What are you Playing Now? - Right Now at the moment edition

[Malcador]

On 8/3/2024 at 12:40 AM, Humanoid said:

I was thinking that if the free period was at least a week, ideally more, I'd have contemplated the download to see what's new since I last played 5+ years ago. But a weekend? Yeah, nah.

Yep, quite a small period, especially for people logging in to find themselves lvl 20 from 120.  Prepatch event is funny, having homages to fun quests like boar livers, the Green Hills of Stranglethorn or Hogger. 

[Mamoulian War]

A little bit more into the Shrine of Amana again. I am spending now a little bit less time, as I would like to, but having a shoulder injury makes it very painful, whenever I sit and play behind my PS for more than 1 and half hour.

Anyway, Looking Glass Knight has been defeated. Not much trouble, as I have called two summons just for the laugh  I did not wanted to spent to much time with the fight, knowing, what awaits me next… Shrine of Amana…

As I have mentioned before, to my surprise, the areas up to the second bonfire have been “blessed” by much better mob placing, than in Vanilla, so it was not as painful, as I have expected. Of course, I’ve made few stupid moves, so my Deathcounter has increased again, but it was much, much better experience this time around.

The issue for me was the third part, before Demon of Song, I have destroyed my equipment few times in the mist from the giant “Sponge Bob”, and then I have spent few times clearing the area, out of the cave, as I forgot, that there is a red phantom invader, and I wanted my Awestone a lot, so I had to change the covenant just for this fight. Of course, I have died in this area as well, so I had to repeat it again and slowly with a crossbow. I have not found a 100% safe way to clear the mobs with melee, like the previous area, so it took a lot of time to get to Demon of Song. I went back to call phantom for the fight, and went through the fog. Took me three tries, as a felt to tired from my pain, but I wanted to get the giant toad at all costs. Of course two more tries meant two more clearings of the pond mobs, so it took me a lot of time to start a new fight. But my goal was fulfilled. With deathcounter stopping at 109 wipes.

[bugarup]

Skyrim.

It appears that you can get pets now. Well so my mage did find one. Looks like a something born out of love between a spider and a mantis, sounds like a tank when walking. Which is kind of grating especially when you try to sneak, but as soon as I found out it messes with enemy pathfinding I'm more than happy to tolerate it in exchange for draugrs doing nothing but very intense eye contact while I pelt them from behind of my spider-mantis mini tank.

Elsewhere in Skyrim, I went werewolf. They have their own skill tree and everything now. So I went on some official Companion Guild quest, turned the wolf on, cleared the dungeon, gained a few perks, cool, but it would be pity to let the wolf timer expire without doing some more maulin', I thought. Could come back for loot later, I thought. 

...probably half a map later I'm still a wolf. See, wolf timer gets prolonged every time you eat someone and I've forgotten just how many bandits and necromancers are there everywhere in Skyrim. Eventually it should expire some day because I avoid towns and undead are inedible, but I'm keeping the wolf on out of sporting interest now - I want to see that trail of destruction on the map. When I'm allowed to use it again, because werewolves cannot read maps. I do hope my companion is okay, I lost him, like, 30 dungeons ago. 

 

[melkathi]

Started again with Rogue Trader.

Tried to see if there is an optimal way of doing the first chapter.

In Dragon Age Origins, the optimal play was to not finish areas, but to hop back and forth to unlock always just enough to get a better outcome somewhere else. (Mainly to help the possessed child)

Rogue Trader it turns out locks in where you have gone first on arrival. Land, take off, go somewhere else and do that first will still act as if you spent time in the first option. At the same time, minor flavour items will react to the actual order you did things, referencing that npcs are dead even though in the grand scheme the game state of the location thinks you haven't been to where you'd kill those NPCs.

[Malcador]

Got all the alts I wanted to, up to 70 in WoW. Quick going too, not even 2 hours apiece.

[melkathi]

Did the Fidelio quest in Rogue Trader. This time I chose not to pretend to be Fidelio, instead investigating who really is.

Interesting how different the quest plays out.

Got almost the same outcome though, with just a few more people alive, as some who tried to kill me last time were smarter this time.

[Mamoulian War]

Two more bosses down in Dark Souls 2: SotFS. Both on second try. Velstadt and Guardian Dragon.

