The first taste is always free.
When I started my character in Dungeons & Dragons Online I assumed that most of my budget for this game would go toward quest packs, but after the huge content giveaway by Standing Stone last year (in this game and in LOTRO) I now have more quests available to me than I'll need for a long time. So what's left to lure me into the cash shop?
As usual for me I've no interest in boosts, and since this game's inventory is slightly more generous than that of LOTRO I don't feel the need to expand on that... much. There is cosmetic gear, and for once I've indulged in that since the default armors in DDO aren't terribly good. That's a one-off purchase though.
There is an item in the store that I can see myself wanting/needing at some point, and that's Siberys Spirit Cakes.
There are very limited options for recovering from a defeat in DDO without leaving an instance. I very rarely die close enough to a shrine to be able to rez there, and for a solo player that's basically the only way to avoid the run back to the instance - which times out very quickly, as I discovered during my disastrous run at The Illusionarium at the end of my last run of this game. Even if I do make it back inside in time it's still tiresome to run through an entire dungeon all the way back to whatever it was that killed me.
The Siberys Spirit Cake is an item that enables a self-rez, and after receiving one for free in a tutorial quest on Korthos Island I discovered they were cash shop items, and they aren't cheap for what they are, working out at about £1.50/$2.00 each. Not much in itself, but it's a recurring fee that could spiral upward fast, especially given my tendency to seek out the most challenging content I can (probably) do.
I dislike cash shop consumables at the best of times, and all the more so when, as here, it doesn't feel like I'm paying for a convenience but rather paying to avoid an inconvenience. By which I mean I'm not spending money on something useful or fun, but on something that does nothing except negate a mechanic that's more annoying than it needs to be. It's rather like certain of the cash shop unlocks in The Old Republic, but at least each of those is a purchase I only need to make once. The only limits on how often I might need a self-rez are my own recklessness and how often the game puts an unexpectedly/disproportionately deadly encounter in front of me. One of these is under my control, the other not so much.
It's a game mechanic that's rather reminiscent of the corpse runs of older MMOs, only with an added fee, and there's a reason why such mechanics are rarely used now. It's also particularly punishing for solo players. So far I've resisted the urge to keep one of these items stashed in my inventory 'for emergencies' because using them is not a habit I want to acquire.
So for now I will, as Brass Eye might have put it, Just Say No to Cake.
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