zydrateacademy - Tumblr blog

[zydrateacademy]

A Heist in the Making

Some weeks ago, Dibbe had conscripted a branch of the Thieves Guild to raid a home belonging to an absent lord by the name of Bernard Auberon. Having sequestered himself to Summerset to wine and dine the world, his house was ripe for Dibbe’s best scout to report what might lie within. It revealed a vault, one the Khajiit could not penetrate, but was otherwise able to inform her of other potential earnings from within.

Once Dibbe brought the Iliac Bay branch of the Thieves Guild, the vault hosted a dark revelation. An entire Dagonite shrine, full of corpses sacrificed to the lord of change. Indeed, during the thieves incursion, several daedra were summoned within to take the souls to Oblivion, intercepted by said thieves. Mercifully nobody died, and when the branch reconvened to safer pastures, it was universally agreed upon that the Lord be reported to the local authorities.

The Lord did not have a chance to defend himself, being arrested the very minute he made port. He was quickly hauled off to prison, and though the Lord of course made a variety of demands ranging from representation to trial by combat, some were either denied or postponed for an indeterminate amount of time. So he rots in prison.

Dibbe had different plans for this fallen lord. Unbeknownst to the Iliac branch of thieves, she’d been planning a specific heist that she quickly surmised most would disapprove of. Entering a realm that almost everyone would prefer to avoid, but there’s a certain Prince that has something precious of hers. Discovering a Dagonite presented an interesting opportunity.

Grifting as a pale scale is difficult enough on its own, but with the right set of armor, a confident stature, and most importantly the properly forged papers, even an Argonian can find her way in most places. She made sure to command that she be left alone, though one guard had to be outside the chamber door, just in yelling distance in the event there was a complication with her meeting.

The Lord had only been in prison for a short time, but a growing stubble upon his middle-aged face began to grow. He was naturally not treated very well given the discoveries beneath his estate. Naturally his weight loss also had become obvious. He gave Dibbe a once-over, more confused at her being an Argonian than her armor and stature. He spoke first.

“What do you want, Argonian?”

Dibbe replied in her characteristic smarm; “Oh friend, it is you that might have something I want. I’ll make this brief; You won’t last long here. I need to find myself in possession of a fresh, unattuned sigil stone.”

The lord looked upon her with some confusion, taking a moment to drink in her visage once more. He was very clearly trying to discern her allegiance or intent, but such a polished-armored, white-scaled Argonian… There were too many incongruent elements involved that he couldn’t quite place her.

“Everything was taken from me, there’s nothing left in my cellar.” “I’m not asking what’s in your cellar now. You were a well traveled noble. One smuggler to another, there’s always more than one stash.” He narrowed his eyes, Dibbe having given him an inopportune clue. “So a thief, is it? This is your…” He gestured vaguely to her, his wrist-bound chains clanked together as he did. “What, disguise? Persona? I have half a mind to deduce you were involved in the breaking in of my house.”

Dibbe admits, “Oh, but I was. That’s why I know more than just the surface-level investigation brought against you.”

“And why in the fuck would I want to help the one who put me here?”

Dibbe holds up a finger, “Because the one that put you here can also get you out.”

This gave the lord pause. He weighed his options. His resources may be drained but in his mind, he still had his loyalties. Perhaps a pocket of a Dagonite cult would still bring him in. Maybe his name could still mean something. Dibbe remained silent, seeing the thoughts churn from behind his eyes. She knew he wanted to be free, that he wanted out. And he looked upon her confident grin, himself knowing that she was not bluffing about getting him out.

“Say I know where to find such a thing. How would this trade work?”

Dibbe specifies, “I can’t get you out this second, it will be a couple of days. I expect the information the second you are freed and safe. Not before, not after. Literally outside whatever escape hatch we find ourselves outside of. After that, you go your own way.”

She grins a toothy grin, her maw vaguely intimidating to the man in lower-lighted conditions. To wit, he wouldn’t be able to discern any fangs from the usual shark-like set of teeth that her kind usually have to begin with. She soon adds;

“And if I don’t find what I’m looking for, remember that I still have some of your books. I know where all the holes you hid in still are. I have connections with mages, and I can find myself in many places very quickly. Lying to me will not be great for your lifespan, and a few Dagon cultist buddies won’t deter or scare me.”

He could tell this was not an idle threat. Her armor was custom made, this was no mere disguise. This Argonian was connected and wealthy, and he weighed the risks. To him, it might be easier to make sure she found what she was looking for rather than compound his problems further. One problem at a time, he was more certainly thinking.

“Fine,” he accepted the deal. “I know where you can retrieve an unspoiled sigil stone.”

Dibbe claps her hands, “Just the words I wanted to hear! I will return in a couple of days. I already have a small crew scouting this place, picking out its weaknesses.” She began to make her way out.

Bernard just waved his hands towards her in surrender. His options were slim to begin with, and here came a lifeline.

Dibbe was true to her word, but with complications. She actually had to arrange for him to be transferred to a less secure prison, which was not easy. It required a veiled threat to one Warden and a bribe to another. It took several extra days but Dibbe was able to keep Bernard informed of said complications, never demanding the intel before her part of the deal was kept.

Eventually she was able to arrange a prisoner transfer, where in a mocked bandit raid took place, scattered the guards in a nonlethal manner and sequestered the lord in a cave. Finally free, he wrote down on a piece of parchment and silently handed it to her. She gave it a look, nodded, and tossed the piece of parchment into a campfire, to his approval.

