December 2012

Lets Gear Up: Challenge Mode #WurmOnline

stargrace December 23, 2012 0Comment

I know, I haven’t been keeping frequent with my posts what so ever. We all know how busy the holidays can be, and mine is no exception. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been getting my game on! Oh no, in fact the opposite is quite true.

In Wurm Online I currently have FIVE premium characters. That’s three more than I had originally planned for, and two more than I’m going to keep in the end. My goal (roughly) is to keep one main character (in this case, Stargrace) for an all-around skiller, and then Arysh as my Vynora priest, and Faralithe, as my Fo priest. Right now I also have a Magranon priest, and Blesse who is my character on Pristine. Holding down the fort until it merges with the rest of the Freedom servers, when ever that may be.

Things have been busy, there’s been deed building and the impalong, neither of which I’ve spoken about much – but I will do that another time. What I wanted to write about today was my plundering adventures of last night.

See, Faralithe is on Independence attending sermons with the hope of one day becoming a priest. In order to get her there quickly, I dropped her off without any gear at all, and then /suicide to the starter deed. Then walked to her sermon location. That means no tools, as she had given up the beginner tools quite some time ago. So I put a challenge forth to myself – how long would it take me to pillage all of the items I needed in order to form a ‘comfortable’ life on Independence.

Answer was roughly two hours.

Independence is the largest Wurm Online server, and it’s also the oldest. There’s LOTS of crumbling down old places just waiting for eager hands to come and make use of items. The screen shot above is a list of all the neat items I found, and that doesn’t include the large cart with 7 rafts that I filled with seeds and veggies. Also a horse.

I even got some rope! I was pleased with that. Oh and some 30 ql chain armor that isn’t listed because I forgot to open the body section of my inventory. I found a trader who had a bit of coin on him (about 50 copper) and managed to walk to the Freedom Market and purchase the lantern from a trader for 10c.

Some of my main pillaging goals included a backpack, a compass, a lantern, and rope. Now the items above may not be the best quality, some are even part of the starter pack you get when you finish the tutorial, but I was still really happy to have found such great spoils.

It’s amazing to me how many people do not properly secure their stuff. For an experienced player, it was like Christmas (har) at this one deed I found. There was an actual deed which of course prevents any stealing – but the player had extended their living space beyond the deed, into the lands of wurm, which is free game if not properly secured in an enclosure. They did have gates all around their property BUT one of these gates was unlocked. Not attached to a house. That means anyone could come in and take items off of the area they had built on. There were thousands of veggies, seeds, animals, iron items, all scattered all over this land they they obviously think is safe.

It’s not.

Now, is it cruel that I’m “stealing” items from players? Maybe. But the game has very specific mechanics on what ‘stealing’ is and is not. I never break the rules, and I would never suggest that people break the rules. Players DO need to learn to keep their items secure, and just like I had to learn my lesson (my animal pens have been broken into before and all my animals scattered) so does everyone else. I don’t have any guilt about it and I don’t think I’m overly cruel about it. In the deed mentioned above, I didn’t take everything (or even close to everything) and I didn’t touch their animals. What I did was take the bits and pieces I needed to equip myself, and left the rest.

Needless to say, it was a very profitable night.

Cow Riding – It’s a Sport #WurmOnline

stargrace December 17, 2012 1Comment

Days like yesterday make me wish we had a 3rd person view for Wurm Online. Let me paint the scene for you.

I’ve recently started playing with an alt on Pristine, the latest server to open. It’s not attached to the Freedom cluster even though it is a Freedom server, to give players that “new” player feel. Without me getting into the whole “us vs. them” debate, I will say that it’s been interesting.

Being a new server means there’s no rope to lead animals, so people are frantically growing wemp and cotton. Leather is pretty easy to come by. Not being able to collect animals via rope has been really nice. I did remember something yesterday though. You don’t need rope to ride a cow and you need very little body control. Less than 20. So I grabbed a pile of strawberry seeds and headed out into the wild to find a cow to bring home. See the problem with no rope means you can’t lead animals into pens. You can build the pens around them but animals won’t walk through buildings or fences with the “go here” command. I learned that the hard way with a few chickens of mine.

Found a cow. Tamed it. And started riding it! Yeeha! Now cows move VERY slowly, but my purpose wasn’t to actually ride it for speed so much as just ride it into a pen of mine.

Then the spider saw me.

So there I was, no armor, riding a cow up a very steep mountain side to get to my deed (on the other side of said mountain) WITH a giant spider chasing me. It was an epic moment. Which brings me back to the point about how I wish there was 3rd person view.

I now have two happy cows grazing in my pens. They’ll probably mash down all the wemp I’ve started, knowing my luck.

Before And After 1.0 #WurmOnline

stargrace December 14, 2012 4Comments

Before – my kitchen

After 1.0 update with new floors and a wooden shingle roof

Before 1.0 – the workshop

Brand new workshop after 1.0 with a new roof and new brick flooring.

Moving Forward to 1.0 #WurmOnline

stargrace December 11, 2012 1Comment

Wurm Online is releasing 1.0 approximately 15 hours from the time of this post. That’s when the new server will be opening,  giving players an absolute new experience. A land with nothing built on it, no one arriving with tools or boats, no maps created.

I am both excited and nervous about it. I’m tempted to create a new character (only new characters can reach this server for the time being) to check out the server – but I have a well established home already set up on Deliverance and I was already tempted by Celebration when that server released. We all know how that ended up (I came back home, to Deliverance, after setting up not one but two deeds on Celebration). I think I’ll just keep cozy here on Deliverance and continue to do my thing. I love adventuring but my favorite sort doesn’t involve running unarmed through a lot of aggressive creatures. Instead I prefer to pick over fallen down ruins where people used to live, exploring whatever the land may tell as a story.

I’m looking forward to multi story. I’ve seen some really nice homes created on the test server and I have plans of a lighthouse for my dock. As long as I’m having fun it doesn’t matter what I spend my time doing, and I think 1.0 will add a lot of flavour to be explored. Keep in mind this is also the date for character models to be released, something we’ve been looking forward to for a long time now.

I hope those who have been putting off trying Wurm will give it a shot. I expect there to be many bugs upon release. Server instability and all the rest of the joys that come with a whole lot of changes hitting an MMO all at once.That’s part of the fun though!

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