Survival

Fort Bel, Outriders and Destiny

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Morning Friends! Surprising to no one I played an excessive amount of Valheim over the weekend. We talked a bit about it on the podcast but I am quickly realizing that for me it is just a different sort of gaming experience. Like when I have played Minecraft in the past, the adventure is fine… but at the end of the day it always ends up being about the building. So since I am slowly moving on past my first foothold in the shared server environment, I thought I would at least talk about it a bit this morning. While my foothold has evolved into something that everyone just generally refers to as “Fort Bel” the truth is it started out as me trying to stay out of everyone else’s hair since I was further progressed.

I posted a walkthrough video of Shade’s Folly aka my starter place on the island. The goal was to run down the coast and sorta do my own thing while everyone else caught up, and as a result I never really assisted much in the building of what became the main town hub for our island. What was originally the building shown on the lefthand side of the screen, I eventually added the second building… and then proceeded the erect a giant stone wall around the entire compound and build further structures directly connected to that wall. This also caused me to create a more shared crafting area and open up my storage reserves to pretty much everyone on the server.

The longer I have been here however the more stale it has gotten. There isn’t that much more I can do with my current location because I risk taking up more space and encroaching upon the territory of those who built around me. Additionally I am on the border of the nearest entrance to the Black Forest and I don’t want to “unwild” that region any more than it already is. As a result I have gone out onto the ocean in search of new areas and at some point I will probably do other walkthrough videos talking about each of them. The biggest of these is Dawn’s Rest or what folks are just mostly universally referring to as “Castle Bel”.

I also played quite a bit of the Outriders demo this weekend, and hit the level cap. I could in theory do like the YouTube community has been doing and grind their faces off against a tiny amount of content trying to farm things… or I could just stop playing. I am likely going to more or less stop playing. I’ve spent a tiny bit of time trying out the other classes but I am pretty certain that Devastator is the class for me. So far my second favorite is Trickster… but they both sorta do the same thing where they are up close and personal with targets which seems to fit my enjoyment pattern with aggressive gameplay and bad decision. Really looking forward to the launch of this game at the end of the month.

The thing that I was NOT expecting this weekend is that I ended up firing up Destiny 2 and playing some of it last night. It is amazing how much more enjoyment I get out of the game now that I know that the weapons I am earning won’t be irrelevant now that the gear Sunset has officially been called off. Unfortunately one of my favorite Auto Rifles is in the sunset, so I will be trying to find a new favorite Kinetic Auto since Steelfeather Repeater is already sunset. Anything that is not currently sunset should be fair game however, so I am hoping to get a few Shadow Price variants to see if I like that weapon. I vaguely remember it from Destiny 1, but not extremely well.

Like every weekend it went entirely too fast. Time moves extremely strangely in the time of the self imposed lockdown. What did you get up to this weekend? Did you check out Outriders? What were your thoughts.

Valheim with People

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Yesterday was the day that Valheim reached critical mass with the AggroChat crew. This might have been achieved earlier were it not for the fact that I blogged about the game but never really talked about it on the show. We had a pretty thick roster the last few weeks of topics and as a result I didn’t feel like it was the right time to slide in a brand new game that at least then I was the only one playing. However and I were having a conversation about the game… and them this perked up Tam and Kodra who apparently tried it… and came back to evangelize the game and the rest is history. I linked my couple of blog posts on the subject as well and yesterday a server was rented and throughout the night more and more of the regulars were logging into it.

Valheim is a game that throws back to the age of renting a private server, and seemingly an entire cottage industry has sprung up around supplying these in rapid form. Granted most of the hosting provides are the same folks who have been hosting Rust and Ark servers for years, but Valheim at least is a relatively new product offering. I did what I often do and went to twitter and over the course of a few hours got not one but six recommendations for GPortal. So yesterday in a few minutes Tam set up a server and I was the guinea pig and figured out how to log in for the first time. The challenge is that so many servers have been set up in such short time that the server browser appears to be overloaded.

I took to the interwebs to glean a method for getting around this problem and encountered this write up. I am essentially doing method two that was outlined, which is comprised of setting up a custom server in Steam… something that I have apparently never done in the over decade I have been on the service. For those who don’t want to travel to another website and watch a less than amazing video… here are the steps I followed:

  1. Open Steam Client
  2. From the View menu select the Servers option
  3. Click “Add a Server” in the Server Browser Window that pops up.
  4. Copy and Past the IP Address and Port Number in the text box that is presented.
    1. For the uninitiated this should be a number that looks like this 111.222.333.444:12345 with those fake numbers representing whatever class D address and port that was assigned to your server by your hosting provider.
  5. You should now see your server in the list in the server browser. Double click the name or select the connect button.
    1. If you get a message about the server being unavailable or that there is no game present, just hit the refresh button a few times. Chances are the virtual server is spinning up if no one is actively on it.
  6. If there is a password on your server you will be prompted to enter that
  7. The game will launch and you will be asked to enter a password again
  8. Play the game

Going forward when you want to connect you open the server browser and double click the name of the server you just added and should be in relatively shortly.

