#the last thing I need to do is spend hours modding skyrim AGAIN | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ogdoadfates · 1 year

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Me and my friends just had to spend over 3 hours fixing my skyrim because a mod I got didn’t work and nuked another mod so bad it glitched the game into being unplayable till we found the problem mod. So have some Skyrim au Vaxleth. Warning: Blood/violence (this possibly will get a part two, we’ll see.)

This is bad. They’ve been fighting this same blasted dragon for hours now. Vax can tell from only just a quick glance that Pike, Keyleth and even Scanlan are running out of magic. Fuck, looking at Percy and Vex their running out of their bolts and arrows as well yet Grog is still going at it.

Vax can feel his blood howling, the wolf wants out, it’s panicked, it’s family, it’s pack is in danger and all it wants is to keep them safe, get them out of here or kill the blasted thing attacking them but Vax doesn’t think even his lycan strength would be able to take down this dragon. Yet his wolf doesn’t care, Vax doesn’t know how much longer he can hold it.

Grog releases another blood curdling roar at the scaled beast as he charges it with his greataxe yet again, just for it to barely make a dent. None of them have been able to break its scaled hide but it has certainly broken theirs and with magic low the situation is only getting more and more perilous.

“Grog! We need to fall back, we’re not doing anything besides losing resources!” Percy shouts at their large friend and Vax is inclined to agree. He can see Grog contemplate for a minute before the dragon says something only he can understand and goes back to trying to hit the beast.

And that's when it happens. The beast’s tail gives a large swing behind it but all Vax can hear is the sickening yelp and crack of Keyleth getting hit and thrown into a boulder. Her body slumps to the ground leaving a smear of blood in her wake.

He can’t stop it. As he rushes to her he can feel his bones extend and morph, fur bursting from him as he transforms into his werewolf form. The wolf’s taken hold.

He can hear the others scream and shout but all he can focus on is gathering Keyleth in his enlarged arms, though he can’t take too much time to concentrate on it he does at least try to make sure his claws do not cause her more damage.

Once he has her he runs, knowing full well that his sister would follow and with her hopefully the rest of the group. Vaguely he is aware of Grog yelling something at the dragon before he and the rest of the group start to follow him.

Vax doesn’t stop running for a long time. By the time he does stop, at a cave he and the rest had cleared all but a few days, it’s night fall.

Slowly and carefully he starts to venture into the cave's entrance before he is stopped by Vex, at first he growls at her causing her to step back. The others immediately back away from them, he can hear Percy load his crossbow undoubtedly aiming it at Vax’s own head.

Vex continues to stare him down till he is able to regain control over his wolf and back down. Vex shakes her head, giving him one last long look before notching an arrow as she heads in. She comes back only a few minutes later to usher everyone in after making sure the place was truly cleared.

Vax doesn’t waste a second finding a soft and safe place to put Keyleth down, she’s thankfully regained consciousness but only barely. He can tell she isn’t fully aware of what's happening around her and it tears his heart to see her so scared and confused.

He isn’t able to tell her soft comforts in this form so he does all that he can do, place himself near her and release soft chuffs. Ones he knows she usually would laugh at because she claims they sound more like soft woofs from a pup than that of a nine foot tall wolf man.

He’s so focused on Keyleth that he doesn’t see Pike coming over till it’s too late. His wolf flares, giving a warning snarl and slash at the small woman who luckily was pulled away in time by Vex.

“Afraid that isn’t the wisest choice right now, darling.” He hears his twin tell Pike.

Grog has his greataxe pointing at him giving him the most stern look he’s ever seen on the big guy's face, Pike gives the large man a reassuring half smile. “It’s okay Grog, I shouldn’t have tried to get to her. Like really, he even growled at Vex earlier, it’s my fault.” She tells Grog, who frowns but regardless lowers his greataxe.

Gods, he’ll need to apologize to them later.

His wolf is torn, wanting to keep his pack safe but wanting no one to get near Keyleth. They need Pike or someone with a health potion to help her. He has no idea how serious of an injury she has, just that it was bad enough to have knocked her unconscious for a time and for her to lose a fair amount of blood.

His growling simmers down when he feels a light hand rest upon his arm. Looking down he’s greeted by Keyleth’s weak smile. “It’s okay.” She says barely above a whisper, hell he might’ve only heard it due to his enhanced hearing. All he can do in return is release a whine but Vax gains enough control in order to make himself back away enough to let Pike work without the looming threat of an almost feral werewolf shadow her.

Keyleth keeps her hand on his arm and he thinks that's the only reason his wolf doesn’t try to fight him and break free in order to get Pike away from her.

Blessedly Pike works fast but sadly it most likely wasn’t on purpose but more so because she only had a little healing magic left. She feels around Keyleth’s head to check if the wound closed fully. Keyleth releases a hiss of pain, her hand giving his arm an ever so slight squeeze. His wolf flares but Vax thankfully was able to calm it in time before it did anything stupid.

Pike bites her lip, looking through her bag just to grunt in annoyance before looking back to Keyleth sadly. “I’m afraid that's all I got until we rest up or make it to a town.” Keyleth just gives her a tired smile. “It’s stopped bleeding but I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to sleep.” At that Keyleth gives a weak groan, causing the group to lose some tension as they softly chuckle at her.

The atmosphere calms after that, Vax helping Keyleth rearrange herself to be leaning against his chest so she isn’t fully laying on the ground, therefore making it hard for her to fall asleep. But it also makes it so it’s harder for Vax’s wolf to get loose due to it fearing it’d hurt her with that kind of sudden movement, meaning finally Vax is back in full control of himself. Though he is still stuck as a werewolf for the time being, it helps.

#skyrim au #vaxleth #vaxleth fanfic #vaxleth fanfiction #vax'ildan #vax #vax x keyleth #keyleth x vax #keyleth #criticalrole #critical role #criticalrole fanfic #critical role fanfiction #pike trickfoot #vex'ahlia

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loadet851 · 3 years

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Pc Games With Character Creation Offline

Games With Character Customization Pc

Steam Games With Character Creation

One of the things I love most in a RPG (Role-Playing Game) is the possibility of creating my own character with tons of different options and add-ons. I made a research yesterday and found some interesting PC Games I already knew about, adding them to the titles I have or plan to get with the best Character Customization. I’m going to list them here for you guys also attaching a few videos so that you can see directly how they work and what kind of possibilities they offer.

It’s the main reason I enjoy games like Skyrim and Fallout. But there seem to be so few good (single player) games with decent character creation - and not just picking from a few presets. The character creation in Dragon Age: inquisition was amazing (although I struggled to enjoy the game) as well as Saints Row (which I really enjoyed). Addicting Offline Co-op Games For PC You’ll Want To Play. Dennis Patrick / Features / Best Co-op PC Games, Co-op, Cooperative. Sonic the Hedgehog is a staple video game character. Best MMORPG with Character Creation. Final Fantasy 14 has one of the most complex and sophisticated character editors. In this game, you can change the smallest details using different sliders, pick a unique voice, or add unique tattoos, accessories and facial paint. What Are Best RPGs With Character Creation? Role-playing games let us live out some of our greatest fantasies like slaying dragons, saving the world and owning a house. Whether your main character is dead, alive, or somewhere in between, these games will let you adjust your appearance and abilities to however you see fit. I've always loved games that give you the option to create your character before you start in the world. I enjoy the game even more when it has role playing or social aspects added to it, allowing you interact with NPCs, or other players if the game has a multiplayer feature. Just character creation would interest me enough to check any game out.

Follow me under the cut if you’re curious!

I’ve been introduced to this type of creation with a game I still keep in my heart and consider one of the best of all times; The Sims 2. Seriously, I’ve created so many 3D characters that if I could win an award I’d have 200 on my shelf by now.

With that said, here you are my personal list of PC games with their awesome customization in no particular order:

I tried this game myself (the free beta that is) a few times in the past and I swear the CC included in it is currently one of my favorite. Without the complete pack I probably didn’t have a lot of additional options available in terms of clothes, makeup and hair, but what truly mesmerized me at the time was the shaping tool, not yet common in games when they released EVE. You can grab and drag different parts of the head and body, modeling unique characters every time.

2. Black Desert Online

This game has been released recently with two different packages and it seems to be quite a popular MMORPG (Massive(ly) Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) in Russia and Korea. I’m not surprised considering the quality this game seems to have and its customization is clearly no less. Just like EVE Online, Black Desert offers a good sculpt instrument to shape faces and bodies as much as you like, plus a beautiful variety of colors and combinations.

UPDATE: The game is also available on Steam!

This patch lets you play Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks with mostly non-touch based controls. The new control bindings are Control Bindings: D-Pad=Run Y+Dpad=Walk B=Wide slash B+Dpad=Long slash Y+B=Spin Attack A=Interact A+Dpad=Roll. Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks D-Pad Patch This patch implements non-touchscreen controls for essential actions in Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks. Legend of zelda spirit tracks xenophobia patched rom.

3. Blade&Soul

This is another Asian MMORPG with the classical ‘Anime’ style, you cannot freely reshape the character’s structure, only pick one of the available presets and play around with the sliders to modify the whole body. Andy mckinney molly hatchet. Still, I honestly like the bright colors, the races/classes and the fact that you can actually recreate other existing characters using additional content (just like this guy did with Cloud from Final Fantasy VII).

4. BLESS Online

Yes, another Asian online title. Hey, it’s not my fault if they look so pretty! Bless is quite recent and not yet released in its final stage, but judging by how the CC works you have as much freedom as in EVE or Black Desert and the same unmistakable Fantasy touch.

5. The Sims 4

Didn’t I mention The Sims 2? Well, looks like the latest title in the series has improved quite a lot in this area. The shaping/sculpting method is here as well, considering that we finally have more possibilities I certainly won’t complain!

Note: In this video I can see the woman has a few mods installed. If you decide to get this game (or even the previous chapters) I definitely suggest you to do the same if you don’t like the default character design.

6. Fallout 4

Another recent (and quite famous) game. Apparently you can only work on the face here, but once again we see the sculpt tool in action. Even if the hair options are a bit limited you can still customize your character and create unique features playing around with your cursor.

7. Dragon Age: Inquisition

Who knows me is well aware of the fact that I am completely OBSESSED with this game, thus I couldn’t really leave it out. The hair options are definitely questionable and just like in Fallout 4 you do not have any body morph nor slider to alter, but as you can see from this video example you are still able to personalize your Inquisitor in a good way, also using real people or other characters as reference. To be honest I like some of the default presets too, if you don’t like spending two hours working on a face (I do that all the time, but I am a basket case so please ignore my madness :P), you can pick those and get a good result nonetheless.

And don’t forget about mods! 😉

8. Skyrim (The Elder Scrolls V)

This one has been around for a very long time and it remains probably the top 1 Fantasy game out there. If you’re not into mods at all and want to keep your game vanilla be sure that the overall quality is not as improved as the current generation, you can see that from the low-res hair and general textures. The reason why I’m including this CC in the list anyway is because even if old, Skyrim looks quite good compared to other games where you only get 3/4 slider options.

9. APB Reloaded

The last game I’d like to mention (and I literally just discovered it) is this not so new title which has a kick-ass Character Creator. Not only it shows some quality graphics there, but the level of customization is unbelievable! You can make hair shorter, beards longer, create beautiful tattoos (and place or rotate them wherever you want!), add patterns to clothes and even get your personal car! 😀

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There are of course many other games with a Character Creator, but they all seem pretty similar or not good enough to be mentioned in my list.

What do you think about these? Let me know with a comment if you like!

Those late-night multiplayer sessions can be really fun sometimes. Surely, everything is better with friends, they say and you’ll agree with that at some point. However, after a long day of work and studying, I like to relax with offline games. Sometimes, it’s satisfying to let yourself indulge in a great single-player story and forget about any problems bothering you. So, if you are like me, then welcome to the club! Below is my list of 20 best offline games for PC and I hope you’ll enjoy them.

1. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

W2k16 pc download. Well, you’ve guessed it! The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt takes first place on the list with its epic setting, characters, gameplay, and those breathtaking visuals! It’s a compelling game that will offer you more than a hundred hours of non-filler gameplay, and there’s always something to explore. The game looks amazing, and the combat system is great. This open-world title is everything you need on your free days! Combine that with the great RPG elements and fun dialogues with NPCs, and you got yourself a pretty good offline game! Go and play it now, it’s a must-play.

2. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus

Wolfenstein series has been once again revived with Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. The positive reviews flashed all around the globe, and this game quickly became one of the best shooting games of 2017. B.J Blazkowicz is such a badass protagonist and the characters surrounding the game are interesting. You’ll quickly start to care about each and every one of them, making this game a worthy offline title. Bethesda said that they won’t be focusing on multiplayer, so they can bring an immersive single-player experience. Well, you nailed it, Bethesda; great job!

3. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Bethesda is one of my favorite companies when it comes to gaming, at least they were a few years back. A few years back, this masterpiece called The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released and it took the Earth by storm! This offline open-world title offers hundreds of hours of exploration and you’ll probably never get bored of it! The combat system might be dated, but it’s damn fun to play and explore every corner of the game. After six years since its release, I’m still eager to give Skyrim another go. It’s that great!

4. Fallout 4

Games With Character Customization Pc

Fallout 4 is one of those top offline games that you either like or dislike. It’s a great single-player experience, as you explore a huge world of fictional city Commonwealth. I mean, the story here is scattered here and there, and our protagonist is in search of his abducted son. However, the game often steers away from that and let you have some freedom and exploration. It’s a fantastic reboot of the series, and it’s surely the best game in the franchise. If you are up for that Stalker-ish feeling, then give this a try!

5. Hitman (2016)

Hitman isn’t a strictly offline game, but I included it because it has a great single-player campaign. While the previous entry in the series Hitman: Absolution relied more on linear, claustrophobic, and confined experience, Hitman (2016) went in a different direction. Here, you’ll experience a vast, open-world with lots of stuff to do. The levels are not that numerous, but they are as big as hell! You can complete your missions in various ways and earn certain rewards and points for doing so. Hitman is a challenging stealth experience, but once Agent 47crawls under your skin, there’s no going back!

Steam Games With Character Creation

6. Nioh

Nioh is a less-known offline game released this year, and I feel like this game is very underrated. It’s a child of Dark Souls and Bloodborne series, which can tell you much about this game. It has a single, crushing, and unforgiving difficulty that will leave you begging for mercy. It’s hard, and you’ll need some blazing fast reflexes and huge gaming skills to finish it. There are more than twenty bosses in the game, and every single boss will kick your ass! Don’t expect to finish this game in a few days; you’ll need weeks to finish it and it will be painfully slow as the bosses shame you every little time… you helpless gamer!

7. Nier: Automata

Another underrated game – Nier: Automata. How could the gaming community overlook this game? Are you blind, or what? This game offers thirty hours of a pure, refined, and amazing experience! It’s a hack-and-slash title that mergers several genres with it. The open world in this game is huge, and the post-apocalyptic environment looks depressing and feels like a void. Nier also introduces RPG elements so you can now level yourself up, upgrade weapons, buy stuff, etc. On top of that, there are some 2D sections that feel like a great platformer, and that’ very unique! Nier: Automata is better than most AAA titles and costs double the less of that price, which is one more reason to get it.

8. Dark Souls 3

Dark Souls series got a fantastic reboot with Dark Souls 3. Just if it wasn’t enough for the previous games in the series, and now we got this punishing game. What can I say? Prepare to die a LOT in this game, as it’s created to kill you. I’m not joking, the whole game is against you, and you can’t do anything about that except fight like a lunatic. Even when you die, the enemies around you respawn and you must fight again and again, which is really frustrating. However, if you have the balls to play it, and manage to finish it, then you deserve a medal, Sir!

9. Bioshock Infinite

Bioshock Infinite is the newest installment in the Bioshock series. This cheap game can give you a huge value for your buck, especially when the Holidays come. I mean, for just a couple of bucks, you can get a fantastic FPS game, which campaign isn’t short and definitely isn’t boring! Bioshock Infinite continues its tradition with great shooting mechanics, various powerups, and that fast-paced shooting in a beautiful environment of the game. Get ready to cause mayhem!

10. Alien: Isolation

Alien: Isolation is that PC offline game that will haunt your dreams every time you try to sleep. It’s a horror game in which you try to stay in one piece and escape that damn space station called Sevastopol. Sounds similar? Well, that’s because the game is based on Alien (1979) movie, which was a very disturbing experience at the time. It’s an intense game that makes your palms sweat and your heart beating so fast that you’ll think it’s gonna come out of your chest! Try this horror if you dare, and watch yourself getting swallowed by the Alien, in a single bite!

11. Far Cry Primal

Elephants are cool, but mammoths are so badass! In Far Cry Primal, you can hunt mammoths and even ride them when you get to higher levels! How cool are you from zero to riding a mammoth? This beautiful-looking game is set 10,000 years BC and no, you aren’t going to shoot guns, but bash the hell out of your enemies. The arsenal of weapons might not be that huge, but the combat is great and requires more thinking, as the enemies are sometimes overwhelming and can easily kill you. If you have the luck to tame a sabertooth tiger, you may survive in this harsh world!

12. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

There is something special about that claustrophobic feeling, especially when it comes to horror games that you can play without internet. That sense of dread and despair when you don’t have much space to move is priceless. Don’t think of me as a psycho, but I LOVE the horror genre! RE7: Biohazard is a game that caught my attention as soon as it was released. This bad boy will provide you with a horrific experience that will leave you scared to death! As the game plays from the first-person perspective, it’s much easier to get yourself immersed, but also scared.

13. Outlast 2

Outlast 2 is yet another offline horror experience, where the developers decided to leave your powerless. There aren’t weapons for you to use, and surely no means to defend yourself. So, what are you left with? Well, a camera and a journal should do the trick! The game does a damn fine job of melding the horror and the dread with stealth and great storytelling. In the end, you may feel a little let down by the ending, but I know you’ll enjoy it until the very end.

14. Dead Space 3

Cat et 2015a factory password generator. While the past games in the series focused more on that horror experience, Dead Space 3 is more of an action-horror game. Sure, there are Necromorphs and they are vicious and all, but the action part is more prominent. Needless to say that Dead Space 3 is an amazing game and I’m very sad that Visceral Games is closed by EA in October. This survival horror game is hugely underrated, but it’s awesome and I recommend you to play it. It’s just a couple of bucks for this experience, don’t be a niggard!

15. Portal 2

There’s something awesome when it comes to Source Engine. The games made with this engine looks amazing, yet they run smoothly. How did Valve manage to do that? Well, as I am not a game developer, don’t ask me! But ask me about Portal 2, which is Valve’s magnum opus, and a compelling puzzle game. The whole point of the game is to use a Portal gun in order to create portals and pass through them. However, the game isn’t that simple and requires some brain skill to finish it. Grab your Portal Gun, and let’s go on a venture!

16. Limbo

This 2D game is straight-up terrifying, dark, and misanthropic from the start to finish! In Limbo, you are a little boy that needs to survive this colorless world of the game as he overcomes various obstacles and escape scary monsters. I like the game’s artwork and the atmosphere is simply top-notch here if you like the dark ambient in the games. It’s a must-play for every offline Indie games lover!

17. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

Speaking of the atmosphere, very few great offline games can replicate the atmosphere as it is in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat. That post-apocalyptic atmosphere of Pripyat looks great, and the game isn’t colorful, which is the whole point. Everything has that grey-ish tint, as this town suffered greatly when the Nuclear Powerplant in that area exploded. It’s based on a real-life event that occurred around 1989, which gives the game a certain weight and meaning.

18. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

With MGSV: The Phantom Pain, Hideo Kojima proved that he still has what it takes to create such immersive PC games without internet. This stealth game is challenging and full of stuff to do, due to its open-world nature. The characters are badass and the game feels somewhat dark, with a very serious tone. Oh, and not to forget that plot twist at the end that’s worth those thirty hours I’ve spent on this game!

19. SOMA

Horror fans will be pleased that I mentioned another horror title here. SOMA is an absolutely spooky and nerve-wracking experience! It creates that atmosphere that’s very unique, and with the story being told in the shape of various documents scattered through the game, it’s even more badass! You are all alone here and you’ll fight for your life, only to find out that you aren’t actually alive! A truly wonderful offline game for Windows.

20. Superhot

Superhot is a cartoonish-looking offline game that revolves around time. To make it simple, the time in the game moves when you move, so if you are standing still, nothing will happen. Vice Versa, if you are moving and shooting, then the enemies will do the same. It’s a lot of fun, but a lot of challenges too. I played it with some of my favorite death metal albums, just to ensure that I’m hardcore enough to beat it!

As we are approaching near the end of our journey through the offline PC games, I’m here to ask you a question. What is your favorite offline game for PC? I tried my best to count some of my favorite offline games, and although I’m maybe going to start a war for not including some of the games, I stand behind my words. Oh, and why don’t you tell me what game did I miss? Do you have any favorites besides these 20 games? Please, let me know, and don’t forget to do some gaming today!

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zydrateacademy · 4 years

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Current Activities in Gaming #222 (and life in general)

Do I even have anyone left to read my stuff? Alright, I’m gonna be real here. There’s a few variables that led to my inactivity on Tumblr. Let’s break down a few. 1) It’s not as fun. And not just because nudity was removed, though let’s be honest that’s certainly a variable. Ever since the Tumblr company shuffling of leadership there’s been a few choice updates that just don’t lend well towards the community. My activity feed is mostly just memes at this point. Also, I love blogging but I’ve yet to find a different platform to do so on, but I’ll be sure to google some alternatives soon enough.

2) I’d rather just be playing. These bigger CA posts typically take an hour or two to write up. I don’t plan them, I just open the post up and let my thoughts just get dumped. An hour or two is a lot of time, and that’s plenty of time to make some headway in certain games. Maybe pausing during an MMO during a dungeon queue or a raid party reset, but I don’t think I’ve touched an MMO in a couple of years so that window has closed. As a 2a, you could also just say I just very simply haven’t been in the mood to dedicate an hour or two every couple of days.

3) Schedule switchup and fatigue. A few months ago I transferred out of front end at the grocery store I work at, and into the produce department. There was more than one chance. For one, I no longer work morning shifts (often was 7am to 1pm or noonish). That’s 5-6 hour shifts and that gives me my day to play around with. However the produce department needed a closer, so now I’m up to 8.5 hour shifts, typically 1:30 to 10pm (EST, in case that matters). I was getting 40 hours a week but I asked my boss to downgrade me to 32 instead, which is still a few more than what I was getting on front end in addition to a raise, because front end is typically the “bottom” of the retail totem pole for some reason, despite them being pretty damn important to customer experience. Regardless, at the end of almost 9 hours, I typically just come home, turn on an ASMR video on my second monitor and basically shut my brain and body down as I mindlessly plug away at whatever game I’m playing. And yes, apparently I’m ‘essential’. So I’m still working during the pandemic.

Now then. Let’s get to what I’ve been up to, and none of this is in any particular order since I’ve last posted. I must have hopped to two or three different Conan Exiles servers while ultimately settling on Oasis of Pleasure, a very ERP driven place. I spend a good month or two being active and then I just gotta wait for the next server reset and let my personal CE batteries recharge.

I’ve gotten back into Skyrim, and I really should do some scrolling to find my last CA number for that. I’ve more than doubled my hours on the special edition, and apparently it’s been just under four years since I touched it last. Right now I’m playing a sort of nonlethal thief. The Ordinator perk overhaul (which is a must have, honestly) gives the light armor tree some big bonuses to hand to hand and makes it incredibly viable even in higher difficulties. She keeps a bow and knife around for “monsters” but ultimately uses her fists against most humanoids. I’ve been trying something different during the thieves guild questline: Actually sneaking by everyone and not murdering the fuck out of every humanoid you run into. Which is an option, fun enough. You can fail the radiant quests by murdering the homeowners but most of the questline is filled with mercenaries and you can’t really ‘fail’ the main missions (though I wonder what happens if you kill that argonian?) otherwise players could block a shit load of content from themselves.

I’ve also played a hot barbarian werewolf girl, some kind of Nazgul looking woman, and some other stuff.

Hilariously I’ve yet to get a decent screenshot of my current nonlethal thief. Her kit is pretty damn basic, wearing a custom set of the guildmaster armor with the black bandoleers. Honestly she looks pretty unassuming, which is kind of the purpose. Maybe I’ll go take her hood off and get a screenshot. Some day.

After that, I will say I’ve done some preorders. I still await Bloodlines 2 and Cyberpunk 2077. Delays notwithstanding, last time I checked they’re being released at roughly the same timeframe. I also preordered Horizon Zero Dawn which I am enjoying but must admit that some elements of it are a tad underwhelming. Maybe it’s because I played a good chunk of AC:Odyssey again recently, but I grow tired of the random garbage pickup game for basic crafting. Games just can’t really stand on their own two legs anymore, and open world games seem to be stuck on a few trends they can’t shake. Running around mining for ore and picking at tree branches is not fun. It’s a side effect of HZD indeed being four years old already, but I’ll still probably get a good few dozen hours on it. Not sure if I’ll bother beating it, but I do like Aloy and her story, though I’ve been treated with some spoilers since its release so I kind of know where it’s headed. After that... Let’s check my ‘recent’ list on Steam.

