Gaming – Page 317 – A Pixel Nomad

Rares and RNG – They Just Don’t Like Me

I spent 5 hours or so working my weapon smithing yesterday in Wurm Online, raising the skill up an entire point (and a bit) which as anyone who has leveled weapon smithing will tell you, is quite a feat. It is the slowest skill to level up, and thus weapon smith accounts are worth quite a bit of money. In that time I had at least four rare rolls, and I had failed every roll, resulting in no rare items. Of course I decided to blog about it, and the second I started this post, before this first paragraph was even done, I succeeded at a rare roll, and my butchering knife turned rare. I take this as a sign that I should complain about RNG more often!

Players who have premium accounts are supposed to have a heightened chance at creating rare items, but honestly I’ve never had that much luck with them. I can count on one hand the amount of rares I’ve created over the years and they don’t measure very many. Normally I sell them off, enchanted rares are worth a handful of silver and that’s a wonderful way to pay for my deeds. I haven’t decided if I’ll sell my latest rare or not. Butchering knives are nice because even if a creature is ‘starving’ they will provide meat. I’ve tried to bid on a few butchering knives over time but they always seem to go higher than my budget allows.

I’ve been debating trying to get a collection of rare tools together to help with my weapon smithing. Not many are required. A hammer, whetstone, pelt, ore, and water is all I use. I don’t believe pelts can be rare, but I should be able to find a hammer. My tools are already pretty nice quality (90+) though they could stand to get a few enchants as well. Anything that helps me level up my skills a bit faster is a help.

I decided to take all the tools I owned that were below 50 ql (extras I had stashed away) and improve them all to 60, so that’s what my forge is filled with at the moment. Then I’ll bring them to my priest, who will enchant them, and I’ll try to put them for sale at the market for a cheap price. So far my items sell pretty well even though they’re not that fancy. Making items in bulk while I try to level my skills helps to keep them at a very low cost. I have no use for all the extra items, so I may as well try to get rid of them.

It’s nice to take a break from the deed work and work on some skills. I’ll probably end up doing what Yetian does, which is alternate the two. That way nothing suffers and you get a lot done. I’m sure in the end, whatever I end up feeling like doing will be what I end up doing…

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Terraria 1.3

OK, so it has been some time since I last wrote about Terraria but an enormous update was made to the game just last week, and I figured it was time to check things out. Of course I’m very glad I did, and I’ve been spending the majority of my vacation so far digging tunnels and building rooms for NPC to live. It’s not quite up to the standards of my previous home, but it’s getting there slowly.

One thing that was added, was expert mode. Which is what I’m playing on. In it mobs are harder and loot is plentiful – if you can get to it, at least. Right now I’m still in the early ‘collecting supplies’ stage, though I am sporting a nice set of new gear and some gold tools. One other new thing added is mounts. They look awesome. I haven’t actually gotten one in game yet (I imagine they’re quite hard to obtain) but the best mount by far would have to be the one that lets you roam around mining as you drive. There’s a video for it here that just looks fantastic.

What else was added?

Mac & Linux versions are slated to release this July
800 new items
New events
New mini-biomes
Expert game mode
Achievements
Lots of unknown stuff with no details given (like new bosses)

There are new minions / pets that can be summoned, you can catch critters with nets and place them in a terrarium, or maybe you want to use them as bait for fishing – that’s right, there’s fishing. There’s new light sources, new wings, trophies, a new liquid, a new hook, a new block, new information display for accessories. There’s new minecart variants, and a whole slew of new characters including a crimson bunny, cultist, granite elemental, dripper, and celestial towers.

Of course, that’s not all. You’ll want to read the notes to see the complete list. Me? I’m headed back underground.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

A Deed is Never Done

I haven’t started any bridges yet, but I’ve been contemplating creating one across the little harbor my deed is settled against. Maybe some sort of welcoming guard towers along the front with a bridge that spans between them. I haven’t quite decided yet. What I did decide, was that entirely too much of my deed was taken up by water, and when you pay for each tile of land that you own, well. There’s only a few solutions. What I decided to do was use some of the dirt I had collected from the mountain side and begin filling in the harbor. It’s an area of approximately 5×7, so it’s quite a large spot. I haven’t decided what I’ll do with the newly terraformed location yet, it’s not like I need any more buildings, pens, or farm space, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

I also decided to re-expand the deed slightly, raising the monthly cost to just under 3 silver. This brings my guard tower back on-deed, as well as a large portion of my mine and my grape orchard. It wasn’t essential that these things be on-deed, but it does make keeping it all repaired a bit easier.

I also spent the better part of one gaming session cutting down wayward trees and turning a large portion to lawn so that more wayward trees couldn’t grow. The reason for this is not because I don’t enjoy trees, but because those threes tend to block the view of the deed, and I wanted it to stand out a bit more. Since I have a dedicated tree farm off to the side it’s not essential that I have any extras, plus the top tier of my place is loaded with maple trees (my favourite type in-game).

