ArcheAge – Calleil Diary, First Five Days

26 September, 2014. 1,070 words.

(Updated with the rest of the screenshots I meant to include.)

If memory serves, Trion brought up the NA Calleil server on Sunday afternoon (Eastern time). Since the queues on Naima were horrible at the time, and there was little or no chance that I would ever find a place for a house or farm there anyway, I decided that I would make a character on Calleil to see how fast property disappeared.

I wasn't the only one who thought it might be a good idea to start on a new server.

This time I made an elf. I don’t know why. I really can’t stand the male elf model. I tried to make him look like a hideous vampire creature with a disfigured face. Of course, from the back, he looks like any other elf: Lanky and awkward.

Calleil Day 1, Sunday.

Character created around 8 PM. Rushed to around level 12 which took maybe an hour.

All by myself out here in the corner. Kind of surreal.

Calleil Day 2, Monday.

In the morning, placed a Scarecrow Garden in the corner of a field in Lilyut. Tried to situate it so that I could later replace it with a 16×16 garden.

1 PM, placed a stone house next to the garden, bought with Gilda earned from main storyline quests. I honestly don’t care about having a house; I just wanted to place it in such a way that it would block anyone else from interfering with my plans to replace my garden with a 16×16 farm later. Sadly there was still a way someone could block me on the other side, though.

By the way, my personal philosophy is that building stone houses will be easier than building wooden houses. I find it much easier and faster to wander around collecting raw stone than to grow trees for lumber. Especially on a relatively quiet server.

8 PM, began first trade run quest from Solzreed to Memoria. The housing space around the Solzreed Specialty Workbench was shockingly empty.

It's extremely weird to walk across empty fields in a housing zone these days. I should be weaving around houses and gardens here.

Calleil Day 3, Tuesday.

When I got home from work I completed the second two trade run quests. I was able to do them faster because I bought the necessary olives on the auction house instead of waiting forever to grow them. (Those olive trees take a long time to grow.)

But of course, someone planted a garden in the exact spot that would prevent me from ever replacing my 8×8 garden with a 16×16 farm. So I demolished my house because I knew I couldn’t stay there. The space around my garden was starting to get more crowded with houses anyway.

After I demolished my house. It's getting crowded around here anyway.

Calleil Day 4, Wednesday.

Harvested Narcissuses’s [sic] in the morning and evening for the fourth trade run quest. Also looked for a new place to move, and found a nice spot in Dewstone Plains. Placed my house, then later moved my garden down there next to my house. It’s situated in a little alcove so nobody can place a garden directly next to mine. Anti-social behavior completed!

Calleil Day 5, Thursday.

9 AM. Nerve-wracking Austera trade run quest across the ocean completed with a rowboat. No players encountered, sea monster seen on horizon but avoided, seabugs seen but avoided. Seemed a lot easier than it was in alpha. Received 16×16 Scarecrow Farm design. (Sold my pack for an inconsequential 1 Gilda Star since they weren’t paying gold.)

Luckily, this was the closest I ever came to danger on the way to Austera.

Placed Scarecrow Farm in Dewstone Plains next to my unfinished house. Didn’t realize I needed a whole Lumber Pack to build it though. That will have to wait for a while. Very happy with my property placement. It’s not “prime real estate” but I like it much better than what I got on Naima. And I have a garden, house, and farm all together. Somehow I’ll have to wrangle up another garden design to make a farmer’s workbench, though. Not sure how to accomplish that. I guess I’ll have to buy one from somebody or find one on the auction house. I don’t think there’s any way to craft or earn another one.

Garden on the left, House in the middle, Farm on the right.

11 AM. Four hour maintenance began just before I completed a Dyed Feather trade run from Gweonid to Two Crowns, hoping for 6 gold or more. (It was over 6 gold at Marianople so I wanted to see what it would be in the next zone.) I’m hopeful that I can earn gold a bit at a time and buy lumber on the auction house faster than I can actually grow trees and harvest them. I think I saw that 100 lumber was around 60 gold.

2 PM. Maintenance over. Completed trade run from Gweonid to Two Crowns for 8 gold. Not bad for riding a donkey from one place to another. Eight of those runs should get me the lumber I need for my Scarecrow Farm, then maybe I’ll be able to really ramp up production on Day 6.

9 PM. Completed the first step of building my house by crafting and using a stone pack, which requires 100 stone blocks, which requires some 300 raw stone. Two more steps to go: 100 more stone blocks and then 100 lumber. Also completed a few more Dyed Feather trade runs at 8 gold each. Sadly it takes 22 hours to receive payment for each trade run so I won’t see that money until Day 6.

Hammering in the first batch of stone for the house.

Conclusion

Based on my experience with observing real estate in the first five days of Calleil, I don’t think Trion needs to add many more North American servers, if any. There are still going to be plenty of places to put down a garden even on Day 6. But on Naima, I had a hard time finding a spot on the second day. Basically I think they did the right thing by sticking to their guns and not adding tons of servers. Maybe a month from now they might consider adding one or two more, but right now I don’t think it’s necessary.