#AND IF I KEEP DOING LIKE 10 RANDOM EVENTS A DAY IN CO OP

[oathofkaslana]

new years starts in like 10 days i'm so scared i won't get his namecard in time :(

[thevikingwoman]

Tagged!

Tagged by @roguelioness and @a-shakespearean-in-paris thanks friends!

1: Why did you choose your url?

Because I’m Danish, so I tend to pick some variation of ‘viking’ as username, and I’m a woman and vikingwoman was taken ;P. I AM wondering if I should re-pick some days, sadly viking imagery sometimes get co-opted by white supremacists and they can get the fuck out of my blog, my culture, and the world. 

2: Any side blogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them.

I have a couple. I created an ME sideblog that I given up on using, too complicated I try to tag any non-DA content I post here instead. I have a blog for explicit images, from when tumblr allowed them. It still have some items on it that has not yet been moderated. I have a blog I posted a few nature pictures on. And ofc I’m an admin at @dadrunkwriting, but it’s hardly my blog. Plently of opportunity for messing up when posting. 

3: How long have you been on tumblr?

Since aug 2016

4: Do you have a queue tag?

I use #scheduled post

5: Why did you start your blog in the first place?

When I finished Trespasser I was in distress, I was shaken in a way I had no business being. (Thanks Solas). I was looking to find fics and used to previous fandoms on livejournal and so forth. I was looking where things were at, and it seemed to be here. Ao3 is nice, but I was looking for fic recs and events such as big bangs and awards (not that DA fandom does awards, so sad)

6: Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

My idon is me, drawn by @destinyapostasy. Hair is wrong color though ( I have 4 versions and none of them is the right hair color lol, it’s become a darkish blonde boring color)

7: Why did you choose your header?

My header is Solas, drawn by @destinyapostasy, it’s just a great drawing of him looking sad. That’s all this blog still is - sad Solas.

8: What’s your post with the most notes?

Apparently it is a post about some investigation of tumblr character limitation in posts ? I have a couple of posts that got a lot of notes, and I had to notification block them. 

9: How many mutuals do you have?

I don’t know? and while I love my mutuals dearly, I don’t want to put too much stock in it. I understand people might not follow me for various reasons, but we can still be friends! 

10: How many followers do you have?

Uh a bunch? It’s weird how the longer you have the blog sometimes you get these bursts of random follows? (not spam blogs either). anyway hi people, I am happy you’re here!! Please do know though that I don’t really keep track of my followers and if you don’t want to follow I’m not going to wonder about it. You do you! 

11: How many people do you follow?

262 which is too many. I have a goal of 200. Some of these are very low activity blogs though. 

12: Have you ever made a shitpost?

Probably

13: How often do you use tumblr each day?

I usually check quite often, but not always? It’s a habit. 

14: Did you ever have a fight/argument with another blog once? who won?

Somewhat? I counterargued some head canon that annoyed me, and the OP (and at one time very popular solavellan writer) argued back, missing my point entirely. It was shortlived though :P. I don’t think someone can be declared a winner hahaha.

Have I felt like starting a fight? yes

15: How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

I don’t reblog and if people post to many of those I unfollow. Nothing bugs me more than guilting into behavior, esp with a sprinkle of performative allyship. 

16: Do you like tag games?

Yes please tag me!!! I might take a bit to reply but I do try to get around to it!

17: Do you like ask games?

Yes! both for me and my OCs. I try to send asks when I see people posting them too, though sometimes I miss it.

 I also miss TMI tuesday when people would really TMI, but I guess the fandom group I hung out with is less active + we already covered the TMIs lmao. I 

18.Do you have a crush on a mutual?

I have mutuals who I deeply love and respect, does that count? 

tagging: @galadrieljones @destinyapostasy @ma-sulevin @wrenbee @luzial @ladylike-foxes @salexectria @allaganexarch  @buttsonthebeach @scharoux @idrelle if you want!

[murasaki-murasame]

I wasn’t exactly planning on doing any real summoning on the dragon banner or the gala remix since I still want to be able to spark on the next Halloween banner at the end of the month [if we get one], but I’m an extremely dumb idiot with no impulse control so that didn’t exactly go as planned, lol.

I’m pretty sure I already talked about my Gala Zena banner summon session before, but I can’t remember if I said how the Ilia banner went after that, so just to put it simply I only did my free summons on it and I got absolutely nothing of note, lol. I don’t think I even got any platinum prizes. The most noteworthy thing I got was a dupe Laranoa, I think.

Then we got to the dragon banner, which is where my hoarding plans started to really go south, lol. Dragon banners are usually easy skips for me, but GC was on rate-up and I wanted them so much I was genuinely contemplating dream summoning them [but I still don’t want to use any dream summons on dragons], so I decided to see how my free summons went, but I pretty quickly became resigned to the possibility that I’d end up chasing GC.

Which is pretty much exactly what happened, since my free summons didn’t get me GC, but I did get three whole Ariel dupes, which was mostly just three separate emotional rollercoasters of agony for me, lol. It’s not like I didn’t want Ariel dupes, since before this I only had one 0UB copy of her, but still. The first dupe I got came from my first daily tenfold, and then the second one gave me two Ariel dupes almost back to back, so that was just agonizing in a lot of ways. So yeah I ended up using tickets and wyrmites to chase for GC, and I ended up having to spend 60 extra summons to get them, so that was extremely painful, but I at least got them in the end. Specifically I got two copies of GC and a fourth Ariel dupe all on the final tenfold I did.

So I ended up with a MUB Ariel just from dupes, and a 1UB GC who I just decided to use stones on to get MUB. Which I don’t really regret, since I still have like 10 sunlight stones left after this anyway. Funnily enough I didn’t get any copies of Summer Sakuya, but I’d say that’s a good thing since I already had her MUB from all the copies I got of her when she came out, and she’s not the sort of dragon I want to have multiple copies of. So at least this banner ended up working out surprisingly well for me in spite of me spending a lot more resources on it than I probably should have.

I was actually planning to do the platinum summons to try and get GC instead of dipping into my vouchers and wyrmite, and I even got some diamantium to prepare for that, but then I found out that the platinum summon wasn’t actually for the three focus dragons on that banner, and was literally just ‘you get one 5-star dragon at random in each platinum summon’, so I just decided to pass on that entirely and use my regular summons instead.

I also got a dupe Xuan Zang at some point but I can’t remember if that was in the dragon banner or the gala remix.

And on the note of the gala remix, oh boy this whole pair of banners was just a one-two punch of me going through the exact same process of going “I’m gonna be smart about this and only spend my free tenfolds and save all my resources for the end of the month :)” and then using my resources anyway because I’m a dumb idiot baby. But like with how GC was the only dragon that was able to genuinely tempt me to spend resources on a dragon banner, I ended up being unable to resist the temptation of this gala remix because it had Gala Alex on it, who was the only gala unit in the whole game that I didn’t have at that point, and I was specifically hoping to be able to get her at some point. She was one of my main priority targets along with Halloween and New Years, so I honestly don’t even regret it that much, but it kinda sucked because I didn’t care about the Akasha and Melsa alts at all, and i already had a MUB Cat Sith, so Alex was literally the only unit on the banner I wanted, and I was hoping she’d be on a more exciting banner than this, lol.

Anyway, I still did all my free tenfolds first, and let’s just say that the very first one gave me a dupe Albert, which felt like divine punishment for my hubris with the dragon banner. I figured something like that was gonna come around to screw me over for spending on that banner, but I wasn’t expecting something so immediate and so specifically designed to mess with me.

I also got a Liger dupe from that summon as well, which was enough for me to get him MUB. Beforehand I wouldn’t have really cared since he’s not a very good dragon for the most part, but he’s apparently one of the best dragons for Gala Zena, so that’s cool.

I don’t think I got anything noteworthy from my other free tenfolds aside from a Siren dupe, which I’m just keeping in my inventory as a random copy now since I already had her MUB before this.

So then I was stuck with the lingering question of if I should go out of my way to chase Gala Alex, and if it was even worth it. I did some full on mental calculations about what my current stash was like, and how many more summons I expected to be able to get between now and the end of this month, to see how far I was wiling to go before I ended up with too few summons to be able to spark by the end of the month. I don’t remember exactly how many summons I had in my stash at that point, but I guess I figured I was willing to take the risk, since I decided to do an extra 20 summons on the banner, which got me . . . Catherine, lol. Because this banner really decided to pull the old ‘you think it’s one of the focus characters but it’s actually some random character of the same weapon type’ switcheroo two different times. I didn’t have Catherine, though, so at least she wasn’t a useless dupe like Albert. I’m probably not gonna use her in the long run, but I’m putting her in my water team for the moment along with Eugene.

After that, I decided to just cut my losses and call it quits. But as the rest of the day went on I kept thinking back to the question of how many summons i’d be able to have by the end of the month, and how many I could afford to spend on this banner while still being able to spark. Which included me taking into account how paid diamantium pulls give double wyrmsigils, because I’m not above taking advantage of that at this point if I need to, lol. So anyway I ended up opening the game again to do another summon session, at least until I got my next pity break.

And after an additional 20 summons, I actually somehow managed to get Gala Alex, lol. It honestly kinda doesn’t feel real yet, but I actually got her. The emotional rollercoaster of seeing that rainbow sword after having been spooked by Albert at the start of this banner was on a whole other level to just about anything I’ve experienced with summoning in this game, but at least it all worked out in the end.

Now I have every single gala unit in the game, including a MUB copy of every gala dragon, so that’s neat. Honestly half of the reason why I wanted Gala Alex was just to complete my collection of gala units. I’m not sure how much I’ll even use her at this point. But I’m still happy I got her after all this. I remember spending like 300 summons on her debut banner without getting her, so it’s a relief to finally get her. Same with how I recently got Gala Elly after also unsuccessfully spending like 300 summons on her debut banner.

I guess now I have to actually grind out a 6-star shadow sword for her, since I didn’t have one before this [since I don’t really use shadow swords often], and I also have to finally get around to figuring out how the fuck her kit works, lol. At least it gives me a reason to grind Kai Yan again, right in time for co-op double drops.

I’m honestly not even sure if I’m gonna be able to spark by the end of the month at this point, at least after seeing how heavily they nerfed the wyrmite and ticket rewards for the Accursed Archive rerun. At the end of the last banner I had like 200 summons left over, and I have a little over 2.4k diamantium, so even taking into account the double wyrmsigils for diamantium summons thing, it might be very tight. Especially since I’m planning to get the dream summon at the end of the month as well. Though I do have like a million adventurer stories and stuff to read, since I’ve only read like three or four in the past, like, six months, so if I really need to I could probably just go through a lot of that, but we’ll see how it goes.

Technically I don’t even know if I’ll be interested in sparking on whatever banner we’ll get at the end of the month. I’m expecting it to be another Halloween banner, maybe bundled with a new gala dragon, which would all be pretty tempting. But we don’t really have any idea what to expect from it, so for all I know I might not even be interested in summoning on it, which would be a bit anti-climactic at this point. But if we they give us a new gala dragon, I want to get at least one copy of them. And new Halloween units have a good chance to be really tempting, at least since they’re limited. I know the Akasha and Melsa alts were also limited Halloween alts, but I just didn’t care that much for them. Which might end up happening if we get another Halloween banner, but I hope not.

Personally my main hope at this point is that we actually get Halloween Euden as a gacha alt and not just a story costume. I know he’s gotten other event-only story costumes before, but I think this one’s different since it’s a lot more unique and detailed than the other ones, and this is also the first time we’ve ever seen it. It’s also kinda weird that it doesn’t even show up in the event’s story itself, which makes me also wonder if it might be more of a tease for a follow-up Halloween event. If he does end up getting released as a unit, I’m guessing he’ll be a shadow wand or healer going by how his design looks, which would be kinda unfortunate since those are some really competitive areas, but I’d still want to get him just because I love his design, lol.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if we get some combination of Shion, Delphi, and Shishimai alts, to go with their new wyrmprint art. I know we’ve gotten all sorts of seasonal alt designs that only show up in wyrmprints, but we did recently get Summer Amane who was first teased via a log-in bonus, so who knows. It’d at least be nice to get any sort of playable version of Shion, but I also really like how Shishimai looks in his Halloween costume.

Maybe we’ll finally get playable versions of mummy Luca or werewolf Ranzal, but I’m not gonna hold my breath.

That’s basically all we have to even vaguely go off of, but I also like the idea that maybe the new Halloween event will be a third part to the Accursed Archives event series, which might mean we’ll get Halloween Heinwald, or a story-based alt for him like with Xuan Zang.

Also, while I remember, my current dream summon candidate is Mitsuba [mainly because there’s barely anyone left in the permanent pool who interests me that much, lol], but I’m holding out until the free tenfolds end just in case I get her from one of them. If I do, my backup option would probably be Yurius. Like I said before, GC was an option, but now that I have them they’re not an issue anymore.

Anyway these two banners feel like they dragged me through all seven layers of Hell, and now i think I’ve made a contract to sell my soul to Big Chungus.

[verdantspringcourtyard]

About SSR/SPs, Dupes & Rerolling

SSRs & SPs

In Onmyouji SSR/SP =/= good or useful. It only denotes rarity, not strength. In all honesty, SSRs are much harder to utilise early on due to requiring max level skills. Eg; Ootengu is one of the few SSRs who can be used straight away without skill upgrades.

SP shikigami are kind of similar. They’re not better than their original counterparts at doing specific things but they all have drawbacks.

Dupes

You should only throw shikigami back into the shrine if they are a duplicate. It is best to keep one of everything. You never know if certain shikigami will get buffed or suddenly become meta.

Dupes of SSRs or SPs you can either 

keep if they’re your fav

keep for the purpose of showing off on your homepage

keep to put a different skin on each

throw them back to the shrine

never use them to level up a skill ...unless you are cursed with 12 dupes of the same shikigami.

Rerolling

It’s not really worth rerolling unless you’re absolutely dead set on starting the game with a specific shikigami, don’t plan on playing for a very long time or making are alt accounts so you can send SSR shards to your main account. 

If it’s your first time playing and are doing it just for the sake of getting any SSR/SP under the assumption SSR/SP = good, not very worth it. 

Besides rerolling in Onmyouji is very time-consuming due to the tutorial being rather long. 

