LadyCrimson

Enshrouded 1.0 - finished the new (main) quest bits. The last --- third, maybe? --- was on the floating "sky islands." If games can give you vertigo, you will not like this section. It's a whole lot of leaping/gliding or using these air-jet bounce pads that propel you far into the air (to get better gliding height) and praying you land in the right spot, or manage to hit E to grab the grapple hook spot in time type of stuff. If you mess up, odds are good you'll go splat somewhere. Some floating islands are larger/more land/POI to explore, some tiny ones had "secrets/collectables" if one cares about such. At least the last boss island has a teleport platform, so one doesn't have to use up a player-altar-base or run the entire path there again, to boss-farm (special crafting ingredients). I'm sure some people really like this sort of thing - again, not saying it's bad, there was fun to be had and the aesthetic and views were marvelous etc - but that boss farm is the only reason I'd go back to the sky-islands. There's simply nothing else up there that's unique/must go there. There was one early bounce-pad bit where I missed a few times and got mad (mostly a me-skill and game-vertigo issue, mind, which is why I don't like any 3d-platforming type design, heh). Thus I spent a few hours cheesing air flame-altar placement across half the biome, starting with a base I already had on a snow-mt. Similar to No Man's Sky, there is no structure stability in Enshrouded, so place altar, build foundations to build-radius max, place another altar there, delete 1st altar, teleport to most recent altar, repeat 100x. eg, my altar might be 5 miles off the ground at this point, no clue. I didn't altar all the way to the sky islands, just far enough where I could easily glide down to what looked like first main POI area (vs. little jumpy platform mini-islands). So here's the main reason, despite some personal irritations, that I do like this game overall. The game lets you do something like that. Quest location up or down and world-pathing takes you in circles? Just dig down/up, dig around the door. It's not always more efficient, but point is, game lets you. I respect that.

I spent $37 on a cheap half-size "cat-tower" via Amazon (no worries about direct rain under our porch), put it together, tossed lots of cheap blankets over and around it (insulation, wind-break) and stuck it by the steps near the sliding glass door. Kitty liked it immediately. I was going to post a little picture but my PC hates my phone and won't USB connect anymore for some reason. Other day, I opened door - a somewhat larger white cat and not-my-cat were facing off. No meows or hissing, just arched posture and eyeballing. I walked toward white kitty to shoo away until she went over the side fence - tabby kitty kept pace the entire time, running in front of me twice to take point with constant posture threat. White kitty seemed only curious, possibly friendly, but tabby was having none of it. :) I have this feeling not-my-kitty was expressing "I've almost got this human fully trained! No share! Go away! Mine, mine!!" Cat distribution system hard at work.

Nooooo! :( Long lives they may have had, but never long enough. Will be missed/RIP. Also passed this week: Barbara Barrie, 95. Breaking Away, Barney Miller (the two I strongly remember), various TV. One of those that many (these days) might recognize her face but maybe couldn't place why/where.

Shadow boxing cats? The only use of AI I'm absolutely ok with. Perfect 2nd monitor while gaming, content. ;) You can find other videos using different cat patterns, but not tons yet. Maybe started in China, but I don't speak Chinese can't tell what they're saying. There's also a hamster version in there. Maybe some anime boxing memes for the AI pattern?

Enshrouded 1.0 (a few small patches later) - ok, I got further into the new biome. A couple of the new dungeons are kinda fun. Especially when I can just pickaxe my way around traps or locked doors. HA. I didn't end up ever liking most of the trap/puzzles in Enshrouded, outside of the simplest/less dangerous ones. Just my dislike for anything too 3d platform-y. I may be over-played out myself, but I can see 1.0 being a good start for a new player, assuming they end up liking it at all, ofc. It is a game that kinda needs 6-10 hours to get past all the initial intro/learning curves. Best QoL they did - outside of more altars allowed - was these plate blocks you craft (you can make/use more than one), which you can then click once to teleport all things in backpack to any (magical) chests within radius that already have some of a thing in them. Not sure how well it'd work with armor/gear (I don't put those in magic chests) but all the resources, foods, non-eternal spells, etc. Saves a lot of time. Edit: also, a kitchen workstation to craft most meals, that you can place anywhere/any base, instead of having to run to the food-making npc all the time.

