GamesMadeMe: Game Markets

 GamesMadeMe is a series of posts that cover gaming-related topics that have shaped who I am as a gamer today.  Playing the Palia closed beta a little bit one thing that shocked me was the lack of an in-game market to trade with other players.  I consider the in game economy one of the three pillars of an MMORPG.  I love my game markets.

 Let's start with the best game market I've had the pleasure to enjoy: Guild Wars 2.  Early on in development they hired an economist that had direct input in designing the game's economy and boy did they hit some home runs.  First: the auction house is global to all players regardless of what server they play on.  Second: there is an exchange available to swap gold for premium currency for the cash shop. Third: a public API is available so third party websites can crawl the auction house data.

 I made a lot of gold and bought a lot of premium currency in Guild Wars 2 simply through playing the global auction house.  There were many tools such as GW2TP that break down whats trending up and whats trending down that also feature tools to find easy profit flips.  More than anything in Guild Wars 2 I was a market flipper and I would not be surprised if 50% or more of my /played time was at the auction house.

 In my current game of choice, New World, I spend a large amount of time in the trading post as well.  The tools and interface are not the best, but there is a lot of "inefficient" areas in the market of New World.  Those inefficient areas let me slide in to make a gold or hundred.  These areas are always shifting as different things happen in the game and it's as much a part of the "player vs player" in the game as the actual "go kill players" aspect.  The market in New World is cut throat and the bigger you climb the harder you can get crushed by the true market makers.

 Another market I look back on fondly is how trading worked in Ultima Online.  There were two main facets: player to player trading and house merchants.  

 Players could own houses in the open world in Ultima Online and place merchants that they stocked with wares to sell.  As a player you needed to know who sold what where and how to get there in order to buy.  Many times in towns you would see folks offering to portal folks to their house and entire shopping malls of houses sprung up to offer a centralized area to buy.

 The market in the game towns also served as a place for folks to advertise their wares and find buyers.  Some "player towns" (close groupings of houses) also became extremely popular not just to go and find wares but to also stand around shouting what you were selling.

 One of my favorite activities in Ultima Online was to jump on my tamer and tame wild horses.  The horses would follow you into town and then you could transfer the tamed horses to another player.  As you could name the horses custom names it was always funny to see A, B, C, D, etc flowing in behind me as I rolled into the town center.  You could also tame dragons and other big bad creatures which were even more fun to figure out how to sell!

 Another more recent game with a neat market mechanic is Albion Online.  In the game all items are crafted by players; even the rewards given out as dungeon loot.  The game cycles items through the "black market".  As the game needs items of a certain type to put into chests it places buy orders on the "black market".  Players can then craft (or buy) items to sell to the black market and the game in turns puts those player crafted items directly out into the loot pool for other players.  It is an absolutely fascinating concept and something players make their entire career around in Albion.

 Game markets.  They are games in and of themselves and they made me the gamer I am today and that reminds me need to go check those buy/sell orders in New World.

 Oh and Palia... seriously... no market? WTF

Heavy bois represent!

 Just Atlas Fishmo and I holding it down in Outpost Rush last night.  We both ended up back capping and at one point it was 2 vs what felt like the entire enemy team.  Atlas plays a heavy PvP tank build and I play a heavy "wheelchair mage" build.

GamesMadeMe: Game Manuals

 GamesMadeMe is a series of posts that cover gaming-related topics that have shaped who I am as a gamer today. With the release hype of Baldur's Gate 3 upon us (no, I am not playing it) it had me thinking about my journey into Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. Specifically the big, fat ringbound instruction manual.

A legendary artifact of gaming past!

 That is a good looking instruction manual!  When you picked up the box at the game store (a local mall GameStop for me at the time) there was some weight to it and you knew you were getting into something good.  Seeing the manual slide out of the game box was an awesome feeling and you knew what you were going to be doing for the next few hours while you waited for the multi-CD install process to finish.

 Even before Baldur's Gate 2 I have fond memories of sitting in the back of the family minivan reading through the manual of whatever latest video game I just bought.  I still remember buying Final Fantasy 8 and flipping through the manual.  I was so excited for that game and decades later that memory is stuck in my head.  Some of my favorites like FF8 and BG2 are still with me to this day.

 That experience is all but gone today and I can't remember the last video game I bought that came with any sort of game-related material.  I can still get a hit of the nostalgia with most board games and their manuals but it's more of a chore there as you really can't play the board game until you digest the rules book so it's always getting in the way of the fun.

 I have tried to bring some of this joy to my oldest son as well.  He found my Shadows of Amn instruction manual some time after he was reading by himself and he consumed the whole thing over the course of a couple days.  He didn't really want to play the game; was just fascinated there was a "book" with so much about a game in it.  We also bought him the collector's edition of the Zelda Breath of the Wild strategy guide and I've never seen a kid more fond of a book in my entire life.  He gets limited electronic time so he filled other time with reading and earmarking every last part of that book and coming up with elaborate plans for his one hour of electronic time the next day.  Man that makes a gaming dad smile ear to ear.

 Dang... need a tissue.  /sniff  Where does the time go anyways.  Game manuals made me the gamer I am today.

HowTo: Add a checkbox to Google sheets

 Dumb little thing I learned today while creating a checklist in Google Sheets; you can add a checkbox.  It is on the Insert menu.  Select the cell to add the box in, click Insert, and then select checkbox.  The data is stored as a boolean (true/false).

