Tag: Wurm Online

Every game has a ‘hitch’ that keeps you wanting to log in. For most of my themepark MMOs, this is done by daily quests. In EVEOnline it’s with daily missions from R&D agents, and my PI production. In WurmOnline that hitch is a lot stronger for me to deal with – pictured above, my hen. She died because I didn’t log in for one day. There are some incredibly delicate animals in WurmOnline, including pigs and hens. My rooster is being cared for and has lasted quite a long time now, but no such luck for the hen. You have to hand feed them (or leave a pile of grain on the ground, I couldn’t do that because the cows just eat it all). I had fed her in the morning, and even cast my Fo spell on her that grooms and takes care of her – but by that evening after less than a real life day of neglect, she was dead. If you don’t log in and tend for your animals (that’s assuming you have animals) they die. They get disease. They miscarry. With 12 horses, a hen, a deer, 5 dogs, 5 unicorns, and a handful of cattle, this is a major deal to me, I don’t want to log in to a pen full of corpses. There are of course ways to get around this. You can have enchanted grass planted, this feeds animals forever (grain eating animals at least). You need to have someone cast it for you or be level 7 on the path of love (meditation skill). It costs approx 50c-1s per tile to be done and there’s no guarantee that the animals will stand on that specific tile if you have a large space. It also doesn’t prevent them from aging or from getting disease. You can leave piles of food around, but there’s no guarantee that every animal who is hungry will get to eat their fill. Especially if you have 2nd generation (or older) animals who may have the “always hungry” trait. Thankfully I have enough skill that I can see if my animals have this trait.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on my deeds lately. I did own four of them. I know, a bit much right? I owned Darkpaw Bay, Fippy’s Keep, Les Reveurs, and Les Reveurs over on independence server. I decided since Fippy’s Keep and Darkpaw Bay were back to back, I would take down the keep, and expand Darkpaw Bay by a few tiles. Doing this allowed me to map out a larger pen for animals, all on-deed. I also added new bear pens, and have started breeding my black bears. I’d like to make a few more pens in behind, and my priest should have a lot of fun working on her animal-heavy deed. Since there’s not a lot else that a priest can do besides nature related tasks, this makes for the perfect deed for her.

My deed in the mountains belongs to Stargrace, and she spends her time mining and working on various skills, it’s probably my favorite deed. She has a small collection of dogs at the moment (four) and two bulls who drag her cart around happily. Aside from that things are quiet.

The deed on independence is also quiet. It’s a place I use only for working skills, right now I’m working my way through hot food cooking. It’s not the most exciting of tasks, but it’s great for priests to raise SD (soul depth). Something needed in a lot of spells.

I’ll be posting more screen shots of each deed as the week goes by, so stay tuned for that. I may even post a video or two of me walking around the deeds. We’ll see. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

That screen shot above is the  main reason why I have been spending my time between two servers, Deliverance, where my ‘home base’ is, and Independence, where I have a LOT of food stored up in a tiny little deed I own. I didn’t want to just leave it behind to rot, so last night I moved 2 characters back over to that deed so that my Vynora priest could work up his Hot Food Cooking skill. I mean, that’s a lot of food just sitting there.

This of course was the start of a big adventure. See, I wasn’t sure what else I had left behind, but I thought perhaps I had left a few iron chunks that I could use to make into frying pans. I had grossly over estimated the amount of iron I had, and after 5 unfinished crafting attempts at a large anvil, I was out of iron. I needed a whetstone, I needed a pickaxe, and I had no iron or supplies on Independence to do any of this.

As any great explorer does, I wandered. I found a pickaxe. I didn’t find any iron, but I did find a mine just across from my deed. I set out to gather some iron so that I could make a chisel, then a whetstone, then finish all of those anvils collecting dust in my forge, and THEN finally, perhaps make those frying pans that I wanted to make from the start. Nothing is ever easy.

