#sprites by FRAG

[lucabyte]

*ignores the frag grenade i just threw at everyone* anyway,

can you believe this is the first time ive managed to draw a fullbody loop whos standing up.

i can finally express my headcanon-- not that loop has body horror inbuilt perma-heels-- but that they've just got perpetual barbie foot. they just got too used to wearing their little bootsies. a real "hey dude do you like, want shoes or something?" type stance. i dont even think its a concious choice i think if you pointed it out they'd get embarrased.

[cosmicheartzone]

((Short one related to the Riders series as I'm still setting up the plan for a story I'm starting in March! Reminder that a Team Rose takeover is planned for next month if you want to focus on questions for Amy, Cream, and Cosmo!))

[Rosoideae sprite is an edit of Jet's board from a Jet the Hawk sprite sheet by Gabriel Frag]

[lynns-mods]

Ok I've had breakfast I've slept I've had lunch, here's a list of the 9 "main" classes in the TF2-inspired class-mod, their loadouts, and some of their stats.

Scout

Health: 75

Speed: 1.75

Jump height: 8.5

Primary: SMG (has a very fast firerate and is more accurate than the Chaingun, but does only 1 damage per shot and eats through ammo)

Secondary: Pistol (literally just the vanilla Doom Pistol but it uses the mod's custom ammunition system and will have new sprites I guess)

Melee: Crowbar (does 10-25 damage per hit, which is higher than the Fist, but takes longer to attack, and has a delay between attacks)

Superweapon: BFG-9001 'Micro' (literally just the beta version of the BFG, but rather than firing a constant stream of energy after pressing the fire button once, it does so if you hold it down)

Inventory item: Blast Grenades (knock monsters and players back on impact with the ground)

Security

Health: 145

Speed: 0.85

Jump height: 7.5

Primary: Assault Rifle (a sort of in-between for the SMG and the Chaingun)

Secondary: Shotgun (literally just the vanilla Doom Shotgun but it uses the mod's custom ammunition system and will have new sprites I guess)

Melee: Stun-Baton (high attack-speed, low damage, and can stun demons)

Superweapon: ??? (haven't come up with an idea yet; possibly some kind of energy-shield or an AOE sonic-concussion weapon?)

Inventory item: Stun Grenades (stun nearby demons)

Pyro

Health: 100

Speed: 1.15

Jump height: 7.8

Primary: Incinerator (a flamethrower that sets enemies on fire)

Secondary: Flaregun (a projectile-based pistol that sets enemies on fire)

Melee: Empty Fire Extinguisher (a more extreme version of the Crowbar; does stupid amounts of damage, at the cost of a very slow attack animation)

Superweapon: Rune of Hellfire (basically the Flamewall from ROTT)

Inventory item: Improvised Incendiary Grenades (not sure what these will do, though I personally think they'll either set demons or players on fire or create a patch of fire that damages any demons or players that walk through it)

Demolitionist

Health: 150

Speed: 0.75

Jump height: 7.4

Primary: Rocket Launcher (literally just the vanilla Doom Rocket Launcher but it uses the mod's custom ammunition system)

Secondary: Grenade Launcher (fires grenades that explode on contact with an entity or after bouncing off the level 5 times)

Melee: Sledgehammer (I just realised how many of the melee weapons I came up with for this mod are just like. "Takes a while to hit but does a lot of damage")

Superweapon: Duke-Class Mininuke Launcher (fires a massive rocket that makes the screen go white and does enough damage to kill the Cyberdemon in two direct hits)

Inventory item: Frag Grenades (standard explosive grenades that bounce 3 times before exploding)

Heavy

Health: 175

Speed: 0.55

Jump height: 6

Primary: Chaingun (literally just the vanilla Doom Chaingun but it uses the mod's custom ammunition system)

Secondary: Super Shotgun (literally just the vanilla Doom Super Shotgun but it uses the mod's custom ammunition system and will have new sprites I guess)

Melee: Fists (stronger and faster than the Doom's regular Fist, and attack twice per use, plus they have a meatier punch sound)

Superweapon: BFG-1993 (basically works like the 2016/Eternal version of the BFG, but with plasma-shots instead of lightning)

Inventory item: Cluster Grenades (explode into several smaller bombs; honestly they would work just as well for the Demolitionist)

Engineer

Health: 95

Speed: 1.15

Jump height: 8.2

Primary: Rivet Gun (semi-automatic, but with a high firerate)

Secondary: Turret Deployer (spends 10 Secondary Ammunition to place a player-allied Turret that, functionally speaking, is essentially a friendly, static Chaingunner)

Melee: Wrench (basically the fists but stronger)

Superweapon: Drone Summoner (summons four small drones and a large drone that follow the player around and attack enemies; the small drones have a weak hitscan attack, while the large drone fires mini-rockets)

Inventory item: Mini-Turrets (smaller versions of the regular Turrets that are basically just miniature player-allied Zombiemen that can't move and don't cost any ammo, instead having a cooldown between each use)

Scientist

Health: 105

Speed: 1.5

Jump height: 8.1

Primary: Railgun (it's a railgun)

Secondary: Nanite Capsules (primary throws a capsule, which heals any player or demon it hits by 10 HP, while secondary crushes the capsule and heals the player by 1)

Melee: Surgical Saw (basically a weaker chainsaw)

Superweapon: Erebus V.666 Laser Cannon (a big laser-cannon)

Inventory item: Deployable Healing Stations (send out healing-beams to any nearby players)

Tracker

Health: 85

Speed: 1.35

Jump height: 7.8

Primary: Sniper Rifle (it's a sniper rifle; alt-fire zooms in)

Secondary: Dartgun (shoots darts that deal damage over time)

Melee: Hunting Knife (fast animation, low damage)

Superweapon: ??? (again, I have no idea what to do for this one)

Inventory item: Bear Traps (deal a lot of damage to anything that walks on them and reduces their speed)

Agent

Health: 80

Speed: 1.3

Jump height: 8

Primary: Revolver (a stronger version of the Pistol that has to be reloaded every 5 shots)

Secondary: Silenced Pistol (a weaker, semi-automatic version of the Pistol that doesn't alert monsters)

Melee: Folding Knife (has a longer select and deselect animation)

Superweapon: Gas Launcher (a grenade-launcher that creates clouds of poisonous gas, but has to be reloaded)

Inventory item: Invisibility Device (a portable version of the partial-invisibility sphere, with a shorter duration and a long cooldown)

The other classes - at time of writing - are the Demonologist, Gambler, Combat Frame, Brawler, Ranger, Marine, Pilot, Sentinel and Specimen.

[buginateacup]

Ship kiss ask number 7 with Dot/Megabyte plz. 🙏

Damn computer reset ate what I started. But just know the hardest part of this was figuring out who was shutting up who.

-----------

Moans and grunts and pants echoed from behind every door of the game level. Dot hunkered lower behind a pot plant in one corridor and eyed the single open door at the far end of the corridor.

"Far be it from me to interrupt your quest," The low drawl slithered over her skin, "But I really think you ought to avoid that particular hallway."

"You!" Dot rounded on him, "I should have known you had something to do with this!"

Megabyte eyed her with an amused stare, "I?" He echoed, "As flattered as I am to hear you think I can control the User, allow me to assure you my dear Dot." His eyes raked over her, "I'm merely taking advantage of an unexpected opportunity."

"Put your eyes back in your head before I delete them." She gritted out, crossing her arms over her chest. Which unfortunately did nothing to counter the fact that her pID was providing more coverage than anything else the game had rebooted her into.

Megabyte's gaze disobligingly dropped to the fishnet stockings gracing her thighs and the skirt-that-was-really-more-of-a-belt barely covering her hips and snorted, "All out of the good little schoolgirl uniforms? How disappointing."

"Wow I did not need to know that about you." Dot shook her head.

"But I thought this was a land of fantasy," One hand gestured sarcastically to the rhythmic thumps and ah-ah-ah!s chorusing all around them, "Don't tell me you're reserving all indulgences for yourself."

