beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I tried to have A Nice Sleep but instead I had A Rubbish Nap and now I am neither asleep nor inclined to start anything much because it is Sleep Time I just failed at it.

*grump*


I have been thinking about character portraits in computer games. Wrath of the Righteous has more limited character design options than I have seen on videos about other games, but you also don't get fancy cut scenes where you get particularly close to characters, so it's all one in play. But instead of taking the animated character you design and using a little portrait of that where applicable, you get Arts.

Several Arts and some items art under the cut plus a few comments ( Read more... )


Okay, aside from some vague thiughts about adventurer's aposematism and the absolutely wild economic divisions between ordinary survival money and magic item money, I am not coming up with more thiughts.

Or more sleepy.

I'll go away anyways.

I have done all the Festival bit of the DLC, including all the arena has to offer.
Played a bit later than I intended but around the time I was planning to sleep I was instead stuck in a rolling battle that just kept getting worse. I was thinking I did not know how to survive it but if I did survive it I would have bragging rights forEVER.

Details under the cut: ( Read more... )

So that was the kind of very exciting computer game day where you spend a lot of it going
yikes yikes yikes yikes
and trying to figure out what is going on because there's too many overlapping graphics on the screen and it is lagging so so bad
but then I won
so now it is fun excite again.

Pretty good apparently nine hours today.



... now if it only gives me my achievements that'll be grand. I got one of the ones I earned yesterday but it hasn't pinged up the second from yesterday or any today.

If I lose the achievement for finishing on Core I shall be very, very, very annoyed.

... but I do seem to be kicking its butt on Core.

Playing Wrath of the Righteous and my characters have levelled up to the point where the main problem is standing still for two minutes before a fight while we cast all the buffs.
Also remembering all the buffs. That is a non trivial problem now. There are... so many.

I am having a weirdly unsatisfying time playing even though I am beating most fights and even the tough ones only take two or three goes, on Core. I think it's because I am aware I am not doing it right. I haven't thought of a better way but I know this one is actually rather rubbish. So I am winning, but it is not elegant glorious solutions to demon problems, it's just the thing where I can stack buffs until the enemy are rolling for twenties just to have a chance to hit, we've got armour and damage reduction, their elemental damage can't get through, everyone is protected from poison AND disease, and death ward is taking care of level drain and negative energy on the whole, so when they actually do hit at all with anything? There's barely any damage. Teensy tiny damage of smallness. So I can do really badly, Woljif tends to be rolling for twenties himself because I cannot build that guy so he can hit for toffee, I've had to turn off half the clever feats because they might up the damage but the to hit is too bad, and yet still, I can just ignore the being hit, so I win.

It's like I'd rather play like Batman but at the moment I'm just a set of somewhat mobile walls and that's somehow working.

Still, progress is being made, and new things happen a bit because I am playing Angel this time, so that's neat.

Today I did another load of laundry and played WotR on Core some more.

I am 100% certain I did the achievements again but they did not ping. Again.

Somewhere around midnight I decided to just have a go at the achievement boss fight in the secret bit.
... it is now 4am and I have a much better idea of what doesn't work.
*sigh*

I am going to have to try it again with different characters. And buy a lot of holy water in case I don't get any better ideas. The only ones doing damage are casting Pillar of Life or running right up to the jerk and slapping Heal on him. Funnily enough, not optimal. Someone should be able to lay a sword, club, arrow, bite or talon on it but noooooo.

I shall bring someone better at hitting things and hope it works better.

It is ridiculously difficult. Literally nothing else has been a challenge, and then suddenly this thing is impossible. Rubbish scaling there.

If this second try doesn't work I'm going to have to design a mercenary specifically just to hit this thing. Which would be very mathy and annoying.

Up until then I was having fun though.

Pretty okay day, just want the game to do what it says it will.

