Dawnlands: Valheim, But It's Anime!

Once again, I find myself at odds with the rest of the MMORPG collective. About this time last year I downloaded a new game called Noah's Heart. I played it, liked it and wrote about it with considerable enthusiasm. 

Off the back of my positivity, a few people around the blogosphere tried it, then politely suggested they'd like some of what I had obviously been smoking. Absolutely no-one saw any merit in the game and after a few weeks it vanished from the public consciousness as though it had never been.

Except here, where there are now fifty-six posts tagged "Noah's Heart" (Fifty seven if you count this one.). I've logged into the game every single day for over a year, making it one of my most consistently-played games of all time. I'm still playing, still enjoying it and have no plans to stop just yet, although yet another server merge yesterday suggests that decision might be taken out of my hands before too much longer.

Noah's Heart is just one in a fairly long line of MMORPGs in which I've found considerable merit, while the general opinion has been that they suck. Big time. I liked all the versions of Bless, for example, but particularly the one every hated the most, Bless: Unleashed. At least once or twice every month, I still think about going back and playing that one some more.

Even among the more respectable games, my experience seems to diverge markedly from the norm. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, very widely considered a complete shambles and a disaster, sits solidly in my top three MMORPGs of all time. Sometimes I think it might be my favorite of them all.

I say all this not to establish some kind of maverick, hipster cred (Although that does sound cool...) but as a warning. Sometimes I do attempt to be objective about these things but mostly this is a personal blog in which I gush about stuff I like and occasionally rant about things I don't. I never pretend I like things when I really don't but I do occasionally get carried away by my own enthusiasm. When that happens, I can feel a little guilty later for leading people astray. Just remember: even if I'm having a good time playing a game, it doesn't mean you will too.

If it wasn't for the big picture at the top of the post you might have guessed I was going to talk about Palia again. There, though, I'm not quite as off-message as usual. The consensus that's building seems to be that Palia lays a decent foundation for what might one day become a pretty good game but that as yet it's under-cooked and probably could have done with a while longer in the development oven.

I don't dispute that. The game as it stands is a very solid start but it does feel a little dry in places. It will almost certainly be a lot better after a few more updates. Then again, it is still in beta so that's only to be expected. 

Uh oh. I can hear the grumbling from here...

Okay, yes, we're past the days when a loud cry of "It's Beta!" could cover sloppy workmanship and I agree that once a developer lets everyone in they open themselves up to criticism that wouldn't be appropriate if they were still operating behind closed doors. Taking money means players are now customers not testers but even so, when all's said and done, it is beta. Calling it "Open Beta" or "Early Access" doesn't absolve a developer from all responsibility but equally neither is it some kind of invitation for a pile-on. 

MMORPGs are famously never finished. Back in the days when MMOs went from closed beta to fully live with nothing much inbetween, they still mostly launched broken, buggy and unfinished. They frequently lacked content and often the good version of the game didn't arrive until six months or a year later. The whole "They're taking money so it doesn't matter what they're calling it" charge doesn't really reflect a major change of practice. MMO developers have always taken money for an unfinished product. They've just changed what they're calling it.

Somewhere along the line, though, any of the patience and understanding gamers once had for MMORPGs (Something that, frankly, was always in extremely short supply.) has all but vanished. If games aren't pretty much perfect on first sight nowadays, they're going to get ripped to shreds. Ironically, even if they are generally reckoned to be tight, polished and professional, ninety per cent of players will still drop them after a few weeks anyway (cf New World; Lost Ark.) Developers just can't catch a break.

Please bear all that in mind, then, when you hear that I downloaded yet another new game yesterday and had a pretty good time playing it. As MassivelyOP reports, that wasn't everyone's impression, not by any means. I beg to differ. Again. 

I already had Dawnlands on my Steam wishlist so for once I didn't miss the announcement that it was available for play. As soon as I saw the email I downloaded it immediately, registered an account with the developer, Singapore's SeaSun Games, and logged in to make a character.

In the past I've written whole posts on character creation. I could certainly do that here. I'll try and keep it short. Dawnlands is a free-to-play title so if you really want to see what character creation is like, go check it out for yourself. I think you'll enjoy it.

I swing back and forth on character creation, as must be obvious by now. Sometimes I complain about all the sliders that let you change the inclination of your cheek-bones or the width of your calves; other times I moan about lack of choice and being forced into pre-sets. 