GamesMadeMe: Blogging About Games

 GamesMadeMe is a series of posts that cover gaming-related topics that have shaped who I am as a gamer today.  I've covered IDOCs in Ultima Online, THAC0 from D&D, and InQuest Gamer Magazine.  It feels like something obvious is missing though.  In the spirit of "Introduce Yourself Week" for Blaugust 2023 it only makes sense to close the gap on the obvious: blogging about games!

 In my "So it begins... again!" post yesterday I went back to where blogging started for me 18+ years ago, but I didn't actually talk about what inspired me to start.  First you have to understand where my gamer tag, heartlessgamer, originates from.  I am sure I've posted other recallings of this so bear with me if details have varied.

 My gamer tag comes from the game Kingdom Hearts and the "heartless" enemy featured in the game (little shadow dudes).  Playing Kingdom Hearts happened to coincide with some other key events that resulted in me needing to pick a new online handle.  Prior to these events I was using handles related to character names I had come up with for Star Wars role playing (Hehl Omni and Torno Shren).

 I was a frequent poster on the Vault network forums (think they are owned by IGN now) back in the day and for some reason the forums were changing and we all had to pick new names to go by.  I ended up going with "heartless_" because I was really digging Kingdom Hearts at that moment and time.  The underscore was required and then it was natural to just bridge that to "heartless_gamer".  Eventually that just became heartlessgamer after I nabbed the domain name.

 It is also those very forums that drove me to blogging.  I forget exactly what was transpiring at the time with the forums but there were forums shutting down and posts were going to be taken down forever.  It occurred to me: I don't have any control over this enormous amount of content I am creating on these forums... I should probably start a blog!  That'll show em!

 Eighteen years later and here we still are (I say we as though anyone actually comments on posts anymore).  There were several lean years in my blogging history as I became a father and realized there is more to life than punching the post button (and I needed spare time to play games of course; not worry about blog posts).

 The draught of blog posts ended in Sept 2022 when I said Let's do this - post a day! when I returned to daily blogging.  To be truthful while I had a gap in blogging I didn't slow down on finding platforms like Reddit to continue giving away my thoughts and ideas for free.  If you cant tell; I have deep desire to TALK ABOUT GAMES!

 Talking about games is directly tied to my enjoyment of games. My current jam is New World and I have tons of posts about the game here, on Reddit, in the old New World forums, in Discord, and other places.  Regardless of the scatter shot of places I put stuff I always come back to this blog.  Blogging is like breathing at this point and is as much a part of my gaming experience as anything else.

 In summary: I was writing a lot of posts about games on forums, the forums were going to go away, so I decided why not take control of my own thoughts and put them all on a blog. I have to talk about games. Blogging about games made me the gamer I am today!

 

New World: My hopes for territory control revamp!

 Having gone through the war cycle in New World recently (we won a war, got a territory, and then promptly lost that territory in a follow up war) it had me thinking a lot about the territory control and war system which is slated for a full revamp in Season 3 later this year.  Here are some hopes I have for the new system.

 The most important aspect for the new system is to get rid of the current PvP mission model to push a territory to war.  The mission objectives are static and so freaking boring.  There is also no real way to defend against a coordinated push. Also after the first wave of kills players are not worth any rewards for killing until their rewards timer resets so it gets tiring real fast as you can't ever stop players and you get no reward for stopping them.

 The dev team has hinted that the new system will be a timed event and focus on concentrating players into the open world zone that is being contested.  Control points/towers were mentioned. I am hopeful this means lots of open world PvP and long enough windows that players can get into the action without having to set a clock but not too long that players feel like they have to treat the game as a second life.

 One of the other things with the current territory influence mechanic is who gets the declare the war at the end of it.  While most often its just one company pushing a territory these days there are times when its more than one and the one that gets to declare and do the war is a toss up.  That is a lot of boring PvP mission grinding for nothing so I am never surprised when players don't want to do it. The root issue isn't that declaring the war is a toss up; the problem is there is only one war as the result of the action.  

 My hope with the new system is a tiered set of war brackets where every company should be able to declare war and get matched up (or not) with a defending company.  While one company owns the territory it should be a faction-wide event when it comes to the war.  If I'm a small company that contributed I should be able to get a war and fill out a roster against the opposing faction.

 My vision would be a set of tiers of company wars.  The top tier is for the faction control of the territory and governed by the winning company.  The lower tiered wars would be for a slice of the territory pie; basically wars would be for a stake of the prize.  I would even be open to the idea of a company in an enemy faction winning a stake in another factions territory; though at a reduced percent if their faction isn't the owning faction.

 Anyway they do it they need to make war more accessible to more players.  The only way to avoid the "war logger" (players that only log in for wars and often have several accounts to get around account restrictions) is to ensure the wars all happen at the same time so players have to pick where they are fighting for that war.  

 I'd love to see a war calendar where a new territory is going into war every three days and the opposite day is for territory control fights and invasions.  Then if you win a stake in a territory you can rest longer than a couple days before you are cycling back up for defense.  The current pace a territory can be pushed is exhausting.

 In summary: make pushing territory into conflict an event and ensure more players can get into wars while spreading out the rewards for territory control to more companies.  Thank you for attending my Ted talk.

So it begins... again!

 It's the second week of Blaugust 2023 so we are moving onto "Introduce Yourself Week".  To kick things off let's take a look back at my first post on this blog: So it begins...

