Category: Gaming

Gaming Schedules

I make it no secret that my life runs by schedules. In order to help keep my agoraphobia under control there are days where I have to schedule the most mundane tasks to keep myself moving through the day. Not all days are like that, but they happen. It’s no big deal to me to schedule what games I’m playing because it helps keep me focused. I like to wander (I consider myself a nomadic gamer) and I could potentially spend all of my free time trying to think about what to play, rather than actually playing.

I created the schedule above for this week to help me spread out the games I am / want to play, and keep me focused. I have my comfort games, my misc games, the flavour of the month, and on Wednesdays I have a wildcard game. What that means is I’ve exported my steam game list to a google sheet, and I’m using RNG to decide on a game from my library to play. I have (at the time of this post) 367 steam games. I bet I haven’t even played 100 of those games thanks to discounts and humble bundles. I want to change that, and I don’t want it to be overwhelming so I’m starting with one day a week. Maybe I’ll find a gem.

The RNG rules are pretty simple. If it’s a game I’ve played before I’ll re-roll. I don’t have to play it for a specified amount of time, but I should make at least a solid one hour effort. Maybe I’ll find something new I enjoy. I tend to play games that are seated deeply within my comfort zone – and I want to change that.

Schedules can be flexible. If I don’t play the games in the schedule that’s fine, nothing wrong with that. It’s just meant as a fence to help guide me during moments of blindness, if that makes sense. So I don’t just wander down the side of a mountain for an hour straight before all my gaming time is gone.

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

Dwarf Fortress

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!

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!

Mesmer Antics

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!

Road to 5 million – for the casual gamer

Before BfA released I was making a fair amount of gold in Warcraft, but that was before my second child was born, and as surprising as it is to say, I had a lot more free time back then. Now, not so much. I earned just a hair shy of 5 million gold and then I spent it on subscriptions, the BfA collector’s edition, all of the battle pets from the shop that I didn’t previously own, and a few other bits and bobs. That depleted my gold but not down to zero.

For 2019 I’d like to try to reach 5 million – but in an ultra casual way. I’m not starting from scratch, I’m starting with a little over 1.5 million gold. I’m averaging things out to 14,000k a day, 365 days, and we’ll see how long it takes me to get there with my play time which ranges between 10 minutes and an hour daily.

I’m confident it’s possible, and I love that it’s something that will span over the entire year rather than just a few short months (that way I don’t feel pressured or that it’s too hectic). I’m not sure what I’ll actually DO with 5 million gold, I haven’t decided if I want to purchase the AH mount – but I probably will, if for no other reason than to be able to use the AH at remote locations where I won’t get phased due to population.

Each month I’ll create a new chart like the one above, so I should have a collection of 12 that put me closer and closer to the end goal. Exciting? Well, depends on how you like to play. For me, yes, this is exciting. I love making gold in WoW, and while I may not be the best at it, it IS something I think I do OK at.

I plan on doing some farming, some crafting, and whatever else manages to pop into my timeline that I can handle. End game? Probably not, but that’s alright.

I probably won’t write about it here every single day, but I’ll try to post at least once a week with the progress, maybe I’ll set it to be every Wednesday just to follow with tradition. Check back next Wednesday to see if I’ve met my goal of 126,000 gold (this is a joke, I’m already at 1,500,000, so if I can’t keep above 126,000 there are some serious issues we’ll have to look at).

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!