Nationstates is a weird little game. Although they don’t call me a dictator, everything I decide is passed, so what’s the difference? I am dismissing most issues brought to my attention because making any decision sends the nation veering off into bizarre tangents. I just KNOW that if I took any decision on the mandatory organ donation policy from this morning, that either roving bands of government agents would be lurking about at accident scenes, or millions would die from an absolute lack of donor organs.
I mean – okay, here’s the report on Dryroot from this morning:
The Democratic Republic of Dryroot is a very large, socially progressive nation, renowned for its compulsory military service. Its compassionate, intelligent population of 159 million have some civil rights, but not too many, enjoy the freedom to spend their money however they like, to a point, and take part in free and open elections, although not too often.
The government — a sprawling, bureaucracy-choked morass — concentrates mainly on Education, although Defence and Commerce are secondary priorities. The average income tax rate is 42%, but much higher for the wealthy. A healthy private sector is led by the Book Publishing industry, followed by Information Technology and Trout Farming.
Legislation sometimes has to battle through weeks of filibustering to pass, Dryroot’s children are widely acknowledged as the most foul-mouthed in the region, colleges adhere to rigid ethnic quotas for admissions, and chocobos have more rights than the average citizen. Crime — especially youth-related — is moderate. Dryroot’s national animal is the chocobo and its currency is the gil.
/sigh
In WoW last night, we took on Omen, the two-headed beast who threatens the peace of the tranquil druid outpost of Moonglade, site of the annual Lunar Festival. The only things that really hurt him is the light from Elune’s Candle and beams of light that various Elders will send you after you get a coin from them.
I must have died… hmmm… I don’t know how many times. I would shine the candle at him a couple of times, DoT him, die, wait five minutes to be able to rez, repeat.
He despawned after awhile. All that for nothing. I even forgot to take screenshots.
I headed to EQ2 after, hoping to find Splitpaw Den; but the Heroines of Harm just spent the evening looking for the entrance in the Upper Tunnels. I knew nothing about Splitpaw; Dina never came, and my monk/warden team never got further than the access quest.
I didn’t forget to take screenshots; there was nothing in particular worth seeing. Tunnels, gnolls, gnoll ghosts, gnoll skeletons, ghost bats, rock guardians, some spiders… well, nothing we haven’t seen before.
Splitpaw scales to the level of the group. I think Dera, at 28, had made the dungeon a little too hard for level 25 Nashuya. She did level there, and got her first pet. That pet can HURT things. Too bad it doesn’t last – and that the tainted essence used to summon it doesn’t replenish as fast as you would like to use pets.
I camped the Mothers of Mayhem out at some random tunnel where no creature roams because I just had to sleep. Since it’s in an instance, I imagine we’ll appear outside Splitpaw and start from the start again.
Sure, I could have gathered information about Splitpaw first, known just what to do, but so few times do you get a chance to try something that challenges you. We spent several hours crawling in a dangerous dungeon, died lots, loot wasn’t that great, didn’t achieve the goal of getting to the quest area, didn’t know about exploding barrels to start, or which things could be blown up… Didn’t know anything.
Still had fun. But tonight, Dera will mentor Nashuya and maybe we’ll get a dungeon a little easier to manage. Groups of level 29 critters… ouch. Just ouch.
