User:Sefet/abitd

A Blog in the Desert

A little bit about me. I played Tale 1 from Beta to a few months in. Can't even remember what my character's name was those days. Eventually quit when it got boring as hell. Played Tale 2 only through the 24 hour trial halfway in-- not having access to metals was too much of a stumbling block. Tale 3, I played from startup for a few months in, when a bad marriage choice ended in my camp getting wiped. (And no, I'm not going further on that. What's past is past.) Anyway, back during Tale 3, I started a daily e-mail to a friend of mine who tried the game and liked it a little, just not enough to pay for it. Over time, these e-mails became known as 'The Daily Desert'. I retained the tradition once Tale 4 began. So a lot of the information and mis-information (see below) comes as no surprise to veteran players. Bear in mind my target audience does not actively play.

Anyway, I know a lot of the information in my blog is wrong...now. That's the benefit of hindsight. At the time, most of my choices make perfect mostly logical sense. Also, a disclaimer. I reserve the right to be wrong about people, too. So if you see your name here and it is in less than a positive light... well, don't be a public jackass next time.

And finally, yeah...I know this is long. In June 2009 it was longer than Stephen King's The Shining. Deal with it.

-- The Daily Desert – Heralding Sefet's Triumphant Return to Egypt!

12/06/08 - Beginning Anew

After some two and a half years, ATitD 3 is finally done. A new, yet familiar, Egypt beckons... and with that I gleefully started up a new account so I could dive into the Beta for the fourth Tale. The beta will run for a week and then next Saturday, everything gets destroyed and we start the 'live' game fresh. So, for the next week, I'm just going to piddle around and get a feel for things again.

Some things I've noticed: the graphics have improved a little. By that I mean “the game looks a little less like cat ass”. Chests look realistic, the water seems sparklier, the flax beds look very cool, and the graphics engine now supports White People(tm).

That said, I'm not going to list all of the little things I'm doing in game for the next week, because they are so temporary. Instead, consider this to be the “forward” to A Blog in the Desert Two, wherein my spouse tries to grasp my love of flax.

12/07/08 – The search for the perfect campsite.

For me and many others, it is vital to have a campsite that is convenient to schools and universities, have access within reasonable distance to most of the basic gathering stuffs: wood, water, slate, clay, limestone, sand, mud, grass, without being too convenient. By nature, I'm social when society is thrust upon me, but I appreciate a bit of space. In real life I like having a little land between myself and my neighbors and I could never envision living in an apartment building. That extends into the Desert, but in the desert there is nothing to stop a person from deciding to set up shop right next to you. When things start up, no matter where I've selected, unless it is in the middle of BFE (bum f**k Egypt, which now that I think about it, is scathingly apropos), I'm likely to have someone closer than I'd like. So, the Sefetplex is being built a slight clip and a half away from the hub of a particular zone.

I really, really enjoyed Lower Egypt in the last Tale, but was perpetually annoyed at how long it took to get down to central and southern zones for trading. Logically, the best point to set up camp is Karnak, as they will have most advanced technologies first and will be central to the map. The main problem with moving there is that I hate them...a lot for reasons I won't go into at this time, but if you've read my previous blog in the desert, you'll be somewhat sympathetic to my plight.

7 Lakes, now renamed Shabbat Ab, is a definite possibility, as is Upper Egypt (UE). I've marked what I think is a decent starting point in UE out-- it is beside a veritable forest of trees, right by the Nile, with some clay a short clip to the South. Silt patties litter the water's edge and papyrus will be found seconds from my front doorstep. It's far enough away from the Zone center to be viable, but given that I already have a few neighbors to the north, I'm curious to see how the region develops next week. In the meantime, I've run south to Shabbat Ab to see what potential real estate offerings are there. If nothing else, I'd be able to log on to scream, “HEY, SHAB-BAT!” Lou Costello would be proud.

My explorations in Shabbat Ab took me to a campsite superior to my last and it looks like I'll be setting up shop here. I'll finish the Beta in UE, but 7L/SA is where Fort Sefet-on-the-Nile will be constructed.

12/08/08 – The destruction of hated Karnak

Hated Karnak is no more. It should make me feel somewhat happy inside, but instead I just feel a certain hollowness, as I have been eternally denied my revenge. What? Oh, Karnak was renamed to Saqqarah. Saqqarah?! It boasts an entirely too large of a Scrabble score, has an extra Q, but at least it doesn't sound like the name of a third-rate magician.

I've decided to take this Tale at a more relaxed pace. The key to doing this is not following the Path of Architecture, I've decided. I'll still go through the Principles, as this Tale has the same crappy level scheme that they introduced last time 'round, but it's nice knowing I'm not going to drive myself mad trying to spend days gathering resources to build a tower at 3 am. So, this time around sleep and family take a larger part of my life. If I pass a few less Tests as a result, so be it.

Still wondering how the wife will take to it all. She hasn't downloaded the client yet and I'm certainly not going to press. If she chooses to play, I'll help her along with her goals-- she isn't hired labor for the Sefetplex, she's a partner. I just hope she doesn't find Architecture appealing.

I started up a secondary compound where I'm going to go once we start up on Saturday-- the lawn isn't quite as nice as one a short jog to the North, but the resources are better: a lot more clay and lumber within a half-minute's walk. The compound was thrown together just as a 'squatting point' and I've made all of the equipment public accessible for the duration of Beta, for what it's worth.

Interesting side story. Years ago when Tale 1 first came out, I found the game so fascinating, I bought a book on translating ancient Egyptian and discovered the heiros on the chests translate to "Give an offering unto the Stranger”. When I subscribed this time, I finally broke down and sent a message to the dev staff to find out if that was an Easter egg or an accident (most things in game didn't translate to anything at all-- the ideograms seemed to be picked for ascethic reasons). I heard back from the staff who confessed that Teppy, the head developer, was unaware of the translation and it was very likely an inside joke by the first artist they had.

The more you know!

12/15/08 – “3….2….1……GO!” (The first words I read upon logging in as the servers come online)

The tale started on the 13th at noon and was off to a breakneck start. Within an hour and a half, I had passed my citizenship test, the tutorial, and was on my way jogging to my chosen campsite. By 4:30pm, I had built my compound, expanded it to a size 16 and passed the Initiation into Architecture.

Later in the evening, I logged back in, built a few things for the compound to make it feel ‘homey’: a couple of distaffs, a flax combs, some kilns, and some chests. Very productive evening.

The following day was mostly spent working on Initiations: passed Body and Leadership as they became unlocked.

Art and Music was… much harder than it could’ve been, but only because of me not reading the instructions. The Art Init was changed to “Build a sculpture, add a few things to it and EITHER tear it down or have 21 people approve of it.” I totally missed the ‘tear it down’ part. So I ran to a popular spot and discovered to my horror I was 5 rope and 50 boards shy, ran back to the compound after doing the Body Init (since I was in the neighborhood), wove more rope, ran back to the center of our region, and spent the better part of an hour trying to make a grass guy lying on the ground, feet propped up, looking at the sky.

The original ‘concept’ for my piece was “Waiting for the grass to dry”. After screwing with it for a half hour, it became ‘Amateur Astronomer’ and another 15 minutes left me with a grass stick figure looking like he was laughing his butt off on the ground. I figured ‘What the Hell’, and left it like that, entitled the piece “ROFLMAO” and went on with my day. An hour after that, I noticed I could’ve just ripped the damn thing down and passed. My stubbornness kicked in and I decided after all that work, I –was- going to get 21 approvals. By the time I logged for the night, it had garnered 18 favorable votes.

The Body Init was scarily easy: click on 35 different plant types in 20 minutes and turn your ‘log’ in to the University/school you started from. I simply followed green areas on my map, running to lakes, encircling them and finished with 10 minutes to spare.

Leadership took even less time: once it was unlocked, a horde of people ran to the school to accept the test, then we all met up for a quick signature party. In short order, we had a mass of people passing in a veritable lightning storm at the University.

A couple of nice unexpected things: got a couple of papyrus from a kind soul planting by my house. Not that I really need any of it yet, but it’s nice to have options. The best surprise came from my first ‘let’s go Downtown’ run, when I stumbled over a group of people digging a hole for rocks. I borrowed a shovel and got to work. After a while, the resources were divvied up and I wound up with a couple of medium stones and 15 or so cuttable stones. These will come in handy later this week—stay tuned.

It will really help when I’m able to get friends into a Guild, so I don’t have to worry about setting very vulnerable items as ‘public use’, so I devoted my entire stock of canvas to taking us within two units of unlocking the Guild Construction technology. It’s been unlocked now, so tonight I shall get a guildhall built.

Current short term goals: Learn guildhall construction, build guild Claim my rights as an Initiate of Art and Music Finish my project boxes for a Dromedary Pen and Sheep Pen Make a lot of straw to lure the camels I’ll be competing for.

