Trick or Treat.....

The programmers of the game I play in Berlin are always inventive. Every Tuesday they turn off their servers for a few hours and fix bugs, or add something new or make an 'event' , as they call it. Some of them are lame, some are interesting. Yesterday they took longer than usual, and had to wait for a huuuuge patch to install itself once they were back up.

The theme of the week is: Halloween! Yay...

They really went all out this time. You always begin in the same place, the town square in an idyllic realm's largest village. And I learned per special notice that there were empty baskets all over the place. And if you got one, you were to go to the 'Halloween Narr (fool)' and you would receive 'candy'. The Halloween Narr is an effigy scarecrow on a crossbar with a pumpkin head and flaming eyes.

Trick or treat in other words. Normally if you have to find things they are few and far between, but not this time. You are generously given all sorts of candy, and I guess there are six sorts.

As is appropriate, the candy is Halloween 'creepy'. Frogs on a stick, dead eye-ball chewing gum, sugar skeleton bones, pumpkin drops, moldy lollipops, candied worms, and so on.

Normally in the game, if you are given 'sweets', they are to be used in the dungeons, and enhance your life force or abilities somehow. So instead of telling you what the candy does, all you get is, 'you have to taste it to find out'. So I tried 'em out.

Takes 'Trick' or 'Treat' to a whole new level. Activate one and it can say 'eeeewwww, horrible'... and you suddenly have minus 20% of your attacking force for two minutes, which isn't good if you're in a fight. Or 'ooh, delicious', and you get a 50% life force increase for five minutes, which is a real 'treat'.

And even within one sort, they aren't uniformly the same effects. Each one is different. Won't go on, just giving you the idea of how it works. I think this is the best Halloween in a long time. Very clever, and I get a week of trick or treating. Who else can say that, right?

Whoever thought this 'event' up really put a lot of work into it, and I think it is as funny as hell. Whoever it was, they must have Halloween as the top 'horriday' of the year.

Apropos Horriday... today is our national one, come around again. You're supposed to go out hiking and take in the beauty of the country. Except the weather is dreary, and there's a fine mist, so will be in-doors. Because we all know what 'mist' means now, right?

Happy trick or treating when the day comes.