GAMING
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At the end of Session 01, we had two houses on a riverbank across the water from Piastovia, and a problem with the trees.
Everything around those houses was birch. A birch gives you two logs. A maple gives you four.
We finished that log wondering whether we should rethink the location.
We rethought the location.
The plan for Session 02 was simple enough. Move somewhere with maples before we built anything else and would regret not moving sooner. Then make a start on the infrastructure: a woodshed, a well, storage and a hunting lodge, so that we could hire some help and let them take over some of the work.
Most of that happened.
Quite a lot of it happened in the dark.
Our old spot did have things going for it. It was flat, which is why we picked it in the first place, and, as Mr.Pendragon pointed out, it was close to town, which is handy for selling things.
But, as he also put it, it was time to put our big boy pants on and move out into the wilderness.
First, we tried to take the old houses down. Neither of us was entirely sure how at first.
There is a deconstruct option, once you find it. There is no refund. I checked, and knocking a house down gives you none of the materials back.
So we left them standing. There seemed little point breaking a house for nothing.
That decision would come back to us.
We headed north to look for maples. I asked whether we were staying near the river, and Mr.Pendragon had two good reasons why we should.
One, water close to the fire. Two, reeds. Roofs need reeds, and if your village is nowhere near any, you end up running across the map every time you want to finish a roof.
Remember the reeds. They come back too.
I found one maple. Then another.
Then I crossed the river and found all the maples. Alot, as far as I could tell.
The far bank had water, reeds and maples, plus a deer spawn point and a boar spawn point just over the bridge.
Mr.Pendragon's verdict: perfect.
The ground was not especially flat. Mr.Pendragon reckoned that did not matter, so it did not.
We were also, it turned out, standing in the middle of a deer spawn point. We decided that did not matter either, on the basis that there would be deer everywhere anyway.
There was even a road running past, which we could use to get between the buildings. In Session 01, Mr.Pendragon was planning doors around a road that did not exist yet.
This one already did.
I wanted my house on the riverbank, so that is where it went.
Then we started chopping.
Two maples gave me eight logs. Two birch would have given me four.
That was the whole point of moving, and it was very satisfying to see it work.
A little later, a birch seedling turned up in Mr.Pendragon's inventory.
The birch, it seems, had followed us.
In Session 01, we discussed how focus mode will not highlight sticks and stones until you have levelled up your survival skill.
This time I went looking for the exact skill as couldn't remember what it was called. We now remember it is called Survival Sense.
Neither of us had it yet. I was close.
So we went looking for stones by hand, which is slower.
The new houses still needed a lot of materials. I had the feeling they were asking for more than the first two had, as I could not remember doing this much chopping in Session 01.
Mr.Pendragon's theory was that I had built my first house partly from whatever I was already carrying as we had gathered a lot of materials before constructing them. We have not checked.
Meanwhile, I was being helpful, building Mr.Pendragon's house for him.
Roof included.
By now it was getting dark, so I went to make a torch.
I could not make a torch.
The materials for it were on Mr.Pendragon's roof.
All this chopping was hard on the tools.
At one point, Mr.Pendragon announced that his axe was about to break.
Not about to.
Had.
It was not his last. By the end of the session we had broken more than one axe, and a hammer as well.
There was also a brief dispute over a tree, involving the word "thief". Both of us had been there first.
It was, for the record, the tree that had broken an axe earlier.
We will need to craft better tools later so they have higher durability.
Then it was properly dark, and everything got harder.
We were short of stones, which are hard enough to spot in daylight. We were short of reeds, too. One of us found some by crossing the bridge and heading west. The other had gone the opposite way and found nothing.
Typical.
One of us also went to work on the woodshed, with the hammer equipped, expecting the building options to come up.
Nothing came up.
The woodshed was already finished. The other one had built it. In the dark, neither of us could tell.
The plan was for our future villagers to share a storage building, so the logs and everything else would end up in one place.
The storage building available is quite big.
There was only one spot close enough to everything for it to fit, so I put it there.
Earlier in the session, I had asked Mr.Pendragon, quite reasonably, not to fell a tree on my head.
It did not occur to me to mention my own trees.
A tree came down.
On me. I had chopped it.
For a moment, I thought it had killed me.
It had not.
A few minutes later, I nearly took my own head off again.
We were building in third person, which made some of the placing fiddly. I wondered whether first person would be easier, because then the building goes wherever you are looking.
Then my character started complaining about the heat. It was a hot day, and our characters were feeling it.
