#i constantly try to min-max any game i play

[citizen-of-the-fandom]

I highly recommend watching Neil Newbon's streams of himself playing Baldur's Gate 3. His enthusiasm and delight in the game is so infectious (him doing a little chair wiggle and shouting "fuck yes i love this game" during the first cinematic cutscene - i love), it reminds me that it's a game to have fun in and he's so supportive of the rest of his cast and crew that it adds even more dimension to a playthrough.

And also, like, his voice. ofc.

[keystone8379]

Side Order review

Ever since Octo Expansion, the Splatoon series has been shaking up its single player content every few years, I only really got into the series during 3’s release cycle but it must be refreshing and exciting for longtime fans. With Side Order’s release, the shake up was adding a movement shooter roguelike to the game, a very indie game idea and a very exciting one. I was so excited, I ended up playing a few runs of every roguelike I owned in preparation. So how was Side Order? How does it compare to other games in its genre? Let’s talk about it.

In Side Order you’ll be climbing the Spire of Order, one floor at a time. Each floor will give you colour chip which ranges from things you can get in gear abilities to more crazy stuff like your dualie dodge rolls having attacks, or your shots having homing. You’ll then take that buff into a floor where you have to complete an objective, either destroying portals, defending splat zones, pushing a tower, sinking an 8 ball, or defeating runaway enemies. There’s not many objectives, but the amount of different rooms you can get makes each floor varied, though the objective count is an issue to some people.

Personally, my biggest issue with Side Order is that there’s a lot of downtime, much more than any roguelike I’ve ever played…except maybe Kirby Fighters 2. Between floors, you have to watch an animation of Eight putting the chip you chose into the palette, you have to watch the animation of the elevator going up, you have to take the cage to the actual level, then after you complete the objective you have to watch an animation of Eight walking back to the elevator. This adds up a LOT over the course of the run.

That being said, when you’re actually playing the game, it’s a blast. All of the rooms have designs that can be tackled in a variety of ways, and when you start seeing repeat rooms, it’s very satisfying to improve at them, whether it be with more optimized movement, better gameplans, or even just a new build. This is really complimented by massive build variety, there’s a lot to find with synergies between chips, or unique builds for certain weapons. The game also rewards min-maxing in a really creative way. Most upgrades will yield diminishing returns…unless you max out that upgrade type. Firing rate for the blaster would go from 300% on the 4th upgrade to 1000% on the 5th upgrade, and it’s super exciting to see what each chip type does when maxed out. It gives the game a lot to explore.

There’s also a lot of little things during combat that I like. Several enemies either interact with the stage in a unique way, or can be interacted with in a unique way. You’ll have some enemies that will only attempt to paint the zone, or enemies who love the 8 Ball and will try to hit it at all times. You also have enemies that drop a top or spring that you can take advantage of. It leads to super dynamic combat. Since not all enemies paint well, or some not at all,  you’re really rewarded for having stage control more than any other single player mode. Since most enemies attack you directly, you’re promoted to push past the zone instead of just staying in it, which is what you should be doing in Splat Zones normally! The bosses also follow this mentality of designing for skill expression, but to talk about them we need to go into spoiler territory.

The slowest and easiest boss is Parallel Canon, an army of Agent 4s. That’s not to say it can’t be done fast, or isn’t interesting though, as clones will scale depending on what buffs you take. However, it’s the only boss that isn’t always vulnerable. Meanwhile, the ball has a small weak point that can be expanded by either waiting, or by pushing it into a bumper. It’s super satisfying to take advantage of its positioning to get high damage while opening it up as it constantly rolls away. My favourite boss from the DLC has got to be the tower though, there’s so much risk to juggle but it’s so rewarding when done well, whether it be running under the tower to get to its weak points quicker, or only aiming for the layers you need to destroy to win. There’s tons of room for skill expression and I love it.

Special mention to the tutorial boss and final boss for sharing mechanics, meaning you can’t be blindsided by the final boss’s premise like you can in some games. (looking at you Time Eater) If we’re going into story stuff though, the game starts with a great intro, it left me really excited to keep going and has one of my favourite songs in the DLC. 

However, this is one of the weaker stories in the series. The main plot is only made with one win in mind, so while the finale is very good, the pacing to get there is a little janky. I was also left with a lot of unanswered questions that Octo Expansion and Alterna didn’t leave me with, aside from the classic “is this a mistranslation” thing. That’s not to say what’s there isn’t good, Marina trying to help the victims of Kamabo Co. is very compelling, Pearl is a bunch of fun to be around, Acht is very cool, and Smollusk is a hilarious villain, even if he doesn’t have the thematic depth of Grizz, Tartar, or Octavio. There have been loreheads who really didn’t like the story but it didn’t bother me too much, except for 2 instances.

I know roguelikes have never really been known for their story, (for the most part) but I can’t help but feel like the first trailer for Side Order was a bit of a sucker punch. Seeing all this concept art for visuals and potential lore that didn’t make it into the game is a little upsetting.

The second big thing writing wise is, and I know this upsets me more than it reasonably should, but fuck man, Eight not having a personality in Side Order hurts. I know she got more stuff than Agent 4, but Eight was one of the most real feeling characters in the series. The mem cakes from Octo Expansion gave her so many little quirks, but there’s almost nothing from Eight. No poems and very few emotes. It’s especially upsetting because Eight was on Team Order but there’s nothing she can say about her situation. What Eight does get is really sweet, and it’s not a dealbreaker for me, but man, it hurts.

There’s also a few other issues like the lack of seeding or any real Heat/Ascension settings. Any challenges you want to do, like no hacks or single tone palettes would be self imposed challenges, and I do wonder if the game may get stale faster than other rougelikes. There also isn’t any secret boss, nothing like the Heart, the Collector, the Lich, or Charon to really push your skill and your build to its limits. It’s especially frustrating because it feels like subsequent runs seem to be building up to something but it doesn’t really go anywhere. But then you have moments like the Epic, Vibrant Battle, or how charming the elevator dialogue can be, and it reminds me how much I’ve loved being a fan of this series. I may have a lot of criticisms with Side Order but I did absolutely enjoy my time with it.

So, in conclusion, should you get Side Order? Well, if you take your switch on commutes, I think the answer is 100% yes. Trust me on this, I can’t tell you how much time I would put into the slay the spire mobile port if it wasn’t Apple Arcade exclusive. If you’re a fan of roguelikes and Splatoon, I would get it, this is the category I fell into and I had a blast with the game. If you weren’t already interested in Splatoon 3, there are probably better roguelikes to get, I’d suggest Risk of Rain 2 if you want a movement shooter. If you value story as much as gameplay or more than it, I would instead suggest Hades if you want a roguelike. If you’re worried about the genre’s permadeath being unforgiving, I would pick up the game, as Side Order does a pretty good job of dispelling that fear while also allowing for the high stakes that makes roguelikes so exciting. I genuinely think you will get more out of Side Order if you’re not great at Splatoon, as you’ll have more hacks to disable for if you ever want to do challenge runs. Overall I’d give it an…uhh…8/10, I guess? Can we get rid of number scores?

[static-sulker]

Ghouls and germs, welcome to the bg3 Conscious Time Loop AU.

As a big fan of Polycule shit and ALSO time loops, I have made a very self-indulgent AU I want to work in. A fun fact about me is that I LOVE Undertale and the content made around it when they talked about the loops or restarts Frisk goes through. Then I thought about one of the big reasons that Undertale had that the gameplay almost encourages you to replay to see the effects it has, like telling you to stop to see the fact that the game remembers your effects. So a lot of people played it, causing the content of constant loops through the game to become (at least to me) a growing form of AU content with a constant loop for Frisk. Then here comes Baldurs Gate. The game itself isn’t saying specifically that it changes when you loop through it consistently but a lot of people are playing and that your actions will lead to freedom from the tadpole. And I'm just a tad crazy… so...

I'm making a conscious loop AU. The team is all going through a loop and then havoc and a ludicrous start. Also polycule. In this Tav and Durge are two different people in the team (For me at least, Tav is known as Erin and is a half-elf Bard, and Durge is known as Monty, a draconic bloodline sorcerer) It starts with a pretty good run, the first way through they go through it as you do in the game, destroying the brain, practically the GOOD ending. Everybody is happy. For 6 months. After the epilogue, they are meant to finally continue life, and start in their little sectors of life.

Then they wake back up on the nautiloid. A part of them is still saying what they said in their first run-through like Lae’zel doesn’t want to jump and prepare to fight Tav but they still feel like an overwhelming urge to do it. For the first 6 loops through, they believe it’s just them that going through it again like they don’t know that the others are conscious. Everybody seems to be acting the same as these urges to do the same events every time is covering any real idea of trying and communicating much.  Nobody outside of camp knows when they try and talk to people like Ethel who is pretty good with this anyways…Or the emperor. They try and keep in line, that is until Monty does something different. During Raphael's first little speech, he lets out a little mention under his breath something along the lines of “It’s an Ironic name for a house if she’s literally in your basement but ok.” Raphael doesn’t exactly hear it as Monty isn’t the big talker of the group. Everybody else? Oh, they hear it. At that point, they all try and work together to get out of the loop by trying any form of ending. No matter if they try and not even fix the brain or try and escape, 6 months after the brain is affected (fully controlled, destroyed, breaks free, etc.)They black out and wake up back on nautiloid. They have tried all the evil runs, Monty has tried to convene with Bhaal but nothing happens. Shadowheart tries this with both Shar and Selune,

After a while, they don’t take it all too seriously most of the time, like they begin to just min-max and like fuck around a bit. Normally with people like Gortash Raphael or Yugir. Astarion and Erin have both like memorized Raphael's whole script and just fuck with him constantly and the others like struggle to stop them because they usually are busy laughing. Death means nothing now and they are just going through what feels like purgatory and going through the ride with as much joy as they can try. The big cutscenes also change what happens to them. Like Astarion has gone through his emotional journey and he has grown as a person but his urges have caused him to act the same as he did when they first came back before the world “allows” him to be nicer without it being a struggle to act on his own choice sometimes. Yes, they can do other run-throughs but they can’t really change their character at times. Their urges to stay in one form of attitude until it made sense to change it, like Shadowheart acting a bit defiant and colder until she frees the nightsong. They also at times don’t have control over certain “events” happening until they actually happen. Like Astarion biting somebody at camp, which also lets him finally use his bite and be honest about it, which forcefully cannot happen like he literally can’t bite in front of them until his secret is revealed.

I don’t know if it would actually have like lore yet, it’s more of an excuse to think of the goobers fucking around and be old friends.

[alchemicaldesignquery]

Gearing up for a Storm: Tank in 5v5

Anticipating a lot of discussion (and "discourse") when the next Developer Blog/Director's Take from Overwatch 2 drops because it is going to specifically target the 6v6/5v5 dilemma...

....Conundrum...

........debate.......

..............concern?

All and all, going to be a pretty defining lecture for a game that I (and many others) have spent years with. Nearly a decade for some of us.

l o l

Until then! There's been some discussion around the recent patch as well as concerns regarding

POWER CREEP

and just what can be done with Tanks. Namely

Are Tanks doomed to be throw pillows of weakness constantly hiding from focus fire and CC effects?

Or Raid Boss style dungeon gods that no one can kill before they team wipe the enemy?

Is there a middle ground?

The difference between busted Tanks and Pillow Tanks at the design level, falls largely on factors from outside of the game; or more accurately

Player defined mechanics vs. In-game mechanics

The former are strategies that players will implement through coordination, targeting, communication, and knowledge-...all of which are not functionally taught or defined within Overwatch. You have to learn how to communicate, coordinate, take high ground, and focus fire, through experience and playing with other players.

Playing Soldier 76 doesn't automatically embed the concept of High Ground, into your head while you execute his kit. It has to be discovered, memorized, and implemented while playing which is a significant abstract in the Cognitive Load of a player who is trying to absorb:

12 different audio cues at any given moment

10 different visual effects at any given moment

18 separate mechanics happening at different intervals and/or simultaneously

all the exceptions, qualifiers, and hidden modifiers with the first three in this list

The on-going demand on a player's memory makes remembering to execute strategies/tactics (which are outside the sensory feedback received from the game) a more distant priority for a lot of players. Most will have to have those strategies/tactics backed up in their reflexes from other games they've played (FPS', MOBAs, Shooters, etc.)

Players who can implement (Information > Knowledge > Execution > Reflex) Player-defined mechanics, are easily poised to hammer another player with an overwhelming amount of In-Game Mechanics.

Focusing the player with the largest hitbox in the game with 5 different kits and the many different interactions they all have is, quite literally, an overload of that Player's own cognitive load; demanding that player operate at such a high level of active memory and execution, that they'll burnout eventually and long before they achieve anything of value in the game-

-or give that player access to mechanics and stats that can outright cancel or deny whole swathes of enemy In-game mechanics just to survive (Orisa Fortify, Hog Vape, DF/Ramm Block, Mauga Overdrive, etc.), which?

Isn't really fun for either side. Not in the long run.

Can we see why Tank Players are increasingly frustrated and/or leaving the game?

The Middle Ground

I'm a firm 6v6 advocate.

But I also know Overwatch 2 should never return to 6v6.

(Because the amount of Dev work that would need to go into making 6v6 viable, would demand a whole new game and they might as well get started on that now and let OW2 have it's lifecycle of 4-5 years).

So what to do about 5v5?

Well...

It's worth noting that, as a format, 5v5 is very difficult to parse from moment to moment; a constant stream of razor thin balancing that shifts and changes as min-maxing of both Player-defined mechanics and In-game mechanics emerge with each new patch.

That is to say, from a design perspective

There will always be a lopsided quality to this format, either within the Roles, within the mechanics, or within the compositions.

But we can mitigate much of the frustration by broadening the options available for Tanks, so that their potency (power) isn't the only option.

Tanks can't be shrunk down. They can't be made significantly weaker and they can't be allowed to steamroll over the enemy either.

Each of those (all of them) would result in pretty big swings of frustration that no amount of collabs or novelty will be able to bury.

Instead, what should be the focus is lower potency with broader (and I mean broader) delivery.

Make each Tank? A Multi-Zoner:

Every single Tank should have the capacity to threaten (not necessarily damage) multiple areas of the map, either through enabling or engaging mechanics.

By creating multiple zones/areas/points of contention in the setting, a Tank can disperse a number of the enemies resources to those varied zones, demanding the enemy dilute their attention or face a possible overwhelming cascade of In-game mechanics that sends them back to spawn.

