Benie's Games Blog

Since the crew responsible for maintaining EDs servers feels they need to take them down for 40 minutes, I might as well write here and go over what I’ve seen.

I made it to the Crab Nebula, and slowly making my way to the Heart and Soul Nebula cluster. The reason I say “slowly”, is this is one of the longest journeys between the Outer Arm Vaccus and the Perseus Arm (as it’s called unofficially by EDSM(Elite Dangerous Star Map).
Approaching and leaving the Crab Nebula, was pretty wild. When looking ‘south’ and seeing … nothing, just a void of nothingness. And looking ‘north’ towards the galaxy, you feel like you’re on the outer edges of it. Fucking wild.
I also got to the ‘beating heart’ of the Crab Nebula; the Crab Pulsar. A neutron star which was seen as I approached the nebula.

Neutron Stars are really, really tiny stars. But they’re also VERY hot stars. Which is why they can be seen for long distances.
They are so tiny, that it’s impossible to get close enough to it and not burn up by the tremendous radiation and heat. Not to mention, escaping the thing is also tricky (but not impossible).

Anyway, the main reason to bring this up is crossing the edge of the Outer Arm Vaccus back to the Perseus Arm. This is a 4kLy journey, requiring four travel points near 998.000Ly (due to the 1kLy route plot limit).
This total distance, according to EDSM, requires a staggering total of 133 jumps (JUST to get to the Heart and Soul Nebula cluster). I still remember going to Maia in that badly-built Viper Mk3, that it took 50+ jumps. I can now make that in 10-15.

Going this far is starting to take a toll on my patience. Once again I feel this is taking too long, wishing this thing was done, hoping this gives me a HUGE payout for all of this scanning… etc. I know I can take a break from the game and go play another, but I feel I must complete this expedition before the GNE (which is 23 days away from now).
I got plenty of time to kill. Just split between myself. One side is getting overly frustrated with small annoyances (scan times, having to be careful around stars when scooping, having to manually plot my course), and the other wants to see the sights (such as the Bubble Nebula).
I felt bored and annoyed before, but seeing the Nebula cluster soooooooo far away from me and not feeling like I’m getting any closer, is REALLY annoying me. The jumping. The scanning. The feeling of seeing the same old systems. Driving on the same old moons. Shit’s getting repetitive fast.

One thing I’ve planned for, is a change to the final waypoints of the long return. Instead of visiting the Veil West Nebula (since we are once the GNE starts), I’m going to bypass it and head straight for Maia. This is probably going to be the longest stretch of the journey — back to the bubble. Of course, not as long as we’re going to go to reach the Galactic Core.

Currently I had to make an emergency landing on an unknown alien moon before the servers went down. Made it with 30 seconds to spare. Due to what time it was, thought it was best to do this before heading to bed.
I should make it to the Heart and Soul cluster by tomorrow. And by then, I’ll finally be in range of the Bubble Nebula.

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EDIT: When I got back ingame, I found myself floating above the moon. As if I never landed. I believe I know what happened (it’s quite obvious).
The server saving stopped as I was descending towards the moon. So even though I landed, it was never saved as having landed. Which is why I was floating about 3,000m off the surface of the moon.
Also… I’ve FINALLY FUCKING MADE IT to the Heart & Soul Nebula Cluster!!! 😀 GEEZus… that was a LONG ass route between the Outer Arm Vaccus and the Perseus Arm! I had to do five waypoints to reach the fucking thing.
Yet the funny thing is, it pales in comparison to the 5k+Ly distances we’ll have to go for the GNE. So when I get back to the bubble and sell all of my exploration data, I might consider working with the Engineers of upgrading my jump distance. I did mess with it before I left on my expedition, and got really…annoyed when I saw an RNG aspect of ‘rolling the dice’ of getting that perfect mix of speed VS mass & power.
But I REALLY don’t want go through that hell. Hilariously, I have to..to get back home. 😛 Fuck me.

But at least I’ll soon be within jump distance for the Bubble Nebula. That should hopefully make this journey worth the effort.

In Elite Dangerous, I’m currently going the same path the Crab Nebula Expedition went earlier this year (and had completed it). Currently at WP3(Bernard’s Loop), I’ll soon be leaving for WP5, as WP4 was called off due to the ‘Unknown Permit’ BS due to the Frontier Devs.
I’ve also signed up (and staying signed up) to the Galactic Nebula Expedition. I personally would call it the Galactic Core Expedition, as we’re heading to the core of the Milky Way; the super-sized black hole of Sagittarius A. The fleet launches at 10pm on September 3rd, giving me plenty of time to complete my solo expedition.

The reason why I say ‘solo’, is.. well, I was going to have a co-op expedition. And it almost was. But sadly RL is a bitch, and also…he really wants to help his friends than play ED with me. And that’s fine. Though to get this far from how it started, was quite…messy. Almost to the point I felt that “friends are pointless”. I don’t really wish to talk about it.

Anyway, about the ‘Unknown Permit’ barrier. I was linked to a Reddit page on how they were able to get past it and continue with the expedition. The barrier is around Bernard’s Loop (which blocks access to the Horsehead Nebula, sadly). I’m about ready to go through the next bypass to WP5. This will take me within jump distance to VY Canis Majoris (the biggest known star (a Hypergiant) discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope).
I’ve been to Betelguise (while the Beetlejuice theme song was looping in the background), which is also a Hypergiant. It actually has a landable planet. And I was fuel scooping.. while landing on the surface. That just shows how fucking BIG this behemoth of a star is.

