#the only thing i need are to level the hp% but I want to find better pieces before I do that

[kitsunabi]

Oh I forgot! @itoshisoup This relic set is actually really good!!! And I haven't even maxed out the stats on her relics or LC :O

[local-diavolo-anon]

i'm back!

ok so 2/3 days ago i found this youtube video where op turned Springtrap (or well, William Afton) into a fully build DnD character, and if i say so myself: things got out of hand fast

so here is my take on DnD Springtrap and specifically on that build (adding more infos under the cut for who is interested, i suggest to watch the video first)

starting with saying that unless you're playing in a scifi setting, this build is either not for you or to be modified, since in later levels spells are heavily centered around technomagic and electronic devices; personally when i will play him i will probably tinker around with the chosen spells and cantrips to make him less violently niche and/or more versatile

which kinda saddens me because it takes away not little of the characterization but, given most dnd stories take place in a medieval fantasy or high fantasy setting, a cantrip like On/Off or a spell like Remote Access are NOT particularly useful; so i will go for more psychic damage or necromancy oriented abilities, maybe i might take more than just 4 levels in artificier as well (especially given that again, all of those warlock spells at later levels are all technology oriented) but i need to see what those offer

however it is a kinda tank-y build given that with a shield on you can get up to a 27 of Ac, so even with low damage and not much hp you would not struggle too much to stay alive, and i like that!

as for the character himself, i put too much effort into my interpretation not to share it, so if anyone wants to play this guy as well, i fabricated a possible backstory that might come useful:

The character goes by the name "Dave Miller" (or whatever variant you want to use), and was originally a human artificier who created constructs for a living, mainly with the goal of offering aid to who needed it for whatever reason.

There however he ran into an issue, that being that a robot need a power source, and his own heart and lungs could not sustain a whole robot by themselves.

After losing part of his family to some kind of accident he became terrified of death, so with age he started replacing his own body parts with machinery to delay his last days (which made him a cyborg), until the point where he was very very close to become just a robot.

(This part may or may not involve a pact with a deity of death, this entirely depends on how you want to play him but it would make sense since the build is an artificier/warlock hybrid)

Through particular and very much not illegal experiments tied to necromancy he discovered that the life force of a living being could be shared, and used as a form of fuel. (possibly: age lived of the creature used= amount of extra months you get)

Here comes the second problem: this only worked with intelligent creatures, and more specifically, it worked best with creatures of your own race, which meant that he either went around murdering people or he found another solution. Non same-race creatures worked as well but not as good and there were not easy to find in the middle of a city and with a shop tied to your name.

And here is where and WHY he'd join a party of adventurers: after some time, his reserves or fuel were running VERY thin, and running into a group of adventurers was a god sent because by joining their party he essentially got a free pass to kill whoever he wanted, and reduce them to a dried raisin after sucking some life force out of them. Doing so you learn that the mowe powerful the creature is, the more energy it produces as well.

Your goal, that you as the player are following, when role-ing your character? essentially slay whatever powerful BBEG your Dm throws at you and suck all of that juicy fuel out of them, so that you can return to your little shop in the middle of the capital and return to create and sell whatever weird construct, doll, or robot comes to your mind for another few decades undisturbed.

And this is it. I think this might be a good backstory that could fit pretty much any setting you want to play this guy into, be it classic dnd or some scifi futuristic thing.

of course you don't NEED to use this one line per line, make up your own without looking back if you don't like it lol, dnd is the "make up shit and have fun" game after all!

Edit: also no his outfit makes no sense, i just went with vibes and decided a tanktop dress shirt, a twin tailed gilet and suspenders OVER said gilet was a good choice.

[valrayne-faeu]

we have gotten a few asks about the “rules” for making a sona or OC in the faeu, so if you’re someone that likes to be “canon-compliant” or have a set of rules to follow when making an OC, here they are! (feel free to not follow them if you don’t want to, you’re welcome to use your imagination)

Dream and Nightmare are the oldest current living fae in the Seasonal Realms at 1500 years old, older fae either left or died during the war

there are no hybrid fae (spring/autumn, summer/winter, etc). the Spring-Summer and Autumn-Winter magics are like oil and water and cannot mix. a fae has the magic of whatever realm they were born into, and a human that becomes fae will have the magic of whatever realm they were tricked in.

Spring-Summer fae can’t travel to Autumn-Winter (and vice versa) without protections or the blessing of the king of where they’re travelling. fae will fall very ill from the conflicting magic after spending even an hour across the border (Summer fae will have a cold and Winter fae will have a fever).

it is possible to convert to another realm, but it is a process and you have to be blessed by the king of the realm you’re switching to in a ceremony. however, if you convert to Spring-Summer and then change your mind and want to return to Autumn-Winter, Nightmare will refuse to let you return. so choose wisely. Dream is more lenient—if you convert to Autumn-Winter and then want to return to Spring-Summer, Dream will welcome you back.

there are certain physical traits associated with each court—

Summer/Spring Court - Antlers. Wings: Butterfly, Dragonfly, Bee, Praying Mantis, Wasp, Fly

Winter/Autumn Court - Horns. Wings: Moth, Beetle, Cicada, Grasshopper, Firefly, Cockroach

there are fae that aren’t based on insects! fae that are bird-like, have traits of dragons or unicorns, things like that. feel free to get creative with it ^^

fae can’t lie, it makes them physically ill. it’s not worth it to try. you can trade a human for the ability to lie, however only one fae has managed to do so. most fae don’t think it’s a skill they need, and the ability to manipulate words and dancing around the truth is a highly valued skill. fae culture loves wordplay. humans that are becoming fae will find telling lies makes them more and more ill until they’re dissuaded from it.

there are realms beyond the faewildes, and other kingdoms of fae with different magics. it is possible to travel from one to another through the wildes but it is dangerous. the faewildes do not have a ruler as wild magic doesn’t like to be tamed, but there are fae that survive out there (Error is one example).

in the fae realms there are some fae known as “Aspects”. fae that went through a lot of complicated, life-altering, incredibly influential experiences that were entirely concentrated around a singular concept of some kind. it changes them fundamentally as a person, concentrating their magic on that concept until they are tied to it intrinsically and it is as much a part of them as they are a part of it. events on the level of Frisk surviving a beam from Asriel as the god of hyperdeath at 0.0000001 HP through sheer Determination, or all the things that made Sans into Geno and then ultimately into Error. they become that thing personified. Aspects are incredibly powerful and exceedingly rare, and it’s a very big deal for one to happen. notable Aspects are Dream (Positivity), Nightmare (Negativity), Error (Chaos), and Ink (Inspiration).

a lot of the faeu is based on Celtic folklore—there are many interesting concepts and creatures to read about and pull inspiration from. i recommend reading up on the Tuatha Dé Danann and Aos Sí!

all fae can make magically-binding deals, even humans that just got tricked into staying in the fae realms that haven’t turned fae yet. magically-binding deals are usually limited to things that you can actually complete, such as trading something you own/have or doing some kind of service. with study and training it is possible to strengthen your magic and give intangible things such as a boon/luck/etc. the more tied you are to the magic of the realm the more powerful you are and the more complex of a deal you can make. it takes lots of study to reach this level.

[ciaran]

joongdok roleswap au

i want to involve hsy in this but I can't figure out how and it's past my bedtime so ok.

I think kdj is the protagonist of a simple, kind of episodic web based game. the graphics are very basic and it's text heavy and it's not really yjh's usual type of game but he's charmed by the protagonist, who is an underpowered weakling who is very "aware" of the player. he speaks directly to the player and gives them tips, and his stigma is not regression but "save point". when he uses save point, he can reset back to the save point but with future knowledge, but not with his skills. he remains underpowered throughout the game. every time he gains stat buffs, he loses them or proceeds to a level where he's weak again, so both the player and Kim Dokja are constantly having to strategize and level up/gear out the party members so kdj doesn't die. the other gimmick is that, to go to the save point, kdj has to lose all his hp and die. this is easy bc he only has 10 hp and (1) stab wound can kill him. but every time u kill him his teammates make horrified faces and are shocked but their trauma is erased when you go back to the save point. and yjh is obsessed w this game. bc it requires so much strategizing, the episodes drop every week. and every episode requires multiple attempts, and some of them even require going back to save points from way earlier in the game to make it work. and the entire time, kdj is so aware of the thought process of the player. yjh thinks it's kind of gimmicky but kdj predicts his thoughts pretty accurately? he'll often tell yjh to think and react slowly, to remember previous scenarios, and guess which ones yjh doesn't need to be reminded of. he also talks to the player like they are a companion, reassuring them when he dies, telling them it's okay, it's not permanent, he'll come back.

as the story progresses, you find out that yjh watched his entire family die slowly, of various things: illness, suicide, accidents. eventually this meant that he went from having a big, bustling extended family w lots of siblings and cousins to only having his little sister. he's terrified of losing her... but one day he finds out that she's been tested positive for the same rare illness that killed many of yjh's family members.

when yjh gets isekaid into kdj's world, it's along with his sister. and his power is that he retains his memories of kdj's deaths, he doesn't lose his memories when kdj uses save point. and he wants desperately to show kdj that there's a way other than constantly dying to gain future knowledge and out-planning everyone else. that kdj can trust people, let them help, let them make their own choices and sacrifices. and through the course of teaching kdj this, yjh also learns to come to terms with tremendous loss. to understand that the way people loved him was real even if they ended up leaving. that clinging to them couldn't have made them stay.

i have more thoughts but later...if I remember

[felixcloud6288]

My stupid guide to playing Skyrim

Give up on being an adventurer and become a merchant. Speech, Smithing, Alchemy, and Enchanting are ridiculously easy to level up compared to everything else.Put most of your points into those so they can level up even faster and then redistribute your points when you can reset them. At any town, buy as much as you can, especially crafting materials, craft what you can, and then sell what you have. Then move onto the next town and repeat. You will level up several times when you return to the first town.

