User:Sefet/May2009

05/04/09 Gypsum, tramps and thieves

CAMELS! Sefet has camels! In the span of two Egyptian days, camels gave to visit, eating about 9k straw between the two of them. They quickly bred, getting up to seven before the cullings became necessary. They are absolute monsters to feed, going through thousands of straw a day. Sadly, I may have to let them go—they are just too expensive to keep. Alternately, I’ll throw in a few hundred straw a day into the pen and see if I can keep them, but thin. Each slain camel yields the leather of three sheep, but leather isn’t exactly a resource in which I’m running in short supply. The sheep themselves have been trimmed to just a couple pair in each pen, with several sporting just one pair.

The second round of Demi-Pharaoh played out and I wound up endorsing a person I didn’t like at first and I briefly debated with myself on deadlocking the group. It would be tricky, but possible. Mystivia is a middle-aged housewife with sensible ideas, once I finally got her talking. I didn’t hold with all of her positions, but saw no reason why she shouldn’t advance. The other likely candidates were... decidedly weaker.

Wound up finding a trader, Taffer, who could fill my order for Hornet’s Wing Granite and sold me an aluminum mine to boot. Total cost? 3k wood and 150 slate. Bwahahaha. Finished the Bijou at long last and designed a cut that isn’t overly complex, but looked kinda neat. The challenge is finding players willing to truck it to the north end of Shabbat to play it, but I’m hoping to pick up a few people who are die hard Reason buffs.

Ran Mandisa around and got her a couple of levels by passing venery and reason principles. At one point while running Mandisa through McArine’s monster of a venery, I was close enough to home to see a group of Pilgrims hit my shrine. W00t! Free glass! Much later I found out they had gifted me with 28 sheets of glass. Very nice indeed! This was shaping up to be a good weekend.

The mosaic is coming along nicely. I found a couple of aspiring Temple builders willing to part with many tiles in return for a minor strategic advantage. 2 colors for one is quite a leg up. I thus came into possession of sky blue and brown tiles. The brown are quite literally central to my work and since I received them late last night, I will be mashing them into shape tonight. Depending on how they wind up, I’ll either continue with my camel plan or shift the design to a horse. (A running gag in the desert is people with “I WANT A PONY!” mentatlity.)

Baked and set aside a couple thousand tiles for the aqueduct, yellow and white. Added a cistern and a few copper pipes and a clay pipe segment or two. Off to a good start!

There was a cooking and eating contest I largely didn’t participate in: The Feast of Shemu. Gourmets and gourmands created and sampled pepper-inspired dishes across the land and those that served and sampled the most received prizes, including a new seed type for the top place chefs: cucumbers! In the end, I received a participation award of a couple dozen debens of resin. Didn’t spend too much time hunting meals, though, just ate when I was near a serving kitchen.

Saturday was spent breaking in the new shovel at a couple of group events: a bauxite dig followed by a gypsum dig. Afterwards, we all stirred up cement. I’ll have to say, a couple dozen people with decent stat buffs stirring cement is a wonder to behold: a process that takes a half hour plus was reduced to a handful of seconds each. I walked away with some 300 cement, plus a couple dozen cuttable stones and a number of medium stones as well. The amount of bauxite and gypsum I left with will produce another 1800 cement if needed.

It was about this time that I discovered I had fundamentally misunderstood a key concept as it relates to concrete. Concrete requires 15 cement, 250 gravel, and 100 units of water (jugs are reusable)...but does NOT require anyone to stir it. It’s a one-button click to make. Don’t get me wrong: I made a lot trading away a good portion of my first 100 cement, but if I had but known... I could’ve saved a fortune on what I’ve paid for concrete over the months. Live and learn.

Now 300 cement with a sufficient quantity of gravel will yield 5000 concrete, which is enough for the rest of the game, one hopes. Gravel, however, is only fun in moderation and by the time I had made some 750 or so I felt as though I had (wait for it) hit my limit.

The initial plan was to stockpile concrete for the Test of Life and the aqueduct towers, but I discovered at the cement mix that I wasn’t in the first round of 20 selected—it turns out the guild had been functioning for about 5 days before I joined up. Consequently, I had a choice: stockpile for another month or soup up the ‘Plex a bit.

Shortly thereafter, the ‘Plex was sporting an upgraded flax gin, capable of processing 600 rotten flax at a time (over a day or so) and a large distaff, a monster of a distaff with triple the capacity of a normal one. I gathered 200 slate and wove a like quantity of rope and learned the Mechanics skill in the hopes of one day improving the speed of the gin. We’ll see how that goes.

Robare, an elder in the Waterworks, had been offline for the past few days. When he got back he read a note I had left, expressing disappointment but understanding in missing out on the first round of aqueduct building, but to let me know if there was anyway I could help out the existing members with quarrying or whatever. He replied back that he would chat with the other elders and see about bringing me onboard as an initiate and if my contributions outpassed the existing members, it may be possible I’d bump one of them into the next round. It’s not a definite, of course, but it was the most hopeful news I’d gotten recently.

The most amusingly random thing was while I was lounging around the ‘Plex, tending to the forge was a pair of out-of-towners, possibly newer players. They wandered around my house and finally came to a stop before my glazier’s bench, discussing at length a key they thought they had. They were both amusing and confused. I leaned casually against the shed and once I had determined they were talking about McArine’s venery, I gave them directions on where to go next. They scurried off with nary a whisper of gratitude, but that’s ok. It never hurts to help, except when it does.

05/05/09 – (I will fit you....) tile after tile

Sunday Passes ran on Monday and it looks like I’m a strong contender for a venery pass next week. Woo! Trivia: venery has a couple of different definitions. It either means a collective group of animals (e.g. A venery of kittens is called a ‘kindle’.) or “the sport of hunting”. It pays to increase your word power.