Sadly due to said barrier, I can’t even get to that star. So I have to go to WP5 instead. Seriously wish they would DROP this fucking thing and allow access! Whatever.
Getting on the last few legs of the bypass to WP5 was tricky — lots of brown dwarfs in the way. I had to re-route around the brown dwarf fields.
Later, I had to land on a planet to replace a drive cylinder that went bad during the last jump. Thankfully I had a spare. I then got a long range transmission, as if my beacon was active.
The guy calls himself CMDR M (all it showed). He approached me a few days ago, saying instead of looking for an exploration group, to make my own. Now he’s asking me what I’ve been exploring. Told him I found an Earth-like and a few Water Worlds(sadly they were all claimed). Suddenly it turns to him recruiting me for some top secret mission of finding anything out of the ordinary — saying he has a fleet able to go to any system in the galaxy and rendezvous with me if I find something.
Basically, if it’s something like more Barnacles, or even the Thargoids, he wants me to notify him and only him.

He reminds me of of that “CMDR X” I’ve heard on Radio Sidewinder who works for ‘The Children of Rexxah’ or something like that. He won’t tell me who he works for, or why he even needs this info. All he says is I will be “greatly compensated” for my efforts. Very odd.
I think I’m going to keep this a secret from the EDEX Discord server. Though I hope no one that plays Elite Dangerous reads this and tells anyone.

I feel like I’m writing history here. Anyway, I will continue on my current course to WP5 and land at the LZs available. But if I find anything that doesn’t seem to fit, I will definitely inform this ‘CMDR M’ guy.
Honestly, though. I’m not going out of my way on a wild goose chase to find this unknown BS. I don’t have the patience to do so. So I doubt I’ll find anything that the CNE hasn’t already discovered.
And also, I doubt I’m the only one he picked.

Before I start with this post, this wouldn’t be possible due to Time Warner shockingly not being a total dick and doing their surprise maintenance all night. I came close to being forced to write this entire thing in a text file on my computer and paste it tomorrow afternoon.

With that out of the way, time to go for the first thing. This is related to Factorio. I’ve managed to catch up to Shen and Aavak’s playthough (as they’re close to ‘completing’ the game, and so am I). The Rocket silo has been researched and ready to see how they do it. I also have a set of Power Armor MK2, with the power to “gotta go FAST” as Sonic (aka, 6 basic exoskeletons)!
My factory seems ohh so tiny when I can run around 360% faster than the normal run speed.

How did I do it? The thing that has put me on the fencepost for months is no longer a problem. And that is an alternate means of getting Purple Science/Alien Artifacts. Aka, endgame items. It’s a mod called ‘Alien Science’. I had to do a few tweaks to get it to work with 0.12.35 (with help from the Factorio IRC).
What it does is it takes your existing Red/Green/Blue Science packs and turns them into one Purple Science pack. Now I get what you say; that doesn’t feel balanced at all. That I have to work my ass off to get it.
Well, contrary to popular belief, it’s actually quite easy to get Alien Artifacts from killing Biter bases (in Multiplayer). Especially when both know how to move around in their tanks or Power Armor. Me? I’m no fighter. I put Peaceful Mode on when I started this map. I even disabled biters to not have them be a problem for expansion.
But this is just to make Purple Science. To make Alien Artifacts is even MORE use of your existing packs. I tweaked this, to accept 10 Purple Science for one artifact. — As you can take 10 artifacts to make one Purple Science pack. It was better than overly abusing my science packs. Red and Green were getting used up the most. Even with a redesign of the Red Science factory(which needed one for a long time), the demand was too strong.
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The only way I could think of how to counter this, is to plan out a sub-factory of science packs that wasn’t connected to this. But with what hell I went through to make JUST the Blue Science (and with no idea of where/how to plan the entire mess), tweaking was the ‘best’ option for me.

Honestly, I want to be done with this map. I actually want to move on to 0.13, but I cannot because of this map. And to do both, I have to constantly upgrade and downgrade (and make sure all mods are set for that version of Factorio). Too much unnecessary work.

But this gave me the means to finally research things that require Purple Science, such as making my drones faster when moving around (and my logistics drones to carry up to 4 items). I’m happy where things are going, and I can’t wait to launch that rocket and be done with this map!

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Now the next thing. Since I’ve pretty much gotten everything done that needs to be done, I idled in Factorio. A bit later, Arty (the person I invited to my friends list to play Elite Dangerous with) asked if I wanted to go back to the planning of that exploration thing we were going to do, months ago. Said “Sure” and we got to it. We were to meet up in Maia.
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He though was pre-occupied with missions for the Federation to do, but I headed back to Maia anyway. Got interdicted once. Forgot how I was supposed to react and my ship went spinning over and over for at least 45 seconds before I was able to recover and get out of there. Luckily I didn’t take any damage as the pirate’s weapons were pretty weak.
Nearly to Maia, I discovered a new icon at Obsidian Orbital. It was a Community Goal. Something about delivering a few items to this station to help the Federation. First time I actually saw an event. I also read something else. Something about a nearby system, HIP 17225, having a “well known” area for Barnacles.

