Free Stuff! EverQuest II Edition

 It's all there in the header: free stuff! Come grab it.

I'll get to what the free stuff is, exactly, in a bit. 

I have a bit of a problem with EverQuest II just at the moment. I'd like to slot it into my gaming rota (Hah! Like I have one!) which currently consists of Neverness To Everness, New World, Wuthering Waves (When I get a free couple of hours that aren't going to be interrupted by dogs. Or one specific dog, I should say. It's not like random dogs run in off the street and hassle me to come play with them. Although that would be cool if they did...) and Black Desert Online. Well, I've played BDO once.

What all of the above have in common is that they're on GeForce Now. For the time being, I can only play games on GFN or more accurately I am only willing to play games using that platform. The reason is simple: if I play any game locally, as soon as I stop playing, my PC suffers a fatal error and crashes. 

It works perfectly the rest of the time. It works perfectly while I'm playing games locally,in fact. I can play anything just fine. It's only when I log out that there's a problem. And since when I carried on playing under those conditions earlier in the summer, it ended up corrupting my Windows install to the point I had to change the whole drive it was on, I don't think it would be a great idea to do it again.

I've been working with ChatGPT to see if I can isolate the cause and fix it. (It's not RAM or the PSU or any hardware fault as far as I can tell. Might be the Bios or the drivers.) but honestly, I'm not sure I even want to figure out what it is. I might be happy enough to carry on only playing games on GFN and just use the PC for non-gaming stuff, for which it seems to have no issues at all. 

If I hadn't logged in to EQII to get the freebies, I wouldn't even have been thinking about it. But I did because... Free Stuff!. While I was there, I took some screenshots so let's take a look at what you can get.

If you're a non-paying customer it's not a lot but it's all useful stuff and definitely worth having. It's all in the EverQuest II 2026 Splendid Celebration Crate. All your characters get one each.

Inside you'll find:

Five Portable Circles of Growth, (Handy teleport consumables that give you instant access anywhere to the Druid Portal Network.) 

Five Portable Translocation Devices (Ditto for the Wizard Spires.) 

A Shissar Armor Crate (Appearance armor.) 

A Mercenary Unlock Scroll (Free payment for a merc.)

A Sorrowful Spud (Really ugly cosmetic pet - looks like a rancid potato.) 

And something called a Splendid Tender, which is an illusion item you can use to make yourself look like.... well, like this guy to the left.

As I say, nothing to get excited about but certainly all well worth having. Except maybe the spud.

If you're an All Access subscriber, though, you do a hell of a lot better than that.

For a start, you get a free Level 135 Boost. 135 is the current cap and since this is an off-year, it'll still be the cap throughout the next expansion, so use this and you'll be good on levels for more than a year. As I can attest, having been through it - or, I should say, having started doing it and then stopped - leveling more than one character through the extra five levels that came with Rage of Cthurath is hard going.

Leveling my first character was fine. All the content was new. The storyline was interesting enough. I enjoyed it. But it took a while. 

I found it a lot less enjoyable, trying to get through it a second time without the benefit of novelty. In previous expansions I haven't bothered with the free boosts because leveling at the high end used to be trivial. As I've said several times in previous posts, Daybreak changed that a couple or three years back and now leveling multiple characters in current content is back to how it used to be - slow, grindy and tedious.

So a skip for those five levels is very welcome. Shame you only get one. I haven't yet decided who to use mine on. Emotion says it should be my ousted main, Conkers, the Berserker. Logic also favors him to a degree because in every respect other than level, he's my most-rounded, complete character, the one who knows all the languages, has all the best faction and owns every perk there is to own.

Even with all his privileges, he's not the second-easiest to play after the Necromancer who replaced him, though. Once I got Mordita fully kitted out, I realised, belatedly, that I'd been playing on a kind of self-imposed hard mode for years by doing everything as a Berserker. I'd be better off using the boost on my Warlock or Wizard or even my Bruiser, all of whom would be in a better position to kick on in the next expansion than the 'Zerker. 

Luckily, I don't have to make my mind up yet. These boosts don't expire.

As a subscriber, you also get a better class of crate. Inside your EverQuest II 2026 Splendid Subscriber Crate you'll find  

A Magnificent Nethernaught (Really impressive-looking flying mount as seen in the screenshot above.) 

A whole bunch of currencies and/or crafting mats, five kinds in total. (I have no clue what to do with any of them but I'm sure they're all very important.)

A flag to say you're eligible for Raid Progression Rank 20 and Untold Heroic Progress IV (No Idea what the implications of that might be. Don't even know what "Untold Heroics" are.)

Vox's Lair Deed of Ownership (A prestige house that's exactly what it says it is.) 

An EverQuest II Splendid Subscriber Gear Bag.

A little more detail on that last one might be helpful. I examined it and was shocked to see a list of items so long it wouldn't fit on the screen. I was worried about opening it in case it completely filled my bags but as luck would have it, the last time I was on I spent a couple of hours clearing Mordita's inventory, so she had a couple of hundred free slots. 

I opened it and what popped out was a complete set of cloth armor, accessories and weapons suitable for a Necromancer, all Level 135 and 130 Resolve. It only gives you the right gear for your class, or at least your archetype (Cloth, Chain, Leather or Plate.) so be sure and open it on the character you want to use it. 

It's baseline starting gear for your boosted Level 135 character. It's an upgrade from the quest rewards from the last expansion and most of the drops you'd get  in solo instances from Rage of Cthurath but Mordita already had some pieces that were as good or better from other content that's been added since.

Still, she's wearing plenty of pieces that aren't quite as good, so when I get time I'll go through and swap them out as necessary. Or I might give it all to whoever gets the boost.

It's a bit of a moot point anyway because a) I already have some 130 resolve gear in the bank to hand out to alts and b) I bet there'll be yet another set just as good on the Pandas, when that event comes round in a week or two. 

EQII is a real gear treadmill. I don't think I've played another MMORPG where gear feels so ephemeral. Even as a casual solo player it's rare for any item to last more than three months, if you play anything like regularly. There are gear resets at the annual expansion in December, at the two Game Updates in March and August and then there's the pandas and all the special events throughout the year and the new Overseer season...

Don't get too attached to anything you're wearing. that's what I'm saying.

All of this free stuff, as I probably should have said at the start, is in the Cash Shop at a cost of zero DBC. I started off looking in Claim but I should have know better. Just open the shop and click on the "New" tab.

