LadyCrimson

Cat: "Wasn't me."

melkathi probably has more creativity (not to mention energy) in one hair follicle than I have in my whole body. Will we get a picture of the cat-pattern for the floor?

The Pitt finale: Hm. I feel like they were trying to duplicate some of the tension re: a certain chr. ethics confrontation of the 1st season and it didn't work quite as well. They also didn't really address/conclude Robby's big "issue" (job related depression) of the season - to be fair, all the docs on the show suffer from at least some level of stress burnout, it's kind of a show-topic - although it wouldn't surprise me at all if the 3rd season starts with: So final episode fell a little flat, for me. Still decent tho. I'll still check out season 3, at least. At this point I kind of want more focus on the other main-side chrs. I know Robby is the leader but the dynamics of at least of a couple of the other regulars would be more interesting to develop.

Crimson Desert - ---my camp finally has a barber. You cannot change Kliff's face, so I tried trimming his beard a bit and cutting/coloring his hair. But then I missed his glorious, dark, wind swept locks and reverted to original hair. I kept the more tidy beard. ---I climbed a snow peak, because a giant tower was on the top and was curious. Was almost to the top when a cutscene suddenly swept me away into a tower locked boss fight with a flying wizard. Killed me a couple times with nasty air attacks. So I countered with my magic swirly repel+attack to dmg. and knocked him down on his butt a few times to wail on him and win. guess I'm OP now. then the area teleported me to an Abyss/puzzle (sky) location. Said "nah" and went back to the ground. ---I climbed another snowy peak in the middle of nowhere. Looked down upon a big square courtyard type building surrounded with lava rivers. Thought to myself "bet that's a story boss location" and left without bothering to go down and look. ---saw a woman in a tent mumbling about the cold. Could have run past, but started a fire for her. She thanked me then teleported away, asking me to visit. eg, I found my 3rd Witch. That was a pretty out of the way location. Wonder where the 4th will be. --found a couple caves full of gold ore to mine and some treasures (that I don't need, but hey, it's treasure). Game is definitely its best when random exploring. Unfortunate that MQ gates so many quests and even npc's etc. But yet, I think if you rush MQ toooo fast, you might lock yourself out of certain things/small quests without realizing. So game still has poor management? telegraphing? information? lack of dev foresight? in that fashion.

Bunch a guys riding giant iguanas or something attacked me for no reason. So I killed half of them, then stole one of their rides and killed the other half. The little beasties even had a purple spit ranged attack. That was pretty fun. Alas, couldn't perm keep the ride, as usual. Why do the enemies have all the hotrods. Mundane sights you sometimes see while randomly roaming. Mundane, but nifty enough to admire for a few moments, before shooting them full of arrows because I need their antlers. :P

I finally got around to watching Nobody 2. The first one as a lot better. Sequel tried, and had a few fun moments, but it kind of went nowhere. Oh well. :) The Pitt ssn2 continues to improve and I'm liking it a lot, again. The season overall is more uneven than the 1st, but still good. Final episode was yesterday/gonna watch it right now I think.

Hubby will be 60 soon. My brother will be 68 and my sister 70 this year. I, of course, am still 16.

Crimson Desert - because I have nothing else I feel like playing/revisiting - Windrose looks maybe fun but early access and not in the mood for that. Maybe 100+ (?) hours now. I've spent too much time upgrading the Camp, because it now increases stash-storage space (1000 at max, which is a bit overkill, I'll stop before that), and I wanted to do it as much as possible before moving main quest farther. It's a lot of boring mini quests and waiting, then waiting some more. So while I'm waiting I've explored the world/done small side quests, done Research. I think I have about 38% of the map uncovered (not fully explored), swam many rivers, climbed many snowy peaks, jogged across sands and puddle hopped through rainforest. I'd guess Skyrim's entire map would fit into a tiny micro-corner of CD's map. I have over 1000 "knowledge" entries - faction knowledge, animal/plant knowledge etc - out of nearly 3000. I avoid most hostile POI's for fear of breaking future quests re: MQ gating, but I've defeated several side/world bosses. Mostly fun. Yet strangely, I kind of want to start over with one of the earlier patches. For reasons. I kept a backup of an earlier version and older saves (not the release-day version, alas). I almost feel like going back to that version for a while, but that would = repeating hours of the banal stuff. I'm not that much of a masochist. I think.

