Easter on Sklotopolis

I know not everyone is a fan of real life holidays making an appearance in their MMORPGs but I happen to enjoy them quite a bit, whether they follow the footsteps of real life holidays, or they’re completely made up new ones. Last weekend was Easter, and that meant the GMs of Sklotopolis got together and offered the players some fantastic events – and I had an absolute blast.

First, there is the foraged Easter Egg that you can find. If you’ve ever played regular Wurm Online you may remember this item. You forage around in the ground, find your egg, and then place it somewhere to decay (on deed unless you hide it really well..) eventually out pops something useless like cheese, or flint. If you’re lucky you may get a gem.

The Easter Bunny also made an appearance. This is a mob players can hunt and (gulp) kill, then butcher. You can make a gravestone out of their corpse, and sure it’s a bit morbid, but listening to the eerie laughter of this creature as you’re out hunting is a bit spooky. I’m pretty sure he had it coming.

Finally, we had an amazing Easter egg hunt set up in Haven, one of the starter towns. 10 eggs were hidden around the area for players to find. You right click and select ‘grab’ and inside were all sorts of treasures ranging from silver, to supreme fireworks. It was fantastic. Some of those eggs were pretty tricky to find, too! The egg hunt lasts until tomorrow (Friday, April 21st) so if you haven’t logged in yet to take part I highly suggest finding the time.

These events (as well as the many others I’ve written about) are just some of what make Sklotopolis so special. It’s more than just a server, it’s an active community with a great range of people.

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

Hunger Games 2.0

I know, I haven’t written in a few days but a lot has been going on (both in real life and in Wurm) so you’ll have to forgive me.

To start with, Friday was my birthday (yay) and I spent it with family which was great. Then Saturday was the Hunger Game event on Sklotopolis – it was a blast!

Basically we all stripped down to our .. well, nothings. Empty inventory and all. We were ported into the pvp area and stuffed into tiny little houses so we couldn’t see anything. Then once we were all in place, the walls were removed. In front of us were chests with random items. Some had weapons, others armour. Mine had three balls of cotton, because that’s my luck.

We all scrambled to grab the items from the chests and ran off into the woods, trying to avoid creatures and thorns. I avoided the thorns, but managed to run smack into a hardened bear who chased me across the area. The rest of the game is pretty easy to understand. Survival of the fittest. Some people teamed up to take down the solo players, others just hid as much as they could. Along the way if you were lucky you’d stumble into another chest of goodies to help you out.

I’d like to say I was brave and took down a few players. I’d like to say I wasn’t the 2nd person to die. I’d like to say I fought bravely and that I went down in a fit of glory to another player – except I didn’t do any of those things.

Two people started chasing me, and that blasted bear took me out before I got so much as a swing off on either of them.

So I watched the fight and waited for round two.

Round two didn’t go any easier! Another bear…

This is where being a Fo priest comes in handy. They’re immune to the aggro from most mobs, and they’re also immune to thorns. My advice, next time, be a Fo priest.

At the end there were treasures raffled off to participants, but as is my luck I didn’t win anything. I had to AFK around then for real life so I suppose it’s just as well. I’d love to win some moon metal, or a HOTA statue. I know there were bigger prizes (drake set) but I won’t hold my breath on ever winning something like that.

A few players streamed the event on Twitch, it was awesome to see Wurm get some attention. This is a game I’ve been playing for over 10 years now and no matter how many other shinies seem to distract me I always return.

The event was a lot of fun, Engineer and the other GMs did wonderfully, and it was great to see so much participation in an area of the map that sees little action other days of the year. It’s one thing I really enjoy about Sklotopolis – there are constantly events going on for the community to participate in, and you’re welcome to run your own events too.

That wasn’t it for the weekend though, oh no. There were more Easter events to be had – but I’ll get into details about that in another post (need some content for tomorrow after all).

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

Wall Hype

I love updates in Wurm Unlimited and I wasn’t expecting another for a while because we just had the enormous cooking update not too long ago – but then the developers went and announced that we’ll be getting some new wall types. Along with those wall types come new paving options, and I think I even saw some new fence options (all of them matching the wall options).

Excited? You bet I am.

They’re also updating hell horse models to have a few new colours, and while most of these updates are simply graphic changes I’m still excited. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to re-do any of my houses (I tend to like the stone / timber look) I am pretty sure I’ll be updating my roads.

Tomorrow is my birthday, and then this weekend is Easter, so I doubt I’ll be on too much (or if I am I’ll be AFK) but I still have some smaller goals in mind. I reached 70 in hot food cooking and ropemaking, bringing my total title count to 62. Today I’d like to get some pottery under my belt (I’ve never raised it) and make a few more coal piles. I transformed 4 peat tiles for Tomservo and now I’m creating 4 for Wreck, except the combines were frowned upon by the RNG gods of Wurm and it took a lot more than I was expecting, so I ran out of coal. Go figure. Sometimes it seems like even if you have high skills RNG can still mess you up.

