User:Sefet/April2009

04/01/09

Very abbreviated playtime. Mostly ran around looking for trees, collecting resins. I see a lot of this activity in my future. Gremlins keep swiping the resin from ‘my’ trees whenever I’m away from camp, so this is going to take for-freakin’-ever. I bought a Very Good Resin Wedge (8551 quality) for an obscene price (30 linen), but I can’t make them myself above the 6k mark. Tonight I’m going to nick a tree and see how long it takes for the better quality to produce some resin. I’ve heard a 9001 quality wedge takes 19 minutes. The one I’m using presently about an hour.

I’ve been harvesting all the resin I can find—hopefully when other ‘flavors’ of raeli come online, if I can’t combine resins like I mentioned yesterday, I can trade even up with someone looking to build one of the other types.

In the meantime, a better use of my time might be in Mass Production of Flax and Papyrus and just trade for resins at a 5:1 ratio, if I can get it. That’s five flax to one resin, incidently.

The realis themselves are a massive disappointment for many: they left the same code in place. We’ll still need a number of them to get different colors and they appear to follow the same color bands we had in Tale 3. There were a LOT of potentially fun changes that could’ve been made here. The new graphic looks nice, but everything else was just...blech.

Started the Test of the Critic— to pass, I’ll need to judge more Art Tests than anyone else. Fireworks, Beetles, Raeli Mosaics, and Raeli Gliderports are mentioned in the Principles tab. Gliderports? Not in yet. Based on previous Tales, they launch little clay glider planes with smoke trails. Should be fun.

04/02/09 – Trying to find a resin, I believe...

Threw myself wholely into resin asquisition. The q9001 wedge mentioned yesterday actually takes 26 minutes to generate a dollop of resin, not 19 as previously reported. My own new toy, the q8551, takes 32 minutes from the time the tree is nicked to make that first sweet deben of resin. Good enough for me and much better than the hour plus I had been using.

One of the odd side effects from all of the resin gathering I’ve been doing is a insane surplus of wood. Space in the camp is getting to be a premium, simply by virtue of the fact I don’t want to have to build a lot of chests just to hold wood and resin and the thought of just dropping it on the ground just kind of bothers me. At one point I had well over 20k wood and I’m pushing over 3.5k resins of various flavors stored.

While timing the wedge to judge its effectiveness and during a little downtime, I went hog wild with charcoal making, doing some rather cavalier experiments, not caring if everything got reduced to cinders. I even filled the firepit a few times just for the pittance of charcoal it gives. In the end, I began having charcoal storage issues: I just wasn’t wasting enough wood! I filled the forges to capacity, discovering in the process they even have maximum capacities, and have begun filling up the casting benches to store it all (around 2500 charcoal). Sure, I –could’ve- left the axe at home while making resin runs, but where’s the fun in that?

After a while, I worked out that by using hotkeys, I could save time and even gather from and re-nick trees at a short distance. Rahr! All the resin, no more woodsy buildup.

I worked out a ‘resin loop’ that takes me by close to 50 trees. Mind you, many of them are being poked at by other people as well, so a number of them won’t have resin when I complete my circuit, which in and of itself takes about 28 minutes to run. It starts off in my camp where I can hit 9 trees, nibbles 36 minutes of travel time to drop me off at a waypoint behind Robare’s house, where there’s a bounty of 14 or so trees, then it’s jogging over to the goods, where another 8 trees line the road, then south on the west side of the Nile where two groves give another 15 or so trees, waypoint back to Mandisa, then jog north to Stillwater where there’s the last half dozen or so. Many of the trees may have already been tagged or renicked by the time I get there, but there’s always hope! I may have the resin within a couple of weeks at this rate.

Folded Birch Resin stockpiled: 541 debens.

I met a neighbor across the river who was reserving her clay patch so no one, including herself, could build an oven there. She covered her patch with scupltures! The neatest one was a little carrot patch infested with bunnies. High marks for creativity on her plan to block builders.

The Pilgrimage has officially stalled for now. Lilac won’t be around this weekend and the following weekend is Easter. At this point, we plan to make a big push the weekend of the 18th -19th.

Finally, the Test of the Funerary Temple and the Test of the Raeli Mosaic was opened, but seeing as I have no oven yet, I haven’t bothered picking up the Tests to begin work on Principles.

04/03/09

Ran around my circuit collecting resin. Folded Birch Resin stockpiled: 841 debens. I’ve had to reorganize my storage considerably to accommodate all of this and I’m debating on building a second warehouse down by Fort KbtS to accommodate resin overflow.

Adn put Raeli on timer last last night, so we won’t know what the ‘other’ resin type will be until the wee hours of the morning tomorrow. Pyramid Lakes is the only other region that can research the technology at this time, so people have already begin starting that along. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to trade resins 1:1 in a mutual beneficial arrangement with other raeli oven builders. We’ll see.

Finished one of my circuits to find a person poking around the bottle trees. Korynth, or something similar, a level one trial account, had already gotten a woodplane and a couple of brick racks started. Oh goody. The ‘ragpickers’ next door have a welcome banner, so new arrivals fresh off the ferry from Welcome Island will on occasion show up. I like new players, but only from afar. I’ll help them with whatever, but I hate waiting for a month plus to tear down leftover starting trash from the non-subscribers.

She seemed very determined with her grass gathering, so I wandered over to introduce myself and throw a few supplies her way to hopefully mitigate the amount of trash built. I gave her a hundred boards and chatted for a few minutes: she sounds like she’s definitely going to subscribe, has been very impressed with the friendliness of people, and doesn’t sound like an idiot. I gave her enough bricks to cover Compound Construction tuition and went on my way.

A bit later on, I checked on the area and she had torn down her ‘nubian yard trash’. I think if she winds up building in my area, I won’t be terribly offended.

My saddest moment...rat tracks were announced a minute before I had to log. I could’ve finished Safari, but I value sleep a bit more.

04/06/09 So tell me what you want, what you raeli raeli want!

Friday night was committed to gathering resin at any cost. I happily trooped over around and through anything to check trees over and over again in 32 minute intervals. Saturday morning was more of the same until the lunchtime hour...