The date: Sunday, May 29, 2005 (18 years ago!)
The topic: MMORPGs

 The opening paragraph sticks with me to this day and I consider it some of the best text I've ever assembled.

 This blog has officially started. It has been a process of thought pulling at my mind for a while. I play these games we call MMORPGs, but I don't even know if "play" is the correct word to describe it anymore. I live and breath these games. They are more than an escape from my mediocre life. Fun is no longer the driving factor. Social interaction with like minded nerds and geeks; people whom live through their in game characters as though it was version 2.0 of themselves.

 The words are as true today as they were back then.  The major change for me, to be honest, is that I've grown up in the 18 years since I started this blog.  I was single with way more time than I knew what to do with back then.  Now I have a family (my oldest is starting high school this week!!!!).  Then or now though I love my MMORPGs!

 I've also chilled out a bit from those early days.  As noted in my first blog post there was a lot of energy devoted to "the game of choice! Room for debate among the flooded market of MMORPGs and the denizens that inhabit them. From baseless flame fests on the far reaches of the most bizarre gaming message boards; to developer's beloved Customer Feedback Forms." While I still feel passionately for or against certain games the idea of a "flame fest" is no longer appealing.  I am much more likely these days to just "let it go" or be positive in support of games others enjoy that I do not (gasp!).

 Ironically I am just not as heartless as I once was.  Double irony that my name was never really meant to be about being heartless; I was really just into Kingdom Hearts at the time I had to change from my old nickname.  In Kingdom Hearts the bad guys are referred to as "heartless" and they looked cool so I went with it.

 And so it begins... again... and now you know a little more about who I was and who I am now :)

Featuring Cheshiregaming

 On this fine Blaugust day we jumped down to another newbie to Blaugust 2023 and checked in on Cheshiregaming.

 The post I jumped into was Bloodstone Fen Meta which made me a bit nostalgic for Guild Wars 2.  Not for Bloodstone Fen but just for the "nice little touches" that Guild Wars 2 has to offer.  Most notably from a blogging perspective the ability to share information like a map waypoint that a player can use in game is cool.  So many neat little quality of life things that Guild Wars 2 features; wish some other games would follow suit!

 If you are looking for some Guild Wars 2 blogging then keep on digging into Cheshiregaming.

Sexy OPR win!

 

Oh snap; here we go! Palia beta!

 Here we go!

It's TiPalia time!

 On the fourth day of Blaugust 2023... something something something... Tipa shares some thoughts on Palia's closed beta.  It's TiPalia time!

 Tipa starts out comparing Palia to Free Realms:

"Free Realms, in particular, I miss. Like Gatheryn (which won’t really mean anything because I doubt few ever actually played it), Free Realms was a collection of minigames that were based off popular arcade games and casual PC/Mobile games." - Tipa

 Well I happen to be one of the folks that did play Free Realms (see my tagged posts) but I have no idea what Gatheryn is/was.  I started skeptical with Free Realms but then enjoyed a few hours before throwing my hands up at the number of times the game asked for a credit card (oh SOE how I miss ragging on you -- little did we know you were just ahead of your time).

 Tipa continues to discuss how Palia is less "do anything you want" like Free Realms and more guided as someone would expect from a traditional theme park MMORPG.  Players get quests and go about the non-combat equivalent of "kill ten rats" (Palia has no combat outside of hunting creatures like deer).

 From the quests players move onto gathering materials to then build various things on their plot.  Building things requires materials, blueprints, and time.  Lots of time from Tipa's account.  As Palia described the game after her initial few hours:

But right now, just a couple hours in, it reminds me most of EverQuest 2’s crafting. You go outside and mine, gather, fish and hunt, then do some crafting.

  I have some more general thoughts on Palia which I am debating whether to share.  Why am I debating?  Because I got my closed beta invite this morning so figure I would be best served to actually try it before saying anything further (even though my comments are out there in various places).

 

Perilous MMO Tropes

 Roger Edwards (aka Mr Peril) of Contains Moderate Peril has been posting about MMO tropes.  For the third day of Blaugust I sat down and read a few of these trope posts and I have some thoughts.

The posts:

• Death
• Running All the Way
• "Kill Ten Rats" and Fetch Quests

 First; these are all great bathroom reads. Second; Roger is an amazing blogger.  Platitudes out of the way let's get to the tropes.

“The MMO genre is rife with its own set of tropes; recurring themes and motifs that have become established and ubiquitous. All of which are ideal material for a hastily produced, lazily conceived, recurring blog post”.

Death

  If there is an MMO trope that encapsulates the history of MMOs it is certainly death mechanics.  In Roger's post he covers the history of death in MMORPGs: from the "corpse runs" of early games like Everquest to the modern "Death is now treated as a minor penalty that temporarily inconveniences you." as Roger puts it.

 In my older age (40+) I tend to lean towards the modern inconvenience approach and I think it is appropriate for today's market.  Every year it seems like a new MMO project gets started talking about the "good ole' days" of corpse runs and death penalties.  None of those MMOs end up going anywhere.

 Death, as outlined by Roger, is a "means by which to teach the player that they’re doing something wrong and that they need to rethink their strategy."  Slapping a penalty on top of that creates friction and friction is what frustrates players.  Frustrated players don't stick around to play a game because there is a dozen other games on the market that will better respect their time. 

