Benie's Games Blog

So there’s something I didn’t go over, that happened just after B2 and I had left the Impalong in our boats. I was given some extremely bad timed news (via a Discord DM) about chaos in the Best Boi community (that just couldn’t had waited until after I got home).
From what I got, Kibble apparently is now feeling sorry for the once Ugandan Knuckles (after curbstomping them since February of this year) and has signed an alliance with them. This has caused most of the Best Bois to (don’t ask me why) convert over to knuckles and form new clans, while others are trying to stop it. So many hilarious things are going through my head, that I can’t pick just one. This reminds me so, so much of the Ket in ME:A, of how they’re able to produce new soldiers.
Unable to breed anymore (because your queen is dead) and you’re on the brink of extinction? No problem! Just convert Best Bois into Knuckles, and it’ll make your population rise again! Make them “know teh wai”!
Personally… if they aren’t hurting anyone, let them have their fun. But I can also see this being a ‘problem’ for VRChat (resurrecting a long-dead meme, like a dinosaur). And just like the Jurassic Park series, they had ‘issues’ with containing them.

Brings up the question, if Kibble was already expecting this to happen. Surely the man would had seen the drama coming from a mile away. I say he did, yet either he wants to give the mods a real ‘test’ of handling chaos, or… I don’t want to think of the ‘or’.
Was even told of.. *fake shock face* corruption in the mod ranks?! SAY IT AIN’T SO!
Even got names of two mods (that I will not say their names here, as the accusations are mainly just rumors), though he does claim that one of them “forced this alliance on Kibble”.
He also claims people are leaving due to said alliance, and feels like the AUFF(Anti-Ugandan Fuzzy Force.. *facepalm* please don’t ask me why this name was thought of) should come back to deal with this.

All I do know, is I’m glad I’m not involved in that crap. Let the community die. *shrug* I wouldn’t care. All the more reason not to be part of the game anymore.
—
UPDATE: It seems that long awaited shakeup of the mod rank has finally happened (with Kibble now in charge of the community he has created). And this image …perfectly suits my feeling for it! It’s FINALLY. HAPPENED! Something I’ve waited for MONTHS, has finally happened!!
So who got shafted? So far, I see two high profile people (with one of them who was named by the informant) have been demoted. The one was named, either was stripped of their rank and file (or resigned on their own, that’s possible too) and is now a retired mod. There could be more, but at the time that I write this, I only see two. There’s also one that I could had sworn was an archive holder, now no longer.
I feel, relieved. Knowing what caused you know who to go on a rampage, has been punished. It feels like sweet revenge for what happened to the community. I feel I can 110% trust Kibble.
He has responded with this statement.
The other mod mentioned by the informant, it seems no action (currently?) has been taken on them. They could be on watch, pending investigation.

Does this mean I could possibly go back to VRChat (and hang out with the community that welcomed me with open arms)? …Unknown at this time. I actually want to watch how this plays out.

The day after the impalong, still missing it and walking around the area outside my deed, being all “I can’t believe the impalong is over, it felt like it had just started” But I tried my best to focus on the bigger picture; getting my mining skill up to 70. But as I said before, I don’t exactly have any copper in the mine to the East of my deed.

I’ve also been trying to get the original skiller pick I bought from Xan, down to the required QL of my current Mining skill (which is 50.98). Been told to try to bash a fence down, so I tried to bash some of angry’s old fences (but not to the point they’ll fall down).
Nahjio is not happy for doing this, but I hope he’ll forgive me (and not take away all of my Favor). I kind of need it to (eventually) get that sweet 10% skill bonus.
Starting to get annoyed with how little damage the pick was getting, and began to wonder if I should had made two of those 1QL picks with CoC (one for DH and one for B2), but it’s too late to ask Virus for it. And to ask Wargasm, I would rather put my head in a blender than deal with him. …But, given my current predicament (to not risk knocking down one of angry’s already decaying walls), he’s possibly my only out.
I had B2 ask him in my place. 😛 And what he had to tell him (and me), seemed promising at first… and then everything I’ve been told before with grinding the mining skill, was turned on its head. Apparently, all of this talk about difficulty affecting QL of the pick with one’s mining skill, no longer is needed. He said to mine Sandstone with my regular high QL, high CoC pick, and I would get the same results.
—
I.. don’t see how. But I trust him not to give false info. Decided to try it (using one of the Sandstone veins in the canal), and the highest skill tick I got… was a sickening 0.0097. Conflicting thoughts ahoy!! To be self-sufficient (and deal with the grind)… or take the ‘easy road out’ and buy 1k of 70QL iron lumps?
And the answer, may surprise you. I’m actually going to stick with the grind (for now), because it’s really not that bad. Because when it comes to grinding Mining, actually getting a skill tick in mining is a godsend (no matter how small it is). Plus, I have 50kg of 75QL iron lumps that I totally didn’t steal from the Impalong (now sitting in a BSB).
Right now (thanks to that), I’m actually good on iron. I.. also have no current plans to imp anything (kind of still bummed out that I couldn’t reach 70). I just feel I want to do… something other than imping right now. Not explore (as it’s too late in the Wurm year), but just, something. Something I’m not even sure if it’ll work (therefore I don’t want to hype it).

