#all I have to do is max out these armor sets + get the last two pieces of my amiibos tomorrow and max those too

[withacapitalp]

How to Rehabilitate a Jock Pt 18

Part One Link to ao3 Part 17. Part Nineteen

Thank you to @stevethehairington for being supportive af and the worlds best beta and @thefreakandthehair for encouraging everything I do y'all rock!!!

Step Eighteen: Get Some Supplies

Eddie had spent quite a lot of time watching Steve in the last few weeks. Observing the way Steve spoke, the way his smile curled slowly on his lips when he thought no one was watching, the way he noticed almost everything, but was somehow still so oblivious. Eddie saw it all. 

But by far the most interesting thing about Steve was the way he could switch at the drop of a hat. 

It was the most interesting, but also the most frightening. It was like the headlights on the van all over again- one second Steve had been joking around with him, saying things that made Eddie’s heart race and his chest sink heavy with guilt; and the next his entire face went blank, a hard protective look in his eyes and a painful tension setting his spine perfectly straight. 

All because of the sound of a car. 

Eddie had no way of knowing what happened to Steve to make him like this, but curiosity was eating at him again, completely pushing aside the fact that he had almost spilled the entire bet to Steve in a fit of regretful shame. 

Well, not completely pushing it aside. Eddie’s heart was still racing like a jackrabbit, but that was besides the point. 

“What’s wrong?” Eddie murmured. 

“Nothing,” Steve replied immediately, his voice so dead it killed something in Eddie too. Steve carefully pulled away from Eddie, leaving cold handprints where his warm palms had just been against Eddie’s skin. “Stay here.” 

Not a chance. Eddie knew whose car that was, and he knew that if Hargrove was here, then nothing good was about to come of it. He waited maybe two seconds before following Steve out of the kitchen, tracing his steps to the front door that was slightly ajar, slipping out the door and onto the porch-

And walking directly into Jim Hopper’s back. 

Hopper startled like he had been shot, and Eddie reared back on instinct, nearly hitting the door in his effort to put space between himself and the police chief. When Hopper saw who bumped into him, he practically growled, his eyebrows furrowing into one long fuzzy stripe as he gave Eddie a completely unwarranted death glare. 

Rude. And uncalled for. 

It wasn’t like they were friends, but Eddie and the chief usually had a pretty good rapport. Kind of like Tom and Jerry, if Tom was the chief of police in a podunk Indiana town, and Jerry was a trailer kid who dealt drugs on the side for grocery money. Usually Hopper regarded him with put upon fondness, not straight hostility, and the shift was… disconcerting to say the least. 

Luckily for Eddie, Hopper seemed to have a bigger target for his rage tonight. A target with a blue camaro and even worse anger issues. 

Steve had only been outside for maybe thirty seconds, but that thirty seconds was long enough for him to get in trouble. Hargrove had gotten out of his stupid car, leaving the engine idling as he swaggered up to Steve, a condescending smirk in his face as his eyes flashed dangerously. Max had also scrambled out of the car, and was on her way around the hood and over to Steve’s side. 

This wasn’t going to be good. 

But, before anything could go wrong, Eddie was reminded they weren’t alone. 

“Is there a problem here, Hargrove?!” Hopper barked just as Billy reached towards Steve, putting every ounce of authority he had into his growling tone, making even Eddie shudder. Eddie had only gotten that tone out of Hopper once or twice during his many run-ins with the law, but each time it scared the bejeezus out of him. 

“No sir,” Hargrove spat out, instantly taking a step away from Steve. It seemed that even his impervious armor of assholery could be penetrated by Hopper’s power. 

Hop started down the steps of the porch, and Eddie burst into action, scurrying after him and attempting to look at least a little bit intimidating as he came to Steve’s aid. 

Mission probably not accomplished, but Eddie hoped Steve at least appreciated the gesture. Hargrove was fucking scary, and if he could beat Steve’s face in, Eddie was pretty sure that Billy might actually kill him if Eddie decided to take a swing. 

“Max, go inside,” Steve said softly as they came over, a gentle hand pushing against her arm and urging her towards the safety of the house. She pushed back, giving Steve a silent glower. Little Red was stubborn, almost as stubborn as Steve, and it was obvious she didn’t want to go anywhere without knowing nothing bad would happen to her babysitter. 

It was admirable, but it was also really, really, stupid. If anything happened, Steve would one hundred percent focus on protecting her first, which might get him hurt. Eddie wasn’t great in a fight, but he knew how to find people’s weak spots, and anyone with eyes knew that Steve’s weak spots were the people he loved. 

“Please,” Steve whispered, taking his eyes off of Billy to give her a silent look. 

Another switch. The guard dog was gone, a sweet chocolate lab in its place. Soft and careful not to hurt as he nudged his pup away from the mountain lion that wanted to devour her whole. 

Max sighed shortly, stopping to press a quick hug to Steve’s side and an even quicker flick of her middle finger towards Billy before she ran over to the porch. She sat herself down on the bottom step, her fiery red hair standing out in the dark as she leaned forward with her hands on her knees, watching them all like a hawk waiting to take flight. 

It was a compromise, and enough to keep her out of the fight that still seemed to be coming. 

“I’ll be back to get her at 8 sharp tomorrow, Harrington. She better be out here waiting,” Hargrove stated, bristling with barely concealed fury as Hopper and Eddie both flanked Steve. 

“I’ll drop Max off sometime in the afternoon, Billy,” Steve replied coolly, leaning casually backward as he crossed his arms. He was a picture of calm, a complete deviation from the rest of them. “If she’s gonna be later than 3, I’ll give you a call. Mkay?”  

Steve finished his sentence with a bitchy little smile, and Eddie bit his tongue, hating the way that his pants were starting to feel tight. It should not have been so much of a turn on to see Steve act like an ass, but when he was using his powers for good, there was something incredibly alluring about watching the former King tear someone down without so much as a swing of his fist. 

Hargrove’s nostrils were flared, and he looked like he swallowed an entire bag of lemons. He opened his mouth, probably to say something stupid, but Hopper wasn’t having any of it. 

“Anything else?” The man asked rhetorically. Before Billy could even shake his head, Hopper continued, putting his hands on his hips, “Good. Then scram before I bring you in on trespassing charges.” 

Hargrove deflated like a balloon, and Eddie barely resisted the urge to scoff. Of course Billy was the same as any other bully. It always went that way- they were all cocky and confident when they were with someone they thought they could beat, but if someone with actual power over them showed up, they instantly showed their belly. 

Eddie had no doubt that if Steve was out here alone, words would fly at the very least, and Steve might’ve even ended up with some new bruises. But the prospect of spending Christmas Eve in a cell seemed to be enough to get Billy Hargrove to fuck right off and leave them alone. 

Good riddance. 

“I could’ve handled that,” Steve complained the second Billy’s car disappeared around the corner. The annoyed face he was making at Hopper was ridiculously cute, and honestly, unfair. Eddie probably could have handled just the scrunched up nose, or the adorable little pout, but together they were a deadly combination that left him wanting to clutch his chest and beg for mercy. 

God, he was down bad for this boy. 

“Mhm,” Hopper hummed, raising a brow. 

“I could have!” Steve insisted. He turned to Eddie expectantly, waiting to hear his DM back him up. 

“You definitely could have,” Eddie reassured, despite not being entirely sure that Steve actually would have gotten out of that on his own, “but as much fun as bringing you to the hospital tonight sounds…”

The unsaid words spoke louder than Eddie had intended, and he even managed to get Hopper to bark out a short unexpected laugh. Eddie broke into a grin and shot Hop a smirk, the smile fading as Hopper seemed to realize exactly who had made him laugh and quickly went back to his angry scowling. 

What was his problem? 

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Babydoll,” Steve said with a roll of his eyes, dragging Eddie’s attention back over to him. Behind them Hopper seemed to choke on air, but Steve didn’t seem to notice, too focused on his next mission. 

“I thought you couldn’t come tonight?” Steve asked Max as he walked towards where she was sitting. 

“Mom and Neil decided to go to a resort for the holiday, so it was just me and Billy alone for Christmas.” Max sighed as she stood, casually stretching her arms high above her head. “I’d rather step in front of a bus then deal with that so I gave him five bucks to drive me here.” 

Her movements and her tone were nonchalant, uncaring and almost lazy, but Eddie wasn’t fooled. Max was chewing on the inside of her lip, and she was avoiding eye contact like the plague. Most people might’ve missed it, but Eddie was good at looking. 

And Steve was too. 

“Sorry about your mom,” Steve murmured as he pulled her in for a hug. Max let him hold her for all of four seconds before pulling away roughly, tossing one braid over her shoulder and sticking her nose in the air. 

“I don’t care,” Max declared, despite all of them knowing how very much she cared. 

“Well El is going to be thrilled. She’s been stuck with just the boys all night,” Steve offered, giving Max an out from the big feelings talk. 

“I’m sure she was fine,” Max muttered, kicking at the ground, “not like anyone was missing me.” 

Eddie had spent the better part of his life being unwanted. From his parents, to his teachers, to basically the whole world. Not only was Eddie the local freak, he was also a barely closeted gay man in a small Indiana town. He had gotten good at being okay with being left behind or abandoned.  

But seeing that part of himself in the little girl in front of him hurt in a way he didn’t even think to expect.

Luckily, Steve seemed to have this handled. 

“Lucas was missing you,” Steve said teasingly, crushing her against his side as he dragged them both up the stairs. “I was too. Now that you’re here I can finally start karaoke. I’m thinking of starting with "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.”

“Fuck off Steve, that song sucks and you know it,” Max complained, trying to wiggle out of his grip. Steve held her tighter, turning back to give Eddie a ‘watch this’ look before taking a comically long breath in.

“I WANT A HIPPOPOTAMUS FOR CHRISTMAS,” Steve crowed at the top of his lungs, startling the silent frigid air of the night with the force of his voice, “ONLY A HIPPOPOTAMUS WILL DO!”

“Oh my god, you suck!” Max shouted, finally escaping his grasp and clapping her hands over her ears. Her tone was angry, but Eddie could see the huge beaming grin that was overtaking her face. Once again the unstoppable force of Steve Harrington had managed to smooth things over. 

“I can see me now on Christmas morning creeping down the stair!” Steve continued without a care, giggling like a kid as he did. “Oh, what joy and what surprise! When I open up my eyes! To see a hippo hero standing there!”

