SHFT: Mistakes

All this time I've been playing Terraria, I've been playing as a character named Garbledytesting or somesuch nonsense. Well, I finally got her gear up to snuff and decided to shove everything in chests and then delete her, and use Indrabar, whom I created a long time ago while I first played Terraria with my husband. So I shoved everything in chests, and then, I shoved all her gold and armor in the piggy bank. I saved and exited the world, and deleted her. Then I loaded in Indrabar. Then I noticed something odd.  Chests will carry over between characters. Piggy Banks do not. All that gear, my Spectre boots, my feral claws, my mining helmet, my 56 gold. It's all gone. At least I put the weaponry in a chest, so I still have that. Oh well. Back to the drawing board. Time for Indy to earn her stripes, and to find some more Hermes/Rocket/Spectre Boots.

Spritely Happy Fun Time!

So I bought Terraria a while back on Steam when it was on sale for 4 bucks or something like that, but I didn't play it much because shortly after setting up a multiplayer server so my husband and I could play together, we exceeded our bandwith for the month and had no internet for about three weeks.

Terraria being on Steam, which requires the internet, I didn't play much again for fear of running up our bandwith. Until today, I decided to try it out. I started up a new world, and found with glee that all of the items my husband (who is a Terraria veteran) had thrown at me during our brief multiplayer stint stuck with me. So I had great weapons and armor.... but I had no idea how to play. So I'm working my way through a world save named Cherry Chapstick and I don't know what this thing is that I found under my house. And it's not very far under my house, either. Yes, I know I could look it up. But I am lazy in a strange way, and instead of taking 30 seconds to look it up on Google, I'm going to take five minutes + however long it takes you, my mythical readers, to respond, and ask if you know what this thing under my house is and how I get rid of it.

Yes, I know it's dark and hard to see. Please tell me what this thing is though.

Also, if you know of any reliable, easy to navigate Terraria guides, I'd be greatly grateful. (......?)

Greatly grateful????

Does This Mean I Have No Life?

So I finally did it.

I cancelled my lotro sub.

And yes, I shed a couple tears before I hit that green button. Does that mean I take the game too seriously? Does that mean I have no life? Probably.

Do I care? Yes.

We can't justify paying for three mmo subs right now, and with SW:TOR still pretty fresh on our plates, lotro, being the old, worn out, flataslastweek'snewspaper game, it had to go.

So why was it so hard for me to cancel? I've waited weeks to do this. I've wanted to find a way around it. I considered using Christmas money to pay for another year's sub. I considered all sorts of things to scrounge up the money to pay for another year's sub. In the exit survey, one of the questions asked was "what can we (Turbine) do to bring you back to Lotro?" I put in that they could give me a free lifetime sub if they wanted, because honestly, there is nothing wrong with their game (or wrong enough to drive me away).

I just don't have the time (or, more importantly, the money) to keep paying for it.

I guess it is all the time I have put into the game over the years that is killing me. All the fun memories I have of running things with Squid. The friends I've made - who thankfully, have moved around with me to other games (I'm looking at you, Minecraft and SW:TOR, and yes, even you, stupid Tanks).

I think my biggest fear in hitting that green button was that this felt like a betrayal to Indrabar. She's been with me for so long, and hey, it is an rpg, after a while it does begin to feel like that pixelated thing on the screen is a part of you, and that you really did defeat Mordirith or clear out Sammath Gul or down a dragon or two.

It feels like a betrayal because there was no Indrabar in SW:TOR yet, and there probably won't be, because, as my husband once said when I was creating my character for that short stint in SWG,  - "It's not a very Star Warsy name. It just sounds, well, elvish." So, for SWG, I went with Tsuka, and Tsuka is now in SW:TOR.


Tsuka was also in Skyrim, instead of Indrabar. A psychologist might say that two personalities are fighting for control.

Yes, I know it is just a game.

Yes, I am a sane, mature adult. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have cancelled.

Just because I am an adult though doesn't mean I have to be happy about the choices we are sometimes forced to make.

 Well, here's to the 20th, and whatever changes that will bring to Indrabar and the rest of my lotro characters. Hopefully they won't all just poof into thin air. Hopefully I won't cry like an idiot again.

