Thalen

#Blaugust Day 14: Of Vaults and Cards and Other Things

by
Kinda late with the blog post today. Normally I try to write them the night before and schedule to post the next morning, but a combination of gaming later than I really should have and lack of any clear notion of what to write about meant I had nothing written when I went to bed. Just means I'm writing at lunch.

Fallout Shelter finally came out for Android yesterday, so I downloaded it to see what people were going on about a month ago. It's pretty enjoyable so far, though I'm obviously still in the very early game which is often the best part in these sorts of things. We'll see if it holds up further in once leveling and finding new things slows down. I did get lucky and pull a unique dweller and a legendary weapon from my first and second lunchboxes, so I've had him out exploring the wasteland and bringing back more stuff. So far raider attacks haven't been much trouble to deal with thanks to the early infusion of armor and weapons. I did have a scare for a little where my water production fell off and my overall happiness started to tank; I managed to reassign some people and make it through though and then prioritized expanding water production once I had the caps.

#Blaugust Day 14: Of Vaults and Cards and Other Things
My litle Vault, ticking along
Over in Marvel Heroes, I finished leveling Magneto to 60 last week and started running Thing up through the story to take advantage of an xp bonus for the Fantastic Four that was in over the weekend. I've been enjoying the Thing's gameplay more than I expected. I tend to prefer dodgy ranged characters and he's very much an in-the-thick of the action brick. His secondary resource builds when he deals or receives damage so you want to leap into the middle of a bunch of guys and start whaling away. I finished up Chapter 4 yesterday with him and have reached level 34, so again, no problem leveling in the story.

#Blaugust Day 14: Of Vaults and Cards and Other Things
Dear Gazillion, I will pay cash money for this costume
Finally, I played a fair amount of Magic Duels last night trying to clear out a couple of quests. You can have up to 3 simultaneously and it seems you get one new one each day. I had a full load, so I wanted to get at least one completed so as not to wasted today's. One quest was to put 20 counters on creatures over the course of any number of games, and the other two were both Archetype quests, which ask you to win 4 duels with particular deck types. It's important to note that you have to make a deck using the Deck Builder for it count for those quests. I know Kodra, who's up on the current cards and meta, hates the deck builder but for me it's helpful to give me an idea of what sorts of decks are viable these days.

I ended up putting together a red/black deck built around creature sacrifices, ideally creatures stolen from my opponent, that was a lot of fun when it worked. I feel like it needs some fine tuning, as it could be brutal when things went my way, but I had a couple terrible defeats as well when the cards weren't with me. For another quest I made a blue/white air superiority deck that worked remarkably well in the duels I used it in. There the point was to overwhelm my opponent with flying creatures while handling his creatures via special abilities to tap or destroy them and a few hefty blockers.

Tomorrow I should have the first of what I hope will be many book reviews going up, and I also have an idea for another ongoing series that I plan to start up Sunday. I just have to actually get the posts written. Come back tomorrow and see if I succeed!

#Blaugust Day 13: Thalen and the Tanuki

by
My wife insists that Japan loves me more than her. It's because of the tanuki.

A little over two years, my wife and I visited Japan for about two weeks. She had lived there for a year when she was in college and had wanted to go back ever since. I love to travel and see new places in general, and Japan has been high on my list for years and years. So it was a no-brainer. One of my wife's best friends had moved back home to Japan not too long before, so we even had someone to stay with.

While planning the trip, my wife was putting together a list of things we wanted to see and do. She asked for my input and my first (mostly joking) response was that I wanted to see a tanuki. My awareness of Japan as a country pretty much began with the Nintendo Entertainment System and the little cultural elements that would show up here and there in many of the games. Super Mario Brothers 3 made the tanuki a symbol of Japan in my mind at an early age.
It's like a raccoon, but not
I didn't actually expect to see a tanuki while we were in Japan; they're wild animals and we were going to be mostly in and around Tokyo. When my wife told our friend I wanted to see one, she remarked that she had never seen one and she grew up in Japan. On our second day however, we went to Meiji Jingu, a shrine dedicated to the Meiji Emperor. It's 170 acres of forest in the heart of Tokyo, and it is absolutely gorgeous. We were walking the trails and came up a rise when a man who was raking the paths got our attention and pointed. And there it was.

#Blaugust Day 13: Thalen and the Tanuki
The tanuki
He was eating some peanuts that the man had given him, and happily let us take plenty of pictures while he feasted. He must have only just come out onto the path, because nobody else was there yet besides us and the man who had pointed him out to us. A small crowd gathered over the next few minutes though, and I was pleased to see that the Japanese folks were just as excited as the foreigners.