 Losing is enough of a penalty for most players.  Games would be wise to let us take our lump and get on playing again.

Running All the Way

 Running is an MMO trope and like Death it has a history with MMOs.  Large worlds and long travel times were a feature in the early days.  Now long travel times are just an inconvenience.  Roger makes a solid point when looking at single player games.

 "Single player games seem to handle travel differently and certainly have some advantages. I envy the fact that a game like Grand Theft Auto V or Red Dead Redemption 2 provide the players with access to public transport."

 The answer for MMOs doesn't always have to be to add mounts and "public transport" is a great concept.  Some games do it; there were flight paths in World of Warcraft that are the equivalent of Roger's Red Dead Redemption 2 reference "riding the train between towns in RDR2 as it is very restful and highlights for a few minutes the detail of the open world."

  Public transport or player-controlled mounts (which are really just faster travel) the key is the same as death: don't add friction. Friction will piss gamers off and they will walk (ha!) from the game.  There are too many great games on the market to be bored to death traveling in a game. 

"Kill Ten Rats" and Fetch Quests

 I almost spit out my coffee when I read this:

"The MMORPG genre is a curious subset of video games. Not only is it predicated on violence against the individual, institutions and “others”, as so many video games are but also species-specific genocide and general mass extinction of fauna and flora."

 There is no truer statement to encapsulate what modern MMORPGs expect of their players.  Most games are designed around the concept of wiping out entire generations of enemies and then doing it all over again.  And again. And again. And again.  And again. And... you get the idea: grind!

 Some may not know this but Ultima Online launched originally with a model where "mobs" were limited and once killed they didn't just respawn.  If a deer was killed and harvest that was it.  In addition there was a predator/prey system; kill a rabbit and a wolf goes hungry.  Kill the wolf and rabbits could take over the world.

 As you may expect it didn't last long.  Player's killed everything in sight and the system fell apart to be replaced by the never-ending respawn system that is the norm.

 In regards to "kill ten rats" I do have a personal preference.  I would like to see game focus more on smaller but more difficult encounters.  Leave the "kill waves of enemies in a single blow" to the Path of Exile's of the world.  Move away from grinding endless respawns of the same creature.  Instead make me work to defeat one enemy and figure out a way to still reward me for trying even if I die.

From mastodon.social to gamepad.club

My Mastodon account @heartlessgamer@mastodon.social is now moved to @heartlessgamer@gamepad.club

I am digging this Fediverse thing and being able to move around and keep followers as I go!

Gamer Lady Plays New World

 For the second day of Blaugust 2023 we are checking in on Gamer Lady who logged back in to play some New World.

I am happy to say that Amazon has made some significant changes to New World and I’m pleasantly surprised at how much fun I’ve been having. 

 Gamer Lady is still in the leveling process (level 38) so is not in the end game loops.  She is also going through the updated main story quest which she is giving positive nods towards.  Personally I didn't like the changed questline as it's very different than the original, but glad to see others enjoying it.

 I also have to chuckle a bit as early in the post she explains "you’ll know that inventory management is a big deal for me when it comes to enjoying a game" and then later "The gear drops also feel generous and I’ve been able to pick up and try out every type of weapon in the game as I’ve done quests."  

 Oh my sweet summer child! Eventually that generosity of drops turns into inventory management hell as in the end game New World drops so much crap that takes up space and has to be dealt with that there is no doubt a number of players that have quit over having to deal with inventory management!

 Anyways; Blaugust rolls on.  Jump over and say hey to Gamer Lady.

On the first day of Blaugust... new bloggers!

 On the first day of Blaugust my true love gave to me... a brand new blogger!  Part of Blaugust is to encourage other's to get into blogging.  So today I rolled the dice and scrolled down the Blaugust "newbie" list to find a participant just getting their feet wet.

 That brought me to BogusMeatFactory and their blog The Video Game Obscura. You can read their introduction blog post here.  And what do we have here...

So what does an overly optimistic enthusiast that still plays video games breaching forty years old care about?

 Yes! Another 40 something game blogger!  Welcome to the freaking club BogusMeatFactory.

How to increase your PvE damage in New World

 I wrote up this long reply on Reddit and figured I'd copy and paste it for the blog record. Here is my checklist for increasing PvE damage

UPDATED 4/17/2024 for Rise of the Angry Earth expansion changes and Season 5 changes to armor weights

• Bane weapon (increases damage against specific target type) - +15% damage melee weapons / +24% damage ranged weapons

  With the rise of the Angry Earth expansion and level cap rising to 65 and GS cap to 700 the Bane perks are no longer relevant.
   

• Powerful Honing Stone - +7% damage increase - applies to both weapons by using one stone

• Infused Corrupted/Lost/Angry Earth/Ancient/Beast/Human Coatings - +15% coating only applies to one weapon so need to apply to each weapon

• Minor/Basic/Major/Ultimate Combat Trophies - 3/4/5% x 3 (so up to 15% total) extra damage against specific types. Note: ultimate trophies simply combine major trophies together so are still the 5% per trophy increase as majors were.