The Undear Crypt changed just a little bit to vanilla, so I had not much trouble, even at the graveyard part with Pharos Lockstone room, where there are a lot of tombstones, which summon caster mobs. They definitely made that room easier in the SotFS. The other change, which was for a change more challenging, are 11 red phantoms, which are being summoned after the "candle-maiden" statue is being lit. This was a trouble, but in the end I was able to survive them as well, and slowly moved to the bossfight. Velstadt is much easier, while having summoned phantoms for help, but despite that, I died once, as I became to greedy at the end, and he just hit me with one of his wide reach swings On the second try, I misstimed one move against him as well, and nearly died again at the end of the fight, but luckily, I had enough HP to absorb that hit

On the other hand, Aldia's Keep has become much much difficult area, as you can get one of the keys only after defeating 4 Forlorn red phantoms, which have very large HP pool and love to outroll you as soon as your backstab animation starts So I had to train a little bit how to properly fight them, which cost me few wipes, due to my clumsiness and less than stellar patience The second change was the gauntlet before the boss fog gate, this was made a little bit easier than in vanilla version. I was able to get through it with now again acquired patience from the phantom fights So no wipe for in there The locked Aldia's lab was fine as well, although it was a little bit more packed compared to vanilla, IIRC. Then I have decided to go and visit the boss, but, as always, I have forgotten, that there are two Ogres guarding two gates, so I went there like for a promenade, which promptly ended my suffering . This of course led to 59000 souls lost, as I was to annoyed, that after almost perfect run through the gauntlet, I got asskicked due to my memory not serving well So I made another clear, went to summon a phantom close-by, and entered the boss arena. This was my first ever melee attempt on this boss. And it needed much much more patience, than with a caster. So I needed a little bit more practice, to re-learn his moves. Still at 30% or so of his HP, he still managed to surprise me, and due to me messing up one roll, I got caught into his volley of fire, while landed on the floor, which ended my first attempt. Another gauntlet clearing was in order... *sighs* Now I went for the boss much better prepared for all of his moves, so I started of, with launching all of my lightning bolts at him, and then, slowly starting to run around him and hitting him again, and again, and again, and again, while trying to avoid all of his fire moves. This time, no major mistake happened on my side, so after a few minutes, I got a fresh Guardian Dragon Soul, and entered Dragon Aerie, after 11 wipes in total. Deathcounter 122. For now

[melkathi]

On 8/6/2024 at 3:03 PM, bugarup said:

Skyrim.

It appears that you can get pets now. Well so my mage did find one. Looks like a something born out of love between a spider and a mantis, sounds like a tank when walking. Which is kind of grating especially when you try to sneak, but as soon as I found out it messes with enemy pathfinding I'm more than happy to tolerate it in exchange for draugrs doing nothing but very intense eye contact while I pelt them from behind of my spider-mantis mini tank.

 

You can find a dog and keep it.

It is quite buggy. As you noticed, it can mess with combat.

Before you adopt it, if the dog event coincides with a dragon, the dog can insta kill the dragon.

If you have children, a child may randomly ask if they can keep the dog. Then the dog will hang out at your home but there is a bug and it might despawn. Children can bring other animals home, for example a fox. These aren't buggy, but as they follow the child around, if you live in one of the homesteads, as those can spawn attacks (or rats in the basement), the pet may get killed.

[Bartimaeus]

I've put like twenty hours into Fallout: New Vegas over the last few weeks after finding a few popular mods that changed how the accuracy of weapons work to make it...uhh, not dumb basically, and have actually been having a pretty good time, especially because I mostly play a stealthy shoot people in the head and/or backstab them type of player (which is pretty necessary given how clunky and bad the combat in this engine is). This approach has been working well, except for when I run into enemies who don't want to die and I get brutally murdered because my weapons are junk outside of stealth...which has happened a lot with mutants/monsters. But the worst part of the game is my own fault, which is the obsessive compulsive kleptomania that afflicts me whenever I play a game like this. I must...steal...all the things. I have a bunch of organized containers in the game's first town's gas station where I'm slowly but surely getting every single type of item into pristine condition by finding other copies of them and repairing them. I know it's just a pool cue and I'm never actually going to use it as a weapon, but I want to have a perfect copy of it. Please send help.

