Cav's Place

Today started reasonably well, so maybe I’ll be able to actually write something non-personal here for a change. And the best bet seems to be this post that’s been in my drafts for over two years and on my mind for even longer. The topic, as the title shows, is housing. More specifically, how could we ensure that all have decent housing of their own, as in not only making sure that nobody’s left homeless or living in unsuitable conditions, but also that nobody needs to live with anyone other than those they specifically want to live with. After all, this should be a basic human right, shouldn’t it?

Anyone who knows anything about me will know that I’ll start this by mentioning population. If the population would steadily drop, there would be no need to build new homes, the existing ones eventually becoming sufficient and then even exceeding any potential demand, at which point large apartment buildings could be replaced by smaller ones and eventually even by houses, while those who already live in houses could end up having bigger and bigger gardens. Granted that human greed would immediately find a way to mess that up as well, but the point of this post isn’t to go that far, but to analyze the current situation and offer some solutions that could, at least theoretically, solve the problem in the very near future.

This “crisis” that started in 2008 and is still apparently affecting the whole world was actually caused by the housing sector. United States banks gave loans to people who wanted homes but couldn’t afford them in any way and, at the same time, attempted to use risky investments as a safety net, which obviously exploded right in their faces. Which, when it comes to the matter at hand, boils down to the fact that housing is not affordable. Whether a person chooses to take out a loan in order to purchase a home or goes the completely wrong way and rents it, they’ll end up needing to pay an arm and a leg for it every month and a whole lot of people couldn’t afford having their own place at all.
That shouldn’t happen! But it’s not that easy to find a culprit, because everybody’s to blame for the current situation in one way or another. The real estate industry is a symbol of greed, inflating prices as much as they possibly could every step of the way, or at least they did before the “crisis” and they’re doing their best to get back in that position as soon as possible. The banks also bleed any potential buyers as much as possible when they offer them the loans that these insane prices require. And the buyers themselves perpetuate this situation not only by accepting these conditions but also, in case of those who have at least a reasonable income, by looking for the biggest and best they could possibly afford, and sometimes even more than that, instead of stopping at just what they actually need.

So what do we do about it? Well, I think declaring the right to live in adequate housing without any need to share it with anyone you don’t actually want to share it with a basic human right could be a start. But those are just some words on a piece of paper, so the important part comes afterwards.
Any homes built from now on need to be as environmentally-friendly as possible and also made to last. When the population will hopefully finally drop to the point where we’ll start thinking of tearing down existing homes to build smaller ones because there’d be nobody left to live in them, there are plenty of older ones we’d need to set our eyes on, so all new ones must be built with the future in mind. That means being extremely sturdy and energy-efficient, but also built in areas that currently aren’t and likely also won’t be threatened by major natural disasters. This ensures that future generations will have good homes readily available to them, without the need for major repairs or improvements, therefore greatly reducing future resource consumption and costs.
But, you will say, that implies putting a whole lot of care, effort and resources into construction, which means the resulting homes will cost even more! Which would be quite right if the homes would be built and sold or rented as they are now. But they won’t be. In fact, the next step would be to make any new homes really simple, only answering to the actual needs of the people and allowing each of them to later make improvements or additions as they see fit and can afford to. Yes, that means no more homes with everything already in place the moment they’re bought, and it also means no more really large homes for anyone unless they can afford to build them themselves and can do so without negatively affecting the environment or taking up space that would otherwise be necessary to build simple homes for those who actually need them.
As long as greed doesn’t rear its ugly head yet again, that shoud theoretically make homes much cheaper at first, with all additional costs handled by the new owners as time passes. After you have a home of your own, you can worry about making it end up just as you want it. Besides, this way you can actually do that, without anyone shoving anything down your throat. But, of course, there will still be lots of people trying to shove things down others’ throats, so any and all rules that require homes in a certain area to look more or less the same need to be completely forbidden and the market for the products and services people will require in order to turn an empty, simple dwelling into a proper home needs to be properly regulated so nobody will be able to saturate it with just their products or artificially inflate prices.
On top of that, since we all know greed actually will rear its ugly head, strict regulations need to be put in place for the real estate industry as a whole, making sure that any new homes fully adhere to the standards and don’t cost any more than they really need to. In addition, I think nobody should be allowed to own more than two homes and checks should be in place so large families who live together won’t be able to own a large number of dwellings they’ll never personally use either. That should take care of the utterly evil concept of renting a place to live, paying someone else every single month of your entire life for the right to have a roof over your head and yet still need to respect their rules and put up with their demands. Renting should only be available for those who know for sure that they’ll spend no more than, at the very most, a few years in that particular city, so there’s little to no reason to have any significant number of homes available for rent unless the city is an university center, in which case the prices need to be suitable for students.

