What games are you playing 2014?

[Meeplelard]

Kirby and Amazing Mirror: Finished!  Probably not going to go back and 100% it because, as I said before, Kirby's not as well suited for free roaming, ability specific puzzles as Metroid or Castlevania is due to how you can lose powers and such.  At least you can still fight the actual final boss without that, who was kind of neat and the Master Sword ability was a neat ability.

Overall, game is decent, but probably still below KSS, KA and RtDL.  Considerably better than the Dreamland Sequels or K64 though, as it has way more powers than those games, and the powers feel regularly more useful.  Certainly better at being Great Cave Offensive than Great Cave Offensive is though!


Mega Man 5 Gameboy: Also completed.  The final stage was amusing because it hurled so many bosses at you.  A nice way to be a finale to the Gameboy series.

The game is similar to MM4 in that it has all the right elements to be a good Mega Man game but suffers from some technical aspects like lag.  To be fair, game seems better designed around it.  You don't run into as many enemies on screen as often, instead they opt to make mooks individually better, and less precision platforming when enemies are around, opting for more hazard based platforming so there's still danger, but no lag, so it ends up being considerably better.

I don't think it's one of the "Greats" as far as Mega Man games go, but it's certainly the only Gameboy one I would recommend getting.  It's got an original set of enemies and stages, Mega Arm is an interesting take on the buster, etc.  One thing that pisses me off is how I lost the S Tank against the Mercury Refight which is complete bullshit, meaning I was down 1 E-tank on the final boss; the game does hurl 2 E-tanks at you right before the final boss at least, but S Tank takes it's own separate slot.

Anyway, Mega Man XTREME!!!! 2 is next.

[dude789]

Final Fantasy 5: Doing the FJF and I probably got the easiest loadout imaginable. Team is Blue Mage/Sorcerer/Beast Master/Samurai. So I've got all the tricks and bullshit that Blue Mage can do along with Sorcerer for ST damage and Samurai for cleaning out randoms with Zeninage. Beast Master is pretty handy too for one big shot of damage on bosses and helping the Blue Mage get spells and whips are a good weapon type. Just beat Atomos and I haven't really had too many problems. I've still had a few deaths though because FF5 is pretty good about catching you unprepared with stuff like Bio Knights 2HKOing the entire party with their counters and the like. The only real irritant is lack of revival which means I spend a whole lot on phoenix downs which are still kind of pricey for this point in the game.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Mystic Knight/Sorcerer certainly isn't the strongest job you can get from the water crystal (that's probably Summoner, which e.g. overkills Bio Soldiers with MT damage) but it has its perks and that is still a pretty strong team.


My somewhat less strong team of WM/RM/Geomancer/Dancer has continued to trudge along. Shell lets me keep the levels low which is good because at some point in world 2 randoms got pretty painful. Gaia varies from useful to garbage and the class has nothing else. Dancer has also been very disappointing. Awful HP and can't get Lamia's Tiara until world 3 without a thief, so they aren't even the offensive cannon class I'm used to. When I did get that yeah Chicken Knife Dance is good damage, but now I've got Holy on everyone so I can do comparable average damage (more actually, unless I grind out more runs) from the back row. RM of course is a problematic class itself once -ara spells stop dominating, but hey at least it provides useful utility like Sleep, Protect, and Cura, and I'll shortly have Dualcast which obviously is great (especially with how low Holy's MP cost is). White Mage obviously carries the team and has kept my reset count down to just one against the Seal Guardians, but many midgame boss fights took forever (Seal Guardians the longest, but also Atomos and Exdeath).

[Crystalgate]

FTL: Had a few failure runs on normal with the Zoltan Cruiser. I'm going to switch back to easy and basically try to unlock all ships that seem interesting. Then I'll try the most powerful ones on normal.

[superaielman]

Just be a really awful plant boss to get some dragon grass in FF5. I'll second Elfboy. Dancer's been really underwhelming so far. The Ribbon's nice and the payoff with Sword Dance will be great, but come on. *shakes fist* Throw has been awesome and I'm still using Red for healing and revival (Fucking el are PDs expensive even now).

