Level 76 Achieved

Well, I have arrived.  My wife managed to beat me there by a good two weeks.

The tasks required to get to level 76 were:

• Earn 38 Platinum medals
• Defeat 100 Team GO Rocket Grunts
• Explore 300 km
• Catch 200 Pokemon in a single day

I finished three out of four of those before her.  But then there was the platinum medal task.  I have a whole post about platinum medals and my strategy for them.

I started out with 35 platinum medals when we hit level 75, while my wife had 38 already.  So she was set.  Eventually the three I ended up earning for the level were:

• Unown – 28 of 28 Unown caught
• Collector – 50,000 Pokemon caught
• Hero – 2,000 Team Go Rocket members defeated

On this past Saturday… so I did actually level up in August, but I’ll mark the date from this blog post… I was finally down to six Team Rocket Go grunts to defeat.  While we were out running errands I managed to find enough to finish off the medal.

Hero – 2,000 Team Go Rocket members defeated

When that medal landed it was time to level up.  Here is my stats page summarizing what I managed while level 75.

Level 75 stats as I hit Level 76

I caught 4,687 Pokemon.  That feels like a lot.  Below I’ll get to why that number was that big.

I also visited 2,387 Pokestops and walked 349km.

That completed, it is time to look at what getting to level 77 is going to take.

As has been the case so far since level 70, I already have more than enough experience to get there.

The xp requirement for level 77 done already

That just leaves the tasks, and the tasks are always what takes all the time.

The tasks required for level 77

Spelling those out for later re-use, they are:

• Earn 41 Platinum medals
• Power up 7 Pokemon to their max CP
• Win 100 Max Battles
• Make 10 trades with Pokemon caught at least 300km apart

Taking those from the bottom up, making those 10 trades… will probably be easy enough.  My wife and I can trade at need and I’ll be in LA later this month… more than 300km away… so I just need to catch some Pokemon there and remember to keep them for trades.  Easy.

I’m already one in since I took that screenshot using the new remote trade option with somebody from Japan on my friends list.  I could probably get there that was as well.

Winning 100 Max Battles… is very doable.  The only impediment is that my wife doesn’t like Max Battles and has held a position of refusing to do them lest she be promoting a feature she does not like.

But she will go along with the plan to get to level 77.  We have a Max Battle location just two blocks from our house.  We will get it done.

Powering 7 Pokemon up to their max CP, or combat power… that will take some work, on my part at least.  My wife is already done on that front.  I had 4 Pokemon set to go, but need to find 3 more to get there.  I have a few close… within 40 XL Candies… but that is still going to take some effort.

Then, finally, there are three more platinum medals to earn.  These are my top three contenders for the next level.

• For Level 77
  1. Mega Evolution Guru – 41 of 46 different species mega evolved
  2. Rail Staff – 2,430 of 2,500 steel type caught
  3. Skier – 2,403 of 2,500 ice type caught

This coming weekend there is a mega evolution event.  If my wife and I can go out and get seven more mega evolutions set, we’ll both have this one done.  (I only need five, but I will of course help her get her medal as well.)

Meanwhile, thanks to some feedback on my post about my platinum medal journey, I have seriously boosted up my count for steel and ice types.  The trick I learned is that catching isn’t all that counts.  If, for example, you catch a steel type, that gets you one more on the count… but if you then evolve it, it counts again.  And then if you trade for a steel type, that also counts.

I started doing this as soon as I learned about it, which is likely why my total Pokemon caught is much higher for my level 75 time than previous levels.  “Caught” does not, strictly speaking, mean “caught” it seems.  Evolved or traded Pokemon count as well.

If I get those three platinum medals I will still need 9 more to get the 50 total needed for level 80.  Here is is my tentative medal plan.

• The Path to Level 80
  1. Cameraman – 373 of 400 snapshot encounters
  2. Wayfarer – 529 out of 1,500 Wayfarer agreements
  3. Backpacker – 39,945 of 50,000 Pokestops visited
  4. Berry Master – 13,253 of 15,000 berries fed at gyms
  5. Great League Veteran – 366 of 1,000 victories needed
  6. Expert Navigator – 240 of 600 routes completed
  7. Jumbo Pokemon Collector – 232 of 500 XXL Pokemon caught
  8. Tiny Pokemon Collector – 189 of 500 XXS Pokemon caught
  9. Dragon Tamer – 1,305 of 2,500 dragon type caught

The tiny, jumbo, and dragon type medals feel doable if only because of the evolve/trade thing.  My wife and I are now tagging any XXS or XXL Pokemon we catch and trading them nightly.

The rest… well, they will take time.  I wouldn’t mind if Scopely released a few more Pokemon to so we could finish the five incomplete regional Pokedex medals.  We will have to see how that works out.

So it is onward to level 77!

Now up Lethar, named for Lethar the Black, the dragon boss of the Ashengate North. (thanks Allakhazam)  The server is notable for opening up with The Serpent’s Spine expansion, which is where that raid is located.

The Lethar Server Awaits

Starting with The Serpent’s Spine expansion is interesting on a few points.

