august challenge ~ part 2

Ambermist’s latest challenge and July’s recap can be found here.  The challenge is, what do you keep and why?

Part 2 ~ Collecting

As for collecting, I do…  books and bows mostly.

I collect bows as I tend to get quite attached to them, they are the defining characteristic of the type of class I play and generally the best bows available have a high level of challenge in order to get them.  Rain Caller in EQ2 was the result of a Signature quest which I managed to do on level with the help of my Guild, the Ghostly Bow of Bylze was part of an extremely long quest chain, to gain my Mythical bow Eagle’s Talon I had to raid in some very difficult and very scripted raid fights.  Obviously as you level and expansions are released you have new challenges and new bows to get so I was really happy I could make my old bows into house items and display them.  They end up being a visual reminder of past achievements which show your development and history within the game.

Skyrim: Archery room in The Reserve

EQ2: Rain Caller

EQ2: Ghostly Bow of Bylze and Eagle’s Talon

EQ2: Eagle’s Talon and Shard of Love bow

Skyrim: Bookshelves in The Reserve

Skyrim: Bookshelves in Markarth House

EQ2: books to be put away…

EQ2: books in display cabinets

EQ2: Left side of circular library

EQ2: right side of circular library

Collecting books in games really reflects my love of reading in real life. I would love a proper library but its not possible so I make do with virtual game libraries

I sorely miss this in lotro.  I would love to be able to have books displayed in my house and weapons on the wall but its not possible with their housing system.  I have sort of replaced those with cosmetic items and horses in lotro, but its not the same and I don’t really care about it as much.

Having said that about outfits, I do collect them to a certain degree.  I generally put together an outfit which says hunter-ranger-sneak thief to me and then mostly stick with it or update within the theme.  I don’t really go for girly outfits, I occasionally stick a dress on a character for a change but it tends to be quite short lived and I go back to my favourite hunting outfit.  Even so, my wardrobe and house storage in lotro are still bursting at the seams with cosmetic items that I *might* use one day…..  When I saw my favourite outfits from the three games below, I suddenly realised that really I’m going for the same look no matter the game…

my trio of bow-wielding wood elves :

so there you have it.  A gamer with a stuffed-full inventory and a penchant for bows and books.  Could be worse I spose

august challenge ~ part 1

Ambermist’s latest challenge and July’s recap can be found here.  The challenge is, what do you keep and why?  I ended up writing so much, I’ve had to split into two posts sorry…

Part 1 ~ Inventory management

I try very hard to keep my inventory manageable in games but usually fail miserably…  Out of EQ2, Lotro and Skyrim I’ve so far found Lotro the easiest, as you have so little space you just have to be ruthless.  So what do my storage slots usually hold?

• gear – either situational or for alts to grow into
• consumables – food, potions, poison, temp buffs and the like
• shinies!  (eq2)
• appearance gear (this is my worst offender in lotro)
• house items
• pets (if available in game)
• crafting mats
• legendary items and items for blowing up (lotro) or gear to be muted/used for other crafting needs (skyrim, eq2)
• odd, nostalgic or unique can never get again items…. like Gandalf’s pipe in lotro, Falmer eye in Skyrim,
• *stuff* for alts

I think this is fairly standard for most gamers and managing these items in game can be pretty tricky.  It is scary if you ever have a break from a game, open up your inventory and bank slots and WTF?! what is all this stuff?!

this is *just* my bank storage in eq2… this isn’t including house storage or inventory…

In fact returning to a game and trying to sort out your inventory can be so offputting that it can seem easier to start a new character.   After putting in around 80 hours in Skyrim from Nov to Jan this year, I then went on a break from the game until a month or two ago.  I looked at my character, I tried to remember where I was up to, I looked at her inventory and wondered why I was carrying all this stuff.  I went to what I thought was her main house and found it empty.  At this point, I just thought…. no…. no…. I just cannot pick up from where I left off and the thought of trying to track down her gear (spread across 5 or 6 houses) and then figure out what to do with it was too much….  So I started again.  A new bow wielding sneak thief….  I have now backtracked and started sorting out my first character.  It turns out my whiterun house was for smithing, my riften house for alchemy, my solitude house for general loot and displayage of weapons, markarth for enchanting…  stupid stupid stupid system!!  I’ve now downloaded the mod house The Reserve which has tons of storage, all crafting needs and many display areas – in short, its perfect for a packrat like me

