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Puzzle Forge 2?
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Popularity Score: 16
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puzzle forge 2: got more runes, made all the crystal weapons, but eternium is really hard to make if I don't want to use a ton of magic items or higher tier mats from my stash. still don't want to 'win' and get to hard mode, but probably soon. still don't know what to do with runes, nor how to access the runes page in the game after I close it when I get a new one, but looks like each weapon has 4 or 5 of them and I'm not gonna be able to get them all, especially if I keep getting shitty contracts. also don't know how to 'set' items. done it before, still happens occasionally, even did 20 of it for a contract, just not sure how.
you might want to try puzzle forge 2. the first one is pretty basic, but I've been playing the second for more than a month.
puzzle forge 2: wrote a lot about it last week because it's great. I found out it actually has an ending, but I might never craft even a full set of golden stuff, too lazy to go beyond silver most of the time, let alone any crystal or netherium items, and in a single run too. unfortunate, as I have a contract to make 30 gold weapons and only 3 contracts can be active and you can't dismiss them. but I'm still having fun, there's still stuff to try and do and unlock within the limits of my abilities (just hit lvl20), but it should really come out on pc. it wouldn't even need rebalancing, just no ads and no cash shop, you can make decent progress, but of course lowering prices and stuff would work too. don't think it'll ever come to pc though.
Have you tried Puzzle Forge 2?
There's also Farms and Castles from Square Enix which has a similar mechanic
puzzle forge 2: reached day 50, the big man came down, but I heard if you make him an item, you practically win and the whole thing starts over and it gets a lot more difficult. I didn't want that, I'm having fun now, wanted to decline but the game didn't let me say no to a god, so I filled the board, game over, back to day 1, which is no loss at all, and now I know how to finish the game if I want to. not that reaching day 50 is easy, even with a ton of items, my previous record was 48 a week or so ago. so gonna fuck around some more because it's fun and eventually check out 'new game+', I guess. just got the last upgrade, 2 customers left to meet, a few levels to unlock tier 3 tournaments, etc. and just got 2 contracts for more runes, though I don't know how to make legendary items.
Puzzle forge is an interesting match 3 medieval crafting game https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tuesdayquest.puzzleforge2
Merchant is a crafting rpg https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=bearface.games.merchant
Can also try stardew valley and Forager
I used to play Puzzle Forge 2 a while back
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tuesdayquest.puzzleforge2&hl=en_AU
Puzzle Craft 2 : A casual town building game. You gather resources by playing mini match 3+ puzzles. While you go on, you discover new crops, animals, mine types etc. There is no fighting though. Suitable for short play sessions. But progress isn't that fast, this is a mid-long term game progress wise.
Puzzle Forge 2 : Supposedly something similar to the above game, but with combat, didn't play though.
puzzle forge 2: still playing this on the john, starting to run out of gem-related stuff, so I'm bound to fail my 100+ day run soon.
puzzle forge 2: someone told me that 'setting' an item means adding a gem to it during crafting, so that's cleared up. still don't know how to access runes in the game, but seeing as every weapon has multiple to collect from random contracts you can't dismiss, it's not something I'm gonna pursue, just google/youtube legendary items at some point. but I'm close to reaching lvl40, tournament tier 3 (kinda pointless, don't need money or xp that much) and I started using crystals and stuff to make all the netherium items, then I'm gonna reach day 50 one last time, make something for the big guy and probably move on to something else. and I still haven't met 2 customers.
puzzle forge 2: made all the purple items and since only runes and legendary items are left now, which are completely out of the question, plus I had what netherion wanted on day 50 in my storage, I decided to finish the game (also hit 1 million points) and find out what 'new game+' is all about. not much, same deal with the difficulty cranked up, but I'm gonna play a bit more, maybe I'll run into the 2 missing customers.
puzzle forge 2: it really gets more difficult after beating it once, but with all the items in storage it's not that bad and losing wasn't a concern for me before either, you lose almost nothing, so it's fine. I'm currently on day 70 after winning on day 50 and already met both of the missing customers.
puzzle forge 2: after reaching day 50 last week, I continued the run and now I'm past day 100 with zero lives lost. these guys really like their set items, should've stocked up even more on gems and gem molds. netherion wanted another purple item on day 100, then the game continued, no 'new game++' or whatever. I should probably stop playing now, look for something else after 2 months or so, we'll see.
puzzle forge 2: still playing, just hit lvl25 and crafted everything from gold and my 2nd crystal item. almost done with the 30 gold items contract too, which seemed pretty much impossible a while ago, along with everything gold and any crystal.
A grea one: Puzzle Forge II. It's super fun, very addictive and I replay it from time to time. It have IAP, but it's very playable without it.
How about Puzzle Forge 2? It's about having your own blacksmithy shop where you forge and sell items, that you have to make yourself.
Another one I like and could recommend is Dungeon Raid. It's paid though. It's one of those sort of match 3 games except you trace a path. There's combat and leveling in it too!
Puzzle Forge 2, challenging puzzle game, new take on the Match-3 genre, interesting premise, very minimal in game purchases, entirely beatable without spending a dime, and few/non-intrusive ads. It's the only game I keep on my phone, I tend to delete anything I've beaten.
Puzzle Forge 2, it's one of my favorite games on my phone because of its versatility. You can play it for 5 minutes or 30 minutes and it never gets boring. It's one of the only game apps that has stayed on my phone since I've gotten it.
I love this game to pieces, and am working on starting a subreddit now. Check it out!
Not only iOS, but Google Play Store as well!
Games
- Puzzle Forge 2 - (f2p, micro transactions) To describe Puzzle Forge as a match three game would be... wrong. But, that's the only thing I have to compare it to. It's a match three with a creating mechanic. The micro transactions are entirely unnecessary. I've put several hours into this game, and the only impedance in my progress is that I suck. Overall rating: 4.5/5
- Atomas - (f2p, micro transactions) Atomas is another game I have difficulty describing. It's like... 2048 meets a matching game. And it's all in a circle. Micro transactions are entirely unnecessary. (Overall rating: 4/5)
- Plague Inc. - (f2p, micro transactions) A rather entertaining game about killing the entire world via disease. Interesting concept, but it gets resistive quickly. (Overall rating: 4/5)
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puzzle forge 2 (android): got more runes, made all the crystal weapons, but eternium is really hard to make if I don't want to use a ton of magic items or higher tier mats from my stash. still don't want to 'win' and get to hard mode, but probably soon. still don't know what to do with runes, nor how to access the runes page in the game after I close it when I get a new one, but looks like each weapon has 4 or 5 of them and I'm not gonna be able to get them all, especially if I keep getting shitty contracts. also don't know how to 'set' items. done it before, still happens occasionally, even did 20 of it for a contract, just not sure how.
risen: (massive spoilers ahead!) dear diary, week 4 on the island, busy as usual, but I'm starting to see the light, or should I say flame, at the end of the tunnel (no, I shouldn't say that, I'm not part of the fucking inquisition). with most of the island dead again for chapter 2, I was ready to do some quests. headed to harbour town, I can now enter via either gate, thanks, mendoza. talked to everyone but only got another teleport stone and found out that romanov was indeed not in his cell anymore. konrad seemed to have calmed down, bought some eggs and spice from him, then he aggroed again. guess anger survives even chapter transitions.
patty can now teach me stuff I don't want and told me her dad left something in a cemetery. we went there (more enemies spawned on the way) and she gave me a key for the treasure I'd already dug out while exploring. a clue was inside, she blessed me and my shovel, then told me to get the other 5 clues similarly not hidden anymore. at one place I found one of romanov's men, the woman beater erikson. we had a friendly chat, but he was only there to make sure I was safe, at least until I find all the clues. I'd missed a chest earlier in a levitation-only area, never looked down there.
on the way to the last chest I ran into vasili from harbour town, also one of romanov's guys. not the sharpest tool in the shed, but a tool nonetheless. I could even ask him to tag along and help me fight nothing because I'd already cleared the west coast, and he still talked about 'our' treasure. the nerve! when I got back to patty in the cemetery, I found a nice gentleman who told me to follow him to romanov or patty gets it. so I did. didn't want to cut a deal with romanov, so I cut his throat along with his buddies' (took a few tries, I still suck at combat), grabbed the loot from the cave and freed patty. she got her dad's map, I got some gold and that was that. a bit anticlimactic.
went back to severin in the village, dealt with the gnomes, took more tries than the pirates, fucking npcs in the way. friendly fire either needs to be turned off when there's a battle with 20 fuckers running around, or give me the xp for all the kills so I don't have to make sure I don't step on anybody's toes. or give me the option to deal with them alone. knocking them out doesn't work, named npcs tend to be invincible, so I knocked out and looted a few regulars for some xp, let myself be beaten, then severin told me the crystal disc was stolen by gnmes.
I headed east through a cave full of skeletons and ghouls, one of the former being patroscon, the undead lord haunting leon. there's one more skeleton ruin on the east coast, so the quest wasn't done yet, but I looted a better shield and found a 'levitation spot'. in the east I ran into jasmin and her pet wolf, stole a horn saw from her, the final gutting tool. found cyrus at the druid's hut, but not the druid who was supposed to fix one of the discs. nothing is ever easy. and cyrus is a dick, he was nicer in the monastery.
jasmin lent me her wolf to sniff out eldric's whereabouts, such a nice girl. 'I can sell you some raw meat to make friends with my wolf.' fuck you, lady, I just paid you 200 gold for a bunch of useless animal skins and I've been hoarding raw meat for weeks. then the wolf led me back to the hut and I said, 'of course, the druid's hut!' wow... we ended up at a temple entrance I wanted to leave for later, but the old man was inside. a magic barrier blocked my way and as expected, cyrus did fuck all but gave me scrolls to destroy it myself. at least he came in with me and helped deal with the lizardmen who drop lizard swords, same dmg as mine but cooler looking, except they're 2-handed. and I like that you can use the nautilus scroll to scout ahead. freed the druid (and an ogre), he healed the crystal in the disc and told me to come back before making a decision about the volcano.
back in civilization I got create scrolls, alchemy 3 and made str pots and ate eggs and apples to nearly max out my str at 195 (was 95+3 and I'll get another str pot from the don later). broke the magic barrier in the monastery library (xp potion recipe, kinda useless now) and showed the lizard swords around until walter in harbour town told me he could make me an obsidian sword blank, gonna do it later, but I got a better helmet.
lizardmen showed up here and there after I met them in the prison, more xp and teleport stones. guess as former rulers of the world they'd have fast travel technology. they go down in 2 hits now (or 1 charged with sword 7), but hit really hard and parry every fucking time. charge breaks parry, but I almost always fuck it up, so at 195 str I was back at the 'kill 2 enemies, back to bed' routine from the beginning of the game... the prison wasn't this bad and most of the time I was wearing the sneak ring, forgot to replace it.
killed the gnomes and skeletons with henrik, jasmin's hubby, who was also after the gyrger, the legendary gnome beast. henrik talked way too much but didn't steal xp. got a slightly better sword, all the pieces of the 2 special swords (both need higher smithing) and the open locks rune for those lvl3 chests. ashbeasts and ogres are doable now too, and just for fun I tried the turn into ashbeast scroll. powerful stuff, killed half of harbour town, got decent xp too. then I reloaded and cleared the temple near tilda's farm with the elite lizardmen and other beasties. was expecting a bit more, though the blue barrier is story-related, so we'll come back eventually. same with the caves above the bandit camp, but I killed some brontoks and stuff in the meantime.
found a 2-handed 80 dmg sword, equipped my sword +1 ring a bit early to use it with a shield and went to the only place I hadn't been, the eastern temple, to see what the don's men were up to. or down to, as one of the treasure hunting triplets fell through a trapdoor. to be fair, I did the same while looking for the trapdoor itself. saved and/or killed everyone I could, found the last crystal disc and a single lonely lizardman. guess with less exploration it would've been such a surprising revelation, then lizardmen everywhere topside, so it was a bit underwhelming, I was expecting lizard city, but less combat was fine too.