A basic home, which everyone should be entitled to own even without paying anything, would basically include the walls, roof, plumbing, wiring and any equipment essential to make it energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly. The numbers I’m working with right now call for 25 to 30 square meters of usable space for each of the first two people a dwelling is meant for, an additional 20 to 25 square meters for each of the next two and 15 to 20 square meters more for each one after that, but no more than 150 square meters total, to add one more way to discourage large families. This doesn’t include the attic or any rooms built underground, right under the house, for those who’ll have houses.
On a related note, I’m thinking there should be few dwellings meant for a single person and that living alone should be somewhat discouraged in other ways as well, but not so much as to make it a problem for those who really need to move and don’t have anyone they’d really want to live with in their city of choice. The main purpose of this would be to encourage people who are in relationships to move in with their partners and those who are not in relationships to at least move in with close friends. But that has to do with encouraging people to depend more on their family of choice and give more importance to it over anything else, which I guess is another issue entirely.

There’s a whole lot to say about this and I’d have plenty of other details to add, but I’ll need to get back to it some other time because it got messy enough already and, considering how I’m feeling, it’ll only get worse if I continue. The point is that people should fully own their homes and be able to live in them without the stress of having family members or simple roommates they don’t actually want to live with around. A resource-based economy would go a long way towards ensuring that, but some things can be done even under the current circumstances.

I haven’t been reading my e-mail for weeks now. Mentioned that already at some point, but this is not a post that you’ll get any links in. It’s hard enough to even use punctuation at this point. Anyway, as I said, after only checking it late at night, after eating, since October, I stopped reading completely a few weeks ago. Logged on a couple of times to delete the hundreds of messages that had gathered and read one newsletter that seemed completely safe, but no more than that.
After a while, dad apparently realized that I was serious when I said I won’t be reading anymore and he really was talking to himself if he was sending anything, so he started leaving notes for me on the kitchen table. So instead of only seeing any potential messages after eating, so I knew I’ll at least manage to eat somewhat, I ended up seeing everything just before eating, prompting me to start whimpering and say “leave me alone” out loud… But so far there was nothing bad in them, so the reaction was just due to the fact that there was any sort of communication.
That changed tonight, when the note asked me to create a new e-mail and give it only to him if I refuse to check my regular one anymore, because “we can’t live without communicating”. Who the fuck does he think I’m trying to avoid communicating with by no longer checking my e-mail if not him? Others can find me on Facebook or Yahoo! Messenger, after all, and so far that’s not a problem at all. I mean, you’d think that rushing and trying to hide myself as much as possible even when going to the bathroom for weeks, not to mention ducking and then rushing back to my room when I made my way to the kitchen a few days ago and he passed by, would tip him off! If anyone else would scare me, it’d be easy to just block them on-line and that’d be the end of it, but if he scares me, and he does, he’s here in the same apartment, so just blocking him on-line doesn’t do all that much, as this message just proves. A couple of days ago he didn’t press when I wouldn’t open my door, but now I get this!
So I was a mix of terrified and furious, not even knowing which was winning myself. Crumpled the piece of paper and threw it on the floor while saying “leave me alone” out loud once again, then did the same with some bag, though I later picked that one up. My hands instantly went numb, then I spent the rest of the time alternating between whimpering, crouching on the floor and hugging my knees, and making angry gestures at thin air. I’m sure the food went down really well under those circumstances…
Now I’m sure I’ll get all sorts of crap for that, all sorts of pressure piling up more and more when I just want to curl up in a ball and cry till I’ll pass out, then wake up to see that these past five and a half years have all been just a bad dream. But I can’t even cry, of course! And I won’t see that it was just a bad dream because it’s not just a bad dream! So there’s no solution and no way out, and I’m asking for help that can’t come because there’s nothing anyone can do. Or nothing anyone who could in any way care to do anything at all about it at some point can do. Not even telling anyone about the more specific issues this time around, haven’t been for months, because there’s no real help they could possibly offer and I couldn’t possibly take as much as a mention of the sort of “help” they may be likely to offer.
I’m too frightened of everything to take anything anymore. Or at least to risk taking anything that I’m not certain I can easily block out completely the moment it makes me feel even worse, since of course things can, and do, always get worse. They only get better in the movies, and various campaign advertisements… And him I can’t completely block because he’s right here and even if I won’t read anything, cover my ears all the time and never get out of the room again, not eating or drinking and pissing and shitting in a corner of the room when I’ll need to, he’ll barge in at some point, so can’t avoid him entirely no matter what I do! And he can say and do so many things that can affect me so much, and none of the plausible ones are likely to have any positive effects, in fact very much the contrary. But, of course, I couldn’t survive in any way if he wouldn’t handle everything either. Not that he can, since I’m not even telling him about things I really need anymore, and there are a few right now. And not moving things around the room to spray something against the mold for so long either because I’d need his help but couldn’t be in the same room with him.
And this was supposed to be just a short rant. No chance of that happening, is there? It became a pretty regular post, and being the first of the week and considering this mood and how things are likely to continue, it seems very likely that the second one will also be a personal one. So much for my hopes of putting in more non-personal ones…
Anyway, have no idea what’s happening anymore. I just know I can’t take any of it! Hear me? I can’t take it! It just needs to be a bad dream and I need to wake up from it now! I probably should have said something else as well, or perhaps shouldn’t have said something I did, or perhaps shouldn’t have said any of it. I don’t know. I just know that since then it’s been five and a half years of shit happening and feeling like nothing is or could ever be worth doing anymore, just like there have been nearly 18 years of the exact same thing before…

