User:Sefet/July2009

07/01/09

I spent a bit of time planning what I needed to get my temple to where I thought it needed to be by Sunday and with some luck all it would take are trades with Alexis, Diania, and Inkoaten to pull it off. So, I log on to start a couple of ovens before I go afk for Diablo Night, gather some resin, and generally look over things.

I got my seven players for the Hexaglyph, but no principles pass. Turns out I will have to cut a special type of turquoise and ‘discover’ mandibular glue in an ant colony for the pass. Blech. I enjoy playing hexes, so I’ll just wait a couple more weeks to play two more recognized puzzles and get my principles that way. Who knows, maybe I’ll pass in the meantime? I’ve waited for months for principle passes before (Kingmaker—another blech.), a week and a half will not be the death of me. As a bonus, Teppy fixed the bug mentioned yesterday and I had credit for playing Numaris’ puzzle.

About that time, lilac chirps that she’s dropped off a quantity of burley wood tiles in my dropbox. This was shaping up to be a good evening!

Well, was. That was the last of the joy.

Discovered to my horror, I was out of charcoal. Not ‘low’, out. I had used up the last of the 5k charcoal I bought from Trillian under three weeks ago. My charcoal sellers were offline and had been for days, so I bit the bullet and knocked out a batch so I could burn the tiles I wanted. Don’t get me wrong, I can make charcoal easily....I just go through a LOT of it, so it is much more convenient for me to buy from someone who macros it.

Afterwards, I lit up the “A” and “C” ovens and went afk. Long story short, I overshot my desired color on “C” and was stuck with nearly 2k nearly worthless tiles. I split it between temple and trade anyway and maybe someone will have a use for them. Burned “D” and “E” ovens successfully at least. I’ll hit “B” again tonight and “C” on Thursday.

My Master Plan hinged on getting trades together with Inkoaten and Diania. Inkoaten appears to be on vacation, as he’s been offline for nearly a week. It isn’t looking too promising for getting a trade together there. Diania...regretfully can’t trade tiles at all. It seems she leased her ovens to a player named Arame, who makes me look like a casual player. (Seriously, he’s also level 33 and has passed more Tests than I have.) Her contract is open-ended as long as he keeps paying his rent, so that’s a dead lead.

In desperation, I chatted up Arame—we had traded before and I was curious to see how receptive he was. He noted, the green and yellows likely won’t happen (3 colors!), as the ovens are already planned for another 5 burns out, but Steel Blue and Teal may be a possibility and he might be interested in a gunpowder trade. Right then. If I can’t have a loaf...or a half-loaf, I’ll take a few slices.

Right now my plans are to:

• Chat up Alexis and see where we are on those colors
• Burn oven “B” and maybe Rabble’s HG one for the Indigo
• Start working towards replenishing basic camp stocks of flax, linen, canvas, saltpeter
• Gather wood and either trade for or manufacture charcoal.
• Research alternate providers for Inkoatens and Diania/Arame’s colors
• Gather materials towards the next oven.

07/02/09

One of the things that always amazes me is how quickly and dramatically my plans get rerouted, diverted, and subverted on an apparently routine basis. Sometimes, it is even for the better.

The entire diania/Arame situation caused me to spend most of my lunch dredging through the wiki, looking for other sources of those colors. After noting several potential sources for a few colors I’m lacking, including such guilds as Zfree, Luxor Plage (A French group operating out of Falcon Bay), and Raeli Pi Kappa, I hit the jackpot. One of the cartels, Faith, has opened shop selling tiles for things that are not tiles....and they had a LOT of colors I could use! I made a papy run then left a chat with Kyline, one of the guild’s Elders, who was offline to see if they could fulfill my order.

AlexisBelle got back in touch, letting me know she had burned several colors I had wanted and had a couple more in stock that help things along.

I chatted with Bcoastaldawn of Zfree and arranged for a color for color trade and Pascalito for several flavors in return for some herb seeds.

Things were coming together magnificently and all I needed to do was complete the trades!

That’s when I lost internet connectivity at home. With packet loss exceeding 50%, despite hours of trying I was unable to stay online more than 10 seconds at a go and only 1 in 5 messages I was able to send actually made it to the recipient. AT&T said there’s no outages reported for my area, but they’ll be calling me back to work on resolving the issue. Blech.

07/06/09

Ha! It was AT&T’s fault. Got everything resolved by the time I got home and my conversation with their technician was effectively “Yeah, I worked around your problem by changing DNS. Close the ticket.”

The weekend was, for the most part, an extensive trade-thon that would’ve made any three used chariot dealers jealous. Got in touch with everyone I had started negotiations with before the Great Internet Collapse of 2009, and completed all of them. Tiles poured in from Faith, Zfree, and Raeli Pi Kappa. My own trade stocks were rapidly diminishing and my spreadsheet of temple colors showed very few holes indeed. I inched closed to my goal of last week’s Test pass and was 3k short.

It was around Saturday afternoon that my blood ran cold. I received a chat from nourbese, wife of Darwishi, and occasional trader wanting to know if I had a couple of colors. She and Darwishi had passed the last two weeks consecutively and were focusing their 18 ovens on passing their friend McArine, who had been on vacation all week.

I had one of the two colors, so I decided to play it cool, asking half-teasingly if they were going to let me pass this week. She asked me what my point total was. Cagily, I answered a figure 2k lower than what was in the temple already. This delighted her and she noted that I had a pretty good shot of passing, as McArine was still on holiday and she didn’t know what was in his temple. She then surprised me by telling me that if McArine passed before I did, she’d do what she’d can to help me along. I thank her and we traded tiles.

