The Gaming Den

I dunno, I kind of like Nick Valentine. Mostly I don't care about added firepower, I keep up with my crafting/scrapping perks and as such have the highest available tier ballistic weave with highest possible tier synth armor on top with tons of water and stimpaks, not to mention the weapons I care to carry are all customized to my exact specifications. If something is too powerful I have a fat man (shooting a couple of mini nukes in problem areas seems to go far, the blast radius seems smaller than in New Vegas so I find myself using it more often), I just care about the character's personality and whether or not they're smart enough to not block my shot. Nick and Dogmeat are the only ones that don't annoy me in some way so far.

Mostly, the settlements give me enjoyment. Storywise I'm at the point where I have to go in the Glowing Sea so I'm taking some time to expand my settlements a bit. I have half a dozen power cores as well as an upgraded suit of t45 power armor with Minuteman colors sitting in my garage at Sanctuary Hills but I'd like to be more prepared first (I don't use power armor a lot so I don't have a good idea on how long the cores last, maybe that's more than I need)

EDIT: Random fact, I thought it was creepy that the house you start in had the same floor layout as my grandparents' house. There's a non-creepy reason for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lustron_house (although I think my grandparents' place is a Lustron knockoff, it says there's only a few thousand left in the country, but every house in the neighborhood has the exact same floorplan, give or take accessories like extended dining area, porch area, etc).

If you've only got a half dozen fusion cores, that's not gonna last you long enough to explore the Glowing Sea, no. You're going to want something like 12-20 if you want to do a serious expedition. Or you can head in with what you have, and fast travel out when you're running low.

Sorry if I am monopolizing the thread but I had a fallout 4 question.

I just completed the quest to find Curie and I got molerat AIDS. Is there a way to get rid of the pill icon on my HUD? I know it's a perk that can be removed via console but I feel that invalidates my choice to save the dying kid instead. I just want the HUD icon gone.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Sorry if I am monopolizing the thread

It's been nearly a week since the last time you posted. You aren't drowning out the conversation, you're just the only one who has anything to say. It's cool.

No, as far as i remember, that is one of those go fuck yourself its your own fault for not being an asshole quests. So the only way to not get stuck with it is trying to not get it in the first place. And appearantly, after a quick research, they also made it so that you get it if one of your companions should have gotten it . .
So, do it alone. No companions. Do not get bitten even once ever by one of those rats.

I've now gotten enough playtime with a new game to recommend it.

Fortnite, by Epic Games, is fucking incredible. It's been a very long time since I've had this much fun with a shooter, probably because you can build things in seconds and it lets you be creative. So many shooters are crippled by being boring tests of who has the best aim, but Fortnite is not like that. Fortnite lets me build a tiny castle around myself when somebody opens fire on me, then spontaneously generate (and open) a door or window as they approach to blow them away.

Hell, it's been a long time since I've had this much fun with a big ol' multiplayer game at all. And it's free. I've been told it's a ripoff of Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, but since PubG is essentially H1Z1 I doubt it has a similar feel at all.

Every single aspect of Fortnite is tuned towards making a fun game. The harvesting mechanic is fast and skill-based. The rarity system rewards aggression instead of just hiding (not that hiding isn't viable, but legendary guns are pretty serious upgrades from common). The building is simple (there are 4 types of base models, wall, floor, roof, and ramp, which you can edit before building or even after it's built with just one button and your mouse) but allows for a lot of variation. The games are fast-paced because the map is exactly the right size and the time between map events is pretty short. The inventory is simple and fast but forces tough choices that will determine how you approach fights. The visuals are refreshingly colorful and bright, which makes things stand out.

This game is amazing. Everyone who enjoys shooters should play it.

More games to play, less time to play them. My Steam library's almost at 200 games now, and I've touched less than half of them.

Worms WMD is pretty good. I bought it after watching a LP by KeepetClassy, after Team17 sent them a free copy and Gabe declared it "Game of the year, everyone should buy five copies". He declared that before playing, but after being told they got it for free. I'm sure there's nothing weird going on there. I'm also sure Team17 don't regret it after seeing the names they went with for their worms.