Devoted the evening to working on the mosaic. I tinkered with tiles until I got a rough camel shape, then fine tuned it more until I had a better-looking one. I mean from a distance and slightly squinting, it looked pretty good. Even the wife, who helped me with a few suggestions was in agreement. It was a camel! So, I summoned a couple of art critics in independently to see what they thought. My seven year olds were glad to oblige.

The boy looked at the brown lumpy thing. “Cool! A dinosaur!” Ugh. After I said “Camel, maybe?” he squinted and agreed. I brought the girl in. “Hey, what does that look like to you?” “Oooh! A DINOSAUR!” I slapped my forehead. “A cow? A horse? Did I get it right?”

I tweaked it a little more.

The hard part was fitting the tiles around the camel. I threw away the khaki tiles I had previously put in as a few placeholders, mostly because I screwed up and traded away all of my remaining khaki, so my sand was going to look hideous. My wife suggested a nice blanched almond color for the sand, so I baked a couple hundred of those and started assembling.

The more I played with the design tool, the greater respect I had for anyone who completed one of these monsters. The entire board isn’t used, you see. There’s a border that’s about three triangles deep that goes all the way around the picture that acts as a border. When the mosaic is closed (pressed into place by glass sheets, one assumes), any tiles under the border are not shown. I figured that it was for people to have an easier time of fitting the pieces into the edge. That’s when the nagging voice in the back of my head prompted me to ask the collective intelligence of E! if that was really the case or did every single stupid triangle on the border have to be fitted. Answer: every last damn one of them needed to be filled. Finding tiles that fit proved to be incredibly challenging.

In the end, the sand was completed and I spent twice the time on the sky. All total, I went through about 300 tiles working on the mosaic, but when I was done, I felt good about it. I posted it on the wiki and made general announcements. A couple of people filtered in to see ‘Sparky the Wonder Camel’ and I figure I’ll pass that Principle in a day or two.

I celebrated by catching an ibis for Mandisa.

05/06/09 Levellin’ la vida loca

Playtime virtually zero, as my wife and I spent some time offline celebrating Mexico’s triumph over the French in the American tradition.

Logged on very briefly to handle a few camp chores, curse the camels, and shill a couple votes for Sparky the Wonder Camel and the bijou. They each needed one vote by the time I logged.

Checked in later in the evening and was tickled pink to see that I had passed Principles of both Mosaic and Bijou! I can now turn my attention to hunting mushrooms and stockpiling aqueduct resources.

It was around this time that I came to the realization that I’m the highest level character in the game. I’ve passed every Principle that’s been unlocked except Life, which no one has since no aqueducts are functional yet. The university of Leadership’s census confirms there are no people who have passed four tests in the same discipline yet, so I’m the maximum current level: 32. Rahr!

05/07/09 Here I go, again cuttin’ stone...

I’ve decided to pass Marriage which will involve getting Mandisa to pass about 7-8 tests. Since I don’t have to worry about getting too obsessive over her passes, this is more of a long-term plan. I’m beginning with obelisk (again).

Looked at the costs for the various obeliesks. Scary. Fortunately, Mandisa’s literal backyard is in Stillwater. Obelisk prices are cheaper there. By cheaper I mean “if we built a Desert Obelisk like Sefet’s, the 80 cubit structure would only cost about 250 linen, instead of the 400+ in Shabbat Ab.” The best alternative looked to build a cut stone obelisk: at a whopping size 22, it requires 67 cut stone and like 90 concrete, along with a few other things.

I gathered my materials to find I was short by a dozen or so small sapphires and a dozen units of salt. I made up a trade for the Goods—only to find all of the tellers were offline. This turned out to be a good thing. While I idled around cutting stones and between making extra charcoal, I checked out the wiki and discovered to my horror there are obelisk queues active in Stillwater that would keep Mandisa from building for another two months. I cast about and looked for a better alternative.

I found it in Heaven’s Gate. With no queue and no active builder for the past month and an obelisk size of 11, this is where we’ll build.

Now I just need the salt and gems.

05/08/09

Once again, no tellers at the Goods. I really wanted Mandisa to get her obelisk up, so I’d have to find alternative sources. I ran over to my sapphire mine in Adn and begin scooping out sand, looking for those precious glimmers. This mine has an extraordinarily poor output and the next time I’m in the area, I’m going to tear it down and rebuild. Still, I managed to eke enough gems out of it and I returned home. Still no tellers.

I have a metric ton of coconut water, but my skill at dessication isn’t enough to evaporate the water. (I know how stupid that sounds.) Tuition is a huge ruby and my ruby mine has the virtue of being almost as shoddy as my sapphire mine, but with the added benefit of not being able to be torn down/rebuilt, because it is an actual metal-producing mine. Only sand mines can be torn down and rebuilt.

I put out a call locally in Shabbat and pinged my pilgrimage group and in a span of moments, I got back a couple of responses—a local who could set up kettles for me to cook some salt and good ol’ Rabble, who was more than happy to give me the salt I needed. A few seconds later, I’m on my way to Saqqarah.

I meet up with fizzles, Rabble’s mule-wife, and she hands me the salt and I give her enough water to make five times the amount at least. I warp back home and assemble everything into a project chest for Mandisa. I believe in making things as least frustrating as possible.

Rabble chats me up and he’s decided to give me the tuition for the next dessication level. I balked at first, as I generally don’t accept gifts of such value, but he sited his fortune at his water mine and that he’s previously given one away to a complete stranger. To give a relative value of its worth, these sell typically for 1200-1800 papyrus on the open market and I’ve never seen one at the Goods for trade.

