I actually saw a Vectrex game system played recently. Very cool old system I'd never even heard of. Arcade projection style screen with a joystick type controller.

It demands a ridiculous price though.

I know of the Vectrex slightly though I have never played it. And yeah, the price on it and other systems now. Just think, all these old gaming systems and games skyrocketing in price these last few years. Even games that weren´t a big of a deal in the first place.


Collectors, eh?

Been playing some Mass Effect 2 the last few days, having some fun with the various classes.

But, I'm going to be firing Oblivion up again later, since I've a character waiting.

Aw, Thorney and Treydoggie! You all are the kind ones! Thank you so much!


For anyone interested, Epic Games is looking for Beta players for its new game Paragon.

No can do for me, I´m still testing Oblivion...


Last night I played some Super Mario Land 2: six golden coins on my Gameboy. Still a great game

No one may see me for a while, I am BANISHED !!!!!!! Thank you SubRosa !!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT !!!!!

OMG, I just finished all the tutorials !!! WOO HOO !!!!!

Sounds like you´re having fun with the game, mALX

So far I've wiped out two entire towns - starvation and froze to death, lol. Urk. But yes, I'm having a blast !!!

mALX the Destroyer!

I am glad to hear you have having such a good time with it. I know I would not have had even half as much fun.

Glad you enjoy it!

As for myself, I'm pretty much focused on Oblivion now. Minecraft is on hiatus until I think up a building project I feel up to tackling. As for Daggerfall, I tend to go longish stretches of time playing either it or Oblivion, but not mix the two.

Were you trying to clear trees from your settlement by inviting friends from a neighboring settlement over with chainsaws and beers?

I stayed up all night playing last night - wiped out 3 full towns, but the last (fourth) one was still alive when I finally fell asleep in front of the laptop! (I woke up upside down under the keyboard, lol).

I lost 3 full villages so far to starvation and freezing; but still having fun. I can't understand how they are starving to death when there is fat chickens running around at their feet; or when I have fields of food planted all around them how are they starving? But having a blast playing anyway!

My prettiest town didn't survive, but boy did it look great !!!


Thank you so much, SubRosa!!!







Really need to try that next, lol.


I noticed before they all starved to death, they were pretty unhappy with their lot in life - a few beers may have given them a rosy outlook,

I consider Oblivion my primary active game, having spent the bulk of my play-time in Cyrodiil for the past month or two. That said, either yesterday morning or the day before I fired up Banished and loaded my ongoing village for the first time in well over a year.

It was immediately obvious that I am too rusty to continue on without an extensive refresher course. Yesterday afternoon I created a new game. Drat the luck, my villagers were plopped down in a very unsuitable area. No water immediately nearby other than a stream too small to fish. That stream also blocks access to workable forest to the east. I can eventually bridge the stream, but attempting it this early would likely end in multi deaths I can't afford. There 'is' suitable water to the south, not as close as I'd like but not prohibitively far. Sadly, it abuts the one accessible nearby forested area suitable for hunting lodge, gathering hut and herbalist. I'd rather not clutter it with fishing piers and (eventually) trading post, but will likely have no choice. Did I mention that west and north or blocked by hills? They can eventually be breached with tunnels. As with bridges that's not something to tackle until all necessities are met. I wasn't feeling well at the time so did no more than contemplate all this and pick a site for the forester hut before calling it quits.

This morning I entered Minecraftia and harvested wood at the fortress' main and auxiliary timber farms. A bit of cosmetic surgery was performed on a road outside the fort proper.

Speaking of which, here is a link to the Minecraft forum thread devoted to my primary Minecraftian world. Be warned that it contains many embedded images. Also, accompanying text is in major need of correction and revision. Both images and text in the section devoted to Autarch Neglect Village are woefully out of date.

Holy Cow! You not only made a stunningly huge place, but your web page for it is about the classiest set up I've seen - for anything, even a blog! Holy Cow! You don't do things halfway, you put your whole into everything you do; and it shows in the end result! You have totally floored me with this and your vids!

Just played a little bit of The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, one of the free Games with Gold on Xbox One this month.

This action-RPG puts you in the boots of Van Helsing, son of the other Van Helsing who fought Dracula. I wasn't paying much attention during the long opening cinematic, but you're in a land called Borgovia and you have to fight stuff. Lots of werewolves, harpies, robots etc.

The art style is nice, with some parts looking suitably dark and mysterious. The game is made by an independent Hungarian company, and they seem to know what they're doing.

It's your standard top-down button masher, and you can use melee, ranged, and magical attacks to fight the various supernatural creatures that you encounter. You are also accompanied by a ghost named Katerina, who can assist you in combat. The combat itself seems pretty well balanced, with weaker mobs of enemies being easily dispatched, and their bosses being really tough encounters.

There are 3 classes you can play as, but 2 are locked behind paywalls.