This needs to become an actual permanent pet you can acquire, not just a temp one you can "steal" from enemy and use for a play session. Like, STAT. It's called a KuKu hatchling, but we all know what it really is. CHOCOBO.

Yeah - I should probably stop playing until they figure out all the ways they're going to change the game. Dunno if I will, but I should. A lot of it is more QoL, but also they'll be addressing the "no more enemies" factor and other stuff. It's not out yet, but that's their roadmap I guess. It's starting to feel like an Early Access progress process, except super accelerated. Dev Update :: Crimson Desert Events & AnnouncementsView full event information here: https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/3321460/announcements/detail/534380184755767107

Oh gosh, I lost it. Perfect.

I really liked the Beatles when I was 12-20. I mean, it was the late 70's/80's, they were still a cultural thing or something, in many circles. White Album was probably my favorite, but I no longer listen to them now/for years. I think they are more remembered because of the influences they had on popular/radio US music and youth culture for a long time, just like Elvis, or whoever else. They've become more emotional myth than reality, even if some of their records/songs were actually very good. In today's social media culture, it's just like the notion that "movie stars are dead" - it's all too spread apart. Every person in a group of100 ppl may have 20 favorite bands that the other 99 have never heard of. Over-rated just means you personally don't like them/dont' get the fuss. Nothing wrong with that. I mean, at this point in my life, in some ways I think Robert DeNiro/Al Pacino/others are over-rated. They made some great movies/had some great roles, that I very much enjoyed, but still over-rated in movie-history.

Yes, just what we needed in a space exploration game - pet vs pet "arena" mini-game, that reminds of Star Wars 3d chess tech. The more they put stuff like this in NMS, the less interested I become in Light No Fire. I mean, one doesn't have to engage with this or the garbage truck additions, but since everyone assumes these are at least in part tech/reaction experiments re: LNF, it's not promising.

Crimson Desert - if you're the type who's only interested in combat/bosses and/or main quest following, you wont be engaging with maybe 60% of the game's content, I swear anything puzzle-y is 1/5th of he interactive content. I'd guess 60-80hrs of MQ and 300+ of "other." And the game's achievement list is - yeah, most aren't going to engage much with that I think. Just saying. The most interesting (or at least weirdest/different) gear options are very late game. Some people may not even get to it before most combat scenarios are actually over. So many things you don't even realize are options, for ages, because the game doesn't mention/telegraph it all. Even stuff like the world map icon and POI information/how it works is obscure. EDIT: like a black dot in a while circle of POI icon = haven't completed all things, while to find out if you've been to a cave already, you Journal and look up text cave description and there's one or two white dots. >.> And that dragon in videos? Super late game. And it has a cooldown timer and stuff. Again, just saying. I dunno guys - a beautiful and immersive environmental world, with lots of micro-exploration and simple quest busywork, but gameplay/rewards etc. still feel unrewarding. If you really connect with the former, you can mostly forgive the latter, but it can make motivation sag a lot by mid-game. That all said - there was one mid-chapter section where the big battle was actually fun/interesting. Tons of enemies with big aggro range+progress bar, but they didn't respawn, more than one subgoal to do. It felt vast and battlefield like, fast, and engaging. If the rest had felt more like that, it'd would've been so much better. EDIT: oh, and story-bosses are relatively "easy" - especially since you can heal-revive spam like mad if desired - but some of the side bosses are brutal. The one-two you're dead in the first 3 seconds and/or their main attack, types, until you retry a dozen times and get lucky/figure it out. Or leave and go back later. Oh, I like the combat music in general, and the combat/boss cutscenes are actually fun to watch. Mostly.

Got a Husky. Don't use it much, since they don't leap onto my shoulder. Or stand on hindlegs, or shake paws, or anything. But doggos are quieter. "Cat, help me." "Meow, no you help me." I've figured out why the wind/trees have super strong wind dynamics. It's so characters hair will fly around beautifully! Not so obvious here, but some of the longhaired witch's hair movement is awesome. Wasn't at all into Kliff's looks until they put in the "don't show helmet" feature, and suddenly in the wind he's kinda generic-stoic handsome, and it's mainly the hair movement. :P I don't know what weapon this guy is using, but I want it. All they dropped was the fuel tanks tho. :/