First, on September 19th we will arrive at the 20th anniversary of the launch of the expansion.  There is potentially a nostalgia element to the whole thing… if being the 12th expansion is at all special or anything.  Out of a pack of more than 30 expansions at this point standing out takes some work.

Second, and no doubt more importantly, The Serpent’s Spine was an attempt by the EverQuest team to adapt to the brand new world ushered in by World of Warcraft where people expected something of a guided experience in leveling through an MMORPG.

I am going to quote the Wikipedia entry about the expansion for context:

The Serpent’s Spine was released as the twelfth expansion on September 19, 2006. New features include new zones, a new player race known as the “Drakkin”, an attainable player level of 75, as well as new spells and alternate advancements.

The expansion was added with the aims of making soloing (playing EverQuest alone rather than as part of a larger group) a more viable option. This was done through the addition of a new town, home of the newly added Drakkin race, which provides various tasks for all levels of game play to gain experience, gear, and money. The advertisements for The Serpent’s Spine stated that one could go from level one to level 75 without a group or exploring any of the previously existing locations in the game simply through completion of these newly added tasks.

The Serpent’s Spine expansion also added the rest feature, allowing players who have been out of combat for a short period of time to regenerate mana and health at a drastically increased rate. This effect was added to aid those soloing, as well as to solve complaints about down time or time spent meditating to regenerate lost mana.

So you could go from a fresh character to the then level cap in a whole series of new zones with quest chains and a storyline to guide you along.

It was something of a massive undertaking and that the team had the resources to basically make an all new level 1 to 75 experience from scratch says something.

Granted, it was a bit dodgy in places, and it wasn’t as solo as they might have suggested… think more the problems of soloing in Stranglethorn Vale than the happy path of Elwynn Forest… but it could be done, and all the more so if you chose the right class or could pair up with somebody.  A warrior/cleric duo could cut a serious path through things.

I have been wondering when/if this sort of TLP might land.  This doesn’t target the hardcore 1999 nostalgia base, but it is a different and viable way to play the game.

Thirdly, that they are going with TSS as the opening is also a bit of a blog history moment for me as the expansion launched seven days after I started the site, so both will be 20 years old this month.  It was the first new EverQuest expansion I wrote about.

I even played some of the expansion back in November of 2006 and have a few posts in what now feels like a very rough approximation of my current writing style, like the cave man version of me banging pixels together.  So you can go back and laugh at some of my early work.

• Nov 19, 2006 – Crescent Reach – Low Level Drops
• Nov 18, 2006 – Crescent Reach – Level 10 to 15 Quests
• Nov 13, 2006 – Thoughts After a Week in The Serpent’s Spine
• Nov 11, 2006 – Crescent Reach Pumas & Truffles
• Nov 10, 2006 – Crescent Reach – Level 5 to 10 Quests
• Nov 8, 2006 – Signs of the Hollow
• Nov 7, 2006 – Crescent Reach – First Quests
• Nov 5, 2006 – Mobhunter – The Serpent’s Spine Review
• Nov 5, 2006 – EverQuest – Drakkin Dreamin’

The screen shots are all gone because I hosted them at Image Shack, which is still around but which doesn’t host for free anymore.  I could probably find them on an old drive… but that would require effort.

TSS still feels like “the new stuff” in EverQuest to me despite being 20 years old.  But I suppose everything after Ruins of Kunark feels like “the new stuff” to me.  The distortion of time as you age is strange.

Finally, it feels to me like there is some tension between this TLP launch and EverQuest Legends.

And yes, there is undoubtedly going to be some tension between EQL and any TLP launch as both are targeting the same nostalgic installed base of past players and those interested in the history of the genre.

But TSS was also billed as a new way to play EverQuest compared to the old days of sitting out in front of Freeport or Qeynos and kicking snakes and skeletons.  EQL also offers an alternative to the original, though through mechanics rather than zone and quest design.

They are unlikely to be in direct competition, but who knows?  I do wonder if there could be an EQL/TSS cross over episode in some future version of the game?

Well, as the launch announcement for the Lethar server says, “Log in today for a good time!”

“Good times” not guranteed, your mileage may vary, fun may shrink during shipping, checks will not be honored, void where prohibited by law.

I will be interested to see if TSS has as much (or as little) draw as it did back in 2006.  I honestly have no idea how well it did back then.  And I didn’t totally copy and paste the entire original Friday Bullet Points mention of this server to use as the core of this post.  I only copied MOST of it, and then filled in some more.  Recycling is good for the environment.

Also, back when I first posted about the server, the launch date was August 26th.  I guess I missed it slipping to August 31st somewhere along the line… and launching on a Monday is strange as well.  I don’t know.  I am sure there is a story in there somewhere.

Related:

• Daybreak – July 2026 Producer’s Letter
• Daybreak – Lethar Launch Announcement
• Daybreak – Lethar Rule sets FAQ

Blaugust is coming to a close today and soon we’ll be down to just the counting.  I managed to over fulfill my quota by just enough to be a hero worker without straying into the Stakhanovite zone.  No need to go over by too much.  35 posts seemed sufficient.

