What Are You Playing 5: New Thread+

[Rynjin]

Honestly I just gave up on Valerie. She sucks.

I took advantage of mods to respec her into a Vindictive Bastard Paladin, which both fits her backstory (it's an ex-Paladin archetype) and is one of my favorite classes.

[Catullus64]

Ok, I booted up Pathfinder: Kingmaker again and am really determined to give it a fair shake this time. That said, a dozen tiny little things keep adding up to make the game frustrating to play; I will now grouse about this many little annoyances. Kingmaker fans, consider this a therapeutic exercise necessary for me to push on through.

• Lack of Good Feedback. This feels like a problem of polish, but the combat lacks a lot of visual and aural cues about what's going on. Character barks are inconsistent, and whenever you input a command, there's not so much as a "clicking" sound effect to confirm that the command is actually registering. Animations on the character models are sparse, and "sitting around doing nothing" and "sitting around while my initiative timer ticks down" look identical, so it's very easy to have characters waste valuable time because you don't realize they're not attacking.
• The game hides dice rolls from you, both in dialogues and its regular systems. This makes it very hard to figure out if you're having a hard time because you're under-leveled, you're unlucky, of if you're just doing something else wrong.
• Pathfinding, ironically, is quite bad, even by the very low standards of this genre of game. This contributes to combat feeling pretty fiddly.
• If your game is going to have persistent ticking-clock quests in the background, your interface had better be extremely clear with how much time actions, travel time, rest, and other activities will take. Instead I often feel like I'm guessing as to whether resting or sidequesting is going to be fine, or will somehow screw me over.
• Stealth is also frustrating; the game has no intermediate state between "functionally invisible" and "all the enemies see you and attack." It's just a matter of failing one skill check (which, again, the game doesn't show you) and you're instantly out in the open. For God's sake, even Baldur's Gate gave you a few moments to react before you were revealed. This, combined with the fact that it's unclear how often or how many times you get Perception rolls, makes effective scouting a futile endeavor.
• This last one isn't a persistent problem, but a single incident that made me ragequit the game. We're having a fight, and Amiri starts moving back from the frontline around the other companions. I figure it's just her pathfinding having a little moment, until she attacks and knocks out Linzi. We lost the fight because of that! The enemies we were fighting had no spellcasters, there was no indicator of Amiri being under any kind of compulsion or confusion effect, and if this is a Barbarian rage thing it definitely doesn't say so in the ability description. Is this a bug? Did I misclick? If I misclicked, why is there the option to target and attack your allies?

[LibraryOgre]

[*]Lack of Good Feedback. This feels like a problem of polish, but the combat lacks a lot of visual and aural cues about what's going on. Character barks are inconsistent, and whenever you input a command, there's not so much as a "clicking" sound effect to confirm that the command is actually registering. Animations on the character models are sparse, and "sitting around doing nothing" and "sitting around while my initiative timer ticks down" look identical, so it's very easy to have characters waste valuable time because you don't realize they're not attacking.

Check for an update. They created turn-based, instead of real-time with pause, which helps that a fair amount. I find the amount of visual feedback to be useful in turn-based... it will show you what path you are going to take (and you can change that path by moving in segments... 10' that way, then 20' forward to attack, avoiding the AoE), plus targeting templates for AoE spells. If your turns hang for a second (which happens to me), quickly turn off then back on turn-based.

[*]The game hides dice rolls from you, both in dialogues and its regular systems. This makes it very hard to figure out if you're having a hard time because you're under-leveled, you're unlucky, of if you're just doing something else wrong.

If you hover over the message in the message window, it will show you exactly how the result was calculated... die roll, relevant modifiers, etc.

[*]Pathfinding, ironically, is quite bad, even by the very low standards of this genre of game. This contributes to combat feeling pretty fiddly.

It does get fiddly with movement, as I mentioned above.

[*]If your game is going to have persistent ticking-clock quests in the background, your interface had better be extremely clear with how much time actions, travel time, rest, and other activities will take. Instead I often feel like I'm guessing as to whether resting or sidequesting is going to be fine, or will somehow screw me over.

