I’m sure that this is going to come as a complete and utter surprise to those who have followed my playing of games on stream before: I got distracted by another entirely different goal in Craftopia instead of furnishing my home base like I had suggested last week. Crazy, right? But I promise that I’m done with trying to unlock another age’s worth of crafting and creation – primarily because I’ve been locked out from moving ahead for now.
See, this game is still very much in early access, which means that it’s not quite feature complete. And right now there’s one more age I could have tried to unlock, except doing so requires me to get an item from an area that’s not open to me yet – a discovery I didn’t make until after I had followed through on my goal switcheroo. Also, I was rationalizing my move as a way to try and unlock more furnishings for when I do decide to get decorative.
In any event, bar some other update landing to Craftopia in-between this post going live and my return in-game, I’ve basically beaten the survivalbox. For now.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Allow me a moment to discuss just what it was that got me off the rails: I can often be frozen by analysis paralysis when I’m playing a sandbox anything.
One of the nice parts of being the usual author of MOP’s Choose My Adventure column is that I’m given some sort of direction and structure, and that’s especially helpful when I do some sandbox title. But here at the helm of Some Assembly Required, I’m left to my own devices, so I’m finding out that I can very often be kicked over as easily as a sand castle when it comes to goals and progression. Not only that, but the items that I needed in order to unlock this next age were already mostly in my inventory from my last bout of wandering. So why not just finish off the list, right? Perhaps I’ll get more equipment or be able to craft new housing things.
This is how my brain works, y’all. I’m so sorry.
Specifically, the items that I was missing to move forward in progress were some doll parts and a topaz mineral, both of which listed as items from “the valley,” along with some suspicious pumpkin pieces. The valley clue led me to assume that all of these were hiding somewhere in the Brigandine Valley area of the seamless world map, and so I headed east to investigate.
This location is sort of like an arid area, dominated primarily by what looks like an extremely large castle ruin. There’s also a massive hole in the ground in this area as well, which led me to believe that this is the place where the world-ending meteor landed in the game’s opening segment. This whole zone’s layout consequently had a lot more verticality to consider, with multiple layers of locations to try and maneuver around, testing my pathfinding as well as my climbing and jumping stamina.
During my explorations to find the needed materials, I got sidetracked once again by my wandering feet as I explored the massive castle ruin that dominates the center of this zone. This was an absolute gauntlet, loaded with plenty of electrified enemies and lots of climbing both walls and stairs along the way. It also was where I found a couple of intriguing weapon drops such as a spear that I ended up not liking and a two-handed sword that I ended up sticking with for a while.
On the subject of that weapon type, the inspiration for its animations and attack style were almost immediately obvious, which meant that using some of the same combat rationale also worked out in my favor. For a while, I even managed to come up with a sort of impromptu build style around this weapon, for whatever limited buildcraft Craftopia offers. Specifically, I leaned in on all-out assault, turning on my magic shield and just going to town on enemies.
This ended up being a boon by the time I climbed to the very top level of the castle ruin, as I was faced with a boss fight in the form of the Griffon of Golden Wind. This was easily one of the more challenging battles I had to take on, which probably wasn’t helped out by the extremely slow speed of the two-handed sword overall. Still, the magic shield ended up saving my life on most occasions in the fight, as I ended up dying only once and was even able to take on the griffon a second time with this weapon setup.
That second griffon fight wasn’t planned, by the way; the damned thing spawned right on top of me after I beat it the first time.
While victory was ultimately sweet, what this all did was bring me nowhere closer to my original objectives, so I had to mentally reset, focus up, drop, store, or sell all of the accumulated crap, and head back out to slowly uncover the valley map. Eventually I managed to find all of the items I needed, though not without help from at least one guide because I never would have found the pumpkin patch otherwise. For the most part, however, I was left to my own devices to find things by myself. Most of the guides out there are outdated, and any mods that are on the Steam Workshop meant to ease a few things along just are not working anymore.
That’s not a complaint, mind you. I actually am glad I was able to figure it all out on my lonesome.
By the end of it all, I ended up hitting that progression soft lock I described earlier while also realizing that not many new furnishings were added to the crafting pile. So my derailment was kind of all for naught a bit. I’m still happy I got as far as I did though, and there are at least a couple of new things to make. I also learned a lot about playstyle too; I think I’ll lean into that two-handed sword build idea.
But that’s for later. Now, I’ve got furniture to craft. No, seriously, I will.
MMO designers construct thrilling worlds, but MMO players also build some amazing content within them! Some Assembly Required highlights player-generated content, from events to housing to quest-creation systems. There’s creativity galore out there, and we travel the MMOverse to find and share it.
