#hopefully the skills and stats are pretty self explanatory

[codename-mallorygrace]

DA Veilguard Party as Tellius Fire Emblem Characters

Mostly Radiant Dawn with Path of Radiance mixed in because those are the game mechanics I know best. Nothing here is balanced. And thank you to Serenes Forest for all the Fire Emblem details

Rook:

Class: Ranger, promotes into Vanguard with options of a secondary weapon of bows, tomes, or axes.

So there’s not really a character creation/avatar in Tellius and I want to respect that. That being said, in Path of Radiance, you can choose a secondary weapon at promotion, so that’s where you can choose if you lean more rogue, mage, or warrior (bows, tomes, axes respectively). And depending on which weapon you choose, you would get a different mastery skill (Deadeye, Flare, or Colossus).

Recruitment: Automatic

Base Stats: HP: Okay Strength: Very High Magic: Very High Skill: High Speed: High Luck: Low Defense: Okay Resistance: Low

Until promotion, Rook fights with a sword with high strength and magic so they can use both physical and magical weapons pretty smoothly. The low resistance and luck is a reference to all the bad magical stuff that happens to Rook and around Rook. And the other stats line up pretty much with typical sword unit, but they can improve depending on the promoted weapon chosen (higher speed/skill for rouge, higher magic/resistance for mage, and higher hp/defense for warrior).

Skills: Provoke: More chance of being attacked by the enemy Resolve: When under 50% HP, Skl ×1.5 and Spd ×1.5

I didn’t want to commit too many skills to Rook since it would be heavily dependent on the playstyle, but they would at least start with Provoke and Resolve. Provoke because sometimes it feels like enemies in Veilguard really have it out for Rook of any class. Resolve because that is Rook in a nutshell. They might be hurt, but that only makes them stronger and they hit back twice as hard (especially if Resolve gets them to double the enemy).

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Harding:

Class: Archer, promotes to Marksman

Recruitment: Automatic

Harding is an archer that’s part of your starting party in both worlds.

Base Stats: HP: Very High Strength: Very High Magic: Very low, but high growths Skill: High Speed: Okay Luck: Okay Defense: Very High Resistance: Very low, but high growths

She starts with poor magic and resistance, but as she grows into her new stone magic, she can improve both stats very quickly with high growth rates. I gave Harding higher defense over speed, which is typically a stat archer wants, because she has a lot of survival skills, both for being a scout and for her unique cooking. Plus with very high strength, she can just one shot enemies (especially flying ones) so no need to double if the enemy is dead.

Skills: Critical +15: Critical rate +15 Deadeye: Triples damage and sends enemy to sleep Cancel: Negates the enemy’s following attack Parity: Ignores both the user and enemy’s Skills, terrain bonus and support bonus

Critical +15 and Deadeye are the Marksman mastery skills and they also fit Harding quite well. Cancel feels like the closes to disrupting an enemy and staggering them from Veilguard, so it matches what Harding’s Seismic Shot and Shred want to do. Parity for her skills as a scout, since I imagine she can get a good lay of the land before attacking so that she can ignore any bonuses for a simple straight shot.

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Varric:

Class: Marskman

Recruitment: Automatic

Varric is your early game strong unit who starts in a promoted class.

Base Stats: HP: Very High Strength: Okay Magic: Abysmal Skill: Okay Speed: Very High Luck: High Defense: Low Resistance: Okay

He has over all good bases and okay growths, just do not give this man any weapons or skills related to magic. Mid strength because he uses crossbows, which ignores his strength anyways, so he doesn’t need strength as much. High resistance because he is a dwarf, but low defense because of, uh, what happens when he gets too close to a dagger.

Skills Critical +15: Critical rate +15 Deadeye: Triples damage and sends enemy to sleep Gamble: Doubles Critical rate but halves Accuracy

Critical +15 and Deadeye are the Marksman mastery skills. Varric isn’t necessarily a gambler, but he does get himself into high risk, high reward situations, so Gamble felt appropriate. And no other skills because he is your Jagen/early pre-promote that falls off very quickly to say the least.

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Neve:

Class: Wind Mage, promotes to Arch Wind Sage with knives instead of staves

Since there’s not really any ice mages in Tellius, Wind with its icy animation is the closest I can get. But Neve does get a knife on promotion as a reference to her mage knives in Veilguard and the potential of her dropping her healing skills if you harden her.

Recruitment: Starts in the middle of the map as a green unit and surrounded by enemies. Rook or Varric can talk to her.

You find her among bodies of Venatori when you first meet her, so of course she’s going to sweep the enemies on the map you recruit her (think Pent from FE7 in The Living Legend), which can be a double edge sword in a Fire Emblem game.

Base Stats: HP: Okay Strength: High Magic: Very High Skill: Very High Speed: Okay Luck: Low Defense: High Resistance: Very High

Very high magic, resistance, and skill and high defense as those are stats that would serve her very well as a detective in Dock Town. High strength to get the most out of her knives. Low luck because she feels so unlucky with all her cases going sideways in ways she could never predict.

Skills: Flare: Negates Resistance and user recovers HP equal to damage done to enemy Celerity: Movement +2 Howl: Prevents enemy from moving for one turn when user is attacked indirectly Pass: User can move through enemy-occupied tiles

Flare is the Arch Sage mastery skill. Since a lot of Neve’s Veilguard skills are about slowing down enemies, I gave her Howl even if she can't technically have it in Tellius. And Pass and Celerity because she does a lot of walking around in both friendly and not so friendly territory to solve her cases, so she gets both skills that can improve her movement around the map.

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Bellara:

Class: Thunder Mage, promotes to Arch Thunder Sage with staves

Thunder and electricity are closely related, so Bellara is a thunder mage in Tellius. She gets staves at promotion to reference her auto-healing skill.

Recruitment: Trapped behind a mysterious barrier as a green unit, you’ll need to interact with a switch near the middle of the map before you reach her. Rook or Neve can recruit her.

Bellara will start the map acting on her own going from device trigger to device trigger until you catch up to her. Rook can recruit her, but so can Neve since Bellara is a big fan of the detective.

Base Stats: HP: Low Strength: Low Magic: High Skill: Okay Speed: Very High Luck: Very High Defense: Okay Resistance: High

Overall, Bellara is a very strong FE mage with many of the class’ weakness, notability being low HP and Defense, though I gave Bellara okay defense because she is a bit bulkier than a glass canon, but she still shouldn’t be on the front lines.

Skills: Flare: Negates Resistance and user recovers HP equal to damage done to enemy Adept: Activates a 2 hit strike Imbue: Each turn, user recovers HP proportional to their Magic stat Miracle: Halves current HP when dealt a fatal strike

Flare is the Arch Sage mastery skill. Bellara’s Veilguard skills tend towards hitting multiple targets or covering an area around an enemy, which doesn’t quite match mechanics in Tellius. So instead, Bellara is hitting an enemy up to 4 times in one phase with Adept, as if she had unleashed a volley of arrows. Technically, she couldn’t have Imbue, but I like it on her because it makes her self-sufficient in a fight. She has Imbue and Miracle because I feel like Bellara, for as open and friendly as she is, can be solitary and not want to burden anyone with her needs, such as being healed in battle.