[Cotigo]

Dark Souls: Smaugh + Orstein down. Quelaag's Furyblade get. It sucks even at 10 Humanity and 40 DEX. I think I well prefer stronger, slower weapons in this game than faster, weaker ones... which is totally not my style in most other games, but there we go.

I don't see how New Londo is easy. Fuck those ghost ambushes I swear to god. Still slogging through to take out the 4 Kings but goddamn.

Thinking about starting a new save, as Pyro is getting boring. Welcome to the CLUB, maybe? Welcome to the CLUB. I could also see how well Dex weapons play out when they're your main form of attack. Perhaps I just need to learn the playstyle. Also interested in seeing how Faith/INT builds look... Hmmmm.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Xenoblade - Giant man-eating robots, shirtless hotties, and lasers? Sounds like my kind of game~

[superaielman]

FF5- Galuf dead. Crystal bosses before he died beat me like a throwrug till I figured out the gimmick (Blitz em at low HP, one at a time). Throw helped tons there. Dancer still trash, Throw rules and my Knight's as solid as ever.

[Dark Holy Elf]

WM/RM/Geomancer/Dancer beaten at Level 30. Once I got Holy everything changed, it was wonderful. Dualcast made it even better. The entire team had Level 6 White Magic so yeah, after having no offence the rest of the playthrough I killed Twintania before it could change forms (despite triggering Megaflare counters which 2HKOed my underlevelled people through Shell), killed Necrophobe before its first non-invincible round once the barriers were down, almost one-rounded tree Exdeath (Man-Eater doing 9k with Sword Dance) after finishing the buff parade (sadly fell one Holy away) and killed the Grand Cross part of Neo Exdeath before it could act. Kinda cathartic. Necrophobe was even a chance for Dance to shine a bit, as I used two to cut through the barriers, for all that it was still the hardest W3 fight probably? Seal Guardians obviously the hardest overall.

Anyway Geomancer and Dancer have their moments but aren't very good overall. Dancer's actually uniquely unsuited to fiesta, I think: it's going to underwhelm Super more than me because there's no way to put boosted Dance on a fighter job in the format, ugh. Red Mage is obviously better than either though still a rough draw for the water crystal; great in W1 then pretty mediocre thereafter though don't underestimate what Protect/Raise/Cura/Sleep/Confuse bring as utility. (And hey I was all ready to Toad Twintania if it had changed forms!) White Mage is obviously good and let me get away with running a lot with the usual wrecking Shell/Blink/Curaga applies to bosses.

[superaielman]

Rough draw for the water crystal is Berserker. I've gotten a lot of use out of Red (Works very well on a Ninja!) but yeah, it's riding entirely on throw after world 1. Also Gilgamesh's last form is optional?

[Dark Holy Elf]

Oh yes, Red Mage is much better than Berserker. People just give it a lot of shit because the other three options are significantly better still.

Yeah. In a big open room on floor 11 of Castle Exdeath (you can't miss it) there's a treasure chest. If you open it you will end up fighting Gilgamesh, but if you don't you can skip him. I recommend fighting him because if you do he'll show up again in world 3 in a couple plot fights and you can steal Genji equips from him with the thief knife, which are the best heavy armour options in the game for what that's worth.

[Meeplelard]

Lightning Returns Abridged:

Captain Cryptic: Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13-2: The Story so far! LIGHTNING QUIZ TIM-...
Lightning: *pulls plug* No, we are not doing that!
Hope: Don't we still need to sum up what happened?
Caius: As if what we say here is going to have any significance to events that happened...
Noel: YEUL!!!!!!!
Snow: SERAH!!!!
Vanille: FANG!!!!
Sazh: DAJH!!!!
Lumina: ^_^!!!!
Yeul: ...am I right in saying you don't need to be a Seeress to have seen that coming?
Lightning: Yes, yes you are.

