Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello fellows! As you may know I enjoy Wurm Online, the hard-as-nails pioneer MMO where you scrape a living sawing planks, farming crops and trying to survive in a harsh Northern European fantasy world.

I've been busy repairing all the farm walls in my village, and my skill with masonry has finally passed 30. This means that the time has come for my old wooden house to be replaced with a sturdy stone replacement. Now, in Wurm, you have to do everything yourself. Starting with a few basic tools you have to mine and smelt iron ore, make pottery, chop wood and assemble a more complete toolset... then chop more wood, mine some rock, make bricks, mix mortar, and build a little homestead. All the preparations are complete, it's time to have a cup of coffee and build my new house!

This is my house. I've lived in it for over six months.



As you can see, fairly humble surroundings. From left to right you have my forge and anvils, my bed, a spare keel to build a boat with, my old small cart, my table and chairs. Just out of view on the right are my storage chests.



So, here's the crucial moment… 'Destroy this structure'



Immediately, the walls disappear. As I'd planned, everything else remains, so I can build the new house around it all.



I begin placing these building frames around, marking out where I'm going to build the new house. Once they're placed, I'm able to determine what sort of wall I want to build there: stone or wood, and then whether I want that section of wall to be plain or have a window or door.



However, in spite of careful preparation, I can't count, and don't have nearly enough mortar to finish the house. As it's still early in the morning, I head down to the paddock to hitch some horses to my large cart and go get some clay and sand to make more mortar.



Hello horse!



Loading some sand from my sailboat (on the left) into the cart.



Shifting the stuff into the cart. It's very heavy!



Back home, the extra mortar enables me to finish the first wall! We're on our way now! The stuff in the foreground is my chest, barrel, storage box (a 'bag of holding', basically) and my fighting practice doll.



Digging for more clay on the 'clay dock'. These two guys went back to forth along the road through the village several times over the course of the day.



Now I need sand, so I jump into my sailboat and head for the canal. On the other side of the canal is an easily accessible sandbank that I can dig.



The giant Champion Scorpion that someone has caught and penned is a great landmark for finding the canal entrance (just to the left).



Hey there big fella. Due to a vagary of the game engine, he is indeed inside that pen even though his 3D model is clearly overlapping it.



The canal entrance.



It's very dark inside.



A few minutes later and I reach the other side.



The canal links to this bay which in turn is connected to the open sea.



I start digging and loading the sand into my boat.



Back through the canal and the sun is now dipping behind the mountains to the west. The unusual island nearby is entirely manmade.



Back home, I moor the boat at the docks. One of the three moons (Valrei) is already high in the sky.



I'm 'ungreh, so I go into the communal kitchen and assemble some ingredients for dinner: meat, potatoes, cheese, garlic and onion should make me… something.



I then go to the forge in my house (which also works as an oven) and plonk all the food in a frying pan to cook.



The forge is lit, my dinner is sizzling away. Soon it will be a delicious and nutritious meal for me to enjoy.



After dinner, I go back to the town square to have a drink from the fountain. Insufficient water causes your stamina bar to refill slowly. I then work through the night, building.



The sun rises over the hills to the east the next morning.



One whole wall of the house is now finished, and the roof is in place.



I continue to build all day, with occasional trips to get more clay for mortar. As the evening draws in, the weather sours somewhat. However, that's the least of my concerns…



Another village alerts me that we have an unwanted guest… a crocodile. And not just any crocodile… a champion (ie: giant) one! Right in the middle of town, too! It's too much for our NPC guards, who are all killed in seconds. I mount a horse and go to help fight it.



The other guy retreats into a house to heal leaving me the sole focus of Schnappi's attentions… I do okay for a few minutes, and then he with one bite takes of 30% of my health. I'm now nearly dead, with several serious wounds, and I retreat to try and bandage myself before I bleed to death.



Slightly bandaged, I return to the square and see all the dead guards.



Schnappi has followed me around, and we finish him off once and for all.