• Equip load also impacts damage (changed with Season 5)
  

  • Light equip load = +15% bonus damage

  • Medium equip load = no bonus damage (default equip load as of Season 5)
    

  • Heavy equip load = -15% damage
    

• Runeglass gems on armor (not recommended; too expensive and you swap gems all the time for mutations - but noted here) - +2% per gem on armor; so in theory +10% damage increase if on all armor pieces

• Runeglass gems on weapon (also not recommended; expensive but unlike armor you rarely have to swap your weapon gems so it is at least OK to invest - though a regulary gem is more raw damage %) - many of the runeglass gems can apply a damage over time (DoT) ability so for some builds this can be a net gain in damage

Other tips

• Make sure damage attributes are maxed; eat max level food and you should be getting to a total of at least 500 attributes.

  • A common split for newer players is 300 in your main damage skill and 200 in CON.

  • Then over time you reduce CON and keep pumping damage attributes as you get comfortable with not dieing.

  • The end end end game is to be in the "5 CON club" where you have no CON other than the base 5 and all 500 invested into damage stats. Glass cannon.

Updated Banner

Old:

New:

Dropped Call of the Wild:the Angler and added Way of the Hunter to reflect current play habits.

Join me for Blaugust (please?)!

 I am a completionist.  I must. get. all. the. things.  This includes Blaugust achievements and I can get all of them done except I need another blogger to join me in this journey!  Drop a comment if you've signed up (sign up here) because of my begging post.

Recruit a Friend – Convince another blogger to participate in this year’s Blaugust event. This could be a brand new blogger but also could just be convincing another blogger out there to participate. Again much of the focus on Blaugust is to stir up activity in the community and get bloggers active again.

My Blaugust 2023 plan

 

 As I mentioned yesterday Blaugust is almost here!  The schedule is posted in the image above and here is what I am looking to feature each week (you can read more on the intention of the categories here).

Welcome to Blaugust Week (August 1st – August 5th)

• I will do some rounds on other bloggers participating and kicking off the event so expect some linking out to other blogs and some heartless commentary to go with them
  

Introduce Yourself Week (August 6th – August 12th)

• We'll revisit my first blog post ever
• Expect some more "Games Made Me" posts

Creator Appreciation Week (August 13th – August 19th)

• I am going to dip into some adjacent-to-gaming creator spaces to inspire some posts this week
• I will probably feature some New World content creators
  

Staying Motivated Week (August 20th – August 26th)

• What better topic for a week about staying motivated than my steam backlog! 
  

Lessons Learned Week (August 27th – August 31st)

• A chance to reflect on Blaugust 2023
  

Blaugust 2023 is almost here!

 Excited to announce I'll be participating in Blaugust 2023!  I am looking forward to some outside driven topics to blog about!

What is Blaugust?

Blaugust is a month-long event that takes place in August each year that focused on blogging and other serialized content. The goal is to stoke the fires of creativity and allow bloggers and other content creators to mingle in a shared community while pushing each other to post more regularly. For years blogging has been dwindling, and in part, Blaugust was my attempt and reversing that course by compiling a bunch of veteran bloggers in one place and making it super easy to ask questions and get answers. The idea is that this festival of blogging can help reignite dwindling fires for the next year and give folks a sense of kinship as a result. Each year has taken slightly different forms and shifted to include more than just blogs, but the core mission is always the same. In this year of corporate internet staples seeming a little less sturdy, it is all the more important that each of us carve our own homes that we can call our own… that gives us a sense of permanence. No matter what happens on whatever platforms I am on… my blog remains.

New World Daily Checklist (Updated for Season 2)

This post last updated 9/25/2023 for active event changes

 Recently I've seen more and more new or returning players to New World asking "what should I get done every day?".  New World has "daily chores" to a degree but not in a way of "daily quests" that other MMOs feature.  New World players have to have the knowledge of what to do as it is not well explained in game what daily rewards there are.  

Here is my checklist I play by every day:
Note: this list is geared towards a solo player that is level 60 and 600+ gear score.

• 3x Faction Missions
• Daily gypsum (up to 10 orbs a day which at 625 gear score is 4,000 umbral shards a day)
  
• 2x Emerald (refining/gathering)
  
• 15x Topaz (potion + kill level 55+ enemies)
  
• 6x Obsidian (kill named open world bosses)
  
• 3-6x Diamond (varies over time)
  
• 2x Garnet (pvp arenas)
  
• Daily legendary refining
• Asmodeum
• Runic Leather
• Phoenix Weave
• Glittering Ebony
• Runestone
  
• Event actions
• Update 8/17 - Luck of the Bones event - kill Rafflebones at a portal up to 3x times for shards and random drops.
   

For more details on these items read below.

Daily faction quests

The first 3 faction quests you complete each day grant bonus faction tokens, bonus gold, and experience.  To maximize the output each day I recommend:

• Get 3x bags with "Loyalty" which increases faction tokens earned (+14% tokens!)
  
• Dedicate 1 of your 3 houses to a town where you increase faction token gain rate with your town cards (for me it's Ebonscale Reach and I have 36%+ extra tokens)
• Don't be afraid to do the PvP faction missions.  
• They are generally the easiest to do and in many cities grant the highest returns (for example in Ebonscale I get 8,000 tokens per PvP mission vs at most 6,000 for PvE).
• The PvP missions are static so are the same mission each time.  2 of the 3 PvP missions will be in the same area and one at the fort's war camp.  I always do 4x a day; skipping the war camp/fort mission and taking the other two twice.  It takes me 10-15 minutes and I net 20k+ tokens, PvP experience, and 500+ gold.
  
• PLUS you gain PvP experience which can unlock PvP tracks that now have great rewards.

