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Sharing, post-game grinding stuff for Etrian Odyssey Nexus. I made Farmer-Ronin to spam Helmsplitter on the Hexgourd in Illusory Forest. I haven’t tested it properly yet but it takes about three minutes to get someone from level 1 to level 99 with these characters as guests. That’s on Expert mode. On a different matter, I had a bit of a trouble while making this. I stupidly switched to Picnic mode, being too excited to see how high I can get my EXP gain, not realizing I wouldn’t be able to switch back. My last save before this was at the very beginning of post-game.

#etrian odyssey nexus #Sekaiju no Meikyuu

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I went to check around here after a long time. I didn’t think much of the new rule that dropped December of 2018 but I learned from this idle visit that I lost two or so posts because of the new rule. I don’t even remember what they were but it bothers me. It’s a mysterious feeling of emptiness that cannot be named. Something was there, and while I don’t know what it was, it should be there. I can speak with such confidence about these posts, that their contents should be mild, safe, and inoffensive, because I think I’ve been a good boy. Silly. One out of my two miiverse screenshot posts has been taken down or hidden. I checked through them again, and I’m guessing it’s either Mordimort’s butt that did it or the half-naked boys in Stella Glow.

#tumblr #deleted posts

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Hugtto! Precure E13

This is one of the best things ever. It’s a relentless barrage of “does not compute” gags. The cute characters just make the experience better... although I am not a fan of Lulu’s ensemble.

Speaking of Lulu Amour and superlatives, she is really bad at posturing as a human. The previous paragraph kinda covers this but I needed to express it. She’s that bad.

#hugtto precure

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No Game No Life Zero

I am in the middle of watching it but I feel confident saying that this was made just to show Sora and Shiro be together as lovers. Frankly, I am fine with reducing the movie like that.

#no game no life

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Hugtto Precure E1

Hana is cute!

Blue girl is cute!

Baby again?! She’s cute too!

Yellow girl just chilling.

Villains remind me of Yes! Precure 5. This time they got pretty people on board.

Blue girl is cute!

This episode is pretty.

What is that ED though? Knowing me and Precure, I know that I’ll warm up to it but wth?

#hugtto precure

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Just sharing the set I use for post-game grinding (can pretty much level one guy up to 99 in one trip with lots of Mana Heal). There’s also a gimmick set with 4 Mercy Blades, more on that later.

This is how I used this: 1) Get three Spirit Brokers with Zombie Powder (Scarlet) and someone with Soul Gather. 2) Spam Zombie Powder on Mounting Horrors 3) Use Fierce Shield and Mana Heal to keep grinding for a long while.

Note that scouted members do not gain XP so the one guy in the party will get everything. That would be 408000xp per Mounting Horrors with Soul Gather and on Basic Mode. (340000xp on Advanced). I believe that would triple if you have DLC.

On Fi, I’ve barely tested her reliability but she doesn’t require Mana Heal and she consistently moves before the enemy. Just hold A and Resuscitate when necessary. Consider her as alternative to Zombie Powder.

#Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth #QR code #Sekaiju no Meikyuu

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As I planned, I’ve defeated the Star Devourer in Advanced difficulty. My previous team couldn’t quite get close to victory though. There are moments where I thought I got the groove of things then suddenly one of the members would just die. To save myself some stress of getting it over it, I scouted some team from Youtube.

I would do it with my own team eventually but I still need to go retire some members and train up the replacements.

#Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth #Sekaiju no Meikyuu

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I’m about 6 hours in and Pokemon Ultra Moon still has to show me what’s so ultra about it. The closest is seeing Poipole for the first time.

I just came out of the Water Trial. The totem Pokemon was a nice surprise but Lana seems boring this time around so it just evens out.

Just to be clear, I liked Pokemon Sun but Alola is probably the worst region to retread. It’s a great place once you get started but the roadblocks are maddening and the Ultra versions might have made them worse.

#pokemon ultra moon

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I reached the end of the game at around the 57th hour. Tonight, I defeated the Star Devourer. My game time passed 123 hours now.

It’s just the Basic mode for now but this is the first time I completed an Etrian Odyssey game. Let me brag a bit.

The MVP for that fight is probably Serge, Saiou, and Saiah (now Yukar and Yuzuk). Aerial Talons is rather reliable for shutting down the troublesome parts and the passive heal really helps.

I picked Shizuku for the card because she can equip the stuff I got.

