#posted from the lighthouse signal so hopefully it'll reach where it needs to

[enamoredencoding]

Ten Things to Promote Long-Term Sburban Survival

So you’ve settled into your session over the past few months, probably had your first brush with death already. The frenzy to adjust to your new life is over. You’re in it for the long haul now; what do you do?

Sessions can take years to complete, not to mention lengthening factors like postsessions, ring voyages, and various flavors of extenuating circumstances. Most likely, you’re trapped in a relatively small space with a small handful of other people and not as much imminent pressure as you’ve become used to. (Yes, a Medium counts as relatively small once everyone’s able to fly. It gets cramped.) However, there are some things you can do to stave off boredom and murder alike.

(Note: the author lives in a stable postsession after a full-length session. Not all experiences will be applicable to everyone.)

Garden. And I don’t mean ‘use magic to grow plants’, I mean ‘actually garden with your hands and soil and real, linear time’. I can’t speak for other species, but human moods are drastically improved by the presence of live plants, and you can sometimes eat what you grow! Don’t worry if you don’t have a green thumb; I once killed an “unkillable” succulent, but after two years, numerous texts to my Life player about watering frequency, and patience, I recently graduated from cactuses to bean plants and tomatoes. If your environment doesn’t have sunlight, you can alchemize quite effective sunlamps, especially by enlisting a Light player. If you don’t have seeds, you can alchemize them from most juices and depictions of plants. Fiddle around with XOR a little.

Keep a consistent day/night cycle. If you’re anything like the average Sburb player, you’ve always wished for an opportunity to stay up as long as you want. It turns out that this is terrible! You may no longer be beholden to the Sun, but it’s in your best interest to stick to whatever you and the people around you define as ‘day.’ It helps your mood and energy, and lets you actually have time to see the internet friends you used to stay up chatting to face-to-face every once in a while.

Continue having regular team meetings. (If you don’t have regular team meetings, this might be part of your problem!) It’s important to have a goal, even if it’s just research for the long term. Besides, it’s good to have mandatory check-ins with everyone. If you don’t see someone for a long time, they could be having a rough time, up to something dangerous, or worse. Better to just make sure everyone’s alright.

Keep up your friendships. No, I’m not kidding. Obviously, there are going to be some extenuating, irreconcilable circumstances, but I promise you that they’re rarer than you think. Don’t ever write off a relationship with a coplayer before you genuinely try to repair it or have concluded that they are seriously harmful to you. Someone may have been grimdark or rash or murderous, or perhaps you have, but time changes a teenager. You need not forget wrongdoings against you, but for the sake of your sanity, forgive what you can. Isolation can hurt you as surely as hunger.

Continue your education. You were most likely cut off from whatever educational institution your society had when you started playing, and while you may be enjoying the lack of homework, you’re still missing education. There’s a lot of resources online, and stuff behind paywalls should be easily accessible from Medium internet. Study what interests you, and on your own schedule. Even if it makes me sound like a teacher, I can say with confidence that you’ll be better for it. On a related note, first aid may seem redundant, but it’s still remarkably useful in more situations than you’d expect. The Red Cross or equivalent has free tutorials of all kinds.

Make your house make sense. This has to be a group project, because you probably can’t build your own home. The bottom of your dwelling spire is almost definitely a Fucking Mess, which sucks because you’re the one who has to live in this real-life-Sims abomination. So if you spend a little time and build grist making your client player’s house actually functional, and maybe nag in the group memo a little, they’ll pay it forward and you’ll be able to live into an easily-navigable abode. Just be careful your house design doesn’t let consorts use the gates. (side note: if you’re still reading this, another one of your nakodiles got in again PLEASE fix it you know who you are)

Quests and dungeons. Especially important if you may leave your session in the future, and can net you a grist safety cushion if you won’t. Assuming you have completed your full major questline including Terraforming and many of your land’s dungeons, here are some of the most viable options: Double dungeons: If a dungeon settles back into the ground or similar after it’s done, it most likely has a Super Secret Second Dungeon inside. It’s a video game thing! It has more loot! Check ‘em out if you’re bored; I promise you missed one somewhere. Escort quests: I’m so, so sorry. I know they suck, but they’re renewable and a good source of steady grist income, plus the harder ones are a pretty good way to improve your land reputation. Try to do some on other Lands for a little variety! Mail delivery: only for the bravest o7 Visit ALL the villages (or wherever the carapaces live): You may be sick of them, but they always have some sort of relatively easy problem that makes good exercise when you’re bored. Listen to a podcast or something while you’re doing whatever trivial tasks they want; just make sure to alchemize wireless earbuds so they don’t see.

Practice your aspect powers. You can do cool things because you live in a fantasy world now! ...Says no player for a long, long time after they enter. The only way you can truly discover your limits is to test them. What does your aspect really mean, and how can you apply it? Go back to your base understanding, the one you began to think about when you first started exploring. Think outside the box and believe in yourself; your classpect is probably more flexible than you think. You have the potential for an infinite supply of party tricks.

Connect outside your session. If you’re reading this guide, you already know how to, in some way! However, there’s a lot more out there than wayward guides in the void. For instance, there are wayward guides in the void from other instances of the Game! I’m kidding, guides are the tip of the iceberg. Tumblr, for some reason, is one of the most reliable websites in the ring. (My url is enamoredencoding. Message me if you have game advice and I can either answer you or find someone who can!) Similarly, there are a handful of stable-to-various-degrees Discord chat rooms that you can connect to with Pesterchum until you get a better client. In the physical world, there are scattered player settlements and benevolent moving ships that are happy to accept people.

Get wasted. And no, not that kind of wasted. The term originates from the Waste class, which may or may not be present in your session, but anyone can become an honorary Waste! I can’t say very much about it, but I can ask you this: where is everything better than expected?