While I was in there, I happened to notice a new familiar. It was pretty cheap at 899DBC and the name, Rowen, intrigued me so I took a look.

It's quite possibly the cutest familiar I've seen. It's a kitten with two sets of eyes, horns and blue fur. A demon kitten. But so cute! I haven't bought one yet but I will. 

As I'm always saying, I'm happy to find anything in that store I can spend my hoard of funny money on. It's not free stuff but it's the next best thing.

Gnomes, Pandas And Flying Sharks - It Can Only Be Summer At Daybreak

I've been out and about doing stuff today so this is a bit of a cobbled together at the last minute post. It's also one of those "Here are some things I'm going to do that I haven't actually done yet" affair, by which I mean I've taken a few press releases and made a post out of them.

Which, yes I know, is cheap. So sue me. You think I get paid for this?

In all cases it's Daybreak I'm talking about. We're just about to hit the big summer festival season in EverQuest II and Niami Denmother has a couple of articles up at EQ2 Traders about it. The first is about Tinkerfest, which she describes as the "annual gnomish (including honorary gnomes) celebration".  Ratongas like to tinker, too, but gnomes don't like to talk about that much. Don't like the competition.

I used to take this one quite seriously. Well, as seriously as you can take anything involving gnomes. I played a few of them (And Ratongas, too.) and at least one of my gnomes had a suitably gnomish residence (See how I resisted saying gnome-home there?) full of the kind of widgets and cogs that make any self-respecting gnome happy.

And, let's face it, all gnomes are self-respecting. A bit too much so for some people. Have you ever met a gnome with an inferiority complex? Or a gnome suffering from imposter syndrome? No, they're all hyper-confident megalomaniacs with delusions of grandeur. It's compensation for their obvious deficiencies in other departments, I imagine, although I'm no expert in gnomish psychology. Thankfully.

But they sure can tinker. If you want something bolted onto something else, these are your guys. Tinkerfest is one of Norrath's  bigger festivals so after a couple of decades it's acquired a lot of cruft. EQ2 Traders has a neat overview and I'm going to steal it, just to fill the post out a bit:

Is this your first time celebrating this event? Or is your memory fuzzy enough that you need a refresher?

• Gnomeland Security in the Steamfont Mountains is the main hub for this event, with portals from all "celebration" areas sending you back to the main hub in Gnomeland. (Celebrating gnomes, surrounded by harvestable cogs and purple shinies, can be found in all home cities as well as the docks of Thurgadin, the gnome area in Solusek's Eye, and Dropship Landing in the Moors)
• The shiny tinkerfest cogs, used for shopping and for crafting, are harvestable "!" items in all celebration areas. They can also be brought back by an upgraded pack pony (100 per 2-hour run).
• The second purple shiny collection (added in 2016) requires that you have completed (and handed in) the first purple shiny collection. Once you have done so, half of the collection can then be found in the Gnomeland Security area; the other half of the collection will be found in Qeynos and Freeport in the celebration areas.
• You will need to know the gnomish language (from a language trainer if you're not a gnome) in order to obtain some of the quests.
• Vendor Tarly in Gnomeland Security will sell all of the past Tinkerfest recipes and items for you while vendor Myron will sell the current year's recipes and items. You will need some shiny tinkerfest cogs before you can buy the books, so scrounge up a few before you go shopping.
• The quest tracker included in a section below will be a godsend if you are trying to run more than one alt through the event. Quest details for all quests can be found on the wiki's Tinkerfest article.
• During the event, there will be a markable sign in several of the Tinkerfest areas, for the Party Sign! Excellent! achievement for those who missed getting the Tinkerfest update for it last year.
• Protip: if you see an item sold on either Myron or Tarly that costs 2 Shiny Tinkerfest Cog, it usually means that it can also be crafted. (Or is a special achievement unlock.)

That quest breakdown, linked in Niami's piece, is huuuuuge. I'm reasonably confident I've done everything on there at least once, some things many times. and by this stage, I'm pretty much tinkered out so I have no plans on doing any of it again. 

I do generally try to do any new quests that get added, just for the sake of being able to say I've done them all, but by now there's really no need for any more activities in most of the festivals. There's literally more than enough to do already. Technically, there is one new Tinkerfest quest this year but it looks to be nothing more than a repeatable option added to an existing quest. If so, I'll pass, thanks.

Even if you're done with the event itself, though, it's still worth noting down the dates because the special Summer Jubilee dungeon, Triad of Elements, only opens during the big three. 

The three tent-pole attractions are:

Tinkerfest — June 6, 2024 to June 19, 2024

Scorched Sky Celebration — June 28, 2024 to July 11, 2024

Oceansfull Festival — August 8, 2024 to August 21, 2024 

Running Triad of Elements multiple times is the only way to get this year's Plume for your Plume slot. I don't think there are details on stats for those yet but if things follow the usual pattern, it will be better than any of the inferior Plumes crafters can make. 
 
As to how essential Plumes actually are, I'll leave that to someone who does the harder content. I got mine the first year they added them and I haven't bothered since. I'm not a fan of running the same dungeon over and over.

The Summer Jubilee currency, Platinum Medals, can also be earned while the other summer festivals are running, the regularly-scheduled minor festivals that sprawl across the summer months, things like the Moonlit Enchantments and the City Festivals. The full, official write-up for the Jubilee is on the EQII website and EQ2 Traders version is here.

And that's it for EQII for the moment. I am still playing most days, by the way, although by playing I mostly mean logging in to set and collect my Overseer rewards. We'll see if the summer splurge of festive activities draws me back in. I do like me a good festival.

On, then, to DCUO, which I am very much not playing. I'm not playing it to the extent that I haven't even installed it on the "new" PC. It wasn't on the SDD I transferred across so it's languishing on the old machine. 

I am contemplating setting the old one up to be permanently available. The issue is where to put it. Until then, though, if I wanted to play DCUO, I'd have to re-install it. And why would I want to do that?

That's why! Come on! Wouldn't you re-install for that shark? I want that thing!

Daybreak has a very solid record on supporting Pride Month. I haven't mentioned EQII's contribution to the cause yet because I'm incompetent and disorganized but it's moar pandas!

I actually have more multicolored rabbits and red pandas than I know what to do with, which won't stop me collecting these, too. I might hold back on getting them for every character this time, though. It's a lot of bag space. 

