#I think I want to try playing it at a higher difficulty next time because of that

[doedipus]

it's january third and I think there's a pretty good chance that black mesa will be the best game I play all year. the original half life is already probably my fave single player shooter, and this cleans up and expands on basically all aspects of it in really natural and satisfying ways.

I'm gonna ramble for a while under the cut

there's a few minor issues I have with it, like the run and some of the gunplay feels slightly less snappy than the older versions do, and the first and third xen levels could probably have cut one or two segments each, and various issues or changes with the sound design I find frustrating, but basically everything else feels as good or better imo.

they did a really good job overall of adapting the objectives and vibe of most of the encounters while toning down like, especially janky platforming and generally making spaces feel more lived-in, especially the exteriors. lots of sparsely decorated and cramped arenas on the surface get expanded upon in a way that feels natural and obvious. and lots of setpieces and smaller vignettes that communicate shifts in the story get fleshed out a bit more or added straight up.

the improved environments also make the encounters with the marines, which were always my favorite parts of the original, more fluid. there's a lot more cover for gordon to use and for them to try and flank or flush him out from. this also ends up making the elite, super mobile version of the alien grunts more interesting when you encounter them on xen.

speaking of xen... idk if there's ever been as impressive a glow-up between iterations of a video game. in the original, the final areas were a confusing jumble of ugly textures that were often hard to parse or navigate. here, xen is downright gorgeous. the initial wilderness area feels lush and alive (if very long), the gonarch fight got upgraded from a simple arena encounter to a full stage's worth of smaller setpieces, and the factory segment does a good job of establishing the relationships between aliens and providing you with lots of tricky encounters. and the infinite energy weapon ammo in the later parts goes nuts.

and the jump module feels so fucking good! source engine air strafing is one of the best feeling movement quirks in gaming, and the xen areas really allow you to just mainline it. this alone made up for the changes to movement prior to getting it lol.

it's really just incredible. it's hard to overstate how influential this game and this series are to their genre and the medium as a whole, but half life one in particular was always kind of odd to go back to, because for all the ways its dated-ness works in its favor, it also severely holds it back in others. black mesa does an incredible job modernizing the boomer shooter formula while preserving and complementing the things that make the original great.

[curioussubjects]

After spending the whole weekend grumpy and ruminating about Burning Shores, I think I finally figured out what has me so bothered about Aloy and Seyka's relationship. I wasn't gonna post anything about it beyond the one salty post because nobody needs to hear me go on and on about what's essentially an "I don't wike it" complaint. But the more I thought about the more I started to realize that my problem with Burning Shores is tied to the one big problem I have with Horizon as a whole, which is that Guerilla really seems to struggle with balancing Aloy's position as the protagonist and letting companions shine as characters of their own who can go on quests with Aloy without being useless or getting in the way (or both! too often both!).

I care about the gameplay mechanics less than the writing because the gameplay stuff seems more like level design growing pains than anything else. And we have examples of it being done quite well to (Varl in the tutorial portion of Forbidden West) annoying (here's looking at you Cauldron in Frozen Wilds) or, well, useless as combat support (always, in my experience, with the exception of how it was handled in Zero Dawn's final battle). However, I wouldn't have as much an issue with this gameplay fumble if it wasn't for the impression that the narrative wants me to believe Seyka is somehow immune to it. Or more of an equal to Aloy in terms of ability and responsibility than anyone else, which is just not the case. Everyone plays third fiddle to Aloy because Horizon doesn't actually have a party system! There's nothing special about Aloy and Seyka taking turns with a ballista, or whatever. Seyka was still surplus during combat, or straight up in my way, just like everyone else. That said, I don't know if the experience is different in higher difficulties because I play strictly on story mode, so make of that what you will.

So the writing. It actually pains me a little bit to write this because I love Horizon's story so much (and this should tell y'all something because I detest what if AIs were people plots). I love the characters and I absolutely am bonkers for its worldbuilding. No other game has made me cry as much or be as angry (fuck you, Ted). Yet, sometimes the characters do fall a little flat when they interact with each other. Conversations between Aloy and NPCs often don't flow well from one topic to the next, and they can end abruptly too, in a way that goes beyond the Aloy's conversational skills. The pacing is a bit wonky, too, in how quickly bonds develop or transition. Not that this is always the case since there are some great characters moments, and I also think introducing the Base was a solid step in making everything feel more cozy and believable. I guess what I'm trying to say is that too often I feel I'm being presented relationship concepts, but not being given the time to let those relationships develop organically. Perhaps also a case of growing pains; it just sucks that a game so well put together narratively can struggle with something so central to its interests.

But anyway, this post is actually about Burning Shores and why the whole romance subplot with Seyka and Aloy was so...bland to me. The problem lies primarily with how Seyka was conceptualized as character-- or, well, how it comes off: she really seems to have been created to be Aloy's love interest first, and a character in her own right second. It's like Guerilla just asked themselves what would make a great love interest for Aloy and, though the answer was someone who can keep up with her, they ended up careening straight into Aloyx2 with a Seyka veneer, and not much else.

Seyka is a great hunter and warrior, she bucks tradition to stand for what's right, she's kind of an outcast now, she has sister issues! She got herself a focus she wasn't supposed to have and it made it really hard for her to fall in line with the Quen's social structure! They even rappel the same! But who IS Seyka outside of Aloy and wanting to be with Aloy? How IS she affected by so suddenly stepping outside of her social role? She seemed to have been quite comfortable in it before, so how much is she struggling, really? How is her experience different from Aloy's since Seyka wasn't actually ever an outcast (and I mean the Admiral was in her corner the whole time). Did she have other ties to the tribe beyond her sister?

I don't know, guys, for a character that was meant to be so central to Burning Shores, I came out of the game knowing precious little about her. And as a result, there's a complete lack of tension between her and Aloy, and it'd be so easy for it not to be the case! Even their banter is more like stock competitiveness than anything interesting, which was a missed opportunity because there was an alternative to that was just begging to be leaned into more: Aloy didn't have to be the serious one for once! Their banter as the player explores Pangea Park was such a fun variation of usual commentary. Plus, Aloy's "miss me?" line when she comes back from exploring on her own was super cute. But to make their relationship compelling, Seyka would've needed to be her own person first, rather than a collection of Things She Has In Common With Aloy.

To make matters worse, what the narrative tells me is special about Seyka and Aloy's relationship isn't so special after all when it's echoed across Aloy's relationships with several other characters. How many times to we see characters be more than capable to hold their own in a fight alongside Aloy? How many characters are also shown to be smart enough to keep up with her? And how many characters are trying SO HARD to share Aloy's burden with her? Or who could share common ground with some of the things Aloy struggles with? And all the while, these characters are all very distinct not only from each other, but from Aloy herself and their dynamic with her. If Seyka is more successful than they are, well, why is she? And why aren't they? Because the plot demands it isn't really enough of a reason when you're shooting for character-driven storytelling.

Of course, it just adds insult to injury that the whole relationship develops in the span of what a month? At most? So that scenes like Aloy comforting Seyka halfway through the DLC don't seem like's it's been earned. It might have been a better bet to have swapped Seyka and Alva's introductions to the story. It's worth noting, too, that I only care so much because I'm not convinced Seyka is just a summer fling, so she really did deserve more than a speedrun of finding love during summer camp.

On a much much smaller note: I do feel a certain way about how other potential love interests kind got exited pursued by bear during Forbidden West too with Telanah (bisexual people exist, do not come to me talking about comphet) and Varl getting love interests of their own, and Nil becoming even more of a side character lolsobs Nil HZD you will always be famous to me.

I very much hope H3 does more for Seyka because as it is I'm so not invested it's not even funny. I also live in fear that the line from the Pangea movie about coming back because the love interest is home is gonna feature in some way in their reunion and it's Not Gonna Be Convincing. Incidentally, let nobody tell you writing romance is easy.

Secret good Seyloy that exists in my head save me, etc.

And, frankly, I know people like to rebuke some criticism of Horizon with "this isn't a BioWare game," but Guerilla could do a lot worse than taking point from Dragon Age and Mass Effect in how they handle companions.

[lesvegas]

Hii you do not have to respond to this if you don't want to, but do you have a good way of explaining how to play caravan? I have looked it up but still do not get it lol.. okay thank you!!

I've tried writing a big guide before but honestly the simplest way is this:

You're playing blackjack (if you don't know how to play blackjack, learn that first. if you can wrap your head around blackjack, caravan will be much simpler) with yourself 3 times. Each 'caravan' is just a different hand. But instead of the goal being to reach 21 without going over, you wanna reach 26 without going over (technically, anywhere between 21-26 is a winning hand). The simplest way to do this is with a deck of;

10s, 6s, Kings (put a King on a 10 to double the value to 20) (20+6=26)

7s, 8s, 9s (7+8+9=24)

These are the only cards you really need; numbers that easily add up to a number between 21 and 26, Kings to easily double the value of a card, and Jacks (all a Jack does is remove the card you put it on. So if your hand goes over 26, you could put a Jack on one of your cards to bring the hand back down instead of discarding the lot).

Your opponent is also trying to get 3 blackjacks caravans. You can mess with them using Kings (to make their hand go over 26) and Jacks (to discard their cards), but they can also mess with you. You win when you get 3 caravans first. There's no real rules to deck building, so stack your deck with the cards I've mentioned and you should be fine against most NPCs.

A few other notes:

I think one of the harder things to grasp besides the poorly-written rules is the controls of the game itself. It's a lot clunkier than other in-game gambling games. Take your time getting the feel of it, and make sure you learn the difference between putting a card ON another card (like a King on a 10) and simply placing the next card in the hand (like a 10 on a 6).

The deck-building is also super clunky but take your time with this, too. A good deck is the only way to win. Cards face-up on the TOP row are in your deck, cards face-up on the BOTTOM row are NOT in your deck.

You can only stack cards in numerical order one way or the other. So if you place a 7 down, then an 8 on top of it, the next card has to be higher than an 8. Or if it was the other way around, the next card would have to be lower than a 7. This can be circumvented by having many cards of the same suit; same suits can go higher or lower. (Queens can also be used to reverse the order? I think? But I've never used them because who cares I'm trying to win as fast as possible)

In the first few turns, you can discard unnecessary cards from your hand (not hands, your main hand with cards yet unplayed) without wasting a turn. I wouldn't recommend discarding later unless you really have a dogshit hand.

Lacey at the Mojave Outpost is one of the easiest NPCs to play and practice against. Ambassador Crocker and No-Bark Noonan are the hardest but hold 2000 caps. I'd say most merchants who play have reasonable difficulty *and* if you buy a bunch of stuff you can win your caps back if you're good. Keith (in Aerotech Suite 200) only bets 0 (literally none) caps if you want a really low-stakes game. Johnson Nash is a fucking BITCH because he uses a ton of face cards against you.

If you play modded fnv on pc, some recommendations:

Easy Caravan - Alters No-Bark Noonan’s deck to be impossible to lose against.

Caravan Overhaul Compilation - Features Better Caravan Limit, More Caravan Players and other smaller Caravan mods.

The Caravan Tournament - A quest mod featuring a Caravan card game tournament.

Legate Caravan Showdown - Allows you to duel Legate Lanius in a game of Caravan rather than combat.

Hope this helps <3

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2024-11-25

Getting Colder

Listening: I have been listening to a lot of Perennial for some reason.

Extremely yelling music. I like it when a musician sounds like they're on the verge of breaking out in tears which happens sometimes with Perennial.

Reading: Catching up on my enormous RSS backlog, which includes a very interesting aggregated feed run by Blackle Mori, Sortition. This is a website where, if you produce an RSS feed somewhere, you can add it, and at random your recent posts will be put into One Big Feed that anyone can subscribe to. It's a nice way to get a broad mix of people Doing Real Blogging On The Web into your feedreader.

