radio414

A little overwhelming but cute 7/10OP Suggestion: new fucked up new fucked up and i can't link the music video because it's age restricted but it's gaaaaaaay 7.5/10 One Day by Fucked Up

“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it.” -Matthew 12:43 (NIV)Melissa dutifully followed along with Rei’s instructions, not really comprehending them until she reached the point where she was already locked in. The code that flashed right in front of her face almost made her ask Zadkiel and Sandalphon if they understood it, if they could interface with everything in some way that could be beneficial to her, but alas, by the time the thought fully formed in her head, it was already gone. It probably wouldn’t have worked anyway, she reasoned. They weren’t about to suddenly understand complex machinery after absorbing the equivalent of a “For Dummies” book. Maybe she could ask if they’d interface with her watch or something, though. She was thinking too much. In fairness, the dark and claustrophobic interior of the pod made it difficult to do anything but. Even as she started sinking into whatever state of consciousness the pod needed her to be in to work, she was still thinking, still worrying. It felt different here than when she’d been summoning her angels, for example, but indescribably so. Just, like, if someone asked her, she’d say, “It’s different.” That was a weird sentence by itself, of course. Again, she tried to recall everything that had happened to her in the last few months, everything that might have led her to this point, because she’d just been an ordinary girl then and now… all of this. She didn’t get very far, though, before the machine took ahold of her. It had to be a dream. It was similar to dreams she’d had, anyway, and perhaps she had even constructed something similar in her last few dream-filled nights. Maybe that was why the machine had chosen such a location, though she had to be careful not to associate this with dreaming. Despite the surrealities, she was supposed to act like this was still real life. Rei was just ahead of her, having apparently just remembered a sordid history involving the training pods if they were haunted so hard. Melissa wasn’t particularly afraid of ghosts -- at least, she wasn’t more afraid of ghosts than she was, say, needing to buy something for a church youth group activity, navigating a long line of people also buying that thing, and then disappointing dozens of people buy buying the last one -- but it wasn’t ideal. “I probably should have asked this sooner, then, like, before we got in the pods at all, but how do we get out?” Melissa said. “Like, if this pod is haunted, shouldn’t we get another one?” The intended reaction was- okay, Melissa, in all her overthinking, wasn’t actually sure what reaction Rei would have to that sort of question, but ambivalence was not it. Rei simply shrugged. “Oh, I'm sure it'll work out. I mean it was here for use right? Of course, these things aren't actually used that much but still.” Like, you’re the one that brought it up! Why bring up an occurrence that Melissa easily would have just chalked up to the already spooky atmosphere of the place if it wasn’t such a big deal? It only led to more questions. “Okay, but is there, like, a safeword or some way to tap out or is that all covered by the pod reading our brainwaves or something?” That was the wrong question to ask, but at least “if I keep asking questions they’ll get annoyed at my pestering” was an expected reaction, one Melissa worried about all too often. “What the heck are you on about?” Rei said. “Is this really something you should be asking now that we’re already here?” The environment was similarly annoyed. Melissa could hear the rustling of branches overhead already even if she didn’t look to visually check for ghosts. She wondered if the trees were stable enough to handle all that poltergeist activity. If this were her dream, where she’d been given total control over everything, they probably wouldn’t be. It wasn’t, of course, just a simulation, but maybe? She took a step forward all the same. “I’m just saying, um, and don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but you seemed annoyed about the prospect of fighting out there in the real world but now that we’re here it seems like the opposite, so…” “I just want to get this over with. I’m entirely over these kinds of training missions. What’s with these places and deciding that the best way to practice was to beat each other up anyway?” The rustling continued and Melissa moved another step or two. “How long have you-” No, she didn’t actually want to know the answer to that question. “What would you rather do?” Rei threw up her hands. “I dunno, anything else? Unlike those other weirdos, I’m not really itching to fight people. It’s just what I’m told to do. So we should just get to it or whatever. Don’t you have some kind of superpower or something to be busting out about now? Or do you think we’re gonna be a couple of pals chatting it up in here?” Maybe that did answer the first question. It certainly helped, anyway. She kept moving, both avoiding any anxious poltergeists and getting closer to try and, as Rei put it, “chat it up.” She did also ready herself to “bust out her superpower,” but that was more because she was pretty sure talking was about to go nowhere. Past experiences on Prana had demonstrated that talking it out when someone had made up their mind would end with a rock to the face, and while that didn’t mean she was going to stop trying, she was trying to heed the voices’ concerns. “We’re not fighting for the sake of fighting, are we?” Melissa said. “If we’re useful to Mauvache, then eventually we can go home and, uh, not fight for the rest of our lives.” “Well aren’t you little miss optimist,” Rei said. “Alright then, you can talk a lot, that’s something.” “I don’t know about all that,” Melissa said. “I guess I’m just more okay doing things I don’t want to do but feel I have to.” She hears a branch crack and the response she’d readied just moments ago fires off before she even has a chance to complete a thought. The cherub erupts from her body behind her and it is already moving towards her opponent, smoothly scooping up the girl’s collapsing body with two arms and two wings as it continues its charge forward, flaming sword extended out in front of it with one of its two remaining arms.