Hope: Ok, Lightning, you're going to the desert next.
Lightning: This is just an excuse to see me dress in far less clothing than I usually wear because of the heat, isn't it?
Hope: ...not answering that...
*at the Dead Dunes*
Lightning Monologue: This place is a desert, everything is dead...except for things that aren't dead...there are bandits here too, and they look for an object called the HOLY CLAVIS!!!  I can already tell this is going to be annoying.
Hope: So...Lightning...go to the Bandit Camp even though that's probably a bad idea.
Lightning: Why are you suggesting it to me?
Hope: Because really, what else is there to do in this area?
Lightning: Point taken.

*Bandit Camp*
Lightning: So...yeah, can you guys here help me find the Holy Clavis?
Bandits: AHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH *deep breath* AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH!
Lightning: What's so funny?
Bandit #1: We've been searching for that for 500 years, and still haven't found it, you seriously think we know where it is?
Bandit #2: You're not even a member of our band!  HOW DO WE KNOW YOU'RE NOT A SECUTOR!?
Lightning: So...how could I join this group?
Bandit #3: NO ONE TELL HER HOW!
Bandit #4: YEAH SHE CAN'T KNOW SHE'S SUPPOSE TO SPEAK TO ADONIS TO GET A TASK!
Bandit #1: AHAHAH! YES! WE"LL KEEP THAT A SECRET FROM HER!
Lightning: ...ok, so I definitely will NOT talk to Adonis and thus NOT ask him to make me join.
Bandit #2: Good! WE ARE AWESOME!
Hope: ...so you're going to join the Bandits now, aren't you?
Lightning: Duh.
*at Adonis*
Lightning: So, can I join the bandits?
Adonis: Only if you answer me these questions 3!
Lightning: ...you're not seriously going to do that joke, are you?
Adonis: Hell no, I'm actually going to ask you to stop an inconvenient sandstorm.  By doing this Stone thing.  Do that and i'll let you in!
Lightning: *sigh* Guess I have no choice*

*one silly quest later*
Lightning: There, Sandstorm done!
Adonis: Wow, you actually did it!
Lightning: ...how'd you get here so fast?
Adonis: I didn't, I just followed you the entire way; being a bandit gives me +5 to Stealth!
Lightning: So...why did you make me do this if you knew how to stop the Sandstorm?
Adonis: Because our chief assumed it'd only work for the savior and you're the first person it worked for!  Congrats, you're in, Savior! NOW GO TALK TO THE CHIEF USING THIS SHORTCUT!
Hope: The Chief is probably Fang, just saying.
Lightning: How do you come up with that idea?  Fang would never become a bandit! These people are anti-Order, and Vanille's a priestess in the order, and Fang is closer to Vanille than a sister is! They're bonded by something stronger than family!  There's no way Fang would be the bandit leader.  0% Chance!
*at the chief*
Fang: Hey Lightning, long time no see, I'm the chief of the bandits.
Hope: Well?
Lightning: *Grumbles angrily*
Fang: What, is that how you say hello to an old friend? I mean, I've been asleep in a Crystal for over 1000 years, that's twice as long as people were alive! Ok, I've been awake for 13 years, but whose counting?
Lightning: You apparently...
Fang: Enough talk, down to business! So you're looking for the Holy Clavis?  You're not with the order, are you?
Lightning: Of course not, I'm the Savior just doing God's Work!
Fang: Good enough for me! Let's go find the Holy Clavis, it's in the Ruins!  I'll even tag along and help you!
*You gained an actual ally!*
Lightning: Wait, I thought this was a solo RPG?
Fang: Look, I'm the only character in this whole game whose actually acting in-character and accurate to themselves from the previous games, therefor, I still retain PC status to some degree while all the other characters just twiddle their thumbs.
Lightning: Fair Enough!
Hope: You know Lightning, she left Vanille, what makes you think she won't backstab you?
Lightning: BECAUSE I TRUST FANG OK!?  YOU FOUGHT ALONGSIDE HER TOO!
Hope: ...sheesh, for someone with no emotions, you sure have a temper.

