Despite storms both here and in Columbus, the potato salad capital of the world, Kasul and I managed to fight our way through the thunder for another FOUNDRY NIGHT! YAYYY! Only the Young by @lakatoi7 Petre’s village is inhabited only by young people! Older people disappear when they reach a certain age. Petre’s parents are just now reaching that certain age, and she is afraid for their lives. ...
I picked Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons up during the Steam summer sale, after remembering hearing good things about it when it came out last year. The very day after I bought it, I lost internet for almost a week. This was my opportunity to play through some offline games, and this was top of the list. The game opens with the younger brother remembering witnessing the drowning death of his mother, leaving him bereft and ever after fearing water. The shouts of his older brother bring him back to the present – their father is ill, and to save him, they must journey to the Tree of Life and bring back some of its health-returning sap. ...
My internet troubles delayed our weekly Foundry Festivities, but the stars aligned and once again set off into the hinterlands of player-written adventures. The Eternal Darkness (Golf) by @freddykidd Kasul led off with this one, a fairly newish quest with an interesting premise – what DO vampires get to in the long, cold dark of night? Why, they play golf! The adventure was mostly an excuse to let loose with punny names, like “Benny Hillgiant”, above. I was disappointed in not being actually able to play golf at any point, but both Kasul and I marked it up for decent level design and puns that just wouldn’t stop. ...
Five days without Internet was tougher than I imagined. But it’s back up now, just in time for the new Neverwinter foundry contest. To kick off our Season of Dragons campaign, we’ve decided to hold a Foundry contest focused on the Cult of the Dragon! To participate, authors must create a Foundry quest with an average duration of at least 15 minutes that includes the Cult of the Dragon in a meaningful way. The winners will receive some amazing prizes in addition to having their Foundry quests featured for all to admire! ...
Neverwinter Foundry Night! Wind and weather conspired to give me and Kasul enough uninterrupted power to meet in Neverwinter and do some foundries. Due to the lateness of the hour, we only got around to two of them. First up: “Merlin the Story Teller 3”. I knew this was going to be trouble when I read the intro: In the realm of Midguard lies the Sky Kingdom of Zeal, and is home to The Temple of Athena. Merlin was summon by the High Priestess Schala when the Spear Of Mars had shock the Land, but was cursed and repelled by The God Mars as he Invaded The Kingdom Of Zeal. ...
Last night’s endlessly rescheduled Neverwinter foundry night was rescheduled, so it was off to #DCUO . Blighted had suggested a Themyscira Divided run, if I happened to be available, and I suddenly was :) It was a pretty good league turnout for an off night, with Sting, Clara, Spode and Blighted doing feats and instances when I logged in. The TD map was pretty familiar – both iconic solos and the War of the Amazons duos use the same map. The bosses were different, of course. I’m told there’s a variety of possible bosses, and you don’t know which ones you’ll get before you get there. This provides a bit of randomness, and gives you reason to keep returning to the instance – the bosses give out their own feats. ...
It was a fairly eventful weekend in #DCUO – did some sparring target bowling with +John Noll , finally got my Green Lantern insignia from Mogo, and started leveling up a Red Lantern. I’d planned on my red lantern, CieEn Red, to live on the Playstation servers, but discovering that I’d have to re-pay for Legendary status, since it doesn’t use my SOE All Access subscription, was a non-starter. Deleted DCUO off my PS4 and just made the character on the PC. This gave her immediate access to all the skill points earned on both my main, TealLantern, and my villain healer, now passed, unremembered, into the bit bucket Brainiac keeps beneath his throne. ...
On the occasion of my hero, “Muddill”, reaching level 60, an update of progress with my favorite Zero Player Game, Godville. (http://godvillegame.com/) Godville is is inspired by Progress Quest (http://progressquest.com/) and other games that required no input from the player in a thin parody of the RPG grind where the hero is sent off on various trivial tasks in order to pad a game’s running length. Godville turns that idea on its head by taking the ZPG idea… and turning it back into a multiplayer game that now boasts thousands of somewhat committed but nonetheless fanatical players. ...
It was a pretty exciting week back in Neverwinter, my home town on the edge of Mt. Hotenow, where the dwarves are good looking, the elves are loud, and all the children are above average. The Protector’s Jubilee is in town to celebrate another year of escaping destruction at the hands of the hundreds of millions of assailants against whom the city guard is of no help whatsoever. While adventurers do their deeds outside the city walls, powerful masters protect threats from the inside. ...
Combat Rating – “CR” – in DCUO determines where you can go, what you can do, and what kind of groups will want you. Shouting “103 DPS LF TD” will get you a group in a moment. I don’t know what TD is. I don’t know because I don’t have 103 CR. 105 is the current target; the elites have 107 or more. Every point is incredibly important, and you can upgrade several pieces of gear without seeing any improvement in this vital stat. To bring some clarity to this problem, many independent programmers have published CR calculators, which take your current and future gear choices and explain just how much CR you can get from them – and if they’ll be worth the effort. ...