Daily gypsum

Gypsum is turned into gypsum casts.  Casts turn into either expertise bumps or after 600 expertise turn into umbral shards (a cast for a 625 expertise slot gives 400 umbral shards!). There are daily limits on the number of gypsum you can gain via certain activities.  Having a plan can maximize your daily umbral shard gain. As a baseline with 625 expertise across the board I am netting at least 4,000 umbral shards a day via solo play.  It takes me maybe an hour at most to cycle through these and many are done in conjunction with the other daily items I noted.

Here is the gypsum I target each day

• 2x Emerald (refining/gathering)
• As you are out doing other stuff make sure to gather.  If you are 200 gathering and gain an aptitude you get an emerald gypsum.
• The other way to get emerald is from refining at 200 and gaining an aptitude level.  You likely hit 2x of these a day doing legendary material refining.
  
• 15x Topaz (potion + kill level 55+ enemies)
• I drink a potion before I do faction missions in Ebonscale Reach.  Then I usually have to hit a couple hot spots to get to 15.
  
• 6x Obsidian (kill named open world bosses)
• I just hit the named bosses in Ebonscale reach as I do my topaz and faction missions.  If you do elite chest runs you likely will hit this as well.
  
• 3-6x Diamond (varies over time)
• Depends on the current event on where you get diamond and how much you get.  It is almost always the easiest of gypsum to get.
  
• 2x Garnet (pvp arenas)
• For a little bit of your time you an get 2x garnet from PvP arenas.  If you don't like arenas then don't do it.  
• +reward crate for the first two arenas daily
• +pvp experience
   

A couple other easy to get but require a group or more time:

• Level 66 portals - 14 gypsum = 2 orb
• Portals have increased rewards with S2 but I still find them very unrewarding for time spent; you can painfully -- slowly -- solo them if you really wanted
  
• PvE arenas - 2 gypsum = 2 orbs
• Outpost Rush (10-40 minutes required) - 3 ruby gypsum = 3 orbs
• +rewards crate with good PvP gear
• +faction tokens, gold, and PvP experience
• Expeditions (regular or mutation) = 2 gypsum = 2 orbs
   

Daily refining

If you have 200 refining you should be refining 10x of each legendary material per day (asmodeum, runic leather, phoenixweave, and glittering ebony -- runestone if you can swing the materials).  Since these are time gated and only 10 can be done per day per player they are always in demand.  You need to check prices and proactively place buy orders for materials so you aren't spending more on materials than the refined material is worth.  Or you can do it just when you've gathered materials yourself.  

You can also try to sell your daily cooldowns.  While not as popular as it once was there are still players out there that will buy your cooldowns and give you the materials + some gold to refine them.  You can usually keep any bonus refined items.

Bonus: if your faction owns Weaver's Fen fort you get +10% yield.  If time permits go over and cap it; most fort caps are uncontested.  I usually just run over and afk and it is capped when I get back.

Daily event

New World has events happening almost all the time.  

9/25/2023 Update - Luck of the Bones ended a couple weeks ago and the Siege of Sulfur event is live.  The event gives named and randomized item rewards as well as umbral shards and obsidian gypsum.  The first three times you do it per day grant a bonus rewards chest.

The event has been extended to end closer to the 10/3 expansion launch.

I have folded doing this event into my daily rotation even though the named items and umbral shards are not worth much.  The mean reason is because of dark matter that will become a central currency in Season 3 and beyond.  The purple rewards cache, if saved and opened after Season 3 is live, is rumored to drop dark matter instead of umbral shards.  Additionally the named items should auto update to 625 and thus when salvaged have opportunity at dropping more dark matter.

None of this is really hard confirmed but everything from the PTR data dumps says holding out for dark matter is the right call.

Old detail crossed out below: 

8/17/2023 Update - The Summer Medley Faire is over.  The new Luck of the Bones event is active.  See this Reddit post for the breakdown and what rewards are available.

Original:

Currently it is the Summer Medley Faire.  For this event the main item I take care of daily is to visit each town and get a basket.  Each basket comes with event tokens +  50-200 gold.  There are 11 towns to visit so that is an EASY 1,000+ gold per day every day of the event.  If you have no use for the tokens you can buy the event patterns (green or GS600) and sell them on the trading post.  This is easy money folks!

Also currently you can get 3x sportsman baskets from skinning animals.  This takes a few minutes at most and gets a bunch of cooking supplies which are easy to sell or useful if you cook your own supplies.  Additionally grants diamond gypsum if you didn't get that from the event.

Other events will be to kill a world boss which you need to evaluate if you want the rewards or if you can get something worthwhile from.

We won the war!

  We won.  Weaver's Fen is ours!

To War!

 I've been rolling with Evan's Empire in New World for the past few months and yesterday we successfully pushed Weaver's Fen (Castle of Steel) into WAR!  The war will be tonight so expect a report tommorow.

Love this man! YaBoiWilly!

 YaBoiWilly was a surprising find within the New World content creator universe.  He went ahead and took surprising to a new level with this tattoo.  Ya boi!

@playnewworld New World has changed my life. This game has done so much for me its hard to explain. Not only the game, but the amazing Community behind it. This piece means alot. I am forged in Aeternum! Shout-out Devan Smith from Mythical Wizard Tattoo in Indiana! pic.twitter.com/Tj6Yg5hDDt

— YaBoiWiilly (@YaBoiWiilly) July 24, 2023

"We are talking to Reddit now"

 The New World developers put out their most recent Q&A and as they stated in the video "we are talking to Reddit now".