Now Max was laughing too, holding her stomach as she tripped towards the front door to try and run from Steve’s singing. He held up his hands in mock trumpet form, vocalizing the instrumental parts of the song as he followed her in, leaving the front door wide open. 

And leaving Hopper and Eddie all alone outside. 

The silence materialized out of nowhere, the tension thick enough to cut with a knife. As much as Eddie wanted to just run into the house after Steve and never even look at Hopper again, he held back. Yes, this was awkward, but Eddie could deal with awkward. He was good at awkward. He regularly stood on lunch tables for fun. He could do this. He would have them back to their normal bantering rivalry before midnight.

“Hiya chief! So how’s-”

“Are you selling Steve drugs?” Hopper demanded, cutting him mid-sentence and rounding on Eddie with fury in his eyes. 

Eddie, unable to help himself, did the absolute worst thing he could have in response. 

He laughed. 

He couldn't help it. The question was just that ridiculous. He had sold to Steve in the past, even jacked up his price with the ‘rich douchebag’ tax, but it was only ever weed. A joint here and there barely counted as drugs in Eddie’s book. Steve wasn’t even one of his regulars. And since joining Hellfire, Steve hadn’t even mentioned Eddie’s side hustle. 

“Chief, even if I was, would you really expect me to tell you?” Eddie snickered, still in shock that he was being asked this by Jim Hopper of all people. Was he worried that Steve was going to give Jane drugs? It couldn’t be that, there was no way anyone would ever think Steve would do that. 

So Hopper was just… weirdly overprotective over Steve. He almost sounded like a dad. 

“Cut the crap, Munson,” Hopper growled, taking a menacing step forward. “I’m serious. I don’t know what game you’re playing here-”

“Dungeons and Dragons,” Eddie supplied, still chuckling at how insane this conversation was. 

“-but!” Hopper continued, putting emphasis on the word and on ignoring Eddie, “nothing better happen to him, or so help me god-”

“Hop!”

Hopper was cut short by the sound of Joyce Byers. She and Steve were standing in the open doorway, twin disappointed looks on both of their faces as they took in the scene in front of them. Steve hung his head low, softly muttering to himself as he plodded down the steps and grabbed Eddie’s wrist, tugging him back towards the house. 

“Handle this?” Steve begged as they passed her. 

Joyce, who was in the process of lighting a cigarette, gave him one short nod, eyes already locked on her target. Eddie didn’t really know Mrs. Byers all that well, but he had dealt with enough irate mothers to know when to stay out of a woman’s way. 

“You promised you wouldn’t act so crazy-” Eddie heard her hiss to Hopper from behind their backs. 

“I am concerned! Am I not allowed to be concerned?!” Hopper exploded, and Steve slammed the door before they could hear anymore, pressing his back against it and groaning as he hid his face in his hands. 

“Why does everyone think I’m doing drugs?” Steve muttered. It was definitely a rhetorical question, but Eddie couldn’t help being a bit of a jackass. 

“I mean it’s not like I’ve never sold to you before, Sweetheart,” He pointed out, sticking both hands deep in his pockets and letting the smirk on his face grow three times as big as Steve groaned even louder. Eddie wasn’t exactly happy to be threatened by the chief of police, but it was nice to know that there was someone who was looking out for Steve. 

Hop was no Wayne, but every person needed a grumpy old man to watch over them in Eddie’s humble opinion, and if Hop was Steve’s, then Eddie could handle a few words thrown his way. 

Steve slowly slid down the door as he grumbled and mumbled, ending up cross legged on the floor, staring up at Eddie with the most pitiful pout known to man. 

If it was anyone else, Eddie would have kept the joke going, teased them to oblivion until they were both laughing until their stomachs hurt. But Eddie was a weak, weak man, and Steve’s eyes had somehow grown inhumanely wide and sad, and there was only so much he could take. 

“Come on, let’s go check on our completely clean, absolutely drug-free cookies,” Eddie offered, sticking a hand out to Steve to help him up, “just to prove to Hopper that I’m not your hookup.” 

Steve heaved the world’s biggest sigh in response, but took Eddie’s hand anyway. As he stood, rather than letting go, he intertwined their fingers, pulling Eddie into the kitchen and squeezing their palms together once before he went for his oven mitts. 

“By the way, I didn’t get to thank you,” Steve said randomly as he slowly lifted the tray filled with cookies out of the oven. 

“Thank me for what?” Eddie asked, reaching a hand towards the fresh treats, his mouth watering at the delicious aroma filling the air. 

“Hey! Too hot, you’ll burn yourself,” Steve said, jostling the tray to one side as he smacked Eddie’s fingers away before they could get singed. He placed the tray down far from Eddie and began to transfer the cookies onto a cooling rack. 

“I meant thank you for having my back out there… you didn’t have to do that,” Steve explained, his voice getting uncharacteristically shy as he continued to stare down at the cookies and avoid looking at Eddie in any way. His shoulders were curled inwards, and his bottom lip was caught firmly between his teeth. 

Eddie could have lightened things back up, made a joke about Steve’s innate ability to get into trouble, or pulled some bullshit insult about Billy’s intelligence to make them both smile and shake their heads, but he didn’t. There was something about the hesitancy sitting in Steve’s body, the way he was almost holding his breath, waiting to see why Eddie had gone after him when Steve had told him to stay behind. 

Like he couldn’t understand why someone would want to protect him instead of the other way around. 

“I didn’t want you getting hurt by him again,” Eddie stated, feeling his cheeks get stupidly warm as he did. It wasn’t like some big declaration of feelings or love, but the way the words laid his soul bare felt just a shade too close for comfort. 

“I would’ve been fine,” Steve protested, wrapping two cookies in a paper towel and handing them over to Eddie to test taste, shooting him a wry little grin as he did. “Billy won’t touch me now anyway. Not after last time. Max made sure of that.” 

“There shouldn’t have been a first time, and there won’t be a second,” Eddie said firmly, ignoring whatever weird joke Steve was making about Billy’s thirteen year old little sister being able to stop her eighteen year old brother. “Hargrove might be able to kill me with a single punch, but I’ll die fighting for your honor, Stevie.” 

“Well, I appreciate the gesture, but I don’t need anyone else dying on my watch,” Steve said softly, his smile disappearing as his eyes faded somewhere distant and sad. 

In an instant they were back in no man’s land, unmoored and untethered to the reality around them. Steve wasn’t at a party with him anymore, just lost in some far away place that Eddie couldn’t reach. Somewhere painful, and empty looking, and all Eddie wanted to do was pull him back and protect him from whatever was trying to steal his happiness. He wanted Steve to let him in, unhook the heavy cape that was set on his shoulders and unburden himself from whatever guilt was holding him hostage. 

Whatever it was, Eddie would help. He could make this easier, at least a little bit. All Steve had to do was tell him. All Eddie had to do was ask what was wrong. 

The time for being cautious was past them, and the time for being afraid Steve might run was over too. They had to be close enough for Eddie to at least know something about whatever was torturing Steve so badly. 

And Eddie had to care enough about Steve to put him over his stupid little crush. 

So despite the fact that his heart was threatening to leap out of his chest, and the dread was making his fingers ache, Eddie took a deep breath in and forced himself to speak. 

“Hey Sweetheart?” 

But unfortunately, the universe had other plans. 

“Steve!”

“What!” Steve yelled back to Mike, breaking away from Eddie and turning just in time to see all of the kids pile into the doorway like a pack of rabid animals. 

“Now that Max is here, can we do White Elephant?” Lucas pressed, impatiently drumming his fingers on the wall.

“Please?” Will added, quickly shooting a look over to his friend before turning back to Steve with barely hidden glee. 

“Fine,” Steve sighed, dragging out the word as the kids cheered and ran out of the room.  

The wild tornado of children had passed as quickly as they came, but whatever moment the two of them had been having had long since passed. Sharing Steve was gone, and Babysitter Steve had come back in full force. There was nothing wrong with him, nothing that would take precedence over his kids at least. 

It was admirable, but Eddie kind of hated it. Actually, more than hate. Eddie despised the fact that Steve was no longer with him, lost in taking care of the rest of the world once more. It was a good trait, something to respect, but it meant that Eddie had lost his chance to dig past Steve’s walls a bit more, and maybe finally get some answers. 

“Oh wait, Eddie what were you going to ask me?” Steve said, halting in his pursuit of the kids and turning to face Eddie. 

It was sweet that he cared, but it was pointless. This wasn’t the time anymore. 

But…

The supplies he had in the lunchbox in his van might just be the perfect way to get Steve to open up a bit. 

“I was going to ask if you maybe wanted to make some not clean kinda full of drugs cookies for us to enjoy later?” Eddie asked, mentally apologizing to Hopper. Steve quickly looked around to make sure no one else was listening, his eyes wide as a secretive smile already started to pull at his lips.  

“Ask me again once the kids are asleep,” Steve whispered in his ear, intertwining their fingers. Eddie steadfastly ignored the full body shudder rolling through his body, already calculating how much of a profit loss he was going to have to go through to get Steve to finally talk. 

Taglist: @paopaupaus @zerokrox-blog @surferboyzaza @whatever-is-a-good-name@minjintea @addelyin @5ammi90 @hagbaby420 @shinekocreator @bornonthesavage @starxlark @electrick-marionnett @resident-gay-bitch @ash-a-confused-enby @classicdinosaurdeathpose @valon-whomsttf @rotten-lil-goblin @thereindeerlady @love-ya-kash @kerlypride @sparkle-fiend @thefreakandthehair @flowercrowngods @milf-harrington @sadcanadianwinter @gothbat99 @hotcocoaharrington @henderdads @lightwoodbanethings @colorful565 @h0n3y-dw @craterbbox @sourw0lfs @lesliiieeeee @bidisastersworld @tinynebula @ravnlinn @bonescaro @mexmatch @cottagecoredreams @joruni @hellykelly @maegan1116 @farewell-wanderlvst @desertfern @due-to-the-fact-that-im-a-slut @anythingforourmoonyedits @eerielake @fandemonium-takes-its-toll @sidekick-hero

[the-desert-beast]

WOULD YOU LIKE TO EARN TOO MANY GODDAMN BAGS FROM THE MAD KING'S LABRINTYH???

