2022 has been an extremely stressful year. From my daughter's unfortunate medical condition that resulted in blindness in her left eye and the ongoing battle to contain the disease to aggressive schedules at work while we continue losing bodies to COVID, I needed this winter break to decompress and recalibrate. The family came into town to celebrate the holiday since Jenn being too far from doctors who are familiar with her condition is risky. We had a great time together, and I reveled in having downtime.
I've been popping on to New World while cooling my heels for the next Star Citizen 3.18 patch. At level 60, there's enough variety in New World for the game to be fun despite the repetitive nature of the content. There's a lot you can mix and match to create a gaming session. Do open-world PVE, instanced dungeons, instanced PVP, gathering, or work on one of the many crafting professions. As a gimp Paladin, I like the freedom of completing PVE content on my own, and people throw me invites for quests that require multiples because I can heal. No one will complain about my heavy armor in PVP because they're just glad that someone is healing. And it takes multiple attackers to take me down when they target the healer freeing up the others to kill the aggressors or complete objectives.
The first wave of players activated for Star Citizen's 3.18 patch came just before the holiday. They hoped to leave for their end-of-year vacation with all backers having access, but the build is too unstable for that volume. 3.18 is a milestone event for Star Citizen, containing Persistent Entity Streaming, Gen 12 graphics, and the long-awaited T0 of salvaging, among other things.
Head to Alysianah's World of Star Citizen to See Salvage in Action
Salvage is one of the professions I backed by purchasing the multicrew Aegis Reclaimer and the solo-capable Drake Vulture. The patch is rough-n-ready with crashes and character physic desync that requires resetting your character repeatedly. However, when things work, it's pretty damn fabulous. Salvage is the engaging but zen experience I was hoping for; this is only a fraction of what the mechanics will provide. Like mining, they've introduced just the laser capabilities as the start. You salvage the material from ship hulls into 1 SCU-sized cargo box, manage the boxes off the conveyer belt in the cargo bay and transport them for sale when you're done.
It seems straightforward, but it contains lots of interactions and player agency. Do you fill up your ship and fly that to sell the cargo directly? Perhaps you have a friend with an actual cargo hauler willing to manage the boxes off the conveyer belt and place them into their ship. The salvaged can keep working in deep space while their partner handles transportation and sales, then they split the profit. Or do you introduce a third person who's the box mover? The Cargo hauler helps to fill his ship and then is off. Box mover continues managing the conveyer belt, so there's a dedicated hauler and salvage. It's great to see multiple roles and choices, even at T0. I've felt this for a while, and this only reinforces my thinking that long development time or not, Star Citizen's player professions development is in good hands at CIG.
If you want to see some Salvaging in action, head to Alysianah's world for an article that discusses the mechanics and has a video of it in action.