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Lucanis:

Class: Assassin

Assassin is a pretty easy class. Lucanis can’t promote like the others, because Assassin is already a promoted class, so instead, he has to reach a high enough level before he unlocks his mastery skill and gets promotion bonuses.

Recruitment: Rescue him from a jail cell near the beginning of the map. You have to use a key to open the door. Rook or Neve could recruit him.

Since you get him before you fight all the Venatori in the Ossuary, you can recruit him early in the map. His jail has one door (that’s not breakable) and no breakable walls. You need to use a key/a resource to open the door as a reference to his personal quest, Inner Demon, where you need to make an extra effort to reach out to him.

Base Stats: HP: Okay Strength: Okay Magic: High Skill: Very High Speed: High Luck: Okay Defense: High Resistance: Very High

Stat spread matches a typical FE assassin. The high magic is for Spite’s influence. There aren’t any magical weapons for thieves in Tellius, but Lucanis can make good use of any skills that require magic. And high resistance of course so he can be a mage killer even in Fire Emblem.

Skills: Critical +25: Critical rate +25 Lethality: Instantly KOs enemy [Doesn’t work on certain enemies] Vantage: User attacks first Wrath: When under 30% HP, Critical rate +50 Smite: Push a unit 2 squares if user’s (Con +2) > unit’s Weight

Critical +25 and Lethality are class skills that suit Lucanis fighting style very well. Vantage because he’s an assassin that strikes before targets even realize he’s there. Wrath is the closest thing I could think of to his Eviscerate skill. Smite, instead of shove, because Lucanis and Spite are both pushing the target.

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Davrin:

Class: Armour Lance, promotes to Marshall

Davrin in Veilguard uses weapon and shields, so he’s an Armour unit in Tellius. And I gave him lances because in FE it’s a weapon that tends to signify a noble purpose for fighting, and while Davrin might not be a literal knight, he fights and battles for a bigger purpose and cause than himself.

Recruitment: Starts as an allied yellow unit as you rush to save griffon green units. Recruit at the end of chapter.

In Tellius, there are yellow units that you can command but not fully control, which is like how you get Davrin in your party during his recruitment mission, but not full access to his skills and inventory until afterwards.

Base Stats: HP: High Strength: Very High Magic: Abysmal Skill: Very High Speed: Okay Luck: Okay Defense: Very High Resistance: Okay

A strong armor unit with the class’ features and weaknesses. Magic is very low because Davrin does not believe in the Fade (wild fact I love him for) so he wouldn’t have great access to magic, if at all. He does have alright resistance, though, because he is a Grey Warden and that makes him better equipped to handle magical attacks than he otherwise would be. He also gets alright speed for an armor unit because he has to keep up with Assan somehow.

Skills: Luna: Triples Strength and negates enemy’s Defense Guard: User takes damage for an adjacent Buddy Savior: Skill and Speed are not reduced when carrying an ally Counter: When damaged, deals half of received damage to enemy

Luna is the Marshall’s class mastery skill and I think it would play off of Davrin very well. Guard and Savior are both references to his role as front line tank and bodyguard. Counter can be seen as him fighting back when hit or Assan attacking the enemy if Davrin is hit.

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Taash:

Class: Warrior, promotes to Reaver

Recruitment: Starts as a yellow unit as everyone clears the map of enemies surrounding a dragon. Recruit at the end of the chapter.

Similar to Davin, you get them a little before you actually recruit them, so they also start the map as a yellow unit. They follow your lead, but very much has their own strategy for the map.

Base Stats: HP: Very High Strength: High Magic: Okay Skill: Okay Speed: High Luck: Okay Defense: Okay Resistance: Okay

A little bit of a glass canon, but one that’s very hard to kill because they have so much HP. Doesn’t suffer in any particular stat, so they very good at being what you need them to be in the moment. They also have alright magic so that they can use any skills or weapons based on magic to pretty good effect.

Skills: Colossus: Triples Strength and deals bonus damage = Strength – foe’s Defense Critical +5: Critical rate +5 Daunt: Enemies within a 3 square radius have their Accuracy and Critical rate reduced by 5 Pavise: Negates all damage Paragon: Doubles gained EXP

Colossus and Critical +5 are Reaver’s mastery skills and fit Taash’s fighting style pretty well. Daunt is for the intimidating way they can breath fire and a kind of translation of Dragon’s Roar. Pavise help keeps them alive, a reference to their Fortune Favor skill, and how they know how to properly fight a dragon. Also since I imagine you get Taash later than everyone else, so they get Paragon to help keep up with experience gains.

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Emmrich:

Class: Dark Sage, promotes to Arch Dark Sage with staves as secondary weapon

Historically in Fire Emblem, dark magic is the most misunderstood type of magic, so that’s perfect for a necromancer. He also gets staves when promoted as Emmrich is one of the team healer.

Recruitment: There's a house on his recruitment map, and if you visit it, he will come out as a green unit to help defeat the enemy, but he will only join the team if Rook or Bellara talk to him.

Emmrich is always eager to help, but for him to join you, I think would require that extra step of talking to him.

Base Stats: HP: Low Strength: Okay Magic: High Skill: Okay Speed: High Luck: Okay Defense: Okay Resistance: High

He might not hit as hard as Neve or Bellara might with their higher magic, but what he lacks in stats, he makes up for in his skills.

Skills: Corona: Negates Resistance and halves enemy’s Accuracy for one turn Discipline: Increases rate of gaining Weapon EXP Reinforce: User can call 3 NPC units to help (can only be used twice per chapter)

Corona is technically not the Arch Sage’s mastery skill, but lowering the enemy’s accuracy feels more in spirit to Emmrich than Flare. Plus he is still bypassing enemy resistance, so he’s still getting a boost from that. Like Taash, he comes to the team a bit later, so Discipline is there to help build weapon rank. Also historically, dark tomes are pretty rare in Fire Emblem, so Discipline helps get his weapon ranks up without spending every tomes. And he is a professor, how could he not have a skill called Discipline. Reinforce is technically is a personal skill of a specific person, but it’s too perfect for Emmrich to not give to him. Just imagine undead instead of Tanith’s pegasus knights.

[basil-from-omori]

How to Beat Itemless Boss Rush in OMORI

a complete guide because something’s wrong with me

what I had equipped:

OMORI:

weapon: red knife • charm: cough mask • skills: vertigo, cripple, red hands, suffocate

AUBREY:

weapon: baseball bat • charm: pretty bow • skills: beatdown, wind-up throw, power hit, counter

KEL:

weapon: basketball • charm: headband • skills: megaphone (didn’t use outside of sir maximus i-iii), tickle, run ‘n gun, juice me (completely needed)

HERO:

weapon: ol’ reliable • charm: chef’s hat • skills: cook, tenderize, snack time, homemade jam

PREREQUISITES: I’d recommend finishing regular boss rush at least once. if you’re on switch this can be rough cuz you need to clear it with basil after your first clear. I can make a guide abt that upon request

PRIORITIES:

kel’s juice. Keep this to at least 100 at ALL TIMES if possible. If it goes too low, below 10, you’re doomed

hero’s HP. If he dies, you can’t heal at all until the next boss.

omori’s HP. this seems obvious but try to keep it at 2+, preserve your “omori did not succumb” in the fights like sweetheart, slime girls, humphrey, and jawsum.

