Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here. My adventures continued in another quite short session the next day. I actually spent a fair bit of my available time searching GalNet or gossiping with the pilots of Mobius on voice comms instead of flying ships. When I did get out into space there was plenty of action to be had!
All my available money was spent upgrading my Eagle. While not every component was A rated, all the core systems were. My first trip for the session had a fit something like this:
http://coriolis.io/outfit/eagle/22A3A3D1D2A2D2C0p120p0mB42725-.Iw1-EA==.IwBhrSrI
A gimballed beam on the top mounted hardpoint and two burst lasers on the underside, powered by A rated power plant and distributor sure dish out the damage. Heat started to become a problem in longer combats but was still manageable.
The Eagle, even with a top tier fit out is still a tiny fragile ship. Taking it out to a High intensity RES site rather than the Low RES I had previously visited was possibly misguided. Initially things were going great – my first kill was an Anaconda with just under 200k bounty, quickly followed by a Python at about 130k. After that things got a little hairy as I hunted a Fer De Lance and his wingman.
The FDL was reasonably easy to take down with the assistance of a couple of police fighters, but I was so focussed on staying out of his firing arc that I didn’t notice his wingman had finished off his police target and was firing on my flank. I thought I had just caught a couple of stray shots from the FDL but was actually taking withering fire from the wingman. The shields vanished quickly and hull plating was boiling away before I managed to pop the Fer De Lance and bring guns to bear on the wingman – who was flying a Vulture! No wonder he hit hard!
Vulture class ships are a heavy space superiority fighter. Not quite as agile as Eagles or Vipers they still manage to duck and weave pretty well and are very heavily armed for their size, with two Class 3 weapons. They also generally are heavily shielded and can have heavy armour as well – certainly a lot tougher than a half-dead Eagle! This one however was substantially damaged by the battles with police craft and I managed to out-fly him long enough to secure the victory.
Back in Haxel port after repair and refuel I revisited the outfitters to swap out the burst lasers for the pair of gimballed pulse I had used previously. They do slightly less damage but are a lot easier to manage the heat buildup. I also remembered to change my paint job for the Tactical Crimson instead of the Cobalt.
After a bit of R&R in the station I headed back out to the High RES. This time the pickings were fairly slim. I don’t even remember what ships I killed, but it was under 150k worth for several ships. The police group I was following engaged a pair of Imperial Clippers in a wing while I was chasing down a pirate Cobra Mk III. Once I had the Cobra down I assisted a pair of police on what looked to be the weaker Clipper. He was down to about 25% hull when I started taking shots from his turreted weapon but my shield regeneration was coping ok. By the time we had him down to the low teens however, his friend had finished off the three police ships that had kept the wingman busy and suddenly I was the focus of two Imperial Clippers.
Turreted weapons do a bit less damage than gimballed or fixed weapons of the same size and type but it was still more than enough to shred my remaining shields and start boiling hull plates. Four pips assigned to engines and two to system plus spamming the boost button just barely got me out of there in time. I made a very cautious landing at Haxel Port with 1% hull remaining!
After repairs and refuel, on the advice of CMDR Wife_Aggro from Mobius, I sold off my modules and exchanged my eagle for a Viper Mk IV with a mid-range fit-out of mostly C class equipment. My current net worth is just under 2 Million credits which I hope to expand more once I get this message posted. (No pictures this time. I've managed to delete the entire camera roll while tidying up previous shots!)
- CMDR Maya Ulniian 21st April 3302
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Elite Dangerous Session 2
Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here.
At the end of my last report, I had just purchased an Eagle class light fighter and given it some minimal upgrades after trading in my Sidewinder. A brief shakedown cruise out to the Low RES netted a few hundred thousand in bounties before I ended the day. This report is about my second fairly short session behind the flight stick.
The first thing I did was visit the outfitters to upgrade a few items and apply a new paint job. I have a selection of different paint jobs for some of the cheaper ships as part of my pilot's graduation package, so I may as well show them off! I had also earned the first of hopefully many rank commendations from the Pilot’s Federation – a “Mostly Harmless” rating for combat. I applied the permitted decal to my ship as well.
Once done with the outfitters, I launched again for my favourite Low RES looking for more bounties. Very quickly I was in luck with an Anaconda on scan and fairly soon after, a bounty claim on record. This was followed by a pair of Pythons, who for some reason were fighting each other, and their Imperial Eagle wingman. The IEagle popped almost immediately – I think I got in a lucky shot that disabled their drives so they couldn’t manoeuvre properly – but the pythons took quite a while even with them shooting each other.
For a time there bounties dried up and the only ships available were innocent miners or several waves of police ships. Thankfully I’ve now killed enough pirates that the local police faction considers me friendly and their ships now display in green on my radar. Eventually some miners left and some new ships arrived. I hunted down quite a few smaller ships – Sidewinders, Adders and a few IEagles as well as a pair of rogue Viper Mk III’s for mostly small bounties. A hostile Asp showed up with a pair of eagles as wingmen. They engaged one of the mining ships which then attracted police attention and I gleefully picked off the weakest ships.