He’s hosting an acro line tonight and will pass it along then. Happy days! There’s several tuitions that call for salt and I’m looking forward to advancing along those lines soon.

In the meantime, Mandisa hopped on and with a few travel tips, made her way to Heaven’s Gate. I updated the wiki and she spent a bit of time finding the perfect scenic spot for her obelisk. A few minutes later, I’ve updated the wiki and she’s built a pointy spire. Now she just needs to hold it for 7 real life days. Here’s hoping!

05/11/09

Made up a list of things I wanted to try and accomplish and managed to do nearly all of them. I met up with Rabble on the fields of Acro and he gave me the ruby he had promised and 20 salt besides. I spent an hour teaching facets to new players as a way of giving back and it worked out nicely. Mandisa ran through the line herself and now has about 8 moves.

I set about my list. It mostly comprised of learning skills I had skipped and picking up a couple of skills in Saqqarah. Saq would have to wait a bit, though—there was mechanics to be leaned here first!

The mechanics skill has 7 levels, one for each school, and each has an insane cost associated with it (1000 gold wire, for example). The one I sought to learn at cost 300 malt(raw) and 300 malt (burnt). There were malting trays and grain ovens at SACFAR, so all I needed was 600 barley. Blech.

Barley is hell. It grows in a bed like flax, but you have to maintain an eye on fertilizer, water, and weedkiller levels. Three different weeds can grow and barley stops growing and starts dying if there are weeds in the bed. Each weed type is treated a different way. All total, it takes about 2-8 minutes to harvest a single bed and good luck trying to do more than 3 at a time. Each bed yields 1-4 barley, depending on if you have to harvest a ‘losing’ bed early, but if you succeed in growing your barley completely, you get 10. Since I passed a Worship test (Pilgrimage), my barley gets a bonus +10 whenever it is fully matured. It’s in my interest to get that barley to survive!

I had heard there was a ‘speed barley’ routine where you don’t care about weedkiller and fertilizer (which was good because I had neither) that involved drowning the barley in water and harvesting as soon as it started to grow. You get 2 instead of 1 and thus a profit! Yeah—that didn’t work out so good. I was going to need weedkiller and fertilizer.

The weedkiller was easy enough: pop a certain mushroom into a kettle with a little water and 20 seconds later: 50 weedkiller! I made 500. Fertilizer requires a carp and a little water and I had no carp. There’s always SOMETHING. Carp can’t be found in my fishing hole, so I trucked myself to Stillwater and fished up a couple hundred debens there, discovering a ‘Oxy’ fish hiding hole in the process. It’s an uncommon fish type, so that’s a happy thing. Shortly thereafter, with a metric ton of fertilizer, I start growing.

Barley is hell, even with all the right stuff. A couple of hours later, I hit the malting trays and grain oven. This part wasn’t bad at all—malting trays take just a minute to germinate 20 barley into malt. The grain oven just took time and a LOT of wood (600 maybe?) to toast a ton of malt. The grain oven is actually fun to watch work, as portions of your grain cook down to light, medium, dark, and burnt levels—it doesn’t happen all at once and if you’re trying to make certain beer flavors, you will take out your grain at whatever point.

At long last, I bought Mechanics Level 2...and still couldn’t tune the flax gin. Maybe next time.

Took the ruby and bought Dessication level 2, made a ton of salt from a few hundred more coconuts I cracked and learned Cooking 3. Traded at the Goods for a few mushrooms I needed and learned Cooking 4. Spent a little slate and learned Rocks of the Ages, which allows me to quarry for marble.

Headed over to Saqqarah with Mandisa to bag a gazelle and brought over Sefet to learn Marble Mechanics and Advanced Marble Mechanics. This allows me to use gearbox-driven winches to replace human workers on quarries. With Mandisa online, we can now effectively quarry marble by ourselves.

Stopped by Meroe and put in my application to Worship World—a group dedicated to passing Worship Tests. They host Vigils once a month and I think I’ll be able to gather everything I need to participate in the June one. After I was accepted in, I started stockpiling resources and spent the bulk of my remaining time engaged in such endeavors. I quickly filled a 5k chest with materials and started rapidly filling another. There’s going to be a lot of mining and trading in my future, I foresee. Some of the requirements (50 medium stones) go directly against my other main project: aqueduct stockpiling,

Speaking of, I was finally accepted into SA Waterworkers, mere minutes after I said to myself that I was considering repealing my application and instead join up in Meroe. Huzzah! Apparently they are changing their rules because it is a race against time and other players: the top 20 contributers will build the first towers. Apparently, they decided that a number of their existing members were too complascent, just knowing they were in the first 20 positions and had ‘guaranteed’ build rights. Yeah...not so much. Robare tallied up my contributions (5k tiles or so, 250 concrete, etc) and I found myself in 6th place on contrbution-based points.

Met up with Rabble and a few others and stirred another 400 cement. I can now trade a bit and still have enough leftover for the rest of the game.

The remainder of the weekend was spent gathering more vigil supplies: fishing, mining, flaxxing, gathering the fun stuff that is the basis of our existance: slate.

Now to find a way to buy extra white and black tiles (these won’t be hoarded by temple builders).

05/13/09 My sledge...hammer!

Started off by completing a trade at the Goods and unloaded a couple hundred leather and a few dozen debens of cement in return for hundreds of fish, 20 antimony, and a ton of medium stones. The fish went into my vigil stockpile as did a number of the stones. The rest had a somewhat lower calling.

I had been making gravel off and on and now it was time to increase my stockpile considerably. I’m having to work hard to maintain my standing in the Waterworks—I really doubt I’ll be in the first 7 builders, but I should make the top 14 without too much strain. I smacked rocks into powder until I had a few hundred scoops of gravel and created another couple batches of concrete.

