#kills everything around me in an aoe attack

[bugjester]

need to stop watching and reading gay shit it’s causing uncontrollable yearning in me

[animentality]

I just had the most devastating honor mode run end that I have ever had, and I'm not going to lie.

I have never been tilted by Baldur's Gate 3...until today.

And it's honestly more tilted than I've ever been at a video game...and I spent like 3 years playing fucking Overwatch...and Dead by Daylight, where the world's worst people congregate to torture one another.

The last time I was at the gith creche, I got my ass handed to me by That Prick who I am going to call Wargass. He's the bitch who tries to murder you when you don't kill the Emperor.

Last time, I almost lost the run because of his legendary move, which is the most horse shit thing in existence.

Basically, every time you fucking hit him OR AN ALLY...he summons a sword to shove up your ass. And it just fucking appears next to you, and surrounds you, so you can't escape without taking opportunity attacks.

So last time, I escaped by going invisible, and running away so I could come back and kill him by dragging him out to the bridge outside the Vlaakith room.

This time, I thought, well last time I got fucked because I was in the center of the room, and we were just taking hits from everywhere. No cover anywhere. This time, I gotta be able to position, maybe surprise enemies.

So I choose the right dialogue options, to make sure Vlaakith doesn't just nuke us.

But then I see the Astral Portal...and I think...well, what if I position myself now? And we just kill him before going into the Portal...can you do that?

And like a fucking moron...

I say fuck it, let's try it.

And uh. I don't know how many of you have ever tried this, but...when you do that?

Lae'zel immediately leaves your party.

So.

I was fucked instantly. Lae'zel is a fucking fighter, which is the second most demonic class after Paladin. She is fucking stacked and has the best goddamn gear I have, and she immediately kills Karlach using action surge. Gale also dies immediately, because he's squishy and there are a million bitches with psychic rend around him.

The only reason the run didn't end there was because I went invisible and fled.

Now I went and revived everyone in camp, but I thought ok...so I have to go back, with four people, and get my shit back...

I bring in Astarion, because I think, it'll be fine, we just need to drag them out onto that bridge...

Guess what? It wasn't fine. I had to draw Astarion and myself back, because Gale and Karlach die again. See, the fucking problem is, the normal strat of making distance doesn't work here. Normally, you can aoe a ton of enemies or have them run into walls of fire or whatever. But these fucking swords that Wargass summons literally APPEAR NEXT TO YOU. And they all take a swing, and break your concentration. Plus, even if you do manage to break them, and good luck with that, he just makes more, every goddamn turn.

So almost in tears, I swap out Astarion and pull in Wyll.

I need Hunger of Hadar, my cheese spell.

It kind of works, because I put it on the bridge, and all of his dumb bitch guards get stuck in it. But THEN Wargass, being a fucking prick, chases me around and murders me out of pure spite. Then Karlach and Gale almost kill him...but then he does his usual bullshit, of using his swords to kill everyone.

And I just...at this point, I'm just done.

Wyll can't do anything, he's out of spells. He can't even run, because there are swords near him.

I just have him take an opportunity attack, and call the run over.

And it's funny, because I'm doing an honor mode run with my buddy, where we've done basically everything wrong...but we still made it to Act 3 mostly unscathed.

With only one or two close calls.

But this is the second time my run's been fucked by the goddamn creche boss battle.

And you know... I love Bg3...but I have played way too many goddamn hours.

Need to take a break and just write porn about it, like god intended.

[thefreelanceangel]

From the Top 5 meme! Top 5 Dungeons or Raids please! and ty! <3

Dohn Mheg

This shouldn't be surprising, all things considered! I love Il Mheg and I particularly love the aesthetics of the dungeon. It also charms me that the enemies are either fae creatures coming to gleefully stomp the WoL for fun or woodland creatures being stirred up by the fuath just to fuck with you. (Plus, the second boss? I feel like such a badass on WHM when I can just burn down the vine wraps on everyone with a well-timed Assize.)

2. The Fell Court of Troia

Not only do I absolutely love this setting, but the mechanics are just fun! It's a level 90 dungeon that's right in the sweet spot of "when you're fully hit at max ilevel, you can plow through everything" so it's actually enjoyable to pull wall-to-wall and just AoE burn all the critters. Also I've taken probably 50 screenshots of that one staircase and will take 50 more, it is so fucking GORGEOUS in there!

3. The Great Gubal Library (Hard)

Look, it's a giant library with angry books and inkwells, of course I love it here! Also, Strix? The last boss? I actually really enjoy the silly mechanic of running into the correct AoE based off of what attack is coming next. (This boss also reminds me of Stolas from both the actual Ars Goetia and from the animated show "Helluva Boss" and that makes me want a plushie of it.)

4. Eden's Gate: Inundation

Not only do I enjoy the story of the Eden raids, but I particularly enjoyed the mechanics for this boss. And doing this one is where I got my Max Party Kill Score, which I am ridiculously proud of.

5. The Tower at Paradigm's Breach

It's not a particularly hard raid, but I was lucky enough to be able to play it almost immediately when the patch dropped. And being in one of the earliest groups, flailing around and trying to figure out the mechanics? Fantastic. I love that so much. Not to mention THAT JUMP SCARE gets me every time. (I also just... really love the overall setting and taking screenshots in it.)

[ascalonianlightbringer]

Mesmers are my favorite class (both in GW1 and GW2, though they're quite different in each game!) and I've always especially enjoyed the more damage-oriented mesmers. I loved playing Domination Magic-focused GW1 mesmers with Backfire, Empathy, Power Spike, Energy Surge, Cry of Frustration, etc (I actually learned how to play GW1 on a Domination mesmer, which was ... a steep learning curve, but a blast once I got the hang of it). In GW2, before the Mirage specialization got nerfed to hell, I loved my Condition Damage mesmer/Mirage, and Power builds + greatsword are always really fun on core mesmers and chronomancers.

(I can't speak to Virtuoso—I've heard great things but I can't bring myself to give up my emotional support clones.)

My main, Gwen Velazquez, originally went from a very damage-oriented core mesmer to a sword-based Power chronomancer—fun in groups, but squishy in solo play unless she manages to kill everything first.

However. My family has played the GW games together since Prophecies and my mother's main is an even squishier Power elementalist who does huge amounts of damage but often dies. So I was trying to think of ways Gwen could help my mother's character survive—and then, after all these years of ArenaNet nerfing the originally superb support/defense chronomancer into oblivion, they buffed the defensively-oriented chronomancer back into effectiveness. This was months ago now, but I was working on my dissertation and only recently got the chance to really try playing Gwen as a chronomancer built around defense and support rather than strike damage.

Holy shit, it's so fun.

Yeah, it takes her a lot longer to kill things, but now she can afford to pick fights with much harder foes all by herself. She's gone from glass cannon to regularly soloing champions if I'm even somewhat paying attention to what she's doing (and chronomancer is a complicated enough class that I'm usually paying attention).

Another player showed up to one of the champion fights I was soloing and advised me to stop using ranged attacks (all that Gwen has now) because those also would reflect back to me, and I didn't have the heart to say it made zero difference because it wasn't getting through Gwen's blocks and she hadn't even needed to heal yet. She's using scepter/shield + staff and it's just like block, block, dodge, block, set down her AOEs, get a chaos aura by teleporting out, oh look her blocks are back and she's got her healing and stability mantras for emergencies.

I gather that the rifle chrono is even better, but defense with a Chaos/Inspiration/Chronomancer build actually being good again makes the scepter/shield+staff chrono feel incredible. Love playing a light armor chaos mage as an unkillable god.

[deusexlachina]

Antisocial DAO Part 4 (Tower of Ishal): Meet the first two party members I respect

In which I forge a friendship with the bravest humans I have known: Soldier and Tower Guard.

Me and Alistair are given one job: Go to the Tower of Ishal and light a fire to signal Loghain's loyal troops to heroically save us. Unfortunately, darkspawn start besieging the bridge to the Tower, much as I burn bridges with those around me.

At the tower, I find two young men named "Soldier" and "Tower Guard." These are curious names, but I'm glad to meet some new companions. I can't wait to bond with them at camp!

For the first time, I have a full party, and here I will note that there are two ways of playing Dragon Age. One possibility is just to control your character and let your party's AI handle everything else. This is relatively immersive, and it's viable because this game has an excellent AI-crafting mechanic that is refined in DA2 and...is completely dropped in Inquisition.

The other way is to play it as Real-Time Tactics, using hotkeys to switch around who you're controlling. You can even click and drag, or press ctrl-A, to select everyone, in case you really want this story-rich medieval fantasy to have that Starcraft feel to it. I started the game with the first style, but I've moved on to the second due to the difficulty spike.

