User:Sefet/abitd

A Blog in the Desert

A little bit about me first.

I played Tale 1 from Beta to a few months in. Can't even remember what my character's name was those days. Eventually quit when it got boring as hell. Played Tale 2 only through the 24 hour trial halfway in-- not having access to metals was too much of a stumbling block. Tale 3, I played from startup for a few months in, when a bad marriage choice ended in my camp getting wiped. (And no, I'm not going further on that. What's past is past.) Anyway, back during Tale 3, I started a daily e-mail to a friend of mine who tried the game and liked it a little, just not enough to pay for it. Over time, these e-mails became known as 'The Daily Desert'. I retained the tradition once Tale 4 began. So a lot of the information and mis-information (see below) comes as no surprise to veteran players. Bear in mind my target audience does not actively play.

Anyway, I know a lot of the information in my blog is wrong...now. That's the benefit of hindsight. At the time, most of my choices make perfect logical sense. Also, a disclaimer. I reserve the right to be wrong about people, too. So if you see your name here and it is in less than a positive light... well, don't be such a jackass next time. Sefet is a role-played character most of the time, but there's a solid chunk of my personality in there.

I'm not a perfect person, nor do I claim to be. I know this and I will occasionally indulge in petty activities.

For now I raise my glass to friends and enemies I have known, both present and absent. I could not have done it without you. Well.. actually, I could've, but it wouldn't have been anywhere nearly as interesting. That's what matters, eh? It's all about the journey.

Actually, part of that last is an absolute lie. There's no way I could've accomplished what I have without the support of my friends. Rabble, AlexisBelle, Lilac, Robare, and so very many others.

And finally, yeah...I know this is long. It's very long. In June 2009 it was longer than Stephen King's The Shining. As of September 2nd, it was over 92,000 words long, mostly involving Raeli tiles. You have been warned.

Finally, for those who are curious, if there are gaps, I didn't stop writing-- I just don't believe in giving my competitors too much knowledge of my activities. Updates will sometimes come in chunks, as warranted by general paranoia. :)

The Daily Desert – Heralding Sefet's Triumphant Return to Egypt!

Leading Up to Day 1

December '08: Let the Games Begin!

January '09

February '09

March '09

April '09

May '09

June '09

July '09

August '09

September '09

October '09

10/01/09

Not much going on. It’s a quiet week. I can’t test for beacons, so I’m spending my time making materials for Pyro. Being flush with acid has its benefits!

Received a massive surprise when I checked the calendar—there was a ballot being held! It was the first in months. I hurried to the voting booth by the house to see what miserable “I Want Your Pony” laws were up for consideration. There was “anyone can harvest flax 5 days old”, “anyone can claim the stuff of people who get banned immediately”, the “I can claim your stuff in one month instead of two” from Tale 3, and a scary law letting people salvage other people’s mines that haven’t been worked in 45 days.

The three that weren’t directly IWYP laws were a law forcing all containers to be publicly viewable, Rabble’s resin information law (it rats out people who don’t re-nick trees after gathering resin), and my own expansion of Demi-Pharaoh powers act!

Basically, if my law were to pass (and I doubt it will), it lets DPs tear down most player built structures outside of compounds. Ostensibly, this will be used to clean out trash left by long absent players.

No sooner had Mandisa and I voted, but the server crashed. Getting back on this morning, I noted that we had been rolled back and our votes no longer counted. Quickly corrected that.

Also, it appears as though Mandisa is a pirate captain (again). I’ll need to get that ship built tonight!

10/02/09

The vote went pretty much as I expected: my bill failed, having only garnered a third of the voter’s support. The big winner was ‘flax abandonment’, so all those flax fences will be going away soon.

My next law is strictly roleplay/plot, so I know it won’t pass, but I like to get people talking. The “Preservation of Bloodline” law forces the eldest son of the Pharaoh to marry BooBoo, who has been stalking him since the beginning of the Tale, and neither may divorce from the union. It only took 34 signatures to get my last effort on the ballot. I’ll need to start pushing the new one at public events.

More saltpeter and salts made and a hundred squat canary stars joined my growing pyro stockpile. I still haven’t decided on a solid design, so right now I’m just amassing stars and gunpowder so I can tinker in earnest next week.

Mandisa’s pirate group accepted an “equal” share, which was weighted towards Mandisa at one other player’s expense. I doubt it will be anywhere near enough to get a pass, but it’ll scootch her a little closer along.

10/05/09 Smoke on the warbler, I fire it in the sky

The weekend found me doing a few odds and ends: resupplying the sulfur stock, knocking out a few hundred boards, gathering things that needed gathering, and so forth and so on. Finally fed the silkworms a ton of thistles I’d been sitting on, so they should be good for another 20 cloth worth soon.

Out of the blue, we received notification that they had finally implemented warehouse basements, only five and a half months after the research was completed. Although I’m not cramped for space now that I have a “medium house”, it is nice to know I have the option to upgrade my primary storage to up to quadruple capacity.

The other major announcement was the release of a new Test: The Test of Flight! I happily checked out the requirements for the launcher: a few hundred treated boards, a chunk of steel wire, raeli tiles, some other odds and ends, and a piece of silk. Easy!

