As I mentioned in a previous post, I was pretty sure I wanted to get going on a raft, but I was so involved in other quests that it was taking me a bit of time to get around to it. I had picked up the quest from the harbor and the first thing I had to do was buy two houses, one for refining, and the second for a shipyard. It was easy enough to click on each house type and figure out which ones would give me what I needed, and I made sure the houses were linked, too. I added more storage, and now I have 6 houses in Velia. One acting as residence (cooking utensils need some place to go after all), two acting as warehouse (storage, I can never have enough), one acting as a tool workshop (I need my fishing rods!), and then the refinery and the shipyard. The refinery lets you make black stone powder from rough stone, and it’s used in quite a few recipes. The shipyard allows you to make a raft or a ferry. Of course I only have the supplies for a raft.
Creating a raft is pretty simple, but it does require an investment of time. You need to process logs (to be more specific you select manage crafting at the house that is a shipyard, and your worker needs to complete each step) – 25 times, each time takes 21m. Then you need to process 3 black stone powder. Once you’ve finished those processes, you’ll have a raft license in your warehouse.
I know the raft is an incredibly slow vehicle, but that makes a lot of sense to me after obtaining my first ground mount which is also pretty dang slow and awkward. I finally got a quest for a donkey this weekend even though I’ve already had my wagon for quite some time.
I also haven’t claimed my explorer’s pack rewards yet. I haven’t made any alts, so I’m trying to hold off in case I decide to play someone else the majority of the time. I know you can trade the items between your family members on the same server, but it seems like a bit of a hassle to me, so for now I’ll just leave the items be. Though I AM eager to get some lighting in a proper house. Any time I use my kitchen utensils I feel like I’m in a dungeon. Of course I bought that residence because of its proximity to the kitchen (easy to go and purchase supplies) so it’s really not that great of a home to begin with.
Thanks to the ongoing St. Patrick’s Day rewards I’m also collecting a small bundle of dye to use in the future, which is neat. Now that I’ve been playing the game steadily for a bit of time it feels like I’m very slowly getting a handle on most of the systems – though to be honest the node system still evades me, I’m not sure how nodes are linked, or how to link them. I’ll need to figure that out better and do more research.
Overall? I’m really enjoying myself. There are still some systems I haven’t explored yet (like amity) but meandering along doing my own thing seems to be working out well. Here’s hoping I can reach level 20 before too long, I’m almost level 18 at the time of this post.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
Making the raft is a fun thing to do and I found it a great way to learn the crafting system. The raft itself, however, is not a lot of practical use. I still don’t have a horse but since I seem to run faster than most of the ones I see I’m not that bothered about getting one!
The apartments on top of the inn are lit already – and cheap! If all you need is a place to cook its not a bad way to go. Also you can assign several workers at a time to the same crafting task – makes crafting those 21 pieces of wood much less of a time sink.