Finally, Fantasy (FFXIV)

Quitting WoW

Due to the "debacle" (aka the systematic and systemic devaluing of womxn and fostering of an environment actively hostile and abusive towards womxn) surrounding Blizzard for the past month or so, I've entirely dropped both of our World of Warcraft subscriptions. It had been months since I'd logged in, anyway. I haven't played since before 9.1 dropped. I miss the nostalgia and some of the "shinies" (pretty things like new zones and collectibles) but I don't miss the gameplay/community/toxicity. 

What have I been up to?

Over the past few months, I've been playing The Elder Scrolls Online (often getting burned out by limited-time world events) and some single-player Steam games. I also had some codes for the closed beta of New World. New World was super fun but I don't think I ever got past level 10. I kept making new alts to play with ideas. Character creation there is very limited, so it seems like it somehow took even more effort to customize my characters to the point of satisfaction. Of note: you can have any of the available hairstyles regardless of character gender. Also, you can choose they/them as your pronoun on your character bio. (So of course I made a nonbinary character). Regarding character creation, there are a lot of faces that are objectively not pretty. There were only two faces that I found acceptable for my characters. One of my characters was a caster and the other was going to be melee dps and archery. You can only have one character per world (I think they call servers worlds?) and it's the type of game where you don't really need alts. When has that ever deterred me, though?

Unfortunately, shortly after closed beta ended, Amazon Game Studios/New World announced that they were going to push back the release date by another month. It was scheduled to release at the end of August but the date now is September 28. 

I had a ton of fun playing but I have heard some apt criticisms from the community and testers. One concern was about end-game PvE vs PvP. The game was initially geared towards PvP, but they gradually improved upon PvE systems as time passed and they received more feedback. Being someone who didn't make it past level 10, I don't have my own opinions on end-game anything, but I've heard that the story is lackluster, the quests are boring, and there's only like one end-game dungeon. The developers did state in their release delay announcement that they're going to spend this extra month improving many of the systems for which they received beta feedback. I have no idea how they can possibly fix the many issues within a month, but I still have some hope. I don't really know why, but I found that game so fun, even doing silly little things like gathering and exploring. The game's graphics are stunning and I took several screenshots that are just gorgeous. In many ways, the game reminded me of Black Desert Online, only nicer and hopefully not pay-to-win. Another thing to note is that as of beta, there were no mounts in the game, at all. Period. The lore behind it was that beasts of burden never survived the shipwrecks that occurred every time a ship approached the shore, or something. The lore overall may not have been fully fleshed out or special, but I did actually read the book excerpts I came across and that did add to things in the game that I hadn't otherwise picked up on. 

New World's closed beta is over, so what now?

I'll tell you what now: Final Fantasy XIV!!! I was incredibly skeptical of this game for the longest time. The graphics (in unedited screenshots) looked kind of pathetic to me in a "this game isn't even that old!" way. They were all drab and gray and the textures and shading were hugely lacking. Thank goodness for GShade/Reshade. A few filters really do make a world of difference graphically. Now there's shading and improved colors. In general, it's more than tolerable now. There are some annoying graphics quirks, like how if you're standing outside in a field of grass, it will flicker from near to far and cause my eyes to glitch out painfully. (There HAS to be a fix for this that I just haven't found yet! I've tried changing NVIDIA 3D settings, game settings, GShade settings, all the things, and nothing has made a noticeable improvement on this fatal flaw.)

Final Fantasy XIV is just so dang fun! I haven't found a free company (player guild) yet but I'm very hopeful. There's a group called Gayorzea that is basically a gaymer hub for all the servers/realms/worlds of FFXIV. There's also a server guild (on Exodus, where I am) I've seen advertised (that uses the tag <SASSY>) and I'm excited to give them a shot. There's so much I don't know or understand about this game. I can't help having a good time playing it, though, even when I'm playing solo. I imagine a good guild/FC could only amplify that. 

Here's another game where I will have to buck the norm and have alts. How could anyone choose to have only one character when there are so many interesting appearance options! So far, my main is a Miqo'te Keeper of the Moon named Starcaller Faelune. Her starter class is Arcanist. She's level 20 as of last night and she's sooo pretty. She has blueish-purple skin and bright, light purple hair. She has gorgeous pointed ears and a foxy tail, both matching her hair. Her eyes are light purple, as well. Next is Leilani Dei-ijla, a Viera Rava (bunny lady!) with gorgeous reddish skin and light blonde hair with red highlights. She's tall and svelte and I love her. Her starter class is Archer and I plan on making her a Dancer someday. I also made a Roegadyn Sea Wolf with a lore-appropriate name: Syggleita Styrmwyn (which roughly translates to my IRL first name's meaning "bringer of victory", last name "storm daughter" [because it was the closest I could get to Stormborn]). Roegadyn Sea Wolf names are fascinating in that they rely on an actual dictionary and (unlike WoW) when you use the randomizer in-game the results can be translated via the dictionary into actual phrases that mostly make sense. She's a big girl and I plan on making her my physical melee DPS and possibly tank character.

