I didn't have very much time to play today. The time I did have was spent doing a bit of basic Halloween decoration on my houses' porches.
I don't know if I'll be able to go all out across all of my houses for holiday decor this year. I'll do what I can, though!
A small marble tower went IDOC today. It ended up having a bunch of basic crafting gear.
Today the admins made some changes to the Kudos and Sovereign drop and conversion rates. A set of 1000 Sovereigns has tripled in price, while Kudos giveouts have been bumped as well. Tr1age explained to the community that the admins always meant to make a Kudo/Sovereign balance sweep, especially with the addition of Blessed zones (where one receives double Kudos). I'm not too bummed out, as I've kept up with converting my Kudos to Sovereigns as soon as I had the best amount to convert.
I woke up this morning to the news that the admins had decided to nerf the Holy Grail Tabard's stats. I understand their reasoning, but I'm not sure I would've spent my time and effort obtaining this special shirt graphic and slot if I'd known that. I probably would've transmogged something different onto the shirt.
Oh well, stuff happens. The admins have offered refunds to players who spent sovereigns on transmog potions for their tabards like I have, but I'm not bothered enough by the changes to take them up on their offer.
My scribe goods have continued to sell well. Every day I have to restock one thing or another.
I pulled some of the plants from their garden beds at the Emporium and stored them in metal boxes in front of their vendors. I still haven't stocked my plant vendors. I'll get around to it eventually.
While I was recalling between my houses to organize the loot, a funny little bug happened where my main castle's structure refused to load. I ended up needing to completely close out of my program and restart it to get my castle to show properly.
I ran a few more treasure maps as well. These are an enjoyably relaxing thing for me to do when I just want to kill some time but don't know what to do.
While I was treasure hunting, a very serious invasion started in Luna.
Players found themselves overrun by black cats. For those who cared to test it, the cats dropped balls of yarn upon defeat.
I began my day with a humility hunt. If I don't get interrupted by other players, I can usually go from 0-10,000 fame in an hour.
Once I finished sacrificing my fame, I went around a killed a bunch of chickens in Jhelom.
Success! A chicken frame! Obviously this statuette isn't quite properly named, but it functions just as it should.
I decided to put this chicken near the entryway stables.
I love that part of gardening where there's a rainbow mass of plants everywhere. :)
My vendors have continued to sell well. According to the Discord, there's a hearty influx of new players with a great need for beginner's items.
I've started keeping a backstock of supplies near the vendors so I can quickly restock them each morning.
At The Plant Emporium, I've started organizing the backstock of plants. I haven't moved them onto the vendors yet, as most of the growing is being done on an account that doesn't own the vendors. Progress, though! I started this project about three months ago. A little bit longer won't hurt anything.
We've also been too busy to sort through the loot, so occasionally Snow or I will sort through the goodies and clear up space in the houses.
It's not the most glamorous of days on a video game, but I'm trying to approach this as a long term video game home and that entails a lot of inventory and house management.
The admins have begun putting Halloween decor at the main congregation banks. A player run costume contest has been announced, too! I may show up to the event, but I don't think I'll enter. There are too many other things on my plate at the moment.
Today was mostly spent at the Plant Emporium. Using the gold I've accrued through hiryu killing and T-Map hunting, I bought a bunch more raised garden beds and filled them with plants.
I don't quite have every single plant variety and color yet, but I decided I'm close enough to warrant putting the hours into setting up the Emporium vendors.
The first step was to place down a bunch of agapite pavers to use as counter tops.
It took me about an hour to get these all crafted, placed, raised, and positioned. Unfortunately ServUO seems a bit more finicky than OSI when it comes to item locations that allow an interior decorator to be used on it. Luckily the interior decorator is a lot more robust on UOAlive, so overall I'd say there are more upsides than downsides.
Unfortunately, the server crashed during my vendor setup. The server didn't stay down long, so it wasn't too much of an issue, but I've noticed the server has been having a few issues lately.
Progress screenshot. I made the decision to group plant types, vendors, and vendor gear color by the plant's generation.
Finished product! Or rather, finished for now. I still need to put up a naturalist plant color vendor and possibly a plant pigment dye vendor. Today, however, I've done enough work. I can stock the vendors some other time.
I've added a Stone Goods vendor and those items have continued to sell well. I'm not rich by any means, but I am definitely very comfortable financially.
The house that entered IDOC last night was still up, so I parked an account to watch the house while I did other things on my main account.
Those 'other things' were mass killing chickens and gathering cotton. I know most mobs are supposed to drop a statuette, so I'm trying to amass an army of chicken statuettes.
The house ended up falling shortly after 5 PM my time, well after most others had gone to bed. I ended up having first pick of the loot.
The biggest surprise I found in the chests were a couple of untrained higher end pets. I ended up throwing the shrunken pets in the Fortress for the crew to grab from.
The last of my free growing plants are nearing full maturity. Pretty soon I won't have to check on plants every single day!
While on some more adventures across Britannia, I came across a couple more daily rares.
Snow and I have been keeping an eye on this house. It finally cycled over to Greatly Worn, so we will see if this turns into an IDOC we'll definitely want to babysit.
We had a smaller (loot wise) house go IDOC today as well. The biggest things we were interested in were the soulstones for Clean Up Britannia Points.
Scribe goods have continued to consistently sell at my Luna Moongate house. I intend to eventually expand my vendors' offerings, but I'm in no particular rush.
I decided to run several treasure maps to clear through our stash of lower tier treasure maps.
I tried troubleshooting the issue with my inability to tune my lutes to Stones. That sent me down a several hour long rabbithole of ServUO coding. I think I have a fix I could suggest, but more testing is needed. It's a minor issue, anyway, but I can't help but want my lutes to spew Stones at me whenever I use them as opposed to the generic lute music.
This morning Nujel'm cemetery was the cemetery that suffered from an undead invasion. I didn't get much from participating, as my bard is rather underpowered compared to the other builds at play on this server. I still enjoyed participating in community events!
I spent a couple of hours trick or treating. Above are the goodies I got. I still haven't decided where everything is going to go, but I like having a selection of Halloween-appropriate decor to throw in my houses now.
I've finally achieved Follower in Sacrifice. I think my Sacrifice grind is going to slow down as the holiday events continue. Hopefully I'll do enough to maintain my current status, but I know there are plenty of other things to do in game that are tugging at my attention more than mindlessly killing hiryus for fame.
There was a bit of drama over a limited time login reward in the UOAlive Discord this morning. Late last night, the admins sent out a Discord notification for a one-hour drop for all accounts that logged in. This particular drop was geared towards some of the EU players who had been admittedly left out on previous drop times. Apparently some of the non-EU players complained rather loudly in Discord and the admins ended up shutting down the conversation and scolding a few particularly angry players. I personally don't have a problem with the way things are run. If I don't want notifications, I turn them off. I don't mind them, so I happen to catch them regardless of what time zone I'm in.
Unfortunately, my begging has depleted my Karma in the lands of Britannia.
Today was an annoying yo-yo between positive Karma farming and begging NPCs for gains.
Unfortunately, most of my Karmic farming was interrupted by various other players coming and killing the hiryus I was actively provoking, then staying and stealing all of the hiryu spawns.
This problem continued throughout the day, and I ended up having to take several breaks from my hiryu killing and begging farming. It was frustrating, to say the least.
On the bright side, I'm building up a decent stock of leather. I know I tend to run through a lot when I mass fill BODs, so building up a healthy stock will allow me to craft to my heart's content when the December Artisan Trees come!
On the bright side, I'll never have to Karma yo-yo again! I've GM'd begging! Trick or Treating goods, here I come!