"Get fragged!"

His grin leered, "I believe that's rather the point." He turned to go, "Do have fun Ms Matrix. Try not to get caught."

"Where are you going?" Dot hissed, "This place is crawling with viruses!"

"I'm aware." He glanced back at her over his shoulder, "Sharing Mainframe with Hexadecimal is bad enough. I intend to make sure no one else gets any ideas about jumping ship, as it were."

"Really." Her eyes rolled, "You're doing this out of the goodness of your heart. You expect me to believe that?"

"Call it enlightened self interest."

"I call bullshit." She stalked after him.

Footsteps sounded around the corner.

Dot's back hit the wall, Megabyte's hands digging sharply into her shoulders. She opened her mouth to demand he release her and instead tasted the sharp tang of viral code as he-

Devoured

No. Kissed her. If a kiss could swallow you whole and make you feel like every line of your code was shocked by a power surge. Ruthless and demanding and one hand sliding down her arm to caress her hip and pull her closer.

"Megabyte! I thought that was you!"

Dot's eyes flew open and her grip on his chest (when had her arms decided they needed to be touching him) slackened, falling away in shock.

Megabyte growled his dissatisfaction, punishing her lip with a sharp scrape of his teeth and took his time releasing her mouth. Pressing his thumb over her lips in a silent warning before he turned to face their voyeur.

Dot sagged against the wall, blinking stupidly at the scrawny virus interrupting saving her from...well. She tried to push herself away from the wall and found herself gathered into a possessive embrace. Megabyte's arm curling around her waist, his hand splaying over the curve of her hip.

The other virus trailed off their babbling recollection of the bad old days and stared at her. She glared back as regally as she could manage with her mouth still buzzing like static.

"A sprite?" His laugh was nasally, "Really?"

"We are viruses, are we not?" Megabyte's tone was mild, but his hand dug into Dot's hip in warning, eyes a furious red, "What's one more taboo?"

[legy]

random game roundup

yeah baby lets go i hate posting things at a time people will see them

Meeting in the Flesh - PWYW

actually im obsessed with this one. holy shit. it fucking rules. its free and i think you should play it

this is a self-described "cozy horror-based dating sim" and i personally didnt think it was like. scary horror. but i absolutely loved it.

the premise is that you are vil, a salt courier in a city that um only eats salt and things mixed with salt? and the eclipse is approaching, a time of great significance in local culture.

i played the full yiestol route which took about 45 minutes. the art is gorgeous, and the writing was compelling enough that i kept playing past the usual 15 minutes. if i have a complaint its that the music was much more "miss" than "hit". you should play this one!!!!!

Flying Frags - World Tour - PWYW

this is. unreal. its a very visually interesting looking fps that is hampered by having some of the least responsive controls ive ever experienced in my life. i have no idea what is going on here lol. it would take two solid seconds of mashing the shoot button (both ctrl and left mouse button) before my gun owuld start firing. i wish i recorded myself playing this thing bc all i could say the entire time was "what in the goddamn"

Eternia: Pet Whisperer - $3

Included in Indie bundle for Palestinian Aid

this is a visual novel about going to a shelter to adopt a pet but all the animals at the shelter can talk. found the loving realistic paintings of the animals very funny when contrasted by the more typical visual novel sprite of the protagonist. also that you have one interaction per day implying you spend like a month at this shelter where the inhabitants kind of hate you lol

Six Match - $2.50

Included in Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality

i forgot to take a screenshot lmao

this is cute! six match is a match 3 puzzle game where you control a little guy who shuffles around the board. you have to make a match within six moves or you lose. it's pretty difficult (im bad at match three...) and kept my attention well the entire time.

i think generally the presentation is extremely good and the sound effects are satisfying but it does feel weird to me that there is zero music at all. overall this is very charming and worth a few minutes at least

Occupy White Walls - Free!

this is "an" "mmo" so kind of hard to get a taste of in only 15 minutes but by god did i try

occupy white walls is an art gallery sandbox. you have your own space to build a place to display art. i spent most of my time running around various recommended player spaces but it looks like it's very robust and interesting to build in

also this runs like ass in "high complexity" spaces despite the fact that it was not really taxing my hardware at any point. idk what was going on with that. this is completely free and on steam so if you want to go wander around some online art projects you could certainly do worse

[doom-nerdo-666]

Another thing i never shut up about is MetaDoom but i also thought of this:

Most of the mechanics and gameplay lean toward the Slayer games snce they have the more material, but the aesthetics try to balance things out to represent other games (Not just visuals, even sounds too).

You get some weapons with combined parts like the Plasma Rifle or Rocket Launcher to increase the reference aspect.

But you also get a feeling that 2016/Eternal aren't always pririotized at times.

Might be because these games have a huge role in the gameplay direction, so it'd be fair if others went more with the visuals or sounds.

But it could also be that something like D3 still retains the "low tech" feeling that Doom gives while 2016/Eternal have more advanced "professional" aesthetic, so they could've looked Doomier.

The Frag Grenade has its mechanics from 2016 but the design is the D3 grenade.

The Gauss Cannon's design is even touched a bit to represent unused BFG sprites: Made to look more toy-ish as opposed to the advanced sci-fi aesthetic of 2016.

(Gif from Kinsie, i assume)

Edit: This is also why i didn't mind that Doomguy showed up in Smash as a Mii outfit because if he was a fighter, the series' presentation should be more than just the new games.

Like i genuinely think both id and Sakurai should know what MetaDoom is before ever thinking of how Doom could've been portrayed in a series like Smash.

Not directly copying the mod but rather get into a similar mentallity.

[eziojensenthe3rd]

Midnight Gaming: Storming Space Normandy

So I played Quake 2 past midnight, checked socials and found... Streamer Kai Cenat is streaming Bloodborne to try and bring to attention demand for remaster/pc port.

So when I played Quake 1, I mentioned that Quake didnt have as much of a cultural impact as doom did. If people actually read these, this would be one hell of a hot take. Quake was after all from technical standpoint a leap forward for 3d graphics in games, Carmacks work has brought a lot to the table that modern games share a relation with. To suggest it didnt have a cultural impact would be ludicrous. You can see that impact mapped out on this image from wikipedia:

But I didnt say that though, i said that Quake, as a game, didnt have as much of a cultural impact as Doom did.

Doom had bill gates greenscreened on it for an investors meeting, Doom was being ported to devices it shouldnt be possible because of its small size and the love of the meme, people nowadays recognise the pinky and cacaodemon sprites from Doom, you think folks will recognise the shamblr from look alone? Show a zoomer the quake symbol and ask them what it is, then make an appointment with your local retirement home when you're done having your soul hollowed out.

The most that the Quake series has in cultural significance is its multiplayer. 1's mechanic of the player not taking too much damage from explosions including their own helped pioneer rocket-jumping ie shooting an explosive at your own feet and using the force of the explosion to propel yourself. Quake 3 straight up depriotised singleplayer in favour for multiplayer and the most recent Quake game to date has that with a splash of hero shooter. Most folks who have heard of the quake series know it more for its multiplayer then they do the singleplayer. You remember Quake 4? What was your first thought about it, the stroggification scene? Yeah..

Thing is.. while i say Quake 1's game wasnt as significant compared to Dooms, its a lot more than can be said about Quake 2. Be honest, before the remaster... how often did you hear about Quake 2 when discussions about first-person shooters come up? How about classic shooters (boomer shooter)? Not much, i certanly didnt. Most folks seem to forget this game existed, its usually when the Quake series gets brought up that 2 is mentioned. "Aw man Quake was so good, its a classic. And Quake 3, man, I fragged so ma.." "What about Quake 2?" "Oh? Oh yeah Quake 2 that was good...too... yeah...".

Honestly, the RTX port was probably the most recognition Quake 2 got before the remaster, mostly to showcase how bad of an idea it is to put rtx graphics and raytracing to a 90s shooter. Made it look uncanny. But that was then, this is now and now we have a remaster that allows the game to played by more people and thats always a good thing, especially since the remaster is very good.... with one caveat being the lack of addon support similar to Quake 1 and Doom 1 & 2s recent ports. Seriously why?