A neutral Python was under attack by two separate wings of small ships and I barely managed to save him by killing four of the hostiles and driving off the other two into jumping out. Unfortunately the Python was severely damaged and his shield was disabled. A reckless police ship collided with the lumbering Python and that was sufficient to explode his power plant. So much for my rescue!
I had taken a little damage in that last fight and was running out of time anyway so I stowed weapons and cruised on back to the station. Bounties claimed and ship repaired, my status looks like this at the end of session 2:
At the end of my last report, I had just purchased an Eagle class light fighter and given it some minimal upgrades after trading in my Sidewinder. A brief shakedown cruise out to the Low RES netted a few hundred thousand in bounties before I ended the day. This report is about my second fairly short session behind the flight stick.
The first thing I did was visit the outfitters to upgrade a few items and apply a new paint job. I have a selection of different paint jobs for some of the cheaper ships as part of my pilot's graduation package, so I may as well show them off! I had also earned the first of hopefully many rank commendations from the Pilot’s Federation – a “Mostly Harmless” rating for combat. I applied the permitted decal to my ship as well.
Once done with the outfitters, I launched again for my favourite Low RES looking for more bounties. Very quickly I was in luck with an Anaconda on scan and fairly soon after, a bounty claim on record. This was followed by a pair of Pythons, who for some reason were fighting each other, and their Imperial Eagle wingman. The IEagle popped almost immediately – I think I got in a lucky shot that disabled their drives so they couldn’t manoeuvre properly – but the pythons took quite a while even with them shooting each other.
For a time there bounties dried up and the only ships available were innocent miners or several waves of police ships. Thankfully I’ve now killed enough pirates that the local police faction considers me friendly and their ships now display in green on my radar. Eventually some miners left and some new ships arrived. I hunted down quite a few smaller ships – Sidewinders, Adders and a few IEagles as well as a pair of rogue Viper Mk III’s for mostly small bounties. A hostile Asp showed up with a pair of eagles as wingmen. They engaged one of the mining ships which then attracted police attention and I gleefully picked off the weakest ships.
A neutral Python was under attack by two separate wings of small ships and I barely managed to save him by killing four of the hostiles and driving off the other two into jumping out. Unfortunately the Python was severely damaged and his shield was disabled. A reckless police ship collided with the lumbering Python and that was sufficient to explode his power plant. So much for my rescue!
I had taken a little damage in that last fight and was running out of time anyway so I stowed weapons and cruised on back to the station. Bounties claimed and ship repaired, my status looks like this at the end of session 2:
Elite Dangerous Session 1
So there I was: Maya Ulniian, a freshly graduated and newly minted member of the Pilot's Federation with no money and few prospects. Unlike most of my fellow graduates, I was not to be drafted into the Navy, or take up a position with one of the corporate interests. A top one percent finish was not enough to make up for the lack of family connections. My inheritance from my parents was all gone, eaten up by tuition fees and living expenses. Whilst there were jobs available with the second and third tier mining or freight companies, most wanted more experience or reputation than I had, or the offered pay was so low that it wouldn’t cover basic expenses. Things were beginning to look fairly desperate.
Perhaps this was why the dodgy looking communication from J. Sneer, of Sue, Cripple & Sneer, Solicitors stood out from all the usual scams. A free ship with comprehensive insurance as well as a small credit transfer from an unknown benefactor. The attached message was intriguing as well:
ATTACHMENT-01
You may be puzzled right now as to why you’ve just received this little windfall. Nothing wrong with that – I’d be worried if you weren’t.
But now get ready for lesson number one. When a golden opportunity comes your way – and trust me, they’re few and far between, my friend – reach out and grab it with both hands. Sometimes it’s clever to ask questions, and sometimes it’s not. This time it’s not.
All you need to know is that my organisation has a very specific remit: to seek out those who have the potential to become real movers and shakers, those precious few with the talent to mould and shape the galaxy around them, to create change on a grand scale.
We find them, and then we test them. Consider this your test.
Take the ship. Take the money. No strings, no hidden clauses. Do with them what you will.
Blaze your own trail.
Impress me, perhaps you’ll learn more.
A Friend
The ship turned out to be a Sidewinder class starship equipped with a pair of gimballed pulse lasers, a discovery scanner and a small cargo bay. All I had to do was appear at Trevithick Dock, LHS 3447, present my access code and the ship was mine. With nothing better on the horizon, that’s what I did.
LHS 3447 was in a state of civil war when I arrived. Trevithick Dock itself was directly affected, and its commodities market was shut off. This severely limited my options as a brand new Commander. Trade insystem may have been possible at the various other settlements but the high number of conflict sites put me off even attempting anything. Plus, the very limited cargo space and funds available make trading a slow option at best.
