Holiday weekend, ye-yeah! I’m not sure how the holiday played out for everyone else, but for me, it meant more gaming! Unfortunately, it also meant sleep deprivation, and a wrecked sleep schedule for me on Tuesday when I headed back to work. I spent far too much time going to bed in the early hours of the morning, and sleeping a bit late to ‘catch’ up on lost sleep. For the future me (that certainly will pay this no heed), I should probably mind the sleep a bit more so, especially as the weekend/holiday is coming to a close!
There was a decent bit of variety in this week’s gameplay as you can note below. I even managed to fire up a classic bit of Minecraft at some point! It was a fantastic set of adventures! I did have a great bit of gaming fun on Monday (Labor Day) as well, but that set of adventures is scheduled to go out with next week’s post. This Hobbit Plays comes a day late, but I got distracted with gaming on Monday with Qvaid, and I never got around to finishing up the post.
On another note, I’ve decided to refrain from using the ‘spoiler’ code implementation on Hobbit Plays posts. I’ll still make use of the feature in regular posts as needed, but when I’m trying to describe an adventure or story in the Hobbit Plays posts, it because far to much of a distraction, in my opinion, so I felt it to be an unnecessary task. Be aware that if you read some of the adventures below, you could get spoilers for some of the games you might be playing as well. 😉 *Spoiler Alerts Below*
Days played: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Players: Qvaid, Hobbit
Comments: Qvaid and I picked back up in Berg on Monday evening. At the start of our adventure, Rissa still didn’t have the next quest for us for the Blue Chamber Faction. We headed out into Enmerkar Forest for a bit of exploration and mischief while we were waiting. We encountered a giant close to the Royal Manticore. We took down the giant, but at this time, we avoided the Royal Manticore. We did get a later start for the evening, and the time we had to explore seemed to fly by. Mostly, we ran around killing whatever we encountered, save for the deer that roam the area. We’ve taken down a few of them, but mostly leave them alone if they don’t engage us. We returned to Berg late in the night, sold our wares, and crashed out our new house in Berg. The next morning, Rissa let us know the Chamber Collective had arrived, and we would need to head to the Blue Chamber Collective in Berg. We rushed to the Collective, and spoke with everyone, but the only thing out of sorts was a missing delegate. Per instructions from Rissa, we headed out to the Inn in Berg to look for the missing delegate. As we were leaving the Blue Chamber Collective in a B Line for the inn, we heard an explosion in the Collective Hall. We rushed back in to see a battle ensuing and quite a few people missing! Gabriella Sullivan, instructed us to track down the attackers in the Necropolis below the Blue Chamber Collective. Qvaid and I didn’t know where this was initially, and so we scoured the area, but somehow missed the entrance directly below the Collective platform. We ran around Berg looking for any possible areas it might be, and after not having any luck in Berg, I checked the journal, and noted it had to be in that room. We rush back in, found the entrance and were hot on the trail of the attackers. We finished up some miners as we entered, took down the guards, although we had already cleared it prior so there wasn’t a lot of enemies still in the Ancestral areas. We discovered the Historian was killed in the process, and found a note that gave hints to Rissa and the enemy commander’s where abouts. We rescued Rissa first, then headed to the area to see if we could find the enemy commander. We were successful in our fight against him, then headed back into Berg to rest, do some inventory management, and see what was next on our agenda. Qvaid and I found out from Rissa that the next assignment wouldn’t be for another 3 days, so we finished up some inventory management, hit the vendors to see if they had anything we might need, did some craft, and finished up the night by resting to prepare for Tuesday evening’s adventures.
Qvaid and I started our Tuesday evening, checking in with Rissa, but still no update to our journal. We decided to start our adventures off with a bit of exploration around Enmerkar forest while we were waiting. We were trying to get to the other Lonely Tower, to no avail. I finally checked the wiki, and it would seem that particular point of interest is not accessible to players. We decided to take on the Royal Manticore. We were going to buff to the hilt, and place traps, but… The Royal Manticore must have heard all the commotion we were causing and caught us off guard. We did far better than I anticipated for being caught off guard like that. I did eventually succumb to the might of said Royal Manticore, but Qvaid managed to scamper off after I went down. She circled back around and revived me, and then we backed off for a bit to explore other things. We did note the Royal Manticore was now patrolling dangerous close to the roads we wander on a regular basis in Enmerkar Forest, so we decided it must be a fight we dealt with now rather than later. We placed a slew of traps in a line, and buffed to the hilt. I dropped my back pack at the location Qvaid and I agreed we would engage after the traps, and I set off to lead the ole chap to its doom. The plan actually came to fruition! It tore after me as I ran up the hill through the slew of traps, and hit nearly every one of them. I started up a round of spells including some hexes, a bit of torment, a rune trap, and some lightning blasts from the Rune sage tree. Qvaid when to work with that Two-Handed Horror Great Sword with a fire varnish, and some incendiary plate traps that were also in the line. Ultimately that plan made fairly short work of what is considered a fairly rough foe. Much like the scene with Robin in Monty Python, there was much rejoicing! We were victorious! We explored the area the Royal Manticore roams, and found the lair. From there we managed to clear the lair in it’s entirety! Including the other two manticores that reside there! It was a grand adventure indeed. By this point, we knew Rissa would have our next task, and thus we headed back into Berg, hit the vendors, picked up our next task which is to travel to Hallowed Marsh for a bit of a diplomatic attempt to recruit some allies for the Blue Chamber Collective. We headed to our newly purchased home in Berg to rest for the night, and perform some serious inventory management to prep for travel out of Enmerkar Forest. We called it a night the next morning, right outside of Berg, ready to travel to the Hallowed Marsh in our next adventure on Wednesday evening!
