Patches Don’t Play Favorites #WurmOnline

Yesterday was patch day in WurmOnline, something that most gamers are familiar with, no matter what game they play as their game of choice. It meant multiple restarts, a lot of left over glitches, and still some bugs remaining today. Patience is something we all must learn, which is really dang hard when you want to go out and play with all the cool new stuff, and oh, what cool new stuff there was.

– Carts and horses can now climb larger slopes (39 is said to be the new number)

– Carts can now travel in shallow water (-7 is said to be optimal, -9 and things start to go wrong)

– Timers for bulk items have been shortened (I haven’t personally played with this a lot, I really dislike making bulk items to begin with, so I usually try to buy them or convince my neighbours to make them for me in trade).

– Animals can spawn around the world of all ages now, not just young. This means that people out there fighting can fight different levels of creatures. It’s a blessing and a difficulty. Personally I think it’s pretty neat. However it also caused some issues with horses giving birth to old horses instead of foals.

– Rare items. There are three ‘tiers’ of rare items, they’re still currently implementing this so some items are rare without use. I haven’t come across any myself yet, but I see kchat filled with the eager gasps of those who have. It is said to be a 50% chance once an hour to create a ‘rare’ item. Sounds like a bit of a confusing system, so I’m going to basically ignore it and if I make something, great, and if I don’t, oh well.

Traited creatures have begun spawning again which is awesome. The giant mountain lion pictured above is a champion spawn, too hard for me to handle on my own, I called in some reinforcements. Yetian gladly took the corpses to decorate his front entrance.

Have you had a chance to play with the changes yet? What are your thoughts so far? Let me know in comments below, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

 

Timers Changed and Rare, Supreme, Fantastic Items Added! #WurmOnline

  • Faster timers for most actions!
  • Timers now run on tenths of seconds, giving more precise effects of quality, skill and enchantments. This includes fighting.
  • Less item loss on failure!
  • Priests receive alignment modification for actions just as non-priests now
  • Dispel now has range 24
  • Mounts and carts may be used in shallow water. Less land bridges – more fords!
  • Mounts and carts may be used in steeper terrain. Less obstruction!
  • Older creatures may spawn now – more challenge!
  • Items have rarity! You may now occasionally succeed in creating a rare, supreme or even fantastic item. These tools are faster, weapons do more damage, and armour protects a bit better. This may also happen as you improve or polish items and rare items may turn into even rarer items. Constructing new items using rare materials may turn the unfinished item into a rare item. Rare guard towers spawn more guards, for instance. More functionality will be added over time.
  • Known bugs: Metallurgy needs some more debugging. Chain armour creation erroneously uses up the chain on failure. Fields show the wrong textures.

A Day At The Deliverance Market #WurmOnline

The Deliverance Market was a project a long time coming. Set up by a player named Rudie (I believe) it was a server wide project that everyone could participate in, giving us a central location to sell wares. It’s located just East of Green Dog, on the top of the tundra. These days it’s plagued by a multitude of unicorns, deer, and dogs, but that doesn’t stop an eager customer (or a merchant, looking to set up shop). Since there are so few customers along the West Coast where my deed currently is, I decided to place my merchant at the market, and perhaps do a bit of shopping while I was there.

I was in luck. I picked up a new weapon and a few pieces of gear for Stargrace, and I had my merchant set up without any trouble. I’m not sure if I’ll actually sell anything, but it would be nice to make a few coin. I’ve stocked the merchant with some high quality tools that have been enchanted, and other random odds and ends that I’ve found along my travels. Items that I have no real use for at the moment.

Along my way home, I spotted a greenish unicorn in the distance. Greenish trait animals are much tougher than regular ones, and I longed to add her to my collection. My first attempts at charm were unsuccessful, she beat me to a bloody pulp. I had no desire to have to walk all the way back to the market (and leave my cart there) so I stepped away and healed up, and then in a last attempt I managed to land charm without being interrupted. That’s the down side of the spell, it interrupts very easily. I jumped into my cart and told the bulls to head home, leading a not so pleased greenish unicorn behind me.

Great addition to my crayon box pictured above, no?

My female black bear has been doing pretty well. I’ve stuffed her with more meat than she can possibly eat, about 20 a day. I’m always concerned with pregnant animals because they can starve very easily, especially if they’re meat eaters. I have four more days or so before I can expect a little baby bear wandering her pen. Hopefully it will have a useful trait, I suppose I’d better start praying to the RNG Gods now.

All in all? A very productive day at the market!