←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Week Thirty-Two -- The Miller Slabs etched with certain celestial designs were erected around the perimeter of the farmstead. The miller, lamentably eager for some early sign of improvement, fixed his watery eyes intently upon the wilted fields and listless mill. My gaze, however, was cast skyward, and I marveled at the limitless profanity of the stars, wondering what harvest might come. Look at how enticing that is. That’s basically the only torchlight level I play at, and things like the Crimson Court’s Bloodlight and whatever the heck the Farmstead has going on (but we’ll get to that) automatically count as this light level also. All we have to do is fight a Veteran-difficulty boss after only one dungeon run at this level. Not only that, The Miller’s one of the more annoying ones to fight. Easy. Let me put it like this. There are two (2) trinkets in the game that are specifically designed to help with boss fights. One of them is in the Darkest Dungeon, and that one has a whole other set of challenges built into it. The other is this fight. So we are going to break out the big guns here. It won’t perfectly fit my normal Endless Harvest team for lack of trinkets and skill levels, but we can at least show it off, especially since I doubt we’ll be doing many Farmstead tasks for the rest of the run. Amani and Dismas are going to dance around each other picking enemies off, the former specifically for some of the higher protection enemies and the latter because he just does a lot of damage, including ripostes on enemy turns if we’re lucky enough. Sethera is the primary buff. The Jester’s Battle Ballad boosts speed, accuracy, and crit chance, none of which goes unneeded. And Junia the Vestal is to keep people alive, obviously. The fights leading up to the Miller go pretty well, all things considered. I mean, Junia did get an affliction after getting too much stress, becoming Abusive, while Dismas saw the same adversity and became Powerful with a capital P. powerful I don’t remember if we covered virtues so here it is again: Just like in real life, people respond to stress differently. In game terms, this means that there’s a 25% chance when an adventurer reaches 100 Stress that they become Virtuous instead, getting a massive stress heal, and significant buffs besides. It’s one of the few times random chance actually helps the player, and it’s a cathartic release every time. Anyway, Junia becoming afflicted means Sethera starts buffing every third turn instead of stacking Battle Ballad to its maximum, desperately trying to get Junia back down to zero stress eleven points at a time before she gets too disruptive. It’s only a slight change in strategy. There’s more to cover. The way the Farmstead keeps from overwhelming players with one long combat string is to break them up into shorter ones punctuated by small reward sections. Once you’ve reached a set number of kills, the game spawns a special crystal shard that immediately uses a move called “Beyond Time and Space”, warping the party to a safe zone with a curio attached. The curio can be healing, stress healing, loot/supplies, or, in a rare case, a campfire, which can be all three in the right circumstances. None of them are harmful, thankfully. The other way the Farmstead holds off monotony is by changing the torchlight. Every other wave takes place in an alternate version of one of the main game’s areas, which means instead of farmhands, you’ll see things like enemies from the Ruins. Unfortunately, I don’t have a great way to demonstrate this since the only enemies we fought in that wave were universal -- grubs, a couple of ghouls, and some munchers -- but the background does change to match the new environment. The effects of the torchlight also change, even if the “light level” remains the same. Here’s Gleaming’s, for example: This is about when Junia’s mind broke, though it was more from rolling like three ghouls in a row and all of them wanting to kill her specifically. The twisted geometry of the place didn't help, I'm sure. So, after that and one more wave, we’ve reached the Miller. The Miller is a Poor Soul (as you can see from his enemy description) who can summon enemies like The Necromancer, heal himself like the Drowned Crew, and deliver devastating damage to the whole party like the Swine God. He can even do two at once since he gets two turns every round. Plus, and I forgot this somehow, his summons, unlike basically every other boss in the game, get to move immediately after they’re summoned. Oh, and he has a stress attack too, as if Amani wasn’t hurting from Sethera giving all the attention to Junia as well. We do have some benefits on our side, though. Namely, his Reaping attack is neatly countered by the Vestal and Highwayman sent on this mission, the former having a mass heal and the latter being able to always attack back when the Miller uses it. This is also the easier version of the fight, since every other time we see him will be in Endless Harvest runs which are inherently Champion-level experiences. So while it is a bit of a grind, it’s not more grinding than any of the bosses we’ve seen so far, and we have seen most of them. I didn’t expect Sethera to get a critical hit on the boss, so I don’t have a screencap of that, unfortunately, but they do get the kill if people are keeping track. That’s it for this week. Next time, I need to stop putting things off and begin the Level Three difficulty spike in earnest, starting with earning a whole bunch of gold to meet the challenge of the dungeons ahead. That means antiquarian runs, but her inability to participate in combat means that, in one of the most notorious parts of the game, I’m making things even harder for myself. Good luck, future me. -r ←Previous Post -- Next Post→

