User:Sefet/January2009

01/02/09 – (It feels just like) I’m workin’ on makin’ glass

Spent a good chunk of time getting my glass station operational over the holiday. Now that the ‘Plex has expanded, I really didn’t like where the glazier’s bench was located and seeing as how I’m going to need two of them (one for soda glass, the other for normal glass), I went ahead and built a new one off to the side behind the mason’s bench and made a note to tear down the other at some point.

Soda glass requires lime (derived from cooking limestone in a fire pit), soda (an uncommon pull when harvesting limestone), and a lot of sand mixed at extremely high temperatures. Benches require a ‘reserve’ of 19 glass before you can make anything at all, so it’s easy to think of the first glass product as costing ’20 glass’ and never, never, never empty out the bench. That first glass was stupidly expensive, but the bench is now operational.

I celebrated by making a couple of glass rods and a few glass blades. In short order, I’m wielding a glass knife and a glass scythe and promptly begin cutting the lawn. It must’ve been somewhat unruly because I was able to process close to 2000 straw before becoming bored with it. Still haven’t gotten rhythmic strength to increase, but that’s ok. I’ve given up on camels: four sheep pens are very productive for leather generation and I’m now sitting on a stockpile. Thousands of straw for me are better served as bricks than camel feed.

Found a guy Zezima (Zima, zooma, Zuul...something like that) who wanted to trade lead for leather—we came to a mutually agreed price, but the deal never happened. He was in ‘the middle of a run’ and I asked him to let me know when a good time was, but he never did and several hours later, he closed the chat tab. Weird, but such is life. Maybe I’ll have better luck in a few more days. The lead isn’t ‘must have to live’, but it’ll make harvesting limestone more tolerable—particularly since I’ll be cranking out more glasswork soon and Mandisa will be building an Empty Hand puzzle at some point.

Visited another acroline or two, but still haven’t gotten beyond 2 moves yet. Marie was mystified at the number of people acroing, but it makes sense in a fashion. Technology is at pretty much a standstill as silver still hasn’t been discovered and Acrobat and Obelisk are the only two Tests that can really be worked on right now. The choice for many is to pursue Acro, dowse for silver, or stockpile resources.

Speaking of, I’ve begun processing the sheep poop into saltpeter, and in turn fertilizing date trees to gather dates. Dates are harvestable about an hour and a half real-time after a tree is fertilized and a random number are given—I think I’m up to 60-something. They will be useful in cooking or in Towers, if I choose to do that Test or as trade if I don’t. Either way, the tubs are going to be busy for a while. (I built a sturdy tub to supplement the basic one.)

I should probably knock out some more pulleys and go looking for more places for gem mines. Sapphires and emeralds would be good.

I’ve just a few miscellaneous restocking tasks to do otherwise: need a lot of rope, a little canvas, and more papyrus and limestone.

Finally, I built a big box to stash all of the ‘stuff’. Constructed a warehouse adjacent to the ‘Plex. It will hold 25k worth of items, so I’m nowhere near as cramped on storage space as I was.

01/05/09 Limestone Cowboy

This past weekend things are starting to kick into higher gear, in several regards.

Silver was finally discovered! This gives us...silver! Which honestly is nowhere near as useful as everyone makes it out to be. The big deal with silver is that it was holding back our tech tree... which now is growing quickly again. I jumped down to Meroe and planted a silver mine and harvested a little. For me, silver will eventually be made into mirrors.

For fun, I decided to skill up carving. This involves a bit of back and forthing between glassworking, carving, and forging. To get carving two, you have to whittle a bunch of pointy sticks and make a lot of tinder. You then get the ability to carve better stuff, which is used as tuition in conjunction with nearly a dozen glass blades....which meant more limestone gathering. I have terrible luck with flint and went through most of my stockpile getting the limestone for that harvested. Finally worked my way up to the limits of available technology with carving four, woo! Among the diverse things I can carve now, includes large crude handles for lead mallets... an essential tool in gathering limestone at 3x rate.

I had tried unsuccessfully to obtain lead through a variety of channels and with the Casting technology going on timer in Saqqarah, this became even more priority. Casting gives us the ability to build casting tables, which allows for more tools and components, such as iron cookpots for cooking, lead tools (chisels and mallet heads), and various other metalwork.

I bit the bullet and chose to either build a mine in Adn’s lead field blindly or take enough leather to repair the one public mine I knew of there, with a handful of grilled peppers just in case. Arriving in Adn, I surveyed the landscape... it would be a pure gamble. The leather cost to repair: about 32 leather. I cursed and clicked repair.

The mine itself was actually fun to work. With lead you pick the gem that has gone the longest without being odd color out and each click increases the ore gathered up to 7/pull. In no time at all I had a full load of lead and a few sapphires. That’s when I failed the Test of Greed. Hmm, I say. If I get enough for -2- furnace loads, I should have enough lead for the rest of the game. I had the peppers so I could carry an additional 500 weight for a few minutes per pepper. As I harvested, I counted and threw my inventory on the ground to make room for more ore. Bricks, boards, rope, dozens of jugs, small sapphires all wound up as trash on the landscape as I waddled back to the chariot stop with close to 1000 lead ore.

About an hour after Casting came off timer, I was the proud owner of a full set of lead limestone mining tools, an iron cookpot and a few miscellaneous things. I can’t say it made picking up another 350 limestone fun, but at least a lot more tolerable.

I’m making decent progress on Acrobatics: attended a couple of lines and picked up a number of moves, taking me to 9 moves total, giving me a permanent dexterity of 2. Fear my leet thread-toting skills.

We now can replicate cabbage and garlic seeds, the former by planting beside multiple wild herbs, the latter by planting after eating a meal from a kitchen. I’ve started looking for herbs and the veggie box at the Plex now boasts a small number of them. They will come in handy as cooking recipes are discovered or when we get hookahs.

The Test of the Prophet and Test of the Vigil both started Sunday afternoon. I got the insane idea over dinner that since weekly winners of competitive tests (like both of those) are on Sunday night and Vigil just opened, there wouldn’t be much competition: in fact, it might be possible to pass Vigil on the very nature of being the only person to hold one, even if it is just a handful of sacrifices. Reality slapped me in the face. In order to build a sacrificial bonfire, I’d need 1k firebricks...and 2.5k wood. Annoyed, I settled for making a Prophesy on some guy I’d never heard of before that would likely pass Obelisk Monday or Tuesday.

The punch line came when ‘Sunday passes’ (as the weekly score results are called) came: Teppy said there would be NO passes on Vigil this week, as there will be a one week minimum before scores will be counted. Apparently, there’s other people who think like me.

A Zen moment: "The sheep are looking healthy and frisky."

01/06/09 – Stop! Hammer time!

Logged on to find Advanced Blacksmithing was now available—which means the End of the Stone Age! I’m running to Saqqarah so often, I should invest in a commuter shuttle. Got the tech, returned to the ‘Plex, built an anvil, and fired up the casting box.

After a bit, I had a full complement of tools, save the tungsten chisel by virtue of not having been able to secure that metal. Bit of a pity really, as they can make very decent carpentry blades in less than a minute with a few whacks. I’ve found I can do much the same with a ball peen hammer, but it takes more work.

Went to make a hatchet, and discovered the sucker takes 20 iron. Le ouch. I immediately regretted making those medium gears on whimsy over the weekend. Fired up another batch of ore, scraped together my last metal and start smacking at making a hammer.

It was god-awful. I noted with some amusement that after 40 strikes, the sad lump of metal would’ve been better off if I had never hit it. I scrapped the project and tried again....and again. Fortunately, when you ‘scrap’ a project, it doesn’t use up the metal you’re working with. You get (x) number of strikes on your product, where (x) is determined by the type of metal used. Iron gives 180 hits. Finally, I ended up with a Quality 6600-something hatchet that I decreed ‘Good enough for now’, affectionately named it BarkReaver (mark 1), and gave it a quick workout. Nice.

