October 2021

Quail’s Tale Tavern (and other Adventures)

stargrace October 7, 2021 0Comment

I was doing some thinking last night and came to the conclusion that perhaps I should start my own guild in Black Desert Online. Now, I ‘run’ guilds in a few games, but they’re not what I would consider active, at all. They’re used mostly for storage and because I don’t always play nice with others. BDO just feels like a different game to me, one I actually WANT to play for a long time. I’ve been playing for almost two months now and I still enjoy it as much if not more – and there’s tons of stuff I haven’t even explored yet, like bartering, sailing, and all that good stuff.

I decided to start up the Quail’s Tale Tavern, a life skill guild for any mutual friends who wanted to join. We’ll never be big and take over the world, but that’s fine by me. It’s a quiet place to call home and rest if that’s your thing. If you’d like to join just let me know and we can make that happen (discord, twitter, in-game, whatever works).

My lahn is now sitting at level 53, and has spent most of today attacking a training dummy because my hands have been too sore to play. Sure, the levels come slower than if I had of just been out exploring and questing, but that wasn’t really an option. At least this way, I can still ‘play’ – and I honestly couldn’t be happier. The class is just plain fun to watch, and I’m not sure what character I’m going to time piece yet on my alt account, but I’m pretty sure it will be another lahn on my main account.

Two good friends joined up in game today and added themselves to the guild which just makes me smile. I love seeing others enjoying themselves and giving the game a chance. I feel like this game has flown under the radar for a long time because of the MANY confusing mechanics, but sticking with it and learning in smaller bite sized doses has been much easier. Ignoring the onslaught of quests and UI gimmicks has been key to my enjoyment. Well, that and horse training. I’m very close to being ready to breed my first mounts – I’ve got my fingers crossed for a Tier 8!

There is also another new event that involves twitch drops – you can read about it here. It works much like New World’s current event where you watch for an hour, claim a reward, watch for two hours, claim another reward, watch for 5 hours, get a reward. There are new rewards each day, and it runs for a number of days. You need to link your twitch account to your BDO account through the BDO web site, then you claim the items on twitch, and redeem them back on the BDO web site. They’re not game breaking items, but hey, free is free.

Goals? I’ve got those! I can only set the guild emblem on Monday’s (why? I have no idea, it’s in the rules. Maybe the person who goes around approving guild emblems only works Monday’s) so that’s one goal. I’d like to get ranks and stuff set up but BDO has everyone do a mandatory 14 day trial as a new member before you can be promoted (minus the guild leader) so I can’t assign anyone yet. I think this is a great idea, it auto assigns you to a ‘general’ player once your two weeks is up. During this time you can’t earn guild incentives (money) so you’re less likely to hang out waiting to abuse the system. You also have to wait 24h before joining a new guild after leaving one, so there’s lots of time to think things over.

Anyway. 53 inching my way to 61 on the lahn, working on fishing on the Shai (and other crafts in time) next on the docket is to learn how to make use of the workers I have, and get into simple farming. I need to start my empire after all!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

It’s Patch Day!

stargrace October 6, 2021 0Comment

Today is patch day, which means that I need to spend a few hours downloading (thanks 5mb/s speeds) before I can play, but I did browse over the patch notes and wow, they added quite a few things! First up is their second dungeon ever – Sycrakea. It looks amazing, but you do need to complete the first dungeon before attempting it I believe. I haven’t done either of the dungeons yet, and honestly it’s not really my thing so I think I’ll let the big time adventurers partake in that one.

They’ve also added some new skills and instruments to the Shai class! You might recall that at the moment, this is my main. It looks insanely detailed and complicated! I can’t wait to dive in and figure it out.

There were some other generic class changes, some drops adjusted, monsters tweaked, really nothing out of the ordinary. They also opened up some forums to go and talk about the big class revamp that they’re working on for later this month. You can sign up to help out and be sure to test those changes and get some input in about how the classes will work moving forward.

For me personally, it’s been a fishing sort of week. I am almost rank artisan 7 which is lovely, and I’ve been catching lots of the event fish which will come in handy to stockpile for whatever goodies I want to buy. My 2nd account also swapped over to a full copy of the game today since I reached level 50 and I’m pretty tickled about that.

I still need to level my horses up so I can breed them and have a better chance at a top tier mount, but I haven’t found the time quite yet because the lure of earning silver through fishing has been pretty high. Eventually that fishing event will end, and I’ll have to figure out other ways of making money – but why not take advantage of it while I can.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself! If you want to see some awesome screenshots of BDO I’ve been posting them on twitter lately, the game just blows me away in remastered mode.

Why, of all games, BDO?

stargrace October 4, 2021 0Comment

I’ve been talking about BDO for a few weeks now, and even after New World released, I’m still feeling this game more than anything else out there right now. I know it might seem a bit confusing, the game isn’t ‘new’ (it released in 2016); so why the sudden influx of posts about it? I decided to clarify with my main points – and I’ll list some cons at the end too. It’s not ALL sunshine and roses (but it’s pretty damn close).

