This week was certainly a trial by fire for me. I made the decision to finally jump to Linux, and earlier Monday, I did some testing. Initially, I just loaded up Linux on a 100 GB partition on my desktop I made room for, and installed Steam and loaded up Outward. I had done some research and found a good portion of the games I like were running relatively well on Linux. Tuesday, I made the jump to Linux completely. Even so far as wiping the install of Windows 11 I had previously (I mean, I can go back if it doesn’t work out, right. Right?). In any case, after a few snags and some rookie mistakes on the first install attempt, I had it all going and even managed a bit of time to hit up some Minecraft with Error since Qvaid was crafting with my sister Tuesday evening. At the time of this post, I have quite a few games installed and at least tested briefly, with some pretty notable success. I’ve had quite a few solid Outward sessions, Minecraft sessions, 7 Days to Die sessions, and even a Vein session listed below. All of those games are working very nicely and friendly with Linux Mint. I have tried something around 11 or 12 games total, although the majority of those are just install, login, run around a couple minutes, and call it good for now. Some honorable mentions for games this weekend go to Hell Let Loose, and Age of Conan. Error, Kilen, and myself made attempts to play both of those. For Hell Let Loose, we just didn’t seem to be having any luck on finding a server for the 3 of us to join. Everything was either full, empty, or a foreign server (which we can’t speak the language for, and in a game where communication is key, that isn’t really an ideal situation to be in for us or them. Otherwise we have no qualms with being on a foreign server.) ;). I did also mention that on Saturday for Minecraft as well, where I explain the agenda a bit. For Age of Conan, Kilen managed some success and was playing again after a brief password reset. Error ran into issues with credentials after signing up, as he had never played the game, and I ran into the first game I’ve tried thus far since jumping to Linux. I haven’t found a manner to get it running just yet, and I’m not sure how much more time I’ll dedicate to the attempt. I’m not real big on MMOs these days, although I did love the combat style for AoC to be fair. All in all, I’m enjoying Linux so far, and I think I might just be able to make it work. I already use it on my personal laptop (which is older and better suited for Linux), but getting to see the performance of Linux on some better hardware has certainly been a pleasant experience. I will say, when you’ve ran on Windows boxes for as long as I have, there are certainly some learning curves to climb, but I’m still digging it so far! 🙂
Days played: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday
Players: Qvaid, Hobbit
Comments: Qvaid and I knew something would bring our well earned peace to an end very soon in Outward. On Monday evening, we decided to head back into Berg from the Hatchery dungeon we left off at in Chersonese. As soon as we had our foot beyond the gates of Berg, we were informed that a courier was waiting for us at the Inn! It was late (in game), and we decided to head to our home first to get some rest, and clean up our inventory. In a bit of some preparation, we went ahead and got ready to travel. I mean, we knew we were going to have to travel. The next day, we headed to the inn, and spoke with the courier. He had two letters for us from Rissa, our mother considering we chose the Blue Chamber Collective for our faction quest. I read the letter aloud in Qvaid’s presence, and it seems we were needed to head to Caldera to add Sirocco! The second letter was to be given to the nobles once we arrived. While Qvaid and I are always up for some more adventure, there was a side trip we wanted to make to Levant and the surrounding areas. With some quick research on the WiKi, (unless I’m mistaken), I found that we had time to spare so long as we had not started the quest. We shifted our patch and headed back out to Abrassar! We explored around there a bit, before heading into Levant where I picked up the Warm Boon, and Qvaid purchased some gear to cope with the desert weather. I had to swap to my Master Trader gear, which Qvaid was initially wearing as well, but she was worried about the protection the gear provides, and opted to purchase some armor off the local blacksmith to make due with both the heat and the local threats as well. I really enjoy the pouch space granted by the Master Trader gear, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I miss the Gold Lich set I was wearing even more! Once we were geared up, we headed back out into Abrassar to do some exploring as we haven’t really adventured much in the desert region prior. We managed a few good fights, and entered a dungeon with the idea to try and clear it, but sadly time had caught up to us by that point, and we headed back into Levant to stay at our newly purchased home there, rest, and prepare for the next evening of adventure!
