Stargrace

New Fountains and Other Goodies #WurmOnline

We got some brand new fountain graphics last week, with actual moving water. There are two designs, this one and one that is mostly a tier of bowls upon one another. Same sleek design and same actual spouting water graphic. It’s pretty but there have also been some reports of it slowing down FPS, so if you’re having issues you may want to enable frame limits of 30.

Last week added a lot of unintended bugs, most of them seem to have been ironed out by now thankfully. I have been working diligently on my three deeds. First there’s Les Reveur. This is a very neglected mountain top deed. There’s a trader, and a lot of silver veins. The deed has only two horses and no fields or other animals as it’s more of a pit-stop for when I go exploring or mining. My character Faralithe owns this deed, and I’ve been paying for her account with in-game silver rather than cash. If for some reason I don’t have the in-game silver, I leave her as a freemium.

I also own Mystic Cove, which is a coastal deed south of Les. I’ve decided not to breed so many animals there so I bashed down an entire center area that used to be pens. I’ve decided I’d like a hedge maze there, in the center an area with the fountain posted above. Each hedge uses 5 sprouts of the same type, and I haven’t been out collecting them yet but soon. I am not sure if I want to design the maze first on paper or just wing it. I suppose we’ll see! Mystic Cove also has a trader.

Finally I own Le Cirque des Reves which is in between the two deeds. Another trader (I know, I own three, that’s probably far too many) is there, and it’s a mountain top deed. There’s a large area for breeding horses, and two enormous fields plus a gigantic mine and a number of buildings. I also created a little garden with some benches and statues, lined by maple trees. My Vynora priest stays there since the deed is completed and is perfect for her to work her skills up at. I am thinking I may eventually turn one of the fields into an area for grapes, for wine making.

This weekend I set up a second merchant in a Northern marketplace. So far I haven’t gotten any sales yet, but maybe with time. Sales on Deliverance in general are a bit slow.

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

Combat Wombats Take On WorldvsWorldvsWorld

It’s hard to tell by the mess of colour above, but that’s the proud Combat Wombats, fighting at the entrance of a keep in World vs. World vs. World last night. I really wish we could turn off particle effects.

I haven’t done much pvp since the first month GW2 released, I did it then mostly because I wanted to earn my monthly achievement. It’s hectic, and fun, but it’s one of those activities I only feel like doing here and there for an hour or two, not all evening long.

It’s basically a map of castles and locations, outposts and supply depots, and the more you capture and secure, the better. There are two sides, the attackers and the defenders. Combat Wombat spent most of their time attacking, as the defenders seemed to have a fairly good grip on things – except then we lost a few locations because those that we had taken over no one stayed around at to defend. So the enemy came up behind and “back capped” as you’ll hear it called. It’s always best to leave a few people from the main force behind to help defend.

I suppose one of the reasons I enjoy WvsWvsW so much is that I do enjoy pvp and am quite used to “battlegrounds” from world of warcraft. This is a much larger and more complicated scale, but in the end it’s still a mass of killing anything red.

I did go with my 26 (now at least) mesmer, I think I actually prefer my guardian, but we’ll just have to see.

Kessex Hills and Tailoring #GW2 #GuildWars2

My mesmer inched her way to level 23 last night, mostly due to some crafting and some exploration of Kessex Hills. I’ve been working on my story quest which is absolutely hilarious. I got sent to the place where these robots were being made that hypnotized a bunch of carnies, and then I had to defeat both the carnies and the robots.

Crafting has been slow. I’ve taken up tailoring on the mesmer and instead of the incredible painful process of collecting cloth for each tier I’ve been purchasing it from the market. Since I do already have a level 80 character I’ve had a bit of coin stashed away. Had, of course. I went broke last night reaching 193 in the skill. Thankfully there are loads of guides available, so I’ve been following one to make the best use of my materials.

I don’t really enjoy leveling up all over again, but I do think the mesmer is a better personal fit for me than the guardian. Not that there’s anything wrong with the guardian, but a caster suits my playstyle a bit more. Of course re-doing content is never fun, but I’m confident that in time I’ll have two (maybe more) level 80 characters and at least have a choice on what I want to play.

I do have all 5 character slots taken up, maybe I’ll try some of the other alts as well. It seems a lot of my friends have started playing the mesmer, and while there isn’t an enormous selection of character classes having a variety for dungeon runs is always a good idea!