There was plenty of work for a combat pilot by picking one of the opposing factions and fighting at a conflict zone but this is not a likely option for me in a very fragile Sidewinder.
LHS 3447 also suffers very long distances between its stations so there is a lot of wasted travel time.
I had heard that there was decent money to be made collecting bounties at the Resource Extraction Sites in the nearby system LTT 15574 so I fired up my nav computer and plotted a route.
First I jumped to Eravate, then to Kini. In Kini, my discovery scanner found both stars listed as undiscovered so I took the time to scan them both. Just before jumping out after scanning Kini B star, I was interdicted by a Dangerous rated Adder pilot. Adrenalin flowing, I deployed weapons and engaged. He had the initial advantage and managed to knock out my shields on the first pass but I was then able to sit on his tail out of his field of fire and plink away at him. It took a while but his shield failed under my lasers, then his hull slowly boiled away. Since Kini is an anarchy system and I had no kill warrant scanner, there was no applicable bounty.
After another uneventful jump I arrived in LTT 15574 and immediately set course for Haxel Port. This station was to be my base of operations for some time to come since it was relatively close to the RES sites on the nearby rings. After a quick supercruise trip insystem I arrived at Haxel port. Docking permission requested and then granted, I flew on in and landed my ship at the relevant docking bay.
A quick refuel and repair set me back nearly 300 credits. This would further reduce my chances of making a living as a trader. I was desperate to get a good start Bounty Hunting. RES sites come in 4 varieties, helpfully noted on your ship’s nav computer. Low intensity RES sites tend to have lower ranked enemies and more regular patrols by the local security forces. High intensity RES sites are more challenging, with higher ranked enemies often in the larger ship types and less frequent security patrols. Hazardous RES sites are tougher again and are so hostile the local cops avoid the place. A RES site without one of these labels is a middling affair, somewhere between Low and High RES in difficulty. For me in my low powered beginner ship, one of the two local Low RES sites was looking good.
After a brief systems check I launched my trusty sidewinder out the letterbox gateway of Haxel Port, boosted away from the mass-lock zone and made the shift to supercruise. Haxel Port is a little over 90 light-seconds away from the ring system of LTT 15575 5– a muddy brown class II gas planet. As I flew closer I noticed that the Low RES I had chosen was right on the edge of the ring within the shadow of the planet. On dropping from supercruise at the site it was clearly well within the “night” time and visibility of the asteroids was a problem. Still, I checked my scanners for any likely bounties. There was nothing but a few miners and a lonely System Defence boat so I flew out of the rocks and back into supercruise headed for the other low RES.
Of course, this other RES site was located on the opposite side of the planet. My path took me over the northern pole which gave a spectacular view but also severely interfered with the frame shift drive, slowing progress dramatically. Eventually I arrived back at the ring and dropped out of supercruise about 15km from the beacon. Almost immediately ships started appearing on scanner.
Oh joy! The first “wanted” ship on scan in my career was a “Dangerous” Anaconda with an 80k bounty – and he was already heavily engaged with the local police! I quickly deployed my guns and raced over towards the conflict. By the time I was in range, the ‘conda’s shield was gone and hull was down to about 60%. I added my feeble firepower to the fray while staying well out of the firing arc of his guns and soon he was down! Almost immediately, a somewhat smaller Python craft opened fire on the police and I was able to join in on that as well. Another 50k bounty! At this point I was considering jumping back to station to hand in and had retracted hardpoints when I saw a damaged Fer De Lance on scan. His health was going down fast, so I charged over and fired as soon as in range. That was a terrible mistake!
The Pilot’s Federation only credits kills if your scanner has completed at least a basic scan on a target. However, if you don’t wait long enough and attack before that wanted status is confirmed, you are treated as having attacked an innocent party and your own computer flags you as “Wanted” to all in the system. This is the case even if your target is under attack by the local cops – as I found out to my horror. I needed to get away, let the heat die down and pay any fines from somewhere nice and quiet. I stowed weapons, put all power to engines and started spamming the emergency boost button to get out of there all to no avail. The 5 or so police ships finished off the Fer De Lance then focussed fire on me. My shield lasted about 2 seconds. The Sidewinder hull melted almost instantly and I was forcefully ejected into space.
When next I opened my eyes, I was being presented with the insurance paperwork to replace my ship and forcing me to take out a loan. After all that excitement I was pretty much back to where I started. No bounties to claim, no cartographic information to sell but at least I was alive.
I admit I considered trying trading as a slower but safer option given my near death experience but decided to risk it all again. This time, I arrived at the RES site with a lot more caution. My first few targets were Asp Explorers with 30k bounties, then a couple of smaller ships worth only a few thousand, but this soon built up to over 100k. The contacts office at Haxel Port was glad to trade in the kill vouchers for cold hard credits which I promptly spent at the outfitters.
I upgraded most modules from the standard E rated stuff to the lightweight and usually more powerful D rated gear. I splashed out and upgraded my power distributor to the best A rated module available – a very significant boost to ship performance.