Gathered more ore, ignored some acro line announcements, and began processing. I’m going to need a LOT of metal and charcoal to make my own kettles, as there aren’t any public ones. More on this in a bit.

Kotas popped in for a short visit, which always makes for a pleasant time. Instructed him in the Art of the Charcoal Hearth and brought him up to speed on various things implemented while on holiday hiatus. Started off his sheep pen right with a pair of lambs and a metric ton of onions. (He had left offline onions turned on for a couple of weeks, so the sheep should start getting hungry again around the time the sun cools.)

Did a quick papyrus run—I’m a firm believer that “You can’t have too much ash”. I want to fire and forget the next few batches in the fire pit. I say that, but I’m going to stoke anyway. 10 minutes worth of fire staring with 16 stokes increases lime output from 13 to 19, with a corresponding increase in ash generation. I’ve got enough for several runs now, it’s just a matter of finding the time. Making the kettles take priority and here’s why they suck:

1 kettle isn’t enough to process any quantity of ash into potash (or make weed killer or fertilizer) effectively. 2 or 3 is the bare minimum. Each takes: 30 iron and 24 copper. The copper is processed in a forge with pinch rollers (which would take another 40 iron to make, but there are some in the public works), and will cost about 70 charcoal to make. The iron pot is made in a Master’s Casting Box, which takes 600 charcoal to fire (eats 250 immediately and another 20 charcoal by the time a pot is done. Any leftover can be recovered when the fire is put out.) Given that each 15 units of metal costs 484 ore and 20 charcoal to process, you can see how this quickly becomes an expensive proposition.

Downloaded and started up Selune’s mining macro, because color games REALLY suck for the colorblind and in a bit I had a considerable chunk of copper ore mined. Moved it over to one of the iron mines and let it run for a bit—wound up with a huge quartz, which as I recollect is a happy thing, used for tuition for something or another.

Checked on the sheep before I left for work and dropped another pair into Kotas’ pen, which will effectively double his production. It’s a feel good feeling to sheep a friend.

01/07/09 – I read your true colors (shining through)

Started off the night with a fun little diversion: let’s make a shovel! Tackling the project with just a shaping mallet and a ball peen hammer, in a while I finished up a 7300-something shovel I affectionately call “DirtBane” (mark 1). It should serve nicely until I can afford the metal to play around some more. It seems to be fairly effective. Just ‘digging’ with it yields 5 debens of dirt, instead of the normal 1. According to last Tale’s wiki 6 people with grilled food can do a dig if they all have quality 8000 shovels. Good sign, but I think my next anvil project will be a better hatchet and those are pricey.

After playing with the shovel (“Holes! Look, I’m diggin’ HOLES!”), I began setting about the somewhat daunting task of mining and processing all of metal and charcoal I mentioned yesterday I’m going to need. In the middle of all of this, Teppy broadcasts he’s testing out a new mining system for colorblind people. I could hardly believe my fortune. I dumped my inventory into the Shed of Holding and jogged over to my local bane: the copper mine. Turns out with colorblind mode enabled, it displays the name of the color of the gem when you click on it. This is borderline miraculous. It takes more time than normally sighted people, due to all the clicking, reading, and thought processes involved, but my accuracy jumped from 20% to 80% or higher. The best part of it all is that it shows Teppy listens to his players.

I happily mined away and fired up enough ore to complete the metals I’m going to need, but in the process used up a chunk of my charcoal reserve. My plan was then to at least make the copper plates in the public works downtown, then come back home, finish the charcoal, then go back and do the pots. No such luck.

My brain snapped, I think. Instead, I went over to an acro party being held halfway between my house and the chariot stop. An hour and a half later, I’ve picket up a handful more facets, learned my 10th move (Asian Influence) and am late for bed. I did teach literally dozens of facets to a couple perfect students and gave several people new moves, so it was a decent line.

Logged after wandering back to the ‘Plex. New goal: kettles by the weekend. Heh.

01/08/09 – I’m coming up, so you better get this potash started...

A few miscellaneous activities today. Made a batch of charcoal, then hauled all of my metal and charcoal downtown to visit the public forges and Casting boxes. A half hour later, I skipped back home, hundreds of charcoal lighter and ready to build! Assembled two iron kettles and another glazier’s bench (this one will house ‘normal’ glass production).

I then turned my attention to converting some ash to potash for this weekend’s glasswork. As I poked and stoked, I reflected that I’m almost ready to call in for my developer camp decoration. I’m thinking a fountain by Lake Sefet, a small path leading up to the front door, some more foliage around the place (including some brilliant blue plants) and possibly altars or something snazzy near the front porch.

I’ve been using a week-and-a-half old pic of the ‘Plex as my desktop background and have had a number of people ask questions. May even wind up recruiting a person eventually. *grin*

Tried my hand at making a better hatchet on the anvil, but I’m going to need more practice it seems. The other option, of course, is to knock out a few ‘ok’ hatchets and sell them at or a little above cost.

Finally, I attended a dig up in Adn—very productive, yielding 5 medium stones and nearly 3 dozen cuttable stones for each of the 15 participants. I could definitely tell a difference using DirtBane (mark 1). I should probably take a couple of hours this weekend and just practice with the anvil.

Hmmm...I’m going to need more ore and charcoal.

01/09/09 – It’s my potash and I’ll cry if I want to

Played on the anvil a bit more and I’m getting better. Knocked out a quality 7300+ hatchet, named BarkReaver (Mark 2) and gave it a whirl. This one will occasionally yield 3x wood harvest on trees, which makes it a very nice step up from the last. As I understand it, 8k will give me a consistent 3x, so that may be my ‘goal’ hatchet. Turns out I’m doing better now than many ever do on an anvil, so smithing could be a trade for me if I keep working at it.

Stoked a couple of fires a few times with 100 limestone and papyrus in each. Five stokes seems to give an ‘ok’ yield without driving me nuts staring at the flames waiting for them to turn white once every 40 seconds or so (the only time you should stoke). Cooked the resultant ash into potash and turned my attentions to the second bench I had made. Time to bite the bullet and start sheet glass.

Sheet glass, as you may recollect, is a pain (seriously, no pun intended). It takes 2 minutes to fire each one, the bench will require charcoal during that time, and there is a nasty likelihood you will do everything right and still break the glass at the end, losing all your materials. Sheet glass fabrication works like stone blade fabrication with a 1-7 ranking. At rank 7, you never fail (and get the option to make mirrors once we have silver powder).

I had enough lime and potash to fill the reserve in the new bench and noted with some interest that it is the most temperature-stable bench I’ve ever worked with. For the uninitiated, benches take very little charcoal to get up to a workable temperature. New glass has to be made at 3200+ degrees, but can only be worked while the temperature is between 1600-2400 degrees. If the temperature goes outside that range, your project is ruined. Every 10 seconds there is a temperature fluctuation. Adding charcoal boosts the temperature for about 60 seconds, with an amount that is consistent for each bench (example: the first bench raises 7.5 degrees per 10 seconds, this one is 8.5 or so). It will then remain stable for a half a minute, then begin dropping temperature by a chunk every 10 seconds by an amount that is, again, determined when the bench was made. This particular bench only loses about 40 degrees during a production cycle, so it is a dream come true for glass working. As long as I keep half an eye on it, I won’t lose any materials due to screwing up the temperature.

