A Pixel Nomad

Cook, Serve, Delicious

I picked this game up when it was on sale during the steam winter sale because it looked cute and I had never heard of it before. You’re given a restaurant to run, and you’re in charge of everything from scrubbing the toilets to doing the dishes and taking out the trash – not to mention the actual cooking. Everything is timed, can be done with either keyboard or mouse, and your job is to complete it all to the highest quality possible.

The tutorial is brief but since the game isn’t that complicated (just fast paced) it should be enough to get you started. You pick a few items to purchase for your menu, keeping in mind that if you don’t swap the menu up a bit, customers will get bored. You generate buzz with your food, and you open from 9am to 10pm.

At any time during the day you’ll be dealing with 1-4 (maybe more are added as time goes on, I am not sure yet) things at once. You’ll have to cook food according to what each customer wants. For example in the screenshot above there are three chicken breasts cooking. Each one has to be tenderized 6 times and then spiced and then cooked – and not burned. A little stopwatch ticks down on the food and it will tell you when it is ready but you have to pay attention because there are other meals and things being done at the same time.

So far my menu consists of beer, pizza, salad, chicken breast, and corndogs. Beer is the easiest to make, just have to make sure you don’t over fill the glass. Salad has about 8 different options that customers can ask for. Chicken is easy, as are the corndogs. Pizza has a handful of options as well. If you burn the food, serve it late, don’t clean the dishes, don’t take out the garbage, or encounter any other number of pitfalls the restaurant will fail.

You’ll also get email each day giving you a few more details about running your business, like upgrades you can do. You have to purchase equipment, and it’s way more involved than I had first thought but it’s also a lot of fun. I’m constantly talking to myself as I read the orders out loud so I can make sure I get them just right. I probably wouldn’t pay full price for the game (found here on steam) but as a 75% off sale item it was completely worth it.

Unicorns, Deer, Cows, and Pigs! Oh My. #WurmOnline

As I’ve already mentioned in numerous other Wurm Online posts, I really love raising animals, even the type that don’t have an enormous use. Take unicorns for example. Most deeds and open space is filled with them. They make great creatures to farm for leather, but here in my pen pictured above I have two sly and a champion that I’m currently breeding. I can’t ride them yet (you need very high body control) but they’re nice to have around. I also have three deer, who also provide leather and alchemy bits. They don’t pull carts and you can’t ride them but I like to have them around.

I was keeping a few pigs but there is a server mission ongoing that asks you to sacrifice them to Fo, one of the deity. I spent a painstaking few hours creating a sacrificial knife (really hard to do with only 1 weaponsmith skill) and then partook in the mission. We’re sitting at 63% completion with me being 46% of that. You get some karma and sleep bonus if you participate, so I hope eventually we’re able to finish the task.

I used to have a chicken but the servers went down yesterday morning and we had a slight rollback of creatures. I searched the nearby woods to see if I could spot it but I had no luck. Chickens are another ‘useless’ creature but I like them a lot.

I’ve been making a lot of progress with the deed. I used a pendulum to divine a water tile, created a nice path, almost finished my horse pens (they just need gates), and improved my forge in my workshop (which has no walls but will one day). Things are going pretty well and I’m looking forward to working my fine carpentry up even higher along with alchemy on the priest.

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

Dragon Flight Heads into Heroic Scenarios #WoW

Some time between when I last quit and when I started playing again last month heroic scenarios were added to the game. They work exactly like regular scenarios except for one thing – you can’t LFG for them. I find this a bit frustrating because I don’t have too many people in game that I can bug to do these instances with. I know lots of people in game, sure, a big selection of my friends are playing – but I don’t want to bother them by dragging them through these scenarios. Thankfully both Bloodgauge and Kanad were online this last weekend and we were able to attempt a scenario all on our own (you can only go with three people).

They were tough, but we managed just fine as soon as Bloodgauge (a DK) swapped to tank spec. I stayed in heals (priest) and Kanad was of course DPS (hunter). I won a nice purple ring at the end of our first one from the weekly quest, but the ones we attempted afterward didn’t reward much of anything so I decided to call it a night and to try again when they reset.

I’m still looking for upgraded weapons. I’ve had absolutely no luck at all. Bloodgauge picked up blacksmithing last week and since he was on holidays he managed to reach 600 without too much effort. He’s working on discovering a staff for me to use but it will take a few days because of the daily craft timers. That will be more than enough to help boost my ilevel towards the 530 mark. I’m currently at 526 and looking forward to finding a few more burden to help raise that.