“We part ways then, thief.”

“Come now, Lord. Aren’t we friends by now?” Dibbe asked, chuckling.

He simply scoffed. They had some idle banter before he was fed and clothed, and then made his way into the wilderness. Dibbe waved him off, a big grin on her face.

After an hour or so, two of her associates crawled into the refuge. An orange-tinted Khajiit, clothed in dark leathers. Her scout, Sajadar. A longtime friend, and Dibbe’s most trusted infiltrator. The second, to contrast Dib’s own white scales, was Sleeps-Under-Skies, a tar-scaled Shadowscale, a survivalist and dressed in very little to accentuate that fact.

Sleeps spoke first, “And now?”

Dibbe casually packed up her things, nonchalantly stating, “Follow him for a week, then send him to the void.”

[zydrateacademy]

Thieves Guild Summary (4/17/24)

Event Summary!

Dibbe, with a lead regarding a hefty safe being transported to Daggerfall, arranges for her fellow thieves to intercept it. The intel that Lord Bernard Auberon was out to Summerset, wheeling and dealing. She did not know much more than that.

Sending a raven to an old acquaintance, a professional lockpicker named Silent-Reed, she was then joined by the local Guildmaster Garrett, Cyprian, Trili, and Pibiha.

Getting in was a simple affair. It took some effort to navigate the Lord’s collection. The vault door to the basement required a specialized key. Upstairs,a nordic door held them back for several minutes until Silent-Reed discovered the puzzle, to which Garrett accidentally solved the second half.

It took a darker turn as they were met with strange technology of obscured origins, a torture rack that was cleaned and transported up to the master’s quarters. A table full of books, golden artifacts, other strangeness. Pibiha raided the master bedroom, locating a subtle alcove from beneath the bed that soon revealed the key to the vault.

After the group finished raiding the upstairs, they headed towards their true bounty.

Silent-Reed took it upon himself to unlock the vault and the entire group was met with a fairly grisly sight. The basement was retrofitted to be a shrine to Mehrunes Dagon, the lord of Change himself. There were torture tables and signs of dismemberment, as well as a crematorium with burned corpses looking to escape, left right where they lay.

All things seemed safe, for a while. The group looted as quickly as they could, with Cyprian wisely warning them not to toil with the belongings of a Daedric lord and cultist. He remained at the stairwell, looking upon his comrades in both disdain and concern in equal measure.

Silent-Reed lived up to his boast of being the best lock picker on both sides of Tamriel, though it was a difficult safe to crack, it all came naturally to him as he could feel the beat of the metal and got it open in ample time.

Just in time for a portal to open on the shrine. Unclear if it was their own meddling, their presence, or if they were just sent there to retrieve the corpses and souls of those slain within the premises, the Thieves Guild found themselves in combat with two scamps and a bloodied Hound of Oblivion.

Cyprian quickly closed the portal to prevent reinforcements. The group made short work of the scamps, but the Hound proved to be an incredibly dangerous foe. It bled Cyprian by mauling his thigh, taking him out of the fight in short order. Trili was also severely wounded late in the fight. The others met it in melee, with Garrett and Dibbe fruitlessly plugging arrows at it only to see it bounce harmlessly against its armor, or the arrows would connect to flesh and yet still do the creature no harm.

Finally, Pibiha finished the creature, crushing its head with a massive swing of her hammer. Wounds were quickly tended to and the thieves dashed out of the unholy shrine with haste. Cyprian demanded his rest and broke away from the team, while the rest counted their earnings (after Dib apologized profusely).

Some trinkets and tantos were kept by a couple of the thieves involved, and the Guildmaster was too exhausted to debate for the usual system of making sure -everything- is fenced off with the proceeds being split among the thieves. Thus, allocation of booty went differently.

Silent-Reed was offered a place in the guild, but he opted to remain independent.

The earnings were thus.

A Dai-Curse Tanto. Designed to mark those who are wounded by it, a Dremora from a daedric plane would know the location of the one struck. Dib was the one to identify it, not disclosing how exactly she’s familiar. She specified that dremora are intelligent, sentient beings so what they could do with the information of one’s constant location could vary between death, to annoyance and inconvenience. The Guildmaster in his wisdom dubbed the threat too great and ordered it to be vaulted under lock and key. Pibiha mentioned her employer would know a worthy target of such a curse, but nobody debated that such a blade remain out of anyone’s hands. Dib specified that for a rainy day, if the Guild comes under hard times, it would fetch a price exceeding five digits, even six to the right person.

There were then three rings. Two were atronach summonings, a storm and flame. Permanent summonings unless slain or ordered to dissipate, and the rings would need recharging. Silent-Reed took the Ring of Flame Atronach for his payment for the evening, undoubtedly striking a decent price on the enchanter’s market.

The third and most powerful (and most expensive), was a Ring of Regeneration. When worn, one’s wounds would consistently close and seal.

There were then the Shoes of Bounding. Decently cobbled shoes but otherwise fairly mundane, allows the user to run faster and jump much higher.

Garrett also grabbed himself an ornate Altmeri-made golden vase. Very shiny, not a bad piece to sell off or present on one’s mantlepiece. There was also a clockwork planetary device, undoubtedly the property of Sotha Sil himself.

Among other things.

The rest, under the Illiac Bay Thieves Guild doctrine, is to be fenced away and the earnings passed around to the thieves that worked for it. An undoubtedly decent haul, well earned from an intense battle.

[zydrateacademy]

Fury and Peace.