That being said, after filling the 19 deben reserve, I had six debens of glass leftover to begin my expensive trek to perfect sheet glass skill. Six debens of glass later, I was still 1/7 in my skill and only a single piece of sheet glass survived the manufacturing process. Last time it took me about 18 pieces to get to 7/7. I think it is going to be worse this time... much worse.

1/12/09 -- Funky Cold Cicada

Picked up where I left off with glassmaking for a bit and after I broke the first two pieces without a skill up, I began to feel the frustration. Then, I hit a streak of luck! The next eight pieces all came out fine, with two exceptions...both of which were skill ups. Moved over to the soda glass bench to work while I boiled away more ash and stoked up more lime. Finished making the twenty glass rods needed for Navigation 2 tuition.

I’ve been waffling between two different projects for the short term: a paint shop or a fleet furnace (this extracts mercury from red sand). The former requires a LOT of glass, the latter, a ton of resources and forty small diamonds. I went ahead and started gathering resources for a lot of glass: hundreds of limestone and a good chunk of ash.

Fortunately, distractions abound in the form of Tests: Marriage and Cicadas were both released over the weekend. Passed the Principles of Marriage and married Mandisa. She’s very sweet, you see. I’ll never pass the Test of Marriage, which requires both spouses to pass a number of Tests, but that’s ok: I’m not pursuing Harmony this Tale.

Passed Principles of the Vigil with a sacrifice of 409 thread. (They were real fine, my 409.) When Sunday passes came along, the scores were already 200k+, but that’s ok: I’m not pursuing Worship this Tale either.

The first Round of Demi-Pharaoh started and my group is the Usual Gang of Idiots. I can almost categorize people for these as follows: (a) only signed up to pass Principles (b) didn’t have anything better to do (c) doesn’t speak or understand English (d) The Serious Candidate (usually a researcher this early in the tale) and (e) signed up, but never shows up. In theory, everyone should just vote ‘d’ and be done with it, but instead it pans out like this: (a) will vote for themselves and there’s a 50% chance they’ll flip at the last minute (b) Is actually the ‘Kingmaker’. They will question each ‘d’, then eventually get votes themselves from at least one other person because of their ‘insight’. (By this logic, reporters should be running our government) (c) will generally either vote for themselves or side with the majority (d) answers questions, then looks shocked when people don’t like the answers and when they lose at the end of the round, congratulate the winner and note that this obviously wasn’t ‘their’ time, but will look forward to the next run.

I usually play (b) for fun, but, at heart, I’m strictly (a). For a change of pace, I decided to see if I could pull off (d). If I do say so myself, I sounded like a very capable politician when questioned, sensitive to the needs of the people, with definite goals and ideas for the office. This, of course, meant that one of our resident (b)s got the critical vote from the other (b) instead. From our group, with a day and change left, two (a)s voted for themselves, a (c) is holding her vote, a (b) voted for the other (b) (the other (b) will not vote for themselves until the last minute, because it would be both presumptive and crass to do so), one (e)....and me, who playing as a (d), can’t vote until the last minute for the same reason. I severely doubt I’ll pass Kingmaker, as it is just a Harmony Test disguised as Leadership one...but that’s ok: I’m not pursuing Leadership this Tale either.

The song of the cicada came out and the race was on! Ran a couple of hours when the Test was released and got a cicada. I got so happy when I heard that chirp that indicated a cicada was nearby, I must’ve grinned my damn fool head off. After marriage and the subsequent “free teleport to spouse”, I can range far and wide in my bug hunts without squandering Travel Time. Ran around for a few more hours and came up with five bugs total. This is a good start, and that’s ok: I –am- pursuing Body this Tale.

Speaking of, Shabbat Ab hosted the Mother of All Acrolines: it lasted 26 hours before it finally died. I tried somewhat unsuccessfully to go through it several times, but real life takes priority. Acro’d a little and managed to win my 11th move: Wide Squats.

In other news, the newest ballots came out, and my Raeli Antimonopolization Act of Year One was on it! This tickled me pink, and a reporter from P! gave me an interview to help promote the law as it comes to a vote. E!, of course, spent their time griping that all of the proposed laws suck, but we’ll see. (And honestly, if my vote doesn’t pass, that’s ok too....as my ’06 blog will attest, I can knock out Raeli Ovens with the best of them) Whether it passes or not, I’ll be discarding the Bill from my inventory and writing something new in the next couple of days, but I haven’t decided what.

Silver was discovered in SA, right at the Saqqarah border, so I built and guilded a mine.

Turned my attention back to construction. The area by the field of bees is flax-friendly, so I worked to restock the rope supply. In the process, I churned out a couple dozen linen. There was a trader who was wanting to sell diamonds for linen, so I chatted him up to get the price. 1.5 linen per small diamond. I thanked him for his time and went back to work. Tried unsuccessfully to make a better hatchet while I converted more ash, and got a notice there was a guy, Marcus, with diamonds for trade in return for glassmaking supplies. That I had in spades. I chatted him up and we struck a deal. 40 smalls in return for 20 potash, 10 ash, and 200 limestone. Looks like I was going to make a fleet furnace after all.

Met up in Saqqarah to complete the trade, then back home to make 600 firebricks and 30 cut stones for the furnace itself. It’s also going to require an iron pot, so that’s ANOTHER trip to the Master’s Casting Box downtown with a billion charcoal. I was running low on that, so I knocked out another 400 or so charcoal. When I go down there this time, I’d like to make 4 pots at once. That’ll cover both this project as well as a future upgrade to my eventual paint shop. In a worst case scenario, they are also great trade objects.

Checking inventory, I was going to need another two loads of iron before I could afford to make four pots at once, but before I could get halfway to the mine, Teppy announced he was throwing away any unclaimed Christmas presents on Monday. Crap. Mandisa never picked hers up.

Logged in as her and began running. Only two of hers were ever found and one was in Heaven’s Gate: the most isolated corner of Egypt with no chariot stop. In the end, I recovered both gifts of pepper seeds and chocolates and warped back home to end by the sheep pens.

Tonight’s goal: get the furnace online, get some red sand, and start that puppy up!

01/13/09 RAMA-lama-ding-dong!

Very brief time in Desert, due to personal complications. Was able to meet my goal of getting the furnace going so tonight I’ll have my first quicksilver! With another 900 or so units of red sand in the shed, I don’t expect to need to get more from Meroe for quite some time. As expected, I also have spare pots for the eventual Mass Production of Color upgrade to my non-existent paint shop.

Added a couple of basic tubs to the ‘plex to start cranking out Saltpeter (whenever I happen to remember to process)—with 5 sheep pens, including Will’s, it isn’t like dung is in short supply.

The past day or so, there has been considerable buzz on the drama board (E!) regarding the laws on the ballot and the fact “they all suck”. The three laws that draw the most ire seem to be: an otherwise innocuous clean-up law that unintentionally allows Improved Brick Racks to be salvaged if unused for a week, Proposition Eight (a law that ONLY allows marriage between two men), and my own Raeli Anti-monopolization Act of Year One (RAMA, as it is now known as).

Honestly, I’m not expecting RAMA to pass—my personal goal was met in getting it to the ballot and forcing people to discuss things of this nature BEFORE it becomes an issue. Amusingly enough, RAMA has had the following accusations thrown against it: it’s a communist law, it rewards the people who are rich IRL because they have multiple accounts, it will prevent technology from being unlocked, it doesn’t say ‘player’, it doesn’t address the most pressing matters facing Egypt right now (how could it? I’ve been soliciting votes for nearly a month), and it causes cancer. Well, not the last, but you get the idea.

I expect it to get about a 24% approval on final votes (narrowly beating out prop 8 with 17% approval), due to slandering from Big Raeli industry. Possibly ‘the tile cartel’... either makes me giggle.