All of this alt stuff must be far, far in the distant future, however, because everyone talks about how much work it is to just level one character with a single class/job. The leveling system for classes, jobs, and crafting professions is rather clever. You switch your "class" (from Arcanist to Culinary/chef, for example) by swapping out your weapon with one from another class/profession (a skillet in the case of the culinary guild). Crafting is way different than WoW and is relatively engaging. You start at level 1 (low HP/MP and all) when you learn a new trade skill. You can create outfits for each crafting class you train for and there are quite a few of them. It appears as though you can only train for specific profession guilds in specific cities, Weaver is only available in one city, for example. Speaking of, Weaver is awesome because you wield a needle as your weapon and your work consists of cross-stitch/embroidery. 

I'm having so much fun in Final Fantasy XIV and the free trial gets you really far! My hubby and I bought our copies while they were on sale for $24 for all of the previous expansions combined. It included a 30-day membership (which I think you need to make alts). There's a nifty in-game recruit a friend system, so if you're interested in trying it, download the free trial and if you decide to buy it we can hook each other up with goodies through RAF. (A two-seater Chocobo? Yes, please!)

GLHF!
- V

~May all your hits be crits, and all your loot epics!~

Comprehensive Guide to Add-Ons in ESO (The Elder Scrolls Online)

 {This post originally appeared on my Stormborn Rage blog. Some of this info may now be out-of-date and I will try to double-check it and edit as needed.}

I've been putting off writing this for a while, probably because I knew how monumental a task it would become.

A quick walkthrough on what addons are and why you may want them:
ESO's basic UI is, well, basic. It's lacking in a lot of different ways, but other players have created many different add-ons to add extra features to the game. I'm going to try to walk you through my top picks and how they ended up on my 'must-have' list.

A quick note: after one of the recent updates, lib files must now be downloaded separately from the addons that rely on them. If you download an addon without the lib it needs, it will show in red in your addon list. (See pic.) If you click on that addon's name, it will show you in red which lib it's missing.

Here are some screenshots of my UI and my addons list.

I put a black box over my chatbox to hide names.

It needs some work but it's serviceable. I actually need to go through and thin out some addons that are resource hogs or that I'm just not getting enough use out of. I'm going to attempt to keep this post updated with changes and information pertaining to game updates that render some addons useless or break them.

Before you get any addons, head to Minion.gg to grab the addon manager from ESOUI.com. It automatically updates your addons and you can download new ones directly from Minion (think of it as an old-school Curse/new Twitch app for WoW addons). It's important to note this here: You do not need to log out from ESO to update your addons. You can download updates, remove, or add addons while playing ESO. Just type /reloadui once the addon has finished installing and voila! 

1) The very first addon I recommend picking up is Addon Selector. It lets you view all of your addons and choose which ones to turn off/on and save them to sets. That's especially helpful if you end up with a buggy addon (if it breaks due to patches etc) as this can help you isolate which of your addons is causing the issues. Addon Selector overtakes the basic addon menu.

2) Now that you've got Circonian's Addon Selector, the second addon you should get is pChat. It's a feature-rich chat addon that adds so many customizable things to the standard chat box. With basic ESO chat box, you can change colors per guild and add extra tabs. You can do that and so much more with pChat. Two awesome features are the ability to save chat - so it doesn't disappear when you have to reload your UI (/reloadui) or when you get disconnected. You can choose how long you want chat saved, up to a period of 24 hours! This is huge (especially since sometimes updates create issues that cause frequent DCs)!