I know a lot of the people in here from other places, fediverse, tumblr, twitter, IRC, even a few Weaguers, and it's a nice vertical slice of a particular corner of the blogosphere. Lots of furries.

Watching: Watched What We Do In The Shadows for the first time. Pointing at the screen going "I know that gif!"

It's a great comedy and it strikes me that comedy movies do seem to have quietly died, maybe because they now put a little comedy in all the mainstream movies? Unclear.

Playing: World of Goo 2 which I continue to do a little at a time. It's a really cute game. It feels floppier than I remember, but that might just be because it launches in at a much higher base difficulty than the original game, I think? It certainly feels that way, the efficient solutions feel much more marginal here, and they're challenging you with much taller, much more awkward structures much earlier in the game.

Also some Forza 5 which is because the Track Day event is on and I wanted some of the porsches. This week's Trial is ruinous, because it's a bunch of really technical twisty circuits with the "Super GT" class of vehicles, which are all big long high speed rear-wheel drive coupes, and if you try to mod your way out of this you tend to drop your top speed too much without gaining enough handling to make up for it. It doesn't help that with less-skilled team drivers they're very likely to cause terrible pileups in corners.

Making: Spent a while printing and pricing out upgrades for my printer and came to the conclusion that a much better refurb printer would cost less, and also that because of the absurd deal I got on my printer literally just the motors are worth more than upgrading it.

I am gradually getting Pissed Off at my big PC speakers which are really annoying and boomy and too loud and I fell down the rabbit hole of the Speaker Builder types and it's unfortunately exactly my shit. I love obsessing over frequency dynamics. There are some really weird little speaker drivers out there in the world and 3D printing allows you to fabricate incredibly complicated enclosures for them, so I am doing the legwork of figuring out how to model some of these.

Tools and Equipment: OpenSUSE AutoYasT is a system for automatically setting up and even changing the configuration of existing OpenSUSE and SLE systems. I'm doing a bunch of orchestration stuff at work and I needed a way to quickly set up a bunch of servers without doing it manually, and this is a handy way to approach it. You can even execute ERB templating rules within the rules file to do specific-to-device config.

You can deliver the instructions in a lot of ways, but I just patched them into the install CD with mksusecd. I'll talk about Distrobox next week.

[nikatyler]

Zeph 1.0

oh?

(x)

I love this little shit

(x)

I accidentally threw a bomb at Gale...the one time I take him out with the party and I murder him right away

I'm sorry Gale I love you actually I really do 💀💀

"I threw" no actually it was my boyfriend, I'm innocent 😇 not like I'm controlling him or anything 😇

(x)

magic delulu besties, yay!

(x)

SHUT UP IS HE PROPOSING WHAT I THINK HE'S PROPOSING

I mean...

dsflakjasdklhgfjghadkfl

the giggle i just let out was not human

Oh lord

OH

So that's the bear scene I'm hearing so much about

Well that was. Something

(x)

welp what a night for Zeph because guess what they're bloodless too, good for them

(x)

sounds about right

(x)

Oh. Didn't have this combat the first time around here. Yay. I'm stressed :D

Yay family, what a lovely bunch they are :D

For real though I thought they would kidnap him, I was so worried I'd screw this combat 😂 I just wanna mess around the city before I get to the bigger quests (and also, yes, the battle with a certain evil vampire scares me, I didn't do well there before my big reload 💀)

(x)

oh god here we go again, should i do it for the achievement

this might be the worst thing i have ever done but let's go i guess. zeph i don't know how you're going to face your boyfriend tomorrow but that's a problem for future you 💀

pause i'm gonna go get dinner 💀💀

JFJFKFKFKDKSKKFNFJF WHATHEFUCK

not gonna lie i expected more people have done it 💀

teehee anywayyyy moving on from that back to this

(x)

i made four new besties

(x)

such a dramatic moment and all I can think about is that old "what are those?!" vine

(x)

who gave this game the right to hurt me so much 🥹

(x)

alright i took a break but now i think it's time to try and face cazabitch again. that combat was not going well for me at all before my big big reload but i think i learned a thing or two 💀

(x)

a good luck kiss before we go get absolutely fucked up :D yay :D

(x)

I'm stalling so bad lmao I don't wanna do this. If it wasn't for me getting stupid attached I would've been done by now for sure. 💀

What if I went to play Minecraft now. hole works need to continue you know

(x)

Fucking hell this quest is actually giving me so much anxiety I don't want him to get hurt but I'm hurting just knowing we're near

(x)

place your bets how many times i'm gonna have to reload

well first off i'm taking a break to do some duolingo because i'm not losing my 299 day streak

yes stalling again

wowie 300

besties i'm eepy i might go to bed

I already knew what was coming (the lines said) but phew. This is heavy. Think I'll actually leave the fight for tomorrow though

I did not leave the fight for tomorrow and I failed. Although I think I did better than before, I'm gonna crack this eventually (if not, I'll cry and you'll hear about it)

I may be stupid

Why did I not think of that dammit. If I wasn't so tired I'd go back to my computer now 😭

(x)

LETS FUCKING GO EAT SHIT YOU EVIL ASS VAMPIRE BITCH THAT'S RIGHT YOU'RE GONNA LEAVE MY BOY ALONE FUCK YOU

(x)

rip me i died dead

(x)

That was intense oh my god

(x)

same Karlach, same. smoochies

(x)

and what if my stuck-at-the-age-of-13 brain picked option 3 (I won't, but what if)

(x)

how i feel after this playing session

Jokes and silly aside, this was actually so good. Oh my god I would never shut up about this if I had the words. This did something to me for real

(x)

Shorter playing session today but I hit 200 hours 🫣 I don't have a problem, no no, not at all 🫣

And still not done with my first run 😂

(x)

Yesterday I was like "okay, I'll leave this combat for tomorrow, it'll probably take me ages to get through" and then I was done in 5 minutes? Maybe I'm getting good at this game idk

(x)

Karlach 😭😭😭😭😭

I promise in my next run I'll fix you 😭😭😭

(x)

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP YOU'RE NOT DYING I WON'T LET YOU I JUST WON'T

(x)

I promise in my next run I'll fix you 😭😭😭Duuude this combat is getting way too easy for me 😗 I should choose a higher difficulty in my second run. I didn't expect I'd get a hang of it

(x)

babyyyy ♥

yeah yeah she's a badass warrior and all but she's also baby

(x)

gjkldfjlkdf what

👁️👄👁️

👁️🫦👁️

(x)

bedfellows? we can be too? interesting choice of words 🤨

(x)

I can't be watching this before lunch or ever actually 👁️👄👁️

This game is wild

(x)

I love it when I cast a spell and so many things go unexpectedly boom and my laptop lags more than usual

Like the lag is bad. But it's a sign that the boom was excellent

(x)

i don't want to finish this game i want it to go on forever 😭

i'm acting like i'm not gonna immediately start a new run when i'm done but still

(x)

I was doing the house of hope yesterday btw 🤭

(x)

Okay I feel a little less sad now because I'm thinking of things I'll do differently in the next run and I'm excited but what kind of character do I play with 🤔

I'm really leaning towards bg3-ifying Ross but I still dunno what class I want him to be. Race even. I'm not sure if I want him to be a human here 🤔 half elf I could see but my current tav is a half elf…hmm. Full elf mayhaps? Dunno. I think that could work for him maybe

I might pull out that long ass dnd test and answer it in character for him to help me figure it out lol, work's slow today anyway

Welp I have figured out already that Zeph is a lot like Ross but so much nicer and without the whole "I was a dirty cheater in my late teens and dated half my high school" thing 💀

(x)

[autumnbrambleagain]

ultimately i think our real complaint with pathfinder wrath of the righteous is that its "difficulty" isn't so much "the enemies have very clever positioning and tatical advantages--how will you manipulate the situation to overcome it?"

it's not like the incredible oil refinery battle in Divinity Original Sin 2, where it gets WEIRD and you're fighting the environment and a new faction shows up and starts overrunning everything with weird resistances and forces you to outthink it, out-position it,

every single battle in Wrath of the Righteous is already decided long, long before the battle starts.

did you look your build up on metabuilds.quick? did you pick the Correct Feats and spells? did you reload the second combat started and then pre-buffed 30 different spells before combat began?

that's what defines the difficulty. is your build meta enough? did you read enough spreadsheets before this battle started?

i LIKED blackwater, I'll be honest. the super-high ACs meant i had to use spells i'd never used before, didn't NEED to use before, to deprive enemies of their AC bonuses! it felt like i was figuring out a puzzle, it was great, it was an outlier

im' on normal difficulty, which coddles and protects and forgives you. i'm on normal difficulty, and combat is either "i curbstop everything without trying, or i die instantly because i didn't get the gimmick right"

but on higher difficulties, there's no room to play with your build. in divinity you could be a teleporting assassin who dips into an elemental magic for extra fun, or a wizard just go full magic and you'll never be at a loss for things to DO. i put some levels of metamorphosis on my assassin just for the wings and tentacle slap, no problem. want a wizard who casts gun turret and then hits you with sword? that's fine.

in this shitty DnD inherited system you can't go "red mage". you can't casually dip. you can't do something Interesting. a sorcerer who spends a feat or two to use a cool sword? no. spell penetration. spell focus. you can't hit anything in melee after level 3 anyway so don't try. turn into a dragon? too bad, you still don't have the BAB to hit anything. you're a weak-ass nothing of a dragon.

the challenge isn't "here are all these pieces you can use--how will you use them to overcome the challenges before you?"

the challenge is "here are all these pieces. if you put them together in the right way you win. if you try to do anything fun with them you lose."

and for what? for what verisimilitude? ADnD had classes as CLASSES. you were a WIZARD. you had NO TIME to learn how to fight. your spells all had a dozen things to keep track of. you were a FIGHTER. at level 9 you literally get a Castle and a small ARMY as a class feature. as you leveled up you gained titles of nobility as a matter of course. you had to worry about taxes and harvests. of course multiclassing was hard back then--each CLASS was a career path. a druid leveling up had to do druid politics just to be ALLOWED to reach the next level. the fluff and crunch was INEXTRICABLE

but 3.x and 3.P threw that all out for the most part. just look at people talking about builds--they ALL talk about level 20 builds, and they're all ridiculous 3 rogue/1 monk/6 cleric/ 10 asshole builds that mix and match class features at will. i've seen it recommend that everyone take an entire level of monk just for the bonuses--ignore that it makes like, no sense everyone suddenly becomes an ACTUAL MONK. you don't just pick up the skills you pick up a level in the CLASS.

it so desperately wants to be a classless system where each level-up you pick what you get, but it can't escape its inheritance. it makes sense, to a degree--if you divide your time poorly in your study, you'll become not great at anything. a mediocre sword-fighter and a mediocre-wizard! but. but we're beyond ADnD aren't we?

why isn't it more gameified? I guess pathfinder 2 is more like that? i haven't played it, and i'm dealing with pathfinder 1 for WotR. taking a level of monk doesn't require you to add being a monk to your story--you don't need to find a cloister and dedicate time to it, you just pick the class to get the bonuses it gives you. why have it tied to classes at all at that point?

just like how multiclassing poorly leaves you unable to do anything well, picking both "classes are a career/lifestyle" and "classes are just a set of bonuses you get for this level" leaves the entire system poorly functional. you really can't do both.

why can't my sorcerer fight in melee when turned into a dragon? i don't have the BAB for it. how do i get the BAB for it? can i spend a few skill points per level to learn how to fight? no, i need to take a fighter class. retroactively all my experience is only into fighting. you can't multitask, you can't learn things outside your class--a sorcerer can't FIGHT with a SWORD! that's silly!

but a sorcerer can take a break for a level and become a knight, and a monk, and an alchemist, and a rogue. you can't be a sorcerer who sacrificed a bit of time mastering their magic to be competitive in a melee--that would make no sense! but you can be a sorcerer who stopped being a sorcerer and joined a convent for a short while and then became a squire for a knight for a week and now they can use a sword, sure. that's the option that makes sense.

just let adventurers be good at shit. let me block out two schools of magic in exchange for being able to fight in melee. let that just be a default fucking thing. you wanna make "classes" just a selection of bonuses you can freely pick from each level up, just let it be a la carte already. untie it from the canon. if everyone can take a level of sorcerer let magic just be something you can pick when you level up.

auroral oceans is a very different beast from a generic fantasy setting and the tabletop system im making for it is far from finished or perfect, but one of the base assumptions it makes is, if you're a player character, you're some kind of adventuring asshole enough that you can both: use a sword, and fire a gun, with enough competency that you can kill a person with it.

like yeah, someone who spends all their points on sword techniques is going to have more dice and way more options in a fight--a wizard with a sword just rolls their dice, a dedicated swordfighter has options to reroll a missed die or turn a point of damage into a disarm or a forced movement--but the wizard with a sword is still a dude with a sword and they can still fuck you up.

altho i guess it helps there's no generic "wizard" in the setting i guess the closest to wizard is worshipper of nirix who gets powers by virtue of emulating its example or like, a hwual channeler which is just a thing you can do it's fine

im off topic

my point is wow DnD fucking sucks and i wish it died from the meme pool already

[thryth-gaming]

Apex vs Alpha and the Parental Units

I believe I've mentioned this game before on this blog, I know I've mentioned the RPG based on it, but just in case. Here's a summary.

