#But keep doing stuff with them like try level them up and get high lvl gags

[cathalbravecog]

Really should be sleeping but I really just have to share that Archie my dearest finally got to Misty... At last they can see their bestie

(Their real objective is the destruction of Barnacle Bessie, the only being in existence that Archie feels negatively towards)

[medicinemane]

Talking about Vampire Survivors and Holocure again, which means another mile long rant about how the former is a good game, but I prefer the latter in every way

Been playing more Vampire Survivors (I will say it's by far one of the best games you can get on your phone, and I've mostly been in bed the past few days, so a phone game is needed)

The more I play it, the more I prefer Holocure

This isn't meant as a dig at it, just there's so many design choices I prefer there, though of course they have the advantage of coming second. You hope the game that's iterating is better than the original in at least some ways

Anyway, two big things I can think of that I prefer

For one thing, a lot of the time Vampire Survivors doesn't feel like a game, it feels like a management simulator. You pick your upgrades (often feeling like you're fighting the game to just get it to give you what you're trying to get), and then... you win or you lose based on gear alone

Like at a certain point you will just be swamped when you're playing with high curse, and you stomp or you die. It's very binary

Holocure is much more of an action game where no matter how I'm doing, it always feels like there's an out somewhere. You may not win, but it always feels like there's something you can do. It feels a lot more skill based, and it feels a lot more intense and engaging to me

Second thing is there's just kind of annoying ass choices, like I was just playing, had a good run, but then oh awesome, this ghost I don't have anything that can damage comes and just kind of kills me and there's not a lot I could do about it. What a big barrel of fun

I assume it's to keep you on your toes, but it's rare enough to be meaningless, and it's just annoying

Holocure instead (on higher difficulties) has these red lines that appear, and once they fill in, something flies at you or a bomb goes off, or whatever

It's a much more engaging way of not letting me just stand still if I'm stomping too hard. The harder levels, when you get to the end usually have a sequence where you'll just be dodging and weaving for like the last minute all while also dealing with enemies

Holocure is a game where I pretty much always go either "that was my fault, I got greedy", or "well this level is just super hard in a really fun way"

Vampire Survivors I often die and I'm just like "this game is so stupid, it sucks", even though it really is actually a good game (in spite of everything I say I recommend it, it's free on your phone, I just recommend Holocure more)

Also there's so much to unlock in Vampire Survivors that adds new little bits... and it just feels like busy work. I'd rather get achievements in Holocure even though most of them do nothing, cause they're actually fun for me. Like I really liked doing the challenge of beating a level without moving, that was so much fun, where as getting lvl 80 with most characters to unlock a card just... isn't

Then there's also the fact that in Vampire Survivors... you unlock this one set of things... you just have to go for it every time cause it's how you beat death at the end. Like you just... either pick up the extra 36 levels you need and the two weapons you need or... you lose. Once I did it with just the offensive weapon, but it was a fluke. Also if you have that stuff, you just win

Like I said, it's very binary

Then, so I beat this boss. Not gonna say final boss, but they take away the items you need to be invincible, make you play the stage normally, and then you fight a much more advanced boss at the end

I was bored fighting them, like I really was. I had a good healing weapon, so I wasn't dying... so I just kind of mostly dodged their attacks and healed up when I didn't... and then eventual I won and was like... cool... another thing checked off the list

Playing the current last stage of Holocure is just a ride start to finish, and the boss had me focusing so hard. I mean even the boss of Hard Mode stage 1 tends to be a tough and fun fight for me if I've been greedy (I'm always greedy). Only reason the earlier bosses aren't as intense is... I'm too good for them. I mean the stage 1 boss is straight up demoted to a mini boss in hard mode. Still enjoy fighting them though, it's just it's fun and relaxing instead of taking all my focus

Just... Vampire Survivors is such a good game that has so many cool things about it, and it's so damn cheap on steam, it's DLC is super cheap, it's free on the phone. I recommend it and say it's well worth the money

But every time I'm like... damn... Holocure wouldn't do me dirty like this, I'd be having so much more fun playing Holocure (but it's not on my phone, that's a hands down win for Vampire Survivors)

It's a really good game, Holocure just made a lot of really good choices that make it better in almost every way in my opinion. Even the stuff Vampire Survivors clearly wins at like exploration and secrets... don't really add anything for me, even though I like that stuff. Hell you even get a power up that takes all the passives you can find on the ground all over the map, and moves them next to you... I assume cause they realized it's kind of just busy work going and picking them up

What a good game... that I just always use to praise how much better Holocure is

I always sound like I hate it cause I criticize it non stop, but it's actually that I like, and just like Holocure even more because I'm like "look at the brilliance of all these choices" again and again

[celestialmango]

Unwilling prey, homebrew humanoid mimic pred, fear play, soft vore, safe vore, fatal implied (for your party), reader insert, DnD type setting

🥭🍡🥭🍡🥭🍡🥭🍡🥭🍡🥭🍡🥭🍡🥭

Your heart pounds in your chest and you're gasping for breath as you lean against the cave wall and collapse, breathing hard you can help but think how stupid you were to agree to follow your group members as they wandered off from the main group and from the designated trail to explore, you're lvl ones, it's bad enough you guys got literally sucked into the campaign you were playing, DM included, then they wanted to split the party, but they wouldn't listen to you when you expressed how bad of an idea it was to explore an unknown dungeon if you split the party. Unlucky for you that had them decide that nobody was gonna pair up with you and now you're in this mess.

You had bumped into one of the DM's homebrew monster races a fucking humanoid mimic based on your DM's idea of "ok how about a mimic but this type of mimic is sexy and can be born from other races though still be full mimic but they at first they look completely normal and can shapeshift only the lower half of their body and ears with only minor changes to the appearance of their torso like if they try to turn into a fully scaled mer they're successful with their ears and tail but only get a few scales on their face and chest, and like, they take the abilities of the creatures they turn into and they can be any alignment"

And then your remember what else your dm said "I'm going to use them in vore campaign as a pred" a predator species, this is the vore campaign, what the fuck do you do now?

Your palm covers your mouth as you inhale sharply, your DM still controls certain aspects, you still have to role against the DM though they're trapped with the villain of the campaign they can still tell you when to roll and you can still tell them your role with some form of dice telepathy you don't really understand.

when the party split the DM made you make stealth checks when you entered the dungeon, you failed and as a bard the DM had you playing music which you asked if you were at least going to play well, you rolled a Nat 20 for that, and the DM told you if you lost the dice and didn't roll when you needed to you may end up screwed. the mimic ate yours. How? Well.

----

You failed a perception check and sat on the random chest you found, you heard and voice tell you it sounded nice, you react by immediately jumping off it as it opens your dice bag fell to the ground with one of the mimic's hand snatching it off the ground, their crossed arms resting on the rim of the chest and propping their chin up with a mischievous grin on their face they address you," oy, why ya stop playin?" Failing to get a response out of your stunned form they push themselves up before they toss the bag in the air a few times, they dangle the bag in front of them " ya need this aye?" You nod feeling tense, the mimic grins, opens their mouth and tossing your dice bag in their gaping maw before snapping it shut as you stare in horror at the disappearing bulge of your dice as the mimic swallows them.

"Phooo,how bout ya come n get em? Go on n reach in." they place their elbows on the rim of the chest and prop their head up their maw gaping open once more while they look at you deviously, you turn tail and run.

---

You grimace, if you don't get those dice back then...., taking a deep breath you turn around and walk back into the room, they're still waiting and grinning at you while you approach, "change ya mind?" They open their mouth again, you kneel and slowly shove your hand down their throat,their throat is relaxed, it feels like you're shoving your arm into a slimy tube lined with balloons, you reach in all the way to your shoulder you should have reached the dice by now, it's then you remember what else your DM said

"they'll have like six stomachs, and like four are bigger on the inside, 2 are not connected and are just filled with treasure n shit then there's and with the other four only 2 are digestive and the digestive ones are connected to each other and vise versa with the non-digestive ones, the top ones are stretchy and durable enough to hold a god damn chimera without much trouble but their stomach would look about half the size of what they ate because bigger on the inside and the bottom ones are like hammer space, once something is in you wouldn't even see a bulge, the friendly acting ones like to trick their targets into feeding themselves to them, only-"shit, oh fuck.

Your face goes pale and your eyes widen , you jerk your arm out to your elbow before the mimic's throat captures it in a vice grip, they grab your other arm and shove it in too gulping thickly you're pulled back in up to your shoulders, you stare at their face in terror, their eyes tell you all you need to know, they're going to eat you, there's no escape.

They grab the back of your head and shove your face into their salivating maw swallowing harshly, you're cries are muffled by the slick flesh pressed against your face, they grab your belt and pull , a sharp gulp forcing you in up to your hips, the mimic shifts their shape as they heft your kicking legs in the air giving themselves legs as they stand lifting themselves up and grasping your kicking legs in the air, they swallow and as your thighs pass their lips your hands push through a ring of flesh. Squish tight by thick muscles pulling you down you try to think of anything that might help you in this moment, a few more swallow your head enters the chamber.

Shit you can't think of anything, it's only a few more rounds before you're forced to curl up inside their gut, from the outside it looks as if they had swallowed a beach ball,you feel something hard under you and you grasp it, pulling it out from under you, you discover your dice bag, you roll to while you attempt an escape, you don't meet the DC, the only thing that escapes is air as the mimic let's out a belch loud enough to echo for several seconds.

They slap their hand on their stomach,"Ur-up, oy now, ya don really think tha would work did ya? Once I swallow something it ain't comin out easy, feel free ta keep tryin tho, ya squirmin feels great." Shit, you roll to persuade them to let you go as you struggle, kicking and pushing at their stomach wall, you tell them you didn't come in here alone, that your party will no doubt come investigate where that echo came from.

You fail once more,you can't see the wild and vicious looking grin that forms on their face, "a meal an a fight, sounds great ta me"shhiiiiit they're one of those types, you feel them move around a bit, you try to remember the last thing your dm said about the humanoid mimic's race, only, only what? "Only thing that can save you at that point is making it appealing to keep you alive as one of their many items they swallow, like give them something no one else can do" something no one else can do, the homebrew spells you chosen.

'what if I told you I had the ability to summon food and drink?' you feel them stop "I'd say ya were bullshitin me." 'but what if I can prove it?' You feel a hand slam down on your back and wince "then prove it, how bout ya summon me a beer?" 'i will need you to press a waterskin against your stomach.' "oh?" 'it's not a long range spell,' you feel them press something again their stomach and cast the spell hoping it will work through flesh, the mimic looks at the waterskin sceptically as it fills, they uncork it and lift the spout to their nose, they take a sniff and don't find anything off about the liquid so they take a swig, then proceed to down it.

You tense hearing them gulp and get ready to become drenched in alcohol...but it never happens,no drink comes raining down on you, you're confused they said a meal and a fight, you, weren't you the meal? What's going on?

"Ah, tha's some good stuff." They pat their gut, "was jus gonna take ya in for yur bounty but now I changed ma mind-" 'I have a bounty?' You interrupt, the mimic scoffs "wha ya didn know?" 'no, why do I have a bounty on me?' "oh yur serious, ya know tha group uh nobles ya pranked a tha had ya run out uh towns a while back?" 'oh them......I regret nothing...but wait, you said a fight and a meal after I told you about my party, what did you mean by that?' you ask apprehensive, "what ya think I meant?"

Oh, oh no, you shift uneasy, 'you're planning to fight and eat my companions aren't you?' "maybe I am,wha ya gonna do bout it." ....well the DM did say that it appears even if you end up dying here you can always roll-up a new character and come back as long as someone from the original group is still alive but you won't remember how you died.

'I'm in your magic damage resistant stomach, I don't think there's anything I can do except offer to summon food so you won't eat them.' they pat their bulging gut, "nice try but I ain't a bout ta give up on a fight an a squirmin meal, as fur wha I'm gonna do with ya now" you hear a groan beneath you and their gut clenches pressing down on you as you begin to slip through to the stomach connect to this one you hear them say "can na have ya givin me way, so I'll have ta swallow ya deeper."

You take a small plummet before landing in something soft and wet, you quickly cast dancing lights, you see you landed in a bunch of fabrics and other soft items, you think you see a few pillows and you have a bit more room despite being shoulder deep in fabrics and pillows, the sphincter above you looks twice your size now, damn you think, they really are bigger on the inside.

You sigh feeling a bit bad knowing you accidentally sent what is most likely a very high level mimic after your party, but hey, you did warn them splitting the party was a bad idea, you can't hear much now except the groans of their organs around you, knowing your not actually in any danger now you lift your arm out of the fabric and slam a fist against one of the fleshy walls surrounding you in frustration, their stomach jostles and you clap your hands over your ears at sound of their booming laugh "still got sum fight in ya ey? An after I made ya all nice n comfy, gave ya my bes room, could a put ya with all the gol n weapons after all." They joke, and you sigh again and rub their gut wall, "tha's better. I'm gonna enjoy having ya round,"

That sounds like they're still not going to let you go....fuck maybe you shouldn't have let them know you could be a source of free food and booze, on the other hand the nobles probably would have did you in for the embarrassment you caused them, guess you're stuck with a mimic bounty hunter, by the time they get here again from the starting point you're sure the mimic will be long gone and they won't be able to find you.

[alexicoin]

2 sacred shards fast on Raid Shadow Legends

There are many Raid offers. I did the one on RevU via Freecash, 2 sacred shards in 30 days for 58k coins ($58). It can be done in about a week. It can take longer if you mess up or get sidetracked. There's also many guides but I'm trying to keep this one straightforward. ---

The most efficient way to get 2 sacreds is brutal 3 star, meaning beat campaign on hard and brutal with 2 champions or less without dying.

Pick Kael as your starter and focus on building him up. Lvl 16 lifesteal, rank 6/level 60, fully ascended, all skills, and complete his masteries when you get the 800 gems. Don't spend gems on anything till you get masteries.

You can get the lifesteal from new player login rewards. You need 4 pieces of lifesteal for it to work (pay attention to how many artifacts are needed to complete a set).

Some people said he can beat brutal at rank 5, depends on your 2nd champion I think, which speaking of, once Kael is beefed out he can solo some stuff but he needs a 2nd support champion for some levels, particularly 11-7.

Put your support in shield artifacts!! (Found in fire knight dungeon.) This will make the difference.

You might find a better support champion sooner, but what worked for me is I got Aleksandr (he was free from new player rewards) who had really high HP and I'd already levelled him a lot. I put 4 pieces of Shield on him and I went with speed for the other 2 bc that's the best I had for HP.

---

Ranking is a pain because you have to make "food" champions, in other words level & rank up other champions to sacrifice in order to rank up your main one. (example, ranking up to 4 requires 3 rank 3s, ranking up to 5 takes 4 rank 4s, etc).