Anyways playing Quake 2, its certanly a change from the lovecraft vibe to a sci-fi ww2 vibe but the music definatly helps in getting you engaged with the game. The strogg being a sort of forced amalgamation of human meat and hard metal is an interesting enemy to fight and their is a nice variety of them to fight, the big enemies that have that railgun however were very annoying since they can take up to 45 health off you while teasing the power of the railgun that you wont get just yet...ughhh... chaingun is a necessity for them. Thing about the weapons is that, from what i've noticied in my session, is theres quite a few weapons that end up being obsolete as soon as you find their contemporaries. For example, the super shotgun replaces the normal shotgun, the chaingun replaces the machinegun (unless theres weak enemies i wanna mow down without burning too much ammo) and the grenade launcher replaces throwing grenades.

Another change is that you collect power ups to use for later as opposed to using them now, most them being rather situational except for three items, the quad damage (for obvious reasons), the adrenaline (for health) and the compass which is a new thing added for the remaster that spawns some arrows  to lead you to your objective. A very nice quality-of-life change to help keep the player moving forward. Honestly, I enjoyed my session with quake 2 and if you havent played it, get the remaster and you can play it along with the expansions, the new expansion made for this and the n64 version of quake 2.

Ok enough of Quake 2, lets go to news. Bloodborne was a launch title for the playstation 4 and for many people, it was one of their favourite soulslikes. Not me though because i never played it myself and at the time of writing, its not likely i will. Despite Sony porting some games like God of War, Uncharted and Ghost of Tsushima to pc, bloodborne has remained locked to the playstation consoles.

This may change with one streamer Kai Cenat, who has a sizeable audience and has been streaming games like elden ring lately, intending to stream bloodborne with the aim of getting demand for a pc port noticied by Sony and Fromsoft. Time will tell if it will succeed. Link to a pcgamer article covering it right here:

Anyways, im not a professional essayist, i dont always articulate my thoughts well enough but i hope that as I write these, i will improve over time. At the very least, i dont get paid unlike some folks over at ign. You get my bad hot takes freely.

Anyways see you tomorrow, feedback is appreciated. Anons are currently on.

[spd-magenta-ranger]

TF Resurrection: The Chimeras

So on National Power Rangers Day....I present to you a....Transformers art?

Yes, hello, the Chimeras are here, ready to be menaces to society.

Hey, laugh all you want, this has been so fun to make.

The Chimeras are a mysterious group that shows up in late season 1 of Resurrection. This drawing captures them at this time,, before character development humbles them greatly. The only ones who know of their purpose? The Decepticon elite guard. They all have a unique elemental power of a force of nature and a skillset that complements them. Alone they're a handful, but together? They are true forces of nature. And boy, do I love them. They've undergone some pretty radical changes since my first drafts of them, though some attributes have stayed the same. Originally they were always goody two shoes, but it's REALLY fun to write them as chaotic neutrals before they see the light.

Personality traits in the form of pose summaries and lyrics from their theme songs:

Echo: (Center) Ready to beat you up with her salves.

"We put in practice and discipline, no giving up, no giving in."

Dawn: (Bottom right) The sass is TAKING ME OUT.

"I don't wanna go to school, I just wanna break the rules."

Sideeye: (Top right) Default Danganronpa sprite pose.

"I like to get my fragging fade on

I'm feeling sexy, I'm like "ooh"

Them haters try to get they hate on

But I'm too sexy, I'm like "ooh"

Riptide: (Bottom left) Threatening to murder you just by looks alone.

"You're hot, then you're cold, you're a light in the dark

Just you wait and you see, that you're swimming with sharks."

Circuit Breaker: (Top left) He knows what you did and is judging you intensely.

"Lights out, you're talking too loud

So just shut your mouth, who the frag are you now?"

So yeah. Absolute menaces to society when they start out and I love them.

Of them, I think Dawn was my favorite to draw The pose and her design were a blast. The headband too! I really love it! Completes it immensely!

Least favorite? Eh....maybe Riptide, but that's only because her pose took several attempts to do....sorry girlie....

Hope you love them just as much as I do! Enjoy!

[169pd]

She’s already been revealed in one of my commissions, and in Miitopia. I’ll reveal her full bio shortly.

[larry-ben-kenobi]

DARK HERESY TIME

Having decided to begin the xenos hunt, we began our journey out into the nebula to find the Eldar’s favorite little hideaway in the sector. Naturally, warp travel is a bumpy ride, so Reguba acquired a craving for paper, and Dariel got highly suspicious that everybody was a mutant. Getting off light, for warp travel through a small warp storm. Speaking of, while traversing the Warp we also came across the collective unconsciousness’ concept of cockroaches, or some other Strongly Real Concept, since it was acting the iceberg to our Titanic in unreal space. This caused BAD THINGS to happen across the ship, and so we all quickly rallied together to panic see if we can help. Sebrius tried to use his space-navy experience to calm and rally the crowds of people in the hallways (more like streets, voidships are big), but was too nervous to do much. Reguba had just finished eating a dictionary, and so did much better yelling about the Emperor, the unity of man, and the strength of said unity yada yada HAVE NO FEAR FOR THE EMPEROR IS WITH US. If I had any spare purity seals, I'd have been slapping them on every doorway I saw. It prevented overly mass void panic, at least.

Heading to the bridge hoping to find the Inquisitor, we instead found a bunch of panicking and fleeing techno lads, void technicians, essentially all those redshirts you see on the Star Trek bridge who don't do anything as Spock aims and fires the photon torpedos. Getting little out of them besides "bridge scary fire ahhh", we dramatically burst into the bridge room to see the unfathomable first actual Daemonic stuff all campaign. (Heresy, in our Dark Heresy? Emperor forbid)

A good pack of netherspawn was doing a chaotic swirling goop vortex in one part of the bridge room, while at the front (or, the part where the giant viewport/window/etc) five blue horrors were throwing warpfire all around like little tzeentchian arsonists. Seeing Daemons and horrible Warp Creatures understandably terrified the bridge nerds, and it stunned Sebrius. Reguba felt the best approach, since Sebrius was too shocked to move, was to charge the horde of netherspawn (pumpkin sized little gremlins, essentially. Even more impish than your imagination can think up) and distract them. This was a horrible waste of a turn and a fairly bad plan, mostly because swinging a giant hammer around can only squish so many netherspawn at once while they surround you. Dariel wisely decided to head -away- from the massive pile of clawy imps and chaos juice while shooting at them. Once Sebrius came to, he instantly realized that a massive horde of little gremlins is best remedied by explosives, and threw a frag grenade right into them, which did far more damage to them than Reguba's hammer could ever hope to. (There were enough of them being little idiots spinning around, stabbing the floor, whatever, that Reguba was actually far away enough to not be bothered by the explosion. This was like, a BIG room and a good fifth of it was the netherspawn orgy).

The blue horrors weren't afk for all this, and the five of them had split to the corners of the room to throw fire at us more annoyingly. Luckily they're awful shots with really stupid little T rex arms. Unluckily for everyone involved, when one ran into the nether pile to try to stab Reguba in the face, Reguba effortlessly smashed it- and then it melted into two little fire sprites. Sebrius threw another grenade while Walrond, our dear friend and kidnapped driver from last session (we wanted his car, and I wanted to adopt him, so we did!) showed up and almost had a heart attack seeing the incarnate forms of thought and madness.

Dariel engaged in close combat with two of the horrors on one end of the room after one grazed his face with thrown warpflame, while Reguba and Walrond dissipated the Netherspawn and brimstone horror-fire creatures by shooting them with exploding Bolter rounds and then smashing them with a giant hammer. Without the swirling mass of spawn, the blue horrors had far less advantage in numbers, and were fairly quickly dispatched by a mixture of bolters exploding them and hammers smashing the flames that came from their exploded bodies.