——
So as I was grinding away at my mining skill (and B2 dropping one of the BSBs from the deed to load up the shards), I wonder if I should stop and focus on getting to 20 Favor (to get that sweet 10% skillgain). It would definitely help speed up the process. But there’s something I wasn’t told.. or something Virus forgot to tell me (which I think is more likely).
And that thing… praying to Nahjo was pointless. Why? *facepalm* Apparently, this god does NOT do the 10% skillgain! That’s fucking Vyrona, angry’s God.. FUCKING DAMNIT!!! D:{ The irony is slaying this dragon!
WOW!! The very God I’ve been trying to get AWAY from, I have to kiss her ass if I want that bonus! UGH!! FUCK!! Angry has to be laughing his head off right now.
…FINE! I’m that desperate. Asked War if it’s possible to get the lost Favor back pretty quickly (after pissing her off if I choose to redesign the deed), and he said yes (followed by “One prayer is like .30 faith. If Vynora “notices” you, you only lose like .01″). I also noticed this with Nahjo, except I never saw ‘Nahjo noticed you!’ in the event log).
Alright, War. Convert me back to Vyn. I want that follower bonus!
Now I have to make my first (ever) altar. War even made me a metal bowl for it. Going over the options in the wiki, the Stone altar is the easiest/cheapest(on mats) to make. Even the wooden one takes more mats (it requires cloth, and uses Fine Carp to imp).

Well, that about wraps it up for today. I’ll get to work on that altar as soon as I can.

So, another Impalong has come and gone. This one lasted four days (instead of five, of what I assumed). And once again, I feel ..saddened, wishing it lasted longer (and/or wishing I could had done things differently). But this is how I’ve always felt when an Impalong ends, and takes me a week or two until I get back to what I was originally doing (before prepping for it).
This will be no exception. But I’ll get over it eventually (it’ll take time). Now while the event was going on, I was writing down highlights of what was happening on Days 2, 3, and 4 (being the final day) in a .txt file. Now, you might not like what I have to say for Day 3, but it was a mixture of feelings (which the page about it was thrown in the garbage).

