Stars Fell Like Rain or Two On A Tower

Want to know how many screenshots I've taken in Neverness To Everness so far? A tad shy of a hundred and fifty. I'd say I've been quite restrained. I thought it would be more than that but I just counted them and it's not, so pardon me while I give myself a cookie.

I've been out and about some, that's for sure. All over the place. Opened all the map now, by visiting each of those big, golden spikes that let you see what's around you. Lift the fog.

They do something else, as well, I think. Something much more important to the welfare of the city than just making it easier to get around. Mint explained it to me but I forgot what she said the moment she stopped talking. I kind of tune her out, sometimes. You have to, really.

Mint hardly ever stops talking. She's hyper-excitable. She loves her work, she loves to chat and she loves to eat, too. 

Don't they all? Not just in NTE. It's all the open-world gachas. It reminds me of how, in The Beano I read as I was growing up, when every character seemed to be obsessed by food. 

For readers who grew up deprived of the output of Dundee's unlikely publishing giant, D.C. Thompson, The Beano is a comic aimed at children aged from maybe five to ten or so, although plenty of readers stick with it for a lot longer than that. 

Then again, who isn't familiar with The Beano? I just learned - from Wikipedia so it must be true - that The Beano is "the best-selling comics magazine outside of Japan, having sold more than two billion copies to date. Wait, how did we get onto The Beano? I don't even like the fricken' Beano that much! 

Oh yes, I remember. Characters being obsessed with eating... 

It makes sense that child characters in a publication aimed at children would be crazy for candy. Children have a limited number of objects of desire and the subset deemed acceptable by parents is likely smaller still. Even with the fashions in parenting that roll relentlessly through the culture, kids always want sweets and savories, even if they're not always allowed to have them. It makes sense there'd be a craving fiction could exploit.

So, I get why all kids in all comics seem to have the appetites of cavemen, treating every taste of sugar and salt like a drug hit, but it makes a lot less sense to see the same behavior in self-directed, independent twenty-somethings in the games I'm playing. But it's there.

I've already been out for ice-cream with Mint and she ate so much she got stomach-ache from the cold, the cure for which was that we both went to a different cafe for hot chocolate! Mint and Flora are bonding over food. They might even be flirting. It's hard to tell.

Flora is my character's name, by the way. Does everyone find it as hard as I do to keep the names and pronouns straight in posts about what they've been doing in the games they play? 

I've long claimed I don't identify with my characters in that way people do when they try to make all of them look as much like they do as possible and on one level that's true but on another, quite possibly a deeper and more significant one, it's really not. My confusion of identity leeches out in posts, where I tell stories about what "I" have been doing, then have to stop myself and reframe it as what my characters have done.

It hasn't helped that until very recently I had a policy of never naming my characters in posts. That's because back when I started blogging, when I was much more sociable in games than I am now and MMORPGs were much more sociable places, and when people who played them occasionally read blogs, there were a couple of occasions where someone recognized one of my characters in game from reading the name in a post and sent me a /tell about it.

Being noticed made me feel a bit uncomfortable so I stopped outing my characters by name and took to referring to them by their classes or races or some similarly impersonal designate. Then, as time went on and the games I played became less and less social, often to the point of being single-player, or if not then feeling like they were, and as the number of people reading what I wrote drifted down and down, it started to feel like mentioning character names was probably going to be less of a problem than it had been, assuming it ever was one to begin with. 

Using proper names certainly made it easier to structure the sentences, so I slipped into doing it and now here I am, although as you can see from the rest of the post, I still have trouble separating myself from my characters.

So, Flora and Mint... 

I'm not a fan of dating in games. I've said that before. I mean, if it's a dating game, sure, fine, go for it. I just won't play it. 

I think of dating as a genre not a feature. Except that's just me, I guess, because it's clearly both, just like PvP. You can have a game where the whole point is to kill other players or you can have one where it's just one of the many things you can do. It's only when you can't play the game at all without engaging with it that it becomes a PvP game.

