What’s so special about Warframe anyway?

I don’t know why, but I seem to be a very seasonal kind of guy. It always happens during winter that I pick up Black Desert again, for example.

The month of August, on the other hand, obviously does something with me that makes me miss playing Warframe. So here I am, still doing my daily stuff in Lost Ark, but dedicating the remainder of my gaming time fully to being a Tenno once more. Man, what an awesome game this is!

The other day I left a comment to one of Naithin’s posts, saying that Warframe is most likely the only Looter Shooter I’ll ever need, and while there is some hyperbole to that it’s pretty spot on at the same time.

The thing is, Digital Extremes’ masterpiece has spoiled me in some fundamental ways, and whenever I play an even remotely similar game I can’t help but compare the two. As you’ve probably gussed by now, Warframe always seems to come out on top in some – to me – very important respects.

Warframe in 2023 – now also with horsies

Unsurprisingly the first thing that comes to mind is the game’s unparalleled pace and fluidity. Everything is so smooth and, if you want it to be, blazingly fast that playing any other game afterwards feels like walking through molasses.

I get that this isn’t to everyone’s liking, but I love it so much that it’s become really hard for me to settle for less, so to speak. If your Looter Shooter doesn’t let me double jump, bullet jump, glide and run alongside walls it’s gonna have a hard time winning me over.

Another big contributor to this quick pace is the fact that, bosses aside, enemies aren’t bullet sponges. I mean, sure, at certain points in your progression you will face considerably tougher opponents, but those aren’t meant to stay that way forever. Instead they’re there to nudge you towards rethinking your loadout and strategy to get stronger, and once you’ve done that even the hardest (normal) enemies become pushovers again.

Yesterday I played one of the game’s endless mission types for about 45 minutes or so, and when I extracted I had defeated just shy of three thousand (!) mobs. It doesn’t always have to be this extreme of course, but let me tell you, I absolutely do not have the patience anymore to shoot each single enemy in the face half a dozen times before they finally decide that I have, in fact, killed them.

Another aspect of the game’s design that I love to death is the enormous complexity, and the freedom that comes with it.

With over 50 ‘frames to choose from, who knows how many weapons, over a thousand mods, companions, arcanes, Forma, focus schools, archon shards, Helminth abilities…it is 100% safe to say that you will never, ever meet another player who is using the exact same loadout as you do.

It’s not that this doesn’t really have much influence on gameplay either – quite the contrary. For example, my Xbox-based buddy and I play the game very differently. He likes to shoot stuff – even his melee weapon of choice is used to nuke the entire site from orbit, basically. I use guns and blades too of course, but I tend to rely on strong warframe abilities much more often. Hence I’m regularly seen playing ‘frames like Gara, with whom I’m usually running around, killing everything by just touching it, without firing even a single shot.

Not only do our tastes in how we like to fight vary, we also enjoy different kinds of missions and gameplay. Before crossplay was implemented we used to play simultaneously but individually, and while he was, say, running two dozen void fissures to crack open relics for Prime parts, I was meticulously searching every nook and cranny for well hidden loot caches in certain missions to find rare mods.

Which is great because this not only means that each of us can play the game exactly how we enjoy it the most, we’ll also be able, should trade between platforms finally be enabled at some point, to help each other out with stuff we don’t like to farm for ourselves. I already have a couple of harder to get mods stockpiled for that occasion, and he keeps surplus Prime parts in store for me in turn.

I always get a kick out of finding one of these

There’s one more thing that puts Warframe way ahead of the competition for me – the loot. It just works. Again, for me.

In his reply to my comment mentioned above Naithin said this about Warframe:

Sure, there is shooting and there is looting, but there isn’t loot, you know? Mods sort of play that role and it isn’t quite the same as getting that one legendary or unique that will enable the build you want.

I absolutely get that, but here’s the thing: finding those legendaries or uniques happens so goddamn rarely in most games! Playing for an hour or two and not finding a single shiny (that I actually need) can feel like a waste of time to me, even if the gameplay itself is enjoyable. Even Diablo II, one of my all-time favourite games, is guilty of that.

Of all loot-centric games I’ve played Path of Exile and Warframe are the only ones that have always managed to make me feel like nothing I do is ever a waste of time.

Getting that sweet dopamine rush by finding a really rare and great thingy is awesome, sure. Warframe has those too – just the other day I finally got my first copy of Hammer Shot, a pretty strong mod for primary weapons that has a measly 1% drop chance at the end of certain missions which you can only do a couple of times per day.

