Day 44

The world of Aloriah ticks on!  Well I got to say the middle of the rounds of Aloriah seem to be a bit slower than the beginning and end.  Day in and out you build, chop, grind, walk, swim, search, etc.  But you got to do it otherwise you drop out of the race.  I have already dropped to #23 cause I am not killing enough dragons or searching enough obelisks.

So alas you must find ways to entertain yourself.  I did this by taking after Draak and going to chop wood at (200,200) which is the center of the world right next to the MD!  successfully obtained a valuable treasure chest, and chopped wood for 12 hours.  It was really exciting stuff!  Now I am headed off to go fishing in her layer as well.  So I am kinda curious too if she ever goes to that fishing spot.  I have a Hero with a high pirate skill which would be some nice extra life and damage against her.

Ha I missed the treasure chest on this one cause I forgot that it disappears as soon as you move on the square.  I'll be quicker next time.  Well in the upper picture you can see the fishing spot that I am going to be going for.  I am moving right around the MD so if she moves just one space I'll be a gonner ha.

Well continuing to build my MD army.  Sending my items right now to Asgard (MA village).  The battle is afoot!

Day 40

So I hate it when you come up with this ingenious plan but it is dependent on something like an army getting to a village or something like that and it all gets thrown off.  I currently am trying to juggle 8 armies in my civilization.  And it is so hard cause I want to do so many things but I only have 8 armies to do it with.  I had this whole plan worked out yesterday but it was dependent on one of my armies making it back to my village so I could put them inside and split this other army I had.  I was three squares away from my village and there were two wildlife armies right next to my village but I had this path worked out to avoid them.  I was sitting and watching them count down 10.. 9.. 8.. 7.. 6.. 5.. 4.. and then BAM!  Dang wildlife army moved on top of me!  4 more seconds that's all I needed!  That threw a whole list of commands in like 3 armies completely off.  Back to the drawing board...

So I am at 992 scenario points now can hardly wait for the 1k reward!  Accept my friend Pidge27 got hers and it wasn't that great just resources and a silver chest.  Hopefully mine is better :D

I am fishing for the first time pretty much.  I only fished like twice last round and never with a hero but this time around I have given one of my heros the fisherman skill and sent him off.  Hopefully I catch something rare!

My new village in MA is progressing along quite well.  Wild animals are constantly attacking me but I built up my moat to level 6 quickly and also a poison tower.  Plus when I was settling my new village I transported a whole bunch of troops so I haven't lost a battle yet!  Such a difference from MM!

So your not going to believe this!  In MM if you have an item shop up to level 8 then you can buy a bonzi tree for 1k gold!  I bought four already!  One for each of my villages.  I was so dumbfounded when I saw that deal.  So now I can control 4 mines in each village except MA cause in all the others I have upgraded my runstone of control to level 10.  Those are some really nice resource boosts!

Day 38

Ah the problems of not logging on!  Well so much for settling today!  My wolf army made it one cell away before dying and dropping the scroll of recall.  My army in DS got beat up by dragons.  And I lost a few towers to other players.  Oh yeah and I wasn't training or building for about 10+ hours!

But abandon ship I did!  Missed the stupid achievement though!  Guess you village does have to be over 400 to get it, lame.  After I abandoned I got the buff apple of a stick which is an extra 5% off of training and construction so I promptly canceled my current buildings and re-queued them to take advantage of the new discount.

But as luck would have it in the wee hours of the night I was able to settle my new MA spot!  And oh it looks good.  My new neighbor the MD looks like a mean monster but really has a good heart.  Mines at +75% for both gold and diamond.  And did I mention it's also ocean front property!  Now the ocean is a raving sea of hot lava but hey it's still a beach right?

Day 37

Abandon Ship!  Or village haha.  Well I got another glyph this one has a village spot even closer to my current village and the MD.  So I am abandoning my village tomorrow and heading in to the MD.  You might think I am crazy well so do I!  But this is my reasoning.  I figure that closer to the MD means that I will more easily be able to attack her which in the end means more scenario points.  This new village spot is close enough to the MD that I am pretty sure with an item or so I will be able to peer into the layer of the MD!  This secret knowledge of the MD might lead to game winning strategies.  Also pretty cool about this spot is that I can reach the MD without docking at all.

So wish me luck!  New settlers are queued up and I got a wolf army headed to the spot with scroll of recall.  By morning I should be ready to give the signal.

Bonus: I get an achievement :D well hopefully that is someone in the form or chat once mentioned you need a village at 400 size to get the achievement which I hope isn't true cause my village is only at 264...

Day 36

750 SP reward!  I love the SP rewards they are such a huge boost.  Well I got another magic glyph...  This one has some village spots a lot closer to the MD...  Might be abandon ship time...

But I fell asleep... so my workers got some much needed rest today.