Crimson Desert - Probably 70-75 hrs now. I get close, sometimes, to thinking "this is it, this is where it'll super-click and become a 9/10" but then it doesn't. There are just too many 3/10 moments/situations to balance it out. Heh. Still, it's good enough (and ofc, never done it before), that I keep playing. --- I spent 2-3 hours pick-pocketing bunny-masked nobles of their gold bars (you can sell these at a Bank for 500 silver). So I'm now "rich". You don't really need lots of currency, at all, in the game, although some small costs do add up over time. But it was funny in a weird way so I kept doing it. --the base "camp" feature is more involved then I originally thought. Not in a building way, but in tons of tasks to upgrade and get some resources, even a bit of farming. All of which are kinda half-arsed, but some may like it a lot. Mostly it's a way to centralize your npc shopping and I guess warm fuzzies re: gathering all the Greymane's again. --when a mission tells me to "clear an area", I wish I could actually "clear" an area. Instead it's a stupid fill a bar situation, where kill enough enemies to satisfy that bar, bang area resets/you've won/liberated. This is repetitive. Most of the time, they all flock towards you or endlessly respawn as well. I've completed some just standing around near an entrace gate of a large complex, watching red-dots on mini-map rushing towards me. This is lame. --POI and sidequest density does seem to shrink a bit the father out you go. Every region has some but Hernand is the most concentrated. --many enemy areas and bosses do not respawn if you've finished the quest related to them, making action-combat sparse in the long run, if that's your desired focus. --combat does become slightly more interesting - at least flashy and a bit more AoE factors - with more varied/higher level scoket gems and skill powers. I think they're called Abyss gears, but to me, such will always be socket-gems, sorry. --flying enemies suck in a largely melee-centric game. Axiom Force powers and bows work but yeah, they suck.

I saw it before the title edit, and started wheeze-laughing around 20 seconds in and never quite stopped. He did pretty good at staying in chr/straight-face plus his jabs at DLSS 5, heh.

Crimson Desert - EDIT - TLDR - my love/hate relationship with the game continues, basically. There really are 10/10 moments, most of the time it's a 7, and then there are the 4/10 moments/aspects. Heh. --- I think I'm a little past half-way the Main Quest - which is nowhere near "completion" of game content, mind. I might stop there for a while and just go my own way for as long as I'm able. I'm beginning to really dislike the MQ and their steps. It's boring/repetitive and hugely time-wasting re: back and forth. You can't skip-speed dialogues (only FFWD in cutscenes) and sometimes it goes on and on. The sky-Abyss puzzling is also annoying over time, even while visually/design amazing at times. --- Kliff, so far, has developed zero personality. He mostly grunts, outside of some MQ dialogues. eg, I find him easy to ignore, he's just a blank avatar while you're running around exploring. --- the poster-bounties are so not worth it because you have to take a criminal back to a faction's jail by foot or horseback. Can't teleport. And some of them are REALLY FAR AWAY. I spent an hour plus looking for a (horse) safe/non-hostile path back, once. And if you don't do them, the posters stay in your inventory forever, can't even drop them. I stopped looking at/picking up those posters. --- the 2 other playable characters, one issue is increasing their skills and refining their gear to high levels takes away from increasing the others skills/gears, because you'd need triple the resources and special Abyss skill stone thingies AND the socket "gems" to do all three equally. Maybe you can get there post-MQ with grind, but most aren't going to want to do that initially/for a long time. You're gonna mostly focus/stick on Kliff, because Kliff is the MQ One. --- what this game does well is have so many different things/systems to do and ways to do it, that players can decide what the game is, for them. I mean, technically, after chapt 6 or so, which is around where I am (I've also heard chapt. 9, if you're into the other playable chrs), you could largely ignore the MQ for 200 hours if you really wanted, etc.

Crimson Desert - another big patch. At this rate it's going to be 40% a different game in a month. I think they're mostly trying to simplify/smooth out the early sections/areas and MQ fights to maintain a better early impression/retention of masses. Y'know, the 70% of gamers who never get past the first 1/3 of most games (me sometimes included, heh. I've been pushing out to other zones/regions and general mobs are still easy to kill in two's and fours - but what they do is ramp up the numbers/patrols/waves so it gets harder to manage camps/forts, with more danger of being overwhelmed if one tries to Leroy in/gets cornered. the occasional tougher or "leader" or side boss to make you use up your healing items. Anyway - this is going exactly like Enshrouded did, for me, where I like the game a lot one moment, then almost dislike it the next It waxes and wanes depending what one is tackling at any point in time. Kitty cute note: I only use the other two playable chrs. when games forces me to, but did recently discover if I summon the female PC to base camp, all my (now 12 or so) parked pets immediately flock/run to her, with all the cats jumping onto her shoulder AT ONCE. Kind of a visual nightmare really, all the tails and faces moving around on top of each other. But it is hilarious, and with oodles of "meow, meow, meow" to go with.