I was saying a week ago that perhaps I’ll be able to write two non-personal posts this week. As you can see, that’s not the case. How could it be when I’m just sitting here and whimpering… And somehow arguing with people on the Forsaken World forum and likely setting all of them against me, as I usually do.
Yesterday I also pretty much negated all I had managed to do earlier this week towards a certain thing I’d rather not mention here. Maybe today I’ll make up for yesterday, but I highly doubt it considering my mood. Last night started whimpering and said “just leave me alone” out loud once again when I found a note from dad on the kitchen table, since I’m still not checking my e-mail at all and don’t plan to start checking it again…

It sounds rather weird, doesn’t it? Wanting to be left alone so much yet playing an on-line game and arguing with people on forums… But of course I don’t actually want to be left alone by everybody. I need her and a best friend, who ideally would perhaps become more than that at some point after I’d be in some sort of relationship with her again, and then one or two other close friends on top of that would be nice too. So, while I do by best to shut away the world and kick and scream at it and poke it with whatever I can find lying around if it tries to close in on me again, I also wait for one or two of the few people I’m still in some sort of contact with to perhaps someday decide to do the same, show “real life” a big middle finger and cut themselves from it, ideally finding and settling down in a nice relationship that they’ll fully focus on while also still being able to spare some time for me as well without “real life” topics popping up. But I’m well aware that it’s highly unlikely for that to happen, as things usually only get worse anyway, plus that it’s pretty clear that I don’t know anyone with “best friend” potential, so I’ll still need to find one someday either way.
What does that have to do with the game and forums? Nothing really… It’s just what I had to say right now. What I keep needing to say, actually, since you’ll see something along those lines in most of my personal posts for a long time now. If such a desperate need is not fulfilled, it can only become more pressing… And I guess the game is a way to hide from it for a little while and the forums are just me doing what I usually do, which is seeing people act like most people do and lashing out at them because their behavior is utterly infuriating. Wonder how long until the enemies made on the forums will start affecting me while playing as well, since they obviously know my character name…

With my characters at level 44, I thought it was time to follow up on my previous post on the issue and answer some more of the questions people who end up here after searching for information about Forsaken World seem to have, judging from the keywords used. Then again, it’s also time to do it because yesterday was the first time I seriously weighed the frustration the game causes against how sorry I’d feel for all the work so far if I’d quit. The frustration lost, but just barely, so don’t think it’ll be long now. Then again, this moment came after about three weeks back when I played Perfect World International, but it was three or four more weeks until I actually quit, and since it only came after about seven weeks now, who knows how long it will really be… But the rule remains that me and MMO games really don’t get along, so the end result is inevitable and I knew that all too well even before deciding to start playing.

