You get a Colossus, and YOU get a Colossus, and You get a…

Things have been going well in Wurm Unlimited. At first I missed Wurm Online, but I don’t miss having to pay a subscription, and believe it or not, I don’t even miss Xanadu. The community on Sklotopolis has made sure of that. Every day is still an adventure.

I recently started offering my colossus building services to players. I charge 15 silver and provide all supplies and go out and build. It takes me less than a day to complete one (more like 5 hours) and it’s perfect for people who may not want to under take such a task or who may be unable to create one of a specific religion they want (you have to be a follower of that religion to create a colossus of that deity). I already built two this week, one for a future impalong site (free of charge of course) and one for a customer (pictured above). Exciting times!

I also managed to create my first ever useful supreme item yesterday – a forge! I was so incredibly excited. It glows a nice purple, and I know I’ll make good use of it since I spend so much of my time at the forges working on weapons and general blacksmithing items.

The teraforming on my own deed is finally completed, and now I just need to decide what I want to do with the space. I have some ideas, but haven’t built much yet. In the meantime I’m just glad it’s done.

My channeling is finally at a place where I’m starting to get some nicer casts. Not all of the time, but occasionally which is better than never. I managed to get a few 90 casts yesterday on items for a customer. Of course I pull off low 60s on my own items because Vynora is not very nice. Go figure.

All in all, a great time Wurming. If you’re looking for an active friendly server, check out Sklotopolis. Highly recommended, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Enter the New Players

I know I’ve been going on about the 1.3 update for quite some time, not only in Wurm Unlimited, but when it was released in Wurm Online – and it appears that I’m not the only one excited, because yesterday saw a HUGE influx of new players to Sklotopolis, I think we were nearing 100 players online at one point (not including any alts, these were unique steam IDs) which is fantastic. It seemed like new player after new player was logging in to check out the changes and see what was happening. Thankfully, Sklotopolis is an amazing server with a fantastic community. It’s also a large server, and there’s tons of space to move around and place your own deed at (or you can join one of the many amazing villages that the server is host to).

New players, old players, it didn’t seem to matter, they arrived in droves. I’m actually surprised no one has tripped over the Troll King yet that’s out there wandering around.

In my own news, my wild bees have FINALLY migrated over to the hives I created. I was a bit worried about one because the wild hive was 66QL and my crafted hive was 66.1QL, but it worked (even if it took a few days). I was incredibly happy to drive up to the hive and see “active” scrawled across it. They even have a cute little graphic of the hive rocking back and forth when it’s got active bees in it. Too cute.

While it’s producing honey, it’s not producing wax, which I find slightly annoying. The devs tell me it’s just very rare, but I personally feel like it’s bugged. Not much I can do about it aside from hunt for wild hives to obtain the wax from them instead.

Ogur and I have been working on terraforming my back yard. I want to create a sort of public park / forest back there. The first thing we have to do is flatten the area, it was covered in hills and rocks. A long project considering I expanded it 70 tiles to the North, but it’s coming along. I also created a new area for the bees, and some tree sprouts were planted along with a fancy marble path. It’s slow work, but it should look fantastic once complete.

I worked on my channeling a bit, enchanted some tools for friends, and generally mucked about doing typical wurm things. Chatted in GL-Freedom to players and enjoyed watching new deeds (and players) crop up. In other words, a very typical Saturday playing Wurm Unlimited (and tending to RL by way of all things baby, of course).

Today I hope to continue working on my channeling, meditation, farming, and maybe work on the second story of my three houses that I’ve added. Then there’s also cooking.

Who am I kidding, there’s always cooking.

OH! One very handy thing that Moumix pointed out to me – you can now center items on a tile with the move option, or place them on a corner. This is the BEST OPTION I have EVER made use of. My altars, and house furniture and statues, and so many other items are now perfectly aligned and I absolutely LOVE IT. I don’t know when the feature was added but I spent many hours yesterday moving items this way and that.

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

1.3 Progress on Sklotopolis

Now that the much anticipated 1.3 patch is live I’ve been spending most of my time cooking, creating tools to use for cooking, and farming items to be used for (you guessed it) cooking. I’m absolutely loving the new recipes that have been added, and making notes in my cook book about which foods give me which affinity buffs. I haven’t found a lot of useful ones yet, but I’ve found a small handful (like meditation, and jewel crafting). The one I’m really eager to find is the food that will give me a channeling buff. With my current skill in cooking most buffs last for a good half hour, and the more complicated a recipe, the longer that buff lasts.

It hasn’t all been cooking though. I recently added three new buildings to my deed, Quail Ridge. I decided I needed a dedicated kitchen house, so I added a new smithing building along with a carpentry house and tailoring. They’re not huge places, but I do plan on adding a second timber floor once I have more time. Maybe a bridge filling in the gap between them, too. I haven’t decided yet.

