I’ve dabbled a little bit in the EQNext Alpha here and there since it opened last weekend… not much because, due to the volatile nature of an alpha test, things keep getting reset. Par for the course, but it makes me wary about investing too much time into detail building, knowing that nothing will last more than a day or three. Still, overall, I like where the game is headed.

The resources-to-recipe ratio seems… a little out of whack though. It’s too early to tell if this is just an alpha anomaly, specifics yet to be tweaked, but certain recipes require an unusual amount of materials.

While looking to upgrade my axe, I found I needed a handful of Burled Wood planks to make the handle. I capitalize Burled Wood because it is a rare drop from regular trees. Better than regular old plebian wood, apparently.

So in order to make one Burled Wood plank, you need 100 Burled Wood Logs. You need 5 planks for the pick’s handle. 500 logs.

Now that alone seems like a lot of wood for an axe handle… but to put it in some perspective, in the course of getting that much Burled Wood, I also harvested 300 planks worth of regular wood. Three-thousand wood logs.

I am now responsible for the extinction of countless animals and insects whose homes I obliterated in pursuit of my shitty axe. And that’s just the beginning. I will now use said axe to wreak further destruction on the landscape in pursuit of even more Burled Wood, for even better tools of deforestation. I am a one-man environmental terrorist. My thirst for Burled Wood cannot be quenched.

Yep, just read that last sentence aloud. Good grief.