~ Including opening of public access, first auction, public live logs, regular reports of economic activity, added knowledge collection and use, expanded bot support, new in-game discoveries by active players, increased client helpfulness and many other useful developments overall. This continues the records directly from the end of the previous chapter, the Euloran Kronikle III ~
Public Live Logs and In-Chat Quotation
First the logs of the in-game chat room went public and live, with on-the-fly updates on my blog so that anyone can easily follow along at any time and regardless of whether they are currently in game or not. You can find the full record under the logs category, with one article per month for each logged chat room.
Each chat room has its own subcategory as well, so that one can directly filter for the full record of any specific room. For example, the Eulora 2 in E2 subcategory will list the full set of logs for the default public chat room that takes its name from the game itself: Eulora 2.
The public logs provide a persistent record that can be easily read, searched and referenced at any later time, too. On demand from players, Ulrich Logfetch bowed to his fateful surname and took it upon himself to fetch indeed the log lines for convenient quoting in the chat whenever someone references them in a current discussion, so that the conversation flows and links quite naturally to all that came before, adding to it and growing from it, to everyone's benefit.
For just one out of the many examples of log quotation already available in the log, check this one out - one player gets back to report his success making use of a new bot feature and then another player references that line to help them even further:
Regular Economic Reports
Once the main chat room logs were public, a series of regular reports became public as well, separated neatly in the Notices and Announcements chat room, with its corresponding News in E2 subcategory on this blog.
As the euloran economy kept charging up through both PC and NPC activity, the resident towncrier added to his duties to compile and provide a monthly report of economic activity as reflected in increases and decreases of value (cash and items) held by three main relevant groups: PCs, NPCs and the environment itself. The reports were warmly welcomed by players, with additional wishes and observations promptly noticed and answered to, as always.
Public Access to Eulora 2 Opens Up
As the game has been running and growing quite steadily, reliably and consistently, the previous access restrictions are removed and so anyone is welcome to join. There is a script for a full client install on any compatible system as well as a readme file with notes on known compatible systems and what changes may be needed to obtain one.
The eulora page provides a convenient starting point, with further links to various areas of interest, including the logs, client code and further game-related articles and discussions.
Ever Helpful Bot Becomes Even More Helpful
If the bot has been helpful so far mostly with exploration and resource finding in the infinite euloran lands, the new developments expanded the automation to cover all the core in-game activities currently present. Most notably, the additions include crafting, bundling and ziggurating, with supporting actions to pick everything in sight as well.
On top of the above, the ever usefully expanding knowledge developments pushed the bot to make better use of them as well. As a result, the bot got brighter too and is capable now of taking stock of one's own items before and after any action, logging conveniently any changes: any items and/or cash that is either newly present (gained) or newly absent (lost).
As always, the bot can do (and it can do *a lot*) but only the player can think and thus put the bot's new capabilities to *useful* employment (or to not so useful one, too, surely).
New Resources Found
As players' activity steadily increased, new resources have been found and their positions even traded on. The previously elusive Two-Leaf Clover is reportedly found and so are Better Bitterbeans, Widow's Whisp Berries, Wooly Mushrooms, Enchanted Dungbeetles and Deserted Crab Shells. All is not found though, not even by far, for all of the bot-powered, multi-sector exploration that has been steadily going on and even ever-expanding so far. So your chance awaits, at least for a while, with no known location for Slithy Toves for instance or even for Giant's Rotten Canines, let alone Pacademia Nuts or Toothpaste Tubes. Your chance awaits for you but one wonders what is it that you are still waiting for?
Improved Client Support
Increased player activity pushed as usual for additional ways in which the client can be more helpful or more of use. And as is the habit in Eulora 2, the client promptly improved as needed, to help players along. Among the various changes, tweaks and additions, there is now a more reliable progress bar that picks up on work even when started by the bot rather than by the player directly, and there are new automated checks and warnings when overweight/overbulk or when running out of food.
Further knowledge types, discovery and relevant uses are added as well, including sector connectivity for navigational purposes and blueprint reading + parsing for crafting purposes. As always, these open up even further options and opportunities, with new players perhaps especially well-positioned to take advantage of them and gain their own competitive advantage from it, too, quite easily.
Navigational Advances or the Euloran Compass Rose
One rather unexpected side effect of the bot's increased capabilities is that players found themselves taking at times extended unplanned journeys that got them way further than intended. And given the infinite and infinitely expanding euloran sectors in all directions, such unplanned journeys can easily leave one quite at a loss as to which direction they should even take to get *back* rather than forever further away from the yet small, yet emerging civilized society.
Then again, perhaps one doesn't *always* want to even go back from all the further away places - or at least not when the place's name is Fertile Knoll of Friskiness, indeed.
As is usually the case in Eulora 2, the above trouble got addressed quite quickly and with benefit for everyone involved: the client got improved with a newly added capability of tracking sector changes and thus gaining knowledge of sector-links as discovered through traveling. Furthermore, a simple compass rose new in-game view displays the current sector's name as well as any adjacent sectors as known and then allows the player to navigate through the map in any direction and as much as they want so that even the infinite world can still be contained and viewed - if a piece at a time, indeed, rather than all in one go.
NPCs Expanding Services
With a new skill and an increased demand to Ulrich Logfetch's training services, the NPC got an assistant and expanded his business. In true euloran fashion, if the trainer fits, get another one just like it was attempted but in even deeper euloran fashion, the "just like it" part turned out to be not quite entirely identical. The new trainer, Faith Kidneyguard is a good and useful trainer just like Ulrich Logfetch but she is her own character, with her own strengths and weaknesses that turn out to influence at times quite visibly the outcome of her training too. Nevertheless, players welcomed her and she has gained her own steady stream of training requests, not replacing Logfetch but working alongside him, as intended from the start.
First In-Game Auction
The first in-game auction came as most organic things do - provisioned for but not planned as such nor forced into some specific time frame, shape or even topic, simply naturally occurring out of necessity. With increased player activity and bot support, a previously unseen skill-giving item was obtained by just one player but wanted by others, as well. And given the lack of a reliable "production" process for this item in addition to an otherwise more general unknown valuing process for skill-giving items, people wanting to trade it nevertheless gradually worked out a starting price and an informal auction in the public chat. All completed well and with everyone on board with the result as it turned out, so quite the success indeed:
Where are you?
Faced with this question, even NPCs can now provide a very clear answer - and it turns out to be quite a useful and used feature indeed. The occasional hiccups coming only from the NPCs' rather strict parsing of text and consequent requirement that the question is indeed provided exact in the form shown, without any additional spaces and with their full name included, as well.
Gets one to wonder what's the hiccup keeping more PCs from having a concrete euloran answer to this rather basic question indeed - where are you?
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