This weekend had a bit more variety than most, although it mostly came about because of some changes to the schedule. Kilen was a bit under the weather this weekend. Error and I were biding our time with other means to entertain ourselves in an effort to not leave Kilen behind on the campaign play through of Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria. It sill lead to some interesting surprises over the course of the weekend as several of us fired back up Red Dead Online. I cannot comment enough on how well that game looks and performs. It has so much untapped potential. Tis sad that Rockstar just can’t see past the GTA games enough to see it.
With the change in schedule, Qvaid and I missed our Wednesday and Thursday evening schedules, however we were able to make up some time on Friday and Sunday evening! The over all selection of games I toyed with over the weekend was indeed a fantastic time. It was also incredibly nice to get to see Eldon (my brother) again as it has been nearing a couple years now at this point. He lives out Mid-West-ish in the states and it makes visits a bit on the sparse side. All of the family enjoyed the time together and had a wonderful, yet short time catching up. It in and of itself was a grand time indeed.
Honorable Mentions: I logged into No Man’s Sky on Friday evening for a brief bit of play. I left my main headquarters and headed out to the Anomaly to pick up some new tech that has come out since the last time I was able to play. Iron (and I’m fairly sure, Falken) played some Valheim on and off through out the week and/or weekend. In a bit of irony this week’s game play recount of Hobbit Plays, an honorable mention goes to Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria. While Error, Kilen, and I played it, it was a brief spell on Saturday while all three of us bounced in and out of game play due various reasons.
Days Played: Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Sunday
Players: Qvaid, Hobbit
Comments: On Monday evening, Qvaid and I were back into the adventures in Outward. We had to spend the 3 days waiting for Queen Calixa to have our next mission ready for the Heroic Kingdom of Levant. We were to head to Monsoon to speak with the Alchemist there and find a solution to get food to the starving people of Levant.
Qvaid and I gathered supplies and prepared to travel. We were sure to check the Wiki as we only have a home in Cierzo and Levant, and forgetting anything without access to our stash in any other areas could be extremely time consuming. I was sure to pick up a few gold bars and a touch over 300 silver to prepare for our mission.
With the information we garnered from the Wiki, we knew we would need 5 x Raw Marshmelons, 1 x Phytosaur Horn, 300 silver, and the ornate granite tablet from the Spire of Light in Hallowed Marsh. The silver and the tablet were favors and payment to the Soroborean Carvan to transport food from Monsoon to Levant.
Now, Qvaid and I were able to gather the 5 x Raw Marshmelons during our travels. As a matter of fact we had a bit over what we needed between the two of us by the time we arrived in Monsoon with everything we needed. We had a stroke of luck for the Phytosaur horns as a traveling Soroborean merchant had two in the Hallowed Marsh as we entered from Enmerkar Forest. We picked up both as we are pretty sure they have other alchemist uses (either life or astral potions? I can’t recall off hand). We also stumbled across one on the ground in the Stekosaur cave after we got just a bit lost.
After we had all the other materials, we headed into the Spire of Light to get the tablet. Our plan was to try and get as much gathered as possible so we could lessen the amount of traveling we needed to do. We were starting to run out of time after all with all the travel, adventuring, and gathering. We did manage to get the tablet with relative ease. Especially considering you don’t actually have to fight the Light Mender to get it.
We high tailed it back to Monsoon, spoke with Laine the Alchemist. We handed over the materials he requested, and was told the experiment he is working on will take roughly 12 hours to complete. Qvaid and I headed to a spoke to camp, tossed our tents down, and rested for about 10 hours. We wanted a little bit of time to check the vendors before heading back out.
Once we had completed our vendor shopping and inventory management (to the best that we could with no stash around), we spoke with Laine again, he told us of his success, and then we spoke to the Soroborean Carvan in Monsoon to get the transports underway. Since we already had everything on hand, we were able to start that immediately after the success with Laine.
Qvaid and I started our travel back to Enmerkar Forest, and from there to Abrassar. I may have forgot to mention we had to get the Jade Idol to unlock the bridge when we entered the Hallowmarsh from Enmerkar Forest earlier. In any case, it was worth it because now we had an easy method to get back to the city of Levant travel wise.
Upon arrival in Levant, Qvaid and I spoke with Queen Calixa again, and we were rewarded for our efforts with the Alchemical Experiment! A nice 15% increase to all damage. Qvaid and I camped for a short bit to get her the passive ability as well, then we did some inventory management, rested, and prepared for our next set of adventures for the Heroic Kingdom of Levant! As you can guess, it was getting late by this point, and it was a touch passed time for us to call it a night.
On Tuesday evening, Qvaid and I picked back up in Levant where we left off. We started with a rest for 3 days to progress to the next quest of the Heroic Kingdom of Levant faction line. After the rest, Queen Claixa had another task ready for us, and that was to check in on what Yzan and Cyrene were up to as they seemed to have disappeared and were suspected that the call for peace might not be quite to their liking.
Based on the hints (and the fact that we’ve watched SheenShots walk through quite a few Outward Videos), we found Yzan at the Abandoned Docks in Abrassar. We managed to convince him that he was on the wrong path, and he aided us in killing the bandits that were, shall we say disappointment in his lack of commitment to Cyrene’s cause?
From there we had to find a way back into Levant as it was currently under Marshal Law and no entry could be permitted for anyone, not even our well proven adventuring selves!? In any case, we found Markus guarding the Slums entrance, and since we fought him previous in his own ‘fight-club’ arena, he let us through and asked us to help get this crazy coupe back under control. Pigeoneye offered to give us a distraction to get past the guards if we provided him with a tripwire and some spikes. Fortunately we found enough cloth to complete the request as I already had iron scraps to make arrows on my character.
