Missing The Boat?

That's me up there, waiting for the boat in Noah's Heart. Again. 

Yep. It's 2023 and I'm still standing at the dock, waiting for the boat to come like it's 1999. That's odd enough in itself but in a game with autoquesting, autorun and automated fast travel? A game with free teleport-by-map? That's a little more than just odd, isn't it? That's wilfully perverse!

So, why am I doing it?

Why am I waiting for the boat? Is it to travel from one continent to the next? Because the boats do that.

No it's not.

Is it to travel to another city along the coast on the same continent? Because the boats do that, too.

No, it's not.

Is it to use the boat as transportation in any way, shape or form? 

Nah. No-one does that. At least I don't think anyone does.

Why would they? I woudn't. If I actually wanted to sail somewhere I didn't already have the teleport location for (Not going to happen because I have all of them.) then I have a boat of my own I could use. Why would I stand on the dock, twiddling the feather in my headband, waiting for the next shceduled departure, when I could just summon my own ship and be on my way?

See? I wouldn't. So why am I there in the picture, waiting for my ship to come in?

Money, of course! And reward! It's a quest. Or, more accurately, an Encounter, which is a kind of pop-up landscape quest.

Someone called Sef tasked me with collecting a package from an incoming ship and delivering it to someone called Grego. Why me? Because I happened to walk past and because I clearly have nothing better to do with my time than run erands for strangers, despite being a leading member of the nation's foremost Mercenary crew, Gale Force, as well as special confidante and helpmeet to kings, princes and powers across the land and despite being currently engaged in trying to stop an extra-dimensional invasion that could bring on the apocalypse. 

So naturally, I dropped everything and ran off to spend seven full minutes of real time, standing on some planking staring out to sea, waiting for a ship to arrive. When it did, there was someone on deck waiting for me. Lucky I decided to take the job. Otherwise I guess he'd have just had to ride the ship back to wherever it came from and take the package with him. And I'd be out 50k and a stack of SSR shards.

Thinking of ships reminds me of trains. Back when I began playing Noah's Heart, one of the first things that impressed me was the extensive and well-implemented railway system. It featured quite prominently in the tutorial. I assumed it would continue to be a significant feature of the game.

It's not, or if it is I must not be finding any of the content that uses it. The great stations with their impressive architecture and detailed schedules provide a reliable transport infrastructure that no-one needs to use. Like the ships, as soon as you have your teleport stations, why would you take public transport?

It's emblematic of Noah's Heart, a game that has far more genuinely good ideas than uses for them. Playing the game is to be exposed over and over again to aesthetically pleasing, narratively satisfying systems and mechanics that then seem to go nowhere. 

Okay, alright. Some of them, the trains and boats for example, do go somewhere - literally. They just don't go anywhere thematically.

I guess it's a lot better for a game to have so many ideas it can afford to throw most of them away, scarcely used, than to have hardly any and try to stretch them thin enough to cover. I'd still like to have some reason to use the ships, trains, balloons and other mechanical contrivances, but even without need, the game's better with them than without.

Then again, even after nearly six months, I can't help feeling there's a lot about the game I still don't understand. Maybe one day I'll find out what I've been missing.

How To Sail A Ship In Noah's Heart or What Does This Button Do?

Fourteen days I waited. Not patiently. Finally, yesterday, I was rewarded. My very own sailboat: Explorer. 

Of course, it's never quite that simple. I claimed it but then I had to find it. It was somewhere in my bags. It took me a while. I was looking for a little picture of a boat, not the head of a Phillips' screwdriver. 

It's actually a picture of the anchor, or at least I think that's what it's meant to be. I had to go back and look at the screenshot I'd taken of the original reward before I could find the damn thing.

"Ordinary wooden sailboat" my ass!

Once I'd safely "Used" it to add it to the "Ship" tab in my Mounts window, I was all set to go. But go where?

Well, to water, obviously. But what kind of water?

I happened to be standing in sight of a decent-sized river so that's where I started. Or tried to start.

It's always the same problem, whenever I get my first ship in a game. I'm never quite sure how I'm supposed to get it into the water. Or sail it, when I do.