You're a weakling. Make someone else do your fighting. Since you're putting all your points into merchant skills, fighting will be harder in the early game. Get a follower who can take a few hits and don't fight a strong enemy unless your follower is also fighting it. Give your follower a lot of potions to make them sturdier. Once you tune your muscles from all the smithing, unlock the secrets of the universe through all your crafting, and learn the art of deception with your speechcraft, you can start picking your own fights.

Stun your enemies with your staunch vegetarianianism. Vegetable soup is easy to make and gives you a small HP and stamina regen for 12 minutes. While the HP regen sounds like the reason I'm suggesting this tip, the actual reason is the stamina regen. You only need one point of stamina to shield bash or do a power attack. And the animations for both is longer than 1 second. This means you have functionally infinite stamina to stun lock an enemy with a shield bash and then followup with a power attack before putting your shield back up for another shield bash.

Trick your follower into becoming a pack mule. Followers have an upper cap to how much weight they can carry. However, if you put items into a container and tell your follower to take all the items in it, the game does not check if they are over their carry limit. You can use this glitch to get them to carry an unlimited amount of items. The worst thing I've ever experienced is my followers' default gear might become unequipped and it becomes slow to take items back from them after a point. As a mild consequence, this means you don't have to use fortify carry weight enchantments on your gear so you can use them for something else. NOTE: Items your follower carries this way will become flagged as stolen. That's resolved in the next point.

Conspire with your friends to launder goods. If you've befriended an NPC, you can take some items from them and rummage through any containers they own. If the container does not have the steal flag, taking any items that were originally in the container doesn't count as stealing either, even if they say it is. But putting an item that already has the "stolen" tag in the container retains that flag (But doesn't count as stealing) But if you put a stolen item in such a container and then have your follower take the item out, the stolen tag gets erased. To test if a container can be used for this, place some valuable non-stolen items in the container and check if their item text is red when you check the container. If that happens, you can use this trick with it.

Work on your biceps to improve your movement. If you become overencomubered, you get get some decent movement by taking out a weapon, performing a walking power attack, and then sheathing it part way through the animation. If you time it right, you'll regain your normal movement speed plus the added momentum that swinging your weapon would normally give while going through the weapon sheathing animation. I find daggers are the best choice to do this with because their high attack speed gives you the most added momentum. And the most optimal time to sheathe your weapon is right before you swing down. Just be aware that you can lose control of your character's movement and you should avoid doing it near anyone you don't want to stab.

Play pretend thieves with your follower. Jewels and jewelry are the best items to steal for pickpocketing experience. Give your follower several of them, dismiss them from your service, then pickpocket them. Ideally, do this in the area your follower lives in case problems occur. Lydia, and probably every housecarl, will not report you for pickpocketing them nor become aggressive. So you can pickpocket until you're caught then hire them back into your service. Any follower with the same behavior is an ideal partner to do this with.

Spec into Unga-Bunga. Don't put points into increasing your max Magicka. The game offers many ways to reduce Magicka costs or increase Magicka. Once you have mastered Enchanting and got the Extra Effects perk, you can craft a ring, necklace, helmet, and chestpiece that each give a 25% cost reduction to two schools of your choice. This can mean having two schools of magic that can be cast for free, or you can spread the effects around. If you're really into it, you can make several armor sets for each school and just alternate what you're wearing when you cast a spell. Your gloves can also have the Fortify Magicka enchantment.

Become a fashionista. Along with your combat gear, make a new set of equipment to fortify Smithing and Alchemy. If you get the Extra Effect Enchanting Perk, you can consolidate these effects to one outfit. When you're in town, switch to your Smithing/Alchemy gear to maximize the quality of potions and equipment you make. You can also chain crafting/enchanting to craft better Fortify Enchanting potions so you can make better Fortify Alchemy gear. There's also a fortify barter you can put on a necklace. Sadly, you'll have to put that on something separate from the rest of your civilian gear.

[ms-demeanor]

So I see you recommending Dell laptops... Not to seem hostile or anything, but what do you think of their negative reputation, if you were aware of it? The story gets passed around a lot that Dell laptops throttle their processors when on third party power supplies.

Now, I can see both sides of that issue pretty thoroughly. I don't know that I've seen it be true, although it certainly sounds that way from the warnings that Dell computers issue when you plug in a third party power supply. I also don't know that it's necessarily that bad of an idea to reduce power consumption when on a dubious power supply, as much as it might seem like an anti-competition strategy. But then again, it really does seem like an anti-competition strategy...

Just thought it might be something that you would have some interesting thoughts about, especially when you're talking about what computers to buy.

It is an anti-competition strategy! Those sorts of things are pretty common in the computing world (HP's Dynamic Security is a great example).

My answer is that it's shitty that they do that however every manufacturer out there wants to pull some shit like this and the only appropriate response is to get gud (in this case trawl forums until you find experienced users discussing the tools that they use to fix this issue).

Dell pulling this shit with power supplies isn't good, but it's also not as bad as whatever the fuck apple has going on. It's also not something that every user notices on every laptop; we sell non-oem chargers to Dell owners regularly but you just don't notice the throttling if you use the computer the way that most home-users do.

Basically I think that we all need to accept that there are varying levels of user hostility that corporations are going to try to get away with and that your purchases and engagement with a brand should be driven by what level of that you're willing to put up with and what level of that you're willing to work around. A regular user might be willing to put up with this from Dell because they're unlikely to notice the problem. I would be willing to put up with this because I know I can break it. A regular user might be willing to put up with bloatware from Lenovo because they aren't aware that it's bullshit. I am willing to put up with bloatware from Lenovo because the first thing I do with any new computer is rip out everything I don't want.

The real answer, the answer that nobody likes, is to become a weird linux guy and evangelize for open source software and hardware hacking at every opportunity.

Being the weird linux guy doesn't serve most users, though.

(I do have a fair number of weird linux guy posts, but the specs post is for people who are are significantly less tech literate)

[darkdemeter]

Child Reader hcs! If S/O was playable, I could imagine her being like some low HP and ATK but speedy rogue-like person due to Strife training her with a knife and stealing items from enemies. She could also be used to crawl small places and be lifted up by War or Strife to reach high spots. And she could even have her own little bag of collecting souls that she uses not for herself but to gain some discounts on amount of Souls the Horsemen would need on upgrades. Such a sweet cinnamon roll! 🥰

CHARACTER CINNAMON GUIDE HER WAY HOME ─ THE GAME HEADCANONS

◤✘DARKSIDERS REQUESTS | CATALOGUE (Platonic!) Strife and War x Female Child!Reader

NOTES ↳ ANON ANON ANOOOOOON! YESSSSSS! OMG I LOVE THIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSS! This is a concept I'm absolutely obsessed with -- that being the reader is a playable character in the Darksiders franchise. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thinks like this and I finally get to put these ideas into a post! I went a bit crazy with the hcs amount that I had to stop myself.... there is so many ideas I have with this concept alone...

────────────────────────

✘ Nicknamed Cinn/Cinnamon.

✘ Your size is used to your advantage. Being so small, you are able to sneak past enemies (unless their level is higher than yours or they're a boss).

✘ If you have enough skill points put into your stealth, you can also utilise your "Deft Mittens" ability - this ability will morph into "Deft Hands" and then "The Phantom Hand" the higher your level is and the more valuable loot you'll be able to pickpocket from higher level enemies.

✘ You're also quick and have a short but 2 charge evasion sprint ability much like Strife. A very rogue-like build that utilises stealth and the element of surprise. You're armed with a single dagger that can eventually be upgraded to dual wielding through Strife's training.

✘ When War and Strife near a small crawl space, they will beckon you over to have you travel through and reach whatever objective you must accomplish.

✘ If you find a spot you can fit through but it's higher up and out of reach, you can call over either War or Strife to lift you up, your character delivering the voice line, "Uppie!" and you'll be hoisted up.

✘ you have the cutest voice lines... hands down. FACTS.

✘ If your health gets down to 1 point, there is a chance that either War or Strife will use an ability called "Guardian Wings" that flies them to your immediate aid to either block an attack combo or to grant you a healing potion if they have any.