got smithing 2-3, made all the swords, none were better than mine. the obsidian 2h will be an upgrade, just gotta advance the story. got new armor from the don, took the discs to mendoza, he could have them if the don gets harbour town back. he was waiting with all his guards lined up at the gate. I was pretty excited to find out what's next, but it was one of those 'fucking npcs in the way, no xp for you' kinda deals and it's not 50 gnome xp but 250 lizardman, but they didn't attack me afterwards at least. and that concluded chapter 2.
killed more lizard people at the monastery, saved citizens (probably lost out on a ton of xp and could've saved more npcs), then went around most of the map yet again to kill any new spawns. it's really tedious now, especially with all the extra running around I did in previous chapters and no west coast teleport stone for some reason. only lizardmen this time, 3 can still fuck me up. then to harbour town to tell the commandant his commandanting days are over. the don moved back, promoted me to captain, sold me another armor, I looted his bandit camp mancave, then headed back to the volcano.
had half a mind to go in alone, but I didn't and still lost half my health with 'help' and had to clear everything on my own because the men camped in front of the closed gate of the lizard fortress until I found a way to open it. had to levitate to 4 fucking lizardmen, not much space to land, move around or charge, wasn't frustrating at all, so I used 40 bolts to take one down (my crossbow is useless) and flew over quick before the priest could use fireballs on my ass. then the team could finally enter the gate after I deciphered the writing on a column because by turning 2 winches I suddenly became fluent in saurian. wtf?
according to the guy I found casually mining there (he was captured), the drawbridge hasn't been used in forever, not even by lizards, but he and the crazy mushroom dude in the swamp (also captured, hilarious character) told me where I can loot a map to find my way inside. btw, this is lizard city, and every time I think I've been everywhere, the game throws another huge area at me. not 100% complaint, but I'd like to finish it soon and this is just the outside of the fort-whatever, there are 5 more story-blocked areas for the next chapter, so yeah...
last week's stuff here, this week in another comment below. it'd be great if the weekly thread went back to being weekly...
puzzle forge 2 (android): after reaching day 50 last week, I continued the run and now I'm past day 100 with zero lives lost. these guys really like their set items, should've stocked up even more on gems and gem molds. netherion wanted another purple item on day 100, then the game continued, no 'new game++' or whatever. I should probably stop playing now, look for something else after 2 months or so, we'll see.
risen 2: week 3. definitely not gonna be done in a month, and I'm not even writing a journal now. and I still don't understand how I got so much better at swordfighting suddenly, no points in blades, no cool sword, only upped toughness and I can still kill stuff even alone. weird, but still gonna pick the musket route, even though I just looted the second slightly-better-than-my-current-one sword. fucking hell... not too late to go back, only put 1k glory into firearms so far, but there's no blocking animals and beasts, so it's not an option for me, but I found another qte, ghouls can jump on you and you have to mash space to get rid of them.
anyway, it was really worth getting sneaking and thievery 2 early, plus not giving largo his clothes back, which means I could loot jack's chest on tacarigua and with the ring inside I can have 50 thievery already. fall damage is ridiculous though. I don't bother with healing while I'm questing and talking to npcs, but once after some combat I had 2 hp left and when I fell off the stairs while sneaking, like 3 steps high, I died. it was funny.
met the local gunsmith, but he wasn't even selling the fucking shotgun yet, the bastard. I was tempted to pick up a better pistol in the meantime for my better sword, but it's 950 gold. I swear I saw it in a guide that he'd sell the shotgun and later better stuff too. I mean I was getting by even alone as an untrained swordsman, so it's not that important yet, but come on... at least I had barely enough thievery with a ring to steal the skinning knife from isabella, right after she gave it to me because I drank a silver tongue potion so she'd talk to me in the first place. so now I have 2 skinning knives. cleared some of the island, just entered the native camp, gonna quest there, get the gutting tools, then join the inquisition and finally get some weapons and kill everything.
avalon legends solitaire: it's been a while since my last solitaire and since I picked up a few in the steam sale, in addition to the ones I had unplayed, I figured I'd knock this one off the list, even though I didn't want to start a side game while playing risen 2, I don't spend enough time playing that one as it is.
nothing special (the sequel looks a lot more promising), except you can sell special items, not just buy them, not sure why you'd do that though. money is hard to come by and powerups are expensive, but you'd still need more of them, not less. and you might have to replay entire chapters because the game doesn't even let you retry the current level, let alone single levels after beating a chapter, which is also quite common in solitaire games, sadly, but I can live with that, keep trying until I get the desired result, then move on.
well, not here, though as long as I hit the chapter goal by the end, I didn't give a fuck, obviously not gonna go for perfects with a shitty system like this. it even cut down on repetition, I only had to play each hand once, except chapter 9 because of rng, then 18 was close too, used a ton of wildcards to get 12k points (got 12.8), then spent my money on buying them back for chapter 19 for a 25x combo. you really need combos and wildcards, otherwise you're fucked later on. chapter 20 was tough too, but pulled it off on the first try. with a replay level function it'd be like every generic solitaire, without it it's more stressful, but you can buy wildcards and it's not that difficult anyway, so it kinda evens out.
sinkr: yet another single-buck minimalist puzzle game, reminiscent of the excellent hook, then it introduces hade-like elements (a game I've yet to finish, got stuck months ago), then portals. the 60 levels should take about an hour or two to complete, but from around 40 a few require timing to pull things off. wasn't expecting that, so I can't whole-heartedly recommend it, but it's pretty cool otherwise, the music and sound effects complement each other well and volume sliders are in the works. no undo button, the game wasn't designed with that in mind, but it's not really necessary. the aesthetics are nice too, except the 3d objects floating in the background, which you can turn off. I think it's a worthy addition to one's puzzle collection.
forgotten tales: day of the dead: another solitaire, decided to go for this next instead of avalon legends 2. I read about grind towards the end, never a good thing, and decks not being random, which is wtf, so I figured let's get this out of the way as well.
turns out, the most helpful review on steam is wrong. decks are in fact randomized, but the draw pile is based on the cards available on the board, which makes sense because you have to use a single deck to clear 3 rounds in one go, so you can't have too many useless cards (and can't save mid-level, if you go back to the map, you'll start over next time). so technically every hand is solvable, and it plays more like a puzzle game than a completely randomized solitaire, which is fine by me, except it makes me second-guess every move and the whole experience gets more stressful than it should be.
add to it bullshit goals like 'no mistakes' and the fact that as soon as you fail a round goal, the game forces you to restart the entire level, so even if you accidentally missed a card you could've taken down from the pile and drew the next card, back to round 1 with you. or 'play x of this kind' when, despite the 'calculated randomness', there just aren't any available, and if there are, they fuck with the score, so getting 3 skulls and/or just completing certain goals can be tricky. and with instant restarts you can't even finish some levels to get more cash for powerups. that's why I won't buy half the picross games on steam, they reset after a few mistakes. challenge my ass...
the game only has 100 levels (which technically adds up to 300 ) and it looks and sounds great (except the main font they went with and animations are too slow) and has a story and everything, it gave me a grim fandango vibe, the main character's name's manuel too, but it really started to irritate me on levels 17 and 18. undos are single use as well, so I try not to use them or any other powerup if possible, used at least as many accidentally as on purpose, and it didn't even work all the time, it could've been implemented better. but they're cheap and cost even less if you buy more at the same time, so there's that.
achievements in-game only show up or show any progress when you restart the game and sometimes sfx cuts out and there's only music for a while. it'd pretty cool if it weren't so stressful and frustrating to reach chapter goals and enough points at the same time. fucking level 40 can fuck off, took about a dozen tries to just pass it with a powerup and I couldn't be bothered to 3-skull it. 50 was better but still no 3 skulls and 60 can join 40 in hell, so I might give up on perfecting everything, we'll see how the final 3 chapters go.
puzzle forge 2 (android): wrote a lot about it last week because it's great. it actually has an ending, but not for me, I might never craft a full set of golden stuff, too lazy to go beyond silver most of the time (and I have a contract for 30 gold items, can't dismiss it), though I made a crystal sword already, but there's another tier above that too. but I'm still having fun, there's still stuff to try and do and unlock with my limited abilities (just hit lvl20), but it should really come out on pc. it wouldn't even need rebalancing, just no ads and no cash shop, you can make decent progress, but of course lowering prices would work too. don't think it'll ever come to pc though.
risen: bounced off everything piranha bytes last year because of design/ui stuff, then elex came out with the same nonsense mechanics, but the couple hours of gameplay I watched brought back risen memories. hated and still don't understand the 'can't see interactable items with your weapon drawn' mechanic, shitty quest log, no map markers and other basic stuff because I'm lazy, but I tried the first demo again, bought the trilogy+dlc 75% off, spent last week reading up on stuff as always, got the unofficial 1.3 patch, put quicksave to f5 and started playing. (I asked so many questions from a steam buddy, he started a replay before me and he plays faster too.)
it's hard, clunky, you can fuck up your build, lose out on quests, factions are exclusive, etc. so not at all a game for me, yet I'm weirdly drawn to it. I'm a huuuuge fan of two worlds, so I don't need polish, love cheese and everything, but this is a whole different thing, so I'm worried a bit, but if worst comes to worst, I'll just turn on god mode, though that'd only solve combat-related frustration, which is admittedly half the game, I suck at rhythm-based combat and my mouse's rmb is acting up already (it's shit but only been using it for a few months).
but inventory is unlimited, there's no enemy respawn (in a traditional sense anyway, but I found out it's not only in new chapters either, which is less ideal), sleeping and water barrels restore health, and the quest map has quest markers, but why the fuck couldn't they add it to the map you bring up with a hotkey?! learning points have to be spent at npcs, not the character screen and everything's worth saving for or doing later, it's like a fucking metroidvania, zero instant gratification. I'm taking notes like crazy, as always, but here I gotta remember locked chests and shit and somehow find my way back later because maps are like, well, maps. and you have to buy or find them first.
(major spoilers from here) so the whole thing starts with our nameless hero, the stowavay, traveling on a ship with his girlfriend (I assume), but the mage on board pisses off a titan, who in turn destroys the ship and we end up shipwrecked, only sara and I survive. found some supplies, a sword and a shield, which is not much help as I obviously have to lower it to attack, and that's when I get hurt (or when my rmb doesn't work). avoided the cave with the gnomes for now and up the path we went. never brought sara with me in the demo, so it was nice that she kept commenting on stuff, including the cave when I took a peek inside.
we found an abandoned house with an almighty water barrel and a campfire and cooked the meat with the frying pan I found inside. there's so much vegetation though, fucking bushes everywhere, can't see loot, nor enemies, not even sure if I'm gonna notice buried treasure. and I wish I could turn off screen shake (I think it's the volcano), sitting on chairs and cooking, chest opening and especially digging animations. and the camera keeps zooming back in no matter how many times I zoom out. and quotes aren't used for emphasis, for fuck's sake...
the catacomb with the creepy-sounding moths I also left for later and I might sleep most nights, though brightness settings help, because torches are a nuisance. can't put it away once you take it out, just drop it, but when you pick it up it's still lit. the next morning I continued exploring, avoiding wildlife, ran into a bandit (there was a bigger bird in the demo at the house, but not now). jan told me the inquisitor from the ship survived as well and I should be lucky I didn't get caught by them. (that's a shitty thing too, if caught, they force you into their faction and cut off a ton of quests. sure, don't get caught or reload, but come on...)
since I wanna be a bandit when I grow up, I told jan about sara, they're gonna keep her safe (she gave me a potion when I went back), then he showed me the way to the farm nearby. I helped out the locals even though they were novices for the inquisition, anything without killing. tristan, their leader is a dick, sees you even if you enter through the back door. stole a few things, but couldn't open the chests and don't want to get sneak, so I headed for the bandit camp in the swamp with jan.
we ran into 2 wolves, still got hit a ton and you only get xp if you deal the final blow, so I went back alone, but it's really fucking hard. it was getting dark, gonna sleep at the camp anyway, but didn't feel like wasting more time or using healing items, so went back with jan, scored every last hit (a 3rd wolf joined in too), lost half my health, but fuck it. found out the don and his men used to live in harbor town, but the inquisition banished them, so they live in the swamp near a temple that rose from the ground when the storms hit. tons of gold, but the don keeps most of it to himself, also himself to himself, so his wife, rachel, is in charge.
