DayZ: A Diary. Sam's Story

Sam Harris was a on a study-trip to Chernarus as part of his PhD in 11th Century Eastern European Architecture.

Look at this! This castle could be perfect for my case study! And everyone knows castles are an excellent strategic vantage point. I can set up camp here and do some research.. ah the walls and staircases are still intact! If I can get to the top I could really see what the surroundings have to offer by means of survival. Perhaps there's a nearby settleme-

Cause of death: fell from a great height.

DayZ: A Diary. Mike's Story

Michael Farris was captain of his college football team. An all-American all star, but his hot-headedness would ultimately be his downfall (pun intended).

He's coming in for the Hail Mary, he rounds a corner, kicks the door down, and it's a bag! Ha! Take that, world! Ah, now I can put my hands in my pockets instead of this.. well if I had any stuff I'd put it in the bag. But I've played plenty of video games, everyone knows that big buildings mean BIG loot! I mean there's probably loads of food just lying around these apartments...

**

I've searched the entire block. That's like, 3 buildings! Nothing but clothes! Seriously why would I need clothes?! I look fuckin' sharp already. You know what world, you can take your bag, and your shirts, and your crummy empty buildings, and stick 'em up your ass. I'm outa here.

Cause of death: jumped from a great height.

DayZ: A Diary. Sarah's Story

Sarah Mayfield was a student travelling through Chernarus at the time of the outbreak. She soon found herself alone and completely lacking in survival skills. These are the only extracts found from her travel journal.

I can't believe how quiet it is. I was sure someone would have found me by now. I never paid attention in those orienteering classes we took. I'm cold, I'm hungry, I haven't had a drink for days. There's a house nearby. Maybe there's something there..

**

I've searched the entire village and found a tin of peaches (definitely looking worse for wear) and a hammar. Used the hammar to open the peaches. Didn't go so well. Most of them are on the floor now.. my tummy hurts.. I want my mum...

**

Found a bottle. It was some sort of spray. I drank it. Mistake. Throwing up. Vision blurring. So thirsty...

Cause of death: lack of nutrition.

Spiders, why did it have to be spiders?

I've played a couple of weeks of ESOTU now, and have made some new observations of the game mechanics and skills.

Crafting gets real time-consuming real fast. Ironically, I suppose. Something ESO has developed which is very different to Skyrim is a trait system, where newly crafted armour can be imbued with an intrinsic bonus trait by addition of a special crafting ingredient. Traits range from increased durability to increased experience gain, and obviously there are some slightly different traits specifically for armour or weaponry. However, to make use of these traits you have to research them. And not just once, oh no, you need to reasearch each trait individually for each item. And to perform that research you have to destroy an item which has that trait. And you can only perform research on one item and trait at a time. And (the best bit) minimum research time is 6 hours. This time then doubles for each additional trait on that armour piece. Does that make sense? I'll try and simplify using my experience as an example.

You have three helmets and some gloves in your inventory. All medium armour, all with traits. To keep it simple, the gloves have Trait A, and the helms 1, 2, and 3 have Traits A, B, and C respectively. So, I research Trait A for helmets, destroying helm 1. This takes 6 hours. Then I decide to research Trait B for helms, destroying helm 2. This research takes 12 hours. I decide to research Trait A for the gloves, which destroys them and takes 6 hours. Finally I research my third helm trait, C, which takes 24 hours. Additional traits will cost 2, 4, 8 days to research, and this is not game-time, this is real-world GMT. Obviously the clock ticks even when you're not logged in, otherwise you'd never get anything done.

The biggest annoyance with this is not the time it takes, but having an inventory full of items you want to hang on to for research. I had something like 4 belts stashed away waiting for the couter to reset. Of course, the more you do it the longer it takes. The reason for wasting so much effort? Well mainly because it gives you a lot more flexibility with later crafting, but also because with enough traits unlocked you can craft special Item Sets, which MMO players will be familiar with - done the full set of this armour to gain a huge bonus to this, that and the other. But you've got to put in a huge amount of time/effort, so when you can finally craft that 5-piece armour set you really feel like you've earned the right to make some money from it.

I've also had a brief foray into the world of PvP, which is entirely Cyrodiil-contained and has some excellent mechanics going on which RTS players will find very comfortable. It feels less like Capture the Flag or Leauge of Legends, more like an actual military battle, complete with an unofficial command structure (i.e. the guys who have experience and commanding voices organize the swarms of bloodthirsty guerrilla soldiers, who are jointly led by their own pack-mentality). Can be a little slow to start, there are 'quests' pointing you to this farm or that hold, and my advice is to 'begin' all of them, then ride around until you find a cavalry of your alliance and just join the crowd. Chances are you'll storm into that farm at some point so long as you stick with them.

If you don't fancy any PvP action then you have the option to just wonder around. Unlike other MMO PvP matches, where you're dropped into a Hunger Games style arena to play Capture the Flag against Team Bad Guys, ESO's PvP arena is Cyrodiil. The entire country of Cyrodiil. You can check your map to see where the battles are taking place, gallop around your alliance's territory looking for spies or stragglers from previous battles, or explore the unique quests and locations within the area. Even if you just want to harvest some rare crafting resources, ESO sticks to its guns leaving the PvP experience truly up to the player.