3) Coming in at third, there's Advanced UI (AUI for short). AUI overrides many of the basic ESO graphical UI elements and replaces them with a highly customizable and very informative display. In this screenshot, I've drawn red rectangles around the AUI parts. It includes a minimap, unit frames (yours and your targets health bars), and action bars (the bar that displays your active abilities). It also includes a quest tracker, but I've chosen to use FCMQT instead, due to its additional functionality (you can drop a quest from the quest tracker, rather than opening your quest log). {Since starting this post, I've replaced AUI with Bandits UI}

old setup (AUI)

Now, Bandits: Bandits is an all-in-one UI (user interface) addon that adds a lot of goodness to your view of Tamriel (really, all of Mundus). It has so many options to customize it to your liking. It has combat frames, a HUD, of course it has Attribute bars, target frames, your action setups. You can use Bandits Gear Manager to save sets of gears and abilities to easily swap before starting a raid or solo excursion (or even RP if that's what suits your fancy). It has so many options. It has a built-in minimap and quest tracker, but I still prefer FCMQT for quest options (it lets you change focus and do a bunch more just by unlocking the cursor, directly from your normal screen. Just hit default . (period) to go into cursor mode and click on your quest tracker.) Bandits also has damage meters but I still prefer Combat Metrics. To modify Bandits' settings, you can choose it from your settings menu or hit (.) again and look for the slim vertical menu that appears on the left side of the screen. Towards the bottom is the gear button for settings.

4) Map Pins. This addon is amazing. It shows map pins (duh) for everything, and you can choose which you want to view at any given time, no reload required. You can even view the locations of the Psijic quest portals, and where treasure maps are, etc.

Now that you've got the basics covered, you may be set or, if you're like me, you're looking for more things to tweak. Do you participate in in-game fishing? There are addons for that. What about damage meters? There's an addon for that, too.

Here are the rest of them:

Advanced Filters and AutoCategory: adds the ability to filter and track your inventory. You can track specific sets so that they're in their own category when you open your bags. "Sellables" are their own category (trash items and ornates) as are stolen items, etc.

AlphaGear 2: lets you create gear sets and attach them to bar setups. You can set aside a "thieving" set that includes your Night's Silence armor and the skills you use when you're doing Dark Brotherhood sacraments and Thieves Guild heists. If you also make a set for regular questing, you can toggle between the two with a single button push. (this one isn't necessary if you use Bandits, which has its own gear manager)

Assist Rapid Riding: this is a simple addon that recognizes when you're mounted and equips Rapid Maneuvers in the button of your choosing. If you dismount prior to entering combat, it will unequip that and reequip the spell that was in that slot. (If you get dismounted by something attacking you, it will not be able to switch back due to restrictions put in place by the game - you can't change a skill while in combat.) {EDIT: Due to the recent changes in AvA (Alliance War) skills, you can no longer get Rapid Maneuvers easily. You used to get access to it as soon as you hit a specific number of alliance points, which was incredibly easy to do, even on very low-level characters, with the daily log-in rewards. However, now you need to grind for your AvA skills, so this addon isn't quite as useful or necessary for alts anymore, which sucks because alts need this skill even more than max-level characters do.}

Azurah: lets you move every piece of the UI. I've been having some issues getting my settings to stay once I move them, but I assume it's a user error and I just need to read up on it.

BeamMeUp: this is the fast travel addon to get. It can be accessed via the main map. It shows a list on the left side of all the zones you can fast travel to for free, by utilizing the 'port to guild member/friend' features. It alphabetizes the list and also lets you further filter them to zones you have treasure maps or surveys in, quests in, only the zone you're already in, etc. Another excellent feature it has (that FasterTravel does not) is the ability to unlock all wayshrines within a zone, if possible. There's a special button for this. It takes a little bit of time, during which your character will pop up at all the wayshrines in that zone, so be prepared for some loading screen and travel time. However, it's so helpful, especially if it's your first time in a zone or if it's a well-populated zone (or if it's Elsweyr with dragons you need to run around to find). Free travel is so awesome. I think I've saved 100s of thousands of gold at this point and I've only been using BMU for a few months. (It shows how much it calculates it's saved you.) It also saves you a ton of time that would be spent running to wayshrines and running around trying to find the wayshrine you need in the other zone.

Chat Window Manager: a probably-unnecessary modifier that adds a few small functions to the chat box, including a button that I accidentally push that reloads my UI.

Combat Reticle: this one is good. It lets you customize your reticle (the target mark in the center of your screen) to different things, including letting you change whether or not it's animated and what functions set off the animation.

Combat Metrics: this (or an addon like it) is pretty much necessary if you want to run trials or veteran dungeons. It shows you what your DPS is so you can work to improve it. It's hideable so it only shows when you want it to (like after a fight).