Week Goals: Get a camel or a pair of sheep Get a pottery wheel (or 5) Unlock offline onion harvesting (only 4 zillion more onions to grow manually!)

Ah—almost forgot: got to compete in a resource gathering contest: The Heptathlon. Basically, be among the top gatherers of slate, wood, veggies, grass, fish, silt, and flax in 30 minutes. Apparently my score was just beneath the cutoff for grand prize winners, (The cutoff was “190 or 193”, per the Pharaoh…my score was 190) but I did get a little extra canvas for my trouble, defraying (if you’ll pardon the expression) partially my contributions to unlock Guild Construction.

12/16/08 – I ran so far away….

With eager anticipation like a kid at Christmas, I logged in to receive confirmation that enough people had approved of my sculpture. Grabbing some travelling supplies from my chest, I began hiking south to the Town Square. I claimed my rights as an Initiate of Art and Music and set to exploring. Shabbat Ab is coming along nicely and I noted with a gleam in my eye there’s now a rock saw and a good half dozen pottery wheels for public use. This pleases Sefet. I made a mental note that I’d have to return with clay and rocks for processing.

Shabbat Ab still had not unlocked Animal Husbandry, so I decided to run down to our southern neighbor, Saqqarah (formerly hated Karnak). I’ve grown to really appreciate the run speed boost in this Telling. It was still a horribly long run, but about half as long as it could have been. Stopped by their University of Worship and was rewarded with a bit more than I expected: not only did I get Animal Husbandry, but I also learned Agriculture and was given 4 carrot seeds. (Carrots will eventually feed rabbits, which will feed snakes, which produce venom, which…). On the way back home, I picked up Dowsing from our own University of SomethingorAnother and learned Project Management from the School of Harmony just south of the Sefetplex. Project Management allows the construction of construction sites, needed for outdoor buildings like the animal pens.

Returning home, I noticed the time was (in-game) around 10:30. Camels come at midnight to the Pen to the one in the area with the most straw. In some warped fashion, this puts camels in the same league as The Great Pumpkin of Peanuts’ fame. Like a demon, I hastily constructed the dromedary pen. They require sand, so it got built on the only strip of sand in my immediate area… on the water’s edge. At least the camels will have a steady supply of fresh water. I began stuffing the pen with tasty straw as a smirk formed in my mind. Few people in my region possess the knowledge to create such a pen! Sefet shall soon have a camel!

By the toll of the witching hour, I had some 700+ straw tucked away. No camels. I checked the pen and they had been nibbling at the straw, but none came to stay. In annoyance, I ask the region how much the winner spent for his camel. “We just spent about 9000” was the answer. My jaw hit the ground so hard, it would’ve spooked the non-existent camels.

On to plan B: if I can’t have a camel….perhaps Sefet can have sheep? Worked the looms and flax fields to get more canvas for a sheep pen and built it behind the shade of trees. I like my virtual animals to live in virtual comfort.

I built the guild hall for “Flaxation Without Representation” beside the pens and was pleased with the appearance. It can hold three members presently and can be expanded in the unlikely event more friends join up and play.

With my buildings constructed, I craved sheep. Putting out a call to buy one, I had two respondents. A quick haggling session later, I settled on a male sheep hand-delivered from Saqqarah. The price the traveler asked was so low, I raised it just so I’d feel as though I wasn’t robbing him. So for Sefet, 2 canvas, 40 flax, 10 papyrus equaled 1 sheep. The sheep looked happy in the pen, so I dumped a handful of onions with him and jogged off to the School of Architecture and got a mate for him, as part of my pre-order reward.

It was about this time, the Developers chatted globally that they had received calls from stunned/confused/outraged players that “game mechanics had changed from the last Telling” and they wanted to set the record straight: animals will die if you don’t feed them. The last two Tales, they didn’t and that was a bug they fixed. Crap. Starving animals was part of my long-term strategy.

Ok—I had sheep, now I needed onions. A lot of them. To grow the onions, I needed water. To carry water I needed jugs— and ran to the public pottery wheels I spied earlier! In return for the use of the wheels and saw, I made a few dozen jugs for the public, found a free Dowsing Rod (more on this tomorrow), and made my way back to the camp.

I then grew 500 or so onions…enough to keep the sheep busy for a while and unlock ‘offline onion harvesting.’ As long as I keep the sheep to a reasonable number, I shouldn’t have to spend a lot of time and energy keeping them fed and happy.

I would call it a very good day in the desert.

12/17/08 – No onions for Sefet!

I log on in gleeful anticipation—any sheepies born yet? Answer: no. Ah, well….at least I’d have plenty of onions to top off the pens, I thought. It was then that I noticed no onions in my inventory and a proliferation of grass. Although I had unlocked offline onion harvesting the previous night, I had forgotten to enable it! The sheep were just going to have to make do with their current ton of onions.

I took a quick assessment of what was needed at the ‘Plex (nothing) and what was wanted (everything) and decided to meet in the middle. The only really useful things I can build right now requires precious, precious leather, so instead I set myself to gathering resources for some upcoming projects: the Obelisk, about 16 beehives (we may have apiary technology in a few days), and a fire pit. I figured additionally that since fire pits will be available the next day, some limestone would be a good investment. It will be processed into lime when it comes time to make glass, so a little bit now certainly wouldn’t hurt.

To get the limestone, I’d need a flint hammer and a few chisels. Chisels break after a random number of uses… the hammer is eternal. I sifted through a ton of clay and gathered enough flint for a half dozen chisels. Taking a few odds and ends with me, I meander down to the local limestone patch… a good ten minute run away. I figured 100 limestone should do it. The first chisel shattered on the first pull. The second lasted another three. I began to grow worried, as there didn’t seem to be a handy clay supply nearby. Fortunately, the next lasted 90-something pulls and I finished with three chisels to spare. Along the way I also picked up 28 soda (this will make soda glass later).

Gathering limestone is fairly unexciting. Click, wait a while, click again. There was a small pool of water nearby with tons of sand beside it. Since I was still carrying my onion seeds, I passed the time and grew a couple hundred more veggies for “the flock”.

Nearly full, I start loping back to camp… and come across a small random herd of male sheep! Picking one up left me seriously overburdened and left me with a very painful choice. In the end I wound up having to leave every onion (save four) I had grown on the ground to carry off my sheep at the limits of my encumbrance.

Returning to the pens, I dropped off the sheep and noted there were still no babies. I mourned the loss of the onions, but didn’t feel compelled to grow more as the pen was still well-stocked.

I was mildly surprised to find my camp was overrun by a number of fishermen, who spent a couple of hours gathering Tilapia on the banks of the Nile and Lake Sefet (the tiny pond by the Guild Hall).

The rest of the evening was spent gathering resources: slate, wood, firebricks, and bricks (I tried very hard not to tap the camel reserve). I built a large chest (holds 5k resources) I ended with enough for the firepot, a few hundred wood, 8 or so linen , and close to a thousand bricks in reserve.

And a bright spot: just before I called it a night, another female sheep was born, yielding two breeding pair.

12/18/08 – I didn’t start the fire

Controlled Burn came off timer, but I wasn’t in a rush to get it. I had a great deal of flaxxing to do at home first, because I’m going to need a lot linen soon. Beehives will need one piece each and the Obelisk, when I get to it, will require a great need, based on how large it will be. Last Tale, my Obelisk was 75 cubits tall and it ran up a cost of 71 linen.

Here’s the scaled costs, based on a calculator I found online for last Tale:

Size in Cubits 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Boards 240 400 600 840 1120 1440 1.8k Bricks 2.4k 4k 6k 8.4k 11.2k 14.4k 18k Ash 19 34 52 75 101 132 166 Linen 15 24 35 48 63 80 99 Beeswax 51 88 135 192 259 336 423 Cactus Sap 39 56 75 96 119 144 171 Small Sapphires 4 7 10 13 16 20 25

I’m preparing for a similar size this time and if it can be smaller, I’m very ok with spending less resources to pass a Test and linen stays useful regardless.

Flaxxing itself got easier, as I now have a ready supply of Nile Green seeds. They require a little water to grow in addition to the weeding, but they have double the yield of Old Egyptian. One seed = two flax. Yay! My production bottleneck comes in the flax combs, which are a bit of a nuisance with the constant breaking.

All total, I knocked out 25 linen last night, which will be more than enough for the Field of Bees (8 hives will really be enough for now. I’ll expand to 12 eventually, but there’s no rush…I tended to run into an overabundance of wax last time. The wax will mostly be used for casting projects later.

Urbi showed up unexpectedly to flax a little, so I gave her better seeds and about a dozen jugs to help her along. This cut back on my jug supply, plus I want to give more to Kotas, so I decided to take a little clay down to the public wheels, along with a couple of cuttable stones to make into pulleys at the rock saw.

