Wurm Online

A Day At The Deliverance Market #WurmOnline

stargrace March 28, 2012 0Comment

The Deliverance Market was a project a long time coming. Set up by a player named Rudie (I believe) it was a server wide project that everyone could participate in, giving us a central location to sell wares. It’s located just East of Green Dog, on the top of the tundra. These days it’s plagued by a multitude of unicorns, deer, and dogs, but that doesn’t stop an eager customer (or a merchant, looking to set up shop). Since there are so few customers along the West Coast where my deed currently is, I decided to place my merchant at the market, and perhaps do a bit of shopping while I was there.

I was in luck. I picked up a new weapon and a few pieces of gear for Stargrace, and I had my merchant set up without any trouble. I’m not sure if I’ll actually sell anything, but it would be nice to make a few coin. I’ve stocked the merchant with some high quality tools that have been enchanted, and other random odds and ends that I’ve found along my travels. Items that I have no real use for at the moment.

Along my way home, I spotted a greenish unicorn in the distance. Greenish trait animals are much tougher than regular ones, and I longed to add her to my collection. My first attempts at charm were unsuccessful, she beat me to a bloody pulp. I had no desire to have to walk all the way back to the market (and leave my cart there) so I stepped away and healed up, and then in a last attempt I managed to land charm without being interrupted. That’s the down side of the spell, it interrupts very easily. I jumped into my cart and told the bulls to head home, leading a not so pleased greenish unicorn behind me.

Great addition to my crayon box pictured above, no?

My female black bear has been doing pretty well. I’ve stuffed her with more meat than she can possibly eat, about 20 a day. I’m always concerned with pregnant animals because they can starve very easily, especially if they’re meat eaters. I have four more days or so before I can expect a little baby bear wandering her pen. Hopefully it will have a useful trait, I suppose I’d better start praying to the RNG Gods now.

All in all? A very productive day at the market!

Away from It All #WurmOnline

stargrace March 27, 2012 0Comment

I love Deliverance, I really do, but some times I just want to get away from it all. Away from the people I see in local (neighbours, you do not count, I like you all), away from the people I know by name trolling kchat, away from a map that I’m (these days) quite familiar with. Thus, I’ve decided to keep a 3rd deed on independence. At the moment my Vynora priest is parked there, working away on meals. As Moxie says, “if you like it, you should put a deed on it.” That’s exactly what I did. Technically the deed was already mine, I had taken it down a few weeks back, but returned due to the lure of what was left in the houses (completely random, that screen shot above is poor because it’s foggy and I can’t see anything in the fog). This deed is incredibly quiet. To the South is Berlin, which is in various states of decay. A new neighbour moved in West of the deed against the mountain but they’ve been fairly silent. There’s a large fenced in area directly West but I removed the houses that were acting as gates because it’s such a waste of wide open space. If someone wants to move in there, they are welcome to. My own deed is surrounded by amazing stone fences, has areas for horses (of which I currently have none on Independence, and doubt I will) and I planted a gigantic field of crops to work on my farming. There’s a vast forest covering half of the deed, with high reaching pine and cedar trees. I’ve been planting more trees along the other side of the deed to balance the forest out a bit.

My home away from home is quiet because of a number of reasons, some of the biggest reasons are that the server is gigantic, and there’s a long walk involved in reaching it. As Moxie mentions on another blog post, if you’re looking for a place to settle, don’t look for wide open nature places – look for abandoned and deserted deeds. Settling into a location like that and calling it your own is a fantastic way to get started. There are so many half decayed fences and buildings around. Within the rules, of course.

I like the Independence server for a lot of reasons. It gives me a new place to explore, new people to meet. Places to salvage when they’ve broken down. It’s a bit of a pain to lug everything between two servers, but it’s quite easy to bring players between those two servers (depending on the wind) hence my final decision to keep the deed going. Hopefully my Vynora priest will get some good skill gains while I have the character over there, especially channeling and alignment.