A few examples of this design execution below, using Zarya as the Tank:

Example - Defensive, Mitigating

Zarya with 2 independent bubbles is a concentration of power around the Tank that begs for all the attention, but also incentivizes her to NOT bubble anyone else.

Giving Zarya one personal bubble + 2 projected bubbles that each only have 100-150 health, would give her up to three (3) separate zones she could apply to any given fight/area of a map.

Zone for her support(s) in the backline, while bubbling a Reaper/Genji going in with Ult, and still having her own personal bubble (and resultant charge to wreck face) for protective purposes.

Example - Offensive, Zoning

Zarya's particle grenades (her Mouse 2/Right Click) when striking the environment, land and persist on the field for upto 2s, or until enemies come within proximity (0.5m).

Large ammo dumps, these can be used to make areas significantly less inviting or engagement worthy to an enemy team, forcing more favourable sightlines and, less, focus fire from the enemy.

Example - Defensive, Zoning

Zarya's Personal Bubble will produce a significant knockback effect if destroyed, giving her room to retreat or find cover incase of swarming or overwhelming by the enemy.

This can also provide her with some significant advantages when played around Graviton Surge and her Particle Grenades.

This is not an exhaustive list of options, but showcases how differing mechanics can result in better zoning potential for Zarya as a Tank, without increasing her potency in a kit already designed to be potent. Broader utility that provides further options for tactical and strategic importance, is how a singular Tank can not only survive but further enable their Team to play the game...

...which is what Tank is all about, really.

[jesswritesthat]

heyo~ i saw your kageyama and hinata in na poly relationsip headcanons and i was wondering if you could do that with kenma and hinata with a gn s/o? if his makes you uncomfortable in any way feel free to ignore this!

A/N: omg cutest trio going for sure! <3

Warnings: Polyamory

>>>>—————————>

A Polyamorous Relationship with Hinata Shōyō and Kozume Kenma would include:

• You and Hinata are usually the ones to initiate physical affection, especially spontaneously, but Kozume readily accepts without protest. Unless he’s gaming then he might hold you back with his foot but that’s your boyfriend for you.

• If Kenma starts it, it’s usually very gently - like he’ll slowly snuggle into your side if you’re sitting next to each other and you only realise once you go to move and bam he’s cuddling you. How? When? Now you can’t move. (He’s like a cat.)

• Hinata is always so vibrant and it draws you into practicing Volleyball with him. He’s even managed to get Kenma to be his Setter (for a max of 5 mins) whilst you blocked. Hinata will teach you anything you wanna know about the sport, and just enjoys you both partaking in what he loves. He’ll return the gesture too.

• If you get bored, you’ll ask to play with Kenmas’ hair - he says no, but Shōyō is all for it and will sit in front of you for up to an hour without getting restless - wispy hums escaping every few minutes as he sparks conversation.

• Seeing this, Kenma reluctantly plonks himself in front of you once Hinata has moved and doesn’t say a word. He’s playing on his switch but hands you back a hair tie or something which is basically the ‘go ahead, do what you will’. Hinata will probably try and do yours bless him.

• Kenma is the one who judges you both the most, any antics that Hinata and you get up to is usually dissed - but somehow caught on camera the second you mess up.

• “I hate you both.” Kozume - after you’ve roped into something he deemed unnecessary.

“No Kenma, you love us.”

“...Do I though?” It’s his way of agreeing since he has a hard time saying ‘I love you’ when he’s flustered, how he hides his blush in his hoodie is all the evidence you need tbh.

• “Can you sponsor me?”

“No.”

“But you sponsor Shōyō, that’s favouritism y’know.” You’re smirking at him, a light nudge to his side as he shoots a subtle glare your way.

“I’ll show you whose my favourite kitten~” It’s unexpected from him and you’re blushing furiously once he kissed you - then Hinata bursts in and is offended at the attention he’s not receiving.

“That’s favouritism! We love equally in this house!” Then he tackles you both, and Kenma just mumbles either sweet whispers or profanity during the impromptu cuddle session depending on his mood.

• But don’t be surprised if you receive that item you were eyeing in the shops months ago the following day.

• You and Kenma team up to watch Hinatas’ games, if you go to the arena he’s got the best seats in the house and Hinata will always wave to you guys.

If they’re courtside seats, then he’ll kiss you both before the game for good luck. Then either seeks comfort or just jumps the barrier into your arms depending on the games outcome afterwards.

• Sometimes you stay at home to watch Volleyball though, the laptop in front of you and Kenma whilst sharing a blanket and snacks as MSBY play. In these cases Hinata either waves or winks directly at the camera for you guys - you both blush every time and swear he knows he has this effect on you despite being miles away!

• When Hinata comes back from Brazil, he always has new recipes with him and ropes you into the kitchen to help. The two of gave fun and make a mess sometimes, Kenma can hear the giggling screams and always comes out to a creative dinner prepared by his two favourite people.

• Kenma and Hinata will support whatever you do too, Hinata is enthusiastic to help you whilst Kenma has a variety of resources at his disposal if you need it. Very good boyfriends yes. Hinata has been known to fall asleep on your shoulder or in your lap if you’re working though.

• Most of Kodzukens’ followers know who you are, since you and Hinata have gatecrashed his live streams multiple times. An iconic one that haunts Kenma to this very day was when you both kissed each of his cheeks and he became so flustered he couldn’t utter a coherent sentence for 2 minutes. It was adorable - he kicked you out but worth it.

• Hinata always invites you into his workouts and you agreed to go running with him. Kenma went with ‘nah and you can’t make me either’ - you can, just plead a little and he’ll cave.

If you’re not a runner, you and Kenma give up mid-way and walk to the nearest Café for breakfast - Shōyō has lapped you guys by now and skids to a halt in front of the window like:

“What. Is. This?!”

Then you slide a protein shake and piece of fruit his way and all is forgiven, except that he made you and Kenma go on a longer run than agreed but... he’ll make it up to guys.

• Since Kenma established Bouncing Ball Corp and is wealthy, he’ll take you both on national or international business trips. Plus he’ll buy you gifts that he knows you really wanted but aimed to get yourselves.

“Kenma! It’s gorgeous but I can’t afford it right now.”

“I know, that’s why I brought it for you.” He’s incredibly nonchalant about it, and is avoiding your gaze completely - but doesn’t miss how they’re sparkling.

“Yes but I can’t acc-“

“It’s fine, you made dinner for us yesterday.”

“That’s not the same and you know it!”

“Its my way of saying I love you, now I need to trial this new game so just enjoy the gift ok.” Its muttered so fast as he leaves the room you don’t get the chance to catch him.

• Hinata will burst in later wearing this brand new Atlético San Juan Team hoodie that Kenma ordered and immediately meets your gaze.

“He got you too huh?”

“Yep~ I’m gonna bury him in hugs and kisses!”

“Wait Shō he’s gaming— let me help at least!”

Instant regret on Kenmas behalf, questions why he continues to do this whilst immobilised. Then he sees the bright grins on your faces and - ah that’s why.

• There’ll be gaming marathons when you can allow, and they can get quite rowdy and competitive depending on company.

• The house is usually full of life, either because of the resident sunshine or the familiar faces that constantly litter it. You’ll have Nekoma grads, pro Volleyball athletes and Karasuno grads over and sometimes at the same time since they’re all familiar with each other since High School.

It’s like home.

• But you can always count on collapsing into the warm embraces of Kenma and Hinata after a long night of entertaining everyone. It’s peaceful and you’ll laugh about what happened all whilst fingertips dance across skin and hug each other close. That’s what love is though isn’t it?

<——————————<<<<

[ Masterlist ]

[flimflamfranky]

if you're familiar with DnD, what class, abilities, etc do you think franky would play as?

*looks over at my dnd/fantasy au that im reworking for the third them* yeah, i’m familiar.

but that’s mostly in the realm of what the characters would be. as for what franky would choose to play as, well!

his go-to would be warforged, natch. it’s a cool robot, of course franky’s gonna play as one. but i think generally he’d go for races that are big, strong, and a little weird. so orcs, goliaths, bugbears, etc.

class-wise, alchemist, definitely, as well as fighter/barbarian. he would multi-class a lot.

but honestly? franky strikes me as a big home-brew guy, constantly cooking up new mechanics to test the limits of the game. probably dapples in min-maxing from time to time. just taking the core mechanics of dnd (or any table top, really), and getting real creative with it

and as a player, he would like role-playing. but as a game master? straight dungeon crawling. it’s mostly, “hey, check out this cool monster/trap that i came up with” and then trying to kill everyone with it.

in a modern au, franky would have definitely grown up playing dnd. i can see him playing as kid, falling out of it bc of life stuff, and then getting back into with usopp (who is also definitely a dnd guy) and the other straw hats

[done-dm]

Talks Machina Summary, SDCC Panel 2019

We get a sneak peak at the first three pages of the second issue of Vox Machina Origins (out August 14th) as well as a reading by the cast.

Ashley and Matt never really discussed what happened to Pike's cousin JB at the end of the first campaign. According to Ashley, "they all died." I mean, I guess that's true eventually...

When asked what was the biggest lesson each member of the cast has taken away from their experience together and journey with Critical Role, Liam said it's all about the people you travel with. For Matt, it was about making their friendship the top priority and allowing everything else to happen as a result. Sam has enjoyed growing closer to his friends.

When asked what was a favorite roleplay moment from campaign 1 or 2 that did not involve their character, Travis said one of his was when Vex popped out of the bathtub with Percy. Sam appreciates anything Matt Mercer does, Liam liked Avantika's demise, Laura (as much as she hated it at the time) loved Scanlan's arc when he left the group, Marisha liked some of the Percy vs Vax standoffs, Matt mentioned Percy and Grog's fight beneath the keep. Liam added another favorite moment with Percy and Vex's interactions in Syngorn, and Taliesin answered that he particularly loved Beau's moment with the pirate king.

When Matt was asked about how it was adapting critical role into animation and "handing off the voices in your head to different people," Matt admitted that adapting the show is difficult when trying to take hundreds of hours of time spent playing and condense it into a season. There are some changes he feels make sense and others he is absolutely unwilling to compromise on: "This isn't mainstream media, this is Critical Role!" He's excited about the process of casting people to voice the various NPCs.

"Given the ever growing pervasiveness of Sam's D&D Beyond sketches at the beginning of each episode, at what point can we expect a day of the Twitch channel to be dedicated to an entire Sam Riegel D&D Beyond telethon?" Sam's response? "That's legitimately a great idea." So, that might be something to look forward to.

Marisha was asked how playing characters with very different opinions of authority has impacted how she handles her position of authority in the company. Marisha's leadership journey with Geek and Sundry coincided with the beginning of Keyleth's journey, and she learned a lot from the experience. Beau helps he to be more assertive in her opinions. She discusses her role as creative director and how certain projects become reality.

When Liam was asked if he chose spells more to optimize the party mechanics or fit with how his character is portrayed, Liam says it's a combination of both. Caleb has long term goals, but sometimes changes his mind to do something good for the group. Liam recently chose the spell seeming, but hasn't had a chance to use it yet.

Taliesin gets asked if there's a certain number of character deaths that would stop him from playing this campaign. According to Taliesin, "there's really only one way to find out." He's got two more ideas he's saving for the next campaign.

When asked if there were any moments or plot hooks the cast wished they had explored more from either campaign, Matt couldn't say much since they're playing in the same world and can still go after those plot threads. However, one hanging plot thread from campaign 1 will be explored in a one shot. He admits that he wished they had gone into Thordak lore more. Liam mentions being curious about the horn of Orcus, and Ashley's thoughts are still consumed by the box. (Matt mentions this during the next question, but the relationship with the clasp in Emon)

When Sam was asked if Nott was seriously considering leaving with her family, the answer was yes. Sam has been trying to justify a mother willingly leaving her family after being separated for so long. Nott loves traveling, but she really wants to be home.

Matt is asked how he balances his ungodly knowledge of D&D rules when playing to avoid min maxing constantly as a player, Matt said he sees nothing wrong with min maxing and occasionally experiments with combinations he think could be broken. However, a lot of the fun comes from quirky character combinations and there is still a need to respect newer DMs and players. He admits it takes a conscious effort to keep that in mind.

When asked about Sam's reasoning in playing two small characters with secret children, Sam says that Liam picks his characters (accounting for the small thing), his child in the first campaign was a suprise, and this campaign he wanted to bring some of his love for his own children into the game.

Matt's favorite sorrow sworn is the lonely.

When the campaign is over, Matt and Taliesin would be willing to release Molly's entire backstory.

Taliesin is asked if Cad thinks he will meet his family at the kiln and what does he think about confronting them given his recent experiences. Cad hopes his family will be there and is "built on expectations." He feels like there will be something great there.

Ashley says it feels weird for Yasha to be an NPC, but she's in good hands with Matt. Depending on when Ashely gets back, she may have to make another character.

When Matt was asked how he makes sure each member of the party gets enough attention, he said it took a bit of preparation and doesn't always work out. Trying to consider the things they might go into that play to their individual strengths can make each member feel helpful. A lot of it also comes from players communicating with each other before it becomes an issue.

Sam is asked about his experiences playing a bard that was barely resurrected by a player whose character is going through something similar. Sam recommends maybe mixing up the type of music the character plays or making her motivations more selfish or self-protective.

If Matt could give his past self starting the livestream advice, he would tell himself not to stress out so much about what people on the internet think of you and that what he is doing is right.

If Beau were a druid, her wild shape would be an owl: "Take that Thaddeus."

When asked about the difference between Vox Machina and the Mighty Nein in how Vox Machina was much quicker to involve themselves in things, Marisha says Vox Machina quickly got involved with higher ups and that the Mighty Nein is more about fighting for the everyman. Laura adds that it was easier to tell good from bad in the first campaign.

Matt is still working on mentally and physically preparing himself to DM the show. He reiterates the importance of making and effort and keeping friendship a top priority.

If Matt has more than 20 minutes to drive somewhere, he's usually brainstorming for D&D. He also sets aside certain evenings and sometimes a frantic Thursday morning to get things prepped.

Also, since this is late, if anyone want to scream about the last episode with me I am always down. No spoilers, but that whole second half was epic!!!

[trauma-13]

You know the drill. All them asks. 😈 (is this deja vu?)