Until recently, dating hasn't really been a thing in the kinds of games I play, even as an option. I can't think of an MMORPG that has it although I'm sure there must be some. Mabinogi comes to mind for some reason...

It has been a thing in RPGs for a while, though. I think there was something of the sort in the first Dragon Age, which must also have been the first time I became aware the concept even existed. Not the concept of dating itself. I knew that existed. I wasn't raised in a monastery! Player-characters in video games simulating courtship rituals with NPCs, I mean. That sort of dating.

I found it very weird at the time, I remember. Creepy, really. I'm not sure I can articulate why but I suspect it's an analog of the uncanny valley idea, the way the appearance of something can be just slightly off in a way that triggers some lizard-brain warning. 

As with many unfamiliar ideas and experiences, time and repeated exposure has normalized dating NPCs for me to the extent that I now mostly think of it as just something I could do but don't, as opposed to something I'd never do. 

Except I said yes to Mint's offer of ice-cream and I said nice things to her about the time we were spending together, so I guess that means it's just something I don't usually do now, not something I never do. Even when it's not necessary to the plot.  

But then, I've been doing a lot of things in Neverness To Everness that have very little to do with the plot. Assuming there is a plot. I think there's a plot? I'm not entirely sure.

If there is, I certainly haven't seen much of it. I've been far too busy, and not just out getting ice-cream with Mint (Hmm. That makes me think of King Krule's classic Out Getting Ribs...) or putting my palm on tower touch-plates. Just exploring, really. There's so much to see. And I've seen so many things. I've seen stars falling like rain...

No, really, that's a thing I saw! And an achievement I got. Stars Falling Like Rain (Witness a meteor shower.) Except when it happened I thought it was something else. And maybe it was.

I was up a tower at the time. Not one of those stubby golden ones that are really public art not architecture. No, this is the truly towering tower that rises into the clouds over Heathereau. It has a name but I can't remember it offhand and it doesn't come up in any of the forty screenshots I took while I was climbing.

I've climbed a lot of things in video games. I've written before about how climbing used to be a thing people did in MMORPGs before the developers even began adding climbing skills to the games. Back then, climbing was as much about breaking the game as it was seeing the sights.

With the coming of the current wave of whatever we're calling the genre that started with Genshin Impact, climbing has turned into something of a focus feature. I bet all the games have it now. Wuthering Waves certainly does. I've never had a climbing experience quite like this one, though.

The tower goes up and up and up. It feels like it's never going to stop. There are big observation platforms with telescopes (That you can't use - they missed a trick there.) then smaller railed rings clearly meant for maintenance workers and then nothing but the pure climb, up an ever-narrowing column studded with projecting spurs you can rest on if you're careful, until  one, final, tiny railed platform barely wide enough to walk around before the last stretch to the very top, where you can haul yourself up and stand on the beacon-light that shines over the city, the highest thing in the world. 

All of which would be too terrifying to contemplate, much less attempt, if it wasn't for being able to stick to sheer surfaces like Spider-Man and glide like the Falcon if you fall. But I didn't fall. I flew. 

At the end, when there was nowhere else to climb, I launched myself into space and glided all the way down to the second-highest tower in the city, far below me. And there was a story all its own when I got there, let me tell you! But It'll have to be a story for another day because I'm not finished with this one yet.

When Flora got to one of the higher platforms - not, I seem to remember, the last one - that achievement popped. I thought at the time it was for reaching a certain point in the climb and it may have been but if so it was also trigger for something much more spectacular. 

I'd started climbing in the late afternoon and now night had fallen and suddenly the sky was full of blue fire. A meteor shower, processing very slowly across an arc of the heavens, moving not at all like falling stars. Over the course of several minutes the sky lit up from side to side in a great, glowing arc, a rainbow made out of only indigo and blue.