And if that wasn’t interesting enough, I sold all of my planet scanning data and saw something new. “CONGRATULATIONS CMDR BENIE! You were the first to dis–“. It shows I discovered two systems on the way to Maia..that no one else did. That means MY NAME IS IN THE GAME of discovered systems!!! 😀 HOT DAMN!!
And sure enough, looking at these two systems at the Galaxy Map, it showed “First Discovered By: Benie”! It’s like I just got an early birthday present, and I love it! My name being in the record books for exploring systems undiscovered by others! And it was pretty close to the bubble, too. It wasn’t that whole “you gotta go 10,000LY away from the bubble to find unexplored systems.” Maybe I just got lucky. I sure as well feel lucky!

Anyway, I went to that system. Wasn’t too far away. The landable planet that claims to be “well known” by the galactic community to be the home of Barnacles, the planet’s color masks the hills and other features, making it hard to find a suitable LZ. The planet also has high gravity(0.42G higher than Earth). Not to mention I was in the star’s noon shine (the glare prevented me from finding POIs for the most part). Eventually I finally found one, but it was another one of those random crashed SRV wreckage sites.
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Arty joined me and prepared to land. Suddenly I noticed his ship flying sideways into the planet (and that’s when my cable modem lost its connection).
Back up (thankfully), Arty got into his SRV and ran into everything he could. Says he’s not exactly good with the SRV. Get a HOTAS, and you’ll be good! … Just saying.

So I pondered if we should split the lootable containers and go sell them back at Maia. He seemed interested until I went to go get my ship. Flying back over to the POI, he was in the air as well of his ASP Explorer. He wanted to at least explore one nebula and I agreed.
It was originally going to be the Helix Nebula, but it turned out to be the ‘LBN 623″ Nebula. We went there. We got there. He went to bed, and that’s that for tonight.
Tomorrow, who knows where we’re going. I just hope its a long, interesting voyage.

Today’s been quite the busy day.
-The five missing stone walls on the main ramp have been replaced. Now Tulsi can no longer ‘have fun’ by trying to jump off a cliff.
-Removed trees from the animal pen. May consider getting a priest to enchant the grass to keep future trees from growing. Yet this would also stop me from turning the pen back into a farm if it requires it. And the trees aren’t really that big of a deal. Infact, it’s ‘free’ lumber.
-The gates have been secured (not sure how well, but they’re locked nonetheless). This is, once again, to stop future trolls and goblins from trolling me by going past the fence.
-I’ve resetted the passwords for both DH and B2 (as I needed to write them down, and it’s always a good thing to do so)
…And lastly I’ve extended the deed border to cover the shoreline (to protect the guard tower and my remaining boats from decay). The upkeep cost is still 1s. Win win! 😀

Resetting the passwords was probably the longest event of the five. I had forgotten B2’s password and the email I did for him, so I was forced to make a ticket. And oh yeah, I had to make another ticket last night because I thought I was exploiting.
I had B2 and myself pushing that fountain up to the deed. When we’re going up the side ramp, all the sudden I’m able to push it infinitely with no timer! Was freaking out, but was told that this was no exploit..but a feature! Said that now, if the object is in the border of your village, you can infinitely push it. VERY nice!

Back to the whole password thing, it took about 3-4 hours until I got a response. Had to get B2 on and then answer a few questions to prove that B2 is my alt (and how long I’ve had him). He set the email to one I can remember and gave me a new password. So that’s all set.
Also, one of these days I’m going to have to hire a master Prospector for my mine, and find me some high-QL veins. The only iron vein I have is capped at 31.00QL. Not good when you need at least 70QL to make anything decent (as the Impalong has shown me).

That’s basically it here. Everything that needed to be done due to months of me being on ‘hiatus'(aka no desire to play Wurm), has been done. All I really need now…is what was in my backpack to be returned to me. I’m getting close to the point where I’m about to say “FUCK IT!! I’m just going to re-buy everything I lost instead of wait for you fucking Sloths to investigate (where there’s not even a guarantee I’ll get my stuff back)!”
I have no way to contact them via ingame to see what the fuck is taking so long. It’s been two days. Tomorrow will mark a week since the accident. And really, most of this stuff I should be able to replace with a bit of effort. I just wish I had a picture of what I had lost. But from what I see in my coffin, all I really remember losing is the lantern, my good compass, and a halter rope. I also had cotton, but that is oh so easily replaced.
I still have all of the tools I had before. So really.. why am I even doing this? I know how to prevent the issue from happening again (as B2’s lantern has proven it).
Though it does scare me, of what if it wasn’t my lantern that caused the bug. Yet it’s also the last thing I remember doing (that was in my backpack).

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GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE!! The investigation has completed, and the verdict is in my favor! I was looking out of my house’s second floor window (infront of the bed), wondering of why I’m even getting impatient with the GMs (as I feel I’m not really going to be any more active than I currently am in this game) after the investigation’s complete.
I then got a surprise PM from a ‘Tarissa’ (a GM) who asked me if I remembered losing anything else from the other items. I told them my halter rope, and they were able to ‘fetch’ mostly everything that was in my Xanadu copy, including things I had forgotten were in it. I got my lantern back (that was the source of the bug), the compass, the halter rope, and also my old lantern. I even got the grooming brushes that Ghost gave me!
The only thing I didn’t get are some healing covers, but this is OK. I don’t really need them when I have cotton (and avoid things that can kill me) on my travels.

