Terraria, why do you hate us?

For those of you who are not aware Steam is celebrating the holiday season with their Daily Wishlist giveaway. Simply have a Steam account with 10 items in your wishlist and then view the daily special to be entered.

What does Terraria have to do with this? Well, to celebrate version 1.1 coming out it was Thursday's daily special at 75% off. A lot of people call it a Minecraft clone but there are enough big differences between the two games so that really isn't an issue.

Diggy diggy hole hole.

Anyways my girlfriend Theresa prefers Terraria to Minecraft because 2D games don't make her nauseous. We don't understand why Minecraft makes her motionsick, we disabled headbobbing, fiddled with mouse sensitivity, etc. etc. but still she feels ill some days.

But for whatever reason, Terraria did not want to cooperate with either of us that day.

Maybe we should have stuck with Minecraft...

There are new features out for Terraria and because I want to try them out with my girlfriend I begin setting up a server. I'm not the most techy guy around but I at least I know how to go onto Youtube and research these things. Follow step by step instructions. I may be derpy but I'm not that derpy.

But no amount of research would get my router to port forward correctly. In other words, no one was able to connect to the server I was hosting. I struggled for several hours before finally giving up. Maybe it's an issue with my router, I'm tempted to reset it and try again.

Or maybe I can just stare at it until it fixes itself.

Meanwhile, Theresa was dealing with in-game issues. The game has new challenges and hazards including new monsters and traps littered around the dungeons. Our current armor isn't up to par and it became quickly apparent. BUT, there is a new NPC that exists who can help enhance your armor. Theresa set forth on a quest to find him.

The new NPCs spawn randomly in dungeons and needs to be "rescued" by you. After that they spawn where ever you've built a home allowing you to access their services more easily.

Surprisingly, my girlfriend managed to find the guy with no trouble at all. She goes up to talk to him and then....

A bug occurred that caused the NPC to glitch and disappear.

 

I imagine her expression was something like this.  

While my girlfriend goes to find where the NPC has respawned I'm tempted to just pay a bit of cash and just rent a server for as long as Theresa wants to play. It'll be easier to manage and maybe we can get other friends to join.

And if that works, maybe I can get that Minecraft server going too.

Early Christmas Shopping

With about a month left until Christmas most people begin to start shopping (and panicking) right about now if not later. Me? I started shopping back in October. Thanks to the glory of being able to order things online I can just buy and forget, receiving a package in the mail a few weeks later.

Makes me wonder why more people don't do this.

For my girlfriend I've got things still on their way. There are rumors that Problem Sleuth Volume 3 and Homestuck Volume 1 are coming out near the end of the month so I'm hoping to order both for my sister. Anyone else read the Inheritance series? The 4th book came out so I grabbed that for my Mom and my brother wants computer parts so I'll get those whenever.

For a lot of friends it's as easy as going onto Steam during a Steam sale and buying things to gift to them later. No seriously, I just bought Portal 1 and 2 for less than $12 yesterday and I'm just waiting for other games to go on sale for other friends. I also bought a ton of Minecraft giftcodes to give away just before the game came out of Beta.

That was easy.

But there are two people I'm having trouble thinking of gifts for. My Dad and my cousin. Mom should be on this list too but I lucked out this year with the book. Dad is hard to buy for because I sadly don't know my Dad that well. We're both usually busy, we don't have a lot in common, etc. etc..

I know he likes chocolates and I've heard that some of the best places to get chocolates are from online stores. Unfortunately, I have no idea where that particular issue of Consumer Reports has disappeared to so I'll keep hunting.

The cousin is also someone I don't really talk to as much. I guess I could just get him a random PS3 game or One Piece related (are there any One Piece games for the PS3?). I already have something in mind for his brother so that makes me look bad if I don't get both of them gifts.

Why couldn't he have a Steam account instead of a PS3...

But I still have one month left so I'm not panicking too hard. This blog is actually helping to pay for some of the gifts so I'm grateful for that. Never thought I could ever successfully make money off what is largely considered online leisure activity.

Never been more glad to be wrong.