Day 35

Great news my workers have built so much in Dry Steeps that now there are cobble stone roads in the village!  Darn guys they need a holiday or something.  Thanks to four villages and all the resources I am producing now I was able to specialize almost all my units.  till have two more to go.  This time around I went almost exclusively with "strong" which give you more damage points.  Except with the catapults.  I made those "fast" so that I can take them with me on my expeditions.  Oh yeah and my boars I made "tough" cause I wanted them to last longer since they are kinda more expensive to train.  Haha okay okay so I guess it's like split 50-50 between strong and the others.

Auction just closed and guess what?  I won 4 bids!  I bid basically on all the stuff that no one wanted haha.  I did it so I could get closer to the "true bidder" achievement.  So I really like the achievements in Aloriah cause during the more dull times they give me stuff to do.  Plus they are totally bragging rights.

It seems that the animals in MA are attacking about once every 24 hours.  Which I think means that I will be attacked tonight again.  I have been almost exclusively building defenses in order to try and protect my village and win against these guys.  We'll see how it goes.

Day 32 End

Well alas I was close but not close enough...  Draak came out of left field and settled about two hours and eight minutes before me.  So close it is kinda disheartening.  I work so hard for it yet no.  Oh well that is the game.  I am disappointed I didn't prepare for it more.  Had I just prepared with one step I would have been ahead of everyone by about 12 plus hours.  Let that be a lesson to all.  Be prepared!  But congrats to Draak for getting there before me.

Having said all that I am quite happy with my performance.  Once I did receive the glyph I reduced the original time by more than 3/4 of the original time that was required.  I was a little more than 4 days out when I got my glyph but reduced that to just under 1 and 1/2 days.  So that is an impressive feat to do.

So it is back to work and building up my new MA village is number one priority.

Day 32 Morning

Through the night I was able to reduce my research to 1 day 8 hours.  My council halls should be finishing up here in just a couple of hours.  This will leave me 1 CP short however still.  I got to get this either through research, upgrading one of my council halls to level 10, or finding an item.  Still a coupld of thousand off in resources to upgrade to level 10 but I do have surpluses in gold and iron so maybe I can trade some to get enough.  I also tried searching a couple of ruins but to no avail in finding an item with CP in it.

Amazingly my wolf army that I sent to MA with a scroll of recall made it through the night without fighting at all.  So they are only an hour away from MA then it's on to the village spot.  But first I got to aviod hellhounds, spiders, burning pincers, and ruby dragons!

Traded a bunch of resources (with a crappy market value) around and now I am only 1.5 hours from having enough resources to build a level 10 council hall.  But I still need to get that down some cause my level 9 finishes in 1 hour 7 mins.  No time to waste!

Day 31

CAUGHT WITH MY PANTS DOWN!  So last night I got a magic glyph, good right?  It even came with a village spot that is only 12 cells away from my ideal spot.  Yeah except I wasn't prepared for it.  Now I am rushing to get the needed CP to settle in Molten Ashlands.  Geeze I can't believe I was this unprepared.  Not enough CP, no settlers, no army in MA.  So now it is a race.  One that I think I will lose cause Holophobia says in the chat that he is ready to settle in MA.  Already has 50 CP??  Crazy!  I am struggling to find my 35 CP I need to settle there (being on a 4 village strategy so far).  Well I am doing my best to get there.  Either way I need to get there asap cause I need the extra resources etc.  So I canceled all my construction and queued up my council halls.  But they were all already at level 8 so to get to level 9 takes a day to do.  I sent a wolf army with a scroll of recall to MA.  That'll take 20 hours assuming they don't get in a fight to which they will lose so that will add like 2-3 hours more on to the trip.  Then I re-assigned two of my hero armies to just go and claim knowledge obelisks.  My next CP award in research will take 3 days 20 hours to get.  Right now I have to build one council hall to level 10 so that is an additional 1 day 12 hours on top of 23 hours (level 9).  So my goal is to try and get enough research to reduce my CP reward below the amount of time it would take to get to level 10 council hall.  We'll see if it works.  I also just bought a scroll of stone portal and I am waiting to get a scroll of recall so I can send my hero there and then call out my settlers.  So for both CP and getting to my village I have multiple ways to achieve these we'll see which of them ends up being the fastest.  Also retasked one of my dragon obelisk armies to go and search ruins in the hopes that I find an item with CP or research boost.

Mid-day: Found a research parchment +10% on research.  Sacrificed gold +28% on research.  Now my reward is down to 3 days and a couple minutes out.

Day's end: Re-tasked all my armies to search knowledge obelisks.  Got next CP down to 2days 10 hours now.  By next morning it should be down even further.  Looking good so far.  Only problem is that I have no idea where anyone else is in settling.  Had to re-route my wolf army so that added +4 hours but that shouldn't effect the end time so long as they don't get in a fight tonight.  See you tomorrow!