In most games you usually do at least get some kind of instructions. Not this time. The web was no help, either. It never is with this game.

You can take a ship to water but you can't make it float, it seems. Not in a river, anyway. I wandered up and down the bank, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did.

Maybe the water wasn't deep enough or the river wide enough. Perhaps I ought to try a lake.

I gave it a go. Didn't work either. I never really thought it would, if I'm honest. I only tried because I pressed the wrong icon on the map trying to go to the coast and ended up next to a lake instead.

On to the sea, then. Or, rather, into the sea. I've played other games where you have to be in the water to spawn the ship so I thought that might be the trick. I jumped off a cliff to give it a try. That didn't work either.

I was treading water for a while, trying a few things out. You can swim in Noah's Heart, just not very far. I seem to remember it was like that in Genshin Impact, too. You start to lose hit points after about thirty seconds and then it's get to shore or drown. 

I didn't make it as far as the shore. I drowned about ten meters short.

 

Fortunately, there doesn't seem to be much of a penalty for dying although I'm no expert on death in Noah's Heart. I'm Level 75 now and I believe I've only died in combat once, maybe twice, outside of PvP. Never in the open world. I don't think there is anything in the open world that can kill a player, other than falling damage and drowning. 

I've drowned a couple of times, though. All that happens is you revive back in town or at the nearest revival spot. This time, once I'd respawned, I checked the map and ported again - to a port.

And that turned out to be the answer. It seems ships can only be launched from structures specifically designed to launch ships. Who'd have thought?  

 

It's quite obvious, when you see it. As soon as you approach the harbor, the icon that was previously either a steering wheel or a horse's head (Your vehicle or your mount.) changes to a sailboat. Click on it in the port and you'll be told you're too far away but move to the correct spot on the pier and you can summon your ship.

It appears alongside, bobbing gently on the swell. It's a solid object, physically present in the world. You can jump on board and walk around it just as you can on the regular ships that ply their way from port to port in classic mmorpg style.

So, now you have your ship afloat. How do you sail it?

It took me a while to figure that out, too. In the end, it turned out to be a very straightforward process but as usual there's nothing to explain how it works. It's trial and error all the way.

Again, it's a very literal implementation. The Explorer has a large wheelhouse at the stern. If you stand in front of it, an icon appears, shaped like a ship's wheel. Click on it and your character lifts her arms and takes the helm. 

At that point, several control icons also appear on the HUD: Set Sail, Release Anchor, Back, Speed and Free. Once again, it's time to experiment.

Set Sail does exactly what you'd expect. It sets the boat in motion. If you just press that and nothing else you travel at a steady 11 knots per hour in the direction you're facing. 

You can steer the ship using WAD. You can't sail backwards so forget about S.

Once you're under way, two other icons appear: Speed Up and Decelerate. Why they didn't go for Speed Up and Slow Down or Accelerate and Decelerate you'd have to ask whatever half-literate intern does the translations. Fortunately the meaning is clear enough.

The Speed icon is a meter. It tells you how fast you're going. This is handy because it lets you see that speeding up and slowing down both have discrete settings. You'd never know otherwise.

Speed Up goes from zero to 34 in one press (or from 11 to 34 if you're already at the default cruising speed.) A second press takes you from 34 to 44, which is as fast as Explorer can go.

 

Decelerate takes you back from 44 to 38, then from 38 to 11, then from 11 to zero. 

Release Anchor, contrary to what I expected, means Drop Anchor. I though it meant haul the anchor up so you can get going but it's the exact opposite. 

Explorer acts like it has inertia but no momentum. Changing direction takes time but stopping doesn't, so if you want to stop suddenly you don't need to decelerate. You can just hit Release Anchor and you'll stop immediately. No whiplash. No being hurled over the wheelhouse into the ocean.

That just leaves Back and Free. Anyone want to guess?

Free changes the camera controls. It's easy to figure that much  out. The icon is a picture of a camera. What it does to the camera, that's harder to fathom. I played around with it for a while but I couldn't see any difference other than the icon changes from Free to Lock when you click it. 