Click to enlarge

For me it’s much more about the little things though. Like I said, I have a desire to feel productive, so even if I do not find that rare item I’m looking for, it still feels good when I at least have a plethora of other useful stuff to show for it.

Look at that screenshot above – in addition to Hammer Shot I received credits, Endo, some other mods that I can give away or turn into more Endo, various resources to build stuff with or feed to the Helminth, syndicate standing, and XP for four different focus schools. So even if Hammer Shot hadn’t dropped I wouldn’t have come up empty, which is just the way I like it.

So, yeah, those are just some of the things that make Warframe special to me, and as of yet no other game I’ve played has come even close to it in these regards.

Blaugust 2023 post count: 5

Challenging vs punishing game design

You there, on the left…camera’s over here!

Last time around I talked about gatekeeping in MMORPGs, i.e. group leaders not granting access to their dungeon runs or raids unless a player meets certain requirements in terms of gear, level etc., and that it usually does not happen due to said group leaders being jerks, but out of a desire to avoid suffering from too punishing game design.

This begs the question how dungeons and raids, or multiplayer content in general, can be designed in such a way that it’s not that, but still challenging.

Now, I’m not saying that stuff always has to be challenging, but today I’d like to focus on those games, or just specific segments of games, that are supposed to be.

You there, on the left…oh, forget it…

In my opinion the most severe form of punishing design, and probably the reason for 90% of any gatekeeping that’s happening, is when a group of players is forced to repeat the same stuff over and over without anything to show for it because just one player made one little mistake.

Hence my suggestion would be to spread the risk on a couple more shoulders. Or less, if you will. Here’s what I mean: let’s say an encounter is designed for eight players, and at certain points in the fight a mechanic kicks in that wipes the group if not executed correctly. Why not make it so that only six or seven of these eight people have to stand at the right spot, click the thing or whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing?

This would still require the bulk of the group to be on point, while giving one or two freshmen (freshpeople?) a chance to watch and learn without immediately causing the run to fail. It would also allow experienced players to have a brain fart moment, which even the best of us do every now and then, without forcing the whole group to start over yet again.

No such thing as “too big” for us

“Do this or it’s a wipe” mechanics aren’t the only ones in need of a little tweak here and there though. Whether or not multiplayer content feels too unforgiving also depends on how a game handles dying and the resurrection of individual players.

Characters in The Secret World, for example, don’t have in-combat rez capabilities of any kind. Which means that, if a player dies, they are out of that particular fight for good. While technically not the same as an automatic wipe, losing one of five players (or ten, in the case of raids) is practically tantamount to having to start over most of the time.

SWTOR, on the other hand, does have in-combat resurrection, but only healer classes get it – this is actually true for most MMORPGs I’ve played – and once one has been used everyone is barred from casting another for five minutes. Which means, for all intents and purposes, that you get one rez per fight, maybe two if it’s a long one.

Personally, I think a five minute cooldown is ok, but each character should have their own instead of a global one, and in a group with just one healer a second player should also get access to an emergency rez of some kind, probably with a much longer CD or even once per fight only.

For raids, which usually have two or more healing classes, this would mean that these players could possibly pull some truly heroic moves in the face of an almost certain wipe. I remember situations like these from my raiding days in Everquest II, and let me tell you, those fights didn’t feel less challenging at all, but had 24 people cheering and hollering as if we’d just won the world cup.

Groups with just one healing class would at least have a small chance of survival whenever the healer’s the first one to fall. Alternatively the “off-rez” could be utilized when someone’s down but the healer has their hands full keeping the tank alive and whatnot.

Assembling the troops for the next onslaught

Last but not least, I think that no encounter should be so overloaded with mechanics that literally every attending player has to assume one or multiple special roles in addition to their “actual” job.

I remember some SWTOR raidfights where the whole group was so busy running to specific spots, pressing buttons, taunting certain enemies at the exact right moment and so forth that actually tanking the boss, healing and dealing damage was almost relegated to an afterthought. It became apparent pretty quickly that this was just too stressful for some of our guildies, especially since one mistake inevitably led to a wipe more often than not – see above.

Of course I’m not suggesting that every bossfight should just be “tank and spank”, that would be boring. However, like I said above, every group or raid should have a couple of spots for players who are either new to the content, or who just aren’t comfortable with and/or good at handling ten things at once while also needing to perform “sexy movement”, as we liked to call it, at the same time.

