2012

Falkenstein Castle #WurmOnline

stargrace June 4, 2012 0Comment

I love castles, and I’ve always had a huge fascination with Ludwig II. My castle deed isn’t named very creatively, but it suits me and I’m excited about it. Pictured above was the beginning work on it. Flattening the mountain top so that I can build. Well. Moumix did a lot of the work. He flattened the portion that will be used for the castle, the portion that is green (and not flat in that picture) I changed so that I can use it for a pen for animals and field. Then there is another area that includes a maple tree lined cobble road, and it leads up to my mine. Eventually, I’d love a gold or silver mine door covering it, with bright flags along the hill. I have a perfect spot for a guard tower although getting the clay required up the hill will be a challenge. Eventually I’d like to build a 3 wide road leading right up to the castle. That will take a LOT of dirt though, and I’m not sure I have the patience for such a grand vision.

I love building new deeds in Wurm, almost as much as I love already-created ones (like Thorin’s Bay). It takes a lot of work and patience, but it’s very rewarding. I’ve done a lot of thinking to try to decide exactly what I want, and I’m hoping when multi story buildings come out my castle will be visible from the ground below.

I’ll be sure to post the progress pictures as things come along. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Lost, Dead, and Deeded #WurmOnline

stargrace June 1, 2012 4Comments

It took the better part of a day, but I now have my 4th deed on the new Celebration server. That’s four deeds in total, not my fourth on that specific server. The deed faces a beautiful river, that eventually winds its way to the starter village of ‘Tap Dance’ – the mountains pictured above are actually deeded by Moumix, I’m on a circular island just across the water.

Starting from scratch has been interesting, a lot of things I forgot. Here’s how my day went. I arrived in Celebration, and turned East because I spotted a big island that way. Turns out I was not the only one, so I kept going. I found a really nice area that I was contemplating deeding, but I had taken over my weakest character, and Celebration is completely covered with very mean angry creatures. I tried to lure some away and failed. Died, spent an hour trying to walk back. There’s no map of this server yet so walking anywhere is a lot of guessing and me frantically sending screen shots to Moumix to figure out where I was. I managed to find my body (it helps that I stuck close to water) and to lessen my weight I dumped all of my tools into my boat. Then I continued exploring. I received a bad wound, and decided to bring my Fo priest over because she’s immune to most types of aggressive animals. I logged the alt with the bad wound out until the priest could arrive because the wound was getting worse.

Priest arrived, healed the alt, decided to poke around on the priest. Then I started to realize just how busy the East coast was, and it was deterring me from settling in that area. After some talking with Moumix and me drooling over screen shots of his massive mountain (which has copper!) I decided to sail over to the island across from him.

Of course, nothing is that simple. I loaded both characters into my sail boat, leaving the corbita behind. I got lost every step of the way, and a few hours later FINALLY had Moumix come out and rescue me, and show me where this island was. I wandered around, and fell in love with the quaint little area. It makes for a nice little country home that’s relatively flat and doesn’t require much terraforming. I haven’t decided what all I want to do with it yet.

I started to get to work – and then realized that all of my tools were way back on the corbita that I had abandoned earlier. So I sailed back to get them after placing my deed. Then I decided to take the Fo priest back home to Deliverance to care for her animals, and leave the alt at the new deed. It was a really quick sail back, the wind was on my side (for once). Once I made it all the way back to Deliverance, I realized that my Fo priest was the mayor of the deed and I had not set permissions for my alt to do anything.

GAH.

So. I spent three hours sailing BACK to Celebration, against the wind, to give those permissions to the alt (and to make her mayor in 24 hours). I had just enough time to make a pen for some animals I found (a pregnant horse and 1 bull / 1 cow so far) and start a large cart.

Welcome to Celebration!