The moral of the story? ALWAYS keep your tools on you. You have no idea when you may need them.

The adventure didn’t end there, I accidentally got the priest killed before I re-deeded the area, and had to walk him from The Howl (I believe that’s the name) to Colossus Lake. Without a compass. On a continent I was not familiar with at all. Thankfully, it was day time. My one saving grace. It took a while, but I made it. I deeded the land so that should any more mishaps befall my brave adventurer, I would at least be able to spawn in the general vicinity.

There are a few differences between the enormous place that is Indi and the tiny by comparison Deli. Not just in size, either. On Indi I have been chased by every manor of aggressive creature, of all ages. The lands are absolutely teaming with life. There are ruins everywhere, the land has been incredibly built up over the years – but I find it much quieter than Deli. In my little area almost all of the deeds have been disbanded and are rotting away with a few exceptions. It makes for wonderful salvaging grounds. Also makes me miss my two horses that I let go when I first left, thinking I would have no reason to return. kchat (kingdom) is busy, and people seem quite familiar with one another. Deeds seem huge. Then again the map is quite large.

When I’ve exhausted the supplies stored up I’ll bring the priest back over to Deli, provided I can find my way again.

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

I’ve been playing WurmOnline for four months now, which is not that long in the eyes of the veterans, but I’ve been having an absolute blast, so much so that it’s rare that another game can hold my attention as well as Wurm does. As I’ve said many times in the past, there’s just ‘something’ about the game that appeals to every aspect that I enjoy (minus the griefers). On that front, things have been blissfully quiet, and I hope they stay that way. March break is over, and I rarely see the accused unless it’s the weekend or evenings. Fine by me. I’m still working on getting all three of my deeds fully protected. While the animals are secure, I now have a lot of extra walls that were on my perimeter, so I am working on taking them down. Unlike deed walls, perimeter walls don’t have a bonus when the mayor tries to knock them down, so it takes some time.

There has been an outbreak of unicorns and trolls around my mountain side deed, the unicorns provide good meat and hides (as well as unicorn horns which I can use to make healing covers) and the trolls, well. I can’t defeat those yet. I cower inside my humble stone house, hoping they ignore me. It’s still quite neat to see them roaming around.

This weekend should be a lot of fun in game. First of all there is a Fo sermon that will be taking place the week of March 24th to 31st. Fo priests from all Freedom servers are welcome to come and join in at Tristan for faith gains. I’ll be leaving both my Fo priest and my follower online at the church to help this. On the 31st there is also going to be a server wide Vynora event. Anyone who is a follower (or priest) of Vynora will gain 5 hours of sleep bonus if you’re online when this takes place, so I’ve been working hard to use mine up in time. Not that difficult to do, my Vynora priest has been busy working on HFC (hot food cooking) and making meals as well as casting opulence for skill gains.

I’ve started back up with breeding cattle and horses, I currently have five foals, with a handful of full grown horses. I’ve been letting the bad trait ones free in the wild for others to kill / use. The cattle I’ve been killing for hides, I just don’t enjoy killing horses that much and would rather let them go. I have a few colours of horses now which is nice, hopefully I’ll get even better stock as I continue. Animal husbandry is a bit slow to raise, but I know I’ll get there (eventually).

Once all of the deeds are finally taken care of I can go back to working my skills, such as tailoring and rope making. I’ve been working on my jeweler, Currently sitting at 18, it’s my goal to reach 20 today. My black bears have reached adolescence, and once a few more days have passed I’ll be able to breed them and try to get some nice trait bears. Although if Arkenor’s experiences have taught me anything it’s that this is not an easy task by any means.