WELL HERE'S HOW!!!!!!

A recent patch allowed for boons to grant you "kill credit" meaning that when an ally with a boon you gave them kills something, you earn loot too! As such, Herald is now an AMAZING way to loot a fuckton of bags from the Mad King's Lab.

First, some lab farming etiquette tips.

Low damage is your priority. Unequip exotic+ trinkets, and if you have the bag space, swap your exotic+ armor for masterwork gear of a support/survival stat set.

SPAMMING AUTOATTACK IS YOUR BEST FRIEND!! NO RAID ROTATIONS! except for boss doors. bosses have so much goddamn health.

NO POWER GEAR; power deals Too Much damage far too quickly, as the open world mobs in the lab Do Not Scale with the amount of nearby players. Power gear & builds will cause you to melt mobs before anyone else can tag them!

NO MOUNT ATTACKS: Mount abilities deal too much damage for the same reasons as above.

Let the tag/Commander open doors! Don't open Boss (purple) doors when running with a Mob (green) Doors only group!!

NOW HOW MAKE MONEY (GET BAGS)??????

For Tag Herald, You'll want to run Invocation, Salvation, and well. Herald. My build looks like this

My Revenant is running level 75 or lower Masterwork(green) Shaman's gear, no trinkets, with a level 75 masterwork Shaman's Shortbow.

Shortbow lets you tag plenty of mobs when they're stacked! With the help of shortbow 4 & 5 you can tag some stray groups of mobs yourself!

Snag a Relic of Speed from the survival relic chests or off the tp! This relic + the Herald trait "Rising Momentum" will give you enough speed to keep up with the groups this year! (I tend to outrun them, so you can change this trait if you like. remember the low damage rule!)

Now for actually picking up the bags you'll want to leave one or two facets of your choice pulsing boons. Light, Elements, Strength, and Nature are all good options.

I leave Light & Elements active the entire time, using my Elite Consume skill when I fall behind or the group has no mobs to smack for a stretch of the lab.

For more bags, max out your magic find!! Lick those spirit banners!! Eat those Chocolate Omnomberry Creams or Omnomberry Bars!!! And lick a utility item that gives magic find!! I use the festival utility items (Crystallized Nougat, Pumpkin Oil, Sharpening Skull.) They're pretty cheap and they give you +30% Magic Find. The more magic find, the more bags!! If your guild has a Magic Find buff- nab it!!! Don't forget your magic fin boosters too. you want to get to around 250+ - 300 magic find!

you can check your magic find on the equipment panel, it's the last attribute listed on the right.

A little clover icon + the % of your magic find!

i think that's everything, happy farming! Remember to keep your damage low and to stretch every 30 minutes to every hour!! stay hydrated and take care of your eyes & posture!

HAPPY MAD KING FEST

[glngrbred]

Hot take, Elden ring is a really good souls like, but that doesn't mean its actually a good game.

within the subgenre, souls-likes have always had really huge issues with accessibility, and i don't mean for disability alone. Elden ring especially had extremely horrible performance issues at launch, which they did eventually fix. Even then you still have to get a 400 dollar PC. Aside from that there are some strange decisions made with teaching the player, like the tutorial is just a hole that players had to point out to each other, and On my barely stable first 20 minutes, i couldn't even find (my b i guess). Obviously alot of extremely experienced gamers would be able to handle themselves super well in Elden ring even without a tutorial. But there's another issue there with accessibility.

2 last things on accessibility. The game's audio is mixed like a movie, (so barely audible or ripping out your eardrums ;-;) witch is another accessibility issue, that you have to put a lot of work in to fix. And the graphics range from maxing out the brightness, to being completely black on bad screens. obviously an issue. I'm not going to go into the issues with explanations and the general tell don't show nature of alot of souls likes, because people have already complained about the text tunnels enough

I do really appreciate the artistry and just beautiful atmosphere Elden ring has, my only issue with the graphics is the performance requirements for them. Also if you never turned the graphics all the way down, it used to cause bit lag spikes just because it wanted to i guess :")

So, my argument is that a game can be a good version of the predecessors it bases itself off of, but if it doesn't actually deliver on playability and accessibility, I really don't think its deserving of the praise it gets. here are examples of games I think are flawless Unraveled/Unraveled 2 Hades Minecraft (Java edition only [cuz bedrock is completely broken somehow???) Never alone (a cool 2 player co op platformer that me and my brother played through when we were 6 and 8 or smthn, it was incredible, and i still think its worth playing as an adult) Spelunky 2 ***Monster Hunter (except for the extremely slow RPG elements) [takes 3 months to get 1 armor set built fully :)]

So i actually have some great news for the difficulty purists, You can actually do a hardcore game well, So long as you make failure quick and readable, Make trying immediate, and Make learning a part of the design. Spelunky is not my cup of tea, i have a bad time with reaction time, but spelunky is really great, in that your goal every attempt is simply to get as far as possible. In elden ring, you have the opposite problem, where instead of completing the objective being extraordinarily hard, getting from point a to point b is tediouse, saving the game takes time, occasionally you can be attacked without knowing why, and you dont get a clear read on what went wrong, ETC. If Elden ring was only the boss fights, I would say its almost a great game. Which is why I included Monster hunter on that list, despite its insufferable grind. Also BTW spelunky 2 has four fun minigames. a requirement for any game to be truly perfect is for there to be appeal for casual gamers, and i don't think adding casual elements makes a game worse, like, ever.

Anyways, last little thing, I really dislike it when People praise games for not catering to the needs of some players. Like everyone has heard dudebros or their friends be like "It doesn't have any difficulty settings! that's so sick!" But, like, Have you ever met someone with a motor function disability, or like, just someone who doesn't play games for 30000 hours every year? Difficulty settings and the ability to control your experience are important. and this isn't about Elden ring, But if you care about being an ally you should want your games to have accessibility features, they only benefit people. and if you're so worked up about about an extra tab being in the settings window, maybe you should like, go to therapy or something.

Also Elden ring's UI is so ass it gave my design teacher a heart attack and they hired a Pe*o as our sub.

[kimoi-boi]

AKA What I'm doing to prepare for Dawntrail.

Note: A LOT of the stuff I've listed here is definitely sweaty min/maxing exp gains and you don't REALLY need to do it if you're just interested in the story stuff. The most important thing is to make sure you're caught up on MSQ and geared up before DT launches.

This got a lot longer than I was expecting, so I'm putting it under a cut lmao.

Make sure you're caught up with MSQ. I know this one seems like a no-brainer, but nothing I put in here applies to anyone that's still working through previous expansions!

If you're interested in playing VPR and PCT, you can use your Poetics to get Scouting/Casting Cryptlurker gear from the Crystarium/Eulmore. Both jobs will come with starting gear, but it will only be ilvl 430 so having another 100 ilvl will help out. You'll have to wait til DT launch to get the weapons, but you at least have time to get a full set of both armors.

On the subject of gearing, make sure you have at LEAST ilvl 630 gear going into the first DT dungeon! Ideally, you'll have either i650 or i660 gear, but you'll need a minimum of i630 to even be able to queue for the level 91 dungeon. If you have i660 gear, that will absolutely carry you through all of DT until you get your free AF gear, especially if you supplement it with the gear you get from dungeons.

Try to cap on Tomestones of Causality and Comedy if you don't have any relics/current gear to buy. You'll be able to exchange these for Poetics on DT launch. IIRC, the exchange rate will be 4:1. If both are capped, that's an extra 1000 Poetics right from the start.

Pick up a Wondrous Tails book for this week and fill out all 9 stickers, but DO NOT TURN IT IN. Each book is good for two weeks, which means this week's book will last until early access starts. Turn it in on your job of choice at DT launch for a ton of early exp, and then pick up next week's book for even more exp gains. This can REALLY help boost VPR and PCT if you're looking to level them quickly to use for MSQ!

If you've got the Hippo Riders tribe quests unlocked, you can pick up your 3 daily quests, do them, but DO NOT TURN THEM IN. Again, wait until DT launch to turn them in for quick exp gains. This will mean you won't be able to do any other new days' tribal quests, so do this closer to when servers go down for maintenance! If you turn them in before daily reset (8am PDT) on the day of early access, you'll even be able to pick up 3 more after you turn those in and then ANOTHER 3 after daily reset hits.

Stock up on cheap food or use old, outdated raid food as you're leveling. That extra 3% gain isn't too shabby over the course of 10 levels.

If you craft/gather, try to cap on those scrips as well, especially white scrips. White scrips will be phased out and can be exchanged for purple scrips at a 1:1 rate. This can be used to get materia that you'll need to pentameld with at level 100!

If you gather, make sure to pick up 8 MIN leves and 8 BTN leves from Old Sharlayan. Do them, but DO NOT TURN THEM IN until DT launch. It will give you a bunch of early exp for both of those. Make sure to do this at least 3 days before early access so your leves have time to accumulate again! Don't bother with crafting/fishing leves, as the exp to these will not be worth it.

Again for crafting/gathering, stock up on common materials for your GC turn-ins. Having them ready to go at launch means you won't have to spend time/gil gathering later and can be crafted into things for your turn-ins for early exp gains. GamerEscape has lists sorted by class that you can use to kind of gauge which materials you'll want to stock up on.

Be REALLY careful about doing challenge log stuff next Tuesday. Weekly reset will happen well before early access and if you complete challenge log entries before then, you'll be missing out on exp. This includes things like running dungeons, giving coms, gathering things, desynthing things, etc.

Next week, you can also pre-game Custom Deliveries by crafting/gathering them on Tuesday, but waiting until early access to turn them in. Again, this is great for an early exp boost! Don't bother stocking up on level 90 collectables outside of Custom Deliveries, as these will not be worth the exp!

If you've got extra grade 10 materia, hold onto it until DT. You can take them to Mutamix in Central Thanalan and try to transmute them into the new grade 11 materia. This one's kind of a low priority, but it's something to think about doing since grade 10 materia will be mostly worthless in DT.

Try to get your weekly hunts done, even after DT launches. You can use Allied and Centurio seals to get Aetheryte Tickets, which will give you free teleports! If the pattern of new hunt currency holds, then Nuts should also be getting Aetheryte Tickets and there will be a new hunt currency for DT. And if they break tradition and keep Nuts as current currency, then there will almost certainly be new things to buy with them!

