Skyrim: Slaying dragons

Dragons! They are my favorite mythical creatures (together with griffons). Dragons are clever, sly and manipulative. Stories with dragons are often both epic and tragic. They're good stories. So of course I was excited when I found out that dragons were going to be an important part of Skyrim's story.

The only bad part is that you have to slay them.

So much better!

But ah well, lets return to the Skyrim reality: slaying dragons. Instead of closing some sort of hell gates (Oblivion) as a repetitive feature, you now keep on killing large winged animals. Which is much more exciting, I must say. Not only because they're, well, dragons, but also because you have no idea where they are and might stumble into one by accident.

Dragon in the dark

During one of my assignments, I had to meet a member of a dragon slayer support group (yeah, you have those in Skyrim - make it up and it exists). I couldn't find her, as it was night and a heavy snow storm just burst out. It became apparent that we had a second problem...

...right under our noses, a dragon was reborn! We learned that dragon babies are not friendly, are not actually babies but already fully grown up and can hurt you a lot. An insane fight against flying shadows followed, wherein we luckily had the giveaway of the clearly visible fire it was spitting towards my companion Lydia. It was an exiting fight against a nearly invisible enemy and huge was my relief when we finally made it.

I waited next to the corpse for the morning to dawn and it was only then that I could finally see where I was. A large hole marked the place where the dragon was awakened. I also finally managed to find my dragon slayer groupie and could continue my quest.

I did replay this part later on and waited until dawn before I went to this place, to be able to see what was going on and, of course, to do a dragon photoshoot. I'm not really happy with the result. Somehow, dragons are really exiting and scary when you encounter them in-game, but if you look back at the pictures afterwards, they don't look that impressive after all. It's like when I draw dragons: I'm hardly ever satisfied with the result. I don't think I've found 'the perfect dragon' yet.

Unfair

There's one thing that embarrasses me a bit, and that's the actual act of dragon slaying itself. It occurs to me that my companion Lydia stands in the fire all the time (which would kill me in one hit) and I just shoot a bit at the beast from a distance. When 'we' kill it, I get to be a famous Dragon Slayer, and all she gets is a a pat on the back for being a good servant. While she did all the dangerous stuff!

Above: Lydia once again getting roasted.

Doing it right?

There's another thing that puzzles me. Sometimes I run into a dragon while traveling to a quest location, and get attacked. I'm forced to kill the beast. Now I've found several dragon shouts that I'm not able to use, so I thought I might need to kill a dragon in order to be able to do so. Indeed, once when I killed a dragon, it said "Dragon Soul absorbed", but the shouts I had collected were still greyed out and there was no way of finding any "dragon souls" back. I just hope I'm not missing something or even messing things up by killing dragons now that are meant to be killed later. 

Any advice (please no huge spoilers) is welcome!

SWTOR: It's pink and it bites

Star Wars players were pleasantly surprised today by a Gannifari in their mailbox. Apparently, this, plus 25 Black Hole Commendations, was Bioware’s way of saying thanks for moving our characters to more crowded servers.

Despite my general concerns about sending pets in lockboxes by mail and giving pets as presents to unexpecting caretakers, the Gannifari seemed to be doing alright. Although I did have to take a few steps back when he showed his temper.

How do I get one?

To get your Gannifari, simply get the lockbox from your mail and open it. You can (re)summon your pet by opening the Abilities window and looking under Pets. Click the icon and... there it is! Note that you cannot use the lockbox if you're lower than level 20. You will have to store it somewhere until you are. If you did not receive a mail, this could be because you didn't transfer or don't play on a destination server.

I’m not sure why, but - even though this baby dinosaur has a creepy fly eyes and might occasionally bite - I still think it's cute.

A similar article has been published on Irez.me as "7 August - It's pink and it bites".

LOTRO: Tickling the evil wizard

I was subtly reminded by Iaksones that I haven't talked about raiding for a while. And that while I promised raiding as a recurrent topic some time ago! I suppose I'm really too chaotic to post on a regular schedule. I will, however, keep posting some raiding news from time to time.

