The Queue: It wasn’t long or much of a trip, but it was definitely strange.

Last week I was supposed to be on vacation, but the vacation was clearly cursed. Just absolutely pirate gold, vengeful murdered victorian child levels of nonsense. The one silver lining was passing by The Peachoid twice in two days.

So, behold, I guess.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us the questions and just as soon as we get back from the DMV, dentist, and mechanic, and actually let’s pencil in an exorcist so we probably won’t have a chance to answer, sorry. Maybe after I get done very carefully and explicitly not cussing out my “roadside assistance” insurance agent. Oh, probably should check in with my therapist about it, too now that I’m thinking of it.

Right now on the PTR, you can still get all that junk from the Decor Duels vendors for Marl. People have been taking this to mean that the vendors will definitely persist and you will definitely be able to buy either duplicates of what you have, or just the items period, for Marl. That’s a fair assumption.

But also, cautionarily, all the Decor Duels stuff cost Marl on the PTR in the patch before Duels was launched. You can see this in the TikTok I made about Decor Duels when they discussed it on the podcast, which took footage from the then-current PTR. So, I would not fully bet against all that stuff costing the Decor Duels currency (coins?) when 12.1 released, or even being removed on live, but they just kinda left it on PTR for now. Why spend time messing with the item cost on an NPC slated for removal anyway?

I’m not saying there’s no chance we’ll get the decor for Marl later. I’m saying, if there’s any Decor, or especially mounts and other junk you want, make it a priority to get it rather than assuming it’s a lock that it’ll still be available for Marl later.

It really depends on the game, its complexity, and how likely it is I’m going to forget literally everything before I get back to it.

In The Long Dark, the mechanics and controls are straightforward and there’s a robust journal I can write down what I’m up to — the supplies I have in various areas, what I wanted to do next, which areas I’ve looted. I can drop that for months at a time and pick it right back up.

Then there are games where the controls or mechanics are a little wonky or in-depth. Like almost all Civ-style games, I’ll start a new playthrough or even play the tutorial again, and then go back to my “real” game if I pick it back up.

But I just started a new playthrough of Salt 2, a fun little seafaring adventure game. It allows you to draw items on the map, and assign various symbols to them, but after a few months, while I remember that I used the black fish symbol to be a fishing merchant and the blue fish to mean the fishing guild, I have no earthly idea what a yellow X and a red… cave thing? is supposed to mean. So I’m just starting over, which honestly is fine. I like early game the best in most games.

In the case of Final Fantasy, broadly, I’d just muscle through because I’d forget, and restarting is going to put you right back where you are now, just later.

Look, it’s none of my business what’s in my warbank. I just cram everything in there and forget about it until I’m forced to deal with it again.

The inventory shuffle is at the absolute bottom of my personal heap in terms of gameplay loops. I would rather do platforming or deckbuilding than deal with inventory. The one way it can become tolerable is if there’s a subloop within the regular one. The inventory shuffle in Pacific Drive was okay for me, because each item had a size within a grid — raw materials were 1×2, the crowbar was 1×3,  a tire was 3×3 — and the inventory grid itself was wonky, with weird sized compartments, making the decision making more complex. I often threw away what would otherwise be high-value parts because a car door didn’t take up the same space as a very small, crappy stack of flares.

Feels like this response means I’m going to monkey paw wish my way into stacks of flasks taking up 6 bag slots or something. Sorry in advance.

Especially at outdoor concerts, as a verified Old Person, my first order of business is scoping out where the speakers are, figuring out the directionality of them, and not standing directly in front of them. I dutifully bring ear plugs — I have some of the very bougie concert ones now — but outdoors, they make it as loud as possible because the sound just dissipates into the sky.

I also hate standing concerts because I’m 5’2″, and the crush of humanity gets so claustrophobic, especially if it’s already hot. I try to stay near the outside, even if it’s sort of up against a barrier.