• The game is absolutely beautiful. It surpasses any other game I’ve played, especially if you set the graphics to remastered.
• The combat is incredibly fluid, and yes I know classes are gender locked and no one likes that in 2021 – but there are so many choices and most choices have a counterpart, so I’ve never really felt upset by it. Hold down the left or right mouse button and ping off some combos and you feel like a master – and it LOOKS great.
• You can highlight a quest objective (hit control to free mouse look, then click on the run icon on your quest on the right hand side) and hit T and you will auto run to your location. That’s right, you don’t have to search maps or hunt down where you’re going next just highlight it and hit T. You’ll run or ride there. Need to get to the other side of the map? No problem, you can auto ride / run your way there and go take care of something IRL.
• Speaking of maps, the world is ENORMOUS and the maps are AMAZING. They have sun and moon cycles on them. They’re probably some of the most involved maps I’ve ever seen in a game. You can watch events happening on the maps in real time.
• There’s player housing. There’s crafting. Incredibly involved crafting. There’s crafting you can do while AFK so when you can’t actually play but you want to play – you can! You can make progress while at work. Legit not cheating progress. You can make coin, level your horses, you can even sit at a training dummy and gain experience and skill experience that way. There’s harvesting. Farming. Fishing. Leveling your horses. Breeding horses. There’s a barter system. A sailing skill! Boat missions. Trade missions. Alchemy. Cooking. Hunting. There is SO MUCH TO DO. There’s also achievements to go after if that’s your thing in the way of titles.
• The community is active. It is a pvp-centric game so yes you’ll always have ‘those’ people around, but it’s active and most people are more than happy to answer questions. This game has been called the MMO where you never HAVE to play with others, and that’s exactly what I’ve found. I joined a guild where the key point was ‘life skillers where you never have to say a word’ – perks of a guild, without having to deal with folks if I don’t want to. That being said, you can create your own guild too and do all that if you want. It’s completely your choice!

A few cons –

• Yes, it’s a pvp game. It’s not optional like it is in new world, but I’ll be honest I’ve never even seen any PVP in all the time I’ve been playing. Number one if you’re below level 50 you can’t and number two, for the most part, people are in very specific areas doing PVP so it’s avoidable. You can fish and train your horses in secure locations, or just never accept the quest to ding level 50 – and you’ll never have issues.
• There is always chat about the game being ‘pay to win’ – but if you don’t concern yourself with what everyone else is doing, this honestly isn’t a big deal. There are TONS of goodies given away on coupons and codes to redeem and daily login rewards and events that I haven’t bought a single thing from the pearl store and I have no idea how they make any money. Sure, you can pay and make things easier. Faster. Less RNG. They are items I would consider pay to win – but what exactly are you ‘winning’ – there’s only one dungeon in the entire game (they’re adding a second). Most of the ‘winning’ is whatever you personally set as a goal.
• The UI is a confusing mash up of buttons and buffs and icons. It’s daunting to look at all that and have no idea what any of it is for! Guess what. You don’t NEED to know what any of it is for! Give the game a week, a solid effort of actually playing, and watch some of the beginner videos by EvilDoUsHarm on YouTube. Stick with it, and just honestly ignore the UI. Play the game, run to quests, do some of the AFK chores. I found it incredibly overwhelming when I started too but I plugged along and honestly, this is one of the best games I’ve played in ages.

Gear – Simplified

stargrace October 3, 2021 1Comment

One of the most confusing things to me when I started playing BDO was gear. It’s still pretty confusing, so let’s look at just season+ characters and simplify things. First of all, if you’re a season character you can’t wear regular gear, so you’ll be looting gear that you can’t wear sometimes. When you’re questing, you’ll be given blue gear – Naru gear (I know technically you get white and green gear first but let’s start with Naru). You’ll see tons of people talking about ‘PEN’ – and this is a tier of enchanting. As you quest, or log in daily, or just exist, you’ll earn beginner black stone armour/weapon. You summon your black spirit dude, click enchant – and with the stones and the armour in your inventory, you use the UI to enchant the gear.

The game fools you because the first few times you do this, you’ll have 100% chance at success. Then things get hard. Now, Naru is special gear and they’ve made it even easier than regular servers, so you SHOULD be able to get all of your gear to PEN without too much difficulty. I believe that means 1-15 and then 5 levels above that to reach PEN. Needless to say it uses a ton of materials.

So once you’ve gotten your gear (ignore accessories!) to full blue naru PEN, you’ll remove it, and go talk to Fughar – type his name into search if you’re not sure where he’s at and you’ll get an auto path to him. Talking to him gives you some quests to turn in that Naru PEN gear for Tuvala gear. It’s yellow/orange, and it’s enchanted a bit to be better than the Naru you were wearing.

Your next goal is to take that Tuvala gear and enchant THAT using the supplies you’ll be collecting – ideally to PEN level before season+ ends sometime in December.

This is where the grind of the game comes into play. You’ll fail. A lot. Your items will go down in durability. You can repair this durability by exchanging tuvala ore with a blacksmith for the same slot as the item you’re trying to mend, and then using the blacksmith interface to repair the durability. When you fail an enchant you’ll go down a tier in levels on it and that sucks. Honestly, just try to get your tuvala as high as you can. When you end season+ your tuvala gear will get exchanged from season+ to regular server stuff, and you’ll be able to use it on non season characters.

Everything else? I’m ignoring for now. Sure some min/max people are out there trying to pen accessories, but we get a set after season+ so I’m just not bothering.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!