On Wednesday evening, Qvaid and I were ready to head out into the Hallowed Marsh to begin our mission to recruit the Ash Giants of the region to the Blue Chamber Collective. In what turned into an absolute epic adventure, we managed to clear the Ziggurat Path and the Reptilian Cave! We also enjoyed quite a few battles with Swamp Bandits and Dinos along the way. While we did manage to clear both the areas I mentioned above, at least to our knowledge, we did end the evening on a somber note. We made some rookie mistakes in our attempt to appease Ash Giant, Highlord Cyr, and ended up having to enable the debug tool to go back to a previous save. To be fair, I should have known better, but it was getting really late, and we were excited about our accomplishments, having done what the Highlord asked, we thought we were good. It turns out, there was optional quests we needed to do in order to gain the favor of the Highlord and complete our mission with success. It was so late by the time we got back to where we needed to be on our save, that we ultimately called it there. We also learned another valuable lesson for a rookie mistake I made. Apparently Pressure Plate Traps will disappear if someone without Pressure Plate Expert puts incendiary charges in them. Opps, sorry Qvaid! I plan to fix that with the debug tool as well. Otherwise, we’ve been playing as normal. We’ll also try to be a lot more careful from here on out so we don’t have to do that again, or at the very least to try to keep it to a minimum.
After the gang called it on Thursday evening, Qvaid and I picked back up in Outward for some grand adventures, and a bit of combat. Since we messed up prior on a mission, we checked the Outward Wiki, and started the process of gathering all of the items, and information on Ash-Giant culture to try our best to get the best outcome. We got the Giant-Heart Garnet that resides in the Trog dungeon in Chersonese. We went back to the Reptilian Caves and gather the other 2 rare roots (of the 3 total we needed), we spoke with the Cardinal in Monsoon, we read the book in the Giant Ruins, and finally we gathered all available information from Gold Belly in the Ash-Giant city. We are hoping to make it back to the Giant Ruins at some point to explore the dungeon there, as we didn’t have time in our play through last night. It was getting late again by that point, so we camped before finishing up the mission because we didn’t want to make a mistake during the meeting, and we there might be skills and other Giants we could talk too if all was successful. Being sleepy we didn’t want to make any mistakes that might set us back, and force us to use the debug tool again to pull up an earlier save.
Qvaid and I had a great session later on Friday night once the gang had called it for the night. We managed to gain the Ash-Giants as allies for the Blue Chamber, and worked on the Purifier Quest line for a good bit. We choose to give Rissa the evidence we had gathered, although we did later learn there was a bit more evidence we could have gathered to perhaps improve the outcome. We also spoke with Roland again when we got back to Berg, to try and keep him in high spirits. I fear we may have missed an opportunity or two to speak with him, so I’m not sure how the Whispering Bones quest is going to go for us at this stage. After we wrapped all that up, we did some more inventory management and called it a night.
Days played: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Players: Error, Falken, Iron, Kilen, Hobbit
Comments: I started out Thursday evening with a great deal of mining resources. No one was ready to play when my schedule opened up, so I figured up some music, which I kept low enough to allow me to hear interlopers as needed, and just plowed through nodes of stone, iron, lead, nitrate, and the meager amounts of coal I came across. I also headed over to the first mine I started and fortified all the pillars for the cover as some of them still had wooden bases. After a bit of that, Falken joined, although by that time I was already doing inventory management in the base. I had quite a bit of sand being produced from stone, because we had far too much. I put more stone in the forges to allow us to make cement and too rectify the too much stone scenario as well. Falken made me some mods and helped me get up to full inventory space so I don’t have to worry about encumbrance anymore, and shortly after Iron joined us. I nabbed a level 6 SMG that Falken either found for me, or made me, grabbed a stack of beer from the wares, and some of Grandpa’s Moonshine. We all checked our gear and headed out to do a Tier 6 infestation clear that Falken had picked up from the trader. Sadly, Falken disconnected at some point mid mission, but came back in and we just finished up the mission for Iron and myself per Falken’s request. I suspect Falken’s decision was likely time related as he would be calling it relatively soon, which gave us just enough time to finish up the almost completed clear we were currently on, and resetting it, likely would have bugged Iron and I as our mission was still active. After we wrapped up the clear, we headed back to the base for inventory management (all of us were completely full) and we called it there for the evening.