The Tower of Ishal is one of the hardest levels of the game for a number of reasons. You have at most one mage (the best class by a large margin), and it's too early for any of the really good builds to come online. Soldier and Tower Guard are also quite weak people. Nonetheless, I respect them more than Alistair: they do not judge me for my foreign ways, frightening magic, or the Miasma which follows my body everywhere. I will have to find non-combat roles for them later in the game. I don't need social skills to impress them. They fight by my side without a word.

There's a room in the Tower where you can free several dogs to help in the fight. They don't follow you further into the Tower. But darkspawn do follow you, and they will follow you right into a room full of hungry dogs. I repeat this process of luring enemies into Dog Range, slowly advancing my menacing battle line of pets.

I then meet the dogs' one weakness: area transitions. I will have to leave these good boys behind. Which is a shame, because I'm about to meet the reason this Tower is so hard: the Ogre.

The Ogre can fatally grab any of you in melee range, which would be bad if three of your party members were melee fighters. It also has AOE attacks with knockdown and preposterously large hitboxes - with its sinister powers, it can ram you without being anywhere near you. I Paralyze it as much as possible, which is very little, since it usually resists.

I must use the elusive tactics of the Dalish. That is, I run away almost the entire fight and hope it doesn't ram me while my redshirts try to backstab it and hope it doesn't turn around and grab them.

After a long fight, the Ogre has nearly killed me, Alistair and Tower Guard, but Soldier charges forward and deals the killing blow, getting an amazing animation where he knocks down the Ogre, jumps on it and stabs it in the heart.

I like this animation better than his usual one where he flails with his sword and somehow misses a huge Ogre right in front of him. It's a much better trick, this one. I wish he'd led with it. Nonetheless, Soldier has earned my respect. He may be a human, but his bravery and loyalty have carried us to victory. I would be proud to have him join me in my quest, along with his brother-in-arms, Tower Guard.

Unfortunately, they both die in a cutscene immediately.

RIP Soldier and Tower Guard

[claire-starsword]

The Guardiana Magic School Run - Part 10

We're back and everything was set up in the last part, so it's straight to battle this time. The clear bonus is only money this time so no pressure, which is good, because it's a forest battle, so no one's walking far today!

There's skeletons in the road, but they're the least of our problems. The Pegasus Knights should be way stronger, and move a lot better in the forest.

Also our instakill friends are back, because Runefaust loves to raise my stress levels :)

Very little happens on the first turn, Max and Gong bait a skeleton, the Pegasus knights do not come towards us, one actually went upwards which is ??? but okay, and everyone else is chilling at the forest with three steps per turn.

Of course a single skeleton is no issue to deal with, we even manage to leave the kill exp for Anri, who is the only one behind in levels after how well Arthur did in the last battle. I put Max to the right of the skeleton in hopes it would bait a lone knight out, but nope. The knights seem to be gathering with the dark elves on the middle of the road. Because of course I want the new strong enemy type to team up with the old strong enemy type, i love this, i'm fine with this situation :))))

I'm actually scared of moving Max up because of the instakills, so I take things slowly. Tao and Gong clean up another Skeleton, also these things are dropping Medical Herbs like crazy today but at least from these guys I expect it. Max finally baits a knight and shows that he's still invincible no matter what new things the game throws at us. I play a bit safe with Anri to make sure she's not in reach of any enemies, since after the last battle i'm fairly sure the elves prioritize mages over even Max.

She also finally gets to use Freeze after all the undead she's had to face so far.

Ironically, she learns Blaze 2 as soon as I say that. Finally an AoE option, though I'm fairly sure Freeze 1 deals the same amount of damage for less MP so it's still the best option for single targets.

Every time these guys attack I feel like crying, but thankfully the ferocious attack is not the attack we fear.

Turn 4 is here and I need those elves dead but I also need the knight dead because Anri is A Bit Squishy. All of these enemies have big evasion I think. We'll be essentially rolling a lot of dice right now, except Tao does reach the knight so her kill is guarantee, I'll even use Blaze 2 because I'm unsure if 1 would do enough damage and I'm not taking any risks.

The RNG has blessed me and with this (hubris incoming), the worst of the battle has passed. Tao also gets a mediocre level up of only +1 defense, but who cares she's still the best.

I try giving Khris some exp and the skeleton decides to be mean with a counter, thankfully Arthur is there to save her, in a reversal of last battle's dialogue.

Khris redeems herself by finishing off a Pegasus Knight after Anri and Tao softened them up. Turns out I was right to be paranoid before, Blaze 1 deals only 7 damage to them.

It's turn 6 and things are entirely chill. Between his last level up and the forest bonus Max is only taking 2 damage from the lizardmen this time around, so not even them get to be a problem. By turn 8 all enemies have been wiped out with no hassle. I mean, almost.

This guy has refused to move since the battle started. Dude does not care at all. Zero ambition. I respect that. I do not respect the rest of this battle though.

Look at the vast amount of nothing in front of us. There's only three enemies at the very end, and another lone knight in the middle, which might also not come. I don't feel like wasting a billion turns to bait them, that's for sure. No one needs exp that much right now.

So yeah! Let's have a whole vacation on this forest I guess! I'll also start casting the heals for exp, because I doubt there'll be any need for them, and if I mess up there's always herbs, the skeletons made sure of that.

It's now turn 13.

boy that was BORING. Gong got a chonky level up and that's it, Lowe also leveled up but it was nothing of it, he just learned Slow and who cares.

The pegasus knight finally came so we get something to do. Despite the boredom, it would not surprise me if we fail the clear bonus just because we can't reach the enemies in time, half the team is pretty much useless at this point.

Perhaps it is also worth mentioning that the final pegasus knight at the bridge is of a higher level, so that could be trouble. Not for Max of course, but for normal people.

Also, I've just noticed some of my characters have a "defend" marked on their stats, and I have no clue what that is.

Turn 15 is here. We're not getting that bonus.

I do have a last ditch effort to make, I did hope I could show this off as soon as possible.

OH GOD IT ACTUALLY KILLS

IF I GET THE BONUS LIKE THIS IT WILL BE SO FUNNY

anyway, that's Supernova. 16 MP well spent. Max has 19 MP right now, so it is a heavy cost, but you now know it very much has use.

And now that I've seen it with my own eyes I can explain why I doubted Max would learn this spell unpromoted. The man does not have animation for it at all, I'm familiar with the ripped sprites so that's why I was confused. Between this and it being a technological thing, it would not surprise me if this was meant to be promotion only (his hero armor is also heavily implied to be ancient tech, even more in this game), and they forgot/couldn't code it like that for some reason. Given all the other wonkiness I've been complaining about spell levels and promotion, maybe there's even more coding disasters behind this.

And that's it on the obligatory tangent during a boring battle, let's see if this light from above was actually a miracle.

Gong hit this guy, Arthur sadly missed, so unless Max somehow counters both enemies that's a no on the miracle bonus.

absolute nonsense

alas, as the nonsense happened I realized it would not work out,

because that DAMN knight is still napping out there in Bustoke, so no, we did not wipe out all enemies, and the battle is not finished.

Given how half my force was useless from the middle on, there was probably some smart play of sending them to deal with that guy. I thought about it. I just didn't wanna risk it because I'm here to not let anyone die above all.

Gods, that's frustrating though, I can't believe Max's absurd stunts are gonna go to waste. Actually, nothing matters anymore so let me go on another tangent. So, Supernova, am I right? Remember that at this point of the game's plot, Max has amnesia. He knows nothing of the ancients, we haven't even seen Laser Eye. This man just leveled up one day, and recovered exactly one (1) memory of his past, and that memory is essentially "hello son, here's our nuclear launch codes, bye".

I can't blame him for not being normal. Who would be normal under these circumstances.

So. yeah. We step on the bridge and win, no bonus. I am so sad.

Ending the battle in the bridge takes you straight to the next battle, but I just use the retreat command, we have setup to do back at Bustoke. Even without the bonus, we should have enough money to buy at least one more Silver Ring.

We do, and honestly the bonus would not give us an extra one, so perhaps i'm crying about little. It was more a matter of glory, really.

The ring goes to Anri, because while the magic users continue to be unoriginal and all have the same defense stat, Anri has by far the worst HP, so hopefully this will still let her survive a bit. Though the next battle has something to say about that, the next battle will just be horrible for Anri in general.

There's no more setup to do as the deals section has nothing new, but we have a few more promotions to discuss, as everyone has reaped piles of exp this time.

Lowe is on pretty much the same situation as Gong, he only learns Heal 4 at level 22, after promotion. Unlike Gong however he doesn't learn Aura so he isn't delaying anything else important, who cares about Quick and Slow. So yeah, like Gong, he'll be promoting at level 16 after getting Heal 3 as fast as possible. I don't recall Vicar only staves until chapter 6, so that should be plenty of time for him to level up.

And now Arthur.

