Mystic Worlds

What’s up? Not much. Some Tera: Fate of Arun

What Was

Playing Don’t Starve Together, The Sims 4, World of Warcraft and Darkest Dungeon have all slowed down.  I’m going to be having what should be minor surgery in a couple of weeks.  This has turned my focus to spring cleaning, getting things ready for hand-off at work and organizing my house and bedroom beforehand. Minimally, I’ll be laid up for 4 weeks.   4 weeks convalescing takes planning!

I like TS4 more than I thought I would.  It’s probably my second favorite of all the expansions, TS2 Open for Business being my favorite.  After redesigning all of the new professions buildings where you accompany your Sim to work, it’s very cool.  I’m very partial to the hospital I designed and downloaded a mod to extend the workday.  Imagine wanting to make your workday longer! LOL I actually wish it was a location that was accessible to her outside of the normal workday.  It’s a hoot seeing other Sims I’ve created as patients and co-workers.  The only thing I’d want beyond what they’ve done, is a way to progress the professions to private practices / home offices.  The same way you can open a bakery, photo studio or retail store on a personally owned piece of property, I want to open a doctor’s office.

In effort of not starving, I meandered back to the single player version because of a RPG mod someone created.  The mod provides predefined classes with their own set of skills and weapons.  It also adds monster villages / towns to spice things up. Instead of the single NPC boss encounters and dangerous critters in certain areas, this puts more combat and excitement into the game.  I wish there was a DTS version.

I’ve lost interest in WOW and Darkest Dungeon for a while. WOW I probably would have played longer if the instances queues weren’t so long for DPS people. I’m really no longer fond of the quest model and not much new with the Warlock class itself.  For now, I hop on occasionally to do garrison stuff until the subscription runs out.  I’m sure part of the issue is playing in utter silence.  No guild or anything.  One of my favorite WOW steamers has started a guild for people subscribed to his stream. And since I’m subscribed, I recently moved two characters over there for the next time I get the WOW itch.

Memorial Day Weekend in Tera

On the same stream, people were talking about trying out Tera.  I guess now that it’s on Steam it’s getting more attention.  I liked Tera well enough.  The combat was good and it had some interesting zones.  It’s still the old school questing model but they’ve amped it up a bit since I last played. There are more daily quests.  They’ve also added a new “Initiative Requests” interface that’s like GW2 dailies. The quests are delivered to you via the interface, you go off and do them and the rewards are received via the interface. The interface will also port you to the appropriate zone.  Tera is large compared to many MMOs and traversing all the zones isn’t exactly speedy.  Battlegrounds have also been added.

Other than the common lockbox RNG that’s favored in many Asian MMOs, Tera’s F2P model is good.  It’s certainly not P2W. It’s pay for convenience such as a map with portals on it. Pay to look good – lots of costumes and skins. Pay to lighten the load – faster mounts, pets with storage space, pets that auto loot.  They have a “Roll Call” promotion going where you earn small treats every day that you log in – minor conveniences. 

Over the long weekend I popped in for an hour, liked what I saw and started leveling my priest again.  Always a sucker for cute cash shop items, I bought a mount that’s a huge hulking creature I ride on top of Cleopatra style and the pet that auto loots.  OMG the amount of trash loot in Tera is staggering.  I wish spending a certain amount in the CS granted a month subscription, I spent more than that over the weekend.  Cuz you know, steampunk rules all and given the chance to dress up in cogs, gears and whatnot is a no brainer! Unique mount, useful pet and gears – ‘nuff said.

Leveling has been fairly fast with the double XP promotion going. Playing on and off, I gained 4 levels over the weekend.  I changed out of my healing spec on the priest to pure DPS.  Her filler skills are shit but she can hold her own. I was even able to do 2 quests designed for 5 mans – BAMS (Big Ass Monsters).  It takes some doing alone but I got her done.  And at least one of the 5 man instances I needed to complete a storyline quest had a single player option.  The bosses were difficult but I survived with more than full health. 