By Sunday, I had closed several more deals, and made it to last week’s total. I threw my cards on the table with AlexisBelle, telling her exactly where I stood and she dove wholeheartedly into getting a couple of colors, determined that I should take the weekly prize. Once I pass, I really have no further use for tiles, so I gave her close to 4k worth of resins and, once the dust settles, I’ll be transferring my five ovens to the Pilgrimage for their use. (Yes, I –could- sell tiles, but I’d rather help friends.)

Nourbese chatted me again Sunday afternoon to see where I stood. This time I gave her the exact number. She then vowed to give what she could to ensure a pass and shortly thereafter, she had upped my score by another 750 points or so, no small feat.

Alexis came through with another color, unexpectedly boosting my scores by another 250. At this point, I decided the temple was Finished. All was over except the waiting.

Sunday passes were running late. Very late. In fact, they never came. Monday morning and we’re still waiting anxiously. It’s been a bit nerve-wracking.

It wasn’t all about tiles, though! I’m also working on passing our aqueduct through Life, and that’s going to require a lot of veggie harvests. I have no idea how many we’re going to need, but since every one counts, between trades I worked on growing onions at a spot nearly at the end of our main line. Two towers didn’t get the benefit of my growing, but that was due to one being on grass (no onions) and one being on a steep slope (growing is a pain in the butt). All in all, I completed around 1100 harvests. That directly translates to 1100 points to every tower along the line up to and including the one I grew at...and 18,700 onions. Never have my sheep seen such bounty!

Suffice it to say, Mandisa no longer does offline onions.

07/07/09

Sunday passes ran at nearly 4pm Monday. I missed temple by 1300 points. That came like a blow to the stomach with a baseball bat. My hexaglyph isn’t even among the runners up and our aqueduct failed to pass...again. Due to my diligence with the onions, I came within 750 harvests of passing and our lead tower came under 250. Maybe next week, eh?

Grew another hundred harvests or so of onions.

I congratulated the temple winner, Lill, and she noted that although she was going to pass her husband,Pacer, as well, it wouldn’t be this week as he was “too far behind.” Nourbese consoled me and advised that McArine was back in town. I advised her I was looking forward to battling him this coming weekend. It’s on.

I made a couple more papy runs and upped my orders from Faith to 1200 papyrus worth of tiles. Those will come to an additional 739 points once delivered later on this week. Met up with Numaris and picked up additional teal tiles. Otherwise, I’ve been leeching from my trade stocks to shore up points here and there, adding about 250 to what I had previously.

Adding significant numbers of points is getting very difficult and two people I need to talk to for new colors have been offline over a week.

Maybe tonight, eh?

07/08/09

Kyline is still out of stock on the Wheat-colored tiles, but everything else was ready for pickup.

My trade chests saw a bit of activity in my absence. Rabble had dropped off a few pieces of marble in my trade chests, Lilac delivered some Indigo tiles, and Numaris left a few hundred more teal tiles.

I stuck to my ‘plan’ and knocked off things from a todo list, picking up Kyline’s tiles from a warehouse we’ve been trading back and forth in Pyramid Lake, glorifying the temple with a few colors from my own inventory, and the like.

I’ve trimmed the sheep down to one pair a pen and separated them, so no more breeding for now. I surpassed my need for leather quite a long time ago and it just isn’t worth as much for trade as it used to be.

Burned a couple of ovens and after all was said and done, I am now 3 points shy of Monday’s passing score. I think McArine will push the total to 50k and I can’t handle that, but I’ll try for 49k. There’s always a chance someone that neither of us are expecting will take the prize, but there’s only so much you can do, really.

Made a couple more papy runs and placed an order for another thousand tiles of assorted colors. They will only give me 400 points—another testament to battling a logarithmic scoring system. I cancelled the wheat, as they would only give me 9 points anyways. Side note: I have got to remember to burn Royal Blue tonight.

Grew a couple hundred harvests of onions towards Life, starting me on my goal of 2k harvests by Sunday passes.

Finally, I’m putting a use to the little newbie house I claimed months ago on the far end of the bee field. I’ve built a cask and have started wining with the grapes I’ve been neglecting for nearly half a year. We’ll see how they turn out. The marble I got from Rabble will be used to make a tasting table. Then I’ll just need bottles and wine glasses.

07/10/09

Getting seriously burned out on the temple. If I don’t pass this weekend or the next, I may have to give up on it. Games shouldn’t be emotionally draining. That’s what work and ex-wives are for!

Over the past couple of days, I grew over 17k onions and went on more papy runs. The papy, as always, goes to pay for tiles in trade and the onions towards Life.

There’s only a couple of discovered colors that I can’t seem to find—the only owners of them have been on vacation/out-of-Egypt for weeks (possibly quit, but with non-expired accounts): magenta and light coral. I’m going to have to suck it up and go without those.

I looked over the colors that were discovered I was needing badly, having only a handful of each, and couldn’t buy from Faith—some six or so in total. I blinked once and looked at my sheep pens, which held some 38k onions. Well, it was worth a shot. “Offering 3k onions for 150 raeli tiles of any of the following colors...” In short order I gained tiles from five needed colors and had moved 15k onions. I shall feed Egypt! (or at least its sheep)

Closed out more deals with Faith, burned another couple of ovens, and my temple now stands at 49,218. Not going to be able to add much more to it by Sunday, but I go into the weekend feeling I gave it my best shot.