Some of that is experience with how long things will take, especially travel; in a later chapter, when you're in the Tor of Levies, or climbing a mountain, the speed is glacial, but there are kingdom management quests that can help that (if you have Wildcards, you can get a quest to improve mountain speed; later, you can do a quest to turn a region into a horse breeding center, improving all land speed). The current state of the timer is in your journal, listed on a quest (after you become Baron, it's the Ancient Curse quest; I think it is the Stolen Lands quest before you become Baron).

[*]Stealth is also frustrating; the game has no intermediate state between "functionally invisible" and "all the enemies see you and attack." It's just a matter of failing one skill check (which, again, the game doesn't show you) and you're instantly out in the open. For God's sake, even Baldur's Gate gave you a few moments to react before you were revealed. This, combined with the fact that it's unclear how often or how many times you get Perception rolls, makes effective scouting a futile endeavor.

Can't argue too much, there, but it does get better as you level and get equipment. My current stealth maven, Ekundayo, is in full plate, but has a cloak that offsets and overcomes that penalty, so he can scout pretty well.

[*]This last one isn't a persistent problem, but a single incident that made me ragequit the game. We're having a fight, and Amiri starts moving back from the frontline around the other companions. I figure it's just her pathfinding having a little moment, until she attacks and knocks out Linzi. We lost the fight because of that! The enemies we were fighting had no spellcasters, there was no indicator of Amiri being under any kind of compulsion or confusion effect, and if this is a Barbarian rage thing it definitely doesn't say so in the ability description. Is this a bug? Did I misclick? If I misclicked, why is there the option to target and attack your allies?

Almost definitely a misclick; I did the same thing day before yesterday, but it was Ekun's wolf and my MC... fortunately, I didn't get knocked out, just knocked down.

[Cespenar]

So far both encounters and companions are satisfying. Encounters isn't surprising; Wrath of teh Righteous is notorious for being an AP that's really easy by Paizo AP standards even if your characters go through the whole thing as non-Mythic characters.

The companions are a bit more surprising. Valerie in Kingmaker BROKE MY SOUL. You have a limited number of archetypes to add, and one of the ones you choose is TOWER SHIELD SPECIALIST? REALLY?

In this game though the companions I've met so far range from decent (Seelah, the Iconic Paladin, who has Shield Focus and Dodge as her starting Feats, but...well she's still a PALADIN) to absolute beasts (Lann, who is a Zen Archer Monk; already good, cranked to 11 because the CRPG Pathfinder games use Core Monk archetypes with Unchained Monk base chassis). None of them are bad.

I've been seeing a lot of bug-related comments on Steam, though, which is a little bit off-putting.

[Spacewolf]

Ok, I booted up Pathfinder: Kingmaker again and am really determined to give it a fair shake this time. That said, a dozen tiny little things keep adding up to make the game frustrating to play; I will now grouse about this many little annoyances. Kingmaker fans, consider this a therapeutic exercise necessary for me to push on through.

