radio414

Tell Me A Story

←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Week Fifty -- The Unstable Flesh I could not store such a prodigious amount of offal, nor could I rid myself of it easily, possessed as it was by unnameable things from outer spheres. When excavations beneath the manor broke through into an ancient network of aqueducts and tunnels, I knew I had found a solution to the problem of disposal. Unfortunately, this is not a particularly exciting fight. Between the way the game generates its boss fights for The Warrens and the fact that the Flesh doesn’t actually scale as well as some of the other bosses in the game, this is an exceedingly quick run with about three fights total. I incur some risk by not taking a primary healer, instead relying on a Plague Doctor (whose healing is just good enough to keep people alive) and a Flagellant (whose healing only works some of the time), but I was saving half of this party from levelling too hard for this exact fight specifically, so it’s hard not to have a little cheese. And it’s not like the Plague Doctor is a bad pick here anyway. Plague Grenade is perfectly reasonable given that it’s twelve blight damage a turn when it connects. Thar the Man-at-Arms is an extra bit of insurance here. His mace is getting pretty hefty, and he can guard anyone that gets close to Death’s Door, tanking further hits if need be. One thing I didn’t pay attention to is that Hakima was still Gluttonous, which means he’s eating for two (Elmer Fudd should get a share, I suppose), so maybe I should have packed more food, but I wasn’t expecting to be here too long. Twenty food is enough for two hunger checks and a full campfire, which turned out to be enough. The one other fight we ran into before the Flesh itself wasn’t even an exciting one with a centaur or a wraith. It was these insects that all died in one hit. It honestly felt like this entire dungeon was one big anticlimax. I told myself that I’d go back and collect loot from a bunch of other curios, but there weren’t even many worth taking. The one treasure chest in the whole dungeon turned out to be trapped. We talked about how we’re taking on this fight last time we did it -- several AoE attacks that all inflict damage over time means the 150 or so health the flesh has gets churned through quickly. I made this fight easier for myself, too, by getting Hakima the ability Hound’s Harry, an attack I normally don’t like but it hits all four of the Flesh’s slots and inflicts a significant amount of bleed, so it was worth the purchase now that we’re rolling in money. It’s not like we can’t go back to his normal skillset later. There aren’t even any more screencaps of this fight. There was no danger. The Flesh just died because it was taking, like, fifty bleed and blight damage a turn and could only heal twelve of it. If I must attribute the kill to someone, Paracelsus was the one who hit it last, so I guess I’d give it to her. Like I said, I wandered around afterwards and took one more fight, but that was just to fill up our bag with loot and wasn’t particularly exciting either. Honestly, I’m fine with all this, even if it makes for a frustratingly short recap, because the alternative is there’s too much to talk about, which means either the game has surprised me or things are going horribly wrong. Either way, someone’s probably not coming back alive. Next week is going to be a tough one, though. I’ll explain more then. -r ←Previous Post -- Next Post→

i wasn't going to call it lewd until they went uwuwu 7.5/10 stillOP suggestion: found a fun song and a fun video 7.5/10

Tokyo Jungle

red bean milk tea (cold)

thai iced tea red bean milk tea green tea (hot)

I don't really have strong feelings either way about ed sheeran but seems like a good come-down from a game 6.5/10OP Suggestion: i loved her "loom" album so new katie gately coming in march is very exciting 7.5/10