In tech news, with the advent of advanced automation, sawmills are now constructable. The turn wood into boards at a rate of about 1 a minute, holding up to 1k wood in the hopper and can be upgraded to a 3k hopper for an insane cost. You can add more wood while it is running, but to remove boards it has to be stopped. Every time the mill is restarted, it requires a new set of steel blades... which aren’t exactly ‘cheap’ to me. I’m going to hold off on this one for a while. Other goodies to look forward to in the not-too-distant future: autolooms, autominers, and crawlers (they push pyramid blocks).

07/13/09 Here I grow again on my own, hoeing down the only row I’ve ever known....

I attacked my projects with vigor and spent a solid chunk of Friday and Saturday meeting my self-imposed goal of 2k onion harvests. I crossed my fingers and hoped it would be enough.

Otherwise, it remained all about the tiles, baby! Arame chatted me out of the blue and I was able to pad a couple of colors up a bit. Add to this a trade with Pascalito for light salmon tiles, which I think is the only discovered color I was missing, as my temple score grew to nearly 50k. There was no telling how high McArine was going to boost his temple to assure his pass, but I figured if I could somehow squeak up to 51k, I’d be set. This impossible number loomed above me and was nothing shy of daunting.

Chatted with Lill, who advised me not to become discourage and that I would pass eventually. She noted that she herself had come painfully close for weeks before her passage—once with under 100 points keeping her from the prize. The conversation steeled my resolve.

I hit every oven, cleaning them out of tiles and then I looked at my warehouse. It would be a bit of a desperate gambit, but I’d give it a shot. I shoved my chips in and declared “all in”, wiping out my entire trade stock for a few more precious points. In the end, I decided I could do no less than my all, for ill or for naught.

My temple was glorious and contained tiles summing to 50870 or so points.

McArine’s was 51279.

It was a painful blow, but I knew I did all I can—the weight of going against 18 ovens focused solely on a single person’s pass drained me, but next week should be my week. All of my former opponents believe it, but I’ll still find some way to add a few tiles between now and then.

There was a nice moment though, when our aqueduct passed the Test of Life. Lightning struck around Shabbat Ab as my time in Onion Alley paid off for seven people. The Waterworks channel was a symphony of gratitude to me and my efforts. It’s really hard to feel down in the midst of all that.

With one less thing to worry about, I idled about hunting down a few mushrooms for my impossible 3rd page (of 5) for Darkest Night. (Impossible due to the ultra-rare ‘beehive mushrooms’ on the list.) I wandered down to Saqqarah and knocked out all of the Dead Tongue and Colt’s Foot shrooms, leaving me with three more flavors to go.

07/14/09 Pump, pump, for your love...

Automatic looms are now available and I’m adding it to the growing list of things I don’t particularly care about. Most of the automatic buildings (brick makers, autoloom, and sawmill) just strike me as too slow and/or expensive to bother with. An untuned loom will make a piece of linen in 5 minutes, assuming sufficient thread. Not worth it to me.

I’m currently in ‘Chill’ mode, long overdue. The only test that hounds me is Temple and I’ve cranked it down a notch for now. Otherwise, I’m just puttering around, socializing, and having fun.

Arranged another order with Faith, trading away my 5 OSM and one run of papyrus for about 200 points worth of tiles. (This is about 1k tiles, incidently—the tile to point ratio is really showing now).

Burned the C oven and the tiles from it edged my point total to 51,001. It looks like I’ll pass McArine’s score sometime this week. I’ll count myself lucky if I can scrape together 51,600, so here’s hoping it will be enough.

Met up with Dianess, mala, and Robare and helped fill our newly upgraded aqueduct reserve tank to 900k water. Apparently water is ‘used’ at a rate of 1 unit per tower per minute, so different people pump a couple of times a week to keep it topped off.

07/15/09

Burned an oven and added an odd smattering of points to the Temple. Both lilac and Alexis pledged some tiles to help me along. Alexis’ gift came to another 210 points and I’ll be letting lilac know what’s needed tonight.

I have good friends and I count myself very fortunate for having joined their pilgrimage so many months ago now.

07/16/09

Picked up my order from Kyline, my Faith tile salesperson, and stuffed them in the temple, along with burns from ovens A & D. I now have a couple hundred points more than McArine did when he passed. I think my next competitor may be Arame. He’s been very ‘visible’ with trading lately, but we won’t know for sure for a few more days.

Tended my grapes a little and the wine in the barrel is up to 11% alcohol, with some residual sugars left. Once it gets to around 13%, I’ll bottle it up and give it a taste.

I decided to buy the Cooperage skill to make more barrels, but it is pricey, to say the least. The tuition is 2 brass plates and 50 copper straps. Being nearly out of metal, I knew it’ll be a couple of days before I’m to the point of being able to work (or build) a barrel vise.

I hit up my closest copper mine and worked it until it collapsed. The repairs are getting expensive and may justify me going to go look for a new vein in a few weeks. After refining the ore, I was left with enough metal to cover the straps, with a little left over. The brass is a different story. The plates take 40 brass and I’ll save myself some aggravation by ordering it from Rabble once I get a few trade goods together.

I still wonder how many ‘active’ people we have. ULead’s census says we have about 1230 paid accounts, but given that we have a substantial number of paid but inactive, mule accounts, etc., the question really becomes...how many of us are there really?

We don't have access to the number of active accounts (unique paid account logins that were not spouse body possessions over a period of time, say the last 2 weeks), the closest thing we have is 'how many people voted for DP now versus then'.