The game's not bad, but there hasn't been anything thus far that really sets it apart from similar games like the vastly superior Torchlight and WH40K Kill Team. I might play a bit more and see if the story picks up, but I won't hold my breath.

I'm playing Wasteland 2 right now. Pretty decent top down RPG in a post apocolyptic universe that inspired the first Fallout. The graphics are fairly good and the turn based gameplay is surprisingly fun too. Story is good enough to keep you playing and the skill system makes sure you pay attention when leveling up and creating your base team.

The random encounter maps get repetetive after a while and the voice acting isn't perfect but overall it is a very good game that plays like the old school top down RPG's of another era with updated graphics.

Hopefully it is successful because it was paid for through crowdfunding and as such may help the future of game development funded by fans.

I loved Wasteland 2! Did you play the original version, or the Director's Cut? I bought the original about a year ago and played the daylights out of it. Gog gave me a free copy of the Director's Cut when it was released a little while ago, but I have not had a chance to try it out yet.

Both Wasteland 2 and Pillars of Eternity were kickstarter games, and both were extremely good. I think that bodes very well for crowd-sourcing, and for gaming in general.

I'm playing the director's cut. Not sure how different it is. Very fun game though. There's a lot going on story wise.

Look where Banished plopped my villagers. What a mess! Hills to the left. A useless stream to the right, then more hills. North is little better, believe me. At least going north offers passage to better land, but that doesn't help in the short term. I was pretty much limited to a southern start, that being the logical spot of a 'forest node' and access to a useful waterway for fishing and later on trading.

As can be seen, the forest node is rather sparse on tree. Can't be helped. I've a Foresters Lodge there now, set to plant-only. That should remedy the situation before too many Banished years pass. (I removed no trees in the node except those on building lots.)

I started in hard mode: four families and a cart, no barn, no stockpile, no crop seeds. That, the general lay of the land, and the distance from my storage card to the river pretty much dictated going with a forest-node hub. (The cart is seen screen top.) With so little starter resources it was a race against the clock to build essentials before folk started dying off. A tight race. All's well thus far. Spring of year three and no losses . . . knock on wood.

I'm apparently not as rusty as I thought, unless this is a false start and the village dies off in a year or two. It's possible, but I see no glaring red flats. Leastwise nothing to panic over.

Just climbed into the cockpit and blasted some Tie Fighters out of the sky. Even after all this time, X-Wing is still a fun game. It would be nice to play a newer version of it, or of a similar Star Wars flight sim game. But there hasn't been one out for a long time.

Man, this Banished map is a bear. Leastwise it is when starting out on hard. I've had no disasters (yet?) but am having a heck of a time finding good spots to plop down essential services. I established a herbalist only this evening, and its facility is further from the village hub than I like and in an area not nearly as forested as I ideally prefer. (Herbalists need to be surround by old growth forest to work at peak efficiency.) I was almost too late switching my foresters from Plant Only to Plant & Cut, running out of logs for firewood at crucial times. Thankfully the village pulled through. I'm still barely keeping up with demand for stone and iron. That'll hopefully change if and when I get enough laborers for major foraging expeditions. I eventually want to trade for both stone and iron, but the village is far from having the luxury of a trading post. What would it use in trade? It barely makes ends meet providing for itself.

Kirby´s Pinball Land for Gameboy. Got this game when I was a kid on a Christmas morning and thought I´d relive some memories


I have beaten it many times but not this time.

Decided to treat myself, and joined the ranks of those playing Banished!

Fired up the game, which set itself up to run on medium graphics going by the menu, which is fine by me, and ran through the tutorials. That done I started a game, leaving the settings for the start as they were. I guess it wasn't a bad starting point, on a river, a decent amount of forest, a fair bit of stone lying around.

I went straight for a forester, gatherer hut, and a fishing dock, followed by some stone houses. Winter was getting too close to build them all, so I had to build a boarding house. I put a herbalist and a hunter's lodge on the other side of the river, because I didn't really ave the space for them, but they seemed to be doing quite well. I got the school built early, along with a woodcutter, blacksmith, and tailors. It was going fairly well; the hunter's lodge wasn't in the best place, and I was just scraping by in terms of food, with a village of thirty four who'd survived a few years.

Then I moved my laptop so I could get up, the power cable got tugged just enough, and because I was running it on the mains with the battery removed, it cut out.

Still, it was fun.

Good job! (The settlement, not the laptop incident.) Certainly better than my first attempt, which didn't survive much past its first full winter. My recently started village had to locate its herbalist across a river, though in my case it meant doing without of some years thanks to the distance involved. Even my first (and thus far only) fishing dock had to wait for year two. Heck, even the foresters lodge was delayed until the second year, and then set to PLANT only for at least a year. It needed a blacksmith far sooner than expected. No school yet or for some time to come. Our population needs to be appreciably larger before delaying folk from joining the workforce. As it is, none of our food producing facilities (Gathering Hut, Hunting Lodge, Fisherman's Dock) or the Forester is up to strength, leaving no manning for luxuries like a school house, trading post or market. Luckily none of these are, in my opinion, essential early on. (Famous last words?)