Sentinels of the Multiverse is a co-op/solo card game where you pit 3-5 superheroes against a particular villain deck.

Each character has their own themed deck with a different gimmick, as do major locations in the world setting. And decks are very well designed such that their deck very well represents their themes and narratives. Within the last 5 years a new edition of the game has streamlined mechanics, adjusted some decks that were a little clutzy in the past, and introduced some new characters.

In this case I decided I wanted to try out one of the new villains from the Rook City Renegades expansion: Apex.

Apex is a werewolf lord, a self-styled king, and he seeks to create a world where werewolves dominate the world and are free to hunt whoever they choose.

His deck focuses around getting werewolf followers into play who have high hit point totals. Typically follower cards have around 3 to 8 HP with some occasionally having as high as 14 or 15. It is rare to see follower HP totals higher than that. With an intergalactic battleship in one deck having around 25.

There are 6 sub-villains in Apex's deck, one of them has 13 HP (she's a vampire) the other 5 range between 21 and 25 HP. And they suffer less damage from enemies that have less hit points than they do. Most of his cards summon werewolves from his deck, empower his werewolves, or give him or other werewolves attacks.

As villains go, Apex's HP is on the low side, only Baron Blade shows at less max Health at 40, and that's deceptive since when you get Blade to 0 the first time, his card flips and he gains 30 more HP. But Apex also has a lot of healing cards in his deck and if he can keep his health above the heroes, is harder to damage.

That said, HP in this game is more narrative than physical health. With Spite, it represents the difficulty of tracking him down and stopping his serial killing rather than a full out battle. With Baron Blade, his first 40 HP represent destroying his doomsday machine and the next 30 represents him in his power armor. So on and so forth.

And he puts out a lot of damage.

When I first scanned his cards, I was a bit intimidated to be honest, but then again, I have an understanding how to build a team to cover each other's weaknesses. Apex has a chance of overwhelming a player with his aggressive styles, and there are a few twists in his deck, but his basic mode is easily handled by a player familiar with the game. Unless luck is really against them.

Now, let's get on to the team.

First up is Tabitha Taft, aka Alpha.

She is a new hero introduced into this edition and is a, obviously, a werewolf. Her deck focuses around putting her six "Aspects" into play to access pieces of her lycanthropic nature without going full wolf and hurting people she doesn't want to hurt.

As you can see, each of her Aspects gives her abilities or bonuses that let her do things without spending one of her normal card plays or power uses, but comes at a risk. When she has 3 or more aspects in play, she will attack whoever on the board has the least HP once for each Aspect.

This can get dangerous especially when there are effects boosting the damage of heroes. Also, she gets affected by Apex's cards that boost the damage of werewolves because she has the tag Werewolf. So, usually when I've played her, I tried to keep the number of aspects in play low, only taking a risk when I was confident of being able to engineer villains having the lowest HP on the board.

But in this case... I had a plan... and it worked gloriously.

I've previously played both her base version and her "Reporter Alpha" version, which was when I was playing her more for scrying and deck control than for damage. In this case, I wanted to focus on her basic version since I think the Reporter version comes from early in her career when her lycanthropy was first starting to show itself.

As a note, the flip side of each hero shows their defeated side. A defeated hero doesn't get their full turn but instead gets a choice out of three options that they can do to help the team.

The above are Tabitha's flip sides for her base and reporter version and part of why I'm showing you this is because the flip side of her base version shows Apex. See, turns out most werewolves are cursed and sterile... Tabitha is the first werewolf to ever be born.

In fact there is a quote on one of Apex's cards that has Nightmist (we'll see her later) talking to Alpha about this:

"They act as though they are far greater than humanity when truly, they exist as a corruption. You, however, are something different."

So, Tabitha, as a natural born werewolf, is key to Apex's plans for world domination. I'm not sure, but I think it's also implied that Apex may be her father (see "A Horrible Truth" as the title of the defeat side of her base form) somehow. Apex has alliances with vampires and other mages so he may have engineered her birth somehow.

So, this is a personal fight for Alpha. A fight for her independence and escaping the oppression of a pack of hyper-violent predators who would rather give-in to their curse than transcend it. This is not her first rodeo, she took the name "Alpha" as her hero name because she fought to become the Alpha of her old pack and then said she was done with the nonsense and walked away from it. Basically exposing the whole artificial hyper-violence that the alpha concept was by just not caring save wanting to be done with it.

However, Apex and his group are far stronger than her prior pack.

And now the Parental Units

You may be wondering why I called this "Alpha and the Parental Units" because the rest of her team are:

Nightmist, premier sorceress who transcended her own curse to become a creature of magic.

Legacy, basically the good dad of the superhero community.

Mister Fixer, old gruff martial artist and sifu who's been around the supernatural block a few times.

Expatriette, the tactical team leader of Dark Watch, take Nick Fury and the Punisher, mix them up as a Magneto's daughter.

And let's get to those characters.

This is the last character that's going to be shown two versions of themselves.

This is Nightmist, at one time she was a private investigator, the grand-daughter of Joe Diamond (the character in the Arkham Horror board games). While her father apparently tried to keep her away from such things, the back of her cards implies she was Joe's sidekick for a while. Also a line on one of the Relics in her Estate's deck (an environment not being played here) says he gave her his collected journal of monsters for her to continue the fight.

In any case, she at some point was investigating a cult or infiltrating a cult, I'm unsure of which, and came across an arcane tome that blasted her with a terrible curse. In essence, she became infused with the essence of the Mists of R'lyeh, yeah Cthulhu stuff. She started to learn sorcery to deal with her curse and was initially a cursed human woman able to resolve into mist form (that's her base form on the left).

Later on, she was exposed to a drug invented by an evil scientist (Baron Blade) to remove superpowers from people and it at least suppressed her curse, leaving her a basic human again. She began to find that she was no longer happy as a human being, it didn't feel like her true self anymore. And then a threat came and the magic she was capable of without the curse wasn't enough, so she retreated into a demiplane to meditate for what was to her centuries though little more than a week passed in the outside world. When she returned, she was no longer a cursed human but a creature of arcane and eldritch nature.

As regards Nightmist, I already noted there's a quote of her telling Alpha that she's different from other werewolves. Initially she advised Alpha to get the curse lifted, though follows it up by asking why she holds to it. So eventually it feels like Nightmist realized Alpha is a bit like her, someone who is more naturally not human.

And also, Alpha's curse being her nature rather than a corruption of her nature the way normal lycanthropy is in this setting.

Nightmist has acted as the mentor to a former villain trying to become a hero (the Villain Matriarch who later becomes the Hero Harpy) and find control over her chaotic magic and the artifact bound to her and manipulated her into her villainous behavior as a teen.

Now, Nightmist is a deck that is fueled by discard cards. All of her spells and many of her powers require Nightmist to discard cards in order to accomplish things or control her magic. So there are a few cards that give her the opportunity to draw more cards to make sure her hand is filled. Normally, Nightmist will empty and reshuffle her deck fairly quickly. In a long game, it can happen multiple times. Nightmist's base version has an innate power that involves drawing cards to help deal with this.

Mentor Nightmist does not have card draw innately.

This heavily effects her ability to keep her hand filled and thus limits the options she has on her turn or to react to incoming issues.

However, what Mentor Nightmist does give me is the ability to safely unleash Alpha. Because when Nightmist uses her innate power she chooses a hero and until the start of Nightmist's next turn, any time that hero does damage, Nightmist decides whether to give it +1 or -3. I've used this for Nightmist's own spells as she has some spells that hit her or her allies for damage. But in this case, it neatly covers Alpha's 1 melee damage on each Aspect attack... heck it even covers that if there's effects boosting Alpha's damage twice.

What this means is that while Alpha is attacking who I want her to attack, we can make that attack stronger. When Alpha attacks someone else, we can reduce the damage to 0 in most cases. I tend to view this as Nightmist teaching control techniques to the other heroes or using them herself. As someone familiar with dangerous powers and how to make sure they are safely controlled.

So, far and away from my normal worry about having too many Aspects. Now I can just get all the Aspects I want.

Legacy is a very famous and beloved American superhero. He has the classic blonde-hair, square jaw Midwestern charm going on that calls back to comics in the Golden and Silver Age. A blend of Captain America and Superman. He has a very interesting power origin.

See, way back in the Revolutionary War, one of his ancestors worked with Paul Revere and developed an uncanny sense for when danger was coming. According to the in-game lore, this person was the man who lit the lanterns that set Paul Revere on his ride. Ever since then, the first child of each new generation would gain a new power... and the power of their predecessors. So each new Legacy was stronger than the last in some ways. (or at least had more versatility).

According to the lore podcasts by the creators this is the list of powers:

Joseph Parsons - Revolutionary War - Danger Sense

Paul Parsons - War of 1812 - Very Athletic. Not superhumanly so, but very Peak Humanity Athletic

Paul Parsons II - No war, Lucky Paul - Superhuman fast. Not Tachyon level but still faster than any human CAN run.

Paul Parsons III - Mexican American War - Superhuman strength, like 'Lift and throw carriages/cars'

Paul Parsons IV - Civil War - Single Attack Negation (can take a cannonball to the chest, but it has to cooldown)

Paul Parsons V - Spanish-American War (Also was the first Parsons to move to Chicago) - Vitality. VERY high-grade general stamina. Walks off sickness, ages slower, heals faster.

Paul Parsons VI - Legacy I - World War I - Flight

Paul Parsons VII - Legacy II - World War II and Korean War - Super Eyesight

Paul Parsons VIII - Legacy III/Heritage - No War until OblivAeon - Bulletproof skin. Unlike PP4, he can tank a lot of weaker attacks with no cooldown

Pauline Felicia Parsons - Beacon/Legacy IV - LASER EYES

This game has insanely deep lore... it's all unnecessary to playing and loving the game, but man... the depths the devs went to in detailing not only the in-game universe but also a fictitious publication history for the comics is amazing. Legacy is very much a call-back to the uber-patriotic, sometimes outright propagandist age of comics. Unlike characters like Omni-Man or Homelander, however, Paul is more in the line of Superman and Captain America as I said in that he represents a more hopeful ideal of what we wish America could be rather than what it is in truth.

It is refreshing to see a "Superman-clone" that isn't a deconstructed asshole. (though there is an evil Legacy from an alternate timeline that exists in the old edition as a villain and given the next expansion deals with the multiverse, I'm expecting we'll see him again) Though the issue of an idealistic USA existing on Indigneous land is troublesome. I need to ask around and see if there's some lore on this. The devs are usually self-aware on these issues so I wonder if this is a blind spot or if I'm just missing something here.

