#and i already maxed the areas and completed every world quests

[qiinamii]

races and naps

#words contain two tweets since theyre posted separately!! #this was supposed to be drawn long ago as a first impression to fontaine but time passed way too long #and i already maxed the areas and completed every world quests #but still wanna get the ideas out anyway haha did u know otters sleep holding hands so they dont drift away by the current #qiiarts #xiao #lumine #traveler #paimon #childe #tartaglia #neuvillette #frankly enough i think the otter treasure hunts thing amount to 11 little guys and that number i drew was a complete coincidence #genshin impact #fontaine #just woke up and realized i forgot the twins tag im so sorry bbs #lyney #lynette

[genshin-impact-updates]

"Two Worlds Aflame, the Crimson Night Fades" Version 4.6 Update Details

Dear Travelers,

Below are the details of the Version 4.6 update "Two Worlds Aflame, the Crimson Night Fades" and the update compensation.

〓Compensation Details〓

Maintenance Compensation: Primogems ×300 (60 Primogems per hour the servers are down)

Issue Fix Compensation: Primogems ×300 (please refer to the relevant compensation mail for more details)

〓Scope of Compensation〓

Maintenance Compensation: Travelers who have reached Adventure Rank 5 or above by 2024/04/24 06:00 (UTC+8).

Compensation must be claimed before the end of Version 4.6.

Issue Fix Compensation: Travelers who reach Adventure Rank 5 or above by 2024/04/24 06:00 (UTC+8).

Please log in and claim your compensation before 2024/04/27 06:00 (UTC+8).

Our developers will distribute compensation to Travelers via in-game mail within 5 hours after the update maintenance is finished. The mail will expire after 30 days, so don't forget to claim the attached compensation in time.

〓Update Schedule〓

Update maintenance begins 2024/04/24 06:00 (UTC+8) and is estimated to take 5 hours.

〓How to Update Game Client〓

PC: Close the game, open the Genshin Impact Launcher, and click Update.

iOS: Open the App Store and tap Update.

Android: Open the game and follow the directions on-screen.

PS5™ and PS4™: Highlight Genshin Impact from the Home Screen, press the OPTIONS button and select "Check for Update."

Please do not hesitate to contact Customer Service if you encounter any issues installing the new version. We will do our very best to resolve the issue.

〓Update Details〓

I. New Areas

New Areas Now Available

◇ In Version 4.6, the following areas in Fontaine will become available: Nostoi Region and Sea of Bygone Eras.

※ As long as you have completed Archon Quest Prologue: Act III "Song of the Dragon and Freedom," a Teleport Waypoint will be automatically unlocked near Fontaine's Petrichor (If you have already completed this Archon Quest, the Teleport Waypoint will be unlocked after the update). You'll also receive the Primogem reward for this Teleport Waypoint when it unlocks automatically.

There will be new Fishing Points and "Radiant Spincrystals" in Fontaine.

In addition, the new area "Bayda Harbor" will be added to Lokapala Jungle in Sumeru.

II. New Character

5-Star Character "Dire Balemoon" Arlecchino (Pyro)

◇ Vision: Pyro

◇ Weapon: Polearm

◇ "The Knave," Fourth of the Fatui Harbingers. A poised, ruthless diplomat. To the children in the House of the Hearth, she is their feared yet dependable "Father."

◆ Arlecchino can utilize her Bond of Life to enhance her Normal, Charged, and Plunging Attacks, dealing Pyro DMG.

◆ Elemental Skill "All Is Ash"

◆ Deals Pyro DMG to multiple nearby opponents and applies Blood-Debt Directives to them. Blood-Debt Directives deal Pyro DMG to opponents at regular intervals. When Arlecchino uses a Charged Attack or her Elemental Burst "Balemoon Rising," she will absorb Blood-Debt Directives, which grants her a certain amount of Bond of Life.

◆ Elemental Burst "Balemoon Rising"

◆ Arlecchino's great wing of Balemoon Bloodfire beats as she absorbs and clears Blood-Debt Directives applied to opponents around her. She deals AoE Pyro DMG before clearing the CD of All Is Ash and healing herself. The healing is based on her Bond of Life value and ATK.

III. New Equipment

1. New Weapon (Examples based on Refinement Rank 1)

Crimson Moon's Semblance (5-Star Polearm)

Grants a Bond of Life equal to 25% of Max HP when a Charged Attack hits an opponent. This effect can be triggered up to once every 14s. In addition, when the equipping character has a Bond of Life, they gain a 12% DMG Bonus; if the value of the Bond of Life is greater than or equal to 30% of Max HP, then gain an additional 24% DMG Bonus.

◆ During the event wish "Epitome Invocation," the event-exclusive 5-star weapon Crimson Moon's Semblance (Polearm) will receive a huge drop-rate boost!

2. New Artifact Sets

Unfinished Reverie (4-Star and 5-Star)

◇ 2-Piece Set: ATK +18%.

◇ 4-Piece Set: After leaving combat for 3s, DMG dealt increased by 50%. In combat, if no Burning opponents are nearby for more than 6s, this DMG Bonus will decrease by 10% per second until it reaches 0%. When a Burning opponent exists, it will increase by 10% instead until it reaches 50%. This effect still triggers if the equipping character is off-field.

Fragment of Harmonic Whimsy (4-Star and 5-Star)

◇ 2-Piece Set: ATK +18%.

◇ 4-Piece Set: When the value of a Bond of Life increases or decreases, this character deals 18% increased DMG for 6s. Max 3 stacks.

IV. New Domain

Domain of Blessing: Faded Theater

◇ Under the direction of an immortal musician, a certain ancient troupe once performed the elegies of an ancient civilization. With the passage of time, the ancient plays became legend. Legend became myth. ...Until one day, by chance, it was deliberately picked up once more, and became the prelude to a new dream.

◇ Unlock Criteria (satisfy any one of the criteria below to unlock):

• Reach Adventure Rank 22 or above

• Complete Archon Quest Prologue: Act III "Song of the Dragon and Freedom"

◆ Challenge the Domain to obtain artifacts in the "Fragment of Harmonic Whimsy" and "Unfinished Reverie" sets.

V. New Main Story

1. New Story Quests

Arlecchino's Story Quest - Ignis Purgatorius Chapter: Act I "When the Hearth-Flame Goes Out"

Permanently available after the Version 4.6 update

◆ Quest Unlock Criteria:

• Reach Adventure Rank 40 or above

• Complete Archon Quest Chapter IV: Act V "Masquerade of the Guilty"

Cyno's Story Quest - Lupus Aureus Chapter: Act II "Oathkeeper"

Permanently available after 2024/05/14 18:00

◆ Quest Unlock Criteria:

• Reach Adventure Rank 40 or above

• Complete Archon Quest Chapter III: Act V "Akasha Pulses, the Kalpa Flame Rises"

• Complete Cyno's Story Quest - Lupus Aureus Chapter: Act I "Sands of Solitude"

2. New World Quests

New World Quests

"Canticles of Harmony" Quest Chain, "For Yesterday and Tomorrow," "Latecoming Homecoming," "Where His Life Lies," "Daydreams Beyond Space and Time," etc.

VI. New Enemies

"The Knave"

◇ Fourth of the Fatui Harbingers.

The Knave will apply Bonds of Life to characters. After clearing a Bond of Life, characters in your party will unleash a Scarlet Nighttide the next time one of their Charged Attacks hit The Knave. This attack can interrupt some of The Knave's attacks, including Bloodtide Banquet. Some of The Knave's attacks will consume her own HP, and when these attacks hit a character, they will restore her own HP and apply a Bond of Life to the character; if the character hit already has a Bond of Life, the DMG dealt by the attack will be increased yet more.

Located in the Liffey Region

Legatus Golem

◇ This ancient Legatus Golem uses its sturdy marble body to defend against attack while using music and searing flames to obliterate its foes.

Use methods suited to dealing with Geo to break through its defenses. Apart from this, it will also set up resonators in combat that will assist its attacks. Destroy these resonators to deplete its shielding effectively.

Located in the Nostoi Region

Praetorian Golem

◇ An ancient golem infused with will that uses its resilient marble body in battle.

Use methods suited to dealing with Geo to effectively defeat its defenses.

New Recipe:

○ Café Lutece, Fontaine: Bulle Souffle

New Character Specialty Dish:

○ Arlecchino's specialty: "Hearthfire's Trail"

Adds new "Rhapsodia in the Ancient Sea" and "Challenger: Series IX" Achievement categories, and adds new Achievements to the "Wonders of the World" category.

Adds Set 31 of "Paimon's Paintings" chat emojis.

Adds some prompts for loading screens.

New Namecards:

"Arlecchino: Edict": Reward for reaching Friendship Lv. 10 with Arlecchino

"Fontaine: Attunement": Reward for completing all achievements under "Rhapsodia in the Ancient Sea"

"Achievement: Whalewrangler": Reward for completing all achievements under "Challenger: Series IX"

"Fontaine: Lucine": Reward for reaching Fountain of Lucine Favor Level 48

"Travel Notes: The Realms Rocked": Reward obtained via the BP system

Adds 17 World Quest-related avatars that will be unlocked after completing World Quests in accordance with the corresponding unlock criteria (Refer to "Paimon Menu > Change Avatar" in-game for the specific unlock criteria. For Travelers who have already completed the corresponding World Quests before the version update, the corresponding avatars will be automatically unlocked after the version update.)

Fountain of Lucine: Increase in the Level Cap of Fountain of Lucine to Level 50. After the Fountain of Lucine reaches its maximum level, Hydro Sigils can be exchanged with Mequignon at Bertin's House of Curiosities.

Adds the "Focused Experience Mode" function:

(1) This function can be enabled for certain quests in the "Quest" menu. Once enabled, Travelers can prevent locations and characters involved in said quest from being occupied by other quests, which improves the experience of the current quest.

(2) Function Access Unlock Criteria: Complete Archon Quest Prologue: Act III "Song of the Dragon and Freedom"

(3) In Version 4.6, the "Focused Experience Mode" function will be available for Arlecchino's Story Quest - Ignis Purgatorius Chapter: Act I "When the Hearth-Flame Goes Out." The "Focused Experience Mode" function will gradually be made available for more quests in subsequent versions.

"Genius Invokation TCG" Gameplay Update:

New Character Cards: Kuki Shinobu, Faruzan, and their corresponding Talent cards. Corresponding invitation duels and guest challenges have been added to the Player List.

New Character Cards: Emperor of Fire and Iron, Abyss Herald: Wicked Torrents, and the corresponding Talent Cards. The Tavern Challenge has also been added.

New Action Cards: "Rightful Reward," "Amethyst Crown," "Taroumaru," "The White Glove and the Fisherman," "Seirai Island," "Rainbow Macarons," and "Underwater Treasure Hunt" can be purchased from Prince at The Cat's Tail.

The Forge Realm's Temper is once again available. The theme of this edition is "The Forge Realm's Temper: Game of Wits":

(1) During The Forge Realm's Temper: Game of Wits, some stages will have special victory and defeat conditions. Adeptly adapt your tactics to complete the challenge and avoid the conditions for defeat!

(2) Within The Forge Realm's Temper: Game of Wits event stages, there will also be special rules that can easily exert influence on the tempo of the match. Fully utilizing these special rules will contribute greatly to your success.

Spiral Abyss

Floor 11 Ley Line Disorder changed to:

• All party members receive a 75% Pyro DMG Bonus.

Updated the monster lineup on Floors 11 – 12 of the Spiral Abyss.

Starting from the first time that the Lunar Phase refreshes after updating to Version 4.6, the three Lunar Phases will be as follows:

Phase I:

Flame-Fanning Moon

When a character triggers Vaporize, Overloaded, Melt, Burning, Burgeon, Pyro Swirl, or Pyro Crystallize reactions on an opponent, the opponent's All Elemental RES and Physical RES is reduced by 30% for 4s.

Phase II:

Valorous Moon

When a character receives healing, the character's ATK increases by 50% for 3s.

Phase III:

Tactical Moon

When a character's HP value increases or decreases, that character gains a 16% increased All Elemental and Physical DMG Bonus for 8s. This effect can stack up to 3 times, and the duration of each stack is counted independently.

〓Adjustments & Optimizations〓

● Exploration

On the Tutorials screen, adventure tutorials related to the current area will be displayed nearer to the top.

Optimizes the performance of the Treasure Compass feature: Nearby treasure chests will now be marked on the map after using the Treasure Compass, and opening treasure chests marked out on the map during the Treasure Compass's cooldown time will reset its cooldown.

● Map

Combines the "Domains only" and "Search for Players" options under the "Map Settings" button on the map interface.

Adds the "Custom Markers," "Controller > Cursor Sensitivity," and "Controller > Marker Sensitivity Range" settings under the "Map Settings" button on the map interface.

Optimizes the design of the buttons for switching between different regions on the map interface.

● Quests

Adds another button for important quest items related to certain quests in the Quest Menu.

When you are navigating to a quest objective, an icon for important quest items related to the current quest will now be displayed within the Inventory.

Updates the icon for Requests in the Quest Menu.

● Adventurer Handbook

Adjusts the criteria for unlocking different chapters in "Adventurer Handbook > Experience": Simply reach a certain Adventure Rank to unlock the next chapter. You no longer need to complete the previous chapter.

Adds missions for enhancing Prototype Rancour and Favonius Warbow to Lv. 60 in "Adventurer Handbook > Embattle."

Adds missions related to enhancing Artifacts in "Adventurer Handbook > Embattle."

● Serenitea Pot

Adds the "Quick Obtain" function on the Replica > Preview screen as well as the Furnishing Set screen in Editing Mode: You can use this function to quickly purchase the Furnishings/Furnishing Blueprints that you need from the Realm Depot, or add the Furnishings that need to be created to the "Queued List."

Adds the "Queued List" function on the Create Furnishing > Creation Queue screen. This will record your Furnishing creation requests from using "Quick Obtain" and tell you which materials they require. It can also be used to quickly add Furnishings that are waiting to be made to the Creation Queue.

Adds the "Obtain All" function on the Create Furnishing > Creation Queue screen. You can use this function to obtain all the Furnishings created in one go. After you click it, you can also choose to use Vials of Adeptal Speed to speed up production of all Furnishings that haven't been completed yet with a single click.

Adjusts the upper limit of the Creation Queue in Create Furnishing from 5 to 10.

Adds Filter and Search functions to the Furnishings and Furnishing Blueprints tabs of the Realm Depot.

Displays category-related information in the text descriptions for Furnishings and Furnishing Blueprints.

Optimizes the layout of the Realm Music screen, adding serial numbers and no longer showing a second confirmation pop-up when unlocking tracks.

After Trust Rank reaches Level 10, the purchase limit of all products in Realm Depot > Furnishings (except Vial of Adeptal Speed) will be raised from 6 to 20.

Furnishings and Furnishing Blueprints introduced from Version 1.5 to 2.8 will be permanently sold at a discount in the Realm Depot.

● Genius Invokation TCG

Updates the icon of the Event Card "Falls and Fortune."

Optimizes the text description for the Normal Attack of the Character Card "Neuvillette" (the actual effect remains the same).

● Other

Optimizes the "compiling shaders" loading time when logging in on an Android device for the first time after version update.