[Azdeus]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

I've put like twenty hours into Fallout: New Vegas over the last few weeks after finding a few popular mods that changed how the accuracy of weapons work to make it...uhh, not dumb basically, and have actually been having a pretty good time, especially because I mostly play a stealthy shoot people in the head and/or backstab them type of player (which is pretty necessary given how clunky and bad the combat in this engine is). This approach has been working well, except for when I run into enemies who don't want to die and I get brutally murdered because my weapons are junk outside of stealth...which has happened a lot with mutants/monsters. But the worst part of the game is my own fault, which is the obsessive compulsive kleptomania that afflicts me whenever I play a game like this. I must...steal...all the things. I have a bunch of organized containers in the game's first town's gas station where I'm slowly but surely getting every single type of item into pristine condition by finding other copies of them and repairing them. I know it's just a pool cue and I'm never actually going to use it as a weapon, but I want to have a perfect copy of it. Please send help.

This is sadly, extremely relateable, and I can't help. I'm stuck doing the very same thing in STALKER; Gamma. I know that I am never going to use it. But that Makarov PM really needs that pristine barrel and it is worth using the monetary rewards from the past 4 hours on buying that repair kit...

[Lexx]

7 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

finding a few popular mods that changed how the accuracy of weapons work to make it...uhh, not dumb basically

Doesn't this make weapon skills useless?

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

Doesn't this make weapon skills useless?

Not useless, but a little less insane. With the accuracy-affecting mods I installed ([1], [2], [3], [4]), the idea seems to be that first shots when fired from iron sights are generally pretty accurate (though still subject to a weapons' base accuracy, so not like perfect if you're at a pretty good distance), while subsequent shots fired soon after are subject to both degrading accuracy as well as recoil if you don't give it a moment to let it reset. Recoil is especially bad if you do not meet the minimum stat requirements on a weapon, just as it is in the original game (particularly noticeable with automatic weapons). Accuracy and damage still improve with higher skill levels, it's just...you know, if you take the time to line up a shot that's not even very far away, you can now expect the bullet to not go wildly off direction like it used to, or for your weapon to just be wobbling and swaying all the time like it does in the vanilla game, or for the iron sight to be visually inaccurate because the devs unfortunately didn't line the iron sight up with the actual center of the screen, all of which is important to especially me because I literally never use VATS and so I need to have some way of approaching combat that doesn't feel like poopy doodoo all the time (that or go all melee weapons, but that's not really my thing in these games either). But I can assure you that every time I get into combat where I need to burst off more than a couple of shots, I'm still very much feeling how bad my accuracy is at my Gun skill level of 35 even when using something as simple as a revolver.

As for why no VATS at all...I've just never found it satisfying to use, you effectively pause the game to take control out of your own hands and instead put it into a random number generator, and a painfully slow and very goofy-looking one at that. Never felt like a good marriage to this kind of action-y gameplay to me, but obviously other people strongly disagree.

8 hours ago, Azdeus said:

This is sadly, extremely relateable, and I can't help. I'm stuck doing the very same thing in STALKER; Gamma. I know that I am never going to use it. But that Makarov PM really needs that pristine barrel and it is worth using the monetary rewards from the past 4 hours on buying that repair kit...

Oh yeah, I always did that in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as well. I'd always have a container for all the artifacts I'd ever found throughout the game, a container for one of each of all the armors in the game, a container for one of each of all the weapons in the game... I didn't usually go so far as to upgrade the ones I wasn't going to use though (actually, if I had one I was going to use, then I'd always make sure to have a second untouched copy still in the container instead).

Edited August 11 by Bartimaeus

[Azdeus]

10 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Oh yeah, I always did that in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as well. I'd always have a container for all the artifacts I'd ever found throughout the game, a container for one of each of all the armors in the game, a container for one of each of all the weapons in the game... I didn't usually go so far as to upgrade the ones I wasn't going to use though (actually, if I had one I was going to use, then I'd always make sure to have a second untouched copy still in the container instead).

I don't know if you had a go at it with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.- Anomaly; G.A.M.M.A. but they redid the weapon repair system to be more detailed, besides base weapon condition you also have parts to look for too such as recoil springs, gas tubes and barrels, I've finally gotten to build a little stash in Rostok where I can have my parts box waiting to go into the many, many, many different guns and armours that I've managed to loot. I've got more guns than ammo, and more artifacts than ammo too come to think of it.