✘ If you lose all your health or are inflicted with a powerful debuff that compells you to be stunned or paralysed while very low on health, this can potentially trigger Chaos and Anarchy for several seconds. If the enemy is downed within a certain time frame, then you will be resurrected without needing to start from your last save point. If not, then you "pass out" and need to load from your last save.

✘ A cute little mid-combat cutscene will occur if you have a healing potion and give it to Strife or War. Yes, you will want to stack up on potions just to see it because it's so cute.

✘ Uhmmmm especially in the genesis type cutscenes -- you are the cutest ray of sunshine. Anything and everything you do is the fucking cutest thing.

✘ You have a very shallow health pool and a weaker attack rate compared to your Horsemen counterparts. This means you will need to be very careful about your strategy going into fights. The more you rest at camp and train your abilities, the stronger you will become.

✘ Eating food at camp grants you buffs.

✘ Tool tip! remember to always search for treasure. Relics found in these chests can be traded into Vulgrim for health upgrades.

✘ If you go to Dis, she can also upgrade your gear and potentially grant you buff if you complete little return quests for her.

✘ Being human has its advantages. You have a passive "tinker" ability that's very weak to begin with but can be upgraded further on with your levelling and your story. This ability allows you to craft useful tools and gadgets.

✘ Dialogue options with Strife and War when you're out and about on your adventures are worth the many playthroughs! You get choices (much like DS2) where you can ask them questions about your surroundings, battle advice and special banters can be triggered in certain places and areas and if you do the hidden misc questlines.

✘ SPOILER HC! You can use the snow sphere given to you by Samael to use as a light source in dark areas. Go to Samael to upgrade this sphere and it can grant you a clairvoyant ability that can either lead you to higher level loot or if you're stuck, show you onto your current objective's path.

✘ You have a little satchel/drawstring bag that has a default number of 5 inventory slots. These can be upgraded at higher levels by Dis OR you can partake in small misc quests by Strife who will teach you the passive ability to increase your inventory space.

✘ You can also collect souls into your little bag that can give discounts for Strife's and War's upgrades on their armor and their abilities.

✘ War can also teach you a few abilities the higher your level is and if you put skill points into your strength but by default, you're role is a close ranged rogue type.

✘ You can choose whichever Horsemen you want to ride with and this gives you control over the movement. There are chase sequences where you can only evade oncoming attacks, but you can learn horseback combat that will allow you to either throw your dagger or cast a spell/ranged gadget.

✘ You can pet and feed Ruin and Mayham. Cause if the developers didn't allow you to do that, then that's just cruel.

✘ When travelling through swampy areas or anywhere that is too dangerous for you to traverse by yourself, you can engage War or Strife and they will carry you across.

[grailfinders]

Grailfinders #341: Mary Anning

hey y’all! would you like-a talk-a dino? no? too bad, here’s Mary Anning anyway. she’s an arcane trickster rogue to sell literal rocks to people at a profit (and get a cool dog), plus a primeval druid to summon a lightning-spitting plesiosaur. and i thought jurassic park was taking liberties…

check out her build breakdown below the cut, or her character sheet over here!

next up: shouldn’t he be istanbullos by now?

Ancestry & Background

despite having nautiluses for hair, Mary is still a Human, so she gets +1 Dexterity & Intelligence, as well as proficiency in Nature (old nature sure, but still nature) and the Tough feat for an extra 2 HP per level. she also used to be a sickly child before being nursed to health by a literal bolt of lightning yes that’s a thing that happened so she’s definitely being Rewarded by something. that gives her Insight and Persuasion proficiency, as well as the Skilled background for more proficiency in Mason’s Tools, Athletics, and History.

Ability Scores

your Intelligence should be as high as it can go. we don’t actually need it here, but you were the first person to figure out what an Ichthyosaur is (not a dinosaur) and what coprolites are (not something you want to touch bare-handed). second is Wisdom. half the difficulty of paleontology is finding the damn things. the other half is dodging the rockslides, which is why your Dexterity is also pretty high. this does mean your Charisma is lower than I’d like. you’re a fine saleswoman, but you didn’t get a lot of credit for the work you did. this means your Constitution is middling, and your Strength is as low as it gets. thankfully you can just reanimate the fossils now, so carrying them’s a lot easier.

Class Levels

1. Rogue 1: if we want to find fossils, you need to be damn good with a chisel first. also I’m not making the same mistake I made with Galatea, I’m not going to figure out how to have you wield a hammer in one hand and a chisel in the other officially, sorry. on the plus side, no matter how you use that chisel you can still Sneak Attack with it, adding 1d6 to the damage done as long as you have advantage on the attack or another friend next to them. all fossils are restrained (by rock), so you shouldn’t have any issue getting advantage. you also learn Thieves’ Cant, which is really just Cockney. finally, your Expertise in Nature and History will double your proficiency bonus when you make checks about old animals or natural history. suck it, publications!

also as a rogue you get proficiency in Dexterity and Intelligence saves, as well as Deception, Investigation, Perception, and Sleight of Hand, bc god knows you didn’t have enough skills just yet.

2. Rogue 2: second level rogues get a Cunning Action each turn, letting you dash, disengage, or hide as a bonus action. the early paleontologist gets the bone, as the assuredly real saying goes.

3. Rogue 3: we haven’t picked up all your fossil-hunting gear just yet- we still need some explosives, and a dog. thankfully, we can get both of those from being an Arcane Trickster! now you can cast spells using your Intelligence! okay I guess we actually did need that. anyway, your spell list is pretty restrictive, with only one spell that can be freely picked from the wizard spell list. the rest all have to be enchantment or illusion spells.

but before we talk spells, let’s talk Cantrips! Thunderclap will help remove solid rock, while Mold Earth will dig through loose dirt real fast. you also get Mage Hand which comes with its own Legerdemain, and that’s going to be Tray for this build! just have it do the dog shadow puppet thing to really sell the flavor. the original mage hand lasts a minute and is a floating ghost hand/dog that sticks near you, and you can use your action to move it and have it pick up objects, open doors, grab stuff from containers, or pour out liquids. you know, basic dog tricks. the legerdemain makes your dog a little more special, letting it pickpocket people, pick locks, and turn invisible. those are less doglike, but you can do all of those plus the og stuff as a bonus action now too.

as for your spells, Mage Armor will help you not die, Distort Value will help you sell rocks for enough money to live on, and Illusory Script will help you get out of whatever shitty contract super bunyan tried to force on you.

one last thing- you can use Steady Aim to give yourself advantage as a bonus action, so long as you haven’t moved yet and don’t plan on doing so this turn. the rocks are generally stationary, so it should be fine.

okay, okay, the real last thing- your sneak attack deals 2d6 extra damage now. this is what happens when you can afford the good chisels.

4. Rogue 4: fourth level rogues get their first Ability Score Improvement, so improve that Dexterity while you’re here. yes the rocks don’t move much, but you still have to worry about your AC. in the same “not getting hit” vein, you get Color Spray this level. this one’s just pocket sand. blast it in peoples’ faces and they go blind for a round.

5. Rogue 5: fifth level rogues have an Uncanny Dodge. whenever you’d take damage from an attack, you can use your reaction to take half damage instead. ideally you wouldn’t get hit at all, but it’s not like you can afford platemail. speaking of damage though, your sneak attack deals 3d6 damage now.

6. Rogue 6: sixth level rogues get another round of Expertise, so double down on Perception and Persuasion to find and sell fossils.

7. Rogue 7: seventh level rogues learn Evasion, which means every time you have to make a dexterity save you only take half damage on a failure and no damage on a success. your job consisted of going to rockslide mountain during rockslide season but you didn’t die until breast cancer took you out, there’s clearly something going on there.

also you learn Dragon’s Breath. it’s a secret tool that will help us later. for right now, your sneak attack deals 4d6 damage!

8. Druid 1: at level one, druids also learn Spells, which they use their Wisdom to cast. since we’re mixing spellcasters, you’ll have to check the PHB to figure out how many spell slots you have at any one time.

first, cantrips. Shillelagh lets you turn a club into a magical club that uses your wisdom to hit, so I guess if you really want to use a hammer, now you’ll be slightly better at it. you can also use Druidcraft to figure out the weather for today. I don’t know if rockslides count as “weather” exactly, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

as for your spells, druids can prepare spells from their whole list every day, so I highly recommend checking out whatever suits your fancy. the only spell I think is in-character right now though is Faerie Fire. sadly we can’t make it only work for women, but it’ll make it impossible for anyone hit by it to turn invisible, and attacks against them have advantage.

9. Druid 2: second level druids enter a circle, and the Circle of the Primeval was practically made for you! before we get into that we do need to mention your Wild Shape real fast, though you’re not using it if you’re staying in character- I’ll just say for now you could use it twice per short rest. more importantly, you can use those two per rest charges to summon a Primeval Companion instead! with this, you can summon a medium plesiosaurus that you can order around with your bonus action. it can’t swim just yet, but he’s just getting started! (this is where Dragon’s Breath comes back in, now you can have him shooting lightning right out the gate. or yourself, if you want.)

also, as a Keeper of Old, you can add a d4 to your history checks.

