LadyCrimson

That nerve destroying op for hubby's lower spine is now on the horizon. Just waiting for a booking opening to open up. Doc says there's 3 vertebrae that are the "worst" but 5 total are problematic so they're going to do all 5. And if THAT doesn't help him, it's down to the spinal-fusion thing, which is a lot more dubious re: could get better, could not, could actually be worse (and just like with the nerves, can't reverse it). Don't know if we'll stay over night in the area or not, depends on time of day (3-4 hr drive). Maybe just rent a room for a few hours of rest/traffic avoidance first.

Tiffany? Who's Tiffany? Also: I miss American Bandstand, silly dancing and lip syncing and all. I remember seeing this on the old tubeTV back then and I'm pretty sure I have it recorded on VHS tape in a closet somewhere. Famous film composer Danny Elfman used to dance funny, hehe. It's how we saw our fave bands outside of in-person live concerts, back then. Now YT over-saturates us all. But at least it also lets us nostalgia.

This is how I picture my husband being at this age. So cute.

Enshrouded: I'm (current) max level, all biomes visited (but not fully explored), most "crafting" things acquired etc. But based on empty workbench squares, I'm missing some building blocks. So this is when I start wiki-ing more. So yesterday I start one of the areas/things for a couple of them. Took me near 2 hrs to get to the end (1st time, exploring, puzzle/traversal-deaths etc). Near the bottom, got one new block. Then I encountered my first major game bug. The boss at the end - which I need its head - I saw its health bar appear on the UI, there was music, but no boss. I killed a few mobs, looked around, saw a treasure box - grabbed it - then saw a teleporter pad. I thought, ok, maybe I have to take this to the real boss-room. So I used it. Which took me to .... the start/entrance of the dungeon. And teleport is one way, ofc. And everything's respawned by now, so even if it took me half the time doing it, I'd have to redo all the puzzles/open doors. Granted, I guess there was a glitch, but I temp-rage-quit again. EDIT: my god I talk too much when I'm frustrated. shortened: I've had about enough of the MMO-like resource/other grind. also, the bug seemed to be I was able to pass thru/unlock a gated door I shouldn't have been able to, before beating the boss. I'm still stupidly stubborn enough to try to get at least all the "building blocks" unlocked (I'm close-ish) but after that I'm out, until a creative mode, or they rebalance things extensively.

Enshrouded: After a bunch of unrelated exploration/resource collecting/dungeon crawling etc I finally got around to making some "cold biome" wear. So between base-comfort rating, clothes, and new hand-warmer I can now stay in super-cold for about an hour. But - I could live with the top, but the hat and pants, no, just no. Thank goodness for transmog. I went back to my original "look". But at least I can live in the high snow for more than 40 seconds. Also learned that if one is relying on base-comfort frost bonuses, teleporting to a TP-only flame altar removes it because it takes on the TP-altar's zero frost bonus, when you get there. >.> so one has to make any base near winter/snow the same frost-comfort level.

Exploring. Wonder what happened to them? Hmm, death by frozen pond. Poor lost souls. But they don't need that anymore - I'll take it, thanks. Stopping for the night.

On your Easy, did you slide every slider full to left? Because one setting controls the numbers. Less/Normal/More, something like that. I left it on Normal because I don't care how many there are in most cases, as long as they die easy/don't kill me in one hit or whatever (bosses mostly, mobs are nothing). The enemy I had to farm is a flying one and it simply doesn't spawn many in the few shroud areas it can spawn. I only found one larger area where maybe 3 spawned, other spots just had one. I have now found coal, which means I can craft a hand-warmer, but I also need a certain kind of leather, which I do not have. Hehehe

It's winter and I have nothing better to do. Plus I'm pretty sure I have both more free time and more "ocd" factors. At the moment I'd give the game in its current form maybe a B or B+. I like aspects but there are still those super annoying things that get your goat, a little too often. So I try to focus on the things I like, until the game "forces" me to do otherwise. I've somehow finished 70ish "quests" (I use that term loosely) but there's oodles of them all over the map I've ignored and every new thing procs more. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of NPC-crafts by not doing some of them. I do like that there's no money/buying/selling. Just resource grind. Speaking of which, I spent a few hours trying to get the 40 of the one item I need to upgrade the altar again. After that time I have --- 37. And that's with the setting that I think increases amounts you loot a bit. >.> The "grind" is that you have to wait for enemies to respawn and ofc it's not a thing that spawns in numbers. It gets MMO old. EDIT: if game didn't have all those easy settings I can turn on/off at whim, I'd probably have irritation-quit.