This figure isn't by any means a great one to use, as there are a number of people who don't vote for whatever reason (voter apathy and language barriers, just to name two) and the opinion is probably split on whether your mule should vote or not, but it would stand to reason that the percentage of voter turnout should remain fairly consistent over time.

The latest DP elections just finished and Korrin of Worship World and vigil-organization fame won. I noticed that there were only 388 ballots cast. The first election for which we have vote totals were in March, right before the 3 month pre-pay accounts started expiring. In that election, we had about 1500 accounts ‘on the books’, but 669 voters. This indicates to me we have a much greater ‘mule population’ these days.

Compare to Tale 3: we had 703 votes in the election just before the 3 month mark and 454 just after the 6 month mark. I have no idea how many ‘accounts’ were active back then though.

I’m not making any insinuations here—just some statistics I find interesting.

07/17/09 Little deuce cooper

Today was a textbook example of how to burn loads of travel time doing a handful of things. As soon as I log in, I hear that hairy tooth mushrooms have been found in Queen’s Retreat on the east side of the grassy bits. I needed 7 for Darkest Night and 4 were spotted. I glanced at the clock and realized I had no idea when they would despawn. I decided to make a break for it anyway. Three chariot hops and 12 hours of travel time later, I’m sprinting across the grassy fields of QR while alt-tabbed looking up info in the wiki on spawn times. Flipping back to the game, I note that I have 12 real-time minutes to cover one thousand coordinates of distance. Fortunately, it was all road travel and I arrived at my destination with four minutes to spare. Hunting all around the area, I found six of the elusive shrooms before the deadline and warped back home with a poisoned and full belly.

I chatted with Rabble and after forcing him to accept payment (which still may be returned at some random point), I bartered for the necessary brass mentioned yesterday. I tried to get down there before dinner (and another 12 hours of travel time used), but to no avail. Afterwards, I find he’s off-line, but he’s left the alloy in a chest for me and after only nine minutes of searching his sprawling camp I found it. Burned a few tiles at his camp and returned home, ready to make some copper straps!

Grabbing some copper, some wax, and a ton of charcoal—I head back downtown to SACFAR. Time to get things done. Loaded up the Master’s Casting Box and set it to work for an hour, knocking out the plates while I tended four forges cranking out straps every couple of minutes until I gave out of copper.

I then happily dashed over to the SBody to buy the cooperage skill and live out my lifelong dream of making barrels. (Step two of The Dream is capturing a woman and carrying her to the top of a framework of girders where I can then hurl the aforementioned barrels at would-be rescuers and/or plumbers.) It was then that I was reminded that I can NEVER succeed without first failing. It’s an odd axiom that has persisted throughout nearly everything I have done. In this case, I stared blankly at the school, as I didn’t have the tuition. I had been focused so much on the two main requirements, sheeting and straps, that I had completely forgotten the third requirement: 100 boards. DOH!

I already had a substantial amount of wood on me (yes, yes....that’s what -he- said), but I needed to plane them. Running back to SACFAR, I made use of the carpentry shops which, for once, were not in a total state of disrepair. I made a mental note to drop off a carpentry blade or two later in gratitude and jogged back to the school. A few minutes later, I was a cooper!

I returned home to see what I’d need to make my Very Own barrel vise. I suppose it shouldn’t have shocked me to learn it included “more brass sheeting”. For now, I’d content myself with using the vises in SACFAR.

It turns out that making a barrel is another mini-game similar to using a charcoal oven, but simpler. For one thing, there’s only one control: add more wood. Otherwise it looks familiar with a series of bars: a fuel reserve, ‘flame’, ‘heat’, and progress. Progress bar only increments when heat is above 50%. Heat only increments when flame is higher than heat, otherwise heat decreases. Flame increases when you have wood in the hopper. If flame fills completely, you lose everything (another 100 boards and a couple of copper straps). If flame goes out...well...

Remember how I said “I can NEVER succeed without first failing”? This holds true even when I approach things cautiously. My first attempt, I added a little wood and got a feel for the machine. Gradually I got the heat up and the progress meter began to, well, progress. That’s when my connection to the server dropped.

To my credit, I managed to avoid screaming at the PC, although I really felt like it at the time. It was about ten minutes before I got that resolved and was able to look at the vise to find it was all right! If the flame goes out, the process just stalls and waits for you to pop more wood into the hopper to start getting your heat back up again.

Relieved, I made a couple of barrels and returned home with pride.

On a whimsy, I burned another 11 hours of travel time and visited oven ‘E’, where I finished the night baking some light blue tiles.

My temple shall be the most glorious!

07/21/09

My temple was not the most glorious.

I’ll back it up a bit and recap the rest of the weekend. Friday and Saturday continued my Adventures in Tile Baking, which is no doubt one of the most boring activities ever. Consequently, most of the time is actually spent watching videos on the intertubes with a portion of the screen peeking around the side to make sure I don’t overshoot a color. After much anguish and hitting every oven I could, I wound up with a very respectable score of 52,004. The winner was some guy I never heard of who –also- managed to pass Hexaglyphs and Pilgrimage that week. Good for him and his 236 more points than me.

Bastard.

The only principle I was still lacking was hexaglyph. I could not for the life of me beat the two most recent winners and otherwise in order to pass I’d need to ‘discover’ glue in an ant farm and make a stupidly difficult (for me) gem cut. I filed that away for later.

Anyway, this weekend’s contests were several Heptathalons! These are contests I generally enjoy participating in for several reasons. First, lasting only 30 minutes each, they are short and I don’t have to compete with people willing to do nothing else for 12-24 hours. Second, it’s a gathering contest that requires a little intelligence to get high scores. I haven’t mentioned this contest since December, so as a refresher, you must be among the top gatherers of slate, wood, veggies, grass, fish, silt, and flax in 30 minutes.