I had to get close to her (not like that, sadly) to get to the don, which meant working for the local dick ordering everyone around. wasn't ready to fight most things yet, not even one on one, and I'm not paying anyone anything, but I got by, running back and forth, talking to everyone several times for xp. met ricardo and luis, real characters, but luis drank all my beer for some info, the fucker. and in the meantime npcs killed some moths (must've done my 'get back to work' routine too well) and I missed some xp and loot. couldn't even go back to an earlier save, wasn't doing much, quicksaved for an hour or so and wasn't going to re-do all that shit. kept reloading, different results every time, the constants being fucking dark, storm, and npcs in the way, so I got attacked by them too. got 3 moths and no aggro eventually, but no extra moth drops because I didn't have the gutting tool...
got gut animals (at least wolves drop maximum loot now), +10 str, lockpick, pickpocket, shovels, picks, some buried treasure, don't want magic/ranged, just a crossbow for switches and aggroing. need alchemy for potions, maybe smithing and prospecting later, but ~28 seems to be the level cap, can't get everything, and finding all the trainers (afte that the game keeps track of them) and all that money... all the sleeping people and their chests made sneaking very tempting, I think I could get it xp-wise, but I read about a hidden sneak ring soonish, so stealing can wait.
also met rhobart, the swamp farmer, makes beer from weed, good money/xp early on, but he's being exploited by brogar, the dick, gonna take care of that. also lied to rachel about the price of the beer. I'm a nice, honest guy, wouldn't hurt anyone, would even do the quest for free, but I'm broke as fuck and the don has more than enough gold (plus there's no consequence and I could open rhobart's chest without him noticing too).
pickpocket 1 is meh so far and that's as high as I'll go. rhobart would've been nice, weed xp/gold again, but I stole clay's sword. he attacked (for a quest I wasn't gonna pay for) with his axe I couldn't steal, but when I won, I took all his stuff. buffing strength first, sword later, wanted to use the axe for more dmg, but it's 2h, no shield. gonna steal the weapon from brogar because there are arena fights, though based on clay, it might not work. when I lifted the quest item just to try it, I could tell him about it after, nice touch. also looted brogar's chest without sneaking one night. looks like if you click the chest fast enough, you can get away with it. also worked on oscar's chest, but rachel's too quick to get up.
and I fucked poor rachel over again. didn't want the fights to end, but I told her about craig making bets for more xp, so I had to lie to her. the fights weren't that bad, had to reload, accidentally killed the first, got a crossbow, and since I took a quest item from craig, I didn't get paid that time (the bet was 50, the item would've been 100, worked for me). got lockpick 2, a worm tool, helped doug kill a rotworm, killed 2 more with rhobart's help (luring enemies near npcs is neat, except when they steal my xp), found out he sells a scroll I can't afford, then brought rachel some raw meat finally, been cooking and not eating them so far.
found out chickens give 10 xp and meat (I'm nice, but every bit of xp/gold counts, at least for now). they don't seem to be laying eggs either, so whatever. then I got fucked over by lorenzo. loot the temple my ass, so I kicked his instead. and stole his beer because it's currency here. did the 4th arena fight (tough fucker with a shield, replaced mine with it), only brogar left, but I have other business with him first, which involves fighting I'm not necessarily prepared for, but don't want to leave until I'm done either, at least not to harbor town. so I got +10 str again (after the 4th fight, so smart) and prepared for the worst...
puzzle forge 2 (android): still playing this on the john, starting to run out of gem-related stuff, so I'm bound to fail my 100+ day run soon.
risen 2: week 4 and I'm still on the sword coast, so even with less min-maxing it's gonna take twice as long as the first game at least. plus I started playing sidegames as well and didn't have time to play every day anyway. would be nice to finish it in january though.
I'm mostly done with the natives and have one more gutting tool, but the ritual knife I'll have to get from elsewhere because I'm not joining them, which means no companion for now either, and no guns until I join the other faction. all my hopes and dreams are constantly being crushed here. but next up is the faction mission, I can kill stuff later, gonna be easier.
forgotten tales: day of the dead: x in a row goals are so fucking frustrating. with the game's semi-random nature they should be more calculated or something, bit this was fucking tedious sometimes. and when you finally succeed, maybe using a powerup or two and come up with like 50 points short of 3 skulls because who knows how scoring works (you can go from 1 skull to 3 in the final round somehow), it's just...
this could've been a great game, but on more than one occasion it just made me angry before going to bed instead of calming me down or keeping me calm, so it's definitely not something I should've started half an hour before turning in. motherfucking level 75 can fuck off, brute forced it with powerups, even got 3 skulls, but there were 25 more levels after that, with some similarly 'fuck you' goals. 40, 50 and 60 were a bitch last week as well, but I 3-skulled them now.
so I decided from then on I'd use powerups instead of retrying and trying to save money, powerups aren't that expensive, buying them in bulks is even cheaper and I've been saving money (and powerups) throughout the entire game anyway, might as well start spamming them in the final quarter of the game. and levels 90, 95 and 96 were still a bitch to 3-skull, amazing... so it wasn't a flawless experience (and the constantly rotating powerups were annoying as fuck), but it was okay for the most part.
cube way: a minimalistic cube rolling puzzle game. not a huge deal, but for 35 cents (had a few cents left in my wallet and it was half off anyway) it was okay. 2 achievements per level was a bit much (there are 70 levels), as was the store description ('incredibly beautiful environment'), and the developer only lets people who own the game comment on the forum, which is fucked up and there's a sequel out already, another warning sign, especially since both games got removed from steam this week, don't know why.
it has separate volume settings though, windowed mode, even v-sync, and not horrible music (I really like the one in the menu), movement is fast enough and you can start moving before the entire level appears (it's mostly a good thing for my impatient self but you can break a few levels by starting early) and hold the arrow keys to keep moving, but locked levels are visible on the level select screen, another weird thing. no restart or undo buttons, just esc to bring up the menu and restart from there, and progress is stored in the registry. so it's a bit of a mixed bag but not as bad as I expected, except it really needs fucking undo because re-doing the beginning of longer levels sucks.
cube way 2: it didn't even last a full day on steam before it got removed for some reason, even had a decent 20% launch discount, so after kinda liking the first game, I bought it for 79 cents. 70 more levels (and 140 more fucking achievements), the exact same music, but you control multiple cubes at the same time now. I hate this most of the time, not even sure why I bough it, come to think of it, so I just looked a few levels up when they started to get frustrating (fucking level 46!). and that's probably it for this long-running franchise. or they might be back soon, who knows?
legends of solitaire: curse of the dragons yet another solitaire, probably the last one I'm gonna play for now, 3 in a row will do. this is actually the sequel to legends of solitaire: the lost cards, but it's not on steam, so I had to skip it, but it's by the folks behind chef solitaire usa (among other things), which I really liked.
it's the usual deal, fully voiced, though speech volume can't be changed, only effects and music, which sucks, even though they have separate values in the .ini, and the intro has to be skipped every time. the same as chef solitaire, except that came out later and it still had the same issues. I turned off the audio pretty soon here anyway because the guy saying wonderful every 5 seconds was really fucking annoying. so is it's instead of its every time it's used.
there are 3 difficulty levels, wanted to go for normal just this once, but casual said 'weapons don't break' and I had no idea what it meant and I don't like weapon degradation in games anyway, so just to be on the safe side I went with casual. not in it for the challenge and I definitely don't want to farm gold just to be able to repair or replace stuff.
at first I thought you can't replay levels, just like in avalon legends solitaire, though it wasn't really an issue there, but if you go back to the map, you can select already completed levels and do them again, except they aren't marked in any way, so fuck knows which to replay later to get 3 stars. so I decided not to care about it and just go through the game. already have the useful items, not gonna buy consumables, but save all the money for wildcards whenever I need them. I'm now on chapter 20 or so of 40.
puzzle forge 2 (android): still chipping away at it sometimes.
risen 2: week 5. didn't play much this week either and I really fucking hate combat in this game, but with a companion or more it's a lot easier. sprinting for a whole 5 meters is also annoying as fuck. but I joined the inquisition, finally got some decent weapon (seaman's shotgun, which uses the musket skill, makes sense, but it has a bayonet, so I can stabby-stab with it, except it does no damage) and more skills, then dealt with crow and his crew at the earth temple.
it was a pain once again because as soon as we arrived, my guys left the team, so their kills didn't give me xp anymore and they were making short work of the enemies. either give me fucking companions or don't, but this middle ground and losing xp is a piece of shit mechanic. and if you save with your weapon out it still gets put away when you reload, so it's just fucking tedious to even keep trying. as I said, would be a great adventure game but it's a shitty action game. so I got 2 kills, let the other 75 xp go to waste and moved on, fuck this... then the boss fight with a single-button qte at the end and if you fuck it up (as I did, no idea how or why), gotta do some more of the second phase. once again, fuck this...
cleared everything on the island with venturo (2 jaguars still knocked him out while I was fucking around with aiming and rolling, and companions tend to disappear sometimes anyway), wanted to get cunning 8 and thievery 3 before I leave, just to open a few more chests and get cunning out of the way for now, 80 (70+10 from a ring) should be enough for most things, want more toughness and firearms next. gonna come back to this place later for respawned enemies, one more chest and small spaces with a monkey, but now I'm off to distant shores.
legends of solitaire: curse of the dragons finished, it was very average, only recommended if you run out of solitaire games. decent length though and a good effort at the story, which was nothing special, but it was illustrated and voiced, but they didn't use 'its' correctly in the entire game, not once.
hade: last played this months ago, got hopelessly stuck on levels 45, 48 and 61 (there can be 3 unsolved levels open at any time), now I finally tried again, wanna finish it even if I have to look up a few levels out if 150+, starting with all 3 of these because I still couldn't figure them out. and the camera shake is still fucking annoying. I'm still not in the right mindset for this, or it's just beyond my capabilities in general, I'm only on level 63 now.
roofbot: also played it months ago, got stuck on level 40 of 100 and on the 3rd xmas level of 20. now I tried them again, the controls are still shit, undo is still fucked up (doesn't always work for some reason) and still didn't manage to progress, so I looked them up to continue, wanna get this out of the way now too. I really hate how trivial these things get sometimes once you know what to do, why didn't I think of that and all that. I'm now on level 75, haven't tried xmas #4 yet, don't like the sliding mechanic there anyway, but I'm glad I knocked out 30 levels in one night.
lineway: started this because I'm still not making much progress with the other 2 puzzlers. this is pretty straightforward, use a single line to clear all the squares, similar to unium and the like, something I don't like as much as other types of puzzles, but I'll play them every now and then.
this is very minimalistic, no menus or anything, fuck volume sliders obviously, and you either have music and idiotic sound effects, or just effects, no way to listen to just the music, and you have to mute it every time you start the game, and windowed mode was only possible with alt+enter and you couldn't resize the window, not even editing the registry worked for me, which was a first (progress is stored there as well, but steam cloud is coming), but almost immediately after I mentioned the audio and windowed mode issues on the forums, they were addressed, which was really surprising, some were brought up before without any effect, except adding an exit button instead of pressing alt+f4. still no volume sliders, but they'll be added later.
you have to hold the mouse button to draw a line and if you let go, the level resets, which is kinda weird, but not a huge problem, except on the final few levels where you need to draw multiple lines while still holding the fucking button. 80 levels, takes about an hour, level 69 was the first I got stuck on, then 70 took some time, the rest went by fast. it introduces new mechanics at a nice pace, so not a horrible way to spend probably not even a buck if it's on sale, plus brownie points for customer service, and the developer's next game (called delete, coming soon, looking good) will have better audio settings (and hopefully sliders) because of this, so there's that.