It's one of the more memorable events I've seen in gaming, all the more so for being both unexpected and understated. It felt like it just happened and I just happened to be there. Perhaps it was linked to my climb (I just googled it and it seems you have to be up the tower when the meteor show happens to get the achievements but whether being there also causes it is unclear.) but even if it was, Flora doesn't know that. 

For her it's just a thing that happened. Lucky for her she had her camera. 

Look At Me Ma! Top Of The World!

Yesterday's post may have been a bit misleading to look at. I used screenshots from Wuthering Waves to break up the text that had very little to do with what the post was about. I just happened to have a lot of pretty pictures from that game to hand and I thought it would be nice to share them.

It didn't occur to me until after I hit Publish that people might see the pictures and decide to skip the post because who wants to read another three thousand words on a Gacha game they're never going to play? So, if you passed on it for that reason you might want to go back and take another look. 

I'd probably just move on, if I were you. It does go on a bit and, when I read the whole thing back later in the evening, it didn't even convince me I knew what I was talking about.

I only mention it because now I'm going to post a whole new set of screenshots from Wuthering Waves and this time the post is about the game. If you avoided yesterday's epic because you didn't want any more of that sort of thing you probably should bail around now. 

Okay... I guess anyone still here actually wants to hear about Wuthering Waves then!

All the shots in this post were taken after I finished two parkour challenges in Zinzhou. I had no idea there were any. The game hadn't introduced me to the concept. I found it all by myself.

I just happened to spot an NPC, standing on a terrace with a blue star next to his name, which means some kind of quest. When I went to speak to him he started going on and on about this climbing club he was in and how they held competitions and set up courses and did I want to try one, since he'd just got it set up right there?

I figured he was talking about parkour, although that's not the term he used. I had no idea where the conversation was going so I didn't take any screenshots and now I can't remember exactly what he did call it but it was something like Overrushing.

This is a thing that happens in the game sometimes. As I keep saying, the translation is very good, albeit possibly less good the further into the game I get and the newer the content. Still, even at its least demotic, it's always entirely clear and understandable, except for one thing. 

There is a lot of jargon. The writers love to throw in pseudo-scientific explanations for everything.  They also like to world-build by using the names of local political, social and administrative organisations, often without explanation, although they do have a neat trick of adding a kind of footnote in superscript above some of the more obscure acronyms and technical terms. 

On top of all of that there's a sprinkling of in-game slang plus a few buzzwords the NPCs clearly understand but no-one else is lilely to know. With all of that going on, it can occasionally be hard to tell if a confusing phrase is intentionally fictive or just a bad translation.

As a prose style, I like it, mostly. The mix gives a general sense of being in another place, where the people may speak your language but don't necessarily see the world exactly the way you do. Like Canada. Or perhaps, more cogently and appropriately, Hong Kong, although if that's the subtext then Wuthering Waves is definitely a different game than I thought it was.

Whatever the activity was called, the rules were clear enough: get from Point A to Point B without touching the ground or grass or water. Walls, rooftops, flagpoles, window ledges - all fine. Use a grapple or a glider if you want. Make it to the end without touching the ground and you get a prize.

The first time I didn't realise just how literal he was being about those rules. I figured a small patch of grass growing on a ledge half way up a building would be ok. It was not. The second time I made it all the way without making a mistake, with the help of my handy Scanner, a Utility device that sends out a pulse to light up any items of interest in the area. 

There were crystals marking the optimum route and a trail of light between them but I couldn't always see them until the scanner picked them out. It did feel a little like cheating but the game specifically told me to do it so I guess it was fine.

At the end of the course I got some XP and there was a chest to open. The parkour guy told me I'd done so well he'd put me in for the big competition if I wanted. He also inducted me into his club as some kind of associate or honorary member. I'd tell you more but I was so wrapped up in the moment I forgot to take any screenshots. 

Finishing the first course also entitled me to try the next one he'd set up in the city. I did that one and it was even more fun than the first. It involved quite a lot of swinging from streetlights to rooftops with my grapple, like some kind of cut-price Spider-Man knock-off. That was really good fun.

