What are you Playing Now? - What doesn't kill you, gives you XP

[melkathi]

8 hours ago, Chilloutman said:

isnt there some kind of protection from fire? like scroll or potion?

You get ambushed from the world map, so can't do or use anything before the fireball hits.

 

I have given up on the game and am unlikely to return (this year). It is little things like this that kill the magic for me.

 

Tried giving Age of Wonders 4 another chance. Absolutely like it even less than before. Biggest disappointment since Evil Genius 2.

[Malcador]

Did the new WoW patch for a bit, the races were pretty fun this time around.  Gearing my alts up a bit as well,  new zone and hourly activity is an ok grind, murders my FPS though, alas my PC shows its age.

Also trying to redo RT3...Orient Express campaign is hell, trying to get the speed goal requires competence in routing, which I lack

[Mamoulian War]

Back from vacations Cleared two more bosses in the third floor of the Ex Dungeon. Boy-oh-boy, the difficulty spiked up after the second floor. I got nearly wiped out few times by the thrash mobs, but I am slowly leveling up and getting more powerful. The first boss (Bloodthirsty Fiend) was crazy hard, and I was fighting him for more than half an hour, and used up almost all of the Fresh Sages I had to control my healers most of the time, to overheal his damage to my party. The next boss (Transmogrified Alma) was a pushover and all I needed to do, was to fill up my "limit" gauge and use the ultimate move with Emerson on 200%... I got my first Moonstone as well, and now I am thinking what kind of weapon should I synthesize with it. Probably weapon for Emerson, as I have found out, that he is sometimes very useful in fights against the bosses to control, and he can deal that way enormous damage, if he can stay alive. And I have a chance to get the best weapon for MC from the next boss. We'll see

[Mamoulian War]

Well, did not get the drop

Anyway, the next boss was piece of cake and I was able to get him down easily in few minutes, unfortunately the next encounter was literally a DPS wall. I spent few hours trying to figure it out, how to defeat shadows of my party with ****ton of HP and crazy healing abilities. I had to spent more than 1 hour to grind levels so I could have at least some chance to stay alive. Well, still not enough. The biggest issue for me are the needed drops. And I am not very lucky with it, so I can imagine, that people can get stuck here, if they are even more unlucky than me. I am happy, that I have at least one ultimate weapon for Emerson, else I would not be able to get through this fight.

Anyway after a while, I have find out a with a little bit of help on Japanese wiki, a nice Role assignment for the characters, although, it still did not help me to beat them I had to use Dead Man Walking Role on my tank to be able to get through this encounter. This makes the character immune to damage, but he gradually loses HP. And pretty fast, so you have to watch out for your healer, so he can top him out with heals all the time. Even with this “cheesy” tactics, I still had a lot of trouble to be victorious and had to use few times items to mass resurrect my party. In the end, I won, but again, absolutely ****ty luck with drops. You can get up to 6 moonstones from this encounter. I got none Two-winged Ethereal Queen (the last superboss of first Maze cycle) will be much harder without more pieces of ultimate weapons.

[LadyCrimson]

I keep meaning to zoom thru Ghostwire Tokyo, just for the art if nothing else etc. But then every day I just turn No Man's Sky back on for a couple hours instead.

Firefly's "Definitive Edition" of original Stronghold (not Crusader) has released - but apparently it doesn't include Skirmish mode, which doesn't sound very "Definitive" to me. >.>   (Edit: correction, I guess Skirmish was Crusader originally, so perhaps that's justified then). I also have the original (from GoG) that can be played at higher resolutions, which looks great, so I'm not sure what the benefit of the new version is. Slightly polished sprite graphics - doesn't look all that different - and Steam service MP/matching I guess?

Edited November 14, 2023 by LadyCrimson

[Mamoulian War]

The Ethereal Queen of Star Ocean 5 has been defeated on Universe Difficulty Before attempting her, I have decided to level up a little bit, and got up to average level 240. The fight was much easier to go through as the previous "Shadow Party". It took more than 20 minutes or so, but after the fight I have double facepalmed. Silly me forgot to replace the XP grinding weapons with the real deal on two characters, so they did not made almost any damage to the boss LOL...

