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merelliahallewell · 3 years

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The Drust in Ardenweald

This post is going to sum up everything I’ve learned and inferred about the Drust from Ardenweald and what they’re up to there.

This will contain information from the main Ardenweald questline in Shadowlands, random world quests I’ve done, the zone in general, and the Mists of Tirna Scithe dungeon, but not the Covenant Campaign.

Part 1 - The Drust Backstory

Part 2 - The Drust in BfA

Part 4 - The Drust in the Night Fae Campaign (1)

Part 5 - The Drust in the Night Fae Campaign (2)

Recap

Let’s begin by laying out what’s going on, in case you zoomed through the Ardenweald story.

Ardenweald is a place of rest and rebirth, representing the “winter” as compared to the summer and springtime that the Emerald Dream is. It is where spirits of nature that die go to rest before they return to their worlds. Spirits are contained within Wildseeds, and nurtured by the native Night Fae, keepers of the many groves and great trees there. With the flow of souls having entirely abated and Anima no longer arriving, Ardenweald has felt the drought more acutely than the other realms. The Winter Queen must make the difficult decision to let some groves and wild spirits die in order to save others and conserve what resources they have. This drives the local fauna into a frenzy. Gorm, Devourers, and Spriggan are all making other things worse too, and the realm is in dire straits.

In the middle of all this, the fucking Drust show up. Assholes.

The Invasion

Apparently they’ve invaded once before, according to Marasmius. This time they’re invading directly from the Maw of Thros, stealing anima, and taking advantage of the drought’s chaos. The Drust have been utilizing the abandoned groves as bases to fortify, with Darkreach and the Oaken Assembly being chock full of elites and acting as their main base. On top of this, the Drust have somehow convinced (forcibly, in many cases) a number of Fae to don various masks. This places them under the control of the Drust. At this point in the story, it’s unclear if they can be freed from their control. What’s worse, it’s revealed that these masks will, at some point literally turn them into Drust. It is not clear if they outnumber the Wild Hunt or not, but they are able to stretch them thin.

Per the Ingra Maloch boss description, The Drust are invading in order to utilize Ardenweald’s “mechanism of Rebirth.” This, presumably, is the mechanic that can be seen in the Queen’s Conservatory and in the cinematic with Ursoc- wildseeds containing souls are nurtured with anima and then sent back to their home worlds.

The Drust are general boogeymen throughout the Ardenweald storyline, with the Masked Fae as the regular foes that have to be fought. They steal and hoard anima and attack the special wildseed we escort all around Ardenweald. They do not necessarily do or say a huge number of things or even have many notable characters introduced at this point in time. Most of the foes seem to be either converted Fae or Drust behemoths (which I think are constructs), rather than true, breathing Drust.

When a vrykul-shaped Drust does show up, it’s treated as a large and powerful threat, needing several fae and the Champion to defeat. It is unclear after a certain part who is or isn’t a true Drust, and I think this may be deliberate- the Night Fae once fully converted are no different than any other Drust.

This may explain how they managed to rebuild their armies after their initial defeat, since many of them had their bodies destroyed twice in Kul Tiras.

The Possessed and the Masks

The Drust use masks to convert the fae into their own kind. However, the methods of getting them to don these masks are left pretty vague. It is implied that it’s a choice given to the fae.

Join us, Niya. Don the mask and serve the masters!

We get hints of this in the side quest chain, An Ominous Stone. In a village on the far east of the map, you collect the journal of Lewor, who described his village’s struggles with the Anima drought. The Gorm were began to gorge themselves on the land and have collapsed whole chunks of the village due to their tunnels. Land even broke off of Ardenweald, and the messengers they dispatched to ask for aid but the Wild Hunt was unable to spare any.

At some point, a strange stone appeared that was certainly not of Ardenweald, radiating with power. He believed that it was not of Ardenweald, but that the forest may have provided it from another land. Lewor even believed that they could use its power to drive off or even defeat the Gorm.

What happened between then and the current events are unclear, but this stone seems to have spread some sort of corruption or magic to the fae, leading to them all donning the masks. There is no mention of the Drust directly being involved in what happened there- this was a conquest through subterfuge.

Why would a Fae willingly wear a mask and serve unknown masters from another realm? At first it may be confusing to see them join a faction known for decay and destruction, but one has to remember how seriously the drought affected Ardenweald. It may be that the Fae, dispossessed and lost after their groves were culled, were tempted by the power the Drust offered to drive off the enemies already in Ardenweald. This is speculation, though, and not hard lore- we ultimately do not know why they accepted the masks.

There is no hope for any Fae once they have donned the mask. From the quests:

There is no coming back for those who have become possessed. Believe me... I tried.

Thank you. I tried so hard to save them... but once that mask is on, there is no return.

They are all wearing these masks now, and they are not themselves any more.

A Pause for Speculation

If the Drust possess a curse that can be used to enslave the minds of any it touches without even having to be physically touching them, why are they doing this mask stuff and not following the same tactic as the Coven did in Drustvar? My speculation is this:

1) The Drust are known by the ancient and powerful beings of Ardenweald, mainly Marasimus and the Winter Queen. They want to avoid displaying who real threat is and taking advantage of the chaos to build their army.

2) They disappear into the chaos caused by the Gorm and Devourers and Spriggan and even Mueh’zalah, who have already stretched the Wild Hunt so thin they can’t assist outlying villages. If those beings knew what was really happening with the Drust, they would turn their focus onto them more fully and employ the whole Wild Hunt to stop them.

3) They needed time bought by the masked fae menace to position their existing forces to capture many of the outlying groves and fortify them. They may also have wanted the secrets Tirna Scithe held or the wildseeds hidden there.

Drust Types

I slapped this together to show the different types of Drust present in Ardenweald. Gorak Tul’s model is on the left for comparison. As a small aside, I find it interesting that the vrykul Drust almost appear to have had their heads fused with the masks somehow. Gorak Tul is so deep into that process (if it exists) that he has sprouted another few eyes and his mouth has elongated.

Weirdly, the lady Drust do not appear to have any weird bark skin or masks anything, and the only effect they have is a general loss of bulk compared to the vrykul model used for them in BfA and freaky looking fingers. It seems as if the matrons of the Heartsbane Coven slit their throats to transform themselves into Drustlike forms.

Motivations

While it’s stated that the Drust want to escape their curse, that’s never really expanded upon. Let’s examine the phrasing from Ingra Maloch’s dungeon journal:

Cursed to exist outside the cycle of Life and Death, the Drust now seek to circumvent their fate using Ardenweald's mechanisms of Rebirth.

The mention of a curse is interesting, because that has never really been said before in an explicit fashion. Thros must be the reason they are cursed in this sort of fashion. It’s not mentioned just what being cursed outside this cycle means, for it’s stated in the Pride of Kul Tiras storyline that Gorak Tul could be slain within his own realm, and was defeated for good.

There are also some curious lines from NPCs that intrigue me.

The Drust will rule all realms!

Nature is meant to be controlled. Conquered. And the Drust will conquer all!

At face value, I think that this implies that they want to go around conquering more realms, either of the Shadowlands or elsehwere. Maybe they already have conquered other realms, during the time they’d supposedly been stuck in Thros? They have attacked Ardenweald once before, after all. It’s an interesting mystery for the time being but unless we get a Thros raid, I don’t see this being expanded upon. I wonder if the nature of this curse will be expanded upon at any point, but knowing Blizzard that is probably not going to happen.

Miscellaneous Bits

Stone is said to be a rare find in Ardenweald by Droman Tashmur. It seems that the Drust utilized strange rocks with runes chipped into them to spread their blight everywhere or potentially influence the Fae.

I found these lines interesting, as all are references to the Drust or their magic.

“Creatures of decay and destruction”

“This stone speaks of hate and broken branches”

"Alien presence that threatens the forest”

"A master who will watch Ardenweald wither”

“All shall wither”

“ Where she appears, decay follows.”

Ingra is a title used by several NPCs. I wonder if it some title of nobility in Thros or meant for commanders.

A Tiny Mystery

Soultwister Cero in Tirna Noch is opening some sort of a portal. It doesn’t appear to be some sort of a standard portal, because the ground bears a ritual circle akin to what the Heartsbane uses, and at each point of it are great stones bearing runes upon them. Atop the portal is a mask, and there are two large runestones on each side as well. Something had to be important to put so much effort into opening this gateway- but why? Is it a portal to Thros to bring more troops in through? A gate to another realm of the Shadowlands, akin to De Other Side’s entrance?

It may also just be the entrance to a lovely little vacation island just across the gap that has been occupied by the Drust, but that seems like a lot of effort to reach something that is a goblin glider jump away.

#Thros #Ardenweald #Shadowlands Lore #lore deep dive #Drust #Merellia's RP Resources

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macgyvertape · 3 years

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50 or so hours into Cyberpunk 2077

This should be roughly the correct amount of time, ive been leaving the game running as I get up to get food or do stretches. Quests are roughly in order I did them

non spoilers above cut:

i haven't found a single hat/helmet i like, and since you can't hide them I just am not wearing any. It matters that much.

I posted the other day about bugs, every few hours I play I find new bugs. some require me to go back and reload a save others I honestly can’t tell if it’s a bug or just really poor development

there are several perks that don’t quite do what the description says, like the Anamesis perk. Based on reddit and trying it out it seems to just not do anything.

sometimes in car chase segments the passenger will say “look out” as cars spawn in my path and hit me. Can’t tell if that was deliberate or a pop in issue

Yeah I’ve just totally given up on doing pacifist things unless required by a mission. Given up on doing stealth too unless a mission objective, except for sneaking around to set up a fight.

:readmore:

the delemain car quest is fun. From the shock of the one going "beep beep motherfucker" and doing a hit and run to start it off, to the GLADOS car i see a lot of people talking about. It was fun to explore the city when i might have missed places like the landfill apparently there is follow up on T-bug's death if you go back to the quick hack shop in Kabuki. It's not much but better than nothing I made the pass with Panam of "what if the room just had one bed". I know she won't do a wlw romance, which is fine since I wouldn’t have chosen her. I enjoy her as a character, don’t get me wrong, my V considers her as a friend, but it seems like theres always drama going on which would be tiring. I would have gone for a fling, i like her leotard-pants combo with all the straps

but also her questline was buggy as hell. Multiple cases of having to reload due to clipping into objects, including her in a driving section, or just insta-dying when collision physics with some rocks broke "your neural network can no longer function independantly of the chip" me slapping my desk: s y m b i o te!!! come on lets have some s y m b i o s i s

in the scene with hellman i really liked how Johnny moved around the room. It made him feel like he was really there. it was hard to follow the convo as I left the room, i would not have understood it without subtitles. But i guess Takemura fucking waterboarded hellman. :|

lol I hope the dialogue is different b/c i refuse to smoke for Johnny

i am level 18 and still can't beat the first opponents in the fist fighting quest. ffs

I looked up the romances options so I went to do the I fought the law quest as soon as i got it. ACAB, but like I literally just met River Ward 2 minutes ago, and I really like him. His earring and cyborg eye, his big fluffy coat. I'm definitely gonna sleep with him Ok i like how when River Ward is dealing with the tiger claws if you interject it leads to a fight. It goes better if you follow his instructions and let him deal with it. Seriously I enjoy that sometimes its good to not pick a dialogue choice.

during the red queen club part, there was no dialogue over the phone. So i reloaded a save and got myself spotted and attacked. Then River showed up to help me <3 and it was more enjoyable having him there. I honestly am not sure if him not going to the club level is bug or not.

then uuuuuugh the worst of irl police "cops are my family" from Detective Han. Again ACAB "FRATERNITY OF CITY COPS RESEMBLES A [Nomad] CLAN NOT AT ALL" ok a few minutes ago i was complaining about bugs, but the character modeling in this game is good (when they're there). You can see body posture, characters jiggle their legs when they are nervous. Like I though character A was just throwing a cigarette on the ground, but then character B flinches back; I realize Char A threw it at B as a fuck you

I'm honestly curious if "I fought the Law" quest will have any impact later on. My choices were that I thought there was more going on than Holt being the only person behind this (based on how complicated the main questline heist is, and keeping an eye on some of the in game news), and told him not to take it to internal affairs, and I loved his response of how he doesn't give a shit what we think, he's doing it anyway.

In the elevator to report in, Johnny said "this muck is deeper than you think, tell them nothing", so i just said that the case was complicated. anyway i love how much of a sarcastic asshole V is

I thought i was being nonlethal with the monk quest, but it seems i accidently killed someone. RIP, but thats kind of the problem with this game. Like when i do the non lethal cyberpychosis quests I equip my non lethal modded gun and hope for the est. I like how a go here kill things quest led to Charles the ripperdoc. He's getting all his parts from scav gang members so I felt obligated to take him out. I got a police bounty for it but w/e.

I merged the Delemain fragments with the whole. Guess he's the meta now. (Side note: some of my favorite rvb fanfic plots are Ai consiousness/memory merging with the humans, so I’m having fun with this game and look foward to introspective fanfic)

Honestly Jonny made some good points, the fragments didn't deserve to die; but also destroying the core and freeing the fragments, they couldn't really function alone.

I was able to rescue Saul fine with stealth. Using cameras and the synapse overload really made it easy. Can't use the sniper rifle reward b/c I don't have the stats for it, and while it has a silencer the fact that it's a ricochette weapon and not a shoot through walls weapons, makes it not as good imo; and theres a legendary one that is stats free for only 100k.

Lol made a pass again at Panam, and she immediately shut me down. I then did Mitch's quest and I love every time someone tells V they area good person.

