2013

The Meta Game of Horse Breeding #WurmOnline

wurm.20140101.0154One of my favorite things to do in Wurm Online is breed animals. Not just the regular sort that are actually useful (horses for riding and pulling carts) but all sorts of animals that I find in the wild. This is made infinitely easier with the help of a Fo priest who has access to charm. In order to breed animals successfully I find it helps to have them in a 2×2 pen paired up with their partner. It’s easy to check traits, and less worry about disease (overcrowding can be an issue). There are 19 different traits that animals can have when bred, first generation creatures do not come with traits.

  • 0 skill: Horse’s color is considered a trait. (Although it DOES NOT go against the trait limit.)
  • 20 (10.56) skill: “It will fight fiercely.” (Higher fighting skill?)
  • 21 (11.12) skill: “It has fleeter movement than normal.” (Minor speed boost.)
  • 22 (11.68) skill: “It is a tough bugger.” (Withstands more damage.)
  • 23 (12.25) skill: “It has a strong body.” (Bonus to maintaining top speed.)
  • 24 (12.82) skill: “It has lightning movement.” (Randomly increases speed for a short duration.)
  • 25 (13.40) skill: “It can carry more than average.” (Less penalty to speed due to high load.)
  • 26 (13.98) skill: “It has very strong leg muscles.” (Less penalty to speed due to slope? Does not currently do this.)
  • 27 (14.56) skill: “It has keen senses.” (Increased aggression range, or possibly harder to tame?)
  • 28 (15.15) skill: “It has malformed hindlegs.” (Minor speed penalty)*
  • 29 (15.74) skill: “The legs are of different length.” (Major speed penalty)*
  • 30 (16.33) skill: “It seems overly aggressive.” (Goes into frenzy when attacked)*
  • 31 (16.93) skill: “It looks very unmotivated.” (Seldom uses speed boosts?)*
  • 32 (17.54) skill: “It is unusually strong willed.” (Will stop being led at random.)*
  • 33 (18.15) skill: “It has some illness.” (Body strength will slowly reduce over time, which will eventually making the animal unrideable. Note: Genesis will cause it to slowly regain strength up to it’s old level.)*
  • 34 (18.76) skill: “It looks constantly hungry.” (is twice as fast to become hungry again.)*
  • 39 (21.90) skill: “It looks feeble and unhealthy.” (Prone to catching a disease.)*
  • 40 (22.54) skill: “It looks unusually strong and healthy.” (Has a higher resistance to disease.)
  • 41 (23.19) skill: “It has a certain spark in its eyes.” (Affects breeding? Will not die of old age? Disproved, see talk.)

Ideally players want horses that have the 5 ‘speed’ traits. These horses sell for more than your average creature, and are highly sought after. You need to work your animal husbandry skill in order to see these traits, and I use a very amazing program called Wurm Assistant that helps me keep my herds under control. Inbreeding horses is a bad thing and can leave them with negative traits – but – since I have a Fo priest I can cure these negative traits with a quick genesis cast. Along with the four horses pictured above, I now have three unicorns (one a champion that I have had absolutely zero luck getting to breed), three deer (I used to have two, one just gave birth), a cow, and a hen. I’m hoping to find a bull wandering around my island, since the creatures don’t swim and they can’t be transported I have no way of obtaining one.

All in all, I think I’m off to a pretty good start. As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Nomi & Me #WoW

WoWScrnShot_122913_215745I finally reached 600 in all the branches of Pandarian cooking, and saved up 50 tokens to purchase the bell that summons Nomi. This cute little kid is your student, and you’re in charge of teaching them how to cook. So far all Nomi can cook for me is dried peaches and that’s after I supply the fruit, but she’s cute so I keep her around.

I’m not sure if there’s an actual reason to teaching Nomi how to cook aside from unlocking more achievements, but that’s enough for me. My luck also changed a bit over the weekend and some how I managed to get my first ever cloth chest piece to drop from the Timeless Isles. Not only that but I got FOUR of them to drop. Of course I used a burden on one in my heal spec and got a horrible version of the one I wanted, but it is much better than the 479 one I was wearing before. Burdens have not been kind to me, some guild mates seem to have all the luck.

There is still so much I want to do but just haven’t found the time for. I’ve been a member of the elusive Brawlers Club for almost a month now and have only stepped foot into the establishment once. My battle pet team is still sitting at level 15. There are alts that I would like to get to 90 before the cap raises to 100 (Druid, Paladin, Monk, Warrior, Warlock, just to name a few..) and while it may sound like I am complaining, I’m actually very excited that there is so much to do and so much to keep me busy. It rarely ever stay subscribed for more than a month but this time around I seem to have found a nice combination of things to keep me occupied. That, and the fact that I’m still poking between both WoW and Wurm Online.

Tomorrow is Tuesday, and I’m looking forward to raids re-setting. Me and two guild mates also ran some heroic scenario this weekend which was a lot of fun (my first time doing them) once we realized we wanted a tank, a dps, and a healer as our three members. I didn’t get any upgrades but the guild earned xp and money for the bank and we all earned a handful of achievements and had a good time.