The upgraded Sidewinder performed brilliantly on my next trip to the RES. There were a couple more Pythons and an Anaconda menacing the local miners but the local police and my upgraded ship made short work of them. With a much healthier credit balance I hit the shipyard and outfitters again.
My current ship is an Eagle – a wonderful light fighter. So far I’ve only made a single brief run out to the RES but it is clearly a vast improvement over the Sidewinder. I’ll be back working on it once I get this message posted!
- CMDR Maya Ulniian 19th April 3302
Coriolis link to current Eagle fit
http://coriolis.io/outfit/eagle/02C3C3D1D2A2D2C1818180mB400--.Iw1-EA==.IwBhrSrI
Perhaps this was why the dodgy looking communication from J. Sneer, of Sue, Cripple & Sneer, Solicitors stood out from all the usual scams. A free ship with comprehensive insurance as well as a small credit transfer from an unknown benefactor. The attached message was intriguing as well:
ATTACHMENT-01
You may be puzzled right now as to why you’ve just received this little windfall. Nothing wrong with that – I’d be worried if you weren’t.
But now get ready for lesson number one. When a golden opportunity comes your way – and trust me, they’re few and far between, my friend – reach out and grab it with both hands. Sometimes it’s clever to ask questions, and sometimes it’s not. This time it’s not.
All you need to know is that my organisation has a very specific remit: to seek out those who have the potential to become real movers and shakers, those precious few with the talent to mould and shape the galaxy around them, to create change on a grand scale.
We find them, and then we test them. Consider this your test.
Take the ship. Take the money. No strings, no hidden clauses. Do with them what you will.
Blaze your own trail.
Impress me, perhaps you’ll learn more.
A Friend
The ship turned out to be a Sidewinder class starship equipped with a pair of gimballed pulse lasers, a discovery scanner and a small cargo bay. All I had to do was appear at Trevithick Dock, LHS 3447, present my access code and the ship was mine. With nothing better on the horizon, that’s what I did.
LHS 3447 was in a state of civil war when I arrived. Trevithick Dock itself was directly affected, and its commodities market was shut off. This severely limited my options as a brand new Commander. Trade insystem may have been possible at the various other settlements but the high number of conflict sites put me off even attempting anything. Plus, the very limited cargo space and funds available make trading a slow option at best.
There was plenty of work for a combat pilot by picking one of the opposing factions and fighting at a conflict zone but this is not a likely option for me in a very fragile Sidewinder.
LHS 3447 also suffers very long distances between its stations so there is a lot of wasted travel time.
I had heard that there was decent money to be made collecting bounties at the Resource Extraction Sites in the nearby system LTT 15574 so I fired up my nav computer and plotted a route.
First I jumped to Eravate, then to Kini. In Kini, my discovery scanner found both stars listed as undiscovered so I took the time to scan them both. Just before jumping out after scanning Kini B star, I was interdicted by a Dangerous rated Adder pilot. Adrenalin flowing, I deployed weapons and engaged. He had the initial advantage and managed to knock out my shields on the first pass but I was then able to sit on his tail out of his field of fire and plink away at him. It took a while but his shield failed under my lasers, then his hull slowly boiled away. Since Kini is an anarchy system and I had no kill warrant scanner, there was no applicable bounty.
After another uneventful jump I arrived in LTT 15574 and immediately set course for Haxel Port. This station was to be my base of operations for some time to come since it was relatively close to the RES sites on the nearby rings. After a quick supercruise trip insystem I arrived at Haxel port. Docking permission requested and then granted, I flew on in and landed my ship at the relevant docking bay.
A quick refuel and repair set me back nearly 300 credits. This would further reduce my chances of making a living as a trader. I was desperate to get a good start Bounty Hunting. RES sites come in 4 varieties, helpfully noted on your ship’s nav computer. Low intensity RES sites tend to have lower ranked enemies and more regular patrols by the local security forces. High intensity RES sites are more challenging, with higher ranked enemies often in the larger ship types and less frequent security patrols. Hazardous RES sites are tougher again and are so hostile the local cops avoid the place. A RES site without one of these labels is a middling affair, somewhere between Low and High RES in difficulty. For me in my low powered beginner ship, one of the two local Low RES sites was looking good.
After a brief systems check I launched my trusty sidewinder out the letterbox gateway of Haxel Port, boosted away from the mass-lock zone and made the shift to supercruise. Haxel Port is a little over 90 light-seconds away from the ring system of LTT 15575 5– a muddy brown class II gas planet. As I flew closer I noticed that the Low RES I had chosen was right on the edge of the ring within the shadow of the planet. On dropping from supercruise at the site it was clearly well within the “night” time and visibility of the asteroids was a problem. Still, I checked my scanners for any likely bounties. There was nothing but a few miners and a lonely System Defence boat so I flew out of the rocks and back into supercruise headed for the other low RES.
