2018

A Day of Eco

stargrace February 25, 2018 No Comments

Yesterday (no surprise) I spent most of my time in Eco, along with my husband and some friends. We’ve picked some crafting paths to go down so that we can get a bit of everything, and unfortunately for me, I went carpenter because I had no idea what I was doing. I say unfortunately because this is one path that uses a lot of trees, and I feel like I’m hurting the ecosystem much more than I would like. I am trying to pick trees that need to be thinned out and not absolutely destroy an entire forest by reducing my resources and increases my yields, but all of that takes skill points, and skill points take time. You can increase the amount of skills you gain daily by eating better food, and by having a fancy home. I’m working on both of those, but it’s very slow paced. Slow isn’t a bad thing in this case, it gives me time to learn the game and get used to everything.

I’ve progressed from making logs for houses to making latrines and iceboxes, along tables, chairs, and beds. Scopique is doing masonry, Arislyn is doing farming & cooking, and Hampooj is doing hunting which includes butcher and I believe he may also take up tailoring. There’s still a lot of skills we don’t have, like engineering, but I know we’ll get there.

The game is pretty complex and involved – a lot more than I initially thought. It is still in early access so not everything is working as it should at release (like laws and government) but I have come across only a small handful of minor bugs and nothing major. Every so often my carpenter table will tell me it’s not in a house any longer even though I haven’t changed anything, but I can pick it up and place it down again without any issues which solves the bug.

Now that we have a dedicated server set up, we’re also keen to see if anyone else is interested in playing with us. We’d like to stick to people we know for now as we’re just getting established, so if you’re interested be sure to drop one of us a ping and we’ll see what we can do. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Lets Save the World

stargrace February 24, 2018 1 Comment

Browsing through steam yesterday I noticed a game called “Eco” that had entered early access a few days earlier. Initially it was the bright and colourful graphics that caught my eye, then I watched the video which was pretty simplistic, but it seemed to be a game that was a combination of minecraft and wurm online, two games I enjoy a huge amount.

There’s single player, co-op, and multiplayer. The premises of the game is that a meteor is going to crash into the world (the timing of which you can control in settings) and your goal is to save the world – and develop your civilization far enough along that you can destroy the meteor, and also keep the ecosystem of the planet intact. You start out building rustic wooden houses and progress to factories and machines, I think in one video I even saw lasers taking down the meteor.

Everything you do has an impact on the ecosystem. Even where I’m building my single wooden house is already changing, the animals, the ground, the plants surrounding the area. I’m not very far into things yet, but I’m hoping other members of the combat wombat team get together and we get a server going where we can work as a team to save the planet. There’s crafting, harvesting, farming, building, hunting, and everything that makes these games a lot of fun for me. Character creation is lacking, but the game is also in early access. I didn’t run into any major bugs in my first round of game play, but to be honest all I’ve done so far is pick some tomato plants and chop a few trees, setting up the basics to my brand new house.

That being said, if these types of games appeal to you, I’d highly suggest checking it out. You can always refund the game on steam if it’s not your cup of tea, but I’m hoping this is one we all decide to stick with for some time. We’ll just have to see!

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you fund yourself (oh, and expect a lot more Eco posts in the future. The game is complex. There’s government, shops, currency, and so much more to it that I haven’t even mentioned).