Palworld and Dwarf Fortress, swapping between them when I get bored.
And getting my Elden Ring char ready for the (hopefully) incoming DLC
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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How's your fortress coming along? I'm super excited for the return of Adventure Mode. :)
Oh man, you may regret that work order. Incoming cliff face of (hopefully) -Well-Crafted- engravings:
So I'm redoing an old project where I turned a volcano into an obsidian caster and casted a 20z level solid obsidian fortress with the lava tube at the center. Reddit ate the original post and I can't find the original files anywhere.
My original was chef's kiss perfect embark, 3 biomes haunted forest, mirthful grass, and wild forest, a brook running right by the volcano. This time wasn't so lucky, it's just a Mirthful forest but the need for a Haunted biome was covered by the fact that I am in range of a Tower (more later). This embark also has Humans, Elves, and Goblins as neighbors, my original was a super evil world where only goblins and kobolds existed, so I guess that's an upgrade.
My first task was to strip the volcano of trees and bushes, and setup my temporary fort where everyone will live til the casting is complete, and underneath that began digging out my water reservoir. The process is ridiculously water intensive and brook tiles refill so slowly that I'm going to need to literally just let it run while I sleep so the reservoir refills.
My next steps (tomorrow night) is to complete the reservoir and start filling it while I build a giant 4 lane water pump stack and build a huge faucet emptying in the middle of the lava tube. This will turn the middle blocks to obsidian and drop them down to the destructive surface at the bottom of the magma tube, draining it. I have to be careful on this, too much water will plug the tube and that is a MAJOR pain to clean out. Once I've drained the lava tube down below the level of the 1st cavern, I will build 2 double magma pumpstack and 2 double water pumpstack columns running up the middle of the fort.
The idea is to provide both RED HOT MAGMA and water to every floor without taking up the main floorspace.
Once that is complete, with the lava tube still drained, I will dig out the mountain leaving pillars at every level and hollow out belowground the radius of my fort down to 1 Z above cavern layer 1 and that will be the first floor of my obsidian casting.
As I've (hopefully) improved my casting process, my previous limited size (the limiting factor was that drawbridges are max 10x10 and need at least 1 anchor) of about 18x18 walls around a 38x38 lava tube should no longer be an issue and I BELIEVE that with my new style of caster that I can make arbitrarily large obsidian slabs.
My original caster had 2 levels of drawbridges surrounding the lava tube, the bottom filled with lava spilling out from the Z level of the volcano top (volcanoes in DF are weird), and the top drawbridge structure held water pumped up from a reservoir below.
Each level looked like the top of a crenelated tower, I don't have the pics anymore so it's hard to explain. It was cool but very very small.
My new caster is the above mockup, delivering 4x lava and water stacks straight into the casting area and allowed to spread out, unlike my original model which was filled then dropped all at once. This is how I am hoping to make larger slabs as the water pours out over a sea of 5-6 high lava at the casting floor. It may not work, this is experimental and I may have to go in after each cast and manually fill in a few gaps but the benefit of making very large slabs is worth the extra annoyance.
Once I've casted enough levels to about 20z above ground, I disassemble the mould used to hold in the lava and start digging my lava moat. In my original version the moat just drained off the map above 3z deep, and was a risk for lava-safe intruders so now it's all going to be recycled through the pumpstack system leaving just enough lava in the moat to deal with sieges.
When it is all said and done, this fort should be a lava defended obsidian monolith where every surface is carved with the story of my people. It will be my greatest work to date and I can't wait to see what I learn building it.
The Need for Necromancers
It is critical to my fort to have a pit of undead butchered animal parts for my archers to practice on, and in my original fort the animation force was the part of my fort in the Haunted biome, and it worked so much better than trying to convince militadwarfs to train archery. Nowadays we have necromancers, so I plan on capturing a necro from a raid and walling him in to a little booth where I can lift a lever and let him see the corpse target pile, reanimate them, then get shuttered again till my crossbowdwarfs finish the random pile of torsos and intestines wobbling about.