By far the most common questions are about the locations of elite monsters, for gem shards, the Fleet of Myth merchants and gearing up in general. Out of those, I think I need to say a little about the first, since I didn’t cover it in the previous post: If you want the exact locations of elites, go look on some sites dedicated to the game, such as those I linked to in the previous post or some of the better guild sites, but I quite frankly don’t see why you’d need them. Elites are always in an area where other monsters of the same type also are, usually in a spot that can be indentified in some way, such as next to a landmark or somewhat more unusual object or in a cul-de-sac, they’re slightly bigger, aggressive and don’t wander around. And each of them seems to have just two possible spawn spots on the first maps, though I’m finding more starting from Lunagrant Woodland, and the spots are usually close to each other. It’s really not hard to find them, and you generally only need to know of one or two to get what you need anyway.
As for the other two common issues, all I can think to add to my previous post is that there are some other Fleet of Myth merchants on top of the “main” ones, those I noticed so far being one that wanders on the road in front of Fort Rotulor and one that stands on a pier in the Sea of Oblivion area, on the side with the Water Observatory and very close to an elite spawn spot. The first one sells all of three items, but the second is extremely important to artisans, weaponsmiths and armorsmiths, because he seems to sell pretty much every blue recipe for those professions. Otherwise, though I think I covered gearing up well enough already, I forgot to mention that, as far as I know, off-hand items can only be obtained through crafting, or of course by purchasing them from artisans, as they can’t be bought from any NPC and no monsters or bosses drop them.

The fourth most common question deals with an issue I haven’t bumped into so far. I may be able to answer, but since I’m not perfectly sure I understand I’d rather not, and won’t say what it’s about either so I won’t have even more people coming here for that answer. So let me move on to the fifth, which is another weird one, specifically the location of Charlie’s Tavern. Admittedly, it can be a bit confusing if you look at the map because for some reason it’s listed as Toteu’s Tavern, but you can get a quest the moment you end up in Freedom Harbor to go to the Tavern, so just click the target’s name and get there. But if you want details, it’s on a ship moored in Freedom Quay, next to the Fleet of Myth merchants and Matthew the teleporter. In the previous post I was saying that these NPCs are next to it, assuming everyone knew where the Tavern was, but it seems I was wrong.

Moving on, let me quickly go through the other issues mentioned several times, though noticeably less than the ones listed above…
If the launcher won’t start, open Task Manager and see if you have a process called patcher.exe in there. If it is, end it and try again, as sometimes it simply decides to freeze for no reason. If you keep trying to open it without ending the previous frozen process, it will just keep freezing each and every time until you either go to end all of the frozen instances of patcher.exe or reboot. If you have any other problem that has to do with the game not starting, really, check the forums. There are plenty of topics there about it, some even set to “sticky”, which can offer some solutions. They don’t seem to work for all, but they do appear to work for many. Just know that the game uses an outdated engine and therefore will have issues with new hardware and software, so you may notice worse performance with a new and powerful CPU and video card than with older ones and should expect some odd behavior under Windows 7 or any 64-bit operating system. Some people were saying that the engine the game’s based on is no less than eight years old, so go figure…
About the artisan job, as I said above, it’s very important because, as far as I know, it’s the only way to get off-hand gear into the game. But, like any crafting job, it’s notoriously difficult to level. Unlike weaponsmith and armorsmith, you can level it without actually producing gear, since you can make medals, but it also requires far more job experience to gain a level than those do. For example, if you just want to take it to level 2 by crafting medals, you need to make 125 of them, which means mining or buying exactly 1875 copper!
Another issue had to do with crafting, more or less in general, and yet another with soul gems. Yes, crafting gear is very difficult in this game. Not only do you need a lot of basic materials, but some very rare ones as well every single time you try to craft something. For artisan, you need the rare soul gems or the even rarer soul crystals, depending on whether you want to make green or blue gear, while for weaponsmith and armorsmith you need various items that can only be obtained by scavengers, so you need something to be broken apart in order to make something else. Now don’t ask me where can one obtain soul crystals because the only ones I saw so far were being sold for utterly insane prices, but some monsters can, extremely rarely, drop soul gems, and it also seems that you can earn some if you do the Battle on the Auriana (or Harbor Crisis) event plenty of times. I only got exactly one soul gem so far, after killing a Desert Robber, but there is a forum topic that points out the other options.
Next, there seem to be some questions about the Harbor Guide (or Find the Place) daily quest… Really don’t know what’s there to ask about that. You get the picture and the locator and, if you know where the place in the picture is, you go there and activate the locator. Something like a piece of parchment will appear, slowly spinning in the air, in the exact spot where you should activate it when you do, so if you’re close but not close enough for it to count you’ll be able to see just where you need to stand. Otherwise, if you don’t know where the spot is, you can keep activating the locator and it will tell you in which direction it is, so you can then check the map and try to figure it out better. There aren’t too many spots you can be sent to find, maybe around 12 or so, but it provides some experience and helps you get some footprint cards.
And now come the questions about leveling… Quite frankly, I’ve been having these characters since the open beta launched, made them as soon as the servers were up, and I’m just level 44, so don’t expect any advice on how to level quickly from me. In fact, what you’ll get from me when it comes to that is raised eyebrows and various phrases along the lines of “stop and smell the roses”. But, if you insist, of course the main way to level is God’s Trial. Do that every day, with a Lionheart Scroll active the whole time you’re inside, and you’ll go a long way, at least until level 40 or so. Past that, do your daily quests, look in the quest finder and go through everything with “Experience” as type, starting from those with a starting level closest to yours and working your way down through the rest if you still have time, and then you also have kill orders and, after level 30, the random adventurer quests and adventurer’s guild scrolls. And, since somebody was specifically wondering about leveling a vampire quickly, all I can tell you is that you’ll need a huge amount of drinks and possibly also mana potions, because vampires are outstanding at taking care of themselves and doing a whole lot of things alone, but they do so slowly, burning mana like crazy if you try to do anything quickly.
Lastly, people seem to also be wondering about the merchant job and merchant runs. All the merchant job does is allow you to learn merchant skills, which will allow you to earn more from merchant runs. As for those runs, it seemed to me that the little tutorial received during the first one should be enough for anyone to understand what they need to do, as long as they pay attention. You simply buy an item sold cheaply by one merchant and sell it to another who buys it at a high price, so you need to learn what the best places to buy and sell are and also keep an eye on the price variations, as they can make a difference even if they generally seem minor. You can’t teleport using normal trackstones and can’t use Town Portal while on a merchant run, and I believe you can’t join instances either, so know your way around and keep going from one merchant to the next until you hit the goal listed in the trade tab in your inventory. At that point, head back and talk to Christopher, who’ll see what profit you made, deducting the starting capital he gave you from your funds at the end. The reward consists of soul coins, merchant job experience and Mercury reputation and depends strictly on the profit you made, not being fixed per run or anything else along those lines. Keep in mind that you can store somewhat more than the goal, but can’t keep buying after you meet the goal, so if you want to truly make the most of it, try to complete one trade when you’re just short of the goal, being able to do another in order to take yourself to the maximum possible profit and therefore the maximum possible rewards.

