Another Trip to Caudecus’ Manor with the Combat Wombats #GW2 #GuildWars2

gw785Ah yes, Caudecus’ Manor. It wasn’t that long ago that the members of Combat Wombats were taking our first stabs at dungeons, and while we may not be the ‘top dog’ type of player, we’re still having a lot of fun. Last night was another dungeon run evening, which is all the more important these days because they’re a requirement for the monthly achievement. I’d almost rather do the PvP achievement than the dungeon one, but that’s got nothing to do with the guild and more a personal preference of my own.

We ran the dungeon twice, and while it was easier this round because we knew what was going to be going on for the most part, there have still been some tweaks. For example you can no longer ‘zerg’ fights any more, when you’re dead you have to stay dead until someone else revives you or until combat ends so you can port to a waypoint. I remember when we did Ascalionian Catacombs zerg was an important part of our combat. It will be interesting to see how it works out now.

Of course with time also comes knowledge. Our characters are better geared, and we’ve all developed at least some sense of what to do, that just happens naturally over time.

I’m still not ‘feeling’ the guardian as much as I had at the beginning. I’ve started playing an elementalist, which is a LOT of fun, and more suited to my play style. Of course the issue with this is that I’ve put a lot of time and coin into the guardian, so switching characters or even simply leveling up another character is not that simple. I’m sure if I can just manage to stick with it for a while the class will eventually become my new main. We’ll just have to see!

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

Tengu Flying #EVEOnline

2013.02.16.00.44.35A few months back I decided I was going to work towards flying a Tengu for PvE missions. I had more than enough funds to purchase the ship, and just needed time to train for it. Right when I finally achieved that goal I set the game aside and moved on to Guild Wars 2. So of course I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic as of late, and I remembered I had some PLEX stored up. Before I knew it I had resubscribed again and was out and about in the beautiful Tengu.

I can’t quite finish fitting it the way I want, I need some more training, but that will (of course) come with time.

The rest of my visit back so far has been spent getting familiar with what I was previously working on. I checked out my PI productions, the market, and took inventory of my current ships (I’m up to 15). I also noticed I had a lot of festival items in my claim window, so I loaded up on a bunch of fire works and snowballs. I have no idea what they’re actually for, but hey free stuff is free stuff!

It’s nice to be back. I’m looking forward to raising my factions and getting some missions under my belt although I’m not sure which faction I want to work on next. I was doing mining and working towards earning loyalty points with a few places but I’m not really sure what in specific I was after.

In any case, it’s great to be back.

Wurm Assistant Introduces the Granger #WurmOnline

UntitledOne thing I really love about Wurm Online is the community that has spawned from it and how each of them contribute to the game in their own little way. Quite a few people have developed helpful programs that you can use alongside Wurm to gather information about your sessions. One such program is called Wurm Assistant and while there are a LOT of things this wonderful program does, the one I wanted to focus on today is the brand new ‘granger’ feature.

In a nutshell what it does is when you smile at and then examine a horse (within 5 seconds) it will record the horse in a chart pictured above. It will make note of all traits that the horse has (that you can see), who the parents are, whether or not it is being cared for, and if it’s pregnant when it will give birth. Then in live time it will tell you when you’ve groomed the animal.

When you highlight a horse it will also try to pair them up optimally. You can assign a point value to each trait, so what I’ve done is assign every speed trait a 10, so I can simply look at the chart and see that if my horse is a 40 it’s a 4 speed. 50 a five speed, and so on. It will highlight brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers in a pink shade so you know not to breed them together and potentially obtain negative traits.

For horse breeders everywhere this is a must have program (IMO). It takes care of me having to use a spreadsheet to keep track of my horses, and even lets me organize them by herd. If you breed animals in Wurm Online, you should really check it out.

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

New Fountains and Other Goodies #WurmOnline

wurm.20130206.2313We 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

gw731It’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.