Numaris left a few dozen meals of serious make-you-run-really-fast food down by his Hall of Diversions(tm); not only did it help in running from place to place, but the bump to speed meant more and larger fish! Second, only flax counts—not rotten flax. Loading yourself with seeds that angle towards that helps. Third, I had a waypoint next to an aqueduct tower on sand. Admittedly it would’ve been stupidly better if it were an onion tower, but I was still able to generate 1k onions in a very short period of time. Grass gets ignored for the most part, because of the volume that some newer players spend trying to get an ‘uber’ grass score means that you can waste a LOT of time for very few points. Finally, Mr. Saturn, my trusty god-hatchet, meant that picking up an orchard’s worth of wood while doing everything else should pose little problems.

There were three contests being held and I participated in two of them; the third was ruled out because I wasn’t waking up that damn early on a Sunday to gather slate. In both contests I placed in the Top 7, earning massive amounts of prizes totalling: 221 bronze, 277 brass, 98 cuttable stones. For one hour’s worth of doing things that I’d be doing normally, I’d call that a serious win.

At one point I also had the good fortune of having Numaris stop by my camp to install an upgrade to one of my marble tubs. It now sports a large barrel reservoir that holds over seven times the water of a normal tub. Now I’m rotting dung like the pros!

Saturday also brought with it incredibly sad news. Rabble: friend, alloy & marble salesman, and community organizer decided to quit the game. The game had stopped being fun for him for a while and the ‘little things’ were getting to him in a bad way, so he decided to pack it all in, taking those few of us from the Pilgrimage into his confidence and bequeathed unto us three the contents of his camp, to be divided in a manner that we saw fit. He guilded all of his buildings to ‘his’ guild, and invited us to join. We asked him if he’d prefer to take a bit of time off to reconsider. He said, ‘no’ and we said our goodbyes and that Egypt’s community became poorer by an order of magnitude.

Once AlexisBelle was on and brought up to speed, she, lilac, and I discussed and came up with a plan. It may not be the best plan, but we have hope that maybe Rabble would return in a month or two if his camp was still intact. We decided not to pillage the coffers and instead maintain the camp to the best of our ability in the ‘absence’. Between the two of us, Alexis and I provided six cornerstones to prevent his buildings from decaying. (Ours are much cheaper to repair and much closer to us physically being the rationale.)

The animals were a little harder to manage. In the end, we decided to kill the camels and prune the sheep down to a single, separated pair. Alexis is keeping the chickens in inventory and the snakes... oh, gods at the snakes. There’s nine serpentiums and dozens of the damn things. I don’t know anything about the care of them, but apparently a thousand camel milk should keep them happy ‘for a while’, so that’s what we did.

There was also a dozen ant...hives? Terrariums? Anteries? Ant colonies! I took a peek in one to see what’s going on with it and one at random contained over a hundred glue. I blinked with surprise when my Hexaglyph tab lit up. I had unwittingly advanced the Principles. I wryly chuckled and went on with my grim task of assessing the fortunes.

Let me take a moment to impress upon you the ginormity of his camp: six massive sprawling edifices containing... well, many multiples of everything? Need a rocksaw? How about 20? 20 distaffs to match? Automatic loom, sawmill, a half dozen fleet furnaces, eight or so silkworm farms... a couple dozen warehouses scattered around filled to nearly bursting with untold riches. A number of mines, quarry fields, a deep well. It boggles the mind. A third is much more than a pharaoh’s ransom, but in the end, it’s just...stuff.

We’ll keep things going for another month or two. Afterwards, I’ll send an e-mail to the player behind Rabble—I have his contact information from back when we first started the pilgrimage so long ago now—and let him know his camp is still intact. If he’s no longer burned out, it’ll be good to welcome him home, but if he chooses to not look back, I’ll understand.

I’d prefer to end this update on an upbeat note. While sitting beside Rabble’s desolate camp, I wound the water mine and watched it twist and turn while raeli tiles baked into deepening hues beside me. Every now and then my vigilance was rewarded with a small gemstone and when I found a turquoise, I thought I’d try my luck on the gem table. I succeeded in cutting the twice-damned Hile’s Chevrons turquoise and passed Principles of the Hexaglyph. I am now level 34.

07/22/09

While Alexis and lilac set themselves to leaf gathering for the ant colonies, I grew and processed flax: thousands of it. Now that all of the Shabbaticals have passed Temple, they are selling their tiles in bundles of 40 or 50 for various things, including flax. After projecting what I’ll need and confirming that ‘rotten’ flax also counts, I’ll be making a massive order.

After burning an oven last night, I’ve barely topped last week’s winner and I estimate I’ll need another 1800 or so to win. I don’t think I can do that, but I’ll certainly try my best. A lot of it hinges on how much flax the Shabbitcals are willing to accept and whether or not my deals with Faith go through in time.

Also, on my decaying compounds, I’ve decided Sundays shall be repair days. We’ll see how that goes. Given that none are particularly large, it shouldn’t be expensive. I’ll just load up Mandisa with bricks, boards, straw, flaw, mud, and tow and send her around.

Forgot to mention one thing in yesterday’s update—not really surprising, given the scope and volume. Built a cheapie tower for Mandisa and pulled another 4% and change towards her Tower passage.