Crafting Writ Assistant: this lets you view a frame that shows you what your writ requires, that way you don't forget and accidentally create the wrong thing. While it's not necessary for armor and weapons when used in conjunction with Dulgobon's Lazy Writ Creator, it is still helpful for the stuff that isn't covered by that, like provisioning, alchemy, and enchanting (consumables).

CraftStore: this lets you view all your alts to see what traits they have learned and whether it's time to train again. It's very helpful if you have a bad case of alt-itis (of course I do).

Dolgubon's Lazy Writ Crafter: this addon is crucial if you do your daily crafting writs - and you definitely should be doing them! Whether you're just leveling, a new player, or a master crafter, daily crafting writs have rewards and benefits for you. Almost everyone will want to be able to craft at some point, and daily writs - when not yet maxed - give you inspiration (crafting experience) that levels your crafting skills as well as crafting materials and recipes. If you are rank 50 in a crafting skill and you have your passive maxed, you have a chance to receive master writs in the reward sack. Master writs have you craft specific, high level crafting items and reward writ vouchers. Those vouchers can be used to purchase a variety of things from Rolis Hlaalu and Faustina Curio (found near the three major cities - Elden Root, Wayrest, and Mournhold). More information on master writs can be found here http://lovelynorth.com/master-writ-vendor/ Lazy Writ Crafter is for the daily writs. It automates creating writ items so you no longer have to search through the items you can craft to find the ones you need to make. You just hit one button and it crafts the items for you. It shows up when you use a crafting table after accepting that type of daily writ. It's awesome!

ESO-Database.com Export: if you use ESO-Database.com, this will upload your characters and all their stuff onto the website. It's a nice web-based way to view all of your characters skills, abilities, achievements, everything.

FasterTravel: this addon is a life-saver and a game-changer. If you are in five player guilds (the maximum allowed), you can use this addon to port to anyone in any of those guilds for free, at any time. It adds a tab to the map UI and lets you choose which zone you want to go to from an alphabetized list. It does not show player names. When you port to a guild member, it takes you to the wayshrine closest to them. I have since replaced this one with BeamMeUp, which has much more utility and awesome features. (See above.)

FCM Quest Tracker: as previously mentioned, this is an awesome quest tracker. I turn off Bandit's quest tracker module so I can use this. It lets you highlight a quest and perform certain functions (like abandoning) straight from the quest tracker on the right of your screen. It also lets you track all of them at once, sorted by zone.

Go Home: this adds some neat features for those of us who own a few different homes. You can assign homes with numbers and type /gh1 etc to fast travel to them.

Of Harven's addons, these are the ones I use {EDIT: some of these may not be relevant anymore}:
Harven's AS to LAM adapter
Harven's Custom Map Pins
Harven's Extended Stats
Harven's Improved Skills Window
Harven's Stack Split Slider
Harven's Trait and Style

HarvestMap: this one's quite useful if you gather everything in sight (and if you have ESO+, you should!). It marks on your map (and adds 3D pins in the world if you want it to) to show you where items you've gathered spawn. They tend to respawn in the same spot, so that's helpful.

Idle Timeout Reminder: this one is simultaneously tiny and huge! I don't know how long the timer is, but ESO has this annoying thing where they boot you if you're afk for a short period of time. This contrasts with the other two MMORPGs I've spent extensive time in, WoW and BDO. In WoW you can be afk for what seems like half an hour. ESO is between 5-10 minutes, I think. BDO actually encourages you to go afk, and lets you work on tradeskills through an automated system. (It's super weird.) If you're about to get marked as idle, this addon sends you a notification (accessible via N) to let you know.

Inventory Insight: this addon is precious. It lets you search all of your characters' inventories and equipped items, and your bank and craft bag, to find items.

ItemPreview: I don't know if this is working 100% yet, but I use this, Furniture Catalogue, and ESO Master Recipe List to preview furnishing items. You can preview items from the blueprint, before crafting them! ItemPreview is no longer being supported, unfortunately. As of today, there is no known fix that makes it work.

Leo's Altholic and Leo's Trainer: these let you see who needs what trained and when. It also notifies you when one of your alts has completed their training. (Honestly, I deleted these because the notifications got to be too annoying.)

Librarian Book Manager and Lore Library Search: these let you look through the lorebooks you've collected so you can read them at your leisure and not hold up a group while in a dungeon, for instance... Not that I'd ever do that, heh...

LoreBooks: shows icons on your map for the location of Mage's Guild lorebooks and eidetic memory books. (This one isn't really necessary with Map Pins.)

