What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

So, ghosts of past, present and future me?

[Grefter]

Pretty much.  I am not sure if Edna is present you so much as perpetual you.

Edit - I suppose it works better to also describe Weisheit as the Snow that has been.  Charlton is most definitely the Snow that hasn't come yet.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I could try to kill King Tarasque, kind of wonder if he drops like a pile of gold or something.  I don't really give a toss though.

Tangent, but :grefter: is more important than gameplay anyway. ANYHOW. Killing King Tarasque is so easy I didn't even realize you could activate the bridge and shits to beat that fight. That and I certainly ain't going to say no to delicious CSP.

[Grefter]

In other news, it is embarrassing how long I have been using Berserker Ragnar before I realised how good he is with it.  In an open space he is so worth Rushing and Turn Shifting too for some serious Raving Ravage damage.  If you threw in Blood Heat and the counter skill in there he would seriously push something's shit in.  And here I was happy with it just being his range helping counter the usability of the limited mobility while he picked up Move Up (which I am sorely tempted to grind on Crawling Chaos until my mages all have it).

That makes up for my disappointment in finding out that the only interesting sounding skill Felius has is broken.  He nearly would be cool with attack assist.  Back to the bottom of the pile you go Felius, Ragnar just got better than you.

On that note, do you want a typo correction Elf?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

There are two classes Ragnar was pretty much born to be in: Berserker and Extremist. Berserker just synergizes way too well with his Rave (this name is so fucking -stupid-, by the way). Meanwhile, Extremist benefits from his base evade+Tactical Evasion quite a bit, with High Slugger damage being based off AVO. Accuracy will always be an issue unless he spends time grabbing AIM +25%, though. Also, Felius, underwhelming, pick ten.

Also, man, why grind for Move +1? At that point, having a mastered Elementalist is feasible, slap EQ+Magic +25% on an Enigmancer and blow shit up with the better raw stats. I guess you could do -both- for 5-move Devastates, I guess.

[Grefter]

Your "I guess" is correct (and my Elementalist generic is showing that even 4 move mages can lag a bit and struggle for slots for more OC skills).

Also you should just start referring to Raving Ravage as RaRa (pronounced like Ray Ray).  Since it deserves your disdain.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Well, Mag +25% and Elem EQ are just utterly paramount to offensive magic setups anyway. I can't think of a single damage-geared magic build that won't have one of Elementalist EQ or Magic +25% (both being preferrable, but that's more of an investment). Later on, Emulator OC and Exploit Weakness are also amazing choices. Emulator OC even mitigates the variety issues cannon mage setups experience in the early game.

Support mage setups, of course, are more flexible (, but you want Elementalist EQ there regardless. Books are the best magic weapon -bar none-, and just equipping one pretty much makes the difference between, say, Heal being 60% PC HP and borderline full healing even off Sacred Slayer stat bases.

EDIT: wait, you just meant Rupert is Random.

[DjinnAndTonic]

The more important question is: Who is Tony?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

The best damn character in the game.

[AndrewRogue]

Hatbot was unavailable, so RANDOM.ORG is filling in for him.

Class: Deprived (Thanks, not!Hatbot)
Weapon: Bows - Darkmoon Bow, Composite Bow, Shortbow
Magic?: Miracles - Force, Heal, Great Heal Excerpt, Great Heal, Replenishment, Lightning Spear, Sunlight Spear, Magic Barrier, Darkmoon Blade, Vow of Silence, Gravelord Sword Dance, Gravelord Greatsword Dance

...I may have made a terrible, terrible error.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

It's okay, you'll probably get bored 1/3 of the way through and go back to Baldur's Gate mods anyway. >_> <_<

[Sierra]

Mulligan, Andy.

In all seriousness, there are worse things to get for a bow setup. Darkmoon Bow's damage runs off of faith and is actually pretty respectable (for a bow) if you pump that stat (decently fast-firing too, like the shortbow, which is going to be better than the higher-damage bows just because oh god you'll have to dodge between every fucking shot), so it's kinda nice you got miracles in conjunction with that? It's elemental though so hahaha DLC bosses. Too bad you got Sunlight Spear instead of Great Lightning Spear. 10x Lightning Spear + 10x Great Lightning Spear = more than enough firepower for most all bosses. Darkmoon Blade is actually a really brutal boss nuke...if you have a melee weapon. Also you can't use it after you've killed Gwyndolin...which is how you get the Darkmoon Bow.

You know what Andy, I refuse to believe this wasn't a Hatbot production. All-bows is probably doable--most bosses it just means you take forever to kill them and have to dodge a lot--but I have no idea how you'd deal with Capra Demon (dogs'll probably stagger you any time you try to do anything) or Gwyn.

~

So random ME3 question? The war room's galaxy map has been saying, "System offline, no data available," the entire game. What the heck is that about? Is that thing supposed to not work and be completely uninformative or...I dunno? I'm also a little perplexed I can still only upgrade weapons to rank 5 despite being almost out of game--there's a trophy for boosting one to rank 10, so I have to assume this is actually a thing that's possible. Makes me wonder if I missed something.

[Grefter]

I think you need a net connection for that part to work.  Rank 10 weapons might also be multiplayer only.  I do recommend it though if you are remotely interested, it is pretty fun.

[AndrewRogue]

I generally kid. I haven't ever played bows primary, so hey. That'll be something.

[Fenrir]

Capra should be a simple matter of run up to the stairs + aim quickly and snipe dogs. This should work.
Gwyn.......  Abuse the elevation difference? Can you shoot through rocks?
It's okay Andrew. You can pretend nothing happened and reroll. It wasn't Hatbot.


