Author Archives: samiusgurobo

Research Mode: Bring on the Weed

by

0

So the last couple of days I have stumbled on to another aquaponic system, Bato or Dutch Buckets. And as I do when I find something that might work well for me I hit research mode scrambling as hard as I can to learn everything about that thing. Some of you have seen the results of that research mode from me time and time again. In DDo that is different builds or gear setups and so on. In real life I have used this kind of information gathering on the health (peleo diet), biking (my trike), the green house and even my aquaponic systems which jumped started this conversation, one sided as it might be.

So Goggling around reading forums, watching videos and checking out various build/use results; all while doing my normal job and or doing DDo screwing off…

Like I said the last few days has been about these Bato/Dutch boxes and as I do I follow the information even though I think I have a solid grasp on the teck. And out of no were I realize that more then half of the materials I am reading or watching is for people to grow the wacky tobacky…

Not again.

I have to be on some kind of list by now. Every time I get in to growing almost anything I end up some how I end up learning from people that are using these skills for illegal uses.

When I was learning about growing my own mushrooms I didn’t even have to get very deep into it before I realized that these people were so adamant about their systems because they are growing makic shrooms. More then half of the auaponic research was from people that wanted to grow weed. Building a green house? About a third.

Guess that makes some sense, who has more passion for these things then those kinds of growers/users?  I do find it funny that those are the people that are making videos and posting details/sharing their building methods. It would be like researching how to commit a B&E and seeing a video by/from thief’s while in progress, which has happened. Normally those are the people you hear about winning a Darwin award…

Well if you want to know what a Bato bucket is here is a good basic blue print and I will take pictures and show you how I am using it once I get the tank in place.

Bato bucket blueprints

 

Hope you enjoyed your bonus post.

❤

Pew Pew

by

2

So I haven’t had a ton of playtime so far this week as I have been busting ass working on the greenhouse. Last night we did a little planting even. I will add some pictures at the bottom.

Anyway as I said I haven’t had a lot of time in game, about 45 mins on Monday night and about 3 mins last night. But that was enough time to play some with now level 15 Samiusbot!

Level 15 on a pure arty is huge; Blade Barrier is up no more caster level checks on Reconstruct scrolls and the most important thing for my build eating a +4 dex tome just in time for level 16 and its bonus feat! Tasty, tasty dex tome allowing IPS…

Knowing that I had limited time Monday I decided to just relax and do some Vale explorer zone work.

I had a real blast. I moved my draw settings last week up a notch to very super special high and now I feel like those archers in the Sands. I can shoot you from waaaaaaaay over heeeeeeere! The Dps is not bad almost 50 on avg on the first number then blazing, good, icy burst, and rune arm for normal hits. I started wearing Wind Howler Bracers for the shrieking bolt and using a bold trinket when xp is not about to roll in…  Over all the dps is not bad at all assuming I can shoot at the mobs from a distance.

But now with BB on line I am ready to jump back into the heavy content again. Right now fairly ungeared they are hitting for about 300ish range crits are fairly huge think I can work in a spell power item fairly soon. Might have to work in a Spell Power item real soon…

Also I need to remember to move some rune arms around/farm up a Tira’s Splendor. It would be a permanent rune arm in my arty’s toolbox.

Well I think tonight baring Tobril having work issues again this week I should have lots of game time tonight. This long on for the Daily Dice roll and not much else is crazy…

<3s and a few pictures with plants in the ground.

 

Growing Begins!

Wife planting some Poison Fruit aka tomatos.

 

Every Beginnings End

by

1

So depending on where you are reading this post, this is a good by post or a welcome post. With the loss or soon to be lost my.ddo I have jumped ship to samiusgurobo.wordpress.com and soon samiusgurobo.com.  Hey for 18$ I can get a domain name to point to my wordpress blog…

Lets jump to some content!

This weekend I busted hump with the aid of my family and we are almost done with my trampoline turned greenhouse. We have a few more finishing touches like getting the door rehang and running some trim around the base to hold the plastic to the bottom of the frame. Then starts the fun stuff the growing.

I have lots of big plans for my greenhouse and as I always do I will share them with you has the come together.  But I will say I have a section planed to re-fire up my aquaponics experiments including using some real fish and a much larger tank.

