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  • Palworld and Dwarf Fortress, swapping between them when I get bored.

    And getting my Elden Ring char ready for the (hopefully) incoming DLC

    • How's your fortress coming along? I'm super excited for the return of Adventure Mode. :)

      • Oh man, you may regret that work order. Incoming cliff face of (hopefully) -Well-Crafted- engravings:

        So I'm redoing an old project where I turned a volcano into an obsidian caster and casted a 20z level solid obsidian fortress with the lava tube at the center. Reddit ate the original post and I can't find the original files anywhere.

        My original was chef's kiss perfect embark, 3 biomes haunted forest, mirthful grass, and wild forest, a brook running right by the volcano. This time wasn't so lucky, it's just a Mirthful forest but the need for a Haunted biome was covered by the fact that I am in range of a Tower (more later). This embark also has Humans, Elves, and Goblins as neighbors, my original was a super evil world where only goblins and kobolds existed, so I guess that's an upgrade.

        My first task was to strip the volcano of trees and bushes, and setup my temporary fort where everyone will live til the casting is complete, and underneath that began digging out my water reservoir. The process is ridiculously water intensive and brook tiles refill so slowly that I'm going to need to literally just let it run while I sleep so the reservoir refills.

        My next steps (tomorrow night) is to complete the reservoir and start filling it while I build a giant 4 lane water pump stack and build a huge faucet emptying in the middle of the lava tube. This will turn the middle blocks to obsidian and drop them down to the destructive surface at the bottom of the magma tube, draining it. I have to be careful on this, too much water will plug the tube and that is a MAJOR pain to clean out. Once I've drained the lava tube down below the level of the 1st cavern, I will build 2 double magma pumpstack and 2 double water pumpstack columns running up the middle of the fort.

        Here is the mockup

        The idea is to provide both RED HOT MAGMA and water to every floor without taking up the main floorspace.

        Once that is complete, with the lava tube still drained, I will dig out the mountain leaving pillars at every level and hollow out belowground the radius of my fort down to 1 Z above cavern layer 1 and that will be the first floor of my obsidian casting.

        As I've (hopefully) improved my casting process, my previous limited size (the limiting factor was that drawbridges are max 10x10 and need at least 1 anchor) of about 18x18 walls around a 38x38 lava tube should no longer be an issue and I BELIEVE that with my new style of caster that I can make arbitrarily large obsidian slabs.

        My original caster had 2 levels of drawbridges surrounding the lava tube, the bottom filled with lava spilling out from the Z level of the volcano top (volcanoes in DF are weird), and the top drawbridge structure held water pumped up from a reservoir below.

        Each level looked like the top of a crenelated tower, I don't have the pics anymore so it's hard to explain. It was cool but very very small.

        My new caster is the above mockup, delivering 4x lava and water stacks straight into the casting area and allowed to spread out, unlike my original model which was filled then dropped all at once. This is how I am hoping to make larger slabs as the water pours out over a sea of 5-6 high lava at the casting floor. It may not work, this is experimental and I may have to go in after each cast and manually fill in a few gaps but the benefit of making very large slabs is worth the extra annoyance.

        Once I've casted enough levels to about 20z above ground, I disassemble the mould used to hold in the lava and start digging my lava moat. In my original version the moat just drained off the map above 3z deep, and was a risk for lava-safe intruders so now it's all going to be recycled through the pumpstack system leaving just enough lava in the moat to deal with sieges.

        When it is all said and done, this fort should be a lava defended obsidian monolith where every surface is carved with the story of my people. It will be my greatest work to date and I can't wait to see what I learn building it.

        The Need for Necromancers

        It is critical to my fort to have a pit of undead butchered animal parts for my archers to practice on, and in my original fort the animation force was the part of my fort in the Haunted biome, and it worked so much better than trying to convince militadwarfs to train archery. Nowadays we have necromancers, so I plan on capturing a necro from a raid and walling him in to a little booth where I can lift a lever and let him see the corpse target pile, reanimate them, then get shuttered again till my crossbowdwarfs finish the random pile of torsos and intestines wobbling about.

  • I'm playing Apollo Justice on my N3DS after playing Phoenix Wright 2 and 3. So far I find it less interesting, I played it for a bit way back in the DS days but can't remember much. Strangely enough, Maya Fei is my favourite character of the franchise, with her half a brain cell and all.

    I'm also trying to get through Persona 5 Royal, I've tried 4 times between the original on PS3 and this one. I can't get engaged enough and it's so frustrating. I loved Persona 3 and 4 and have played them a few times since I discovered them in 2011 or so and was really hyped for 5 for years. But 5 feels like a worse Persona 4, despite all the enhancements. I just finished the third palace (the farthest I ever got was the fourth palace a few years ago) and I haven't touched it in a couple of days because I can't find the will to go on. Maybe it's me who has changed, although I still find 3 and 4 very enjoyable.

  • Still trying to finish Pillars of Eternity. The level scaling is all sorts of weird with the White March content. The game's original level cap was 12, I think, and I'm there now, close to 13. Since both your to-hit chance and all of your defense stats are significantly affected by leveling up, some areas are ridiculously easy, and a few areas are ridiculously hard. I can waltz through the majority of combat encounters and then end up in one where all of their magic casters immediately stun/paralyze me or knock me down for about 10 seconds straight, rendering me completely unable to defend myself, and the fight ends poorly in hardly any time at all. And what sucks is that I know it'll be a cakewalk if I come back and do this fight in like 2 levels, because enough of my party will survive the dice rolls that lead to characters being paralyzed for so long, so that I can properly respond and keep my party alive. I hope they adjusted this stuff in the sequel, which I do intend to start right after I finish this game.