I hacked the operation carpe noctem shard, and wow the corporations are using ai to make people have cyberpsychosis, or something like that. What a shocker /s, I've played Deus Ex HR before

lol driving through the unifinished interstate, past the fight from Panam's first quest I found a "batcave" with a very nice car, and a manifesto written by "muckman'. But here's my complaint about the loot, there is a legendary top, but it had 16 armor. My current top has 84 armor, like why would i switch?? then later i found a bunker with soviet spies in it. Wild

Doing River's second quest, love the timing of as soon as you ask, why are we breaking in, someone shows up to tell you he got kicked off the force. It's funny how Johnny comments how maybe River's into you, and V just doubts Johnny's words. Love how the first kid asks River if I'm his girlfriend. also wow like oof both the second parts of Judy and River's quest are SUPER fucked UP!! oof like i stopped doing first person mode on the braindances for those quests as soon as i could, just made me too uncomfortable seeing that in first person.

DRIVING IN THE GAME IS BAD! nowhere is it more apparent than the sinnerman quest, which took me 3 times to get the driving section done, as cars spawned out of nowhere to hit me. Then when you restart, there is a bunch of dialogue it doesn't let you fast forward through. The rest of the Sinnerman questline is interesting. My V took every option to tell the dude that he was messed up, and what he was doing was wrong. idk, I was surprised how much dialogue there was that let you buy into his whole "forgiveness thing" and how there wasn't any real dialogue to call him the fuck out, that in seeking forgiveness he continues to do harm both emotional to the mother of the man he killed, but also that he got the husband killed via cop. The later follow up quest, I told him that what he is doing is crazy, studio is just going to profit off this vid. Then I refused to join him prayer, and told him fuck no i wasn't going to hammer him to the cross, or even watch. Yes, the man is scared of dying, and the corporation is exploiting him, but he keeps creating burdens for others. I think the discussion on this quest will be interesting to read, it's definitely my own personal experience with religion coloring my view. Anyway back to a main quest, yeah i don't trust Placide, especially in that scene where he grabs my hand, then jacks in. I ran off to do most of the sidequests here and got some criticism from him. I do love how in the cinema the western movie switches to a mission brief as the netwatch agent talks. its a fun enviromental detail. I took the netwatch offer, i don't think he's being fully honest with me, but he didn't put a virus in my head. As I told Placide later, I didn't pick a side. I like how you can then talk with the agent, who is a fan of Western movies, b/c they show "a simpler time where all good guys carry badges" :eyeroll:, and then V recommends Unforgiven, which from the wiki summary goes against that theme.

Looks like the Voodoo boys all got killed by Netwatch, but I as revenge for them trying to set me up I'm fine with it. Honestly after speaking with ai!Alt I don’t believe their plan of trying to be on good relations with AI would work.

doing the johnny flashback 2, and wow Johnny really is an asshole. Like I had gotten so used to him in side missions I forgot how self centered and unlikable he was.You constantly get prompts to drink or do drugs, which I ignored. But i do love the goth/punk love Rogue and others have.

lol i called it, when Hellman said that the engram would seek to override the host, put V on the engram. I really like how as the relic malfunctions, you wind up in the chair with a cigarette, which you can either smoke and say you are turning into Johnny or throw away. My dialogue "your problem is the ends justify the means", which is true!!! He and Rogue detonated a nuke downtown, does anyone know that, and like ask Rogue about it????

(Funny you can ask Rouge about Johnny silverhand, over the phone, then the game bugs out and spawns her npc where you are. She doens't say much about the nuke, but she does say no one trusts you for jobs). The line of no one trusting you for jobs is pretty funny at level 46 street cred where im at “respected” status. really loving the family atmosphere at River's 3rd quest. Also his big strong arms, and the fact he is no longer a cop. I totally let the kids win, and wow the family dinner where they GRILL YOU over the relationship and try to set the two of you up, then the water tower scene!!!!! I don't love the first person sex cutscenes but they do have personality. I'm glad afterwards you got to tell River about the biochip and that you might die. Because he's so far removed from your personal plot. So I took that option to back out of a relationship.

I do love that you wake up with "river's tanktop" that says "fuck the police" It actually has extremely good armor stats, so thats what I'll wear now.

panam 3rd quest, when shes like why did you help me, I'm like "because it's important to you". Basically the closest you can get to "when a friend asks for help you help them", which as an ex-nomad backstory I really choose the nomad options when ever i can Paralezes quest part 2! I love the piano song but I always think of it as ocean's 11 music. It's also fun to see the computer and see Judy recommended you for the first quest. The emails talk about "forgetting" to hire a staffer, on the balocony a strange antennia was scannable, the color of the roses was remembered wrong... lol guess i was right with those giant wall screens. Its fun environmental details that spell things out before you can notice, and it ties into some other quests where people's behavior is being altered. Actually, this quest "Dream On" I love it! For a while I've been like "wheres the illuminati conspiracy! Here it IS! I chose to follow Elisabeth's wishes and not tell her husband he was being brainwashed. In best case they program him to forget again, in worst case he ends up dead. The gaslighting Elisabeth described is CHILLING, her husband describes a vacation she can't remember and she doesn't know whose memories have been messed with. On your way to the plaza you get a call from someone/something that says the know exactly WHAT you are, any you black out!!! It's such a great feeling of helplessness that you're just one person in a world so big that you can't fight every power. As Johnny said, could be a corporation, could be a rogue ai, either way Jefferson is fucked (and so are you).

#cyberpunk 2077 #mac plays video games #a lot of this journaling i do #so in a few years i can look back #and see my first impressions

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candideangel · 4 years

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🔥🔥🔥

Let’s see...I talked about NPCs and an Expansion that could’ve been split into two story. Let’s see what I can come up with.

1. The slightly branching dialogue, I wish there was more to it mechanically. As you know there are story based answers the WoL can give, things that happened. I will use for the biggest example and most fresh one; the Crystal Exarch lines right at the end and towards the end of 5.0, if you did do the Crystal Towers questline before it became required, you would get those dialogue options and he genuinely did have reaction to it. I’m not saying go completely crazy or make it feel like some kind of dating sim, but I would love to see more of that being utilized or even becoming a bigger concept like characters remember your words based on the response given. It’s more a mechanic thing, and it’s probably not so possible.

2. I don’t know if this bothers anyone except me and a few others, but; why aren’t we allowed to see the city-state leaders after the story is done? Aymeric you got to adventure partly with until the end of HW and then he spends most of Storm in his office and only made a few brief appearances. It would be nice if we were given the option to still see them and depending on story progression you’re working towards have some small fluff text. I do genuinely feel bad when NPCs that are really good end up becoming simple decoration until they’re needed or a quest demands their attention. (Let Aymeric do something for Starlight damn it! The tradition started in Ishgard of all places!). Or...I don’t know, actually see the leaders who apparently worried for us while the Scions were comatose and the WoL literally traipsed off to another star!

3. The playerbases’ conception of beauty within the game of FFXIV. Now I will say that this does not count towards every single one within the fandom, but I will say from a standpoint of someone who does play a Hyur Midlander and came from a Miqo’te background (ie my main until Angelique became the main). There is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying an in game play whoever you want. But it’s a bit worrisome when it feels like the playerbases’ views on beauty is all about playing the most exotic races out there; Miqo’te, Au Ra, and Viera. They’re popular races to play, but it does make the people who do play other races a bit in the dark, maybe even in rp ignored during public events depending on the theme. As I said, play who you want to play, but don’t discount someone’s played character just because of the race they chose to fit it, there is always a good story hidden under that blank slate. Beautiful headcanons, storylines, layers that no one would expect.

(It’s what makes me thankful that Angelique has been so well received thusfar with the circle of friends I’ve come to know. Even if she isn’t exotic-looking which I had often second-guessed until it all settled.)

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dungeons-and-danis · 5 years

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How I Prepare For Major Arcs & Organize My DM Notes, As Well As Just General Narrative Advice!

So, I got a question quite a while back to try out this neat little trend of displaying and explaining away how I prepare for a session, as well as show how i organize and utilize my notes as a DM. I’m going to be using my upcoming, work-in-progress arc, “Nightingale”, as a visual reference throughout the post.

So, I know i’ve released my DM’s notes on worldanvil before, but I gotta admit that the platform I most like to use for notes and plot setup is always OneNote, which I have for free via my college. It’s versatile, organized, and easy to navigate on any platform (even my phone!). So if you can get your hands on it, I highly recommend it.

PART ONE -- THE MAIN PAGE OF CENTRAL INFORMATION

What I like to do first, is create a central tab of navigation, the first thing that will pop up when I open my fresh set of notes! Things I like to include in that main tab would be any of the following:

Format Key

This will come in handy later, but essentially I have a key to differentiating different types of text throughout my notes and it looks like this (note: your notes DON’T have to look like this, but I recommend having a specific format for all these types of text to help keep you organized):

Reference Links

This is to link to articles I have on world anvil with more detailed information

Settings

NPC’s

Organizations/Factions

Misc.

Plot Setup/Brainstorming

This is helpful to get you started on your overarching plot! Be as messy as you want and DON’T DELETE ANYTHING, even if you think it’s stupid. All brainstorming is good brainstorming.

Objective

Themes

Relevant History

Hooks

Encounters

Small Outline of Main Questline

Reputation Points

I like, especially for big cities with lots of factions and NPC’s, to keep track of reputation and karma with a point system. Every good deed or bad deed, I like to record and assign a certain number of points to add or subtract from the total score of each faction, based off of just how good or bad that act was. This will help decide things in both the conclusion of that arc, as well as the conclusion of my campaign. This way, your actions really do have consequences.

PART TWO -- BUILDING THE PLOT IN ACTS

So I believe it is pertinent to keep things simple when it comes to notes, especially when it comes to major arcs where your players have a lot of freedom and you need to do a lot of writing in order to allow that freedom. So i like to build in 4 acts, each of them being dedicated to its own special needs. You can add however many acts as you might need, but this is just a base line!

Act One: The Introduction

Act Two: Exploration/Information Gathering

Act Three: The Rising Action

Act Four: The Conclusion/The Climax

To add onto this, I usually put these acts as Major Groups in OneNote, and they look a little like this:

Act One; Introducing Your Players To The Setting

This, in my opinion, is the most important act of the four. I usually like to send my players into the setting with a BANG! Throw something at them that they don’t expect! An eerie exorcism, a public execution of an old friend, a plague that keeps the party away from public entrances, anything you can think of! The intro should be narrative heavy, not battle-heavy. That will just make your party snore. Give them a reason to fight, a reason to care about this story and its NPCs. Make sure that this first part is your best work, because it sets the story from here on out and will determine if your players are eager to return to the table. Do not forget to set the precedent of your arc’s main plot goal here. If you don’t do it now, it won’t make sense elsewhere. Make the PC’s care right away!

For example, some snippets of my introduction notes look a little bit like this (remember my format key from before? well here it is in use:)

Act Two; Exploration/Information Gathering

This is a big one, because this is where the majority of your work will go. This is the part where the players can roam around the setting, getting to know the NPC’s and the environment for themselves and make their own opinions on the current state of affairs wherever they are. I like to get super organized with this part, because it can get VERY hectic while going live. You want to write where you leave room for players to move, but also keep them focused on the task at hand. So whatever dialogue or side quests you introduce in exploration, keep it brief and drawing back to the central plot line at hand.

I will expand more on this in PART 3, because it deserves its own section.

Act Three; The Rising Action

Yes, just like your english teacher taught you in 6th grade, there has to be a Rising Action in your plot line! This is self explanatory, it might seem. But this is the hardest part about writing up a plot line for D&D, because you never know how your players are going to change the plot. So keep things loose and relative, allowing for wiggle room and improvisation. But still, have a decent chunk of the plot ready to go in this act, because this will be the majority of your plot and usually where the information gathering from act two will start to come in handy. Things need to start coming to a head towards the end of this act, or else you’ll be stuck with a very unsatisfactory conclusion. Another helpful tip during this act, is to write down EVERY, and I mean EVERY SINGLE LITTLE question your players might have. Figure out an answer to all of them, even if the answer is “you’ll find out later”.

Act Four; The Conclusion/The Climax

This is the end. The part of your story where everything starts to come together into a full circle! You need to be prepared to answer all those questions your players had during act three, in one form or another. There’s nothing worse than ending an arc finding that there were a million plot holes that didn’t get accounted for. So prepare, prepare, prepare for this final act. On top of that, prepare for several outcomes on top of that! Don’t be afraid to change the ending on the fly, just make sure you answer those questions somehow--be it out right, or implied in the narrative. My best advice is to not write out the ending until you’re at least half way through act three. Because your player’s choices should matter, and should have a major effect on the ending. If they don’t, then whats the point in running a narrative-heavy campaign? This is where my reputation points have come in handy in the past.

PART 3 -- EXPANDING ON EXPLORATION

I wanted to give you guys a taste at how I organize my exploration section. And to be honest with you, it’s fairly to-the-point and straight forward. I’m using a city setting for my example, but I feel like this can apply to any settlement setting to be honest. But I usually like to start with a table of contents as the first page for me to land on when going to my Exploration section. It looks like this, and each link, links exactly to that page on the document so i don’t have to guess at where everything is.

I also have a page dedicated to general information about the city in my worldanvil, linked on the Reference Links page I mentioned before! But it’s always good to have a central source of information about your settlement when prepping.

Now, let’s take a look at what one of the shops looks like, as that’s most likely going to be the bulk of what you’re writing. We’re gonna start with my shop “Dagna’s General Goods Store”, which is simple enough. Here, you can see all the pages I have for this location:

These are specific to a certain encounter, but to put it in a more general sense, this is how I would organize any relevant location in a settlement:

Introduction

I like to introduce my players to the outside and inside of every establishment in my settlements. So, narrative of the outside... and then a narrative of the inside. For example, this one looks like this:

Then, from there, I can dive into whatever introducing encounters I may have planned for that shop on the same page. This is just to give the players an impression. I continue for this page like this:

I like to put in brackets before voicing a new character, how their voice may sound. But that’s just me!