Of course, this other RES site was located on the opposite side of the planet. My path took me over the northern pole which gave a spectacular view but also severely interfered with the frame shift drive, slowing progress dramatically. Eventually I arrived back at the ring and dropped out of supercruise about 15km from the beacon. Almost immediately ships started appearing on scanner.
Oh joy! The first “wanted” ship on scan in my career was a “Dangerous” Anaconda with an 80k bounty – and he was already heavily engaged with the local police! I quickly deployed my guns and raced over towards the conflict. By the time I was in range, the ‘conda’s shield was gone and hull was down to about 60%. I added my feeble firepower to the fray while staying well out of the firing arc of his guns and soon he was down! Almost immediately, a somewhat smaller Python craft opened fire on the police and I was able to join in on that as well. Another 50k bounty! At this point I was considering jumping back to station to hand in and had retracted hardpoints when I saw a damaged Fer De Lance on scan. His health was going down fast, so I charged over and fired as soon as in range. That was a terrible mistake!
The Pilot’s Federation only credits kills if your scanner has completed at least a basic scan on a target. However, if you don’t wait long enough and attack before that wanted status is confirmed, you are treated as having attacked an innocent party and your own computer flags you as “Wanted” to all in the system. This is the case even if your target is under attack by the local cops – as I found out to my horror. I needed to get away, let the heat die down and pay any fines from somewhere nice and quiet. I stowed weapons, put all power to engines and started spamming the emergency boost button to get out of there all to no avail. The 5 or so police ships finished off the Fer De Lance then focussed fire on me. My shield lasted about 2 seconds. The Sidewinder hull melted almost instantly and I was forcefully ejected into space.
When next I opened my eyes, I was being presented with the insurance paperwork to replace my ship and forcing me to take out a loan. After all that excitement I was pretty much back to where I started. No bounties to claim, no cartographic information to sell but at least I was alive.
I admit I considered trying trading as a slower but safer option given my near death experience but decided to risk it all again. This time, I arrived at the RES site with a lot more caution. My first few targets were Asp Explorers with 30k bounties, then a couple of smaller ships worth only a few thousand, but this soon built up to over 100k. The contacts office at Haxel Port was glad to trade in the kill vouchers for cold hard credits which I promptly spent at the outfitters.
I upgraded most modules from the standard E rated stuff to the lightweight and usually more powerful D rated gear. I splashed out and upgraded my power distributor to the best A rated module available – a very significant boost to ship performance.
The upgraded Sidewinder performed brilliantly on my next trip to the RES. There were a couple more Pythons and an Anaconda menacing the local miners but the local police and my upgraded ship made short work of them. With a much healthier credit balance I hit the shipyard and outfitters again.
My current ship is an Eagle – a wonderful light fighter. So far I’ve only made a single brief run out to the RES but it is clearly a vast improvement over the Sidewinder. I’ll be back working on it once I get this message posted!
- CMDR Maya Ulniian 19th April 3302
Coriolis link to current Eagle fit
http://coriolis.io/outfit/eagle/02C3C3D1D2A2D2C1818180mB400--.Iw1-EA==.IwBhrSrI
Monday, April 18, 2016
Checking out Elite Dangerous
I've been playing a fair bit of Elite: Dangerous lately after years of MMOs. I still play some WOW, quite a bit of SWTOR and dabble in RIFT and some others but am looking a bit further afield more recently.
Elite: Dangerous is a space flight sim that attempts to model the entire Milky Way galaxy. They seem to have included most known stars fairly accurately as well as bringing in key systems (Lave, Diso etc) from earlier game versions. The rest of the galaxy is generated procedurally based on real information. Like previous games in the series, you are free to trade, fight or explore pretty much wherever you want.
Progression in the game is primarily by getting money and then upgrading your ship or buying new ones. There are about 30 different ships to choose from. They have a certain level of specialisation amongst them, some being optimized for combat, others big cargo ships. Several are designed for long exploration trips and others are generalist designs. Upgraded modules and weapons as well as limitations in fitting allow for a fair variety of builds. No ship has room for every desired module meaning that no one build will be perfect for everything.
The price of ships and modules in each category means it will take a reasonably long time to get the best of everything. Money gathering at each stage seems to match fairly well the requirements for the next meaning that there is a constant rate of progression despite things being monumentally expensive at the top end. There is also a certain incentive to revisit earlier ships at times for fun, even if money gathering suffers somewhat.
One limitation with the game is that you are restricted to one Commander at a time. You can delete it if you want but you lose all progress and the long grind for money you may have already performed. This means it’s hard to go back to the start and experiment with other options, or to have one commander specialise in combat and another off exploring for months on end.
This limitation is why I've just recently bought a second account and may document my adventures here.
