More Mods – RimWorld

I went through my list of mods and removed a few that I didn’t end up liking, and adding more that I wanted to try out. Right now my mod list sits at 28, which isn’t that many in the grand scheme of things, but is still a lot more than I’ve played with previously.

Mods are fantastic, especially in RimWorld. They can completely change how you play the game and extend the gameplay far beyond what the base game comes with. So far I’m still completely enthralled, and looking at my steam hours it’s no wonder. I have over 130 hours played (though a lot of that is me just leaving it to play while I’m AFK, or sitting with the game paused as I tend to RL).

Some of the newest mods I’ve added are:

  • The Mad Rabbits of Caerbannog – This adds new pack animal events instead of just the base ones (which were pretty boring)
  • Shiro – adds a new type of pet to the game
  • Expanded Prosthetics and Organ Engineering – Because playing doctor is fun
  • Lamia – another pet type mod
  • Call of Cthulhu – Cults A16 – which adds a whole lot of sacrifice, spells, and monsters to the game. This mod is insane, and a lot of fun.

I’ve also been watching RimWorld streamers on twitch. Everyone plays the game slightly different, with different goals and mods. It’s pretty neat to see what someone else is up to, how long they survive, and what difficulty they play on. You can customize the scenario before you get into the game which also offers a lot of replay ability. There’s a pretty popular Fallout theme that I’ve seen some people playing that I may try out next.

I also added Prison Architect to my steam wishlist (you can find me there as Stargrace if you’re looking to add friends) – I know it has been in a humble bundle or two in the past, and I’m hoping I can find it there again before too long. Since RimWorld is based loosely on that game I’m hoping I would enjoy it just as much. I prefer the genre of RimWorld which is the only reason I haven’t immediately scooped it up.

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

7th Spring 5500 – RimWorld

(Tales from the RimWorld, my adventurers diary of events) 

7th Spring, 5500

I decided to head out and make it on my own, taking only a few belongings and my trusty Yorkshire Terrier, Gambler. He isn’t much but I just can’t be without him. Everyone laughed at me. I think I’m in the arid shrub land right now but I can’t really be too sure. More updates later.

10th Spring, 5500

After a lot of mining and hauling, I’ve carved myself a small room in a mountainside. I think I will at least be safe from fire here. Sadly, this did not protect me from the insane turtle that started randomly attacking me. I managed to ping off a few shots with my rusty gun, but those turtles don’t mess around! Maybe I accidentally stepped on its nest?

11th Spring, 5500

Veniamin was wandering around outside and said it looked like I could use some help, so he joined my team. He doesn’t say much but he’s a hard worker. I suppose I’m thankful for the company. He also reminded me that he faints at the sight of blood, so he won’t be doing any medical procedures. No problem, I can handle them all.

12th Spring, 5500

We were raided today by Soto; a pirate. Veniamin doesn’t have a gun but he bravely ran out there and clubbed the intruder while I shot from the safety of the doorway to our humble abode. There were no deaths (besides Soto’s) and we buried him under a nice tree (after taking his clothes). Why he thought attacking us with a club was a good idea I’ll never know. Veniamin uses that club now. Hey, we have to eat.

13th Spring, 5500

An escape pod landed nearby but when I went to check it out I found Denis there. He is known as a masochistic pyromanic with depressive traits. He’s also Veniamin’s brother. Instead of rescuing him I told Veniamin that he was already dead when I got there. Veniamin is sad now because that was his only brother. I should feel bad, but I oddly don’t. I really didn’t want to deal with a pyromanic at our base. It’s almost summer, we should be gathering crops for food.

14th Spring, 5500

Our neighbours came by for a visit, they call themselves the Washatntni Confederation. I just call them the Washa’s.

15th Spring, 5500

Veniamin is acting oddly, wandering around in a dazed state. I think he’s close to the breaking point.

4th Summer, 5500

Veniamin’s Mom was being chased by a raid – and since we already declined his brother, I decided why not let her join up with us. I was hoping she could help bring Veniamin out of his weird dazed state. When she called us for help I figured she was nearby but her and the pirates showed up IN OUR BASE which was just not cool. Lots of blood shed, but thankfully we’re all still alive.