Finally, I opened the Photo function, which is available while sailing, and my boat merrily sailed off into the distance while the camera's PoV stayed where it was. It's the same Lock/Unlock function that Photo already offers. Why it's also on the sailing controls I have no idea.

As for Back, what that does I have no idea. Nothing, as far as I can tell.

 

Those are the controls. Once you figure them out, they work very well. I sailed my ship from Port Utu in Cannan Mountains out into the Sea of Dawn. After a minute or two, several islands appeared on the horizon. I made for the nearest but as I approached I realised I had no idea how to land.

I solved that problem pretty easily. I just ran the Explorer close to shore, dropped anchor, let go the wheel and jumped into the sea. It wasn't far to swim. I didn't drown this time. 

I spent some time exploring the island. Quite profitably as it turned out. I found a Grand Chest and several other smaller chests. Eventually I came back to where I'd left my ship. It had gone.

Obviously, I knew it hadn't gone gone. This isn't Valheim. Nothing had come along and smashed it up and left fragments of wood floating on the surface with all the nails on the bottom of the sea. It had just despawned, like the other mounts, as soon as I'd moved a certain distance away.

Luckily, there happened to be a small harbor on the far side of the island so I was able to re-summon my ship. I assume if there hadn't I'd have had to use the map to port to somewhere that did have the necessary facilities, which would be very inconvenient if you were out exploring new islands in the deep ocean.

And there are plenty of them. I saw half a dozen small ones and one very large one in the relatively short time I was at sea. I landed on the big one, which turned out to be Innis Volcano, an area meant for Level 85 and above, as I found out when it wouldn't let me open the teleport because I was too low.

It looked like an interesting place. I look forward to exploring it properly when I'm big enough.

It was getting late by then so I decided to camp out at the docks so I could carry on next day. I've always enjoyed sailing in mmorpgs since I got my first real taste of it in Vanguard. 

The implementation in Noah's Heart isn't the slickest I've seen but it's pretty good. The boat handles reasonably well, although the position my character has to stand in surely must get really uncomfortable for her after a while.

There's some of the jankiness others have complained of elsewhere in the game - the PoV jumps about quite a bit and getting the wheel icon to appear sometimes takes a bit of shuffling back and forth around the deck but it's all pretty much on a par with most boats I've sailed in games like this. They're always a little jittery.

I'll take all of those minor flaws and more just to be out on the open sea again, especially when, for once, it's a genuinely interesting, content-rich environment. There are said to be hundreds of islands and I can easily believe it. As soon as I got out of port I could see new places to explore in every direction.

Whether I'll get to many of them is another question. I already have plenty to do in the game. The call of the open sea is strong, though, and Explorer is a very fine vessel. I'm proud to be her captain and I look forward to seeing where the wind takes us.

Motorcycles And Mounts In Noah's Heart

Like my bike? I got it tonight. It didn't cost me anything but time. 

Thirty days, it was. Thirty days, logging in. Just that.

Noah's Heart launched on July 28. I logged in for the first time on July 29. Thirty days ago, exactly. I haven't missed a day.

The thing is, I haven't been logging in just to get the bike. I wanted the bike, yes, but I was logging in because I wanted to play the game. The bike was just a nice bonus for something I was doing anyway.

I do like a motorcycle in an mmorpg. I think this is my third. I had one in City of Steam and another in The Secret World. Or Secret World Legends. Either or both. 

I'm not much of a biker in real life. I've been on a motorcycle just  a handful of times, riding pillion back when I was in my teens. I was a bad passenger. I leant the wrong way. 

I never even thought about getting a motorbike of my own but if there's the chance to own one in a game I'm always interested. When it rains in games I don't get wet and if I fall off I don't go to hospital. Or the morgue.

My bike in Noah's Heart has a name. That's a first, I think. It's called Sky Devourer, which kind of suggests maybe it can fly. I hope it can fly. A flying bike would be all kinds of cool.

There's a page of stats for my bike. There's even a diagram. 

I understand the stats. I don't understand the diagram.