I placed my oven in the clay patch by Fort KbtS and tore down all of the trash I had built to ‘guard’ it. Ovens look extra neat this time: little ore buckets on a loop scoop clay from the earth, upending their prizes onto a conveyor belt, which then runs into pinch rollers and into a warehouse looking structure with a chimney on top. Happy at last, I set my oven to dredge tiles and took off for another round of birch gathering. A second oven? Maybe eventually, but this resin had a different purpose.

I tracked down Cali and Robare, whose trees I had been gleefully keeping clean for the past few days during my loops and gave them gifts of resin 50 and 70 respectively. Both were extremely surprised at the generosity, but I find it’s a small price to pay for keeping the peace; a sterling reputation is the best currency you can have in a social game.

After the oven had produced a few tiles, I fired it up and timed the colors....white, snow, ghost white, Gainesboro, thistle, and plum gave way to deeper orchid colors before settling into black. A very pleasing assortment that came to around 17 or so colors total. It’s a not-quite-purple oven and a nice change from the deep reds I had the far north last Tale.

Now that I can produce raeli tiles, it was time to start on the next project: something that uses them! Picked up the Test of the Funerary Temple and winced at the requirements to build one. It was the most challenging thing I built in Tale 3 and the costs had not changed: 5000 firebricks, 250 concrete, 50 iron bars, 600 boards, 100 cut stone, 200 silver, 40 gold, 4 mirrors, 16 sheet glass.

As luck would have it, I had just a smidgeon more than 250 concrete stockpiled, along with the hundreds of silver and just enough cuttable stone. The glass was also covered easily, leaving me with... a lot. Nipped down to SACFAR and cut the cuttable stones quickly using their eight saws while planing the rest of the needed boards. I supply the public works with carpentry blades frequently, so I don’t feel bad about using them and wearing a couple out when I need to.

The gold was problematic. There’s a public mine I knew about, so I made my way there. It was not collapsed but had been repaired 29 times. This was one hell of a hot potato. If it collapsed, I’m morally obligated to repair it and nasty things are said about people who don’t repair public mines they crash. Repairing a mine a 30th time would’ve cost well over 300 leather. I picked a bit at it, but passed the test of greed, leaving with a small sackful of ore. I then traded for a chunk of gold and gold ore at the Goods—not quite enough for the temple, but the price was rapidly reaching astronomical levels. Smelting it all down, I was 4 short. Good enough for now.

Parked my butt at my iron/ruby mine and dug at it until it collapsed, smelted the results and came away with 300 iron. The iron bars would account for half of that, leaving me a bit on hand for future projects.

Grabbed a fifteen hundred charcoal from my stockpile and carted it back to SACFAR and fired up all ten forges. Iron bars take fifteen minutes each to make, but ten at a time isn’t so bad!

The mirrors are the biggest pain, due to the 800 silver powder requirement. That works out to 80 cycles of a barrel grinder. Each time the grinder stops, it needs 4 leather and 4 oil to repair, so if I was doing this solo, I’d be looking at 320 leather in manufacturing costs. Ick. Fortunately, I had help from two sources, Mandisa and some food that was leftover from a dig in Falcon Bay. With quite a bit of finagling, we got things going a lot more efficiently. When all was said and done, it probably only cost about 64 leather and oil to crank it all out.

Back home, I fired up the bench and made the mirrors and a few extra pieces of sheet glass. Always a good feeling to have extra glass around the house.

Gathered a bit of silt for the firebrick bonanza. I had 3500 or so leftover from when I thought raelis were going to use them, months ago. The hour was getting late, so I was only able to knock out a few hundred towards the balance needed.

I did get the last of the gold I needed though, by trading birch resin to a person who had covered a massive clay patch by his somewhat remote home with dozens of tiny compounds. 10:1 seemed like a winning deal to each of us.

On the way back home, I noted that The Test of Darkest Night had been opened, so I picked it up. With this test, one must find and devour fresh mushrooms off the ground. Because everything is a hassle, you must find 7 of 5 specific mushroom types and return to the UBody and get a new list of mushroom types 7 times. It’s a test that takes a while to do. Fortunately, Principles is just ‘find and eat 7 of your listed mushrooms’. It’ll be a while before I’m rambling in the desert again, but it’s now filed away for later. Most of the ones on my list are fairly common this time, so here’s hoping.

04/07/09 I would bake 500 bricks and I would bake 500 more...

Baked a thousand firebricks and constructed my Temple by a small copse of trees by the road. It is amazingly cool looking. Last Tale it started out tiny and grew as you added more tiles to it. This time, the art is stunning and it begins HUGE. I’ve been told it does not get any larger, but the graphics change as you glorify it with tiles. I baked a few rounds of tiles and got the glory to around 1000, with some tiles left over for trading. I was rewarded with what looks like a flight of stairs leading down to a temple antechamber. You can’t go down the stairs of course, but it looks incredibly nice. It isn’t just a flat graphic on the ground; it really looks like there’s a basement down there! Can’t wait to see what comes next.

Picked up the Test of the Raeli Mosaic, although it’ll be a while before I build one. I’ve already got my ‘concept’ picture down: black cat with green eyes on a table. It’ll be a while before I have all of the materials to make it (takes a lot of steel cable), so it’s very ‘back burner’ right now.

On a whim, I decided to clean out a little wood and I dropped a Tower of the Living Land down in Queen’s Retreat during last night’s Hour. My impulse got me about 5.5% closer on Towers. Am now a quarter down w/ that Test. May go ahead and participate tonight during a high competition Hour, just to see. I’ll need a few thousand bricks first and to position Mandisa up in Heaven’s Gate afterwards.

As of a couple of days ago, I have a diamond mine! I bought it for cost from Numaris, another militant soloer. He’s on the list of people to spare when the revolution comes. I mined it until it broke and output is ‘fair/ok’. 13 or so small diamonds and 8 mediums.

On the tech front, things continue to advance beyond my ability to worry about dealing with them. Silkworm farms can be built for those who have attained level 28, but that’s still a bit off for me. On researched technologies, metal treatment is now available, as is crossbreeding! People have been splicing flax genomes for the past few days, creating strains that are wonders to behold. The current ‘best’ produces after a couple of weedings: 2 flax, 2 rotten flax, and 2 seeds. It’s unlocking god mode for flax. Never again will you have to run dry and just harvest for a few minutes to rebuild seed supplies! These seeds are made freely available in public chests at various chariot stops around Egypt.

