User:Sefet/abitd

A Blog in the Desert

A little bit about me first.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leading Up to Day 1

December '08: Let the Games Begin!

January '09

February '09

March '09

April '09

May '09

June '09

July '09

August '09

September '09

09/01/09

Spent Monday sick, so playing catchup now—still a little woosy, so please forgive interruptions of my usual narrative style.

The weekend was mostly about working on Pyro, mostly. I finished the ‘rough draft’ of it and showed it to my wife. She gave me an “Awwwww!!!”, which is good enough, so all that remains is padding it with more gunpowder and colored stars. The effect itself is thus: I use red lights to trace a giant heart in the sky. It hangs where for about 12 seconds, then there’s a giant explosion of color from the center of it, leaving behind a cloud of white ‘poppers’. It looks really neat, if I do say so myself. My goal is to appeal to the 50% female demographic and I think this’ll do it.

To get to that point, I mined and processed a ton of magnesium and aluminum and I was finally able to catch a Goods trader, BL, to close the deal on more acid to supplement my dwindling supply. I lost track of how much dung and saltpeter I processed, but I’m to the point of squeezing camels to get more. I estimate I’ll be ‘show ready’ in a week.

To celebrate, I uncorked a couple of bottles of wine and finished off my second tasting book. It’s a good thing!

There were a couple of conflict tourneys held over the weekend and I’ll touch on both.

The first was ‘Tug’, the game of Telekinesis, and was extremely fun. My regret was I only got in a handful of games. In this game, you and your opponent pit your mental skill in a game of tug-of-war for an ore cart. It works like this: you each have a pool of 50 points to last the entire game. You spend as many as you want each turn in a blind bid. The person who bid the most ‘wins’ and the ore cart rolls towards them. Once the cart has moved four places from the middle (read: all the way to one side), there is a winner. If you run out of points, it is a simple matter for the other person just to keep bidding ‘1’ to get the cart back on their side.

I placed in the top 21 of that competition and won five pieces of tangerine marble, of which I no longer have any use.

The second was Kanivan Tak. It plays a lot like checkers, but without a board. Pieces shaped like giant eggs move forward in up to 60 degree arcs and once they reach either of the back two ranks, where they hatch into phoenixes that can move (and attack) in any direction. The controls are very fiddly and it is hard to estimate how far you can jump, but I still won a match, so I know I can play it if necessary. We had too many people tie at my ranking, so I didn’t get a special prize, but that’s all right.

The big drama to come down the pipe was a group of people from Stillwater who decided to ‘game’ the tournaments to win the very sweet prizes. By playing only against each other and deliberately throwing matches, they were able to ensure a number of them got the top prizes in each tournament. It’s poor sportsmanship, but there’s nothing you can really do to prevent them from doing it, aside from getting a DP to ban the offenders, which they wouldn’t do, due to fear of community backlash. The people who take conflict games and tournaments ‘seriously’, that is to say, those who enjoy the actual competition, have called out the offenders by name or by guild association. It promises to be ugly.

09/02/09

What started off with a quick login to ‘thin the herds’ turned into a small pyro foray as I manufactured 1k charcoal and gathered a couple hundred clay to make another 150 stars to go into the ‘finale’ portion of the firework.

Flushed out the acid tubs and they are now dissolving the last salts needed. From this point on, I just need to finish one batch of stars (I think) and make a crap ton of gunpowder from a ton of crap.

The major silk producers made a push to get airships researched and now it stands with just 150 silk to go. I’m stuck with an array of tanks with nasty thistle requirements and I’m not about to start rebuilding them to try for better ones. The void set changed and I spent an hour working out a ‘reset’ recipe for Tank 7. A reset recipe is a stupidly complex recipe that is impossible to do in bulk, but is useful for either generating small amounts of silk or, more frequently, to reset a silkworm tank to hope for a much easier thistle request.

09/08/09

Very little playtime this past week. I finished up my firework and, as luck would have it, there was a perfect time for displaying it on Saturday. I showed up to the field at the appointed hour and nervously paced, counting the participants twice.

In order to pass Pyro, all I needed was to place in the top 1/4th of the participants. This rounds down, so 1-7 participants meant I needed to win first place, 8-12 participants, first or second place.

The appointed hour struck and walkups were allowed to register as contestants or judges. We easily met the minimum for judges and I quickly made a headcount of the participants. When the lights dimmed for the show, there were nine aspiring pyromaniacs ready to take the stage.

I had determined to wait until the 6th or 7th turn to launch mine, hoping to follow behind an utter crap firework to get a few extra points from the judges. The first few launched and were passable, small 40-60 star affairs with one neat ‘gimmick’ in them.

The fourth person was disqualified by the judges as a fraud. She had launched a single star firework, hoping to finish her Pyro principles. Judges hate that. If three people vote an entry as a ‘fraud’, that knocks them out of the contest entirely, bringing our count down to eight entries.

I bided my time, and then I got floored. Nissim launched a shell entitled “tequila sunrise” and it was stupidly impressive. With 580 stars or so and what could only be an ungodly amount of gunpowder, it was everything a crowd could want from a ‘themeless’ firework. It got both a “Wow.” from one of the spectators and my wife, who was watching over my shoulder. Time passed and no one wanted to follow that monster. Guess who had to?

I sent my rocket up and it performed exactly as expected, eliciting an “Awww!” from someone. The audience was duly impressed and I received a mind-boggling high score, just a few points under tequila sunrise. Second place.

The seventh non-disqualified person fired her shell and it was ‘ok’ and received a moderate score.

The seconds ticked by and the final contestant didn’t launch. I hastily recounted the people on the screen to make sure I didn’t screw up. No, there was one other person. The contest ends after two minutes pass and no one fires a shell. The automated 60 second warning came and went. My passing or failing depended on this guy firing his shell. The 30-second mark came and finally—FINALLY—he armed his shell. I breathed a deep sigh of relief.

He launched one star and was disqualified.

I wanted to scream. Dozens of hours, hundreds of stars, thousands of gunpowder gone. It was disheartening. I congratulated the winner and logged out.

Time for a little break.