Our laws typically break down as follows:

I want a pony. (Feature requests) I want YOUR pony. (Stuff is made public, or tear-down-and give me stuff laws. This is always the first type to pass) You can’t have a pony (Restrictions on whatever, serious or otherwise...see Prop 8) OMG! PONIES! (The truly ludicrous laws—rainbow out of butt laws that people pass around as jokes)

RAMA is a little bit of a variation. It is a ‘You can’t have ALL the ponies.’ law, or ‘Everyone should have a chance to own their own pony.’

We’ll see how it goes. There’s one day left on the ballot.

01/14/09 – Don’t Rock the Vote, baby

Began the conversion of Fort Kotas-by-the-Sea into a Raeli Workshop. The technology may be a month away or longer, but there’s no sense in not stockpiling resources for a few ovens! Tore down the carpentry shop and a kiln, due to the size of the Master’s Casting Box I installed (no more running to the heart of downtown with 600+ charcoal). Even with that, I had to expand the building a couple of squares to accommodate the construction. Installed nine or so true kilns for the Mass Production of Firebricks (each oven will take 4k). Fort K-b-t-S will eventually also house the gearbox design table and likely a few improved brick racks as well. I’ll continue to manufacture all of the glassworks at the Sefetplex.

Ran around looking for cicadas, picking the odd one up here and there, finally getting enough for a cage, but will need to place it tonight—I have an odd mental defect that keeps me from remembering to carry linen when I’m out and about, so I couldn’t place my cage when in the Heart of Nowhere. Along the way, I stopped by the Essence of Harmony and Passed the Principles of the Prophet. Also came across a wild beetle, furthering me in the Principles of Scarabs—apparently the five I found prior to starting the Test didn’t count towards ‘find a wild beetle’. I’m finding a lot of new types of mushrooms to add to my pitiful collection... my herb/veggie/fungus chest is rapidly reaching the bursting point with all of the wonders I’ve discovered while wandering.

I mis-timed the ballots—they close tonight, so we’ll see how those go.

The first round of Demi-Pharaoh elections closed and they went almost as I expected them to. By the evening, 2 (a)s had voted for themselves, one of the 2 (b)s had voted for the other (b) and it came as no surprise when the other (b) voted for herself. The only thing that rubbed me the wrong way was that the (b) actually taunted me by saying she would not be giving me her vote, then added “maybe if I had asked a little differently”. Well, when the round started, Aiko (the b in question) asked “who are the people looking to advance?” and I responded that “I would appreciate the consideration to advancing to the next round.” I noted with some amusement she added to her /info a line she used during the round “Those who ask for power don’t deserve it.” (or words to that effect). A poor rationalization is better than no rationalization, I suppose.

The surprise came when the (c) cast her vote for the (b) that had no votes. She offered the explanation of “He was the only one who voted for someone else!” This was a bit of a relief. If she had voted for Aiko, my plans would’ve failed. The (e) never showed up and it left our score at 2 to 1 to 1 to 1, with myself the deciding vote: which is exactly how I wanted it. With ten seconds left in the round, I voted for one of the (a)s, forcing a tie for our group, meaning no one passed. The Test this time is NOT to become the DP...it is to guess the one who will be DP...and ensure your selection wins. Since it was obvious I wasn’t going to go to the next round (I’ll have to go back to being a b next time), my next best scenario was to prevent anyone from our group from advancing. Would I have done the same if Aiko hadn’t acted like a total prick? Maybe not. ;-)

Finally, Hated Saqqarah (still doesn’t have the nice ring of Hated Karnak) unlocked Advanced Metallurgy, so I picked up the tech—only to find that the building will require topaz, which I don’t have, and one of the iron pots I was holding in reserve for the paint shop. ARGH!

01/15/09 -- Lucky in the mines with topaz

Unsuccessfully hunted for cicadas, but dropped my cage in the middle of nowhere. I’m going to need more bugs to get a decent score for speed, but I’ve passed Principles if nothing else (level 15).

Spent some of my time fixing up the Plex and Ft. KbtS, destroying a mason’s bench and bullet furnace, adding another rock saw. I just don’t need a bench presently and will reconstruct if necessary. Kind of funny how buildings that were very expensive just a couple of weeks ago now seem cheap to replace.

Attended another dig. Incredible returns for an hour’s effort: 10 medium stones and 75 more cuttable stones. Put the new saw to work and started a few pulleys for fun. My secret confession: I like seeing how many things I can have running at once. Between 4 distaffs, the pottery wheel, a couple of rock saws and kettles and a few kilns, it looks like a miniature industrial complex with everything animated.

Unsuccessfully tried to get someone to come off some topaz, nor could I find a public topaz mine. I may not have the tin to make alloys yet, but I really wanted to finish the reactory. Finally, I took to the internets, read everyone’s Guild page on the wiki and found someone with a topaz mine fairly close to my camp, east near the Red Sea.

A few days ago, I had tried to drop a mine where no ore vein existed in a greedy attempt to get more rubies, but was met with a mine that did nothing. I had to tear it down (note to self: LEARN SALVAGE SKILLS). Other people have talked about sand mines—mines that did not sit on veins, yet they were able to extract gems freely. That’s when it hit me like a pound of firebricks: my failed mine was on grass, not sand. IDIOT!

With a Mining Kit (boards, bricks, pulleys, leather, rope) in hand, I dashed to the east and checked out the area around that Guild’s topaz mine. It looked like there was space a bit to the northeast...sitting on sand. It was a blind stab...you can’t douse for gems, only pray.

I built the mine. The fourth pull yielded a small topaz! Sefet would have his reactory!

01/16/09 *brick rolled*

Started off by mining the needed topaz for the reactory and finishing the construction. I decided I was going to need to fully upgrade my camp into a Raeli Oven producing factory and that was going to take a LOT of metal. Upgrading the student forge with a pair of pinch rollers and an extrusion plate to make metal sheeting and wire was going to cost...60 Iron and 40 Copper. Ouch. Add another 15 or so iron to make nails for a few brick racks for Ft. KbtS and I was looking at hours of mining and hundreds of charcoal in processing.

In the end, the student’s forge is now fully upgraded and Ft KbtS sports five Improved brick racks to complement its 11 kilns.

I decided to start cranking up firebrick production to see how well it all works. KbtS is incredible and the only limitation is a minor wood shortage, even with the bounty of trees nearby. It does show I’ll cap out at 12 kilns and 6 racks. Generated around 3500 firebricks out of the 4000 needed for the first Raeli.

Next up is more copper sheeting so I can add two more kettles. I’ll just have to replenish the iron pots later. Being able to convert a lot more ash at once is far more useful at the moment. I’ve shown I can knock out the firebricks—next is the Vast Quantities of Sheetglass.

Unsuccessfully looked for a tin mine. I’m going to have to go region to region looking for a public one. I really hate trading for metal.

A bit lonely around the ‘Plex lately. Mandisa is busy with her schooling, only popping in every now and then to feed greedy sheepies and Kotas is now on hiatus for his move. Even the chat channels are no longer abuzz with constant idle gossip: only the occasional discussion on recipes or trade requests. Drama levels are comparatively low at the moment.

01/19/09 – Cartouche this!

Friday night, I hunted unsuccessfully for a tin spot. I did find some more iron just north of UWorship and I placed a couple of mines there. The whole ‘lack of tin’ thing is starting to bug me. Bought two levels of salvage skills (finally), just in case I have to tear something down.

Finally got a hold of a public tungsten mine—the color game was hell, even with colorblind mode turned on. Finally got enough ore for two metal, made a wide chisel and gave it a try. Making carpentry blades is now cake. Knocked out a 6500 quality with close to zero effort.

Added a third kettle to the ‘Plex, increasing potash production by 50%.