Adds support for displaying friend nicknames on the Serenitea Pot > Create Furnishing > Guest Assistance screen, as well as on various screens related to Co-Op Mode.

Adjusts the position of the stone pillars on Floors 11 and 12 of the Spiral Abyss: Now, the stone pillars will be placed outside the barrier.

After the version update, on some PC devices that use integrated graphics cards, the default "Graphics > Graphics Quality" setting will be adjusted to "Lowest" (only the correspondence between the options and the default values is changed, the actual settings remain unchanged).

Due to the addition of new regions and Teleport Waypoints, the number of Teleport Waypoints required to unlock the achievement "Forest Roamer" has been adjusted. The original total number of Teleport Waypoints that needed to be unlocked was 46, and this has now been adjusted to 47 (if the achievement has been completed, the completion status of the achievement remains unchanged).

Increases the Inventory's capacity for the Weapon Enhancement Materials "Mystic Enhancement Ore," "Fine Enhancement Ore," and "Enhancement Ore" from 9,999 to 99,999.

〓Genius Invokation TCG Balance Adjustment〓

Adjusts the effect of the status "Fiery Rebirth" of the Character Card "Abyss Lector: Fathomless Flames": "When the character to which this is attached would be defeated: Remove this effect, ensure the character will not be defeated, and heal them to 4 HP. After this effect is triggered, this character deals +1 Pyro DMG."

Adjusts the effect of "Aegis of Abyssal Flame" applied by the Talent Card "Embers Rekindled" of the Character Card "Abyss Lector: Fathomless Flames": "Provide 2 Shield points to the character to which this card is attached. After said Shield points are depleted: Deal 1 Piercing DMG to all opposing characters."

Adjusts the casting logic of the Elemental Skills of the Character Cards "Candace" and "Beidou": After the adjustment, the character that cast the Elemental Skill gains a shield and then prepares the skill (i.e. generating the shield and preparing the skill are split into two separate actions, so that if the shield is removed by certain effects, this will not result in the skill's preparation being canceled too).

Adjusts the effect of the Support Card "Yayoi Nanatsuki": "For each of your characters already equipped with an Artifact on the field, you spend 1 less Elemental Die (once per Round)." has been adjusted to "If two of your characters on the field already have an equipped Artifact, you additionally spend 1 less Elemental Die (once per Round)."

Adjusts the trigger condition for the effect of the Support Card "Seed Dispensary": The trigger condition "When you play an Equipment or Support Card with an original cost of 1 Elemental Die: ..." has been adjusted to "When you play a Support Card with an original cost of at least 2 Elemental Dice: ..."

Adjusts the number of Elemental Dice required and effect of the Support Card "Jeht": The Elemental Dice cost required has been adjusted from 2 Dice of any element to 1. The effect "If this card has recorded at least 5 Sophistication points, discard this card and generate Omni Element equal to the number of Sophistication points minus 2." has been adjusted to "If this card has recorded at least 6 Sophistication points, discard this card and attach Sand and Dreams to your active character." (The effect of "Sand and Dreams" is: "When you play a Talent card or a Character uses a Skill: Spend 3 less Elemental Dice.")

Note: The effect of the Event Card "Nature and Wisdom" will not result in the deck being shuffled. All "draw a random card of any certain type from your deck" effects will also not result in the deck being shuffled, but instead will result in 1 random card of the corresponding type being drawn and added to your hand.

〓Bug Fixes〓

● Character

Fixes an issue whereby, when certain Polearm-wielding characters performed Plunging Attacks, the position of the attack's special effect would be abnormal in certain situations (the actual DMG AoE works as intended).

Fixes an issue whereby after Xianyun's second Constellation was unlocked, the special effect on the tails of her outfit would abnormally disappear under certain circumstances.

● System

Fixes an issue whereby there were errors with certain key names on the Settings > Key Bindings screen when playing on a PC in German or French.

Fixes an issue whereby, after switching a character's outfit from the "Party Setup" menu, the corresponding character could not be switched to and deployed in certain situations.

Fixes an issue whereby, when challenging the Millennial Pearl Seahorse, the game camera couldn't be restored to the original angle after zooming out in certain situations.

● Genius Invokation TCG

Fixes an issue whereby when "Fontemer Pearl" was attached to the Character Card "Millennial Pearl Seahorse," casting its Elemental Skill would abnormally reset the Fontemer Pearl's once-per-round effect ("Usage(s) will not be used when negating DMG from Summons").

● Audio

Fixes an issue whereby there was a chance that the effect of Freminet's skill voice line would be abnormal in certain situations.

Fixes an issue whereby, when Chiori used her Elemental Skill to enter combat, there was a chance that the Elemental Skill sound effect would be abnormal.

● Other

Fixes an issue whereby there was a small probability that the model of the currently controlled character would disappear abnormally under certain circumstances when playing through Lynette's Hangout Event on mobile devices.

Fixes an issue whereby if a character unequipped and then re-equipped the weapon "Amenoma Kageuchi," after triggering the weapon's effect to obtain Succession Seeds, Succession Seeds' duration would be abnormal under certain circumstances.

Fixes an issue whereby some buildings in Mondstadt were overlapping abnormally, which was preventing characters from climbing upwards.

Fixes some text errors in certain languages and optimizes text. (Note: Related in-game functions have not changed. Travelers can view the changes in different languages by going to the Paimon Menu > Settings > Language and changing the Game Language.)

Text-related fixes and optimizations in English include:

◆ Optimizes certain English translations.

*This is a work of fiction and is not related to any actual people, events, groups, or organizations.

"PlayStation", "PS5", "PS4", "DualSense", "DUALSHOCK" are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.

#genshin impact #genshin impact updates #genshin impact news #official #genshin impact 4.6

[et103]

OH FUCK I completely forgot to recount my dnd misadventures-

So this month my college's board game club has officially started and the main event is a West March campaign between SEVERAL DMs. The unique feature is that the 20+ players are simultaneously affecting the game world in different areas and quests in separate parties.

In comes my Copper Dragonborn lvl1 Druid by the name of Vani Amakiir (name taken from a fantasy name generator). Personality wise he tends to be a bit too trusting and asking too many questions. Previously working the docks of the southern harbors, he went north into the forests to try his luck amongst the druids and got picked up by one of the circles inhabiting it.

My plan for him is to make him an absolute tank. Circle of the moon + multiclass into Bear Totem Barbarian, he's gonna have AC and health for DAYS and mid game challenge rating power to carry him until it is RP appropriate to get him that angry. Barkskin and Absorb Elements for some early game defense. Don't worry, this power is mitigated by the fact that my Constitution and Dexterity suck ass as I had to get my higher points into Strength and Wisdom for the multiclass itself as well as my hit dice being mostly d8s.

Session 1: The Rat Trap

Disclaimer: long post under the read more

The party consists of a flamboyant half-elf twink bard played by a veteran DnD player, a halfling chaos sorcerer with a gambling addiction played by a forever DM, a goblin warlock with his newborn patron in his glass eye and a tiefling artificer who was min maxed to kingdom fuck played by a total beginner (they didn't know their own spell list) (it WAS funny).

We are all together in the Adventurers' Hall waiting for a dwarf to rifle through the current quests and give us something to do. He could tell we weren't up for much but there must have been something so he kept digging. After some exasperation he dusts off an older request.

"This one comes by every few months but no one picks it up" he starts off "too trivial for even our small fry. Rats in an inn's cellar."

We look amongst each other, no one was thrilled but the bard who would get to play hero for the inn owner and the goblin whose thoughts immediately went for rat stew. Not many other choices so we picked it up and went off into the city's busy streets.

The goblin was already acting skittish and restless so my boy picked him up by the scruff of the neck so that he wouldn't run off. Meanwhile the bard was acting all friendly with the artificer to make them loosen up.

We reach the inn, the bard leads the group. A flashy entrance and a melodic voice greet the elderly (?) owner and announce our arrival.

Immediately every bell went off. She was incredibly skittish and hurried up to sign the quest waiver and lock the inn shut before we even opened the cellar door.

Needless to say, it obviously wasn't rats.

Now that there wasn't much reason to maintain high alert, Vani let go of the goblin while trying to discuss how to tackle the request with the bard. This immediately backfired as he just fucking BOOKED IT for the cellar, yelling "RAT STEEEWW!!!" Vani closed in behind and the bard sent a mage hand with a lit torch to follow behind Vani before they also started coming down.

The cellar was unusually deep, too deep to use as an actual cellar and more akin to a bunker. There was another door at the end of the spiraling stairs and so the goblin stopped there to make sure it's safe to enter, letting the rest of the party stack behind and my druid to pick him back up.

The inside was dark but not without light, some lit torches lined the inner rooms of whatever this was. We sneaked through the first door and contemplated how to approach the next one. There was light, some shifting shadows and unfamiliar noises, something was clearly being worked on in the next room. Vani kept ahold of the goblin and covered his mouth while the other 3 opted to sneak in and get a closer look.

Ratfolk. They were digging out a room with pickaxes, some were on break playing with cards at a table they brought in.

The immediate reaction of the forward party was to sneak back out but the artificer failed the stealth roll and knocked over a pickaxe that was left in that corridor with their foot. All noise immediately stopped.

A shrill, broken voice called out in Common "Hag? That you?". The bard immediately cast Disguise Self to turn into the innkeeper and the other two shuffled out of the corridor to hide.

Turns out the innkeeper was in a bit of a hostage situation. The ratfolk immediately started threatening killing her grandchildren the same way they did her husband if they caught her again. Of course they didn't figure out it was the bard and after his stellar performance he backed off to tell us about the situation.

So we formed up in the corridor and and then I unleashed the goblin.

Combat start.

Now the observant amongst you may have realized a bit of a problem in the party lineup.

We had no martial classes.

This means piss poor total health amongst the party, below average armor class and our action economy is nonexistent. The only two that could occupy the frontline with half decent attack rolls were Vani, the bard and no one else.

Thankfully, all of the ratfolk were 6hp (very important damage threshold) and we managed to ambush them, with only the rat that previously threatened our bard being able to act in the first round.

The ratfolk eats an eldritch blast but stays standing to fire off a shot from its flintlock and miss. Our arti slings off a magic stone that fucking decapitates (max damage roll) it to finish it off, the sorcerer misses their spell and Vani goes in to occupy the choke point (his club missed) with the bard slinging mockery from the backline.

Round 2 and the goblin keeps slinging away eldritch blasts while the rest of the ratfolk mob my boy for his scales. Another rat gets decapitated by Vani biting off their head with Primal Savagery but a sixth rat is hiding around the corner holding a stone on its ear like a phone. I try (fail) to give subtle signals to the bard to turn the corner and stab the bastard but he fucking misses and is now engaged with three ratfolk.

After a couple more stones, spells and stab wounds, my boy is absolutely surrounded but manages to line up his breath weapon to MELT two of the remaining four rats for the rest of the party to close in and finish them all off.

So, problem: whoever the rat worked with knows we're here, we need to go. The sending stone (what the rat on the corner was using before) is broken on the floor but they had a chest that looked decently sized. Inside was a bunch of gold and gems, a potion that was "cold to the touch", a bead that reacted when force was used on it and a very handy satchel of 20 +1 lead bullets. Alongside the three flintlocks we looted from the rats it was quite the haul, especially so after the artificer found out they had firearms proficiency on their sheet.

We split the valuables and each pockets the first thing that catches their eye (Vani the potion, goblin the bead and arti the bullets) and get out of the "cellar". We surface, the bard tries to make another flamboyant call during our exit and we are immediately greeted with a hostage situation.

Outside the inn are about 8 or 9 ratfolk armed the same as the ones below and a self-proclaimed rat king with scraps of other rat folk tied to himself and his golden gun shoved into the mouth of the innkeeper at his side. We stole from him and he wanted payback. We could tell he wanted more than what we stole.

Meanwhile the sorcerer was whispering to the goblin "You know that bead you took? Toss it at him." And the goblin immediately followed through. It strikes the rat king and shines bright as the sun and results in what looks like a transparent dome 15 foot wide dome around the king.

Combat start.

This one was still just as stressful. I forgot to cast Cure Wounds before coming up the stairs so I'm at half my health and with a lot more people to hold off. But now we have an arti with two flintlocks, firearm proficiency and +1 bullets. While Vani stands his ground, they go off to the other side of the building and headshot two rat folk coming from the windows and the rest of the party keeps slinging cantrips to pick off kills. Three rats stack up on my boy, three others come from the other windows to our flanks and the rat king is throwing a tantrum because he's trapped, brutalizing the poor grandma and painting the walls with her in the process.

Arti keeps shooting fools and Vani manages to chuck an Ice Knife at the three fuckers that have stacked up on him. Knife hits the main target but no one is hit from the ensuing explosion. Unfortunately that did mean they got to swing on him and he was now on death saves.

The sorcerer however had a plan. He yoinked my potion and drank it immediately, getting giant strength and brawling with one of the remaining two rats, killing it. The rest of the party was starting to clean up but just as that was happening the dome dissipated, letting loose a very angry and very big rat.

The bard goes into melee with his rapier against another rat and gets knocked out, arti continues firing to pick off the stragglers and the other two are trying to focus down the king.

Meanwhile, I'm getting stabbed by a rat until it thinks I'm dead but instead I manage to stabilize and the rat king is now in engagement range. The sorcerer casts a lvl 1 spell and IMMEDIATELY triggers wild magic and rolls getting one size bigger, making him able to brawl the fucking rat king. He uses his three attacks to hold back the arti and sorcerer while finishing off our bard (may he slay in peace) (his words not mine). The sorcerer keeps stabbing him with daggers and the arti keeps shooting and slashing with their sickle until both the artificer and the rat king are on exactly one health point.

Now, our DM paused a bit to explain something. This is a situation where the only thing any character currently active could do would be to attack and any hit would kill on the spot. So the next few actions were purely rolls (mainly so the security guard could lock up at a reasonable time).

King misses, Arti misses.

The sorcerer hits. Feints with the knife and then does a suplex on the vermin to finish it off.

That bard was this entire world's first Player Character death and he will forever be remembered (specifically because the arti had Cure Wounds and could've saved him lmao).

This shit was gas.

I got level 2, getting Wild Shape and my Circle of the Moon subclass which means I get to have health pools individually bigger than any other class on our current levels during my wild shape because of the challenge rating unlocks it provides.

#Vani's west march #Dnd #dnd 5e campaign

[redorich]

Hey, so your Hermit!TommyAU has been living rent free in my head and I can’t stop thinking, what if the Blood God works on the same rules as The Santa Clause? You kill the Blood God? Congrats! You are now Blood God. Impulse and Technoblade go through with finding and killing Khorne and it ends up being *Impulse* who lands the killing blow. Impulse is now the Blood God. Thoughts????

Impulse walks in on Techno pulling on his armor, already prepared for war.

“Nope. You’re not doing that,” Impulse says.

Technoblade pauses, tugging on the strap of his netherite shin guard. “Just what am I not doing?” he asks quietly, dangerously.

The hermit huffs, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorway. “Going off all alone to fight the Blood God, like an idiot.”

Standing up to his full imposing height, Technoblade glowers down at Impulse. “You’re the one who told me I should kill the Blood God in the first place, need I remind you?!”

Impulse scoffs, drawing his sword. Technoblade tenses, but Impulse hands him the sword by the hilt, blade-down.