Anyway, enough of me addressing the cognitive dissonance here, and back to the game.

So, Legacy's deck does have some impressive damage cards in it, but it also has a lot of support abilities. His innate power increases the damage of his allies and he has a card that essentially doubles that effect. He also has ways to heal allies, give card draw, give card plays, and also he has quite a few ways to tank damage. Which was my original plan for him here. However, while I got some of his tanking cards in hand (and even played one) the support cards were almost always the best play at hand in this game.

Okay, so here's where we get back into the insane amount of in-universe Lore. In the fictitious publication history, he came out of the 60s and 70s and a mixture of Blaxploitation and Kung-fu stuff (and apparently vampires too) and started as a side character that began to get increasingly popular and they even talk about how he started to get more detailed in mid-70s around "the time comics started to get better". As the Blaxpoitation craze started to end he just... stopped being popular and people forgot him.

Move forward a few decades in the 90s (still fictitious publication history) when they introduce a villainous martial artist known as The Operative, they introduce an auto-mechanic called "Slim" as her original mentor. And this "Slim" is the original "Black Fist". And now he comes out of retirement as "Mister Fixer" using his tools as weapons. Now that he's in the hands of writers ready to do some interesting stories beyond "I know Kung-fu" and start to get into his position as a mentor who has seen a lot of tragedy through his life and knows about hubris. (and apparently he's blind... I just learned that.)

Yeah, the completely optional lore of this fun co-op/solo card game includes lots of commentary on the highs and lows of comic book history.

See the podcast episode here:

Anyway, Fixer's deck is mostly about pairing a Tool and a Style to modify his attacks. These do things like change the targets he gets or add an extra effect when he does damage, etc. He has a lot of ways to switch out his cards, attack multiple times, switch styles between attacks, and so on. I found it very easy to add cards into his hand (this game does NOT have a maximum hand size. I have had games where my deck and discard had 0 cards in them on some characters) so he always has a lot of options of what to do in a game.

In this game, I was trying to handle multiple high-HP followers, so after finding the Jack Handle I stuck to that and only switched styles once... though I was considering switching to a third style near the end.

Also, I was today year's old when I realized "Mister Fixer" acronym's to MF... as in obvious Samuel L Jackson quote. Yup, Fits.

Expatriette is one of my gals (the other two main ones being Fanatic and Harpy). So, take The Punisher, Deadshot, and Nick Fury, roll them up into a bundle shaped like a Canadian woman whose mother is basically "what if Magneto was actually evil and not just very rightfully angry".

That's Expatriette.

She starts out as a hired killer and apparently was contracted by villains to kill Mister Fixer. However, she seems to quickly switch over to the good guy side and is even one of Mister Fixer's teammates on Dark Watch alongside Nightmist, her boyfriend Setback (a golden retriever man with weird luck), and Nightmist's apprentice, The Harpy.

(To be honest I haven't listened to a lot of the lore podcasts. I love the bits I learn from fandom pages, but also, the game is just fun, you know? And the podcast competes with Kikoskia, Storyteller Squad, Monster's Playbook, Knights of the Night, AltHaven, The Writer's Room, Insym, and Critical Role.)

Her deck in the original edition was kinda meh. It gave you guns, lots of guns, but it was a bit slow to get everything into play and get her going. And in general she was a one-trick pony. She had some control options and the ability to remove Ongoing effects, but mostly she shot things.

The new version of her is so... so much more versatile and also builds much smoother. Giving her innate power the ability to do damage and play an item was amazing. And the Ammo is far more fluid to use (you used to have to attach it to specific guns each of which could have a single ammo attached, except shotgun, which could have two).

I do miss Pride and Prejudice being separate cards though... they were designed to make a single picture when you set them next to each other (which unfortunately order them as "Prejudice" and "Pride", which was irksome). But putting them as a single card just works better.

However, the biggest change that Expat got was that she got a lot of team support cards. She now has a lot of options to give other players actions outside of their turn and it is amazing. She's always been described as a tactical genius but her deck in the original edition never reflected that, only show casing her shooting skills.

The above guns, ammo, and other cards are ones that got played in this game. If the game hadn't ended when it did, I would have played a card another such card called "Comprehensive Plan"

Dark Watch doesn't have a leader per se. They sort of just go with things. Eldritch stuff they turn to Nightmist, martial arts and weird supernatural stuff they turn to Mister Fixer, everything else and general battle plans they turn to Expat. Harpy and Setback are the least leadery of the five.

So, this is the environment deck I went with. Megalopolis which is the typical shining idealistic "what we wish reality was" city like Metropolis from DC comics. Now, it may have made more sense to choose Rook City given that every character I put on the team is a Rook City resident except for Legacy. Heck, Nightmist, Mister Fixer, and Expatriette are three members of the signature Rook City supergroup: Dark Watch. But I liked the idea of werewolves fighting it out on the streets of the shining city rather than the grim one where supernatural nonsense usually happens. Also, this makes Legacy's presence more probable.

What I figure is that Alpha was in town for some reporter thing as Apex tracked her down. They came through Rook City which picked up the attention of Dark Watch, though Harpy and Setback were unavailable for some reason. Then when the first attack happened, Legacy was on hand and the brawl started.

Environments in this game are on nobody's side. Some are more friendly to villains, some are more friendly to heroes, most are rather neutral and mess with everybody. Megalopolis features a lot of citizens in peril, making it mostly a headache for the players. That said, there are a couple of cards that help heroes out and as this is the shiny "we wish it were so" city, this includes "Police Back-up" (the corrupt cops are all in Rook City, don't you know?). There's also a lawyer friend. But mostly, the city makes it hard for players to use their powers or gives them a count down to worry about.

The environment is the last deck to play in any round which is why it is the last deck I talked about. (and also, you now know how long this game lasted)

So, let's get on to the actual game.

Round One - (werewolf) FIGHT!

Apex

Apex started out with three werewolves in play:

Timber - attacks multiple of the highest HP

Rowan - attacks the lowest HP

Flint - attacks the highest HP

He didn't need to heal and there was no werewolf with more HP than him, so he didn't flip. He moves to play phase and plays The Pack Hungers. This gives all werewolves more damage and causes them to suffer toxic damage.

They're HUNGRY!

At the start of his next round it would heal him and check to see if any werewolves were low on health and destroy those. I guess the implication is they eat their own if that person is weak.

Then all the werewolves attack, dealing damage across the board. Apex hits the highest HP hero and then all werewolves. Timber, Rowan, and Flint do their attacks after him. Then Pack Hungers hits all werewolves including Apex.

Nightmist

Nightmist is at 18 HP out of 28... she got hit pretty hard.

She plays Call Forth to summon the Amulet of the Elder Gods which she immediately uses to redirect the infernal damage from Call Forth away from her to strike Rowan because enemies that target the lowest HP targets are scary and can wear down vulnerable heroes fast.

She then uses her Magical Mentor power to boost Alpha and Draws Master of Magic... which is the other main set-up card I look for when playing Nightmist.

Alpha

Alpha is at 26 of 32 HP.

She plays Fatal Feast which discovers Insatiable Hunger. I didn't note it down, but I think the target was Rowan (again, villains that stalk low HP heroes are scary)

Alpha then uses her Prowl power to discover another aspect and gets Lupine Senses. Neither Insatiable Hunger nor Lupine Senses were may first choice in this case, but in retrospect they probably should have been. They worked out pretty well.

She draws Hamstring, which is what I call a "Shut Down" card because you can use it to shut down the Villain partially for a round.

At her end phase she only has 2 Aspects, so no attacks happen.

Mister Fixer

Mister Fixer is at 27 HP out of 29

He plays Zen Maintenance to collect Hoist Chain and Harmony.

Note on the difference between "Collect", "Discover", "Salvage", and "Summon".

Collect means you can name a particular card of the named type and put it in your hand.

Discover means you reveal cards off the top of the deck until you find the number the card asks for and then you put them into play.

Salvage means look through the trash and grab a card of the desired type to put in your hand.

Summon means you name a particular card of the named type and put it directly into play.

Mister Fixer has some Discover, but he has a lot more Collect and Salvage, giving him more control. He has options in his hand rather than depending on the random chance of Discover.

I was thinking I might need the Hoist Chain's ability to reduce the damage output of villains hit by it. I then used the card play granted by Zen to play The Manifold Path and that brought out the Jack Handle (perfect for this situation and I immediately realized that) and Alternating Tiger Claw, also excellent for this situation given it made his damage irreducible which got around Apex's protection.

Then I used his Strike power which he used to attack Apex, Timber, Rowan, and Flint. Usually he'd only get one attack, but Jack Handle let him hit up to five targets and there were only four.

Then he draws Dual Crowbars.

Expatriette

Expat is at 23 of 28 HP. She got hit pretty hard as well.

She plays Arsenal Access which discovers her Modified SMG and some Liquid Nitrogen Ammo. She then draws another Arsenal Access and plays her Double-Barreled Shotgun off that card.

She shotguns Rowan and decides not to use ammo right now. Again, stalker enemies are scary.

Then she draws hollow point

Legacy

Legacy is at 22 out of 32 HP. He got hit as hard as Nightmist.

Legacy plays Bolster Allies which gives everybody a card draw including himself.

Legacy draws the Ol' One Two

Nightmist draws Essence Transfer

Alpha draws Silver Bindings

Mister Fixer draws Overdrive

Expatriette draws Backup Plan

He then gives Nightmist a card play. Nightmist chooses to play Starshield Invocation. The discarded card shows a "4" on the Infernal number. Her Amulet of the Elder Gods upgrades that to 5. And now all damage to heroes is reduced by 5 until Nightmist's turn.

Legacy then uses his Galvanize power to boost Hero damage.

He draws Dauntless Durability, one of his tanker powers.

Megalopolis

Plays "Persistent Paparazzi" meaning heroes will now take 1 fixed damage whenever they use a power. "Fixed" means it can neither be increased or reduced, though it is still blocked by immunity to damage.

Round Two

Apex

Not much damage was dealt to Apex, so he heals completely. He gets 5 healing from himself and 5 from The Pack Hungers, though he can't go over his Maximum of 50. There are no werewolves at 3 or less HP so no one gets destroyed. But The Pack Hungers destroys itself.

As a note "Destroyed" only means "not in the scene/available for use anymore" it could mean knocked unconscious, trapped, or forced to flee for living creatures or disarmed, stolen, or otherwise unavailable for items. Fanatic (not in this game) has multiple cards of her signature sword representing her ability to recover it quickly if it is lost, not that she has actual multiple copies of Absolution.

Apex plays his top card and gets "On the Blood Trail" which brings Gumbo into play. Gumbo immediately attacks the lowest HP Hero target because of the card but this is reduced to 0 by Nightmist's Starshield.

Now, the werewolves throw themselves ineffectually at Nightmist's Starshield. In frustation, Apex damages all his pack (I mean he does this every round, I'm just imagining it's because of frustration with being blocked by Nightmist here). Then Gumbo snaps back at Apex because Apex has the most hit points here.

Nightmist

Still at 18.

Starshield tries to deal damage to Nightmist at the start of the round, but she discards a card to redirect the damage to Rowan causing Rowan to be defeated and go to Apex's trash.

No more stalking for you.

She plays Master of Magic. She uses Magical Mentor to Boost Alpha again (she does this every round) and takes 1 psychic damage from Persistent Paparazzi asking her questions.

The paparazzi makes me think this is not one fight but an ongoing situation across the city over several days. I'm also aware that Alpha's day job is that she's a reporter.

She draws Scouring Mists and then Master of Magic allows her to draw up to a hand of 4 getting her Essence Transfer and a second copy of Master of Magic.

Alpha

Still at 26.