Ascension just takes potions. Potions dungeons are all open when you're new, then close after a few days but alternately reopen so you need to pay attention to that. The books are for skills and you can get them from quests and events.

Promo codes (google them), daily logins and daily quests give you a bunch of stuff. Clan quests help with energy too (by buying it with clan currency) and some of them are already what you're doing like upgrading artifacts.

Avoid "missions" (next to quests at bottom). You'll get some of them just playing the campaign, but some people try to get the sacred shard there and that's a BAD decision. They're progressively more impossible and a colossal waste of resources. The final one is a fusion summon requiring 4 specific rare champions. Just focus on Kael and his support and you'll have your 2 sacred shards in no time. ---

Pay attention to the wording on your offer and as always remember to screenshot, in this case I screenshotted the shards before and during opening lol. I was paranoid after all that grinding. But RevU credited me within a few minutes.

[villains4hire]

Eva Rainsong.

Eva Rainsong, independent OC based on the popular TTRPG Dungeons and Dragons. Reworked Quickling race into to something I enjoy more. Disclaimers: 1. If it isn’t completely compliant to 5e as I do rework classes or other things, don’t be surprised I suppose. I homebrew a lot of stuff for my group that we all use in a high fantasy setting, along with using griffinsaddle bag items. It will be highly 5e-esque because I’ve recently converted to the handbook for the sake of teaching people I play with the game much easier. So expect more of a mix of quarter 3.5 and then mostly 5e, along with the flavor of powers inspired off how the guide encourages spells to be done such as magic missiles being chickens instead as a spell, but translated to fighter powers as well or fae related things. As she will have artifacts and of the like depending on her level, so expect the more powerful of her items listed to be the farther level she is. I will try to keep things mostly to canon or close to canon/official sources in that regards, but beware if things look odd, it’s mostly from a homebrew ruling that I’ve decided with my friends on how we do DnD 5e to keep it rewarding but also deadly still.

2. I will do this character in tiers which will be kinda meta but if you plan on doing anything to her against her to hurt her or oppose her, it’s kinda needed. Along with making her a more flexible character. They will be labeled lvl 5, lvl 10. lvl 15. lvl 20 or ‘epic lvl’ which goes beyond lvl 20. This would be if you want her to be able to fight major gods without getting trashed or at least have a chance, though minor gods, arch fiends, or even gods can be doable in a group/specific questline or plotline we make together or even solo vs Eva if you want that to be a thing as a lvl 20 character could be considered a demigod/god in terms of scaling of that point. Major Gods like Tiamat levels and so forth would need a group however. If you need more details on power scaling to your specific universe and what she’d be at in terms of each level scaling. Then feel free to DM me and ask me if you plan on doing some kind of adventure or fight with her.

3. Tag ‘eva being nasty’ as Eva being a demented evil fae, bc I will have cursed humor that I would never actually be into rping for smut or want to pursue. She mostly does this kind of stuff to say or make people go ‘wtf’, but it will include mostly censors and implications of ‘guro’ or ‘gorefucking her dick’ etc. Traditional Fae for how I do things are pretty fucked up, if anything, the things I say or have her do will be pretty tame compared to that, but a warning is still needed.

4. Eva Rainsong will have multiple timeline iterations mostly for the sake of her either permanently dying to your character, or interacting with them before or after meeting your character with their main timeline. Main timeline Eva I will not be killing as in DnD, the multiverse is canon along with countless iterations and taking inspiration that there are countless DnD worlds that have been made.

5. I will be giving a much more descriptive bios than normal so bare with me. Expect her to have full Quickling racials, but I fully expect other characters of even ‘mechanically’ weaker races than a Quickling to keep up with her if they’re on the same scaling for the rp. Mechanical enemies and mechanics does not = lore strength.

Species Faceclaim below: most Quicklings, including mine look similar to the picture below, usually blue-skinned, long thick ears, long hair, yellow-eyes, slit pupils. Clawed hands, clawed feet. Then are around 4′0 to 5′1 at max.

My specific Quickling faceclaim:

Do I want them to die: They can very much lose or even die as they will return to the fae realm upon death, even if a creature is capable of soul-stealing and of the line due to how fae work similar to other extra-planar creatures. Then even dying in the fae realm to die permanently is fine, but that won’t be considered main timeline Eva. You could even have that person meet main timeline Eva if you want, but we’ll discuss how it plays out. As I won’t be killing main timeline Eva and any alternate timeline will just be called ‘au’. Will I have/get icons: I have around 260 or so. Tag: (maintag), flash of blue. (lvl tags) lvl 5, lvl 10, lvl 15, lvl 20, epic lvl. Age: Centuries to Eons based on her lvl. She is an adult in every verse/stage of development. Sex: AMAB Gender: She would be considered a trans woman in other  cultures, but as a fae, she is merely considered a woman among her kind  as she’s not human and fem identifying primarily, though is fine with she/him as well. As for other identifications,  she is very much fine with (after asking me ooc) with terms that vary  but not limited to: Male Wife, Girl Husband and so on. Her relation to  gender is much less humanized along with viewpoints. Race: Quickling. Sexuality: A hole’s a hole. Personality traits: Greedy. Likes rain and water. Likes to chew on bones, people, flesh. Tends to weed out and goes for weaknesses out of her own glee. Extremely Brutal. A Glutton. Selfish. Wrathful. Sadistic, Masochistic. Pretty horny at times, but it depends who it is and only if the mun in question is fine with it/requests it. Can be kind of stalkerish at times when looking for entertainment to play pranks or to eat someone. She is a bitch, grumpy, prone to more outbursts. Eats people pretty indiscriminately, doesn’t matter who they are. If she doesn’t like them, she will probably kill them or eat their ankles and just stalk them over time to kill them. Quicklings are extremely spiteful and vengeful if spited enough. Likes to steal, likes to play tricks. Likes to mess with people using her Quickling invisibility and supernatural speed. Can be sweet if you manage to gain her affections or listen to you. Hyper. Hates a lot of people depending on the usually benign reason. Slightly tsundere. Has a bit of humor in a spiteful or playful way. Stabby. Bitey. Likes to be spoiled. If she likes you, she will force herself into your lap to sit. Destructive. Doesn’t think of the consequences a lot. Can be fun. Can go too far even with her loved ones sometimes. Reckless. Tends to self-sabotage her own relationships on accident at times with her alien perception if friends with non-fae. Can be surprisingly loyal to the point of self-destruction though this is rare with most individuals, as they need to really earn it with her. Can be pretty cursed at times if she just wants to fuck with you or make you uncomfortable/weirded out by her. Feral. Can be extremely manipulative, tricky or unpredictable if she doesn’t like you, she may even pretend to be your friend to later betray you potentially if you piss her off unknowingly enough. (I’ll handle her based on peoples’ comforts and such of course, but yeah) Mental traits: Has an alien mindset and viewpoint to certain topics and things. Physical traits: 4′3. Yellow eyes, black slits. Black hair with blue glowing ends that goes down to only her waist. Thick-bodied, has a fairly decent breast-size. Thick, long ears that twitch or even change direction in her mood, they tend to flick back when fighting. Has two rows of sharp, retractable teeth. Has maws of teeth in her throat that are retractable and she can chew with it independently of her mouth. Has a tongue that is quadruple her height that has retractable spikes, this is used when scooping out the organs of people she leads into a false-sense of security. It is akin to an ant eater but biting a hole in someone and using supernatural speed to quickly scoop out their organs or flesh.  Retractable claws on her hands and feet. Tends to meep akin to a chinchilla making a noise when being affectionate toward people she genuinely likes. May spit or chirp akin to a chinchilla as well as a warning to not be touched with people she likes, as people she dislikes will immediately be missing a hand.

Powers: statline and skills, racial powers, items, then classes and feats. Keep in mind that this is scaled down significantly the lower lvl she is for her tagline. This is to give a good idea of what she’s capable of and to be able to scale her down.

Statline:

HP: 240ish at max level or in epic levels. (Average for Fighters is around 170 to 240ish, especially if toughness is taken)

Strength: 20, Belt of the Storm Giant (29 strength) when wearing it at higher lvls.

Dexterity: 16.

Constitution 20.

Intelligence 14.

Wisdom 10.

Charisma 8.

Skills:

Athletics. Acrobatics. Survival. Perception. (Fighter Class and Background)

Intimidation. (Barbarian multiclass)

Saving Throws:

Strength.

Constitution.

Intelligence (Resilience Feat) 

Movement:

110 ft in six seconds or 220 if dashing. (That’s the standard combat time it takes each round.

Languages:

Common, Infernal, Aklo, Sylvan.

Racial Powers:

Standard Stats:

Despite being a Quickling, as while her intelligence is fairly good and dexterity is as well, her recklessness and unusually clumsy dexterity for Quickling standards leaves her a bit standoutish from the rest. Along with her supernatural strength and endurance that she’s honed instead to compensate. Though she is able to to somewhat overcome this further down her life at least for being clumsy to a more acceptable level after training with a few magical manuals.

Quickling Cunning, she is able to burst twice her speed in a dash to get closer, run away or can hide fairly easily.

Attacks are extremely hard to hit her as she zips and blips seemingly out of existence from her blinding speed. And then is able to go invisible if standing still. Think the DC’s ‘Flash’ almost.

Her fae ancestry allows her weapons to be magical to overcome resistance or immunities that targets may have.

She is immune to fire and able to move through fire and lava due to this.

As a fae, they trance as part of their sleep, such as elves who have a direct ancestry link to this. Resistance to being charmed and immune to sleep magic.

Dark vision of 60 ft. She can see in shades of grey and white in absolute darkness.

Fae-Born: on death, she returns to the plane of the Fae rather than being killed outright, akin to a devil or fiend, as the same rules canonically apply to the fae. She must be killed on the plane of the Fae to completely die. Her items as with demons, also go with her unless she drops them/their snatched out of her hands or removed from her somehow.

Innate Spellcasting:

at will, dancing lights, fire bolt, minor illusion.

Three times per day, burning hands as a spell.

One time a day for each, levitate, shatter as a spell.

Items: (Keep in mind the more insane things such as the ‘Belt of Storm Giant Strength’ or anything like that in terms of legendary rarity is kept to lvl 15 and above.

Main Equipment: For her armor, it is either none before lvl 10 or Mithril Full-Plate, because it is near weightless and more befitting of a Quickling as they tend to like things that don’t weigh much or wear nothing at all in terms of armor. A magic +3 shortsword with a radiant enchantment on it to deal with fiends and demons. A magic +3 shortword with a necrotic enchantment on it to deal with living beings and celestials. Then a magic +3 greatsword of dragonslaying as a situational weapon. A few magic daggers of returning for utility. (They return on throwing them). A few backup shortswords that are +1 and +2. A bag of holding. A backpack. Trapper’s tools. Butcher’s Kit. Mess Kit. Rations.

Minor Magic Equipment: A ring of enlargement, mostly to be able to wield two-handed weapons due to their short stature and build as while even strong, it is an unbalanced wielding when small-sized. And also to be able to carry, push, lift or grab to make use of her full strength or the strength of the giant’s belt with a better size. Though it does not effect the weight of her blows otherwise due to supernatural, trained strength. A ring of slowfall, as to avoid being killed through great heights or teleportation. Potions of flying if dealing with flying enemies, mostly for utility. A few potions of supreme healing, only three or four at the most. Then quite a few superior healing potions, around six to eight. Rope of Climbing.

Major Artifacts that require attunement: Belt of the Storm Giant’s Strength. A Mantle of Spell Resistance. (Both self-explanatory) Then a Blood Fury Tattoo. It has ten charges per day, it allows the user to inflict great necrotic harm on top of any of their attacks and healing from that specific necrotic damage, along with giving lightning-esque reflexes to deliver blows back as a reaction. Amulet of the Planes (This item is usually unattuned unless she dies, as her goal is to leave the fae realm as soon as possible). Magical List of Grudges: this magical list of grudges is seemingly near endless that reign from benign to the most twisted, sadistic, or even insane plots of revenge wants toward them. It seems to unfold near endlessly from the Eons of use... some even with plots to go into planes of existence for certain afterlifes.

Classes and Feats: this segment will be starting with barbarian since it is shorter, then fighter as that’s the most of where levels are going into.

Barbarian (2 levels put into after 1 into fighter, no subclass):

Fae’s Spiteful Rage: she gains immense resistance as her flesh hardens from her anger and spite. Slashing, bludgeoning and piercing physical attacks nearly bounce off her body when tapping into her rage.

Reckless Brutality: her attacks almost always hit in a flash of the flurry she does. They leave her hardened, supernatural body much more open to attack however, not that it bothers her much.

Supernatural Reflex: as part of being a Quickling, her supernatural reflex allows her to dodge out of the way of traps and spells much easier than most. However her senses in this regard can be interrupted when being blinded, deafened or incapacitated.

Fighter (17 levels put into after 2 levels of barbarian and 1 starting fighter level, subclass is my reworked Champion to be more Nemesis and Signature Fighting Style based):

Adrenaline Rush: her intensive training has allowed her to attack three times as quickly by tapping into her supernatural adrenaline for six seconds. This is only twice as quickly if below lvl 20. She needs a short break afterward in order to be able perform this legendary flurry of intense, deadly strikes.

Fae Endurance: tapping into her fae spirit, she may heal herself supernaturally slightly once per day.

Secondary Fighting Style: mariner, with intense training, Eva has adapted her honed athletics to be able to use supernatural speed with climbing and swimming, along with gaining an adaptive movement defense. She is only capable of using this with mithril armor or inferior forms of light armor, as it cannot be used with heavy, clunky armor.

Graceful Brutality: Eva’s strikes as a Quickling combined with her honed brutality and strength could be considered a new fighting style in itself, creating a deadly series of attacks using supernatural speed, deadly precision and accuracy, giving the ability to strike several times a second. She combines this brutal, precise fighting style with her ability to dual-wield masterfully to fully abuse its effects on any unfortunate victims of hers.

Fae Resilience: her innate resilience as a fae has been honed to a level not thought possible for someone so small when combined with her intensive constitution training. She can often shake off even the most devastating effects or attacks, but there is a limit of so many times per every eight hours that a body can physically handle.

Subclass Champion Variant:

Fueled by Spite: Eva’s critical deadliness is defined by her spite, utilizing the inner supernatural spirit and nature of her kind to a terrifying effect. Her attacks are much more pinpointed to weak-points she picks out when in combat or from stalking her opponents or repeatedly attempting to kill them... or those around them to get to them. This power seems bizarre in nature in functionality, as even foes trying to kill her don’t seem effected by this unless she herself develops a grudge toward them. Though it may at best be a temporary heat of the moment use of this Spite-Based power in combat as an imperfect grudge to gain access to these seeming supernatural fighting skills. It cannot compare to any poor soul that she develops a grudge toward for her own reasons... or twisted affections toward them.

