Howdy, y’all! Joe Hills here writing as I always do in Nashville, TN!
Today’s stream was my weekly Saturday Grind and Read, so we jumped in to inventory management, removing stone, and reading Moby Dick chapters 78-80. This is the one stream a week where I completely avoid music, so there’s even a VOD if you want one!
We got a lot of mining done, but I was hampered a bit on pacing by having to avoid hitting villagers and iron golems. I probably need to figure out a relocation target for all of them.
Chapter 78 was kind of horrifying, but 79 and 80 were just old-timey weird. I’m looking forward to chapter 81, about a few ships converging and all chasing the same whales. but it seems like it’s one of the books’ longer chapters and we already had spent 2/3s of the stream on the first three chapters.
With chapter 81 too long to start tonight, I decided for the last third of the stream to disassemble and clean the keyboard I spilled soda into a few days ago. Thanks to Badger helping me find cotton swabs, I was able to make short work of the clean-up, removing about a quarter of the keycaps to clean up the soda residue. Only two switches were sticking themselves, so I swapped those out with fresh ones. I’m not sure if I can repair those somehow.
Howdy, y’all! Joe Hills here writing as I always do in Nashville, TN!
We’ve had a lot of extra expenses recently because of emergency dental work and the filing fee for the next step of Badger’s immigration process, the Green Card, so we decided to take time out of the last Saturday before Halloween to do a bonus stream of one or two spooky games (tips are welcome via https://paypal.me/joehills).
Ten Bells: Strongly Recommend.
It turned out, we only had time for Ten Bells today, but it was a lot of fun! If you don’t want any spoilers, I’ll just provide my review up front: strongly recommend for fans of spooky games. It took me about three hours to complete the normal mode, and there’s a nightmare mode that I haven’t gotten to yet, but probably would take me another few hours at least.
Are bells good or bad?
Badger and I both enjoy horror, but have never played a game from this emergent genre that I’ve been told is called “anomaly hunt” but which I believe should be called “aberration examination.” The player needs to explore the space of The Ten Bells pub and determine if anything has changed from the last walk-through. It’s harder, and spookier than it sounds.
Since we didn’t know how the game worked, it took us a while to figure out what counted as an aberration and what was merely an indicator of how progression was tracked. For example, the name of the pub above the bar changes from “The Bell” to “The Two Bells” to “The Three Bells” and that’s a progression tracker, not an aberration.
I’m the sort of person who loves deducing the rules of a game by playing it, so this was a lot of fun for Badger and I to puzzle out, but if you’re the sort of person who gets frustrated by things like that, it may be worthwhile to watch someone more experienced play a round or two before you jump in yourself.
Hitting a rhythm
Once we figured out that bells are good and that there were changes to the hallway near the restrooms that marked progress through the story, everything kind of clicked into place and the only person I could blame for not knowing if a carpet had always been there or not was me.
The core gameplay loop is simple and elegant, and the pacing make this a great choice for streaming. The predictable opportunities to breathe each time we finished a walk through the pub really helped make this a fun show, but also created a lot of tension every time I was about to turn the corner and walk through the door.
End-game bug
We only planned to stream for three hours, so once we hit our scheduled stop time Badger headed out of the studio to take a break. I was so immersed in trying to completely finish the last few scenarios, I decided to go into overtime and try to wrap up the entire normal mode.
Unfortunately, I made some sort of mistake by trying to walk back and look at the progress board after the bells rang and things went a bit sideways. I ended up in some sort of broken end-game state, and one of the devs, Acrylic Pixel showed up! Here’s how that bit went:
Thanks so much again for joining me for this log, but if you wanna catch a stream live, you can find my streaming schedule at https://joehills.net/soon/.
Until next time y’all, this is Joe Hills from Nashville, Tennessee!
Howdy, y’all! Joe Hills here writing as I always do in Nashville, TN!
My stream this morning was only an hour, but I got so much done that I wasn’t sure I could top it this evening… until I developed a terrible idea for an illegal shop while mining tuff and calcite.
I already knew that I wanted to build an xB shop at spawn, but after discussing the best angle for all this with the chat, I decided that the funniest possible thing would be to package that as a lagniappe with a pitch to trade Joel a bunch of empty shulkers in exchange for Joel building a silverfish experience farm at the Hermit Holmdel Project.
I had just switched over to an xB skin to sacrifice myself with fireworks to drop player heads when Scar logged in and killed me over a hundred times with his bow. Cubfan135 helped with the slaying and even added some unicode to my pricing emeralds.