(and I will say now that yes, you could use wild shape charges to summon a Wild Companion if you want Tray to be a real dog, but that would mean he’d have an actual HP bar and I’m just not ready to deal with that.)

10. Druid 3: third level druids learn second level spells! Enhance Ability gives you advantage in one kind of ability check of your choice, while Locate Object can help you locate the nearest fossil. it’s kind of like cheating, but fuck it!

11. Druid 4: fourth level druids get a Wild Shape Improvement, so while plesi can’t swim yet, you can. somehow. also your Dexterity goes up again. also also you can cast Guidance now to give yourself or a friend a d4 to their next skill check, for when you really need to sell this next fossil.

12. Druid 5: fifth level druids learn third level spells! Conjure Animals is your go-to for your noble phantasm, letting you summon a bunch of smaller fossils all at one go, but you can also use Elemental Weapon if you want some electrical attacks for yourself too.

13. Druid 6: now that you’re a proper Prehistoric Conduit, you can cast spells as though they came from your plesiosaur. this means you can cast Dragon’s Breath on him without even having to touch him! given that he’s probably in the thick of battle, that’s most likely for the best. also, if he gets caught up in one of your spells, he gets advantage on his save against its damage and evasion for said spell, regardless of what kind of save it is.

14. Druid 7: seventh level druids get fourth level spells, like… actually there isn’t really any I want. maybe Elemental Bane if you can find a non-spell way to deal lightning damage? otherwise just upcast conjure animals.

15. Druid 8: eighth level druids get another WSI, so now you can fly if you want. also you can use your ASI to start improving your Charisma for better sales pitches.

16. Druid 9: ninth level druids get fifth level spells, and while Plessy doesn’t really talk much he’s probably a lot smarter than most dinosaurs, so I still think Awaken is a good pick for him. this’ll make the animal or plant you use it on sentient permanently, and it will be your friend for up to a month. past that point, how it feels about you is up to it.

17. Druid 10: let’s grab Mending real quick before we go into the level, I imagine your clothes probably get torn up pretty often in this line of work. also you now share a Titanic Bond with your living fossil, making it large enough to ride around on and it can finally swim! as a bonus, once per turn you can try and frighten a creature when you hit it with an attack or spell. everyone’s seen jurassic park by this point, they know not to stand near dinosaurs.

18. Druid 11: as we near the end, you can finally grab sixth level spells like Move Earth. for up to two hours after casting, you can reshape dirt, sand, or clay in a 40’ area that can be moved around, with each change taking ten minutes. also worth noting, this doesn’t work on stone or stone structures, so any rock formations might collapse if you use this too much. Make Sure Nothing You Love Is Under the Rocks.

19. Druid 12: use your last ASI to bump up your Charisma again! with a charisma score like that you could even make a 19th century englishman respect… well, literally anyone who isn’t also a 19th century englishman.

20. Druid 13: for our final level you gain access to seventh level spells, but again there aren’t really any I want. sorry to end it on a sour note, but now you can upcast your animal conjuring and lightning breath, so that’s neat!

Pros & Cons

Pros:

druids have access to some powerful aoe spells, and while we only really use Dragon’s Breath in this build, being able to shoot them out of a large creature means you can make those aoes even bigger, for free, and odds are Plesi’s gonna be just fine on top of all that.

as a rogue, you like having people around you. as a druid, you can make people around you. well, dinosaurs. still, everything goes with sneak attack, so you can pretty much guarantee that extra damage whenever you want.

rogues are always great at skill checks, and you take that to a whole new level. as long as you have anything to sell, your party will never have to worry about their budget. also, while we got a lot of skills for buying and selling, most of them are open-ended enough that they can be used for any skill check you want!

Cons:

it takes a while for this build to reach something I’d call a finished state. while it works fine for most of the game, riding around on a plesiosaurus is kind of the dream, and you can’t do that until level 17.

a lot of your spell list is spent on utility spells, and while they aren’t necessarily bad, it’s hard to think of when you’d really want the ability to dig for two hours over say, a fireball. they don’t even break rock, so good luck getting to actual fossils with Mold Earth.

both druid and rogue are pretty greedy classes- they both want you to focus on them as much as possible. because of this, we get neither a big sneak attack bonus nor druid’s busted capstone ability, which is rough. it’s not the end of the world since you’d probably never see any capstone ability used in regular D&D anyway, but still.

[xxcrystalinerose]

In celebration of me officially reaching 100 HOURS of fucking around in Hades 2, here's a couple of general gameplay tips from yours truly!

Preface

I am not the best Hades gamer out there, but I'd like to think I'm doing pretty good considering my still-standing 25+ win streak in the Underworld and 16 Fear clear on all weapon types, so this tip is meant for you guys who find Hades 2 weirdly difficult compared to the first game (I've been there!), or those who still haven't figured out good build and aspect combos. However, I will not be doing a deep dive of all the bosses except for the final bosses!

Obviously, spoilers abound under the cut, so tread with caution!!

Part 1: General Questions, Comments, Complaints, etc.

Q: Playing Melinoë is so difficult compared to Zagreus!

A: First of all, you are playing Melinoë, not Zagreus. Second of all, you are playing Lv. 1 Mel after being so used to Lv. 100 Zag (if you've spent an unreasonable amount of time playing Hades 1 like I did). These two have different playstyles! I myself am guilty of this mindset in my first 20 hours of gameplay.

Mel is all about using everything in your disposal to dispatch enemies. Additionally, the devs have designed the kit in such a way that none of your moves are an afterthought that you occasionally use every other room. The biggest example of this is Cast, which remains useful as a crowd control (CC) move even without a Boon attached to it. Use your Cast all the time!

Additionally, in case you haven't realized it, you can still move while charging your Omega Cast; however, the AoE will not follow you unless you have Local Climate (Demeter).

Don't forget that you can hold down Dash to Sprint. Lock enemies in place with Cast then sprint away if you need breathing room. However, do remember that you do not have i-frames while sprinting, only when dashing.

I have to concede that as of the current EA patch, dashing to dodge attacks still feels janky without the Swift Runner card, mostly because of the dash start-up animation being slightly but noticeably slower than Zag's dashes. However, after several runs with the Judgment card (where I can't activate Swift Runner, and that it might not activate further in the run), the rhythm of dashing with and without it is just muscle memory now. Keep practicing!

Q: Melinoë feels so squishy/slow/weak/etc.!

A: Hades 2 does feel much more Early Game Hellish™ than Hades 1, which imo is mostly because of the Arcana system's complexities.

You need various resources to unlock an Arcana, then you need sufficient Grasp to actually use the Arcana, THEN some Arcana have prerequisites for activation so you can't just use anything and everything you want. Very unlike H1, where you can just dump exactly one resource type into levelling the Mirror upgrades and the only true constraint is choosing one side of the Mirror over the other.

To mitigate the squishiness, Frinos with a fully upgraded Life Bond gives you a free 40 base HP. I prefer him over Toula because I fucking suck at bullet hells and Frinos eats up all those projectiles without flinching too much, and some enemies are really fucking annoying with their projectile attacks. Looking at you, hourglass thingies in Tartarus.

Another thing to note is that The Wayward Son card is a buffed version of Zag's health regen on room exit. At max level it heals 4 HP (8 if you're low), which also makes Chaos gate health drains trivial in Erebus and Oceanus, so go grab those Chaos boons.

If you think surviving against Chronos/Eris is difficult, try having at least 200-220 HP (adjust depending on Fear settings) before entering the fight. The Centaur and Titan cards are useful to achieve this. If you run a Hephaestus build, the Boon that adds HP based on Magick is also great!

Q: The Bosses in Hades 2 are more difficult... please help!

A: I see this observation often, but in my experience, the H2 bosses bar Chronos and Eris are actually significantly easier than the H1 bosses. Your experience gap between dealing with H1 and H2 bosses could also contribute. But anyways, here's some tips for each boss:

Hecate

The transformation Hex counts as a projectile and can be blocked by Frinos. If you haven't unlocked Frinos, simply dash back and forth into the hex (essentially abusing your dash i-frame) and it will eventually dissipate. Don't try to outrun it.

(Frinos ate the hex before I could fully demonstrate the dodging lol)

If you DO get transformed, dash and attack repeatedly to prevent Hecate's attacks from hitting you, because your attack in sheep form is a charge forward that helps add extra distance while waiting for the dash cooldown to end.

Scylla and the Sirens

They killed me an unreasonable amount of times early game because there's so damn much going on the screen, so my tip for that is kill the drummer first. The guitarist's arsenal is much less dangerous and her dash attack is heavily telegraphed. Even if the guitarist is the featured artist, I would still kill the drummer first. Additionally, the Night Bloom Hex* works in this fight. Have fun!