You got it dude!! (It is...cause I fucked up 😂)

The meaning behind my url:

Trauma because it's my favorite area of nursing.

Princess because I'm a fuckin princess.

93 because the year I was born.

A picture of me:

If you look hard enough you'll find one on here. Also my icon is me soooo.

How many tattoos i have and what they are:

Oh good lord. I have quite a few....

1. Mom's last name on my left wrist.

2. Flowers on my right foot.

3. Tribal-ish heart my brother drew on the back on my neck.

4. Walt Disneys signature on my left foot.

5. Mickey and Minnie behind my ears.

6. A prior dogs paw print on my left ankle.

7. A dandelion on my right shoulder blade with music notes.

8. My dog, Axel, paw prints on my collar bones.

9. A moon on my right ankle.

10. A semi colon on my right wrist (ulnar side)

11. A arrow on my right wrist (radial side)

12. A humming bird on my right forearm.

I think that's it... for now...

Last time i cried and why:

I dunno, honestly. I cry frequently hahah

Piercings i have:

Labret/Monroe

Ears gauged to a 00.

Traugus both sides

Right sided daith.

Nipples.

Favorite band:

Sooo many. Currently imagine dragons.

Biggest turn offs:

Bad hygiene, liars, cheats, narcacists.

Top 5 (insert subject):

???

Tattoos i want:

Too many to list, honestly.

Biggest turn ons:

I'm a big physical touch person, so basically anything where I'm being touched.

Age:

26

Ideas of a perfect date:

Doing something totally new that neither of us has experienced.

Life goal:

Pediatric ICU trauma nurse, be a mom, be a good wife.

Piercings i want:

Maybe my left daith. Probably a 2nd lobe hole.

Relationship status:

Very happily engaged.

Favorite movie:

Steel magnolias (the old one), Moana, Mean Girls.

A fact about my life:

I'm a nurse, I work in the ER and medsurg/tele, I have 2 doggos, and 2 kittens, I'm practically married at this point, I live on the surface of the sun.

Phobia:

Spiders, failure.

Middle name:

I'ma pass on telling the world that.

Height:

5'6" with shoes on.

Are you a virgin?

Naaah.

What’s your shoe size?

Between 9-10 depends on the shoe and brand.

What’s your sexual orientation?

I am bisexual, however I'm in a heterosexual relationship.

Do you smoke, drink, or take any drugs?

Drink yes, no to the others.

Someone you miss

@car-one-responding

What’s one thing you regret?

Suffering in an abusive relationship because I didn't think I had a way out.

First celebrity you think of when someone says attractive:

Chris Evans.

Favorite ice cream?

I'm honestly not a big ice cream person, but we have some delicious basil-lime sorbet from a local store that I'm obsessed with.

One insecurity:

Weight.

What my last text message says:

"I re sent it. Just delete the other one I guess? Lol" from @car-one-responding in reference to this cause I done FUCKED IT UP.

Have you ever taken a picture naked?

Mmmmhhhhhmmmmm.

Have you ever painted your room?

Not recently at all, but as a kid yeah.

Have you ever kissed a member of the same sex?

Yep, couple times.

Have you ever slept naked?

I usually do.

Have you ever danced in front of your mirror?

Almost every day hahah

Have you ever had a crush?

Duuuh, who hasn't hah

Have you ever been dumped?

Aldo duuuh.

Have you ever stole money from a friend?

Nope. I'm a very honest person.

Have you ever gotten in a car with people you just met?

Hmm. Probably.

Have you ever been in a fist fight?

Does patients attacking count?? I didn't punch, but I got punched.

Have you ever snuck out of your house?

Yep.

Have you ever had feelings for someone who didn’t have them back?

I think just about everyone has.

Have you ever been arrested?

No. Im from a tiny Town where my dad was a cop, mom was a nurse. So everyone knew me.

Have you ever made out with a stranger?

No I don't think so.

Have you ever met up with a member of the opposite sex somewhere?

Like...in a sexual way? Or like hung out? If so yes to both hah

Have you ever left your house without telling your parents?

Yeah, however I'm a pretty open person. I usually tell my mom where Im going. She raised me as a single mom, and I had a lot of freedom as long as I was open and honest with her. That's just transferred into adulthood.

Have you ever had a crush on your neighbor?

No. But I purposely became friends with an old neighbor cause he had a cute ass dog named Max.

Have you ever ditched school to do something more fun?

Yep. Got busted too haha

Have you ever slept in a bed with a member of the same sex?

Uh huh! It's called sleep overs, duh aha

Have you ever seen someone die?

Unfortunately, that's part of my job. Not everyone gets saved in the ER. Plus in the hospital where I work there is a very large group who has very strict rules about death, so frequently we admit people to die either to the floor if we suspect it'll be a couple days, or the ER if we think it'll be quick. Death can be a beautiful process, or it can be horrific, and traumatizing...just depends how ya look at it.

Have you ever been on a plane?

Yeah quite a few times!!

Have you ever kissed a picture?

Honestly what little girl didn't kiss a picture of Leonardo DeCaprio...

Have you ever slept in until 3?

Bro I'm a mid/nightshifter. Weird sleep schedules are my life.

Have you ever loved someone or miss someone right now?

Weirdly worded question. But yes I have loved, yes I do miss people.

Have you ever laid on your back and watched cloud shapes go by?

Yes!! It's one of my favorites. I also love to watch the stars.

Have you ever made a snow angel?

Yeah!!! It's super fun!!

Have you ever played dress up?

Yeah!!

Have you ever cheated while playing a game?

Queen of attempting to cheat at games and failing miserably 🙋‍♀️

Have you ever been lonely?

Mhmm. Side affects of working away from my family.

Have you ever fallen asleep at work/school?

I'm forever sleepy, so yeah.

Have you ever been to a club?

Yeah couple times!

Have you ever felt an earthquake?

Once as a kid. I don't remember much of it besides it waking me up, and I woke up my mom because I didn't know what it was. I was maybe 7?

Have you ever touched a snake?

I love snakes. They're such cool animals.

Have you ever ran a red light?

That may or may not be why I didn't have a drivers license for 3 yrs.

Have you ever been suspended from school?

Nope 😏 I did get temporarily kicked out of nursing school and fought my way back in though. That's a tale for another time.

Have you ever had detention?

Once, for chewing gum.

Have you ever been in a car accident?

Yeah, nothing serious though. *knocks on all the wood*

Have you ever hated the way you look?

I feel like everyone has, unfortunately.

Have you ever witnessed a crime?

1. I live where I live, it's a regular occurrence. We don't carry a gun for no reason.

2. Used to work in the heart of the ghetto.

3. Used to live 5 mins from there.

Safe to say I've seen a crime or two.

Have you ever pole danced?

One drunken Halloween, yes.

Have you ever been lost?

Physically not emotionally? Yes to both haha

Have you ever been to the opposite side of the country?

I have yeah!!

Have you ever felt like dying?

Yeah, on quite a few occasions I don't talk about.

Have you ever cried yourself to sleep?

Yep.

Have you ever sang karaoke?

Again, drunken Halloweens.

Have you ever done something you told yourself you wouldn’t?

Im sure I have.

Have you ever laughed until something you were drinking came out your nose?

Yes I have, it's not fun.

Have you ever slept with someone at least 5 years older or younger?

Hmm.....I don't actually think so.

Have you ever kissed in the rain?

Yes!!

Have you ever sang in the shower?

Every single time.

Have you ever made out in a park?

Mhmm!

Have you ever dream that you married someone?

Yes, and I'm marrying him in a little over a month.

Have you ever glued your hand to something?

My other hand hahah

Have you ever got your tongue stuck to a flag pole?

No..but not for lack of trying.

Have you ever gone to school partially naked?

Uh, no haha

Have you ever been a cheerleader?

Nah, I was a band geek.

Have you ever sat on a roof top?

Yes, it's a great time.

Have you ever brushed your teeth?

I want to say "who hasn't" but we all know there's those people who haven't...

Have you ever been too scared to watch scary movies alone?

Sometimes, yes.

Have you ever played chicken?

Not huh.

Have you ever been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on?

Probably so.

Have you ever been told you’re hot by a complete stranger?

Yep.

Have you ever broken a bone?

A few yeah. My nose, jaw in 3 places, my tail bone, my ankle.

Have you ever been easily amused?

Have you met me....

Have you ever laughed so hard you cried?

Like 45 mins ago hahah

Have you ever mooned/flashed someone?

Yep, regularly occurs in my house.

Have you ever cheated on a test?

Probably way back in the day, but I don't remember anything specific. I'm a pretty honestly person, so if I don't know it, then oh well.

Have you ever forgotten someone’s name?

Every fucking day of my life!

Have you ever met someone who didn’t seem real?

Not quite sure...?

Give us one thing about you that no one knows.

Once upon a time, I was like 13 or 14. I was hanging out with my mom while she cooked dinner and eating a carrot. I suddenly sneezed. I then had a carrot chunk stuck in my sinuses. I could feel it, but mom didn't believe me. So for 3 days straight I blew my nose constantly. And I finally got the carrot chunk out.

[laryna6]

Magic Scroll Tactics is not a long game, but it’s not a bad thing that it doesn’t wear out its welcome. The last free battle map has a couple optional bosses for those who want to keep playing/more challenge.

Despite having beaten a few now, I’m not the hugest fan of strategy rpgs, but this one was charming enough.

...So instead of any of the JRPG games in the library (I now have 2 (two!) SMT games I’m not playing, IV-2 and PQ2), I go on to another strategy game. Farabel’s gimmick is that you’re going back in time with each battle, so you choose which level-up bonus to lose.

It looks like it’s going to be really short, since starting at level 14/13, I’m going down a level each battle and the battles aren’t that many turns... good thing I got it on sale.

The game wants me to compare myself to how optimally the best players did on each level, but having a multiplayer element in my game annoys me, and it doesn’t actually seem to matter that I’m playing pretty carelessly. In battle 2 I didn’t notice two of my dudes were just hanging out until an enemy attacked them. The title screen also has something about daily challenges on it, but again, do not give me this multiplayer nonsense. Still, I suppose trying to min/max the battles and do the challenges is more content than just a dozen+ battles, so there’s some value on offer.

I kind of wanted something short and brainless (+1 for the games beaten list/I’ve been playing too much solitaire when I can’t think of what to do) to play this evening/in the morning while I’m waking up, so the game is kind of optimal for that.

...I say this and then next battle I get my first game over because I let the king unit die. You need to pretty constantly keep all your units topped off HP-wise, the mook units can take like two attacks before they die and there’s no revive. Still, I respect the game a little more now for giving me a game over. I’m an SMT fan, a game should immediately bitch-slap you if you’re not taking it seriously.

Found an LP to review Stella Glow since I’ll be writing a crossover oneshot with Devil Survivor, and wow, no wonder Atlus USA published it, it’s got a ‘god’ that is very SMT-like, most specifically P3FES, in the worldbuilding. I managed to locate the bit of game with the last bit of info I needed today.

[06love]

“Home” | 3.5k

Summary: Jungkook can’t go back “Home” until he has his soulmate with him. OR Arya never felt like she belonged here and only one person could make her feel a connection in this world, a boy that goes by the name of Jungkook and talks to her about stars. 

Words: 3,595

Genre: Fluff/Angst��| Soulmate!AU

Pairing: Jungkook x O/C

Rooh’s note: I wanted to write a fic like this for quite some time, since I listened to “Home” by Gabrielle Aplin, I hope you enjoy, Thanks for reading, and i had fun writing this piece. Also this is a repost + rewrite. 

“I’m a phoenix in the water,  a fish that’s learned to fly,  and I’ve always been a daughter, but feathers are meant for the sky.  And so I’m wishing, wishing further,  for the excitement to arrive.  It’s just I’d rather be causing the chaos, than laying at the sharp end of this knife.”

Arya remembers her childhood memories always a little confusing, and incomplete, she recalls a day where she was sitting in the sandbox of their neighbourhood, where her parents placed her. They told her “Be nice with the other kids Arya, and you’ll make new friends.” with a smile spread on their faces that she couldn’t yet understand.

Parents usually want their kids to socialize and be accepted by society, and Arya’s parents wanted nothing less, they want their only daughter to have friends, to fit in, even at a young age.

Them moving didn’t help much, Arya was a shy child, she didn’t like having too many people around, for some reason she felt uncomfortable next to other children, at a young age she already knew that she wasn’t like them, didn’t share interest in the same things as them, even though she forced herself to.

She grew up with the need to be accepted into what seemed normal to other peoples eyes. Playing with girl friends, having Ken dolls that met with Barbies, pretending to be drinking tea from an obvious empty cup while talking what seemed grown up conversations never really appealed to her. 

Friends would look at her funny when she said that she didn't understand the way they played, or even tell her that she is ruining all fun and leave her. 

She wouldn't mind, she wouldn't care if they left her alone, she loved to be alone and listen to what the universe had to say, she loved to appreciate the creations and sense the energy they transmitted, for her that was enough. But her parents thought otherwise, like most parents they wanted their daughter to be happy and for them that seemed to imply that she needed friends, so she faked it. She faked to be like them, enjoy the same things they did, she faked so she could be seen as normal. 

“Why are you so quiet?” Julia asked Arya, as they ate lunch on the cafeteria. The latest conversation was about this new boy in school, Jungkook, most girls seemed to think he wasn’t as gross as other boys, they even considered him cute, but reality is that Arya couldn’t care less.

Her thoughts wandered to a bird that was chirping near the open window outside. She found it magestic, so tiny, making such a powerful sound. She was startled when Julia threw a piece of bread as hard as her little arms could to the bird, making it fly away scared.

“What was that for?” Arya asked angry.

“What? That thing was annoying, and it kept distracting me.” Julia shrugged her shoulders.

“That bird was just singing. Why do you gotta be so mean? You’re always mean!” Arya got up from her chair abruptly.

“Arya, what are you-”

“You’re always this awful! I hate being around you, you’re always so mean to other girls and you made Sana and Josy fight that one time. I don’t wanna be your friend anymore!” Arya spurted in Julia’s face.

“It was just a stupid bir-” Julia tried to excuse herself but Arya began walking towards where the bird was, leaving the cafeteria after catching everyone’s attention.

That day she looked for that bird, even after the bell rang, but when a supervisor came to bring her back in she couldn’t fight it. She went back to class and the day passed by slowly, and as all she did was look at the window searching for that bird in hopes to see it again.