Deep in the north of Winterhold, a stranger walked into town. The town fell on harder times due to the harshness of its locale, mostly maintaining what they had through trade towards Windhelm. This stranger, garbed in dark, world-worn cloth with armor segments inspired by the akaviri blades. Three blades adorned her ornaments in the Tsaeci style. Her scales, a vibrant red, typically betrayed by her tired tail dragging along the snow as her wide-brimmed hat obscured a large portion of her face except by those shorter than her. The stranger had to see after all, she peered up beyond the veil of the hat, her bespectacled eyes gazed towards the tavern where she made her way without the courtesy of greeting the merchants who spotted her.

The patrons of said tavern were few. The bartender was doing idle cleaning work, tending to the clearly nord-preferred clientele though there was the odd Breton, shivering and shuddering in the corner as he tended to his cups. The stranger made her way in that direction, catching the eye of the patrons. Their gaze held for a few too many moments, as Marshborn don’t typically enjoy themselves in the frozen north. She paid them hardly any mind, and set herself next to the breton, much to his confusion. He narrowed his eyes at her, challenging her choice.

“...There’s an entire bar of seats, lizard. Find another.”

The stranger grinned, looking up at him with her barred teeth. She revealed her orange irises seemed to glow in the dimly lit conditions, “But you are the one I am most interested in.” The breton leaped from his chair, screaming towards all the other patrons, “Assassin! Assassin! Help me!” As the man had nowhere to run, he was sure to die freezing if he fled the town properly, he tried to use the others as cover.

Being the most exciting thing to happen here in weeks, the Nords stood up to challenge the two. The red stranger lifted her hands up, “No assassin here, fine northern gentlesirs and ladies. A hunter all the same, a rectifier of failed justice.”

Her claim wasn’t good enough. To some civilians, be they bounty hunters, vigilantes, or assassins, anyone to a tight knit community with the thought of violence in their heart is surely to be met with it in kind. The Nords located some improvised weaponry, an already-broken table leg here, a cleaver there.

The stranger sighed. Repeating to herself under muttered yet still audible breath; “Fury and peace. Fury and peace.”

A single brave Nord wanting to put his muscles to use charged at her, but in a single swift step she grappled his swinging arm, elbow to elbow and tightened her grip. After a single second of stunned silence, she forcefully extended her arm to bend against his, snapping it to the bone. As everyone’s eyes widened, the tavern fell silent as the Nord screamed, deep puddles of blood dripping from his arm onto the wooden floor. He went for a frenzied left hook, but not being his dominant arm the stranger easily parried it with a flat palm, using her free hand to strike him in the throat, leaving him collapsed on the floor and choking to recover his lost ability to breathe.

“Peace,” she uttered to the crowd.

Naturally his kin were not too keen on this, and three more went against the stranger. However they were not well acquainted and thus uncoordinated. Using this to her advantage, the stranger weaved around their swings easily, concentrating several swift strikes against the pressure points in their arms and ribs. At a certain point she was forced to draw one of her shorter Akaviri blades, seeking to down the greater foes that tower over her by a foot or so. There was one woman among them, a beast of a creature trying to bring down a mallet on her. Once it missed, crushing the floorboards below, the stranger struck her blade through both of the warrior’s outstretched arms, and then twisted the blade. 

While the warrior cried out various Nord curses, the stranger once again uttered; “Peace.” Two fighters remained still. Still they tried to crush her with blunt weapons, which she would deflect the weight of. At one point she was able to take advantage of their frenzy, and redirected the weight of one man’s swing into the other’s jaw, effectively harming themselves in their stupor. They slowly backed her into a wall but managed to duck a swing, and one of the men broke his hand against the wall.

Taking advantage of the two wounded opponents, she jabbed her blade through one of their feet, pinning them down. A series of rapid maneuvers from her own fists left them both on their knees in proximity, to which she grabbed them both by their opposing ears and bashed their heads against each other. Then she did so a second time. Then a third, and she kept doing so until she heard bone break. 

The two warriors barely held enough energy to moan out their pain, and she leaned down towards them both to utter once again; “Peace.” She let them fall where they were.

The Breton remained terrified. He spewed excuses at her, but she grabbed him by the throat to silence him. She forced him to his knees, placed the tip of her blade against the man’s lips, piercing them and drawing blood. Again he attempted to cry through her grip, begging and offering what little the criminal had left to his name.

She shoved the blade down his throat, into his stomach. Making sure not to sever her spinal cord brain stem, so the man felt several of his organs bleeding and failing in his last moments.

As he struggled, she uttered just one word to him.

“Fury.

[zydrateacademy]

Current Activities in ESO #6

Had to dig for this one. Like Warframe, my last ESO related post was way back in 2014.

My #2 post states my own brother dropped 95$ on the game. 2014 was before I ever ever employed. Jesus.

The origins of Dibbe are revealed. I do remember her still being a dark elf, I still have a screenshot of her as a level 46 being stuck in Coldharbor which eventually drew me away from the game for years after. (I didn't know the guy I had to talk to was just hanging out in the Fighter's Guild there). I've had a pale argonian before on previous games but they were named differently.

Ancient Dibbe. She's hideous!

My number 5 post basically precedes me quitting the game. Couldn't find my #1 or #4 post.

All of that long before the One Tamriel update. Came back to the game some time ago and all of my problems are basically gone. Leveling still feels just a tad sluggish. 3-10 are usually pretty easy but up into the 40's feels like a slog. Generally one of my better methods is counter to what I usually do on MMO's and I level up as a tank or healer for quicker dungeon queues and just bank on that chunk of experience at the end of them.