Even if you can’t summon an SSR, there are other ways to get one. Listed below are ways to get them:

Login Rewards - random SSR @ 365 days - uncollected SSR @ 500 days - uncollected SP @ 999 days

Demon Parade (SSR shards, can’t get SP shards until lv60)

Bounties/Wanted (SSR shards)

Wishing in Guild (requires having at least 1 shard of the SSR/SP before you can wish for them)

Honour Points from PVP (200 honour for 1 Ryoumen shard)

Kekkai/Realm cards (SSR shards)

Shikigami Dispatch (shards, from 5-6* missions only)

Area Boss (SSR shards)

Shikigami Bosses in Demon Encounter (SSR shards)

Collect all the SSNs aka the N shikigami frogs (random SSR)

The Unlucky Onmyouji achievement (random SSR)

Group Summon Unlucky Achievement (random or uncollected SSR/SP)

The Mentor System (random SSR for the student)

Events (1-10-20-50-60 SSR/SP shards, random SSR/SP)

Shrine (most of these require throwing dupe SSR/SPs back to the shrine) - 6000 ofuda for 1 of 12 SSRs (2 SSRs are added to this each year)

Special Summon Event Amulets (can pick 1 SSR or SSR/SP out of a selection, require good rng or summon +600 times) - Golden Amulet: can pick any cuurently released SSR/SP - Red Amulet: can pick any SSR released before a certain date - read more on the wiki’s Items page

[GL exclusive] 120 Summons (1 random SSR out of 7) - Summon 120 times within 30 days to get a random SSR (Shuten, Ootengu, Arakawa, Enma, Aoandon, Shishio, Ibaraki)

Guaranteed Starter SSR (1 random SSR out of 7 below) - Ootengu, Shuten, Iba, Susabi, Higan, Tamamo, Onikiri

If you’re dead set on rerolling + really want to twist my arm and tell you who get, then i recommend these SSR/SPs;

Ootengu:

just plain good aoe dps

Tamamo:

great at one-shotting enemies in explore

but needs to be maxed skilled

Youtou:

her 2022 skill adjusment makes her a great dps for demon encounter

but needs to be maxed skilled

Asura: 

1 of the best shiki for farming s11 and great in events

but don’t ever bring him to kraken, people won’t like co-oping with if you do

SP Ibaraki:

great for events (usually paired with Asura)

but uses up 4 onibi

SP Tamamo:

1 of the best shiki for farming s10-11 and great in events

but uses up 4 onibi and requires the rest of your team to have high ATK

Shiranui:

a great support and last resort dps for pvp

occasionally used for events

she really needs other shiki to synergise with her to be worth using (eg Shokurei, Karasu, SR/SP Ubume, Kujira, SP Shuten)

Do you need to get any one of those or even all of them? No.

Is anything other than these trash? No.

Will they make starting out easier? No, might make starting out even harder tbh bc some of them require max skills.

tl;dr They’re just nice shikigami have.

[travelingthroughtimejjs]

High school- and friends

When i went through that first enlightenment period of my life, I realized I didn’t really have much money. Sure my dad paid for me to participate in sports and stuff but I didn't have money of my own and couldn’t really get the things that I wanted in life. So I worked my ass off doing just random small jobs for my dad’s friends and at home to earn money, I was always working to try and make myself into something.

I saved up enough to buy my first iPhone in grade 8 and bought myself a longboard, which were big purchases for me back then. I applied to get my young workers certificate the day I turned 14 and gave a resume to every single store in cornerstone. My resume was shit, I hadn't done anything at that point in my life besides raise money for relay for life and volunteer at the SPCA for 6 months. I only heard back from one place, Sobey’s and they laughed at me when I told them I was 14. So there went that dream.

In grade 9 my friend groups started to blend. All these people coming together from different backgrounds in one place. Being the social butterfly that I am, I tried to make a friendship with every single person in the grade. I actually think I did a pretty good job of this within those 4 years, I can say I had some sort of relationship with almost every single person by the end of grade 12. 

It also gave me the opportunity for my friends to meet each other, I introduced people like Short and Matt to the people that I’ve been hanging out with for years. I became really close with Corrigal and our friend group hungout almost every single day together. There were a lot of us but we would have our own parties and get together to drink at someone’s house almost every weekend. The guys I was closest with at this point were Josh, Liam, Matt, Tyler, Jaxon, Jeremy (who I just met), Reese, Corrigal, Short and although he was still in elementary school kept a relationship with Rhys. 

The girls in our group were also pretty cool back then, spent time with Kate, Taryn, Nikki, Sydney, Selena, Billie and Cami. 

I didn’t really try the hardest in school until grade 12, I was more so focused on having fun and my sports. 

Throughout the years the girls started to care less about us and were doing their own thing. I started making some friendships with some other guys that I didn’t ever have the opportunity before like Crawf and Fuzz. 

My mom was really reflecting on her health and she knew we were going to be leaving soon so she let me throw huge 100 person parties in our basement a couple times in grade 9. Pretty wild for some 14/15 year olds. 

At this time I started kind of getting into the dating scene, nothing ever really came out of it but I was learning. I couldn’t drive at this point but I started going on date’s with a girl named Emma. I would pay to go golfing, go to the movies, we’d go play tennis or we would just hangout at one of our houses. We were even posting pictures on our social media together. Seemed like everything was going good until she randomly texted me one day saying that we couldn’t keep seeing each other, it was pretty random but I went with it. We still hungout from time to time after, even went on a few more dates but nothing came from it. I later found out that her reasoning was that I was too short for her, which was honestly pretty valid because she was 6 foot tall and I was 5 foot 7 haha.

Everyday after school Jaxon and Tyler would come over to my house and we would watch hours of Netflix together practice beer pong in my basement. That changed at the end of grade 9, Matt had asked me if I wanted to come volunteer with him at an event at the Co-op where he worked, of course I said yes because I didn’t really have much going on ever besides working out. I met the HR person from the Co-op at this event, Matthew, and he loved how charismatic I was, asked me if I wanted a job at the Co-op with Matt. I was super happy because the prior year I tried so hard to find a job. 

I worked my ass off at the co-op. Matt left after a couple months of me being there which meant I was the only student left around to close the Meat department. That meant I was going in after football practice for 3 hours to do all the intensive cleaning. As you can see, school still wasn’t my biggest priority. I wanted to buy a vehicle so i worked as much as I could. This was in grade 10.

Grade 10 was a pretty big year for the boys. We ventured out from our small group parties into huge parties, the rookie party era started and the boys weren’t shy about going out. We went to everything, no matter what. I always said I wasn’t going to let work interfere with my social life so I would show up to the Co-op absolutely drunk as fuck still from the night before on multiple occurrences. But the boys meant so much to me that it was worth ti every time. At every party you could find me talking to people’s parents, building relationships with everyone I could. I grew especially close with Jeremy and Liam at this point and we did basically everything together. I still maintained my brotherhood with Josh, a task I always found easy no matter how different of things we were doing. Grade 10 I became pretty close friends with Dyllen. Tyler wasn’t really associated with our group due to fucking up too many times. 

I also continued with my relationship building skills. I wanted to be remembered by every single person, so I put in so much effort into getting to know people deep down and trying to actually become their friend, asking them the real questions. I did this especially with my teachers at school, I was always asking them about their life at home and I got some really personal stories from teachers like Mme Chan, Miss Welter and Mr. Germs. I think I earned the respect of every teacher in high school. At the same time I was still my attention seeking self and wanted to be heard in class. I volunteered to read every time the class was asked upon and tried to crack some well timed jokes. At work I learned so much from the adults there and got basically their whole life stories. I loved to learn about other people, it made them feel special and it built a strong connection with them.

They started hiring more young people at Co-op around this time. I made some awesome friendships with people like Zach, Dante and Ivan. Especially Zach though, we would spend every single break together either going for lunch or playing baseball behind the store.

I had my second real thing with a girl in the summer between grade 10 and grade 11. Her name was Brooklyn. Dyllen was dating her best friend Jaici at the time and had invited me up to Brooklyn’s cabin to hangout for the July long weekend. I was off from work and thought we might as well go. I met Brooklyn and we hit it off instantly. She was fresh off a breakup though so I wanted to give her some space. She ended up getting back together with her boyfriend after a couple weeks and we obviously stopped talking. Then when her and her boyfriend broke up again she texted me immediately. This was right at the beginning of grade 11 and we spent a lot of days hanging out together, with Dyllen and Jaici some of those times. She wasn’t ready for anything serious so we just eventually stopped talking. She ended up dating Matt a few years later.

A lot of the same old at the beginning of grade 11. For me, playing football, partying and spending time with the boys. I loved it, formed so many good relationships with those guys. I became really close to Rahman at this point. Halloween of that year my life changed drastically, but I’ll write more about that later. I started dating Eden and that meant my time with the boys plummeted. I was super busy at this point in my life. I was playing basketball 6 times a week, playing hockey 2-4 times a week and working every Sunday. I somehow balanced it all but lost touch with the boys because of it.

Long weekends were always such a special time for our group. Everyone would take the weekends off from work and gather at the lake for a weekend of catching up. They really kept the boys together in a way that is hard to describe. For me I almost didn’t play spring football one year so that I could go to May Long but I got talked into playing from the coaches. Aug long was my time to shine and I always appreciated Rhys’ and Corrigals’s hospitality towards me. 

The end of grade 11 was the second huge reflective moment of my life. I needed to figure out what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be. My career choice at the time was to be an architect based off of Ted Mosbey from How I Met Your Mother. I was taking a drafting and design class and I loved it, took all three levels (10, 20, and 30). I needed to figure out how I was going to turn into it into my career, so my choice was to apply for Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan and specialize in structural engineering and then move on to the University of Calgary to get a degree in architecture. I started trying extremely hard in school to set myself up for this path. Jaxon and his girlfriend also broke up when we were in grade 11 and the guy has never been the same since.

I was working almost full time at co-op, while still participating in my spring sports and didn’t have as much for the boys due to me trying hard in school now with that other stuff. I didn’t have any money to go to school, maybe 5000, which wouldn’t get me far so I needed to keep working.

In grade 11 my grandpa had died and although I saw it coming and was extremely sad, he left me 5000, this money really helped me get my education. 

In grade 12 I was the biggest try hard in school, and I was getting awesome marks because of it, as good as I really could get while playing a bunch of sports and still working a bunch. But I also came to a realization that all those relationships I had worked so hard on for those 4 years were going to come to an end, I wouldn’t be able to see the same people everyday and have those real conversations with them. I started going out a bunch again in grade 12 because that was what I felt I needed to do to hold onto those relationships. It was tough to balance everything but I always made it work. 

Billie and Cami were still super good friends of mine throughout all of high school and we sat together in every class. I was going to ask Cami to grad but she ended up asking Rhys before I had the chance.

Grade 12 I formed the tightest bond I think I ever had with Josh even after knowing him for so long, we had such similar career paths in mind that we helped each other strive towards them. That’s when Jackson came along so become one of my best friends, although his work ethic was a little different than ours, he was naturally smarter and didn’t have to work to the same degree, he still had very similar ambitions that helped us grow together towards our goal. We all planned our university lives together and spent a bunch of time as a group, we planned to find a place together. Our original plan was to get a place at College Quarters but when I called to ask about the availability when we got accepted in January, they had said that the application deadline was in November so we were way too late. Thank God though because the situation we found ourselves in was a million times better. At co-op they hired a kid named Lucas who I took under my wing and made a really good friend of mine.

Me, Josh and Jackson were so set on this goal of moving to Saskatoon and we knew it wasn’t going to be cheap, when the graduating class was all pushing the idea that we should go to Mexico as a grad trip, the three of us initially decided against it. We were thinking that 2000 could mean two months of living in Saskatoon. I think I was the first one to come to the realization and I brought it to the boys. We were NEVER going to have an opportunity like that again, so we signed up. I was lucky because my dad and Nicole combined some money together and gave me 1100$ to go. The trip ended up being around 3000 by the same all the money was spent there, but I don’t regret it one bit.

Grad retreat was a super special day to me. One last effort to spend time with all the people that I tried to befriend throughout my 4 years. I’ll never forget that big tackle football game the boys had going on. It was also an opportunity to let everyone know how grateful we were. I wrote so many notes and dropped them on peoples baskets for them to read later. I still go back and read the notes people wrote me at least once a year.

At graduation time all the work I put into my relationships was finally coming together. I received the highest valued scholarship at the St Mary Grad ceremony, I was getting really nervous because as the list dwindled down my name wasn’t getting called and i really thought I wasn’t going to win anything. But there it came, the last scholarship 2 500 to the person who displayed what it’s like to lead in all aspects of life. All the teachers had voted me this person, I didn’t have the best marks in our class, I had a 94% average in grade 12, there were about 20 people with higher averages than that but at the end of the day it was my personality that had me winning, maybe not deservingly so because there were a lot of brilliant people who were also leaders in different ways. I also won a 500 $ scholarship from the Kinsmen Club Prince Albert for being a community leader and then 250 $ for having the highest average in Drafting and Design 30 (in which I was the only student). I also got a 700$ scholarship from the co-op that i worked at. Pair those winnings with the 2000$ entrance scholarship I got from the U of S, I was capable of attending university. I had about 7000 saved from the co-op, 5500 in scholarship money and the 5000 from my grandpa’s inheritance, this was enough to take me through the first couple of years. 

[mistabonbon]

I’m kinda torn when it comes to Warframe.

I’ve had it on my PS4 since the PS4 first launched and a lot of it I used to enjoy so much.

It was a game that was heavy on Co-op that I could still play on my own and just be paired with random people who, for the most part, knew what they were doing. 

It was a game where if I wanted something extra cool, I could put aside a day or two and work on getting it, and by the end I’d feel satisfied in the effort I put into it.

But then we got to Archwing. 

Archwing was interesting at first, still kinda is, but to get more Archwing gear? 

That day or two of doing one thing became a whole damn week. The items were put behind game modes that were annoying to play, took forever to complete, and no-one liked playing them, so you hardly ever found a full squad for it. On top of that horrible experience, the drop chance for the item you’d need were stuck behind playing the game mode for an absurd amount of time, and even after you played it for that long there was a HUGE chance you STILL wouldn’t get the items you need. You would instead get some stupid thing you don’t even care about in the slightest.

I wasn’t too insanely bothered by this at first. I could just play everything else the game had to offer that WASN’T Archwing. 

Then we got Nidus, Vauban Prime, Valkyr Prime, etc.

Warframes, base Warframes that you could get an use ANYWHERE. One of which is a Prime variant of my personal favorite, Valkyr.

Nidus alone is a fucking mess to work towards. 

You play a game mode kind of like a mix of Survival and Defense where you’re swarmed by hive of increasing difficulty over time and you need to pick up special drop items to put into consoles that will decrypt information over time as long as you keep putting these items into it. 

A fine understandable and, to some small degree enjoyable mode at first.

But then you see that you need to play it for 20 minutes in a single run for just one chance at getting a piece of Nidus that you need, and ALL THREE PARTS OF THE BLUEPRINT ARE BEHIND THE 20 MINUTE WALL. 