solitaire mystery: stolen power: had this wishlisted because solitaire, then read up on it and removed it a while ago, can't remember why, but it was 90% off the other day (after a month on steam, though it's a few years old originally) and I figured for 1 eur it can't be worse than fucking best in show solitaire, even with its (optional, according to the store page) hidden object sections. so I bought it and started it immediately, instead of continuing the other games I haven't finished above.
it has separate volume sliders, but the resolution is only 1024x768, stretched to a full (even wide) screen if need be, and the journal is in russian. I'm sure I would've survived without more background story, but decided to dig into the files and fix it myself (and published a 'guide' for it, first time for everything). upon starting a new game I didn't see a solitaire-only option, but I can deal with a few scenes, especially with a hint option, not the first solitaire that has them.
this one even has different variants, like matching cards mahjong-style and stuff, adds to the variety, but you gotta keep replaying a hand until you clear all the cards, no story progression until then, even if you got the special cards already. the game's super easy and short though, took 2 (two) hours. still, for 1 euro it was ok for an evening, and it has a few minigames and endless mode as well.
puzzle forge 2 (android): it really gets more difficult after beating it once, but with all the items in storage it's not that bad and losing wasn't a concern for me before either, you lose almost nothing, so it's fine. I'm currently on day 80+ after winning on day 50 and already met both missing customers.
risen 2: week 2 of my pirating adventures. giant crabs (just like sand devils and grave spiders) can appear from nowhere, that's a bit shit, can't even tell if I got them all unless I run around like an idiot. couldn't kick them at first either, nor did I have any weapon skills (hoping to find a musket, not buy a shotgun for 750, and no point in investing in it until then, but didn't want to waste points on blades either), so patty was invaluable, though far too often she just stands there doing nothing and she doesn't use her gun often enough either, though when she does, it's effective. not against 2 giant crabs and 4 ghouls though, so I left that area for later.
I don't like not having a confirmation window when buying/selling stuff and they used some of the plant assets from risen, but for different things. I always get excited when I find a hero's crown, but it's a skullflower here, useless for me. and all the open chests (and some locked ones) have like 5-10 gold and a single provision. fast travel is instantaneous, love that, but even with that and very limited sprinting it takes ages to get to some places.
speaking of chests, lockpicking took a while to understand and it sucked before and after understanding it. target practice with barney was pretty bad too, but I managed to hit all 10 eventually for a measly 100 xp and gold, then the follow-up was actually easier for 500 gold, then I did the other kind for 250. good haul. the drinking minigame wasn't a big deal either, much easier though.
and the game's pretty much the opposite of the first one. in risen most of the game was done (for me) in chapter 1, I got real powerful, killed most enemies, did a ton of quests and not much more than the main story was left in chapters 2-4. here patty did most of the killing, I was making exploration progress faster, didn't save every loot mob for later, but when I started chapter 2, I still didn't have a decent weapon, didn't know what's gonna happen on the companion front either, because alone I suck big time, especially with starting stats/equipment (found a slightly better sword after I was done killing for the time being, but I want firearms) and no blocking, shields or hp upgrades (later I can get +20 and +30 and that's it).
I'm on the sword coast now and it's kinda shit because patty and steelbeard keep leaving and joining the group and sometimes I get xp for their kills and sometimes I don't. maybe I should've bought the shotgun and critical hits before leaving catarigua, no going anywhere else for now... my goal is to get a shooty weapon, a skinning knife with my thievery skills and the other two missing gutting tools, a permanent companion (patty or whoever else), then murder, explore and quest the shit out of the place.
I looked some stuff up and turns out, until I join the inquisition I probably won't be able to buy anything better than the same shotgun, which for some fucked up reason uses the musket talent, and the only reason I didn't buy it was because I didn't want to waste money on a shotgun but go straight for a musket instead. but it doesn't use shotgun ammo either, which is a plus, but even if I grab one from the inquisition, I'll be stuck with it for the entire island. this is the reason I like to throughly read up on stuff before I start a complex game, but there wasn't too much to read here. shitting hell...
I was contemplating to reload to get a gun and start the sword coast with it, but I would've just conserved ammo anyway and used my useless sword to steal kills from ungrouped companions, so I stuck with my decision, but still tried how the shotgun works and can't say I'm a fan of the shoot-roll-roll-roll-shoot gameplay. a warthog still takes 3 shots with firearms lvl5 (which is not much, admittedly, about 25/100 points) and they're rarely alone, and in confined spaces I'll be fucked even with a single enemy. this'd be a great adventure game, but the action really sucks...
so I looked around the sword coast alone a bit, somehow managed to kill monkeys relatively easily with the sword and my own useless gaming skills (was kind of a waste, only getting claws from them now but whatever), then joined up with patty again and I'm about to follow steelbeard to the inquisition's place first for the stuff I mentioned above. gonna do what I can or feel like there, then visit the natives and slowly work my way through everything.
I'm also thinking of upping pistols (they're a side weapon and seem better than dirty tricks) and getting left-handed for faster pistol cooldowns, but the shotgun might be enough, it reloads in 2 seconds and a pistol shot every 30 seconds isn't that great on top of that, so we'll see.
this was last week (tl;dr: finished risen), this week's stuff is in a separate comment below (started risen 2).
puzzle forge 2 (android): someone told me that 'setting' an item means adding a gem to it during crafting, so that's cleared up. still don't know how to access runes in the game, but seeing as every weapon has multiple to collect from random contracts you can't dismiss, it's not something I'm gonna pursue, just google/youtube legendary items at some point. but I've reached lvl40, tournament tier 3 is now a thing (kinda pointless, don't need money or xp that much) and I started using crystals and stuff to make all the netherium items, then I'm gonna reach day 50 one last time, make something for the big guy and probably move on to something else. and I still haven't met 2 customers.
risen: (massive spoilers ahead!) dear diary, this is my 5th and final week on the island. we finally managed to enter the volcano and open the gate to lizard central, but lowering the drawbridge wasn't easy, the caves were crawling with fucking lizardmen. luckily (for me, not him), drok the ogre got captured again and after freeing him he joined me, so I thought de-lizarding the caves would be a lot easier. finding the map not so much, I had no idea I had to leave the cave and go back to jasmin's place. it was good to be outside again, but that's where drok left, the motherfucker. I guess I could've reloaded (rufo, jasmin's wolf also died, probably not scripted) and cleared the caves with drok before going for the map, but whatever...
so I slept to heal, got sword 10 for no reason at all (I had everything I needed and more), then went back to clear the volcano caves and lower the bridge. would've been so much easier with drok, but I had a bunch of conjure skeleton scrolls (and a ton of bones for more), so I tried it. he was called fred for some reason and was pretty effective. according to the map, the bridge was only accessible from the inside, but mendoza found a way in, and with my fluent saurian knowledge I picked up from thin air, I found out that ursegor was someone who ordered the titans around and the fortress was built according to his plans and his body was still there somewhere. couldn't make out everything, but it was good enough for mendoza to have me order someone else for a change to punch a hole in the wall to proceed to the crypt. he was useless, of course, so into a snail I changed again to crawl through the tiny hole he'd made and opened the bridge from the inside.
of course, the fort was huge as well and crawling with lizards WHO FUCKING PARRY EVERYTHING and I was really fucking sick of it at that point. yeah, charged attack, and lure them out in the open (or into a corridor) for more (or less) space, but it's still fucking annoying that I can't even scratch them without any of this but they can fuck me up. thank fuck for all the potions I'd collected until then, so I didn't have to care too much about my health.
then I finally found ursegor's spirit. a titan lord, but not a titan himself, just someone who subdued them for humanity because the gods kindly asked him. then he got trapped with the last titan he caught and the whole temple went underground. serves him right for trusting a deity... also, he never heard of the holy flame, glad the order has a solid foundation. not sure how this titan remained trapped while the others escaped, but at least it kept the rest of them away from the island. ursegor told me if I free him, he'd tell me how to free the fire titan and use it as a weapon against the others. I only had to hunt down his 3 servants, grab their skulls and tell ursegor he was free to break the bond between his body and spirit, then use all 4 skulls to open the titan trap. found a titan sword too, same 80 dmg as mine, but it looks less badass.
with the trap open, mendoza told me that weaponizing the titan might destroy the island (either by his great plan backfiring or being successful and the titan leaving the island open for other titans while it's away freeing the mainland), but no biggie, plenty of other islands left. I wanted to kill him, but he ran inside and closed the gate, and since I figured the chapter would be over soon, I hadn't bothered healing and had 9 (nine) hp left to fight all his loyal men. so I reloaded, healed, skipped his delusions this time and murdered everyone. ursegor told me I had to become a titan lord by finding his ancient armor and weapon, scattered all over the place, of course, and gave me a rune to break the blue barriers, and that was the end of chapter 3.
grabbed the rune and could've teleported away, but decided to fight my way out, die order scum! and flashbacks to chapter 1 where they'd attack me on sight. talked to some monastery dudes and eldric because I'd promised him, though that quest already completed itself a while ago. then made a 2-handed 90 dmg obsidian sword and a bunch more potions and scrolls (don't even know where I picked up the inferno rune) and learned pickpocket 2-3 because why not. could even steal from the don but didn't bother going through everyone's pockets, nor the entire place again to check new spawns, just the 5 temples to get the armor.
thought I'd talk to severin one more time, his village is right next to one of the tombs, and he actually had something to say, but while talking we got attacked again and I accidentally hit a fucking npc in the way again. piece of shit... second time I managed it and the tomb was short and combat-free as well, nice. the second was shit, had to lure a fucking skeleton over a fire trap I had to turn on for a very short time, and by the time he walked there the fucking thing went out. what the fuck is this? worst idea in the game so far. tried levitating over the fire, as one of the guides suggested, that didn't work either, then a steam buddy suggested telekinesis for the switch, best idea ever. and it was guarding the titan hammer, I'm a sword guy, what the fuck do I care? found a 120 dmg titan axe too, but it's an axe, can't do much with it.
on my way to the third place I ran into patty. I'd been looking for her in harbour town for no particular reason, and now she wanted to join me, so I took her along to the temple. this time more bastards spawned on the west coast, so she was actually useful and I still had to heal some after every fight, wasn't really optimizing anything, nearing the end, got plenty of items. but of course she didn't follow me into the cave and the tomb, would've been nice, if only for company. I also got stuck here for a while, but then figured everything out, it was pretty cool. caught patty up with happenings, then she left.
even towards the end of the game, being as powerful as possible, I fucking sucked at combat, 3 lizardmen could kill me. or just 1. but the titan crossbow from the previous tomb is pretty cool. I ate all the dex boost items as they were, and the 125 dmg bow with 45 dex can kill an elite lizard in 5 or 6 shots, or an undead ashbeast in 7. not bad if I can find a spot where they can't reach me. I also found a 100 dmg sword here, didn't make much difference.
the final tomb was short and sweet again, a bit more puzzly but also combaty, then I went back to eldric to fix the armor, looks spiffy, then to ursegor for some final advice. killed mendoza, took his eyepiece (supposedly to be able to see the titan, but you don't have to equip it and the helmet is better), then boss fight, which was shit at first sight, but took only about 3 tries, so didn't really ruin the overall and final experience/atmosphere. and with the titan sealed again, credits, a bit of extra dialog, according to which our nameless hero is off to meet the other titans in his new gear, and that was that. I was hoping to run into brogar again, but apparently ratting him out to the don closes that avenue.
really glad I gave this a second shot after hating the demo. it was a lot of fun, some frustration, mostly combat-related due to my lack of dexterity, coupled with my reluctance to use healing items until later, which also led to a lot of unnecessary back and forth between me and the nearest bed. finished on lvl29, it took 1 month, I'd say about 80 hours, lots of idling, so steam and the in-game counters are useless, and there was a lot of reloading too. should've done the monastery path when I got to it, then reload and do the bandit stuff I ended up choosing, because after finishing the game I didn't feel like it anymore, so I just watched that bit from a let's play. the murder mystery was pretty cool and I learned about a couple of places I'd missed. can't wait to start risen 2 after reading up on it a bit. any good-to-know advice is welcome.
