Time to Terraform in Planet Crafter

Over the weekend I dropped hard into Planet Crafter and surrendered my life to Terraforming a planet. I'm going to be honest, it took a bit to get into this game at first. I'm used to having my survival game mixed with a bit of evil zombie, but that's just not the case in Planet Crafter. No, in this game there are only three major threats: Hunger, Thirst, and Oxygen Supply. As it turns out, that's enough . . . although a giant dune worm or two might be kind of fun.

No Dune Worms to run from here.

Stage one of the game involves simply stepping out of your space pod and getting to work collecting raw ingredients enough to expand all your essentials: backpack space, Oxygen tank, exoskeleton space, agility boots, jet packs, and tools.

Where it all started . . .

The next stage is all about making a quick home base and starting to work on the big five of Terraforming: 

• Oxygen
• Heat
• Pressure
• Biomass
• Power Supply

Watching it tick up . . . ever so slowly

Power Supply is king of that of course . . . you can't run equipment to build a planet's Oxygen, Heat, Pressure, and Biomass without it. A few wind turbines are enough to get you started, but eventually you'll be upgrading to solar panels and nuclear reactors--crafting every step of the way.

Eventually your efforts will bring moisture to the planet as puddles begin to form and the ice you've been using for a water supply begins to melt. Puddles then become Lakes. Lakes then lead to Moss. Moss then leads to flora. Flora then leads to trees . . . and on and on as you attempt to obtain the seemingly impossible goal of 175 Ti (I think that "T" stands for "Tera" as in Terabyte?).  You start small, and at the time of writing this article I've only crested over into 2 Gi (I think that "G" stands for "Giga" as in Gigabyte?) -- I've come a long way but I've got a long way to go.

That moment when you realize you need to move your base because it'll soon be underwater.

The whole game has a management aspect to it similar to how the goal of a clicker game is to eventually stop clicking and instead unlock passive features that click for you. Eventually you've built multiple Biodomes, Multiple Tier 4 heaters, Multiple Tier 4 Drills, Multiple Algae Generators, and now they just . . . work for you.

Also, much like clicker games, there are expendables that have an impact on your terraforming in various ways. One is simply informational: GPS Satellites. A couple others cause meteor showers to rain down upon you with rare ore. Others release seeds and nutrients into the air to help your terraforming with one time boosts to your ever-counting Terraforming index.

Sky rockets in flight! Afternoon Delight!

Along the way you begin to discover traces of a story to the game. At first, I didn't know what my motivations were. Once I built a radar tower and received an email, it became clear . . . I'm a convict and I've chose to commute my prison sentence into an extradition to this planet. If I fully terraform it, they'll come take my beautifully isolated planet away from me and give me my freedom.

As it turns out, I'm not the first to have arrived here as part of the fun in Planet Crafter is delving through downed space craft of those that came before me. You can even find underground bunkers from previous extradited convicts full of loot for the taking and a few scattered hints to their story. (It's unfortunate I haven't found any of their dead bodies yet)

This guy went a little crazy in his bunker . . .

So while the first part of the game was a bit slow, soon I got absorbed into the flow of the game and I was unlocking recipes and crafting all kinds of better and newer stuff. The mid-game has been really fun so far. Building a base of operations and exploring my planet was great. The ever present danger of oxygen is real and acts as a tether to the safety of indoors or a supply of oxygen reserves. Mid-game is the best game so far!

I would say that it feels like now I'm more in the tail end of the mid-game, and things are starting to slow down. I've kind of run out of my supply of Osmium until I can build a Tier 2 Ore Extractor, and really that's going to take some down time as I wait for my planet's pressure to reach a certain state.

Up until this point, I've been extremely addicted to this game, which is always a good thing.  It's too bad it's not a multiplayer game or I'd ask Lessah to start a new world with me. So far, it's been well worth the price of admission.

Here's a quick walkthrough of how my base is looking here so far.

Happy Dueling!

Oops. I won V Rising, What Comes Next? Covid?

A couple weeks ago, the server settings on the Team Spode V Rising server somehow got set to easy mode and I didn't know it.  All I knew is that suddenly I felt like an uncontrollable superhero in game. My scythe was mowing down mobs like a butter knife going through soft butter. In my mind I was thinking, what did I just upgrade in my kit, this is amazing!

So, because I was feeling so amazing, I was like, man, I bet I could try taking on one of those final three bosses. 2 hours later I had beaten the game.

