In Which I Work My Way to Enshrouded

This is the year of small group co-op survival titles for me I guess.  It started back when Hello Games gave us a teaser for their upcoming… still upcoming… title Light No Fire.

That got me thinking about games like Valheim that might fill the sudden need I felt for a new survival title, which ended up with me buying several on Steam during the Winter Sale.

None of those seemed to fit the bill for me really… hell, I couldn’t even get Rust to run… but that made me just go back to Valheim, which I dragged the rest of the group into for our third, and likely final, run at the game.  We went with mods that time around, which made things a bit easier to deal with, but which brought its own challenges.  That sustained us for a while, but it was in many ways going back over ground we had already trod.

By the time we hit the plains it was just Potshot and I, and the mistlands killed even that partnership, leaving me in a mist-free modded mistlands alone to find and slay the boss… the finding was the tough part… and then crash into the ashlands, where Iron Gate decided they really needed to dial the difficulty up to levels beyond annoying.

But I was still feeling the co-op survival itch and there were titles out there that I had yet to try.  I even set the various AIs to work on coming up with options.

We landed on Conan Exiles, which was pretty good for a stretch.  We explored, learned the systems, and even did a dungeon.  And then that sort of fell off our interest list without any reason or explanation.  Sometimes we just hit a stopping point without knowing it.

Granted, we still had WoW Classic on our agenda.  But I was still pulled towards other things, which included a return to No Man’s Sky, a game with quite a history at this point.

That, too, faded without comment after some invisible barrier was hit.  One day I just stopped logging in.

Still, the urge for something to scratch that itch continued.  I dropped into Once Human for a bit, but it didn’t grab me.  There was also a quick diversion into Guild Wars 2, thinking the new expansion and housing might grab me.  And then there has been the Stars Reach play testing, though that coming in irregular short increments only whet my appetite for the right title.

And then, last week, Enshrouded, which was on my Steam wishlist, popped up on sale and I bought it and gave it a quick spin in solo play.

I got in, got through the initial intro and out into the world where I started down the gathering and crafting and building path, and quickly felt that the potential was there.

Satisfied with that feeling, I checked over at G-Portal to see if they hosted co-op servers, found that they did, and rented a six slot setup.  Then I put it out on our Discord server that I was off the rails again with a new game and hey, come join me if you want.  Potshot took the dare, so there are now two of us playing.  We’ll see if we can get Ula in as well.

With Potshot on, the housing situation improved dramatically, as he is not as easily satisfied with ramshackle dwellings as I apparently am.

Will this be the next title for the group, something to keep us busy and focused as we wait for Cataclysm Classic to wind up and transition to panda time?  We shall see.  We could be playing this into the new year… or we could be playing Nightingale or something else that goes on sale in three week.

Though I should probably wait for the Steam Winter Sale to come back again before buying many more titles.