Under The Mountain

I didn't want to skip a day's posting but I really don't have much to offer. 

I spent almost all Sunday playing Guild Wars 2, sorting my banks and answering call-outs in world vs world. It was a whole lot of fun but not something that makes for much of a blog post. 

I was hoping I might get a post out of Jenn Chan's latest Producer's Letter for EverQuest II but having read it. it's so vague and lacking in detail it looks as if I'll have to wait and actually play Whispers of Tyranny before I find out what's in it.

There is some news on the Overseer front:

Overseer Season 3 includes:

• Five new traits!
• New achievements!
• New adventures!
• New agents!
• New rewards!

About what I expected. The interesting part will be the rewards. I'm not sure anyone plays Overseer for the stories or even the mechanics. More on that when it happens.

Yesterday it looked for a while as though I might go a whole day without logging into Valheim. I think that would have been the first time since I bought the game, had it happened. In the end I did finally succumb at about eight in the evening.

Of course, as soon as I got started the fever took hold. I'd been thinking about relocating now the focus is moving to the plains. I have several decently upgraded bases and two places I'd call homes but none of them is in a good spot for what I'll be doing next.

There's one medium-sized island I know that has all of the biomes close enough together for convenience but far enough apart for safety. I had a portal there but no base set up. I'd already been all around the island looking for somewhere I liked but I wasn't really feeling it. 

Then last night I found a spot on a steep, meadowed hillside below the mountain and it occured to me I could tunnel into the slope to make a comfortable homestead with secure, underground storage, panic rooms and an attractive, open terrace overlooking the sea.

I've spent all day doing that. Pretty much literally all day. I'm probably about two-thirds done. Maybe. 

By sheer good fortune, this is what the half-buried runestone has to say.

The thing about picking a nice location to build in Valheim is that it predicates a lot of running. Construction takes industrial quantities of stone and wood and you can't source them locally because that's going to leave your perfect home surrounded by acres and acres of smoking wasteland.

I did clear a lot of large stones from the long hill leading up to the mountain and I chopped down some trees that were beyond the draw distance from the sundeck but mostly I've been taking portals to other islands and desecrating the environments there. It's quite exhausting. Well, after eight hours it is.

On the plus side, I did find forty scraps of iron in one chest I'd left in the entrance to a crypt further down the coast and sixty pieces of silver ore in a hut right above where I'm building the new house, so that saved a load of time. All I have to do now is dismantle one of my upgraded forges and ship it across. I think that will be quicker than making a new one from scratch but maybe not. We'll see.

The next few days are supposed to be some kind of mini-heatwave here in the U.K. which almost certainly means some longer walks. Then I have to pull  my monthly music roundup together. That usually takes me at least a couple of days. Put those two things together and add in finishing the house and I'm not sure I'll get much else done before Friday. And I have two zoom training sessions to fit in somewhere as well, now things are starting to move in the run-up to going back to work.

Perhaps this would be a good time to step off the daily posting bandwagon. I guess it all depends on whether I have anything to say or not.

Hmm.... should have saved that last line for Thursday.