The commentary on Snow was spot on.
At least he's not the WA3 villain cast.
(That would be Niu)


Tactics Ogre: One of my characters got killed by an underlevelled fairie with a blowgun. I am a mastermind of tactics.
I find that... an archer actually works better than a witch for dealing damage to monsters. I mean, he does 2/3 damage but he gets a finishing move and dies way less easily. A monster doing a limit break on a witch is something terrible.
I've picked the wrong element though, it seems. (Fire)
Noted, about ninjas and katanas, I switched weapons.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Dark is the best element for magic pretty much no questions asked in TOPSP. Earth eventually gets decent and Wind is solid backup for earlier GT and multitarget sleep. But Fire just sucks, buffs/debuffs are trashy outside speed. Also, for mages, you kinda want to invest on Spellstrike for status accuracy, it makes the rates shoot up into constant 100% territory.

[hinode]

Crowd control via status is the really important part for mages, not damage until you get the endgame/postgame spells. I once had a well-geared team who could steamroll every human fight via mass archers/ninjas + 2 tanks with Rampart Aura get wiped out in an sidequest battle stage because I was up against three Golems. They managed to wipe out my party tanks with techniques while my archers and ninjas struggled to inflict any serious damage to them, at which point the fight was basically lost.

In the rematch I brought in an Enchantress whom I had recently intended to retire; despite being somewhat underlevelled, she easily kept the Golems petrified until my heavy hitters mopped everything else and could focus on the Golems one by one.

[Fenrir]

Daaaaamn
I'll just use one of the sisters as a mage instead I guess.
I use Spellstrike. My accuracy issues with the witch exist because fireballs like to randomly target Canopus instead of the enemy. I wish there was a Trajectory skill for spells.
I want to do a witch SCC.
Or anaother archer SCC. The last one wasn't -legit-, I only had 10 party members. TO PSP has 12!

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Petrify being the reason Earth gets good, of course.

[Fenrir]

BTW.
Crafting.



(Also, SCCs here are a really terrible idea, forget about it)

[Dark Holy Elf]

Pretend crafting isn't in the game, life improves.

I don't think SCCs work well in many games besides FFT, most other games don't give individual classes enough options and/or are too lengthy. Never really been tempted by FF5/XF/TO SCCs. (Fiesta/Hatbot runs can be cool though.)

[Sierra]

ME3: He died the way he lived: a major load.

[Dark Holy Elf]

FE7 HHM - Beat this (second time). 5 stars on everything except Exp which was 3 because Exp rank is kinda stupid, and I spent too much time midgame worrying about Funds instead. Oh well! Best PCs were Raven (slightly RNG-screwed, haha), Heath (RNG-blessed) and Priscilla (loads of evade, staff stuff), although Lucius deserves note for being Raven's A support and having the most kills because things liked to suicide on him though sometimes succeeded in killing him. My pegasus knights got pretty badly RNG-screwed (especially Fiora) which didn't stop them from being useful, just stopped them from dominating. Eliwood I benched because he's kinda bleh and wasn't turning out well, the highlight of the final chapter was feeding him kills with Durandal. Kills which saw him getting 4x-overkilled if he missed because he had 3 speed! (Good thing Durandal has hit.)

Good times. This game's shopping system sucks forever and there are a few other nagging polish issues (any time you can't deploy Merlinus is too much obnoxious inventory management) but otherwise I remember why I like it a lot, there's some great map design with secondary objectives and solid overall balance. Probably my second favourite FE though it's close! (Non-remake FEs made in the past decade so good.)


Paper Mario - Speaking of decadish-old IS games. Getting into this more. It's a bit of a slow starter (c'mon, needing an hour to unlock timed hits?) and the writing's a pale shadow of glorious glorious M&L3 but otherwise it's quite interesting with its non-random damage scale and simple but important choices. It's already obvious that the game lends itself more to challenges than normal playthroughs but it seems breezy enough for a legit first playthrough which is always how I prefer to do things anyway.


Suikoden 2 - I decided my army needs more squirrels. Most armies do.


edit: re typo correction, you mean for the BMG, Gref? If so then yes please. (If you mean for my posts in general, then uhhhh sure?)

[Otter]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44765065/killhavelock.JPG

Ran through Dishonored yesterday on Normal.  I tried not to abuse quicksave too much and ended up killing a bunch of extra dudes.  This afternoon, just as a completionist thing, I re-ran all the missions, on Very Hard this time, and got Ghost while never killing guards or abusing sleep darts (much; I did use them to help me spare the Pendleton twins' consorts).  Killing the Regent in the middle of a room full of his guards without alerting any of them (time stop, blink, shadow kill) was pretty fun and satisfying after the trainwreck that mission was for me the first time.

So now I was thinking about trying out a "spare no one" run but I'm not sure how long the novelty would last, might as well go play Saints Row 3 or something.  Fortunately Cid just reminded me that I never actually played ME3 despite loving ME2 and playing it obsessively like three times in a row.  Probably should play it.  I can't even do Bioshock Infinite because I'm on XP, what the hell.

edit: damn, just googled this and apparently the last mission is different in High Chaos?  Tempting but probably still not tempting enough to justify a slaughter-run.

[Grefter]

I killed everything that moved in my Dishonored run unless it was too much effort to do it without being spotted.  It is pretty meh honestly.  You just turn everything to dust and get a couple more weepers for your effort.  The Princess is a complete fucking mess at the end of the game for it if you want to see that, but eh.

Edit - and BMG elf, good gods I have no fucking place telling people to fix typos in posts.