So we got some Town of Salem, which has become my go-to night closer before bed most nights. Last time I made a post on it I probably only had 10-20 hours played, of which I now have over 200. I’m sure as hell a lot better than I used to be, but the All Any gamemodes still manage to make my headspin, but they lead to some hilarious moments. All other modes makes it very difficult because of the “no claim space” meta, so I like hitting AA so I can claim whatever the hell I want. I’ve wanted to get back into Dying Light but it does something dirty to my computer that always demands a hard restart. You basically can’t tab away at all, even in borderless mode. And when I try exiting, I can no longer click any tabs. So hard power button it is. It’s such a good game and it feels really good to play, but I just can’t let it force me to do hard restarts anymore. I’ve dabbled into many others and some aren’t worth mentioning too much. We got Star Wars Battlefront 2, which I was approaching with some level of skill. I like the Co-Op modes but it feels like there’s only like three maps for that. Was fun with my brother for a while but that mode needs like ten new maps. But I believe development has stopped (a while ago, too), as the team is probably working on the next thing. I’ve already posted my dealings with the likes of Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord and Generation Zero. I never got around to beating GZ’s Alpine expansion. I got my 40 hours of it and frankly... that was enough. Good game, just lacks some depth. Some reviewers mentioned that the loop became too shallow and I can kind of agree, even though it took me 40 hours to get to that point. As for MNB, I’m sort of waiting on the more final phases of its early access. It’s basically getting patched every since week and I had trouble keeping up with all the mod downloads. So I’m thinking of doing a full uninstall (mods and all) and waiting longer down the development line. Maybe with workshop support, playing and updating will be more stable. That’s about the last I have within the last few months. I’ll probably get around to finding my last Skyrim post and pick up from where I left off.

#Gaming #PC Gaming

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enchantment1385 · 5 years

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My most magnificent mega must (have) mods memo.

So, I’ve been putting this off (big surprise!), but the time has come! I am going to try and provide some recommendations of my favorite mods. Mods I will not play the game without, or mods I love so much, I can’t recommend them highly enough! Hopefully some of you will find a new excuse to play one of these games again! I will split the list up into games so you skip if you don’t play a certain game. Again, these are my personal recommendations, so please don’t get all bent out of shape over this people. I also won’t be adding the very amazing utility mods (such as SkyUI or mcm or mod organizers) as I feel these are required mods. Today's installment -

~Skyrim~

VIGILANT + VIGILANT Voiced - English Addon Okay, where do I start with the amazingingness of the mod? It’s massive, compelling, scary (chapter 3 holy fucking shitballs, batman!), and just absolutely perfectly executed on every level horror mod! This is not a mod you complete in a couple of hours, this you need to put aside a day or 2 and go through all 5 chapters! 1 guy made this. 1 awesome japanese dovha, alas it’s not as adored as it should be as, when originally released, the english subtitles (literally translations from Google) didn’t really translate well... or at all at some points. Hence why you need the voiced addon which makes this mod a 15+ hour, fully awesomely voiced adventure to seek out daedra, and be physically, and morally tested by the one and only Daedric Prince of domination, Molag Bal. Your choices WILL affect the outcome. This mod gives you everything you want from a mod. New weapons, new armour, new enemies, dark soul like boss battles, new places, new people, new land. With Halloween quickly approaching, this is the perfect time to give this a shot!

Legacy of the Dragonborn

I stayed away from this mod for SO long thinking it was just a massive oversize player home to put all your crap on display. I was wrong. I was SO wrong. This mod is the ultimate scavenger hunt turned up to 11. It adds some of the best mods out there and puts them all together to make you WANT to go find that bloody staff, or helm, because A, it now looks amazing, and B, there’s a place for EVERYTHING in the museum, it must be filled! It adds old relics, new quests, a very gorgeous fair sized player home, you get to go to Elsweyr, and even get an airship you CAN use later! And trust me when I say, there is nothing that looks quite as impressive as your dovah walking around a city with your massive ass airship looming overhead. The way everything gets placed into the world is fucking flawless, and if you’re bored or just want more out of Skyrim, this is the mod that does that, and WAY more. Also a massive bonus, it has several patches for other mods that didn’t get incorporated (vigilant being among them) to add extra wings for you to display the items from other mods!

Interesting NPCs

Another mod I stupidly avoided to begin with. So as we know, vanilla followers are... meh. But now with all these new battles and exploring you have to do, you might want someone watching your back, right? Forget vanilla, time to go interesting! This mod adds -

• 250+ Voiced NPCs • 25+ Followers with Location Based Commentary • 15+ Marriage NPCs

This mod makes Skyrim feel inhabited, but with REAL people. People who you can, should, and will want to talk to. The voice acting is just fantastic, the characters are an absolute joy, they fit into the world so perfectly you’d never know they weren’t there all along! Well... Except for the fact they’re actually interesting, and have more than 5 things to say! It also has something called ‘Super Followers’. These followers actually comment on what’s happening in your story. Just about to go kill your first dragon? They have something to say about it. Just joined the college of mages? Have a chat to see what they think! I can not express how much this will change your game, but 151% for the fucking better! Oh! And just in case you were running short on things to do, this also adds 50+ more quests! *(footnote) Pleaaassssee go to Soljund's Sinkhole and take Rumarin with you. What he says when you clear that place out has me laughing my ass off every time.

Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul

Are you tired of being the only one is Skyrim who actually seems to DO anything? Are you weirded out by the fact when you walk into an inn at 4am everyone is doing the same thing as they were at 2pm last week? Confused as hell by the comment ‘Do you hunt? The plains outside Whiterun are ripe with game.’ How the fuck would you know, Anoriath?! You never leave Whiterun, dude! EVER! That ends with this mod. Now people have routines. They sleep, they eat, they walk around, they don’t just stay in one place all the time! It makes the npc’s go from a static feature and changes them into actual people, or goes a long way to help! Even people like carriage drivers now have a lil tent near the carriage, and will even take shelter under cover if it starts raining. (if it’s not too far from the carriage!) Random people will now not try and fight the big dragon who is burning everything to a crisp, but instead run away and take shelter, you know, like a normal person would? Which is helpful, as I tend to hit them with a stray spell then get into shit for accidentally electrocuting the blacksmith or someone who shouldn’t have stood in the way of the MASSIVE FUCKING DRAGON IN THE FIRST PLACE! Anyway... This mod is awesome and makes all the vanilla npc’s less static and weird!

Relationship Dialogue Overhaul - RDO

Don’t know about you but, I’m kinda bored with the dialogue in this game. The same 5 lines on repeat, over and over and OVER again. I want people who hate me to say something a bit more nasty that ‘What do YOU want?’ This mod adds over 5000 lines of dialog that was never used. Braith finally has more insults to throw at you! Which is great, because I hate that kid and now you will too! Your rivals will be rude to you. Your friends will compliment you. And your spouse will finally say more than a handful of lines to you! With this and the AI overhaul Skyrim will finally feel like it’s come alive. It seems like such a small addition, but it makes a huge impact when you hear lines that you’ve never heard before!

PC Head Tracking and Voice Type & Expressive Facial Animation (M) (F)

So we’ve finally got a living breathing Skyrim, and holy shit, it’s a beautiful thing, right? Time to focus on bringing you to life. Don’t know about you, but I found it plain fucking odd that I didn’t ever look at the person who’s talking to me. Like, not even accidently. I also found it creepy the only time I ever made any sound whatsoever was when I shouted. So the first mod is going to fix that shit. You’ll finally look at the person talking to you, or at that dagger you’re just about to steal. What's more, you’ll be able to assign a voice to yourself, so you’ll greet people who talk to you. Fun doesn’t stop there! You can download voice packs such as, Ciri, Yenifer and loads of others! But... What if you know who you want them to sound like and there isn’t a pack for them? Well, make your own! The page is really good and explains how. So we’re not a clueless goon anymore, we look and talk, but that basically makes us no better than the T 800 terminator. The second mod will make you actually have emotions, instead of constant blank face. You’ll smile at friends and loved ones, and scowl at people who you hate, like you Elrindir. For the last time, I didn’t mean to steal the fucking apple pie! But I think me spending HUNDREDS of gold should have made up for that and did NOT warrant you sending a group of thugs to come kick the shit out of me! Sorry. Just... Some unfinished business between me and that bastard bosmer.

Enhanced Lights and FX

I have a potato as a laptop, as such a lot of these amazing ENB’s are totally off the table for me. But... We all deserve a pretty Skyrim, right? Fuck yes we do! And this is the mod that does that for me. So there are two versions of this bad boy, and you will really want to think about which one you want to go for. You’ve got standard, or hardcore. The MAIN difference is, the hardcore version will make dungeons dark. No, I mean pitch black darkness. Really think you know bleak fall barrow? Install hardcore then go run through it. It make sense that it would be dark down in these places, but fuck me dark is now really dark, which I personally love, but you might not. Install at least the main file and the weather mod and I guarantee when you boot your game back up you’ll be saying ‘wow’.

Enhanced Character Edit OR RaceMenu

Okay, first off you only need one or the other NOT both. Here’s the difference. If you want to make a character that looks like they’re from FFXV or korean mmo, you’ll want to get Enhanced character edit. They’re all so damn pretty! Even the men are pretty! If you want something a little less cute looking and maybe more mature, Racemenu is character creator for you. Both give you a TON more customization when creating your new oc, down to finger and toe length and what’s not to love about that??

Enhanced Camera

You finally have a body in first person mode. not just hands when attacking. Which FYI Bethesda, is creepy as fuck. Next mod.

Familiar Faces

Right, last one as we could be here forever, but I need to do more of these things for other games so let's finish with something stupid, but awesome, shall we? You know who’d make the best companion? That spellsword character you made. Or the sneaky archer. Or that tanky as fuck warrior, but they’re on that other save.. No more! When you fire up the game with this mod installed, you get a portal stone placed in your inventory. Use it and get get warped into this empty hall. Go to any of the books on the pedestals and hit yes when prompted. You, your abilities, spells, shouts, game progress and inventory has just been recorded. Load up another save and do the same in a different book, then you can go recruit... you! You can even make yourself marribale! Got that perfect otp? Create them both and have them travel around with you! Want them to use their shouts? No problem! Want them to not use shouts? That’s fine too! Isn’t that overpowered? Who gives a flying fuck?!

Now go have fun in Tamriel, Bahlaan fahdonne!

#skyrim #tesv #skyrim mods #i tried to keep it short #there are so many good mods #but tried to keep it to stuff that will make your game better #and not add things that are really down to personal preference #like body mods #or armour #i may have rambled a bit #all of these mods are available on oldrim and special edition #the links are for oldrim

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gamer-gulls · 5 years

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The story of my marriage in Skyrim

So, I recently experienced a series of events in Skyrim that motivated me to create a tumblr account just so I could share them. So strap in, it’s gonna be a doozy. (If you don’t feel like reading this novel of a post, just scroll down to the last two paragraphs, they pretty much sum up the whole story. But I personally recommend you get the backstory as well.)

It all started when I was deciding who to marry in Skyrim. I had just murdered my previous husband, dragged him into the lake, and gotten myself another amulet of Mara. (Yes, I did feel insanely guilty for doing this.) I had narrowed my decision down to the furries Companions, but it was still hard for me to choose. I furthered narrowed my choice down by the extremely important factor of how hot they were. When I narrowed it down to Aela, Farkas, and Vilkas, I ruled Aela out because she was simply not thicc enough. So, I had it down to the brothers, but I couldn’t for the life of me pick one.

I lamented this choice for hour. Just one. How does one decide between an intelligent, eloquent, confident warrior, and Farkas? I weighed in my mind the personalities of the otherwise identical brothers. Finally, the answer was as clear to me as it probably is to you. I chose the superior brother, Farkas. I couldn’t resist his blatant stupidity, lack of emotional intelligence, and violent tendencies. In all seriousness, I found him absolutely adorable with his puppy-like personality. I also have a thing for dumbasses.

So, the decision was made, I talked to the dude at the temple to Mara, and the last step was to attend my wedding. This is where the true fuckery began. You see, when choosing a dumbass to be my husband, I failed to foresee the full extent of his dumbassery. I’m sure the incidents that follow were all the result of the hundreds of mods I have polluted my game with, but I’d love to imagine that this is all just canon how Farkas is.