Taking this into account it can actually be beneficial to have, if you pardon the expression, mechanics for dummies. EQII’s fight against a raidboss named Druushk, for example, needs up to four (!) of 24 players to stand in the corners of a large room, too far away from the actual fight to participate, because every 45 seconds one of four statues becomes clickable, and the assigned player has to react relatively quickly to prevent, you guessed it, a wipe. I seem to remember that we did it with just two players, one each for a pair of statues, and all these two folks had to do was to watch their respective statues and run up to them to clicky clicky if needed. Nothing else, no damage to deal, no ground targets to avoid.

Now, was this fun to do? Not exactly. But it meant that players with sub-par DPS and/or without sexy movement could still come along, do their part and reap the rewards, and that’s a pretty big win in my book.

This one didn’t go down quite so easily…

Of course some might disagree, but I don’t think that any of these proposed changes would make the games less challenging…only less punishing.

All of this being said though, keep in mind that I’m not against having a difficulty setting for those close-knit player groups who’re actually seeking out the biggest, baddest and most punishing of challenges. Nightmare Mode, Mythic+ and whatever the hell else they’re called – those can remain just as they are as far as I’m concerned.

But each and every player who likes to play MMORPGs should be able to see every bit of content that the games have to offer and, even more importantly, experience what sets them apart from single player games – the chance to work towards a goal and taste the sweetness of success alongside likeminded teammates. It’s too much fun to be reserved for a select few.

Blaugust 2023 post count: 4

Punishing game design is bad for MMOs

I’m still playing Lost Ark a lot, and I’m enjoying it very much. However, there’s one thing that bothers me a bit, namely the fact that I’ll most likely never get to see much of the game’s dedicated multiplayer content.

One reason for this is that the game unfortunately doesn’t provide much of an incentive to run Guardian Raids and Abyssal Dungeons below your current gearscore, resulting in all but the highest ones being deserted most of the time. It’s a shame, as from what I’ve heard especially the dungeons are well designed and really fun. I think the folks at Smilegate should draw some inspirations from games like FFXIV here and keep that content relevant somehow.

The bigger problem by far though is that I, as a casual player, won’t even be able to find groups for the current endgame stuff – not because there aren’t any, but because nobody will want to have me in their group. Gatekeeping is what it’s called nowadays, but this is far from the first time I’m confronted with that kind of player behaviour.

I used to think that those players do it because they’re elitist dickheads, end of story. Over time I’ve come to realize that it ain’t quite as simple though. Of course some people indeed are dickheads, sure, but when there’s gatekeeping going on more often than not it’s the game’s fault, not the players’.

Back in 2008 my Everquest II guild was fighting and clawing its way through the Rise of Kunark expansion’s raid tiers, and we all had (mostly) a lot of fun. Until we had to face a boss named Venril Sathir, that is.

Here’s a quick rundown of only his most annoying and punishing mechanics, as they were back then:

1-2 people devoted to clicking the statues in his room. Statues must be clicked constantly during the fight to prevent the two larger statues in the hallway leading up to his room from spawning.

At 65% […] Use the Mistmyrian Soulcube from Tairiza the Widow Mistress within 5 seconds or die.

At 60% […] he will begin to watch your power consumption. Your raid force must keep their power between 30% and 70% to be safe. A raid member who get’s under 30% or over 70% for too long will spawn adds that will wipe the raid most likely.

The first one isn’t too bad for the raid as a whole as it doesn’t take any skill to execute, meaning that basically anyone can do it without risking a wipe, but it sure is boring as hell for the assigned clickers. Also, getting that job doesn’t feel too good, because it means that you’re obviously deemed expendable for the ‘real’ fight. But, fair enough, someone’s gotta do it. And, as we’ll see in a follow-up post, having stuff like this in a fight can actually have its advantages.

The second mechanic wasn’t too much of a problem for us either, but still, I think having a whole 24-player raid wipe because one person didn’t do a specific thing within a 5 second window is pretty harsh – especially when it happens 5-10 minutes into the fight and you’ll have to do it all over again if screwed up.

Shortly after having taken that hurdle the third and really disgusting mechanic kicked in though. Having to stay between 30% and 70% power at all times is harder than you might think, what with healers still needing to heal and damage dealers still having to beat the boss’s enrage timer etc. As if that wasn’t enough random players were debuffed regularly during that phase, either doubling power consumption or drastically enhancing power regen for a while. My Warlock getting hit with the former just before casting a huge nuke meant game over for all of us.