No matter the game though, I tend to be very nerdy about it all and have different boxes, slots etc, organised by type.  I keep stuff until I don’t have room and then have a purge.  I would like to say that I only keep stuff I truly need but clearly I don’t… A lot of stuff is kept ‘just in case’, and of course I never need it…

Battlechicken’s July Challenge

So the challenge this month is to tell you all something personal about myself…  I’ve been wracking my brains over this and wondering what to tell you about me.  Its very strange as I tend to only discuss gaming related stuff here, so its actually quite hard to write,  so anyway I thought maybe I’d just do a 5 point bullet list and see what I come up with…

1. I’m a trained textile conservator (with very little post-MA experience…)  What IS a textile conservator?  We basically look after all those samplers, tapestries, costumes, flags etc that you see (or don’t see if they’re archived) in museums.  Painstaking and fiddly work.  It doesn’t just involve sewing and dyeing, you also need a good grasp of chemistry as you work with solvents and other chemicals and you need an understanding of the process of decay and how modern materials might interact with the object.  I’m not currently working in that field at the moment because hmm well, its a long story with many factors but… it includes being bullied at a previous workplace (knocked my confidence for a while), getting pregnant, being unable to travel to get the work (and that one is probably the largest factor) plus I don’t feel confident or experienced enough to start up on my own at the moment.  This may change
2. My life used to revolve around music, pubbing, clubbing and gigging (and some quaffing of pints.. ).   I had so much fun during my 20s, I’m not sure I’d go back though… rather keep my rose tinted specs on  Especially when you consider my proudest moment was at a gig and someone offered to buy my Monster Magnet t shirt cos at the time it was so rare The best gigs I saw were Mercury Rev at Brixton Academy, Fugazi (Town & Country I *think*), Mark Lanegan at the Wedgewood Rooms,  Mudhoney at the Astoria, The Cure at Reading Festival… happy days  I’m totally out of touch now and I really don’t care
3. I still can’t admit to non-gamers that I game…  I did mention it once to a co-worker and then had to spend half an hour convincing her that I didn’t gamble online :O  Its not that I’m embarrassed about it, its the lengthy explanations and trying to assure people that I don’t run around thinking I’m an elf and then the subsequent weird looks they shoot you when they think I’m not looking…. that’s what I can’t deal with…  Fortunately, many of my friends and family are gamers
4. I like being a stay-at-home mum, hate the title though My little boy just kills me laughing, I love going over the park with him, picnics, going down to the beach (oh yeah, I live on the coast!), making stuff and watching kids’ films with him – I think Dimzad and I thought MegaMind was far more hilarious than he did and we loved Kung Fu Panda too.  I made the mistake of letting him watch Austin Powers as he absolutely LOVES it but it wasn’t as erm… suitable as I thought…  He’s great fun to be around and I’m really glad I’m able to spend this time with him.  As he’s at nursery part-time and will be off to school in the Autumn, I also get time to write this blog, nerd up on games and do other stuff too  Actually, that all sounds very stepford so yes I do have bad days, tired days, bored days, days when I’m glad for a break… but on the whole, its great
5. Ok for the last point…  I totally ran out of inspiration so I found some ‘getting to know you’ questions

• Do you have any pets?  We have two rabbits, named Buzz and Woody (no prizes for guessing who named them )
• What was the last book you read? George RR Martin: A Song of Ice and Fire book 5, part 2 and halfway through…
• How tall are you?  5’9″
• Are you a ‘morning’ or ‘night’ person?  definitely a night person
• Which do you prefer, sunrises or sunsets?  sunrises… but seen when you’ve been up all night

So there you have it

*edit*

I thought of two more things I should have included:

1 – I have a really bad habit of overusing smilies… it got pretty bad in this post – apologies

2 – when I was 3, my imaginary friend was a Dalek… what that says about me, I have no idea!