• Lack of Good Feedback. This feels like a problem of polish, but the combat lacks a lot of visual and aural cues about what's going on. Character barks are inconsistent, and whenever you input a command, there's not so much as a "clicking" sound effect to confirm that the command is actually registering. Animations on the character models are sparse, and "sitting around doing nothing" and "sitting around while my initiative timer ticks down" look identical, so it's very easy to have characters waste valuable time because you don't realize they're not attacking.
• The game hides dice rolls from you, both in dialogues and its regular systems. This makes it very hard to figure out if you're having a hard time because you're under-leveled, you're unlucky, of if you're just doing something else wrong.
• Pathfinding, ironically, is quite bad, even by the very low standards of this genre of game. This contributes to combat feeling pretty fiddly.
• If your game is going to have persistent ticking-clock quests in the background, your interface had better be extremely clear with how much time actions, travel time, rest, and other activities will take. Instead I often feel like I'm guessing as to whether resting or sidequesting is going to be fine, or will somehow screw me over.
• Stealth is also frustrating; the game has no intermediate state between "functionally invisible" and "all the enemies see you and attack." It's just a matter of failing one skill check (which, again, the game doesn't show you) and you're instantly out in the open. For God's sake, even Baldur's Gate gave you a few moments to react before you were revealed. This, combined with the fact that it's unclear how often or how many times you get Perception rolls, makes effective scouting a futile endeavor.
• This last one isn't a persistent problem, but a single incident that made me ragequit the game. We're having a fight, and Amiri starts moving back from the frontline around the other companions. I figure it's just her pathfinding having a little moment, until she attacks and knocks out Linzi. We lost the fight because of that! The enemies we were fighting had no spellcasters, there was no indicator of Amiri being under any kind of compulsion or confusion effect, and if this is a Barbarian rage thing it definitely doesn't say so in the ability description. Is this a bug? Did I misclick? If I misclicked, why is there the option to target and attack your allies?

Ok some advice, screw the normal combat system for anything at your level and go for turn based combat it fixes every issue you have.
Means you know exactly what your characters are doing with each of their actions.
Means you have time to actually check your combat log to check the saves and effects that are causing your characters to get hit or miss
For the time based stuff, basically it's extremely generous for everything and you can usually check the quest log to check what date a quest will fail on. Resting tells you how long it will take before you click traveling is known for used paths but obviously unknown for untrodden paths.
Yea screw stealth, I rarely use it and if I do my team is usually chugging potions of vanish.
That does sound like a miss click.

Only reason I ever use the standard combat system is if I'm up against a bunch of weak enemies and I want my guys to just chop away while I don't really pay attention.

Edit:
About companions in Kingmaker honestly it doesn't really matter how good they are because the way you interreact with them is just awful. Meet character grey out all talk options leave, check back next chapter to see if anything has popped up see it hasn't proceed to ignore, get quest, finish quest get 1 dialog option, continue go back to ignoring.

[Rynjin]

I've been seeing a lot of bug-related comments on Steam, though, which is a little bit off-putting.

I think the only bug I've encountered so far is that enemies will sometimes provoke AoOs for no reason. Other than that, the only non-bug frustrating thing is that if you send a character to interact with something, instead of moving near it, it moves just that character. Meaning sometimes your MC can be caught out when a combat starts.

[Catullus64]

Took some people's advice and gave turn-based mode a try. It does fix a good number of the problems I was having; problem is, it makes combat itself take about twice as long. I do appreciate the fact that you can switch back and forth between combat modes mid-game. Before people pointed out the option, I thought it was like Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire, which requires you to stick with one mode for an entire play-through.

Honestly, I am finally starting to get hooked on the story, and my party is leveled enough that we feel a little more effective. I don't know if turn-based mode is worth all the extra time it takes though, I may just take my lumps with some of the jank of the real-time version.

[Starbuck_II]

Took some people's advice and gave turn-based mode a try. It does fix a good number of the problems I was having; problem is, it makes combat itself take about twice as long. I do appreciate the fact that you can switch back and forth between combat modes mid-game. Before people pointed out the option, I thought it was like Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire, which requires you to stick with one mode for an entire play-through.

Honestly, I am finally starting to get hooked on the story, and my party is leveled enough that we feel a little more effective. I don't know if turn-based mode is worth all the extra time it takes though, I may just take my lumps with some of the jank of the real-time version.

Hold space/enter on enemy turns to make them go faster.

[Cespenar]

On a tangential note, I gave Solasta a try, which is another (competing?) D&D RPG, but this time in all 5e glory. It seems to lack polish at the non-combat aspects of the game, and its writing/VA seems to be pretty mediocre (almost memeworthy in some cases), but the combat mechanics and encounter/quest design look to be pretty enjoyable, even ahead of Kingmaker in my opinion.

One particular point that made me enjoy it very much is how closely it was designed to an actual tabletop adventure (in quest design), rather than a video game.