Qvaid and I had an epic adventure on Wednesday evening after we returned to the previously mentioned, Electric Lab. We managed to clear the dungeon, solve the puzzle (after a bit of a struggle), kill the golems guarding the courtyard, and activate all those juicy ornate chests in Abrassar! It was an amazing time! After clearing the dungeon, Qvaid and I slid down the wall where she got the Werlig Spear. Another nice addition to her repertoire of weapons, I should say! From there we made our way to the Cabal Wind Tower of Abrassar, and fought off a Shell Horror that kind of took us by surprise in the lone tower. I admit we should have ‘remembered’ it was there from watching SheenShot videos, but for whatever reason, we did not. After a rough battle in a tight area with a fearsome creature (Shell Horror), we headed over to on off the other Ornate chests the Arcane Machine activated, and then back to Levant for some rest. We both got corruption during several of those last fights, and we needed to clear that up, stock up on a bit of hot weather foods, and prepare for the next set of adventures ahead. The following day, once everything was cleared up, and we were ready, we headed out into the Desert region again to allow Qvaid to test the new spear, she wanted to give a try, and collect some of the other activated Ornate chests. We managed a couple more along side of quite a bit of combat, before ultimately having to call it a night after camping near some butterflies in the Desert night. In case you didn’t know, if you place a tent amongst the butterflies, it allows you to camp AMBUSH free!
On Thursday evening, Qvaid and I finished gathering the remainder of the ornate chests we unlocked with the Arcane Machine. We also cleared the Stone Titan Cave, and had a bit of combat in the surrounding area of Abrassar. Considering it was a bit later in the evening when we started, we didn’t have quite as much time to adventure around in Outward, but we made the best of the time available. After a bit of time scouring the desert for loot and some selective combat, we headed back to Levant, where Qvaid decided to clean out her stash a bit, I too decided it might be time to clear out some gear and items I had no interest in using. We also crafted quite a few Horror Weapons, including a Horror Mace for myself. Qvaid took her pick of the lot and decided to just sell the rest to the various vendors of Levant. We picked up some more supplies, finished up the inventory management, and spent a night in our home in Levant to rest up. We saved right at the door to our base, ready to adventure again as the opportunity presents itself again.
Qvaid and I were able to play some more Outward on Sunday evening! We wandered around Abrassar a bit more and managed to defeat the Manticore near the broken ship, we cleared the Sand Rose Caves, and… well it turns out the Giant Iron Key that we figured might go to the door at the broken ship in the desert leads you too an arena fight, Qvaid and I were TOTALLY NOT prepared for. We were super excited that we found the key to what we thought might be some sort of dungeon. I remembered having a Giant Iron Key in my stash, and we headed back to Levant to grab it, but got side tracked with the Sand Rose Caves icon we noted in the right corner of the map. We finished it up and headed back to the ship. Needless to say, it was not a pretty sight when we loaded in and got absolutely wrecked by a beast golem on steroids and other illegal drugs of Aurai! We finished up the night in our home in Levant after we were rescued from the arena fate by none other than the great Gep! Inventory management and prep to start our adventures again as scheduling allows! 🙂
Days played: Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Players: Error, Hobbit
Comments: Qvaid was at my sister’s again for some crafting sessions and it just so happened that Error was off on Tuesday evening. We hopped back into the Minecraft world we recently started playing, and hit some sort of trial we found in the mine near our base. It was certainly interesting and great fun! I don’t recall seeing anything like that in the previous sessions Qvaid and I had, but that has been quite some time ago. We did get a bit of a late start, and so ultimately we didn’t have a lot of time for much else. After it was closing in on time for Error to call it, we headed back to our base, did some inventory management, and wrapped it up for the night.