I don't need to understand any of it to ride the thing, fortunately. As soon as I got it I took it for a spin.

It handles nicely enough. Mounts in Noah's Heart have some inertia but not, thank god, anything like in Guild Wars 2. Just enough to feel it, not enough to make you throw up.

The Sky Devourer makes a somewhat throaty noise setting off but sounds more like a lawnmower when it gets going. Or a wasp trapped in a Coke can. It's okay. I've heard worse.

I thought I'd see them everywhere now the thirty days are up but so far I've only seen one other. Then again, I've only been on for a few minutes, just long enough to take the shots to write the post.

I'd like to write something in a little more detail about mounts generally in the game. There are four types: horses, mounts, vehicles and ships. 

Horses come in many kinds. They roam around in the wild. You need a lasso to catch them, then you have to play a mini-game to tame them. It's not hard. 

You can feed them and level them up and there's a whole breeding deal involving bloodlines and who knows what-all. I haven't gotten into it yet. I probably won't. Animal husbandry's not really my thing.

Mounts are any riding animal not a horse. There are three I know of and two of those are just different colors of Llama. The other's a wolf. 

The llamas can be bought in stores. One's a store I don't even know how to see, the other's in a store that uses a currency I don't know how to get. And it's not listed there anyway. I've seen people riding them, though, so someone's worked out how to get them.

The llamas make some really annoying noises. I can hear them if they're nearby when I'm crafting in town. I wouldn't want one even if I knew how to get one. 

Actually, I do know how to get one. Or rather, I do now. After I wrote that I didn't I went back into the game and clicked on the icon that says Treasure Record, under "Obtain by purchasing in Adventure Store" and it took me to the shop.

It isn't in the Adventure Store at all. There is no Adventure Store except when the translation says there is. There is a "Treasure Record", though. It's a sub-department of Trading Port. 

The llama costs 20,000 Illusion Crystals. They look like pink stars. You get them from "Open World Adventure Mode" or by completing "Area Missions". I must have done that because I have 3001 of them. Maybe one day I'll have enough to buy a llama.

I don't want to buy a llama, though. I would like the wolf. The wolf is called Forest Wolf and it you get it from an event. It doesn't say which event, even if you click on the icon that says "Event". 

If you click on the icon that says "Rare Boutique", though, the other way you can get the wolf, it takes you to a sub-department of Treasure Store called Trendy House. There's no wolf there.

This is why I am not writing any guides to Noah's Heart. It's probably why no-one is. I imagine most people find it frustrating, infuriating even. To me it's one of the reasons I'm so wrapped up in the game. It's more like being in a foreign country than most mmorpgs and I enjoy it.

I would like to figure out where to get the wolf some day, all the same. Also, I'd really like to get the Flashing Sword, which is a car that looks something like a cross between a Bugatti and a tiger shark. 

The Flashing Sword is one of the Vehicles. The other two are the bike I'm riding and another bike, called The Terminator. There are no helpful icons to tell you how to get any or them. Maybe they'll also be login rewards one day.

The final category is Ships and there are just two of those right now. One is Explorer, "an ordinary, wooden sailboat" although it looks far from ordinary. It's "capable of handling long-distance voyages".

If I log in every day for the next nine days I'll have Explorer. It takes fourteen logins and I've done five already. I want it more than I wanted Sky Devourer so I will get it. There is no doubt.

I would love to get the other ship, too. It's called Heart of Ocean, it's "the flagship vessel of the Gulf Stream Royal Guard" and although it's much slower than explorer its a lot bigger and tougher. I don't know how dangerous sailing the seas is going to be but I don't imagine ships would  need hit points if there was nothing to worry about.

This has all run on rather longer than I expected. I was only going to post a few pictures of my bike. I didn't even do that. Let's have one now.

 Never mind. I learned a lot.

What? You thought I knew this stuff already? Nope. Most of what I know about Noah's Heart I find out as I write these posts.

If I didn't have a blog I probably wouldn't know anything at all.