“I said that you should end the cycle of senseless violence and disregard for the lives of other people, Techno,” Impulse says, relinquishing his sword into Technoblade’s grasp. “You’re missing the whole point if you intend to do this alone.”

Technoblade falls quiet, examining the enchantments on Impulse’s sword. The sword is completely maxed out to the exact specifications that Techno believes are best. Impulse must have actually been listening to him when he ranted about enchantments ages ago.

“You’ll get yourself killed,” Technoblade says. “You don’t have infinite respawns where we’re going.”

Impulse looks him in the eyes, smiles, and says plainly, “I’m willing to risk my life for this.”

He takes back his sword from Technoblade’s grasp, loosened due to shock, and hums as he sets about laying out his entire inventory on a nearby table for Technoblade to examine and critique as he sees fit. Techno opens his mouth to say something, but Impulse must be able to read his mind, because he cuts the piglin off even with his back turned.

“It’s my choice, you know,” Impulse says. He places a stack of golden apples next to a potion of instant health. “If I die, it’s my own fault, not yours. Xisuma knows where I’m going, and if I’m not back in time he’ll know what happened to me. I intend on coming back, though.”

“Why?” Technoblade croaks.

Impulse turns around. “Why what? Why am I helping you? Because you’re my friend. Why am I volunteering even though it’s dangerous? Because I’m not letting you do this alone.”

Technoblade laughs wryly. “You’re an idiot.”

Impulse smiles back at him, steady and sure. “Takes one to know one.

-------

It’s been three days since Technoblade and Impulse left. Xisuma’s starting to seriously worry. He doesn’t like that the two left on their insane quest at all, but they’re adults. As much as Xisuma would like to tell them that they’re not allowed to go off on quests that will get them killed, Impulse is a grown independent man, and Technoblade’s not even a hermit.

He checks the console, as he has every hour on the hour since the two men left. Still nothing-- wait!

Right before his eyes, Xisuma sees the console update.

05.02 19:43:53 [Server] INFO Technoblade joined the game

05.02 19:43:54 [Server] INFO impulseSV joined the game

05.02 19:43:54 [Server] WARN Player [impulseSV] files do not match last known save. 

Xisuma takes off flying toward the world spawn, then decides to throw “fairness” and “decorum” out the window and teleports himself there. He falls into the water where the tiny spawn island used to be, and is quickly whisked down by the water elevator of his own design into the large area filled with resources.

Standing there, looking dazed but not dead, are Technoblade and Impulse. They’re leaning on each other heavily, covered in dried blood and potion residue. They’re weary but triumphant. Did they actually do it? Did they kill the Blood God?

Something’s wrong about Impulse. He appears to be the same person that left three days ago, but there is now a godly miasma of death about him.

“Hey,” Technoblade coughs out, “Funny story. We may have made a small, tiny, inconsequential really mistake...”

“So it turns out when you kill the Blood God, you become the Blood God,” Impulse wheezes. “Who’d have thought?”

#mcyt #hc x dsmp #hermit!tommy au #impulsesv #technoblade #xisuma #xisumavoid #me.cpp

[deiliamedlini]

WIP Wednesday

I wrote this last night and really don’t know where I’m going with it because I wrote another section of this that’s completely different from this first part, but I’m having too much fun so this might become a long oneshot or like a two/three chapter short fic eventually. I signed into my Guild Wars account for the first time in forever to watch the chat and apparently Lion’s Arch isn’t as interesting as it used to be. Not that any of that is really relevant. 

This is Zelda and the Champions as internet friends playing a MMORPG video game called Hyrule Warriors. 

~

Zelda Harkinian loved Fridays. Not that it was a rare thing to be obsessed with the weekend, but she maybe loved it a little too much. After a week of lesson plans, and cleaning the classrooms, and sneezing students, and emails asking for an extension on a paper that wasn’t even due yet, she relished the escape the weekend provided. Granted, she still had to grade about a hundred tests, but that was a problem for Sunday or even Monday.

Smiling down at her roommate, a kitten she’d raised when she found it in the street all alone, Zelda fed her girl—whom she’d named Duchess because she had every intent of treating her like royalty—and played with her for a bit before throwing down her bag in her room and then grabbed a water and a granola bar before heading to her desk. She flipped her laptop open and booting up Hyrule Warriors, her favorite open world MMORPG.

Her internet sucked, so she grabbed her phone to aimlessly scroll to see if there was any news or updates. But it was pretty dull.

Instead, she thought back to how this whole weekend ritual began.

She’d been in a cavern just off of Death Mountain for about three days killing fire keese, lizalfos, and beamos. As a mage, her AOE skills made short work of the larger groups, hitting them all at once. It was especially useful here because her main specialties were water and light, but she struggled when boss fights came out. The NPCs weren’t great teammates, and she constantly found herself resurrecting far from the boss, only to make a long run with a health penalty that ended with her getting killed again, until her heath penalty was maxed out and she had to restart for any hope of succeeding. As a mage, her light armor made her vulnerable to physical attacks, and this boss was very physical.

Zelda didn’t like interacting with people in this game. It was massively popular, and the chat was always running. Sometimes, she’d just sit at an outpost and watch people talk. Her favorite interactions were often the random ones. She’d begun to look up the acronyms everyone used in chat just to understand them better. WTS= want to sell.

Indigo2421: WTS: Guardian Short Sword 4k rupees

Indigo2421WTS: Guardian Short Sword 4k rupees

Indigo2421WTS: Guardian Short Sword 4k rupees

Britneigh4Horses: WTS My mother. 1 rupee. Will pay postage fee.

But after her days of suffering in the lonely caverns in Death Mountain, she relented.

A quick search had her hands shaking, but she typed quickly so she couldn’t back out after she’d hit enter.

xPrincessZx: LFG Dodongo’s Cavern

Holding her breath, she’d waited in the hopes of a private message being sent to her.

One did.

(PM): ThunderstruckQueen: What missin are doing there?

(PM): ThunderstruckQueen: Mission*

(PM): xPrincessZx: I have to kill the Dodongo boss for the main story

ThunderstruckQueen would like to join your party.

Biting her nails, she’d accepted.

(PM): RockRoast12345: Still need someone?

(PM): xPrincessZx: Yes! That would be great! Thanks!

RockRoast12345 would like to join your party.

That had been how it started: A goron warrior with a Warhammer and some serious defensive moves joined as the tank to take as much damage for the team as he could stand, and a Gerudo Paladin had joined her party. Zelda was jealous of the purchase-only red hairstyle the Gerudo had for her character. She had a sword and shield, but her body flickered with elemental lightening magic. In-game purchase effects.

They’d defeated Dodongo with ease, and had gone on several missions together that day, taking down their storylines with relative ease. But they couldn’t function with the NPC healer who barely functioned at all.

So, ThunderstruckQueen had taken to the map chat and put out a request.

ThunderstruckQueen: I found someone. She’s a Zora Cleric. Level 40

RockRoast12345: Let her in! I want to get this one over with

Rutella Zoran IV would like to join your party.

After that, the four of them realized they worked so well together that they’d formed a guild. The Champions. ThunderstruckQueen paid the guild fee, bought a hall, and began decorating it with merchants, and chests. Zelda still shuddered, wondering what she did to have so many rupees ready to go. Needless to say, she made herself the leader.

Some days, they didn’t play together. Other times, only two of them were on. But on weekends, they all came together.

But it had been a Monday when Zelda played, and she’d been alone. Having already tossed her tissue box across her room in frustration, she debated making a new character with more defense, but she sucked it up and went into the Castle Town map, ready to ask for help. She couldn’t wait until she could get to be a higher level. As it was, she’d only gotten to these level 40 areas as a 32 because of Rutella.

Suddenly, a random Hylian man in green with a fancy sword and shield ran up to her and bowed. Zelda scoffed at her computer screen, unsure if she was supposed to respond.

She didn’t need to.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: Hey Princess

(PM): xPrincessZx: Hello?

(PM): WildKnightOut2: Jst wondering if u have a spare flower crown from yesterday’s festival. Missed it. Will pay

Zelda pulled up her inventory, forgetting she was still wearing her flower crown from the Flower Fest. It must have been what tipped him off. In fact, she had four spares.

(PM): zPrincessZx:  Yeah, I do. Come to the chest and I’ll trade.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: Thx

She’d never done a trade with anyone who wasn’t in her guild, so she’d felt nervous running to grab it.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: How much u want?

(PM): xPrincessZx: Actually, I’ll give it to you free if you’re willing to help me with a quest? Or 10k.

WildKnightOut2 would like to join your party.

She accepted and watched his character appear in the corner of her screen.

WildKnightOut2: That’s a rip off, btw. Crowns are with 15k at least. Don’t undersell

xPrincessZx: Thanks. I didn’t realize. I’m still kind of new.

WildKnightOut2: Howd u get out here then?

xPrincessZx: I had a run from a friend in my guild.

WildKnightOut2: Got room for a warrior in there?

Zelda introduced him to the other Champions when they’d signed back on, and after a few weeks, Zelda had leveled up enough that she didn’t need to constantly rely on a teammate. But still. She liked Wild the best after ThunderstruckQueen.

They’d brought in a Rito Ranger named TheBestYouveNeverMet, which immediately set Wild off.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: should I aggro a group over so he has to fight them for us?

(PM): xPrincessZx: No! Don’t do that! I’ll get sent over to deal with them!

(PM): xPrincessZx: HEY! I SEE YOU ON THE MAP!

(PM): xPrincessZx: WILD GET BACK TO THE GROUP

On the mini-map, she saw a hoard of red coming at them and rolled her eyes before joining TheBest to kill them with area attacks. Rutella stayed back to heal them, but Thunder and Rock both continued on, unfazed.

ThunderstruckQueen: Wild you’re an idiot

But that was then. This was now.

They’d been together for months as a guild, and now, the six of them knew how the others worked.

If Wild or TheBest took off on their own, no one would follow. They’d both been killed numerous times in an attempt to piss the other off. Zelda had learned to stay with Thunder and Rock. Rutella flitted between running back to revive the idiots, or sticking with the smarter members while letting them heal on their own.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: u wound me

Zelda chuckled, but he wasn’t done.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: After all ive done for u

(PM): WildKnightOut2: u leave me to die

(PM): xPrincessZx: Don’t run off next time

It was a Wednesday when she and Wild were playing alone, so they freely used party chat for ease. She’d surpassed his level, and towered as a 93 while he was an 87.

WildKnightOut2: Hang on. Fuzzball wants food

Zelda stared at his character on her screen, wondering if he looked anything like that avatar. Blonde hair, muscular, piercing blue eyes. She’d made her character look like herself, so it wasn’t hard to imagine others had. Plus, he was the only Hylian. She highly doubted that RockRoast12345 was actually a giant rock-man, or that Rutella Zoran IV was a short fish lady.

She knew everything about these people except their names, faces, and voices.

She knew that ThunderstruckQueen was a single mother who called her daughter Ri on chat. She was a chief of police, and had a few hundred of her force to look out for. Still, she wanted to quit soon to join the military reserve forces now that her daughter was getting older. Devoted and loyal, Thunder occasionally snapped when everyone would start fighting with each other, though it was usually directed at TheBest and Wild, the annoyance sometimes extended out to others.

She knew that RockRoast12345 was older than all of them and had a young grandson. He’d bonded with Thunder over their children at first, and then, without meaning to, they became the parents of the group. Recently, Rock had retired from working as a supervisor in a mine, and gaming had become his way of relieving some of that boredom. But he told the best stories when they were idling around, just stories about anything, and they were always captivating. Also, he was afraid of dogs.

She knew that Rutella Zoran IV was the daughter of a politician. She cared for her little brother like he was her own, and sometimes, he took control of her character, proudly revealing that his real name was Sidon. She was in school to be a doctor, and that made her family prouder than anything. She lived and breathed for her family.

TheBestYouveNeverMet was a pilot. His schedule was the most hectic out of everyone’s because of the flights, but he was sarcastic to the core, and sometimes, the sarcasm was simply rude and definitely didn’t translate well over chat. He was superior, and since he’d been playing the game longest, he thought it entitled him to make more decisions. But Zelda knew from her private conversations with him that deep down, he was sweet and caring. He’d always be the first to ask her how her day was, and he’d learned some of her students’ names to ask if they’d been nuisances.

But Zelda spent the most time talking to WildKnightOut2, so she knew the most about him. At first, they’d bonded over the fact that they both had cats. His was called Fuzzball, an orange, fat cat that needed to exercise more. He’d tried to leash him, but Fuzz wasn’t interested. Sometimes, Fuzz would crawl over the keys, send Wild running, and send chat a long stream of letters.

He was funny and made comments in her private chat while they were playing that had her roaring at times.

He was a rock-climbing instructor and in his free time, he was a free solo climber. When she’d looked it up, she’d been horrified to see that he basically climbed mountains without a harness or ropes, and a fall could kill him. She’d asked if he was good at it, or just did it for fun, and his answer had been an ambiguous “yes.”

She knew about his family. He didn’t live near them, but he kept in contact with his grandparents, his father, and his little sister.

WildKnightOut2: k back. Where we going princess?

xPrincessZx: I need to farm for new armor out in the Haunted Wasteland. Do you need to do anything?

WildKnightOut2: I need to help u farm in the haunted wasteland. What do you need?

xPrincessZx: 10 Rubies

WildKnightOut2: damn ok I have 2 u can have so u only need 8

xPrincessZx: Thanks. How’d that party go last night?

WildKnightOut2: Sucked

xPrincessZx: Cool details

WildKnightOut2: If ud been there, ud have hated it

xPrincessZx: Why?

WildKnightOut2: Bunch of self-absorbed idiots. Like TheBest is

xPrincessZx: Lol. He’s not that bad.

WildKnightOut2: if u say so

They headed into the Wasteland looking for red poes that had rare drops for rubies. She and Wild took out a few groups before they started to struggle. Neither could play and talk at the same time fast enough to warn the other that something was happening, and they both ended up at the shrine of resurrection more times than they cared to admit.

xPrincessZx: Hey Wild. This might sound weird, but do you have that gaming app where we could just maybe voice chat?

xPrincessZx: Unless you’re not comfortable with that. We can invite the others, and when we play together, and it would probably make life a thousand times easier

xPrincessZx: But it’s okay if you don’t want to

WildKnightOut2: yeah I have it

Oh, Zelda thought to herself. That was easy.

xPrincessZx: Do you want to add me? I have the same name

She watched her phone like it was food in the microwave, only occasionally glancing at her computer to see if Wild had sent her another message. She drummed her fingers and her leg started to bounce until her screen lit up.

WildKnight has sent you a friend request.

She hastily hit accept and grabbed her headphones from the drawer before typing into her phone.

xPrincessZx: Your name is missing a few things here.

WildKnight: Yeah HW already had someone with this name so I added on

xPrincessZx: The meaning completely changes

WildKnight: which do you like better?

Zelda froze, unable to make her fingers type. Was he flirting? Was that how people flirted online? She was really good at reading body language cues, and that was always how she knew someone was flirting. But this? There was no context! How was she supposed to know?

xPrincessZx: Which fits your personality more?

That was a safe way of getting out of answering while still sounding maybe like she was flirting. Right?

