A Pixel Nomad

One thing WurmOnline still has that many other games do not (Vanguard also still has this feature) is corpse retrievals. I’m talking full out when you die you lose everything except your deed and merchant papers retrievals. All your tools, keys, weapons, gear, gone. When you die you also lose skills, a lot of games still have this method of death penalty, where you lose skills or experience or your armor takes some damage. In Wurm it is VERY dangerous to die because half of the time if you’ve been out wandering you have no idea where you are. You also re-spawn at Green Dog if you don’t own a deed, or you can choose to spawn at your deed. If your allies are close by you can also chose to spawn at one of their deeds. I was not so lucky.

It was 1:30am and I was incredibly tired. Arkenor was nice enough to sail be down to the area where I had died, and once I had retrieved my corpse (it was spiders who got me the first time) I decided that to make the trip worth while, I would attempt to charm a raging bear and bring her/him home for the bear breeding program. Now, bears on their own are not too bad. Raging bears, were a mistake.

The bear went into a frenzy on me right away, hit me four times in a row, and down I went like a sack of potatoes. Dead. Again.

Ouch.

Normally death doesn’t bother me, it’s a natural part of this game, losing my items is quite painful these days because they’re high quality. They also include useful items like my Fo statue which I use to cast spells. No statue means no spells. Having no back up weapons was probably also poor thinking on my part. Because I was frustrated I logged off, that’s just the normal thing to do. I came back to the situation this morning with a clear mind (and some sleep) and felt much better. I now had a choice. Do I go after the corpse and risk dying a third time (it was a good 30-45 minute walk through dangerous lands) or do I start from scratch.

I probably wouldn’t have minded starting from scratch except for one thing. My keys. I really didn’t want to leave the keys to my boat and my deed just floating around the lands of wurm. So I grabbed.. well, nothing. I headed out without armor, no compass (I’m getting much better at figuring out where I am without one these days), no creature by my side. I was able to walk without having to regenerate any stamina because I had no weight.

I found my corpse, grabbed all my belongings, bee-lined straight for my boat, and sailed home. Lesson learned, stay away from raging bears. Even if I had of been able to handle a hit or two, there’s no way I would have been able to continue with that as the bear aged and grew in power. Animals hurt more the older they are.

It was still a great adventure.

One of my favorite spells as a priest of Fo is charm. It works as a tame spell, giving the exact same levels of loyalty. Since I reached 40 faith (and thus 40 favor) I’ve been trying to find exotic animals to tame and bring back to my deed. I was looking in specific for unicorns, they’re not very handy creatures but what girl doesn’t like a unicorn. Yesterday, finally, my wishes were answered. It was unicorn day in Wurm, or at least that’s what it seemed like. They were everywhere. I ended up with four of them, a hardened, slow, and two sly. They brighten up my deed quite a bit (the slow is a very bright blue colour, the sly are green).

I purchased 500 bricks from a player who was offering to sell them for 1s and that included delivery. Bricks are really annoying to make, especially since I had already made 300 and still had 500 to go. I have no issue purchasing bulk goods or rare goods from players, especially when I have a budget of 10s a month to help invest in the market. The bricks were delivered without incident (highly recommend the folks who did so) and I was able to finally complete the walls of my 2nd deed, Fippy Keep.

Now that the walls are done I can take my time working on the areas that I want to improve, piece by piece. I want to join the animal pens together between the two deeds since their perimeters join, and create a very large pen. Animals only require one tile to live healthy lives, but I’m really more fond of giving them more space.

I would still like to find a champion unicorn, as well as a raging one. I’m also still on the look for eggs / hens / alert dogs, and added to that list are cave bugs. I think it would be a neat endeavor to breed cave bugs. I doubt I could give you a proper answer why, I just think they’re interesting and it would be nice to have a supply of dye-making bugs.

I found a water tile on the Keep deed yesterday and built my first fountain. It’s in a fantastic location that is close to all of my buildings, and it looks pretty neat. Hopefully now that those pesky walls are up I can spend some time making the place look good, and do a lot of replanting. I want to surround the outside with trees so that the keep blends into the forest. As soon as it’s looking a bit better I’ll post some videos of the place, as well as more screen shots.