new year new jack-o-lanterns two this year too wow so cool

The World Is A Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid To Die Alright, Nil said. Now, let me tell you what happens next. These things you have told me, your hopes for the future, both immediate and far-reaching, are not going to come to pass because you merely said them aloud. I would not grant you that even if I could. What you are asking for, above all else, is a better world than this one, and those do not come cheap. I will grant you the time to do so. I will grant you this as well: The words spoken here, are yours and yours alone until your death. It would not be fair for me to simply let someone else end the world in your stead, and you are correct in that I would like to be entertained. But also remember that we are still opposed. I grant you these things and nothing more. Nil’s form started to fade away; each passing word turned her more and more transparent. She spoke with the same even tone she had through her entire conversation with the watchdogs, though now, perhaps, there was a hint of wry amusement. It’s easy to defy me when I’m right in front of you, when there’s someone here explaining the stakes. It will be interesting to see how long it lasts out there facing the rest of the world. I am not alleviating the work required of you at all. If anything, knowledge of me surely only piles on more difficulty. After all, I only need you to slip up once. I only need one single moment of weakness. If anyone can avoid it, I suppose it would be you two, but even so, you had best stick together. Her last words before she disappeared entirely were, I’m leaving you the fire. Take good care of it. And indeed, while the form she had taken had disappeared, the flickering lighthouse flame remained, as did the lighthouse, the island, and the rest of the world. The sounds of life returned to the island. There were crickets chirping in the grasses below. Even with their small size and distance, they were still present against the towering lighthouse mirrors and the crackle of the bonfire, carried by the breeze to those who needed to hear it. Carried, too, was Captain Helmsley’s voice. “Oi! You alright up there? Had a bit of a scare with all the shaking and I think the ship’s a little banged up, but we can make do if you have something that needs doing!” After a moment’s pause, he added, “Take your time, though! Whatever you need!” The sun peeked over the eastern horizon, and the rest of the morning started to blot out the night, ushering forth a new day. As Kitt and Olive looked out to the west, though, to the edge of the world where Naviim met the sky, they could still, for the moment, see an innumerable number of stars. THE END OOC

More were coming. The group hadn’t even dealt with all the skeleton hounds yet, and it had taken a bit of weird levering to deal with the one that had been attacking Lana, and yet more were coming. Chris swore under his breath, but tried to mentally take it back. They could deal with it. He and Lana were especially getting good at dealing with these things, and Ziun, despite his complaining, was holding his own. If Robin could keep firing her guns and Estellise’s enchantments held, they’d probably be okay. He looked behind himself to the rest of the group and saw that both Estellise and Robin had been tackled by the hounds attacking them. He swore again, louder this time. “Uh, Okay.” He needed to make sure that they weren’t about to get more flanked than they already were, but he also had to help the rest of the group, like, if they couldn’t get out of their current predicament, they wouldn’t get to worry about the other skeletons in the room. It was like the dungeon expected him to be in two places at once. Well, that was manageable now, wasn’t it? He still had his string. He placed his return point and charged the first skeleton in the line, not even bothering with defense as he lunged forward and chopped its head clean off. Just before he could experience the consequences of the thing’s still-moving sword, though, he pulled back on the string and he was back where he started. Chris stumbled a bit. He’d still been moving one way when he teleported, and his need to stop and go the other way was screwing with his balance. It was a dizzy sort of feeling, actually. Stupid magic, not working exactly how he wanted it to work. There wasn’t time to catch his breath, though, so he tried to work through the grog, pausing for just a moment to make sure he was facing the right way and he had the right weapons handy before rushing over to Estellise’s side. He tried to do the same thing he’d done to help Lana. It wouldn’t be the exact same, if only because Lana’s leg had already been bitten and Chris really didn’t want the skeleton hound to get that far on Estellise’s neck, but the principle was the same. He jammed a dagger in the hound’s mouth, at least trying to disrupt it before it clamped down, and, with all his might, tried to wrench the thing off of the mage.