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

The Meta Game of Horse Breeding #WurmOnline

One of my favorite things to do in Wurm Online is breed animals. Not just the regular sort that are actually useful (horses for riding and pulling carts) but all sorts of animals that I find in the wild. This is made infinitely easier with the help of a Fo priest who has access to charm. In order to breed animals successfully I find it helps to have them in a 2×2 pen paired up with their partner. It’s easy to check traits, and less worry about disease (overcrowding can be an issue). There are 19 different traits that animals can have when bred, first generation creatures do not come with traits.

0 skill: Horse’s color is considered a trait. (Although it DOES NOT go against the trait limit.)
20 (10.56) skill: “It will fight fiercely.” (Higher fighting skill?)
21 (11.12) skill: “It has fleeter movement than normal.” (Minor speed boost.)
22 (11.68) skill: “It is a tough bugger.” (Withstands more damage.)
23 (12.25) skill: “It has a strong body.” (Bonus to maintaining top speed.)
24 (12.82) skill: “It has lightning movement.” (Randomly increases speed for a short duration.)
25 (13.40) skill: “It can carry more than average.” (Less penalty to speed due to high load.)
26 (13.98) skill: “It has very strong leg muscles.” (Less penalty to speed due to slope? Does not currently do this.)
27 (14.56) skill: “It has keen senses.” (Increased aggression range, or possibly harder to tame?)
28 (15.15) skill: “It has malformed hindlegs.” (Minor speed penalty)*
29 (15.74) skill: “The legs are of different length.” (Major speed penalty)*
30 (16.33) skill: “It seems overly aggressive.” (Goes into frenzy when attacked)*
31 (16.93) skill: “It looks very unmotivated.” (Seldom uses speed boosts?)*
32 (17.54) skill: “It is unusually strong willed.” (Will stop being led at random.)*
33 (18.15) skill: “It has some illness.” (Body strength will slowly reduce over time, which will eventually making the animal unrideable. Note: Genesis will cause it to slowly regain strength up to it’s old level.)*
34 (18.76) skill: “It looks constantly hungry.” (is twice as fast to become hungry again.)*
39 (21.90) skill: “It looks feeble and unhealthy.” (Prone to catching a disease.)*
40 (22.54) skill: “It looks unusually strong and healthy.” (Has a higher resistance to disease.)
41 (23.19) skill: “It has a certain spark in its eyes.” (Affects breeding? ~~Will not die of old age?~~ Disproved, see talk.)

Ideally players want horses that have the 5 ‘speed’ traits. These horses sell for more than your average creature, and are highly sought after. You need to work your animal husbandry skill in order to see these traits, and I use a very amazing program called Wurm Assistant that helps me keep my herds under control. Inbreeding horses is a bad thing and can leave them with negative traits – but – since I have a Fo priest I can cure these negative traits with a quick genesis cast. Along with the four horses pictured above, I now have three unicorns (one a champion that I have had absolutely zero luck getting to breed), three deer (I used to have two, one just gave birth), a cow, and a hen. I’m hoping to find a bull wandering around my island, since the creatures don’t swim and they can’t be transported I have no way of obtaining one.

All in all, I think I’m off to a pretty good start. As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Nomi & Me #WoW

I finally reached 600 in all the branches of Pandarian cooking, and saved up 50 tokens to purchase the bell that summons Nomi. This cute little kid is your student, and you’re in charge of teaching them how to cook. So far all Nomi can cook for me is dried peaches and that’s after I supply the fruit, but she’s cute so I keep her around.

I’m not sure if there’s an actual reason to teaching Nomi how to cook aside from unlocking more achievements, but that’s enough for me. My luck also changed a bit over the weekend and some how I managed to get my first ever cloth chest piece to drop from the Timeless Isles. Not only that but I got FOUR of them to drop. Of course I used a burden on one in my heal spec and got a horrible version of the one I wanted, but it is much better than the 479 one I was wearing before. Burdens have not been kind to me, some guild mates seem to have all the luck.

There is still so much I want to do but just haven’t found the time for. I’ve been a member of the elusive Brawlers Club for almost a month now and have only stepped foot into the establishment once. My battle pet team is still sitting at level 15. There are alts that I would like to get to 90 before the cap raises to 100 (Druid, Paladin, Monk, Warrior, Warlock, just to name a few..) and while it may sound like I am complaining, I’m actually very excited that there is so much to do and so much to keep me busy. It rarely ever stay subscribed for more than a month but this time around I seem to have found a nice combination of things to keep me occupied. That, and the fact that I’m still poking between both WoW and Wurm Online.

Tomorrow is Tuesday, and I’m looking forward to raids re-setting. Me and two guild mates also ran some heroic scenario this weekend which was a lot of fun (my first time doing them) once we realized we wanted a tank, a dps, and a healer as our three members. I didn’t get any upgrades but the guild earned xp and money for the bank and we all earned a handful of achievements and had a good time.

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