After becoming unemployed again I will say that my lack of the craftbag drew me away from the game for a long time. However I've developed something of a system regarding that. I am still painfully selling off some of the harder-to-get materials like runes, but I'm collecting stacks of the more common stuff in my bank. Presumeably to be sold on a guild trader at a later occasion. That way I can still dismantle stuff and it will have a purpose later.

My gaming loop has mostly revolved around collecting decent sets for my various alts. I'm not good at making gold passively, mostly just selling motifs that I get randomly. I keep being told that writs are the moneymaker but that's only a few grand at a time. I wonder if they refer to those master writ you get as rewards sometimes because those typically sell well if you're lucky to get the ones that reward a lot of vouchers. But those aren't guaranteed either.

Dib, my main, is on the cusp of crafting mastery so generally she can craft a couple of decent sets for fresh alts but crafting sets are usually for the beginning. Overland and dungeon sets tend to be improved, so part of my gaming loop is the slow grind of transmutation stones so I can make shit there as well. However a big hurdle there now is without my subscription, I'm now locked out of 80% of the DLC dungeons. I have a few, but I thought dungeons came with the zones that they were released with. I was incorrect. Turns out, ESO content is released quarterly. So I've bought a few zones (I'm missing the Reach which makes me sad because I love that zone and Murkmire, which I don't have much of an opinion on but now I can't make the grave-stake set which I've had fun with in the past).

And I certainly need to keep playing the game because if I run out of gold, it usually means I can't outfit my characters! Transmogging doesn't cost much but still. Gold doesn't make itself.

And then I spend my nights roleplaying. I feel the cusp of a sort of golden age of roleplay for me personally, especially regarding my main girl Dib. I've recently developed a "radiant" quest system. Around 8 of my houses are decorated and can be used for various stealth activities. For most of them (I lose out on decor slots without a sub) I can place a variety of those Precursor dummies, little bland robots that can act as like DnD figurines to represent npc's and enemies (not to mention a few houseguests, I can have up to like 15 npc placements if the decor slots allow). I've put this in practice twice now with a few different people and it's really fun. For the smaller homes it also doesn't even take very long, so it can be used for a thief-to-thief RP meet and greet.

I joined the OG <The Thieves Guild>, a player has owned that tag since 2016 but they're recently staging a revival. It still has a pretty small core right now, about four to five of the same faces have attended the last few events.

I generally, absolutely, detest tavern RP as a general rule but I will resort to it when I'm bored or want to watch a podcast or streamer on the side. However a few nights ago a marshland tavern was opened up in Blackwood, where Dib got to meet a lot of her own kind for once.

As an aside: Not that Argonians don't frequent the current RP hub in Evermore, but I spend most of my time in Evermore wallflowering with nobody deeming my character interesting enough to approach. That or the fact that they're all usually up their own asses to greet newcomers. I had Dib try to contribute to a "never have I ever" and she was never directly replied to once. It felt like four people had me on ignore for no reason.

But in Blackwood, everything felt pretty organic. I dressed Dib down from her usual shady attire from this;

To the more approachable this;

So either she was more approachable or the energy of the room let to my own Dib having more incentive to interact. A friend even came along and instead of being attached to the hip we would interact, break off to mingle, swing back to each other, and break off again. Like a real party! There was one particular player whom I didn't know very well who seemed to attach herself to Dib's side but it didn't detract too much. It was a great night. Dib is pretty sure she almost got jumped by a couple of Khajiit because she openly purchased a tome of daedric lore right there in the open. She detracted an imperial priest's claim that she is so clearly a shady sneaker.

"...Charming."

I've posted that around in some discords I'm in but I can't help it. I almost died laughing at my computer. I'm even unclear if he bought it or not but she cut real close about openly admitting daedra worship (she's a Nocturnal simp) but I feel like she managed to pull way from it.

While unemployed I'm generally making an effort to pop in relevant RP events I see scheduled in the various discords I'm in. And I do say relevant. I almost attended a pet show, I wanted to bring a small guar that Dibbe named "Lump" and would emote the fact that there was nothing special about it and that she likely just picked it out of a field somewhere. "This is lump he's wonderful" (this Guar isn't special at all). I decided to go for some other open RP in someone's household. I acquired secondhand knowledge that there was no "show" to begin with. People just brought along pets and everyone just walked around to talk about them. Would still have been funny to have Dibbe and Lump just hanging out in the corner somewhere.

Anyway I've been working on this post for an hour with Dib waiting for me in the background to do a Jester Festival quest.

[zydrateacademy]

This reminds me of something I've been thinking lately, specifically about "simp" culture. All these tiktok bunnies and borderline softcore porn twitches that are just swimming in cash and donations and I'm just like... What do these donators really expect? I want to meet each and every single one of them and just yell "BRO SHE'S NOT GOING TO FUCK YOU". You are numbers to them. A charge on her bank account. Numbers. You are nothing.

Oh gawd every time you think it's over it gers BETTER

🙌🏻 🙌🏻 🙌🏻 🙌🏻

[zydrateacademy]

did i ever post this here

[zydrateacademy]

[zydrateacademy]

Just joined the discord. A couple of people got my username reference immediately. That's always fun.