Either turn off shout/yell/say chats OR have a chat tab that only has party and maybe FC chat or whatever linkshells you can trust to not have jerks in it. This will hopefully prevent assholes from spoiling things for you while still being able to communicate with party members/friends.

If you're a sidequest enjoyer like I am, make sure you don't have too many quests in your journal. You can only have 30 active at a time, which includes MSQ! Either clear the ones you've got before DT or abandon them and get back to them later if it's possible. Leves do NOT count against this, since they have their own limit.

Clean up your inventories, including your retainers and saddlebag(s). Anything that's easy to get or can easily be replaced (outside of stuff specifically stockpiled for GC turn-ins), just get rid of or sell on the MB. Having to run to your retainers every time your inventory gets full really takes you out of the flow of the MSQ and is kind of a bummer.

Back up your settings from the character log-in screen. You never know if data will get borked during an update and you really don't want to lose your hotbars/settings and have to spend hours fixing them. You can do this by pressing the little gear next to your character's name and uploading your settings to the server. I actually recommend doing this routinely even outside of new expansions!

And that's about all I can think of at the moment! Again, most of this is pretty sweaty advice. If anything I've listed here sounds like it'd be too annoying or would take the fun out of stuff, then feel free to disregard it. I have fun finding efficient ways to do things in this game, but I know it's absolutely not for everyone!

[delphiniumarchangelmoon]

So I never technically beat tears of the kingdom

It started as me wanting to get prepared for it, make sure I do it in one go. Max my hearts, max my inventory slots, upgrade my favorite armor sets in case I wanna swap em around during the fight, commit war crimes against the Lynel population to get a bunch of multishot bows, yanno the usual stuff.

And then THAT turned into “ah shit upgrading armor costs MONEY” and “how do I easily make money? Selling gems to that nice lady in Goron City!” And “easy way to get gems? Fighting Taluses!”

And THEN I remembered that you get medals for defeating all instances of a boss type and, well, since I’m already going to be mass-murdering taluses for money I might as well just blitz through all of them in one go and get the medal since fighting them is so easy.

(And while I was doing this I started mapping and mass-solving korok puzzles cause it turns out the full inventory upgrades took more than I expected and I actually wasn’t very good at finding koroks on my own…)

And then I finished the Taluses. And I went to collect my reward.

And it said I have one left.

So I did it again. I went online to one of those interactive map pages, filtered for Taluses, and marked each one before doing a circuit of the entire map. Not only did I CHECK every talus for the “defeated” notification, I re-fought every single one just in case it was some kind of glitch.

And it still says I have one left.

So now here I am on my THIRD attempt of finding the last Talus I need to kill to get my medal because goddamnit I CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS

And of course between fighting the Taluses and Uber-ing koroks around I was EMPTY HANDED. No bomb flowers, no zonaite, no bitches

So I had to do a depths tour. And re-did all the depths talus fights seperate from my other runs. Just because I can. Ended up buying like 45 bomb flowers with all the poes I got and have over 1000 crystalline charges so I’ve bought out every construct shop like three times.

Anyway I’m at like. 400 something Koroks cause if I’m doing several world tours I figured I’d get those while I’m at it (and it helps when I get sick of chasing these dumb rocks) and I’m fairly certain I’m going to get all the other boss medals before I find this last fucking talus just from me needing to kill them to restock on materials.

On the bright side Ganondorf is gonna get his shit absolutely WRECKED when I eventually get there. Master sword who? All I need is my collection of 5 shot savage lynel bows and an inventory full of rocket shields. Eat bullet time you raggedy old bitch!

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

The History of Area 59 Ruins

If you're dumb enough to Max Risk CC this weekend, you're a big enough schmuck to come to the Area 59 Ruins.

For now, let's settle with a little mood music while I get started.

So this post is just me kind of rambling nostalgically but with CC12 coming soon I figure we can enjoy the end of our CC journey with the very beginning. Plus this event happened like, at the beginning of this game's lifespan I kind of doubt most of the current Arknights players remember doing it.

These days you can only experience this map in the Training Grounds, which is a bit of a shame that it hasn't rotated back in. The gist of the stage is this: from the bottom left entrances come Light-Armored Soldiers, Heavy Defenders, and Armed Militants. From the upper left come Avengers, Hateful Avenger, and one Invisible Caster Leader I call The Rat Bastard because he sucks. From the bottom right, only Invisible Caster Leaders spawn.

There's no bosses and all of the enemies primarily just have their stats (and the Caster's Camo) to threaten you with. If you look at the contracts available...

Originium Zone: Activation III - Enemies have their HP increased by 2.5x. (3 points) Originium Zone: Stimulus III - Enemies have their ATK increased by 1.8x. (3 points) Objective: Blade Breaker III - Avengers and Hateful Avengers have their HP, ATK, and DEF increased by 2.2x, 1.8x, and 3x, respectively (3 points) Objective: Armament Destruction III: Armed Militants have their HP, ATK, RES, and weight increased by 2.5x, 1.8x, 1.75 and 2, respectively. (3 points) Objective: Covert Action III: Only 4 Operators (including the Support Unit) can be included to the squad. (3 points) Objective: Strategic Dispatch: Casters and Medics cannot be used. (2 points) Objective: Deep Infiltration: DP generation rate reduced by 50% (1 DP every 2 seconds). (2 points) Environment: Precipituous Terrain III: Friendles cannot be deploying in 10 tiles (3 points) Anti-Armor I: Enemies have their DEF increased by 50% (1 point) Anti-Sniper I: Ranged enemies have their attack range increased by 50%. (1 point) Anti-Mobility I: Enemies have their speed increased by 50%. (1 point) Objective: Last Line of Defense: Life Point reduced to 1. (1 point) Originium Zone: Erosion III: Friendlies have their maximum HP reduced by 75%. (3 points).

There might be a couple that jump out at you (we'll get to that in a minute) but total max risk was 29 and most of these are pretty simple in their execution. What was the Max Risk that was achieved by players?

To the best of my knowledge, the Max Risk achieved was 26. Which is kind of wild to think about. In this day and age it seems like almost a guarantee that a CC will get a Max Risk clear super quickly, and there are some truly heinous clears like that Ashpoint All Specialist clear. So how...did this happen?

Well there's two reasons really. The first is actually really simple: as of CC Beta's release, the most recently released operator was Mostima. This meant in terms of meta-breaking 6-stars, you had: Ch'en, Siege, Shining, Nightingale, Ifrit, Eyjafjalla, Exusiai, Angelina, Silverash, Hoshiguma, Saria, Skadi, Schwarz, Hellagur, Magallan, and Mostima. There's a lot of good operators there, but most people would agree that the grand majority of them aren't what we think of when it comes CC all-stars.

The second is how the stage is set-up. With all the tags enabled, let's look at the stats of two enemies in particular: the Hateful Avenger

and the Armed Militant

(HP, ATK, DEF, RES, Movement Speed in tiles/sec, Weight, and Attack Range)

Now despite that gigantic 99,000 HP, the Hateful Avengers were not really a big problem. They can actually be Push stalled basically endlessly. They'll take a while to actually die but it's not particularly hard to just whittle them down.

The Armed Militants are the problem. Their 5 Weight means they are very difficult to stall with shifting and thanks to the Erosion contract, nothing survives their axe swings. So already the map has two lanes you need to hold.

But it actually has a secret, THIRD LANE.

These guys are also nightmares and need to be dealt with basically immediately. Their 720 damage Arts attacks are much more lethal with -75% HP, but their increased attack range makes them a bigger issue. With the tag, they have an Attack Range of 3 tiles, but this is a little deceptive in how its framed. Let me illustrate.

Attack ranges are essentially circles, with a radius of the attack range distance in tiles. This means they can hit some tiles you might immediately think are actually four tiles away and not three.

The difference in attack ranges means that the Caster Leaders will often have complete free reign from their starting position to blast away at your entire bottom line if left unchecked, which is very bad. This isn't even getting into the one that spawns at the top too.

(Ignore the quality of these diagrams, I did them in Paint.)

So you have three lanes to defend, that's not hard, right?

Objective: Covert Action III: Only 4 Operators (including the Support Unit) can be included to the squad.

This. This is the bastard. To this day, I don't believe they've ever done a similarly restrictive squad condition in a main map (its possibly been in a rotating one, there's been 12 CCs I'm not checking).

The Risk 26 clear takes the 2 risk HP increase contract (which only boosts HP by 1.6x) and the 1 risk Squad contract (maximum of 10). With the current pool of obviously busted operators, I think it would be really easy to take the Risk 3 HP increase contract and the Risk 2 squad contract. Risk 28 is obvious. But trimming the squad down to four operators is a much more monumental task. I don't know if I would say impossible, but very very difficult.

Area 59 Ruins also ran on the rotating schedule for two CCs (CC0 Barrenlands and CC1 Pyrite) and I'll include them later on as their existence as rotating stages is far less interesting and I'm making this post while recovering from a virus lmao.

[echoequinox]

Starfield spoilers but you know what I'd kill for in the DLC

There are two big things I'd love. 1. Va'ruun. Obviously. The embassy is there so it's likely they're gonna show up, and also their WHOLE ASS HOME PLANET isn't in the game yet so. I hope we get a real serpent. I hope that the serpent is either a legit fucking big scary beast or that the Va'ruun leader is a Starborn

SPEAKING OF, you know what I'd kill for? An endgame story quest. You make it through your tenth run, you have a maxed out Starborn ship, armor, X level powers. And then you find other Starborn do too. They're at the apex of their power, just like you. The Hunter and Emmissary are back, as per usual, but there's so many MORE Starborn now. You all keep going back, and that means universes are absolutely full of Starborn.

So there's war. The Hunter and Emmissary are like, opposing and hesitant generals, neither wants to LEAD really but people follow them - maybe a lot of Yous, or Thems, or Constellation members - and they feel obliged to not leave them behind.

And so now there's REAL stakes. The universe torn asunder. Entire cities under new martial law by superpowered time traveling freaks. The UC and Freestar in shambles trying to deal with this new threat to their world.

The option to cut everyone in the current universe off from Unity FOREVER - yourself included! - in an attempt to stop these newly powerful armies from moving forward.