*Ruins*
Lightning: So where is the Holy Clavis?
Fang: We have an idea but can't access it.  For the record, I'm making sure you didn't go in alone because you could open the doors for those damned Secutors and let them walk right through the front door, I have to make sure I get it!
Hope: The Holy Clavis is probably behind that big unopenable door right there.
Lightning: How do we open it?
Hope: Find 3 Murals, it seems and learn what they say, and you'll get an object to do so.
Lightning: Ok, onto the Murals!
*Mural #1*
Lightning: It's not working...
Hope: You need a Tablet...
Fang: Oh, I know where those tablets are! They're in 3 shrines on OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE DESERT!
Lightning: You're joking aren't yo-...wait, how did you know we needed tablets?  Hope only speaks directly to me!
Fang: You have the volume on that thing turned up so high, how can I NOT hear every word he says?  Also, Hope, if you're listening, you don't have to repeat EVERYTHING WE DO RIGHT AFTER WE DO IT IN GREAT DETAIL! We're sort of dealing with Skeletons, Schrodenger Cats, Earth Eaters, and god knows what else down here.
Hope: ...that hurt...

*one really dumb fetch quest later, and 3 mural readings*
Lightning: Ok, so let me get this straight...the God Lindzei decided to cut Etro, the Goddess which made her bleed and this created humans because...umm...wait, this never told us why.
Fang: Yes, and after that, Chaos was used to fill the bodies that created Etro, those bodies meant to be temporary, but then Chaos was unleashed and broke the rules!
Lightning: And Bhunivelze is going to PURIFY ALL THOSE LOST SOULS using the Holy Clavis, right?
Fang: Pretty much...personally, I don't know why you're doing his work; the Gods just use us to do their bidding, we're so much better at fighting against Fate than actually following it...in fact, didn't we have an ENTIRE GAME about fighting fate?  Seriously woman, what happened to you?
Lightning: Umm...er...well....
Fang: In any event, I won't let the damn Order use the Holy Clavis to SAVE ALL THOSE SOULS!  Those bastards will kill Vanille if they do that!
Lightning: ...and now finally we get an answer to all this!  That's why you left the Order even though Vanille was there?
Fang: Yeah, I was trying to make sure the Order didn't get their rotten hands on it!  You come along and are able to open things, so now I can get the Holy Clavis finally!
Lightning: ...ok, Fang, I understand all that, but you do realize a major flaw in your strategy, right?
Fang: What's that?
Lightning: If you had only told me all this from the get go, I wouldn't have come in here and we wouldn't have unleashed the Holy Clavis which is sitting RIGHT THERE by the way, and it would have remained sealed until the end of the world since I'm literally the only person capable of opening the doors.  We didn't have to go through all this stupid nonsense to open doors and could have left it here and the Order would have been Shit Out of Luck.  By being secretive, you kind of made the whole situation worse.
Fang: Yeah, well, we got to it first, what could possibly go wrong?

*Bunch of secutors pop up*
Secutors: AHA! THE HOLY CLAVIS IS THERE! GET IT MEN!
Fang: ...ok, you win this round Lightning, but we should be able to take care of a bunch of powerless goons, right?
*Secutor summons a huge fuck off monster*
Fang: ...ok, that might pose a bit of a threat...
*big boss fight later*
Lightning: Well, it looks like they got the Holy Clavis.
Fang: DAMN IT! All this time and I failed!
Lightning: when do they plan on using it?
Fang: Last day before the end of the world.
Lighting: So we still have time to stop them.
Lumina: Awww, I can't let you do that, not after all the time I spent baiting you guys out to get the thing ^_^
Lightning: ...dear God, why do you mock me?
Hope: Do you mean that literally?
Lightning: I honestly don't know anymore...
Lumina: Don't you see? Vanille is going to save all those souls! It's so great, isn't it ^_^
Fang: Like hell it is! YOU JUST WANT TO USE HER!
Lumina: Of course I do, but it's such a good thing too ^_^
Lightning: I hate you...
Lumina: Awww, what have I ever done to make you do that ;_; ^_^
Lightning: where do I begin?
Lumina: But we don't have time for that, so good bye savior ^_^
*she leaves*

Fang: Yeah, Lightning, this is where we part ways.  I'm going to save Vanille even if it kills me.
Lightning: So...you're going to do what you've always been doing when not sleeping in a crystal?
Fang: Pretty much.
Lightning: Right, but Fang, just so you know, I can't save Vanille if she doesn't want to be saved.  By which I mean I can only take her soul by fulfilling her utmost desire; if she truly wants to die, I am unfortunately forced to oblige.
Fang: ...I miss the old Lightning, you know, the one who was all giving Gods, Fate, etc. the middle finger and decided to kick ass?  I guess there really is no point staying with you, good bye!