Remarkable Grudge: Eva’s ability to perform skills against her enemies are remarkable in determination to see them miserable.

Signature Style: master of Dual-Wielding, being a master of ambidexterity and with intense training? Eva is able to near supernaturally strike several times more with her offhand compared to the average dual-wielder in a short amount of time, even when compared to her own kind.

Honed Spite: she’s somehow learned to wield this innate magical nature of Quicklings as a deadly weapon. Her strikes tend to be instinctively guided toward the weakpoints of other creatures to inflict as much pain or suffering as possible if she has a grudge toward them.

Reigning Contender: Eva is able to tap into her supernatural nature to have a mock form of troll-like regeneration so long as she’s not critically injured... then gains the ability to move toward her grudge-aligned target with a speed not thought possible of even a Quickling.

Trained Feats and Stats:

Trained Strength and Constitution: instead of dexterity, most of her training or magical manuals went into being intense strength and endurance training early on in her Fighter Career, or the use of magical manuals to become a supernatural fighter.

Trained Toughness: through near self-inflicted torture in the form of endurance training from taking repeated blows to every part of her body? She can endure an extreme amount of punishment comparable to even the bigger, magical races can endure as a fighter comparable to her caliber.

Dual Wielding Training: she may dual wield most weapons even if she prefers dual shortswords due to their grace and ease for critical strikes. She did this mostly to become better at dual wielding to develop her signature style, along with having an offensive defense. Then with being able to effectively draw her weapons in a blink of an eye when stowed away, mostly to seem unarmed at first if any aggressors get any wise ideas.

Combat Mobility Training: supernatural speed requires training to use in effective group combat, along with dodging or moving in a way before targets can effectively attack her or be aware she’s moved out of the way. This training has left her a little bit faster than normal, but only slightly.

Mind Training: to first grasp the spite within herself, Eva honed her mind into that of a steel cage to properly process, analyze and utilize her spite deep within her mind to control her subconscious hatred. 

Motivations: she’s mostly a mercenary, but kinda just fucks around metaphorically or literally. Just doing this for fun as a kind of thing as a chaotic evil character, as she can be with ‘good-aligned’ party members but she’s more or less the party’s bastard rather than against the party as their bastard. She has no real tragedy in her life other than her many petty grievance list of people she’s listed over the centuries and plans to either make them pay in the living world or whatever afterlife they had either through moderately harmless pranks, or extreme as death, torture or w/e is fitting for the grievance to her own twisted perception as a more evil leaning fae. Something trying to not be ridiculous in terms of edginess but overall something fun or funny as a concept, though pretty evil as well. She tends to be much more respectful toward non-mortal races or on the mortal plane, though is still playful and annoying. Backstory: Born as of one of the fae and a Quickling, Eva’s nature left her chaotic, but not exactly evil to start with in terms of alignment energy. While living a mostly good life when experiencing growth as a fae in her home realm, she yearned for travel and exploration but more importantly... more victims to play her pranks on or to prey on. It is with her love of pranks sometimes turning into fighting with others and then brutalizing her victims did she fully shift her alignment energy toward ‘evil’. Now she mostly is a mercenary, an adopted ‘fae’ into an organized group that can be reasoned or convinced with a proper moral compass for a time, or even develop friendship or of the like. Though her nature always remains the same as some of the more chaotic evil leaning Quicklings are, just with the ability form attachments and deep loyalties... though isn’t above lovingly tormenting her close friends or loved ones.

[entropic-introspection]

Final Fantasy XIV: A Quick(ish) Summary As Told By Someone Too Lazy To Recheck Exact Times/Things

1.0- We don't talk about it

A Realm Reborn (ARR)- for some strange reason the world got like, completely blown up 5 years ago, crazy! You are some dumb kid from nowhere in particular, with nothing but the clothes on your back and a weapon that is little more than a chunk of wood, or a book. Possibly just your fists. You have got 50 levels and a shitload of lore to get through until you reach the first expansion.

Essentially: you don't have enough money for chicken nuggets, your fashion game is nonexistent, and every high level player calls you a sprout and exhibits Concern about your every action (they mean well).

Garlemald bad, Ascians bad, Eorzea uhhh trying to be good but kinda racist/capitalist/pirates with a history of colonialism, Coerthas is French Catholic and in the Crusades with the dragons. Hydaelin... good? Confusing, for sure, often referred to as Mother in text. Primals bad and scary, but fortunately you are immune to their mind-fuckery techniques thanks to Crystal Mom and surprisingly good at kicking their asses. Garleans mad that you ""savages"" keep killing Primals, despite having a whole mandate against Primals and Primal summoning. Ascians mad that you keep killing Primals because Ascians are dicks. People die, there is an amnesia plot, some annoying twerp is annoyingly right about a lot of things and also you can't get rid of him, Moogles, possession, fucking Ancient Aliens Allagans (if it's a problem in ARR, it's Ascians or Allagans aight), and hey ho you go and kick Garlean asses until they throw a giant machine at you that they stuffed full of Primal juice. Such devastation-!

Then there is the slightly post ARR stuff, where we're still level 50-ish but not really into the next expansion. So basically, we meet Dragon Dad who slaps Crystal Mom's blessing off of you to build character, Ascians are once again dicks, Who The Hell Names These Things, wow Lysanderoth you're definitely not suspicious at all, and our annoying twerp is dabbling in politics and for some reason you're getting fond of him?? Just in time for...

Heavensward (Lvl 50-60)- Congratulations, you are now an enemy of the state! We return/flee to French Catholic Coerthas/Ishgard, where we get to room with our Dear Friend, Haurchefant.

Don't mind how all the high leveled players have started crying. This expansion is emotionally devastating, has a great storyline, and also features canonical consensual dragon vore as a plot point. You know that tweet that's all "Church bad because they won't let you fuck dragons"? Yes, that's Heavensward. You will still cry. We embark on an epic road trip with the annoying twerp (ft his existential teenage crisis), a famous dragon killer and sadboi, and a famous lady who advocates peace/fucking dragons. Somehow, none of you kill each other. Instead, you murder a weirdly attractive bug-man with good music and a desire for violence, a giant flying whale, and some old dudes. You also beat up the same Ascian from the first bit, again. And again, in his final(?) form. Dragon Dad has come along to watch your progress, and also check on his kids cause he's actually, y'know, the entire progenitor of the dragon race. Wow! His family is very sad, mostly. But he does like you, so hey, he can adopt you and have one kid that turned out ok and happy! Hahahahha there's no therapists in Eorzea :')

Then we get to deal with "Hey we ended your like 500 year+ Crusade and kind of upended your social structures, y'all good?" (no), something something Warriors of Darkness, something something Urianger sus, then ALISAIE JOINS THE PARTY. I love her ok, let me have this. She's the annoying twerp's twin, and she's more inclined to hitting things that politics and philosophy. She's also kind of crushing on you. Also Minfillia kinda fucks off to nowhere, which is weird, b/c she has been Important but also Not Involved with the plot for like. 8 years.

Stormblood (Lvl 60-70)- Return of Lysanderoth! Briefly. Before he fucks you over, again. And a bunch of other people, honestly. But hey, this puts Eorzea in open contention with Garlemald for the first time in years, instead of them hovering in an uneasy cold war. For the first goddamn time in the game, you canonically get your ass kicked. Hard. So hard you decide fuck it! And go overseas to Fantasy Japan/China to visit some nice people you helped out earlier. You get catfished. You meet a weeb. There's some pirates, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There's Ravana take 2, this time in a slightly more 'Forever 21' phase. Wild, young, free, REJOICE.

You attempt to inspire rebellion (since your character doesn't talk much, this is quite difficult). Garleans crack down, and hey look, the dude who kicked your ass is back! Prince Zenos Yae Galvus, as by this point you've hopefully learned, even if you're bad with names like me. He kicks your ass again, but this time we break his helmet, and wait shit is he... kind of hot? Maybe? Fuck?? He pins you to a wall and tells you to find him later, it's all confusing and prompts strange butterflies in stomachs. (Side note: as a lesbian, I am making some assumptions here. Mostly based off of how I reacted to the idea of Tsukuyomi doing the same. Mm.)

Then he promptly fucks off, and to work off that sexual tension you square up and work with local friends on Rebellion! You get help from some neighboring nomads after proving you're cool enough to tame a bird, and this proves enough to free the area from Garlean control (for now). We go back to Eorzea, and prepare to kick Zenos' head in. He's playing hard to get though, so we gotta get through some other folks, learn hard lessons about war/colonization, and feel bad. AND THEN WE KICK HIS- oh no wait. Is he... coming on to us again? Oh jesus man, get a therapist, oh my god, this is awkward for us both. Turns out he's kinda depressed and just wants you. To fight him. To the death. There is some bullshittery and he becomes dragon. Fails to kill you, so he kills himself. (Spoiler: it doesn't stick)

The Garlean Empire is now pissed off at you, and Eorzea in general. Everyone is kung-fu fighting, but oops, Garlemald is preparing to commit ~war crimes~! Someone is doing something weird, which is making your Scion friends fall into comas, which is both very convenient and highly inconvenient, cause all of you are kinda needed right now! Zenos, or something in his body, is causing trouble as well. Look, even when we thought he was dead he was causing trouble.

Shadowbringers (Lvl 70-80): We find out what's been making our friends pass out- someone from another dimension has been trying to yoink you over to them, and like all attempts at using the Rescue spell, it just sometimes leads to hilarious accidents. In this case, some epic lag, so although your friends have only been out of it for a week or two at most, they've been in this other world for 5 whole years in some cases. Turns out, Garlean war crimes are all an Ascian plot (what isn't, by this point), and mysterious Crystal Exarch is hoping you can save this world and your own.

At this point, Yoshi P, the lead developer, pulls out a gun and asks if you've been doing all those side-quests and optional 48 man raids. He worked very hard on those, you know. He put in lots of lore. Then he asks if you remember all those dangling plot hooks from previous expansions. We're addressing a lot of those. And adding more. You are sweating and nodding frantically while scrolling a wiki on your phone.

You get to feel like you're in an Otome game, because there's two dudes being weirdly polite and interested in you, but also real snappish to each other in terms of "fuck off she's mine". Alisaie and Alphinaud off-screen character development. Urianger still sus. Thancred now a dad? Y'shtola still so good. A lot of things happen, and you get progressively sadder as the expansion goes on. You get a nice, great big burst of hope and love, and then SOMEONE is a DICK with a GUN. (It is not Yoshi P.)

Now you just feel bad. Your character feels bad. This is all build up for the A) some motherfucking revelations and B) the utter catharsis of "If you could take one more step... would you?" "What, all by myself?" "THROW WIDE THE GATE"

I have shed legitimate tears over Shadowbringers ok, between the music, story, and pacing it is an Experience. Oh my god tho, all the music from Shadowbringers is so good. La-HEE

[carnival-phantasm]

How do u get strong team in arknights? From wat ive seen online, a specific meta operator/squad isnt necessary but im struggling with the chapter 2 quests regardless :c any advice to give to a noob Doctor please?

Most important things I can think of for begginers:

Don’t get too obsessed with tier lists or try to use high rarity operators in every map. Tier lists always have flaws and many high rarity operators only truly shine when you promote them twice, which costs as much as giving you an army of maxed 2 and 3-stars operators.

Following that, don’t underestimate low-rarity Operators. They are much cheaper to raise (including skill levels) and deploy, some 3-stars like Kroos and Melantha remain useful even in late game. Although far from perfect, this guide gives you a good idea of the strongest ones, if you are having trouble. 

Keep things simple in the early game: Defenders hold the enemy and tank physical damage, single-target Snipers on the back do physical damage from a safe distance (and they focus drones when needed), single-target Casters (don’t forget your daughter Amiya) to kill armored/shielded enemies, Vanguards with DP-recovery skills like Fang and Courier usually placed first and on the back, near the blue square thingie. Medics on the back healing everyone from safe positions. Later into the game when you have your favorites or stronger units, you can do fancier stuff.

Remember how many enemies each of your units/archetypes can block so you don’t mess up. For example, Vanguards with DP-recovery skills usually block 2 while the ones that recover DP on kill block only 1. 

Remember there is physical damage, which is reduced by the enemy’s defense as a flat amount, and arts/magical damage, which is reduced by the enemy’s RES as a percentage. Enemy casters usually have low def and high res, while huge and/or armored enemies are the opposite and require Arts damage..

When you raise skill levels, you’ll notice that when they get to lvl 4 and 7 there’s usually a bigger improvement. Getting a skill from lvl 3 to 4 can make more of a difference than you imagine.

[windblooms]

Hi I'm back bc I lost your blog for a while and couldn't find you again but this is Diluc won't come home anon. I looked through your recent posts and I think tumblr might have eaten my followup ask you you but things changed anyway. Diluc still refuses to come home >:( like what? But I have a few questions and I apologize in advance bc this will take several asks. 1 My Keqing and Xiao are level 70 and I'm starting to stock up on stuff for Diluc so I haven't leveled up anyone much. 1/?

How should I go about leveling up the other characters you suggested for the team builds? Should I just pick one and only level those ones up? 2 do you have recommended weapons for Diluc/Keqing (my only good staff is Homa so Xiao will keep it). I got two wolf's gravestones and uh, some sword that sometimes heals when I attack? I forget the name. I've been using that w/Keqing. 2a should I refine wolf's gravestone since I have two or keep it for someone else? 3 which talents should I focus on 2/?

I have Keqing at C3. Should I strive for (but not whale for oof) any constellations for her/Xiao/Diluc over time? 5 do you know the names of the artifacts best for any of them? All guides just use tiny icons and idk what everything is... Finally not a question but I just want to thank you for your advice and willingness to help! Seeing everyone else asking makes me feel less alone for not super "getting" things about the game. I hope you're having a nice day/night. :) (3/3)

hi!!  yes, i think your ask did get eaten by tumblr orz,, and that diluc won’t come home to you ;; i’ll try and make your time here worth while urk

typically you want to focus on leveling your dps/main damage characters first!  but i wouldn’t recommend leveling your dps characters to level 90.  keep them capped at level 80 because the amount of mora/exp books you need to use to upgrade from lvl 80-90 is atrocious.  

most supportive or non-dps characters are fine at level 50 for overworld gameplay (in the abyss floors 9-12, try getting them to at least level 60).  

DILUC BUILD:

diluc’s best weapon is wolf’s gravestone!  i would say refine it (so combine the two you got), unless you have another claymore user who you will use as dps.  supportive claymore users like chongyun don’t need wolf’s gravestone.

diluc’s a bit tricky with talents, but you want to focus his skill > normal attack > burst.  skill then normal attack because diluc uses a pryo damage bonus goblet, and i believe diluc’s skill hits harder than his normal attack, and is already a pyro ability.   

artifact set combos for diluc go: 2 piece crimson witch of flames + 2 piece gladiator > 4piece crimson witch of flames.  lawawalker is okay but not as strong.

artifact main stat prio goes hp flower, atk feather, atk% timepiece, pyro bonus damage goblet, and crit rate/damage circlet.

artifact substat prio goes crit rate/damage > atk% > atk.

