and maybe come back later, when they feel they've seen and done it all.

I hope no-one does. Leave, that is, not come back later. Personally, I've set my parameters so that things I read on other people's Valheim blogs count the same as discovering them for myself in game but those are just house rules. Everyone makes their own.

Enough with the spoiler alerts. And anyway, the first isn't even a spoiler. It's a genuine tip.

How To Recover Iron Nails From The Sea Bed When Your Longship Sinks (Again)

Remember when my longship mysteriously sank? Well, it happened again only this time I heard it. Didn't see it, just heard it.

I was inside my hut on the new, northern island. I'd just woken up and I know my ship was there because I'd seen the mast tip bobbing about through a gap in the wall.

For some reason I decided to tab out and check Feedly. Don't know why. There was a new post up at TAGN and I was halfway through it when I heard a horrendous crash. I tabbed back and ran outside, expecting to see a troll or worse but there was nothing. Nothing but some wreckage floating on the calm waters.

My longship had self-destructed. I have no idea why. There were no creatures nearby. No rocks for it to strike. There wasn't a breath of wind. It was particularly strange since I'd been away from that ship for several game days and it had apparently been floating there perfectly happily the whole time. I find it suspicious that both sinkings have happened right after I've come back home from a long trip and had a good night's rest.

I had a portal right there so I wasn't stranded and the hold of the boat had been all but empty but I was cross about losing another hundred iron nails. This time, though, the ship has gone down closer to the shore. I wondered if I might be able to salvage them.

I waded out a ways and there were the nails. I could see them on the sea bed. It looked like they were about ten feet down in crystal clear water. I tried swimming over them and pressing "F" (I changed the default "E" key to "F", which is what I use in every game) but no joy. 

And then I had an idea. What if I raised the land with the hoe? I didn't figure I could drain a whole bay but I'd noticed when I'd been mining that fixed objects drop to a new level when whatever's supporting them gives way. I wondered if that might work the other way around.

To cut to the chase, it does! It took me a good few stacks of stone (there are no rocks left standing a hundred meters in any direction from my hut) but I was able to build a breakwater out to the spot. I was trying to work out whether it was feasible to encircle the entire area and drain it (probably not - water seems to have a set level) when I had the inspiration to target the nails and raise the land directly beneath them.

At first I thought I'd just buried them. Or, worse, maybe they'd been destroyed. They certainly disappeared. I carried on building my breakwater with a vague plan of filling the whole area then mining down to where the nails had last been seen. And then I happened to open my inventory to get something and there were my nails!

There hadn't been a message or if there had I'd missed it but when I'd raised the land beneath them they must have been shunted upwards into range and I'd auto-looted them. So things can be recovered from the sea bed after all.

I wouldn't like to try it more than a few yards from land. You'd need boatloads of stone if it would even work. Close to shore, though, it can definitely be done because I've done it.

Now all I need to find out is why the damn longships keep sinking in the first place. 

Why You Should Never Build A House On The Back Of  A Giant Turtle

I didn't actually do it. I only thought about it. Luckily I found out why it was a bad idea before I got the workbench out.

There was this island up the coast from my castle. I'd been looking at it every time I passed by. It had a lovely, round, domed shape, a few trees here and there and some lumpy things down low that I couldn't quite make out from the shore. Tin nodes, maybe.

Every time I saw it I thought about what a fine spot it would be to build something. Steep enough so the waves wouldn't come over the top, small enough that no annoying wildlife could live there, far enough out that trolls couldn't wade close enough to lob rocks. I was imagining building maybe a lighthouse or a watchtower.

I had to make a run up the coast by ship so when I came near to the cute little island I couldn't resist pulling in for a better look. As I got close enough to see them properly I realized the "tin nodes" were giant limpets. Or maybe barnacles.

Hmm. A suspiciously regular-shaped dome-like island with an oddly smooth surface covered in barnacles. What does that suggest to you?

Giant turtle!

I didn't really think it was a giant turtle, of course. I've played games where there are giant turtles. There's one in both EverQuest and EverQuest II for a start.  It's a fantasy trope but is it Norse fantasy? Is it really? 

No, I don't think it is. So I moored the ship and jumped out to take a look. Which was when I discovered the limpets were indeed barnacles. And you could interact with them. 

