Lair of the Wolf Dragon

First impressions

I had some new screenshots of the progress Vahkt and I have been making on our little homestead but unfortunately I can’t access my home computer right now from work. So they’ll have to come at a later date.

My previous post was more of a general overview of Wurm Online for people who don’t know anything about it, so now I’d like to indulge myself and ramble on about what we’ve actually done in the past week or so that we’ve been playing. 🙂

After I had finished the tutorial Friday and arrived the Howl, Vahkt and I wandered around the nearby area for a while, feeling bewildered as we asked each other, “Okay…now what?” We had all the starter tools but no compass and no in-game map.

We quickly found WurmPedia, THE bible for all Wurm players, and a community created map of the Freedom Server (thank god). We traveled to the Freedom Market with the help of signs along the road and this place became our standard point of reference for the next few days. In the middle of it is a settlement token which is used to claim an area of land. Handily, it appears in-game as a pedestal with a sun clock on the top that also labels the cardinal directions.

We first tried foraging through some of the grass around Freedom Market and found that most of them had been picked clean because of course, that’s where everyone else was. We then made our way north-west to Hill Side where we spent the rest of the night foraging and making some tinder for a fire.

Vahkt then had to leave for his work on night-shift so I wandered back to Freedom Market and then headed west until I was north of Hanover Docks, looking for some clay to make us flasks and jars. I happened to come across some clay just lying on the road so I went to work. This is when I attracted the attention of Volonis and Humbrol, two helpful veteran players. They gave me some helpful tips and items, including some cotton that I would later use to spindle into lines for our fishing poles. I spent most of the night trundling back and forth with my ever-increasing inventory, which was beginning to slow me down with its weight.

The rest of the weekend was a bit of a blur after that, with me staying up much too late and waking up much too early because I really wanted to play. >.> Vahkt came back online at some point and I presented him with the completed fishing poles I had made. We then realized that we needed to find iron to make many of the tools we’d need. Someone in CA Help kindly pointed us towards an iron mine near Freedom Docks so we set up our temporary camp there. Vahkt mostly fished and cooked while I mined and crafted us some more tools and a small anvil for myself.

This is where we realized the greater potential of playing with a partner. You can do two things at the same time and our respective skills would increase much faster while still sharing the same pool of crafted items. So we decided that he would be the fisher/cooker and I would be the smith.

Vahkt then had to go again (probably to sleep) and I kept playing and eventually wandered back over to north of Hanover Docks. The weight of all the items in my inventory (especially the iron) was really slowing me down and making me have to rest often. It was here that I realized that we needed a cart. After reading up on it, I decided to make a large cart instead of a small one because then it could be locked when we were offline.

Volonis and Humbrol saw me hanging around then and chatted with me as I went through the long task of making my cart and lock. My carpentry was quite low of course so it took many tries to make enough planks and shafts for it, resulting in more wooden scraps (failed tries) than I could carry. But my perseverance won out and eventually I had my shiny new cart before me, which I proceeded to load with all my crap. It was slow goings to pull such a large cart around (it’s ideally meant for a pair of horses to pull) but at least I was moving faster than I was before.

Humbrol came by to see my finished work and then showed me a plot of land nearby. It had been abandoned by its owner long ago, to the point where the house had rotted away around the forge and storage boxes. He and a friend had been planning to use the rather large plot for a field but he said that if I wanted it, it was all mine. Not long after, Volonis came by and showed me the piece of land he had staked out for himself. Then he lead me to yet another abandoned place near his and said I could claim it if I wanted. I thanked them both and said that I’d take it into consideration and talk to Vahkt about it later. Such nice people I meet. 🙂

Volonis then went back to his land to begin terraforming it, so I offered to help. My digging skill was so low that I really wasn’t any help and spent the entire time trying to get it to 10 so I could actually be of use. A friend of Volonis showed up though and between the two of them, they really didn’t need my help. We took a quick break in between to kill a wild cat that had showed up nearby, only to have someone else rudely butcher the body and take the hide while Volonis’s friend was running back to get his butchering knife. :-/ The thief was quickly chastised in local chat and logged off not long after. Humbrol was around at the time and had threatened to put the guy on the kill-on-sight list he had for his property.

We shrugged it off and went back to work, only to have Volonis and his friend finish their terraforming right about as I hit 10 digging. Vahkt logged on shortly after so I went over to show him our new cart and let him unload his items into it. We then decided that we really needed a place to make our own because even the cart was getting full now. I showed him the two places Humbrol and Volonis had shown me but we decided to go exploring a little to see if we could find a more suitable spot.

After leaving our cart under Volonis’s watchful eye and debating which direction we should go, we headed out east of Freedom Market and began following the roads that went around the north coast. We figured out some requirements with what we wanted out of our future site: it had to have easy access to wood, water, iron (which meant rocky regions), and to a lesser extent, clay. I also wanted to be close to at least a few nice people, because you know, safety in numbers.

At one point we wandered off the road into a treed valley and found what was either an unfinished settlement or one that had been abandoned long ago. It was actually eerie to be the only people around (no one in local chat), exploring flattened plateaus that contained nothing but stone walls. It was here that we spotted a well and headed towards it, as there was no open water nearby and we were getting thirsty. A young goblin appeared and began chasing us but I thought the two of us could kill it so I turned around.

It was at this point that my router had one of its infamous disconnects and I had to go restart it. When I got back a minute or two later, I logged onto the death screen. Poor Vahkt hadn’t even had experience fighting something and had gotten killed as well. Sigh.

We respawned all the way back in the Howl and began the run back to our bodies to recover our items. Luckily it was only about a 5 minute run. I lead the goblin on a wild goose chase as Vahkt recovered his items and then I looped back to pick up mine. We then continued on our way. Now ascribing to the motto “Run and live!”, when a bear appeared on our trail, we ran for our lives…until Vahkt’s stamina ran out and he couldn’t get away. I then distracted the bear by attacking it until he could run again and then we both took off, leaving the animal behind.

At this point we arrived in a place called Stonehaven and realized that we had gotten ourselves completely turned around. Then we backtracked a little and got back on the roads heading east. Somewhere along the way, we turned north and found ourselves in Spider Hollow. It was on the edge of this beautiful little lake and we quickly found that it did have everything we needed. It was surrounded by thick pine woods, a patch of the shore was covered in clay, and there were plenty of places to dig mines. Since settling there, we have also found a tar patch just up the road, as well as some nearby copper and silver mines. It really is a wonderful spot.

We picked a little plateau of land on the side of a hill leading down towards the lake, near a place called Willowspring. As we were building, it quickly became apparent that I needed to go back to get the cart, which had the majority of our items. Vahkt would ask me for this or that and my answer always seemed to be “Yeah…back on the cart.” It didn’t take me that long to get back to Freedon Market (even though I had to dodge a crocodile on the road), but the return trip was very sloooooooow (and I had to dodge both the crocodile AND a scorpion on the way back). It’s certainly not something I want to do again without horses pulling that large cart.

From then on, we’ve been industrious little buggers, spending pretty much all of our time building things on our plot. But I think I will save those updates for when I have screenshots to show. 🙂

If you’re looking for more Wurm Online stories, Battle Priestess has some great ones and The Adventurers of Surviverman is also turning out to have an awesome read. (Yes, I discovered that blog through Battle Priestess too. 😛 )