8th Summer, 5500

We had some visitors today, but I forget their names. Summer has been warm.

Early Fall, 5500

We’ve had a few eclipse. They knock out our solar panels, so it’s not much fun. Thankfully they only last a day, but when you have a few in a row it can become a problem. We have one battery, so we have some power stored up but not that much. It’s keeping our freezer running at least so our meat doesn’t go bad.

8th Fall, 5500

We were raided by the Godlessness party. There were three of them. All of us are injured, which means no one is tending to our wounds. I can barely pick up the pen and paper to write this journal entry. Hopefully we can just pull out of it.

1st Winter, 5500

We managed to survive the raiders back in the fall, but shortly after we came down with the plague. All three of us. I don’t have long to live, but I wanted to make sure that our story was told. Whoever finds our base should find a good supply of food and items in storage. Make sure you keep a healthy doctor handy, learn from our mistakes.

Throwback Monday – Sims Medieval

Another post from NomadicGamers – 2011!

I’ve been spending some of my free game time playing The Sims Medieval since it released and I have to say, I am simply in love with the game. I’ve always been a huge fan of the Sims franchise in general, and this game is no different. Well, that’s not completely true, this game has aspects that are in fact, very different. One thing that the game does NOT do well is explain how the controls work. Unless you’re familiar with the regular Sims UI (I’m talking the house one in specific) you may feel a bit lost on some aspects. For example, in the first part of the tutorial you’re expected to go upstairs and use a mirror. The tutorial doesn’t tell you how to get upstairs – but the manual does (for those of you who purchased the physical copy of the game). If you remember the house icon in the basic Sims game, you’ll also see there’s a house icon above and below the direction keys on the UI. The upper one leads you upstairs, the lower downstairs. The mirror is in the bedroom upstairs (at least in my default castle). The camera view is a bit difficult to navigate when it comes to interacting with buildings because you can’t rotate the view to any more then a front “barbie house” view as I call it. You can still decorate your castle in any manor you like, and your characters in the Kingdom are unique to your creations which I adore.

The one thing that’s completely different in Sims Medieval that wasn’t in the other sims games quite so much (Sims 3 has it although done differently) is the quest system. You can decide who will do the quest and that will decide which path you take to complete it. You need to have certain NPC unlocked for a few quests, but the amount of choice each player has is just astounding. I can choose you use a bard or my monarch to complete a quest, and then they each have their own decisions and paths to make about each step of that quest. It’s humourous and the graphics are simply astounding.

If you’re not a fan of the Sims I don’t know how much appeal this game will have, as it still follows the basic Sims rules at its core – but personally, I just can’t get enough of it. Anyone else playing? Enjoying it? Let me know in comments!

RimWorld Mods

I love the steam workshop that allows people to create and post their game mods up for others to use. I think it really adds to the community, and of course it adds to the playability of the games that these mods are created for. RimWorld has a few “quirks” that I’m not very fond of – but no worries, there’s a mod for that.

The first one I use increases stack sizes. I believe the default stack size is 75 – and when you’ve progressed in the game that becomes a huge annoyance as you collect more and more items and have to keep expanding your stockpiles. I suggest this mod as a must.

You’ll notice that most of my mods don’t make the game ‘easier’ but only enhance the game, add content to it, or are simple quality of life items. I prefer it that way, but you can hunt down mods for pretty much anything.

The other mods I’m using include:

Realistic Rooms – this makes it so that I don’t need gigantic rooms in order for my RimWorld colonists to be happy. They’re much more realistic sizes.

FishIndustry – adds fishing to the game. You can create a dock and basically ‘hunt’ from it.

RimFridge – just like it says, it adds fridges to the game. Great when you want to keep food in the same room as a prisoner (just one example).

More Furniture – adds (you guessed it) more furniture.

[T] More Floors – adds more floor options (a LOT more).

Tilled Soil – gives me better growing options if I till the soil first.

Vegetable Garden – A huge mod that adds new meals to cook, new ways to cook them, and new research branches to unlock even more options.