Me, repeatedly the past week or two: "I need to remember to get baking powder." Hubby on the weekend: "Going to get coffee filters, need anything." Me: "A few things, thanks. I'll write a short list." Hubby: "Did you actually want baking soda? I thought you keep mumbling about baking powder." Me: "I want baking powder. What did I write?" Hubby: "Baking soda." Me: >.> Sigh.

Enshrouded 1.0 - ok I figured out the wand timing thing is dependent on how long one holds the mouse click. If I rapidly (and I mean rapidly) spam the mouse click, it does the fast single wand shot like before. If I use a longer click, it starts the longer animation. I guess it's a charge-up mechanic. But it's really easy to mouse-click for a micro second too long. Anyway, went into the new cinder biome. I suppose it's ok, but it's dark and dreary because it's, y'know, volcanic like. Jumps over lava. Black/grey stone/dirt. Darkish lighting. Common mobs no biggie for a lvl45+ chr, my frost wand and staff frost spells seem op'd in early areas/encounters, at least. Gameloop repeat of all the other biomes - new dirt type, new stone/ore types, new gem types, new spark levels, to craft new/stronger blocks/gear/foods and whatever else. And max clvl is up by 5, so now max gear lvl is 55 instead of 50. So far not as fun to explore, to me, because of design (more elevators, more leaping/gliding/jumping) - reminds me of some of the lava-shroud areas already in existence. New enemies so far are robotic looking. Feels like when an ARPG gives one a new Act/area and the game loop continues. So if one really likes the cinder biome, it's great. If one finds it dull and dreary to wander endlessly among many poorly lit twisting paths, looking for chests and loot and quest markers, not as much. Yeah, I think I just OD'd on it last time. New blocks and craft items not motivating at this point. Again, not bad or anything. Just more of the same. It's not different enough to feel worth bothering with as someone returning to it.

Enshrouded 1.0 -- the "can't change difficulty settings" is fixed. I now remember mostly how to play, but since it's been at least a few "big updates" since I last played, there's a lot of small stuff that's changed/isn't what I remember. I don't like how the basic magic wand attack, on the 3rd or 4th attack/cast/fire, it does this different fancier animation for the next attack that's longer - it throws off my sense of timing and drives me batty re: mouse-clicking. I'm guessing it does a little extra damage? I don't recall wand base attacks doing that before, certainly not to this extent. Other very minor UI stuff like changed recipes and a plethora of auto-UI messages popping up (you can disable a lot of them but there's lots and I'm finding it difficult to figure out what controls what). Or if this or that in the list is even what I'm bothered by. Not saying it's bad per se - more like a lot of minor irritations, vs. what I knew before plus just in general (not UI things I would ever like). Sometimes it feels like more clicks then before, which to me isn't an improvement. Some might like all of these things more than me, ofc - who knows. Anyway - all of this is making me grumpy re: the game. It does look nice and the general sandbox/exploration is still nice, but I feel like I'm constantly fighting UI/usability issues. Maybe it's time to try Space Haven and make my "backlog" be zero, again.

RJ Mitte - 34 - apparently suicide (no details given) Was Walt's son in Breaking Bad. Shame, so young, seemed like a nice young man and advocate for disabled actors.