Insatiable Hunger can't destroy any target so she discovers an Ongoing and finds Rip and Tear.

Lupine Senses reveals "On the Blood Hunt" for Apex and she decides to trash it instead of draw cards.

That ends her Start Phase and she then plays Hamstring targeting Apex. This prevents Apex from doing any damage until Alpha's next round. It's also some significant damage since she's boosted by both Nightmist and Legacy as well as the bonus damage she gets on Apex for being his Nemesis.

She decides to use her Prowl power instead Rip and Tear in order to discover a new Aspect and gets Powerful Frame so attacks coming in on her deal -1 damage unless irreducible or fixed. Under normal circumstances, I'd probably stop at two Aspects, but hey, Nightmist is teaching Tabitha how to better control herself... and Nightmist admits that Tabitha already has a lot of control.

She takes 1 damage from paparazzi. Oh the stress you must feel during shop talk with other reporters, Tabitha, trying to keep your secret.

She draws Furious Slash.

Now End Phase happens and she has 3 Aspects. Timber has the lowest HP on the board so she goes to town on him attacking him once for each Aspect in play.

Mister Fixer

Still at 27.

He plays Harmony. He has both a Style and a Tool so he now deals +1 damage with his attacks.

He uses strike with Jack Handle and Alternating Tiger Claw style to attack all four werewolves with irreducible damage.

I opted not to collect another tool.

He now draws a second copy of Harmony

Expatriette

Still at 23

Plays Lock and Load.

First she summons Pride and Prejudice... just for the flavor of having her signature handguns in play.

There are now 3 guns in play so the next step of Lock and Load discovers three Ammo: Thermite Rounds, Shock Rounds, and Hollow Point Rounds.

Finally, she chooses Legacy for the last step of the card and he plays the top of his deck: A True Hero. Legacy Draws Bulletproof Skin and Thokk. Everybody else heals 1, neatly canceling the Paparazzi damage.

She decides to fire her SMG with Hollow Point rounds to hit all the werewolves. This defeats Timber as Timber was weakened severally by Alpha and Mister Fixer. So he goes to Apex's trash.

She takes 1 point of Paparazzi psychic damage, neatly canceling the healing from Legacy.

Draws Assault Rifle.

Legacy

Still at 22.

Simple round, he plays the Ol'One Two and hits Flint for 2 damage. Then he uses the extra card play to play Bulletproof Skin so that he is now also reducing incoming damage. (remember HP is narratively covering lots of things... he always had Bulletproof Skin, but now it becomes narratively relevant)

He Galvanizes and draws Inspiring Presence

Megalopolis

In the start phase all the Heroes choose to discard a card to get rid of the Paparazzi. When a card demands that I discard cards to remove it, I always imagine the discarded cards are the method the characters used to solve the problem

So, I imagine that Legacy reassured people that he was involved in the situation, the man doesn't have a huge ego, but he has that perfect amount of lovable confidence. Nightmist probably started talking magic and perhaps some reporters got a little lost in the terms and also the fact that they were speaking to someone who had mist for hair. Expat just ducked the whole scene and vanished into one of her caches until the reporters lost her. Mister Fixer parkoured well past their ability to follow. And Alpha dealt with the stress of being around her colleagues by locking herself up for the night.

"Arg, I can't stand Lisa and Tom one more minute, I've got to go chain myself up."

"I know, right, Tabitha? Sometimes I feel like I'm just going to go beasty you know?"

"...." staaaaare "I'm going now. Khalil."

And now Megalopolis played "Bank Heist in Progress"

Round Three

Apex

Apex Heals 4 because there's only four werewolves in play: himself, Alpha, Gumbo, and Flint. This isn't enough to heal all his wounds but he also still has the most HP of all the werewolves. So he doesn't switch.

He plays Making of an Alpha to force Alpha and Fixer to fight as they are the two highest HP heroes. Mentor Nightmist had boosted Alpha so reduces the damage she deals by 3 causing Fixer to only take 1 damage. I should have used Fixer's reaction here to use his Jack Handle to hit all the villains, but I forgot about it.

Making of an Alpha then plays the top card of Apex's deck and puts into Play "Hunting Party". This brings back Rowan and pulls out Blood Magic's Boon. This is actually good in some ways since now all the werewolves are dealing Infernal damage so when Rowan stalks and attacks Nightmist, Nightmist can use her Amulet to redirect it.

Apex deals 0 damage because Alpha still has Hamstring in play (it was conceivable something could have destroyed it before it got to his time to do damage).

Such a great Apex predator unable to do any damage at all for two whole rounds. Not even able to snap at his bulli- I mean oppres- I mean loyal pack mates.

Flint hits Mister Fixer. Gumbo hits Expat and Apex, Rowan attacks Nightmist and here I decide to stop focusing on minions and redirect that damage to Apex.

As a note, I DID end up using Fixer's Tiger Claw Reaction here and attacked all the villains with the Jack Handle. Since you can only use each Reaction once in a turn and he only had one Reaction in play, it became a non-issue gameplay.

Just would have been funnier to use it at Making of an Alpha.

Nightmist

Still at 18

Plays Essence Transfer, chooses to use Master of Magic's option to discard from hand if the top-card discard isn't something she likes. Drains Apex and uses that to heal Legacy.

Magical Mentor to Alpha as last round.

Master of Magic lets her draw up to four cards and she gets Scouring Mists, Droplet of Lethe, Essence Transfer, and Mistform. The last is not useful right now because it only protects against non-Infernal damage and the Blood Magic's Boon makes all the werewolves deal infernal. In the past edition it was just general damage immunity and far more powerful, allowing Nightmist to effectively tank at the cost of having no actions except drawing cards. The new version is much more limited.

But to be honest, Mistform in the old edition was mostly boring unless you were playing solo and controlling every hero. Even then... it's not great. Having it for one round is fine for me.

Alpha

Still at 23.

Insatiable Hunger discovers Badger the Bloodied which immediately allows her to defeat Flint. (yeah, I decided not to focus minions, but I'm going to take advantage of vulnerable ones) And now she has a reaction for when she takes damage.

Lupine Senses reveals Chel and I decide putting a new werewolf in play isn't the worst thing this deck can do to me, so I put her back on top and draw 2 cards but didn't note down what the draws were.

Now... that's Alpha's Start Phase.

At this point I choose to skip her Play and Power Phases to jump straight to Draw Phase in order to deal with the Bank Heist.

I'm thinking that was some terrified bank robbers.

"What the fuck?! A werewolf? This is Megalopolis, aren't all the weird and crazy heroes in Rook City?"

She Draws Lycanthropic Frenzy

Now, her turn's not over.

End Phase comes AFTER Draw Phase and she has Three Aspects in play.

Flint is the lowest HP on the board so Alpha goes to town on him and he's defeated and sent to Apex's trash.

What was it you said again Flint? "We'll fight, you'll die?" well... I can see how that worked for you.

Mister Fixer

Mister Fixer is now at 22 out of 29.

In Start Phase he opts to use Harmony to play a style and replaces Alternating Tiger Claw with Driving Mantis.

He loses the irreducible damage, but that's not much impact with Galvanize going on and Inspiring Presence on the horizon, and thus means he draws cards whenever he uses a power. The Reaction change now means he uses a power instead of just hitting a target. Which sounds like the same, but now he's dealing damage AND drawing cards. So it's a boost.

I considered changing tools but since I know we have another werewolf coming up due to Alpha's Lupine Senses, I figure it's more important to keep the AoE damage going with Jack Handle.

Interestingly... it looks like I accidentally skipped Fixer's Play Phase here... or I just forgot to note it down. Whoops.

Anyway, he Strikes and hits the three present werewolves and then draws Manifold Path and Riveting Crane style... which has an even more appealing reaction on it.

So, I have ALL these cards, plenty of discard fuel. And with Galvanize, Harmony, AND Inspiring Presence, that would be 4 damage instead one. And with the Jack Handle that would be hitting pretty much every enemy.

Yup... that's good stuff.

So at this point I'm already thinking of going Full Throttle which I drew at some point on the next round and just tearing the villains apart.

His Draw Phase produces another extra Harmony. Yeah, Riveting is looking pretty good.

Expatriette

Expat is at 20 out of 28 HP.

She plays Backup Plan

First she discovers Liquid Nitrogen Rounds

Then she lets Alpha hit Apex. In retrospect having Fixer do this would have been more efficient as his Jack Handle would make it AoE, but the flavor of directing Alpha at Apex. The juicy juicy flavor of it.

Then she lets Legacy heal 2.

Then she chooses to Salvage her Hollow Points back into her hand.

On to Power Phase and some quick math says that both Double-Barreled Shotgun with Thermite and Hollow Point and Pride and Prejudice with Thermite and Hollow Point will do the same damage (if Inspiring Presence was up, Pride and Prejudice would do more damage since the Galvanize and Inspiring boosts would each happen twice for 4 extra damage instead of 2 on the shotgun's one hit.)

So, again, I opt for the flavor of Expat using her signature weapons and just unleash both guns on Apex.

She then draws Comprehensive Plan.

Legacy

Legacy is at 24 out of 32 HP.

He has a simple round. He plays Inspiring Presence, everybody heals except him and then he Galvanizes. All his allies are now dealing +2 damage.

I have to say most of Legacy's tank build ended up in my hand for this game. Of the cards below, only Heroic Interception never appeared.

However, between Nightmist's turn one Starshield and Alpha's turn two Hamstring, I was already handling damage fairly well. Apex wasn't hitting me with cards to destroy my set up (destroy Items or Ongoings) and Megalopolis was being annoying but wasn't throwing anything I couldn't handle at me.

I also had some decent damage in hand.

But seriously, it was just way more effective to boost Legacy's allies than to do the actual damage.

Narratively speaking, he would still have been in the fight, getting his punches and going toe to toe with werewolves, but the main effect of this would be to open the path for his allies to effectively shut things down and keep the morale of the heroes and public up.

Speaking of Megalopolis

Megalopolis

Plays Hostage Situation.

Now, at the end phase, we're given a chance to discard cards to solve the situation without having to divert actions to hitting him. But you know what? This is a 6 HP target. Rowan is still in the field and she's going to attack the lowest HP target, and Chel is going to play now too and she'll do damage too.

You know what? Yeah, I'm good, you can be werewolf bait, hostage taker.

Round Four

Apex is at 30 HP. He heals 4 because there's just him, Alpha, Rowan, and Gumbo in play. Then Blood Magic's Boon causes him to suffer 3.

He plays Chel. Leaving Chel on top was the right play. A nasty One-Shot or Ongoing could have made things come out different. As it is, he only gets a new minion.

Apex finally gets to do damage! ^_^

He hits Legacy and has his damage reduced by Bulletproof. Then he attacks all the werewolves. His damaged is reduced against Alpha, but also increased as he's her nemesis.

Rowan hits Hostage Situation, Gumbo hits Legacy for 3 and Apex for 2, Chel hits every non-villain including the Hostage Situation. Since Sequencing matters this is the order I did Chel's hits:

Chel hits Hostage Situation for 2.

Chel Hits Fixer for 2,

Fixer's reaction hits Chel for 5

Fixer's reaction hits Rowan for 5.

Fixer's reaction hits Apex for 5

Fixer's reaction hits Hostage Situation for 5. Hostage Situation is defeated. Ending it with a Hero instead of Werewolf villains means I think Fixer saved the hostage and hostage taker from the werewolves.

Chel hits Nightmist for 2.

Nightmist redirects the infernal damage to hit Apex for 1

Chel hits Alpha for 1 (Powerful Frame)

Alpha's reaction hits Chel for 5.

Chel hits Expatriette for 2.

Chel hits Legacy for 1 (Bulletproof Skin)

Nightmist

Nightmist is at 19 out of 28 HP.

She plays Essence Transfer and hits Apex for 6 she then heals Alpha for 5.

