Rionne and Riovis Go To Grána!

 Note: You may notice in my Black Desert Online posts that I refer to people (and myself) by one name, while they/we occasionally show up in screenshots of text with a different name. That's because BDO has a "family name" system, in which you pick a last name for your characters. They will all have the same last name, and that is the name I am using to refer to people as. Each character then has its own name. For ease of keeping people straight, I use the family name to refer to the person behind the character, and the character name if I'm talking about a specific character.

Stolen from Riovis, because I forgot to get a screenshot!

  So as promised, today's adventure (well, really super late last night, but "today" is shorter) is about Rionne and Riovis Go To Grána!

  In any game with elves, you will invariably find some sort of nature themed city (space elves don't count for this--and even some of them have nature themed space stations, I'm sure!) as the elven headquarters. Sometimes the nature theme is realistic, other times it's very Alice in Wonderland. And once or twice, I've run into what I internally dub "Industrial Natural," where there's this weird blend of an industrial feel with plants.

  Grána is, in my opinion, how elven cities should be done. Often games break elves up into factions that include high elves and wood elves. It can make for interesting lore (High elves tend to be more prestige focused, though still nature loving. Think marble floors, and giant arbors in and around homes. A place for everything, and everything in its place. Wood elves go more for pure nature. Homes grown from trees, plants spilling over barriers and into the street, etc.), but I've always felt from a city design standpoint, breaking them up like that is cheating. It turns elves into caricatures instead of a fleshed out, well rounded race.

  But Grána has taken elves and blended them seamlessly back into a single whole.

Gorgeous buildings, greenery everywhere!
And if the greenery wants to take over a place other than that allotted for it, it can!

  Nykoss and I visited Grána in my first weeks of playing. Riovis was offline at the time we visited, but I knew on seeing the city that I had to take her there. Aesthetically, Grána is wonderful. Lore-wise, the elves of Black Desert Online are fleshed out and interesting. What's not to love?

  The night after Nykoss and I went to Grána, I sank every spare silver I had in-game (and some not-so-spare silvers. I sold a lot of gear--every single stitch of clothing on every single one of my alts. Luckily in BDO, the majority of gear is not character or account bound, and can be resold on the marektplace) to purchase a tier 8 (horses come in eight main tiers, with a 9th special tier that you'll never see for sale) with the "Two-seater" ability. It's a rare ability that allows two people to ride the same horse, and is only seen in tier 7 or tier 8 horses. Technically, I believe it can be seen in the 9th tier (Dream tier), since the special tier is made of tier 8 horses leveled up to fill specific criteria. This is the only time a horse can change tiers. Every other horse is locked into the tier it was born/spawned as.

The horse market. As you can see, massive variation in prices between tiers.
Also massive variation depending on horse level and special skills.

Rionne and Riovis on Empress, my tier 8 speedy she-devil of a horse.
In Grána. Gorgeous Grána.

  Life got in the way, and we didn't get a chance to visit Grána for several weeks. In that time, I made and lost enough to buy my horse several times over. But it didn't matter. I had her, and she was ready to take us as soon as we decided to go!

  That moment came last night, when all reasonable people were in bed. Riovis and I were both up. Neither of us were interested in doing something stressful or in-depth. Exploring a city together seemed like a great idea.

  So I grabbed Empress, Riovis hopped on, and we rode from Heidel (in the middle of the continent) to Grána (in the southwest). I'd say it's a good 20 minute ride at Empress' top speed. Closer to 30 with the frequent stops I was making. And I forgot to take screenshots along the way there! Darn it! Oh well. I'll be dragging another friend--Gladeborn--there at some point in the near future, and I'll be sure (haha! Yeah, right) to get lots of screenshots then.

Started in the northeast, rode southwest. Passed a lot of little towns along the way!

  The ride out to Grána was uneventful (I'm sorry for lying about it being uneventful. I didn't mean to get you killed Riovis, I swear! That snake jumped out of nowhere!). It mostly consisted of us galloping along, chatting about the Korean market Riovis and her husband just found in their neighborhood, with pauses for Riovis to grab the nodes (a method of connecting trading points) along the way.

It was a very powerful snake. Riovis died in one hit.
It half killed me in that same hit.

  There was that moment when we ran up to some elven female NPCs (non-player characters, for those of you not versed in MMO lingo. Characters created and controlled by the game, usually for the purpose of progressing a story/quest, giving a quest, or to otherwise make the world look populated even when you're the only player in the area), we drooled over their clothes, and I very seriously asked Riovis if she thought anyone would notice if we murdered them and took their gear... sadly for my wardrobe, this is not an option the game allows. Pity.