Infernal Beast

Mostly immobile boss that can't really turn around with heavily telegraphed attacks, so the easiest trick is to just stand behind it for free backstab damage and don't get hit. Paired with the massive hitbox, the boss becomes very vulnerable against Apollo/Zeus cast and Omega specials with Pan aspect on the Sister Blades.

Polyphemus

Sometimes he has sheep in the fight; if he eats them he gets healed. Gold sheep will block Omega moves in the radius indicated around them, while black sheep will charge at you. I find his most difficult attack is the boulder slam if he spots you. When he leaps, sprint away first for some distance, then dash into the shockwaves because they move FAST and staying near will guarantee you get hit.

Eris

All of her attacks count as projectiles, so Hestia's Soot Sprint turns the fight into a total joke. She also turns relatively slowly when firing; when she does the spread shots, stay directly behind her. The forward charge is also telegraphed by an animation where she rises a bit before charging, so dash towards Eris to avoid getting hit (because it also stuns you).

Chronos, in general

God I hate that bitch ass scythe throw attack SO MUCH. I find the most reliable way to dodge it is to dodge towards Chronos but in a counterclockwise direction because it always travels clockwise. DO NOT DODGE AWAY FROM HIM.

The thrown scythe counts as a projectile, so projectile slowing effects like Demeter's Cyclone debuff or Hard Target (Hermes) affect its move speed.

Additionally, Chronos himself is immune to any time-slowing effect, including from the Sorceress card, the Phase Shift Hex, and Hermes' legendary Boon. He can still damage you during the time stop in the Hex casting animation.

Lastly, the ring explosions that come after his slashing attacks are unblockable by any "Block" move e.g. Axe special.

Chronos, 2nd phase

He always begins the phase with a full screen attack that does 999 damage unless you stand in the highlighted safe spots... or if you have Coarse Grit (Demeter Infusion) that lets you take no more than 15 damage per hit (lol). The clock hands will also kill you this way, so stand well clear of its radius. When he does this attack he will stand in place, which if you're lucky lets you get a guaranteed Omega Cast or Total Eclipse strike, and even one or two fully charged Pan aspect specials if the "safe spot" is near him.

(* Night Bloom has an unintended interaction with the Judgment arcana that causes its effects to be triggered multiple times in the Scylla fight. I've reported this as a bug, but I guess you could abuse it until the next patch lol)

Q: What is your Arcana setup?

A: This! I find this to be the easiest setup for activating the Divinity card and also the "safest" build, with the drawback of being unable to change room rewards/Boon and Well of Charon offerings.

If I wanted more challenge, I would activate everything in the third row, and use the remaining 3 Grasp for either The Huntress or Death, depending on weapon:

When I do a Judgment arcana run, I only activate The Wayward Son, Eternity, and Excellence; the bonus with Judgment is that it also automatically activates The Queen, and keeps it active no matter how many more cards it activates later.

If you have yet to max out your Grasp and want to play it safe, the cards I recommend to prioritize are Eternity > Excellence > Origination > The Swift Runner/The Sorceress > The Titan > The Furies/The Moon/The Huntress/ > Night/The Unseen.

Extra tip: The Moon synergizes very well with pure damage Omega Casts e.g. Apollo, Zeus, Poseidon because it adds to the base damage. Naturally, this makes Apollo cast busted as hell.

Q: What are your recommended Keepsakes? How do I use them?

A: The ones from Hecate, Odysseus, Nemesis, Moros, and Narcissus. If you're good at not getting hit, Arachne's because it continuously stacks Armor per location as long as you stay above 1 Armor. Recently I've also been messing around with Chaos', which has been fun.

To elaborate:

Silver Wheel (Hecate) lets you regen Magick automatically, which was great for me in very early game until I got the hang of every Gain boon and evaluated which are the best ones. Essentially, it's a good crutch for learning how the game works. However, do note that the Keepsake regen is prioritized over any other Magick regeneration effects.

Knuckle Bones (Odysseus) is also a similarly useful early game crutch if you have difficulty against bosses or need to take a run to analyze their moves (very appropriate). It also gives you all-damage reduction against bosses. And fun fact: bring it to the Polyphemus fight multiple times for some unique interactions!

Evil Eye (Nemesis) is just a straightforward free ~30% universal damage bonus against the last enemy that killed you. Since mine was Chronos... well, let's just say I almost never spend a single DD in his fights ever since.

Engraved Pin (Moros) is functionally a better Stubborn Defiance. Triggering its effect will be prioritized over consuming a Death Defiance, and it works ONCE PER ROOM which is fucking amazing as a learning crutch and in high Fear runs. One of my favorite strategies if 1) my HP falls below the Pin's healing threshold, 2) its effect has not been triggered yet, and 3) I am 100% sure the encounter is about to end, I just die on purpose, kill everything that's left, and get a free heal.

Aromatic Phial (Narcissus) rarifies a random Common boon when you drink from a Fountain, which helps massively in no-Arcana runs or runs without Excellence/Divinity. It could also help if you grabbed Hera's Uncommon Grace but are unable to activate it because you have a Common boon. Lastly, the extra Fountain heal helps with survivability.

On the topic of Keepsakes, I encourage you to use the Olympian Keepsakes, because they now have the ability to increase the rarity of non-Infusion/Duo/Legendary Boons up to a certain rarity threshold and not just help you aim where your current build is going.

Rarification works especially well with Demeter's Rare Crop; one time Heroic Rare Crop managed to rarify my Attack, Special, and Cast somehow and I ended up blazing through Tartarus and Chronos like it was nothing.

End Notes (For Now)

I have some more tips prepared, but I'd like to know before I compile the next one:

Aand that's it for now. If I got something wrong or you know anything relevant to what I've shared above, do tell me in the replies so I can edit!

TL;DR: Don't forget to use Cast, get used to dodging with and without Swift Runner card, grab Chaos boons in early regions, be patient with grinding for upgrades, keep practicing, and have fun :)

[fictionfixations]

honestly so happy that its easier to grind in hsr then genshin cause im actually able to properly build my characters instead of whatever mess i had in that game (i got the right artifacts but trying to get materials for anything was a bit of a pain to me)

also that the resin (i dont know what its called in this game im using genshin terms) can like. overflow into this other thing??? is. so helpful. (i stopped playing at one point so i just came back to both being full. and then when i realized what it actually did it was a godsend because it made it so much easier to fully commit to grinding. i know in genshin you can make the resin this little thing? condensed?? but thats a thing you have to do yourself i think)

all im missing is leveling up the lightcones and traces

and im only missing the traces because i already used up weekly bosses. THATS IT.

robin and ratio have the same boss material so all i have to do then is get the other resources which isnt actually that hard (ill only have an issue if i cant material synthesis or exchange or whatever since i need to do it for the robin stuff that you get from enemies that can ambush you, i dont know what you refer to them as, but cause i havent unlocked penacony yet lol)

and the only lightcones that might give me issue is because highlighted is penacony material stuff

(yes i put final victor on ratio LMFAO)

so YEAHH i feel like im doing pretty good in that department. also ive caught up to penaconys story i just havent started in-game because i wanted to see where it all leads up to and then go back to see all the foreshadowing and get a better understanding of what happened since it also confused me, so im waiting for a time i can just sit there for countless hours and focus. i even switched to eng vas so i dont end up misreading something

(anyway i only got to trying to max out my characters as much as i can until i can level them higher because before i got stuck on so many quests that required a fight 😭, yanqing, argenti, i hate battling you oh my god)

actually on that topic everyones relics arent fully maxed out.

ive only been leveling this cause 5 star dan heng is my main damage dealer

and the healer because im fucked without them (its natasha, but im open to changing it if i find a better healer or shield 🙏)

on that topic:

i returned to honkai star rail because aventurine. i focused on the story because aventurine. (got spoiled his story, realized 'what the fuck hes cool i like him' and watched someone go through the story) i came back in time for his banner but you know what? i had like zero wishing stuff because id stopped playing so i missed out unfortunately

i have friends who have aventurine as like one of the support characteres thingy tho? like the the where you can get support from other peoples characters

so thats been fun. but also auto is kind of bad with aventurine. or maybe because it thinks 'oh theres already a shield, so i wont e' which is pain. on the other hand actually playing instead of having it on auto is fun with aventurine. i like planning around it and thinking of who to have use their skills while keeping in mind when i should have him refresh his shield. i cant explain to you how it hurts seeing hp missing with a shield around it because i cant do anything about it (im the type of person who likes to keep my characters hp full ngl)

probably not the best decision to want shield over a healer but. i can make it work. maybe. i just want aventurine ok. (except for phantylia who as far as im aware is the only one who can just TAKE hp like that? without even affecting shields???)

[loominggaia]

Been on a rpg craze as of late and looking into game design. It got me thinking about a hypothetical looming gaia ttrpg and what such a game could potentially look like. This is just some of the rough ideas I’ve been able to come up with in imaging how a game based on this lovely world would look like.