One main quest mission (in the early game), for example, took me to a site. There was a first big fight encounter of the mission. Then, some exploration/looting/movement based puzzles, a short/long rest, and the final boss battle. No padding out, no hunting 25 separate packs of goblins through the caves, just some relevant and hard-hitting encounters.

Also the combat/terrain design seems to be pretty on point -- almost in every battle there are some fun interactions, e.g. where a lizardman climbs on the wall, ends its movement on the wall, and throws a javelin at you with its free hand. Then you cast sleep at it, it loses its grip, falls, takes fall damage, etc.

I'm on the fence on suggesting it, given how wonky the writing and VA can get at times, but the other aspects seem to be pretty enjoyable at the moment.

[Starbuck_II]

I only played the Demo for Solasta, I loved that you climb/interact with everything like actual D&D.

[halfeye]

At the moment mainly go on KGS (Kisedo Go Server).

[MCerberus]

Playing world of tanks again on the console. Boy the cold war era tanks make things different. It's kind of nice how it isn't a giant mess of high damage guns that immediately wreck anything not camping. The closest thing, the anti-tank missiles have counter-play*

*getting shrek'd by point-blank light tank missile not included

[Cozzer]

Just bought Wrath of the Righteous. I was really feeling like playing that sort of game, and after reading a few reviews and reactions I was pretty much sold. For now it feels like the improved Kingmaker I was expecting, though I'm still in "introducing mechanics, characters and main conflicts" territory.

I'm also playing Tell Me Why from Dontnod. Still on Episode 1, it's clear that things are not what they seem. I'm interested in the characters and I like the main gimmick of reliving slightly different versions of the same past scene because they remember it differently and there's no way to know for sure how things really went. Let's see how much I like the big twists that are surely coming!

[Wookieetank]

Picked up Kitara Fables for the daughter to play, and we'll be getting to dive into that this afternoon. From the previews, it looks like an ARPG with farming elements and you get to play as cat people. The cat people bit was the biggest sell for my daughter XD

Been working my way towards completing my first Dyson Sphere in DSP. Really need to look into optimizing my production better, right now its a mad dash from one lacking item to the next and I'm at the point where I just want to watch my sphere finish and move onto another game. Overall game is great, gotten 60 hours out of my first playthrough and do plan on coming back to it at some point, maybe make a multi-sphere structure or somesuch.

About 2/3rds of the way through SMT:3 at this point, probably would've finished it by now if it wasn't for DSP. Made it to the 3rd Kalpa, and running in the issue of needing to stat grind to get through the needed doors, so just cruising along through the plot to get that.

[LibraryOgre]

Hold space/enter on enemy turns to make them go faster.

You can also do that on your people's turns. I have run into a problem where I'll click than immediately hit space, and it winds up skipping my turn, but that's PEBCAK, not the game.

[MCerberus]

You can also do that on your people's turns. I have run into a problem where I'll click than immediately hit space, and it winds up skipping my turn, but that's PEBCAK, not the game.

had entire squad wipes stemming from hitting enter on Xcom

[tonberrian]

Was fighting one of the bonus bosses in Wrath of the Righteous, and i check their immunities and they are not immune to either instant death or mental effects. Hmm. I've got one (1) preparation of phantasmal killer, wouldn't it be neat if that worked?

It worked. Less than 1% chance of actually working.

Still, I gave up that fork because that was the weaker bonus boss - the stronger one had more loot and five times the xp. It could basically kill any one of my characters in a full attack. So I cheesed it by making Seelah fight Defensively so that just enough attacks would miss so she could survive one round with the monster, and used up my two heal scrolls keeping her alive. Meanwhile Seelah used a Holy Sword spell on Lann and Ember kept up the Fortune hex on him via Cackle. Lann just stood there plinking away hitting a good half the time for 20+ damage a pop, only had to throw my animal companion and Camellia under the the bosses full attack combo of death to have enough turns to finish him off.