The build is pretty simple, but since I’m giving it away if Joel takes the deal, I didn’t want to over do it.
We hung out by that map for a while chatting and choosing points of interest to fly out to, including an X-marks-the-spot treasure chest next to Scar’s base that contained a diamond block we all split three ways.
Scar and Cub had to call it a night, and I did too, so I wrapped up the stream by recording myself mailing a letter to Joel with my offer to trade this shop and 40 shulkers for him to build a proper xp shop. I think it’s a fair deal, and I hope he takes it. It’s too late at night to think of anything else to throw in there, and I’ve gotta get to bed.
Before you go too, just as a heads up, I’ve got some spookier than usual streams coming up for the Halloween season. You can always find my schedule at https://joehills.net/soon/.
Until next time, y’all, this is Joe Hills from Nashville, TN.
Howdy, y’all! Joe Hills here writing as I always do in Nashville, TN!
My last HermitFactory streamer’s log concluded with me realizing I’d created a huge mess by building multiple truck stations aligned with each other on the same roads. The trucks were loading and unloading from inventories I expected them to drive right past, and machines were ingesting the wrong parts for their recipes!
Truck station removals, replacements, and improvements
Today I kicked things off by adding new side roads for loading on the north and south sides of our aluminum processing plant intersection. Welsknight improved on my design by creating a cool billboard frame, which I tried to replicate on other stations, but couldn’t get the painted beams to snap correctly. I’ll need to ask him how he pulled that off!
While I intentionally moved truck stations for loading and unloading parts away from the road, Hypno automated turbo fuel production and helped me add new a refueling station on the main road that most trucks routes hit. They should pick up a bit of fuel every time they go past, even if the other stations have run dry.
The receiving truck stations for unloading raw quartz and aluminum casings at the modular frames factory also needed some improvements. I removed the center divider between the road sections there so trucks could go in and out without passing too close to the wrong truck stations. I also added cleared signage and better refueling there. The most stressful part was trying not to mess up while re-recording all the truck paths, but in the end, it all came together better than before!
Joe Hills in the sky with with crystals
Several stories above, I realized that automating crystal oscillators wasn’t just good for build gunning billboards, but that we could create crystal computers and radio control units with them! To get us on track, I added three more manufacturers tasked with creating crystal oscillators and cleaned up my raw crystal processing.
I left plenty of space a future expansion into on-site silica processing, which opens the door to create silicon circuit boards for crystal computers. I mean, how hard can it be to process additional copper for copper sheets anyway?
If you don’t want to miss my next HermitCraft 10 stream, don’t forget you can always find my schedule at https://joehills.net/soon/!
Until next time, y’all, this is Joe Hills from Nashville, TN.
Howdy, y’all! Joe Hills here writing as I always do in Nashville, TN!
Due to forces beyond my control, I had to forego my routine Friday morning HermitCrfat stream in favor of a 1-hour bonus stream, so I jumped right in on a small project that I could see results on quickly: improving my lasertag arena’s storage and workshop area!
The grass ceiling was a huge liability, so my first objective was to give the space more of a bunker feel (and level of security). I ripped out all that grass above it and added a one-meter thick layer of cobbled deepslate.
During that process, I realized I’d made a storage layout mistake by including two chests for wool when one wool’d do. The ten shulkers worth of stone I’d accrued digging yesterday called for me to deposit them in the POE POE impound lot, where I continued to fill in the crater iJevin left when he ripped out his shop with a snailocopter.
After leaving that space better than I found it, I returned to the storage area and installed a few hanging lights to make it feel more like a classy bunker a rich person would have.
The floor still needs carpet or something, but I’ll come back to that another day, I only had an hour!
If you want to be sure to catch my next HermitCraft 10 stream, don’t forget you can always find my schedule at https://joehills.net/soon/!
Until next time, y’all, this is Joe Hills from Nashville, TN.
Howdy, y’all! Joe Hills here writing as I always do in Nashville, TN!
We had a great HermitCraft brainstorming call earlier today, during which I spent hours digging out the LaserTag observation deck and placing glass, so the stream kicked off with me showcasing my progress there. The game may not be ready, but the view from the lobby is much better!
During that call, ImpulseSV reminded us we can come start checking out the HermitCraft History timeline areas of his Metro Mayhem game, so I flew out his way to look for that. It took a while to find the entrance, so I added some signage.
There was also a really cool pumpkin nearby with a pedestal challenging us to make our own Halloween decorations, which intrigued me, but I’ll have to come back to that!