On Friday evening, once Error got off work and got settled in, we hit some Minecraft again. Most of our journey consisted of exploration. I certainly enjoyed it, myself. Error and I moved from running across the vast, infinite lands in Minecraft to boat travel where needed. We ended up camping late into the earlier morning of Saturday.
Saturday, Error and I were back at the exploration again. We found numerous caves and villages along the way. Our style of travel was very much like the travel mentioned in Friday’s adventures. From land to boat mostly. We did have to eventually get back to our base to drop off our inventory and resupply on weapons, food, etc… Much like Friday’s journey, I certainly enjoyed the time spent wandering around to discover what the world had to offer. We took a break to attempt some Hell Let Loose gaming with Kilen. Unfortunately that turned into a bust, because EVERY server we came across was either 1. Full, 2. Empty, or 3. Foreign. Not that we have anything against foreign servers mind you. It’s more so that HLL is heavily reliant on communication, and it’s hard to do that if you can’t speak or understand the prominent language on the server. 🙂 Kilen bounced on us, while I was chatting with SoSirius in Discord to watch shows with his wife, and Error and I decided to give up and head back to Minecraft to finish out the night. We accidentally encountered the Warden on our travels. We ran like scared children, eventually escaping the clutches of the Dark Inducing Warden and calling it a night not long after a short bit of more exploration.
On Sunday, Error and I mostly focused on some improvements to the base, which of course, included the inventory managements. We didn’t technically finish up all the projects we started as at some point we got distracted with Kilen and attempted to play another game, which I listed in the honorable mentions of games above.
Days played: Thursday, Friday
Players: Falken, Iron, Hobbit
Comments: We were all initially under the impression we had a Horde Night coming soon when we started our 7DtD adventures on Thursday evening. In a bit of irony, none of us really checked the ‘day’ we were on, only the time. We knew we had enough time to run a Tier 6 Infestation mission from the trader, and thus we were off to a new Military Base POI. Falken, Iron, and I managed to clear it to completion, although I’ll say the number of zombies for that POI is quite a bit of work! It was a grand time, and we managed to come out relatively unscuffed, save for a sprained, and later broken leg I suffered near the start of the mission. I’m using a melee build mostly, so I guess I took a bit too many hits over all. I was able to grab a plaster cast from Iron’s drone, and get fixed right up. By the time we completed the mission, I was all healed up. We headed back to the base, and effectively called it a night after the inventory management came to a close.
Friday evening, Falken, Iron, and I picked back up for some 7 Days to Die with another Tier 6 mission from the trader. This time it was a Pop N Pills POI. We managed to clear it through the night of Day 41, and after a successful, yet entertaining run, we headed back to the base for some more inventory management. Falken and Iron were calling it after that, so I called it as well, since I didn’t want to burn time so close to a Horde Night. We are at the start of Day 42 after completing all of the above mentioned shenanigans.
Days played: Saturday
Players: Error, Kilen, Hobbit
Comments: Due to unforeseen circumstances on Saturday, we had to start over on VEIN. I reloaded my desktop to a Linux distro, and I’ve been testing gaming on the OS. It has went relatively well, all things considered. However, due to that, I lost the previous save. In truth, I just didn’t bother to pull the save file when I went to reload. Vein is still in really early stages, and has some really bad multiplayer bugs. I’m not sure if those bugs exist with a dedicated server, but we’ve been playing on my box for multiplayer. In a bit of irony, the game did seem to play much longer before the performance hits came, but come they did, and they came in hard. When it hit, it almost locked up my pc. I had to use a command in Linux to ‘reboot’ it gracefully. The session was fun, albeit, full of interruptions and afks for Error and I. Kilen did quite a bit of testing, while we were away though. Vein holds potential to be a contender of some sort, if the small dev team involved can track down this multiplayer bug and knock it out. It’s still quite a bit behind, and given the size of the dev team, it’s been a slow process on the games progression. I say that with a sense of understanding though. I realize these two devs have lives and other things they have to attend too. It’s not a knock at the game or the games progress, just an observation from someone that loves to game.