Arthur might be the character that pisses me off the most when it comes to this mechanic change. He only learns level 1 spells, Blaze at level 15, Freeze at level 20, and Bolt at level 25. This is already kinda bad in the mega drive version, having single target Blaze and Freeze spells on a guy that already has weapons with the same range is pretty meaningless, save for getting through the occasional high defense enemy. Bolt is the only meaningful spell he gets due to being AoE at least, and he's already getting it super late.

Here, though? He's getting it ten levels later at best, and by promoting him earlier, you also delay his first spells by ten levels, which completely loses the character flavor. Like, is he still useful? Of course yes, you are seeing him kick ass in this playthrough, and the new weapons help a lot. But he's largely just another paladin. It's pretty sad that the series fumbled the concept of a magic knight twice.

There's no helping it though, so I will be promoting him now and hope we still get to enjoy at least a bit of Bolt eventually, but don't count on it. I legit considered not counting him for this magical playthrough because of this, but since he's a character that normally gets overshadowed by late game knights, it's nice to get to focus on him here. He just really deserved better.

Still, congrats to him for being the first promoted member of the run. His prize is, stat loss. Another stupid mechanic but I can't blame the GBA version this time. jk I can why did they keep this.

It's a bummer note to end on but next update should be exciting as we face Laser Eye. See ya.

Losses: 0 Deaths: 2 Max's memories: Just one, but it's a doozy.

[violasgamingpalace]

My final party for fire emblem Engage- stats plus analysis

Insanely good- but sadly too good. I invested a lot into her because I knew she would be there the whole game and be a good use for it. But in the end I probably would have been better off giving those resources to someone else and making her the greatest utility character ever- after all the extra point of warp and byleth instruct is something only she can do. Still, it was fun as hell to have a ridiculous one-shotting Alear. Also why does her second sword come so late?

Incredible. Almost all of that is because corrin is really good, but he is the best user for her so it works fine. Once he got super high level Luna happens all the time too! Pretty nice setup for longbow dreadful auras and Covert Dragon-Veins

My beautiful wife, and also a really strong unit. Part of that is Wolf Knight being an incredible class, but she's also got great stats. Gave her the flame Lance for occasion magic damage but silver daggers and later Cinquedea ended up being more than enough

Pretty good! Single-minded, gasping Void, echo and Nova all work really well together, but even without that she isn't bad. Pretty much always had something good she could do

Took a long time to get going but once she did was incredible. I could tell she was strong but had no idea what to do with her until I finally did a reclass into Great Knight with Ike. Then she became a machine- over 80 percent critical rates against everything and defense high enough to never get hurt. Even magic wasn't a big concern. She covered entire halves of the map for me on maddening

Mediocre, but could double as a tank and kill weaker units so was glad to have him. Let him pick up Tomes so he could kill more

He's a dancer. Cool. Kinda funny how they also gave him chain guard and arts, which are both really good utility you almost never use because dancing utility is almost always better

He had bows which was cool, then I needed someone to use Micaiah around the time bows stopped being good. Anyone could warpskip but he had some bulk to occasionally take a hit

He was ok as a sage but I needed someone to take Roy so radiant bow it is! Kinda awful but funny crit every now and then.

The game takes it's sweet time giving you another Dragon. Veyle was good at killing things, and then I gave her draconic hex and byleth so she could be good at utility too

I fell in love with her early on and used her throughout the entire game. She would fluctuate between MVP for ability to dodge tank all the way to dead weight for having no bulk & no damage, but with Lucina she can poison with dual strikes and add an extra 90 to her avoid.

Goldmary had a funny gimmick, and the best stats out of the backup characters from the midgame so I used her. She never did TOO much, but brave assist/Dual Assist+ is a nice combo and with Marth and a Silver Blade she could lodestar rush problem enemies

The best staff bot, but that doesn't mean much. Every now and then another Staffer is good and she does also provide a nice AOE warp/rescue before doing the paralogues. Also, she was funny- worth a couple points

Worse gimmick than goldmary and worse stats, but I needed someone to replace saphir as a backup attacker so in he goes. He would be fine if I gave him some extra levels of course but I needed backup attacks more

[fyx-ation]

Sage Limit Break.

Astrologian used to be my favorite healing job. It has a very strong identity, and just the right amount of tedium to keep me busy. And then they changed it. Swept away were the old card purposes. And then they changed everything again. Swept away were the celestial fun times of expanding buffs--including lightspeed.

I still enjoy playing Ast from time to time, but I very much fell in love with Sage when Endwalker came out.

All the healers have a very similar tool kit--just like tanks. Each has their own proactive oh-shit buttons and their reactive oh-shit buttons. The difference is only in knowing the job well enough to use them right. (Like WHM planting their bells before a multi-hit stack attack or raid-wide aoe followed by a dot. Same thing for Sage's Panhaima.)

I play a lot of WHM, too, because it's my alt's main job. I don't dislike scholar, either... it just often gets neglected several months into a new expansion.

Speaking of new expansions! Astro is getting another re-work tomorrow. Can't wait to see how much I like it or feel indifferent--though I suspect that will be a while from now, since I start every expansion on bard (often leveling both bard and my favorite healer class at the same time for queue reasons... which is going to be important more than ever with 2 new dps classes coming).

Jobs and all that aside... More than anything, I am hoping there isn't some catastrophic and mood-killing disaster like I had when Endwalker came out. See, I was one of the few people that had the audio glitch. It was awful. The sound was distorted so badly that no amount of tinkering on my end could make it bearable. It was essentially broken, and there was nothing I could do. I even dipped into the official forums for help. That's like putting your dick in a toaster. You're in there, at the mercy of people who could uplug the toaster or press the lever, and everyone around you looks like they ate paint chips for breakfast. I mean, fortunately, I don't have a dick. I put in a hot dog--as a peace offering.

Anyway, that wasn't fruitful. But it was validating. Other people were experiencing it, too. IT WAS MONTHS before they released an update which included a fix for this bullshit. Endwalker, in all its beauty, was ruined for me because of the sound. And I wasn't given any compensation. No one was.

I held off on taking my alt through EW until the sound was fixed just so I could hear it how it should have been.

If something like that happens again, I might eat my hotter-than-the-sun video card and call it a day.

[missizzy]

A Game Novice's Baldur's Gate 3 Log, 6 1/2 hours in: I might just be getting somewhere

(Note: this will definitely contain spoilers for all I've played through, and probably quite a bit of the later stuff I've also seen.)

I spent the week continuing with my Baldur's Gate 3 experiment, even as the dialog sequences ran excruciatingly slow, due to the animation going at half the pace as the audio. I now suspect the problem is my computer's struggling with our internet connection, which it has ever since Comcast insisted on replacing the modem. Which is part the reason we may finally be doing something about that next week, and I may pause playing until such time as we do. But that depends on how long it takes. I'm kind of getting hooked on this game, despite everything.

After last weekend saw Sara Tully, my barbarian Tav, successfully find Gale, and me fail to figure out how to lockpick, I went and looked up how to do the latter. (Of course it was the obvious way I hadn't thought of.) So first thing when I resumed was to take the party back to the big locked door on the beach to try to get through it. Except Astarion failed two checks in a row, resulting the loss of all our thieves tools. Guess I'm not finding out what's behind that door in this run.

After that I looked up Lae'zel's location and went to find her, and once again managed to go the wrong way, hitting the chapel entrance instead. So we ended up killing Gimblebock and the bandits outside, which made me feel a bit too much like a murderhobo, but at least, at long last, I finally got Sara to rage, marker by her box and everything. I have also now equipped her with a looted goblin bow, so she can even do ranged attacks while raging. Also we were able to get another set of thieves tools out of it. I even happily took Astarion up to the chapel door-except that when we heard the other bandits calling out through it, I decided to just walk away.

He did, on the other hand, successfully lockpick us through the trapdoor outside. Which of course led to another fight, one that felt very much like a learning experience about positioning characters in the game and recognizing when they are and aren't in silence AOEs. But I was much less sorry when we made contact with Withers, whom I hadn't known about, though I've since learned he's a camp follower, and I suspect I'll enjoy having him about. Maybe going the wrong way in this game isn't such a bad thing.

Still I was impatient to get back the Emerald Grove, so I scrutinized the maps a little more carefully (another skill I'm still developing) and finally got to Lae'zel, sent her captors on their way by saying I'd deal with her, and then Gale shot frost on the her cage's bottom to get her down. Then I promptly sent her to camp, because the party was full, and Sara as a barbarian is a tank already. Also, reading some meta about how she probably viewed the druids made me not really want to bring her to the Grove. (And since, I've come to think I'd rather not deal with the druids' reactions to her either.)

I suppose I'm not supposed to ask how we even have a camp, when we've been doing nothing except walk around since landing in the area. Or why, when we finally returned to the Grove entrance and went in, we found Aradin and Zevlor right there arguing as if the goblin fight had still happened only moments ago. Though at least Wyll had found time to go further inside and resume his fighting lessons before we recruited him.