1) ye old sprout

the first fight is ye old sprout. this can be completed in one turn, via:

omori: red hands

aubrey: beatdown

kel: tickle

hero: tenderize

If this doesn’t work, which it SHOULD, just use run ‘n gun to get through the rest.

2) download window

this should only take 2-3 turns :3

1) same routine as step 1. Repeat till it’s gone. The thing about itemless is GETTING THROUGH the boss, not prepping for next round.

3) capt spaceboy

The length of this fight depends. I suggest starting out with the previous routines of red hands, beatdown, tickle, and tenderize until omori’s juice is down to <175. if anyone’s HP drops to 3/4, wait till at least 1-2 others are hurt to use snack time

4) king crawler

initially, focus on getting a lot of hits in if you have good juice/heart. if you don’t, try to heal as much as you can. a good strategy for if you’re trying to make sure hero and kel don’t die yet because everyone’s low on juice is to have aubrey use counter. if you can, make hero cook for aubrey when she’s at half health or so.

target king crawler only!!! sprout moles don’t matter, 600 health added to it is nothing. don’t even worry

5) sir Maximus I/II/III

this fight is surprisingly easy. For this, you wanna focus emotions!!!! Make everyone on your team angry via megaphone, let the enemies wallow cuz they make themselves sad. if you get everyone on max emotions on both sides, you do significant damage and they can barely do any. take advantage of omori’s attacks that damage everyone, lowering stats is always very helpful.

try to maintain emotions as much as you can, while making sure kel doesn’t run out of juice and neither does hero. heal as needed, this fight is self explanatory for the most part.

6) life jam guy

A magical blessing of free time to heal. take the life jam, but you can’t use it because you’re on itemless. Again, heal as needed. nothing to say here

7) sweetheart

for many, this may be who wipes you out. but trust me, as long as you upkeep everything, you’re fine. FOCUS. ON. LOWERING. HER. STATS. Please. itll save you, especially since the only moves we have for emotion are for making you angry, which we DONT want. lower her speed, attack, and defense.

this marks the start of where you hafta be conscious of everyone’s stats/health/juice. pay close attention!!! Again, use Aubrey to take the punches via counter.

8) jawsum

70% chance of surviving this, tbh. I won’t lie, this is genuinely difficult. Kinda complicated, so LISTEN CLOSELY!!

1) omori use any attack, Aubrey use wind up throw, kel use tickle, hero use tenderize

2) hopefully, there’s one gator guy left. if not, repeat and heal as needed.

3) when there’s ONE gator left, do: red hands, beatdown, tickle, and tenderize. our goal here is to eliminate the gator guy, as he’s a shield for jawsum. jawsum is our target. So, we want to be able to eliminate the gator guy before our last ATTACKER— likely being hero with tenderize.

4) do step 3 repeatedly, healing as needed, hopefully it works out!!

9) pluto

Pluto is shockingly easy, don’t even worry

1) omori should use all his defense reducing stuff. make Aubrey use power hit, as it also lowers defense. run n’ gun with kel. tenderize with hero.

2) honestly just yeah worry about lowering stats and getting hits in. sometimes Pluto hits kinda strongly, but he shouldn’t if you lower his stats.

3) HEAL. HEAL PLEASE. HEALTH AND JUICE. DO IT. PLEASE. HEAL. MAINTAIN BOTH HEALTH AND JUICE TO AT LEAST 200 IF YOU CAN. this is in preparation for the next fight, one of the few times we NEED to worry about what’s next.

4) that should work— relatively easy afaik :3

10) slime girls

brace yourself— this is by far the most difficult. you may make it out, but don’t feel bad if you can’t!!

1) vertigo, beatdown, tickle, tenderize

2) Vertigo again, do it until you can’t lower attack more. But in the meantime, maintain juice with kel (JUICE IS A PRIORITY DUE TO THE MOVE WHERE THE SLIME GIRLS SWITCH HEALTH AND JUICE). Aubrey can do whatever, tbh, just do beatdown. Hero should prioritize healing.

3) HEAL AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE WHEN THEY START TO THROW EVERYTHING THEY CAN!!!! The next fight is easy, as long as omori lives by the end of the round, it’s good enough.

4) Pray

11) Humphrey

Humphrey isn’t too bad, surprisingly. use stat reducing moves, then big hits with tickle as well (meaning: do red hands, tickle, beatdown, then tenderize). There’s a good chance you’re low in health, which is understandable.

In humphreys stomach, do heavy hits, stat reducing moves, and every turn use snack time. kel can do whatever, as long as he maintains everyone’s juice. Listen, if you managed to successfully lower their defense and attack, they should do very very little damage to your team— I’m talking like… 0-20 damage each.

please tell me if this works for you, and ask me literally anything. if this ends up not working, PLEASE let me know where you died!!!!! thx for reading, I was supposed to write this a couple months ago

[jacscorner]

RWBY Maids RPG: Ruby Rose

So I like Maid RPG, and I still have a sot spot for RWBY, so I figured I'd make posts about building RWBY Characters into Maid RPG for fun.

And, naturally, we're gonna start with the star of RWBY...Ruby Rose.

Ruby Rose is the main heroine of the series named after her-sort of. Inspired by her dead mother, this silver-eyed scythe-sniper dreams of becoming a Huntswoman and boy did that dream come true and then some.

Honestly, HOW there isn't an official Maid RPG X RWBY crossover is beyond me...

I'll break down my reasoning for everything, but if you'd rather skip to the end for the general build, just Ctrl+F "TL;DR" or "Ecru" for the build stats.

Alright, first, let's go to the allocation of stats. If you're rolling yourself, I'm assuming you'll just roll up your numbers and plug them in as appropriate. In game, you'll role 2d6 and divide by 3. So here's the priority list of Ruby's stats.

Will: Ruby is nothing if not an optimist.

Affection: Ruby loves everyone. She's got a shit list, but it's incredibly short.

Athletics: She's a little girl carrying a big-ass scythe. Ruby lifts.

Luck: Ruby's pretty lucky throughout the series, but we need other stats more.

Skill: Ruby seems like the type of gremlin who'd eat cookies every day if she could and would have a bed covered in crumbs. Ironically, being good at being an actual maid is not required in this game and Ruby probably would do a lousy job.

Cunning: Now, this isn't to say that Ruby is smart, but manipulating people and deceiving others isn't her strong suit.

Now for Ruby's Maid-Type. In-game, you take 2 different types for your maid, or 1 type twice. Ruby would probably be a Lolita/Heroine-Type Maid.

Lolita doesn't mean 'loli' in this instance (though it can if you want, I won't stop you). Lolita means childish, innocent, sweet. Ruby, even when the show darkens in tone, keeps this kind of air to her. Lolita-Types get +1 Luck, -1 Athletics.

Heroine is pretty straight forward. In context, Heroine-Types earnest hardworkers, doing their very best. How is that not Ruby? Heroine-Types get +1 Will, -1 Luck

Next is the fun flavor stuff; Special Qualities. You can take anywhere between 2 to 5. 2 is recommended, but I'd play 3 for my own personal games. Either or, here's the Top 5 you should take for your Ruby Maid.

