What Are You Playing: 9 Years since the Last Dragon Age

[warty goblin]

Watch out for anyone wielding Dragon Lances, or mages with hourglass pupils

That's a brilliant idea, next game I'm absolutely going to set my leader up as Raistlin. Honestly Laurana would work pretty well too, but I haven't gone up the Dark tree in a while.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

So basically, Solasta turned Calm Emotions into a better version of Hypnotic Pattern. Probably not a great call on their part, but I guess it's something to keep in mind.

I don't see it as a misread of the 5E text. Calm Emotions does specify that it can cause all targets to become indifferent to hostile creatures as one of the effects. The main difference in the book text is that Calm Emotions is restricted to Bard, Cleric (a bit weird that a mass control spell is available to Clerics earlier than Wizards) and when any of the affected targets is attacked, it breaks for the whole group. Hypnotic Pattern is Bard, Wizard, Warlock, Sorcerer and each target is affected individually, so you can pick them off one-by-one.

Haven't booted up Solasta yet, but it seems like they implemented it faithfully reading the book text versus the game text.

[Beelzebub1111]

Hypnotic Pattern has a larger radius and makes them unable to take any actions at all. Calm Emotions still allows for non-hostile actions and movement. In practice of the game, however most enemies with low will saves don't have actions that aren't hostile so they will just meander about for their turns.

[Form]

I've picked up One step from Eden and whilst the gameplay is entirely different from what I've played before (I'm not used to frantically dancing around on a 4x4 grid whilst desperately shooting/casting away at the enemy), I've been able to jump right into it and have fun. I'm starting to get a better feel for the various cards and bosses, but the later bosses are both too tough and too fast for me to clear. I've gotten to the final boss only once so far. Usually I get killed one or two bosses before that.

I will make it to Eden eventually. Though I may have to lower the difficulty via Angel Mode to do so.

[warty goblin]

Wrapped up my dragon lizard velociraptor AoW 4 game with a Magic victory. The two remaining AI empires actually put up a credible fight at the end, throwing absolute buckets of reasonably powerful armies at what amounted to my own personal continent. Sadly they were immediately absolutely smashed by my seven fully pimped stacks of doom. Six actually, I held one in reserve just in case.

So ended the reign of the dragon, with an ascent to the stars. He started out a young and confused firebreather, just searching for answers. Then he entered his hippy phase, started glowing green, and healing people (well, lizards) with his breath. Tree hugging however did not supply the answers he needed, so inevitably he found God. And by God I mean himself. Yes, it was his destiny to lead his people (well, lizards, ratmen and a batch of elves who declared war on the wrong reptile and got absorbed) into legend as a big scaly angel who is also God Emperor.

Various heretic foreigners (mostly dwarves) failed to get with the program and kept invading. They all got enlightened, by which I mean vaporized by the holy vapors of the dragon god to be's breath. Or torn apart by undead dragons, because for some reason I ended up with gobs of undead dragons. Look, the Church of The Big Dragon embraces all, being dead is no obstacle to a righteous life.

[WritersBlock]

I just noticed recently that Daggerfall Unity does not have an option to exit to the main menu, just to exit to desktop, I wish they would do something about that.

That minor nitpick aside Dream combined with Weeb Overhaul makes the game look absolutely amazing. In some ways I prefer this to Skyrim actually and I DEFINITELY prefer this to Oblivion. (Morrowind I like about the same but in different ways)

[Zevox]

Okay, wrapped up the main campaign of Solasta. For the most part, opinion of the game didn't change much throughout - it does the combat of D&D well, the rest of it fairly meh to weak, and isn't exactly my personal type of D&D in tone or style. I will say I did not much like the final battle; it was a huge difficulty jump compared to the rest of the campaign, simply because the bosses did so much damage (on their turns and as legendary actions) and were accompanied by so many other allies, some of which were pretty durable, and practically everyone gets 3 attacks per turn.

Spoiler

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And that random Gold Dragon that joined me as an ally helped way less than it feels like it should've. Hell, I had to restart a couple of times just because it was AI-controlled and dumb enough to use its breath weapon on my party, killing 3/4 of it, twice. Outside of that, pretty much every enemy resisted its attacks, it kept rotating who it attacked rather than focusing on any one target, and it started with half of its health already gone, so even as a meat shield it wasn't that great. It did not survive wave 1, despite me having Zelda cast Heal on it to try and save it.