She boosts Alpha and draws Coalescing Spirit (Which has a picture of her aiding Alpha, so wish I could have played that for the flavor).

Oh well.

In any case, this was where I realized Alpha could finish it as Apex was at 17 health and she had a LOT of damage available via Galvanize, Inspiring Presence, and Magical Mentor.

Alpha

Alpha is at 25 out of 32 (my notes say 28, I think I misread my ticker, some of the wheels are put together wrong and I may have seen an upside down 5 as an 8)

Going to her Start Phase before skipping to the end.

Insatiable Hungry can't destroy any target and I want to Discover anyway. And it Discovers Hamstring that's where "Bwuahahahaha" got scribbled in my notes.

Anyway. That's 6 damage to Apex. I would say he can't do damage until Alpha's Start Phase, but it IS Alpha's Start Phase so Hamstring gets destroyed as soon as her other Start Phase events finish.

Not that it matters. It just made me laugh because it was just such a thumbing the nose at him.

From here, Lupine Senses reveals "Making of an Alpha" and I replace it to draw two cards: Rip and Tear (already in play) and Fatal Feast.

I look over my options and reason that Lycanthropic Frenzy has her attack all targets and has a quote from Apex praising her for giving in to her nature. So I'm avoiding that one. I had a couple of other options, but ultimately I go for Fatal Feast again.

Fatal Feast discovers Eye for the Hunt... and now she's doing +4 damage each attack (Magical Mentor, Galvanize, Inspiring, and Eye for the Hunt). Now, this would be dangerous if the game were taking longer because her Aspects could now do enough damage to get around Magical Mentor taking 3 off, but... it doesn't matter.

That takes Apex to 6.

Then we come to Power Phase and I use Rip and Tear.

Apex doesn't even survive the first of Rip and Tear's two hits.

Wrap-Up

Apex is aggressive and has some potential for being tricky, but is a fairly simple and straight-forward Villain. Handling his pack is important and having the ability to prevent or reduce incoming damage is essential.

Mentor Nightmist works exceptionally well with Alpha. Even though I only ever had to reduce her damage once, the simple confidence I could handle it if I didn't control her targeting well enough gave me the confidence to lean hard into her being a full-on werewolf. Even though I only got 4 out of 6 aspects into play.

And it was such a flavor win for Alpha to land the final blow.

I had some math errors and missed plays but nothing that impacted the final result. At one point Rowan just vanishes from my notes in the end of Round three, no indication she was defeated. So I had to extrapolate what happened.

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

I'm trying to give my worlds with different atmosphere composition, but I'm not sure about what humans or humanoids can take without requiring full space suits. Oxygen is one thing, but how about everything else? I don't want things that are too drastic, maybe they need a filter, scuba tank, or maybe they need some sort of supplement or can only take a certain length of exposure outside. How about when taking into account people from different areas. Like if you live at high altitudes, they can take less oxygen than everyone else and thus those people need no help to breath normally? Any other location differences? How about designing various atmosphere composition at different altitudes or even areas on my world that maybe isn't oxygen based? Also, I'm wondering if it's possible to have a world where there is actually more oxygen at higher altitudes?

Tex: Give them a range of environments they can tolerate, and an amount of time for adjustment. For the example of oxygen, there could be zoning areas that have gradated amounts of oxygen and each species would need a variable amount of time in each area to adjust for the next one on their approach (higher or lower level), in much the same way scuba divers do in order to avoid the bends.

Oxygen on Earth is typically more abundant at lower atmospheric levels because the air is denser. I’m not sure if the ratios differ in the upper atmospheres compared to the other gasses in air, so I’m not sure if oxygen at higher levels could be proportionately more than at lower levels. The Wikipedia article on oxygen (link here) does have more information.

Wootzel: I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking, so pardon me if my answer is a little spitball-y. 

It sounds like you have a pretty good idea of what atmospheric parameters are in play. The only thing I can think of that you didn’t mention is air pressure - most life on earth can only tolerate a pretty narrow range of atmospheric pressure without dying. 

There’s loads of data out there on what humans can take without suffering negative effects (and what they can tolerate temporarily without lasting damage). I honestly would suggest making yourself some kind of chart or spreadsheet with the different variables, research and note down an upper and lower range for each, and look at all of it together to get a picture of what humans can deal with. Then, make a table for another species. If their ideal oxygen content is lower than humans, but you want them to be able to share atmosphere, give them a survivable range and make sure those ranges overlap. Like Tex suggested, you could include structures (or even something like a suit the individual wears) that one could adjust over time in order to let their bodies get used to conditions that are a little outside their ideal, but still survivable. 

A technological option to keep in mind is something akin to supplemental oxygen therapy, which some humans use when they have difficulties getting enough oxygen into their blood from breathing normal air. Maybe if two species’ atmospheric needs are similar but not quite compatible, one could wear some kind of assistive device similar to an oxygen tank and cannula, and breathe normally otherwise. 

If we’ve missed what you were actually trying to ask, feel free to come back and clarify. 

[kana-ena-kinnie]

How to Improve at Project Sekai

From someone with only 4 expert FCs left and 100 master FCs total.

Disclaimer: I am not an all-knowing deity of rhythm game skill. I am, in fact, just a Girl on the Internet.

I want to say before I get into any advice or suggestions that it's okay if you're not able to play hard, expert, or master. No one in their right mind is going to be upset at you for playing a lower difficulty - your score in this game depends FAR more on your cards than it does your skill.

Keeping a level head is one of the most crucial parts of being able to land that FC/AP, and worrying about how well you're doing or what the other players are thinking if you're in a multi-live will throw you off.

Anyway, on to my advice:

Play a lot, but don't play too much

You've heard "play a lot" before, you'll hear "play a lot" again. No other piece of advice is more important. However, knowing when to stop is just as important.

Becoming frustrated with yourself will make you play worse. Becoming exhausted will also make you play worse. Becoming burnt out on PJSK will kill your ability to play well. In these cases, it's better to stop playing and do something else for a while. How long that while is depends on you.

Try higher difficulties, even if you're missing a lot of notes/dying

The discrepancy between normal and hard, hard and expert, and expert and master, is pretty high. The best way to get used to it is to just jump right into it. There's a filter setting when choosing a song that organizes the song by difficulty, so use that to find the easiest songs and start there.

Increase your scroll speed + make sure your timing adjust is accurate

I've been sitting on a comfortable 10.9 scroll speed for basically my entire time playing this game. Don't set it to anything high immediately, because you will NOT adjust to that quickly. Instead, start from whatever scroll speed you're on now and increase it by .1 every day you play. I would suggest capping it below whatever amount starts becoming too much. (Don't go up to 12, for example, but 11 is probably also a bit much.)

A higher scroll speed allows for easier reading due to the increased amount of space between notes, but too much scroll speed means you won't be able to react. Finding that sweet spot is very important.

Turn off the MV

The MV will make it harder to see the notes, and the additional movement can distract you. It's better to play with it turned off.

Don't use cards with skills that change judgements

This is more of a personal preference, and certainly don't switch out cards that give you a higher event bonus just because they have this skill, but it helps to be able to see if and where you're messing up.

If you do use these cards, don't listen to people who tell you it's "cheating." It's not cheating if it's literally in the game. Speaking of not listening...

Watch someone FC/AP the chart

Specifically, when you encounter a pattern that you just cannot understand, it helps to see how someone else hits it. I struggled so much with dramaturgy master, watched someone else play it for the first time, then full combo'd the next attempt. It helps.

Ignore any and all advice at will, including mine

I'm not kidding, don't feel obligated to listen to anyone. The thoughts and opinions of any other players, regardless of skill level, should not be considered like its an absolute truth. You can go against everything I listed - keep your MV on, play at 5 scroll speed, use only cards that change judgements. Have your timing adjust at -10 for some reason. Literally go crazy and play as absurdly as you want. If you're not having fun with it, what's the point?

If you do choose to listen to me, then I hope my advice will help you. Regardless, I wish you well on your path to improving, gaining you more crystals to get that card of your most special blorbo

[infinity-squared-comics]

I don’t like Pokémon Rejuvenation’s level cap system. Here’s why.

Let me get one thing out of the way first, I do love rejuvenation. It’s probably my favorite Pokémon fan game. The characters, the story, all of it is excellent. I simply take issue with the way they handle difficulty.

I don’t have any problem with the game being hard, in and of itself. I in fact enjoy that challenge. The thing I take issue with is the lack of options presented by the level cap system.

Let me paint you a story. In a typical Pokémon game, you’ve found yourself at an impasse. You can’t beat this trainer with your current team: so, you have two options that both take about the same amount of work.

1. You find a Pokémon that has some advantage over that trainer, be it type or stat makeup, and you train that Pokémon up to be strong enough to take out the challenge, having it join your party either temporarily or permanently.

2. You train the Pokémon you already have, training and practicing and growing stronger with your friends until you can overcome this seemingly insurmountable challenge.

The problem with level caps is that it removed the second option. You can no longer win with your favorite Pokémon, unless that Pokémon happens to be strategically good against whoever you’re fighting. And that makes the game significantly less fun and more stressful for me. I don’t want to feel like a chess master, switching and swapping Pokémon around to be able to beat these enemies. I wanna be able to get stronger alongside the Pokémon I choose, to be able to overcome any obstacle. That’s, in my opinion, a big theme of Pokémon- practicing and working hard to overcome challenges, becoming better through hard work and determination.

I do, however, think there is space for a level cap in Pokémon games. And that cap is level 100. I think it doesn’t hurt but in fact helps the themes of the game to have a level of play in which you can’t win with sheer determination, not because these people are simply better than you or because of a type weakness, but because they’re just as determined as you.

Looking at the recent Red V Leon battle in masters, we see two people at the peak of Pokémon, and there’s not one who can easily and soundly beat the other, because they’re both trying and training and working just as hard as each other.

In real life, it doesn’t always matter how hard you try. There are some things you just can’t do, because you weren’t lucky enough to be born with the ability to do so. But in Pokémon, it’s different. Pokémon gives me the feeling that I’m strong enough, that I’m good enough, that I can overcome any challenges. And, as a disabled person, that feeling means more to me than I can say.

So, how would I suggest adding difficulty in a way that maintains the ideals of overcoming hardship through hard work?

1. Higher levels. Very simple, have the opponents be tougher, make the level curve harsher, have people need to train more to beat these challenges, yes, but let them train in the way they choose to. But how, you might be asking, would you stop yourself from over leveling? After all, even if you do get strong enough, there’s still the issue of Pokémon not obeying you. For that, I say- make friendship matter in battle. Highlight the bonds between trainer and Pokémon. Sure, you can have your Pokémon respect you cause you’re strong, but you should also be able to forge respect through bonds of friendship. If my Cinderace has maxed friendship values, it doesn’t make sense for them to ignore or sabatoge me. Friendship is a very important theme of Pokémon, and I believe that should be more emphasized in gameplay. (Also, bring back return and make it a bit stronger, please.)

This brings me into my next point- affection bonuses. Things like your Pokémon surviving a fatal hit because they love you. I heckin love these things! (Shout out to the time my armarouge ember tanked three fatal hits in a row, so proud of you girl <3). But how do we balance them out, keep the player from having an unfair advantage? Simple. We give them to certain opponents too. Imagine if Nemona’s Lycanroc could survive a fatal blow in your climactic battle. Imagine if Kieran’s team love him so much they land a critical hit at the perfect time. Imagine a battle not of brute strength, but of bonds and determination. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? I think it would.

[reversedout-blog]

Targeted-Impact Link Building | A Complete Guide For Businesses!

Link building enhances traffic and traffic escalates ranking – that’s something that readers, content marketers, and technical SEOs will consent upon. The very next question you may ask is, what is link building? Which ranking is to be done and on which page or website?

Link building is important because links play a major role in ranking your website on Google. The search engine checks the quantity of high-quality inbound links. The higher quality links there are, the better your site will be ranked.

