What I Played Today: February 15

Rift, A Tale in the Desert, Magic: The Gathering

Man...I think I'm pretty much done with MMOs for a while. I just can't seem to get excited about them right now, and no reason to waste money every month paying for them. Hrm.

What I Played Today: February 4

A Tale in the Desert, Rift

A bit of MMO today, in which I logged into games that I'm still paying for, for some reason, and did some stuff to justify that. In Rift, I did some Instant Adventure, which involves running around killing stuff, and that totally happened. In A Tale in the Desert, I solved a puzzle box, which leveled me up, apparently (why did I bother even building a puzzle box if that's all I had to do?) and now I can chase after cicadas! Which will involve....running endlessly in the desert looking for some cicadas, without having any reason to assume I will find one. GREAT.

What I Played Today: February 1

A Tale in the Desert

Eh...just kinda hanging. I visited the public iron mine and got some iron, and then smelted it. And that's the end of the story. Sorry for not playing so much. I have a game night scheduled for tomorrow, maybe that'll be interesting.

What I Played Today: January 27

A Tale in the Desert

I continue to play this game! It is not news, although I built a little box with a puzzle in it, and it was pretty expensive. So much rope, why so much rope? Also limestone, but that wasn't so bad, it just required standing in one stop for a while and hitting a button. Then again, isn't that the point of every video game?

What I Played Today: January 26

A Tale in the Desert, BattleCON

I found a sheep today! Well, okay, someone told the chat where some sheep were, and I ran over there and looked at them. I picked one up, which was stupid, because they weight 300 pounds and you need a pen to keep them, and killed one to get some leather and mutton and stuff. Also, because I'm a monster. Eventually I did set down the sheep I was holding and killed him too, so, yeah, I'm pretty awful. There was also something called a carrot wave going on, which apparently greatly increased the amount of carrots you would get with one pull, so...I grew a bunch of carrots. Yeeeeep.

I will not apologize for playing BattleCON by myself! I had forgotten how the game had played in the nine months since I last touched it, and there were a lot of characters with new abilities, and I wanted to try it. So I choose two characters, set them up, and played each, trying to decide the best move based mainly on what was on the game board without remembering for sure what I just had to the other player play. It kinda worked, and it taught me a lot about the game. Mainly, one of the guys I choose was not great at long range, while the other was, and I don't think I was using his special ability quite right. So...I lost, but I also won! So good for me!

What I Played Today: January 24

A Tale in the Desert

Mainly rolled around the desert today, built my little obelisk and leveled up, so now I can do other stuff. The biggest problem with the obelisk quest is a) you need to keep building bigger and bigger obelisks in order to compete, and it can be tough if other people are doing it at the same time (and I have no chance in my current location, because the tallest obelisk is already 113 cubits) and b) it requires way too much goddamn linen. All the other resources are either trivial to make or in such small quantities that it's not that big of deal, but the linen, man.

Let me break down the crazy for you: linen is made from 400 pieces of thread on a loom. You have an initial carry limit of 500 bulk, so if you're carrying thread, that's all you're carrying. Thread is made from twirling lint in a distaff, at a conversion rate of 1 lint to 15 thread about every minute or so. In order to get lint, you need to separate rotten flax into three different pieces. In order to get rotten flax, you need to rot regular flax in water. In order to get flax, you need to plant flax seeds and tend them without letting them overweed. So from flax seed to linen, we are talking about half an hour for each piece. And that's assuming your equipment doesn't wear out, collapse, or requiring restringing. If that happens, you need to sidetrack in order to rebuild those before continuing. For the littlest obelisk, you need 7 pieces of linen, so, assume 3 hours of work. And according to the text, this linen isn't even going into the obelisk. It's just an offering for the gods. You are literally throwing it on the ground.

Also I'm being rockblocked. A lot of buildings that I want to make to move to the next technology level (metal and shit) require stones, which can only be gotten out of big holes in the ground. Digging a hole is easy, it's keeping it open that's a problem. You can't do it solo unless you no longer need to, you need a team of 10 or so, and how am I going to get ten people to help my butt? Luckily, I've pretty near a public factory that has some buildings I can borrow to convert the goods I need.

So...yeah. Deserts.

What I Played Today: January 23

A Tale in the Desert, Dance Central 2

Running in the desert! I've decided to knock out the principles of the Obelisk, because it's actually relatively easy to do at a low level and I won't get too worked up to try and actually pass any tests, because I'm just kinda hanging anyway, I just want to experience all I can. Plus, I can have an adorable little obelisk at my home site, how cute.

There was a clutch of trolls hanging out in my zone, a few jackasses I saw earlier on my adventures, and who started to annoy me for no discernable reason. They didn't actually DO anything; they showed up in the chat, demanding a tribute of linen that they didn't get, then talked about poop. The most annoying part was probably how they figured out how to add a weird banner to all their names, so that it was hard to ignore them when they were nearby. But...they were just there, and it was remarkably easy not to engage them. I mean, I'd think they would run around building wood planes everywhere. (In fact, I think that's what they threatened to do, and just didn't bother.)

I also played Dance Central 2 again, meeting the Glitterati and passing their level easily. Their songs are definitely more Gaga and European, but their challenge song "Born this Way" is ridiculously low contact. But then, after passing that, the game just thrust me right into the marathon boss fight, and I was kinda too tired for it! I made it throught two songs okay, but I wasn't quite hitting the third, and the option was either retry that song right away, or quit and have to start over. Having already danced for 25 whole minutes, I balked, but man, that was kinda nuts that it didn't even ask me if I wanted to start the marathon battle. Come on guys, this is legitimate exercise.

Welcome Back

A Tale in the Desert

One thing I've been playing to bring me back into the fold after my stupid hiatus is A Tale in the Desert, a game I played way back in college that I recently scoped out again after I found out the game rebooted itself a little over a month ago. This is the weirdest MMO I've ever played (okay, weirdest successful MMO. I'll tell you about Seed sometime). The basics of the game are you are just an acolyte of sorts, trying to follow the seven principles of Egypt, which involves a lot of building, a lot of talking to people, and a lot of running.

I've been spending some time getting set up, constructing buildings and dealing with flax and making bricks and such. I've completed three principles so far, and really close to achieving two more. The central driving principle of the game, the tests, are extremely difficult tasks that require a lot of coordination and a lot of busywork, and they are still something that I will probably never do. But, they have been readjusted so that you can still get some credit for at least attempting a test, showing that you're willing to put in the effort, if not able to go all the way. Which is good, because some of them, like being elected demi-Pharoah, can only be achieved by one person a month. ONE PERSON.

Also, one thing that I didn't notice I missed until I realized it was gone is the Conflict tree, which used to be about playing games each other, which was replaced by the Harmony tree, which is about being nice to each other. It's an odd change (and one that happened quite a while ago, apparently).

So that's all I've been playing. Not ALL, but quite a bit a time has been killed there lately. And so we're back, back in the desert, back on the blog, back on the bacon.