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

The Sims 3 Mods, Skins, and Fun #TS3 #TheSims3

Someone asked me if I used any mods for The Sims 3, and at the time I used absolutely none (no real reason, I just didn’t have a use for them) so I decided to look into them a bit. One of the most popular ones is NRaas Industries, which is actually a whole lot of mods depending on what you want to adjust in your game. There is the ever popular decensor which removes the mosaic from your naked sim bodies, as well as Mastercontroller which does a number of interactions to manage the population of your town. I decided to install a few of them and see how enhanced my game play was. There are even mods that help take care of generally known bugs that EA hasn’t gotten around to fixing. Installation went smooth, you just need to read the installer section and it’s pretty simple. I started up the game, and it recognized that I had mods, and loaded without any issue.

Mods are not required to play, but they sure do make things easier. There’s also a difference between mods, cheats, and skins. All of which can enhance your Sims 3 gameplay.

Once I had installed the mods I wanted to try out I decided to go searching for skins. Not the ones that are hosted in the exchange on the Sims 3 web site (there are a lot of great ones there) but at Sims fan sites like Mod The Sims. Of course as always when you install 3rd party mods or skins into your game you’re going to want to make sure it comes from a reliable source known for having a clean record, you don’t want to accidentally install a virus while downloading these. I picked out a few skins that caught my interest and went back to playing the game, while I count down the days until Sim City releases (which I am oh so excited about).

I still haven’t used the built in game cheats yet to give my sims any money or the like, but it’s easy to see how the Sims community helps make the game better.

A Genie in Starlight Shores #TS3 #TheSims3

The Sims 3 is such a large game with so many expansions that it’s quite easy to ‘miss out’ on some aspects of it. I have a steady family I normally play, but last night I was in the mood for something different, so I created Ellithia Reveur, a genie.

The genie race is quite unique. If you don’t have a lot of time to cook or clean, they’re also perfect. You can summon meals from thin air. This was exciting to me – you’re given a drop down list of every single food item in game, and you can summon anything you want, at perfect quality. My genie is a vegetarian so that left a lot of things off of my personal menu, but it was still fantastic to see food I’ve never gotten to try before.

You can also instantly clean the house, or your sim – or any other sims you happen to be around. So why not go make your town a cleaner place!

I’ll admit, I can be a bit.. predictable, when it comes to creating my households. My female sims are almost always writers, or photographers. This time I decided to explore an entirely new career choice. I became a ‘sing-a-gram’ novice.

This meant that I was self employed, basically. It’s a profession rather than a career in the games choices. While I was out and about during the day I’d get a random message that so and so had just earned a promotion, and how about I go deliver a sing-a-gram to them. Then a few minutes later I’d get another message saying that so and so was feeling down, how about I go cheer them up.

Doing these sing-a-grams would give me experience towards the next level of the career, where I’d get more options. There are also events called ‘SimFest’ where people put on acts like magic, singing, acrobatics, and juggling. You can stand around and watch these shows, or when you’re good enough at a skill you can participate. The crowd judges you! It was awesome. I even got to go up on stage during a magic show and the magician cut me into a bunch of little pieces and then put me back together. Talk about thrilling.

I’ve applied to a few gigs, and was booed off stage after my first hour of a two hour show. Not exactly great for my ego, but hey that’s alright. Eventually I’ll show them. I’ll show all of them! Then they’ll be sorry that they ever booed me.

You also get to create a stage name for yourself. My stage name is ‘Sugah Sugah’ – and you can change it at any time should inspiration finally strike. As a professional singer you’ve also got the option to just randomly break out in song, or to sing for tips. So I’ve been heading to the lounges and setting up my microphone and trying to earn a few dollars from random passers by.

Being a genie has certainly helped cut down the mundane tasks that my sim would be burdened with, and given me the ability to explore some options of the game I’ve never played with before. So far, it’s a lot of fun. Ellithia has been to the Summer Festival twice now, and performed once. I’m still doing a few small sing-a-grams on the side but I’m getting gigs.

When your house hold is two or more sims, and you’ve got the talent, you can also use the SimPort to bring your sims to perform at other peoples cities! On that same note you can use the SimPort to request performers to come to your cities, and these are all requests done through your friends list. So if you happen to be on my Sims 3 friends list (you can find me there as stargrace) please come visit my city and perform!

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