I arrived at my wedding, everything seemed normal, my groom was there, along with three random people I didn’t remember ever helping. It was perfect. The cutscene began, and the ceremony commenced. Then, halfway through the cutscene, after we had agreed to marry each other, Farkas fucking turned around and left. He didn’t say anything, just casually walked out the door. Through the varying degrees of “what the fuck?” in my mind, I came to the conclusion that either my game glitched and he left prematurely, or he was too dumb to understand that he had to fully attend his own wedding.

After the cutscene ended, I went outside to see if I could find him. I assumed he was making his was back to Jorrvaskr. Oh boy, I was wrong. I couldn’t find this bitch ANYWHERE. I looked through Riften, scoured the path from Riften to Whiterun, and looked everywhere in Whiterun. Forkass was nowhere to be found. At this point I was honestly offended. I was losing my grasp on reality, thinking, “did this mf really flee skyrim just so he didn’t have to marry me?” Distressed as I was, I had to get on with my life and save Skyrim. I tried to marry Vilkas, but the game wouldn’t let me.

I proceeded with the main quest, along with doing some smaller side quests. Now, I’m not too big into roleplaying in games, but I’d imagine that these quests would have taken my character at least a few months. (That’ll be important later, just keep that in mind.) At one point, I needed to turn on quest markers for the Thieve’s Guild. When looking at my quests, I realized that I could turn on quest markers for The Companions, and it would mark the locations of Vilkas, Aela, and Farkas. When I turned my quest markers on, Vilkas and Aela were in Jorrvaskr as usual, and Farkas was in some random fucking location between Riften and Windhelm.

I rode out to go find my missing dumbass husband, and when I found him, I had to pause my game to cry laughing. This dumb bitch, the motherfucker, this absolute fucking walnut was standing in the middle of the woods, with his face directly up against a tree. If he moved any closer to this tree, he would be inside of it. When I approached, he turned to me, half of his face clipping into the tree, and said,"Married. It isn't what I thought it would be, but I'm happy.” WELL YEAH, NO SHIT IT WASN’T WHAT YOU THOUGHT IT’D BE. YOU LEFT HALFWAY THROUGH THE WEDDING TO STICK YOUR FACE IN A TREE. I DIDN’T THINK IT’D BE LIKE THIS EITHER.

After that situation, I told him we would live in my house in Falkreath. He told me he’d meet me there, and promtly went to Jorrvaskr. I told him to follow me, fast traveled to my house, walked inside, and dismissed him from following me. Thankfully he stayed at my house from that point forward, but he has yet to figure out where the beds are and he hasn’t slept through any of the nights I’ve been there.

Earlier I said I don’t lose my mind over roleplaying in Skyrim, but I couldn’t help but put myself in the shoes of my character in this situation. I mean, Imagine: You’re in love with Farkas, and he admits to being in love with you. You agree to get married, and you couldn’t be any happier about it. You show up to your wedding, everyone’s already there. Then, during the ceremony, the absolute oaf turns around and walks out the door. You run through the streets of Riften looking for him. (At this point you’re well acquainted with his stupidity, you’re thinking he probably forgot he was at his wedding, left, and got lost on his way home.) You search the path back to Jorrvaskr. You search the whole city of Whiterun, yet your love is nowhere to be found. You must accept this truth, and reluctantly you move on with your duties as dragonborn. (Just forget that I tried to marry Vilkas it’s not important)

You spend months bettering Skyrim. You fight bandits, dragons, the undead, and all types of ill-meaning foes. One day, you’re on your way back from an adventure. You’re taking a shortcut through the woods, and out of the corner of your eye you see...him. You rush towards the man in the woods, wanting to be sure of his identity. Yet, deep down you know. You know it is your long lost husband. How? What other man but Farkas would be standing in the middle of the woods with his head pressed against a tree. You call out to him, tears in your eyes. He turns to you and says, "Married. It isn't what I thought it would be, but I'm happy.” You beg him to come home, after leaving your wedding and spending months lost in the woods with his face against a tree. He obliges, but is too dumb to get to your house, and ends up at Jorrvaskr. You try again, this time personally escorting him to your home. He smiles at you, and warms his hands a bit too close to the fire. You spend the next few weeks in bliss alongside your husband, even if he doesn’t know how to sleep in a bed yet. He’ll figure it out eventually, and for now, you’re happy.

#skyrim #skyrim glitch #skyrim mod #video games #funny #skyrim story #farkas #skyrim farkas #companions #skyrim companions #video game meme #meme #story #skyrim funny

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kriatyrr · 6 years

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The many ways in which Fallout 4 could have been better.

I’ve had so many ideas run across my mind that I have no hope of getting them all in writing, but some of the big ones..

During the opening, when your spouse goes into the cryopod in Vault 111, instead of merely waving to you, they could signal “I love you” in ASL. Your character mirrors the gesture and whispers “I love you too, hon.” Even if sign language never comes up in the game again. Just that little thing could mean so much to some players.

The intimidate perk could be used to resolve some situations peacefully. In Diamond city when that guy pulls a gun on his brother, thinking him a synth, you can pacify him if you have the perk - and nothing happens. The security goons don’t arrest him, they just stand around doing nothing and the encounter does not resolve until you put your gun away or walk away, where it resumes as scripted and security shoots him.

Not to mention in the Railroad ending... Haylen surrendered to me, and then Tinker Tom comes along and fucking murders her anyway. How awesome would it be if you could talk her into joining you, in order to reduce collateral damage. While you’re planting bombs on the Prydwen, Haylen rounds up the squires (+Emmet) and take them down to the ground and away from the blast radius. Or you could even tell Desdemona that no, we’re not blowing up the Prydwen, there are children on that ship. Your plan sucks and I will not do it until you come up with a better one. At least in the Institute ending they had some time to evacuate - the last thing I saw before being forcibly relayed away was Elder Maxson in power armor, running away.

Everyone has already mentioned actually fixing Danse’s dialogue post-Blind Betrayal. A redemption arc would be nice too. He doesn’t strike me as the type of hypocrite who would accept himself being a synth while still hating every other synth in the game.

You learn Danse’s synth designation, but you can’t do a damn thing about it. You can’t ask the Railroad about what happened (granted, they’d have a lot of personnel changes since 97 originally escaped, but Deacon at least was probably still around back then, or they might have records. Or maybe those were destroyed at the Switchboard)

You can’t ask anyone in the Institute. Not even Liam. Obviously he’s too young to have been involved back then, but he’s pretty good with computers, surely he could dig up information about old synth escapes.

you never actually get to see the intel that Quinlan decrypted. All you get to know is he was on the list of “missing or escaped” which Arthur Maxson can’t tell apart from “infiltrator unit” and they announce his synth designation to the entire division as if there is no risk of actual institute infiltrators who can then contact their superiors to get the recall code. So I get at this point that bringing Danse back isn’t an option, but surely there is no danger in Danse existing after the institute is destroyed. When Maxson tells you that we will never speak of this again, I wanted to tell him that I’ll obey that order until the institute is destroyed, but after the dust settles, we need to talk.

Or how about some delightfully awkward situations where BoS members see you with Danse and you run away instead of killing them. Have Maxson exposed as a liar. Undermine his authority. (They sure gave us a lot of fanfic fuel...)

How about being able to assign settlers to corpse disposal or general clean-up and slowly over time get rid of those trash piles that are everywhere and those infernal skeletons that you can’t even drag around. But no, we had to get a mod for that.

How about after getting rid of the raiders at Nuka World, they actually start wearing normal clothing and take off the damn shock collars and get someone to work in the radio station - it’s still on air, Red Eye just left the studio without turning anything off. I bet they meant for that guy in Cappy’s Cafe to take over and then just never finished it.

Also wouldn’t it be cool if you ran into Red Eye in a random encounter that could go many ways depending on what you say to him. I wanted to say I loved his station and it was the only thing I missed from before I killed everybody. Offer him a ton of caps to come back and work for me again.

If you let the raiders take over Commonwealth settlements before turning on them, they’ll randomly show up and try to kill you - again and again, long after you exterminated them at Nuka World. How do they keep getting new recruits when all their leaders are dead? How does the Brotherhood keep getting new vertibirds when they crash all the time? There are always more raiders. Where was this massive population when I was just thawing out? Encounters should get less frequent to reflect the dwindling population.

There is no sense of scarcity beyond the first few levels. Things respawn at a ridiculous rate. Just the other day I was picking up some scavenge, wandered into a different area, backtracked and went through the same area later the same day and everything had respawned. This is so upsetting to me. I want my efforts to mean something. I am cleaning up the commonwealth, one discarded beer bottle at a time, but all the clutter just keeps coming back! I hate it. I have yet to play a character who is a cannibal because I really can’t imagine needing to do that when the world is just full of food. I plant some crops and tell a settler to tend to them, and when I return a day or two later it’s ready for harvest.

Speaking of harvest, there are no seasons. The daylight hours don’t get longer in summer or shorter in winter, there is no sense of the passage of time, the date is just a string of numbers in your pip-boy with no meaning whatsoever, you get a quest and everything just waits on you, for months or years, Father doesn’t start to question your dedication to the Institute when you STILL haven’t relayed to Mass Fusion six months later, nor will he be a good boy and just die already from his rapidly progressing terminal illness, no he’s going to force you to kill nearly all of your friends before he’ll let you actually take over. Not that you get to do ANYTHING at all as Director. All you get is the institute power armor paint job and the ability to buy synth relay grenades. You don’t get to say “Oh by the way I’m abolishing slavery, have fun doing your own menial work from now on” (I keep thinking I’d be able to do more good for the synths as the leader for the institute than I ever could with the railroad) and why can’t I tell Desdemona to go deeper underground and I can just tell Father they had already left when he sent me there to kill them. Why can’t I tell Elder Maxson to go back to the Capital Wasteland because literally no one in the commonwealth wants him there. We have the Minutemen to defend the settlements and the Railroad to fight the institute and all he’s doing is making things worse.

And let MacCready stop being such a deadbeat dad and bring his son to live with us in the Commonwealth.

I loved the Far Harbor DLC, but it was so disappointing that none of the companions other than Nick had any new voice lines.

Why can’t I bring my romanced companion to the Memory Den for a date in a simulation of the pre-war era? Danse would love that, I’m sure..

why can’t I pet cats? Why didn’t Bethesda spend a quarter of the effort they did on dog animations on making cats look more realistic. They should be napping on beds and chairs, rubbing up against settlers’ legs and tripping them and interacting with their environment too. Have you seen the animation that passes for a cat’s yawn? The first time I saw it, I thought Ashes was about to throw up a giant hair ball.

If you are caught pickpocketing, that’s it, game over. Diamond City Security doesn’t try to arrest you, it’s shoot to kill. Same in the institute. I’m sorry to say it, but that was something Skyrim did better.

why can’t you romance non-companions like in Skyrim? I want to marry Arturo Rodriguez and be Nina’s step parent.

Synth relay grenades should not work after blowing up the Institute.

The AI should not fall off things quite so often. I should not go through an entire Research Patrol assignment for the Brotherhood only to have the Scribe I’m escorting fall to their death when I take the vertibird up to the Prydwen.

When an enemy panics and decides to run away, they should keep running and not turn around and go right back to trying to kill me seven seconds later.

my companion should not be quite so bloodthirsty. They should not attack a fleeing enemy, particularly a civilian like the institute scientists.

Every companion shouldn’t have all the same animations. Preston should not inhale Jet if you linger around on the top floor of Drug Den. Curie should not smoke.

The companions should have preferences as to what food they prefer to eat, which chems they take or under which circumstances. I gave Danse a whole bunch of different stuff to see what he’d use, and the first time I got in a fight he had taken med-x and berry mentats (fun fact: your companion takes berry mentats and you see the pink haze). You’d think Yao Guai ribs were his favorite things to eat, but no, it’s just that the AI will favor taking anything with damage reduction. Other companions do the same. Synths will not favor Fancy Lads Snack Cakes. Little things like that would have made the game so much more fun to me.

Damn it there should have been a terminal with journal entries in Danse’s quarters on the Prydwen. Or he should have continued to update his terminal at the Cambridge Police Station. Maybe wash his face once in a while after the Prydwen arrives.

You should be able to give people caps. I hate how caps only flow one way in the game. You can take your settlers’ measly pocket change, but you can’t pay them for working for you. You buy property in Diamond City but you never pay taxes or utilities. (that might help with the sense of passage of time).