Elite: Dangerous is a space flight sim that attempts to model the entire Milky Way galaxy. They seem to have included most known stars fairly accurately as well as bringing in key systems (Lave, Diso etc) from earlier game versions. The rest of the galaxy is generated procedurally based on real information. Like previous games in the series, you are free to trade, fight or explore pretty much wherever you want.
Progression in the game is primarily by getting money and then upgrading your ship or buying new ones. There are about 30 different ships to choose from. They have a certain level of specialisation amongst them, some being optimized for combat, others big cargo ships. Several are designed for long exploration trips and others are generalist designs. Upgraded modules and weapons as well as limitations in fitting allow for a fair variety of builds. No ship has room for every desired module meaning that no one build will be perfect for everything.
The price of ships and modules in each category means it will take a reasonably long time to get the best of everything. Money gathering at each stage seems to match fairly well the requirements for the next meaning that there is a constant rate of progression despite things being monumentally expensive at the top end. There is also a certain incentive to revisit earlier ships at times for fun, even if money gathering suffers somewhat.
One limitation with the game is that you are restricted to one Commander at a time. You can delete it if you want but you lose all progress and the long grind for money you may have already performed. This means it’s hard to go back to the start and experiment with other options, or to have one commander specialise in combat and another off exploring for months on end.
This limitation is why I've just recently bought a second account and may document my adventures here.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Still going!
I've just posted a whole lot of RP information for my wow characters on "The Team" page.
Wow is still a game that holds a lot of interest for me and I'm online when I can every few days but I have Real Life commitments in the form of a newborn daughter. I may post more game related stuff here when motivation strikes but it wont be anything like regularly!
Wow is still a game that holds a lot of interest for me and I'm online when I can every few days but I have Real Life commitments in the form of a newborn daughter. I may post more game related stuff here when motivation strikes but it wont be anything like regularly!
Monday, October 18, 2010
not quite dead
Obviously I haven't updated this recently. That doesn't mean I've stopped playing WoW or even contemplating updating this place though. The release of the pre-Cata 4.01 patch is probably the most recent event for me - I should get back and revise my hunter pet information since a whole lot of changes have been made.
The other thing I've been doing in game has been Recruit-a-Friend and now dual-boxing. I now get to be a poor-ish player on two toons instead of one - but I'm having a blast doing so!
If anyone wants to chase me down I'm most often on Dath'Remar, Moon Guard, or Nessingwary servers.
I'm also still playing AION whenever the mood strikes me and have maintained my Eve accounts.
More updates "soon".
The other thing I've been doing in game has been Recruit-a-Friend and now dual-boxing. I now get to be a poor-ish player on two toons instead of one - but I'm having a blast doing so!
If anyone wants to chase me down I'm most often on Dath'Remar, Moon Guard, or Nessingwary servers.
I'm also still playing AION whenever the mood strikes me and have maintained my Eve accounts.
More updates "soon".
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Disbelieving Suspenders
One of the key things in role-play and indeed any storytelling is maintaining the audience's "suspension of disbelief". This is perhaps all the more difficult when you yourself are part of the "audience". Suspension of disbelief is where an audience is willing to overlook certain aspects in order to be entertained. We as players of online computer games overlook many obviously unrealistic things in order to immerse ourselves in the story. Some of these are limitations with computer gaming - non-realistic graphics and sound, clunky keyboard/mouse interface etc. Others are inherent in the genre of fantasy - elves, trolls, dragons not being things we can experience in our real lives.
As players of an online fantasy game, we willingly suspend our disbelief in these things to take part in an enjoyable experience. Familiarity with other fantasy stories and movies means that we are unsurprised at non-human races, that dragons exist and can fly, or that magic has practical applications. All these are accepted as part of the new "world" we are involved in.
Where things break down however is the introduction of something well beyond our newly accepted framework. Instanced dungeons is one of the main "belief suspenders" in WoW and similar games.
How do you rationalise the "fact" that Ragefire Chasm and Stockades, instanced dungeons in the main Horde and Alliance capitals, are STILL full of hostiles, more than 5 years after WoW's release? Surely someone would have cleared them out by now?
How can my rogue claim to have cleared the place, and have an achievement to prove it, yet your priest also make the same statement, at a different time?
As you can see, issues like these can make or break your immersion into the story. There are a fair number of these issues imposed on us because of the nature of online computer gaming.
(not finished, but published so I embarrass myself into working on it later!)
As players of an online fantasy game, we willingly suspend our disbelief in these things to take part in an enjoyable experience. Familiarity with other fantasy stories and movies means that we are unsurprised at non-human races, that dragons exist and can fly, or that magic has practical applications. All these are accepted as part of the new "world" we are involved in.
Where things break down however is the introduction of something well beyond our newly accepted framework. Instanced dungeons is one of the main "belief suspenders" in WoW and similar games.
How do you rationalise the "fact" that Ragefire Chasm and Stockades, instanced dungeons in the main Horde and Alliance capitals, are STILL full of hostiles, more than 5 years after WoW's release? Surely someone would have cleared them out by now?