Along the way I came across an amusing lolcat statue (“I can has Egyptian cat food?”) of a kitty in front of a tadpole ‘fish’ bowl and a couple of Empty Hand Puzzles. I’ll go into detail with the Puzzles later, but for now suffice it to say Initiation into Thought has been unlocked.

I made a few dozen jugs and a single pulley—it turns out pulleys take ten minutes each to cut and I didn’t want to hang out that long. I’m just going to have to build a rock saw once leather and oil start rolling in. The sheep are holding steady at 5 total. (I had started to wonder why there weren’t breeding as quickly as I hoped and then I realized they’re wearing sheepskins.)

I wanted to add something to the ‘Plex besides the third distaff so I went ahead and picked up Controlled Burn for the firepot and started the Inits to both Thought and Harmony.

Harmony requires meeting people-- not just any people, but people who have passed Tests in previous Tales and Initiations in the current one. It should be easy to pass the next time there’s a big dig or something. The only ‘hitch’ with it is that it requires level 4 to start, so I’ll have to likely wait until others have passed the other Inits.

Finally made my way back to the ‘Plex and discovered a new neighbor had built next to the bottle trees, near Ft. Kotas-by-the-Sea. He seems friendly enough, so we’ll see how that goes.

I keep forgetting to pick up fishing while I’m out and I also need to trade for leek seeds. I’ve got the firepot built, but nothing to burn on it for ash. It’ll need leeks, dried flax or dried papyrus. I’ll have to check the wiki for Tale 3 and see which gives the best return for time invested. It’s been too long since I stoked a pit myself. End result: I’ve got a fire pit, but I won’t light it for a day or two.

12/19/08 – Let’s Hear it for the Bees

Wasn’t honestly expecting to get very much accomplished, due to other commitments outside of Egypt, but providence smiled at Sefet, even if the camel gods do not.

A neighbor, Trillian, gifted me with thirty handfuls of papyrus seeds. I thanked her and blessed her house and sheep. I’ll grow some papy this weekend most likely—it makes for lovely ash and I could also really, really use a basket of woven papyrus for faster grass harvesting.

Mandisa, my wonderful wife IRL, has been diligently gathering basic resources and dumping them in a nearby chest as the minutes tick down on her trial account. She seems to like the gathering aspects (mmmmm….slate!) and is always happy to count sheep midday, but doesn’t think much of the Tests. I should know in another week or so if I’m going to be starting her up on a ‘full’ account. We shall see.

I noted with some pleasure a dig was underway very nearby…just a couple minutes from the ‘Plex, so I took the opportunity to join in and meet a few people

It turned out that it was a very good idea. In short order I met a couple of people who helped me along the Harmony Initiation. Aside from meeting initiates of 6 and Worship—neither of which are possible yet—all I needed to do is meet a Granddaughter of an Oracle, and I heard that near the Chariot Stop lived one named Shebi (not to be confused with a ‘sheepie’, which gives more leather) I’d go to visit later.

The dig continued and lessons began! Some who had travelled far to the south knew Beekeeping and were willing to share the knowledge. Four lessons and 15 minutes later, I could construct apiaries.

When the dig concluded, I was rewarded with ten cuttable stones and another medium stone. I now presumably have enough for a forge, once that technology is researched.

Back home, I grab nine linen and construct the Field of Bees. Well, placed nine apiaries in a 3x3 grid at any rate. They’ll need to be checked once a day and it’ll be likely three days or so before they start producing wax and honey.

Wove a few linen until I ran out of thread and flax. I’m going to seriously need to flax it up for the next few days to get the linen stock up. I want to be as prepared as possible once Obelisks come online, which I’ll predict will be next Friday. In theory, IF I’m one of the first two people in a zone that builds an obelisk, I can do it without the need for any sapphires, but that’s one hell of a long shot. It’d require being at the University as soon as it unlocks (wherever that is) and Expedition Travel somewhere two zones away. That’s…doable. It also assumes the materials required to construct an obelisk hasn’t changed since last time. That’s a lot of assumptions, really. Fortunately I should have a week to plan.

I decided for fun I’d show Mandisa what a firepit in action looks like: whittled up some pointy sticks for stoking and tinder, dumped my spare dried flax for some ash and a metric ton of wood on it, bent down, tinder in hand… and realized I didn’t know how to light it. Ironically, I managed to do THE SAME THING last Telling. I was going to need Firebuilding.

Checking the map, there was a School of Leadership I could learn the skill from to the north in Stillwater across the Nile from their Uworship (read: Seed Depot). As I ran, I wondered what exactly leadership has do to with setting things on fire. Aside from books and witches, I couldn’t really think of anything else leaders have tried to light up. Cities, maybe? Serendipitously, as I ran I passed a random person ran up while I had my map out. She introduced herself as a granddaughter of an Oracle, putting me that much closer to passing the Initiation into Harmony

Doused along the way, but still no traces of Iron or Copper. Got cabbage seeds from Stillwater’s Uworship, learned firebuilding, and headed back home. It was really too late to get a fire going, so I’ll put it off until tomorrow.

Given how slowly my sheep are reproducing, I’m going to need a second pen to keep the leather supplies steady once I start culling. I’ll make that my highest priority and then construct a charcoal oven. Historically, charcoal makes a damn fine currency for trading: everyone needs it, it’s very portable, and I’m good at making it.

I only hope we get tech for the ovens soon.

12/29/08 Christmas in Egypt or “‘Talkin’ ‘bout my Initiations’”

A bit of time since the last update, I’m afraid. Too busy playing in the Giant Sandbox to write about it. Quite a lot happened in the past ten days over my vacation, so I’ll kind of sum up and expound later on key interest points.

Technology

We had quite the industrial boom with a new tech being unlocked nearly every day: horticulture, basic charcoal production, mining, forging, blacksmithing, and possibly one other I’m forgetting. What this gives us are: mines and ore, charcoal, refinement of ore into metals, simple metal tools and beloved nails. Most importantly, possibly, Chariot Repair was made available and many of the Chariot routes have been repaired, allowing much fast travel between the regions!

Life around the ‘Plex: Mining

The ‘Plex has been buzzing with activity…and not just from the fully operational apiaries. With the advent of metal tech, leather from the three sheep pens first went to building mines.

I successfully found a couple of veins, but my first location was ‘jumped’ by Ovid. I wasn’t too resentful at the time, as he simply had the leather to build at the time and I did not. It was a tin mine, which is rarer than iron and copper, but he gave me some ore in return. (He also helped out with several other things, so I’m completely happy with the arrangement.) Over the course of several days, enough leather was generated and enough pulleys made to allow three mines to be built, fairly closely: two iron and one copper. As a bonus, one of the iron mines also produces rubies.

Life around the ‘Plex: Toys!

Fun new ‘toys’ have been built around the Compound, all of which have been ‘Guilded’, so you can play with them without having to worry about building your own:

Kitchen. Grind up cabbages and carrots (for juices) or seeds (for oil) Charcoal Oven: Convert large quantities of wood into charcoal, 100 at a go. Compression Furnace: 484 Ore + 20 charcoal + 20 minutes = 15 metal Bullet Furnace: 50 Ore + 5 charcoal + 5 minutes = 1 metal (not very practical now that we have the Compression one, but I just haven’t torn it down yet) Rocksaw: fashions cuttable stones into cut stones and pulleys. Mason’s Bench: Cuts medium stones into fly stones and crucibles. Tub: Although you –could- rot flax in it, it really is used for rotting dung into saltpeter, or evaporating sulphurous water into sulphur. Student’s Forge/Master’s Forge: allows various metals to be made into tools, make nails. Hackling Rake: Finally, a flax comb that lasts 90+ uses, instead of 5. Hand Loom: My crowning achievement. A loom that never wastes twine in ‘breakage’.

--I also have a scythe and papyrus basket to make grass picking more productive.

To accommodate some of the new structures, I’ve increased the size of the Compound to 30 squares. To my delight, I found we can change the floor color at no cost.

Tonight advanced brick rack technology comes off timer and hopefully soon, we’ll have casing technology. That will allow us to make anvils and the wonderful tools that make harvesting less of a pain: better axes, shovels, and scythes.

Obelisk Drama

Test of the Obelisk came online and we all queued up to build our obelisks…there was a major change this Tale. Previously, the Obelisk had to be the tallest in your region and stand for an hour unmolested. This time they upped the time factor to about two and a half days. This caused a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. When it came down to it, Shabbat Ab decided to form a queue starting at 8 cubits (the minimum) and people signed up in order 1 additional cubit at a time and we pretty much had to trust there’d be no asses.

Didn’t work out so good. Our ‘queue-jumper’ was a French girl named ‘chris35’. I have strikingly little love for people with numbers in their name to begin with, but the day after the test went online, she dropped down a 15 cubit obelisk and responded to critics by saying ‘no easy test passes’. According to the queue, the next person with resources available to place was me and by an amusing coincidence, my obelisk was slated to be a 16 cubit. The question then became: do I let chris’ work stand or top it and add fuel to the fire? I topped it with my 16 about 3 hours after she built hers. (The only bright spot was that my calculator was for a different kind of obelisk! This one required no gems or sap.)