You build a peaceful utopia at your settlements, but your settlers never form relationships or start having kids now that it’s finally safe to do so. The world could feel a lot more real. (I mean I love how absurd it is, but absurdity and realism can coexist, I promise)

“Crop’s been growing pretty good lately” - there’s never any crop failure, or natural disasters making food a scarcity. Rad storms don’t affect anyone but you, and people will not seek shelter.

Nick and Ada remind you that they don’t need to eat or sleep or anything, but neither does any other companion. I mean I guess they’re adults who can take care of their own basic needs, but they don’t have any money of their own unless you specifically tell them to pick up caps you find.

You never find out where Danse got that lovely suit of X-01 power armor from.

Hate me for this long post yet? I’m not even done but this’ll do for now. Uh, how do I do a Read More thing again?

#fallout 4 rant #paladin danse #damned respawn

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imadeletingmysocials · 6 years

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My scores for E3, because apparently now i’m a dumb 4channer who thinks this /v/ meme shit matters, like it’s not gonna affect sales or anything it’s pointless as all hell [this is lenghy, but hear me out ok]

EA:

4/10 - people will probably play the games regardless of how shitty this presentation was but... It felt pretty insulting.

Battlefield V is probably gonna make a lot of money regardless cuz people like war games and it seems pretty well done, the more footage they have shown seemed better than their weird advertizement that made world war 2 seem very wacky, which honestly regardless if you’re a sexist neckbeard or not, seemed like a poor advertizement move.

TinyBuild:

No one watched this lol and it was just 1 GAME and a fun cute musical that made people who aren’t strong enough to musicals die, 6/10 because it made nerds die and their song is catchy, i dont really care about their 1 game.

Microsoft:

9/10 - I'm giving this much of a high score because I would play practically almost all of these games showcased (they’ll probably be available on PC which I’m biased for cuz I have a gaming PC), no kidding, I pretty much liked everything I saw and it was fairly straight to the point. Many gamers don’t appreciate the finer details of each game and think they’re generic but that’s just fanboys who haven’t played a single game outside of their favorites.

Also my cousin uses those Xbox One netflix rip offs that gives you games so i’m happy for him. The presentation had a lot of diamonds in the rough games that will I will probably appreciate more over time (they might even become cult classics like Metro or Dying Light) than any of other games at other e3s. As for the stuff I won’t be playing: It’s mostly harmless so eh.

There was an abundance of trailers! It was like one after the other, pure goodness, it seems as if they left out all of the Sports games to EA to present and the only thing they showed that might not be anyone’s cup of tea was “Forza”, but honestly? I appreciate it, it seems like a good racing game even if I’m not one to buy racing games.... But the more you think about the number of good games presented, the less you’ll think about that, I mean they showed DEVIL MAY CRY 5!!!

...The Funko Pop game made me scream though.

Bethesda:

8.5/10 I cannot deny that these are games I will want to play regardless if they’re good or not. Sad to see nerds not enjoy the opportunity to meet ANDREW W.K. but I’m glad all of the divisions they own are making sequels to stuff I already like, so pretty much Bethesda played it safe.

Devolver Digital:

8/10 It’s like that one b-movie film your college students made and you had a laugh with creating.

Square Enix:

5/10 seriously, 30 minues of just trailers? Most of which we saw?? I guess it could be worse but who uses E3 screentime for mostly MMORPG deals! The new stuff was too vague to be excited about too.

Ubisoft:

7/10 - I liked it when they made funny quirky things and their games are probably gonna be okay like usual, Ubisoft has dedicated fans that like their collectathon games they release every year, and it’s usually that one game you play when you’re bored and got nothing else, it’s okay.

Gamers hate fun and dancing and all that stuff but I kind of find stuff like that exciting, while nerds who never went outside and who are sensitive as all hell to any representation of fun find it “cringey”. A panda dabbed, and that settles it, Ubisoft was the only E3 Brave enough to dab this year.

PC Game Conference (it was fairly long):

I know none of you watch this one cuz y’all fake as hell but listen... Fuck you LOL, these are the type of games people actually play over 400 hours and really get people’s money. Like these are games built to last that might be on the best-selling Steam front page for MONTHS, like how Frostpunk was comfirmed last year during this conference, PC Gaming has been known for sleeper hits that nobody knows about (because the attention goes to cinematic experiences on consoles most of the time) but suddently everyone’s playing it.

PC gaming has always been an alternative lifestyle and seeing as many people didn’t watch this one, that just proves the point that it still relatively alternative. Maybe it’s because everyone sounds dumb as fuck when saying “PC GAMER MASTER RACE” and acting like an elitist.

The PC Gaming conference is always more of a talk show than a regular E3 which is why I respect it every year, fuck the hyperactive gamers that just wanna see flashy trailers, this one’s more SOPHISTICATED!! It feels a lot more human and less artificial. Either way, lot’s of what you might’ve expected: Simulators and Survival games you’ll probably spend 3 years playing until they make a better minecraft clone.

Gamers like to act as if they’re tired of Battle Royale (already? It’s a new fad it still is here to stay for a little more) but the numbers and success of it doesn’t lie that it isn’t a fad that proves itself to be highly tempting to try out for developers. Go cry to valve that they didn’t release Half-Life 3 cuz you haven’t played any other FPS game without even researching that Valve pretty much fired all of it’s developers and you’re just being annoying.

I feel as if I need to comment what I saw at this e3 cuz nobody watched, they made a mod I liked from skyrim into a fully-ass game, they’re rebooting Star Control which not a single gamer today knows of, the HP Lovecraft open world detective game also seems very good. YAKUZA IS COMING TO PC!!!!!!!!! Killing Floor 2 stuff, Road Redemption stuff, SHARK RPG, cute indie games, Jeff Goldblum was there, Wall-E with a gun in VR which seems to have promissing good vr design by Insomiac games (yes the spyro people), 2 games about Taxi driving... Like sure I think it’s a good format for story telling but.

A cell-shaded art game, star citizen is still being made, and it’s gone to the point nobody really wants it anymore even if it’s... Still being made you know? So most guys are wrong that it was gonna be canceled. After that was the technical graphic card stuff which gamers don’t have enough capability to understand, stuff like 9k laptops that SELL a lot mind you. Rich people love that technical stuff.

A space defense sim game, Don’t Starve Sequel, Just Cause 4 detailed explanation of the engine, Overkill’s The Walking Dead gameplay which has been in development hell for years now now has a release date, I discovered Clementine’s voice actor is white... Go figure, a literal pixelated roguelike (not what you think it is, it’s Noita),

Theme Hospital REBOOT!!!! YES!!!!!!!!! And the doctors were cute. Probably one of the funniest games presented... Followed by REALM ROYALE HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. That harvest moon clone with a cute art style is still being made: Ooblets, no release date sadly. Anno is still going, cyanide and happiness still exists? and they’re making a battle royale? lol okay. How was Hitman 2 not announced during Square Enix?? Anyways it’s here at the end, the trailer was amazing and it’s coming out this year.

I don’t have that much strong feelings because it’s just a normal conference and not a special one you know? But I’ll give it a 8/10 or 7/10 im not sure cuz I seem to like most games and I found Frankie cute.

Sony:

Yo usually Sony makes like a huuuuuuuge thing about their conferences (like this year they didn’t even showcase indie games) but this year they started from a church for the sake of immersion?? It reminded me a little of their first E3s during the 90s, and it almost felt like a indie gathering for musicians, I swear to god, Sony is borderline experimental trying to balance out their E3 across stages. Jeb played the banjo and people just ACCEPTED it... AND THEN someone played some JAPANESE FLUTE? aRT. It might come off as a bit arrogant for some tho.

Nerds hated it and thought it was bizzare, which is why it means it’s good. HAPPY PRIDE MONTH BITCHES. Anyways could have been a little more fast-paced... But then again when it was fast-paced it was just like: Huh? What was that? I’m a big Resident Evil Fangirl, RE2 was my childhood but ignoring that for a sec: finally, Death Stranding gameplay, remins me of shadow of the colossus but post-apocalpytic, survival horrorish and abstract sci-fi.

Kind of feels more Metal Gear than MGSV did already Cuz Norman Reedus sounds like snake a lot more than the 24 hours guy, and because from what I’ve seen in the footage, someone acts like Otacon to “Sam”. I think most now can figure out the plotpoints of this game with what has been established. I might be a bit sad at the fact that this will be a PS4 exclusive just like Metal Gear Solid 4, which I still haven’t played fully because it’s PS3 exclusive and I only have a gaming PC.

Also this E3 was surprisingly entirely SINGLE PLAYER, I sorta don’t believe in the “single player doesn’t exist” myth honestly, especially now. I’m not sure if that makes Sony’s E3 better or worse, maybe it needed more variation, like I’ve commented, usually they have an indie showcase which this year did not. There were few games shown but for what it was worth, it’s still interesting... But yeah just 5 games? No Spyro? (easy picking), nothing extra? I can understand why many people felt this E3 was upsetting.

8/10.

Nintendo

Here it is, the most overhyped developer of all of E3, the source of “Nintendo wins E3 by doing nothing” memes because Nintendo fans really don’t care about anything except Nintendo and then act surprised when they only care about Nintendo when they try to be a little more open-minded (and fail) even if other E3s probably make more games built to last in comparisson, cuz we gay people only care about NINTENDO YOU KNOW? Shade asside...

I was pleasantly surprised this E3, it wasn’t just a series of okay at best releases, a strong 9/10.

tHAT WAS WHAT I WROTE IN PREPRATION....

BUT THEN???? IT WAS JUST THAT??? NO PRIME 4 NO ANYTHING LIKE JUST 3 GAMES BASICALLY? (maybe there was 5 games but eh) I mean smash is good.. It’s pretty much just an update of the last smash, every character is REALLY FUCKING GOOD BUT.... JUST THAT? jeez.. Like, the only stuff I wanted from it was Mario Party and Smash... Okay maybe that 1 Mecha game. Also I guess fornite is now on Switch but I can play that anywhere else really.

I guess a 7/10 is all I can give to just Smash, if there was a little more I’d give it a 9/10 for sure but... ehh Just Smash? jeez, fuck... i MEAN I kind of get it, Nintendo doesn’t do “e3″ normally, they usually do 1 big game at E3 and then wait a couple of months to do that little seasonal announcement thing they do across the year, ugh.. Okay. Yeah I guess i shouldn’t have expected much. Still isn’t it weird that Miyamoto was in Ubisoft’s E3 but not this one??? what!

Anyways

#e3 #i'll post that image at the end individually #long post #Sony #Nintendo #Bethesda #Microsoft

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vivaciouswordsmith · 7 years

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On Dream Daddy being “too short”

I just finished playing Dream Daddy last night, and I have...incredibly strong feelings about the whole “it’s too short” thing being bandied about right now. I have a lot to say, so, if you’re interested in my take on this...

Here’s the thing: simply put, length in hours is not a good way to judge whether or not a game is good or not. For several reasons. All of which I will try to cover in due time.

First off, there’s a stark and radical difference between a game’s length and the game’s experience. Think of something like Skyrim, for example. I’ve sunk over five hundred hours into Skyrim at this point, but my most memorable experiences come from back when I was still figuring the game out. Yeah, it’s still fun, but some of the gild has worn off by now. Mods inject some freshness, but otherwise it has largely faded as the novelty’s worn off.

More to the point, however, is my next, well, point: time is more a factor in a strong gameplay experience, and Dream Daddy is all about a narrative experience. I can play Skyrim, or MineCraft, or even something like Bejeweled for hundreds upon hundreds of hours because those games revolve around gameplay and not so much around story.

To elaborate, Skyrim is a vast game that can take ages to get through. There’s tons of content. However, its story definitely leaves something to be desired, not to mention the fact there’s no reason to complete the main questline. You’re not going to get punished for wandering through the woods picking flowers, even if you spend a hundred in-game days doing it, so there’s no pressure to save the world. There are people who, to this day, have never even gotten close to defeating Alduin, because they exhausted the game’s capacity and grew bored with it without touching the main quest.

Same goes for MineCraft. The only way I can really enjoy MineCraft now is by playing mods like Sky Factory or Pixelmon (RIP). It’s not that MineCraft isn’t fun. Far from it. It’s definitely an “easy to learn, hard to master” sort of thing, and opens up more and more as you progress. But it definitely gets old fast. I’ve never managed to play vanilla MineCraft to the point of defeating the Ender Dragon or the Wither, just because, again, there’s no real reason to, and you won’t get punished if you don’t.

(And don’t even get me started on the fiasco that was No Man’s Sky. That, in my opinion, is the prime example of what happens when a game’s length is more important than its experience.)