The way it works is you build a launcher, load it with gliders that look like birds, configure how you want them to fly using what may be the most cryptic interface known to man and people judge how they think it looks.

After a bit, I had a launcher up by the chariot. I clicked “launch” and shot a bird straight into the side of a guild hall. Hmm... fortunately gliders can be launched an infinite number of times. After a bit of fiddling, I fired it out over the chariot and I learned a few things.

I learned they don’t soar into the air like I thought they would. They kind of ‘hug’ the ground at a preset altitude you can tweak. I also discovered if they slam into the ground they don’t come back out. Finally, I discovered that without a cool smoke trail, they look... not as good as ones with smoke trails.

For the price of 100 gunpowder, I upgraded my birdie to add smoke. A white trail followed the bird as it looped and soared around the area, terrorizing a couple of aspiring acrobats. I had enough silk and wire to make a couple more birds and did so.

The white smoke was well and good, but I needed colors! I found the upgrade to colored smoke and stopped short at the cost: 7 salts of each of the 15 metals. I had some of those from pyro stockpiling, but I’d never held strontium, platinum, or lithium. Most of the rest of them I had on hand, but in a non-dissolved state. I flushed the acid baths and started up batches of what I could.

I swung by Rabble’s camp and was able to get lithium and strontium, but was (and am!) still shy of the platinum. I put in a Goods order, but I’m not overly hopeful for a speedy transaction. With some luck, I’ll be able to complete the trade this week. That’ll let me spruce up my launcher with colors and a few more birds by the weekend. Like all Art projects, I’ll fail miserably, but I want to at least give it a passable effort!

10/06/09

Discovered that the week’s beacon activity had been discovered (drink a glass of wine), so I made it my primary goal to get a bit closer to passing the Test while I could. Announcing on worship world that I had “a bottle of wine, a ton of gems, and a willingness to travel”, I soon had a couple of partners for a beacon up in Sinai.

Met up with Kemnesh and Alciphron, both likable people, and we hoisted a glass and waited. After only a few minutes, we got our first beacon. Kemnesh ran us through the ritual combinations quickly and everyone agreed to do another. I brought over Mandisa and within twenty minutes, we had summoned another beacon. It went extremely well (two to go!) and, as a bonus, Kemnesh gave me the platinum I needed for the colored smoke upgrade to my bird launcher.

I headed back down to SACFAR and made more potash and set the kettles so the next users could make acid if they wanted to. Finally returning home, I set all of the remaining needed metals to dissolving. Once that was done, it was back over to the gliderport. Upgrade completed!

All that remained was a couple of hours of tweaking, firing, tweaking, firing, and eventually coming up with a design that looked decent. I doubt it will pass, but the looping birds make me happy.

That’s got to count for something.

10/08/09

Played around with pyro designs. I’m torn between a freeform explosion type (the tequila sunrise boomer that beat me last time was one of these) or a theme. I’ve got two good “theme” ideas and I’ll likely work out both in the coming weeks.

Cranked out another hundred silver stars, rotted more dung and made 1500 gunpowder. Whew.

Picked up the silk I had made and I’m now sitting on a small stockpile, which will be good when Festivals gets unlocked. I’m looking forward to that Test. It’s sure to be a monster resource-sucker.

As expected, I passed the Principles of Flight and hit level 38. I think the only skill left in game (Nav 7) comes available at level 40, but is presently unattainable.

10/12/09

More sap gathered and more saltpeter made. Slow going, but I’ll get there.

Quite a bit of drama over the weekend came from a new player who built a swastika-shaped compound near Jewish players. The player, obviously a young American, wanted to ‘make an in-your-face’ statement. That statement apparently was that he was an idiot. At some point, the trial player/instigator, Aladdin, paid for his subscription. At any rate, two good players quit over it: Kastou and Asnath (they lived just a country mile down the road from the ‘Plex). Apparently, this specific thing happens once a Telling.

A significant portion of the player base blames Teppy for not banning a player who is in clear violation of the Terms of Conduct, Rules of Engagement, Conditions of Whathaveyou, or whatever. Honestly, I can’t imagine a more botched reaction.

Teppy maintains a hands off approach, because we’re supposed to be self-policing ‘anti-social’ behavior. Not a single DP banned the person or delivered an ultimatum of “change it and apologize publicly or you’re banned” or anything along those lines. A petition to have the compound removed started circulating, but I don’t know how fast it will go through our legal channels. At the time he quit, Kastou was a finalist for DP election and would’ve been able to ban the asshat himself.

In other news, the Test of Backstabbing Friends and Making Them Ragequit got released, except they called it The Test of the Covered Cartouche. Cartouche plays out like a season of “Survivor: Egypt”. Basically, you’re put in a group with 11 other people (I know...not 6 others. I have to wonder sometimes) and there’s alternating rounds of building and voting, after building an expensive ‘voting booth’.

Each building round the person who builds the smallest cartouche gets eliminated. Each voting round, well...that works like you expect. The last three survivors win tickets to participate in a Round 2. The last 3 in a Round 2 challenge pass the Test itself.

That would all be well and good, but once again we’re stymied because the Test unlock requires something we don’t have yet (some sort of plant part).