If I'm honest, it depends a lot on what kind of mood I'm in or how urgently I want to get into the game. Sometimes character creation can feel like a hobby all its own, other times it's just a barrier keeping me from the fun stuff.

The character creation options in Dawnlands land right in my sweet spot. There are lots of presets but after you make each pick you can customise it with sliders. Better yet, the sliders actually do stuff you can see! I'm very used to - and fed up with - sliders that make adjustments so small I can barely see the difference. In Dawnlands, when you move the slider you can see a different person up there on the screen right away and you don't even have to squint.

As I've said many times and as I'm coming to believe is even more crucial than I previously believed, the key to whether I'm going to find myself pulled inside a game or bouncing off it lies in how comfortable I am with the character I've been able to create. And by that I mostly mean what that character looks like. 

Sometimes I think judging these things by appearances is a shallow approach but at other times it seems almost ineffably deep. There's a lot of talk nowadays about options for having characters meet the expectations of the audience. Gender-locking is right out in the West, not that it was ever popular here, but far beyond that it's increasingly expected that you'll be able to make a character that represents either the way the world sees you or the way you see yourself, which can, of course, often be two very different things.

There's a whole different post to be written on that, one I'm quite keen to write some day but also pretty nervous. A lot's going on when we make our characters; it's only fairly recently started to become clear just how much. 

For now, all I want to say is that I just loved what I was able to do with the character creator in Dawnlands. It's so good it makes me want to go back and just make more characters for the sheer fun of it. If you want to play a big, beefy middle-aged guy with a full beard, though (Hi, Bel!) your mileage may most definitely vary. 

Also, it'll be nice when I get some clothes to wear. Just sayin'. One day at a time, eh?

Having a character I feel comfortable playing goes a long way towards making me feel favorably disposed towards a game but stepping into a world that just looks absolutely gorgeous goes even further. I just love what Dawnlands looks like.

I've seen the look described as anime and a lot of reviews on Steam, both positive and negative, compare the aesthetic to Genshin Impact but my immediate impression was of waking up inside the Saturday Morning Cartoon spin-off of a 1970s comic book, maybe Anthro or Rima the Jungle Girl. To me, Dawnlands looks like something one of the Silver Age greats like Nick Cardy, Nester Redondo or even Alex Toth might have done guideline character sketches and storyboards for, before full animation was handled by a studio somewhere in the Phillipines. 

I get that not everyone is going to have these specific reference points. Probably the artists who worked on the game didn't. I don't care. Those are the synapses it snaps for me and it feels good.

I'm not going to turn this into a full-blown a First Impressions post for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I've only played for about an hour and a half so far and I'd like to get a bit further before committing myself. Secondly and more importantly, there's just one heck of a lot going on right now, what with Blaugust and everything. I wasn't planning on shoe-horning another series of posts into the schedule but I guess I'm going to have to find a way.

What I will say up front is that so far I'm really enjoying Dawntide. It's a toss-up at the moment whether I'll log into Dawntide or Palia after I finish this post but it's sure to be one or the other. It's quite exciting, having two new games competing for my attention. Certainly gives me plenty to write about, anyway.

I almost wrote "two new MMORPGs" in that last paragraph but Dawntide isn't exactly an MMORPG. It's what the developers call an "Open-World Survival Crafting cross-platform game" and MOP calls an "MMO-lite". As well as being available on both mobile and PC, it also offers three settings: Single Player, Multiplayer and Sandbox. 

I thought about it for a while but in the end I plumped for Single Player. I have a post already completed about how I keep thinking I'm playing a single-player game when I'm playing Palia and it feels to me like maybe these kinds of survival games work better for me when I have the world all to myself. 

That was certainly the case in Valheim, the game which, as you probably guessed from the title of the post, it reminded me of the most. Although I very much enjoyed reading other people's accounts of their shared adventures there, I never once felt like I wanted to share my viking afterlife with anyone else other than in the posts I was writing about it. Since Dawnlands feel really quite significantly similar, it makes sense to carry on in that tradition.

Whether Dawnlands will have anything like the staying power of Valheim it's far, far too early to say. I kind of doubt it but obviously I very much hope to be proved wrong. If so, it'll be yet another game that I'm playing and writing about when almost no-one else is. 

But then, I'm used to that.

Sad Goth Girl And The Treehouse Pajamas

If there's one thing I have to say about Dragon Nest 2: Evolution it's that for a game that's supposedly predicated on making money by selling you stuff, they sure are generous with the free samples. I've only been playing for a few days and my character's already better-looking than many I've played for years - or ever - in other games.