Strategy:

-debuff, debuff, debuff

-spam Foot Sweep

-bind parts as they come

Goodnight

#etrian odyssey v: beyond the myth #qr code #sekaiju no meikyuu

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Miiverse has died before I finished the pointless exercise of making a better Warlock for getting through the 6th Stratum in Beyond the Myth. I needed another outlet. Well, I’m hoping someone tries it here and have the same rather leisurely experience of getting lost in that maze as I did.

#sekaiju no meikyuu #etrian odyssey v: beyond the myth #qr code

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Kirakira Precure 31

Akira was cool last episode. Ichika is even cooler in this one. I think it boils down to which story I like better and I find Ichika’s to be more powerful and sympathetic.

I also like how this episode shows how everything about Ichika is pretty much shaped by her relationships, particularly with her mom. I doubt that we’ll see more of this side but it’s nice to see that Ichika reconnecting with her mom, whom she look up to as a heroine, rekindled the fire in her own superheroine thing.

#kirakira pretty cure #kkpcalm

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Kirakira Precure E30

Just posting to say that Elisio has been a very effective villain. Julio did well but Elisio doesn’t play around.

I find it really funny that he played with the trial thing in Alice in Wonderland, after saying that he’s “familiar” with the story. I also like how the Kirakira girls initially faced the enemy with Alice costumes on.

#kirakira pretty cure #kkpcalm

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Kirakira Precure E28

This episode is a bit strange, in the way it makes me say “that’s not real”. Of course, that’s a given for a show about teenage girls throwing magic sweets at ugly monsters.

Anyway, this is a Himari episode which is nice, because I like Himari and her story is always strong and clear.

The art this time looks a bit weird but I find it cute.

The battle sequence is pretty special this time. I hope they don’t forget about these combos soon.

It’s important that the giant cake is a failure. I don’t know if the creators intend for the audience to draw meaning out of this event but I like this move.

First, the obvious - it’s an attack to Himari’s confidence which she would later overcome. This is the story.

Second - It’s a way for Ichika to do something nice again. Some people, I think, don’t like that it’s always her, but I like it this way. (aside: I think I just like it when pink cures can fill a supporting role for the other girls... I liked Megumi when she did this for Hime.)

Third - it’s a way to show how these girls react to failure. It’s not like the girls haven’t failed before (I just wish they fail more because of the setting) but this came right after E27.

E29 preview: I’m not a fan of the anime pairing up Yukari and Akira.

#kirakira pretty cure #kkpcalm

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Kirakira Precure E27

Aoi always gets ‘spotlight’ episodes that are better than the usual episodes, yet they never quite resonate with me. Part of the reason is that Aoi’s story is so detached from the rest of the show.

There were two things I found interesting in this episode. The first one is that Elisio did a mind control thing. It’s not exactly special but I had this “oh, they went there” moment. It would be a shame if the creators forget that this happened.

The second one relates to my idea of Ichika’s character. Once again, she unceremoniously said something that she thinks would make a friend feel better, but she failed this time. However, it turns out that little line was a part of the resolution that would come after. At first, II thought Ichika’s expression of Aoi’s identity was grating, the little “this isn’t you; this is what you are”, but I realized that just the part of Ichika who made Aoi the lion.

#kkpcalm #kirakira pretty cure

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Kirakira Precure E25

Once again, Akira is played up as a trope and it's lost much of its appeal. It's not as funny this time around and the pair up is blatant. There's that one scene where I was just clamoring for Akira to add "we're friends". Ship tease is fun when it’s to delude the audience that there is something beyond the guise of another kind of relationship. If the creators intend to go all the way, then the couple should have wonderful chemistry. Frankly, I would pair Yukari with Ichika or Julio before I would with Akira.

All that aside, this might be the best-looking episode in a while... maybe since Bibury’s intro episode.

#kirakira pretty cure #kkpcalm

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Cinderella 3: A Twist in Time is a fun time. The whole is kinda iffy but the moment to moment is really entertaining.

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So I just finished Worm... I’ve seen enough praise for it that I expected to love it but the overlong journey is a bit of a disappointment. I’ve had time to develop my opinion in the course of the story and the problem with it can be summarized by a word--”looseness”. 

I must clarify that I like Worm. I like it enough to finish it and write about it. I even spent a few nights dreaming about it. Its merits lie in its inventiveness and half of its ambition. However, the acting of reading through the series hadn’t been the most pleasant one and I find that a lot of the story does not align with my interest.