•First off I’d think it be a class & level-less game. Player characters not being restricted to rigid arbitrary archetypes nor advancing into unkillable Demi-gods after afew sessions. Instead the game is more grounded, success and failure being based on the players skills/ planning/ and abit of luck. Things like Attributes and Hp being finite and not easily improved, it being easy to lose your character by being stupid and reckless. 

•Design wise I’d say that a more character & narrative based approach is best. The gameplay focusing heavily around the lives and daily struggles of the PC’s, not combating world ending threats or larger than life horrors. While combat and exploitation is a part it’s not the main focus, being more than capable of running a slice of life game as it could a dungeon crawler. 

•Character generation is where I’d imagine the game would really shine. The first major decision you make when building your character being their species & nationality, this acting as the basic template you build out from. Each one of these being both narratively & mechanically distinct to encourage replay-ability. 

Species determining your starting stats and abilities, of which you can select all of the 15 core species. Commoner/ fae/ & gaian act as a meta-mechanics that apply to all species under it, like for example all commoners cannot become spellcasters/ fae suffer extra damage from iron weapons/ or gaians rolling deception & insight checks at disadvantage. 

Stats and mechanics are based on the biological capabilities of each species, only being able to modify their stats within their species perimeters. Only the commoner/ fae/ & gaian ancestries are available in the base game. Nymph’s & monsters being unplayable until an expansion comes along and adds character options for them. Afflictions can also be purchased to add extra challange for those players who want it. 

Nationality determines things like your skills/ starting gear and other background details based on which of the great kingdoms (if any) your character comes from. For example a zareenite character will have a boost to technology skills and may start with a small electronic device. Species & nationality combos also effect eachother, so a pc whos an evanglite human will have a major advantage over an evanglite elf and so on. 

Once you determine these two, a point buy system is used to build up the rest of your character. Buying various modifications and extra skills/ receiving various advantages and disadvantages/ and so on that flesh your character out. 

•Magic would definitely follow a more spellcheck/ spell-points based system. Only fae or gaian ancestries having access to spellcasting and need to learn spells organically via finding tutors or Grimoires containing it. Mage pcs having to both pay magic points and succeed a spell check to successfully cast a spell, having a large range of both success & failures to represent the chaotic randomness of magic. 

•As for enemy variation I can imagine quite girthy table of monster generators & build options to create all manor of terrifying and unique monsters. 

•A distinct mechanic I can imagine is that of “regional reputation”, where what your character is greatly determines how your gameplay experience will be in each in game region. Having special mechanical buffs or debilitations depending on how people of your characters demographic are viewed. Matuzu would overall have the least effects due to its liberal and accepting culture, whereas other kingdoms can be hostile to your pc’s and extra challenge. A red elf pc starting in damajani won’t have too much difficulty, whereas a human pc in seelie will have to face hostility from npc’s and face heavy penalties for most basic actions. This forming unique stories and once again in challenges your characters can overcome and encourage players to make multiple characters of varying types to explore everything the game has to offer. 

This is so good, I love stuff like this! There has been some discussion of a Looming Gaia-themed games on the blog before and people have come up with a lot of fantastic ideas. A number of folks have told me they've run LG-themed tabletop gaming sessions or cherrypicked critters and characters from its lore to use in existing worlds.

I'm not super familiar with these types of games myself, but I have so much respect for all the worldbuilding and creativity that goes into them. Thank you for sharing this! I bet someone can incorporate these ideas into their next gaming session!

*

Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

Read the Series

[diamondmeadow]

Mid-week Snippet

Tagged by the lovliest @lovelymasks for this. Twice. While I was waiting for the actual mid-week, another tag has come <3 Tagging forward - @ohyou-pretty-things, @euripidestrousers, @tealeavesandtrash. No pressure though.

But this clearly must be a sign. Considering my current state of mind.

So what follows is the start of the third chapter of my oldest HP multichapter WIP, that I haven't updated for almost a year. Here's to hoping this makes me accountable enough to finish this asap and post before the actual year passes.

It isn’t until a week after their midnight conversation when Sirius starts earnestly considering purchasing that leash Remus requested. He’s reminded when he finds himself in a pet shop where James drags him with an excuse of needing help with buying and hauling some cat food into his car. The shop has a clearance sale of his and his wife Lily’s orange tabby’s favourite food, and it seems James is planning on buying out the shop. “Christ, can you be any cheaper, Prongs?” Sirius snorts as James explains and points towards a pyramid of stacked cans and dry food underneath. Pouting, James shakes his head and swats his arm. “Pet food is bloody expensive these days, Sirius,” he tuts playfully and makes his way towards the shopping assistant to talk discounts. Sirius only rolls his eyes in amusement and finally looks around. Without a specific target in his mind, his eyes easily wander to a display wall with collars and leashes. A tingling sensation at the back of his neck forces him to scratch at it, a little too forcefully. The tingles stay nevertheless. The truth is Sirius has been thinking about Remus and their banter every day since they met for the first time last Monday. But in an attempt to stall a permanent hard-on, Sirius hasn’t dared venture further than the memory of their mutual handjob (as if that was any better). His thoughts have definitely not gone as far as the leash and collar, and what Remus might want to do with them when they see each other in the next 5 days, 7 hours—Sirius glances at his wrist watch—21 minutes and 17 seconds. Fuck. Who is he trying to lie to? It’s not that Sirius has succeeded in preventing that one particular talk they had from swirling inside his head, it’s not like that at all. As a matter of fact, that conversation has been all that was trying to make its way to the forefront of his mind these past few days. It doesn’t help that it is permanently logged on that bloody app either. The only thing Sirius is able to do to deal with it is intense wanking sessions and more mindless scrolling through the app where he encountered Remus (very fruitless when your mind is set on one thing and one thing only, well, one man). But it has only made that itch to message Remus again more intolerable within him. Still, there is something stopping him from doing exactly that, perhaps his not so irrational fear of Remus getting annoyed with him. Perhaps his own very rational realisation that he has been acting slightly more obsessive than it’s acceptable in this situation. Besides, Sirius doesn't get it either. He’s no stranger to hook-up culture. He’s the cool one. Level-headed. Reasonable. He is. Usually. This is just casual. Nothing but that. Lily’s words resound in his head then. A sport jacket is casual, Sirius, fucking someone is not. She would still probably laugh at him. Well, if only he could help himself. But victorious deeds keep you hopeful and eager, and what were his last texts with Remus if not a little victory? Sirius runs his hand over his face to remind himself to get it together and with a careful step, avoiding more piles of pet food, he approaches the leather collars.

[tainbocuailnge]

Ended up going cool points and got Ptilopsis. I'm much earlier in the game than I remembered, so I'm just gonna wing it. Used the free 10 roll on the current banner and pulled Wis adel, so that's cool. So far the only character I have any attachment to is Eunectes, any tips/synergy for those three?

fortunately for you ptilopsis is not just cool but also really good. ptilopsis as a unit synergises with almost everyone because her thing is that she increases the automatic sp recovery of all allies on the field when she's deployed, which 90% of units will benefit from, including wisadel, but actually not including eunectes until you've invested far more into eunectes than you're probably able to at this point. more on that later.

my number one tip is always to invest in your 3* units first and actually use them too because they're not only far cheaper to raise but also the best way to learn the basic gameplay principles (what does each class do, how does deployment order work, how do the types of damage work, etc). after that try to get at least two 4* or higher units of each class raised that have different subclasses (i.e. a marksman sniper and an artilleryman sniper) to expand your range of strategic options. resource accumulation in arknights is fairly slow, especially if you're still finding your footing. that's why it's generally recommended to raise some 3* and 4* units first, because they consume exponentially fewer resources and will give you the means to get the stuff for your bougie 6* units. many of them are perfectly decent to even good units in their own right, nobody does what gravel does for example

depending on what you want out of arknights, that means you should either leave wisadel aside for now or raise her asap, because wisadel is an extremely busted "kill everything now" button that will make you not learn how to actually play the game. most super busted 6* need to be e2 promoted to unlock their third skill to do their super busted thing but wisadel can high impact kill everything now right out of the box. if you just want to read visual novel arknights then having a kill everything now button on hand from the start is really convenient, but if you also want to play strategy game arknights i would recommend leaving her for later, because sooner or later there will come a boss you can't just explode with wisadel, and then you will wish you knew how to play arknights.

anyway, eunectes! i like eunectes both as character and unit and i think she has a lot of good qualities that are often overlooked but she might be difficult to use for a new player. her thing is that she has really high raw stats and powerful skills, but she has only 1 block, she only gains sp in order to use those skills when blocking enemies, and she's expensive to deploy. the sp lockout means that ptilopsis' ability to increase sp gain doesn't work on eunectes unless she's blocking. there is a way to make it so she very slowly gains sp even when not blocking (and ptilopsis can make this faster), but it's through the module system, and you can't even access that until you have a unit e2 promoted and at a certain minimum level (lv40-60 depending on rarity).

eunectes' job is to hold dangerous enemies with her sheer raw stats. she is your expensive cartoon piano that you drop on someone you want flattened into a pancake. chapter 3 for example features a few boss enemies that deal heavy splash damage that you'd rather not let close to your frontlines, but eunectes has so much hp and defense they can't hurt her much and enough atk that she can safely beat them to death away from the team if you just point a healer at her. early in the game a lot of dangerous enemies including some bosses are vulnerable to stun, so her s2 is incredibly powerful because they will just not be able to do anything for at least 15 seconds while she caves their skull in. if the enemy can't be stunned or eunectes is getting punched back a little too hard, s1 will give her stats an extra permanent boost so she takes less damage while you point some ranged damage (like wisadel) at it to blow it up.

s3 is the one where she gets in her giant robot and becomes the ultimate Every Stat Ever beatstick but that's behind e2 promotion and i don't think you should prioritise her e2 promotion if you're still starting out, she'll do fine at e1 for a long time. more importantly, to facilitate eunectes gaming you should raise multiple vanguards so that you can produce the dp necessary to actually deploy eunectes when you need her.

