2019

Dwarf Fortress

stargrace January 8, 2019 1 Comment

Dwarf Fortress is a special type of game. You either love it or you hate it. There are menus upon menus upon menus and for beginners like me, a tileset is necessary to make sense of what the heck is going on.

PlayerVShobbies started up a game last night and was asking for Dwarf names. Of course this piqued my interest especially because I saw she was using a tileset that made things so much easier to see. I asked her what she was using, and she mentioned something called the lazy newbie pack.

These starter kits are specially made for beginners to get up playing the game with a minimal amount of fuss, and she also had some great suggestions on YouTubers to watch.

The starter pack I’m using is this one here, and right now since I’m completely new I’m just getting used to the basics. I was able to name my Dwarves and get a room in a mountain mined, and I was figuring out zones when I had to call it a night and take care of the baby then get some sleep. It’s still more progress than I’ve ever made in the game, and I can’t wait for my dwarves to die a horrible horrible death.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Gaming

Wurm – Online?!

Wurm Online is still very much a thing, even though there is also Wurm Unlimited now which is the game on steam with self hosted or servers hosted by others. That’s where I play on Sklotopolis. Before WU, I played on WO, for many many years. Some of the features in WO are NOT on WU, and this winter the developers have done a pretty good job in luring players back.

WO is a F2P game – but you do need premium time if you expect to get anywhere. Premium is less than a AAA mmo would cost, but it’s still a fee. I started out my WO days on Deliverance, and then hopped around to various servers as they opened, eventually settling on Xanadu.

Over the years I felt off, living there. Xanadu is HUGE, and I didn’t feel connected to any part of it.

When WO announced the new changes they were implementing to fishing, priests, and wagoneers, I decided that it was time to return to my roots. I sold off my old Xanadu place and headed back to Deliverance, where I joined up in an alliance with Yaga, a longtime player I’ve known for ages.

Deliverance is comfortable and every day I see names in GL-Freedom that I recognize. Pingpong, Elwood, Velvetsun, these are all folks I’ve “known” in game for at least 7 years, probably longer. The developers loosened the restrictions on priests, we still can’t improve items, but we can do a lot more activities than before. I can actually build, which is a start.

I can’t dig, or pack the ground as a priest of Smeagain, but I do have an alt that can do those things for me.

I won’t lie, it feels REALLY good to be playing again. Wurm has always been a home for me, and for whatever reason the game just touches every single aspect I’ve ever enjoyed in a video game. Hopefully it’s a home for many years to come.

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

Gaming

Mesmer Antics

stargrace January 6, 2019 No Comments

With my husband home on paternity leave, I have a smidge more free time than usual, and I’ve found myself dipping back into GW2 again. I remember there were some things I wanted to work on but now I can’t remember what those things were for the life of me. I know one goal I wanted to accomplish was to obtain my first ever epic. I can’t remember WHICH epic it was though. I’m thinking maybe it was a sword for my mesmer? That’s the character I’m maining these days.

Still, GW2 is an easy enough game to get back into. You can find a story line and pick up exactly where you left off. Right now I’m working on my personal story (completed it on another account but not this one) and then I’ll progress through the rest of the seasons / stories / expansions like normal. Will I actually make any progress? That’s always to be seen, but it’s a lot of fun in the meantime and there are still a good number of friends playing which always helps.

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

Real Life

I Just Want it to Work

stargrace January 5, 2019 1 Comment

Time is precious to everyone, but when a majority of it is eaten up by kids, some things change. For me, that things is I simply don’t have the hours free any more to try to fix stuff that doesn’t work.

My computer was a major issue. Trying to find the time to solve why it wouldn’t start up ended up being a week long endevour. I can’t just ignore my family to work on it.

This week, it was my old fitbit charge HR. It should have been simple. Plug it in and charge it, put the receiver into my PC, link the device to my profile and ta da. Instead my PC refuses to acknowledge the device, though it works well enough on my laptop (an issue with bluetooth and windows 10 I’m told). Now it doesn’t want to hold a charge, and I’ve been troubleshooting what I can but there’s just no way for me to spend hours trying to diagnose the problem.

At this stage of my life I just want things to work. I want them to work as they should, out of the box, without having to spend hours and hours figuring it out. That’s one of the main reasons I contemplated going to a pre-built gaming laptop rather than futz around with my PC (again).

It feels like for a lot of things, that’s just too much to ask.

Real Life

Getting Healthy Together with Challenges

stargrace January 4, 2019 No Comments

One of my 2019 goals is to get back to my pre-baby weight. I gained an enormous 70lbs with my second child, and I’ve lost 35lbs of it, which leaves me with roughly 40lbs to lose this year. My husband also wants to get more fit, his job requires him to be in the best shape he can be. I decided that we should have monthly mini challenges we do together to motivate and inspire each other, along with one major challenge for the year. Unique to each of our goals, they’ll reward us with non-food rewards for a job well done.

My year-long goal is of course to lose the 40lbs. The reward? A peloton, something I’ve wanted for a few years now. The monthly goal for January is to go the entire month without eating any fast food. With two young kids we have a habit of grabbing whatever is fast and easy for ourselves, spending far more money than we have to and eating food that doesn’t exactly give us the most nutritious of starts.

If I acomplish this goal for the month of January, I get to buy some yarn – which I am very excited about. Initially I had decided on just a single skein, but my husband decided it should have a monetary value of $100. Each month the goal changes but hopefully leaves us with better eating habits. February I might be able to eat fast food but I’m hoping that because I’ve abstained through all of January the urge to eat poorly will be reduced. By December I’m hoping to be 40lbs lighter with much healthier food choices.

Will it work? No idea. In 2016-2017 I lost 70lbs (after the birth of our first) so I know it’s not an impossible task, but things are so much more hectic with 2 children instead of 1 and I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up. At least I’m trying.

Dwarf Fortress

Wurm – Online?!

Mesmer Antics

I Just Want it to Work

Getting Healthy Together with Challenges

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