Under The Sea

For once, when I sat down to write today's post I had something specific in mind. Of course, that meant I ended up writing about something else entirely. I often don't know what I'm going to say until I hear myself say it and it's not much different when I write.

Rather than forget about the post I'd originally intended or even save it for tomorrow, I thought I'd just get on and do it. So here it is. Two posts in one day. Blame Valheim.

The original theme was going to be continual discovery and the way not looking stuff up on the interweb keeps everything fresh. You can see that's how the original post starts out. Where it was heading, though, was towards a couple of things you could almost call tips. Or spoilers.

I'm sure anyone who's been reading the wiki or following game guides will know both of these already but I discovered them for myself and I'm very happy I did. If anyone reading this wants to do the same, I guess they'd better leave and maybe come back later, when they feel they've seen and done it all.

I hope no-one does. Leave, that is, not come back later. Personally, I've set my parameters so that things I read on other people's Valheim blogs count the same as discovering them for myself in game but those are just house rules. Everyone makes their own.

Enough with the spoiler alerts. And anyway, the first isn't even a spoiler. It's a genuine tip.

How To Recover Iron Nails From The Sea Bed When Your Longship Sinks (Again)

Remember when my longship mysteriously sank? Well, it happened again only this time I heard it. Didn't see it, just heard it.

I was inside my hut on the new, northern island. I'd just woken up and I know my ship was there because I'd seen the mast tip bobbing about through a gap in the wall.

For some reason I decided to tab out and check Feedly. Don't know why. There was a new post up at TAGN and I was halfway through it when I heard a horrendous crash. I tabbed back and ran outside, expecting to see a troll or worse but there was nothing. Nothing but some wreckage floating on the calm waters.

My longship had self-destructed. I have no idea why. There were no creatures nearby. No rocks for it to strike. There wasn't a breath of wind. It was particularly strange since I'd been away from that ship for several game days and it had apparently been floating there perfectly happily the whole time. I find it suspicious that both sinkings have happened right after I've come back home from a long trip and had a good night's rest.

I had a portal right there so I wasn't stranded and the hold of the boat had been all but empty but I was cross about losing another hundred iron nails. This time, though, the ship has gone down closer to the shore. I wondered if I might be able to salvage them.

I waded out a ways and there were the nails. I could see them on the sea bed. It looked like they were about ten feet down in crystal clear water. I tried swimming over them and pressing "F" (I changed the default "E" key to "F", which is what I use in every game) but no joy. 

And then I had an idea. What if I raised the land with the hoe? I didn't figure I could drain a whole bay but I'd noticed when I'd been mining that fixed objects drop to a new level when whatever's supporting them gives way. I wondered if that might work the other way around.

To cut to the chase, it does! It took me a good few stacks of stone (there are no rocks left standing a hundred meters in any direction from my hut) but I was able to build a breakwater out to the spot. I was trying to work out whether it was feasible to encircle the entire area and drain it (probably not - water seems to have a set level) when I had the inspiration to target the nails and raise the land directly beneath them.

At first I thought I'd just buried them. Or, worse, maybe they'd been destroyed. They certainly disappeared. I carried on building my breakwater with a vague plan of filling the whole area then mining down to where the nails had last been seen. And then I happened to open my inventory to get something and there were my nails!

There hadn't been a message or if there had I'd missed it but when I'd raised the land beneath them they must have been shunted upwards into range and I'd auto-looted them. So things can be recovered from the sea bed after all.

I wouldn't like to try it more than a few yards from land. You'd need boatloads of stone if it would even work. Close to shore, though, it can definitely be done because I've done it.

Now all I need to find out is why the damn longships keep sinking in the first place. 

Why You Should Never Build A House On The Back Of  A Giant Turtle

I didn't actually do it. I only thought about it. Luckily I found out why it was a bad idea before I got the workbench out.

There was this island up the coast from my castle. I'd been looking at it every time I passed by. It had a lovely, round, domed shape, a few trees here and there and some lumpy things down low that I couldn't quite make out from the shore. Tin nodes, maybe.