Ranking helps in surging the chance of a click to your website, hence extracting more audience. This will increase the popularity and range of your site.

This is a small guide for you if you are wanting to build links that impact your website and enhance your ranking.

A Complete Guide To Targeted Link Building

Below, we are going to share with you a complete step-by-step guide to targeted link building.

Choosing Pages For A Targeted – Impact Link Building Campaign

Link building campaigns frequently require – clarifying client goals to work efficiently and understanding the demand for work. The first and foremost step is level setting- in which the data available will help in learning more.

For a better understanding, first compare the link metrics against the leading competitors which will help in estimating the level of competition, traffic, page authority, and SEO difficulty.

When we look out for opportunities nowadays, it is complex and time-consuming to go-through hundreds and thousands of pages, so it is more efficient to choose pages for a targeted – impact link-building campaign.

If you choose random pages, then there is a chance that your audience will shift to another website. Try to use links to those pages that correlate with the topic and are catchy. This will help you in interacting with your audience for more time and will increase their interest in your website.

Searching Targeted Audience

Before explaining further, we will start with a simple day to day example: If I want to increase the sales of a product, let’s say anti-dandruff shampoo, now I have to find out where its in higher demand, weather condition, age group to target, how to make our brand of shampoo more reachable and attractive, adding some value to it, plunging its price against rivals, and so on.

The offers made, conditions, and usage is directly related to the targeted URL (uniform resource locator), if the same keywords are used or not to describe them. This means we build our audience based on the particular client URL that we are building links to.

For instance, if we target Reversed Out Creative’s SEO service page, we would start asking ourselves, when will agencies and businesses start thinking about SEO services? How do we make them understand the value of investing in SEO? Additionally, online seminars can be used for agencies in showing them how their business can grow. With both scenarios, online SEO services are essential to increase traffic on websites and rankings. In addition, expert surveys, expert interviews, and off-site informational placements enable targeted link building.

Let’s step out of SEO and think of an insurance sales package. We can start thinking about circumstances that will help us to seek insurance requirements. Life insurance in case of sudden death, health insurance for sudden cardiac pain, etc.

By understanding your audience, you can make a list of websites that your target audience is visiting. Check out your target demographics’ interests and their behaviors. What does your audience want? Which particular product or services are they interested in? Make a list of each and every point to understand them better.

Use brainstorming by trying to find out the problem areas and queries which your target audience is facing and then after discovering, align them to a particular webpage link. This will increase the chances of your audience reading your website and getting all of their answers on your website.

Link Building Strategy

A targeted link-building strategy plays an important role in increasing traffic to your website. There are numerous strategies that help in building an impactful link to enhance Google’s ranking. There are a plethora of digital marketing resources as well to make websites attractive to seek audience attention.

Link Outreach

Outreach means the act of reaching out and link outreach simply means the act of asking a site for backlinks. If you write content that is worth links, then it helps Google understand that your site is full of data regarding that particular topic. These backlinks act as a vote of confidence from one site to another.

What do backlinks actually do? Well when you click on a link given on a webpage it then directs you to a particular page, thus increasing the target audience of that particular page, this is also known as organic traffic. Plus it helps the audience to understand the topic better and retain them on your website for a longer time period. If the site is an external site then it increases the potential customer of that website.

Quantifiable Link Building Wins

This is the most effective and challenging aspect of a targeted link-building campaign to retain clients or budgets if you are a house site.

There are numerous ways to measure the performance of a link-building campaign but which method you want to choose depends directly on the strategy and tactics used.

In case you are focused on the content site and exclusively on earning placements to sales landing pages. We address our evaluation from the viewpoint of SEO-related metrics that will show both prime indicators of advancement and the correct performance indicators once we have had an impact.

In a campaign, you may see a worsening of average position. The cause of this is new keywords ranking on a particular campaign page. If the page earlier ranked SERP (search engine results page) #7 or #8 this will pull down the rank of the page.

The graph above represents one of the risks of concentrating heavily on rank as the prima facie factor. While the average position (purple) line shows a decrease in position. Now concentrating on columns we can see that the number of keywords is growing in positions 1-3 (blue) lines. Just not enough to keep the ranking keywords down in SERPs.

This certainly shows that the ranking of a particular website depends on various factors like links (external and internal), keywords, the share of voice, page authority, etc.

Share Of Voice

The advantage for us of highlighting the share of voice over ranking is that it equates to dramatic shifts in time series outline based on ranking fluctuations from low-volume examination.

Ranking reports can sometimes be a roller-coaster. Share of voice equates with an averaging traffic model, expressed as a proportion of total traffic for a keyword set.

As the graph represents a similar set of the control group; a set that is not a part of the campaign. This second set is selected from the same sections of the site and from similar ranking and visited pages, to quantify the achievement of our link building.

The graph does not show positive growth and when we differentiate between the campaign page and the control group, then the results are even more dramatic.

Page Authority

One of the early indicators of imminent success is page authority. We often see page authority escalating even before we see any improvement in rankings and share of voice.

Another benefit of page authority is the direct impact of third party validation on our work.

There are many other factors of our link-building campaign that may affect our ranking like misalignment, gaps in our content, spelling errors, punctuation marks, grammar mistakes, technical issues, image optimization, and inhibiting a metric that is best influenced by improving the page link.

Bottom Line

In the end, we would like to say that it might seem overwhelming to follow through this process. This is the reason why we examine the quality and performance of links over time. If you have any questions or need help with your link building campaign, feel free to contact us at Reversed Out Creative.

Contact Us

At Reversed Out Creative, we understand the challenges and opportunities presented by AI disruption. Our team of experts specializes in web design, SEO, graphic design, and digital marketing services. Reach out to us through our contact form to learn more about navigating the evolving job market and embracing the potential of AI. Together, let’s shape a future that combines human ingenuity with the power of AI.

Content source: https://reversedout.com/targeted-link-building-guide/

[callgespenst]

It's apparently only been just under two months since I last updated the Dancelog but it feels like it's been way longer.

I now have three 11 AAAs! Air Heroes, Night of Nights, and 打打打打打打打打打打. That last one I got just yesterday and I'm particularly proud of it because there's a decent number of quarter arrows in there.

I haven't managed to clear a 15 yet but I also haven't tried again recently. I should give it another shot next time I play. My main focus lately has been to keep to the 11s-13s and find ones I like that are Chaos heavy. Plus a lot of Ghost Kingdom ESP and AM-3P Chaos Special once I get up to the 14s. The hope is to get better at accurately hitting anything that's not regular on beat or half notes. My stamina's continuing to improve, my combos are getting better, but I'm getting way too many Goods on higher difficulty songs.

I can't do it consistently but I've FC'd び DSP twice now. I think I want to make that my first 12 AAA so I can never have to play it ever again. It's catchy in a way that makes me feel like it should be played in prisoner of war camps.

I did get to try DDR WORLD last month. Don't know the next time I'm getting out to an R1 and I hope they make some adjustments between now and then. It's not bad, but definitely feels like it lacks polish.

Anyway I definitely really want to step up my game, burying the lede a little here, but we're going to Japan in three months! Still have my goals I want to hit by then. Feels achievable if I keep practicing at least twice a week.

[midoropalace]

Yakuza: Like a Dragon -10-

You can't put a premium on this adventure.

With the completion of the main story, I have now unlocked two options: New Game + and Premium Adventure. New Game + allows me to start the adventure over while keeping my progress for most combat-related achievements, like levels. I can also start a new game or new game + on a higher difficulty, which apparently greatly boosts my battle rewards. I've never been a huge fan of New Game + in a video game... IDK why. It's not something that's ever appealed to me, and I'm especially not sure why I'd want to do it for a game that doesn't offer me much choice to begin with. But perhaps I'll regret my decision when it comes time to do the grind.

Premium Adventure, on the other hand, is essentially an "endless play" mode. The game dumps me back into the game world in the exact state I was right before the credits started rolling, and I can do pretty much anything I want. Upon loading my Premium Adventure save, I get notified that I have unlocked the "Final Millennium Tower", which is apparently a post-game dungeon of sorts. The trophy list indicates that there is also a "True Millennium Tower", whatever that is.

Speaking of trophies, this is essentially what I am going to use Premium Adventure for: trophy hunting! I feel pretty confident that I can get the Platinum Trophy in this game, so I decide to start hunting ASAP. The first thing I do is get a trophy that I could have easily gotten earlier in the game: a trophy for changing Kasuga into eight different jobs. Oops.

The next trophy I go for is the Sheep Sheep Slapper trophy. This requires that I complete all of the Seagull Cinema movies without falling asleep. Going to the movies with a party member gives you and them bond points, so I take this opportunity to grind out Joon-gi and Zhao. The actual minigame itself isn't too hard -- the only movie I "failed" was the very last one, but I was able to get through it on my second try. With an S rank! (it wasn't displayed on the trophy screenshot, but trust me -- I got it)

With Joon-gi now at max bond level, I decide to view his final Drink Link. I go to Survive only to find that he's not here... The bartender informs Ichi that Joon-gi got a phone call and hustled out of the bar. Suspicious! Ichi assumes Joon-gi must have gotten a call from the Jingweon mafia and rushes after him.

Of course, Joon-gi knows Ichiban is following him -- and he's glad, because he actually would like for Ichiban to give him some back up. The two head to a strip club on the other side of town, where the Jingweon mafia appear. Being the haters they are, they spew haterade at Joon-gi for impersonating their late boss. Angered, they decide to give Joon-gi a piece of their mind.

But given that Joon-gi is about 40 levels ahead of the Jingweon, I'd say they picked the wrong person to mess with.

After whooping their asses, Joon-gi explains to the Jingweon why he continues to serve as the boss' body double: he wants what remains of the Jingweon to come to Ijincho so they fight the person impersonating their leader. Then, the Geomijul can take this opportunity to provide them shelter and acceptance into their family. Touched by altruism, the Jingweon mafia members shake hands, and Joon-gi's Drink Link ends.

Meanwhile, my husband is having a dilemma: Mabuchi is back in Ijincho, and Seong-hui is surely going to kill him if she finds him. Zhao relays to Ichiban that he wants to help Mabuchi escape from Ijincho and away from the Geomijul. Mabuchi might be a dick, but he's still like a brother to Zhao.

While speaking to the others in the bar, I got the offer to grab drinks with Saeko. Thinking nothing of it, I accepted, which led to a very interesting scene.

While talking over drinks, Saeko discusses Ichiban's love life. She questions if he's ever though about finding a girlfriend, to which he replies that it would be nice, though he's unsure if he'd ever find a girl that could love an ex-felon. Saeko forgoes all pretenses and makes it very clear that she really, really wants to fuck Ichiban. And Ichiban, as dense as ever, questions why Saeko doesn't have a boyfriend yet.

Ichiban heads upstairs to take a nap. While sleeping, he is visited by Saeko, who dotes over him then proceeds to give him a big kiss -- which wakes Ichiban up. Saeko expresses confusion when Ichiban asks about the kiss, leading him to think it was all just a dream. The lipstick mark on his cheek says otherwise. Very... interesting.

In any case, the other big task is to play a few rounds of Dragon Kart. This is a minigame I neglected pretty early on, so hopefully I can pick it back up pretty quickly.

Now that we're sitting on a cool 12.7m yen, I decide to just go balls out with the upgrades and get all 3 cars up to max. Cause why not?

For the most part, the tournaments aren't too difficult. In each cup, you are effectively racing against one of the three rivals introduced earlier in the story who I completely forgot about until now. But it never feels like you're truly competing against them. With my maxed out carts, I pretty consistently was getting 4-5 second leads over them and never dipped below 1st place once. The real issue I had was the controls. Maybe Mario Kart spoiled me (okay, it definitely spoiled me...) but I found the controls extremely stiff and unresponsive. But once I got used to them, the minigame became pretty easy.