I wasn't sure quite how to interact. Pressing "F" did nothing so they weren't a food you could gather. Maybe you could break them up with the pick?

Yes, it turns out in Valheim you can mine abyssal barnacles with a pickaxe and if you do what you get is chitin. As soon as I chipped off a chunk some recipes popped up. They vanished too fast to read although I spotted the word "Harpoon" before they disappeared. 

Gleefully, I began hacking away at every barnacle I could see. I'd mined about twenty-five chunks of chitin when the ground began to shake. There was a grinding noise, too. I looked up. I knew it. 

Told you so! Giant turtle!

I dithered for a second. There were several more barnacles waiting to be mined. Nothing seemed to be happening now so I brought the pick down on another shell. 

Oh, boy! That did it. The whole island began to vibrate. Great gouts of spray appeared all around the edge. I forgot all about the chitin. I sprinted for my ship and leapt aboard. Lucky for me it hadn't drifted far from the spot where I'd left it.

I stood on the deck wondering whether I ought to grab the tiller and get the hell out of there before the turtle turned round. I don't know what they eat but it was certain sure this one was big enough to eat me and my ship if it had a mind to.

Fortunately for me, it seemed all the beast wanted to do was get away from the annoying hammering on the outside of its shell. In a series of titanic heaves the island submerged. In a few moments all that was left was calm, clear water. 

As I sailed away I thought what a good thing it was I'd not come with a whole load of stone, wood and iron to build my island getaway. I carried on up the coast, counting my blessings. And my chitin.

I still haven't found out what to do with it. It doesn't go in the smelter. I can't work it with the hammer or the workbench or the forge. I even tried the stonecutter but no dice. Maybe there's another piece of workshop equipment I haven't discovered yet.

Could be. In Valheim, there's always something new to find.

Location, Location, Location

So many notable things happen in Valheim, and so often, it's becoming quite impossible to get them all written down. Every session offers up enough material for two or three posts. The pace, the scope and the intensity all create problems in journaling my adventures beyond the most obvious one - not wanting to take time out to write up what's happened because I'd really rather just keep playing.

Even when I do force myself to stop playing and start posting, remembering the exact details or the precise sequence of events later can be problematic. I like to be as accurate as possible here and normally I rely heavily on virtual photography as a form of note-keeping but in Valheim often I'm either so engrossed I forget to take screenshots or it's just too dangerous to risk it. 

Without a visual record my recollections tend to become somewhat impressionistic. I regularly find myself describing events as they ought to have happened rather than as they did, giving a logical framework and a coherent narrative to what was much more a series of unfortunate events.

With that in mind, here's an impression of what I've been up to these last few days. 

I wanted to mine some more scrap iron. I'd been reading about the third boss, Bonemass, and I didn't like what I was hearing so I thought I'd better try to get everything as fully upgraded as it could be. I took  a trip to the further end of the large island where I'd found some sunken crypts before and this time I hit paydirt.

The famed lost valley of the crypts!

A whole line of crypts stretched southwards through the swamplands. I could frequently see the next target from the doorway of the last. I soon had clearing them out down to a fine art. Pop up a workbench in the entrance, barricade the front and put in a door and you're safe to take as long as you like. I even put a stockade outside the first crypt and installed a portal so I could nip back home whenever I needed repairs or supplies.

That worked splendidly. The crypts weren't as rich in iron as the ones I'd found further north but the sheer quantity of them made up for it. It didn't feel dangerous at all. In iron armor and weighted down with poison resist potions nothing really seemed like much of a threat. Not only that but the part of the swamp I was working seemed remarkably quiet. At times, when it stopped raining, it was almost pleasant.

I kept going until I had about two hundred pieces of iron ore then I stopped to figure out how I was going to get them home.

Ah, yes. Home. Where was that, exactly? At this point I had two well-established homes complete with foundries, one on each of the large islands I'd explored. I also had a treehouse, a beachhouse, a boathouse, a tower house, a cliffside house, my original house close to the place you hang the boss-heads... and those were just the ones with portals. If you counted all the places I'd secured and made liveable it probably came to a couple of dozen.

It was obvious I couldn't keep adding properties to my portfolio like a nineteen-sixties slumlord. I sat and thought about it for quite a while and came to no conclusion. There's a surprise. 