  We rode up to the city, and I paused to admire a view (the one on the bridge). At which point Riovis hopped off Empress and began exploring.

The moment (after) I was abandoned. Grána won. She seduced my friend away from me!
It's all right though. This scene makes up for it. Sorta.

  The following hour was filled with happy squeals over architecture. There's a library I neglected to get a screenshot of that makes my bibliophile soul sigh in joy. I'll grab a shot of that next time.

  There was also the following conversation:

  Riovis: Outfits WANT.

  Me: Yessssssssssssssssssss

  Me: GIVE US

  Riovis: zomg

  Riovis: zomgzomg

  Me: YES

  ...that was the moment that two more elven women were added to our outfit hit list.

  And we toured houses. Which led to:

  Riovis: Ooh I like this house without the balcony.

  Riovis: Grána 11

  Me: Coming!

  Me: Oh wow.

  Me: This is SPACIOUS

  Me, after exploring a bit: There's a balcony. It just has doors. WIN

  Riovis, going out on the balcony: oh look at that view

  Me: You found The House.

  Riovis, falling off the balcony: that railing ain't solid

  Me: All the better for quick escapes!

  Riovis: It's very lovely

  Riovis, after a short silence while she did a bit of research: The arches in here represent the holy tree, Kamasylve. Like on the windows.

  Me: That's amazing

  Yes, ladies and gents, there is even lore behind why the windows are arched. I am in love.

The view from the balcony with the Fake Railing.

Another city view, because it was just too pretty not to include.

  At about that point, we realized it was 2/4 AM respectively, and we should probably both be in bed. So we did it. We went to sleep. Almost (but not really) at a decent hour. Go us!

Adventures in BDO, Part 1

  As I mentioned previously, I like the social aspect of MMOs. Going adventuring with friends--whether it's slaughtering things, exploring, or some other aspect of the game--is what I consider the most fun. Sure, I need my alone time (part of that whole introverted thing), but the real fun is doing things together. It is an MMO, after all, not a single player game.

  Today's adventure started out simple enough. Nykoss and I have been taking our higher level characters out to the desert to kill desert naga. He and I have been gaming together for over a decade, and we like the same sorts of things, including exploring weird places. The problem with the desert is that the map stops working when you go out far enough. BDO's way of saying, "It is difficult to navigate in a desert, your compass has stopped working," so to speak. The same thing happens out on the ocean (yes, you can build and sail boats!). As Nykoss is the leader of our intrepid band of adventurers (I use the term "leader" loosely. He runs our guild, <Nonessential>, and has been playing longer than the rest of us. That's about as much leading as he does), and has decided that our guild needs a large sailboat so we can all go on exploring adventures in the open ocean together, we were determined to unlock the compass ability. That way, we could easily see where we were and where we were going on the map when we all went out together. So our adventure began.

  We started in Port Epheria, on the northwestern coast of the main continent. The quest immediately sent us out chasing clues among the islands to the north. Not too difficult, Nykoss has a boat!

Nykoss does the work, I relax. Life is good.

  This is not the large sailboat that Nykoss is working on building. (Actually, I'm working on building one as well, because one must keep up with the Joneses!) This boat is a fishing boat, and while it's sturdy, it's not particularly large or fast.

  The quest had us tootling around the islands, investigating various locations underwater. Now, when you go underwater, you have a breath bar. We both were frantically swimming and diving, thinking that if the breath bar went down you started drowning. Good news is, no you don't! You simply auto surface, while gasping for air. Bad news? You auto surface. Doesn't matter if you were almost at your objective. You're headed for the surface.

  A brief portion of the quest involved killing some pirates. The two of us were merrily wreaking havoc on the pirate clans of the island when another player ran up to us.

  "PT?" he said intelligently. "pt," he repeated again, when neither of us responded immediately (seeing as how we were in the process of decimating a giant group of unwashed sea dogs). Nykoss informed him we were just there for a quest, not grinding. We'd killed 41/60 by that point. So our lovable giant friend huffily informed us, "Go somewhere else if u no pt. U ruinin my rotation."

  Goodness! You'd think he owned the pirates or something! I mean, I know the area is heavily trafficked, but it's not like we were following him around and killing mobs (enemies) he'd already attacked. We'd been there for a total of maybe three minutes (yes, we killed 41 enemies in about 3 minutes). He was the one following us around demanding a party invite! (That's what "pt" meant, for those who were unaware. He wanted to group up with us to kill the pirates. But we weren't staying long, so there was no point.)