Wrath of the Righteous Lord of Nothing DLC is not giving me achievements. I followed a guide and redid the shadow realm and definitely did the achievement as listed and uet, no achievement.
Explains why the percents are so tiny, it doesn't flipping work.
I've put it back so that character's win can be used in the main game and deleted all the in between saves. Frustrating mess.
I shall be back eventually to win it on Core or above for a specific fight, but, I shall need to redesign my characters and start again at the beginning for that.
Grumpy now.

Big Finish audios are not grumpy making though.

Most recent one I listened today:

Dark Universe
7, Ace, and The Eleven ( Read more... )
I either need to listen while paying attention (very possible) or I didn't like it much.


Before that I listened to
3 adventures with 7 and Mags, the werewolf from the circus. Excellent companion material, refreshed stories because you don't know which way she will jump, and she's always afraid of her own darkness, which 7 at this point very much should be as well.
The Monsters of Gokroth
Moons of Vulpana
An Alien Werewolf in London
( Read more... )
I think it worked very well.

So I liked those three a lot


Pretty good listening.

I finished Drezen again yesterday, including the optional really hard fight, and the optional fight only took a handful of tries.

... playing without all dying repeatedly isn't possible on core. for me. anyway.

I stopped in the middle to let my shopping in and then got around to eating while I was doing all the talky bits when Drezen is first set up.

Seelah calls herself sister Seelah to the Knight Commander but Auntie Seelah to Daeran. Specifically in the context of saying she'll spank him in the drinking contest. Daeran says he's fine with losing to such a worthy opponent especially if she carries him upstairs to bed.

which struck me as obscurely sad because there is no up to the rooms prepared that day, there's broken places the players can't get past, so he's home, but home isn't quite there.

It made me think about ages and relative ages. We don't get precise numbers for most of them, just Ember iirc, and it's tricky to figure out lives from life experience, since the correlation between experience and XP is necessarily fluid with regards to backstory. I mean you level up repeatedly in days in Kenabres, age isn't measurable from experience. And then there's how old assorted races are for their age category, most obviously Ember, but what with meeting a half elf, a tiefling, an aasimar, and a mongrel right away, what an age even means gets messy from the get go.

Pathfinder rules for ages as per the back of Advaced Race Guide say the youngest a 1st level tiefling or aasimar can be random rolled to be is 24. Aasimar or tiefling adulthood is listed as 20, where human adulthood is listed as 15. It doesn't quite make sense to take that number as written, humans can start out at a minimum of 16 because you roll assorted numbers of dice to add on top. Humans are coming out of training ready to face the world at 16 minimum, so I feel like considering 16 adult is the lowest humans can go.

Aasimar and tieflings roll more dice. Their aging effects start at 35/53/70 same as humans, but they are adult late and roll more dice. So they're slow learners, until they hit 1st level and meet the standard character progression. Aasimar and tieflings are rolling at least 4 dice on top of a 20 year adulthood, so they're not going to be rolled up at 1st level until at least 24.

Which means, one, those with the blood of the outer planes are going to special school compared to humans or even half elves. Half elves are adult at 20 but can roll a 1 and be fully 1st level at 21.
Two, unlike half elves, after that they just have less time. Slow start, normal age pattern for humans? Less time before ageing starts taking their stats.
Three... There's a solid interpretation that Daeran is actually pretty young for an aasimar.

It's interesting because we know Ember is an elf child read as a child by people you meet, and we know however young Woljif might be, most people saw a tiefling. Daeran described at his party gets compared to angels, inevitably unfavourably. Due to being an actual mortal child. But being an aasimar and a noble and a rich man and someone who was found having drunk all the wine after a disaster of a party just... seems like the order of interpretations, before anyone gets to age.

Daeran could be an adult the way a college fresher is an adult. Possibly after a gap year of partying.
He could have grown up with tutors not just because he was rich, but because he, and some of his family, were slow, compared to humans without celestial influence.

Or I could be over interpreting a single dice table in the back of an expansion book, because I am older than a lot of characters and they keep looking younger from here.