It's all happening so fast I'm finding it hard to keep up. It's certainly too much to report as it happens. In the last few, short sessions I've acquired four pets, two outfits and a pair of wings. And they all look great!

Thanks to a weird glitch when I logged in on Sunday, I can offer a benchmark illustration of what my character looked like when she started. For some reason, the game reverted to the default appearance until I rebooted Bluestacks and this is what I used to look like in the dim, distant past of a few days ago:

Ah, the sweet innocence of youth. Although I see I still have my sad goth girl fairy pet.

She's not called Sad Goth Girl for real. I wish! She's not even a fairy. She's officially my Swan-Like Elf pet, which is weird, there not only being nothing remotely swan-like about her but also because my character is an elf, too. It's like a human having a pet human. I think there's a name for that...

Here's a close-up, taken earlier as you can tell because I'm wearing my Ranger outfit. (I'm just going to use "I" and "my character" and "she" interchangeably from now on and not just in this post, either. It's really too much trouble, trying to keep my pronouns straight and if I want to identify as an elf, is it any business of yours? (I do not want to identify as an elf. Let's just make that clear right now...))

Did you also notice Swan-Like Sad Goth Fairy-Elf is wearing a crown? It adds yet another layer of mystery. Have I somehow enslaved a member of the elven royal family? Or is it just an affectation, like when King wears that crown from Burger King in the first episode of The Owl House so he can call himself King of the Demons?

(That's what Douglas Coupland called tele-parabalizing, by the way. I'm re-reading Generation X, something that will no doubt feed into a future post or two. It's a handy neologism. Pity it never caught on.)

Another thing that happened during the glitch was this. I got abducted by aliens. 

No, not really. This is actually a mount. I wish it was my mount but it's not. Not any more. When I couldn't get my outfit to display properly I tried mounting up to see if that might shift something and instead of my Angelic Sheep I got this. 

I've seen people flying about in these things. There's a ray-gun that flips out from the underneath and swings about in a vaguely threatening manner. It took me a few goes to get it in shot. In some of the pictures I discarded you could see my foot sticking out of the bottom of the spaceship. Shoddy alien tech!

I didn't get to keep the spaceship but I do get to wear this baseball outfit whenever I want. There's a baseball cap that comes with it but it goes on backwards, something that always makes anyone look like a dick. It's a look even an elf can't carry off so I'm sticking with the bunny ears. Everyone knows those are cool.

The baseball outfit comes from some login event or holiday or something. I'm already losing track and the game's only just started. There's an actual Summer Beach Party thing going on but it's cash-shop only so I haven't been able to make myself look like this.

Probably just as well. Honestly, I'd be embarassed to post a picture like that if it wasn't that I've played Final Fantasy XIV and everyone seems to find it perfectly acceptable there. And anyway, I've got something even more awkward to show you later.

But first: wings!

Every game needs wings but not every game knows how to do them. Guild Wars 2 definitely doesn't. I acquired several sets there over the years and not one of them fitted properly. It always puzzled me. The GW2 art department is generally top-class but when it comes to attaching accessories to character models it looks like they farm it out to the interns. 

My DN2:E wings fit perfectly. I got them from a new activity that opened up when I dinged 16. Don't ask me what it was. It has the word "feathers" in the title, I remember that much.

If I learn a bit more about how it works, maybe I'll do a post on it, but for now here's a shot of the Feather Insertion screen where you perform Feather Synthesis with the intention of making yourself some fancy wings. Out of feathers. What else?

I made some and when I'd finished they looked like this:

As you can see, they fit me like I was born with them. Not like I got them for a hen party with a budget of "Don't spend more than $5. We all know it's not going to last".

It's a look I'd happily have settled for but this game doesn't like for you to just settle. Before I even had time to appreciate how great I was looking I was already opening the chest with my next outfit inside. 

Remember I said I had something awkward to share?

I'll warm up to it with the description. Make of this what you will.

Nervous? You probably should be. I was.

I mean, we've all wanted to skip school to spend the day in a treehouse in our PJs. That's a normal thing normal people want, right?

As it turns out, it's all quite innocent. Well, relatively-speaking, although what dictionary they must have been using if this is their definition of the word  "pajamas" beats me. 

To my eye, it looks more like something you'd put on to go to a party than anything you'd sleep in. A little dressy for a treehouse, too. It also really does not go with those boots, as you can see from the shot below. Swan-Like Elf can't bear to look.

