Videogames: New Year, New Thread

[Poobah]

36 minutes ago, Kalsandra said:

In general you should unlock the nonspecial aspects of everything first, then try and get the special aspects. 

23 minutes ago, aceluby said:

That’s the plan, working my way through the hidden aspects now. It’s just weird to have so many blood just sitting there

I would agree that it's worth putting the minimum blood in to unlock each thing but I feel that pacing of unlocks at this stage is pretty much the only criticism I have of Hades - it takes far too long/too many runs to get everything powered up to max level IMO, and I say this as someone with hundreds of hours in the game and at this point tons of excess blood, but that midgame of like... "I wanna try this thing, oh I need to grind more blood for it" was frustrating for me - so it's worth doing some research/investigation to figure out which ones you like / want to invest in, especially because some really need that blood to get to the point that they're actually fun to use. Chrion, Hera, and Chaos are especially notable for this, but also Demeter, Poseidon, and Eris scale much better than most of the weapons - then of course there's Guan Yu which really needs all the blood to get to playability.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 1/4/2022 at 1:13 PM, Ser Drewy said:

Yeah it's an odd blend of really good ideas and a often mixed bag of execution. There's definitely parts of it that are evocative, but sometimes the other elements of the story or presentation don't live up to the promise. 

My most recent glitch involved a quest character finishing their dialogue only to turn and run straight off a cliff... 

The way Todd Howard thinks, I have to believe that ES6 is going to be pretty rough. Leveling will be "streamlined" even more, fewer weapons and armor (because who wants that shit?), and more big name actors. 

[Toth]

On 1/7/2022 at 8:16 AM, The Winged Shadow said:

You can try making kibble (veggie + meat). You can hunt the animals on the map for some meat. You can also feed them the meat directly.

(Pro move: feed them raider corpses. I once had a freezer full of raider corpse which fed my pigs and Labrador haulers)

Yes, yes. The raider corpses was my idea to use for the boars as well, but I still get attacked only very sporadically, so it's not a steady supply. And it feels like a waste to use some of my actual food for it, so I'm waiting for hay in my stores.

Unfortunately I think I now witnessed the first time the game was genuinely trying to kill me. Well, some of that is my fault. I realized far too late that I completely forgot to research geothermal energy, meaning I wasn't able to build my indoor farm as I initially intended. I then completely misjudged how little of Spring is usable for farming, given how I started the game out in spring and the weather was nice. And yet the snow stubbornly persisted, the temperatures weren't rising and I couldn't plant my crops. According to the tooltips growing season starts six days after the start of Spring, meaning with each season lasting 15 days, that's almost half of Spring unusable! Fuck!

And then the snow finally melted, I seeded my crops, let them grow a few days... cold snap! And another eclipse! Fuck! All my crops died. And the gras in my boar pen isn't growing either. Three days in which I went from casually living off my food stores while planning on how to expand my base to having my fridge being completely depleted, desperately killing every critter on the map for food and slaughtering half of my boars to feed them to the rest. Well, on the bright side: I'm not lacking in furs and leather anymore. Still. Now Spring is already over and I couldn't get in a single harvest. I guess I can forget my ranching plans. I'll have to grow much more rice to squeeze every little bit of use out of this summer. And it isn't helping that another wild woman appeared and is munching on my rice fields. Unfortunately she has absolutely awesome stats, so... I'm thinking about taming her to get another helping hand.

[Werthead]

13 hours ago, Centrist Simon Steele said:

The way Todd Howard thinks, I have to believe that ES6 is going to be pretty rough. Leveling will be "streamlined" even more, fewer weapons and armor (because who wants that shit?), and more big name actors. 

I'm not sure. I think they reached a plateau with Skyrim and Fallout 4 (which wasn't really any more streamlined than Skyrim, just different) and they can't go any further in that direction without abandoning RPG progression mechanics at all and just turning into an action-adventure game.