07/23/09

Bit of a grab bag last night... mostly worked towards Temple by growing 5k flax for trade and placing an order with the Shabbaticals that may frighten them into no longer accepting flax as payment. I expect to hear from nourbese tonight. Finally spoke w/ Kyline and she’s sick as a dog, so it’ll likely be a couple more days before that trade goes through. For whatever reason, I never get a raeli tile dealer even remotely in my own time zone.

Lilac helped out with another chunk of tiles and I burned another oven or two. I’m starting to lose track and that isn’t good. I think I need to hit just “Oven B” tonight.

Tended the grapes a bit and I’ll try to bottle and barrel this weekend. I’m anxious to sample my first attempt at alcohol.

Made my way down to Saqqarah to check out the quarry field he left behind—there’s easily over a dozen quarries with various marbles ranging from exotic to mundane, some of which are fitted with double winches already. Double winches mean that it only requires two people working in tandem to mine the marble instead of four. I’ll file this away for much later reference.

Tried my hand at thistle-growing, but I couldn’t for the life of me grow anything with positive nutrient values. I’ll need to figure this out if I want silk and I do want silk very badly.

Out of the blue, Wahim announces a new Test for Leadership. This is completely new, as it was the one designed by Tale 3 players: The Test of the Retired Pirates. Unfortunately, we can’t ‘demonstrate’ the Test to open it, as it requires “someone who has read Wahim’s Manifesto of the Student”. Translated, that means we need a person who has passed a Test in all 7 disciplines. Given that we have NO such person, the test remains locked. A number of us were livid, particularly since they’ve only been 20-something passes in a couple of the disciplines.

I pointed out the closest we have is likely Arame, who is a Student of Six. Like me, he has yet to pass an Art Test. Unlike me, he’s also passed a Leadership Test. I proposed we throw a peer based challenge and force Arame into passing mosaic this weekend so we can unlock the Pirates.

Arame will be making a solid-colored Mosaic and as many people as possible will be judging it as ‘monumental’ and thus, we accomplish the following:

1. Set a dangerous precedent by turning an Art Test into a Leadership one
2. Completely screw over the ‘rightful’ winner for one week
3. Show Teppy we are capable of throwing a test in order to force along a stagnant plot
4. Unlock Pirates! Woo!

I’ll give you the details of the Pirate test later this week, but the short version is groups of seven must divide ‘treasure’ without mutiny. Based on the full description, it looks really cool. We’ll see how Teppy screws it up.

07/24/09

The barrel is up to 12.8% alcohol—so close to that magic 13%! At that point it becomes a ‘high-alcohol’ wine and is more useful in filling notebooks. I’ve made some wine bottles in anticipation.

The Shabbaticals came through as expected with the tile order, so I placed another one for another 5k flax, which I grew. I’m now a little flaxxed out, so if I decide I need more tiles (HA!), I’ll likely trade some of the herbs I have on hand they are looking for. nourbese is an absolute pleasure to trade with and was generous to toss in a handful of rare yellow tiles to help me out.

Kyline is still out sick, but I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to complete that trade before Sunday. It’ll mean about 200-300 more points on the total, which is now borderline 53k.

Failed to make a paint color I wanted to create for lilac—at some point I need to re-calculate my reactions. Gave AlexisBelle a tutorial on paint, how colors and reactions are determined, and probably left the poor woman more intimidated by the paint mixing process than when she began. Some game mechanics like paint mixing and thistle growing are just...obscenely complex.

Speaking of, I nipped down to Rabble-opolis and jotted down the thistle requirements for 7 of the 8 tanks there. The eighth was in a growth stage where the requirements don’t display. All I have to do now is figure out a ‘recipe’ for a couple of these and I’m in business!

Have spreadsheet, will travel!

07/27/09

After playing with spreadsheets until my eyes hurt, I devised a thistle recipe that should’ve worked. Imagine my annoyance when it didn’t. Fortunately, the voids changed with the end of the Egyptian week and it failed with the new set as well. Once someone posted the new void set to a public channel, I tried again—I really want silk!

Armed with the proper void set, I worked out a daytime formula...which also failed. At one point, my lovely wife looked over my shoulder at the rather calculation-intense ThistleSim spreadsheet and simply said “That’s hardcore, bb.” Finally, I decided the reason the formula failed was due to the time of day and I wasn’t receiving a consistent amount of sun, so I reworked the formula for the nighttime. Bingo! I’m now growing thistles for hungry silkworms! I’ll only have tonight and maybe tomorrow before the voids change again, so I’m going to try and grow what I can before loading them into the tanks later this week.

Every last one of my tile trades came through in the nick of time—I burned all of the ovens and AlexisBelle gifted me with a few hundred chocolate tiles. It was a serious pain, but I managed to secure a score of 54200 or so—nearly 2k more than last week’s pass. I was quite disheartened when Ariella passed with a score over 1k higher than my own... using six fewer colors. It’s gotten to the point where trading is failing and it’s all about volume of tiles. Very disheartening. I’m going to make one more push on this for next week, then give up. It’s just too emotionally and resource draining. I’m expecting next week will either be Pascalito or Arame’s week.

In other and happier news, I finally bottled my first wine. I decided to go ahead and cork it instead of waiting for the last .2% of alcohol, which was taking forever. It’s still too young for good flavors to be discerned, but I’ve got 2 bottles of it set aside for later exploration even as my next batch of grapes sit in the barrel.

It was a good weekend for salvage. In my efforts to keep quit players from passing tests, I found and tore down two veneries and a temple. I should note the salvaging a temple does not yield any tiles, but it was good for enough mirrors and iron bars to add two more upgrades to my acoustics lab, some spare sheetglass, and enough firebricks to build dozens of kilns.