Maybe now I can have a real life, you know, in the real world.


If I was able, I would give Indrabar permission to punch me in the face for just metaphorically indefinitely locking her in a dark cell with no chance of sunlight or ever seeing her forty-nine horses and three goats again..

You mean I actually have to work for it?

I'd forgotten how much work a festival in lotro can be, if you are as obsessive about collecting everything as I am.

Wait, let me back up.

A year or so ago, I decided to get both my Inn League and Ale Association standings to kindred. Getting both to kindred takes a good deal more work than just doing one or the other, as doing one will give you negative rep with the other. It was only through a delicate balancing act and several weeks of grinding dedication that I managed it.

By the time I was there, I had a couple stacks of the barter tokens for each faction. At first they seemed useless, but as Indy is unable to throw anything away, I shoved them in the vault and forgot about them. Until, that is, at the next festival, when I saw that these tokens could be traded on a 1:3 ratio for any festival token of your choice.

Suddenly, acquiring all those festival cosmetics and mounts was a piece of cake. I no longer had to grind out the quests and deeds to get tokens. Festival's started today? Okay, go to the vault, pull out a few Inn League or Ale Association tokens, turn them in for the appropriate festival tokens, aquire goods, done. That was it. I could usually accomplish all my festing in the space of five minutes, unless there was a new deed I wanted to finish.

Well, the Yulefest started last week, but due to the release of SW:TOR, I've been distracted. I just decided to log onto lotro today, and what would you know, but I'm all out of those IL and AA tokens.

So now, to acquire my new Yulehorse, I had to actually run quests, which isn't all bad since I still hadn't finished my Feast-beast title from last year, and there is a new snowman building quest/deed thingie. Thank goodness the festival will run until Jan 30th, because it'll probably take several days for me to get all the other cosmetics.

At least the new Yulehorse isn't that bad looking. Don't know what's on his head, but the rest of it looks good.

Technical Difficulties

So I was playing Civ V the other day, and suddenly, I had the oddest feeling I was about to crash.....

Turns out, my fears were unfounded and the game never crashed, but I did have errors like that wherever the clouds were for the rest of the game, but once I revealed the whole map the problem was largely avoidable.

Clouds are too much for my computer to handle, apparently.

The second rule of being a Dungeon Master

People will die.

So last night we had our second session, and before our characters had even moved from their campsite, we had had a death. Amata, the Crystalboy, decided he had a better character in mind, and could he not be the shardmind anymore, please?

Sure.

So, having mysteriously died in the night due to a fright from the still twitching corpse of the rat-man, our adventurers briefly mourned the unexpected demise of Amata and promptly stole all his items.

After bumbling about the temple grounds for a while, the paladin had a vision from his patron deity of steamy hot springs. There were hot springs on their map, why not go there next? So they did, and were joined by a giant barbarian named Lowkeg. Oh boy. Lowkeg AND Kegslow? This will be fun.

While at the hot springs, our adventurers discovered that the slaying stone, the object of their quest, was in the possession of a young and petulant brass dragon. They were unable to convince her to give the stone over, as it was obviously an object of dark power and could be used against her, so she assured them of her ability to easily kill all of them and dismissed them from her hotspring.

What now?

Well, our paladin once again sought guidance in the form of prayer, and in return, received a vision of a mug of ale. In response, he set off for the ruined tavern, the travelers following only reluctantly, for perhaps our dwarf was only claiming that it was truly divine guidance pushing him towards a chance of ale.

Once at the tavern, our adventurers were met with the sounds of drunken singing. There was a nasty looking female orc inside, quite intoxicated, who our adventurers managed to convince to go back to the hot springs with some of her orc buddies, as they too were looking for the slaying stone. She waddled off, leaving the party free to explore the tavern, where of course they found nothing, other than a strange circle of blue runes on the floor.

Piers the wizard, after a bit of examination, recognized it as the back end of a teleportation portal. Wow, really blogger? You think teleportation is not a word? Take that stupid red line away, now!  With a great deal of effort, our heroes managed to chip away at the runes, thus damaging the circle and preventing anymore whatsahoosits from coming through. 