It's not without its charm, all the same. I'm hoping there might be some slippers still to come. Or maybe some actual pajamas. It does say it's part of a set and this is just the top.

We'll just have to see what I get next time I log in. There's almost bound to be something.

Dragons, Ponies, Bunnies And Sheep

Immediately after I posted about Dragon Nest 2: Evolution yesterday, I logged in and played for a couple of hours. When I logged out I was level 10 and I had a pony. 

I'd love to show you how cool I looked riding it but although I took some great snapshots I still can't find them. After spending the best part of an hour looking, including a full search of my hard drive by date and file extension, I have to conclude that's because they don't exist.

Luckily, I have a workaround. Two, in fact. I can take screenshots using the excellent Windows 10 Screenshot function, something I do more and more these days, since I finally discovered it existed a few weeks ago. Or I can use Bluestacks own screen saving service.

Why don't I do that now and then we can have a nice picture of a horsie!

Isn't he adorable? He's even better when you can see him stamping and shaking his head. He's called Macha. Or maybe she is? Probably a girl-horse.

Doesn't really matter because I won't be riding him/her any more. Now I'm riding a sheep. Want to see her? Of course you do.

The more observant reader might also notice my character's dressed differently in that last shot. Oh, a lot happened while I was logged in taking those screenshots, let me tell you! For one thing, I got some...

Bunny Ears!

Bunny ears that turn you blonde, no less. It's only fitting.

The bunny ears came from a chest I got that I think was either from the current holiday event - because of course there's already a holiday going on even though the game only started a week ago - or it was a reward for the game going Live. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a Log-In reward because those were mostly coin and gems to spend in some shop I haven't even looked at yet.

 

The sheep, which is actually called Angelic Sheep - it has a halo! - also came out of some chest or other. Judging by the congratulatory message, maybe it was a lucky win. I only saw one other person riding one but then again I am a week late getting started so probably everyone else is on griffins or pegasi by now. 

My sheep is quite charming, don't you think? Yes, well, you should because she is charming and I can prove it.

See? She has a Charm modifier. My pony doesn't.

She's also faster than the pony so you know who's going to win and I don't just mean in a race. I have no idea what riding a charming mount does for you in this game but I'm betting it's better than not riding one. I mean than riding one that's not. Oh, you know what I mean.

As for the new outfit, I bet you can't guess how I got that. Go on. Try. You won't guess.

I fought a dragon for it! Yes, that dragon. A big, red one breathing fire and everything!

I want to say I killed a dragon but I'm not actually sure what happened. It was a quest that popped up at level 10 to "Change" my class. I wasn't sure I wanted to change my class but I was curious so I clicked on it and it took me into an instance where I had to fight that thing.

It was one of those fights where the boss has umpteen defensive layers you have to peel off so it felt like I'd already killed him three or four times when he finally flew off. I was so low on health by then I thought he'd killed me and I'd lost but when I exited the instance it turned out I'd done whatever it was I was supposed to do. 

Probably just prove I was dumb enough to try and solo a red dragon, I guess.

I found out what "Change Class" meant when I did the hand-in. It means pick your sub-class. Or advanced class. Or whatever. 

My inclination was to take the ranged option, Bowmaster, but then I looked at those helpful diagrams at the bottom and decided that given the way I'm approaching combat, Ranger would be the better option for me. 

When I started, I tried to play my Archer the way I imagined a ranged DPS ought to be played solo. I stood back, picked targets, kited and tried to stay out of melee range as much as possible. That worked fine in a couple of instances but then at around level 5 I hit a quest instance I couldn't finish. 

I kept dying almost as soon as I engaged the final boss. At first I figured he was too strong and/or he had some kind of one-shot ability I was failing to avoid but after a few runs, while I was going very carefully and slowly, trying to figure things out, I got "one-shotted" before I even got to the boss - after I'd killed all the mobs.

It was then that I figured out what I was doing wrong. The instance had a timer I hadn't even noticed. You had to complete the whole thing in under three and a half minutes or the instance closed and kicked you out. That's what had been happening to me every time.

Clearly I needed to go faster. Careful pulling was too slow. So I changed tactics one-eighty. Instead of backpedalling and plinking away with my bow as the mobs chased me, I ran straight at them and stopped in melee range. Then, instead of carefully selecting each of my attacks, I just rippled my fingers as fast as possible across keys 1-4 like I was playing a keyboard trill.

