Well, after the blogging frenzy I went through last week you’d think I was getting back on the saddle for good. Unfortunately WORK reared it’s ugly head this week and just slammed me under piles of tickets, I’m just now getting caught up and it’s almost time to bail outta this joint to go pick up my kid from daycare. Ah well, excuses excuses I suppose. Sure I could have been wasting my free gaming time after work to do some blogging, but it just never feels right. My home PC is capable of so much more than word processeing I feel like I’m betraying it whenever I sit down and write about shit. My time is better spent kicking ass.

Now, while I may be doing a lot of work, it’s doesn’t mean I’m slacking off on my game time. The group that has been slowly getting leveled up for T4 adventures is finally coming together with four of us online regularly picking up a pair of pugs to round out our group. Supposedly two of the guys are getting their significant others to level up and rock out with us, but in my experience that rarely goes over well. Unfortunately my backup plan for a fifth person lost his job recently and isn’t going to renew his sub at the end of the month. I’m dreading getting these other two ladies geared out and warded so that can finally run LV and VL when we need them since I really don’t expect them to stick around that long. 

What am I getting at here… well, LF2M. Destro, Iron Rock, Skype user, Greater wards (unless you’re a healer, we can get you by without em). At the moment we’re running Chosen, Blackguard, Squig Herder, Zealot. Ideally I’d want a DoK and Sorc to get on board, but I’m really not that picky on classes. The thing I am picky about is voice comms. Yeah, everyone uses vent. We all have vent. I just don’t LIKE vent. Skype does everything Vent does with less latency and better quality for 6-man groups and serves as a handy “hey, i’m online” tool for people that have a few too many alts. Anyway, if you’re looking for a relatively vulgar crew to run with there’s multiple ways to get a hold of me.

Other things that have been distracting me… Hoo boy, Minecraft. Minecrack. That’s more appropriate really. There’s something about this bit of alpha, well a lot of things really, that make it hard to stop when you hit the wee hours of the morning. I’m pretty sure every night after primetime has cooled down or the rr80 premades start facerolling in scens :shakes fist:, I’ve grabbed hold of my deep dwarven roots and went a-mining. I’ve barely cracked the surface with this “game” cough:ultrasandbox:cough, and currently I’m digging a mine-ride empire. Lately I’ve been looking at different servers to play on as well and see how that works out. There’s tons of videos out there of people doing all kinds of things in the game too, google it.

You start out with nothing but your fists, go punch a tree for wood, break the wood into planks, turn the planks into sticks, wedge the sticks and planks into a wooden pickaxe, dig up some stone, coal, iron, gold, diamond, and craft the world to your liking. During the day you’re relatively safe if aboveground and you get about 10 minutes before night falls. Better get setup quickly and hope you can find some coal to make torches with. At night the undead rise, zombies, skeleton archers, giant spiders, and the exploding creepers spawn in the darkness. Of course, exploring underground it’s always dark when you find a new cavern, and chances are if you’re more than 10 minutes into a game, the undead have spawned inside already making exploration a little hazardous.

There’s other hazards in the game as well. My favorite one is getting lost! More often than not, the caverns and tunnels interconnect for insane distances. One minute you’re digging out a shaft in search of iron and break through to a darkened cavern filled with the moans of zombies and clattering of skeletons, the next you realize you’ve been traveling for a solid twenty minutes through the twists and turns of the tunnel trying to find the end. The one time I was so horribly lost, I did what made sense at the time, dig for the surface. This went over great until I managed to hit the bottom of the ocean. My whole spiral staircase flooded instantly and my 8 air bubbles started ticking down shortly thereafter. Swimming desperately for the surface I cursed my luck when I hit the ice. Protip, don’t try to swim to the surface on an Ice world, it doesn’t work.

I lost all the contents of that tunnel to the bottom of the frozen ocean, all the ore, gold, diamond, and coal. Tons and tons of stone. It didn’t even slow me down, once more into the breach or so it’s said. Minecrack doesn’t stop for death, there’s literally miles and miles of world to dig through, you just hit your respawn point and keep running. I would recommend you build some sort of structure surrounding your spawn point as well. Nothing sucks more than respawning at sunset and having to avoid the undead for a solid ten minutes while you run back to wherever you’ve placed your stronghold. In retrospect, it’s really not a bad idea to build your stronghold at your spawn…

Anyway, the game is worth the 13EUR or whatever the solo developer is charging. Considering the huge success he’s already had, and the pledge that paying for this ALPHA version will unlock all concurrent versions, expansions, and derivatives. The classic version is free, but it lacks multiplayer, and is no longer being developed at all. Fun to give it a try.

Right. Well here’s to hoping that next week I get a bit more free time during my work days to get some posting done. I see we have the Eternal Citadel rolling out for the weekend, perhaps I’ll dust off my FRAPS and get some good punting video going. Hehe…