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

Off to Visit Santa #WurmOnline

wurm.20131228.2243After experiencing a few issues with my web site early last week, I lost two weeks worth of posts and then didn’t really feel like writing. I’m hoping to make up for that over the next little while though. Just because I haven’t written doesn’t mean that I haven’t been playing games!

Most of my time has been spent between Wurm Online and World of Warcraft, two incredibly different games. Wurm is as sandbox as they come, and WoW is a theme park. Still, I love both of them. In Wurm I continue to play on the Pristine server. Actually I decided since I have been neglecting my Exodus deed I would move the token and downsize the place. It used to be approximately 60×60 tiles, and is now 18×18. This lowered my rent a considerable amount and since I had a lot of upkeep pre-paid, I earned all of it back. I shifted that coin over to Pristine, and went shopping, hence the screenshot above.

The market is in the center of the zone and I live along the very south coast. I swam from my island to the mainland, and then proceeded to walk to Blossom. Since the character I decided to go with is a priest of Fo I had no aggro from any creatures along the way. The walk was relatively painless and it was neat to see how the land has changed and been shaped over time. I crossed many deserted deeds, and fought back the urge to pillage. I didn’t want anything to weigh me down until after I got to the market.

Once there, I took out some coin from the token and then browsed through all of the merchants. I picked up three 70 quality weapons. A two-handed sword for the Fo priest, a long sword for my main character, and a large maul for bashing. I also picked up a full set of chain armor for 10 copper per piece. It’s only 60 quality but that was more than enough for me. A copper lantern caught my eye, 70 quality which means the light is quite bright. A 60 ql toolbelt was added to my quickly growing pile of items. I saw a miss-priced emerald and picked that up. I debated getting a new carving knife for working on my fine carpentry skill but decided against it for now. Oh, and I also purchased a shield.

Instead of walking all of the way home I decided to use some of my karma to gate. It costs 1,000 karma but it ports you right back into your town. I had never used the skill before but it worked flawlessly and I was pleased. The coloured smoke you see off in the distance is Santa who stands at Blossom (or stood I suppose, he’s gone now) feeding players delicious holiday food and rewarding premium players with a 99 ql snowball lantern (our gift this year). It was quite a walk, but  really had a great time. No surprise there, I adore exploring in Wurm.

The deed is coming along very well, expect a post about those details to follow! As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

 

It’s all about the Pets (and Addons) #WoW

WoWScrnShot_122313_210823I recently picked up two very nice addons for my pet obsession. The first one is called PetTracker and to sum it up, this is an amazing addon.

  • Displays the locations of all pets, stables and tamers on the world map.
  • Tracks your progress of catching pets in your current zone.
  • Shows the rarity of pets in battle and warns you of upgrades.
  • Exposes pet breeds in combat, the journal and tooltips. NEW
  • Displays all your enemies and allies abilities as you fight.
  • Provides a journal of all tamers and their teams. NEW

If you’re working on pet battles I highly suggest you pick this little gem up. You can customize it to track only the pets you’re looking for and there are so many other options. The second addon I got was a suggestion from Kasul who has been leveling up multiple teams so that there is less downtime. This one is called Petbattle Teams.

  • Create an unlimited teams of pets and quickly switch between them in the pet journal.
  • Reliable pet switching even when spammed with requests to change teams.
  • The skills in the tooltip are the saved skill selections
  • The frames location is now saved.
  • Pets are saved to your current team as you make changes, no more hitting save. (This behavior can be disabled by unchecking “Automatically save teams” in the options).
  • Teams can be named, deleted or locked by right clicking the team.
  • Additional options are available from Game Menu -> Interface -> AddOns -> PetBattleTeams

So far my team has hit level 15, and I’ve collected pets in all of the zones that I’ve done battles in. My collection has grown to 183 owned pets, and I’m looking forward to finally hitting 200 and maybe even reaching level 25 one of these days. The battles have started to get a bit more difficult now, I have to fight three on three instead of two on three, but I haven’t had any great losses.

How have your own pet battle experiences been so far? Are you close to reaching level 25 with your team? Any advice for other addons that I may find useful? Let me know in comments!

A Month of Steam Sales

UntitledNormally when the steam sales come around, there is very little I want. This year, was different. See, I made a resolution not to buy a single game unless it was at least 75% off. In the past I’ve just picked up whatever game or expansion came out at release, and that really hurts the wallet. It meant that for the first time I was able to really make use of all the wonderful sales – combine that with some awesome gifts from friends, and you have got one very happy gamer.

What did I end up with as my final tally?

  1. Botanicula
  2. Machinarium (& soundtrack)
  3. Samorost2
  4. Brothers – A tale of two sons
  5. Cook, Serve, Delicious
  6. The Lord of the Rings (LEGO)
  7. Reus
  8. Age of Empires II HD & The Forgotten Expansion
  9. FEZ
  10. Castle Story
  11. Dishonored
  12. Craft the world
  13. Spore Complete pack
  14. Gnomoria
  15. Ittle Dew

I’m really pleased with the games I’ve picked up so far, even though I have yet to play any of them. Santa forgot to give me a some free time this Christmas and things have been hectic between family happenings. I’m not even sure which game I want to start with first! Did you pick up any games this steam sale? Let me know in comments! As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.