I remember at least three full evenings, three to four hours each, of one wipe after another at the hands of this guy – and I wasn’t even one of those who attended each and every raid night.

As you can probably imagine it didn’t take very long until tempers started to flare, and when yet another wipe had happened someone to blame was quickly found. Once the same person had screwed up twice murmurs along the lines of “let’s not take that player along next time” started, if not openly then at least behind the scenes. And I’ve absolutely seen raidleads comply and bench people. Hell, I was this close to doing it myself once, back when I was a raidlead in our SWTOR guild.

Gatekeeping is nothing new, is what I’m saying, and in my opinion this is a perfect example of too punishing game design being the catalyst for this kind of seemingly toxic behaviour.

Do note that I’m not talking about “too hard” here. Raid bosses are supposed to be hard. However, forcing 24 players to repeat a 15+ minute fight over and over because just one of those people made a little mistake – that’s not hard, it’s overly punishing, which is something different entirely. And it’s only natural that human beings have a tendency not to expose themselves to stuff like that if at all possible.

An argument often brought forth to prove that gatekeeping is idiotic is the fact that a character’s level, gearscore and whatnot don’t actually reveal anything about that player’s skills – and of course that’s 100% true.

But here’s the thing: what else is there to go by? Unless you already know that person and have seen them in action you have absolutely no way of knowing whether or not they will cause wipes galore because they don’t know or can’t execute the mechanics.

When a character has a high gearscore (and in the case of Lost Ark also good engravings, a high roster level etc.) you at least know that the person behind it has played many, many hours, so the chance of them knowing their stuff is quite a bit higher, which is all you can really ask for.

That’s why there will always be gatekeeping in games whose multiplayer content is designed in such punishing ways, and it’s bad because it means that lots of players will either never get to see that content, or worse, get yelled at by strangers for being “bad” and thus grow to hate that content. There’s no doubt in my mind that people have quit playing (and paying for) certain games over this.

So what could game designers do to prevent or at least reduce gatekeeping? How can dungeons and raids still be challenging without reverting to those overly punishing mechanics?

I’ll save my thoughts on that for the next post.

Blaugust 2023 post count: 3

Five hugely successful and influential games – that I’ve never played

As you can see it’s “Introduce Yourself Week” in Blaugustland, formerly known as “Getting To Know You Week” if I remember correctly. Since I’ve already introduced myself in the past and you can dig up those posts at any time if you’re so inclined I’m gonna use this opportunity to talk about something more specific that’s been on my mind lately instead.

This one hasn’t aged well enough to be on this list I’m afraid

I guess we have all missed out on some games that seemingly everybody and their mums have played and that are widely considered to be masterpieces any person who likes video games should have experienced.

Obviously there can be a multitude of reasons for not having done so. Maybe a particular title just came out at an inopportune moment, and once you would’ve had the time to play it any kind of momentum was gone. Or you had a specific reason for not wanting to play it, and no amount of rave reviews was enough to change your mind. Of course some games are just not your cup of tea, and that’s that.

Without further ado, here’s my (by no means complete) list of highly successful and beloved games that I’ve never played.

• • Skyrim

My history with the Elder Scrolls franchise starts with 1996’s Daggerfall. I’d read about it in a PC gaming magazine and liked what I saw very much. I bought it shortly after release, played the hell out of and absolutely loved every minute of it. Given the game’s enormous scope I never finished it though, I seem to remember that I ran out of steam about two thirds through.

In 2002 I bought and played its sequel, Morrowind, without any hesitation. However, this time around I lost interest a lot sooner. Sure, it looked much better, but somehow felt very lifeless and sterile to me, which killed my immersion rather quickly. I wasn’t really happy with the combat and progression systems either, although I’d quite liked those in Daggerfall. Oblivion I didn’t even buy, but still checked it out for a bit (ahem). It felt pretty much the same to me, if anything it seemed to be even more lifeless and sterile. I didn’t like it at all, is what I’m saying.

Hence I’ve never felt even the slightest urge to play Skyrim. I’m sure that it’s a much better game overall than its predecessors, but what I’ve heard and seen points to the “Elder Scrolls Formula” still being in there, and all of the above suggests that I just don’t enjoy that – or at least not its 21th century incarnation.