Time for Celebration #WurmOnline

stargrace May 31, 2012 0Comment

In a very surprise announcement yesterday, Rolf told players that a new freedom server would be joining the cluster, called ‘Celebration’. This land mass is located (for the time being at least) South of Exodus, and is rumored to be a PvE server (the email didn’t really clarify whether it would be PvP or PvE but for now we’ll just figure it’s a PvE server).

Along with this new land, achievements are coming to game. You’ll be able to access them from the main tab, and despite the fact that a lot of players (from multiple games) abhor achievement systems, I’ve always looked at them as neat little accomplishments for players to work on when they don’t really know what else to do. In a sandbox game this can be a very good thing, giving players a sense of direction and “something to do” when they’re not sure what they want to be working on.

Of course, a new server brings up all sorts of comments. Can we handle yet another server, the population is already so thin, etc. To these opinions I’ve had basically one line of thought. It is the players choices to move, and the players who spread themselves thin (if one is of the opinion that it is spread too thin, I don’t necessarily agree for Freedom servers). I hear every day about how new players want fresh open land that isn’t covered in ruins, they want uniques (which typically get killed), and a handful of other “not close to my neighbour but I want a full server” complaints. In a sandbox MMO there are so many opinions from so many different players that it’s all but impossible to keep everyone happy.

Personally, I sailed an alt out to the south of Exodus yesterday with an unused deed form. We’ll see what happens from there.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Reeds, and Pens, and Papyrus, Oh My! #WurmOnline

stargrace May 30, 2012 1Comment

The reed farm is coming along well, I’ve harvested my first crops, and was going to make a press and turn them into paper when servers came down this morning for an update, so at least it’s giving me some time to post, hehe. Reed is used to turn into paper with a press, or you can turn it into a pen and fill it with ink. Then you can write letters and mail them, or leave them around the lands of wurm for players to find in some sort of neat treasure hunt.

Making pens uses the carpentry skill. You use a carving knife on a reed plant, and create a container for ink.

Making paper uses a new skill called ‘papyrusmaking’ – you activate a press, right click a reed fibre, and select it from the misc menu. You can’t improve either of these items, so making high quality can be quite difficult and will take some time.

I’m looking forward to being able to (eventually) make books, write guides, and even sell them on merchants to players. First I’ll have to actually level up my skills, which in Wurm, is always a slow process (but very rewarding).

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

Renovations To Thorin’s Bay #WurmOnline

stargrace May 28, 2012 0Comment

Thorin’s Bay is located on the South Coast of Deliverance, and has been where I’ve been spending most of my in-game time. It’s a beautiful deed, but I’ve still found lots of little changes I’ve wanted to do to make it represent ‘me’ a bit more. One of the first things that was done was ripping out some of the horse pens and adding guest houses as well as an extra storage house. There are still some pens, but not nearly as many as there were before.

Moumix also added an amazing reed farm to the deed along the dock area, so I’m now growing reed in addition to my corn fields. One of the larger houses has been given double doors along with indoor walls, separating rooms and creating a hallway. I’ve attempted to make a path of love section with a 3×3 area of flowers on the lower dock, but so far have been unsuccessful at it. For now I take my path of love characters over to Darkpaw to use the tile there. I’ve also tried creating a path of knowledge tile on the sand just outside of my perimeter, but haven’t had any luck with that (again I take Stargrace over to Darkpaw to use the knowledge tile there too).

I’ve also removed a few of the slabs from the upper level and planted some flowers, and created a few statues and added some flags and banners to the area. The fountain was added along with a bench or two and some practice dolls for fighting skills. Over all, it’s coming along.

Moumix was kind enough to map out the entire deed as well as a lot of the mine, which has been a huge blessing because now I know what nodes are where. I reached 50 mining, which means I can finally give up mining rock and move on to something else. Not that I mind rock, but I’ve done a LOT of rock mining during my stay in Wurm Online so far.

I’m really excited to see what comes next. Moumix has been working on creating some boats (I believe his current is a corbita) to sell, and we’re slowly working through the bulk storage bins we have filled with logs. Very slowly, might I add. There are still thousands.

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