Other Games

The Tipster in Brisban Highlands I may have missed the Combat Wombat romp through the Brisban Highlands last night, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t run through it solo tonight! I was 16, going on 17… fellows will fall in line. Eager young lads, and grueways and cads, will offer me food and wine… Well, okay, that didn’t happen, Baron von Trapp. Instead I fell into the clutches of the villainous Nightmare Court, a faction of evil Silvari, apparently. What would turn a plant evil, I wonder? And what constitutes evil among plants? Stealing sunlight? Hogging the fertilizer? Hosting pungent varieties of fungus? Wearing your lichen on the south side of your body? ...

Castle Story Prototype When Sauropod was hawking their Kickstarter for RTS/Minecraft hybrid Castle Story, they promised that backers past a certain tier would get access to the very prototype they were using in the demo. Today they sent out the prototype, with the warning that the game probably wouldn’t be really playable or anything in this primal state. Well, it’s hard to argue with that. I couldn’t really get the game to do anything or build anything. I figured out how to do logging, and after I did something, the little critters built some barrels and log pits, and eventually some mining, but getting them to fill resource caches with stone bricks and then go on to make a castle from them (which I’d sketched out with their wireframe maker tools) did nothing. ...

vs Shadow Diablo Yesterday, Patch 1.0.5 dropped in Diablo 3, bringing a huge number of changes that I just had to check out. Since I AM the inveterate D3 auction house player, I absolutely had to get in game and check out the changes to the auction house. You can now sort, for instance, by the prime attribute for items in which you’re interested – in my wizard’s case, Intelligence. You can also find items similar in nature to an item you select (although in my experience, not all that similar), and the search attributes are now sorted alphabetically instead of grouped by crits, resists, stats and so on. ...

Armada I met up with Friendly Thomas and Eccentric Austin Ornsley last night for a little soiree on the decks of Austin’s galleon. On the POOP deck, mind you. Just needed for you all to know that. Poop deck. Well, we’d cracked open a new barrel of yum (with my head) (it was an accident, I swear), and before long, the companions were all muttering to themselves about the sorry state of their pirate masters, and somebody, not sure who, said we should go out and hunt us some cutthroats. ...

Rumble in the Presidio I kinda remembered the Presidio battle from Alpha, but Arislyn on Google+ was saying it had gotten a lot tougher. I think I did it with someone else back then, but I didn’t remember it being TOO hard. Basic plot is, you’re trying to get a favor from the Frogfather – the location of a notorious pirate you’ve been chasing – and to earn that, you need to do the Frogfather a favor – get some spices stored in the Monquista Presidio. ...

Spider Queen We were down a monk last night. Not sure why, yet, but I’m pretty sure it has something with his GAME launching today. Anyway, the rest of us were there, so we jumped in for another run in our softcore playground of destruction, where we steamrolled over most everything and brought the boom to the Butcher, finishing Act I for us. I think we all ended the night at level 38. There were a couple of times where one or the other of us needed a heal potion, so the going was as tense as it gets. ...

Headed to the Butcher When we went “softcore” last week, I wasn’t sure I’d have anything to write about. Sure, Sunday we made great progress, ripping through the Skeleton King and on to the Butcher, killed him without a death, rolled on to Act II. And it was fun, of course it was, because Stingite, Calrain and Spode are fun. But it wasn’t memorable. There’s no risk, no danger, we’ll log in and do all these things every week and honestly, it’s an endurance contest. How long can we keep it up before we get bored? ...

Hardcore in Diablo 3 is fun and exciting and in a group, it’s a heck of a chance for group dynamics to come into play. Well, until someone dies. And then the person that died has to make another character, try to level it up solo on the off days, only to still be below the level of the group, which are now running old content because stuff one-shots the re-rolled character if we just run current stuff, and in any event, the person playing the re-rolled character rightfully resents being babysat. ...

After agonizing over the decision whether or not to risk my character by facing Azmodan, the boss of Diablo 3’s Act III, I finally said ’the Hell with it’ and waded in. I panicked, sure, when the pools of blood started spreading, remembering how they killed my demon hunter. But my demon hunter had crappy gear. I stood in the blood, weathered the attacks, and had the demon lord dead in a few seconds. ...

Dude, where's my Belial? I don’t know anyone who, upon first meeting the child emperor in Diablo 3 Act II, didn’t think they’d be battling him at the end of the chapter. We left off last week with Stingite, Spode and me (witch doctor, barbarian and monk) at level 23 and Calrain as a level 10 barbarian, still recovering from a death. Nearing the end of Act II, we had only to find the body of the malevolent spirit Zoltan Khull and re-animate him. ...