Started off Saturday doing what I do best: glassworks. In short order I managed to break another eight or so sheets of glass, receive one skill up (now 4/7!), and enough sheet glass for the upcoming Raeli oven.

Due to my time cicada hunting, I’m falling a good bit behind on technology. I find that I have to keep reminding myself that I don’t have to keep up with the larger guilds, I’m –NOT- pursuing Architecture, and I simply don’t NEED to do things like drop 5 or 6 raelis the week the technology opens. I still have a compulsion that if a type of structure exists, I want to build it because.... well, just because. This will lead to my downfall, I’m sure.

I did a little unsuccessful cicada hunting to take a break. Point scores remain low....too low for the test to have been open a week. It occurs to me this is due to two reasons: safari isn’t open and most people won’t wander the desert for hours –just- to hunt cicadas and with technology continuing to be unlocked at a pace that can only be described as “breakneck”, many don’t want to fall behind the tech race.

Saqqarah (of course) opened masonry and the new hotness was concrete. This gave people access to the blaster furnace which is twice as efficient as the compression dealies. It requires both concrete (100 debens I think) as well as a lot of steel sheeting, meaning it will be a while until I can make one. Concrete or cement (I confuse the two), if I remember correctly, requires bauxite, gypsum, and gravel. The first two are found in digs on the east and west side of Egypt. Gravel is made from pounding medium stones to dust with sledgehammers. The lot is chucked into a clinker vat and a couple of people have to keep it stirred until it is ready. This will likely be something I’ll need to trade for.

Someone discovered that clay bricks can be made in improved brick racks now if you have masonry. There’s nothing that uses them currently, but it seems to be something to file away for later. Should I get masonry and start stockpiling them, I wonder?

People are playing with all of the new hotness, but I decided to take a little break and go cicada hunting and maybe get a speed point. A couple of unsuccessful hours later, my plans quickly began to unravel.

There’s an unexpected event notice: “Celebration of Isis (1” appeared on the calendar. One what, we didn’t know. The description wasn’t very helpful. “An annual event to celebrate Isis. Construct the largest Spire of the Sun to win”. The largest who of the what? It will start in an hour. OH GOD, WHAT IF IT TAKES CLAY BRICKS?!?!!?

I make my way to Saqqarah, dodge an acro line along the way, and pick up my ‘missing’ technologies: barley cultivation (I’ll expound another day) and masonry, the latter just as the Isis event begins. I’ve got the materials to build a small construction site on me and I check it out. It will only let me build a ‘size 1’ Sun Spire and it requires: a few small gems (emerald, sapphire, ruby, topaz), a little copper wire, and a sheetglass. Well....let’s see. I only have access to two of the gems, I’ve got a handful of copper, and the glass is ‘spoken for’. That was easy.

I headed back home and went through an acro line instead. Picked up my 12th move (+3 dex, baby!!!) and returned home. I don’t know quite what happened, but I think the part of my brain that knows there’s something that could be built that I’m not building began screaming at me and the next thing I know, I’m intently reading guild pages trying to find a place to blind drop an emerald mine.

Long story short, I get lucky....twice. I built a sand/emerald mine just a little walk south of my topaz mine and a sand/sapphire mine in Adn, just south of the lead patch. I carried supplies for two mines with me when I went to Adn (just in case). The pull rate for the sapphires was very disappointing, yielding only one gem for 75 tries. I tore down the mine to rebuild it and try for a better rate... only to find I had forgotten to pack enough boards for two mines and the equipment I salvaged from the previous mine left me a couple dozen shy. Grrr!

Mandisa to the rescue! A little woodplaning and one spousewarp later, the mine is back in action. Action being a relative term, as it was 150 pulls before the first gem popped out. Mined a few more gems out and returned both of us home.

Built the Size 1 spire next to the ol’ Obelisk. It looked like a tiny Jell-o mold. I checked it and it gave me the option to upgrade it to a larger size. Hmm...just 1 copper wire for a little bigger. I could do that. Hmm...just another sheetglass and a couple more gems to get a few more sizes up. Thus, it nickeled and dimed me until I had spent 4 or 5 glass and it was a pleasant size 42 (don’t panic!). It now looked like a large Jell-o mold. I decreed it ‘good enough for me’ and went back to hunting cicadas.

After a long dry spell, I hit cicada alley and picked up a number of bugs in rapid succession. Planted a second cage in a horrible, horrible spot (time constraints being what they are) and received my first speed point!

On Sunday, things continued breezing along. I spent most of the day falling farther behind the technology curve as advanced glassblowing (thermometers!) came off timer, the first greenhouses got built, and water mining came online. We are now just one technology from Raeli technology... gearboxes. I can only hope it’ll take them another couple of days. Many hours of cicada hunting yielded only a single cicada, but it was worth more than the last 4 I picked up combined.

Some bright spots:

My cartouche was one of the largest 49 in Egypt, yielding me a prize of 25 steel. Definitely worth the sheet glass investment. The Goods will be opening in ‘another day or two’. These guys are the traders that make soloing possible. It may mean the end to my resource shortfall. To cap things off, their headquarters will be halfway between me and the chariot stop. I couldn’t be happier. Neither of my cicada cages crumbled by Sunday night and I picked up my second speed point.

I ended the night harvesting a couple hundred papy. I’m going to need a lot of potash soon. No man should have to choose between glass and cicadas. ;-)

01/20/09 – I bless the trades down in Africa.......

I decided that tonight, I would have tin. Started things off by generating trade bait. Charcoal. Lots and lots of it. Generally everything industrial is powered by it and as my friend Kotas will attest, some people just suck at making it. In short order, I had generated a massive pile and began hawking my wares, offering it or leather (which I now have in abundance) for tin. Not even a nibble. I’m rather surprised by this, but note that most are now hording glass-making supplies, notably ash and potash.

Ok. I can do that too. Usually. Massively screwed up a load of lime and ash with an improper stoke that cost me an hour’s work. Sigh. A person advertises that they are looking to buy linen—something I have a good stockpile of. I send an inquiry to see if they have tin to trade. No response. I turned my attentions to other things to break the funk. Never, ever hunt cicadas when depressed. The endless empty quiet desert does little to improve things.

Then something positive happened! After a half hour, the person I chatted replied, apologized as she had AFK, and had access to tin. A quick negotiation session later, I had committed up to 25 linen at 2 tin each. For those keeping track at home, this is me cutting my throat to get a deal. Assuming she has access to a blast furnace in her region, 750 ore can be made into 48 metal in about 20 minutes. She advised me it’d be about an hour. With a lighter heart, I resumed my cicada hunting.

An hour later, she chats back the tin is too much of a pain and she’s just going to do the linen herself. Sigh. Still no cicadas. I knew I wasn’t going to get a speed point this night, but at least I could build up a better inventory or work towards a water mine or something instead.

I warped back home, fed the sheep (to my knife), and took a look at my ash supply. Virtually zip. Did a papy run and that always perks me up. There’s something just cathartic about picking those little yellow plants for me. Fished a little, played around with cooking – at some point I need to skill that up to make better dishes. I actually have a decent herb selection due to my forage-as-you-go wanderings.

There are times when things just go...right. While plucking papyrus, there were two adverts that piqued my interests and made my spirits soar.