My little urban farm is coming together nicely; the chicks are doing well so far. Oh for any that didn’t know I now have chickens. Surprise! My town allows up to 15 chickens as long as they are 50feet away from every building or in a mobile coop. All I need now is a few solar panels and a milk goat…

Just because I got things done doesn’t mean I didn’t get some DDo time in because I did. I was able to push to lvl 15 on my arty this weekend Blade Barriers!!! And we got some other things knocked out with the Brits including a 67 min EE Madstone. Which Grim was the only one not to take a death, but I think most of those deaths could have been avoided. I know my 2 deaths were strange things that I should have been smarter about and avoided. One I got pinned against a wall while kitting, should have went for tea with the queen and not tried to heal out of it. The other involved me being a baseball and being knocked into lava, which is very hot…

Lets see we also did an EE Crucible, which took less then the hour of ship buffs. But I had an early death thinking that Tobril on his healer would heal me but he was in save SP mod right out of the gate and I should have just PWKed my attacker when he got too close. Lesson learned!

But over all it was a very good weekend for me. I got the EE Skullsmasher for Java, thanks to my wife being good enough to pass it over to me. And I picked up a spare Iron Beads. Looking at the AH and SH I didn’t see any of them listed. Given the apparent supply and potential demand I think I will list the one I pulled for a fairly hefty sum on the SH and see if it sells. I am thinking of starting at 100 shards and having a buyout of 500. It seems overly high to me but I did get those tells the other day and there are 0 to be found…

Well it is time to go, I will miss my.ddo but these things happen. I got my black log of posts moved to the above URLs. I am really grateful to my.ddo and turbine for hosting my ramblings for as long as it have. My first post on my.ddo was March 16th, 2011 and I started there/here because I didn’t want to pay the hefty price for my guild site that was 80% my blog 10% tobril’s blog and the rest was other guildies chatting back and forth on the private forums or the rare post of their own… So moving due to shutdown is just SOP but I really like my.ddo sure is had a lot of issues but its community was more then top notch. Still I think we will still be around if a little fractured for a while.

Well as always…

<3s

Shatter Shot Mar29 (Gearing up)

by

0

So last night the wife and I went to the farm supply store to buy a stock tank. Like this:
stocktank

So I could make some thing like:
fishtank

For my aquaponics system, this winter I decided I needed a larger tank and more fish.

Instead of buying the tank I ended up buying this:
chickencoop

Yes it is a chicken coop. It is fairly lightweight so we will be able to move it fairly often and it looks like a million times better then anything I would ever be able to do on my own. Think we will be real happy with 4-6 little guys laying eggs.

In game I logged on with the goal of gearing up my rogue with the Threnalian War stuff. I ended up taking Samius and my piking account and soloing the Threnal west quests. More or less just zerged the hell out of them and then did the get the blade quests and boom matching long sword and dagger. Have to say the first damage number is not super impressive in the 20-30s but as I am not a str/power attack build going from a +1 heavy pick of I, X, Y and +1 short sword if X, Y to these guys I have the feeling that once I get them slotted and stone of changed ritualed I will be real pleased!

Then I took my stockpile of ore and hit the Nightforge, key was in the first room so luck was on my side. Cleared the path for my rogue and made a helm, chain shirt, and the choker. I wasn’t going to use the Chain but thought for like 9 or 10 ore why not have it as an option. And it was a good thing I did as I adding life shield to my current armor made it level 12.. I forgot that they moved Invulnerability to a power 3 so adding the life shield also power 3 shard made my item lvl 11 -2 from a masterful shard is level 9… So I am wearing the chain shirt. I need to decide how to fit in some fort. I have a heavy blue fort gem that I could slot for now but as I only plan to use this armor for less then a level seems like a waist. Guess I could craft a mod fort item real fast someplace…

Anyway didn’t get to do any playing with my new gear, but I will have some play time tonight and this weekend.

