2012

It’s a Bear! #WurmOnline

stargrace January 16, 2012 3Comments

Peering out my window yesterday, I avoided almost certain death – now that I’ve been replanting trees along my deed, nature has decided to once again wander its path. I think this is fantastic, I love that you can affect the actual lands of WurmOnline, you can change the ground into anything from sand, dirt, grass, trees, steppe, and even flowers. Changing the tiles changes what happens around that area, so it’s not something to be taken lightly. Scopique eventually lead this bear over to a guard to have it taken care of (there are no guards on my property, but the neighbours have some) so he was safe. For now.

Yesterday I decided it was time I wandered over to Arkenor’s deed, to see how he has been progressing. His deed is out in the wilds, and it took a little wandering before I could find it properly. I almost died, numerous times, but thankfully there were a few abandoned deeds along the way I could hide out in. I even managed to find myself a fat young calf to take home. Now I’ve got a calf and a horse penned up by my house. I also managed to get my digging high enough that I can manage steep slopes, and I flattened an area of land to plant on. I extended the path that leads from my home down to what will eventually be a dock area, although it needs quiet a bit of work. That’s what WurmOnline is all about.

I have a schedule for myself in game. If it’s night time I putter around my deed doing mundane things that need to be done like working on the dock, the farmland, cooking casseroles. If it’s day time I can wander from home and it’s far more safe since I can actually see where I’m going. I use this time to adventure – typically looking for sprouts and flowers that I can clip and bring home and re-plant. I also hunt for abandoned villages to plunder, after all, why let things go to waste. I’m waiting for my horse and calf to grow up, and I’d like a male horse and a bull so that I can eventually breed the animals. I need to extend the pen slightly, it was put up temporarily when I first brought the horse home so it’s quite tiny.

All in all, I’m enjoying myself in WurmOnline (as you can tell by the frequency of posts). I realize people may not be all that excited by my daily ‘working on a farm’ posts, but it’s so incredibly refreshing to me. Plus once I have the skills to perform the more mundane tasks, no doubt my posts will get a little more interesting. I’d like to build a ship to explore other servers, and I may even start up a second account so that once I dedicate myself to Fo I can still cut down trees and mine.

I hope everyone else had an amazing weekend, no matter where you found yourself. As always, happy gaming!

A Bed to Rest My Head #WurmOnline

stargrace January 15, 2012 1Comment

I’ve been pretty busy on Darkpaw, my house was built and next was a floor. I’ve only got one square of flooring in so far, but it’s a start. I also managed to make myself a bed, and a chest to keep tools in when I don’t feel like carrying them around. The barrel is filled with some foods I made, they won’t last long before they start to decay, but it gives me a place to store them in the mean time. I’ve been working on getting the landscape ‘fixed’ – see when you cut down a tree in Wurm it doesn’t just magically grow back, you have to plant more trees. My property was pretty bare, so I’ve been cutting sprouts on my travels and replanting to bring the forest back. Especially along my Northern border, it’s completely bare and I’ve been working on getting rid of the sand tiles by covering them with dirt. Ideally, I’d like to see that whole area covered in steppe so that animals will spawn, but that would be a LOT of planting, and since I don’t technically own the land that way (no one does, it’s a large space between my deed and my neighbours) it’s only too easy for someone to come along and destroy it all.

I went out to ‘clay isle’ and worked on my digging, I can work with slopes up to 12×3 steep now, which is nice when I’m trying to get a little farm land going. This entire area is the side of a hill, so I’ve had to work it a bit in order to get myself situated.

Everything about Wurm appeals to my sense of gaming, and I’m really glad that I finally gave it a try. It’s a time intensive game, but since I work from home time is something I have a lot of. It’s sandbox in a way that scares a lot of people – but again that’s exactly what I was looking for. The effort required to build items that you use such as a cart, a floor loom, a house, is something that I can take pride in because it’s not just a single mouse click. When I completed my bed by adding sheets to it (that I made) I was incredibly proud, I didn’t even fail the combine, with only a 42% chance to complete them. It was a great moment.