The Test of Festivals was released, but requires rose petals to open. Rose petals require roses... which requires the Xenobotany tech, which still needs many, many herb seeds to unlock. That test will require dyed silk, rose petals, flavored honeys, perfumes, wines, glass torches, and much more in order to honor the gods. As usual, more details later.

Tidied up the ‘Plex by cleaning out the three kilns that were on the verge of crumbling and tore down all of the sturdy tubs. Bought a couple of marble tubs with upgrade kits from Numaris and had him upgrade another marble tub, bringing my total to four, allowing me to process up to 400 dung at a time. Tubs and thistle gardens received an art upgrade a few days ago, so my row of marble beauties look rather swank. For the record, thistle gardens now look more like flower beds with built-in shower heads and a lot less like dumpsters. Both are very welcome changes.

Arame built his mosaic in an effort to game it so we could get Pirates unlocked. Instead of a solid color, he designed a Jolly Roger’s flag. Brilliant. This, of course, started up a massive debate on gaming the Test on E! with drama levels approaching obelisk queues of months long past. People were insisting others to go vote it as a ‘fraud’ to wipe out monumental votes, others pointed out that deliberately voting ‘fraud’ when it wasn’t was just as much gaming the test as the other, when it was a legitimate mosaic. In the end, I was blamed for suggesting the idea to begin with. Ask me how much I care. Arame passed Mosaic and will be able to unlock Pirates as soon as he logs in and walks over to the ULead. I consider it to be a victory over Teppy.

07/28/09 It’s a small worm, after all...

And thus, did Teppy enact his revenge. Arame nipped over to the ULead to unlock the Test and it required him to start a petition to receive the Manifesto. Jerk ass.

Arame and Katezinha (I probably have that misspelled, but she also became a Student of Seven with Sunday’s passes, it seems) are now sweeping Egypt looking for the handful of people who can sign the petition. It requires 7 Students of each Discipline to sign. Given there’s only 20 students of Leadership and just twice that in Art and Thought, including prepaids who are no longer active, this is just a cheap stall tactic from Teppy.

I spent the evening not burning tiles or grinding out flax or papyrus for tile trades and that felt really good. I’ll regret it later when I start scrambling for precious points later in the week, but it was nice just to relax and obsessively grow thistles for a couple of hours instead. Overall, I grew about 430-odd thistles and for the tank. The worms won’t hatch and eat them until after midnight tonight, so if the voids haven’t changed I can make a few more, depending on my level of masochism.

My recipe is a little complex, but only requires water and oxygen, so they are ‘free’ to grow, as opposed to costing tons of saltpeter and dung, but it means I can only tend 3-4 tanks at a time. Slow going and slow growing, but any silk is better than none.

I was on my way to Rabble’s to feed the worms and make some thermometers, and I had a spot of fortune when I zoned into Saqqarah. A player had announced he was quitting three hours previously and was donating all of his ‘stuff’ to the public and he asked that people only take what they need. Apparently someone needed just about everything and all that was left was a hundred thousand clinker and other miscellaneous trash items. Picking through the chests, I did find one treasure, ignored by anyone not working pyro: 1.6k saltpeter. That, my friends, will make enough gunpowder to put a camel in orbit.

Oh, the thermometers? Between the crapton of camels next door and the raeli oven I built close to Fort KbtS there is too much graphics lag to make therms at home anymore. I literally went from a ‘never fail’ state to ‘fail half the time’, which is completely unacceptable. I tested this out at another glory hole, and it is definitely localized to my equipment. Sigh. Still, Rabble has six fleet furnaces gathering dust, so I’ll be making quicksilver and therms whenever I have glass pipes and am in the neighborhood.

My current ‘Plex project is the addition of a crematory for Fort KbtS and it requires, among other things, seven thermometers and 210 grayish raeli tiles. I’m greedy with my tiles, but I’ll set some aside when I do Wednesday burns. I’m going to need a thermometer also when I build an alembic for alchemy (this is distillation of some sort—takes high alcohol wines and beers and converts them to spirits), but I think any extra will be used for trade.

Fed the silkworms and called it a night.

07/29/09

Not much going on, being a Tuesday. Burned a couple of ovens—I’m rapidly running out of colors I can produce that I don’t already have 1k+ tiles in the temple. Lilac has offered me a number of colors and she has some browns that would pass the score a little. It just takes so much to increase the score by a little and I despise imposing (or self-perceiving that I’m imposing) on friends.

Grew a few more thistles, since this may be my last chance for a while and finally ended with 510 thistle in the tank. The worms hatch today, so tonight I might get silk! Silk is produced on a bell curve, with some other variance thrown in, so it isn’t simply a 1 in/1 out exchange. 600 or so is the top of the bell curve, so I may be pulling up to 600 silk from the tanks. Here’s hoping! All total I need eighteen silk cloth (900 thread) for current projects and more once Festivals is unlocked. Of course given that ‘current projects’ also include upgrading an acoustics lab I can’t really use yet, that figure is really one third. I can live without a long range ferry and silk trades extremely well... I may not have to grind papy for hours tonight. We’ll see. I grew a couple thousand flax anyway.