<3s

Shatter Shot March29 (my.ddo going down)

by

0

And the list of options grows and grows. So the powers that be finally decided to let my.ddo.com go. Have to say while I didn’t “know” know I was fairly sure that I did “know” that it was going to be on its way out. At the different Gencons and talking to some of the devs that I have befriended and even more when I was visiting turbine during a convince I got the impression that my.ddo was just something that a higher up thought was a good idea and no one every really championed it. As a web dev my self I know what it is like to build/implement a tool that some manager things is a good idea but no one wants to take on. It stalls and then dies. So I am not surprised that it is going, but I am surprised that it will just be gone and I am surprised that a replacement will not be ready to go right away…

And between you and me I have been thinking of leaving my.ddo for a while now….

I was hosting Defenseguild.net for a long time. And I had my blogs located over there before moving to my.ddo. It was not cheep. I was over playing and was locked into a deal I didn’t really love. But looking at some other hosting services I could do a 3-4$ a month service easy enough. So I could host my own thing, solo. But I let it go for my.ddo because of the cost and because the traffic was just not super high when there was a free service that could do a lot of the same thing.

I could team up with some of the other bloggers like Grim (one of my Brits) and start our own thing. That would be lots of content to port and handle but more people to share the load of making content and building the actual site. But we haven’t really talked about that yet.

I could and from the sounds of it a lot of you all could team up with Geoff over @ gamergeoff/ddogamer. I like this idea a lot. 1, being lazy most of the work is done already I would just need to edit my back log of posts or import or just start fresh even… 2, forming a network is just a better strategy for maintaining content writers and readers. That was one of the main issues with the old DG website, just not enough writers and readers to justify the cost. 3, someone else is the boss. I really like not having to BE the boss. Most of the time I would rather let someone else drive but be ready to take over as needed if something important comes up. And while I wouldn’t be able to takeover on DDogamer I wouldn’t have to worry about going off a cliff that would be on Geoff.

Now an option I have be texting and emailing back and forth with Lessah that a lot of you can’t do is move my blog to DDoCocktailhour.com. It has lots of the same perks that joining Geoff and breaking out on my own has but I don’t think Lessah and I would want to bring the Brits along…

I don’t have a clear plan yet, I will know more after talking to some people this weekend and maybe a phone call with Lessah and Clank. But in the mean time I am going to keep posting here so watch out!

❤

Wednesday…

by

1

So I was super ready for last night, Tobril has been out for work for more then a week and other then a short phone call driving home from my pnp game I haven’t spoken/gotten to hang out for a while. Also on the none guild night weekdays I have been kinda rudder less, mostly rocking one of the lowbees or doing one or two quests with the wife before she is burnt out. Frankly with out someone wanting something even on the weekends we can be unfocused.

So I had a plan for the night, first it was amazing out so I was going to put a good hour – hour and a half into the green house. Will talk about that in a min. Work a little on a trade list, game with everyone for a few hours and end the night watching a episode of Game of Thrones maybe while reading a comic… aka an amazing night!

So I get home and start to work. After about 30 mins the wife gets home with dinner and wants me to get inside and eat before it gets cold. Oh well, finish what I am doing and clean up the tools for the night.

After eating I get logged on and start working on a trade list. That lasts for like 3 mins. There is nothing more boring then making lists of stuff I am willing to trade…. There needs to be a better way. In retrospect I think I might use my piker account to make a private party and just start linking things and then copy the chat list one time per char and then edit the list in post vs trying to list everything by hand. Might try that soon.

So I wait for tobril, I run the ship and redo any buffs that need added. Seems like my part time job any more. I say to the wife didn’t I just do this? She replies that she did a bunch last week and it was not her turn. When I reply I guess with the two of us playing most of the time I guess that is just how it is… Speaking of she noticed that we were super close to 80 but just the two of us can’t make much in gains vs the renown loss need to play more I guess.

Anyway about 630 my time I get a text, Stuck at work. Hope to be on later – Tobril. Hmm, well at this time the wife wants to do something but again we are rudder less. I want to work on my Rogue, he is ready (and took) level 8 but there are just a few more 5s I want to BB real fast. But I could use the last hour of the day and get some more work on the Green house done. So we shift gears and head back out side.