04/08/09

Added a few more tiles to the Temple o’ Doom and got to work makin’ bricks. There was a Tower Hour coming up at 11:14pm and I was hopeful that with some momentum I could tack another 10% to my score by dropping four rich soil towers down in my happy spots around Egypt. It’s one of the two ‘cheap’ towers to build, but I figured ‘what the hey’ and made a few more brick racks to improve my bricklaying speed. Four kilobricks later I was ready to go.

Killed some time by playing a few more Pathmakers. I’m going to need to start tracking these better so I don’t have to repeat them later. Not that many of them are that challenging, but still. Bortox noted that regardless of complexity most Thought puzzles eventually pass, due to the sheer cost in construction. There just isn’t that much competition.

When the Hour of Towers began, I started my circuit hopping to the four corners of the Universe, building as I went. When the hour ended, my score served as a stark reminder of why I should be putting the Test off another month or two: 58 towers built. My own slice of the pie? 5%. Not dreadful, but much less than I was hoping for. Some total freak built 9 towers and claimed 19%. Meh.

I’m definitely putting a kibosh on certain tower types for the time being. I’ll only participate in the rarer towers, but won’t go nuts trying to get materials together for them. An Hour of the Hand of Man is coming up this weekend at some point and that’s a potential. It requires a lot of ash, so I may just drop one to see what I get. My canvas supply is also critically low, so that means it’s time for... FLAX!

Picked up some flax seed of the day from the public chest. This is Zaniac’s creation and takes one watering. When harvested it yields 2 rotten and 3 flax (or possibly the other way around). With horror, I realized that multiple seed flax didn’t the way I thought it did and I used up all of my seeds with the planting. Went back to the chest and grabbed a couple. I let those plants go to seed and each seed harvest yielded 3 seeds. Incredibly nice.

I’ll need to bake some more tiles and get my tradin’ swerve on, whatever in the hell that means.

04/09/09

Another day, another batch of tiles into the Temple. Its glory is now just above 2k... well short of the 7k required to pass Principles. Gettin’ there.

Flaxxed a bit and quickly generated around 800 flax. It still amazes me how quickly flaxxing goes now. I dried and burned a couple hundred just for a little ash (papyrus is so much better for ash, but I’ve got a TON of wood and flax), chucked a couple hundred into the hopper for auto-processing overnight, and hamboned around the compound, tossing fistfulls of seeds into the air with joy and STILL and many hundreds of flax and seed leftover. It was a nice night for flaxxing.

Time constraints prevented tile trading, but I did help out a visitor from a neighboring region with a bit of charcoal. SaiCoSis was very grateful to not have to return home for a pittance of charcoal to start her raeli toasting and a piece of unexpected linen in return.

Took a look at my Reasoning score, which on the whole was odd, as we haven’t been given the Test of Reason yet. Apparently, I’m a good judge of Pathfinders and Veneries, and have been slacking on Empty Hand Puzzles. Good to know. ;-) I may take a couple of hours and bring that up to speed this weekend.

I broke down and created a new warehouse by Ft. KbtS to contain my resin stockpile and extra wood. As a consequence, the ‘main’ shed now looks much happier for space.

04/10/09

Temple is now up to 2.4k and my off-and-on resin harvesting continues well. I’m likely going to buy a share of Numaris’ Tile-of-the-Week Club. Fifty resin buy in gets you a split of each color an oven he is building makes each week until it goes through all of its colors. All said and done, it’s a pretty good deal.

I processed more of the flax I had grown and quickly wove a dozen canvas. In preparation of the next Tower Hours I’ll be playing in, whenever they are, I started work on stockpiling resources. There’s two that are so costly, most avoid them utterly. I’d like to be able to build one of each of those, as well as 2 each of the ‘midrange cost’ Towers, and I’ll happily avoid the 2 cheapies.

The 2 costly ones are Night Soil and Racing Mind. Night Soil requires 2 night granite marble and a bunch of rarer mushrooms. I’d been trading one of the two pieces of granite I had back and forth with the Goods several times now and it was time to trade for it back ‘for keeps’. Racing mind requires a hundred pieces of paper, a special cut gem, a bit of quicksilver, and chemical extract known as ‘Nut’s Essence’, which is typically used in crossbreeding experiments. The essence itself is made from rare mushrooms and other fun things. The two slightly cheaper ones are New Life (the seed Tower I built for Principles) and Hand of Man (the ash and iron bar tower). Any way I chose, I was going to need a bit of resources.

I perused The Goods’ inventory page and I grinned widely. Prices had flipped on marble yet again and night granite was cheap and oyster shell marble (which I had in abundance since the quarrying episode a couple of weeks ago) was very pricey. Sweet. I traded 3 o.s.m. for: 2 night granite, 2 carrot seeds (we still can’t reproduce these), 250 firebricks, 3 ‘hairy tooth’ mushrooms (needed for the aforementioned essence), a few iron bars, a couple of eggs, and still had change left over. Tonight I’ll check upcoming Tower schedules and see what I can plan for.

While I was out and about, I got leads on a couple of mushroom types needed for my first round of Darkest Night. I made it to a large patch of Toad Skin mushrooms and passed Principles. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get to a grouping of Nile Fire shrooms before they despawned. Maybe next time, eh?

They fixed a bug with Venery principles, but it looks like I’m going to have to run two of them again to get credit for playing them. Sigh. I’ll try dev calling it to see.

04/13/09 Lightning striking again (and again and again....)

Started the weekend off with a race to get two towers ready for the Hour of the Hand of Man Tower. No such luck-- I was only able to get materials for one Tower, but it still scored me 9%, taking me to just under 2/5ths of the way to passing. Afterwards, I focused on getting the materials together for two of the most expensive tower: Racing Mind. It required my paper stockpile, six quicksilver, a couple of cut gems, and some Nut's Essence. The last component sent my wife to giggling.

The Essence is made in a toxin kitchen using a bit of fiddling. There's no public toxin kitchen in Shabbat Ab, so I had to go to Cat Claw Ridge (CCR) to access one. I get there and I find I can't make it; I needed to learn Botanical Identification first!