That shark, though... with the flag! Gotta have it!

Just to round out the Daybreak news, there's a limited time promo on subscriptions happening. Wilhelm wrote an excellent piece comparing MMORPG subs, in which I thought Daybreak's All Access came out clearly on top. It's going to be an even better deal for a while because they've added some extras. 

100 slot Broker boxes and a 25% boost to what is now arguably the game's primary currency, Status, are  not to be missed. And while they're limited-time offers, the limits are pretty generous - the end of August for quarterly subs and the end of November for six and twelve months. If you were vaguely thinking of subbing, that might swing it for you.

And that's all I have from the Daybreak News Desk for now. I'm off to download DCUO and get my flying shark!  

Free Comic Day At DCUO

I don't really play DCUO any more. It's arguable whether I ever did, really. I leveled to the extremely low cap of 30 a couple of times, which is tantamount to boasting about having completed the tutorial in any other MMO. And even that was many years ago. In recent times, about all I've done is log in when there's some new freebie to collect or if something's going on that I think might make a blog post.

And that's kind of what's happening today. Only this time I don't even need to log in! 

As you may have noticed (If you've been paying attention to anything I've been saying.) there's a new Supergirl movie out this summer. Next month, in fact. June 26 to be precise. I posted about it here and here which, since I'm talking about it again today, makes this three months in a row. DC should be paying me!

It's not so much the movie this time as the opportunity it represents. Digital Ink, the Daybreak sub-studio responsible for DCUO has, unsurprisingly, thrown itself headlong onto what it hopes is going to be the Summer Supergirl Bandwagon. If I had to bet, I'd guess the movie will be an artistic success but a commercial failure but until it comes out, its success or lack thereof is conveniently unsullied by either reviews or box office receipts so why not make the most of it while it lasts?.

There is, naturally, an in-game event based around the movie. There's even a (Not very good...) trailer, which you can watch below, although if I were you, I probably wouldn't bother.

I've completely lost track of how these things work in DCUO any more. There used to be Chapters and then there was some kind of multi-part story set up and now I don't know what they're doing. It must be well over a year since I last logged in and a lot longer than that since I played for more than half an hour before I got bored and logged out again.

Of late, I haven't even bothered to go in and get my free stuff. There's always free stuff but if you're not playing, what are you going to do with it? And I got a bit annoyed when I bought a new Hideout and instead of ending up with two, it lost me the one I already had. Which I never got back. Not that I'm bitter... 

I tried to redecorate the new one but my heart was never in it. Anyway, enough of that. For this summer's Supergirl event there's a freebie you don't have to log in to enjoy. And it's a good one, too. If you like Supergirl and superhero comics, that is. Which, obviously, I do.

To cut to the chase (In the skies above Metropolis, likely as not.) DCUO is "giving away" six issues of Supergirl's comic to promote the new Children of Krypton: Shadows Over Argo event. 

I say "giving away" but it's more like "Giving you a lend of" as we used to say when I was at school. And when I say "comics", I imagine no-one really believes they're going to send you half a dozen printed copies through the mail. No, what they're giving you is limited-duration access to selected digital issues through the DC Universe Infinite portal. You do have to sign up and register an account at DCUI but it just asks for your age and an email and password but it only takes like thirty seconds.

The most interesting part of all this for me was learning that DCUI is now available in the UK. Has been since 2022, in fact. I completely missed the Bat Signal on that one. 

Several times, back in the twenty-teens, I tried to sign up for the service and was repeatedly rebuffed. I wanted to give them my money but they wouldn't take it. I kept checking back to see if they'd expanded into my region and they hadn't but then, some time during the pandemic I think it must have been, I happened upon a website that gave me free access to what seems like every comic ever published and I forgot all about DCUI. 

The six Supergirl comics you can read for nothing right now.

I've used that website, sporadically, whenever there's been something I particularly wanted to read.  I assume it's some sort of pirate operation so won't link it here but really I have no clue what it is. At no point has anyone ever asked for any money or indeed any personal details, You don't even need to provide an email address. It's as easy to access as Wikipedi and as public, which seems a bit of an odd way to do piracy.

Still, I prefer not to pirate if there's a legal alternative. FFS, I don't even like playing pirate-themed games! Pirates of any and all kinds are the antithesis of cool as far as I'm concerned. Bad pirates! Pirates bad!

The upshot of which is that, having been alerted by the DCUO promotion to the fact that DC is now willing to take my money, I will very soon be giving it to them, not least because the monthly subscription is an extremely cost-effective £6.99. For reasons that are anything but rational (Or indeed sane.) I feel it would be foolish to give them that money before I've read my six free issues, so I'll probably start subbing next month. I fancy the idea of reading comics on my tablet in my lunch hour at work. You can download them and read offline with the DC offer so I won't even have to contend with our crappy wi-fi.. 

The one thing that's putting me of a bit is that, having read one of the issues on the DCUI platform this morning, the experience doesn't seem to be anything like as good as it is with the pirate version. I was only saying to someone at work this week that I now find reading comics on a screen considerably more immersive than reading them on paper but that certainly wasn't true of the one I read on DCUI today. I hope there are better ways to display and turn the pages hidden in the UI somewhere because the default option felt really clunky.

The six free issues are mostly very recent, including the first in the current run that's been so highly rated by Anj at Supergirl Comic Box Commentary. Anj's reviews are so incredibly thorough that you could just read them and not bother with the comics at all. I have to skip most of what he says about anything I have any intention of reading. The word "spoiler" doesn't seem to feature in his vocabulary.

340 more Supergirl comics you could read for just £6.99 a month. 

Having read that one, I can confirm it's excellent but also probably of more interest to long-time fans of the character than casual readers. I guess that's likely true of most of the others but I would recommend anyone with more than a passing interest, especially if they have any plans to see the movie, to take the opportunity to read the free copy of  Issue #1 of Tom King's Woman of Tomorrow, the full graphic novel version of which I wrote about at some length in one of the posts I linked earlier.

Ah, yes. Issue #1 and only Issue #1 for free. That's worth noting because of course the hope is that, having had a taste, you'll crave more and be willing to pay for it next time. Remind me again what profession uses that sales model?

