Stonehearth

In my constant adventure to find games I can play while nursing or holding my 2.5 month old bundle of joy, I noticed quite a few people I know had picked up Stonehearth again and were playing it. I got the game back when it first entered Alpha, and I found it really difficult (at the time) with not a whole lot to do. I decided to try it out again and I’ve been pleasantly surprised.

My town is 18 days old, and I have 14 villagers. I’ve named them all after people I know on twitter / the blogging community. I started the town over a few times while I got comfortable with the controls and decided what I wanted to do. A few invasions have happened, nothing that I couldn’t handle though. I’m playing on normal mode, and I debated kicking it up a notch because it seems pretty easy. My little citizens are thriving, lots of traders come to the town, and while I don’t have every job yet (I’m hoping for a shepherd soon) there’s always lots of work to go around.

The game couldn’t be installed on my MacBook Pro which is what I use to play lately because I spend 90% of my time on the couch / near the bassinet, but I stream it from the PC without any issues. It’s easy to pause the game or just let it run while I get real life things done, and I don’t have to worry about letting others down in a situation where I need to randomly go AFK.

I foresee 2017 as the year that my steam library gets far more use than it ever has in the past. Besides Stonehearth I’ve been playing a lot of Civilization (the latest one) and I’ll have a post coming up about that before too long.

I do still have my subscription to EQ2 – and my subscription to EVE Online which I reactivated, so in between I’m still playing multiplayer games (even if I am playing them alone). I’m also on discord as Stargrace if you’re looking to chat or if you have a channel suggestion for me please don’t hesitate to let me know. These days there’s not a lot of ‘social’ I get to do, so even just watching chat scroll by helps keep my sanity.

This week has been especially difficult as far as real life goes. The car died and it’s -24C out (that’s -11F for you in the US), the doctor had some weird news about Leo that I need to take into consideration now, and the house is out of groceries, but with no car it’s difficult to get any. Not that I need to whine about my personal issues here on my blog, but I’m just saying that hanging out in discord channels, watching twitch, and trying to at least connect on some level with other gamers still helps me to keep my sanity when everything else is going down the pooper.

Here’s to 2017! Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Oh Look, a PLEX!

Finding games that are easy to step away from at a moments notice has been one of my main game criteria since Leo was born. WoW doesn’t really fit into that category unless I’m doing nothing but pet battles, EQ2 fits fairly well as long as I’m just crafting or running quick instances – and lately I’ve (once again) felt the tug of EVE Online. The game has recently adopted a version of free to play that I was keen on checking out (also called having an alpha account) and I had a feeling I had a spare PLEX kicking around in case I wanted to upgrade to Omega.

I think I had logged in for a grand total of 10 minutes before I decided to activate my PLEX. I couldn’t fly my Tengu or train any of the skills I had been working on previously without upgrading, and honestly, why not. I have enough ISK to purchase another PLEX or two in the future if I want, and maybe I can earn enough cash to cover a subscription for the year or something. We’ll see how it goes.

Anyway.

As always, first thing I had to do was figure out what I was working on and why I was in the station I was currently in. Failing to do that I moved straight to my R&D agents, and decided to work faction because one of my agents is still only rank 1, and they give my most important datacores. So I flew out to the Amarr Empire, and started working distribution quests for Kaalakiota. My other R&D agents are at least rank 3, with one being rank 4, so I’d like to catch up the one that’s slagging behind. It’ll mean a lot of missions, but hey that’s something to do (and I really enjoy running them most of the time).

I also hopped into my hulk for a little belt mining while I was nursing, and noticed that my hulk has one less high slot than it used to before (the strip miner I had equipped in there was red, and when I removed it the slot was gone altogether). I’m not sure when that change happened, but as I told someone yesterday, changes happen in games and for the most part they don’t phase me, I just need to learn to adapt and adjust.

I also joined the Help channel so I could quietly lurk and learn more about what’s going on. I see a lot of talk about citadels, reduced tax rate, and selling PLEX 1 jump away from JITA to take advantage of that reduced tax rate. People were (for the most part) pretty helpful and answered all sorts of questions, so I imagine I’ll be able to learn quite a bit as I dive back into things.

I wasn’t exactly sure where I left off with my skill training, I’m just over 34 million points, which is not that much these days. I decided to finish up my ore processing skills. Once I’m done faction work to my hearts content I’d like to get back into some mining, as well as some production. I haven’t actually checked on my planetary interaction in months so I’ve got no clue what I was doing or where to pick up with that, but I’m sure I’ll get there with time (as long as I give it a little time).

It feels nice to be flying the skies again. We’ll see how long it lasts (normally this is something that is more of a money issue than a time issue). I’m also still in EQ2, alternating between the two games when / where I can. Leo also loves to watch me fly around in my ship – I can’t wait until he’s a little older and a bit more interactive with the games I’m playing.