Having secured the bridge, we dug out one of the surviving bridge crew from underneath his charred terminal, set him to work cleaning up the fire while we went to find the Inquisitor. (luckily once you kill daemons most of their actual bodies dissipate into the nether).

Deciding that the best place to find her is the interrogation chambers where we had the surviving (and maimed) eldar, we went deeper into the ship, calming warp panicked men on our way through prayer and loud yelling. On entering the interrogation room, we found Supplicator Alethos (your friendly interrogator) in an awful state, panicking and freaking out while a maw of teeth and darkness took up half the room. On seeing this, Reguba panicked and fled, Dariel freaked similarly, and Sebrius lost his mind in a wholly different way and started towards the eldar to execute it while Alethos slammed the door shut. He took out his shotgun and aimed at the bound, gagged, and unconscious eldar. The shotgun jammed from a rolled critical failure. Reguba composed himself and immediately started slamming into the door with his hammer, and broke it down in time to see Sebrius fling the shotgun to the floor and take out his chainsword. Then the Supplicator tackled Reguba and the floor in front of the door was a tangle of Ecclesiarchy robes wrestling like a 60's movie fight scene, with Dariel trying to clamber over them to save the prisoner from the possessed Sebrius, who was being influenced by his rage against the Eldar to execute a prisoner who had valuable knowledge.

The wrestling match continued until Reguba gained control of it then tried to fling Alethos against the wall, but actually flung him into Dariel (didnt see him there, because he's a slippery little lightweight), and Sebrius cleaved the Banshee's face in half with a sword-chainsaw, spilling her blood everywhere in a mess of gore and grey matter. The Alucard-like maw laughed and began to fade, but first set all the paper in the room on fire (and ate some, because it was taunting us). We lost any intel that Alethos couldn't remember, and his memory was going to be shot from the daemonic possession. We still knew where we were going, but didn't know what we would be getting into.

[tisfan]

Lucky Buck’s Magical Coffee

Chapter Two - Working for a Living

Fantasy Bingo: Square Magical Exhaustion

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24743212/chapters/60835351

Jarvis flapped Tony’s coat at him as he was ready to leave. “I have insider information that the weather ifrit’s had a fight with his spouse. It may rain later today.” It didn’t look like rain according to the screens that Tony had open that showed the outside world. It looked sunny and peaceful and lovely. But Jarvis was seldom wrong about these things.

The spirit of technology was still relatively young, compared with his brothers and sisters -- spirits of air, earth, fire, water, and void -- having only started coming into being about the mid seventeenth century, or so.

Jarvis himself had been formed in 1835, fathered, one might say, by the invention of the Analytical Engine, in the workshop of Charles Babbage. For a spirit, he was practically a baby. To Tony, he was impossibly old and wise. But then, Tony was a technomage, and spirits of the “natural world” didn’t tend to speak with him.

“Right, so I’ll want an umbrella,” Tony said, digging through the closet for one, “and to bump personal force fields up on my to-do list. And not to suggest a walk in the park for my date. Or maybe I should; Bucky’s a Natural Witch, maybe he’d enjoy getting caught in the rain.”

Tony was on his way to Buck’s Lucky Coffee as soon as he found a functional umbrella, to meet up for their third date, as soon as Bucky turned the afternoon shift over to Clint. He was somewhat unreasonably giddy about it; three was an important number in both the physical and magical worlds, and so three dates seemed... significant, somehow.

He wondered if, after three dates, he could call Bucky his boyfriend, instead of “this guy I’ve gone out with a couple of times.” And why in Turing’s name did he have a pink umbrella with flouncy little ruffles all around its edges? They looked like they’d hold onto water and dump it on you at exactly the wrong moment.

The line wasn’t quite out the door, but only until Tony got there. The next person would, in fact, be out the door. Although that might have been because Bucky had an actual troll as a customer, and he both took up a lot of space and people didn’t want to stand near him. Tony was pretty sure all the nonsense about trolls was just racist bullshit. They did a really good job building bridges, so what, exactly, was everyone’s problem? There hadn't been an incident involving trolls and children in at least a century. (well, sensationalist magazines and abusive parents dragged that story out all the time.)

And even as Tony was putting that together, three more people got into line behind him. The date was not going to start on time, because there was no way Bucky was walking away and dumping a rush like this on Clint to handle alone.

Which was fine, it actually, absolutely was, because Tony was a little overloaded with work, himself, so he could get his coffee and go stake out a table in the corner and knock out a little work on his tablet while he waited. They both worked in customer service; it was a thing you planned around.

Tony squinted up at the ceiling and huffed over the patchiness of the shop’s wards. Bucky was going to have another imp in his espresso machine if the building super didn’t get some fresh protections up soon.

The line inched forward. The troll spoke actual trollish, which Tony didn’t understand. Neither, apparently, did Bucky, but Bucky gestured to Clint, who made a few gestures. SSL -- Supernatural Sign Language, which was left over from when trolls and witches and dwarves all worked together on some of the city projects, and had to learn to effectively communicate. These days, almost everyone spoke English, which seemed very human-centric, come to think of it. Maybe Tony could get some mileage out of a translation app.

“Get me a bucket,” Clint said. “He wants a venti-venti-venti.” Clint signed again, and the troll dropped a gold coin on the counter about the size of a jar lid.

 A triple-venti was going to take a while to pull. Tony fished out his phone and started making notes. Translation app, personal force fields, the somewhat sticky problem of a cursed laptop that a college student had brought him that held the student’s only copy of their master’s thesis -- bad idea, that, always have multiple backups -- and thus couldn’t be de-cursed the quick and easy way, which had a tendency to leave a few memory sectors fragged.

The line kept growing behind Tony. But he’d finally gotten up to the second in line when the door pushed open and a tall, willowy woman came in with strawberry blond hair that was soaking wet and stuck to her face. “I don’t understand it,” she said. “It was sunny. The weather report said sunny all day--” She gasped a few times for breath -- if Tony had been running in those shoes, he’d have broken an ankle -- and gazed at the line in horror.

“Ifrit domestic trouble,” Tony volunteered. “Or so I heard.”

“You think I can send him my dry-cleaning bill?” She wrung out her hair and then took off her jacket, flapping water toward the door. Her shell top was sticking to her. “I’m soaking wet, I’m going to be late, I’ve been working the worst hours.”

“Hi Miss Potts,” Bucky yelled from the counter.

“Mr. Barnes,” she said. “Tell me you can save me.”

“I can save you.”

The troll collected his drink -- the repurposed ice-cream bucket still looked like an espresso cup in his huge hand -- and headed out into the weather. The door yawned and stretched around him to make room. That was a neat trick. Tony hadn’t seen it before; tech wizards said it was too hard, and so trolls and giants and some of the taller elven tribes complained about lack of access.

“Huh. I wonder when he had that installed,” Tony mused, eyeing the door, and then his attention snapped back to -- Miss Potts, apparently. “Does he save you on a regular basis? What’s your standard?”

“I’m probably only alive because of Mr. Barnes’ shop,” Miss Potts said. “Have you been here before? I love this place. I would live here, if they’d let me. Working for A Living. I think I might either die falling down the stairs in exhaustion, or actually push my boss down an elevator shaft without it.”

Tony let the two or three people between them skip ahead of him in the line -- he wasn’t going anywhere until the rush died down, anyway -- to make it easier to chat. “I only discovered it a couple of weeks ago,” Tony admitted. “Came in to exorcise the espresso machine -- it’s fine now, don’t worry -- and well, like you -- didn’t want to leave again.” He grinned. “Sounds like your boss needs to pause and have a cup, too. What do you do?”

“Personal Assistant,” Miss Potts said. “Pretty much whatever my boss says to do, all the way from taking notes at meetings to fetching his dry cleaning. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except they’re in the middle of a hostile takeover, and between angry dwarves and multiple on-site labor disputes, I’ve been putting in sixteen hours a day, six days a week, for almost a month.” She did look on the brink of falling over with exhaustion, her hands shaking.