My friend bandages my wounds and I thankfully recover from them. I resume working on the house. Eventually it's sunset the next day.



The house is coming along well, and is more than half finished. Unfortunately, I'm now sure I'm going to run out of all building supplies, not just mortar, but bricks too. It's time for dinner, though, so I log out.



When I log back in, I see some unfamiliar names in the local area player list. They appear to be leading several horses away at high speed. We have a lot of horses (as you saw earlier) so I couldn't tell immediately if any were missing. Fearing the worst, I saddled one up and followed them.



The mysterious men travel down the lake, across the landbridge and into their own settlement.



Those are definitely our horses they've got there. Each horse gets a randomly generated (silly) name when it's born.



Racing back to the village, I see another man leading another two horses out of the pens. I start taking more screenshots as evidence. I've caught him red handed.



Oi, you, stop that.



The scumbag thief claims the horses are unattended and stored off-deed in an unlocked pen (lies - he picked the locks) and are therefore fair game for him to take, unless I want to buy them back?



Alas, this being the non-PVP server, I can't do anything to stop him, and call a GM to investigate the theft. She arrives and uses her 'track' ability to confirm what the naughty man and his friends did, and advises it's likely to go down as their violating the Code of Conduct, as the horses were stored in a locked pen immediately adjacent to an obviously lived-in village. The guy naturally tries to justify his theft. The GM departs, saying the evidence will have to be considered and a ruling reached as to whether the theft was unlawful.

ANYWAY, while I wait for that, I decided finishing up my house is now definitely a priority, in case those chavs come back for revenge. As I'm scooping more clay up, I spot Schnappi's friend has come to visit. I keep my distance.



Nearly finished, now!



Laying the final brick into the final wall!



The house is now complete. It's smaller inside, but I have a little patio area at the back, now.





I think it looks very nice, if I do say so myself. Certainly I'm very attached to it after my tribulations putting it together!



And that's it. As night falls over the village, good night.

Holy shit. This might be the best thread ever.

I can't believe they tried to steal your horses! So do you life in a town with other people? What would have happened if you hadn't logged in and noticed someone taking horses?

Dude, you are supremely hardcore.

It's OK! his horses had a serious liver complaint anyway!

How do the servers work in this, poiks? Are they publically owned or centrally run?

Then they'd all be gone. All our cows were nicked the other day, but we weren't sure what had happened. If I'd tried checking for tracks at the gates not long after they'd gone I might have seen the tracks of the thieves leading the horses away, but yeah, sheer luck to catch them in the act.

There's other people in the village and surrounding area... none were online at the time apart from one who was in his big mansion up on the hill and therefore didn't see them.



There's two servers, a PVP server (Wild) and a non-PVP one (Freedom), run by the company that makes the game. At any one time there's about 400-odd people online... the world itself is huge so depending on where you are, you might not see anyone for a while.

How easy is it to secure things?

Awesome job on building the house, by the way.

You can buy a 'deed' which you can then set permissions on... the bigger the deed the more it costs. Everything off-deed is more vulnerable and needs to be protected.

You can also fit locks to just about everything including doors, gates, carts, boats. On the Freedom server, stealing and such is not allowed but scum still find a way around it.

Color me interested.

Knowing your piratical ways, you'd probably be happier on the PVP 'Wild' server... but everyone on there would have a huge head start and you'd need to do some serious grindage.

I've just gone through the world's most complicated process for turning a tree into a fire. I think I like this game.

Tree - log - kindling. I assume you're in the shanty town that is The Howl?

Yep. In the wiki there's stuff about quests in the starting town, but I've no idea where you might get them from. Thus far there appears to be a Hill and a lot of dead people.

If you want to get out of there, I will come pick you up. When are you on next? To get to my village will take a few hours by boat.

In the meantime, go up the hill into Freedom Market and you'll see an NPC in blue called Phil Muggs who'll give you free food and drink for your first 24 hours (realtime) of play.

Indeed!