Blog Your Current Game

[ASHES]

I've heard a lot about Pokemon with guns, I may have to check it out. I've been playing a lot of Ghostwire Tokyo lately. Not usually the kind of genre I get into, but the magic and exploration and random crap happening has pulled me in. Tokyo looks awesome, gameplay mechanics all feel good, lots of enemy varieties. Really good game I wasn't expecting to like. Unfortunately the screenshots had to be compressed from 1440p to less than 2mb.

 

[Redress]

I've been REALLY enjoying PalWorld. This game is amazingly complete for an early early release.

Granted, I've only been in the starting area so far, but this game is deserving of the hype.

The basics of the game are, as previously stated, Ark + Pokemon but it's more than that. I enjoy the more rapid beast "Pal" acquisition pokemon style, but there is a rather interesting reason why you will want to acquire all of the Pals.

The reason you will want to catch and learn about all of the Pals is because your captured pals all have skills that are useful around your base. Some will be good at building and will pick up your more time consuming crafting tasks, some can mine and will gather stone and metal ore, others plant crops, and so on. I've found myself catching Pals just to see what they can do at my base, and with the right group I can come back to the base after a long scouting trip enough resources gathered to upgrade and repair my gear.

The Interface is basically Ark, but better in a lot of ways. Everything seems much more streamlined.

You can play a custom map with all the same XP and Gathering boosts you can in Ark or Conan if you want to fast track advancement. I tend to nudge up the XP gain in my first play throughs in the Ark-Likes because I like to quickly get to the more intersting items in the game and this game seems to have a rather large tech tree.

I'll be playing this game for a while.

Ok, ok, you talked me into it. Downloading now...

Edit:Steam must have gotten faster servers, it is already downloaded, starting up now.

 

[Redress]

Lesson 1: Do not set up first base right near the giant mammoth thingy...

 

[jmotivator]

Ok, ok, you talked me into it. Downloading now...

Edit:Steam must have gotten faster servers, it is already downloaded, starting up now.

5 hours of my day vannished after I booted it up.

 

[jmotivator]

Lesson 1: Do not set up first base right near the giant mammoth thingy...

I have my first base between two of the big mammoth things and they seem pretty docile. I got really lucky and stumbled on a fight between a two high level Pals (for me, anyway). They were both near death so I yoinked them both.

 

[jmotivator]

Well, I tried to assault the first boss tower last night and got beat like a rented mule.

It's clear that they wanted me to be WAY more leveled when I started that fight.

I played 9 hours and have only encounted to bugs so far. With one bug I captured a creature but it wasn't added to my inventory. That issue was slightly mitigated by the fact that the reason I was capturing that Pal was because I just neede dto see its stats. the capture populated the data in my encyclopedia so it wasn't a real loss. Had it been a more important Pal capture it might have been annoying.

I'm level 18 (?) now and the XP/Level is really ramping up to the point that my slight bonus I gave myself on the map seems non-existent. THat's OK, it allowed me a fast start, at least.

I started reading through the tech tree before I signed off and I see more automation tech in there which seems to indicate you will be able to expend on what the Pals can do for you at the base. This... pleases me.

The other bug is Pals that randomly show up on top of structures they can't climb down from, but this is easily fixed by just unassigning and reassigning to the base. I can see it being an issue when you are away from your base for a while since in theory they could starve to death because they can't access their food dish.

One of the great things that this game does is turn saddles into 1-Time, multi-use tools. Once you have unlocked and created a saddle for a given Pal it automatically applies to all Pals of the same type.

Still a great game, can't wait to play again.

 

[jmotivator]

Also, for anyone who decides to pick up PalWorld, I have a handful of handy tips that will make life easier:

1) All containers within your base circle are automatically tied to your crafting stations.
2) Due to #1 you should always place a small chest next to every resource node to give your Pals the shortest distance to store items. They work MUCH faster that way.
3) The Palbox acts as a teleporter, Press C to teleport to unlocked shrines.
3) Rush the Mega Sphere to help with Pal acquisition. They aren't much more expensive to make and make all acquisitions easier.
4) When your base is attacked by packs of animals, throw spheres into the scraps like crazy. You will end up capturing some animals that aren't easy to find otherwise.
5) In the same line as "People in Glass Houses..", People in wodden Houses shouldn't start fights with flame pals....
6) By level 15 do whatever you can to capture a flyer. Flying makes EVERYTHING easier.

 

[jmotivator]

So my lates thoughts on PalWorld:

If I had to knock the game, and it's not really a knock, it is that the out-of-the-box Server difficulty settings are rather steep for a solo player. That is mitigated by the fact that the game really doesn't scale with more players, so if you are going to scale the out-of-the-box game it should skew difficult.