This, of course, freaked out everyone. People logging on over the next day saw the queue had jumped from 8 to 16 and ran to see who had ‘broken the public trust’. In a proactive measure, I built a sign next to my obelisk to explain what had happened. The region accepted this…mostly. When my obelisk had three hours left to go, the nefarious chris35 again overbuilt…this time to 25 cubits. The public freaked and formed a lynch mob. I took matters in stride publicly, but was disheartened. Chris35, tore down her obelisk to appease the mob, but it was too late…the game demanded the next obelisk be 26 cubits high at the least.

The next few hours passed and no obelisk was constructed. The amount of linen required surpassed what anyone had stockpiled. I was able to disassemble my obelisk at no material loss, but it left me around 20 linen shy. Trillian, who was next in line after me, was also disillusioned and offered to lend me 15 she had stockpiled. I decided ‘to hell with it all’ and ground out the other linen and thousand bricks remaining. My 26 cubit obelisk went up by Lake Sefet-by-the-Nile and shadeking summed up the community’s sentiment as follows: “Sefet rebuilt? Good for him!”

On Christmas Day, just past noon, I became the first person to pass a Test in Shabbat Ab and was decreed a Student of Architecture. Yay!

‘Talkin’ ‘bout my Initiations’

Thought –

Thought’s Initiation can be passed one of two ways: beating three of the hardest Empty Hand Puzzles in Egypt OR by building one of your own and having 7 people beat it and judge it as ‘good’ or better. I originally wanted to take the easy way out and just play the games, but found out to my dismay only ONE puzzle was being ‘passed’ as worthy every week. So, I built my own and was rather glad I did. These can actually be fun little puzzles, if they are designed well. I built and designed what I thought was a fairly challenging puzzle away from town over by where we hold digs.

While I was down by the chariot stop, I played and very quickly beat a dozen or so puzzles that only took 3-5 moves to solve and weren’t challenging…at all. I then became worried that I made mine too hard. It won’t get votes if it can’t be beaten, so I built a sign by it, requesting players and referring them to the solution written on another sign by the Sefetplex, if they were curious. In the end, within 3 days I had achieved 6 votes and bribed the head of the local research guild with 1k firebricks to give me the last vote needed.

Over the days I’ve received a number of complements on the puzzle noting that it is challenging and ‘definitely not a beginner’s level puzzle’. I’m quite pleased. It will never pass as one of the best in Egypt, but it got me what I wanted.

Worship / Harmony-

Someone finally discovered diamonds up in Adn and gave a few to the people to share around to participate in Initiation into Worship. Once a few people passed Worship, it became easy to finish Harmony. I ran into an Initiate of Six at a Chariot Stop, then met an Initiate of Worship about a minute later. Zap!

It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I was able to undertake the Worship Initiation myself and, as always, it was much more pain that I was expecting. My partner was the lovely Mandisa and both small diamond and camel milk was provided by Ovid, with the diamond promised to be returned that evening.

I got back to camp to check over the supplies I’d need…beetle…check. Milk, diamond…check. Tuition for a new skill to learn….check. Grilled fish….crap. I’d no fish left. Hastily threw together a fire in the pit and let it cook away while I checked online to see if I’d need flint or what to light the public ceremonial torch and discovered that torches burn away after one use this Tale and thus, there were no public torches.

I’d need Ritual Construction in order to build a torch…and that required…a couple hundred firebricks (of which I had none), a hundred oil (of which I had tons), and ten…linen. Crap. Spent the whole of the next hour flaxxing my heart out to get everything done by ‘go time’. Well, at least Ritual Item Construction would count as my ‘skill learned’. Ran Mandisa and myself down to the altar and waited til Marie was ready.

The Ritual itself went smooth as silk, with me running around like an idiot and Marie cutting and pasting the intonations to the seven gods and goddesses. With well over 15 minutes to spare, we both zapped. Mandisa is now an Initiate of Six, with Thought left to go. (She passed Art with a Christmas Tree sculpture that got its last vote on Christmas Day and Architecture with a compound I built as her a little north from the ‘Plex where the road turns to a T-Junction.)

Acrobatics –

Attended a couple of Acrobatic-oriented gatherings (including one very impressive Acroline®) Still haven’t gotten my second move yet, but with 88 facets taught and some parts of two dozen moves learned, I’m getting very close on several of them. Needless to say, I passed the Principles of the Acrobat quite readily.

Miscellaneous Fun!

I found a tar patch, so learned ferry construction and built a small light craft that glides across your inlet. Unfortunately, it won’t cross the Nile (cause walking a minute to the north is so burdensome…heh.), but is a fun little thing. When Test of the Singing Cicadas opens, I’ll be taking a ferry kit with me to cross lakes and what-have-you to get at those delightful little cages.

Christmas came to Egypt with freak snowstorms and piles of presents addressed to paid people who logged on during Christmas and Boxing Day. Mind you, they were dropped off in random sections of the map, so some running was involved, but the gifts included pepper seeds and chocolates.

It was a very nice holiday season in the desert.

12/30/08 – I want to a-cro every night (and party every day)…

Made my way down to Queens Retreat and picked up Improved Brick Rack technology, along with half of Egypt. Turns out there was quite the party going on with many dozens sticking around to form the Mother of All Acrolines®.

Ran the gamut and hung out for a while performing my one move: the coveted leg stretch. When all was said and done, no new moves for me, but I did get to 6/7 on 3 moves and 5/7 on 3 others, so it wasn’t a total wash. All total, I danced with 57 new partners and taught a couple dozen facets (112 total taught).

Got back to the homestead, fired up the forge and made enough nails to put together six public never-ever-fall-apart improved brick racks! Each will make 12 bricks at a time (takes double the resources of the old 6 brick models, of course) so given enough straw, many thousands can be knocked out quickly. This will cut my board expenses down greatly…which means less slate gathering and more happiness. I may build another sheepie pen to celebrate in the next day or two.

Finally, someone somewhere did something and triggered the unlocking of the Test of the Vigil. It’ll be a bit before we have the Test opened to start, so more on that camp-eating monster another day.

12/31/08 – Lookin’ for lead in all the wrong places

Received text from Marie mid-afternoon while at work advising me of a large acro party forming in Shabbat Ab. The message came from her AT UBody, waiting for it to start. This was somewhat amusing as she’s gone from “this game pisses me off” to “this game is ok, except when it pisses me off”... which I think is what everyone really thinks. One person once remarked it is a “frustration simulator” and there are times I agree.

Anyhow, I decided I wasn’t going to screw around with acro that evening and instead try out the brick racks and make that other sheep pen I’d been considering. Got home and did so, enjoyed dinner, check back in to Egypt to find the line is still going strong and is now so long it stretches from the University of Body all the way to the School of Body, some several minutes away.

That’s where they got me....I had to check it out and I’m glad I did. Mandisa and I ran through the line, which actually stretched as far as the chariot stop by that point, and I finally got my second move: lunge. Acro’d with a number of people I’d met before and several dozen people that were new to me.

After it was over, I went in search of a public lead mine I read about on the E! channel. Since the text is streamed to the wiki, I can read happily whenever the mood strikes me during the day. Lead’s only been found in one spot: Adn, the northernmost-central region (this was Lower Egypt and my home last Tale). Several long chariot trips later, I found myself in familiar settings. I debated on visiting my old campsite, but decided against it for bittersweet reasons. Instead, I trucked happily South of their UBody to find the precious lead mine. I’m not going to need very much lead—just enough to make a couple of limestone gathering tools.

The mine was collapsed and it looked like the entire vein was covered so new mines wouldn’t have yielded any lead.

This wasn’t that surprising, as lead is still rare and it’s the only public mine for that metal that I’m aware of. I note with some amusement the mine also produces sapphires! The mine has also been repaired eight times. With a hesitant finger, I clicked to see what it would cost to repair and stared in mute disbelief. 27 leather. 14 sheep would have to go to the sausage-grinder to cover the repairs for the one mine. The cost was just too high. I trudged back to the ‘Plex and decided that I’d just have to trade for the metal or the tools.

Now if only I had had the foresight to look at the owners’ names on the other lead mines!

01/02/09 – (It feels just like) I’m workin’ on makin’ glass

Spent a good chunk of time getting my glass station operational over the holiday. Now that the ‘Plex has expanded, I really didn’t like where the glazier’s bench was located and seeing as how I’m going to need two of them (one for soda glass, the other for normal glass), I went ahead and built a new one off to the side behind the mason’s bench and made a note to tear down the other at some point.