Back to Tamriel

The Elder Scrolls Online recently scrapped its subscription fees and added Tamriel Unlimited to its name. If this means nothing to you so far, the remainder of this review won't make much sense either. It may be best to cut your losses and move along.

If you've stayed, you may be aware that ESO is currently in the midst of a Welcome Back Weekend, a chance for beta testers who haven't purchased the full game to download and play for free for a few days.

I officially playtested the game's beta a while back, and didn't manage to pass the initial dialogue without the game crashing dramatically on my ancient laptop. Since then I've watched from a distance as updates were released, character builds published, and subscriptions scrapped. This last point was particularly exciting for me - a former WoW player who couldn't justify the constant financial drain of another MMORPG - but with a hefty price tag I still wasn't keen to commit to this game. The day off work yesterday therefore perfectly coincided with this free-to-play event, and I left my brand new laptop to download the 80GB file overnight.

I awoke eager and excited and jumped straight in to Bethesda's famously detailed character creator. I can only imagine that if Bethesda and Maxis ever joined forces they could create entire games based on detailed character creation. My favourite slider in ESO turned out to be 'Posterior Dimensions' where you can decide whether your character is flat as a plank or has the sort of junk Sir Mix-A-Lot would like, no lie.

After half an hour of arguing with my flatmates about how large a gut my biographical character should have, I released him into the world. Well, into prison. This is an Elder Scrolls game after all. I'll skip the walkthrough since this is supposed to be a review, and start talking about key points.

I have played for one day so far and would give these tips to new players:

1. Whilst there is plenty of time and space for experimentation with builds, do a bit of pre-research. You can't approach this game in the same way we approach Skyrim: hoarde everything until it may be useful. It doesn't work. You run out of space quickly and 'dropping' for later retrieval isn't an option. Think before you boot up the game, what race and class do I want to be? What weapons do I want to use, what armour? You can read the basics of most all of this on the ESO website. From there you'll have a grounding and know which of those weapons you want to loot early on, which you'll want to sell, because unlike other MMOs which limit your weapons based on class, ESO is completely open to your imagination. Greatsword-wielding mage? Go for it. Duel-wielding warrior with group-healing spells? Why not. Restrictions just aren't in Bethesda's rulebook.*

2. Be prepared for the MMO. This is not Skyrim Online. It will not feel, look, or behave like Skyrim did. This is a completely new game with new mechanics and new skills. And no pause button (that's right, you can be attacked whilst looking through your inventory. No more quick banquets if your health is running low). Skyrim fanatics may find things a little unfamiliar at first, even I did, but the controls are easy enough to make sense of and the first-person view makes the transition more comfortable.

3. Quests. So many quests. MMO players will be used to this, but as a Skyrim player I had to tear myself away from the New Quest markers so as not to overfill my quest log (which, like the inventory, has limited slots). One of the most interesting and unique features (I've never seen it before) ESO has added is that quest NPCs can only be seen by players doing the quest. As far as I can tell it's to do with the way the MegaServer technology works, but I'm not here to be technical. It's cool that once you've completed a quest for a guy who then says he'll head back to town, he actually goes back to town. And you can talk to him in town. But for players who haven't done the quest, he's still sitting by his tent in the wilderness. Very clever coding which infinitely improves the realism and immersiveness of the world.

4. Crafting. Much like other MMOs (and Skyrim), ESO allows you to focus on honing skills other than combat. Unlike Skyrim, you can't expect to do absolutely everything. Levelling up in general is a whole different ball game, as are the skill trees. If you want to know about them it would be better if you looked at the official site or a fan wiki. In my experience thus far, crafting is a fun passtime when you're bored of wolves and mudcrabs**. I decided that my mace-and-shield wielding group-healing Nord Templar would wear medium (leather-based) armour, so a crafting skill allowing me to craft and improve that would be useful. Lo and behold, a noticeboard told me of a crafting master who could certify me as a Clothier, so off I went. Even if you haven't done a year's worth of research and planning (I checked the date of my beta test - 09/01/14), quests like this one point you to NPCs who can explain each crafting skill to you (there are six in total) in enough detail that you can decide what to dedicate your time and skill points to.

5. As there were in Skyrim, so glitches can be found in ESO. I've only found one so far (but considering I only played for one day, who knows what else I might stumble across) which led to me plummeting through the floor of a building I was trying to enter. No damage was done, the game reset me back to my last loading screen so I could test the glitch multiple times to make sure it wasn't a one-off. There is an easy-to-access in-game bug reporter for just these scenarios - Bethesda know there is still work to be done.

All in all, I very much enjoyed playing for free. Would I pay £15 a month to continue playing? Probably not. But since that fee is now an optional membership bonus, I had no hesitation charging the £50 price tag to my PayPal account. Now I can play forever.

