The week in Gaming

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Fallen Earth, war-worlds

On the gaming front, I’ve found myself getting sick of the grind in War Worlds.    It is a huge effort to continue to build fighters on my planets.    Am I really enjoying myself, if I’m constantly checking my phone for Sitreps about fighter building ?    And where if I get a little bit behind, the pressure on losing the production from being buried among my 1500 stars, frustrates me into staying on the treadmill ?   I don’t know.   Maybe I’m about done with the game here.

Some simple fixes would change this.     I build no more than 5,000 fighters at a time, by game design.   Why ?    If I want a longer queue, to keep the sitrep from constantly going off, I just build 7-10 stacks of 5000 at a time.    And then, the sitrep gets overwhelmed from having multiple queues of 10 finish.

My thought of creating these massive silmultaneous queues didn’t end up working to make the game easier.    It just delayed the inevitable burnout from massive sitreps.

A fix to allow me to build 50,000 fighters or more would solve the problem.    And you’d get a single sitrep report announcing that fact, keeping the “overwhemination” to a minimum.

At the moment, I’m just ignoring it all and seeing if I’ll find myself determined to grind on sometime during the week.

Fallen Earth has seen a week of tradeskilling.    I finally got around to building first my ATV, and then the Motorcycle mounts.

There’s my motorcycle

You can only get your vehicles after grinding some 6 hour + recipes many times.    I then find myself working on “Improved” components for these vehicles, starting with Engines.    I’ll see where that leads, at some point.    Currently working on the recipe for that.

Now I am out of Scrap Steel and need to do some serious harvesting to get it, but not sure where it might be.    Quick googling tells me to go back to South Burb in S1.   I’ve been doing all my crafting in New Flagstaff having reached level 23 and needing a lot of XP to move up in levels.

The Center Park in New Flagstaff

This is not a bad place to craft – three vault types all together, and your stable/garage manager just behind me in this screenshot.   That way you can access mount inventories for more storage.

I completed Mafia II.   It’s an odd feeling getting to the “end” of a game nowadays – last game I remember playing that ended was Fallout 3.    An excellent game that I may continue to mess with just to increase my inventory of steam achievements.

And that brings the blog more up to date.

Interrupting our regular deep introspection with a brief note about playing many games at once

Tags

Carmageddon, Civ5, Fallen Earth, Mafia II, Steam, war-worlds

And for the past week I have spent my energy on many different games.      Many.    Different.   Games.

War Worlds expansion continues.    The north corner of my “square” is getting better defined, and as I continue to move it southwards I get closer to having a large area being worked north-to-south.     I still have my ships moving in that direction all along the loose line from Inkdium to what is left of Curufin, and have passed 6.5 million population.

Mafia II turns out to be quite a bit of fun.    The game is advertised as a shooter, which it is in a certain sense, but I have a much stronger feeling of being inside a Mafia movie instead.    Taking care of the family, and business, and crushing those you don’t know under your bootheel.    So far I’ve gone from rags to riches, to rags, twice.     I assume I’ll end up with riches again but it’s a scripted movie game so who knows for sure.

One thing driving me crazy about Steam is the screenshot method.    When I take a screenshot, it gets saved in some crazy numerically-named folder deep in the folder tree.   This has more or less sapped my desire to get screenshots during the games, which is silly, but I have to be honest with myself.   I want to find it two or three deep in a clearly marked folder, and anything else just doesn’t work for me.     Now, what it works well for is publishing screenshots on your Steam feed, but otherwise, meh.    This is why there’s no images in this post.

I now have the “Pre-Alpha” version of Carmageddon, which is a lot of fun in a limited sense.    I can take out pedestrians and race the other crazy personalilties, just like 20 years ago when the game first came out.    It needs work, no doubt, and I’m waiting for additional updates.    I was misinformed thinking that the game was finished and ready to play.     And so the excruciatingly long lead time for my initial Kickstarter investment continues to tick off.

I have reached Level 23 in Fallen Earth and moved on to S2 – The second map, where there be many factions and the large city of New Flagstaff.   I’ve done some adventuring, but I decided to catch up on my tradeskills.    I now have an ATV as well as my horse, and I’m currently working on making my last Ballistics book before I hit 90 skill, which is the next point at which I can unlock more recipes.    I’m running low on materials (finally) and at some point will need to go out and do some more harvesting.    With 7 red chips (7 million total, I believe) and nothing auction-wise to spend them on, I am buying plenty of Scrap Paper, Pens, Scrap Lead, and Weak Botanics to continue the tradeskilling spree.