The NPC(s)

Always have a page for NPC’s relative to the establishment! I usually like to link to my worldanvil at the top, but sometimes characters are so small that I don’t make them a page. For those instances, I like to write just a little bit about them under the following format:

Appearance

Personality (including voice/accent)

What They Know

Willing to Share

Not Willing to Share (requires skill checks, or otherwise)

I like to keep this brief as possible, because too much text will just overwhelm me when i’m actually DMing live. Don’t make them too complicated, unless they’re major NPC’s, otherwise you will suffer.

Whats For Sale

Self explanatory, especially for shops. If the establishment sells things, I like to take screenshots from the books and place them in this page. Or I make tables myself! Cause OneNote can do that lmao.

General Information

I like to split this up into three categories:

Schedules

What time does the establishment open and close? When is the owner there? When does the owner go to bed? Is there anything the people living there do at certain times that are of relevance? This all becomes helpful when trying to nail down routines and time tracking.

Points of Interest

Things the players can find! Maybe a secret heirloom, a private letter, or a family tree! Usually these require skill checks to find, but can also just be apart of the apparent environment!

Encounters

Events that happen to the players. This can happen at certain times, or only when the players are currently present! It’s entirely up to you. But don’t equate encounters with battle, encounters are just events, battle or otherwise!

Mine looks kind of like this, though it needs some more fleshing out-- which will come with time as my plot progresses.

Missions (if applicable)

This can split off into various sub pages, if need be, and may not even be applicable to this specific establishment! But sometimes, you can acquire missions from people and places. I like to write the mission pages in the Establishment or NPC pages that will give them out.

And well, that’s about it! Sorry for the huge post, but it gave me some time to kill, so there you go! LOL Have fun with that, guys.

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thesevenseraphs · 5 years

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Director’s Cut: Part 1

Hey everyone,

I wanted to try a little experiment with our communications and put together a longer look at where Destiny has been over the last few months and where it's heading next. I think it's important to take time to reflect on what's happened so we can show you where we're going.

I'm calling this Director's Cut. Based on how long this ended up being, a key learning from this is "maybe there's a better way to communicate this than a GIANT WALL OF TEXT!" Let me know. I also may like doing it in a different format in the future, I'll let you know.

Today, I'm going to talk about more than just the Destiny game and talk some about how we build Destiny and the effects it can have on the team. I think transparency about the game is important and I also want to be transparent about the work required. Sound OK? That's rhetorical, because a wall of text is coming up.

We're making a lot of changes to Destiny 2 with Shadowkeep and New Light. We want Destiny 2 to be an amazing action MMO, in a single, evolving world, that you can play anytime, anywhere with your friends. I'm going to keep referencing that. All the time. Until it's true. And then, I'm going to keep referencing it until it's good enough.*

10 THOUGHTS ON THE LAST SIX MONTHS (LOOKING BACK)

Overall, there are some things about Annual Pass that worked out very well and some real learnings for us along the way. The Annual Pass was a big transition for us. We've been moving away from DLC and trying to provide more ongoing reasons to play Destiny. I wanted to start the State of the Game series by looking back at how we got here. I'm going to largely focus on Season of the Drifter to near-present day.

We set up a calendar of content, showed you the plan early, and delivered it.

A lot of you love Destiny for the chase on the way to improving your characters. Between the Annual Pass drops, questlines, and events in between, the team did a great job of providing stuff to do, items to chase, growing fat with strength, et cetera. Destiny history has had many content droughts, but not this year.

But, the Annual Pass was harder on the team than we anticipated.

The scope of what we delivered, the pace that we delivered it, and the overall throughput for Annual Pass takes a toll on the Bungie team. I--and many others--had conversations throughout the year with team members--who had jumped from release to release-- about the grind of working on Destiny. Working on the game was starting to wear people down. Here's an example:

During the annual pass, we invented new, bespoke ways to earn rewards each season. Black Armory had its bounties, Season of the Drifter had the "Reckoning Machine," Season of Opulence had its Chalice. Each of these mechanics - each with their own lessons - were valuable, but also put the team into an unsustainable development cycle. We needed to develop a more systemic, standardized set of mechanics for progression to keep our teams healthier.

We're going to take this problem on in D2Y3.

WE HAVE A POWERFUL SOURCES PROBLEM

As the game's weekly sources of Power grew and Destiny grew with it, this - at times - could really feel like a chore. Each season brought with it new Powerful sources and optimizing your character meant that you were maybe still running three story missions every week or returning to the Dreaming City months after those first few magical trips from last fall.

I feel like we needed to do a better job of shifting Powerful sources. We could explore things like changing the value of Powerful sources to create new seasonal efficiencies or retire some Powerful sources as we bring new sources into the game. Simply put, I wish we'd been able do more seasonal curation of the game.

SEASON OF THE DRIFTER THOUGHTS, PART I

I like Gambit Prime. It felt like a great refinement of Gambit to me. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

Matches end quicker, so it feels more efficient. The invading frequency feels lower, so I can Collect and dunk. I think there's something cool about the roles, although the requirements to get a full set online to inhabit a role meant not enough folks got to appreciate the playstyle diversity.

In the future, we're going to have to make a choice: Which Gambit is the Highlander of Gambits. Prime or Classic. This isn't just about removing stuff from Destiny 2 -- but the game cannot grow infinitely forever --it's about focusing refinements and evolutions to the Gambit ecosystem. We think Gambit is sweet and deserves more ongoing support and we want to ultimately focus that support on whichever mode ends up being the Highlander. There can be only one.

That said, we hear you that not everyone is excited about a season that overly focuses on one part of the game. Destiny is a game with a lot of breadth and we agree that this season felt too specialized.

SEASON OF THE DRIFTER THOUGHTS, PART II AKA LET'S TALK ABOUT RECKONING

(and Encounter Design)

The first time I used Phoenix Protocol at home, I knew it was over. It's an exotic coat that refills my Well of Radiance and then refills itself as I "slay," so that I can continue to place my Well of Stand Here to be Borderline Invulnerable and Deal Tons of Damage. Datto has a great video that talks about Well of Radiance's effect on the PVE game.

I wondered, How are we ever going to make content that fairly challenges players again?

With Reckoning in Season of the Drifter, we got a taste of what kind of content we'd need to build to challenge Protocol-wearing Warlocks. Matchmade encounters that accost you from all directions, plant snipers off in the distance, and put players in between a pincher attack of many whelps, handle it (I wanted to link a thing here, but it's definitely not T for Teen) and giant bosses (also eff you Knight Taken guy).

This is what it had to be. We were breaking encounter rules left, right, and center on the Reckoning bridge, in no small part due to players in always-active Wells of Radiance becoming invulnerable gods, holding all six infinity stones all the time.

In Reckoning, we set out to build an activity that could be relatively easy at Tier 1 and scale up to very challenging at Tier 3. We have an internal team here codenamed: Velveeta (they were formed in the wake of the Crota's End modem-unplugging debacle to help find the cheesiest things to do/use in the challenging PVE portions of the game) – these players are some of our craftiest.

Once Velveeta can get close to beating something, or beat it outright, that becomes an important data point on our "is this hard enough?" evaluation. We give them a bunch of tips like "here's how this works, can you beat it?”, so if they can, it's a good indicator of the action game and gear game working together.

Let's talk about encounter design. Generally, in activities we expect players to complete alone (dungeons, raids, zero hour-type activities can play by a different set of properties!) or in matchmade groups, there are a number of guidelines we use when we build them.

We don't want to spawn enemies behind the player.

We want players to play a game of taking space from enemies.

We want players to have cover where their shields and health can recharge, or where they get to be smart using geometry, movement, ability and gunplay to dig enemies out of cover, and make interesting decisions about target prioritization.

We want players to be able to understand where in the space enemies will come from, and if we're going to reverse the combat front on players (AKA spawn enemies behind them, we want to telegraph that.

We use dropships, spawn clouds, audio cues, all kinds of tricks to try and prepare players for reinforcements.

As character power was dramatically increasing (more on reasons for this increase later on), the encounter rules got thrown out the window.

To summarize this: Destiny had sweet gear and in order to create challenge in the Reckoning we broke a bunch of our encounter design philosophy. That sweet gear, coupled with the encounter design meant the number of ways to viably/efficiently progress was dramatically reduced. We want Destiny to be a game where you have lots of choices with your character, build what you choose to do, and funneling those choices down to only one in Reckoning is something we don't want to repeat. There's more about damage and player power sprinkled in this update, and even more on the rest.

Last, last note: I think it's totally sweet when an activity challenges you to use something other than your favorite item. I don't think the whole game should work that way, but when it's time to bust some shields on the Shanks in Zero Hour, I had a use for that Distant Relation scout rifle in my vault.

SEASON OF THE DRIFTER THOUGHTS, PART III AKA NOW LET'S TALK ABOUT DIFFICULTY AND TOUCH ON SANDBOX NERFS

I started to talk about challenge/difficulty above and drifted (heh heh) to encounter difficulty. But, it's all related. When the media would come to play our Halo games for an event, we'd always recommend they play the game on Heroic. Heroic changed a bunch about Halo combat – it made enemy weapons more accurate (but not too accurate); enemies would fire more frequently (which made you feel like a hero when you dodged them); it increased projectile speed; and Heroic lowered player outgoing damage (so that the enemies would survive longer and make their way further through their behavior tree - and therefore appear more intelligent). There's more than just the above going on, but that's a quick summary of some of the changes.

But here's why: we asked the media to play the game on Heroic, because when the game is challenging, overcoming the challenge feels incredible.

Important to note here: Challenge isn't something universal. In an action game, challenge can be largely personal. One person's challenging might be easy to someone else. We've historically thought about the main Destiny campaigns as something we want to be pretty easy (I think D2's campaign was actually too easy at times), and as players push further into the post-game they'd be able to find more challenge. Across Destiny's history we haven't had enough challenge deep into the end game, and that's definitely something on our list as we head toward fall 2019.

Overcoming challenges is a huge part of what makes an action game's moment-to-moment engaging. Action games are a delicate balance of growing stronger, the game rising up to push back, introducing new challenges that force you to learn/become more powerful/master a new element and -- at their best -- creating the fist pumping moment of celebration when you achieve victory.

But Destiny has an RPG component, too. And the RPG component is about customization, optimization, and it's a way for players to choose how they overcome challenge. The entire time we've been making Destiny, the action game and the RPG have been fighting. It's the forever war. The RPG has the power to dramatically overcome the action game, and the action game has the power to render the RPG game irrelevant. It's a line - by nature - Destiny will always have to straddle.

In order to create challenge during Season of the Drifter, we needed to break a bunch of encounter rules, have exotics like Phoenix Protocol basically function like a key (or hope you match with multiple Radiance Warlocks) which then unlocks success in the matchmade encounters of Reckoning. There's a really good video from Slayerage on this in the context of the nerfs we made heading into Season of Opulence.

Those nerfs also saw Whisper of the Worm get its day in court. If I could turn back time, we'd probably not run Whisper as the original Black Hammer infinite ammo design. However, considering the year before had Destiny 2 feeling very restrictive and power-limited, I think we did the best that we could with the knowledge and intuition we had last summer.

Whisper was an outlier that lets you stand still at a safe distance, in a pool that makes you borderline invulnerable, never having to reload or relocate for ammo, and allow players to deal piles and piles of damage on giant bosses who aren't threatening. This isn't your fault! It's ours! We're making some stuff too easy and allowing players to circumvent parts of the game! Mechanics that circumvent the ammo game (relocate to pick up ammo bricks) or completely ignore the reload animations (a critical part of weapon tuning) are mechanics that create the kind of outliers that we ultimately have to tamp down before the game spirals into the boss health version of Reckoning bridges.

The other significant set of changes we made to the game during this time were taking down the Super Snowball exotics. With as powerful as Destiny Supers have become (they are - on the whole - dramatically more powerful than Destiny 1's Supers), using your Super to recover your Super is an amplification to player power that the challenge and difficulty game can't keep up with. But, we're going to talk about Supers much later on.

Difficulty and challenge are important parts of mastery. There are more changes coming in Shadowkeep (buffs to things like Scout Rifles, nerfs to mechanics that circumvent the ammo economy, refactoring of the way damage stacking rules work) -- we're gonna talk about it in the next episode.

SEASON OF OPULENCE, PART I: THE PURSUITS TRAY IS A CATERPILLAR IN A COCOON–QUESTLOG IS THE BEAUTIFUL BUTTERFLY

I've seen streams and videos of people beating activities in Destiny blindfolded. I cannot imagine developing the muscle memory and memorization (nevermind the thumbskill required) to be good at Destiny with the blast shield down.

When things fundamentally change in a way that interrupts muscle memory and mastery, it is frustrating. The initial set of changes to the Pursuits tray earlier this year did a few things beyond upsetting muscle memory. It certainly didn't get as far as the team wanted in its initial release and it also didn't feel like an improvement over what previously existed.

It felt like we started to redecorate your house but we didn't finish it (and sometimes, that's how things in a live game can feel).

The morning after the Pursuits changes went live, I talked to some folks on the UI team about the feature. They had Reddit open.

"Have you read it, Luke?"

"Nah, I haven't."

"Please don't."

They were crestfallen. Not just because of the sometimes-harsh-feeling feedback, but because this team wanted make something sweet, exceed your expectations, and meet their own expectations. None of those things happened. We wanted to try something different with Pursuits, in the sense that we knew where we wanted this feature to end up, but that we'd take some iterative steps to get there. I think we've got to do a better job ensuring that while we're remodeling your house, the potential of the renovation is clearer either in the game or via some communication here on the site.

We want a Questlog with great tracking that can help players prioritize what to do next.

Oh, and this fall, bounties will be separated from quests and PC players can assign a hot key that takes them directly to the Pursuits menu.