Blessedly I'd picked Improved Invisibility as one of Midna's spells, so casting a twinspell version of that wound up being my answer. With Midna and Zelda permanently invisible and these enemies seemingly having no way to see invisible things, they were safe to do whatever they wanted throughout the fight, while Link's AC and Sheik's mobility made them tough to kill (although boy did they both come close).

Also, screw them for including Shikkaths in wave 2. Why on earth would you be dropping one enemy with 160+ hp, legendary actions, and legendary resistance every turn during the survival portion of the fight?

So, overall, not bad, but not that great either. I'm hesitating on whether I want to pick up with the Palace of Ice right now, or move on to something else.

Oh, and here's a weird one: remember I mentioned being on a Yu-Gi-Oh nostalgia kick? Well, that included rewatching the original show, and when I got to the end of the first season, I was reminded of an old GBA game for a Yu-Gi-Oh spin-off: Dungeon Dice Monsters. And wouldn't you know, digging through my old games, there it was, and the oldest system I still own just so happens to be a GBA SP. So I've actually played a little bit of that recently. It's honestly a decently fun little spin-off game, but it can be frustrating because everything is so RNG-dependent - even moving and attacking with your monsters requires a resource you get only by rolling specific "crests" on your dice, so some games can go by with one side basically unable to do anything because they just don't roll any attack crests or movement crests. So not any kind of hidden gem or anything, just a strange thing I happened to still have when the mood hit to play a little bit of it again.

I don't see it as a misread of the 5E text. Calm Emotions does specify that it can cause all targets to become indifferent to hostile creatures as one of the effects. The main difference in the book text is that Calm Emotions is restricted to Bard, Cleric (a bit weird that a mass control spell is available to Clerics earlier than Wizards) and when any of the affected targets is attacked, it breaks for the whole group. Hypnotic Pattern is Bard, Wizard, Warlock, Sorcerer and each target is affected individually, so you can pick them off one-by-one.

Haven't booted up Solasta yet, but it seems like they implemented it faithfully reading the book text versus the game text.

Hypnotic Pattern has a larger radius and makes them unable to take any actions at all. Calm Emotions still allows for non-hostile actions and movement. In practice of the game, however most enemies with low will saves don't have actions that aren't hostile so they will just meander about for their turns.

The fact that attacking any of the targets breaks the effect on everyone is a notable disadvantage relative to Hypnotic Pattern for it I'll grant. I do feel it's a misread of the spell though. Altering the enemies' attitude towards you would only sometimes help, and even then only if you also stop acting hostile in turn. The spell doesn't change what the enemies know about the situation at all after all: they know that you were fighting and why, so depending on that "why," their attitude may not matter. The spell could stop someone who was only fighting you because you made them angry for something like that I feel, but a bandit who wants to kill you and take your money? An assassin who was paid to kill you? More monstrous humanoids who see you as attacking their homes, or even as dinner? Not so much.

[Cygnia]

Since it's free on Steam until the 27th, I checked out the puzzle game Machinika Museum last night. Pretty intriguing. Reminds me a little of Myst in tone.

[Beelzebub1111]

Since it's free on Steam until the 27th, I checked out the puzzle game Machinika Museum last night. Pretty intriguing. Reminds me a little of Myst in tone.

In a way, but the examining of strange artifacts to try and figure out what purpose they serve seems more like Rama to me.

[LibraryOgre]

So, Kingmaker: If you're playing an Alchemist who doesn't have the Infusion discovery, how does casting communal spells (eg "Stoneskin, Communal") work? Does it still work on everyone?

I now have an answer to this: It affects everyone, but can only target you.

If Octavia casts Haste, she picks a person as the centerpoint; the AoE is based on who she picks.

If my character casts Haste, I am the centerpoint, but it affects everyone around me.

And I would very much love a "Communal spell" metamagic... one that changes the range to zero and the AoE to a 10' radius.

[warty goblin]

The Age of Age of Wonders continues.

I'm doing Mystic Elves again. This is a very natural combination, as elves get default bonuses to accuracy with magic and ranged attacks, and Mystic is all about turning spellcasters into doom machines.

There are two tricky parts. Firstly, the obvious play is Mystic culture, load up on Astral cultural ablities, and then beeline through Astral tomes for a maximum magic playthrough. This tends to leave you economically weak, as all the good "make more stuff" abilities are Nature or Materium, and if you don't have an economy you don't have an army until decent summoning gets online. So I compromised and took Materium and Nature perks.

