More AoE4 last night. Getting good with the Delhi Sultanates. The Mastery system is making me try out other civilizations. I was pretty much only playing English and Chinese because imo they seemed the easiest, so I’m trying to branch out more and try all the civilizations to see which I like the most. I still have a lot more to try out but the Delhi Sultanates have lots of unique features that I’m am enjoying. It’s a pretty different play style than playing as the English and that’s one thing I really like about the game. Each civilization has their own unique features, units, buildings, etc, so you need to learn what they can do and how to use it to your advantage. Some people call it imbalance but it balances out in the long run. Each civ plays totally different so there is always something new to learn and the Mastery system rewards you for learning their features. It gives you small achievements to complete in exchange for a small reward like a new portrait picture or banner, kind of insignificant but still something to work towards.
Also got on more Sea of Thieves with my girlfriend. We realized just how little money you truly make when playing on Safer Seas (private server) compared to High Seas (public). The same cursed skull sells for 250 gold on Safer Seas, but 5000 on High Seas. I don’t fully understand why they do this, the “true” experience is in the public servers, but it punishes people wanting to play completely alone quite severely. I think it’s because they don’t want people to grind out missions solo that are more difficult to complete when there are other people, but that shouldn’t really matter when the only things you unlock and can spend money on in game are purely cosmetic only. No new weapons, abilities, skills, anything, the only progression in the entire game is cosmetic stuff, so why punish private server players so harshly?
We have always played on a private server because we were afraid of people. One day I suggested we try high seas because of the money, and within 5 minutes of spawning in the island, a group of two players killed us because I picked up one guys cat. That proves our point to why we don’t want to play on a public server, but playing private we make a tiny fraction of the gold we could make in public. It kinda sucks but we just try to avoid other people as much as possible now.
We have also been discovering some bugs that are a bit baffling to say the least. For example, if you are fishing and there is even a few inches of ground between your feet and the water, your fish line will get caught on the ground and completely lose your fish no matter how long it took to reel it in. It’s so annoying and frustrating that I’ve given up on fishing and now only cook chicken or pork.
All these gripes aside, we did have a fun time knocking out a few treasure maps. We aren’t done with the Pirates of the Caribbean tall tale yet, might try to complete it this weekend.