I first ran across 'The Hive' when it was in full swing and it was by far the largest town I'd seen in the game so far. I had a little secondary mining operation near it and all the people seemed friendly. After a few weeks I noticed less and less people playing there and then finally noticed the town was down and there were big gaping holes in the walls. It was a beautiful location and I liked the equal square design but hated the pre-splash walls so I decided to rehab the old place and moved in back a year ago.
Since then we've done a lot of work. We weren't as expansive as other towns like Arcadia and we weren't as much like as a vault as towns like Pangea and we stuck to the original town plan.
I mostly just used the smelters and mined for the first 4 months but this summer I really started to farm and crank out the braziers. This last September I started to help new players learn the game there and Gargamel, Kardinal and Resi moved in. Eventually in November Desmond, Remraf, Nayle and Tammer moved in and made the town even better. We had other casual players but that was the core group of new players. Here's what we did.
The only two original players from 'The Hive' still playing that I know are Greb and Kandarim/Latikai. You're probably using Kand's client right now. His little farm still exists.
I fully tiered all 24 of his original fields.
We treat his original cabin as a historical landmark in thanks for his client.
It was very cozy sitting by the fire when I played all alone in that big empty base.
I tried to spruce it up with flowers to make it seem more like a home.
Eventually that grew into a whole hill of flowers.
The smelters were in near constant use to get as many braziers as we did over the last 6 months.
The mine was a 31% merc mine.
We burned whole forests for charcoal.
Our work payed off, and we slowly grew.
This was Gargamel's Place.
This was Nayle's place.
This was Remraf's place.
This was Tammer's place. The first and only brick house in Mirkwood.
This was our bakery. Desmond was a hell of a cook and basically I consider it his. Thanks for all those Windy Pooh's.
Here were his farms and the North fields.
We got good use out of our near constant rotation of our herb garden.
Thanks to all of you for helping me to rehab this grand old town and I'll see you in the next world.
Sincerely,
Stinky Stumpwater