Overactive Imagination: Ruby is very energetic and imaginative. She had a big hand in that food fight in Volume 2...

Accessory - Pet: Zwei would be perfect for a small, animal companion to follow Ruby around.

Symbol - Cross: She does have crosses on her character design, but I think it's more for a goth aesthetic than her being a woman of any faith...

Relationship - Sibling: I mean, we're gonna get to Yang eventually. Maybe. Hopefully.

Monster - Shinigami/Secret Job - Assassin: Yeah, these two are both just for fun. Shinigami, aka a Grim Reaper, is just to play up the Scythe aesthetic. And Assassin is, again, just for fun. Maid RPG isn't a very combat focused game, but it makes for some fun character flavoring.

The next important thing are your Stress Explosion and Maid Roots. In Maid RPG, you don't lose HP, you gain Stress. When your Stress overcomes your Spirit (basically your HP), you go into a Stress Explosion. Maid Roots are self-explanatory; it's how you became a maid.

For Ruby's Stress Explotion, we'll say her Stress Explosion is Binge; nothing but cookies and sweets until you lose enough Stress to get out of it.

For Roots, we'll take "Admirer of Maids?"; I guess for the sake of this game, we'll say Ruby was inspired to be a maid. Summer Rose DLC when? :P

Next, because this is RWBY, we need to give her a weapon. Again, these are mostly for flavoring, but it can add a bit of fun RP. Naturally, Ruby isn't Ruby without Crescent Rose, but since "Fused Weapons" aren't really a thing here, I think there's two fun ways to go about it.

1. Take a Scythe. Plain and simple. Again, this is Maid RPG, not D&D.

2. Take 'Rifle' and flavor it as a 'Sniper Rifle'. Remember, Crescent Rose is 1/2 Scythe, 1/2 Sniper Rifle, so playing Ruby is a cute little sniper girl is totally in character.

Finally, your Maid Power. This is a special power your character gets based on their highest Stat. If our biggest stat is 'Will' as mentioned before, then we'll take "Hard Work": giving you a +3 bonus to the end result (not the attribute or die roll) of Skill rolls. Which sounds perfect, really; she's determined to be a Maid and she'll be the best she can! If you roll poorly and your stats are 9 or below, you should also take "Persistence": reducing any amount of stress you take by 1.

If SOMEHOW Will isn't your highest stat, then it should probably be Affection or Athletics.

For Affection, you should pick "Power of Friendship", taking 1d6 Stress to remove 2d6 for someone else. Be a true friend and take the L for a buddy.

Athletics, you should pick "Super Evasion", taking 1d6 Stress to completely avoid an attack. Play up Ruby's speed!

TL;DR (Art above by Ecru)

Maid Type; Lolita/Heroine

Maid Color; Red (or Black) Uniform Silver Eyes Black/Red Hair

Attributes;

Athletics: 1

Affection: 3

Skill: 2

Cunning: 2

Luck: 2

Will: 5

Favor (Affection x 2): 6

Spirit (Will x 10): 50

Special Qualities; Overactive Imagination Accessory - Pet (Dog, Zwei) Monster - Shinigami

Maid Weapon: Scythe

Maid Roots: Admirer of Maids

Stress Explosion: Binge

Maid Power: Hard Work

(Art above by Iesupa) And that is Ruby Rose as a Maid! Sadly, there's no "Cape" option in this game, but you can just give Ruby her famous cloak or just homebrew it as a quality, with a "Uniform - Cape" or something. I don't think anyone will bat an eye at something so harmless.

[murasaki-murasame]

After a billion years of waiting, the 2nd anniversary digest is out, and even though it didn’t talk about quite as much stuff as I expected, the stuff it DID show off was extremely good on just about every level, and oh boy do I have some thoughts about it, lol.

I’m not even sure where to begin with this one, lmao. There’s so much stuff they talked about, and so much stuff they DIDN’T even talk about. Like how they didn’t talk about the October events and banners even though they’re teased at on the 2nd anniversary website, which I guess means we’ll have to wait longer for info on that.

we also didn’t get any info on a collab, but I assume they’re going to announce that at the start of November and have the collab itself release a few weeks later.

I’m kinda sad that they accidentally leaked out the existence of guns, but I still got to experience all the shock and surprise about it, so that was fun. I’m really surprised that they’re adding a new weapon type so late into the game. Especially since they don’t seem to be planning to retcon any old adventurers into being gun units, which means that they’re going to make up a super tiny portion of the pool. But I still really like how they work, from what we’ve seen of them.

It’s great that Joe got a new gun alt who everyone gets for free, but it really feels like they screwed him over by making him a 3-star, lol. He’s probably gonna get immediately replaced by any light gun units they introduce after this point. But it’s still nice to see him get some love. He was the perfect unit to go for to showcase the new weapon type.

All the changes to weapon and wyrmprints are extremely overwhelming, so it’ll probably be a while until I have an actual opinion on them. But thus far I think it’s fine, but we REALLY need the ability to save wyrmprint set-ups so we don’t have to spend so much time shuffling them about again and again.

It’s kinda sad that it’s such an eldwater sink if you want to equip the same print to multiple units, but it’s much cheaper to do that with event prints, so you can still fill your team out with some good prints. And on the other hand, this is actually why I’m fine with the fact that so many prints are almost identical now, since it means you have way less of a need to actually spend eldwater to get extra copies. There’s like 4+ different prints that all give 30% skill damage, so you’d never actually have a reason to bother getting extra copies of any of them, if you at least already had all these prints before this update. It does make it harder to keep track of if you end up using like 15+ different prints across a whole team, but still, the eldwater cost is more or less avoidable if you just use different prints with the same effects.

I think the weapon bonus thing is going to be the most grindy, long-term part of this update, but I’m cool with it. It gives everyone something to slowly work towards, like when you’re at the stage of leveling your dojos. The issue is that people will want to max their weapon boosts as quickly as possible, but it’s clearly not designed to be rushed like that.

It’ll all take a lot of getting used to, but I’m happy that they’ve drastically cut down on the amount of weapons in the game, and made the progression system more linear. Once everyone gets used to it and more people start playing the game after this update, it’ll become more natural.

We also got a bit of an overhaul to the textures and lighting/rendering for all the 3D models, which still feels like a really strange decision to me. It gives them a really different sort of aesthetic, and I have mixed feelings about it. I think if they made it a bit less ‘harsh’ I’d really like it, but at the moment there’s a bit too much contrast between the lighting and the shading, and the black outlining just looks a bit odd.

We also got the big adventurer balance change, and even though it’ll be a while before we’ve got all the new numbers and stuff for everyone, I already get the feeling that Vice is gonna end up way worse than he was before this. Which is sad, since outright nerfing people always sucks, but I get why they did it. It messed with the balance too much to have a 3-star be in like the top 3 for DPS units across the entire game. At the very least they gave him poison on his S1 so he can afflict that more often now, instead of it just being on his S2.