←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Week Thirty-One -- The Brigand 8-Pounder Simple folk are by their nature loquacious, and the denizens of the hamlet were no exception. It was not long before rumors of my morbid genius and secretive excavations began to fill local legend. In the face of my increasingly egregious flaunting of public taboos, awe turned to ire, and demonstrations were held in the town square. Here it is, the most fearsome boss fight of all of Darkest Dungeon, the one I’d been putting off for so long not because I just had other, better things to do than trek through the Weald and unlock it, but because I was traumatized from past experiences even daring to face the thing. It’s… some guys. Okay, some guys and their pet siege engine. It also inadvertently highlights the absurdity of Darkest Dungeon’s positioning system because we’re about to fight a giant cannon by standing in front of it and hoping it doesn’t go off in our faces. But I get ahead of myself. Here’s the lineup: I’ve been using The Sisters as a healing unit so far, which makes the frontline choice look a bit suspect on the surface, but that has been ignoring the damage the Nammo half of the duo can dish out. More importantly, Junjeong can give her sister a riposte, which is going to come in handy. That’s why I’ve been saving Dismas too, for this moment where he’ll be the most useful. It’s a bit risky, what with all this dancing around our front line is going to do, going into the grindiest boss fight in the game without a healer, but with some good speed trinkets, we should be able to keep much of it off our backs, and worst comes to worst, Nammo has a Shadow Fade similar to the Grave Robber’s, so she can hop back and start healing people back up. The other two adventurers are taken from the limited pool of those who would even go on this mission in the first place. Not that either of them are bad, just positioning them got a little awkward. That’s another reason I didn’t take any healers with me. It’s less detrimental to take an underleveled healer into a dungeon than any of the damage dealers, especially when trinkets are thrown into the mix. Most of the fights up to the 8-Pounder are like this. We win a surprise roll, take out two of the enemy fighters, and clean up the rest afterward. Which is good, because again, we don’t have quick access to healing on this squad. It also makes them boring to screencap, but we’ve been over that before. I will show you this fight also, though, because it contains an element that I thought I had to opt in to see. That guy in the front? That’s the Gatekeeper I mentioned before. It runs away after a few turns, but if you do manage to kill it before that, you get an extra invitation, an extra chance to run through the Crimson Courtyard. Speaking of, I really thought we were about to see the Sisters get Cursed here, given how every attack seemed to target them and they’ve also got a negative quirk reducing their disease resistance, but we were fortunate enough to avoid all that. Yeah, just some guys and a siege engine. Granted, it’s a hard-to-kill siege engine. It’s got 20% PROT and a permanent buff that prevents another 25% damage on top of that for funny game design reasons (armor-piercing attacks weren’t a thing when the boss was created, so to keep the boss from getting cheesed too hard by the Shieldbreaker, they split up its damage prevention). It also is impossible to debuff or inflict a DOT on unless you’re more dedicated to that specific outcome than, you know, fighting the boss. We’ve fought the other parts of this group before, though. They’re just standard Brigands. That’s why ripostes are so important, because otherwise we’d have to spend time on that Fuselier rather than the actual dangerous part. Let’s talk about the gimmicks of the fight. First, when I said this was the grindiest boss fight in the game, it wasn’t just because of the boss’s armor. Every turn, the 8-Pounder will summon one or two more Brigands, in a manner a lot like the Farmstead, except this boss came first, so it should be the other way around. One of them is guaranteed, it’s that Matchman in the third slot there, and the other one is randomized. We’d be spending time on a lot of Fuseliers, is what I’m getting at. And the reason you don’t want to spend time on the Fuselier is because you need to dedicate yourself to killing the Matchman every turn. If you don’t, he’s the one that lights the fuse and the cannon uses a move literally called “BOOOOOOOM!” and, just like real life, the more Os in a BOOM sound effect, the worse it is. But yeah, as long as you know what you’re doing, this is probably the boss fight with the least amount that can go wrong. The Matchman, especially at the level we’re doing this fight, is incredibly slow and fragile, so it would take a lot of misses for him to be able to actually go through with his job. I also didn’t realize Junjeong, Nammo, and Quinn also had a bit of mark synergy, until we actually got to the boss fight which even makes the cannon’s armor look like cardboard. It’s Nammo that gets the kill because of it. One of those ethereal images is to indicate speed. The other is familial trauma. Figuring out which is which is left as an exercise for the reader. And that’s all the novice-level bosses! Now, I do have a confession to make. I’ve been dancing around this because I want these bosses to seem impactful, but outside of the Darkest Dungeon itself and the DLCs, these are also the only bosses. The other two difficulty levels, Veteran and Champion, only have retreads of these with tougher stats and scarier names. Instead of the Swine Prince, it’s the Swines King and God, for example. It’s a disappointing decision, but I do understand it from a story perspective. The plot of the game summed up is basically that “Local Man Ruins Everything” meme, which is a bit of dissonance from the introduction of the game, which implies that your ancestor’s only fault was delving do greedily and too deep. And that dissonance is intentional! And it leads to a suitably cosmic horror ending! But it does mean that his actions need a bit of time to be revealed properly, it’d be difficult to be like “here’s why the Siren is like this” when the Siren could easily be the first boss you see in the game. I’m not going to rush through the DLC bosses. I mean, I might go back on what I said last week and try and fight The Miller, since that quest is offering a decent trinket, but I haven’t decided yet. I might just try to grind a little more first. We’ll see. -r ←Previous Post -- Next Post→