It’s night time in game right now, and that’s when I stick close to my deed and do mundane tasks, because wandering around in the daylight is dangerous enough, walking around at night when I can barely see in front of me is something I would rather not risk yet. Never know when a lava fiend or some other big nasty is going to sneak up on me, and since I’ve been so incredibly focused on crafting in game, I have barely done any combat at all – which is NOT a bad thing, since I’ve never been that combat orientated.

I’m looking forward to what comes next. I’m waiting for daylight so I can wander over to Arkenor’s property, and cut some flowers and sprouts along the way to bring back with me. I’ve got a small garden going, and I’d like to start breeding horses. So far I have an adolescent female, she will have to age a bit, and I’ll need a male. I’d like to get a cow or two, too, work on my cooking some more, and decide which skills I’d like to ‘focus’ on. It’s slow going, but incredibly fun. Plus, I still need to find a priest to convert me to Fo.

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

Shack On A Hill #WurmOnline

stargrace January 13, 2012 3Comments

It took a few hours, but after a lot of hard work (and I do mean a lot) I managed to get myself a house built. It sits on top of a hill overlooking Darkpaw Harbor (the deed I share with Petter) and I love every inch of it. To give you an indication of just how much work goes into building something like this. First you need to flatten the ground that you want to build on. This involves a lot of moving dirt around, digging, flattening, making four sides of a square even with other sides that touch it. It is annoying work and it took me a few hours to flatten the top of this hill enough so that it was usable for a building. I learned a lot by reading the wiki and I’m thankful for that, even if I did have to draw little pictures of the area to figure out what I was doing.

Once you have the land flat, you need to plan the building. This relies on your carpentry skill. Thankfully with all of the building on Petter’s house that I had done the day before, my skill is already at 23. At the time that I started my own house, it was 18. Just enough for a nice sized home. You need large nails and a plank in order to start construction. First you plan out the house, then you secure the walls, any doors you may want, and windows. Once that’s done you use 19 planks per wall (so a total of 20) to erect the final building. That’s a lot of planks, which of course has a process involved in creating them, too.

It’s difficult to tell from the picture, but there are two camellia bushes planted under the right hand side windows, and there is a small patch of onions growing on the left hand side. I’ve planted some wild flowers around, and I’m working on filling in the areas surrounding the house with trees. I haven’t put up a floor yet, that’s a job for another day, and involves MANY many planks.

Now that I have a building set up, I can work on other things – like a bed. A bed will give me sleep bonus, which is something I’d really like. I’ve also been working on the land surrounding my deed, it was covered with sand in odd patches along the property, so I’ve been working on cultivating that back into forest, flowers, and bushes. It’s a slow process but the end result should look very nice. I’ve done a little research into religion, there are (edited) three Gods on the Freedom servers, and now that my house is built, I’d like to become a follower of Fo. This involves a lengthy process and I need to find a priest of Fo in order to be converted – or get a statue built, and find a follower. Fo is the deity of farming and gardening, and becoming a follower comes with nice perks – and becoming a priest comes with a lot of pretty hefty drawbacks, such as being unable to mine or cut down trees. There are lots of upsides to becoming a priest as well though, and eventually, with a lot of time, I think it would be neat to explore.

The game certainly isn’t for everyone, but the side of me that craves, and thrives, on sandbox MMOs is in heaven. Now it’s time to do more exploring and see what trouble I can get myself into. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Barn Raising and Lava Beasts #WurmOnline

stargrace January 12, 2012 2Comments

Yesterday was an exciting day in WurmOnline. First of all, Squid managed to get a house set up – thanks to Arkenor’s excellent planning skills, and a whole lot of planks. It’s a pretty large house and my carpentry skills got a nice work out as I helped out with it. The whole endeavor felt like we were raising a barn together, helping to raise a small village – it was great. There’s a lot of pride felt when something as big as that gets completed. Once the house was completed I decided I should get some sprouts so I could re-plant some of the forest that’s missing to the north (not due to my harvesting, it happened before I took over the deed). I grabbed the sickle, and was about to wander away when Arkenor told me there was a demon in the mine.