Dream Daddy is more or less a visual novel. That means it doesn’t have any really new or interesting gameplay to offer. Thus, it rests fully on being a solid narrative experience. And that’s much, much harder to pull off well. Good gameplay needs tens or hundreds of hours to really be fully explored, but a story, if not done well, can get old much faster than that. Any storyteller worth their salt knows that the worst thing they can do is make their viewer/reader think they’re wasting their time

A good narrative experience actually benefits from being shorter and more concise. Some of the best narrative-driven games out there are only a few hours long. One of my personal favorites, Spec Ops: the Line only took me six or seven hours to finish, and that was only because some of the gameplay sections really ramped up the difficulty near the end. Also, the Stanley Parable, a game that, like Dream Daddy, rests almost completely on its narrative, can be almost fully explored within a handful of hours. Pony Island has good gameplay and a good story, and is only two hours long. Same goes for Undertale. If they were any longer than ten hours, they’d be overstaying their welcome.

That is how I feel about Dream Daddy. Yeah, it definitely has places it could be expanded upon, but mostly, it’s a solid story, with excellent, likable characters that you quickly get invested in, and much more depth than your average dating sim. Unlike something like, say, HuniePop, I actually felt compelled to seek out and befriend/date every dad because I got invested in their personal struggles. I ended up sinking twelve hours into the game just so I could know the ending of every story. The fact that it didn’t take that long to complete didn’t bother me at all. Their stories were short and sweet, and I’d play them all again.

Something else to consider is not everyone can devote the same amount of time to games. A kid on summer vacation (or an unemployed schlub like me) can afford to spend a weekend hunting down every last secret in a sixty hour open world game, but someone who works forty or more hours a week can’t spare a lot of time to games like that. For someone with not a lot of time on their hands, a short, decent experience is way more valuable in that it can be finished faster.

I’ll wrap this whole diatribe up with a simile. A good gameplay experience is like a full three-course meal, while a good narrative experience is like a piece of chocolate cake. By the end of the three courses, you’re full and content, but you probably didn’t clean all your plates entirely, and maybe you liked something somebody else didn’t, and it takes a long time to get through all three. A piece of chocolate cake might not last as long, but if it’s fluffy with creamy frosting and a lava center...you’re gonna remember it for a while. You might think you want a second piece of cake, but you’ll probably regret it if you eat another.

Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense.

TL:DR - Dream Daddy may have its flaws, but being too short isn’t one I’d value too strongly. It has a great story, great characters, and is overall very lighthearted and cute. Definitely worth checking out.

#dream daddy #rant #gaming #games #story #i'm a writer #so story really matters to me okay #and I think this story is really good #also the artists deserve serious kudos cause wow I love how this game looks #double thumbs up #also hugo's the best #just saying

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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The Seventh Link: Summary and Rating

The game manual featured some fairly modest hand-drawn art.

The Seventh Link

Canada

Oblique Triad (developer and publisher)

Released 1989 for Tandy Color Computer 3 Date Started: 16 December 2018

Date Ended: 16 March 2019

Total Hours: 22

Difficulty: Medium-Hard (3.5/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at Time of Posting: (to come later)

Summary:

Inspired graphically and thematically by the Ultima series, The Seventh Link is probably the most extensive and full-featured RPG for the TRS-80 Color Computer. A single starting character ultimately enlists a group of allies of different races and classes on a quest to save their planet from a black hole at its core, about to break its containment. Solving the quest will take the party through dozens of towns across multiple planets and through multiple large, multi-leveled dungeons. Although the game gets off to a slow, grindy start, character development is rewarding and the tactical combat system (drawn from Ultima III) is most advanced seen on this platform. The problem is that the game’s content is not up to its size, and not enough interesting stuff happens while exploring the enormous world.

****

I never like giving up on games, and I particularly don’t like when I know the author is reading (I’m frankly not sure it’s ever happened before). But in several months of trying, I simply haven’t been able to make any decent progress in The Seventh Link. That doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t like it. If I was a Tandy Color Computer 3 owner, I’m sure I’d prize the game and play to the very end. The problem is that as a blogger, I have to be able to justify my playing time with material. If I spend four hours in a dungeon and all I can say is I killed a bunch of enemies (showing the same combat screens I’ve shown before) and gathered some gold, it’s hard to countenance that time.

In some ways, The Seventh Link is the quintessential 1980s RPG. It offers a framing story with more detail than appears in the game itself, sticks the player in a large world that the player has to map if he’s to make any progress, and features a lot of combat. In mechanics, it’s as good as any of the early Wizardries or Ultimas.

Unfortunately, Link was the last game I encountered before leaving the 1980s, and I’d just spent a decade mapping featureless dungeon corridors. It’s not its fault that it’s last; that’s just the way it happened. And by the time I got to Link, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t–I can’t–play a game that’s just a few dozen 20 x 20 dungeon levels full of combats. The Bard’s Tale and its derivatives drained that battery.

I never figured out anything to do with the pillars.

This is the 90s, and gamers are demanding more interesting content in their game worlds. We want NPCs, special encounters, puzzles, and other features in those dungeons, at regular intervals. We’ve decimated forests in our consumption of graph paper; we’re ready for automaps. Ones that don’t require us to find a spell first.

Despite investing a fair number of hours into the game, I really didn’t accomplish much. I explored the surface of Elira, visited each of its towns to assemble a party, and mapped 4 of 13 levels of one dungeon. There were at least 9 more dungeon entrances on Elira alone, some of which would have taken me to teleporters to three other planets and their own towns and dungeons. I would have found a final party member, a female ranger named Starwind, on the planet Dulfin. Others dungeons would have led me to power packs and the places where I needed to install them to save the planet. I still don’t know where I was to find the other spells. From hints in an old disk magazine, I learned that the maximum character level is 25 (my main character reached 8) and that one of the planets has a store where you can buy potions that increase attributes, serving in the role of Ambrosia from Ultima III.

One of the few lines from an NPC. Alas, I will probably never explore Selenia.

My GIMLET is naturally based on an incomplete picture of the game:

4 points for the game world. The sci-fi origin story is fairly original, and well-told in epistolatory fashion, although it fails to explain a number of aspects of the world (e.g., why are there settlements on other planets). While the player’s role is somewhat clear, it’s less clear where he came from, how he got started on this path, and whether he understands his role.

3 points for character creation and development. The selection of races and classes is familiar but not entirely derivative. There’s nothing special about character creation or the development and leveling process, but they’re reasonably rewarding. I don’t know if the level cap would have caused any issues or if you finish the game well before reaching it.

3 points for NPC interaction. The game has a better system than it uses. You learn a few things from NPCs, but there are hardly any NPCs that say anything to you. Expanding that number would have resulted in a richer, more engaging world. I do like the Ultima IV approach to assembling your party by finding members in the towns.

2 points for encounters and foes. The monsters are mostly derivative of other games (though I like the explanations for their names here: the ship that populated the planet had Tolkien fans on it), and I didn’t really experience other types of encounters.

4 points for magic and combat. The tactical combat screen is about as good as Ultima III, but with fewer spells.

On Level 3 of the dungeon, I met an enemy called “Floating Stars.”

3 points for equipment. You can get melee weapons, missile weapons, armor, and adventuring equipment like torches and keys. Various sites hint at more advanced items like rods and gems of seeing. The selection of stuff is a little paltry in the traditional Ultima style.

5 points for the economy. It lacks a certain complexity, but money is certainly valuable. You almost never have enough keys, for one thing. Healing, torches, equipment, and leveling up consume gold fast, and it sounds like the shop on Dulfan would have served as an endless money sink for any extra you could accumulate.

2 points for a main quest with no side-quests or quest options.

4 points for graphics, sound, and interface. Almost all of that is for the interface. It adopts the Ultima standard of one key per action, which ought to have been mandatory as far as I’m concerned. Graphics are functional but sound sparse.

I never quite got used to the perspective. That lava square is only one square in front of me.

2 points for gameplay. It gets a bit for nonlinearity and a bit more for the moderate-to-challenging difficulty. But it’s not very replayable and it’s way, way, way, way too big and too long.

That gives is a final score of 32, which is hardly awful for the era. It’s actually the highest score that I’ve given to the platform. The only things that stop me from finishing it are the number of hours it will take and the number of other games on my list.

The Georgetown, Ontario-based Oblique Triad was a mail-order developer and publisher, co-founded by Jeff Noyle and Dave Triggerson. The name referred to the decorative bars on the top of a Color Computer. Mr. Noyle used to host a page (available now only on the Internet Archive) with links to their games, which included a pair of graphical adventures called Caladuril: Flame of Light (1987) and Caladuril 2: Weatherstone’s End (1988); a strategy game called Overlord (1990); an arcade game called Those Darn Marbles! (1990); and a sound recording and editing package called Studio Works.

Caladuril, the company’s first game, is a decent-looking graphical adventure.

With the Color Computer in serious decline by 1990, Oblique Triad shifted its focus to specializing in sound programming, and both Noyle and Triggerson have associated credits on Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (1990) and Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant (1992). I haven’t been able to trace Triggerson from there, but Noyle got a job at Microsoft in 1995 working on Direct3D, DirectX, and DirectDraw and remains (at least according to his LinkedIn profile) there today. He also has a voice credit for a Skyrim mod called Enderal: The Shards of Order (2016).

Mr. Noyle was kind enough to not only comment on one of my entries, but to take the time to create overworld maps to speed things along. I’m sorry that it wasn’t quite enough, but every game that I abandon stands a chance of coming back when circumstances are different, and I’ll consider trying this one again when I feel like I’m making better progress through the 1990s.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/the-seventh-link-summary-and-rating/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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hawffensive-blog · 6 years

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Start Playing Dungeons & Dragons #1: Group-forming and social tips

So you want to play Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), but you’re not sure where to start? Got a group of friends who’ve never played before but want to? Is everyone looking for you to start the group and be the Dungeon Master (DM)?

The world of D&D can be intimidating. Grabbing the book and opening its thousands of words, some you’ve never heard of before, is a bit much. Fear not, traveler. I’m here to help.

A quick introduction. I’ve been playing D&D on and off over the last 2 decades, mostly playing in 2nd and 5th editions (5e), though I’ve had experience in 4th and Pathfinder as well. I’ve recently started DMing 5th edition campaigns for new players.

D&D has seen a sort of revival in the last few years. 5th edition cleaned up and simplified a lot of rules from previous editions. Web shows like Critical Role also brought a lot of people to and back to the game.

I’ll be doing a series of posts built around getting a group together and playing D&D. Most of it will be from the Dungeon Master’s perspective, but much of this is relevant to players. Even though these discussions should take place before the first session, they can (and will) take place as the campaign progresses as well. The things here come from a combination of my personal experience and what I’ve heard from other DMs. Many of these things I adjusted as I discussed as we played.

This first post will have tips for anyone trying to form the group, which is usually the DM, but could be anyone. I’ll be discussing some of the social aspects of D&D that are not specifically related to the gameplay, but are still important. Here we go.

1. Personality compatibility

D&D groups can form in many ways. Sometimes it’s a bunch of people from the same group of friends. Sometimes it’s a mix of different groups. It can be coworkers. It can include girlfriends/boyfriends. It can include family. The possibilities are endless.

Group compatibility is very important. If the group is going to be gaming for hours together at a time, the last thing you need is people not getting along.

It’s also not black and white. Two people who seem like they won’t get along, may. People who seem compatible may not game well together. A harmless joke outside of the game’s context may not be so harmless when someone’s character or play session is affected.

If you’re in a group that doesn’t have the luxury of being discussed beforehand (such as a pick-up group at your local game store or convention), don’t fret! My experience is limited, but I’ve had some success. It comes down to people coming in with an open mind.

2. Setting expectations on game type

Topic#1 — Amount of combat vs non-combat:

This isn’t called “Dungeons & Dragons” for all the fight-avoidance built into the ruleset. A large chunk of the “Player’s Handbook” is dedicated to how combat works.

However, there are plenty of non-combat things to do. You could run a game with little to no combat. Pretty much all D&D games will be a mix, with the dial moving between the two as the campaign progresses.

Most players are excited to just play, ready to be enthralled into the world of whichever DM they play with. But, it could be something worth discussing.

If you, as the DM, spend hours crafting layers of political intrigue and a conflict that requires intense deliberation, but your players want to kick in the door and kill some dragons, you may have set the wrong expectation.

On the flip side, if you spend hours building expansive dungeons with puzzles, traps, loot, and finely tuned combat encounters, but your party wants to frolic at the local bath house and get involved in whirlwind romances, you may have set the wrong expectation.

This doesn’t have to be a huge part of the pre-campaign discussion. It’s good to talk with your players for some ideas, but run the campaign you want to run and be willing to take feedback as things progress.