Did your save file survive????? Hope so!

I didn't actually think to look before an autosave before restarting. *facepalms*

But the restart's going even better. The map's not great, I've got a circular lake forcing me to build slowly around it, when there aren't hills in the way, and a river constricting me even more. So far the only problems I've had are the frequent shortage of stone, partly due to building stone houses all the time, and an outbreak of mumps that killed two children before everyone recovered. I made a mistake in the beginning, looking to expand south rather than west, so when I got bottlenecked by a hill I had to juggle things around to move eastwards. And since I had to cross the river to get more stone, I decided to put the land to better use.

Th main settlement has all the necessities; blacksmith, tailor, school, woodcutter, and the trading post, as well as about 15 stone houses at present. It's got a couple of large pastures stuffed with chickens, the only animals I've been able to get hold of. I bought 8 and I've not got over a hundred of them, I think.

The second settlement across the river is pretty much dedicated to farming, four fields, 8 or 9 stone houses, with a herbalist nearby that I didn't get until the ninth or tenth year when health dropped to four, and a market to make things easier for them so far.

So far it's in its 16th year, I've got a population of 73(people have been dying of old age for the last few years), and a good sized surplus of food. I've basically run out of stone, so I've been requesting it from traders, as well as animals.

Edit: Now in year 22, over a hundred people. I'm completely out of stone, running low on wood and space. This is going to get ugly.

2nd edit: And later this evening, I'll be playing Dishonored

Edit the Third: Well, I think it's safe to say that attempt at Banished is dead. It seems I expanded and grew too quickly. I ran out of stone, didn't have anything to trade, and my two woodcutters couldn't keep up with the demand. I think I might just take my mistakes and restart. Also, I'm tired of the noise made by 116 chickens.

Too bad about the village, but you didn't do badly all things considered. It can be rewarding to salvage a seemingly dead settlement. You might want to keep a good save-file and look at it again once you know the ropes better . . . assuming you abandon it, that is.

My village shares your stone shortage. There is in reality lots more stone to be had on the (large) map surface. But what's left creeps further and further from the settlement with each foraging expedition. I was hoping to avoid a quarry, but might not have that luxury. Too, my tailor isn't getting enough hides despite having two fully manned hunting lodges. I desperately need either sheep or cattle, but that means a trading post, which eats stone and a few precious manning slots. And like you, I have no excesses to trade. On the plus side, food seems to be doing well, and firewood is adequate of not plentiful, as are tools.

I need at least two more wells, but that's yet more stone.

I splurged a bit (for year eight) on a hospital . . . didn't want to risk losing the settlement to one of the more deadly diseases. Right across the road from it is my first, small, cemetery, also a bit of a luxury. With some settlers in their late fifties I reckon it won't be overlong before the oldest of them begin to pass. I've been lucky thus far in losing only one villager . . . to mumps.

No school yet. I had a lot for one on pause, but removed it to make room for the cemetery.

Here's the settlement at year eight. Not much to it. The original forest node. Two additional, less crowded, forest nodes. A small support district between them at the river. My screen is cluttered with pinned buildings, but I like to keep certain circles of influence visible at all times so as not to mistakenly build on them more than is absolutely necessary.

----------------------------------------------------------------

In Minecraftia, the Autarch harvested both main and auxiliary tree farms as well as all Upper Plateau crop fields save melons. He bred and slaughtered livestock except at the Lower Terrace sheep ranch, reserved for shearing only. He explored a recently found abandoned mine shaft, but returned to the Hill Fort with much yet to discover.

Well, I've taken another stab at that village, and it's definitely dead. It's borderline on both food and firewood, to the point that I regularly run out of both, I've used up all the stone on the map, and I can't get anything stockpiled to trade. Perhaps if my village survivors long enough for my sheep to start producing enough wool to build up a stockpiles of warm coats then I'd have something to trade, but I don't think they'd last long enough.

My latest attempt is going much better though. It's year 25, I've got about 130 people, plenty of stone(but practically no iron), a better layout, and a full size pasture of sheep and cows. I've also just built some orchards and a couple of taverns. I've got a herbalist and a gatherer's hunter's cabin to the northwest, and another hunter/gatherer/forester node to the southeast. It looks like I'm about to start another phase of expansion down south.



Beyond Banished, I've also been playing Dishonored, which is damn good fun.

This is amazing that you are surviving on so little in such harsh terms as this! And three births! That is Awesome! Geez, and I was killing off whole villages on the medium and easy levels !!! Awesome, Decrepit!

My village finally got the trading post, but didn't have enough workers - I could only put one trader in there. And so far, no one has come through with any needed supplies.