Every time I saw it I thought about what a fine spot it would be to build something. Steep enough so the waves wouldn't come over the top, small enough that no annoying wildlife could live there, far enough out that trolls couldn't wade close enough to lob rocks. I was imagining building maybe a lighthouse or a watchtower.

I had to make a run up the coast by ship so when I came near to the cute little island I couldn't resist pulling in for a better look. As I got close enough to see them properly I realized the "tin nodes" were giant limpets. Or maybe barnacles.

Hmm. A suspiciously regular-shaped dome-like island with an oddly smooth surface covered in barnacles. What does that suggest to you?

Giant turtle!

I didn't really think it was a giant turtle, of course. I've played games where there are giant turtles. There's one in both EverQuest and EverQuest II for a start.  It's a fantasy trope but is it Norse fantasy? Is it really? 

No, I don't think it is. So I moored the ship and jumped out to take a look. Which was when I discovered the limpets were indeed barnacles. And you could interact with them. 

I wasn't sure quite how to interact. Pressing "F" did nothing so they weren't a food you could gather. Maybe you could break them up with the pick?

Yes, it turns out in Valheim you can mine abyssal barnacles with a pickaxe and if you do what you get is chitin. As soon as I chipped off a chunk some recipes popped up. They vanished too fast to read although I spotted the word "Harpoon" before they disappeared. 

Gleefully, I began hacking away at every barnacle I could see. I'd mined about twenty-five chunks of chitin when the ground began to shake. There was a grinding noise, too. I looked up. I knew it. 

Told you so! Giant turtle!

I dithered for a second. There were several more barnacles waiting to be mined. Nothing seemed to be happening now so I brought the pick down on another shell. 

Oh, boy! That did it. The whole island began to vibrate. Great gouts of spray appeared all around the edge. I forgot all about the chitin. I sprinted for my ship and leapt aboard. Lucky for me it hadn't drifted far from the spot where I'd left it.

I stood on the deck wondering whether I ought to grab the tiller and get the hell out of there before the turtle turned round. I don't know what they eat but it was certain sure this one was big enough to eat me and my ship if it had a mind to.

Fortunately for me, it seemed all the beast wanted to do was get away from the annoying hammering on the outside of its shell. In a series of titanic heaves the island submerged. In a few moments all that was left was calm, clear water. 

As I sailed away I thought what a good thing it was I'd not come with a whole load of stone, wood and iron to build my island getaway. I carried on up the coast, counting my blessings. And my chitin.

I still haven't found out what to do with it. It doesn't go in the smelter. I can't work it with the hammer or the workbench or the forge. I even tried the stonecutter but no dice. Maybe there's another piece of workshop equipment I haven't discovered yet.

Could be. In Valheim, there's always something new to find.

Which Way To Kalimdor? : WoW

After reading the helpful suggestions in the comments section the directions given by Netherlands and Tyler jogged my memory. I remembered taking the boat from Menethil Harbor although where it might have been going was another question.

My recollections of setting sail from Booty Bay were a lot clearer. I was reasonably sure that ship came to land somewhere off the Barrens Coast.

Looking at the map showed Invasions taking place in Northern Barrens and Tanaris. I was in Dun Morogh at the time, closer to Menethil than Booty Bay. I spoke to the Griffin Master and took a catbird across Wetlands.

Since The Cataclysm I've scarcely set foot outside of the various racial starting areas. I don't have a picture of what's changed or how. Arriving at Menethil I found the town flooded but the docks still seemed to be in operation.

Typically, the only ship in sight pulled away from the pier just as I arrived. I hopped on my griffin and tried to catch it up but it outpaced me and vanished. I turned back to the docks, where a bunch of pirates were standing on the dockside, staring morosely at the masts of a sunken ship poking out of the water.

I listened to them talking among themselves for a while. Then I left them to it and settled down to wait. It was only a few minutes before the big ship returned. I boarded it and waited some more. I was the only passenger, which should have set off warning bells, but I was just happy to be on board and I didn't think anything of it.

The captain didn't hang around. In a couple of minutes we were under way. To Northrend.