SEASON OF OPULENCE, PART II: THE EVOLVING EVERVERSE

Last year, we thought long and hard about Eververse and how we wanted to change the strategy around microtransactions in Destiny. As some folks have smartly pointed out, MTX is a big part of our business being a live game. I'm not going to say "MTX funds the studio" or "pays for projects like Shadowkeep" -- it doesn't wholly fund either of those things. But it does help fund ongoing development of Destiny 2, and allows us to fund creative efforts we otherwise couldn't afford. For example: Whisper of the Worm's ornaments were successful enough that it paid [dev cost-wise] for the Zero Hour mission/rewards to be constructed (this shit matters!).

The storefront, which we launched alongside Season of Opulence is the first part of the strategic shift we're making with MTX. The decision to run old content in Bright Engrams instead of making new Bright Engrams is another part of the shift. We want to believe that our players would rather just buy things they like from the store. Earlier this summer, we detailed a bunch of the changes coming to Bright Dust and Eververse this fall (and if you haven't read that, go check it out here).

The storefront is going to get another round of enhancements this fall, too. We're going to move it to the Director, so you don't have go to the Tower and see Tess to interact with it. We're giving it some Class specific content, so if you're on your Titan looking for Titan Universal Ornaments with smaller shoulders, you'll see Titan armor on one of the store's subpages. We're also going to make it so that the pieces you've already acquired from a given set reduce the Silver price of the set. For instance, if you are 3/5 Optimacy set on your Titan, the cost to finish the set in Silver will be reduced by 60%.

There are some other philosophies here that we haven't made explicitly clear:

We have made deliberate choices related to cosmetic items and not having them come from gameplay. Gameplay rewards are where you get items, power, mods, perk combinations, stats, triumphs, and titles. The aesthetics for armor blurs the line some – we want players to get cool armor from activities and the world that feel thematic to where they were acquired. Cosmetic items like universal ornaments, weapon ornaments, shaders, ships, sparrows, emotes, and finishers typically come from the store (There are exceptions, but generally speaking, that's how we think about this).

We are continuing to try and separate capability/gameplay from vanity. Armor 2.0 and Universal Ornaments are big parts of this separation. This is also why Finisher perks are mods that can be socketed into equipment, so that their aesthetic can stand alone.

As always, we welcome your feedback and thoughts.

SEASON OF OPULENCE, PART III: THE MENAGERIE IS SWEET

Have you ever been to an amazing party for something like the Super Bowl? It's the kind of party where there is an incredible spread of snacks rolling out throughout the event, amazingly comfortable seating, an A/V system and TV that makes you jealous, and super sweet people to hang out with. Once you've been to this party -- the Super Bowl anywhere else never feels the same (invite me back somedayyyyyyyyy).

This is how I feel about Escalation Protocol. Once I had the feeling of running around in public bubbles, fighting giant bosses with a bunch of players (even though getting into a good instance of Mars for Protocol was a pain in the butt!), public gameplay never felt the same. At its peak, when you have a bunch of players slaying big ol' bosses, Escalation Protocol is one of the best things we've added to Destiny 2.

The Menagerie - a six-player matchmade activity where you make progress no matter what - is awesome. Its "learn-by-watching mechanics" means that it doesn't require communication between players. The way groups can make progress - even if they don't kill the boss - means the real efficiency gain is by learning and executing the fights quickly. Hasapiko, Beloved by Calus -- and also beloved by me -- feels like a great translation of World of Warcraft's Heigan the Unclean** into an action game.

There's a lot to like about the Menagerie, but I'm going to close the activity part here with: We love the Menagerie, it's a great middle spot on a six-player activity pyramid, with Raids sitting at the top. Escalation Protocol (aka Partying in Public) is a great base. We want to do more activities like this, but in the context of what we learned and in a way that we can better support them over the long-term.

SEASON OF OPULENCE, PART IV: THE CHALICE OF OPULENCE AND SOMEHOW EVEN MORE SEASON OF THE DRIFTER THOUGHTS

Having some ways to target and farm some specific gear in Destiny is great. We did a version of this with Black Armory weapons but the very, very long character-specific attunement questline for the Forges was a bit much. We made the Opulence attunement account-wide as a result. The Chalice was an even bigger version of targeting rewards. Players could unlock different sets of armor, different weapons, and even select their Masterwork perk roll.

Pause on Chalice thoughts.

We will come back to the Chalice. Let's talk about how we build the game.

While content for Destiny is released serially, it is largely developed in parallel. For instance, while Forsaken was in its final few months, Black Armory was well underway, and Season of the Drifter was in development while Black Armory was being built, et cetera. For years people have wondered "Why doesn't release X do the thing content drop Y did? Get it together, Bungie."

This is one of the reasons why. So even though Menagerie is sweet, and Chalice is great, while Shadowkeep was being built, the Menagerie and the Chalice hadn't yet been released. So we didn't know how players would react.

Because we have so much to build, we frequently find ourselves having to place many bets at the same time. This has paid dividends at times – we discover new and awesome things like Escalation Protocol or Menagerie - and this has also resulted in things that feel like setbacks at other times.

An example of a setback is the reward chase during Season of the Drifter. There are a bunch of super awesome weapons in Drifter (One Two Punch Last Man Standing), but the path to them isn't clear like Black Armory or the Chalice. We didn't do a good enough job of rewarding players for their time or giving them clearer paths to some of the sweet weapons in the release. If we had a do-over with this season's rewards we'd probably have dropped Armor directly from Prime and maybe used Reckoning combined with learnings from Menagerie's fail forward mechanics to let players chase awesome rolls on weapons they could love. While I got pretty lucky with a Rapid Hit Kill Clip Spare Rations, I personally had more fun chasing my Kindled Orchid or Austringer.

Unpause. Back to Chalice.

The Chalice isn't perfect. Being held hostage by THE rune you want to drop from a Strike or Crucible to go make the weapon or armor piece you're coveting is pretty frustrating.

But having more ways in the game to pursue loot in a deterministic fashion, while preserving the hunt for a great roll, is something that we hope to explore.

Things left unsaid-ish while looking back

There's a lot a lot a lot of awesome stuff we didn't spend time talking about (Tribute Hall, Lumina, that cool Drifter cinematic with the Taken Captain, lore books, Vanguard/Drifter choice, et cetera).

Full disclosure: I'm almost always going to focus on opportunities for improvement, rather than celebration!

We're in the midst of Solstice and Moments of Triumph so the learnings for those are still bubbling up.

Looking Ahead to Looking Ahead

The rest of the Director’s Cut updates are going to focus on Shadowkeep and the changes we’re making this year. Here are some of the topics that will be included:

Supers and PVP in Destiny 2

Armor, Stats, Mods, and Tradeoffs

Powerful Sources, Prime Engrams and the World

Damage numbers, damage stacking rules

And more

I know this is a lot to read (because it was a lot to write). I appreciate you taking the time to make it this far. Like all things with Destiny, it's a journey. The next two parts of this journey will look at the RPG and Combat game.

See you soon,

Luke Smith

*It's a set of aspirational goals that can help guide the team to create better experiences for players who love Destiny. And it's a simple way to describe how we're thinking about the game to all of you. And even when it's true, there will always be work left to do. And we're committed to it.

**Fun fact: Heigan the Unclean was often called the "dance" boss in the WoW Raid Naxxaramas and Hasapiko means "the butcher's dance" in Greek. It's a little nod back to Blizzard's Xûr reference.

#Destiny #Destiny 2 #Destiny 2: Forsaken #long post

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ingloriousbi · 5 years

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Long, drawn-out 80-hour experiences aren’t always a good thing. They can be incredibly frustrating.

Side quests become tedious, with no real rewards. They become fetch quests or grind quests or inconsequential rp quests. 100% requires all these little collectibles – like the ac feathers or solas’ orbs or what have you. Travel between locations can be difficult or stunted, and gameplay can become tedious – the fighting takes too long, or the cutscenes take too long, or the dialogue is unending. I usually find myself skipping through long dialogue when I can read the text, I don’t usually read everything on terminals, and I usually only ever 100% things out of compulsion.

For reference: my first dark souls 3 playthrough was 50 hours, but my second was less than 20. Even going by just the second play through I would consider dark souls 3 worth 60 bucks.

Because it isn’t *just* about hours. An 80 hour, long-ass drawn out low quality shit show isn’t better than a high-quality, well polished 20 hour game. But those 20 hours need to be *polished* and they need to serve the game. In a game like dark souls 3, that meant the atmosphere, combat, boss fights and environment needed to be polished and interesting. And they were! The atmosphere was amazing, there was good enemy variety, the boss fights were awesome, the lore was interesting enough to keep me on my toes, and the combat system had good depth to it.

But RPGs need roleplaying elements. Shooters need engaging gameplay. For 60 bucks, the outer worlds should have offered more time with its existing system or greatly enhance it.

The armor and weapons easily capped their max armor/damage, and with the tinkering ability and unending trash a-la fallout, I had a better weapon than any drop or quest item ever gave me. Instead, the constant armor and weapon drops exclusively became a means to money, and this translates into insane inventory management, because of course it does. I can’t speak too much to weapon/attack variety, because once I’ve got a gun I like I usually do a full playthrough with it (although the distinct lack of snipers annoyed me, especially for places like roseway and tartarus), but armor variety was shit. Armor offered little balance, bad mods, shitty stats, and all looked ugly as hell. I never used any medical items except for the standard heal, and never felt the need to (I was playing on regular difficulty). The difficulty curve was really weird; I struggled the first hour or so and soon after I was completely overpowered; but manti-queens were still always a tedious, semi-difficult bore, even when I one-shotted everything else.

The roleplaying elements started off really strong. Back in Edgewater, way at the start, someone even commented on my wearing marauder armor – which just happened to be the first thing I looted from some enemy. There was a lot of humor to balance how genuinely overwhelmed I felt with this new world (in a good way) that slowly gave way to more serious narrative, while never taking away your options for fun. As I found my bearings in the world, the narrative offered good themes and such (obviously; fuck capitalism!) but also had a good balance of “large save the colony!” vs “Im just a dude in space” and you can roleplay for either or in the middle of those two. There was never really a moment I felt it was weird that I was putting the main quest on “hold” to do side quests (with the exception of the fucking tailoring quest line which was really jarring lmao).

Questlines typically offered a healthy balance of options; it really allowed for different outcomes, different character motivations, etc. I didn’t feel shoe-horned into certain dialogue options in order to complete quests the way I wanted to complete them. There was nuance to your choices/dialogue options with characters and in questlines. Persuade, lie, or intimidate weren’t always a different button to the same outcome; oftentimes they actually led to different things happening in the quest. There were also different ways to complete your goals in-game, with different kinds of stealth, to murder or not to murder, talk your way through, guns-blazing, etc. Usually quests gave options I wasn’t really expecting and had a pretty good amount of interactivity between them (think the strike quest on Monarch, or the Sublight quests on Monarch). The only time I felt really shoe-horned was at the end of Lily Hagen’s questline and during the ending quest. Lily Hagen’s last quest is also the only time I felt like I got a significant choice where the consequences didn’t actually matter, which was really frustrating considering the ending of the fucking game.

The way skill points allowed for both in and out of dialogue improvements was really cool (e.g. persuasion isn’t just new dialogue options but affects enemy’s statuses, etc) and the combination of skills required during roleplay elements (i.e. you need persuasion AND science points to convince a scientist of X) felt really strong and did really well for my immersion. In the last mission this all went to shit though.

I liked a lot of the individual characters (I fucking love Phineas and ADA, Zora and Sanjar and even the Van Noys were really fun, a lot of characters were really sympathetic like Reed and Graham) and most of the companions have interesting enough personalities, but there’s a definite problem with the crew members and their implementation.

There was a huge difference in character quality between them; Felix has significantly less character depth to him than any of the other companions, even though his questline felt like it should have had a significantly larger impact on a person. Ellie and Nyoka are super interesting characters, but neither really allow for significant character growth after their respective missions or during companion dialogue.

Parvati and Max have significantly more depth than anyone else on the ship, and these are characters with the most growth and arguably most impactful side quests (measured by impact on the characters). They also have way more, and more in depth, companion dialogue. And still I’d argue the growth is too little. You run out of dialogue with your companions super quickly and they rarely have anything to say about your choices or whatever. Only Ellie really spoke up about some stuff I did/had questions for me about Phineas and even then it didn’t actually matter. Ellie’s lack of character growth was probably the most jarring, because she actively starts conversations that would/should lead to it but she remains unchanged until the epilogue informs you You Did Change Her Mind After All. Felix’s lack of anything was really disappointing especially since I didn’t really care for him, but he was really sympathetic to the captain and to the unification of the crew, especially near the end (his joining the crew was also the most random). I loved Nyoka but her alcoholism is a little much and casually overplayed for no reason, and it actively inhibits what could/should have been character development after her mission. I actually kind of feel like non-companion NPCS like Catherine Malin or Zora had more character development and relationship development with the captain than some of my companions. Parvati got the most personal and had the most growth, but it was *all* in relation to her dating life lmao.

This lack of depth or use for the companions is really bad when you think about the way they are positioned in relation to the factions and again, this is made worse during the last mission. I was kind of happy there were no romances when that was announced, because I thought it would allow for more independent character growth instead of development based on whether or not you’re fucking the player character, but what it really lead to was static characters and static interaction with them. The interactions between them are fun at the start but there aren’t many of them and they quickly end up repeating themselves. I wasn’t expecting fucking Mass effect or Dragon age companions, but I was expecting better than the fallout 4 fare.

The gameplay, skill division and choices/quest options really allow for interesting replayability for both different options/character motivations within an ending but even more so when you consider the fully pro-board playthrough (idk if I could stomach it though). But even with another playthrough I’d be looking at just 40 hours of gameplay (if I 100% it again, and I could probably do it in less than 20 now that I know where/what/how and how useless most loot is) and the companions would remain disappointing.

And the ending just throws it all in my face, especially the skill/stat division is just… terrible. I was level 30 and all side quests were done; I couldn’t milk more levels/exp if I WANTED to, and it was still bad. But I did get to walk back to my ship, re-spec my stats, and then walk all the way back to the end of the mission I’d already played which was super fucking funny.