To avoid making a real decision I decided to get the ore back to the stilt house since it was nominally the nearest. It's called the Stilt House because it's a house on stilts, or it was when I found it. Now it's a sprawling mess but it has a tier five forge. Might even be tier six. If there is a tier six. I know I gave it a lot of upgrades. 

The only problem was the location.

It looked so different in daylight...

 

Most of my houses are in places that look good. That usually means a sea view, which should be excellent for bringing ore in by ship. Unfortunately I chose to put both my foundries deep inland. 

I stupidly built them near where the iron was (or where I thought it would be) without considering that I'd have to get it back through a swamp. It was okay when the crypts were in walking distance but now they were down the other end of the island or on a different island altogether I was starting to wish I'd thought it through.

I looked at the possibility of getting the iron most of the wayback by ship. It seemed feasible. There was a blank patch of map I hadn't opened that looked as if it could be an ocean inlet not too far from the Stilt House.

It would be a longish haul up the coast and round but it would cut the walking to a minimum. Only first I'd have to get it out of the swamp and over to where I'd left my longship. Which is when I had the bright idea of building a cart.

Everyone else built carts as soon as they could but I never saw the point. When I read Aywren's post on carting, though, it gave me some ideas. I get all my best ideas from other bloggers. It was Asmiroth who clued me into drying out the swamp by flattening it with the hoe, in the post where he credited me for pointing him in the right direction, ironically.

Watch yer back, porky. Comin' through!

 

To cut what could be a very long story indeed down to a manageable bitesize morsel, it turns out you don't really need to flatten the land ahead of a cart, even in the swamp. It does help but it takes a while and I'm not convinced there's a net gain. The cart will roll through swampwater.

In keeping with most aspects of Valheim's really quite impressive quasi-physics, the cart handles extraordinarily convincingly. It goes slower and gets stuck more when you overload it. If it bogs down you can take stuff off to manouevre the cart more easily around obstacles, then reload it. You can even get behind and push!

I learned a lot, hauling two hundred chunks of scrap iron through a swamp, a forest and down a hillside to the sea. One thing I learned was that it's a bad idea to try and dig a path for a cart with a pick axe. I got mine stuck in a hole that way. I got it out again the same way. Eventually. That was fun.

Also, if you get behind a cart and push at the top of a hill it will indeed freewheel down to the bottom. Into the river. Where you won't get it out again. Mine's still there.

Ya think?

 

But carts are cheap and the river was in sight of my boat. Of course, getting the ore onto the ship was an adventure in itself. There's a reason people use docks and jetties. I should have taken time to build one. 

Never mind. I got it all stowed and didn't drown myself. All plain sailing from then on, right? Yeah, not really. 

The thing about unexplored bits of the map is that sometimes when they look like sea they turn out to be swamp. The inlet above my stilt house I was imagining turned out not to exist. I kept going long after I should have stopped, night fell, there was fog... 

I was very, very lucky not to sink the ship. That would have been very bad. Although not as bad as I thought it would be. 

I thought that if the ship sank, all my iron would go to the bottom of the sea, where it would be lost forever. I know now that doesn't happen (Ironic foreshadowing!). I had good reason to think it would. I've killed far too many deer by picking them off with the bow as they try to swim away. They make easy targets in the water but I've taken to letting them go because when they explode (the way everything in Valheim explodes when it dies) their hides sink like stones.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time"

 

In Valheim you can swim on the surface and see through the clear water to the bottom but you can't dive. If something's on the sea bed it stays there. That's where the nails from my longship are right now. (More ironic foreshadowing! Laboring the point a little, in fact).

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I survived the failed voyage through the swamp, just barely. After yet another cold, miserable night at sea I opened the map and re-assessed the situation. 

I could land somewhere safe and try to get the iron to the stilt house overland, maybe by cart, but the terrain looked difficult and it was a long way, wherever I'd make landfall. I could sail back south, further than I'd already come, and dock at the boathouse but that would mean another, even longer overland trek. I could sail up and round to my first house, which I'd actually built next to water. That had a kiln and a smelter but no forge.

Or I could stop and start over. As far north as I'd yet been I'd found a medium-sized island that was all meadows and black forest with just a small mountain in the middle. No plains. No swamp. It would make an excellent permanent base. I already had a portal there and I'd marked the map with a scarcely-ruined-at all-tower I'd spotted in a great position on the coast.