The second problem is that the Mystic combat style is pretty distinct and micro intensive. Your line infantry sucks, their only job is to not die long enough for the backline of battle mage units to roast everything. This means your typical battle plan is to shuffle your casters around a bit, move the blocking units a couple hexes forwards, hope you got the magical ranged BBQ dude to meatshield dude ratio correct, then unleash hell on everything that moves into range. If it works, by the time the survivors reach your line, they are electrocuted, on fire, and also somehow frozen, and it's genuinely quite cool.

The combat AI isn't great at this, which causes unnecessary losses. This is doubly bad, as your economy is pretty weak early on. So expect to manually fight a lot of battles.

But I pushed through the pain point, made unusuallybad by a couple really nasty infestations plundering most if the townlands around,my capital, and am now at the point in the game where I can smash the AI who have been bullying me up until now. Highlights include a marvelous joint operation where I simultaneously took one city while a second army group relieved thr siege of one of my vassels.

[Anonymouswizard]

I now have an answer to this: It affects everyone, but can only target you.

If Octavia casts Haste, she picks a person as the centerpoint; the AoE is based on who she picks.

If my character casts Haste, I am the centerpoint, but it affects everyone around me.

And I would very much love a "Communal spell" metamagic... one that changes the range to zero and the AoE to a 10' radius.

Now I'm getting the urge to restart Kingmaker or WotR as an Alchemist.

If only I was allowed to wear my lens at the moment...

[LibraryOgre]

Now I'm getting the urge to restart Kingmaker or WotR as an Alchemist.

If only I was allowed to wear my lens at the moment...

The Grenadier scratches a lot of my itches, but not quite all of them.

Playing through these always makes me itch for classless games, though.

[Anonymouswizard]

The Grenadier scratches a lot of my itches, but not quite all of them.

Playing through these always makes me itch for classless games, though.

Honestly not sure what to go for, a lot of them seem like decent picks. Except for the healing one, but I've got an itch to do a Sarenrae Chigureon in WotR. Honestly Grenadier's actually the one I'm least intrigued by, I might just go straight.

...not in terms of the romance options, obviously. There's too many sexy devil ladies for that.

[LibraryOgre]

Honestly not sure what to go for, a lot of them seem like decent picks. Except for the healing one, but I've got an itch to do a Sarenrae Chigureon in WotR. Honestly Grenadier's actually the one I'm least intrigued by, I might just go straight.

...not in terms of the romance options, obviously. There's too many sexy devil ladies for that.

The only reason I play a straight character is Tali Zorah vas Normandy is fine with humans, but only if they're dudes.

For the grenadier, I would up switching to a halfling... I originally wanted to be melee, so was half-orc, but went to a ranged halfling, instead.

[Anonymouswizard]

The only reason I play a straight character is Tali Zorah vas Normandy is fine with humans, but only if they're dudes.

For the grenadier, I would up switching to a halfling... I originally wanted to be melee, so was half-orc, but went to a ranged halfling, instead.

I have so much trouble not going human for the extra skill point, despite the mechanics of Owlcat games making skillmonkies less of a necessity. Although halfling is tempting, while not as bad as BG3 the Pathfinder games are generally short on Small party members...

Ah, **** it, who needs strength? All hail Marie, Golarion's most chaotic genius under three feet tall!

(Yes I dumped Strength down to 5, I needed those two points to get 18 INT.)

[Zevox]

I'm now going between a few. Back to doing duels in Yu-Gi-Oh: Legacy of the Duelist here and there, going through the single-player story campaigns and doing the special duels you unlock from them with my own decks, of which I've thrown together a few more for kicks. I'm now through the fourth story campaign, Zexal, so only two to go. That one introduced "Xyz" summoning, to which my first thought is "that's seriously the name they gave it? The hell?" Besides that, eh, it's a less interesting variation on Synchro summoning, just requiring 2-3 monsters of the same level instead of monsters whose level adds up to a specific number. Also feels more power-creepy than Synchro summoning did, by quite a bit. Not as much of a fan of that as I was of Synchro summoning as a result.

Besides that, I also started back on Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, since a new DLC character I'd like to try is coming out soon. Started out just playing my main, good old Belial, and it did not take long to get back into the swing of things, so I already switched to one of those characters I was surprised I liked: Eustace, a special agent gunman type who is a weird hybrid zoner/pressure character. Definitely harder on me , but I am having fun trying to figure him out and get better with him. I've got about a week until that DLC character hits, should be plenty of time to get a good feel for him.