“That’s fair/understandable” you say, but then you see there’s five other items in that same loot pool after you play for 20 minutes that have MUCH higher drop rates. We’re talking 20%-30% drop rates while Nidus is nowhere close. You can play that mode for a whole damn day and not get a single part of Nidus’ components. To make things even worse, most of the people playing that mode either have no fucking clue what they’re doing, or they do, but they leave the game before you’re done 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile with Primes, that’s a whole new shit pile.

The way acquiring Prime stuff USED to work: Play specific missions within the Void for a chance at getting items that you need to make X Prime thing. 

This was great because you would always go into these missions with other people who were farming for things that were ALSO behind the same wall that the items you needed were behind. You’d go into a Void survival, everyone would decide on 20, 40, 60 minutes, etc. and you four would go that long. No one would leave, people knew what to do, it was great. Sure the drop rates were still rather shit, but it was a lot more tolerable.

The way acquiring Primes works NOW: You play specific modes/missions to acquire Relics, specific relics have the ability to drop specific prime parts when you use those relics to play a Void mission. You can increase the chance of the drop for the item you need by using a specific resource and “charging” the relic with it.

This sounds fine, and on paper it is, but in the actual implementation into the game itself? THIS IS ABSOLUTE SHIT. Why? Because the drops you need are not tied to the specific missions anymore. Obviously that’s the case. But on top of that, they’re tied to a thing you need to farm. ON TOP OF THAT. You COULD have a higher chance of getting the thing you need when multiple people have the same relic. A group of four people with charged relics that have say a 10% chance of dropping a Valkyr Prime part EACH, that’s a 40% chance of getting that Valkyr Prime part. BUT. If you ever want that kind of chance, not only do people need to have that relic and have it charged to the max, you need to organize the use of four of it with a group.

No longer can people just go play the game, do what missions they want to, and get things done within a reasonable time frame.

If you can’t organize a farming session with a group of people, then you’re stuck playing a handful of things for fucking WEEKS because you play X thing and use X resource trying to get X item and then you run out of that resource you need to get that item so you need to play a DIFFERENT thing to try and get more of that resource to try and get that item again. 

It’s not fucking fun. At all. Now more than ever the game feels like it’s Pay to Win because if you want to keep enjoying the game and NOT be stuck doing one bullshit thing for an entire damn month to the point you can’t stand even just looking at the damn title screen of the game? Fork up the dough, buy platinum, skip the fucking bullshit grind, ACTUALLY ENJOY THE GAME.

But over the past few months, Warframe has gotten some huge updates. And I mean HUGE. The Plains of Eidolon a while ago. An “Open World” space where you can involve yourself in hunts, psuedo-events, missions, and you can fight giant ancient robot monsters at night. Plus there’s a settlement of friendly NPCs with stores, factions, bounties, etc. PLUS YOU CAN FISH. A lot of people were surprisingly hyped for that. 

They had just recently release The Sacrifice, which I played, and while it was a bit annoying since it focused to heavily on using your Operator in combat, it was honestly one of the more satisfying quests in the game, and it had probably the MOST satisfying way to get a Warframe.

In the Sacrifice, Umbra is added to the game. You play through the Quest to get him of course, but you don’t just get a blueprint then need to do a million other things to get his components and the resources needed. No no no.

In the first mission you get his blueprint, but it’s incomplete. You have it in your Foundry but it needs more data. 

The next mission you run, you get more of that needed data, and then you can build Umbra. No components, no extra blueprints, just the one and a couple resources. 

Once you build him, Umbra is max level, with a catalyst, and it’s own Warframe slot added into your inventory, and are tasked with equipping it. However, once you do, Umbra comes to life. It reacts violently to being alive again, and threatens to kill your Operator. But you manage to do Transference with Umbra and you see a memory. One that shows a bit of what Umbra remembers from it’s life BEFORE being a Warframe. When you come out of the memory, you learn from Ordis that Umbra has escaped from your ship and has gone somewhere else. Your Operator decides to chase down Umbra, do transference with it, and learn more about the memory with the goal of helping it come to terms with and move on from that moment in their original life.

Over the course of the quest you learn about the origin of the Warframes, of how they were first made, of the dark, horrible truth to it all, and you lose something, as the name “The Sacrifice” suggests. Thankfully it’s not one of your own frames, that’d have just been stupid, but what you do lose is HUGE.

But by the end of the quest line, you come to understand the torment Umbra had been going through ever since they became the Warframe they are. The painful memory that runs through their mind over, and over, and over again for who knows how long. Not only do you understand, you help Umbra. You support Umbra, and work with them through that torment so they can move past it, and work toward the future. To stopping the insane prick that started everything.

Once it’s done, Umbra stays with you. Umbra doesn’t just run away and disappear, not at all. They recognize you as a Tenno, as their Tenno, and stay so that they can now help you. 

A lot of the fandom/community jokes about Umbra now being your Operator’s dad, because they certainly do kind of become a father figure on some ways.

But Umbra is now one of your Warframes that you can use whenever you want, and Umbra’s pretty damn great, not only is it a pretty well buffed up Excalibur, it’s and Anti-Sentient Warframe. It’s second ability is an AOE stun that will REMOVE all the resistances that a Sentient has built up! Add on the exalted weapon it has already being great against Sentients and the fact it has 720 HEALTH, Umbra’s a FANTASTIC Warframe for the Void.

Also, Digital Extremes recently had Tennocon, and during Tennocon they showed off a half-dozen new skins coming to the game for various Warframes, two NEW Warframes, AND a NEW OPEN SPACE. 

They also showed off a new game mode where you and three other players operate an entire ship, flying it around, using it’s canons in battle, and you can send someone to fly to the enemy ship via Archwing and do things on the ship as if it’s a normal mission, while someone who’s still on your friendly ship can hack into the enemy one and help the person who boarded it!

The game type is pretty damn interesting, I gotta be honest, but it also makes me worry that it’s going to be EXTREMELY anti-solo. 

What I mean by that: I’m worried you’re not going to be able to play it alone and have any chance at succeeding, and that even with a random group of people, unless EVERYONE knows what they’re doing, you’re going to have a VERY hard/messy time playing it.

On top of all of that, ALL of these big new things coming to the game, it’s being released for Nintendo’s Switch console.

Warframe. 

A game with a future that looks very promising, but at the same time, very unfriendly for solo-players and console players.

[brothergrimmbo-blog]

Examining my love for Destiny 2 (A Rant)

So I guess I logged a lot of hours into Destiny 2 last year...

According to Playstation’s 2019 Wrap Up, I kind of fell back in love with Destiny last year and I have thoughts on why. This is by no means a comprehensive list of reasons to play Bungie’s fantastic space based looter shooter, it’s just me trying to figure out why Destiny 2 was my most played game of 2019.

My History with Destiny

During Playstation’s 2013 E3 press-conference, I was exposed to the glorious Destiny gameplay-demo. It teased the social elements of an MMO packaged as an expertly crafted first-person-shooter (FPS) experience, all brought to me by one of the most exciting developers in the business, Bungie.

“The guns have names and power levels,” I thought, “I’m in.”  

I purchased the Digital Deluxe Guardian Edition or whatever it was called (the first time I’d ever bought any kind of special edition for a game), and upon release I was almost immediately disappointed. I beat the main campaign in one sitting and felt the ending was underwhelming to say the least. The early days of Destiny were confusing as all hell and frankly, a little dry in the content department. I played a lot of Crucible, but other than that, I never really played through strikes or most of the PVE content in general once I beat the jumbled main story. At the time, I didn’t see the point of logging in, so I didn’t. I put away my Warlock Bonds and stopped playing entirely. And then Shadowkeep happened.  

Enter Shadowkeep

I jumped back in with the Shadowkeep expansion and New Light revamp. Bungie’s tweaks and updates to the game really reinforced the idea that “the world of Destiny” is alive and it will move on with our without me. Main characters have died in my absence. Fallen heroes have been resurrected. The Traveler is broken now? And also sticky portal monsters are a thing. I decided to jump back in, intrigued and hype as all hell.

I still have a lot of catching up to do lore wise, but I’m actually excited to experience it. I’ve loved diving into the robust and so-far extremely friendly Destiny community on Youtube and Reddit, so I know my questions will have answers. The overarching story in Shadowkeep -in addition to the smaller, character-focused quests (like last week’s Devil’s Ruin Exotic Quest)- keep me in the loop way more than Destiny 1’s Grimoire cards ever did.

Destiny in 2020

In terms of “What to do” in Destiny 2, it can be initially overwhelming, but here are the basics:

The Playlists

There are three basic game modes presented as “Playlists”: Strikes, Crucible, and Gambit. These playlists serve as quick and easy “Jump right in”-style fun, catered toward cooperative, competitive, and...Gambit (Destiny’s unique mix of co-op and competitive gameplay). If you want a more chill experience, you can explore or patrol the solar system. In between shooting sessions, you’ll meet your friends, organize loadouts, and talk to bounty vendors at The Tower, Destiny 2’s social hub.

The Tower

In concert with these game modes, you’ll complete daily and weekly bounties obtained from vendors across the multi-planetary map and The Tower. Bounties might task you with using a certain weapon-type, killing a particular boss, collecting specific materials or performing different in-game activities. Once bounties are complete, you can redeem valuable currency, or engrams (Destiny’s randomized loot drops). In addition to bounties, you have the opportunity to acquire and complete meatier quests for more specific, powerful rewards. Quests come in multiple steps that can be as simple as finding specific items in the world to completing the most challenging activities in the game. They come in a wide variety of both difficulty and time consumption, but the rewards have been worth it so far.

The Loop(s)

The gameplay balances the box-checking nature of quests and bounties with great space-shooter gameplay to establish a loop that is both addicting, and rewarding. For example:

Lets say you just got a handful of daily bounties and a few weeklies. You need to get 10 kills with a hand cannon, 10 kills with a solar weapon, and 10 kills in the Crucible. Play one game of Crucible with a solar hand cannon, get 10 kills and you just completed three bounties. Before you head back to the Tower , you’ll realize you need to complete one more bounty for the weekly quest so you play “just one more game” to complete “ just one more bounty” and now it’s 3 in the morning and you have a slew of new gear you just have to try out, and thus the cycle continues.

This extends to the moment-to-moment gameplay as well, it’s not just “shoot the bad guys.” Guardians have special abilities according to their class (Hunter, Warlock and Titan) as well as their elemental subclass (Solar, Arc and Void). Even within those subclasses, there are branching ability trees with different playstyles. Want to fly around and rain fire from the sky? Go top-tree Dawnblade. Want to be a spirit-bombing vampire? Go bottom-tree Voidwalker. Balancing ability cooldowns with gear upgrades makes every second of gameplay count. Throw in some environmental puzzles and some floaty platforming and you’ve got Destiny in a nutshell.

Here’s to another 93 hours

The constant loop of long-form quests, quick-bounties, and an ever-flowing stream of loot keeps me engaged more than any other game on the market. There’s a lot to do without a specific goal in mind, and it doesn't even take into account quests for exotic weapons and armor pieces, story specific events, raids, and seasonal events. There is so much to do in Destiny it’s almost impossible to get bored. Tied together with Bungie’s excellent shooting mechanics and “space-magic” vibe, Destiny 2 is going to continue to take up way too much of my time and I am totally okay with that.

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

12 Mar 2019: Amazon supermarkets, social return on investment, can you trust Youtube?, TV you can play

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading and please do send ideas, questions, corrections etc to @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading please consider telling a friend about it!

Amazon supermarkets?

The Wall Street Journal said that Amazon plans a new supermarket chain that’ll stock lower-priced and non-organic products - Amazon hasn’t commented. (Some are speculating that Amazon might be therefore interested in either Sainsbury’s or even (Walmart-owned) Asda if the Sasda merger fails.)

It is fair to predict that the Everything Store is going to keep experimenting as it tries to work out what ways of retailing are going to work well for the 2020s: it already has several offline retail businesses and experiments/pilots:

Whole Foods, obviously - about 500 stores, most in US

Checkoutless Go stores - 10 in US (but rumours of plans for 3,000 by 2021!), but these have a variety of formats and product ranges being tried in Go

Books - 18

Kiosks in malls and other superstores - 87, but being closed

4 star, which sells products which got high ratings online - 3

Drive-thru and click and collect formats - a handful

Social return on investment

“Nipped to Tesco Express. A few people in front of me eagerly chatted to the cashiers, who chatted back. Had impression checkout staff were the only people those customers had talked to this weekend. I happily pay a bricks-and-mortar premium for that contribution to society.”

If you’re a grocer, that post on the twitter might be a weak signal that shoppers have concerns and needs that go beyond price. The question might be how a grocer can show the return on investment in a service that trades off speed for social value. Some supermarkets are doing “quieter” or “slower” days designed for older or disabled shoppers, though these test programmes haven’t yet been deployed widely. An emerging measure of social return on investment (SROI) may help answer those questions. (Well done Tesco for allowing checkout staff to spend time chatting.)

The modern tech business workplace

Facebook content moderators are broken by what they have to look at - a tough read. FB has about 15,000 people monitoring content.

Job applicants asked to work for free to win a job at fintech unicorn Revolut - perhaps the custom emoji in the screenshot from Revolut’s Slack neatly describe Revolut’s internal culture: Get It Done, Push...

Google tops up male engineer pay because inequality (!)

Jeff Bezos confronted by Amazon moms demanding day care.

Momo and TV you should distrust

There was a worry in the media and schools about Momo challenges, a whirling mix of alarming pictures in the media, parental and educator concern, unpleasant Youtube content and viral social media sharing. There are a couple of important points. First, social media are great at amplifying *everything* - the good and the bad. Some of the reaction by internet users and schools was overblown - there isn’t much evidence of “apps being hacked” or Momo challenges having actually incited young people to self-harm - but it is understandable. (See also: fake news.)

Second, it is increasingly hard to trust content on the internet. Something that looks like and advertises itself as Peppa Pig, might not actually be Peppa Pig. This is a problem with any platform that shares advertising revenue with content creators: the incentives are there to cheaply remix or generate video content, and some creators now automate that work: algorithms generates video content to game other algorithms, all in search of human attention and therefore money. And usually the platform is not incentivised to police that. Here’s a long and scary read about that. So even though there is a lot of great and good content on Youtube, if you are a parent (or a child!), it may be safer to think of Youtube being of variable quality at best, and utterly poisonous at worst. YouTube has taken some steps, eg turning off comments on videos of children, but it remains pretty unfiltered.

That’s why this newsletter often says that technology isn’t neutral but it is indifferent: technology doesn’t care about the effects it has unless the people that own it or use it make it care.

