March 2012

All Sunshine and Rainbows – Life as a Priest of Fo #WurmOnline

stargrace March 26, 2012 No Comments

I took my Fo priest to Tristan to participate in some ceremonies that were going on. These are basically skill gain sessions. Priests gather around, every 3 hours they preach, 30 minutes between each preach, and you get a skill gain of faith depending on the number of listeners. You need 4 for a gain at all, and 6 for a prayer re-set. That means that every 3 hours you gain 5 new prayers (spaced 20 minutes apart) as well as the gain from preaching. You also gain alignment. It was very nice and I gained a lot of faith but it’s also a very boring job, hanging out on someone else’ deed and basically ignoring the screen unless it’s your turn to preach.

In the mean time people do mundane tasks like working on channeling, and casting spells on one another. It’s common to link up with other AFK priests so you can make use of their favor (basically mana) while you work on your skills. Because everyone is from different time zones there are lulls in conversation, but it’s mostly friendly chatter.

For me working on a Fo priest is quite easy. I have high alignment from planting sprouts (you also gain +4 alignment each time someone preaches). I spend time casting spells and praying, and I’m working on my meditation skill so that I can get to rank 7 and create enchanted grass (note: meditation is not related to religion in any way, it’s a regular skill that anyone can pick up). I’m still some time away from that yet you need rank 7 and 30 meditation skill. For some reason my meditation skill has refused to move the last few times I’ve attempted it.

My goal is to reach 70 faith (and hence 70 favor) so I can cast genesis. It’s a spell that removes bad traits from animals, and I’ve got a few that could use this miracle cure, as does Arkenor. We’ve been saving up some bad trait animals because they’re just too deer to give up, in the hopes that one day I’ll be able to cure them. I think I still have a month or two to go before that will become a reality.

There are days I regret being a priest. Days when my boats sink due to poor quality and I can’t improve them and have to use my alt. Days I want to bash down a wall (I have many of those days actually). I can turn off faithful and lose 0.1 faith per action which is at least an option, but it’s a harsh one. I was nearly at 60 faith when I decided 4 of my deed walls needed to be taken down RIGHT THEN. Mayors get a bonus to this type of fence removal and I am the always impatient gamer when I have an idea I want implemented. I dropped down to 54 faith, and am now slowly climbing my way back up – again. It’s worth it to me to be able to do these things, which is why a LOT of priests have a different main and keep both characters premium. Or at least have a free character around who can improve and fix things. Or live on a deed with others who can handle the upkeep. There are always options.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

How WurmOnline Keeps You Playing #WurmOnline

stargrace March 24, 2012 4 Comments

Every game has a ‘hitch’ that keeps you wanting to log in. For most of my themepark MMOs, this is done by daily quests. In EVEOnline it’s with daily missions from R&D agents, and my PI production. In WurmOnline that hitch is a lot stronger for me to deal with – pictured above, my hen. She died because I didn’t log in for one day. There are some incredibly delicate animals in WurmOnline, including pigs and hens. My rooster is being cared for and has lasted quite a long time now, but no such luck for the hen. You have to hand feed them (or leave a pile of grain on the ground, I couldn’t do that because the cows just eat it all). I had fed her in the morning, and even cast my Fo spell on her that grooms and takes care of her – but by that evening after less than a real life day of neglect, she was dead. If you don’t log in and tend for your animals (that’s assuming you have animals) they die. They get disease. They miscarry. With 12 horses, a hen, a deer, 5 dogs, 5 unicorns, and a handful of cattle, this is a major deal to me, I don’t want to log in to a pen full of corpses. There are of course ways to get around this. You can have enchanted grass planted, this feeds animals forever (grain eating animals at least). You need to have someone cast it for you or be level 7 on the path of love (meditation skill). It costs approx 50c-1s per tile to be done and there’s no guarantee that the animals will stand on that specific tile if you have a large space. It also doesn’t prevent them from aging or from getting disease. You can leave piles of food around, but there’s no guarantee that every animal who is hungry will get to eat their fill. Especially if you have 2nd generation (or older) animals who may have the “always hungry” trait. Thankfully I have enough skill that I can see if my animals have this trait.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on my deeds lately. I did own four of them. I know, a bit much right? I owned Darkpaw Bay, Fippy’s Keep, Les Reveurs, and Les Reveurs over on independence server. I decided since Fippy’s Keep and Darkpaw Bay were back to back, I would take down the keep, and expand Darkpaw Bay by a few tiles. Doing this allowed me to map out a larger pen for animals, all on-deed. I also added new bear pens, and have started breeding my black bears. I’d like to make a few more pens in behind, and my priest should have a lot of fun working on her animal-heavy deed. Since there’s not a lot else that a priest can do besides nature related tasks, this makes for the perfect deed for her.

My deed in the mountains belongs to Stargrace, and she spends her time mining and working on various skills, it’s probably my favorite deed. She has a small collection of dogs at the moment (four) and two bulls who drag her cart around happily. Aside from that things are quiet.

The deed on independence is also quiet. It’s a place I use only for working skills, right now I’m working my way through hot food cooking. It’s not the most exciting of tasks, but it’s great for priests to raise SD (soul depth). Something needed in a lot of spells.