  We informed him that we only had 19 more mobs to kill, and he angrily ran off. Definitely a different experience than I've had so far--the few times that I've run into other people and wound up killing "their" mobs (mobs that it was clear after a moment of reflection they'd obviously been heading for), I've apologized and the situation has been quite cordial.

  After a while, the quest wanted us to head out to Nowhereisland, conveniently situated out in the middle of nowhere in the ocean. So we hopped on the ferry (well, not a ferry. A ship. An NPC ship).

It's snowing! There's snow on the rails! And me. Brrr.

  Now the thing to keep in mind about going into the deep ocean is that there are sea monsters. The ship was attacked multiple times as we headed for Nowhereisland. The good news is that while both of us don't have the best gear in the game, we have pretty decent gear. The sea monsters only tickled us. Our first encounter went something like this:

  Me, panicking: AHHHH! I was in the worker window, and I heard the roaring! Why is it following us?!

  Nykoss: He is in pursuit
  Me: MAKE HIM STOP

  Nykoss: Jump overboard. He will stop.

  Me, disgusted: After you do.

  Two minutes later...

  Nykoss: He's back

  Me: That was a whale. Why is a sea monster a whale?

  Nykoss: There's many types. Once we get a sailboat, we can fight them with cannons and stuff.

  Apparently, you can hunt them from a ship! Yet another reason <Nonessential> needs a ship.

  The sun went down as we were on the ferryboat, as the sun is wont to do. The moon rose. I took a few screenshots and mentioned it to Nykoss.

  Nykoss: Water is kind of eerie at night. It's like black shadowyness. And no one is steering this boat... we are doomed!

  Me: It's a ride to hell.

  Nykoss: I'm glad we caught the boat. 'cause it's a long ride.

  Not long later...

  Me: Another one?!

  Nykoss: That ain't no whale for sure.

  Me: No, that one's not.

  Nykoss: Looks like a naga.

  Me: We're outdistancing him! Keep it up, boat!

  And again...

  Nykoss: Whale back again

  Me: That's not a whale, that's a stingray!

  Nykoss: Stingwhale

  Eventually, we made it to our destination. Out on Nowhereisland (not its real name guys, I promise), we began questing. Because we'd taken the ferryship to Nowhereisland (and even on the ferry, it was a good 20 minute ride!), Nykoss' fishing boat was back by the main continent. Luckily, one of the quests in the chain gave us deeds for... a raft.

Not glamorous, but she'll do.

  The raft wasn't the fastest thing around, and I swear the waves were going to capsize us, but we made it. After more tootling around on the raft, and diving deep into the water, we received diving masks as rewards! We were excited, because they'd help us with the rest of the diving in the quest chain, right?!

We look so snazzy in our masks!

  Dear reader, you would be forgiven for believing so. It is, after all, called a diving mask. However, it does absolutely nothing except look awesome! We wore them anyway.

  Me: Does it do anything, or is it just for looks?

  Nykoss: I have no idea. I will wear it anyway jic

  Nykoss: Aw man it doesn't actually do anything

  Me: Awwwww

  Nykoss: But it's necessary to increase immersion by 1500%!

  We did a bit more diving for various quests, wearing our useless masks, and the useful crystals they gave us to increase breath time.... in our boots (because that makes sense, right? I would have at least thought they would be crystals for helmets. But no. Boots).

  Eventually, as we stood there on the docks after one of the quests, Nykoss decided to do some research. And realized the compass is temporary, not permanent. We'd been questing for hours, and it was for a temporary item! 3 days of compass, and then it breaks and you have to do another quest again. Good news, there's another place you can do a shorter 3 day compass quest. Bad news, there is no such thing as a permanent compass. So we decided to leave Nowhereisland, and head back to the main land.

COME BACK, MR. BOAT!

  And of course that means we got there just in time to watch the ferryboat sail away. Thus ended our adventure for the evening. Well, except for when the ferryboat dropped me in the middle of the ocean randomly, and I had to swim ten minutes to land.

  Tune in next time for Rionne and Riovis Go To Grana!

Adventures In MMO Gaming, Part 1

  It's that time again! That time where I remind everyone that in addition to being someone with chronic health issues, I am an avid gamer. Massively multiplayer online games are my game style of choice--I love the RPG aspect, the various combat styles different MMOs bring to the table, and the community. Which is funny, because in "real life," I'm very much an introvert. Dealing with people for extended periods of time is extremely draining. Stick a computer screen between me and other people though, and I can indulge in socializing all day long.

  In the past year I've played: Star Wars The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, and am currently playing Black Desert Online. No surprise, today's post is going to focus on BDO!

