• Bluecoal’s Diaries – 01132015

    Posted on by suguay Comment

    My name is Bluecoal. I’m an Orc, Destruction Warlock, and a scribe. I’ve been asked to help out in Draenor and have helped to make significant progress. Still there is so much more to do.

    And it’s not like there is a lot of extra time to do it all. Being in charge of a garrison is a huge responsibility and there are always things to do. There is the garden to tend, the mine to keep clear. I just got word today that we were out of fur so I had to go out and trap a few beasts for the barn. And the fishing pond needs stocking. Ok. I love fishing but really this just has to take a back seat to everything else.

    Just today, Rokhan tells me that Gazlowe has some plan to assault the Iron Siege Works out past Thunder Ridge. So I catch a flight over there. First, he wants payment up front. Then we have to pick up a few parts as well as sabatoge some of the equipment. Oh and of course, we need to kill a few of the leaders. I guess the good news is he got a lease on a Mole Machine from Thelin Darkanvil. It’s supposed to take me to the outpost in Gorgrond. I don’t know if I want to go by some tunneling machine. Then again, at least it isn’t a flying mechanical chicken. What to do, travel via tricky Goblin equipment or trust Dwarf technology.

    I did get a bunch of the followers off on some missions. Three of them are supposed to bring me back a really awesome robe. I hope they hurry. I really want to send them off to help liberate Shattrath. That one has a sweet payoff. Not everyone is out on missions. Benjamin Gibb and Shadow Hunter Rala are helping out in the garrison, and Kimzee Pinchwhistle is just hanging out. She’s really not one for the long missions and every mission the others are out on are long ones. Maybe there will be someone she can go out with tomorrow.

    In the meantime she will just have to stay around here and stay out of trouble. I hope she doesn’t  blow anything up. Goblins. So enthusiastic about inventing stuff and just no concept of what will blow up. Give them nitro and they make alcohol out of it. Oh wait, that might have been the Pandas. I haven’t seen any of the Pandas around here. You would  think they would help out since it was their stupid Sha that Garrosh was playing with. But no. Voljin and Thrall decide we need to take care of this problem ourselves and if the Pandas come along that’s cool but they won’t ask them for help. Really?

    That’s enough of my grumbling. I have to get back to work. I need to get over to Nagrand and help out and then there are those fish I need to catch. And better find something for Kimzee to do.


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  • Getting Started in The Repopulation

    Posted on by suguay Comment

    I spent most of my New Years holiday time working on reorganizing my home office. This was quite an undertaking that required the occaisional break to spend some time on games in order to maintain a bit of sanity. During one of the breaks I was trying to get into WoW only to discover they were having technical problems. Since I was intent on spending some time playing agame and was not too interested in my other options, I decided this was a great chance to get started with The Repopulation.

    I did go ahead and get early access through Steam. Sadly though, I missed the sale. Oh well. I’ve been reading about the game for so long and have intended to help fund it on Kickstarter without ever getting to it, so I’m ok with the extra few bucks.

    This is an early access game. I have to remember that. And I did pretty good. When if first logged in, I didn’t really have any time to do much so I created a toon sort of on the server for the east coast of the US. I tried getting back to that toon but couldn’t get on. The server went down pretty much as soon as I logged in. So I created a toon on the west coast server and got just far enough to get the toon created before it too went down.

    I waited a bit and tried again. This time I was able to choose the east coast server and not get booted. I wanted to delete my toon there that was generic but was not able to because it was my only one on that server. So I started a new one. BONUS! Apparently, during the time the servers were unavailable, code changes were being implemented. The with the west coast toon I created I was unable to change things like hair color and a couple of other things. Now, on the east coast server, I can choose hair color and a few other customizations. Yay!

    I am still getting used to the controls. The usual keys are part of the movement controls but a little different. W and S work as usual however to actually turn you need Q and E because A and D just strafe, they don’t turn. This will take time to adjust to. I play one other game that has really different movement controls and it always takes me a while to adjust.

    Some of the other controls are pretty cool, though I may not remember them if I don’t play often enough. And I think I will want to remember them. Seems crough and prone will be good options to keep in mind. I don’t play other games that really use them so, I will need to make an effort to remember them and use them.

    The game starts with a set of tutorials that cover most of what you will need to get going. There is combat and medicine as well as crafting and entertaining and pet taming, and even one on harvesting. As part of one of the basic tutorials you recieve some training chits. More advanced training at this point, for the most part, cost either chits or coin. I have very little coin but I still have all my chits that I got. I was able to get a couple for free, mostly to get started.

    There is even a tutorial for completing a mission or assignment. I have forgotten what they are called. The nice thing about this is that it lets you earn a little bit of coin. You can of course skip all the tutorial stuff after you have played for a while and know what you are doing. But as far as I’m concerned, with a new game, it’s time well spent.

    I have managed to finish all the tutorial assignments and I am ready to venture out into the wider world. However, when I logged off I left my toon still in the beginning base. I think I will go spend one or two of those training chits before I venture out, just to have a little extra preparation.

    This is not going to be a quick one for me to pick up, but I think it’s going to be fun.


