Sunset Six: Monumental Victory

[Part of my Sunset Six story.]

At the end of a tale the final tests in each discipline become available: the building of monuments for each of the seven schools. Not only do these constructs need an obscene amount of resources, but they also require their character slots to be filled, specific to their rank in the discipline. A monument needs exactly 1 Oracle, 2 Sages, 4 Masters, 8 Scribes, 16 Journeymen, 32 Prentices and 64 Students. All up that's 127 people!

It doesn't look like much when it starts.

The monuments also hold a second purpose: they contain a player made suggestion for a future test in the next telling! Obviously there are many ideas that get put forward and after the "oracle" type players have a chat with Pharaoh Pluribus they get an idea of which ones are actually feasible to implement and from there can only pick one to go forward.

Imagine my surprise when two of my ideas made it through then: The Test of the Sculptors (Art and Music) and the Hand of Ra (Architecture)! Gotta admit, I am overjoyed that my input will potentially shape the future of the game. Those are the best types of events a player can have in an MMO right?

The Monument of Art and Music!

As my self imposed "final" quest for the telling I decided to try visit all the sites, failing only to reach the Monument of Thought in time which was the hardest to build due to lack of students in that discipline. I suppose like me, everyone was content solving puzzles instead of building them!

From top left to bottom right: Leadership, Architecture, Worship, Harmony, Thought, Body

Did I mention there are strange gods? Well there are. Just uber rare to run into them.

And so, the sun finally sets and Tale 6 comes to a close - it's time to say goodbye to my Level 54 Scribe of Two. While this is the end of my story, it is just the beginning of another chapter for Egypt and who knows, maybe next time it's you who will have A Tale in the Desert.

Thanks for reading! =)

Sunset Six: Marriage Goods

[Part of my Sunset Six story.]

Balance of Goods continues the theme of Harmony which is guesswork, only this time you need to construct something first: an offering vault. Once built you can then load it with items of your choice (one unit per item) which are then taken up by the gods. You get points for each, but you get more if no one else puts the same item in their vault that week. My optimum strategy? Put as much garbage in there as you can. :P

After passing the test, it also becomes an awesome storage space.

The final test of Harmony I'll talk about is the easiest to pass but one I'm definitely not going to for moral reasons: the Test of Marriage. Yep, pixel murdering is OK but pixel marriage to anyone else but my real wife (who doesn't play this game) is definitely off the table. Anyway, all you need are some pretty common items, an altar for a quick ceremony, five witnesses and boom, you are married. Egypt is also pretty progressive in that you can marry an avatar of any gender and once married you gain the ability to instantly warp to them. Pretty cool right?

There's a small catch: Once married your spouse has access to all your stuff and all your constructs. They can also log in as you. Good thing divorce in game is pretty easy huh? :P The most common solution it seems is that people simply make alts and then marry themselves! That wasn't the case in the next picture though.

Kokabeel and Kamots wedding!

Sunset Six: Guessing Games

[Part of my Sunset Six story.]

Time to tackle a new discipline, this time that of Harmony which is meant to involve you being in touch with the rest of your fellow Egyptians but really plays more like a guessing game half the time. Still, it is perhaps the easiest discipline to clear - especially if you are at the start of the tale (which I'm not, doh). Let's have a look at some of these tests.

In the Test of Promotion, you simply build a list of players (at the rate of one a week) and should any of them advance in rank (not level - meaning they must be passing tests), you gain points. More when they reach higher ranks. Similarly, the Test of Chains has you building a list of married couples (in game) which builds points if both spouses gain a level during the week. Slightly more complicated because if they don't they drop from the list and you cannot reuse them.

The Test of Reason and the Test of the Critic are also similar in that you must judge both puzzles (Reason) and artworks (Critic) across the land to gain points. You get more points if your view lines up with the majority of other voters and it's a pretty good method to ensure non-biased voting.

Each week you can also see how balanced you are.

The Test of the Freeman is another guessing game where you guess the percentage of votes each law will get during ballot time. Laws in Egypt are pretty interesting in that they are player made, and if enough people sign the petition for it - it makes it to the ballot draw. Should enough people then vote on it, the developers actually put in code to enforce it. That's pretty damn cool for user generated content.

Probably should have lowered my guess on Useless Law to 0%.

Sample of a petition I made.