I was curious (Read: suspicious.) that the free Supergirl comics were just the regular free tasters on offer over at DCUI. Well, I was once I remembered that, when I was checking the platform out all those years ago, giving away free issues was a thing there. So I went there directly to check, using a different browser, and they're not. 

Not the same, I mean. There are six free comics anyone can read over there, just not the same six. And none of them feature Supergirl, which seems odd now I come to think of it. Why would they miss a chance at cross-promotion? Free Supergirl comics coming to all in June, I'll bet.

Thinking about that, it occurred to me to wonder just who it is that can access this offer. I got an email but whether that's because I'm a Daybreak All Access customer or because I have a history of playing DCUO so Digital Ink has me email address I couldn't say. Well, I probably could, if I dug into it a bit but I have better things to do with my Saturday afternoon. It's not like I'm a journalist!

In that spirit, I offer the information, for what it's worth, "as seen." If you play DCUO or have played it, maybe you can read six Supergirl comics for free, too. Or maybe not. If you care enough, I imagine you'll go find out, now I've brought it to your attention. 

And if it turns out you can't... well, there are other ways. 

I'm With You - Three Hundred Per Cent!

   

 

  

Question:

What could make me download and install EverQuest on my new PC, given I haven't bothered until now?

Answer:

A 300% XP Bonus and a free Level 115 Character Boost.

I wasn't going to post today due to laziness but then I saw this news story at MassivelyOP and I thought I ought to share. EverQuest just turned 27 and in the tradition of MMORPGs that means it's the one giving out presents. 

They're good ones, too:

All players will receive the following for free:  

• Anniversary Kickoff Event 
  • 300% XP 
  • 300% Rare NPC spawn chance 
  • 245% loot 
  • 190% coin 
  • 200% alternate currency 
  • 175% Item evolution experience for all players! 
    • (The kickoff ends March 22 at 11:00 p.m. PT) 
• A Maestro's Baton Ornament for all your characters. (One per character; available until April 20, 2026, at 11:00 p.m. PT.) * 
• After the anniversary kickoff event, all players will receive 150% experience gains for all players! (Starting March 23 at 12:00 a.m. and ending on April 1, 2026, at 1:00 a.m. PT.) 

The celebrations come in two parts, it seems. There's a week with everything turned up to eleven, then a second week when everything calms the heck back down. Even then, 150% isn't chopped liver. (I'm assuming everyone hates liver...)

Of all of those bonuses, as an old school EQ Player it's the massive xp bonus that gets my attention. What we wouldn't have done for a bonus like that, back in the day, amirite? 

Of course, these days I very much doubt even a bonus as generous as that is going to be able to compete with the xp you can get just from standing around in the Guild Lobby, sending your agents out on Overseer missions every day. And since I haven't even bothered to do that for a few years now, it seems exceedingly unlikely I'll be going out hunting, no matter how big the bonus.

So why did I even bother patching up? Well, there's not much suspense to be wrung out of it, is there, seeing how I slammed the reason right up at the top there in the biggest point size available. It's the free Level 115 boost.

115's not the cap. It's ten levels shy. The cap, as of this 27th Anniversary, is 125 130. (Never trust an AI.) Tunare forfend they'd ever give out a boost to max level. If they did that, Luclin might explode!

Unlike the perks listed above, the boost is only for subscribers but that's fine. My highest character on the account I pay for is just 87. (Hmm. That means I must have done a couple of levels on him after I boosted him. I bet that was on Overseer...)

I have two Level 85s on that account, as well, both of them boosted. No-one on the account has ever really been played. All the characters I care about are on a different account, one for which I canceled the subscription long ago. Old story. Not going into all that again.

The F2P account doesn't need the boost, anyway. My Magician there already dinged 115, back when that was the cap, through a combination of going out and killing things and staying at home doing Overseer missions. She can't benefit from the boost and anyway, as I said earlier, if I really cared about leveling her up, I'd have been keeping up with those missions. There's no faster or easier way to level solo.

So, realistically, there was absolutely no point in bothering to re-install the game at all, was there? It's just... free stuff...

What would really be fun, now I come to think about it, would be to take one of my low-level characters and blitz through some zones with a merc and that 300% bonus, possibly topped up with an xp potion, if the bonuses stack and if I have any left. It'd be pointless, sure, but it would be fun and I haven't done it for a while.

I just might do that. And if you'll take my advice, if you have an old EverQuest account lying around gathering dust, now might be the time to brush it off and take it for a spin. After all, it's not going to cost you anything but time.

Rag-Tag Grab-Bag. Sold As Seen. No Refunds

For once, I have several meaty posts I want to write but I can't seem to find the time to write any of them. Certainly not today. Tomorrow I don't have much planned, though, and it's forecast to rain heavily all day so maybe then...

For now, though, I think this is going to have to be a bit of an ad hoc rummage down the back of the bookmarks. Again. 

Let's start with a PSA.

Are You Experienced?

EverQuest II is.  275% experienced. From yesterday until 10.00AM PST on 19 November, all Live servers plus Varsoon and Zarrakon are getting a 275% server bonus to adventure and tradeskill xp. Anashti Sul, the Origins server, where players are supposed to enjoy the journey or something, I guess, are getting just 14%. 

This is in celebration of Darkpaw breaking $100k in donations to Extra Life this year. There's also a 45% increase in the chance of rare drops, double currency rewards and double loot drops in "current expansions". 

This is great news if you want to fill your bags with crap level a character up to 125. Before level l00, a 275% bonus on xp from mob kills and quests is huuuuuge. From 100 to 125 the xp from kills will be meaningless but as I understand it the bonus will still apply to quest xp, which is already huuuuuuge in some of the relevant expansions so presumably it will now be huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge! 

I haven't tested it personally, so don't take my word for it. Go try it for yourself. I also haven't confirmed what I've heard about the final five levels to the 130 cap, which is that in the expansions aimed at those levels, bonus xp does not apply to quests at all. That's by design, not because they've been specifically excluded.  

I have tested it on a Level 125 character in the expansion before the cap went to 130, though, and it seemed to work there. I was getting almost 10% of the level for a basic kill quest hand-in, which seemed like a lot. 

If I can find a gap in my schedule, I'll put in some time and see how far I can get a couple of characters who are sitting at 125. It would be nice to have them at 130 for the new expansion.And I might get one of my lower-levels out and blitz some dungeons just for fun. When it comes to xp, I like big buffs. I cannot lie.