Alright, so.. here we go! Starting from Day 2 (Saturday, July 28th);
Not really much happened that day (as far as activities go). I reached 66 Blacksmithing, and even was able to (barely) hit 70QL on two people’s items (so that’s awesome! I can finally hit 70QL in BS! THIS is what I’ve wanted for a VERY.. very long time).
But due to multiple things going on (my grinding queue being ruined by other people imping the same item), this started (of course) making me frustrated. I wanted to reach 70BS so BADLY, and this isn’t helping!!
–
I was on the verge of saying “fuck this, I’m going home and working on my own things” (but not before taking 50kg worth of the high quality iron lumps from the BS Mats cart while they weren’t looking).
But seeing someone’s creature cages where the boats are, gave me another idea; “hmm, I wonder if I could ask them to do what I cannot with my crap woodcutting skill.. because I could certainly use it” I asked, and someone offered to do it! All I needed to do was go home, load up the cages, and bring them back. And that is exactly what I did (leaving B2 there to check up on our stuff).
–
As DH was heading home to pick up the cages, I as B2 saw someone talking about dropping a bunch of iron chains down, and talking about saccing them to “a god of your choice” to get more sleep bonus. Interesting, very interesting. I definitely want a part of this!
Came back to the site as DH (after naming the cages after me) and unloading them of where I parked, asking again and got someone out here to do it (while I went back to work on BS, just ‘needing a break’ for a bit). Then I asked about the chains to verify this claim, and was told “the mission is over”… fuck, it was a Valrei mission? Then someone said there’s another that’s active, also wanting chains.
They were made, and I tried to throw five in and attempted to sacrifice to a random god.. no Sacrifice option. Read up on the wiki, and saw I need at least 10 Favor. FUCK!! I’m trying to GET RID of being a follower! DANGIT!!
And to add onto it, Virus told me that I can pray to my god five times a day (every 20 minutes) to get 1 point in Favor. He also told me that once I reach 20, that I’ll be able to get something like ‘10% in skill gains’.
Okay, that’s tempting. Maybe it was a good idea of what angry did to DH. I’ll try to do this, when I can. Because 10% in skill gain sounds very awesome. It (and what I’m doing) also poses a major issue (but I’ll get to that later). Let’s say (as always)… I’m unsure; having conflicting thoughts.
—————————–
Day 3 (Sunday, July 29th);
A bit more activity this day, things going for (and against) me, but it actually turned out good at the end of the day of learning a trick to help me. I’ll try to cut the ‘against me’ part down quite a bit (as a lot happened).
It was ‘HorseCon’ when I logged in as DH (everyone but three people including myself) was a white horse (or foal). I cracked a few jokes, saying “which one of you is a 5-speed?” One of them was a white drake, and Virus was the Easter Bunny. As I spoke, I got turned into a baby seal.
Someone else wanted Virus to get in a photo with the drake, and I decided to also get in it. But just before the picture was about to be taken, I lost my ‘seal form’ and tried to get out of said picture.. still photobombed it a bit though, heh.
And then, THIS happened a few minutes later! Someone got turned into the Avatar of Vynora while in the imping building, and came out to say hi. I was able to get my own picture of the bitch that pissed me off of not being able to remove pavement (thanks angry :P).
After that (going back to work), I finally pulled off a successful rare roll (and got someone’s shovel to rare! Go me!) …And then, things started getting bitter for me (after eating my last two sleep powders, and getting very little skill with SB on). In the Xanadu Impalong, the host actually felt sorry for me and tried to keep giving me sleep powder to keep me going. This time, that was not the case (nor did I really expect it to happen).
The fact I can get tools to 70, I felt “what am I doing here, when I can do this back home? That was the whole point, to not NEED the impalong!” It’s like I had completely forgot (or lost) the desire to help, and went back to my old ways of wanting to be self-sufficient.

Actually did go home for awhile, but I wasn’t ready to work. Instead I asked for the same iron rune of Fo (that Virus used for the forges to keep them burning 10% longer than normal). Got someone who lives in Cele, and after dealing with several perm issues, I was able to get the rune (and paid 30c for it). I was actually planning to give him 50c for coming out here.
With the rune (and the forge) in place, it was time to ‘imp my own stuff without others touching it'(to get the maximum skill ticks). However, I wasn’t completely done with the Impalong. I remembered someone needing my hammer to imp theirs, and thought of making my own (to imp my own hammer when needed) and getting B2 to take it to the Impalong, to get CoC on it while I stayed home.
—
And that is exactly what I did. Got the hammer to almost 71QL (which ended the day).
—————————–
Day 4 (FINALE | Monday, July 30th)
Attempting to login B2 to deliver the new hammer to the Impalong to get CoC on it, a hotfix was released for this ‘Modern render’. One of the things it covers; ‘Tweaks to improve FPS performance’, I thought of giving this thing a chance. But I was busy imping my other tools to do so.
Gave B2 the hammer, and my slightly dented carving knife (that I can’t imp as I desperately need to work on WS) to get CoC and WoA on it. I originally wanted him to get it re-imped, but that had changed a bit later.