[Bartimaeus]

14 minutes ago, Azdeus said:

I don't know if you had a go at it with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.- Anomaly; G.A.M.M.A. but they redid the weapon repair system to be more detailed, besides base weapon condition you also have parts to look for too such as recoil springs, gas tubes and barrels, I've finally gotten to build a little stash in Rostok where I can have my parts box waiting to go into the many, many, many different guns and armours that I've managed to loot. I've got more guns than ammo, and more artifacts than ammo too come to think of it.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has become very difficult for me to play, unfortunately - it's always been too demanding on my ravaged hands/wrists, and trying to use a controller to play those games is way too frustrating. The last time I played any S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was a couple of years ago when I finally gave the cut-down and rebalanced Lost Alpha mod a proper go, and I think I got about ten to maybe fifteen hours into it over a few weeks before the pain became too much and too constant to the point of affecting the rest of my life on a daily basis, so I uninstalled it and kind of consciously made the decision there that I just would not be able to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for the rest of my life. It's just too much. In contrast, I've been able to handle New Vegas in moderation without too much ill-effect so far, though I've been making great use of aiming/iron sights being bound to ALT instead of right-click, which helps a lot.

Edited August 11 by Bartimaeus

[Azdeus]

10 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has become very difficult for me to play, unfortunately - it's always been too demanding on my ravaged hands/wrists, and trying to use a controller to play those games is way too frustrating. The last time I played any S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was a couple of years ago when I finally gave the cut-down and rebalanced Lost Alpha mod a proper go, and I think I got about ten to maybe fifteen hours into it over a few weeks before the pain became too much and too constant to the point of affecting the rest of my life on a daily basis, so I uninstalled it and kind of consciously made the decision there that I just would not be able to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for the rest of my life. It's just too much. In contrast, I've been able to handle New Vegas in moderation without too much ill-effect so far, though I've been making great use of aiming/iron sights being bound to ALT instead of right-click, which helps a lot.

That sucks mate, yeah, the GAMMA mod is even more punishing in several ways so it'd probably be really hard for you. Unless someone makes a mod to link something like a Tobii eyetracker to it. I remember playing some Ghost Recon game with that thing, and all I had to do was look in the general direction of an enemy, right click and fine adjust to get perfect headshots all the time

[Mamoulian War]

So far the worst "day" in DS2 23 wipes at Dragon Shrine and Giant Memories

I have forgotten about the difficulty spike between Dragon Aerie and Dragon Shrine, so I have changed my covenant to Company of Champions, and the got repeatedly obliterated by the second Dragonkeeper Guard with mace. I was simply not able to avoid his attacks, and he hit like a truck on steroids for my current level. So I had to shamelessly change the covenant back to something, which I can survive, and moved slowly up the stairs. Noticing, that if I summon phantom/shade, all mobs in the next room will run towards you and attack you. Which pulled like 12 or so mobs at once on the final stairs. I never run so fast towards the bonfire After that "incident" I run back to the Ancient Dragon, and talked to him for the Ashen Mist Heart, skipping the fight for now. Probably until I clear all DLCs.

After that, I went into the Giant Memories, and man-o-man... I did sucked a lot at the first one. I missed few jumps, then I was pierced by archers, which I have not noticed, and then I got destroyed by mob firing the ballista, which cost me around 60k Souls Ok. I tried to refocus a little bit on what am I doing, and then with just a few more hickups, I arrived at the Giant Lord fight and won on the first attempt with the help of Bernhart of Jugo, for his questline. I have also picked up the Drangleic Helm, and finalized the armour set. Now, I am just thinking about where to go. Either moving to the first DLC, or Darklurker, or grind a little bit for the covenants.

Deathcounter: 145

[melkathi]

13 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

 I have a bunch of organized containers in the game's first town's gas station where I'm slowly but surely getting every single type of item into pristine condition by finding other copies of them and repairing them. I know it's just a pool cue and I'm never actually going to use it as a weapon, but I want to have a perfect copy of it. Please send help.

I had a room in Novac where I had one of each cooking ingredient in the fridge. Meat like skewers etc and a pilot light in the oven.

One of each clothing/armour in the wardrobe. 

One of each weapon in a box.

Crafting material in a different container.

Books, and household junk in the dresser...

 

I do not see a problem.

 

 

Then again, I sneak skill books into the chest in my children's bedroom in skyrim, to get them reading.

Edited August 11 by melkathi

[Mamoulian War]

More DS2 again

This time, just some small time grinding and then to finish up the session, another encounter with Royal Rat Authority. And this time it was a successful one. It was big help, that I had a chance to purchase full Forlorn Armour Set, which has a nice upgrade for Poison Resistance compared to my old gear. This helped a lot. But TBH I still have not a clue, how have I survived the fight The 4 adds jumped all around the place, and the boss hits like a truck. I almost got obliterated by a gang bang right in the beginning, but somehow, I cleared all the adds, and later had a chance to pop an Estus. This pretty much saved my attempt. On the other hand the boss has very low HP compared to most, which I have fought, so even though he hit hard, I was able to get him down in few minutes. The biggest problem in the fight, was that if I locked him, the Lance always missed, and when I fought him without locking in, my clumsiness has shown in full glory  

Still down on first try in this session and on third in total.