[zydrateacademy]

RIP Rooster Teeth

I had some exposure to Red Versus Blue back when I was in high school. Mostly the first season with my friend, who lived above me in the apartment after the divorce. We gamed together, he and his mother fed me when my jackass father tried putting me on the same diet craze he was on (a 40 year old fat man and a 15 year old skinny child probably shouldn't be on the same diet). We played Halo, watched the first season of Red Versus Blue as it was coming out, had our laughs, played more Halo.

RT dropped off my radar for a while there, I was too young to really care that there was a company behind it. I thought it was just a cute little thing some Halo fans were doing (which is... true, I just didn't know that there was a company).

Came back to my Radar when Youtube Let's Plays were starting to get popular. I had heard of this "Minecraft" thing and even to this day I only have a few handful of hours played on it because I could never find a gaming group to play consistently with me. So instead I had to live vicariously through Achievement Hunter. I didn't quite latch onto them immediately, but it was pretty damn early in that series lifespan. I think I discovered them by episode 30 or so, and then swung back to 'catch up' and I followed Achievement Hunter since. In those early videos they rarely showed their faces so it was hard to match voices to names. I was there when they started showing up on camera more often with their news shows or various things like "Go!" where they pick some random odd challenge and all the Hunters got to choose which game to accomplish that goal on. Great stuff. In some way I do feel like I grew up with them.

I know people toss the term "parasocial" around a lot. I have no illusions, I know these people don't know I exist. They're not my friends. But that didn't stop them from being around when I was young enough for them to become an influence to my own sense of humor and comedy. They're the reason cussing doesn't bother me. I was raised by an overbearing father where a single toe out of line gets you grounded for two weeks, making sure I remained in my room was his go-to punishment so I languished in boredom for a good portion of my teen years.

They don't know me, but I grew up with them all the same.

I don't know what the turning point was. All I can offer is "a few years ago". Possibly even just before their acquisition from some entertainment company, or it could have been right on that line. The crew started to splinter away. Ray left, whom I think played against others much better than he does in his solo twitch career. Gavin is a pretty big deal in the film industry, being a sort of go-to guy that people know have one of the best Slow-Motion cameras on demand. In that industry a lot of tech is rented rather than bought and many of them can just go "Oh hey I know a guy". A couple more break off and are replaced with the likes of Jeremy, whom I adore and I follow Jeremy Dooley's youtube to this day. He plays often with the ChilledChaos crew which brings that "buddies playing games together" vibe that I crave.

But something else happened. I called it the "tik-tok-ification of content". I remember at some point on Michael Jones's Off Topic Podcast, Trevor (who managed AH) came on to say that videos were going to start looking different. More "tightly edited". Oh no. This was the era that even Jack started splintering off to lean more into their gaming news shows and other projects. I watched as the original six became the original two. Jeremy left during the pandemic, choosing to remain at his original home.

I don't know who BlackCrystal, Ky, or Joe are. BlackCrystal was mostly fine but never morphed into the comedy sense of AH. Ky irritated the hell out of me, I don't know who she is but she had this "tiktoker reactionary let's player" vibe to her, almost constantly screaming as a reaction to every little thing. She'd turn a corner in Gmod and scream because a guy had a gun. It's a gun game. There's guns in it. Stop screaming.

Matt never gel'd with me. I found the sad sack persona and the whole meme of shitting on him because of said sad sack persona I found very tiresome pretty much immediately. I'm a bully victim in real life. If he could take it more power to him but I'm not sure I could handle being "focused down" like he was. Alfredo was funny as well, I enjoyed his dynamics with Jeremy. Then of course there was that situation with that other guy...

I had never seen Joe before but all of the sudden on an Off Topic they welcome him to the AH family and I had absolutely no idea who this was. It's like the media trope of a character showing up on the next season of a show and everyone just acts like they were always there. Or that trope where a main character suddenly has a sister or brother that was never mentioned before and then the following episodes bend over backwards to force a full arc on this new character so viewers can be forced to like them. "They're here to stay, fuckers!" These shows and movies would cry out. But you rushed it. They just... showed up.

I basically haven't watched a single AH video with Joe in it. I'm sure he's a nice guy, he's probably very funny to some people. His presence just marked a "where the hell did everyone else go?" So... I more or less stopped watching most AH content a couple years ago. I waited and waited for them to get their groove back.

Then AH shut down and they gravitated towards some painfully unfunny skit show they called Dogbark. They shifted away from the 100k views (which is far under their heyday to begin with) and their Dogbark videos struggle to eke past 10k.

In that time I've attached myself to other communities. The likes of Critical Role, which also has that 'just a bunch of friends playing a game together' vibe. And even that won't last forever. Campaign 3 is a bit of a slog, I hope they can muster up enough energy to try for a 4th but after that they might get too exhausted and want to move onto other projects.

ChilledChaos and Jeremy Dooley cut close, most of their videos are with a group of gamers but they're all single perspective. AH had that unique rotation of perspectives that always added to the humor. Yet as some people say, that's been the shift in Youtube content. Single perspective streamers. I'm not sure why that shift happened. I saw Alanah Pearce (previously of Funhaus) say in a video that that's just become the preference. I don't understand why. I can never just sit through these four to six hour streams in a single go. Even CR episodes take me two or three days to chew through. Just one person sitting in a chair often failing to keep the energy up as they mumble through loading screens and reading dialog. I'm not having fun. I don't know why that's the direction everyone is going.

I try to watch Smosh but some of their senses of humor isn't clicking for me, partially due to the tiktokification of content. I find Shayne Topp to be fucking hilarious but he's the only one who makes jokes I actually laugh at. The rest of it they get barely neutral amusement.