Captain Cryptic: Will Lightning save Fang and Vanille?  Will Fang stop the Order from killing Vanille? Will Lumina ever decide to start making sense?  And will Fang ever come to grips with the fact that she's the only character in the entire game who manages to be consistent with her previous self?  TUNE IN NEXT TIME ON SAME TORIYAMA TIME, SAME TORIYAMA CHANNEL!
 

[Captain K.]

FF5- Galuf dead.

wtf dude spoiler tags

[Clear Tranquil]

Now Meeple gets to spend excess days doing nothing but side quests, and canvas requests, and exterminating monsters, and opening the highways, and farming abilities, and growing greens for monies, and buying all the upgraded garbs from the shop (monsters get stronger, drop better stuff, and shops get upgraded on specific Days) , finding the secret merchant,  getting all the treasure orbs, etc! (or you know he could sleep till the end but then he wouldn't get the surprise at the end from doing enough sidequests!) ~

About the Dead Dunes originally it was going to be possible to save Bhakti, but it was cut because of time restraints, which explains why their are excess battery packs lying around, more than needed to complete the quest The Dead Dunes in general seems lacking compared to the other continents. Shame too because Fang. Would have been fun to do more stuff with her.

[Sierra]

Dark Souls: Smaugh + Orstein down. Quelaag's Furyblade get. It sucks even at 10 Humanity and 40 DEX. I think I well prefer stronger, slower weapons in this game than faster, weaker ones... which is totally not my style in most other games, but there we go.

I don't see how New Londo is easy. Fuck those ghost ambushes I swear to god. Still slogging through to take out the 4 Kings but goddamn.

Thinking about starting a new save, as Pyro is getting boring. Welcome to the CLUB, maybe? Welcome to the CLUB. I could also see how well Dex weapons play out when they're your main form of attack. Perhaps I just need to learn the playstyle. Also interested in seeing how Faith/INT builds look... Hmmmm.

GHOST HOUSES suck but if you're careful a lot of the inhabitants can be drawn out one at a time to make the actual ambushes less of a problem. The church in particular? Run down the stairs leading to it, run back up-> shoot the ghosts that follow you; snipe the one on the roof before even approaching; wait at the bottom of the stairs overlooking the boss room and shoot one-by-one the ghosts hanging out below as they rise. Should only be like one left in the first room to shank you after all that.

INT/Faith is really difficult to get away with in DS1 (less so in DS2 because there's a class of magic specifically built for it). If you just want to use utility spells then you can have both stats sit in the teens somewhere and get most of the fun ones, but you're not going to get any kind of respectable endgame damage out of offensive spells unless you pump one stat or the other well beyond that. If you want both at pro-caster levels (40 for optimal damage, possibly 45-50 if you want access to all spells, and Crystal Soul Spear/Sunlight Spear are both totally worth it) on the same character, you're looking at well beyond normal endgame levels before that becomes possible, and you're probably gimping yourself on all your physical stats to make that happen.

Might be more manageable to main one and make a sideline in the other if you really want to mix and match both at the same time. There are catalysts/talismans that let you use INT for miracle calculation/Faith for sorcery calculation (still need the base requirement to cast the spell though), so theoretically you could stop at 20 Faith for Lightning Spear or something and then dump the rest of your levels into INT to boost both that and your sorceries. I dunno, I always find specialization the most effective approach in these games.

Ideal Faith starter is Master Key -> go die retrieving the Astora Straight Sword. Undead Parish does not count on you having that.

