Today I wanted to come here and express my love for what is possibly the greatest quest in the game’s history: A Bag of Veilshards. Pretty much every single aspect of this masterpiece screams “peak game design”.
For example, how the rats can take up to 20 extremely entertaining seconds to reach their lair, and sometimes wander across enemies, where they immediately turn around the corner, and you may lose them from sight in the resulting chaos. Since there’s no way to prevent this from happening, it’s great because it forces you to pay attention to absolutely worthless enemies that can’t even harm you.
Sometimes, when approaching a veilshard, it may disappear for no apparent reason, which is an excellent way to add challenge. Imagine my surprise when, after my usual rodent chase, I found myself looking at nothing! What a twist. But the complexity of this awesome quest goes beyond that: sometimes, the shard won’t even spawn, because it’s a rat you already chased. The challenge increases even further because now you must remember which ones you already clicked. Simply put, it’s perfection in the form of a mission.
When I did this quest last week, I was surprised at the sheer quality of it. Today, the quest is not only back, but now they ask me to collect even more veilshards than before! It’s magnificent, because they sometimes can be one or two per finding; most of the time, it’s just one, allowing you to enjoy the fun for longer periods of time. In fact, today I had the pleasure of chasing fifteen rats in total! Boy, I loved every minute of it.
Speaking of this week’s quest, the NPC gave me an item that allows me to see the rats through the walls. An unnecessary quality of life addition, since finding them is part of the enjoyment, but it compensates by revealing rats that, after reaching them, can’t be clicked. Well done! I was afraid that the item would make the quest too easy, but it luckily didn’t happen.
I hope that, in the future, they add more quests like this, but mandatory, like in the middle of the campaign, so it’s always there in your map, beckoning you to do it. It worked perfectly with the ridiculously long chain to capture bees, and I’m sure it’ll work with this.