It was a good game, and most of the game was genuinely good, but the things that let me down were the things that I really wanted, or are really impactful (IT’S A SHOOTER RPG, WHY DOES YOUR COMBAT SUCK). And it was so short. It was a eally well polished, quality experience, and I wouldn’t have liked to see it stretched out to 50 hours because it would have ultimately done it a disservice (and the story WAS genuinely really good and well-done, the world was well-crafted, and I would have hated to see it drone on and one when it’s better than that) , but I WOULD have liked to see an hour or two extra per companion and a price reduction to 40 bucks at launch.

Theme: 10/10 Narrative: 10/10 Atmosphere: 10/10 Environments: 9/10 Shooter-gameplay: 5/10 Character creation: 7/10 (shitty physical creator 3/10, very good stat creator 8/10) RPG Dialogue/Quest Gameplay: 8/10 Companions: 4/10 Inventory management: 1/10

#personal #look im not a reviewer #this isnt meant to be a review for other people abt outer worlds #but i was frustrated with the ending #but also frustrated with myself because i did LOVE this game for the first 19 hours #so i wanted to write it all down for myself #to make sense of my thoughts #and get on paper my frustrations #but also remind myself about all the good shit i enjoyed for the 19 out of the 20 hours I played this game #no overt spoilers

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baidar-oroq · 5 years

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I said it in discord and I'll say it here: ALL OF THEM. Unless someone else asks any, then ALL NOBODY ELSE ASKED.

Since you asked nicely…:D

HERO: Does your character consider themselves a Warrior of Light? How do they feel if/when other people address them as such?

Baidar accepts that he is a Warrior of Light by virtue of the Echo and the good that it allows him to do, but he rarely refers to himself as one. He likes to think that he would be doing as much as he could to help others without the Echo, minus the primal slaying part, but calling himself a Warrior of Light isn’t who he is.

Several of the Scions-mainly Y’shtola and Alisaie-believe that his modesty and unwillingness to accept that he is a Warrior of Light merely proves it, but Baidar remains uncertain.

ORIGIN: If your character is formally a Scion of the Seventh Dawn, how did they join the organization? If they aren’t a Scion, do they know of the Scions?

Baidar is formally a member of the Scions. The details aren’t nailed down yet for me, but I do know Baidar came to Eorzea with some Clan Centurio hunters who had come to the Azim Steppe to hunt, and my sense is that one of them realized he had the Echo and got word to the Scions, who asked him to come to Mor Dhona.

QUEST: Does your character’s story diverge from the plot of the MSQ at any point? Does their story change just slightly, or is it considerably different?

The obvious answer, of couse, is as a Xaela Baidar did not experience any part of the ARR MSQ, arriving in the story at some point in time during Heavensward. There are some minor differences in Stormblood-he missed the 4.1 MSQ because he was living in Kugane, for example, and he spent more time in Othard than Eorzea during all of “A Legend Returns” quests, formally returning to Eorzea for the Battle of Ghimlyt Dark after Y’shtola’s collapse.

ALLIANCE: Does your character have any important relationships with major NPCs? Friendships, romances, rivalries?

Well, the obvious one is he’s in love with Y’shtola, and pretty much was at first sight, but as for other NPCs…he considers both Alisaie and Lyse to be sisters, would fight through hell itself if Raubhan was at his side, would fight through hell TWICE if Hien was there (those two really got along well during the liberation of Doma) and if you mess with either Tataru or Namano you get the lance.

Because of his helping with the primal Alexander and in the artificial realities of Omega, Baidar considers Cid and his crew to be friends.

Baidar has sworn to kill Zenos for his part in nearly killing Y’shtola, and isn’t particularly bothered by the fact that the man calling himself that at the moment is really an Ascian, because he’s wearing the same body, and that’s all that matters.

TRIAL: Are there any duty instances that had a particular impact on your character (primal fights, dungeons, raids, etc.)?

Alexander, of course. Not only did it establish his odd working partnership with Cid and the Ironworks lot, one that continued into the Omega affair, but it was there that he came to know Y’shtola and she came to know both him and his future boyfriend Kage. Plus, of course, there were connections to the Au Ra there, so, over all, a big deal.

Ala Mhigo was important because it was the first time he was able to fight on something approaching Zenos’ level, and, at the time, the Royal Menagerie was a big deal given the aftermath, where Zenos was thought to be dead. More recently, the Omega raids were where Baidar’s friendship with the Ironworks crew became solid.

From an out of character standpoint: given my love of Monster Hunter World, I loved the Rathalos quests and trial. Amusingly, I said at the time of their announcement that FFXIV was trying really hard to get me back, but I’d stick to the MHW side, but I never found a group that could do Behemoth, and wound up finishing the FFXIV side first!

TRAVEL: Does your character have a favorite city-state? A favorite overworld zone? What about least favorite zones?

Ul’dah is his favorite for a lot of reasons, but primarily because that’s where his relationships with both Y’shtola and Kage began. He’s a simple man, really. Kugane is a close second because it was a city he heard of as a child and always wanted to visit, and eventually he lives there. He’s naturally fond of the Azim Steppe, but beyond that, he tends to largely view most places in terms of “what can I climb there?” As a child of the Steppe, Baidar grew up always in motion, and he always wants to see the horizon from where he is, to know where he’s going next. That he’s fond of ANY place speaks a lot about it.

BASE: Does your character live at the Waking Sands, the Rising Stones, and/or Fortemps Manor at any point?

No. He lived first at a succession of inn rooms, depending on where his adventures or duties with the Scions had taken him, before getting an apartment in Ul’dah near Kage’s, and then later the two of them got a place in Kugane. The Rising Stones in particular is somewhere he only goes when summoned, and he leaves for his next mission ASAP.

LOYALTY: Is your character notably committed to any of the major organizations in the story other than the Scions? The Grand Companies, Garlond Ironworks, the many guilds of Eorzea, etc.?

As stated above, Baidar is rather fond of the Ironworks, and tends to come whenever Cid’s gotten into some mess that needs adventurers to get him out of. His main loyalty remains, of course, to the Scions, but the Ironworks are a close second. Mind, Baidar rarely understands a lot of what goes on around him when he’s helping the Ironworks-he’s still puzzled by the Omega affair-but he’ll help them when he can.

CLASS: Is your character canonically any specific class(es) or job(s) from the game (e.g. white mage or dark knight)? If so, do you count that job’s questline as canon for your character?

Baidar is indeed a dragoon, if only because there isn’t a class in the game more suited for someone who likes to move fast and jump all over the place, but for OOC reasons (called JACK BOOSTED BAIDAR TO SIXTY) the DRG questline is not canon, since I only did the 60-70 part.

ECHO: If your character has the Echo, does it grant them any particular strengths beyond the usual benefits (e.g., Minfilia’s strong connection to Hydaelyn, Krile’s ability to follow a soul’s trail)? What about particular drawbacks or weaknesses?

Thus far, I’ve not come up with any notions about Baidar having additional benefits from the Echo. I toyed briefly with telling Baidar’s life out of order because he could view his entire life through Echoes, but Kurt Vonnegut came back from the grave and told me not to steal from Slaughterhouse Five.

SHIFT: Have the events of the MSQ changed your character in any major ways? What about more subtle changes?

The Stormblood MSQ and what’s happened to Y’shtola-her near death in the Stormblood MSQ, then her succumbing to the voice in the patch MSQ-has effected Baidar, more than anything. He’s lost a lot of his happy go lucky side, while his more reckless side has taken over, and he’s far more melancholy and sad. In a story I intend to write set during and after Ghimlyt Dark, when the voice comes to him (and claims Alisaie), he comes out of it in a total rage, screaming madly at the voice to give him Y’shtola back as he lays waste to retreating Garlean troops. Thankfully Kage is there to pull him back.

The hope that Y’shtola and the other Scions can be found on the First has given him a little of his hope back, but he was teetering dangerously on the edge of the Dark there for a bit.

#ffxiv spoilers #voidcarcharocles

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naernon · 6 years

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i’m making some changes to what i’ve previously said of various OCs. you can’t count the amount of plot holes, contrivances, and weak points in my OC verse and while i’m not in an OC mood lately anyways aside from maybe ryvrinei... oh well. i figured to fix it. i wrote all of this late last night and im really not willing to proofread it right now so i hope it’s coherent enough. if it sits too long in my drafts i’m going to forget it exists and never post it.

i previously had that ohtehil, after deserting from the thalmor, disguised herself when residing in whiterun (which, IIRC, was implied in-game to apparently be a safe-place from the thalmor-- sort of. in which. they don’t seem to be allowed in? forget which quest and all) through various shit, which included dying her hair black. we only see a few black-haired altmer in ESO, which leads me to headcanon that while it is possible, it’s not common. which is... fine. but does not make sense if you’re trying to blend in as an average, totally-not-wanted by the thalmor altmer in skyrim, which has a small altmer population to begin with. i’ll try different colors out on her disguised, post-desertion version tomorrow, but either way, her hair color will be changing. im thinking an auburn or something? just a shade of ginger. her hair prior was platinum blonde. anything that is different enough from that yet doesn’t draw attention would suffice.

this is not really a change but just a clarification. i’ve stated ryvrinei is a dog person and has a immortal dog herself based on a particular husky mod (garm. but i need to do changes to fit it more into the lore)-- and then also said she liked cats. she likes both. she did have a moonlight senche tiger during the time of ESO but it... did die. eventually. or maybe not, if i decide to somehow make it so it’s immortal because i’m a pussy and the idea of pets dying makes me sad. but. yes. ryvrinei. dog person, but also very much likes cats. both. both are good

estryon, after a certain array of events combined with his mental state in skyrim for a while, would make the decision to adopt two kids. human kids. not one immediately after another, but yes, he does it. he is my character and i say he would so he would. great. fine. but, with the personality i’ve mentally built up for ondolemar, ondolemar would not stand that. i don’t think ondolemar is a frothing bigot who’d hate the idea of adopting human children but even that aside, obviously getting a kid, nevermind TWO, is a lot.. i just have a hard time believing he’d be the type to agree to adopting two whole ass kids even if estryon wished. and estryon wouldn’t wish, at least in so little time. estryon still adopts lucia and sofie respectively. but-- i’m changing when he does in my “timelien”. this all will also change when i settle on a time that ondolemar and estryon do actually get together in an actual damn relationship, but estryon does have sofie by that time and before that. he adopts her well into the skyrim main questline, assuming that that questline would realistically last months. the chain of events and thought processes that lead estryon to full-on taking a nord orphan in windhelm under his wing is the embodiment of “it’s a long story”. my first thought as to where estryon kept sofie when he was away was in dragonsreach-- a demand met with SOME protesting from those already residing but estryon has his ways of convincing, which includes both glared AND literal daggers. ha, ha. anyways, ondolemar eventually gets with estryon. he does not find out about sofie until a startling amount of time into the relationship which causes a reasonable amount of early difficulty. a few years past. they have a nice manor. dragonborn happens, a couple years after dawnguard. estryon is so fucking done with skyrim and being the stupid thane of stupid fucking whiterun but it eventually hits him that lucia is still an orphan in whiterun and had been the entire time, by then around 13 or so, and he feels bad-- but doesn’t wish to adopt her at that point. he did adopt sofie, but that was rather impulsive and at a weak mental point for him, plus he’s not the biggest fan of children. considering he is thane of whiterun however, he tries to remotely do something involving his city for once in his damn life and takes it upon himself to try and find someone in the stupid fucking dusty city that would take the kid in. no one. long story short, he then adopts her. great. sorry for the long tirade but i just wanted to put that all down for the first time. but yes. that’s... hopefully a bit more elaborated on now. because it too confused me how two ex-thalmor would end up goddamn adopting TWO human children in the span of a few years.

that’s it

#oc talk #ramblings #i remember from last night that the estryon (ugh) portion of this was a bit incoherent #and i wanted to fix it in the morning #i did not

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bloodborne-guide · 6 years

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Novice’s Walkthrough of Bloodborne: Cainhurst Castle

Forsaken Castle Cainhurst is an icy place, once brimming with life, now filled with ghosts and servants

While Castle Cainhurst is a later game area it is still possible to access it right after you get the Cainhurst Summons in Iosefka’s clinic to gain access to a stronger Blood Gem and some Bloodstone Chunks to boost your character further ahead in terms of progression.

To first get to Cainhurst Castle you need to go to Hemwick Charnel Lane via the lamp to Witch's Abode, from the Hemwick Charnel Lane lantern, or to walk there from the Grand Cathedral. There is a large black obelisk right before the hill where the Witch's Abode is located. A cutscene will play in which a stagecoach being drawn by two horses will appear and its door will open. Entering the stagecoach will play another cutscene where you will find yourself at the gates of Cainhurst Castle.

In Cainhurst Castle you will face.

Cain’s Servant: Found within the Castle. They have 3 variants. They can all be knocked down by blood damage(i.e. bullets)

Cleaner: Will only attack if provoked. Wields a cane

Blow-dart: There are two types of blow-darts. One is damaging while the other marks you and makes the Widows more aggressive. Found in the library

Knight: Wields a rapier. Attacks swiftly, are aggressive, and are evasive.

Gargoyle: Found on the balconies and rooftops of Cainhurst Castle. They attack with their wings and with a grab attack. If you interrupt these gargoyles while they’re standing for an attack, it will knock them down and they will take more damage. They have a small chance to drop Bloodstone Chunks.

Bloodlicker: A dangerous enemy. Can’t be visceral attacked. Their stomach size indicates their physical resistance. Have attacks that can hit you from any direction except from their sides. 3 variants in the main game and 1 extra in the DLC

Bloated: literally unable to fight back due to its belly.

Hungry: most common one in Cainhurst Castle.

Starved: Similar to Hungry Bloodlickers but a bit more aggressive from what I’ve seen.