Blaugust 2026

I didn’t do too much specifically about Blaugust.  But that is my normal routine.  I was going to post every day in August anyway.  I did, however, write a first cut, brief history of Blaugust.

Now that the event is winding down, if you too participated in Blaugust you can help out with the final accounting by filling out the exit survey and indicating how many posts you made during the event.

Back to the blog, this is also the 240th month in review post.  Or should be.  The implication of that is we’re headed into some sort of double digit anniversary or something next month.  Stay tuned.  Also, that should have probably been in the “coming up” section, but by the time I get to the far end of the post I will probably have forgotten about this and will simply repeat myself there.

I don’t have much for the site, but I did fish a pretty good comment out of the spam filter a couple weeks back.  Take a look at this:

Do you want to be a member of the great Illuminati and start living the life you’ve dreamt about? also be popular among others, have riches and fame, I was sent by the Freemason high chief to bring 66 members into the Illuminati, I have gotten 40, so we looking for 26 being,, try and be among the twenty-six people to be rich and famous.

That’s right, I’ve been invited to join the Illuminati.  Pretty cool, huh?  I wasn’t aware that they had merged with the Freemasons, or that they used gmail, or had a WhatsApp account with a Houston phone number, but it is tough times for everybody these days, and even secret societies are not immune I guess.

One Year Ago

It was Blaugust once more, and we were kicking off with 146 participants.   Or 146 sites.  Some people were running multiple, including myself.  By the second week, when I introduced myself, the number was up to 164 sites.  At the halfway mark the count was 166.  When I started writing about writing for the event, we were up to 168.

The topic of comments came up in the event and I wrote a piece about to to keep me from leaving comments on your blog.  I also pulled out a half written draft from years back and tried to complete it.

No Man’s Sky rolled out the Voyagers update, which introduced corvettes and saw concurrent users hit the highest peak since the launch of the game.

We got an accidental peek at the pricing for WoW Midnight, which included housing.  Then we got the official announcement, with many more details.

Daybreak was having a margins meltdown in the Enad Gloabl 7 Q2 2025 financials.  Over at LOTRO we were in the last few days of the 32-bit servers.

I checked in on Stars Reach… and still wasn’t sure about that as a name.

World of Tanks turned fifteen and I went back to give it another try.

In EVE Online I wrote about Ishtar ratting in forsaken hubs.

I also did a Friday bullet points post that covered the War in Heaven, Pandemic Legion leaving PanFam, the addition of “complete three jumps” to the AIR daily activities, CCP limiting Twitch SKIN redemption, Pearl Abyss financials, and my first ever legit solo kill in New Eden.

I also hit 280 million skill points.  And then there was the June 2025 MER.  And then I hit my 19th anniversary of playing the game.

In Pokemon Go I was working out my platinum medal strategy for getting to level 49.  We also got the news that the game would raise the level cap to 80.

The group started its adventures in Palworld.  I got out there and was pretty quickly breaking the law… and fishing.

I wonder if, in the long term, Kickstarter was any good for MMOs.  There were certainly a lot of duds and broken promises in the mix.

Speaking of which, Dual Universe went offline.  It was better than many who went down that path, but Kickstarter did not save it in the end.

I was on about the economics of water and how if makes sense to drink water from Fiji in California.

I did a binge watching post about The Lazerus Project.

I also pointed out why the AI bubble kept on going despite the obvious economic issues.  Basically, Wall Street and Silicon Valley had not yet come up with a “next big thing” to snow people with.

Five Years Ago

It was Blaugust of course, and we had almost 50 participants as the event opened up.  I wondered if it was better to have one blog or multiple, I was on about my RSS feeds, and wrote something about motivation and passion.

Niantic relented on some of their post-COVID feature roll backs, most importantly the range at which you can access gyms and Pokestops.

The Enad Global 7 Q2 2022 financials included the announcement that Ji Ham, once acting CEO of Daybreak, would not be acting CEO of EG7.

The Q2 2021 results for Activision Blizzard came out.  It was hard to tell if the state of California lawsuit and the stories relating to it were having an effect on the bottom line for Blizzard yet.  I was fairly sure that Blizzard had beshat itself such that the company would drop their name from the company letterhead.  I mean, the stories were ugly.

That didn’t stop me from jumping into the Diablo II Resurrected beta however.

The instance group was getting its epic mounts in WoW Classic.  That done we went back to give Hellfire Ramparts another try as a group of four.  We also went back to Blackrock Depths (for probably the 14th time) to scare up some stuff for Ula to disenchant.

Honest Game Trailers and Carbot were doing videos about Burning Crusade Classic.

I continued my exploration of immersion, this time looking at EverQuest and then EVE Online.

I gave The Fermi Paradox a try.

In EVE Online the days of World War Bee wound down to an end.  PAPI tired of the siege and the Imperium was able to retake all of its space very quickly.

