The gaming for the week was over all still a success. There were some hiccups in the schedule here and there. All things considered, we still made the best of it.
Qvaid and I helped Error and his family with a move on Saturday. Normally that would mean, I wasn’t gaming at all that day. It so happened that we did manage to get the move wrapped up in a decent amount of time. I figured I could get a little bit of gaming in later that evening. Unfortunately for me, the heads up I gave to everyone meant that I spent that time playing Solo. Everyone else made other plans since Error and I had already told them we’d be MIA.
Error didn’t have internet on Saturday, so even considering the completion of the move he could not play had he been available. I suspect he likely wouldn’t have been able too even if that were the case though. They still have things to unpack, and he needed to get his gaming gear set back up. This alongside of the fact that I imagine he was tired, and his family probably needed help adjusting to the new place.
I take the blame for the cluster Sunday evening turned into. I foolishly made the mistake of removing the swap partition I setup in my new install of Fedora. I noticed the operating system wasn’t making use of it over the zram0 partition it creates by default and I got the bright idea that I would just take the space back and reallocate it too my /HOME partition. It ‘can’ be done, but I sometimes forget that Linux isn’t quite as forgiving as Windows when it comes to storage, files, directories, etc… I forgot to edit my fstab file and regenerate the GRUB before rebooting.
I combined that epic failure with the fact that 1. I forgot I removed the partition and 2. I ran updates right before rebooting and going to eat dinner that evening. I came back to my PC just spinning at the boot screen. Initially, I thought the issue was related to the updates I ran, so I gave it some more time, and went about the chores of washing up the dog food and water bowls, topping off the dry food, and their water, and then treats, and their dinner (chicken and rice). I got back to my system still sitting at the same screen.
I pulled out my laptop and started researching possible fixes, thinking something borked on one of the updates. Eventually the research (and hitting escape) lead me to the cause of the issue. It was the configuration files still pointing to a swap partition that was no longer present. DOH! I booted off my USB drive with a Fedora install (ie: Live Boot Disk), and got to work on repairing the damage I caused. I did eventually get it fixed, albeit it too longer than I anticipated and cost me the rest of the gaming on Sunday. As I said before, Linux gives you to power to do whatever you want. You must take care in how you use said power to accomplish the tasks at hand.
Now I had it fixed in time to ‘game’, roughly around the 8 PM CST mark. By that time though, everyone else had moved on to other activities and/or prep for the work week around the corner. In essence, I have no one to blame but myself. 🙁
Qvaid and I had a fantastic week of adventures in Outward. We managed to make some record progress! Finishing up the week on the second quest of the New Sirocco build in Outward Definitive Edition. This 4th run is certainly flying by! Split Fiction is around the corner, and I’ve preordered that game for us to play. I’m hopeful we can play it on my current install. It is a new game, and generally speaking new games don’t run on Linux out of the door. There is the possibility Qvaid and I will be done with our 4th run of Outward before the game lands, but if not, it should be ready for us once we get the time to wrap up our adventures in Outward!
Schedule
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Outward
Outward
Outward
Outward
Hell Let Loose
No Man’s Sky (Solo)
No Man’s Sky, Hell Let Loose
Honorable Mentions
7 Days to Die, Age of Empires III
Falken seems to have taken a vacation from Valheim and has been spotted scouring the wastelands of the Zombie Apocalypse in 7 Days to Die a bit over the course of the week / weekend. I also seen Eldon in No Man’s Sky and Age of Empires III for a bit here and there. Iron seemed to be MIA over the course of the week.
Highlights
Days played: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
Players: Qvaid, Hobbit
Comments: As Qvaid and I started our adventures in Outward this week, we had 3 days pending for Gregory Turnbull to give us our next quest in the Sorobor Academy. Sometimes we just camp those days out to speed up the process, but in this case we had things we wanted to try to accomplish in that time frame. We wanted to see if our theory that the Wolfgang Mercenaries were no longer favorable to us. We can confirm that is now the case. We started down a few paths in the Antique Plateau and had a couple attempt to jump us. We spent a good portion of our time avoiding them as they tend to be quite formidable adversaries. We decided we wanted to free the Trog merchant since we haven’t done that yet in all 3 of our previous runs. We made it to where she was captured and freed her with the key we got from the Living Quarters dungeon. Now the next part we weren’t quite aware of, but apparently she ends up recaptured in the Bandit Hideout. We made our way there, and cleared too her only to find out we didn’t have the key we needed to free her again. A quick jump to the Outward Wiki and we knew we needed to take out the Bandit Leuiteant to get the Bandit Cage Key. We headed over to the Kazite Bandit Camp and found the Leuiteant, dispatched him, got the key, and headed back to free the Trog merchant once and for all. Mostly, we felt like we might benefit from this action since we knew at some point we would be back in some of the dungeons associated with the Rust and Vengeance quest. Qvaid and I do not sell a lot of items from our runs, but it would be nice to see what wares she has to offer at some point in our play through. We did run over in time with the next faction line quest for Gregory, but we also noted there wasn’t a timer in place. So we just continued our adventures and decided given it was already late, we would pick back up on that in our adventures later in the week.
As I fully expected over the course of this weeks Outward sessions, we managed to complete the Sorobor Academy faction quest line. In terms of the over all story, I’d have to add that it is my favorite. You assist Turnbull with a method to pacify the Immaculates and finally release them of their uncontrollable urge to kill and destroy. While I’ll certainly agree the methods you must deploy to accomplish these goals are not exactly favorable in my book, I suppose the sacrifices you make are worthy of the cause. I disliked the fact that you have to betray Victor and the Wolfgang Mercenaries in the process, but then, neither are exactly a great role model for their people in any case.