Anyway, I was unlucky with her drops again, so I got just one Moonstone from the chest behind her. Which was still enough to create the best weapon for Anne. And luckily, she dropped her feather as well, so I was able to create the best female armour in the game as well. It went to Anne right away, so she is outfitted to the max for now. The next goal will be the Orichalcum farming in respawned first floor to slowly fill out the craft book and then the 4 winged versions of the superbosses.

[Mamoulian War]

Goal number 9/2023 complete

After defeating the Ethereal Queen for the first time in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on my PS4, I have decided to go for full clear of the first floor of the Ex Dungeon again, to obtain more Orichalcum for the crafting trophy. But because I have finished it sooner as expected, I have went to challenge the final boss of the game's storyline as well. As expected, due to trying to get all of the Private Actions, I got again Miki's and Relia's Endings, but it has unlocked one more trophy for me as well. For finishing the game on Universe Difficulty. I have also finished every Battle Trophy in the game, with the exception of 1 million hits on enemies. I am still under 250 thousands, so it will probably take a lot more time .

 

[Keyrock]

I'm at the point in The Talos Principle 2 where I'm about to start the endgame. I've opened up the 4th and final side of the megastructure and can now go inside for potentially the last time. I'm going to be very careful now and make sure I complete every single other puzzle I can before taking that step because there's no guarantee the game will let me complete the remaining puzzles after I get an ending (presumably there are multiple, like in the first game). I don't want to go through what I went through with The Witness again. I still had a number of unsolved puzzles in The Witness when I finished the game. I didn't even know those were the final puzzles. Once the end credits played I was deposited back at the start of the game and I was like "FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU...". That's why I never 100%ed that game. The idea of having to do all those puzzles I had taken months to complete again... I don't know if any of y'all have played The Witness but that game has A LOT of puzzles. That one stings because I care about 100%ing puzzle games, I don't give a $#!! about that in most other game types, but puzzle games are a point of pride. Still, I'm not doing those all those puzzles again, **** that. Anyway, to bring this back to The Talos Principle 2, I'm trying very hard to avoid that scenario. I'm going to make damn sure I solve EVERYTHING before end credits roll.

[Wormerine]

10 hours ago, Keyrock said:

I don't know if any of y'all have played The Witness but that game has A LOT of puzzles.

It’s perpetually in my “to play” folder. All that tall made me dip into Talos Principle1. Not feeling it right now. I find puzzle games difficult to enjoy. It feels you need to slog through a lot of tutorial before you get to do puzzles (though to defence of Talos they already introduces stars, that seem to require thinking to get!). Still, rather well designed so far. I plan on sticking with it, as I can see it getting great later on. 

[bugarup]

Mask of the Rose, a VN set in Fallen London universe, where you play a door-to-door surveyor with highly inappropriate questions and equally inappropriate notions to romance the sh†t out of anything they encounter. As a VN it lives and dies by writing, and it does deliver. Along the way it got obvious you'll need multiple playthroughs each focusing on 1-2 characters to get everything out of lore and stuff, not that I mind, because setting and lore is really fun to read and new runs with different characters already read surprisingly different, also I met a couple of new characters I didn't encounter in 1st playthrough. I didn't solve the whodunit either and that won't do at all. 

Made me dust off my old Fallen London characters I abandoned because the game got too grindy, wonder how I'll fare this time, I also want to go back to Sunless Sea...where, hm, I also stalled because of grind. Probably should look into some anti-grind mods if there are any. 

Oh and I romanced...something...that's likely a very big bat? Which is fine, because, a) it's normal-ish by Fallen London standards, b) if a big bat is good enough for Sadie Frost and Monica Belucci, it's good enough for me. 

[Keyrock]

46 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

It’s perpetually in my “to play” folder. All that tall made me dip into Talos Principle1. Not feeling it right now. I find puzzle games difficult to enjoy. It feels you need to slog through a lot of tutorial before you get to do puzzles (though to defence of Talos they already introduces stars, that seem to require thinking to get!). Still, rather well designed so far. I plan on sticking with it, as I can see it getting great later on. 

The regular puzzles are relatively straightforward until you get deeper into the game and there are more available tools. There are some devilishly tricky star puzzles. Some of those you won't see until later (provided you can find them). I realize I'm giving you the ol' "it gets better later" argument, which I myself am not a fan of, but it is what it is.

