Nepenthe

Nepenthe, 3 days ago

Astarion standing loudly silent in the background while Gale awkwardly rambled about adrenaline and how big and sweaty my muscles were apropos of nothing felt utterly appropriate. It's not my favorite screenshot, but it is secretly up there.

Nepenthe, 14 days ago

I'm not so sure. I've not played the first two to be able to measure between them, but I do recall thinking that if I hadn't been so into watching videos of other peoples' dnd campaigns, I would be so helplessly far out of my depth.

As it was, I was already struggling a little bit with which class was best for my likely playstyle. Who can use what armor, why, and what happens when they don't. What skills go with what stats. The general info they don't have a need to go over when you're not the one at the table.

Those aren't things OP would know enough about to even know they don't know, so I'm glad they have someone helping them. I don't consider myself anything remotely resembling intelligent and they're starting out with less. For being easily one of the best things I've played in years, it would feel impossibly daunting for a noob

Nepenthe, 14 days ago

It can be a little stressful even for me. And yes, the inventory management is atrocious btw, it's a common complaint.

Like someone else mentioned, you can always pay a little to respec if you find out a character doesn't have the stats to do what you're wanting/what they're built to do. That does require gold, and it is something that needs to be read up on and ultimately taken for a test ride to see if it's even fun for you. That many options can feel really daunting.

But I think with enough cleverness, the game can be won with almost anything. Just last night, I watched a playthrough of a guy who had challenged himself to beat the game without killing anyone or manipulating anyone else to kill them for him, and he did it.

Whole game. The only NPC he had no way around personally harming could still be knocked out and left alive. He tricked the end boss into murdering itself through careful use of explosive barrels and he himself never fired a shot — a super cheesy fighting tactic common enough that the term "barrelmancy" is a thing.

I'm not gonna say there won't be reloads, but there are a multitude of ways to handle most if not all altercations. Some things can be talked out of, or allies sought to help.

If not, it could be a huge, horrible fight taken head-on for the awful fun of it, or you could sneak up and thunderwave them into a hole and be done with it. Covertly poison the lot. Command them to drop their own weapon and then take it, and giggle while they flail their fists at you. Cast light on the guy with a sun sensitivity and laugh harder at their own personal hell.

You could sneak around back and take the high ground, triggering the battle by firing the first shot from a vantage point the enemy will take 4 rounds to reach through strategically placed magical spikes.

I passed one particularly worrying trial by just turning the most powerful opponent into a sheep until every other enemy was dead and I could gang up on them. Cleared another fight sitting entirely in the rafters where they had trouble hitting me, and shoved them to their death when one found a way up.

Going straight into a battle is the most expected way to do it, but there are usually shenanigans that can be played, is what I'm saying. Accept with grace the attempts that don't work. If the rules of engagement seem unfair, change the rules.

If it helps any, the game does also reward xp fairly generously. Just reaching new/hidden areas grants a little bit, to say nothing of side quests.

That guy I was talking about, the one that finished with zero kills, ended the game at level 10. The level cap is 12. That was all just wandering around, doing stuff that didn't require fighting.

Know which stat each class mainly uses and focus on that. Do not make the mages wear armor, it is not a happy fun experience. Beyond that, be clever and moderately lucky with your cleverness. You'll be fine.

It's a lot to get used to and does take time to be familiar with all your options, but I started out not very far above where you sound like you are. You do get used to it if you take your time, and I'm certain most people would be overjoyed to help.

Nepenthe, 14 days ago

The thing about it is, his isn't even the most uninteresting storyline. His whole and only deal is literally "guy who can't get over his abusive ex" and it's still more riveting than whatever they did to Wyll.

For real, though, if the Elminster in this scene is illusory (and it is), where did my food go?

Nepenthe, 24 days ago

My character says, standing in a spreading pool of and in fact covered head to toe in blood.

Nepenthe, 29 days ago

You can ask him five questions, but he won't be answering any of them.

Nepenthe, 1 month ago

Up til now, we've had:

• The sudden realization that you can bathe and don't have to crunch around in weeks of dried gore

• The further realization that at least one npc mentions you stink and should probably do something about that

• Standing relatively close to a waterfall for a few minutes if you can find one, or perhaps walking at a normal pace through a really deep puddle.

• Sophisticated method — stealing a water bottle, throwing it really hard at the floor, and hoping the splashback is enough

After months of steady work, we can use the soap now, but you're going to have to give your fellow gamers a minute to get used to things before you start making other suggestions

Nepenthe, 1 month ago

How did I forget about that cloak!? I got that before reloading because I kept failing my attempts to steal all my money back. I didn't expect all of those to be so addictive. I loved it.

My personal favorite was the boots that grant their wearer misty step for the tradeoff of leaving all your other clothes in a pile at your starting point. Still kinda sad I couldn't snag those again.

Nepenthe, 1 month ago

Some fixes really should be optional

Nepenthe, 1 month ago

And one unusually eloquent zombie who apparently showed up one day and refuses to explain himself to anyone.

But I audibly laughed. Brilliant. Thank you for this.

Nepenthe, 1 month ago

Not that I've done it myself, but to my knowledge, she does have a reaction and she's less nice about trusting you than you are about her own belief. Which is...predictably bitchy of her.

Nepenthe, 1 month ago

AI-generated maps and NPCs might be ok. Ditto fights, though there would have to be playtesters whose job it is to make sure the result is something winnable and acceptably fair.

The main issue there would be that there IS no continual certainty of that. You'd have to either be able to rerolled entire encounters — which would be jarring — or force the AI to DM what happens when you lose an impossible battle — far more rewarding, provided it doesn't keep doing it. But it may keep doing it. This would be impossible to ever test adequately. Every game on the market may be a hard mode Bethesda game.

