New World First Light Storage Missing - Fix!

 The First Light settlement is no more in New World as the Angry Earth have taken it over (for a yet to be revealed purpose).  With it means players have lost a town storage slot (and let's be honest more storage is the real end game of New World).  The storage was meant to be available to retrieve items from, but due to a bug many players are not able to see their OLD First Light storage! Oh my! Oh no!

 The good(ish) news is there is an easy workaround.  The bad news is it's a momentary fix and requires repeating each time, so my recommendation is to do it once, empty First Light storage, and move on with your day.

 The workaround/fix is to log out all the way to desktop and log back in.  Once logged back in you will see OLD First Light storage the first time you open storage.  IMPORTANT: You will only see it the FIRST time you open storage.  If you close out of storage you have to log all the way back out to desktop again for it to re-appear.

 Hopefully this helps!

New World Season 2: Day 1

 New World Season 2 is dropping later today (7/6).  Hype!  Read the patch notes here.

A few lesser-known notes to call out:

PvP Trade Skill Perk Items
    Adjusted all PvP Trade Skill perk items to no longer bind on pickup:

 This is a great change.  It was irritating that the PvP perks were Bind on Pickup which required you to be a crafter to make use of them.  Now they can be sold to other players just like they should have been from the start!

 Next we have some faction store updates:

 The faction stores have had their weapons and armor prices and stats changed to make them more desirable. All previous weapons and armor have been removed from the store.

 But the armor/weapons are only 580 gear score so are effectively worthless as you can't upgrade anything that is not 590.  You are still better just buying cheap 590+ gear off the trading post.  This update makes no sense.

Component items that allow multiple Major trophies to be crafted into an Ultimate trophy.

 Basically my entire existence for the past few weeks has been  getting my major trophies ready for this update.  Now just to farm the gold (45k per) and faction tokens (100k per)!

Armoring
    Bag - Gear Score 600 and Bind on Pickup
        Artisans Satchel
        This bag features the Lasting Consumption, Luck and Azoth Attuned perks as well as a perk from the Burdened perk bucket to finish them off.

 This will be a good way to get Lasting Consumption now without breaking the bank!

Artisans Flatbread

    This meal has the same effect as Hearty Meal but lasts twice as long and has a default craft bonus amount of 120%

 Interesting meal; not sure what the purpose of this is but will check it out.  In general you aren't eating a hearty meal for its long term effect so duration is not a factor here except for maybe the craft bonus.

Steam Backlog: Way of the Hunter

This post is part of my running series: My Steam Backlog (see all MySteamBacklog tagged posts).

 Ever since I was a kid I have been a fan of "hunting" games on PCs.  There was a long period where I didn't play any, but that changed when I got into theHunter:Call of the Wild.  With a renewed interest in the genre I grabbed Way of the Hunter on Steam and added to my backlog.  Now I've gotten around to giving it a whirl!

 As most of the game reviews on Steam note it is impossible to evaluate Way of the Hunter (WotH) without making comparisons to theHunter.  The games are similar, if not almost exactly the same, at least at the surface.  WotH differs in some key areas and I've found myself enjoying it more.

 The first aspect of WotH that I found more enjoyable than theHunter is the story and missions.  I never spent much time on them in theHunter but in WotH I've found myself following along the main story line.  It is not anything to write home about, but it has a much better storytelling mechanism with it's comicbook-like cutscenes.

 Another aspect of WotH that helps with the story line is that travel feels much faster. Whether walking or taking a vehicle I feel like I get from A to B much faster than I did in theHunter.  There are still moments where you slow down to hunt, but between then it feels much faster.  WotH also gives you a vehicle from the start which is a welcome sigh!

 WotH also has a much larger render distance than theHunter.  In WotH you can spot animals and landmarks for what feels like thousands of yards/meters where as in theHunter it cuts off abruptly at 430.  Combined with faster travel I spend a lot less time "roaming" in WotH than I did in theHunter.  In WotH I can find targets at a distance and get there quickly.

 The inventory management in WotH is more straightforward and simplified.  While theHunter offers a ton of variety as far as load outs go the interface to manage all of it is a mess (better than it was in the past with recent patches but still a long ways off from what I expect in games made in the last decade).

 Speaking of variety that is one area that WotH lags behind theHunter.  theHunter has more reserves (aka maps) than I can remember and the variety of target species to hunt to go with them.  theHunter also has more weapons and hunting options such as bow that WotH does not have.  You can spend a lot of time with theHunter before you have to repeat content (if you pay up for the add on packs that is).

  As far as how the games play they are very similar.  Find animals, stalk, shoot, follow the blood trail, and harvest the animal.  Starting out both games felt the same, but the more I played (and paid for add ons) the theHunter became "arcade-like" as far as hunting went.  WotH has yet to get that "arcade" feel.  Hunts in WotH feel purposeful and engaging even if it sometimes takes a bit of time to track down an animal that you shot.  I shoot and kill less in WotH than I do in theHunter but somehow it feels better in WotH and unlike theHunter I never struggle to find animals in WotH.

 I am still early in WotH and I am enjoying it.  If asked I would recommend WotH over theHunter, but we'll have to see if that new-game sheen wears off and where the team behind WotH takes it.

 

Happy 4th of July!

 Crazy to think this is someone's last day with all of their fingers!

New World Gear Reset: More Details?

 As we've talked about before on this blog there is an impending gear reset in New World, but we are still waiting on any sort of detail related to the gear reset.  This leaves the community guessing and looking for any obfuscated details in other updates.  While I was out the last week there was exciting news that I think speak to part of the gear reset.

 In a recent Forged in Aeternum video (specifically the 6:12 mark) the team announced they are planning to get rid of the ward and bane system.  Resilient was also mentioned in the answer which leads us to believe that will also get axed.

 Not only is this delivering on one of the top community-requested changes, but I firmly believe this is the first major piece of the gear reset puzzle.  I cannot fathom they would make this level of change outside of a major release and as Season 2 is just around the corner (7/6) it makes sense that we will see these major changes with Season 3.

 As the road map already showed "gear score increase" for Season 3 and it was indicated to include a new gear progression system it makes complete sense we will see ward/bane/resilient changes during Season 3.  While making this logical connection doesn't unearth specific details it does show us that the developers are looking to make big changes.

 In conclusion: buckle up buttercup; it's about to get bumpy!

New World On Sale (60% off!)

 New World is on sale for the Steam sale.  Go grab a copy for $15.99 (60% off)!

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