Scheduling for this week was certainly an odd bit of sorts, but there was still gaming to be done. On Friday, Error and I were out with the family so we got a bit of a late start. Sunday we had a party for Lil Bit at my sister’s house, so Error and I gamed a bit before having to leave for that, and then we picked back up in 7 Days to Die after we got home and things settled down a bit in the afternoon. You’ll note Wednesday was certainly not my usual gameplay schedule, but I did enjoy walking through the character creation by ‘hand’ with the assistance of friends via some group chats. I managed to get the character at least to the point where I can play in the upcoming Gaming Convention we hold each year. Qvaid missed out on a day, but we made up for it with some extra gaming on Friday and Sunday evening. As always, I still had a blast, even though the majority of our Conan Exiles gaming was mostly building this weekend. It was satisfying to see a base in CE build from something other than Sandstone, Stone, or some other lower end materials for a change. I also really enjoyed the 7 Days to Die sessions. It’s always a blast to have so many people in our group in the same game at one time! Game on, my friends!
Days played: Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Sunday
Players: Qvaid, Hobbit
Comments: On Monday evening, Qvaid and I were back into Outward! We were camped in Monsoon from a later Sunday evening adventure, and needed to head back to Chersonese, and eventually back to Cierzo. We had some pretty intense inventory management we needed to do. I also took the time to adjust my controls on my keyboard to match other games similar to Outward. Just mostly quality of life things for me, as I was more comfortable with my dodge, block, inventory, and secondary weapon attack on the more ‘standard’ keys (at least what I would like to consider it). I did find it came at a bit of a price though, moving my inventory to ‘Tab’ made it where I have difficulty comparing gear. For now, I’ve left it as is, because I play several other games where Tab is the main inventory key. I’ve done a bit of quick research on it, but other than the possibility of mods, I haven’t seen a viable manner in which to change them. In any case, Qvaid and I cleaned up our inventory, dropped our sleeping bags in our stash as we each have tents now, gathered some things to make adventuring a bit easier, such as the alchemy kits, cooking pots, elemental rags, potions, and gear we might need more while on the road. I crafted up quite a few Firestones to use with Fire Sigil on the harder fights, and we headed out into Chersonese to test out the new skills. Fret not, we plan to move out of Chersonese very soon, we just wanted to test the skills with enemies we were a bit more familiar with. We managed to take down the random Wendigo in Chersonese with relative ease, alongside a slew of bandits, Mantis Shrimps, Pearl Birds, various Trogs, and Hyenas. We stumbled upon a cave with a skeleton pirate captain, and after a bit of a stall took him down and read the note about some hidden loot on a post in the camp. It was another night we stayed up a bit later than we intended, but ultimately all the adventure was certainly worth it!
Tuesday evening, Qvaid and I had an absolute blast in our Outward adventures! We picked back up at the Pirate camp where we called it the night before. From there we moved on to clearing up more bandits, hyenas, pearl birds, and various Mantis Shrimps in the area. We started feeling a bit brave, and climbed to the top of Conflux Mountain to engage in mortal combat with the rock mantis there, and I picked up the rusty sword stuck in the stone. We cleared a bandit camp we had previously, faced off against the Wendigo in the Bandit Prison and gathered our things and headed off to Ghost Pass. We managed to make our way through the pass, clearing up all the ghosts we could find, although we didn’t head down deeper into the corruption. Instead we focused our efforts on getting out into the areas of Chersonese we have not yet been. We visited the Cabal Hermit, got Weather Tolerance! I also picked up all of the tier 1 skills from the Cabal Hermit as some of them synergize with my current build in any case. We decided to end the night facing off with a dreaded Shell Horror! We managed to take down the Shell Horror with a bit of kiting, and Qvaid’s use of a Fire Varnish on her Prayer Claymore. We have a chitin now to make her a horror weapon as soon as she settles on which one she would like that too be. By that point it was pretty late in the evening, and we camped at the Cabal Hermit’s place again ready to pick back up on the adventures later as scheduling allows.
On Friday evening after the guys called it, Qvaid and I decided to jump back into Outward and head back to Chersonese. We knew we had materials to build a Horror Weapon now, and all she needed to do was to decide on what that weapon should be. She’s running a no mana build, and she certainly could use the weapon more than I since I mostly attack at range with magic. We did get back to our Light House, and had a fairly long session of inventory management, along with some crafting that included the Horror Great Sword she settled on. It was already fairly late when we started the journey back though, and by the time we got everything ironed out, it was a bit too late to try to start an adventure. Qvaid had to get up a bit earlier on Saturday than normal, so we called it not long after getting her weapon created.
On Sunday evening, everyone turned in a bit early, so Qvaid and I once again, decided to start some adventures in Outward. Due to time constraints, and the fact that it was already somewhat later in the evening, we just took her new Horror Great Sword for some testing in the Chersonese area, where she decimated foes with easy in the Trog Caves, bandit camps, etc… We were both full to the point of picking up even little things would through us into encumbrance so we hoofed it back to the light house and finished the night out with some inventory management, and preparations to start the adventures again next week.