    I also picked up Tekken 8. I have historically not been a Tekken fan. The movement is weird, and the characters feel like they all do kind of the same thing, which takes a lot of the fun out of a fighting game where you get to select a character. At least it's a full package. I went through the arcade story mode, which is a much-needed tutorial after the complete lack of any such thing in Tekken 7. The cinematic storyline, which I haven't finished yet, seems to have gotten rid of the biggest problem with Tekken 7's story mode, which was that narrator who made the craziest anime nonsense seem boring. And as for the character stuff, the Heat system does add in a pinch of flavor that incentivizes you to do something somewhat unique with your character in order to stay in Heat mode longer; for instance, if I'm playing King, doing his powerful grab moves will extend his Heat meter, which means it's rewarding you for playing him the way he ought to be at his coolest. We'll see how that goes. Unfortunately, the online mode has been a no-go. There's a problem right now where playing the game through Proton just results in a lot of disconnects, so I've hardly been able to finish a match, and I likely won't try again until I see some patch notes acknowledging that they've fixed the issue, either on Bandai-Namco's side or Valve's side or both.

  • YouTube kept recommending Fallout: New Vegas videos, so I've been doing a mostly bee-nice NCR run. Did main quest up to the dam, currently working my way through Honest Hearts (did Old World Blues super early for the implants).

  • Diablo 3: Season 30 - Already working on the Destroyer chapter.

    Alan Wake 2 - I'm trying to be extra careful because I know there's a few extra things in ng+, and I'm starting to have a lot of questions about a couple loose ends that also showed up in the first playthrough. I'm hoping maybe the ng+ ending will explain some of them. I'm only a few chapters away from the end, so I'm hoping I finish it in the next 2 or 3 days.

    Diablo 4: Season 3 - Chose a Barbarian for this round. Not sure I like my current build, but I'm hoping once I get some more legendary items I can look into a better one. I like the "story" for this season a lot better than last season's, but that might be because Zoltun Kulle is one of my favorite Diablo 3 characters. My lil construct companion is kinda kickin' ass too. Just wish it would also pick up gold for me lol. As far as the season journey goes, I'm glad they took out the PvP objectives. I actually feel like I might be able to get all of them done this season.

    • Just wish it would also pick up gold for me lol.

      It's weird that D4 doesn't have this yet. Not just talking about the season companion, but in general. Maybe they're still trying to be a more serious game, and having a tiny Butcher running behind you would be too silly. In a few seasons, once they put the Horadric Hamburger in the shop, they'll hopefully also add vanity pets.

      I just want my SC2 Probe, dammit.

      • If they are planning to I imagine they're waiting a little bit to introduce them. I try not to compare the two games too much, but iirc it was a few years before D3 even got pets.
        If they're not planning on it, at the very least increasing the pickup radius would be nice, since it's fairly small as it stands now.

  • Monster Hunter World, again. Had been playing Sunbreak together until a friend wanted to prove world was the better game for some stupid reason. I genuinely like both, but SB was so much better for multiplayer.

  • After finishing my second playthrough of Loren the Amazon Princess, I've now started Tales of Aravorn: An Elven Marriage. And I must say, it is pretty good. From what I can tell up to now, I like Elven Marriage more than Loren, so it's a bit sad, that it didn't sell that well...

    Apart from that I'm playing way too much Against the Storm. It's a pretty fun city builder rogue-like. Basically Settlers, but only the fun parts, with a bit of random challenges sprinkled in.

    I also tried to play Albion (the DOS game) again, but I died in my second battle and hadn't saved from the beginning... 90s games were something different, when it comes to difficulty. I will definitely start over again soon, this time actually saving frequently.

  • New Diablo 4 season started, so I'm playing that. I'm a Barbarian this time, level 80, trying out a Thorns build.

    The beginning was extremely boring, and I was thinking about stopping altogether or switching characters, but after I got some items, it became less miserable.

    As for the new season mechanic, it's kinda whatever. It's not as bad as I thought, but last season was definitely more fun.

  • I've been playing V Rising PvE with a friend. Pretty fun game. Much less grind than typical survival or basebuilding games. But the bosses are quite hard to compensate.

  • I started playing Firewatch a while back and then got distracted. I recently picked that back up on my Steam Deck.

    On the PC I'm playing Remnant 2 with my kid. I'm not into soulslikes but it's not bad when there's 2 of us.

    I've also started playing Palworld to see what all the fuss is about. It is amazingly derivative. It's like Ark and Pokemon had a baby with maybe some fortnite sprinkled in.

  • Monster Hunter Rise and Deep Rock Galactic! Trying to increase my master rank and unlock all the Risen elders. Doing event quests that interest me, and finally taking a jab at arena quests.

    DRG is just fun as hell and it's kinda relaxing at the same time. Not too far into it but greatly enjoying every moment.

  • Nier Automata on the Switch, it is the only version I have played so far I think it is a great port... The anime motivated me to get around this title BTW (I think it is usually the other way around) so far I like it, even if it is the same genre that seems to reign the gaming market nowadays, open world action RPG...

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