Fences and Floors – pretty self explanatory.

Have a favourite RimWorld mod that you use? Be sure to let me know in comments and I’ll check it out! I’m only just getting started with mods, so I’ve just been going by those most popular and ones that interest me. There are thousands out there that can change so much of the gameplay that I just haven’t really known where I should start!

I started up a new game last night (on rough difficulty, classic gameplay) and so far it’s going very well. I’ve had a few pirate invasions, I had a chunk of spacecraft fall from the sky that I had to destroy (and two scythers popped out of it, scary!), I’ve had animals go mad, I’ve had a muffalo rampage happen (I had to keep my colonists indoors for that one), and various other smaller difficulties have all been faced and overcome. Two of my colonists are now in love, no one has died (yet), and we’ve expanded from the original three to five. In other words, things have been going relatively well, and any moment now I expect things to go batshit crazy and fall apart. I’ve just entered into my first winter. We’re well stocked with food and medical supplies – we’ll see what we come up against, and how well prepared we were in the end.

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

 

Keeping up With Gaming

In EverQuest 2 things have come to a bit of a standstill. I don’t have the time to LFG to do dungeons, and I’m pretty bored of running the same advanced solo dungeons every day. I log in to craft, get my loyalty tokens, and putter around, but I haven’t been keeping up with my epic 2.0 or progression in any real meaningful way. Since I have so many characters just doing the little bit of daily stuff I do is enough to keep me ‘busy’ but I’m also wondering if it wasn’t a mistake to get a year long subscription. Of course I had intended to play EverQuest with that, not EQ2, so maybe when I have a bit more time I’ll go back to my original plan.

In WoW things are moving along (even if it is at a snail’s pace). I’m able to queue for a few raids a week, I do some world quests, my characters move up the chain of progression. I’m really excited about the new pet battle dungeon coming to the game soon(tm) and I can’t wait to give it a try. I wish pet battles could be done independently of logging into the game (ie: mobile) but things are not so bad. My subscription for WoW lasts until July, so I have a few more months of that left and I’ll probably renew. It’s a good game even with my limited time.

EVE Online. I subscribed with a PLEX and then played once or twice. Truth of the matter is as much as I adore this game (and I do) I really want to play it with TWO accounts and that’s just not viable for me at this time. I probably won’t renew until I can afford to activate both my accounts, so maybe once my EQ2 subscription runs out. Don’t get me wrong, I love the game, I love playing, but I really like both accounts active so I can make full use of things.

Wurm Online / Unlimited. I currently have two active accounts in Wurm Online, Stargrace, and Blesse (a Vynora priest). I’ve got three active deeds (two on Xanadu and one on Independence) and while I haven’t been doing much to them aside from keeping up with the fields and animals, I still enjoy logging in every day. Wurm is one of those games that just really relaxes me. Plus I can leave it up and running while I putter around with my little one in real life. I also logged into Wurm Unlimited to check on my deed there. One had fallen (I re-deeded the place, my buildings and walls were all still standing) over on Sklotopolis, and over on Age of Urath – well, that server is apparently done now. It had a lock symbol by it with no users online. Should have stuck with my first choice! I also noticed a “new” server with the highest population these days, Zaneth. I’m incredibly cautious about new servers because it seems like there’s a huge overturn and you never know if the server will actually stick around but as long as I don’t go off and donate right away (like I have in the past) then I suppose there’s no real harm in checking things out.

In the meantime life is pretty busy. I get maybe an hour of gaming a day, which isn’t anything to sneeze at, and by rotating what I play I keep from getting bored. Of course it does seem that as soon as I settle in to do a dungeon or improve some weapons my little guy is waking up and begging for my attention, but hey that’s the joys of parenthood. He’s 4.5 months old right now, and while things haven’t exactly gotten easier yet, they’re constantly changing.

I hope everyone else has been having a great time despite the turmoil that seems to be enclosing around the world. Are you checking out Conan Exiles? What about ESO’s big announcement today? Did you give For Honor a try? Head to PAX South? Let me know in comments, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.