qop: very basic puzzle game, slow movement, no speed settings, volume sliders, resolutions, windowed mode, undo, and spams you with achievements. 4 (FOUR!) just for starting the game and also per level, you get all of them no matter which game mode you play, because of course there are separate ones for playing with a dark and light background. so it's one of those achievement spamming garbage games, didn't realize this 'developer' is all about this shit, and also spewing out sequels all the time, might as well call them achievement packs. it got a free dlc with a few more levels and a sequel's coming out soon, and according to the dev, possibly with even more achievements. ridiculous. not worth the time or money.
so, this week I've been playing...
puzzle forge 2 (android): reached day 50, the big man came down, but I heard if you make him an item, you practically win and the whole thing starts over and it gets a lot more difficult. I didn't want that, I'm having fun now, wanted to decline but the game didn't let me say no to a god, so I filled the board, game over, back to day 1, which is no loss at all, and now I know how to finish the game if I want to. not that reaching day 50 is easy, even with a ton of items, my previous record was 48 a week or so ago. so gonna fuck around some more because it's fun and eventually check out 'new game+', I guess. got the last upgrade, yet to meet 2 customers, need a few levels to unlock tier 3 tournaments, etc. got more contracts for more runes, though I still don't know how to make legendary items, but I made another crystal weapon.
risen: (massive spoilers ahead!) dear diary, week 3 was just as busy on the island as the previous ones. I was finally out of harbour town, patty and the triplet treasure hunters too. the final faction quest in town didn't end chapter 1, so I went back to the don, who welcomed me into the fold, kindly sold me armor for 1k, then sent me to the monastery to find out what the inquisitor was up to.
did more killing and exploring first, gotta test that armor. gained 3 more levels, got +10 str and sword 5-6, I can use bastard swords in one hand with a shield. even had a blank to make one, but no smithing 2 and I need max str asap anyway, so just bought one, can afford it now. downed 2 skeleton lords and my first ghoul, the skellies had it in the back room, nice pet. found the permanent str potion recipe and a cave behind a waterfall with 4 (FOUR!) ghouls. 2 or 3 are managable, but 4 skeletons are a pain, quit fucking blocking everything and surrounding me. rotworms are annoying too, jumping out of range all the time.
ran into an elite lizard warrior in a temple ruin, that was a short fight... and learned crossbows can't throw levers (not that surprising), gonna need telekinesis scrolls after all. another temple puzzle could be solved in 2 ways: by telekinesis on the lever and walking in and out without a boulder smashing me, or levitation to fly over the spike trap on the other corridor, then nautilus to turn into a tiny snail and go through the hole in the wall and flip the switch manually. neat, but I don't see why the snail triggers spike traps when I'm clearly moving between them and I'm tiny and very light.
the order doesn't attack me on sight anymore, so I could look around the other farm, helped a few guys (and myself to some loot), went back to harbor town to finish up some business, but for some reason konrad the merchant attacked me along with the entire city, and I used a tell joke scroll on him last time to finish another quest with the cow head. fantastic...
missed out on a huge chunk of content in the monastery as a bandit (might watch a mage let's play when I'm done). still got to explore and loot, got a quill and paper for writing scrolls. almost saved 5 points for it, then thought I can surely only get it later in chapter 2, let's have more str. open locks would've been nice, but I did too much looting to re-do the monastery, but I read everywhere it's not available until chapter 2 and it was a lie... then illumar told me I also need runes, looked up where open locks is (and some others, that's how I didn't miss the cool underground library), not gonna happen anytime soon, might not bother with this skill at all, just buy what I need if I can't find them. problem is, illumar won't sell me anything until I learn scrolls...
then I talked to the inquisitor, but not before using my so far only open locks scroll on his chest. he's the guy who was on the ship with us at the beginning, and he's not afraid of all the creatures swarming the island, only the storms. those bring the titans (a mage wanted to free humanity and accidentally chased away all the gods and released the titans, good job), but the island is protected by the flame and as long as it burns, the island is safe, but he'd like to find out what the titans want and why they don't come to the island. the flame originates from the volcano on the island and he got his monocle from one of the temples, probably on another island if he arrived with us.
he lead me to a gigantic glowy door that leads to the source of the flame and can only be opened with crystal discs. he has one, but it broke when the titans replaced the gods and he sent it to a druid to have it repaired but hasn't heard from the guy who was supposed to pick it up (I met him in the monastery, wtf?!). the quest map says he's in the druid's hut, which is on the other side of a cave I couldn't clear earlier because of skeletons and ghouls. oh, and I have to find the other four discs and bring them to him so we can enter the door hand in hand.
this is how chapter 1 finally ended, then I got a teleport stone from him. holy shit, these (there are 14 for various locations) are gonna save so much time! half my gametime so far was running back and forth, healing, trying to fight different mobs in different areas, etc. guess I could've waited until now, but I wanted to look around and get stronger and leave fewer mobs for later. also, the stones use mana, the bastards. I want the teleport stones from two worlds...
the monastery dudes weren't any more talkative, so I left and started chapter 2 with more killing and exploration because while I was busy fucking around in harbour town (sometimes literally, shoutout to sonya and the girls), the wildlife did the same and some areas got repopulated. the new creatures are a bit stronger, it's black wolf central now, but honestly, I was expecting more respawns. I hate them, the whole point of killing stuff is they stay down, I accomplish something and can roam freely, but this chapter/special event thing is tolerable, and they're not the same mobs either.
on the farm I wanted to talk to severin again, might as well do some random quests. he's the logistics manager, sends artifacts and stuff from the ruins to the monastery and inquisitor mendoza said he might have one of the discs. but he triggered a gnome invasion, which is fine, I just didn't feel like fucking around until I got all the xp from the kills (have to deal the final blow), so this will have to wait, it's for the main story anyway. went back to sara but all I found were, yes, wolves. she finally moved in with the bandits. well, rhobart. guess she wasn't my girlfriend after all. or she traded me for beer and weed, the bitch.
found a whole new area above rhobart's house, levitation is great. tons of wolves, hero's crown, levitation rune and a scroll, which made my descent safer, otherwise I would've had to run past some ogres. fighting them is still futile and when I lured the one still chasing me to a bandit, I accidentally killed him, then the ogre killed me. doyle was up there too. I'd spared his life and apparently he shacked up here. I love small details like this. got part of a sword called souldrinker, looking forward to using that at some point, though even at 73 str/42 dmg I managed the 5-ghoul cave (formerly known as the 4-ghoul cave, didn't notice one in the back when I took a peek), but they weren't even the main attraction there, gotta come back later.
went back to the bandits, got +10 str, and I really don't know what to get with the other 10 points. either another 10 str to 90, or +5 and smith 2 to make a new sword (which I could buy, but then why did I get smithing/prospecting?), or +5 and writing scrolls (got some useful runes runes already, open locks is coming soonish too), or fuck str for now, it's already up by 10 since I last fought anything, and get smith 2 and scrolls. pretty sure I have enough money to buy whatever at this point, but also have tons of ingredients, which are better used (or sold) if you make something out of them. decisions, decisions, hate them...
in the meantime I talked to the don. he was surprised mendoza only wants the discs, told me to bring them to him so he'd have a bargaining tool, but didn't much care about what's behind the gate, only the possibility of more gold. for the good of the island, I'm sure. he didn't give me his disc, but told me to go to the eastern temple, it's open now thanks to me and the triplets, there's bound to be another disc there. fincher gave me another teleport stone and also sent me to the temple to see what's keeping the guys there.
and I met balturo here, who's working for romanov, the pirate captain held prisoner in harbor town. well, probably not anymore, seeing as I left his cell door open. he's in business with the don and now wants me to help patty, the former bartender, with probably finding her pirate captain dad's treasure, so he can probably take it from her. that's how things usually go. I was headed for harbour town next anyway, see if there's anything new, and find out what patty is up to.
as every other week because of the 10-day rotation, this one was written for last week, and this week's stuff is below it in a separate comment.
puzzle forge 2 (android): crafted everything from gold now, should try to do the crystal stuff, only made 2 so far. still need a few upgrades and levels to unlock the 3rd tournament tier, and I got a rune for the 30 gold items contract, so I could make legendary weapons if I knew how.
risen: (massive spoilers ahead!) dear diary, I've been stranded on this not really desert island for 2 weeks now. the bandits are nice enough, well, some of them, but I was ready to see more of the world, just had to finish a few things first.
finally found enrico, he really didn't want to work (and I suck at reading maps and the environment). to be fair, he got trapped in the ruins for 3 days, that'd fuck the best of them up. gave him a useless amulet, told him he's good with the ancient spirits now and stole a potion from him. and since I'm using the 1.3 patch, he could teach me prospecting. it's his trade, makes sense that after coming to his senses he'd do that. but the fucker killed a bunch of stingrats on his way back, no xp again, nor extra loot because I don't have the stinger tool. been talking and quicksaving, but the autosave was just before it, so I followed him and got the xp at least.
after doing his job for him, hawkins had some basic armor for 500 gold. yeah, right. had to kill more stingrats for luis, so he'd get his drunk ass back to work (also stole my beer back from him, hehe). no tool, less loot again. then the nearby cave where where one of brogar's men went missing. it was full of moths (had the tool) and they all aggro as part of the pack, more piranha bytes fuckery, but I managed. gonna come back later to kill the ghoul and the other path leads back to the village, but I'll save the stingrats for later.
found the guy dead, of course, and another sword piece and a list of people brogar's been 'protecting.' took it to rachel, the don's wife, then confronted brogar. had to play along for the greater good, felt really dirty, but got xp from everyone, him included, then got threatened when I kept the gold. threatened him back, told rachel, made a bet, stole his weapon (he still had a sword), spared his life though, I'm not an animal. got the 5th sword piece and his hut from rachel, whose chest I managed to loot before she woke up, thank fuck the game pauses when manipulating chests, who needs sneak?
oscar the blacksmith made the sword for the don, but when I kept it, he told me to go fuck myself. there are other smiths, but I didn't want to anger him forever, so I let him keep it and bought it for 200. the money would've been better spent on training, but I had 1k at that point after getting alchemy 1 and didn't want pickpocket 2 for 250 just for this. it'd pay itself back, but whatever. would've loved to keep the sword, 30 dmg (mine's 15), but it was for the don. tried it on the ghoul in the cave like 20 times, still died.
the don was pleased and sent me to harbour town to find his missing men. told him about brogar, who swore revenge and left the camp. rachel wasn't happy either, forgot I'd promised her not to tell the don. the mage sells cool stuff and he sent me to the monastery, but first I helped recapture the nearby temple ruin from the order. took a few tries and pathfinding was shit, half my guys kept going the wrong way and I wanted to take them back to camp before disbanding, so they don't accidentally kill anything I should, happened before. went back to loot the temple, then got a decent map from fincher, but it needs some getting used to, wish I could zoom in at least.
got smithing, a 30 dmg sword from loot (smiths take fucking forever, why is their crafting process longer than mine?), cleared the starting area (gnome cave, catacomb, novice village, sara was still hanging out at the abandoned house) and went exploring where I could, only leaving animals I didn't have the gutting tools or killing power for. combat's still frustrating with more than one enemy, and going back to a barrel/bed is tedious, so I need to get better or start using potions. but I love how stingrats go to a corpse I just created to munch on it. and animals sleep at night too, can sneak up on them.
found a dude who's being haunted by ghosts, probably not wise to take on them yet, but I reached the eastern temple for fincher, found hero's crowns, giant turtles, ashbeasts (both are too tough), buried treasure (no keys yet), a cool ring finally, and I 'unlocked' a bed in the wilderness by clearing out the place I dubbed gnomesville (a house with gnomes). after I hit lvl10, I headed to harbour town with tellur's help, not that I needed it, already explored and cleared most of the way, but it was 200 xp.