Very happy, but again also a bit nervous to put anything in my backpack. Eventually I’m going to have to get over my fear. Just..don’t keep my lantern on when I log off.
Mmmm. It’s going to take awhile. Plus they never really said it was a bug. But the fact they never hesitated to restore what they could, kind of proves it is.
At least now I’m free to go back to Xanadu if I wish.

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Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this. I spoke to Shrimpiie today in PMs, and it’s official that he’s going to be doing the Impalong this year. And the location is Hermit Island(the Southeast island). His place is on the north side of the island. I also discover I won’t have to go that far to reach it. On the ingame map, there’s an East/West canal that’s Southeast of FM. This gives access to the eastern side of the server. I can use this to get to his place instead of having to traverse the server.
Also, I now have a reason to go there. With the new ‘upgrade’ of my deed’s size, I can make more lamps (and have them imped there)!
I also asked him when it’s going to be, and he said it’ll be “the last two weeks of December”. That means it should start on the 18th of that month.

Got months to plan this out, so there’s no rush. Even though I really want to, it’s still way too early to do so.

Tulsi’s back in Oceanside Retreat with me of what has been a somewhat hetric day for me. This morning, I decided that fixing broken fences is a higher priority than sitting on my hands doing nothing until he came on.
Logged in and no one was around, not even my contact. Found it somewhat odd, but at least I didn’t have to explain my sudden intrusion to their village.
Getting back to Indy was..challenging to say the least. There was a gale from the Northeast. And if you remember yesterday of what side of the Release server that this village was? .. Yep. The exact same direction as the wind is coming from. Fuck me. I hate headwinds.

But I believe said headwind was the reason I was having so many issues at the server border. I got the usual “if you keep going in this direction, you will wind up at (server name here)”. But getting close to the border was causing me to hop out of my boat for no reason.
I asked CA HELP for assistance. They suggested I back away from the border and try it from another angle. I did their suggestion, and it worked. Was back in Indy. I was actually getting pretty worried that I was going to be stuck here.

Made it back home with no problem, then realized I didn’t have much time to do anything due to RL issues (aka a mini-heatwave this week, I had to go get fast food for two days). Decided to still scan my mine for hostiles (while on one of my horses). Did find a Venerable lava fiend that gave me some trouble of trying to lure it out of the mine, but I got it out.
By then, I had to go back to Release. Raced back to my Knarr and got in, then got B2 on to take the horse back up to the pen.

When arriving back in Harvestmoon, I (assumed that I) met two of Ultra’s villagers; “Whitefeather” and “Shadowwolf”. They didn’t seem to care about me, but I asked them a few questions (as they asked their own). Basically I asked if they liked Ultra, and they say how he’s a great guy. Hmm. Interesting. Makes me wonder if they got brainwashed to accept him or something. Told them how that Ultra got Tulsi to join, and they’re all “good” and stuff. But I also told them about how Ultra’s trying to get me to join as well. One said to “start an alt”, but I told them that my home is with Indy and it’s not going to change anytime soon.

I then logged out and went to go get dinner. Came back at 6:01pm. Tulsi wasn’t on. He never came on until 6:47pm. He was also having client issues, and has been since he had arrived in Harvestmoon. I wonder if it’s the same as what’s been causing my FPS to tank.
There came a point where he just gave up trying, even though I told him to go to the Support section of the forum.
While I waited for him to respond of hopefully him getting the help he needs to fix his crashing, I decided to explore the village as it was day and no one was stopping (or even talking to) me. Saw some pretty cool stuff. I’ve also finally found the token and tried to ‘download’ data on how long this place has existed. Though unfortunately I have to be a villager to see it.

Eventually got bored and told him I’m going to go back home. He asked me “can i come with you?” I tell him to meet at the bridge. It was here when I discovered their temple. Never saw any freaky shit going on of brainwashing of the villagers to accept Ultra. So maybe they actually mean it.

We found eachother, and I told him to tell Ultra that we’re leaving. He did more than that, telling him he was leaving the village. To my surprise, I saw a rather calm Ultradude say “door is open if ya decide to return”. The guy seems to enjoy using the word “ya” instead of “you” or “your”.
After setting perms for him, Tulsi hopped on my boat and we went back to Indy. We pulled away and I set course back to Indy. Though he was still randomly crashing, which greatly worried me if his client would survive the server border switch.

Again that issue with being too close to the border plagued me. Either it’s the wind, or I was literally sitting on the Northeast corner of the server. But another ‘going back and towards it’ attempt fixed that, and Tulsi also survived the switch! Win win right there.
Starting sailing back home. Tulsi only crashed once. Something about that other server, his client didn’t like. Quite interesting. So it looks like I’m literally stuck with him (until he can afford a better computer). To be honest, I was sure this was going to be the outcome of this. So it’s no big surprise.

Finally reaching home, I had to fix a bug I saw by ‘kicking’ out the old Penadragon and adding the new one. He then proceeded to…want to kill himself by falling off of a cliff. And even tango’d with my tower guards. Not sure how he finds pain fun. Quite disturbing.