Pirates finally got unlocked and every gets 24 hours to sign up for the first round, which I did! Yarr! To pass Principles I need to accumulate 777 gold doubloons. The way we understand Pirates works is like this: people are divvied up into groups of 7 and the captain (randomly chosen) has a week to split the gold however he likes. If the ‘crew’ approves of the split, the deal is done and they can join the next group of pirates the following week. If the crew doesn’t approve, they mutiny (I don’t know if one dissenter counts or if it is a majority vote), the captain leaves with nothing, and a new captain is selected among the remaining members of the group. A weekly Test pass goes to the one pirate in Egypt with the most overall doubloons.

You will never ‘beat’ the Test by dividing up 111 to each crew member—to pass, pirates will have to screw each other over in the name of ...well, whatever rationalization you can put on it. This should prove to be a Source of Infinite Drama and I look forward to it! Things have been too orderly as of late. (Balance must be maintained.)

07/30/09 99 gold doubloons....

Newest round of DP started and it looks like my original assessment of people types is only good for the first few months (explained months ago and I’m not recapping). In my group there’s mostly active players who really don’t care that much about advancing, just looking for a decent candidate who has a chance of ‘going long’. I might be that candidate, but I told my group point blank not to vote for me. I’m just interested in meeting new random people at this point. For that, we’ve got a good group with four chatty people.

Out of curiosity, I checked out Mandisa’s group—and she’s the only person to have played in the last four days, with most being absent for months.

Ran down to Rabble’s to check out the silk situation and discovered to my dismay that although the silkworm eggs had hatched, they were still weaving cocoons and I wouldn’t have silk until the morning. Damn you, simulated life cycles!

Burned a couple of ovens, picked some papy, and grew a few thousand flax and placed tile orders with my two largest suppliers.

Retired Pirates finally launched—and promptly burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. The Test differed only marginally from the way the Tale 3 people designed it with the inclusion of a Ceremonial Ship. When the round began, our group was assigned and we receive the message that the captain or crew had 24 hours to build the ceremonial ship. Cool!

I hastened down to the water’s edge at the ‘Plex and built construction sites of various sizes until I found the right option. It was stupidly cheap: a few pieces of paper, 100 boards, and a sail. I presume the paper was for ‘ballots’. I told the crew I was building it and a minute later I had an incredible lawn ornament. It looks like a ship broken in half and shoved into the ground. In front of the ragged wreck, a semicircle of seven lit torches stand. That’s when the problems started.

Because I built the ship, it was letting –me- distribute the gold, despite the fact I wasn’t the captain. Secondly, the only person it would let me give coins to was the 7th member of our crew. I tried transferring ownership of the ship to our ‘real’ captain, nebkhepure, but he reported the same concern. Over the course of the next 15 minutes on E!, we discovered that this was a problem common to everyone and Teppy was notified.

It eventually all got straightened out, but not before a few captains were screwed over. If a crew member who built the ship gave away the money to their 7th and the people voted “Oh, hell no.” the real Captain ‘walks the plank’, instead of the person who assigned the money—even if the captain was offline since the Test started.

Right now this poses extra excitement because all seven crew members will be ‘active’. I wonder how the Test will play out four months from now when you have numbers of absent prepays still signed up for the Test.

At any rate, we’re waiting now for neb’s attempt at a split and the inevitable discussion on whether we’ll even take an equal share or vote him off anyway to have fewer people to split the loot with.

Finally, ended at Rabble’s to feed the ants and collect my silk in the morning.

07/31/09 Nav-i-gate, Nav-i-gate (Dance to the music!)

687 Silk thread! Woohoo! I stuffed 300 into the looms and wove some cloth. The rest, for now, will be used as trade bait. The exchange rate? 3-4 thread to about 40-60 raeli tiles—enough to get me a couple hundred points closer to this weekend’s disappointment.

Now that I had woven my new silk cloth, I made my way down to SHarm to buy another level of navigation and a much-needed waypoint. I got there and was about to click the school, when I realized I had left the silk in the loom. I warped back home.

I gathered the silk cloth and ran down to the school again, to find I couldn’t buy the skill. It turns out that I was one level of skill lower than I thought I was and the current tuition was 50 papyrus paper and the –next- level of skill after that was six silk cloth. I warped back home.

There was still a lot of paper left in my supply shed, so I grabbed it and was about to leave the ‘Plex, when I remembered the level after silk cloth required a large emerald. I glanced through my storehouses. Nope. I’d have to pick one up later. I ran back to the school and bought two levels of navigation. That’s when I discovered I was wrong about the emerald. It was a sapphire that I needed—and I knew I had one of those. I warped back home.

Gem in hand, I went back to the school a final time and obtained Navigation 6. The final level is available at level 40, so there’s still a while to go there. I warped back to my second home: a raeli oven.

I burned a couple of ovens and made glass with Mandisa while we awaited for the tiles to bake. Knocked out a mess of jars and glass rods. Left a chat with Numaris to buy tiles with the rods; the jars were going for a new project. Completed my trade with nourbese and Kyline should be a go for tonight.

I checked a few of my tiles suppliers and noted with some dismay that Pascalito has gone ‘all in’ with his vast tile collection, so he’ll likely be passing this weekend. Given that I have unfettered access to 8 ovens + what I buy outright + what friends give me and I still can’t pass, it gets wearing. I was really hoping for a birthday weekend pass. No love for Sefet. Still, the fight continues.

Spared a few gray tiles and finished the crematory, useful for all my cremation needs. It makes ash a LOT more efficiently than a firepit, but the controls are a lot ‘fiddlier’, requiring deft hands and a clear head.

With the jars, some gold wire, and other things, I built an alembic in Fort KbtS. Now when I get higher alcohol wines, I can make them into spirits!

My pirate group concluded quickly and peacefully, with us accepting equal splits of the trove.