I have only three tradeskill slots given that my premium has expired.    This is encouraging me to log in for a few minutes at a time, whenever I know I should be done making whatever was last in the batches.     Then I set up an additional 3 recipes and quit the game.     Play some more War Worlds, etc, then when the time is right head back into the game.  Planning to rinse and repeat until I’ve done everything I can with tradeskills.     So far, the only limiting factor is collecting salvaged wood – I know where to collect tons of the level 1 materials, but I need a bunch of salvaged wood as well.     I’m sure I’ll figure it out later.

Having bought the latest expansion whose name escapes me, I went ahead and fired up Civilization 5 again.     This time I am Ramkhameneanang or whatever the Siamese leaders name is, on Warlord level with Terra map and no goody huts.    I am doing OK and trying to get the hang of the new artistic winning method.    Without the goody huts the game is significantly harder, but more fun, and we’ll see where I end up when it’s all said and done.    A win will tick off another achievement, and Civ5 always has the advantage in that it’s easy to interrupt.   Now looking forward to Civilization : Beyond Earth.

I’ve pretty much finished the good parts of Flatout 2, and plan to start the next game in the series which is Ultimate Carnage.     Quick races when you can squeeze them in are pretty good, and easily shareable with kids.

What happens when you die IRL ?   Good question.    But I now have my failsafe plan in the event that I should pass away suddenly – IRL friends (2 of them) now have the keys to this blog and are supposed to post to it.    I think about Jeff Freeman every so often, and his amazingly fun blog which has disappeared after his passing.  I do want all my regular readers to know if I disappear suddenly, why.    Not that it’s expected, but you never know.

And with that, back to Real Life outside gaming.

Exploring Fallen Earth Crafting

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Fallen Earth

My go-to game at the moment is Fallen Earth, when I can tear myself away from War Worlds.    I am having quite a bit of fun with this very old title.

My character (Marcellus Gibbs) is at level 17 with more AP’s than I really know how to spend.    I hope the points I am investing in mutation will pay off with cool new skills at some point.     He is a melee character, so invested in strength, endurance, intelligence, and perception.   And otherwise, I collect the various tradeskill items and try to keep them stored in some sensible fashion.

Even with 64 slots, and 4 different banks, I am beginning to have trouble storing all of that stuff and am very interested in the rumored bank expansions.   I began working on my construction skill in anticipation of this.    A quick googling reveals the appropriate wiki page – and these start at construction skill 150, which I am far away from currently.  Apparently you can also increase your pack size, and Barter and Sector vaults, via the marketplace.

Roughly 1 cent = 1 G1C

A more complete understanding comes from the Gamers First Storage FAQ.    To really go nuts and expand your space to the maximum, you have to acquire one of each type of expansion – you cannot add two 8 slot “exclusive” sector vault expansions.    You need a “handmade” and “reward” one to add for a total possible of three.    And go with 16 slots for more space.

The crafting works pretty well.    If anything, it goes too fast at my level.     Without careful planning I doubt I could keep the crafting going for 24 hours, and I’m not being careful at all.    Then again, long crafting time will probably come with higher levels so I’m not going to worry too much about it.    What’s really weird is crafting the books.

You can craft food with the cooking skill, obviously.    You get the recipes from books.    But a lot of your books contain a recipe, for another book.    Cold Prep 1 has the secret to constructing a book Cold Prep 2, which will then give you additional recipes.    Pretty neat, if you ask me.    I started crafting a bunch of these last night.

There are tiers to the raws you will need, it seems – Tainted Water moves on to Questionable Water, and probably something else after that.    I am getting stuck with the Scrap Glass (Very rare) and Plain Spice (Needed for most of the cooking books I want).

And for the moment, I am trying to improve my character so he can move on from the first sector to the second; and finish up several of the main story quests.   They look kind of hard to finish at his level.    I am currently in Old Kingman trying to finish up a lot of quests, and entering the Prison in search of Casta Gaunt and his minions.    I think this is a bit like a raid so I have no idea if I can accomplish this solo.    Going to have to see.

A brief peek – Fallen Earth

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Fallen Earth

Just a quick update – enjoying a lot of Fallen Earth.

Now level 13 and new armor

Currently finishing up questing in the newbie areas.     At first I just wandered and did quests and harvested as needed.     Guides for the game suggest you finish many questlines as they reward additional AP’s so I have given in to my natural tendency to quest and am finishing a bunch of them up.

The world of Fallen Earth – So Far

I have throughly explored Clinton Farm (my starting area), Midway, Odenville, Mumford, and am currently finishing up quests in Boneclaw.    I’ve explored some of the other areas but I’m going to just work my way through all of these little burbs and see what develops as I go.    Next stop – Embry Crossroads.   A real large city in FE terms.