Dude, where's my longship?

 

It was an easy sail and there was a good, sandy beach in front of the tower. I needed to head north soon in search of the other Bonemass altar anyway. I had access to stonecutter technology so I could fix up that tower. It would mean making a new foundry (my third... or fourth if you count the one with no forge...) but even that would be orders of magnitude faster than getting all this iron to the ridiculously inconvenient places I'd put the others.

So that's what I did. Sailed up the coast, beached the ship near the tower, ran in and threw up a few wooden barricades for safety then unloaded all the iron. Then I made a stonecutter and set to building my castle.

Things got a little out of hand, the way they tend to when I start building. Rather than just refurbish the tower I had to extend and remodel it. It took me a good few hours but by the time I was done I was more than happy with the result. 

I spent the last hour or so fetching wood and running the smelter to convert the scrap iron into bars then I went up to my terrace room to take in the view of my longship, gently rocking on the swell as the sun slowly dropped below the horizon. And so to bed.

I woke to find my longship gone, vanished in the night. Nothing left but a few crates bobbing by the shore. And then a troll came and knocked my tower down. 

But that's a story for another day.

No Solid Ground

At the end of my first month in Valheim I find myself at something of an impasse. I've mined about as much iron as I need for the moment. I've made plenty of poison resist and healing potions. I've bought everything Haldor the Dwarf has to sell and there's plenty of gold left over. 

I'm not short of things to do: upgrades to work on; huge swathes of the map to explore; construction projects  that could fill my time from now until well after Easter. I haven't run out of ideas. It's just that I know there's something I ought to be doing at this point: killing the third boss. 

I don't have to do it. Valheim is totally forgiving of anyone who doesn't want to follow the plot. But I do want to. Not because I'm looking forward to the fight. I'd sooner the boss fights didn't exist or, better, weren't tied to progression.

No, I want to kill Bonemass because I'm guessing it will open up the next craft tier. Whatever that is.

I'm assuming it won't be black iron, even though I already have a few scraps of that and they're flagged "No Teleport", just like all the other metallic ores. They drop from Fulings, the goblins who live on the plains. Fulings are a real handful. I can only handle them with any confidence one at a time but we've had a few run-ins and I've come off best, more times than not.

Picking up the black iron scraps they drop hasn't opened any new recipes and my forge doesn't show anything for black iron either. It won't even go in the smelter. It's hardly surprising. Plains isn't the next biome on the difficulty curve. That's mountain. Presumably there's a progressive step I'm missing.

If I want to carry on up the crafting ladder I'm going to have to take on the next boss in the hope it drops an item that unlocks the next stage of technological development, the way the last two did. Only first I have to find the damn creature. 

It shouldn't be too difficult. It's marked on my map, after all. Twice. The first marker appeared when I examined a Vegesir in a sunken crypt. 

The location it pointed to is way, way off to the North, far beyond anything I've explored so far. I was happy when, a little while later, I looked at a different Vegesir in another crypt and got a second marker much closer to areas I'd already visited down in the South-East.

That looked a better prospect even though it was clearly going to take a sea voyage to reach. The spot lay due East of the coast, just across the spur where I'd built my treehouse. Last night I ported down there and trotted through the black forest to take a look. 

I took with me all the materials I needed to build a longship. I figured I could try that out at the same time.

I found a nice flat rock jutting into the sea and started building a boathouse. Greydwarves kept streaming in to stop me but they're no more than annoying these days. I swatted them with the axe as they came and picked up the planks they all drop. Good of them to bring me a steady supply of wood.

Before I'd finished building my dock the ground started to shake. Troll attack! I was out of arrows so I let him vent his anger on my lean-to shack while I watched two more trolls a few hundred yards down the coast. They were fighting something I couldn't see. And they lost.

That was disturbing but I thought I could guess what was happening. As I explore my world I'm finding a lot of places where biomes intersect. So many, in fact, that I'm beginning to think it's the rule rather than the exception. 

Sometimes several come together at a kind of nexus of chaos. I was at a spot yesterday where meadows, black forest, plains and swamp all joined up. It was a very scary place to be. I didn't hang around.

The problem with biomes butting up against each other is the excellent AI afforded to their inhabitants. All the aggressive creatures like to hunt. They don't just kill things they happen to bump into, either. They really do go hunting, moving from one kill to the next with what looks disturbingly like intelligent thought or well-honed instinct.

