October 2018

Farm Together Made me Hate Pumpkins

stargrace October 23, 2018 No Comments

I was gifted this ultra casual super cute steam title called Farm Together by a good friend, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it – until I got wind of their Halloween event. It starts out innocently enough. Harvest 100 cursed pumpkins. Once you do that, you need to harvest 1,000. Then you need to harvest 10,000 – and 1,000 special trees.

You can harvest in a 3×3 area thanks to vehicles and gas – if the farm has those, but each cursed pumpkin costs 500 gold, and when you harvest them you get zilch in coin back. This makes it an incredibly difficult challenge especially for beginners like me. Thanks to the kindness of friends I was able to reach 3,000 pumpkins or so harvested (after blowing absolutely all my hard earned money on the crop before I realized they reward no coin in return) and I decided I give up. There’s a time limit (ie: harvest them by halloween) and 10,000 is just way. too. many.

You want to be a good neighbour, so you not only harvest in a 3×3 area, you till the land, and re-plant. Each action uses gas (or takes you forever by hand) and you can only plant in fall, which has a 17 minute window. The cursed pumpkins take 8h to grow (4h if you water them) and just.. no. NOPE.

This event is NOT FUN. It’s a grind that entices me because I WANT to unlock the cute halloween decor, but after 3k pumpkins I have put my foot down and I am NOT harvesting any more.

Sorry, Farm Together, your event is just more chore than fun.

Gaming

Change is Good

stargrace October 21, 2018 No Comments

I recently started playing Wurm Unlimited again, on the Sklotopolis server. Let me start off by saying that yes I promote this server a lot because it’s absolutely one of the best ones out there – and it keeps getting better. The developers recently coded a bot that hooks into the Wurm API and we can now talk back and forth between discord and game. It’s fantastic. It strengthens an already strong community, and I just think it’s a fantastic feature. I also think it’s impressive that this is a feature on a small independent gaming community, and not a larger company.

Anyway, that’s not the theme of this post. What I wanted to talk about in this post is how I’ve recently disbanded my two main deeds, keeping my 3rd smaller coastal deed on Liberty, and moved to Novus.

What spurred this on you might ask?

I recently posted looking for a pre-fabricated deed because I simply don’t have the time to design a new deed from scratch, and at the time I had no coastal home (after the fall of Moumix’ place). Barefoot responded, and offered to build me a deed (with payment of course) on Novus. He found the perfect location, asked me about the smaller particulars (buildings, landscaping, etc) and set to work.

I also joined a new alliance on Novus. I love my alliance on Liberty, but it’s hard to get people talking or to feel really involved because they have known one another for a very long time. My hours also don’t really match up, and while I know people come and go from the game I was feeling a little lonely. Being on a more active server (a lot of people left to Novus when it was linked to Liberty) has helped me feel not quite as lonely.

I do still have one smaller deed over on Liberty, in a new location. I took down Quail Keep and Quail Castle, and created Quail Cove over on the East coast. I’m hoping to slowly (ie: very slowly) turn it into a small town hub for when I go to Liberty events, and for alts. So far it’s going quite well, and despite all the changes I’m feeling happy and confident about them.

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

Knitting Yarn

Yarn Review – Boss Lady Yarn Co.

stargrace October 3, 2018 1 Comment

Earlier this year (or maybe it was late last year) I had gotten it into my mind that I wanted to review (for my own reasons) yarn dyed by indie dyers – preferably Canadian. It didn’t exactly take off as I had way too much on my plate, not to mention the cost involved was more than I could spare. I’m hoping to bring that feature back at least once a month. Last month you may have seen me review this yarn that I was absolutely in love with so lets start with the second yarn I chose to review.

The sock above was knit with a yarn called Ivy, by Boss Lady Yarn Co. While it knit up well enough it was not what I was expecting when the package arrived. Because it had been vacuum sealed unwound and no label, it was incredibly messy and easy to get into knots as I opened it. The colours were nothing like what I had seen on the web site and I was really disappointed. They did include a wooden stitch marker as an extra that I appreciated a lot. Notions are a great way to win over an audience with an extra perk.

That’s the picture of Ivy in the shop. Really strong blues and greens, and a white base. What I got was a very speckled off-white base without the strong greens or blues that I had hoped for. I purchased the yarn from the sellers Etsy store, and I left a less-than-stellar review because I was not pleased with the yarn I received based on the shop pictures. Below is what I received.

The owner of the shop wrote me back and stated:

“Leaving a negative review should be a customer’s last resort.”

Let me mention that this was the first time I had ever been unsatisfied with a purchase and left a negative review. I didn’t feel the same way as the seller and it felt as though they were talking down to me as the customer. I felt that a dissatisfied customer should have the opportunity to leave their feedback, and that it was the whole reason there was a feedback option to begin with. I noticed that the new website does not allow people to leave reviews, and I find this a bit troublesome.

I understand that colours show up different depending on your monitor and that batch dying as a small company means there are going to be differences in the skeins, but this just felt like it was not what I had ordered at all. Something for the buyer to beware of. In the future I’ll also be looking for swatches knit up so I can get a better idea of what the yarn will look like if there are multiple colours used.

Farm Together Made me Hate Pumpkins

Change is Good

Yarn Review – Boss Lady Yarn Co.

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