I haven't played since the day before the surgery (couple weeks ago); but it was really getting tight on supplies and health/happiness levels when last I played, urk.

Ran out of firewood, next thing you know people are freezing. Then the trees are getting cut down to make firewood; and the herbalist and gatherers/hunters are having trouble finding what they are supposed to. And for some reason, after I made some extra nice stone houses (and now am out of stone and iron because of it) - suddenly the people have moved into every house as singles and their happiness levels have gone way down! Grrrrr, lol.

The game is a blast, I just haven't found the right balance yet, lol.

I've little to report. The settlement grows bit by bit. I established a school so as to eventually graduate educated, more productive workers. Much as I didn't want to quite this early I now have a working quarry just north (abutting) my original forest node, with a mine plotted but not built next to it. (Unlike with stone, I've still a decent amount of surface iron available reasonably nearby.) I've a working trading post with one trader assigned, but not enough excess goods to purchase crop seeds or animals. Was surprised when the events log announced my two barns were full. Thankfully I knew roughly where the third barn would go and had enough materials on hand to construct it. More houses of course. I'm still doing okay firewood/food wise, and suffered no natural disasters or illnesses.

Speaking of disasters, here is the penultimate episode of a shortish Banished LP I finished watching earlier today. Titled "Double Tornado", it and the concluding episode might better be termed "Death of a Settlement", the player throwing in the towel at its end. As he says himself, he might well have salvaged things, but past a certain point decides it just isn't worth the effort.


I like the look of this new settlement. Most everything seems placed in the most logical and sensible locales to feed on and support each other. I too wanted market-centric village hubs, but the combo of a hard start in bad terrain led me to go the 'forest crossroads' route. Once/if I expand into more suitable territory I hope to deploy markets.


Hard mode isn't all that much more challenging than the easier modes once you know the ropes. The first few years are more of a race against the clock, since there are very few stockpiled supplies to fall back on. I don't see lack of fields/orchards/pastures as much of a limitation early on. I would likely have established a forest node first (for the firewood) even were crops available to me. Granted, my settlement would sport a few fields and a sheep pasture by now were those available to me. Any screen captures of your settlement to show us?

Good luck Decrepit. Sounds like you should be a developer at Beth with all that settlement building!

**


I am playing Fallout 4, GTA IV and Forza 6 at the moment.

Fallout 4 is so good that I cannot go back to Skyrim with its clunky controls.

And GTA IV is showing me just how bad the single player story is in V.

Well, my game of Banished has moved onwards.

Since I'd run out of iron, I built a mine to the south, threw 15 labourers into it(I had a couple of dozen at that point) and then went a bit nuts:

See?

The first picture's got the mine, the additional housing, a second blacksmith(I ran out of tools, and couldn't build them quickly enough), and a couple of farms because I needed the extra food.

The second picture's the northeast, well, north-northeast really. I've now got fifty sheep and forty cattle, a couple of farms with one person working each(best use of space), and another trading dock.

And the third picture is my main section, with its new trading dock. I'm completely out of stone, and I'd rather trade for it than try and fit a quarry somewhere. I've also found that venison and mutton are great for trading to food merchants, since you can end up getting three times as much food back off of them. Oh, and after trading a sizable amount of stone off a trader, I put stone roads over the dirt ones. Not all of them, but most.

And, to my surprise, I've been picking up some achievements with this run: Trader, Foodie, Healthy, and Smiles All Round. But, I've now reached the point where I've basically run out of space. Unless I start hacking down my forests I've got nowhere else to expand to, so now I'm just gonna see how high I can get the population without everyone dying.

You already have a better feel for the game than me, or so it seems. Three trading posts. Very nice. My old 'large' village had no more than that. Yes, trading for stone is preferable to quarrying, the more so on the smaller maps where every usable inch of real-estate is valuable. Mining isn't quite so bad since only a small portion of each mine is on land that can be used for something else . . . tunnels excepted.

I'm in something of a holding pattern. My village needs to expand to keep its population young and growing. But . . . right now the only way to do so is with yet more forest-node hamlets. I desperately want farmland and pastures, but don't have the trade goods to buy seeds. I can now afford one sheep . . . if a merchant ever shows up with any. I already have a pasture built, ready for turn-on when the time comes.

I had one person become an adult and join the labor pool right before ending my brief morning session, a first since establishing the school. Seems a bit early to me, but I recently heard (on YouTube) that the amount of time each student must spend in school isn't as cut and dry as I thought.

Some but not all my original settlers have died off.

Funny (????) story. At one stage of my old long established village I kept getting messages that my storage barns were full. I'd build another, only to get a message not much later. For some time I just kept building them without paying much attention. I finally decided to see what was taking up so much room in my barns. The vast majority of them were filled with nothing but wool!!!! I offloaded much of that to my trading posts and was able to trade for most anything I wanted for some time to come. (I eventually ran out, but no big deal, not with the amount of sheep I had.)