Just going by what they’ve said, and what we can see in-game, one of the really big changes seems to be how basically all of the healers except Grace now have strength buffs on their S1s, which basically all seem to be 15% for 60 seconds. Which is a really interesting way to make healers more relevant, but I like it. I think it doesn’t stack, so you won’t get as much buff uprime as with dedicated buff units, but it at least means they contribute SOMETHING to the team’s DPS.

One other notable change is how T-Hope now has a 15% strength buff on his S1, which makes it pretty much exactly the same as Patia. So that should make auto eCiella a lot faster, with how often he gets that skill off, lol. This was something I expected him to eventually get via a spiral, but in general a lot of stuff in this balance patch feels like mana spiral upgrades in all but name, which is neat.

Lots of characters also got more status punisher stuff, which should hopefully at least make more units stronger. Most of it’s all pretty self-explanatory, but it’s kinda interesting that Norwin is now a poison punisher unit. I guess it’s one way to make him somewhat relevant to the shadow meta, lol.

They also buffed the older gala units, which is great. At least this way they can put off on establishing the precedent of gala mana spirals, by just directly buffing the old ones. We’ll see how it turns out when all the exact numbers have been datamined, but it seems like they’ve addressed the main isseus with G-Mym, G-Sarisse, G-Ranzal, and G-Euden. 

I also noticed that they added defense debuffs to a fair amount of units, and made a lot of existing defense debuff moves land more often, so that’s interesting.

I’m also pretty excited to try out Pipple with this balance patch, since he now gets a 30% strength buff for himself with his S2. It at least makes it so that it’s always worth using whenever you can.

They didn’t announce anything about new endgame bosses like we expected, but it does sound like we’re still getting some eventually, and it’ll just come up later. Which is a good idea, probably, since we need some time to keep focusing on Agito stuff.

And on the note of the Agito fights, and current endgame content in general, I really like the addition of solo versions of all of them. For one thing it means a new wave of first clear bonuses, but it also means that you can pretty much entirely avoid co-op if you want to. The solo fights seem to give less rewards, but hopefully still enough that you can just stick to doing them exclusively if you want to. I haven’t tried any of it out, but it sounds like they’re all balanced around solo play, which should make it way more easier to do them than it was to try and solo fights that were designed for co-op.

It’s also kinda funny to me that even though they said we’re getting another tier of difficulty for the Agito fights, the only thing we know that we’re getting from it is fancier skins for the Agito weapons. They’ll probably still get stat boosts, but I could see them pretty much just being cosmetic upgrades.

They also upgraded the amount of weekly chests for HDTs and Agitos to five, and it sounds like we’re gonna start getting double drop events for them soon, so that’s great. In general I think this whole update will make it way easier to actually do endgame grinding, especially with the solo fights.

And then there’s the elephant in the room, which is the new battle royale mode. I haven’t tried it yet, but honestly I actually like the sound of it, lol. I absolutely never expected that they’d add something like this, especially since it’s effectively PVP, but it actually sounds perfectly fine. It’ll probably get tweaked as time goes on, but it sounds like you barely even get any extra rewards from it by winning compared to just dying immediately, and the whole mode is designed to have you start from a blank slate where you and everyone else are at the same playing field, so it’s basically entirely skill-based, and you don’t even need to be good at it to get rewards.

I wasn’t even sure how they’d handle PVP in an action RPG like this, but I think this is a good way to go about it.

We’re also getting a return of the time attack mode, which is . . . worrying, but hopefully now that people are much more familiar with both HDTs and Agitos, it’ll go by a lot more smoothly.  I’m surprised they’re even touching this concept again after how badly it was received the first time, but I’m curious to see how it goes. I know a lot of people really liked it, so hopefully it’s balanced so that you can ignore it if you want to, without feeling like you’re missing out on too much.

They also finally got around to adding sparking, which is great. I honestly wasn’t really expecting it at this point, but after the patch notes got revealed yesterday I figured this was probably gonna happen. I know some people would wish it had been introduced earlier, but I’m glad it’s finally a thing. I still don’t think it’s as much of a make or break issue for me as it is for others, but it’s still pretty much an objective bonus over the old/current system. My main concern with sparking, though, has always been that it might lead them to notably tanking the amount of summons we can do each month as F2P players, which would cancel out the good parts of sparking, but I doubt they’d do that.

Either way, it seems to work in exactly the same way as GBF, in that each summon gets you a unique bit of currency, and when you get 300 of it, you can trade it for a featured unit of your choice. But also like with GBF, your sparks reset after each banner and turn into different items that you can exchange at a store for regular in-game items, so your 300 summons all have to be on the same banner, and you can’t just accumulate a spark by summoning across several banners. Though one thing that seems to be different to GBF is that summons done with diamantum give you twice the amount of sparks, which is really interesting, since it really cuts down on the amount of money you’d need to spend to get a spark that way. It’d still be super expensive to do an entire spark just through diamantum, but 150 summons with diamantum is still way cheaper than 300, lol.

If they keep our monthly summon income about the same as it’s been thus far even after they add sparking, I think that we’d be able to do a spark every 6-8 weeks just from event and log-in bonus rewards. At the moment we get around 150-200 summons per month just from all that, so it seems like it’ll be WAY faster to save for a spark than it is in GBF [where outside of specific holiday periods that have free summon events you’re probably looking at 4+ months of saving to be able to spark].

This at least means it’ll be way easier to plan out my hoarding, since I know that as long as I have 300+ summons saved, I can at least spark a new unit I want. And there’s always the possibility of just getting them early and being able to quit while I’m ahead.

And on the note of summons, we’re also getting 330 free summons total between the anniversary and the end of October, which is absolutely insane. Sadly you can’t save up sparks across banners, so you won’t be able to do a spark JUST from that, but it’d go a long way to helping supplement a spark on a specific banner.

It looks like we’re gonna get a short pre-gala of sorts soon that’ll contain all the previous gala units, but I’m probably gonna skip that, outside of the free pulls. The only one I don’t have from that set is Gala Alex, and at this point I’d rather just chase her when she’s in a future gala remix. If it’s anything like the same type of bonus gala we got for the first anniversary, all the featured units on this banner will probably have lower than normal rates to make up for how many of them will be on the banner, so it’d just be a really low-value banner for someone like me who already has all but one of them. I’m also not even sure if I’d be able to get all the way to 300 summons that quickly.

Either way I’m more interested in saving for stuff like Halloween, Christmas, new gala dragons, and New Years.

We’re also getting Gala Zena on the anniversary itself, and I think everyone saw her coming, lol. She’s not a gun unit, though, which is actually a bit lame, even though I figured it wouldn’t happen. Her being an attack-type light staff unit is really interesting, at least if she ends up working like Heinwald, but I’m still not sure if I’d be interested in actually spending resources to try and get her.

The gala banner is also going to have the new girl from the anniversary event, and a Midgardsormr alt. Though it sounds like he’s going to be non-limited, so he’s not our wind gala dragon.

The anniversary event also sounds extremely interesting. It sounds like we’re time-traveling back 1000 years to when Ilia created her religion, and she seems to basically be a punk biker girl, which is extremely cool on so many levels. It also kinda looks like Zethia is going to be the MC of this event, and it might not even feature Euden and co, which would be a nice change of pace.

