No Vehicles in Starfield Confirmed

 Sadly it has been confirmed there will be no land vehicles in Starfield.

 Starfield front man, Todd Howard, was answering a number of questions when asked if there would be any land vehicles for getting around on a planet’s surface. “There is not,” he said. “We do design it, we’ve seen this with our other games where we wanna design it where it feels good on foot, but we do have the boost pack, you have skills for the boost pack, so the boost pack almost acts like this vehicle, super fun, where you can fly through, and then the low gravity planets are really something special.”

Bummer, but he did add in:

“We have a lot of biomes – we do look at temperature, we look at the radiation, and we look at all of those things on a planet so that your suit and your protection… you can get certain ailments if you’re not ready, and certain weather things can come through with all of that.”

Corrupted Finished

 I finished my 3x major corrupted combat trophies in New World.  I bought materials for two of them and then farmed shards for the third. 100 shards multiplied by the time between re-spawns of Pit Lord Daehi is more time than I care to think about having been spent on this.  Fortunately Pit Lord Daehi is in a spot where you can get topaz gypsum done easily and at the same time get a bunch of orichalcum ore.

 Now onto the real expensive ones: ancient, angry earth, and human!

New (World) Ideas: Music Sheets

 New (World) Ideas is a series of posts in which I present small changes that New World could make that would improve the game.

 Getting music sheets as a drop in New World is irritating.  No one buys them and you can't do anything with them if you already learned that piece of music.  This clogs up inventory and requires players to drop them or stick them somewhere.

New Idea: Just get rid of music sheets.  Instead just have them unlock when they would have otherwise dropped.

OR

New Idea: Keep music sheets but let me salvage music sheets for music experience.  Now players will actually want to buy and trade them.

Mostly Positive on New World

For the First Time Since Launch, New World's Lifetime Review Rating Has Transitioned From "Mixed" To "Mostly Positive" On Steam
by u/randrogynous in newworldgame

Summer Camp

 Getting ready for summer camp with the oldest kiddo so expect some autoposts in the next week!

Find me on mastodon.social

Update 8/2/2023: I have now moved my Mastodon account to gamepad.club's fediverse instance https://gamepad.club/@heartlessgamer

 

Original post: 

 You can now find me on mastadon.social - https://mastodon.social/@heartlessgamer

 I am a bit confused by the fediverse so need to look a bit further into other mastadon servers, but for now I digging and redding up on mastadon.social.

New World Major Trophy Grind (Guide)

 With the upcoming Season 2 changes for New World there will be new "ultimate" trophies that let players combine their major trophies into a single ultimate trophy that can be placed  in one house (5 trophies in 1 trophy slot).  Effectively this will let players never have to swap trophies again as they can just combine all major trophies together and slot them in their houses.

 This is a huge quality of life change but it is coming with a cost (45,000 gold and 90,000 faction tokens per ultimate trophy + the cost of the major trophies themselves which are 10-20,000 gold each themselves).  

 So in typical MMO grind fashion I've now made it my mission to grind the major trophies out (helpful guide posted here) so I can be ready to grind the gold and faction for the ultimate trophy when Season 2 drops.  This will be hundreds of thousands of gold and/or hundreds of hours of grinding.

 The irony I am finding as I venture into this is that farming for the trophy materials is significantly less efficient than just farming materials to sell.  I tried to get the corrupted trophy material but its so annoyingly slow; you either get lucky and get the legendary trophy mat or after 100 attempts get 100 shards to craft it... for one trophy.  Repeat 3x for each major trophy. 

 The legendary material itself is 8,000-10,000 on the market.  I can make 10,000 gold in about 2 hours of material grinding (such as skinning).  After 2+ hours of grinding blue shards (again needing 100) I only had 30 for the corrupted trophy.  Lost was much faster; I finished my lost trophies within a couple hours which also explains why Lost are dirt cheap on the market compared to the others.  But for corrupted I am way way way better off just farming for gold and buying it out right (which I've now done and have 2 of 3 trophies done).

 Once past the combat trophies it is on to crafting and refining.... a grindin' we shall go!

I AM .heartlessgamer (Discord rant)

 I own the domain: heartlessgamer.com

 I have the gmail: heartlessgamer_at_gmail.com

 I have heartlessgamer in almost every online game service since the dawn of the Internet.

 But I guess having it since the dawn of the Internet is not enough for services like Discord to ensure I get to keep it when they randomly decide they need to change their username system.  So now on Discord instead of being heartlessgamer I am relegated to .heartlessgamer (yes a DOT f'n period in front).