Back home and then to a SBody with the necessary tuition, then -back- to CCR... and the fun began. It wasn't hard, just a little fiddly, as mentioned. Everything is now sitting tight for a few days. I hope to get 15% with 2 towers. We'll see.

Devoted myself to trying to see how many puzzles I can solve across Egypt. I hit zone after zone, trying unsuccessfully to trade Raeli tiles and beat every empty hand puzzle and pathmaker I came across. A lot of pathmakers have sprung up recently, but they uniformly lack any semblance of real challenge. To date the hardest Pathmaker I’ve found was the first I attempted: McArine’s back in SA.

I really wanted to finish Principles of Reason, so I checked on the wiki for bijou puzzles that may be opened. I needed to beat three of them, and there were four up. I made my way to Meroe, to check them out. There were three of them (one not yet released) in a little row in a ‘Museum’ the locals had built. To my surprise and delight, there were also a couple of mosaics there—the first I had seen. (One was the apple logo, the other a cute undersea design replete with a jellyfish, fish, and underwater plants. I favored the latter and voted to reflect it.)

Bijous are gem cutting tables that have a cut displayed you have to match with the provided gem. I really, really suck at gem cutting. However, bijou tables are better than ‘normal’ tables by three virtures. First, the gem to play with is provided free. Second, it is guaranteed that the gem they provide to massacre will produce the displayed design. Finally, you are allowed an infinite number of tries. This is great for practicing cuts without wasting precious gems. After a bit of time, I beat both as well as the one in Nomad’s Paradise, passing the Principles of Reason! (For what it’s worth, the one up in Adn had a couple of people waiting to play it and looked hard—but there were easily another 12 empty hands to play...and beat.)

In the off time, I spent time cooking tiles (over halfway to Temple Principles!), gathering resin, and tending to camp chores. I had just finished a birch run, when Philidelphia announced she had found a rat in Heaven’s Gate and wanted to give it away. I pounced at the opportunity, and she confirmed it was mine. It was in the furtherest reaches of the zone, but elation lent speed to my stride. In retrospect, the grilled cabbage probably helped too.

I arrived at the rat tracks and found they were indeed active—but the rat had wound itself in a circle several times and was impossible to see where it actually was! I traced the circle slowly and after several minutes, the tracks diverged from the roundabout and darted towards a nearby cliff. I hastened after it, determined not to let my prize escape. I pounced...and finished Safari! Never had lightning felt so good. Journeyman of the Human Body. Rahr!

The concensus is that the Venery principle bug thing is, in fact, ‘working as designed’. That’s fine. I’d already redone Malard’s. I would wait until after Sunday passes and hit Dreasimy’s and the one that passed and that’s a level in the bank.

Sunday passes came. Trillian’s group passed Pilgrimage and my group is hopeful for next week. Vigil scores are down in the 70k range again... now that there are a lot more toys in the sandbox, chunking everything into a firepit for two solid days just isn’t as appealing. Once again, I failed to achieve Prophesy, missing by....a hell of a lot, actually. Oni (fish guy) passed the Test of the Mosaic. McArine passed Pathmaker and Ping passed Venery. A moment later, I got struck by lightning.

Unbelieving, I flipped over to the system channel to see what had happened. Reason had happened. The many hours I had spent playing those puzzles paid off! It wasn’t worth a level (Tests only grant levels when your highest rank increases, like student to prentice or prentice to journeyman), but filled me with great pride. The first to pass the Test! The scores for myself and the top 7 runners up were posted and I had won by about 25%.

A minute later, someone (the third place scorer) noted that the Test hadn’t been open a full week. Teppy agreed and took back the Test pass. I was “unzapped”.

I was still staring at the screen in mute disbelief when the ‘You have gained a level’ screen appeared and lightning struck me again. What the hell? Had Teppy changed his mind? Why did I just level up? Oh! I got credit for passing Critic Principles. I figured it had bugged when he unzapped me. I turn my attention back to System—I had passed the Test of the Critic.

Apparently I’m the most critical and judgemental person in Egypt.

The Test pass revocation mildly irritated me and actually upset a number of people, who presumably have a vested interest in my passing tests, by virtue of their Prophesies. I’ll just dedicate myself to maintaining my sizable lead and try for a pass next Sunday.

There was already a queue to play McArine’s pathmaker, so I nipped over to play Ping’s venery again. After beating it in record time, I nipped down to Queen’s Retreat to play Dreasimy’s. It turns out it was one of three I had not yet played! It went quickly and I passed the Principles of the Venery. Level 28 now.

Returned home and logged for a bit of ‘offline Mandisa time’. A couple of hours later, I logged back in and realized I had forgotten to judge the venery after completing it. DAMN! Went back to QR and was glad it let me judge it. Looking over the wiki, there were a bevy of new bijou tables to play in Meroe. Went there and beat every last one of them. I’m getting better with gem cutting, but more importantly—I’m getting better at understanding How people design their puzzles and that makes them easier.

I found my screenshot of the solution to McArine’s Pathmaker, so I expect to hit level 29 tonight.

04/14/09 Born on the bijou

Gathered a little more resin, killed a few sheep, harvested some grass. Ah, the quiet simple life of the virtual Egyptian. Sunday, I decided that I would just have to maintain my lead in Thought by playing as many puzzles as possible, so that’s just what I did!

I solved McArine’s Pathmaker, as expected, and got my level, then moved on from region to region looking for bijou tables. I played a few more and beat them, but the solution to a couple are still eluding me. I still really hate gem cutting.

I checked the wiki to look for any open veneries I may have missed and there were two! One had just opened and I high-tailed it down to play. It was a well-designed venery that didn’t involve too much running and required finding locations based on song lyrics. Mandisa was quite helpful at looking things up as I dashed hither and yon.

The other posed a unique challenge: it was entirely in French. Thanks to the power of Google translate, it wasn’t impossible to beat, but a number of the locations were kind of difficult to pick out of a crowd. As an example, one clue wanted you to find a vineyard... and there were a lot of vineyards around. Le sigh.

Along the way, I added another 14 empty hand puzzles to my list of ‘beaten’. The major problem I have with them is that I have no real way of determining if I’ve played them before. Resultantly, I ‘redo’ a number of puzzles by accident. If I don’t pass Reason this week, I’ll need to make a list of Pathmakers so I don’t start running into that problem with them.