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

Yesterday was a day for grand adventures in WurmOnline. It started with me charming bears so that Arkenor can begin his bear breeding program (they are wonderful creatures, especially for pulling carts and combat against other creatures). I tried to pass the bear to another (you can give pets as gifts) but alas the bear had a different idea and instead decided to try to eat all of us. Thanks to the powers of Fo (I can’t stress enough how much I love being a priest) I was able to re-charm the creature. Arkenor was the brave soul who stood in front of the bear and danced around distracting it so that I was able to cast the spell.

Later on in the day I decided to hunt for hens (again). I wandered North, and spotted a mine on my neighbours land. Being the curious sort that I am, I entered the mine. In front of me almost directly was a sign that said “danger” and then a very sharp drop. I didn’t realize just how close to the edge of that drop I was, and I fell. Onto an adolescent starving scorpion. I then spent the next 3 minutes running back and forth along the hallway I found myself trapped in, screaming about a scorpion trying to kill me.

It didn’t end well for either of us.

I died, wandered back to my corpse, and noticed that the scorpion was so incredibly determined to eat me that he had scaled the walls of the mine and was sitting at the entrance. I lured him out with the scent of flesh, and then backed around. Toggling ‘climb’ on I was able to lower myself far enough down to grab my corpse and run (slowly, corpses are heavy) back out of the mine. Later on in the day as I was praying I noticed a shadow cross over me.

The scorpion was back, and he wanted revenge.

Thankfully, I was on my own deed and it was just a matter of bringing the creature over to the guard tower and screaming in local for help. Two guards rushed over – one died in the battle. I butchered the kill, but didn’t get any of the bits that are used to make red dye (shame). So why is there a screen shot of a horse directly in my face above? Well. I THOUGHT I was taking screen shots of my glorious battles, but it turns out that I completely forgot the command for in-game screen shots (it’s F11 I believe, not print screen!) and so that was the result of my endevour.

It was a great day for adventures, that’s for sure. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

 

One of the big factors in any sandbox game is that you are the one who decides what you want to do in game. The game doesn’t tell you what to do and your imagination really is the limits. In WurmOnline I’ve decided to go a few routs. First of all, I breed cattle, and then slaughter it (messy business) and butcher the hides. I then take these hides over to my neighbour Yetian, who uses them for his leatherworking skill. These cows are not just leather though, they also provide me with creatures to groom for my animal husbandry skill. I also spend a lot of time cultivating the ground in their pens with fields that I can harvest later on (and it provides them with food). All of this gives me helpful skills for my character. Animal husbandry will allow me to check my horses out and see what traits they have. Negative traits can (eventually) be cured with my Fo priest spell Genesis. It’s a big circle.

Since I am a priest of Fo and restricted in a lot of my activities, I spend a lot of my time ‘making parts’. Making planks, making bricks, harvesting sprouts, working fields, cooking meals. Those may seem like boring mundane things but they’re activities that I enjoy doing in game. You could take a completely different rout and become a warrior, traveling the lands defeating creatures and not making any one place your home. You could move from village to village, working for coin, there’s so many possibilities within the realm of your imagination, the game only needs to give you a few tools in order for you to move forward with them.

I’m still working on my keep. I need 500 (or so) more bricks to finish the final wall, and then I can start working on the inside of the keep walls. I’ve got lights set up which give off a nice glow during the night, and two buildings, one is my personal residence, and the other is a craft hall, with bulk storage bins and the food storage bins as well as a few other containers for random storage.

I’ve been looking VERY hard for a hen. My rooster is getting lonely. Hopefully I can find one before too long, I’ve had my rooster quite some time, but I’ve never seen a hen before. I may have to post an advertisement on the forums looking to buy one. The forums are a fantastic way for players to interact with the community, there are boards for selling / buying products from one another as well as server forums to find out if any events are going on in your area. That’s how I found out about the Fo sermons, as well as the Kyklops killing. Don’t be afraid of getting involved with the community!