And that’s pretty much it with this. Tulsi is welcomed to go back to Harvestmoon, but again.. not with his hardware. As for the GM investigation with my missing backpack’s stuff, it hasn’t happened yet. Still waiting, even as I type this. I hope it’s soon.
But at least, I don’t have to worry about him anymore. I can focus back on maintaining my own village. It may not be much compared to Ultradude’s.. but it is home. 🙂

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With this all said and done, I decided to focus on getting a fountain before doing anything else. Asked in Trade for a 30+QL standard fountain. It took a half an hour until I ‘got a bite’ in the form of the host of Impalong 2015; Williamweird. Was a bit of a shocker. Of course I talked to him before about losing my backpack items.
Anyway, he said he would make one for me for free. All I have to do is come over and pick it up. Of course I agreed and set sail.
The wind has shifted to the South as a gale. Fucking PERFECT! Just in the direction I gotta go, too!
As I pass by the Northern Passage, I notice the red beam again. Decide to ask him what he knows. He says he’s been to one, and it’s pretty hellish. Saying it’s worse than what I saw (on both B2 and DH) with Enki.
He says it’s a late-game PvE event that happens (and mentioned quite frequently). I would assume it would be rare. Apparently not.
He also said that in 48 hours after the beam appears, is when the monsters spawn — not during it. This might give me time when I’m not busy (and it happens again) to go there on horseback and check it out.

Made it to William’s place. Yet I had a tailwind and I couldn’t really stop. Finally moored with half of my Knarr’s sail is in the bridge that links to the inside of the village. It startled William who didn’t expect it, and I laughed a bit while also apologizing.
He showed me around a bit, and I saw rows upon rows of statues of different shapes and sizes. I was almost about to ask if I could have a few of them (though I really have no need for ’em), but he told me to “please ignore the statues”. It’s possible these are what’s left after the Impalong? Yet that wouldn’t make sense as it was several months since it happened.

After I turned around, I couldn’t find William. Looked around and asked him where did he go. He re-appeared behind me, scaring me a bit. Looks like he got me back. 🙂
He then asks me “so where’s the fountain?” I pause for a bit, thinking “Uhh.. I asked YOU for a fountain, and you said you would make one” Not sure what happened there, but he agreed and said he would be making it on the south side of the village (near these two bridges).
I still had the shit compass, and didn’t know what he meant by ‘south of the village’. Waited for the compass to settle, then got my bearings and ran for my Knarr. Un-wedged it from the bridge and brought it over. I saw him between the two bridges working on the fountain, and moved over and moored then got out.

I told him how I tried to make a fountain, and with 32 fails later I finally had it. But told him the thing decayed ‘a few months later’. I’m not even sure if it was that. Could had been just a month.
He told me that items that use Stonecutting tend to decay faster than most items, which explains why my fountain went poof (even on deed).
So we talked a bit about certain things. He asked me a pretty embarrassing (at least to me) question that I wish I could had given him a better answer; “have you been skillgaining since we last met?” Of course I had to tell him the same thing I told you guys, that I’ve been ‘slacking off’. But said how the next Impalong is months away and I got plenty of time.

Then he told me that he won’t be doing it this year, and said he doesn’t think anyone has ever hosted an Impalong twice. I reminded him about 2010’s up near FM. I don’t think he remembers it like I do (as it was my first).
He continues by saying of the Chat Monitor named ‘Shrimpiie’ is planning to host it this year, saying how he’s been purchasing a lot of things for it. Asked him where he lives, and he says that he ‘thinks’ he lives on ‘the bottom-right’ island. So that would be the Southeast island. Damn. That’s on the other side of the server, and not accessible by horse. But again, he ‘thinks’ this is where Shrimpiie lives. I’m going to have to ask him personally if I see him to confirm the location.
I then asked him of why he’s not going to host, adding on that last year’s was the best I’ve been to (better than 2010’s for sure). He said how it’s just a lot of work and how he has very few friends to assist (which is why his place was so messy).

And with that, he got the fountain up to 71QL and said it should last a good time if I repair it once and awhile. Loaded it up in my Knarr and bidded William adieu. He said bye and he hopes to see me at “Seafood’s Impalong”.
Well, you know that feeling where things are changing and you got to embrace it, but you want to just go back and re-live the ‘good days’? Yeah, that’s how I feel about this. But the ‘good days’ being a purpose for going to an Impalong, which was to get my lamps imped. Now it seems the only purpose is to go and help with it (as I fucking said I was going to do last year…).
But it’s going to require me to do things I don’t like doing, which is slaving over a forge for days… grinding up my skill in something like Blacksmithing. Basically, skills I really have no need for. And then having the desire to do this for free during the Impalong.
If it wasn’t for when you fuck up (a LOT) that what you’re working on gets damaged to a point that 10-15 minutes of grinding was for NOTHING(as the QL of the item is lower than it was back then), then yes I would do it more. So it looks like all I’m going to do over there, is stand around being bored out of my mind while everyone happily imps.

So it’s technically “tomorrow” (even though it’s 1 in the morning as I type this). I’ve discovered I never had to use Deliverance as a slingshot. I messed up in my thinking there.
Basically, you leave on the Northwest side, you’ll enter on the Northeast side. I was thinking that if you leave on the Northwest side, you’ll enter on the Southeast side. And since my destination is on the Northeast, that just made my life easier.
Arriving in Release, I went around the southern side of the island infront of me. Saw a pretty nice arch bridge that went on for quite a bit.
On the Southwest flank, I found Finn’s place; that guy I met during the Impalong last year (the one with the bear head). It wasn’t no big treehouse (like in Adventure Time).
As I passed by, my FPS started to tank. Was getting like 15-20 FPS at times while looking toward the island. About as bad is it was during the Impalong.