I had a more detailed response to this written down last night, but the servers went down when I tried to send it so I cba.
This is super freakin' cool. Nevermind -Well-Crafted-, I'll call this one ☼Masterful☼. What was your inspiration for the original project?
Lol don't call it ☼Masterful☼ till it works! I could be very mistaken about lava flows here though I hope to post my updates to lemmy so we can all see how it goes together.
My inspiration was, in a roundabout way,: how to find a FUN way to dispose of kings who keep making insane crafting requests like weapons made out of soap. I envisioned a room suspended over a lava tube with a hanging pillar holding it up and drawbridges providing access. If the king got silly I could pop the pillar and drop his whole royal suite into the tube.
And of course I had to keep his subjects near him so I built the fort into the volcano side but I was annoyed about how irregular the floor size and mineral patterns were. I had just learned about obsidian casting in industrial quantities (the reason for the initial volcano embark) so as I was playing the thought kept coming back: 'Well, obsidian is a really valuable mineral when carved, and obsidian mechanisms are an amazing trade good, so... what if I made a whole fort out of obsidian?
So I tried that with that existing fort, not a fancy fort with a lava tube, more like just a giant cube of solid obsidian cast off to the side from the volcano.
It worked magnificently! The rooms were all lavish with just bare stones engraved, and I had unlimited material for stonework and mechanisms.
Smiling in satisfaction I said "This is cool... but it could be cooler."
And that's when I came up with my 'volcano base with a live active lava tube in the middle'.
The original took about three months of damn near every moment I wasn't working or sleeping, hopefully my experience since then will cut that time down a bit.
I'm really excited to see how this goes, and can't wait to share my updates.
Fun Fact: If you dig out each floor and drop them all at once, the game registers the internal hollowed out tube as being 'outside', meaning even after you cast the obsidian tower, all internal areas are considered in sunlight, so your dwarves never get sunlight sickness when defending raids and you can grow aboveground crops in the safety of your mountain home.
There's something magical about the idea of suspending a king in a room above a volcano. Y'know, just in case the peasants get mad. ;)
Best of luck! I'm sure it will be !!fun!! either way.
I'm playing Apollo Justice on my N3DS after playing Phoenix Wright 2 and 3. So far I find it less interesting, I played it for a bit way back in the DS days but can't remember much. Strangely enough, Maya Fei is my favourite character of the franchise, with her half a brain cell and all.
I'm also trying to get through Persona 5 Royal, I've tried 4 times between the original on PS3 and this one. I can't get engaged enough and it's so frustrating. I loved Persona 3 and 4 and have played them a few times since I discovered them in 2011 or so and was really hyped for 5 for years. But 5 feels like a worse Persona 4, despite all the enhancements. I just finished the third palace (the farthest I ever got was the fourth palace a few years ago) and I haven't touched it in a couple of days because I can't find the will to go on. Maybe it's me who has changed, although I still find 3 and 4 very enjoyable.
Maya is a genius compared to Pearl. Poor girl was introduced as a little kid and they decided she'd stay a toddler in a grown-up body for the rest her life.
P5R was my first introduction to the series, but I've heard the characters in P4 are much more fleshed out. Is that your issue, or would you say it's the game mechanics that are bugging you?
I'd say it's a bit of both. I have the impression that they wanted to do a better Persona 4 but for me the characters feel more artificial and the game feels bloated in comparison. By wanting to expand on everything that made P4 so good, they expanded everything a bit too much for me. And reading the game lasts some 100-120 hours reinforces this feeling and makes me uncomfortable, which shouldn't be the case with such a beloved franchise.
I can't really compare too much to P4G, since I never got very far in it (I missed the QoL improvements).