KEQING BUILD:

keqing’s best swords go blacksword > aquila (physical, but its stats are high enough to be good on electro keqing) > skyward blade > lion’s roar (electro keqing) > prototype rancour (physical keqing). 

keqing talent focus goes normal attack > skill > burst.

artifact set combos for keqing go 4piece thundersoother (hybrid electro and physical) > keqing 2piece thundering fury + 2piece gladiator (electro keqing) > 2piece bloodstained + 2piece thundering fury (beta hybrid keqing) > 2piece bloodstained chivalry + 2piece gladiator (physical keqing). 

electro keqing with 4piece thundersoother has been mathematically proven to be the best build for her with the highest damage output.

artifact main stat prio goes hp flower, atk feather, atk% timepiece, electro bonus damage goblet, and crit rate/damage circlet.  you can use a physical bonus damage goblet instead but i really don’t recommend it (from personal experience lol).

artifact substat prio goes crit rate/damage > atk% > atk.

CONSTELLATIONS:

uhh after refreshing on their constellations, i would heavily discourage you from going for more keqing constellations.  order of best constellations (in my opinion) go diluc > xiao > keqing.

at c6, i think xiao is more busted than c6 diluc.  but the only reason i put diluc’s constellations as better is because starting at c2 (and especially more noticeable at c4) diluc comes online and is much more better than c0 diluc, ie you’ll unlock more of his potential at a sooner point, whereas with xiao, his constellations 1-5 don’t really . . . make him that much better imo?  i’ve debunked xiao’s constellations here if you want to see why.  so yeah. you gain more return in investment sooner with diluc’s constellations than with xiao’s.  

keqing . im gonna . they did her so dirty ahdljaf.  keqing constellations do make her better, don’t get me wrong, but they’re nothing impressive like xiao’s or childe’s.  like if someone said “skill tree”, keqing’s constellations are as basic as it gets.  

thank you for the sweet words as well! orz  you don’t have to “get” things about genshin, most people who fuss about aritfacts and particular builds are slaves to the game (i am so guilty of this orz).  at the end of the day, genshin should be for fun!  and i do hope that you are enjoying yourself with the game. ♡

[fakebookreport]

The Reconception of Marie by Teresa Carmody

What's up you beautiful book beaters? Today I'm going to SCREAM about this novel I just finished on my lunch break at work yesterday. The Reconception of Marie was written by Dr. Carmody, who is the director of the MFA program at my university. I had a fiction workshop (at the 300 lvl) with her last year and I will be taking the same workshop with her at the 400 level next semester. (None of that is relevant, but you're welcome.)

So, let's talk about Marie. The novel begins by letting us know that it takes place in 1987, western Michigan. The overall scope of the book bounces back between first person narration, which readers should come to understand is our protagonist, Marie, telling and/or writing down the goings-on in her life. We learn about Marie's friends, Angie, Jennifer, and Denise, and we learn that the most important thing in Marie's life currently is Christ. Marie's mother has been "born again," and Marie takes it upon herself to bring her friends to salvation. The novel's first paragraph sets the framework for a series of Marie's (seemingly) unshakeable beliefs with parenthetical citations of the Bible.

Marie is either in late elementary school or early middle/junior high school. I found it hard to get a read on her. Do I like her? Do I dislike her? Do I find her endearing or annoying? The answer is D. All of the above! What I find Marie's main redeeming quality to be is that she is confident and typically feels good about herself. She seems to believe that she is an overall good person and that she usually tries to do the right thing. Even though her logic is kind of skewed, she says things like true friends should tell you your bad qualities so you can work on them, etc., Marie always has good intentions.

Now, we've gotta talk about the paintings. Carmody waxes and wanes about these classical paintings depicting Biblical scenes. I'm talking pages and pages and pages and pages of detailed descriptions of the geometry, the color schemes, the proportions... To the point where I was like, ok, either you need to include a pic of these paintings in here or move on because this is a novel not an art gallery. The other reason I disliked the sections on the paintings was because to me, it read like Carmody was just dressing up her interior monologue in the 3rd person and passing it off as fiction. I didn't feel that the descriptions of the paintings added anything to the novel (except numerous pages) and then we've got stuff like this ⬇⬇⬇

One thing I did find refreshingly real (though unfortunately as sad as it is common) was that Marie had a boyfriend (Chris) who took advantage of heriof the disorganized scope of this novel), and the use of rhetorical questions feels ineffective.

Take a look at the 2nd paragraph on this page and tell me that the pink hairbow/hairy legs dichotomy isn't a cliche. C'mon, I dare you to say it with a straight face. You can't? Me neither. I get what Carmody is trying to do here, I do, but she doesn't do it well. Maybe it's just not the main focus of the novel, but this glosses over so many details, and I'd way rather get some dialogue with the mother over the pink hairbow, the music, and especially the weed. Later on Marie comes home one day (where has she been??) and finds that her mom has destroyed a bunch of her stuff. She's cut Marie's dresses in half, etc., because they're too provocative, but we are never told that Marie even had them in the first place?

One thing I did find refreshingly real (though unfortunately as sad as it is common) was that Marie had a boyfriend (Chris) who took advantage of her in a way that wasn't overtly rape, but was still a violation of her boundaries and pushing the terms of her consent. Marie was concerned that her virginity may not have been intact (my words, not hers) and her boyfriend laughed at her as though nothing had happened. A few pages later, we find Marie and Chris in a Planned Parenthood for an abortion.

Not long after this, the novel wraps itself up as bizarrely as it begins. The last full chapter has weird line breaks, like two words on a line (is this prose or poetry? Not that there's anything wrong with hybrid work, but if you're gonna throw some poetry in there, do it before the very end. It appears on pg 288 and nowhere else in the novel, which is 302 pages long. A bit late to introduce new formats, if you ask me.) (But no one did!)

Finally, we travel back in time to March 1981 for no apparent reason that I can glean, and we are given a few extremely short diary entries that Marie has written, like 3-5 sentences each. It ends with one of those. It's vague, it's weird, and its dissatisfying. The only reason I kept reading this book was because I found it so bizarre that I had to keep going since it was giving me so much to think about. So. There you have it. The Reconception of Marie.

[annsparksthegmr]

Pokemon Black Nuzlocke - Part 4

Hello! Surprise everyone I got another Nuzlocke update. And for a quick minor spoiler. I tackled two Gyms down in the next part. Might surprise you but I got a feeling the last two Gyms may pose a challenge. But you can read more below!

Back into we go with a Vanillite encounter at the Cold Storage. Once again, I caught a female one and decided to name her BananSplit. Totally spelt it wrong but that shall be her name for now on. Then I went inside of the building to go deal with Team Plasma and level up my team. After that I went to the Gym, watched Ghetsis truly do “totally not villainous” things before busting down the door to challenge his Gym. After buying a bunch of Moomoo Milks because they are surprisingly affordable for the time being.

I managed to reach Clay with no casualties. But then came our battle and immediately after his Krokorok used Swagger, he got a critical hit Bulldozer which Captain thankfully survived. I switched into Queen to handle the incoming Palpitoad and heal Captain back up. Queen then easily took out Palpitoad, but then came Excadrill. Which I’ve heard can be an end runner if I wasn’t careful - or at least I thought so. My main goal was to use Leech Seed and have Queen slowly take it out. After all, she resists most of its moves besides Slash. And I can switch into Captain if her HP gets too low. But thankfully Leech Seed secured the victory after using a hefty Grass Knot.

Another Gym secured with no casualties! I am so happy for my team. Queen and Captain really helped pull their weight. It might be because I get over prepared at times. Maybe a bit too much with items, but I feel like it's fair to use items. I headed to Route 6 and had a battle with Bianca. Not sure if I was supposed to do this before the Gym Battle, as all my team was around level 30 and her team was level 28. But she was easy to deal with.

Route 6 arrived so far all I am getting are Vanillites, which I use dupes to ignore for another. I understand it is because I am playing in winter so most options don’t appear. But I ended up running into a Foongus. A male one, who I decided to cheekily name Voltorb for the encounter. Never really going to use it right now but it shall hang out in the box.

Clay opened the way to Chargestone Cave and I got the TM Bulldoze. And I remember why I like Clay so much. Just like with all the other Gym Leaders. Oh, also N sent ninjas - I mean Shadow Triad - so we could chat. Here comes when N reveals Cheren is ideals, Bianca is truth and the main protagonist is somewhere in between. And it's kind of scary after N apparently walks off and teleports away then Bianca and Professor Juniper appear to explain the floating blue gemstone mechanic. I really miss stuff like this. I get the Lucky Egg and manage to find my encounter for Chargestone Cave - a Klink. Never got one of them before, so I nicknamed it Geartown.

After defeating more of Team Plasma I finally fought against N. We beat him no problem. I arrived in Mistralton City. Skyla had her little speech which led me to Route 7. On the way, Odette evolved into a beautiful Swanna. And I got my encounter as a double - with a male Watchhog and a female Cubchoo. I decided to go with the Cubchoo because I have found memories of my Beartic on my first one. Plus, if memory serves - a Beartic can learn some potential HMs. I named the adorable Cubchoo Snowball and she’ll rest in the PC until I need her.

Arriving at Celestial tower, I climbed up to the top and on my way caught a male Litwick. Decided to name Gracey after Master Gracey - neat Haunted Mansion reference because why not. At the very least, if Ramona faints before I reach the end I can use him. Or if the Modest nature on Ramona becomes too big of a problem to ignore. Plus Ramona also has Hustle as an ability. Though speaking of Ramona, she evolved into a Darmanitan. I reached the top and rang the bell. I really miss stuff like this. But a quick check of the PC revealed how both my Fire-Types have their natures lowering their respective attack/special attack. Whelp. Guess I have to wait and hope Reshiram will have a decent nature.

But now, I’m about to do something risky. I’m going to take down Skyla’s Gym at the same time. I already have a decent pick of Pokemon already prepared for this. Which hopefully, she won’t be too much trouble. By the way, what are the odds of a Trandquill getting off three Detects in a row? Just curious. There were no problems and with my confidence boosted so high in the sky, I challenged Skyla to showcase the power and potential of my Nuzlocke team. And I’d like to say, Pebbles and Zigzagzop clearly brought Skyla down to ground level.

Two gyms down a single update? I might be getting a bit too cocky, considering how N nearly spooked me as I exited the Gym. He wanted to chat with Pebbles - and seriously N, call Pebbles by her nickname and not Boldore. She takes great offense after defeating Skyla. He left about spouting about the Light and Dark Stones.

I plan to end things on this high note for the time being! I am only slightly considered regarding the next two Gyms. Brycen is Ice-Type, but with Ramona I feel okay with challenging it. But the bonus of Ramona getting Sheer Force now, I’m fairly confident in her performance. Though I may train up Gracey a bit, since I don’t think having Zigzagzop would be totally okay. My Zebstrika might have Flame Charge, but I don’t think it would help out as much as another Fire Type. 

Though after that will come the final Gym Leader. Who I currently have is either an Ice or Dragon Type in my party. Meaning that Drayden could honestly kick my butt if I went with how I had now. *has flashbacks to his Gym Battle* His Haxorus is scary… I do, at the very least, have BananSplit and Snowball currently relaxing in my PC. I may have to plan to do some extensive level grinding to get up prepared for that challenge. If I don’t end up suffering any unsuspecting battles which end up taking out members of my team.

Maybe it is my experience with casually playing Pokemon and trying to keep a balanced team of Pokemon which has me pretty much not having any deaths so far. Though, I won’t be surprised if an upcoming battle decides to add a bunch into the death category. But for now, I played enough for the time being. Next time, I plan to at the very least challenge Brycen or hopefully get a considerable chunk of the way through to the eighth Gym. Not entirely sure if I’d be up to face Drayden - since I am playing Pokemon Black, which means no Iris fight. 

But overall for my team, I can’t help but feel extremely proud of them so far. I knew for the later Gyms, Queen would have to practically be benched since Grass does not fare well against Flying, Ice or Dragon Type Pokemon. But she still carries herself well otherside of Gym Battles. Pebbles was definitely a surprise pick who I thought I’d bench her right after Lenora’s Gym. But this girl’s been proving her weight with her massive defenses enough where I want to keep her around. (And I swear if Pebbles dies, I will actually cry. She may not be able to fully evolve but I’ve grown attached to my rock). Zigzagzop was meant to be dropped after Elesa’s Gym, but he’s actually been proving himself with this latest Gym to keep around. I feel like he has a strong friendship with Pebbles considering I got them back to back. (Even with the funny Jaiden Animation reference.) Captain has been… well, I don’t really like his final evolution but having the Water/Ground typing makes him a good enough tank and Water-Type Pokemon to have on the team. Even if Odette is on the team. He might end up being Boxed, but it may just depend how things go. And Odette has already been showcasing why I needed a Flying-Type Pokemon on my team. Even if she is x4 weak to Electric. Even after fully evolving, she’s already showcasing her worth. 

The only dilemma I have will have to be addressed soon. But I really hope even with losing Puppy and Fountain, I won’t have to say goodbye to anyone through a death. I expect to have to switch some out for the upcoming Gyms. Until next time though, which, I do plan to draw what my final team will end up being. And who knows? Maybe I’ll end up finishing the main story of Pokemon Black right on Christmas? Wouldn’t that be a treat? 

Smell ya later!

Team Recap:

Queen - Female Servine (Lvl 35)

Pebbles - Female Boldore (Lvl 36)

Zigzagzop - Male Zebstrika (Lvl 36)

Captain - Male Palpitoad (Lvl 35)

Ramona - Female Darmanitan (Lvl 35)

Odette - Female Swanna (Lvl 35)

In Box/Reserve:

Ghost Girl - Female Liepard (Lvl 20)

Cassandra - Female Sandile (Lvl 21)

Trashie - Female Trubbish (Lvl 22)

Lowen - Male Cottonee (Lvl 20)

Lady - Female Minccino (Lvl 23)

BananSplit - Female Vanillite (Lvl 21)

Voltorb - Male Foongus  (Lvl 23)

Geartown - Klink (Lvl 26)

Snowball - Female Cubchoo (Lv 30)

Gracey - Male Litwick (Lvl 26)

Deaths: 2

Fountain - Male Sampour (Lvl 15)

Puppy - Female Herdier (Lvl 25)

[0poole]

Some thoughts on Temtem

Because as far as I’m concerned Pokemon games are some of my all-time favorites (as a group, since they’re basically all the same) so naturally there’s a lot to say about Temtem. Considering this is the first standalone Pokemon-alike that got serious attention, especially after the Sword and Shield riots making Pokemon fans just want something else, it’s basically the game that’ll let different developers make their own Pokemon-alikes. 