The last Worms game I played had cool water physics but had a bunch of missions that just didn't feel like Worms, and overall I didn't like it. Maybe if I had friends over and we just played multiplayer. This time, even the single player missions are basically "Here is a game of Worms, you vs AI. You have an objective but ultimately you're going to want to kill the enemies". With a few bonus objectives (that grant points that unlock cosmetic options, rather than using your credit card). And some special challenges.

The AI has super 360 noscope spec-ops sniper skills as usual, but whatever: single-player has always been something you could choose to do in Worms, but not the focus. If you like playing against random dickheads on the Internet, or have actual friends in the nearby vicinity, it's absolutely great. Maybe start with one round of Total Wormage so people can get it out of their systems before going on to more "normal" settings.

I just got Dark Souls 1 (Prepare to Die edition) on steam, rounding out my masochism trilogy, and got the DSFix thing. I learned that no matter how many hours I've put into DS3, the everything is different enough in 1 that I still get my ass kicked a lot and often, sometimes to the point of anger and frustration (friggin' horde of zombies and a channeler before gargoyles). I've just beaten the Bell Gargoyles, and am a total glass cannon (went sorcerer because I like magic, and have 60 shots of soul arrow attuned), so I'm slowly making progress, at least.

Sorcery worked a lot better in the first game than in the third, if I recall. You should be able to clear the game from start to finish without too much trouble, a few boss fights notwithstanding.

Maybe if I was a DS1 veteran and knew what I was doing, but this is my first time through and I still screw up my dodge timing because I'm not used to the pace of DS1 compared to 3 yet.

@Count
As for Fallout 4 Mods:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj-Xe219OYg
One of the youtubers i follow posted this

Archmage Joda wrote:I just got Dark Souls 1 (Prepare to Die edition) on steam, rounding out my masochism trilogy, and got the DSFix thing. I learned that no matter how many hours I've put into DS3, the everything is different enough in 1 that I still get my ass kicked a lot and often, sometimes to the point of anger and frustration (friggin' horde of zombies and a channeler before gargoyles). I've just beaten the Bell Gargoyles, and am a total glass cannon (went sorcerer because I like magic, and have 60 shots of soul arrow attuned), so I'm slowly making progress, at least.

DS1 rewards careful approach above all else. Picking up a bow and luring out enemies with it significantly reduces the number of fights where you're outnumbered one to five by angry Hollows.

Archmage Joda wrote:Maybe if I was a DS1 veteran and knew what I was doing, but this is my first time through and I still screw up my dodge timing because I'm not used to the pace of DS1 compared to 3 yet.

I'm not sure how it works on DS3, but in DS1, you have invulnerability frames at the beginning of the roll, and rapid movement in the next few frames, so it rewards waiting until the absolute last instant before pressing the roll button. Rolling early will get you smashed by even the slowest enemies, as attacks track until fairly late in their animations.

Romancing Saga 2 is a lot of fun, it's an SNES era open world RPG where you play as an imperial line seeking revenge against the asshole dark lord that killed one of your family members.

It's very story lite but there's just enough to get into the setting and explore.

So playing as my first emperor I...
- Befriended the thieves guild
- Befriended an order of martial arts mercenaries
- Destroyed a bandit fortress monopolizing trade
- Got revenge on one of the dark lords

After that a 200 year time skip occurred and now...
-Thieves guild characters are recruitable due to the actions of the 1st emperor
-Martial artists are recruitable due to 1st emperor
-That town cleared of bandits is now planning on building a bridge to promote trade, I can spend money from imperial reserves to fund it.

The game just throws you in without explaining how recruitment works but it's a lot of fun. Current story arc is a war of succession in a vassal kingdom and depending on my actions I can support one of the sons or daughter, or let them all kill each other.

I just got Dark Souls 1 (Prepare to Die edition) on steam, rounding out my masochism trilogy, and got the DSFix thing. I learned that no matter how many hours I've put into DS3, the everything is different enough in 1 that I still get my ass kicked a lot and often, sometimes to the point of anger and frustration (friggin' horde of zombies and a channeler before gargoyles). I've just beaten the Bell Gargoyles, and am a total glass cannon (went sorcerer because I like magic, and have 60 shots of soul arrow attuned), so I'm slowly making progress, at least.