How can my rogue claim to have cleared the place, and have an achievement to prove it, yet your priest also make the same statement, at a different time?
As you can see, issues like these can make or break your immersion into the story. There are a fair number of these issues imposed on us because of the nature of online computer gaming.
(not finished, but published so I embarrass myself into working on it later!)
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Musings on morality
This post is a part of my preliminary thinking for the backgrounds of my newest roleplay characters. A long term friend and officer on my Dath'Remar guild has convinced me to join his roleplay guild over on Moon Guard, so I've erased several alts on unused servers and created:
Cryptbred, a gnome male Deathknight,
Satrith, a gnome female Warlock,
Helacea, a draenei female Hunter.
Don't worry about their gear or levels; I've barely started working on any of that.
The guild The Tainted Legion has several members with well developed RP that I'm only starting to get my head around. The legion itself is pro-Alliance, but more willing to "do what must be done". It has a high number of deathknights and warlocks in its ranks, as well as disillusioned or fallen paladins. I had chosen my characters based most on what I enjoy playing rather than what would fit the guild but it looks like they will fit in easily. It will be a challenge to create distinct personalities for each that don't rely on too many clichés.
Concepts of good and evil, honour, loyalty, duty, pride, regret, remorse, vengeance and others are all things to think about. Warlocks and deathknights use powers that are viewed as evil by most. Some warlocks are described as mages that were lured to the "dark" side by easy power. Deathknights were once significant heroes of their faction that fell in battles against the scrounge and were raised as minions of Arthas. Though now supposedly free-willed, their skills and powers are definitely of darker aspect. It would be fairly far-fetched to portray either class as a do-gooder. The best most can do is to minimise the harm done.
Cryptbred and Satrith are both gnomes, sometimes described as lacking understanding of good or evil. Most gnomes are not deliberately harmful to others but can be blindly focussed on their goals and cause destruction as a side effect of seeking what they want. In Crypt's case, hes been recently freed of evil control and is likely still seriously confused.
I will continue posting later but will publish as is to spur further ideas. feel free to comment!
Cryptbred, a gnome male Deathknight,
Satrith, a gnome female Warlock,
Helacea, a draenei female Hunter.
Don't worry about their gear or levels; I've barely started working on any of that.
The guild The Tainted Legion has several members with well developed RP that I'm only starting to get my head around. The legion itself is pro-Alliance, but more willing to "do what must be done". It has a high number of deathknights and warlocks in its ranks, as well as disillusioned or fallen paladins. I had chosen my characters based most on what I enjoy playing rather than what would fit the guild but it looks like they will fit in easily. It will be a challenge to create distinct personalities for each that don't rely on too many clichés.
Concepts of good and evil, honour, loyalty, duty, pride, regret, remorse, vengeance and others are all things to think about. Warlocks and deathknights use powers that are viewed as evil by most. Some warlocks are described as mages that were lured to the "dark" side by easy power. Deathknights were once significant heroes of their faction that fell in battles against the scrounge and were raised as minions of Arthas. Though now supposedly free-willed, their skills and powers are definitely of darker aspect. It would be fairly far-fetched to portray either class as a do-gooder. The best most can do is to minimise the harm done.
Cryptbred and Satrith are both gnomes, sometimes described as lacking understanding of good or evil. Most gnomes are not deliberately harmful to others but can be blindly focussed on their goals and cause destruction as a side effect of seeking what they want. In Crypt's case, hes been recently freed of evil control and is likely still seriously confused.
I will continue posting later but will publish as is to spur further ideas. feel free to comment!
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Faster?
There are several theories out there about the best method for faster levelling. One theory is that killing "hard" monsters at or just above your level earns more experience per hour than killing easier ones a couple of levels below. I set out to test this theory recently on a couple of lower level alts. The results are inconclusive.
My testing was done on a level 25 warrior and 26 priest. Both were fully rested and have unexceptional gear. No heirloom items were used.
The warrior started out killing the level 20-22 humans at Durnholde keep. Syndicate Watchman for example. These guys showed up as green difficulty. After 30 minutes of slaughter, he'd gained about 12,000 exp. Unfortunately my noob warrior skills got him killed 3 times. The corpse runs were relatively short so should not impact too much on the end result.
After repairs and handing in relevant quests, the now level 26 warrior moved on to killing the farmers and townsmen over at Hillsbrad Fields. These guys are anywhere from 22-28 and the ones I was mostly killing were about level 26. After another 30 minutes of slaughter, this time with no deaths, he'd gained about 11,800 exp.
The easier kills earned slightly more exp, even with the unfortunate character deaths. Both grinding areas are fairly densely populated so there was little time between encounters.
I killed lots of the same farmers with the priest a little later. She kills things slower since there was a lot of drinking between battles. The kills were rated as green or yellow. I didn't record the starting values for experience so I'm not sure just how much she gained in the 30 minute test but it felt like a similar amount to the warrior.