Also, Fallout 4 had virtually no big-name actors in it at all apart from Ron Perlman, and I think he only did one day's recording for the intro and outro narrations. And Perlman has done the narrations for Fallout from the very first game, of course. Otherwise the biggest names in Fallout 4 are Lynda Carter, Tim Russ and Robin Atkin Downes, who are not exactly giga-famous apart from to hardcore SFF geeks. Skyrim had Max von Sydow and Christopher Plummer who were reasonably big names but also very good and distinguished actors. Probably the next-biggest name in the game is Michael Hogan, who again makes SFF fans very happy but is not a household name. We're quite a way past Fallout 3 starring Liam Neeson (for five minutes) or Oblivion with Patrick Stewart (for three minutes).

I think Starfield will give us a big clue as to what to expect from Elder Scrolls VI. I'm not expecting them to return to Morrowind levels of complexity (which still wasn't that complicated), but I'd be surprised if they go much simpler than Skyrim and Fallout 4 were.

[Arakasi]

Won again with an Aphrodite attack/Demeter special. Was a real odd run since I had the Ares/Demeter cast which isn’t useful for bosses and my damage was hardly great. I did have the Hermes sturdy/fast after dash which I really like. I also like the dodging one. Nice thing was I both won and spent 1200 for a titans blood.

I had another run I was sure I was going to win that I had Aphrodite attack/Artemis special with a good chaos special boon and the correct hammers. Was lacking heart rend though. I just didn’t have enough health and survivability tools to win though.

 

edit: my least favorite enemy in this game is the archers in Elysium. Maybe it’s because I do play at range mostly but I always get wrecked by them to a degree. Like even just a few on a floor likely means I take 20-30 chip damage. Poison in Styx is another annoying thing but I find having a good cast (Ares or Zeus for example or one run I had the Demeter/Dionysius one) is really important there to kill rats.

edit2: in the middle of another run and I got this weird combo of Athena’s aid, smouldering air and second wind (sadly only common but still). I’m invincible 1.65 out of every 5 seconds and I pretty much have a permanent 30% move/dodge bonus. Just started Styx but was my easiest act 3 boss kill as I didn’t get touched.

[Toth]

Okay... during the summer I went crazy. I put down a huge corn and a huge rice field at two patches of fertile land. When I brought in the harvest at the end of the season, it was so huge I couldn't get it into the fridge and ended up quickly setting up a barn like you guys suggested. I wonder, will this be enough to get me through winter?

https://s20.directupload.net/images/220108/lcbnvkp7.png

I seriously needed all my hands just on the harvest, which is why I didn't exactly do any further projects. Well, not quite. One event gave me two donkeys, so I'm breeding those now as pack animals. Unfortunely of the two horses on the map the stallion wandered away, so I couldn't breed those. I did get the alpacas though and am keeping those around. But once I don't need to tend to my fields anymore, I guess I will have to focus on crafting weapons and finally building up these damn walls around my village.

[RumHam]

1 hour ago, Toth said:

Okay... during the summer I went crazy. I put down a huge corn and a huge rice field at two patches of fertile land. When I brought in the harvest at the end of the season, it was so huge I couldn't get it into the fridge and ended up quickly setting up a barn like you guys suggested. I wonder, will this be enough to get me through winter?

https://s20.directupload.net/images/220108/lcbnvkp7.png

I seriously needed all my hands just on the harvest, which is why I didn't exactly do any further projects. Well, not quite. One event gave me two donkeys, so I'm breeding those now as pack animals. Unfortunely of the two horses on the map the stallion wandered away, so I couldn't breed those. I did get the alpacas though and am keeping those around. But once I don't need to tend to my fields anymore, I guess I will have to focus on crafting weapons and finally building up these damn walls around my village.

I would think so, if you don't have tons of animals.

Under the >>> button for max speed is a little toggle to group your inventory on the left. Highly recommend it

[Toth]

50 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I would think so, if you don't have tons of animals.