By the end of class, as a normal habit her parents came to get her a little late than the other kids, she was often left alone with a supervisor for at least 30 minutes, but that day was different.

A small cute boy, with a blue shirt came around and called for her, she followed him to the playard, and ignored the fact that he knew her name already even though they didn’t formally meet yet.

“What are you doing here?” Arya asked curious.

“I’m waiting for my parents, they are gonna pick me up soon.” Jungkook smiled.

“Why did you call for me?”

“I found what you’re looking for.” He said smiley as he grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the tree. “There” He pointed at the top.

Arya’s eyes searched for a bit and then they laid on the beautiful blue bird she had seen earlier in lunch. Her eyes shined with hope and a smile spread across her lips as the boy stared at her.

From that day on Arya and Jungkook became friends, she’d rather be friends with him than the rest of the girls. (or anyone for that matter)

Soon Arya learned how to deal with being by herself, she would rather not having people around her, than having someone that could remind her how much she could despise the human race. If what her parents wanted was friends, then Jungkook was there for her, he was her friend.

Jungkook was her best friend, but unlike her, he was a very social person. He was constantly surrounded by people, always making new friends, but she didn’t mind.

Just like in middle school, the same thing happened in high school. Jungkook was popular, playing sports, socializing, the perfect example of a kid parents would like to have, filled with friends and living high school to the max.

Arya was a left out, that lonely kid that sat alone in lunch, that girl that had her head stuffed in books most of the time, that girl that didn’t really care what you thought of her, she just wanted you to leave her alone.

Jungkook tried to help her fit in, inviting her to sit with his friends, but he soon realized that that only created an awkward situation for all of them. He sits with Arya most of the time, not because he feels sorry for her only having him as a friend, but because he enjoys her company. It was easier when they were younger, kids didn’t discriminate as much and everyone was the same at some point. 

They hang out most of the times in her place, or his. But everytime she went there, there were other school mates around, making things weird for her.

It’s not that Arya doesn’t like people, she just doesn’t understand them. She tries, God, she really does. Only Jungkook knows how much effort she put into having an actual conversation with one of his friends when he asked Jungkook to introduce him to her.

“How can you do it?” Arya asked as she ate another mouthful of chips. “How do you… fit in like that?” She looked at him in the eyes, as the soft wind blew his hair in that stared night. 

“What do you mean?” Jungkook asked again trying to steal the bag of chips from her, almost as if he didn’t take her question seriously.

“Stop, I'm serious you know… fit in, have lots of friends and at the same time…” She looked at him as he smiled. “at the same time be like me.” 

He didn’t understand the question at first, so he laughed softly and asked “Why can’t i be like you?” with an arched eyebrow. 

“Kook, you’re… you’re the only person in this world i think it’s worth anything. And it’s not just because you’re my only friend, it’s because you get me. Our conversations, our interests, the things you know… I can’t have that with anyone else, and believe me, i’ve tried. You know how much i’ve tried…” Arya said those words looking at the bright night sky, on top of the roof of her house as the cold breeze hit them. “I wish i could be like you, to be able to fit in, to be able to… connect with other people.”

Jungkook looked at her with pity in his eyes, he didn’t mean to, it just happened. Gladly she didn’t notice because he quickly laid back next to her and looked to the dark blue sky admiring the stars.

“What’s your favorite star?” He asked out of the blue.

“You already know what my favorite star is, i won’t tell you for the thousandth time.” she laughed. 

“One day, i’ll take you there.” Jungkook turned to face her, and she did the same. “Write my words, one day i’ll take you there. And you’ll love it. It’s all-”

“Pink and bright. And there’s a river that looks like diamonds shining that goes all the way from the begging of the mountains to the very end.” she completed his sentence. “You’ve been saying that since we were kids, i thought your drug would’ve worn off by now.” she laughed and he followed him laying down and looking tot he sky.

“Do you believe in soulmates?” Jungkook asked, apprehensive.

“I don’t, i find it to be stories to keep love enthusiasts with hope.” She turns to face him. “But, if i’d say they existed, with no doubt you’d be mine. Cause no one else in the world could complement me like you do.” she smiled.

With those words Jungkook smiled as well, and turned to look back at the sky, with hope on his eyes. 

Arya never knew that since that the words she spoke that day, would make things become different.

Graduation will soon happen, and both Jungkook and Arya are glad to leave high school. Arya doesn’t know what she wants to study yet, so she will take a year off, Jungkook on the other hand doesn’t seem to find interest in any of the scholarships he had won through sports. His answer is always “I have other plans.” But he never really reveals the plans.

Arya’s 18th birthday will coincidentally happen on the same day as he graduation day. Jungkook had turned 18 years old months ago, or so he says. He threw a big party for it, Arya was there because he insisted, but she spent most of the time in his room playing video games as he would pop in and out every 30 mins to check if she was ok and bring her snacks.

Jungkook promised Arya a birthday gift, even though she told him numerous time she didn’t want one, he said it was something he had to do, or else.

Lately Jungkook became more protective of Arya than he already was. He went to pick her up before school, and take her home after school, walk her whenever she had to go somewhere. It seemed that he stopped caring about his friends and was focusing on Arya only. She told herself that it’s because he was scared they’d stop being friends when they graduated like some people feared, but she assured him that that wasn’t the case, yet he kept being closer to her, as if he wanted her to know that he’s there, no matter what. And she enjoyed it, every minute of it.

Graduation day finally arrived, and the ceremony occurred like planned. For a lot of surprises, Jungkook’s parents weren’t present, Arya thought she’d at least see them once, but she didn’t. Jungkook himself was MIA. Nothing besides an ‘I'm gonna be late, don’t worry’ text from him was all she got.

They called her name, and she went up there, grabbed what belonged to her, took a picture and walked out. Finally that part of her life was over.

Everyone seemed to celebrate, and all Arya wanted was to know where Jungkook was. She couldn’t find him anywhere. He went missing all day making excuses.

Arya got home to find a text from Jungkook with a location to meet. It wasn’t a odd location, they’ve been there multiple times together to stargaze and pay on old swing sets. So she changed, ate something quick and went to the old amusement park.

As she jumped over the rusty fence, she tried not be caught on by local guards and walked towards the trees near the lake to meet him. She saw him whispering to himself and called for him. “Hey, there you are. I’ve been looking for you all day.” Arya said as she walked towards the bench Jungkook was sitting.

“Hey.” Jungkook greeted, then realized that Arya looked more beautiful than usually.

“Mom put some makeup on me, i thought it looked nice, so i decided to not take it off. Do i look weird?” She asked as she seated next to him, while he followed her with his eyes.

“No, not at all. You look good, I like it.” he smiled.

“You’re still with the graduation costume. You didn’t go home?” She asked him.

“Yeah.. uhm, i didn’t. I was here, thinking.” He looked to the void in front of him.

“Thinking about what?” she asked concerned. 

“About how can I convince you to come with me.” He said still looking to the horizon.

“What do you mean come with you? Where to?”

“Home” Jungkook turned to face her. “I want you to come home with me Arya.”

With those words Arya felt confused, and began softly laughing. She soon realized that Jungkook was being serious because he had a straight face all along.

“What are you talking about Kook? What do you mean ‘Home’?”

“Arya,” He looked her in the eyes “what if i told you, that this is not where we belong, that this isn’t our home? That there’s a place somewhere, where you and i both belong, somewhere where you’d feel comfortable, where you wouldn’t wish to fit in, because that’s where you belong, and people there are just like me and you.” Jungkook’s hand slowly moved to meet hers. “What if i told you you didn’t need to feel like a phoenix in the water or fish that’s learned to fly? You get to be yourself, with me.”

“How do u know those words? I don’t remember telling you that, ever.” She looked at him with mistrust.

“I know those words, because I know you, that’s something you’ve said to me before.”

Arya felt her stomach tighten at Jungkook’s words. “I’ve never done such thing. What are you saying? How did you know that?” She retrieved her hand from his.

“I know it might sound weird, and i understand that. But please listen to me, that’s all i ask of you, to listen to me and try to comprehend. Listen until the end, and then you can make your own decisions, do whatever you want, ok?” He looked at her with hopes for a positive answer, and she granted him.

Jungkook began talking about their origins, that they weren’t human to start, they belonged to the moon, they were moon folks, and had lived there for as long as he remembers, even though they were both still young according to him. He explained that there was an explosion, a mistake that was yet to be explained, but the explosion caused a lot of malfunctions in their world and one of the consequences was that some of them were sent out of their homes to live in nearby stars until everything was fixed.

Both of them were sent to the star Arya considered her favorite now, they lived there for quite some time and decided not to go back, they met new friends, they made a life there, they liked it there and to top that it was all pink —Arya’s favorite color. Somewhere in life Arya got convinced by a friend of theirs to experience a new life, in a new planet called Earth. Jungkook was against it, because for some reason, Earth was one of the few places in universe where the soulmates logic didn’t seem to work or exist for that matter. There was too many distractions, people didn’t seem to care that they were meant to be with someone, they could simply ignore it and force a relationship with someone else. It was against what was written, what was natural and Jungkook didn’t like that.

Jungkook feared for their relationship, but for Arya he accepted the challenge, she wanted something different, Earth had everything they could imagine, and it was unexplored, so they embarked on this adventure.

But there was a malfunction in the ships with the first batch that was sent there, which they were part of. A lot of people lost their memories once they arrived, others disappeared and lost connections to their soulmate (which meant they probably died), in their case, Jungkook lost Arya.

He searched for her for almost 2 years, to find out that she had incorporated into human a child. Once he saw her he knew, his heart beated and he knew it was her, but to see her that defenseless, and dependent bothered him. He watched the family that adopted her for almost a year, and tried talking to her a couple of times to realize she had no memory at all of her past life.

That’s when he decided that he had to do the same, incorporate himself into a human child and grow next to her, protecting her until she was capable of understanding the truth, and try to bring her back. Which bring them to this point, where he’s telling her the truth. 

“So you’re saying, that we used to live in the moon? And you’re my soulmate?” Arya asked still processing information, but before Jungkook could answer she continued. “If that’s true, that would explain why i feel like i don’t belong here, why i always wanted to leave this place, but still.” She looked at Jungkook. “You enjoyed yourself, you loved being here, you made all those friends and you’re telling me you don’t belong here? Tell me Jungkook, how is that possible?”

“I… I lost focus. My goal was to make you trust me again, but you were so closed, I tried to be part of you again, but you wouldn’t let me in, and to know that all we’ve lived, all we went thru together is erased from your memory, it’s something that hurts me inside. I was angry, i was… out of focus.” He turns to look down ashamed. “I tried to forget about you at some point, but I couldn’t. Yes i was always there for you, but i made other friends because unlike you, i didn’t have a family, i was alone. I compelled people to believe i had parents, to give me a house… I lived a fake life for almost 18 years just to reach this point.” He looked back at her, and saw her trying to wipe her tears.

“I lived all this time just to be able to let you know that we’ve had a life together, and i want that back. I want us back.” He reached for her hand, she didn’t hold it back at start. “I want us to go home, to live our lives the way they were…” Jungkook looked at Arya and took a deep breath exhaling tired and anguished while a tear rolled down his cheek. “I want my soulmate back,i want my other half, i want to feel whole again and not broken and empty. And only you can do that. So please, Please Arya” he pleaded. “Please tell me you believe me and you’ll come back with me?” he cries.

Arya’s cries began growing louder, as she pulled Jungkook in for a hug, she cried in his shoulder apologizing, over and over again, sobbing, feeling as guilty as possible.

“I never knew, and I-I’m, I’m so sorry.” She sobs uncontrollably.

“That day when i asked you if you believed in soulmates and you said no, i  thought i’d die. For a split of a second I thought I'd end my own life but then, you said that if you did i’d be your soulmate. Until that moment i was almost out of hope, i had almost given up. But you gave me hope,” He backed up.  “and i couldn’t hold it in anymore, I prepared myself to tell you.” 

She looked at him with tears flooding her eyes and began apologising again. He raised his hands to touch her face, wiping her tears. “Don’t cry my love, it’s not your fault.”

“B-but you were all alone. And I… I didn’t do anything, I had no idea. I’m so, so sorry Kook.” She pouts even harder than she already was, her face red, her eyes puffy and her hair seemed to be everywhere. She looked messy yet Jungkook though she was the most beautiful.

“It’s not your fault, and i don’t really mind anymore, i just want to go home, with you.” His thumb caressed her cheek and she leaned in for comfort while showing a weak smile.

“With you, i’d go anywhere. As long as we’re together, does it matter where we go?” She asked with a smile, and he followed leaning in for a soft kiss, pushing his lips against hers.

Jungkook parted with his eyes still closed, foreheads touching, his hand on Arya’s nape and she whispered, “Let’s go Home”.

