#crafting sidequest

[nonameelephant]

Made this for the gallery wall I want to have in my living room to subtly show I've read to many fanfiction in my life

[terpho]

This was basically a fail—BUT I still love her regardless. Look at her stupid face. I need to make her proper fitting clothes 😭 the shirt was too small so I just shoved her nubbins into the body of it

Definitely learned a LOT about the sewing process though!! Seriously need to figure out how to work the sewing machines at the library 😞😞

[bigpuppyroegadyn]

Day 30 - Creation

Hound really enjoys crafting, mostly to maintain his gear, but building furniture has also been a great way to pass the time and keep his mind occupied. The forge is still his favorite though.

[officialpenisenvy]

how is the necklace making and general crafting coming along?

i cut out the pattern and the cardboard core i will use to fold the metal onto + found the jump rings i knew i had somewhere! the tin i thought i could use was wayyyy too tough and impossible to cut with the tools i had at hand, so next time i go grocery shopping ill just buy the cheapest aluminium-canned drink i can find and use that as my tin — i will also need to figure out a way to make the decoration on the metal plates, which in the original are both engraved and coloured-in (being, of course, solid metal with presumably good craftsmanship) and which i think i might just draw on if it doesn't look too terribly cheap. much to ponder 🤔

[mimiyanna]

I have made over 180 original posts about FFXIV since I started playing it again in December of last year. I would say I'm sorry. But I'm not.

[entropii]

Saturday Morning Yuzu ☀️

[fragmentedblade]

Insane that Blade during Todd's quest did basically the same thing Dan Heng was doing during this last video

[daniellethamasa]

Weekend Writer: April 2024 Prompts

Hey all, Sam here. It’s the start of a new month, and that means it’s time for more Weekend Writer prompts! As I mentioned in a previous post, I am making some changes to how this blog series works, mostly because I was spending so much time prepping and writing these weekly posts and it left me so drained. I absolutely loved writing all the writing posts and doing the writing craft book deep…

[greeds]

by "nonessential" i mean that these are minigames or sidequests or upgrades within the base game and dont necessarily need to be completed to move forward with the story!

[nonameelephant]

Representing the clown I regularly become with the interests I have.

[terpho]

Yeah guys I’m going to sit down and finish writing this excerpt just a few pages more and oh my god

side quests guys…that’s literally all I do 😭

Knitting is so cool guys I haven’t done it in months but muscle memory came in clutch 💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽

[brawltogethernow]

The Disco Elysium/Death Note fic I discovered I'd accidentally crafted myself into the perfect engine to write when it possessed me for five straight months (based off neproxrezi's excellent viral post) is finally done and posted.

A crossover formatted like a Disco Elysium bonus sidequest! Play as Harry Du Bois*,

*simulate watching a letsplay where the player selects slightly different choices than you would

and investigate who fatally struck Light Yagami with a Kineema Coupris! (It was you.)

PROJECT your latent bisexuality onto Light's corpse!

FLIRT with Touta Matsuda????

ENCOUNTER an exciting new cryptid! (shinigami)

And learn about the main event: The etymology of Elysium's alternate history version of pogs

[joshnekuu]

I'm sure that many people have already talked about this but one of my favorite things about In Stars and Time is how the game uses its mechanics to encourage you to slowly but surely embody Siffrin's mental state and treat their friends like NPCs.

Like it starts as early as the 'zone out' mechanic is introduced, not so subtly encouraging you to skip through scenes you've already experienced. If you're like me, the first several times, you resisted the urge. You know exactly what the game is trying to do and you don't want to treat the gang like skippable cutscenes. These are Siffrin's friends, even if Siffrin has heard this before it's the first time their friends are sharing these words with them, so surely he wouldn't just zone out.

... but after a while, when it's clear that the loops aren't going to be ending any time soon, when you got so close to finding another piece of the puzzle, another step closer to getting an answer... it's hard not to just... zone through a scene here or there. Sure, you stay tuned for the more emotional moments, you don't want to be a dick, but there's really no obvious consequence for zoning out, so... it's fine, right?