Meant to go through some of those that were mentioned less too, but this is far too long already so I’ll continue some other time perhaps.

As usual, if the first post of the week is a personal one, it’s even harder to write anything non-personal that week. So, once again, I won’t. Countering last week’s two proper posts with these two this week I guess. Maybe next week I’ll manage to write two proper ones again, but who knows. Looked through my drafts and saw one that’s been sitting there for some three and a half years that I’d like to get to write about alongside the one about Forsaken World that’s already scheduled for next week, but if I wouldn’t have liked to write about it before as well it wouldn’t be in drafts in the first place, yet since it’s still there after all this time…
But speaking of Forsaken World, I should be playing it right now because, though I rushed last night to finish all the Sea of Oblivion quests with Kalee as well, I didn’t even do my dailies for today and it’s evening already. And I should also quickly run to do a little main quest part so I’ll get another weapon too, because her weapon is badly damaged, God’s Trial opens shortly and losing your weapon during that is a pretty bad thing. Not that there’s any moment when losing your weapon wouldn’t be a bad thing, but you know what I mean, right?

Meanwhile, this crowd brings tears to my eyes. Unfortunately, as usual, I can’t actually cry, but that’s another issue. Ended up there after Remus Cernea started promoting Blind Guardian‘s concert that will take place here on May 1st and I snooped around a little. Mostly just reminded myself why I quickly gave up on the idea of listening to them when I tried to a few years ago, but they do have a few songs that I actually like, one of them being just The Bard’s Song… And then you have such crowds that just take your breath away. You know that you have a truly legendary song when you have tens of thousands of people practically singing it for you perfectly in tune all the way from start to end! And there’s also what happened when they sang Valhalla in that concert, with the crowd repeating the chorus, which admittedly consists of only a few words, for basically three and a half minutes straight, bar some 20 seconds after they supposedly ended the song.

I’ll be leaving you now. This was just something thrown here to get two posts in this week, after all. Not that I’m doing much of anything today. Didn’t even clean my room as I tend to do when I’m alone, especially if it’s been more than ten days since the last time I did it, since I just don’t feel like doing anything. Even started whimpering and said “just leave me alone already” out loud when I saw the note my parents left on the kitchen table when they left to my grandparents this morning… And keep putting off spraying something on the areas where mold appeared again for over a month now, especially since it’s not in all the areas it usually appeared in anymore and it doesn’t seem to be spreading any further.