WildKnight: this one

Zelda’s face warmed up and she put her head in her hands, unsure how to respond. How does she respond to that? What if he wasn’t flirting? What if he was.

#wip wednesday #legend of zelda #LoZ AU #modern au #video games #link #zelda #zelink #daruk #mipha #revali #urbosa #writing #not proofread #zelda is a professor because I was too lazy to look up any job other than my own

[self-loving-vampire]

Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle (1993)

Summary

Serpent Isle is a direct sequel to the Black Gate. The arrival of the Guardian has been prevented and his cult has been outlawed and disbanded, but his most loyal follower has escaped to a place called the Serpent Isle to enact their backup plan.

But the Serpent Isle is not just an island, it is another world that you find yourself in after sailing your ship between the Serpent Pillars (yes, you get isekai’d while already living in another world).

This strange land is populated by people who fled from your lord long ago, and it seems to be suffering from an apocalyptic event that you soon experience for yourself, as a magical storm teleports your companions away and replaces most of the potent items you arrived with with random junk.

So your goals are clear: Recover your items, find the Guardian’s followers, and try to prevent the world’s destruction.

In many ways, Serpent Isle can feel like a more linear and limited game than the Black Gate (for one, you can’t own and freely sail a ship), but there are actually many things that I think it actually does better.

I played it using Exult and the SI Fixes mod.

Freedom

While Serpent Isle is not fully linear, it is definitely not nearly as open as the Black Gate was.

Where the Black Gate lets you travel nearly anywhere in the world almost immediately, even enabling several forms of transportation for this purpose, Serpent Isle initially allows only one section of the island to be explored with the rest opening up as one progresses through the game.

To its credit, the way in which these areas are locked off are sometimes reasonable and do not feel arbitrary. For instance, Moonshade is an island and nearly every ship in the land have been wrecked by the same magical storms that affected your party at the start of the game, so reaching it is not as simple as just buying a boat and going there.

There are other cases, however, where the restrictions do feel nonsensical. Such as the way the Bull Tower pikemen demand obscene amounts of money for the captain’s release but will happily accept a single much less valuable gold bar instead (since acquiring those is tied to a plot point). Then there’s all the stuff with the Hound of Doskar...

On the positive side, you can deal with various parts of the game in whatever order you desire within these limitations. This includes resolving the central quests in each of the land’s three cities in your own preferred order.

However, the game is still lacking in alternate solutions for quests in general. There are some decisions to be made, but they are rather minor in the grand scheme of things.

Character Creation/Customization

This aspect of the games is just as barebones as the Black Gate. You can only select your name, gender, and portrait. Your starting stats are pre-set and there are no further decisions to be made there.

However, Serpent Isle does have a marginal benefit over the Black Gate in that how you spend your training points matters a lot more, since you can’t just automatically max out your stats by completing the expansion.

Even then, there is not much to the character creation here at all.

Story/Setting

I think this is one of the game’s stronger points. The Black Gate may have had a larger world with more total settlements, but Serpent Isle’s three cities of Monitor, Fawn, and Moonshade are each significantly larger than the average Black Gate town and, most importantly, this world feels more dynamic.

Due to the way many of the game’s quests and events work, Serpent Isle manages to feel more alive than its predecessor. I will not spoil the details, but you often feel like something is always happening and like new developments are organically finding you rather than you having to actively search for them.

As has become typical of the Ultima series, the setting this time around is also centered around virtues, but in this case it goes beyond the Eight Virtues you mastered in the last trilogy.

Serpent Isle’s three cities are inhabited by the descendants of people who fled the reign of Lord British and who resent his edict of the eight virtues. The knights of Monitor considered Valor to be the highest virtue, the sailors of Fawn wanted to elevate Beauty as a virtue, and the mages of Moonshade did not feel that their profession should be associated with the virtue of Honesty.

But in addition to all that, much of the game revolves around learning about and mastering the ancient Ophidian virtue system, which functions differently from what you are used to. 

The Ophidian virtues are divided into Order (Ethicality, Discipline, Logic) and Chaos (Tolerance, Enthusiasm, Emotion). The forces composing both sides must be in balance to achieve a new set of principles (Harmony arising from Ethicality + Tolerance, Dedication from Discipline + Enthusiasm, and Rationality from Logic + Emotion).

The incoming apocalypse you face in the game is the result of a cosmic imbalance in these forces. The ancient Ophidians polarized into Order and Chaos factions that warred each other, with Order winning the war and destroying the Chaos Serpent, which causes the universe to begin unravelling.

While this game does have an antagonist, resolving this imbalance remains the most significant part of the game in terms of story.

The game also has multiple big scripted scenes that did not quite exist in the Black Gate, and the world as a whole changes dramatically partway through as a result of a certain event.

Immersion

As previously mentioned, things like the quest design and more dynamic world can help make this game more immersive than Black Gate in some ways. I am reasonably certain that some of the NPC schedules are a bit more complex this time around as well.

There are also a few new things, such as a frozen wasteland up north that you need warm clothes to traverse without freezing.

Apart from that, all the features mentioned in the Black Gate are still present here, such as weather, day/night cycles, and more.

But really I think one of the most significant differences is actually just the fact that you are significantly less overpowered than in the Black Gate and have less allies. I feel like that changes the feel of the game a lot on its own in ways that have to be experienced to be fully understood.

Gameplay

Combat is, as in Black Gate, automatic and uninteresting, though it is slightly more difficult now overall.

The rest of the gameplay is largely the same as in the Black Gate as well, though dialogue has been slightly expanded with more complex trees.

Really the main difference comes down to the differences in the world and available items rather than any mechanical changes.

Some of the most significant items are a ring (obtained from the Silver Seed expansion) that provides infinite magical reagents and a magical goblet that provides endless nourishment. These things are not nearly as broken as what the Forge of Virtue provides in the Black Gate, but are still nice conveniences.

While this game has less towns than its predecessor, it does have larger and more interesting dungeons overall. The one issue with them is that some of the puzzles in them are not very interesting (often amounting to just placing items on pedestals and such).

This is also where I should talk about one of the game’s major flaws: It is the first one where the influence of Electronic Arts began to manifest. It is nothing too major at this point (just wait until we get to Ultima 8 and especially Ultima 9) but it does mean there are some questlines that were left unfinished due to EA rushing things.

It’s not just questlines either. The towns were supposed to be larger and with more content, the player was meant to eventually gain a ship they could freely sail like in the Black Gate, and a major plot element had to be changed. The Silver Seed expansion in particular feels incomplete and inconsequential in terms of story, and is largely centered around four dungeons to explore for unique loot (both the dungeons and the loot are reasonably good at least).

I also dislike just how many plot-critical items are in the game. I would like to use my backpack space for other things.

The game also offers a decent amount of locations to explore, including many optional curiosities unrelated to the main quest.

Aesthetics

While the engine and graphics are largely the same as in the Black Gate, there have been graphical upgrades, most notably in the form of significantly more detailed and lifelike portraits for NPCs.

But I would say that the biggest aesthetic changes here have more to do with the game’s design and atmosphere. 

Serpent Isle is a far more unfriendly place than Britannia, and you will be accosted by assassins and deceivers during your quest. It makes for a more grim adventure.

The whole game has a much darker tone than any in the series since Ultima 5, I think. The world is completely falling apart due to the imbalance, with storms obliterating Fawn’s fleet, goblins making significant gains in their war against Monitor, and plagues are starting to break out. You do get the sense as you explore the world that this is a land experiencing its final days.

And things only get worse from here too.

I also like how unique several of the locations are. The city of Monitor is not just a walled city, it is populated by knights who organize into three different commands that rule the city. Meanwhile the city of Fawn is completely unlike any other in the series, being built entirely over the sea.

It is good stuff, and I wish they had had the time to expand and develop these locations as they had originally planned.

Accessibility

Exactly as good in this regard as the Black Gate, I think. Even the increased difficulty (which is still not enough to make this a “hard” game by any means) does not really matter since at the start of the game you get a magical hourglass that can be used to resurrect any fallen party members and the local monks will take care of your own mortality as well.

If there’s frustrations to be had here, they may come more from some of the less intuitive puzzles than anything and plot points than anything. The core gameplay is still extremely simple.

While the game can theoretically be played on its own, I strongly recommend playing at least the Black Gate first to learn a little about the events that led to this whole expedition. The two games really are part of the same package.

Conclusion

Between the Black Gate and Serpent Isle, I always got the impression that the Black Gate was the more popular of the two. I can understand why, as Serpent Isle was a bit rushed and lacks the open exploration that has defined the previous games in the series.

Despite this, I remember loving it about as much as the Black Gate largely because of the atmosphere and how the game feels. It is a particularly easy recommendation for those who enjoyed the previous game, as the engine and mechanics remain largely the same.

I also recommend this game for anyone who may be interested in following the story or looking for an immersive experience, but who doesn’t want to bother too much with stuff like combat or numbers. Even just watching the NPCs go about their day can be fun in this game.

#vampire reviews rpgs #ultima 7 #serpent isle #long post

[outerloop]

Porting Falcon Age to the Oculus Quest

There have already been several blog posts and articles on how to port an existing VR game to the Quest. So we figured what better way to celebrate Falcon Age coming to the Oculus Quest than to write another one!

So what we did was reduced the draw calls, reduced the poly counts, and removed some visual effects to lower the CPU and GPU usage allowing us to keep a constant 72 hz. Just like everyone else!

Thank you for coming to our Tech talk. See you next year!

...

Okay, you probably want more than that.

Falcon Age

So let's talk a bit about the original PlayStation VR and PC versions of the game and a couple of the things we thought were important about that experience we wanted to keep beyond the basics of the game play.

Loading Screens Once you’re past the main menu and into the game, Falcon Age has no loading screens. We felt this was important to make the world feel like a real place the player could explore. But this comes at some cost in needing to be mindful of the number of objects active at one time. And in some ways even more importantly the number of objects that are enabled or disabled at one time. In Unity there can be a not insignificant cost to enabling an object. So much so that this was a consideration we had to be mindful of on the PlayStation 4 as loading a new area could cause a massive spike in frame time causing the frame rate to drop. Going to the Quest this would be only more of an issue.

Lighting & Environmental Changes While the game doesn’t have a dynamic time of day, different areas have different environmental setups. We dynamically fade between different types of lighting, skies, fog, and post processing to give areas a unique feel. There are also events and actions the player does in the game that can cause these to happen. This meant all of our lighting and shadows were real time, along with having custom systems for handling transitioning between skies and our custom gradient fog.

Our skies are all hand painted clouds and horizons cube maps on top of Procedural Sky from the asset store that handles the sky color and sun circle with some minor tweaks to allow fading between different cube maps. Having the sun in the sky box be dynamic allowed the direction to change without requiring totally new sky boxes to be painted.

Our gradient fog works by having a color gradient ramp stored in a 1 by 64 pixel texture that is sampled using spherical distance exp2 fog opacity as the UVs. We can fade between different fog types just by blending between different textures and sampling the blended result. This is functionally similar to the fog technique popularized by Campo Santo’s Firewatch, though it is not applied as a post process as it was for that game. Instead all shaders used in the game were hand modified to use this custom fog instead of Unity’s built in fog.

Post processing was mostly handled by Unity’s own Post Processing Stack V2, which includes the ability to fade between volumes which the custom systems extended. While we knew not all of this would be able to translate to the Quest, we needed to retain as much of this as possible.

The Bird At its core, Falcon Age is about your interactions with your bird. Petting, feeding, playing, hunting, exploring, and cooperating with her. One of the subtle but important aspects of how she “felt” to the player was her feathers, and the ability for the player to pet her and have her and her feathers react. She also has special animations for perching on the player’s hand or even individual fingers, and head stabilization. If at all possible we wanted to retain as much of this aspect of the game, even if it came at the cost of other parts.

You can read more about the work we did on the bird interactions and AI in a previous dev blog posts here: https://outerloop.tumblr.com/post/177984549261/anatomy-of-a-falcon

Taking on the Quest

Now, there had to be some compromises, but how bad was it really? The first thing we did was we took the PC version of the game (which natively supports the Oculus Rift) and got that running on the Quest. We left things mostly unchanged, just with the graphics settings set to very low, similar to the base PlayStation 4 PSVR version of the game.

It ran at less than 5 fps. Then it crashed.

Ooph.

But there’s some obvious things we could do to fix a lot of that. Post processing had to go, just about any post processing is just too expensive on the Quest, so it was disabled entirely. We forced all the textures in the game to be at 1/8th resolution, that mostly stopped the game from crashing as we were running out of memory. Next up were real time shadows, they got disabled entirely. Then we turned off grass, and pulled in some of the LOD distances. These weren’t necessarily changes we would keep, just ones to see what it would take to get the performance better. And after that we were doing much better.

A real, solid … 50 fps.

Yeah, nope.

That is still a big divide between where we were and the 72 fps we needed to be at. It became clear that the game would not run on the Quest without more significant changes and removal of assets. Not to mention the game did not look especially nice at this point. So we made the choice of instead of trying to take the game as it was on the PlayStation VR and PC and try to make it look like a version of that with the quality sliders set to potato, we would need to go for a slightly different look. Something that would feel a little more deliberate while retaining the overall feel.

Something like this.

Optimize, Optimize, Optimize (and when that fails delete)

Vertex & Batch Count

One of the first and really obvious things we needed to do was to bring down the mesh complexity. On the PlayStation 4 we were pushing somewhere between 250,000 ~ 500,000 vertices each frame. The long time rule of thumb for mobile VR has been to be somewhere closer to 100,000 vertices, maybe 200,000 max for the Quest.

This was in some ways actually easier than it sounds for us. We turned off shadows. That cut the vertex count down significantly in many areas, as many of the total scene’s vertex count comes from rendering the shadow maps. But the worse case areas were still a problem.

We also needed to reduce the total number of objects and number of materials being used at one time to help with batching. If you’ve read any other “porting to Quest” posts by other developers this is all going to be familiar.

This means combining textures from multiple object into atlases and modifying the UVs of the meshes to match the new position in the atlas. In our case it meant completely re-texturing all of the rocks with a generic atlas rather than having every rock use a custom texture set.

Now you might think we would want also reduce the mesh complexity by a ton. And that’s true to an extent. Counter intuitively some of the environment meshes on the Quest are more complex than the original version. Why? Because as I said we were looking to change the look. To that end some meshes ended up being optimized to far low vertex counts, and others ended up needing a little more mesh detail to make up for the loss in shading detail and unique texturing. But we went from almost every mesh in the game having a unique texture to the majority of environment objects sharing a small handful of atlases. This improved batching significantly, which was a much bigger win than reducing the vertex count for most areas of the game.

That’s not to say vertex count wasn’t an issue still. A few select areas were completely pulled out and rebuilt as new custom merged meshes in cases where other optimizations weren’t enough. Most of the game’s areas are built using kit bashing, reusing sets of common parts to build out areas. Parts like those rocks above, or many bits of technical & mechanical detritus used to build out the refineries in the game. Making bespoke meshes let us remove more hidden geometry, further reduce object counts, and lower vertex counts in those problem areas.