Our adventurers then made their way back to the hot springs, where they discovered that the young dragon had been killed by a band of 40 or so orcs. Luckily for our adventurers, about 32 of those orcs were dead now, killing by the raging dragon, and our adventurers only had to deal with the remaining eight orcs, who had the stone in their possession.

This proved to be one of the most difficult things to watch I have ever seen. Kegslow, the paladin, died more than once, but managed to save out of it every time. In fact, everyone died at least once. I really thought it was going to be a wipe. In the end though, our adventurers managed to defeat the orcs, with just the paladin left standing, and then, after slowing rising to their feet, our heroes discovered that Lowkeg, the giant, had fallen in battle and could not be revived. He had really and truly died. This was two characters now who had died, both owned by the same person.

After wearily collecting the stone and deciding to destroy it rather than give it back to the woman Treona, The woman was, needless to say, a little ticked off at their blatant non-compliance with her request, but she got over it and shoved them out of her tower, throwing a bag of money after them.

Level up! Hooray, with the completion of the quest, our characters ( the surviving ones, anyways) advanced to level two, and while reveling in their success, they met up with Meebo, the halfling sorceror. This was our unlucky player's third character, and everyone seemed to enjoy him. Hopefully he will stick around.

They journeyed together to the town of Winterhaven, where they restocked and rested, and where Kegslow decided to sell off all the brass scales they had collected from the dead dragon and use them to make a suit of wyrmscale armor. Lana was glad to have her bag of holding empty again. Piers, on the other hand, sold off all the interesting books and scrolls he had collected in the ruined library back in Kiris Dahn, and attempted to buy a better staff, but still lacked the gp, so he moped a bit, but got over it.

After asking around in town, the innkeeper informed them that the lord of the city, Padraig, was looking for adventurers to deal with a kobold problem. So, they set off along the road after meeting with Padraig, in search of the problematic kobolds. They dealt with the ones along the road with no trouble, and followed their tracks back towards their lair, where they fought a whole bunch of kobolds, mostly minions.

This fight would have been much more difficult if I, the DM, hadn't been so sleepy at this point and had remembered that the ten minions should have been attacking the whole time instead of just standing there. I didn't realize that they hadn't been attacking until there were only two minions left. Oh well. Our adventurers had just had a horribly difficult experience with the previous battle with the orcs, why not throw a couple easy fights at them, with stupid minions who don't know how to fight?

Anyways, with the defeat of the kobolds outstide the lair, our session came to an end and we look forward to the next session, when our adventurers will enter the kobold lair and discover what or who is behind the attacks on travelers to Winterhaven.

Discrepancies

Only after I started raising the walls a bit in my cathedral did I notice something when going back and forth between my reference photos and what I was actually building - my building was not tall enough. To truly capture the grand majesty of a cathedral, I need this thing to touch the sky, literally, as I will probably go all the way to the top of the map. So, after some more tedious math and some re-working, I managed to get at least one side to the correct height, so far anyways.

I don't know if you can really tell from this screenie, but notice that the right side has openings that sit significantly higher than the openings on the left side. The right side is correct, height wise anyways. I still need to work on the windows a bit. But it's coming along, and I have height now, yay! Oh, and that other side needs fixing. Maybe Notch will have invented colored glass by the time I get ready to put the windows in.

More work tomorrow, maybe, if the ice-storm doesn't kill me.

A Rifting We Will Go

I'm feeling a bit wordy, and my imagination won't let me sleep, so forgive me if this post is a bit more on the .... grandiloquent side than usual. This may quite possible turn out to be my longest post to date, so I won't blame you if you don't have the time, patience, or interest enough to read it. If you are looking for information on how to beat the Rift, what strategies you need, etc. You won't find it here. This is pure creative release for my own mind, to share my experiences while they are still fresh.

 Last night, the kin got together, all impromptu-like, to do a bit of Bogbereth farming. We killed her about twenty times, at least until everyone who wanted the housing trophy had one. Farming her was pretty easy, and we had the group and were in the general vicinity, so we figured, why not? Let's go to the Rift.