And guess what? It worked. I finished the whole instance, boss included, with a minute to spare. I didn't even take all that much damage. Since then, that's been my go-to combat style. Absolutely no skill or thought required. I can't imagine it's going to work for long but it's gotten me to Level 10 and it beat that dragon so I'm sticking with it until it stops working.

It also got me a parade through the city of Saint Haven complete with cheering crowds and a fanfare from iconic NPC Irine. I've had similar experiences in a few MMORPGs over the years but this was one of the better ones. It gave me feels, I'm not gonna lie.

It's nice to get this kind of thing at the start of the game, too, rather than having to wait until your all cynical and jaded after weeks of grinding. Not that I'm going to be doing any of that. Much though I love Dragon Nest in all its myriad forms, I don't think of it as any kind of "forever game". A Forever Franchise, maybe.

Even if I was minded to settle down in Altea (That's the name of the world where Dragon Nest is set.) it wouldn't be a good idea to become too fond of any one iteration. They open and close like California poppies (If that's botanically inaccurate you can blame Bard. I didn't cross-reference it.) A previous attempt at a mobile MMORPG version of the game, World of Dragon Nest, barely lasted a year and the way the ratings for this one are going (Down to 1.9 today.) I wouldn't bet on it lasting even that long.

Which would be a shame because it's a lot of fun, at least at the beginning. How long it'll stay fun I wouldn't care to say, although comments I've read about the necessity to find groups or even raids to complete basic main quest instances don't bode well.

For now, though, I'm happy to keep mashing buttons and picking up prizes. We'll see how long that lasts, I guess. If nothing else, it makes a change from doing the same thing in Noah's Heart.

Thereby Hangs A Tail

Time for another fashion report. My latest acquisition is the Black Mountain Set, as worn by Sophos Sisyphus, sometimes known as Sophia.

Sisyphus has a very unusual backstory as you can see from the panel,on the left.

If you can pick your way through the translation, the gist is that she's forever rolling the stone of her age up the hill of years from eight to twelve, whereupon it slips and rolls back down and she has to start all over again. She's knows she's doing it but she doesn't know why. She wants to stop  but she doesn't know how. It's heartbreaking.

That's not why I picked her, though. I picked her because she has a tail.

It's not a real tail. She's a human girl not some kind of animal that walks and talks like one. (If only...) The tail's a part of her costume. I thought it was attached to the legs but it turns out it's sewed into the top.

As you can see, there's really no way to tell where it's attached from the pattern. The tail doesn't appear in any of the pictures. Well, it wouldn't be attached to the shoes, I guess, although with magic in the world you can never be sure.

Before I decided which pattern to unlock, I spent a good, long time looking at all the available options in the Fashion preview window. I was a little gunshy after unlocking the last one and finding it didn't look exactly as I'd imagined.

I couldn't find any more full sets I thought I'd want to wear just as they come. There are several I really liked the look of when I saw them on the big, splashy, full-screen picture that flashes up when you first acquire a new Phantom and some still look good on the Line-Up page but when I got to see the as-worn version in the preview window, most didn't look quite so appealing.

Consequently, instead of full outfits, my main focus has moved to separates and there you have to be very careful. Some patterns give you Top, Bottom and Shoes but quite often, especially with any of the gowns or dresses, the Top and Bottom (And sometimes even the Bottom and the Shoes.) are all one piece.

Separates combine pretty well in Noah's Heart. They fit together very smoothly. There are plenty of pieces that share an aesthetic and go together convincingly. I'm acquiring a lot of leather jackets and leggings and things with straps and buckles. A tail, though, that's something special.

Sisyphus' Top and Bottom both go with several things I already have but if I want to wear the tail, I have no choice but to wear the top too. Luckily it goes really well with several options in my wardrobe.

As you can see, my choices do tend towards the gothic, although that's mostly a by-product of the original designs. I'd prefer at least a splash of color but for that I'd need some dye. The good news is I have finally figured out how the dye system works. The bad news is that, as you'd expect, dyes are mostly sold in the cash shop. 

There are some that come from "Events". I have received a few of those but at the time I didn't really understand how to they worked and I used them up trying to figure it out. The other good news is that the're not very expensive. I could unlock a dozen colors for five dollars and a dozen is about twice as many as I'm ever going to need.

That brings me to a very significant moment of truth. Do I actually spend some money on this game? Given I've been playing it for nearly a year and it's cost me nothing, it seems reasonable to pony up a fiver. I'd spend twice that on an indie game on Steam that might only give me four or five hours of playtime and I must have had hundreds of hours of entertainment from Noah's Heart by now.