And yes, I am going to call them all Pokemon-alikes because let’s be real that’s the role they’re trying to fill. 

But actually, for once, there’s a few major things that I really dislike about the game. Like, seriously dislike. Considering we’re coming from the stuff people always disliked about Pokemon, I feel like it’s easier to be critical about this stuff. Might as well start with them so I can end on a higher note:

Conversations with random tamers. Literally like 95% of all tamer battles start with some sort of conversation with them, all of which require you to press some random response to either skip the dialogue or go through a completely pointless series of dialogue. There’s absolutely 0 chance I’m interested in what these random people have to say, because I know that no matter what, it’s going to end in a fight. Maybe if they made it so you can actually convince some tamers not to battle you, then it might be a fun mechanic (although I still wouldn’t bother, it would just have a purpose). But, no. All it does is make me want to spam click through everything and start the battle as soon as possible. It’s legitimately annoying. When it comes to more important tamers, it makes sense, just because that’s a convention of RPGs and junk. It still feels pointless, but at least it’s the norm.

The evolution system. Unlike Pokemon, where you evolve once your Pokemon reaches a specific level/etc determined by the Pokemon’s species, Temtem instead evolve a certain amount of levels after you catch them. Sounds pretty alright, until you realize that a lot of these level requirements are way too high. Most evolve after like 20 levels, and your starter evolves after 30. This might not be a total issue if the story is much longer than it seems, and the final battles are around lvl 60+, but even then it really makes you want to ditch the unevolved Temtem you caught a while back for its evolved form once you encounter it. Like, you can find Bunbun and Mudrid in the exact same area, so there’s absolutely no point to catching a Bunbun. If they evolved at a set level, you could just catch one, level it up once or twice, and it’ll evolve anyway, since there being others of its evolved form close by usually means it’ll evolve around that level. Instead, if you do that, you’ll have to wait a seriously long time. I’m currently going through this issue with my Mushi. This is even worse for the second reason:

Eternal double battles. For strategic purposes, it’s obviously a major plus. But, even though the difficulty is definitely higher than Pokemon, the battles are still pretty easy, so as long as you switch into the right types you won’t have any issue. That’s not the problem. The problem is that it makes leveling up feel so much slower. Since the EXP from a battle is always split between at least 2 Tems, it’s harder to train up just one of them. It’s worsened because all battles are set battles (where you can’t instantly switch Tems out once the opponent is about to send out another Tem) so that basically means it’ll be split between around 3 Tems each battle, since you’ll be accounting for a new type on the field.

The human names. They’re too out there to be at all memorable. Apart from Max, obviously, I can’t even remember any names because when I first see them I’m just like “I don’t even know what that word is so I’m just not going to bother.” I’m guessing this makes translating names easier, since no name has any obvious tie to some language/region, but it’s still annoying. Mainly because a lot of quests are like “Talk to [character name]” or “Find [character name]” so if you don’t remember the names it makes questing harder to follow. The names of the Tems are kind of in the same boat, but it feels more warranted because they’re weird monsters and not people. Most of them are a pretty normal Pokemon level of naming (Barnshe, Toxolotyl), some even less interesting (Crystle, Mushi).

The roadblocks aren’t any better than Pokemon. It’s still just “You can’t get past here until you get this item.” It’s like the tiniest step above Pokemon, where they just have some dude at an entrance who says “You can’t get past here because [reason],” but effectively it’s exactly the same. It’s even weirder with the Crystal Skates, because they don’t do any sort of slippery puzzle with the Crystal path before you get them, but later you lose the skates and THEN they put in the slippery puzzles in. They really should have just not given you the skates yet and made any reachable secrets a part of a puzzle instead. 

The start of the game needs more variety/balance. Ganki is actually OP, and was my hard carry. But, there are so many Wind and Water types early on it gets kind of boring quick. It’s worse, because Wind resists Wind, meaning you’re constantly dealing with Tems that resist your type. But, sure, I guess the variety isn’t the problem and one of the most prominent types resisting itself is. Ganki does need a decent check though, since Crystal types don’t exactly come around until later.

The clothes are WAY too expensive. I’m the character customizer type. I want to buy out all the shops and make myself look snazzy. I can do that while a fucking early-game bikini costs 9000 Tembucks or whatever they’re called.

Then, here are some stuff I’m kinda neutral/iffy on:

The type chart feeling a little arbitrary. Obviously this one isn’t actually a problem, since they probably just did that to make sure Pokemon had even less of a reason to sue, but like I mentioned before, why does Wind resist Wind? When I imagine two gusts colliding, it turns into a giant tornado that destroys everything. That, or they just flow around each other. Considering it slows down the early game, I really wish it wasn’t that way. Another questionable one is that Wind is strong against Toxic. Maybe it’s just because we use vents to clear out toxic air? Considering most Toxic attacks involve liquid that doesn’t help much. It probably wouldn’t be an issue to someone who hasn’t completely and totally remembered the Pokemon type chart, though.

The “representation.” Yes, they tried, and that’s a step in the right direction, but like... it’s really not quite there yet. Like, in the character creation screen, as we’ve all heard from the #gamerrage you get to choose your pronouns. Sure, good. Then they give you the option of the girl body or the boy body, and the girl voice and the boy voice. Really? Still no ambiguously chubby option? Slightly more rounded faces aren’t enough people. Also, I still actually don’t get why they (as well as other game developers) don’t just put in a bald option. Did they just not model the scalp or something? It’s obvious they did because there was a bald option in the beta/alpha, and they just... removed it? Why? It’s not even a matter of reason, It was already there. But yeah, back to the gender representation bit, fused a bit with the conversations, there’s one specific bit of dialogue that really confused me. When big event happens and one girl tells you to go searching for her wife, sure they’re lesbians whatever, but then it pops up with the dialogue options of “Sure, I’ll go looking for him/her/them” but like, as 3 different choices. What’s the point of that? She literally said it was her “wife,” so I just picked “her,” but what’s the point of having the other options? If the first girl’s response is just like “’Him/Them?’ I did tell you she was my ‘wife,’ right?” It’ll boggle my mind even more. Anyways...

The Temtem designs. It’s more like two extremes balanced out to become neutral. I seriously love some of the designs, and I seriously hate others. From what I’ve seen so far, my favorites are Oree, Platimous, Capyre, Valash, Barnshe, Gyalis, Myx, Mushi, Valiar, Noxolotyl, and Kalabyss. My team at the end of the current story consisted of Mushi and Banapi, who I were still training, Gyalis, Mudrid, Kalabyss, and Gazuma, so I only slightly compromised for the sake of my interests. I actually seriously love Valash, but I already had 2 Crystals on my team, and being Neutral wouldn’t be much of a help. My least favorites, though, are Tateru, Taifu, Houchic, Tental, Babawa, Saku, Magmis, Ukama, and Vulcrane. So many Tems have the classic Pokemon issue of “just getting bigger” as the evolve, and a lot of them evolve for the worse, like Vulcrane and Saku especially. Vulcrane, Houchic, Tental, and Zenoreth (who I still sort of like for its colors) look uncomfortably humanoid, where they have almost too much muscle detail on their arms and legs. Pocus is a better example of a humanoid design, because its legs are much more nubby and arms less detailed. Plus, the former Tems’ designs aren’t quite exaggerated enough proportion wise, making them just feel kinda weird I guess. I don’t really know how to explain that yet. Some other designs I think are good, despite me not being into them as much, are Skail, Saipat, Sparzy, Cerneaf, Volarend, Shuine, Adoroboros, Tuwai, Kinu, Pigepic, and Anahir. Overall, Temtem have some good designs, with a few stinkers strewn about.

The evil team/rival. The evil team, as far as I cared to know, are just evil because they’re evil. They’re not crazy, but they’re fine. I definitely think the term “clan” can only be used in an evil context nowadays, so I guess that’s a good thing. Max is just whatever. I’m extremely tired of the stupid rhetoric Pokemon fans keep throwing around, suggesting the only good rival’s an asshole rival. It’s obviously just not true, and Crema’s obviously just catering to that idea with Max. They really just seem like an asshole for asshole’s sake, so that’s boring. The rival’s level of asshole-ness is completely independent of their quality. Honestly I’m like 2% of the way into wanting to make my own Pokemon region so I’ll be able to test my mettle there once it comes around.

The MMO-ness of the stuff feels really minimal, and sometimes I found it hard to find the NPC I was supposed to be looking for because they were in a crowd of random people. I’m pretty sure more MMO-esque stuff will come later, but now you basically just see other people walking around. I obviously didn’t use the co-op function either, but the fact that it exists is good. I guess a good thing to implement later would be an offline mode, so you can choose not to have all those strangers running around if you so choose.

Then, here are the things I really like:

The breeding system. It’s really just simpler, and that’s a good thing. It was kind of annoying to figure out which Pokemon have the same egg group (before I just used a Ditto, at least), but now it’s just based on type. Plus, you can just buy the right items to get the right stats. I do hope they lower the prices though. 

FreeTem. It makes actual sense that the people who didn’t want Temtem to fight didn’t go full-on Plasma and become terrorists for their cause. Plus, you get money for cheating their obviously cheatable system. It’s a win-win!

The graphics. This is just one of those cases where people who don’t like it say it’s “bad,” even though they’re objectively wrong. The only “badness” about the graphics are the human faces. Everything else actually looks really nice and polished, especially the animations. I actually died when I saw my Mushi scurry behind me. It’s too cute. Too bad Mushook is losing its luster... But, anyway, it is one of those things that’s just a preference. There’s nothing wrong with the quality. In terms of human designs at least, I was going to say that they look to similar, but for the most part the only characters that looked too similar were the random nobody NPCs, and even then they put together the already existing character customization options in pretty decent enough ways. Some tamers even being not at all subtle references to other things was kinda cute too, although it’s not something I at all care for. That just seems like it’s asking to be reposted every other week on the subreddit...

The music kinda grew on me. The generic themes (wild battle/tamer battle) will never not get old, but the specific themes actually are pretty good. I especially like the theme of the Xolot Resevoir, since it kind of gave me Field of Hopes and Dreams/Scarlet Forest vibes. That might be my favorite kind of video game area song, to be honest. It’s the perfect blend of relaxing, mystical, and trance-y.

The gyms. No one, no matter how good you are, can actually get up to that high of a standing just by using one single type. The fact that Tem Dojos are all based on 2 types is great, especially in how their puzzles/appearance are styled. Obviously the slippery puzzle of the Crystal/Toxic dojo kinda took me aback as mentioned, but alone I liked it. The one problem was that 2 of them were with the exact same types, which kinda sucked, since it also used the same kind of puzzle. That’s the thing about good designs, though; you don’t mind as much if they’re re-used.

The CRYSTAL type. Oh my god, I love it so much. I tried to mask it a bit when talking about the Tems because it’s seriously my favorite thing about the game. It’s the perfect replacement for the Rock type, and it makes any Crystal Tem look so damn cool! The only one I don’t like as much, as mentioned, is Zenoreth/Azuroc, but that’s not at all the fault of their Crystal parts. I seriously wanted to create a whole team of Crystal Tems just because of how universally cool they all were. Gyalis and Valash are easily two of my favorite Tems. I also love how they managed to give the type two signature colors at once, with the bright red and seafoam green. Most other types really only use one or many colors for their part of the Tem’s design, but it seems so solidly both a red type and a green type, even if the icon is red. Since I play Pokemon/these types of games for the cool monster designs, having a whole section of the monsters be this cool is a major upside for me. I love it.

I kinda-sorta tried to arrange this list from worst to best, although really most stuff in between is sort of a crap shoot anyway.

Honestly, I don’t feel like a good source for a “should I buy this game?” kind of review, especially since the game basically just came out of Beta. If you’re into what they’re putting down, you might as well get it now. If you’re not sure, there’s no harm in waiting. The game is clearly making enough money to stay afloat, and since they’ve been at it for so long, there’s really no reason for them to stop now. I remember hearing about this game eons ago... Crazy to think I actually played it.

Now the next wave is Kindred Fates. That’s the next logical step in the genre. I hope this decade is the age of Pokemon-alikes, like how the past few years was riddled with BRs. Every game better have a monster collecting portion to it or else. I want to train my guns in CoD. 

[solitaria-fantasma]

((Extensive Session #3 highlights.))

We go to Von Trikona’s tower and are greeted by three students and a handful of golems.

Humphry eyes Mountain with abject terror.

Von Trikona gives us the preserved bodies wrapped in burial shrouds, and teleports us to the town of Fwee - just past the security gates, but not right in town square.

The map for the town of Fwee is heckin’ pretty.

“Oh no...oh no, I fucked up. I made a mistake! UwU!!!”

“Please don’t comment on the corpse-shaped backpacks!”

Udaji may be tol and stronk but she is also dumb and can’t roll higher than a 10 on her Perception checks.

“The only ones who don’t blend in with the local crowd are the Halfling and the Dragonborn.” Claus and I just can’t catch a break…

We walked around the marketplace with the preserved corpse backpacks for a while as we asked for directions to the Rose family home.

Mountain’s intimidation checks are on-point.

Udaji’s average Perception roll is a 4 while the rest of the party averages around 16.

It has been decided that this scaly baby should never have been allowed out of town on her own.

Somebody in this town is throwing mud balls and glitter bomb darts at our rogue and Udaji is seeing NONE of it.

“Claus would like to point out that you’re covered in paint.”

We entered a house and the DM resized our icons to reflect the height differences. It looked like a bad game of Agar.io and I was winning.

Matthias - still covered in paint - was politely asked not to sit on the furniture, and handed a single tiny-ass napkin to ‘clean up’ with.

“Yeeeaaahhh...there was no easy way to do this, was there?”

“Is it more disrespectful to put the bodies on the ground or the table?”

“It might be more disrespectful to try and unwrap the bodies one handed and risk dropping them.”

“Above the board, do we have to tell her that the bandits were already dead when we found them?”

Matthias ‘accidentally’ smeared paint on the servant on his way out, and offered him the tiny-ass napkin back.

Lady Rose thanked us for returning her family’s bodies, but asked us to give her some time to process her loss.

We then went to the magic district (mostly wizards, mostly elven) to get started on the errands we promised to run between Von Trikona and her friend Vincent.

We knocked on the door, heard a loud ‘CRASH’, and poked our heads through the unlocked door Scooby-Doo style.

The DM promptly had us roll for initiative.

I keep forgetting to select my token BEFORE rolling for initiative heck.

“Hopefully you guys don’t die.”

“Gotta be honest - I’ve thought about what character I’d bring in if Udaji DID die. But it would be really, REALLY sad.”