The Whole of the Luna

As I suspected, Amazon's recent withdrawal from the games market has indeed put paid to Prime Gaming. I got one, presumably final, email from the Prime Gaming blog that handed everything off to the Luna website and since then... nothing. I guess it's up to Prime Members to remember to go check to see if anything new is available from now on.

If so, here's where to look. I'm not going to go through the slate for November one by one but just for completeness' sake, here are the games, the dates they become available and where you can claim them from:

Already available: 

New Tales from the Borderlands [Epic Games Store]
Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Sun Series [GOG Code]
Gas Station Simulator [Epic Games Store] 
Lovecraft's Untold Stories [Epic Games Store] 

From November 13: 

Another World: 20th Anniversary Edition [GOG Code] 
Fallout 76 [PC via Microsoft Games Store] 
Fort Solis [GOG Code] 
Dark City: Kyiv Collector's Edition [Amazon Games App]

From November 20:

PlateUp! [Epic Games Store]
Dungeons & Dragons: Krynn Series [GOG Code]
Dream Tactics [GOG Code]

From November 26:

Big Adventure: Trip to Europe 6 Collector's Edition [Legacy Games Code]
Gunslugs [GOG Code]

I don't remember seeing the Microsoft Store come up before as a place to claim Prime giveaways. Not sure I like that development much. Also, I notice there's only one game you can play through the Amazon Games app itself. I imagine that's on the way out, too. It'll all be freebies from third-party platforms by 2026 or that's my bet.

Stranger Than Strange

There's a new trailer out for the final season of Stranger Things. It's the first five minutes of the first episode, which seems to be a thing now. Netflix did the same for Wednesday back in the summer.

I haven't watched it and I'm not sharing it. I watched the Wedneday one and posted it here, because it was really good. But I regretted it later. Watching it, mostly, although if I regretted watching it then logically I should also regret sharing it, unless I was trying to give people a degraded experience when they came to the show itself. (I wasn't, by the way...)

The problem with the Wednesday First Five Minutes Trailer (And this is a spoiler of a kind, if you haven't watched the show yet, although if you haven't gotten around to it by now I'm guessing you 're not really going to care...) is that it raises completely inappropriate expectations for the rest of the season. It makes it look as though in Season 2, Wednesday is going to be working as a kind of bounty hunter, tracking down and capturing dangerous criminals. 

That is very much not what the rest of the season is about . The trailer is basically Wednesday's "What I Did On My Holidays" report. When I came to watch  the full first episode I was a little irritated by what felt like a bit of a bait&switch by the marketing department. It definitely fed into my mild disappointment with the first half of the season.

I have no idea if the Stranger Things trailer plays any similar tricks but I don't intend to risk it. I'm really looking forward to the show and I'm more than happy to wait until it arrives before I see any of it.

I will happily share this with everyone, though:

That's a trailer for the upcoming Stranger Things animated spin-off series, Tales From '85. The Duffer brothers said a while back that they planned on doing more with the Stranger Things IP and this is one of those things. 

It's a cartoon that's supposed to remind everyone of the kind we all watched in the '80s, which makes sense. When Stranger Things first appeared, all the publicity about it went on and on about how it was either an homage to or a recreation of the 1980s. It was one of the things that put me off watching the show until much later.

In the latter seasons that whole eighties vibe seems largely to have vanished. The action may take place in the same decade but all the focus is either on the weirdness or the military, neither of which seems particularly grounded in any time period, not on the everday small-town lives of a bunch of young kids in the decade of Madonna and MTV. Plus the kids aren't so young any more, either.

The cartoon show, which has a completely different cast of voice actors, has the opportunity to reconnect with that original, nostalgic concept. Whether it will, or whether we'll want it to, is another question. We won't have too long to wait to find out. It's coming in 2026, although exactly when it will run is still a mystery.

And Finally

Anyone remember a song called iPod Touch that I included in a music post a while back? I thought it was great. I still think it's great. It's by Ninajirachi and it's from her album I Love My Computer, which is also great. 

At the time I thought she was some obscure hyperpopper I'd been lucky to discover. If I thougt about it at all, I'd have guessed hardly anyone was listening to her. Although actually I didn't think about it at all. 

Turns out she's a much bigger deal than I knew. She just won Australian Album of the Year at the TripleJ awards. She also won Australian Music Video of the Year for Fuck My Computer, which you can find in that post I just linked so I won't link it again here. She won Australian awards as a teen, too. She's a big deal in Oz, apparently.

This will explain.

I didn't even know she was Australian. 

Tomorrow, a proper post. Maybe. Let's hope so. 

May The Fourth Be With You. Again. And No, Not That One.

I really did not think I was going to get a post done today, for various reasons including but not limited to being out most of the day and not having any ideas that weren't going to take a lot more time than I had to spare. But I'd forgotten it was the first Thursday of the month. And what does First Thursday mean?

Prime Gaming giveaways!

It sure took me long enough but I have now figured out that Chris Leggett, under whose byline the Prime Gaming Blog appears each month, isn't terminally disorganized. He can read a calendar. It's just that for him, for some reason I still don't, as yet, understand, the month always starts on Thursday.

So, what have we got for September? And I warn you, this is going to be quick because I've left it really late and I'm in a rush. I might not even get through everything.

Let's have the games you can grab right now, anyway. There are three of those and they're all reasonably interesting:

Dungeons & Dragons Ravenloft Series

Ravenloft was my favorite of the AD&D campaigns I played through, back in the 'eighties. It was new then and there was only the one module: Ravenloft itself. Or at least that's how I remember it. It's been popular ever since and now there are loads of spin-offs, including the two in this double-pack, Strahd's Possession and Stone Prophet. I'll be claiming them but I had a look at the D&D games Prime gave away last month and they just looked so very off-puttingly old I didn't take it any further. These look a little more modern but not a whole lot. Can't imagine I'll play them but I did like Ravenloft...

Sid Meier's Civilization IV: The Complete Edition

Didn't we have this one last month? Oh no, that was Civ III. Is this one better? I guess it's newer, at least. Might as well take it anyway. Maybe one day I'll be in the mood for one of these. The day has to come sometime.