I've heard plenty of how Wyll is hard done by and underused by players. I kept him with the party, partly because we were in the place he knew, and also because Shadowheart was low on health and and spell slots, so it was just as well to send her off. But when leveling him up, it was hard not to observe he really has the same spells as Gale, only fewer of them, which I suspect is one of the major problems. On the other hand, I did give him Beast Speech as an invocation, which will probably result in my using him a lot more, since the animal dialog in this game is really fun.

We ended up wandering around most of the hollow, which meant hearing about the Absolute for the first time,-but I'm pretty sure Sara won't believe in the significance of that for a while. I continued to work on trying to figure the map out, even after seeing the marker for Kagha on it, making a full circuit around the sacred pool, having an important conversation with Apikusis and a hilarious one with Volo (was kind of sorry there were no conversation options for Sara to tell him how much he was pissing her off). Then, finally, I found the entrance to take us to Kagha.

By then, the talk with Apikusis has already made clear she was a bad leader, and I happened to already know about her working with the Shadow Druids. But honestly, I'm not sure who they even are, and that's really more distant fantasy novel villainy. Her introduction scene, on the other hand, where she refers to a Tiefling child as "poison" and terrorizes her for doing as young children will sometimes do? That's something that really will hit the player hard. It hit Sara hard, too, and if she hadn't really wanted to see that healer, she definitely would've tried to intimidate her, or might have even outright attacked her to rescue the kid.

Instead, I ended up going with the nature check option of her saying imprisoning little Arabella would disrupt the balance of nature. Maybe not the best choice either, since Sara has -1 on nature, but luckily she rolled high. I immediately decided that Sara was pulling words out of her ass or possibly just trolling, and Kagha was the kind of narrow-minded arrogant that completely failed to realize this. Whether the approving Wyll or Gale realized this, I am not yet certain.

The last thing I've currently done was the conversation with Gale that immediately followed this encounter. I'm pretty sure I'm going to romance him, and one could even count that interaction as flirting, if you really stretch it.

Now, however, I am looking at next facing a scene I've seen played through twice, and heard comments about, and I think may well end with us having to flee the Grove. Which is even more of a problem when I still haven't even talked with Zorru about the possible location of the Githyanki creche yet!

[zydrateacademy]

Current Activities in Gaming #226

Alternative title: My Christmas sale haul. I'll start with something that wasn't even on sale but still bought it at the same time as the others; Rogue Trader. Pretty much along the same lines as BG3, I don't expect to ever beat RT. There's also a lot of reports that Act 4 and beyond are a buggy breakable mess, which is similar to how BG3's act 3 becomes a lagfest for me because I'm still in the process of saving up for a new CPU/Motherboard so I can run newer games like Starfield. Quick aside about Starfield: The one saving grace of not being able to play it right away... I hear it's a fairly lackluster game. Perhaps by the time I am able to play it at all, the modding tools might be out and help liven it up. I certainly expect to get a ReShade because it LOOKS like dogshit from most screenshots I've seen. I don't want to play in a brown mess.

Back to RT; Much like BG3 I am finding myself doing some alt hopping to see how other class/archetype combinations behave. I also want one of everything; A heretic, a dogmatic, and the "iconoclast", a word I'm not familiar with but mostly means "helpful and supportive".

I have 20 hours played but have only gotten past Act 1 just last night on my "main" file. My main girl is a crime lord soldier, whose main job is being the team's backline sniper. She's very good at it, and when she CAN hit, she's the most likely to crit into very high damages. But she's the least capable of AoE. Her sniper can sometimes hit an enemy directly behind my target but that's it.

Next on the list is Evil Genius 2. Don't know much about it, screenshots and reviews remind me one of those "Dungeons" games I had where I had a bunch of minions build various functional rooms in order to do dastardly deeds. But if Zero Punctuation is anything to go by it sounds like EG2 spends too much time on the room building part and not enough on the dastardly deeds. Not sure if I'll like it but hey it was on sale.

We got Sipho next, which acts like Stage 1 of Spore but more robust. I played a few rounds of it and I'm still not sure I understand how to really build my own creature. Controlling them seems sluggish too, and I wonder if that will be more smooth as I get more parts.

Next up is Death Must Die, a survivor-like that follows the same Diablo-esque mood of Halls of Torment. If you liked Vampire Survivors I recommend both of these. Death Must Die is fun but it currently has a problem where one build is vastly superior to others, based around the "Mayhem" trait, if you can get it, it adds permanent damage for that run. I once got it up to 416% so I killed the map's boss in about seven seconds. That's gonna be nerfed.

We got Dome Keeper, which acts like that old digging game I can't recall the name of (but it was iconic for its era, I just didn't play it myself). You kinda play a bit of minecraft but your dome gets attacked every couple of minutes so you need to use the resources you get to upgrade it and fight them off. It's cute, finding it a bit difficult though.

Keeping the same theme here, Graveyard Keeper. Same developers as Stardew Valley which I really liked and most reviews state that if I enjoy Stardew than Graveyard follows a lot of the same beats. I just wish I could mod my bearded chud fellow into a girl but that doesn't seem to be available. Didn't play it for very long, I'll get around to it some day.

I -finally- got one of those Vampire Masquerade visual novels, a genre I don't usually care much for because there's not enough "game" in them. Sometimes one will add RPG elements and that catches my interest more. Right now I have "Shadows of New York", which I believe has a gal PC. I think the other ones you switch around like five different characters. I installed it but didn't play it.

I have Vectorio which I can't even get past the tutorial. I should probably refund that one. It's haunted my wishlist for so long but I have no idea what to actually do.

Got Hard West 2. Looks like another XCOM-like, as Rogue Trader is. Not installed yet. Low priority.

Startup Panic, another game dev simulator like. Not installed, low priority.

Crossroads: Anniversary edition has been on my wishlist for fucking ever but it's been locked to mixed reviews because apparently it's buggy to the point of unplayable for some people, and I'm just hoping I get lucky. The christmas sale finally put it on sale to an acceptable price so I nabbed it. Not even fully sure what kind of game it is, just an inn manager sort of thing.

Noun Town Language Learning. Installed but waiting for them to add Norwegian. I could get in there now and start a little bit of Japanese. One of my favorite things about learning other languages is watching movies and occasionally catching to see if the subtitles are accurate or not, which I can typically do with German even though I'm no longer remotely fluent in it (took German classes for a couple years in high school, those days are long behind me).

But I'm on a Norse lore kick lately and I want to be a little "closer" to it by learning Norwegian.

And that's a wrap!

[sneakyscarab]

alrighty, ive now caught up from my backlog of touhous that ive beaten, so the pace from now on is gonna slow down since i need to beat the games first before i write about them. who knows though, if they take as long as this one did maybe i can keep up this pace :P

nina's thoughts on Touhou 12 - Undefined Fantastic Object

so funny story, after Subterranean Animism took me like two weeks to finish, i went into UFO expecting a similar result, but i ended up clearing within a single day. twelve (12) attempts of UFO and i had already got my 1cc! im a bit impressed with myself tbh, but i think i was helped by the gameplay changes in UFO that make it a bit easier.

for starters, real bombs are back baby! no more trading attack power for survivability, full power bombs are here again as a seperate resource. life pieces stick around, but now boss fights only give one out when you defeat their last phase. you would think this makes life pieces incredibly scarce, but theres another entirely new source for them: the titular Undefined Fantastic Objects. some enemies now drop little ufos that fly around the screen that come in one of three colours. when you pick up a ufo it goes into a small tracker in the corner, and when you collect 3 in a row all of one colour, or 1 of each, then a Big UFO spawns on screen. the UFO sticks around for about 10 seconds, slurping up every collectible that shows up onscreen. for each item it grabs, a meter around the ufo fills up and at max it drops an item depending on the colour, and when destroyed it drops another item plus everything it picked up. rainbow ufos drop more small ufos, green gives you a bomb on full meter and a bomb-piece on kill, red gives you a life piece on both, and blue does… something? i don't know. i never saw any items pop out of a blue ufo, and i prioritized blue ufos the least. i can only assume they do something relating to points since those are blue, but i honestly have no idea cause i beat the game before i had to go look anything up about it. once i figured out red guys gave you life i basically hard-focused proc'ing red ufos as much as possible, going for rainbow or green when red wasnt possible. as weird as the ufos are, i have to say their mechanics are conveyed surprisingly well without any real tutorials or even words, just really solid ui design.