On Friday evening, Falken, Iron, and I grouped up and continued the Tier 6 Infestation clear quest Falken missed out on the night before. Those take an incredible amount of ammo, and a decent amount of time, so both Falken and Iron called it a night shortly after getting back to the base and doing some inventory management.
Saturday was fairly interesting, Iron and Falken were MIA. Error, Falken, and I hopped into 7DtD for a bit of gaming, albeit the session was a bit short. We were on day 35 and nearing the time for an upcoming Blood Moon. We did some minor prep, and I finally have some level 6 steel knuckles ready to wrack some zombie faces! We called it around 20:00 hours in game to allow anyone else that may want to participate in the Blood Moon an opportunity. Due to scheduling, that pretty much meant the end of 7DtD for Saturday.
On Sunday, I noted a message from Falken trying to round up the gang to work on the day 35 Blood Moon. I didn’t see the message for a bit, but replied as soon as I did. Error, Falken, Iron, Kilen, and myself all hopped in to face off against an onslaught of zombie hordes. I have most of my build (if not all) complete by this point, and I decided to get some Fort Bites, Grandpa’s Moonshine, and some Beer, and face the zombies head on! After a bit of tagging zombies with a Desert Vulture. Error switched off the blade traps, and I ran out to the platform where I used Steel Knuckles, a pump shotgun, my ever so trusty desert vulture to keep the zombies off the hill. Ultimately, it was mostly show, we have quite a bit of turrets up, along with Falken sniping and dropping molotov’s and grenades from the horde base tower, Kilen and Iron sniping, and raining bullets with their rifles, and Error and I using a shotgun or melee for any that got close. It was still an incredible time, and since the test went relative well, I may just start the next Horde night from the platform. Would certainly help me prevent the mistake of falling onto the spike traps below during my initial attempt to get to the platform. On a strange note, we all logged and bounced the server to go back to 4 Hour days, and something went really wrong. I logged back in to get back to the base, and my character was complete reset. I bounced the server again, logged back in with the same results. I asked Error to log back in, and low and behold he was level one. I logged back in and noted it was DAY 1! After fumbling around and looking over the backups, I found some files that I restored from the server backup, and that ended up resolving it all, but it was looking fairly scary for a bit there. We stood too lose about a weeks worth of server changes, and a day or so worth of player changes. Fortunately the server file trick worked and we were right back where we left off! Iron and I discussed it, and I changed the backup script to do a server backup more frequently in case we have any more strange hiccups like that in the future.
Days played: Sunday
Players: Error, Kilen, Hobbit
Comments: Later in the evening on Sunday. Error, Kilen and I jumped into HLL for some matches. I noted quite a few of the servers I had in my favorites was gone. I’m not sure if it has anything to do with the recent Update. I checked the list thinking maybe they were full and I had that filtered out, but nope, just two of them survived what ever the change was. Sadly neither of those two had enough spots for all of us to join. We found one that seemed to have enough spots, and started with a tank crew for the 3 of us. Error had to drop a few times over the course of the session, and Kilen and I eventually move to a recon squad, where we had some success, but ultimately all the the matches we played were a defeat for the side we were on. We’ve fell into that pattern a few times before with some of the HLL servers, but this one in particular just seemed to be a rough run. Kilen was a squad officer in all cases, and he said the officer change was becoming a complete sh** show. Still fun none-the-less, but a win or so would have been nice as well. We all called it a night shortly after the last match in Recon. HLL matches are quite long in most cases, and we’d already had about 3 or 4 in total as it were.
Days played: Saturday, Sunday
Players: Error, Hobbit
Comments: Error and I struggled with a game to play on Saturday after we called it in 7DtD. Ironically, Falken asked if we’d play Minecraft if a server was setup for Minecraft. I told him, I loved the game, but so far as I knew Kilen didn’t have the game, and I honestly wasn’t sure if Error would have any interest in it. I mentioned it in passing to Error while we were trying to think of something to play, and thus the fire was sparked. Before I knew it, we were both logging into our Minecraft accounts, downloading the launcher (both Java and the Windows version), and we opted to play the Java version to start. We ended up playing it LATE into the morning of Sunday! Working on gathering materials, building our first base, which was much larger than our typical starter base, and Error even managed to wrangle up some animals, and start a farm. We ended the session by heading out to explore before sleep started to call us both and we called it after making it back to our home base.
On Sunday morning, Error and I started out the day with a bit more Minecraft. We finished up the basement we started on Saturday, and at this point all we need to do is decoration of said base, with perhaps some changes or alterations in the future as desired or needed. We called it shortly after to hit up some 7DtD with the gang, and had plans to get back to the game again later. It just so happened, he was able to make it back a bit later Sunday evening for another session. I can’t even put to words the amount of nostalgia Minecraft holds for me. Qvaid (my wife), Error (my son), my daughter, and I used to play it together quite a bit when they were younger. Qvaid and I have also had countless adventures in Minecraft a few years back. It is such a great game, and it was certainly a pleasure to be back into it and to see what all had changed, what was new, what was familiar, what was similar, and a great joy!