I also created some of the new storage options. WOW. They’re amazing. The barrel rack and planter rack are adorable and make everything look neat and tidy. The new large storage rack is great for holding all sorts of things although I didn’t really enjoy crafting it since it took three rafts.

I’ve also been trying to collect bees of my very own. I have two hives out in the wild (near wild hives) hoping that the queen will migrate to my (better quality) hive. So far that hasn’t happened, but I go by every day and take the honey and wax from the wild hives to add to my collection. If I can get a queen to migrate to my hive I’ll plant all sorts of flowers in the back yard to encourage more production. We’ll see how it goes.

Have you played around with the changes in 1.3 yet? What are some of your favourite things? Let me know below in comments and as always happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Lets Play – Sparta: War of Empires

Haven’t you always wanted to control your own Spartan city-state? I know I have! I’ve always been fascinated by the history, and if you’re looking for a great game to explore, then Sparta: War of Empires may just be the one for you. It will provide a few distracted hours of entertainment at the very least.

Of course you can’t conquer other cities all alone so you’ll need to recruit a slew of different military units to defend your city – or to take over other cities. You’ll raid them of their wealth and resources and boost up your ranks with these military units. By completing objectives you’ll help your small city grow into a mighty empire and eventually you’ll lead your mighty Spartan army to victory against Xerexes’ forces. To battle!

Captivating artwork draws you in right from the get-go, and let’s not forget just a few of the game highlights featured on their web site:

  • Develop your city into a major military and political power and save Greece!
  • Inspire over 30 different mighty warriors from across the ancient world to aid your cause.
  • Use trade, diplomacy, guile, and raw military power to rewrite history in your image.
  • Battle NPC enemies and rival alliances, join in cooperative missions with your friends, or go up against a massive community of live opponents – the choice is yours!
  • Immerse yourself in deep MMORTS gameplay, AAA artwork, voiceovers, and an original score by BAFTA award-winning composer Jesper Kyd.

An active and robust community is just one more enticing feature of this MMO as you can tell by their twitter account where they announce cash shop sales, contests, and general happenings. You certainly won’t be finding things growing stagnant here! You may even want to bring along a friend or two to form an alliance, or you can all join a coalition together and combine those forces with others to ensure greater victories.

Browser games like this are especially appealing when you may not be able to get to your gaming PC, or you may only have a little bit of time at your disposal (like you’re taking care of your young one, or you’re waiting for an oil change) which makes me incredibly thankful for them. The diversity in these games means there’s something for everyone.

Have you given this game or a game like it a try? What did you think? Be sure to share your comments below!

Getting into Horizon: Zero Dawn

It has been ages since I plugged in my PS4 – in fact last time I did, I was planning on selling it, and it was before my son was born. I ended up not selling it and I’m glad that I kept it (even if it has been neglected). Last week I saw people playing Horizon: Zero Dawn and I started watching a bit of it on Twitch – then decided that the game was just so beautiful and entertaining that I wanted to get a chance to play it myself and I didn’t want to spoil the story, so I stopped watching and swapped over to watching Zelda (which a lot of people have also been streaming, what a great time to be a gamer).

I decided to splurge and picked up the game from Amazon where my prime membership meant I would get a 20% discount. That saved me a whooping $15 (not sarcasm) – a big deal when it comes to console games. They’re typically around $80 Canadian when purchased new.

I set the PS4 back up, patched, logged into the PSN (I think I’m Stargrace if you want to add me) and added random friends who have purchased a console over the years. I only own a handful of games which seems quite pathetic. There’s Pinball (which I happen to play the most), Diablo 3, FFXIV (which I’m not even playing since it requires a subscription and I simply don’t have the time), and Little Big Planet 3 (I think this game is free atm if you have a PS+ subscription). Horizon showed up at my door two days later (yay) and required only a small little patch so I was up and playing within minutes. Ah, technology.

The game is absolutely stunning. PS4 share means I can show it off to everyone on social media, or save it for myself to view or make into a desktop. I will admit, one of the more appealing aspects of the game is that I don’t have to play a male character. I know, males play female characters all the time in video games when they have the choice (let face it, that choice isn’t around as often as it should) but I just relate more to playing a female character. You play Aloy, an Outcast. I don’t want to give things away, but lets just say that an absolutely gorgeous world combined with a strong female lead, and incredible mechanical beasts makes for a game that I won’t be bored of any time soon. There’s questing, adventuring, crafting, and just so much to do. I’ve barely scraped the surface because I keep stopping and pausing the game in photo mode and taking screenshots.

It is taking me a bit to get used to the controls – not because there’s anything wrong with them or it’s difficult in any way, but because I’ve always been a strict PC gamer, and controllers are still “new” to me. Eventually intuition takes over and I won’t have to keep looking down at the controller to see what buttons are where.

If you own a PS4 (or a PS4 Pro, or whatever they’ve come out with these days) I HIGHLY recommend picking up this game. There’s just too much good to say about it. In fact, I suppose I’ll get back to playing.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.