Unfortunately, during the grinding session, I accumulated 5 more wipes Deathcounter 150.

[melkathi]

Your goal is to reach a 40.000 death count and turn your play through into Warhammer performance fan art?

[Mamoulian War]

Well in PS3 version of DS2, I got almost 1500 deaths, and IIRC, in Demon’s Souls I got around 750, no clue, how many Deaths I Had in DS1, and almost 500 in DSR. So I am slowly getting there

3 hours ago, melkathi said:

Your goal is to reach a 40.000 death count and turn your play through into Warhammer performance fan art?

 

[Malcador]

Grinding along in D4, nice changes to Rogue, I am being boring and sticking with Flurry though.

Felt like reinstalling M&B, so I am doing that, forgot how clunky the UI is

[Hawke64]

Batora: Lost Heaven. Not as good as I hoped it would be. I have finished the first area and the thoughts are below.

Spoiler

The setting is post-apocalyptic, most of the population are dead. The protagonist is the chosen one of two magical entities and tasked with restoring the balance and saving Earth (how the MC is supposed to save the already dead population or restore the infrastructure is unknown) by teleporting to the other planets and poking their "cores". The “isekai”-style story is passable, though the plot twists can be seen a mile away. The protagonist is a generic teenager, but not too horrible, though a silent MC would have been much better. While the choice-consequence system is supposed to offer some engagement, the combat benefits do not feel significant and the story ones are rather bland as well - the side NPCs are depicted as either “cute” or moustache-twirling evil (i.e. to be executed).

The combat is mind-numbingly boring and the hitboxes are odd. The general idea is that the MC has two forms - the physical/melee orange and the magical/ranged purple, with separate health bars for each (having either empty leads to death; there is 1 combo attack, 1 slow attack, and 1 strong attack combat ability for each form), and these forms should match the opponents' colours. Speaking of the opponents. There is very little diversity per biome, they respawn very quickly, and the game does not allow to flee the repeated encounters to continue with the story.

There are severe FPS drops in the menus, such as trading and the inventory, reaching as low as 10 FPS.

The controls are rebindable and 5-button mice are supported. There is manual saving, but the number of slots is limited to 8 and upon loading one can be 5+ battles away from the saved position.

The visual style is cartoonish and generally nice. The MC’s design and weapons are adequate (close to Darksiders). The game also seems to try to be colour blindness-friendly with variable results - some things have icons or easily-readable shapes in addition to the colours, but there are optional colour-based puzzles. The music is unobtrusive, but I have turned off the VA by the end of the first area.

 

[Lexx]

10 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Well in PS3 version of DS2, I got almost 1500 deaths, and IIRC, in Demon’s Souls I got around 750, no clue, how many Deaths I Had in DS1, and almost 500 in DSR. So I am slowly getting there

 

You guys counting deaths?

[bugarup]

On 8/10/2024 at 4:43 PM, melkathi said:

You can find a dog and keep it.

It is quite buggy. As you noticed, it can mess with combat.

Before you adopt it, if the dog event coincides with a dragon, the dog can insta kill the dragon.

I found one of those! Daedric dog to be precise, I'm sure he can take on a dragon seeing how he shredded random vampires and wraiths to, well, shreds. But he was really pushy - like, literally, whenever I stopped to pick a lock or sell loot or just because, he'd bump into me and yeet 5 metres away which got old really fast even if I imagine that's how big dogs are IRL. What's worse, he messed with my sneaking and had a psychic link with every guard of Skyrim which he diligently used to report any transgression. So I really rushed to finish that quest and get rid of him. His Daedric master was an **** though; really missed the option to say "What?! Hell no, f†ck you and also I'm keeping your pushy dog!" 

On 8/10/2024 at 4:43 PM, melkathi said:

as those can spawn attacks (or rats in the basement), the pet may get killed.

Ah. I was wondering why there's a dead draugr in the herb garden of my homestead. 

 

"It is quite buggy" is a phrase that could be used with anything in Skyrim. 

[melkathi]

Depending on the homestead, different random critters will attack.

My theory is that basically it simply wasn't really possible for the Devs to stop nearby random spawns the moment you buy the property.

The guard you get for the homestead usually will kill any of the spawns easily.

Even the odd giant attacking that one homestead...