Time to Loot Journal: Blapril 2020

While not something I’m going to dwell on — I think I will at least acknowledge that the COVID-19 lockdown is finally getting to me. Not in any serious, major ways. Rather just I note that my motivation levels are down, with each day increasingly more difficult than the last to get down to doing my work.

So while it is great news that earlier in the week we moved to Level 3, where some services were allowed to reopen, the practicalities of day-in day-out life haven’t really changed yet. In another week or so, the Government will reassess our situation and see if we can step down in levels yet again to Level 2. Fingers crossed!

But! Not to worry. Onto the games! :)

This has certainly been a bright point in the month. It was triggered first through Krikket’s Five Favourite Game Series post, by way of the raft of followers that came. Myself included. What I noticed after even just the first few responses was that quite a number of us were listing Civilisation amongst our favourite game series’.

Harkening back to the days of old where I used to play succession games for Civ IV, I thought it might be a great thing for us to try as a community. It allows for asynchronous co-operative (in a manner) play, and so far it has been fantastic.

The participants are:

1. Naithin
2. Rakuno
3. Paeroka
4. Tessa (aka Endalia)
5. Krikket
6. UnwiseOwl
7. Rambling Redshirt
8. Kanter

And at the time of my writing this post; the most recent update is indeed from Krikket herself, for turns 41-50 from UnwiseOwl for turns 51-60. You should be able to follow the turns forward or back from there, but I will be setting up a Succession Game page to help keep track of it all soon… In fact… At least I now have one goal this month. I was struggling to think of any!

Gaming Goals

April’s Goals

• Post. Every. Dayyyy. For Blapril.
  OK, not exactly a ‘gaming’ goal, but I’m going to give myself a pass here. I can do that, you know. It’s my blog. See? Benefits you guys. Decide to run your own blog and you too, can possess such whimsical power.
• Deep Rock Galactic: Progress to Rank 15 on Gunner, and at least 5 on the other classes (Scout, Engineer, Driller).
  Deep Rock Galactic recently re-entered play in my friend group. As in… Yesterday. But I’m still a bit skeptical about this goal. It’s a great game in a group, but not one I’d play solo (even though they do cater for it). But should group attention wander, this will certainly be a failed goal.

I’m going to call both of these ‘done’. Blapril is actually still going and will do so through to May 9th. From a goal perspective though, I posted every day of April (and for a couple of days beforehand (which also counted!)) and so count April’s goal done.

However, even though marking it off — certainly my intent is to keep going right up until the end. :)

If I manage to skip no days from here til May 9th; that will make 41 consecutive days of posting. (Would’ve been 42, but I missed the very first day… Not entirely out of the question I might do a double post day somewhere to make up for it.)

With Deep Rock Galactic, all done! I didn’t just get the Gunner to 15, I got him to 25 and then promoted. The other classes to level five wasn’t that difficult either, once I’d found the drive to simply start on it.

I did also find it was time to hang up the pick and move on to other things for the time being though. See you again next update, DRG!

May’s Goals

• Setup the Civilisation Blogger Succession Game page
  On which I will endeavour to keep it updated with all the turn posts and a brief summary of actions for each as we go. My aim is to have this setup either by the time the turns come around to me again or at the very least before I pass the turns on again to Rakuno.
  
• ???
  ??????

I might just… keep it to that. I thought of some other goals potentially around hitting a certain population milestone in Cities: Skylines or pushing myself harder to unlock Pathfinder Part 1 (if not Part 2 as well) in WoW before May is out. The reputation buff only runs through to May 18th after all…

But for Cities I’m finding it to be a very chill gaming experience; and I’d quite like it to stay that way. For WoW; I don’t know. I think I’m still somewhat resisting the notion of doing a rep grind, even though it is far less severe than I initially thought it to be.

Of course — if I end up doing these things anyway, I’m 100% going to claim them in May’s journal. ;)

*** Some time later ***

Right. Well. Yep. Between writing that and finishing this post:

Dangit. if I’d just made this a goal an hour or two earlier… xD I had Proudmoore and Tortollan emissary quests ready to go; and with the reputation buff currently running — those were enough to pop Azerothian Diplomat, and by extension — this!

Still! Part two is basically a blank slate. Still haven’t finished Najzatar storyline let alone gained it’s rep to revered. Neither have I even seen Mechagon yet.

Still; those are two bits that, being new, I probably won’t mind doing so much even post-buff.

Games Played in April

I don’t think I’ve had any month where the top four have been so relatively close to one another in time played. Before last night in fact, WoW (Retail) was also around the 16 hour mark. More interesting than that though, to me at least, is how the month has felt so long. It feels like there was the Deep Rock Galactic and Mount & Blade part of the month on the front end, then Cities: Skylines and World of Warcraft portion more recently.

Each of which, I could easily have believed were at least a month each in duration if I didn’t have any way of keeping track of the dates.

Anywho, all that represents 83.6 hours of gaming, down 3.4 hours from last month.

But also? Holy moly! 10 of the 12 games played have a post about them. That’s crazy. I guess when you post every day, you talk about more things… Who would’ve guessed?

The Blog

30 posts published in April itself, up… Oh, 19 or so over last month. For the Blapril period as a whole — March 29th through to May 9th — this post will make 33. This one will also be the 265th published post on Time to Loot. :)

Most Viewed Posts

1. Can You Play a Game Wrong?
2. Animal Crossing Just Might Not Be for Me
3. Five Favourite Game Series
4. Civilisation Blogger Succession Game — Setting the Rules
5. Long Live the Queen — Establishing an Empire (Turns 1-10)

I’m not 100% sure, but I think this might be the first time every single post in the top five has actually been a post from the month in question.

Interesting.

In any case, I’ve been eyeing up SDWeasel posting on his top and least viewed posts of all time and thought that might be an interesting thing to look at indeed. I know without looking what my top two posts will be. Unsure on the third and below though. Bhagpuss also took a rather insightful look at his stats and how having a veritable bot army come swarming your sight and borking your stats might not be the worst thing ever after all.

In any case, that’s all for now. Those posts are for another day! :)