Henchmen

During the past two days that I've been off of work, (among other things) I've been playing Guild Wars. In the first campaign, called Prophecies, there is a vast, involved tutorial area. At the end, you go through a mission and end up in the bulk of the game, two years after the events in the tutorial. Once you go through the mission, there's no going back. Some people like to stay indefinitely in the tutorial. Yes, there is a limit as to how much your character can grow there, but you can easily farm for gold or coveted items like dyes. I created a character for the sole purpose of holding my earnings because there is no bank in this part of the game. Once you get to the main part of the game, you can get a bank that is connected to all characters on that account, across all campaigns, except for whoever is in the tutorial part.

So, I had a character in the Nightfall campaign who was in need of some extra cash since she's not strong enough yet to be making much herself. All I needed to do was get someone from the tutorial, armed with gold, to the next part of the game where they could access the bank and deposit some sharable funds. I created a character with the purpose of deleting it just for this run. I leveled him up so he was good and strong to get through the mission, then loaded him with lots of gold.

Now, this mission is in two parts. The first is a short PvP battle with an assigned group of four players against another group of four. Then, your group goes through the mission, kills the bad guy, and arrives two years into the future. It just so happened that last night, when I was ready to run through the mission to deliver my precious coinage, no other players were doing so. This means I had no one to group with or fight against. What happens then, you may ask. (Ok, probably only Fox is wondering at this point.) I was assigned three NPC henchmen! And since I was the only player, it skipped the PvP part (which I'm not fond of anyway). So, me and my three henchmen, each two levels below me, went through the mission, killed the bad guy, and there we were. It was great fun going through that part with henchmen, and not with other players who, I've found, often rush through it.

You can hire henchmen on your own in the later part of the game. I think I need to work with them more often. It's fun to have a group of NPCs around to kill things with you. I hope no one is around the next time I have to run that mission. It was fun! LDS called me a geek!

With pride!

Now that all of you, gentle blog readers, are going crazy with my game-talk (by the way, you can purchase a copy of your very own through my Lemonade Stand below, if you want to see what my fuss is about), let's talk about the weather. It's cold. Not snow cold, but cold. There's an outdoor event at the ministry I've been working with on Friday. It's going to be cold.

Phoenix and I are learning that our condo doesn't heat very well. The vents are at the tops of the walls, so heat is rising to the ceiling. This leaves us poor people on the floor quite chilly. We had the thermostat at 74° on Monday and were still wrapped in blankets. I thought, since we're on the top floor, that the heat from other condos would help keep ours warm. I guess they're too well insulated because that doesn't seem to be the case at all. And, there are no vents in the bathrooms. I get chills just thinking about it.

We're either going to have to bite the bullet and pay out the wazoo to heat up the place, or get some energy efficient space heaters so we can put the heat on the floor where it will do the most good. The latter seems to be the best idea. I'll stop by Target on Friday before I head down to the event to see what they have. I can't take too many more nights shivering under a foot of blankets.