Into The Breach

Now, this does look quite interesting. It's a turn-based strategy/puzzle game. I'm always looking for more turn-based strategy games, preferably without puzzles. I'm very picky so it's harder than you might think. I try quite a lot of them but very few stick. Marvel's Midnight Suns didn't and neither, I suspect, will the one I started last night, Dark Envoy, a previous Prime giveaway. Both of those are sorta-kinda third-person 3D games, which is not really what I'm looking for. I'm after something more along the lines of Baldur's Gate or Divinity: Original Sin, visually at least, with little characters you move about like pieces on a  board. This one looks something but not exactly like that. Worth a go, anyway.

Next Thursday (Because everything happens on Thursday in Primeland (Except Wednesday, of course, but that's another Prime altogether.) we get Afterimage, which looks beautiful but also not remotely like anything I'd ever play, being a 2D action adventure. Pass. Probably.

Then there's Spelljammers: Pirates of Realmspace, another D&D title, albeit from the sideloaded "Spelljammer" universe. My TTRPG group in the 'eighties knew about Spelljammer but I don't recall anyone ever suggesting we play it so it has zero nostalgia value for me. It also looks ancient and has a "mixed" rating on Steam. I'll still claim it but I know it's just going to sit there.

Third we have Tower of Time which looks exactly like the kind of turn-based strategy game I was saying I was after... well, in the screenshots, anyway. It seems like it can be played in various ways, from tactically, with pause and slow-time, through to full-on, real-time action combat. There are various difficulty modes and even a permadeath option so something for everyone. It's got some decent reviews so I'm optimistic about this one. Definitely claiming it.

And it it doesn't turn out to be as good as it looks, maybe  Subterranean Mines of Titan will do a job. It's yet another turn-based rpg. Seems to be the month for them. Can't say the screenshots are doing much to whet my enthusiasm though. Too fussy and not my preferred aesthetic. I'll take it anyway, I guess.

A week later we get Residual, a very nice-looking 2D platformer I will completely ignore, plus yet another in the FATE series, this one subtitled The Cursed King, and... er, no, that's it for Week Three, just the two. I'll take the FATE game but I haven't tried any of the earlier ones in the series yet. Prime clearly has a policy of scooping up entire franchises and feeding them out month by month, which is great if it's something you like but kind of annoying if not. 

Speaaking of which, on the last Thursday of the month, there's yet another dumb hidden object game I won't even bother naming. That's a hard no. I might, however, claim Pixel Cafe, a visual novel/time management hybrid. It's a prety weak ending to the month, though, especially since Pixel Cafe is currently a whopping 94% off on Steam, making it worth less than a dollar.

And that's it. I said it was going to be quick and for once I wasn't lying!

It's Still Summer! Have Some More Free Stuff!

It has only just occurred to me that late summer seems to be freebie season in the video game industry. Okay, the free stuff trundles out, month on month, all year round, but it has been feeling lately like this is peak giveaway season. If only I had something like a diary of things that happen in video games that I'd been keeping for a few years, eh? Then I could just flip back through the Augusts of yesteryear and see if my theory holds true.

Ah, but that's the stuff of fantasies, isn't it? No-one keeps notes on what hapens in the video games they play. That would be crazy. And anyway, what would you even call it? Some kind of gaming log? A glog, maybe? Well, that sounds dumb! No wonder no-one's doing it.

Evidence from the past notwithstanding, there certainly seems to be a glut of giveaways in the games I'm "playing". I just did a whole post on the massive hand-outs in EverQuest II and this morning I logged into two other MMORPGs to pick up my rightful dues. (Also, that little ironic meta-conceit about the non-existence of game blogging does kind of fall apart when I link to a post right afterwards, doesn't it? If I had a decent editor they'd just put a blue line through the whole of paras 1&2 and tell me to start over. Lucky I'm self-editing this thing...)

I am now in a position to add some detail to the aforementioned post, although not as much as you might expect. I claimed the one-per-account crate plus the one everyone gets on my Berserker but now I'm wishing I'd read up on it a bit more first because it turns out that not everything in the one-time crate is Heirloom. That is made clear in the announcement but looking at the forum thread I'm not the only one who didn't bother to read it carefully.

Luckily, I did at least claim it my "main" so none of it is going to go to waste. Had I been paying better attention, though, I'd have claimed it on the character I'm working so hard to turn into my new main, my Necromancer. 

On the bright side, EQII's ceaseless vertical progression escalator moves so ludicrously fast, anything with stats is going to be replaced in a matter of weeks anyway. We've got Pandas soon and then it's the expansion, so even though the gear in this crate is a huge upgrade (It is stat gear after all, not appearance as I wrongly suspected.) I don't imagine I'll be wearing it come Halloween, let alone Christmas.

As for the rest of it, I haven't sorted through it all yet but it sure looks impressive. But there's no time to sit around admiring my unearned goodies, not when there are more to be grabbed.

Game #2 on my loot list, quite unexpectedly, is Lord of the Rings Online. I have MassivelyOP to thank for this one. They PSA'd the offer yesterday and I logged in and claimed it this morning. Well, after I'd waited half an hour for the game to patch, naturally. Is there any other online game that takes this much time to get back up to speed after only a few weeks absence? 

I last logged in on 16 June, when I moved my characters off their old 32-bit servers and onto the shiny new lag-free 64-bit upgrades. (Golf clap...) I hope you've done the same because if you haven't it's too late now. 

No! Wait! No it's not! You still have a couple of days! Go! Go! Go!!!

Out-of-place illo.
The one I took of the LotRO store
somehow vanished. Thanks SSG!

Possibly because their entire year has been such a roiling, heaving mess, Standing Stone decided to throw some bones our way and they're pretty big bones, too. Oliphaunt bones, maybe. (Oh, look! I know what an oliphaunt is and I didn't even have to look it up. I guess I must be right-wing now. They do say it happens as you get older.)

Not as far to the right as all that, though. I have no clue where Gundabad is, although I suppose it's worrying that I even know it's a place not a person. Or a weapon. These people name their weapons, don't they?  Have you ever done that? Can't say I have. I might start but first I'd have to have some weapons. I suppose I could name my garden spade. Digger. That's be a good name for a spade.

I seem to have whimsied myself into a hole here. Hang on while I dig myself out. Now, where did I put Digger?

(See? If I had an editor you wouldn't have to put up with any of this. Not that I imagine there are many of you left by now...)

The code for the giveaway is EXPLOREOURWORLD, all in caps, which presumably is some kind of GenZ thing, judging by half the bands I listen to these days, who all seem to think all capitilization is nothing more than a style choice. You wouldn't have thought the devs at SSG would be so cutting edge... 

