Trucking Digest

It’s been a while and our trucking world grows. My readers will have seen the occasional mention of Trucking events intervening in my photo challenge posts. Tonight I’m going to quickly report on the recent delivery of the West Balkans map and the associated event which, because of the time of year, became embroiled with the annual Happy Hauloween event and also our Breast Cancer Awareness drives too.

To set the scene, a while back SCS Software released the Road to the Black Sea map which took us through the east Balkan countries to Western Turkey. To me, it seemed a bit odd at the time as it left a huge gap between the Italian map and the most immediate countries to the east. While driving through Romania and Bulgaria to get to Turkey was ok, it just seemed a little illogical to go that route first – leaving a large black hole in the cohesion of the map. This release rectifies that issue.

As with all map releases there was an event but this was also a bit different – Leaving aside past precedent, this event tied the new West Balkans with the existing East Balkans to give us 2 World of Trucks Achievements to collect. We were required to deliver to or from 15 cities in the new West Balkans map for one achievement and to do the same in the older Road to the Black Sea for the other. The event was called Cruising the Balkans and ideally, you might pickup a string of jobs delivering from one map to the other and back, but that didn’t happen in my experience.

I started out from Marseille in my MAN TGX, Clovis, heading into Koper, Slovenia – Probably the nearest city to my start point😅 But from there it was a lot of hard work getting loads to meet the targets for the achievements. Initially the truck was wearing our Pink Ribbon livery for Breast Cancer Awareness…

…Seen here with some Lavender which complimented the paint scheme😎 Only a short time into the event and the additional Happy Hauloween event kicked in. Fortunately the two events could co-exist although at the expense of doing Halloween jobs in American Truck – While most were done in Europe, Dog actually got to do three…

…Looking pretty good in the orange but happier once back in a more Mack oriented Green😅

Of course, Clovis had to adopt a suitable Halloween colour scheme too and spent the next couple of weeks hauling a mix of Halloween trailers and normal jobs while knocking out the Balkans event requirements…

..Along with the needs of the Happy Hauloween event👍

I covered over 14000km before I met the requirements of the Cruising the Balkans event – a total of 30 cities delivered to or from across the whole of the Balkans. Then there were the Steam Achievements to do – 5 of those! We had to visit all of the cities on the new map, go to all the locations with a cutscene and drive on a particularly tricky road between Bijelo Polje and Pristina referred to as The Serpentine. There was a production chain set of tasks to complete – easiest done by taking quick jobs – which went from bauxite ore through to a completed motorhome. Here I am completing that last delivery for that set of tasks in a classic Renault Magnum…

Finally, there was a trip down the Adriatic Coast from Rijeka to Nikšić via Zadar and Split. A lovely if challenging drive with some great views…

This new map DLC is an absolutely wonderful addition to the simulation and sets a high bar for future additions. We know that upgrades to older maps are ongoing in the background and we’ve seen the improvements made in Germany and Austria to bring levels of realism to our driving experience that were undreamt of a couple of years back. We’re promised the Switzerland update soon and also the next stage of the update to California covering the Stockton area – we’ll get to Los Angeles eventually! And – We can expect Kansas, Nebraska and Greece in the next few months… It’s a breathless time for us virtual truckers!😅