• 56 Weeks of World War Bee
• PAPI Begins Pulling Out of Delve
• Operations in Delve as World War Bee Continues
• 57 Weeks of World War Bee – Victory in Delve
• Destroying the Forge of Heroes
• Towards a New Delve
• The Downfall of The Tower of Legends
• 58 Weeks of World War Bee
• The July Monthly Economic Report and the Lull Time in EVE Online
• 59 Weeks and the End of World War Bee
• Fifteen Years of Kill Mails in New Eden

I also wrote two Friday bullet point posts.  Past me loves to do those just to annoy future me I am sure.

The first one covered New World being delayed, Switch sales numbers, FFXIV subscription numbers, the Chinese government being down on video games again, the one year anniversary of EVE Echoes, and another free EverQuest II character boost.  Kind of a lot in that one.

The second one brought up Richard Bartle’s Designing Virtual Worlds book being available for free, Quantic Foundry research about cross-gender play, EA making lock boxes slightly less bad, and a video looking at what happened with Vanguard and EverQuest Next.

Finally, there was the tale of the missing tree on our street.

Ten Years Ago

It was really Blaugust, so I was posting every… single… day… even though it was supposed to be the “super relaxed” version of the event.

After spilling Mr. Yoshida’s delicious sauce over my ancient cell phone, I finally joined the smart phone boom with an iPhone 5S.  Of course, that meant playing Pokemon Go, something my wife does better than I do.

I tried to come to grips with the constant whine that every MMORPG should cater to every single play style by asking if any MMORPG had ever managed to find a new audience after launch.  I remain unconvinced that it has ever worked.

Blizzard was telling people that World of Warcraft was still the number one subscription MMORPG. But after their vow of silence on subscription numbers, that brag seemed a bit hollow.

In the game though things were looking up as the pre-Legion expansion event , the demon invasions, proved to be a boon to leveling up alts as they built up momentum.  And I still had that level 100 boost with the expansion to look forward to.

And then WoW Legion launched and it was on to the Broken Isles and class halls and what not.

I speculated what WoW expansions would look like if they were done like Pokemon games.

The Stormhold server in EverQuest II was facing a unlock voting crisis over the Rise of Kunark expansion.  It failed the first two votes, and failing a third would put votes in a moratorium for a while.  However, it passed on the third try.  I also shared my secret EQII shame.  Of course, with the coming of WoW Legion I was out of the game… like Legends of Norrath… just in time to miss some deals.

In EVE Online we had the YC118.7 update.  I was wondering if better PvE could save the game, though I remain unsure as to what “better” would really look like.

I was also celebrating my ten year anniversary with EVE Online.  Meanwhile CCP had a free to play plan lined up for New Eden.  It looked like it had some holes in it though… which we later learned it did.

Down in the southwest of New Eden the Imperium had set up shop in Sakht and was banging on the door of Delve, dropping citadels, blowing up citadels, and fighting LUMPY over sov timers.  Despite threats to keep the Imperium down for good, the locals in Delve got very little support in their fight and we were into the region shortly.

Back up north I was able to slip my last belongings out of the newly quiet system of Saranen.  Meanwhile, Executive Outcomes, which rode out the struggle as part of the Imperium, parted ways once the Casino War was over.

And somewhere along the line I found the time to get out Half-Life 2 and give it another spin.

Fifteen Years Ago

Blizzard announced some crazy idea that you would have to be logged on to Battle.net at all times to play Diablo III.  Glad that never came up again.  Oh, wait…

SOE finally got a comprehensive server status page, and Scars of Velious opened up on Fippy Darkpaw.  I was wondering if they had “made good” with customers after the great hacking in April/May of the year.

I hit 70 million skill points in EVE Online and prepared to check out after the summer or rage.

I was back playing LOTRO for a bit.  I made it into Moria, then went looking for hoes.  I also wrote a post summing up my relationship with LOTRO up to that point.  It’s complicated.

Wargaming.net announced World of Battleships.  They have since changed the name to World of Warships, because we cannot have enough games with the acronym WoW yet.  This got me musing on battleships and related games.

Meanwhile, World or Warplanes (another WoW) got a web site with cool pictures and stuff.

David Reid was telling people that Rift had ONE MILLION CUSTOMERS.  How one actually defined a customer was left as an exercise to the student.

I was still playing some Need for Speed World.  I was enjoying destructible terrain, though the weekend the police broke lead to some different destruction.

I mentioned some of the little things I liked in MMOs.

I was wondering about World of Warcraft Magazine issue 5.  It seemed to be very late.

And Namaste put out a Very Short History of MMOs video.

Twenty Years Ago

This is the last month in review where I have to pull things from Twenty years ago without linking back to my own blog posts.

AOL, which is still a thing even today (I strongly suspect my mother-in-law still gives them money every month here in 2026), bought the GameDaily site which, in a case of foreshadowing, was eventually disappeared into the Joystiq brand.

I started playing EVE Online on the evening August 29, 2006. (After UTC midnight, so August 30 in Iceland/London.)  It was my last “pre-blog” MMO start.  It was certainly another stepping stone on the way to the blog, as I felt I have to tell somebody about the horrible new player experience.  Some things never change.

Thirty-Five Years Ago

Tim Berners-Lee released to the public the first browser for something he called the World Wide Web.  Geocities sites and pop-up ads and massive link rot were on the horizon.