Cool rap 6.5/10 interesting subject matter for a band whose reuinification was pretty celebrated but has some cool moments 6.5/10 you're lucky i spent the last three weeks innoculating myself to metal growls but 7/10OP Suggestion: Bad Apples no not that one i already rated that one don't try and get cute on me 7/10

Praise be to the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle. -Psalm 144:1 (NIV) They were late and it was Melissa’s fault. It was her stupid fault, deciding to go off on her own to get the food she needed for Bartleby and then getting stuck trying to decide just how much she could afford to spoil him without engaging with the pet store employee in any meaningful capacity. She ended up getting “The Good Wet Food With Both The Chicken And The Tuna In It™” that said it was multiversally enjoyed by pets of all shapes, and though it would probably have been smart to just buy a little and make sure the Slakoth actually liked it, the bulk amount was cheaper by volume and she still had some money left (a budget probably would have been a good idea…), so the maxi-size got shipped straight back to the apartments. It was her fault because even after that -- and, by the way, she had insisted on staying behind and helping unload groceries too, which cut into even more of the intervening time -- she had resolved to go to the library and at least start looking into Pranan technology at the behest of Zadkiel and Sandalphon. She hadn’t been able to get through too many books, and that was even as the computers read them through her eyes, just signaling when to turn to the next page, because as she was putting a text called “Your Computer and You: A Suspiciously Convenient Guide” back on the shelf, she spotted a King James Bible and got sidetracked examining that, wondering exactly how such scripture ended up completely outside the realm in which it had been written. Melissa spent more time leafing through that than any other book she might have wanted to go through. It wasn’t even her favorite version of the text! Another reason was that, when wondering how to properly pronounce Prana’s computer systems’ power source, she kept saying “æthercrystals” and her own computers had to correct her to “aethercrystals,” which got her sidetracked into a linguistics hole she was only able to climb out of when she just happened to glance at a clock. She’d allowed herself enough time to check out the Bible before she had to dash off back to where everyone else was waiting for her to get on the bus. This was the third time Melissa had been to the arena, and it was still different every time. The receptionist’s desk was the same, though while the receptionist did recognize them, it seemed more like he recognized everyone as a group than he recognized the people who had been back multiple times since then. Whether that was due to exhaustion or just the convenience of a crowd, Melissa wasn’t sure, but she hoped it was the latter. She hadn’t exactly done anything to rectify it if it was the former, and she felt a little responsible for it. Still, it wasn’t worth dwelling on too hard when there were other things she could dwell on just as easily, such as the introduction of Squad Grand. It was easiest to focus on Rei, especially once they were introduced. They had to be about the same age, though Rei’s body language was much more relaxed, so either she didn’t share Melissa’s neuroses or she was simply more used to Pranan life. She said something about not particularly wanting to put in much effort, which earned her a reprimand, but before Melissa could actually respond to her question, Grigory had answers for Trevor. “This is no tournament,” he said briskly. “It is just a single sparring match and, in the interest of not being here all night, we will be going in all at once. As for what is allowed, anything goes. If you can do it, it’s fair game.” He gestured to the machines peppered all through the area. “These devices work much the same way as in the Arena in that no lasting damage will be done, but if you fight as though you can’t be hurt this whole training session would be made pointless.” If her angels could stare a burning hole into her skull from within it, Melissa was pretty sure they would have been, but she resisted the urge to fight back against it and simply went over to Rei to introduce herself properly. “I don’t know if my name came up when you got our matchups, but my name is Melissa,” she said. “Um, I don’t care much for fighting either -- until, like, a week ago I would just accept card games as an alternative to violence -- but if fighting is what we’ve been asked to do and it won’t hurt anyone, I do want to do at least okay at it. It's nice to meet you.”

Spitting Off The Edge Of The World There was a long silence as Olive and Kitt gave their answers. Even the flicker of the fire seemed to disappear. Nil stayed entirely motionless, as though pondering exactly what to say. Outside the lighthouse was a different story. Both Olive and Kitt became keenly aware of the sounds the creaking lighthouse mirrors and conversation had drowned out, from the sound of a cool nighttime breeze to insects hiding in the fog. Their awareness stretched outwards even further, to the sound of crewmembers working on the deck of the Swallow Tail or the idle chatter as they did so. It expanded outwards even further than that, to Andalou, to Corpus and Nieuw, to Galatea, and beyond to islands even further east until they were at least vaguely aware, on some level, of all of Naviim. This, all this, is what you have been assigned. You need to understand that too. Nil seemed to say, but the words did not manifest themselves out loud. Perhaps Nil should have been frustrated by the watchdogs’ impertinence, and indeed, her lips did purse as Olive slowly pulled himself back to his feet, but it slowly turned into a smirking sort of grin instead. That’s it, then? she said. Knowing what you do about the world, you still insist on fighting onward? All these things I have threatened, they will come to pass. I can only ask you now the question I asked when we first started this conversation: What matter of pride makes you think you can save the world? No, perhaps that is not the question I should ask. She stood up and kept her gaze forward. Let me ask this instead: What will you do, then? I have heard your mentions of returning to the start of your journey and trying again, but what about after that? And after that? Tell me about the future you are trying to protect. OOC