Without being entirely paranoid, I'd be wary of giving my credit card details to whoever's behind this thing but I just checked and you can pay by PayPal, which is the exact reason I made a PayPal account all those many years ago. 

Looking past that decision, I'm really not sure what Phantom to butter up next. There aren't many obvious choices left for seperates and none of the full Outfits feel like anything I'd wear in preference to those I have already. 

I might even have to start thinking about which Phantoms would be most helpful in combat rather than focusing on whose clothes would suit me best. There are practical reasons as well as cosmetic ones for bribing a Phantom into liking you, after all. 

For the time being, though, I might just make some pies and stockpile them. They don't go off so there's no need to rush.

Tarisland First Impressions: The Market or Why A Duck?

I was working all weekend so I didn't get much chance to log into the Tarisland beta. Those Noah's Heart dailies don't do themselves, you know. I mean, they almost do but you still have to be there...

I wanted to play, though, and I did manage to get a few minutes, here and there. On Saturday evening  I was fiddling about with the UI because I didn't have enough time to go adventuring, when I happened across something you'd think might have come up in the tutorial but, as far as I can remember, wasn't even mentioned - the Market.

By "Market" I don't exactly mean the cash shop. I think it probably will be the cash shop, when the game goes live, but there is no cash shop in this beta. 

I suppose it's an assumption to say the game will have a cash shop when it goes live but it seems a pretty safe one. It would be a weird free-to-play title if it didn't. Then again, now I come to think of it, I haven't actually seen any mention of the payment model. 

Hang on - I'll check... 

 

Hmm. It's surprisngly unclear. I can't see anything specific on the official website other than the much-touted "Say No to Pay to Win!" policy. A general search of the web finds most sites describing it as "A Free to Play Cross-Platform MMORPG" so I guess that's what it is. I imagine the payment model is something so obvious to the Chinese developers they don't even feel the need to mention it. Are there any MMORPGs in their home market that require a subscription?

Anyway, getting back to the point, I hadn't noticed until a couple of days ago that there even was a marketplace. I think it might get a mention at some point during the extended tutorial but I don't recall anything specifically directing me to open a window or buy anything, as happens in most games that rely on people spending money in the company store. I had to find the Market for myself.

What I found when I did surprised me a little. I knew the game had various factions with which you could raise your Reputation and that by doing so you could purchase crafting patterns and other useful items. I also knew there were tokens to collect for doing different activities such as running dungeons and other instances and that you could spend those tokens on gear upgrades. What I hadn't appreciated was just how intensive and wide-reaching those systems were.

The Market window has three tabs: Appearance, Market and Trade Assoc. 

There's next to nothing in the Market tab, just some health and mana potions, a four-slot backpack expander a name-change token, all of which you can buy for a small amount of silver, the most common in-game currency. I'm guessing (A lot of that going on here.) that this is the tab where most of the non-cosmetic Cash Shop items are going to appear, when the time comes.

The Trade Assoc. tab breaks down into half a dozen sub-tabs, each featuring a named Association. Some of those in turn open out into more tabs, around a dozen in all. That's almost certainly just the beginning of what you'll see when the game leaves beta. 

The Associations are:

• Adventurers
• Honorary
• Universal Hall
• Reputation
• Lifestyle
• Friendship.

Each of them uses a different type of token from a different type of gameplay. The Adventurers Association rewards stat gear for the tokens you get from running dungeons, whereas the Honorary Association takes tokens from PvP. Sound familiar at all?

The Universal Hall is a kind of ascending solo instance as seen in games such as Final Fantasy XIV and takes tokens earned from doing that content. Reputation is self-explanatory. So far there are only three Reps, one for each of the zones available in beta, but presumably eventually there'll be one for every zone in the game. (And again, I'm making an assumption, this time that Tarisland will launch with more than three zones...)

Lifestyle Association is for crafters. This turns out to be where you buy the kind of mats that are often vendor-sold in MMORPGs, as well as the crafting tools themselves. If that was explained in the extremely brief crafting tutorial, I must have missed it. Everything in there costs nothing but silver and in amounts that seem very reasonable, although since I have yet to do any crafting, don't take my word for it.

For the Friendship Association it looks like Tarisland has borrowed an idea from FFXIV generally reckoned to have been a good one and then expanded on it. The currency you spend in this tab is the Friendship Badge, which you earn in three ways: by doing dungeons with players who have never done them before, by completing - or in some cases just attempting - the higher difficulty Elite and Arcane instances, and by taking on the Healer or Tank role in Raids. Be a good egg and karma will reward you, in other words.