This was a pretty tame set of questions and answers.  If you want to analyze all of it you can use this Reddit thread (zing!)!

 One area that they hit on that did interest me was the topic of azoth salt.  As I've mentioned it feels broken since the season 2 changes and ultimately it really serves no purpose in the game.  I posted this as a comment on the Youtube video.

Salt makes no sense as a currency.  There is nothing other than the tracks to spend it on and now we have to hold progress while waiting for salt to accumulate (I play a ton and it took me 3 days of play just to get salt to select rewards from one track; I easily lost multiple tracks worth of PvP experience holding it up).  And at the end of the day either salt is going to be meaningless like it was before or its going to be too little.  The game would be better if salt was removed. It makes no sense to have to do the PvP activity for XP first and then also accumulate a currency to select a reward: just let us select the reward.  Is 3x rewards per PvP track that game breaking?  

I earn far more rewards for a mutated expedition without having to earn a secondary currency... why insist on continually adding gate keeping to PvP.  While we are at it let's also get rid of the "only the first two arenas a day reward a crate".  If you wouldn't put a restriction like that on expeditions don't put it on a PvP mode.

 They said they are looking at the issue and I am hoping it is more than just adjusting the salt gain rate or cost of track rewards.  It just needs be removed.

 Outpost Rush (OPR) was also discussed in a couple questions.

 First; cross world OPR has brought more matches (a big win in my book) but also highlighted more one-sided matches.  The devs noted that matchmaking is a big complex system to work on so they are looking at what other options they have. Personally I don't want to see ranked OPR but wouldn't object to solo/duo vs group queue OPR now that we have cross world queuing.

 Secondly siege weapons in OPR were discussed.  With Season 2 they were "buffed" but I'd be hard pressed to say I saw any difference.  They are still worthless in my experience.  The question asked was about bringing in other siege weapons.  Ideally they'd figure out what, if any, role the siege weapons are meant to play in OPR before talking about others coming in.  As it stands they are pointless aside from dumping materials into when trying to top the contribution leaderboards for a single OPR match.

 The real spice of the video was the tail end with a preview on the next balance of power update.  They pretty much stated as a fact the one shot blunderbuss combos are getting removed.  Finally.

 

Screenshot

 2,000+ hours in New World, hundreds of hours in the zone Ebonscale Reach, and first time I've noticed this thing off in the distance.  This also reminds me how good this game looks if you pause for a second to look around.

 

Dumb

 How did this happen Max Summer Medleyfaire Rep FAST | New World Season 2?  Such a dumb design for an event.  

 However, I'm not going to complain as I made 7,000+ gold earlier today being one of the two musicians getting tipped on stage for a few hours of mindless music playing (no, I didn't macro it).

Update: They've disabled this part of the event.

New (World) Ideas: Gemstone Dust From Salvage

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

 In New World players can break down gems into gemstone dust which can be used for brief protection from elemental damage.  Tier V gemstone dust is expensive as it comes from Tier V gems and Tier V gems are needed in a lot of areas in the game; mostly to slot into gear for whatever the weekly mutation rotation is.  Once a gem is turned into dust or locked into a piece of gear there is no getting the gem back.  Thus it is not smart to turn valuable gems into dust and dust is therefore expensive.

 New Idea: If a piece of gear has a gem slotted and that piece of gear is salvaged give players gemstone dust as a salvage reward.  This would make dust more widely available and ensure it doesn't feel like you are giving up a firstborn child's worth of gold for 20 seconds of elemental protection.

CPU+PSU Upgrade: Need Suggestions

 I have been rocking a Ryzen 5 3600X for a while and I think it's time for an upgrade.  My current thought is to go with a Ryzen 7 5800x3D. This upgrade path will take me to the top end of CPUs that my motherboard (Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite) can support and should improve performance in New World.

 The AMD x3D CPUs have been noted to improve gaming performance for many games and seem particularly well suited to gaming performance over other processing tasks.  However, there is a recommendation to upgrade to a 1,000W PSU (power supply) at the same time.

 I have a current 650W PSU that has followed me for multiple builds now.  It has been ole' reliable but with recent crashing issues requiring me to undervolt my GPU the PSU is showing its underpowered nature.  So I will be on the hunt for a 1,000W PSU and open to any suggestions.  I am hoping to find a modular PSU so I can swap the PSUs without having to redo cabling.

 I am having issues logging New World's performance (external tracking is now showing an average FPS of 0.1....).  I do want to figure this out so I can do some good before and after to share with the New World community so open to ideas here as well.

New World Ultimate Trophy Update

 This is an update of the journey started in this post.

 I am cruising on my Ultimate Trophies in New World.  I have now completed 3x ultimate combat trophies and 2x ultimate gathering trophies. I plan to finish the third gathering ultimate and call it quits on the ultimate trophies for now.  I don't craft enough, nor do I have the major crafting trophies, to justify the crafting ultimates.

 On the right is my house's porch in Brightwood with the ultimate gathering and ultimate combat trophy on display.

 

 

PSA: New World Daily Gypsum Season 2

 Just a quick note on some easily overlooked changes to daily gypsum limits in the Season 2 patch for New World.