Master Merchant: this is basically a necessary addon if you want to profit. MM tracks the items that have sold in your guild stores and gives you a value on each item. It can be a resource drain, so make sure you set it to only poll from the server at certain times, otherwise it will cause framerate drops. I use this along with TTC to determine the best prices for items I sell in guild stores. TTC (Tamriel Trade Centre) is an addon and desktop client (you need to run both for accurate prices) that shows you the data for all the found listings of items matching the one you're selling. It adds this information to the item's tooltip. The prices shown by TTC reflect listings, not sales, while MM reflects sales but from a much smaller sample size, so I tend to roughly average the two of them. [TTC's client sometimes sets off red flags in the Windows firewall, so just beware of that and ready to select 'more details' and 'run anyway' when you install it, and be vigilant to make sure the app finishes installing.]

MiniMap by Fyrakin: this addon has a ton of potential but I can't get it to stop lagging. It's a very detailed minimap that allows you to track things like movement speed percentage. It's very nice, but it frequently lags and takes time to catch up to my movements, which can really throw you off if you're using it to navigate. Also a pain, it lags when I use a treasure map or survey, so it still shows on the minimap even though it's no longer in your inventory because you've already harvested everything. (I'm going to check out their page on ESOUI and see if I can figure out what's happening and if there's a way to fix it.) {EDIT: After speaking with the addon's author, I've realized that the lag is Fyrakin's way of preventing the minimap to hog all of the resources and cause regular lag in-game. Because of this, I sometimes use Votan's Minimap and sometimes use Bandit's built-in. Make sure you turn off Bandit if you want to try an alternative. I still haven't figured out which of the three options is best as far as resource management and performance.}

Port to Friend's House (PTF): This addon lets you save all of your friends' houses in one list. To open the menu, type /ptfopen. To use it, type the friend or guildmate's name in the first box, then select their home from the drop-down menu. You can assign these numbers and make them your favorites, so you can later use /ptffave1 to return to that home quickly. (This is great if you're in a guild that has all the crafting stations set up - 2 of my amazing guilds have this!)


WritWorthy: this is a necessary addon if you do master writs. It shows in the writ's tooltip whether or not you're able to make it and why: motif not known, trait unknown, etc.

I hope this helps you. Either way, please let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading!

KDS has always been utter garbage: witnessing Kyle's abusive behavior a year before his ban

I’ve been putting this off for over a year, but I finally feel like maybe it’s safe to post it now.

Kyle Dempster Studios (KDS or Kyle from here on) has always been garbage. He’s toxic as hell. He’s incredibly immature. He threatens people with unleashing his ‘fam’ upon them. (He has – or had – a dedicated fanbase that was OBSESSED with carrying out his deranged desires. They’ve been doxxing critics, or coming very close to it, that whole time.) Not only has he been toxic, but his followers include[d] Gina Bruno, community manager for The Elder Scrolls Online. During one of these streams, she encouraged him to publicly release information about my other guild. He was streaming as she was texting him. 

He's come dangerously close to doxxing other community members with whom he had a disagreement. He made a habit of silencing dissenters by threatening them. He was verbally abusive to everyone in his inner circle. And the Zenimax team should have been aware of this before making him part of their Stream Team for ESO, because it had already occurred during public streams by that point. There is no reason why they should have legitimized his petty, gross behavior, but they did. 

Here's what he did that finally got him banned: 

https://massivelyop.com/2020/06/27/elder-scrolls-online-doxxing-drama-ends-with-one-partnered-streamer-booted/ 

This tweet sums it up succinctly (albeit with a spelling error in KDS's name).

Last year, in fact, almost exactly a year before he pulled this specific incident of doxxing (including at least one minor), this happened to me and my guild: 

In case you don't play The Elder Scrolls Online, all guilds of a certain size have a guild store. A guild trader is an NPC that guild leaders bid on in order to have a kiosk where people from other guilds can purchase the items in the guild store. Guild traders are highly sought after and location is generally competitive and a matter of prestige. Usually, one guild will hold onto a guild trader for as long as possible, once they find a decent location that they can afford. Guild trader bidding is blind, meaning you don't know how much other people are bidding before you place yours. Because of this, traders can be "sniped". Sometimes, this happens because members of one guild tell members of another guild how much their trader cost. Most guilds keep this info on lockdown, only letting a select few members have access to that information because it's so valuable. Guild traders last for a week, at which point guilds have to bid again and hope they get to keep them. 

The following screenshots were taken from Discord. They show my guild leader talking to KDS about the abovementioned source of "drama" (which really wasn't even that dramatic, or rather wouldn't have been had it been discussed between two rational, mature adults).