With him sailing to the site, I started seeing people in Global Kchat talking about the Impalong (as if it’s ending).. this definitely grabbed my attention and PM’d one of the people I remember were there, and asked. Was told “it technically ends today”.
TODAY?! I thought it ended on Tuesday!! With B2 now at the site, he was able to verify (with Virus saying “it’s been known months ago”). Checked my RL calendar, assuming Virus had typo’d (that it ends just before August 1st.. because it just doesn’t make sense it would end so quickly).
I put my hammer down, and my hands on the burning red hot forge (staring at the roaring flames), knowing I had to make a decision; do I help, or do I grind for my own personal reasons? It was there, that I had remembered the promise I made to help during an Impalong. And when they needed more people doing BS there, I grabbed my tools and headed back. The road to 70BS can wait. I made. a promise. to help, and I must keep it. I could use what I learned here, for there.
I learned that imping one item over and over, would give me decent skill in BS (while also not stepping on anyone’s queuing toes). It’s a win-win, for me, and for the person I’m imping their tool. This thing has been verified to work by others, but only if you have high QL, high CoC tools. And this goes for any skill that involves production.
Back to the site, and the place was pretty.. dead. But I picked a forge that had gold things, and did my best to help with it. Even getting this gold lantern to 70, with it nearly 6 in the morning.
—
12pm rolled around and I logged in (using the new Modern render). I didn’t notice a difference with the FPS (which is good). It was also pea soup.. extremely foggy (and night). Made my way to the forges, and saw how…. quiet everything was. A majority of the forges were out (except for Blacksmithing 2). Checked Blacksmithing 4 (the forge I was working on last night). Someone else had imped one of the gold items to 70 (and got the ones I did imp to a higher QL). I thought 70 was the limit. *shrug* Oh well. Asked for the forge to be re-lit so I could get to work (as all there was left to imp was a gold cauldron). One of the staff did this (as Virus was offline, spending 17 hours yesterday doing nothing but casting on his alt.. ouch. I feel sorry for him(especially how B2 dropped my stuff in)).
I eventually got the cauldron done (wasted so. much. gold lumps though, but thankfully they aren’t my gold lumps.. heh). I also hit 69 Blacksmithing!! WOOT! But I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to hit 70 (not here, not when there’s very little to imp now). The closest I got it was 69.50. So, yeah. With .50 until 70, I’ll hit it when I’m home.
—
As I was imping whatever was left (with a few others), the one that was quiet during her first impalong (the Xan Impalong.. and I really miss that), is once again being overly enthusiastic (Goldfinch). So to explain what’s been going on with the daily activities, Virus has been picking people at random (now Gold), where they must unequip their armor and use Autofight, equip fish, and slap eachother silly. The person watching picks a random body part, and the one that hits it, wins a prize.
I was able to actually participate, not once, not twice.. but four times. I won the first and 3rd time. First prize was a brand new rare huge axe! ..Ohh holy fuck, is it Christmas already?! I NEED this!! 😀 When the Christmas Impalong rolls around, I’m going to try to get them to throw Human’s Demise on it, with all of the other enchants of my current axe (to be my trollkiller)!! YES! Then go up to that mountain in Xan, and make them PAY for killing me (or, at least I hope I can)! To get revenge when I was lost on that mountain with my wagon and bison (and nearly losing them), would be sweet.
–
The second, was a kingdom banner of a kingdom I’ve never heard of.
The forth fish-slapping spar, was the battle of the Dragon Warriors (Dragonhead VS Dragonshearts)– the ultimate battle of honor. And, he won. He was also kicking my ass, having high body control but low fight (while I had the reverse… explains why trolls are still a pain in the ass for me(but hopefully with this new axe, that might change)). However, he decided to give his prize to me (another JK banner).
But as the battle was going, an Avatar of Libia (named ‘Venerable Death incarnate’) spawned in the arena. The impalong finale is HERE! We geared up and tried our best to fight this spawned strong mob. Retrograde (the one who spawned it), laughed as he kept healing it, planning to kill us all. And he nearly succeeded, if it wasn’t for the Fo priests able to cast LoF(Light of Fo) on us, healing our unhealable internal wounds. I think I’ll take back them being tree-huggers.
While the battle was happening, a few champ mobs (a champ Rift mob, and a champ troll) were spawned outside of the arena. So the pain continued.
As for me, I NEARLY died several times (when it did a boss attack-like thing on us, attacking everyone evenly). Wow, what a battle that was! And watching it die, was very satisfying. But it wasn’t done, as fog spiders spawned in! FUN! Never have I seen fog spiders being spawned during an impalong. I did my best to stay alive (and using the farmer’s salve I got from someone who’s name I’ve forgotten, to heal the poison wounds).
–
Finally the battle was over. And as people started to pack up to leave, a champ Uni spawned in (named ‘Old champion Bedtime’, to show he was done and logged for the night). Pretty cool. We thought of taming it, but since it’s a champ, it’s a bitch to. Ended up killing it.
And that was pretty much it for the impalong. I got DH in a bed (to get as much SB back as possible) while leaving B2 on (to wait for the (hopeful) enchants to my hammer and carving knife). I also wanted to wait ’till the timer ticked down to 4am (when it’ll officially be over).
Virus rambled about trying to advertise the impalong in Trade chat, and was told he couldn’t. He gets how people post in there for the intention of buying and selling, but he says how 90% of Kchat is trash (and would be ignored there). I agreed wholeheartedly.
While I patiently waited, mother nature (IRL) was attempting to push storms toward my house. Started booming outside, and I thought for sure I was going to lose my power. Luckily that wasn’t the case.
With ten minutes until the event was officially over, he managed to enchant both without shattering! Thanked him and said how I wish I could help the priests out. He said no problem, and how he wishes the other priests were on.
—
4am rolled in, and I got both DH and B2 in their boats. Thanked Virus and all the staff (including the ones that weren’t on) for the event and the help. And he says (with a chuckle) “yeh GTFO” Hosts in the past have done the same thing, about adding us to the KOS list and stuff. All harmless good fun. 🙂