Players can no obtain the following daily (with previous amounts listed):

• 15x Topaz Gypsum (previously 10x)
• Turns into 3 gypsum orbs (previously 2)
• 2x Emerald Gypsum (previously 1x)
• Turns into 2 gypsum orbs (previously 1)
• 3x Ruby Gypsum (previously 2x)
• Turns into 3 gypsum orbs (previously 2)
• 14x Amethyst Gypsum (previously 7x)
• Turns into 2 gypsum orbs (previously 1)
  

Any other changes I didn't list? 

Updated 7/18

Are PvP Tracks Broken in New World?

 New World made great changes to the PvP tracks for Season 2, but they may have broken them at the same time. The tracks reward great (seriously great - best in slot great!) gear now.  The only catch is the rewards cost a pretty pinch of salt (azoth salt specifically) and salt is hard to come by now so it's effectively broken the tracks.

 Here is what my current filled up (not complete!) track looks like.  

 Notice the amazing rewards?  Now look closer at the top right and you will see my current problem: I only have 12,212 azoth salt.  I want at least two of the rewards here; one for 12,500 and one for 20,000 for a total of 32,500 total salt needed.  I actually completed this track when I only had about 10,000 salt and therein lies the problem.

 I am now filling out PvP tracks far faster than I am getting salt to buy rewards.  Not completing a track (i.e. click the complete button after claiming rewards) means all future PvP experience earned goes into a blackhole and is lost. The track carries over the excess experience from the activity that finished the track but nothing past that.  I will likely do 2-3 tracks or more worth of PvP before I have the 32.5k salt to get the rewards here (chest + boots are what I'd love to have).

 Azoth salt is now just a frustrating limiter of my fun in the game.  It used to be a mostly worthless currency; something I had more than I could spend.  I've burned through a huge stockpile of it now and am effectively salt-broke.  I'd prefer it if they just removed salt from the game if I was being honest.

 Compare it to PvE expeditions that give rewards simply for doing the content.  Kill boss.  Loot chest.  Get the reward.  Imagine instead of it was kill boss, get materia (the closest PvE equivalent to azoth salt), and then repeat dozens of more times to be able to use the materia to claim a single randomly generated gear piece.  People would lose their minds.  Note: materia is used to craft specific named drops if you are unlucky in your drops in expeditions.

 Anyways; that will be me over in the corner screaming about a lack of salt or efficient ways to get salt.

New World Steam Error: No product information found, cannot initialize Game (Fixed!)

 I went to play New World today and I got an error launching the game in Steam: “No product information found, cannot initialize Game.”

 I went over some old forum posts talking about disabling IPv6 in my network settings, but that was not relevant to my situation.  I also tried to verify the game files in Steam and while it did download some new files it didn't fix the error.

 Then I remembered I've had this before and the fix was just a full PC reboot.  I rebooted and voila it was fixed.  Sometimes the simple step of "turn it off and back on" is the best first step to take.

Palia Beta!

 Palia dropped a surprise announcement that a Closed Beta is coming in August.  See the trailer below!  Also the game was announced for the Nintendo Switch console and stated it was coming out "this year".  It was not clear if that was just a Switch release or if we'd see the PC release.

 The game has been on my radar for it's developers pedigree from past projects (mainly Blizzard and World of Warcraft).  Palia is also aiming to be a "non-combat" MMORPG focused on life skills (crafting, gathering, building, etc) and social interactions.  It may just be right for this aging gamer and hoping to sneak into a beta slot!

New World Season 2 Keeping Me Busy

 New World Season 2 is full of stuff to do.  While there is the big stuff like the game's first raid, first 10-man trial, new PvP arena map and cross-server OPR I am finding myself busy with everything else.

 First the story quest line of season 2 is OK.  It is nothing to write home about but it's at least interesting enough to hold my attention.  It is dotted with a couple solo-trials (mini dungeons you go into by yourself) which were actually complex enough to make me pause and figure out the fight mechanics.  I will take more of these solo trials if anyone at AGS is listening!

 Next I have been working on ultimate combat trophies.  Each trophy requires one each of the six major combat trophies along with 45,000 gold and 100,000 faction tokens to purchase the ultimate upgrade component (+ your furnishing skill has to be leveled up).  Between major trophies and the 45k gold for the upgrade component; that is about 150k gold per trophy.  I have two the ultimate combat trophies done and just grinding the faction tokesn for the third.  Then I'll get started on ultimate crafting and refining trophies.

 The season journey is also full of tasks that my completionist-self must check off.  Currently working on capping 8 forts. 

 Azoth Salt is now a much needed resource.  This PvP currency used to be something I had at cap at almost all times, but now with the PvP track rewards updated I have found myself at close to zero salt multiple times now.  The new legendary gear rewards on the track are very enticing and cost a good bit of salt.  

 We've also been rocking the portals daily in my company.  The rewards are much improved (at least the gear that drops; still stingy on the materials for corrupted lodestones).

 I may get around to the 10-man trial, The Hatchery, but doubt I'll get to the 20 man sandwurm raid.  Seems it will be hard for organized groups let alone random pick up groups.  Maybe if the company I am rolling with gets around to it I'll give it a whirl but not sure yet.

7/9 New World Bug Fix Patch for Season 2

 Small bug fix patch last night for New World Season 2.  It fixed some Hatchery objectives being tracked properly and targeted healing hot keys should be back in working order.  I'd link to the patch notes but... reasons... can't.  Here is a screenshot.