Takedown psychology

Lately, my kinship has been into Saruman T2 and I've been in there with them almost every time. We even skipped some locks (well, did them quickly on T1 to get them over with) to be able to spend more time on Saruman. Which can turn out well or less well for a takedown, as I've learned in the past.

In a previous kinship, a long time ago, we had only Gortheron T2 left to complete before the Rise of Isengard would dawn. We spent months doing nothing else. I once expressed concerns to a friend who was in the officer team. Are we not overstretching ourselves? Will people keep enjoying themselves? "How so?" was her reply. "We have to do it, and I want that (server first-only) title."

In the end, we stopped making progress. We were close to making it. Close, but not close enough. New approaches were dismissed, as the leadership was convinced we were on the right road. We kept trying and trying, but eventually a negative atmosphere emerged. We just didn't get any further. I think it was that people didn't really believe they could do it anymore. As some of the negativity was directed at my boyfriend and I, we thought it better to leave and join the kinship I'm currently in.

With our experience of the fight, combined with an enthusiastic group, we came up with a totally different strategy and bested Gortheron T2 Challenge only a few weeks later. It was an amazing experience. What I learned from it was this:

Be open-minded. Progress works best if everyone feels free to share their ideas and are listened at. Try them all. There's no shame in trying a bad strategy, because it will teach you what works and what doesn't. Don't be afraid to discuss and improve yourself.
• Don't get stuck. But if you do, don't do what we did. Take a break, work on something else for a while and return fresh. You're playing LotRO for fun, after all, not to feel demotivated.

 

Saruman

So far for all the seriousness. How are we doing on Saruman? To be honest, it's been great. Of course there's a lot of dying, but any serious raider should have a high dying tolerance. I can enjoy nothing more than working towards a takedown like this. I love getting to know a fight so well that I know exactly which mechanic gets introduced in which phase. I love the discussions on how to improve on the kinship forums. I love knowing exactly what to do when and what to prioritize. When I'm on Saruman T2, I'm 100% lore-master.

Last night, we broke our record of amount of Sarumans downed during the last phase. We also achieved something else that might be even more important, and that was total control over the first four phases. We could do them in a relaxed atmosphere and play "I see something and it starts with a D..." (forgot how the game is called in English). It's only the last phase that requires all our attention. I've been having so much fun, I can barely wait for our next try.

Gaming laptop

My computer, meanwhile, has been having less fun doing Saruman. Environmental shifts such as acid above (and frost in particular) are too much for my graphics card to handle and cause gigantic lag, even on the "very low" graphics setting. I could cope with it on the first phases, but it gets so bad when we get to the ten Sarumans that I had to resort to claiming my boyfriend's gaming laptop. It took some time to set up the plugins and to get used to playing on such a small screen, but I got it working. And now I can even take nice screenshots while raiding! Only when pulling power of course, I don't want to wipe the group...

I do think the environmental shifts are a great idea. In addition to their dangers, they also make the fight visually challenging. The clear winner is definitely the shadow shift, which turns everything black! 

Can you find the 1. guardian's shield; 2. main Saruman; 3. minstrel; 4. lore-master; 5. captain banners; 6. champion; 7. raven and 8. burglar? Tip: click on the image for a larger version.

LOTRO: Ready for summer

Summer outfit

Just a quick post to show my new summer outfit, as promised. With thanks to Danania ("Supergirl") for pointing out that the dress that I missed getting this spring wasn't bound and my friend Liry for letting me borrow hers to put in my wardrobe! I don't really care about sets and think it looks great with the faire's flower circlet. Isn't this the perfect outfit for a summer's day in the park?

Well, if the weather would be a bit better, that is. I guess that's where the long sleeves come in.

One final note: do watch out for bears while you're hanging around. Those buggers even roam the most idyllic picknick spots. Luckily, I can take them out with my fists these days. Go Rav!

     Summer's outfit      

• Simbelmynë dress 
• Circlet of Fresh-picked Flowers

You can get the circlet at the current farmer's faire. If you missed getting the dress in the spring, check the auction halls to see if it's offered there, or borrow one from a friend, like I did.