^ all games feel like work these days, with all their multi-systems/skill-perk trees and 30 attack combos and 9999 items/resources, and/or too many decisions of any kind etc - at least outside of really simple clicker or "boomer" games. ;p =================== Enshrouded 1.0 - updated (backed up old/saves, ofc). Seems fine. Reset my perk points and had to re-do those (slightly changed perk pathing than before). Performance on my old faithful PC is about the same. Maybe slightly better. Visually it looks better, LoD and object detail, yet also looks kinda ... dimmer. Hard to explain, must be a lighting thing. There's a few bad bugs (can't alter difficulty settings atm) but I'm sure that'll be fixed quick. My main base appears unaffected by any changes, which is cool. But I've practically forgotten how to play. The max flame altar (base claim-build-area thingies) has increased by four or five apparently. Which is great. Still not enough, but any increase is a good increase. ================ Scritchy Scratchy - forgot I bought this cheap incremental type lottery ticket game. Gave it a shot. I first thought it was going to end up as a simple "scratch various levels of tickets and then just endlessly make money" idle type thing, but apparently what you do is progress until a death ticket, which ends a session, gives you perk points to use on a perk tree - then you restart with those perks and some new tickets/levels/tools gained at points, to speed things up. Repeat several times until you get this one tool that lets you ultimately defeat/win the death ticket, which gives you an ending. And then if you want, you can start all over all maxed out (or completely start over). It's silly and not really replayable, but for an incremental progression/idle it hits an obsessive note for 2-3 days (depends how obsessive/fast/slow one is) until win. I guess I got my 5-7 bucks worth or whatever I paid.

Yup, saw that a year ago or so. But early-access. I mean I'm more willing to try ea these days "just cause" or if it's a well-established ea title, or super cheap enough, but I still try to wait. The walkin' house is a nice idea but it also doesn't equal freedom of building. Seems more atmosphere/adventure/cozy oriented. The near constant low contrast greyish fog smear lighting/backgrounds isn't my thing, either. Picky, I know. Heh.

That's good news, Sarex. :D ================= Today: Cooking up a storm in the kitchen. Heard scuffle/objects moving noises outside, like it was far away. Thought nothing of it. Heard squeaks outside. Thought nothing of it (too busy cooking, could be wind, birds, angry squirrels). Finished cooking. Went outside to take out some garbage. Small dead mouse/baby rat on the bottom step. Oh, nice. Kitty left a gift. My main cat at parents used to leave birds on the doorstep once in a while, much to my mother's dismay. Since I've had only indoor cats since then, hasn't been a thing. But cat gonna cat. If she could hunt the larger rats that occasionally scuttle around the fences here, I'd give her many more treats. Just don't mess with the skunks. :P

Netflix's Below - my conclusion: not worth the time even as a short series. First 2 episodes were the best thing about it. By the end, it's not really a horror/suspense anymore, it's some kind of weird family trauma drama + social-political commentary re: global warming or humanity's influence or some such, where chrs. do a positional flip. I mean, it's still kinda watchable and could be someone's bag, but it's not mine. Shame. I also tried renting/watching the Coyote vs Acme film via Prime. I was expecting something OTP funny/whodunnit, ala Who Framed Roger Rabbit, even if it didn't match that old classic. For 45ish minutes, I smiled a few times but I generally found no funny. Most of that first half seemed to be about Coyote's inspirational bonding with the sad sack lawyer chr. None of it was very charming and it felt like there was no plot movement for far too long. John Cena looked like he was having fun, tho. Anyway, hubby and I both grew bored and turned it off. I might try finishing it on my own (since the rental was $19, dangit) - maybe it becomes bees knees in the last 30 minutes - but I might not.

Talisman is a trilogy, now? I think I read that novel near original release period as a mid-teen. I liked it ok at the time - or more accurately I ended up liking that one wolf-y chr more than the book itself, which about all I remember - but sequels? Meh. I remember trying to read Straub's other works after that. Never got into him.

Grew kinda bored with 7 Days again. Looked at my Wishlist. Looked at "new survival/sandbox+ other indie games" videos and store pages. Watched some TV for a while. Then went back to 7 Days 3.0, again. One of those periods where I fairly seriously feel Ike uninstalling everything left on my PC (well, except maybe 7 Days as my singular sandbox) and "quitting" gaming. Nothing feels icompelling/interesting anymore to my puny brain. I'd rather sip tea and watch the trees in my backyard. Maybe in another 3-5 years.