I've always enjoyed climbing in MMORPGs, going all the way back to EverQuest, which really didn't have any in-game tools to support it. Over the years, games have added more and more in the way of officially-sponsored climbing. It can feel a bit clunky in MMORPGs but open world RPGs tend to excel at it. I certainly remember climbing as one of the main attractions in Genshin Impact, back when I played.

That was good but this better. Maybe the best I've seen, although that also may be because it's right in my skill zone. I suspect it will feel too easy for anyone who can do jumping puzzles in Guild Wars 2 without getting a stiff neck and sweat-stains.

After I finished the second course I got invited to do a third. I was up for it but it started way over on the far side of town and on the way I got distracted. By a mountain.

Zinzhou is a gorgeous city. An explorer's dream, with so many side streets and plazas, harbors and towers. It's on the coast, surrounded by high cliffs and the view from the highest peak is phenomenal. I know because I've been there.

It took me quite a while. I started off taking a short cut to get across town and somehow I ended up on a terrace overlooking the ocean with a small mountain between me and where I wanted to be. I didn't fancy back-tracking so I thought what the hell, I'll just go up and over. It'll be good practice.

It was. It was also quite possibly the most fun I've had so far in this consistently entertaining game. For a start, the views were stunning. I took so many screenshots. All the ones in this post and many more. (There aren't any from the parkour courses because I was concentrating too hard on not messing up to stop and take selfies.)

I could have, though. Even action shots. I discovered a couple of days ago you can bind your camera to the radial Utility menu that opens when you press Tab. That means you can take a screenshot instantly just by pressing "T", rather than having to to press Alt to free the cursor, then open the main menu and select the camera icon. You can even take pictures when you're gliding, although for some reason pressing "T" doesn't work if you want to take a picture of yourself sitting down.

Any way I pointed my camera there was a perfect postcard scene. That alone would have kept me occupied but there was so much more to see and do. Pickable plants suitable for cooking and other crafts were growing everywhere. Not just in the grass but in cracks in the cliffs and on high ledges all around. I took so many detours to grab mushrooms and flowers along the way I must have doubled my step-count for the day.

I saw rabbits and mountain goats grazing on hidden plateaus. There were even a couple of long-horned cattle although how they got up that high I can't imagine. I found pools and waterfalls. There were birds. A crane dropped a feather for me as it flew away. 

I kept going up and up, scaling sheer cliffs, swooping across deep drops, trusting to my glider to make the jump, then clinging to the wall and scrambling onto the nearest ledge when it fell short. However high I went there was always another cliff, another ledge, another plateau.

I thought I was done when I came to a huge chest and an achievement popped up but even then there was more. From there I could see the decaying remains of a boardwalk, clinging to the cliff-side above me. I jumped into space and flew across the chasm, dangling from glider, hoping I had enough height to make it. 

Just! I clambered along the ramshackle walkway, jumping the gaps, hauling myself up and trusting to fortune to make it to the top. When I reached solid ground again it was plain others had been there before me. There were stone steps cut into the side of the cliff and... a teleportation tower. My reward for getting so far was never having to do the climb again.

But that still wasn't the end. At the top of the steps I found a gazebo, all fitted out with a table and chairs. There was even some food laid out for visitors. Or possibly for the two cats I found there, enjoying the view.

That, I thought, had to be the end of it. But it wasn't. Not quite. 

At the very, very top, on a spur of rock over-hanging the abyss, a single seat waited, facing the ocean. It came with a warning: "A chair with a daunting aura", which made me wonder whether I ought to sit in it. Of course, I did.

Nothing happened except a message about being "Fully Healed", which I was already so who knows?

The chair also has a large sword in a scabbard leaning against it, which may mean something or may not. What it mostly does is add to the already strong sense of mystery and wonder that clings to the mountain like early morning mist. 