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

Epic 2.0

People have been in a frantic dash to figure out the latest epic quests in EverQuest 2 – the Epic 2.0. There’s a few details that I’ve heard (and seen over on EQ2i) that have some people upset. I have been listening to the chatter in the EQ2 discord channel because I am no where near ready to begin this massive undertaking.

You need to complete city quests in Freeport or Qeynos (depending on your alignment). You also need to be a level 100 tradeskiller. Since I want to do the 2.0 on my latest character (my brand new necromancer) that means I have a while to go. I’m only level 35 at the moment in my crafting.

You also need to be level 5 ascension before you can even begin, and that takes approximately a month of grinding every single day. There are rumours that you need to be level 10 ascension level before you can complete the epic, which means three months of grinding every single day. Perhaps this is a way to keep people subscribed and playing your game? Not sure.

I know the mage epic involves a KP named that others are killing to grief mages, and people are unhappy about that. The tradeskill portion cannot be commissioned, and the non-tradeskilling players are upset about that. I imagine crafters are going to be upset too because they would typically make money off of the adventurers who didn’t want to craft, and now everyone who wants their 2.0 will be forced to do it. I don’t like the idea of forcing crafters to adventure any more than I like the idea of making adventurers craft. Some people just like to do one or the other (or neither). Allowing people to ‘play the game their way’ is much more important to me.

Still, 2.0 has people pretty excited, and I like to see that. I haven’t seen any completed ones yet, so it’ll be interesting to see if it’s all worth it in the end.

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

Kindness

Yesterday was a really tough day. My little guy has been going through colic and yesterday was one of his more difficult days with it. Colic is just another word for ‘unexplained crying’ – where you’ve taken care of the basics for your little one, and they still cry, for what seems like no apparent reason that you can figure out. Burped. Bathed. Fed. Changed. Bounced. Walked. Talked. Sang. Swung. You try all of the tactics in your arsenal and for whatever reason your baby decides to keep on wailing. Sometimes for hours.

So that was Leo.

Then I found out my hematoma that I’ve been dealing with since September is once again infected. To be blunt this absolutely wrecked me. I’ve been trying so hard to heal up and get rid of this wound that I’ve had since my c-section that it just made me burst into tears to see it this way again. It took me three weeks last time to have my doctor finally prescribe some antibiotics and I’m not sure I even have the strength to go through that argument with him again. I have nurses coming tomorrow to look at things (they’ve been coming every two days and then twice a week ever since it happened) and I’ll see what they say.

To say I was in low spirits would be an understatement.

Then I received a very nice letter from a random person on steam, and along with it a game from my steam wishlist. This person had “known” me since I started writing about EQ/EQ2 many years ago (2017 will be my 11th year) and they wanted to let me know that they appreciated my posts. I don’t write a lot of controversial stuff, so my posts tend to remain without comments or discussion but I have always simply written for myself and the simple joy of writing. I have met some wonderful people through my blog over the years, and I have received my share of whispers and tells and notes from those who have followed along.

This note (and game) came at a time when I was feeling pretty low about things. We had heard that Carrie Fisher passed away, as well as the Author of Watership Down. 2016 has not been a kind year. In 2017, I’d like to see more kindness. To ourselves. To each other. To strangers. It’s kindness like the one I mentioned above that keeps people going, keeps them believing, keeps them pushing on when their day to day lives may be difficult.

It’s pretty easy to be kind in a video game setting, and that’s something I want to do more of moving forward.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Epic Repercussions (again)

My necromancer hasn’t been around for very long but I already have a list of things I wanted to complete on the character starting with my fabled epic which I completed a few days ago. The necromancer epic is incredibly simple. It requires no factions and just a handful of old dungeons. Once I had the fabled, I went to the mythical. That one required Protector’s Realm, Leviathan, and Nexona from Veeshan’s Peek. I mentored down and completed them all solo without too much issue.

After that it was time to start Epic Repercussions, and that quest probably took me the most amount of time, but I got it completed this morning. Now the necromancer is set to begin her 2.0 whatever that entails. Since she’s “new” there’s lots of faction and language work that I haven’t done on her yet. I also want to work her up as a provisioner. I do already have a level 100 provisioner but she’s on Maj’Dul which isn’t much use to me these days.

I leveled the carpenter to 100, bringing my crafters to 5/9 at level 100.

Next up? Probably working on the signature line for the previous expansion. There’s an ethereal I can get if I complete both that signature line and the one for Kunark Ascending. I’m not sure how long it is or how complicated but hopefully it’s not too bad. I’m still using twark gear in my off-hand, so completing this and getting the ethereal would be really nice. Then it’s back to faction work in KA.

Busy busy!