--------------------------------------------------------
Now 31 Dec (2015) I'm having no luck finding a trader that carries sheep. Still can't afford crop seeds, though I just plotted one 15x15 fields. Wishful thinking I reckon. Also plotted a third forester lodge and know roughly where I want its wood cutter. Oh, have a second working fully manned fishing dock. I wasn't hurting for food without it, but my stored food excess wouldn't be high enough to support much expansion for any length of time. Leastwise I don't think so. A minor setback, just as the fishing dock was being completed two citizens died in quarry accidents, followed soon by a natural death from age. That combined with the dock taking four able bodies reduces my labor force to uncomfortable levels, for the short term.

The quarry now has six assigned workers. Not a lot, but enough to allow me to start building stone houses, which in the long run should significantly reduce fuel consumption. That in turn will hopefully allow me to add more firewood to the trading post, though I don't consider firewood an ideal solution. Gotta make do with what I have.

Not so much what I am playing, but rather than Angry Joe is playing. Here is Angry Joe's Early Access to Xcom 2. It looks fantastic! If you like tactical, squad-based games like Wasteland 2 or the original X-Com games, you are sure to like this. I am looking forward to this coming out.

My Banished settlement hobbles on despise my best efforts to the contrary. To the plus, establishing the third Forester Lodge and Wood Cutter has allowed me to store enough excess firewood in the trading post to exchange for seeds (or livestock, which trade for appreciably less). To the minus, I moved that firewood to the post bit by bit so as not to short-sheet the village proper. That took time, time in which I missed a chance to acquire bean seeds. I did have a chance at chickens. They are low on my list. I passed, but put in an order with that trader for sheep and cattle.

Otherwise I've not accomplished much other than plop down some paused building/field plots and think on where I want specific services. I know where Town Hall will go. I had a boarding house plotted but am having second thoughts.

I almost unpaused construction of our second trading post to allow us two trader visits a year. Nixed that until I have enough excess firewood (or other resources) to make it worthwhile.

Might need to unpause construction of a mine near the settlement's original forest node before too long.

I still worry that I am letting the settlement stagnate too long while waiting on seeds and livestock.

ADDENDUM: My settlement now has a cow/steer. Wanted sheep first but settled for what I could get. Hopefully I'll have a second pen to transfer cattle to by the time a trader with sheep arrives. No crop seeds yet, alas. The Boarding House is now in place, sort of out of the way. Inconvenient for those who might be forced to stay there, but unlikely to burn down if fire ravages the village proper.

ADDENDUM 2: The settlement now has plums. Again, not my first priority, but it's a start. The orchard was already in place, witch a stone house plotted next to it ready to unpause and build, which I did. I've a start of a new area plotted, large pasture, small crop field, two houses to cover those, barn, stockpile. Think I'll plot a small/medium orchard there, with another home. It's just across the river from the settlement proper, with a bridge connecting the two. Doubt I'll begin building/using any of its structures until I've animals for the pasture.

Still no disasters of any sort. All deaths are from age or quarry accidents, plus that one long ago death from mumps.

I am playing Divinity Original Sin - Enhanced Edition (it seems every game has an enhanced edition or director's cut out there now...). I bought the game back before the EE, but did not play it much. The EE came to me free once it was out (thank you Larian Studios and Gog), so I downloaded it a few days ago and started playing.

One thing I did not like in the original version is that you could only pan the camera around about 180 degrees. Which made it hard to see in some places. But the EE allows you to move the camera a full 360 around your characters, which makes the game much easier to play.

So far it is fun. The game itself looks beautiful. It is a pretty classic turn-based RPG. I am so glad these games have made a comeback. At first it appears to have classes, as there are bunch of them to choose from when you create your two characters. But in reality it is a classless system. The classes you pick to start with only really determine what equipment you start with. For example, the Knight starts with a two-handed sword. So pick your starting class solely on what gear you want.

Everything else is completely customizable when you create your character, such as attributes (this game has them!), skills, abilities... So you can pick a Knight, and then take all magic skills, spells, and so on. Assuming you wanted a magician with a two-handed sword of course. When you level up you get to add a point to your attributes and another to your abilities. Skills are learned and raised by buying skill books. The word skill is a little bit of misnomer. Actually the Abilities are what we would normally think of as skills: Two-Handed, Bow, Witchcraft, and so on. They effect your basic ability with using weapons or magic. What they call skills are more like perks or spells. They are special attacks with weapons, like a ricochet shot with a bow, or a charge attack for a melee character, or a summon critter spell. You start with 3 of these, and the rest you have find as you play.

You start with 2 characters. Everything I read everywhere on the web said that it is always a male and female. But the truth is when you customize your characters, you make them any gender you like. So you can have two men or two women. I don't know why everyone wants to keep that a secret. There are also other companions you can recruit in the game, though I have not found them yet. What I read is that you can have up to 4 people total in your party.

