Despite being seriously tempted to recant on my cancelled Aion subscription, I have decided to stick it out for at least a month or two of no Aion. Perhaps I can resubscribe once 2.0 hits sometime in September, assuming that I haven't gotten distracted with the dual something shiniers of Going Rogue and Guild Wars 2.
ATITD Tale 5 on the main shard is launching sometime August 5th. There is a tremendous temptation to go check it out, especially the new mining and new fishing systems.
However, one thing is for sure. I will not be indulging in mass industry on the main shard. The only way I will survive there is to attach myself to a nice humongous research-type guild and do the social contribution thing.
Two possibilities arise, not altogether incompatible with each other -
1) I could make contact with Wampak, the old Zfree guild leader, though I feel a little embarassed having dropped off the face of the earth. I did explain that I had been recently promoted IRL and just had no time for the game - which was true then.
2) I made chance friends with tehm (tehmoosh) and Verix, and while tehm has lost interest in shard B, Verix tells me that he is pondering shard A's new reset, though who knows how long he'll last. However, tehm has contacts with Pascalito and Ariella, who are one of THE established hotshots of the server. If I could get in with that group, I would be super-set. Doubly encouraging is Pascalito's entry on Facebook's ATITD page, where he volunteers to mentor anyone joining the game. Maybe he just wants new slave labour, but hey, what do I have to lose?
Back on shard B, the main bulk of my infrastructure and industry lies. And you know, it is a good comfort zone.
It helps that there is a crazy hardcore Aussie pair devoted to making resources public, as they have managed to build 13+ of 42+ Raeli ovens where I haven't even managed to build any. Slowly, but steadily, we must be running out of good spots to put Raeli ovens. But I feel less worried and less frantic that I will be locked and shut out of anything. The public resources are always there. And I'm sure there has to be one mountaintop that is so far away that no one on shard B wants to run to.
That's the nice thing about Bastet. There's only 300-some people, and the lebensraum is greater. There are a couple of big industrial lockout guilds, but meh, let them have their fun.
Having watched shard A from beginning to end (well, watching from the outside anyway), I am beginning to understand the population ebb and flow patterns.
Eventually, folks get bored and quit and voila, they free up resources, and all the painstakingly collected Raeli tiles are now free for someone else to claim.
Or they don't quit and they stick it out sitting on their gallant hoard and become the new titled Oracle of something or other, which only entitles them to... slaving away on a humongously costly monument, sitting around begging for other lower ranked people to contribute (what, those same people your selfishness encouraged to quit the game?), and then having Teppy play a cruel trick with a vote that could nullify your achievements/monument in favor of new tech. Oh, and I guess they get bragging rights too. To whoever cares to listen.
I'm actually greatly amused by the vote. It neatly sets up the Explorers vs the Achievers. Out-group focused vs In-group focused. Do you go for new techs that will benefit ALL of Egypt, and bring new game systems and mechanics to fiddle around with? Or do you go for maintaining the status quo of creating new competitive Tests by re-affirming what the monuments stand for, with all the hardworking Test-passers names inscribed on it and everything?
Obviously, I'm in with new and shiny, research for -all-, and a number of research folks on shard A also seem inclined in that direction. The question is, how many of the other subset are left on shard A and which way will they swing? Towards new change and novelty, or back towards the same old?
Regardless, owning a substantial piece of virtual territory in shard B is a good comfort zone to fall back on, as I've mentioned before. Practically no one comes by where I've chosen to set up. It's nice, it's quiet, and it's just me and my alts and all MY junk. Stress on MY. I'm not sure why, perhaps it's part of a collector tendency, but I have this chronic urge to own things, and know they are always going to be there. It's nice to be guildmaster of your own shit... er, stuff.
Being self-sufficient there means that I am more secure in venturing out and trying something experimental with social stuff. It's like a secure home base with which I can always retreat to, in case I get stung by anything.
I did some mass beetle growing over the weekend. I have immensely pretty beetles. Remind me to post pics of them at some point.
I also did some mass charcoal-lizing. It still isn't enough. I nearly filled all my forges and casting boxes, before getting tired and feeling like I was running out of wood in a hurry (I get insecure once I drop below 9k wood.)
Then I got distracted and decided to cast a ton of gears and bearings and things, in preparation for impending automation. Which burnt up about half the charcoal I just made. And I don't think I've got all the gearwork I need for automated machines yet, so I'll have to do it again at some point.
I'm really not keen on metal, but I made myself do it anyway. I macro-mined for two hours (can't wait for it to be gotten rid of in T5) on two alts, accumulating plenty of ore that I can't carry away to smelt until I make myself a carry recipe.
I tried to experiment for 1-2 hours on food cooking pairs, and got some data into my spreadsheet, but couldn't find any good and cheap pairings for what I wanted.
I grew some barley to restock my cooking ingredients and made a reasonable amount of light, medium, dark and burnt barley, malt and wheat in my grain oven.
My long term goal is still to build a deep well of my own. And probably make it public after that. I did some calculations, and the amount of metal I need is mind-boggling. It's going to take at least one week of double-alt macro-mining for two hours. And possibly be ten days, depending on how fast I macro-mine, and if I want to sacrifice any recipes to it.
After getting ore, I'm going to have to smelt it down, which takes 15 minutes for 150 metal - I haven't decided if I want to make myself another gyration cell... it'll speed up the process but gyro cells are so expensive and it'll sidetrek me yet again.
And then casting the screw gears themselves would be a lot of beeswax and a lot of time and a lot of charcoal in the master's casting box.
It's immensely crazy for something that should be a community project, but... you know, it also seems like a fun and ambitious and yet doably achievable by one person type of thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment