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Kluwes’ January 2025 Goals

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Happy New Year! Now begins the one to two month period where I constantly write the wrong year. It’s also, what I feel like, the beginning of winter here. No more holidays to look forward to, only grey skies, cold weather, and snow until May. We’ll have to find some fun, indoor activities, to do with little Kluwes now that the weather has actually turned colder. She hates being cooped up in the house on the weekends and, to be fair, so does my wife. I on the other hand, could never step foot outside our house while it’s cold and be perfectly content until Spring! We’ve got a membership to our local Children’s Museum which I foresee getting a lot of use out of in the near future.

After taking a lot of time off gaming last year I feel ready to jump back in and lay out some goals. Not for the 2025 quite yet, I still need to take some time to think about those. But I’ve got a couple ready to go for January:

Explore the Road to the Black Sea DLC in ETS2: After completing the Greece event last month, I was ready to leave the country and explore some more of the map. I liked the rules of the rules of the event: Deliver to or from every city in Greece with a distance of 200km or more. It made me think a little more about what job to take next and I felt like I got to explore more than I would have otherwise. With that in mind, I thought I would do the same thing with each DLC. My last job from Greece landed me in Istanbul, Turkey which is part for the Road to the Black Sea DLC. This includes the countries of Romania, Bulgaria, and the European part of Turkey. The Steam page says there are 20 major populated cities which is only 5 more than Greece so I think this is do-able this month.

Play games I bought during the Winter Sale: I had some restraint this time around with the Winter Sale. Even if I wasn’t playing all that much last year, I was still buying games, which in retrospect, seems a bit silly. So I set out to only buy a handful of games that looked interesting in the moment or had been on my wishlist for a while and were at a good price. I picked up three games for $15, which I was happy with.

Post 8 times this month: This went well last month so I’m doing it again! It was the right amount of post to target to keep me feeling engaged with the blog but not overwhelmed by it.

Returning to Winterland

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The Return to Winterland event in Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator kicked off last week. Like the Cruising Greece event, Return to Winterland has both a personal goal and a community goal to work towards. The personal goal is to deliver to each of the five depots in Winterland: The Christmas Market in town square, Marigold’s chocolate factory, The Northstar Post Office, Rudolph’ Crafts, and the Snowy Peaks mountain resort. In addition, you need to make 15 deliveries to or from Winterland. Completing the personal goal earns you a Winterland themed paint job, 6 festive exterior lights compatible with the top tier trucks, and a World of Trucks Achievement.

The community event challenges players to deliver Winterland goods to and from every city on both games maps to earn snowflakes. Each city earns a snowflake after 1000 deliveries between it and Winterland with each city able to earn up to 5 snowflakes. Every 200 snowflakes unlocks a new tier and a new Winterland themed cabin accessory. You have to complete personal goal to be eligible for the community goal rewards.

I like that you can participate in this event from either ETS2 or ATS and your contributions to either goal carrier over to both games. I have been participating from ETS2 mostly because I was already playing there to complete the Greece event. Also, SuperToast has been completing deliveries from ETS2 so sticking to one game makes it easier to meet up when we play together.

Winterland cargo jobs are picked up from the external market. Most are short distance trips so they don’t pay very well or give much experience but you can chain them together pretty quickly. One the cargo is picked up, it’s time to head to a Winterland portal which seem to be located at rest stops not too far from each city. Once you’re stopped at a portal, you can travel to Winterland. This also seems to reset the fatigue meter so I don’t have to stop to sleep while completing these deliveries. Must be some of that holiday magic at work.

Winterland looks great! It’s a bigger map than I was initially expecting and it’s charming. All the roads are covered in a blanket of snow which makes driving slightly more challenging. I don’t really notice too much of a difference unless I’m flooring it through turns. I tend to do this frequently since there isn’t any traffic on the roads. I haven’t flipped a truck yet but I’ve had plenty of close calls…The sound effect of tires on snow is so crunchy and satisfying!

Ok, so I did flip one truck…but that was on a switchback in Greece and not in Winterland!

Winterland also sports some cozy holiday vibes complete with ice rinks, Christmas music, and decorated trees galore. Each depot has a place to stop to watch a short cut scene that shows off the surroundings. My favorite depot, Northstar, has a giant frozen lake that you can drive around on. Snowy Peaks also offers some great views of Winterland from above.

Town Square in Winterland

I have four more deliveries to complete before the event ends on January 12th so I have plenty of time. Now that it’s after Christmas though, I’m not sure if I’ll be using any of the rewards from the event. Plus, I don’t have a top tier truck yet anyways.

I have enjoyed both of the ETS2 events I’ve participated in thus far. The structure reminds me of Elite: Dangerous‘s Community Goals where everyone pitches in to accomplish something big. I have been trying to take jobs to and from cities that don’t yet have their first snowflakes. There are still plenty left, but it is fun to see a city with very few deliveries hit 1000 and get their first snowflake seemingly overnight.

I Guess I’m Playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 Now?

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Now if you would have told me, even a month ago, that I would be writing about Euro Truck Simulator 2 I wouldn’t have believed you. ETS2 was one of the first games I bought on Steam almost exactly 10 years ago, according to my purchase history. I picked it up because it was on sale (of course) and because it was one of those “must own” games with Overwhelmingly Positive reviews. The year prior I had been in a bad car accident and had a lot of anxiety related to driving. In a way, playing ETS2, even with a controller on a laptop, was a cathartic experience. I don’t think I played it all that long, probably pulled away by all the other shiny things on Steam. I bought Hero Siege the same week, and that’s still one of my most played games.

After meeting the Squad 3 years later, I dipped back into ETS2 once or twice a year. It’s SuperToast’s main game and he’s been streaming it on our twitch channel almost every Thursday since 2017. Every once and a while we’ll join him for some shenanigans. Usually involving a lot of crashes.

Last Christmas, I was home for the holidays and visited Blades. We took out his old racing wheel setup, hooked it up to a PS3, and played a bunch of Gran Turismo 3. It was the first time I had ever played a racing game with a racing wheel and I was hooked! When we got back home, I immediately ordered a wheel and a wheel stand and got very into Assetto Corsa and Automobilista for the next few months. As usual, my interest fell off and my wheel has been sitting next to my desk ever since.

Last month, I started contributing to OpenStreetMap after realizing my neighborhood was missing from the map while playing MissionChief. I wrote a little about OpenStreetMap before but you can think of it like Wikipedia for maps. Anyone can contribute to or edit the map with the goal of providing open spatial data to whoever wants to use it. It got me interested in learning more about maps, map making, and geography.

ETS2 sits in the middle of both of these things. It’s way more fun and immersive to play with a wheel over a controller. Though, when I bought my wheel, I didn’t buy a gear shifter, so I’ve been driving my trucks around using paddle shifters like a race car…

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that I’m so into this game right now. The last few Decembers have been the time I typically get back into Elite: Dangerous. You don’t have to look hard to find Elite described as Space trucking. I Flying spaceships is cool, driving a truck doesn’t seem like it would be quite as exciting. But! It’s super relaxing and it’s the perfect podcast game!