It's a wide-ranging and potentially very solid scaffold on which to build a range of platforms for character-progression. It certainly seems to back up the No Pay-to-Win claim which, of course, invites the question so what are you going to make all your money on, then?

I'm guessing that's where the third tab, Appearance, comes in.

In Appearance you can buy Mounts (Ground and Flying), Costumes, Weapon Skins and what the game calls Pendants. We'll get to Pendants later.

All of the mounts (There are only four available in the beta) have special abilities in addition to their obvious mobilities. There's a mech suit that allows you to craft a portable Warehouse, giving remote access to the storage vault to you and your "nearby allies". There's also an elegant, icy elk-like creature called a Polar Bluehorn that allows you to gather crafting materials without having to dismount. I wanted that.

I'd seen people riding the Bluehorn and wondered what you had to do to get one. You get a free mount from a quest fairly early on but it's a clunking great rhino that I found aesthetically unpleasing, not least because someone on the art team made the dubious decision to have female characters ride the thing side-saddle. 

Or maybe everyone has to. It's about as wide as a VW Microbus. You'd need some thighs to straddle one of those, gender notwithstanding.

It hadn't really occurred to me I might just be able to buy a better mount and even if the possibility had crossed my mind, I certainly hadn't entertained the idea that I might be able to afford it. When I found the mounts in the Market, it came as a very pleasant surprise to discover I could do both.

In beta, that is. I'm pretty sure it'll be different in the Live game.

It's not explained anywhere I could find it but I'm guessing everything in the Appearance tab will eventually be available only for a curency purchased with real money. Oh, I'm sure there will also be a way to earn a pittance of the same currency in-game. There always is. The main route to looking good, though, is going to be through your wallet.

For the beta, however, it seems we've all been given a stipend of three thousand... I'm going to call them Gems, because that's what they look like. Mousing over the icon for once produces nothing. 

I spent a good, long while examining all the ways I could spend my free money. I really wanted the Dauntless Explorer costume, a kind of catwalk version of something Indiana Jones' cooler, younger sister might wear. (That's younger when the first movie came out, obviously, not younger than Indie is now, when his hypothetical lil' sis would probably be even older than I am...)

Unfortunately, I couldn't run to both that and the Polar Bluehorn and the sheer utility of not having to get on and off my mount to gather from nodes won out. That still left me with a chunk of change to spend so I spent some of it on...

Well, I kind of blew the reveal with the picture at the top of the post. Yes, I bought a duck. 

And not just any duck, either. I spent 180 Gems on a bright yellow duckling that tosses a purple ball into the air then catches it, occasionally turning somersaults, all while sitting on a fluffy white cloud that floats over my character's head. The in game logic and lore-appropriate explanation for this is anyone's guess.

Weird objects that float above the player-character's head are called Pendants in the terminology of Tarisland. It's a category that also includes back items and halo-like particle effects, a couple of which I may well also spend my remainingGems on before the beta comes to an end. I am absolutely the target market for this kind of thing, always providing it's not going to cost me anything. Well, anything other than my self-respect, but that's a ship that sailed long ago.

All things considered, the mechanics underpinning this aspect of the in-game economy seem solid enough. I personally prefer the more traditional approach to gearing up that comes from beating up monsters and taking their stuff but token systems have been with us almost as long and many people seem to prefer their predictability. 

According to the website, Tarisland is also supposed to have a "Free Trading System ... committed to restoring the freedom of trade in the endgame and creating an economic system that closely resembles a real market." If that's in the beta, I haven't found any sign of it yet, but then it took me twenty levels to find the bank, so once again, don't rely on anything I tell you.

At the end of my session this morning, most of which was spent researching this post, I was asked to complete another, entirely different, lengthy survey on how I was finding things. They didn't ask me to score the Market but if they had I'd have given it an 8 out of 10, which is what I've given most aspects of the game I've been asked about so far. 

I am a very generous grader, though. Always have been.

Spring Fashion Supplement

It's been about a month since I last posted news of what I'm wearing in Noah's Heart. I realise it's a topic likely to be of interest to no-one but myself but I have to consider my legacy. This is just the sort of thing that's going to help convince me my life hasn't been a waste, when I look back on it on my deathbed. Also it's my blog and, to paraphrase Lesley Gore, I'll post what I want to.