the last new addition to the gameplay comes in the playable characters, Sanae is here now! wooo Sanae lets go! obviously Reimu and Marisa are here too, each of them get 2 weapon options so theres still only 6 total. i gave each one a shot, although some of them i literally only played once lol. Reimu has the standard homing shots and needles, Marisa has her illusion lasers but a new secondary weapon that shoots in sort of branching V-shapes, with a couple shots going behind her as well as in front, which i didnt find many uses for in my brief experience with it. illusion laser is the only one of these that i played more than once, as i put most of my focus into Sanae. both of Sanae's movesets are pretty neat, her first one was my weapon of choice for my 1cc attempt. based on Kanako, she shoots out snake beams that fly vertically, and then if they see an enemy to their left or right they take a 90 degree turn, making for an interesting type of homing. her other set, based on Suwako, shoots out frog beams in a wide fan angle, or straight ahead when focused, that explode into lingering AoE damage when they hit a target, which is great at clearing out huge swarms of enemies. i really like how her movesets sorta play off of Reimu's homing shots and Marisa's piercing lasers, but in very different ways compared to the two of them.

for the new characters, my favourite is probably Kogasa. this poor umbrella girl just wants to be scary, but shes inherently too silly-goofy and struggles to do what she as a youkai is Supposed to do. she's trying her best though, and looks adorable while doing it. i believe in you Kogasa!

i wasn't expecting to be a Ichirin & Unzan fan, but they surprised me. Ichirin is basically a stand user, a buddhist monk who controls her partner Unzan, a old man wind spirit with a powerful beard and even more powerful fists. the spell cards involving Unzan are great, seeing his huge angry face show up and throw hands is just hilarious. the best one by far though is their final attack, what i would call the absolute funniest spell card of the entire series so far: Thunderous Yell 「A Scolding from a Traditional Old Man」. if the name alone didn't convince you, the visuals are also hilarious, with two massive Unzan faces appearing on each side of the screen and shooting angry eye lasers at you. just look at it. perfection.

it's become a pattern in these posts that i talk about three new characters, but none of the others in UFO really stood out to me. if i had to pick one id go with Captain Murasa, just cause pirates are cool, but i don't have much more to say about her lol. sorry UFO crew!

anyways i think its about time to wrap this one up. thankfully i kept this one short so we dont have another SA essay situation lol. UFO is pretty fun, if a little bit Too easy with how much free stuff you can get from good ufo management. the story and characters really didn't stand out to me, and with how quickly i finished this one i don't expect it to really stick out much in my brain once i finish the series. if anything from UFO sticks it probably will just be Unzan's laser eyes. can we play that back one more time? thanks.

[limayde]

#4 Live A Live

Live A Live is a hard game to review because of how different each chapter is. So I think I'll do mini reviews of each one. Prehistory is the only chapter I straight-up disliked. The characters are annoying, it's full of toilet humor, and it's kinda sexist??? This game was initially released in '94 so...not entirely unexpected, but still not enjoyable. Imperial China is a pretty decent chapter, it's got some enjoyable moments and characters but unfortunately a story that is way too fast-paced. It's also got the only playable female character in the entire game...again...'94. She is one of the best characters in the entire game though, both personality-wise, and also during gameplay. Best speed stat in the game baybee. Twilight of Edo Japan is easily one of the best chapters in the game...with the caveat that you're attempting the pacifist route. If you do it normally, it gets repetitive right quick, as there's only like two or three enemy types. If you're doing pacifist, however, it's a total joy. It becomes a stealth/puzzle mission where you sneak around the castle and try to find the most optimal route to kill absolutely nobody. I almost did this on my first attempt but made one fatal error midway through that cost me near the end of the chapter. Still enjoyed myself a lot though. The Wild West is a chapter that is horribly undercooked. It's got a lot of fun characters with great synergy, but the actual playing of the chapter isn't the best. The whole thing is timed, you're supposed to run around town and collect materials to turn into traps. Then you give the traps to the townsfolk and they place them for you. After that you fight everyone who didn't get caught in a trap and then it's over. There's a skeleton of something fun, but it just wasn't executed very well. Present Day is interesting. It's the only chapter without any exploration, just straight combat. The twist is that Masaru will learn certain attacks of the bosses you fight, which is really cool. There isn't much else to say about this chapter, so I suppose I'll use this opportunity to talk about the combat. I really like the combat in this game, it's very different from your traditional RPG in that you move around a field and turns are decided by how fast each character is. All the attacks in the game have different AOEs, providing a lot of flexibility and diversity. I haven't seen anything else like it, it's super fun. Anyway, back to the chapters. Near Future is really unfortunate. It's got one of the best main characters in Akira, along with a similarly great cast. But just like Imperial China, it's got some terrible pacing along with gameplay that does not value the player's time. I swear if I ever have to walk up those ten flights of stairs again I'm gonna wring someone's nec- The presentation is great though. A killer opening and a finale that is just balls to the wall over the top. Distant Future is my favorite chapter in the game—and it doesn't even have any combat! It is pure suspense and horror, surprisingly good horror for an RPG too, it actually made me yelp a few times. Up to this point, my opinion of the game has been mixed, but that all changes once you get to the Middle Ages. I cannot stress this enough—I can't say anything about this chapter without spoiling it. Just know that it fucking rules and is where the game takes a major leap in quality. The final chapter of the game is where everything comes to a head. Everyone you've played as comes together to face an evil greater than them in this huge, sprawling map with secrets tucked away in every corner. It is pure RPG bliss. Live A Live is a hard game to review because of how different each chapter is. The first seven vary in quality and you don't get to experience the good shit™ until the very very end. But that buildup is so, so worth it. I know I've been pretty hard on this game, but it actually incredible...it just...takes a while to get going.

Top ten games I played in 2022 that weren't necessarily released during 2022.

One a day until the end of the year.

[tigerkirby215]

5e Vex, the Gloomiest build (League of Legends)

(Artwork by Horace “Hozure” Hsu. Made for Riot Games.)

Writing this build in a dark room late at night, super tired and stuff... Stuck inside cause of this dumb virus... AFKing in TFT for a Prestige skin like a tryhard... It’s kinda aesthetic, ya know?

GOALS

Another person to kill... Shadow? Can you handle it? - You don’t need best friends: you’ve got your Shadow. He’s the only cool one, because he’s basically you.

Ugh. Can we get some rain clouds in here? - No one likes a debbie downer, but everyone loves a good scare!

Man, walking suuuucks - Nowadays even the anti-dash champion needs a resetting dash. “Do the thing, Shadow.”

RACE

I could make Vex a Harengon to justify her rabbit ears, but she doesn’t really do much “jumping.” That, and I didn’t buy Wild Beyond the Witchlight. So Halfling still works good enough for a yordle. Your Dexterity increases by 2, and while your movement speed goes down to 25 you have Halfling Nimbleness to move through people who are bigger than you. You’re also “Brave” for advantage against fears (when you hang around the Shadow Isles stuff really isn’t that scary) and of course have good ol’ yordle Lucky to reroll Nat 1s.

Halflings are normally pretty cheerful but Ghostwise Halflings are perfectly dark. You’d normally increase your Wisdom by 1 but I’d recommend increasing your Constitution instead. But I mean, it’s not a big deal if you take Wisdom instead. It is only +1. You also get Silent Speech to keep to team chat with 30 foot telepathy. I mean, they have to understand your languages but at least you don’t have to tell everyone what you’re talking about. And oh yeah you obviously speak Common and Halfling.

ABILITY SCORES

15; CHARISMA - Turns out when you don’t release any new yordles for (wait it’s been 5 years since Kled was released? Holy shit) people end up wanting them.

14; DEXTERITY - Just because you don’t like walking doesn’t mean you’re slow.

13; CONSTITUTION - Imagine dying like a normie.

12; WISDOM - Vex isn’t sad because she’s pessimistic. She’s just realistic.

10; INTELLIGENCE - You’re too cool for school. (And I needed everything else more.)

8; STRENGTH - Ughhh I don’t wanna lift heavy stuff! I’m tired...

BACKGROUND

I guess you’re technically a Haunted One, even if the black mist is the best thing that ever happened to you. You get proficiency in Arcana and Survival as well as two language of your choice to talk to your "allies.” (I guess one of them has to be exotic or whatever.) (I’d personally pick Sylvan as the language of yordles and whatever language the majority of your party knows as your second choice, but that’s just me.)

The thing that sucks about having a Heart of Darkness is that everyone keeps trying to help you, thinking that your sadness (and the living shadow on your back) is something to be fixed. I mean, at least you can get the NPC normies to help you, as long as you don’t spook ‘em. “No doctors! I told you: being sad makes me happy.”

(Artwork by @ToggleD0wnFall on Twitter.)

THE BUILD

or whatever...

LEVEL 1 - SORCERER 1

Starting as a Sorcerer for saving throws and stuff. Also proficiency in Intimidation and... Persuasion, I guess? Look, persuading people that you’re fine “no really” is a skill too.

I wonder what Sorcerous Origin we’ll pick... If only there was one based entirely on shadows and darkness... Oh hey Shadow Magic. As a Shadow Sorcerer you get Eyes of the Dark for 120 feet of Darkvision to see with your dumb Halfling eyes, and Strength of the Grave which will let Shadow take a hit for you. (As long as you make a good Charisma save.)