“Yike,” Tony sympathized. “Is this his first hostile? I mean, someone with experience would have known to hire a temp for the duration or something.”

Up at the counter, Bucky was making two Money for Nothings, keeping up an easy patter with the customers about lottery tickets and checking their pockets. 

“He seems to think that I’m the only one who can keep this company going,” she muttered. She pulled a magical compact out of her purse and opened it. The compact spouted a few uplifting and cheerful advertising-disguised-as-pep-talk phrases, and then-- “damn.” The purple smoke drifted out of the back and pooled around their feet. “It got wet. I am going to complain to the weather guild about this.”

“Nah,” Tony said. “I mean, go ahead and do that, sure, but here, let me see--” He plucked the compact out of her hand and peered into it. It wasn’t very sophisticated tech, but it only took a little for Tony to be able to manipulate it. A locking clasp, a tiny speaker and some wires connected to a button battery for amplification, and boom, tech.

Tony balanced the little thing on the palm of his hand and let energy flow into his witchmarks, making them glow a bright blue. There were some who said it looked spooky, but Tony had always found the light comforting. He coaxed little wisps of magic up into the compact and swept out the water, reversing some corrosion and a little bit of normal wear-and-tear, and reinstalling the sprite software that had drifted loose.

He popped the lid open again.

“Oh, honey, that shirt with that jacket, really? We’ve got some work to do.”

Tony rolled his eyes at it and handed it back to Miss Potts. ��Here you go, good as new.” Well, it might be a little bit sassier than it had been before. Semi-autonomous sprite technology seemed to do that whenever Tony put his hands on it. 

“How did you-- thank you,” Miss Potts said. “My name’s Pepper Potts, it’s nice to meet you.” She held out a hand for a professional shake, but when her fingertips touched Tony’s, he felt the brief surge of Empathic Magic. No wonder her boss wanted her on site all the time. Empaths could affect the moods and compliance of people around them with a simple touch.

“Tony Stark,” he said. He considered her briefly. “Want to quit your horrible job and come work for me?”

“Are you joking?”

The woman in front of Tony in line took so long deciding what pastry she wanted with her coffee, Tony was almost certain that her coffee was going to be cold by the time she actually took a sip. 

“Here,” Bucky said. “I got yours already, doll. And Miss Potts, I’ll have your life affirming moment ready in just two minutes.”

Bucky put a mug, rather than a to-go cup on the counter in front of Tony. The heart in the steamed milk on top was glittering red and gold at him.

Tony shot Bucky a warm smile and a thanks, and stepped aside with his mug so Pepper wouldn’t have to reach past him when Bucky finished hers. He turned the mug until the point of the heart was pointing straight at his chest -- sympathetic magics always worked better if you gave them a bit of a push -- and then tipped the froth into his mouth. Like it had the previous times he’d had Bucky’s Lucky in Love brew, everything felt extra-warm for a moment, and a little bit sparkly, and behind the counter, Bucky seemed glow, just the tiniest bit.

“I wasn’t joking,” he told Pepper, when he’d finished savoring that first sip. “My dad died a couple of years ago and failed to leave the business to me free and clear, and last year, almost on the anniversary of his death, his old business partner split the company and walked off with about two-thirds of the staff for his branch. I’ve been scrambling to keep up and looking for good people.”

Obie had done a little more than simply splitting the company, but the sob story wasn’t something Tony liked to wave around. Maybe, if she took him up on it, he’d tell her about it sometime.

Bucky, perhaps feeling something going on -- he seemed to have that sense -- put Pepper’s drink in a tall glass, complete with a bamboo recycled straw instead of in the to-go cup. “On the house,” he added, pushing an actual brownie-crafted brownie on a plate at her. “With a little extra daydreams.”

“I would live here,” Pepper repeated, taking a sip of the drink. “So, job. Details. Would you like to do an interview, I could do an interview. Right here. I even have my resume up to date.”

Tony glanced at the line behind the ordering counter, then shrugged. He wasn’t going anywhere soon. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s do that.” He pointed at a table.

It took barely a minute of scanning Pepper’s resume to know that she was vastly overqualified, and probably not getting paid anything like she was worth. She’d successfully negotiated a dozen contracts, as a personal assistant.

A little nudging and she didn’t quite admit to being sexually harassed by her boss, but Tony could sense that maybe that had happened, too.

When Bucky finally came out from behind the counter, leaving Clint to finish out his shift, Pepper was smiling, cheerful, and enthusiastic, and it probably wasn’t all entirely due to Bucky’s coffee.

“Hey, snowflake!” Tony greeted him cheerfully. “I’m going to steal Pepper from her obnoxious boss. I’d offer to pay her what she’s worth, but frankly, I’m not sure I can afford that, so I’ll have to settle for merely doubling her current salary.”

Bucky tapped the plate in front of her, where she’d eaten the entire brownie except for a few crumbs. “Opportunity Knocks brownie. Glad you enjoyed it.” He gave Pepper a wink. “But now, I am going to steal my boyfriend from you, since we have a date as soon as I’m off shift.”

Tony pulled just a little magic out of his phone and flipped it at Pepper’s. “That’s my number,” he told her. “I’ll call tomorrow, and we’re going to do this. Start writing your resignation letter. Hire some clowns to see you out. Or strippers. Stripper clowns?”

Bucky rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I know a clown dominatrix,” he volunteered. “She could always use extra work.”

“Perfect,” Tony declared. “Talk to you tomorrow, Pep!” He tucked his arm through Bucky’s and turned them toward the door.

Guess he could start calling Bucky his boyfriend, now. That was easier than he’d thought.

On the way through the door, Bucky offered his hand to the doorframe, cupping what looked like a thimbleful of honey and a tiny piece of bread. “Wood fairies,” he said. “She deserved a bonus after that trick with our Troll earlier.” He glanced up at the sky, which was still pouring rain, and the occasional spates of hail, in anger. “I don’t know if you had anything in mind, specifically, but there’s a traveling mystical petting zoo in the park. They probably have wind sprites to keep the weather off. I always wanted to see a unicorn up close.”

“I’m more of a wyvern man, myself,” Tony said, feeling the happy buzz of Bucky’s potion fizzing through him at Bucky’s closeness. “Yeah, let’s go to the zoo.” He held up the pink umbrella. “I can even keep us dry on the way, if you don’t mind walking close.”

[medakakurokami]

Cocopo (New Year’s) Sprite Art w/ Shis and Rurutieh - Utawarerumono Lost Frag

[creta5164]

[Fourth week of 2020.04] White Spirit devlog - Sprite renderer and vertex color

Hi, there!

I came to the devlog after a while! It's not another problem, but I'm wrote devlog because of this week problem.

In this week, I worked on porting the shaders I've made to shader graphs into code. I only worked with this issue in this week, because there's some have reason, so I'll tell to my story...

Problems facing me

The sprite renderer changes the color of the sprite displayed by changing the color of the vertices of the mesh.

Problem was figured out when I modified the shader several times and found a case where it wasn't completely colored the way I wanted.

The problem was, I realized that there was "logic that vertex colors are multiplied by the colors that are output" rather than the intended behavior.

Looking closely, it didn't take long to realize that this was happening on the master node.

I'm sure this logic is not wrong, but I'd like to have one option for this part.

Output : White (red)

I eventually concluded that this problem could only be solved by moving the shader graph to code, and I started looking for a way.

Fortunately, Shader Graph has the ability to import code created on the master node.

Right-click on the master node and select Show Generated Code then Unity will display the shader code in the code editor.

Of course, the automatically generated code comes out in a form that is not human readable.

Fortunately, you can see how the names in the code are distinguished.

It doesn't change that I have to fix it anyway...

The logic in which the color of the vertex in the shader code created in the shader graph (Sprite lit master node) is multiplied by the output color is just before the return syntax of the frag method of each pass except the normal pass. (Based on 2020/05/03)

So I confirmed that when I remove multiplying logic the red color was not dyed.

OK, now it's time to clean up the code!

Since the script created in the shader graph is generated procedurally, you can see that the node's functions are created by being included in each method.