Days played: Wednesday
Players: Hobbit
Comments: Technically speaking, there was no D&D to be played on Wednesday evening. After the work day came to a close, I took the grandkids outside to play for a bit, then had dinner. Qvaid was at a friends for the night, and nothing else was going on. Since I usually game with her on Wednesdays, I decided to use the spare time to work on my character for our gaming con later this year. It is for a one shot campaign, so I haven’t really thought up a back story yet per se, but I did manage to get everything else ironed out (At least I think? It’s the first character I’ve done by hand in a pretty long while). Unless I made a mistake somewhere, it should be ready to play when the time comes. Sadly, for me D&D has become quite a bit of a love hate relationship. I absolutely love the game, never regret playing, as it were. But, my dice hate me. I never really have a character with anything above average stats, and generally speaking I tend to use everything else to get my stats up to even an average character. The character I recently created is a prime example of this. My stats are: 13 Str, 10 Dex, 16 Con, 10 Int, 16 Wis, and 10 Cha. Roughly average from a glance, no? Well, that is with a manual, and attribute improvements on level 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19. Alongside of racial improvements. That, my friends, is only the start. I rarely succeed at anything I do in game, as my rolls are usually low. It has become an oddity of sorts for me over the years. I don’t recall having such rotten luck when I first started playing so many moons ago in my youth. Over time though, my rolls just hit a slump, and they’ve been there ever since for the most part. I will say that it certainly makes those higher rolls (as rare as they are), all the more enjoyable. Alas, they are so rare though, and generally they tend to be towards something that doesn’t really matter. Ultimately, the majority of the joy I get from the game is just hanging out with everyone, and I do enjoy seeing all the group succeed. I don’t hold any envy towards anyone for their success, and I hope I never will. My son (Error) has some incredible luck. His mother’s luck if I had to pin point it to anything in particular. He decimates foes like a well oiled gnomish construct. Combat is one of his favorite aspects of D&D. He builds his characters with that in mind always, which to be fair, most character should be combat oriented at least to some extent. Still, it is incredibly hard to live out the fantasy of a hero of the realm when your character tends to fail at the most mundane things inside the game. I’ll keep playing the role of comic relief with hopes and dreams that one day, maybe, my luck will turn around…
Days played: Thursday, Saturday
Players: Error, Kilen, Iron, Hobbit
Comments: On Thursday evening, Kilen and I jumped into CE to game for a bit. The majority of the game play was mostly reviewing a base Kilen had recently started. In an attempt to see a base type other than Sandstone or simply Stone, Kilen decided to activate Creative Mode for the base building, and build a fortress out of Black Ice and some of the other more rare materials we haven’t really got to play with given the life span of most of our games. We’ve made it to what I suspect we’d consider end game numerous times, but the time it takes to grind out a decent size base of some of the end game building materials is quite a long one. Typically speaking, the game play usually burns out before the grind to gather the materials pans out. We finished up the Thursday evening still working a bit on the base, albeit, it was a relatively early call, even for a Thursday.
On Saturday, Error, Kilen, and I hopped back in and we continued building on the base Kilen started earlier in the week. Iron joined us briefly for a bit, but had to bounce and never made it back. The 3 of us that remained just continued building, and managed to break some decent ground on the progress. A huge grand hall, a relatively large tower, massive fortress walls, and even a couple ‘houses’ were either completed or in progress when we all decided to call it a night. It was the first day I can recall in a while where we spent most of the available game time building. We did hope over to 7DtD Saturday evening to game a bit with Falken and Iron while they were on. We decided to hop back over to CE after they called it for the night. While again, most would consider this cheating, and effectively it is, I’m not always opposed to some boosts in a game with a legendary grind. It allows us to experience some of the finer things CE has to offer, but if we are careful we can still have plenty of adventure via other methods in the game. And I’m certainly ok with that myself.
On another note, technically speaking we all logged into CE on Sunday, but Iron was in 7 Days to Die, and we opted to hop over there before we really got started on anything in CE, so I didn’t include it as a day we played. For me, I had logged in as I was stepping away to take care of some things before starting, and by the time I got back, Error and Kilen were already in 7DtD.
Days played: Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Players: Error, Falken, Iron, Kilen, Hobbit
Comments: The gaming on Friday started quite a bit later for us than usual. The family headed to a dinner to celebrate a birthday for Lil Bit. She turned 2 years old on Friday. When we got back, I had already messaged Kilen to let him know we were certainly running late, but alas, he was beat from the work week and ended up calling it quite early. Before we even managed to get home Friday evening as it were. Error, Falken, Iron, and I jumped into 7DtD to so some questing and scavenging. I also managed a bit of mining in between runs as I noted we were getting low on materials, and I was trying to get some of those gathered up to keep production going, although at this point we aren’t particularly hurting for anything really. We continued with the quests and scavenging until everyone was ready to turn in for the night.
Saturday evening once Falken and Iron jumped on, Error, Kilen, and I joined them to run some higher end Trader Quests that Falken is able to pick up from working in progression on them over the course of our gameplay. We just walked through that and some scavenging until Falken and Iron called it a bit later, and Error, Kilen, and I headed back to Ce to continue building the new fortress.
On Sunday Error and I had limited game time earlier in the day, and we had jumped into CE to start working on the Fortress again with Kilen. I logged in, but had to step away to get some things done first before I sat down for what gaming we had time for. When I got back, Error and Kilen had already bounced to 7DtD to join Falken and Iron. I got back and logged in, and we continued with more quests and scavenging. I did a bit of mining in between inventory management, questing, and scavenging too try and keep up with the materials, but it was certainly a losing battle for me. We are able to burn through materials at an insanely quick rate with 4 active forges, 3 cement mixers, 3 (now 4) work benches, 2 chem stations, etc… The routines we were running was pretty much the same up until later evening where Error, Iron, and I hit the ‘Dark Science Facility’ to finish off the night. We got back to the base, did some inventory management, noted something really odd about the behavior with the forges. It looks like something might be off on the math with the materials. That or, perhaps we had situations were we had large stacks of Forge Steel being processed, but if you cancelled them, it was too many materials to go ‘back’ into the forge and so we’d have larger stacks being worked on, and if you cancelled them for some reason, the stack you could make after that was less than the over all stacks we had processing prior to cancelling them. It was certainly odd. In any case, we called it after that, and I hit some Outward with Qvaid to finish up the weekend.