Now the Rift of Nurz Gashu is the old end-game content for lotro, back when the level cap was fifty and the player base still all knew how to play their classes. I had been to the entrance of it, once, but I had never actually been inside. After volunteering myself for Horn duty, I headed up that way from Gath Forthnir. Even though I had been to the entrance of the place before, I had never really realized how desolate the place was. I felt like I was riding through some surreal movie sequence or something. My imagination began to run away with me as I rode slowly up to the summoning horn. I could almost see little puffs of ash swirl up around Bainrhi's hooves as he worked his way across the ledge. The wind was utterly still, and there were no signs of life to be seen, except for the distant glows of campfires.

After what seemed like ages and ages, I found a camp, but it was not the one I was looking for. These were no Dunadan. These were orcs. Angmarim. Trolls. I threaded my careful way between them and continued towards where I hoped the friendly camp would be.

I finally made it. I summoned my kinmates to the camp, and we marched down from the cliffside to the abandoned arena. The one thought that kept flitting through my head, like some annoying insect, was the size of the place. What sort of place was this? Why had it been built? And where was the entrance to this supposedly horrible place?

The answer to that last question was soon answered, as the leader of our party rode his horse down into a gaping crack in the stonework. A small voice inside me laughed with the thought, at least now you know why it's called The Rift. A great crack in the earth. Then, another thought soon replaced it. What happened to open up this crack and reveal whatever horrors lie beneath it? I had heard horrible things about this place, about how difficult it could be. Even now, at fifteen levels above the intended level, I knew I was up for a challenge. This used to be end-game. The old Sammath Gul. Of course the creators of the game were going to make it as tricky as possible.

I watched my fellow kinmates enter the cave, one by one, and then, I rode down last, into the Rift. Murmuring to myself that I was about to die, I turned, just before entering, and bid farewell to the sunshine. As pitiful as the sky in Angmar is, I had a feeling it was going to be a while before I saw it again.

Inside was a gaping cavern, far larger than what I had been expecting. Truth be told, I had been expecting a tunnel, but no. This was something else.  Far away, I could see orcs and angmarim wielding picks. Were they mining? What was going on down here? What was this place?

We worked our way down ramps that looked none too steady and stopped before a small group of orcs and a massive troll. They were speaking, in their own harsh way, and arguing. I have come to learn that orcs argue a lot. Those with swords and shields rushed forward, and I hung back with the other archers, as was my place. We dispatched with the lot of them quickly, and relatively unscathed.

And that was the way of things for a long while. We would press onward, ever deeper into the earth, and the orcs and evil men fell before our blades. Eventually we came to an interesting scene - some extremely large giants, fighting a band of orcs. For a while we stood back, waiting to see how it would turn out, but then, with one mind, we rushed forward and assisted the giants in defeating the orcs. They thanked us and told us of some horrible creatures ruling over the orcs, and asked if we would help defeat them.  Of course we would. That's why we were down there, wasn't it? To kill bad guys?

After the commotion with the orcs had died down and we had stopped for a bit to catch our breath around the giants' fire, something caught my attention. What was that off to the side? I ran over the the ruined archway and proceeded to view one of the few sites in lotro that have caught me quite by surprise.

What sort of place was this? Who were these fire-giants, the Eldgang? Had Tolkien invented this place, or was this one of the more fanciful (and frankly, strangely beautiful) places the game's creators had though up? But there is no rest for the would-be heroes, so I was soon called away from my sight-seeing to press onward with the rest of the group, ever deeper into the earth.

It soon became apparent that we were headed towards that great coliseum I had viewed earlier. Part of me was excited about the prospect of going there, but part of me still held a lingering fear. Deep places of Middle-earth usually hold ancient, evil terrors, and I had heard rumors that one dwelt here. A balrog. But he has no place in this story yet, for we were still a long way off from that coliseum.

We did battle with many more evil things, not the least of which was an orc named Zogtark and his many drakes. The drakes fell to the ground after we filled them full of arrows, and Zogtark was dispatched by the sword-carriers. We pushed through, and emerged through what appeared to be a promising door only to be met with frustration: We had come out too low, and now had to work our way back up toward the coliseum.