Pure melee is sooo much a different (and more difficult) experience than offensive caster with melee for backup, definitely worth trying if you like the game enough to replay it. Clubs are great. LARGE CLUB acceptable substitute for Great Club if you're lucky enough to get one or don't mind farming fatties (slightly weaker but faster than Great Club, better moveset, POIZN but that doesn't matter because everything will die before the status lands). The black knight weapons are also all outstanding but hahaha those drop rates. Heavy weapons not outstanding for PVP in my experience though, people tend to see your swings coming much like they do with spells. R1 katana spam godlike for PVP right you guys

DEX weapons you can't rely on knocking down/stunlocking everything to death like you can with clubs, but at least you also don't leave yourself wide open with one whiffed attack (I have died so many fucking times due to accidentally using a club's regular R2 when I meant to do a jumping attack). DEX weapons also benefit greatly from buffs/enchants. You can get like 200-300 extra attack power out of Crystal Magic Weapon/Darkmoon Blade just at minimum casting requirements (weapon enchant bonuses actually do scale with casting stats; they do not in DS2, which makes them much less worth using there). This can seriously add up with a fast weapon (what up Four Kings dying so fast there are only three of them).

[Fenrir]

Glad you are one of us.
You're so lucky you have Dark Souls 2 left.


Anyway you can get the great club like 5 minutes into the game if you're PR0. Accept no "kinda large but not that great" substitues.
Watch how Bell Gargoyles react to a Great Club +5 w/ Gold Pine Resin applied.

Black Knight Greataxe is the best weapon if you want to AXE the enemies a few questions but it's more of a NG+ thing.


I agree that Int/Faith sucks big time. I should add that, in Dark Souls 2, endgame levels are way higher, so you can have both high Int/Faith AND high other stats too, when it's not really an option in Dark Souls 1.
Miracles in Dark Souls 1 are more of a complement to regular weapons, and I guarantee you'd get nothing out of them in an Int/Faith playthrough and you'd just spam sorceries basically all the time, save for the occasional Wrath Of Gods. (Gotten very late)

[Cotigo]

Off to work, but to clarify: I meant specifically looking at an INT build or specifically looking at a Faith build. My first runthroughs taught me quite well the importance of specialization.  That said if both suck fuck it I will just go melee. Club time baby.

[AndrewRogue]

Monster Rancher 2

Been playing this. Quite a few monsters.

CT (Skipper - Hopper/Tiger) - Stalled out in B-Rank. Still, kept her around to dig me a hot spring. Good monster, but her lack of damage was incredibly frustrating.

Ko (Silhouette - Pixie/Monol) - Uh... yeah. Was trying to use her while broke. Errantry refused to on discount, meaning I was stuck without Int-based attacks. Retired without ever having a battle.

Magic (Gaia - Hengar/Golem) - Another rough follow-up, mainly because Ko bankrupted me. Lifespan got crippled due to repeat and endless stress, but didn't do too badly. Made it to C-Rank, I believe. Retired.

Super (Pink Kato - Kato/Mochi) - Uhhhh... yeah. No idea what to say here. Super literally beasted all over. Made it to S-Rank without a single loss, OHKO most of his opposition, reached 999 Int, and all that. Twister Claw is stupidly overpowered. Unfortunately, beating S-Rank is probably too much for him to do without dying (he's as durable as wet tissue paper). Still, by far my most successful monster.

I'm probably gonna train him up a bit more before retiring him. Still, if folks want to contribute to my next monster, go ahead and suggest some PS-era games for me to use as the discs. Literally any PS games are okay since I'm emulating. Suggest a disc with a monster I like and I'll name it after you!

Dark Souls 2

I should beat this. I'm literally on the last boss.

[Sierra]

Zenny: high-end spells for either sorcery or miracle school should outdamage pyro and usually give you more spell charges, soooo...