Topic #2 — Theme/feel of the world and game play:

It is well known that in serious situations, comedy is needed to keep one’s sanity. However, there is a general overall tone you can have with your campaign.

Is the subject matter serious? Are you dealing with heavy subjects like murder, mental health, genocide, or drug dealing? Or is it more light-hearted? Are your players trying to save a princess from the frog prince who wishes to charm her like a fairy tale?

Do you want a strictly developed and consistent universe, or do you want to pull from many sources? Do you mind if pop culture references or memes are featured heavily?

Players immersed in your carefully constructed fantasy could get frustrated if an out-of-place meme shows up during a tense moment.

Topic #3 — Player investment:

It’s nice to have invested players.

An ideal situation: When the game is going, all distractions are kept to a minimum. Phones are only checked periodically or when necessary. Players are paying attention even when they’re not involved in the present circumstance. If a joke is cracked, it’s not a full-scale digression that stalls play for the rest of the group.

But this is not guaranteed. Your players may not pay attention during important scenes. They may play on their phone when it’s not their turn.

If you’re players aren’t involved, ask yourself why. Is your content not compelling? Is the story moving too slow? Are they not taking notes and forgetting things? Are there too many players?

It’s possible your group “isn’t meant to be.” Maybe what you are looking for in players and what they’re looking for in a DM just don’t match up. Some players may not enjoy pen-and-paper as much as they thought they would.

Games without some level of player investment can grow boring, ending up as a slog of rolls and outcomes that feel meaningless and uninteresting. Not all players have to be actively involved and debating on every party decision, but all players should be paying attention, even if that involves sitting back and enjoying the show, jumping in only when they need to act. As the DM, it is important to discuss with your players your expectation of them.

Topic #4 — Rule strictness:

If you’re like much of my generation, you’ve probably played video games. To me, what makes D&D so special is that it’s not like a video game (though I still love video games, but for different reasons).

The “computer” of D&D (the DM) being a reactive human being opens up the game. Adding/subtracting rules can be as simple as adding or removing a dice roll. Making a playtest-ready version of a new class can take only a few hours.

On the other hand, modding a video game can take hours (unlikely), days, months, or years!

When I was a youngling, playing D&D with a group of friends, I remember a situation where a player wanted to kick a door down, but it was being held shut on the other side by goblins. The player still wanted to attempt it and the DM said he could. The DM assigned a -4 penalty (to signify the goblins holding the door) and allowed the roll. I don’t remember the outcome, but I do remember what I thought at that time:

The DM thought of that on the fly! If this was a video game, and no door-kicking mechanic was implemented, he couldn’t even attempt that.

In my mind, the world of D&D was opened. I became enlightened. I was snake-bitten by Gary Gygax’s ghost.

Therefore, I am personally very open-ended with my D&D games. Running for new players especially, I am more lenient on rules and I homebrew heavily to show the freedom of D&D. You want to play Batman? We can do that. You want to play some really cool character idea you thought of but couldn’t make in Skyrim? We’ll make it work. You want to try flipping off the table and catching that flag so you can climb to escape? You can certainly attempt it!

I’ve talked with other players and DMs who run strict ruling games. From what I hear, it’s just as fun, just different. It really depends on the group you want to run.

3. Scheduling and play frequency

If possible, most groups I’ve talked or been in run once a week, same day, roughly same time. But that may not be possible or wanted.

The recent group I DMed ran Saturday nights every other week. While I’m a nerd who spends most of my Saturday nights gaming, and such is true for most of my players… things would come up (random events, concerts, dinners, wanting to relax, etc). I didn’t find it reasonable to hold my player’s Saturday hostage with that much frequency.

I also played in another pen-and-paper game on alternating Saturdays. This meant, for the foreseeable future, all my Saturday nights were booked for a social activity. Being the introvert that I am, this started to wear on me.

Play frequency is important though. It can be tedious to have every session start with the players going “what are we doing again?” Any excitement for an awesome plot twist from the previous session may be gone by the time the next session rolls around if too much time has passed.

Find a schedule that works for your group. Playing at night on a workday may be viable. Playing once a month can work if your group is cool with it.

4. In Conclusion

Don’t overthink it! If you want to play D&D, play D&D. If you have the luxury of a group of friends who want to play, be the DM if no one else wants to be. If you don’t have that luxury, try searching for a group. If you have a veteran friend who wants to run and teach everyone how to play, that’s great! That’s what I am to many friends.

Just start playing. The things I mentioned in this article are important, but they shouldn’t be the reason you don’t play. You’ll get better as you play. Groups can change. People can come in and leave. Rules and themes can adjust as you find what interests your group.

Here are some great D&D channels with a ton of information. These guys have much more experience than me. They’ve taught me a lot and many of my own findings have been verified by them.

Critical Role (on Geek & Sundry) — https://www.youtube.com/user/geekandsundry

Matthew Colville — https://www.youtube.com/user/mcolville

Web DM — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7XFmdssWgaPzGyGbKk8GaQ

So, what are you waiting for? Get a group together and roll some dice! Oh, and come back for my next article where I’ll be going over game mechanics.

#dnd 5e #dnd #dungeons and dragons #tabletop gaming #rpg

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sleepymarmot · 7 years

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Skyrim liveblog: Riften, Dawnguard, more house decoration, etc.

"Good luck finding those jazbay grapes, they're very rare" Actually, I'm growing them in my garden...

This poor woman is spending all her time growing this nirnroot and I just come here and steal it.

Also nirnroot makes the same sound as the shards in DAI and it makes me nervous.

I don't want all these mods that let you have an entire army of followers. I just want to improve and charge their equipment without transferring it to my inventory and then back :(

Riften! It's so exciting to finally reach the city after a long journey that mostly consisted of losing my way and sidetracking, and get to see what's inside the walls! Even if it's 2am and there isn't much to see.

Okay, I can see why Mjoll is popular...

Let me guess: the only guy she trusts is secretly part of the guild.

"Last thing the Black-Briars need is some loudmouth meddling in their affairs" Last time I met a family this corrupt, its leader didn't live to tell the tale. Will I have to break the game again for justice?

Why is the argonian bodyguard naked?! Did one of my mods break something?

And the barmaid is naked too... I wonder what's wrong. An argonian bandit I killed a couple of hours before was wearing armor with no problem...

The argonian jeweller in the marketplace is clothed properly. The mystery continues...

"Marsh-friend", aw

Also I like that Argonians are famous for their jewellery. Then it makes sense I crafted so much of it!

An argonian, and an argonian-raised dark elf! I feel at home in this marketplace.

You'd go down to the sewers yourself, but can't? What about me? Is the Dragonborn not good enough for the job?

I like the jarl, she sounds reasonable.

...And believes Maven is a respectable citizen who is trying to destroy the Thieves Guild. Oops.

Ah, okay, that's why I'm supposed to break into Aventus's home? Okay, I'll try it. "Don't bother with the Dark Brotherhood, kiddo, I'll do the job for you myself!"

This writing is stupid. Everyone in the city talks about how shitty the Thieves Guild is, a bunch of pathetic thugs everyone hates, and it totally sounds like a setup for a quest where you clear the city from them... Instead the only option the game gives is to join them. Wut? Why the heck would I want to?

The naked guy in the inn is pretty nice! And handsome. And he asks for my help proposing to the naked lady! How cute. Oh, and his recipes don't just sound good -- apparently he's the only person in this country who can make drinks that don't have negative effects! That woman is damn lucky.

I wanted to propose to my (yet undetermined) future spouse with a ring, like a real Argonian, but if it requires three flawless amethysts... I'll have to make do with a normal amethyst ring I guess. Has anyone made a mod with a proper recipe? Maybe even making it a replacement for the amulet of Mara, if possible.

Shit, I'm an idiot. I gave Uthgerd a Soup Trap weapon but no gems, and was wondering why she's not catching anything!

Is there a mod to turn off friendly fire in this game? Allies can't stop jumping into my arrows. Fought a vampire, shot at her, when the fight was over I found Uthgerd dead. Reloaded, then Frost got in the way, quest failed. Third attempt: the quest giver jumps into my arrow but survives, after the vampire is dead he starts attacking the horse I stole for him, my follower and me.

Okay, I tried it five more times. I can't. That vampire is unbeatable. A dremora summoned by Sanguine Rose does 0 damage to her. If I let her get close she one-shots me with her sword.

I finally did it... Downing like five different potions at once did the trick, I think... I was headed for Fort Dawnguard, but maybe I shouldn't...

What, Convenient Horses considers Frost my horse now?! Where's MY horse?! Did it get lost somewhere? Was it killed by the Black-Briars? Fast travelling doesn't help...

Oh, okay, I fast travelled to Riften again and found it. I'm so relieved... This horse has been with me since the beginning of the game, I bought it just before entering Whiterun for the first time. So even if it's kinda useless and I prefer travelling on foot, I don't want to lose it!

Why is the map marker for Dawnguard so dumb and glitched...

The leader is very cool! I'm going to help rebuilding the fort, right?

Okay, so I think my crafting geek falls instantly in love with the crossbow, even though its damage is lower than her current bow. Can I upgrade it? Enchant it? Craft my own with better materials?

I can upgrade it! And now it has more damage than my legendary dwarven bows!

Okay, I guess the archery trainer that I made this journey for will appear after the fort is upgraded? Ah, that's okay. I have 51k gold saved up. Isran is training Heavy Armor, I need that too.

Aaaand that training leveled me up again so there was no point in saving that level, I still lost one lol.

Holy shit, those vampires are all the way across the map!

Ah, so now I have a quest to go into the Ratway and kill the thugs in there! Say hello to my newly crafted archery equipment, motherfuckers!

Hm, people in the bar don't seem to care that I broke in and murdered their bodyguards.

"Stay out of trouble, or there's gonna be trouble" says one of these guys as I exit their hideout having killed and looted everything inside.

That's a pretty little garden they have here.

I'm visiting the crafting corner in Riften's keep for probably the third time in this session... Last time I reached 90 alchemy; maybe I'll make it legendary, since it's so easy to level up. Smithing is 86, Enchanting is 81. I finally picked the "Well fitted" perk and made myself a full set of heavy armor with enchantments -- what I was wearing before had light and unenchanted items. It's all steel & dwarven, because I can't afford to spend more perks, but legendary several times over.

I need a new loadout organizer. Every time I upgrade an item, it disappears from the group (because it's renamed, I guess).

Okay, I think I'm ready. Time to travel back to Dawnguard and train Heavy Armor for like the third time in a row... Well at least coursing between Riften and Dawnguard is a welcome change from the cursed Whiterun-Riverwood-Lakeview circle: it's too easy to get stuck there and never leave.

Oh great, another fort full of bandits. I'm starting to just speed past them. I'm not the fucking police!

...Aaaand a blood dragon descends just as I ride past the fort's entrance. Okay, that's my business, can't argue.

(I really should return to the main quest btw...)

Wait, how the fuck did we kill the dragon so fast?! Did the armor help? Or my second-level Marked for Death?

Aaalright, now I have to go back to Riften again. Finish a quest, heal a bone broken by a bear, disenchant something I bought for that purpose and forgot...

Speaking of enchanting: the best thing about being rich is just buying every filled grand soul gem I see, instead of worrying about the need to hunt mammoths or becoming an evil necromancer.

I was already like "haha, let's fill some gems" when the miner complained about spiders, but this is ridiculous! There's like five of them! I don't even think they had a really big one!

Just as I was about to give up, I finally came across the road to the Northwind Summit! And the dragon I needed to kill is just a dragon, not even frost or blood. His breath barely registered on my healthbar, and I needed like five arrows. What the fuck? Am I just walking around underleveled enemies, or did I grow strong overnight thanks to the armor and training?

Oh my, Black-Briars send mercenaries to deal with me, "the thief"! That's hilarious.

Nah, I'm not that good, a couple of necromancers with puppet draugr killed me.

Seriously, I should make more things for my own use instead of just for sale. I was like 5% away from one-shotting a boss from stealth and cancelling the entire fight. My damage health poisons were too weak. Thankfully, I had one fortify archery poison. One! What if I didn't? Would all of that overpriced multi-effect crap help me?

Btw I'm not using my shiny new crossbows because bolts are in short supply :(

Oh god! I have finally reached 70 speech and can take the Investor perk! Now that's a great excuse to make a tour around Skyrim and invest in everyone!

Aw, why can't I invest in my marsh-friend :(

Windhelm

Ugh, I knew that Blood on the Ice should have re-triggered, and I even saw the victim, but I didn't notice the guard standing next to her, so I had to google what to do. Why couldn't he address you automatically as you approach?