Especially like this multiply node...

Let's organize these parts so that they can be processed directly, such as the multiply operator.

I decided not to touch the methods of nodes with complex functions.

So I cleaned up all of the code and cleaned up the handling for vertex colors...

After finishing the editing shader, I added a preview function that changes gradually in real time in the editor to check the conversion of day and night.

Also, I needed a function to change the color of the shader property over time, so I added one more.

In this way, the distant sprite has been modified to look distant by the color of the fog.

Phew...

So, from now, I started working on coloring the light again.

In fact, this coloring lightsource works should be have finished working on all the levels in this week, but it's failed because of shader problems...

Intentional, but unintended behavior

Sometimes, automation has the ability to return without knowing your intentions.

It's often difficult to tell how far you need to do it automatically and how far you need to see your intentions.

In this side, what I've been experiencing today has been a lot of thinking about automation.

See you in next week.

[aftermathdb]

DEATH BATTLE Review: Ghost Rider vs. Lobo

Two badass bikers have one hell of a fight!

Ghost Rider′s Preview.

If one were to take a look at Johnny Blaze, you wouldn’t really expect much out of the son of a famous stuntman who had died in a stunt gone wrong. But, you’d be surprised. Johnny’s new dad, Crash Simpson, got cancer.

So Johnny turned to the one man who could fix the problem: The Devil.

It worked… Until Crash crashed.

From that day forward, Johnny became merged with Zarathos. A being of power that scared Mephisto. And together, they became: Ghost Rider.

Ghost Rider possesses your typical powerset for a bounty hunter for the devil. From your typical Superhuman strength and speed, with a side of insane durability and an extra large healing factor.

And to top it all off, Ghost Rider’s signature weapon of choice is fire. But not just any kind of fire. Hellfire (Insert Hunchback of Notre Dame reference here).

Hellfire burns, but not in the conventional way you might think. Hellfire burns away at the soul, bypassing any defenses that would normally protect against typical burn damage. It’s like Salazzle’s Corrosion ability, only with fire.

But, if you’re going to be on the hunt for bad guys to make them pay for their sins, you’re going to need a toolset to match. From your typical hellish chains to soul manipulaton, Ghost Rider is one hell of a guy to fight…

Real talk: Lowkey disappointed that there weren’t more hell puns like this in the episode proper.

But if there’s anything that Ghost Rider is known for, it would be his Hell Cycle. Which we get a Wiz and Boomstick animation for the explanation.

Moving on, Ghost Rider’s other signature move is his Penance Stare. A Bloodcurdling gaze that burns the victims with the agony of their sins. Every life they’ve ruined, every person they’ve killed, all of it comes hitting you at once. Basically, it’s the “I’m not mad, just disappointed” phrase weaponized to the point that it burns. If you’re a truly sinful being, your soul goes bye bye. It’s like the Dark Hado, only with a less complicated button input.

And since the hosts neglected to mention it here (or even in the list of feats (Though, it is shown)), this stare once brought Galactus to his knees. Here’s the video link.

With all that power, Ghost Rider has taken on some insane opponents.

From the likes of Thor, to World War Hulk, to Doctor Strange, Ghost Rider has taken on a great slew of opponents, both good and bad.

However, Johnny doesn’t exactly have the best relationship with the Ghost Rider.

In fact, Johnny’s relationship with Ghost Rider is similar to Bruce Banner’s relation to the Hulk. Johnny suppresses Ghost Rider’s full potential, and the two often clash.

Also, since I forgot to bring it up earlier, The Penance Stare doesn’t work on the blind, those without a soul, those who draw power from pain, or masochists.

However, plot twist, Zarathos is actually an angel of vengeance, not a demon.

And similar to the Hulk, when Johnny opts to let the reigns loose, Zarathos. becomes so powerful, that he scares Doctor Strange.

For reference to Zarathos’ power, he’s equal to the divorce judge Mephisto, who in turn, once battle Galactus. The fight was so intense, that the entire universe was at risk as a byproduct of the battle.

Zarathos himself can eat souls. As for Johnny himself, the guy is still a mortal man, so he’s vulnerable to any kind of conventionally lethal attack. The Rider himself is vulnerable to holy weaponry, and is killable through it.

And even if he’s not too keen on being the Devil’s bounty hunter, Johnny’s doing alright. He even overthrew Mephisto… Does this mean that Peter and MJ’s divorce is null now?- I’m pretty sure that it’s null on the grounds of it being filed under duress, but still.

However, should you be walking out on your own, hearing a feint sound of a chopper drawing near, and see a glow on the horizon getting closer, you better hope that it’s not you that the Ghost Rider is after.

And you better pray to whatever deity that you believe in for mercy.

Because Ghost Rider won’t be giving it.

Lobo′s Preview.

It’s the 1990s, and the world of comics entered a darker age. After the success of such books like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, comic book companies started to churn out gritty anti-heroes by the dozen.

From the time-traveling mutant Cable, to the darker and grittier Azrael, and Overkill. It was an… interesting time, to say the least. They were certainly cool-looking, but at some point, it just got ridiculous, that the world needed someone to take these guys down a peg.

The world needed a hero- no. A parody.

Enter: Czarnia. A planet that was known to be the most peaceful place in the universe… “Was” being the keyword there. The planet was. ravaged by a biological lifeform that left only one survivor: The guy who killed them all: Lobo.

For the record, Lobo’s name roughly translates to “He who devours your entrails and enjoys it.”

(So, he’s basically the NRA).

Lobo’s birth caused so much destruction, that pretty much everyone around him died out. Hell, some theorists think that the universe made Lobo just to balance out the peacefulness of Czarnia.

Lobo strives to be unique, and what better way to be unique than to be the last of your kind?

Lobo has left destruction in his wake. Which is possibly why he became a bounty hunter, as it’s the only profession that legally lets you kill people… Not that it stops him from killing you illegally as well.

Lobo is so insanely durable, that his healing factor is stupidly powerful. And his strength is off the charts. He’s like the unholy child of Superman and Deadpool. Speaking of which…

Oh, Taka… You never fail to make us laugh.

Anyways, not only can Lobo regenerate from a single drop of blood, he can also basically clone himself from it.

If you haven’t guessed by now, Lobo is stupidly hard to kill. He’s taken on the likes of Superman and other high-level fighters to the point that he’s basically  invulnerable. And if that’s not enough for you, he’s also pretty smart capable enough of doing complex equations to be able to tag the Flash.

Lobo can even deduce the weak points of any opponent he faces.

Of course, you don’t get to be an infamous bounty hunter unless you have the tools for the job.

Lobo’s ride responds to his whistle, can fly fast enough to escape a black hole, comes equipped with numerous machine guns, and has numerous other add-ons to boot.

And he has numerous firearms to deal with anyone who gets in his way. Even better: He’s also a fan of chain weapons.

Lobo also likes to ignore some things too. Like how he can sing “Born To Be Wild” while in the vacuum of space.

If that’s not physics-breaking enough for you, Lobo also once did this:

He pulled down Solaris despite it being physically impossible. Not, physically like his physique is inadequate, more like… It breaks physics. Meybe he and the Flash can bond over that.

For reference, this is how much strength Lobo would be exerting to pull Solaris down, assuming that Solaris has a mass similar to our sun.

Lobo also once crushed an entire city to fit in the palm of his hand. And then he ate it. There’s not a laxative in the world that can make that easy to digest.

And thanks to his rambunctious attitude, and constant heavy metal playing, Lobo has been banned from the afterlife. As in, his soul is not to be collected by death. Once the universe ends, he doesn’t go with it.

Lobo has a bomb that wiped out the dinosaurs, allegedly murdered Santa Claus (Who could bypass Apoklips’ defenses to give Darkseid a lump of coal), and has even walked through literal willpower.

However, despite his many claims, Lobo isn’t perfect. He can still take damage, and while his spirit can fight on without his body, he’s not exactly invincible.

He also has a… fondness for dolphins… Apparently. But, he’s also a man of his word, and will follow things to the spirit too. So, he’s basically the exact opposite of the NRA.