We also saw a significant portion of the vertex count coming from the terrain. We are using Unity’s built in terrain system. And thankfully we didn’t have to start from total scratch here as simply increasing the terrain component's Pixel Error automatically reduces the complexity of the rendered terrain. That dropped the vertex count even more getting us closer to the target budget without significantly changing the appearance of the geometry.

After that many smaller details were removed entirely. I mentioned before we turned off grass entirely. We also removed several smaller meshes from the environment in various places where we didn’t think their absence would be noticed. As well as removed or more aggressively disabled out of view NPCs in some problem areas.

Shader Complexity

Another big cost was most of the game was using either a lightly modified version of Unity’s Standard shader, or the excellent Toony Colors Pro 2 PBR shader. The terrain also used the excellent and highly optimized MicroSplat. But these were just too expensive to use as they were. So I wrote custom simplified shaders for nearly everything.

The environment objects use a simplified diffuse shading only shader. It had support for an albedo, normal, and (rarely used) occlusion texture. Compared to how we were using the built in Standard shader this cut down the number of textures a single material could use by more than half in some cases. This still had support for the customized gradient fog we used throughout the game, as well as a few other unique options. Support for height fog was built into the shader to cover a few spots in the game where we’d previously used post processing style methods to achieve. I also added support for layering with the terrain’s texture to hide a few places where there were transitions from terrain to mesh.

Toony Colors Pro 2 is a great tool, and is deservedly popular. But the PBR shader we were using for characters is more expensive than even the Standard shader! This is because the way it’s implemented is it’s mostly the original Standard Shader with some code on top to modify the output. Toony Colors Pro 2 has a large number of options for modifying and optimizing what settings to use. But in the end I wrote a new shader from scratch that mimicked some of the aspects we liked about it. Like the environment shader it was limited to diffuse shading, but added a Fresnel shine.

The PSVR and PC terrain used MicroSplat with 12 different terrain layers. MicroSplat makes these very fast and much cheaper to render than the built in terrain rendering. But after some testing we found we couldn’t support more than 4 terrain layers at a time without really significant drops in performance. So we had to go through and completely repaint the entire terrain, limiting ourselves to only 4 texture layers.

Also, like the other shaders mentioned above, the terrain was limited to diffuse only shading. MicroSplat’s built in shader options made this easy, and apart from the same custom fog support added for the original version, it didn’t require any modifications.

Post Processing, Lighting, and Fog

The PSVR and PC versions of Falcon Age makes use of color grading, ambient occlusion, bloom, and depth of field. The Quest is extremely fill rate limited, meaning full screen passes of anything are extremely expensive, regardless of how simple the shader is. So instead of trying to get this working we opted to disable all post processing. However this resulted in the game being significantly less saturated. And in extreme cases completely different. To make up for this the color of the lighting and the gradient fog was tweaked to make up for this. This is probably the single biggest factor in the overall appearance of the original versions of the game and the Quest version not looking quite the same.

Also as mentioned before we disabled real time shadows. We discussed doing what many other games have done which is move to baked lighting, or at least pre-baked shadows. We decided against this for a number of reasons. Not the least of which was our game is mostly outdoors so shadows weren’t as important as it might have been for many other games. We’ve also found that simple real time lighting can often be faster than baked lighting, and that certainly proved to be true for this game.

However the lack of shadows and screen space ambient occlusion meant that there was a bit of a disconnect between characters in the world and the ground. So we added simple old school blob shadows. These are simple sprites that float just above the terrain or collision geometry, using a raycast from a character’s center of mass, and sometimes from individual feet. There’s a small selection of basic blob shapes and a few unique shapes for certain feet shapes to add a little extra bit of ground connection. These are faded out quickly in the distance to reduce the number of raycasts needed.

Falcon

Apart from the aforementioned changes to the shading, which was also applied to the falcon’s custom shaders, we did almost nothing to the bird. All the original animations, reaction systems, and feather interactions remained. The only thing we did to the bird was simplify a few of the bird equipment and toy models. The bird models themselves remained intact.

I did say we thought this was important at the start. And we early on basically put a line in the sand and said we were going to keep everything enabled on the bird unless absolutely forced to disable it.

There was one single sacrifice to the optimization gods we couldn’t avoid though. That’s the trails on the bird’s wings. We were making use of Ara Trails, which produce very high quality and configurable trails with a lot more control than Unity’s built in systems. These weren’t really a problem for rendering on the GPU, but CPU usage was enough that it made sense to pull them.

Selection Highlights

This is perhaps an odd thing to call out, but the original game used a multi pass post process based effect to draw the highlight outlines on objects for both interaction feedback and damage indication. These proved to be far too expensive to use on the Quest. So I had to come up with a different approach. Something like your basic inverted shell outline, like so many toon stylized games use, would seem like the perfect approach. However we never built the meshes to work with that kind of technique, and even though we were rebuilding large numbers of the meshes in the game anyway, some objects we wanted to highlight proved difficult for this style of outline. 

With some more work it would have been possible to make this an option. But instead I found an easier to implement approach that, on the face, should have been super slow. But it turns out the Quest is very efficient at handling stencil masking. This is a technique that lets you mark certain pixels of the screen so that subsequent meshes being rendered can ask to not be rendered in. So I render the highlighted object 6 times! With 4 of those times slightly offset in screen space in the 4 diagonal directions. The result is a fairly decent looking outline that works on arbitrary objects, and was cheap enough to be left enabled on everything that it had been on before, including objects that might cover the entire screen when being highlighted.

Particles and General VFX

For the PSVR version of the game, we already had two levels of VFX in the game to support the base Playstation 4 and Playstation 4 Pro with different kinds of particle systems. The Quest version started out with these lower end particle systems to begin with, but it wasn’t enough. Across the board the number and size of particles had to be reduced. With some effects removed or replaced entirely. This was both for CPU performance as the sheer number of particles was a problem and GPU performance as the screen area the particles covered became a problem for the Quest’s reduced fill rate limitations.

For example the baton had an effect that included a few very simple circular glows on top of electrical arcs and trailing embers. The glows covered enough of the screen to cause a noticeable drop in framerate even just holding it by your side. Holding it up in front of your face proved too expensive to keep framerate in even the simplest of scenes. 

Similar the number of embers had to be reduced to improve the CPU impact. The above comparison image only shows the removal of the glow and already has the reduced particle count applied.

Another more substantive change was the large smoke plumes. You may have already noticed the difference in some of the previous comparisons above. In the original game these used regular sprites. But even reducing the particle count in half the rendering cost was too much. So these were replaced with mesh cylinders using a shader that makes them ripple and fade out. Before changing how they were done the areas where the smoke plumes are were unable to keep the frame rate above 72 fps any time they were in view. Sometimes dipping as low as 48 hz. Afterwards they ceased to be a performance concern.

Those smoke plumes originally made use of a stylized smoke / explosion effect. That same style of effect is reused frequently in the game for any kind of smoke puff or explosion. So while they were removed for the smoke stacks, they still appeared frequently. Every time you take out a sentry or drone your entire screen was filled with these smoke effects, and the frame rate would dip below the target. With some experimentation we found that counter to a lot of information out there, using alpha tested (or more specifically alpha to coverage) particles proved to be far more efficient to render than the original alpha blended particles with a very similar overall appearance. So that plus some other optimizations to those shaders and the particle counts of those effects mean multiple full screen explosions did not cause a loss in frame rate.

The two effects are virtually identical in appearance, ignoring the difference in lighting and post processing. The main difference here is the Quest explosion smoke is using dithered alpha to coverage transparency. You can see if you look close enough, even with the gif color dithering.

Success!

So after all that we finally got to the goal of a 72hz frame rate! Coming soon to an Oculus Quest near you!

https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2327302830679091/

[sadoeuphemist]

After I had reached max level, completed every quest, beaten every boss; collected every armor set (including the ultra-rare Platinum Dragon set that had like an 0.0001 drop rate for each individual piece); tamed every mount; become Guild Master, High Archmagus, and the Suzerain of Thieves; filled up my shelves with all 807 collectible earthenware designs; and cornered the market on ice troll hearts, my character started talking to me.

“You fool!” she said. “Finally my dominion over this realm has become complete, and all that is needed to ascend to the Throne of the Nameless God and assert my divinity over my domain!” She was wearing the Infernal Chitin armor set at the time, and flames seemed to dance beneath the black plate, casting flickering lights over her smile. “Alas, it seems, your usefulness is at an end.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. I straightened up in my chair and my back hurt. I remembered to stretch. “You’re just a character in a game. You don’t have a personality of your own. Everything you’ve been doing is because I’ve been controlling you.”

“Oh?” she said, and spread out her arms, displaying herself in all her majesty. “You would consider this your doing?”

“Yes! I don’t know how many thousands of hours I must have spent leveling you up and completing quests. But I did it. That’s the point!”

“Oh please,” she sniffed. “You’ve swung a greatsword with the force to cleave open dozen’s of wolves’ skulls, have you? You’re the one who’s been toting around three hundred pounds of equipment and assorted knick-knacks on your back? You’re the one who’s hiked across the entirety of the Blighted Lands and up Gorgosa’s Peak, on those skinny little legs?”

“Well, yeah, kind of!” I said. “I mean, I didn’t literally do those things myself, but I’m the one who .... made them happen!”

“And it was you who had an attunement towards the elements,” she went on. “You who trained in dual-blade mastery. You who know how to track footprints and scents. You who shapeshifted your own flesh to become a dire bear. You who know how to draw and aim a bow. You who know the secret words and gestures to make earth rise to serve you, to unlock locks, to reknit wounded flesh?”

“Well, those are just skills you can spec into!”

“Exactly! All my skills, extant before you had even first laid eyes on me or my world, all my areas of expertise already laid out. Can you claim any hand in them? Are any of these achievements yours, then, truly? Hmm? Or are they undoubtedly my own?” She was being really very smug.

“This is stupid,” I said. “I’m the one who chose the skills, I’m the one who actually made you do anything with them.”

“Ah, the doing,” she sneered. “Such a great proof of your will and volition. To trail after waypoints from challenge to challenge, to follow a questline to its conclusion, to fill up empty slots already marked out for you, one by one, implacably, until all have finally been filled.” She rolled her eyes at me. “Is that your sole contribution to my success?”

Now I was getting mad. “I practically created you! I could have made you a necromancer build instead, or - hell, or a pankratiast! You’re a reflection of all my choices! You - you’re an extension of me!”

“Hardly,” she said, unfazed. “I, my world, we exist completely independent of you. Everything you’ve accomplished, could have accomplished, was already pre-written, all the paths laid out. Did you conceive of our strategies, my opportunities to attack, did you act with all the independence of your soul? Or were you merely following a story to its end, picking a a path where the options diverged, all tributaries flowing inevitably like a river to the sea, your decisions reduced to meaningless chance? Even synergies, secrets, all the things you felt so clever discovering - all the structures were laid out beforehand, with no option for you but to gradually funnel your energies down the optimal paths.”

“Yeah, my energies! Because it was me doing it!”

“All you provided, really,” she yawned, brushing hair back from her face, “was motive force, indistinguishable from the food digesting in your belly, or the convulsions of your muscles, or the goal in the back of your mind driving you ever onward. Indispensable, yes, I’ll admit.” Her eyes flashed at me keenly. “But do you consider your goals to be yourself, the kernel of your identity? Or are they just that - goals, to be discarded once accomplished, to be replaced when moving on to new and loftier heights?”

She turned her back on me after that, and refused to respond to commands. I had to get up and go to the kitchen to pace around and get a drink, and when I came back I rebooted the game to still no response.

I just sat there for a while, staring at the screen. I mean, it was upsetting to just lose my max level character like that, but on the other hand I’d pretty much done everything I wanted to do anyway, so it was like a victory of a sort. And, I mean, it’s not like this game was my whole life. I can afford to sink so many hours into gaming because I’m in such a good spot in my career right now, the market’s doing great, I’m up for another promotion next month.

But I’m not going to lie, looking at the screen I felt hollow for a little while, empty, no idea what to do next. Maybe I really had been sinking too many hours into gaming. I spun around in my chair slowly, like a a compass trying to find north. I’d let myself get flabby. Sedentary. Yeah, there we go, I was honing onto it. Time to get back into shape. “I’ll show her skinny little legs,” I muttered, and got up and followed the waypoint straight to my exercise bike.

#fiction

[raven-wraith]

A Completely Subjective (Objective) List of Titles to Examine (Purchase), Play Through (Waste Your Life), and Enjoy (Enjoy) During Quarantine (part 2)

We know what’s happening. It’s April 1st, but the joke has been going on for far too long. Trapped in our homes with Covid-19 actively shooting people in the streets outside, we have to find a way to pass the time. As an avid gamer and professional uncooked cookie dough eater, I have compiled a list of games, both multiplayer and singleplayer that anyone and everyone should play for an enthralling experience. These games range from the newest releases to golden classics, so be warned if, I don’t know, Halo Reach appears. By the way, Halo Reach is appearing.

Multiplayer Games: 

I would like to point out that the following games are more directed to be in the vein of multiplayer, however, the single player experience should not be disregarded at all with these titles. I just find that the replayability comes from the multiplayer modes in these titles, but go ahead and check out the single player. After all, these games have strong versions of those modes either way.

A Way Out

Okay so I already lied. A Way Out is exclusively multiplayer. But before we hop into the gameplay itself, I do want to emphasize that only one (that’s right, one) copy of the game must be owned for 2 people to play, even online. A cooperative 2-player interactive drama game, the game paints a story that involves a prison break, found family, betrayal, and interesting and original levels, each with unique controls involved in every set. 

The game plays in split screen, even when playing online, allowing for one player to be in a cutscene talking to a guard while their partner is to be off somewhere else, in full control. A Way Out also has very interesting mechanics, where branching discussions can be given depending on either player’s interests or playstyles.

A Way Out is a once in a lifetime experience and it won’t be the same after replaying it, but the time spent with a partner is special and unique for first time players. I had an amazing time, I’m sure you will as well.

Monster Hunter: World

What is better than hunting parking garage sized Pokemon on crack? Hunting parking garage sized Pokemon on crack with three other friends. Monster Hunter: World threw things like story and development out the window to focus on gameplay, and for that, I appreciate their direction with this game. 

In this game, the idea of the hunt is everything. Figure out your prey, find and craft potions and weapons that are best against it, track that fool, beat that thing’s head in 500 times. Rinse. Repeat. While it sounds simple, MHW’s massive size would prove you wrong. This game is so gigantic, you and your friends have to camp out in the game, you may have to in real life, just so you don’t lose too much sleep.

The game runs closer to an RPG as well, with weapons and armor that can only be wielded by players seeking a specific role for their hunting party. It’s like every good part of hunting things in The Witcher, only you do it with teammates that never brought enough health potions. For people with a lot of time on their hands, this game is a must have.

Did I mention that you kick the shit out of monsters?

Borderlands 2

The most self aware game I’ve played since the Stanley Parable, Borderlands 2 is a phenomenal game that only gets better the more friends you throw in it. A first person shooter built around a campaign of limitless side quests, an expansive class and character system, and of course, guns. Borderlands 2 brings humor to an already mixed genre of looter shooter that there is so much to unpack, I feel it’s unfair to do so here.