 
Letting my imagination take hold again, I wondered what the heat of this room would feel like, and how taxing it would be on our little band of heroes, both mentally and physically. The armor of the stronger ones would surely grow hot from the heat, and the air would dry out my bow and weaken it. In a place like this, how long could one expect to hold out and continue fighting? Some of my companions' clothes had even caught alight from stray sparks.

It seemed as though we had been underground for ages. The vast caverns had given way to small, tight corridors, and I longed for the sight of the stars. A clear night in the Shire. I wondered how much further we had to go. Even Moria, with all its twists and turns and tight places, gives way to the beauty of Lorien in the end. What golden wood was waiting on the other side of this darkness?

I began to think we had gone too far, surely we've gone too deep. Strange creatures, that looked at first as though they were trolls - but no. These were not trolls. I do no know what they were, even after leaving the Rift and finding the sky again. I have a feeling I do not want to know, with names like Shadow-eater and Stone-biter. Later, we found one that was named World-eater, but that is for later.

Eventually, we fought our way past the strange creatures and into the coliseum. I braced myself for the Balrog. But he was not there. Instead there was another of the Eldgang giants, and a strange creature called the Ever-seer. I was not looking at them though. I was looking at the place I was in. How many thousands of people could this place hold? I wondered, looking at the rows and rows of seats. A pity a volcano had decided to come up in the floor.

I looked below me, over the edge of the platform, and saw beautiful statues. Again I wondered who had built this place, and why. What were those stone kings put there to watch over, with their fire-bladed spear and their towering shields? What was inscribed on their shields? My elvish is a bit rusty. It was in this room that our group was put for the first time to a real test, and we failed miserably, I admit. But we got back on our feet, dusted ourselves off, and tried again.
This time we succeeded, and pressed onward, to what I still didn't know, but thoughts of the Balrog still held heavy in the back of my mind. We ran onward across a long stone bridge towards what appeared to be a fall of lava, cascading downwards from some great height. High above us the roof of the cavern stood, and for a moment I was thankful to be back out in the 'open' and away from those tiny tunnels. I laughed mirthlessly to myself and continued across the bridge with my kinmates. Far away I could see that ruined archway at the giants' fire, and I realized how far we had come. How much farther did we have to go?

At the end of the bridge we came to a great door, and going through it, I met with surprise an elf maiden. But this was no mere maiden. This was a warrior, so strong that it put my feats thus far in the game to shame. This was one of the Eldar. She pointed to a great door beyond us, at the other end of the hall, held shut by many great locks and seals, and told us the tale of how Thaurlach had been imprisoned here many ages ago by the Istari instead of being killed for what he had done to her people, and she had set guard over him for thousands of years, waiting for him to try and escape so that she could finally give him the justice he deserved. After assuring her that we would help her defeat Thaurlach, the Balrog (!!) she opened the great door with its many seals for us.

Not long after entering his prison chamber, something went horribly wrong and he broke loose from his chains. We fought valiantly, but in the end death takes us all, I suppose. It was only a matter of time. And so ends my story of the Rift. Maybe next time, when we've had a chance to catch our breath and re-summon our courage, we'll try again.

If you know me at all and the way I play lotro, I am a complete shutter-bug, and am constantly taking screenshots, sometimes of completely pointless things. This post, if nothing else, should be evidence of that - that I managed to take all these pictures and more in the middle of a twelve-man raid. Maybe that has something to do with my dying so many times. Who knows?

The Whispered World

Almost a year ago, my husband and I discovered a website for an upcoming adventure game. Adventure game? Here? In this day and age? Isn't that genre dead? Obviously not, for we stared at the screenshots from the upcoming game in gleeful anticipation. It was beautiful, it seemed. We were going to relive our childhoods through a game genre that supposedly died out years ago. I mean, look at this screenshot. It looks amazing. Think of the possibilities.