I thought Ilia might be our new welfare unit, but going by the preview image for the event it looks like it’ll be Mordecai, who looks like he’s gonna end up possessed by Morsayati or something, since he looks a lot like Morsayati’s human form we’ve seen a few times. I hope he’s a gun unit, just so we can get more of them, but we’ll see how it goes.

I’m guessing that Ilia will eventually be playable, but maybe just for the 3rd anniversary event or something.

We also got a tease at the next three main story chapters, which all look really interesting. It seems like the Archangels event is going to pretty immediately become important to the story, and now we’re heading off to North Grastaea. We’re also going to be going to the fairy kingdom eventually, which is cool, especially since the teaser for it heavily implied that Notte will become a playable character then.

Which also reminds me that we’re probably eventually going to get a gun unit from the main story, since we have all the other weapon types already, but I doubt Notte will be a gun unit, lol.

Going by the teasers, I also get the feeling that Leonidas and Chelle will be our next two gala adventurers, and at least one of them, if not both, will probably be a gun unit. I think one of the shots of Leonidas had a gun visible in it, but Chelle’s also apparently the one who introduced guns to the world, so who knows how that’ll turn out. At the very least they did say that we’re gonna start getting new gun units soon, and we might get a lot of them really quickly to help fill out the pool. Which also means that some of the new holiday units might end up using guns, so that’s also worth saving for.

I also get the feeling that we might take a break from gala dragons for a while, since we’ve basically run out of good options for them. But who knows. We still need ones for water and wind.

Hopefully with the spark system in place I’ll be able to spark on at least the Halloween and New Years banners, since those are my top two priorities, but we’ll see how it goes. It’s always scary to enter limited holiday banner hell season, but at least they introduced sparking right before it all starts. At the moment I think I’ve got like 150 summons saved up, but I’ve still got most of my reset co-op rewards to go through, and I haven’t touched the Halloween event they added to the compendium, so that’ll add a lot. I think the anniversary log-in bonus will also give us like 2k wyrmite, and if the retweet event succeeds we’ll get an extra 1.2k wyrmite. So as long as they don’t tank our monthly summon currency, I should be able to spark on Halloween if I can commit to saving for it. Which is much easier said than done, lol.

All in all I think I really love this update, but it REALLY changes the entire game, so it’s gonna take a long time to get used to. And thankfully even with the introduction of stuff like sort-of-PVP, it doesn’t look like they’re going in any sort of P2W direction with the game.

Also, there’s still the 45-minute Game Live presentation set to come later tonight, but I’m not expecting that to tell us much, since it’ll probably be targeted at new players. I’m still holding out hope for a Switch port announcement, though.

[perfect-corroscience]

Wow, a lot can change in about a year, huh. I was there for TB2, but tapered off it and TB1 sometime for real-life reasons, just before the Girls Gone Astray event in 2… but I’ll leave my thoughts for the end of this (the playthrough).

With version 5.5.3, Terra Battle now has an ending. For the most part, I’m going to be aiming just to finish that. I got to chapter 36 before I stopped playing, so chapter from now to at least chapter 34 will be several versions behind. But nevertheless, onwards:

Chapter 30: Rising World – “The will of countless creatures great and small converges into a single purpose: to protect the future.”

30-1 They live solely for vengeance.

Things are coming to a head, now.

30-1 is five rounds of these two enemies. They aren't too out of the ordinary. The Oxsecian Striker’s Rocket Force move doesn’t do damage, just displaces your units.

30-2 The rancor that has festered in their souls for so long.

The Oxsecian ship unleashes its weapons en masse on Animata, intent on retribution.

This is the day they will finally purge themselves of the rancor that has festered in their souls for so long.

A new face among the two enemies seen in 30-1: sentient space junk! They appear in the second, fourth, and fifth battle alongside some other mooks. Take care of the Oxsecian enemies while hopefully staying out of range of the Space Debris’ status-inducers. 

Of the two, sleep is less annoying, so it’s not a bad idea to bring someone with Panacea (at the very least, Palpa will have it, but there’s also have Eileen and Gatz or Sheena w/ Cleansing Caper), or even just Locomotion (Palpa again, but Bonna and Kana are notable for having it while also having Paralysis Ward. Kana’s A class so most people likely have her anyway). 

Of course it’s a complete non-issue if you get rid of them first and/or stay out of the AoE, but it never hurts to be careful.

30-2 introduces this, the sword counterpart to the other.

30-3 The king does not budge.

Three battles this time: Space Debris/Oxsecian Bladebots make up the first and third battles; latter is notable since there’s 10 Bladebots to deal with.

30-4 With a subtle, slithering movement.

This introduces the Oxsecian Spearbot. Fairly self-explanatory.

There are no Space Debris in this stage; just Bladebots, Spearbots, and Strikers.

30-5 The sound of a massive explosion rips through the air.

This battle is of spear-enemies, so if you’re not overleveled like my crew, arrows are better.

This enemy is introduced here, and I guess is notable because it has Solar Wind, the at-the-time strongest Fire elemental spell (at 3x damage). Its in a cross range, so I guess be aware.

30-6 Shield with Animata.

Four battles this time. There’s another new enemy: another Elemental Spinner, this time ice-typed, with Absolute Zero, Cross (1).

30-7 Trust in me, overworlders!

There aren’t any Elemental Spinners here; just fights against Oxsecians.

30-8 Their collective will is sublimated into radiant life.

Their collective will is sublimated into radiant life that illuminates all.

“That radiance, washing over you, becomes a source of newfound strength.”

Before the battle starts, you get the message above. What this does, as you may notice, is fill up the Powered Point gauge to near-full. 

There’s only one battle in this stage; the boss is the Oxsecian Fighter EX (as noted by the 4x4 square), with a whopping 16 Oxsecian Strikers backing them up. For the most part, though, it’s not too bad: its moveset is really simplistic, with the only skill you have to be concerned about being Missile Barrage.

It helps that the mooks have a number of turns before they act, giving you time to pincer them and create some breathing room. They’re all staff, so no circle of carnage advantages. For a pack like this, you’d probably want at least one mage for their AoE attacks.

Its laser attack is column only, so just stay out of range.

It will telegraph when it’s about to use Missile Barrage, saying sth among the lines of “Missile Launchers open”; you have a turn to prepare, heal, etc. If you bring anything that has an Ice attack, this will happen, making it lose its turn. 

After that, it’s just a matter of chipping it down and any other Strikers it summons. Finally, it can drop Dark Matter and/or Mantle Helixes.

30-9 The power of will evokes a miracle.

The formidable will of the humanoids rouse an even greater power: the beasts that inhabit this world you once dubbed Planet Beastbait.

Humanoid and beast alike stand ready to confront the alien threat.

The resolve to defend their home--and the home of future generations--converges into one will, transcending ecosystems and the planet itself.

The will of countless creatures great and small converges into a single purpose: to protect the future.

As one, they raise their voices in a thunderous rallying cry to that future.

Hmm... 

After that fight, 30-9 returns to the 5-battle stage. Another Elemental Spinner is introduced. Good thing there’s no elemental mixing and matching.

Ba’gunar was helpful for dealing with them, with both type advantage + summoning capsules. If you’re not like me and have great luck, managed to pull someone like Samatha or Jennish – even better.