Seeing the tanuki was sort of an omen for the trip; it was if anything an even better vacation than I had anticipated and we're planning to try and go back next year. I don't expect to see a tanuki again, but hopefully this one is still doing well, hanging in Meiji Jingu, and enjoying his peanuts.



#Blaugust Day 12: Liebster 2: The New Batch

by
I have been Liebstered once more, this time by Tamrielo. I'm not going to try to come up with another 11 facts about myself; that was hard enough the first time. I will answer his questions however. Rumors that I am using this as free content because I can't think of anything better to write today are absolutely false and should be disregarded. The computer is your friend.

The computer desires answers

What is the best spell to cast?

Time Stop, no contest. Casting Time Stop gives you the opportunity to set up a cascade of fireballs, lightning bolts, and delayed blast fireballs all capped off by a prismatic sphere to utterly annihilate your foe. Not that I have any experience doing this, nope, not me.

What food item(s) from a game do you want to eat above any others?

I'm extremely curious about that goblin cheese. If the Illuminati want it, it must be some impressive stuff.

You’ve got an infinite supply of one consumable, and can never carry any others. Which consumable do you choose?

Fairies in bottles. Infinite fairies in bottles mean you can brute force your way through any problem.

#Blaugust Day 12: Liebster 2: The New Batch
Cures what ails you

You have to choose a race and class that you’ve never played seriously before. What do you pick?

Bugbear warrior. Bugbears are clearly the chosen race, and are particularly good at beating people up.

What game did you think you would hate but actually loved?

Team Fortress 2. I got it in the Orange Box because Half-Life 2 and Portal. Turned out to actually be a whole lot of fun.

What game did you think you would love but actually hated?

Ultima VIII. I was a huge fan of Ultima, and the idea of taking the fight to the Guardian's world was really interesting. The game was... not good.

Pick a zone from any game to live in. Why?

Hrm, maybe pre-Cataclysm Loch Modan? I always liked it, and it's a reasonably pleasant terrain and climate. Good fishing too.

You can excise one class from every future game. Which? Why?

Warrior. Replace with something more interesting than 'guy who hits people with sharp objects'

What’s your favorite story?

The Wizard of Oz

What hobby does no one (yet) know you have?

I'm a (very) amateur birder. I'm not going for a Big Year anytime soon or going way out of my way to hunt down rare birds, but I do actively keep an eye out for birds when going about my life, and keep record of new or interesting ones I see.

What is your favorite secret shame? >:D

I enjoy bubblegum pop music way too much.

#Blaugust Day 11: Whalers in the Sky

by
Last night was my regular raid night in Final Fantasy XIV, led by Tamrielo. This is the more laid-back raid of our Free Company, so we tend to be a little behind the most current content. Up until last week we've been working on clearing out the remaining raid content from before the patch, the Coils of Bahamut. Last week we defeated Bahamut Prime, leaving us free this week to begin in on the Heavensward raids.

We started out by running the Alexander raids, which are lower difficulty raids designed to be doable by random groups. They definitely still require everybody to be paying attention, but there's a little room for error. I had only been in the first and second of the 4 wings before, so two of the bosses were entirely new to me. We took them down without to much difficulty, and by the end of that content a number of us walked away with new gear. I ended up with new boots, gloves, belt, and a ring.

Face away from the explosion for maximum cool points
After we finished up in Alexander, we moved on to the Limitless Blue where the flying whale primal Bismarck dwells, for the extreme version of his fight. For those not knowledgeable of Final Fantasy XIV, primals are the summons of previous Final Fantasy games, generally summoned by the prayers of various beastman tribes. Bismarck first showed up as a summon in Final Fantasy VI and is the patron of the birdlike Vanu Vanu in Final Fantasy XIV.


A number of our raiders had tried this fight a couple of weeks ago but hadn't been able to do damage fast enough to make it through. Last night it took us 3 tries to get the hang of it, but once we all understood the fight, we managed to down him without much difficulty and Tam walked away with a whale-themed two-handed sword to use in his Dark Knight job.

#Blaugust Day 11: Whalers in the Sky
He's much more impressive these days
After months of raiding near the top of our ability pre-patch, it's nice to once again be in the period where we're working our way up through the ranks to see how far we can get. More runs at Bismarck are likely in our future to get weapons for the rest of our raid; next up in difficulty is Ravana in Thok ast Thok. This is reportedly a fight demanding much more precision, so I imagine it'll take us a little longer than Bismarck did to get a handle on. I've been surprised before though.