So, when we realized that the game had finally come out and was available on Steam, he bought it without a moment's hesitation. Yesterday, while he was at work, I decided to finally test the waters and try the long-anticipated game out. This is what I found:



Apparently, they put all of their talent into the artwork, and not so much into the voice acting. I guess the good old days of Broken Sword and Monkey Island really are gone. The game was developed in Germany, and so I watched a gameplay clip on youtube of the game in its original language, and to be honest, it was much better. Granted, I could only make out about half of what they were saying, but at least my brain wasn't threatening to melt just from the sound of Sadwick's voice.

I will probably keep playing the game, if only to support the people who are trying to breathe new life into a once great genre. Maybe it will get better and everything else will outweigh the negatives. Maybe this will encourage someone else to make another adventure game, if only to say "I could do a better job than that." I mean, that's how progress happens in societies, right? Someone does something, then their jealous neighbor down the street one ups them? Maybe this is just the nostalgic wishful thinking that had me hoping this was a good game to begin with. Ah well, we'll see. I'll keep playing, and maybe things will turn out okay. I mean, I have only seen the content of the game as far as the above video (because at the time, that's all I could stand).

On a Side Note

I hate the sheep quest in the Shire. That is all I have to say.

Irony to the nth degree

Today I announced in Kin chat that I was heading out to the Moors. Did anyone want to come with me? No, but one member charged me with making sure that the relic stayed safe. I had never seen the relic. I didn't even know where it was kept, or who was guarding it. All I knew was that the freeps having it meant we got a nice experience gain boost. Losing the relic meant losing that buff. So, I nodded dumbly and rode off to the moors, not quite sure what I had just promised and hoping he was joking. He didn't really mean for me to watch over this mythical relic, did he? Surely he was joking.

Later, out on the moors, I somehow managed to scrape together a group of a captain, warden and a minstrel. A pretty awesome group. We managed to get a bit of renown off of a group of creeps, and then, after wiping the floor with them, they disappeared. We rode around like chickens for about fifteen minutes looking for them when something popped up in the announcements. Something I had never seen before. Something I didn't want to see. Something that one Kin member had jinxed into happening:

They were stealing the relic. 

If you can manage to read the orange line of text in the chat box, you will see that a certain fragment is being stolen by a warg named Heathcliffe. This warg and I, at least on my end, have a particularly uneasy history, but I digress. 

We jumped on our horses and ran in circles in a panic for a few minutes until we figured out the route they would probably take to deposit where we assumed they would have to take the relic. None of us had ever seen the relic. We all had seen Heathcliffe though, so we made a rough guess and charged off towards the Orc fortress of Dar-gazugasomething. I forget what it was called. With a daring charge and an insane amount of good luck, we made it into the very heart of the fortress. Right where Heathcliffe the warg would have to put the relic. Heathcliffe was not there. 

We stood about dancing for a second, certain that we had averted a crisis and all we had to do was wait for the pup to show up so we could stick him full of arrows and reclaim the relic for the Free Peoples of Middle Earth. Things were starting to feel both a bit triumphant and epic.

Then, in the midst of our celebrations, I noticed some movement at the entrance to the room. Before I could barely get the words "Hey, guys, um, warg" out, Heathcliffe had blazed past us, the relic held tightly in his teeth. The relic was lost. I had watched it happen. The one thing I had never seen, never even known where it came from or where it went - I saw it on the one day when a Kin member charged me not to lose it.

So class, the word of the day is irony.

Here's to you Heathcliffe and your daring-do. Here's to your group, with your warleaders and your spiders and your wargs, who wiped us out, still in the midst of our celebrations, while you blazed past us with that thing blazing like a beacon. Here's to the captain, warden, and minstrel, who fought so bravely and tried their best to keep a squishy hunter alive.

Running, jumping, climbing, and drowning

So I'm taking a brief break from my long morning of playing Assassin's Creed to complain about the water. Evidently it's highly toxic, but only if you fall into it from great heights. At first I thought it was just the rivers and canals and such that are to be avoided, but I jumped off a rooftop, aiming for the ivy-covered safety of a garden trellis, but as I am not good with judging distances, I fell short and hard, into a fountain. And drowned.

In a fountain.

A six-inch deep fountain.

I am going to attribute this simply to a glitch in the game and go back to my stupid canal jumping, chasing after those stupid flags. And yes, I'm having a horrible time of it.

But I still love it.