The priest tried to move on to killing the tougher guys in the azurelode mines. The high density of mobs and the fact that they flee when low in health made this really tough. No deaths were suffered but the rate of kills was very much slower. I feel the warrior may make better headway in this area.
The numbers don't really come out clearly in favour of any strategy being superior. There may be a slight edge to killing the easier mobs since the higher number of kills offsets the lower experience per kill. I didn't test the effects of questing on the rate of gain. Again there is probably a slight edge to quickly completing the easier quests. Though its satisfying to kill orange and red mobs its just not efficient.
My testing was done on a level 25 warrior and 26 priest. Both were fully rested and have unexceptional gear. No heirloom items were used.
The warrior started out killing the level 20-22 humans at Durnholde keep. Syndicate Watchman for example. These guys showed up as green difficulty. After 30 minutes of slaughter, he'd gained about 12,000 exp. Unfortunately my noob warrior skills got him killed 3 times. The corpse runs were relatively short so should not impact too much on the end result.
After repairs and handing in relevant quests, the now level 26 warrior moved on to killing the farmers and townsmen over at Hillsbrad Fields. These guys are anywhere from 22-28 and the ones I was mostly killing were about level 26. After another 30 minutes of slaughter, this time with no deaths, he'd gained about 11,800 exp.
The easier kills earned slightly more exp, even with the unfortunate character deaths. Both grinding areas are fairly densely populated so there was little time between encounters.
I killed lots of the same farmers with the priest a little later. She kills things slower since there was a lot of drinking between battles. The kills were rated as green or yellow. I didn't record the starting values for experience so I'm not sure just how much she gained in the 30 minute test but it felt like a similar amount to the warrior.
The priest tried to move on to killing the tougher guys in the azurelode mines. The high density of mobs and the fact that they flee when low in health made this really tough. No deaths were suffered but the rate of kills was very much slower. I feel the warrior may make better headway in this area.
The numbers don't really come out clearly in favour of any strategy being superior. There may be a slight edge to killing the easier mobs since the higher number of kills offsets the lower experience per kill. I didn't test the effects of questing on the rate of gain. Again there is probably a slight edge to quickly completing the easier quests. Though its satisfying to kill orange and red mobs its just not efficient.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Farming?
So, the harvest festival was pathetic. Pilgrim's Bounty more than makes up for it. I was busy with real life stuff until the last few days of this festival so just used it as an opportunity to level up cooking skill on all my main alts. Each of them are now at around 300 skill thanks to a single run of the dailies and associated cooking recipies. This one event has improved the tradeskills of my little army more than I have in the last year of mucking about!
The Pilgrim's Paunch achievement made me chuckle. Aside from the obvious greed stuffing your face at each cities' tables, nearly every recipe for these foods contained lots of honey. Very likely you WOULD become obese eating that much sweet and fatty food!
I've spent a fair bit of time recently playing Aion. My guys are all still relatively low level so haven't yet experienced the massive grind that others have complained about. Since I don't really care about levelling, a long grind for each level wont affect me much so long as there are still things to amuse myself along the way.
Tradeskills are one area thats annoying me though. Its a horrid time and money sink with little to show for it as yet. Standard crafted items are generally as good or slightly better than drops at the same level, and the rare special items are significantly better but the process to get there is hideously expensive. Crafting also involves a lot of different materials. Just the basic stuff I'm doing at the moment has mostly filled my limited bag space. Its much worse in this respect than the crafting in WoW.
Many of the people who started blogging about Aion at or before release seem to have dropped out, even though the game is barely 2 months old in the west. It hasn't grabbed my attention the way WoW did but so far is significantly better than the free-to-play games I listed in my earlier post. I've actually found that playing Aion has revitalised my Wow experience. At this stage I'm enjoying both!
The Pilgrim's Paunch achievement made me chuckle. Aside from the obvious greed stuffing your face at each cities' tables, nearly every recipe for these foods contained lots of honey. Very likely you WOULD become obese eating that much sweet and fatty food!
I've spent a fair bit of time recently playing Aion. My guys are all still relatively low level so haven't yet experienced the massive grind that others have complained about. Since I don't really care about levelling, a long grind for each level wont affect me much so long as there are still things to amuse myself along the way.
Tradeskills are one area thats annoying me though. Its a horrid time and money sink with little to show for it as yet. Standard crafted items are generally as good or slightly better than drops at the same level, and the rare special items are significantly better but the process to get there is hideously expensive. Crafting also involves a lot of different materials. Just the basic stuff I'm doing at the moment has mostly filled my limited bag space. Its much worse in this respect than the crafting in WoW.
Many of the people who started blogging about Aion at or before release seem to have dropped out, even though the game is barely 2 months old in the west. It hasn't grabbed my attention the way WoW did but so far is significantly better than the free-to-play games I listed in my earlier post. I've actually found that playing Aion has revitalised my Wow experience. At this stage I'm enjoying both!
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