The real challenge comes after completing 3 of the 4 tournaments. To unlock the final Dragon Cup, we need to defeat all of the rivals in head-to-head races. Each race takes place on a different track, with the added gimmick of there being a heavy fog effect on every track. This was really more of a test of how well I memorized each track, and I think I memorized them pretty well. I defeated each rival on my first try. Defeating the rivals unlocks new vehicles, which you have to purchase and upgrade. In total, I spent millions of yen purchasing and upgrading the vehicles. Ouch.

Defeating the Data Drifter leads to a very funny interaction between him and Akira, where the latter calls the former a virgin. The Data Drifter then complains to the Dragon Kart organizer about being a virgin... Bro, wtf is this interaction lmao.

This interaction does unlock the next rival race, however -- against Akira. The race against Akira is definitely a little more tense. It's still a fog-covered course, but Akira actually kept pace with my fully-upgraded vehicle for most of the race. He never overtook me, but it was still too close for my comfort.

Completing Akira's rival race seemingly unlocks another rival race, however. Just how many more rivals are there? This guy's manner of speaking makes me think he'll be the final one before we unlock the Dragon Cup, so that's what we'll have to do, I guess...

[thingswhatareawesome]

just sr pathetic whining.

do just like i'm supposed to when trying swarm diff III. path of abundance, pres mc, qq, dhil, luocha. get great run of blessings. boss stage 1 pastes qq near instantly (even had the destr blessing to divide dmg), then couple rounds later gets dhil, despite healing. draws out to boss enrage (goddamn grizzlies anyway). constant enemies with lightning dmg, when i didn't have jy, ofc. and boss buff was gonna do shit anyway, bc it was going to create phys or ice weakess, which ofc i had neither of.

next run, take jy. still use path abundance. blessing choices are constant shit, don't even have the basic resonance yet. partway through stage 1, get a swarm i literally can't do enough dmg to to get ahead of the new spawns, sit and spin until enrage. and ofc jy dies. does that matter? no, bc this time they want *quantum* so i should've had qq.

so tired of the random bullshit in this event. you NEVER have the damage type they're going to want, every time you guess you're wrong. the blessing rng is all over the place. and ofc my shields just aren't good enough bc i'm sure i just should have gepard's super shields which i don't, bc i'm both f2p and standard only ever gave me one 5* and that's himeko.

i just HATE this event. i wasted so much gd time, to get nothing. yet yesterday i did so well on difficulty II and it was damned near easy. it's ALL RANDOM RNG and god i just want to destroy shit and i'm just again, so frustrated bc all i can see is i'm too pathetic and shitty at this game and my characters are too shitty to function, and all i see are people with amazing characters with amazing stats and i just WISH i could fucking have their relics and planar shit bc all mine are bad and it's not my fault??? it's what the game's given me? i'm doing my fucking best??? and it's just not enough.

just tired of this event making it seem like hoyo's gating me, that i'm not allowed to play with the big kids anymore. all bc just rng on top of rng on top of rng with a f2p cherry on top.

idk. not sure whether to retry it tomorrow with path preservation, or just give up and go back to diff ii and accept i'm too crappy to do any better (meanwhile everyone considers III ez or normal and only get challenged higher).

and yet again i'm going to be up too late. bc sim u shit takes SO MUCH TIME and ofc so does the swarm version. and i'm tired of not realizing i'm playing til 1am which means i'll be lucky to be goign to bed by 3. again.

and i think i'm the only one who hates this event, who's frustrated and upset by it, everyone else thinks it's fun and great, like it's only ME that's struggling. because i suck. i guess.

i hate that i hit the point in this game where i feel too shitty of a player to be daring to play. i remember when i got to that point in xiv when i changed from hey i'm having fun at this and i'm doing my best and doing good to wow i suck and no matter hard i try i'm always avg at best. and now i've hit that here, where i felt like hey i'm having fun i'm doing good if i do my best and keep trying i eventually get it to now just i already know to not bother with FH and now this just says nah i'm shitty and everyone else are meta gods and i'm stupid and take forever to learn, but no matter how much i do or how much time i spend learning, the game's still going to fuck me over by just constant CONSTANT bad rng in every damned aspect of the game.

why can't the game just give me a fucking break and give me the good rng it give other people. please, why push me down when i'm already down as it is.

and seriously HOW COULD I DO SO WELL YESTERDAY AND SO COMPLETELY AWFUL TODAY. ALL THROUGH ALL 3 PARTS OF DIFF II WITHOUT EVEN ONE DEATH AND THIS I CAN'T EVEN DO STAGE 1. i just...what the fuck even. tired of feeling like i only get to do well if i'm lucky and all the stars align just so. why even try if the biggest gamble is if the game is/isn't going to outright fuck you over and prevent you from succeeding.

i just...want some event rewards too :/ i knew i wasn't going to get them all, had that happen before on one with difficulty levels. didn't realize i was barely going to get anything from doing my literal goddamned best.

[zablionsea]

Alright, here I am, post-NEWSZ stream.

Here's a break for anyone trying to avoid spoiler content for the NOISZ games, NOISZ SL in particular, just in case anything I say counts. Cheers.

Or just to shorten your trek across the Tumblr hellscape, if you happen not to be interested! I totally get it!

So? I think I'm going to go grab the CD for the NOISZ SLFT OST when that's available. I was really sour about missing the previous CD releases, so I want to get this one. Plus, it comes with the newer originals from Chapters 5 and 6.

And the cat plush. I need it. It's so silly and cute and lovely.

I'm excited for what's coming next! Even it's going to be a while until the next story content releases. TBH all fandoms could benefit from having a little bit of hiatus brain: it gives theories, analysis, and fan creations time to breathe between new content.

Just not so much that everyone goes insane, but that's not going to happen in this case, I don't think.

The ADOFAI Neo Cosmos collab coming up sounds amazing. I think I might actually get the event pass for it, though, I gotta set up my payment details again for that. That reminds me, I need to go buy ADOFAI eventually. I feel like it's something I definitely should have played by now, considering my love for unusual rhythm games, but I haven't gotten around to it.

I've been super reluctant to spend money on anything for the past few months bc I haven't had an income (I have yet to move out). But, with getting a new part-time job sorta thing soon, I don't feel so scared to spend money. I can power through my Bandcamp and Steam wishlist soon.

galaXXy brain scroll speed adjustment - tbh I was scared of trying that song on higher difficulties because mathematics are challenging.

Yes, there is a chart in NOISZ SL that asks you to do math. I love it; it's so weird. Hopefully, the adjustment to auto scroll makes clearing Hard more reasonable for me. Overload charts? Haha, nope, I am not good enough at video games for that.

Watching that stream was really fun! I don't think I've felt that focused on anything for a few weeks! I had a good time, even just lurking!

I'm looking forward to what Anarch Entertainment has coming up, both NOISZ and the mystery project coming after the series' end. I've fallen in love with its projects so far, and I am excited for what's to come. I'm sure it'll be amazing!

[tiacat11]

As someone who's also into game design (though it's not really a career so much as an interest) I think accessibility in games is really, really fucking important, but I think after playing GX a little I kind of understand why the difficulty is such a huge draw.

I'm gonna say something controversial here: Dark Souls isn't that hard. F-Zero isn't that hard. Mega Man isn't that hard. I've played all of those games. What they have is the POTENTIAL to be hard, and the fact that their core gameplay loop revolves around trial and error. They're games that reward patience and persistence over anything else.

I'd barely ever played a racing game before F-Zero GX, the thing I'd had the most experience with was Mario Kart. And yeah, I struggled a lot on the first story mission of GX, which I knew was SUPPOSED to be a tutorial. So instead I went to Practice mode, picked the very first track in the game, and learned the controls on my own time and at my own pace. I did several laps on Mute City, getting used to how it controlled, getting used to drifting and taking tight turns. I learned that blast turning wasn't possible in this game, but I could pull both drift buttons at the same time to powerslide. I learned that I could use jumps to get up into the air and massively cut time off of tracks, but if I wasn't careful I could get myself killed. I learned that boosting is fun and you should definitely ignore that little alarm that goes off when your energy is low! (Okay, that last one is debatable)

But from then, I tried a grand prix on Novice difficulty, and I actually did pretty decent! I think I ended up taking 3rd, which feels like a loss at first, until I'm reminded that this is a "hard" game and you're supposed to keep playing over and over to get good at it. Then 3rd felt pretty good. 2nd felt better. 1st felt fucking amazing. Then I went back and played the story mode that had me stuck, and passed it in the first go.

Now, I repeat that process, every time I'm stuck on a track. If I lose a Grand Prix to a track, I pull it up on Practice mode and run laps on it over and over until I feel more confident on it. F-Zero is fun to me because I can feel myself getting better at the game the more I play it, and I never considered myself a "tryhard" or someone who loves "hard" games.

I think accessibility in games is important, and that's why I think we should find a better term for "hard" games. Because that's the thing, these games aren't hard, they're meant for you to try something new, fail, learn from that mistake, and come back again. It's a game that's meant to help you grow your skill level, and it's kind of sad to me that once a game gets a reputation for being "hard" people like me won't want to play it anymore. I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into playing Dark Souls because I didn't think I would like it. I only played Mega Man because my friend begged me to. Every time, I come in convinced that this "hard" game is going to give me a bad experience, but instead I find myself growing and learning and being rewarded for that.

I guess I'm a little off topic by this point - how can we fix it, aside from finding a better term than "hard game"? I definitely agree the difficulty curve in GX is fucked, as great as it feels to get good at the game, how quickly it revs up ends up feeling like you're going from one stonewall to the next. So then, I'd propose more missions of a smaller caliber, with the extremely difficult missions as a sort of "boss" mission.

I think rewarding the player for playing and making losing fun is a crucial part of the gameplay loop, the fact that you still get parts and tickets even if you don't win the Grand Prix means you don't walk away from a race emptyhanded, and I think that's crucial. Rewards for beating your best time, placing higher than you did before, rewards for continuing to play the game (NOT daily rewards, those are the path of the devil) and encouraging the player to keep trying, I think that's all a crucial part of making a "hard" game fun. Helping the player track their individual progress and growth, not just in terms of "win the race or don't" but showing how they the player are now better than the player they were a week ago - that's what I think would make F-Zero more fun, and possibly draw in a larger audience.

But also I'm a #fakefan who got into F-Zero because 99 dropped so maybe I know nothing about the series LMAO

What would you want from a new F-Zero? Personally the only gameplay things I can think of are more vehicle customization, death race (F-Zero X) and an easier difficulty?

Non gameplay, I suppose the integration of the various anime original characters into the game universe?

Those gameplay additions sound good! I know that the difficulty is part of what "makes F-Zero" for some people but as someone who is both bad at racing and studying accessibility in video games and game design, I would really love for there to be ways for less skilled players to enjoy as well (looking at you, GX story mode).

As much as I love and adore the anime characters I'm not sure I personally would want them to be merged into the game universe. I don't really talk about it much because I'm afraid it will come off as judgey or gatekeeping when that is the opposite of what I want to convey but I am happy with their current status as characters in an alternate universe timeline and I think introducing them into the main games would make more people mix up the anime and game timelines/characters, like more than they already do lol. I personally like keeping the verses separate but I think it's interesting when people think up ways to make the two universes work with each other.

Other than that I would really love another story mode, I know there's mixed feelings on GX's campy story and whether it even actually happened (stares at Black Shadow's pilot vid) but I LOVE campy cheesy goodness and beyond that, the implications of certain things that happened in the story such as Falcon uhhhhh gaining the power to reshape the universe (like. Hello????) are so fun to dig into. Sure the story wasn't a cinematic masterpiece of plot but the open ends mean it's Free Real Estate for fic and meta 🥳🤲 So a new story would be fun to see, whether it's serious or not. Or even just new snippets of pilot screentime like the interviews were because the pilots are what keep me in a chokehold here 👯