Soda glass requires lime (derived from cooking limestone in a fire pit), soda (an uncommon pull when harvesting limestone), and a lot of sand mixed at extremely high temperatures. Benches require a ‘reserve’ of 19 glass before you can make anything at all, so it’s easy to think of the first glass product as costing ’20 glass’ and never, never, never empty out the bench. That first glass was stupidly expensive, but the bench is now operational.

I celebrated by making a couple of glass rods and a few glass blades. In short order, I’m wielding a glass knife and a glass scythe and promptly begin cutting the lawn. It must’ve been somewhat unruly because I was able to process close to 2000 straw before becoming bored with it. Still haven’t gotten rhythmic strength to increase, but that’s ok. I’ve given up on camels: four sheep pens are very productive for leather generation and I’m now sitting on a stockpile. Thousands of straw for me are better served as bricks than camel feed.

Found a guy Zezima (Zima, zooma, Zuul...something like that) who wanted to trade lead for leather—we came to a mutually agreed price, but the deal never happened. He was in ‘the middle of a run’ and I asked him to let me know when a good time was, but he never did and several hours later, he closed the chat tab. Weird, but such is life. Maybe I’ll have better luck in a few more days. The lead isn’t ‘must have to live’, but it’ll make harvesting limestone more tolerable—particularly since I’ll be cranking out more glasswork soon and Mandisa will be building an Empty Hand puzzle at some point.

Visited another acroline or two, but still haven’t gotten beyond 2 moves yet. Marie was mystified at the number of people acroing, but it makes sense in a fashion. Technology is at pretty much a standstill as silver still hasn’t been discovered and Acrobat and Obelisk are the only two Tests that can really be worked on right now. The choice for many is to pursue Acro, dowse for silver, or stockpile resources.

Speaking of, I’ve begun processing the sheep poop into saltpeter, and in turn fertilizing date trees to gather dates. Dates are harvestable about an hour and a half real-time after a tree is fertilized and a random number are given—I think I’m up to 60-something. They will be useful in cooking or in Towers, if I choose to do that Test or as trade if I don’t. Either way, the tubs are going to be busy for a while. (I built a sturdy tub to supplement the basic one.)

I should probably knock out some more pulleys and go looking for more places for gem mines. Sapphires and emeralds would be good.

I’ve just a few miscellaneous restocking tasks to do otherwise: need a lot of rope, a little canvas, and more papyrus and limestone.

Finally, I built a big box to stash all of the ‘stuff’. Constructed a warehouse adjacent to the ‘Plex. It will hold 25k worth of items, so I’m nowhere near as cramped on storage space as I was.

01/05/09 Limestone Cowboy

This past weekend things are starting to kick into higher gear, in several regards.

Silver was finally discovered! This gives us...silver! Which honestly is nowhere near as useful as everyone makes it out to be. The big deal with silver is that it was holding back our tech tree... which now is growing quickly again. I jumped down to Meroe and planted a silver mine and harvested a little. For me, silver will eventually be made into mirrors.

For fun, I decided to skill up carving. This involves a bit of back and forthing between glassworking, carving, and forging. To get carving two, you have to whittle a bunch of pointy sticks and make a lot of tinder. You then get the ability to carve better stuff, which is used as tuition in conjunction with nearly a dozen glass blades....which meant more limestone gathering. I have terrible luck with flint and went through most of my stockpile getting the limestone for that harvested. Finally worked my way up to the limits of available technology with carving four, woo! Among the diverse things I can carve now, includes large crude handles for lead mallets... an essential tool in gathering limestone at 3x rate.

I had tried unsuccessfully to obtain lead through a variety of channels and with the Casting technology going on timer in Saqqarah, this became even more priority. Casting gives us the ability to build casting tables, which allows for more tools and components, such as iron cookpots for cooking, lead tools (chisels and mallet heads), and various other metalwork.

I bit the bullet and chose to either build a mine in Adn’s lead field blindly or take enough leather to repair the one public mine I knew of there, with a handful of grilled peppers just in case. Arriving in Adn, I surveyed the landscape... it would be a pure gamble. The leather cost to repair: about 32 leather. I cursed and clicked repair.

The mine itself was actually fun to work. With lead you pick the gem that has gone the longest without being odd color out and each click increases the ore gathered up to 7/pull. In no time at all I had a full load of lead and a few sapphires. That’s when I failed the Test of Greed. Hmm, I say. If I get enough for -2- furnace loads, I should have enough lead for the rest of the game. I had the peppers so I could carry an additional 500 weight for a few minutes per pepper. As I harvested, I counted and threw my inventory on the ground to make room for more ore. Bricks, boards, rope, dozens of jugs, small sapphires all wound up as trash on the landscape as I waddled back to the chariot stop with close to 1000 lead ore.

About an hour after Casting came off timer, I was the proud owner of a full set of lead limestone mining tools, an iron cookpot and a few miscellaneous things. I can’t say it made picking up another 350 limestone fun, but at least a lot more tolerable.

I’m making decent progress on Acrobatics: attended a couple of lines and picked up a number of moves, taking me to 9 moves total, giving me a permanent dexterity of 2. Fear my leet thread-toting skills.

We now can replicate cabbage and garlic seeds, the former by planting beside multiple wild herbs, the latter by planting after eating a meal from a kitchen. I’ve started looking for herbs and the veggie box at the Plex now boasts a small number of them. They will come in handy as cooking recipes are discovered or when we get hookahs.

The Test of the Prophet and Test of the Vigil both started Sunday afternoon. I got the insane idea over dinner that since weekly winners of competitive tests (like both of those) are on Sunday night and Vigil just opened, there wouldn’t be much competition: in fact, it might be possible to pass Vigil on the very nature of being the only person to hold one, even if it is just a handful of sacrifices. Reality slapped me in the face. In order to build a sacrificial bonfire, I’d need 1k firebricks...and 2.5k wood. Annoyed, I settled for making a Prophesy on some guy I’d never heard of before that would likely pass Obelisk Monday or Tuesday.

The punch line came when ‘Sunday passes’ (as the weekly score results are called) came: Teppy said there would be NO passes on Vigil this week, as there will be a one week minimum before scores will be counted. Apparently, there’s other people who think like me.

A Zen moment: "The sheep are looking healthy and frisky."

01/06/09 – Stop! Hammer time!

Logged on to find Advanced Blacksmithing was now available—which means the End of the Stone Age! I’m running to Saqqarah so often, I should invest in a commuter shuttle. Got the tech, returned to the ‘Plex, built an anvil, and fired up the casting box.

After a bit, I had a full complement of tools, save the tungsten chisel by virtue of not having been able to secure that metal. Bit of a pity really, as they can make very decent carpentry blades in less than a minute with a few whacks. I’ve found I can do much the same with a ball peen hammer, but it takes more work.

Went to make a hatchet, and discovered the sucker takes 20 iron. Le ouch. I immediately regretted making those medium gears on whimsy over the weekend. Fired up another batch of ore, scraped together my last metal and start smacking at making a hammer.

It was god-awful. I noted with some amusement that after 40 strikes, the sad lump of metal would’ve been better off if I had never hit it. I scrapped the project and tried again....and again. Fortunately, when you ‘scrap’ a project, it doesn’t use up the metal you’re working with. You get (x) number of strikes on your product, where (x) is determined by the type of metal used. Iron gives 180 hits. Finally, I ended up with a Quality 6600-something hatchet that I decreed ‘Good enough for now’, affectionately named it BarkReaver (mark 1), and gave it a quick workout. Nice.

Gathered more ore, ignored some acro line announcements, and began processing. I’m going to need a LOT of metal and charcoal to make my own kettles, as there aren’t any public ones. More on this in a bit.

Kotas popped in for a short visit, which always makes for a pleasant time. Instructed him in the Art of the Charcoal Hearth and brought him up to speed on various things implemented while on holiday hiatus. Started off his sheep pen right with a pair of lambs and a metric ton of onions. (He had left offline onions turned on for a couple of weeks, so the sheep should start getting hungry again around the time the sun cools.)

Did a quick papyrus run—I’m a firm believer that “You can’t have too much ash”. I want to fire and forget the next few batches in the fire pit. I say that, but I’m going to stoke anyway. 10 minutes worth of fire staring with 16 stokes increases lime output from 13 to 19, with a corresponding increase in ash generation. I’ve got enough for several runs now, it’s just a matter of finding the time. Making the kettles take priority and here’s why they suck:

1 kettle isn’t enough to process any quantity of ash into potash (or make weed killer or fertilizer) effectively. 2 or 3 is the bare minimum. Each takes: 30 iron and 24 copper. The copper is processed in a forge with pinch rollers (which would take another 40 iron to make, but there are some in the public works), and will cost about 70 charcoal to make. The iron pot is made in a Master’s Casting Box, which takes 600 charcoal to fire (eats 250 immediately and another 20 charcoal by the time a pot is done. Any leftover can be recovered when the fire is put out.) Given that each 15 units of metal costs 484 ore and 20 charcoal to process, you can see how this quickly becomes an expensive proposition.

