On 15th July 2017 a Blockhouse was built on a relatively small island. The Blockhouse had been designed on a previous wipe, which was merely an airlock, 2×2 loot room, and stairs to a window room. It was a simple, but fun and easily built structure to house a group of friends for a day. Servers at the time often lost their population after that first day, so there rarely felt like a need to build anything larger (beyond possibly adding some honeycombing and an extra airlock).
This was the second wipe that the Blockhouse design was used by the squad, so it was referred to as “Blockhouse 2”. If anyone saw my “roleplay” buildings and wondered why they had a sign that reads something like “BLOCKHOUSE 46” then that’s the tradition behind it.
The garrison of Blockhouse 2 found the island to be largely devoid of technology, as it was not near any landmark, which resulted in the tools and weapons remaining primitive. Beyond limited use of pipe shotguns at close range, the long range fighting was dominated by a crossbow, but there was only one on the entire island. We just couldn’t get the resources to produce anything better (or craft additional crossbows) before the server population evaporated.
Another small group also built on the island, and the crossbow changed hands several times as we fought battles against them. I’d felt the value in saving memories about gameplay stories before then, but I suppose this low-tech conflict felt insignificant. I look back on that time and wish I’d written more than the two sentences that were descriptions of two of the three saved screenshots:
“A lowly populated technologically stagnant island saw conflict revolving around control of a single crossbow which changed hands several times.“
“The foundations of a building with a large furnace were captured, leading to the construction of one of the biggest buildings on the island.“
I can’t even remember which side crafted the crossbow, and rarely did one have so much value. We didn’t hit a ceiling and get bored; all of our loot and weapons felt precious. The battles were never wildly out of proportion, as with rifles you often see an obvious winner, but here every battle invited victory if you were willing to craft a few spears and try flanking around the rocks.
A couple of barrels on the island were likely the source of the rope used to produce the crossbow, and towards the end of the day I guess a metal pipe was found – enabling a revolver to be produced, possibly being the key to us capturing a furnace base. We were on a different wipe the next day, probably having hopped server due to the playercount crashing. We were looking for stimulating PvP, and had certainly found that on our day on Crossbow Island.