The first week of July marks the beginning of many new adventures! We’re diving into Rust and experiencing our first FORCED wipe.
If you’re not familiar with Rust, each server has different wipe cycles: some weekly, biweekly, monthly, or even on weekends. These wipes reset all progress made, but you get to keep the “Blueprints” you’ve researched that month, so not all progress is lost. A forced wipe happens on the first Thursday of every month, meaning almost every server will completely wipe, and you start from scratch. You’ll have to grind to either find or research those blueprints again. And let me tell you, it can get intense!
I’m absolutely loving the adventure so far, learning so many different aspects of the game, like the tiers, meds, armor, and what items to look for in the wilderness. It’s been an eye-opener and hopefully a fun watch too!
I’ve also decided to start moving around in real life. I’m not morbidly obese, but I’m in the worst shape I’ve ever been. This makes sense since I haven’t done much physical activity in the last four years. So, I’ve started a Running Challenge: a 1.5-2 mile run around my area. Unfortunately for me, none of this is flat ground! Let’s hope my knees survive! It’s 30 days of running. Let’s see how I feel at the end of these 30 days! The Running Challenge has sparked creativity. I’ve been able to think about things I can do for Tara to help improve her day, as well as ideas for videos, podcasts, and streams while out on these runs and walks. It also gives me time to mentally plan everything in the morning, allowing me to complete my tasks before streaming, so I have less to rush about after streams in the evening!
I’ve always said time management was one of my weaknesses, but having less time in the mornings now has actually improved my time management. A mixture of cheap generic running shoes and constant hills have definitely hit my legs. For the first few days of this challenge, I couldn’t walk properly! There are definitely positives in getting out of the house and moving around. We’ve had some days off due to slight injuries, like a rolled ankle and minor shin splints, but a day off doesn’t count as a day in the challenge.
The cats are absolutely hilarious lately. It seems they’ve all really connected or at least hit a point where they all know each other’s tolerances. Brooklyn has zero, for example. But almost all day every day, one of them is playfighting, grooming, or cuddling another cat, and it’s so adorable to see. I can’t think of another animal that has made me laugh this much on a daily basis. Floyd is still the chief cuddler though. I’ll share some photos.
Rust has been an absolute blast to learn, with so much to offer beyond constant PvP. Learning how to farm, automate, and defend bases has been really interesting and exciting. I guess the pointing and shooting is the easy bit? I have started watching several Rust creators for inspiration and have jotted down several ideas that I could try while playing. Hopefully, you are all enjoying the Rust adventures.
Arma Reforger is definitely calling our name for a return very shortly. With the 1.2 update rolled out and Worst Case Scenario pretty much back on their feet, we’ve been talking with several team members and have some exciting plans for the near future. So be ready for some loud warfare action coming back soon!
Learning more and more with Rust each day still blows me away. The amount of creativity you can have with not only base designs but also electrics, farms, and industrial setups is what I really want to learn and try to achieve. Running and walking have been going pretty consistently too (until Global Warfare). Daily movement is helping my productivity around the house and in the early mornings before streams start! I still need to do more, but it’s making me manage my time better, so we’re heading in the right direction!
FancyOrbs Global Warfare 2 hit this weekend, and it was absolute chaos, the good and the bad kind! Let’s start with the positives. I absolutely loved the idea behind the event. The amount of work that went into this event was obvious from the outset. The freedom of roleplaying allowed for some incredible stories: alliances, betrayals, false elections. I really enjoyed what was going on within the event. We met so many incredible people within our team and other teams across the world. I had such a great time, whatever we got up to! From roaming monuments and attacking underwater labs to taking a trip to Canada to visit some incredible artists and creative role-players!
However, with the good comes the bad, and unfortunately, the bad came from our team. Some individuals were incredibly toxic, egotistical, or just downright rude. In-game, in a Discord VC, or general chat channels, it really felt as if the creators on our team weren’t allowed to do anything beyond specific jobs. It was frustrating. I tried to reach out to Max during the event regarding some ideas I had previously mentioned, just to get the go-ahead (I didn’t want to make the event more stressful for him, dealing with 70 players within a team that wouldn’t listen, the role playing aspect of the event, and his own stream too!). Unfortunately, I did not get any response, so we were kind of stuck in limbo. If we asked any questions, they would fall on deaf ears.
Due to some real-life issues, I couldn’t make it to two of the big events across the weekend. We missed the big raid and the nuke event. It was a shame, but time doesn’t stop; we gotta keep rolling.
A more personal ending to this week’s blog, one that won’t be aired on the monthly recaps. I have been under a huge amount of stress the last few weeks trying to find part-time work behind the scenes. I am unfortunately not making enough to keep us afloat, and it’s putting some serious strain on us at home. So, I have applied for several jobs in the last few weeks and hopefully, I’ll get a response sometime soon. I’m sorry if I have shown signs of stress. I’m trying to keep it away from the stream as much as possible, but I currently feel like my dreams are crumbling down around me. I have plans to re-jig the schedule and streaming patterns, so it’s not completely over, but the overwhelming feeling of failure hits hard.
With a busy week ahead, we had lots of streams involving Rust with wipe practice, building practice, and planning for our next big wipe as it was Force wipe this Thursday. However, I wasn’t able to jump into Force this time due to going away for a family holiday!
The week was filled with editing, cleaning, and house prep until the final day before leaving for our holiday. A wild rush of two hours of cleaning before we left the house, and we were on the road! Just a two-hour drive to our destination shouldn’t be that bad, right? Wrong. Obviously, it’s the summer holidays, so every family was out on the road driving to their nearest beach destination. Two hours into our drive, we were still two hours away. With idiot drivers and the worst case of “invisible traffic” I have ever seen, we got to our destination after a seven-hour drive!!
Okay, it wasn’t a seven-hour traffic jam, but we had to charge the car too! We stopped at a service station, and they only had ONE charger. That seriously doesn’t add up. Surely they need more chargers alongside a busy motorway?
Six hours of driving with an hour of charging, and we finally got to our destination: a cute little cottage in the middle of fields! What more could you want for the next four days! It was a family birthday celebration, so the beers and prosecco were out as soon as we walked through the door!
Over the weekend, we visited a few seaside towns, one in particular called Clovelly, a tiny fishing village built into the side of a hill. Steep paths wind all the way down to the beach. Cobblestone paths and beautiful houses paired with a lot of cats roaming the village made it such a lovely and peaceful place to be. It’s somewhat a shame that something so beautiful is filled with tourists in order to survive the current climate. It would be a beautiful place to live, but then you have to think about all the tourists who’ve paid to enter this area, looking through windows and strolling down the paths.
Clovelly was absolutely lovely. I should have taken the shuttle jeep back to the top of the hill, but I wanted to get my steps in. Eleven minutes of power-walking up the cobblestone paths and we made it! I was panting like a dog. The rest of the weekend was filled with barbecues, hot tubs, and several types of beer. It was great to get away, but we missed our cat family so much that we enjoyed the drive home to cuddle our fur family!
Tara is unfortunately driving back down south the following day for a team meeting at work and a birthday dinner with her family. I am raring to go with ideas in my head for the next few week on Twitch and Youtube!