Downloaded and started up Selune’s mining macro, because color games REALLY suck for the colorblind and in a bit I had a considerable chunk of copper ore mined. Moved it over to one of the iron mines and let it run for a bit—wound up with a huge quartz, which as I recollect is a happy thing, used for tuition for something or another.

Checked on the sheep before I left for work and dropped another pair into Kotas’ pen, which will effectively double his production. It’s a feel good feeling to sheep a friend.

01/07/09 – I read your true colors (shining through)

Started off the night with a fun little diversion: let’s make a shovel! Tackling the project with just a shaping mallet and a ball peen hammer, in a while I finished up a 7300-something shovel I affectionately call “DirtBane” (mark 1). It should serve nicely until I can afford the metal to play around some more. It seems to be fairly effective. Just ‘digging’ with it yields 5 debens of dirt, instead of the normal 1. According to last Tale’s wiki 6 people with grilled food can do a dig if they all have quality 8000 shovels. Good sign, but I think my next anvil project will be a better hatchet and those are pricey.

After playing with the shovel (“Holes! Look, I’m diggin’ HOLES!”), I began setting about the somewhat daunting task of mining and processing all of metal and charcoal I mentioned yesterday I’m going to need. In the middle of all of this, Teppy broadcasts he’s testing out a new mining system for colorblind people. I could hardly believe my fortune. I dumped my inventory into the Shed of Holding and jogged over to my local bane: the copper mine. Turns out with colorblind mode enabled, it displays the name of the color of the gem when you click on it. This is borderline miraculous. It takes more time than normally sighted people, due to all the clicking, reading, and thought processes involved, but my accuracy jumped from 20% to 80% or higher. The best part of it all is that it shows Teppy listens to his players.

I happily mined away and fired up enough ore to complete the metals I’m going to need, but in the process used up a chunk of my charcoal reserve. My plan was then to at least make the copper plates in the public works downtown, then come back home, finish the charcoal, then go back and do the pots. No such luck.

My brain snapped, I think. Instead, I went over to an acro party being held halfway between my house and the chariot stop. An hour and a half later, I’ve picket up a handful more facets, learned my 10th move (Asian Influence) and am late for bed. I did teach literally dozens of facets to a couple perfect students and gave several people new moves, so it was a decent line.

Logged after wandering back to the ‘Plex. New goal: kettles by the weekend. Heh.

01/08/09 – I’m coming up, so you better get this potash started...

A few miscellaneous activities today. Made a batch of charcoal, then hauled all of my metal and charcoal downtown to visit the public forges and Casting boxes. A half hour later, I skipped back home, hundreds of charcoal lighter and ready to build! Assembled two iron kettles and another glazier’s bench (this one will house ‘normal’ glass production).

I then turned my attention to converting some ash to potash for this weekend’s glasswork. As I poked and stoked, I reflected that I’m almost ready to call in for my developer camp decoration. I’m thinking a fountain by Lake Sefet, a small path leading up to the front door, some more foliage around the place (including some brilliant blue plants) and possibly altars or something snazzy near the front porch.

I’ve been using a week-and-a-half old pic of the ‘Plex as my desktop background and have had a number of people ask questions. May even wind up recruiting a person eventually. *grin*

Tried my hand at making a better hatchet on the anvil, but I’m going to need more practice it seems. The other option, of course, is to knock out a few ‘ok’ hatchets and sell them at or a little above cost.

Finally, I attended a dig up in Adn—very productive, yielding 5 medium stones and nearly 3 dozen cuttable stones for each of the 15 participants. I could definitely tell a difference using DirtBane (mark 1). I should probably take a couple of hours this weekend and just practice with the anvil.

Hmmm...I’m going to need more ore and charcoal.

01/09/09 – It’s my potash and I’ll cry if I want to

Played on the anvil a bit more and I’m getting better. Knocked out a quality 7300+ hatchet, named BarkReaver (Mark 2) and gave it a whirl. This one will occasionally yield 3x wood harvest on trees, which makes it a very nice step up from the last. As I understand it, 8k will give me a consistent 3x, so that may be my ‘goal’ hatchet. Turns out I’m doing better now than many ever do on an anvil, so smithing could be a trade for me if I keep working at it.

Stoked a couple of fires a few times with 100 limestone and papyrus in each. Five stokes seems to give an ‘ok’ yield without driving me nuts staring at the flames waiting for them to turn white once every 40 seconds or so (the only time you should stoke). Cooked the resultant ash into potash and turned my attentions to the second bench I had made. Time to bite the bullet and start sheet glass.

Sheet glass, as you may recollect, is a pain (seriously, no pun intended). It takes 2 minutes to fire each one, the bench will require charcoal during that time, and there is a nasty likelihood you will do everything right and still break the glass at the end, losing all your materials. Sheet glass fabrication works like stone blade fabrication with a 1-7 ranking. At rank 7, you never fail (and get the option to make mirrors once we have silver powder).

I had enough lime and potash to fill the reserve in the new bench and noted with some interest that it is the most temperature-stable bench I’ve ever worked with. For the uninitiated, benches take very little charcoal to get up to a workable temperature. New glass has to be made at 3200+ degrees, but can only be worked while the temperature is between 1600-2400 degrees. If the temperature goes outside that range, your project is ruined. Every 10 seconds there is a temperature fluctuation. Adding charcoal boosts the temperature for about 60 seconds, with an amount that is consistent for each bench (example: the first bench raises 7.5 degrees per 10 seconds, this one is 8.5 or so). It will then remain stable for a half a minute, then begin dropping temperature by a chunk every 10 seconds by an amount that is, again, determined when the bench was made. This particular bench only loses about 40 degrees during a production cycle, so it is a dream come true for glass working. As long as I keep half an eye on it, I won’t lose any materials due to screwing up the temperature.

That being said, after filling the 19 deben reserve, I had six debens of glass leftover to begin my expensive trek to perfect sheet glass skill. Six debens of glass later, I was still 1/7 in my skill and only a single piece of sheet glass survived the manufacturing process. Last time it took me about 18 pieces to get to 7/7. I think it is going to be worse this time... much worse.

1/12/09 -- Funky Cold Cicada

Picked up where I left off with glassmaking for a bit and after I broke the first two pieces without a skill up, I began to feel the frustration. Then, I hit a streak of luck! The next eight pieces all came out fine, with two exceptions...both of which were skill ups. Moved over to the soda glass bench to work while I boiled away more ash and stoked up more lime. Finished making the twenty glass rods needed for Navigation 2 tuition.

I’ve been waffling between two different projects for the short term: a paint shop or a fleet furnace (this extracts mercury from red sand). The former requires a LOT of glass, the latter, a ton of resources and forty small diamonds. I went ahead and started gathering resources for a lot of glass: hundreds of limestone and a good chunk of ash.

Fortunately, distractions abound in the form of Tests: Marriage and Cicadas were both released over the weekend. Passed the Principles of Marriage and married Mandisa. She’s very sweet, you see. I’ll never pass the Test of Marriage, which requires both spouses to pass a number of Tests, but that’s ok: I’m not pursuing Harmony this Tale.

Passed Principles of the Vigil with a sacrifice of 409 thread. (They were real fine, my 409.) When Sunday passes came along, the scores were already 200k+, but that’s ok: I’m not pursuing Worship this Tale either.

The first Round of Demi-Pharaoh started and my group is the Usual Gang of Idiots. I can almost categorize people for these as follows: (a) only signed up to pass Principles (b) didn’t have anything better to do (c) doesn’t speak or understand English (d) The Serious Candidate (usually a researcher this early in the tale) and (e) signed up, but never shows up. In theory, everyone should just vote ‘d’ and be done with it, but instead it pans out like this: (a) will vote for themselves and there’s a 50% chance they’ll flip at the last minute (b) Is actually the ‘Kingmaker’. They will question each ‘d’, then eventually get votes themselves from at least one other person because of their ‘insight’. (By this logic, reporters should be running our government) (c) will generally either vote for themselves or side with the majority (d) answers questions, then looks shocked when people don’t like the answers and when they lose at the end of the round, congratulate the winner and note that this obviously wasn’t ‘their’ time, but will look forward to the next run.

I usually play (b) for fun, but, at heart, I’m strictly (a). For a change of pace, I decided to see if I could pull off (d). If I do say so myself, I sounded like a very capable politician when questioned, sensitive to the needs of the people, with definite goals and ideas for the office. This, of course, meant that one of our resident (b)s got the critical vote from the other (b) instead. From our group, with a day and change left, two (a)s voted for themselves, a (c) is holding her vote, a (b) voted for the other (b) (the other (b) will not vote for themselves until the last minute, because it would be both presumptive and crass to do so), one (e)....and me, who playing as a (d), can’t vote until the last minute for the same reason. I severely doubt I’ll pass Kingmaker, as it is just a Harmony Test disguised as Leadership one...but that’s ok: I’m not pursuing Leadership this Tale either.

