April 2016

Finally, Progress!

stargrace April 29, 2016 No Comments

After moving to the new deed, I have FINALLY finished leveling and surface mining the dock so that it’s flat, and real construction has started. This is the very first part, the three towers and two arches. To the left of the first tower a vynora statue will stand, and then these towers, arches, and the vynora statue will be duplicated at the other end of the dock. In the center will be the shipyard, with bridges spanning from the towers to the building.

I’m VERY excited to finally be at this stage! It feels like it took forever. It’s also using a lot of bricks, not just for my portion of the docks but for the town that Moumix has been working on up above. Maya is also going to start on another field along the slope, which involves a whole lot of surface mining. I think I’ll take a little exploration trip before too long, I’m going a bit stir crazy on the deed and I haven’t been exploring in a little while.

Pregnancy woes have meant that I’ve been cranky and short lately. I don’t really mean to be, but I decided it would probably be best if I just (mostly) kept to myself and didn’t interact that much. Not that I don’t want to, I love interacting with people, but I don’t like snapping at folks for no reason at all just because my hormones are wonky and dancing all over the place. It’s a sure way to find yourself on the outside looking in.

Leatherworking reached 40, not a great feat, but it’s nice. I’ll have to improve my gear again before too long, it’s still 35 or so.

Natural substance, on the way to 70! Excited about that one. Potions and dye are much easier now.

I worked jewelry smithing up a bit so that I could make a neat marble brazier to stand on top of the center tower – and I love how it turned out. That skill is 30 at the moment. Masonry (which is my affnity) is almost 85! No surprise there, I think I spend 90% of my wurm time making bricks, mortar, or building.

So what’s next? I haven’t the faintest idea. Exploring a bit maybe. Relaxing before starting on the rest of the dock area. Making more bricks. More mortar. Saving up so I can place a merchant… somewhere. I haven’t figured out where yet. My enchants are not the best, but I’m not looking for too much.

Anyway, that was my Friday! I hope everyone else had a better one than I did. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Live Map and other Mods

stargrace April 27, 2016 2 Comments

One of the neat benefits of Wurm Unlimited is that there’s an active mod community. Maybe not as large as some of the other communities out there, but they do a fantastic job. A lot of mods are server side, so unless you’re running a server you may not even notice that you’re using them. Some of the mods are client side, and while there are such mods that actually change how the game is played, those mods are typically not allowed by servers and the only mods that are allowed are visual mods that don’t change gameplay. One such mod is called Live Map. The map in Wurm Unlimited is a default one that shows “Ocrea”. If you’re using a custom map, chances are it will make no sense for you. Live map takes the in-game map and puts it into a mini window for you. It also works in mines, such as pictured above. The coloured marks are ore, the bright red square is me. The map moves around you, and you stay centered on the screen.

As you can tell by the dull red squares, I’ve uncovered a lot of ore. The black tile is slate, and the faint grey tile to the east is silver. I’m working my way towards some zinc, and then I think the only ores remaining are copper, gold, and marble (which isn’t an ore, I know). I finally reached 70 mining which means I can improve tools to that quality. Unfortunately out of all the ore I’ve uncovered, only one (so far) goes above 65 quality.

I also managed to reach 60 in natural substances – down side to that is I haven’t found a single source salt, which I need to make the leather working potions I have. I’m pretty surprised at how rare they are, then again I haven’t seen any hellhorses or hellhounds either, so I guess some things are just rare.

Since I’ve been working up mining I haven’t been working on the deed aside from working on the garlic fields and some animal husbandry. Now that my mining is 70 I imagine I’ll go back to working on the dock, I’m so close to leveling the portions I need and then I can get started on building. Do I have a vision yet on what I want to make? Nope. Not at all. I’m not sure if I want to plan it out in deedplanner or if I want to just wing it. We’ll just have to see.

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

Farming, Knarrs, and the Economy – Oh My

stargrace April 26, 2016 No Comments

Pictured above, me tending the garlic fields. My farming is only 35, but Maya has been busy with school so I’ve been tending the fields and harvesting garlic so I can use it. The upper field is now a combination of cotton and wemp, though I could still use more garlic – it’s important to have other things, too. I’ll get there eventually.

Yesterday I bought a knarr from Mara for 12 silver. I know I could just craft one (eventually) but there are so many other things that I want to do in game I just couldn’t be bothered. People keep saying that Sklotopolis doesn’t have much of an economy, but I find that it’s the complete opposite. You just have to be involved in the community and pay attention. There are always people looking for items in the trade channel as well as the market posts on the forums. If you’ve got something to sell or you want to buy something you really have to advertise it. People are not mind readers after all.

The knarr is great. It can sail at shallow depths which is what I really wanted it for, and it has fantastic storage capacity. I’ll need to get some large creates made for it, but then I can travel around to different hunting places or explore the server a bit more and at least I’ll have some space to put items. I’ve slowly been working on the dock. There’s just one corner left to dig to rock and then surface mine. Each tile is between 50-70 mining actions and I’ve had to dredge quite a bit to expose the rock but I’m getting there.

I haven’t found anything interesting in the mine yet, but then again I haven’t expanded it that much yet. There’s just too many other things that need to get done. Moumix and Maya have been doing amazing things to the top tier of the deed. Moumix has completed a kitchen / inn building, along with the first crafting building, and a natural substances building. Maya dug out two farm fields into the side of the mountain we’re perched on and she did a fantastic job getting the animal pets set up with hedges. It looks great.

As far as the dock goes, I still have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do as far as design goes. I’m thinking buildings and bridges attached to towers, on each end, with a Vynora colossus in the center.  Ship building could be in the buildings attached to the bridges, and boats could park in between the two towers, in front of the colossus. So far that vision is only in my mind, so we’ll see where it ends up going (if anywhere). The one issue I have is that just out from the dock in the water is a whole lot of clay. Clay means that I can’t extend the docks out very far – I think right now it’s a maximum of 4 tiles before I hit clay. We could transform all of that clay into dirt, but wow that’s a lot of potions. I’ll keep thinking about it in the meantime.

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

We’re Slaying Drakes

stargrace April 24, 2016 No Comments

50+ unique individuals gathered together today on the Sklotopolis server to slay a drake. It was awesome. I brought my main character along with my Fo priest to link up with the healer, Gatwick (my apologies if I spelled that wrong). Cennydd wished me luck, and secretly Mizova wished Melketh certain death. Corax wished the same, but knew that if Melketh went, he’d be next.

We lined up for pictures and screenshots, posing for the twitch TV channel that was being streamed by Devily. The dragon was just a hatchling, almost like a large dog, and was lead to the fight spot easily enough. We all swung our swords at it. Nothing happened. Not even a scratch.

So we swung harder, while laughing nervously to ourselves.

Again no damage showed up on the drake.

Melketh cast smite – and finally we saw some damage done to the creature. We cheered inwardly but it was short lived as the dragon healed a portion and then all damage stopped again. We continued to swing, pondering if the dragon difficulty would be too much for our group – and suddenly, the creature just keeled over and died right in front of us.

We were confused, we had no idea what happened. Could it have been lag? The announcements said we’d killed the creature fair and square, but little other details were given. Once the beast was dead, it was time for loot to be rolled on and distributed. As I thought, RNG was not my friend and I didn’t win anything at all. There were 7 full sets of drake, along with a partial set given out though. A rare bone, a skull, and the body of the drake completed the giveaways. Afterward I attempted to find my way back home and only got lost once.. or twice. It was a pretty eventful day and it was fantastic to see so many show up. It was the first time I had ever seen a blue drake before, and I hope everyone enjoyed themselves as much as I did.

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