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” -John 16:33 (NIV)Melissa wished she could just conk herself out for a few minutes. Surely the computers in her head could stretch that time out so she perceived it as however long they needed it to be. Alas, other people were climbing out of their pods, some in a better state than others -- Melissa did hope Morgan was alright, however she ended up -- and she couldn’t entirely retreat into her own little world right now. At the same time, the fight was still so fresh. She had to talk about it a little bit, so while everyone was talking about debriefings and ice cream, Melissa mumbled to herself. “Obviously I have my own ideas but I wasn’t the only one there,” she said. “What did you think?” You are still learning the extent of the burden Mauvache has placed upon you. It is only reasonable to push at the edges to, as you told your opponent, “find out what your best is.,” the voices said in unison. Tactically, you managed to surprise both your opponent and yourself. We can tell as much. Perhaps this whole session was for the best, then. Our same concerns as before apply here as well, but they do not have to be relitigated. Your continued awareness of them is enough. Sure, they could say that, but also, like, “I can’t just sit back and have you protect me,” Melissa said to the voices. “I’m just not that sort of person. Even directing from some safe pocket you’ve created for me, I don’t think that’s something I can do for the duration of a fight. But like I said, I have ideas. I think there's a way, with practice, for you to be around and me to still get out of the way.” While she was on the subject, Melissa also wondered if she’d be able to fit a treadmill in her room or if she’d have to drag it out into the common area, but that was a problem for the future. In the present, Rei was brushing past her -- brushing past everyone, really -- to head for the exit ahead of everyone else. “If you want to help people out, I’m sure I can find something better for you than just fighting monsters some other time,” she said. Melissa almost asked why not right now, but literally everyone else had gathered together, a sort of social pressure she found she couldn’t escape. It wasn’t even like the alternative was bad -- it was ice cream! -- so maybe it was more like a temptation she was failing instead. Further increasing that burden was Rei’s demeanor. Melissa couldn’t tell if that was how Rei was or just a result of the fight being, to lightly sanitize Rei’s language, a pain in the butt. If Rei needed to be alone or with some sort of comfort activity, Melissa could sympathize with that. So she let Rei be. No! This was a “‘We should do this thing.’ ‘Oh, we should sometime.’ and then nothing after that” situation. Back home on Ambrosia, there’d been so many half-hearted invitations and offers Melissa hadn’t followed up on, and sure, some of those had received straight refusals inspired by her asocial nature, but the ones she secretly did want, she’d frequently be noncommital about in the hopes whoever was asking asked again. But this wasn’t Ambrosia, and she wasn’t about to do that again. “Rei!” Melissa ran after Rei, who’d reached the exit and was heading out. Melissa held up her watch. “I have to be with my team right now,” she said, “but take my number. Text me next time you’re doing something you think is worth doing.”

I'm down for some spooks

this is like the sixth mori calliope song i've heard where her lyrics are like "i grind harder than you so i'm better than you" i know there are differences in tone and style and it's not bad but video is missing an offscreen kiss hololive fans can debate over for two years before a movie comes out that makes everything clear 7/10 Cool but kinda forgot about it when it ended both times I listened to it 6/10OP Suggestion: new fever ray is pretty good 7.5/10

They were in danger of getting stuck again. Chris could still remember how that had turned out on the previous floor. The red mist was untouchable and created a sort of choke point trapping them between it and the mausoleum in the center of the room if they wanted to proceed the way they’d started. Thankfully, none of the enemies seemed to be taking advantage of it, they were either apathetic to fighting not in their section of the room or they were on the defensive. The eye in the mist in particular was using one of the zombies as a shield, a fact the zombie either didn’t have the brains to realize or the will to disagree with. He saw Estellise raise her bow again to try and aim around it and stepped in. “I got it,” he said, taking out his own set of daggers. He didn’t even need to try to kill the zombie, just get it out of the way for her. At the same time, killing another zombie was absolutely the ideal result here, so he aimed for the head. The first dagger hit its mark but didn’t exactly “get it” as promised. The zombie was still standing, barely even phased. The second dagger, though, got the zombie to move forward a little bit before slumping over, revealing the eye behind it. “Now!” Chris said, and Estellise loosed an arrow, striking the eye in its white. The eye wasn’t dead yet, but it wavered, dropping to near the ground and not exactly being quick to rise back up. Another important point was that Chris could see all that happen. The red mist that had wrecked his head not too long ago was fading. He didn’t dare try and find out if it had lost any of its effectiveness, but he was starting to put the pieces together as to what they were up against.