The combat is all turn-based. Characters act in order of initiative. They have action points that determine how far they can move and what they can do. When you mouse over places it will show you how many action points it takes to get there, or to perform an attack, which is helpful. So it is like Wasteland 2 or the X-Com games in the way the combat plays out.

One thing that is really neat is how the game uses elements and environmental effects. You can blast open a barrel filled with oil and it will spill out all over. Follow with a Flame Arrow (or a fire spell, or even throwing a lit candle) and it will cause it to explode. Cast a water spell (from the Hydrosophist Ability line), and you will put the fire out. There are even water balloons you can use for the same purpose, and water barrels you can blow up to spread water. My character used a Rain scroll to put out a fire that was burning a ship. There are other cool combinations too. If you cast cold magic on a wet area, you make ice, that can knock people down. Cast lightning on a wet area instead and it does shock damage to everyone in the pool.

Gear does degrade with use, and you need a repair hammer to fix them. Not a regular hammer, which is a weapon. The repair hammer was something I had to buy from the first wizard I met (he's part of the main quest, you meet him early). There is a pile of crafting as well. I have only barely scratched the surface of it. You can take a knife and a piece of wood and make an arrow shaft. Combine that with an arrowhead and you get an arrow.

Speaking of which if you use a bow it comes with an invisible quiver than never runs out of normal ammunition. So you never have to worry about running out of shots. Only magic arrows are craftable, or kept track of by the game. There seem to be quite a few of them you can find and create. Plus some really neat ranged skills. So archers are a very feasible character type in this game.

Wait, I thought you just started a new character on NV?

Another game now.

How you do this?

Since my last Banished update Pritchbuie Village hit several milestones. It at long last has field crops. Potatoes and beans to be specific. Animal wise we goofed, buying one lone cow, web research stating that that is all one needs to start a herd. The cow died. As luck would have it, sheep arrived with the next trader. We acquired three and have since bred two more. Next trader carried bean seeds, the next potato seeds, the next cows again. Bought three cattle. Had a large pasture already prepared for ‘em. That’s a grand total of two food crops, two farm animals and one fruit tree (plums). Between those, various forest node food produces, and two fishing docks we’ve vittles coming out of the rafters. I didn’t sufficiently update our food limit after planting the fields until noticing unharvested crops standing unattended during autumn. Corrected that oversight before losing anything.

Here’s the village southward expansion as of year 19. The yellow circle-of-influence centered at screen bottom is the border of our original forest-crossing node. Beans are planted but not potatoes. They are on the incoming trader boat. Town Hall, seen plotted screen left, has since been built. The second Trading Post remains paused. Our sheep pen is offscreen immediately below the schoolhouse at bottom right.

Note the water well just beneath the Gathering Hut designators pinned at screen top. That well features prominently in my next image. The settlement had its first fire year 20. It occurred in that forest node, a node containing our sole Herbalist along with a Gatherers Hut. It broke out in the wood house across from the herbalist. As the image shows, the fire brigade pounced on it pronto, carrying buckets of water to the house until the fire died. They did not, alas, save the structure. The fire did not, however, spread as could easily have happened. I was right pleased to see it! I last played Banished not long after launch, v1.0 or 1.1 of memory serves. Back then, wells were all but useless except as happiness boosters. Numerous times buildings caught fire near them, which the populous proceeded to ignore. I never once saw a well utilized to combat fire. Works like a charm now, if this one incident is any indication. Next session I’m going add more of them throughout the settlement, stone supply permitting. (Once we acquire a reasonable variety of field and orchard crops we intend to trade for most of our stone and iron needs.)

Another milestone -- the settlement exceeded 100 villagers during year 20.

All remains well with the settlement. Its only bout of illness was an early case of mumps which took one life. That and the recent fire are the extent of it -- knock on wood. One cause of concern is my lack of markets. For whatever reason I always forget about them until too late.

It only now occurs to me that I forget to figure in a tavern. (ADDENDUM: Problem solved. I found a decent if not ideal tavern site by shifting a few road squares ever so slightly to the west.)

I've been playing ARK: Survival Evolved, on the Xbox One preview program. So far, so fun. So difficult.

For those who haven't heard of it, ARK is an MMO set in a mysterious land that's inhabited by various dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures (Which you can tame at later levels). You can choose between PvP and PvE servers (I chose the latter).

The game focuses on survival, and it's pretty tricky early on. There are no tips or tutorials, your character wakes up on a beach. That's it. You just wake up and have to fight to survive straight away.

You have to deal with hunger, thirst, extreme temperatures, and various creatures. When you die, you respawn in a random location - minus any items you were carrying at the time. You can find your corpse and retrieve your gear, but the world is big and you might spawn several miles away.

I've learned how to craft basic tools, and I'm working on a shelter. Found a nice area of rainforest that has plenty of trees, and a colony of Dodos nearby that I can hunt for food. Took me about an hour to figure the basics out, and I'm excited to delve deeper into the game.