Bound Widow: Found throughout the inside of the Castle. They have 2 variants. Most of their danger comes from their numbers. They are all invisible until they’re approached

Knife: Most common variant. Will become more aggressive if you’re marked

Screamer: These only appear in one room. They cannot directly damage you but their screams are able to immobilize you for a few seconds.

Hateful Maggots: These enemies are found in a lower area of Cainhurst Castle. They are vulnerable to blunt damage but are very low to the ground.

From where you start off when first arriving in Cainhurst Castle you will need to first walk up the stairs leading to the gate of Castle. You will only need to wait for the gate to open as it will open on its own.

When the gate finally opens you will see a courtyard full of Bloodlickers roaming around and the Castle Cainhurst Lantern.

From the Lamp, you can see to the left the entry to the inside of Cainhurst Castle and to the right, a lower area filled with maggots. Next to the fountain, there are a few numbing mists on a corpse. When you’re just about to reach the stairs to the door, look back and see the bloated Bloodlicker and two starved Bloodlickers. They are feeding on 3 corpses: 2 of which have Frenzied Coldblood on them and one of which has 4 numbing mists on it. There are 4 more numbing mists to the right of the door off to the corner.

Down in the area with the many Hateful Maggots in it is a Radial Tempering Blood Gemstone. This particular Blood Gemstone adds a 9.5% physical attack boost and a +3.6% physical attack boost when near death. I advise running in to pick up the Gem then running out as the Maggots are too much trouble than they’re worth.

Walking up to the door will open it automatically. When you walk into the first area you can hear the cries of weeping women and the cleaners working their hardest to make sure the castle is clean. The crying is from the Bound Widows. The servants can drop blood vials so if you are running low on vials I recommend clearing out this lower area full of cleaners. There is one Madman’s Knowledge in the right side of this area and another one to the left. There is also a chest in the corner which has the Reiterpallasch, a Skill-scaling weapon that can fire bullets in its transformed mode.

Walk up the stairs and turn right. There are several Bound WIdows here and one Cleaning Servant. On a corpse near the Cleaning Servant is a single Bloodstone Chunk, the third tier or fortifying material.

Turning left, however, will lead you to where you’re supposed to go in order to advance. There are more Widows and another singular Cleaning Servant. You will also find a room which appears to be a dining room. A respectable amount of Widows are here, waiting to ambush you. There is a corpse in the center of this room which has 4 QS bullets and a chest on the right side of the room which has a Noble Dress.

Walk outside to the balcony and make a left. You’ll find yourself on the wall of Castle Cainhurst. If you’re particularly observant you can notice a Gargoyle perched on top of some ledges. You can find another Bloodstone Chunk here by walking straight ahead then making a left up some spiral stairs. There is a Gargoyle perched like a statue here so be careful. After killing off both Gargoyles head toward the doorway which has two torches lit by it. Be wary of an ambush by a Gargoyle, however. Inside is a corridor with a single Knight Servant in here. After you deal with him you have to go outside and either go back inside through another door or turn right to get 3/4s of an attire. The attire in question is the Executioner’s set but it doesn’t have the headpiece. You can get the headpiece by completing Alfred’s questline. It is guarded by two Gargoyles so either run back inside or face them head-on.

Inside there you’ll find yourself in a Library. Immediately to the left, there is a chest and an elevator shortcut back to the courtyard of Cainhurst Castle. Inside the chest is the Vileblood register. It is only useful in online mode as it is just a leaderboard of who PVPs successfully the most.

Back in the Library, there is a Blowdart Servant in here which marks you for the Widows to attack. When you’re marked the Widows will scream and start moving towards you much more aggressively.

There is also a chest at the right side of the library that has a gun in it called the Evelyn. It has higher bloodtinge scaling than the standard Hunter’s Pistol but it has less base damage than it. The chest is sealed off by tables but you can get to the chest by jumping over with the library stairs. You’ll have to run up the stairs that are close to the left of the Servant.

On the second floor, there are mainly Knight Servants and Blow-dart Servants. The Blow-dart Servants here only deal damage to you.

In the far left corner of this floor, there is another Bloodstone Chunk.

To advance you have to find the empty window pane that leads to the outside. You’ll have to drop down onto the balcony below. There is also a ledge that has 10 QS bullets that you can easily miss.

Going inside will lead you to another room filled with Bound Widows. There are also screamer variants of the Widows in here which paralyze you but deal no direct damage. There are two chests in this room. One of which has 3/4s of the Knight Set and the other chest has a Hunter Tool Called the Executioner’s Gloves. The Executioner’s Gloves cost 3 QS bullets and 20 arcane to use. They fire off 3 skulls which all deal arcane damage and are pretty good at staggering opponents. Go back outside and drop onto the ledge where you can spot the Gargoyle perched on top of a gargoyle statue. On your way to that Gargoyle, you’ll notice a spot in the wall where you can go back inside. The item that the Gargoyle is perched over is a Kin Coldblood which grants a ludicrous amount of blood echoes.

Back inside you’ll see a lever which you’ll have to pull to pull back a ladder which was disguised as a wall. You’ll have to climb up this ladder to advance. At the top of the ladder go up the small set of stairs and make a left. After a long bit of walking you’ll reach the corner of the room and if you look to the left you’ll see a Scurrying Beast. This particular one drops 2 Bloodstone Chunks when it is killed. Run back and open the chest you may have spotted while going around. It has a Droplet Warm Blood Gemstone. This droplet Gemstone increases bloodtinge scaling by a flat amount of 13.5.

Turn around and find the stairs that lead to the roof of the Castle. At the top, there is a Red-eyed Gargoyle here. It is essentially a stronger version of a Gargoyle. There are also 2 normal Gargoyles which will flap their way towards the roof so you’ll have to deal with the single one as soon as possible. There is also a corpse here which has the last piece of the Knight Set, the Knight’s Wig.

Now you’ll have to drop off to another piece of roof with fencing on it. Then you’ll have to drop to another rooftop. Then you’ll have to drop down again to a bridge like area. Do take care as it is possible to fall off the roof and die. You’ll also find a Kin Coldblood here as well. Climb up the ladder and move forward a bit until you find the corpse that has some Bold Hunter’s Marks on it. Then you’ll have to walk back up to where the arch with the two torches is. After some more walking, a cutscene will play and you’ll have to face the boss fight of Cainhurst Castle, Martyr Logarius

Martyr Logarius is a master spellcaster and an incredibly skilled fighter. He makes great use of both disciplines during his boss fight.

He has 2 phases

In phase 1 He will mainly attack with arcane spells, rarely throws out a melee attack, and will do his best to back away from you.

He has 4 types of spells in this phase.

A row of small skulls that have homing properties and hurt quite a bit

A larger skull which he will cast when you’re right in front of him

A larger skull which starts off as a small skull and explodes into a larger skull after he backs off

It will explode into a larger skull regardless of whether it looks like Logarius is making it explode

A large swirling mass of skulls which has a small homing property.

Phase 2 begins when he hits about 70% health.

At the start of phase 2, he will buff himself granting himself hyper-armor and will deflect any bullets you try to shoot at him

You can interrupt this buff by delivering a charged R2 to his back.

He won’t cast this buff again

As such you will need to do your best to keep his back away from a wall when he is almost at 70% health

During phase 2 Martyr Logarius will attack with mainly his scythe and his sword.

His sword is fast and quick but it doesn’t hit as hard as his scythe

His scythe is hard-hitting and slow but it isn’t as fast as the sword.

The scythe has more reach and is likely to hit you if you dodge too early

Martyr Logarius has two different plunging attacks. One which he goes straight up and hovers for a bit and plunges straight down on you with his scythe and another which he hovers for a bit and attacks with his scythe in a spin attack.

The one which he jumps straight up is the harder to dodge of the two as it is highly likely he won’t be on your camera while he’s performing this attack and the other one only requires you to dodge toward him

He also has an attack where he plunges a spectral version of his sword into the ground which will cause a rain of swords to fly towards you.

You can lock onto the sword to shoot it with your firearm

It causes an explosion when it is cast.

You can destroy this sword to end the sword rain.

When he is defeated he drops the Crown of Illusions near the Lamp.

Equipping the Crown of Illusions and heading to where Logarius’ seat was will reveal that there was a hidden throne room there all along. Going inside will greet you with an NPC. Her name is Annalise, and she is the Queen of Vilebloods. She tells you to kneel in front of her throne and she will rebuke you if you do otherwise. Talking to her and swearing oath to the Vilebloods will unlock you a new covenant and will grant you the Cainhurst Badge, unlocking for purchase in the Shop.

Cainhurst armor Set

Chikage

The Chikage is the only weapon in the main game that scales with Bloodtinge in one of its forms

In transformed form its blade is coated in blood

It causes Rapid Poison to build up in its transformed form

It depletes your health slowly while it is transformed

Its R2 increases the health drain while charging.

Evelyn

Numbing Mist

Reiterpallasch

The Vileblood covenant rune, Corruption, grants +1 health regeneration when you are low on health. It also causes Blood Dregs to be dropped from non-respawning hunter enemies and from PVP.

In Annalise’s chamber, there is an item for you to pick up. It is the Unopened Summons. You can give this to Alfred to get the Wheel Hunter Badge. It unlocks

Gold Ardeo: headpiece of the Executioner set

Logarius Wheel

The only weapon in the main game which has an S scaling in strength when fully upgraded.

Its transformed form deals a large amount of arcane damage

Its transformed L2 buffs the arcane damage at the cost of health drain.

You can press L2 up to 4 times with each press buffing the damage and the health drain.

If you decide to travel back to the Vileblood Queen’s Chamber you can find that Alfred has reduced Annalise to a pulp. Talking to him will grant you the roar gesture. You can also interact with Annalise’s flesh to get an item that you can use to resurrect Annalise.

If you return to Alfred’s original spot you will find that he has committed suicide and you can pick up the Radiance Rune-the Covenant Rune for Executioners-from his body. The Radiance Rune increases the effectiveness of blood vials by 2%.

One thing to note about the Corruption and Radiance runes is that players who have the Corruption Rune equipped cannot cooperate with those who have the Radiance Rune equipped and must do combat with them and vice versa.

This has been Castle Cainhurst and Alfred’s questline.

#Bloodborne #bloodborne guide #Castle Cainhurst #martyr logarius

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aethernoise · 7 years

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“where the gods may bear witness to our dance"

Final boss spoiler-heavy musical discussion below the cut.

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I was thinking about how the first phase of the final boss theme has the melody from Order Yet Undeciphered. I wasn’t sure I understood it initially (I was puzzled during the fight when I first noticed it), as Shinryu it/himself is not really related to the Allagans or Azys Lla at all. However, the second iteration of this same song in the game is Regula van Hydrus’ theme, which played several times during the Warring Triad questline (which….of course took place in Azys Lla).

I think that’s the connection: to Regula van Hydrus who, like the WoL, wanted to destroy the eikons at all costs, who actually sought common ground with you based on this goal despite being your enemy. This brings me back to what Zenos says about you being alike, about you being kindred spirits (whether or not you or your WoL buys it is another matter). It’s another example of a Bad Guy Garlean who makes you take a hard long look at yourself, and musically, given the conversation you have with Zenos before the battle, this clicks. (Needless to say, if you haven’t done Warring Triad, go do it, it’s really interesting. I’ll help you with all the fights lol)

The second phase is obviously a revisited version of the main SB theme, but with an exciting, hard-hitting and up-tempo choral verse and then a sort of ominous slower bridge before going into the main “storm of blood, born from blood” chorus. It gives me a similar feeling that Ultima does, while sounding…. hopeful? Triumphant? It’s encouraging, somehow moreso than the regular boss theme. I think it’s in a different key, but don’t quote me on that. In the midst of the colorful, flashy, utter fuckin chaos of the battle, the music does its job perfectly. This is top-tier epic boss music.

One final thought…the arrangement of this piece has a very Uematsu feel, especially the string and woodwind parts in the beginning, but the choral parts as well. I know the melodies are Soken’s, but this sounds like a Uematsu battle theme…almost enough that it makes me wonder if they collaborated on it.*

*I know Uematsu composed Revolutions. Did he compose anything else for Stormblood? I tried to Google this today and came up empty.

#ffxiv 4.0 spoilers #stormblood spoilers #ffxiv ost #game soundtracks #masayoshi soken #nobuo uematsu #ffxiv 4.0

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dumdumdrawstumtums · 7 years

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I just remembered that the single-greatest idea I've ever had ever actually came to me in a dream, just like in the movies! It was essentially Skyrim..... but in SPIRA~~ Takes place as sort of an AU to FFX, still during the cycle of Sin and Yevon going strong. I think it was like.. you wake up imprisoned in one of the villages/cities (a la every Elder Scrolls game). Then Sin attacks, devastating the place - including the jail holding you. Its toxins also give you amnesia for the obligatory story lecturing from NCPs through the game. You could've been knocked out in the attack and wake up somehow within the temple, and badabing badaboom you become a summoner through shenanigans. Then the rest is exploring Spira with the Skyrim mechanics, where your base ability is summoning but any other skills are open for character building. The main questline is of course the pilgrimage to defeat Sin, probably along with finding alternate solutions, uncovering the corruptions of Yevon, yadda yadda the whole FFX story. But y'know you'd also have all sorts of side quests and such to do, with thousand-year old ruins aplenty to explore. And choosing from available NCPs around the world who should be your guardians (probably with number limit where you can trade out and such). So.. yeah bottom line is I've played both games too many times and my dumb subconscious cried "pen-pineapple-apple-pen!"

#quiet dumdum #no but if this was a thing #i'd buy it in a heartbeat lmao #i'm tired & waitin for the starvs season finale #if i'm embarrassed by this later i'll blame it on that #I DUNNO I THINK THIS'D BE COOL THO???