Meanwhile, Linus Torvalds announced the operating system he was working on to the Usenet news group comp.os.minix.  While he wanted to call the OS Freax, it would eventually get the name Linux.

Forty-Five Years Ago

In 1981 IBM launched the IBM Personal Computer, perhaps the most influential and least IBM-like product the company has ever created.  After failing to come up with an internal design and feeling the market slipping away, IBM let a team working outside of the normal company hierarchy put together a machine with off the shelf parts and an open architecture that was the essential foundation of the PC market we have today.

IBM, seeing all the clones spawning in its wake, eventually decided to make a more proprietary model, so introduced the IBM Personal System/2 in 1987.  Clones would need to pay IBM to remain compatible.  The rest of the market said, “No thanks!” and the clones became the standard and IBM no longer makes desktop or laptop PCs.  I think the most lasting legacy of that 1987 design is the PS/2 port… and I think even that has died off after nearly 30 years of USB being the new standard.

Most Viewed Posts in August

1. Stardew Valley – Farm Upgrades and Stardrops as the Second Winter Approaches
2. EVE Online, Departure Planning, and the Big Sell Off
3. Planning my Platinum Medal Strategy for Pokemon Go Level 49
4. EverQuest Legends – Level 10 and Decisions to be Made
5. This One Simple Trick will Up Your Pokemon Go Steps Dramatically!
6. Stardew Valley – Unlocking the Greenhouse
7. Planning My Path to 50 Platinum Medals for Level 80 in Pokemon Go
8. Building My First Corvette in No Man’s Sky
9. Making Level 73 in Pokemon Go and onward to Level 74
10. No Man’s Sky – Playing with Friends
11. 20 Games that Defined the Apple II
12. EverQuest Legends Announced… But What is it Exactly?

Game Time by ManicTime and Nintendo

Planet Crafter came out way ahead for August, followed up by the weekly game of Stardew Valley with my daughter.

1. Planet Crafter – 49.75%
2. Stardew Valley – 22.95%
3. EverQuest Legends – 15.53%
4. EVE Online – 7.59%
5. Stars Reach – 3.31%
6. No Man’s Sky – 0.84%
7. World of Warcraft – 0.04%

EVE Online

I did go on a few home defense ops… three to be exact… which puts off my being purged for a bit.  Not that KarmaFleet does any sort of regular member purge, but it happens.  I also managed to get on a few kill mails on those ops, so zKillboard can again act as proof of life.

But as I hit the 20 year mark with the game I was also feeling somewhat tired of it as well.

EverQuest Legends

I have been off to a slow start with this.  So far it is the sort of thing that has worked for me in the evening when I have a sizable block of time and want to just play something while listening to a podcast.  I’m still well within my comfort zone in the unfashionable end of the Antonican continent.

No Man’s Sky

I’ve got nothing here.  Early in the month, when I did the looking back portion of the post, I sketched out all the games and I put in a placeholder for No Man’s Sky because I was absolutely sure that the Cosmos update would land before the end of the month.  It has not.  Maybe it will be a September thing.

Planet Crafter

Potshot and I continued to craft a planet, crafting it so hard that it ended up being terraformed.  We then opted to go and craft a moon in the same solar system, once again crafting so hard that the place was soon teeming with… well… trees at least.  But we’ll get to that.

Pokemon Go

I am so very close to level 76 at this point.  I might even be there by the time this post goes live.  My wife got there two weeks back, but I still need that 38th platinum medal.  Soon.  Very soon.

• Level: 75
• XP Progress: 92.4% of the 203,353,000 xp needed for level 80
• Tasks for Level 76
  • XP: Done
  • Platinum Medals: 37 of 38
  • Defeat 100 Team GO Rocket Grunts – DONE
  • Explore 300 km – DONE
  • Catch 200 Pokemon in a single day – DONE
• Pokedex status: 938 (+2) caught
• Pokemon I want: Basculegion
• Current buddy: multiple as I work on parallel buddies

Stardew Valley

My daughter and I have carried on with our farm and life in and around Pelican Town.  We play every Sunday still, with an occasional session during the week.  We are almost done with year two.  The community center will be done once we catch or otherwise obtain a puffer fish.

Stars Reach

It went into early access.  I played a bit.  It has some things going for it, though it is still very rough in places.  The whole move from pre-alpha to early access was not accompanied by any sort of last moment miracle patch.  Instead, things are being fixed bit by bit.  We’ll see how it shapes up.  But the portents… the spirits seem mildly perturbed.

Coming Up

A major milestone is coming up in the middle of next month.  Well, “major” in that it is a nice round number that people find significant.  Whether it means anything is up to the reader I suppose.

BlizzCon is coming up in September as well.  Expect a predictions post about what to expect early next week, and then a follow up to see what really came to pass.  Spoiler: I am betting against Classic Plus.  But don’t let me stop you from getting your hopes up.

Valheim is leaving early access.  The Deep North will arrive with new terrors to conquer… what I have read indicates that they want to one-up the already dreadful Ashlands… along with a price increase.

