July 2015

Not a Game for the Impatient

stargrace July 8, 2015 No Comments

I have some goals in Wurm that I’ve been trying to accomplish, and because I am a naturally impatient person, I’m finding them more and more difficult. For example, I made the decision to swap my Fo priests over to one of the newer religions, Nahjo (or Nacho, as they’re calling the deity on Xanadu). Nahjo priests can cast strongwall as well as genisis and courier. That means that if I could eventually level up my faith (and thus favor) I wouldn’t need all three of the base priests to do what I want to do, I could just keep my Vynora along with a Nahjo (or two, for linking). The problem is that in order to swap my character’s religion, I need to find an actual follower and have them convert me. Then I need to have a priest convert me when I hit 30 faith (in a month or so). Finding people who are in proximity to my priests and who are on at the same time as me is a daunting task, especially when I want things done yesterday.

Skills are another thing that raise incredibly slow – which is one of the reasons I love Wurm but also tests my patience. The game is certainly not for everyone. For those who are willing to put in the time, the rewards are fantastic (IMO, as someone who enjoys the game of course).

Speaking of yesterday, my main character (Stargrace) is in a bit of a bind, which should get sorted out by the end of today hopefully. I recently made a friend 11 sets of tools for alts, joined his village and used my karma to port there to deliver them. Then there’s a 24h waiting period before you can join another village, so I’m waiting for that to pass so I can port myself back home. I really should raise my meditation skill high enough so that I can port myself every 12 hours without using karma (path of knowledge). It will take me quite some time to get it that high, but had I been doing it all the time that I played Wurm I’d be there already. I just dislike having to meditate, for whatever reason. Most of my characters stop when they’re on rank 7.

Once Stargrace is safe and sound back home, it’s back to working on support beams to reinforce the mine that links my deed with those of my main alliance team. We have an enormous tunnel that links our deeds (though it is not yet completed) and portions of it keep collapsing, so I’d like to get that fixed before too long. Aside from that, it’s just general skill leveling going on while I wait for the impalong to begin. I haven’t decided if I’m going to bring any raw materials yet, but I’ll probably donate some depending on what they need.

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

Lets Talk Allies

stargrace July 7, 2015 No Comments

Over the past few days my alliance (which compromises of myself and three other people) have been in discussions with another alliance along the South Eastern corner of Xanadu. We decided to take the plunge and join our alliances together, so now instead of an alliance of three we’re an alliance of almost five times that. It’s quite a different situation, when you involve more people. First I had to double and triple check my deed permissions. While I like them well enough so far, you can never be too sure with Wurm. I don’t want to give everyone permission to everything quite yet. I’ve worked really hard on my deeds, and it would be upsetting to lose it. I’ve given the alliance some basic permissions like passing through locked doors, but for the most part I’ve decided to set up individual permissions, granting more permissions to people I know and then I can work from there.

It also means there’s a lot more chatter than I’m used to. This is good and bad. I do enjoy having more chatter but Wurm is also my ‘quiet’ game, so there are many moments where I don’t exactly feel like having a big open discussion. Even more so are the moments where I’m only partially paying attention, or I’m AFK doing other things while my characters stand around regaining their favor.

It’s the largest alliance I’ve been a part of so far, and I’m interested in seeing how it works out. I’ve had other real life friends play with me over the years and a majority of them ended up moving on to other games, but the core group has been folks I’ve played with ever since I started playing Wurm. I think it will be an interesting adaptation for us all. I don’t expect that everyone will get along with everyone else, but we’ll see how it goes. It does also help that there are quite a few alliance members from the UK, which is where my own alliance members are from. Even though I’m from Canada my hours tend to be the same as those in the UK since I work nights, and it’s nice to have a few more people around. Whether or not our personalities mesh, I haven’t seen. My initial reaction is that it should be a good fit. It’s nice to have a group of people to work with, we can share skills and help one another out.

Speaking of skills, I recently purchased a Fo priest, and so the screenshot above is me sailing my characters from my deed down South to my deed up North. I’m hoping to have the Fo priest work on some healing covers, thus raising essential skills. I have a lot of animal bits laying around, so they should get some pretty good gains. By ‘a lot’ I mean I have about 20,000 animal bits in total. I’m thinking of leaving my collection of priests at the Northern deed, while I take Stargrace (my main) back down to the Southern one I own. Nothing is set in stone though, whatever I decide to do I’m sure it will be fun. It’s a nice break from working on weapon smithing. I also finished an order of tools for a friend, so I’ll need to deliver those some time.

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

Xanadu Impalong – July 24-27

stargrace July 6, 2015 No Comments

I love impalongs. I’ve participated in a few over the years, depending on what server they were hosted at. Since moving to Xanadu it’s very rare that I ever travel to another map, this one is so enormous that there’s no real reason to go exploring elsewhere. With that being said, a summer time Impalong is being hosted July 24-27th, and I’ll be taking my characters down there to help out for the days that it runs.

What is an Impalong? Imp is short for ‘improvement’ and that’s the action you do when you raise the quality of an item, like a tool or gear. So basically it’s an enormous gathering of players from all different skill backgrounds, and you work together to improve tools / gear / weapons of other players to the best of your ability. That means if you’re a blacksmith with a high skill level, you park at a forge for however long you feel like participating, and help improve other peoples items. You leave your items (labeled with your name) in the appropriate containers, and players with the proper skills come by and improve the items for you. Then at the end of the celebration you go home with a nice set of tools, some new friends, and a valuable understanding on how important community is in Wurm.

