Tread with caution, some of the descriptions below may contain spoilers for Children of Morta. I’ll start by admitting that even though the Steam Summer Sale hasn’t started yet, I managed to pick up a few titles for my wife and I to play later on down the line. I caught For the King, Cat Quest II, and Secret of Mana on sale at a price I felt was decent enough to go ahead and pick those up. We have a few other titles in the back log that we ‘might’ eventually get back around too, but otherwise we’ve completed quite a bit of the games we had set aside to play together. Save for Stardew Valley, which doesn’t really have an ‘end’ per se. I imagine we’ll dive back into SDW at some point again, but otherwise we’ve been biding our time with games we can complete, which certainly makes me a Happy Hobbit! To finish up the Sunday evening, everyone was pretty tired, so my wife and I watched the remainder of the Pacific Drive series on J.C.s Channel on YouTube, which personally, I found to be an incredible adventure in and of itself!
Days played: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday
Players: Qvaid, Hobbit
Comments: My wife and I had doubts about our typical game times this week. But as it were, scheduling worked out, and we managed to get some game time in! On Monday evening, we started the second part of the first dungeon, Caledippo Caves. As we traversed the Lost Trenches, we ran into some more struggle very much like our run through, the Silk Caverns. As we finished out Monday night, albeit a bit early, we were just grinding out experience and Morv to earn enough upgrades to help us along.
On Tuesday evening, my wife and I managed to grind out and conquer the Lost Trenches in the Caledippo Caves. We also saved the wolf cub, unlocked what appears to be all of the Animal Shelter, built Ryker (the wolf cub) a moment with materials gathered from the dungeon, and unlocked Lucy (fire mage) of the family! We started grinding in the Anai-Dya’s Dominion. I believe we managed a couple more upgrades in Uncle Ben’s shop before finally having to turn in for the night.
Wednesday evening, my wife and I continued our adventures in CoM. We managed to make it to the boss in Anai-Dya’s Dominion, and were making good progress. Ultimately though, we succumbed to the fight, and never made it back to try again. We continued grinding however, and managed to get a few more upgrades along with a few quests completed. Over all, I have to say the game has been a fantastic adventure!
The gang called it around the usual time for a Thursday evening, which left some time for Qvaid and I to jump back into some more Children of Morta. We managed to defeat the stone golem in Anai-Dya’s Dominion, and progress to the next dungeon. On to Barahut, the City of Thieves! Our initial run of the City of Thieves actually went pretty well, although we did not manage to complete it on our first try. Even still it was certainly a decent attempt, and we managed to make enough Morv to garner us some decent upgrades from Uncle Ben’s shop!
In another rare schedule, my wife and I were able to play more CoM, late Friday and Saturday night. We managed to beat the City of Thieves Dungeon, we rescued Mary from the corruption, although we did lost Grandma Margaret in the process. We unlocked what appears to be the final character, Apan, albeit we didn’t make use of her during our sessions. To be fair, we unlocked her late Saturday night, and we called it not long after that. Otherwise, we walked through some grinding, got some more upgrades from the Book of Rea, and Uncle Ben’s, and just ran a couple runs through The Ziggurat dungeon before turning in.
Days played: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Players: Error, Kilen, Hobbit, Eldon
Comments: Thursday, Kilen managed to find another Sentinel Ship, which I happily added to my current collection. He already had it, and figured either Error or myself might like to add another as well. Error was busy working on some multi-tool upgrades at the time and happily declined stating he’d pick it up later on. From there, I rolled back to my quest to find the last remaining creature on the planet I left off on last week. Sadly the name of said planet eludes me at this time, but I had already burned a decent amount of time searching for this cave dwelling monstrosity! It’s neither here nor there, that I probably couldn’t pronounce the name of the planet if my life depended on it anyway. This planet is a toxic hell. Frequent storms, high flora that makes finding caves a feat in and of itself, topped with nosy sentinels, and titan worm infestations. There are also those annoying eggs, that spawn alien like hostile creatures. Granted you can avoid those easily enough. I pretty much burned the remainder of the night looking for that infernal cave dweller! I ended by heading back to my base to prep for some inventory management on my next play through (which should be Friday evening, given scheduling works as planned). I’m feeling cute, might dump all that inventory into the proper locations and head back to that planet for some more mind numbing punishment. I dunno!
It should be known, that I attempted several more times to get that final fauna on Friday. Ultimately, I gave up and moved on to gathering some radiant shards for my Sentinel Ship, worked on some agriculture quests for the farmer at my main base. I did managed to progress the base quests far enough to get an exocraft tech, a bit of equipment upgrades, and tons upon tons of inventory management.
On Saturday, I finally found and accepted a Capital Ship (freighter) after warping into the event. It was a Class B with something like 32 slots for storage, and 19 tech slots. Not a bad start if I don’t say so myself. I was the last of the group to finally get their capital ship. Along with the typical shenanigans in NMS (you know, inventory management, quests from the log, travel, exploration, and effectively ADD dreamscape), I started working on the layout for my Capital Ship with what resources I had available. It looks like a giant blade to me, so I just built a long corridor, and set rooms off to the left and right in an order I felt would be the most efficient for my playstyle. I installed all the rooms currently available, along with the portal, vaults, and galaxy trade terminal!
Sunday, I had a pretty small amount of time set aside to play, but I still managed nominal upgrades to almost all my equipment, continued working on some quests, and resolved an issue I had with one of the Base Quests, then helped Kilen resolve his as well. Initially, Kilen and I were going to hit a derelict freighter event, but I ended up having to take a rain check on that to get to some family time.
Days played: Sunday
Players: Family Time!
Comments: We spent the larger part of Sunday afternoon to early evening playing a campaign Error (my son) had started back in December that scheduling kept us from completing at the time. We finished up that boss encountered recently and were ported off into the blinding snow, where we found a cabin to make camp in for the night. We picked back up there, cleaned up the place enough to get a good nights rest, and rested until morning. We all cleaned up, got spells prepared, and set out in the snow to the North to see what became of Santa’s workshop after the defeat of Krampus. Our journey stopped at Matlock, a small tavern based town in the middle of nowhere, where our small group too rest at the tavern’s inn after a nice meal and a strong drink. In the morning we purchased horses, and started making our way further north in attempts to reach Ironhaven or Santa’s Workshop if we can find it again. We had an encounter with Winter Wolves along the way, which we dispatched the 3 of them, only for the final wolf to signal our location on it’s death. We left off with what appeared to be a Frost Giant, and the alpha wolf busting through the forest line, ready to avenge the fallen wolves we just fought!
There were plans to pick the game back up after dinner, but everyone was pretty tired after that came to a conclusion and so it was decided, we would pick back up on another day.