←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Weeks Forty-Eight and Forty-Nine -- We Fight A Miniboss, But Not The One I Was Talking About We have two goals this week: progress towards another boss and getting more upper-tier trinkets ready for the Champion-level fights. That feather crystal featured above is one such example, an upgrade to our existing speed cloaks given its additional dodge chance. The stun resist debuff is absolutely manageable given not even every monster will stun you (even if the worst ones absolutely will). A smaller goal is to show off this Thing From The Stars miniboss, though, as you can probably infer from the subtitle there, that doesn’t get to happen. Here’s the loadout we do have, though: A synergy I didn’t actually realize while planning is the three adventurers behind The Goliath all have a small bit of Mark synergy. That was helpful to find out as I was navigating my way through the various rooms. Honestly, when I was putting the team together, I was just designating The Sisters as the healer to level her up and the rest as whatever Bleed synergy I could cobble together that wouldn’t level out of being able to fight the one remaining Veteran-level boss The Warrens has to offer. Another bit of synergy is having the tools to deal with this nonsense that the game decided to throw at us. I didn’t even realize an enemy lineup where everyone started off stealthed was possible, though I suppose it makes sense. Thankfully, both Quinn and Junjeong have abilities that destealth enemies, and they’re both slower than Ren and The Goliath also, so it’s not a huge problem, but it was a bit of a shock, especially for the first fight of the run. An anti-synergy is that I keep running Quinn and a Goliath who is Marked by the Flock in the same party, which means I also keep running into this nonsense. Thankfully, it’s a stress heal if you leave their hostage unharmed, and this party is pretty big on not wanting to deal with stress what with The Goliath who gets stressed every other time he suffers a hit and The Sisters whose every move will either stress them out or the rest of the party. But those are the two notable fights of this Warrens run. Between that stress heal, the campfire, and both Nammo and Ren having move that guaranteed a critical hit, even the stress wasn’t a big factor, so much so that I ended up bringing Ren along for a second run immediately afterwards. I probably don’t need to take Josephine on any more runs given we’re more concerned with heirloom acquisition than money, but if she’s going to slot into any party, its one with a buffed up heavy hitter like Yui on the front lines to make up for the lack of damage. And it’s not like she’s completely useless. Her kukri stab is getting to the point where it can reliably help clean up already injured foes, her blight is similarly meaningful, she can work as a secondary healer to keep people from Death’s Door, a trait she manages during this run, so she’s not a completely useless pick here. Was really scared she was going to get knocked by a tree branch though. That Blighted Giant isn’t actually that scary when Yui’s hunk of metal that can barely be called a sword can take it out in two swings. The real “Oh for fuck’s sake” moment comes later. We didn’t fight this guy last time, but then again, we weren’t as well-equipped as we are now. We outlevel him, for one, with all our adventurers at Level 4 in a Level 3 dungeon, and while our capacity to stun him and keep him from retreating to the backlines is limited, we have a second way of working around that part. Ren’s core feature is his ability to disrupt enemy lines, which in this case means pulling enemies forward into Yui’s chopping range. In a surprising bit of utility, Euryale can do this as well, so she’s not entirely useless to me once her stun attempt on The Collector fails. i showed you my collection please respond I touched on this when we retreated from this guy the first time, but this is another flunky-summoning sort of boss. He has three “heads” he can pull from his collection, corresponding to each of the three head trinkets: Dismas the Highwayman, Barristan the Man-at-Arms, and Junia the Vestal. Each of them does basically the same thing their alive counterparts do, which means you have to slog through a lot of damage, protection, and healing to get at a miniboss who’s adding an extra smattering of stress on top of that, just for him to summon more as soon as he gets the opportunity. Other options of dealing with this boss besides pulling him back to the front are outspeeding him from the outset and taking advantage of his lower-than-average stun resist to get two free turns of damage on him, or being able to hit the backline with, say, a Hellion. So yeah, a much easier time this go-around. I’ll call that revenge for week 4. Next time, we’ve unlocked another boss fight, so we’re going to go fight the Unstable Flesh and probably lose access to half our bleed teams until we start doing Champion-level dungeons in earnest. See you then, -r ←Previous Post -- Next Post→

Journey Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars Railfan: Chicago Transit Authority Brown Line LittleBigPlanet