Outside of dabbling in Yu-Gi-Oh and returning to my multiplayer genre of choice though, I've opted to dust off my PS3 and go back to one of the greats that I haven't played in way too long: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Goddamn, this is what I wish Stellar Blade had been. It's still one of the best action games of all time, easy. Even visually, it holds up pretty well - doesn't quite look as good as modern games obviously, but we'd clearly hit the point of diminishing returns on graphics enhancements by the late PS3/360 era, because it looks quite a bit closer in quality to modern games than when I replayed Batman: Arkham Asylum on my 360 last year. And everything else about it, from the crazy story, to the fantastic combat, to the great music with perfect timing on when to have it kick in during boss fights, to the (to my knowledge) still unparalleled physics on cutting up enemies and objects, is just so wonderful and satisfying. I need to replay it more often, frankly. I look forward to kicking a US Senator's ass in the final boss fight once more.

[LibraryOgre]

I have so much trouble not going human for the extra skill point, despite the mechanics of Owlcat games making skillmonkies less of a necessity. Although halfling is tempting, while not as bad as BG3 the Pathfinder games are generally short on Small party members...

Ah, **** it, who needs strength? All hail Marie, Golarion's most chaotic genius under three feet tall!

(Yes I dumped Strength down to 5, I needed those two points to get 18 INT.)

Oh, I can't even go there. My halfling started with a 10 strength.

Though I do relish playing skill monkeys. Part of what makes the Bard so alluring to me is "I know every skill and get better at them all the time". If you're an Archaeologist, you get a bonus of half your level to six different skills, and a +1 to all skill checks.

[Anonymouswizard]

Oh, I can't even go there. My halfling started with a 10 strength.

Though I do relish playing skill monkeys. Part of what makes the Bard so alluring to me is "I know every skill and get better at them all the time". If you're an Archaeologist, you get a bonus of half your level to six different skills, and a +1 to all skill checks.

My thought process was 'when I'm not throwing bombs or using extracts I'm going to be using a crossbow, and treasure is plentiful enough that I won't care about leaving low grade armour behind'. Like I might have picked up some Strength, but there were so many other stats I wanted.

Still need to pick up Infusion though, I can now see the point of going Grenadier or Vivisectionist.

My plan for my next attempt at WotR is to go Human Alchemist, get the background that runs Lore off off INT, and just know ALL THE THIGS. Plus have Trickery, even though there's normally a good number of party members with that. I like highly skilled characters, it's an issue I have with D&D5e, but rarely feel the need to have everything.

Especially as Kingmaker and WotR actually allow me to offload Persuasion ont other party members. Linzi's the current talker, but I suspect she'll be replaced before Act 1 is over.

[Zombimode]

Last weekend I spend my gaming time with Svarog's Dream, an RPG that is something special.
First, the game uses the ARPG (like in Diablo) setup with an isometric view, character centered camera and action combat. But this is in not a Diablo-like game, but a classic rpg.
The game is moody and slow, with a surprisingly low combat density.
It has all the idiosyncrasies of an unsupervised one-person passion project. The game's setting an theme is centered around the clash between and the cultural transition from (slavic) paganism to Christianity - although the game does not fully commit to anything historical. The term "Christianity" (or similar) is never mentioned, the christian god is called "The One God", there are no typical christian insignia etc. Only the Bible is mentioned explicitly, and only once. The slavic gods have their proper names (as you can infer from the games title) and their description explicitly equates them with other well-known germanic, greek and roman gods. But the names of people and places, the history and lore of the people do not point to anything historical (or maybe I simply do not recognize it...)
The discussion of religion in the game has a very "personal" touch to it, I feel.

But the most interesting aspect of Svarog's Dream is that it is designed around permadeath. Some clarifications are in order:
- Contrary to an "Iron Man" mode that some games offer for an advanced challenge, dying is Svarog's Dream does not result in an Game Over - it "just" means the death of that particular character
- But also, unlike games like Hades where you're expected to die over and over again, every time effectively restarting the game but with some kind of meta-progression, there is nothing meta* about dying in Svarog's Dream. There is also no "restart" of the game in any kind - the world continues, its just that the person you were playing is dead. You continue playing a different person.