Once deathsquitos or fuling hunting parties finds easy prey in black forest or meadows biomes they go on a killing spree. As they chase their prey it can lead them far inside the boundaries of the supposedly less-dangerous area. It makes for a very nasty surprise when you meet them as you're looking to spend a safe and comfortable night.

Fighting fulings and deathsquitos in deep swamp water with impeded movement and terrible visibility is no fun at all, I can tell you. There are good pickings to be had from going over the battelefield afterwards, though. I've picked up more deer skins that way than I've killed deer.

Seeing the two surviving fulings from the troll massacre heading up the shoreline towards me I decided to postpone building and get on the boat. It was raining hard and I'd wanted to wait for clear weather but better the open sea in a storm than two fulings in a tight corner.

The storm wasn't too bad and the wind was with me. It didn't take long to come in sight of land. The longship goes fast with a fair wind. Unfortunately the land in question was mostly plains and I was going fast. By the time I'd pulled the ship parallel to the coast a deathsquito had spotted me and made a beeline (ironically) straight for me. 

Fighting a deathsquito onboard a longship is an experience I wouldn't want to repeat. Which is a shame because no sooner had I killed that one than another turned up. I managed to catch him a good blow with my axe but my nerves were shot by then. Night was coming on and I realized, belatedly, that I'd come sailing into strange, dangerous waters wearing all my best gear.

If this is meadows, how come I can see bison?

I abandoned the mission, turned the boat around and headed back. I spent the rest of the night finishing the boathouse and digging out a deep moat all around it in the hope of discouraging any wandering goblins. Then I went to bed, in game and in real life.

This morning I jogged back to my treehouse, took the portal to my log cabin, changed into my bronze armor, stashed anything of value in chests and packed the mats to make a couple of portals. Then I headed back to the coast for another try. It didn't go much better than the first, although at least I neither died nor sank the ship, which was something.

The weather was fine but the wind stayed stubbornly against me for most of the hour I spent looking for a safe place to land. I thought I'd found one when I saw green grass and the map told me I'd reached meadows but when I jumped off the deck onto a rock I could see deathsquitos flitting through the trees and the huge, shaggy silhouettes of bison just beyond.

Navigating along the coast confirmed what I suspected but didn't want to admit. The new landmass I'd found was mostly plains with a few small pockets of black forest or meadows close to the water. Nowhere was there a section large enough that fulings and deathsquitos wern't using it as a hunting ground.

I'd been planing on establishing a base, setting up a stockade and putting up a portal, then sailing back to install a link in the network at one of my houses. Only then was I going to come back, properly dressed and equipped to go searching for Bonemass's altar on foot.

Looks like swamp but the minimap knows better.

That never happened. Since I couldn't find anywhere remotely safe enough to settle I decided to see how close I could sail to the marker on the map. All the way, as it turned out. Which was not a good thing at all.

To be strictly accurate, I never got close enough to see the altar or summoning site or whatever it is. I kept sailing, the wind mostly against me. It was slow going. As I neared the marker on the map all I could see ahead were dead trees jutting out of the water. Technically it was swampland only there wasn't any land. It was swampwater.

The longship got nearer and nearer to the marker. The water got shallower and shallower. I could see draugs watching from among the trees. There had to be something solid for them to stand on but I couldn't see what it was. 

With the icon for my ship all but on top of the marker on my map I hit a sandbar. Ahead of me there was still nothing that looked like solid ground. Or was there? Looking closer I realized all the stark, black trees were rooted in golden sand. The swamp was growing out of the plain.

The ship wasn't going to go much farther. It didn't have the draft. I was fearful of getting it stuck for good. The sun was going down. I considered the prospect of fighting a boss in water with adds coming in from both plain and swamp at once.

Nope. I don't think so.

Turn, blast you!

 

With a great deal of effort I got the longship turned around and headed for open water. I tried several times to find somewhere to land but there was nowhere. The wind was dead against me most of the time. For a terrifying few minutes I found myself becalmed just a few feet offshore, plains stetching away into the darkness on both sides.

Luckily nothing spotted me. The wind finally shifted and blew me back out to sea, where I spent a cold, dark night, alert for sea serpents that thankfully never came.