But of course the main appeal of a Sorcerer is the Spellcasting. You can learn 4 cantrips from the Sorcerer list and two level spells: For cantrips Mage Hand will let Shadow pick things up for you, Mind Sliver and Sword Burst will keep loud people off you both up close and from afar, and Prestidigitation will let you do all sorts of normie yordle magic. As for leveled spells Shield and Mage Armor are both kinda mandatory for some Personal Space.

LEVEL 2 - WARLOCK 1

What? Did you really think we wouldn’t get at least some support from adults? Work for that cool gloomy dude Viego and make a pack with The Undead. That’s because Undead are super dark and morbid and have a Form of Dread: as a bonus action you can turn on your Doom and Gloom for 1 minute. You get some temporary hit points, fear people when you hit them, and are immune to fears yourself. You can transform a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus and regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

You also get Pact Magic, which is different from normie Spellcasting because you get the cool stuff done with just a Short Rest. Anyways you can learn two cantrips from the Warlock list like Minor Illusion to have Shadow trick some normies and Eldritch Blast to Eldritch while you Blast. You can also grab some first level Warlock spells like Hex to mark people you don’t like, and Arms of Hadar if you really need your Personal Space.

LEVEL 3 - WARLOCK 2

Second level Warlocks get their Eldritch Invocations for extra stuff that you don’t have to put effort into. While Armor of Shadows does exist it’s honestly better for you to cast Mage Armor with a spell slot, so with that being said take Agonizing Blast to agonize while you blast and Eldritch Mind so you can keep your concentration around annoying people.

You can also learn another spell like Hellish Rebuke, because people just keep barging into your Personal Space!

LEVEL 4 - SORCERER 2

Now that you can agonize your blasts it’s time to go back to Sorcerer. Second level Sorcerers get a Font of Magic for Sorcery Points which currently don’t do much other than give you more spell slots. You can turn your Warlock slots into Sorcery points though, which is good because they come back on a Short Rest but the rest of your magic does not.

You can also cast another spell like Earth Tremor, to slow people down with Looming Darkness and sunder the land with your edginess.

LEVEL 5 - SORCERER 3

Third level Sorcerers finally get Metamagic! Empowered Spell will allow you to maximize your damage and retain your role as an artillery mage. Alternatively if you want to guarantee fears in your foes take Heightened Spell to give them disadvantage to resist Shadow’s influence.

If you want Shadow to stick around then Dust Devil will swirl around for quite awhile. Alternatively Shadow (Magic) also teaches you Darkness for free, and you can cast it with 2 Sorcery Points to see through it! Your friends can’t see through it, but you can team up with Shadow for some powerful combos when you can see them but they can’t see you!

(Artwork by @jpdiasarts on Twitter.)

LEVEL 6 - SORCERER 4

4th level Sorcerers get the first of many Ability Score Improvements, but I can’t take Fey Touched every time for Flash. That, and we won’t give into basic yordle society. So let’s get value out of our Halfling race with the Second Chance feat. Along with +1 to your Charisma you can also use your reaction to make an enemy you can see attacking you reroll their attack roll, potentially making them miss.

Don’t use this against an attack that you can Shield against, but if someone gets a really good roll you can use this to get your Personal Space back! You can only use this once per combat though (it comes back when you roll for initiative!) so make sure to use it when it matters to keep your spell slots in check.

Oh and you can also learn another spell, and another cantrip! For your cantrip Shocking Grasp will help you push people away if they get too close (folk tend to react poorly when zapped by a tazer!) As for leveled spells Web will keep foes from dashing around, and is also pretty flammable. Huhn; wonder if that’ll be useful.

LEVEL 7 - SORCERER 5

5th level Sorcerers get gifts from the Ruined Queen Tasha in the form of Magical Guidance. You can use a Sorcery point to reroll a d20 if needed, potentially squeezing a success out. Don’t use this all the time (even if Warlock slots means you’ll have plenty of Sorcery points to spare) but this can be very useful in an emergency!

You can also learn third level spells and hey: Fireball may be a normie spell, but it’s still pretty effective. It’s maybe a bit too flashy to be Looming Darkness but it’s a good source of AoE damage which isn’t as loud and annoying as Shatter.

LEVEL 8 - SORCERER 6

All this time being a Shadow Sorcerer and Shadow hasn’t even done anything for us! Well how about you go out there and get some work done, Shadow? For 3 Sorcery points you can summon a Hound of Ill Omen to target a foe within 120 feet of you.

Shadow is basically a Dire Wolf except he’s Medium, has temp HP equal to half your Sorcerer level, can move through stuff (but takes damage if he ends his turn in stuff), and automatically chases whoever you told him to go for. Shadow will appear 30 feet away from the person you told him to get, and will chase after him like I said. All he’ll really do is attack the target you told him to though; he won’t even opportunity attack unless it’s the person you told him to chase. But if Shadow’s near someone they have disadvantage on their saving throws, which is pretty cool. (Unfortunately it’s only against spells, not your Form of Dread.)

Speaking of saving throws: Slow is a really great way to keep normies from running around doing annoying stuff. And you don’t have to hit Shadow with it which is pretty cool.

(Artwork by @Lauriquess on Twitter.)

LEVEL 9 - WARLOCK 3

Third level Warlocks get to choose their Pact Boon: if you want a really small Shadow go for Pact of the Chain, and if you want your cool necklace go for Pact of the Talisman, but we’ll be going for Pact of the Tome because you’re mostly a spellcaster really. (And we definitely don’t have enough cantrips.)

You get a Book of Shadows (See? Books can be cool!) with three cantrips: take Thaumaturgy to be extra spooky, Vicious Mockery for some sick teenage burns, and Sapping Sting to make normies fall over when you fear them. Some might say that 10 total cantrips by level 9 is a bit overkill but look on the dark side: you’ve now got a cantrip for basically every type of saving throw in case you can’t hit with Eldritch Blast!

Honestly none of the Pact Boons are particularly important for Vex so I picked the one that made the most sense. Feel free to take something more practical since 10 cantrips is admittedly overkill.

Oh and you can learn more Warlock spells, so now it’s time to finally take Misty Step. For Flash!

LEVEL 10 - WARLOCK 4

4th level Warlocks get another Ability Score Improvement: getting more Charisma for better spellcasting is probably a good idea.

You can also learn another spell, and hey look another cantrip. For your cantrip even if more damage options are kinda overkill by this point Chill Touch inflicts Grievous Wounds, which might be useful. You can also grab another second level spell and Blindness / Deafness (which is on the Undead list) is far more useful than any of the other normie options you’d have at this level anyways.

LEVEL 11 - WARLOCK 5

5th level Warlocks get another Eldritch Invocation, and even if you’ve got a resetting dash you’re still a squishy mage. So grab Tomb of Levistus for Zhonya's Hourglass.

You can also grab third level Warlock spells now! Remember how I took Fireball and complained that it wasn’t a good replica of Looming Darkness? Well Hunger of Hadar takes your Concentration but it’s a lot edgier!

LEVEL 12 - WARLOCK 6

6th level Undead Warlocks have become Grave Touched by the mist, and can make mist of their own! Along with being able survive without eating, drinking, or breathing you can turn any of your damage into necrotic damage. If you’re in your Form of Dread however you can add one extra damage die to whatever you’re using to get people to buzz off, adding to that morbid and macabre aesthetic.

You can also add another spell and if you’re bored with Shadow being a wolf how about you make them a Summon Shadowspawn? Weaponize your Fury, Despair, or Fear (I’d honestly recommend Fury since it has good synergy with your Dreadful Aspect) and work together with Shadow to deal with all your annoying foes! I’d also suggest replacing Hellish Rebuke with Counterspell, because even if the former fits better the latter is way more useful.

(Artwork by Jennifer Wuestling. Made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 13 - WARLOCK 7

7th level Warlocks can finally activate Shadow Surge. Relentless Hex lets you mark a foe with Hex and then dash to them. And technically you can move Hex around after the fact to reset your dashes! And while you’re at it you may as well grab Dimension Door for Summoner Teleport.

You could also upgrade Summon Shadowspawn to Summon Aberration if you so desire, but Summon Shadowspawn is more than strong enough and far more fun and thematic.

LEVEL 14 - WARLOCK 8

Another Ability Score Improvement. Yay. Cap off your Charisma for the best spellcasting you can get out of Shadow. You can also learn another spell, but we’re going to wait for...

LEVEL 15 - WARLOCK 9

9th level Warlocks get another Eldritch Invocation: even if it’s kinda ineffective Ascendant Step is still pretty useful to have Shadow carry you around. I mean yeah it’s slow but not that much slower than walking for you, and Shadow can lift you up in the air. “Shadow; carry me...”