 

Away from It All #WurmOnline

I love Deliverance, I really do, but some times I just want to get away from it all. Away from the people I see in local (neighbours, you do not count, I like you all), away from the people I know by name trolling kchat, away from a map that I’m (these days) quite familiar with. Thus, I’ve decided to keep a 3rd deed on independence. At the moment my Vynora priest is parked there, working away on meals. As Moxie says, “if you like it, you should put a deed on it.” That’s exactly what I did. Technically the deed was already mine, I had taken it down a few weeks back, but returned due to the lure of what was left in the houses (completely random, that screen shot above is poor because it’s foggy and I can’t see anything in the fog). This deed is incredibly quiet. To the South is Berlin, which is in various states of decay. A new neighbour moved in West of the deed against the mountain but they’ve been fairly silent. There’s a large fenced in area directly West but I removed the houses that were acting as gates because it’s such a waste of wide open space. If someone wants to move in there, they are welcome to. My own deed is surrounded by amazing stone fences, has areas for horses (of which I currently have none on Independence, and doubt I will) and I planted a gigantic field of crops to work on my farming. There’s a vast forest covering half of the deed, with high reaching pine and cedar trees. I’ve been planting more trees along the other side of the deed to balance the forest out a bit.

My home away from home is quiet because of a number of reasons, some of the biggest reasons are that the server is gigantic, and there’s a long walk involved in reaching it. As Moxie mentions on another blog post, if you’re looking for a place to settle, don’t look for wide open nature places – look for abandoned and deserted deeds. Settling into a location like that and calling it your own is a fantastic way to get started. There are so many half decayed fences and buildings around. Within the rules, of course.

I like the Independence server for a lot of reasons. It gives me a new place to explore, new people to meet. Places to salvage when they’ve broken down. It’s a bit of a pain to lug everything between two servers, but it’s quite easy to bring players between those two servers (depending on the wind) hence my final decision to keep the deed going. Hopefully my Vynora priest will get some good skill gains while I have the character over there, especially channeling and alignment.

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

All Sunshine and Rainbows – Life as a Priest of Fo #WurmOnline

I took my Fo priest to Tristan to participate in some ceremonies that were going on. These are basically skill gain sessions. Priests gather around, every 3 hours they preach, 30 minutes between each preach, and you get a skill gain of faith depending on the number of listeners. You need 4 for a gain at all, and 6 for a prayer re-set. That means that every 3 hours you gain 5 new prayers (spaced 20 minutes apart) as well as the gain from preaching. You also gain alignment. It was very nice and I gained a lot of faith but it’s also a very boring job, hanging out on someone else’ deed and basically ignoring the screen unless it’s your turn to preach.

In the mean time people do mundane tasks like working on channeling, and casting spells on one another. It’s common to link up with other AFK priests so you can make use of their favor (basically mana) while you work on your skills. Because everyone is from different time zones there are lulls in conversation, but it’s mostly friendly chatter.

For me working on a Fo priest is quite easy. I have high alignment from planting sprouts (you also gain +4 alignment each time someone preaches). I spend time casting spells and praying, and I’m working on my meditation skill so that I can get to rank 7 and create enchanted grass (note: meditation is not related to religion in any way, it’s a regular skill that anyone can pick up). I’m still some time away from that yet you need rank 7 and 30 meditation skill. For some reason my meditation skill has refused to move the last few times I’ve attempted it.

My goal is to reach 70 faith (and hence 70 favor) so I can cast genesis. It’s a spell that removes bad traits from animals, and I’ve got a few that could use this miracle cure, as does Arkenor. We’ve been saving up some bad trait animals because they’re just too deer to give up, in the hopes that one day I’ll be able to cure them. I think I still have a month or two to go before that will become a reality.

There are days I regret being a priest. Days when my boats sink due to poor quality and I can’t improve them and have to use my alt. Days I want to bash down a wall (I have many of those days actually). I can turn off faithful and lose 0.1 faith per action which is at least an option, but it’s a harsh one. I was nearly at 60 faith when I decided 4 of my deed walls needed to be taken down RIGHT THEN. Mayors get a bonus to this type of fence removal and I am the always impatient gamer when I have an idea I want implemented. I dropped down to 54 faith, and am now slowly climbing my way back up – again. It’s worth it to me to be able to do these things, which is why a LOT of priests have a different main and keep both characters premium. Or at least have a free character around who can improve and fix things. Or live on a deed with others who can handle the upkeep. There are always options.

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