I then hit both ovens, burned more white and yellow tiles and donated another 2k tiles and 1100 concrete to the Cause. For those of you keeping score at home, I’m currently holding at 7th or 8th place. There’s only so much I can do with only two ovens. People with tiles are hording them for their own aqueduct projects, so I’m going to need to build another to increase my output. I have nothing set aside for the next oven yet, besides a few hundred resin. Moonsteel is the worst resource to acquire.

Rabble, as it turns out, sells an alloying service for cheap. I swear this guy is rapidly becoming my favorite person. I may build him a Tower or two in appreciation at some point. I looked over the list of requirements for a ton of moonsteel. The base costs are somewhat pricey, but doable, with the exception of antimony. Antimony is a hoarded metal, but I had traded at the Goods earlier with precisely this expectation in mind. The 20 debens would cover the materials required for half of the moonsteel needed for an oven. The rest I’ll just have to take in stride.

Gathered a ton of clay and I have about 1500 wet bricks that I’ll need to bake. Busy, busy!

On another note, my happy little corner of Egypt has been invaded by yet another trial account who felt the need to build in ‘my’ area. He’s tucked in the far corner by the Ragpicker’s raeli oven. Sigh. Here’s hoping this one will be gone swiftly without building too much crap outside his compound.

Finally, for no apparent reason they’ve changed the apiary graphic. They now look less like beehives and more like “solar powered microwaves for cooking bees in the Egpytian sun”. It literally looks like a revolving flat honeycomb under a glass dome. Little bees buzz around it and it’s not unpleasant to look at—it is just nothing like one thinks of when you say “beehive.”

05/14/09

Apparently I have two wishes left. I log in to find the new player’s compound in my corner completely gone. No trace whatsoever. Since I didn’t think to remark his name, I have no idea if he relocated or quit. Either way, I’m amazed at the consideration, particularly since I’m having to put up with other nuisances beyond my control: people stealing resin without nicking the trees to make more and some inconsiderate taxidermist who has dropped a number of mounted fish along my shoreline. Mounted fish can be neither picked up nor examined, so I have no idea what boob dropped them. They don’t decay, so I have a feeling I’ll be looking at them for the rest of the game.

Made a couple of papy runs to build up stock for a trade proposal for Rabble for enough moonsteel for an oven and 100 debens each of brass and bronze. The brass/bronze will be more than enough by far to keep me stocked for a while after the oven is constructed. It wasn’t until late in the evening that he logged on and confirmed the trade. (He had just logged on to kill animals. “It’s been that kind of day.” I nodded sympathetically.) The metal trade should complete tonight and there will be much forging and casting over the weekend.

Thousands of debens of charcoal needs to be made now. Part of the trade used up my last 700 units. In preparation of Charcoal Fest, Year 2, I gathered a couple thousand wood while searching for more resin. Spent some of it firing quite a lot of clay bricks. Tore down the old furnace in the corner, as it was horribly ineffecient and has been unnecessary since I built the gyration cell months ago. Some of the scrap went into the raeli project chest and life is good.

All total now, I’ve got 2k of the 3k clay bricks needed, a third of the resin needed (1k to go!), and the rope, canvas, carpentry blade, glass pipes, crucibles, and cut stone done. Once the metal trade is done, I’ll have the raw materials needed for the moonsteel plates, bearings and small gears. Then it is a matter of just casting/forging those along with the shovel blades, moonsteel plates, copper wire, iron bars, and probably something else I’m forgetting.

Ever get the feeling certain aspects of the game weren’t intended for casual players?

Oh—the new “I want your pony” law goes into effect today. Trial player’s stuff is claimable after 14 days logged out and paid players have 60 days after account expiration to reclaim their stuff. After the 60 days elapse, if they have designated an ‘heir’, that person has up to 2 weeks to lay claim to everything before it becomes ‘free for all’. The only thing that’s good about the bill is that all of the fragile chests go away and scavengers will have a field day as they discover little troves around Egypt from long abandoned campsites.

05/15/09

Met up with Rabble and watched as he diligently alloyed hundreds of debens of metal like it was child’s play. Very impressive and I even walked away with some leftover materials!

Whenever I had an odd moment, I went on miniature resin runs and ended up over the course of the day a few hundred closer to my goal. I believe I’m about 650 shy, not counting a few hundred hawthorn I should be able to trade even up for more folded birch if it comes down to it.

Restocked both wood and some charcoal—enough to get by for now, at any rate. Otherwise, the bulk of my time was spent casting and forging. When all was said and done, I made all of the small gears, bearings, shovel blades, bars, wire, and plates I’m going to need after several hours.

That leaves: resin, bricks, pinch rollers, and medium gears to go. I figured that I was going to need about 13 medium gears (read: 195 iron) for both the oven, which takes five, and eight for my aqueduct tower gearbox. That and the 60 iron needed for the pinch rollers meant I was going to need to revisit one of my iron mines for a while. That’s when the Waterworks threw a curve ball. Nothing too bad, though.

We had gotten to the point where the only things we need to start building is a few hundred marble and two hundred thousand tiles or so. This left a hole for each player to build their own gearbox when it was time to build: no point value. That changed when the elders decided to start accepting contributions of small, medium, and large gears, with a weight that makes a person sit up and take notice. Medium gears, for example, are worth 70 points each and they are wanting 120 of them. Not game breaking, but enough to swing a couple of people into higher positions. (Speaking of, I’m currently in eight.) It’s become critical to get that next oven online.

Set my macro to mining while I kept an eye on it and read some Stephen King. After I had harvested enough ore for about 400 iron, I started the smelting process and left it at that.

