VS Journal #4: Homestead Progress & Preparing For The Archives
The first thing we did when spring came around was start a proper farm. We could no longer rely solely on forage and the greenhouse, and needed to increase our crop production, especially if we were to start raising and breeding animals. We fortified it well and built it over the water to decrease the chance of animals breaking in and eating our crops. It is not pictured here, but we later attached a second field specifically for growing pumpkins, as they grow very differently from other crops in the game.
We also captured and penned a chicken and a rooster, which was much easier than we thought it would be. The chicken pen was similarly fortified, and we also added hay to the floor to prevent the spawning of wild predators inside the pen. as well as an in-between section (of which the exact name of escapes me at the moment) in order to prevent chickens escaping from the pen.
Our final foray into expanding our farming life that we made (at least, for now) was to get started on beekeeping. We located a nearby tree with a large enough beehive, placed down an empty skep at the base of the tree surrounded with flowers, and then collected the skep-and flowers-once it was populated, bringing it home and planting a flower field around it. We slowly built up our hives until we had 4 skeps with large bee populations, ready to produce all the honey and beeswax we'd ever need.
Once that was all settled, we began work on iron production. We had found readings of hematite near our old base, and after much searching, found a massive vein deep underground. We collected more than enough iron to get started on iron tools, mining away at the vein until our temporal stability was too low to continue. Once the iron was bloomed, we crafted a small bellows and placed it beside our forge, heating up the blooms enough to hammer them into ingots without constantly putting them back into the forge. Soon, we had our first iron tools, and we shifted our focus to armor.
Deciding to prioritize protective value above all else, we decided to craft a set of iron plate armor. When we made this decision, we were unaware of just how much iron would need to be refined and processed to make the full set, and by the time we did realize it, it was too late into the process to change our minds. Because we had yet to set up any sort of automation, we had to hammer out 96 iron blooms by hand. After that mind-numbingly punishing experience, we decided that it was finally time to do what we had been putting off for so long: building a windmill and helve hammer setup to process iron blooms and metal plates, so that we would no longer have to do it by hand.
To encourage ourselves to work on it, we and our friends decided to hold an "executive function," where we all got together in a Discord call and worked on things we'd been putting off, encouraging each other to stay focused and keep working until we had at least made good progress. I don't think we finished the windmill on that call, but we did get close. It was honestly not as difficult-or resource intensive-as we thought it was, and by the next day, we had finished the windmill and the helve hammer. We also started moving the rest of our smithing and leathermaking setup into the windmill, so that we would no longer have to work outside.
Before getting started on hammering out the iron ingots into plates, we decided to test the helve hammer by having it process two copper ingots into a plate. We had needed said plate for something, but I unfortunately do not remember what that "something" was off the top of my head. Regardless, it let us get a feel for how to work the helve hammer, and we soon felt confident enough to begin iron plate production. We also began working on tanning the remainder of the hides we'd need into leather, which was thankfully a much easier process than the iron production, as we already had most of the leather we'd need for the armor set.
With the helve hammer, processing the iron ingots into plates was a breeze. We did have to process most of those plates into chain, which had to be done by hand, but it's a lot faster to hammer plates into chain than it is two ingots. During this time, we moved the remainder of our smithing and leathermaking supplies into the windmill. It was the dead of winter at this point, and we were tired of trudging back and forth through the snow from the windmill to our house and back any time we needed smithing or leathermaking supplies.
Once the iron plate armor set was complete, our penultimate task in preparation for tackling the Resonance Archives was to create an iron shield and a secondary armor set. Our current copper set was very badly damaged, and we did not want to wear our iron plate set until we absolutely needed to. We also did not want to use our fancy gold shield in the Resonance Archives; despite the fact that it still had most of its durability remaining, we knew it would be destroyed in an instant by the many hostile denizens lurking within the Archives' depths. We hammered out an iron hoop, boss, and two plates for an iron shield, and crafted a full set of gamboised armor for everyday wear. We had to resort to foraging for the remainder of the flax fibers we needed, but had finished the set by the end of July.
The last thing we did to prepare for the journey ahead was preparing rations, sealing them so that they would last the journey to the Archives and beyond. We already had sealed crocks of jam from the previous year that we had never eaten (we now produced more than enough fruit from our fruit trees that it lasted throughout the winter), and decided that now would be the best time to use them. Four crocks of sealed stews, scrambled eggs, and porridges later, we are now ready to pack up and truly begin our journey into the game's main storyline.