The combat is fun, but the visuals are really growing on me.    I feel like I’m really in the southwest wandering around as I see the sun rise and set around me.     And this is a real crafting game – find recipes, pick up junk, and make it into cool things.    I am wielding a spear I crafted for myself, and wearing odd bits and pieces of armor which I mostly made as well.

Fallen Earth – First Steps

Tags

Fallen Earth, Steam

I got curious and looked into Fallen Earth a bit more than “Wow, its on Steam, has achievements, and is free”.

Apparently this is an MMO from 2009 thus accounting for some of the old, dated look.    The game was not originally a free-to-play, but a subscription.    It was converted after being bought by Gamers First.

So all that explains my lack of knowledge about the game.     I’ve been tanking for two years and paying minimal attention to more traditional MMO’s.    Even before that, I had little interest in another subscription.

Meet Marcellus Gibbs, post-apocalyptic melee fighter.

Gotta harvest them all

The best way to progress includes running the quests given out.    Not the repeatable quests; there are lists of exactly what matters.    In this way you get bonus AP points, which are important independent of level.

The guide also clued me in on how to spend them.     I have a melee character.    Strength – Intelligence – Coordination – and Perception.   Ignore the rest.    Intelligence is necessary for crafting, and if you’re not crafting why play this game.

And horses – more useful for the simple fact of bag space.    The “Old Nag” default horse I have has a mere two bags, but others apparently have more.   But it’s probably difficult to fill the Embry Crossroads banks, which is four sets of banking slots, 64 slots each.

The crafting is definitely the heart of the game.    Nearly everything you loot is a crafting ingredient.     Where do you get your weapons and armor ?    You craft them, although some quests reward gear.     Kill baddies quickly for lots of crafting items.

The game has a sick number of Steam achievements and I’m working my way through the list for giggles.      Visiting each town and looking through a tourist telescope gives one.     Kill counts give more, and someday I may have 75 skill points possible in crafting, which will allow me to earn some for that.

Grand total to date for all Steam achievements : 219.     Most of them are still Civ5 achievements but Fallen Earth is moving up there.

Messing around on Steam and Minecraft

Tags

Fallen Earth, Flatout, Minecraft, Steam, war-worlds

Over the weekend I let my War Worlds empire take a breather – all I did was answer the Sit Rep.      I left the Wibbit empire 100% crushed, and am moving on to bigger and better things – trying to expand out and touch two neighboring empires.

And needing a break from World of Tanks as well, I got back onto my Steam account.    Which they are very good at getting you to buy and install new games on – I mean, 50 cents ?     Sign me up, I’ll buy it !    Before I knew it I had installed three new games and messed around with some others.

My Flatout 2 experience continues as I try to finish the campaigns on Street Racer level.     This is a very accessible driving game and I got a bonus – I even had my boy playing it.    His current Ipad game of choice is some free racing game, which includes all the elements of typical video game grinds – unlocks, races, earning money for upgrades, and slickly rendered versions of real life cars which he gets to drive.    So Flatout was fun for him to mess with.

My Minecraft world Biomass got reopened and I found myself wandering the world again re familiarizing myself with what I’ve wrought.    What I would like to do continues to be connecting all my explored areas via railroad (minecart), which requires massive grinding to find enough iron.     I’d also like to find some of the new biomes in it – I have no dark wood, and no mesas discovered.      And I never have found a horse either.

With Minecraft I can also get slave labor – the kids will log in from the other PC in the house.     We have a total of two licenses, or I could start a three player game.   And they help me out doing various things such as mining for iron/diamonds, or working the farm.    Slop the hogs out on the North Forty son !

I installed Fallen Earth and started playing that as well – for whatever reason it’s a fun experience.    No death penalty (other than a debuff), and I’m a clone wandering a post-apocalyptic world doing quests and trying to get better at making stuff.    The game is apparently, at its heart, a crafting game.    That would be great, except I’ve only used a bare few of the items which I have crafted as I grind my way up skill levels.

Fallen Earth has pretty basic graphics and an “Old Everquest” look to it, along with nasty lag issues.      But creating a melee character and figuring out the game has been a very fun diversion.    One of the important questions as always, is money – will they be able to extract any from me ?    I’m not sure I can see why I’d bother, at the moment, and I don’t plan to start digging into all the web information about the game either.      I just need to figure out where the scenic overlook is on Clinton FARM…..

And of course, (most) all Steam games have achievements which I can’t stop myself from trying to achieve.     I am too goal oriented sometimes.