I logged out, sitting in the chair. When I log back in later today I plan to glide all the way down to the southern gates of the city, where the third parkour challenge begins. It's going to be a fine adventure.

Who knows what I'll see this time?

I Almost Didn't Recognise You With That Beard!

This afternoon, I made it to the first dungeon in the new EverQuest II expansion, Renewal of Ro. That makes it sound as though it was a bit of a trek but in fact the entrance was right there in the harbor. It's one of the first things that catches your eye as soon as you arrive.

I haven't been keeping an exact track of how long I've been playing since the expansion dropped. I know it probably hasn't been as much as other years. There seems to be more pressure on my time than usual right now, which seems odd, given I'm only working a couple of days a week. 

Most of what slack there might have been seems to have been taken up by Beryl and her many daily walks; more than she'd probably choose for herself if she was in charge, to be honest. We really enjoy going out with her, even if the weather has been less than amenable. I'm clocking up three hours a day, more days than not and never less than two.

Dog walking hours, that is, not EQII playing. I'd guess EQII is getting about half that. Even allowing for the difference, progress seems to have been quite sedate, which is in no way a criticism. I'm taking my time to savor the atmosphere. I have yet to step beyond the first zone, although I believe that I have now at least opened the whole map. 

It's behind you!

I made a comment in an earlier post, suggesting the embargo on flying mounts didn't particularly matter due to the relative flatness of the terrain. With more experience, I need to revise that observation. It's true that the desert itself is easy to explore on foot but the expansion so far is unusual in its inclusion of what I can only describe as a number of jumping puzzle elements. 

There's nothing to ressemble the kind of formal set-pieces seen in games like Guild Wars 2 but several quests require you to find some way up cliffs or onto the tops of mesas. EQII has a fully-fledged climbing mechanic that's been much employed since it was introduced back in the game's first expansion, Desert of Flames, but even though we've returned to that same desert seventeen years later, this time around it seems we're expected to clamber and scramble our own way to the top, not follow in the scuffed bootprints of those who climbed before us.

I've been enjoying the challenge. EQII's movement mechanics don't really have the facility for finely tuned jumps but the game does have a couple of advantages othes lack. One is a peculiar, floaty adhesiveness to vertical surfaces that allows you to move forward while sliding along walls and the other is the ability to glide almost weightlessly by use of any item with the spell effect Featherfall, found mostly, if not exclusively, on magical cloaks.

If this was Noah's Heart I'd use my grappling hook.

In that fashion, I've so far been able to reach everything and go everywhere I've been asked. This afternoon I spent an enjoyable twenty miutes figuring out a workable glide path to get to a quest item on top of an otherwise inaccessable rock formation. I imagine some players find it irritating (A few comments in General chat have certainly suggested it.) but I have to say it's working for me. Sure, I'll be glad to get back to flying when the appropriate point in the narrative arrives but for now I'm having fun doing it the old-fashioned way.

Speaking of the narrative, the plot has held together quite well so far, in a slow-build, low-key kind of way. It makes a pleasant change from the end of the world scenarios we usually get. Yes, there are some bigger issues looming in the background that I'm sure we'll get to eventually but for now it's all about bandit attacks and Djinns with mysterious agendas. Standard desert fare and all the better for it.

For example, there's a lengthy sequence involving infiltration into a bandit camp while disgused as..., well, what would you disguise yourself as if you wanted bandits not to notice you? Another bandit, of course.

Who are you and what have you done with the boss?

Normally I have "Hide your illusion form" toggled on at all times because I'm proud to be a ratonga but there's a practical side to be considered, too. If you're not seeing yourself as others see you, sometimes you forget whether you've put your disguise on or not. Well, you do if you have a memory like mine.

Having been set upon by angry bandits one time too often, (Admiteddly, I do stand out rather as a ratonga. Desert bandit clans don't seem to practicethe kind of racial integration - or at least grudging acceptance - that's de rigeur almost everywhere else in Norrath) I flipped the switch so I could see my illusion and I have to say I found it rather fetching. I wouldn't generally go out dressed like that but I think the beard kind of suits me. Not to mention the turban.