Temple principles are proving more challenging than it should be. People pursuing Temple are incredibly paranoid about other people getting ahead of them in glory, so even though I have no intention of doing that test, trying to get people to come off tiles is insanely challenging. Tiles scale for value, so the first tile of any color is worth 100 points. To get 200 points for a color it costs six more tiles. (So: 1 = 100 7 = 200, 49 = 300, 343 = 400, etc.) I had a lead on a person who was willing to trade a few tiles for resin, but he backed out. I can solo Principles with a single oven, but it will take a while. I’ll keep my eyes open for potential traders and be vaguely hopeful.

04/15/09

Slammed my head over and over against a couple of bijou tables until I eventually gave up. Solved a different one and a couple more empty hands and felt better.

Burned some gray tiles and the temple is now at 4.7k points (kiloglory?). Gathered some more resin and I’m now halfway towards oven number two. At some point I’ll need to start getting the clay for another 4k bricks.

Our pilgrimage group is finally getting its act together—it looks like we’re hitting out Saturday morning and will be making an extended run that should take several hours. Somehow I became the de facto leader and have laid out a course that should enable us to pass the Test with a little more than 7k points. We just need to confirm two of the players who weren’t online. Here’s hoping!

Chatted with Rabble, one of my fellow pilgrims, a bit about tiles— and it looks like we’ll be able to help each other out with 4 colors each way! So that’s 1200 points into the temple I can count on ... or another 800 with a pile left over for trading. It turns out all ovens built along the Nile have a pruplish tint to them...and since the Nile is the heaviest populated areas, my colors aren’t that rare. The next oven will be in Sticksville, Egypt population: sheep.

Tonight’s the night for the Hour of the Tower of the Racing Mind. I’ve got two Towers to place, which means I’ll need to burn no travel time for once. Plant, spousewarp, plant. I’m hoping for 16%, but I don’t know how competitive this first one will be.

Crossing my fingers!

04/16/09

Very little playtime—pretty much just ran over to where the Towers were going to be placed, dropped them when the Hour began, and logged. I checked my score a bit later and was disappointed. Only 7 people, myself included, participated, but everyone built multiple towers. In the end, I only got 10% for my troubles, taking me to 49.89% control. The tower itself was absolutely beautiful: imagine a pale brown rectangular solid that’s given a half-twist and covered in heiros. Now make it tranluscent so you can see a thin solid cylindrical core supporting the beacon on top. Slap a few offeratory bowls around the beacon and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the design.

Burned the last of my unique colors from the oven. The Temple is now at 5k.

There’s another Racing Mind hour coming up on Saturday—I’ve got half a mind to start the pilgrimage run with the materials to build a tower on me, then placing it wherever I am when the hour begins. That could be fun!

04/17/09

Made a papy run and squished all of the yellow flowers flat into papyrus paper, giving me enough for a Saturday tower. Ground an amethyst to perfection and dropped it in a chest with some quicksilver and materials for the construction site. Just need a thousand bricks and some Nut’s Essence and I’m good to go!

Spent some of my store credit at the Goods for some more Hairy Tooth mushrooms and I’ll make more Essence tonight.

A mosiac was advertised as having just gone up in Shabbat, so I hustled down to check it out. Although I’ve passed Critic, I still enjoy the tile art for its own sake. The mosaic was an excellent depiction of Kermit the Frog’s head suspended over crossed staff and flail. Very nice looking, if I do say so.

I had just returned home and gathered some more resin when an announcement went out there were two more bijou tables and a pathmaker opened in Meroe. Jeez. I book it down there—I really want to pass Reason. I beat the pathmaker quickly and was able to knock out one of the bijou tables. The other had a player on it, who wasn’t able to beat it by the time I needed to log.

Still no new veneries active. Right now I’d say I’ve got a better than average shot at winning this weekend.

04/20/09 It was the seed of the moment...

Starting Friday and through Saturday another 10 or so Bijou tables came online, another Pathmaker, and a couple more Veneries. I hit them all, beating most of the gems and all of the rest. The greatest challenge was another foreign language venery—this one in German, with a (very) rough English translation. I hoped it would be enough for a Test pass, because I really didn’t think I could take another week of gem cutting.

I put together the materials for two more Racing Mind Towers. The original intent was to drop one during Saturday’s Pilgrimage as a surprise, but we didn’t run as expected—Varick was a no show the entire weekend. Our next opportunity will be....3 weeks from now. I seriously had less trouble running this with a guy from New Zealand last time than with people in my own time zone. Sheesh. Both Towers went down anyway and I earned another 10% for my efforts. 60% completed!

While wandering, I found a field of neglected flax seeds waiting to be destroyed by the sweeper. ‘Tedra’ something-or-another. I put a few dozen of them in my pocket and promptly forgot about them.

I traded tiles with Rabble, burned a couple more batches in my oven, and finally made 7k glory, passing Principles of the Funerary Temple. (Ding! Level 30!) Less than 30 minutes later, a person advertised ‘7k glory packs’ of tiles for 100 folded birch resin. That’s about when I slammed my head into my desk—that’s all I’ve been after for a while. I went ahead and bought a pack for fun and received 70 colors (a number were duplicates of ones I already had, but that’s ok). I slapped them all into the Temple and it now has around 11k glory. Hilarity. At some point the temple gained a gatehouse, so it now completely blocks the road. I’ll see if I can get a world builder to scootch it somewhere reasonable.

After deciding to start working towards my own Bijou and Veneries, I traded for a bunch of gems from the Goods and started hacking away. I’m still not great at it, but I was able to cut about eight or so gems out of the 30 I needed. I’ve gathered all of the materials needed for by Bijou except for a piece of marble, which I’ve contracted from Pascalito. The venery will take a while.

I’m slowly assembling the necessary materials for a second oven, but this is a more leisurely project. I’ve already finished most of the moonsteel, a sixth of the clay bricks, and well over half of the resin.

Sunday passes came earlier than expected while I was offline. Logged back on to find I am still the most reasonable person in Egypt! Test of Reason Passed—woohoo! They now have a ‘zap me’ button for offline test passes so you can still get the warm fuzzy feeling of being struck by lightning.

