Stargrace

GW2 – Getting Familiar (Again)

Last night I decided to dive back into Guild Wars 2 and see what I had missed. I played briefly when HoT released, but it has been some time since then. My stream had a rocky start (a pretty bad stuttering issue when I first started the stream, and then some issues with the music being louder than me talking) but it didn’t take long to get off and running.

Literally.

I checked out my guardian and noticed that her personal story was at the level 10 stage. I had leveled my characters up by doing crafting instead of adventuring, so I missed out on pretty much everything. This is my second account so I just wanted to level up as fast as possible and move past the content I had already done (many) times before on my old account. I headed off to do my level 10 story and… got completely stuck. I had NO idea where the instance wanted me to go to progress the line. I walked all over the place but was constantly told if I walked any further I’d be outside the instance lines (looking back, the NPCs wanted me to go under the water.. I just didn’t grasp that at the time).

Instead I headed out to do the opening sequence that leads you to HoT. Lots of information about lost troops and the bad guys basically destroying everything.

I didn’t get too far into it before my hour of game time was up, but it was nice to be playing. I really enjoyed GW2 when I had more time to play. I still saw players everywhere, and while it may not be as busy as it was, it’s still a pretty hopping game. I always smile to see things like that. I never want a game to fail. Sure, there are games out there that I don’t particularly like, genres I don’t enjoy playing, but that’s perfectly OK. Not all games have to be for me.

My characters all passed another birthday so I picked up the goodies from that, too. Scrolls, miniatures, everything deserving of cluttering my bags. If you missed the stream and want to take a peek, you can head on over to my twitch channel: http://twitch.tv/stargrace. If you like what you see, please consider giving a follow! I stream Tuesday-Friday 7:30 PDT-8:30 PDT.

Have you recently returned to a game and if so are you enjoying yourself? Let me know in comments! As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

A Stream Scheduling Change (Life Happens)

I had intended to stream Black Desert Online last night at 7pm PDT but that didn’t happen.

I wasn’t feeling the game, my mood was a bit bleh, and instead I hopped into Gwent: The Witcher Cardgame. Things were moving along at a pretty nice pace, I was 13 minutes into my stream (yes, I remember the exact minute) and I was doing a multiplayer game against a random person (my apologies, whoever you were, but at least you won).

My little guy doesn’t sleep through the night quite yet, and last night was a rough one for him so at the 13 minute mark I had to suddenly sign off and go take care of him. He was screaming and crying and wouldn’t calm down which I hear is pretty normal for 8 month old babies. Truth of the matter is I may just not be able to stream until he’s a bit older or at least sleeping through the night.

In a test, I’m moving my Tuesday to Friday streams up half an hour, from 7:30-8:30 PDT instead of from 7-8. I’m hoping this gives my little guy more time to fall soundly asleep, leaving me with at least an hour to stream. I don’t know if this will work, I may be too tired, he may still wake up, a number of other factors come into play. I REALLY want to stream. Right now I feel like my days are 99% baby filled (which they are) and the small 1% I’m entitled to helps me keep my sanity. Unfortunately it also comes down to the fact that I need sleep. A lot of sleep. I’m a nursing first time mother and sleep is incredibly important. When he starts sleeping through the night hopefully I’ll also be able to sleep more soundly and I may have more time to stream then. I need to find the balance that lets me take good care of my family, and also allow myself that 1% of sanity. I am still a human being, after all.

So! Tonight should be guild wars 2. 7:30 PDT. We’ll see how that goes. Please tune in, give my channel a follow, and stick around if you enjoy things.

What happens on the Rim..

Last night I streamed RimWorld once again, continuing off from the cliffhanger of the night before. We were down to four colonists, being raided by five pirates with guns. We had two guns, and two knives.

Would we survive?

Turns out, we did. Barely.

Then things progressed, we expanded the base, created more gardens, supplied clothing to the nude – and another raid came along.

This time there were seven of them, all of them with guns.