As soon as the sun came up I tacked into the wind and zig-zagged my way back to where I'd started. I pulled the longship into a cove, leaped out and sprinted for the closest portal. 

Cross that off the list. Looks like I'm in for a long trip north.

A Tall Ship's Tale : Black Desert

Much of the conversation over Black Desert Online has focused on systems and processes. From the arcane and convoluted crafting to the controversial cash shop, to the conflicts between the needs and desires of PvP and PvE players, to the "always online" demands of the afk progression mechanics, BDO has generated controversy and confusion in equal measure.

With all that going on it's easy to forget that this is still an explorer's game par excellence. If you come to Black Desert with an explorer's heart there's no need to know or care about any of these things. From the moment you step out into the world there is quite literally nothing to stop you putting foot to road and heading for the horizon.

Yesterday I had the finest, simplest, open-world adventure I've had for a very long time. It took me all the way back to the earliest days of EverQuest, when I stood at the harbor in Butcherblock, staring at the sea, waiting for my first ever imaginary boat trip.

It all goes back a few days to when I first arrived in the great port city of Altinova. I'd climbed the hills at the back of the town, getting my bearings and my breath after a dizzying jaunt through the red clay mayhem of the souks and alleyways below. Looking out across the rooftops to the docks I saw a square-rigged galleon at the wharf, by far the biggest ship I'd seen.

As I watched, it pulled away from the pier, turned awkwardly and headed out to sea. I scrambled down the hillside and raced through the teeming streets to the waterfront to where the great ship had been.

For half an hour or more I waited there for another seagoing vessel to arrive. I passed the time fishing. My bags filled and I sold the catch to the Trade Manager up the hill. My rod broke. No ship appeared. Eventually I gave up waiting and left.

Yesterday I was in Altinova again when history repeated itself. I was looking down from the heights when I saw the ship, only this time it was just coming in to port. I forgot my plans and sprinted for the dock. This time I made it.

I was the only one waiting to board when the ship pulled alongside the harbor wall. When it set sail again just a few minutes later I was still alone. There were no passengers but me. There was no crew. There didn't even seem to be a captain. And yet the ship sailed.

There I was, the lone passenger on a ghost ship. The sun was going down. Of course it was. It's always coming on night when I do anything in Black Desert or so it seems. I tried to take some shots of the ship but the light was poor and the vessel too large for the frame so after a few minutes I settled down to watch the waves roll by.

And they rolled. And they rolled. And they rolled. I had no idea where the ship was heading. It seemed to be making for the deep ocean. Opening the map after a few minutes it looked as though we might be bound for Iliya Island.

That would be some journey from Eastern Mediah but it would have been handy for me. I could check up on my shipyard there, see my workers were settled, have a rummage around my storage. But Iliya slipped past to starboard and we sailed on into the night.

By this time we'd been afloat for ten minutes or so. I wondered if we might be heading to Velia, which would make for a trip of at least twenty minutes. We were not.

Velia slid by to port. I looked at the map again. Where else was there? There were islands, of course. A lot of islands. Some of them even had names. For a time we appeared to be heading directly for a middling sized isle but at the last moment we rounded its southernmost tip and on we sailed.

It was light again by this time. We were cutting along within sight of land but but the mists had come down to hide the shore. Tantalizing glimpses of towers and walls drifted in and out of view.

I paced the deck from prow to stern, trying to get a clear line of sight. Gingerly I hoisted myself onto the spars and edged along the rails. I was terrified of slipping, falling into the dark ocean. I knew that if I had to swim I'd drown before ever I reached land.

Opening the map once again it was hard to believe just how far the ship had traveled. We had been, quite literally, in uncharted waters almost from the start but for a good while now we were running past unmapped land. Whatever country this was to the lee it was one I'd never seen before.

By now I'd been on the ship for well over half an hour. About the only place I could think of that might be our destination port would be Calpheon. The great city of the West is inland but it stands on a major river. I hadn't noticed a harbor when I was there but then I hadn't looked for one.

After the best part of forty-five minutes, with the sun up and full daylight clearing the fog, finally the ship turned for the shore. A great lighthouse tower on a promontory heralded a major port. A port I had no idea existed.

The ship nudged alongside the planks of the dock of a busy fishing port, with granite fisherman's cottages rising up the hillside towards impressive public buildings and churches above. Wide, sandy beaches swept away to the north. A beached whale lay on the sands, surrounded by curious Shai.