  To start off, BDO is free to play. You aren't penalized that greatly for not having their version of a subscription (which can be bought for real money by players, then sold on the broker/auction house system to other players for in-game currency. It means that those on a budget can play for free with a subscription, and those who have extra cash on hand can earn in-game money and help someone else out at the same time!), and the game itself is only $9.99 (on sale on Steam for $4.99 right now!). Most MMOs retail for anywhere between $20 and $60, and penalize you heavily (or don't allow you to play at all) if you don't have a subscription. Subscriptions typically run $15. Not bad if you consider the cost of an average movie theater visit is in the realm of $18 these days, and that's for 2 hours of entertainment, not 30 days of entertainment. Still, it's nice to not have that $15 a month charge.

  So that was a pro. Let's go with a con next.

  BDO was produced in South Korea. That isn't the con. Nor is the con the fact that everything had to be translated to English for the English version of the game (duh!). No, the con is that a) there's a ton of Engrish in the game thanks to poor editing on the part of the English-speaking staff, and b) it feels like they plugged the Korean into Google Translate, then dumped it directly into the game. I'm sure they did edit the translated text, but it sure doesn't feel like it. That wouldn't be more than giggleworthy for the voiceovers, but the problem is that they did this with quests, too. So when you're trying to follow the story of the game, it feels like the story is fine. However, the method of telling it is abysmal. I've taken to completely skipping reading the quest text because it's so painful.

  Pro time!

  The combat system is one I've only seen in a few other games, where you use button combinations to fire off moves, instead of using the traditional "hotbutton" system where you hit a number on your keyboard and a move goes off. It lends to combat that feels more fluid to me. Your hands dance over your keyboard, instead of the repetitive 1-3-2-4-1-6-9-3 of other games. It does mean there's a bit of a learning curve, but the game makes it relatively easy and painless.

  Another pro in my mind is that the game is very much a sandbox. You pick what you want to do, and then you do it. There's combat, of course. You can earn money via killing. Or trading! Not on the broker/auction house like you may be thinking (though that's an option). There is literally a "trading" skill in the game, where you transport goods from one town to another. The further you transport them from your starting destination, the higher your money bonus. Additionally, you can pick random things to transport, or you can transport exactly what a city is looking for (which of course gives a better payout as well).

  With that said, I wasn't entirely right when I said that you can earn money via the broker/auction house. There is no player-to-player trading in this game, to prevent gold selling. In that sense, it's very much a single player game. Items you find, you can put up on the broker/auction house (the Marketplace, in BDO). But you can't save the awesome item you have, and give it to your friend. Your friend will have to save up enough money to buy it off the Marketplace themselves.

  Still, you can play the market and make good money off of that, right? Buy low, sell high? Nope. In BDO, the game itself controls market fluctuation. I'm not certain how the algorithm works, but the end result is that you lose a little money on every market transaction if you buy/sell the same item. Items are given a max and min that they can be posted at, and then you are allowed to choose where within those limits you'd like to post your item. The max and min do change based on the number of items up and the current price range that players have assigned the items, but the change is relatively slow compared to what it would be if the economy were entirely player driven.

  It leads to a very stable economy without much inflation (from what I've seen), but it does mean that you have to actively do things in order to make money.

  Well... sort of. Koreans don't have a problem with AFK (away from keyboard) gaming like most Western countries seem to. Unattended gaming doesn't seem to have the stigma it does in the US. Or it could be just BDO, I don't know. Maybe I'm overgeneralizing. Either way, you can do several activities without being at your keyboard. All of them take some sort of preparation, and have ways that prevent you from doing it indefinitely, but unattended activities for periods of time is actively encouraged by how the game is set up. Combat is definitely an at-keyboard part of the game. But auto-pathing combined with auto-running is a thing (yay for being able to grab a drink while running to the next quest!). Auto fishing is a thing--though fishing poles have durability that goes down with every fish you catch, so you only have a set number of fish you can catch before you stop. And there's no way to auto-switch a pole. Plus you can only catch as many fish as you have inventory slots for! Auto horse leveling--YES you have horses that you can breed and level!--is a thing. So is auto-traveling for trading (but not the trading itself. You have to actively be involved to converse with NPCs).

  I can't cover all of the game in a single post, because there's so very much to the game. House decorating, exploring, questing, PvPing (that's a big thing. Once you're past a certain level, you're auto-flagged and can be killed by other people), horse taming/breeding, crafting empires (you don't really do much crafting yourself. You hire NPCs to do it for you), trading empires... the list goes on. I'm debating going through and breaking up the game into bits, talking about what I've learned in my month (almost!) of playing, but that's for a later date. Right now, the next post will be on the massive adventure Gil and I took today! On a ship!