Ah, yeeeeesssss... Well, here is my fairly pitiful base so far: https://s20.directupload.net/images/220108/cr8tjjwe.png

Alpacas and donkeys aren't exactly breeding as explosively as you would think. I lost track of how many boars I have though. I put the auto-slaughter on me keeping 2 males and 4 females at all times, but since I'm waiting until they are adult, my pen has gotten quite crowded.

Well, to be sure I better fill the barn up some more:

https://s20.directupload.net/images/220108/oxqnz5pl.png

58 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Under the >>> button for max speed is a little toggle to group your inventory on the left. Highly recommend it

Ah thanks. Though to be honest, I hardly look at the inventory thingy. At most to keep track at number of stones resources I have left and for that it's sorted well enough as it is.

[RumHam]

2 hours ago, Toth said:

Ah, yeeeeesssss... Well, here is my fairly pitiful base so far: https://s20.directupload.net/images/220108/cr8tjjwe.png

Alpacas and donkeys aren't exactly breeding as explosively as you would think. I lost track of how many boars I have though. I put the auto-slaughter on me keeping 2 males and 4 females at all times, but since I'm waiting until they are adult, my pen has gotten quite crowded.

Well, to be sure I better fill the barn up some more:

https://s20.directupload.net/images/220108/oxqnz5pl.png

Ah thanks. Though to be honest, I hardly look at the inventory thingy. At most to keep track at number of stones resources I have left and for that it's sorted well enough as it is.

I see what looks like an "ancient danger" there. If one day you have some traders handing out near it you should consider opening it up and letting them deal with it 

[Arakasi]

Yeah that run with the smouldering air/second wind/Athena’s aid/greater reflex/calculated risk with low tolerance for attack went well. I think I killed Hades without taking any damage. Turns out when you can go invincible every five seconds you win fairly easily.

[Toth]

9 hours ago, RumHam said:

I see what looks like an "ancient danger" there. If one day you have some traders handing out near it you should consider opening it up and letting them deal with it 

... I somehow seriously doubt traders are up to ruin diving. They usually just hang out where my solar panels are and then enter to eat on my tables. Also doesn't it give a reputation penalty if you let friendlies die on your map?

So in any case, I won't touch that thing until I stacked up on guns, guns, guns!

[Poobah]

I've started setting up to play an XCOM2 campaign and I'm really torn about Long War 2, or rather Long War of the Chosen, since I really don't want to play XCOM2 without the performance upgrades the expansion brought. The plus side is a much deeper and longer game overall that I can get much more invested in, as with the original Long War, with more and a wider verity of enemies, more tech options, more weapons, more tiers of weapons, more items, much expanded soldier classes and perk trees, more mission types, more choices and things to do in general, lots and lots of good stuff!

The minus side is that I just... don't really like a lot of the choices the developers of Long War 2 made, I guess? I play these games to do interesting and ideally somewhat balanced tactical combat not to get bogged down on the world map trying to play a fucking grand strategy game. Similarly while I respect the choice to lean in to the whole underground resistance theme that's just not the game I want to play where most missions are stealth operations in a race against the clock as they massively expanded the hugely annoying and dumb enemy reinforcement mechanic from the base game into almost every mission.

I'm also very frustrated with the cosmetic mods available for the game. While there's a huge number of well constructed and high effort mods for expanding soldier classes, improving the UI and user experience, fixing bugs, adding new mission content, new items, factions, enemies, maps etc. when it comes to the cosmetics... I'm familiar enough with modding from the Morrowind and Skyrim scenes to expect a certain number of silly and/or sexual mods and way more mods for female characters than male ones because see above with regards to sex appeal, but trying to find any cosmetic XCOM2 mods that aren't just copies of female characters from other games/franchises, anime girls, or both of the above is near impossible. I mostly just want some more styles that look like something a normal human would do with their hair so I can better represent my friends. At least I found a nice utility mod that unlocks cosmetics from gender, and armour pieces from tier/outfit.