You can also learn 5th level spells. If one guy’s being particularly annoying Negative Energy Flood can get them to shut up and work for you. Alternatively if you want more Personal Space Antilife Shell is on the Undead List and will make sure normies keep faaaaar away.

LEVEL 16 - WARLOCK 10

Are you ever so sick of everything that you just want to explode? Necrotic Husk has two benefits: for one you’re resistant to Necrotic damage, and immune while in your Form of Dread because being around Viego for so long means you’re used to his work.

But additionally when you are reduced to 0 hit points you can use your reaction to drop to 1 hit point instead and cause your body to explode! Each creature of your choice within 30 feet of you takes 2d10 + your warlock level in Necrotic damage. You do gain 1 level of exhaustion after using this, and after using it once you can’t do so again until you finish 1d4 long rests. So I’d perhaps use Strength of the Grave first unless you really need to lash out.

I hope you weren’t expecting more spells because you aren’t getting them from Warlock: just a cantrip. By this point we’ve honestly got far too many cantrips so I dunno maybe just grab Prestidigitation again and swap it out from Sorcerer when you get the chance.

(Artwork by @DukkoArt on Twitter.)

LEVEL 17 - SORCERER 7

Finally back to our yordle roots: 7th level Sorcerers get 4th level spells like Storm Sphere for a sphere of darkness and angst. But I mean the real benefit is that you get more Sorcery points let’s be real.

Oh and you can swap out Prestidigitation for Gust I guess. Spooky winds and stuff. Either this level or next level depending on your DM.

LEVEL 18 - SORCERER 8

Your last Ability Score Improvement... You’re gonna have to ask: what’s more important to me? More Metamagic, or more Eldritch Invocations? If Metamagic is to your liking take Metamagic Adept for Careful Spell and Distant Spell along with two more Sorcery points to use on them. If you like Eldritch Invocations though Eldritch Adept has a ton of options as a level 10 Warlock. I won’t tell you what invocation to take (they’re all great boosts but none of them shout out at me as something you should prioritize) as there are plenty of options to make your own Vex now that they’re all grown up.

I can at least tell you what spell to take: none of them! Wait until next level!

Oh and you can swap out Prestidigitation for Gust I guess.

LEVEL 19 - SORCERER 9

9th level Sorcerers can learn 5th level spells which means you’ve finally caught up to your Warlock slots. And look at that: the good wish Tasha gave you one last way to weaponize Shadow. Bigby’s Hand does a bunch of cool stuff and is pretty much the ultimate way to make Shadow crush some normies. (Most literally.) Alternatively if you want to borrow from Viego Enervation will let you heal from the mist and also do some damage. Great if you’re stuck in a corner with a bunch of annoying normies.

LEVEL 20 - SORCERER 10

Our final level is the 10th level of Sorcerer for one last spell, one last cantrip, and one last metamagic option! For your metamagic it’s honestly about time you take Quickened Spell to up your DPS. For your cantrip take Mold Earth to dig holes in the sand and brood. And as for your leveled spell? Honestly I just like Synaptic Static, and there isn’t much else I want anyways.

FINAL BUILD

PROS

We’re all doomed. But you’re more doomed - 5th level spells pack more than enough punch, and you’ve got plenty of them. Warlock slots will always be at your fingertips, and Sorcery points give you plenty of flexibility too!

I can feel it: someone’s happy over there! - Along with giving you a temporary hitpoint shield Form of Dread puts a nice bit of CC on all your abilities. Keep enemies scared and sad with tons of Doom and Gloom!

Ugh. Stop copying me Shadow! - Hounds of Ill Omen are cool. Summon Shadowspawn is also cool. Bigby’s Hand is especially cool. And hey: even your lower level Concentration spells like Hex? They’re pretty cool too.

CONS

Ughhhhhhhhhh this is gonna take foreeeever! - You’ve got limited fumes, even for a coffeelock. Form of Dread has limited uses and there’s only so much spell slot melting you can do to get your magic back.

I’m dancing... Happy? - You’ve got a really boring set of really normie skills... and if you’re playing Vex the way she’s meant to be played you’re probably not going to use any of them except for Intimidation.

Yup; the glass is half empty - Half your levels are Sorcerer levels, meaning you’re squishy. You’ve also got Mage Armor on which guess what: also means you’re squishy. People who hit teenagers sure are lame but it’s really not hard to Power Word Kill you.

But I guess you’re pretty cool overall. Shadow’s an alright partner and you can spread Ruination even without Viego. Trudge around and get people to frown for once. There’s nothing wrong with being sad, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting the world to be sad. But do try to at least be happy out of character, because we play games to have fun. I mean, who’d play a video game that just makes you depressed and angry?

(Artwork by @AzzylumArt on Twitter.)

[badass-at-fandoming]

Just Little Malkavian Things ~

Malkavians these days can do nothing but de-conceptualize, Dement, eat hot chip, and lie.

Since people seemed to enjoy the #JustLittleVentrueThings VTMB adventure, here's a matching Malkavian one. Though I'm gonna be real with ya here, I had less fun D:

I finally figured out why I have such trouble wrapping my head around depictions of Malkavians in VTM media. Books, Storytellers, and fans say it's like having a mental illness and being linked to a massive group chat. But, listen, I've lived around and with mental illness all my life. I've been in massive group chats. Being Malkavian ain't like that.

It IS like being an early-twenties English major in the midst of an existential crisis, over-worked and cross-faded outta your skull and watching horror movies to Cope(TM)

So it's like drugs. It's like you had too much weed and too much wine and are let loose on Los Angeles. Which. My friends and I have and we, coincidentally, also "fought" a stop sign. The Malkavian PC never really seemed like a character to me: she's like a collection of cliches and dude-bros doing blunts while watching slasher movies. I named her Liotta after the Psychic Shop owner, and I'm sad Liotta didn't really get to be a person.

I wasn't surprised by any of the dialog. It's a pattern. Alliteration, allusion, animal joke. Alliteration, allusion, animal joke. It lost its charm.

Often, I didn't know what the FUCK I was saying. Which is the Malkavian Experience(TM), according to Rosa.

Anyway

Nonsense time

Most characters have an extra paragraph of dialog to Acknowledge That You Are A Malkavian. Some get an extra conversation branch. For example, there's lots of new Bertie dialog and he was all impressed Liotta knows about Gehenna and Thin-bloods <3. The Anarchs characters, especially Skelter, get a lot more. Skelter, Ash, and Liotta totally vibe.

If you sneak around the Santa Monica drug house, they talk about Mercurio?? Hello?? Mercurio, you bent Masquerade by not getting beat up real good.

Zero pretense about Voerman. Yes, I have DID; yes, I am making it your problem.

When Liotta talked to Beckett, he said the DID was "something to look forward to." Goddamnit, Beckett. That's not how the Bane or mental illness works! >:-(

I've never sneaked before!!! Did you know that the Tong AND the American gang downtown have fakes in their suitcases??? Like, Full On, "it's just stuffed with newspapers, brah." They were going to kill each other over newspapers. For some reason the Tong brought the REAL suitcase along too, but I'm so past having VTM make any sort of sense. It's fine.

Accidentally pissed off Nines. I meant farmer (affectionate) and Nines thought I meant farmer (derogatory). :(

The Dementation powers are (a) pretty purple loop-de-loops, (b) not as effective as Dominate (reaaaallyyy missed a good AOE attack), and (c) oddly enough, gave more compassionate dialog choices. I mean. In the pen-and-paper version, Dementation isn't conflict-focused, so the devs had to jigger it to use as attacks. But I was touched when Liotta made Hannah believe she was Paul, so Hannah got to say goodbye. Making Samantha believe Liotta was a pet turtle was funny and spared her the pain of her friend vanishing a second time. Heather thinks her entire experience was a dream and returns to her life, more or less unscathed.

Boris?? Asked Liotta to kill Venus for him???? DUDE, WHAT. I didn't know he could counter-offer!! What happens if you take up his offer? Who controls Confession? Does it close down??

Pro Tip: don't trust the pale woman in a cowboy stripper outfit who comes out of your vent and tells you everything's fine.

I went through an ENTIRE Ventrue playthrough without puking and Liotta ate one (1) unhoused person and blew chunks. I didn't realize Diseased Blood was a threat. What happens if you skip the Plague-bearer quest? Should you just never chomp on the Downtown unhoused community?

Strauss called Liotta "young one" and I was like, sir. You're not Beckett, you can't trick me.

A rat dances in the Downtown sewers and tells Liotta that the grass is greener in someone else's asshole.

And also will take you places.

Do you know what it's like for a Capri Sun to suddenly start speaking and offer taxi services.

LaCroix: how did Bach find me??? also LaCroix: [names his company after himself] [lives in Ventrue Tower]

Liotta told Beckett that Kindred are a joke and I got extra EXP for being so sneaky.

DMP produced snuff films even before Andrei???!!!! I thought all the blood was from the lil geo-dudes.