He complied with a nod, opening his eyes to look into her deep blue eyes, then whispered with a smile on his lips “Home.” ♡

Feel free to tell me your thoughts on this fic, as I'm always curious to read them and they motivate me into writing more. Thank you for reading~

[heroballzguide]

Hero Ball Z Cheats

Hero Ball Z Guide

Hero Ball Z manual turned into lately released. So test the titles and the descriptions of whatever films you can locate to look if they are selling the video through using the promise of codes. Proper now, due to the fact that this recreation is present day, there are no new coupon codes, promo codes, or other types which have been given away but. Hold checking lower back though, as whilst we discover discounts, we can be the primary to interrupt the news and supply them to you. Make certain to check the comment sections as well, as whilst gamers locate codes, they may publish them there. "[30] another evaluate became published with the aid of italian spaziogames. This evaluate praised storytelling, soundtrack and expolorativeness. Then again, it criticised the sport for being too easy and lacking gameplay. [31] 212fahrenheit overview praised the game for its gameplay, ecosystem and incredible soundtrack. Some other factor of praise is a tale that is open to interpretation. The evaluate also stated that the gameplay is pretty confined. [32] what is your tag? Overview determined gameplay a piece repetitive at instances but referred to that new standards in sport are added in true durations which enables. You will be able to report yourself whereas completing the boring play and replay them over again when needed with most effective one keypress. So find out the fascinating half of, ignore the monotony. Bluestacks script has created an high-quality tale for automating repetitive responsibilities. With a fixed of instructions, some automated duties might be done to execute the movement. You'll be able to installation Hero Ball Z to your android system and revel in it from our web web page, the button below. It's rated for 12+ age with affordable violence. Black fishes had been once white but they came throughout to black mass. It turned them to black and made them aggressive. It additionally turned gray to black. He then initiated the campaign to exterminate white fishes. Hero returns to the dominion of crimson where he meets red queen. They may be attacked through black and forced to overcome a "race" with him. In the long run they escape. Collectively they get to the center of the kingdom wherein crimson queen profits new energy so that they launch attack which pushes black fishes from a local nest. Within the "trade center", you can trade the "union coins" for ssr, sr, "professional piece", and "novice piece". Heroes are to be had in more than one levels; ssr tier, sr tier, and r-tier. Ssr tier and sr tier characters have greater strength than r-tier characters. Maintain merging the tier 10 novices to get random-tier heroes. You could earn superstar coins, celeb coins, rubies, manufacturing boost price ticket, studies cash, and lots of other rewards with the aid of completing the every day quests. Do you like playing cell video games? Enroll in our youtube channel - gaming soul for brand spanking new mobile game videos. This trouble has been constant so guardians who purchased warfare bypass any longer can use specific skip commonly as earlier than. We can apply the differences to guardians who bought war skip before we fixed the issue at the subsequent week preservation. This recreation is created by using joycitycorporation, who also are at the back of the video games like the warfare of genesis and sport of dice. Whilst the sector is in danger, all of the lovely and fantastic heroes will come collectively and keep it from every destruction. For example - growing the wide variety of novices inside the struggle, max wide variety of dispatchable novices, growing offline rewards, extra rushes, and greater. Spend research ability points and max them out. You need to clean a certain level to reach a certain level. In the higher-left nook, faucet the extent badge -> beneath the level bar, you may see the stage that you should clear. Level up and unencumber new functions which includes "drone", "commander", schooling, "type battles", etc. You'll be capable of play the raid mode that offers you coins and union cash. Hearts plans a "prevalent seed" on universe eleven to drain it is energy as he sends enemies throughout universe 6 and three. Vegeta, trunks and the combatants of universe 6 face against android siblings oren and kamin, who eventually fuse into "kamioren" while cooler, now converted into "meta cooler", fights towards cunber in universe 3. the fight on universe 6 is finally taken to universe eleven. Goku arrives on universe 11 with a few manage over extremely intuition. Vegeta manages to defeat kamioren together with his evolved super saiyan blue. When you have any hints, please sense loose to ship it to us at joycity.oqupie.com/portals/812. We will be happy to hear from you. You may now watch up to four advertisements in a row! - overall 60 min auto for complete functionality of this web site it's miles necessary to permit javascript. Right here are the instructions how to enable javascript in your web browser. By checking this box you certify that you are over 13 years of age and confirm that you have read, understood and agree to comply with happygamer's terms of carrier and privacy coverage joycity has announced pre-registrations are to be had for its upcoming cellular sport Hero Ball Z. Primarily based on your region, we suggest that you choose: . Choose the china web page (in chinese or english) for satisfactory website performance. Different mathworks u . S . A . Web sites aren't optimized for visits out of your location. The web page you are seeking out might have been eliminated, had its call changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Stuck on this recreation? Ask a question below and let different gamers solution your question or view solutions to formerly asked questions. If you assume you are an expert then please try to assist others with their questions. It forces the pre-hero protagonist to go back and keep the sector. Check out the opening movie to get a vibe of its world placing. "Hero Ball Z" consists of a extensive kind of characters from joycity's another cellphone hit, sport of dice. Gamers can gather those lovely anime-style heroes, upgrade them, then use them to fight bosses. You can also assume the regular rpg stuff, including the characters' detail kind, their buffs and greater. The simple gameplay requires you to mix heroes with the same tier to generate a more powerful hero. Don't get happy too early whilst you get an sr/ssr, with its 4* form he will most likely be weaker than your 5/6* r's. The game is constantly creating a competition for everything and everywhere. Your first 2 weeks of playing are literally a sprint competition. (after playing some time you realize that the rewards are cheap, but the impulse made you spend in the beginning). Soft-launch/beta i assume? The social media just went active so i assume the events only started with the official launch, assuming data carried over.

[next-lvl]

Majority of my followers know what Wakfu is, but not all know about the game: how many wounds it left in my heart, and everyone else’s. This post isn’t gonna be precisely explaining the wrongs that Wakfu did, I just wanted to mention that, in aftermath, it was a disaster of a game that left its most loyal players hurt, disappointed and immensely sad. I still keep meeting people who love this franchise, but can’t stand the game anymore since it’s.. Changed too much and didn’t stay enjoyable, to say mildly. I’m surrounded by, literally, traumatized veterans who look back at the good old days and shed tears. And I’ve been talking a lot about GW2 recently, not for no reason.

I want you to heal, just like I did. I mean.. I’m still hurt over Wakfu and I’ll stay this way forever, but I found a game where you can feel safe, loved, cared about. Devs in GW2 are humans who talk to us, who put smileys and memes in their posts, who hang out on reddit and ingame. This’s one of the major and striking differences between Wakfu and GW2. I’m still genuinely stunned by my own experience with customer support, I had a few troubles during my 1.5 years in GW2 and the response was not only fast and effective, it was HUMAN AND CUTE. I’m still not over it. Now that I’ve been invited to be a creative partner.. I’m still not over it too. They shower their regular players and content creators in gentle attention and kindness. I cry. During the 5+ years of being the most active and visible artist in Wakfu fandom, literally promoting it with thousands of drawings, I’ve never got a tiniest bit of official recognition. Not even a single placement on official media. When I took part in contests, I never won. Overall it’s been a one-way street. During my first 1.5 years in GW2, I’ve been noticed, picked up by the team, pampered and spoiled to the point of barely believing it’s true. That’s my personal experience, but it should indicate Anet’s general attitude towards the players. They. Do. Care.

I just wanna try and convince more ex-Wakfu players to give GW2 a shot. The two games are different in the visual and core gameplay aspects, yes, transitioning from an isometric 2D turn-based to a 3D, real-time game was somewhat harsh, but boy, how glad I am that I did it.

There’s EVEN MORE TEXT, brace yourselves. :D In GW2, I found everything that I wish was in Wakfu.

GW2 is a true sandbox. You log in, you do whatever the fuck you want. Level your first (second, 12th, 33rd, 68th) char? Grind mobs and dungeons? NO. Run around, look for events, explore, literally everything you do and everywhere you go, gives xp. You can level via crafting! Which, btw, is relevant throughout the entire game, unlike in Wakfu.

You do have dungeons of two kinds, and you CAN farm them if you want, but it’s your deliberate decision. There ARE farms in GW2, but they’re fun, if you’re not trying to get a legendary weapon in a month. I personally like running around with a bunch of random people who are there to FARM events in a specific map, but that happens once every two months.

Said legendary weapons ARE hard to get and yes, they can get you burnt out in no time if you don’t have a concept of a “long term goal”. Leggies are a prestige item, and, just like other prestige items (auras, specific minis, skins, etc), they’re meant to be your ultimate show-off item. People see you and know that you’ve been through.. A lot. BUT. Your hard-earned prestige item is to stay prestige. I assume you know relics in Wakfu? Then you must know what happened to them after a few years.

There’s no devaluing in GW2. Your trophies stay relevant and rare. Your prizes, your exclusive titles, skins, etc stay exclusive. You aren’t losing half of your wealth just because the devs decided to revamp ALL GEAR FOR THE THIRD TIME.

Speaking of the gear, the orange set you get at 80, is endgame gear. GW2 is 5 years old, so that orange gear is. People crafted it on the release and.. It stayed endgame. Yes, there’s also pink gear, which ~5% better than orange and is only needed if you do high lvl fractals or are min-maxing in raids. If you’re casual or just starting, you don’t even have to think about it. But once you craft your set, it stays relevant forever. People’s effort is never shoved up their asses.

There’s no constant carrot-on-a-stick gear upgrades. Level cap is 80 since release and will stay so. The game promotes safety and stability, that’s what attracted me. You take a 2 years break? No problem, you log in and go play. Nothing has lost its value, you don’t feel inferior, you don’t need to catch up to play with your friends.

Which reminded me: there’s a wonderfully done level downscale system. You’re a lvl 80 in a lvl 16 zone? Your stats are auto-adapted so the enemies you fought as a noob are still dangerous, and your reward (xp/gold/materials) is adapted to your true lvl. You go and play anywhere you want, and get fair rewards.

Crafting materials of all levels are also demanded and relevant. Oh yeah, you can run around for hours just gathering wood/ore, familiar to Wakfu players? It’s nice and relaxing until you meet another player. Well, in GW2 all gathering nodes are NOT shared. You see a tree? It’s your tree. That dude who runs up to it won’t steal it from you.

Oh also there’s no kill steal! Which is big, imo. You’re encouraged to play together, to help people kill stuff, to contribute to any event you see around, since everyone gets rewarded equally.

Legendary stability of GW2 servers. Lemme just say: there’s no weekly maintenance. There is. No. Downtime. Even on the big update days, you can download and play pretty safely. If there’s a hotfix, the game KINDLY WARNS YOU that you need to update and you have TWO FLIPPING HOURS to do so. Before you did that, you still can play, finish whatever you were up to.

Everything revolves around player’s happiness and convenience. There are constant quality-of-life updates. Your bags are full of crap? Here, salvage it into materials with two clicks, then deposit into your bank with two clicks (from anywhere in the world), then compact the rest of your shit. Yeah, with two clicks. x’D

There’s wonderful Fashion Wars. The game offers so much customization, and it’s taken so seriously, that it’s one of the endgame aspects. There’s 30000+ achievement points to earn, which are mostly fun and make you go out of your usual way. Dailies? You get 10 points and 2 gold for doing 3 easy tasks that take ~15 minutes.

There’s LORE. There’s fun little interactions all over the world. You just did an event? Stay here and listen, probably npcs will say/do something and start another event, logically following the previous one. The world lives and breathes. You can just walk around and observe. You’ll learn so much. And of course, there’s always a good cause to laugh. Dialogues/reactions are just hilarious sometimes.

Regarding the lore: there’s a so-called personal story which accompanies you up to lvl 80, then there’s “living world”, smaller events and single maps being rolled out every once in a while - so far there’s 2 seasons available, and 1 being “historical”, not playable anymore. In that season, they fucking crushed the main capital city. It changed forever. It was an epic event, which I missed, but watched people’s videos later. Then season 2, then HoT, then season 3, and now we’re waiting for PoF, second expansion. The updates have picked a nice pace and are frequent now.

There’s just so much to do. Just go, dive into the world and drown forever. :3c And meet me on the bottom. x’DD

GW2 feels different from Wakfu, but I found similarities for myself. It’s a sandbox after all, and later endgame has a lot of strategy. GW2 is never tank-and-spank. You just, literally, can’t facetank shit here. You gotta use your skills wisely, time your dodges, play with traits/passives until it all flows together. You’ve got a HUGE BUILD FREEDOM. There’s 9 classes, each having at least 3 defined roles, with more variations. You don’t just go ranger (oh archer it’s like a cra rite??) and do pew pew from max distance. Well, yes, you have a bow and can pew pew.. Or you can be a melee fighter, you can be a full blown healer/support.. As a ranger, yes.

I’ll be wrapping up now, I swear. GW2 is true f2p. Which of course does have a few restrictions (can’t trade or use map-chat), but you can get to 80, gear up and explore to your heart’s content before you decide to pay. I personally played for 5 months, every day, before I bought HoT.

Why’d you buy an expansion? More story, more maps, new class traits, gliding in HoT and mounts in PoF. The expansion and living world content has been constantly improving, visually, mechanically and lore/writing-wise.

Other than that, there’s a gemstore offering cosmetic and convenience items (gems can be bought for cash OR ingame gold). There are infamous rng boxes, but none of those are p2w. GW2 is oriented at the western consumer, which means, yeah, they know that we hate p2w and they’ll never do that to us.

*breathes out* I had to get that off my chest. I wanna talk about GW2 forever, but it’s exhausting to do one-on-one. :P Hopefully someone’s still reading this!

Now lemme remind you that now I have those partner links, if you use this to create a new account and play for free (for an hour or two months? w/e), or this to buy an expansion, I’ll get paid a bit. Not much, but it definitely helps!

And I was gonna write this wall of text regardlessly of the partnership one day, now I just have more incentive. x’DD Plus, we’re gonna have a beta weekend on 11-13 august, where you can preview the second expansion for free! It’s a perfect timing to write this post and try convincing you. You’ll just need a f2p account, and you’ll be given a lvl 80 boost and whatnot for that beta weekend. I’m not sure yet, but I assume you WILL. Just please register using my link above, so that I get paid for the two hours I spent on this post. :D

[lucianhuntress]

FFXV Characters playing World of Warcraft Part 1/3 Headcanons

I know I was supposed to start posting my writings next week, buuuuut.... World of Warcraft is a dear game to me even though I don’t play it anymore, still this was a blast to write! This will be posted in three parts, first one containing the chocobros! And it couldn’t have been possible without @glaive-eve‘s help! Gotta love our story brainstorming :3 Also this is my first-ever-published writing. I’m slightly nervous.

Second Part Third Part

Hopefully you enjoy <3

Noctis Lucis Caelum Havoc | Demon Hunter

Noctis enjoys double jumping, gliding and dashing.

Oh and he will dash. A lot.

He is eager about getting the best loot possible for his demon hunter. He might even be slightly aggressive over loot, shouting: “You don’t need that!”

He has min-maxed stats and his gear is perfectly enchanted and gemmed.

Noctis wants to be the loot master and probably whispers about it to Ignis at the start of every raid.

He still hasn’t made any progress towards being the loot master.

He won’t be the first in his guild to get a legendary item. Nor the second, nor the third.

Noctis will be acting salty towards those who get legendaries before him.

He still sits at the top of the damage meter — Despite the lack of legendaries.

He won’t move out of boss mechanics, unless it’s a sure oneshot. He is just tunnel visioning the damage and there is no arguing about it. He won’t take orders if they include moving around.

Because he needs to be on the top of those DPS meters. He won’t accept the second or the third place. It has to be the first.

And he will literally drain all the heals and cooldowns.

If the group he is in keeps wiping at same boss over and over again, he is ready to ragequit.

But he won’t.

Noctis really wants to unleash the hatred of ten thousand years. Illidan is so proud of him.

His favourite spot to go AFK is the Stormwind Keep, if he is playing on the Alliance and Grommash Hold, if playing on the Horde.