Ember saying she's going to the trouble so the trouble won't come to more children? Makes me think of how young how many people were.


I haven't played as an aasimar yet and wonder what dialogue I'd get.

I am playing as a tiefling and it throws in a bit extra here and there, stuff about you understanding how bad tieflings have it, or just between us yeah the abyss whispers, or a bit I just did when you ask a vendor what a tiefling is doing in the crusade and he's like I bet you're only asking because you had to answer that stupid question so many times you're taking your turn.
... the dialogue does offer you chances to say all the same prejudiced things, you just get a few extra words of answers sometimes.



The other thing is I keep choosing the character portraits where they're wearing a mask and hood, and then everyone always recognises your race anyway. And sure the view of your animated character doesn't get a face covering unless you get a mask with game stats, but it still feels weird? Like how do you know there's horns under the hood, if I'm trying to cover my hair all the time anyway? Not all the options have glowy eyes anyway. Why do tails always stick out of your outfit? They're not for grabbing or for balance, you could just keep them under your robes. But nope, everybody always knows.

Which is super weird when the race guide says "No two tieflings look alike".



I am playing a tiefling witch and I just chose the Angel path. Apparently this means not getting some cool out of the spellbook options, but, tiefling witch angel makes so many characters eat their prejudices, I am pretty determined to finish the game this way.

... it is not easy on Core. I am spending all the money on healing and therefore not getting the best equipment. It's... tricky.

But my achievements started pinging again after eight months of nope, so I have incentive to stick with it!
Sure they only ping after I turn it all off and on again, but, incentives, I am getting them. On Core even.

Can't go back and get the optional boss fight from Kenabres though, don't have a save I could conveniently do, it keeps saying too full.

... if I do another play through I guess that would be why then...


Shall see how this one goes. Last one stalled when I had to drop the difficulty for Lost Chapel. This time I grit my teeth and invited Regill along and kept Camellia and did all the locations before Lost Chapel or Drezen and it went much better.

Onwards!

I forgot shopping doesn't happen on Easter Sunday, and indeed forgot it was Easter this Sunday, so I had to grab the last delivery timeslot available on Saturday night, because fridge empty so waiting until Tuesday for the next workable one is... not ideal.

So now I'm feeling persistently like I've Forgotten Something, which is not in fact fun.

But! Reminds me of Wrath of the Righteous.

... spoilers for the whole thing go under the cut: ( Read more... )

You get all these choices for background at the start, you can change everything about the Knight Commander, you get so many options for answering the Who Are You questions... and yet by the end I feel like I know which ones are honest.

KC knows what you choose, first time you see the opening scene.

... and all the options for Remind Me Who You Are just get darkly funnier...

I won Inevitable Excess, including the fight that gives you bonus loot later, and I did it on Core, the highest difficulty that improves said loot.

I would feel more accomplished if I hadn't spent all the time I was playing realising over again I hate Inevitable Excess gameplay.

The stupid completely new way of moving. The levers and buttons and clocks. The maps you can't see all of even after you've been there. Stupid fiddly cogs and mechanical things I still haven't used all of. Puzzles puzzles everywhere and nothing but another fight and some loot to show for it.

... yes there's usually another fight and some loot, Pathfinder is fight and loot centric, I just... I was playing gold dragon and on gold dragon all you need to do is breathe on things, sometimes twice. That's not fascinating. ( Read more... )

I like the questions IE raises, I like the decisions you can make, it has lots of bits of fun story.

But it also has deliberately weirded out graphics that can be hard to see, a movement and puzzles loop that makes Alushinyrra look like sensible straight lines, and enemies that don't leave you with many options to think about.

I am done with it again.

... until I finish the main game on another myth at least.

For entirely spoilery to the last act reasons I was looking up the rules on alignment in Pathfinder Ultimate Campaign p46 https://legacy.aonprd.com/ultimateCampaign/characterBackground/backgroundGenerator.html see Conflicts, and seeing how to apply them to Daeran in Wrath of the Righteous.