The song of the cicada came out and the race was on! Ran a couple of hours when the Test was released and got a cicada. I got so happy when I heard that chirp that indicated a cicada was nearby, I must’ve grinned my damn fool head off. After marriage and the subsequent “free teleport to spouse”, I can range far and wide in my bug hunts without squandering Travel Time. Ran around for a few more hours and came up with five bugs total. This is a good start, and that’s ok: I –am- pursuing Body this Tale.

Speaking of, Shabbat Ab hosted the Mother of All Acrolines: it lasted 26 hours before it finally died. I tried somewhat unsuccessfully to go through it several times, but real life takes priority. Acro’d a little and managed to win my 11th move: Wide Squats.

In other news, the newest ballots came out, and my Raeli Antimonopolization Act of Year One was on it! This tickled me pink, and a reporter from P! gave me an interview to help promote the law as it comes to a vote. E!, of course, spent their time griping that all of the proposed laws suck, but we’ll see. (And honestly, if my vote doesn’t pass, that’s ok too....as my ’06 blog will attest, I can knock out Raeli Ovens with the best of them) Whether it passes or not, I’ll be discarding the Bill from my inventory and writing something new in the next couple of days, but I haven’t decided what.

Silver was discovered in SA, right at the Saqqarah border, so I built and guilded a mine.

Turned my attention back to construction. The area by the field of bees is flax-friendly, so I worked to restock the rope supply. In the process, I churned out a couple dozen linen. There was a trader who was wanting to sell diamonds for linen, so I chatted him up to get the price. 1.5 linen per small diamond. I thanked him for his time and went back to work. Tried unsuccessfully to make a better hatchet while I converted more ash, and got a notice there was a guy, Marcus, with diamonds for trade in return for glassmaking supplies. That I had in spades. I chatted him up and we struck a deal. 40 smalls in return for 20 potash, 10 ash, and 200 limestone. Looks like I was going to make a fleet furnace after all.

Met up in Saqqarah to complete the trade, then back home to make 600 firebricks and 30 cut stones for the furnace itself. It’s also going to require an iron pot, so that’s ANOTHER trip to the Master’s Casting Box downtown with a billion charcoal. I was running low on that, so I knocked out another 400 or so charcoal. When I go down there this time, I’d like to make 4 pots at once. That’ll cover both this project as well as a future upgrade to my eventual paint shop. In a worst case scenario, they are also great trade objects.

Checking inventory, I was going to need another two loads of iron before I could afford to make four pots at once, but before I could get halfway to the mine, Teppy announced he was throwing away any unclaimed Christmas presents on Monday. Crap. Mandisa never picked hers up.

Logged in as her and began running. Only two of hers were ever found and one was in Heaven’s Gate: the most isolated corner of Egypt with no chariot stop. In the end, I recovered both gifts of pepper seeds and chocolates and warped back home to end by the sheep pens.

Tonight’s goal: get the furnace online, get some red sand, and start that puppy up!

01/13/09 RAMA-lama-ding-dong!

Very brief time in Desert, due to personal complications. Was able to meet my goal of getting the furnace going so tonight I’ll have my first quicksilver! With another 900 or so units of red sand in the shed, I don’t expect to need to get more from Meroe for quite some time. As expected, I also have spare pots for the eventual Mass Production of Color upgrade to my non-existent paint shop.

Added a couple of basic tubs to the ‘plex to start cranking out Saltpeter (whenever I happen to remember to process)—with 5 sheep pens, including Will’s, it isn’t like dung is in short supply.

The past day or so, there has been considerable buzz on the drama board (E!) regarding the laws on the ballot and the fact “they all suck”. The three laws that draw the most ire seem to be: an otherwise innocuous clean-up law that unintentionally allows Improved Brick Racks to be salvaged if unused for a week, Proposition Eight (a law that ONLY allows marriage between two men), and my own Raeli Anti-monopolization Act of Year One (RAMA, as it is now known as).

Honestly, I’m not expecting RAMA to pass—my personal goal was met in getting it to the ballot and forcing people to discuss things of this nature BEFORE it becomes an issue. Amusingly enough, RAMA has had the following accusations thrown against it: it’s a communist law, it rewards the people who are rich IRL because they have multiple accounts, it will prevent technology from being unlocked, it doesn’t say ‘player’, it doesn’t address the most pressing matters facing Egypt right now (how could it? I’ve been soliciting votes for nearly a month), and it causes cancer. Well, not the last, but you get the idea.

I expect it to get about a 24% approval on final votes (narrowly beating out prop 8 with 17% approval), due to slandering from Big Raeli industry. Possibly ‘the tile cartel’... either makes me giggle.

Our laws typically break down as follows:

I want a pony. (Feature requests) I want YOUR pony. (Stuff is made public, or tear-down-and give me stuff laws. This is always the first type to pass) You can’t have a pony (Restrictions on whatever, serious or otherwise...see Prop 8) OMG! PONIES! (The truly ludicrous laws—rainbow out of butt laws that people pass around as jokes)

RAMA is a little bit of a variation. It is a ‘You can’t have ALL the ponies.’ law, or ‘Everyone should have a chance to own their own pony.’

We’ll see how it goes. There’s one day left on the ballot.

01/14/09 – Don’t Rock the Vote, baby

Began the conversion of Fort Kotas-by-the-Sea into a Raeli Workshop. The technology may be a month away or longer, but there’s no sense in not stockpiling resources for a few ovens! Tore down the carpentry shop and a kiln, due to the size of the Master’s Casting Box I installed (no more running to the heart of downtown with 600+ charcoal). Even with that, I had to expand the building a couple of squares to accommodate the construction. Installed nine or so true kilns for the Mass Production of Firebricks (each oven will take 4k). Fort K-b-t-S will eventually also house the gearbox design table and likely a few improved brick racks as well. I’ll continue to manufacture all of the glassworks at the Sefetplex.

Ran around looking for cicadas, picking the odd one up here and there, finally getting enough for a cage, but will need to place it tonight—I have an odd mental defect that keeps me from remembering to carry linen when I’m out and about, so I couldn’t place my cage when in the Heart of Nowhere. Along the way, I stopped by the Essence of Harmony and Passed the Principles of the Prophet. Also came across a wild beetle, furthering me in the Principles of Scarabs—apparently the five I found prior to starting the Test didn’t count towards ‘find a wild beetle’. I’m finding a lot of new types of mushrooms to add to my pitiful collection... my herb/veggie/fungus chest is rapidly reaching the bursting point with all of the wonders I’ve discovered while wandering.

I mis-timed the ballots—they close tonight, so we’ll see how those go.

The first round of Demi-Pharaoh elections closed and they went almost as I expected them to. By the evening, 2 (a)s had voted for themselves, one of the 2 (b)s had voted for the other (b) and it came as no surprise when the other (b) voted for herself. The only thing that rubbed me the wrong way was that the (b) actually taunted me by saying she would not be giving me her vote, then added “maybe if I had asked a little differently”. Well, when the round started, Aiko (the b in question) asked “who are the people looking to advance?” and I responded that “I would appreciate the consideration to advancing to the next round.” I noted with some amusement she added to her /info a line she used during the round “Those who ask for power don’t deserve it.” (or words to that effect). A poor rationalization is better than no rationalization, I suppose.

The surprise came when the (c) cast her vote for the (b) that had no votes. She offered the explanation of “He was the only one who voted for someone else!” This was a bit of a relief. If she had voted for Aiko, my plans would’ve failed. The (e) never showed up and it left our score at 2 to 1 to 1 to 1, with myself the deciding vote: which is exactly how I wanted it. With ten seconds left in the round, I voted for one of the (a)s, forcing a tie for our group, meaning no one passed. The Test this time is NOT to become the DP...it is to guess the one who will be DP...and ensure your selection wins. Since it was obvious I wasn’t going to go to the next round (I’ll have to go back to being a b next time), my next best scenario was to prevent anyone from our group from advancing. Would I have done the same if Aiko hadn’t acted like a total prick? Maybe not. ;-)

Finally, Hated Saqqarah (still doesn’t have the nice ring of Hated Karnak) unlocked Advanced Metallurgy, so I picked up the tech—only to find that the building will require topaz, which I don’t have, and one of the iron pots I was holding in reserve for the paint shop. ARGH!

01/15/09 -- Lucky in the mines with topaz

Unsuccessfully hunted for cicadas, but dropped my cage in the middle of nowhere. I’m going to need more bugs to get a decent score for speed, but I’ve passed Principles if nothing else (level 15).

Spent some of my time fixing up the Plex and Ft. KbtS, destroying a mason’s bench and bullet furnace, adding another rock saw. I just don’t need a bench presently and will reconstruct if necessary. Kind of funny how buildings that were very expensive just a couple of weeks ago now seem cheap to replace.

