The Great Adventure (Part II) #WurmOnline

It is 10:17:53 on day of Awakening in week 2 of the starfall of Fires in the year of 1021.

The forest is not kind today. For hours I was trapped inside my meager pen, avoiding the smoking lava fiends that chased me from the mountains. My own fault I suppose, as I was poking around their homes. It is hard to resist the lure of an open mine. The lava fiends were not the only dangers out there. Mountain lions, wild cats, and even a young troll wandered past. I don’t recall ever seeing a troll back home, but Arysh assures me they are not as rare as we think they are.

Speaking of my dear sister, she came to visit and brought me a few home cooked meals as well as some sprouts to help plant around my temporary home. She knows my gardeners thumb is not nearly as green as hers, in fact I mangled some roots so bad the day before that it’s a wonder we’re related at all.

Progress was made, at least. In an effort to affect as little of the natural surroundings as possible I’ve decided to be content with my small home, a food storage bin, and my forge. The broken down remains of the forge were already here long before I and have proven to be quite valuable. I fashioned myself a new file so that I could work on a large cart for hauling, as well as a butcher knife. I can’t have all that precious meat going to waste after all.

Things are not completely silent here, and I doubt they are anywhere. Deep within my mountain I can hear the clang of pickaxes reverberating off of the walls, as well as the gentle hiss hiss of the lava fiends who call it home. I must remember I am a guest in this little sanctuary, and treat it as such.

Hopefully Arysh comes by with another load of meals today, and if I’m lucky, more sprouts. As long as that troll wandering around leaves her alone…

 

The Great Adventure (Part I) #WurmOnline

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Arysh looked at Stargrace, wrinkling her nose as she stuffed 10 large nails into a backpack.

“Yes for the millionth time, I am sure!” Stargrace giggled and playfully tapped her sister on the shoulder. The decision had not been an easy one, Stargrace and Arysh had been together for as long as either girl could remember, even if they were not true sisters.

“Explain to me why again. Why on earth would you want to leave what we have here and go wandering through the woods!” It was something Arysh could just not understand. The priest of Fo loved adventure as much as the next wurmian but she also enjoyed her nice comfortable pinewood bed, and a roaring fire in the oven to take the chill out of her bones at the end of the day.

“There’s no adventure here! Come on now, we barely see two young brown bears a day, if we’re lucky a wolf.”

“You know Moumix has seen a troll not far from here….” Arysh shivered.

“He was probably seeing things. You know how he is.” Stargrace grinned. “Anyhow, I shall not be gone long. Warriorheart will keep me company, and I’ll write about my adventures every day.”

“You know I’ll support you what ever you decide to do, but I still think you’re crazy.”

“It’s just something I must do, sister. Trust me I’ll be alright.”

With that, Stargrace strapped on her backpack, and started leading her new foal to whatever adventures awaited her. Getting started would not be easy. She had packed only the basics of survival, a few nails so she could set up a home without having to look for iron right away, a frying pan, two eggs from the hen that had been recently laid, some sheets, and a handful of tools. She also packed away two potatoes and onions, it would do her no good if she wandered off only to starve.

As she walked the well-worn path from Fippy’s Keep she ran into problems almost immediately. The fog was so thick she could barely see three feet in front of her, and Warriorheart stumbled down the cobble road, raising such a clatter that creatures from all around poked their nose out to take a bite. She limped through the woods, using up her meager supply of cotton rags almost right away. Taking refuge in Jesse’s house she planned out her next move which was to climb up a nearby hill and scout along the top. She wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but she would know when she found it.

 

Ding Level 80! Instantly. You Win. #WurmOnline #WoW

I couldn’t help but give a little gasp of surprise yesterday (not in a good way). Reading my RSS I discovered that Blizzard has revamped their ‘resurrection’ scroll, you know the item you could send out to recruit your friends to the game. This time 300% experience was not enough, they had to allow those people to instantly move one character to level 80.

Really?

Is that what it has come down to? I don’t want to hear ‘well it’s world of warcraft, what sort of people did you think were playing!’ – because I play the game, and I’ve never in all my time gaming wanted anything like that. What happened to games being about hours of enjoyment and working on a character instead of all of this instant gratification that players seem to be demanding.

It left me feeling incredibly out of the loop, especially with my latest Wurm adventures. I have two premium characters (the cost is so wonderful that I have no issues with this) and I decided that “city” life such as it were, was too ‘easy’ for one of my characters. I packed up her belongings and set out in search of adventure. I found it, too. I’ll be writing about that in a separate post as I didn’t want it cluttered by the rest of the negativity that I’ve mentioned here.

What are your thoughts on instantly leveling up a character? I realize that everyone is entitled to their own method of game play, and it certainly doesn’t affect my way (except there will be a nice influx of people who have no idea how to play a level 80 character) but honestly it’s a method that I can’t even grasp because it’s so far beyond my own realm of personal enjoyment. It honestly baffles me.

 

Rescue Mission #WurmOnline

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.

Glorious Days #WurmOnline

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!