There are normally some contests that go on as well, with donated prizes. Running an impalong takes a lot of work and a great team of people. You need to have a deed large enough to hold everyone who wants to show up, as well as supplies for those doing the imping. You need meals, water, beds and basically have to take care of all issues that may arise. Of course any time you get that many people together in one spot you’re bound to have issues. The most common one is peoples tools going missing after they’ve been improved, or people dropping more than 1 set of gear into a forge to be improved, only to sell the items later. This is frowned upon, you should only submit one set of tools for improving, people are taking their time to help you out by doing these improvements for free.

There’s usually a section for priests, as well. People will gather for sermons, cast enchants, and hang out together. I plan on going with my Vynora and Fo priests, last year when I went I spent all of my time working on smithing and carpentry. This year I’m looking to do things a bit more casually, and help out with sermons and enchants. It’s at a location I’m not familiar with, so I’ll probably leave a few days early so that I can get there in plenty of time (and find my way back). If you’ve never been to an impalong before, I highly suggest you check one out if you have a chance. No two are alike, especially when they’re all run by different players. If you happen to be stopping by this one, be sure to say hello to Oshi and Maivis (my two priests). You can always /addfriend stargrace if you’re in-game, I look forward to hearing from anyone playing!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

A Few Good Priest Casts

stargrace July 5, 2015 No Comments

I have a tendency to buy and sell characters in Wurm Online on a pretty frequent basis. While most games frown upon this sort of interaction, it’s a form of player market that’s openly encouraged and supported in Wurm. I tend to buy and sell priests, thinking that I no longer want to level them up, or when I get bored of them. One of the first characters I sold was my Fo priest, which of course I ended up regretting, and then I purchased a new one (which I also eventually sold). My last purchase was a Vynora priest named Maivis. The character came with decent beginner skills, but channeling was quite low. Priests need nature skills alongside their priest skills (faith, alignment, channeling, etc) in order to perform half way decent casts. It’s all based on RNG so of course the chances of me getting a ‘good’ cast even with good skills is pretty slim. We all know how those RNG Gods like to mess with me.

For the past few weeks I’ve been working on raising my channeling from 30 to 60. I finally achieved that goal, and started working on the rest of my skills. Hot food cooking is currently at 72, so once I’m done a work order for a friend I plan on creating 1,000 frying pans (and ovens to hold them in) and working on that. Hot food cooking is a great way of raising Soul Depth, which is another essential skill. Farming is at 73, and I’ve been working on rope making, locksmithing, and toy creation (yoyo) so the priest has materials to sacrifice for favor. I also started working woodcutting, which is a skill vynora priests can do but not other priests (minus Libia).

Now that channeling is at a decent level I succeed on my casts more often than not, and yesterday I got my first “high” power cast, an 86 circle of cunning. I consider anything 60+ “high” for my priest, my normal casts hover around the 40 power mark. Power caps at 104 but to get a cast that high is incredibly rare.

I’m still contemplating purchasing another Fo priest, but I haven’t seen any good ones for sale within my price range. I don’t need anything top of the line (priests have been known to go for 100-300 EU) but something that has relatively good faith and basic priest skills is always a bonus. In the meantime, I’ll keep working up the vynora skills. I’m hoping to be able to do a few more good enchants and sell the items but we’ll see how that goes. I don’t feel pressured to sell any items since I don’t use the funds to pay for my characters or deeds, but a little extra cash is never a bad thing!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Rares and RNG – They Just Don’t Like Me

stargrace July 4, 2015 No Comments

I spent 5 hours or so working my weapon smithing yesterday in Wurm Online, raising the skill up an entire point (and a bit) which as anyone who has leveled weapon smithing will tell you, is quite a feat. It is the slowest skill to level up, and thus weapon smith accounts are worth quite a bit of money. In that time I had at least four rare rolls, and I had failed every roll, resulting in no rare items. Of course I decided to blog about it, and the second I started this post, before this first paragraph was even done, I succeeded at a rare roll, and my butchering knife turned rare. I take this as a sign that I should complain about RNG more often!

Players who have premium accounts are supposed to have a heightened chance at creating rare items, but honestly I’ve never had that much luck with them. I can count on one hand the amount of rares I’ve created over the years and they don’t measure very many. Normally I sell them off, enchanted rares are worth a handful of silver and that’s a wonderful way to pay for my deeds. I haven’t decided if I’ll sell my latest rare or not. Butchering knives are nice because even if a creature is ‘starving’ they will provide meat. I’ve tried to bid on a few butchering knives over time but they always seem to go higher than my budget allows.

I’ve been debating trying to get a collection of rare tools together to help with my weapon smithing. Not many are required. A hammer, whetstone, pelt, ore, and water is all I use. I don’t believe pelts can be rare, but I should be able to find a hammer. My tools are already pretty nice quality (90+) though they could stand to get a few enchants as well. Anything that helps me level up my skills a bit faster is a help.

I decided to take all the tools I owned that were below 50 ql (extras I had stashed away) and improve them all to 60, so that’s what my forge is filled with at the moment. Then I’ll bring them to my priest, who will enchant them, and I’ll try to put them for sale at the market for a cheap price. So far my items sell pretty well even though they’re not that fancy. Making items in bulk while I try to level my skills helps to keep them at a very low cost. I have no use for all the extra items, so I may as well try to get rid of them.

It’s nice to take a break from the deed work and work on some skills. I’ll probably end up doing what Yetian does, which is alternate the two. That way nothing suffers and you get a lot done. I’m sure in the end, whatever I end up feeling like doing will be what I end up doing…

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!