The amazing thing, technically, about this game is that it has fixed all of the various bugs that I have come to expect from Ark and Ark-likes. The fact that you can edit server much more simply which is welcome since as a solo player I have found I needed to tweek some things to make it easier to maintain a fresh and vibrant feel of the game in the mid-late when grinding would absolutely kill the solo player.

Generally I bump the XP and drops. If you have a x1 XP gain you will end up having to farm a handful of dungeons and bosses that are at your level if you want to advance at a reasonable rate. I'm at level 32 now and it would take me forever to hit level 33 doing the normal grind. I would suggest solo players run a minimum of x4 at least after level 15, in the later game I might even bump that to x8 to flatten the grind. At x8 I might need 4 dungeon runs to hit 33 rather than 32 dungeon runs. It's a matter of taste I guess.

I wouldn't suggest messing around with damage multipliers, though, because the bosses are tough, but all are doable solo if you follow the Rock-Paper-Scissors format in your Pal choice and tackle the bosses within 4 levels or so.

Upping the drop rate VERY slightly takes the sting off of the other half of the gring you will see while playing solo. In mutiplayer, with a lot of guild members, you can distibute to gathering tasks, so you need to make a bit of an adjustment to allow you to collect a bit faster. Later game I'm finding I need to run multiple bases across the map just to balance resources and ease of building.

That is all I'll say now since it can get spoilery.

 

[Redress]

Palworld: flying mounts rule hardcore!

 

[Redress]

Starting to move forward with the game. Beat first tower boss(excellent fight, feels like a boss fight while not being unfairly hard), beat first alpha, clearing dungeons(when they do not mysteriously disappear on me), and exploring alot with flying mount. Figured out how to change palballs on the fly, makes things oh so much easier.

 

[jmotivator]

Starting to move forward with the game. Beat first tower boss(excellent fight, feels like a boss fight while not being unfairly hard), beat first alpha, clearing dungeons(when they do not mysteriously disappear on me), and exploring alot with flying mount. Figured out how to change palballs on the fly, makes things oh so much easier.

I've hit that point in all survival games where my ADD gets to be a bit of a hinderance. I have so many projects I need to focus on, but I keep getting sidetracked by Ooh-Shiny.

I haven't really gotten into the breeding and merging side of Pal Farming yet, but from what little I saw of it, that is more of an end-game for multiplayer since it quickly outpaces the power of the map content.

And yeah, being able to fly is a game changer. My first project when I got my flyer and saddle was to immediately hunt for a better base than my starting location and start rebuilding. There are some really choice, almost cheaty map locations if you do enough recon.

 

[Redress]

Diablo4 season 3: memory leak still exists, game still hangs briefly when people get close to you, uninstalled the game.

 

[PoS]

With the announcement of NCSoft officially licensing the "City of Heroes: Homecoming" private server, I decided to put the cape back on.

View attachment 67487369

I've played a bit today, and it's still a fun game.

I was almost disappointed because it appeared that their mods to the game had moved travel powers to a gated merchant system that would have taken forever to grind... and a Youtube channel even said that that is how it's done.. but it isn't.

Galvanic Avenger is now flying around Atlas Park, dispatching bad guys.

You can download City of Heroes: Homecoming Client here. The Game is free and persists on donations alone.

Hmm, I played DCU online and Freedom Force way back in the day. How is the graphics of this one? does it hold up? I might think about getting into it since I need to find a new game to play.

 

[jmotivator]

Hmm, I played DCU online and Freedom Force way back in the day. How is the graphics of this one? does it hold up? I might think about getting into it since I need to find a new game to play.

The graphics were very good in 2004 when it was released. It's good as a walk in history, if nothing else, and it's free.

 

[jmotivator]

I was flying around on my new faster mount in PalWorld when I spied a rather amazing potential base site, so my morning adventure changed immediately from hunting bosses to base relocation.

In my new base I decided to try a new strategy on base building wherein the only enclosed space is a small 2x2 house for my bed. The rest of the base is scattered about the base site on 2x3 and 4x3 platforms, as required.

I have to say, I am very glad I did because I hadn't realized until I completed my base and assigned Pals to it how bad of an idea it is to put production inside your base, especially on a second floor. Now that everything is out in the open the Pals seem far less confused, and my assembly lines now attract numerous Pals to complete build tasks. Before this I had my assembly lines on the second floor of my castle and apparently Pals can't or don't navigate stairs to tasks, or back see chores when there is a stairway in the pathing. Now everything gets done fast.

(Spoilery tips incoming)

Finally, I have to say that they really need to rework pistols in the game. The scaling of pistol damage does now keep up with the time it takes to make the various ammo. It was crossbow and Musket for me for a long time with lots of resources wasted on pistols.

Now I carry a Single shot rifle and Shotgun.

Granted, now that I figured out how much easier it is to manufacture when the Pals can join you are the assembly like, maybe I'll rethink it since producing ammo is no longer a slog.