The game gives you the option to take shortcuts, and after enough loops, you take them. They're there for a reason after all, right? With a game that centers so much on replaying the same scenes, it's only natural that you would be given the opportunity to skip around a bit. Don't worry about the implications of Siffrin willingly dying for convenience's sake. It's fine.

By the time the friend quests are introduced there's a dawning sense of dread, that eventually, these too will become something that slowly loses meaning, that you zone through or skip altogether. By the time you reach the final act and Siffrin is treating their friends like actors in a play, hurting their friends one by one, it feels earned. Because even if you tried your best not to skip through everything, even if you tried your best to live all these moments as they went by, that's still fatiguing in its own way. You still were just going through the motions by the end, weren't you? Even trying to be 'good' and not skip through things, they still just became another obstacle for you to overcome to reach the end point, another meaningless scene in a play you've performed a hundred times.

And I think that's also part of what makes the ending hit so hard for me. Because no matter how hard you tried to make a 'perfect' route for Siffrin, no matter how much time you dedicated to doing the Friend Quests and making sure you experienced all those little moments in the castle and did all your little sidequests... in the end, those are not the runs you get to keep.

The world that Siffrin finally breaks out of the timeloop in is the world where they hurt their friends. Where they acted like a jerk and said things they can't take back. But even so, their friends still come and save them. Their family still loves them. Their family knows them well enough to know that something is wrong, that Siffrin wouldn't just act like this for no reason. And even if Siffrin fucked up, even if Siffrin hurt people, he can finally move forward. He can finally have new moments and make new memories. The world you get to keep is the world where you fucked up, but you are still loved. And I just think that's so beautiful.

After dozens of loops where you've done everything in your power to try and 'max out' your points with your friends, treating them like NPCs in a video game that you can 'make' like you by doing or saying just the right thing... it's finally breaking that cycle and revealing just how bad things are for them that Siffrin is able to trigger what needs to be done to finally break the loops. Breaking character and being a person instead of an actor, going off the arbitrary script thy have crafted, is what frees Siffrin. The worst possible outcome for them happened, showing their 'true' self to their friends, showing their ugly side and damaging their trust. But the world doesn't end. Their family doesn't abandon them. Everything works out, somehow, some way, because of the power of friendship and love and honesty. And I love it.

[nightzap]

Older games in the Monster Hunter series are often criticized for taking too long to get started. Forcing the player to go on several trivial quests to gather mushrooms and slay small predators that aren't threatening on their own before allowing players to actually hunt a real monster.

Over the years, the developers have streamlined the early game, cutting down on lengthy menial tasks and letting them get to the proper hunts sooner and sooner. Now in Monster Hunter Wilds, the newest game, the first thing you do after getting your weapon is to immediately fight your first boss. Very streamlined so the player won't risk getting bored with immersing themself in the wilderness.

And then it stays streamlined. For the entire low rank story lines, there's pretty much only three things: Cutscenes, on-rails riding sections to get to the next location, and fighting the next new large monster. There's little optional content. No sidequests to upgrade facilities like in older games, no optional monsters you can hunt to take a break from story fights, and all the gear you can craft costs very little in terms of materials so you don't have to farm much, especially since the difficulty during the story is quite low so you don't actually need to upgrade your equipment very often.

And I found it pretty boring. Don't get me wrong, the fights themselves are fun, but the gameplay feels reduced to just fighting a new monster every twenty minutes, with little incentive to explore the world or to redo fights to master them. No, says the developer, we need to keep things streamlined as to not lose the player's attention.

Only when the low rank story was finished, 15 hours in, did the game open up. Now the game actually has sidequests to unlock stuff. Now most monsters are optional, and the game asks you to raise your Hunter Rank to unluck the next story segment by hunting whatever monsters you want. Now upgrades become expensive enough that you actually need to farm monsters and explore the areas for ore runs. Now you can randomly run into higher tier monsters that you wouldn't be expected to fight at your current progression.