There’s a couple of Hand of Man hours coming up—I discovered I had a few hundred dried papyrus lying around, so I stuffed it into a firepit for the ash. I needed some flax, then I remembered the flax seeds I was still carrying! I planted a few to see what they’d produce and I was not disappointed: 1 watering yielded: 5 flax, 2 rotten flax. When left to seed, each bed produces 6 at a go. Flaxxing has just entered ‘god mode’. Using the new seeds, I can easily tend 30 beds at once and drop a few extra to pay back the seeds used at the same time. Each couple of minutes yields 210 flax. I grew 1k without realizing it and unlocked the ‘grew 7,777 flax’ achievement.

Aside for a few hundred reserved for processing, I dried the rest out downtown—a dozen hammocks makes drying mass quantities a dream. I may add a second firepit just to speed up the processing.

04/22/09 My Towers...it’s now or never

Mass produced hundreds of ash from thousands of flax with thousands of wood. Monday night I dropped two Hand of Man Towers and scored 11%. Buoyed by my success, I plunged headlong into gathering resources for more! I quickly threw together the materials for 3 rich soil towers and worked on two more hand of man towers.

While this is going on, I have several other projects ‘time sharing’ my attention: Mosaic, Venery, and a Bijou table. I put the second raeli oven project on the back burner (heh) and was thus able to alternate between other various aspects of soul-crushing fun.

I’ve already passed Venery principles, but I’d really like to build one myself. This takes 7 lockboxes and a starting point. Each lockbox requires, among its other components, 4 specially cut gemstones. I’ve gotten fairly decent with crafting simpler cuts and was able to cut a little more than half of the total stones needed. As a side note, I also cut the stones needed for the Bijou table, and one of the ones for a Pathmaker, should I ever decide to do that one.

I’m going to need to take a couple days break from the gemcutting, so I’ll pick up on that next week. I tried outsourcing the stonecutting, but the one respondant I got wanted 500 folded birch resin for just 7 turquoise. I thanked him politely and went about my day.

Left a tell for Pascalito, my quarryman, for a piece of rare marble that I’ll need to finish the Bijou table. Everything else is tucked away in a project chest.

I had a spot of luck with paints! Shiva made a public offer to mix paints for free, so I inquired what the raw material cost would be for a mosaic. I had all of the materials on hand, save 125 copper. A good bit of mining and refining later, I was on my way to Adn. True to his word, a few minutes afterwards I was ‘porting home with some 600 debens of paint. He noted that he has all of the recipes down, so if I ever need anything, just look him up. Excellent.

Also needed for the mosaic were 500 specially treated boards: 250 glossy blonde boards and 250 glossy white ones. I’d built the wood treatment tank but I hadn’t really played around with it much. Basically you add different reagents at different times to work out formulas for making boards with certain attributes. It’s nasty complicated and every tank is slightly different so recipes aren’t universal. Elfus was selling ‘kits’ of mosaic boards for 150 resin, but since he was the one who had backed out of the tile trade last week, I opted to not engage his services. It took about half an hour and some wiki researching, but I developed recipes that worked fine and all it cost was water, wax, sulfur, and a bit of potash. As a bonus, I now understand the mechanics behind how the tank works, so the next project will take less experimenting.

I built my mosaic in Mandissa’s house, but it’ll be awhile before I have it finished and opened for judging. The tile placement works a little like tetris, using tiles from your inventory to fill a little tray. Pieces from the tray go onto a grid of triangles. I still haven’t finalized what I want the picture to be of, but I have ideas.

At some point during all of this, diania opted to increase my property’s resale value by planting an Essence of Harmony (a gazebo-looking thing that’s used in a couple of Tests) by the road in front of my house. She had been stalking the locals for palm fronds for the past month. In the end, it makes things insanely convenient for south StillWater/north SA people.

Rich Soil Tower was, as mentioned before, one of the cheapest towers to build and I expected heavy competition. As a result, I figured it’d take three well placed towers to get 5% and stay in the top 14. I tried a couple of different tower spots and nearly ran out the clock getting to the third site without burning too much travel time. When the dust settled, I was the second highest with 9.5%. All total, I’m now at 80.5% on Towers.

Tower Hour tonight is early. Six pm early. As a result, I parked myself and my wife where the towers will be built, with materials in hand. I’m trying a new spot in the great northeast and using my ‘comfort sport’ in Queen’s Retreat. I’m counting on another 6-7% tonight. We’ll see.

04/23/09

Very, very short play session—logged on and built the two Hand of Man towers, earning another 11% and change, taking me to 92 point something. There’s no good Hour coming up before this weekend, so it looks like I’ll have to wait another week before Mandisa passes Marriage after I pass Towers.

Traded 299 Hawthorn resin to Cali for a like amount of folded birch. I now have almost enough resin for another oven. I’m just shy a few thousand clay bricks...the glass...the blades...30 moonsteel...a mess of bearings....you get the point.

Still haven’t heard from Pascalito about the marble for my Bijou. I’ll ping him tonight to see if he forgot or if he’s too busy with the current project: an Aquaduct pump. A network of aquaducts must be built for the Test of Life, but the main pumping station is a regional project requiring hundreds of marble. It’s very likely that Pascalito got booked hard for that one.

I’ve narrowed my mosaic picture down to one of the following: a folded birch tree, a cat on a table, or a camel sidelong. Right now, I’m really leaning towards ‘camel’. Put it on sand below a blue sky....should look good. Not monumental, but good. I’m going to need a lot of colors I don’t have access to. I’ll have to see if I can find a non-paranoid temple builder to trade for some browns and blues.

04/24/09

Last minute cancellations of other plans allowed me some desert time last night. I log on to see there’s no good tower hour in the near future, but there’s a Solid Land hour (the cheapest and most competitive) coming up in under two hours. I needed 7.8% to pass. If I pushed hard, I could rack up 5%. I decided ‘what the hell’ and started to cut my last few cuttable stones while I performed a physical inventory of my chests to see what I had on hand. Answer: a lot of nothing.

That was not entirely true, as I had canvas and rope aplenty and enough straw to build many thousands of bricks, as well as dozens of medium quartz gems. Hmm... that left me with only worrying about cut stones, of which I had enough for two towers, and white sand, of which I only had enough for one. I made three thousand bricks while I thought and schemed.