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

All Sunshine and Rainbows – Life as a Priest of Fo #WurmOnline

stargrace March 26, 2012 0Comment

I took my Fo priest to Tristan to participate in some ceremonies that were going on. These are basically skill gain sessions. Priests gather around, every 3 hours they preach, 30 minutes between each preach, and you get a skill gain of faith depending on the number of listeners. You need 4 for a gain at all, and 6 for a prayer re-set. That means that every 3 hours you gain 5 new prayers (spaced 20 minutes apart) as well as the gain from preaching. You also gain alignment. It was very nice and I gained a lot of faith but it’s also a very boring job, hanging out on someone else’ deed and basically ignoring the screen unless it’s your turn to preach.

In the mean time people do mundane tasks like working on channeling, and casting spells on one another. It’s common to link up with other AFK priests so you can make use of their favor (basically mana) while you work on your skills. Because everyone is from different time zones there are lulls in conversation, but it’s mostly friendly chatter.

For me working on a Fo priest is quite easy. I have high alignment from planting sprouts (you also gain +4 alignment each time someone preaches). I spend time casting spells and praying, and I’m working on my meditation skill so that I can get to rank 7 and create enchanted grass (note: meditation is not related to religion in any way, it’s a regular skill that anyone can pick up). I’m still some time away from that yet you need rank 7 and 30 meditation skill. For some reason my meditation skill has refused to move the last few times I’ve attempted it.

My goal is to reach 70 faith (and hence 70 favor) so I can cast genesis. It’s a spell that removes bad traits from animals, and I’ve got a few that could use this miracle cure, as does Arkenor. We’ve been saving up some bad trait animals because they’re just too deer to give up, in the hopes that one day I’ll be able to cure them. I think I still have a month or two to go before that will become a reality.

There are days I regret being a priest. Days when my boats sink due to poor quality and I can’t improve them and have to use my alt. Days I want to bash down a wall (I have many of those days actually). I can turn off faithful and lose 0.1 faith per action which is at least an option, but it’s a harsh one. I was nearly at 60 faith when I decided 4 of my deed walls needed to be taken down RIGHT THEN. Mayors get a bonus to this type of fence removal and I am the always impatient gamer when I have an idea I want implemented. I dropped down to 54 faith, and am now slowly climbing my way back up – again. It’s worth it to me to be able to do these things, which is why a LOT of priests have a different main and keep both characters premium. Or at least have a free character around who can improve and fix things. Or live on a deed with others who can handle the upkeep. There are always options.

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

How WurmOnline Keeps You Playing #WurmOnline

stargrace March 24, 2012 4Comments

Every game has a ‘hitch’ that keeps you wanting to log in. For most of my themepark MMOs, this is done by daily quests. In EVEOnline it’s with daily missions from R&D agents, and my PI production. In WurmOnline that hitch is a lot stronger for me to deal with – pictured above, my hen. She died because I didn’t log in for one day. There are some incredibly delicate animals in WurmOnline, including pigs and hens. My rooster is being cared for and has lasted quite a long time now, but no such luck for the hen. You have to hand feed them (or leave a pile of grain on the ground, I couldn’t do that because the cows just eat it all). I had fed her in the morning, and even cast my Fo spell on her that grooms and takes care of her – but by that evening after less than a real life day of neglect, she was dead. If you don’t log in and tend for your animals (that’s assuming you have animals) they die. They get disease. They miscarry. With 12 horses, a hen, a deer, 5 dogs, 5 unicorns, and a handful of cattle, this is a major deal to me, I don’t want to log in to a pen full of corpses. There are of course ways to get around this. You can have enchanted grass planted, this feeds animals forever (grain eating animals at least). You need to have someone cast it for you or be level 7 on the path of love (meditation skill). It costs approx 50c-1s per tile to be done and there’s no guarantee that the animals will stand on that specific tile if you have a large space. It also doesn’t prevent them from aging or from getting disease. You can leave piles of food around, but there’s no guarantee that every animal who is hungry will get to eat their fill. Especially if you have 2nd generation (or older) animals who may have the “always hungry” trait. Thankfully I have enough skill that I can see if my animals have this trait.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on my deeds lately. I did own four of them. I know, a bit much right? I owned Darkpaw Bay, Fippy’s Keep, Les Reveurs, and Les Reveurs over on independence server. I decided since Fippy’s Keep and Darkpaw Bay were back to back, I would take down the keep, and expand Darkpaw Bay by a few tiles. Doing this allowed me to map out a larger pen for animals, all on-deed. I also added new bear pens, and have started breeding my black bears. I’d like to make a few more pens in behind, and my priest should have a lot of fun working on her animal-heavy deed. Since there’s not a lot else that a priest can do besides nature related tasks, this makes for the perfect deed for her.

