WildStar: Bugs and the glorious beginnings of Pillowtown

As usual, I want to get the bad out of the way first:

WildStar, what is UP with you lately?  The last couple of days have been absolutely horrible for me, performance-wise.  Not only do I get horrible show-stopping graphical bugs like the above screen every once in a while, but now I’m getting lag spikes or stutters that freeze my screen up for a few seconds out of every 10-15.  It’s made navigating Thayd an absolute nightmare, and I don’t know if it’s on my end or more of a widespread problem.  In any case, it’s disheartening because, y’know, I just want to play.

Apart from that, Syp the Engineer is coming along grand.  She’s powered up to level 16 and finally wrapped up Algaroc, including all of her Settler missions.  With two gathering professions under her belt, she’s making bank at the commodities exchange.  I think I made around 40 gold over a couple of days just with low-level mats, and that will definitely help to fund my future adventures and decorating.

Speaking of which, it’s getting hard to play the game proper when all I want to do is putter around my housing plot.  WildStar isn’t helping by continually throwing new items and fabkits my way, such as this owl-themed Stonehenge:

That was from a drop last night, and even though it doesn’t “do” anything, it looks so awesome that I can’t imagine parting with it.  WildStar has an unexplained thing for owls, which is cool with me.  Owls are awesome and remind me of my grandmother, who had owl *everything* in her house.

Actually, for only being a couple of days old, my house is coming along wonderfully.  I’ve filled up all of the plugs, including a hedge maze that a random player graciously gave away (and subsequently became my neighbor) and a spooky graveyard challenge that’s drawn quite a few people to my plot.  Let me tell you, I really love folks visiting.  It’s a terrific feeling, especially if your home can provide something beneficial or entertaining for them.  I’ve set my mining and gardening to split the mats between me and visitors as such.

Oh!  And the RNG deities were with me yesterday, as my boombox gifted me an elite garden fabkit.  It’s really cool looking and apparently only comes from boomboxes.  It’s darn useful, too, with 15 mounds of dirt for planting.  I’m getting through a lot of my stored-up seeds that way.

I had to come in to edit this post this morning, because today my boombox spat up an elite relic excavation fabkit too — two elite fabkits two days in a row.  Seriously, I’m so out of room on my land that it isn’t even funny.  I am in much more need of decor, by far.

My housing plot is named “Pillowtown” because eventually that’s what I want it to be: a big pillow fort.  I’m collecting/buying a lot of pillows now for constructing it, and the above represents my sad start with these kidney bean-shaped pillows.  They’re not the best for stacking, but maybe this will be a pillow igloo.  Don’t judge until it’s done!

While I couldn’t even navigate Thayd tonight to get my mount, I did find a shady vendor who sold me this somewhat familiar piece of headgear.  Pretty cunning, dontcha think?