In retrospect I probably should have guessed the destination from the appearance of the vessel. Like the gnomish icebreaker that used to ply the waves between North Ro and Iceclad Ocean, this was a ship clearly designed for northern waters.

The trip was a scenic one, with the great cliffs looming above as the captain navigated a narrow channel between. I stood at the rail and watched as we maneuvered alongside the dock of a settlement. I made a mental note to return when the Burning Legion retire to lick their wounds or whatever bested demons do. Then I let the boat carry me back to Menethil.

Standing once again in the hammering rain it occurred to me that the wreckage of the "pirate" ship in the harbor might well be all that remained of the old ferry to Kalimdor. Certainly it seemed no other ship was going to come.

I squelched back through the rain to the Griffin Master and took up the reins once again, this time for Booty Bay. It was a long flight but at least it gave me the chance to dry out.

As the griffin swooped down over the planks and rigging of the goblin city I felt a rush of nostalgia. I'd spent many lively hours running up and down the confusing ramps, racing in and out of huts, doing ...something. I can't quite remember what. I know I did a lot of it, though.

This time the deck of the goblin-crewed ship was crowded with adventurers, all waiting impatiently astride their motley mounts for the journey to begin. We didn't have long to wait. The ship sailed promptly, there was a flash of the map and within just a minute or two we came in sight of the ramshackle port of Ratchet.

No-one waited for the boat to dock. With a flurry of wings and scales the whole contigent of passengers took to the air, myself among them. The lurid green sky-rent that told of demonic invasion was all the signpost we needed.

So, now I know how to get to Kalimdor. It's not difficult but it does take a while. The views are stunning so it's time well spent, in a way. You certainly can't fault the worldliness. Still, and even though my forty-year old self would be having conniptions at the thought of the lazy bum I've become, I have to say that I'd take GW2's waypoints or even EQ2's bells if they were offered.

Anyway, I've now sampled all six invasion sites and I can put them in order of preference according to how well-balanced they are between fun and profit. The running order, from least enjoyable to most enjoyable, from an Alliance perspective:

Hillsbrad Foothills - a pain to get to from anywhere; awkward to fight among the buildings; graveyard annoyingly far away; Horde NPCs re-agro soon after event ends and kill you if you hang around sorting your bags.

Azshara - A long flight; annoying geography; disturbingly close to Ogrimmar; the Goblin Trade Prince's "encouragement" is predictably infuriating.

Dun Morogh - Very easy to get to, especially when you have your characters bound in Ironforge like me; fighting in the village of Kharanos is claustrophobic and the NPC chatter is distracting; trees get in the way in phase two; dwarven exhortations can be an acquired taste, especially with the Brigadoon Touring Company accents.

Westfall - A very short flight from Dun Morogh, making these a good pair to do in succession; reasonably open fighting area; good options to solo demons in phase two.

Northern Barrens - Easy access from Ratchet; good, flat, open landscape makes it easy to see and get to bosses; Crossroads is an iconic destination and defending it feels "important" (that might just be me...)

Tanaris - Straightforward and fairly quick trip from Crossroads making them a good pair; by far the best area to kill bosses in phase two because of excellent line of sight and very flat, uncluttered desert landscape; Gadgetzan is a full service hub with a bank; goblin yelling is funny.

Having finally got all this straight no doubt it will all change again in today's update as we go into the final week. Whatever, I'm having fun!

A Tall Ship's Tale : Black Desert

Much of the conversation over Black Desert Online has focused on systems and processes. From the arcane and convoluted crafting to the controversial cash shop, to the conflicts between the needs and desires of PvP and PvE players, to the "always online" demands of the afk progression mechanics, BDO has generated controversy and confusion in equal measure.

With all that going on it's easy to forget that this is still an explorer's game par excellence. If you come to Black Desert with an explorer's heart there's no need to know or care about any of these things. From the moment you step out into the world there is quite literally nothing to stop you putting foot to road and heading for the horizon.

Yesterday I had the finest, simplest, open-world adventure I've had for a very long time. It took me all the way back to the earliest days of EverQuest, when I stood at the harbor in Butcherblock, staring at the sea, waiting for my first ever imaginary boat trip.