Attended another dig. Incredible returns for an hour’s effort: 10 medium stones and 75 more cuttable stones. Put the new saw to work and started a few pulleys for fun. My secret confession: I like seeing how many things I can have running at once. Between 4 distaffs, the pottery wheel, a couple of rock saws and kettles and a few kilns, it looks like a miniature industrial complex with everything animated.

Unsuccessfully tried to get someone to come off some topaz, nor could I find a public topaz mine. I may not have the tin to make alloys yet, but I really wanted to finish the reactory. Finally, I took to the internets, read everyone’s Guild page on the wiki and found someone with a topaz mine fairly close to my camp, east near the Red Sea.

A few days ago, I had tried to drop a mine where no ore vein existed in a greedy attempt to get more rubies, but was met with a mine that did nothing. I had to tear it down (note to self: LEARN SALVAGE SKILLS). Other people have talked about sand mines—mines that did not sit on veins, yet they were able to extract gems freely. That’s when it hit me like a pound of firebricks: my failed mine was on grass, not sand. IDIOT!

With a Mining Kit (boards, bricks, pulleys, leather, rope) in hand, I dashed to the east and checked out the area around that Guild’s topaz mine. It looked like there was space a bit to the northeast...sitting on sand. It was a blind stab...you can’t douse for gems, only pray.

I built the mine. The fourth pull yielded a small topaz! Sefet would have his reactory!

01/16/09 *brick rolled*

Started off by mining the needed topaz for the reactory and finishing the construction. I decided I was going to need to fully upgrade my camp into a Raeli Oven producing factory and that was going to take a LOT of metal. Upgrading the student forge with a pair of pinch rollers and an extrusion plate to make metal sheeting and wire was going to cost...60 Iron and 40 Copper. Ouch. Add another 15 or so iron to make nails for a few brick racks for Ft. KbtS and I was looking at hours of mining and hundreds of charcoal in processing.

In the end, the student’s forge is now fully upgraded and Ft KbtS sports five Improved brick racks to complement its 11 kilns.

I decided to start cranking up firebrick production to see how well it all works. KbtS is incredible and the only limitation is a minor wood shortage, even with the bounty of trees nearby. It does show I’ll cap out at 12 kilns and 6 racks. Generated around 3500 firebricks out of the 4000 needed for the first Raeli.

Next up is more copper sheeting so I can add two more kettles. I’ll just have to replenish the iron pots later. Being able to convert a lot more ash at once is far more useful at the moment. I’ve shown I can knock out the firebricks—next is the Vast Quantities of Sheetglass.

Unsuccessfully looked for a tin mine. I’m going to have to go region to region looking for a public one. I really hate trading for metal.

A bit lonely around the ‘Plex lately. Mandisa is busy with her schooling, only popping in every now and then to feed greedy sheepies and Kotas is now on hiatus for his move. Even the chat channels are no longer abuzz with constant idle gossip: only the occasional discussion on recipes or trade requests. Drama levels are comparatively low at the moment.

01/19/09 – Cartouche this!

Friday night, I hunted unsuccessfully for a tin spot. I did find some more iron just north of UWorship and I placed a couple of mines there. The whole ‘lack of tin’ thing is starting to bug me. Bought two levels of salvage skills (finally), just in case I have to tear something down.

Finally got a hold of a public tungsten mine—the color game was hell, even with colorblind mode turned on. Finally got enough ore for two metal, made a wide chisel and gave it a try. Making carpentry blades is now cake. Knocked out a 6500 quality with close to zero effort.

Added a third kettle to the ‘Plex, increasing potash production by 50%.

Started off Saturday doing what I do best: glassworks. In short order I managed to break another eight or so sheets of glass, receive one skill up (now 4/7!), and enough sheet glass for the upcoming Raeli oven.

Due to my time cicada hunting, I’m falling a good bit behind on technology. I find that I have to keep reminding myself that I don’t have to keep up with the larger guilds, I’m –NOT- pursuing Architecture, and I simply don’t NEED to do things like drop 5 or 6 raelis the week the technology opens. I still have a compulsion that if a type of structure exists, I want to build it because.... well, just because. This will lead to my downfall, I’m sure.

I did a little unsuccessful cicada hunting to take a break. Point scores remain low....too low for the test to have been open a week. It occurs to me this is due to two reasons: safari isn’t open and most people won’t wander the desert for hours –just- to hunt cicadas and with technology continuing to be unlocked at a pace that can only be described as “breakneck”, many don’t want to fall behind the tech race.

Saqqarah (of course) opened masonry and the new hotness was concrete. This gave people access to the blaster furnace which is twice as efficient as the compression dealies. It requires both concrete (100 debens I think) as well as a lot of steel sheeting, meaning it will be a while until I can make one. Concrete or cement (I confuse the two), if I remember correctly, requires bauxite, gypsum, and gravel. The first two are found in digs on the east and west side of Egypt. Gravel is made from pounding medium stones to dust with sledgehammers. The lot is chucked into a clinker vat and a couple of people have to keep it stirred until it is ready. This will likely be something I’ll need to trade for.

Someone discovered that clay bricks can be made in improved brick racks now if you have masonry. There’s nothing that uses them currently, but it seems to be something to file away for later. Should I get masonry and start stockpiling them, I wonder?

People are playing with all of the new hotness, but I decided to take a little break and go cicada hunting and maybe get a speed point. A couple of unsuccessful hours later, my plans quickly began to unravel.

There’s an unexpected event notice: “Celebration of Isis (1” appeared on the calendar. One what, we didn’t know. The description wasn’t very helpful. “An annual event to celebrate Isis. Construct the largest Spire of the Sun to win”. The largest who of the what? It will start in an hour. OH GOD, WHAT IF IT TAKES CLAY BRICKS?!?!!?

I make my way to Saqqarah, dodge an acro line along the way, and pick up my ‘missing’ technologies: barley cultivation (I’ll expound another day) and masonry, the latter just as the Isis event begins. I’ve got the materials to build a small construction site on me and I check it out. It will only let me build a ‘size 1’ Sun Spire and it requires: a few small gems (emerald, sapphire, ruby, topaz), a little copper wire, and a sheetglass. Well....let’s see. I only have access to two of the gems, I’ve got a handful of copper, and the glass is ‘spoken for’. That was easy.

I headed back home and went through an acro line instead. Picked up my 12th move (+3 dex, baby!!!) and returned home. I don’t know quite what happened, but I think the part of my brain that knows there’s something that could be built that I’m not building began screaming at me and the next thing I know, I’m intently reading guild pages trying to find a place to blind drop an emerald mine.

Long story short, I get lucky....twice. I built a sand/emerald mine just a little walk south of my topaz mine and a sand/sapphire mine in Adn, just south of the lead patch. I carried supplies for two mines with me when I went to Adn (just in case). The pull rate for the sapphires was very disappointing, yielding only one gem for 75 tries. I tore down the mine to rebuild it and try for a better rate... only to find I had forgotten to pack enough boards for two mines and the equipment I salvaged from the previous mine left me a couple dozen shy. Grrr!

Mandisa to the rescue! A little woodplaning and one spousewarp later, the mine is back in action. Action being a relative term, as it was 150 pulls before the first gem popped out. Mined a few more gems out and returned both of us home.

Built the Size 1 spire next to the ol’ Obelisk. It looked like a tiny Jell-o mold. I checked it and it gave me the option to upgrade it to a larger size. Hmm...just 1 copper wire for a little bigger. I could do that. Hmm...just another sheetglass and a couple more gems to get a few more sizes up. Thus, it nickeled and dimed me until I had spent 4 or 5 glass and it was a pleasant size 42 (don’t panic!). It now looked like a large Jell-o mold. I decreed it ‘good enough for me’ and went back to hunting cicadas.

After a long dry spell, I hit cicada alley and picked up a number of bugs in rapid succession. Planted a second cage in a horrible, horrible spot (time constraints being what they are) and received my first speed point!

On Sunday, things continued breezing along. I spent most of the day falling farther behind the technology curve as advanced glassblowing (thermometers!) came off timer, the first greenhouses got built, and water mining came online. We are now just one technology from Raeli technology... gearboxes. I can only hope it’ll take them another couple of days. Many hours of cicada hunting yielded only a single cicada, but it was worth more than the last 4 I picked up combined.

Some bright spots:

My cartouche was one of the largest 49 in Egypt, yielding me a prize of 25 steel. Definitely worth the sheet glass investment. The Goods will be opening in ‘another day or two’. These guys are the traders that make soloing possible. It may mean the end to my resource shortfall. To cap things off, their headquarters will be halfway between me and the chariot stop. I couldn’t be happier. Neither of my cicada cages crumbled by Sunday night and I picked up my second speed point.

I ended the night harvesting a couple hundred papy. I’m going to need a lot of potash soon. No man should have to choose between glass and cicadas. ;-)