Green House update: the end cap walls are framed up and I got a door poorly hanged we shifted it slightly as to have a little more room around it for the chickens tracker thing I plan to work on next. We get the tarp I plan to use as a floor down and all I have left b4 laying the plastic is getting the inside laid out/filled and pinning the walls down so I don’t have huge sails in my backyard. Tonight I buy a water trough for my fish tank for watering and my aquaponices setup.

Anyway as dark falls we head back in, no Tobril the wife is done and is ready to watch TV with the boy. So I am in solo/pugville so I solo the last of my 5s and take 8.

About nine I log for the night and watch ep 5 of Game of Thrones and hit the sack. Have to say I don’t feel as satisfied as I would like but as it is Thursday I can’t complain much.

<3s

So pissed

by

4

Last night post recording the new Cocktailhour (which is up @ http://www.ddococktailhour.com btw) I got to spend a little time playing. And I don’t know about your server or maybe it was just me but things were super laggy.

Now normally I don’t get a ton of lag or I get mild lag that I can live with like an item doesn’t swap or a clickly doesn’t click. But last night I was getting thrown back and or freezing for 5-10 secs at a time not all the time but often enough that I was worrying about lag deaths most of the night.

But I was able to play around the lag a lot of the time by not playing things close to the chest. But after spending over a min knocked down in the STK end fight I was steamed up, but I was able to knock Stk xp with out a death.

I have xp to level to 8 but I still have a few more level 5s to knock out and I want to start banking xp because I am thinking sands quests are not going to be a helper on my sneak attack driven alt.

Quick aside: I am getting in the grove of using Bluff while I am running to the next mob. I would like the timer to be shorter I can only use it every 3rd mob or so but still 20 damage a swing vs 40-50 points a swing is a big deal. Blinding weapons cannot get here soon enough!

Checking the list the last few 5s I care about are in Splinter Skull, no problem. Re buffing and heading out I start to notice things dragin on. Fine I can do this. Get in and start SLOWLY pulling and clearing. I am on the get the key quest in the chain aka the one with the super mobs. So I take care and pull smart and use bluff to drop casters and then boss mobs and then trash. A few big spikes but in single combat 5-10 sec of lagged out time stop is not a huge deal. I get to the key check easy enough and start pulling the trash off the chest. Kill a caster and a trash mob when the game enters stop go stop mode.

Stop – the one caster I am on is the only mob around.
Go – Drink a CSW pot and now the other caster is also on me.
Stop – swear
Go – Comeback held
Stop – Oh a trash mob is running this way
Go – tripped get up drink a pot start to run away
Stop – Okay, at ¾ life but its all good.
Go – held
Stop – hmm
Go – hold timer starts again
Stop – FML what is with all the damn lag
Go – Hold timer again restarted also tripped
Stop – shit I am at 40 hp…
Go- come back dead the mobs are walking off!

I was so pissed I slammed my mouse on the table almost knocking my Tea over… Shouted a few swear words, as this is the first death on this guy that was unplanned ie the quest is done and I don’t want to bother killing all this trash and I need buffs anyway deaths which was one time, btw. I was so pissed I knew I was about to tilt real hard and while I had the Sully cake in my pack I decided to just release and go watch TV with the wife.

Man I hate it when something like that happens. It is so aggravating and reminds me why I don’t play PD even though I am compelled to try it again.

<3s

I like Mondays

by

0

Well I like Mondays after work anyway. Mondays for me is Samius time, not that every other moment of my life isn’t Samius time… But Monday is really Samius time. I don’t have any other plans and can just be care free with my play.

Last night my Monday was spent in game, it was too cold for a nice bike ride or working on the green house. Give me 2 or 3 days of fair weather and I will knock it out and get my grow beds rocking. So my in game time was more or less split between my Arty and my new rogue build. And they couldn’t play more different even though they are very similar.

My starting plan was to start on McPlunderer and hit Ghost of a Chance until I was burnt out. I logged on my alt account and shared the quest using him to open the quest. Don’t under value the helpfulness of an opener. I was almost to the quest, 3bc is a big open explorer with no ports after all, just then the wife says, “Lets do something.”

I say sure and inquire what she wants to do. After watching her switch alts for 10 mins while I just wonder around the explorer zone she finally decides she is willing to play her clonkish alt so I can use Samiusbot.