I’m still undecided as to what skills I want to raise on my main character. My priest is pretty simple. I finally raised channeling to 60, and I’m working on Soul Depth. Animal husbandry, farming, hot food cooking, all the usual priest skills. On my main I’m debating between jewelry and going back to weapon smithing which is just the slowest skill in the entire world to level up. It’s one of those skills where you want to be doing something else as you work on it (like watching TV) and only work on it when you have sleep bonus. Even then, you’ll be lucky to raise it any significant amount. The more I think about it, the more that’s the skill I think I’ll end up going with. Now I just need to find something on netflix or hulu to watch so I don’t fall asleep from boredom.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Ragefire – Leveling Continues

I haven’t written about it much (well, I haven’t written about anything much this summer to be honest) but I am still playing on the EverQuest progression server, Ragefire. My magician is now level 17, along with my druid. I’ve been camping Dervish out in South Ro along with Kasul playing his shaman. The place is dangerous. There’s a mixture of dark blue mobs mixed with some white, a handful of yellow, and then the reds (usually Orc Warriors, and the odd Sand Giant that wanders by). The zones are still really packed with players, and I use the /pick function as often as I can to swap to quieter instances. There’s a large number of players who are now at the level cap, but I’m not in any rush.

We did have a poll option to see if we’d like Kunark to come out earlier than normal, which I did vote in favour of. I think it offers players a larger range of zones to explore and will help spread the population out even further. Of course one day I’d like to see myself in a raid but because of the population issue I’m not expecting to be able to help out for quite some time. I’ve been contemplating creating (yet another) alt in the meantime, but I suppose I should at least reach 50 on one pair of characters first. I know there are better (ie: faster) camps out there, but I”m content to sit and wait on three spawns in a relatively safe location.

There has been a lot of chatter in all of the channels I join when I log in, but not a lot of that chatter is centered around groups or camp checks. This is one of the biggest differences I’ve seen between playing back when I first started, and playing now. Now it’s only to easy for people to box multiple accounts, or to have already established groups. I suppose it was a bit foolish to think that things would be exactly as they were 10 years ago, but a part of me had hoped.

Between leveling I’m working up my tradeskills. Earning skill points is a slow process, but one I find incredibly valuable. I haven’t been selling anything I’ve created yet, but I do enjoy having a fine selection of foods and drinks to choose from. I did also create myself a set of gear, and while it offers nothing in terms of actual stats, it does offer AC, which is very important.

Playing a magician is quite easy. There’s so many of them around. The only time I really have any concerns is when a roaming mob (or two, or three) has wandered into my camp, and then I get flustered and forgot to watch the health of my pet and before I know it I’ve been taken out by a named I wasn’t even aware of. It’s exciting times, and I’m glad to be a part of it.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

What Keeps You in a Game?

Not too long ago I was playing ArcheAge and I was convinced that this was ‘the game for me’. I purchased a multi-month subscription and leveled my main up to 40-something; where I promptly logged out one day and then never logged back in (minus one exception, I did log in when there was a promotion ongoing, I wanted the mount). What is it about games that draws me in? What changes about them that makes me question why I even began playing?

The first question is quite easy. I love a robust world. I love being able to explore, doing quests, and a crafting system. I love player housing and player created content. What I don’t like is end game, and the closer I get to that end game the less likely it is that I’ll continue playing. What changes about the games that makes me stop? Well, it’s not something about the games themselves so much as the fact that as I continue to play I get closer to the ‘end game’ whatever that may be. In most cases it’s a world that I simply don’t want to participate in. I have no interest in raiding and it’s rare that I want to group. I’m tired of running daily quests, and I dislike that dailies have become the crutch most MMOs use to convince players to log in each day. What I need is something to convince the casual player (me) to continue playing so that it doesn’t feel like a grind. In most cases this ends up being either 1. alts, 2. crafting, or 3. Some sort of mini-casual end-game like housing, collecting pets, mounts, or achievements. Problem is, there’s so much competition for these things that I can easily log into 5 or 6 other MMOs and find the exact same things in a world where I’ve already established my characters.

Lets look at ArcheAge in specific. I really disliked the whole idea of having to constantly log in to make sure that my plot of land wasn’t going to vanish. It made it seem like a task, and I worked really hard to get that piece of land when there were so many others trying to get land, so the idea that it could vanish so easily was quite upsetting. Then there was the fact that I couldn’t purchase more land unless I camped it and battled other characters to earn it, or spent a huge amount of money to purchase it. I didn’t want to have to wait months down the road for content that I wanted to do ‘now’. Add to that, labour. If I was ever at the cap for labour I felt as though I was wasting it, and that I must log in to use it up and make sure that I was always optimizing my character in that regard. Eventually it just became draining. Finally, there was the fact that I was quickly approaching end game. I felt that I was ‘behind’ everyone else, that I was constantly going to have to play catch-up, and that there would be little to no ways for me to actually catch up unless I participated in those tasks which I decidedly did not enjoy (grouping).

So I stopped logging in. Once I lost my plot, it was easy to cancel my subscription and stop playing. Take away one thing that I felt like I had ‘earned’ and the lure of the game goes down drastically. Make me feel obligated to log in (muck like work) rather than excited, and I’ll be less likely to log in. Make it seem like a chore, instead of fun. That’s what these systems did to a casual player like me.

That’s not to say I won’t ever be back, I did log in a few days ago because a lot of friends on twitter were excited about the game and I of course wanted to feel like a part of that excitement, but the instant I logged my characters in and realized they no longer own land, no longer have extra storage, and were so far behind that it would just be a lot of work to ever get caught up, I logged right back out.

That’s not how you keep me playing your game.