It gets you a huge swathe of content, all the quests and expansion content up to about three years ago. There's no particular rush. The code, which you have to redeem in the in-game store, is valid through to November. Why they do it this way, rather than just make all content before a certain date free automatically, the way every other game does, I have no idea but that's Standing Stone for you.

Thirdly and finally, at least until the next game announces a summer gift bonanza, comes DCUO. This one's slightly different in that you actually have to play the game to get most of it. It's not a straight log-in event so much as a holiday, the holiday in question being possibly a regularly recurring event albeit not one I remember doing before.

Specifically, it's Teen Titans Homecoming, a big party the Titans throw for Starfire to try and cheer her up after her sister Blackfire confirms her exile from Tamaran for another year. I don't know what it says about my politics but I could explain all the italicized words in that last sentence, in more detail than you'd want to hear, without having to look anything up, just like a Tolkein fan could tell you all about elves. (That's the remake of the old Bette Davis movie, starring Orlando Bloom and Liv Tyler, with Sydney Sweeney in the Marilyn Monroe part, by the way.)

Focus, dammit! Focus!

Since it's a seasonal event not a giveaway as such, you do need to do some missions to get the currency to buy the rewards off the special vendor and I wouldn't normally have bothered only one of the items you can get is so weird... 

It's Starfire. You can buy Starfire and she'll come live at your base and talk to you about her life. You can ask her about her Homecoming party, her team the Titans, her adopted planet Earth, her home planet Tamaran and who knows what-all else. I'd like to know what she thinks about her sister for a start.

I'd also like to know if she thinks it's appropriate for a Princess of Tamaran to be sold like... well, I guess we'd have to say like a slave because if she was a servant she's have working hours and I'd have to pay her, like I pay my mercenaries. I've played plenty of games where NPCs come to stay in my character's houses and work for them but it's always assumed to be on some kind of contractual or apprenticeship basis. (In EQII there's literally a contract involved that you have to hand over for some of them.)

There's a kind of precedent for it in DCUO in that I have Krypto flying about my base but although technically he isn't my character's pet he is a dog. People do buy dogs. That's how Mrs Bhagpuss got Beryl. 

When I read about it (Again on MOP although I'll most likely get an email from DI about it at some point.) my first thought was "I'm having one of those!" Me and the Teen Titans go back a long way. As I've mentioned before (More than once, most likely.), I once interviewed Marv Wolfman about the New Teen Titans comic he was writing at the time and for me Starfire will always be that golden-skinned alien with the wild hair he and George Perez created but I've also watched all seasons of the Titans TV show, so I'm very comfortable with the current version, which is of course the one you get in DCUO.

It's going to take a little while before I can install her. It costs 75 tokens for the "Base Invite" (Ah, wait! Now I get it! She's my guest! That's a lot less weird. Although still a bit weird...). You can pick up a dozen tokens each day just for doing the two daily missions and the event runs for almost a month, so it should be easy enough.

I did the very easy mission Raven hands out first. That gives four tokens and takes about a couple of minutes. Then I did the Miss Martian one, which is an On Duty, meaning you have to grab a group from the group finder and let them carry you play your role to earn eight more tokens.  

Doing daily group missions in DCUO is about as painless as it gets. Mine popped in seconds and lasted maybe five minutes. I do have some idea how to play my character but certainly not after months away so I just button-mashed through the whole thing. No-one died, not even me, and at the end, when you get a scorecard, while I definitely did the least DPS (As a DPS character, too.) I didn't do none.  No-one complained, anyway. No-one even spoke. So that should be fine.

You can also pay some currency to reset the dailies and re-do them on the same day. Don't ask me which currency. There are sooo many. Whatever it is, I had plenty of it, so I did Raven's easy one again. If I did that each time it would only take me five days to get Starfire but there are quite a lot of other things on the vendor that look interesting so we'll see.  (You can also just buy the tokens in the cash shop, which seems like a great idea to me, espcially given how much DBC I have lying around doing nothing.) 

I will make the effort to get Koriand'r at least. (That's her real name. Didn't have to look that up, either. Not even the spelling.)

The Homecoming event itself has some kind of progress bar you can complete to get other rewards as well but I just want Starfire. When I get her, if she has anything interesting to say, I'll let you know. 

Until then, where's my next freebie, game devs? Don't you know it's Giveaway Season?

PSA - Free Stuff In One Of The Few Games I Actually Play These Days!

I probably ought to do a proper post on this at some point but it's late and I'd like to get something up for today to keep my Blaugust run going, so in the spirit of Wilhelm's Motivational Post, where he says "I am very much of the mind that publishing something, even half formed, is better than publishing nothing", here's a rushed PSA for anyone who plays EverQuest II, cribbed entirely from the official press release, which I just skim-read five minutes ago.

Freebies! Grab 'em while they're hot!

Everyone, free players included, is entitled to something snappily named the EverQuest II 2025 Crate. It's available for free in the in-game cash shop and you can have one for every character on every account you own. I doubt I'll bother to log in all nine or ten accounts I have access to, including Mrs Bhagpuss's old ones, but I'll certainly grab a crate for every character on my regular account.

Inside that crate you will find:

• Cloak of Winning
• Goldstone Sentinel
• Visage of Growth
• Portable Translocation Device - x5
• Portable Circle of Growth - x5
• Mercenary Unlock Scroll 
• Zimaran Swag It Out Familiar Infusion

As you might be able to tell, I've lazily cut and pasted this from the official announcement, which you could easily just go read instead of this post. It has pictures of everything, too, which is just as well because I sure don't have time to claim the crate this evening, open it up, sort the contents, equip the visible stuff and take screenshots. I'll save that for the putative "proper post", should it ever happen.

So much for the FTP side. On to the Subscribers. Or Members as Darkpaw like to call us.

Here, you just get the one crate per account. It'd better be a good one, then. 

I'll let you all judge for yourselves.

This crate is called the EverQuest II 2025 Subscriber Crate. You really do have to hand it to whoever it is that's coming  up with these names. I couldn't do it, could you?

What's in it then?