I hit the wiki and confirmed that the local patch of white sand is out in the boonies and would require a 15-20 minute run to get more. The Stillwater patch was, interestingly enough, much closer to my house. That’s when it occurred to me that The Goods is even closer. Maybe, just maybe, I could pull off something patently insane. Five towers in five zones in twenty minutes, unassisted.

Robare was at home and he agreed to meet me for a quick exchange once he realized the fate of the free world was at stake. “It would be highly irresponsible of me to decline when the world is in mortal danger!” Robare kicks ass. I traded in some of my credit for a mixture of thirty cuttable and cut stones and a ton of white sand. I thanked him profusely, judged his mosaic and ran downtown.

At SACFAR I was able to fully employ the 8 rocksaws and 30 brick racks to finish processing the stones and the last bricks needed plus a few extra. I ran across the street to a small compound I had built a few days previously. I had intended it to house my mosaic before I discovered how large the structure was and the building sat empty. I built a large chest and dumped bricks and sand for two towers in it, then warped home to finalize my plans. At this point, the Hour was to begin in but thirty minutes.

I shuffled inventory back and forth between several chests and the shed and double checked everything before heading out. I’m rather glad I did, for I discovered that in my haste, I had neglected to make the clay lamps needed for the beacon. That was quickly corrected and I was on my way.

The only rule I gave myself was that travel time didn’t matter. I couldn’t use waypoint travelling, as doing so would keep me from using the fast travel option on the chariots for ten real minutes. With less than fifteen minutes to go, I was ready by the Stillwater coast a couple of minutes east of their Chariot. I bided my time, listening to the frogs and then, in hardly any time at all, the Hour had begun.

I dropped my first tower without even checking the percentage: it didn’t matter and would be reduced in seconds anyway. Precious seconds I needed to be in motion. I hit the Chariot and warped to Nomad’s Paradise. My second Tower went down almost by the Chariot and I glanced: 1.6%. On to Shabbat Ab! I spousewarp out of habit, throw down my third Tower, and spend four minutes running downtown. I get to the chariot and nearly warp before I remember to get the rest of my materials from my storage chest. THAT could have been embarassing.

Resupplied, I warped to Meroe and ran a minute west to drop my fourth. I took a peek: 0.61%. Five minutes left and I’m dashing back to the chariot. Although I said originally travel time didn’t matter, I’m not going to waste it needlessly. With two and a half minutes to spare, I warp to Queen’s Retreat and navpoint to my ‘sweet spot’ on a mesa in the eastern desert, overlooking the vast and bountiful sand. I built my last Tower with one minute left on the clock.

I spousewarp then jaunt back to downtown Shabbat Ab for luck. The Hour ends. I’m struck by lightning. Towers passed!

Hour of the towersolidland, 46 towers built. The top 14 claims are: Creed claimed 2.20% using 1 towers. Duncan claimed 2.48% using 2 towers. Shinjaki claimed 2.80% using 2 towers. diania claimed 3.08% using 3 towers. Ryyssa claimed 4.43% using 2 towers. Chelle claimed 4.90% using 2 towers. murtha claimed 5.38% using 3 towers. Yamantalai claimed 6.56% using 3 towers. Tammie claimed 7.36% using 2 towers. KebiRoz claimed 7.75% using 4 towers. Ikuu claimed 9.03% using 3 towers. Dusksgirl claimed 9.76% using 3 towers. Nighthawk claimed 10.24% using 3 towers. Sefet claimed 13.71% using 5 towers.

04/27/09 Do you know the way to Falcon Bay?

Friday night got off to a great start as our Pilgrimage FINALLY got back under way. We left from Nomad’s Paradise, tromped down into Khmun, turned east into Saqqarah and Falcon Bay, and ended up in Sinai. The only major snag was when we took a wrong turn heading into Falcon Bay from Saqqarah, trying to avoid a mountain range. It was a bad decision I take responsibility for and cost us a half hour of time. The only other distraction was a brief break in Pascalito’s house as we cracked open a half dozen bottles of wine to pre-emptively celebrate. They were stronger wines and I was amused to see the normal glass hoisting animations included an additional treat: shrugging, stumbling slightly, then totally face planting. Good times. As a bonus my marble should be ready Monday or Tuesday—they’d been having some problems with their dual logging.

We didn’t hit anywhere near the number of shrines we had originally projected, but made a great deal of progress, ending with a score in the 6500-range. We figured that was good enough for a pass on Sunday or another week or two and, if not, we’d revisit if necessary.

Peaceful Panther had gifted me with some extra cuttable turquoise and with a few spare I traded for at the Goods, I was finally able to finish cutting all of the gems needed for the Venery.

Sunday was spent out of the desert mostly as the wife and I celebrated our anniversary with a trip to visit the Atlanta Civic Center and see the treasures of King Tutankhamun (her idea)—it was a very enjoyable trip.

In the late afternoon, I configured my Venery, which involves running around North Shabbat Ab with a songbird companion reuniting the fragments of a woman’s soul (heart, personality, identity, shadow, and intellect) to allow her to pass into the Afterlife. Couple that with some wordplay, a riddle or two, and I think I’ve got a venery that should win in a couple of months.

When Sunday passes came, I passed Pilgrimage and Mandisa passed the Test of Marriage (on our REAL anniversary.....Awwwww!!!). Now that the wife has an actual video card, Mandisa is showing up more often in the desert. This will make for a happier Sefet and hungrier sheep.

I learned how to farm silkworms, but it will be a while before I build a farm. Those suckers take fifty sheetglass in addition to other pricey resources to manufacture. Then there’s the thistle garden to feed them, etc. Saqqarah has researched Chromatic Touch (allows the dying of silks) and Modern Sheep Farming (allows up to 50 animals in one farm, I think), but I haven’t had a chance to get that way yet.

The next Test that will get my attention is likely going to be Darkest Night, with working on pyro during the daylight hours when no shrooms grow. Varick showed off a firework he got as a reward for judging a contest and I was just simply agog: there’s going to be rough competition ahead.

04/28/09 – I’ll get oven two I know I will—I’ll be the king of wistful clicking

I put in my application to a new Guild: SA Waterworks, a group dedicated to passing the Test of Life. Most regions have an aqueduct guild, so here’s hoping. Waterworks is building aquaduct towers and channels on a point system. The more you contribute to the project, the higher the place in the build queue you are. Makes sense and is fair.

