October 2014

My Introduction to Craft the World

stargrace October 31, 2014 0Comment

One thing ExtraLife did was allow me to spend more time with my steam library, and with that I noticed “hey, I have a TON of games I have barely even played.”

One of those games is called Craft the World. When a game has mostly positive reviews, I tend to take notice. Especially when there are over 1,000 of those reviews, and the top reviewers have over 100 hours played. I’ve owned this game for quite some time now, and it is still in early access, but for whatever reason I just hadn’t played.

The game looks a lot like terraria. It’s a side scrolling game where you take control of dwarves, and have to ensure that they survive attacks from bad guys. You craft them a home, armor, food, remove resources from the world, and decorate to your hearts content (if that’s your thing). The game is a lot of ‘busy work’ especially during the first part of the game. You’re limited in how many dwarves you have, and each action you perform will net you some experience that will eventually allow you to level up and obtain another dwarf. The more dwarves you have, the more stuff gets done. You don’t technically control the individual party members, but rather you push out generic tasks (ie: chop down this tree) by clicking on it, and your minions will set off to do just that.

How you play the game is completely up to you, hence the sandbox portion. There are places to explore, but you may want to just sit tight at home, which is were all your “stuff” is (and that stuff can’t be moved, which is a bit of a shame). Of course since it’s early access there are glitches, but as time goes on more and more of the reviews posted have been positive. I did watch a few ‘lets play’ videos on youtube to see what thers were up to, mostly because for some reason the game didn’t want to recognize my structure as a structure. I’m still not sure what I did wrong, but I’m thinking the next session I play I’ll run through the campaign instead of sandbox mode (where you’re just sort of tossed into things).

All in all? A great casual way to spend some time, and it appeals to me because hey, sandbox.

Gaming

Typical Deed Work

stargrace October 30, 2014 0Comment

My deed in Wurm Online is coming along nicely. I managed to finish the stables and terraform a good portion of the upper tier, the last part of the deed that is still pretty much mountainside. The latest patches brought about an influx of animals to the Xanadu server as they continue to search for the “perfect balance” and I’ve started noticing a good number wandering around my place, which is nice because when I first moved in there were no animals around at all and I had to wander quite a bit to find any. Lately this includes seals, like the one pictured above. I’m not really sure if these new creatures can be used for anything but they’re non-aggro and adorable to watch.

With the stables done I have been thinking about what project I would like to work on next. The Vynora priest is still doing well. On that character I have been leveling up the typical priest skills (nature and the like) as well as channeling. Animal husbandry just finally reached 30 today, allowing me to care for one more animal and see more traits. Horse breeding is going well, as is sheep and cow. Cooking is already at 70 so for the time being I’m not leveling it up.

I’ve been working on fine carpentry along with weapon smithing on my main, tied in with some chain armour smithing. All of these skills seem to level very slow, so I can only handle them in short spurts before moving on to something else. Wurm Online is not for the faint of heart, it can take years to get skills to the cap of 100 (minus things like alignment, that doesn’t really count). Still, I find the game relaxing and fun and I’m enjoying working on my deed. There’s so much to do, I suppose the real challenge is narrowing it down.

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

Gaming

Legacy Family Adventures

stargrace October 29, 2014 1Comment

I love that your sims can play the sims on their computers. The screen is a bit hard to see, but that’s what Alfonzo is playing above. I spent a bit of time with my legacy family during extra life, but aside from that I haven’t had a lot of time to play. Emily aged up from baby, and changed colours which I found amusing. She had a good childhood and I picked two positive traits for her. As soon as she aged up the family decided to throw a party, so she missed school and everyone missed work. I decided that was alright, at least for one day.

The screenshot I actually wanted to use was when Alfonzo caught on fire as he cooked dinner, and then set fire to the rest of the house. Unfortunately I must have been too caught up in the moment and so I missed it. I was hoping (secretly, of course) that the grim reaper would pay him a visit, after all he IS an elder with a frail heart, but alas he pulled through just fine (after a shower or two).

Jessica (the founding sim) is still working on being an author. She has published two children’s books so far. One was titled something about not eating your turtles in kindergarten (game generated title), and the second one I named after my extralife stream for a bit of flavour. Their house is growing very slowly, I find making money in Sims 4 much harder than it was in 3. Not a bad thing, but it does make the game move slower.