• • Mass Effect

Oh boy, this one I really regret. I’m a huge science fiction buff, I like to play RPGs a lot and gamers worldwide seem to agree that this trilogy tells one of the best stories video gaming has ever seen.

For me this falls squarely in the “came out at the wrong time” category. The original Mass Effect and Everquest II’s Rise of Kunark expansion launched pretty much simultaneously, and at that time I’d really dug my teeth into the latter, including raiding and everything. As it would turn out, playing anything else wasn’t going to happen for another year or so.

I don’t remember at which point in time I first contemplated finally playing Mass Effect with any seriousness, but somehow…well…the moment seemed to have come and gone.

That being said, the “Legendary Edition”, including all three games and countless DLCs, was discounted to 15 bucks on Steam a while ago, and I pulled the trigger – this is actually what gave me the idea for this post – so at least I now have the somewhat serious intention to finally play them. We’ll see how that goes…

• • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

I don’t really have one specific reason for not having played this, and I’m pretty sure that I’d love it if I started playing today. The thing with sprawling single player RPGs that take ages to complete is…I don’t feel that I have the time to play this kind of game.

Which is, of course, a load of bollocks. When I can play MMORPGs for hundreds (or thousands) of hours, surely I can spare one or two hundred for a masterpiece like this, right?

Only that, ever since I started to play MMOs, investing that kind of time into games that are not meant to be played “forever” somehow doesn’t feel right to me. Knowing that all the cool sword skills, magic tricks and whatnot, as well as relationships and reputation I’ve built – in short, that everything I’ve worked for will basically cease to exist as soon as I hit the end credits makes me very reluctant to even start. It’s silly, I know, but that’s how I feel.

It’s much different when I know that a game is only like 15-20 hours long – stuff like the Uncharted series comes to mind. Those I can finish in less than a week without even taking a break from my current “main game”. Titles of somewhat average length, let’s say 50 hours or so, require a bit more commitment, but can still work for me if the time is right. 100 hours and beyond though…I’d rather not. Which, I guess, is yet another reason for Skyrim also being on this list.

• • Elden Ring

By far the most recent game I’m mentioning here, but at this point it seems already safe to say that it’s one of the all-time greats too. However, I’m fairly certain that I’m not going to ever play it.

The thing is, I play video games for a variety of reasons – a desire to overcome big challenges is not one of them.

It’s not that I only play games that are as easy as pie, mind you. As I’ve said earlier I’ve even raided and stuff, so I can definitely enjoy playing difficult content – as long as I do it with friends. When we’re talking single-player games though beating my head against tough as nails bosses (or even normal enemies), having to learn and master intricate dances of attacking, blocking, dodging and all that jazz – to me that’s pretty much the polar opposite of fun.

From Software’s worldbuilding may be the best in the industry, and I’d most likely love all of their games in that regard, but I’m just not willing to submit myself to the frustration that would go along with it.

• • World of Warcraft

I wrote a whole post about why I’ve never played the world’s most successful MMORPG during my first Blaugust participation (jeez, that was five years ago today!?), so I’ll keep this short.

Everquest II and WoW launched pretty much at the same time, and a friend of mine convinced me to play the former. While the game initially had too much forced grouping for my taste it turned out really great by the second expansion, which is when I got into it big-time and never looked back (see above). It easily ranks among my favourite games of all time.

Also, although Blizzard as a whole was still widely regarded as a top-notch development studio at the time, looking in from the outside I never felt that they were doing a particularly good job with WoW, considering the huge piles of money they were making with it. Much fewer expansions, races and classes than EQII, inferior crafting, no housing, the list goes on. Due to this it’s the one game on this list that I’ve never played at least in part because I felt – and still feel – that they didn’t deserve my support and money.

And there you have it. Which all-time classics did you never play?

Blaugust 2023 post count: 2

Things I really like about Lost Ark

I’ve been playing a whole lot of Lost Ark recently – according to Steam 77 hours in the last two weeks alone – and I’m still fascinated by the whole situation. To quickly recap, I had high hopes for the game before it launched last year, but was disappointed greatly once I’d actually played it for a while. Almost a month ago I picked it back up, and now it’s everything I’d hoped for and more, although it’s basically still the same game.

So what do I like about it so much? Well, when played the way I do now it’s almost exactly what I want from an MMORPG – a nice, well-rounded package of exploration, progression, combat, life skills and story. That it looks, sounds and feels absolutely awesome (in my opinion, obviously) puts the icing on the cake. It’s not a sandbox by any stretch of the imagination, but one can’t have everything.