Sadly, the circlet cannot be dyed, but the dress can. Simbelmynë's dress  also looks great with it when dyed violet. Let me know if you found another nice combination!

I'm usually not really the type, but sometimes it's just great to run around and look happy and cute.

Skyrim: Crafting potions and sneaking around

My previous Skyrim post ended up with amazing walls of text from comments, full with tips and advice. I haven't had enough time to answer everything (I will, I promise), but thanks all for sharing your game experience! The tips were very helpful. As to which character to stick to, most people favoured either Ravereth or Ravanel (with a slight head start for Ravereth), so I started playing on Ravereth, and I quite like it!

Sneaking
This is the first time I play a hunter-like class in an Elder Scrolls game, but the combination of sneaking around and hitting hard from stealth works like a charm. It's funny how squishy I am, though. My boyfriend laughed at me when I was trying not to one-shot a mudcrab to catch its soul, and then got killed by one hit. One hit! I mean, it's a crab, right...

Crafting potions
A weak spot of mine has always been Alchemy. I just love to explore and gather all flowers and then brew weird stuff from it. It's also a nice way to get some money without walking around with heavy stuff. There's something about me and games (I have the same in Lord of the Rings Online), but I'm always overencumbered.

Something seems to have changed since the other Elder Scrolls games: while you could use food (venison, cabbage, apples etc) for alchemy before, now you can only use it to cook it. Cooked food only regenerates a little bit of health/stamina/magicka, so it's a lot less efficient than potions. Still, I suppose it's still useful at the start of the game, when you don't have many resources and recipes to make potions.

 Just a list for me to remember what ingredients are useful:


Potions

Restore health

• Mountain flower (blue)
• Butterfly wing (monarch)
• Egg (rock warbler)
• Wheat
• Imp stool

Restore stamina

• Honeycomb
• Mountain flower (purple)
• Claw (bear)

Restore magicka

• Creep Cluster
• Mora Tapinella
• Mountain Flower (red)
• White Cap

Food

Restore health + stamina

Stew - apple cabbage: immediate effect

• Saltpile
• Apple (red) 
• Cabbage

Soup - vegetable: over-time effect

• Potato
• Leek - raw
• Tomato
• Cabbage

Perhaps I should give up on collecting food, though, as it's starting to become very inefficient. I think it's in fact all the food I carry around that makes me overencumbered. It's sort of a shame that you can't use food anymore for potions (as you were able to do in earlier Elder Scrolls games). If I shoot a deer, what should I do with it? Just take the hide and leave the meat? Such a shame. I must admit some potion combinations were a bit ridiculous. Like, onions, for breathing under water? I guess the current mechanic is a bit more realistic, but in the end it's still a fantasy game.

SWTOR: Thoughts on free-to-play

Star Wars: The Old Republic is going free-to-play, and honestly, I'm not surprised. In fact, I had already written half of this post a month ago, and it was just sitting in a box waiting for a suitable moment to be published. Why is free-to-play ("F2P") a logical progression, you say? Because:

1. SWTOR is at that famous point their game lost it 'shinyness' causing the loss of a lot of customers and needs to make sure their model keeps working, and 
2. the F2P model is seen by many gaming critics as the future of the MMO world, whether gamers like it or not.

The only thing that surprises me a bit, is the speed at which F2P is released. Then again, the faster it comes, the less time there is for players to worry. F2P in SWTOR will be available this November.

Different systems

I play two MMO's that are based on different business models. On one side there's SWTOR, which currently works with a monthly subscription model. On the other side there's LotRO, which has a hybrid model of so called "VIP's" (consisting of monthly subscribers and oldschool life timers) who get most content automatically, and F2P players who don't and have to buy individual quest packs.