On top of all the other problematic shit he said, notice how she pointed out at the very beginning that she was the guild master, yet he continued to belittle her and, in the end, said: "if you care to put me directly in touch with you [sic] guild leader". It's almost as if he's always had issues with women. I know he (during at least one of the streams that I watched) used the term "meat curtains" and other derogatory phrases meant to demean women and our bodies. He's just utter garbage and he always has been.

As a guild leader, Kyle only paid attention to sycophants who could boost his ego. He had no idea what actual leadership should look like. He only wanted attention and praise, and anything less than that was incompatible with his ego. He couldn't handle any criticism and threatened to doxx anyone who offered any kind of critique. He did this more than once that I saw. He kept his officers on short leashes and had no concept of mutual respect. He wanted worshippers and, somehow, he got them. 

As a person, he was capable of being humorous, but it was almost always at the expense of someone else, usually marginalized people. Despite claiming to be a "leader" of the LGBTQ+ gaming community, he never made anyone who was not his particular flavor of Queer feel welcomed, and then only if they offered unquestioning obedience. People like me, who identify as Queer/bi/pan, were outcasts within our own "community", and he said on several occasions that we shouldn't even identify as Queer because it offended him. 

I was completely unsurprised when I heard that he had been banned and why; what surprised me was that it had taken a year for him to fuck up that badly. It took the community more than a year to see him for what he was, and there are still fanboys of his that will continue to defend him to the death. I don't understand it. He was an oddity only in that he was an openly gay Satanist gamer. His attitude and actions are/were toxic. His opinions of women are/were toxic. There's nothing special about a misogynistic, petty, immature gamer. Nothing.

He's completely deserving of his new moniker involving the word "dumpster" to replace his last name, and he deserves worse. That's why I'm writing this, to finally let everyone know how he's always been a piece of shit. I'm still worried he's going to doxx me... I mean, he has no fear of reprisal or accountability now that he's been removed from the Stream Team, so why not abuse and harass anyone who speaks up against him? 

It's not like it would be the first or the last time he did that. 

So for now, I guess I'm signing off. I'll go back to hiding, but I'm glad to have finally rid myself of this burden. Now, if only the gaming community could collectively remove and get over the burden that is Kyle Dempster.

New Blog

Very few people still read this and I'm trying to streamline my usernames so I'm making a new blog dedicated to gaming: Stormborn Rage

My Twitter handle is the same.

I hope you few keep in touch. I'll be trying to update those a lot more frequently.

And if you already play the games I do, these are my IDs:
PS4: VStormborn17
Battle.net: Stormborn#11275
ESO: VeronicaStormborn
BDO: Family name Mystarria
GW2: VeRAWR.1096

I hope to see you soon!

Getting Lost in Black Desert

So now that I've been playing the game since the earliest of the early headstarts, and am still playing, spending soooooo many of my waking hours in-game, I can give a bit of a better perspective, deeper than just "it's awesome!". (I still think it's awesome, though.)

Black Desert Online isn't for people like my husband, although I guess it could be, depending on how you look at it. He wants games with goals, where you head straight for the finish line and get rewarded for it. He even plays MMORPGs like that: in WoW he wants to be a decent raider, and see all the end-game content. He's also tried PvPing with me in the past. The thing is, I want to get lost. Don't shove me through the world with blinders on. Let me take in the scenery. There's enough bullshit rushing in our day-to-day experiences. Let's take it easy in the game, and actually enjoy the journey. If you agree with my opinion, you may genuinely enjoy Black Desert as I have. Granted I'm still not max level, or even close, but I feel like I get a ton of enjoyment out of the game, and that it's worth the investments made.

My only real complaint in the game so far is the level of evil RNG we have to try to overcome. For example, I recently got a tier 3 hawk. This took me way longer than it did most people. I had one brown hawk I got as a reward from my pre-order, one brown hawk as a reward from the Maehwa event, and one sky hawk that I purchased separately. I followed a plan, believing that leveling your pets gets you a higher chance at a higher tier result of exchange. (It's exchanging, it's not actually breeding. You take two pets, combine them, and they turn into one new pet.) I took the two tier 1 level 10 brown hawks and exchanged them, and I even had my fingers crossed, but what did I get? A tier 2 brown hawk. Tier 2s are the most useless things ever. They start back at level 1, and they start off with one buff, but unlike the tier 1s, they don't gain a new one at level 10. They only have one buff. So I traded two looting and buffing pets, for one, and I didn't even get a new appearance as a result. I was pretty pissed, and of course I was directed to the "suggestion" forum to express my grievances. I took some time, regrouped, and leveled that tier 2 and my tier 1 sky hawk. Once they reached level 10, I took a deep breath and exchanged them. The result was a little bit underwhelming at first, but overall I like it.