 This is the dumbest change I've seen any system make in a long time.  There was literally nothing wrong with the username system in discord that used random numbers afterwards.  All of us heartlessgamers of the world existed just fine.  But now someone else is heartlessgamer and I am DOT FREAKING .heartlessgamer

 First it was losing my Youtube handle (a true headscratcher considering I own the domain via Google's blogger platform and gmail for the "handle" of heartlessgamer) and now it's Discord.  Screw these platforms changing their username systems and not giving priority to clear long term owners!

New (World) Ideas: Honing Stones and Coatings

 New (World) Ideas is a series of posts in which I present small changes that New World could make that would improve the game.

 Honing Stones and weapon coatings are a key element to maxing your character's damage in New World.  Forgetting to apply them (or re-apply them) is a rookie mistake that many veterans make as well and forgetting is easy to do as they are often buried in your inventory waiting for you to remember to use them.

 New Idea: allow players to attach honing stones and coatings directly to their weapons via slots on the inventory and gear sets.  Player's can put a pile of stones or coatings in these slots which will then automatically be consumed (or not; it can be a player controlled setting). 

Vehicles in Starfield?

Caught up to the recent gameplay deep dive for Starfield.  One missing piece for me was ground vehicles such as a rover.  Does anyone know if the game will feature vehicles?  How cool would it be to land your storage ship and drive off into the planet on your custom land cruiser!

New (World) Ideas: Buy/Sell Umbral Shards

  New (World) Ideas is a series of posts in which I present small changes that New World could make that would improve the game.

 Umbral Shards in New World are the main currency for upgrading gear to a max gear score of 625.  They are also now part of multiple crafting recipes and in the Season 2 patch more uses are being brought forward.  The only problem: umbral shards are bind on pickup so you have to earn them yourself.

 New idea: Let players buy and sell umbral shards for gold directly.  There are already numerous ways that gold is converted into shards (shard selling via mutated expeditions, buying flame cores to use at the forge, infused salvaging scraps turned into gypsum orbs and then casts, etc) so it's not a leap to just let the shards themselves be traded amongst players.

New (World) Ideas: Attribute Respecs

 New (World) Ideas is a series of posts in which I present small changes that New World could make that would improve the game.

 It costs 200 gold to respec attributes in New World even if all you are doing is adjusting a few points.  This cost isn't much fun in a game where players are encouraged to change gear often for different content (for example: changing from one ward gear set to another inside a split ward expedition).

 There is a stark difference between hitting an attirbute bonus or not (i.e. if you make 299 CON you don't get the 300 CON perk).  For all practical purposes players have to respec attributes whether they need to just adjust 1 point or reset all 190 -- the bonuses are that important to hit.

 New idea: instead of attribute respecs costing 200 gold it should be a sliding cost based on number of points being changed.  This way if you just change one piece of gear out and need to adjust 10 points it's only a few gold vs 200 gold for a full reset.  This would make it feel less penalizing for having to change out gear.  Simply go into the attribute and change your attributes and a cost will be displayed on screen to save.

 Even better would be to tie attribute respec to azoth instead of gold so it is consistent with weapon skill respec, but let's not get crazy on ideas here.  This is an MMO after all and what MMO doesn't need a gold sink!

Bike stolen

What a great way to start vacation.  Sigh.

Vacationing!

On vacation.  A couple posts scheduled to go out but otherwise see y'all in a week 

New World 200+ Everything

 Checked off a personal goal today.  I hit 200+ in every gathering, refining, casual, and crafting skill in New World. The last one to finish out was music.

Note: the one's that show a number other than 200 indicate the 200+ aptitude level.  For example Weaving on the bottom left is level 27 aptitude (meaning I've leveled it up 27 more times since hitting 200).

All About Me

 I'm honored to have fallen on the field of battle!  Yoink!

More details on the New World gear reset?

 With the New World Public Test Realm (PTR) up and running with the Season 2 patch there are quite a few things that testers are finding that were not in the patch notes.  Some of them may hint towards the gear reset that is assumed to be coming.  Let's jump in and take a look at what's been found.

 The main piece that tester's stumbled across is the addition of Artisans crafting recipes (example: Artisans Round Shield).  These are guaranteed 600 GS weapons and gathering tools that anyone can craft and look to be positioned to allow anyone to jump directly into 600 GS items.  

 There are also multiple changes to gypsum casts.  The cooldown now appears to be weekly (7 days) instead of daily.  So players can craft up to 7x of each cast once per week.  Also each cast is awarding more expertise bumps which will reduce the total needed to level expertise to 600.