the guard was very reasonable, let me in for 100 gold and gave me a map, but said I couldn't leave. no one can, actually. I could climb out and back somewhere, but had no outside business, so I started talking to people, there are a TON of them because when the ruins destroyed most people's farms and livelihood, the order kindly invited them into harbour town. more to get them out of the way so they could raid the tombs in peace than anything else, and of course that's why no one can leave, but they're not happy either, what with the order exploiting them, and so on.
so I helped a farmer and his sick wife, found a buyer for the fishmonger's stall who only bought it because the girl she fell for liked fish (shark steak gives xp and others sell ingredients to more hearty meals), visited the brothel with occasional live music and calmed a lady who was worried about her sons (one was the guy being haunted, yet to find the 3rd), stole back a necklace from the don's old house, helped the local drug dealers (because I'm the good guy), and while following one, had a lovely time with lilly the prostitute (it fails the tailing, but I just dinged, so to speak, with that xp and got another chance at the other task, also ratted lilly out to sonya, the madame), helped another harlot get rid of her drunk admirer, and completed epic quests such as 'a night with olga' (another employee there, psychic too) or 'mental arithmetic' (what's 24x17?).
the pearl necklace I'd sold or an open locks scroll would've been useful for a quest, but I didn't feel like waiting, climbing out or paying for these (couldn't buy a scroll in town anyway), but kayleigh is a stupid bitch, so I was fine with stealing from her. and from the prison guard, had a kickass shield, nicked it and got the key by bringing him a prostitute. also helped patty, the tavern owner, find traces of her father thanks to the prisoner. they're both pirates (arch-enemies), so naturally she sells lockpicks in her tavern. and after helping her leave town, I could finally look at her chest. the wooden one behind the counter. (shouldn't have ratted her out to romanov, but 300 gold and 50 xp was a good enough reward.)
both factions gave me stuff to do and to get the most xp out of them, I kept informing both sides, then ended them for the don. got the sneak ring and looted everything I could (permanent str potion for later, etc.), love how some people say they can see me sneaking around. got 2 more gutting tools (boars and stingrats) and ran into lvl3 chests and doors, may buy or make scrolls for them, not spend 5 lp, there's about 20, as I hear, probably not worth it. already went around one via the roof, it was fun.
after a while the commandant who runs the town for the order summoned me. stole everything there, told him I'm just a castaway, haven't picked a faction yet. didn't want to anger him unnecessarily, he'd find out my bandity intentions soon enough, at that point all I had left was to turn in the faction quests to the don's men. then I met scordo, who runs the bandit business in town from the brothel, to nobody's surprise, and also got a few extra errands to run, such as killing a merchant's cow ('stop interfering with livestock,' the farmer said) and putting its head in the merchant's bed to scare him into paying protection money. I'm not part of the mob at all and I'm sure 'the don' is just short for donald. (the sad lesson was that scrolls also use mana, never thought of that, gonna need a ton of mana potions for offensive spells, levitation or whatever away from beds.)
I barely got 2 levels out of all this (it takes exponentionally more xp each time), and that's with some boars and stingrats I could finally kill for loot after I found my way out, didn't want to end chapter 1 with only a few hundred xp missing, though I'm sure I'll get a bunch more when I turn in the final faction quest and end the chapter. should've done +10 str, not alchemy 1-2 earlier, not gonna need it until lvl3 and that's far away, need 100 str first. can't use bastard swords in one hand until sword 6 either and I need my shield. with the 2 new levels I got to 60 str and sword 4, so 2 more levels until a better weapon, but armor is due soon from the don. also a ton of tougher respawns when chapter 2 stars, should be interesting...
puzzle forge 2 (android): the first one was fun, then I kinda reached the limits of my abilities and willingness to grind, so I moved on to the sequel. it uses the exact same music, some of the graphics and even item descriptions, but item placement is a bit different: you can't take back the last piece you put down, nor can you break molds, but tier 2+ mats need to be held to place, so no more accidents, except due to lag (it runs slower on my shitty phone) or when I try to pick up a weapon and put an ore down next to it instead. task switching doesn't work either, when I switch back, it restarts the game every time, and there are ads now after every day, but with wifi off it's not an issue, and achievements are online-only, but statistics and collections are still available offline.
guards now take any crap you sell them, no more shady dudes showing up at night, gold is now only used to buy stuff (stock changes every in-game day with the occasional discounts), and you get gems when you level up and when a year passes (40 days, I think) and use them on upgrades. I like the extra info when a hero requests an item (except when it's 'with good speed', yeah, thanks) and you can store extra items in case you need something quickly. pleased heroes can give you stuff as well, many more of them in this one. there are also seasons (not only cosmetic, rain in autumn randomly cools squares, etc.), contracts (some are timed, like irl 1 week to make 40 staffs), quests, challenges (I don't stand a chance), sausages, tournaments and whatnot. so a lot more to do.
also a lives system, which is unfortunate, but when you lose them all by not fulfilling customer orders, it just clears your score and the board, as far as I can tell there's no real penalty, though quest level resets as well, and you lose reputation with certain heroes, that's kind of a bummer. and since you don't need to farm gold anymore for upgrades, it's even less of an issue, for me at least. items are expensive but I try not to spend much, just like in the first game, but I'm looking out for gem fragments, if you get 4, extra skill point, and sometimes random mats or molds can come in handy too.
so most things improved, some not so much, the worst being performance for me, but gonna play until I can make decent progress (still not paying real money or watching ads), then look for something else, but it's pretty cool and I'd actually pay for a de-mobilized version for pc, no ads/iap, rebalancing, etc.
peg: started and finished the cross board, which is the last one with 32 levels (21 was a dick), and after spending another 40 minutes trying to figure out fucking circle 14, I was just about to throw in the towel and look up the solution, then I quit, came back a couple hours later for one more try and solved it in 3 minutes.
lara croft go: finally finished the fire and mirror dlc. they aren't easy and I'm a bit rusty, playing once a week, not making much progress, plus I don't like either dlc much (respawning enemies, pillar pushing and controlling mirrored characters), just wanted it to be over after a month. so I eventually looked up some hints for fire 5 just to move on, and again for 8. also for mirror 3, 7 and 11 (really minor thing here, I swear I did the same but must have overlooked something). all in all, a lot less fun for me than hitman go, but I'll still buy deus ex go if it ever leaves the windows store.
access denied: completed about 2/3 of it last week in one go, then sat down again and finished the rest. I could've put more effort into it, a few might've hit me at some point and I liked the game and the concept a lot, I just wanted to move on, so of the 36 levels I eventually had to look up level 20 (fucking math), a hint for 30 (I had the right idea), 31 (I hate puzzles where buttons increase/decrease various things and you have to figure out which ones to press, this isn't the only one here, but the others were easier), another hint for 33 (must've tried everything, knew I was overthinking it, and yeah, I was...) and 34 (once again, I sort of had the right idea), and 35 and even 36. not my most successful or patient puzzle completion, but whatever.
the room: picked it up in the halloween sale, just like access denied. the concept is kinda similar too (open mystery boxes and such), and even though it's originally a mobile game, they re-did the whole thing for pc, added windowed mode, resolution options and a volume slider, because it's also a pc game now that can handle all these complications and fancier graphics. what's really missing is a brightness slider, and what would also be nice is a camera sensitivity setting, especially coming straight from access denied, but otherwise it's a really cool little thing.
as expected, I got stuck around the halfway point, in the middle of chapter 3. the following day, fresh eyes (can't sleep these days, so fresher at least), it clicked where I should look next, but I still couldn't figure it out, so I had to ask for a hint. the problem is, if I look up just one hint for a game, it's so much easier to look for the next, etc. floodgates broken, I don't know, it kinda sucks. I like to figure stuff like this out on my own, but it's not pride, and I don't like to 'waste' time on something I'm pretty sure I couldn't figure out, but often it's something I could. or it's not even what I thought and missed another thing, despite checking what I thought was everything 3 times already.
same thing happened here, was looking at the wrong thing, but at least I was right, nothing to figure out there yet, plus it was very near the end of the chapter. the next was surprisingly short and easy, but in the last I once again had to look some stuff up, then I was done. good stuff.
the room two: this was also on sale, more of the same, gimme. 6 chapters, still no brightness options, and invert mouse would've been nice, there's more moving around, and once again I had to get some hints here and there (I was also faster on the hints button this time, less patient, more tired because of lack of sleep), but it was pretty cool still. there's a third game, only on mobile so far, hope it comes out on pc soon.
blue estate: somebody recommended me this on-rails shooter after I had a fantastic time with typing of the dead a few weeks ago, and it just went on sale last week. this is also a lot of fun, similar kind of humor, a bit less intense than totd, and the gestures are a bit weird and brushing your hair out of your face got old after the second time and really annoying after the third (the dog was annoying from the get-go). plus I kept shooting and waiting for the gun to reload, like in totd, but it doesn't work like that here. and double rmb changes weapons too, which is annoying when I'm trying to reload the shotgun quickly and I end up with the pistol.
thankfully, there isn't a boss fight at the end of all 7 chapters, but I almost lost all my lives at the first one and I even dodged all his projectiles (got an achievement for it). that was also when I found out I have lives. I'm sure I overlooked something, like I did initially in totd, but even there I didn't die more than a couple times, but this one just wouldn't fucking die while I kept emptying magazines of machine gun ammo into him. fucking hell...
the 2nd boss went a lot better and easier, only died once, and the rest was smooth sailing as well. I completed the story once (as opposed to 3 times in totd, but those had various differences), then tried arcade mode to see what it is: just the action, fast-forward when you kill everyone, the more kills, the better weapons, levels take about 3 minutes instead of 20, so I did all of them, even got a few s-ranks. really fun, reminded me of playing gems of war on 4x speed last week. don't care about scores, collectibles, achievements, etc., so that's it, but I'd play a sequel if they made one, preferably ditching the annoying kid as a narrator and the hair/dog bullshit.
btw, I bought 5 games in last week's halloween sale and 4 of them are already completed, which is pretty cool. it's still +1 to my ever-growing list of games to play, but that's not a problem either.
zombie vikings: 3rd week without any progress. this is why I don't do co-op. or can't, actually. maybe I should just finish it myself, though I'm sure it'd be frustrating, dying all the time, no revive, back to the checkpoint or beginning, etc.
star story: the horizon escape (demo): I've had this game wishlisted, was half off on chrono.gg this week, still too much (at the same time it's 20% off on the developer's site and on steam), but they just released a demo, which I tried. the writing is a bit awkward sometimes, but it's by a russian team, so whatever. doesn't look bad, so come a bigger discount, I'll pick it up.
Try Puzzle Forge 2. It has a similar mechanic.
puzzle forge 2 (android): still playing this on the john, starting to run out of gem-related stuff, so I'm bound to fail my 100+ day run soon.
risen 2: week 4 and I'm still on the sword coast, so even with less min-maxing it's gonna take twice as long as the first game at least. plus I started playing sidegames as well and didn't have time to play every day anyway. would be nice to finish it in january though.