Makes him feel like a boss.

His fishing skill is maxed out.

And he has all sorts of cool fishing hats.

He won’t be sharing any of the fish he has caught though, and Ignis has to literally bribe him to share some of them with the guild.

Sometimes he pet battles against Prompto, if he is ultimately bored.

His in game title is Salty.

He will be playing a male night elf or a male blood elf, depending on the faction he is playing at the moment. 

Prompto Argentum Beast Master | Hunter

Prompto chose his class just for the pets.

Cute pets.

He even takes S.E.L.F.I.E.s with his pets.

Prompto has his S.E.L.F.I.E. -camera bound on his keyboard.

He is the definition of a hunter, which means he spends a lot of time being dead and waiting for resurrection.

Why walk, when you can get a resurrection?

And he dies often.

Maybe because he barrage pulled the whole room?

Barrage is his thing and it’ll take a lot of persuasion skills to get him change out of it.

He is almost as greedy about loot as Noctis, but he doesn’t really care about the secondary stats.

If it has agility on it and a bigger item level than his previous one, he wants it.

Everything is hunter loot.

It annoys the shit out of Noctis, when he is trying to tell Prompto what he should be equipping.

His profession is engineering and he likes crafting all those mechanical squirrels for his own, personal amusement.

He also greatly enjoys pet battles!

And his pet battle team is well trained.

He even beats Noctis in the pet battles.

When he is playing World of Warcraft, he is barely ever AFK. Prompto will keep on jumping around the town, while waiting for something to happen.

And maybe spam the guild chat for company.

He is eagerly asking people to join him on battlegrounds, looking for raids and dungeons, when he is bored.

The guild chat will fall silent instantly.

Not that he is a bad player. He knows how to do damage.

He can be quite heavy company from time to time.

Prompto was once given a special task —  Fit for a hunter. He needed to soak some damage during a boss fight.

Never again.

He likes leveling up alts, but gets tired with them easily and his character selection is full of low level characters he won’t touch again.

Maybe because someone camped him while he was leveling up.

Prompto changes his character’s hairstyle at least once a day.

His title would be the Zookeeper or the Field Photographer.

And his character would be a female. Night elf, if Alliance and blood elf, if Horde.

Gladiolus Amicitia Arms | Warrior

Gladio has an off spec for tanking, incase one tank is missing from the raid.

Tanking isn’t his favorite job to do, but he’ll do it without complaints and handles the role well.

He is usually charging right into the battle, when the pull timer is somewhere between one and zero.

Whirlwind is his thing.

He is slightly annoyed at the fact that he doesn’t really get healed.

Somehow he still survives and is usually the last man standing, if the encounter ends up being a wipefest.

And he’ll make sure everyone knows that he survived, again.

He’ll definitely twit Noctis or Prompto, if either of them died earlier during the fight.

“Noct will pay everyone’s repairs!”

Because Gladio does actually handle the game mechanics.

He’ll cheer everyone up with his motivational speeches.

“We can do this! Just 10% more!”

Occasionally he does arena, but he isn’t as passionate about it as Ardyn though they team up from time to time to get some honor points.

Gladio also loves the Brawler’s Guild.

He spends his free time there.

Or practicing his rotation on dummies while waiting for queue to pop.

Iris really hates it, when he smashes his keyboard while doing his warrior rotation. She can hear it all the way to her room.

It must be a warrior thing.

Inscription is his character’s profession and he eagerly volunteers to mill all the herbs in the guild bank for free.

He also loves crafting those Steamy Romance Novels.

He will often transmog his characters in silly non matching outfits, but he also has transmog sets if he needs to get more serious about it.

Badass warrior tiers sets look cool.

Battlelord is a cool title for him.

Gladio will be playing male dwarf, if on the Alliance side and male tauren, if on the Horde side.

Because dwarves are badass.

Ignis Scientia Subtlety | Rogue

At first, he wasn’t interested in gaming, but Noctis had him change his opinion of World of Warcraft.

He actually started playing, he began reading all the possible tips and guides online.

Now he knows everything.

Ignis could do his rotation in his sleep and he still practices it.

He was voted to be the Guild Master, when Noctis, Prompto and Gladio decided to form a guild of their own.

He secretly enjoys being the Guild Master.

He also became the raid leader due to his knowledge of raids and tactics. He knows exactly what classes to use in a boss fight and will instruct anyone if needed.

Ignis has to reassure Noctis and others that the key to beating a boss isn’t a DPS race.

He is often so immersed in his raid leading role, that he has his Cheat Death on cooldown constantly.

And he is also dead quite often.

If he happens to be the cause of a raid wipe, he’ll literally send an apology letter to everyone participating in the raid.

He is the loot master despite Noctis’s protests. He is also naturally a member of the loot council as his knowledge is invaluable.

But Ignis will gladly pass the loot for Noctis if he’s whining that he hasn’t gotten any loot again.

Ignis can often be found standing in the Auction House with a campfire placed next to him.

He knows his business and makes sure that the guild bank has enough money.

He has cooking skill maxed out.

And he is always looking out for new recipes!

Will desperately beg Noctis to share some of the fish he has caught.

He will be the one crafting all the buff foods and feasts for the raids.

Ignis loves to earn all the raid and dungeon achievements. He’ll make sure there is an event in the calendar for the guild to attempt the most hardcore ones.

So he does have all sorts of fancy titles and mounts from those achievements.

But he still uses the title he worked the hardest for: The Insane.

He also has the Loremaster, because he needed to know everything.

His characters would be a male worgen, if on the Alliance side and a male troll, if on the Horde side.

[monstrous-hourglass]

Guild Wars 2 Beginner’s Survival Guide

In light of the new expansion, I see people dipping their toes into the game, so here are a few tips for new players who want to give free to play a spin.

This is focusing on PvE. You don’t gain access to WvW (world vs world, the big group pvp content ) until you are level 60 and there isn’t much to say about regular PvP. If you plan to go into those, I suggest checking Metabattle for some of the popular builds.

Character creation

Everything starts with making your character. Keep in mind that you can’t change your race or class later in the game. Your race and to some degree the choices you make during character creation determine your personal story and give you one race specific elite skill, but otherwise have no bearing on gameplay. Your class determines gameplay, but have minimal effect on story.

You can try your profession in the PvP lobby

There is no traditional levelling in pvp so whenever you enter the lobby (crossed swords icon on the top left menu bar) you get access to all your skills and core specialisation trees as well as vendors you can get every weapon type from. If you aren’t sure which profession you want to play, hop in there and punch out a golem or three. There are even npcs you can duel for practice.

I wouldn’t recommend jumping into pvp right away, at least not until you know with confidence what each and every one of your skills do.

What profession to pick?

If you are looking for easy classes to start with, Necromancer (good survivability, can solo a lot of small group content with minions), Ranger (good mobility, good survivability with pets) and Warrior (decent balance between tankiness and damage, can get out of a lot of tight spots with stun breaks) are a good in that regard, but be warned they are not the most interesting things to play.

End of the line, play what feels the most fun. In PvE neither gear nor build matters much.

Gearing and levelling up

Should you worry about min-maxing your skills/gear/etc. while levelling up? No, not at all.  Just use the highest level gear you find, it really isn’t worth wasting your hard earned coin on trying to buy X type of weapon or Y type of armor.

You unlock specialisations and utility skills with Hero Points that are earned in the open world. If I can suggest something, spend your point on utilities first, you’ll get more mileage out of those than the passive traits from specialisation.

Any utility that gives a passive speed buff is nice to have. So are skills that apply swiftness or remove conditions and debuffs.

Tips for rush levelling

Try to stay in your level appropriate area. That way you get good amount of experience for discovering the map and you can kill the mobs around you with relative ease.

As you move through the map, only do the hearts/events that involve killing mobs to make the best use of your time.

You will see ambient creatures with yellow names that won’t become hostile until you hit them. The game has a system that gives extra experience if a mob hasn’t been killed in a long time, so finding mobs in remote places and killing yellow mobs is a good way to speed up levelling

Don’t bother with veteran mobs. You might think the added difficulty will translate into more experience gained, but they are really not worth the effort.

If you have the materials, you can get a few guaranteed levels out of crafting.

(Only applies for the maps in Orr, but there you are better off ignoring mobs. Exploring the map and doing the occasional group event will give you more experience than chasing the zombies around.)

Salvaging extra equipment

If a mob drops something you can’t use or it’s worse than what you are wearing, you can salvage it for base materials. Equipment is rated through colors (white for the worst, blue, green, yellow, orange, pink, purple towards best) and you have different tiers of salvage kits you can use.

Don’t waste expensive salvage kits on low quality gear. Master’s for high level yellow or orange gear to increase the drop rate of expensive materials (ectoplasm, Hardened Leather, Elder Wood), Fine or Basic for everything else.

 Exploring the world

You will start in the beginner zone corresponding to your race   - Caledon Forest (sylvari), Metrica Province (asura), Qeeunsdale (human), Wayfarer Foothills (norn) and Plains of Asford (charr). You will have one Waypoint (your way of quick travel) unlocked in each zone, so if you bore of wandering in the zone you started in, you can go explore others.

Your personal story starts at level 10, till then you don’t have to worry about anything and if you are having fun wandering the world, that personal story won’t go anywhere.

The game really builds on exploration - finding new areas, Points of Interests, Vistas and new Waypoints will all award a good amount of experience, discovering a whole zone always gives Achievement Points and a chest with rare goodies. Also you can always stumble into a dynamic event.

Dynamic events and Heart quests are the two most common things to do in the zones. Dynamic events can happen almost anywhere, at any time. They are usually fun to do and give good amount of experience and they can have an effect on the area. For instance, if you fail to protect a bridge from a bandit attack, that bridge will stay in ruins until it’s rebuilt.

Heart quests are static, more of the standard mmo quests. They are simple to do, count towards map completion, award karma (a unique currency) and let you access to a trader when done.

If you are missing just the one POI or Vista on a map or you want to find the Jumping Puzzle for a change of pace, you can use the Interactive Map of Tyria to check what is where.

Jumping Puzzles are unique challenges where you have to climb an obstacle course - hop up the side of a mountain, climb a set of ruins, jump along the leaves of a giant tree, run around the roofs of Lion’s Arch. They can be simple and straightforward or very challenging, if you have any fondness of platforming you are probably going to enjoy most of them.

Gathering is important. Try to have the highest level gathering equipment you can get and gather all the wood and ore you can. Vegetables and herbs aren’t all that important, but wood and ore are your best friends. They are needed for crafting and sell for a fair bit of coin.

Things to avoid in the open world

You can stumble into Champions even if you are on your own. They are group content, avoid them if you can. They usually stay in one place or patrol with a very short leash, so if one of them starts to chase you, run for your life.

If you see a group gathering to tackle a Champion or they are actively fighting one, you can join in. The more the merrier and they drop decent loot.

Veteran and Elite enemies aren’t as tough as Champions, but don't underestimate them. Elites usually turn up for events so you won’t see them all that often, but Veterans can turn up almost anywhere and they are not to be underestimated. They are significantly tougher than regular mobs and take forever to kill on your own. Avoid them if you can.

World Bosses. Not much needs to be said. Depending on difficulty they can drop some very awesome loot, but take huge, organized groups to kill. Most of them either spawn on a timer (you can check the Event Timers or the wiki if you are curious) or at the end of a quest chain. If you run into one and don't see at least fifty people clobbering it to death, turn around and come back later because on your own, you won’t even put a dent in it.

A note on dungeons

Dungeons are fun and a very good way to get good level 80 gear. However until you are in the end game or you have a group of friends who run with you, you should stick to the story paths. It’s a good introduction to the dungeon mechanics. Regular dungeon paths are more suited to experienced players. If you decide to join a group of random people (you can access an LFG feature through your contacts menu to see if there are any open groups) then it’s best to ask them if they mind an inexperienced player tagging along.

A suggested route through the zones

This is just a suggestion, but I heard of people dropping the game because they never moved past the starting areas and grew bored, so here's a possible, no frills walkthrough if you want to keep constantly moving as you level up.

Brisban Wildlands (15-25) Accessible through Caledon Forest, Kessex Hills or Metrica Province. After your starting area of choice, you should take a stroll through here. It’s a big map with a lot of things going on, but most important because it connects to the Silverwastes. The Silverwastes is a level 80 map and hands down the best place to earn gold in Core Tyria. Also it’s the gateway to the Heart of Thorns maps if you decide to buy the expansion.

Gendarran Fields (25-35) Accessible through Queensdale and Snowden Drifts. Not that big of a deal on its own, but at level 35 even you get access to Lion’s Arch which is the big, central hub city. Very important.

Here you have a choice to go Harathi Hinterlands (35-45) which is bit of a dead end to the north, take an asura gate to the Fields of Ruin (30-40) and move up to Blazeridge Steppes (40-50) which gives access to the Shatterer World Boss or head south to Lornar’s Pass (25-40) and Dredgehaunt Cliffs (40-50) which has the Sorrow’s Embrace dungeon.

Bloodtide Coast (45-55) should be the next stop after this, just south of Lion’s Arch. The main event of this map is Triple Trouble, the first Hardcore World Boss you can encounter. If you ever catch GW2 Community organizing a TT run, I suggest you tag along because they have a great success rate slaying the beast and it has a chance of couching up very high tier (ascended) gear or even a miniature.

Sparkfly Fen (55-65) is next, with another Hardcore World Boss, Tequatl the Sunless. He’s easier to slay than TT, and he can drop unique ascended weapons and a mini (also a spoon. May the spoon be with you).

Mount Maelstrom (60-70) might sound like a detour, but it has the Crucible of Eternity dungeon in the top right corner and it’s a popular resource farming map so you can pick up a couple of golds worth of ore or wood on the way.

There is only Orr left to do, Straits of Devestation (70-75), Malchor’s Leap (75-80) and Cursed Shore (80). You need to come here for the last leg of the story quests anyway and there’s the Arah dungeon. Primary source of Ancient Wood in the Core maps and they don’t have heart quests. Drawbacks include the zombies. You are walking neck deep in zombies and they aren’t the most pleasant things to fight en mass.

Alternatively you can just ignore Orr altogether and go up to Frostgorge Sound (70-80) (you can get here from Wayfarer Foothills) that has both a World Boss (Claw of Jormag) and a dungeon (Honor of the Waves). Also talking polar bears.