Overall, despite the rocky start, this is now #2 on the list of Impalongs I’ve been to (since 2010’s). What won this place over the 2017 Christmas Impalong (in Xan), was the number of activities we did. The layout of the impalong was great, and I absolutely loved the easily viewable arena!
Still, 2015’s Christmas Impalong (in Inde) is king (due to its activities of the finale, being unlike anything I’ve done in Wurm).

Time to head home, and figure out just how in the fuck I’m going to be able to grind my mining skill (with the limited resources near my deed at my disposal)… may go to FM’s public mine, or Glasshollow’s. Because I need to find crap quality iron and copper to go from 50 to 70.
I might require help to locate said veins.

So apparently the Impalong hasn’t ‘officially’ started yet (even though today is the day). If I had known this, I would had arrived today instead of yesterday. It starts in an hour as I type this, which gives me time to do so.
(Rewriting this from all the screaming I was doing)
Logged in today, expecting to see local filled with a ton of people. Instead, there were only two… the hell? Isn’t this the day? Where IS everyone?? Was told it hasn’t started yet. Ok, so we’re waiting for VirusMD to get on. Fine.
One of the staff here threw in some lumps in a large chest (where the Blacksmithing forges are), and then lit the forge. I’m thinking “uhh.. okay! I guess I’ll get to work!” and logged in B2, having him bring over the lamps. He threw one in while I grabbed 10 iron lumps from the cart, and waited for both to get glowing.
Sorted out my toolbar and was about to hammer the lump into the lamp, when perms got in the way. So we can’t even work; have to wait for Virus to get on. The staff member was very sorry for the delay, and I said it’s fine. Got B2 back in the second bed and logged him out.
With my food bar getting quite low, I wondered if they actually had any larders here. There was one right outside the imp building to the west. Perfect. Went over to it, tried to eat.. no perms. Okay, this is starting to get annoying. It’s like the host can’t even trust us to eat, let alone work without him being on. Or, maybe he just forgot to set perms.
About a half an hour passes, and I notice he’s on. He says the larder should now be accessible. I walk over, try to eat.. “that would be very bad for your karma”. Someone else claims they can eat (and I even see it in the event log).
I tried doing a full logout (waiting for myself to log ‘out of the world’ while being out of the game). Come back in a few minutes later, try again.. again with the “that would be very bad for your karma”. What the fuck is going on?!
Then he tells me to try the one upstairs in the Inn (top floor of the Friendship Inn), and I was able to eat from that with no problem. So it’s some sort of perm bug. Lovely. And the only way to fix it is to push the larder into a building.

So with Virus on, we’re still waiting to get to work. Someone says “there’s not enough mats to imp with”, he says “I know, because it’s not time yet”.. what do you mean? You’re on, so let’s get to work. What are we waiting for now?
He says that he’s got a few things he needs to get done, yet we’re having to wait ’till 4pm before we can get to work.
…Is this Wogic, or the result of bad planning? The only words going through my head are “why”, “what”, and “this is stupid”. Feel like we’re being punished, because the host isn’t ready. We’re ready, let’s get to work… nope, nope. Gotta wait as if it’s nearly Christmas and we’re all children. “this wouldn’t be fair to others” also comes to mind, and goes back to the whole ‘being treated like children’ thing.
Already, this is looking to be the worst Impalong I’ve ever been to (and it hasn’t even started yet).