Our colonists fought with all of their might, but two of them were kidnapped (girlvsmmo and carloverz28) and the two remaining colonists, Hampooj and Scopique, couldn’t fend off the attackers. The pirates decided to give up after kidnapping our colonists – but not before setting fire to our base, including the solar panels and the wind turbine. This created a continual burning fire within the base, and things got hot. REALLY hot. It was a whooping 180C inside the base at one point and that’s when Scopique succumbed to his injuries. Soon afterward Hampooj passed because there was no one to take care of him.

Bront, our pet Ori, survived the attack and wandered around the empty base feasting on corpses because all of our meals and the remaining supplies had burned up.

That’s life on the Rim for you.

If you’re interested in watching the series, you can find it over on both my YouTube channel and over on twitch.

Today (Thursday June 8th at the time of this post) I’ll be streaming some Black Desert Online, starting at 7pm PDT (until 8pm PDT) – so be sure to tune in! I’m working on the game schedule for next week, I’m thinking some Wurm Unlimited, combined with.. well, we’ll just have to see!

I’m also trying to raise some funds for a new computer chair, so if you happen to be feeling generous and want to support me please stop on by my donation page. As always, thank you, and happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

A Lot of Preparation!

It has been really great to get back to a little bit of gaming but what I have been really excited about is streaming those games and interacting with the audience while doing so. Over the weekend I spent some time trying to look into what I wanted my Twitch channel to do for me, checking out bots, pondering layouts, looking into StreamJar for donations and the like.

I made a huge list of things I want to fix / change / set up.

I think I’ve settled on using Anhkbot for my chat channel, and StreamJar for donations and a few layouts. There are other layouts I’d love to add eventually but I’m trying to go slow so I don’t get overwhelmed. I’m learning the ins and outs of Anhkbot – there’s a 50+ paged document outlining how to set everything up. It’s going to take me a while, to say the least.

With setting it up I also had to create a bot account so they can sit in my channel and monitor it. I know some bots don’t need you to create a completely new account but this way I control what the name of the bot is, which I like. I also want to set up various commands, and maybe one day I’ll get into the more detailed aspects of things like awarding currency to people who are watching in stream that they can spend on virtual things like song requests.

Since my stream is so small for now and only four days a week for an hour, I’m not too concerned. I really want to get myself comfortable and back onto a schedule more than anything else.

The details, as it were, will come as they come.

Have any advice, tips, tricks, or suggestions for me as I hash it out as a part-time streamer? Let me know in comments and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

DING! I’ve Joined a Guild!

First of all, I was watching an EverQuest stream today by a very popular streamer who had 7,000+ people watching him play. Even though I was a bit jealous, I was also SUPER happy that so many people were watching him play the game. He’s playing over on the latest progression server (of course) and was playing a necromancer (I believe he may re-roll something new, he was level 49) and it just warmed my heart to see that many people paying attention to the game. The streamer plays all sorts of games, so it’s not like EverQuest was his usual choice. While I may not have the viewership someone like him does, it still made me smile and I hope streamers continue to promote the game. Plus it certainly couldn’t hurt Daybreak to have that sort of publicity.

In my own news, my beastlord headed out to Blightfire Moors once more (har) to take on snakes and rats. Once they started conning dark blue I moved on to gators and turtles. While I was out adventuring I was buffed up numerous times by strangers – FV is an INCREDIBLY friendly server! I was astounded. Plus someone put thorns on me that last for over an hour. I didn’t even know that was a thing.

I started out the evening at level 18 and before I knew it (after using Lesson of the Devoted of course)I had dinged 25. Along the way I also joined a guild!

Emerald Alliances of FV responded to my cry in general channel looking for a casual family friendly guild. There were a good number of people online with 330 total members. Not overly chatty, but it’s still nice to have a home. Plus guilds come with perks like halls. Something I’m going to want to make use of, especially with portals to get around Norrath.

All in all it was a very productive night. Now I’ve REALLY got to pick up my last … 7 levels … of spells and see what skills I’m missing. After that it’s off to the Bazaar for a shopping trip. The guild offered to help gear me up but I would rather take care of that myself. I need a second weapon at the very least.

Don’t forget I’ll be streaming (it’ll probably be a RimWorld stream) Tuesday, 7-8pm PDT and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.