TV you can touch

Friends-of-the-newsletter Playdeo have made a game inside video: “television you can touch: a new space, inside video, where you can play.” Your character - a curious detective avocado - can walk through a space that’s described solely with “real world” video. In that world are objects and human characters, challenges and quests. It’s video that responds to your character (and it’s easier to play than describe.) It’s completely charming and a hint of what Augmented Reality might be able to do if it gets, you know, good.

Other news

An alternative model for a convenience store: a packaging-free, zero-waste grocery.

The National Audit Office says Gov Verify hasn’t been good value. If civil servants were allowed to comment, the newsletter reckons they’d disagree.

"We should not be haunted by the specter of being automated out of work. We should be excited by that. But the reason we’re not excited by it is because we live in a society where if you don’t have a job, you are left to die." - AOC.

Machine Learning is making better weather predictions for wind turbines - better management of energy generation for The Grid.

“All the previous machines have used thermal noise to produce random numbers. The latest version is powered by quantum technology - the ability to produce random numbers through light.” - new Ernie machine uses quantum computing magic to pick premium bond winners.

Mailchimp treating mentions of crypt*c*rr*nc**s as an indicator of spam (perhaps sensibly) is going to make it hard to criticise crypt*c*rr*nc**s in the newsletter.

Co-op Digital news

How we turn research into actionable insights - so that future products can actually use the research insights meaningfully.

Why teams need to think about content design from the discovery phase - get your content designer to show up earlier then you think you need them.

Events

Funeralcare show & tell - Tue 12 Mar 1pm at Angel Square 12th floor.

CRM show & tell - Tue 12 Mar 2pm at Angel Square 13th floor.

Manchester data platform user group - Wed 13 Mar 5pm at Federation House 6th floor.

Content teatime - Wed 13 Mar 5pm at Federation House.

Open Gov week - participation day - Thu 14 Mar 11am at Federation House.

Storytelling with data - Thu 14 Mar 11am at Federation House.

Membership show & tell - Fri 15 Mar 3pm at Federation House 6th floor.

Delivery community of practice meetup - Mon 18 Mar 1.30pm at Federation House.

Shifts show & tell - Tue 19 Mar 10am at Federation House 6th floor.

Web team playback - Tue 19 Mar 1pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Health team show & tell - Tue 19 Mar 2pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Food ecommerce show & tell - Tue 19 Mar 2.30pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Co-operate show & tell - Wed 20 Mar 10am at Federation House 6th floor.

Data ecosystem show & tell - Wed 20 Mar 3pm at Angel Square 13th floor.

Digital offers show & tell - Thu 21 Mar 2pm at Federation House 6th floor.

Membership show & tell - Fri 22 Mar 3pm at Federation House 6th floor.

More events at Federation House. And TechNW has a useful calendar of events happening in the North West.

Thank you for reading

Thank you, beloved and thoughtful readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to the newsletterbot’s flunky @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading please consider telling a friend about it!

If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog.

[grapsandclaps]

GRAPS AND CLAPS REVIEWS - BREED PRO WRESTLING 'SUNDAY NIGHT YEET'

Hello and welcome everyone to this edition of Graps and Claps, this time taking me across the Pennines once again to Sheffield for Breed Pro Wrestling’s debut show taking place at The Abbeydale Picture House, located around a 20/25-minute walk from the Train Station.

A very early start for me, deciding to leave my dad in bed for a change I took the 30-minute walk to Rochdale Bus Station, but not before going to the newsagents to get the mornings paper to which I was greeted with the sight of a woman in a nightdress with her full arse visibly showing picking up cigarette butt-ends (Stay Classy Smallbridge!). Taking the 50-minute bus journey to Manchester, I arrived into Shudehill Interchange for 9:30am with enough time to visit the local Co-Op for a hot Sausage Roll and 3 Hash Browns to keep me nourished on the short journey to Sheffield – arriving in the Steel City for 11:10am.

First port of call as ever in Sheffield was The Sheffield Tap to meet up with some of the gang (Athers and Ben to name a couple). Only two pints in here in the hour that I was in with a Arbor Rocketman IPA (6% £5 pint) being the best out of the two that I had, the other being a Fyne Ales Maverick Dark Bitter (4.2% £4.20 pint that had a slight taste of dirty dishwater to start but gradually got better as the drink went down. With Ben making his arrival, we went on our expedition to the venue, but not before visiting another couple of pubs on the way, the first being a recommended choice of Breed Promoter Mitch – that being The Clubhouse.

To Mitch’s credit he chose well, as this pub had around 10 real ales on tap, plus for people who were there for the wrestling, there was Bacon and Sausage butties put on for everyone at a cost of £2.50 each making it feel like a proper wrestling away day, but with a bit more advertising about this I could see this becoming more and more popular as the promotion goes on throughout the year. As Bacon butties go this was a solid 8/10 on the crispy scale but still full of flavour. Drink wise it was a pint of Gongoozler Stout (4.5% £3.20) that won the battle in this pub, just mildly over the Peach and Amber Ale (£3.50), also it was nice to have a chat with Mitch’s Dad who we would see on a number of occasions during the show – top fella to chat with.

Drinks done in this venue, we carried on our long walk to the venue with along the way a sight of someone in a Chinese Dragon outfit doing some ceremonial cake buying, whilst it’s band of symbol players looked on outside – this was random as anything! With at least an hour to go before the show, a few of us decided to visit the pub next door to the Abbeydale Picture House that being – The Picture House Social which you could tell straight away as you walked down the steep stairs that this venue has found a spare tub of pink paint to adorn its walls.

Inside it did have the feeling of a basement bar that served Pizzas, a handful of real ales and as my friends Davey and Chris Wilson of the Bill fame would find out was that you can have the use of a private Cinema room which holds around 24 people for a cost of £50 for 3 hours – random but something that I could see them both taking full advantage of in the future that is for certain. Only the one drink in here that being a pint of Beak Midwinter Porter (4.8% £3.80 pint) rating as a good 7/10 in my book. This I would say if Breed are holding further events at Abbeydale Picture House could be a perfect meeting up spot for the wrestling as it is literally next door.

Drinks finished, it was time to get into the venue, which on first sight looked like the old Grand Central building in Liverpool with an ornate balcony. Cinema style seating was in action with easily around 300 people in attendance which is an excellent by Breed to draw that on their first show in Sheffield. As the building doesn’t get used that much nowadays, the venue was akin to Oldham Athletics Boundary Park better known as ‘Ice Station Zero’ – a bit cold that was for sure. Toilet situation was 3 different toilets but with only 1 piss stone in each of them, but it was still serviceable for people throughout the show. Drink options including cans of Abbeydale Heathen for £3.50 and pints of a local cask ale costing £3 which was passable as a drink through the show, but lacked a head as it was being poured straight from the barrel. Before the show it was nice to finally chat to FSM’s own Will Cooling, plus also to see my old Boltonian friend Matthew was great.

Starting near enough bang on time (3pm), we were introduced to the afternoon’s action by ring announcer Lucy for whom it was her first full show announcing, despite a couple of early stumbles on the mic she performed admirably as the show went on. First match for the afternoon was a 3 on 2 Handicap match with Session Moth Martina teaming with The Anti-Fun Police (Damien Dunne and Los Federales Santos) taking on 2/3rds of Irish Trio ‘More Than Hype’ that being L.J Cleary and Darren Kearney.

Lots of fun and shenanigans early on with Martina and Santos grinding on Cleary which initially flustered the young Irishman as this certainly put the Police on top for around a good 4/5 minutes, luckily for Cleary he managed to wriggle free as he hit Dunne with a roundhouse kick and them promptly tagged in his team mate Kearney who came in to hit kicks and a roundhouse of his own to Martina then a sit out slam to Dunne. The Police came back as Santos got a 2 count, but that was as close as it got as More Than Hype eventually got the victory as they hit a kick/Jay Driller combo to get the victory in a good fun opener. After the match, the dissension told in the Anti-Fun Police as Martina was dismissed of her duties by Dunne and Santos, but soon got revenge as she was consoled by More Than Hype.

2nd match now, with the first in the Breed Pro Wrestling Title tournament with Progress Broken Toy TK Cooper looking to prove that he is no back number, taking on Man Like Beano who I have only seen a couple of times on my travels around the U.K. It was to be the man from Wales who was on top early as he hit a face-first buster for a 2 count, following up with a forearm to stun TK then another slam for a 2 count to have the crowd fully behind him in his quest to defeat TK. TK however, got around to the realisation that he needed to win as he hit a Cartwheel Kick off of the top rope, then following up in swift fashion with a side slam to get the 3 count in another good contest.

3rd match was set to be a strike fest as Danny Jones (Not of McFly) took on Chris Ridgeway for whom some people had as their favourite to go all of the way to win this tournament. A very technical start with Ridgeway getting the best of the exchanges, Jones though did come back hitting double knees in the corner to Ridgeway to wind him. Ridgeway though came firing back with a SEX PIN for 2, then turning it into a crab to try and submit Jones, Jones though rolled through to save his skin. It only saved him for so long though, as the Cumbrian Ridgeway finished Jones off with a boot to the head to get the 3 count to advance to the Main Event 4-way – good match!!

4th match on this 9-match card was a change to the advertised match-up with Irish Starlet Scotty Davis replacing El Phantasmo who got injured trying to do a flip off a park bench whilst drunk – (Where’s Beadle when you need actual footage of this)! Davis was taking on Ben Corrigan’s favourite wrestler Chuck Mambo in an intriguing contest where maybe on paper it would be hard to pick a winner. As we started, both wrestlers hit high impact moves with Mambo hitting a DDT and Davis hitting a dive to the outside to floor Mambo. Lots of chants in this one about the wrestling attire on show with Scotty Davis’s Purple Pants and Mambo’s Turtle Pants being sang to the tune of Prince ‘Purple Rain’. Even Referee Eddie Sideburns got a chant about his Stripey Shirt!

Silly chants out of the way, Davis hit a driver to Mambo to get a two count, then followed up with a pair of knees to wind Mambo, but Mambo came back to hit a sweet Superkick then an Emerald Frosion for two. That was as good as it got for Mambo, as Davis locked in an arm submission on Mambo who duly tapped out to end a fine contest.

Half-Time Main event now with the final qualifier in the Breed Pro Wrestling Title Tournament with Spike Trivet taking on German Superstar Lucky Kid with the Mayor of Sheffield Majid in his corner to try and put Trivet off. Early control by Trivet in this one, a long leg hold stalemate then followed. Lucky Kid tried to apply some of the RISE poses he is famed for to make Trivet’s mind go mad and this worked as Lucky hit a Bounce back elbow to Trivet to get a two count. With the crowd fully behind the charismatic Lucky Kid, Trivet tried to use the Champagne bottle but was foiled by Majid who stole this from his clutches, leaving Lucky to hit a kick then lock in the Cross face to make the Tory Boy tap out. So your line up for the final in a 4-way Elimination match would be TK Cooper vs Scotty Davis vs Chris Ridgeway vs Lucky Kid.

Next up we had the first match in the New Breed Tournament which is an up and comers tournament with the first competitors being Connor Mills Vs Maverick Mayhew both of whom are more well-known for tag team wrestling, but Mills recently has been making waves down South on the Undergraps scene. As with the earlier Ridgeway match, this had a technical feeling out process but once they got into their stride the high-flying moves soon came out of the closet with Mills attempting a dive but he didn’t connect, he did though connect with a low dropkick to Mayhew to get on top. As the match reached its conclusion though it would be Mills who connected with a kick then finishing off his friend with a 450 from the top rope to get the victory in a passable contest – possibly not their best outing!

Women’s action next with Candyfloss vs Jayde vs Eliza Roux vs Shax, the latter has recently ditched the blond locks, going for a darker brown hair colour which suits her. Also I do have to point out that Shax & Damien Dunne have a beautiful dog not so sure on the breed, but a good dog nonetheless. Plenty of action early on in this, including Shax hitting a dive to everyone on the outside, back in the ring we had a leg stretch from Jayde to Candyfloss to try and submit her but ultimately failing. At the tail end of this match, Roux had locked in a Rack (Not of BIG T proportions, but still effective), that didn’t end up in a victory for her, as it would be Candyfloss who locked in an arm-bar to Roux to get the Submission victory in around 10 minutes.

Second qualifier in the New Breed Tournament with Omari looking to get back to the glory days of 2017 in Fight Club Pro taking on local lad Alec Michaels. Lasting around 10 minutes, Michaels was giving a good showing proving more than Omari’s Equal, that was until a mysterious blond haired chap came from the outside to distract Michaels enough to eventually be hit with The BIG O by Omari who got the three count to advance in the tournament. One minor gripe we never found out the name of the mystery blond haired man.

The 9th and final match of the evening now with the clock just coming past 6pm, with the Final of the Breed Pro Wrestling Tournament with a 4-way Elimination match between TK Cooper vs Scotty Davis vs Lucky Kid (No Magic Majid in his corner this time, he was at the bar) vs Chris Ridgeway. A wild opening to this match with early eliminations for two of the Favourites with Scotty Davis going first and then swiftly being followed by Ridgeway (my betting slip was duly thrown after this elimination, shows what I know). This left TK Cooper and Lucky Kid to fight it out for the big prize, with the crowd fully behind Lucky Kid who was getting over very well with the crowd in attendance.

With this support, we thought that this would spur Lucky Kid on to victory and it looked like that until Spike Trivet got involved, only for Chuck Mambo to come out for what was to make the save for Lucky, but he instead turned on Lucky and sided with his Escaping the Midcard buddies, as TK soon finished off Lucky with Eddie Sideburns in position to count the three. So your first ever Breed Pro Wrestling Champion is none other than TK Cooper – BOOOOO!!!!

There we have it then, as we end Breed’s first ever show and in closing about the show I would say it was a success with a show full of solid matches, but nothing spectacular but still a fun 3 hour show that was well worth my £14. I do feel that things like time-keeping and overall organisation of the show was excellent (something that Mitch can be proud of). Venue wise it was serviceable, despite the cold, we shall see how their second show holds up in Sheffield City Hall on the 17thMarch (a totally different venue)

With the show done, it was time to make our merry way home but not before having a natter with Mitch’s dad again and also Matthew Taylor-Richards who is a lovely fella. Leaving the venue, we still had time for a couple of pints in a nearby pub, before we went for our train at 9:11pm (arriving back home for 11:40pm – weary!).

I hope as ever, you have enjoyed reading this review of Breed Pro Wrestling and if you are interested go and check them out for their second show on the 17th March and also their 3rd show on April 7th (Mania Night) – you won’t be disappointed. Like, Share and Retweet this review and I will see you next time with a review of PCW in Leeds on the 15th February, so until then – BYE!!