There is one warning to dole out though - and it only really applies to Steam users. If you want to play the game through Steam, granting access to the Steam Achievements, trading cards, etc, you have to purchase and create you're ESO account through Steam. Combining previously created accounts with Steam purchased software is for some reason a no-go. A shame, but from what I can tell there is no restriction on players from Steam interacting with non-Steam, since there are no individual servers.

My recommendation: if you're an MMO fan, you'll enjoy what this game brings to the table. Strategy, long-term playability, replayability, all there. Without a subscription.

If you're a fan of the previous Elder Scrolls games, you'll enjoy this game, if you're open to a new experience. This is a new game, not a Skyrim upgrade, not a sequel, a completely new standalone with very different mechanics. You, like me, probably forked out for all the Skyrim DLC, and the truth is it can be 'completed'. Try a game with no discernable end, and an even larger map.

If you've never played Elder Scrolls games or an MMO before, this whole thing probably made about as much sense as Klingon. But this could be the safest way to get into a new genre. Without a subscription fee the most you stand to lose (should you hate the game) is the £50 price tag, and most of us have spent more than that on unplayed games or uncomfortable sofas already.

Of course, this is all personal opinion. Your own adventure will lead you to unique discoveries and untrodden paths, whatever form that adventure might take.

Footnotes:
*With up to 8 characters available per account, there's plenty of chance to try new combinations once you're more used to the game mechanics.
**I don't know why everyone was going on about the swarms of mudcrabs. I've seen about 3 so far.. maybe I just need to find more rivers.

'A Study of the Vampire' extracts from the work of Dr. E. Kranz

Vampires are among the most elusive of modern-day mythical creatures, making them somewhat more difficult to study than their deceased counterparts. However through years of extensive research and first-hand experience with a little help from a close friend, I have managed to compile some facts about their species.

1. Vampires seem to be more closely related to the family Felidae than the order Chiroptera - that is, they are more cat than bat. This explains a number of crucial discrepancies in accounts of their kind, namely their dislike of sunlight. While bats are purely nocturnal creatures, many vampires are active during the day and night time, like their feline counterparts. It would seem, however, that they are more adept to low-light environments, able to see even in pitch black areas - a marked evolutionary advantage that cats cannot boast. This leads many vampires to be more active during the night, and likely fueled the initial bat-like image.

2. Vampires do not burn in sunlight. Nor do they sparkle. They are not particularly weakened by it although it can somewhat affect their vision so they are usually seen wearing darkened glasses even during overcast days. In fact many of the archaic repellents used against vampires are, if more modern accounts are to be believed, ineffectual. My research suggests that vampires are an almost entirely atheist species. They are somewhat repelled by religious symbols such as the crucifix, the star of David and such, but that is not to say they would cause them harm or severe discomfort. The same applies to garlic. They have no taste for it, and avoid it where necessary, but as long as they aren't forced to eat it it will not pose a risk to them.

3. Stabbing with a steak through the heart is not fatal. Painful, I imagine, but not a mortal wound from what I can glean. The easiest way to kill a vampire is to remove the brain from the body, most often by severing the head by the neck. The most effective way is removing the heart, a fatal trait they share with their distant cousins - werewolves. However when looking further into this particular method of death, a source described it thusly,

Removing the heart from an immortal is akin to trying to shave their mortal counterparts. You only need to glance at a rich high street to see quite how easy it can be to give a dog a ridiculous trim, but how often have you seen a cat comply when presented with shears?

Due to this fact, the exact details of vampiric death are difficult to ascertain, with some claiming that the body immediately disintegrates into ash whilst others assert that ancient rituals may be used to resurrect the being. One thing is clear, though. Killing a vampire is extremely difficult and rarely successful.

Many questions still remain with regards to these creatures. I hope my research can lead me to further understand them and their biology, not to mention their culture and history.

Here's A Real Conundrum

This summer I have a huge decision to make. In short it is this: leave York or stay in York.

Do I leave the comfort of the North and try to make my way in the big city of London, or do I stay where I am and keep saving money in hopes that one day I may build up the courage to leave.

The answer is simple really, I mean I have to go. What's keeping me here? Apart from a job and a girlfriend, nothing. The job I have is only casual part-time, easy but hardly a career. And I love my girlfriend, but I'm not at a stage where I'm willing to let life-changing decisions be decided by love.

I can move to the big city, fall onto a West End stage, earn enough to support myself while still managing to visit York on alternate weekends. Get myself a nice flat, overlooking Hyde Park, go to drama school, make a name for myself.. well if I can't dream what can I do?

I can stay in York. Find a cheap house share, maybe a flat, work as much as I can, act as much as I can, save money and move to London the year after? Or maybe the year after that. Or if I'm starting to save a lot, why not stay one more year and increase my safety net. And then I'm 30 and still working behind a bar for a casual part-time wage while saving small amounts of money which I'm slowly spending on drink as I begin to realise that I'll never bloody leave..

A sad state of affairs, I'm sure you'll agree. I mean obviously I doubt that would actually happen. If I did stay in York for another year, it would be only one more year. 5 years in one place would fit my current record.. although I have to wonder what will happen when I'm moving countries every few days.

So. Anyone moving to London this summer? Because I'd quite like to not go down alone..