—
And we’re going. Got back by 3:55, expecting to see “is it time to imp yet?!” Instead, I actually saw people imping away. Finally!! Now to get to work.
So far (from the rocky start), it’s actually been quite good.. in ways, more than good. It went from bad, to OK, good, somewhat funny, very good (then slowly back down the ramp to bad).
-The ‘somewhat funny’ part was during the 2nd time a GM (that wasn’t Enki) dropped off a ‘basket of goodies’ at the arena. I’m imping away (trying not to get distracted as my SB ticks away), then suddenly my view gets changed to where it looks like I have a long blueish nose. Then I realize “hmm, I’ve been turned into a whale. Ok” B2 was on at the time, doing his usual errands for me (checking to see if things I cannot imp, are being imped), and I had him run over and take a few pictures of myself flopping around as a whale infront of a forge. Quite humorous. And when the illusion wore off, 1/4 of them were all “awww, I didn’t get to see it! Did someone take screenshots?” The third one B2 took I showed it to them, and they laughed.
-The ‘very good’ is seeing my horseshoes fully imped (not by me), and I’m all “B2! Get these things up to the top floor and get them WoA’d STAT!!”… and they pull it off, BETTER than expected! 81 WoA on every shoe!! WOOT! FUCKUP, UNDONE! 😀 I wanted B2 to hug the priest(s) that did it, for you have saved my exploration ‘career’!! And this, can never be repaid.
And that’s not all. I managed to pull off my first. EVER. 70QL imp (on my large anvil)! Literally, right. on. the. NOSE (70.00QL), with 61 BS at the time! That is awesome. And finally (comparing this to the Exo Impalong), I got my small and large anvils CoC enchanted (which will boost my BS when making things like door locks, nails and stuff for the deed)!

Then the slope started slowly going back down to ‘bad’, when a third GM (that also wasn’t Enki) filled up the arena with ‘treats’. With all of my “mission critical” things imped and placed back in the boat… I had to open my mouth with the fighters needing help (instead of keeping quiet), saying “I’d help, but I just recently got my gear re-imped, and I want to keep it like that (outside of an arena).” I expected them to say “that’s OK, we got this”, instead it got pretty ugly, with a few of them saying I got ripped off when I got my reimps done.
Hell, I know I did (especially for the axe), but I was desperate. 5s to re-imp it, when it only costed me 2.5s to re-imp my copper chain set? I already realized that. But (and I was about to say this too.. but I actually was smart and stopped myself) “but that’s what happens when I’m too lazy to stand infront of a forge, to grind chainsmithing and weaponsmithing”.
10 seconds after I was about ready to say it, the unnamed GM spawns in a sea serpent, with a nearly ironic name; ‘Beanie‘ (just get rid of the ‘a’ and it would be perfect).
*sigh*.. Facepalmed infront of the forge and put my hammer down. Fine, so you’re taunting the Dragon Warrior inside me. That’s actually a good way to entice me to fight.
Time to gear up and say “fuck it, I’m going in” and helped to kill the serpent– achieving max combat focus and making the killing blow.
More mobs spawning in.. nogumps. Can’t solo nogumps, they hit 3x harder than a troll (and have a large attack radius). Even attempting to DPS, nearly ended in failure. But hey, we were able to see the new Death tab. Not sure if this means server-wide deaths (like if a noob died to a wolf on a road, on the other side of the server from me).
This fight went on and on, to where I was starting to get bored with seeing mobs I couldn’t solo with mobs that I could. Needed healing, people telling me where they are (which is IN the arena, with the mobs.. okay, that’s just fucking hilarious). Actually, they’re to the sides in safe areas, and they have enchanted grass (which according to one, guarantees the heal instead of being based on RNG, and increases the speed of wrapping the wound). And it works.
Huh, this makes grinding meditation more, almost seem worth it.

Then it ended up with just me prancing around the arena while riding on Uma, trying to look for an opening. Got bored and went back to imping without a word. If you all don’t wanna help anymore, why am I bothering then? Maybe they were too embarrassed to be around me.
Ehh, whatever. I got lamps that aren’t going to imp themselves.

Today (well, this evening) is the day to prep for departure to Pristine, and be there early for the Impalong there. And just like everything Wurm has done for me (/sarcasm), the devs picked this day of all days to release a patch. It couldn’t be yesterday, it had to be today.
And like any video game patch, it was completely flawless and totally doesn’t need any hotfixes and emergency downtime that lasts for an hour. And only people that don’t understand how programming and scheduling works would believe this. And I’m not calling anyone out, as I was once one of you.