@oggypart3

#Grapsandclaps

[spicynbachili1]

Cozy up to the dead with these recent Switch releases

Loss of life, dismemberment, and demons, all simply in time for Halloween

In keeping with Irish folklore, Samhain is the day on the calendar when doorways between the land of the residing and the land of the useless and different areas of the supernatural open at their widest. Over time, the day morphed into what we now name Halloween, a vacation the place kids’s minds are stuffed with ideas of monsters whereas they stuff their mouths with sweet that may ultimately kill their our bodies. Additionally it is the night time when the most individuals on Earth might be discovered sporting slutty Luigi. The Yin and Yang, life and demise relationship between teeth-rotting, blood sugar-spiking sweet, and the attractive Mario Bros. are simply a part of what makes this such a particular time of yr. 

For those who’re a Change proprietor and also you wish to rejoice the day in a extra off-beat means, these 5 new-ish video games (most of that are additionally on PC) could do the “trick.” Not like most typical horror tales, these titles do not at all times work laborious to make you concern demise. As a substitute, they permit the participant to interact in contemplative, generally empowering relationships with the tip of their lives, making them an ideal match for Crom Cruach’s large occasion. 

Pinstripe 

I used to be not anticipating a lot out of this sport, nevertheless it actually blew me away with its writing and voice performing. It is not clear that any of the characters in Pinstripe are alive for any of our time with them, however they actually come to life emotionally, particularly Bo, your three-year-old daughter who faces a destiny worse than demise for many of your journey. The sport is about attempting to avoid wasting her from Pinstripe, a shadowy, devilish man who desires her for himself. It is uncomfortable stuff, however by no means exploitative. It is spectacular how shut the narrative involves straight addressing critical subjects like alcoholism and youngster abuse whereas by no means veering into territory that I would conceal from a ten-year-old. 

The sport’s puzzles are extra hit and miss. They vary from quick re-appropriations of Flappy Chook to hidden object hunts straight out of Highlights journal, although they’re all tailor match for the narrative. There are additionally some limited-scope motion sequences, often involving taking pictures one thing with a slingshot or leaping on a canine with a giant butt. All of them vary from fine-to-fun, nevertheless it’s the Burton-esque artwork route, unsettling use of By The Mild Of The Silvery Moon, and underlying themes of paternal guilt and habit that actually make this one work. It is a rated-T 2D Silent Hill: Shattered Reminiscences for the fashionable period. 

The Lacking: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Reminiscences 

As Chris stated in his assessment, there may be much more to The Lacking than you would possibly glean from simply the trailers. I’ve heard some folks say that the sport seems like one other dread-filled 2D platformer within the type of Limbo or Inside, the place grisly shock-value deaths lie round each nook, besides that this time it is a beautiful younger lady who will get repeatedly massacred. That is not solely unfaithful, however one of many issues that makes The Lacking particular is the best way it turns participant motivations on their head, generally actually. As a substitute of desirous to run away from having your cranium caved in or your legs lower off, it’s essential to run into these brutal assaults in an effort to progress, and it hurts each time. 

Hurting herself is the one means for J.J. to avoid wasting somebody very near her. In that means, The Lacking forces the participant to alternate between the roles of protector, victimizer, and sufferer on a relentless cycle, and that is all simply in relation to controlling the sport’s protagonist. It is extraordinarily intense, which makes me all of the extra grateful that the carnage is damaged up by the occasional bursts of surreal comedy and in-game textual content messages that really feel very actual. Regardless of some points with wonky physics and uneven issue curves, The Lacking is a must-play sport for followers of physique horror, survivor tales, and anybody who is aware of what it is wish to be hated only for being your self.

Black Chook 

This new Fantasy Zone-meets-Steel Slug shmup from the thoughts of Yoshiro Kimura (Dandy Dungeon, Rule of Rose, No Extra Heroes, Little King’s Story) can also be a few lady who dies and comes again time and again, however not like in The Lacking, the violence right here is never masochistic. As a substitute of coming again damaged and bloody, the star of Black Chook reanimates as a ghostly raven’s head who wreaks havoc on every part she sees. The message can also be slightly tougher to parse. Do all of the soldier-peasants appear like Mario as a result of the sport is about struggling indie devs who wish to let free on the senseless mascot-worshiping client tradition that usually leaves them ignored? Would the world be higher off if the spoiled innocence of nature rose up in a rage and destroyed mankind and all its environment-poisoning expertise? Which has extra of a proper to exist, the vengeance of a useless youngster that left the world in wreck, or the lives of apathetic bystanders who did nothing however watch as that very same youngster died within the streets?

I haven’t got solutions to these questions, however I do know that Black Chook makes it very enjoyable to explode issues, and its soundtrack is already one among my favourite sport scores ever. It is a gibberish opera sung by passionate Muppets the likes of which we have not heard since LocoRoco, and higher but, many enemy spawn occasions are tied to the choral beats. This inherently enjoyable fusion of sound and motion mixed with non-linear development and a copiously deep combo system makes replaying the eight ranges (4 in the primary sport, 4 in new sport plus) a pleasure to blast via each time. Although the sport is technically fairly quick, it has tons of secrets and techniques, unlockables, and random occasions to assist each apocalyptic spherical of destruction really feel contemporary.

Friday The 13th: Killer Puzzle 

Sure, consider it or not, this makes the fourth sport to launch on Change this month the place you play as some type of a useless individual. This time although, the rotten face you tackle will in all probability look extra acquainted, even though it is hidden behind an cute hockey masks. Like within the movies from which he hails, Jason Voorhees is out for revenge once more, however this time his homicide spree takes place in a collection of human jigsaw-like puzzles. As a substitute of film items round a board, you progress Jason, who’s mainly the Superman of the slasher world; impossibly robust, capable of transfer into your private house right away, and susceptible to only a few obstacles. On this case, his types of kryptonite embrace lakes, bear traps, and even getting arrested by the cops. Jason could also be a mass assassin, however with regards to interacting with the police, he is downright well mannered. 

These issues not often gradual Jason down although. His fundamental drawback right here is, he cannot stroll diagonally, and he can solely cease shifting when he hits a wall or somebody to kill. That may make it laborious to walk up and decapitate a camper who’s hiding in a nook down by a bear entice subsequent to the lake. Whereas the primary 10 levels or so are slightly too straightforward, the following 100+ greater than make up for it with sensible design and satisfying options. The devs additionally labored all of the DLC content material from the Steam construct into the Change port with extra pure, in-game unlocks. Now new variations of Jason are accessed through progressing via varied modes and coming into secret codes. That features the return of the NES’s inexperienced and purple Jason to Nintendo consoles, which is a trademark occasion for anybody who grew up with that individual iteration of our illustrious drowned boy.

Streets of Purple: DDD 

This can be the one sport on the record the place you play as a residing individual, however do not you are worried, it is nonetheless received loads of reanimated corpses to mess around with. In truth, there’s at the very least one boss that bears greater than a putting resemblance to the beforehand talked about Voorhees youngster, although this mama’s boy is extra of a parody and fewer of direct illustration. He is simply one of many many satirical tributes to horror movie icons. You could possibly virtually consider the sport as co-op horror Smash Bros., because it has equally easy inputs, however with a crossover of sport characters combined in with the lookalikes of The Demogorgon, Freddy, Colossus Titan, and the one who scares me most of all, none apart from Jim Sterling.

We additionally simply acquired phrase that the sport is about to get a complete lot greater. As you’ll be able to see within the trailer above, it is getting a free replace, tentatively set to go reside on Halloween. The patch features a good quantity of recent content material, together with new bosses, language choices, and the implementation of on-line leaderboards, all alongside a brief value drop.

I’ve helped advise the creator of Streets of Purple on varied points of the Change port for some time now, so any reward from me could come off as biased, however hey, I am not the one one who likes it. Whereas all of the video games on this record come extremely really helpful, that is the one one which’s constructed for 4 gamers, so in the event you’re planning on partying this vacation, placing this in your Change is the best way to go. 

Bonus Deal with

This artwork by James “Illmosis” Beaver, entitled Horror Combat 2, is on the market proper now and I am unable to suggest it sufficient. I purchased an 11×17 print of this piece final month, so I can attest to the print high quality and paper inventory, that are each high notch. In case you have time for one final Halloween ornament earlier than the 31st rolls round, do not be afraid to choose it up. 

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[opinesandnettles]

So You’re Thinking That Homeschooling is Starting to Look Pretty Appealing

You know, for completely non political reasons or anything like that. *cough*

*Apologies, this is an U.S.A. centric post. I don’t know too much about the laws of other countries regarding homeschooling.*

Well, hey, I was homeschooled for about 10 years, and have been homeschooling my kid for three, I’ve been all over the place and met many a homeschooled family, and I can maybe help you out with that. 

As a disclaimer: Homeschooling is not for everyone. Not everyone can or should do it, due to finances or temperament or the child’s needs, all kinds of reasons. But if you find yourself between a rock and a hard place, or just think you could do a better job than your local public school and can’t afford a decent private one, and you as a parent are home more often than not, then hey, maybe I can help you out. 

More after the cut.

1. Before you do anything, really think about whether or not you’re qualified enough. If you didn’t graduate high school at least then you might not be able to do the job adequately later on. And it is just that: A job. Treat it like one. Would you hire you to teach your kids with your education level and temperament? Do you have the time and resources necessary to do that job well? 

2. Why are you doing this? Is it to provide a better education than what a public school might provide? Religious or secular reasons (as might end up happening *cough*)? Are you in a bad area? Really dig deep and make sure it’s worth it, because this ain’t gonna be a cake walk hon.

3. If you can’t teach a certain subject for whatever reason, is there anywhere you can go to get your child adequate education for that subject? Are there online courses you can plug the child into? Local classes? Know any licensed teachers that could help you out? 

4. Your kids need to be able to see other kids a couple of times a week. What about team based activities? Do you have a YMCA or 4H or something nearby? Homeschool group or co-op? Do you attend a church or other religious services where they can play with other kids for a decent chunk of time? You can’t just throw them out at the park to play with random kids once in a while, they need friends.  (No, your other children don’t count.)

5. Alright, now look into your state’s homeschool laws. Some are more draconian than others. Some require you to have a bachelors degree or access to a teacher (Washington State). Some have overreaching district policies (Ohio). Some require testing every year or two years, some want you to keep attendance records, report cards, and leave no wiggle room for trying other kinds of education systems. Some don’t seem to care if you homeschool or not, just declare and do whatever you want. A cursory Google search should help you find out what you need to know about your state. See if it’s worth it and if you can do what’s required.

Alright, if you really think (or pray about it as the case may be), and you’ve decided that homeschooling is the best option for your kids, then great! Now comes the hard junk. 

1. You’re going to need school books. If you’re Christian then there are a ton to choose from in the U.S.A., but if you’re a bit more on the secular side, (or are Christian and want your kids to know about evolution anyway), you might have to do some digging. Read reviews, consult other families, really do your homework and try to find a curriculum that fits your kids needs. Some states have their fingers in this more than others. Most stuff you’ll have to order, but there are some practice books and other nifty things you can find at local bookstores. If you order something but your kid is struggling because they explain things poorly or in a way that the child doesn’t quite get, those practice and test prep books can really help you fill in some gaps. And in the internet age there’s a lot of worksheets and printables and youtube videos that you can use for free, so take advantage of that. Don’t forget online classes and classrooms! 

2. Keep a consistent schedule. We do school year around but take off one day out of the week for extra time off or for catch up, with the occasional couple of weeks out of the year for Christmas or a summer event. Some people do the five day thing and take the regular summer off. Some start early in the day, or late, whatever, just be consistent with your methods. 

3. If something isn’t working, be willing to fix it until it does. Listen to your child, help them if they’re frustrated. Be patient when they don’t get something or forget how to add fractions for the third time. Don’t punish them unless they’re being intentionally disruptive, and even then don’t yell at them. Sometimes things take time. If you can’t get them to understand something no matter how many different ways you approach it, seek outside help. 

4. Prep them for college or higher education in case they want to go. Teach them how to take tests. Even if you don’t think they’re necessary, if they want to go to college later they’ll need to know how to take tests. And write essays. Critical thinking, reading, all that. Don’t slouch. Prepare them for anything and let them decide what they want to do. That’s your job.

5. Know when to call it quits. Sometimes things happen. People get hurt, and people lose jobs or money and both parents have to pick up the slack. Sometimes a kid changes and needs a different environment than what you can provide. They might be fine homeschooling until ninth grade when they suddenly need something more like a public school environment. Do what’s best for them. 

Alright, that’s all I can think of for now. These are trying times in the U.S.A., especially for education, (not that they were all that great when looking at global statistics, but... again.) But if you want to try homeschooling out there are benefits, and if you can take advantage of them I encourage you to give it a try. It can be a cheaper alternative than private, it can be super rewarding to spend so much time with your kids and really see them grow and give them good one on one time, and it will cut down on some of the negative social downsides that public schools tend to have, like bullying and whatnot. Just please, research, research, research, and above all, do what’s best for your child, not for you.

[indi-flying-with-dragons]

(Get ready!) 1. Any scars? 4. Kissed anyone? 5. Coke or Pepsi? 6. Someone you hate? 7. Best friends? 8. Have you ever done alcohol or drugs? 9. What’s your dream job? 13. Height? 18. Obsession? 19. If you had one wish, what would it be? 21. Kiss or hug? 22. Nicknames people call you? 23. Favorite song? 24. Favorite band? 26. Best thing that has ever happened to you? 27. Something you would change about yourself? 30. Watch the movie or read the book? 32. Favorite show?

[Continued]

(Same anon continued!) 35. Do you wish you could ever start over? 36. Any bad habits? 37. Ever had a near death experience? 38. Someone you can tell anything to? 41. Someone you hate/dislike? 42. Are you okay?

WOW… you’re certainly a…. enthusiastic anon eh? e.o *mind boggled* Let me… let me reply to all these. As brief as possible. E^E….Geesh. 24 different questions. Damn… My apologies to everyone. This is gonna be a LONG POST. e.o

Btw THANKS FOR ASKING :D *GLOMPAGES* X3 *hug-SQUISH*

Long post below! O.e

1. Any scars?

Um, I have two on my head, right behind my ears at different heights from my two different cochlear implant surgeries to install the internal parts into my head so the external processors will work. When my hair is short it looks like someone purposefully buzzed a line through my hair there, lol, but it’s natural from the surgery when I was 7 and 11 years old respectively.

And since I heal very well, my scars are real hard to see. I still have a faint one on my thumb, at the base of the last joint to the front of it, and one along the left side of my middle finger (both fingers on my right hand) that is still rough and keeps peeling a lot even now, years after the event.