Liotta agreed with Andrei that Caine is here and boot-scooting around in his lil Angst Mobile. :D

As bad as Liotta was in group fights, she repeatedly made bosses cower and stand quietly while she beat them to death. Andrei had a full on lay-on-the-floor temper tantrum in his war form and Liotta just. Smacked him until he exploded. She didn't even take damage!

Imalia's computer password is ALSO "cleopatra." Just like Tawni's! Dual reference to the Embrace type

IDK why I never asked this before, but, um, who does Mitnick share the bunk bed with? Barabus..?

I went back to the Empire Hotel Penthouse suite to fetch the educational book and the Russian mob dudes were still there?? Hello, sirs, your leader is dead. You can leave now.

Liotta heard the real thoughts of the Red Dragon hostess...and also some debate about the Dark Father's presence in LA, heehee.

I thought it was fun that one of the "take me away, Cabbie!" taxi replies mentioned riding in a car like father and child. :D

"Why is the Mandarin giggling at me" is a sentence that came out of my face.

With the different dialog options, sometimes it's impossible to be polite to NPCs. For example: Liotta could only call VV "dolly/doll/toy doll" instead of her preferred names; the Chinatown gun seller felt frightened, thinking we were Police or Immigration.

Some great fourth wall breaks in the dialog: "I don't want to get involved either, but tell that to whoever is playing me!" to Beckett after the Giovanni Mansion.

"You can't spell success without whatever the hell my name is."

"If I cannot win with effort, I will cheat my way to victory. I am gone." Funnily enough, this was my first run where I didn't hack in to boost stats.

"I just want it to end. I feel like I've been playing forever."

Some nice wider lore references: "I devour knowledge like the great worm devours the corpse of society" could refer to how Salout, in tapeworm form, is devouring Tremere's body and destabilizing the Clan and/or Kindred night society.

"They should have a channel devoted to you in my head" to Beckett. In his Diary, Beckett witnesses Malkavians devouring Malkav and may or may not join the Cobweb (PS check out this great fanfic where he does).

This made me stare into space for a minute and question my life choices. During the Sabbat massacre, Liotta didn't snack on any of the blood doll ghouls (ya know, the ones with the eyes gouged out). She had such high Inspection + Finance that she had $4k in her wallet and could buy blood. I wanted to test a rumor that if you don't feed on the blood dolls, you get extra EXP. You do. BUT anywAY, right before the Tremere miniboss, Liotta was sword-fighting some goons and the blood doll...attacked him for her? Like. He moved on his own. When the goon was dead, the blood doll asked if Liotta was all right. This might have been a glitch but...the horrific implications that those men are still conscious, still willful, still feeling. ACK. I hope they got out the next morning.

RIP Ming Xiao. Flamethrower right to the tiddies.

I stole @ryttu3k's idea and noclipped through the werewolf section. Liotta still killed the Garou, but I didn't want the stress.

Caine is very Caine. "Don't you get it? We've already been judged!"

Liotta went Anarch because what little backstory I came up for her was she considered Smiling Jack her sire. Nines complimented her ability to murder.

Sheriff got sooooo dizzy that he fell over right onto Liotta's sword 27 times.

Dancing werewolf ending! Seemed fitting. :D

[psiknife]

further thoughts on raz’s hydrokinesis and shadow archetype deal:

as the name suggests, it’s based on the shadow from jungian psychology: the repressed, primal aspects of a person’s psyche, let it be good or bad. 

in this case, raz’s shadow represents a repressed fear of hurting people with his hydrokinesis. even if the kid’s began to work through his hydrophobia, the combined generational trauma and harm maligula’s done isn’t something that can be resolved in a day.

from a gameplay perspective, raz initially uses his hydrokinesis as a defensive move; it will push enemies away, and combined with cryo can even be used to make temporary barriers. there’s some offensive stuff, like increased damage when slamming them into barriers, but it’s mostly defensive aoe attacks.

optional pins for cryokinesis include:

foregoing all defense with hydrokinesis to use precise, single target attacks in the form of iced throwing knives.

being able to freeze enemies to a single spot, with slight speed decrease after they break free perhaps?

he also won’t initially use hydrokinesis at all if there’s any non-hostile creatures around. that includes the occasional teammate, archetype, and even cognitions found in mental worlds.

but at a point, the constant repression on top of already existing issues with everything post-pnauts 2, eventually manifests the shadow archetype. raz isn’t sure it’s there at first; usually just an occasional thing in the corner of his vision, but it quickly becomes clear it’s not just a figment of his imagination during a routine exploration throughout the collective unconscious. the shadow archetype outright attacks him, and raz either flees or is forcibly pulled out.

from then on i imagine he has to venture into his mental world. i don’t have exact thoughts on how i personally interpret it yet, but it’s hostile even to raz due to the whole “repression, compartmentalization, and a partridge in a pear tree” thing.

raz’s shadow doesn’t fall into that trope of a mirror boss, per se; he doesn’t use all of raz’s psychic abilities, just those to do with cryo and hydrokinesis. it’s stylized like black ice, and where maligula had serpents, here, raz’s shadow uses hands of galochio to try and drown him. he will also momentarily disappear by, for lack of a better word, “breaking apart”, like his form is made only of water held together by psychic power alone.

throughout the boss fight, his shadow would also use those cut voice lines, and his voice rings with echoes of maligula’s destruction. like maligula, his shadow, of course, can’t be killed outright either; instead, the key is for raz to acknowledge that the issue is there and accept his “maligula”, per se, is both a part of him, but not all that he is.

when he does, the black water and ice of the shadow archetype melts away, having been accepted and giving raz a measure of catharsis and peace.

from the on, as a gameplay thing, raz would then be able to use his hydrokinesis in combat regardless if there’s non-hostile creatures in the field, to represent his growth both as a person and as a psi user.

this post originally started off as me trying to better articulate my ideas and ended up with a whole outline and god i’m tempted to take it further. maybe once i develop more detailed ideas for raz’s mental world

[nightzap]

Now I’ve also beaten this map in CM! Woohoo what a doozy, I had to change my strategy a lot to account for the main chokepoint being banned in CM, forcing me to hold five lanes at once! Clever use of Gravel to stall the first few enemies allows me to set up Myrtle, Texas, La Pluma, Arene and finally Gummy, followed by deploying Warfarin to keep Arene alive and prepare him to shoot down the Targeteer later.  Last comes Specter in front of Myrtle to do the fighting in that lane after the first hound is dealt with. Lastly, Project Red clears out a few enemies ganging up on Gummy. The opening centers mostly around finding a good build order to deal with the early, but weak aggression.

Once Pursuer and his elite squad appear, the real battle begins. April and Red  kill out one caster and weaken another, while Specter spawnkills the Striker in front of her. I made a small mistake here and let another hound slip through, nothing that Gravel can't handle. Meanwhile, the Targeteer spawns and starts bombarding Texas. Our noble Knight Margaret takes her place and tanks the bombs while Arene destroys the tanky drone. Finally, Jaye helps Nearl kill the Striker coming at her and retreats afterwards. The other striker on her lane while blunt his weapons on her shield for a long time: The final wave is not triggerd by just the Emperor's Blade's defeat, but by the death of every enemy before then, so with Nearl stalling the Striker, I have a lot of time to set up for everything. The other three strikers will now be dealt with: One gets pincushioned by a Warfarin-boosted April, one is turned into sashimi by Jaye, with a stun from Texas since EB's AoE attack hurt him a bit too much to survive dueling a Striker, and the third gets slaughtered by everyone's favourite crazy nun.

The actual fight with EB begins now. Arene and April bring him down to half health from afar to bait the first Dominion, afterwards I set up taking down his second phase and killing the five Elite Strikers. I make a minor mistake in deploying Myrtle to early when I actually want her to bait a Dominion, but it's nothing run ending and I correct it by putting Red in her place. Finally, I put down Specter and Arene, lower EB's first healthbar to zero, stall out his invincibility period, and bring in April so the three of them can take off half of his health together. Finally, the second half is annihilated by Amiya's S2, boosted by Warfarin.

I need to retreat the vampire and redeploy her just one tile to the left - if I deployed her there before, Amiya would also have to be deployed further left, and the Striker would be in range of her S2, killing him early. After EB's defeath, the lingering Dominion zones also debuff enemies, making it much easier to stall the incoming Elite Strikers. Jaye needs Medic support to survive a fight with them, and I'm also using Texas who also needs a Medic to tank 1200 Atk hits. Specter, who takes on two Elite Strikers at once, is also barely unable to kill them before her S2 runs out, so April and Project Red add a little extra damage to secure the kill, while Gravel comes in to hold up the middle Striker so he can't escape Specter's wrath.

Now that most of the big charge is cleared out, I have all the time in the world to deal with the two remaining strikers. Jaye/Arene and Specter take care of those problems. Mission accomplished!