How to Make Your Kestral’s Cry Ravine All Snuggly

After I wrote that last night I did look up decorating tips for the ravine.  This is indeed your chance to use those building blocks and strange planks you’ve been accumulating in the bank.

Here, from Better Homes and Dimensions and the wonderfully named Stylish Radish (!)  you can see a cabin she created for a dwarf friend.

 

And here, from Rift Dimension Addicts a nice video tutorial showing how to use the Rift Dimension Building tools.  He makes all the X Y Axis, copy/paste, choose 1080 or 13 or just pop your eyes out of your head and STOP THE MATH… sound almost reasonable.

I’ll try, and who knows if I can’t do it maybe my mathematical spouse (everyone should own one) will give it a shot since he dreams about numbers and he doesn’t wake up screaming from doing so as we mere mortals do.

Lesson learned, don’t spend anymore hard earned plat on these empty holes of a dimension if I can’t build in them.

Rift: Kestrel’s Cry Ravine Oops

I should have looked this one up!  This is it! No house no campfire nada but cold snow and whistling winds which I am seeing enough of these days, thanks!  I suppose I am supposed to use my non-existent building block skills here to make a cozy place.  Hahahahaha.   40 plat. ouch.

 

I have been questing alternating with Instant Adventures.   Plat rolling in. Joking.  Oh well, I’ll research the next one first.  On the plus side I have a giant bridge sized log that doesn’t fit in my homey Breach Chamber that would look da bomb here.

Rift Home Sweet Home

I started with the Sanguine Shores “starter home” which I called “home sweet hovel.”   A pretty setting but a tiny hut.  I found it a little depressing to tell the truth.

 

Then I found I had enough money to buy the next size home.  I couldn’t really find pictures of it to see if was worth my coinage but what the heck, I thought.  ah, how incredibly more spacious and beautiful it is than the hovel.  I’ve been slowly purchasing and finding by happenstance (looting creatures) plants, trees, bits of furniture.  I can buy recipes to make some things but I need special coinage from doing daily crafting quests so I’ve been working on those with both characters.  Both can use the house, and decorate, so I only need to spend time and money on one place.  It is shaping up nicely, and it makes me want to play more to get it all snuggly.

The Entrance Hall

 

The Bedroom Area

 

The Garden Area

Merrymaker

As usual after being all whiny, I looked and all I needed for the Merrymaker title was to turn into a snowman and dance with another snowman in Dalaran.  Done.  Ho ho ho.

Via Buzzfeed: 17 Signs You’re a Board Game Bully

Ha!  I recognize a few of these behaviors, not in myself of course.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/justinabarca/signs-youre-a-board-game-monster

I do have some flaws/oddities.  I know, you’re gasping for air at that.

I always want the red token/figure/gamepiece.

Despite my awesome vocabulary, I lose at Scrabble like a dog because I can’t resist nice words!  Putting down a cool word loses to Aaa or whatever every time.

I generally lack strategy because I am just happy to play, la la la.  Dead meat.

I have favorite countries in Risk I try to get and defend because I like them, doh.  Again epic fail.

I finally got a chance to play Dungeons and Dragons and the math aspects ruined it for my non-mathematical brain.  I like games which run those numbers for me in the background.

I like word games, yay!

I am enjoying trying out some new types of board games because, just as with books, films and computer games, my charming imagination puts me right in the world of the game almost immediately and I’m ready to have my imagination enter new enchanting territories.

Happy New Year from The Last Chapter!

World of Warcraft

After having so much fun working in Neverwinter, I had to break to do some of the Winter Veil activities.   Just as with the last couple of holidays in World of Warcraft, I approached the many requirements half heartedly.  There are too many activities for this busy time of the year, and having three PVP ones is a real pain.

So I did the gnome/battlefield one, entering the Isle of Conquest for the first time ever in a skimpy gnome Santa outfit.  Because I’d lose my gnome form if I shape shifted to my feral cat form or a bear or moonkin form for that matter, I had to go in as my Elf Self transformed.  I used my secondary talent set for which I have no talent never ever having used it…restoration.  I can confess here because I feel guilty that I was concentrating on my toolbars and skills and when I entered the battle ground I went in marked dps as always.  I suspect this saved my miserable gnome hide from instant death because I just looked like the only Santa gnome in the place, but not a falsely labeled one.  Shame, shame.

We tried some dungeons as a guild to get some of those achievements.  Only I and my husband and son and nephew dungeon dive, others don’t.  So we did a few, just us, to test things out, then got in the dungeon finder queue.  Unbelievably our first one had this Pin Brain From Mars who was critiquing everyone’s dps and skills and blah blah blah.   Obviously we were doing fine and didn’t need the Head of Bone and we should have drop kicked him sooner, but we waited till the end.  Luckily the next guy was just normal and we sailed along.  Not so confidence inspiring to those who we can’t talk into dungeons at all most days, and to me playing my dread rogue who I know is just awful, thanks for applying the brown sauce.

I’ve been running my shaman through some dungeons trying to level her up to use in the group instead of the rogue.  I’ve had trouble with her in the past which is why she is my lowest level class.  The dungeons in the 50 levels are just torture.  I am always so grateful to qualify for Hellfire Peninsula at 58.  I have been running into one after another of what I call “draggy tanks”.  They aggro one group of mobs then just chain drag them and everyone else through the whole place. Gack.  THEN there was the gnome who was playing his healer with his tank on follow or was it the other way around.  Nobody but me spoke up and said how bizarre that was, and when he died immediately because his following character got stuck on a wall, then everyone died…I got dungeon deserter for leaving that fun time behind.  How I love dungeons.

In an effort to have my spouse help me with a Winter Veil quest, I logged in his guy to just get him set up.  Lo and behold he has an in game email from the devs inviting him to try Raiding.  Hello?  He’s never going to try raiding.  Did any of my characters get it? NO.  Grrr.  Not that I’ve been raiding either but I do play.  

Rift

Aimlessly working on my Pyromancer in Rift.  Am at level 24.  I was trying to do every quest in Silverwood but I couldn’t stand being there forever so I made sure my gathering skills were to level, finished what I could and stepped over the border into Gloamwood.  It is all gloomy and spidery, not looking at all like Duskwood from Wow but having that ambience.  A nice change and I feel like I’m making some forward progress.

Dearth of Games for PC yet again

I was thinking this year how in years past there were always maybe five games out in the fall I wanted badly and I’d ask for them for Christmas.  I can’t even think of the last time I asked for a computer game.  It is not as if there are a bunch on another platform I’d be buying either if only I didn’t love my keyboard/mouse so much.  There is not much of interest released if Action/Adventure is your genre.   I do not count those stoopid find the hidden picture puzzle games as Adventure.

There are a few upcoming lists with some possibles, but not much.

Board Games

New additions this season are Forbidden Island and Carcassonne.  I and my team mates liked both and appreciated the cooperative nature of each.  We are going to see if we can’t re-institute our board game day here, maybe we can eventually lure in others on a regular basis.  Snacks and board games, hard to beat that for entertainment and relaxation.

Repopulation

They’ve got my attention with the new game trailer and Kickstarter for the Repopulation.  They are sidestepping what I thought was a hardcore pvp game and practically stepping out of the video saying if you loved Star Wars Galaxies pre-NGE you will love us play play play!   Am I someone who could resist that?   I’m supporting the Kickstarter and if they bring that puppy up I’m going in for a look.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/therepopulation/the-repopulation-a-sandbox-mmorpg

Happy gaming in 2014!   Atherne and the crew of the Last Chapter