I’ll be posting more screen shots of each deed as the week goes by, so stay tuned for that. I may even post a video or two of me walking around the deeds. We’ll see. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Spending Time On Independence (Unintentionally) #WurmOnline

stargrace March 23, 2012 2 Comments

That screen shot above is the  main reason why I have been spending my time between two servers, Deliverance, where my ‘home base’ is, and Independence, where I have a LOT of food stored up in a tiny little deed I own. I didn’t want to just leave it behind to rot, so last night I moved 2 characters back over to that deed so that my Vynora priest could work up his Hot Food Cooking skill. I mean, that’s a lot of food just sitting there.

This of course was the start of a big adventure. See, I wasn’t sure what else I had left behind, but I thought perhaps I had left a few iron chunks that I could use to make into frying pans. I had grossly over estimated the amount of iron I had, and after 5 unfinished crafting attempts at a large anvil, I was out of iron. I needed a whetstone, I needed a pickaxe, and I had no iron or supplies on Independence to do any of this.

As any great explorer does, I wandered. I found a pickaxe. I didn’t find any iron, but I did find a mine just across from my deed. I set out to gather some iron so that I could make a chisel, then a whetstone, then finish all of those anvils collecting dust in my forge, and THEN finally, perhaps make those frying pans that I wanted to make from the start. Nothing is ever easy.

The moral of the story? ALWAYS keep your tools on you. You have no idea when you may need them.

The adventure didn’t end there, I accidentally got the priest killed before I re-deeded the area, and had to walk him from The Howl (I believe that’s the name) to Colossus Lake. Without a compass. On a continent I was not familiar with at all. Thankfully, it was day time. My one saving grace. It took a while, but I made it. I deeded the land so that should any more mishaps befall my brave adventurer, I would at least be able to spawn in the general vicinity.

There are a few differences between the enormous place that is Indi and the tiny by comparison Deli. Not just in size, either. On Indi I have been chased by every manor of aggressive creature, of all ages. The lands are absolutely teaming with life. There are ruins everywhere, the land has been incredibly built up over the years – but I find it much quieter than Deli. In my little area almost all of the deeds have been disbanded and are rotting away with a few exceptions. It makes for wonderful salvaging grounds. Also makes me miss my two horses that I let go when I first left, thinking I would have no reason to return. kchat (kingdom) is busy, and people seem quite familiar with one another. Deeds seem huge. Then again the map is quite large.

When I’ve exhausted the supplies stored up I’ll bring the priest back over to Deli, provided I can find my way again.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Still Playing in the Sandbox #WurmOnline

stargrace March 22, 2012 No Comments

I’ve been playing WurmOnline for four months now, which is not that long in the eyes of the veterans, but I’ve been having an absolute blast, so much so that it’s rare that another game can hold my attention as well as Wurm does. As I’ve said many times in the past, there’s just ‘something’ about the game that appeals to every aspect that I enjoy (minus the griefers). On that front, things have been blissfully quiet, and I hope they stay that way. March break is over, and I rarely see the accused unless it’s the weekend or evenings. Fine by me. I’m still working on getting all three of my deeds fully protected. While the animals are secure, I now have a lot of extra walls that were on my perimeter, so I am working on taking them down. Unlike deed walls, perimeter walls don’t have a bonus when the mayor tries to knock them down, so it takes some time.

There has been an outbreak of unicorns and trolls around my mountain side deed, the unicorns provide good meat and hides (as well as unicorn horns which I can use to make healing covers) and the trolls, well. I can’t defeat those yet. I cower inside my humble stone house, hoping they ignore me. It’s still quite neat to see them roaming around.

This weekend should be a lot of fun in game. First of all there is a Fo sermon that will be taking place the week of March 24th to 31st. Fo priests from all Freedom servers are welcome to come and join in at Tristan for faith gains. I’ll be leaving both my Fo priest and my follower online at the church to help this. On the 31st there is also going to be a server wide Vynora event. Anyone who is a follower (or priest) of Vynora will gain 5 hours of sleep bonus if you’re online when this takes place, so I’ve been working hard to use mine up in time. Not that difficult to do, my Vynora priest has been busy working on HFC (hot food cooking) and making meals as well as casting opulence for skill gains.

I’ve started back up with breeding cattle and horses, I currently have five foals, with a handful of full grown horses. I’ve been letting the bad trait ones free in the wild for others to kill / use. The cattle I’ve been killing for hides, I just don’t enjoy killing horses that much and would rather let them go. I have a few colours of horses now which is nice, hopefully I’ll get even better stock as I continue. Animal husbandry is a bit slow to raise, but I know I’ll get there (eventually).

Once all of the deeds are finally taken care of I can go back to working my skills, such as tailoring and rope making. I’ve been working on my jeweler, Currently sitting at 18, it’s my goal to reach 20 today. My black bears have reached adolescence, and once a few more days have passed I’ll be able to breed them and try to get some nice trait bears. Although if Arkenor’s experiences have taught me anything it’s that this is not an easy task by any means.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!