[Rodin]

Continuing my playthrough of The Witcher, I've made it out of the tutorial and through the starting area to the game's first major hub, Vizima.

This game is a lot better than the introduction tutorial makes it look. Once you get a silver sword and Aard signs the combat gets a lot more interesting, and I can see why the basic pattern of "auto attack with timed hits" is present. You aren't supposed to be trying to do flashy combos, it's all about controlling the fight and using the correct tool for the job. It's very Witcher-esque, actually - Geralt is a better swordsman than most opponents he fights, so the narrative in the novels rarely focuses on that. Instead it's all about his tactics against multiple opponents and how he deals with supernatural nasties.

I'm also really liking how they handled the loot and crafting system. Geralt's base sword is better than anything the enemies carry, and the weapons are bulky. As such, weapons are practically worthless to him. Instead he values herbs (potion ingredients), monster bits (potion ingredients and proof of Witchering), alcohol (potion base), and above all the most important loot is books. Books are very valuable, befitting the medieval setting. Books are how you learn to fight the enemies in the game, how you learn to craft more potions, how you learn what the valuable bits of a monster are. It's a very cool conceit, and I had a bit of a moment when I realized that rings were only valuable because they're light and easy to sell to the more materialistic townsfolk.

In short, the game does a very good job of simulating the Witcher experience. I am suitably impressed.

Gameplay-wise it reminds me a lot of Morrowind on a smaller stage. You arrive in an area and there are all sorts of sidequests to do both in and out of town. There's a lot of talking, detective work, learning of lore, and you're generally fighting monsters on the way to get somewhere rather than as part of a dungeon crawl.

I'm glad I picked it up, and recommend it to anyone with a tolerance for older, less polished games.

Edit: Although I do recommend reading the books first. I've lost count of the direct plot points pulled from the books, both major plot references and minor easter eggs. You'll get a lot more out of the game if you have some concept of the universe before going in.

[Eldan]

Have you played the other Witcher games? Because they lean a lot harder into the book plot, especially Witcher 3.

[Man_Over_Game]

Been playing Slay The Spire. For some reason, every class that isn't the Huntress just kinda feels like slow, stale garbage.

The Ironclad is slow, expensive, and doesn't have much to work around his high energy costs. It just feels like you take too long to build up your Powers for a long fight, and you don't have enough combo support to play without Powers, so...you just kinda get stuck wishing you played the Defect or the Huntress.

The Defect can be strong, but it's so dependent on building towards very niche builds. When you build towards Claws, it's ALL you build for. When you build for Orbs, it's ALL you build for. Most fights are either things you can deal with just fine, or they completely roll over your strategy because you can't adapt. When it's good, it's really good, though, I just wish it was a bit more consistent. I can usually tell a game is a loss before halfway through the first act on the Defect just because of how much you need things to go your way.

The Watcher is fun, kinda like a high-risk Huntress. I think she does suffer from the adaptability problems a bit, but part of that might just be from a lack of experience. You always need to plan 2 steps ahead as the Watcher, so maybe that kind of thinking hasn't fully developed enough to be able to work around potential problems. She does seem hard-pressed to deal with oncoming attacks, though. I can burst down an enemy with 50 HP easily, but trying to block 30 while I get there feels impossible.

[IthilanorStPete]

Been playing Slay The Spire. For some reason, every class that isn't the Huntress just kinda feels like slow, stale garbage.

The Ironclad is slow, expensive, and doesn't have much to work around his high energy costs. It just feels like you take too long to build up your Powers for a long fight, and you don't have enough combo support to play without Powers, so...you just kinda get stuck wishing you played the Defect or the Huntress.

The Ironclad is definitely on the straightforward side, you probably won't do much fancy with him short of some relic combos, but he's quite good. I don't generally rely much on his Powers except for Inflame, and I've never gotten the hang of his Exhaust-based stuff; I either go for buffing Strength and getting multi-hit attacks, or going with a Defense-based build that uses Body Slam for the kill.

