The crows at the campus where I work do watch me through the windows of my makerspace, waiting for me to come out and feed them, and I’ve got the 3D printers set up in the windows, so this guy may have actually seen a benchy before…

All the good dungeon real estate got bought up by early adventurers with their collected loot, so now they are located in gated communities or expensive adventuring resorts. Everyone else gets the roadside discount dungeon experience with plastic monster chotchkes for loot drops and pugs and chihuahuas dressed up in skeleton and dragon costumes.

But which one? Zombie killer, scifi vampire, perfect alien, blood queen, monster hunter?

You throw water on the fiery plane when you land at the airport.

But seriously, I would imagine the hangar would need to be constructed of a material that was neutral or resistant to the elements, maybe even composed of them altogether to have immunity to destruction by them. So a prismatic hangar that has all elemental resistances. Or you could go with a fifth element like aether. Or heart if you’re playing the Captain Planet RPG. Or Milla Jovovich.

Everyday. I am the rain king.

I thought you were going for a haiku, but the last line was 10 not 5 syllables.

Beaks. What a strange thing. They are both, fingers and mouth. Their real fingers fly

I feel like you’d need to be specific about what kind of pirate existed in the late 19th century. It’s not the stereotype of the Caribbean pirate from the Golden Age. There were regional pirates near China and India. But pirates in the west in the late 19th century were mostly suppressed. You might have a former privateer from the Civil War still alive in the 1890s and he might be in his mid 40s at the youngest.

It’s not new, but the current hot trend is for companies to outsource their costs as much as possible but pretend they’re providing “creators” with a service. Gig economy jobs, social media jobs, Etsy stores, etc. all involve “employees” who can’t call themselves employees for the purposes of insurance or full time hours or salaries taking on the equipment and material costs and labor costs in hopes that the company will pay out more than they invest. It’s the new MLM Avon calling, Tupperware party, essential oils scam. It’s not to say that some people won’t beat the house some of the time and make a decent living, but the odds aren’t in your favor and the house is still making a bunch off of you even when you are being “successful.”

My old SV06 at home often had better bed adhesion than the same prints on a Prusa MK4S at work. The SV07 Plus had the bigger bed I wanted, but it didn’t print as well as the 6. Lots of large failed prints and layer quality issues.

But now you have the next adventure opportunity: 3D printing quality of life upgrades for the printer!

I recommend looking into the ball bearing spool holder, the skadis organization mods for the left side alcove, purge bin, filament guide, vent handle, and more. Printables has a whole bunch of useful options.

Who’s to say alien snot isn’t geologically identical to a rock?

This is my favorite gift from my crow buddies:

I feel like this is too general. I’d want to customize based on specific IRL traits or jobs or hobbies.

You feed and befriend crows? Druid with animal skills focus.

You’re some kind of a carpenter, engineer, craftsman? Artificer.

Phlebotomist’s assistant? Vampire thrall backstory.

Retail salesperson? Bard with psychic damage skills.

Live in a basement? Homebrew troll obviously.

Software and coding? Sounds like arcane languages and warlock pacts to me.

A pattern I’ve noticed isn’t the legal aspect, but rather the monetization. Everyone is offering a platform where an obscure writer can pay to give away their writing for free or pay for an ad campaign where you’re spending more on ads than you will otherwise make off your work. One of the significant advantages for writing is that it requires very little overhead versus another activity like making physical objects that require equipment and material. But the market is saturated and publishing platforms are harder to access unless you’re a guaranteed seller who is already somewhat famous or has a built-in following. And there’s always someone out there willing to “help” by taking your money for the promise of connections and exposure.

It reminds me of the old poetry contest scams where you submit a poem, they tell every poet that they’ve “won” and will be published, and then they offer a “discount” for poets published in the book to get print copies for you and your friends and family, but the book is only advertised to the poets.

It does seem like there should be more open and free resources for this—websites where authors and readers connect without barriers or monetization. There probably are, but they don’t show up high in search results. Obviously they’re not going to be seen before all the paid options with ad funding.

The print instructions mention sticker paper as an option. There are some types of sticker paper that work fine on inkjet printers. Then you could just stick it down on pieces of wood or something like that. If you have access to a vinyl cutter like a Cricut or Silhouette machine, you could cut them out more easily.

The license is Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial 2.5 Mexico, which allows for remixing. It could be cool to make a 3D printed version of the board and pieces.

About 18 years ago when I was a dispatcher, I had someone call 911 to report their drug dealer stole their laptop because they couldn’t afford to pay for the drugs they wanted to purchase. I asked them a few times if they would like to file a police report that states that they intentionally purchased illegal drugs. They didn’t seem to understand the angle of the question and we asked them to stay where they were so a deputy could go out and take a statement.

Bed adhesion is usually the biggest issue, often attributable to the z height being off, and a lot of older printers didn’t have z-axis sensors or the software to accommodate for the variances, so it involved the old paper test. Depending on the printer, it might shake itself out of its z height setting while printing. A lot of people ended up spending as much as the cost of their printer upgrading with after market parts to try to resolve some of these issues.

I haven’t used the Monoprice before, but my research says that Monoprice doesn’t make their own printers. They just rebrand someone else’s. So the Monoprice Maker Select appears to be a rebranded Wanhao Duplicator i3, which looks like it came out sometime in 2016. So while you might have bought it six years ago, the actual printer design is much older and missing out on possibly 9 years worth of innovations.

If you can eventually afford to replace it with something else, there are some sub-$400 printers out now that might give you a much nicer experience. I started with an Ender 3 v2, which was a pain, similar to what you experienced. I upgraded to a Sovol SV06, which was great (and recommended to me by a professional with a print farm and wide variety of printers). Now I’m on a Prusa CORE One, but I don’t recommend spending big until you know you’re really into 3D printing. If you do consider buying a newer printer at some point, I’d recommend seeing if you can see someone else’s in action so you can experience the difference. Makerspaces might be a good resource for this.

Unfortunately, with the factors you mentioned, you might want to cut your losses because I’m guessing you’ll just become more frustrated if you try to get more out of it. There is a learning curve for 3D printing, especially with older models like the one you have. The quality of printers has vastly improved for beginners in the last six years. Without the ability/funds to upgrade to a newer printer, what you have may be more trouble than it’s worth because it would likely take a lot of effort and learning to get it working decently. You might also need new filament since anything old is likely brittle after absorbing moisture over the years.

That said, I wouldn’t give up on 3D printing entirely. It can be a great experience. Maybe find a local makerspace that can help you or that has 3D printers of their own to learn on.

What’s wild is that there are “crows” in other places that look like what we consider “ravens” and the terminology is all arbitrary. And the Indo-European root source for the words crow and raven seem to be the same despite seeming so different.