Take for example my Vynora priest casts. I have really good channeling, wear cloth for the 30% cast bonus, have a deed bonus of 25, and have a 50ql gold altar – when I cast on other peoples things I get pretty good casts. Yesterday I landed my first 100 circle of cunning – on a tool created for someone else. When it came to casting on my own tools I managed to land a 10. The RNG of some skills is just too much.

Are you excited about the new wall types? Going to take down any buildings and redo them just because you want to try them out? Let me know in comments, and as always, happy gaming. No matter where you find yourself.

P.S. if you’re interested in learning how to create your own affinity meals, check out this amazing tool. Also, look into moonshine.

Making Affinity Meals for One

Ever since cooking was introduced to Wurm Unlimited I have been obsessed with collecting as many recipes as I can – and figuring out what food granted me what affinity. As time went on I learned that this would be a lot more difficult than I thought because there are a ton of variables and it’s not quite so simple. The first thing I learned is that if you substitute any one ingredient in the list you altered the affinity buff it granted. If you used a chopped carrot instead of a tomato, or added a different type of grain you’d see a different result even though the meal may end up the same.

Then I learned that it varies depending on who cooks the meal, too. So you can’t just copy a recipe from someone else unless you’re going to have them making your meals for the rest of your life. A nice idea in theory, but not very practical.

I spent most of yesterday playing around with different meals trying to create a complicated base meal and then figuring out what my character ID was so that I could match it to the key list of available affinity. The whole basis for this was to create a semi-complicated meal that would grant me any buff that I wanted and have that buff last for at least an hour. In order to really accomplish this I need to get my cooking skills higher. Yesterday I reached 50 (yay new title) and I’m hoping to grind my way to 70-80 this week or next. It depends on how busy real life gets, lately all I have time for is standing around AFK.

I managed to improve all of my cooking tools to 80 (I could get them to 90 but it takes forever) and next I’ll need to improve the stone ones. I haven’t worked up pottery, but I really should. My oven doesn’t stay lit nearly as long as my forges even though it’s the same quality, and that bugs me. It seems like I’m constantly re-fulling it.

My list of recipes continues to grow. I am getting close to 200 learned recipes, a lot of those are drinks. Drinks also grant affinity, but I have no idea how that process works as far as finding out what drink grants what affinity. It’s enough that I’ve managed to figure out meals I suppose. I also spent some time making coal piles yesterday and transmuting some grass to peat, but I’ll get into that more in another post.

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

If I didn’t have Bad Luck, I’d have No Luck at All..

It never fails.

I spend a day or two working on my own tools, improving them to 90, creating ones I’m missing and I don’t get a single rare (or above) roll. I don’t even pretend to look for them any more because it just doesn’t happen. Today was just like that. Moumix then put in a trowel of his in my forge to improve since he’s been working on the walls of Sybaris and BAM – I turned it supreme on the first action.

The only thing I’ve ever made supreme in my entire WO / WU time is a forge (which I absolutely love, don’t get me wrong). Of course after a day of creating tools to sell / improving my own tools I would happen to turn the ONE item I was improving for a friend supreme. THAT is my luck in Wurm Unlimited. I am lucky for everyone – except myself.

It’s not a bad thing I suppose. At least I’m lucky at something.

I re-stocked my merchants at Haven (I sell cooking recipes on one merchant and I sell rares & enchanted tools on another). I think I’m up to 40 silver of items sold now – and I’ve spent all of it on armour and other tools. I don’t sell a lot (it takes weeks for me to run out of stock) but it’s a little bit of pocket change here and there that really helps me out over time. Creating colossus for players is a great way to make some extra cash but it has been a bit of a lull lately.

There are a small tiny handful of people on Sklotopolis who rub me the wrong way but for the most part I get along with everyone and I don’t mind helping out where I can. I helped convert Reko to a Magnaron priest (and before that a follower) with my alt, and I lent another player a few silver so they could purchase a hell horse (fantastic animals for traveling the server). I like to help, and there are certainly people who have helped me out over the last year so it’s only fair that I return the favour. My mailbox was enchanted to 93 for no cost, and some horses were returned to me after my time away. I know if I need help with something I can call on folks to be there. It’s a nice feeling and one of the reasons why community in Wurm is so important. But, like I said above, sometimes a person comes along who just rubs me the wrong way. You can’t get along with everyone after all (even if you try). Usually these types of people are trolls who are purposely causing drama that I just don’t have the patience for. Sometimes it’s just a misunderstanding and all is well after things are cleared up. In both cases talking things out like mature adults is a good way to go about a resolution. Sometimes it just requires you to simply ignore the offender.

I better get back to improving someone else’ tools so that I can turn theirs supreme (or fantastic? I’ve never made anything fantastic before) because I know it won’t be one of my own tools at this rate.

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