 

[Lethargic Aptitude]

This won't tell the vast majority of people anything, perhaps nobody, but I was in the middle of back-training in some easier hunting grounds in the ancient mud I've played since I was young (looked it up 15+ years after leaving, found it alive, and was able to re-activate my account)....




View attachment 67237360

That is remarkable.

 

[jmotivator]

OK, I'm going to have to stop playing PalWorld for the day.

My main base is up to full speed and is churning of refined metal and advanced technologies so I spent some time figuring out the ins and outs of Pal breeding and dedicated my old base to a breeding base. Basically I have a pasture and Pals that produce key breeding materials, and then the Breeding station itself which needs a large flat space.

I experimented with some breeding and have concluded that I need to catch a lot more Pals....

 

[PoS]

Tried Armored Core 6, but then I realized it was the same people who made Elden Ring, and I suck at these kinds of action RPGs. Uninstalled and got a refund. Oh well.

 

[jmotivator]

Fair warning on a bug and the workaround:

Always always always keep a Pal you can mount with you when you travel. I was traveling this morning collecting eggs and treasure chests when I suddenly fell through the world. Unfortunately the world in PalWorld is not entirely hollow, but rather interconnected blocks, so rather than falling through and plummeting to my death I fell about 20 feet onto the next block down. I logged out under the assumption that it would reset me to the nearest pathable terrain, but it didn't. The game had saved me trapped inside the world.

Luckily the textures and only one-way, so I could see out of my new prison. There were some bandits so I figured let them kill me so I made my way to as close as I could come to them and they would attack me, but that was a mistake because the bandits were melee and so they tried to run to me, hit the wall and created a deafening shriek and the game seemed to try to push them through the wall. Had they succeeded I would have just let them kill me, but they were now frozen in an impossible task, and they couldn't shoot or hit me and now the game was grinding, so I tried shooting them and discovered that the wall, like the graphics, were one sided. I could shoot out.

So once I realized that I could shoot out the fix was pretty easy. I threw my mountable Pal through the wall and then mounted it, which pulled me out of the prison and back to normal space.

I was sweating there for a minute, though, thinking I'd have to start over

Anyway, keep the mount handy to pull you out of the underworld is what I'm saying.

 

[jmotivator]

One last PalWorld post for a while

I didn't really understand the use for the Grappling hook coming so long after most players had secured a flying mount but today I realized you can use it to travel when you overburdened. It comes in VERY useful when you are moving high volumes of goods around a base.

 

[OrphanSlug]

A few old friends of mine on steam found me a few days ago and convinced me to load up GTA5 for an evening of gaming.

Turns out I went pretty far in online mode after completing single player, got myself well above lvl 300 and had amassed quite a collection of properties, businesses, cars, military equipment and just about everything else.

Yacht, 2 penthouses, casino penthouse, office in the Maze Bank Tower, Bunker as a front for weapons dealing, Night Club, Motorcycle Club as a front for money laundering and narcotics, Auto Shop, Salvage Yard / Chop Shop, 100+ cars everywhere, and I guess one night I decided to buy a Hanger at the Airport.

Anyway, a few picks of things as we played off and on over the past couple three weeks. I'll try to post more later...

 

[PoS]

After trying out a bunch of games and not liking them, I finally found one I cant get enough of.

Iratus: Lord of the Dead. It's like Darkest Dungeon, only you get to play the monster! Way way cooler because your party isnt subjected to insanity and all that. Instead youre the one making the miners and adventurers that stand in your way nuts! I couldnt finish DD because it was so tough, but this one even has a difficulty level, so I can avoid the frustration lol. Loving this.

 

[OrphanSlug]

Did a little more old GTA5 exploring, turns out there is more I had forgotten about. Car meets, a chop shop, and turns out under the night club was quite the car collection.

 

[ModernDiogenes]

I’m looking for RTS games without RPG involvent. The next level real world conflict recreation to test previous military strategy or creat one’s own. The digital Avalon Hill stuff. Also the next gen Civ games, Age of Empire, Command and Conquer. Civ 6 isn’t feeding the fix any more .

Any notions? I’ve looked but I’m not finding. I’m I missing any candidates in the RTS venue?

Thanks.

 

[jmotivator]

I’m looking for RTS games without RPG involvent. The next level real world conflict recreation to test previous military strategy or creat one’s own. The digital Avalon Hill stuff. Also the next gen Civ games, Age of Empire, Command and Conquer. Civ 6 isn’t feeding the fix any more .

Any notions? I’ve looked but I’m not finding. I’m I missing any candidates in the RTS venue?

Thanks.

Have you tried the Total War series? Total War: Rome is generally considered the best of the series. It has a turn base strategic map and RTS combat.

If you want a fully engrossing game with a steep learning curve try Hearts of Iron IV. It's almost literally a Real Time Avalon Hill game. I'm sure Redress would love to give you pointers.