May 2016

Sklotopolis Updates

stargrace May 19, 2016 1Comment

I know I haven’t been writing that much over the past few weeks (months?) but I have still been gaming. Today I’ll talk about what I’ve been up to in Wurm Unlimited.

I decided to drop the smaller deed called Quail Ridge that I had because it was quite far away from my ‘main’ deed and it was a pain to travel to. I prefer it out in the Southern part of the map where there’s less population, and I couldn’t really justify keeping a deed that was hours away. Instead I created Sybaris Stables, which (as the name shows) is an animal stable area. Mostly for hell horses. The GMs fixed the spawn issue we were having and hell creatures have begun showing up again. I ran out over the steppe and brought back 6 hell horses – but the guards like to attack them. They can avoid being attacked by being branded, but this doesn’t help the babies not be attacked, especially if they’re born when I’m offline.

The deed is the default (free) size of 10x10x9x9 and I spent the first day terraforming it so that it’s flat. I then added 12 2×2 pens for breeding pairs, 4 5×4 pens for crops + grazing animals like deer, a very small 3×3 house with the basics, and a larger pen for anything else that I may want. I surrounded the deed by a tall stone wall so that it’s protected from creatures outside (since I have no guards) locked the doors, added some altars, and ta da. Nothing fancy, but a great place to keep animals.

Aside from that, Sybaris Sales has opened. I’ve been creating tools and enchanting them (and weapons) and selling them to players. I also create dye and sell that. I’ve made about 25 silver so far which is a pretty respectable amount for being open only a week so far.

For some reason about two or three weeks ago, all of the community assistants quit playing. They went from 12+ hours a day (some of them) to 0-1 hours. I suppose that’s the issue with having CA all from the same alliance. Mizova, Corax, Melketh, and Mara, most notably. Every so often one will log in and say hi and there’s a rumor going around that ‘they’re all just busy’ but my guess is that they’re just playing someplace else together. There also hasn’t been any sign of Noskull, nor have I seen Devily, Yala, and a few of the others. The community does a fairly good job of running themselves, but it strikes me as weird. I wonder if there was a bit of drama or some such.

In any case, deed things are going well. Moumix is away for a work trip for the week so it has just been myself and Maya. I’ve now got four characters total in game, two Vynora and two Fo priests. It means I can cast LT and MS (though I don’t quite have the favour for MS) so that’s good. Otherwise, it’s just business as usual in game!

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

A PVP Area Appears

stargrace May 7, 2016 0Comment

I’ve never been a huge fan of PVP in Wurm Online, but I did give it a bit of a try on Chaos for a while. I enjoyed the thrill of it, and being able to join different kingdoms. My main reason (at the time) was to create a priest of Libila, a black lighter instead of the usual white light priests. I had grand hopes of hiding out and working on my skills in the dark, then transferring goods over to the other freedom servers.

On Sklotopolis there’s a vocal minority of people who also want some sort of PVP (I say minority because I truly believe that a majority of wurm players are not looking for pvp to be their main focus). So it was that the GMs of the server created an area where this can happen. It’s between a bunch of mountains, has a tunnel leading up to it, a camp outside, and functions like a regular PVP place except for a few restrictions that they’ve implemented. These restrictions include banning the ability to dig or otherwise terraform the land, creation of all forms, and a few other things added to try to keep the area pristine. I think most people were hoping for an entire server, with kingdoms that they could join, but this does scratch a potential itch.

Or at least it would, if anyone were interested. Yesterday’s PVP event had to be cancelled due to lack of interest. I walked over with my alt and have been hanging out in the PVP zone for a day and a half now, but I haven’t seen another person come by or enter local. The other “issue” with PVP areas is that people like to stay close to their deeds, and travel (at least from the southern portions of the map) is awkward and filled with mountains.

Still, I congratulate the GMs on trying to please all the players on their server, both the PVPers and the “carebears”. I don’t know if it will ever really take off, I think that they’re making the same mistakes that Rolf constantly makes with Wurm Online and that’s dedicating resources to something only a very small vocal group of people want. The population of the PVP servers on Wurm Online is about 10% of the average total population. Perhaps they’ll find a way to make it more appealing, without making it incredibly over powered for only a handful of well geared / skilled players. I suppose we’ll just have to see what happens in the future.

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

GM Downfalls and Colossus Building

stargrace May 4, 2016 1Comment

I finished the first of two colossus yesterday – wow, they are so much faster than I expected. Once I had the materials construction took less than 2 hours. The statue uses 2k bricks, 2k clay, and 10 gold sheets (for this particular one). The most ‘difficult’ part (I use that term loosely, nothing is difficult it’s just time consuming) was getting the gold. I also got lots of extra.

I need to fix the windows pointing towards the ocean and then I can begin work on the opposite side, mirroring this side. Moumix has 85+ carpentry now which means he can plan the shipyard building that will be in the center. He needs 92+ carpentry to plan one of the castle grounds longest walls but it seems to be coming along at a decent pace.

The biggest challenge is keeping my mining above my other skills. See, if I want to improve things to 70 or 80 I need 70 or 80 quality supplies. Right now my mining is at 76. I’m trying to get at least a point or two a day, which makes for a lot of mining. My goal is to reach 80 by this weekend, and if I stick to the 1-2 points a day plan I’ll get there without too much issue.

I held an auction and sold off a rare longsword I had created as well as a rare needle. The auctions went well, I sold the needle for 5s and the longsword for 10. I bought a merchant form with the money I earned (10s) from a trader, so there was a 3s return, actually costing me 7s. Now that my skills are pretty well off, and my channeling / vynora spell casting isn’t shattering things or failing quite so much, I can afford to put some cheap items up for players – especially since I have so many from working up my skills. I’ve been giving away 60-70 ql tools to new players for the past week just to move some inventory.

I’m still not OK with a lot of things that happen on the server, like GMs removing houses that are supposed to be left to decay (but only for certain people, everyone else has to wait) especially since my deed and my alliance mate’s deed is right there and we were the ones waiting for them to decay (as per rules) but that’s one of the downfalls of playing on a privately owned server as opposed to a professionally hosted one. You have to look the other way and accept the fact that these things happen. If they bother you to the point where you’re not enjoying yourself any more (especially since this is a video game, where people should be enjoying themselves) then move on. It does make me wish I had researched into the available servers a bit more first, asked around and found out how they ‘really’ run, but hey it’s a learning experience.

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