On the non-raeli front, there’s a couple of contests/activities this weekend. One’s a scheduled roleplay event, which promises to be a disaster and the other is a challenge to Egypt to find and dig up the monuments they built at the end of Tale 3, which contain the challenges (read: New Tests) written by them for us to accomplish.

The latter contest requires an archaeologists shovel, and I was fortunate enough to hammer out an 8k quality one at my anvil without too much grief. Could be fun!

05/18/09

The ‘reclaim your heritage’ monument dig began and ended without much fanfare. It was, in my opinion, a completely wasted opportunity for the dev staff to advance the story, do a little roleplay, but alas, not so much. The top prizes were to be given to people who worked on the most monuments (18 in total from the 3 previous Tales). I decided not to be one of the guys who ran around to each monument, dig one shovelful, and ran on to the next. Instead, I really wanted to unearth one monument with the team of Shabbats that gathered in Saqqarah to reveal the Tale 2’s monument of Body. As we dug, it slowly was raised pixel by pixel from the unforgiving virtual sand.

In the end, it took about 5 hours and we were proud of our accomplishment. Raising the monument was its own reward. Thank gods I really believe that, because my lottery award for the work done was precisely 55 papyrus. Heh.

During the dig I took a break of about an hour to gather the last few dozen resin needed and built oven number three a very short distance from the chariot in Cat’s Claw Ridge. I haven’t fired it up yet, figuring I’ll just make a larger batch of black tiles when the time comes.

The competition in Waterworks is getting...fierce. It’s a given that I’ll be one of the top 20 contributors, so that isn’t even on the table. It’s now a question of whether I’ll be one of the first 7 builders. Passes go in groups of 7, and there are 7 regions working on their own projects, so not making that first cut could mean a month or two before passing the Test.

The elders of the guild discovered a horrific math error in the project requirements and they are going to need a lot more materials to build over a ridge. This could work out to my advantage or detriment, depending on what I can afford to contribute. To shore up my position in 7th place, I made and donated 18,500 bricks and would’ve made more had I not run out of straw.

It was time to upgrade the compound a bit. Added another greenhouse, another rocksaw, another student’s casting bench to the Plex and added a few more kilns in Fort KbtS.

Took a ‘break’ by adding to my Vigil stockpile. I supplemented my stockpile with many, many things, but the best break came when I saw that glass rods were trading at an all-time high at the Goods. I only had a few, but they would command a pharaoh’s ransom. All total I traded a few bearings, a little cement, and three glass rods for some 600 fish, 190 or so small gems, nearly a dozen medium diamonds, a like number of topaz, gold, gold ore, cuttable stones, and a few other tasty tidbits. I made out like a bandit.

Aside from that, there was a lot of miscellaneous things. I even made a slightly better shovel! Made a couple of papy runs to replenish my flagging papy seed stock, upgraded my flax production to the latest seed (4/4/5, no water), and rode a carrot wave to the tune of several hundred units of bunny bait. Generated hundred of charcoal, gathered thousands of wood, and fished a bit. Made some gravel, hamboned with strangers, and cheered Mandisa when she got another move in an acro line.

Mandisa also passed Obelisk and that was cause for much celebration!

05/19/09

Devoted myself to Vigil preparations and ran papyrus another couple times, getting a couple of baskets closer to my goal. Traded a metric ton of silt to Simon for 15 medium-sized gems. Exchanged a considerably quantity of steel sheeting, a little cement and a couple hundred slate at the goods for a few marble slabs, some tungsten ore, a hundred or so cuttable and cut stones, a little papyrus to round off a basket, more gems, and a little miscellaneous stuff.

When all was said and done, my Vigil stash is only lacking a few dozen cuttable stones, a basket, 50 small gems of some flavor or another, a few hundred fish and a few hundred grilled fish. What I’ve socked away borders on staggering. The only thing that’s bugging me are things that AREN’T on the list, that I know the vigil fire calls for these days: cut gems (I don’t know if there are any gem cutting tables in the area), chicken meat, and wines. I haven’t a clue about wines at all. I asked about them in the guild chat.... but have yet to receive an answer. This is not encouraging.

I built a storage warehouse in Meroe near the vigil altar and moved a lot of stuff down there. Will move more closer to ‘go time’.

Otherwise, Rabble was in my neighborhood, so I gave him 28 debens of rare herbs he was looking for and danced with him as Mandisa, earning her a couple more moves: 12 total now!

Fished a bit and am learning how fishing bands work. Basically they are strips of coordinates that yield ceratin types of fish and go diagonally for a couple hundred coordinates. Where they intersect water equals what fish are available there.

The waterworks project is coming along nicely. Burned 1k tiles, but am holding off on donating until I have more to give.

Got an unexpected nifty this morning. Checked in on the sheep before work and one of the developers, Zatarg, was looking for a volunteer who could test a new ‘thing’. I waved my hand and in a moment, I was playing with an entirely new chat interface. It rocked. Everything from customizable colors to click-for-info to variable font sizes. Embedded urls are now allowed and your name in a line changes to color of the text for that line. Each aspect is flaggable and customizable. It rocks. :)

05/20/09

Got in late and logged in right when the last portion of the ‘free stuff’ law went into effect. Basically, all of the fragile chests that have been created around Egypt can now be claimed for the contents. I hit the chests that had belonged to former member of the months-defunct obelisk guild and was rewarded with dozens of linen, hundreds of clay, and thousands of bricks. This is just what the doctor ordered.

Converted the last of straw into tasty bricks to supplement what I looted and donated another 14k bricks to the aqueduct.