Tam being the excellent host that he is, proceeded to create a massive encampment near the spawn point with lots of beds for anyone who wants to stay there. It expanded a significant amount over the night and now includes walls and a launch bay for a raft. If I remember correctly there is room for I believe six beds in there as well as some of the early crafting machines needed to function.

Being who I am however, without really meaning to… I wandered off on my own and crafted what Kodra referred to last night as Fort Belghast. Since I am further progressed than most of the folks on the server I wanted to be beside the Dark Forest biome and I happened to stumble onto it pretty early and then set up shop along the nearest coastline. I wish I had built on a coast in my single player game so I was effectively remedying this desire. Then last night I proceeded to attempt to jump start my way back to the bronze age so that I could at least repair my gear if I needed to. It took me the better part of the evening but I managed to gather enough resources to build up the crafting progression through a Tier 4 Crafting Bench and a Tier 2 Forge.

I think tonight I might craft a raft and venture across the channel to a nearby island you can see in the distance. There is a weird quirk with our server in that it seems to have a meadow biome maybe one quarter of the size of that of my single player game. It legitimately takes me at least one full day night cycle to run from the spawn to my base on the outskirts of the dark forest. On this server I can cross the meadow into either the Dark Forest or the Mountain region multiple times in the same day cycle. The challenge here is with all of us playing in the same area and the tier 1 biome being so small… we are starting to run into resource contention. I am contemplating going to my single player world and harvesting up a bunch of wood and then dropping it off in woodstack form at Tam’s communal base.

I have a very specific style of home that I like to build in this game, namely because I like having my fire inside. If you do this in a fully closed in area you will kill yourself in your sleep from carbon monoxide. So what I do instead is build a roof in such a way as to leave open eaves which allow for the venting of the smoke and exchange of fresh air, with my bed strategically placed at the opposite end of the domicile as the fire. This allows me to always stay warm and toasty during the nights, never have to deal with my fire being doused by rain and also makes for a much cooler looking inside. There however is room for a spare bed so I might go ahead and build one in case someone needs to use my outpost as a temporary save location.

I didn’t actually interact much with other players apart from chopping down a tree that apparently Neph was fond of. I just viewed it as the next tier up of wood, but I guess it was rather picturesque near her cabin. She opted for reclaiming one of the prefab damaged shacks, which honestly is a great way to start the game. I hope to maybe interact with some folks tonight as I continue this adventure. The Dark Forest is just as aggressive on this server as it is on my single player game, and as a result I spent a lot of time poking my head in for resources and then coming right back out. I’m not even sure how one would survive long enough for a proper base there. We survived the night and now have a multiplayer world, and I am sure we will be talking about it this weekend on the podcast.

Northern Expansion and NDA

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The northern expansion of the Realms server began last night, and most of the evening was spent building a sky road in an attempt to link up with the Taiga Village that I found earlier. I have no clue WHY I have this desire to keep pushing forward into new areas and opening up new possibilities but it is apparently a thing. The skyroads serve a few purposes, not the least of which is safe passage to wherever I am wanting to go. The second is it serves as a nice landmark for me to use while exploring because I have a mighty tendency for getting completely lost. Like in games I struggle until I am able to build a sort of 3D map of where things are and how they relate to others and building these roads helps me do this thing.

I know there are a few deserts that I would like to link up with as well but I think the next big thing that I am going to do is venture forth into the Nether. I think I am mentally prepared for that nonsense and can hopefully get some new resources. I think that might be the side benefit of all of the expansion on the surface, is that it might be useful for linking up portals through the nether given that many of these little outposts are far enough away that they might link to new biomes inside the Nether.

Another thing that I am wanting to return to soon is Valheim. I was really enjoying the flow of this game and I am super happy that it seems to be blowing up right now. More attention means that likely we will see improvements to the game as a result. I’ve still yet to take down the second boss and I should do that thing. While not as fulfilling as Minecraft in the building gameplay, I am enjoying the adventuring quite a bit. I think more than anything I want to get back in and harvest enough metal resources to start building into those weapons.