As an aside, there’s a chance of nabbing a Demon’s Badge otomo from this stage. Its evolved forms eventually provide Death Ward, self – which has some niche uses, I guess!

30-10 AND SO WE RETURN TO ZERO!

Everyone was too caught up in the battle to notice they vanished. But then, perhaps it isn’t a surprise they came back given what we’ve seen of them in previous chapters…

Before the battle even starts, we see each member of the Zero Series fuse together into…

6ZOO. He’ll always start the battle with Cyclone, Area (1), which does damage and knocks units back. At level 99 with those stats, he’s pretty beefy.

He has Counterattack, but it will always proc when pincered. He also summons two mooks too after using Cyclone; in fact, he follows a pattern of: Cyclone > summon two mooks matching its type > switch weapon. The weapon type switches from Sword (default) > Spear > Bow > Staff, then repeats.

The Staff form is notable because 6ZOO doesn’t summon anything, but will spend a turn preparing to use Quake, All. It’s one of the reasons I brought Gatz.

The mooks aren’t too bad, but their attacks can add up as 6ZOO beats your team down. As you clear them, take note: 6ZOO will use Supporting Fire whenever one of the mooks is pincered. Keeping health topped up is seriously important, and this is with a mainly B-class team that’s near his levels. (Fun fact for non-vets: levels used to be maxed out at 70.)

Once you wear it down, it says this…

Music (listen to this!): The World’s Awakening/Day of Reckoning

…and transforms again, recovering HP and becoming even more monstrous! This time around, it stays Staff-typed, but switches elements around. As it does, it not only summons corresponding Elemental Matchers, but also absorbs attacks of the same element. 

Not a problem if you’re bringing a majority-physical team like I did, but…

A few turns in, you’ll get this message. It’ll telegraph the big moves, then follow up w/ the corresponding elemental aim attack (except when its Dark-typed):

An inescapable gravity field takes hold… > Black Hole

Crackling bolts cross and spread outward… > Tempest (Cross)

An inferno blazes up on both sides… > Wall of Hellfire, 1 row

A band of frigid air descends… > Icicle, 1 column

Watching and waiting… > Terra Panic, All (occurs at ~25-30% HP)

Tempest and Icicle are explanatory: they’re strong elemental attacks. Wall of Hellfire creates flames on the rows 6ZOO is on – it’s a really damaging stage hazard, though mercifully it only lasts a couple turns and can kill off the mooks. Black Hole transports two random units away for a few turns.

Terra Panic is its big move; it affects everyone with every status effect except Ice/Shadowbind and the Solar/Lunar related ones. As a reminder:

Poison: damages units for a few turns. (not bad normally because it never kills your units, but could potentially help the boss/mooks)

Sleep: units don’t act and can’t be moved for a few turns or until they take damage. (the least dangerous, but iirc they can still be shifted)

Paralysis: unit don’t act and can’t be moved for a few turns. (You can still shift them away, though)

Demoralize: unit’s physical attack and skill proc rate drops to 0 for a few turns; buffs still proc, while demoralized units can still use skills w/ a Powered Point (though physical attacks will hit for peanuts)

Confusion: unit moves around randomly, cannot be controlled, act in chains, or be used to pincer. (This one is pretty bad because your unit is useless until it wears off, and they can put themselves in range of attacks or run through Wall of Hellfire if it’s up)

Petrification: unit turns to stone, cannot be controlled, and can’t be shifted by other units. (IMO the worst status effect because it pretty much never wears off; your units get petrified for 99 turns! By then the battle is over, either with your units dead or the boss dead.)

This is why it’s good to bring along a Remedy character or two. I had Gatz (who has Sleep Guard, Adjacent and Panacea by J3) but Bonna comes to mind because her J1/2 teach skills that cure Petrification and Paralysis while she herself gets Petrification/Paralysis Ward, but again, there’s Palpa. Just hope she doesn’t get petrified…

I was lucky to not get petrified, but this was pretty bad, too. Everyone was a sitting duck while Sorman and Zan were off who-knows-where after getting Black Holed.

Thankfully after that, things are fairly smooth sailing.

 Now, onto the epilogue…

“What is happening?”

“What are we to do?”

“I do not understand.”

“This is no fault of your own. It is simply that I have chosen a brighter future. Forgive me.”

“Father…”

 A strange sound emanates from the Oxsecian ship.

“Sire, what have you done?”

 It was 6ZOO who set the Oxsecian Ship on its suicidal course.

He sought complete and utter destruction, even if it meant his own end. He desired nothing more and felt no attachment to life.

He was the perfect weapon, destruction incarnate. This was the mission assigned him by his king.

 But the king had realized the error of his ways.

“I have changed the ship’s course.”

“WH… WHERE TO?”

“Is there somewhere you wish to go?”

6ZOO does not answer. He has collapsed into a heap of inorganic material.

Animata is a massive technological life form. Humans, lizardfolk, beastfolk, stonefolk, and the children of the Oxsecians dwell within her. 

All of these are species created from DNA plundered by Animata in her travels. Each has a home world somewhere in the vast universe.

As anyone might do, they seek out their roots to discover their origins.

There’s something really poignant about that simple message, accompanied by that backdrop.

It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it? With this, part one of Terra Battle is finally, finally complete. Though this may be done, there’s still more left to do. I’ll be putting up the table of contents for part one, and from there on it’s just catching up to my story progress in-game.

Finally: that final boss theme tho, god bless Uematsu. Fantastic track, in a game with great music. I actually remember getting some chills when I played through 30-10.

[writinggeisha]

Writing:  How to Describe a Room I’ve noticed lately in the stats that people have been actively searching for “how to describe a room.” Even though I had done a writing prompt that called for using the description of a room, I never did go over the particulars of describing locations.  So for anybody looking for some specific answers, here are my thoughts on describing interior settings, for fiction and prose.

First and foremost, you got to ask yourself, what importance is the room or setting to the story or characters? If the room is only there for a brief passing scene, it may just suffice to say “so-and-so went into the broom closet.  It was dark, cramped, and loaded with brooms.” That may be all you need.

For more significant settings, where you really do want to paint the picture in the readers’ heads and firmly establish a sense of space or ambiance, then of course you’ll want to dig into more details.  The key issue here is that you don’t want to overdo it.  Unless you’re typing out an architectural report or something, there’s no real need for a reader to understand the full dimensions of the space, or what the composition of the walls are, or anything technical like that.  You will want to cover the overall impression of space, color, mood, atmosphere, furnishings, props, and anything else, as long as it’s distinctive, relevant, and contributes to the story or image in some way.

The objects in a room - furniture and stuff - may or may not factor into your scene.  If you say that people are in the living room, chances are that the reader will automatically populate the room with their own idea of what a living room will have:  likely a sofa, a TV, etc.  So there may not be a need to describe what furniture is in that room, especially if such furnishings are not going to be actively used.  On the other hand, if the characters are going to use something, it may be necessary to establish such things early in the scene, so the reader can understand that the given thing exists and the characters aren’t just making it materialize.  For example, if characters are in a room with a gun on the table, and one of the characters grabs the gun and uses it, it’ll help to explain right away that there is indeed a gun on the table.  Otherwise, it’ll sound like the gun just magically appeared on the table.  It may not be necessary for some things (grabbing a knife from the kitchen would be self-explanatory), but this kind of thing should be set up for everything else that isn’t so obvious.

