First up is Erenshor, I guess. I have a few indie games I really want to be playing right now. Erenshor is one of them; I’m in the beta, so I have access to the whole game. It’s really addictive. In all the best ways. If you want to just log in, find a camp spot and just sit back for tasty experience, you can. I was at the goblins in Rottenfoot Swamp for a good amount of time last night, until I hit level 17. Then we went back to the Lost Cellar and tried our luck against the Spectral Torturer again. We just didn’t have enough deeps, or we needed a better healer or something. I’d grouped up with another arcanist, Zara, and she did well enough but I looked at her gear and it was terrible. I’m going to need to bring her to some places if she’s going to be raid-ready.
Still looking for the best group combination. Tank, Healer, Crowd Control/Nuker — that last one is me. The final slot is floating. I usually have a Duelist for the fourth spot, but I have been using a second arcanist to help with crowd control and mana so that I can focus on DPS. I dunno. Maybe Cyndara isn’t as good a healer as she claims to be.
Well, there’s some stuff I need to camp in Blacksalt Strand, maybe we can find some upgrades for everyone else there.
Someone on Reddit was overjoyed that he had found the old EverQuest II Dire Bear pack-in toy in a box somewhere. I still have mine on my desk right next to me.
Back in the day, I liked it so much that I thought it would make a great optional Monopoly piece, and did a bunch of webcomics with Dire Bear, Scotty, Car and the others RPing on a Monopoly board.
Those took so long to do. If I had to do it all over again, I’d get better lighting. The header image for this post may have been inspired by this.
Not sure if I’ve ever shown my mini work area. I’m still working on bringing together my Malifaux December crew. I know, I know, it’s February now, this is just how slow I am.
Kasul and I were at the Battle Standard up in Ellington? East Windsor? Somewhere around there, and I saw that they had a cool Metal Golem in the display case. The one I use for my Foundry crew was a pre-assembled one from a Nightmare special edition that I picked up at Origins last year. I hadn’t realized just how sexy the original one was until I saw it all put together. And I had it at home! Still on the sprues, but I did have it. I resolved to get to putting it together and painting it; it’s toward the back, there, holding on to a rail. Next to it is a Mechanical Rider, and more to the left is an alternate model for Blessed of December called Luther that I’m starting to work on.
Between Luther and the Mechanical Rider is a plastic-dissolving solvent. I can’t remember what Kasul called it; he brought it home from work. The idea here is to cut up the sprues once the models have been put together, dump them in here. They dissolve and go into solution in the solvent, and then can be used as a sort of molding putty to fill gaps. Works pretty well.
Primed but unpainted are three Kaltgeists, two Ice Dancers and Raspy 2. And some bases.
I’m also working on making a shelving unit to fit inside a bag so that I can bring the minis places safely. My previous project works fine as long as I’m being super careful not to tip them over, but I need something more robust.
EverCraft Online
Everyone in the Discord seems to think there’s going to be some sort of announcement today, but I don’t know why. Maybe we can play it again? I thought it was pretty funny, as I was going through the ECO Discord, to find that a couple of years ago, they were hiring MineCraft builders to work on the game.
EverCraft to players: This is not MINECRAFT! EverCraft to developers: This is TOTALLY MineCraft.
I mean, of course it is. But I am there for it.
BTW, how is Pantheon doing? It came out and I haven’t heard much about it. The Pantheon Reddit is pretty active and people seem to be enjoying themselves. I guess it would be easier to keep track of it if it were on Steam.
Speaking of games that should be on Steam, I’ve been feeling kinda shitty about giving Raph Koster’s “Stars Reach” such short shrift. I’ve been reading up about it, reading Wilhelm’s stories about it and so on, and I am still not sold on it, having been through the whole Landmark mess and with more than the normal amount of time spent on MineCraft back in the day and Valheim more recently.
I signed up to back the Kickstarter and just now signed up to play test it, so… I’m keeping an open mind.
I legitimately thought (and still think) that Cryptmaster was one of the most fun and innovative games of 2024, based only on the demo that I played. I always meant to buy and play the full version, but I always have this gigantic backlog of games to play and I just don’t have as much time as I would like to play them all. It was unfortunate that Cryptmaster fell off like that.
Limited Run Games, a company that re-releases games on physical media, is going to press some copies of Cryptmaster and give them a real, physical release. It’s sold out now, but I got one of them, it will be coming this June, and I am going to play it through.
Hey, whatever happened to Fantasian: Neo Dimension, you ask?
Nothing, it’s still right there, right next to me, in its box, safe and sound.
Honestly, the fights got punishingly hard and I just moved on to other things. I do need to finish it up; I don’t think I’m super far from the end, but it’s to a point where all the boss fights take a really long time and… I’ll get to it. I want to finish it. But the prep for CaptainCon took precedence, and once that momentum is lost, it is super hard to get it back.
Anyway, have to get to work. I wanted to give an update to what’s happening here at Chez Tanglewood because it’s been awhile since I last blogged. There’s so much stuff I haven’t even talked about.
Maybe tomorrow?
We’ll be here waiting when you have time to fill us in on the rest of the stuff you’ve been up to!!
Thanks, Nim
I just need to make more, smaller posts, I think.
Pantheon did release paid Early Access on Steam in mid-December I think? I picked it up there, played it for a few days, and have not gone back to it. It’s not bad, I’m just not crazy about dealing with pre-release games anymore.
I backed it a long time ago and played a few of the open play tests before release to early access, and I thought it was okay, nothing special. It didn’t pull me in like Monsters & Memories and EverCraft Online did.
I used to love those Monopoly web comics. Now you’ve reminded me, I see there’s a category for them on the blog. I’ll go through them all again. I bet I never saw all of them the first time.
Pantheon is doing quite well as far as I can tell. Certainly better than I expected. Easy to check, what with it being on steam. As I type this there are about two and a half thousand people playing. All-time peak was just under 7k. Using the old multipliers, that would certainly give them 20-30k players in EA, total. That’s got to be three times what I thought they’d get. I still haven’t bought in though. That demo weekend really killed any interest I had.
Stars Reach is a similar story in a way. I’ve been in the pre-alpha for a few months and I’ve found the more I’ve played, the less I’ve wanted to play. The plain truth of it is that I always knew it wasn’t my sort of game – I mean I never even played SWG until *after* the NGE and I had free rein to play it before then on Sony All Access. I knew then all that pretending to have an actual job wan’t going to appeal to me and it still doesn’t. I want to be thrilled and/or entertained, not to have to do all the work myself just to end up where other games begin. Even so, I’ve said I’ll back the Kickstarter and I will, if they ever actually run it and if there’s a suitably cheap pledge.
I have to say that Monsters and Memories seemed a lot more engaging than either Pantheon or Stars Reach to me. I’d play that if was in EA or similar. Ditto Erenshor. Based on your reports and preferences, that suggests I probably ought to give Evercraft a go, too.
I didn’t really get into SWG pre-NGE; it ran bad on my computer and I had a slow connection. I never played it after. I didn’t play Ultima Online, and I didn’t play Metaplace, so I really don’t have a lot of experience with Koster’s games.
I’m going to give it a chance. The videos may not do it justice. It really, really gives off Landmark vibes, which isn’t a bad thing, necessarily. But, I am looking for a game, not a houe builder. I like building bases, but I’d like a game where that is not the focus of gameplay.