The Defect can be strong, but it's so dependent on building towards very niche builds. When you build towards Claws, it's ALL you build for. When you build for Orbs, it's ALL you build for. Most fights are either things you can deal with just fine, or they completely roll over your strategy because you can't adapt. When it's good, it's really good, though, I just wish it was a bit more consistent. I can usually tell a game is a loss before halfway through the first act on the Defect just because of how much you need things to go your way.

Yeah, I feel you on this one. Comboing off with the Defect feels so great, though.

he Watcher is fun, kinda like a high-risk Huntress. I think she does suffer from the adaptability problems a bit, but part of that might just be from a lack of experience. You always need to plan 2 steps ahead as the Watcher, so maybe that kind of thinking hasn't fully developed enough to be able to work around potential problems. She does seem hard-pressed to deal with oncoming attacks, though. I can burst down an enemy with 50 HP easily, but trying to block 30 while I get there feels impossible.

It helps if you never end the turn in Wrath. The Empty * cards switch you out of your stance, so they're great to end an attack combo with.

[Rynjin]

Ironclad is very strong. Straightforward, but strong. Just smash people hard.

Watcher is...much the same way. The class is arguably broken, you can consistently just kind of steamroll things without ever getting hit if you get the feel for them.

[tyckspoon]

The Ironclad is definitely on the straightforward side, you probably won't do much fancy with him short of some relic combos, but he's quite good. I don't generally rely much on his Powers except for Inflame, and I've never gotten the hang of his Exhaust-based stuff; I either go for buffing Strength and getting multi-hit attacks, or going with a Defense-based build that uses Body Slam for the kill.



Yeah, I feel you on this one. Comboing off with the Defect feels so great, though.



It helps if you never end the turn in Wrath. The Empty * cards switch you out of your stance, so they're great to end an attack combo with.

Ironclad is kind of weird to make a full Exhaust deck with (but tons of fun when it goes off, especially if you manage to land Corruption - Dead Branch and just kinda go infinite off random skills that cost 0 which exhaust to spawn another random card..) but mostly what you want the Exhaust cards for is to tune and trim your deck while you're playing it, like getting temporary card removal chances; you can cut the low value chaff out of your deck in the middle of a fight or remove specialty effects that aren't relevant to the current combat.

My Watcher runs got vastly more reliable when I realized that you don't have to always switch from one stance to another and that resetting to neutral/no stance is fine; I was hugely undervaluing the Empty * cards before that. Also that changing to 'no stance' counts as 'changing stance' and will cause Flurry of Blows to recycle from the discards, which means you can pretty easily get turns where you get to use your Flurries two or four times with a use attack that goes into Wrath - Flurry Flurry - Use attack that exits stance - Flurry Flurry - Go into Calm with defensive skill - Flurry Flurry kind of sequence.

[Eldan]

Hah, nice. I just picked up Slay the Spire yesterday, since I finished Fights in Tight Spaces last weekend.

Quite liking it so far. First run Ironclad, died to the first boss. Second run The Silent, managed to kill three bosses somehow, mostly through a combination of some really, really useful items for what I was doing. (Basically, one item that made me start the game with a throwing knife in hand, three more cards that gave me an additional throwing knife each round, then an item that added +4 damage to all 0 energy attacks (like throwing knives), one that added +1 block for every card played and one that added +4 block every time I played four cards. Which was every turn. It was absolute slaughter. Oh, and a card that adds +4 poison every round, for those enemies with hundreds of of HP.)

Fun so far. Just unlocked the third class, let's see where this goes.

[Man_Over_Game]

Hah, nice. I just picked up Slay the Spire yesterday, since I finished Fights in Tight Spaces last weekend.

Quite liking it so far. First run Ironclad, died to the first boss. Second run The Silent, managed to kill three bosses somehow, mostly through a combination of some really, really useful items for what I was doing. (Basically, one item that made me start the game with a throwing knife in hand, three more cards that gave me an additional throwing knife each round, then an item that added +4 damage to all 0 energy attacks (like throwing knives), one that added +1 block for every card played and one that added +4 block every time I played four cards. Which was every turn. It was absolute slaughter. Oh, and a card that adds +4 poison every round, for those enemies with hundreds of of HP.)