It took me a litle longer than usual to max Affection with the next Phantom on my list so I could get her to hand over the pattern I needed to craft my own version of her signature look. That was because, for the first time, I chose one of the SSR-rated phantoms, all of whom require an extra level of persuasion to part with their patterns.

As XyzzySqrl explained in the comments to a post back in September last year, there's a very straightforward hierarchy in the game that goes from R (Rare) to SR (Super Rare) to SSR (Super Super Rare). Rare phantoms max affection at Level 11, Super Rare at Level 12 and Super Super Rare at Level 13. The number of points required for each level increases markedly as you make your way from vague acquaintances to BFFs. It takes 18k to go from 11 to 12, which is where I'd always stopped before but this time I needed but another 24k to go from 12 to 13.

For this reason only, I was loathe to pick an SSR phantom for my next charm offensive but in every other way it was the obvious choice. Visually, there's a very significant change in quality between the three grades. Rare phantoms wear relatively plain outfits in very muted colors, which often include a lot of dull, battleship grey. Super Rares are much more detailed and colorful, with plenty of attractive options to choose from, but Super Super Rares are incontestably the winners in any fashion parade, their costumes more subtle and intricate than their sometimes brash inferiors.

There are plenty of SSR looks I'd love to adopt but ironically the one I've picked isn't one of them. For once, I made my choice for pragmatic, gameplay reasons rather than whimsical amusement or pure aesthetics. I needed to improve some stats and this was a way of doing it.

Other than the extra tier, raising affection with SSR phantoms is no harder than with the lesser rarities, something that very definitely does not apply to raising their all-important star ratings. I currently have all my Rare phantoms at the highest star rating and fifteen out of nineteen Super Rares maxed as well. 

Of my twenty Super Super Rares, however, only one is even close. The rest have either no stars at all or just one or two. Since the SSRs are meant to be the superior choices for combat and since combat is unavoidable if you want to follow the storyline or progress through either the narrative seasons or the seasonal arenas, you'd obviously want to do all you can to stack your team with SSR phantoms at the highest star rating possible.

Which is, of course, how the developers hope to make their money. There are plenty of ways to speed that process up by spending cash, although none that completely avoid the usual reliance on the goodwill of the RNG gods. 

Since I have no intention of spending a single cent on the game, I have to make do as best I can, which means focusing on one SSR phantom at a time, and since the first such phantom I acquired was the one everyone gets at the start, Ave, that's where I've been directing my attention. 

Ave is a fun companion but she doesn't dress remotely the way I'd ever choose to dress a character of my own. I much prefer the looks of.... well, honestly, pretty much any of the other SSRs. Unfortunately, none of them was remotely ready for action so I was stuck with Ave and her frou-frou blue and white party dress.

That said, it looks better on than I expected. I'm going to wear it for a while, just for a change, but once the novelty wears off I imagine it will go back into the wardrobe, never to be seen again. 

On the plus side, all of the outfits come as separates - top, legs and shoes - and some also have hats. It is possible to mix and match the pieces to come up with a look of your own. There's also a dye system, which I haven't yet attempted to figure out. It is conceivable I might yet find a use for something Ave's wearing. I kind of doubt it but could happen...

I now have wearable versions of the outfits of three of the four phantoms that make up my regular team. You can store several different teams and you can swap individual team members at any time, out of combat, but once again, the more phantoms you try to maintain at full combat readiness, the more its going to cost you, either in cash, time or most probably both. I prefer to stick with the same crew most of the time.

The only regular team member I haven't maxed affection with is Hughes. He has an outfit I like but he's male and although Noah's Heart is very modern in its willingness to allow you to express both the male and female (Although not the non-binary.) aspects of your personality, it's not a game that allows cross-dressing. To dress like Hughes, I'd have to bring out my "Inner Personality" and cosplay as a boy.

Hughes is a Super Rare and I have a good number of other options in that category, some of whom have very attractive outfits. It might be easier to gear one of them up and swap Hughes out, at least for a while. Or I could just gear someone up outside the team and not bother so much about the "wasted" effort and expense.

I'm thinking on it. Noah's Heart remains a very interesting, involving, thought-provoking game, especially if you don't plan on buying your way to success. It's going to be a good while before I'm done with it, I'm happy to say. Although, of course, it might be done with me first. The game does seem to have slipped into a holding pattern of late, with very little in the way of genuine new content and a lot of re-use of existing resources.

I hope it lasts a while longer. I haven't nearly finished playing dress-up yet.