It also does a lot of things quite differently than other MMORPGs I’ve played, some of which I enjoy very much.

As always, klick the images to enlarge

• • The Adventurer’s Tome
    

This is Lost Ark’s version of “map completion”, a concept I was first introduced to by Guild Wars 2. I didn’t care much for it back then (I only played GW2 for a couple of weeks though), but I quite like this iteration.

The usual suspects are all there of course: unlocking all waypoints, discovering every vista, stuff like that. There’s a lot more to it though. You also need to clear every dungeon in normal as well as hard mode (which are all easily soloable, especially once you outgear them a bit), get to trusted rank with various NPCs, collect a bunch of mob drops and kill some nameds and field bosses.

Lastly, you need to find a couple of story snippets scattered all over the maps, and, believe it or not, you have to acquire the ingredients for a range of local specialties, which is at times quite a bit more complex than just picking them up or buying them at a vendor, have a local chef cook them for you and then, well, eat them.

One might argue that, at the end of the day, all of this is still just busywork, and one would be correct. I’m having fun with it however, mostly because there’s more to it than just running around and clicking things on autopilot.

What I also like is that there isn’t a tome for each individual zone, but one for every continent, and that there’s not just a reward for 100% completion, instead you’re getting something nice every 10%. This means that even if you don’t like some of the things you’re asked to do, or can’t stand a specific area, you can probably still get to the reward you’d like the most and then just stop – as long as you don’t want the 100% one of course.

• • Una’s Tasks (aka dailies)

Yes, seriously. I can’t quite believe that I’m putting these here myself, considering my strong dislike of repeatable quests in almost every other game I’ve played, but in my opinion they’ve done an outstanding job with them this time around.

First of all, the game keeps track of how often you’ve finished each of these tasks, and every five times or so you receive an additional reward. We’re not just talking more silver or XP, but substantial boosts to your overall progression – skill points, virtue stats, song sheets and emotes (you actually need those, they’re not just fluff here), even stuff like a blueprint used to build the game’s fastest ship is to be acquired this way.

In some cases the tasks even change after reaching the next “level” (of which there are usually three or four), progressing the little stories they tell further.

But Mail, I hear you ask, if they’re that important, won’t I have to busy myself doing nothing but dailies all the fricking time? No, because you can do only up to three per day. Yep, you read that right! You can use one-time tickets to raise that limit, but the game dispenses those sparingly, so most of the time you’ll actually do no more than three. Which of course means that you need to prioritize. Folks who always want to progress as fast as humanly possible might hate this, but I’m thankful for it because it lets me work towards meaningful goals without stressing me out.

That they’re spread out over the entire game world and thus let me travel a lot and explore in the process makes them even more enjoyable. Which leads me nicely to…

Every little palm tree is an island waiting to be visited

• • Islands

The game’s main continents are separated by the sea, and on your travels you’ll come across many islands – over one hundred to be a bit more precise. Most have at least one quest chain associated with them, Mokoko Seeds to find and an Island Soul to unlock (I’ll probably talk about the game’s various collectibles in a post of its own), as well as co-op events and other stuff happening on or around them. Quite a few also have their own Una’s Task.

What I like the most about them is the sheer variety in aesthetics and subjects. Every time you might think you’ve seen it all along comes something new and unexpected yet again.

Oh, so you’d like some examples?

[Spoiler warning in case you’d like to discover these for yourself]

Here I’ve just uncovered and put a stop to environmental pollution commited by an evil corporation (who else?), and a concert is played to celebrate. I love how the penguins are in attendance too.

Speaking of cute animals, how about an island full of talking and singing pandas, foxes, rabbits and whathaveyou? Unfortunately their singing is…well…bad, so I have to show them how it’s done. Naturally.

Not really an island, more like an offshore platform, anyone should think twice about attacking this ramshackle but fully armed and operational pirate hideout, as the approaching fleet is to find out the hard way very soon.

As part of the second awakening questline (which rewarded me with a very powerful, long-cooldown skill) I had to uncover and smash a conspiracy by some religious fanatics (who else?). Here I’m sitting at the far end of the bar to eavesdrop on four baddies pretending to play poker or whatever. Fortunately they were too busy to notice the glowing…ball…thingies…I use to beat up evildoers like them all the time.

After that much work nothing beats raving it up on an island where no one ever sleeps.

Blaugust 2023 post count: 1