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  • Warlords of Draenor Progress

    Posted on by suguay Comment

    A quick update on my progress in Warlords of Draenor. I finally have my main to 100. Yes, I know a lot of people have been there since a week or two after it came out. I just don’t have that much play time. But I finally made it.

    To be honest, it snuck up on me. I new I was in the range but I was busy trying to finish up quests in Spires of Arak so I didn’t realize how close I was. I killed something and the next thing I know, boom there’s the big anouncement that I’m at 100 and all these new dungeons are available.

    Yippy.

    As soon as I finished the quests in Sprires and got the follower that comes with that, I headed off to my bank. I had several items as rewards from missions in my bank that I couldn’t use until I hit 100. So off to get those and boost my ilevel as well as all those other great stats. My highest item is my staff. It’s crafted and as soon as I can get the rest of the materials together, I will upgrade it. The upgrade will also be crafted.

    I also got the quest to upgrade my garrison to level 3, which I did. And I promptly put in a salvage yard and a
    Warmill. I don’t generally do raids but I would like some of the gear and I have read that with those two buildings I can get and send followers on raid missions, some of which award raid level gear. I will be doing this.

    It looks like I will need to do something about my battle pets if I want the Menagerie working. I don’t have any high enough to challenge the ones running around my garrison. I haven’t been doing the pet battle on my main, I have an alt that mostly does that as I am leveling her. It works better. But she’s only level 50 or so which means my pets are only about level 16 at most, maybe 18, I don’t remember.

    I still have questing to do. I’ve just barely started Nagrand and while I did pick up the daily in my garrison that has me attacking something there, I haven’t done it yet.

    Progress and yet there is still so much to do, so much to do.


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  • Getting Playtime or Not

    Posted on by suguay Comment

    I can’t say that I have been getting a lot of play time lately.

    I know for certain that I have been neglecting my association with the really cool people in the corporation I joined in Perpetuum. That has me a little disappointed. I have also been neglecting the new expansion in Rift. I started it and my main is in some underwater realm some where but I haven’t gotten very far.

    About the only thing I’ve managed much time for has ben World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor. I’m made it to 98 with my main there and I’m managed to get my garrison to level two with a few level two industries so I am making progress. Though, I will be honest here, most of my WoW time is maintenance. I log in, pick up the garrison supplies in the cache. I pickup the finished missions and send my followers out again. I also do the mining daily to get the supplies and create the work orders. I do the same for inscription since that is the profession of my main. I was really happy to finally get the herb garden so I pick the plants and set the work orders there as well. Most of the time I don’t even leave my garrison. This is how it is most of the week. If get a chance I try to do the fishing quest. But I don’t even get this done daily.

    I’ve got a few other things going right now so getting in that play time is a challenge. I would like to think it will get better in the new year. I know that’s not true. I suspect it will get worse.

    But just for a quick look at some of the stuff I’m trying to get around to: late to the game I know but I got Minecraft over the summer and have not had much time to spend on it since. I would like to get back to that. I would also like to get a bit more time in with Perpetuum. I’ve heard there are some cool changes for Planet Calypso (Entropia Universe) that I would like to check out.

    There’s one more though. It was just recently released to early access on Steam. I’ve been reading about it for two maybe three years now. I’m really excited for The Repopulation. This is a game that looks really cool. I haven’t picked up the early access yet, though that may change soon. This is one that will take a bit of time to learn and as it is early access, I’m betting there will not be many resources to be able to look up recipes and figure out how to complete quests so it’s going to a lot of play time and patience.

    I have no doubt that I have missed something that looked really good and I want to try. Or that there are old favorites that I have neglected for so long I’ve forgotten. Which, yes, is sad. It’s just that without a lot of play time, it’s a little hard to keep up.


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  • This Could Be a Problem

    Posted on by suguay Comment

    World of Warcraft, Warlords of Draenor has been live for just over a week now. The really cool new feature in it is Garrisons. I think it’s cool anyway. It may also be a big problem for me. Talk about a squirrel.

    One of the things I like in online games is when you can set something to be happening while you are logged out. That could be skill training and manufacturing like in Eve Online, or in Perpetuum there is the manufacturing and earning ep to go into different skills and in Ever Quest II there is the upgrades that can train or research while you are logged out.I think it’s really cool and enhances game play.

    The biggest downside to these offline processing features is that I want to keep checking on them. If I set something that takes only an hour to do, then I want to check back in an hour and see how if it’s done and how it turned out. When Eve Online created the skill queue where you could stack skill training so that if the one skill was only going to take 20 minutes to train another would start right after, that was a huge help. With Warlords we don’t have that option with missions. At least not yet, or not that I know of. And so I find myself logging in to see if something is complete so I can send out another mission.

    Missions are not the only thing that keep me logging back in while I’m trying to clean my home. The workorders are just as bad. I find if I log in to see if a mission is done then I also have to check the garrison cache to claim resources and I need to make sure I have picked up any work orders.

    I really do like the offline processing, it’s just cool. I would like a way, maybe through an app, to do these housekeeping things remotely. That would be really awesome.


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