With the requirements of Harmattan behind us, we ended Wednesday evening with preparations for travel to Berg. We purchased the player house on our arrival and settled in to prep for the quest line for New Sirocco. We are both looking forward to what has become one of my favorite areas of the game (Qvaid’s too, I suspect?). I find it ironic that the 2nd DLC for Outward is more along the lines of End Game than any other part. Caldera hosts some of the most challenging fights, Qvaid and I have encountered thus far. We called it before any preparations to pick up the quest and/or travel were complete. It was getting late, and we were quite content with the success of aiding Turnbull, Desy, and the Friendly Immaculate to become the Ambassador of the Immaculates (or Scourge as it were).
Qvaid and I ended the week with an incredible bit of progress in New Sirocco. To be fair, we used resources we had from previous runs of Outward to get samples and the rare materials needed for building. We are on our 4th run of the game after all, and we’ve collected quite a bit of those materials over the course of our play throughs. On this run in particular we’ve been assisting with construction more than any other run previously. We just keep an eye on the resources and manage them accordingly. This drastically speeds up the build process and in doing so, we’ve already managed to get 3 hours, the Hunter’s lodge, Masonry Workshop, Woodcutter’s Lodge, City Hall, Food Store, and the Blacksmith Shop all completely built! We handed in three samples and got a bit more rare materials, although one was just some extra stone. On your first set of samples, three is enough to send Evangeline out on an expedition for a specific rare material. We opted for another Ameythest Geode, mostly because it was the only rare resource we could think of at the time that we were out of. In hindsight, we probably should have checked the wiki to see if we needed any more, but alas it is too late now. After the first set, you must turn in 10 samples to get any further expeditions along the way. Every 10 samples, grants you the opportunity to have Evangeline send out a team to find a specific resource, which she will bestow to you on the next 24 hours.
We finished the last night of this week’s game play on the second quest of New Sirocco. We need to take a forge stone to Old Sirocco to get it charge for use with an experimental forge for Josef. It was too late to really get a good start and/or possibly finish, so Qvaid and I opted to call it there. The run is progressing much faster than I anticipated it would, but we are also skipping the full clear of dungeons that we were doing in previous runs. It doesn’t look like we have too much further to get to wrap up the 4th and final run of some of the best adventures we’ve had to date.
Days played: Saturday, Sunday
Players: Aces, Error, Kilen, Hobbit
Comments: You will NEVER hear me complain about some No Man’s Sky gaming sessions. It is still my favorite game to play to date. I can literally get lost for hours in bouts of exploration, discovery, and what brings me a sense of meditation in NMS.
We always strive to play as a group, albeit, NMS has made that a touch difficult in the recent updates. We seem to get dropped from Multiplayer fairly often with the recent updates. Normally, I’d chalk it up to maybe my being on Linux, but it happens no matter whose game we join and what platform they are on. Error and Kilen are on Windows for example, and it happens to both of them as well for example.
Our game play this weekend was a bit sporadic, and I did have a few sessions here and there where I tinkered around in NMS while the group was waiting to get something started. I spent a decent amount of time, finding that last fauna on a planet I needed to complete the discoveries in a Galaxy I discovered. I know it’s not really the most efficient way to earn units or nanites so to speak, but there is just something about it I can’t help but enjoy doing it.
In any case, Aces decided to join us for a bit of space adventure on Sunday while he was on. He was starting over, so unfortunately, he didn’t quite get caught up enough to join us before the gang decided it would be a good time to hop into Hell Let Loose for some World War II combat.
Just so it will be known, Aces and I both ribbed Error and Kilen a bit for destroying our zen we had going in NMS on Sunday to hop over to Hell Let Loose.
Days played: Friday, Sunday
Players: Aces, Error, Kilen, Hobbit
Comments: I would like to add that for Error, Kilen, and myself, Friday’s session in Hell Let Loose was pretty epic. Especially considering it had been some time since we had jumped into the intense game play HLL has to offer.
We started out in a tank squad in pretty much every game, although we did have at least one game where we moved to infantry because the game was ending and we didn’t really have time to get another tank spawned in.
On Sunday after a joyful bit of No Man’s SKy, Aces, Error, Kilen, and myself hopped into HLL for a bit of WWII combat and shenanigans. It was still a great time, although, we didn’t quite have near the success we had on Friday evening. Quite a bit of the ole ‘running simulation’ was in order for that day. This along with some server hopping and attempts to find a server with a better fit for us.
We did make the mistake of joining a French server at least once. Not that we have anything against anyone mind you, but it’s not easy to play with players that don’t speak your native language. Usually when we find out about the mistake we just hop off and try to find one that is primarily English speaking.
HLL is all about good communication, and if we can’t communicate with the other players, that tends to fall apart fairly quickly. In some cases, the server’s players also make it know that you would be better off joining a server that speaks your native language. Which to be fair, they did hint at to another group of players that was also natively English speaking.
We took the hint silently and moved on to another server. The four of us played HLL until it was close to dinner time for Error, and myself as well to be fair. The gaming kind of fell apart after that. This was partially due to my fault as I made some system changes earlier, rebooted to install some updates, and had to fix some goof ups I made in the process. I mentioned that above though, so no need to get into detail again. 🙂