Maybe you get a set of Constellation companions who have seen it all. A Sarah who loved you and watched you die, and ventured into the black to find another you. A Sam who lost his little girl, and a version of his daughter - all grown up - who lost her daddy. Andreja, fully realized, a Va'ruun badass with deadly powers. Maybe Barrett found his husband, and wants to make this universe good for him, somewhere they could live in peace. Fuck, maybe Matteo, Walter, and Vladimir took the plunge, maybe you have their fully realized versions, too.

A final confrontation with fate and destiny. One last hurrah. Rather than the simple question of Hunter v Emmissary your first go-around, you now have to truly reconcile with eternity. Is it right to let these people flow out into every universe? Is it right to keep them here when they've touched infinity? Is it right for the people of this universe to damn them to being in a universal terrarium with the Starborn?

Maybe if you play it right, the Starborn get their own cluster of planets like the UC/Freestar. Maybe they get an embassy in New Atlantis, and people are offered the opportunity to touch the same powers that the Starborn had. Maybe there's even post-ending quests where you can see how the factions interact with each other.

Also permanent Hunter/Emmissary companions, fully romancable. This Emmissary is you, so you dont have to figure out randomly which Constellation member it is, also you can fuck yourself. I just really wanna fuck the Hunter okay I really wanna kiss that dirty old man.

Man idfk!!!! Starfield feels like the prologue to such a cool story and we never get there

EDIT: SECRET FINAL BOSS IS THE VERSION OF YOU IN UNITY, THEY'RE INFINITY INCARNATE AND THEY'RE MAD YOU'RE TRYING TO SEAL OFF UNITY AND ALSO WE GET A BRIEF GLIMPSE AT WHO MADE THE ARTIFACTS

[vermilionvector]

Speculation of the new armor

The history of armors in Elsword was wild. From simple crafting to incomprehensible RNG hell. Here is a brief history (at least from when I started playing):

Normal dungeon gear: Pretty much straightforward. Just a regular gear with higher stats.

Henir gear: This starts having some interesting unique effects. It can be upgraded via grinding Henir.

Secret dungeon gear: Similar to normal dungeon gear but with unique set effects.

Heroic gear: This was the first gear that had RNG components, having to roll 3 lines of IDs for the stats you want. It also came with a set effect of 3 variations.

Elrianode gear: Even more RNG hell with the Tears. The set effects also have 3 variations.

Amethystine Prophecy (AP) gear: The first set to have a Reforge system as an additional grind. The set effects have 6 variations. However, this is the first set since SD gear to not have any RNG involved in the set effects but rather on the Reforge system instead, which, in my opinion, is more acceptable. After it's changed to be bank-sharbale, the value of this gear for early game players increase significantly since it's a common gear that can be equipped on all characters. The reforge system may prove to be daunting at first due to reforge durability, but it's become more friendly after the material requirement nerf and many events and season pass also alleviated that.

Tenebrous (Tene) gear: A DIY set that you can mix and match the effects by yourself with more interesting effects that do not exist in earlier gears. The reforge system is inherited from AP. However, the Shadow Effect RNG is the worst out of all sets released. With so many combinations possible, it can be difficult to obtain the stats you want. Moreover, the armor is character-specific, meaning you cannot share it with different characters unless you purchase the conversion tickets from the item mall, which is very expensive.

Now the criticism:

AP: After many adjustment, this is the set that players seem to like the most due to how straightforward it is. Craft the armor of the set you want > Reforge it to R21 > Done. You can use it on any character in your account.

Tene: Though stronger, players hate it for how many of the stats are locked behind RNG hell. Firstly, you have to get the Shadow Effect you want. Secondly, you need to roll the max value on that stat. Thirdly, if you want another effect or want to reroll, you have to extract the desired option from another piece and roll it again. At initial release, the chance of extracting the desired effect was not 100% but 50%, so there was even more RNG involved. As a result of these factors, many players were unable to enhance their gear to an acceptable level and raised a concern during KOG's new armor release plan last year. KOG acknowledged it and postponed to this year instead while also reworking the planned armor to become Harconium Tuning Reactor, which is compatible with Tene.

Now the speculation:

Given that Harconium was supposed to be the new armor, it could be surmised that, based on the appearance of the item icon, the new armor will return to being common and bank-sharable.

Given how reforge system is in Tene, it might reappear in the new armor as well. And if KOG is being greedy, they could demolish the existing Chlorite market and release a new item as a replacement for Chlorite to be used for the new armor instead.

Harconium or a new substitute could also be used on the new set.

Since the release of the armor will come before the new raid, we can surmise that the armor acquisition can be done without having to raid. This could be done by gathering materials via gridning or daily/weekly quests and crafting like AP/Tene.

Since the armor is common and bank-sharable, the quest will have to be account-wide to prevent rapid acquisition of materials.

The DIY Shadow effects of Tene might return. There could be stronger effects or more lines to identify. Whether it will retain the RNG elements depends on KOG's mercy. (I hope this is the case because god I love the Tene Barrier so much like can you imagine 60% barrier?)

Now regarding Raid, which is required to enhance the armor. It could be in a form of Stages like Raid weapons or doing account-wide weekly quest to get materials. If we have to do Stages like VoS/SoA, it could be challenging if our armors weren't fully prepared.

There could also be items that can be exchanged to NPCs like marks we obtain from helping 0% people completing the raid which can help accelerate things.

[cursedalthoughts]

PR6 SPECULATIONS - Ironblood

In honor of Mainz (my precious little meowmeow) getting a skin, I've decided that the next nation to get a post is the Ironblood. Honestly I intended to do Eagle Union first lol.

Just like last post: Do not treat any of the following choics as guaranteed. I would not bet money on any of these specific ones getting added as part of PR6 this year, it's just the ships I see as Very LikelyTM.

Also, I will tell you which ones I think could be Priority Research (SSR) or Decisive Research (UR). Because I'm sure we could get another Ironblood DR.

Schröder

Let's begin with a possible DR, Schröder.

She's a large cruiser. Yes. But before you get your pitchforks out, Schröder could be the different large cruiser some of y'all have been wanting to get.

No torpedoes, but scarily good secondary armament (I'm talking as good as Odin in AL, but in the vanguard). Extreme speeds and evasion stats, she's a fast as fuck ship. On top of that, she has somewhat weak armor.

All of this combined would make Schröder a certainly unique shipgirl, vastly different from all the other large cruisers: a somewhat spongy (but not too tanky), super fast fire-setting ship.

Max Immelmann

The second possible DR, Max Immelmann. She's an aircraft carrier with only torpedo bombers and skip bombers, on top of having great armor and secondaries (she's literally an FdG with a runway on top).

Honestly, she's kinda bad in WoWs. She's hyped too much because she's marginally better than Manfred von Richtofen, the other Tier 10 German CV; but that's not saying much.

She would be a bomb spammer for sure.

Anhalt

This monstrosity you see is the German battlecruiser Anhalt. She has 15 305mm guns that are extremely accurate with a respectable 21.1km range, meaning she's a snipper. Her guns don't deal a lot of damage (because they're very low caliber) but she's somewhat agile and fast (not as much as Zieten, which is a mini Rupprecht) so she can get behind cover if needed.

Schultz

The Schultz is an enlarged destroyer - basically a light cruiser cosplaying as a destroyer. Unlike Dido or Atlanta or other ships that straddle the line between DD and CL, the Schultz doesn't fire too much, nor does she fire too fast. She's mediocre.

Her torpedoes hit hard it you can prepare an entire tea party while they reload. She has no hydro, making her instantly weaker than the other German DDs.

Still, she could be an extremely tanky destroyer.

Pommern

You know her by now, probably. The half-sister of FdG, Pommern.

She's one of my favorites. The pinnacle of German battleship gameplay in WoWs - meh caliber (380mm, low for her tier), torpedoes, brilliant secondary guns, terrible stern turret angles, amazing armor that gets negated by her huge superstructure, and hydroacoustic search.

She could be a PR version of FdG that fires torpedoes ala Odin.

Preussen

The last pick for a DR, Preussen.

With a proper build, you could have a Preussen with scary secondaries who also shoots every 21.1 seconds. 21.1 seconds. Tirpitz, a fast firing battleship, reloads every 26.

And with guns as big as Preussen's (457mm), being able to fire every 21.1 seconds means you don't have to worry about accuracy betraying you. By the time the shells arrive at the objective, your next salvo is about to be loaded.

A super-fast firing FdG with overall better stats. To balance her out, she could be greedy - she won't provide any buffs to any Ironblood shipgirl, and needs flagship position to get the most out of her.

[senstless]

Splinterlands BATTLE MAGE SECRETS Featuring Going the Distance - Bronze Deck vs some Maxed cards in Wild!

Featuring Bronze League Summoner and Monsters in Action!

CHALLENGE RULES

RULESET: GOING THE DISTANCE

Description: Only units with ranged attacks may be used.

Reasons Why I like it While at first I thought this was a difficult matchup to play, I've acquired few cards that have really helped to make my lineups easier. Limiting your options to only arrows simplifies to rules and the car to play. Those cards with close range, reducing my opponents attack, or adding return fire are clearly going to be keys. Plus any cards that have both melee, magic and arrows will be a big focus

The Matchup - Where Rules Sets, Splinters and Mana Collide

The Rule Sets

Watch the Match Here

MANA: 33

Ruleset: Going The Distance: Only units with ranged attacks may be used.

SPLINTERS: Fire, Water, Earth, Life, Death

Initial Rule Set and Mana Gameplay Thoughts

Rulesets It's hard to believe it is one of the rare one rule set matches, I feel like most of my matches in diamond League have been three rule sets.

Mana 33 man I will leave plenty of room to pick and fill out a full team. It will allow plenty of options and it is not going to be too restrictive

Splinters I think that while each splinter available has its benefits, typically it will be life to add an arrow attack, death to subtract one, or maybe Earth for close range

Summoner ILTHAIN My recent go to move for all close range matches is to give all of my monsters returned fire. Dealing back damage every time I receive it it's just been too powerful

First Position VENARI MARKSRAT Well I got to start off by giving dry bone radar a boost to start to match. Well I will be losing it's arrow attacks the double melee strike is going to be welcomed

Second Position DRYBONE RAIDER One of the rare cards that speaks through enjoying the distance because of it's melee and hero attack.