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

Yesterday was a nice quiet evening in WurmOnline, which may make for boring blog posts, but makes for a relaxing time in game for once. The griefers have been sticking to the top of ‘their’ mountain, and leaving me and my friends alone. I’m hoping they’re laying low while GMs deal with things. Still no sign of the horses being returned to my friends. I spent a portion of the day yesterday working on securing my mine. There are some very specific things you need to do if you want it secured. My first task was to build a 1×1 shack at the entrance of the mine. This shack is situated right at the wooden door I have, and while the wooden door will prevent others from walking in, they can still bash it down because it’s not deeded property. Hence the shack. From there I built low stone walls around the opening of the mine. This will prevent people from falling down the mountain and becoming stuck inside (which is against Wurm rules, entrapping new players is bad m’kay). I placed locks on each of the doors, and made sure the quality of the house was quite high. Since it’s so small I should be able to check the damage on it quite easily and repair any decay.

Once inside the cave I’ll reinforce the walls on the left and right hand side of the entrance, this will prevent it from collapsing. I’ll still store all of my important bits inside my actual house and not in this undeeded location for safety sake, but it is nice having a little bit of security (even though the majority of security comes from having deeded property). I have almost completed my supply shed, which will hold some BSB so I can separate by quality level. I also built a new pen for my cattle at one of my deeds, completely on the property so it won’t decay nor will I have people breaking into it. Once I get the property looking a bit better I’ll post some pictures.

At this point in time I own three properties, which is one more than I had planned. Thankfully because two are back to back it makes things a bit easier. I have three active accounts, two are priests (Vynora and Fo) and the third is my “do everything” character. I’ve invested a lot of time and money into the game, so if those griefers think they’re going to scare me off, they’re mistaken. I tried to play other games while all of the drama was going on, but nothing holds my interest as of late like WurmOnline does.

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

Anyone who has been reading my blog posts these past few months knows just how much I love WurmOnline, and how I’ve never had any issues in game – until these last two weeks. These last two weeks have almost completely undone everything I love about the game, and the worst part is there’s nothing that can be done about it because it’s one of those shady grey areas of griefing. Pictured above is the forest (well, it used to be the forest) just below my deed. It is right in front of and around the deed of a friend of mine, and to the side of yet another friend. There are four of us in the area, most of these trees were planted by us. We don’t technically own the woods because it’s not deeded, but we’ve been living here happily for months now. Up on a hill away from this forest lives the griefers. It started out innocently enough.

Logging started 2012-03-10
[14:14:14] <Zeno> is “cabin fever” your house?
[14:18:28] <Stargrace> Yes
[14:20:09] <Stargrace> Why do you ask?
[14:21:55] <Zeno> you should repair your fences
[14:22:07] <Stargrace> No thanks, they’re alright. =)
[14:22:07] <Zeno> wood makes terrible fencing and yours are all damaged

From there it quickly went downhill.

[14:23:42] <Zeno> you do realize its not on a deed and anyone could bash those fences down in about 10 minutes and steal your horse and whatever else is in there though right
[14:24:01] <Stargrace> I own two deeds not far from here, this is just a temporary camp I’ve set up for fun. Thank you for your concern about my fences. You know that breaking into an enclosure is against game rules and GMs will enforce that, right? :)
[14:24:17] <Zeno> I wouldnt need the horse you have
[14:24:24] <Zeno> I have about 30 named horses lol

[14:59:45] <Zeno> ive had more than a few handle legitimate complaints and err on the side of “do nothing” so they could close the case and I wouldnt get proper assistance
[14:59:58] <Stargrace> Very sorry to hear that. I’m glad they help me.
[15:00:16] <Zeno> keep acting cute and they will
[15:00:40] <Stargrace> I think you’re confusing it with ‘nice’. ;)
[15:00:59] <Zeno> nice i.e: manipulative
[15:01:18] <Stargrace> Manipulative? I haven’t even done anything..
[15:01:22] <Zeno> nice so you too can be a GM/CM or to get aforementioned assistance

[15:28:45] <Zeno> though, as I said, you’re providing me some interaction in lieu of trolling kingdom chat
[15:29:38] <Zeno> that would quantify as my part time job I suppose
[15:29:56] <Zeno> much to the chargin of GMs