I personally really don't think I'd enjoy something with a randomly generated cast/main story for the same reason I wouldn't be interested in owning one singular book whose writing changes every time you read it. I don't play to kill time; I play for the stories and I get attached like hell to the good ones. I replay them ad nauseam because I miss the characters.

I think it would be an intensely entertaining idea either as a New Game+ or for those games to have a wildcard setting that you could turn on and off. That way, there's no lack of devs who get to tell the tale they wanted and players can mix it up when they're bored. Otherwise, you've downgraded the job of the entire company to filling the AI in on background lore and nothing else.

Other aspects:

• for those that do get attached and wanna re-experience it, you'd need a way to save the information behind the game you just played. That file might be fairly gigantic?

• Would also lead to a weird market for other peoples' saves. The way modders already make quests, but for an entire plot.

• NPCs and party members that all look like randomized sims.

Nepenthe, 1 month ago

I've recently begun to wonder whether there's so much free wine in the world because the water is undrinkable. I would say "I have too much alcohol and I didn't even have to work for it" is definitely first-world, and sanitation would greatly improve lives.

It's kind of ruining my roleplay a little bit. I can't not pick up supplies because what if I need them later, but I used to enjoy putting effort into long resting over a meal that didn't sound gross, and now we all just get fucking wrecked every night with these mystery bottles I took off a zombie in a ditch.

Edit: The difficult terrain would probably come first, but at least taking an involuntary shower on my way to Gale means he'll never again talk to me about how good I stink.

Nepenthe, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Unless you've forcibly seen most of them and you can pick out what moments go where because x action, or you have this one singular shred of information that happens to be the integral piece to draw together an entire arc.

Earlier this week, I was listening to music on YouTube and saw a thumbnail that told me exactly what was up with the tadpoles. Not even the title. I don't remember what the title was. It was written on the thumbnail in giant glaring yellow letters.

If I am to play this game. I cannot have access to the internet in any conceivable way. I had thought this problem only extended to forums and news sights, places that were fairly obvious and thus easily avoided, but it's the entire internet when you least expect it.

I'm a third of the way into act 2 and the only teammates whose important plot moments and/or multiple endings I don't know are Wyll and Lae'zel, and that's only because nobody likes them enough to be talking about them.

I have tried to avoid this shit at every turn. It's still a great game. It's fantastic. It would have been in my top 3 if I could have played the damn thing on my own. I fucking love picking things to shreds more than anything else and there are so many pressing unknowns and conflicting motivations that I'd be having the time of my life. You don't understand. I could write a whole thesis on any one of them.

But I know the answers already. I'm kind of convinced the reason I've found myself so much more attached to side characters like Mol, Oliver, etc. over most of the main story npcs is because they weren't important enough for anyone to ruin them for me.

Nepenthe, 2 months ago

If I understand, the argument is that someone who doesn't want to be spoiled for endings should...look at a headline purported to be specifically about endings, and then read the article to see if it's about endings, which they are not going to do because there is an extraordinarily high chance it's exactly what it says it is in big letters, and any failure to voluntarily read spoilers they don't want to be spoiled for is then a failure on the part of the player?

That feels like reaching. Would rather not be mean. I think people stranded on top of zombie infested buildings whose only method of escape is a single in-use helicopter have reached less.

This is just a justification to brush off anyone who opens their mouth at all, because were there a reader who did for some reason want to click on every headline they didn't want to know about in order to make sure they shouldn't have clicked on it, that would definitely still be something that is their fault once they saw anything they shouldn't.

Even leaving aside why someone would do that, the OP made the conscious decision to post it like they did.

They could have tipped everyone off to the clickbait. They could have used a spoiler tag if they didn't bother reading it or wanted to play into the clickbait. They chose to do neither. That has nothing to do with the journalistic integrity of online gaming mags. This was a personal mistake.

I have seen communities be shockingly good about respecting this. The Hades community especially is amazing and, though the game has been out now for so many years the sequel is nearing completion, they'd probably still just give you what bare advice they have to based on your current status and tell you to keep playing because "trust me."

I don't know why the bg3 community wants to pretend it's impossible and out of their hands, while swearing it shouldn't matter anyway. It very well is, and for a game this stunning, it absolutely does.

Nepenthe, 3 months ago

Thanks for single-handedly ruining my entire character 😭

Nepenthe, 3 months ago

Sonic Spinball

Oh god, I'm so fucking sorry. Do you have like a donation page for your therapy bills or something.

It's not a bad game, it's just that it's full of insta-death, has no pause or save features, and there is no Continue screen should you fail. If we stopped because we were being called to dinner, it meant having to play....the whole....game....again....all the way from the start. Proudly, we did eventually beat it, but mother of fuck

Nepenthe, 4 months ago

That's the one I was trying to remember, I'd heard about it back when it was just starting out! Unfortunately, it still doesn't support türkçe, and I'm not exactly in the position as a learner to help add it or I'd be all over that :(

Nepenthe, 4 months ago

Props on upper management for caring. I applaud them. I also...don't entirely miss the users we left behind.

Hopefully, this communication will help fans understand the gravity of the situation and will improve things going forward.

It will not.

Nepenthe, 5 months ago

The only thing I disliked about Tactics Advance was I felt like they really cheaped out on Ritz's plot. I'm thinking maybe it comes off better in the context of a japanese culture where standing out like she does really IS culturally frowned upon, but it made very little sense to me in the west and I still feel like she got done dirty. Everyone else has a really good reason to stay, Doned doesn't have functional legs, and she's complaining about her hair.

Other than that one single thing, yeah, still one of the best games I've played. I've never seen a game tackle it from that angle before or since.