Potshot and I had finished up Emerald Lake, the first of the five regions that come with Over the Hill last time around. Or we thought we had finished.
Over the Hill
A patch came out last week that added three more points of interest to Emerald Lake because some people had finished all the maps and found that there were still cosmetic items left unlocked. The crates at points of interest are the way to get those, so a few more were sprinkled about to make sure they were all available.
We went back and did that, then turned ourselves to the next region, Gimli Ridge.
Despite the name, Gimli Ridge has a good deal of water and a lot of swamp down in its lowlands. Enough swamp that one starts to learn the fundamentals of driving through slippery mud. That tends to boil down to getting up some momentum and trying to avoid steering as much as possible. Also, don’t hit things.
The Blazer… the Trail Burner in the game… excels at swamp driving, being able to build up a significant head of steam and, with even the first water fording upgrades, doesn’t need to be steered away from any open water in the swamp.
The Trail Burner in the Swamp
It isn’t that my Scout… Trailrat… cannot get through the swamp. It is that the Blazer is barely phased by the mud once it gets going.
Out in the swamps… there are a couple of swampy areas… you will find one of the more unique challenge trails, the Fraser Research Boardwalk.
Starting the Fraser Research Boardwalk
The goal of this is to get to the end… a mere 174 meters away at the yellow building… without falling off. This is a task perhaps less suited to the big and somewhat floaty on its suspension Blazer. But I had to try.
The physics model can get a little janky and I managed to, at about the half way point, bounce myself off the roof of one of the sunken buildings you need to drive over and ended up facing the wrong way. Not being keen to try and turn the beast around on the narrow plank surface, I decided to just reverse my way to the final two checkpoints.
Backing up!
In the grand tradition of Sponge Bob at boating school, I managed to over do the backing up aspect of the whole thing and ended up missing the last small turn, landing ass first in the swamp and wedged between a couple of posts.
Off the boardwalk inches from the goal
After a few attempts I decided that I was not going to be able to winch myself back up onto the boardwalk. The winch can be magic at times, but your tires need to at least have some surface grip before it will perform miracles.
Failing that, I used my last winch point, placing it in the middle of the destination and managed to get just enough grip to put the nose of the Blazer sufficiently into the circle to finish the trail.
Challenge Trail Complete
I later went back and did it with the Scout/Trailrat, a more nimble ride, and one that I had fully upgraded by that point, and managed the whole thing without falling off.
It is hard to quantify how different the various vehicles are. You can find their mass and horsepower and what not on the wiki… or wikis, there seem to be a couple… but they definitely “feel” different.
I compare that pair, which feel different, to the Blast Wagon (reward for the Windcall Gorge Trail in Gimli Ridge), the original Dodge Power Wagon recreated, which has its own distinct feel, being very slow until you get an engine upgrade, but seemingly able to climb up anything in low gear.
The Blast Wagon in olive drab livery
So over the weekend Potshot and I got together to do a couple of trails as a duo. We managed the Bridal Veil Falls trail, which rewards one with The Brick (Toyota Land Cruiser J70) where I only fell off the trail a couple of times.
Potshot winching me up from another potential fall
At night, in the rain only adds to the experience. Potshot had already done the trail, as evidenced by his vehicle, which is The Brick. That turns out to be an very competent trail vehicle as well.
The trails are getting more challenging, for us at least, though not completely beyond our capability. And then we hit the Waddington Scree Trail. We found that and, on starting, got into trouble almost immediately.
The winch is out already
The image above show Potshot, whose vehicle is stuck between some rocks, with me trying to pull him out. Also, the start of the trail is about 20 feet behind me. If that. This trail was going to make you work for it from the first moment.
Meanwhile, I was having less luck than I might have hoped, managing to fall on my side while trying to reposition.
And over I went
Potshot, still wedged between rocks, deployed a winch point between us, there being no trees handy to latch onto, that we might both get ourselves going again. Through the magic of game physics I did get myself upright once more, Potshot got himself unstuck. and we eventually got ourselves past that first hurdle on the trail, but we had not covered ourselves in glory so far.
Up the trail some, but not very far
The image above, maybe 15 minutes into our run at the trail, show the start of the trail (the brown trail at the upper right of the image) and the fact that we somehow needed to expend two more winch anchor points in order to progress even that far. It is a good thing we packed extra.
Then, as we rounded the corner to the next waypoint it was my turn to get wedged between some boulders.
The Trailrat gets stuck
Potshot had to climb over one of the boulders… which was probably the correct choice in any case… to get on the other side at the right angle to get me unstuck. It took a bit, but some wiggling and tugging with the winch and… I was on my side… but no longer stuck and with a tree close enough to winch myself back upright.
After that the trail let up and we were able to at least not get stuck for very long. The winch was still deployed a few times… I am starting to use the damn thing like I am Spider-man shooting webs, a topic for another post… but that is par for the course. If you could just drive up it, then it wouldn’t be a challenge trail, now would it?
We then found ourselves at the end of the trail in a relatively flat spot.
The Waddington Scree Trail completed
The reward for the Waddington Scree Trail is Das Rust Ox, an interpretation of the Mercedes-Benz T2, an absolute bread van of a vehicle that will surely lead to further comedy.
Das Rust Ox comedy preview
And that mostly wrapped up Gimli Ridge for us. There was a bit more to do, but Asgard Mountain, the next area, was already calling for us.