Reaching the Northeast flank of the island, the studdering eased a bit and my contact popped up in Local. There was this really nice wooden arch bridge (that probably would had made suppoe cry with envy, as he loves doing arch bridges in Minecraft).
I parked on the western side of the bridge, moored and hopped out of my Knarr, then crossed the bridge. Saw a gatehouse infront of me and prayed it was public. The door opened without any issues.

Met my contact using a large cart with two horses. Told me to hop in, but I couldn’t as there was no “Embark as passenger” option. Needed perms.

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About 15 seconds after that, I got a PM from a ‘Serraphine’. Thought it was one of my contact’s villagers, so I didn’t really click on it and waited for him to get the cart’s perms set.
I then decided to click on it, and it finally was a response to my ticket. I actually had to wait four days for a response. Wow. That guy who told me this on the Support forums was not kidding!
So me and the GM were in conversation while my contact attempted to show me around his place (using the cart). I tried to tell him that I was talking to the GM, but he just kept going and didn’t really seem to care.. at all. I think this guy is a kid, like Tulsi. Because he seems pissed off that Tulsi never came on. I tried to joke with him (when we had a scorp and a wolf after us). Told him if it wasn’t for the scorp, I could take that wolf out with ease. And he just seemed pretty snobbish with me. I just don’t like that. I feel he’s going to do the same to Tulsi.

Plus, he’s STILL trying to get me to leave my village and move in. What the hell. I told him no thanks! How about listening to that request, huh? I am not interested. Thanks anyway. Now f— off!

Oh, forgot to mention that I wanted a conformation (since he’s apparently so skilled in Wurm, he has plate armor compared to my studded) of the idea I had of running around with only the essentials to explore the rest of the servers on foot.
All he told me was the obvious “skills are capped at 20 with non-perm”. But before I could explain more of what I mean, he suggests that I rest for the night in his Inn.
I think “alright, fine. I need to focus on the GM’s words anyway” and tell him how that’s not that bad of an idea.

At the Inn, he tells me to “pick a bed and fall in”. I felt like saying “Dude, did you not see I’m talking to a GM about a bug I’m having?”, but went with “I’ll do it in time”.
Now he’s gone for the night. I..I don’t like him. No humor. All business. Just feels wrong. But maybe he’ll ‘whip Tulsi into shape’ with knowledge of Wurm that I could never do without getting pissed off at him. I’m not like angry, who understanded and was mostly calm (which you might think is ironic when his name was Mr angry).

Anyway, I did not expect the GM to get ahold of me while I was over here in Release. It is starting to look pretty grim that I will ever see my backpack items again. Thankfully, the GM isn’t giving me a BS answer as to why. They say it’s because, my items don’t exist anymore. When going to a new server, the game takes a snapshot of your inventory. They can use this to get the Item IDs of your stuff and hopefully restore everything.
But since I haven’t gone anywhere except here for the past…, several months since I bought the Knarr? This is actually a really good thing. At least, I hope.
Had to send the GM the Event Logs (though the same email I sent the email ticket that I hadn’t gotten a response from) of the day before and after I lost the objects in my backpack, but that wasn’t really any help (as it didn’t list the contents in the backpack).

The GM did manage to find a lamp in Xanadu that belongs to me. If it’s the lamp that disappeared, I have no idea. But that’s basically it. Right now, we play the waiting game.
What’s going to happen, is this GM is going to get a group of GMs to look into it. If it’s a confirmed bug, they ‘might’ restore my items. Or at least, what they can. To expect all my items to be restored is… just not possible at this time. I hope at least they’ll be able to restore most of them.

At least, this.. well, this has taught me two lessons. The first one still pains me, because why of YEARS that I fucking had a lantern in my backpack.. for it to now bug out all of my stuff?!
But at least, leaving the lantern on when logging out is a no-no. That, I won’t do anymore. But even that, I’m not even 100% sure even(think I said the word “even” enough times?) if it was the lantern that caused it. Which is why the GMs are going to be doing their investigation.

More questions to hopefully turn this in my favor are coming. I.. yeah. All I can do is pray. But even if they don’t restore my stuff, it’s not the end of the world. I’ll just have to replace everything that I can remember via FM (when I get back home).
Right now, I feel like I’m stuck here. But it’s just to ensure Tulsi is happy here. Once I know, I’ll ferry his stuff over.
Thing is, the Rowboat Tulsi has is still at my place (but it was sunken under my Knarr). What I could do is I can repair it, then B2 drives it back to him (and I’ll pick him up in my Knarr). Or, B2 can use it instead of buying him a new sailboat. Because the guy has rowboats. And I don’t know if Tulsi even wants the boat, as he dislikes long boat rides.

Tomorrow’s going to be interesting. Just hope it’s the good kind.

I have re-friended Tulsi, after all the things I’ve said about him. I’m really taking a gamble here. He had to re-create his account. Of that thing I said before about Tulsi had removed himself from my friends list, it turns out that wasn’t the case.
It seems there’s this new rule that if you are inactive with a free account for three months, they will delete your account.
B2 and I don’t have to worry about this, as both of us have had prem in the past.

So he found himself back in GV(Golden Valley, aka that little blue dot that’s hanging around ‘Sol’). Ok, I have to say this. This isn’t Earth. This is an Earth-like planet. Earth doesn’t have three moons(with one being planet-sized), and three Gods. So why call the sun Sol? Sol is Earth’s sun (as said so by Elite Dangerous and other space exploration games).