 Combined these two items may be an indicator that AGS is looking to help players accelerate the 500-600 expertise which supports the gear score increase announced on the road map; thus players can get into the new end gear progression faster.  This will be needed if, like other major updates, a large number of players come back to check the game out and the last thing AGS needs is them being stuck behind a significant grind.

 Another piece of the puzzle are a new type of gypsum cast that reward guaranteed legendary gear.  These cost gypsum orbs and umbral shards (as opposed to rewarding shards) and result in a roll at a legendary item.  This along with other changes such as awarding gear creates for PvP arenas and more legendary items on the PvP reward track are bringing more and more legendary gear to the fingertips of players.  And the more they give out legendary gear the more you have to wonder if that's because they are about to hit the big ole' reset button (i.e. they are buttering us up with freebies so we'll be less mad).

 A gear reset in New World seems very likely at this point and to soften the blow it looks we are getting some possible hand outs as well as faster paths for players looking to catch up.  We still don't know what an increase to max gear score looks like or what it means for our 625 gear but the pieces are starting to come together.

New (World) Ideas: Briars and Thorny Vines!

 New (World) Ideas is a series of posts in which I present small changes that New World could make that would improve the game.

 Heartrunes of Grasping Vines in New World require 1,000 thorny vines to upgrade meaning 3,000 thorny vines are needed in order to craft the three legendary heartrunes.  Thorny vines are gathered from briars which don't fall into any of the gathering skills so gathering rate is not influenced by gathering luck or yield increases (buffs, potions, etc).  So players gather one vine at a time.

 New idea: move briar (and any other "general" node) into a gathering profession.  This way gathering effects can make the activity of gathering briar for thorny vines more efficient and expedite the rate at which they can be gathered.  This is especially important if 1,000 of something are going to be needed to upgrade a heartrune!

Best OPR Ever + Bonus

 Had my best Outpost Rush (OPR) match ever in New World.  Crushed it with my heavy armor Flamethrower build (Fire Staff/Sword and Shield).  

And another bonus OPR scoreboard; our team steam rolled them but very rare I go 10-0 on kill/death!

New World Inventory and Storage Search!

 Hot sexy news straight out of the New World PTR.  The new inventory search feature is here and its better than expected!  Grab a peak from this Twitch streamer.

 The best part is that it accepts text searches so will not require a lot of clicking like the current TP.  In the stream you see it accepting searches for certain perks.  For example; [abyss] found items with perks that have the word abyss in them.  And [abyss] + [keen] found items with perks that match both (screenshot at right).  Also from other chatting it sounds like it can accept gear score searches such as [keen] > 600 to find gear over 600GS.  Sexy.

 And actually the best best part is that it supports searching storage and inventory.  Let's freaking go!

New (World) Ideas: Azoth Bottling

  New (World) Ideas is a series of posts in which I present small changes that New World could make that would improve the game.

 Azoth is supposedly what makes Aeternum the magical place that it is.  It is the essence that allows players, monsters, and animals to continually come back to life in New World.  It is used in all sorts of activities (fast travel, crafting, etc), but with a cap of 1,000 azoth at any one given time it is also a resource player's never seem to have enough of when it is needed most.

 Fortunately players can buy and sell Vials of Bottled Azoth which when salvaged grant 50 azoth. Unfortunately players do not do the actual bottling of the azoth.  Bottled azoth is randomly dropped from enemies or given as rewards for quests and opening various chests.

 New idea: let players bottle their own azoth.  When a player hits 1,000 azoth they start losing out on future azoth gains and for many players who don't craft there is little use for azoth so they end up hovering around 1,000 azoth.  Ideally players could bottle up that azoth and sell it.  Then the developers can remove vials from various drop tables and the main avenue is from players bottling azoth.

 Bonus idea: let players obtain a housing item that slowly bottles azoth out of thin air and they can get a little bonus for having a house and an azoth bottler.

Diablo IV Best Build for launch?

 Want the best build for Diablo IV for launch?  Then why are you here?  I'm not playing Diablo IV.

Reddit Digg-ing

 Remember Digg?  No? Remeber your answer to this question because in a few years I am going to ask if you remember Reddit.  They are playing the full Digg card.  The best quote from that thread (bold added by me).

Some people might not be old enough to remember when digg.com made a bunch of changes during the transition to v4. Digg was huge at the time. They thought they were literally unstoppable, but just like myspace and many companies before them, their names are unknown to many.

It will be weird transitioning away from Reddit like the companies before, but I guess, in the tech world it eventually becomes inevitable…