It's sad and it sucks to see RT go down like this because the void of competition hasn't filled that void. And it hasn't for a while, and I was just kind of holding out. I guess I'll just have to see what Michael does next, I'll follow him on any platform I care about. I'm just not sure that even he is really 'in it' anymore.

[zydrateacademy]

Hope this makes it into Discord's gif searcher sometime.

i simply had to gif this

[zydrateacademy]

Review - Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector

What an amazing experience this game is.

I've had it wishlisted probably since it showed up but there it fell under my radar since its release. It may or may not have caught some sales in that time but again it went unnoticed and what an absolute crime that is. Released in 2021, it recently just came out with the T'au army which put the rest of the game and its various army packs on sale to an agreeable level, and putting it back on my radar.

Many Warhammer games usually nail the aesthetic, themes, diction, and storylines but very few capture the actual feel of playing on tabletop. There was Dawn of War which depicted swaths of armies cutting across the landscape but it was all in real time, the only methodology there was making sure your travelling teams had all the right counters to vehicles and infantry and after that you basically just let it go.

What we have here is a unique XCOM-like that may very well be the closest many of us will get to playing the actual tabletop game. We have a campaign (just one; following a Blood Raven chapter of the space marines) and two extra modes. Demonic Invasion is a wave based king of the hill type thing where you hold off for as long as you can as every round will continually spit the chaos god's minions at you. There's Planetary Supremacy, which is a sort of Catan/Risk style hex board that players of Dark Crusade or Soulstorm may be familiar with. It's the mode most of my hours have been played on. My only wish is that it could go for just a bit longer, maybe a bigger map, more enemies fighting each other, better node control.

In extension, there's also custom campaigns players can build as well as skirmishes for you to play against AI or other players. As of this writing there is no Co-op and that's quite a shame.

So there's a lot to do here. Some of the more mixed reviews, especially targetting the new armies, are complaining that there's not a super special story campaign for each and every single one of them. That is frankly not so much a problem for me, as I immediately gravitated towards the hex board game mode and just enjoyed having my hands on the Necron for the first time in many years. Now in HD with reflections! My dead bois are beautiful!

There's plenty to learn as well. Even on the easiest difficulties, the AI can route you. My Necron have units called Warriors, basically the equivalent to shotgunners. They also have the slowest movement of my army so it's difficult to get them into position and keep my general army momentum going. Sometimes they fall behind and I lack the much needed damage against enemy swarm units, and I've lost some good troops because I didn't have enough people shooting back. It's how I nearly lost against the Tyranids one game despite outnumbering them by 500 army points. Tactics very much matter here.

There's also a photo mode which is a bit fickle. The camera is locked at certain height over the floor tile so it's difficult to get sweeping, heroic visions of your armies from foot-level. You're more or less stuck staring at them from head-on. It's fun to play around with, though.

So while there is a campaign (just the one), this game could be treated more like a sandbox than anything else. I'm told from the game's discord they plan on releasing free units over the coming months. This is good, because that's one of my chief complaints about the game. There's a significant lack of versatile units to play with. Each faction gets around a dozen to fifteen to allocate with your army point cap (another staple of Tabletop that most games don't quite capture), with Khorne getting the shortest end of the stick (and the cheapest DLC) whom only have eight units to choose from. There's a significant lack of Kroot and vehicles here, and foot troops seem to be a choice between three different things. There's a lot more than that on tabletop.

Not that I expect this to be the tabletop simulator but it cuts real damn close. Closer than most games in this franchise. A must have if you like turn-based XCOM-likes.

[zydrateacademy]

Current Activities in Gaming #230

Since my last Starfield post I discovered a handful of mods that really "make" a character. I believe I had already spiked Contraband prices. That 13k might look good but once you get it to a vendor that quickly turns into 3k which isn't much more than guns and spacesuits you can sell without having to avoid ship scans.

But there's two mods that allow you to harvest organs. One is called "Recycle Scum", wherein based on your Medicine/Zoology skills you can harvest corpses for the "Harvested Organs" contraband. Pretty dark, but another one came along that made it even darker. Called "chopshop". Every npc you kill comes with a 40 pound "corpse" item which themselves can be converted into contraband. I then made the above character, nicknamed "The Bloody Butcher". I also downgraded my contraband prices from 5x to 3x, because I was just drowning in organs after a certain point.

As dark as it is I'm enjoying playing the game in an entirely different way. Often having to balance my greed with my carry weight. Once you go over encumbrance, the slightest little jog will completely tank your oxygen and you'll be unable to sprint and start losing health. The Personal Atmosphere ability cancels this out... except for the fact that I am sometimes full of corpses before entering an enemy base. So I'm constantly juggling Personal Atmosphere with Reactive Shield to reduce incoming damage. I basically have to time my engagements with one or the other, and it's pretty awesome.

This is very likely the reason I haven't entered a 'cooldown' period with Starfield yet. Every time I consider taking a break a mod comes along that makes me think "Oh I need to hit Unity and start a playthrough to utilize this".

I've also spent a bit more time with ship building and I've become a bit more savvy with it. I've learned I can CTRL+Click things to target multiple items, which even works with the duplication hotkey and coloring. I've figured out cockpits have a different "entry" point so you can't just slap them all on the top of the ship, you need to figure out where its backdoor is. I've also learned why I have so much trouble with docker modules, basically no other item can go past it, even a weapon mount. I guess because it would clip with the ship you're docking with. That was always the problem I ran into with that, and figured out that the extra weapon mounts I was placing was interrupting my ship's ability to dock.