Fun so far. Just unlocked the third class, let's see where this goes.

Ah, The Silent, I always get her name mixed up. She's still my favorite.

Be prepared to bash your head into a wall while you figure out how to make the Defect work. It either feels like hot garbage or you steamroll everything starting with the first boss. Once you find a good card you can build around, put all of your bets on that one playstyle (Orbs, Powers or Claws) and pray that nothing stops you from min-maxing into it.

[LibraryOgre]

I'll be honest, I'm low-key hoping my younger brother gets me Wrath of the Righteous for my birthday. ;-)

[Catullus64]

Just started a new playthrough of Dark Souls. If I finish it, this will be my third time all the way through the game. The first run of the game that I completed was a DEX/INT build using Ricard's/Velka's Rapier and utility sorceries (Fall Control, Aural Decoy, Hidden Body, Magic Weapon, etc.). The second was an ultraheavy Zweihander build, which was considerably easier than the first.

Now I'm out to challenge myself: Pure DEX build, no shielding. I'm using the Uchigatana right now, and in order to force myself to stick to the no shields gimmick, I literally haven't put the points into Strength necessary to one-hand it. It's proving tough, which surprised me; I beat Dark Souls III with the same weapon and pretty much never using a shield, but Dark Souls I's slower combat and less reliable dodging is putting me through the wringer. Something I also didn't think about is the fact that, unlike in DS3, you can't parry with the Uchigatana, which is a pain. I may think about putting in the points to one-hand, and then carrying a mail-breaker or cestus in my offhand just for parrying. I might also switch to the Balder Sidesword at some point, if I can farm one up.

I've gotten past Taurus, Gargoyles, and Moonlight Butterfly, and killed the Darkroot Basin hydra the only way I know how, by spamming a trillion arrows into it. I've run up against a wall with the Capra Demon, though; he's a difficult boss in the best of circumstances due to his incredibly tight boss arena and dogs, but without a shield I can't seem to last more than 10 seconds. I don't technically need to fight him, since I've got the master key and can bypass the Depths, but that means an early trip to Blighttown, which I don't exactly relish either.

I thought about trying to cheese him with Firebombs as I've seen done in videos, but then I realized that my only reliable source of firebombs is gone: I killed the Undead Merchant to get his weapon!

[LibraryOgre]

On Pathfinder: Kingmaker, I had a no-duh revelation yesterday.

Kinectists aren't psychics, they're Warlocks.

[Wookieetank]

Dark Souls Builds

The one time I played through Dark Souls, I went with a club and pyromancy, with a bow as an obligatory backup. Managed to get a clear with it, but it wasn't the easiest. Tried out most of the weapons, but doing a flying leap at opponents while swinging my club over my head was just pure, simple fun for me. The pyromancy was more for pizazz than anything.

[tyckspoon]

Hah, nice. I just picked up Slay the Spire yesterday, since I finished Fights in Tight Spaces last weekend.

Quite liking it so far. First run Ironclad, died to the first boss. Second run The Silent, managed to kill three bosses somehow, mostly through a combination of some really, really useful items for what I was doing. (Basically, one item that made me start the game with a throwing knife in hand, three more cards that gave me an additional throwing knife each round, then an item that added +4 damage to all 0 energy attacks (like throwing knives), one that added +1 block for every card played and one that added +4 block every time I played four cards. Which was every turn. It was absolute slaughter. Oh, and a card that adds +4 poison every round, for those enemies with hundreds of of HP.)

Fun so far. Just unlocked the third class, let's see where this goes.

Shiv-spam has always been the most reliable/easiest to build Silent deck type for me, too - it doesn't need any rare cards to work and there are a good chunk of relics and cards that work off of 'play a lot of cards/play a lot of attacks' that naturally synergize with it.