And unlike guys like Doctor Fate, the Green Lanterns, and Darkseid, Lobo isn’t immune to retcons.

This new Lobo is a dark and tortured soul. Literally the thing that the real Lobo was meant to be a parody of.

Thankfully, some of the writers at DC had a sense of irony, and decided to shelve the new Lobo… Literally.

And with all that, Lobo is one fighter that you don’t want to mess with. Because when the Main Man gets a contract…

The Battle Itself.

Zack, Luis, and Jerky are heading this animation. Ghost Rider will be voiced by Steven Kelly and Lobo will be voiced by Jason Marnocha. ), sprite artists, Ride to Hell by Brandon Yates. Audio is led by Chris Kokkinos.

The fight starts off with Lobo collecting a bounty, only for the Spirit of Vengeance to show up and give Lobo what’s coming to him.

Lobo, being Lobo, doesn’t take too kindly to someone telling him what to do, so he just runs over the Hell Cycle to get away.

Ghost Rider, understandably mad as hell, gives chase, and even fries Lobo’s bounty while doing it. So now even the Main Man is mad too.

After a brief battle of chains, Lobo does a Scorpion impression and grabs Ghost Rider to give him one hell of a headbutt.

But Blaze doesn’t take this lying down, so the battle gets forced to a city… Hopefully abandoned.

And now it’s Ghost Rider’s turn to do a Scorpion impression as he uses his hellfire to give Lobo a nasty Burn.

This being Lobo, he powers through it to get to Ghost Rider to eat a building.

This being Ghost Rider, the Spirit of Vengeance bursts out, spilling blood everywhere. But, this is Lobo.

Or rather, Lobos (Note the plural). They dogpile on the burning skull head, forcing Ghost Rider to unleash Zarathos.

Lobo, pretty miffed at the moment, blasts Ghost Rider with a massive gun.

So, with the battlefield fragged, the finishing blow (Yes, this wasn’t the finishing blow) is coming up in 5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

Hot damn…

Verdict + Explanation.

Okay, so… This being Lobo, it was a pretty intense fight. Lobo doesn’t die easily. And Lobo also takes many of the physical advantages, like strength. But Ghost Rider wasn’t a slouch in this area either.

Given the insane durability and amount of pain that each fighter could take and dish out, it was hard to say for sure as to who would win out. But, Lobo doesn’t have any specific weaknesses that are obscure, and he wasn’t equipped to have anything to really kill Ghost Rider.

Now, you might be thinking “Who cares about Holy Weapons when you can crush and eat a whole city?” While that’s a good question, and it’s also a good question to ask if Lobo could just overpower Johnny.

However, Remember: Zarathos = Mephisto, and Mephisto = Galactus. Given that the fight between Mephisto and Galactus put the whole universe at risk, it’s reasonable to say that Zarathos could do the same.

Now, given Lobo’s own speed, he couldn’t really run from the Ghost Rider either. Recall that the Hell Cycle could outrace Mjolnir, and Mjolnir could move over 100 Billion times the speed of light. So, even if Lobo could figure out Ghost Rider’s weaknesses, he can’t exactly get away to find a holy weapon to work with.

Essentially, Lobo could handle the Ghost Rider, but once Zarathos was unleashed, his means of victory started diminishing fast.

But now, for the big elephant in the room: How do you kill a person who’s banned from the afterlife?

Well, this is where you need a lawyer, because there’s a small little loophole that Ghost Rider can exploit:

Lobo’s soul can only not be collected, there’s nothing saying that his soul can just go poof. And Ghost Rider has three ways of just ending Lobo’s soul.

His hellfire bypasses normal defenses, his Penance Stare can deal damage to Lobo since he’s got trillions of dead people on his hands, and Zarathos could just straight-up eat his soul. Lobo has no defenses against attacks that target the soul.

Essentially, Lobo was toast.

The winner is Ghost Rider.

Overall impression.

This fight was cosmic. In essence, it takes some of the most intense fighters and pits them against each other. This fight has a lot of hype behind it, and it’s one

hell

of a fight.

However, the lack of “Hell” puns during Ghost Rider’s rundown is somewhat disappointing. But the fight is awesome. It also helps that the music is intense in the good way that it makes it really feel like a battle straight out of hell.

The fight’s awesome, the explanation makes sense, and the music is a banger.

8.666/10

Next Time…

A friend of mine on Deviantart is doing reviews of these Kaiju Movies and a few Power Rangers episodes too. I’m feeling that this fight might interest him.

Is there a fight that you want me to review? - Send an ask/request, and I’ll look into it!

Do you want to read my fanfic based around DEATH BATTLE itself? click here!

Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you next time for…

Robo-Kaiju Rumble.

[vexredain]

Vex’s Brief Guide to Baldesion Arsenal :: Part 1 - Twin Spears & Raiden

“’E’s ‘ind me, ain’t ‘e?”

Now that I’ve had some time to get some clears done, I can finally write a guide! I’m not sure that I’ll be able to get to Ozma (though I hope I can and I’ll give it a good try!) but if I don’t, this will likely be my last guide. So thank you all for sticking with my until now if that’s the case! I’m sure I’ll have a lot of other bits of content to write guides for come Shadowbringers, so this definitely isn’t the end!

For those who may not have heard of Baldesion Arsenal, it is a piece of High-End content that is connected to, and accessed through, Eureka Hydatos. There are four bosses in total. Furthermore, unlike nearly every other piece of content in the game, raise is very limited in BA, with only three sources of raise possible - Sacrifice L, Spirit of the Remembered, Healer Limit Break 3. 

I’ve really enjoyed BA so far, it plays like an old school MMO raid, which means that it requires a lot of people, a lot of patience, and a lot of careful planning and strategy!

This guide will cover:

Runs and Organisation

Path to Twin Spears

Twin Spears

Path to Raiden

Raiden

Chests

Roles

Logos Actions

Best of luck to all you Warriors of Light whom venture into the final part of the Forbidden Land, the Baldesion Arsenal! As always, the rest will be under the cut.

1. Runs and Organisation

So, you’ve completed Eureka, and now you’re looking to do Baldesion Arsenal for the promise of that sick Ozma mount, as well as either your augmented Eureka weapon, +2 armour, or Kirin’s Osode/Vermillion Cloak. The vast majority of BA runs are organised via discord and this is the best way to assure yourself a spot in a run, rather than entering an instance beforehand and entering a portal as a pug (which may have its own problems depending on whether or not the instance has another pre-made BA group in it). You can find the discord link for the Aether Baldesion Arsenal Discord >here< and be sure to assign yourself the correct roles so that you’re available to be pinged whenever there’s a group going. 

So how exactly are these runs organised? 56 people are required for a ‘full’ run of BA, though there are only 48 portals that spawn on the killing of Ovni. This is because the last group, named the Support Group must stay outside to rally the rest of the instance to kill the ELvl 60 NM FATE “The Baldesion Arsenal: Expedition Support”. Most fragment groups aim to kill Twin Spears, then Raiden, and then clear the trash up to AV as there are three chests past Raiden and before AV. As such fragment runs will always be under 48 people, progression runs will require the full amount. 

Group leaders are usually whoever wants to step up and get the group together, and will sit in the Group Leaders channel in the chosen Arsenal Group folder (the Aether BA discord has between 1 - 9). These groups will be formed within the Party Finder and given passwords, detailed in the relevant LFG channel for the run. Each group will be associated with a different element, with the tank of each group usually sticking to the element of their party barring extenuating circumstances. As such the groups are further divided depending on what side, and therefore which Twin Spear, that they are on. These are East Side (Fire, Lightning, Ice) and West Side (Earth, Wind, Water).  From there, the group leaders will ready check, enter the instance (usually at the same time in order to try to spawn a fresh and continuing to do so until all groups are in the same instance), and organise their parties until BA is entered. You will be asked to choose a portal, a map of these is below, along side which portals belong to which group! Worry not if you do not have a stabiliser, you can wait 5 Earth Time Minutes and all portals will turn red and are able to be entered.