SinPritchbuie Village has begun a rather risky expansion. This image shows it plotted out, except a quarry and several mines unseen beyond screen top. Since its capture the orchard has been enabled, the market was built and manned, forest lodge and woodcutter are operational. Houses were added as needed.

I had not planned to utilize the expansion so soon. Felt force to begin when my sole functioning orchard became infested and had to be cut down. I do not yet have alternate orchard trees with which to replant that orchard. The expansion orchard was in place ready for use. My plum trees now grow there.

That done I felt the need for other facilities, and in any case wanted an extra forester lodge and woodcutter to increase firewood output enough to open a second trading post. All this said, I don't have manning to pull it off without short sheeting needed improvements at the established settlement. Should something go amiss I might be hosed.

Sad thing is, I should have that extra orchard tree. A trader showed up one winter with it on his/her boat. I eagerly bought it. Only, I wasn't paying chose attention. What I bought instead was the field crop right above the apple tree. Didn't catch my mistake till too late. I had a good save not a year prior, so reverted to it. This time round, that boat did NOT carry orchard trees. Within a year my existing orchard became infected. Such is life.

I've had my eye on ARK for some time. It looks to be a fine game indeed. One can find a number of decent LPs of it at YouTube. It should be pointed out that the game has a strong single-player component, or so such LPs indicate.

Now year 29, the Banished settlement expansion seen plotted but little utilized in my previous report has undergone a fair amount of attention. Comparing that post's linked image with this one shows a goodly number of buildings and functions now operational.

. . . The market is operational.

. . . A second cemetery, reduced in size from what I originally plotted, is operational.

. . . A fourth Forester Lodge with two or three workers is operational. This was mostly to allow more firewood in my two trading posts without overly harming home firewood supplies.

. . . A fourth woodcutter is operational, again mainly to speed up firewood production for the trading posts.

. . . A second Trading Post (not seen in the linked image, which contains the unbuilt plot for what will eventually be my third Trading Post) is now operational.

. . . A second orchard, already built but not utilized, is now functional thanks to the arrival of apples on a trading boat. We have since gotten pecans but have not plotted an orchard for them.

. . . A third pasture, just above the cemetery, holds sheep. Between this, a smaller sheep pasture, the full size cattle pasture, and my two hunting lodges, we have enough raw material to make 'warm coats' for everyone.

. . . A second Tailor was built, allowing us to crank out coats fast enough to put some in the trading posts.

. . . An additional storage barn has been added to the area.

. . . A water well was installed near the Tailor.

. . . Our first Chapel was at long last built, thanks to a Trader boat arriving with 100 stones on board.

. . . A second hospital has been plotted but not built. The road to it can be seen running off screen at bottom right.

. . . Sufficient homes were built to support all added functions. All homes fall within the Market's circle of influence.

My current thought it to next build the plotted quarry, our second, unseen just above the sheep pasture. It will be manned by four to six workers. Homes for them are plotted but not built. I suspect that after doing so I will need to built and utilize a plotted gathering hut seen in the forest node screen right.

Have you completely abandoned Oblivion now, Decrepit?

I'll never completely abandon Cyrodiil until I become to decrepit to game, or unless my current playthrough corrupts beyond salvation or becomes unplayable for some other reason. If the latter I would need to seriously evaluate if I feel I have it in me to start afresh. A problem with my current playthrough, if you see it as such, is that it has been in many aspects well nigh perfect from inception. I doubt I will witness its equal again, much less better it. Nor can I envision any future playthrough as other than an attempt to recreate my current decrepit avatar's adventures in detail. Such thoughts are mere speculation on events that may or may not come to pass.

As to the here and now, it has long been my practice to rotate between the games I enjoy, devoting most or sometime all my gaming time to one title to the exclusion of all else. Right now I'm hooked on Banished again, which is in truth a great surprise. I thought I had gotten it out of my system during its initial play early 2014. In any case I'll likely spend most of my gaming time for the next some days or weeks expanding my Banished settlement (assuming it doesn't crash and burn before then), then move on to something else, be it Oblivion, Minecraft or Daggerfall (the most likely suspects) for a time before switching yet again.

So no, I've not abandoned Oblivion except for the short term.

In Minecraftia, the Autarch harvested both primary and secondary tree farms at Hill Fort. He also harvested cactus and baked 18 potatoes.

In Banished, already plotted mines and a quarry were constructed and manned. One mine is devoted to coal. An already plotted second hospital was built. Stone homes were provided as needed. Truth to tell, I could have simply doubled the manning at our pre-existing quarry and mine rather than establish new ones. But this way each operation has a longer life span, and constructing them caused no unwanted material shortage. The second hospital is a luxury in that my villages never seems to get sick . . . knock on wood. Two bridges were built in preparation for future settlement expansion.