Third Position ANACHRON BOLTER Also given the chance to have a magic and an aero attacking card is a benefit not to mention the fact that it has headwinds and will reduce my enemies attack by One

Fourth Position VENARI CRYSTALSMITH Might as well add a tank heel if I can to help my card's last as long as possible.

Fifth Position XENITH ARCHER Picked it really because I had two men left and this one was gold foil

Opponent Lineup & Match Play

Summoner GENERAL SLOAN Not excited to feel level 8 rare summoner but it is what it is. They'll get a plus one boost on their attacks

ANACHRON BOLTER One of the two cars not maxed, but it also has headwinds just like I do. It's a pretty solid play and can attack in first position since it has magic

PELACOR ARBALEST When are the heaviest hitting cards double strike with three or four arrows attacks is going to be a lot of damage

VENARI CRYSTALSMITH Great minds think alike they also wanted a tank healer

PRISMOLOGIST I like this place since it has splash damage, it will be doing either for 5 damage with three and splash damage

XENITH ARCHER Another card not maxed but it's got the same stats that mine has accepted one less health.

Round 1

Round one starts off and dry bone it gets a boost as Markscrat who's the first card eliminated. Luckily it doesn't miss a turn and it quickly secures and knock out of anachron bolter. This is great news as it has moved pellicore horrible list in the first position where it cannot do any damage to my cards. Passed around progresses the return fire is starting to make itself known and it is producing health and eliminating armor.

Round 2

Round two starts off and I'm feeling pretty good, I get another knockout with tribe on the radar and they have now lost pellicore arborist, and are close to losing Crystal Smith. Once again return fire is wreaking his havoc as prismologist is taking back half of the damage it's dealing out and it is significantly weakening my opponents lineup and chances. As the round comes to an end I still have dry bone radar in place and look to be cruising towards a victory

Round 3

Thoughts - and Chances to Win Again

I think dry bone raider had a massive impact on this match and it will be continued to be one of my favorite cards to use. I also think the return fire help to hasten the elimination of my enemy. I think my anime could have used a better card in first position to potentially help have a stronger tank but I'm not sure what cards they have available. I think the combination of dry bone raiders Plus giving all my monsters returned fire in going the distance has been a recipe for success. It's almost a cheat code to hurt your enemy every time I hit you plus having a double strike melee card to start the match to chew through their tank. I am feeling intended to keep running the same lineup every chance I get in going the distance until the mana gets down to 13 where I'll switch it up and go with fire.

~~@senstless

[the-firebird69]

This is an example of the stucco on the turret and it's mixed in the use of the house and it's kind of a split-faced slightly colored block that's used on the exterior as well it looks very nice. They also added some touches to use some period windows and even in the turrets they do it like that so you don't have Windows everywhere and it's a nice touch and it makes it easier and it less expensive. As you can see this look works with the current roof. Are those a bigger roof then you see here it still broken up up top with dormers those windows you see up there and the roof they have some as examples and people like it

Thor Freya

Olympus

I like this look and it's something to be looked at it's because it's a veneer and it's less expensive and because of the mix and the effect it has and you're not in this big cold dungeon building and they can fend off anybody and it's not a German type obstruction out here it looks pretty normal and the veneer is nice it's not split Rock or random and it's very neat and it's not a German look either although it's very nice to have a very sturdy house out here people take it the wrong way

Hera

We have a lot of styles that work on this on the particular house chateau nouveau and it is a very nice look that we come up with the one they have is very rudimentary and it is almost it's 100% Bavarian and they don't even do that out there anymore it's very very rustic and old fashioned. We have a lot of new looks as a builder we can make the changes actually we have an architect who does that kind of work and on the plans that you get from them. We do insist you do that because they are the ones who copied the castles and no they're not copyrighted people have done it in the past and it is a wonderful idea to put this forwards a lot of people will love it and there's exteriors like this that work they look very nice. This is a good pic for the particular Palace that they're looking at and it is a castle piece there's some others that I think are nicer but the ones that they have is examples or not that great and he has some design changes that are right but he likes the block but that's because it is bullet resistant very bullet resistant I like it too but we have different color block and texture like this that's the same bullet rating and even works a little better because you don't have a good angle all

Freya Ridings

Here's our goals we hear this stuff and get interested and we started buying stuff and then we get blown off when we want to cancel it and how you should not do it unless you're going to definitely do it if you're planning to move you should do it now if we move out west which it looks like we're going to have to with these Max breathing down our neck and taking all the stuff and it looks like we set them up we didn't do it on purpose but we did take the ships in the first place so think about it if you're planning on moving this is a great idea this color and the texture and the different materials it doesn't cost a fortune it doesn't look like you're living in a few and it stinks over here and the water stays comes up through the drain all the time it's very gross but it's everywhere along the coast but still this look is great it's not obtrusive it doesn't say that you live in a fortress and it's not foreboding and it's a warm color and it's accepted down here this is a great color selection I'm glad you put it up it's better than the last one which was not bad the last one is probably a little bit more secure and like no lead would work even right up next to it and armor piercing would not work at a distance it's not bad it does look like a lot of stone cuz it really is I would buy this as a matter of fact I might look for some like this out there in the West.

Trump

This is smaller but it's kind of the same style and people's like the colors and they like the mix just like I said so you got a little help and we'll put it up in this wonderful people like it and I would say go for it and we need people to have a life to try and defend it I'm sick of people being huge poopers plenty of that we don't need that

Thor Freya

Olympus

I like this look it's one of my favorites so I'm hoping he saves it

Hera

Olympus

[jodjuya]

Okay! All done with "Fallout: New Vegas"!

I min-maxed my character too hard and accidentally optimised all the fun out of the game! Whoops! My bad!

(I did it twice, in fact! Got bored with my first Guns/Explosives sneaky guy, so I made a new character in hardcore mode and restarted the game to play as an Energy Weapons/power-armor guy)

((when will I finally learn to play a video game without having its wiki open on my phone the whole time? Scientists are unsure!))

This was my first hardcore-mode playthrough, and it was also the first time I ever learned that you actually CAN have two companions at the same time in New Vegas! it just has to be one humanoid and one NON-humanoid!

So I no longer had to choose between Ed-E, my beloved; or Arcade Gannon, my Doctor Boyfriend; but could have both of them with me together at the same time!

Which was lovely!

But the game got even more ridiculously stupidly easy from that point.

Because as much fun as it was to have Doctor Boyfriend and I tromping around the countryside in our matching suits of Remnants Power-Armor with our beloved pet Eyebot by our side, doing an Indomitable Antifa Genocide while also caving in the skull of an Old World billionaire with a golf club for funsies on the side...

...it wasn't THAT fun.

Once you can vaporise any enemy in the entire game in under a second, everything just kinda loses its allure.

Even hardcore-mode stopped being hardcore role-playing and just started being an extra set of menu-clicking chores. No thoughtfulness or tough decisions required.

Was absolutely drowning in caps from all those Legion hit-squads that kept manifesting themselves for Gatling Laser Target Practice, too.

"the kAiSaR has marked you for death!"

Oh word? Pretty brave talk from some dorkass cosplay loser armed with naught but a few pointy sticks against the supreme pinnacle of the Old World's military might. World War 4 technology versus World War 3 technology? Get vaporised, idiot. 💥

But yeah, only level 29 yet most of my skills were at level 100, my DT was 46, and my primary weapon could throw out like 510+dps or something ludicrous like that.

God mode.

Might as well just explode random ragdolls in a level-editor at that point. 🤷🏻‍♂️

---

And speaking of exploding ragdolls, next up I'll be playing through the Halo franchise for the first time!

Picked up CE Anniversary, 2, 3, and 4 from pawn shops over the last two weeks.

I played CE on a borrowed gaming PC back when it came out, but was too poor to be a console gamer for the rest of them, so I never got to experience the rest of the story or the series' gameplay developments.

I did play a 2d fan-game prequel tho. That was pretty fun! Forget about that entirely until just now.

Probably will have to wait until after this weekend's heatwave passes though. This old 360 really starts chugging once it heats up. Every time New Vegas crashed or glitched out, I'd feel the side of the Xbox and sure enough that thing would be running a fever 🥵

I think while I wait I'll open up the 360 and see how much dust I can clear out of its cooling system. I expect there'll be generous amounts up in there...

[keymace]

Key plays Fallout Shelter (summer 2020)

So I decided to finally try Fallout Shelter before it disappears like the mobile gacha spinoff that it is. I originally planned to play only seven days, but kept playing (at a much slower pace) a bit longer. During the ten days I played, I managed to finish four questlines. In this article, I will relay my overall experience, review said quests, and then talk about some miscellaneous things.

My experience

I started my vault, got my first two dwellers, and did the tutorial. So this is one of those games where everything you want done takes between 2 minutes and 2 days. Since I'm the kind of person who just stares at the screen and waits for things to happen, combined with bad luck with the Rush mechanic, stuff took even longer. Before the day ended, I found the Mysterious Stranger, got a Hardened Minigun, got the vault's first child, and made a lot of rooms, going to bed feeling satisfied despite the rocky parts.

On day 2, I open the game and completely ran out of all my resources. trying to Rush so I can get resources back only makes the situation worse, so my only solution is to scrap everything and make a better vault. After that, I completed a challenge that got me my first Mr. Handy which got my mood back up. I later also find a Pickaxe and a Gauss Rifle.

Day 3 also had a bad start. Basically right after I start the game, mole rats invade a far-off room with no dwellers close by, and the moles proceed to spread through the vault and almost kill everyone. I finally rescue Bottle and Cappy, whose questline I had started a day or two before, by the time the day ends, I also get invaded a few times by Feral Ghouls and Radscorpions, pitifully fighting back as I barely unlock nuclear reactors.

As if to mirror the previous day, the morning starts with Deathclaws attacking the vault. I fight them off, do quests and challenges, and find an Armor-Piercing Minigun.

Days 5 and 6 are somewhat uneventful compared to the ones before. I take it easy and play a bit more passively. I unlocked the garden and water purifier, found another Gauss Rifle, and got my first max level (50) dweller.

On the 7th day I got a Lunchbox to celebrate my first week. It had no rare items in it. I finished the Climbing the Ranks questline, and got Sarah Lyons as a reward. I managed to fully upgrade my weapon workshop, leaving me with no money, and reached 100 dwellers in the vault, achieving all the goals I had set for myself. Another cool thing that happened is I got my last legendary junk, completing that tab in my log.