Now I felt like the game has really started. After more than 10 hours. It's ironic. Back in Monster Hunter Tri, I didn't mind the long tutorial sequence to gather mushrooms, mine iron ore in a cave, swim in the ocean (and crap my pants when Lagiacrus shows up) and kill weak Ludroths before I was actually allowed to fight my first Great Jaggi. Meanwhile, Wilds immediately starts off with the fight against Chatacapra and works hard to keep the player occupied, and I found it boring. Only when the fights started getting kinda challenging, around Ajarakan about 9 hours in, did I start to have real fun. It's ironic, Capcom wanted to cut down on the slow start so much, yet I found that Wilds takes much, much longer to actually become great, while the humble beginnings of Tri's hunter drew me in much more quickly.

[quartings]

Thoughts and Theories on Pokemon Legends Z-A

With Pokemon Legends Z-A being very different from Legends Arceus, I wanted to figure out what all the differences we know so far are, and what similarities there were to connect the two as "Legends" games.

So here are all the big similarities and differences with a pinch of speculation and a dash of slight TeraLeak info!

Differences between PLA and PLZA:

Pokemon may no longer be able to kill you.

It’s a modern world- you can actually fight trainers, and many different kinds! With this extra source of Exp and gameplay, will there be less focus on mass catching and research tasks?

To build on this, the “boss fights” will likely no longer be noble Pokemon, or not even singular Pokemon at all. Instead, they will likely take the form of trainer battles. Not Gym Leaders, as that would undermine Clemont’s job. Instead, they may be major city figures who use Megas, whom you must recruit to give you access in developing the rest of the city.

Less focus on crafting, maybe more focus on money and business-building? Dex completion will likely still contribute to earning funds in some way, though.

The cast can’t be ancestors anymore- instead we get timeskip designs to show off. Most likely the residents of Lumiose. Clemont, Bonnie, Emma. Maybe other Kalos residents like Xerosic, Sycamore, Sina, and Dexio. Hopefully even Calem and Serena!

Maybe the Fallers subplot will continue, maybe not. Maybe depressed Emmet will be here.

While regional variants may still be around, there will likely be less focus on them thanks to the return of Megas.

To help us estimate how many new Megas there may be, there were 28 Megas in XY. 18 Megas in ORAS. 18 Alolan Forms. 20 Galarian Forms. 16 Hisuian Forms. 4 Paldean Forms. 22 Paradoxes (Counting Koraidon & Miraidon)

With less focus on the wilderness, Ride Pokemon may have a reduced role (Cabs and Gogoat could return) and parkour combined with Rotom Phone upgrades will likely further replace Ride Pokemon.

With Megas returning, this could mean the potential return of abilities and held items. This is not a guarantee, though. Megas have appeared in many other games that lacked either abilities or held Mega Stones, including Let’s Go, Pokemon Go, Mystery Dungeon DX, Shuffle, Smash Bros, MastersEX, and more.

Most notably, you are bound to one city instead of a whole region.

The urban environment means we could get complex new indoor areas for the first time since USUM in 2017 (If you don’t count Let’s Go and BDSP as remakes)

So, what IS a Legends game?

Similarities between PLA and PLZA:

You return to an older Pokemon region at a different point in time compared to the original games (Past/Future). As opposed to remakes, which re-tell the events of the original games.

The starters are a mixed assortment of previous starters (likely) with new forms for their final stages.

You are not taking the Pokemon League challenge in any way. Instead, you are building up a civilisation (Jubilife Village/Lumiose City)

Heavy theming on the balance between humanity and nature. PLA is about urbanizing and colonizing a wilderness, and PLZA is about re-introducing nature to a developed city.

“Drive by” catching is a thing, where you can throw Pokeballs at Pokemon without engaging in a battle screen to fight them.

The battles themselves diverge from the typical turn-based format of the mainline games.

While you are not able to explore the whole region (Floaroma, Eterna, Canalave, and its islands aren’t in PLA), what you can explore is divided into five different roamable areas, unlocked as you progress through the story.

A marketable appeal in seeing a region and its characters in a different time (Ancestors in PLA and timeskip designs in PLZA)

A marketable appeal in introducing new forms for existing Pokemon and (likely) even a small handful of new Pokemon!

Sidequests given to you by townsfolk help flesh out the world and its people.

No version exclusives, and story focus on a Trio master legendary/mythical which didn’t have its own game before.