I had to run down to get dinner and missed half a turn of combat but I made it back just in time for my second go.

“Oh! Udaji! You missed this part, but the old wizard man has cried out for you to not set anything on fire.”

“Can do! That’s not my kind of dragon heritage!!”

The old wizard man is ‘Vincent Oman’ - an artificer. We returned his stuff, and he offered us dinner.

“This guy is, like, peak Grandpa. He’s very happy to have people over.”

Vincent has not heard of Lord Hassan, but recalled an enchanted lockbox a cohort of his (Ceri, another artificer) had made on commission for the dowry of a local girl marrying a man in the next kingdom over.

That lockbox (enchanted to be neigh on impossible to break into) was part of Clarissa Rose’s dowry, and now I’m sad.

Vincent drew us a map to Ceri’s house, and then we nearly left without picking up Maxine’s books (three advanced spellbooks & some of her notes).

He also offered to let us sleep in his attic for the night, since it was getting late, only asking us to try and keep quiet, as he was a delicate sleeper.

Matthias finally got to wash off the paint in the ‘waterifier’ (re: magical, water-creating shower).

Vincent reminds Udaji too much of her own dad, and she took one point of homesickness damage. Vincent gave her heartwarming life advice, and more food.

“It’s okay if you get sad sometimes, when traveling far from home. You will find people who will not, perhaps, fill the void, but surely make it feel less empty.”

I’m going to adopt Vincent holy heck

Ceri confirmed that the lockbox was commissioned to keep safe a dowry traveling a long distance, and told us that it could only be opened by using two skeleton keys simultaneously.

We had found one of said skeleton keys in the bandit/necromancer lair back in Session 1.

“We were too eager to shout ‘MURDER!’ in front of the guards back in Torrin so now we’re afraid to whisper it in Fwee.”

Ceri confirmed that the key we found is one of the lockbox’s two keys.

We then debated for five minutes who the key, lockbox, and dowry would legally belong to, now that Clarissa and Donald are dead, but never officially reached the wedding.

“This is not the kind of law my family studies!”

Ceri whispered a few rumors of engagements in the area that had fallen through due to ‘accidents’ which saw the dowries go missing, and that the enchanted lockbox had been commissioned by the Rose family to protect against that.

He then told us to get out of his house.

“That’s the kindest ‘GTFO’ I’ve ever gotten.”

“We haven’t heard back from Lady Rose yet, but I feel like it would be too awkward to go back to her house and knock on the door like “Hey, are you done grieving yet?”. The answer is probably ‘no’...”

“Maybe if we walk around town, someone will try to throw more paint at Matthias.”

We wandered around the marketplace for a while, trying to lure out the mysterious woman who’d been throwing things at us the day before.

[Just to set a little reference - this is all happening within the first two hours of the campaign.]

Matthias got egged, and we chased the perpetrator into a public park.

Mountain got distracted by the beautiful view, and Matthias threatened the woman with his bow. The woman pulled her own bow and threatened right back.

“I am going to swing my lute around in front of me to act as a shield in a worst case scenario. I’m not taking an arrow over an egg.

THE WOMAN. IS MATTHIAS’. CHILD.

DM: “How long has it been since you last spoke with your lover?”

Matthias: “Let’s say it’s been….twenty-five years, seven months.”

The kid’s name is Astrid, and she is mAJORLY pissed off at ‘dad’.

Udaji is backing away from the awkward family reunion, and Mountain is still distracted by the park scenery and has no idea.

“You’re Hohenheim, and she’s Edward.”

[I understood that reference!!]

“Udaji makes eye contact with Mountain and shakes her head like “Don’t get involved you’ll regret it”.”

Mountain officially confirmed for Tiefling.

Claus tries to calm Astrid with the blessings of Lathander. She refuses. Udaji bends over a little and pats Claus on the shoulder consolingly.

His player has difficulty articulating it (and honestly, who wouldn’t? Words are hard), but Matthias is legitimately upset to hear that his lover had died.

“You go up to her and give her a hug with a pat-pat?”

“She immediately starts sobbing in your arms.”

“I shed a single manly tear.”

Mountain has only just now caught up to the fact that these rogues know each other.

Astrid is now refusing to leave. Udaji is still the party baby.

“The only reason I was allowed out of town is because nobody could physically stop me.”

“Claus gives you a comforting pat on your hip, as that’s about as high as he can reach.”

After all that chaos, we were approached by a servant from the Rose family, calling us back to Lady Rose’s house.

Her name is now Ingrid Rose, because the DM forgot to name her until this very moment. Mood.

Matthias is still covered in egg.

Lady Rose admits that she thought the offer of marriage from Lord Bryant Hassan to her daughter was too good to be true.

She also admits that she thought the Lord had asked for a rather greedy amount of dowry with the proposal.

“Were any of my husband or daughter’s possessions recovered?”

Don’t look at Matthias. Don’t look at Matthias. Don’t look at Matthias.

Lady Rose asks us to look into the recovery of the enchanted lockbox that was carrying her daughter’s dowry, and offers to reward us for it.

She ALSO asks us to put a knife in the throat of whomever arranged her daughter’s death, should we find it to not, in fact, be a tragic accident.

Astrid is basically June from AtLA but without Nyla.

Everybody stocks up on rations for a long trip back to return Maxine Von Trikona’s books.

We get on the road back to Torrin, retracing the ill-fated Rose party’s steps as we go.

After two days on the road, we come across a seemingly wounded man on the side of the road, by an overturned cart.

He asks us for gold to get back on his feet.

Udaji immediately fell for it, and had to be physically stopped from reaching for her gold.

Miraculously, we all managed to avoid a bunch of mysterious projectiles and whistling noises.

Interestingly, both of the guard corpses we had ‘interviewed’ reported hearing a whistling noise before their death.

Mountain took an arrow to the horn, but only three points of damage.

We were all tired by this point and there were a lot of bandits so combat was looooooong.

Claus has two waiting Bardic Inspiration dice and is having a very good day.

“You’re going to shoot THROUGH your daughter and your cleric??”

ONE BANDIT DOWN!

I charged at a bandit, sword drawn, but couldn’t quite make it there in one turn, so I added an intimidating roar for good measure.

I rolled a nat 20, therefore proving that I inherited SOMEthing from my white dragon mother, and the bandit pissed himself.

THREE BANDITS DOWN!

I took 8 points of damage from the other bandits and it’s a good thing the DM had us level up at least once bc if I’d still had my lvl. 1 total of 9hp that damage would have damn near killed me.

“Ew, he’s got a skull face with horns! ...oh, wait, he’s just ugly nevermind.”

“If I cast the magic, but Matthias says the words, can we duet ‘Vicious Mockery’?”

“My mother [the white dragon] would be proud of that, and I’m not sure I’M proud of that.”

I stand corrected: Astrid is a ranger, not a rogue.

Dragonborn zoomies.

“I may be wearing a flower crown, but I’m still scary.”

I have now decided that there will be - at minimum - one fight where I take off my flower crown and force someone else in the party to hold it.

Probably Claus.

SIX BANDITS DOWN!

“Well, they identify as a corpse right now, so…”

We got distracted for another five minutes arguing about how useful Hawkeye was to the Avengers in the MCU vs. how useful Hawkeye was to Loki in the MCU, which spawned from the DM apologizing for her slowness in playing out Astrid’s turn, as she had never played a Ranger before because she thought they were useless.

Poor Hawkeye.

The bandit captain tried to ambush Astrid, hit her with one of two scimitars, and failed his dagger roll badly enough to stab himself.

Claus - incredibly inspired by Udaji’s music and heroics - saved Mountain from dying.

Udaji keeps rolling really well on attacks and damage...if only I could shuffle some of those over into Perception.

Astrid got the killing shot on the bandit captain.

I looted his body, and found (2) scimitars, tattered leather armor, the queen piece from a set of dragon chess, and (7) silver.

I took the chess piece, and nothing else.

Astrid found footprints leading back to the bandits’ camp, so we took over it for the night.

We leveled up! Woo!!!

Zone of Truth. Zone of TrUTH. ZONE OF TRUTH-

And College of Creation. This is gonna be fun!!!

[monstersdownthepath]

Spiritual Spotlight: Cayden Cailean, the Drunken Hero

Chaotic Good God of Ale, Freedom, and Wine

Domains: Chaos, Charm, Good, Strength, Travel Subdomains: Azata, Competition, Exploration, Ferocity, Love, Lust, Resolve

Inner Sea Gods, pg. 36~43

Obedience: Sing a song in praise of freedom, bravery, and your god’s glory (and good looks). The song must be audible to those nearby—friend or foe. Between stanzas, you must pause to drink from a full mug of ale, wine, or other spirits. When the song is done, drink the remaining alcohol while mentally composing the song you will sing on the morrow. If a creature is attracted by your song, do your best to engage it in conversation about the merits of Cayden Cailean. If hostilities become inevitable, leap boldly into the fight without hesitation. Benefit: Get a +4 sacred bonus to saving throws versus poison effects.

Discussing one of Pathfinder’s more well-known Good Guys has been a long time coming! I just had to get all of the Evil gods out of my system first (which is a lie, there’s still 80+ more pages of Evil to discuss), and what better way to wash them all out than with a pint?

The Drunken Hero’s Obedience prevents you from being subtle about who you’re working for. It MUST be audible to anyone nearby, even party members you want to keep it a secret from, and it MUST be about Cayden Cailean. There’s also the fact you have to start your day with a hearty drink (the mug must be full, and you must finish it), which could prove disadvantageous if you have anywhere to be early in the morning. Alternately, you could drink just before going to bed; I make most of the Obediences sound like they’re something to be done right as the day starts, but that’s only true for casters, who are basically encouraged to do their Obediences at the crack of dawn as they prepare their spells (Obediences can be done alongside preparations, no matter how wild they are). 

A martial character can have a nice tall nightcap and sing everyone to sleep--the song has to be audible, not ‘ear-cracking’--and enjoy their benefit and Boons for 24 hours, waking up with a mild hangover (easily cured) rather than going about the first few hours of their day like a drunken fool. If you ARE a caster, however, I hope you didn’t dump Constitution, because you’ll need it! Especially if a baddie does overhear your singing and come investigating, because Cayden requires you to leap into the fray no matter what.

Benefit is nothing we haven’t seen before. Ironically, since alcohol itself is considered a poison for the purpose of game mechanics, this benefit actually helps keep you from getting too sloshed. I just hope you remember not to drink your strongest stuff in your first mug, because the bonus won’t apply then!

Boons are gathered slowly, typically obtained when a given character has 12, 16, and 20 hit dice. Unlike fiend-worshipers, servants of the Eldest, and devoted of the Empyreal Lords, characters worshiping Good gods do not seem to have catch-all classes (though I could very well have just missed it)… but Good-aligned characters can enter the Evangelist, Sentinel, and Exalted Prestige Classes earlier than Evil characters, classing in as early as level 6 (they need +5 BAB, 5 ranks in a single skill, or the ability to cast lvl 3 spells); entered ASAP, one can gain the Boons at levels 8, 11, and 14.

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EVANGELIST

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Boon 1: Liberation. Liberating Command 3/day, Knock 2/day, or Dispel Magic 1/day.

You all should know by now how useful Dispel Magic can be, even at 1/day. It shatters more or less any magical effect that doesn’t require another specific spell to undo, and can shave buffs off enemies and debuffs off allies in the middle of combat.

So lets look at the other two! Knock, in particular, seems pretty fun. It can open just about any locked object you can think of and can even go so far as to loosen welds, knock nail-studded boards away, and undo bars and chains holding something shut. You use your caster level +10 versus the DC of a locked object, and since your caster level is equal to your HD for spell-like abilities, you can only fail on a 1 when opening simple locks and have a pretty good chance of unhinging more complex locks as well. It takes SERIOUS effort to keep someone with Knock out of a particular door, because most means of shutting someone out count as ‘simple locks’ unless you invest hundreds of gold into it.

Liberating Command is a pretty nice spell, really. You can target any creature in Close range (25ft + 5ft/lvl) to grant them an immediate attempt to escape a grapple, binding, or restraint with an Escape Artist check... Which get get a bonus to equal to twice your caster level (+18, when you first get this Boon, but it only goes up to +20). One thing I missed on my first pass over it was that it was an immediate action, allowing you to use it in response to someone near you getting grappled, or if you yourself get snared.

Liberating Command is a pretty terrible spell to prepare, but it’s an amazing spell-like to just have at 3/day. The number of critters with Grab in the game is worrying, and many scrawnier players more or less become dead weight the moment they’re grappled, so giving them an instant chance to escape with an enormous boost to their attempt can let them wiggle right out of the grip of a troll/octopus/worm monster.

Boon 2: Drinking Buddy. 1/day as a standard action, you can create an illusory duplicate of yourself in an adjacent square next to you. The duplicate moves on your initiative count and has your movement speed. It automatically moves to try and flank enemies you designate, avoiding Attacks of Opportunity using your Acrobatics bonus if needed. Anyone interacting with the double can attempt a Will save (DC 25) to see through it, and anyone who realizes it’s an illusion cannot be flanked with it. It has your AC, but vanishes instantly if it successfully struck. Otherwise, it lasts 1 round per HD you possess.

Ugh. Cayden, what are you doing? What is this? This is just awful!! I mean, if you’re a class with Sneak Attack or someone who’s built to flank others, this is passable, but at 1/day? Instantly vanishing if damaged? Granting a flat Will save to disbelieve (it does not rise as you level)?

I suppose it makes for a decent distraction, if nothing else. Boosting your own AC before sending in the clones works fairly well, possibly drawing numerous enemy attacks in, and the ability does note that the double only vanishes if hit with an attack, meaning AoE won’t clear it out, and many spells which don’t rely on an attack roll simply fail as well. That gives this ability a bit more utility than it otherwise would have.

But it’s a standard action to perform, at 1/day, and you can’t even send the double into a room alone, since it only exists to try and flank enemies and the description doesn’t mention if it’s usable for anything else. For characters who don’t want to be flanking enemies, this ability is essentially useless.

Boon 3: Intoxicating Strike. 1/day, you may declare one of your attacks to be an Intoxicating Strike. You must declare this before the attack rolls is made. If the attack is successful and deals damage, the victim becomes supernaturally soused for 1 round per HD you possess; a soused creature takes a -4 penalty to AC, attack rolls, and skill checks, and their movement speeds are all reduced by 10ft.

Honestly, this one is kind of pathetic as well. You all probably know that I don’t like 1/day things negated by a successful save unless they change the course of a battle, and this is one of those things and it sets my teeth on edge. I do, however, admit that the fact you can use it on ranged attacks gives this a bit more reach than it otherwise would. A -4 penalty to attacks and skill checks usually won’t matter at such a high level, though there’s always the cases where they turn a certain blow into a near miss, so I won’t talk down too hard on this. A -4 to AC, however? Now THAT’S something special! Especially since there’s a good chance it’ll last the entirety of the fight!