I decided to keep playing because some parts were fun enough, and wanted to finish the two other questlines I had started. However, on day 9, I open the game and some kind of glitch happened, which made the cooldown for watching an ad for free stuff be 210 hours, and it also made challenges stop working at all.Day 10 ended, I finished Almost Human and Journey to the Center of Vaultopolis, and I am done with this game.

I originally planned to highlight my most valuable dwellers, but the glitch really destroyed all my motivation, so I'll talk about the quests I have done.

Quests

First off, I'll talk about the two one-off quests I've done. Getting Started is the tutorial quest, and there's nothing special about it. You just get in, kill a Glowing Radroach, and leave. This proves you’re somehow qualified to be the overseer. The only other one-off quest I did is Can't Stop The Signal, in which a raider is using a strange signal to control Radroaches, which is pretty interesting. I've also done a few daily/weekly quests as well as Random Encounter quests, but those aren't saved in the log for whatever reason, and I can't remember them well. Now for the questlines I have done:

Nabbed from Nuka-World

Raiders have kidnapped Bottle and Cappy, the mascots of Nuka-World! Obviously you have to go save them, because you love them so much. Also they're real living beings here. Along the way you come across a group of ghouls who you do not have to fight if you don't want to. That honestly surprised me, and I instinctively went with the peaceful option even if it meant less experience and and loot. After that, you get to the lair of a wastelander who was raising radscorpions, and on the way you kill her pet Glowy. You don;t have to fight her, and she directs you to the Nuka-Cola Factory, where Bottle and Cappy are being held. At the factory, the raider boss is defeated, and Bottle and Cappy are saved. After that, they visit the vault from time to time. Tapping on them when they dance will give caps, and sometimes Nuka-Cola Quantum.

I think the quest was alright. I did it first because it was a limited time quest. I'm not too big a fan of Bottle and Cappy, especially animated fluidly like that instead of being animatronics like in Fallout 4, they're really uncanny here. Again I was surprised that I could choose peace, and I like that one of the mobs was named, even if just in one dialogue.

Climbing the Ranks

So the Brotherhood of Steel thinks your vault would make for a great BoS outpost, but they need a little help at some factory and call for your help. Once you help them, they want to recruit you as a soldier, and ask you to help some more, though the quest descriptions describe it as "proving your Vault is good enough to be an outpost" despite the BoS being the ones asking to make it one. So you save the next team and become a Soldier and get sent to save another team. You do so but their leader was kidnapped and taken to the Nuka-Cola Plant, completely different from the Nuka-Cola Factory. You head there and save none other than Sarah Lyons! She joins your vault as a reward.

I started this questline because it was short, being only 4 quests. The inconsistencies with the quests descriptions and  dialogue bother me, but it doesn't really matter that much, and your vault being an outpost or you being a soldier have zero consequences on anything at all. Seeing Lyons was surprising. I don't really rememeber her much as a character, but I do remember that her Brotherhood is a faction I liked, as they're trying to help everyone. The last thing I have to say about this quest, though this applies to the whole game really, is that they made the female Power Armor look way more... girly for some reason, instead of it looking the same on male and female dwellers as it should.

Almost Human

The Railroad was trying to sneak some refugee synths close to your area but they got captured by raiders hired by the Institute. Now, them resorting to random people from the wastes is nothing new and happens as early as Fallout 3, but it's still strange. Anyways, this is a short and straightforward quest: You save Railroad agents and free the synths.

Once again, I started this one because it was short and I wanted to squeeze one last questline to write about before I was done playing. Really standard Railroad quest aside from being against raiders instead of synths. I quite like the reward though, a suit of T-45a power armor, which is basically a prototype made before the standard T-45d.

Journey to the Center of Vaultopolis

This is a long one, made out of 15 quests. I started it before Almost Human, but of course I finished Almost Human first. It begins when you find the journal of Paula Plumbkin, an overseer looking for the legendary Vaultopolis. You follow her steps along the wasteland, checking on vaults and rescuing people, stopping by a Super Duper Mart halfway to resupply, In there, you find another page of her journal, saying that Vault 525 is Vaultopolis, and they used a G.E.C.K. to make it so. You find the supposed location of the vault there, only to meet Paula Plumbkin, who was actually a raider all along. After you defeat her, you head to the real location of Vaultopolis. It's just a vault with nothing special. All Paula wanted to do was kill everyone and make the vault her base.

I liked the mystery this quest had at the start. You're just following a vault overseer looking for an utopia. Along the way she apparently got captured by feral ghouls who were saving up humans for meals, which is something smart that animals do but I wouldn't really think that feral ghouls would do that. Anyway, at the end it's revealed Paula was a raider and was leading you to her, which implies everything that happens, from her being captured by ghouls to a different Vault being attacked by named raiders was all made up by her in order to lead you to her which makes absolutely no sense in my opinion. All the people you visited before meeting her called her nice so they were all in on it? Or did she slowly become a raider as her adventure went on?She does say the wasteland "toughened her up" and the quest description calls her a wannabe raider, but again, that's all weird. The plot twist really surprised me until I thought about it a bit more, and overall the whole quest felt like a waste at the end.

That's it for the quests I've done. Before the glitch happened, I also started Horsemen of the Post-Apocalypse Part 1 which I also find quite intriguing and am tempted to continue to see how that turns out. That questline's three parts have 18 quests combines, making it the longest line in the game. Up next is random little bits I wanted to talk about.

Things unique to Fallout Shelter

As I've already noted before, you can get a never-before-seen prototype power armor in this game. It's not the only item like that. I did not want to cross-check every type of armor here, so I'll only highlight the Power Armors, as well as weapons and creatures.

First I want to talk about the creatures. All the monsters in the game are returning from previous games, except of course most named raiders and monsters. I met a few names raiders, mostly in the Journey to the Center of Vaultopolis, as well as a Glowing Radscorpion named Glowy. Most of the original creatures though are pets. There's a lot of new breeds of dogs and cats, and nearly all legendary pets are new named animals, with only some that are returning characters, like of course Dogmeat, though while most of them do not exactly match their appearance in previous games, at least their description does. Among the pets though is an animal brand new to the Fallout franchise: parrots. There are three different types of parrots with five legendary parrots.

The other creature type I wanted to mention are simple wild animals. First off are rats that like to wander in your vault rooms when no one is in there. They are smaller than the rats seen in previous games, and dig into the ground when people get into the room. They are merely silhouettes though.

The other type of wildlife you may come across are bats in caves. Those really surprised me! As far as I know, this is the first time bats appear in the franchise, though giant mutant bats were planned to appear in Black Isle's Fallout 3, AKA Van Buren. Unlike rats, bats are actually textured. Another creature in caves are insects that flock to floodlights.

Power Armors

As mentioned above, a few of the power armor models are unique to this game, because they wanted the armors to have tiers. For that purpose, a are the weakest, f the strongest, and d the middle ground. All d and f versions do appear in Fallout 4.

T-45a is a prototype and T-51a are prototypes, while the description of T-60a makes it sound like it's just regular T-60. There is also a unique variant of T-60 worn by War from the Horsemen of the Post-Apocalypse. It is vastly superior to even T-60f but I don't know much about it yet. If I make another article about Fallout Shelter, I will talk about the rest of the unique pets and armors.

Unique Weapons

The game's weapons are mostly Falout 3 and 4 weapons, including the unique weapons, but there are a few new ones. The closest thing to fully original weapons are some of the melee weapons: The Pickaxe, and to a lesser extent, the Fire Hydrant Bat and Relentless Raider Sword.

The Fallout franchise has had pickaxes before, as background objects, but this is the first time one can be a weapon, beating Fallout 76 to it. The Fire Hydrant Bat is a tiny version of the Super Mutant Behemoths' melee weapon. It has the potential to deal the most damage out of all weapons in the game. The Relentless Raider Sword is interestingly the only New Vegas-related thing in this game. It's shaped like a bumper sword, but appears to be a normal piece of metal instead of a bumper. Another noteworthy thing related to this weapon is that there was an unused weapon in the files using the Relentless Raider Sword’s appearance and the Sniper Rifle’s name, but its internal name was Bumper Sword. (source)

The most interesting unique gun is Henrietta, a modified lever-action rifle held by Old Longfellow. He does not own this weapon in Fallout 4, nor there seem to be any traces of it in the game's files, and it is the only Fallout Shelter weapon to have visible mods. Here are the rest of the unique weapons that are only in this game:

The Lone Wanderer, a 10mm referencing the Fallout 3 protagonist, the Red Rocket, a BB Gun referencing the in-universe gas station chain, the Magnetron 4000, a Gauss Rifle, the Railmaster, a Railway Rifle, the Farmer's Daughter, which may be a surprising reference to Fallout 2's Miria whom you are forced to marry, Mean Green Monster, a Plasma Rifle, the Lead Belcher, a minigun,

Apotheosis, an Institute pistol, Technician's Revenge, a Junk Jet, Little Brother, a pipe pistol, Big Sister, a pipe rifle, and Dragon's Maw, a plasma thrower. Another weapon of note is Charon's shotgun, which is NPC-only in Fallout 3 but playable in Shelter. There is also a lot of half-implemented unique weapons, and the only actually working but unused weapon is Amata's Pistol, which is basically a Hardened 10mm pistol.

Afterword

After playing for ten days, I had a little fun. I'm still curious about the Horsemen of the Post-Apocalypse questline, but I'm done for now. I didn’t say anything about the music because I think it’s all from Fallout 4, which is fine. The graphics are good enough too. I don't really have anything else to add, so I'll end it here. Thank you for reading!

[freyayuki]

Final Fantasy Record Keeper Wind-Weak Dark Odin Fight

The Dark Odin fights in the Final Fantasy Record Keeper (FFRK) mobile game are quest level 500.

If you defeat a Dark Odin Magicite boss, you get a Black-Armored Echoes accessory. This accessory adds moderate resistance to all elements.

You can get up to 5 Black-Armored Echoes accessories by defeating 5 different Dark Odin Magicite bosses.

So far, I’ve been able to beat 4 different Dark Odin bosses so I already have 4 Black-Armored Echoes accessories. I talk more about these fights in other posts.