I made my way over to CCR and fired up the third oven for the first time. I love this part. The joy of discovering new colors! Oven number three makes medium-purple and beautiful deep blues (royal blue and slate blue notably). I ended the burn prematurely, since I wanted some of the royal blues for my temple and socked away some 700 or so to donate later this week. We’re almost through with pink and green tiles! I estimate we’ll have the aqueduct up in 2-3 weeks at this rate.

The most unexpected thing happened: Rabble, my patron saint, has opted to donate up to 10k resins to our pilgrimage group—just because. He likes collecting resin (who doesn’t?), but has a limited need for tiles and doesn’t want to sell to raeli guilds. Tile cartels annoy him like they annoy me. This’ll mean another oven for Alexis, lilac, and myself, with a sizable chunk leftover. Yay! Now I need to start getting ‘all the other stuff’ together again.

05/21/09

Swung by Saqqarah and picked up the resin. Afterwards I hit ovens 1 & 2 to gather enough tiles to make a decent donation to the Waterworks. Numaris had just donated enough pink tiles to finish out that color requirement and enough green to establish a definite lead over me, despite my recent brick making endeavors. Any given week I produce more tiles that Numaris, but his colors are worth more points, so it is a neck-and-neck thing for now. That will hopefully change once the ‘specialty’ colors (yellow, green, pink) are done.

Gathered a metric ton of clay while the ovens fired and once the tiles were tucked away, I began baking in clay bricks in earnest. I increased the array of kiln in Ft. KbtS to 20 and now that they ‘fixed’ kilns so they degrade through use, I made a quantity of ‘backup’ firebricks, just in case. In no small time I manufactured 3,000 clay bricks.

Made a few hundred charcoal and obliterated nearly 500 wood trying to run multiple ovens simultaneously. Win some, lose some. Knocked out the cut stone, crucibles, small gears, medium gears, rope, canvas, carpentry blade, copper wire, and part of the shovels and iron bars needed. I was getting to the point of wondering why I thought these sucked so bad, when it occurred to me: I had forgotten I was going to need to make a ton of moonsteel sheeting. Ugh. Time to scrape together another metric ton of things to trade.

Ended the night a little later than normal, but it was for a worthy cause: another ibis for Mandisa! She’s now 4 animals into Safari and has –finally- achieved a permanent 1000 carry, leaving her less likely to suffer from onion overstock.

05/21/09 Supplement: Alexis and the Raeli

Once upon a time in Queen's Retreat, there lived a woman named Alexis. She and her husband Tyler spent their days and nights in an isolated oasis a fair clip and a half from more urban settings. She was known in her area for being kind and friendly. She had many adventures, including one time when she joined up with several Pilgrims, including the dashing* Sefet, and travelled the countryside. More than anything that was not Tyler, she loved her home.

She swept the silt from the doorways and admired the land she and her husband had arranged so meticulously. Trees and flowers adorned her yard and the landscaping was kept in awesome beauty.

It came to pass that her friend and fellow adventurer, Rabble, offered her a sizable amount of resin, enough that she could build a raeli oven of her very own! She had never thought that she could afford one, but she had socked away a few things here and there in the hopes that one day she too could build one far from home.

The very next day, she awoke to smoke in her kitchen, but this time it wasn't Tyler experimenting with cooking! Some fiend had build an oven directly against her home!

This upset her greatly. For the first time, she felt a rage build within her soul and she hunted down the one responsible...who was apologetic, but unremorseful. He needed tiles for an aqueduct he was building and the maps indicated this spot would yield the pink colors he desired. This angered her to the point where she decided to quit and told her friends goodbye.

Rabble stepped swiftly to the forefront and spoke to her at length. In time, he (and a bottle of wine) calmed her to the point where she decided against her previous act...for a time. For now, the oven still churns, dredging at a little more than clay. It stirs a woman's soul. We wait now, for soon one or the other will fire.

* He ran everywhere.

05/22/09

Spent some time doing investigative research (read: spying) on the other aqueduct projects going on around Egypt. As it stands, I think we’re going to be the second group to build. Of the nine projects ongoing, only one had the intellect to withhold posting all of their secrets: Pyramid Lake Institute of Technology. They have ties with two of the major raeli cartels (each of which lays claims to dozens of ovens) and only mention they have a target build date of May 28th or sooner. Luck to ‘em. We’re two-three weeks away ourselves, based on tile counts.

After us, based on threat level:

Queen’s Retreat Waterworks with about 195k tiles to go. Our closest known competition and will probaby finish the week after we Keep Pumping (in scenic Meroe) -- weeks behind us. They’ve only gathered about 60k tiles, no concrete, and 6k boards. Their only perk is they have all marble needed. Falcon Bay ToF, operating under the “Shadock Corporation” is about on level with Meroe Nomad’s Paradise Aqueduct Association: maybe 30k tiles gathered. It’ll be a couple of months at least before theirs is online. Society of Sad Saqqarah Scientists is on par with NPAA Cabal of the Arch (located in Adn) looks like it is being handled by two people. Adn Aqueduct Association may even be less successful than the OTHER Adn guild.

If other regions are building, they are completely unknown to me so far. I would’ve expected something from Stillwater.

Hours later, I chatted with KalmKitty, whose application was rejected by SAWW, due to them being full up (rather like mine was at first). She wound up joining Adn’s AAA and confirmed a couple of things: the CotA project IS a “private” project and AAA is, for the most part, leaderless. They have a number of worker bees, but no direction since the organizer, Bortox, quit.

The Project of the Evening was: trade for moonsteel. Rabble’s trade list is a very organized point-based system. 200 Moonsteel would cost 50 “rabble points” (my name, not his), with things like 30 slate, 5 ash, or a glass pipe being worth a point each. I had a sizable quantity of soda and a bit of lime, so I opted to pad my trade with a number of glass pipes. The fact I needed a few for the oven sealed the deal. I knew Rabble was running low on the antimony needed for the moonsteel, so I arranged for a trade at The Goods.