What?

He mentioned I could hide behind the fence (fences stop critters) and look at it, hence the screen shot above. He was completely right, there WAS a demon in the mine! The mine is pretty short, and I have no idea how it wandered in there but that nasty beast isn’t something I can fight right now, so Arkenor bravely took it away to a guard and the property was safe once more. Remember to bury your corpses folks! Dead animals attract other beasties, so bury the dead bodies. As I went around hunting for sprouts I also buried any dead bodies I saw along the way, and gathered up a whole bunch of meat that I then cooked and added to the food storage bin.

As far as sprout hunting went, it was pretty successful. It’s olive season right now, so I harvested as much as I could, and I even got some neat sprouts like a rose bush, a few apple trees, some lemon trees, and some other pretty flowers. I also found a really nice abandoned property that has a very ‘cottage’ feel to it, so if you’re looking for a home there are some out there! I was tempted to settle down in that place, it was just so pretty.

Abandoned villages are a great way to ‘procure’ items. I wouldn’t suggest stealing (you get a message that what you’re trying to do is illegal in the village if you’re stealing) since then the guards will come after you, but abandoned villages are free game. Exploring is one of my favorite things to do in Wurm, and I even managed to fight – and defeat – a young mountain lion! It was my first kill and I owe a huge part of my success to those who explained to me how to actually equip a sword in my hand, and to wear my shield on my arm. You would think these things would be simple to do – but no, it’s complicated.

I bandaged my wounds up, butchered my kill, buried it, and then set off for home with my bags bursting with meat and sprouts. I need to set up my own house some where on the deed before too long, but for now I’m a bit sick of planks so that’ll be a project for another day.

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

Owning a Deed #WurmOnline

stargrace January 11, 2012 2Comments

Pictured above, my new deed in WurmOnline. Well, technically it’s not mine quite yet, I have a 24h wait period before I can obtain it, but it’s on the road to being mine. That fence there is something I helped build, and I was really happy doing so. The property is quite large, on the other side of that fence is an iron mine, on the left hand side a house will be built. Up the path is a forge, an oven, and some food storage bins as well as some holding containers. When I was tired of working on the fence I decided that a little break was in order, and thanks to a trusty new staff that Arkenor gave me, I set out exploring.

You have to be careful in WurmOnline, you don’t want to do things that will anger other people, especially not to their property. I wandered around until I reached some wilds, unowned by anyone. I found some meat that I could haul back to my own deed and turn into casseroles. I found some fur (used to improve beds) and some cheese. I even found some pumpkin seeds but apparently those are quite hard to plant. I’m looking forward to getting a garden going in the future, once I flatten some land. Which of course takes time, and skills.

I’m having an absolute blast in game, which doesn’t surprise me at all because this is exactly the sort of game I enjoy. The graphics are not that bad (if you ignore how everyone looks and just take in the scenery) there’s combat if you want it, and the fear of never knowing what you’re going to run into. Literally. While I was wandering around I came to an area that was infested with trolls. Considering I can’t even take down a young wolf at this point in the game trolls were a creature that I really didn’t want to mess with. In avoiding them I also stumbled smack dab into a lava spider, which are far worse than regular spiders – and those mess me up pretty bad already. I was encumbered due to all the goods I had found along the way, inching my way back to my own deed which seemed hours away (and it was indeed a good hour to walk back), with my health lowering as a young bear got a hold of me. If you’re lucky you can find some spirit guards that will help take care of those wild critters blocking your path, but when you’re spending your time roaming around in underdeveloped land, the chances of that happening are pretty slim.

I’m really excited about my progress in game so far, and can’t wait to share it with everyone in these blog posts. As always, have a wonderful day and happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.