The first was from a Marble Quarryer (Quarrier? Quarryman?) named Pascalito who was hawking his wares for cheap. Marble is used in several tuitions and structures, notably including the Pilgrim Shrine and the tuition to make it (more on this much later. For now, suffice it to say I really, really want one.) Marble is a pain in the butt to locate, pricey to build a quarry for, and requires 4 people working in tandem for a few minutes to harvest. Translation: this is something I cannot solo in my wildest fantasies and is usually so damn expensive as to make its procurement prohibitive. The cost? 16 linen for the three slabs that will pay for my Pilgrim Shrine Construction tuition. For me and my willingness to flax beyond all that is sane and holy, this is a very reasonable price. He takes my order and delivery should be the following day. He’s a European player, so I made a note to catch him as early as possible. (As luck would have it, he caught me this morning as I was logging in to do my morning sheep check and culling. The trade completed smoothly. I bookmarked his wiki User page and will be getting all my marble from him this Tale.)

The second came literally a minute after finalizing the deal with Pascalito. Shabbat Ab Ironworks is now open for business, offering metals, tools, smithed items for Reasonable Rates. Truth be told, the prices were what I’m willing to pay, and I negotiated 20 tin for 48 leather. Yes, it hurt a little inside, but I really need the tin and it should be enough to get steel operations up. Delivery would be most likely the following night. They are local, so that’ll make future trades more time-efficient.

I’m going to need to go on a limestone run in another day or two, but for now I was content to work the lime I had on hand and cranked out about 15 or so glass pipes without ruining any. I like running a bench while cooking ash down to potash. It makes the potash work effectively ‘background’ work that just takes a few clicks every couple of minutes. The pipes will eventually be used in the water mine or made into thermometers. A public glory hole (used in manufacturing thermometers and other advanced glassworks) was built over by the limestone pits, which is a bit of a relief. You do NOT want any sort of lag when working one and I was worried about the activity level around the ‘Plex.

Making the steel sheeting for the Raeli is going to be time consuming. Going by last time, it will take 300 steel sheeting. That means 100 steel getting processed, two at a time, for ten minutes a run. Net cost: 100 steel, 8 hours 20 minutes and 500 charcoal, plus 60 charcoal each time if the project is broken down in chunks.

01/21/09 – In the steel of the night

I had spent an idle moment during the day wondering if I would be pursuing cicadas or technology in the evening. Viticulture had been unlocked, so now grape lattice thingies (Vineyards, Sefet. They are called vineyards.) can be built and wines produced. One of my two tiny cicada cages had crumbled and that really decided it.

I took to the deep desert and continued a back and forth pattern, so that every inch would be covered. Nothing. In the midst of this, I receive notification from Eldar that my tin was ready for pickup! Huzzah! If I can’t have a cicada, perhaps Sefet can have steel?

Reluctant to return home just yet, I logged in as Mandisa, topped off the pens with the couple thousand of onions she was holding, and completed the deal. Returning home I gathered the iron, some charcoal, and a lot of towering palm resin and fired up the reactory. It sucked. A lot.

Disappointed, I logged back in as Sefet and continued hunting for a couple more unsuccessful hours. When I had just about given up hope and was literally seconds away from warping back home, a cicada chirp came calling from upon a high hill. Better than nothing! I nabbed the bug and it gave me motivation to press on for a few more bugless minutes. Muttering ‘good enough’, I returned home to work on alloys anew.

Crafting alloys is a new minigame that takes a LOT of practice to get right. The short version is you have to click around a series of grayish swirls that kind of follow your mouse when you click, trying not to get them to ‘stack up’ too soon. It has a hell of a learning curve, but at least you can ‘redo’ your attempt without it costing your 8 metal (7 iron, 1 tin for steel). Each redo costs a few charcoal and a resin. This adds up. I spent probably a couple hundred charcoal before I made a single steel. I scrapped it, deciding I can do better for the cost of 8 metal. A few more tries later, a much better success and 3 steel came as a result of fiddling with camera angles and experimental concepts. Hmm...3 steel resulting from what the game considered a 50% success. Good enough for me. I played around until I ran out of iron, discarding any attempt that gave less than 3 metal. I hit 5 metal returned once, and that was just a thing of beauty.

On occasion, I look back to my Tale 3 blog to see how things progressed from a tech and test standpoint. It turns out, we’re not that much farther along with tech than last time at around 5-6 weeks. The main difference is that last time a couple of alloys were broken and could not be manufactured. That held us back a bit. On the testing front, it would be a few more weeks before I began looking for my first cicadas and at this point I had only 5 acro moves. Interesting.

While bughunting, I googled ‘cicada cages’ to see if the cages we use were based on an existing design and I came across the following passage from Mimes, by Marcel Schwob, A. Lenalie:

Here, thou didst weave for me, for the first time, a cicada cage. There, in that thicket, thou madest captive for me one of the shrilling cicadas and placed it in my hair where it sang without ceasing. It was more beautiful than the golden ones of the Athenians of yore; for it was alive and sang. I would that once again I might have one. And Daphnis replied: - The cicada is silent at noon-hour when the wind pierces reddened spaces in the heart of the stubble, and the green-pointed hemlocks spread their white umbrels for coolness. Now they are asleep and I know not where to find one.

Freakin’ poetry, that is. Culled the sheep this morning and found my persistence paid off. Barely earned another speed point, putting me at 3/7 for cicadas.

01/22/09 – I’m hot for clinker

Very brief evening, but filled with much purpose....just not at first. I pretty much just want to check out how the sheep are doing, but log on to see a few minutes previously Malard was advertising concrete for sale. Concrete! That’s useful! I had been meaning to get a ton for a blast furnace, so a chat him up to see what he’s looking for. Gravel mostly, which I can make but don’t have time for, stuff, stuff, stuff...or linen! I immediately fixate on the linen and two chariot hops and 7 linen lighter I return home with a hundred debens. I’m on my way!

I checked the project requirements. Ouch, ouch, and ouch. The concrete, of course, 5 pulleys (which I have), 50 leather (easy), 100 boards, 6 crucibles (hmm...shouldn’t have torn down the mason’s bench), 10 glass pipes (well, I guess I can put off my water mine a bit longer), and 100 steel sheeting (oh dear Ra in heaven).

I didn’t have much time (Lost premiere!), but wanted to get the project done. I could rebuild the mason’s bench, but that would mean an hour knocking out the crucibles. Meanwhile, thanks to my previous alloying experiments, I had enough steel to make sheeting...at 10 minutes per 6 sheets. I had nearly half of it done. Ah ha.

Logged Mandisa and sent her to the public works with a sack of rocks. They have 5 benches there, along with about 20 carpentry shops to make boards. She can’t use forges, so I flipped back and forth between my spouse and myself keeping the steel sheeting coming. After ten minutes, it started getting tight for time and I didn’t want to spend another ten minutes waiting on a single crucible then it occurred to me: there were up to three crucibles in the old compression that might be salvaged when I tore it down. Well, I wasn’t going to need it anymore, so I pulled it down and was rewarded with all three of the crucibles. For the next hour I popped in every now and then to start more steel sheeting. I sighed softly as I loaded in the last of the sheeting...a full third of the Raeli oven now gone, in the interest of nearly doubling my metal output.

It was so worth it. 9 charcoal, 1000 ore without babysitting the device will yield 54 metal in 9 minutes. (For comparison, for about the same ore, the old one would’ve made 32 metal with 40 charcoal in 40 minutes.)

As a closing note, when I was at Malard’s I was stunned by a small grove of citrus trees. They come with Indonesian bees. I proclaimed that I was stunned at the rate tech was being unlocked. He gently chided me for not reading my level up notices. They are a skill available at my level, not a technology! I bought the skill just before bed, and see that each beehive/tree costs a dozen linen and a ton of clay. At least now I know why people are suddenly clamoring for the linen. It ain’t just for obelisks!

1/23/09 - Glass, glass baby (too cold!)

Made a few rounds of charcoal after wasting a ton in the reactory. I was led into a false sense of accomplishment when my first try yielded a 75% rate, with 5 steel output. From that point on, I simply failed at nearly attempt. Rather than burn up my remaining stockpile, I turned my attention to my glacier’s benches. I never got around to replacing the sheetglass needed for the Raeli, so now seemed as good as a time as any.