←Previous Post Week Thirty -- The Color of Madness Blight had struck the harvest again that year, and the miller was desperate. He came to me, hat clutched tightly in filthy fingers, stinking of sweat and manure. Seated comfortably in my observatory, surrounded by telescopes and other delicate apparatus, I recognized his misfortune as an opportunity, and I agreed to lend him my expertise. Okay, so, like, the Farmstead area is an endless mode with two introductory quests, which is cool and not the only addition The Color of Madness adds to the game (we’ll get to the other addition at the end of the post), but, like The Butcher’s Circus that followed it, the game isn’t exactly balanced around it, so it falls a little flat overall. It’s especially boring to screencap for the same reason I haven’t been including too many action shots from combat; it’s a little hard to form a narrative throughline, especially one that isn’t just “they did this and I did this.” So instead of a rather short post this week detailing exactly how I killed twenty guys, I thought I’d do that thing I promised and talk about trinket selection instead. There are three big factors I take into consideration when deciding what trinkets to use. The first, and perhaps the most obvious, is “how likely is this to make the fight end faster.” Damage boosts, speed boosts, and accuracy all fit in here. The longer any given fight lasts, the more likely something is going to go wrong. The second is fight avoidance, for the same reasons, really. Why fight if I don’t have to? That’s what scouting trinkets are for. At this point in the game, and at the radiant torchlight I prefer to play at, we can get scout chances of over 50% easily. This has the additional benefit of adding to our coffers, since proccing scout chances is how you find secret rooms, and those are worth oodles. The last factor is healing, since the base healing in Darkest Dungeon is designed more to stem the bleeding than actually top back up. Currently, for example, Joan the Vestal’s Divine Grace party heal is a flat 3 health each for party members that have, at minimum, about 30, but with the right trinkets, we can bump that up to 5, a much more significant chunk. Add in the occasional crit heal, and she can easily keep several people alive just by herself. Now, you’ll notice I didn’t mention including any of the drawbacks and, if you’ve played Darkest Dungeon, you’ve seen how debilitating some of these trinkets can be. Dismas’ head, one of the best damage trinkets in the game, also increases an adventurer’s stress by 25%, which makes sense given that, you know, they’re carrying a person’s head around with them (and that person may or may not still be alive). Indeed, being more vulnerable to stress is one of the most common drawbacks on these trinkets. Another one, reduced speed, can also be problematic. But I refer you back to factor one here. I don’t intend for these fights to last long enough for stress to get to matter (ideally, they’ll take maybe 10 extra over the course of the dungeon this way, which is manageable), and in the case of speed, that can either be planned around by ensuring a given adventurer is last in the turn order. For example, you might want the healer of the team to go last so they can actually heal round one, or maybe you want to coordinate a dancing party to actually shuffle the party order around how you want. These things require thinking ahead, and, admittedly, I don’t always think ahead, but that’s my thought process. Speaking of thinking ahead, though, back to The Farmstead. This team’s a real thinker. The big problem with putting this party together is that this is one of two remaining Novice-level missions I’d like to accomplish and I want my sole remaining Level Two damage dealer for the other one. That being said, ABC can make a pretty good impression when she wants to, and Paracelsus is actually rather good in these fights since her blight stacks quickly, including two of the few multi-target moves that don’t suck. The only real head-scratcher, I suppose, is the inclusion of Josephine, especially on the front line where she can’t spam her party dodge buff. My reasoning basically lies in her versatility, at least as it compares to the rest of the party. Ren really needs to be in the middle to be at full effectiveness, and the other two adventurers really need to be in the back, ABC especially. An additional bonus is that this is a team with two healers, including Paracelsus’ Battlefield Medicine, which will cure the blight our team is sure to take, so we’ve got that going for us, which is nice. Anyway… After breaching the walls of the Farmstead (what is it with this game and dramatic entrances holding back untold horrors?), the endless waves begin. As I said before, this is an endless mode. At the end of every turn, if there are two or more spaces free on the enemy side, more will spawn in. You’re grinding against the inevitable here. Like so: I know it looks the same but that’s because these are still level two adventurers with level three equipment. The fight was always going to be a lopsided one. “But wait,” I hear you say, “If this game has permadeath, how can you ever expect to do well at an endless mode when you can’t send in key heroes?” The developers have accounted for that, firstly by offering loan heroes as soon as the actual quest is unlocked, who will only participate in the endless mode (not that we’ll encounter any on this save, I think, since we turned the stagecoach off), and also in that the endless mode doesn’t actually have permadeath. Instead, if a hero dies in the farmstead, they’ll instead get lost for a week or two and come back. That being said, infuriatingly, this only takes effect during the actual “Endless Harvest” quest, which means we’ve got this one and a boss fight to deal with while permadeath is still on. This is not adequately explained and is probably one of my bigger frustrations with the game, it just happens. The other thing to watch out for here is this Seeds of Madness mechanic. Things don’t stay dead in the Farmstead, so any corpses left behind will turn into these crystalline structures at the end of a given round. If you leave the dead bodies alone another turn, they explode (just like in real life), inflicting both damage and stress on the party. Thankfully, their health is miniscule, and if an adventurer does destroy one of these crystalline corpses, they regain a small amount of health as well (again, just like in real life), so it’s more of a distraction to give the farmhands a chance to actually hit you than a serious threat like the Cove’s Thralls are. Anyway, the fight isn’t super interesting, just long. Josephine gets close to Death’s Door as we closed in on 20 kills, but it was never actually an issue. We get to the results screen, which has some new graphics and a handy counter to tell us just what the game will expect later… There’s an achievement for scoring 300 kills, but we’re nowhere near that level yet. …but for now, that’s really all there is. The crystal shards we get aren’t worth much until we get more of them, the best way to get more is to keep doing Farmstead runs, and we’re not ready for the Miller boss fight. Now that we’ve released the seal on the place, there is a wandering miniboss, but I’m not interested in encountering that guy just yet either. Just so you know which dungeon to avoid. It moves each week. No, we’ve got the Brigand 8-Pounder Cannon to fight next. Stick around for that. -r ←Previous Post