My deed in the mountains belongs to Stargrace, and she spends her time mining and working on various skills, it’s probably my favorite deed. She has a small collection of dogs at the moment (four) and two bulls who drag her cart around happily. Aside from that things are quiet.

The deed on independence is also quiet. It’s a place I use only for working skills, right now I’m working my way through hot food cooking. It’s not the most exciting of tasks, but it’s great for priests to raise SD (soul depth). Something needed in a lot of spells.

I’ll be posting more screen shots of each deed as the week goes by, so stay tuned for that. I may even post a video or two of me walking around the deeds. We’ll see. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Spending Time On Independence (Unintentionally) #WurmOnline

stargrace March 23, 2012 2Comments

That screen shot above is the  main reason why I have been spending my time between two servers, Deliverance, where my ‘home base’ is, and Independence, where I have a LOT of food stored up in a tiny little deed I own. I didn’t want to just leave it behind to rot, so last night I moved 2 characters back over to that deed so that my Vynora priest could work up his Hot Food Cooking skill. I mean, that’s a lot of food just sitting there.

This of course was the start of a big adventure. See, I wasn’t sure what else I had left behind, but I thought perhaps I had left a few iron chunks that I could use to make into frying pans. I had grossly over estimated the amount of iron I had, and after 5 unfinished crafting attempts at a large anvil, I was out of iron. I needed a whetstone, I needed a pickaxe, and I had no iron or supplies on Independence to do any of this.

As any great explorer does, I wandered. I found a pickaxe. I didn’t find any iron, but I did find a mine just across from my deed. I set out to gather some iron so that I could make a chisel, then a whetstone, then finish all of those anvils collecting dust in my forge, and THEN finally, perhaps make those frying pans that I wanted to make from the start. Nothing is ever easy.

The moral of the story? ALWAYS keep your tools on you. You have no idea when you may need them.

The adventure didn’t end there, I accidentally got the priest killed before I re-deeded the area, and had to walk him from The Howl (I believe that’s the name) to Colossus Lake. Without a compass. On a continent I was not familiar with at all. Thankfully, it was day time. My one saving grace. It took a while, but I made it. I deeded the land so that should any more mishaps befall my brave adventurer, I would at least be able to spawn in the general vicinity.

There are a few differences between the enormous place that is Indi and the tiny by comparison Deli. Not just in size, either. On Indi I have been chased by every manor of aggressive creature, of all ages. The lands are absolutely teaming with life. There are ruins everywhere, the land has been incredibly built up over the years – but I find it much quieter than Deli. In my little area almost all of the deeds have been disbanded and are rotting away with a few exceptions. It makes for wonderful salvaging grounds. Also makes me miss my two horses that I let go when I first left, thinking I would have no reason to return. kchat (kingdom) is busy, and people seem quite familiar with one another. Deeds seem huge. Then again the map is quite large.

When I’ve exhausted the supplies stored up I’ll bring the priest back over to Deli, provided I can find my way again.

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