Anyway… so Tulsi’s back. He’s talking to me in Skype. I’m not on the MRT because suppoe suggested that I do this strange thing instead of working on the road when he’s gone. He suggested that I “take a break”. What the hell is a break? Is he telling me to go break the A8 in two? Or go break my bones? What an odd guy, he is.
And back to Tulsi (once again), he’s telling me that he met someone, they talked a bit, and then asked if I wanted to join the person’s village. I’m thinking “hmm.. getting Tulsi off my village? Letting him being taken care by someone else? I’m OK with this!! 😀 ” and told him to go on and join the village, and to tell the guy I already have my own village.
So the two leave Golden Valley and join the Release server. Hmm. Never been to that server. And it would definitely spark my interest in once again wanting to explore all the servers of the Freedom Isles. Anyway, they’re now part of the village called “Harvestmoon”. Which is on the Northeast side of that server.

The guy’s name is “Ultrarecruiter”… “Ultra” “Recruiter”. Sounds like a kid. I’m having my doubts if this person even cares about Tulsi, and cares more about how many people they have recruited. He also doesn’t seem to talk much after I friended him and introduced myself. But when he spoke, he’s sitting there telling me where Pena(Tulsi) is. He then asks me if I wanna join. I assume Tulsi forgot to tell him, so I told him that I have my own village.
He asked me if I have any villagers. Told him my alt. He says how it must be so lonely there. Pfft. If only he knew what I’ve been through with angry since Day 1 of joining Wurm (of the days of JK:H, and the early days of Indy). How bad I wanted to move out and live on my own. And this guy thinks I’m lonely? I’m literally laughing internally.

So Pena’s begging me to come see him. I’m getting a wee bit concerned that I’m at 10% Nutrition and feel I’ll go hungry by the time I get there, but I checked myself and saw I’m “well nourished”. That ended my fear there, and set sail.
Ran down to my Knarr and boarded it. Got in as the captain and sort of freaked out. I was expecting the game to be all “Uhh.. dude. You gotta get PREM to drive your boat! 🙂 “, but it didn’t do this. I was able to pull up the anchor. And when I was able to control it, I was REALLY freaking out! HOLY FUCK!! I can drive my Knarr WITHOUT PREM?!?! 😮
I had to make sure I wasn’t dreaming by asking in Freedom chat. Also asked them of “where’s the catch?” They told me there’s been an update, that people that were prem but are not prem are allowed to retain their ‘knowledge’ of driving boats that they could before (including horses and everything else that only prems can do).
This is AWESOME!! THANK YOU, Wurm Dev Team!

Of course you still need perm to get your skills above 20, but that is perfectly fine! I am completely, 100% happy with the devs decision. This may be the first time I’ve ever been OK with a change that still requires you to do something.
No more forced prem time. I. LOVE THIS!!!! Fucking LOVE this! Sadly, I can’t use this to explore the rest of the servers on foot (thinking with my skills capped at 20, they won’t go down if I die). They actually will. :/
That’s a bit of a downer, but it also makes sense. Can’t make it too easy.

With this out of the way, it’s time to talk about the other bad things. So I sat course for Release, then realized if I used Deliverance as a slingshot, I’ll be able to get to the Northeast side of Release.
But that came crashing down after I reached the Southeast side of Deliverance…that I forgot my really good compass was in my backpack. And that too, is gone. FFFUUUUUU–!!
Was forced to turn back home to Indy, hoping that I still had a backup compass. Returning home, I couldn’t find it either.

But thank lady luck for B2 having it! It’s shit (only 10 QL. Believe this was Tulsi’s old n00b compass), but it will have to do. It’s better than nothing. Time to continue on that trek.
There is also a slight concern back home. A ‘rift’ has opened up almost due West of my village. I hear it spawns a bunch of nasties around it. Almost reminds me of the occasional encounters in ESO (and Oblivion), where mobs just suddenly teleport in. Pretty sure this is something to keep the long-time players online.
Though I’m slightly worried that these high leveled mobs might migrate over and ‘say hi’ to me. I may need to investigate this further once I get back home, and set up (if any) required defenses.
The thing is, the event stops 48 hours (two days) after the rift opens. Don’t know how many times it happens. What I have discovered is, it happens on all servers when it does. I’m going to assume it happens about the same time as Jackal eclipses Sol(which what was happening at the time).

Anyway, tomorrow I’ll plot course for Release.

Been meaning to do the things I said in my previous Wurm post, but the MRT (and being able to work on the A8 again with suppoe) has delayed me. What’s funny is even the A8’s construction is being delayed due to suppoe and/or Frozen not being on.
It’s not the fact I can’t do it — it’s the fact I need authorization. I don’t want to fuck up certain areas of the landscape around. Getting perms is always a good thing to avoid unwanted drama.

Anyway, with Wurm, even that is being delayed (can’t go back to it), due to quite a major bug that has happened to me. I’ve never seen nor heard of it in my life. It happened sometime after I had died.
After I got my stuff back and verified everything was there (and searched around for any other hostiles), I lit my lantern in my backpack and headed into the mine, hoping to lure any mobs out that were near the entrance. Nothing came out, so I left (while leaving the lantern on), headed up to my house and logged off.