Inside the Hermit History tunnel, I measured out that each plot was 31x31x20H, and realized there were no ender chests! It would be trivial to go get a single ender chest, but there are nine plots, one for each season, so it would be better to get nine ender chests. And, oh, another to-do item I had from our meeting today was that Etho needed 10 stacks of obsidian for mail network expansion. The End was soon in sight so I could gather enough obsidian for both Etho and Impulse.
After harvesting all that obsidian from towers on the main End island, we sent Etho his in the mail and added the ender chests to the Hermit History tunnel with a bit of glow ink for flair.
After that, I excavated a bit more of the arena back at the name tag shop and called it a night after spending ten hours total working on the server today.
It was a long day, but I’m optimistic all my work on my shops this week will leave me freer to jump into Wool Street and Halloween stuff moving forward.
Until next time, y’all, this is Joe Hills from Nashville, TN.
Howdy, y’all! Joe Hills here writing as I always do in Nashville, TN!
As a Hermit of my word, I wanted to be sure that I didn’t waste any time in delivering Docm77 the dirt I promised him yesterday in exchange for a spot at his upcoming poker tournament.
I collected sixty-two shulkers worth of dirt from the Hermit Holmdel storage beacons, as well as thirty-thee shulkers worth of stone since I was over there anyway. In the process, I rediscovered a few missing treasures, like a lost shulker of gravel, a chest of glass intended for my shop, and my “@JoeHills’ written materials” shulker box containing four of my permits, my maps, and my missing shop ledger!
After sending my four chest minecarts full of shulkers back to the shopping district, I first unloaded the dirt at Doc’s Wash and Fold loading dock, stacking the chests to look vaguely like two adjacent stacked pallets.
The dirt was neatly stowed in the POE POE impound as well.
And then I quickly posted three of my remaining permits in my black glass shop, name tag shop, and my calcite/tuff shop.
Not a bad showing for four hours of playing video games!
Until next time, y’all, this is Joe Hills from Nashville, TN.
Howdy, y’all! Joe Hills here writing as I always do in Nashville, TN!
It’s never too late to unburn bridges. Auto-correct tried to tell me that I should have written “to sunburn bridges” but I’m not letting artificial intelligence write this for me!
Some of you may recall that Docm77 wasn’t thrilled with my defensive strategy during his trial (even though I lovingly rendered it in glorious 360° video).
I wasn’t thrilled about Doc not being thrilled, so after giving him some time to cool off and hearing that he has a huge poker tournament coming up, I reached out to him about trading some of my surplus Hermit Holmdel dirt blocks for a reserved spot at his tournament. I might not strike many of y’all as a huge poker player (because I’m not), but I did briefly get really into Balatro earlier this year.
When we met up, Doc was in good spirits and hyped about his upcoming tournament, as well as for the opportunity to avoid afk farming dirt for a while. I recorded the whole thing for an upcoming episode, so I won’t go into more detail about the convo now, but I will say that Doc directed me to his laundromat’s delivery area as the dirt drop-off location, and promised me a seat at his upcoming event. A most excellent outcome!
It’s all going right here.
After that, I mined a couple geode’s worth of calcite and some extra tuff to ensure I had enough to complete my Tuffest Teef trophy topper. The sketches I drew to mock up the design on this morning’s stream allowed me to hit the roof running and turn around a lower mouth that I’m particularly proud of.
I’m not sure I even should build the top, since most Hermits will be flying over it and that’ll just obscure the lower part.
There’s still room for refinement, but that was all the time I had this afternoon. I’ll revisit this with fresh eyes another day, after I deliver Doc’s dirt. After all, my grass delivery to Impulse the other day was a real highlight of his latest video (starting at 14:47):
If you want to try to catch my next show, you can always keep an eye out for those via my streaming calendar at https://joehills.net/soon/
Until next time, y’all, this is Joe Hills from Nashville, TN.
Howdy, y’all! Joe Hills here writing as I always do in Nashville, TN!
A bit of background
Since this is my first streamer’s log about Arts and Crafts with Cleo, I wanted to open with a bit of background. My pal ZombieCleo and I have been recording videos together even since I challenged Cleo to a duel thirteen years ago.
Cleo accepted my challenge.
And we battled.
Though we don’t duel regularly, Cleo and I still try to spent two hours every Wednesday to stream arts and crafts.
Our earliest craft streams featured parallel attempts at similar projects, initially paper craft models of Castle Hohenzollern, like this one:
Back to the present
These days, Cleo and I still chat about whatever is on our minds, but we usually work on different projects. Most weeks, Cleo focuses on bullet journal illustrations, and I’m all over the place with my goals and objectives.