This shows the buffs I ended up with, 3% karma regeneration and 3% hunting exp, neither of which I will use, at least for now. Thankfully Tuulikki kept the ability to find rare monsters, which is one of the things I really like about bird pets. Her name is the name of a Finnish goddess, and means "little wind".

Here are some pictures of her in-game.

As you can see, she's white and teal.  She's not what I had hoped for (a burgundy color that I've seen around), but she's fine the way she is.

The thing is though, that all over the web I've found all these people saying they mated two level one t1s and got a t3 right away, whereas I leveled all of mine to 10 each time and ended up only going up one tier. There doesn't seem to be any sense to it. At least when it comes to in-game horse breeding there are ways to calculate likelihood of results. This seems to be completely random.

I've gone a bit off-track, but it's little things like this that I find very frustrating. There is definitely a lot of RNG in this game, almost to the point of absurdity. I don't know much at all about the end-game, but - and this might drive off some people, too - it seems to be a lot of grinding, which may or may not be the fun part. Getting a group and endlessly slaying doesn't sound terrible.  There's also competitive or non-consensual PvP, depending on your goals. Some people are dead-set against PvP, and won't even fight back, and I think it's a little sad that that's okay. The really hardcore PvP crowd are so overgeared that there really isn't anything you can do to stop them from killing you... or your horse, which is way worse. Horses with death counts produce lower quality foals.

I 'made' my hubby buy Overwatch last weekend, so I may start playing that soon.
Our battle tag is Stormborn#11275 if you're interested in joining a noob on her first few matches.
I just have to peel myself away from BDO, first...

Black Desert Online or The Game That Keeps Me Awake

I've been part of a multi-game LGBTQ guild since I started playing Skyforge.  Recently they started talking a lot about Black Desert Online.  I hadn't heard anything about it and hadn't been exposed to any of the hype.  I wasn't very interested in it, but I wanted to be an active member of the guild.

Prior to CBT2, BDO released their character creation tool, a small program dedicated just to creating a character.  I was so attached to the beauty of the character I created.  (She's a sorceress and I named her Elysia, but that name was taken by the time I had a chance to reserve.)  They were having a Beauty and Beast contest for which you had to submit your best creations, and there were several winners, but everyone got prizes just for participating, so of course I did.

(Yes, that's pink hair!)

After playing with the character creator, I was intrigued.  I entered several contests to win a beta key, and actually won for once.

We had a late-night gaming party at the start of the CBT.  It opened at 2AM central (8 UTC).  I had a blast.  My first impressions of the game were a bit 'meh', but that quickly faded as I realized just how much there was to do and how immersive it was.  The only complaint I had then and still have is the translation/localization.  There are many pieces of quest text that either don't make sense or are grammatically incorrect.  I was and still am very disappointed in that.  I'm sure there are some English majors out there who would have jumped at the chance to edit in-game text.

I decided to go ahead and blow all of my money, pre-ordering the $100 conqueror's package of the game.  I was really nervous about spending that much money on the game, any game, but this game in particular.  I had read a lot of chatter about pay-to-win, high cash shop prices, and a variety of other complaints, but - especially since the cash shop hasn't opened yet - I haven't had any problems.  I'm also fairly certain I've already gotten my money's worth out of the game, considering how many hours I've logged already.

Five days later and I am still having so much fun with this game.  I have been playing A LOT every day since the pre-release, and still want nothing more than to be playing right now.  Unfortunately the game is currently undergoing maintenance, but should be finished very soon.

I ended up making several versions of the same 'Elysia' character (now named Verisiel) but am so happy with the finished product.  I chose the family name 'Mystarria', after a land in the Runelords saga.  Family names are what you identify as in the game.  You can add a friend to your list and whichever character they log in as, as long as it's in the same family, you will see them online, and there is one guild in which you can place all your characters.  Building a guild is really hard work.  You have to start out with a clan with a maximum occupancy of 15 players, and have to save up 100,000 silver to turn that into a guild.  Then you have to complete group quests - gathering only in the lower levels - until you save up enough money and points to expand the guild more.  There are also salaries - you can get paid just for being in a guild.  Oh, and to be eligible for a salary you have to sign a 30 day contract.

