2015

Even When You’re Experienced, It’s Dangerous

stargrace July 10, 2015 0Comment

Oh Wurm. I decided I’d go out hunting for a bit. I wanted to re-stock some natural substance supplies and so I decided to take a large cart so that I could fill it with corpses. My character has over 70 fight skill, drake armor, and a weapon that has great enchants but could use some improving to take it to a higher level (hence why I’m working up my weapon smithing). Problem is I completely forgot that carts move much slower than just plain riding a horse. That, and I didn’t have my best speed horses attached to it. So when I was tired of beating up critters I decided that I would just “run away” from anything that was following me. Nope. That most certainly did not work.

What I ended up with instead was over 6 trolls chasing me, along with their friends which included various spiders, hellhounds, crocodiles, bears, wildcats, and scorpions. I decided I would just stay on the road I was traveling and that hopefully I would run into a settlement that either had a gate, a guard tower, or a templar, but no, the entire road that went on forever was devoid of any of these things. As you travel on an incline you also move even slower, so eventually I just gave up and let the inevitable happen. I just could not shake the creatures that were tailing me.

Once I died and revived myself back at home (minus all gear, horses and cart) I decided to go back, and this time I’d take my fastest horse. I didn’t bother with any gear, this time I knew I’d be able to out run anything that was coming after me. Since I had pretty much already cleared the path, it wasn’t too hard. It did take me a good 20 minutes to run back out to where I had died, but in the grand scheme of things I didn’t mind. Sure, I could have summoned my corpse back using karma – but then I would have lost the horses. What I decided to do instead of taking the very slow cart all the way back home was to unhitch my two horses, and lead them while riding my fastest. This allowed me to gather up all of my belongings, and leave behind a mystery cart for someone else to find (and it’s packed with corpses but nothing else). I simply did not want to risk dying again. Each time you die you lose a bit of skill, and I had had enough.

After a long adventure with nothing at all to show for it aside from my bumps, bruises, and lost skill, I made it back to my deed. Needless to say I’ll be sticking closer to home in the future, and I’ll kill as I go instead of trying to out run all the things around my place.

Adventures with Nahjo

stargrace July 9, 2015 0Comment

People on Xanadu have taken to calling one of the latest religions Nacho, when referring to Nahjo, and I can understand why. Make it much easier to remember and say! In my post yesterday I mentioned that I was contemplating swapping my Fo priests over to this new religion. The most important thing is that this re-sets your faith (favor, mana) and you have to start over again. First you have to become a follower and raise it to 30, then you can be converted to a priest and continue raising it from there. That’s where I’m at now. I found a priest not too far away from home and sailed over last night. They converted me without too many issues, and I headed back home.

Actually the hardest problem with being a follower of Nahjo was creating an altar. I can’t create a metal one because those require blessing (which requires a priest), and the stone altars can only be created in an area that doesn’t already have a priest ‘domain’ in play. I eventually settled on an area inside my mine. Above and below ground counts as two different areas, so you can place an altar in each. Since neither character is a priest it means I can do the mundane things that priests are unable to do (like continue items) at least for the next few weeks. By the end of the day my faith was sitting at 7, a nice start.

Magnaron statues are the statue of choice for Nahjo followers, so I created a few of those and handed them out to my characters as well. Aside from standing around making sure I get my prayers in, there’s not a lot for these characters to do *yet) so I swapped back to my main character and began working on my natural substance.

I created 300 healing covers and raised my skill from 32 to 37, and am looking forward to reaching 50 eventually. The skill levels up pretty easily so far, but I expect that will slow down. It’s a great use of the few thousand animal bits I have in a bulk storage bin on deed though, and I’m hoping to make some really awesome dye over time. That does mean that my support beam project is slightly on hold for a bit, but I’m still hoping to create the side materials used for it. No matter how ‘done’ I ever think I am in game, there are always so many things to do. That’s one of the great things about Wurm Online.

Not a Game for the Impatient

stargrace July 8, 2015 0Comment

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 0Comment

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 0Comment

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!