Those I got from a random-ass exploding lightbulb that I was screwing in, had MADE SURE the lamp was off both at the wall and at the lamp itself (though I didn’t unplug it because I didn’t think I needed to…), but nope I had screwed it in one too many times, saw a BRIGHT FLASH OF LIGHT, and then it exploded, glass everywhere, and somehow only got hit on my index finger, middle finger, and thumb. ONLY there! Even to this day my engineer mother is completely baffled as to how that happened.

4. Kissed anyone?

Yes. My first ever kiss[es] was with an enthusiastic sloppy and awkward boy during a yearly dance when I was in highschool (I was unschooling and going to the Voyagers Homeschooling Co-op and they hosted yearly dances). Five French kisses are not my idea of a good first kiss ever!

My second ever person to kiss was … well. *blush and funny deadpan with crossed arms* He knows who he is. Since apparently I keep totally forgetting it somehow until he mentions it in a teasing fashion and yes we did date for a short while there before breaking up and remaining friends.

My third and remainder of kisses are thoroughly claimed by my handsome, hot boyfriend. -w-

5. Coke or Pepsi?

Coke. ALL. THE. WAY.

Blame my awesome grandmother (R.I.P.) who had 4 pm be coca cola time every day. :D She got me on coke early. …NOT COCAINE! Yeesh. Dirty minds. She also introduced me to my love of dragons and she was awesomely supportive and adoring of my artwork. :3 Since she was hard of hearing from old age and I was born hard of hearing, we got along well with having the TV on a comfortable loudness (for us). x3

…Damn just thinking about coca cola makes me think of her. :,) I even drank a whole 1 liter glass bottle of coke we got at a Mexican food store nearby for her funeral fiesta since she wanted a party for a funeral, not a sad dirge. :3 https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ea/51/da/ea51da750fc136a655021c558b7c28c5.jpg Yes this one. XD I drank it all in under an hour in her honor and memory. I was so thirsty and so proud. XD I still have the empty bottle. x3

6. Someone you hate?

IDK… Hmm… I’m not one to really hate people. It’s such a strong emotion… I always thought of it as a “I want you to instantly die, right here and right now!” kind of emotion. So I don’t really hate people.

…I DO know of someone I would… honestly NOT be sad if she died. Considering she caused a hellava LOT of suffering and torment for my friend. I’d be sad because my friend would be sad, BUT I wouldn’t be sad because I actually missed her or regretted her death in any way.

7. Best friends?

Oh gosh. :3 Off the top of my head @destan-of-the-shadows and @faes-hiding-place :D my boyfriend counts too! Two RL friends I can meet with at times are more friends than “best” friends but I still count them as my friends because we’ve been friends since like 5th or 6th Grade in Middle School when we were all like 11 or 12 years old. :D I’m 22 now so see how long we’ve been friends. :D

8. Have you ever done alcohol or drugs?

NO drugs! The only thing that counts as alcohol is that couple sips of champagne at my cousin’s wedding when the servers mistakenly forgot to give us kids sparkling apple cider instead of champagne. Oops. XD We of course took great advantage of sipping as much as we could before they removed it. ;D It tasted HORRIBLE though. X_X What’s the appeal? IDK!

I drank some sips of other people’s drinks when I turned 21 but I absolutely HATE and CANNOT STAND the horribly bitter taste of alcohol (even in the sweetest mixed drinks it is strong and proud there when nobody else can taste it). Even if it’s burned off when used in a cheese fondue, that HORRIBLE bitterness remains. Bitter like the rotting corpse of a dying animal.

No thank you. I don’t ever want to drink again. X_X

9. What’s your dream job?

…. :,,,( I’ve not thought about this in ages… since I had to give up a lot of my “dream jobs” and “dream life” in order to make peace with the chronically ill life I have now. The grieving process was hard.

Goodbye my aspirations of being a geneticist, a psychologist, or even a therapist. Hello my life goals of being a professional artist and published author. :3

13. Height? 

5'10". 5 feet, 10 inches. -w- … I really wish I was taller than my dad though. *grumble* He’s 6 feet. At least I’m an inch taller than my MOM. -^-

18. Obsession? 

Oh dear. Which one? XD Take your pick. ;D I have: dragons, wings, flight, flying, cats/felines, biology, psychology, discussing the universe, astrology, culture, world-building, magic, art (as in drawing and coloring), writing, daydreaming, reading, listening to music, and cuddling with my boyfriend in a literal Netflix and chill. -w-

19. If you had one wish, what would it be?

…. *blinks and sighs* … It’d either be to be healthy again so I wouldn’t have this chronic illness (but would still keep my being deaf and hard of hearing because I LIKE THAT PART)… or to go back home, to my home world where my soul came from.

Yeah. XP

21. Kiss or hug? 

Hug. :3 Preferably cuddle. :D  

22. Nicknames people call you?

Indi-bindy-bo (You know who you are

23. Favorite song?

OH GEEZE. Hard to answer! XD … My favorite song of ALL time that I will ALWAYS love, have always loved, and might as well be my theme song for the sake of it? xD “Can’t Take Me (I’m Free!)” by Bryon Adams, from the Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron movie. xD

24. Favorite band?

My favorite singer is Michael Jackson. :3 He’s the only one I really know a lot about. All other bands and singers I just like some of their songs but know nothing about them as people, not even what they LOOK like a lot of times. -////- I prefer to respect their privacy. :)

26. Best thing that has ever happened to you?

Oh… Oh GOSH. IDK… XD … :3 Meeting my boyfriend, @destan-of-the-shadows and @faes-hiding-place :3

27. Something you would change about yourself?

See my wish above. -.- I’d LOVE to change that chronic illness of myself. … If I can’t then my persistent anxiety, or to somehow grow wings (like this third would be more likely than the other two? XD Hell, I can still ask! XD)

30. Watch the movie or read the book?

I’d rather read the book. :3 Unless the book is so horrible, that I wanna see why people think it’s so horrible, then I watch the movie because they usually try to tone things like that down. If the movie is horrible in many of the ways that I’ve heard criticism of the book itself… then I know never to touch that book. E^E 

32. Favorite show? 

Of all time? Avatar: The Last Airbender, Gargoyles, and Seconds from Disaster. >:D

Right now? XD Air Disasters. -w-

35. Do you wish you could ever start over?

Start what over? This life? Blegh. Don’t make me go through puberty TWICE!

… *looks at the side effects of taking testosterone HRT* Oh wait, I’m already doing that! -p-

… Make that don’t make me go through it a THIRD time. xD Even if that means I’d be able to be in a male body from day one, as opposed to having to be trans. XP

36. Any bad habits?

Which one do you wanna know? -x- Anxiety, hyper-focusing on a thing in my mind and then having the mind get stuck and not concentrate on anything else until I yank it off that… Staying quiet about things that affect me because I don’t want to hurt others or be a burden? Often opting to be quiet instead of confronting things that could make the relationship better in the long run? Being intensely private? Judging the strength of my relationships based on how much of my inner self I truly share? Doing subtle tests as I get to know someone to see which subject is “safe” to talk about and which I should just shut up about without them ever knowing? Over-thinking things a ton? Apparently my not needing to talk to others for a while is a weird-ass thing? … I can go on. -x-

Oh wait, were you asking about like little quirks like twirling hair or picking at the skin kinda bad habits? My apologies. -x-;;

37. Ever had a near death experience?

Yes. Waking up to being strangled by a spirit counts as that.

No, I’ve had an occasion of sleep paralysis before. I know what that feels like. You can’t move anything.

This was where I CAN move. I could move my hands and arms and everything else. It’s just something invisible and mostly intangible was strangling the life out my throat. Not from the inside choking, because I know what that feels like too. (My Life…) but from the outside suffocation and pressure and constriction on the outside of my neck.

Being strangled to near death in my spirit form by another spirit meant my physical body could feel that too, panicked the FUCK OUT at the feel of almost dying, and I literally felt my awareness fading away into a black nothingness with the faint but faltering heartbeats starting to skip and take longer and longer between each beat. Gasping and choking and then going still…

Thankfully helpful spirits got the negative one off and thoroughly destroyed it. They could heal my spirit form and with that healed, my body was able to come back too.

Never want to do that EVER. AGAIN. *shuddering* Those spirit attacks over the course of those three years were HELL on Earth. *holds self tight* 

38. Someone you can tell anything to?

My boyfriend. I’m still working on being more honest with my two close friends @destan-of-the-shadows and @faes-hiding-place but I’ve made a lot of progress over the years thankfully. :3

41. Someone you hate/dislike?

Try that woman I mentioned far above that I hate.

As for actively dislike? Trumperdink. Bigoted assholes. TRUSCUM, TERFS, SWERFS, rapists, rape-apologists, racists, ableist assholes, murderers, serial killers, homophobes, aphobes, transphobes, and all the rest of that shit. I really dislike and don’t trust the police force in this country. And the vast majority of politicians too.

My country is a dystopian nightmare the tyrannical capitalist US of A. x.= Save me.

42. Are you okay?

Umm…Today was a bit hellish. I survived though. *grins a bit too widely and eyetwtiches* My life is just…………. very…… VERY………. interesting. *twitch*

… I still stand by my previous opinion of laughing my ass off at the utter ridiculousness of how people try to portray those “superhero teenagers” as somehow balancing a “regular life” with “crime fighting on the side with a secret identity” and somehow NOT having the crime fighting life interfere with their regular life outside of those “special two episodes.”

Yeah the fuck right.

Obviously written by those who have NO idea what balancing two different lives are like. X_X In my case it’s nothing so noble as a superhero identity, but it’s the difference of my spirit life and physical life.

And above, in my near-death-experiences… you saw just ONE of the many manifestations of that clash. -x- …Not. ….Fun.

I high-key DO NOT RECOMMEND. -x-

Most days these days (since the spirit attacks ended WHOOT WHOOT!) I can have a normal calm life. Then SOMETHING comes up and I’m like “what the shit-fuck is my entire existence right now??”

Yeah. -x-

… Can I have a hug? ;;;n;;;

[murasaki-murasame]

Oh boy, that anniversary Dragalia Digest sure was something, huh? lol

Anyway I’ve got a lot of thoughts on it, and the surprising amount of announcements and surprises in it.

ok realistically like half of my brain power is still being taken up by ‘MEGAMAN!????’ but I have at least some actual thoughts on everything else we’re gonna get in the anniversary and in the near future, lol.

And on that note, I’m surprised at how much stuff they talked about that’ll be slowly coming out over the next six months. I expected this digest to just be about the anniversary. I’m honestly a little unsure exactly when certain things are planned to come out since they kinda just jump from ‘anniversary stuff’ to ‘stuff for later this year’ to ‘stuff that’ll happen by the 1.5-year anniversary’ really quickly. But at the very least we know what the 1.12 update has in it since that’s out now.

Anyway, I ended up being right about a fair amount of my predictions [if I remember them all right], with me mostly just being wrong about my more hopeful but unlikely guesses like a Switch port or an anime announcement. But I was right about a lot of the event stuff. Though it wasn’t really hard to predict stuff like Euden being our new gala unit :v

I’m honestly a bit surprised that they’re actually committing to having his alt be a summonable gacha unit and not a free welfare unit of some kind, or a direct promotion of the existing Euden. It feels kinda strange to have to try and pull for an alt of the protagonist, but oh well.

As i figured, he’s a light sword unit, and I probably should have expected that he’d end up being really strong. On paper he sounds like a melee version of Gala Cleo, so I guess we’ll see how that turns out. Light needs more strong DPS units, but it mostly just needs strong DPS units that are in the regular summoning pool. At least shadow has a whole bunch of strong non-limited units. And we’re even getting a shadow banner after the gala. So I hope that we can at least get some more good light DPS units from other banners soon. But really I just hope they don’t balance light-attuned content around the assumption that you have Gala Euden. In the short term lots of people will probably get him between the daily free tenfold summons and the platinum gala summon, but once this is all over he’ll be really hard to get.

They’re also casually dropping the fact that some units are gonna get unique coabilities, starting with him. I’m really curious to see if this will be exclusive to limited units, or if some random banner units down the track will also have unique coabilities.

It also looks like we’re getting a regular raid event starting in a few days, which is kinda surprising. I wasn’t expecting a raid event next since we’re getting an astral raid this weekend, but I think the raid event will start pretty much immediately after the next astral raid ends, so i guess it works out, lol. I was expecting more of an anniversary-themed event, if that makes sense, but the more i think about it, the more that might actually be the case. Sort of.

We still don’t really know much about the raid event since it hasn’t gotten a detailed announcement yet, but they decided to announce the post-gala summon banner which seems to be directly tied to this event, since they have the same name and all, and it puts into perspective what the event will probably be about.

Basically, the next banner has Alberius’ pacted dragon on it, a new unit who’s related to the Binding Ruins which were a big part of the history of the royal family, and the other new unit is tied to the royal family as well. The event also seems themed around time travel, since it’s called Fractured Futures, the raid boss is called Chronos, and there’s clockwork-themed event currency. The guy on the event banner image who’s probably gonna be our welfare unit for the event also looks a LOT like Euden.

So let’s just say that a whole bunch of signs seem to be pointing at the idea of time travel magic or whatever letting us get young Alberius as a welfare unit, along with his pacted dragon as a new dragon we can summon. Maybe the new banner units will be part of the raid event story itself, and it’ll be themed around Alberius’ history and the royal family in general, which would be a nice follow-up to chapter 10, and it’d feel important and plot-relevant enough to be a nice anniversary event.

Or i could be wrong and the event welfare unit could just be some random blond dude who just so happens to look like he’s related to Euden, but the lore behind the new banner units and the fact that the next banner just straight up has Alberius’ dragon on it makes me think I’m probably right. [He might also be some other ancestor of Euden’s who isn’t Alberius, but it’d be weird if we got some random ancestor of his while we get Alberius’ dragon in the next banner]

I was kinda sad that us getting Gala Euden might mean we wouldn’t get Alberius as a playable unit, but this would be a fun way for them to have their cake and eat it too, lol. Considering what happened in chapter 10 they were going to need some kinda time travel magic to let us use him anyway, and that might be exactly what they’re doing. So I can’t complain, since chapter 10 really made me want Alberius as a playable unit. I just hope that he’s not yet another light sword who’s gonna be immediately invalidated by Gala Euden. Especially since even before this we got Alfonse as a really good light sword event unit. They could at least make him a light blade unit or something to make him stand out. Or maybe they’ll throw us a curveball and he’ll be a shadow unit.

And on the topic of the shadow banner we’re gonna get for this event later, I think it’s gonna take me a while to figure out exactly how I feel about it. I’m happy about Chthonius since I don’t think shadow has a non-limited 5-star strength dragon yet, but the two new adventurers seem . . . weird. Between this and Lea, they’re really leaning hard into these Fjorm-esque units lately. It’s kinda weird. In general it’s just hard to tell how useful they’ll be.

