What are you playing?

[GasBandit]

The description just says "favoured foe that is alive", not "favoured foe that is alive and on screen". Is this a bug or just the game treating Krydle as if he's being played by a particularly convincing minmaxer?

That ability is Imoen's, actually, Krydle just seemed to be benefiting from it in a way that Warduke doesn't.

There must be some other hoodoo at work, because that 3.15e04 number is apparently the base number. Every time a beast comes on screen, it went up. When the screen was cleared, it went back down to that.

Now I'm running a different mission, and on low rounds, the base shield on Warduke is 2,223. Gonna leave it running while I go to work, and see what it is when they're up in the round 400-500 range.

Well, I left it running all day, and around round 520, the ability has upgraded even more.

I guess it just gets stronger with Imoen's level. Which is 1560 at this point.

And so on, and so on...

So it's not Krydle that's an amazing tank... it's that Imoen makes pretty much anybody an amazing tank. She refreshes the spell every time a new area is entered, or every 8th attack she makes (and she attacks every 1.75 seconds). Add on to that that Warduke is already the best tank and the best DPS, and it just gets ridiculous.

It should be noted that at this area level, a typical single attack against Warduke does about 1300 damage. And even if he weren't getting stoneskin, the party is healing him for ~7000 hp per sec. He is a tanking MACHINE, and only gets stronger the more he gets attacked.

 

[Frank]

I've had a lot of time on my hands since having my hours cut after Christmas. I've been playing a lot of Red Dead Redemption 2. Not the story or anything, just hunting out every single thing I can in the world, which has become very comforting and relaxing for me.....except for moose.

I've run into more moose walking around rural Alberta (literally a half dozen times) in real life than I have in 20+ hours (not solely) looking for one in a God damn video game...and I need fucking 4 more of their perfect 3 star pelts. God damned swamp donkeys are everywhere here.

PS: The game does an amazing job with animals but the moose are kinda small....moose are absolutely enormous. The legendary one you hunt (the only I've been able to find since it spawns in the same spot always) is a particularly small example. Arthur was taller.

 

[Squidleybits]

Wylde Flowers

This is another farming game ( I have a problem, I know) that’s similar to Stardew Valley in some ways, but your character has a secret double life.

It’s pretty cute and doesn’t have combat so I can play it in my current state

 

[PatrThom]

Wylde Flowers

This is another farming game ( I have a problem, I know) that’s similar to Stardew Valley in some ways, but your character has a secret double life.

It’s pretty cute and doesn’t have combat so I can play it in my current state

You want any pointers, you let me know. My wife has already completed the game (checks notes) nine times at ~60hrs each playthrough.
A bit of a hint: keep your saves for each playthrough. That way when they release new content, you won't have to play through the entire thing to see what they've added down each branch.

--Patrick

 

[bhamv3]

So I'm on playthrough... uh.. eight or so in Stellaris. Covid plus Lunar New Year holidays means I literally sit at home and play games all day, unless I'm napping.

I've tried quite a few different playstyles so far, some more effective than others, some more fun than others. One of the most memorable ones was when I played as a hive mind devouring swarm, which basically means I could swarm across the galaxy eating everything in my path. Every alien empire that got in my way was eaten, unless it was a lithoid empire, in which case its denizens got ground up into minerals for industrial purposes.

There was also the time I built a galaxy-ending machine that turned every single star in the whole galaxy into a black hole. As you can probably imagine, the other empires were very alarmed when they learned I was building a device that would end all life galaxy-wide, so they all attacked me at once to stop me. The final stages of the construction of the machine were basically me playing a desperate holding action, trying to stop all the other empires in the galaxy at once by finding strategic chokepoints and trying to hold them off there as long as possible, before eventually losing that chokepoint and having to retreat to a closer defensive position. I got it done in the end, though, and ended the galaxy. That one was quite a memorable experience.

Most of my playthroughs have been on the more militaristic and aggressive side. So for my latest playthrough I decided to do something different. I'm playing as a xenophilic megacorporation, in which I'm basically doing everything I can to make friends with the other empires and make as much cash as possible, with which I buy up other resources I need, which ultimately makes me pretty powerful. However, I don't know if it's an issue of preferences or if I'm doing something wrong... but this just feels a bit boring. Everyone's getting along, everyone likes me, everyone wants to trade with me, I haven't been genociding anyone... It feels like there are long stretches of the game where nothing's really happening.

So I think after I'm done with this playthrough, I'll go back to being xenophobic. It's just more fun to have conflicts. After all, there's a good reason why this is seen as the Stellaris national anthem:

 

[Krisken]

I'm late to the party, but Torchlight Infinite is a pretty good game. Boss fights feel fair and the gatcha part of the game is pretty unnecessary.

 

[PatrThom]

I totally thought this was Tom Smith, turns out it was Bill Sutton.

—Patrick

 

[GasBandit]

70,000 gems later... I have bought my 10th familiar.

Minsc would probably be overjoyed... if I ever actually would let him off the bench to be in the formation.

 

[bhamv3]

So I grabbed Mass Effect: Legendary Edition during the Steam winter sale and I've just finished the ME1 portion of it.