To my chagrin, Tera has taken a page from the Blizzard handbook of designing boss encounters – hopscotching out of circles and obstacles left-right-center has become a thing.  They've even added phases where things get worse the longer the encounter stretches on, which wasn’t going in my favor doing it alone but I managed it.  All in all, it was a fun diversion. I don’t expect to play it “full time”. Not sure I’ll be playing anything “full time” for a while to come but it was definitely worth the download.

 

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Steam Early Access: Darkest Dungeon

Steam Early Access: Darkest Dungeon

I’ve leapt from the ledge again on Steam, purchasing another game that’s outside of my normal genre.  I don't play rogue-like games, Don't Starve being my first ever.  Dungeon crawlers aren’t my thing either.  In fact, I don’t enjoy questing in confined dark spaces. I’m an open world kind of gal.  I have a couple of my favorite Twitch streamers to blame.  They made Darkest Dungeon look like a lot of fun. So much so, that I wanted to try it myself.  And they were right, it’s worth the price of admission. *Smile*

The Premise

You’re now the caretaker of an estate plagued by demons and other monstrosities of the netherworld. Someone dug too deep.  Like the ill-fated Dwarves of Kahzad-dum, they unwittingly released these horrors and corrupted the estate. Now it’s up to you to recruit followers, train them and reclaim your legacy.

Game Play

The game play is deceptively simple.  You recruit followers and run dungeons.  Except for the fact that your followers are flawed and are susceptible to the stress caused by combat.  This susceptibility is manifested by a stacking stress debuff which debilitates the recruit into behaving negatively.  This is not a desirable outcome in a game with permanent death. 

Recruits can also suffer other psychological maladies that impact their skills and behavior. You relieve them of these disorders by sending them away for appropriate treatment. Perhaps that Knight suddenly beset with kleptomaniac tendencies needs a few days of flagellation in the Abbey. Or your Bard needs to recover his nerve by throwing back a few stiff ones at the Tavern.  Based on the recruit’s ailments and the number of spaces you have available in the various recovery buildings, you have to balance their need for treatment versus having recruits to do missions with which earn you gold and other artifacts used to progress the storyline.

After assembling the right bodies for the tasks (quest/mission) at hand you can also bring along provisions such as food, torches, keys and shovels.  Strategy is required for deciding how much to buy and of what because you lose whatever you don’t consume inside the dungeon.  As a result, you’re always trying to figure out how much is “just enough” without wasting gold by taking too much or coming up short which could result in deaths – permanent ones.

You can always recruit more followers as well as dismiss others to make room for new ones.  However, this comes at a cost.  Newer recruits are at level 0 and have starter gear. Having to replace key higher level recruits with green ones will require a change in strategy and reinvestment in armor, weapons and skills training.  So it’s not something you do lightly.

Holy RNGesus

If you don’t like heavy RNG this might not be the game for you.  The encounters are random and so are the outcomes of each turn in combat.  You could take the same exact party into the same exact dungeon and have a completely different outcome.  I’ve had some fights where a class misses on every single turn! Grrr.  And others where it rains critical strikes for the NPCs.

The RNG in DD feels more like Hearthstone RNG compared to what I’ve encountered in combat in other games.  The feast or famine of RNG being in your favor, can completely change the outcome of an encounter. I haven’t lost any recruits to it yet but there’s been a lot cringing and holding my breath!

Why this Rogue like Dungeon Crawler?

For me it has what I like about turn-based combat + min/maxing meta-game + an RPG-like story.  I enjoy having an estate to manage by upgrading specific aspects according to my strategy.  I like managing the recruits which feel like a shallower set of cards in a deck building game.

The combat animations and traversing through the dungeons remind me of a more mature version of Wizard101 which I really adored.  Except that DD removes the wasted traveling around which got a little old to me as W101 progressed.  Hopefully, I won’t get tired of the how the dungeons themselves look.  There’s not much too them but the art style is very appealing.

The game is simple enough for anyone to hop right in and start running missions. While complicated enough that running them efficiently and without causalities takes it to a whole other level.  Right now I’m on Week 5 and am trying to upgrade buildings, characters and their skills without having a solid plan or deep knowledge.  It’s working so far.  If not, I can always kick this saved estate to the curb and start a new game when I know more.

 

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