On the whole I am not enamored of the mathematical approach taken to deciding how lawful or evil you are.

It seems to take Lawful Good as a default position you can fall from by doing bad things. Rather than, for instance, starting at neutrality, as it is elsewhere stated all babies and the majority of adults do. You do not have to random roll Good things to see where on a table your Good is, you just roll Conflict and set off away from Lawful Good. Theologically speaking this is A Choice.

But: Ultimate Campaign makes it possible to random roll you alignment in 3 parts, or four if you count the extra conflict point you can get by doing any of the conflicts to a child. ( Read more... )



Okay I went to look up online references and proof read what I'd written and now if I had any further conclusion I forgot it.

But having even a strange and annoying math for alignment gives you a place to start the arguments.

... I have seen so many alignment arguments on the internet. I have seen so many people arguing so and so isn't actually evil. I do not want to have those arguments.

Yet I just typed up so much alignment math.

But the interesting part is how many ways you can end up in how many parts of the alignment grid. It makes it hard to argue so and so isn't such and such when the math is this mobile.

... it makes it easy to argue alignment math is a bad tool with weird outcomes tho...

Hours spent playing Wrath of the Righteous yesterday: ... all of them? I don't know, I don't think I hit 24, but the ones between midnight and actually going to bed were not intentional in the slightest. My watch needed recharging and I thought Just One More Thing and, well, hours.

But I have beaten two DLCs thoroughly, ( Read more... )

So. Way too many hours, probably should have been two days. But the only thing left is the final fight, and we are very well equipped to do it.

And after that I shall have to do activities that are not Wrath of the Righteous.
... unless I do Inevitable Excess again with this more optimised team.
... but after after that, other things.



I'm sure I shall think of some when I get there...

This morning around midnight, having realised I needed to run the dishwasher before I could eat, I sat down to do the Tuesday tasks, then found tbe printer won't print black when it is out of color, so the Tuesday tasks are bumped to Wednesday after the delivery arrives.

So I played Wrath of the Righteous.

It is 7pm now.

I did play all the in between hours.

Pretty sure that is too many hours.

I did kick the arse of two different demon lords, but got zero crystals out of it for reasons unknown. Maybe shot the wrong one? Annoyance.

But I saved Daeran, finished Seelah's quest and saved a bunch of civilians, and did Nenio's questline, which more than makes up for how little she had to do up until now. ... I hate the puzzles and the running around and the more puzzles and looking them up online and still getting stuck ugh. But we won. It is done. Oh and we did the Heart of Mystery first. So that's all the puzzles all in a row because I left them til last for being annoying.

The only things left are the DLC with the boat and the party, and then winning.

Which is neat.

I still, on my fourth play through, have not got the hang of Nenio. Wizard looks nifty but I don't bring the right spells.

Seelah has excellent buffs this late in the game and I can give her excellent armour too.

Daeran is I think on the good ending. I always worry, there's some very bad endings in there.

And I have completely ignored reality for nineteen hours.



Well it's a self limiting problem, there's only so many hours between here and winning again.
🤞

Attempting to take a day off from Wrath of the Righteous just leads to thinking a lot about Wrath of the Righteous.

All the companion and NPC stuff fits together thematically with the Big Secret really Well:
( Read more... )

Lots to think about, even before you get to the unique myth paths and how they change how you can act and react. Because to start with you have choices, but once you choose your path their are things you can't say because on that path you'd never think of them. So you can get locked in by the power in some ways, ways that are about how you treat other people and their sins. But you wouldn't have been able to make it stick without some myth power in the first place.

... not my favourite bit, I like choices and consequences but the idea you need otherworldly whammy to make them work isn't the best.

But still. Means you're playing a slightly different game on every myth path. And that changes their world.



... I'm going to go play again in the predictable near future.

... shall make sure I eat properly first...