Housing reaction: yay

I won’t bury the lede: I’m just as happy about housing as I hoped I would be.  Yay, ZOS.  Cookies all around.  The housing patch represents an immense amount of work on the devs part, really staggering.  The system has a ton of options that make it extraordinarily customizable and yet the overall set-up is still very accessible to casual players.  I’m really impressed. Specific comments after the cut.

Housing: OMG

Hi, and welcome back from winter break!  Or maybe that’s just me.  At any rate, welcome to 2017. 🙂

Housing is coming to ESO in February.  Right now it’s on the PTS, and I considered diving in to the PTS to try it, but I decided to wait.  I don’t want to hassle with downloading the game all over again to get PTS access, but more importantly, I don’t want to “re-do” any work I put into housing – don’t want to decorate one on the PTS and then decorate it again when Homestead goes live for real.  But the preview vids are hitting YouTube and I am drooling.  The rest of this post is a verbal rendition of that drool, and my personal history with TES. 🙂  It’s extremely TL;DR.

New Life Festival review

Oops – wrote this days ago; it was still sitting in drafts.

To cut to the chase, the New Life Festival is pretty much everything I said I wanted in a holiday event when I was bitching about the Witches Festival, and I’m really pleased with it overall.

Summary: you go to the Crown store and “purchase” (for free) a scroll that is the New Life kick-off item.  It drops into your inventory, and reading it gives you the quest to go see Breda in Eastmarch.  She then sends you to celebrations hosted by each of the races, nine total, and after attending each festival Breda gives you the festival quest reward: a gift box with a random mix of festival items.  Breda’s quests are dailies, so you can do each of the celebrations once per day per character.

Nyx, to her sister

Sissa,

The situation in Abah’s Landing has eased somewhat – the Iron Wheel is moving their men out – but pass on to Papa that he should still avoid the region for a while longer.  I’ll let him know when.  You can tell him, too, that I had the chance to kill Nicolas, but I let him go.  If Papa wants to remedy that error, I can tell him where to find his former friend.  I just didn’t think it was my choice to make.

There’s a change in the air here, though; people are calming down all around town.  A witch hunt raining down makes everything muddy – the merchant lords all have their fingers in some sticky pie or another, so no one wanted close scrutiny.  So the ‘Landing is breathing a sigh of relief, but the Den is downright giddy as the Wheel pulls out.  A few nights ago, we were sitting around drinking, and I was told about an initiation challenge – apparently I wasn’t put through it because of the situation when I arrived.  They started making jokes about how I wasn’t really one of them, because I hadn’t done the initiation.  Couldn’t let that stand, right?

And that’s how I ended up getting arrested for theft and got to be naked in public when all my stolen clothing was repossessed by the guards.  The usual tactic is to carry a spare change of clothes, but I left all my things in the Den and walked back, crossed the place in my underwear, and retrieved my clothes from the banker while everyone laughed and applauded.  They certainly couldn’t say I didn’t commit; now I’m officially a full member of the club.

Speaking of questionable choices I’ve made lately… I succumbed to the wiles of a wild dog, and now I have a pet.  I didn’t mean to, but he’s been showing up and wanting to follow me ever since I hit the ‘Landing docks.  The locals call them jackals, but the dock workers say they named this one Mischief… honestly, I do feel like a sucker, but how could I turn away a pet named Mischief?  Besides, he’s adorable and kills mice.  And I’m going to let him crawl all over your clothes when I come home next time, just to annoy you.  Turnabout is fair play and all that – don’t tell me since I’ve been away you haven’t ‘borrowed’ everything I own that’s still in the house.

Have to run – the spices Mother requested are double-bagged and separated from the rest of the items in the package; it should arrive shortly after this letter.  As usual, your real gift is hidden in the center of the bolt of cloth.  This fabric’s a nice damask you should enjoy – the dock handler who slipped it to me assures me it’s very fine quality.

Love,
Nyxi