Aqueducts require hundreds of marble, thousands of concrete, and hundreds of thousands of raeli tiles, so this isn’t something that is going to be thrown up overnight. So, I have a bit of time to gather resources to donate.

I grew two thousand flax, originally intending to trade it for raeli tiles, then something caused me to check out the Goods. I had a new mission. While I negotiated their inventory, I fired up the forge and started making a few items. An hour later I had worked out the most horribly convoluted trade I ever had: close to 4k miscellaneous articles of mine (wax, honey, marble, flax, papyrus, rotted flax, dried papyrus, rare mushrooms, and many other things) in return for brass, 5 glass pipes, 60 iron, 30 moonsteel, 500 clay, 30 lead, 50 cuttable stones, and a small host of other things besides. Robare took a look at the trade page and simply said “Holy crap.”

Returning home much less encumbered, I kicked the casting box into high gear and started cranking out small gear after small gear as I diverted the forge to moonsteel sheeting. I was going to make a second raeli oven!

For hours the Sefetplex buzzed as a hotbed of ruthless industry. Crucibles and stones were cut, and another thousand clay gathered and fired. The last dozen debens of resin were harvested and an accounting was made of all that was collected: I had a raeli in a box. Well two chests, actually, but you get the point.

All that I needed now was a place to put it. I checked over the wiki’s known color maps, and it looked as though I’d need to venture to Nomad’s Paradise to obtain the soft browns I desired. I headed that way and explored. I travelled the length of the zone, hitting every oasis and strip of water looking for clay. Everywhere I turned either already had an oven churning away or was completely covered by drying racks and wood planes.

I followed the river down into Khmun all the way to the map’s edge. Every inch of clay claimed.

The hour grew late and I, frustrated. Tonight, I’ll try again.

04/29/09 – Tiles, They are a Changin’

I picked up my Quest for Clay where I had left off in Khmun, travelling south for precisely two minutes before finding an unclaimed patch. Don’t get me wrong, it was in striking distance from someone’s compound, but somehow I still manage to sleep at night. Happily, I plopped down a construction site and started loading in the materials. One additional trip from home was needed to carry all of the bricks and resin, but after a few minutes it was dredging clay.

I jogged off to search for mushrooms for Darkest Night, but finding none, I returned to the oven. This, in my opinion, is the best and worst part of Raeli operations: burning a few tiles for a couple of hours and camping by the oven to see what colors it gives and how long it takes to achieve them. Consequently, the bulk of my night was engaged in staring at a swath of color that very gradually changed in hue and luminosity.

This oven was to serve two purposes: provide camel or sand colors for my mosaic or generate tiles I can use toward the aqueduct. That monster requires white, black, yellowish, greenish, and pinkish tiles as well as ‘wildcard’ colors. The point system for the SA Waterworks guild gives more points to the yellow/green/pink subsets, since they are rarer and specific. The original spot I wanted to build should have given me some nice brown, but I was now miles off course. I nervously kicked off the burn sequence:

Success! The oven generated 13 new colors for me, including some that would be great for the sand in the mosiac (bisque, blanched almond) and colors that match both the yellow-ish and green-ish color requirements. It’s a predominantly goldenrod-colored oven that eventually deepens into a couple of darker olive colors. I couldn’t be happier.

Piddled around at the ‘Plex, grew another kiloflax after upgrading to a newer flax strain: 4 regular, 3 rotten, 6 seeds...one weeding, no water.

Mandisa popped on and ran around a bit, tending to sheepies and whatnot. We watched a poor soul run through my venery, cheering her on in our room as she made the right choices, wondering what she was thinking as she just stood in a place for a while, and so forth. In the end, the player asked me for additional clues twice, something she said she has never had to do.

I fine tuned a couple of the clues to ratchet down the difficulty a simdgeon. We’ll see how it goes in the coming days.

04/30/09

Bit of a mixed bag last night, with lack of any real focus. The biggest test-related activity was working on the mosaic a bit, where my Grand Discovery was that I can rotate tiles in the tray. The way they work is you pick a color of raeli tile from your inventory and a random shape 2-8 triangles big appears in a placement tray. The highlighted one can be placed if you mouse over the puzzle grid or rotated/trashed if you’re moused over the tray interface. You can have nearly a couple dozen pieces in the tray, so you have a variety to pick from. Pieces that are placed on the mosaic can be moved if needed, but you can’t overlap tiles, so they’ll be a lot of wasted tiles as you fill in spaces.

Found a person with sky blue tiles and we’ll be trading a half dozen colors tonight. Now I just need some darker camel-colored tiles and I’ll be in business!

Helped Mandisa out with her Empty Hand Puzzle—I gave her a material list and she got everything together. Instructed how to do the construction sites, etc. The puzzle design portion was a bit overwhelming, so I designed a stupidly easy one that hopefully will get her a Principle pass within a few days. If it doesn’t pass by Monday, I’ll start bribing people openly with resin or glass.

Wound up tending a Vigil with Rosierazor over by Robare’s camp. Zeus had apparently built one for the sole purpose of passing Principles, then made it open public. The point total on this one will be low, but it was fun scrambling around for a bit for items and it got Mandisa a level, so it’s all good. Scary note: at less than 24 sacrifices, it was already asking for specific gem cuts –and- wines of particular vintages. If I try for a Vigil pass, it is going to suck. Hard.

Rabble offered us (the former pilgrimage) a baby queen ant, but the last thing I want to do is scramble for fresh leaves every three real days to feed the stupid thing. He’s also hosting a series of digs this Saturday for bauxite, gypsum and having a mix party for concrete and cement. Hopefully, Mandisa will be up for at least part of that—concrete/cement is one of those things we can’t really do ‘in house’ and many structures are starting to require it by the boatload.

I took to the anvil for the first time in a while to see if I could make a better shovel that the 7300 or so that I was currently using. The answer? Why, yes I can. I nervously tapped out a 7850 and Mandisa will inherit the older one. At some point I may just break down and buy a pair of damn fine shovels. A pair of 9k+ quality shovels and very good food may allow us to ‘burst dig’ a hole. For now, though, these bring a bit of oomph to the dig, being about 3.5 times more effective than a ‘plain iron’ shovel.