Well I thought I would give you a bit of a breakdown on one of my survivors… as I already have her photo I thought I would go with Rita Ibori:

Lively and strong-willed, Rita always had an interest in plants, so it was no surprise that she graduated top of her class in xenobotany. What shocked everyone was her decision to decline a job as a lecturer and sign up for a programme helping planets on the verge of ecological collapse. This would take Rita to all sorts of weird places around the universe – something that she greatly enjoys and treasures.

Her starting stats are as follows:

Combat: 3
Construction: 0
Cooking: 1
Crafting: 1
Farming: 6
Healing: 2
Intellect: 3
Physical: 1

Her two traits are:

Natural Curiosity: Has chance to field Observe unknown species during Expeditions
Cheerful Personality: Has permanently increased Happiness

Her stats after a year and a half are now:

Combat: 3
Construction: 0
Cooking: 6
Crafting: 4
Farming: 6
Healing: 2
Intellect: 4
Physical: 2

I took her for her farming, mid range combat and intellect. She has an interest in cooking so I let her run with that whenever she wasn’t off exploring.

Mental health has a major part in this game, luckily I have a buff with her being cheerful.

Her troubles are that she feels like she is a cave dweller -5 (she is in a bare room with a bed and a light). Evidently to remove this I need to give her a carpet and decorations.

Her pleasures are:

• Appreciated decoration +18 ( a nice statue of a local animal)
• Slept in a private bedroom +9
• Slept in a comfy bed +9
• Many fun things to do +9 (I made sure there was lots of entertaining things to do)
• Cheerful personality +9 (her buff)
• Good luck charm +7 (something I crafted for everyone)
• Ate at a table +6
• Ate a quick meal +6

Now she has  lot of positives there, but if truth be told, these can disappear and the negatives can appear. As an example if she goes on an expedition she will not sleep in a bed, eat at a table etc which causes her to lose happiness.

Rita’s happiness is at 82%, Ember on the other hand is on the verge of a meltdown, hers is 23% luckily she had some of the positives that Rita had, but she is drowsy -6 as well as the -5 for the cave dweller.  She has just gone to sleep so won’t get the comfy bed perk.

My biggest problem right now is food supply.

Here is my camp earlier in the evening…

Since the photo was taken I have added electricity in the shape of solar and wind power.

We I seem to have abandoned poor Mizzy as I haven’t touched her for ages.

I found I had Stranded Alien Dawn  for free on the console. So what is the game? Basically  it’s a survival simulation game where you oversee a group of survivors who crash land on an Alien planet. Four survivors arrive on World in an escape pod and have to make it to a point where you escape or are rescued  (I think). I survived my first year, including a rather brutal winter. Luckily I just managed to get the warm weather clothes in the nick of time.

The game is also about resource and people management. You can build shelters, chop down trees and kill the local fauna to provide food (not to mention use the flora too). The tree you chop down may have other useful properties and the animals you shoot in the head may give more than just meat. Therefore an important task is to take time to observe things first.

You can simply choose random survivors or hand pick the four yourself. Each has a skill score rating. These being combat, construction, cooking, crafting, farming, healing, intellect and physical. Intellect affects research and observation speed.

I chose mine, taking ages to try and get a balanced team. My original four were Ken, Naras, Rita and  Ember. During the course of the first year I also rescued  Melody and Edmund. Ember arrived in an update and was a spec ops commander.

Each of them can  have a positve perk and a negative downside.

As an example Rita has natural curiosity, which means she can field observe unknown species. She will randomly say she has seen and named something, which saves me doing it. I send her out on the long range expeditions for this reason. She is also cheerful and has a permanent increase in happiness.

Edmund on the other hand is a glutton, but writes inspirational stories and is a quick sleeper so can get out to work earlier.

Naras cannot experience a meltdown, but he is a pacifist and will not fight or hunt in any circumstance.

I will let you know a bit more about my survivors sometime soon.

This evening was the last ever Staff night out for my little school. It was  great night with all but one member of the team being there.

They are such an amazing, hardworking and nurturing bunch and I for one will miss them terribly.

If truth be known I am what is best described as KerfuctundBuggered! So for that reason I decided not to even attempt any painting this evening.

I had an hour painting session with the Geek Club today and really went to town on the goblin rock band (or Runt Rockers as they prefer to be known as).

There is no grey anywhere on them anymore.

Hopefully I will feel a bit more on top of things tomorrow .

This evening as expected I was absolutely drained from our leavers assembly. It was rammed full of people.

I did manage to get another  layer of paint on Mizzy’s skin.

I also got the goblins onto their bases and also glued onto their frogs.

I am hoping to get some more done on this lot tomorrow.

This evening I got round to painting the white bits on these goblins that had been left unfinished.

Now, I will need three more frog riders to make up a unit. Perhaps something to print this weekend.

I also got the final bust off the plate. Once again it is from Miniatures of Madness. She is called Loreil Softvale, a druid.

Now the miniature version is as above (with legs- obviously). It also comes with a NSFW version. She is nude, now I am not a prude by any stretch of the imagination but… I really, and I mean really don’t get it. Why do people want them? Yes I get that someone might want to paint a lot of skin and eventually have a use for their pot of nipple pink paint. Each to their own I guess. I am seeing a lot more (oooh err) NSFW appearing in kickstarters. In some cases clothed and unclothed. Interestingly they are never male, or at least I have never noticed any appearing.

This might be bias as I am not interested so don’t bother looking.

Okay rant over for the evening… I will try and start on the bust tomorrow.

Today I was trying to work out why my seventy plus day run had become five. In doing so I realised that as of yesterday I had posted 2318 times since August 26th 3017. This August I will be starting my 8th year on this blog.