Free-to-play in Lord of the Rings Online

On first sight, the LotRO system looks the most appealing, and there are many people who praise it. If you haven't played for a while, it's quite easy to get back into the game without having to pay for anything and can just enjoy yourself familiarizing yourself again. If you get caught up enough you can choose to buy a quest pack or expansion, or start subscribing again. This seems to be the way to go for online games in a time when there are very many MMO's offered and an increasing amount of players don't stick to one MMO, but rather 'butterfly' from game to game. Another often heard argument for F2P is that you "pay for what you play": you can carefully pick what you want to do and only pay for that. If you never raid, you don't buy that content and you don't indirectly pay for them through a subscription fee either - at least, that's the idea. In LotRO, it's even possible to receive small amounts of Turbine Points or 'TP' (the coinage used to buy quest packs and other things in the in-game store) by completing in-game achievements ('deeds'). So of course there are people who make a sport out of it and try to progress in the game by only completing deeds and buying quest packs from the TP earned through that. A journal of a LotRO player trying this out can be found at Wynnie goes Free to Play.

Sounds great, right? So would could possibly be wrong with the LotRO system?

Potential free-to-play problems
I guess it all boils down to your own personality. For me, there are several things I dislike about LotRO F2P:

1. Planning ahead and thinking about what to purchase. I know some people are shopaholics, but I personally don't like spending money. I want to spend my time in-game having fun, not thinking about which expansion, quest pack or item to buy. If I pay a monthly fee, I know how much it is but I'm not reminded of it all the time. I'll automatically receive all content (apart from expansions), so I can try everything I feel like without feeling any pressure. Basically, F2P isn't for me. You can subscribe to LotRO, though, so what am I moaning about? Well, there is problem 2:
2. Subscribing doesn't give you everything there is. A subscription used to include everything apart from expansions. This has changed. Store items include things you can only get through the store, and in some cases this are game system things that would've been given to everyone as an update in the pre-F2P era. For instance the barter wallet, that lets you store barter items in there instead of in your bags, freeing up loads of bag space. In practice, this means that subscribers pay the same, but get less.
3. In-game advertisement environment. There is a tendency to trick players into buying more. This is easy to spot for players who have played LotRO since the launch in 2007 and still do as of today. Where the game used to be only about having fun in Middle-earth, now there are buttons hidden everywhere that lead you to the LotRO store. Need to complete a deed to get a virtue sorted? If you click on it, you'll get directed to the store, where you can buy the virtue and don't need to do anything in-game. Recently, festival activities have been introduced with an extremely rare chance to get a certain mount or item. Of course, if you aren't lucky enough, you can always buy it in the store. These are just two examples how sneaky advertisements try to lure people into buying more. For me, they distort immersion with the beautiful world of Tolkien.
4. Distrust in game companies. Many long-term players have become distrustful of Turbine because of not keeping their promises. With the introduction of F2P, players where soothed from their fears by being promised they wouldn't introduce so called "pay to win" (P2W) items. They took this back, and introduced items that give you clear advantages in PvP areas. There's also a history of enthusiastically announcing new things, which afterwards turn out to be only available by paying separately for them when they were implemented (the sixth bag and, again, the barter wallet come to mind). This feels like misleading. It's not fun to pay a company you dislike, and many old time players I know have left because of it.

 Comic of Dilbert, by Scott Adams.

Don't get me wrong, F2P was probably a good thing for LotRO. Without it, it might very well not exist anymore. During the time of the Mirkwood expansion very little people were around, and logging in would really give you the feeling of a dying game. There wasn't that much new content and people were generally disappointed and left the game. It was getting quiet, very quiet. F2P brought an influx to the game that made it thriving again. However, all the marketing of the LotRO store makes me feel sad. It doesn't fit with Tolkien's world at all. I just want to play my elf again, wandering through the woods without being interrupted by some sort of store advertisement every so-many minutes.

Free-to-play in SWTOR
SWTOR still has all options open: F2P could turn out to be great. I'm sure the game will get an influx of players, a boost that could help the game a lot. So far, it looks like they give subscribers full access and F2P'ers limited, which is the common solution that works well. I hope they won't place many attention calling advertisements everywhere, but I suppose they might need that to get money flowing. If they do, I can only hope they will give subscribers a break from it. That would be a great quality of life improvement.

The only reason I still play LotRO is because it has a great community, because the content is good and because I'm a huge Tolkien fan. If SWTOR goes down the LotRO F2P road, I might not have the same patience.