Man, I bet that's tough when the server isn't on easy mode

Then I started thinking . . . hmmm . . . that seemed too easy, and then I looked at the server settings. Yeah, I was at 10x damage and .1x damage received. I alerted Tipa and she hit the reset the settings button, but I already had the pylons sitting safely in my castle.

They give awesome buffs!

Whoops.

Team Spode has still been playing on Sundays, but my motivation to log in and play outside of that has been minimal. I've got my full Bloodmoon set, sanguine reaper, and blood key, so I'm kind of done. I could find a random server to join and give it another go, but I'm not feeling that passionate about playing it again just yet.

. . . . and then I got COVID. For the past three weeks my family had been hosting visitors and treating ourselves to fun things to do around the greater Austin area. I think we narrowed it down to when we went to the Snake Farm Zoo and a lady there was sneezing and coughing a bunch, and we had dropped our guard by not wearing our masks. Yeah, that was probably when it happened. And if not then, we certainly spread it around to each other in the Escape room.

That Star Trek Discovery Escape Room was really tough!

The past week has really been about recovering and just sitting around watching TV. The Iron Chef Iron Legend series was great! Allez Cuisine! Needless to say, after all that, I'm feeling hungry . . . for a game to play! To those ends, I have a HUGE backlog of VR games that I want to play, but being sick and playing VR don't go together. No one wants to strap on a VR headset in that state.

I also noticed my buddy Lessah Ismorah was playing a lot of Planet Crafter on her Youtube channel and she talked me in to buying it. It was only 20 bucks. That's also when I saw, my old wish list, Legend of Keepers was on sale for 8 bucks. A checkout screen later, I had both.

Bringing back life to a dead planet . . . why am I here again?

Time to kill some adventurers!

Dear readers of The Friendly Necromancer. I'm on the mend, and I have a lot of games to write about here in the future. Expect more posts in the future.

Happy Dueling!

Hitting End Game in V Rising

The past few days have been extremely productive for me in V Rising. On Sunday, Team Spode played together and destroyed a few lower level bosses for Spodepire, which of course is Lord Spode's vampiric name on V Rising.  . . . and then everything after that during the week was a solo hunt for me . . . because I'm addicted . . . seriously.

On Monday I took out the Duke of Balaton, Foulrot the Soultaker, Wilfred the Werewolf Chief, and Azariel the Sunbringer. This allowed me to finally construct the Eye of Twilight. Also, with my new gold bar recipe I had from Azariel, I was able to upgrade my castle to its final full size. BAM!

I spy with my little little eye, something twilight 

On Tuesday I did another round of boss hunting and rounded out the bosses that I had skipped: Mairwyn the Elementalist and Terrorclaw the Ogre. They were difficult hunts, but nothing I couldn't overcome with time, patience, a healing potion, and a bit of skill swapping.  

Thanks for the Golden Jewellery, Mairwyn

On Wednesday, I brought down Morian the Stormwing Matriarch, Matka the Curse Weaver, and Nightmarshal Styx the Sunderer.  With that, I now had my bat form, and I basically rule the night skies. HISS! FLAP FLAP FLAP! (Just don't go trying to fly in the daytime or it's insta-barbecued bat after 5 seconds.)

Stingite and his Batform!

The next three bosses, nay THE FINAL THREE BOSSES, are special! Upon inspecting the Eye of Twilight that I had constructed on Monday, it revealed the location of the final three.  What's special about these bosses is that if you defeat them, you can obtain their soul shard. 

There is a server setting that can make these soul shards unique. Tipa currently has that turned on. (Maybe we should turn that off?) Basically, it's a setting to encourage pvp between vampires as they hunt for soul shards from other vampires. At least I think that's how it works? Probably no need to inspire that kind of competition on our PvE server.

The final three await!

Of other note, these bosses seem like a big jump in difficulty. Granted, I still need to craft my end game amulet and two pieces of endgame outfit.  To get those, I'm either going to have to discover their recipe while farming end game Silverlight Hills and Cursed Forest mobs or burn tons of schematics looking for them.  Either way and ultimately, I'm going to need a lot of reagents to craft them when I get them. I need gold necklaces, yo--a lot of them!

So here I am at end game. I'm staring down the final three and needing just a few more pieces of the final gear set. My castle is built. My animal forms unlocked. LET'S GO!

Happy Dueling!