The visuals in RoR are generally very pleasing. There's a quest where you have to wander in and out of tents playing the flute. When I "used" the flute, I was surprised to see and hear my character actually playing it. Also, there were musical notes floating in the air - but I think that might have been heatstroke. 

In retrospect, I wish I'd thought of hiding the illusion so I could see if the animation works for a ratonga. That'd be like the Pied Piper in reverse. Sadly, I didn't think of it until after I'd finished the quest and now I don't have the flute any more. I'll have to try and remember, if and when I do it again on my Bruiser.

That's great, Zel! Now we just need to find a good pitch and put down a hat and we'll soon be raking it in!

It's all been very entertaining so far and the difficulty level has been just about right for me. I've run into several more solo Named mobs on my travels and added a notch to my sword for each of them. No particularly good drops so far, although even the common drops are upgrades at this stage. 

I was apprehensive going into the new dungeon, actually an instanced version of the entire zone, now overrun by bandits. The last few expansions have been a bit hit and miss when it comes to solo difficulty in instanced content. By and large it's been fine but there have been occasional difficulty spikes, often right at the start.

I'm pleased to report that the regular mobs in the opening instance are very manageable. They don't take too long to clear and I never felt overwhelmed. The first Boss (Or "Named" as we Norrathians would have it.) posed no problem at all. I took him on without first reading up on tactics and although he had several tricks I was able to power through them all and treat him as a plain tank'n'spank. He didn't drop anything very special either but it's early days. 

I would have gone on to try the next Named but I foolishly clicked on the wrong X when I was trying to close the map and closed the whole game instead. Not the first time I've done that. I really shouldn't play in Windowed mode. It's asking for trouble.

Seeing I was at desktop anyway, I though I'd come here and write this, so here I am. Solo instances persist for three days in EQII and I'm not working until Sunday so I should have plenty of time to get through the whole dungeon before it time-expires. Wish me luck!

I Covet The Waterfront: EQII

Yesterday marked the first day of Frostfell in EverQuest II. The midwinter celebration is a huge event in Norrath's calendar, bringing a welter of quests and activities, several seasonal instances and a whole zone dedicated to games, crafts and gift-giving.

There are no new quests this year, which is probably just as well. There are already nearly two dozen, several of them multi-part, some repeatable. There are three new Collections, all of which I completed in a ninety minute session last night.

EQ2 Traders, as always, has full details. I found the gloss there very useful although I was familiar with the mechanic from previous holiday events. Each of the three Collects comprises nine items, three sets of three, to be found in three locations - a home city (Qeynos, Freeport or Neriak), a secondary starting city (New Halas, Kelethin, Gorowyn) and Frostfell Wonderland Village itself.

I started in Freeport for the very good reason that it was where I found myself when I logged in. There were purple sparkles scattered across the cobbled streets of Lucan's capital and I wasn't the only one trying to grab them. Track Harvestables came in handy once again.

It was while I was grubbing around down by the waterfront in North Freeport that I noticed the hole in the wall. I know Freeport pretty well after living there for a decade and a half but it still has the capacity to surprise. I must have passed the building in question a hundred times and yet somehow Id never noticed how different it looked from the rest.

The walls were grey stucco, patterned with swirls. Fancy. An archway opened into a small, featureless courtyard. Had it always been there? How had I never noticed it before?

Against the outer wall there leaned a crude ladder. Planks nailed together. Why was it there? Had it been forgotten by the plasterers? Left behind by burglars? More to the point, could I climb it?

Climbing in EQII is quite specific. It was added as a feature in the first expansion, Desert of Flames, back in 2005 and has been included in content ever after, albeit somewhat sporadically.

Climbable surfaces are usually easy to spot; the walls are marked with the tracks and handholds of previous climbers or there are ladders or nets. All you need to do is move close enough and your character will begin to scale the obstacle, hand over hand.