[Mamoulian War]

4-winged Gabriel Celeste and Ethereal Queen have been defeated in the last two days. Gabriel is a pain, which can wipe you easily, if you do not watch out for your melee team members, and if you forgot to craft Resurrection Mist Queen is just a crazy big damage sponge, where you need either crazy good weapons or a lot of patience. I have all the ultimate weapons now, but I was not able to upgrade them yet, so I need more patience for now . Also defeated the final boss one more time, to get Fiore's ending The way to 6-winged deities has been unlocked. I will probably have to craft some accessories for boosting Rush attacks, as these bosses will have ****load of HP, and I am already at max level, so only way how to boost damage is to upgrade my gear. We'll see.

[Keyrock]

All the easy puzzles are out of the way.

Nothing but the good stuff from here on out.

So close. I need to figure out how to light up that last triangle. I thought I knew what did it, I guess not. I have a feeling I'll need to go back inside the megastructure to do it. I'm not doing that until I get the last 21% of star puzzles completed, though, just in case.

[Hawke64]

Finished Shadow Tactics: Blades of Shogun. It is a very well made tactical stealth game, though I did use a guide for the last level (and still have no idea how I was supposed to get Takuma into the wells).

Started Shadow Tactics: Aiko's Choice. Tried to copy the configuration files from the main game, seemed to work.

Created a character in Colony Ship. Somehow, the character creation seemed very different from Larian's D&D - much more stats and a reasonably long intro to provide the context and express opinions on the factions. On the negative side, there were significantly fewer non-stat customisation options. Kind of fits with the sci-fi setting where the spaceship's population are descendants of Christian fanatics. Curious if min-maxing is necessary, like it was in The Age of Decadence.

[Helz]

On 11/10/2023 at 11:27 PM, Theonlygarby said:

I think I will go back to it.   I might want to recreate my main character.  Plus I think I'll need alex,  and he's forever trapped in the scorpion cave currently.  I went small guns, and low strength (4)  which in retrospect seems like a dumb decision.  I think I might have even boosted charisma over strength... and so far charisma seems pointless. And I can't imagine I'm taking down super mutants with a pistol.

Small guns are powerful because they include shotguns, submachine guns, and rifles. You do want high Perception. Once you get your guns skill up, you can reliably hit burst and aimed shots. Blinding enemies makes them permanently helpless, so go for the eyes. The Better Criticals perk gives a chance for criticals to kill instantly. Later in the game you can use the Tag! perk to quickly level up energy weapons to use against heavy armor. It's helpful, but not strictly necessary because while your regular attacks will barely scratch them, your criticals will still disable or kill.

[BruceVC]

I completed KOTOR 1 after 45 hours, it was a much shorter game than I was hoping for but it was great fun. It gets a solid 70/100 on the globally followed " BruceVC game rating system"

I enjoyed the SW lore and the game provided classic Bioware fun around how you can do quests in your own order and I appreciated the companion interaction. I ended up Romancing the hottie Bastila and I saved her from the dark side

Most combat became easy from level 14 or so with some exceptions but the battles on the Star Forge were challenging and I only succeeded by using my Jedi Powers strategically. I had Canderous and Jolee in my party for the final stage

And I had to adopt a " cowardy " approach for the final battle with Malak, I used my Jedi speed to run away from him and destroyed the Jedi healing pods. Then I used Throw Lightsaber to wound him from a distance and killed him in normal lightsaber combat when he was on his last health

But Im enjoying the SW universe so I have decided to play KOTOR 2 next 

[bugarup]

6 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

Created a character in Colony Ship. Somehow, the character creation seemed very different from Larian's D&D - much more stats and a reasonably long intro to provide the context and express opinions on the factions. On the negative side, there were significantly fewer non-stat customisation options. Kind of fits with the sci-fi setting where the spaceship's population are descendants of Christian fanatics. Curious if min-maxing is necessary, like it was in The Age of Decadence.

Please update on Colony Ship as you go along, will you.  That setting looks really interesting, but I couldn't get over Age of Decadence's schtick of either metaing to heaven and hell up to very hand-tailored build following very narrow track, or constantly dying. 