-The phrase “a lot of the story” is a good place to start with taking Worm apart. It is too ambitious, too bloated. It spent too much time on things that do not interest me, giving the impression that it was written with the approach of “seeing what sticks”, and what sticks are not always the things that agree with my sensibilities. Note, that I not only opine as a reader but also as a writer. For example, Harbinger’s chapter barely mattered in the story, Foil and Parian still felt like tag-alongs by the end, the new Endbringers did not amount to much, things like these. 

I appreciate the little things that make me go “okay, that’s a thing”, making the world a bit more lived in, which is what a lot of the plotlines in Worm do (Wards’ side, Dragon’s side, Amy’s side, etc.) but it feels off when the most of it is Taylor’s story because it gives the impression that the others are just dangling. 

-Then there is the problem with the prose. Wildbow is certainly more verbose than I am, more confident and all that, but I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying simpler compositions. 

Worm is simply drawn out. Being harsh, I’ve thought of describing a lot of the action scenes as boring play-by-play, the more reflective aspects of it is more tolerable but feel repetitive, and sometimes I doze off thinking that what I just read is meaningless. 

Because it says more than it needs, I sometimes catch it being distracted. The writing shares the problem of being bloated. I would be lost in the action to realize that the narrator themselves lost track of what was happening. A number of characters would step into focus then out and forgotten as if their existence ended just then. There are a number of times that a presence like Shatterbird simply disappears in the battlefield (97% sure this is not me doping out). The first person narration can be an excuse if Taylor doesn’t have a canonical ability to watch over everyone.

-Ambition is a two-way street to greatness and Worm got stuck in the middle of it. It may be just my preference for humbler stories but I really did not like the escalation Worm presents. I think the bank robbery is probably my favorite in the series. It is meaningful, as a first step if nothing else, and it has a strong sense of identity. My suspension of disbelief was also quite healthy then, before it wore out in the consequent events. 

Believability is important in my enjoyment if only to rein in my more cynical mind from tainting that. It eventually cracked and after the Mannequin fight, I’ve come to adopt the idea that the author just does whatever is badass. I like Skitter as a warlord but her thoughts had devolved into “words” and everything just crashed when she quitted. 

add: I forgot to mention that some of this sentiment comes from my observation of the amount of punishment Skitter and her armor endures. 

By the way, Skitter’s rise to notoriety has been the high point of the story and her surrender is the falling action. The first Slaughterhouse Nine arc was a strong group vs group conflict that didn’t quite pan out because of how lengthy it was, how many distractions there were. Of course, what came after had its share of strong moments (I like Weaver’s meeting with the Goblin King, for example) but I think that the story was overstaying at the point. The emotional core had gone loose off the socket.

-I realize that I didn’t really say much about the looseness directly, it might even be the wrong word. If there is one thing I find most fascinating with Worm, it is boldness to move on (besides that one damning revelation at the very last chapter), the chain of cause and effect is taut. However, it caused the author to go through a lot of detours. I don’t know how the writing process goes here, if the detours are planned or if they are solutions to a present problem but they mattered. Most of the time they are small setbacks that add several paragraphs in the story. Then there are complications that either shakes everything (something I would praise) or simply delay further.

The series of events that led Skitter’s first exploit, in castrating Lung, to her membership to the Undersiders, to the escalation of the gang wars, to the Leviathan’s visit, then the Slaughterhouse Nine, is one thing that I cannot take away from Worm. It was a bold move to do something that lasting. I’m not fond of the End of the World thing but I suppose it also counts. The Leviathan’s appearance is the main piece here though because it really changed everything.

The latter complications are the ones that make the story longer, perhaps more suspenseful, without truly adding to the story. These would be the second Mannequin fight, Purity’s rampage, etc.. These are scenes I find undeserving of the focus they received. 

The fact that there are such chapters is odd considering that the author was willing to skip several pages of Taylor’s story. The Chicago Ward’s arc didn’t get as much attention it deserved considering that it was a rather substantial part of the story, and it would have made sense, too, because that was the majority of Taylor’s cape life.

-There should be more but I guess that’s the essentials. Just sharing some hanging thoughts from here: 

Rachel turned out well. I also like Dragon even if I’m not so thrilled about her love story. I want to see more of Tecton and the other Wards. As soon as Taylor developed a crush on Brian, I thought he needed to die to tip her over. Golem is such a waste, he was such a good foil for Weaver. More of Emma would have been nice.

#worm #wildbow