I’m optimistic that beginning to log what I work on during these craft streams here will help me bring more intentionality to my projects.
Today, Cleo and I opened by discussing Shoptober on HermitCraft. Due to the urgency of the Permit Office Enforcers demands we all finish our shops, I’m dedicating my arts and crafts time today to sketching models of human teeth. Cleo has chosen to attempt to punt that sort of work until “Shopvember” and is illustrating a bee for her bullet journal.
My initial attempt to render teeth as individual Minecraft blocks was hampered by my inability to keep a proper count, so I made a second attempt.
It was pretty obvious to me that with the base of the shop having a diameter of 19 blocks, a 10×7 footprint for the sculpture wasn’t going to suffice. I took another hack at this at double the scale per tooth, which allowed more subtle diagonals where the teeth met.
That felt a lot better to me, but I realized I’d prefer to have some contrast between the sizes of the molars and the incisors, so scaling the molars up to 4×4 blocks and the incisors down to two or three wide might be worth sketching out.
23×24? That feels about right. I’m looking forward to building that out in 3d on HermitCraft!
Chatting about Board Games
Cleo and I also discussed board games, which reminded stream viewer (and my project manager) NJCoffeeJunkie that we need to schedule my appearance on her upcoming charity stream benefitting the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. We locked that down for noon to 2pm US Central time this Sunday, October 27th. The first hour will be Clank! and the 2nd hour will be Phasmophobia. If you’d like to donate, you can do so at: https://donate.tiltify.com/67afebbf-454c-461f-9f2a-ac92edf708eb/details
I also mentioned that I was going to be attending Tennessee Game Days Fall from November 1st–3rd, and Cleo recommended I try Give Me The Brain, which apparently I can download for free and print at home. Cleo also suggested I try MLEM: Space Agency, which is about cats exploring the solar system.
At past TGDs, I tried a few decent Pandemic variations I could recommend, specifically Fall of Rome and Reign of Cthulhu. Both mix up the core mechanics of Pandemic enough that I enjoyed them.
Closing thoughts
Since this is my first streamer’s log for a craft stream with Cleo, I’m still noodling on how best to balance presenting discussion topics and project progress. I hope you come back next week and see how I’ve improved.
Until next time, y’all, this is Joe Hills from Nashville, Tennessee.
Howdy, y’all! Joe Hills here writing as I always do in Nashville, TN!
I hope you enjoyed my account of yesterday’s HermitFactory stream, where I leveraged our first access to automated smelted aluminum to build a heat sink factory and pioneer a nitrogen pipeline.
I started this stream by giving Hypno a tour of the nitrogen harvesting area, and used that trip as a chance to finish painting the nitrogen pipes grey for consistency.
Hyp was curious about what nitrogen could be used for, and learned that you could combine it with sulfuric acid to make rocket fuel. Since rocket fuel sounds out of this world, Hypno wanted to start blending some up at the petroleum processing facility I agreed to extend the nitrogen pipe there while Hyp started tapping the nearest sulphur nodes.
I reached the petroleum facility so quickly that I decided to continue the nitrogen pipeline toward my heavy modular frames factory. Hyp’s conveyors and my pipeline met under the intersection to the heavy modular frames loading dock.
Once I reached the heavy modular frames loading dock, I ran the pipe up the building to the current top floor. I set up some temporary industrial storage units for the heavy modular frames and aluminum casings until I could properly convey and truck those over and fed it all into a blender to kickstart production of fused modular frames.
Xisuma logged in a bit after us and began adding walls around the aluminum complex. I really liked the skylights and the sloped roof. The shed on the top serves as street level access.
Once those walls were up, it was time to take a hard look at the spaghetti electrical job I’d done when I set up the heat sink production line yesterday.
I removed over a dozen poles and set up outlets along the walls and beams and am pretty pleased with the results:
I was just about to wrap up for the day when I realized that my truck routes had trucks crossing each others depots. I did my best to clean up the mess quickly, then shut the trucks’ auto-pilots down for the day. I’m going to take a fresh crack at that problem tomorrow.
Thanks for joining me for this Satisfactory streamer’s log! If you’re curious about catching a HermitFactory stream yourself, please remember that you can always keep an eye out for upcoming shows via my streaming calendar at https://joehills.net/soon/
Until next time, y’all, this is Joe Hills from Nashville, TN.
Not a bad showing for four hours of playing video games!