I'm mostly done with the natives and have one more gutting tool, but the ritual knife I'll have to get from elsewhere because I'm not joining them, which means no companion for now either, and no guns until I join the other faction. all my hopes and dreams are constantly being crushed here. but next up is the faction mission, I can kill stuff later, gonna be easier.
forgotten tales: day of the dead: x in a row goals are so fucking frustrating. with the game's semi-random nature they should be more calculated or something, bit this was fucking tedious sometimes. and when you finally succeed, maybe using a powerup or two and come up with like 50 points short of 3 skulls because who knows how scoring works (you can go from 1 skull to 3 in the final round somehow), it's just...
this could've been a great game, but on more than one occasion it just made me angry before going to bed instead of calming me down or keeping me calm, so it's definitely not something I should've started half an hour before turning in. motherfucking level 75 can fuck off, brute forced it with powerups, even got 3 skulls, but there were 25 more levels after that, with some similarly 'fuck you' goals. 40, 50 and 60 were a bitch last week as well, but I 3-skulled them now.
so I decided from then on I'd use powerups instead of retrying and trying to save money, powerups aren't that expensive, buying them in bulks is even cheaper and I've been saving money (and powerups) throughout the entire game anyway, might as well start spamming them in the final quarter of the game. and levels 90, 95 and 96 were still a bitch to 3-skull, amazing... so it wasn't a flawless experience (and the constantly rotating powerups were annoying as fuck), but it was okay for the most part.
cube way: a minimalistic cube rolling puzzle game. not a huge deal, but for 35 cents (had a few cents left in my wallet and it was half off anyway) it was okay. 2 achievements per level was a bit much (there are 70 levels), as was the store description ('incredibly beautiful environment'), and the developer only lets people who own the game comment on the forum, which is fucked up and there's a sequel out already, another warning sign, especially since both games got removed from steam this week, don't know why.
it has separate volume settings though, windowed mode, even v-sync, and not horrible music (I really like the one in the menu), movement is fast enough and you can start moving before the entire level appears (it's mostly a good thing for my impatient self but you can break a few levels by starting early) and hold the arrow keys to keep moving, but locked levels are visible on the level select screen, another weird thing. no restart or undo buttons, just esc to bring up the menu and restart from there, and progress is stored in the registry. so it's a bit of a mixed bag but not as bad as I expected, except it really needs fucking undo because re-doing the beginning of longer levels sucks.
cube way 2: it didn't even last a full day on steam before it got removed for some reason, even had a decent 20% launch discount, so after kinda liking the first game, I bought it for 79 cents. 70 more levels (and 140 more fucking achievements), the exact same music, but you control multiple cubes at the same time now. I hate this most of the time, not even sure why I bough it, come to think of it, so I just looked a few levels up when they started to get frustrating (fucking level 46!). and that's probably it for this long-running franchise. or they might be back soon, who knows?
legends of solitaire: curse of the dragons yet another solitaire, probably the last one I'm gonna play for now, 3 in a row will do. this is actually the sequel to legends of solitaire: the lost cards, but it's not on steam, so I had to skip it, but it's by the folks behind chef solitaire usa (among other things), which I really liked.
it's the usual deal, fully voiced, though speech volume can't be changed, only effects and music, which sucks, even though they have separate values in the .ini, and the intro has to be skipped every time. the same as chef solitaire, except that came out later and it still had the same issues. I turned off the audio pretty soon here anyway because the guy saying wonderful every 5 seconds was really fucking annoying. so is it's instead of its every time it's used.
there are 3 difficulty levels, wanted to go for normal just this once, but casual said 'weapons don't break' and I had no idea what it meant and I don't like weapon degradation in games anyway, so just to be on the safe side I went with casual. not in it for the challenge and I definitely don't want to farm gold just to be able to repair or replace stuff.
at first I thought you can't replay levels, just like in avalon legends solitaire, though it wasn't really an issue there, but if you go back to the map, you can select already completed levels and do them again, except they aren't marked in any way, so fuck knows which to replay later to get 3 stars. so I decided not to care about it and just go through the game. already have the useful items, not gonna buy consumables, but save all the money for wildcards whenever I need them. I'm now on chapter 20 or so of 40.
puzzle forge 2 (android): made all the purple items and since only runes and legendary items are left now, which are completely out of the question, plus I had what netherion wanted on day 50 in my storage, I decided to finish the game (also hit 1 million points) and find out what 'new game+' is all about. not much, same deal with the difficulty cranked up, but I'm gonna play a bit more, maybe I'll run into the 2 missing customers.
risen 2: already liked the demo of this more than the first game's, despite the pirate setting, and after finishing and loving risen, I was really looking forward to playing it. I had a lot less to read through beforehand, so I'm feeling less sure of how it's gonna go and assume it's more or less like the first game, but gonna go with a ranged character this time, they say it's an easier time. they also say voodoo is a fun time, but I don't want to cripple myself too much in combat, where voodoo is useless. even towards the end in risen I had problems with multiple enemies, why make things even more difficult here?
attributes can be leveled without visiting trainers, that's good, not talents or skills though, and I hear respawns happen in caves now too, which sucks. healing isn't instantaneous from food (only rum and grog) and joining the inquisition is 'canon' and I was a bandit in the first game. the game world consists of several islands, no problem with that, but quicksaving and autosaves create a separate file every time and saves are a lot bigger too. I love that e.g. king's bounty rotates 3 quicksaves in case things go south, but this is ridiculous, even more so because I tend to spam quicksave and the game spams autosave (can be turned off but I have it on just in case), so after every session I gotta wipe a ton of them and only keep manual saves. loading screens are no longer a thing either, they're just black.
movement and stuff needed some getting used to, a lot has changed since the risen days. the camera, movement and the hero's voice are shit, combat is a fucking horrible piece of fucking shit, no jumping back, blocking or shields anymore. the inquisition banned magic in general, I became a lieutenant but lost one of my eyes because the ocular was cursed, more fitting for a wannabe pirate, and I'm an alcoholic to be more authentic. there's sprinting for a limited time and didn't say no to the +5% glory/xp boost ring from a dlc. don't like cheat content, but 5% is probably not a huge deal and if I do everything I can, it'll make the extra xp even less necessary, but whatever.
one of the boys found me drunk in my room and sent me to carlos, an old not-friend-because-I-was-a-bandit-dammit, who in turn sent me to the beach because we'd just witnessed a ship getting eaten by a kraken. that's where I met patty again, who lost most of her boobs and changed her voice and tried to convince carlos that his still unaccounted for dad knows where to find a weapon against the kraken. spent most of my gold on learning sneaking from largo, a prisoner, but it kinda paid off already when I looted the warehouse nearby, though without lockpicking I couldn't open the door upstairs or locked chests anywhere.
severin was also here. big step up from being an artifact logistics manager and fighting gnomes to training actual soldiers. dueled with him A MILLION TIMES with a ragequit here and there until I finally beat his ass because, yes, melee combat is a piece of fucking shit, the pistol misses all the time, dodging isn't much use because you still get hit just once or twice while doing it, which is bullshit, and you can't even bring up the menu to reload while you're knocked out, only quickload works, which loads the latest save, not the last quicksave, interestingly.
after a while I decided to cheese the fuck out of it and quicksaved after successful pistol shots, the 3rd one finally took him out, but loading a save puts you out of combat mode, so that was another lesson learned. I swear I shouted almost as much at the screen during this one fight as most of the first risen (don't remember rage quitting there either). how the fuck did I manage to get past this in the demo? it's not mandatory, so maybe I just moved on.
then we boarded a ship and headed to tacarigua. jungle, pirates, whatnot. I like how you can 'eavesdrop' on npc conversations, not in a shitty assassin's creed way, it's more incidental, just listening to them talk, but about more meaningful stuff than in the first game, then the scene is over and they go their separate ways. to save ammo, I tried sand, shorter cooldown and it doesn't get consumed, but it doesn't do dmg and blindness doesn't last long and it's gone after one hit. there's coconuts too, no cooldown, can insta-knockout a human (hasn't happened yet), but very little damage otherwise and it's pretty rare, at least for now, so I'm saving them.
there's also fast travel between visited locations and lethal qte traps in the jungle, that's a dick move, but patty remarking 'you're an idiot' is kinda funny. shadows flicker all the time, objects only appear way too late, and foliage weirdly grows as you get closer. I looked into editing the .xml files, but ultimately decided not to bother, it's annoying but also takes a long time to figure out what to change to what. not gonna write a detailed journal this time either, takes way too long and there's not much point, though it made my risen playthrough more memorable. and about twice as long, so maybe I'll finish this in a month or so as well, I think it's bigger/longer than the first one.
I'll also try not to min-max that much, I don't know a lot about how stuff works, but I think I'd rather get more xp early on from mobs with patty's assistance (because combat is shit, did I mention that?) than leave everything alive and get some extra warthog skins or crab eyes or whatever to sell later (I only have the tool for claws so far), and it also cuts back on the back and forth. we can deal with jaguars, but they don't drop anything yet, so I'm avoiding those, and sand devils always make me jump when they appear from underground. so did the grave spider in a cave, could only cheese it (it got stuck, even patty went down a few times), but it's scary as fuck, so glad risen didn't have them. ghouls were creepy enough there, not so much here, they're faster but more human-like.
Puzzle Forge 2 - 3.7 rating - Free with IAP - Search manually
Card Thief - 4.2 rating - Free with IAP - Search manually
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Puzzle Forge 2 | 3.9 rating | Free with IAP | 100,000+ downloads | Search manually
> Heroes of Burning-Blade need your help! As the new blacksmith of the realm, put together ressources on the board to build powerful weapons. Sell these equipments to heroes, earn gold pieces and experience to increase ...
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Puzzle Forge 2 | 3.9 rating | Free with IAP | 100,000+ downloads | Search manually
> Heroes of Burning-Blade need your help! As the new blacksmith of the realm, put together ressources on the board to build powerful weapons. Sell these equipments to heroes, earn gold pieces and experience to increase ...
|Feedback|PunyDev|Lonerzboy|
puzzle forge 2 (android): someone told me that 'setting' an item means adding a gem to it during crafting, so that's cleared up. still don't know how to access runes in the game, but seeing as every weapon has multiple to collect from random contracts you can't dismiss, it's not something I'm gonna pursue, just google/youtube legendary items at some point. but I've reached lvl40, tournament tier 3 is now a thing (kinda pointless, don't need money or xp that much) and I started using crystals and stuff to make all the netherium items, then I'm gonna reach day 50 one last time, make something for the big guy and probably move on to something else. and I still haven't met 2 customers.
risen: (massive spoilers ahead!) dear diary, this is my 5th and final week on the island. we finally managed to enter the volcano and open the gate to lizard central, but lowering the drawbridge wasn't easy, the caves were crawling with fucking lizardmen. luckily (for me, not him), drok the ogre got captured again and after freeing him he joined me, so I thought de-lizarding the caves would be a lot easier. finding the map not so much, I had no idea I had to leave the cave and go back to jasmin's place. it was good to be outside again, but that's where drok left, the motherfucker. I guess I could've reloaded (rufo, jasmin's wolf also died, probably not scripted) and cleared the caves with drok before going for the map, but whatever...
so I slept to heal, got sword 10 for no reason at all (I had everything I needed and more), then went back to clear the volcano caves and lower the bridge. would've been so much easier with drok, but I had a bunch of conjure skeleton scrolls (and a ton of bones for more), so I tried it. he was called fred for some reason and was pretty effective. according to the map, the bridge was only accessible from the inside, but mendoza found a way in, and with my fluent saurian knowledge I picked up from thin air, I found out that ursegor was someone who ordered the titans around and the fortress was built according to his plans and his body was still there somewhere. couldn't make out everything, but it was good enough for mendoza to have me order someone else for a change to punch a hole in the wall to proceed to the crypt. he was useless, of course, so into a snail I changed again to crawl through the tiny hole he'd made and opened the bridge from the inside.
of course, the fort was huge as well and crawling with lizards WHO FUCKING PARRY EVERYTHING and I was really fucking sick of it at that point. yeah, charged attack, and lure them out in the open (or into a corridor) for more (or less) space, but it's still fucking annoying that I can't even scratch them without any of this but they can fuck me up. thank fuck for all the potions I'd collected until then, so I didn't have to care too much about my health.
then I finally found ursegor's spirit. a titan lord, but not a titan himself, just someone who subdued them for humanity because the gods kindly asked him. then he got trapped with the last titan he caught and the whole temple went underground. serves him right for trusting a deity... also, he never heard of the holy flame, glad the order has a solid foundation. not sure how this titan remained trapped while the others escaped, but at least it kept the rest of them away from the island. ursegor told me if I free him, he'd tell me how to free the fire titan and use it as a weapon against the others. I only had to hunt down his 3 servants, grab their skulls and tell ursegor he was free to break the bond between his body and spirit, then use all 4 skulls to open the titan trap. found a titan sword too, same 80 dmg as mine, but it looks less badass.