Their party was a huge success, and I loved that I was able to choose spooky theme music thanks to an update a few weeks back. I still haven’t seen any ghosts in my game, I have been avoiding reading up on any details and was hoping I would just fall into it naturally. Of course there’s still time.

I’m really excited about the November patch that will bring pools into play. As the seasons in real life also switch to fall it has me missing certain Sims 3 expansions (like seasons). I get tired of looking at the desert all of the time.

Hopefully the 2nd generation of my legacy family grows up well, and before I know it I’ll be on the 3rd generation. Of course in order for THAT to happen I have to actually play the game..

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

Gaming

ExtraLife Ends, and Games Begin

stargrace October 27, 2014 0Comment

Now that the excitement from ExtraLife is over, it’s time to relax a bit. Thank you to everyone who supported me through my streaming endeavors and helped to keep me awake. It was awesome. I played through all 24 games in 24 hours and had a lot of fun doing it. Hopefully everyone had a lot of fun watching me, too.

I’ve been trying to learn how to create more things in minecraft. I started out by trying to create an enchanting table. Unfortunately it uses a few items that are really hard to get. I’ve got the diamonds for it but I don”t have the obsidian, I found a mod that will help me create obsidian except that requires steel. So far I haven’t found a way to create steel. I created a blast furnace, but that creates a different type of steel which doesn’t happen to be the one I need. This is how things typically go for me, I choose something I want to learn to create, and then I have to follow the path backwards making all of the items that will let me create the main item. The reason I want to create the fancy enchanting table is because I made a force sword, and I want to enchant that. At least it’s a project for me to work on, and I have a fancy blast furnace.

November is going to be a busy month for me. For those who are familiar with my events, every year I run a Gamer Secret Santa, and I’ll be running that again this year. Registration should open around mid November, so don’t forget to check back! There’s also NaNoWriMo which begins the first of November. I’ll be writing horror this year, a genre that I have absolutely no experience in. Why? Because I like to challenge myself of course! I haven’t decided if I’ll be posting the story public or not, I may decide to post it chapter by chapter, or I might just keep the embarrassing moment to myself, we’ll just have to see.

I hope everyone else had a fantastic weekend, no matter what you ended up doing. Happy gaming!

Gaming

Two Gaming Blogs I Envy

stargrace October 24, 2014 1Comment

Blame it on the cold weather, or the fact that the year is almost over, or the recent turmoil in my day-to-day life. Whatever the reason, I’m nostalgic and thinking about life. Every morning I wake up and go through my RSS feed, which I sporadically check throughout the day depending on my downtime. There are a handful of blogs I read that I really envy (in a good way, I’m not talking about some jealousy thing here. I mean I respect them, their writing styles, and subjects), and I wanted to share those blogs here and maybe encourage some others to read them too. I’m going to start with just two of them today.

First up, I have Touched the Sky – by Rowan Blaze. Every single day I read Rowan’s blog and it just makes me smile. There’s one main reason. He writes about gaming with his significant other and I miss that (no, I don’t mean I miss gaming with his significant other.. silly). I miss the closeness of having someone to game with like that. As time goes on I typically get frustrated gaming with someone else because people are so different. No one games quite like me. Who else wants to spend a few hours organizing their inventory, for example. I love the way he describes playing Rift, and starting new characters together in his latest post. His posts are filled with “we” and “us instead of “I” and “me” and it’s something I envy in the purest of ways.

Next up, Stylish Corpse – by Ysharros. I’ve been following this blog for years now, and while it may not always be updated, when it is, I can’t help but nod along as I read. Her latest series on a Sims 4 legacy family is something I look forward to almost every single day now. Sure, it might have something to do with the fact that I’m probably one of the biggest Sims fans out there, but the style of writing and the humour I find in her posts just comforts me. It’s nice to know that there are people out there with similar thought processes. Shame we all live so far away from one another!

Just like I take pleasure in the fact that there are so many different games out there that can appeal to so many types of gamers, I also appreciate the fact that there are so many people writing about them, and each one has a unique style and flavour.

If you haven’t checked out the blogs mentioned above, get to it! Hopefully you’ll love them as much as I do. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

My Introduction to Craft the World

Typical Deed Work

Legacy Family Adventures

ExtraLife Ends, and Games Begin

Two Gaming Blogs I Envy

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Personal EVE Economic Update (October)

Expensive Month (preparing for fun)

Locked Out (again)

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