Walking the wet, early morning streets I learned the name: Epheria Port. Standing high on the cliffs that backed the weather-worn, tiled roofs I watched the sails of the ghost-ship shrink to the horizon, heading back to warmer waters once again.

For almost an hour all I'd done was board a ship and wait for the voyage to end. In the terms of the game my character did not progress by any measurable means. No skills increased, no loot dropped, no quests completed, no achievements accrued. There were no rewards, material, statistical or nominal.

It was the best adventure I'd had for a long time. Something I'll remember the way I remember those first trips across the Ocean of Tears.

It was a mighty long hike back to Altinova, where I left my horse, though. I'll tell you that for nothing!

The Longer View : Black Desert Online

Black Desert is full of surprises.

Late last night I realized I had a conger eel in my pack that wouldn't last the night. Fish spoils quickly. If you don't sell it while it's fresh then you can't sell it at all.

Neither can you sell it just anywhere. Only the Trade NPCs will buy it and they will only pay you a fair price if you have linked all the necessary nodes. Don't ask. Life's too short.

You can sell to an unlinked trader but you'll only get 30% of the price a linked one would give you. For a cheap, common fish that's acceptable to me. I'm not hauling haddock (not an actual BDO fish - as far as I know) five miles just to get a few hundred silver more for it.

Conger eels, though, are not common. They are Yellow quality, which is the fourth and highest tier. That makes them valuable. They sell for somewhere north of 20,000 silver.

That's worth a little travel time although not as much as you might imagine because whoever designed Black Desert's Economy clearly had a soft spot for hyperinflation. Remember those pictures we all saw when we were at school studying the Rise of Fascism in Germany? The ones where someone was wheeling a wheelbarrow full of banknotes to the baker just so they could buy a loaf of bread?

Well, the BDO economy is like that. You have one grade of coin, silver, and even basic items are priced in thousands or tens of thousands. Anything truly desirable goes for tens of millions. There's probably a lot more to it than that but that's the impression I'm getting.

Even so, a 20k fish is not to be sniffed at. So to speak. Examining the fish handily tells you where it was caught and this eel came from the waters around Iliya Island. Since I hadn't connected Iliya to anywhere that meant yet another round on the ferry. Must have been the third round trip of the day. I should get a season ticket. Oh, wait, it's free...

The sun was nearing the horizon as I boarded the ferry. Evening light was turning the ocean to copper. For a moment I contemplated getting my fishing rod out for the journey but the boat passes through the waters attached to several nodes that I haven't connected, which would mean a bag full of fish I'd have to sell for a fraction of their value. Kind of what I was trying to avoid in the first place.

So I left my rod in my pack. Instead I decided to do something I'd seen another player do earlier. She'd managed to sit on the rail of the boat. I thought it looked like something the cool kids were doing so why not?

Black Desert is almost unique among MMOs I've played in that it appears to have no basic /sit command. I tried it early on to no effect. There's a convoluted way to bring up a window with all the emotes shown as icons but there isn't one for Sitting there, either.

As usual I had to google it and it transpires that to sit you have to back up to a potential sitting spot and press Q. If the game deems your chosen object a fit match for your posterior your character will do a little bit of posturing and hoick themselves up onto it, or down, as appropriate.

So, I sidled up to the rail and hit Q and up she hopped. It did look for a moment as though she was going to do a comedy pratfall into the sea but she got settled and there we were, ready for the trip. Which was when the window popped.

As I said, Black Desert is full of surprises and it likes to spring them on you unannounced. The game has an "Observation" mode that comes into effect when you sit down. It allows you to de-link your camera from your character's point of view and send it high into the air, free-floating.

You acquire a whole set of new controls that let you swing the PoV around as though you were operating a high crane. It is fantastic!

The views that open up when you have access to this device are just astonishing. At first I kept sweeping and swerving it around, marveling at the sudden changes of perspective. The painterly long shots made Velia harbor look like something by Breughel. Then I found the zoom, which let me swoop in for close-ups on the crowded streets. It felt astonishingly real.

As the boat left the harbor I turned and saw the sunset. It was just stunning. Small craft moved across the burnished waters between isles that drifted in the haze. On the ferry with me were the NPC helmsman and one other player, fishing from the prow.