Either way, you are now level 80, congratulation. If you got this far, you probably know enough of the game to decide where to go next (start hoarding achievement points, do map completion, join a guild, get rich and fashionable, become a pvp/wvw god, etc.) and if you like the gameplay enough to keep playing and invest in the expansions or not.

I hope you found this at least a little useful. If you have any question, throw me an ask and I’ll gladly answer if I can. Have fun playing!

[cyberkevvideo]

Rolling Stats for TTRPG. My Grief and My Found Solution

I’m going to be controversial for a moment here. And I’m going to release a little bit of pent of frustration and trauma here as well. Cleanse the spirit, I suppose.

This link may not be anything new to certain readers, but when I saw Justisaur’s 27-25-23 ability score generation, I knew I finally had an answer to all my issues. https://sites.google.com/site/justisaursdd/tar-pit-dugout/justisaurs27-25-23abilityscoregeneration

You roll three times using whatever stat generation method you prefer (3d6, 4d6, 4d6 drop the lowest, etc). Then in order, you subtract the first number from 27, the second from 25, and the third from 23. If any of the numbers are higher than 18, you re-scale them 1 to 1 so that one is 18.

For example, say you rolled a 5 on the first roll using 3d6. Subtracting that from 27 gives you 22. That’s higher than 18 by four points. Re-scale 1 to 1 and the 5 becomes a 9 and the 22 is now 18. You continue this for the second roll with 25 and the third roll with 23. You then add +2 to one number that is 16 or less. So if your numbers ended up being 9, 18, 15, 10, 17, 6 you could put the +2 to four of the numbers. Maybe that 6 could be a 8 instead. No matter what, your total is never less than 77 points. Considering standard array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) is 72 points that’s pretty good. There are a couple of variants in the link too. Lower points for different systems and editions (eg. 3d6 systems suggest 25-23-21 instead), and that’s fine. It’s tailored that way for a reason.

I’ll hide some of this for those that don’t care about my gaming past and my issues with rolling stats over point buy, not that I don’t understand people’s gripes about that. I’ve been there too.

I’m tired of blogs who go on and on about “the right way” to build RPG characters. This has gotten even worse since 5e has become a main staple of the gaming community. Even Stephen Colbert has called out the new rules of “4d6 drop the lowest” vs “3d6 in a row” as (paraphrased) ‘rules for babies’. People go on about how rolling stats is what “real gamers do”. That it worked back in the day, and it works now, because you’re not too good to roll stats, and then use slurs of all kinds to put down today’s players who like point buy or prefer not to play games with unoptimized stats. There’s nothing wrong with that. Granted, I’ve done my share of games where I too am tired of seeing the variant human fighter or barbarian Str 20, Dex 16, Con 16, Int 7, Wis 7, Cha 7, and that’s if you allow 20 point buy in Pathfinder. At least in D&D numbers start at 8 and you can’t go any lower. I know. It sucks to see a group built with similar numbers. But that’s easy to get rid of. Just make a house rule that stops people from dumping stats. “Oh, but having low stats is the very primordial fabric of D&D. You don’t want a perfect character. Flaws are fun.” Then what’s the difference between rolling those numbers and getting them organically? Because they purposely min-maxed? Oh, no. Call the Feds. No matter what, people are going to optimize. I have personally seen people train themselves to roll 3d6 and 4d6 so that they almost always roll 18′s. Yet that’s perfectly fine. Nothing’s really said about that at all. But min-maxing stats is where people draw the line. Okay, a few DMs/GMs will go “No, no, you actually roll those dice.” One way or another people will optimize for their own benefit. That will never stop. But what’s worse is the outcome. I personally hate stat rolling because of bombastic trauma I received for having such poor numbers. When you’re in a group that constantly ridicules you because you once again rolled the stats of “Bob the Slow” and when everyone else is Hercules and Thor, the game isn’t fun to play. But don’t you dare voice your opinion because you’re called weak, made fun of more for being a child, etc, etc, etc. That you should thank your lucky stars because you were “blessed” with so many RP stats. Just look at those 7′s. Those are lucky 7′s. So much RP potential compared to those five 18′s everyone else has. Meanwhile everyone, including the DM/GM is mocking you. And yes, I understand that not all groups are like that, but I’ve talked with other people who’ve been there. Maybe not to the same degree, but it was still bad. Also, a lot of groups won’t force you to play characters that don’t have an average modifier of >1, but there are others that make you play it as rolled and you just have to hope for a quick death.

But why don’t you just leave the group then? In my case, I did. More than one group too. Then I came to my current group and it does point buy. It was great. But as other people have mentioned when I talk about that group, it’s apparently equivalent to an abusive relationship that I need to leave. So there’s that, I guess.

I’ve seen posts from professional players, publishers, and writers who all hate point buy, and will say right off the hop that they will not allow anyone to do point buy and then go on a rant about how much they hate it, and why. Usually for the reasons I said above which are easily counteracted. Then when I bring up my arguments I get the same counter argument of “just leave” or “play online”. Yeah, no. It’s not that easy. I’ve done the online thing. It usually peters out after a couple of months, at the most. My computer’s too old to properly run Roll20, and I live in a small city with a very limited number of gamers. I had actually given up gaming for years because it was that hard to find groups, or to care about gaming.

But, this post is not all about being a Debby Downer and putting down rolling stats and saying point buy is better, because sometimes point buy isn’t. It’s what most pre-written modules accommodate for, and that’s fantastic. No, I’ve come to learn of a wonderful new way of rolling stats, and the only people I’ve come to find who hate it are those who want to min-max as heavy as possible with point buy, or have learned to “fake roll” their solid 17-18 stat scores. This makes it even better in my mind.

This was shown to me by another person who was tired of people hating on point buy unnecessarily and even called out older gamers for trying to gatekeep the younger generation. No surprise that person was attacked relentlessly, but some people accepted the find and would consider using it for those who would prefer point buy because they have a major fear of rolling terribly and being their own “Bob the Slow” who might be openly ridiculed by their group.

But Justisaur’s way of doing things? That’s huge to someone like me who’s rolled poorly in the past, and still terrible with numerous d6. Considering I had rolled three 7′s with my one character, I’d have two 18s and a 16, and one of those 7s would have become a 9. And that’s not even including the +2 that I can add. That would have made all the difference in the world back then.

I don’t usually agree with most GMs out there. I don’t even agree with how Matt Mercer does his characters (70 points for stats minimum instead of 72). But more often than not it’s because they’re old school and despite the change of editions they won’t adjust to the changes and feel their way still works. Which, for rolling, if you ALSO add in that your character has the minimum point buy that the system is made for (3.5e 28 pts starting at 8; PF 15 pts starting at 10; 5e 27 pts starting at 8) then fine. Monsters straight out of their monster manual/bestiary, especially in Pathfinder and 5e, are designed for 4 players with that point buy equivalent.

Side Rant: This brings me to another issue. Rolling stats and having 3-4 players with god stats compared to other players, means that you have to adjust combat encounters for the god tier characters, making it way more difficult for the average or low tier players. But that’s basically it. /rant

So, I feel a little better writing all of this, and I very much endorse Justisaur’s way to roll up stats. No one’s god tier, everyone has 77 points, and you still have the “role play” stats that you’re supposed to be proud of.

One final thing to say about this. The fact that you get 77 points is something a little nostalgic for me, and it’s kind of why I’d consider adding an additional +2 to one of the stats (probably to any number less than 10). In the early 2000′s, our local convention used to do 3.5e D&D tournaments with home made characters. They were called Monte Halls. Any class and race from the Player’s Handbook, and you were a specific level based on the scenario, but you always had 80 points to put in your stats with no number being higher than 18. I found this kind of reminiscent of that.

[maddiebiscuits]

Maddie’s Big Gigantic Breath of the Wild Write-Up Where I Talk About Things I Like and Things I Didn’t Like

And regrettably, there are many things I did not like. But that doesn’t make this any less of a fantastic game that I enjoyed - I just wanted to put all my thoughts down in one spot. And yes, there’s spoilers.

--------------------------------------| Things I Like | ----------------------------------------

You can read any review for the game and that’s pretty much this section. There’s not much to say about the core game that hasn’t already been said, dozens and dozens of times, by professional or at least more knowledgeable game reviewers and critics out there.

Breath of the Wild (BOTW) is a big return to the uttermost classic Zelda feeling, of being a plucky hero in a big world that’s yours to traverse and discover, and get through on your wits and skills alone. But I’d actually argue that BOTW does the sense of open world and exploration far better than any other Zelda game comparison, not for the size of the maps (and man oh man they are big) but in that it gives you all the tools you need to explore within the first area and then kicks you out the door into the world. Any and all Zelda games, including the first, regardless of how “open” and non-linear you think they are, have a formula in that to progress through certain points, you must find an item that allows you to do so. BOTW dismisses that notion entirely and teaches you the core game mechanics and gives you the tools to explore wherever you want after the first area, and that’s a good thing. I spent the first several hours (upwards of a collective 20 or so) getting lost and just exploring, cooking food, finding side quests, fighting monsters, scaling mountains, and in a big way that’s sort of how the game is intended to be played. It’s full of creatures to hunt or befriend, hills to snowboard down on your shield, an expansive and hilarious physics engine to exploit, NPCs to meet and quests to be found and completed.

I like the provinces on the map, they’re either classic Zelda locations or call-backs to places from past games that weren’t always in Hyrule (large Majora’s Mask vibes, which makes sense, as this game takes place within the Child Era timeline). Even places that seemed the same at first ended up having subtle or severe differences, and of course the crisply-rendered graphics make the world vibrant, bright and inviting. While I miss the big orchestral scores I’m used to from other big console Zelda games, the subtle atmospheric music ended up being very nice and tonally appropriate, with familiar tunes sneaking in here and there in fun and sometimes beautiful ways.

NPC designs are unique, expressive, and full of character. Towns and hubs have a real sense of being lived in, with their own culture and way of life. Locations have their own passive dangers and benefits that make the world feel exciting and treacherous, and you can take any kind of approach to all kinds of situations. You can make special buff food or elixirs (one of the most fun things to do because I love watching the little food bits jump around in the pot) to brave the elements or give yourself extra bulk, or you can wear specialty armor or clothing, or do both. You can dye most outfits too, and tame and register your own horses and customize them. While a part of me misses the iconic green garb, being able to traverse Hyrule on a jet-black steed decked out in skulls and tattered leather while my Link was adorned with sleek black armor and cloak is kind of the best (and you can get the garb later, and then just build a custom green outfit yourself, which is how I went into end-game) Any weapon is fair game to wield as well, which was another part I greatly enjoyed and gave an added sense to exploration and that “get by on what you can find” survival aesthetic the game provides.

There really is a kind of subtle, almost accidental thoughtfulness to this game’s incarnation of Link. The background plot of the game describes, shows, and in some areas at least implies that Link was not a plucky hero from humble beginnings that the series is used to - Link was a prodigy in BOTW, a son of a proud and excellent knight who was to follow in his father’s footsteps to defend the kingdom and the royal family. Since he was a child he was groomed for this roll, despite the stress it caused him, until he became a trained and powerful warrior, even going so far as becoming the knight appointed to Princess Zelda, and wielding the Master Sword. He was the Hero from the beginning and was raised and trained his whole life to fulfill that role.

And he failed.

For all intents and purposes, Link in BOTW more or less dies (well, it’s implied he’s just unconscious and on the brink of death, but for my joking need to continue this “Link is the Chosen Undead” Dark Souls joke, yeah, he died). All the pomp and circumstance and careful, strict training surrounding his life ended up meaning nothing in the final grand scheme against Calamity Ganon. And this narrative carries not just to Link, but to the other cast of characters and Hyrule as a whole - years and years of careful planning and preparation was not what was needed to defeat Ganon.

The game starts with Link being resurrected, with no memory of what happened 100 years ago and nothing to his name but a shirt and some shoes (and the Sheikah Slate I guess). But it’s this Link, stripped of everything, who has to cross the wilds and adventure, working his way up from scratch, completing test after test and trial after trial laid out by the ruined Hyrule and the ancient Sheikah sages in their shrines, who reclaims the Master Sword, earns the green garb (or doesn’t - you only get it if you complete all 120 shrines, which I think fits tonally because I wouldn’t exactly dub a guy who failed the first time a hero until he’s been thoroughly re-tempered for the task) and defeats Ganon. It’s not a bunch of strict, stately training given to a person who’s told their destiny from a young age and forced immediately to live up to it that makes a hero in Zelda games - it’s the plucky adventurer coming from little, courageously taking on feats bigger than them for the good of Hyrule and the people within it, working up to the final encounter.

Hyrule and the NPCs you meet echo that tone as well. It’s a world that’s had to pick up the pieces since Ganon re-emerged and laid waste to their world. Descendants and spiritual successors of champions from the past risking themselves for the good of their people, unprepared and outmatched compared to what they’re up against, but coming out on top with determination and follow-through in the end. The main story of BOTW has a bittersweet, but ultimately powerful and true-to-form Zelda tale that, on top of the immersion and pure fun the game provides is why it’s so easy to see why people have rated it so highly.

Unfortunately, extended playtime with this game revealed a ton of flaws and personal nitpicks, because despite what these scores claim, no game is perfect, and neither is BOTW.

----------------------------------| Things I Didn’t Like | -----------------------------------

BOTW gets...repetitive, and at times annoying and even vacuous. I’d find a lot of really cool places during my exploration of Hyrule, but found that a lot of them just ended up being set-pieces to the world, with maybe a Korok hiding there (or maybe not, which was just super frustrating, climbing to a high mountain peak to find nothing up there). The game became measurably more enjoyable when I upgraded to full three stamina wheels, which took a lot of my early shrine upgrades to do, and that ugly, ugly little green wheel just constantly reminded me of how much I loathed it in Skyward Sword. I’d climb and climb and climb, usually not finding much of anything at the top later into the game. I’d find a set of interesting ruins, clear out the same enemies I’d fought 200 other times during the game, and not really find anything of interest within them. And god the enemies are repetitious. the same three core enemies in different colours, the same four or so core world bosses in different colours, the same Lynel and Guardians in different colours with ridiculous health bars that hit for 12 hearts a strike to impose the illusion of difficulty, when you end up just hitting them with ancient arrows, or using upgraded Stasis on them, or some other cheap trick because the combat and the difficult-to-time parrying and dodge/flurry attack prompts are not fun to activate (and if you fight them “properly”, especially the Lynels, get ready to run through all your resources).