Once the groups are in BA, you will have to go to your relevant side. DO NOT JUMP DOWN OFF OF THE PLATFORM YET! Jumping off will render you unable to return to the Logos Manipulator, Magia Spinner, and if you’re on the wrong side, you’ll be stuck there. The West Side is always the same as the Logos Manipulator, and the East Side is always the same as the Magia Melder. Pay attention to which side your group is on, and follow them down. 

2. Path to Twin Spears

You’re now ready to begin the real fight! This will be a Demon Wall. It doesn’t do anything in particular other than serve as a wall that you have to hit. 

Further ahead, you’ll see Arsenal Magus mammets, and an Arsenal Poroggo. The Magi will do an AoE (Deadly), and should be pulled slowly. If you’re a tank, pull at range and do not attempt a big pull, this can get party members killed early. The Poroggo is your true challenge, its Toy Hammer ability must be interrupted, else it chunk your tank a hefty 80%-ish of their health pool. 

Up the top of the stairs will be two Arsenal Byblos, these guys do a tail-based AoE so do not stay behind them at any time (Remember all enemies here have no directionals), and do not stay in front of them either as they will cast Magic Hammer which will kill you. This can be interrupted. 

You’ve cleared the trash, bringing us to the first boss! It is hear that in discord your group will likely merge with another in a different channel, separated by what side you are on, this is to better communicate and perform call-outs. 

3. Twin Spears

These boys will be your first challenge upon reaching the Arsenal. There are two different bosses here with very different, yet also similar, mechanics. 

Art is the West boss, whilst Owain is the East boss. I don’t want to detail mechanics here, as the best place to find them is in the BA guide written by Kalina Skysong of Leviathan world, which can be found >here<!

After the twins are killed, they must die at the same time, you will be able to move ahead further into the Arsenal!

4. Path to Raiden

The first thing you will likely hear in Discord is people saying “Don’t go any further! Wait!!” this is because yes, the way ahead is particularly dangerous. There are traps that lay unseen and will instantly kill those who step on them. Unlike similar mechanics in HoH and PotD, these are massive. 

Yes, these things are pretty damn dangerous. Luckily, they can be detected from a range of 15 yalms by the Logos Action Perception L. This will let you know a trap is nearby from a range of 30 yalms. Please note that once the trap is discovered it is not disarmed! It will still kill you. There is 1 trap on the way up to the room before Raiden, and in this antechamber there are 4 traps, in a rough square shape around the room 2 on the East side, and 2 on the West side. 

There’s a few trash mobs that are quite dangerous on the way up to Raiden. These are:

Arsenal Magus. Avoid AoE. 

Arsenal Sprite. This mob will patrol up and down the hallways. It will cast Banish III, this MUST be interrupted as it will immediately banish a party member from the instance. 

Arsenal Calcabrina. This terrifying doll must be tanked facing away from the raid, all DPS and Healers must stand behind it as its gaze AoE will kill people who are not tanks. 

Arsenal Geshunpest. This guy doesn’t do all that much but float around and patrol down the corridors. 

Arsenal Centaurs. These guys are mean, they will cast Rear, which must be avoided by melee DPS in particular. Their other cast is Beserk and this must be Slept, lest the tank get 2 shot by the damage up buff it receives on successful cast.  

Now you’ve fought through all that! It’s time for Raiden. 

5. Raiden

Raiden is the second boss of BA, and one of the more technically difficult ones. The best thing to do is follow your raid’s callouts, and make sure that you know the markers’ locations around the room. Raiden himself has mechanics from Hashmal (Half the room is hit with an AoE depending on which side his weapon is glowing on), Ifrit (Nails will spawn and must be killed to avoid a raid wipe), and Odin. 

Again, I don’t want to detail mechanics too much here. Please check out Kalina Skysong of Leviathan server’s guide >here<!

If you die on Raiden, it’s okay. It happens to the best of us. You can watch me die to Raiden twice >here< if you want! If you have died, and you’re a healer, it’s likely that someone will risk raising you through a Sacrifice L. This can also happen if you’re a DPS or Tank too, it depends on the party and how many healers still have a Spirit of the Remembered up. If YOU are a Healer, remember to take your chest first before you attempt a gamble on a raise!

6. Chests

Following Raiden, there’s still more! There are 3 chests in the following areas that must be found, these will give 1 Eureka Fragment each, along with either 5 Obscure Logograms, a token for one of the FFXI chestpieces, or a mix. 

As with before, wait for the person with Perception to go first. Ahead there will be some new trash mobs that have some nasty surprises for you! These are:

Arsenal Scribes. Interrupt Condensed Libra.

Arsenal Bibliotheque. This refrigerator will either cast a donut AoE or a circle AoE centered around him. Avoid this as it can and will kill you in one hit. Try not to be on the stairs as this can affect how visible his markers are. 

Aresenal Eye. This will do a cone AoE, avoid it. 

Arsenal Calcabrina. The same gaze attack as before, must be pointed away from the raid. 

Keep checking for traps as you go up the stairs. Now, you’ll be on a corridor with many rooms ahead, with AV staring you down from the back. The purposes of these rooms is to find a portal that will take you to the third and last chest. The second chest is also found in one of these rooms, each aligned with a specific element, so let the tank aligned with that element pull that room. 

 In a frag run, take these slowly, pull what you can, and kill it. Do not run into the rooms without the Perception L carrier having scoped out the room first. The portal is also invisible and must be found through the use of Perception L. 

Yes, these portals can be placed VERY precariously. Once this portal is found, enter it, and you’ll be at the last chest. Take it, and prosper! Usually at this point, the raid will return back to base in Eureka Hydatos. Your run is now complete! 

6. Roles 

Minesweepers are what I like to call the carriers of Perception L. This is one of the most important roles in the instance and must be done carefully. You basically just spam Perception L to first find if you are close to a trap, and then spam it some more to locate it once you are near. WALK SLOWLY and be careful. 

Tanks. You must be elementally aligned with one specific element. This will not change unless you are down a tank, or there are mobs ahead that are not aligned with the tanks on your side at the beginning of the instance. 

7. Logos Actions

For a first time run, I would recommend Spirit of the Remembered and Wisdom of the Platebearer. This gives you enough survivability that you may survive some of the AoEs in the instance. Spirit of the Remembered will give you a 70% chance of rez on death, that’s pretty great! Refresh L is also nice for the DPS who may be often switching their magia board and losing aether. Spirit of the Remembered should always be available and you should have many of them in storage. If you can’t make them using the singular Mneme, remember they are also made through Wisdom of the Platebearer, Wisdom of the Martialist, Wisdom of the Aetherweaver being placed within the Logos Manipulator. Save your singular Mneme for when you want two Logos Actions ad it lowers the chance of failure. 

If you’re a healer, Shell L, Protect L are usually wanted and cast on people who will wait on the bridge at the start, and the stairs before Raiden. Sacrifice L MUST be paired with Spirit of the Remembered, after cast you will get doom. This CANNOT be Esuna’d, so you will die. If your SoR procs, great! If not, another healer will likely juggle procs with you until you are both alive. 

Tanks, Wisdom of the Indomitable is an especially good Logos Action, as is Wisdom of the Platebearer. SoR is required with both. 

With that, you’ll be good to continue farming your frags, or whatever else you came into the Arsenal for, whether its progression or gear, I hope this guide served you well! Thank you once again for reading! Credit to Kalina Skysong for her amazing guide, the creator of the Portal Map, to whom I do not know the name, and the Dataminers for the BA maps I used here! It’s been a pleasure writing all these guides, I’ve enjoyed it immensely being able to share, and run Eureka with you all. 

May you ever walk in the light of the Crystal, 

Vex

[askscarletrose]

It’s pixel characters again, my apologies. Satomi just had to join in on the fun from last year.

Sprites courtesy of Gonzo233, FRAG, Foxx and myself.

It’s really sweet of you too! Merry Christmas @169pd