While we’re all set up to take on the next boss, Moder, the group has been busy over the last couple of weekends so we haven’t been able to get together to finish that off.
Meanwhile, I think I’ve hauled in and refined enough silver ore and iron scraps to serve us for the immediate future, so I have spent my time lately exploring and building outposts, with a bit of an eye towards the next stage of the game for us, which will take place in the plains.
That has meant getting in the Karve… the longboat is too big for exploration in my opinion, I’ve already done an Ever Given in a stream with it… and sailing further and further from our main bases in search of new lands with some potential.
I have noticed, out at sea, that I will occasionally get a flight of drakes passing by. If they spot me, they come after me.
Drake attack
Fortunately, they are not too difficult to deal with.
Exploring up and down coasts and every river passage though is fraught with some danger. Like this troll, for example.
Oh yeah, he’s seen me
My first thought was, “Pink troll?” But them he got close enough for me to see the two star rating on him. A normal troll is a push over at this point, but the last troll to kill me was one star rated, and got me because I was getting complacent. A two star troll called for some caution, especially since off camera to the right was a standard troll looking to join in fun.
I hopped out of the boat and kited the pink guy around until I managed to bring him down. Then I knocked off the other one because he had destroyed my boat. I had to go fish everything out of the river, which was just deep enough to make the bronze nails tricky to grasp. Fortunately the first fight had knocked down enough trees that I had the wood for a workbench to build a new boat.
I managed to sail out far enough to run into my first Mistlands biome.
The last biome on the list
The wildlife for those is not yet implemented, but it looks dark and spooky none the less.
But what I was really after was plains biomes, and specifically plains biomes with more gentle, preferably meadows, biomes adjacent to them.
Spying out the plains
We’re going to need plains biomes for our next stage, and as I understand it, we’ll need to set up a base on the plains to take full advantage of the new resources that will be unlocked once we slay Moder. That means getting a foothold some place where we can set up a base and a portal and what not to support such an effort.
Plains are much more common and I have found a few likely landing spots where I have set up outposts, like the one we used for staging for Bonemass. It is sandwiched in between plains, north and south, with mountains to the west, which are in turn also hemmed in by plains.
I went over the mountains and found more plains
That actually is a pretty good spot, since there are swamp crypts over on Bonemass side of the straights, so I was able to haul some scrap iron over in case we want to set up and make stone walls. You need some iron for the stone cutter.
You can see the smelter poking up from the inner compound
Also, there are surtlings in that swamp, so a supply of coal and surtling cores as well. I didn’t even need to tap our home base supply to build the smelter.
But I am not betting everything on that one outpost, so I have set up a few more, all near plains. We have a portal tagged “Explore” in the main base, so I go out with the supplies to build a connecting portal, then set it up when I have a likely spot.
Of course, to carry on from there I have to make another portal back at one of our primary bases to connect it, so I can use the explore portal again. I have started farming those out to the secondary bases, like Dieppe and Elder, as the portal room upstairs in the main base is getting a might full these days.
The portal room – not visible, one around the corner and three more down stairs
There is a hole in the floor because somebody got tired of going down stairs.
One of my likely candidates is off to the east of Elder base and has a nice buffer area of meadows then black forest around it before you get into the plains.
Eastmarch Base in the meadow
Of course, I have been nosing into the plains as I have been exploring.
A furling tower near the edge of the black forest biome
I am getting a little less paranoid when I get close to the plains. I am now able to knock down a Deathsquito with an arrow shot as soon as I spot one. I am not confident enough to take a screen shot while doing so, and I am always looking and listening, but I am getting there.
And the furlings seem manageable, even though they come in groups of two or three most of the time. The Dargur Frang bow with even a wooden arrow will take one down if I get the drop on them. And fighting them can be done. Of course, I got over confident at one point and a two star furling came in and one-shotted me.
Death on the plains again
That happened where the little skull and cross bones are on the map.
Fortunately I had cleared the way there pretty thoroughly. I was able to eat some sausage and serpent stew for a big hit point and stamina total, jump through the portals, and make the naked run out there to collect my stuff successfully.
I have yet to take on the bison who wander the plains however. I haven’t seem them out in groups of less than three and am worried about something like a triple troll scenario. Crowbar managed to slay one, though he said he did it by building a platform up in a tree then shooting them from there until they were dead.
We’ll get to those soon enough.
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