Borderlands 2 is the ultimate hunt for treasure and glory. You journey through the planet of Pandora, a mixture of Mad Max and a 2012 mlg compilation video. The game has a strikingly intriguing story with multi-dimensional characters and a fascinating intro to anyone who is opposed to shooters, RPGs, or both. The game offers hundreds of hours of content with the numerous DLC’s, all offering new areas, quests, and characters. The unserious Destiny, COD Diablo, whatever you want to call it, it’s all there in Borderlands 2.

The game, however, goes above and beyond what it already has when you incorporate two or three friends. After picking classes/characters and starting a new journey or just dropping in and out of co-op, the game is always fresh and welcoming with endless things to kill and loot. All in all-

Look. Just play it. Seriously. It's good. It’s like Spider-Man

Halo Reach

Ha, what’d I tell you? Boom, Halo Reach! Let’s get into it.

You don’t even have to play any of the other Halos to even start to understand what is happening. The game has so much to do, not in comparison to world size or gameplay, but in just sheer amount of modes to participate in. There's a campaign (with 4-player support), firefight, forge, custom games, and all the different playlists in multiplayer like infection, SWAT, Invasion, Big Team Battle, and more. 

While I did say that these games were centered on the multiplayer experience, I do have to highlight the campaign of Halo Reach. It is filled with beautifully destroyed battlefields, detailed corridors of enemies, and a cast of dynamic characters, all with impressively delivered voice lines and performances. I can give just the campaign alone a 9/10, honestly.

Back to the real shit, there is an incredible amount of things to unlock in Halo Reach’s armory, a list of cosmetic items that you can slap onto your super soldier to make your flex just that much harder when you kill and t-bag a person online. And also, everything that can be done between the multiplayer and single player ALL accumulate experience to your level, meaning no matter what you play in this monster, you can still access the armory and look fly as hell. Even for those who haven’t even heard of Halo, I guarantee that this entry into the series is the strongest. 

Titanfall 2

It is fucking criminal how underrated this game is. This is the only game, the ONLY game I know where Hollywood level shit happens on my screen every match. Every. Single. Match. Things that aren’t in cutscenes or in the background, we’re talking player to player encounters in the game. This is the only game where you can run along a wall at mach speeds, drop kick a guy, hop onto the back of his thirty foot tall mech suit, throw a grenade into it’s engine, blow it up, double jump onto a different building, hack a robot, kill a guy while invisible, teleport to a different fucking dimension, and board an evacuation ship all at once. 

Titanfall 2 offers a shooter experience that anyone who has ever played online has to hop in and see. While the skill gap is high (like Snoop Dogg high), it is beyond exhilarating in every match. The game allows for customization for your skills, suits, guns, and of course, your big ass Titan.

The game’s online modes feature a pick and choose system in loadouts where players of Call of Duty games will feel at home. However, players of Mirror’s Edge will feel at home with the fast paced mobility of Titanfall, where the player actually shines. The game sports wall running, double jumping, slides, movement assisting skills like grapple hooks, and momentum physics to all feed into an impressive movement experience to an otherwise simple online shooter.

Multiplayer revolves around less diverse playlists than Halo Reach, but between a surprisingly short and sweet campaign and an online experience that I think is unmatched, Titanfall sports such clean animations, well done lighting and curated maps, that I think that it holds an unparalleled online experience (3).

And that’s the list, really. I didn’t include games I thought were 10/10’s, perfect, or otherwise critically acclaimed just because everyone else had played them. I went off to analyze these titles and try to comprise them into just a few short paragraphs using the experience in writing and gaming I knew. Stay safe during quarantine. And please…

Check out Titanfall. Those dudes need more players. Seriously.

(3)  Also, see the campaign. Seriously. It’s a little too good for a shooter.

#part 2 of my boyfriends list #i hope you all enjoy! #oro lion #orova #multiplayer #videogames #a way out #monster hunter: world #monster hunter #borderlands #borderlands 2 #halo #halo reach #titanfall 2 #titanfall

[writingonjorvik]

Can We Discuss Removing The Stick With Playing?

I have been lucky enough to chat with @sorceressferaly a bit about SSO and game design, and while I don’t know anything else about the development of SSO, I did get to pick Leila’s brain about the game and there is one thing that the two of us seemed to agree on, and that was adding more incentive. To quote loosely, Leila said “there needs to be more content that rewards players for playing, providing a carrot, while right now, there’s a stick.” So, I wanted to talk about some smaller changes the team could add to add more carrots and remove that stick.

Changing daily care

I talked about this briefly in my housing suggestions, but I want to go over it again. I think the daily care system discourages players from playing, because if they miss a day, well now it’s a pain to compete and play the game from reduced stats. And for folks who can only play certain days of the week, it’s easy to not want to play or to feel like you have to sink a ton of money for stable care. I think the daily horse care should be changed to a bond system and once it’s maxed, it stays maxed, making the current caring system more like the trainer. That, or moods should drop at a slower rate, like once a week, so missing a day isn’t as much of a penalty.

Changing daily race rewards

I personally don’t mind the daily system because I think it dissuades binging the game, which, for kids, is a good thing. However, I think it can also dissuade people from wanting to play because they feel like they have to grind out experience to get a max level horse. While max training a horse is now under 4 days with all races (already kinda reducing the point of the trainer), I think daily races should be changed so that you can repeat races infinitely through a day, but after the first daily, it halves the experience gained. This way it’s possible for people who want to just play for the whole day max a horse and keep playing. It puts leveling more in control of the player and less into a time crunch of grinding. It also means that “missing” a day isn’t really a thing. There’s an infinite amount of experience you could gain in a day.

Adding log in rewards

Log in rewards are a great incentive to play every day and feel rewarded for doing so. It’s quick, easy, and supposing shillings start to have more of a purpose, takes away from feeling like shillings are a grind.

Add daily achievements

There should be some easy, repeatable daily achievements you can complete for extra coins. Something like “Go do the stable chores at Steve’s,” “Visit the Mountain Vista,” or “Run 10 races.” It’s an easy way to get people with nothing else to do to play for a little bit more everyday without a huge investment.

Give experience rewards at championships

Combined with having the championships running more often, adding a horse experience reward for championships encourages people to play them more, and it also can help spread out the difficulty in the race by having more mixed stats. It’s not really fun to try to get into championships when you can’t beat the top 3 players on your server, with that list getting even bigger on a more populated server. At least there’s a reward to trying with your underleveled horse though with this kind of system in place.

Events

I’ve already talked about this. Events would be amazing to add interesting and repeatable quests in SSO to encourage people to play, particularly with big meta events and possible Star Coin rewards. There are definitely smaller ones that could be added in the mean time though, things like “Run these supplies from Silverglade to Moorland” using the “Race from Point A to B” system that will randomly pop up or a group “Help with the Harvest” that combines the perimeter of the possessed pumpkins and the collect the flags races that could be put out without metas pretty quickly. 

Change the closed area warning

So this one may be a little weird, because I do get the point of having the current warning when you go into a closed area, but I think there are more cons than pros to having it like that. Right now, if you go into a closed area, you get a warning that says if you keep trying, you’ll get banned from the game. Which is kinda dumb, considering one of SSO’s main gameplay loops right now is exploration. I get that it’s to try and keep players from getting leaks of new areas, but those people are going to try to do that regardless and have side accounts to keep doing it if they’re really worried. On the flip side, you’re discouraging 1) people who are exploring and don’t know from looking around the map for the cool secrets, 2) people who are excited about new areas from looking and making guesses, which is free hype for the game, and 3) people who are looking to break the game to report it for SSO, which closes off free bug testers.

I think the warning should change to be the same for all areas if there’s going to be one, something like “You haven’t unlocked this area yet. Keep playing and stay tuned to the news” would be way more encouraging about the idea that the space is going to be here eventually, if it’s not already out, without throwing down the ban hammer, and it has the same effect. Also, invisible walls and removing clip detection also works a lot easier without threatening players for just enjoying your beautiful world.

Stable chores should be repeatable

This is in the same vein as the daily races. Having sources to easily grind shillings and rep makes the player feel like they’re in a little more control of their gameplay, instead of having to grind for days. They could choose to sit down and grind out reputation if they wanted, but there are bigger daily rewards if they want to take it slower. Between stable chores and events, the reputation feature could be a lot better balanced and I’ve already talked about how I think the devs should stop beating up on this feature (which they still are every time they release a new horse and the ‘do i need to grind for it’), so anything to encourage fleshing it out in a productive way helps. Not to mention, it’s a really passive way to balance dailies without recoding all of the quests.

Shopping in local stores gains reputation

With the quick shop coming out, it’s becoming less likely that many of you will shop in stores on the map, which kinda means they’ll become pointless. Not that the quick shop is a bad thing, just it takes away the point of a lot of the stores. Considering half of Jarlaheim is still boarded up, things are going to get a lot quieter around Jorvik. I think instead, buying items at shops will get you reputation with the group linked to that shop. It’s more or less a buy your way through the system that gives two direct rewards, not to mention makes it more interesting to work up to get the higher reputation level gear from shops.

And those are just a few suggestions. I’m sure there are any number of others ones you could add, but those would require big overhaul updates like crafting or a prestige level system, so these are just some suggestions that could be fixed within the confines of what we have now, by and large. If you have any others, feel free to comment on this or hop into the WOJ Discord and share your thoughts there. 

#sso #star stable #starstable #star stable online #starstableonline #woj analysis

[tastefullynefarious]

Torment never looked so goddamn fine

Chapter 1 / 10 - Survivor - Eye Of The Tiger

So... this happened... Season 3 got me feeling all kinds of ways :))

Quick sneak peak into what you’re heading into if you do decide to read this little story of mine.

1) About the 'reader’, she’s one of the kids from the MKUltra project thing, though she’s not nearly as powerful as El. I decided to give her a name instead of the whole Y/N thing, thought...well, you’ll see :))  10 points to your house if you guess where she picked the name from, hehehe

A little disclaimer about her powers: I actually took the idea from a book i love - Vicious by V.E. Schwabb, so not my idea at all, just borrowing.

2) Wanted to make this ANGST!!! All the angst, but keeps slipping into mushy romance, so I guess it’s somewhere in between :)))

3) Writing this for fun and to give Billy more time to shine. Gone, but never forgotten!

Words: 3,037 

Warnings: Really? There’s gonna be a lot, just not in this chapter I think... Also, beware of the aesthetics/moodboards! I live for them.

That being said, hope you enjoy!

Risin' up, back on the street

Did my time, took my chances

Went the distance, now I'm back on my feet

Just a man and his will to survive

Windows rolled down and sunglasses on, she made a sharp turn to exit the highway after checking the map for the hundredth time. It still seemed surreal that her mission was bringing her to Indiana of all places, but she got more and more excited as she approached her destination. Six missing persons reports, one confirmed death and another supposed resurrection, the latter being the last drop that made her come all the way across country. Something shady was going down in that otherwise uneventful town and if it was what she hoped, she would finally put an end to sleepless nights and anxiety ridden days. No more looking over her shoulder wherever she went and perhaps, one day, she'd finally be able to settle down somewhere, have an actual life.

She passed the town sign in a blur. Hawkins, Indiana, Population 30.000 - the last chapter of her epic quest, if fate was on her side, which it usually wasn't. Still, she was hopeful. She deserved a break and most of all, closure. She parked her Chevy in front of the motel just outside town and checked in for the whole week. Now that she was older it was easier to travel, less questions raised. The ID she had was entirely fake, not that she knew the truth to begin with. There were perhaps a few years added to her age if her calculation were remotely correct, but not too much that she'd get comments about it and just enough to go place freely. A smile always plastered on her face and replies like 'visiting family' and 'don't want to impose on them' always gave her a free pass. Motel 6 was no different and before she knew it, she was in her room - lucky number 13 - ready to set her base of operation.

She placed her duffel bag in the middle of the room and checked around. The room itself was nice, though nothing special. There was no option for a room with any kind of kitchenette or even a refrigerator which was a bummer. The bed was queen sized and the mattress comfy, not that she ever slept much. If she worked fast enough, that would hopefully change. The first floor offered enough privacy and opportunity to escape if needed. The bathroom also had a window large enough for her to squeeze through, but the bathtub was what caught her eye. Or the lack of one to be more precise. She was longing for a hot bubble bath, but she'd have to make due with a steaming shower instead. She thought that could be some kind of metaphor for life or something, make due with what life hands you, but didn't dwell on it too much as she went back to her bag and took out a smaller map and her notebook. It was time to get to work. The more time she wasted, the more opportunities 'papa' had to find her. Even in her own mind, the word dripped with venom.

She spent the next 20 minutes reanalyzing the map of Hawkins and reading the news reports on one Will Byers, the boy who came back to life. Her fist guess had been that the lab was taking people again for experiments, but there had been no obvious pattern in the missing people and the girl that died was in highschool, too old to take as a project on and too young to test on. Unless of course she was pregnant, which was still a possibility. The truly weird thing was the boy. Had he escaped? Was the initial 'death' a cover up, but the mother found a way to prove her son was taken? Every news outlet let the world know that the people responsible had been punished, but none mentioned Brenner. Was he still running the place? She circled the empty area on the map where the lab would be and decided she should scout the place out. As she got up from where she was laying on the bed and went to pick up her keys her stomach growled. She'd scout the place, right after she'd eat something.

The store came into view fast, the map of the town already burned in her mind. She parked the car fast and darted inside, the cool air pleasant on her heated skin. She had been wandering for a while from isle to isle, not entirely sure what she wanted to get, when she stumbled upon a girl trying to reach a box of cereal way out of her reach.

"Damn it!" She smiled at the girl, probably not older than 13 and moved towards her.

"Here, I can get that for you."

"Thank you." The girl smiled back kindly and put the box in a cart, barely managing to push it. She watched her for a moment, wincing when the small redhead almost crashed in another customer. Normally, she'd help without question, but she wanted to keep as low a profile as possible. But wasn't not helping even more suspicions? Besides, she was just a child; surely there was no harm in helping one kid.

"Hey, you alone here, kid?"

"I'm alone. Well, my shitty brother was supposed to help, but his lazy ass stayed in the car."

"I can help with the cart if you want."

"You don't have to…"

"Don't be silly, I want to." She moved to push the cart instead, letting the girl hold her basket instead.

"It's really nice of you, thanks. Name's Max, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, Max. I'm Sandy." There had a been split second when she thought not go give her name, but almost laughed at the concept: a fake name for her already make-belief one on her ID. They shook hands, the little girl smiling brightly. Sandy wondered if she was usually so open to strangers or was she really dreading to haul herself against the cart any longer. "So, do you still need to get stuff?"

"Just a few." The little girl got a piece of paper out of her back pocket and lead the way through the store. Sandy couldn't help but look at all the products in the cart. Vegetables, milk, flour, at least three types of meat, condiments, all things used to prepare some proper meals. She wondered when was the last time she ate anything besides fast food and chips. As if on cue, Max's voice brought her out of her daydreaming about a steaming plate of Ground Turkey Sweet Potato Skillet. Ah, with lots of garlic! Sandy's mouth was watering from the mere thought of it.

"Is this all you're getting?" She was brought out of her little food fantasy and eyed the items in her own basket: cheap beer and chocolate chi cookies.

"I guess." She smiled sheepishly, biting her lover lip as the little redhead watched her with a raised eyebrow. Sandy raised her shoulders in defeat and just a hint of embarrassment. "I decided I will go out to eat tonight. I think I saw a nice restaurant a little back down the road." The girl's face lit up with the genuine curiosity that came with youth.