You’ll also want to describe things if they’re not usually associated with a given place.  For example, in Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, some living rooms had expensive lawns in them, with actual soil and grass growing in the middle of the room.  It was important to describe them, because the characters used the indoor lawns, and even commented on them.  Later in the story, one of these lawns was ruined.  It serviced the story (plus, an average reader will not associate grass in a common living room).  For sci-fi and fantasy stories, where settings are imagined and re-imagined more vividly, more description may be necessary to paint a picture of a futuristic or otherworldly setting in the readers’ heads.

Another thing to consider will be what the items of a room, or its decor and layout, says about the characters.  If the room is messy, you can conclude that the character is disorganized, and thus you find another way to show a character trait.  Or, if the room has expensive art, you can infer that a character has refined tastes (or maybe he just pretends to).  The possibilities on this level are limitless; if a detail is relevant to a character, you will want to capitalize on it.

In the end, however, all of this will depend on your own personal writing style.  Different writers will write settings in different ways.  Wordy writers like Stephen King or JRR Tolkein could spend pages and pages talking about the stuff in their rooms; James Patterson never seems to describe any of his settings, especially if they’re common places.  Really, the best advice I could give is to simply approach the scene naturally, and write out the first things that come to mind.  If nothing comes to mind, just proceed with the scene in the given setting with sparse details; chances are that you don’t need details anyway.  If you’re compelled to say more about the setting, then try indulging in such details as your imagination allows, and see what comes out.  It should be a natural occurrence; if you’re stuck on describing a place, it might be best to just skip ahead, write the next scene, and go back in the rewriting session to see if you really need to add anything more.

And when it comes to your own writing style, there is no set way to describe a place.  It’s not like you go through a room step-by-step to introduce the walls, floors, furnishings, etc to a reader.  If anything, this will come off as dry, long, and uninteresting.  If you have to explain every little thing about a room, it would be better to break up the exposition with action or dialogue; you have to keep the story moving, and lingering on interior design may stall plot progression.   You also don’t want to make the language describing the room overly dry or overly flowery; just use your natural narration.  

In summary…

Do:

Keep it simple.

Talk about colors, patterns, decor, and unique architectural details, if they’re relevant.

Talk about furnishings and props, especially if characters use them.

Talk about anything in the room if it reveals something about the characters within.

Talk about space.

Talk about unique details that readers may not usually associate with a given place (especially for sci-fi and fantasy works, where the settings are purposefully different anyway).

Describe it naturally with your own personal writing style and sensibilities.

Don’t:

Get technical or overly-explicit.

Divulge in unnecessary details.

Tell about room’s atmosphere or impression; show it instead.

Overthink or overdo things.

Dump details in one long paragraph.

Describe things in a dull, dry, choppy, or uninteresting manner; use your natural narrative voice.

Describe things that the reader will already assume for a given place, especially if such things don’t contribute to the story.

For some examples, here are some excerpts from my own projects, with varying levels of description (not to mention varying levels of skill and nuance).  I think you’ll find that I’m very light in details, and just give just enough to keep things flowing.  Chances are that I may break my own rules above (I’ve always been pretty bad at “showing not telling”), because it’s as much of a learning process for me as it is for everybody else.

From Rider of the White Horse, Chapter 25

I wrote this story as far back as high school; I’ve always felt this was a very amateurish story with a weak writing style, but it’s serviceable and got the job done.  The description here is pretty bland, doesn’t say much, and quite understated.

Kurt walked towards the old man, and he followed him through the ruins of Tokyo to a squat abandoned building a quarter of a mile away.  There, the old man led Kurt into a relatively clean room with cupboards, a single mattress on the floor, and a low table.   The old man lit a candle that was on the table with a makeshift lighter.  The candle illuminated the room, revealing the old man’s face to Kurt.

The old man went to the corner of the room, where a tub of water sat idle.  Kurt noticed that the man rigged a purification system over the tub, allowing him access to relatively clean water.   The man took some water and some leaves he had stored in a cupboard.   Then he prepared two cups of tea, working diligently with trembling old hands.  Kurt sat at the low table and watched as the old man prepared the tea, observing the man’s technique as he mixed ingredients and stirred them in wooden cups.

From Perfectly Inhuman, Chapter 3

This is one of my most recent works.  I did take the time to describe this area in bigger detail, to give the reader a lavish and futuristic picture.  It reflects on the power and wealth of the Mayor and his government.  Hopefully, you’ll get the impression of wide-open spaces, luxury, and cleanliness.

At the topmost floor, the city became a mere map beneath Mary.  The doors opened, and the guards pushed her out.

She found herself in a large lobby.   The floors were made of colored tiles arranged in jagged patterns, and the walls were made of glass, revealing additional views of the city and the mountains to the east.  A frosted glass partition separated the lobby from a private office.  Silk banners hung from the ceiling.   Polished stone pedestals held golden and silver statues portraying nude men and women.  Everything in the room was rich and lavish; Mary found herself awed, and envious that she never had a place so luxurious.

The guards guided her through a set of glass doors in the frosted glass partition, and they passed into a wide open office space.  The office looked much like the lobby, only instead of statues and banners there were holograms and display screens.   Contrasting with the bright floors and the bright exterior view, there was a black desk on one end of the room, made of a rare dark organic wood.

From Ouroboros:  Demon-Blood, Chapter 11

This is one story I’ve worked with on and off; I’ve been a little wordier with this series of stories than with most others, to try and immerse the audience in a more detailed fantasy world.  Hopefully, you’ll get the feeling of seeing something different and fantastic (and possibly wicked) with this segment.  Note that the term Svartálfar comes from ancient Norse myth, referring to a race of Dark Elves.

In the middle of the woods, the Svartálfar had constructed a large settlement.  It was surrounded by a thick wooden wall, studded with huge wooden thorns and metal spikes.   The area around the wall was cleared of all vegetation, so that it could not be scaled with nearby trees.  There were trees on the other side of the wall, which had platforms and turrets for guards to stand watch on.  The settlement’s gate was a thick wooden door with iron supports; it swung open for us as we approached.

Inside the settlement, the Svartálfar used most of the trees as buildings; they were all hollowed-out to serve as homes, stairwells, storage, and stores.  They also had small wooden shacks and huts in between the trees.  Some buildings were also constructed on the sides of trees and on their branches.  There were scores of elves bustling around, trading with their craftsmen, mentoring their children, and practicing with their weapons.  When I entered the town, they all stopped to gawk at me; I met their gazes with my own look of contempt.

In the middle of the settlement, there was a larger tree, surrounded by a wooden wall with turrets all along it and a single gateway.  I was led through the gate toward the base of the tree, which had an expansive hall jutting out of its bark.  Passing into the hall, I stepped across a polished stone floor; the hall’s curved walls were ornately carved with elfin runes and mosaics.  Twisted pillars held up the ceiling.  At the end of the hall was the throne of the Svartálfar king, Lord Hygric.  It was a large throne ordained with pieces of gold, silver, gems, and there were skulls hanging above it.