When I go to a new area I want to see new enemies. Where are things like...I don’t know, Gibdos? Redeads? Poes? Darknuts? Skulltulas, Deku Babas, Gohmas, Armos, Dodongos, Aeralfos, Peahats, Likelikes SOMETHING ELSE besides these damn Lizalfos that keep JUMPING AROUND. I had one amazing encounter with a serpent dragon on an icy mountain peak, and had thought that I would have similar awesome encounters with the other two dragons in the game. Turns out the other two just sort of float around in locations and you don’t do anything with them except try to shoot them to farm items, no special encounters. Why.

I’d find a weapon I’d love but it would break quickly, so I ended up forming this habit of hoarding good weapons, bows, and shields, thinking I’d have to save them for later for fear they’d break, then ran into a problem where I was constantly getting showered in weaponry and had to play min-max on their attack numbers to decide what I was taking with me and what I wasn’t. I’d run into Koroks constantly to upgrade my storage space, but over time the malaise of searching for them after about 270 (out of a grand total of 900 Koroks) became too tedious and I stopped doing hyper-thorough canvasing of areas, especially because the canvasing didn’t really yield anything that exciting. I began, less and less, taking my horse places with me, because I could fast-travel and paraglide to locations I wanted to explore, and very often they were places I couldn’t even take my horse to. Armor variety, which I liked, ended up making a big chunk of food and elixir buffs superfluous and I no longer really felt a sense of danger or need to prepare for big exciting ventures into the bitter cold or so on. And upgrading armor ends up being a nightmare, as high-end stuff requires farming very precious materials, and if there’s one thing I did not like about Skyward Sword, it’s farming for materials.

Environmental hazards that could not be overridden with food or armor, particularly rain, halted my gameplay. I’d be trying to scale a cliff and, whoops - it was raining, which means you slip all the way down or exhaust your stamina trying to force through it. I’d have to go somewhere else and halt my progress on that spot, or attempt to find a place to make a fire and wait out the rain, which seems realistic in theory, but disrupts gameplay in practice. There’s also this weird abundance of cold areas in the game, but only really one hot area and only one “you’ll literally catch on fire here” area. A lot of shrine tests revolve around the same combat trial against the same enemy with a fluctuating health pool and do not get me started on the frustrating motion control mechanics for a few. I played the game on the Wii U as I did not want to get a Switch just yet, and suffered draw distance, framerate and even freezing issues. I figured this was an issue with the Wii U hardware, but hilariously it turns out this is an issue on the Switch as well (as an aside...it’s not really a good idea to have your flagship launch title with your new console be a game that the console can’t even run...)

Then there was the story. I know I just talked a lot of good about it, but the thing is, the tones and storytelling I was talking about come across as...accidental, a sort of side-effect of the game as a whole. I don’t really play Zelda games for top-tier story - let’s be real, Zelda games do not necessarily provide enriching, unique narrative experiences. They are fun, generic adventure games with action-RPG elements, and that alone is enough to make them classics beloved by so many. But it’s been 25 years and the world of Zelda has expanded into a deep-reaching and ridiculous lore, enough that it has enough content to provide for a hard-cover art book, a historia featuring a collective timeline with three branching routes, and an upcoming encyclopedia. As years go by, narrative elements in Zelda games, such as story and character development, become larger and more prominent as the series develops. This is not a bad thing, and as a huge Zelda lore nerd myself it gives games a bit of extra appeal for me personally.

The issue with BOTW, and maybe the Zelda series as a whole, is that it’s kind of “blooming late” on the story and character narrative department in a generation where huge arcing epics with deep and relatable characters run regular in a lot of mainstream triple-A titles. BOTW, for example, is the first Zelda game to feature voice acting, something I was very wary about when I first heard about it, and ended up being rightfully wary. No it’s not terrible - the cast is doing the best they can with the stilted dialogue and passive direction they clearly had to work with, but it creates a very underwhelming and at times embarrassing experience that shouldn’t be so in a time when English dubbing/voice acting and localization is at some of it’s best (though not always of course), especially for a big-name title like Zelda from a big-name company like Nintendo. If this was the first time they were going to try voice-acting, this doesn’t really inspire me to look forward to it being a repeated trend in other titles. And even then, there’s actually only a handful of scenes that are actually voice-acted, with the rest of it being the usual textbox scrawls with some vocal sounds over top like in previous games, which begs the question as to why they bothered to go with the voice work at all.

BOTW does something I refer to as A Plot and a B Plot, the A Plot being the main over-arching story of the game and the B Plot beside an over-arching side-story of the game. Typically, A Plots are the here-and-now of a form of media, it takes place in the present, with the B Plot being in the past, the future, or behind the scenes but being woven into the A Plot. When I set out to play BOTW, I thought that the failings of the past and it’s events would be the B Plot, with the A Plot as the here and now, focusing on new characters who would pick up the mantle of those who had fallen and see me into battle with Ganon. I thought I would follow the trials and tribulations of Princess Zelda in the A Plot, as well as the four champions, but it turns out, I was wrong.

When the game starts, the four champions are dead, and Princess Zelda is keeping Ganon trapped within Hyrule Castle, her power about to expend. At first I thought this was tonally appropriate - after all, they did fail, and it is supposed to paint a bleak picture of Hyrule. But this also meant that the only way for me to really learn or care about these characters was through optional flashbacks, and flashbacks are not really good tools to tell a story most of the time. I went and collected every memory, but didn’t really end up learning anything particularly new or exciting about any character other than Zelda herself - a wonderful character and incarnation of the classic princess, who is, honestly, a nerd. She’s an insecure scholar, burying herself in research to escape the stress of her failed ability to use her magic (Triforce, Light Force, I don’t know - the Triforce doesn’t feature at all in the game), the loss of her mother, and her honestly mean and scornful father and the doubtful whispers of her kingdom. She’s in over her head, and while her abilities and passion are best suited for studying the ancient technology and the Divine Beasts, at every turn it seems that she is forced away from this and told to focus on her destiny, that of using her sealing power to trap Ganon away. It plays again on that theme that pre-conceived notions and strict preparation in the name of prophecy and destiny and what have you still lead to failure, and that it’s through the heart of adventure and discovery that heroes that can defeat the darkness are forged. I expected that new champions would rise to replace the failed ones of the past, born from the adventure and sudden struggle of Ganon suddenly re-emerging, without any preparation beforehand. I expected Zelda to get her big moment where she proves that she doesn’t need old rituals and prayers to unlock her power, and that her inner strength comes from her true passions, and uses her research and scholar prowess to find ways to balk Ganon and use her power. I expected new heroes to rise and take control of the Divine Beasts in the steed of the failed champions of the past.

Well that doesn’t happen. The Divine Beasts get piloted by the ghosts of the fallen champions, who are ultimately dull and kind of not really likeable save maybe one or two. The new characters who help you get onto the Divine Beasts, which act as the “main” dungeons in the game, fall to the wayside and are forgotten after, apparently unable to become champions themselves (as only “champions” can board the beasts, apparently) despite the trials they face to assist Link and fight back against Ganon to save their people. The main dungeons lose their luster quickly too - they’re puzzle-based, requiring the same mechanic for each one (find five terminals, beat the boss at the end, each boss looks kind of the same). Something I thought was interesting was that each beast can be controlled from within, and you use that mechanic to solve puzzles. Two of the beasts end up using the same tilt mechanic though, and three beasts require shooting arrows at it to board (two of which are bomb arrows), and with the beasts’ interiors all looking the same it just sort of gets...a bit dull after a while. Been there, done that, done this, again. I really do miss more classic Zelda dungeons if just for the cheese factor, but this game does not have them.

Since the game has to use flashbacks instead of a continuous story to show the development and relationships of the characters (where dialogue is delivered unnaturally), the original four champions seem very one-note, defined by maybe one or two traits. The case of Revali is especially frustrating. Why is he so mean to Link? Is it his pride, did something occur between them, is it something else? We don’t know, we never learn, because primary characters introduced are not developed, he’s Just The Rival character, to fulfill the trope. His introduction in a mandatory flashback comes from Link literally looking at a bunch of planks of wood on a flight landing (I’m serious), and Revali is more or less an arrogant jerk to the end because That’s His Character I suppose. While we’re on the subject, the entirety of Rito Village is a wash - NPCs talk about how there’s nothing to do there, the Divine Beast is not causing any serious harm, it’s just not letting the Rito fly as high as they like and is being a general nuisance, the Rito that helps you board is just Some Guy and you don’t really see him again unless you want to do yet another optional and inconsequential mini-game. The dungeon is easy, borrows a boarding scenario from another beast, and borrows its in-dungeon mechanic from another beast. The whole area is such a let-down.

And then there’s Zelda, my poor, poor Zelda. She fails, just as everyone does, and I thought, and hoped, and prayed, just as I said before, that her inner strength would come through in the form of doing things HER way, using her research and her smarts, sticking it to the father and the people who didn’t believe in her by succeeding with the very methods they disapproved of. Well no - she activates her sealing power at the last second to protect Link because she loves him. It’s “tru wuv” that sparks her big character moment, where she does exactly what destiny pre-determined she do, not some awesome defiant moment where she pools her strength and self-confidence through her research and herself. She doesn’t even get to research and discover for herself that the power is apparently so closely linked to her “heart” or whatever generic nonsense works the magic this time - gotta love The Boy, that’s what makes you strong. And this is not extrapolating - when you complete all the shrine quests Kass the Rito bard gives, you can see him at Rito Village, where he tells the story of his teacher and the events just before the Calamity, and how his teacher fell in love with the princess, but the princess was in love with her appointed knight. The song his teacher taught to Kass after his teacher witnessed Zelda unlocking her powers was how her love for her knight was what brought it to the surface. Even the Zora champion Mipha, who I guess was supposed to be some callback to Rito from Ocarina of Time in a way, hints that her amazing healing ability is born by “thinking about who she cares about most”, and that’s not her family or friends or anything, that’s Link - who she loves and adores and wants to marry because that’s the Rito callback I guess.

I was so angry, it’s trite and tropey and ruins half the tone the game manages to do so well. Show me a BOTW Zelda who overcomes after failure not through “true love” and all the pre-destined nonsense that lead them all to failure to begin with, but the scholar she is using her research, her passion for knowledge, her wisdom, to unlock her power, to stop the Guardians, to seal Ganon.

Oh and then there’s Ganon. “Calamity Ganon”, now a non-character - just an amorphous, shadowy entity of no real interest. I suppose you could say that after the events of Twilight Princess or Four Swords, Ganon(dorf) is really no more, no longer a proper physical entity, no longer the Gerudo man who had ambitions or menace or a tangible presence when he entered a room - that person was long since defeated properly, and it’s only the lingering malice, that sort of twisted essence of the primordial Demise from Skyward Sword, that remains. From a lore perspective that works, but it doesn’t make for an interesting villain, just like flashbacks don’t make for interesting storytelling and character development. The final battle in and of itself is hugely underwhelming too. Calamity Ganon’s first form is an apparently “incomplete” gooey, robotic spider...thing...it’s very ugly as a design in a game that’s had largely strong character and enemy designs, except for the Divine Beast bosses which, I guess fits tonally. And unlike other enemies where you can kind of take multiple approaches to the battle, you MUST bounce the laser beams in the second half of the fight back at the boss with either a shield parry or the Master Sword, which I think is the game trying to do the old “tennis mechanic” callback but it’s really...kind of janky and often unresponsive? The second form LOOKED much cooler and more tonally appropriate, with a huge, flaming Dark Beast out in Hyrule Field that I’d ride around on my trusty steed fighting. But instead Dark Beast Ganon just faces one direction only, shooting lasers at nothing. Your horse sort of meanders around and you just ride updrafts or stand safely beside it waiting for Zelda to shout very loudly and clearly about the GIANT GLOWING TRIFORCE-SHAPED WEAK POINTS you can hit with your Light Arrows - it’s all an exact, even easier version of all the “boarding the Divine Beast” scenarios you did earlier in the game.

Zelda re-appears, seals Ganon, gives these really wishy-washy smiles and lines. The ghosts of the king and the Champions linger in the silhouette of Hyrule Castle and say nothing. We get no closure on the king and Zelda, who as far as the game wishes to imply in flashbacks and a hidden diary the king left in the castle, parted on extremely tense and unfavorable terms. the Champions get no final word in either. Zelda is shown after the credits kind of just...acting like everything’s a bit “back to normal”, saying her and Link need to go to Zora’s Domain to give the king closure on Mipha which...it’s been 100 years he’s...more or less made peace with the death of his daughter by now as was shown earlier in the game. Zelda says she can no longer hear the “voice” in the Master Sword and admits her powers must have weakened over the course of 100 years, but she’s actually okay with that for once, which I think would have been a bit more powerful of a statement to her character if she’d previously shown that her own determination and smarts were her true strengths all along, and not this HUGELY powerful magic. There’s a shot of the Silent Princess flower at the end, a flower that in the game Zelda comments on, saying that it cannot bloom in captivity and only in the wilds. Again, it would be a very thematically-appropriate metaphor for how Zelda’s true strength came from her journeys in the wild, focusing on her unique strengths and not those pre-determined by her destiny, but the game has her...literally in a state of “captivity” holding Ganon back. If anything the Silent Princess flower metaphor makes a stronger thematic statement for Link, not Zelda, and that’s really telling about how inconsistent and weak a lot of the story-telling is in this game. It was clearly supposed to really be about the relationship between Link and Zelda and their character development, but since they spend the entire game separated and only show shallow interactions of them together in short flashbacks that only really serve to develop Zelda (as well as her diary entries found in the castle), things end up feeling...vapid, forced and ultimately weak.

And I just...want to fight. A Darknut. One damn Darknut and have a cool sword fight. Or a Poe. Not another dAMN LIZALFOS. LET ME CLIMB TO THE TOP OF A MOUNTAIN AND FIND A WHOLE DUNGEON UP THERE.

I MISS.

HEART PIECES. AND UPGRADES.

AS REWARDS FOR EXCELLENT COMPLETION OF MINI-GAMES. IT INCITES. YOU TO REPLAY THEM.

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

In summary, Breath of the Wild is excellent. But I’m a huge nerd and it’s clear that a lot of people who reviewed this game only went in for about 20 or so hours and didn’t complete it before passing final verdict. I hope Nintendo builds from this game’s strengths and learns it’s weaknesses.