This intoxication, by the way, is entirely supernatural in its intensity. It affects ALL creatures, even ones that can’t get drunk, such as Constructs, Undead, and most Outsiders. And it’s not technically a Save-or-Suck since there’s no save! All you have to do is get past someone’s AC! Which, eehhhhhh, can be just as iffy as firing it at their saves... Unless you’re using a firearm, of course, which hits touch AC from certain ranges.

All in all, Evangelists of Cayden don’t really win this round.

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EXALTED

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Boon 1: Libations. Gain Bless Water 3/day, Delay Poison 2/day, or Create Food And Water 1/day.

And Exalted is already off to a bad start, too! Yeesh! Holy Water stops being useful roughly around level 3 except as components for beefier Divine spells and certain rituals, and Delay Poison is a niche pick rendered useless by the fact Neutralize Poison exists and is within a level 9 party’s reach.

That being said, because spell-likes don’t require components, you don’t need the ridiculous five pounds of silver to transmute a singular pint of water into Holy Water via Bless Water. Holy Water doesn’t fade from day to day, either, so you can just slowly rack up an entire lakes-worth of the stuff over time to dunk Undead and Evil Outsiders in, or sell it by the bottle to churches or other adventuring parties for a tidy profit.

I would still just take Create Food And Water and never have to worry about rations or using resources to bribe hungry enemies again, though. Hell, at level 9, CFAW creates so much stuff that you could reasonably carry it to the next day and just alternate between CFAW and Bless Water (you can even bless the water you create!!!!) to keep everyone fed and armed. You won’t make much money by selling the excess food, but feeding the hungry without expecting profit is something a goody-good person like you should be doing anyway. Just uh, make sure at least one person on your team knows Prestidigitation, because I can speak from experience that a party will quickly grow tired of CFAW’s bland food.

Boon 2: Freedom’s Ally. 1/day as a standard action, you can call a pair of Bralani Azatas to your side. You have telepathy out to 100ft when communicating with them, and they serve you perfectly for 1 minute per HD you possess. They will not fulfill any orders which would cause them to commit evil acts or restrict the freedom of another purely for the sake of law, and asking them to do so may draw their ire. They may attack if your commands are especially vile.

Oops, nevermind, Exalted is Good, Actually. Bralani Azata are CR 6 creatures from the realm of Elysium armed with +1 scimitars and +1 composite longbows that they get two attacks with each round, and have such interesting spell-likes as Mirror Image, Wind Wall, and Charm Person at will, as well as Lightning Bolt and Cure Serious Wounds 2/day each. Against an army of foes, the Bralani can assume Wind Form to grant themselves an enormous 100ft fly speed and the power to deal 3d6 bludgeoning damage in a 20ft line with their Whirlwind Blast ability.

VERY powerful critters to have on your side, even if you’re twice their level! The defensive options they have via Mirror Image and Wind Wall alone make them tenacious even against enemies of higher CR, and their Wind Form turns them from gorgeous humanoids into nondescript clouds of fog, letting them run stealth missions if needed... Or use their massive movespeed to deliver curative spells to far-off allies.

I’m not sure how far away they’re summoned, since this ability doesn’t use any preexisting Summon Monster spell and doesn’t say where they pop up. I assume they appear adjacent to you, which limits the shenanigans you can pull with them, but not enough that I’d consider it worth worrying about.

Boon 3: Wine to Water. As a full-round action, you may transform a single serving of an alcoholic beverage into either potent Holy Water or a potion of Cure Serious Wounds. The potion option cures 3d8 HP, +1 HP per HD you possess (max +15). The Holy Water you create deals 4d4 damage to the Undead or to Evil Outsiders, and 2d4 to such creatures within 5ft of the initial target. Both the potion and water last for an hour. You can use this ability a number of times per day equal to your Charisma modifier (min 1).

Ohoho now this is something special... Provided you have a Charisma modifier of 3 or more, because at 1 or 2 a day? This ability’s kinda pitiful. The maximum healing it can do is 39, which is GOOD, but you’re likely never going to roll maximum healing.

Yes, the emergency healing is nice. You can turn even common 1-copper swill into an emergency healing potion, and “a serving” can be as small as a shot glass (which potions are traditionally served in), but it’s a full-round action to do, which means you can’t actually use this ability and then hand it to an ally in the same round. They’d have to use some actions on their turn to take it and drink it. After-combat healing is usually the way to go unless desperate, pouring a quick shot into an unconscious ally’s throat to get them back on their feet. If you know combat is coming you can make the potions ahead of time since they last an hour, but know that if the potion ‘expires,’ the ability is wasted. The use is limited, but it helps your healer’s spell slots stretch just a bit further.

4d4 damage to an undead or fiendish enemy is also pretty lackluster at level 15, the earliest you can get this ability. The best trick you can pull with it is to trick such a creature into drinking it, burning them inside and out and likely preventing them from speaking from the searing their throat just took. This ability is even more hilarious than typical Holy Water in that regard; you can instantly detect shapeshifting Evil beasts by spritzing them with a bit of the stuff, but that likely won’t work against more cunning monsters. This ability, though? It makes suggesting a drink for your friend MUCH less suspicious than handing them a vial of water. You’re just pouring them a cold one to enjoy!

It’s like you’re testing your party for The Thing, only instead of them exploding into a tentacle monster and killing everyone in the room, it’s a secret mystery test that’ll expose them while also debilitating them! That’s about the only use it has at high levels, aside from being used as material components for spells that actually matter.

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SENTINEL

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Boon 1: Devastating Duelist. Bless Weapon 3/day, Brow Gasher 2/day, or Greater Magic Weapon 1/day.

By level 9, most people in the party should have magic weapons anyway. Not always, but usually you’ve got enough of a mystic arsenal to make Bless Weapon redundant. The fact it overrides magical enchantments already on a weapon also means that it becomes weaker as you level up and gain access to better equipment, putting it firmly in the Niche of this list.

Greater Magic Weapon is almost always the better choice when choosing to buff a weapon, though I will admit that Bless Weapons’ ability to auto-crit against Evil creatures is pretty nice. GMW, however, makes any weapon hit harder and hit more easily. The fact it also lasts for 1 hour/level means it’ll likely last your entire adventuring day.

Brow Gasher is also an interesting choice. It forces you to use a slashing weapon (which you already likely do, if you’re a Sentinel of Cayden) but heavily rewards you for doing so; discharging the spell as part of a successful attack slashes the poor fool across the forehead, bleeding them for half your caster level (4 damage a round, which rises as you level) and potentially blinding them if they can’t get it cured in time. The list of creatures who are immune to resistant to this ability is long, but it’s certainly worth taking anyway on the occasion you find yourself against targets capable of bleeding.

Boon 2: Light Weapon Master. Whenever you battle with a light bladed weapon, if you have the Weapon Training (Light Weapon) ability, you get a +2 deflection bonus to AC. If you do not have Weapon Training, instead you get a +1 sacred bonus to attack rolls with light bladed weapons.

Here I thought Evangelists were hogging all the bad Boons this time, but it turns out Sentinel is the one who got shot in the leg here.

This ability basically reads “unless you’re a Fighter, get a lame benefit.” Don’t get me wrong, on an actual Fighter (or a Swashbuckler, if your DM is nice enough)? This ability is amazing. +2 extra AC for a character already loaded with AC makes them that much better at tanking, and it’s a DEFLECTION bonus to it even applies to touch attacks!

But if you’re not a Fighter, this ability is basically worthless. I know I’m being a little harsh here, but a Boon should be ABOVE the power level of a feat, not on part with a feat you can take as early as level 1 (Weapon Focus). Even Drinking Buddy is better than this.

Boon 3: Critical Luck. Each time you roll a natural 1 on an attack roll, keep a tally, up to a maximum of your Charisma modifier. Whenever you threaten a critical hit with an attack roll, you can ‘trade’ one of your tallies to automatically confirm the critical hit. Your tally empties out every 24 hours.

If you roll enough natural 1s to make this ability useful, you’re likely either dead or dead weight. Seriously, you may need to exorcise your dice if you roll three or more 1s in a single day of combat. I think the first thing that would need to go is the Charisma mod limitation, followed by the fact it empties out every 24 hours. Unless you have a weapon with a high critical range, you might not even get to use this ability at all, let alone in the same combat.

I know a lot of abilities rely on luck, but this is one of the only Boons I’ve seen that specifically relies on YOU, personally, having absolutely terrible luck, followed by absolutely fantastic luck. It’s just... not good. I would go as far as saying that this ability could realistically be a simple feat anyone could take, and not even one locked behind particularly terrible prerequisites.

Exalted of Cayden win this round by a long shot.

You can read more about him here.

[eorzean-capitalist]

FFXIV Marketboard Guide.

AKA: How to level up your crafting classes and make a little money on the side to support said leveling.

About the author of this guide:  I have over 150 million gil at the moment, and am lazily working my way toward 200 million.  I am an omni-crafter, all crafts and gatherers at lvl 70.  When I bought my large house in Shirogane, my highest level crafter was 53.  I had 85 million gil at the time.  I know what I’m doing, I know how to succeed.

There is no one way to succeed.  Consider this guide really a set of tips to help you get a jump on leveling your crafting and gathering.  This guide assumes you’re starting with everything at level 1 and goes from there.

It takes work, a lot of work on your part.  But it’s quite rewarding as you watch your classes level up and your bank account increase at the same time.  If you’re hoping this guide will help you get rich quick with no effort on your part, this is probably not your guide.

ONE:  The first thing you need to do is gather shards.  You are going to need a shit ton of shards.  You can buy them off the marketboard if they’re cheap, but if they run up over 100 gil each, don’t bother.  Farm your own.  

Set your retainers to botany and mining.  Equip them with a pick and an axe, and start sending them out for shards.  (You can buy ventures with GC seals, and Allied Seals.  Stock up on them, as many as you can.)  It is worth it to gear them up as they level (ever 10 levels after the retainer hits lvl 20 is my recommendation).  Eventually they’ll be able to bring you back 60 shards every 40 minutes.  

When you hit 9999 shards, shake off the excess onto a retainer and keep sending them out for shards.  Now you’re ready for step two.

TWO: Level up all your crafters to lvl 20.  Do this by crafting items at the starting stages and turning in class items.  (Most of the items you need are buyable from the vendor at the crafting area.)  When you hit 10 on your first class, you’ll unlock Quick Synthesis.  This is ungodly for leveling.  You only need to synthesis something once, and then you can set your character to create 99 of that item and let ‘em go while you go get coffee or do laundry or something.  

Tips: 

Don’t bother with crafting leves at this stage of the game.  It’s not hard to get to lvl 20 without touching them.  It’s time consuming, but not hard.  

You’ll get all the starting gear you need from your class quests.  Don’t bother buying gear at this stage.  If anything, you can make whatever you need as you go.

These classes will all provide shards at the first quests.  Make sure you have room for them. If you already have 9999 shards, you’ll just lose these extras. Offload around 2000 shards onto a retainer’s inventory so you have room.

If you have the Ala Mhigan earrings, wear them.  They work for crafting and gathering just as well as war and magic classes.

THREE: Take stock of what you can make.  By level twenty, these items either are now available to you or are very close.

Carpenter: Walnut Lumber (Lvl 25, a bit of a risk but worth it.)

Blacksmith/Armorsmith: (Iron Ingots lvl 16 and Iron Rivets, lvl 18.)

Goldsmithing: Silver Ingots (lvl 23)

Leatherworking: Aldgoat Leather (lvl 17)

Weaving: Dew Thread (lvl 23)

Alchemy: Mortar (lvl 20) and eventually Natron (lvl 25).

Cooking: Grape Juice. (Lvl 21, has only one ingredient, easy to mass produce to get levels.)

SOME of these items are great to sell on the marketboard.  Others are not.  I can tell you right now I had great experiences selling the following: Walnut Lumber, Silver Ingots, Dew Thread, Mortar and Natron.  

Four:  Now go farm up the mats you need that cannot be bought off a vendor.

Walnut Lumber:  Gather up at least 300 logs to turn into 100 lumber.  Go nuts with this, the more you have the better off you’ll be.  

Silver Ore or Effervescent Water:  Effervescent water sells great on its own if you want something to just mine up and sell as is.  Or you can turn it into Natron for a bit more profit.

Limestone.  I’ve found Limestone always sells high.  Mortar is particularly popular for making furniture items.  

Noble Grapes: Check the marketboard for these, it may be worth it to just buy them if they’re cheap rather than waste time gathering them when you could be gathering more walnut logs.

Aldgoat Skin: Check the MB for this too.  It may be cheap enough to buy rather than gather.  Since gathering takes you going around killing aldgoats near camp drybone.  (If you do gather them, save any aldgoat horns you get, they’ll come in handy later.)

Alumen: Necessary to make aldgoat leather.

Diremite web: Pain in the ass to gather yourself.  Buy off marketboard or run Toto-rak over and over again and hope you get some.

At this point, you should have enough shards and your retainers should be high enough level to gather other things for you. Send botanists out for walnut logs, and miners out for silver ore, alumen, limestone or effervescent water.

DO NOT BOTHER FARMING FOR IRON ORE.  IT IS BOUGHT OFF VENDORS EASILY.  WASTE OF YOUR TIME TO UNLESS YOU JUST REALLY ARE A PENNY PINCHER AND ENJOY GATHERING.

TIPS:  

Put on an audiobook to listen to, or have the TV nearby playing a movie or binge watch your favorite show while you gather.  Makes it less tedious.  

Take breaks.  Get up and get something to eat, stay hydrated.  Walk away and do some how chores for a bit.  The gathering part takes time.  

Set a limit for yourself.  Like you’re only going to get 300 walnut logs and then go do something else for awhile. Or, set a timer like you’ll farm for 30 minutes and then take a break.  Run a dungeon, play another game, do housework, something to mix it up a bit.  

This stage of the game is different for everyone. Some people like the grind of gathering, other people find it boring and tedious.  Don’t feel like you’re a failure if you can’t spend more than a short amount of time on this.  Pace yourself, do what you can, and then stop before you burn out.

Five:  Now for the crafting part.  Start working on everything you have gathered. Make walnut logs into lumber, turn silver and iron ore into ingots, diremite web into dew thread, aldgoat skin and alumen into aldgoat leather, noble grapes into grape juice, limestone into mortar.  

Once everything is made, head for the market board and price your items.  See what’s selling decently, what’s selling low.  Also be sure to check what the history is on the item in question. How much has it sold for in the past? How often does it sell? 

This is where your marketboard savvy should begin to take shape.   If you need to, keep track of sales trends on a spreadsheet.  Very useful in the beginning as you are learning the ropes, and will likely become intrinsic later.  