That said, SWTOR now has the opportunity to "do it right", and I genuinely hope they will.

LOTRO: Fairly hard

 

Having missed out on the amazing dress of last festival, I was determined not to make the same mistake twice and check out Farmer's Faire in time. So there I was, heading out for the small town of Bywater in the Shire. I always love to visit this region, as the weather is always good. Besides, it's always nice not to get battered by some evil Dunlendings for a change.

There were an awful lot of hobbits about in Bywater, the place was crowded with them. A kind hobbit lady offered me to give me goods if I would collect festival tokens for her. I wasn't very impressed by the gardener's outfits she had in stock, but oh dear, she had a flower circlet I had never seen before. I had to get that thing! She also had a mushroom table which made me curious, as I have many mushroom decorations in my house (I always thought the flower pots were a bit underwhelming). It became apparent that I should collect these tokens for her. This turned out to be harder than I thought.

First of all, I didn't read any festival guides, since I rather just go there and find out myself what's there. So I tried to help out another hobbit lady with the huge amount of customers she got. The customer I addressed gave me a shopping list of what he needed and I eagerly went looking for these ingredients. Ah, there I saw the apples he requested! No, that wasn't correct, he wanted to get them in the right order as well. Spoiled little brat, I tell you! So alright, I had to find him some meat first then. Although there was a table were food was magically spawning and disappearing, it didn't have any meat, and even though I turned the whole faire upside down, I couldn't find any there either. I'm terrible at finding things. Of course the timer expired and I was so ashamed that I didn't dare to show my face to the market lady again. The debacle made me feel as depicted to the right.

The bounders were happy to give me another job. I had to address drunken hobbits and tell them to take a break. "That's good," I thought, "I'm always good at tracking down drunken elves, so how hard can it be?" Very hard, I found out. I had forgotten that hobbits don't get drunk. Well, most of them, that is. They drink so much that they pretty much built up an alcohol tolerance. And when they say things like "May the hair on your toes grow thick and curly" they're not drunk, but that's normal hobbit etiquette. After ten minutes of frantically monitoring feasting hobbits, none of them had said anything silly (and by silly, I mean above the average hobbit sillyness). I gave up on this faire of horrors and went to check out the nearby pond...

...where a lot of people where testing their luck with the fishing rod. It boiled down to "fish 10-50 times and be lucky". One quest required you to keep on fishing increasingly hard fish without catching the "bad fish". There was a deed for catching all tiers, and I think that meant 50 times not catching the bad fish. Not really my idea of fun, as you could still catch the wrong fish after spending half an hour pressing the fishing button 49 times (or actually 98 times, one for throwing the bait out, one more for pulling the fish in). It turned out you could barter each pile of fish for festival tokens, which cheered me up a bit. 

I got loads of tokens, enough to get myself the flower circlet I longer for. My grinding tolerance is very low, so I don't think I'll visit the fishermen any time soon again. I visited Bywater again, failed some more quests and had enough for today. I still have to try out Sandson's Farm and stealing mushrooms, so I'll do that another time. A kinnie with a *much* higher grinding tolerance than I returned from Sandson's Farm with 400 tokens "left over" (he was trying to get some deed done), so that does sounds promising. The best thing was that he bought me the mushroom table (so nice of him!), so now I've accomplished everything I wanted from the faire already. I'm now ready to construct and wear my new summer outfit, as the one I was wearing today is a bit warm in the pleasant environment of the Shire. Still, I will present it to you before I put it off:

       Raven's outfit       

• Hat of Deep Lore
• Cloak of the Raven's Claw
• Mantle of the Beneficent
• Lore-keeper's Robe - evendim blue
• Fingerless Gloves - evendim blue
• Shoes of the Stone-student - evendim blue

I recently won the shoulder parts in a raid skirmish and I love their fancy look. They even cover the ugly cloak thingies on your shoulders (see second picture from above). This outfit is one of my favorites as it's colourful yet classy and it is raven-themed (the raven is my favorite pet). I think it's a fitting set for a lore-master and I always use my raven when wearing it!