sadako yamamura (the ring) cadavre (broodhollow/local58) ramiel (neon genesis evangelion)

pamplemousse la croix

←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Weeks Twenty-Eight and Twenty-Nine -- The First Veteran Dungeon I mean, I say that, but I decided to do a long Apprentice dungeon first. I wanted to get as many worthwhile quests in as possible before getting priced into actually starting the Veteran-level grind and a dungeon run with two campfire logs seemed like the optimal time to finally get Amani to have her second nightmare. This one gets all the adventurers besides The Sisters, who were a bit behind, up to level three, so that’ll be good for the future. There’s also the matter of the event we’re working under: So we don’t even need to work to get Doggo those last few experience points. Not even going to think about what he’ll be doing in the meantime. I’m sure it’s fine. The Cove lineup I am taking is a bit fragile outside of The Thrall, and worse still, doesn’t actually have a healer most of the time since Audrey’s lunge will knock Junjeong out of position, but it’s got three heavy hitters against the high-PROT Cove, so the real goal is to just play the best defense is a good offense and hope that our high-level equipment and trinkets suffice. Some of that is also “expecting to get ambushed” jitters, since, again, Amani’s probably going to call in some snakes to fight us, and we want to get rid of those asap. Before we get into any of that, though, let’s talk about the infestation: Now that the Crimson Court’s infestation level is at “high,” we’re going to see a whole bunch of these egg sacs all over the dungeons. Breaking them open doesn’t require any trinkets, and results in a fight with some amount of bloodsuckers, including at least one Gatekeeper. Defeating a Gatekeeper before it runs away is how you get Invitations, which are the currency used to do Crimson Court runs. We have one from opening it in the first place, so I’m just going to leave these alone. They’re more trouble than they’re worth for now. Anyway, the kill-first-ask-questions-later strategy works, so the only fight really worth talking about on this run, despite its length, is Amani’s nightmare. The biggest problem with this fight is that the Rattlers -- that’s the non-stealthed ones -- have 24 health and are fast enough to even outspeed Audrey, which means we’re dealing with their ripostes for the start of the fight. They even guarded the stealthed ones, so Amani couldn’t destealth them with Expose if she tried. Still, the fight only lasts three or so rounds, since after beating down those, the Pilskins only have 12 health each, enough to be one-shot by any member of the team. I do regret throwing away our antivenom, like, right before camping, but it’s not a huge problem. Next dungeon! It was either starting Veteran dungeons or trudging through the Warrens. The map has become such that it’s only offering one Novice mission at this point that isn’t the Farmstead, and while I wouldn’t hate that, I got tired of waiting for the Weald to give us the last mission we needed to unlock the last Novice-level boss. We also need to start preparing for Crimson Court runs, and a decent bleed team with a touch of stress heal will do well there. There are two ways the dungeons get harder with the increased dungeon level. The first is pretty self-explanatory. Enemies get harder. Basically, every stat they have gets a little worse to mitigate, whether that’s health, resistances, or damage dealt. In the case of these Fungal creatures, the Batteries get an extra 10% of PROT, and the Fungal Grabbers jump from 33% to a whopping 50%. The second way is the introduction of new enemies. These are not the first two-tile normal enemies we’ve seen, since the Brigands have some on their teams as well, but these are also significantly beefier than even those. The Ghoul is the first one we encounter. The Ghoul has a lot of problems to deal with, not the least of which is how every one of its attacks deals a significant amount of stress. It also negates 40% of its damage and is pretty beefy besides. It’s also universal -- it can appear in every Veteran dungeon, so you can’t avoid it. We’re lucky we didn’t encounter it with something more threatening than these grubs, because it could easily get out of hand if we also had to deal with, say, some rabid wolves. We also encountered some Ectoplasms, which now have the ability to start out combined, just to mess with you even more. Thankfully, this almost makes the fight easier. I mean, we got really lucky resisting a bunch of stun attacks, but normal slimes don’t get that much harder and bleed just as easily as everything else in the Weald somehow, which means there’s really just less room for Cytokinesis to do its thing. Overall, these were some pretty successful runs. I think I hit every goal I set out for these two weeks, including some lucky Quirk cleanses in that Cove run. Next week, I’ll open up the Farmstead, and we can finally start talking about the last DLC offering. Hope you like the color turquoise. Hope the color turquoise doesn’t drive you mad. -r ←Previous Post -- Next Post→