 

P.S.: True "cowardly" way to deal with Malalalalak is to stick him with those adhesive grenades you've been hoarding throughout the game, pelt with other grenades from afar, rinse, repeat. 

Edited November 17, 2023 by bugarup

[melkathi]

That's why inventory limits in games are bad - they limit the use of the time honoured tactic of "just use everything you hoarded throughout the game".

That's how I beat the original Baldur's Gate. Used all my summoning wands and scrolls to fill the room with so many magical creatures, Sarevok couldn't move anymore, then took him out with arrows.

[Humanoid]

2 hours ago, bugarup said:

Please update on Colony Ship as you go along, will you.

There's a demo available which contains the first chapter and saves carry over to the full game. Probably going to go play that myself once my eyes recover properly from laser eye surgery.

[Zoraptor]

Yep, playing the demo highly advised.

2 hours ago, bugarup said:

Please update on Colony Ship as you go along, will you.  That setting looks really interesting, but I couldn't get over Age of Decadence's schtick of either metaing to heaven and hell up to very hand-tailored build following very narrow track, or constantly dying.

It's considerably different to AoD's system and I'd say far more polished*. There's a lot of metagaming possible as you gain skills by using skills, so it's beneficial to do skill checks/ conversations in a specific(ish) order but it's nowhere near AoD's level- and it's not, generally speaking essential to do it that way, just beneficial. OTOH, it has that annoying feeling where you're in a high(ish) tech setting with firearms and laser guns but all the encounters occur at such short distances that you might as well not have them since everyone will be in melee range usually in a round...

*Note: only played the InDev version and that not with the final update but it was already far more polished than AoD was.

[Hawke64]

4 hours ago, bugarup said:

Please update on Colony Ship as you go along, will you.  That setting looks really interesting, but I couldn't get over Age of Decadence's schtick of either metaing to heaven and hell up to very hand-tailored build following very narrow track, or constantly dying. 

 

P.S.: True "cowardly" way to deal with Malalalalak is to stick him with those adhesive grenades you've been hoarding throughout the game, pelt with other grenades from afar, rinse, repeat. 

Will try. Played for very little so far, but the skill checks seem quite low and there are companions (found 1; the party size depends on Charisma). The map and the journal are not particularly helpful, though the former has fast travel.

Tried to launch Dragon Age: Inquisition. Any way I can access the game without interacting with EA App, which seems to have become less usable than it used to be? I somehow doubt that it will come to GOG.

[Mamoulian War]

15 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

Finished Shadow Tactics: Blades of Shogun. It is a very well made tactical stealth game, though I did use a guide for the last level (and still have no idea how I was supposed to get Takuma into the wells).

Started Shadow Tactics: Aiko's Choice. Tried to copy the configuration files from the main game, seemed to work.

Created a character in Colony Ship. Somehow, the character creation seemed very different from Larian's D&D - much more stats and a reasonably long intro to provide the context and express opinions on the factions. On the negative side, there were significantly fewer non-stat customisation options. Kind of fits with the sci-fi setting where the spaceship's population are descendants of Christian fanatics. Curious if min-maxing is necessary, like it was in The Age of Decadence.

From what I heard, it was not so prone to min maxing as AoD. But I have not played it yet. So can't confirm it from my own experience.

[Mamoulian War]

After doing some crafting, I was able to defeat 6-winged Gabriel Celeste. On 2nd attempt. During first attempt, I became to comfortable with a fight and I have, after 15 minutes of almost flawless figh, dropped a guard. I have forgotten to get my healers at the edge of arena, so when I was performing Rush attack, he casted his uber AoE, and wiped floor with my whole party

[Keyrock]

to start the endgame.

There were 2 star puzzles that gave me a lot of trouble, a Pandora puzzle and a Sphinx puzzle. The Sphinx puzzle was the trickiest because the clue can easily be misconstrued and even once you're on the right path, the image isn't exactly correct.

Edited November 18, 2023 by Keyrock

[MrBrown]

On 11/17/2023 at 1:29 PM, Hawke64 said:

Tried to launch Dragon Age: Inquisition. Any way I can access the game without interacting with EA App, which seems to have become less usable than it used to be? 

No. Once you've logged in it doesn't pop-up on every launch though.