I think being able to save in safe rooms let them expand the Palaces/Dungeons, which I could see making the game drag for some. Personally, I enjoyed the safe room mechanic since it meant that I could play for short times if necessary, which let me "pick up and play" much easier.
I'm playing it on Steam Deck, the sleep function is a godsend.
The sleep function is pretty nice, but I like to swap games relatively frequently; so being able to save frequently is still critical for me. Plus at the time, I was just playing on my personal computer, so I couldn't leave it running, even if I wanted to.
For P5R, I suggest only playing for an hour or a two at a time; I think it helps keep the game from dragging. For me, it helped keep the exploration aspect fun since I didn't have to rush to the end since I was probably not getting there in this sitting anyways.
If I understand correctly, you own a Steam Deck. I haven't tried it, but this plugin could be useful for your use case.
That's pretty cool. Does it let you pause games indefinitely while playing other games, or does it just initiate a pause while you're on the home screen, etc?
From the README:
A Steam Deck plugin for the Decky Plugin Loader that makes it possible to pause and resume games even for those that don't have an immediate pause option.
Useful for when you wish to temporarily suspend an application in order to redirect the cpu and gpu ressources to another without having to close it.
Since used RAM and VRAM won't be able to be recovered from paused apps you might look into tweaking your swapfile to make things smoother: https://github.com/CryoByte33/steam-deck-utilities
It sends the SIGSTOP signal to all the children of the reaper process to stop the execution and SIGCONT to resume them. (Signal (IPC))
I intend to replay Apollo Justice for the same reasons as you lol, I wish I didn't forget the plot of the Ace Attorney games so I could keep with the main story.
Still trying to finish Pillars of Eternity. The level scaling is all sorts of weird with the White March content. The game's original level cap was 12, I think, and I'm there now, close to 13. Since both your to-hit chance and all of your defense stats are significantly affected by leveling up, some areas are ridiculously easy, and a few areas are ridiculously hard. I can waltz through the majority of combat encounters and then end up in one where all of their magic casters immediately stun/paralyze me or knock me down for about 10 seconds straight, rendering me completely unable to defend myself, and the fight ends poorly in hardly any time at all. And what sucks is that I know it'll be a cakewalk if I come back and do this fight in like 2 levels, because enough of my party will survive the dice rolls that lead to characters being paralyzed for so long, so that I can properly respond and keep my party alive. I hope they adjusted this stuff in the sequel, which I do intend to start right after I finish this game.
I also picked up Tekken 8. I have historically not been a Tekken fan. The movement is weird, and the characters feel like they all do kind of the same thing, which takes a lot of the fun out of a fighting game where you get to select a character. At least it's a full package. I went through the arcade story mode, which is a much-needed tutorial after the complete lack of any such thing in Tekken 7. The cinematic storyline, which I haven't finished yet, seems to have gotten rid of the biggest problem with Tekken 7's story mode, which was that narrator who made the craziest anime nonsense seem boring. And as for the character stuff, the Heat system does add in a pinch of flavor that incentivizes you to do something somewhat unique with your character in order to stay in Heat mode longer; for instance, if I'm playing King, doing his powerful grab moves will extend his Heat meter, which means it's rewarding you for playing him the way he ought to be at his coolest. We'll see how that goes. Unfortunately, the online mode has been a no-go. There's a problem right now where playing the game through Proton just results in a lot of disconnects, so I've hardly been able to finish a match, and I likely won't try again until I see some patch notes acknowledging that they've fixed the issue, either on Bandai-Namco's side or Valve's side or both.
Diablo IV Season III
Viewfinder!
I started playing Firewatch a while back and then got distracted. I recently picked that back up on my Steam Deck.
On the PC I'm playing Remnant 2 with my kid. I'm not into soulslikes but it's not bad when there's 2 of us.
I've also started playing Palworld to see what all the fuss is about. It is amazingly derivative. It's like Ark and Pokemon had a baby with maybe some fortnite sprinkled in.
