Saturday 14 February 2015

Free Books from Crystal Lake!

Our friends at Crystal Lake would you all to take advantage of two free downloads on offer this weekend (5 day Amazon give-away.)

Fear the Reaper horror anthology, and Horror 101: The Way Forward.

If you already have copies of these books, please download them again or share the giveaway with your friends and colleagues. Enough giveaways will give these two books some well-deserved attention through Amazon’s popularity lists.

Fear the Reaper, for example, has an amazing story by the late Rick Hautala. And believe it or not, a vampire story by Joe McKinney!

So download your FREE copy of Fear the Reaper here: http://myBook.to/fearthereaper and Horror 101: The Way Forward here: http://mybook.to/Horror101Amazon
For those who love anthologies, they also have a Two for the Price of One sale on Tales from The Lake Vol.1 and For the Night is Dark:http://www.crystallakepub.com/promos-and-specials.php

Thursday 5 February 2015

H1Z1 PVE video

There seems to be lot of speculation about H1Z1 that it is purely PVP. I'm here to tell you this is not the case. There are PVE servers and they are very popular. As you can see from my last few posts, PVE in this game can be a lot of fun.

Today there was a server wipe, all characters and worlds were gone and it gave me an opportunity to start from scratch and build a base using the knowledge I gained over the last couple of weeks. What did surprise me was that I had a serviceable base up and running within two and a half hours, something I was still working on after two weeks, pre wipe. 

I streamed as I did it and recorded it here for anyone that cares to sit through 2 1/2 hours of me running around shooting badly, gathering supplies and not giving any kind of commentary. On the upside, it is a good example of how the games crafting system works so far (I managed to get all he recipes figured in that short time) and how the thig looks outside of PVP.

It's important to mention, this is Alpha. Things are being changed on almost a daily basis but there is so much potential here, this could turn into a great horror survival game. 

Monday 2 February 2015

H1Z1 The continued diary of a survivor part 3

Things have started to come together. Having found a spot on the edge of a mostly deserted town, I have now upgraded the ramshackle shed I used as a base, to a fully fledged platform, with outbuildings, dew collectors for water and even a barbecue for cooking that tasty wolf meat.

Thankfully the local bear has kept his distance but the Dead continue to approach in droves, usually attracted by the sounds of me felling trees or the smoke from the Grill. I'm getting quite proficient with the bow. From the comfort of my raised platform, I can take them out with a shot to the head fairly easily and the endless supply of wooden sticks growing around my camp makes for great ammunition. These sticks can also be fashioned into spike traps, which I've spread liberally around the steps leading up and now a pair of barbed wire fences protect the entrance.

Today was a metal run, many of the cars are abandoned so scrap metal is plenty, and having fashioned a makeshift forge, I can melt this down and make sheets of metal that fortify my base. Today, however, I had a mishap that almost cost my life.

I set out at dawn. Visibility was low but I had seen a number of areas of cars and wanted to get round them all by nightfall, as well as a trip to the local river, my supply running low. As I reached the valley, I was suddenly in a bank of fog. I ran into a couple of the Dead and in the panic, lost my bearings. I spent most of the day walking, trying to find my camp or at least a landmark but the fog wasn't helping.

Soon enough, I hit the river, and though I didn't recognise the stretch I was on, following it seemed like a good idea. As I did, I found a load of survivor camps, though no sign of life. Several hours later, after dodging a bear and countless walking corpses, I saw something I recognised..a water tower that sits about a mile from my base. Making a beeline for it, I saw more familiar scenes, and soon hit the edge of town. The sun was going down, so I ran straight through, scavenging more cars on the way and soon enough found my home, to some relief.

Tomorrow I must get more rabbit traps up to keep me in food  and maybe get more metal to fix up more walls. Life is lonely here, but I'm surviving.