So anyway, these post-patching attempts are starting to concern me (as the title says). If these things continue through the overnight hours, there’s a possibility that I might be there later than I hoped.
But at least the lamps are ready to be shipped. And now it’s time for me to speak random things on my mind (and none of them pertain to my Wurm future).
-First thing, is Deli is the only server left that Uma hasn’t received a branding from. Since I’m gearing up (aka waiting ’till 12am) to get to the site. I’ll restart looking for the final brand when the event is over (and I’m ready to go home).
-Second thing, depending on if all ten of the lamps I bring get imped (after pushing my BS over ‘safe limits’ (aka similar to being inside the cone of a neutron star in E:D)), this is likely to be the last time (in my Wurm life) that I send lamps to be imped.
-Third, I plan to go back to Xanadu next Wurm year (but with Uma instead of the wagon, to reach areas I was too nervous to access before). With the faster speed (and being able to ride quickly to get out of a sticky situation), I won’t have to worry about trolls as much. I also plan to check out Soleil’s place. As said before, the wagon will only be used when I feel I’m ready to move out (then again I might not ever need to).

And that’s enough out of me (for now). I’ll be updating this post as 12am nears.
—
And I’m back. Did you miss me? Of course you didn’t.
So, prepping to leave (it’s night), getting things collected, buying more prem time and throwing the 5s directly into the upkeep. The deed is now protected for four months (through November)!
I was also debating if I should take Uma with me or not. But with the horse racing thing, I decided “sure”… then I run into a major problem– my quite pricey WoA horseshoes, are gone. They’re not where I had remember placing them in. They’re not in the boat. They’re not in the wagon. Where the hell AR– oh no. .. No. NO NO NO.. DON’T TELL ME I— FUCK!!! GOD FUCKING DAMNIT I’M SUCH AN IDIOT!!!!!
The shoes, were still on my (now dead) two 5-speeds. And…. I buried them, and I never fucking once thought “WAIT! They still have my horseshoes!!” NOPE! NEVER fucking THOUGHT of that!! And before you say “they could be on the ground if you’d look”, that only works if you butcher the creature. No.. I lost them. This is all my fault. Not even going to get the GMs involved…
Because I have a alternative (but it highly depends on if there’s enough priests, and if they’re willing). I have four unenchanted shoes (my original ones). They need imping first, and if I can get WoA 70 on all of them (without shattering) before the Impalong is over, I’ll have it nearly as good as I did back then (I’ll try to push for 80 or 90 sometime after the Impalong). But at least it’ll undo this major fuckup.
And this changes things. Getting these shoes re-imped to 70 (so I can get them enchanted) is now emergency high priority (over the lamps). Unfortunately, I can’t do shit to speed up that process as my BS isn’t anywhere close to 70 (it’s 58 right now). The reason I need them imped, is (I hear) they’ll have a somewhat lesser risk of shattering from the WoA casting.
But if they (or even one of them) shatter… I’ll have no choice but to buy new ones. And no I’m not going to Xan to buy them. I’ll be using the Trade channel (while still in the Impalong). I pray I won’t have to do it… but if I do, then there’s my alternate alternative.
I MUST get replacement WoA horseshoes, one way or another!!

The rest of this, was dealing with being in the dark, and in a South headwind when approaching Sunset Canal. Made it to Pristine, and had B2 switch to ‘Impalong mode’ (aka the Impalong graphics setting I made). Hopefully with one of us in that mode, the studdering won’t be as punishing.
Went past Dragon Beard (going West on the south side of the long island, three people in local (including the host). Continuing going West drops them out of my local. I thought you could access the area from the south, but as I went further, it was looking less likely.
Turned around, spinning around the long island to the north side. Passing Dragon Beard (again), I come up on some boats, and signs saying “Please dock here!”
The people here are clearing the trees and grass here, like as if they were prepping for a Rift event. Parked and said hey, they didn’t really say much back and continued working. I told them I would help them out, but I wanted to drop off the things I needed imped first.
VirusMD told me “the mats won’t be here for 15 hours or so”. 15 hours? That’s like 3-4pm my time. He responded saying it’s based on when he’ll get up, and I was fine with that (not like I can do anything about it).
–
Found where to drop off the goods, but was unsure if I even should (as they’re all empty). Then I thought “ah shit, I need to get Uma out of that cage and find a place for her” and asked if they had a public pen. It’s to the west, past the ‘arena’ (it looks like a pen for horses. Great visibility though). Had B2 lead Uma (after giving him perms to do so(having her branded was a smart thing to do)) and dropped her off there.
Due to the QL of the saddle, I want to also get that re-imped (before I put it on her).
–
I also found the private rooms (for (very slowly) regenerating SB). A sign said to PM Virus for one, but I decided to ask in local as he was about ready to head to bed. He gave both me and B2 the same room (we both have beds), and we’re directly across from Dragonshearts (on the ground floor). Ain’t that just peachy? And this is awesome too. B2 won’t have to walk anywhere as far as he did during the Xan Impalong (and he’ll be able to get his SB back from grinding his ML).
Verified that the door worked for both me and B2, then said “Thank you so much Virus. It’s going to be a good day tomorrow. :)”
He responds with “I hope so” and logs off. ‘I hope so’..? Those aren’t comforting words coming from the host of a very popular Wurm community event. It almost feels like this would be his first of hosting one (which is quite surprising, given the history of this place).
To wait three years(estimating it took two years to terraform and build since 2013), then pick 2018 to host his first impalong (of a deed that was specifically designed for one(according to his own words in that Valrei International article))? Call me perplexed.