After finishing my second playthrough of Loren the Amazon Princess, I've now started Tales of Aravorn: An Elven Marriage. And I must say, it is pretty good. From what I can tell up to now, I like Elven Marriage more than Loren, so it's a bit sad, that it didn't sell that well...
Apart from that I'm playing way too much Against the Storm. It's a pretty fun city builder rogue-like. Basically Settlers, but only the fun parts, with a bit of random challenges sprinkled in.
I also tried to play Albion (the DOS game) again, but I died in my second battle and hadn't saved from the beginning... 90s games were something different, when it comes to difficulty. I will definitely start over again soon, this time actually saving frequently.
Enshrouded. Loving it.
Monster Hunter World, again. Had been playing Sunbreak together until a friend wanted to prove world was the better game for some stupid reason. I genuinely like both, but SB was so much better for multiplayer.
Diablo 3: Season 30 - Already working on the Destroyer chapter.
Alan Wake 2 - I'm trying to be extra careful because I know there's a few extra things in ng+, and I'm starting to have a lot of questions about a couple loose ends that also showed up in the first playthrough. I'm hoping maybe the ng+ ending will explain some of them. I'm only a few chapters away from the end, so I'm hoping I finish it in the next 2 or 3 days.
Diablo 4: Season 3 - Chose a Barbarian for this round. Not sure I like my current build, but I'm hoping once I get some more legendary items I can look into a better one. I like the "story" for this season a lot better than last season's, but that might be because Zoltun Kulle is one of my favorite Diablo 3 characters. My lil construct companion is kinda kickin' ass too. Just wish it would also pick up gold for me lol. As far as the season journey goes, I'm glad they took out the PvP objectives. I actually feel like I might be able to get all of them done this season.
Just wish it would also pick up gold for me lol.
It's weird that D4 doesn't have this yet. Not just talking about the season companion, but in general. Maybe they're still trying to be a more serious game, and having a tiny Butcher running behind you would be too silly. In a few seasons, once they put the Horadric Hamburger in the shop, they'll hopefully also add vanity pets.
I just want my SC2 Probe, dammit.
If they are planning to I imagine they're waiting a little bit to introduce them. I try not to compare the two games too much, but iirc it was a few years before D3 even got pets.
If they're not planning on it, at the very least increasing the pickup radius would be nice, since it's fairly small as it stands now.
YouTube kept recommending Fallout: New Vegas videos, so I've been doing a mostly bee-nice NCR run. Did main quest up to the dam, currently working my way through Honest Hearts (did Old World Blues super early for the implants).
Nier Automata on the Switch, it is the only version I have played so far I think it is a great port... The anime motivated me to get around this title BTW (I think it is usually the other way around) so far I like it, even if it is the same genre that seems to reign the gaming market nowadays, open world action RPG...
New Diablo 4 season started, so I'm playing that. I'm a Barbarian this time, level 80, trying out a Thorns build.
The beginning was extremely boring, and I was thinking about stopping altogether or switching characters, but after I got some items, it became less miserable.
As for the new season mechanic, it's kinda whatever. It's not as bad as I thought, but last season was definitely more fun.
Monster Hunter Rise and Deep Rock Galactic! Trying to increase my master rank and unlock all the Risen elders. Doing event quests that interest me, and finally taking a jab at arena quests.
DRG is just fun as hell and it's kinda relaxing at the same time. Not too far into it but greatly enjoying every moment.
I've been playing V Rising PvE with a friend. Pretty fun game. Much less grind than typical survival or basebuilding games. But the bosses are quite hard to compensate.
God of war Ragnarök - kinda meh, unskippable cutscenes, pseudo cutscenes, mediocre story, worst/laziest difficulty design (enemies are damage sponges at higher difficulties), playable Atreus. Glad I got a used copy for relatively cheap and can regain most of my money.
Octopath Traveler 2
I started playing Darktide around a month and a half ago and I've been hopelessly addicted since