When I was starting the game I expected that character death would be a at least semi-common occurrence. But then... I just kept surviving. There were hairy situations, but I managed to pull through. With time my abilities grew, I amassed good equipment, my personal abilities of playing the game improved. I was... confident. The realization grew that, maybe, I could finish the game with my starting character. I explored most of the map, did most of the sidequests and went deep into the main quest. Then I was confronted with a Boss encounter. The buildup was great. I was well prepared and mentally ready. The fight is tough - but, I realize, doable. My build works, my equipment is good and I have a good amount of toughness. Slowly I grind the enemy down. I stay focused, the opponents healthbar is almost gone, I put in everything to seal the deal and... the boss goes down.

.
..
...

Then the second phase of the boss battle starts.
But the cooldown for both my healing spell AND my potions are still on, I need to scramble, need to get out of this area effect, *ouch* getting hit by a nasty damage-over-time, maybe I can...
The screen fades to black.

I was stunned. I never felt like this when dying in a video game.
It is the same feeling like loosing a character in a tabletop rpg.

I will continue with Svarog's Dream, because it is really good, but not right now. I need... I need time.

* well. You keep your levels and a number of traits that are tied to the progress in the main quest.


So, for this weekend I have something else in store. As one person on Steam has put it aptly:"The days of searching for 'Ghost of Tsushima PC' a million times are finally over."

So that's what I will play

[LibraryOgre]

Especially as Kingmaker and WotR actually allow me to offload Persuasion ont other party members. Linzi's the current talker, but I suspect she'll be replaced before Act 1 is over.

I refuse to offload Persuasion. I'm the Queen, dammit, I gotta be able to talk to people.

[Anonymouswizard]

I refuse to offload Persuasion. I'm the Queen, dammit, I gotta be able to talk to people.

Why does the baroness talk for herself? I have seneshals for that

[LibraryOgre]

Why does the baroness talk for herself? I have seneshals for that

Because when I threaten Hargulka with death by acid, I want to do it myself.

[tonberrian]

I want to play Wrath of the Righteous again, but i'm waiting for the next dlc to drop. I think it'll be the last one so i can finally play through ALL THE CONTENT.

Dunno if i'm going Oracle Angel or Fighter something or Monk Lich though. Next dlc has Titan fighter and I can dual wield some very big weapons.

[Rynjin]

Living Grimoire is lowkey one of my fave archetypes so I'm interested to see their tweaks to it.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

I want to play Wrath of the Righteous again, but i'm waiting for the next dlc to drop. I think it'll be the last one so i can finally play through ALL THE CONTENT.

Dunno if i'm going Oracle Angel or Fighter something or Monk Lich though. Next dlc has Titan fighter and I can dual wield some very big weapons.

I'm really interested in that Slayer Vampire archetype they showed. The Slayer class is one of my favorite hybrids next to the Magus, but it's unfortunately very straightforward. Having vampire powers and special mechanics to power them sounds like it'll give the class a much more dynamic playstyle.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm really interested in that Slayer Vampire archetype they showed. The Slayer class is one of my favorite hybrids next to the Magus, but it's unfortunately very straightforward. Having vampire powers and special mechanics to power them sounds like it'll give the class a much more dynamic playstyle.

Huh, hopefully they let you stick that on a dhamphyr.

[LibraryOgre]

Huh, hopefully they let you stick that on a dhamphyr.

I think it might be a dhampyr only archetype.

[Anonymouswizard]

I think it might be a dhampyr only archetype.

That would make sense.

Having trouble with Kingmaker, I think just the fact that I know the kingdom management is coming up is putting me off. But picked up the second Season Pass for WotR, so maybe I'll try the Shifter class, maybe do a Werewolf Azata before going Vampire Trickster with the new DLC. Because the one thing I've been saying D&D needs for years is a dedicated shapeshifters class.

[Form]

I've managed to make my way to Eden in One step from Eden on a pacifist run and without having to use Angel Mode. Tried a few more deck combinations and characters. Some Phalanx cards are good to have because you can always use some shielding for survivability. I've gotten decent mileage out of convergence cards as well by focusing almost exclusively on trinity cards. I've also managed a couple of neutral runs and broken down the gate to Eden and once even managed a partial genocide run, beaten Serif and got sent back to the start again.

But a full genocide run is just not within my grasp. I've tried fighting the shopkeeper a couple of times, but she just kicks my ass every time. I just can't get a good feel for that quadrant attack of hers. It's so fast and it hits the entire field and even though I know the movement pattern I'm supposed to follow to dodge it I just can't get the timing right. This is one of those bad endings you really gotta work hard for.