We do a few runs in the House J graveyard, about the time I remember how to play Samiusbot well, she is ready for dinner and thinks she is done for the night. I tell you there are not a lot of builds out their with a greater ability to change combat styles mid stream then a (simi-well equipped) WF Arty…

Also it was nice playing the arty in a quest where invis wouldn’t have worked anyway so I didn’t miss it. But I would love for it to work again…. In any case I got to use my new mace a lot and still got to rock my Xbow. Took me awhile to get in the swing of things with all the different layers of defenses the Arty has, Stoneskining the turret while I lit the funeral pyres in Beyond the Grave was a big help once I remembered I had those spells…

Anyway post dinner, I was back on McPlunder who doesn’t have the option to be good at ranged damage yet, but he will… So for Ghosts he was using his heavy pick and shortsword. The guys were tough enough that I could play with the bluff skill and got to see my sneak attack damage for a change. I can really see those sneak attack d6s doing their job as I climb the ranks some. Think once I get a little higher and start grouping more then I will really like this guy a lot. Right now I am wondering how come he is not stunning everything! Blinding weapons can not come soon enough.

All right you all! Hope you all had a good Monday and remember only 4 days left until the weekend.

❤

Let’s Talk About Plats, Baby

by

1

Let’s talk about you and me
Let’s talk about all the good things
And the bad things that may be
Let’s talk about Plats

So after a week of hardly playing due to spring break I have to say this weekend was a good one. Got lots of time in game on Firday night and Saturday to hang with the Brits and most of the morning before heading to my pnp game. In our normal fashion when we are low manning things we hit whatever quests we wanted. We did some GH and some FR stuff. We even worked in an EE Madstone run that while fun was very draining and took a long time. Next time we skip optionals until the end if we do them at all.

Anyhow we got some pulls but not the belt I was hunting for Darth Samius. So when we picked up where we left off on the next day I hit the AH/SH just hopping to find one of the belts for a good price. The shard exchange prices on Sarlona are still out of hand in my opinion so I pass on the 1 or 2 belts I see listed. But there happens to be one EH belt on the AH for 750k plat. Darth has all of 300k on him but the ladies are able to lone me 250k each so I don’t have to spend the time swapping around to move some plat. And I pick up my belt off the AH.

In the corse of playing and swapping alts for different quests I repay the ladies and realize I am super plat poor. Log story short I have been just buying the GH loot off the AH due to my poor farming skills, aka time to use this +2 weekend and a few loot gems to make some Plats.

I have talked about in the past about where I go to farm plat but for some reason, cough invis bug cough, I have had issues with some old standbys. So I want to both share my list and ask you for any quests you might farm when you are plat poor.

DQ 6 man, normally a no brainer, 3 amazing chests per run and little to no time to ransack them but this quest was having real issues due to invis still not working right to the point after 6 or 7 runs and 2 deaths due to skull issues while invised I said enough and moved on to.

Von2 maze chests, You have to know where the chests can spawn and using the friendly target or “radar” figure out where the chests are so you can get them and get out with out a fluke death but once you have it down it is a fast 2 chests.

Raiding the Giant Vault, this guy is one of my go tos because again once you have it down you can get 5 chests in 2 mins they are not all super high level chests but in two runs I got a 20% for 6 hour xp pot and a 20% guild renown pot.

Lets see what else …

Unquiet Graves got hit real hard. This quest also had the perk of getting the newly capped out or about to be capped out wife a ton of xp in 3 min runs. Kill 4 guys loot and DD reset. Sure there was only one chest but it was a good chest.

And of course we sacked Rusty Blades. Both for xp and the chest once the chest was sacked we did one more for people that missed a run and moved on.

Once I had decided to farm some plat I made about 750k xp I even did a shroud run thinking hey there are like a lot of chests in there. And for a speed run on hard it was not super fast to start but the quest its self was fairly quick once everyone entered… I could have done that a few more times…

Okay so where else? I would like to get a good buffer of a million plat per played alt if I can. Sure I could start to sell my EH/EE GH loots but I would either need to take the time to list things on the AH or make a trade list…

Like either of those things are going to be happening…

<3s