They were almost at the back wall, or what was a wall, anyway. The fog still kept things from being too clear, but at the very least, something was changing. More things than one, actually. As they approached, Chris spotted another telltale shadow lurking in all that haze; he saw another skeletal hound getting ready to leap forward and attack. The usual tactic of just swinging, leaping back, and swinging again probably would have worked, but now that he was allowed a second to think, it probably wasn’t the best way to go about things. It would only take one stumble to knock him to the ground with a canine’s canines poised over his neck, and counting on his friends and fellow dungeon delvers to rescue him when there were still visible enemies in the room to keep them otherwise engaged didn’t seem smart. As he kept going forward, his hand brushed against his magic string, and he remembered how he’d used it to dodge a sword swipe while still keeping his feet. It could work again, he thought, except the dog probably would keep lunging forward, unlike a skeleton with a sword that had to stop. Still, it was enough to at least get the spool out and place the string for some opportune moment. In the worst case, maybe he could trip the thing up. Then an idea struck him, and, instead of charging towards the beast now emerging from its hiding space, he retreated, not quite turning tail and running -- he still had to keep an eye on it -- but definitely not running the way he was used to when it came to stunts like this. As expected, the dog kept following him, giving chase, but his string kept unspooling and, when the dog had passed that point, he gave it a pull and now found himself chasing the thing right back. It was a weird feeling, and not just because of the whole teleportation thing. He was getting used to that. No, it was because all of a sudden he had at least a few moments where he probably wasn’t going to get attacked by anything (unless he’d caught a skeleton’s attention somewhere), so he didn’t have to worry about playing defense. Chris raised his sword, and took aim at the skeletal hound’s joints, just as he had with the human skeleton earlier in the room. It took a couple of swings, but again, he had that time now. He looked up as he finished the job and cursed himself. Everyone else had their own hound to deal with now. He should have shouted something! “Alright, hold on, I’m coming to help!” he said and ran after the next.

We Have Reason to Be Afraid, This Is a Terrible Place Nil nodded. It is the same elsewhere else on your travels here, she said. The gods have gifted you power, and some have even given you training, but never the understanding of what it is that power is for. Perhaps you could have lingered on an island longer, but then you might have missed the happenings of other places. The past is sealed from you, there is no returning to it. The reason I tell you these things, Nil said, is because, despite your assertions to the contrary, I am still only a god. And if you continue to believe otherwise, accept this: It wasn’t a request, it was a command. Like other gods, I cannot directly impact the world. Whispering across the wind and manifesting in certain spots is about all I can do. If I could end the world even with the gods and our rules holding me back, I wouldn’t need you. It would have already happened. She straightened her back, and she turned her head to face both of them again. “Need” is perhaps too strong a word. But you did have to see how the world was. That is actually something the other gods and I agree on. We only differ in that they thought you had to know of my influence, while I thought you had to see the futility of your actions. I could show you more. I could show you images of Andalou’s inhabitants using Joy to fuel their destructive revel just a little bit longer. I could make you wonder why David placed your coin on an altar or how you spread that law of cycles just a bit further. But I will get to the point. My gift to you is perhaps the most impactful thing you can do, to the gods, to Naviim, and, yes, to yourselves as well. It is this: ca̼ͬnt͇ͮ̔͡͡ić̴̨̻̊u̹̾͝ma̷d̮̆ ̪s̝͉̙̉u̡͈̽̒m͜͏̣̅ͯm͝umͤ̀ͅ ͬ̂̚m̌ͯ̓u̡͓͋͟nd̛i̳̞͗. As Nil uttered the completed sentence, the whole lighthouse, no, the whole island shook, reverberating from the impact of the words at play. It took several moments after the utterance for it all to subside. You already know what it does, Nil said. Do with it what you will. OOC

wait but it's fall already aren't these just present waifus

arnold palmer half and half iced tea/lemonade mug root beer a&w root beer canada dry ginger ale