• Allyrian Wings of Winning
• Magical Equipment Unattuner - x3
• Nagafen's Abode Deed of Ownership
• EverQuest II 2025 Celebration Subscriber Gear Bag 
  • Full set of armor, weapons, accessories
  • Zimaran Rune: Money Sink
  • Zimaran Rune: Ready Check
  • Sovereign's Rampage
  • Sovereign's Remnant
  • Spirit of Drakkel
  • Well Prepared
  • Vrakorr Scroll Case - x2
  • Velium Drachma - x50

 Blimey, Charlie! That is a lot! There's a flippin' prestige house in there. And a full set of gear.

Is that actual gear with stats, though, or just appearance?  Hmm. Not sure. Appearance, I think, but the runes and accessories, which are all deteailed in the press release, have stats. BIG stats. You'll want those, especially if you're a casual like me.

I'll get back to you on the rest of the deets when I've claimed mine, which as I said is not going to be tonight.

There's no need to rush, anyway. The crates are in the Marketplace until 22 September. 

And remember - they're free! 

 

Dog Days And Giveaways

No, not Beryl again. Prime Gaming Giveaways, which seem like they're really becalmed in the doldrums of late summer this year.

Remember when I said I was going to stop reporting on these every month? Well, it's just too easy a post to miss. Also, it's nice to have regular features. On a blog, I mean. Not on your face. We can't all be Sydney Sweeney, which is probably just as well.

So, what have we Prime Gamers got to look forward this month? So far, not a lot. But then, we haven't hit Second Thursday yet.  

Week One nets us a couple of big fish and tiddler. The big fish are well past their prime, but I imagine there's still some good eating in them...

Look, I'm just going throw that metaphor back into the lake, if it's alright with everyone. Or even if it's not. I mean, I bet I could keep the fish-related imagery going all through the post because fish puns are like shooting a hippopotamus in a barrel (How he got into a barrel I don't know - © Groucho Marx.) But I'll restrain myself (Insert dad joke here...)

Five paragraphs in and I've said nothing. Beat that, ChatGPT!

Ahem. Getting back to the point. 

The three games in question are

Sid Meier’s Civilization® III Complete 

Sometimes it feels like I've played the Civilization series because I've read so much about it on blogs, especially TAGN, but I never have. I don't believe I've ever played any 4X games. I don't even know why they're called "4X". I could look it up but I'm not going to. I probably won't start with this one either but it's not out of the question so I'll take it. It's currently 80% off on Steam anyway, making it less than a pound to buy, so it's not much of a bargain, even for free. 

THIEF: Definitive Edition 

I have a feeling Thief was already in the offer from last month but I'm too lazy to check. I seem to remember mentioning before that I dislike stealth games and Thief is the reason why. I bought it when it came out - the box is still in the house somewhere, with the disc still in it. I really did not get on with it at all. Too hard but worse, too boring. Pass. Also, since I'm just noticing how very low-value this month's offer is, I'll mention this is just £3, at full price, on GOG...

The Academy: The First Riddle.  

As for The Academy, it's "a puzzle-packed adventure set in a school filled with mystery", which sounds  like something I'd play if I was in the market for a cheap-ass Harry Potter knock-off, which I might be now the real thing is off limits. I was planning on claiming it but it wasn't showing up on my Prime Gaming page so I had a closer look and guess what? I already claimed it back in March 2021! It may be twice the price of Thief on Steam but this is the second time they've given it away. At least. Another non-bargain, then.

So much for this week. What's upcoming? And I'm only going to talk about the interesting ones. If you want the full line-up, it's on the blog.

Not this blog. This blog. 

Two days from today, on Thursday 14th, you can make your choice from 

FATE: The Traitor Soul - Not the first FATE game that's come up on Prime, I think. There was one last month. Looks like they're giving the whole series away. They do a lot of that. "Very Positive" Steam rating. Suppose I'll take it.

Tin Hearts - Compared to Lemmings in the Prime blog, which is worrying. I was addicted to Lemmings for a while. Everyone was. Not sure I want to go there again. It doesn't actually look anything like Lemmings, though. It looks mildly interesting. Might as well claim it.

Filthy Animals -Not to be confused with the movie of the same name. Or the "Australian supergroup".  A "heist simulator" apparently. Is that a recognized genre? Looks mildly amusing but only "mostly positive" on Steam. Probably going to end up claiming it then forever afterwards forgetting I own it.

Not in the running: Necroking.

 And a week after that, on the 21st, because this month Thursdays are all a handy multiple of seven...

Labyrinth City: Pierre the Maze Detective - I was sure this was going to be one of those tedious hidden object games Prime likes to use as filler but it turns out it's an actual game and a weird one. It's like a Where's Wally book come to life. (Where's Waldo if you prefer. Or Where's any other pop culture phenomenon you care to name - Taylor Swift, Pikachu, Sonic the Hedgehog... we have a whole shelf of them at work.) So I guess it is a hidden object game but a much more original one than usual. Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam. I'll give it a go.

Silver Box Classics - Four very, very old games but possibly of some interest still. "This collection brings back a gathering of adaptations of the events in the first four Dragonlance role-playing modules, at the beginning of the War of the Lance. These were the first games that brought the world of D&D to PC."  Dragonlance was my era. AD&D rather than D&D as it once was and later reverted to being. I read and reviewed the first Dragonlance novel when it came out. Didn't think much of it as I recall. Never read any of the others. I'll claim this but looking at the screenshots on Steam (Where it has a Positive rating from just eleven reviews.) I can't imagine playing any of the games. Or not for long, anyway.

It's just those two for the third week. I didn't skip any. On to the last week, starting on the 28th.

... aaaaaand nothing. That's an anti-climax, isn't it? I mean, there are games being given away in the final week of August. They're just not anything I'd consider claiming and I said I wasn't going to preview stuff I wasn't interested in. 

Okay, two of them are things I theoretically might have been interested in. One's a sort of dungeon crawler and the other's yet another D&D game, but the first is a sequel to a game I wasn't bothered about the first time around and the other looks older than gaming itself. It's embarrassing in a way, the kind of games Prime is trying to pass off as interesting or exciting these days.

Oh, alright, I'll do you the links...

Heroes of Loot 2

Fantasy Empires

Happy now?

And the final game, which I am not going to link because it only encourages them, is a hidden object game called City Legends: The Ghost of Misty Hill. The Collector’s Edition no less, although I wouldn't want to be stuck in a lift with anyone who actually collects these things.

That's the lot for August. Roll on September, eh?