got_quiet

Welp I've been spending about all my time lately playing Valheim. My friends got into it big time a few months ago and then then stopped after they kind of hit the limit of the content at the time, but there was a big patch recently and they jumped back in. I figured fuck it, I could do for something new right now, and joined them. I don't tend to like open world games at all, or survival games, or games that lack a pretty narrow progression, so I thought I would hate this, but it's actually gotten rid of a lot of what I dislike and put in a lot of what I like. The world is actually persistent. One person keeps the server running and we can all pop in and out to the same world and continue to build it up over time. The gear and crafting and stuff isn't too overly complicated, or reliant on too much grinding, and what grinding there is is spread out among lots of people so it isn't too bad. The crafting tree I don't need to worry about too much because the other guys seem to enjoy it, and the exploring is fun and the combat relies less on stats (you do need the most current equips but there is only one progression, not constant comparing of stats) and more on mechanics, which is what I prefer.

So I've been spending a lot of time with that game, building houses, stabbing my spear at people (And spears are my favorite weapons in games so I'm very happy that the spears here are strong) and generally enjoying myself. The building options are a little limited, but with some creativity you can make some nice things. One of the things that always frustrates me with a lot of building elements in games is the shitty scale. It makes sense because the purpose of games is to fit the stuff that needs to be inside a building in there, along with the camera, but a lot of time the scale is way too big. Valheim's system is off of cubes, with some leeway for angles, so it's easy to make things too big or with weird scale, but there's enough freedom that you can make stuff that looks kind of nice too. I made a little hut for myself right by the portal hub and a big "church" to learn the mechanics of how building works. I hold had wood to work with when I did it so now that we're in the end game I may make something new and better looking later.

There's also a "taming" option in the game. You can tame boars, wolves, and massive buffalo looking creatures called lox. The wolves hang around and defend your town from invasion, but they also howl constantly, so our peaceful little town is now full of doggy wailing. The lox are kind of cute in their low def way (everything in this game is kind of low def, it's a very small company) and also turn out to be pretty good guard dogs because they trample everything in their path. I tamed one and called it Boop, and then someone else tamed another, and now there's a baby Boop. It's actually kind of cute.

So here is Boop and his family.

Here's my house. I tried to make it as small as possible because I like cozy small things.

Here's a bridge my brother made. It's looks great!

And here's a "church" I used as a way to learn the mechanics of construction. I'd probably do it a lot differently if I tried again but it was a good learning experience.

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I'm still working through Octopath Traveler. It's slow going since I play it once every other week or so, but I have finished the main storylines and am now just cleaning up all the sidequests, which tend to consist of talking to one guy, then talking to another, then talking to the first guy, or talking to one guy, then guiding some other guy over to that first guy. Very simplistic. Honestly I don't know why I'm still playing except that I want to kill the final boss before I uninstall, and it's not like I can do anything that I have to actually focus on when I'm playing it to occupy myself during meetings or whatever.

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I've had a hankering for faster paced games and so have been playing some Hades again, finally getting max hearts on everyone. I'm trying to beat a new game run but haven't gotten any further than Meg. But now I'm at least getting past Meg. I'm such a button smasher this is a real difficult challenge cause I just walk into damage lol. But that challenge is at least keeping things fresh.

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Ended up watching the last half of Midnight Mass with the roommates. I enjoyed it well enough. My attitude towards most horror is that it basically a subgenre of comedy, and I kinda had to approach it that way to have fun. Horror movie logic is just too much for me otherwise. The monologues were also a little much. This was the first things I've seen by the director, and while I liked it my understanding is his other stuff is kinda similar? Or at least he's pretty strictly a horror guy? I didn't feel particularly compelled to seek it out.

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I ended up picking up and reading Mieruko-chan, which is a manga about a girl who can see scary undead apparitions but tries to just pretend she can't. The series starts out with some really gratuitous fan service so I was a little apprehensive, but it's actually a fun story with an interesting cast and lots of mystery about what these monsters are, just how dangerous they are, what they want, all that. The few moments of really tension I felt were mostly based on the human characters, cause their motivations are not always clear, but despite all the crazy horror elements the tone is actually kind of heartwarming and uplifting, as poor Miko is trying to help her friends and do the right thing while also being perpetually scared shitless by the weird shit going on all around her.

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It's also IF Comp time. I've got two games finished so far and enjoyed them both. I need to play three more in order for my votes to count. I always takes me forever to finish them up because I end up with executive dysfunction thanks to the deadline, haha. This is why I avoid doing exchanges too. They just make me extremely anxious as all I can think about is the deadline...