Freeport predates all that. When it was built there was no climbing in the game and as far as I know, no-one ever bothered to go back and add climbable surfaces to original game zones. But we never needed special skills to climb back in the old days. We just...climbed.

And the way we used to climb was by jumping, hoping to find a piece of geometry that extended, invisibly, far enough into the horizontal to allow a precarious perch. I looked at the ladder. The expression "thick as a plank" came to mind. Those were pretty thick planks.

My Berserker tried a standing jump with a little jink forward. He landed on the first cross-strut - and stuck. Good start. He tried again and there he was, on the next rung. Third jump he fell off. Luckily no-one was watching except his Mercenary and he's paid not to laugh.

The ladder turned out to be fully climbable - old school style. I'm not sure I've climbed a ladder that way in EQII before. I kind of think I have but I couldn't say where it was if I did. 

At the top was a wrought-iron railing and no roof. I stood and looked down into the courtyard of the room with the hole in the wall and I pondered. I knew now that the ladder could be climbed but I was no wiser as to why it was there in the first place.

And I'm still not. Does it have a role in some quest, possibly for a class I've never played? Did some designer place it there intending to add some feature they never got around to finishing? Is it some kind of in-joke? I have no idea although I'd bet someone does.

One thing occurred to me as I stood on the roof. I've known since almost the start of the game that there are buildings you can rent in Freeport which have outdoor views. I actually own one on some character or other. Unless it's in Qeynos. Whichever, that one's a closed rooftop with no real view but I've seen and visited a large Freeport house with a rooftop terrace and views of the harbor. Maybe this was it...

Not to undercut the tension but yes, it was. I went round the front and checked the door. I was outside 7, Compassion Road, one of the original Guild Houses. I took the tour and went upstairs. The six-room home has not one but two rooftop terraces, both with great views. And neither of them is the rooftop I climbed onto.

There was a time when I coveted that house. It seemed impossibly expensive. Not only did it cost three platinum to buy the lease but 250,000 status as well - and you had to be in a guild of at least Level 30. And if you could manage all that, weekly upkeep ran to fifteen gold and 50,000 status.

Well, that may have been a pipe dream in 2004 but fifteen years later it's trivial. I have almost a million platinum on my Berserker alone, his one-person guild dinged Level 63 two days ago and he has enough Personal Status to pay the upkeep for almost as long as the game has been running. Fourteen years-worth, in fact.

I did consider buying it. It's a fantastic property in its own right and I'm pretty sure it's breakoutable. I could have a whole section of the Freeport waterfront all to myself.

In the end I decided against it - for now, at least. I already have an astoundingly over-furnished mansion in Maj'Dul on that character, which he long ago broke out of, giving him access to much of the city. Plus he's in the process of landscaping his Mara Estate, a bona fide small town, complete with river, ocean and fields, no breakout required.

EQII is one of those games where it's all too easy to take on more than you can handle. I don't need another housing project right now - I still have my Inquisitor's Baubleshire to deal with and my Wizard just set up home in the Mistmoore Crags Estate.

I shut the door of 7, Compassion Road and went back to my shiny hunting. An hour or so later I'd finished all three collections and handed them in. My Berserker was the proud owner of a Bleachbone Faun Mask (the sunbleached skull of a deer, complete with antlers, set in a silver hood, covering the whole face and making him look like the first jump-scare in a 1970s horror movie), a Bleachbone Faun Cloak (a silver cloak, embroidered with an image of the same skull and quite  possibly made from the flayed skin of the same deer) and a Bleachbone Faun Staff (made, I'm guessing, from whatever bits of the deer were left over).

What connection those gruesome items have with Frostfell and its happy-go-lucky cheer I cannot begin to imagine. They're druidical, that's as much as I know, but what druids have to do with goblins, false beards and Dickens parodies beats me.

It's another culture. Who am I to impose my values?

On with the revels!