CCP plans to nerf null sec… excuse me, “fix force projection” for us… because they are obsessed with small gang gate camps as the only real way to play in New Eden… which could come to pass next month.  Maybe.  If everybody gets back from their summer holiday in time.

I am sure there will be some other things popping up.  But right now I can only really commit to some Stardew Valley, more Planet Crafter, and the weekly Fantasy Critic League posts… oh, and blathering on about the blog for the anniversary.

Oh, and No Man’s Sky… the Cosmos update… It’s gotta show up soon, right?

New Eden Me

Not literally born.  A capsuleer does not begin their journey as an infant.  In my past life I was an adult and was chosen to ascend to the status of capsuleer.  I know I was chosen… but only because I have been told so by the Caldari State, which chose me.

When you ascend your past life is wiped away.  They tell you that is part of the process.  But the state also has a vested interest in you not being encumbered by familial or emotional attachments to your past.

As such, I emerged pristine, a tabula rasa, cleansed of any past.  When I rose as a capsuleer for the first time, when I entered the pod that has become such a part of me, my interface to the universe and the vehicle through which I act on that universe, my life was all before me.  That pod, in which I have now lived with for twenty standard years was the foundation from which I began my journey.

I chose a name.  I think I chose it.  Maybe my past self chose it.  Maybe the state picked it for me and simply set me up to believe I had chosen it.  But it became my name, my identity, going forward, a handle on me until I die.

If I die.

Death is a serious business, and all the more so as an essentially immortal capsuleer.  No conventional withering away into old age awaits me now. A decrepit frailty will never haunt my future.  The technology of the capsuleer is such that my consciousness is preserved, continually backed up, so that if I am killed… well, when I am killed… I am immediately reborn in a fresh body in a fresh pod, all skills and memories restored, save for that final moment of my death.

Does death hurt?  Despite having experienced it hundreds of times, I do not know.  It hurts in that I recall my mistakes, the path I took that led me to that fate.  But the actual moment of death is not recorded.  The Jove, the ancient and now reclusive race that first crafted this technology, probably guessed correctly that were death to sting too hard we might not undock again.  So they omitted that bit of data capture, erased it from the recording of our lives. When we climb back into our pods, mate with another ship, and undock to fight again we are not burdened by any after effect of our last encounter.

You would think the state would want some return on their investment, some gain for granting me this immortality.  Maybe my past self, or my family that once was, paid up front.  Maybe they are paying off my ascension still.  But the state, after expending the effort to make me what I am now, seems somewhat uncertain as to what to do with a new capsuleer.

You are, of course, imperfect, your knowledge is extremely limited, so what you can do for them is not initially very much.  Still, they let you wander off almost without a second thought.  You could just dock up in a station, tune into the various entertainments… and your connection to tri-dee video and music is exquisite… and just waste your precious gift.  There are even drugs specifically tailored for capsuleers to enhance such idleness.  And many take that path.  Most capsuleers end their trajectory almost as soon as it begins.

We speak quietly, passing various rumors of the “Jove disease” and how their pushing the boundaries of this technology led them down a path of self-destruction, how they cut themselves off from the rest of New Eden, deactivating their jump gates to remain in isolation, due to some virus run amok or other debilitating technological nightmare.  Are the rumors true, or is it just a story they tell us to keep us in line.

I wonder at times if the Jove didn’t simply perfect the digital entertainment interface to the point that they could live out interesting and fulfilling lives while never leaving their pods.  Maybe they were just sick of our petty, childish squabbles and wanted to be left alone with their vids.

But I digress.

The state explains their laissez faire attitude through the prism of the Caldari capitalistic philosophy, a form of social Darwinism that expects success from a few, idolizes the pyramid of power where the highest achievers end up at the top.  The cult of the meritocracy reigns supreme.  But this is a post facto rationalization, an attempt to make reality fit their empty philosophy.  Of this I am sure.

I am sure because, being let off the leash, we end up interacting with capsuleers from the other empires, and each has a version of this tale built up around their own base philosophy.  For the Gallente it is wrapped in the fetishistic belief in individual freedom.  The Amarr have a religious vision built into their view, the spirit of the creator being allowed to move through each capsuleer in its own way.  The Minmatar say that the struggle to be free is in all of their people.

I suspect that the reality is that they simply do not know what to do with us once they create us as capsuleers, that there was no plan, merely an arms race to create as many capsuleers as they could, to take volunteers and put them through the process lest they find themselves behind.

I say this because once they have us and have given us some very rudimentary training, we are left on our own to find our path forward.

Sure, they have things for us to do, and more things now than when I was created as a capsuleer.  There are missions available.  You can be the enforcer of corporate policy, putting little people, the mortals, in their place… generally meaning death… if they step out of line.  There is little inhibition when it comes to killing for the corporations.  You gain standing with the corporation and the empire and even CONCORD, the police force of the empires, for killing those whom have been declared beyond the protection of society.

But most of these are so beneath the abilities of an immortal capsuleer that enforcement become tedious, a mere matter of eliminating some designated targets on your overview without a thought to the reason or implications.  It simply becomes easier not to read the details, to just go where you’re told and eliminate whatever problem has been indicated.