[pebblysand]

Are you working on any new projects that you feel like sharing with us

Love castles and you

Never gonna give you up never gonna turn around and dessert u

hey anon! apologies for the delay here. this is a very sweet anon that made me smile when i got it, so thank you ❤️.

regarding your question though... i suppose: not really? i don't know. it's complicated. to be fully transparent, i've not written a word since the end of castles. i know that for you it might feel like a long time because objectively, it has been five weeks, but for me, i just haven't had that much downtime since then. i spent almost four weeks in france post-publication, most of which were holidays where i wasn't working (at my IRL job, i mean). this was so peaceful and restful and nice but also so outside my usual routine that i didn't have much time to think about writing (or to really let the end of castles sink in, for that matter). i wrote 23 in about a month, and 24 over a weekend, so looking back, it all feels like one big feverish dream i haven't really had time to digest, yet. i came back to ireland just over two weeks ago and i don't know, i guess i've been... crashing - a bit? 😬

it's not bad. like, trust me, you don't need to worry about me - i'm alright. i've been distracting myself with going to london a couple weekends and have loads of other trips planned between now and christmas, which i am very much looking forward to and should keep me busy. i've been doing a lot of podcast-y things, i'm getting reacquainted with my friends who i've sadly neglected for far too long (hopefully they don't hate me too much, haha), and with life in general (i've been going running more consistently, i've done embroidery - lol 😅 - i'm thinking about signing up for pottery classes - the works, you know).

if i'm honest, on a deeper level though, i've been finding that i'm not quite sure what to do with all the time that is now on my hands. my anxiety skyrocketed early last week, which i know is just my brain slowly readapting to this new, post-castles normal, but which still very much sucked. i am worried about my dog's health and my mum's health, and loneliness in my thirties. i'm worried about my plans for next year, i am worried about whether i'll be capable of writing original fiction, and i am worried that now that castles is finished and that the post-completion around it has stopped, everyone will forget about me and no one will read my works anymore. again, 🙄 ugh.

having said that, here are my plans for the short, medium, and long term:

SHORT TERM (BETWEEN NOW AND DECEMBER)

i don't want to start any "big" project between now and december, tbh. i need to sit and breathe and recharge (see above). i could however ever see myself doing one or two short-ish things (under 10k), that i could get done over a weekend or something. in that list are:

the aoife one-shot (follow-up to the fault in faulty manufacturing) (likelihood: 90% - i've been meaning to write this for age, it haunts me. my only issue is that i'd love to write it for paddy's day but since the beginning of the year will probably be busy with other things - see below - it might be my winter project)

maybe a fic about pansy parkinson's side of the amycus story, possibly tying into chapter 22. (likelihood: 50% - i literally just had the idea for this this afternoon but i kind of like it. i've been fascinated with the concept of pansy parkinson lately, so we'll see.)

for reasons that i don't want to explain yet, i'll probably need to have a really good 3,500 words original fiction story written by march 2025. i should probably get started on it this autumn. (likelihood: 35% - i know me and i will probably be procrastinating this as much as i can because it's not "fun" and feels like a chore)

MEDIUM TERM (JANUARY TO SEPTEMBER)

there's literally an endless list of stories i'd like to write. some of them might be written next year, some of them might never get done. the current list includes:

HP Harry/Ginny Muggle College AU (likelihood: 20% - i love the idea of it but idk about the execution)

HP Harry/Ginny FWB AU (likelihood: 40% - this one i'm more interested in. could be a sort of AU of castles but could also stand alone)

Peaky Blinders Ada Character Piece (likelihood: 70% - i need to rewatch the show, but i really like that one. i already have a few paragraphs of this i'd written somewhere)

Peaky Blinders May Character Piece (likelihood: 60% - same as above, i also have it already started somewhere. i do feel like i'm more interested in Ada than i am in May right now, but we'll see)

The Good Wife Will Character Piece (likelihood: 60% - i've been meaning to write this for, like, 10 years. i just need to brave a full rewatch which, ugh)

HP Malfoy Character Piece (likelihood: 25% - idk. same as the college AU. i like the idea, but no idea about the execution. just marginally more interested in this one cause it's a character i've not explored before)

HP Harry/Pansy AU (likelihood: 10% - i've found a fantastic fic for this pairing already in existence, so that has satiated my need to write it, i think.)

Silk Martha/Clive Children AU (likelihood: 10% - it's a beautiful fic... in my head)

HP Hermione Character Piece (likelihood: 40% - i know you all want this one but honestly i'm not sure what i would have to say. it's a hard one because i would love to write it, i find hermione a very interesting character, but it also needs to narratively bring something that isn't already in castles. like, i don't want to repeat something people already know. so, we'll see. i will write it if i find an angle for it. i was going to write it as an ode to friendship - like: the long-standing nature of she and harry's friendship, the way everyone always focuses on romance when actually, platonic friendship is also very important to us as humans - but i think i already sort of blew that angle with Lily and Naran now. so, again, we'll see.)

Black Sisters Piece on Female Rage (likelihood: 20%. i had a very, very specific idea for this back in 2023 and i never wrote it. i'm thinking of revisiting)

having said that, i also know that January - March 2025 will really be the moment i'm planning on easing back into writing more frequently, but also the moment when i'll have to focus on original writing for a while (again, reasons i can't explain). so, write that 3,500 words short story, and outline a larger project. so, not sure i'll have much time for fanfic at the start of the year.

LONG TERM

there will be a book. i have an idea. i have characters. i need... an outline, and a plot, and all that stuff. i would love to outline january 2025-march 2025 (as said above), then to slowly start writing it as life allows. i think fanfic will remain my outlet, my "fun" thing, the thing i "cheat" on my main project with haha. we all need those.

i will keep you updated on all this as it happens, and i hope (hopehopehope) you stick around ❤️.

[slightly-gay-pogohammer]

Permission to ask for some D&D advice? Mostly regarding as a DM?

you never know what your players will do. you maybe come up with 30 possible options, they'll pick the 34th. you'll have to be ready to improvise as much as they do

you're a player too, and you're allowed to have fun. this is very important

some railroading is okay, just don't make it obvious and don't force it on them everytime. if you want a plotpoint to happen at All Costs but your players dont go where it's supposed to happen, move it to another location

your players are the main characters. all of them. not your npcs, not only one of them, ALL of the players. always remember that

if you're not doing a oneshot, i highly recommend trying to implement your player characters' backstory in it

the manual is a guide rather than a rulebook to follow at all costs. change things, even at the moment

focus on preparing plot points, rather than a story. know that in one session they'll have to go to point A to B with a battle in between rather than hoping they'll have to go through point A,B,C, [etc] to Z

you're allowed to cheat actually. if a battle is too easy, add some HP to your monsters; if one is going too badly, consider lowering them; add new attacks and stats to your enemies, and change the level of difficulty accordingly

encourage quick and creative thinking, and tell off disturbers. getting distracted or speaking out of order a few times can happen, but if someone is actively out of their way to disturb the session tell 'em off, and do it OUT OF CHARACTER.

you're allowed to say no. you should, actually. i know reddit horror stories makes you think that making the team, or just one problem player, pay the consequences of their actions is funny and epic, but it's just a waste of time for everyone learn to put your foot down as soon as possible. i'm not saying "tell them to not go through a door you didn't prepare" or "tell them they can't use a specific attack you find overpowered", i mean something like "tell your player who wants to randomly go on a murder spree that you're not okay with that"

about that, if you describe something, your players Will want to investigate. don't tell them there's a room full of doors if you want them to go through just one of them, they ARE going to try and open them all even if you try to tell them it's impossible; don't try to give names to all the people in the tavern, just tell them there's a crowd but out of all of them there are just a few that might be interesting to interact with

for the love of god keep notes write down your names add what kind of items you made them find trust me remembering names is hell i can't tell you how tiring it is to remember VOICES

do a session zero. ask them about their boundaries, what they DON'T want in a session and what they'd like to see, if they're okay with PVP or permanent damage, what kind of mood they'd like for the plot, if they need help with their sheet. i think this is one of the most important hints i can give

good luck <3

[whinlatter]

Hello Elizabeth, I’ve loved all your metas so far, and you do a great job of pointing things out that we as readers may have overlooked. You honestly made me want to read the HP series again because I feel like I missed out on so much. Apologies if you’ve already done a meta on this before and I missed it, but how abused do you think Harry was by the Dursleys? We know the basics: malnutrition, neglect, and emotional abuse for the majority of his life, but I remember reading the book as a child and getting this uneasy feeling that he was being physically abused. If you read between the lines and pay attention to his interactions with the Dursleys in the beginning of each book, I think it's indirectly mentioned... but maybe I've been reading it wrong all these years? What is your take on this?