The whole voyage lasted ten or fifteen minutes and it was one of the most ethereal, immersive experiences I have ever had in an MMO. It wasn't in any way like a game. I wasn't doing anything gamelike - just sitting. and watching. It was like watching a movie but from the inside.

From time to time I wished I could video the whole thing. I thought of firing up FRAPS but I didn't want to break the mood by tabbing out. In the end I just sat there, soaking up the atmosphere, taking the odd screenshot now and again. They really don't give more than the merest hint of how it was.

And then we pulled up alongside the pier at Iliya harbor and I stood up and the camera snapped back to normal and I got off the boat and sold my conger eel and that was that. Next time I ride the ferry I'll know about Observation mode and I'll be expecting the views and they won't ever be quite as amazing or as surprising or as emotionally involving as that first time.

But they'll always be something worth seeing.

You're Going To Need A Bigger Boat : Black Desert Online

So there it is. My raft. Thanks to everyone who left suggestions, tips, advice and encouragement in the comments. It was all very helpful and some of it made a significant difference.

The key points I've learned:

• You never have to visit your Shipyard. It might as well be a window in the UI.
• It is a window in the UI. Open the map, click on the City, click on your house and there you go.
• All the mats to make your raft go in your Warehouse. That place you probably thought of as your badly-translated bank. 
• Your Warehouse is full of fish. 
• Rotting, unsaleable fish. You probably want to do something about that.
• It has to be the Warehouse in the same town your Shipyard is in. All storage is local.
• No, the Warehouse is not a window in the UI.
• Oh, wait, yes it is. 
• Don't get excited. It's a read-only window. You still have to go to the real Warehouse to put anything in or take anything out.
• I think. Don't quote me on that.

• You can hire multiple workers.
• Every worker needs a bed. 
• Okay, not literally a bed. Just somewhere to sleep. You'll be glad they made you buy those other two apparently unrelated houses just to get to your Shipyard.
• You can set your workers to work on more than one project.
• Or they can work on different parts of the same project.
• Best of all, they can even share the load on the same task for the same project, thereby reducing the overall completion time and the grinding of your teeth.

• You can do all of the gathering and some of the processing yourself.
• The more you do the faster the whole thing goes.
• I  mean, if you want a job done properly, do it yourself, amiright?
• If you set it up correctly your project will carry on just fine without any input from you. You can go do something interesting like kill goblins or something profitable like fish or maybe just afk and do something else entirely, like play another game that has raids and flying mounts and what all..
• I mean, why keep a dog and bark yourself, amiright?
• If you log out your workers will down tools and, for all you know, get drunk and chase girls. Or guys, depending on preference.
• The second you log in they will jump back to work like guilty schoolkids when the teacher comes back into the room.

• Two giants can easily make a whole raft before you have to give them any beer.
• Working together they can get the whole thing done in, like, six hours. 
• Don't laugh. It's better than eleven.

And so I have a raft. It was moderately satisfying, getting it made, and at least next time I'll know what to do. And there is almost bound to be a next time because

• The raft has a set lifespan.
• The raft has durability.
• The raft exists only to remind you that you really need a real boat (just as the donkey exists to remind you that you really need a real horse, but that's a pleasure I have still to come).

 
The appearance of the raft is excellent. It looks very authentic. It handles excellently and the character animations while using it are very fluid and convincing. The way you berth it at the wharf and summon it again when needed are a fine, workable compromise between convenience and realism.

It's a great little craft in every respect but one. It moves at the pace of an arthritic snail. In fact I think it moves at the exact same pace that a character swims, albeit with the huge advantage that you neither drown nor die of exhaustion. Unless you fall off and can't get back on. Don't think that can happen...

The first thing I did was sail - actually paddle - to an island I hadn't yet visited. On the way there the Velia-Iliya ferry ran right over the top of me, apparently doing about 90 knots. I thought that thing was slow when I was riding on it. How naive I was.

The ferry was no more than a dot on the horizon when I beached my raft on the rocky shore of the island, whose name I forget. It had a Node which is why I went there.



You might wonder why a rocky islet with no habitation or significant features would have a Node, let alone a full-time Node Manager. There's a story behind that.

I'm taking it as ironic foreshadowing. I'm getting a bigger boat.

Didn't say I was going to make it myself.