Start putting up auctions on your vendors of the items you think are most likely to sell.  Don’t put up stacks of 99 if you can help it.  Some people like big stacks like that but others may just want a few of an item.  (Also you can possibly sell it for a bit more than the lowest price if they have stacks of 99 up and you’re selling a stack of 20.)

Tips:  

Make sure you check the history of the item in question.  Look to see how often the item sells.  Is the last time it sold back a month ago?  Probably not a hot item right now.  Check the next item in your bags.  Your auctions are prime real estate, you want to occupy them with items that sell relatively well.  Reserve your slower moving items for times you’re low on the fast ones.  

Always have your retainers full.  When you go to bed, they should each have 20 auctions up.  Soon as something sells, put up something to replace it.  

Keep an eye on the going rates.  If it normally sells around 600 gil a piece, but there’s none up right now?  Don’t get greedy, selling it for 5000 gil each will just get you undercut pretty fast.  Try something like twice the last going rate to start with.  So, in this example, something that was selling at 600 gil a piece, put your auction up for 1200 a piece.  This is trial and error and every server is different.  

A watched auction never sells.  Don’t obsessively check your auctions to see if you’ve been undercut every 5 minutes.  Put them up and WALK AWAY.  

Know prime shopping times.  If it’s early in the morning, there won’t be as many sales.  Don’t bother undercutting just yet.  When you get home from work, great time to log in, check auctions and undercut as that’s the time people are getting home and logging in and buying stuff.  Don’t bother with it again until you go to bed.  

And that’s about all I have time for right now.  I will try to put up a part two on how to Marketboard tomorrow.  Good night and good sales!

[ivi-gw2]

Recycling old content and why must some easy things stay easy

(long post)

In the last post I explained why I think that Guild Wars 2 is in desperate need of “medium” difficulty content. In this post I’ll talk about some ideas that come to my mind.

What would I say is needed? More hard and much, much more medium content to balance things out with large amounts of easy content? More updates? Sure! But let’s go green: I would like to see older content that once was medium or that wilted, revisited and refreshed. There is already enough variety of stuff to do in GW2 - we don’t need so much new stuff, it will just make older stuff more abandoned and maybe the player base too fragmented. Also, not touching old and boring content will make it “bad” and more and more abandoned by players” - the game would benefit a lot if they’d find a way to make it new and interesting.

Also - the best solution would be to make the most change with the least possible work done - to make it economically rational. While - importantly - focusing on making what already exists in the game better. With Colin Johanson as a new (old) leader and more focus shifted at GW2, I once again have hopes that ArenaNet will stop abandoning good content shortly after shipping it. Yes, Colin means experimentation - but the focus part will, I believe, make them think about it for a bit.

So first of all - what change would make a lot of now trivial and too-easy content better and a bit harder? Buffing all mobs and encounters and nerfing all player abilities? Yes, but… it wouldn’t make the game better. Let’s say we have a low-skill player - one that is new to the game or simply hasn’t yet learned some of the game mechanics. And a high-skill player. For the high-skill player most of the game (as it is in the easy category) is braindead. But for the low skill one it is not braindead. It is a probem even ArenaNet is trying to fix; in an interview when Icebrood Saga was coming, Mike Zadorojny said that “The challenge is that the skill disparity between average players and hardcore players is extreme. We’re talking about ten times damage output. You can’t necessarily put a DPS check that the average player is going to be able to overcome without making the fight entirely trivialized for the hardcore.” Just buffing everything and nerfing all player abilities wouldn’t do much because many new players and lower skill players suddenly won’t be able to play content that was intended for everyone. Some guy who just created their first character in Queensdale, running around, would come up to the bandit who would kill him in 3 hits. For many people that would be a good learning lesson, but GW2 is a fundamentally different game (and differently marketed) from MMOs that focus mostly on hard endgame content (FFXIV or WoW, for example) and so it attracts everyone, not just people that want to be super skillful players. Just making the absolute whole of the game much harder because that would make average players’ skill closer to the raids or quality PvP experience would succeed in what it wants. But it would also deter a lot of people and, more importantly, lose a lot of players who found friends and communities, peace or happiness in simple things GW2 offered. Harder content is needed, many of the existing stuff in GW2 has to be notched up just a bit, but a lot of it has to stay in “easy” difficulty. 

Most of core’s open world mobs and events are definitely one of those things - most of them being in lower level maps. Leaving them in the easy difficulty category won’t take anything from raids - yes, ArenaNet hasn’t focused on the raids because a small number of players play them and it would be cool to have more players that play them so we could then have more raids… but harsh up in difficulty for this kind of content isn’t the solution. Making low-skill players better and bringing them closer to playing raids is best done with small step ups in difficulty - something having enough content in all difficulties does - making easy and medium important. Only thing I would add to the open world core mobs is better telegraphs for attacks - red aoe dots on ground, arrows for charges, etc. As for LS, PoF and HoT open world mobs and events - those can stay the same, they are an appropriate level of challenge for many players.

Next up is content I believe was and still is the most played content in the game: world bosses. Huge dragon coming from the sky and hundred brave warriors rush to defeat him, epic music playing… And the dragon is dead in 2 minutes. I’ll say this right away: I love world bosses, even them being this easy. I still play them. Because I love MMO experience and I love to see a lot of other players. World bosses are Guild Wars’ 2 trademark and the defining game characteristic, and something they did the best way possible out of all the other MMOs. And while they are in no way falling in popularity, I believe they should be a bit refreshed so they move into the “medium content”. In my opinion, focus for their rework should be: small changes to make them a bit harder (most of them just a bit, few of them a lot) and teaching players some of the more difficult game mechanics. Making them harder is needed so players would organise more and make the bosses feel as an actual threat. New and low skill players aren't the issue here because most other players can carry them. A good example of teaching some difficult mechanics with a harder boss was adding the Vale Guardian event in Bloodstone Fen.

But no changes to the world bosses means no engaging (or “better”) content for experienced players. Well, then some changes that would affect only the experienced players are needed:

Much harsher dynamic level adjusting for high-level characters in lower level maps.. I already wrote in one of my previous posts: “Make me, while in top gear, have just 15% better stats than a noob in some low-level map, but let me be stronger and more able to help them with my skill creep.” I would say that it would require less work for ArenaNet, than revisiting every mob, event and skill. But I can only guess.

Harsher event scaling for larger amounts of players - currently events are scaled well mostly for single players and small groups, but big metas get too easy. Boss doing more damage and having much more HP than how it scales now could help a bit.

Keeping power-creep in check - constant skill balance changes to keep every top damage number under a certain threshold.

More work needed to get participation, scaled by players level. Low level characters could do less and have more participation while lvl 80 characters should do more to get the same. This would work even for expansion/living story/lvl 80 maps - in those cases, everyone should do just a bit more. And in my opinion that is okay because a lvl 80 player will by default do much, much more than a low-level one. Unless… they are not doing their part.

Add timers to big meta events - as they work in strikes - with more work done, you get a better reward. And make gold really hard to get. Not all world bosses should be absolutely lethal and only killable for players with super skills, but all of them should be a kind of a challenge.

Another thing that should be revisited is the personal story - the story of how we killed Zhaithan. It is the content that can’t be just pushed under a rug like dungeons were. Everybody plays it and all the new players will play it - it will define their first hours of GW2 experience. The focus of its rework should be to make it a big tutorial for many game mechanics and something that should slowly, step by step, up the player’s skill. The pacing, events in it and boss encounters are something I don’t need to say anything about because of how old and easy they feel today. New story stuff is great and shiny and made in a way that’ll take much more time to lose it’s shine. While we’re at the shiny new story - while all of GW2's story should be little by little harder, it should never get too hard. It should stay pretty low in difficulty - maybe just lower-medium difficulty tier. Because it is a showcase for new players what new stuff ArenaNet just added to the game. They shouldn’t need to play hundreds of hours of all the rest of the story before they can try out and be happy playing the new toys that they just got. Adding special achievements, making memorable encounters, special fractals or strikes with CMs is a very good solution ArenaNet made. It makes the story a bit more of a challenge for more experienced players. I would also like to see some core story’s memorable moments be turned into fractals or strikes - killing the Eye and The Claw Island come to my mind. Even HoT, PoF and LS story events could be made repeatable somehow - Mordremoth, Balthazar and Joko fights are some of my favourite ones.

Then there are dungeons, somehow tied with the personal story. With them, a lot of rework is needed. I believe they are the type of old content that can be redone from bottom up and people won’t be mad about it. Some of the stuff I don’t miss is running down iced scaffolding to light a fire or luring skelks away from orbs to get to Mossman. FotM update was a very good decision - boring or needlessly irritating parts were removed and replaced with more meaningful encounters. An art of the deal. If it gets removed and replaced with something better in the same vein - some of the stuff I won’t miss that comes to mind: underwater boss in HotW, many simply irritating mobs in Arah or the fiery tunnel in CoF. Dungeons have an immense potential to span difficulty steps from easy (story path), over medium, up to hard difficulty.

But why should we, the veteran players, go back to this, already played content - even after “the refresh” relatively easy content? More about that in upcoming posts!

Source: Balancing Guild Wars 2 difficulty is tough when top players do “ten times” more damage | PCGamesN https://www.pcgamesn.com/guild-wars-2/difficulty

[level99life]

I’m back

Just a quick post to say that I’m back and I’ll be trying to actually update this now.  I basically set this up last year and then never touched it again - becauseeee I immediately got in a relationship lol....  I haven’t re-read my posts yet but maybe I talked about it?  Because I would have been texting her the very week I set this up I believe.

A quick update about me:  So yeah, that relationship thing happened, that was scary.  We ended roughly around August 2020 (but off-and-on did a friends-with-benefits thing until January 2021, after which I’ve since completely blocked her on everything - maybe I’ll go into that in the future, probably not though). At work, I took on more management roles and so that takes up a lot of my time and mental bandwidth (I’m slowly trying to get a new job, however - one I’m not embarrassed about - so far I just have my resume like 95% complete).  At home, I still live with super weird/messy roommates that I really need to get out of (surprisingly this is probably the #1 issue in my life right now, and I think that by solving this I’ll have a lot of derivative benefits across all other facets of my life).  Relationship-wise, currently not seeing anyone or even trying; I’m forcing myself to address other things before I bring someone else into my life (relationships are time-sinks and money-sinks, not to say that’s bad [in my opinion those are like the best money/time-sinks possible, it’s basically the whole point] but I either literally don’t have those things available to me at the moment or need to figure out what I can budget for it).  Free-time wise: completely stopped working out all of COVID so far - I had injured my back (that took a good 6-8 months to heal), my stomach constantly has problems that get much worse when I work out, and I haven’t been able to figure out meals that... A) I can make fast enough to have time to do other things in the day, B) have enough calories that I even gain weight when I’m not working out (all of COVID my weight has slowly been going down, so I can only imagine what it would have been if I had been working out).  I played RuneScape a little bit all year (came back from a 3 year hiatus) and finally maxed both of my accounts plus some other side-goals, and I’m calling it mostly quits again (I might pick it up every few months, but I’m definitely done grinding) -- this is probably the most important part to make note of as it’s what made me remember this blog lol; throughout the last year I blogged on my clan’s dead forum and it felt really good to journal goals and accomplishments and thoughts like that, so once again I’d like to try applying that idea to my real life here.  Self-wise

I just finished some quick spring-cleaning of the blog (fixing pictures, styles, links and such).  Also renamed it from Lvl 99 Life to Level 99 Life because yeah.  Still not totally sold on using Tumblr for this (honestly I love the format of forums so much, but I want something to be a bit more public even if I’m not actively sharing it and expecting people to read it - I love semi-anonymous, semi-public posting), but it’s one of those “we’ll improve it with time” things I need to get more comfortable with (I so often fall into the trap of thinking I need to perfect things at the very beginning).

Some quick reflections on this blog: Almost certainly not going to do those weekly update things.  Structure like that, while pleasing to my OCD-like tendencies of wanting strict organization, is stressful as fuck.  Nah.  I’m keeping this super loose (as you can tell from this jank-ass post) the same way that my RuneScape blog was over the last year, and maybe with time it’ll converge to something more structured.

Alright, I think that about covers everything.  My ending notes will be my current overarching life goals and what I’m actively working on:

Actively working on:

Project 0: Get a rotation of meals to make every week (super quick to make, high calories so I gain weight, and that don’t upset my stomach).

Next life goals:

Finish my PC (I’ve put next to zero focus on this since January-ish so I’m forcing myself to re-focus and get this bitch done; I literally just need a GPU but I’ve been super defeated because of how hard they are to buy for normal prices... this annoying project has taken me something like 5 years and will stand as a trophy to my inability to complete things in reasonable timeframes whatsoever, jesus fuck).

Finish budget & financial goals spreadsheet (I don’t want to know how many hundreds of hours I’ve put into this now).

Finish resume, post to Indeed/Linkedin/etc., look for a new job.

Find a new place to live (alone or with just one other person).

Go back to college.

EDIT: I went back and read my other posts.  Oh boy.  Alright so, from this post:

Today, Sunday, has been especially bad. I got into bed as soon as I got home and I haven’t been able to leave. I haven’t had this happen in months, if not more, so it’s worrisome. I’m scared about roommates seeing me for some reason, can’t leave to eat anything, and sometimes can’t even get out to go to the bathroom.

Yeah, I continued to be like this all year, and especially all of 2021 so far.  I had no fucking clue until now how literally nothing has changed in over a year.  I need to start seeing doctors again, wow.  Really proves the importance of journaling like this - you don’t realize the time of things until you read old thoughts.  In January I was my absolute worst - I was literally only awake for 9 hours as most, and slept the rest of the day, and it’s becoming that again.

I truly can’t get myself to go grocery shopping, and I ran out of meal foods on Friday, so I’ve been severely under-eating. This has likely caused a loop wherein I feel more depressed/anxious/etc. due to my hormones and stuff being out of whack from bad diet, further preventing me from going out to get food. So much for the budget helping with this.

Still such a huge problem, if not worse?  I don’t think I even go grocery shopping once a month anymore, it’s a little over that.  I do laundry just once a month.  These two things are examples where I feel like living on my own would have huge bonuses though, since (as I talked about above) I’m so scared of being around people (and conflict with them in terms of needing to use certain things/rooms at certain times) that I can’t just get shit done when I want, be noisy at weird hours in the kitchen, etc.

I started my role as assistant manager at work. Nothing has changed yet, no training yet, so it’s very weird where people are asking me things that I can’t do anything about.

Yeah that hasn’t changed.  Fuck this job actually sucks harder than I thought.  I could be hard on myself and say it’s (at least in part) on me to have initiative and seek things out on my own, but honestly no - I’m blaming the company for such a terrible training structure.