A day later(Sunday), I came on to finally work on what I need to do. Opened up my backpack to get some rope in order to use one of my horses in the mine…and everything in my backpack IS GONE!! It’s completely empty!
Asked Freedom chat if anyone’s heard of this, and/or if this is just a “visual bug”. Tried logging out and back in, that didn’t fix it. Backpack’s still empty. Was told to check my event log for any “is useless and you throw it away” messages. Nothing there.

Tried to make an ingame support ticket. Waited for over a half an hour and got bored, and asked if there was a way to contact them via email. And as I write this, I have yet to receive a response from them. Not even a conformation that they had received it.
The reason I chose to email instead of using their IRC channel or the forum, is because I wanted to get back to the MRT. It seems Wurm’s support team won’t get back to me. Not like this anyway. So I might be forced to make a ticket or something.
It’s kind of a low priority, though. The A8’s keeping me in the MRT(which is good). Until this section is done, I’m really not going to worry about Wurm until then.

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To be honest, I’m having my doubts they’ll be able to restore my items. If this was WoW, this wouldn’t be a problem. But it’s not. Wurm’s support team probably doesn’t have the ability to have logs of lost items. And if that’s true… I dunno. I just don’t know. Really beside myself right now.
Half of me feels like rage-quitting over this, but the other half tells the angered half that they will give zero fucks about it (and it’s not really worth it).
In all honesty, I know how to prevent this from happening again (which is to not have the lantern in my backpack). Just wish I had a second chance without having to take B2’s lantern as a replacement.

All I can do is hope they have the ability to restore lost stuff due to a bug. But again, I have my doubts. We shall see, whenever I get approached by a GM.

I ‘briefly’ came back to Wurm to fund my deed. It’s night, and it’s Spring. There has been a change to the launcher. There’s a new ‘Time and Wind’ button that will show the current server time and the direction of the wind (and how strong it is). Nice addition.
So I haven’t been coming on regularly as I said I was going to last year, and how I said I was going to help out with the Impalong (which is still many months away).
Everything is still intact from what it was a few months ago. My fountain is gone, and 1/4 of the stone fence around the main ramp is also gone. The guard tower is shockingly still standing.
There are a few things I did notice are different. B2’s boat is gone — possibly has decayed. That’s not good. And Tulsi has removed himself from my friends list.
As annoying as he was, I can’t help but feel that I was an ass to him. It was my fault for wanting to drag him into Wurm to ‘relive my glory days’. I just wish he would had understanded me better. Then maybe we could had been long-time friends (like angry and I when we were). But he was just a kid, who had no real business being in a game like this.

I still remember when I had this idea to do an “Oceanside Retreat Docks” settlement to keep the boats from decaying. Either that or extended the deed border to cover the dock area.

Anyway, I went down to the shoreline to secure it from any mobs that have obviously spawned in from months of no player activity. Was attacked by a..aged fog spider?! Holy hell, fog spiders are finally a thing, and it isn’t even foggy! And battling them is like battling a mini-boss. The two tower guards, and myself, it took about 15 minutes to take this single fucker down. Somehow it’s able to protect itself from being attacked by a cloud of fog. Go figure. Plus, it randomly teleports around.
It killed one of my guards. Wow. And to top it off, a troll shows up to play with me. I’m all “NOPE!!” as I run up the side ramp and make it to the fence gate, thinking that will stop him (as it did in the past).

The troll goes past the fucking fence gate! OSHI–!! I run into my house, and the fucker enters my house! I am FUCKED! I was forced to do an emergency logout due to the troll being in my deed. This is not good. Bet when I log back in, I will be seeing red (or a club beating my face in).
And I saw red, thankfully not the troll when I spawned back in via my deed token. Was able to easily re-equip my crap. I searched around to see if I could find the troll, and I found it dead in my horse pen. Nice! My guards took care of the fucker.
Went back to the fog spider corpse. It was a glowing, smoky lump of white left over. Aka, it’s supposed to represent visible water vapor.
It actually contains a bit of water, too(which can be used as a temp water source). Probably as a reference that fog is low-hanging clouds, and clouds are made out of water vapor.
That battle does worry me a bit. For one thing, I did not expect to see a ‘fog’ spider without it being foggy. I thought they only come out when it’s foggy. This..is proving otherwise. My only guess is they despawn a day after it gets foggy.
Asked Freedom chat, and they said it’s because “it was foggy earlier and it wasn’t exposed to the sun”, and how “it really wanted to meet you”. Yeah, I’m sure it did.
So if that’s the case, if I’m out on the water and fog rolls in, to not get on the shore until the sun comes up fully.
These are the only mobs I’ve encountered. Of course, I still need to clear the mine of things that want to eat me.

But this ‘adventure’ has definitely alerted to the importance of locking my gates, is of VERY high priority. Apparently Goblins and Trolls are the only ones that can open unlocked gates. I just wish the lesson wasn’t literally beaten into me with a club. 😛
The second thing is to make another fountain(though I might just consider buying a reasonably high QL one to prevent it from decaying as fast), and repair those fences. Then I’ll need to get B2 another sailboat. Though I wonder if the sailboat is even needed. The only times he needed a boat was when I was acquiring boats (and the Impalong, which is again way too far away to worry about ATM).
So I think I’ll put it as a low priority.

Anyway, I threw in 3s into the deed’s upkeep. It had 46 days left, and now it has 183 days left. From my calculations, it should be good ’till possibly October.