The fix, Mr.Pendragon confirmed, is to jump in the river. It cools you off.
I could not remember whether that works. He was sure it does.
Villagers need water, so we wanted a bucket.
Neither of us could remember whether we could make one this early, or whether you have to buy your first one.
Before the shopping, there was the recruiting - I refer to it as hiring in some places but technically you are recruiting them to join your settlement, its not like you pay them to be there- As Session 01 said, hiring takes reputation, and we had enough for at least one.
There was a farmer available, and a couple of hunters.
We took a punt on a female hunter, her is name Zygfryda. The name became significant later. You'll see why.
While she was on her way, I went looking for that bucket. One trader told me their wares never disappoint. I did not come away with a bucket, and I could not remember who sells the pots and things.
I came home with two waterskins instead. A waterskin holds four drinks and I had enough starting coin to get them, so they will do for now.
As long as we remember to fill them back up.
With a house still to finish, I spent a while trying to chop a tree down by punching it.
In Session 01, I tried to fell a tree with a hammer. This is progress, of a sort.
The house was for our new hunter: a small one near the woodshed, which was Mr.Pendragon's idea. It needed two more logs. Mr.Pendragon had two more logs.
I put some food in it and looked to move her in.
I looked at the UI. According to the game, we had five houses.
We had to stop and count.
Two new houses for us, one for her, and the two we had left standing at the old spot.
Told you that would come back. We decided to remove those two old houses eventually. In the UI you can see they are unfinished so they are easy to ignore for now.
I wanted Zygfryda on logs. Logging felt like the more efficient job.
Her extraction skill was one.
She was, surprise surprise, better at hunting.
We do not have a hunting lodge yet.
So, for now, she is on logs.
A woodcutter needs an axe, so I had to make her one. That needed materials, and here the game surprised us. I did not remember so many bushes you cannot harvest sticks from. Mr.Pendragon remembered being able to harvest every bush. So did I, especially the big ones. Either the game has changed or our memories have.
Eventually, she got her axe.
Then a notification told us there was no wood for the task I setup to automate firewood. I put a log in the woodshed's storage box to see if the warning would go away. It did not, at first. A log in the storage building seemed to do the trick. I also set her up make logs and gather sticks. Over time this will help us do less of these tasks ourselves.
I wanted some screenshots for this log.
It had got dark again.
I took this personally and issued the day a command.
The day ignored me.
Mr.Pendragon's more sensible suggestion was to just end the day.
Then I realised that I had turned the HUD off for the screenshots and spent a short while blaming the dark for not being able to go to sleep in my house to end the day.
When the next day started, upon walking out of my house I was presented by Mr.Pendragon standing atop a tree stump. This I later discovered distracted me enough to forget that the whole point of ending the day was so that I could get some screenshots. I got the screenshots. I forgot to turn the HUD back off before I got them. I had also stood atop a stump to see if it gave me a better view.
In hindsight, I wonder if he was sizing up a potential statue of himself for later! Why? Well...
As we were wrapping up, Mr.Pendragon asked whether we could give our villager a new name.
I pointed out that you cannot force someone to change their name just because they have moved into our settlement.
That would be worse than an Autarch.
To his credit, he accepted that, although he found my reaction to his query amusing.
A few minutes earlier, he had been standing atop a tree stump. Thinking about it, if you look at the evidence I gathered above, he is staring right at Zygfryda.
Hmm.
I am starting to see a pattern. I made a little clip about it which you can view on YouTube:
By the end of the session, we had moved the village to the maples, built two new houses, a woodshed, a storage building, and a small house, and recruited our first villager and got her working on making logs, firewood and gathering sticks. Mr.Pendragon had also started on a workshop and the hunting lodge.
We had also broken a few tools. I had felled a tree on myself and spent left myself in the dark by using materials on Mr.Pendragon's roof, and he had been short of reeds that were growing next to his house the whole time.
We just could not see them in the dark.
I'd call that a productive session.
You can check out the full play session below:
Mr.Pendragon's workshop is already under way. and the hunting lodge goes in behind the workshop, so that our villager can do the job she is actually good at.
At some point, we need a bucket.
And more torches. Preferably before dark.
And I feel I need to keep an eye on Mr.Pendragon.
Our first Medieval Dynasty co-op session was a short one. We settled on a riverbank across from Piastovia, got Mirogod's permission to build, tried to fell a tree with a hammer, and finished two houses, then learned that the spot we picked was surrounded by the wrong trees.
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