Battle Royale Adler met Shields’ tut with a scoff of his own. “You do make googly eyes at it, then. That’s adorable. Give me that.” He reached out through his power and snatched his phone back before Dee could pocket it out of sight. “It doesn’t have to be thirty miles out,” he said. “It could be thirty miles up. I hear not a lot of organic stuff survives terminal velocity either. The calling for help, though, is appreciated. Maybe -” A pair of loud crashes and a “Heads up, old timer!” diverted Adler’s attention away from his banter. He turned and saw the robot Sibyl had been fighting now stumbling backwards towards him. It would never reach him, of course, especially now that it had suitably distracted him, but it did give him a chance to process the rest of the noise that he had skipped past. Sibyl had gotten herself thrown into a wall, and the wall was repairing itself, but at least Vi had overcome her Sisyphean task and gotten her hat back, which was nice. The wall was repairing itself. That was an important detail to focus on. He looked back at Shields. “This you? No, you’re just a tinker with a wall fetish. And it’s not that guy.” Adler pointed over at the guy collapsed in the corner, even using Command Editor to reach over and poke him a few times just to make sure he really was unconscious. He wasn’t, it turned out, but he was really out of it. “So that means you’ve got a shaker too, huh? Don’t suppose you mind telling us where they might be?” Dee just glared at him. Adler shrugged. “Thought not, but one can hope,” he said. After a moment’s consideration, he added, “Well, I’ll take those too then.” He snatched Dee’s glasses right off of her face and clocked her unconscious too for good measure. He focused in on the robot’s arm, gave it a yank, and stuck out a foot for its legs for good measure. The resulting trip sent the robot tumbling to the ground, leaving it without an apparent way to get back up and worse, a cracked “head.” “What’d you say?” he asked Sibyl. “We’re here to break shit? Let’s go break more shit.” Further down the hallway was a set of two more doors, one straight ahead, and one to the left. Adler strode forward but deliberately slowed himself so that the two more excitable members of the team might get to take the lead. It’d save himself the work in the meantime. Casino Royale Gambling had always been a tricky subject among Scarlet City’s general populace. It was legal, yes, always had been, and nobody had the political willpower to change that, but it was hard to ignore that the one casino in all the world was run by its largest organized crime group. The Hell’s Inferno Casino was in Hilltop, a neighborhood out in the west, and served as a dividing line. The Gibbons gang controlled other areas, but everything west of Hell’s Inferno was theirs. This was obfuscated by the petty tag war that had sprung up on the outskirts. “PROPERTY OF GIBBONS GANG” a sticker would read, and someone had tagged over that in barely-legible scrawl, that tag would be covered in more stickers, and so on the process went. It petered out the closer they got to the casino – perhaps things were more patrolled there. Hell’s Inferno Casino itself was awesome in the most literal sense of the word. “inspire awe” was exactly what it had been designed to do. In the midday autumn sun, one could tell the building was a spectacle unto itself, and there were visible light fixtures for when the evening came and it was time to make Hilltop seem eternally, impossibly bright. The central fixture of it all was a massive slot machine with reels that spun several rotations before stopping on its three-numbered jackpot of 666. Caesar -- ˈsi zər, ˈkae̯ sar, however you pronounced his name -- was inside. Here is what G3 had to say about him: Name: Augustine Edwards Cape Name: Caesar Active for: 7 years Power Classification: Trump Current leader of Gibbons Gang, overseeing several operations personally along with attendants Legion and Hellhound. Of particular note are the Battle of Graceland and the Chicken Nexus Heist Job (see attached files). As before, the referenced files had not been attached. Goals: Caesar ascending to power has caused a paradigm shift with regard to Gibbons Gang as a whole. Previously, Gibbons was comfortable becoming, in their words, “The most influential organization in Scarlet City.” Caesar, however, seems determined to achieve nothing less than domination and rule over the entire city. Various truces and the occasional bout of overconfidence have held him in check so far, but it is clear these are still temporary measures until either the man or the gang he controls become S-class threats. Hellhound was waiting for the heroes just inside. The most notable feature of their cape costume was an oversized wolf’s head they wore like a pauldron, the rest of the costume was an amber sort of orange. They also had a purse over their other shoulder where a small dog was poking its head out, shivering as it noiselessly observed the world. “Caesar” -- ˈkae̯ sar, they said -- “has been expecting you for a good while now. Come with me, please.” They turned and went further into the casino, and the dog shifted her position in the purse to keep her eye on the heroes. Hellhound led the two into the pit, past all the slot machines, the bar, the other various games like craps and roulette, all of which followed the Hell’s Inferno’s theme, through a back room where the poker and baccarat tables were, up to an elevator that required a special code to even access. It was still early enough for the casino pit to not have many people in it, and those that were there were engrossed in whatever gambling they had set out to do and paid the capes no mind. The elevator took the three up to a receptionist area where a secretary was typing away. She didn’t even look up from her screen as they entered. “Please, wait here,” Hellhound said, gesturing to a sofa at the opposite end of the room from the secretary (and, more importantly, the door). “Caesar will be right with you. I’m going to go on ahead and tell him that you’re here.” One notable feature about the room was that, like the casino, below it, it had no windows or clocks -- there was no way to tell the passage of time. Hellhound had not specified a time either. Aeon and Override were just meant to wait. OOC

←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→