All in all I think this is a good update. There are some nice QoL improvements, such as better graphics and an improved HUD, Mako kills no longer giving reduced XP, a Mako speed boost button, etc. Some of the old janky bits are still there, for example the Mako can still be a pain to drive, and the old money exploit on the Citadel and the Paragon/Renegade exploit on Noveria are both still there (I... may have used them), but generally speaking it's an improvement overall. Although the default driving controls for the Mako are bizarre, but this can be changed in the settings.

Anyway, I'm now starting ME2, and aww yeah, this is the good stuff.

 

[Ravenpoe]

So I grabbed Mass Effect: Legendary Edition during the Steam winter sale and I've just finished the ME1 portion of it.

All in all I think this is a good update. There are some nice QoL improvements, such as better graphics and an improved HUD, Mako kills no longer giving reduced XP, a Mako speed boost button, etc. Some of the old janky bits are still there, for example the Mako can still be a pain to drive, and the old money exploit on the Citadel and the Paragon/Renegade exploit on Noveria are both still there (I... may have used them), but generally speaking it's an improvement overall. Although the default driving controls for the Mako are bizarre, but this can be changed in the settings.

Anyway, I'm now starting ME2, and aww yeah, this is the good stuff.

It's a shame it dives so much at the end. Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 were two of my absolute favorite games ever, and 3 had the same effect that the last season of Game of Thrones had, it ruined everything for me.

 

[bhamv3]

Yeah I've never played ME3 before so this'll be my first foray into it. I know all the criticisms and memes, I think my expectations are suitably tempered.

 

[Squidleybits]

The first Mass Effect game was amazing. It’s right up there with my all time favourites.

 

[chris]

So I grabbed Mass Effect: Legendary Edition during the Steam winter sale and I've just finished the ME1 portion of it.

All in all I think this is a good update. There are some nice QoL improvements, such as better graphics and an improved HUD, Mako kills no longer giving reduced XP, a Mako speed boost button, etc. Some of the old janky bits are still there, for example the Mako can still be a pain to drive, and the old money exploit on the Citadel and the Paragon/Renegade exploit on Noveria are both still there (I... may have used them), but generally speaking it's an improvement overall. Although the default driving controls for the Mako are bizarre, but this can be changed in the settings.

Anyway, I'm now starting ME2, and aww yeah, this is the good stuff.

But what we really want to know is who is hot and are you playing as femshep?

 

[bhamv3]

But what we really want to know is who is hot and are you playing as femshep?

No I'm using the default Mark Vanderloo Shep because I want to romance Tali.

And everyone is hot. Seriously, even the elderly Dr. Chakwas has a killer body under that skin-tight uniform.

 

[GasBandit]

No I'm using the default Mark Vanderloo Shep because

 

[Dave]

Started playing a game called Ready or Not. In it you play a policeman who has to infiltrate various areas and kill/capture bad guys while saving the poor innocent civilians. Or the drug users in the flop houses. Whatever. But it's easily the hardest game I've played like this. I've played a lot of shooters and the AI in this one is so much better than any I've played. For example, if you shoot at someone they might repeek the corner...or they might run around a hallway and flank you. Last night I completed my first mission and it only took me 7 hours.

 

[GasBandit]

Started playing a game called Ready or Not. In it you play a policeman who has to infiltrate various areas and kill/capture bad guys while saving the poor innocent civilians. Or the drug users in the flop houses. Whatever. But it's easily the hardest game I've played like this. I've played a lot of shooters and the AI in this one is so much better than any I've played. For example, if you shoot at someone they might repeek the corner...or they might run around a hallway and flank you. Last night I completed my first mission and it only took me 7 hours.

Have you played GTFO, and if so, how would you compare the difficulty to Ready or Not?

 

[Dave]

Haven’t played it.

 

[GasBandit]

Haven’t played it.

Well, I can't really say I recommend it. The basic line behind it is "What if we made L4D, but punishingly hard by way of unlimited high HP enemies with woefully inadequate ammunition and forcing stealth gameplay without any actual decent stealth mechanics? Hope you like verbally coordinating 4 simultaneous melee headshots on sleeping targets 57 times per level and if you fuck up even once you're as good as dead!"

 

[Simfers]

Started playing Chained Echoes on the Switch. It's really good, total nostalgia throwback to the days of SNES/Genesis RPGs like Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, etc. but with its own personality. Solid story, gameplay's engaging, really enjoying it, although I'm not far in. I got, like, three issues:

1. The localization from the original German is a tad clumsy at times. Nothing that prevents you from understanding or that's as egregious as "All your base are belong to us", but just enough to take you out of the moment and go "that's not how you say that". Like, "that's the first time I'm seeing this thing". Really not major, just awkward.

2. I'm a fan of a lot of things in the combat system, but the Overdrive gauge is not one of them. Feels like it's making every fight, even against random mobs, into a knock-down, drag-out fight for survival that takes longer than it should. I appreciate that it adds a different layer of strategy to the proceedings, though.

3. The big one: There's no way to review tutorials. You put in a journal with quests and a bestiary, and a description for every single item in the game, but you didn't make the tutorials accessible after the fact? What?

As you can see, even the big one's a tiny complaint. This is really good if you're a fan of the genre and old enough to remember the olden days.