There’s quite a lot of projects that use glass, now including beetle terrariums, as entomology came off timer in Queen’s Retreat. Always nice to see Saqqarah beaten to the punch, even if QR rivals ‘Saq’ in the pain-in-the-ass-to-get-to department.

I’d left a large bit of glass in the benches to be heated and worked and I had a goodly supply of potash on hand, so I tried something a little more ‘exciting’ and ran both glacier’s benches at the same time: one working on sheetglass, the other on glass pipes.

Sheetglass continues to be an exercise in building character. Over the course of an hour, I lost 12 sheet glass, 11 due to uncontrollable failure based on skill level and one Sefet-based timing accident. I did get another skill up, to 5/7, so that was nice. Worked until both benches were down to the mandatory glass reserves.

My stockpile when all was said and done? 24 glass pipes (exactly enough for a water mine), 30 sheet glass (exactly enough for the Raeli oven AND a beetle terrarium). Dug up a hundred dirt and set a few linen aside in case I decide to build a terrarium over the weekend. If I make the water mine, I’m going to need a bit more material (large gear and copper strapping—and I’m strapped for copper as it is.)

Finished off the night by rounding up my firebrick count to an even 4k.

The chat channels were abuzz with discussions on territory claiming and how clay patches are already being ‘reserved’ for raelis by dumping compounds on top of them. People are freaking out nicely. “What if we made a law that made them all public?” “We need to make a law to keep people from reserving all of the clay patches!!!” “If only there was a law that controlled Raeli construction BEFORE we get the tech open in a couple of weeks!” (This was when I rolled my eyes.) Also, there’s an evil rumor that Teppy may change the building costs for ovens this time around. That would make me a sad Sefet.

01/26/09 -- Just another manic monkey

Kicked off the weekend in high gear, determined to get the Raeli as close to completion as possible, and work on side projects along the way. First order of business was to replace the steel and get as close as possible to the 100 needed for the sheeting. I had 9 measly debens of tin left and that wasn't going to get me far with my reactory experience. As luck would have it, I soon was able to employ an alloy maker named Zaniac who worked for 'whatever you think is fair'. I thought 6 linen was fair to make 9 batches, but he griped a little, so I upped the price to 9 linen and a couple of canvas. He noted that it was a low tip, but he'd do it. I suppressed my natural instinct to show him the error of his ways, and instead settled down to watch a self-proclaimed Master at work.

To be fair, he really was good. He had to restart a billion times, discarding any result that offered less than 5 steel on each crystallization, but within an hour he had returned somewhere around 57 debens of the impossible metal. I had watched him intently-- with some luck I'd be able to replicate some of the success at home with the batch still in the reactory. I left happy and if I had to employ his services again, I'd have no regret at bringing a larger tip. Cleared the metal at home after a dozen attempts, yielding 5 steel. Including my 'on hand' stockpile, I had some 83 steel now.

Next, it was about making the metal sheeting or at least a lot of it. Steel sheeting, as you recollect, takes a long time to manufacture in a single forge, so I carted the last of my charcoal down to the public works and fired up all four forges there. Being able to knock out 24 sheeting every 10 minutes took the task from 'arduous' to merely 'inconvenient'. While the forges pinched metal, I made a couple of batches of charcoal to supplement my almost non-existent supply. With 5/6ths of the sheeting completed, I traded for four thermometers (for expedience sake) and contacted Shabbat Ab Ironworks, who just started selling steel, to barter for the remaining 17.

I'm beginning to develop a very healthy respect for Eldar and shadeking, the proprietors of the Ironworks-- they are always friendly and professional. The steel cost me 400 wax and 18 cuttable stones and was ready the following day. I'm still going to need brass for smaller gear work and need to crank out the remaining sheets, but the bulk of the oven is now 'load ready'. Whew. Just in time to have Teppy hold a quick poll about Raeli Ovens in Tale 3 (How many did you build? Have access to through Guilds? Do you consider yourself a casual/moderate/hardcore player?) Oh gods. This will not end well, mark my words.

Enhanced the homestead a bit and added a terrarium. I just love watching the beetles scoot around in there! Played around with breeding a bit, but it'll be awhile before I have a bug that is 'show-ready'. Although I'm not pursuing Art, I don't believe in just making a crappy-looking bug statue just to pass the Principles. I'll at least give it a college try.

Added a second charcoal hearth. I've found I can work two at once without a regulator and that's a good thing. Needed a LOT of charcoal for the next stage of the projects: firing up the Master's Casting Box (forever more referred to as a MCB) takes hundreds. After a bit I knocked out four batches from each hearth. Cake.

Mined and processed thousands of ore. When I looked in the shed and saw in excess of 200, I decided it was time to spend some. I had been saving up a bit to buy a much better hatchet from the Ironworks (they sell quality 8500 ones), but decided that could wait a little-- I had other projects to finish first, namely the water mine.

In short order I cranked up the MCB and a glazier's bench, the former to forge a couple of replacement pots, a large gear (this takes a hundred iron), and some medium-sized gears, the latter to make some replacement glass pipes, as I had spent some trading for thermometers with Eldrad (not a typo, just a similar name to Eldar's).

Placed the water mine by the shore, adjusted the pitch of the dredging tube, and waited a bit. In short order a gemstone appeared in the collecting basket. I greedily snatched it up before the waters could wash it away. It will be a fun toy.

Ran around the desert and found a couple of cheap cicadas (four in pocket total) and found to my surprise the cage that still lives is the one that I thought I had placed in a horrible location. The deep desert one had fallen! Did not have enough points to advance over the weekend, but as I missed Sunday by a whisker, I'm confident for tonight.

Harvest some papyrus, just to rebuild my dwindling seed supply, flaxxed a bit for the rope, and otherwise just chilled out.

The weekend ended on an odd note. Pet monkeys are now available on the billing menu for $75. This is actually the ticket to go to the Philly player's meet and you get a free monkey that runs around and does Horus-knows-what. To celebrate the monkey, Zomboe, the legendary hatchet maker, held a contest for 'the best monkey-themed poetry' to be submitted in an hour. Winner would receive Mr. Saturn, a quality 9782 hatchet, which is undoubtedly literally the best in all of Egypt.

I like writing (can you tell?) and I occasionally pretend I'm good at weaving the written word, so I gave it a stab.

The Monkey Who Fished for the Moon

In the stillness of Egyptian night,

A monkey regarded the moon.

The slender simian with hand outstretched

Tapped lightly at a lagoon

And wondered then at wandering light

Reflected, from the moon!

He paddled the puddle with a stick he'd fetched

The orb distorted so soon--

Only to reorder in a moment or two

Before the monkey who fished for the moon.

Twas then the primate grew quite irate

At the silvery, shimmering moon

And then once more he stretched out for--

When out came the cry of a loon!

Startled, he fumbled into waters and tumbled,

Discarding all hopes of the moon.

Throughly drenched, his gaze was thus wrenched

To the skies above the lagoon.

And then did he spy where his prey didst fly

From the monkey who fished for the moon.

After a while, the poems were read by Zomboe and there were dozens of entrants. After the 8th or so was read, I realized I probably horribly misjudged the scope of the contest-- nearly all were limericks and short four to six line 'funny' ones. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

After a couple of hours, they were all done and Zomboe expanded his generosity to the best three he liked and an audience favorite. Korrin, who wrote a fun little verse about an itchy monkey, and I both received several accolades from the public and Zomboe judged that Korrin won the audience poll. This made sense, as he had just whispered to me that I had won first place!

