Hardcore elite has taken it’s toll! I had a level 11 and level 9 embermage go down for the count last night, one during a phase beast challenge (tough stuff!) and once in the Grell dungeon to one of those estherian(sp) spheres (and when I was far too low level to be in there). Here are some pictures of the group from the first night.
I think this is a ‘believe it when I see it’ sort of situation, but there you go. How many times have I posted announcements of a talisman port over the years?
Spoilers.
I’m running around Whiterun. I’m cash strapped because I refuse to sell my refuse or just can’t take the time between random quests. I start wandering around outside of a city and bam– dragon– a representation of a ~500 gold pieces in flying lizard form. Kill: loot the bones and scales, sell. Repeat. With 10 I can buy a house. With 20 I can buy a bigger house! That said, why would I want to end the dragon attacks? Why would I not want to wander Skyrim ad infinitum to murdalize the 500 gold piece flying geckos for fun and profit?
These things ran through my head while moving through the main quest– obviously there is a large battle with a dragon of some kind that seems like the end of the game (it’s not) and I thought: do I really want to kill off all these flying cash cows? What if there’s something from the Dawnguard expansion that I really want to buy but I can’t afford– I won’t be able to just wander around and take some dragons down for a quick couple thousand gold (BTW– where is the Creeper??). Now sometimes there aren’t dragons around, so it’s not really a rapid path to cash in Skyrim, but then again–whenever you hear that far off dragon sound, you know 500 gold is coming your way no problem.
And what have the dragons done that’s so bad? They just seem to fly around the wastes and burn hunters or groups of imperials/stormcloaks/Thalmor escorting prisoners. They don’t seem to attack any inhabited areas or burn any towns to the ground. Could it be that they really aren’t that bad? Could it be that the World Eater really isn’t that hungry?
That said, Skyrim, as we all know, is pretty awesome. There are just so many places in the game, so many sub-plots and guilds and NPC’s with little adventure hooks it’s madness. I remember stuff like: oh that’s from last year (as in 2011) when I was a were wolf. Now I took a long break, mostly due to Saints Row 3 and Shogun Total War 2, but getting back to Skyrim has been fawesome. I delved into the mega dungeon (as part of the main quest) and man they really went to town. While areas certainly are never maze-like, they certainly went TEXAS BIG on everything, even underground.
My build, predictably, is pure shit, just do exactly the opposite of this and you will do well. In the Elder Scrolls games, I always start with a Dark Elf and then do something OTHER than what the Dark Elves are good at– and too much of everything without a focus on any one skill. That is, I suck at destruction magic and I decided to go 2-handed instead of 1 -handed for the weapons after going one handed + shield for awhile, as well as heavy armor topped off with a dose of archery and a lot of Alchemy. Alchemy has it’s place in the ES series, but it NEEDS SOME LOVE. Healing potions get used a lot but it seems so artificial to have to go into inventory to pop a potion (while the game is paused) while other means (spells and scrolls) you actually have to cast on yourself to get to work in real time. Why I continue to keep going heavy Alchemy is beyond me…
Let’s get a list of people up for the Elite hardcore blind run (as in, hardest difficulty, one life, never played the game before) when TL2 comes out next week. As far as I know, it’s max 6 players per game, so if we have more than 6 (unlikely!) we can split into two groups. The only rule is that you cannot play the game at all before your hardcore character bites it (and they will bite it!).
Now– some of us that got to play the beta in May will effectively be cheating until the first big boss (which only one person got past). To make it fair, we will tell you when one of the three points of likely death are about to happen. There’s one main quest point, one optional quest area and, of course, the first real difficult boss. That should even it out a bit.
So if you are up for it, reply to this post and we’ll try to get things rolling about 7-8PM Central time on the 20th (unless stuff is out at midnight…).
While I haven’t played D&D for decades (pathfinder, well, a year or so ago), I still follow the unfolding drama of 3rd to Pathfinder to 4th to ??? from time to time and came across this:
http://kingsminis.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-i-would-save-dnd-license-brain-dump.html
Since I haven’t played D&D for a long long time, I’m not even sure what people that play it want to get out of it, and especially if my demographic is even relevant at all to the brand. Certainly there is a faction of players my age that have gone directly back to the Basic/Expert set (really the first really viable ruleset for the game) or enhanced this with subsequent publications to keep it a ‘living’ game (i.e. Labyrinth Lord, or Lamentations of the Flame Princess, etc), and there’s a faction of players that have gone off to the more WOW-like 4th edition– and the rest who have abandoned the dungeon crawlers to get to the more narrative RPG’s (let’s face it, hacking through 66 Gnolls when not in a computer game is pretty bloody tedious for those over the age of 13) if we play at all.
Very strange thing to do– signing up for a the beta of a PnP RPG– but here we are. D&D 5 is doing it, and it probably would have helped a lot to have Exalted open tested a bit more than it was back in the day to avoid the 2/7 filter (ideally including John Chung). This is really a test of Fate Core 3 and how well it does the overpowered, and here’s what I’m hoping it does:
Anyway, if they have another round of beta action, it should be in the next month or so.
After reading 2009, I was sort of WTF about the series– it was good and all but tough to compare to the insanely awesome 1910 and everything that had gone before. Needless to say, going from 1910 to 2009 with the group, there are a lot of gaps and the next book, out Feb 2013, starts to fill in those gaps with a one off story about the daughter of Nemo (introduced in the 1910 book) who heads to Antarctica. Since they’ve already done the whole Blazing World bit in the north pole– I’m assuming some Cthulhu stuff in the south…
One thing that should be noted: I really think the Gally-Wag should have his own comic. Moore took a pretty crazy (and potentially racialist) character and turned him into a perverted, cross-dimensional being with his own language. What could be better?
This is an odd one, but looks promising. The creator of Hunters and Hunters 2 is taking a crack and the seminal Games Workshop dungeon delver: Warhammer Quest. While I never got into this when it was out, I heard good things, so if they can pull it off, it should be solid stuff.
In terms of the board games, I infinitely prefer the dungeon crawlers like Descent or Advanced Heroquest where the game master is actively trying to KILL OFF the other players as it turns what really could be just D&D into a solid set of boardgame dynamics. Warhammer Quest, as I understand it, was not a game where the GM was trying to take out the players, but more of a traditional Dungeon Master role.
As for the idevice games, there are few and far between that are actually good– the system being absolutely swamped with the free-to-play/buy-my-stupid-in-game-shit games. There are a few gems that I consistently play: Tigris and Euphrates is pure gold and I am still trying to win Elder Sign with any frequency. I picked up La Havre, and while a great board game, on the iphone, the screen is far to small for the game to be playable.
The new release trailer came out right after the Pax interview this morning and It’s great. If you played in the beta, you can see how some of the skill graphics have changed for the better. Needless to say, I’m pretty stoked and will be counting the days–likely taking off work the 21st for good measure.
There are rumors of a simultaneous Mac/PC release but this has yet to be confirmed.
Ok, that’s enough Torchlight fanboism for awhile.