Cassandra reminds me a bit of Veronica, but her skills don’t seem to be directly affected by her HP lowering, and her S1 is an HP buff and recovery skill, which is . . . an odd choice for someone who seems to be based around taking damage. I guess the plan is to have her keep alternating between getting to low health and then healing herself so she can trigger her strength buff again by taking more damage. Oh and there’s also the fact that she’s gonna be in competition with Gala Cleo, but at least she’s not limited.

And on the other hand, Delphi just has a bizarre-looking kit. His kit’s all about debuffing the enemy and inflicting poison on them, but he also has a permanent 60% strength debuff on himself for? some reason??? I can only assume that without it, his personal DPS would be way too high in addition to his poison and debuffs. But it’s certainly a new way to go about handicapping a unit to keep them from being overpowered. I just hope it doesn’t lead to him being too weak. But on the other hand, he’s cute, so really it’s impossible to say whether or not he’s a bad unit :)

It’s also worth noting that there might be a secret 4-star in the banner since those are never talked about in these preview posts, but the last couple of shadow banners have just been two 5-star adventurers and a 5-star dragon so I wouldn’t bet on it. But if we do get one, I think blade is the only weapon type we don’t have a shadow 4-star unit for, so that’d be nice to get.

I want to splurge on the gala since i’ve been specifically saving up for it, but between us getting free daily tenfolds, us getting a shorter second gala period where the earlier gala units are featured, AND us knowing about the post-gala banner like two weeks in advance, I’m not really sure if it’d be a good idea for me to go all in on it immediately. But I also want to get Gala Euden, so we’ll see.

I’m still kinda shocked that we’re getting ten whole days of tenfold summons. I know I predicted something like this, but I figured it’d be a week at most, and just cover the gala. But this is ten days long, and the last three days will apply for the post-gala banner. We’re also getting 5k wyrmite from the log-in bonus, 2.5k wyrmite in total from the co-op reward reset, and a tenfold voucher from the version update, so this is . . . a lot of free summons.

I probably should have expected that we’d get a platinum summon for the gala, but I didn’t expect it to also include Euden. I figured it’d only cover the first four gala units.

We’re also getting a 5-star dragon voucher from log-in bonuses, and there’s gonna be several types of 5-star vouchers in store packs.

And I guess that on the flip side, all that generosity lead to them choosing not to do a dream summon for the anniversary, which is kinda sad since I specifically had diamantum saved up for one. Oh well.

The 1.12 update itself seems a bit low-key, with a lot of the really interesting stuff coming in the next few months, but I’m really happy about the raid battle improvements. It’s nice to see what they’re actually taking feedback into consideration and improving how they work. Like how a while ago they made blazon summons way more convenient, and even more recently they got a lot cheaper to do. I’ve been one of the people wanting them to overhaul the EX Raid system to remove the randomness from it, so i’m glad we’re getting exactly the sort of system I wanted.

I wasn’t expecting the system where in each raid event from now on we’re apparently gonna be able to get a 5t3 weapon of our choosing after we beat an EX Raid. But they seem to have a lot of plans related to higher-tier endgame weapons, so I guess they’re just trying to make the 5t3 weapons more accessible. It seems to be limited to one weapon per raid event, so it’s not exactly gamebreaking, but it’d go a long way toward lessening the grind to get them.

Omega raids just seem like they’re an even stronger version of nightmare raids, which is cool and all, but I don’t even think i’ve managed to beat a nightmare raid yet so it’s not really relevant to me yet, lol

Though the new raid boost system seems designed to make the higher difficulty tiers more accessible. Assuming that they aren’t balanced around them and it all just evens out anyway.

We’re also getting a retweet campaign like last time. I think this one has even better rewards, though. The idea of one person getting literally a hundred goddamn sunlight stones is kinda insane. At that point you could probably find a whale in the community who’d give you some serious cash to buy your account, lol.

The mana and rupie rewards are whatever, but a max of 100k eldwater is kinda absurd. I guess I’ll be getting a lot of wyrmprints maxed out and characters to 50MC now.

And then there’s some random quality of life and UI type stuff. As everyone hoped, we’re gonna be able to change the home screen BGM now, which is nice. I’m surprised that they’re putting in Haikei Goodbye Sayonara as an option, though. I don’t think that’s ever been used in DL before, and it definitely wasn’t made just for the game.

The new hammer item thing seems like a nice quality of life addition to help out with late-game grinding, since it starts to take ages to finish buildings, and it’s never a good idea to spend wyrmite on them. It’ll be interesting to see how often you’ll end up getting them.

The honey tree seems to basically be a system where once every three days or so you can get a free stamina refill, so that’s pretty neat. It’ll make it even easier to hoard up honey, I guess. I feel like we need more ways to get getherwings, though.

And then there’s the stuff that we know isn’t gonna be in the anniversary but will be added over the next few months.

I wasn’t expecting them to revisit and flesh out the high dragon trials, but adding in higher difficulty tiers for them is a neat idea. I’m wary of the time attack leaderboard concept, though.

High dragon weapons seem to be their big plan to create a new weapon tier for even further endgame content. I wonder how that’ll turn out in the long run, and how hard they’ll be to obtain, considering how much you need to grind for 5t3s as it is.

I didn’t actually think this was a very likely guess, but I ended up being right about the idea of them expanding mana circles to give units more boosts across the board. Though it doesn’t seem to be tied to any sort of special transcendence/6-star/etc system like i thought. If it’s gated behind getting a unit to 50MC, I hope they really revamp the materials you need to get that far, since there’s some serious bottlenecks going on with champion testaments and eldwater. Even if every unit in the game gets more or less equally buffed by this, and some weaker units become a lot more viable, people would still just choose to prioritize their stronger units if they have to be very selective in how they spend their resources.

Either way, I hope it’s more than just a set of flat stat buffs. I hope they give units new skills and abilities, or at least boost their existing ones.

As I expected, we’re getting a new tier of endgame bosses beyond high dragon trials, though we probably aren’t gonna get our first one until chapter 11 drops. I was almost certain it was gonna be themed around Euden’s siblings and their dragons, after how chapter 10 ended, but I think I prefer the direction they seem to be going with it instead. The fact that they’re all humanoid bosses who explicitly aren’t dragons, and are a complete mystery in general, is a lot more interesting to me. I have a feeling that, like how you can obtain the high dragons as units by farming them, you might be able to earn these bosses as playable adventurers if you farm them enough, which would be really neat.

They also seem to have some really unique designs, and they all look completely different to each other. I actually wonder how they’d work as playable units, if we can play as them, since they have such unique and somewhat alien designs. I’m really curious about the boss that seems to be a set of twins. That could be a fun set-up for a boss fight in and of itself, but there’s a lot they could do with a playable adventurer who’s a set of twins that you both control. The one we got a proper design for makes me think it’s gonna tie into the sci-fi direction the story seems to be taking with chapter 11.

And on the note of chapter 11, we got confirmation that it’ll come out in December, and that we’ll get a new story chapter afterward every two months. It’s really nice to have a schedule planned out for that, but the wait for December will be rough. It also sounds like we’re getting short story segments or side-stories in the months between main story chapters. I wonder what they’ll do with that.

Then at the very end we got a rough list of stuff that’s probably all just scheduled for January-March 2020.

Most of it isn’t really noteworthy, but i’m really intrigued by the ‘play past events at any time’ bullet-point. I assume it’ll just be a way to read through old event stories, but the fact that they said ‘play past events’ rather than ‘read past event stories’ makes me wonder if they might actually include the raid bosses and stuff with them. I have no idea how that’d work, though, since not many people are going to be randomly doing co-op for old archived events. At the very least, if they use this as a way to let us obtain the welfare units from past events, that’d be great. It might let them stop doing event reruns altogether, if people can get all the rewards from them in some kind of event archive. But I kinda doubt it.

We’re also getting a What’s Ahead type of post on the first of October, which I assume will just go over some of the stuff in this digest in more detail. But maybe they’d also announce the Halloween event that we’ll inevitably get at the end of next month.

All in all I’m really happy with what this digest had to offer, even though I wish the next raid event would start immediately on the anniversary after this void endeavor week ends. It’s gonna be a bit boring if we get a few days where the only gameplay event going on is double drops.

[miketendo-64]

Developer: Cygames / Nintendo EPD

Publisher: Nintendo

Platform: iOS / Android

Review Version: Android Version 1.0.1

Category: Action & Role-Playing

Release Date: September 27, 2018 (JP & NA)

    The Dragalia may be Lost but you can find a hit RPG in the making, over in the App and Google Play stores!

When the reveal of Dragalia Lost first come about earlier this year, it was at the time, a bit random. Not only was we revelling in the reveal of a new Nintendo collaboration as far as their mobile games go, but it would be a mobile game concerning a new IP and release it this year.

Fast forward to the present. Although Dragalia Lost did not see a release in the likes of Australia, New Zealand, Canada or even Europe, the Cygames developed title did get to have the United States added as a day one launch title and it’s a good thing it did because Dragalia Lost is actually a pretty impressive RPG.

It’s nowhere near as impressive as the likes of Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna – The Golden Country, which is just godly, but Dragalia Lost, even with the gacha system at play, is an impressive game that feels too good for mobile devices.

I know the same can be said for a few RPG mobile games, but having played it as much as I have, it does actually feel like a game that would have been better off on the Nintendo 3DS or even the Nintendo Switch. It would naturally need bigger levels and more content to feel right at home on either platform as a “true game,” but Dragalia Lost is a gem that does have a great way of demonstrating what a gacha RPG should be like.

Still, that’s enough praise for the meantime, after all, we’ve to get into all the nitty gritty details, so let’s correct that shall we? First and foremost, Dragalia Lost is not just another Japanese action role-playing game, it’s a JRPG that comes to us from Cygames, a developer who is no stranger to making mobile games and monetizing them in such a way that everyone can benefit.

Only, it’s not just Cygames who are involved as Nintendo are also getting their hands dirty with it and the love child the two companies have created is a delight that you can choose to play on your own, or on the go. But as far as co-op goes, we’ll cover that later, first up is the story.

In typical fantasy-setting JRPG fashion, Dragalia Lost is an anime-like game, which in its current state, takes place in or around the Kingdom of Alberia. As for its story and main protagonist, both revolve around a young prince by the name of Euden, seventh in the line to the throne of Alberia. He’s also the twin brother to Zethia.

Both he and his sister are born from a royal family that possesses an ability most do not and that ability forming pacts with dragons, which in turn allows them to transform into the dragons they’ve formed a pact with, temporarily.

Only, unlike their older siblings and father, at the beginning of the game, neither Euden or Zethia have formed a pact with a dragon, since Euden has deliberately avoided doing so and Zethia actually walks a different path altogether from her family.

Now, I could go into detail as to why that is, but Dragalia Lost is a new game that is currently denied to most of the world, so I’m actually avoiding spoilers as if they were the bubonic plague. However, what I can elaborate on, is the fact that in typical RPG fashion, what was meant to be a simple task, ends up being anything but and poor Euden ends up finding his whole life getting turned upside down.

In the first 6 chapters of the game, he’ll come face to an ancient evil that the world (Grastaea) has been threatened by before, make new friends who will join him in arms and embrace a path he wished never to walk and enter into pacts with more than just one Dragon.

As for the title and its relevance to the game, Dragalia is the word used to describe the trust between humans and the dragons they’ve formed a pact with. A Dragalia that was then lost and Euden is determined to see restored, along with peace for all.

Were Dragalia Lost an RPG on any other platform, the full story and experience would be available to you from the get-go, but it’s not. In the game’s current state, its main campaign only features 6 playable chapters, the last of which comes with a yet cliff-hanger ending that seems to scream “End of Part One.”

This ending is then followed by a notification that tells the player that the story will continue when the game’s next update rolls outs. (Yay!) It is something of a shame that players can reach the end within 10 hours of playing, but there is more to Dragalia Lost than just a main campaign made up of 6 chapters, which in turn are made up of areas that have their own playable levels and story segments, there are side quests in the form of missions in the Events tab.

For the most part, they play out a lot like the main campaign quests, except these are quests you can just play over and over, in a bid to grind gold, upgrade materials and elemental upgrade materials.

As for how to play, the quests are pretty straight-forward. Players must navigate a given area, using their finger on the screen and sliding it in the direction they wish to move. Upon seeing an enemy they wish to hit, they must tap repeatedly and when available, press the highlighted skill icon or even the highlighted dragon icon, to perform a special attack or turn into a dragon and deal devastating damage.

If you go with the latter, the transformation will not last forever, as it is a temporary act, which can be shortened if enemies attack the player, since getting hit shortens the duration, but it can be increased by improving your bond with your partnered dragon when out of battle. (More on this later.)

Most levels consist of two areas, the first which you must explore and contains things like environmental hazards, enemies, crates and that can drop a health-restoring item that acts immediately and chests that drop useful items and weapons. As for the second area, they’re where you can expect to engage a big bad boss in battle, who may or may not be alone.

By completing a level, players can earn EXP for their characters and themselves, as well as keep the items they discovered. If they fail it, they can opt to use Diamantium (a type of currency players will need to buy with real-world money,) or Wyrmite (a type of currency that players can earn,) to continue.

Personally, on the occasions I did die on a level, I never did bother with paying to continue, as I just took my failure to mean I should forget about trying to do a level on my own, and do it via co-op instead.

How the two modes differ is fairly minimal and co-op is very beneficial. You see, when playing on your own, players will need to make a team of up to 4 Adventurers, equip them with the best weapons, dragons and Wyrmprints they have (a card like item that each have their own special effects.) You’ll also need to try and make sure their levels are similar, but not with co-op.

With co-op mode, players only ever need to focus on having one high powered character and dragon, as they can then join up or create a room of their own and be paired with a team full of high-powered. Sometimes you can create a room and everyone is ready to go within seconds, but other times, it can be a couple of minutes before everyone is ready to set off.

I’d say the waiting can be exhausting at times, or at least a little long-winded, but playing with others is the best way to play Dragalia Lost and get all of the good stuff. You can also communicate with one another by using stickers and for every new player you play with, you can get another 50 Wyrmite for free.

Another co-op benefit, which is a rather big one, is the fact it offers a way to keep on playing when you run out of stamina. Being a mobile game, a stamina is expected, but with Getherwings, players can use these free items to join rooms created by other players and play with them, while you wait for your stamina to fill (6 minutes to recover one stamina point.) or level up.

When levelling up, not only will your stamina recover, but your Getherwings will be restored as well. Essentially, co-op is a great means of playing Dragalia Lost for free, for hours on end. You will not have to worry about investing a cent into the game, but you might want to have your charger handy as Dragalia Lost is a battery killer.