Screenshots in this game turn out amazing.  When you hide your UI (default Ctrl-U) you enter this mode where the background is fuzzy and blurred, and you center in on your character.  There are also different photo filters you can put on your gameplay and screenshots.  You can change from the Vibrant (recommended setting) to a large variety of other options.

Don't mind the screen clutter!

(Vibrance)

(Filmic)

I had gotten to the point that immediately after taking care of my diabetic cat I would go right back to bed, and sleep for most of the day.  This game has given me a reason to stay awake!  I've also been in intense pain for the past week, but it's been made more bearable by a heating pad and being able to play BDO.  I've even been staying up late playing and still waking up on time and staying up.

There is just so much to do in this game!

Come and join me in-game!
Black Desert Online is now available for purchase.  Today was the general public release date!
It starts as low as $30!

https://www.blackdesertonline.com/shop/GamePass.html

My New Favorite Pasttime

I treated myself to quite a deal on cyber Monday.
Here's a hint...

I, of course, bought the Game of the Year edition, because I just can't do without the added DLC (that costs $15 each and so more than the cost of the game in this case) and the extra goodies that came with it.

Unfortunately, I've run into some problems with the game.

I haven't been able to access any of the extras that are included in the GOTY edition: no weapons, mounts, or DLC.  So I made a ticket through the EA/Origin website, and had even more problems with that.  The first response was speedy, but was just informing me that I should wait longer - despite already having waited 5 days - before expecting it to show up.  The next response took about a day, and after that I waited almost a week to get a response, and that was with me sending out daily requests for aid.

I don't know if this was the reason, but I finally gave up and contacted BioWare, telling them that I love their game but am probably never going to buy another one because of the EA/Origin [lack of] customer service.  Shortly afterwards I received a special personal email from someone who works at EA.  He informed me that he would be helping me and that he may need to access my account, which I agreed to.  Well, it still hasn't been fixed, and he's off for the weekend and works extremely early in the mornings, so I'm SOL for now, at least until Monday.

One person responded to my original EA ticket saying that I should un/reinstall the game.
Given that my max internet speed is 6 Mbps which generally equates to 800 Kbps download speed, I'm loathe to do it.  I barely managed to free up enough space on my multiple hard drives to be able to cut/paste the folder onto another drive, saving the game while I download another copy.  (More hard drives is at the top of my Christmas wish list.)

I have spent almost 70 hours in game so far, without my precious extras.  My first two characters were modeled after the Daenerys example found here: http://imgur.com/a/sAeSn
I don't really like the way either turned out, especially in the eyebrow area, and the game also does this really gross thing where when you're standing in shadow your face looks like a raccoon wearing makeup.
Here's an example of what I mean.

In my opinion it looks pretty gross.  (Plus her eyebrows are all wrong.)

Sadly, that's the character I've spent the most time playing, mostly because every character I've made since still ends up looking like that.

It seems like a combination of the blush and eye makeup compounded by the lack of direct light, and it's just awful.  So I made a new character and she still looks pretty messed up.

This is my most recent character, made today, at the request of the EA employee who said I might find the items on a new character I made.

As you can see, the game has the potential for beautiful characters, it just falls short when not in cinematics or at least conversation.

I hope I'll continue to be happy with this one, who I named Elysia.

As you may have noticed, I've chosen to play a mage - at least for my first time through.
I found this article after I started that confirmed that it was a good choice.  http://kotaku.com/tips-for-playing-dragon-age-inquisition-1660270767
I like how it adds into the storyline of the battle between the mages and templars.

Based on the amount of time I've spent in-game so far and how I'm nowhere near done nor am I sick of it, you can definitely say I'm enjoying this game and am glad I got it.  If you, like me, can find the GOTY edition for $39.99 I recommend picking it up, and hopefully the extras and DLC work for you (unlike me)!

The only other RPG that's not an MMO that I've played extensively was Skyrim, and I'm still not done with that game.  Yeah, there's an awful lot to do in that game, but I also kept encountering bugs and glitches the second time around (the first time my character, that I had progressed farthest with, disappeared).  So I haven't spent too much time going back and giving it another shot, because the bugs have been quite annoying.  I may give it another go once I'm done with this, though.  Of course, I also play The Elder Scrolls Online, which, while not perfect, I also recommend.

Thanks for reading and ...
"May all your hits be crits, and all your loot be epics..."

edited to add
I've also encountered this glitch that makes my weapon damage animation trail behind in the sky.  It's really annoying.  Has anyone else seen this?