Low Effort Halloween

 Happy Halloween you rascals!

Pax Dei Alpha This Year?

 It is almost November, but the Pax Dei team is still maintaining that their alpha test is going to happen this year according to this MMORPG.com article.

The Pax Dei team is affirming their plans for alpha this year and has released some stats from the small Friends and Family playtest.

 I also found the numbers from the friends and family test intersting.

Those testers have used over 346,749 building pieces with the top builder having used 25,767.  Since everything in the game is player created, it does make one wonder what 25k pieces added up to. There have been  5,284 deaths by NPC and 1,771 deaths by falling. Dungeons have seen over 180,000 square meters covered, and over 47,200 km explored. Those testers have also killed over 3,500 rabbits.

  The building numbers specifically stand out.  This tells me that building is a big part of the game and not just a secondary pursuit.  Also coming from a game like New World where fall damage is something you laugh off it will be an adjustment to fear falling from great heights again. And the poor, poor rabbits (though not as many as I'd suspected so maybe they are more evasive than your standard MMO rabbit).

 I will continue to watch this one with interest.

Sunday 10/29/2023 Post

 Possibly the worst team in the league.

New World Servers Down 10/27

Update 10/27 10:15a ET: Servers back up

>>>>

 When you log in to check your Trading Post buy/sell orders but New World servers are down:

Looks Interesting: The Finals beta

 The Finals is a new FPS in a short beta period starting today.  Looking to give it a try later tonight.

Mind Blowing Star Citizen Video

 Anyone that has talked to me about Starfield likely knows I am not a fan.  I'd go as far as to say Starfield is a bug-ridden mess of loading screens.  With my disappointment in Starfield it has had me on the look for other games to scratch the space opera itch.  The two that come to mind are No Man's Sky and Star Citizen.  Itching even harder today is Star Citizen after I watched a mind blowing tech demo video!

 Does this mean I am a Star Citizen fanboy now?  Am I drinking the kool-aid?  Am I upset about a major financial investment I've made in Star Citizen?  No x3.  I am honest when I say Starfield sucks and there is a serious itch I want to scratch for a space exploration game.

 Also the more I've learned about Star Citizen the more I realize the general "Star Citizen is a scam and will never release!" sentiment online is way off base.  First off, there is a valid Star Citizen alpha that is online and playable.  Just watching a few videos I'd argue it has numerous aspects that beat out games like Starfield by a mile.

 I think the sentitment about Star Citizen comes from its ever-growing scale and watching this video I can see where that comes from.  But this video is in their engine.  This is in theory a literal path a player could take without ever hitting a loading screen.  Jump in your ship, fly to a planet, explore, hop back in that ship, zip off to a space station.... and it goes on and on and on.  Consider me impressed, if not mind blown, by where Star Citizen is at.  I shall watch it with much more interest now.

TIL you can harvest the statues in Elysian Wilds!

 Since the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion launched for New World I will admit I've not spent nearly the amount of time in the new zone, Elysian Wilds, as I should have.  Today reminded me of that as I was wrapping up my mount quests and I came across the realization I could "harvest" the stone statues scattered across the zone.  When I learn; you get to learn with me!

Sorry buddy!

 

 The statues are of various animals our human characters.  Walking up them you can interact and "mine" them with your pickaxe.  The result is Petrified Fragments which are a crafting material in a few recipes.  I will admit I am not exactly sure what these crafts are for, but at a minimum there is seasonal objectives tied to upgrading your spore jelly container which requires the fragments.  As soon as I learn more; I'll share.

Halloween cometh!

 Always love Halloween events in MMORPGs.  Some screenshots from the current New World event.

Turning in rewards at the cauldron

Fighting the big Halloween baddie.  Love the circling crows!

Sunday 10/22/2023 Post

Losers.

New World: How to use the Twitch Call of the Wilds drop

 This may have been obvious to some folks, but it was not to me.  Earlier in October there was a Twitch drop for "Call of the Wilds" to celebrate the launch of Rise of the Angry Earth.  With this drop came a mount attachment.

 The drop did not come over as a chest that had to be claimed nor do anything show up in player inventory.  That is because the mount attachment is a skin and it may not be obvious to players, like me, that mount attachments have skins!

 To use the Twitch drop skin open your mount equipment screen and then select the attachment slot you want to change.  Right click the item you have there currently and pick change skin.  This works just like changing skins for any other item slot.

Right click > Change Skin

 

Call of the Wilds skin appears

End result!