It is also a mobile data eater as it has constant downloads all throughout unless you decide to do a batch download as soon as you can and just download everything (all the levels, event quests, Adventurer Stories and the rest.)

Sure, downloading everything will have the game take up a whopping 2.51 GB on your mobile device, but one additional download is better than having to download each and every level when you go to play them.

Anyhow, even if you invest a hundred hours fighting, the battles are only half the war as Dragalia Lost has lots of other features and facilities for players to take advantage of and strengthen their units. You do however need to make sure you continue playing the main campaign long enough to unlock the likes of an auto play mode that will have an AI control your team of 4, unlock Castle, and a few other things, such as a hard mode.

Ultimately, it depends on how the player chooses to play Dragalia Lost, in which they’ll gain access to everything, but once you have, with the Upgrade menu, you will be able to upgrade Adventurers, Wyrmprints, weapons and dragons, as well as craft new weapons that are stronger.

For things like weapons, dragons and Wrymprints, in the event you don’t have any upgrade materials, you can always sacrifice weapons, dragons and Wrymprints you don’t need. You’ll also be able to take advantage of Mana Circle and spend both items and Mana to unlock nodes that will allow your characters to learn new abilities, improve their stats and buy Adventurer Stories.

The latter is a story-like segment that gives players an insight into the characters they have been fortunate enough to acquire. You’ll find this feature over in Castle. In Castle, players can also visit the dragons they have bonded with and give them gifts. There are gifts you can earn by buying them with gold, which can be earned just by playing and then there are those you can earn for free.

In return, the dragons will also give you some great gifts, and as your bond grows, you’ll be able to hear their Dragon Stories. Then there is also a build mode with Castle Grounds, where players can place facilities and level them up. Some facilities will earn you gold, whereas others will boost attributes and grow Dragonfruit, which is an item that can be used to level up your dragons.

If after all that and you’re still looking to improve your team, you’ll have no choice but to combine multiple dragons and Wyrmprints, by “unbinding” them, as this will allow you to level them up further. Weapons can also by unbinded, but to strengthen your characters and add another star to their rating (5 is the max,) you will need to promote them, which requires Eldwater.

Eldwater can be earned just by playing, but it is a slog and it will be a long time before you get to promote anyone to 5* status. One way which can speed the process up however, is by summoning. Whether you’re using your real-world money or all the Wyrmite that you can earn, via completing missions, quests and daily accomplishments. By summoning, you can summon new characters, dragons and Wyrmprints.

As great as it is to get a new character, by getting someone you already have, you can get Eldwater instead and the higher star rating of the character, the more Eldwater you can get, thus speeding up how soon you can promote someone.

Honestly, I have lost count of how many times I have done a ten-fold summon already, but I have yet to pay anything and I have two great 5* dragons, one 5* character named Hawk and a couple Wyrmprints as well. I’ve also managed to get plenty of lesser starred characters and fill out my rosters quite a bit.

Not everyone has had a similar luck as myself, as some have had worse, but others have had better and their collections put mine to shame, but for a gacha game, so far I have not felt pressured to pay for anything, not even when in the game’s shop, where special bundles and items are available.

For me, that is Dragalia Lost is at its finest. Some have nothing but praise for its chosen graphical choice and killer soundtrack that is foot-tappingly infectious, but for me, the fact Dragalia Lost is a mobile game with plenty to do and what feels like minimal pressure on buying into it, makes it a winner in my book. If you chose not to summon at all though, you can earn adventurers and dragons, just by playing through the main campaign.

It also has more RPG-like gameplay going on and a similarity to Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido, what with the character designs, game menus and texts, which only makes it all the more enjoyable.

Naturally, Dragalia Lost is not without some issues as the home menu can soon get overcrowded and it is perhaps a little too “grindy” and can have the occasional performance issue, especially when playing co-op, but so far, it is certainly a game that should give Fire Emblem Heroes a run for its money, and at least perform half as well. After all, the two comic strips it have are cute, funny and like the rest of the free-to-play Dragalia Lost, don’t cost a single thing!

  Conclusion:

Cygames were already a fantastic developer in their own right, but with their knowledge, Nintendo’s talents and both parties joint expertise, Dragalia Lost is not just another run-of-the-mill JRPG, but a great one. Just because you can pay to get ahead, or just to get all the good stuff, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.

You can grind for hours on end, the means are there so you can do so without paying. Sure it gets repetitive going through it all, but what is an RPG without some grinding, especially when it’s for one of the best RPGs to grace mobile devices this year?

  THE VERDICT: 8/10

Recommended

  Should you wish to check out another of our reviews, you can do so by clicking here.

[Review] The Dragalia may be Lost but you can find a hit RPG in the making, over in the App and Google Play stores! Our full thoughts on @NintendoAmerica's & @Cygames_PR's #DragaliaLost are finally here. Developer: Cygames / Nintendo EPD Publisher: Nintendo Platform: iOS / Android Review Version: Android Version 1.0.1…

[sup-its-madds-blog]

Payday 2 Cheats Ps3

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[miamibeerscene]

Beercation Destination: San Diego

February 23, 2017

In San Diego, if you were to visit 10 breweries a day for a solid month, you still wouldn’t have seen them all, as surely five new would have opened up in that short time. Simply driving around the vast county, you’re just as likely to smell beer being brewed as you are to inhale the intoxicating scents of the Pacific Ocean.

A trip to this West Coast beer city and the sprawling county surrounding it can be hard to plan because there are so many options. As someone who visits multiple times a year, here are some tips to create the perfect San Diego beercation.

(MORE: Uinta Brewing Company Launches Beer Honoring the National Parks)

Start Planning Around a Marquis Event

Since San Diego’s weather is freakishly nice year round, it’s easy to plan a trip during the offseason. With SD Beer Week happening in early November, one could easily skip this entire post and show up with bag in hand, have a crazy fun week, and somehow mysteriously end up in Tijuana jail a few days later, complete with a new hop nugget tattoo on your lower back. The week is brimming with elaborate pairing dinners, tap takeovers, and a guild festival that, just like San Diego, is difficult to try everything.

If November doesn’t jive with your turkey, some other events to plan around include The Mission Valley Craft Beer & Food Festival (April), Modern Times Festival of Dankness (or Funk!) (August), and SD Rhythm & Brews (May). A personal favorite is the Brewbies fest which takes place in North San Diego at Bagby Brewing (February); the event that is adored by industry and reachable by train.

Chris Cramer, co-founder of Karl Strauss at their 28th anniversary. “Give me just a tiny bit of the Pappy barrel aged stout so there’s more for the guests.” (Credit: Greg Nagel)

Brewery anniversary parties are also great to plan a trip around. Stone Brewing’s anniversary, which falls in late February, is overflowing with rarities from within their cellar and guest breweries tend to bring their black tie beers to help celebrate.

(MORE: 9 Weird Brewery Names and the Stories Behind Them)

San Diego Beercation: Where to Stay

North Park is a great neighborhood all on its own, with 30th Street being the central hub of great beer bars, brunch spots and stellar breweries. The historic LaFayette Hotel is situated amongst all this, and is a great jumping off point with easy access to the downtown gaslamp district, beaches, the zoo and other brewery hotspots. The hotel was built in 1946, yet still maintains its poolside bungalow charm. Nothing is more relaxing than cracking a brewery-fresh crowler in a chaise lounge next to their Olympic-sized pool, only to have an impromptu poolside bottle share with traveling room-neighbors from abroad.

The LaFayette Hotel in San Diego. (Credit: Greg Nagel)

So, with your marquis event and a place to stay, what else are you going to do? Grab a free West Coaster Magazine (basically everywhere beer is poured and in your hotel) and get your fingers dirty with newsprint until something catches your eye. The beer map and directory is in the back, which is your guide to what is fresh and in season.

Starting your day in North Park is poised with possibility. Brunch at nearby Small Bar for $15 includes a full breakfast with a choice of beer (Pliny the Elder on draft, anyone?), a foot tall bloody mary, or even a local favorite michelada (beer bloody mary). Give your morning yawns a kick in the pants and put some money in their juke box, which is filled with all Bowie you can handle.

Bellies full, a stroll down 30th street is always filled with fun and photo ops. The juxtaposition of urban art, yoga mat-carrying locals and beer touristas makes for a sense of belonging. Stop in a store called ‘Simply Local’ to grab some seriously cool beer art by local artist Rudy aka “Craft Beerd.” and grab his $9 deck of San Diego Brewery playing cards to keep you busy while brewery hopping. While checking out, you must buy some local nuts made by North Park Nuttery. They’re created with locally-made beer, and shockingly taste like the beer they’re made of.

A couple doors down, Bottlecraft is the only bottle shop you need to stop in; be sure to stock up with treats to take home.

Whether or not you’re craving beer or coffee, Modern Times Flavordome has you covered. House-roasted coffee and 16 taps of beer, including Black House, their eye-opening coffee stout with house-roasted beans. Mike Hess Brewery and Fall Brewery make up my other must-visit breweries in the area, each with their own pint-worthy charm and incredible neighborhood vibes.

Within 3.5 miles of 30th street are four of the area’s best beer bars. For an epic trip, start at Blind Lady Alehouse, move to Tiger Tiger!, then Toronado San Diego, finishing with a quick #2 city bus ride to Hamilton’s Tavern in South Park. Lunch, and lots of water, is recommended at any of these places.

(MORE BEERCATIONS: Los Angeles | Charleston, South Carolina)

How to Get Around

In San Diego, it’s surprisingly easy to reach the best beer spots without driving yourself. I find a combination of bike rental, Uber, train and trolley are all fast, inexpensive and safe to reach most places. For all others, I reluctantly suggest a brewery tour. Although some might like the fast-paced big-bus tourist lifestyle, I prefer to mosey at my own pace and set things up in advance.

YouTuber Maxnosleeves on the HotShots Brewery Tour in San Diego. (Credit: Greg Nagel)

One service I highly recommend is the HotShots Brewery Tour group, which shuttles you around in a swank smaller-sized retired fire battalion wagon. Local beer, food and knowledge is dropped on their friendly experience, complete with phone chargers and plug-in stereo jack to jam out to your own tunes while stuck in traffic. Only drawback? No potty on board.

To Escondido, or Escondidon’t? Take the Hop Highway!

Some areas of San Diego are well out of the way, so much so that they have opened more convenient taprooms and restaurants within your travel bubble. Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens is a must for any first time San Diego beer traveler, even though their location near the airport at Liberty Station is also beautiful. The Escondido location is a place one can take their mom on Mother’s Day, a wedding party, or just a random day to chill at this destination brewery. Reservations for dining and tours is highly suggested. Protip: BYO ketchup.

Stone brewer Kris Ketcham is the real brite tank sample hero (Credit: Greg Nagel)

With fresh gargoyle in your belly, hop along highway 76 for some incredible pockets of beer that are destinations on their own. San Marcos is a short ways away and is home to Port Brewing/ The Lost Abbey, Rip Current Brewing, and Churchill’s Pub & Grille, three San Diego landmarks. Vista is just a little bit up the road along the 76 with a brewer’s guild of its own, including Iron Fist and Belching Beaver. Just before you hit the ocean, the hop highway drops you off in scenic Oceanside, which quickly becoming a brewery hotbed on its own. Locals love Urge Gastropub & Whiskey Bank, complete with adjoining Mason Ale Works for their incredible burgers. Nearby, Bagby Brewing, ran by Jeff Bagby, is probably one of the most decorated GABF winners in history at his tenure with Pizza Port. His attention to detail with lower-ABV beers is remarkable.

Speaking of Pizza Port, Carlsbad is home to most of their operation with a brewpub, a bottle shop, and their huge canning operation in Bressi Ranch, which is a short drive away from Legoland theme park if traveling with children.

(MORE: Coolship Fever in American Brewing)

The San Diego Beer Pioneers

For every craft beer pioneer brewery in San Diego, there are usually several must-visit places around it. Set your GPS to Stone, Alesmith, Coronado, Pizza Port, Karl Strauss, and even White Labs yeast bank. Once there, it’s easy to find a few spots you have never heard of via Yelp, Untappd, or even Google Maps’ “nearby feature” on the phone app.

Operation Beeramar

Miramar is more than just a Marine base surrounded by fast food and furniture stores; it’s home to one brewery that has its own street named after it: Alesmith Brewing Company. The big brewing operation has forged the highly regarded Speedway Stout, and the three-time GABF gold medal winningest Barleywine, Ol’ Numbskull. Adding to their big beer program is a unique barrel blending experience called Anvil and Stave, which is sort of like a beer speakeasy, allowing visitors to create unique tastes on each visit. For the baseball fan, be sure to check out their Tony Gwynn museum after a sip of the bright and hoppy .394 Pale Ale, which the ball player personally put his stamp of approval on.

Alesmith Anvil & Stave in Miramar, California. (Credit: Greg Nagel)

Alesmith’s original brewery is a short trip away, but now houses Mikkeller San Diego. Ex-Alesmith head brewer Bill Batton opted to stay with his storied brewhouse, making the transition to make the Copenhagen-based gypsy brewer’s beers. I find their freshness and vibe to be electric among San Diego’s finest, offering new takes on copycat classics.

Finishing the Beeramar trifecta, I like to visit something new while in the area. My last visit included Little Miss Brewing at only 20 days old. With a WWII bunker vibe and legit dart boards, the flight of bright and hoppy beers were the bomb, just like their logo.

Food & Nightlife During a San Diego Beercation

When beer touring, the need for food can become a necessity, but a little planning ahead can have you eating like the locals do, and hopefully squeeze in a couple fine-dining experiences into the trip. Touristy areas like Seaport Village and Old Town might be fun to shop, but the dining and beverage experience is somehow stuck in the 90’s. A couple miles from Old Town, get your burrito fix at Lucha Libre Gourmet Taco Shop. Fish tacos are also indigenous to the region and usually a safe bet on any local menu. Type “fish tacos” into Yelp, and don’t be shocked to see a few pages of 4-5 star results.

(MORE: Why You Should Drink Beer Fresh)

Impromptu stop at Burning Beard Brewing on the way to Alpine, great jukebox and beer. (Credit: Greg Nagel)

Little Italy offers several gastropub experiences with hip noun & verb type of names, but Craft & Commerce made me feel most at home. Their modern naturalist ambiance and surprisingly accessible menu is as tasty as it is Instagram-worthy. Plus, they have my favorite San Diego brewery on tap: Societe Brewing. If by chance you can’t make it out to their taproom, be sure to try their beer around town. You can thank me later.

As San Diego continues to solidify itself as one of the nation’s best beer spots, the thing that keeps me coming back is its ability to keep morphing into something better than it once was. It’s not just the quantity of breweries and bars that makes a place great, it’s the history, the landscape, and the passionate producers and local fans that consume beer that truly make for great beercation.

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