It all goes back a few days to when I first arrived in the great port city of Altinova. I'd climbed the hills at the back of the town, getting my bearings and my breath after a dizzying jaunt through the red clay mayhem of the souks and alleyways below. Looking out across the rooftops to the docks I saw a square-rigged galleon at the wharf, by far the biggest ship I'd seen.

As I watched, it pulled away from the pier, turned awkwardly and headed out to sea. I scrambled down the hillside and raced through the teeming streets to the waterfront to where the great ship had been.

For half an hour or more I waited there for another seagoing vessel to arrive. I passed the time fishing. My bags filled and I sold the catch to the Trade Manager up the hill. My rod broke. No ship appeared. Eventually I gave up waiting and left.

Yesterday I was in Altinova again when history repeated itself. I was looking down from the heights when I saw the ship, only this time it was just coming in to port. I forgot my plans and sprinted for the dock. This time I made it.

I was the only one waiting to board when the ship pulled alongside the harbor wall. When it set sail again just a few minutes later I was still alone. There were no passengers but me. There was no crew. There didn't even seem to be a captain. And yet the ship sailed.

There I was, the lone passenger on a ghost ship. The sun was going down. Of course it was. It's always coming on night when I do anything in Black Desert or so it seems. I tried to take some shots of the ship but the light was poor and the vessel too large for the frame so after a few minutes I settled down to watch the waves roll by.

And they rolled. And they rolled. And they rolled. I had no idea where the ship was heading. It seemed to be making for the deep ocean. Opening the map after a few minutes it looked as though we might be bound for Iliya Island.

That would be some journey from Eastern Mediah but it would have been handy for me. I could check up on my shipyard there, see my workers were settled, have a rummage around my storage. But Iliya slipped past to starboard and we sailed on into the night.

By this time we'd been afloat for ten minutes or so. I wondered if we might be heading to Velia, which would make for a trip of at least twenty minutes. We were not.

Velia slid by to port. I looked at the map again. Where else was there? There were islands, of course. A lot of islands. Some of them even had names. For a time we appeared to be heading directly for a middling sized isle but at the last moment we rounded its southernmost tip and on we sailed.

It was light again by this time. We were cutting along within sight of land but but the mists had come down to hide the shore. Tantalizing glimpses of towers and walls drifted in and out of view.

I paced the deck from prow to stern, trying to get a clear line of sight. Gingerly I hoisted myself onto the spars and edged along the rails. I was terrified of slipping, falling into the dark ocean. I knew that if I had to swim I'd drown before ever I reached land.

Opening the map once again it was hard to believe just how far the ship had traveled. We had been, quite literally, in uncharted waters almost from the start but for a good while now we were running past unmapped land. Whatever country this was to the lee it was one I'd never seen before.

By now I'd been on the ship for well over half an hour. About the only place I could think of that might be our destination port would be Calpheon. The great city of the West is inland but it stands on a major river. I hadn't noticed a harbor when I was there but then I hadn't looked for one.

After the best part of forty-five minutes, with the sun up and full daylight clearing the fog, finally the ship turned for the shore. A great lighthouse tower on a promontory heralded a major port. A port I had no idea existed.

The ship nudged alongside the planks of the dock of a busy fishing port, with granite fisherman's cottages rising up the hillside towards impressive public buildings and churches above. Wide, sandy beaches swept away to the north. A beached whale lay on the sands, surrounded by curious Shai.

Walking the wet, early morning streets I learned the name: Epheria Port. Standing high on the cliffs that backed the weather-worn, tiled roofs I watched the sails of the ghost-ship shrink to the horizon, heading back to warmer waters once again.

For almost an hour all I'd done was board a ship and wait for the voyage to end. In the terms of the game my character did not progress by any measurable means. No skills increased, no loot dropped, no quests completed, no achievements accrued. There were no rewards, material, statistical or nominal.

It was the best adventure I'd had for a long time. Something I'll remember the way I remember those first trips across the Ocean of Tears.

It was a mighty long hike back to Altinova, where I left my horse, though. I'll tell you that for nothing!