with the trap open, mendoza told me that weaponizing the titan might destroy the island (either by his great plan backfiring or being successful and the titan leaving the island open for other titans while it's away freeing the mainland), but no biggie, plenty of other islands left. I wanted to kill him, but he ran inside and closed the gate, and since I figured the chapter would be over soon, I hadn't bothered healing and had 9 (nine) hp left to fight all his loyal men. so I reloaded, healed, skipped his delusions this time and murdered everyone. ursegor told me I had to become a titan lord by finding his ancient armor and weapon, scattered all over the place, of course, and gave me a rune to break the blue barriers, and that was the end of chapter 3.
grabbed the rune and could've teleported away, but decided to fight my way out, die order scum! and flashbacks to chapter 1 where they'd attack me on sight. talked to some monastery dudes and eldric because I'd promised him, though that quest already completed itself a while ago. then made a 2-handed 90 dmg obsidian sword and a bunch more potions and scrolls (don't even know where I picked up the inferno rune) and learned pickpocket 2-3 because why not. could even steal from the don but didn't bother going through everyone's pockets, nor the entire place again to check new spawns, just the 5 temples to get the armor.
thought I'd talk to severin one more time, his village is right next to one of the tombs, and he actually had something to say, but while talking we got attacked again and I accidentally hit a fucking npc in the way again. piece of shit... second time I managed it and the tomb was short and combat-free as well, nice. the second was shit, had to lure a fucking skeleton over a fire trap I had to turn on for a very short time, and by the time he walked there the fucking thing went out. what the fuck is this? worst idea in the game so far. tried levitating over the fire, as one of the guides suggested, that didn't work either, then a steam buddy suggested telekinesis for the switch, best idea ever. and it was guarding the titan hammer, I'm a sword guy, what the fuck do I care? found a 120 dmg titan axe too, but it's an axe, can't do much with it.
on my way to the third place I ran into patty. I'd been looking for her in harbour town for no particular reason, and now she wanted to join me, so I took her along to the temple. this time more bastards spawned on the west coast, so she was actually useful and I still had to heal some after every fight, wasn't really optimizing anything, nearing the end, got plenty of items. but of course she didn't follow me into the cave and the tomb, would've been nice, if only for company. I also got stuck here for a while, but then figured everything out, it was pretty cool. caught patty up with happenings, then she left.
even towards the end of the game, being as powerful as possible, I fucking sucked at combat, 3 lizardmen could kill me. or just 1. but the titan crossbow from the previous tomb is pretty cool. I ate all the dex boost items as they were, and the 125 dmg bow with 45 dex can kill an elite lizard in 5 or 6 shots, or an undead ashbeast in 7. not bad if I can find a spot where they can't reach me. I also found a 100 dmg sword here, didn't make much difference.
the final tomb was short and sweet again, a bit more puzzly but also combaty, then I went back to eldric to fix the armor, looks spiffy, then to ursegor for some final advice. killed mendoza, took his eyepiece (supposedly to be able to see the titan, but you don't have to equip it and the helmet is better), then boss fight, which was shit at first sight, but took only about 3 tries, so didn't really ruin the overall and final experience/atmosphere. and with the titan sealed again, credits, a bit of extra dialog, according to which our nameless hero is off to meet the other titans in his new gear, and that was that. I was hoping to run into brogar again, but apparently ratting him out to the don closes that avenue.
really glad I gave this a second shot after hating the demo. it was a lot of fun, some frustration, mostly combat-related due to my lack of dexterity, coupled with my reluctance to use healing items until later, which also led to a lot of unnecessary back and forth between me and the nearest bed. finished on lvl29, it took 1 month, I'd say about 80 hours, lots of idling, so steam and the in-game counters are useless, and there was a lot of reloading too. should've done the monastery path when I got to it, then reload and do the bandit stuff I ended up choosing, because after finishing the game I didn't feel like it anymore, so I just watched that bit from a let's play. the murder mystery was pretty cool and I learned about a couple of places I'd missed. can't wait to start risen 2 after reading up on it a bit. any good-to-know advice is welcome.
qop: very basic puzzle game, slow movement, no speed settings, volume sliders, resolutions, windowed mode, undo, and spams you with achievements. 4 (FOUR!) just for starting the game and also per level, you get all of them no matter which game mode you play, because of course there are separate ones for playing with a dark and light background. so it's one of those achievement spamming garbage games, didn't realize this 'developer' is all about this shit, and also spewing out sequels all the time, might as well call them achievement packs. it got a free dlc with a few more levels and a sequel's coming out soon, and according to the dev, possibly with even more achievements. ridiculous. not worth the time or money.
Ooh! This looks good!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tuesdayquest.puzzleforge2
I dunno about "easy" games, but try this. The microtransactions are practically nonexistant.
puzzle forge 2 (android): crafted everything from gold now, should try to do the crystal stuff, only made 2 so far. still need a few upgrades and levels to unlock the 3rd tournament tier, and I got a rune for the 30 gold items contract, so I could make legendary weapons if I knew how.
risen: (massive spoilers ahead!) dear diary, I've been stranded on this not really desert island for 2 weeks now. the bandits are nice enough, well, some of them, but I was ready to see more of the world, just had to finish a few things first.
finally found enrico, he really didn't want to work (and I suck at reading maps and the environment). to be fair, he got trapped in the ruins for 3 days, that'd fuck the best of them up. gave him a useless amulet, told him he's good with the ancient spirits now and stole a potion from him. and since I'm using the 1.3 patch, he could teach me prospecting. it's his trade, makes sense that after coming to his senses he'd do that. but the fucker killed a bunch of stingrats on his way back, no xp again, nor extra loot because I don't have the stinger tool. been talking and quicksaving, but the autosave was just before it, so I followed him and got the xp at least.
after doing his job for him, hawkins had some basic armor for 500 gold. yeah, right. had to kill more stingrats for luis, so he'd get his drunk ass back to work (also stole my beer back from him, hehe). no tool, less loot again. then the nearby cave where where one of brogar's men went missing. it was full of moths (had the tool) and they all aggro as part of the pack, more piranha bytes fuckery, but I managed. gonna come back later to kill the ghoul and the other path leads back to the village, but I'll save the stingrats for later.
found the guy dead, of course, and another sword piece and a list of people brogar's been 'protecting.' took it to rachel, the don's wife, then confronted brogar. had to play along for the greater good, felt really dirty, but got xp from everyone, him included, then got threatened when I kept the gold. threatened him back, told rachel, made a bet, stole his weapon (he still had a sword), spared his life though, I'm not an animal. got the 5th sword piece and his hut from rachel, whose chest I managed to loot before she woke up, thank fuck the game pauses when manipulating chests, who needs sneak?
oscar the blacksmith made the sword for the don, but when I kept it, he told me to go fuck myself. there are other smiths, but I didn't want to anger him forever, so I let him keep it and bought it for 200. the money would've been better spent on training, but I had 1k at that point after getting alchemy 1 and didn't want pickpocket 2 for 250 just for this. it'd pay itself back, but whatever. would've loved to keep the sword, 30 dmg (mine's 15), but it was for the don. tried it on the ghoul in the cave like 20 times, still died.
the don was pleased and sent me to harbour town to find his missing men. told him about brogar, who swore revenge and left the camp. rachel wasn't happy either, forgot I'd promised her not to tell the don. the mage sells cool stuff and he sent me to the monastery, but first I helped recapture the nearby temple ruin from the order. took a few tries and pathfinding was shit, half my guys kept going the wrong way and I wanted to take them back to camp before disbanding, so they don't accidentally kill anything I should, happened before. went back to loot the temple, then got a decent map from fincher, but it needs some getting used to, wish I could zoom in at least.
got smithing, a 30 dmg sword from loot (smiths take fucking forever, why is their crafting process longer than mine?), cleared the starting area (gnome cave, catacomb, novice village, sara was still hanging out at the abandoned house) and went exploring where I could, only leaving animals I didn't have the gutting tools or killing power for. combat's still frustrating with more than one enemy, and going back to a barrel/bed is tedious, so I need to get better or start using potions. but I love how stingrats go to a corpse I just created to munch on it. and animals sleep at night too, can sneak up on them.
found a dude who's being haunted by ghosts, probably not wise to take on them yet, but I reached the eastern temple for fincher, found hero's crowns, giant turtles, ashbeasts (both are too tough), buried treasure (no keys yet), a cool ring finally, and I 'unlocked' a bed in the wilderness by clearing out the place I dubbed gnomesville (a house with gnomes). after I hit lvl10, I headed to harbour town with tellur's help, not that I needed it, already explored and cleared most of the way, but it was 200 xp.
the guard was very reasonable, let me in for 100 gold and gave me a map, but said I couldn't leave. no one can, actually. I could climb out and back somewhere, but had no outside business, so I started talking to people, there are a TON of them because when the ruins destroyed most people's farms and livelihood, the order kindly invited them into harbour town. more to get them out of the way so they could raid the tombs in peace than anything else, and of course that's why no one can leave, but they're not happy either, what with the order exploiting them, and so on.
so I helped a farmer and his sick wife, found a buyer for the fishmonger's stall who only bought it because the girl she fell for liked fish (shark steak gives xp and others sell ingredients to more hearty meals), visited the brothel with occasional live music and calmed a lady who was worried about her sons (one was the guy being haunted, yet to find the 3rd), stole back a necklace from the don's old house, helped the local drug dealers (because I'm the good guy), and while following one, had a lovely time with lilly the prostitute (it fails the tailing, but I just dinged, so to speak, with that xp and got another chance at the other task, also ratted lilly out to sonya, the madame), helped another harlot get rid of her drunk admirer, and completed epic quests such as 'a night with olga' (another employee there, psychic too) or 'mental arithmetic' (what's 24x17?).
the pearl necklace I'd sold or an open locks scroll would've been useful for a quest, but I didn't feel like waiting, climbing out or paying for these (couldn't buy a scroll in town anyway), but kayleigh is a stupid bitch, so I was fine with stealing from her. and from the prison guard, had a kickass shield, nicked it and got the key by bringing him a prostitute. also helped patty, the tavern owner, find traces of her father thanks to the prisoner. they're both pirates (arch-enemies), so naturally she sells lockpicks in her tavern. and after helping her leave town, I could finally look at her chest. the wooden one behind the counter. (shouldn't have ratted her out to romanov, but 300 gold and 50 xp was a good enough reward.)
both factions gave me stuff to do and to get the most xp out of them, I kept informing both sides, then ended them for the don. got the sneak ring and looted everything I could (permanent str potion for later, etc.), love how some people say they can see me sneaking around. got 2 more gutting tools (boars and stingrats) and ran into lvl3 chests and doors, may buy or make scrolls for them, not spend 5 lp, there's about 20, as I hear, probably not worth it. already went around one via the roof, it was fun.
after a while the commandant who runs the town for the order summoned me. stole everything there, told him I'm just a castaway, haven't picked a faction yet. didn't want to anger him unnecessarily, he'd find out my bandity intentions soon enough, at that point all I had left was to turn in the faction quests to the don's men. then I met scordo, who runs the bandit business in town from the brothel, to nobody's surprise, and also got a few extra errands to run, such as killing a merchant's cow ('stop interfering with livestock,' the farmer said) and putting its head in the merchant's bed to scare him into paying protection money. I'm not part of the mob at all and I'm sure 'the don' is just short for donald. (the sad lesson was that scrolls also use mana, never thought of that, gonna need a ton of mana potions for offensive spells, levitation or whatever away from beds.)
I barely got 2 levels out of all this (it takes exponentionally more xp each time), and that's with some boars and stingrats I could finally kill for loot after I found my way out, didn't want to end chapter 1 with only a few hundred xp missing, though I'm sure I'll get a bunch more when I turn in the final faction quest and end the chapter. should've done +10 str, not alchemy 1-2 earlier, not gonna need it until lvl3 and that's far away, need 100 str first. can't use bastard swords in one hand until sword 6 either and I need my shield. with the 2 new levels I got to 60 str and sword 4, so 2 more levels until a better weapon, but armor is due soon from the don. also a ton of tougher respawns when chapter 2 stars, should be interesting...