Eh. You get used to the notion. I think fires, lately, are more of a threat to any individual. Edit: when I was young, these small tremors happened all the time. They don't seem to occur as much in the past couple decades (where one can feel them at home, I mean), which could be a good or bad sign. Who knows.

Before there was YouTube, there were ... educational classroom videos.

Yeah, ofc different weapons have different attack patterns/skills. Spear is fun. Doesn't negate that the stats/dmg of each type ends up almost the same. I think most ppl don't upgrade lots of things/are still not even past chapt 3 and just haven't noticed. The puzzles are kinda interesting but I haven't found them hard (time consuming a bit at times) yet. And I liked the way Hogwart's game did puzzles a lot more. The no yellow paint notion seems more about the puzzles and features you may not realize even exist for 50 hours - there IS a marker to tell you general area to go to for quests. It's just one of those wide as ocean, deep as puddle sandboxy games. There will be "I love this" moments but also a lot of "this sucks/I'm bored".

Sadly no. There's tons of animals but so far they only seem to be for meat. I've become a butcher of chipmunks for food. 🤡

I spoiled my kitty and he got fat. -- j/k, it's a different black cat. At last a game where I can be a true "cat lady". Forget gameplay, I'll just tame cats for hours. Sadly, cannot rename. There's a few outfits to start, rumor has it one can get more. MUST GET.

Crimson Desert - 35ish-40ish hours in. I'm getting a little bored. --- maybe I'm missing something, but I feel like weapons/armor is mostly all the same, because of the upgrade system. If you upgrade anything enough - whether a seeming starter you buy in 1st city or some cool looking thing you looted, everything ends up with similar stats. You can eventually socket items and stick "gems" into them that give some bonuses/effects, but you can swap these out and put them into anything else, far as I can tell. This makes gearing feel more about cosmetics - what you like the look of - more than function. Which is good for those that don't want to be stuck with something "ugly" because it's the "best." But it means there's not much reason to care about finding a new armor, outside of do you think it looks badass. eg, loot hunting/treasure finding is boring/feels pointless after a while. I find nothing by looting that is "better" than what I've already upgraded and I have no desire to swap (meaning I'd have to upgrade new stuff, all over again). --- I don't know if it's the patch nerf or that I've already gear-upgraded much more than they expect, but combat, even MQ bosses, are so far easy. I've just button spammed them, food-healed a few times, didn't need any fancy moves, and win in 60 seconds. I'm sure I'd hit a "wall" somewhere late game perhaps but I was expecting boss-combat frustration and it's not there. I guess one could conceptualize that the upgrade system is like a Difficulty option. >.> --- MQ combat surges are visceral and very busy/large but eh Anyway, it's not that it's bad - but the appeal in this game is largely/simply visceral/visuals/cosmetic and for those that never tire of finding yet another small POI/cave/castle over the hill over there with mundane loot or simple quest, because it's discovery. And I do very much like discovery, but if you're talking 100's of hours of a map of untold size, I feel like I need to have more of a mental or game goal to go with - there is no base-building or mega resource hunting, outside of one time type gear upgrade costs, as example - but so far I already have enough "money" to not worry much re: general or frequent small purchases. City/regions have a "you're popular/respected" currency that is slow to accumulate but mostly that gets you - more cosmetic gear options. The visuals/vistas are great, but that only takes me so far before I get bored of looking at them. EDIT: oh, some exploration tedium after a while, is because the main traversal methods are too slow/drain stamina super fast. Enshrouded-gliding it's not. So far the best thing in the game for me long term is - you can gear up your pets with adorable costume pieces. SO CUTE. EDITEDIT: I think for most of the forum long-timers here, this would be a $30-40 game at best. But optimization/performance IS pretty good, if you're not trying to 4k it. :D