Wurm Online: A Return
Apologies for the long break in posting; I've been away on holiday. However, before I went, I was inspired by Stargrace, posting about Wurm Online, to log in and have a look around again. I liked what I saw - there's been a graphics upgrade, new servers, and other improvements.
Last time I was playing, I joined the village of Stonehaven. It worked well, but it wasn't quite fitting my vision of Wurm - developing my own deed, building it from the ground up (or considering Wurm's landscape, building the ground first and then the deed...) and making an impact on the world. Instead I was joining a well-established village, and contributing only very little because my skills weren't all that high. To boot, even had I wandered off, that server was so thoroughly jammed with people as to be impossible to settle with a low-skilled character.
This time, I created a new character, and headed for the new server where I knew some people. I was able to make it across from the spawn point to where they live, poke around a bit, and find a spot where I could set up a small deed of my own. It's up on a hill, not an unreasonable distance from water, and the neighbours are nice folk. There have been previous deeds in the area, so the spot I've claimed - all of 11 tiles square - already contains a forge, some storage, and a cobbled area. That's immensely useful, and still leaves me plenty to do. So the first thing I'm doing is puting a fence around the deed - a simple wooden one - and the second thing I'm going to do is more-or-less level it, and establish some fields and orchards.
As with everything in Wurm, the fencing is a long process - three or four nights of work have about 60% of the work done, and I'm still debating exactly how much to fence. I could, of course, just fence the whole thing, but that actually cuts me off from a useful resource. The guard that lives on the domain (well, I say lives - she's a ghost templar) kills hostile beasts that come onto my territory. If I butcher and skin those, I get meat, pelts, teeth, and so on - all useful things. But if I fence all around, they can't come on to the deed. The fence, though, marks out the borders for me - otherwise I'll have to keep on clicking on the ground to see whether that-tile-there is mine or not - and will keep animals, when I get some, on the deed. So I might end up fencing three sides, or three and a half, and leaving some open space for beasties to wander in and become dinner.
The deed down the hill from me is for sale - it's a nice patch of coastal territory, and the owner wants 12 silver for it. You can buy game currency directly - which is about as much use as it is in EVE - so if I wanted to drop €12 on it, I could get a second deed. I don't think I do, though; I've enough going on with the current deed for now, and there is a fair chance that the owner will just disband it and move elsewhere if it doesn't sell. If that happens, I could expand into that area, or I could create an alt, and establish a new deed where his was. I think that for now, I'll sit tight, and see what happens.
Wurm is going to be my MMO of choice for at least the next few months - it doesn't demand all that much time, it won't block me from getting in if I let my paid access lapse, and I can dip in and out as I want. That means it'll line up well with the spring, when I have college and then exams, and then the summer, when I'll have, in theory, some free time. It's also as sandboxy as I could reasonably want.
Posted by Drew Shiel at March 7, 2012 1:11 PM