"Patrol Stone Quarter at night" and just as I was leaving the palace at noon and was opening the map to see what the Stone Quarter is, that quest was suddenly marked complete and I was shown a quest mark on the murderer. Yay immersion!

Time to invest in Wuunferth's business as an apology :D

His motive is exactly the same as the necromancer in the dungeon I just did, and in DA2. Can we have some new ideas please?

I completely forgot Lydia lives in my house, she spooked me.

I wonder why some merchants have unique responses to "I want to invest". Windhelm blacksmith and Belethor are arrogant, Arcadia is heartwarming. I really like Investor and the final perk in the tree because I feel like I'm being a positive influence, making rich not only myself but people around me.

Ugh, I accidentally sold Arcadia the wrong thing, reloaded, and all of the free stuff from her shelves disappeared -- what?

Shit, I was satisfied with how I decorated my home and then my stupid follower got in the way, I accidentally selected her, dropped, and wasn't sure she was all right so I had to reload.

And once again, from the start! This time I selected an enchanter and accidentally sent it to its original location, wherever that is.

Binch stand in the corner!! If you refuse to stay outside while I'm redecorating, at least get out of my way!

>walk out of my house at night >get attacked by a frost dragon >he circles overhead, I admire the beautiful starry night sky and his purplish wings against it >dragon flies away >I see his health very rapidly diminish >dragon dies >suddely I get attacked by a bunch of Thalmor Leave me alone...

Shit, I picked up a black soul gem and captured a vampire thrall's soul. Oops.

I notice I'm alone. Maybe I accidentally killed Uthgerd again? I backtrack. Finally meet her. Lead her forward... and at some point she turns around and *sprints* back. WTF?

I'm back in modding hell :(

Tried to copy a rug from a modded Breezehome, accidentally removed it instead, returned to a previous save -- and it was still gone. I guess that removed the asset from the mod entirely? I had to reinstall.

Installed several retextures for Alchemy and enchanting tables -- and like none of them :( Rustic is the most thought out, but I prefer the tables to be made of wood, thank you. It just doesn't make sense that every other shitty inn in the province has this carved black stone monstrosity, and the enchanting mesh somehow applies to all other candles in the game. Why can't people just make higher resolution versions of vanilla design?!

I really like Rugnarok in my house, but finding this perfectly preserved carpet covered in blood under a rack in a Nordic tomb...

I have no idea how to make followers tankier. Uthgerd knows block and has decent enchanted equipment, but she's always on her knees five seconds into the fight.

I'm testing ELFX now, and higher contrast makes my eyes hurt sometimes, and it's very inconvenient in dungeons, but having the dark be darker is kind of fun. This is the first time I had to use my camping mod and just lie down next to a Nordic ruin and some skeletons I just killed because I could see absolutely nothing.

Oh great, I enter this seemingly ordinary house, inside there's a mage who attacks immediately, I have to kill him, but afterwards I can't take any of his stuff, it's all marked "steal". Uh, ordinarily it's fair game in these situations? He has a very nicely designed home btw.

Wizard in Morthal: I'm not evil! *sells black soul gems*

Okay, it's been 111 hours, it's time to retrieve that horn!

This dungeon made me uninstall ELFX. Even with two torches I can't see shit.

Fuck these three stones! I know I need to use Whirlwind Sprint, I just can't do it fast enough!

Ugh, I went all this way for nothing?

Dawnguard

This master vampire can wait, there are so many ingredients here!

"Is that an Elder Scroll?" Good question, I've been playing this game called The Elder Scrolls for 100+ hours and this is my first encounter with the term.

Uh, so is there any reason why I, the fresh Dawnguard recruit, would not kill Serana on sight? I mean obviously I, the player, won't, but...

Like, even if I'm a nice person who doesn't attack unprovoked, why should I help her instead of dragging her to Fort Dawnguard and letting my new boss deal with her?

Aaaand I caught the vampire disease. Great. And of course I'm in the middle of nowhere with no shrines in sight. Alright, I have a stack of potions to burn...

Tried to take her to the fort. "I don't like the feel of this place, I'll wait for you back by the entrance". Oh great.

Well, at least the boss had dialogue for this and gave me approval for this nonsense, so I didn't make a trip across the entire country for nothing.

Unfathomable depths

I didn't even know that Riften had a dock outside the walls until I read about the quest I needed to take there...

This dwarven ruin is a nice opportunity to practice destruction magic, since the automatons can't be soul trapped so there's no reason to waste arrows on them.

Whoa, a health regen amulet!

Good thing Serana is with us, because my magic is severely underpowered.

Should have done this quest sooner, because I've been wearing dwarven armor for so long that by now I want to get rid of it, not bonuses to it.

I just checked -- and my normal set of heavy armor is already at the armor cap. I wonder if the bonus pushed it over the edge or not...

Lol, nah, I was already good. Well I'm having an existential crisis now. What am I supposed to do with my life now? I'm only level 46?

Modding hell

I'm slowly adding more and more HD retextures -- when I fix one thing, the one next to it suddenly looks too ugly... Now that I have Peltapalooza, ordinary beds suddenly look more comfortable, and next to them the blurry and dirty texture on noble beds is just terrible. Why couldn't someone just make a clean HD version of that bed?! Enhanced Noble Furniture 4x _byMike makes the bed red for some reason. Another mod, don't remember which, raises the resolution but doesn't delete the dirt, which you can now see in all HD glory. In the end I settled on Snazzy HD Noble Beds -- green, the closest to canonical, for single and double beds, and blue with drapes for the bed that obviously is supposed to have drapes but doesn't in vanilla. Then HD Noble Furniture, and Furniture and Clutter - HD Retextures for non-noble. The patterned bed and the new carpets are a bit too much together, but what can I do...

Aaaand the bed texture clashes horribly with the rug I placed under it in Lakeview :(

#skyrim #blah blah blah

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zydrateacademy · 6 years

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Review: Conan Exiles

Quick disclaimer; I’ve only played single player with some interest in coop. I’ve yet to attempt open servers. As a result, I probably haven’t run into the more annoying stock of communities like purges and raids. I’ve played alone, modded, and at my own speed; that may color how I see this game. I’m okay with this. Let’s talk about Skyrim for a moment. Yes, it’s relevant. Do you all remember the first five to ten hours you played it? You were still weak, dealing with iron and steel swords and slashing your way through new caverns and dungeons while scrounging every bit of material you could for your smithing skill. Everything was new and different, and every new playthrough with a different race or weapon type. Then something happens. Several hours in, your smithing and sneak is 75+, you’re level 40 on Expert Difficulty one-shotting every bandit in every dungeon because you took a couple of very specific perks that make the entire game a cakewalk. Or you used alchemy to hilariously boost your stats in the several hundreds or thousands and now your armor rating is at a complete maximum and you’re doing sixty times melee damage on sneak attacks. At a certain point, Skyrim gameplay becomes less about mechanics and just about exploration. However, Exiles basically takes those first few hours and expands them across the entire experience. I get a bit of a Skyrim meets ARK and a lesser used comparison is that I’m honestly getting an Assassin’s Creed: Origins vibe, if nothing else certainly the aesthetics. Large sandy dunes and mountains with spotty greenery and oases, and I’m pretty sure I have an identical screenshot of climbing up a red mountain. My exile and Bayek would probably get along.

For whatever reason, I find Exiles to be a bit more accessible than ARK ever was. I think it’s perhaps the single player admin menu which if ARK has I have never found. Through it you’re able to manipulate things to an insane degree, like ten times the amount of experience and resource gain, as well as modifying how much damage you do and enemies take. I went through a largely unaffected run (though I did bump my experience up to 2X) the first time around and that sucked me in for several hours. In future games, I made it a little easier on myself with quality of life workshop mods including upping armor durability and reducing boss health pools. That last one might sound like a cheat, but when they have up to 30,000 health and I’m alone in the world, lowering it down to 10,000 or something makes the experience a LOT more bearable. I’m not saying ARK does not have these features (it does have workshop support) but it just wasn’t nearly as compelling as Exiles, which does in fact have a story contrary to what some reviews claim.

You start the game creating your character and get a randomized set of “crimes” which can include anything from punching a camel to lewd acts with corpses. It ranged wildly and there’s quite a list that can be quite comical, though the game itself is largely void of humor. Conan himself shows up to remove you from the cross and the game dumps you in a desert road, entirely naked and scrounging for fibers, rocks, and branches; all the things you’ll need to quickly craft a set of clothes and basic tools. The story doesn’t really hold your hand, nor does it tell you what to do. There are runestones dotted around the land that give you snippets and clues. The idea is that you have a magical slave bracelet that’s holding you in what is literally called “The Exiled Lands”, which is the whole area of the map you’re in. Go too far, and you’ll find a green shield that will automatically kill you. What’s involved in this is finding a large variety of bosses and McGuffins that will eventually remove the curse of the bracelet and allow your exile to leave.

That’s the basis of your presence in this strange world. What happens after that point is really up to you. Since you can hardly take on an undead dragon right out of the gate, you pretty much engage in the usual ARK/Minecraft flare. Build a house, hunt animals for hide, and generally spend a lot of time working your way up.

Eventually I found that I had the most fun when I had a decent set of medium armor and a good stock of weapons that I could repair on the fly and that allowed me to make various expeditions outside the comfort zone of what people call the “newbie river”, the southern-most landscape that offer you the most resources within a reasonable travel time. I eventually made it to the Hinterlands where I was able to harvest heavier leathers for better armors, which in turn allowed me to travel farther and take on more intimidating enemies. As you’d expect, you have to manage some resources including hunger, thirst, heat and weight. Thirst can be fairly easy to manage if you’re hanging around the southern portions of the map. Hunger isn’t too bad, and weight I’ve modded out entirely, which I’ll justify shortly. Beyond that there’s a full listing of RPG elements with various perks and stats you can acquire as you level up. In an unmodded game you can only max out a couple so in multiplayer or co-op games you may want to split roles between survivors, gatherers, and combatants. The most fun I’ve had in this game is just the unrestrained exploring, which for me has only been with the help of some workshop mods. I got an insane encumbrance mod early in my career because once I acquired a legit “decent” set of armor, my weight was at 70% regardless of how much stuff I tried to store away. Even in my most purist playthroughs, that mod will always remain. I am less irritated with weight in the likes of Skyrim because I typically have fast travel and stores to sell my crap to, but here I do not have that convenience. Fast travel in Exiles is possible but more of a mid- to end-game perk once you explore enough of the map. There’s a bunch of obelisks you can purify and then travel to through a map room, of which I haven’t done a lot of research and I’m not sure where to find that. As it stands, everything you need you have to get on foot. No horses, no mounts, just hauling all the ass.

The lack of fast travel is indeed a late-game annoyance. Alongside that are a variety of bugs that you’ll come across for a post Early-Access game. I’ve found that engaging in combat within certain variables will have me and the NPC I’m fighting just... sorta flail at each other for a bit. Neither of us take damage, and I noticed that it is because we had some buildings and terrain above us. I lured them out and now we both took damage again. Speaking of, the combat leaves a lot to be desired. It gives me Origins vibes again with some blocking, dodging and health bars. However there’s absolutely no lock-on and hit detection is very wonky when I try to do some light attacks right next to a crocodile only for them to miss entirely. I had to back up and try again and it would work. This happens about twenty percent of the time, depending on my attack. Conversely, a heavy spear attack always hits my enemy.

Some enemies also have knockback effects. I’d be fighting basic bird type enemies and they’d reel in, walk towards me and I’d be knocked over. Apparently they’re “charging” but they don’t go faster than walk speed and thus are difficult to detect. Maybe that’s my fault but it’s just a bit annoying. I also find base building to be vaguely irritating and I find myself doing the ol’ Fallout 4 thing of turning on god mode (in this game, admin mode), getting unlimited resources and at least starting with the basic shape of the building that I want. I’ve only resorted to that once in my ~5 playthroughs and my next semi-purist play will try to be a little more conservative and patient. Patience is really the key here if you want to get the most out of the game. I’ve tried rushing towards the revered “Star Metal” for the endgame gear but found myself perfectly content with some normally crafted heavy stuff, or light armor if I want to dodge enemies more often. Exiles is kind of a slow burn at first but once you find an established area with decent walking distance to most forms of resource, you’re probably in good shape. My experience shined when I was in expedition mode, treating every corner as a new experience. Maybe in a few hundred hours nothing in this game will be new to me, but for now all I can do is stare wide-eyed at the world before me.

#Conan Exiles #Conan the Barbarian #Conan #Gaming #PC Gaming #Survival RPg

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