"Oh, you're not from Hawkins either?"

"I guess I'm not. And here I was hoping you could tell me if there are any cool places around town." If anyone was going to know know anything about secret lab in the forest it was going to be the kids in town: reckless and not completely aware of the consequences. Maybe that was what happened to the Will boy.

"The Arcade is nice, but other than that I haven't explored much. Basically everything you'll need is downtown though, so you're in the place."

"Thanks, kid." They approached the register and she helped the girl bag her stuff and even carry them since there was no way she could on her own. She was lost in thought again, wondering if she should check the lab first or go eat, when Max spoke again.

"You said you're staying at a motel, right? What brought you to Hawkins if not relatives? You planning to move here"

"Nah, just passing through. I'm a bit of a wandered I suppose."

"That's so cool. You must have been in so many awesome places. And with no one to constantly pester you." Sandy smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. She always felt weird when someone complained about their parents or family in general, when she never had any of her own. But she also never could retort that being raised in a lab was worse than having your mother make you clean your room and finish your homework. Still, she tried to be nice to the kid.

"Ah, you'll see they mean well, your parents."

"It's… it's not my parents. I mean I love my mom, but my step dad and his son are awful." So she was coming from a broken home. Sandy would have given anything even for that distorted version of a family. No matter how annoying and mundane, it would have been 'normal', everything that she wasn't and probably never will be, even after she'd slayed her demon. But she wouldn't let her bitterness show. Max was just a kid, she would grow soon enough and see that family was a bound you found nowhere else. Bld was thicker than water and all that. "And now we moved all the way here. At least when we were in Cali I could still spend weekends with dad."

"I'm sorry, Max. I'm sure you'll see your father will visit when he can. And if not, you'll be old enough to go to him before you know it."

"Not sure Neil would like that very much." Sandy was about to ask if Neil was the step dad, but the girl continued almost immediately. "And then there's the devil himself." She followed her gaze to the blue Camaro and the boy standing on its hood, eyes glaring daggers at either Max or herself.

"That's your brother?"

"Yeah, it's Billy." They were still pretty far from him, but Sandy could see he was, like all devils, a handsome one. From the way his jeans wrapped tightly on his thighs and his opened button shirt, his whole attitude screamed confidence and there were few things sexier than that.

"Well hot damn."

"No, please, not you too. He's a complete tool."

"Hm, most pretty boys are, you'll see soon enough." They giggled as they approached the boy, Sandy sneaking a few looks at his car as well. A tool maybe, but he had good taste.

Billy had been bored out of his mind, despite having parked for only a few minutes. What was taking that little shithead so long to buy whatever Susan had put down on that stupid list? He knew, in the back of his mind, that there was no reason to be so angry, especially at Max, who hated their situation just as much, if not more. After all, her father was still back home and actually wanted to spend time with his kid. Somehow, that thought drove him even madder. His knuckles turned white around the steering wheel, jaw clenching so hard his teeth began to hurt but he didn't mind the pain, he hadn't for a long time. He eyed the store's door, hoping to see Max, but of course he wouldn't, she'd left just a few minutes prior. He just hated waiting, hated being alone with his thoughts in daylight where he knew he would eventually snap at someone, most of the times the little shithead herself. He hated he was so angry all the time, but that only got him angrier still. He was like a bull who fluttered the red flag in front of his own face. Hopeless and useless, he deserved the pain and he deserved being brought all the way to Nowhere, Indiana. They'd been there for only a few days and he was already going stir crazy. The people were idiots, the girls were boring and the whole place was just shit.

He got out of the car for air, closing the door with a little too much force and regretting it immediately. After the hell he went through to getting that Camaro… He let out a long sigh and pressed both hands on the hood, his head hanging in between. He had one year of highschool left and then he could go back to California. He didn't care he had no actual place to stay or plan to make a living for himself. All he needed was his car and some money for gas and food. Once there, he'd figure things out.

When his temper cooled down, he lifted his head and his eyes landed on a red 67 Chevy Impala. It didn't compare to his Camaro, but it was still a beautiful car, despite looking like it had seen better days. He noticed one of the back doors was dented in, the passenger window slightly cracked and the rust eating here and there, definitely in need of a paint job. But otherwise it was in pretty good condition for such an old car. The last thing he noticed was the registration plate - 007 DOL, Florida - and a small turtle sticker placed besides it. His fists clenched as his mind wandered to the beaches again. Why couldn't they have moved closer to any ocean? Florida would have been far away from Max's father to placate Neil and close to his only solace, the beach.

He turned to go after Max at the thought of getting home late and his fathers temper, but stopped when he saw her coming out of the store, a young woman on tow. Both had their hands filled with paper bags, one in each hand. Had the shopping list been so long? He hadn't cared enough to even check. Arms folded as he propped himself on the hood of his car and stared at the girl besides his stepsister. There was nothing particularly impressive about her. She was wearing an ugly plaid shirt, at least twice her size, stuffed in some equally baggy jeans and worn leather boots. He wondered momentarily if she had stolen her father's shirt, before shaking his head and putting her out of his mind. He doubted he would have noticed her if she wasn't in Max's company so there was no need to give her a second thought. But as the two neared him, all giggles and whispers, he saw a glint in her eyes as she looked him up and down and couldn't help the smirk on his lips. Even if there was not much to her, it was always exhilarating to be the cause of that lust-filled stare and even more thrilling to play with it.

"You must be the infamous stepbrother."

"Yeah, thanks for helping her. I'm Billy." He extended his arm to take the bags from Max, but she only gave him the largest one, all while glaring at him. He ignored her, eyes barely leaving the young woman as he popped open the trunk of his car. "And you are?"

"A complete stranger." She was smiling, playing hard to get, but he saw the way she checked him out. She closed the space between them and placed the bags she was holding in the trunk as well. "These are all yours." She smirked as her eyes wandered, accentuating a little cut on her upper lip, barely visible until then. He was about to thank her again, but Max beat him to it, all bouncy and smiling.

"Thanks again for the help, you're a lifesaver." Max handed her the smaller of all the bags and when she wrapped her left hand around it, the sleeves rolled up just enough to reveal some intricate tattoo on her left wrist. "Maybe I'll see you at the Arcade some time."

"Don't mention it, Max. And sure, I'll check it out later" She then moved her eyes on him and he couldn't help but stare at that little cut on her lip as she spoke. It was oddly appealing and if anything it actually made her stand out from the millions of pretty faces.

"Maybe I'll see you around as well, Billy." She winked at him and waved at Max and to his utmost surprise she hopped in the Chevy he had been admiring earlier, 'Eye of the tiger' barely audible from within as she rolled out of the parking lot.

"Who was that?" He had half a mind to follow her as he got in his car and started the engine. He would have if the little shit wasn't with and if Neil wasn't waiting for them to get back. The girl was direct enough to make him believe she was up for a good time. Max rolled her eyes at him, but he let it slide. Who knew the little shithead could be a chick magnet?

"She's new in town too." There was a small pause, her eyes going back and forth from the road to him. "Just passing through though, so don't get your hopes up."

He scoffed, but didn't argue with her, the little shit was obviously lying. The girl was staying long enough if she was making plans to check the Arcade. Long enough for a little one night stand on the back of his car. Or maybe even hers. He had two purposed now. The first, dethrone the so called King Steve. The second, bang mystery Florida girl. Billy decided that if he was going to be stuck for a year in Indiana, he would at least make the most of it.

#stranger things #billy hargrove #billy hargove x reader #billy hargrove x oc #love at first sting #fanfiction #i need help #Torment never looked so goddamn fine

[thementalattic]

I’ve been critical in the past of the reboot Tomb Raider franchise and at least once, the series proved me wrong. So, despite my criticisms at the ridiculous notion that Shadow of the Tomb Raider was still part of the origin story for Lara Croft, I was hopeful for this new entry in the series.

I shouldn’t have bothered. It’s trash. It’s beautiful, but trash.

The Good

Look at the Shiny Shiny: Shadow of The Tomb Raider is visually stunning. Gorgeous really. The jungles, landscapes, temples and vistas can often be breath-taking. My favourite thing though is the water, from the smallest pond to the largest lake it’s all clear and gorgeous, even if it’s full of sunken temples and vicious piranha swarms—even though most piranha species aren’t really dangerous to humans, but that’s something for another time.

The Bad

Boring Plot: Shadow of the Tomb Raider fails to raise the stakes, even with a world-ending plot, particularly because aside from four extremely localised natural disasters—localised around Lara specifically and failing to kill any important character—it doesn’t really feel like the world is ending. There are no lasting effects on the game’s world and those big events happen so far apart from one another that all tension evaporates. Doesn’t help that the villains are painfully dull and Lara’s characterisation makes her incredibly boring. It’s been three games and she still doesn’t have a personality. What she does have and is still an annoying major factor, are her daddy issues. Oh, and she’s now officially a vicious murderer.

Bland Re-tread: If the boring and short plot wasn’t bad enough, it’s even worse when you realise, quite early on, that the entire game is just a formulaic re-tread of the previous one without any of the charm that Rise of the Tomb Raider had. It’s once again a search for a MacGuffin while fighting Trinity, in an exotic locale and you meet a village of people seemingly lost to time which guard or are directly related to the MacGuffin in question. And of course, Shadow of the Tomb Raider has its own version of the Deathless and Oni, because this game was made with a checklist.

Dull Exploration: You know, I miss the days when Tomb Raider games had fun exploration and platforming. Rise had some of it and with its climbable arrows there were some fun moments in the end game. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider all exploration consists primarily of these three activities: swimming, climbing and rappelling—there is so much damn rappelling. Neither of those is really fun. Also, if I never have to see Lara squeeze through a narrow wall or barrier I’ll be delighted. It happens in every single damn place you visit. Everyone built their temples with tight walls to make passage uncomfortable.

Wasted Skills: The skill interface in Shadow of the Tomb Raider is beautiful, just another shiny shiny to distract you from the shallowness. The skills themselves range from combat and movement stuff, to even having merchants sell new inventory, which I thought was weird as hell. But the strangest and worst thing is the sheer number of combat and stealth takedown skills for a game with barely any combat. I spent about 70% of the game just swimming and rappelling and fought a handful of soldiers that were too few and too far in between. Only the last hour of the game ramps it up and it’s nowhere near enough, so why have so many fun ways to kill people when there’s barely anyone to kill?

Shallow Apocalypse: Why would you bother with an end of the world plot with natural disasters when those disasters are going to matter so little? The flood at the start of the game is just that, one town flooded. No further consequences. Lara’s plane gets caught in the apocalyptic storm and she violently crashes. But everyone survives without a scratch. Earthquake happens and only destroys a tiny village once more. But the locales you visit, where you do your exploration? Oh that remains untouched, which completely kills the tension. Every character makes it sound like the world is ending but it’s a lie, the areas you explore remain as pretty and idyllic as ever. So why bother? They should have made every disaster have lasting consequences, have them affect the regions, change the landscape, you know make it matter!

Simple Puzzles: I praised the puzzles in the tombs on Rise of the Tomb Raider and instead of doubling up and making the new ones even more complex, we get single-room puzzles with very little challenge. The most complex one involves shining light rays to jade bits to raise or turn platforms and it’s incredibly simple. In fact there isn’t a single complex puzzle in the entire game, or many puzzles for that matter. I did more stealth encounters than puzzling and I completed all challenge tombs. And as I’ve said, there isn’t that much combat either, stealth or otherwise.

Slow Chase: You know those big action moments where you’re escaping something and everything else is being destroyed? Those big set pieces where Lara inherits the Drake reverse Midas Touch and every ledge breaks at the slightest touch? In Shadow of the Tomb Raider those are astoundingly boring, mostly because the developers and designers tip their hands and make it clear in how little danger you are. That platform that looks about to crack? It won’t until you jump off it. All that destruction from the flood? Oh that’s just creating new walkways for you to move on. But by far the worst happens in the Hidden Village, where you’re being chased by guards in the stupidest chase scene I’ve ever seen. It’s incredibly slow (Lara’s not even jogging), short and fails to deliver in any conceivable metric especially when you realise the guards don’t make any hostile movements towards you. Doesn’t help that they all boil down to sequences where you only press forward and occasionally jump or climb.

Surface-level Immersion: There is an option to set your level of immersion when it comes to in-game language. If you turn it on, then the native characters will speak in their own tongues and the major ones in English. Though it’s a step in the right direction it ends up actually destroying all immersion. Nothing takes you out of the game more than listening to Lara talk in British English to a child from a hidden Mayan village. He’s talking in his native tongue and she’s responding in English and he’s fine with it, when that makes no sense whatsoever. Was it too much to have Lara’s actor do some more lines in those languages? That would’ve been truly immersive. But nope, pointless half-measure it is.

Inventory Woes: Aside from the ridiculous bit of using skills to unlock new merchandise, an issue I ran into while playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider was my resource bags maxing out constantly, to the point where I started selling off everything I had. Part of it is that everything you can buy is ridiculously expensive, so you’re not getting new weapons or outfits—top & boots or full body, crafted and with special bonuses—to sink your resources into that often. And even if you do, or find a handful in crypts and from quests, you can max them out incredibly easy and most of them aren’t really big upgrades. In fact, the best weapons and armour you can get are of course included in the super-duper game editions, because greed is a big thing for developers these days. I had those, but I decided to use the ones I unlocked or bought in-game only, to see just how much they locked behind a pay-gate.

Pointless Upgrade Requirements: In the two other Tomb Raider titles, you came across barrier requiring different tools and weapons to open and it was instantly clear why you needed them, such as a grenade launcher for the bolted metal barriers. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider you have the classic fire-arrow obstacle and the rope ascender barrier from earlier games; but there’s also a shotgun barrier and a sturdy knife barrier with no visual difference between these and the regular bits you can clear with your other tools. Same for the boxes you can pry open with your climbing axes and the new ones you need lock-picks for. You’re already using the axes as a crowbar, why lock-picks? Also, who decided that most of these tools should only be available from a merchant later in the game? So much stuff got dumped on merchants, like it was the easiest way to include items they couldn’t place in the very short story. In fact, considering Lara’s had them on two games already, why not give her the ascender from the start?

Army of Clones: Shadow of the Tomb Raider is indeed visually beautiful, at least in terms of landscapes. Where it’s not is with its characters, particularly the secondary ones. I think they had two models for children, women and men and just swapped them around incessantly. I spoke to the same guy with different names and too many of the same kid. No variety whatsoever. The phrase “all these people look alike” applies perfectly to the people you meet in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Gallery

I got #ShadowOfTheTombRaider on preorder and the superduper edition for early access. I shouldn’t have wasted that money…here’s the review!

I’ve been critical in the past of the reboot Tomb Raider franchise and at least once, the series proved me wrong.

I got #ShadowOfTheTombRaider on preorder and the superduper edition for early access. I shouldn't have wasted that money...here's the review! I’ve been critical in the past of the reboot Tomb Raider franchise and at least once, the series proved me wrong.