Of course this has me very concerned (mainly for getting a ‘replacement’ set of enchanted horseshoes for free)… but, we’ll see how it goes.
Also, B2 and I are now the only ones here (the other guy logged out). This feels so eerie. I would had expected to see this in the day, but usually at night (from the two Impalongs I’ve arrived early), there were usually some people here that were imping some last minute things. This is the first time that we’re alone.
But back to the room we have, it has a coffer and a chest. This is absolutely perfect for me, as I can put imped and un-imped things in one, and high quality lumps (that I totally didn’t take after the Xan Impalong was over) I brought for the other.

See you guys tomorrow for Day 1 of the ‘Friendalong’.

In another news (and half of me is thinking “why are you even bothering posting this? I thought you were bored to death with VRChat!”), but this deserves a post; as this could change the minds (including mine) of how the mods treat people and what is expected of them (IE: how I felt some of them weren’t doing their jobs).
You can read the Code of Conduct (it’s a txt file that you can pop open in Notepad) right here.

And going over it, most of this is pretty much ‘what you would expect common sense’ stuff. However, it doesn’t cover what happens if the mod rarely comes on VRChat (or speaking in the Discord server). Though the whole ‘High stress/family/Work/Health/Emergency or sensible excuses’ thing could possibly fit into it.
Guess it should be based on common sense. 😛 I just wanted to see it in writing, though.

One other thing that ‘may be’ rubs me in all the wrong places, is seeing “Known game crashers or hackers may be banned immediately and reviewed.” Excuse me.. ‘may be’!? ‘MAY BE”!?! There shouldn’t BE a ‘may be’!! If the crasher/hacker is known to be a repeat offender (and is in the process of doing the same to your world and its community), you don’t fucking think about banning, you do it!!! This shouldn’t even be a question of ‘may be’! Wtf, Kibble??
Maybe I’m reading it wrong, because the ‘may be’ does fall into a gray area (such as the person did it by accident, or has sworn never to do it again).

Overall, this hasn’t changed my mind in the slightest. As I said, most of it is “duh, you’re a moderator.. it’s what you do”. As said before, I wanted to see the conduct relating to inactive mods. That’s all I care to see, and I was let down.
However, that’s not to say I don’t appreciate Kibble releasing their Code of Conduct. I do. I was just hoping I would see more, that’s all. Though I’m curious why now, of all this time, he chooses to do it. He could had done this when I was still active in VRChat.
Something major could possibly be happening, to warrant this. Going to ask Creepery. Maybe it’s… you know who again, still with an unknown grudge to make his life a living hell (and is too blind to see it).

EDIT: Speaking to him, he says that someone ‘had a lot of complaints about the mods’, and they’re trying to resolve it (by setting up a special meeting). This explains why Kibble is on damage control (by releasing this .txt file).
Interesting. Hope they get this individual to understand whatever’s eating at them. Though it’s really strange why they’re ‘catering’ to this person with this meeting. Whoever they are, might possibly be a VIP that could do a lot of damage to them, financially and mentally.
And if so.. wow. Best of luck to them! I hope in the near future, he could tell me how this all transpired. But right now, they’re too busy to chit-chat.

Future me here: I had no idea that this would be the start of the community’s downfall. If I did, I would had tried shifting gears and trying to help the mods. But since the Pristine impalong was hours away, it was more important to me.