[RumHam]

8 hours ago, Toth said:

... I somehow seriously doubt traders are up to ruin diving. They usually just hang out where my solar panels are and then enter to eat on my tables. Also doesn't it give a reputation penalty if you let friendlies die on your map?

So in any case, I won't touch that thing until I stacked up on guns, guns, guns!

I don't think you do, as long as you don't wound them. They may have changed it though. And you do have to be careful because your guys will shoot past neutral pawns and can hit them easily. You can get a rep boost for saving them and nursing them back to health though. 

The best is when you've got a mechanoid cluster or manhunter pack and the traders come in and just get immediately destroyed. 

[Werthead]

58 minutes ago, Poobah said:

I've started setting up to play an XCOM2 campaign and I'm really torn about Long War 2, or rather Long War of the Chosen, since I really don't want to play XCOM2 without the performance upgrades the expansion brought. The plus side is a much deeper and longer game overall that I can get much more invested in, as with the original Long War, with more and a wider verity of enemies, more tech options, more weapons, more tiers of weapons, more items, much expanded soldier classes and perk trees, more mission types, more choices and things to do in general, lots and lots of good stuff!

I always felt that XCOM2+Tactical Legacy Pack+War of the Chosen took so many ideas and inspiration from extant (or X-TANT) XCOM1 mods that it didn't leave the modders with very many options and interesting places to go.

[Arakasi]

Yay beat another weapon (on I think second try with it). That being adamant rail. Went in with Zeus keepsake for attack synergy but that didn’t end up mattering. (I sold my Zeus boons eventually)

This run turned out to be around hammers and Artemis/Poseidon. I initially got the Poseidon special but I replaced it with Artemis special at improved rarity since I had flood shot and wanted mirage shot. This went well with rocket bomb and triple bomb. Between that and mirage shot and flurry shot I had huge ranged aoe damage. I could either crit groups for massive aoe or push them back to the other side of the map. Probably the easiest Styx I’ve had since I just shotgunned everyone. When I picked up triple bomb in act three I stopped using attack.

I also got an early act two epic strong drink that got me 20% bonus damage. This was pretty much my main defence since I had no dash boons. I took a lot of damage at times just because I am not good yet at dodging around with rail. Also having 354 max health helped. It kind of played like Chiron since I would just poke my head out to launch my flood shots or rockets and then go hide again.

[Poobah]

Congrats!

[Arakasi]

Thanks!

I’m going to have a hard time not forcing bomb builds with rail. Won again although I didn’t have enough money for titans blood. (Even if I had sold several boons) Then again with how easy Hades was I likely should have. Would have had to sell hunting blades and a couple others and it still would have been close for buying it. But after seeing Hades melt I don’t think I needed hunting blades.

Had rocket/cluster with Artemis special again. That plus hunting call meant every floor in Styx got shotgunned. Hades died the fastest I’ve seen. I also had some weird lightning thing going with lightning rod, double strike and splitting bolt although my only thing that could actually make lightning was Zeus’s call and the crystals from rod.

I need to figure out the moves with sword or shield. Not sure I’ll ever be a big fan of fist or spear.

[aceluby]

Ok, unlocked all the aspects, now I'm going through the prophesies, focusing first on finishing with the hidden aspects.  Beat it yesterday with Arthur and a reflect build, and am currently in the middle of a good run with the rail hidden aspect.  At the same time I'm trying to finish all the side quests, which seems to just be a battle of wills as you ever so slowly unlock their conversations.  Having a blast and already up to heat 4 for most of the weapons.

[Reny of Storms End]

On 1/9/2022 at 7:11 AM, Toth said:

... I somehow seriously doubt traders are up to ruin diving. They usually just hang out where my solar panels are and then enter to eat on my tables. Also doesn't it give a reputation penalty if you let friendlies die on your map?

So in any case, I won't touch that thing until I stacked up on guns, guns, guns!

What game are you talking about? Looks interesting

[Toth]

1 hour ago, Reny of Storms End said:

What game are you talking about? Looks interesting