I still have more plans for ship building as well which certainly keeps me playing, because I don't just want to look at it and go "ah, pretty"... I want to put it to use.

I forget if I've mentioned this within my last couple of posts but I really like space combat and traversal... except with how shallow it is. Once you're done with an encounter it's done. Major space battles only happen a couple of times. The end of the Crimson Fleet is one, and there's a side quest helping a cabal of farmers fight off various teams of spacers though even that one is just a 3v1. Most space combat fights only take a few seconds and I'm REALLY holding out for the Creation Kit to let modders beef up enemy health values, or have enemy ships level alongside me. There's already mods like that for on-foot enemies, but not for ships. I think it's because people can't really edit any vanilla ship modules right now, just add onto what's there. I also wouldn't mind some level of damage scaling. I run around with a 4,000 shield module and rarely lose half of it.

Space combat was intense and exciting at first. You got the Frontier, worst ship in the game, and it sort of teaches you like "Okay, what are you lacking, upgrade that, add a new cannon here..." But like me if you've played for a couple hundred hours you can pretty much go to a ship technician right out the gate and just throw a few things on it to make half the game's space combats trivial. (Combination of a better shield and those Vanguard autocannons).

I'm enjoying the game but I am also slowly running out of content. A lot of what I'm doing is prepwork for my eventual "alright let's do all the side quests" run. Not quite there yet.

[zydrateacademy]

I did a thing!

[zydrateacademy]

Current Activities in Gaming #229

So the Crimson Fleet in Starfield is actually very well worth doing on most playthroughs assuming you're not trying to burn through another run at Unity (main story skip or not). It rewards a whopping quarter-mil, regardless of what side you choose and near the corpse of an old pirate lord is a legendary named Magshear. Now legendary effects in this game seem to be fairly random across the board (not sure if that's an effect of mods or not), the first time I got it, it had a double clip. So 150 bullets on a Magshear is huge. An absolute beast of a weapon.

I want to try the Fleet again but as an actual criminal and I'm curious about how pissed the companions get. Or just make sure everyone is off my ship and goes home before doing that questline in its entirety.

The interesting thing I found about the Fleet is that it's basically significantly better at stealth design than Ryujin is. I know big games like this have a multitude of teams, so it's very clear there were different teams. In the Fleet, you have to literally wear disguises or you'll be stopped by NPCs. Multiple missions have you duck and weave, generally without even overtly going stealth mode, like you don't have to crouch around and stuff. But more like you just need to do the mission "correctly" and you undergo multiple full blown heists. An early one has you steal some kind of award trophy, in front of an NPC sitting at a chair. But if you dive behind her, pickpocket the key, you can open the door without her making a fuss. Like an actual stealth game. It... is a bit odd how she can basically just watch you pilfer that entire room. Glass wall and all. I think it is marked as stolen, the whole room, but not trespassing. So you do need to sneak but not like, the entire time.

I enjoyed it.

I also did the Rangers and I had an impression that it was YET ANOTHER "no-kill" ruleset but man they didn't give a FUCK. Right away I blast some mercenaries trying to take someone's farm and no shits were given. At the very end of the questline, turns out some very highly ranked asshole arranged the whole thing. It was either take his 20k offer (50k if you have the Negotiation perk) or fight. I was doing an ethical run at first so I refused and it led to combat, killed the guy, and was later congratulated for it. This is long after the Marshal told me to toe the line and be careful when speaking to him. There's even a moment late in the questline where you have a sit-down and they basically review all your actions up to that point. I was playing it pretty aggressively, blasting my way through mercs, and was extolled for it.

I'm not sure where that impression I had came from. But once again as long as you're not a braindead murderhobo and only shoot when you need to (even if you initiate [Attack] dialogs), you come out of that questline pretty clean.

For the Fleet, I know the commander has some words for you if you go in those missions and start blasting but if you end up betraying them anyway then who cares. I'm gonna try it on my current playthrough.

Not saying my current playthrough is my "last", but I will be holding off on Unity for a while. Got a bunch of mining outposts set up, will do a couple of the questlines off-camera and will eventually record for my Youtube... all the various side quests and odd jobs that pop up just by travelling around. Often NPC's you are sprinting by will mention "hey this guy's looking for some work" and a side quest or activity will pop up in your log. So that will be the subject of my later episodes.

I might not have much left to say after that point.

I'm visiting the nexus every day, because I'm always picking up Quality of Life stuff. I keep my eyes out for weapons and armor, which this game sorely needs to let loose in the coming modding tools. So much that's available is just reskins and recolors. A lot of replacers too. I don't want to replace all that much, I want to add onto what's there.

But at 140 hours I'm not in "cooldown" mode quite yet because there's still a bunch of side stuff I want to experience. But I'm getting there.

[zydrateacademy]

I quite enjoy FO4 myself.

[zydrateacademy]

Current Activities in Gaming #228

So there is in fact an extra enemies mod for Starfield, and the game's much harder. I haven't even bothered playing on "very hard" yet, just "hard". With leveled enemies and such, the game has some actual level of challenge now. I just got really tired of seeing level 5's and 10's. I don't feel like a pro stealth sniper at all when I can basically sneeze on most enemies without a problem. Stealth sniping is still kind of viable but mostly in the outdoor sections of encounters. Enemies will impotently fire in my general direction but if I'm far enough away they have trouble actually finding me. Interiors are much more difficult, but I imagine once I drop having a follower and utilizing void form more I can lose them as well.

