This topic is inspired by something that recently happened to a friend. We often play the PvPvE Extract shooter - The Cycle: Frontier. In the game you drop onto the planet surface of Fortuna III, a colourful and dangerous alien world. If the creatures and storms don’t get you, the other players will.
As a prospector you have certain quests and jobs to complete for the in-game factions. Many of the quests involve collecting specific items that can be found on the planet surface. As you work your way through the quests the items and challenges get more difficult. As such my friend had a quest to obtain and deliver an extremely rare item called a Veltecite Heart. Veltecite is a mineral that can be mined from specific nodes on the planet surface. It comes in various forms, each rarer to find. To put it bluntly the chances of you finding a Veltecite Heart are minute (roughly a 0,3% spawn rate)
Now for the heartbreak. On one drop I took a swing at a Veltecite node and couldn’t believe it when right before my eyes sparkled a Veltecite Heart. I stashed it in my inventory and we made a beeline towards the Evac. In order to secure the heart my friend need to extract with it in his backpack, the only thing that could stop us now is another player killing us and taking our loot. The game gives you a safe pocket in which you can stash an item so that even if you are killed before you can evac, you get to keep that item. Sadly my friend’s safe pocket was too small to stash the veltecite heart, and my upgraded safe pocket was filled with another rare piece of loot that we had gone to great effort to collect. Near the evac we ran into another highly armed player who took us out, stealing the veltecite heart. Since then we have been mining nodes, searching for the elusive heart. But wait, here’s the real tragedy…
The other day my friend did a “naked” drop, i.e. dropping without armour, weapon, backpack or any items. It’s a cheap way to do a run without risking losing any valuable gear. He was just running around hitting veltecite nodes, without worrying about other players. When lo and behold, he finds a Veltecite Heart! But here’s the thing…
Because he had no backpack, the item would have to go into his safe pocket, except his safe pocket wasn’t big enough to fit it…
He spent about 30 minutes running around the server in the off chance a backpack was left lying around from another prospector who’d been shot, but alas none was to be found…
