Wurm Online

January Gaming in Review

January saw me playing a whole lot of games with “world” in the title. I started off the month strong, playing World of Warcraft – Shadowlands. Sadly, I don’t really enjoy the expansion that much. I find anima difficult to obtain, and there are far too many timegates put in place. There’s also a lot of new currency, and I think it’s needless. I did level up some alts through pet battles, and I had fun logging in weekly to obtain loot from the world boss, but I don’t find that that there is a lot of staying power, yet. Who knows if that will change. I’ve been flip flopping between a few characters, mostly my monk and my demon hunter. I also paid just over a million gold to move all of my horde characters from Argent Dawn, to Hyjal. I just wanted to have everyone together on the same server. I now have all of my alliance over on Argent Dawn, and my horde are all on Hyjal. I’ve always wanted to learn how to make gold better on a high population server, and Hyjal is most certainly that – especially compared to AD. I’m just better at making gold on AD and always have been.

I also played a LOT of Wurm Online. I started off playing on the Southern islands on my Indy deed, nothing really special just doing generic deed work. I expanded to a second deed because I wanted a mine, but now that I’ve had it a while I might just disband it. It’s some ways away from home and I’ve been waiting for buildings to decay that are going to take over a year. Worth it? Not exactly. After that I started playing over on the Northern (newer) servers with my Fo priest. I managed to find a 24/7 sermon going on, and I joined up and then subscribed a few alts. For the past month I’ve been doing sermons as often as possible, every three hours. I reached 100 faith for the very first time. This is a HUGE goal of mine. It means I can cast summon soul, and I can also cast lifetransfer without requiring extra characters.

While doing sermons over on Harmony, I met up with Arbi, a friend from Sklotopolis, the Wurm Unlimited server that I frequent. They told me about the fantastic work that the developers have been doing despite the fact that WU is no longer supported in an official capacity. I was drawn in, despite losing my amazing deed – when I logged in the exact location that I had deeded previously was still free. I took it as a sign, and now I’ve dedicated myself to building my place up the exact way that I had it before. I really loved that deed and one of my biggest gaming regrets is letting it fall.

Single player games? I didn’t play many, but I did delve into RimWorld for a bit, and some Sims 4. With covid knocking on my community door, I spent most of my time inside trying to avoid everything going on in the real world. I can think of worse ways to spend my time.

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

ALMOST 100 Fo

For all of the many years that I’ve been playing Wurm, I’ve never gotten 100 faith. I’ve owned countless priests, but in the yearly years they were purchased and I always re-sold them. I now have two priests, a Vynora on the older Souther servers that is at 70 something faith, and a ‘new’ one on the Northern cluster, a Fo, who is ALMOST 100 faith. For the past month I’ve been living on Harmony instead of Cadence, and I created 3 listeners who are also premium. The more listeners you have, the more faith gain you get each sermon. .02 per listener, in fact. Each day, every 3 hours, minus the few I actually get to sleep, I’ve been setting my alarm clock so I can sermon and get as many gains as possible. Praying between those gains to work on the benediction journal entry.

I hate the grind. If I were to only pray, reaching 100 would basically be impossible. Sermons are by far the fastest way to complete this, and unless you (or someone else) is willing to pay premium for extra listeners, it’s still slow. I was 55 faith when I joined the sermons, and I’m getting on average 1.5-2 points of faith a day. I paid for my extra listeners on January 4th, and had already participated for some time.

That’s basically wurm in a nutshell. It requires a lot of time, a lot of dedication even if it’s passive dedication (ie: I leave all 4 of my characters on 24/7 and set an alarm to come back to them every 3 hours while I do what needs to be done in real life).

Why this grind to 100?

So I can cast Lifetransfer & summon soul without requiring links. Is it worth the work? Well, that depends on the player. For me, personally, yes. It is worth it or I wouldn’t be doing it. I really want a 100 faith character. I’d ideally like BOTH my characters to be 100 faith, and I know there are sermons going on in the Southern servers as well, but I can only handle 1 sermon at a time.

Prayer is getting a revamp, and while some older players who grinded to 70 are frustrated at the change – I personally think it’s healthy for games to evolve over time, and I hope this helps players more than hinders them. It’s almost 800 hours to grind from 1-70 prayer which is a journal entry requirement for benediction and that’s just extreme when it’s a skill that grants almost nothing.

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

Here Kitty Kitty..

I added a new little friend to the deed yesterday. Found wandering around outside my deed was this little cutie, a wild cat! They are adorable, and I promptly tamed it with some meat and then put it in my house (which I know, still needs a floor). If I can find two maybe I’ll breed them and have a house FULL of wild cats! That’s the dream, right?

A Few Pens Complete

A big thank you goes out to Tahlula from the Cadence server yesterday, who sent me 6 fence bars so that I could finish my cow pen. I had them hitched to a post by my house, but for some reason they would randomly go invisible. Someone told me that not only would they go invisible, sometimes they’d just go missing. I do NOT want that for my cows, so I took it upon myself to finish at least ONE of my pens. This is the pottery one, which I love the look of. I know I could have used a different fence, but I didn’t want to have to bash it down after.

Fence bars take a lot of iron to make and my blacksmithing is still quite low so I only have a 20% chance at creation. That’s a lot of iron wasted. I was talking about this issue in Freedom chat (server specific talk) and they offered to send them to me for the cost of postage. Incredibly kind of them, I was so happy! Now my cows are safe, and I can go back to working on the rest of the deed.

Taking Down a Dragon

Public slayings are few and far between on the older servers of Wurm Online – but the newer servers still tend to do a few public slayings. I was recently able to participate in the kyklops slaying, and then a white hatchling slaying over on Melody.

Over 180 people were in local (most probably alts) and it was a great time, hosted by one Elwoode, who was also celebrating his 30th birthday. One of the reasons slayings tend to be private is because those who are in local benefit from a piece of hide/scale as well as blood from the kill. If you’re not actively participating or hitting the creature, you can leech off of those who are doing the brunt of the work, and still obtain these items. The more people in local, the less hide/scale you obtain. For this slaying, people received between .02 and .03 of drake hide. To put that in perspective, a single glove (the smallest material required) needs .2 hide to create (and hopefully you don’t fail).

Gear made from dragons is supposed to be rare, and I understand that – but I feel like it’s a bit awkward that only the experienced and rich ever get to indulge in these items. I used to have a set of drake many moons ago, but when Wurm still allowed RMT I sold it to help out with some RL funding I required. I have deep regrets over that. It’s a trait that I tend to carry from game to game. Give away / sell personal belongings and then down the road I wish I had of kept them. I’m trying to be better about it, but my instinct is to give that stuff up.

Anyway, we gathered on Melody, which I had never been to before. It is the third server that was opened after the steam release (not including the PVP server, Defiance) and in my personal opinion was an unneeded server that just served to spread populations further apart in a time when we knew things would be crowded (and then they died down, significantly, which all Wurm players of any length of time are also aware of). I brought my Fo priest so I could help with heals and at least contribute something while my fight skill is quite low.

It was neat to see the dragon, and I still dream of one day capturing and hosting my own slaying – that will probably have to remain a pipe dream, but it’s still good to have those dreams.

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

Nomadic Gamer