[15:36:09] <Zeno> also to be perfectly honest, I had considered smashing down your walls but your little area was cute and I’d have felt bad
[15:37:32] <Zeno> but don’t tell your GM friends that ;)

[20:36:26] <Zeno> by the way when I said I was considering smashing into your place, that was before we talked lol.. i’m not THAT heartless

While these conversations were going on, my neighbours at my deed were being broken into by one of the members of their village, and their horses stolen and moved up the side of a gigantic hill. I actually watched them walk home (as I myself was walking home) with a few of the horses, but I had no idea at that time they were stolen. At the time of the conversation I had applied to be a CA, but was not yet accepted and didn’t want to jinx it, so I left it quiet.

[22:08:40] <Zeno> are you a cm/gm
[22:08:45] <Zeno> in any facet
[22:08:51] <Zeno> I ask purely out of curiosity
[22:08:57] <Arysh> Nope, I am not
[22:09:19] <Zeno> k
[22:10:59] <Zeno> this isn’t one of those chris hansen type entrapment things right
[22:11:14] <Arysh> I don’t even know what that is ><
[22:11:14] <Zeno> where you befriend the server jerk and then trap me in a cage somewhere lol
[22:11:17] <Zeno> haha
[22:11:27] <Arysh> No I’m just a nice lady, sorry
[22:11:33] <Zeno> haha
[22:11:44] <Zeno> I remain ever suspicious

The next day, I attempted to help my friends get their horses back. GMs have been trying to work on this with a LOT of logs we’ve supplied and have come to no solid resolution yet. I provided logs of me examining each of the horses when they were on the owners deed, and then also examining them when they were in the stolen deed. I also get accepted as CA and start getting random tells from various members of their villages, I put them all on ignore. Two days later, I get this message:

Logging started 2012-03-15
[17:44:48] <Zeno> fippys farm is yours?
[17:45:03] <Arysh> Nay, that is Yetian and Gotchi’s
[17:45:17] <Zeno> I see
[17:45:58] <Zeno> ahhhh fippys keep is yours

On the eve of that day my perimeter is broken into, and my cows stolen / killed / let loose in the forest around my deed. I find out the day after as I log in and notice all 25 animals missing. I work all day along with a few friends to re-build my pens on-deed so that they can not be broken into any more and hopefully prevent any more damage from happening. I’m also accused of altering logs, even though in my 6 years of writing for this blog and about various MMOs and after being incredibly involved with every single community I’ve joined, I’ve NEVER been accused of this before.

[14:55:27] <Zeno> you have every motivation for faking them

The GMs finally get involved, and the clear cutting stops, but it’s a grey area, and they (the griefers) are within their rights to cut down whatever they want. I receive more tells from random members of their village, either checking to see if I am online, or where I am, or what I am up to. I keep putting them on ignore. They put all of my characters on their KOS list, which I don’t mind because I have absolutely no intention of going to their deed, they’ve also put the neighbours on KOS, which is fine by all of them.

The best part is that I’ve played for months now without any issue until these people came along and I was made CA. I have sent in all my logs and proof that they’re trying to intimidate and causing distress, but because it’s all within the ‘rules of the game’ there’s nothing anyone can do. It’s caused me to want to just stop playing, which is a shame because I really enjoy Wurm. There are even PVP servers set up for this, which is where these players came from. My best bet (at this moment) is to hope they simply go away and get bored again in time. In the mean time, my stuff is all deeded, and secured. They can cut down the entire forest that I’ve planted, but my little tiny area of land is safe for now.

It took me approximately 8 hours on two accounts to fix up the cut down trees, but it got done. Many thanks to those who helped out. I won’t be re-planting any time soon because I know it will just get chopped down again, but it’s a start. Honestly, I just wish more could be done. It’s been a very frustrating two weeks in game.