We had a bit of trouble in the Undercity Passage, when we got taken by surprise by some guards, and I believe a mini boss? Which… in a bit of irony, I don’t think we had to even go that way? So Qvaid went down, but I managed to slip away. I started sniping bandits from afar and even managed to trick some into going to the Trog room via the trap floor. Once I got Qvaid back up, we found we didn’t have to go that way after all and we meet up with Dawne. 50 silver later, and we were in the Palace running towards the throne room to try and stop the coupe.
Alas, we were too late and Cyrene had already shot Calixa with the Scourge tainted bullet. Simeone was also injured. Yzan tried to convince Cyrene she was headed in the wrong direction, but she would hear nothing of that sort. And so the battle commenced with Yzan on our side, we defeated Cyrene and rushed to the aid of Simeone and Calixa.
Elatt appeared and spoke in the minds of everyone present. He assured Simeone that he could save Calixa, and they should begin the trek to Monsoon. Qvaid and I opted to head to Monsoon with the convey.
In Monsoon, there was a meeting to discuss the peace treaty along with the ritual to save Calixa. She would ascend to a Goddess and be bring balance to the people of Levant and their allies. This of course meant a battle in Monsoon with the Scourge. We managed to take out the Scourge that attacked Monsoon, Calixa was ascended to a Goddess, and once again the world of Aurai was a safer place!
The traveling begins! From there Qvaid and I headed to Berg and purchased our home there, which meant we had all the player homes in this run except Harmattan. We purchased the Monsoon home upon arriving and before we left Monsoon after defeating the Scourge. On to Levant to take all the foods, potions, and supplies we had in a backpack in our home to our stash so we could get ready for the trip to Caldera. But wait… one of the backpacks I had was missing, ugh, on to Cierzo to gather the supplies we left in our Light House a LONG time ago. With everything packed up and ready, we headed off to Caldera.
In Caldera it was off to Sirocco to witness the executions of the previous Nobles, and the establishment of New Sirocco. Qvaid and I did some MAJOR inventory management alongside of setting up our camp to prep for the adventures ahead and the building of New Sirocco. As with goes with the majority of the patterns here, it was time to call it a night at this point. Although at least we should be ready to speak to the diplomats of New Sirocco and begin our adventures of gathering supplies, dungeon crawls, quests, and building of the city once again!
Friday and Sunday evening Qvaid and I mostly worked on gathering samples and materials for New Sirocco. We made some pretty impressive progress. Caldera and New Sirocco can be a bit of a grind, but the play style Qvaid and I use make it a bit easier, especially considering we’ve already had two runs previous with quite a bit of farming on those runs. In case you are wonder what that means, we take samples and materials used to build New Sirocco from those games and move them over to the ‘new runs’ we do. I mean we already took the time to farm them once and we feel like it is a fair behavior for ‘us’. In any case, Qvaid and I accomplished enough by Sunday evening that Dorion bestowed the ambriane fertilizer quest. We were able to embark on that when we noticed the time on Sunday and decided it might be best to call it there and to pick back up on the next week’s set of adventures.
Days Played: Saturday, Sunday
Players: Error, Kilen, Hobbit
Comments: Saturday, Kilen was still a bit under the weather when we started so Error and I hopped into the Wild West of Red Dead Online and relived some of our previous adventures again. RDO is such a beautiful game. Some great sun sets, scenery, and plenty of things to do. We did run into a few hackers here and there, but the number (at least in our recent plays) have certainly decreased. Error and I took a break for a bit to hop into LoTR: RtM when Kilen jumped on for a bit in the evening. After he called it again for the night though, Error and I decided to take advantage of the Free Fast Travel going on in RDO right now. We worked through collecting all 4 of the Tarot Cards Sets for the collector. I managed to actually max out the Collector Role in RDO during the process as well. It might be a bit boring to some, but I really did enjoy it. We were fast travelling all over the place and I was soaking up all the beautiful scenery RDO has to offer. Once we had all 4 sets complete, we headed over to Madam Nazar and sold them (turned them in). I won’t lie, that did take a decent amount of time. We called it a night not too long after turning in our hard earned work.
On Sunday, in a bit of a surprise to me actually. Kilen messaged me to let me know he was downloading RDO and he would jump into Discord once it was done. Now that process did take some time, and Kilen was certainly still under the weather, but he did make it in game. We were a bit scattered on tasks, and mostly Kilen was just relearning some things he forgot. He started to feel rough again at some point and called it, and I just worked on a few quests, and Naturalist things to try and get that role leveled up a bit over the course of time. At some point, I decided to call it and hopped over to Outward to finish out Sunday with Qvaid.
Days Played: Wednesday, Thursday
Players: Family Time!
Comments: On Wednesday evening, Eldon (my brother) and his wife were in town. They stopped by on their way on a work related trip to spend some time with the family. We spent the majority of the evening just catching up at dinner, with a few trips to the stores here and there for Error and Eldon. Eldon and his wife retired back to my sister’s house after the evening festivities for some much needed rest. It was a VERY long drive for them.
On Thursday evening, we all met at my sister’s house, where Eldon and his wife were staying for a big family dinner. Almost the entire gang showed up! The food was fantastic and there were many great times to be had. Some of us played some Nintendo Switch for a bit of gaming, while those not in current participation spent time chatting together. We all were out a bit later than we likely should have been for a work night, but nothing as drastic as we once did in a bit of our younger years. It was, as always, an incredible time and great fun!
Sadly, Eldon and his wife were back on the road early Friday morning. It had been a decent span of time since last they were able to make the trip to see us, but it was certainly great to see them and spend a bit of time with them in the crazy busy adult lives that we’ve all made for ourselves. We will all look forward to the next visit, and hope that perhaps it won’t have to be quite as long as the previous.
