User blog:NoBanana/The Empire of Stonewall

This is one of my first experiences of a legitimate game on the new map. Enjoy! :D

Spawning In
I spawned in, and I touched down on the familiar surface of stonewall island. I hadn't played survival 303 in a while, and I was happy to be playing again.

As I spawned in, I saw a player who was AFK next to me. The server consisted of about 5 people, and was the only server on the new map, so I asked if there was any tribes. As it turned out, there was only one, and it contained the AFK player who was next to me, and a farmer on volcano island. I made a raft (a decision I would soon regret) and sailed to the volcano. As I sailed, I noticed a small settlement on rockshard, and a severely glitched out basin island. I finally got to volcano, and I noticed the farmer who was settled there had a very extensive farm, along with some high end buildings. I asked what tools they had, and as it turned out, they hadn't actually made any. I offered to get some, and I borrowed their sailboat, unbeknownst to me it would be with me until the end of the server.

I sailed to the nearest source of iron that I could remember, which happened to be rockshard. There was a player there, who people referred to as "Talism", and before I docked, I asked: NoBanana: Permission to dock? Talism12: yea. I rested my boat on the side of the sandy shores, and made myself some basic tools. I filled my bucket, and then noticed I was lacking a lantern to go inside the cave. As it happened, the other person also lacked oil, so I had to sail to the glitched out basin island to get some.

Stone to Bluesteel
I sailed to basin and back, a lengthy process, and made myself a nice lantern. After that, I hopped inside the cave, collected an iron, and used the forge that Talism had already created to make myself an iron pickaxe. With a iron pickaxe in one hand and a stone one in the other, I collected 3 coal and 3 iron. I made myself the familiar triple steel pickaxe, and hollowed out the cave of all its ores. I made myself a steel sword, at which point I didn't know what to do with the rest of it, owing to the fact the server was peaceful and ownership of a steel sword made me the strongest on the server, so little in the way of defence was required.

I decided to jump mithril (as I was unaware of how to get through the complicated maze that crescent provided, and I never did find the mithril on volcano), and head straight for bluesteel, so I collected two batches of Chromium and headed on my way to collect the other resources. Since we have rules against disclosing these resources, I wont describe the process.

Having collected everything I needed, I noticed someone was complaining about two stone buildings being in the way of their building, and they didn't know who they belonged to. Since the player was on volcano, meaning I could get explosives there, I decided to take a slight detour so I could watch some fireworks. I arrived, made three gunpowder, only one of which actually did any form of damage (which just goes to show how terrible explosives are). After having done this repeatedly, I gave up, and made myself some bluesteel, said goodbye to the volcano dweller, who was now considering moving, and went to rockshard, where my only forge was (I never trained my architecture to make my own). I arrived, crafted the spare chromium with my two bluesteel to make a sword, and after that, I stayed at rockshard for a bit to look after the tribe I was now part of. Eventually, we found space confinements to be too much of a problem, so I sailed to Stonewall Island, where a lot of people had accumulated.

The Empire
Having created a bluesteel sword, people saw me as a good person to hide behind for cover (after they made sure I was friendly). As a result, when I asked who wanted to join me in creating the next great NoBananaville, a good chunk of the server flocked to my side, partly due to the fact most of the server had only just joined and was looking for a tribe, and partly because they wanted to be on the correct side of the bluesteel sword. In fact, all but two of the server was in my tribe, Talism, and some other guy who nobody had met and was assumed to be a living at catacomb or snowpeak.

Talism had been reluctant to join as they liked being at rockshard, and they had a load of boats in harbours that would have been a pain to move. Understanding of this, I started without them, and eventually we came to the conclusion that in exchange for the gunpowder I was mass producing due to a lack of other tasks to do, they would trade us iron, since our massive island didn't have any deposits (which made arming the tribe with steel swords a right pain). Things went well, the tribe grew quickly and buildings and food houses bounced up all over the place. There wasn't any form of raider threat, as all but two of the server was part of the tribe, and the mysterious other person wasn't particularly keen on doing much in the way of interaction. After about two trades of iron, Talism decided to join the tribe, as we were growing fast, and soon after that, the last person on the server who wasn't under my power left the game. This left me leader of the entire server, proof that you can rule a server, albeit not via raiding. I was the leader of a tribe of 8, with plenty of food (we had a stone house full of various flavours of pies, and a few breads), and my most urgent concern was to arm the entire tribe with bento leather armour and a steel sword, as the last time I had commanded a tribe of that size was burning bright in my memory:

''I'm commanding a large tribe. We are trying to solve a food crisis, as there appears to be a theif stealing the food we produce. Large amounts of fish and other unprocessed goods are piling up, but nobody is cooking them. Slowly, we are fixing the issue. Suddenly, out of the blue, a raider with full mithril attacks. It dawns on me that in the midst of all the food production, I had neglected mining and tool creation. I had recently lost my last set of steel weapons when I forgot to eat. Nobody else in the tribe had even touched a metallic weapon. I had fireproofed almost all of the place, but the raider is staying put. The tribe is scattered across the map. Many leave. My empire falls, all because I forgot to create weapons.''

Despite being safe in the foreseeable future, it is clear I need to make weaponry if I am to survive. I know my tribe wont be able to hold against a mithrilite raider, as my bluesteel sword is mainly just for show and will be annihilated in a combat situation against mithrilites, especially considering I only have bento leather armour. I appoint a smith, who attempts to create the tribe a steel sword each, from the iron bought and coal mined from the island. I appoint a miner to collect resources, although instead of iron they return with chromium and mithril, which although nice doesn't help the situation. I make myself a set of reinforced mithril armour, (since I might as well salvage something from the situation), and look on the leaderboards again. In the time I spent trying to create some weapons for the tribe, a few more people joined, and one of our tribe members had left without saying anything. I asked one person if they wanted to join, and they explained they wanted to be a peaceful trader, which was exactly what I needed. I offered them gunpowder for some iron, and they accepted the trade eagerly, as gunpowder makes a great trading item, and also helps when dishing out revenge on scammers. The trader went the same fate as Talism however, and ended up deciding to simply join the tribe, for nobody wants to be the sailer in a map that large.

At this point, I crashed, which was frustrating, as that meant I lost all my valuables, any way of getting back my valuables without starting from scratch, and all my tools. I also had to re-create the entire tribe and re-assign each job. I rejoined, and almost instantly after I did that, got back to the base and sorted out the tribe, I crashed again. I was extremely frustrated at this, and I decided to just give up, so I rejoined one last time to say my farewells, when I noticed Ultrabug and FredeyFly had joined the server. I was encouraged to try and start again, but my connection said otherwise, and I deemed it pointless to continue. I explained Talism would be the next leader, and counted everyone who was in the tribe (and on the waiting list for being invited). It totalled to 10, a new record. I left the server, satisfied I had at least pulled something off.

'''P.S: Does being the leader of a huge tribe count as an incredible achievement (being ranked up in the Fanclub)? I doubt it is, but I can always be hopeful :D'''