2017

Wurm Unlimited, and (unrelated) Anxiety

stargrace March 28, 2017 No Comments

A little bit of non-game related, before we get to the good stuff. Apologies for not diving right in!

I was diagnosed with agoraphobia a few years back after experiencing some intense panic attacks that left me vomiting up blood any time I tried to go anywhere outside of the house (especially the car, and the elevator in my building). They came on suddenly and I honestly thought I was dying. Thanks to some medication I was able to get things under control and as the years went by I decided to stop taking that medication on occasion. Every so often I’d get it into my head that I was fine (the fact that I was taking the medication that was making me fine was sort of lost on me) and that I didn’t need the help any more. Except with things like mental illness they don’t just vanish, and sometimes (like in my case) it’s an imbalance in your brain that causes the issues, and that isn’t something that goes away.

I had to deal with a lot of stigma surrounding mental illness. Some of my friends stopped talking to me and drifted away. A lot stopped asking me to do things because they knew I’d decline. I hated declining. I absolutely hate the fact that having this sort of an illness prevents me from taking advantage of some situations that are presented to me. It’s not logical, and it’s not something I can control, and it’s something I have spent many conversations apologizing for. I’m the person who will say sure lets meet up, and then cancel at the last minute. Not because of anything anyone has done wrong but because I simply can’t handle it. So I totally get why people bailed on me, I’m not the most fun person to deal with. A few managed to stick around and for those people I am eternally grateful, let me assure you.

Anyway. Recently an amazing opportunity presented itself to me and I accepted – only to decline again at the last minute. These things don’t happen often, especially for this stay at home with a 6 month old Mom. I hated myself for declining. Hated myself for having this mental block. Hated myself for many things. I know it’s difficult to talk about mental health. I know it’s difficult to look outside of our boxes and realize that the person we’re talking to is indeed a person and they have a whole bunch of stuff going on that doesn’t even register. I just wanted to say that to anyone else in this situation, you’re not alone, you’re never alone, and to just keep trying.

Lets get back to gaming!

Wurm Unlimited is going well. I managed to create a rare glimmersteel pickaxe, and improved it to 81 quality. I’m hoping to get more glimmersteel so I can improve it further in the future. I created a colossus over at Dwarf Fortress, and I’ve been enchanting tools for friends. Pretty basic stuff, really. The troll king went down last week, and we’re all hoping that a dragon spawns next. Whether or not that will actually happen I have no idea, but here’s hoping! My deeds are coming along really well. I built pens for the hell horses and the unicorns and then I created a slate (black) road along the side with the hell horses and a marble (white) road along the unicorn. In the centre I have marble statues of horses, along with a path of flowers. It looks amazing.

One of my beehives spawned a second queen so I’ve been trying to get it to migrate over to a new empty hive. That would make three. YAY! It’s fall in game so migration works a bit different.

Fall also means that winter is just around the corner and for the first time we’ll be able to make those snowballs and stock our larders! Awesome! All in all, I’m still having an absolute blast (as I always do) on the Sklotopolis server. If you happen to decide to play over there be sure to give me a shout (I play as Stargrace) and as always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself.

You get a Colossus, and YOU get a Colossus, and You get a…

stargrace March 17, 2017 No Comments

Things have been going well in Wurm Unlimited. At first I missed Wurm Online, but I don’t miss having to pay a subscription, and believe it or not, I don’t even miss Xanadu. The community on Sklotopolis has made sure of that. Every day is still an adventure.

I recently started offering my colossus building services to players. I charge 15 silver and provide all supplies and go out and build. It takes me less than a day to complete one (more like 5 hours) and it’s perfect for people who may not want to under take such a task or who may be unable to create one of a specific religion they want (you have to be a follower of that religion to create a colossus of that deity). I already built two this week, one for a future impalong site (free of charge of course) and one for a customer (pictured above). Exciting times!

I also managed to create my first ever useful supreme item yesterday – a forge! I was so incredibly excited. It glows a nice purple, and I know I’ll make good use of it since I spend so much of my time at the forges working on weapons and general blacksmithing items.

The teraforming on my own deed is finally completed, and now I just need to decide what I want to do with the space. I have some ideas, but haven’t built much yet. In the meantime I’m just glad it’s done.

My channeling is finally at a place where I’m starting to get some nicer casts. Not all of the time, but occasionally which is better than never. I managed to get a few 90 casts yesterday on items for a customer. Of course I pull off low 60s on my own items because Vynora is not very nice. Go figure.