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glopratchet · 4 years

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cldstrm000

You can't see anything on it, but you guess that it's probably a little more advanced than what your computer was capable of back in grade school What we have is a screen of buttons and a list of plot lines and a bunch or characters who are either important to the story or just there for you to kill You're not really sure how much you want to play with this thing though since all of these games seem pretty cut and dry, like they're going to be exactly the same no matter which one you choose Throw it up there let us see it Plot -Bunny's right, it's better if you choose since A: You're the mastermind behind all this and B: You'll enjoy it more that way Press the button with a flourish, we have work to do Plot-Bunny's right, Unseen story Try to incorpate in to mechanics but descriptions are nice too You can pay others to use their creations, or even make your own a separate items with a single coin ; (much smaller than the gold coins) A "Creations for Coin" topic will be started, but it is not necessary to use it First impression of character -creation What can you character do with what abilities they have? How does the begining of the story effect the outcome of it all? So many factors come into play, that this is going to be unbelievable hard Very few people can say they got an A in Writing Class ; (Or any other Subject), but you're going to TRY for one of those few Who are the characters you'll be controlling in this giant game of marbles? What kind of relationships will you make with them? That's all down to choice my friend, choice Your grade for This is going to be decided by a poll on "What was your favorite questline? " along with other things, ex: "What was your Favorite Line? or "Did the ending meet expectations? " so make it count! Delivering lore is about consistent details Collecting 5 of the same rune creates a stack of that rune that some may argue that you don't need in a game, but you'll need them to understand your bios - From backstory to in-game details Everyone starts with 3 Inventory Slots, each lasting 3 Posts ; (Coins are included in this), get more by investing in "Backpack Creation" Head cannon ideas can range from silly to creative Bad ones get deleted, good ones' get used (Starting Gold: Briar ; (Thyme? A dash of herbs and a sprig of flowers Power: Healing Touch ; (3 Use) - Sacrifice Thyme's herbs and flowers for Health Packs Ability1: Harmful Smell ; (1 Use) - Release a scentless gas that knock's enemies back and confuses them momentarily So do you control a character or do you watch a character Tell me about it: Why are you resigned to telling a story instead of playing one? Why would someone willingly do this to themselves? You could watch the character manage the story or manage it for them, makes no difference to me Rejoice! To become a Narration Pixie! For that is what you are now (Also who reads this stuff? ) Your Friends, your Classmates, your Family ; (Surly they're reading this) nobody will ever look at you the same way again ; (Except for Sophie who just asks "What now? Don't believe me? Move from hex to hex and let the story unfold from there, don't just watch some scrub do it for you Also there isn't just survival on the line ; (Although there is that), but your grade in my class, of course Then the ui is like dashboard for witnessing plots / ui plot select Select a plot to start the game To skip the prologue and go to credits, choose 1 To jump into the action, choose 2 For more info about each section and the credits, choose 3 There's not much but A, and C so that narrows it down at least How do you interact with the plot By lightly to heavily imagining what the plot is and actually feeling the emotions, this plays out like a choose your own adventure This gives you shares in game, but losses shares for your choosing Make all the choices and you have nothing to represent the fact that you ever existed The 1% of people who finish get 1% shared in being a winner Are you roman During the market stampede? By creating alligator snapping turltes and dropping them down into the world they slowly grow over time, eventually turning into a deadly underwaterbeast that can crush and burn anything your grade in my class, The events tab would write out stories In the past you thumbed through them like a college radio enthusiast, but with this set of incomprehensible inputs you decide that it might be better if you personally arranged them about the nonplayer characters and their life events--what they felt, saw, thought, and how they were died You didn't read too much into it then, but maybe somebody was trying to tell you something Rant: Ultimately written with NaNoRe write your user story So what you are creating is one giant story that quite frankly nobody will ever read mainly because they aren't instructed too Also many sections are so long that nobody, even you have the persistence to read it all through But that doesn't matter, in fact you probably don't even care if anybody reads it But how is interactive when you enter text it plays out in real time based on how you set up the characters and events Your main character is a veteran that served 20 years? Have him reminiscence about the past, but don't go overboard Got a bully? change what they say based on your input Have mother nature herself be a female Goddess of destruction? Have mechanics come up that support the theory after you get passed the religious fanaticism of it all I mean little bubbles could pop up that tell you that the plot as been advanced to a new page It needs tweaking so that's going to take time So what do you do until then? Bold: The unending sun accosts your skin with only the mercy of lukewarm breezes to cool you down "Not bad, not bad, A full head of gray hair onto your Violet scalp thanks to your orc heritage, dark circles surround your eyes and a white beard reflects how many worries have plagued you in the past few days Perhaps even re watch the drama unfold on the hex map You killed forty of the young men in the ensuing battle and now have them at your beck and call to take out to the battlegrounds as you decide on what to do with your Nation, So your resourceful half-dragon master makes first contact with a nearby orc village--it went better than anyone could have anticipated That would fade into video during certain segments that really need a high definiton render His elaborate map shows what could only be the western front of an on going war It's quite frankly more high tech than anything he's shown you before You peer closer at the twenty foot hexagonal tiled ground and watch as the war drones fly overhead and bombard a nearby rocky outcrop They cut through it like butter, then continue on The why from his perfect memory and ingenious implementation You fondle your many options You see a screen of all the characters names and on the row exists options that can be choosen for them to say or do when 'active Something about alligator snapping turtles dropping from the sky (he said dropping not falling Well that's interesting) Must be an event He had many connections to companies out side of the village so that might be lucrative Someone is spying on the village, via a drone maybe? You can try and track it down and disable it Or leave it alone thinking nobody noticed Nah He had only four re-inforcements waiting to aid him in his journey as commander of the war-band Or are you the turtle roaming about The screen pulls back and now you are shown to have your pointer finger on a yellow giant star at the center Also other planets exist out side of your vision Maybe the moon of this planet contains resources You can only control events that YOU personally have been a part of If someone else where to take command no doubt you would be demoted Where did he come from? Why is he here? Could he have destroyed the village in the first place? But if it lands in certain places it opens up new characters for you to play The universal storyteller could have ideas for you for a price presumably The thing is all of this story is really happening in the background or to make your own Hitting select pulls up a prompt to continue the story Turning the three terminal into one large hexagon would allow you to use it as a visual mapping tech for re-creations of battles or wildlife etc Combining functions eh? Removing enemies from the story could increase the rate of survival for people such as your character There is a fourth column that exists with the why, how and what columns In the simulation this displayed 'life' and was at 100% Pressing it changes the column heading to a screen ending of continue or create The hallway now exists with walls on each side displaying blue swirly patterns that seem to form words, sentences thoughts Everything feels very Matrix like right now Now you start to panic, wonder if you had something to drink before heading into the lab best get out of here quick And i need to program it out so others cant use this stupid machine! Now you try to exit, but the terminal wont let you Only one option remains no no that won't work! horrors This ending is nonsensical under most circumstances! The question is how do you program out the simulation It was designed to be a visual storyteller Your sacrifices or their sacrifices were used in the formulas to allow my abilities to program and design video games! Even a light switch is knowledge of electrons and protons in our Universe! o I hear opening music usually reserved for grand space battles the sensations of flying through space are filling your mind I wonder if something I ate disagreed with me You need to create the alligator turtle drop for others to use without them being participators in my whole scheme argh music is mathematical structure but what will I choose as the columns? To have your music relived via hologram at your funeral or not This seems almost backwards i was about to try something out and now I am on a decision screen! The story was about someone dying from snakebite now music? This doesn't seem right The idea of a single page decision does not sound like a good one I have been having trouble of late and cant be sure that there are not things broken in the narrative The world is a loop that resets itself over and over We can only hope to change the tiniest portion of it But what choice do we have but to try? NOTE: This story was previously titled "The Storyteller: A Music Tale" Think more about the company that creates this experience in movies and games Wish I could list all my sources and influences or this note would be far too long Thank you for your time, patience and support How does the alligator turtle drop game work It is the closing drop of a magic act A bowl is place on a table and a ball is placed on the floor beneath it The magician slowly puts each finger into the bowl one at a time and then makes a horrifying discovery a small alligator turtle has been secretly placed underneath the bowl! You must play through the choices in chronological order Each choice represents one of the fingers But yes dropping more and more turtle reviels more and more of the game If you get desperate one can use the other website link ; (or copy and paste) to try and figure out the elaborate set of circumstances needed to create this tale Please do not post these answers online anywhere as it is likely to ruin the fun for others in the future Let the adventure and discovery begin! The protector robot has safeguards to prevent itself from being hacked and summarily destroyed by evil types It can tell when these types are trying to gain access to the place It would be very rare for someone to be of this unusually interested in this tale It is easy enough to get a hold of me through the contact information at the front of this website The idea to creat a simlation was developed through talking to a number of high school and college students who were heading into these fields It really stemmed from my desire ot get the programming language Python ; (used in the creation of this tale) into classroom CS101 curriculum's After I retired it seamed natural to revisit the idea of switching my focus to online teaching This venture was much longer and more successful than my 74seconds org venture because it seemed to tap into an underserved market! Remember the idea is to create a simulation of a physical space so that you the reader can learn logic gates So keep interaction in mind when you are moving through each page! Maybe the reader does not focus on the details difference with each new reading but the programmer watching you will see if there is any pattern or repeatable strategy There needs to be a bit of adventure for flavor but mechanically the entire story is built with interaction in mind Finally the idea is to create a computer simulation of a physical space so that you the reader can learn logic gates without all the tedious work I believe this idea could be applied to other in-demand career fields as well; from medical technicians to kindergarten teaching Where a robot design to protect a snapping turtle baby malfunctions and does not disappear when dead and effects the swamp opera around them The snapping turtle baby also metamorphisizes as it grows up The interaction between the swamp creatures and the robot as well as their mannerisms are used to represent bits and bytes of information That second paragraph was for you programmers trying to solve out the sim Just think binary if it helps! One day I would love to try this as an app or some other kind of video game form but sadly I do not have the knowledge to accomplish this But you still have not figured out how the players of the game can add something unpredictable to the mix so that each play through is different Feel free to email me your ; (sensible) solution! I would also like comment on the image of R2-D2 above the robot design I am a big time star wars nerd and carrying that over into the design was a no-brainer for me But what you may not know is that this robot design was made by one C-3PO! The players make the game unpredictable by selecting which wires to cut If the wrong wire is cut then the robot may misread a command and turn hostile! Thanks again for visiting my site and good luck with the puzzles! - modified on Tuesday, October 3, 2013 9: 26: 04 PM Labels: All , Software Break those chains - for freedom! I think that this is brilliant because it really ties into my theory of only education certain types of schooling can really prepare you The most unpredictable method of changing the game by the players is Something even more unpredictable than the roll of a dice and that's the chaos in human behavior which these gladiators will find out today Some lessons in life can only be taught through pain and loss and maybe even death Something even more unpredictable than the roll of a dice and that's the chaos in human behavior The most unpredictable method of changing the game by the players is actually very simple It is the one thing every 'person' has that separates us from other creatures: Choice My challenge to you, readers, is to find a way to introduce choice-based actions for the gladiators to do within the narratives I lay out Specifics on how this will happen will be in each post Doesn't have to be complex and it doesn't have rewrite the entire post

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jamesbyerj · 4 years

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Monster Hunter: World - Major Update and Interview with Stracker