Another thing that happened over the weekend is that I realized that I had several game test invites sitting in my spam folder. So even though I had been watching and searching for one of these… the key words I was searching on did not apparently resurrect it from my spam folder. The problem with both of these games is that they are also bound by an NDA. So as a result we break out a generic Game Under NDA image and not say much detail. I’ve been spending quite a bit of time playing one of these and I am super happy that the world still feels extremely good to be exploring it. It is something I have tested in the past but I don’t want to go into much more detail than that. Suffice to say some improvements have been made and I am super down with what has evolved while I have been gone from it. Unfortunately this talking around in circles about something doesn’t exactly make for compelling content.

Another thing that I think bears some discussion is that I am not certain how much longer I am going to be able to keep up the YouTube thing AND the blog thing. I am starting to experience some deep conflicts about these competing activities. I am finding myself NOT wanting to talk about certain things on the blog because maybe there is a video queued up that has yet to be released where that thing happens. Even worse however I am finding myself not wanting to do something in Game, because I am not necessarily in the mood to record it and I think that maybe just maybe it is something that should be recorded. Essentially I am not designed for the YouTube style content and I think maybe after this week I might officially let it drop. I proved to myself that I could do something like this, but it has also taught me that I can’t do that and this blog and you know work and life and those sort of things.

It isn’t like I am trying to do any of this for a living, so there are no serious ramifications of any of these decisions. I just personally find I enjoy sharing content more in the pattern of blogging… where I do a bunch of stuff and then talk about it, rather than staging a bunch of video content and then letting it come out slowly. Conceptually I enjoy YouTube videos… but really I am learning that there is not enough creativity in me to make that work in addition to the blogging and podcasting that I don’t want to give up in the process. It was a fun experiment nonetheless.

Black Forest Outskirts

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Yesterday I played an excessive amount of Valheim. I am still not entirely certain what it is about this game that ticks the right boxes for me, but suffice to say it does. After yesterdays post I did a bit of research and I now understand how one summons the bosses in this game. Essentially in each new area you are going to find an altar that allows you to sacrifice items to it. I didn’t fully grok how exactly this worked or what the game was trying to tell me. However near each altar will be a runestone that gives you a clue as to where to find the items needed for sacrificing. So for example the first boss in Valheim is a giant lightning deer and the clue that is given is “Hunt His Kin”.

Turns out the Deer Trophies that I had been collecting from sneaking up and “murderating” them with a knife… is the key to summoning the boss. I needed two of these and this summoned the angry stag god Eikthyr. Now the guides that I had read talked about needing a specific level of bow with specific arrows, but I opted for a more Belghast solution. I fought it with a Flint Axe and a Shield and this allowed me to block pretty much all of the incoming damage and time my attacks between blocks. It seemed way easier than I was expecting. Over lunch break yesterday I finished the first boss and moved on to the Black Forest.

This has also led me to build a brand new Chateau in a big open field near the entrance to the Black Forest. This became a necessity given that it was over a days walk between my original home and where my new hunting grounds would be for the next segment of the game. I opted for a completely different design this time, but so far my fortifications have not been needed. For whatever reason none of the hostile monsters seem to be screwing with my domicile this time. I do think I am going to make a jaunt over to the original home base and collect my bee hives because I have not had much luck in finding replacement Queen Bees to build new ones.

Truth is my second time around I made a much better home, minus the bit of floor missing… which worked out fine in the end because that is where I have my camp fires set up. I find it annoying that I now have to manage two fires given that I need one for the meat rack and the other for the cauldron. I however have so much more “room for activities” with this design as opposed to the more longhouse thing I had going on previously. Now I am very much in the mode of collect raw metal and create charcoal… which is why I left the meat on too long as an extra easy source of it. I can craft bronze which opens up a whole new world of gear that I can equip.

The one word of warning that I have is the Black Forest is a whole new world of challenge, and all of those things that you fought regularly in the lowlands seem to have a version that is much much harder to kill and attacks in packs. Gone are the Greylings that haphazardly roam into you and may or may not attack… and replaced are Grey Dwarves that attack in packs of five or six and have specialization with casters. The dungeons have been specifically challenging filled with Skeletons so I am getting much use out of my tier 3 gear and more specifically my shield.

The king of the “programmer art” creatures in this game though has to be the Troll, which looks like a giant doofy blob of humanoid playdough. They are however extremely challenging and while I have killed a few… they have taken me down to almost dead each time. Blocking helps quite a bit… but also does knocking them down which I am not entirely certain if it happens because I hit them in the junk or in the leg. When I am swinging my axe it sort of hits both at the same time. However while knocked down they seem to take considerably more damage which allows you to sorta power through with the kill.

I’ve found the altar for the next boss, and I am guessing that since I have killed a Troll I am likely ready to actually take it on. On the other hand I kinda want to finish crafting and upgrading my gear at this step in the game before moving to the next. Having a lot of fun with this game.