All in all, a great time Wurming. If you’re looking for an active friendly server, check out Sklotopolis. Highly recommended, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Enter the New Players

stargrace March 12, 2017 No Comments

I know I’ve been going on about the 1.3 update for quite some time, not only in Wurm Unlimited, but when it was released in Wurm Online – and it appears that I’m not the only one excited, because yesterday saw a HUGE influx of new players to Sklotopolis, I think we were nearing 100 players online at one point (not including any alts, these were unique steam IDs) which is fantastic. It seemed like new player after new player was logging in to check out the changes and see what was happening. Thankfully, Sklotopolis is an amazing server with a fantastic community. It’s also a large server, and there’s tons of space to move around and place your own deed at (or you can join one of the many amazing villages that the server is host to).

New players, old players, it didn’t seem to matter, they arrived in droves. I’m actually surprised no one has tripped over the Troll King yet that’s out there wandering around.

In my own news, my wild bees have FINALLY migrated over to the hives I created. I was a bit worried about one because the wild hive was 66QL and my crafted hive was 66.1QL, but it worked (even if it took a few days). I was incredibly happy to drive up to the hive and see “active” scrawled across it. They even have a cute little graphic of the hive rocking back and forth when it’s got active bees in it. Too cute.

While it’s producing honey, it’s not producing wax, which I find slightly annoying. The devs tell me it’s just very rare, but I personally feel like it’s bugged. Not much I can do about it aside from hunt for wild hives to obtain the wax from them instead.

Ogur and I have been working on terraforming my back yard. I want to create a sort of public park / forest back there. The first thing we have to do is flatten the area, it was covered in hills and rocks. A long project considering I expanded it 70 tiles to the North, but it’s coming along. I also created a new area for the bees, and some tree sprouts were planted along with a fancy marble path. It’s slow work, but it should look fantastic once complete.

I worked on my channeling a bit, enchanted some tools for friends, and generally mucked about doing typical wurm things. Chatted in GL-Freedom to players and enjoyed watching new deeds (and players) crop up. In other words, a very typical Saturday playing Wurm Unlimited (and tending to RL by way of all things baby, of course).

Today I hope to continue working on my channeling, meditation, farming, and maybe work on the second story of my three houses that I’ve added. Then there’s also cooking.

Who am I kidding, there’s always cooking.

OH! One very handy thing that Moumix pointed out to me – you can now center items on a tile with the move option, or place them on a corner. This is the BEST OPTION I have EVER made use of. My altars, and house furniture and statues, and so many other items are now perfectly aligned and I absolutely LOVE IT. I don’t know when the feature was added but I spent many hours yesterday moving items this way and that.

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

1.3 Progress on Sklotopolis

stargrace March 9, 2017 1 Comment

Now that the much anticipated 1.3 patch is live I’ve been spending most of my time cooking, creating tools to use for cooking, and farming items to be used for (you guessed it) cooking. I’m absolutely loving the new recipes that have been added, and making notes in my cook book about which foods give me which affinity buffs. I haven’t found a lot of useful ones yet, but I’ve found a small handful (like meditation, and jewel crafting). The one I’m really eager to find is the food that will give me a channeling buff. With my current skill in cooking most buffs last for a good half hour, and the more complicated a recipe, the longer that buff lasts.

It hasn’t all been cooking though. I recently added three new buildings to my deed, Quail Ridge. I decided I needed a dedicated kitchen house, so I added a new smithing building along with a carpentry house and tailoring. They’re not huge places, but I do plan on adding a second timber floor once I have more time. Maybe a bridge filling in the gap between them, too. I haven’t decided yet.

I also created some of the new storage options. WOW. They’re amazing. The barrel rack and planter rack are adorable and make everything look neat and tidy. The new large storage rack is great for holding all sorts of things although I didn’t really enjoy crafting it since it took three rafts.

I’ve also been trying to collect bees of my very own. I have two hives out in the wild (near wild hives) hoping that the queen will migrate to my (better quality) hive. So far that hasn’t happened, but I go by every day and take the honey and wax from the wild hives to add to my collection. If I can get a queen to migrate to my hive I’ll plant all sorts of flowers in the back yard to encourage more production. We’ll see how it goes.

Have you played around with the changes in 1.3 yet? What are some of your favourite things? Let me know below in comments and as always happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!