Anyway, I really wanted to get my 5th Black-Armored Echoes accessory so I decided to try another Dark Odin Magicite fight. This time, I set my sights on the wind-weak version of Dark Odin.

I do have some wind relics although I haven’t really done much with them. Haven’t even really built a wind team.

Would have loved to bring my physical fire elemental team to this fight. Said team stars Genesis Rhapsodos from Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (#ad) as my main DPS. 

Genesis is currently my absolute, most favorite Final Fantasy char. He’s the reason why I’m playing Final Fantasy Record Keeper. Have all of his Soul Breaks and he’s as fully built and maxed out as possible.

I bring Genesis to every fight I can, and try to use him as much as possible. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s gonna be possible to bring him to fight against the wind-weak version of Dark Odin.

That’s because you need to hit Dark Odin with the element you want to fight him with. I could get past that since Genesis can just equip a Spellblade-type ability that deals wind damage.

But Dark Odin also hits really hard and it’s necessary not to let the fight run too long otherwise your party will automatically get ejected.

Didn’t really want to deal with all these crazy mechanics. I just want my last Black-Armored Echoes so wind team it is.

I could have gone with a physical wind team. Actually, I think my physical wind tech is better than my magical one but I found myself looking at my magical wind-type Soul Breaks for a number of reasons:

I don’t want to use Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII yet even though I have his Awakened Arcane Soul Break (AASB) and even his True Arcane Soul Break (TASB; also known as Arcane Dyad Soul Break (ADSB)) since I don’t have his Synchro Arcane Soul Break (SASB).

Most of the teams I could build seem to lean towards the physical side of things. So I want to try a magical team this time.

Furthermore, I have Cait Sith’s (from Final Fantasy VII) Awakening, Glint+ Soul Break (G+), and Ultra Soul Break (USB).

Cait Sith is one of the best supports for magic-based teams. I’ve gotten to use him a bit, and he’s really pretty good.

He can be of use for physical teams too since he can sing and dance but he’s really more of a support and buffer for mages and mind-based attackers.

So I looked through the list of magical wind-type relics that I have and came up with this team:

Alphinaud Leveilleur from Final Fantasy XIV

Have Alphinaud’s Awakening, Glint+, and Burst Soul Break (BSB).

Created the Dark Valefor and Neo Bahamut summon-type abilities for Alphinaud although they’re both stuck at rank 4 since I ran out of the resources needed to max them out.

Also got Alphinaud the dagger artifact that adds a small boost to wind damage.

Fujin from Final Fantasy VIII

Have Fujin’s magical wind Chain Soul Break (CSB), all of her Glints, her Arcane Overstrike Soul Break (AOSB), and her Overstrike Soul Break (OSB).

Fujin is basically only here for her Chain. Too bad I don’t have her Awakening or Sync.

Cait Sith from FInal Fantasy VII

Cait Sith is quipped with Allegro con Moto and Mage’s Hymn to speed up and buff my mages.

Lenna Charlotte Tycoon from Final Fantasy V

Lenna served as my team’s healer. Have basically her entire kit, including both of her AASBs and her Sync.

The relics I’m missing for Lenna can be bought from the The Record Lab although haven’t bothered to buy any of them since I already have her good Soul Breaks.

Ultimecia from Final Fantasy VIII

Ultimecia served as my other DPS alongside Alphinaud. Only have her Sync and OSB. Wish I had her Awakening too.

Made her the Chain Tornado ability though it’s also stuck at rank 4. Already had rank 5 Meltdown so that was Ultimecia’s other ability.

Also already had a staff artifact that boosts wind damage. It just wasn’t fully leveled so maxed it out now for this fight.

If I’m remembering correctly, Ultimecia’s Sync was the very first one that I got. Used it a bit back then but wasn’t overly impressed with it and Ultimecia’s damage output.

Well, to be fair, that was the only relic that I had for Ultimecia and I didn’t really invest too much into her precisely because of only having 1 Soul Break for her.

But now I even gave her Crystal Waters and unlocked parts of her Record Board. Even made her a 6-star ability, as aforementioned.

Was super impressed with both Alphinaud and Ultimecia. They were dealing really awesome damage during the fight.

I’m sure this was largely thanks to the buffs from Cait Sith’s Awakening and his equipped abilities. And Fujin’s Chain also comes with a large magic buff.

So all of that really enabled my 2 DPS to take off chunks of Dark Odin’s HP once they were under the effects of their BDL relics.

Had to do this fight a few times before I got the win though. The Sync and Awakening effects would end before I could finish off Dark Odin which was not good because I didn’t have any more to cast except Ultimecia’s and Fujin’s OSBs.

It really made me wish that I had Alphinaud’s Sync and Ultimecia’s Awakening and even Fujin’s Sync and Awakening so I could keep going. Thankfully, I somehow managed to make this team work. Got the win in 32.51 seconds.

I enjoyed using this team and would love to be able to do it again. I really hope I can get more magical wind-type relics, particularly Alphinaud’s Sync and Ultimecia’s AASB.

Conclusion

So what about you? Have you tried fighting against wind-weak Dark Odin yet? How did it go? What team did you use? What do you think about this fight? Feel free to share your thoughts and opinions by leaving a comment below or by reblogging or replying to this post.

Notes:

screenshots are from my Final Fantasy Record Keeper game account

[bobgoesw00t]

Top 10 Video Games of All Time: bobgoesw00t Edition (Part 09)

It's almost midnight where I live, it's -4 (-27 when you factor the wind chill in) and Winter Storm Elliot is suppose to hang around the for next few hours. It's almost Christmas Eve so I figured, WHAT BETTER TIME TO POST MY PENULTIMATE VIDEO GAME OF ALL TIME!!!!!!! >_<

Number 2 goes to the MMORPG I've been apart of for the last TEN YEARS now, the MMO that truly broke the traditional mold of MMOs by taking the "Holy Trinity" of party building, going "NOPE!!! FUCK THAT BULLSHIT!!!!!" and gave us a game that was unlike anything at the time, Guild Wars 2.

Now I was lucky enough to enter this franchise with the Third Expandalone title (yes, ArenaNet was doing expandalone games WAY before that was even a thing in most developers minds) Guild Wars Nightfall and I was hook instantly. I actually beat 3/4 campaigns in the original game on my Dervish and he didn't even have Max Armor...which is fucking nuts! It wasn't until roughly a year or so before GW2 went live that I opened his inventory and went, "OH! MY CHARACTER DOESN'T HAVE MAX ARMOR!!! THAT EXPLAINS WHY I'M TAKING AN ASSTON OF DAMAGE EVEN AT LEVEL 20!!!!!"

Anyways, so I was able to run through all four campaigns on two characters before GW2 went live at the end of August in 2012 and get 90-95% of the cosmetic stuff from the Hall of Monuments by the time it came out. I even played most (if not all) of the Beta Weekend Events leading up to launch and I was hooked even more so than with the original.

I literally don't know what to say about this game that you can't find by simply looking up information about the game other than my only real gripes I have are even after playing the game for over ten years now, I still only have one Legendary Weapon which is only due to how much fucking money you need to make all the various components combined with how a good chunk of those items are time gated and can only be made once every 24 hours or so. Thankfully, Ascended weapons are a tad easier to come by and have the same stats as Legendary ones, so it's not that big of a deal.

My other complaint is that the only way to get a Guild Hall is via an "Expedition" and if your in a tiny guild with only a few people (less 50), you'll have no chance of getting one. In the original game, it was possible to get one if you saved enough money to get the require item so it's kind of annoying.

Even with those two gripes, this is still one of the best MMORPGs I've ever played (which, while not a lot, it still a few) and I'm glad to say that I've been apart of it's community since launch.

So I'm giving Guild Wars 2 and all three of it's expansions (this score is VERY true of the most recent one, End of Dragons) a 5/5.

Honorable Mentions:

Aion: Another good MMORPG that's free to play that has combat that's a good mix of titles like WoW and an action game like Guild Wars and Blade & Soul (or as I like to call it, Boob & Soul xD)

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: The Smash Bros game to end all Smash Bros games. Was supported for almost three whole years post launch with two sets of DLC Fighters, including the long awaited inclusion of the Dorky Keyblade Master (who, unsurprisingly enough, was the most requested fight for the Sm4sh Fighter Ballot Sora Ltd and Nintendo did years ago) Sora from Kingdom Hearts. My Smash waifus however are Zelda (GOD her Final Smash in Ultimate is broken) and the Aegis duo of Homura/Hikari (one is fast as light and the other has STUPIDLY high knockback on her Side Smash, N-Special and Up Special).

Sorry for the short entry for my penultimate game, but I have family coming over tomorrow to open presents since some of them are busy on Christmas Day and I really want to go to bed ASAP xD. The reveal of my Number One pick will still be coming on the 27th so look for it then!

[retphienix]

The last major update I rambled on the content therein so I figured I'd do that again but a little more concise.

The new Arisens are both really fun. Kushala is 10/10, Kushala just keeps winning in Rise. Teo is a lot less interesting moveset wise but hits a lot harder which is fun. Genuinely, both arisen are great fights I would love to do a lot of which is a minor improvement from Chameleos which was already a pretty good addition.

Chaotic continues the gore magala trend of being the monster everyone hypes up to unreasonable levels and then you face him and he's "Fine".

Gore plays like he did in the older games, which is off-putting and boring. And Chaotic is the exact same fight. Not interesting.

Still baffling that Shaggy gets the Kushala treatment of being made into a good fight but Gore just gets left behind while being the fan favorite.

All the new armor and what not is neat, Chaotic has the most "fun" set gimmick at a glance, Arisen Kushala continuing Arisen Chameleos' trend of having SINGLE SLOT DECOS for the blessing which is insane, now you can have super recovery for 3 single slots and no kushala pieces- insane.

More anomaly is whatever because I got burnt the hell out on that grind last update, so being told "It's even GRINDIER! (and has cool decos in it)" is not the most appealing. I do love the deco aspect of anomalies, but it really feels too little too late where I would have loved grinding that stuff at sunbreak launch but now I'm hundreds of hours in and could not care less about max minning even more.

This is all tinted by me being burnt out on Rise but if you sift through that I do think this was genuinely a really fun content drop. Loving those new hunts, hope high level anomalies are fun for those still invested in that!

Capcom stop charging money for cosmetics while giving the game NOTHING you can earn challenge