TW: generalised non-specific discussions of child abuse and neglect

Thank you so much for the question and for reading all my jumbled thoughts! Totally relate - I re-read the books for the first time in the better part of two decades last summer and was like, sorry all this stuff was there the whole time and I missed it? I learn so much for other writers' close readings revisiting these texts (@ashesandhackles's re-reads spring to mind, but there are many others) and love to be a part of these ongoing conversations.

On the Dursleys and child abuse... I haven't written anything on this before, and the short answer is: yes, I think it's clear that Harry experienced some level of physical abuse at the hands of the Dursleys, at the hands of both Vernon, Petunia, Marge and, to a lesser extent, Dudley.

That said, I do have some caveats. One is that I think fandom speculation over the extent of the physical abuse can sometimes risk overstating the canonical scale of the physical abuse (any abuse, including psychological abuse, is awful enough, and some fics claiming canon-compliancy can sometimes risk gratuitous depictions of really horrific abuse in problematic ways). Two, I think sometimes fanfic depictions of Harry at the Dursleys' can risk overstating how canonically Harry perceives his treatment at the Dursleys, in ways that risks predetermining how child victims of abuse ought to feel about their experiences rather than how they describe them themselves. Three, and the one that's particularly interesting to me as a historian, is how Harry's treatment at the Dursleys shines this fascinating light onto changing audience tastes and attitudes towards depictions of harm to children in mass-market children's and YA literature between the time of HP's initial publication and the present day.

I've done a longer little lunch-break discussion of some of this below the cut. Yes this quickly became a long-winded discussion of the character of the abused orphan/child in the publishing market for late twentieth century children and YA literature and Thatcher's Britain. I am sorry about that, and know that I apparently simply cannot be stopped.

It's undeniable that what happened to Harry at the Dursley's was child abuse and neglect, for all the reasons you rightly cite. Both Harry and the loving adult caregivers he finds in the Wizarding World recognise that he is abused and neglected at the hands of the Dursleys. This includes physical abuse, with examples readers rightly cite off the bat: Harry being held tightly around the throat by Vernon and later citing 'a need to duck' around his uncle (OotP), Petunia trying to hit twelve-year-old Harry with a frying pan (CoS), Marge hitting Harry with her walking stick (PoS), and repeated instances of the Dursleys withholding food and confining Harry to small physical spaces. I hope it goes without saying that these instances are plainly incidents of physical violence against children. Each is horrific on their own terms, and likely part of a pattern of repeated physical roughness and low-level violence towards a child (I say low-level only because the strangling incident takes place after Dudley appears to have been harmed in OotP, and Harry's response to Vernon holding him by the throat suggests this violent incident is particularly extreme even for Vernon).

It's also clear, though, that while Harry bitterly hates the Dursleys for all of the harm they have done to him, he does seem to see this physical abuse as part of a broader set of failings they committed as his caregivers, and doesn't single-out physical abuse as uniquely traumatising. Confinement, being shouted at, and failing to protect him from bullying by other children are all crimes the Dursleys commit against him that he clearly views as just as harmful as the physical abuse he endures at their hands. We don't know how Harry the character would come to think about his experiences with the Dursleys in adulthood, of course, and it's reasonable to speculate that he may come to acknowledge himself as a child abuse victim and have either suppressed memories of traumatic incidents he endured as a child. With that said, I personally feel a certain level of discomfort with fan speculation about further or escalated incidents of child endangerment against Harry at Privet Drive beyond what we see either in the text or is implied within patterns of the Dursleys' behaviour. What the Dursleys do to him in canon is bad enough as it is, and exaggerated depictions of the Dursleys' treatment can get dangerously close to implicitly suggesting child abuse has to be a certain level of physically egregious to be sympathetic to the reader that the canonical text doesn't achieve, which I think is intensely problematic.

One thing I will say, though, is that I think the example of the Dursleys' treatment of Harry is a fascinating case study in HP's reception history and the cultural acceptability of depicting and using child abuse as a plot device. The topic is such a good a litmus test for the gulf between how the series was read and consumed when first published and how it is increasingly thought about and revisited by audiences. Changing attitudes about Harry's experiences with the Dursleys reflect how HP as a piece of literature which was written, edited, published and marketed to a consumer audience with certain expectations about depictions of harm to children, but which now continues to be closely re-read/revisited through the films and consumed by a market audience with increasingly different comfort levels and expectations about child welfare.

Children's and YA literature in the mid-to-late twentieth century had certain certain norms and conventions. Often, this took the form of the orphan child as either the protagonist or as a key sympathetic hero. Lots of media used the abused child both as an immediately sympathetic character for audiences to empathise with, and also used the absence of things like family, safety and love as central motivators for these characters, which then sets up the plot of the media at hand to resolve. The literature that for most UK school-children became canonical between 1980 and 1997, so in Thatcher/John Major's Britain, often centred characters who were usually orphaned or bereaved and who experience child abuse, neglect or mistreatment, often depicted in a slapstick and almost pantomime-esque way. This includes predecessors to HP like Roald Dahl's Matilda (1988), Michelle Magorian's Goodnight Mister Tom (1981) and Jacqueline Wilson's various books but especially Tracy Beaker (1991). This period also saw enduringly popular older works of literature experience a resurgence as older English-language TV or film adaptations made in the UK or Hollywood became even more commercially successful and entered 'classic' status - Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Roald Dahl wrote the Child-Catcher into the 1968 film - he's not in the book!), Ken Loach's Kes (1968), Peter Pan (including Hook (1991), the Spielberg version), or mid-nineteenth century works of literature that became commercially successful popular musicals after 1950, like Oliver Twist or Cosette in Les Mis. Even in media where children appear in dysfunctional but fundamentally loving homes - Billy Elliot (2000) - or face physical violence at the hands of adult villains - Home Alone (1990) - we can see from both critical reception and popular audiences responses that the consuming publicly were on the whole less likely to be disturbed by either violence or the threat of violence against children than audiences, especially young audiences, three or four decades later, who typically find such depictions, even in their slapstick form, abhorrent.

In this period of writing (and particularly publishing and/or market media production beyond print fiction), there was far greater flippancy about depicting violence or the threat of violence against children as an empathy device for readers, especially young readers. I think this is for reasons that I think relate to changing ideas (and legislation) around children's agency, child welfare, endangerment, protection and the boundaries of the state and family life in late twentieth century Britain and elsewhere (a mammoth topic for another day). These were increasingly pressing political issues into the 1990s, especially the late Thatcherite/Major period into the Blair years. The violence that was depicted in literature during this transitional period almost always had a slightly farcical, or even slapstick or comic dynamic to it that I think is true also of the Dursleys around Harry in those early books - the frying pan being a classic example. We're supposed to think of the Dursleys as ridiculous, a parody of Thatcherite Home Counties surburban culture. While authorial intent is to show a character defined by the absence of familial love at the hands of clear villains, the Dursleys aren't intended to be read as vicious child abusers inflicting irreparable psychological and physical harm on a pre-teen child. They're supposed to be within this genre convention of cruel but ridiculous adults who behave badly and embarrass themselves and who the reader is supposed to immediately root against.

My point, really, is that we as readers can certainly revisit these books decades later having absorbed this greater popular literacy about child trauma responses and PTSD and see these characters differently, but we should keep in mind that this is a lot about the changing sets of ideas and expectations we have as a reading audience than it does about how the author and the text's editors intended these characters to be received. If we are reading the Dursleys' treatment of Harry and thinking - how is Harry remarkably fine after all of this? How could Dumbledore leave him with these people? - we're asking questions that HP as an artefact of literature fulfiling certain genre conventions was never set up to be able to answer. I just think is something that fandom discussions and fanfiction authors (particularly those drawn to canon-compliancy) need take into consideration when trying to reconcile their horror at the Dursleys' treatment of Harry and interest in how this abuse would shape him as a character, with an interest in remaining true to the canonical text.

(I absolutely don't mean to be overly relativist about this, and want to make clear I'm talking about depictions of children's abuse in literature. In reality, children who have experienced violence and harm at the hands of adult caregivers have always felt some level of pain and distress. My point here is less about the lived experience of abuse and neglect, and more about changing cultural norms, attitudes and tastes about fictional depictions about abuse and neglect.)