For what it's worth, very little, here's the settlement save file in ZIP format as of this morning, 7 Jan 2016. Might provide a good laugh for fellow Banished players.

That's a nice village. Just loading it up gave me the Builder award(I haven't bothered with either churches or graveyards), and I made use of that nice big lake to get the Golden Gate one too, so thanks for that I'll have to start a village on a large map at some point, all that space!

Fired up my village, Mulburg, and did a little poking around. Built a couple of storage barns because I was getting warnings about running out of space, and a Town Hall just because I haven't got one. I love being able to get the stats on the village, currently:

Year 35
75 homes, 72 families, and a population of 228, of which 145 are adults.
99% clothed, 97% educated, 5 hearts for health and 4.5 stars for happiness.

So I guess I'm doing pretty well. Now all that's left to do is see how high I can get the population before it all starts going down the drain.

Still on with ARK. Was doing quite well for myself, hunting Parasaurolophuses (Parasaurolophi?) and whatnot, then I logged on this morning to find my character had died while I was offline, and all my gear and supplies had been lost

THEN I realised that you can play offline single player, and set your own server settings up - Easier dino taming, easier resource gathering etc.

Tamed a raptor, saddled him up, and set out to explore. Aside from getting lost in a swamp and chased by a particularly determined Titanoboa, I've been having lots of fun. There's a snowy area to the north which I'll head to after I learn how to make fur clothes and preserved meat. Not sure the raptor will be able to operate in those temperatures, but I'm sure I can find a suitable replacement.

Disaster . . . of sorts:
The Settlement lacked emergency pastures. I've been telling myself to build one from the get go. Never got around to it. It caught up with me this evening. My large sheep pasture became infested. After a brief panic I paused the game, searched for a serviceable site, and erected the backup pasture. Took forever. By the time it was operational the infested pen held only one sheep!

My sole saving grace is that I have two functioning sheep pens, far enough from each other so that infestation doesn't spread. Sadly, the second pen is rather small, holding only 12 sheep, half the capacity of the infested large pen.

That one sheep was moved to the emergency pen. I then transferred cattle from their pen into the now abandoned large sheep pasture, standard practice for surviving infestations. That done, I split the small sheep pen, sending half its animals to what had been my cattle pen ere its move. I next moved the single emergency pen sheep to one of the other sheep pens. That set things to rights, until the next infestation.
The emergency pasture stands ready to handle that. Its a smallish pen. I'll lose up to half a pastures animals transferring them there. But it's better than losing them all to disease.

The settlement saw significant expansion today. I had not intended to expand again so soon, but the labor pool swelled to the point I felt something had to be done before they ate the village into oblivion. Added were two orchards, two crop fields, my first chicken pasture, market, a third trading post, a forest node with Foresters Lodge, Hunting Lodge and Gathering Hut, wood cutter, tavern, barns, and homes to house all workers.

The settlement continues to make to with one herbalist. Folk just don't get sick. That said, it had a small outbreak of mumps today. The infected person marched straight to a hospital and stayed there until was cured.

The settlement hit 200 population. It needs a second chapel. I have one plotted but am not sure I like the location.


Pritchbuie has given me, in addition to what I earned with my first successful settlement, 'Smiles All Round' and one other. 'Jack of All Trades' maybe? I'll have to see if I have Golden Gate. Don't think so. My old map has at least one large lake I intended to span. Whether I actually did so is debatable. Yeah, liking long duration play-throughs as I do the Large Map option is pretty much mandatory.

I did it! Bought King of Dragon Pass off GOG.com. It can be had on Steam too, but . . .

. . . the Steam version is a port of the phone version, which is itself ported from the PC original. GOG offers the original PC version with no DRM. Most of those who have compared the two on YouTube say tend to prefer the original PC version.

. . . the GoG download is cheaper.

Being on slowish DSL it's still downloading. Don't know that I'm gonna install it first thing in any case. Too involved with Banished at the moment.

Speaking of which, the settlement saw another major expansion. It has almost 300 population now. Tons of food and firewood, the latter my trade item of choice. We have four trading posts now, allowing four visits a game year. We now have all crop/tree seeds, so trade our firewood for stone, occasionally iron, and sometimes coal. Started in on another expansion, but am not happy with it. Think I'm gonna back out, since that entails no more than dismantling one house, shutting down and maybe dismantling a market, and removing several short stretches of roadway. Gonna think on it more before committing.

In Minecraftia, the Autarch harvested his secondary tree farm, mined netherrack, smelted the netherrack then converted it to Nether Brick, spent a good bit of time shearing colored sheep at his sheep ranch on the Lower Terrace, and made a feeble stab at roofing the Keep. As with past roofing attempts, nothing came of it. Unlike past attempts, he left what little he built in place, in hope of salvaging something good out of it. We're not holding our breath.

Ark sounds really neat, because, dinosaurs! Is it still in the beta stage though?