After working out a trade for a quantity of ash and lime (both of which was much cheaper than expected) and a couple of pinch rollers (to save myself the annoyance of firing up a master’s forge)... and a few copper plates in case I want to make another honkin’ big distaff down the road(I do), I find out Robare won’t be able to do the trade for up to a half hour, as he’s making potash. That’s cool. I’d use the down time to do miscellaneous tasks and confirm the moonsteel purchase order. I pulled up the wiki and cursed.

Rabble was nearly out of base metals so could only handle trades that included most, if not all, of the metal required. I didn’t have anywhere near the tin or iron (300+ iron?!?!) on hand to make the trade. Fortunately, I had caught the change early and hastily reworked my Goods barter to include 100+ iron and a quantity of tin.

After completing the trade (which due to timing, I nearly lost the pinch rollers to a newer player), I made my way to Saqqarah, laden with 300 copper, 150 iron, 40 antimony, 56 tin, 16 glass pipes, 25 ash, and 150 slate. Rabble’s a bit backlogged on orders, so I leave my side of the deal in a warehouse and, at his request, gave his wife coordinates where the finished goods could be dropped off overnight.

I wandered around, unsuccessfully looking for mushrooms, when someone locally announced a gazelle! There didn’t seem much enthusiasm for the sighting (read: none), so I logged Mandisa, warped over, and ran to join the hunt.

Mandisa got there and there was no one but the gazelle-- not even the finder stuck around. I looked at the gazelle. The gazelle looked back. I made a decision and charged it. Gazelles are designed to be a group encounter, but I was near a river. I’ve heard of two very determined people being able to tag with a river helping and I like a challenge. The gazelle ran. I pursued, swinging wide...it darted back and forth. It bolted away from the river. I chased it around an empty chariot stop. We circled a small lake. I pursued it up a sharp hill to a plateau and back down...nine times. After getting it away from the terrain from hell, I chased it back to the Nile. I relentlessly pursued the creature until after twenty minutes, it lowered its head. I successfully solo’d a gazelle. Muahahaha!

05/26/09

Bit of a long weekend, with much time spent making gravel and fishing. Put oven number 4 online in eastern Shabbat by the coast. Mandisa noticed the spot while getting an ibis, and it was just barely far enough away from another oven to plant. It gives a few more colors I didn’t have before: indian red and a few different shades of violet. There will not be an oven number 5. This I swear.

Saturday, Egypt’s lungs were polluted in the Great Egyptian Smokeout! Smokeoff would’ve been a more appropriate word choice, but it was a contest with two challenges: improve your fumeology score the most and/or share a hookah with as many different people as you can over the course of the day. The top prize for each category was the full tuition for cooking 5: several dozen rare herbs. Additional prizes were scads of rare herbs plus medium stones and gravel for participants. I spent a good bit of time on the contest running around sharing herbs and the use of my hookah. When the contest ended, I placed in the top 49 for improved fumeology scores and in the top 14 for ‘socializing’. Dozens of rare plants were dropped into my inventory by the gods and all was well.

The real prize, in my opinion, were the cucumbers. During the contest Zog discovered that growing cucumbers near a lit hookah would reproduce seeds. Within a few hours everyone in Egypt who wanted seeds had them freely!

Gravel was the number one time sink, as I have an eternal need for concrete. 400 concrete went towards the tuition for mechanics 3 and I still can’t tune the flax gin. Ah well—the next level of mechanics is either going to be 49 acid or 40 cuttable gemstones, whichever I can find cheaper first. Also, I donated some 1.5k concrete to the aqueduct. I’ll be taking a break from graveling for a while.

Burned tiles at all of the ovens to make contributions to the aqueduct. I additionally found a couple of public raelis in Saqqarah and supplemented my contributions by another 1.5k tiles. Presently we are just 95k tiles, a couple thousand cut stone, and a few hundred marble from completion. We’ll be online in under two weeks! My own donations leave me holding tightly to 6th place, with a chance to pull into 5th by next week.

After months, I finally got around to getting my camp decoration done! Orchid worked with me for a while and the results are stunning. She even moved my temple off the road and into my yard where it belongs! Screenshots will be forthcoming later this week, but for now here’s the rundown: a path now runs from the road to the ‘Plex and from one the back doors down to Fort Kbts. At the road end, two large blue banners sit astride the path and more than a dozen windmere trees line the path, swaying gently in the Egyptian breeze. (They are technically ‘plants’ and not ‘trees’, so no wood from them, but the blueish look to them works well.) The ‘Plex’s front door is flanked by two large boulders with flame coming out the top and the boulders themselves surrounded by tiny ground plants. Along the back doors there are red, white, and blue plants.

The grove next to the Guildhall got a slight makeover with some of the ugly trees being replaced with cinnars and the plants tweaked for a more overall ascethic look. The capstone is what she did with Lake Sefet-by-the-Nile. I requested it be ‘enlarged a little’, put in a fountain effect, and maybe put a bench or two in for when company comes over. What she did far exceeded even her own expectations...

Lake SbtN is now a little wider (no more dashing across it!) and a cone of water sprays across a third of it in a beautiful arc. On the bank, there is a permanently lit campfire, surrounded by four benches. In turn, there are now four palms arranged around it to provide shade. It looks amazing and Orchid herself was impressed by how well it turned out. I shared a bowl of some of my rarest prize herbs with her to christen the park and it was a good night.

