Lockdowns

Along with everyone else in the Western world, and for that matter much of the rest of the world too, my life has been upended this last week and a half or so. I've spent over a week working from home, running to the store every night looking for items that were out of stock, my daughter-in-law got laid off due to no customers at her job (she's pregnant and my son works part time and goes to school full time.) My other son is getting sent back from his missionary service in Peru, will likely be with us for a time of quarantine (or maybe they'll do that somewhere else; no idea) and then be reassigned within the country. My wife is still babysitting kids, including some that have "graduated out" of having her as a babysitter, but now have no school and their parents still have to work. My teenaged son is home from school with a totally unprepared school and state department of education, so with little to do (luckily our very friendly next door neighbors have a pretty decent gym in their garage that they're letting him use during the afternoon, giving him something useful to do.) Even my father-in-law, who was scheduled to retire within a few months, is probably going to defer, maybe even for years, because his 401k has taken such a bath. My dad, who's already retired and working on a state university pension, is fine. I haven't heard anything about anybody else, but I also have a brother-in-law who works in hospitality and a brother who's a dentist; I imagine they're both hit pretty hard in the short term.

Anyway, given all of that, I'm mostly just trying to figure out what the heck I'm doing. Work has actually been very busy, so it's a bit of a hard time to be working from home when there's a lot to be done, especially given that since my wife babysits four young kids, my home is a bit chaotic during the day and it took us a few days to figure out how to organize so we can both do what we need to. In the evenings, when we're not running around at the grocery store trying to find stuff (we've actually got everything we need now, I believe) I've been allowing my wife to talk me into binge-watching British period dramas with her, which helps her to feel happier when she's a bit anxious about all of the changes and worry-beads. Other than that, I've been trying to keep Red Dead stuff moving, and at least doing daily challenges every day, even if I can't manage to do anything else.

Along those lines, I maxed out my moonshiner role, the third of four. Bounty hunter is where I started, and that's still the one that's lingering the most; it's just a much, much slower one to do, and I've avoided doing some of the missions for various reasons. Now that I've finished the other three, unlocked the Norfolk Roadster (and actually bought one of the level 20 ones) that's what I need to focus on, I guess... although it doesn't really pay all that well, and I do still have a few expensive things to buy. Cosmetic things, no doubt, but things that I want, including more camp themes, more Cripps' outfits, most of my role outfits, the bar and band expansions, etc.

Due to all of the people who are at home, the servers have been extraordinarily strained, and I've had more errors, glitches and problems than normal; although when I played late at night everything worked great. Sigh. Of course. But I can't afford to do that most nights. Working from home is still working, not just being at home. I still have to get up (although admittedly not quite as early as normal) and get on with conference call meetings, and other things that need doing. Otherwise, I'd shift my schedule to play from 11 PM to about 2 AM or something, when the game seems to actually work and not constantly glitch and crash and have my camp and my moonshine shack disappear, etc.

Anyway, I'll probably still keep doing moonshine runs. It's an easy way to make a decent little wad of cash without spending tons of time doing it. Collecting coins takes at least a good hour and a half of running all over the map, at least for me, and the trader role means spending lots of time hunting for animals and hoping when you bring them back to your camp your camp hasn't glitched out and you can't turn them in. You don't make as much per run, but you can start up a batch, go hunt some bounties, come back and make a quick delivery, and even if you paid full price for the mash, you're still making a good $175 for very little effort or time investment. And you can keep doing it over and over again. If I can get the mash price down to $10 instead of $50, it's even more profitable, of course. (I usually do 2 star moonshine. The amount of extra money you get for doing three star is barely worth the cost of the expensive collectible alcohol ingredient needed.) Evergreen is my favorite because the ingredients are not only easily found, but you end up getting them as part of daily challenges frequently anyway.)

A good long distance trade run or a full collection of coins is still better, of course. But those are a bigger investment of time too. I find that it's difficult to do a collector run before it resets early in the evening, so Saturdays are usually my only good bet for that. Getting a full wagon for trade generally takes me most of the week too. But I can do a moonshine run every time I sit down for the evening to play for an hour if I start it distilling before I do anything else and then go delivery the wagon before I'm done for the evening. Depending on how long I intend to play, I can even do two runs many evenings. Not a bad way to keep the cash flowing relatively well.