You can also go down the path towards resource harvesting and industry.  You have the ability to out match the corporations that gave you this life at their own game.  But mere capitalist greed, while it can fund your ambitions, still feels like an unfulfilling path, a routine unlikely to use all the abilities you have been given.

The empires of late have been attempting to push capsuleers into their own wars, to entice them with rewards to go out into the contested regions of space and battle the other empires in a series of see-saw campaigns that seem as much imperial ambition as busy work to keep capsuleers focused and engaged lest they get up to trouble.

Much of what goes on seems geared simply to keep us in line.  We must do their work to earn their ISK to buy their ships and inject their skills to continue to do their work and earn their ISK.  It also feeds the treadmill of capsuleer creation.  If the Gallente show a surge in capsuleers, then the Caldari must keep up.

Some… many as time moves on… see through this and either refuse to undock, sitting idle in a station for however long we last as capsuleers… our immortality is theoretical so far… or reject the system the empires try to hem us into and go pirate or side with factions fighting the empires or, like myself, flee beyond the reach of the empires and their CONCORD enforcers, to zero security space.

Even the name… zero security… places it within the structure of the empires.

We flee out there, away from the rules to create our own societies, our own empires.  We build up our own structures and fight our own wars and create and destroy at a rate that makes the so-called civilized areas of space seem frozen in amber.

We are the empires running ahead at high speed, rising and falling, fighting wars, building ships, harvesting resources, and creating our own stories and narratives.  Such mighty fleets clash in our space that at times it can make one question why we don’t turn inward and conquer the empires themselves.

Why the empires tolerate us is unclear.  They say it is because they are locked in their own inwardly focused struggle or that our actions buffer them from the pirate factions like the Gurristas and Sansha’s Nation.  Could they turn outward and conquer us?  Could we turn inward and conquer them?  Would either action be of benefit to anybody?

At least for the Caldari, the reasoning is probably much more simple.  Our wars and petty empires require a supply chain from empire space, a supply chain from the main trading hub in Jita.  Few grow poor supplying the needs of war.  And the state itself grows fat on the taxes and fees that our conflicts generate.

The other empires and their lesser trade hubs benefit as well, though none can match the rapacious maw of Jita, the Caldari mercantile beast unleashed.  It became such a power that the other empires, through the CONCORD proxies, have started to try and take control of the gem that is Jita.  But whoever controls it and gets the spoils, we still go there to buy.

And we not only buy supplies out of Jita and Amarr and Hek and Dodixie, but we turn around and haul in goods to sell as well.  The corporate lords who control the Caldari State from their boardrooms must be pleased with their pet Tibus Heth.  Their figurehead leader has managed to maintain a tax revenue scheme that has enriched them all beyond the dreams of even the most elite capsuleers.

So much for the free will and independence of the ring of null sec alliances.  We are handy to have around when the Drifters or the Triglavians show up.  Then we’re hailed as heroes.  But when the danger has passed we are once again prodded into conflict, lest the shareholder value diminish.

Still, that is the view of a capsuleer of 20 years.  When I was younger, when New Eden was fresh to me, when my skills were as yet untapped and I was looking for purpose in space beyond the transparent and mundane machinations of the greedy empires, null sec did seem like an adventure.

I went out, naive still, and fought for my corporation and alliance.  I formed up with hundreds and even thousands of other capsuleers and flew off to war.  I witnessed epic battles, helped conquer vast regions of space, held the line in desperate fights against overwhelming odds, and fell back in retreat as fate, who had favored us one day, withheld its support on another.

I have fought in nearly every region of space, moved back and forth across now familiar systems in pursuit of, or fleeing from, the same foes.  The names sometimes change.  A corporation or even an alliance might change sides now and then.

But the face of the null sec empires changes very slowly, with the same entities remaining, maybe in one region for a while, then off to another later on.  We are not claiming space or fighting for independence, we’re on a treadmill of exploitation.

The exultation of victory and achievement in battle has been diminished for me.  I have more in common with the fleet members of our foes than with the leadership of any alliance and coalition.  I go out to fight still, but it is more a search to find what once motivated me rather than the lust for conquest or victory.

And what else is there to do?  Some will point to wormhole space as a frontier free from the empires, but that is as much self-deception as the null sec point of view.  They are still tied to the trading hubs, their raw materials and loot from sleepers and what not feeding the might of the empires in the end.

Likewise there is Pochven, where some of the most keen have gone.  And maybe they are keeping the Triglavians at bay… or maybe they are just another unwitting arm of the empires, there to extract wealth and bring it back to Jita.

In the end you can pound your chest and declare your independence and run around with a negative ten security status, but you are still a prisoner of the system.  Your freedom is self-deception.  The web of commerce and taxation that the empires have woven about New Eden still keeps you in line.

A conspiratorial mind might think there was some shadowy mysterious group behind the scenes manipulating the whole thing to keep us engaged and toiling for the empires in our own way.  But I am not much for the whole “what if I am just a brain in a jar and all of this is a simulation” theories.  What would I do differently either way?