05/27/09

I find myself in a somewhat curious holding pattern. This is the mid-game, the stage of the game where people relax and take things in stride, barring the occasional Project. There have been no new Tests released in the past month, the ones I want to bother with I’ve either done or have all of the prep work done for: venery is on auto-pilot, my Vigil supplies are as complete as they are going to get, barring some last minute gathering, and the aqueduct is now just a matter of collecting tiles from the ovens for two more weeks.

It isn’t really in my nature to relax and I honestly don’t feel compelled to start passing Mandisa through the same Tests I just beat, so I found myself experimenting with a couple more things...

A long term goal of mine is to maximize the mechanics skill. I’d gotten 3 levels of it, as noted yesterday, but was still failing to tune my flax gin even once. I looked over the remaining tuitions and decided ’49 acid’ was the cheapest of what remained. This was obtained from the goods at a dire cost: 10 gold, 30 cement, and a clay dome that I happened to have lying around the ‘Plex. I also got 20 medium stones to resupply my gravel stockpile and a few dozen fish because they were there.

Tuition was paid at SArt and I returned home to put my newfound skill to the test on the infernal flax gin. Failed. I tried it on CelAmun’s flax gin. Failed. I tried it on Trillian’s flax gin. Failed. ARGH! Mechanics 5 will cost me 40 gemstones...maybe next week.

The other project I decided to apply myself towards is the creation of an acoustics laboratory in Ft. KbtS. Once the Test of the Windsong is released, it will be used in creating wind chimes of various notes. The laboratory itself is a pain to build, and on top of that there are 12 ‘upgrades’ you can build into it. Each upgrade allows for more tuning options and, in theory, will let you access all of the possible notes (including sharps, minors, etc...) for a range of a few octaves.

The laboratory base itself required steel sheeting, of which I had some leftover from a few months ago when raeli were a distant speculation, steel wire (easily made), 500 black and 500 white raeli tiles, 250 concrete, and a few thousand specially treated boards. At some point, I’m going to sit down and analyze why I find things like this “fun.”

The raeli tiles hurt a little... it’ll mean 2k less points when it comes time to finalize the Waterworks points, but I’ve got enough cushion to afford it. I may eat those words next week—we’ll see. The boards were a greater challenge.

I built a second carpentry shop next to my first and knocked out a few carpentry blades on the anvil—I’m getting rather good at those and the 6k+ quality blades can plane about 500 boards before wearing out. From that point on, it was a matter of planing wood and treating it.

It took a while to figure out the wood treatment ‘recipes’ I needed to make assorted boards: soft and pliable, rigid and fireproof, etc..., but in the end I was able to cook everything without too much waste in the experimenting. The saddest part was using up nearly all of my lime stockpile; I hate gathering limestone.

I ended the night with only black raeli tiles needed. I’ll hit up one of the ovens in Shabbat in another day or two and complete the project. If nothing else, I’ll be a little ahead of the game when Windsong is released.

05/28/09

Spent most of the evening out of the desert and working on the wife’s computer—it got hit hard by a virus and the first round of cleaning failed to repair the system.

For the most part Sefet just sat around ovens while they baked and chatted a bit during the many system reboots.

In the end, I decided against finishing the acoustics lab until after the aqueduct is complete. I can’t really do anything with the lab at the moment, so it is strictly a vanity project. Meanwhile, I’ve got Numaris nipping at my heels in Waterworks points contributions. Net result? By the end of the evening, three ovens were burned and another 2k tiles were donated. I’m still hanging in 5th place solidly and it looks like we may be the first region finished! At our current rates, we’ll have everything up next week. We’re down to 58k tiles, 1544 cuttable stones and 127 marble to go.

I did find out a little more about diania. She’s on some sort of extended sick leave so right now she has “nothing to do but atitd and doctors”. It certainly goes a bit to explain her eight ovens and recent contribution of several hundred medium gears. She’s stated that once she passes temple and aqueduct she’s donating all of her ovens to the public. That’s pretty altruistic and I can see me doing that myself if and when I pass Temple.

On one of the channels, we took a moment to remember some of the people who fashioned the early days of this Tale, for better or for worse, who have gone on to other things. A number of the names are peppered in my own blog:

• MouseD, the cicada hunting speed-addict
• bortox, master of cooking and meal seller
• Zaniac, crossbreeder and utter maniac who once fished ALL of the fish for viticulture in a single night
• Tactician, an utter ass
• tlanthil and Ichigo, the two driving forces behind Shabbat’s early research burst and the founders of SACFAR
• Eldar and shadeking, the metalsmiths of SA Ironworks
• Choltai, a friend from Tale 3 who stated her goal was ‘to Complete at least one Tale!’
• PeacefulPanther, fellow Pilgrim—you will be missed
• ...and others numerous to count.

At some point, I’m going to depress myself by seeing how many names I picked for Prophesy no longer play. The ones who are still around earned a handful of points this past week, but I’m still going to be short a good portion when passes come this weekend.

05/29/09

Not much in the way of desert activities— mostly just gathered a few herbs around camp (since the deco went in, the herb spawns at home have easily tripled). Jogged over to Saqqarah and swiped tiles from the two public raelis there, to the tune of 1200 tiles.

While in Saqqarah, I dropped in on Camp Rabble and gave him a few dozen more debens of rare herbs. He likes experimenting with cooking and smoking, so I’m all for encouraging his vices. In return he gave me 7 slabs of Oyster Shell Marble with promises of a couple of slabs of Tangerine to follow this weekend. It’ll be nice to get all of the tubs upgraded fully. Now that I’m maintaining camels, the amounts of dung generated are copious. In a matter of days, over a thousand debens of virtual fecal matter have accumulated in the single pen.

Back to A Blog in the Desert