Ultimately, I've barely died in this game at all until installing that mod and I'm okay with this. I have to actually rethink certain encounters and hallways and that's exciting.

Now my FO4 game I made super hard but I also had a modern firearms mod which has pretty crazy damage scaling. Enemies can kill me quickly but I can kill them just as fast. It's different in Starfield while I'm still dealing with vanilla weaponry, enemies are semi-spongey (I can usually 2-3 tap basic enemies but boss/veteran enemies with multiple health bars take a while to deal with) so enemies can kill me quickly but I can't in turn do the same to them. So now I'm outnumbered and outdamage'd, but again it just forces me to rethink encounters and I'm spamming my starborn abilities a lot more than I did before. Finally putting those essences to use when before I'd be collecting dozens. They're a real resource now.

So, so many of my problems with the game were fixed just by adding more enemies. As I knew it would, and usually does in Bethesda games. Stealth is a lot more fickle as usual but as long as my ranged capabilities stay to par, it's fine.

I also had to get a mod that allowed me to continually craft and upgrade the quality of my guns to keep them competitive. But the values are still fairly vanilla, it's not OP 2-shots-you're-dead like Modern Firearms, but it helps with the scaling issue of enemies staying at my level but my Beowulf being stuck at 200 damage for every NG+. As usual, mods fix everything.

I said in the comments of one of my previous posts that I'd report back to how I feel about Ryujin. I did it again and void form basically makes the more annoying bits of that final quest fairly trivial. I had much less problems and glitches with it the second time around. Seems odd to design a whole faction questline around the powers, which you can technically do before you discover them. I'll have to do a self-imposed challenge some day without void form but the problem is... I've already walked that road. It sucked ass. That said I only used it on the one or two problem spots from before, I still just classically sneaked through most of it, but it's still a bit beyond me how they expect me to do that last stretch to grab that prototype (schematics) without void form because there's shit all over that room and some of the guards don't patrol. I know we're supposed to use manipulation but that only works half the time because the interfacing with it is super fucky.

Interestingly I've discovered something else. I bought it a while back before I had computer upgrades because I just wanted it available, but was worried. Most screenshots make the game look like dogshit, but none of them really did it justice. There's weather conditions that can mute the colors but most towns and areas have their own palette, so it's not a homogeneous blur of grey and white as you play. I found places like Neon and Gregarin(sp?) to be fairly vibrant in its own right, while New Atlantis can seem a bit muted in comparison. Overall it's not too terrible looking game as you play it, but looking at static screenshots could give that impression.

Currently my main save file is on her +3. First was the normal, second playthrough I was making some different choices while recording it for youtube. Third was the speedrun MQ skip to see what it was like and how much exactly it skips. Turns out Sarah will literally just hand you like half of the artifacts (like seven of them or so, in truth) after a certain point because you just tell Constellation where they are. I had her as a follower even and she just had them on hand which was pretty funny. You have to gather the first five yourself but as one quest, not as a chain. Anyway the whole MQ can be done in about an hour, not counting the temple runaround for power upgrades and I also didn't do much prepwork. Basically ran around with a decent semi-auto Kodama I picked up from Constellation's basement and burned through it.

My current "fourth" playthrough is my "whatever I feel like doing". I have spent many many hours just doing surveying and was almost getting ASMR tingles from it. I say in my youtube recording that planet surveying is very much a "mood" thing and not something you should really go out and do on purpose, just something to vibe with. That said it can be fairly decent early-game experience or something to go do to eke out an extra level or two if you feel like you absolutely need something before you can progress. I understand how and why people might find it boring, but nothing about it is required.

I might honestly do a lot of surveying on a total new game, which I might have to do once mod tools come out and everything gets updated to a proper structure. I fear I might also have to reinstall and just burn-delete everything I have right now. But it's fine because I know the flow of the game better, now.

One point of order though, I've done both Ryujin and UC multiple times and it seems the factions aren't terribly rewarding on their own. Ryujin only gives this decent stealth outfit that gives 25% to your stealth which is decent, but you lose everything in Unity so everything factions reward is temporary. UC pays fairly well but their best reward comes from their very first quest. Complete it and you get access to one of the best ballistic ship weapons in the game. I don't know what else they give other than decent chunks of credits every now and then.

At some point soonish I'll actually try out the Crimson Fleet and Freestar Rangers. Gonna go google their rewards.

[zydrateacademy]

Gaming #227 Addendum

They're still right on a few things. But my problem, even on other games, was my stuff was getting bottlenecked. I had an 8 year old computer. So I upgraded from an i5 processor to an i7, had to get a completely newer, this-generation motherboard, and with that motherboard I had to get 32gb of RAM over my old 16gb (which was more than enough for most purposes) because my old stuff wouldn't fit into my new stuff. I still have my 1080 graphics card from YEARS ago and it's still chugging along fine even though a 3050 or 60 was recommended to be my next step.

However, I'm still in the camp that you can't just tell thousands of people "just get a new computer, lol" because for some that's not as economically viable. It took me about four months to save up 1000, could have been less but I ran into expenses. As one does. And 400 of that was extra from my vacation time/bonuses.

There's still plenty of other complaints that are valid. While I have found a decent gameplay loop that I generally enjoy; So far the faction quests are shallow, I have no real interest in ever doing the Freestar Collective because apparently they ALSO have a no-kill policy (jesus game let me shoot dudes) so I can't imagine having to do some of these quests ad infinium just to see the occasional extra dialog choice.