Dark Souls 1 also has hyper armor (the ability to not get stunned out of an attack animation by an enemy attack) on at all times so putting on full havels will let you wade through flailing hollows. Magic is also more limited due to the vancian slot system.

So yeah cheese things with arrows to lure them out one at a time.

Zaranthan wrote:

Archmage Joda wrote:Maybe if I was a DS1 veteran and knew what I was doing, but this is my first time through and I still screw up my dodge timing because I'm not used to the pace of DS1 compared to 3 yet.

I'm not sure how it works on DS3, but in DS1, you have invulnerability frames at the beginning of the roll, and rapid movement in the next few frames, so it rewards waiting until the absolute last instant before pressing the roll button. Rolling early will get you smashed by even the slowest enemies, as attacks track until fairly late in their animations.

I feel like DS1 had more intuitive and responsive timings in general (relative to DS2, not sure about DS3) - some of that is by design and some is just weird control bugs. But also wut. DS1 enemies seem like they have the weakest tracking in the series. Going from DS1 to DS2 was hilarious - someone taught the AI to 360 no scope inbetween the two games. And it's made even better by DS2's gigantiwhat hitboxes.

DS2 was a weird experience for me. Your roll is shit until you put points in improving it, your parry has this awkward windup variable on the weapon you're using, hitboxes warp space and time to include you, even relatively ordinary mobs are surprisingly stagger resistant... You're a bitch in DS2. I don't think there's any other way to say it. Pretty much everything your character does is designed to not actually work and force you to play... incredibly methodically. You can, in fact, git gud - but I never felt good about gitting gud. I felt like I had learned to harness my inner robot and complete the pattern required of me.

I think the Smelter Demon is a good example. If you play off what your eyes are telling you, you will die. A lot. Because even though his sword is visually maybe the width of your character model, his hitboxes are the width of his character model. Your lying eyes cannot tell you when the Smelter Demon will and will not hit you, so the all important lesson of that fight is to stop looking at his sword and just learn the pattern. If you see him windup for attack X, roll at time Y, this leaves him open to Z hits. Respect the pattern. Follow the pattern. If your eyes tell you that you are safe to deviate from the pattern, you will get hit with an invisible minivan. If you wish to map out the dimensions of that invisible minivan with your face, you can. But that is the masochist's solution to an otherwise simple problem.

OgreBattle wrote:Romancing Saga 2 is a lot of fun, it's an SNES era open world RPG where you play as an imperial line seeking revenge against the asshole dark lord that killed one of your family members.

It's very story lite but there's just enough to get into the setting and explore.

So playing as my first emperor I...
- Befriended the thieves guild
- Befriended an order of martial arts mercenaries
- Destroyed a bandit fortress monopolizing trade
- Got revenge on one of the dark lords

After that a 200 year time skip occurred and now...
-Thieves guild characters are recruitable due to the actions of the 1st emperor
-Martial artists are recruitable due to 1st emperor
-That town cleared of bandits is now planning on building a bridge to promote trade, I can spend money from imperial reserves to fund it.

The game just throws you in without explaining how recruitment works but it's a lot of fun. Current story arc is a war of succession in a vassal kingdom and depending on my actions I can support one of the sons or daughter, or let them all kill each other.

Does the game let you choose when to initiate the 200 year time skip? Could you have befriended factions other than the thieves guild and monastery in that timeframe?

I'm still making slow but sure progress in DS1. Halfway through sen's fortress, but keep getting distracted by side objectives, like upping my pyromancy flame, getting logan's sorceries, and just becoming a mightier wizard overall. Just gotta find Quelana and finish up sen's fortress and go to anor londo.

Blicero wrote:

OgreBattle wrote:Romancing Saga 2 is a lot of fun, it's an SNES era open world RPG where you play as an imperial line seeking revenge against the asshole dark lord that killed one of your family members.

It's very story lite but there's just enough to get into the setting and explore.