Mr. Saturn is a true glory to wield, always harvesting 4x with a good chance at getting 5x. The bottle tree trio yielded 70 wood. I will not see a better hatchet this Tale.

01/27/09 – Groove is in the Hearth

Began the day cicada hunting. Picked up several in a corner of the world, gained a speed point (4th!), dropped a cage in the desert, and went on my merry way.

With my dual hearths and ability to level forests in moments, I turned my attentions to charcoal production. I’ve found that the only time I ruin charcoal is if I try to use a regulator, so I now only run things full speed. Rahr! After knocking out a thousand charcoal (and still having more than 3 kilowood in the shed), I said to myself “Self, you need bronze badly. I’ll bet you can trade charcoal for some more tin.” Bronze is a copper/tin alloy and after watching Zaniac I was a little more confident in how the whole thing worked.

Now then, what was the value of tin/charcoal? Going by Ironworks prices, 100 charcoal to1 tin, but I figured I might get a better deal elsewhere. I posted on E! an offer of 500 charcoal in return for 12 tin or 250 tin ore. Within a handful of seconds I had three respondents and made a note that next time, if a next time were necessary, I’d adjust my prices accordingly. Got ore from Nekojin in Falcon Bay, and smelted a portion down to nine tin to work with. Mined and refined 60 copper and I was set.

I started working the reactory and brass is harder than steel. Terrific. In the middle of this debacle, SAI contacted me, letting me know their first bronze was in stock and at steel prices. I traded a bit of copper, resin, and wax for 10 debens of it, so the immediate pressure to succeed was lifted. I worked at the reactory again, taking small amounts as they came up, and suddenly everything clicked! I could see what I was doing wrong and why! I knew I had it figured out when I made 5 brass a couple of times in a row, then 7 steel in a single go.

I can now make alloys!

The brass was needed for small gear work. I’ve been trying to stay ahead of the Raeli tech tree and I’ve been successful so far. Fine casting (allowing for small gear work) was unlocked late last night (again, coincidence—I thought it was already open), and cast 15 small gears, more than enough for my gearbox.

The shocker came though as cries of dismay came forth from Saqqarah. The costs to unlock Raeli had suddenly changed....dramatically. It now included tens of thousands of resin, many from rarer trees. This is going to push the technology out at least a month or two and speculation ran wild as everyone tried to figure out why!

What would make the most sense, and what I’m hoping for is that Teppy is changing the dynamics on how Raeli ovens produce their colored tiles. Normally, the spectrum an oven can generate is based on the location of the oven and in previous Tales, people were forced to drop at least several ovens to get an array of colors. Now, maybe adding different resins during the baking process will alter the color of the finished product? If so, that would be very cool!

Either way, if the cost remains static, the only thing that remains for my oven is hammering some steel I have into sheets and waiting for the tech! Hades, I’ll even take them resin every time I’m in the area.

In the meantime, I can focus on other pursuits, like finishing cicadas and acrobatics!

01/28/09 Bugs in the wind..... (or “How Sefet Got his Grove Back”)

Almost obsessively, I’ve started checking my cicada status on login and then once an hour or so. I note with some grim displeasure that one of the two cages have fallen. Hmph. I might make a point on Wednesday, but it will be much closer now. I ventured into the deep desert and meandered through the northeast quadrant— I found no bugs (but several Hunters) after an hour and a half in the far reaches so I hit back home. Checked my statistics... and my other cage had crumbled.

I was devastated. Well, disheartened at any rate...enough so that I moped around the ‘Plex for a few minutes before hunting down a few of my acro masters for lessons. I tracked down three, but no new facets were learned. I need to seek out Ay, Etruscus, and Robare still.

Other people were planting papy (my usual solace), I didn’t feel like playing with metals or glass, although I did burn a load of papyrus I had on hand in the fire pit for some ash. Ash is always good to have around.

Noticed I had a lot of clay sitting around in the shed, so I took it downtown in hopes of making a clay dome for a rabbit hutch. Couldn’t find a public pottery deck or vault kiln, so I contented myself with making a few dozen jugs to restock and wandered by home still laden with clay.

An idea came and I moved over to the Field of Bees and began work on an Indonesian Beehive. A couple hundred clay and a dozen linen later (which wiped out my stockpile of both), I had a small clay dome. Looks kind of neat, but has an annoyingly limited draw range. (My one serious gripe about the game is the extremely limited draw distance on many structures.)

I decided to invest a little time flaxxing to start replenishing my spent linen. Halfway through processing a lordly amount of flax, my comb/rake/whatever wore out and needed replacement. Ah. No nails in stock. Typical. I fired up the forge, cranked out some nails and in my remaining time hammered out some steel sheeting.

Checked on the bees and an orange tree has sprung up next to it! In another day or two when it has finished growing, I’ll have sweet oranges! I read up on bees and apparently if I have a couple of citrus trees, the bees will start making flavored honey. Three or more trees and you can start crossbreeding them to get desired flavors. This has some promise.

01/29/09 It’s the end of the world as we know it...and I hear bugs....

Not much going on. Ran to the farthest corner of the world and nabbed a cicada for myself and a couple for Mandisa. Etiquette be damned, I’m going to have Mandisa pass cicada principles. (It’s considered poor play to spousewarp your partner to get a bonus bug from a cage, but everyone pretends they don’t do it.) Still don’t have enough for a cage and speed point costs are climbing and have exceeded 8k for the first time. I now have 7.5k points which –might- be enough for today. We’ll see, but I really need a cage or two in the wild.

While in the Heaven’s Gate area, I idly paused at oasiseses (new word) to gather herbs. I now have in excess of 54 unique types, so once I have a hookah, I’m in business. There’s talk of a public hookah bar opening downtown soon, so we’ll just see how that goes.

Back home, I sadly looked at my Raeli oven chest I had worked so hard for. After viewing the new research requirements, it seems very obvious the materials required will have radically changed since Tale 3. I’m going to hang onto the sheeting just in case, but the sheetglass may get diverted to a greenhouse.

I started stockpiling what I think will be Raeli oven costs, starting with clay bricks. Clay is much slower than silt, but I still managed to get over 650 bricks baked. (Clay bricks are made from 8 clay, 4 sand)

Finally, the orange tree produced its first fruit.... tangy oranges!

01/30/09 –

Three hours of no cicadas. Well, check that. Three hours and one cicada cage I already found a week ago. Mandia was pleased with the 1800 points it gave and somewhere someone was saddened as their cage crumbled. I missed speed by 1k points and I’m thinking it isn’t going to drop below 8k again. I may put cicadas on hiatus. The hours of not finding anything is a bit wearing.

I started construction of the Pilgrim Shrine, trying different materials to find a cheaper marble. Surprisingly, sheetglass works and I left a message for Pascalito ordering 7 Oyster Shell Marble. Since Raelis are so far away and will likely have different costs, I didn’t have regrets at giving up a portion of the stockpile for payment. All total the marble will cost me: 15 potash, 20 ash, 4 medium gears, and 20 mushrooms, and 5 sheetglass. We’ll see how it goes.

Tech is making another leap as they unlocked Beer Brewing, Wood Treatment, and as I was about to logoff, they were collecting the last seeds to unlock Advanced Avian Handling. CHEEKINS!

I finally managed to track down another acro Master, Robare, and he was able to give me my 15th move: Crunches!

Played around with a hookah for a bit and got my fumeology score up to 8. Just 41 more until a permanent perception point. Heh. Basically hookah work the way you’d think. Clean out the bowl, put some herb(s) and some water and charcoal in it and puff away. Eventually, you’ll reveal the true taste and your score goes up. You then must try a new herb, as each will only give one point ever.

Hmm...at some point I need to flax up some more linen.

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