Enshrouded: I found the snow biome. Or rather, I found some edges of it. I guess I didn't notice before because I've been using double-jump, gliding, and a lot of pickaxing to reach places before the game wants you to, I think. So I'm often in tunnels, or it's night, or --- Anyway - I glided and then made a tunnel upwards in this one spot. I hit patches of snow and new granite/blocks (I can now build snowmen). At one flat cliff ledge some way up, I plopped a base-altar. Good thing, since about 60 more seconds of tunneling upwards through rock, I wtf dropped dead, apparently from cold. Tried again, paid more attention, saw the tiny "frost death imminent" timer bar this time. So I went sideways. Found another snowy ledge, but this one had a nice, empty, pre-built fancy stone house. So I put a base altar in there as a foothold. there was a path upwards. So I tried again, just walking. Worked for a while, then that bar showed up again and I had to rush back down. I think it's "altitude" based, not the actual snow. Guess I need frost protection. I have zero idea how to get it. My altar stage is still only lvl 5, that's probably some of it. Each altar level (for me so far) has at least one (shroud) material required that is so annoying to get, even with 25+minute shroud-time. Either because of grind or getting lost finding a POI area or a spawn area etc. Dangit, guess I gotta grind.

Enshrouded: --I see an entrance room like this in this game and I nope outta there. Don't get me wrong, most of such aren't that terrible or anything - outside of a couple platforming things, because I suck at platforming things - but some have taken a bit of time/effort or reloads. I ran out of patience already. As always, it's hard to get a picture of one's base. I haven't gone very extravagant, mostly functional. I also keep building upwards for workstations because I don't want to increase the "build area" of the base-altar, since it stops trees/plants/terrain/anything from respawning. --This is the front, at night. Notice all the NPC's in a line. Was tired of them wandering all over when I have to find/craft from them, so I made all their walking-distances to 0. They don't even go sleep in their beds anymore. There are too many craft-station-NPC's. >.> --The glowing blocks for lighting are the only things that don't go out when it rains so I use them a lot. --The back, night. It's a steep dropoff in back, roadside in front. --Similar backview, day. The porch floor below my chr is where the small farm-area is. Since apparently no sun is required.

I've had the 32gb ddr4 since I built this thing. Only one game ever wanted it all, and that was only for rendering a map, not actual playing. I have had no care to "rush" to higher speed ddr5 and get that extra 6-10fps or whatever. Nor for current gen/faster nvme's or even sata ssd's. After a point those things start to feel like "window-treatments" for house windows. It's nice, but not really necessary/gaming. It's not a rush thing, those. Although the way AAA dev's are going, in a few years gonna need mega-nvme drive just to prevent read/transfer poor frame pacing/stutters. Haha.

With the way melee animations work, I haven't had alt-itis like I do in some games. I've tried melee a few times and once I melee-thrust myself off a cliff. Technically I think using the staff to cast spells does the same forward/stuck in an elongated animation movement but since you cast it from afar it doesn't bother me. I might try the bows later. Of course, I'm still using mostly the easy settings, because after the first 20 or so hours, I'm just trying to rush to unlock stuff. Having to find/loot block varieties in "random" places is so annoying. Loot a chest, bang, "true sandstone fancy block discovered." Pffft.

It's already in the game. I've seen ppl on forums talk about it. It's mountains I guess. I've been focusing on exploring and seeing what one can do with building blocks (no gravity/structural integrity considerations, can "float" bases, like in NMS). I still haven't even tamed a cat/animal. Just like in real life these days, I don't really want to take care of one. Edit: I went without the larger backpacks for ages because that swamp FT spire annoyed me - I kept falling with those bouncy pads. Later I finally tried chopping a stairway into a tree and got to the top that way. I hated that swamp area.

Enshrouded: Well, I'll be dipped in .... I was making new chrs/saves/testing and realized that each save, even offline/SP, is still like creating a separate world "instance" of the game - which you can then enter/visit with any other character you create. Meaning you could take chr. #2 and enter chr #1's save/world and grab anything out of chests. leave and go back into chr #2's world/save. High level tools, gear, big storage boxes, working workstations, whatever. Keeping that join-server-like feature as part of offline/SP is nuts. Talk about sandbox-replay shortcuts. So that gives Enshrouded a few extra bonus points until a possible full creative mode. I think I'm lacking the snow biome. I'm not sure I care. I'm almost current max-clvl already, and the progression of shroud and dungeons are becoming more aggravating (platforming jumps, maze-likes, getting constantly lost/turned around, ugh). Plus I don't need snow-themed furniture, haha. My fave biome so far is the 2nd one (kind of a redwood/forest rainy biome) and it's probably the only one I'd want to base in, anyway.