I agree that Int/Faith sucks big time. I should add that, in Dark Souls 2, endgame levels are way higher, so you can have both high Int/Faith AND high other stats too, when it's not really an option in Dark Souls 1.
Miracles in Dark Souls 1 are more of a complement to regular weapons, and I guarantee you'd get nothing out of them in an Int/Faith playthrough and you'd just spam sorceries basically all the time, save for the occasional Wrath Of Gods. (Gotten very late)

Fenrir don't tell me you've never immediately run straight down to Tomb of the Giants just so you could revenge nuke Capra's dogs with Wrath of the Gods. (Why did I ever do this.) Miracles are actually great for offense per-hit, it just takes a while for you to get more than one or two actual scrolls. Like, Lightning Spear wrecks everything from the moment you have it, it's just that there's only ten shots and you can never get a second scroll so it kinda has to be saved for bosses.

I once had an Undead Parish invader drop the entire black knight set for me.

I already had the only one of them I even wanted to use for that character.

[Meeplelard]

Now Meeple gets to spend excess days doing nothing but side quests, and canvas requests, and exterminating monsters, and opening the highways, and farming abilities, and growing greens for monies, and buying all the upgraded garbs from the shop (monsters get stronger, drop better stuff, and shops get upgraded on specific Days) , finding the secret merchant,  getting all the treasure orbs, etc! (or you know he could sleep till the end but then he wouldn't get the surprise at the end from doing enough sidequests!) ~

About the Dead Dunes originally it was going to be possible to save Bhakti, but it was cut because of time restraints, which explains why their are excess battery packs lying around, more than needed to complete the quest The Dead Dunes in general seems lacking compared to the other continents. Shame too because Fang. Would have been fun to do more stuff with her.

Yeah, just did my latest "Kill time doing random things" quest.  Worst part is, most of the quests I've already finished near as I can tell; I assume more open up in the Canvas of course, but really, this is entirely "kill time harvesting stuff."  I don't think I've seen a single time based game (Majora's Mask, Dead Rising, etc.) force so much downtime on you.  It's both a good and a bad thing.  On one hand, you aren't pressured by the clock as much...on the other hand, plot stuff existed to help you give legitimate things to do in the game.

I guess if I really get bored I can abuse inns, but meh.

And yeah, next few segments will probably involve Side Quests.  The side quests I parody will be completely random and based off memory and not indicative of when I actually finished them, just there to fill up episodes because god forbid I actually do a normal gameplay update!

[Cotigo]

So specifically you guys are saying that going for both INT and Faith at the same time is a shitty option (but viable in 2), but going one or the other is viable? Got it.

Still gonna club some bitches with my beefstick next character, though. I think I'll wrap up NG+ first, one so I'm not playing as obsessively as possible while I should be packing up to move, but two because meeeeh learning new fighting styles I just wanna light bitches on fire. I think my main problem is that I see my fire quickly starting to not OHKO things and there's nothing I can do to make it better. Like I will actually have to fight things like some fucking plebian.

[Grefter]

I can't lie.  I have been planning a build in my head that is a lot like this one.   Have been debating going deep Str and picking up Pyro stuff (attunement as tertiary stat?) or going for Enchanted Large/Great Club build and being Sorcerer if I don't mind the grind to buy all the spells and shit.

I also note that this is a testament to what this game does to people.  There is a POIZN Club and Fenrir denies it in favour of more applications of Tree.

Edit - All this while considering running 3 different versions of whatever club I am interested in, so either run a Standard/Enchanted, Fire and Divine/Lightning one or some combination of said weapons that seems optimal (need to dissect Titanite chunk accrual more closely to determine efficient breakdown of components).

[Hunter Sopko]

Grefter has yet to die in the Dark Souls game that exists in his mind. He's just that good.

[Grefter]

You wish you never played Dark Souls so you could be as good as I am at it.

[Fenrir]

Large clubs only do poison status for lore reasons!
Poison on a freaking massive piece of wood instead of, say, A DAGGER or AN ARROW is really never going to kick off in game until you're in NG+++ or something and then hurray for 3 damage every minute.

Large club and great club are pretty similar otherwise, but the large club is an enemy drop (and you shouldn't farm for anything (except the Channeler's Trident (for the Dance))) while the Great Club is lying around waiting for you. Aso I think the great club is slightly bigger?