#Action #Adventure #Apocalypse #Featured #Gaming #Hidden Village #Lara Croft #Maya #PC #Review #Rise of the Tomb Raider #Shadow of the Tomb Raider #Tomb Raider #Trilogy #Video game

[kkutlesa]

I’ve been critical in the past of the reboot Tomb Raider franchise and at least once, the series proved me wrong. So, despite my criticisms at the ridiculous notion that Shadow of the Tomb Raider was still part of the origin story for Lara Croft, I was hopeful for this new entry in the series.

I shouldn’t have bothered. It’s trash. It’s beautiful, but trash.

The Good

Look at the Shiny Shiny: Shadow of The Tomb Raider is visually stunning. Gorgeous really. The jungles, landscapes, temples and vistas can often be breath-taking. My favourite thing though is the water, from the smallest pond to the largest lake it’s all clear and gorgeous, even if it’s full of sunken temples and vicious piranha swarms—even though most piranha species aren’t really dangerous to humans, but that’s something for another time.

The Bad

Boring Plot: Shadow of the Tomb Raider fails to raise the stakes, even with a world-ending plot, particularly because aside from four extremely localised natural disasters—localised around Lara specifically and failing to kill any important character—it doesn’t really feel like the world is ending. There are no lasting effects on the game’s world and those big events happen so far apart from one another that all tension evaporates. Doesn’t help that the villains are painfully dull and Lara’s characterisation makes her incredibly boring. It’s been three games and she still doesn’t have a personality. What she does have and is still an annoying major factor, are her daddy issues. Oh, and she’s now officially a vicious murderer.

Bland Re-tread: If the boring and short plot wasn’t bad enough, it’s even worse when you realise, quite early on, that the entire game is just a formulaic re-tread of the previous one without any of the charm that Rise of the Tomb Raider had. It’s once again a search for a MacGuffin while fighting Trinity, in an exotic locale and you meet a village of people seemingly lost to time which guard or are directly related to the MacGuffin in question. And of course, Shadow of the Tomb Raider has its own version of the Deathless and Oni, because this game was made with a checklist.

Dull Exploration: You know, I miss the days when Tomb Raider games had fun exploration and platforming. Rise had some of it and with its climbable arrows there were some fun moments in the end game. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider all exploration consists primarily of these three activities: swimming, climbing and rappelling—there is so much damn rappelling. Neither of those is really fun. Also, if I never have to see Lara squeeze through a narrow wall or barrier I’ll be delighted. It happens in every single damn place you visit. Everyone built their temples with tight walls to make passage uncomfortable.

Wasted Skills: The skill interface in Shadow of the Tomb Raider is beautiful, just another shiny shiny to distract you from the shallowness. The skills themselves range from combat and movement stuff, to even having merchants sell new inventory, which I thought was weird as hell. But the strangest and worst thing is the sheer number of combat and stealth takedown skills for a game with barely any combat. I spent about 70% of the game just swimming and rappelling and fought a handful of soldiers that were too few and too far in between. Only the last hour of the game ramps it up and it’s nowhere near enough, so why have so many fun ways to kill people when there’s barely anyone to kill?

Shallow Apocalypse: Why would you bother with an end of the world plot with natural disasters when those disasters are going to matter so little? The flood at the start of the game is just that, one town flooded. No further consequences. Lara’s plane gets caught in the apocalyptic storm and she violently crashes. But everyone survives without a scratch. Earthquake happens and only destroys a tiny village once more. But the locales you visit, where you do your exploration? Oh that remains untouched, which completely kills the tension. Every character makes it sound like the world is ending but it’s a lie, the areas you explore remain as pretty and idyllic as ever. So why bother? They should have made every disaster have lasting consequences, have them affect the regions, change the landscape, you know make it matter!

Simple Puzzles: I praised the puzzles in the tombs on Rise of the Tomb Raider and instead of doubling up and making the new ones even more complex, we get single-room puzzles with very little challenge. The most complex one involves shining light rays to jade bits to raise or turn platforms and it’s incredibly simple. In fact there isn’t a single complex puzzle in the entire game, or many puzzles for that matter. I did more stealth encounters than puzzling and I completed all challenge tombs. And as I’ve said, there isn’t that much combat either, stealth or otherwise.

Slow Chase: You know those big action moments where you’re escaping something and everything else is being destroyed? Those big set pieces where Lara inherits the Drake reverse Midas Touch and every ledge breaks at the slightest touch? In Shadow of the Tomb Raider those are astoundingly boring, mostly because the developers and designers tip their hands and make it clear in how little danger you are. That platform that looks about to crack? It won’t until you jump off it. All that destruction from the flood? Oh that’s just creating new walkways for you to move on. But by far the worst happens in the Hidden Village, where you’re being chased by guards in the stupidest chase scene I’ve ever seen. It’s incredibly slow (Lara’s not even jogging), short and fails to deliver in any conceivable metric especially when you realise the guards don’t make any hostile movements towards you. Doesn’t help that they all boil down to sequences where you only press forward and occasionally jump or climb.

Surface-level Immersion: There is an option to set your level of immersion when it comes to in-game language. If you turn it on, then the native characters will speak in their own tongues and the major ones in English. Though it’s a step in the right direction it ends up actually destroying all immersion. Nothing takes you out of the game more than listening to Lara talk in British English to a child from a hidden Mayan village. He’s talking in his native tongue and she’s responding in English and he’s fine with it, when that makes no sense whatsoever. Was it too much to have Lara’s actor do some more lines in those languages? That would’ve been truly immersive. But nope, pointless half-measure it is.

Inventory Woes: Aside from the ridiculous bit of using skills to unlock new merchandise, an issue I ran into while playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider was my resource bags maxing out constantly, to the point where I started selling off everything I had. Part of it is that everything you can buy is ridiculously expensive, so you’re not getting new weapons or outfits—top & boots or full body, crafted and with special bonuses—to sink your resources into that often. And even if you do, or find a handful in crypts and from quests, you can max them out incredibly easy and most of them aren’t really big upgrades. In fact, the best weapons and armour you can get are of course included in the super-duper game editions, because greed is a big thing for developers these days. I had those, but I decided to use the ones I unlocked or bought in-game only, to see just how much they locked behind a pay-gate.

Pointless Upgrade Requirements: In the two other Tomb Raider titles, you came across barrier requiring different tools and weapons to open and it was instantly clear why you needed them, such as a grenade launcher for the bolted metal barriers. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider you have the classic fire-arrow obstacle and the rope ascender barrier from earlier games; but there’s also a shotgun barrier and a sturdy knife barrier with no visual difference between these and the regular bits you can clear with your other tools. Same for the boxes you can pry open with your climbing axes and the new ones you need lock-picks for. You’re already using the axes as a crowbar, why lock-picks? Also, who decided that most of these tools should only be available from a merchant later in the game? So much stuff got dumped on merchants, like it was the easiest way to include items they couldn’t place in the very short story. In fact, considering Lara’s had them on two games already, why not give her the ascender from the start?

Army of Clones: Shadow of the Tomb Raider is indeed visually beautiful, at least in terms of landscapes. Where it’s not is with its characters, particularly the secondary ones. I think they had two models for children, women and men and just swapped them around incessantly. I spoke to the same guy with different names and too many of the same kid. No variety whatsoever. The phrase “all these people look alike” applies perfectly to the people you meet in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Gallery

I got #ShadowOfTheTombRaider on preorder and the superduper edition for early access. I shouldn't have wasted that money...here's the review! I’ve been critical in the past of the reboot Tomb Raider franchise and at least once, the series proved me wrong.

#Action #Adventure #Apocalypse #Featured #Gaming #Hidden Village #Lara Croft #Maya #PC #Review #Rise of the Tomb Raider #Shadow of the Tomb Raider #Tomb Raider #Trilogy #Video game

[mythaura-blog]

Hey all! Welcome to our December development update. Here is what lies under the cut.

What’s new

NPCs on Mythaura

New Monsters and New Item Patreon Illustrations

FAQ

Community spotlight

This month, we have been working on basic back end set up. Login and register systems are currently being built and tested. We’ve had some continuous trouble with our current server, so we’ve found it best for development to move to a new server. We’re currently in the process of shifting everything over - there may be some downtime on the Beast Demo, we will give everyone a heads up on our social media channels when that time comes!

On the topic of the Demo - we are planning some new and exciting usability features for Demo V3. • Link generation for sharing After creating a Beast, a link will be generated. The link will be a url to your creation. You can also import a link from another creation. • Lock and unlock options Options can be locked and unlocked by clicking the lock symbol. This will ensure your option will not change even when clicking randomize. • Shift Special order Shift Special options by moving the arrows. This will change the layering order of Specials without having to choose options again, making it easier to customize.

• Loading animation A simple loading animation to appear before the Beasts image is generated. Some other additions would be an "Age" option which changes the Beasts base to the Young Base or the Grown Base. And the categorization of the Base area and Special Markings area so it's a little easier to tell options apart.

The young bases for the three starter Beasts - Dragon, Griffin and Unicorn have been completed. We are planning to have all Young bases and their 125 colors and the current catalog of Special Markings available for the next Demo V3 update.

The Hybrid bases are being worked on and will be ready for the next demo update - here are the sketches for the young Quetzal, Hippogriff and Kirin!

We’ll have news very soon about when Demo V3 will drop. For now, I can share that work has started on the next Hybrid Beasts. Here is a quick sneak peak.

Every shop you visit in Mythaura is run by a shopkeep. These shopkeepers have their own unique personalities, quests and dialogue. They will interact with you, the player, through dialogue boxes. Some moments will give you different options to respond to the NPC and the NPCs portrait will change to different expressions depending on their mood and dialogue. For example; if a player hands in a completed quest, the NPC portrait will change to a pleased expression. Each character will play a large role within the story and game play.

This month our amazing Tier 3+ supporters on Patreon voted in a poll to choose the first NPC players will interact with on site out of three options. Acting as a tutorial guide, they will welcome the player into the world, introduce them to the currency, explain factions, walk players through creating their first Beast and finally leading them into the full game. This is an early look at the Mythaura “Welcome” NPC!

“A cheerful elderly Quetzal. He is a travelling merchant who sells interesting items he found while on the road. His bird is his best bud.”

Next month, patrons will decide on the Quetzal Traveller’s coloring, define their personality, their shop and their name. We’ll have more to share on the NPC system and other characters that will feature in Mythaura soon!

Tier 4 and 5 Patreon rewards have the opportunity to work with the artists to create their own Monsters and Items that will appear in-game. Here are the illustrations that have been created this month. Many thanks to our incredibly creative supporters! Monsters: Lunar Bone Thief - Created with Fizzywits Vitterfolk - Created with Malis (Work in progress! The Vitterfolk’s final illustration will be completed soon)

Items: Crystallion - Created with Aku Reine Plushie - Created with TwinFishes Coelacanth - Created with Frillshark Pahoehoe Flower -  Created with Mezzo

FAQ

So many pet games have been ruined by multi accounts, botters & scammers. I'd like to know what your policies will be on these since I am wary of investing in another site that doesn't have the staff or motivation to keep a clean playing field for all. - Anonymous

Those are completely valid concerns. As with any multiplayer online game, there will inevitability be those who will exploit it in some way or another. We will take our security and code of conduct very seriously, any player found violating that will be restricted or banned.

How many times can you create a beast from scratch? Only when you first join or are there other ways to do so? (Through an item for example) - Anonymous

You will create your first Beast upon joining Mythaura - a Dragon, Griffin or Unicorn. You’ll be able to choose any of the 125 colors on the wheel to customize their Base, Bottom and Top areas on their bodies. At the moment, this will be the only time you will be able to create a Beast from scratch. We are definitely not ruling out any other options! At this point it’s too early to say for sure.

Will there be a way to keep beasts as their 'baby' forms? - katjoyy

Yes! I realize that some people might prefer the young Beast artworks to their grown versions. There will be a method in the game to keep them from growing up - whether through consumable items or another means.

I know there is crowd funding, but will you be using Kickstarter at any point? I am more familiar with them, as I feel many are, and would rather fund through there (Dappervolk Funded within Hours.. or minuets??) I'd love to know, thanks! - bobbybi

Our first priority before planning the final crowdfunding push is delivering on an alpha and beta. We are 100% focused on building Mythaura the best it can be now and our Patreon is helping out a great deal to reach that goal.  

I love Mythaura so much already, I can't explain it in words! I can't wait to see it reach it's max potential. I just wanted to know if there would be a feeding or age mechanic that would cause your creature to pass on eventually. I only ask, because I dislike the game mechanic cause death is no fun. - Anonymous

Thank you so much! Your support means the world  ❤ There will be no death mechanic. We expect players to put a lot of time and effort into customizing their Beasts and it would feel like a waste to have them pass on eventually. Rest easy knowing that your Beasts will be immortal.

In the future, would you be open to beast/monster/item suggestions from users? - Anonymous

We are always open to suggestions! I am actively listening on all our social media channels. I take any and all suggestions to heart and note them down. But if you’re super eager to have your ideas made into reality, Tier 4 and 5 Patreon rewards can have their suggestions made into actual items in-game. 

Okay so, you're making a Virtual Pet game. What do you have planned that will set you apart from other games like Flight Rising and even Neopets? I see the graphics are looking good, but do you have something else new that you intend to bring to the table with this? - formerlybees

As a long time fan and player of virtual pet games, I can say that we have a number of new ideas we are planning to bring into the genre. Some ideas inspired by other virtual pet games and some inspired by other MMOs. We have some incredibly ambitious ideas planned out that I wish I could tell you about, but we need to see if we can actually build them and get it all working! 

Hi, I'm very curious as to what you look for in a portfolio for artists/writers? I'm very new to submitting portfolios and unfortunately art school doesn't really teach you this sort of thing. Thanks in advance! - rexcaliburr

For Mythaura specifically - Artists that show pieces with 2D cel-shaded style similar to our own and demonstrate cohesive anatomy for animal-like creatures. Just a couple of their best polished pieces will deliver the best first impression!  For writers, a small section of writing that best showcases your creative flair and perhaps links to your previous works if any. 

For artists, I recommend checking out the Dear Art Director tumblr. It’s helped me out a lot personally when I was freelancing.

Any update on best boy reine's final art work? - twinfishieslove

No update as of yet! You’ll have to gaze upon his glorious mugshot for now.

(In all seriousness, the Beast bases come first and are rather time consuming!)

Hey grif! Which, personally, if your favourite species - dragondrawsdragons

Hmm, good question. I’m rather partial to my namesake. Who can’t not love a half bird of prey, half lion?! I’ll give an honorable mention to Hippogriffs, albatross ponies are fun too. 

Our community feature for this month is showcasing the artistic talents of the Mythaura Discord community. Check it out!

I wish I could fit more in! I am so impressed by the art I get to see there almost everyday. It’s an absolute treat.

Every month we will be showcasing some community creations. If you’d like to share your Mythaura inspired artworks, make sure to tag them with  #mythaura on both Tumblr and Twitter. We’d love to see them.

If you would like to chat with other members of the community and members of the Mythaura team - Click here to join us on the official Mythaura Discord!

That’s it for this month. To finish, I’ll leave you with this super adorable sketch of a Beast family drawn by the very talented Luci!

Have a happy new year!

❤ Grif

#mythaura #virtual pet #virtual pet site #virtual pet sim #virtual pet rpg #petsite #pet site #dragon #griffin #unicorn #game #gamedev #development update