Ever since the PC release of Monster Hunter: World in August of 2018, we have been amazed to see all the mods and utilities that have been created and released by the Monster Hunter community. This is especially true since the release of the [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1118010/Monster_Hunter_World_Iceborne/]Iceborne DLC[/url] in January of this year, when the number for [url=https://steamcharts.com/app/582010]peak current players on Steam surpassed 280,000[/url] - and that spike in interest was of course also reflected in the amount of new mods being released! [center][youtube]jPsjaVWMYfI[/youtube][/center] Today, [b]12th March[/b], Monster Hunter: World is receiving another [url=https://steamcommunity.com/games/582010/announcements/detail/1692724456739431460]major title update[/url] adding new, free content and bringing the PC version further up to date with the consoles. To celebrate this and to shine the spotlight on one of the most vibrant modding communities on our site, we are talking to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/users/3313485?tab=user+files&BH=0]Stracker[/url], the author of [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/1982]Stracker's Loader[/url] - an essential tool for Monster Hunter: World modding. [b]BigBizkit: Thanks for joining us today, Stracker![/b] Stracker: No worries! Thanks for having me. [b]Monster Hunter: World came out on PC in August 2018 and not only has it become Capcom’s best selling game of all time, it is now one of the biggest games on our site in terms of mods and downloads. In your opinion, what is it about Monster Hunter: World that draws in players and modders alike?[/b] I think the main draw for players is the gameplay and the world design, fighting the monsters is just very interesting and fun in general. The monsters themselves are just very well designed, both in the way they interact with the world and environment, and in the way you have to fight them. The weapons you fight them with are also all very fun in their own right, I have played and enjoyed playing with all 14 weapon types! I obviously still have my favourites in lance and swag axe though :D I think that for a modding community to emerge, you need people playing, and you need them playing for a long time. The game pushes that through the variety of ways you can customize your character. Making different builds, making your character look good, both keep the game interesting and give you goals to work towards once you reach endgame. It's also worth noting the element of mastery: the game can get quite challenging and the satisfaction of getting better at handling monsters and your weapons is also an important factor in keeping us hooked. [center][youtube]-0l0B7NDTAU[/youtube][youtube]pCXYCE5UtXk[/youtube][/center] [b]You are the creator of [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/1982]Stracker’s Loader[/url] - a tool that is required for nearly all Monster Hunter: World modding. Can you explain what it actually does and why you set out to create it in the first place?[/b] This one is fairly technical: The game engine that MHW is based on manages its files through big archive 'chunk' files, but through what I imagine must have initially been a debugging/testing feature, it will also read files directly from the 'nativePC' folder first if they are present. This is really useful for modding as it allows us to skip having to rebuild a chunk file every time we want to mod something. In a gambit to combat online cheating, Capcom made an update to that functionality with the release of Iceborne which restricts what type of files are loaded from that folder, only allowing some purely visual modifications. The loader lifts that restriction, and allows the game to load any type of file from that folder again. It also does so seamlessly once installed: the game will be automatically modded when launched, without needing to launch another piece of software or through a different exe file. The main reason I made this mod is convenience : While it would have been possible to make even non-visual mods through building those 'chunk' files, it would be pretty annoying for mod users and especially modders, requiring a lot more steps to install and/or test mods. I wanted to streamline the process for everyone, myself in particular, and it was an area of modding I was already familiar with from the Quest Loader, so I set out to make the loader. [b]The modding community for Monster Hunter: World is going strong and we have seen a vast variety of mods ranging from useful utilities such as [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/2645]HunterPie[/url] and [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/2556]SmartHunter[/url], to quality of life mods, graphical improvements, as well as [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/12]more humorous mods[/url]. On that note: what are some of your favourite MHW mods?[/b] I am personally most fond of mods that integrate and mesh well with the existing game, and improve upon it in discreet ways. Quality of Life mods like [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/112]Souvenir's Light Pillar[/url] or [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/188]Extra NPCs in gathering hubs[/url], or subtle visual changes like [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/2036]Blood efx[/url] are good examples. Beyond that I like mods which give me more Monster Hunter: new content, new quests. The [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/1880]Christmas Modpack[/url] for example was impressive on so many levels! Shoutout to [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/43]transmog mods[/url] as well, without those I'd have a lot less variety in making a cool looking character! [b]With the release of the Iceborne DLC in January of this year, we have seen a massive surge of MHW players on Steam, as well as many new mods being uploaded. What did you think about all the new content provided by the DLC in particular and have you been using any new mods?[/b] Iceborne has been phenomenal, content wise. Nearly all of the new monsters were just more of what I loved in the vanilla game, the new areas fit very well within the game, and I have enjoyed the weapon changes they made a lot. I had high expectations of the expansion, and they absolutely were matched. There hasn't been any major new mod I'm interested for Iceborne so far, but I have a few QoL tweaks installed, like the [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/1986]Guilding Lands Gathering Indicator[/url], or my own loader plugins. [center][img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/110/images/93729/93729-1583766067-1861871603.jpeg[/img][/center] [b]For the base game, Capcom had added various updates including [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHsXDgZV12k]an entire questline featuring Geralt from The Witcher 3[/url]. Iceborne has so far received and will be receiving a similar treatment in the future with many different free mini-DLCs being scheduled for every month until at least June. Today, 12th March, a major update is being released and PC players will get to fight Stygian Zinogre, explore the new Guilding Lands Tundra region, as well as play the Safi'jiiva siege only console players got to enjoy thus far. What are your thoughts on this new update and Capcom’s update roadmap for the future?[/b] Having impatiently bought the console version of Iceborne when it released, I have already played with the new monsters coming, and both are a treat to fight ! The tundra region completes the guiding lands nicely as well, with the near entire monster roster being huntable in there now. My only gripe would be that the new Safi'jiva weapons are a bit too powerful and kind of overcentralizing, but I'm sure the community will find a way around that one. I'm not not sure what to expect of the stuff Capcom has in store next though, though I'm definitely curious to see what the 'fan-favorite' monster coming in April is, and to finally be on the same schedule as console releases! [b]How did you personally get into Monster Hunter: World and what motivated you to explore the modding side of it on top of that?[/b] I came to Monster Hunter as a fan of the Dark Souls series, at a glance it looked like i'd be right at home with big monsters and technical, commitment-based gameplay. I tried a couple times to get into the series with previous entries, but couldn't get past the clunkiness of the old games. I was pretty intrigued to see how I would like the streamlined and modernised Monster Hunter: World and it hooked me big time! While I did very quickly install some QoL mods, I didn't actually start modding myself until pretty late into the game, during the wait for Iceborne. Reading a discussion about how Legiana and Rathian (and several others) actually had the same animating skeletons beneath, I wanted to see if I could make Rathian do a "Legiana flip". This led me into quite a rabbit hole in the game's modding research community, where I started helping with stuff I felt interested in, usually through analysis of game files and/or code, and making tools to work with them. [i][center]Did you know? A Monster Hunter movie is being made that is due for release in September 2020![/center][/i] [center][youtube]t4_2iZz7e6M[/youtube][/center] [b]How did you learn how to mod Monster Hunter: World and are there any other mod authors in the community that you found/find inspiring?[/b] I initially leveraged my general programming and computer knowledge, as well as some research into some hacking techniques, to dig directly into the game's code and slowly map out notable sections of it. The fact that I arrived pretty late into the base game's scene meant there was already quite a lot of resources I could use as reference points, which made things quite a bit easier. I used this knowledge both to understand how the game reads some of the files and understand their format, as well as knowing where exactly to insert custom code so I can modify the game in a way I want. [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/users/50474981?tab=user+files]Fandirus' custom monsters[/url] (especially the [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/1533]stories mod[/url]) are without a doubt the most impressive mods I know of, and what inspired me to make the first quest loader. I hope to see more mods like those in the future! [b]What other games do you like to play and do you have any hobbies outside of modding and gaming?[/b] While I generally have a pretty broad taste in gaming, I do gravitate towards challenging Action-RPGs. I'm a huge fan of the Dark souls series, and regularly come back to Path of Exile, for example. Outside of gaming, it's hard to pinpoint anything in particular. I started doing some tabletop roleplaying recently, I like reading a bit of Fantasy/SF, and I do like to spend some time furthering my developer skills when I'm inspired in one way or another. [b]Is there anything else you would like to say to the community?[/b] Ah man I never quite know how to answer that kind of question. Enjoy the game, enjoy the mods, and don't use cheat-y mods with randoms online, I guess! [center][url=https://discord.gg/gJwMdhK][img]https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/110/images/93729/93729-1583936464-2115661132.png[/img][/url] [i]Curious about modding? Join the [url=https://discordapp.com/invite/gJwMdhK]Monster Hunter World Modding Discord[/url] now![/i][/center] [line] A big thank you to Stracker for taking the time to talk to us! If there's an author or mod project you'd like to know more about, send your suggestions to [b][url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/64597]BigBizkit[/url][/b] or [b][url=https://www.nexusmods.com/users/31179975]Pickysaurus[/url][/b]. Published first at Monster Hunter: World - Major Update and Interview with Stracker

#Video Games #PC Gaming

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thementalattic · 6 years

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I’ve played World of Warcraft since the Wrath of the Lich King expansion and I’ve loved the series from before the MMO even existed. I quested and raided my way through all expansions up until Legion, though in both that expansion and its predecessor, Warlords of Draenor, my life took a few turns that meant I couldn’t play nearly as often as I wanted to nor do so with my American friends.

I missed out on some content, getting raid clears only on one-off appearances. But with Battle for Azeroth, World of Warcraft’s latest expansion, I’ve made it my goal to return to the old days, when I logged into Azeroth at least once a day and completed every task set before me. Yes, it’s a grind, but it’s a fun one, especially during the initial stages of the expansion.

The Heart of Darkness, home to the Underrot dungeon, the closest place to the Stranger Things’ Upside Down

So far, I’ve levelled my character, the Druid Kadrell, to level 120, completing the questlines of Kul Tiras, and loving every single moment of it. I’ve often claimed to be a quest whore (or as WoW puts it, a Loremaster), you put a quest in front of me and I’ll do it. So in Battle for Azeroth I’ve been in quest haven. Between storyline quests, one-off missions and world quests, I’ve had so much to do, so much to enjoy. And best of all, I’m not even close to done! As of reaching level 120, I’ve discovered brand new quests that I’m certain weren’t there as I levelled, unlocked perhaps as I reached this expansion’s level cap.

I play an Alliance character and though that often means I miss out on some Horde stories, this is the first time I’ve been tempted to create a character on the other side—I really don’t because I’m not one for alts and all my friends are on the Alliance side—because there’s so much there to explore, particularly with the Zandalari Trolls, whom we’ve just seen in the past as enemies. I’ve seen some of the cutscenes on their side, and the stories are great.

Yes, that flight path is a giant bee. It’s that awesome!

But on the blue and gold emblem side, the Kul Tiran stories are phenomenal:

Tiragarde Sound, home of the Proudmoore Admiralty—yes, Jayna’s family—has a political intrigue plot, pirates, azerite weapons, and even a couple of Lovecraftian and haunting stories that serve as morsels for the stories you’ll experience on the rest of the journey.

Drustvard, to the southwest, has something of a witch problem. Its towns are haunted and cursed by witches, their familiars and minions running rampant. It’s up to you and the last heir of Waycrest to reform an ancient order and take the battle to these supernatural foes. It has more of a horror vibe and they pull it off spectacularly. Best of all, there’s this one creepy child that makes it all worthwhile.

Stormsong Valley is simply the best. It’s all about an ancient order of sea mystics turned evil, corrupted by the whispers from the dark depths. If you’ve played WoW or know your Warcraft lore, you know what that means! It’s visually stunning, mechanically diverse, highly challenging and the new characters and storylines introduced will continue to impact the expansion perhaps much more than the other two.

Abby Lewis’ creepy rhymes rock!

Prevalent throughout the experience wasn’t just the clever writing and quest design, mixing it up every so often to break the monotony or give you something truly silly, such as riding ornery boars through enemy lines, scattering them like bowling pins, but these three important things:

Zone visual designs married with quest design and progress, with Stormsong being the very best example. You reach Stormsong through a pass that leads to the valley but as you get there the army blocks the way. You convince them to move on and as you follow suit, the pass begins at the bottom of a hill and ends at its crest, from where you can see the valley stretch below you. It’s a wonderful introduction as from the starting point you can only see the sky and distant mountains, but as you reach the top, you witness the majestic splendour of Stormsong. The quest locks you into this beautiful introduction.

Challenge Up, for the most part I found enemies beating the ever-loving crap out of me in every zone. For a long while now, new content zones scale with you, so that you can take in the new content in whichever order you like and enemies will always be at your level. For me, it meant that quest mobs, simple random enemies, put up one hell of a fight. It led to some frustration of course, but also to some very clever playing, where I had to combine some of my skills, even those I rarely use, to split monster groups to better deal with them. And as an alchemist, I had a big reason to raise my level in the skills and get better potions for fewer materials.

Related to Alchemy, Herbalism is outstanding in Battle for Azeroth because it does something that hasn’t been seen in World of Warcraft for a few expansions, where the herbs you find aren’t locked to specific regions—save for one plant and only because it’s a desert herb and there’s only one desert—but soil and conditions. You will always find Riverbuds near small streams and Sea Stalks in beaches, Siren’s Pollen grows on the trunk of trees and Winter’s Kiss on patches of snow. But best of all is Star Moss, which grows on stone and in the shade, so it’s often found under bridges, in alleys or on the side of buildings. If you’re near the water the moss will be vibrant green, with purple flowers growing from it and if you’re in a dry environment, it’ll come in shades of red and orange. It means you can find most herbs in all maps.

I’m enjoying the new Azerite mechanic. It was a bit unusual to see chest, shoulder and helm gear pieces without any secondary stats but instead these highly customisable ones that can give you greater survivability or trigger massive damage bursts. I would have loved this system to be more prevalent, say have all armour bits and even weapons get azurite traits, but I don’t mind the way it’s done and the grind for Azerite feels much less punishing than the ar3tifact weapon grind was in the previous expansion, especially since the “Artefact Knowledge” trait—a multiplier on the amount received—will scale automatically week to week.

This creature sent by Azshara is not a dungeon boss, but a quest enemy and he looks amazing!

Dungeons are super fun and visually unique, with interested mechanics throughout. This is the first time I’ve geared up so fast, going through a few normal dungeons, skipping over to heroic and even Mythic dungeons within days of the expansion’s launch and it’s great to see the increase in complexity from one difficulty to the next. There are so many left to do, and there is no single tank & spank boss. They all have at least one mechanic to keep you on your toes, even the gigantic T-Rex with the enormous hit box. Can’t wait to see what the first raid, Uldir aka Titan Umbrella Corp. has in store for us.

I’ve even had a bit of PVP, though completely by accident. I tried to do a World Quest but went through the main horde city in stealth to do it. A few guards discovered me a flagged me for PVP, meaning that players in War Mode, where you’re constantly flagged for PVP (there no longer are PVP only servers) could target me. Had a nice fight against a Shadow Priest and would have won if he hadn’t waited to attack me after quest mobs left me at a quarter of my maximum health. He didn’t kill me though. After a bit of self-healing stalemate, when things turned in his favour, I used my many movement skills to put some distance between us and go into stealth mode again, finding a dark alcove to hide in and teleport back to the safety of an alliance base.

Last week I didn’t publish a single thing or even upload any video on this site or my YouTube channel, and didn’t even think of doing something with my Twitch channel, because I spent every moment I could in Azeroth fending off against horde forces, searching for Azerite and getting my ass whooped.

It’s been a hell of a ride so far…and it’s only just beginning. There are dungeons to run and they’re a lot of fun, there is gear to unlock and professions to max out. I have to practice my rotation and get my DPS to a nice place so I can do well once raids unlock. Just a couple more weeks for that to happen and I’m eagerly awaiting it!

I spent last week adventuring in #WorldOfWarcraft, here are my thoughts!

I’ve played World of Warcraft since the Wrath of the Lich King expansion and I’ve loved the series from before the MMO even existed.

I spent last week adventuring in #WorldOfWarcraft, here are my thoughts! I’ve played World of Warcraft since the Wrath of the Lich King expansion and I’ve loved the series from before the MMO even existed.

#Battle for Azeroth #Druid #Expansion #Featured #Gaming #Jaina Proudmoore #Kadrell #Kul Tiras #Levelling #Questing #Video game #Warcraft #World of Warcraft #Zandalar #Zones

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