So I undock and maybe I am doing it for myself and my fellow capsuleers, or maybe I am just being manipulated by the empires.  It still beats staying in my quarters watching vids.  For now.

What is on Space TV today?

Maybe not forever though.  Immortality… turns out to be tiresome in the end… and there are so many vids and so much music out there to experience.

Fantasy Critic League – Like Fantasy Football, but for Video Games

The rules in both leagues allowed me to drop the title after being counter picked… I wouldn’t have touched it otherwise.  I basically gave people a shot at a very safe option.

But the ongoing, multi-year story of Squadron 42 to failing to ship… Chris Roberts said it was done already last year, but somehow couldn’t ship it yet and is now blaming GTA VI for the delay to Q2 2027, when it will still not ship…  I would bet money on that… is only the most amusing item for me this week.

Squadron 42 – Launches 2026

That was the banner at the bottom of so many of their 2025 and 2026 weekly updates… and then it suddenly stopped getting used around June of this year.  Go figure.

There was other activity this week… this update isn’t all about mocking Chris Roberts… including two titles that shipped.

First, however, we have to check in where we left off last week.

Week 34 Scores

That baseline set, we had two titles on the list for the week, Star Wars Zero Company and Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy.

The first out of the gate with a score was Star Wars Zero Company.

Star Wars Zero Company

The turn based tactical XCOM-like title showed up with a strong opening score.

• Star Wars Zero Company
  • Picked by Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)
  • Counter Picked by Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)
  • Now has a score of 86.7

With that in place, it wasn’t long before the second title landed.

Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy showed up soon thereafter.

Resonance: A Plague Tale

It also landed with a very solid starting score.

• Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Now has a score of 85.3

Resonance couldn’t quite hold the line as more reviews came in and eventually sank some, moving closer to the 81 point average score that the league saw last year.

• Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 84.8 to 82.7

And then it was just the waiting for both titles to launch.  When they did, the scoreboard got a bit of a shuffle.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)
    • Score has gone UP from 81.8 to 99.3
    • Moved from 3rd place to 2nd place
  • Anthania Interactive (Ula)
    • Moved from 2nd place to 3rd place
  • Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)
    • Moved from 9th place to 8th place
  • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)
    • Score has gone UP from 16.1 to 28.9
    • Moved from 11th place to 9th place
  • Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)
    • Score has gone DOWN from 43.8 to 26.2
    • Moved from 8th place to 11th place

That pushed Corr up to second place while Cyanbane, who had counter picked Star Wars Zero Company felt the pain of his error and dropped down to eleventh position.

However, it wasn’t going all Corr’s way.  Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls showed up again with a small drop in score.

• Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls
  • [Picked by Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 87.1 to 85.5

Again, still a strong outing, but more is always better, right?

Then, in a last minute hit during the week Beast of Reincarnation took a blow.

• Beast of Reincarnation
  • [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 73.7 to 72.4

All of which left the scoreboard looking like this.

Week 35 Scores

Shintar remains the league pick for first place.

We also had some bid this week.  Three of them were swaps for new titles as well as one fresh pickup.

• Bids in TAGN League
  • The Eternal Life of Goldman
    • Won by Green River Gaming (Nimgimli) with a bid of $6
    • Dropped game ‘Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement’ conditionally
• Nivalis Nights
  • Won by Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss) with a bid of $5
  • Dropped game ‘There Are No Ghosts at the Grand’ conditionally
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered
  • Won by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta) with a bid of $23
  • Dropped game ‘Minecraft Dungeons II’ conditionally
• Enter the Gungeon 2
  • Won by Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar) with a bid of $20

We also had Archey commit to a counter pick.

• Counter Picks in TAGN League
  • Ecco the Dolphin Re-Something (Unannounced)
  • Won by Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey) with a bid of $5 ( Counter Pick)

In addition, we also got some release updates.  We had one title get nailed down to a specific date.

• Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2
  • [Picked by Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)]
    • Release date changed from ‘2026’
    • to ‘Wednesday, October 14, 2026’

And then we had three titles, including Squadron 42, slip out until next year in one form or another.

• There Are No Ghosts at the Grand
  • [Picked by Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)]
    • Estimated release date changed from ‘Q4 2026’
    • to ‘2027 or Later’
    • Note added: ‘Planned for Early Access in December 2026’.
• Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement
  • [Picked by Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)]
    • Estimated release date changed from ‘2026’
    • to ‘2027’
• Squadron 42 (Star Citizen)
  • [Counter Picked by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)]
    • Estimated release date changed from ‘2026’
    • to ‘Q2 2027’

As noted, Squadron 42 was ripe for a counter pick, so congrats to Arhanta for picking it up.

That leaves the next ten titles up for release as follows.

Week 36 Coming Up

We will have another big week next week, with four titles launching.

Related:

• TAGN Fantasy Critic League
• TAGN Discord Server
• Fantasy Critic Site
• Fantasy Critic How to Play
• Fantasy Critic FAQ
• Fantasy Critic Most Desired Reviews
• Open Critic Review Site