So playing as my first emperor I...
- Befriended the thieves guild
- Befriended an order of martial arts mercenaries
- Destroyed a bandit fortress monopolizing trade
- Got revenge on one of the dark lords

After that a 200 year time skip occurred and now...
-Thieves guild characters are recruitable due to the actions of the 1st emperor
-Martial artists are recruitable due to 1st emperor
-That town cleared of bandits is now planning on building a bridge to promote trade, I can spend money from imperial reserves to fund it.

The game just throws you in without explaining how recruitment works but it's a lot of fun. Current story arc is a war of succession in a vassal kingdom and depending on my actions I can support one of the sons or daughter, or let them all kill each other.

Does the game let you choose when to initiate the 200 year time skip? Could you have befriended factions other than the thieves guild and monastery in that timeframe?

The year skip number is somewhat arbitrary as it's based on "how many battles you fought as that emperor", I fought 200 so 200 years forward.

It's triggered by either a milestone ("I fought a major boss battle") or by your emperor dying* and then the next one takes up the mantle of revenge. The next emperor is chosen from a list of characters you can recruit so if you befriended the thieves and died then a thief can be the emperor. There's no story explanation for this, you just fill in the blanks with your own headcannon as to what happened in the last XX years.

*Every battle you start with max health and healthy condition (no persistent poison), but if you are KO'd in battle your Life Points go down permanently, when you are attacked while KO'd your LP also goes down by 1. When it reaches zero that character dies permanently. But then you can recruit characters from the same class who might have similar skills, but there's a skill dojo in your castle to teach new characters skills learned by the previous generation.

The skill something is not typical, you have a chance to learn a new skill by attacking foes (the stronger the better) with different wepaons. Each character (not class, but individual with their own color pallet and name) has a "skill learning type" that determines what weapon skills they can learn. Everyone can use every weapon but male wizards won't learn greatsword skills but will learn club skills quickly while female wizards learn new spells faster. The game doesn't explain this as this was from the era of having a physical manual that explains game mechanics.

Also the very beginning of the game has you choose a gender and name. This character is the Final Emperor/Empress who will slay the final Dark Lord, so the majority of the game is playing as his/her legendary predecessors on their path of revenge.

I'm still making slow but sure progress in DS1. Halfway through sen's fortress, but keep getting distracted by side objectives, like upping my pyromancy flame, getting logan's sorceries, and just becoming a mightier wizard overall. Just gotta find Quelana and finish up sen's fortress and go to anor londo.

Did you get the coal to make magic infused weapons?

Magic, yes, Enchanted, no. I currently have a +5 Magic Balder Side Sword (i started using that over longsword because of the slightly better reach) as a sidearm in addition to attuned sorceries (Great Soul Arrow, Great Heavy Soul Arrow, Homing Soul Mass, Soul Spear).

I honestly recommend the Zwihander or Pyromancy for DS1. The Zwihander hits like an artillery shell, and Pyromancy hits like a nuclear bomb. Brokenly good times.

Next Stellaris Update/Expansion
ASpec on some points:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txOAT4_Q0ko
Stellaris - Dev Diary #100 - Apocalypse Announced (Repel Firepower of that Magnitude)

And a VOD of a developer livestream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBKSqcuy6k0

Hicks wrote:I honestly recommend the Zwihander or Pyromancy for DS1. The Zwihander hits like an artillery shell, and Pyromancy hits like a nuclear bomb. Brokenly good times.

I did have the idea of making a pyromancer with the great scythe. I'm given to understand that the scythe is amazing in ds1, and dex increases casting speed for the pyromancy, and I'm meaning for PvE since PvP doesn't interest me.

Stahlseele wrote:@Count
As for Fallout 4 Mods:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj-Xe219OYg
One of the youtubers i follow posted this

I use that mod, it's a big help when the plot is fucked up and it's hard to build. Kingath has patched it, but that mod can break the Old Guns quest, I had to set stage out of it because I thought it was a nice gesture to make Preston the city planner of The Castle. It's really funny to make Cait a city planner as she shoots up with Psycho while sitting at the desk.

I can understand her. Nothing worse than administrivia <.<