Jump to content

Leaderboard


Popular Content

Showing most liked content on 01/22/2023 in all areas

  1. 1 like
    City folk were weird. It was a thought that crossed Ryu's mind almost every day, and today was no exception. Today, the school was in a fervor, like there was a festival today. There was no festival today though. Instead, they were sending everyone out on a journey, out into the wild. That was unheard of back home, but hey, city folk. They were incomprehensible to him. He spent the day listening to his teacher Jacq. The boy tried to keep up, but frankly, it was a lot to take in. Eventually though, the bell rang, sending the youth from a long boring lecture to... another long boring lecture. The director spoke of them heading out to the world like it was something to be proud of. Something to be praised. It just seemed too dangerous to Ryu, but he didn't have much to say to that. Besides... somewhere out there, his precious partner was waiting for him. He had to find him... he just had to... His grip on his sole pokeball tightened as the speech concluded. Now he was free to meet up with the group, but before that, there was something very important he had to do, something he was sure everyone else was doing as well. He adjusted the giant bag on his back, the bag being nearly as tall as he was, and just as wide. Time for a shopping trip. He went around the town square, looking at what every store had to offer. It was all shocking to him, everything around him. Back home, he could never imagine so many stores, all selling different things. Where he was from, there were small vendors, usually attached to a person's house. Here though, there were entire buildings dedicated to selling things. And not just one or two, but entire streets of them. The buildings themselves still felt very strange to him to. He was used to being surrounded by trees, but the buildings blocked those, as if mocking nature itself. Even the food was strange to him. Pre-sliced bread? Back home in the village, the bread was always made fresh, and you had to slice it yourself. Peanut butter? Never heard of it until two seconds ago, when he bought it. He was sure other people in his group would know what to do with it. He kept buying random things until his bag was completely filled. Despite how heavy the bag was, he walked forward with it like it weighed nothing. It was a familiar weight, one almost comforting to the boy. Now with all the food bought, it was time to meet his group. As he walked to the board, he passed by one thing that did remind him of home. A vendor was selling things from a small stall. That made him nostalgic. Eventually, he found everyone else, the group gathered next to a ladder. He walked to them, raising a hand in greeting with a quiet nod. "How do you do, fellow students?" He asked awkwardly. Well, at least his greeting was nice and 'hip', as people say.
  2. 1 like
    ←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Week Forty-Seven -- The Alluring Siren In financial desperation, I struck a bargain with the ancient things that surfaced in search of sacrifice when the moon was right. Their price was the delivery of an obscure idol and one other item of more troubling portent. The pact struck, my new-found accomplices slipped silently beneath the brackish water. A fearful stirring at the edge of the torchlight betrayed a familiar witness and gifted me with malign inspiration. I was taking a look at the current levelling situation, and with several adventurers hitting Level Five, we’re pretty close to being able to take on the Darkest Dungeon proper. Which is a scary thought! I mean, I knew that going in, how limiting our access to more heroes, practically forbidding me from dismissing them, means we were getting more useful experience per run, but still. It also means we’re unlikely to actually hit all the versions of all the bosses, but we did thankfully see the first versions, so you can get the gist of what the next ones might be like. I’m still trepidatious because of our trinket situation, but that will get rectified in time. For now, we’re just staying the path with the Siren fight, as promised. A small mistake you don’t see here is that I forgot to give Audrey, our Grave Robber, a second trinket -- she’s only got one that boosts her speed. This is largely fine in this case since she’s mostly there to support the one-two punch of Skaia and LordCowCow, but a utility trinket to help with scouting wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. On a related note, a frustrating quirk of the map design is that the game likes to have the party in the center at all times, but in this case, that obfuscates which way we need to go. I was pretty sure the Siren was in the bottom-right square since that’s what the game defaults to in situations like this, but I needed to count the left path just to make sure it wasn’t longer, which the game seemingly enjoyed preventing by zooming in on the party. I eventually managed, but it was a small quality of life thing I hadn’t noticed in previous runs. We face this lineup a few times in the runup to The Siren fight proper. It would probably be a backbreaker necessitating some pretty heavy item usage if it weren’t for a few key points. The first and most obvious is that Margaret directly counters the two Shamans in the back with her Skeet Shoot ability, which serves to de-stealth them. The second is that Skaia’s ability to mark enemies also comes with PROT reduction, meaning the Giant Enemy Crab is a little less threatening. Lastly, it turns out the team’s Dodge stat was pretty high since everyone got at least one key dodge in when it mattered. One fun interaction we get after one of these fights is how the game will let you camp before taking loot or interacting with the curio in the middle of the room. It’s something I’ve done a few times without comment, but it’s especially exciting when I’ve given LordCowCow all the damage trinkets and we come across an idol that will buff damage even more when purified. That buff lasts until we camp, so we camp first, take the loot from the fight now that the camping log slot is empty, and then interact with the curio. Now all that can go wrong is if The Siren enchants LordCowCow first. Aw son of a - I mean, it’s fine. Does it still suck when CowCow deals twenty damage to Audrey cutting her HP to a fifth of what it once was? Yeah, sure, but she never gets put on Death’s Door and Cow only gets to do that once anyway. Like all the other summoner bosses, the real difficulty spike is in exactly what it can summon, and we’re prepared for that for the same reasons we could fight through those room battles. If the enemy has a high PROT, Skaia reduces it or Audrey’s pickaxe pierces right through it. If a healer gets charmed, we brought along a spare. It’s still a grind, but it’s always a grind in our favor. I alluded to solving our trinket situation in the next few weeks. I said that because hopefully, we’ll be able to do that soon. We might be running into a miniboss we haven’t seen yet to do so, so that’s exciting as well. Until then, -r ←Previous Post -- Next Post→
×
×
  • Create New...