Ooblets

Yesterday I wrote about how I was just going to probably have to accept not having a beard in Ooblets. I was wrong about this and wrong about so many other things. This morning I am going to talk about the various things I was wrong about or more so the things I wish I understood earlier in the game. It is not like you are on a strict cycle like Animal Crossing, so knowing them now instead of earlier doesn’t really damage my enjoyment in any significant way. However I thought I would share some things I have come across with you fine folks so you might be able to do things a little more efficiently.

Break Rocks and Weed Immediately

This is partially my own fault and partially that I am obtuse as hell, but when the game tells you that you can break rocks to get “Nurnies” I didn’t quite understand what it meant. I kept walking up to rocks and looking for the energy interface allowing me to break one. The part that I somehow missed is this is an activity that only appears while you are in “Garden Mode”. The other thing that I missed is that I should realistically weed everything immediately because while rocks give you Nurnies, Weeds have a small chance of dropping seeds that you desperately need early in the game. Sure you can buy seeds at the seed store, but you are going to be short gummies for a long while and this lets you start growing the much needed Clothplants on day one.

You Can Take Naps

The game very clearly tells you that the bed is for sleeping each night, but if you run out of energy during the day you can come in and take a nap. You can pretty much do this an unlimited number of times but each time it will progress the day night cycle forward a bit. If you spend a bunch of your energy weeding your garden first thing… then you might need to nap early on rather than hitting your supply of energy foods quite so soon.

Machines Work on Their Own

This one is probably self explanatory to everyone but me… but machines have a hopper for a reason and will continue chomping away on things when you leave the machine. For the first several days I would sit here and wait for the slurry machine to make my slurry. Additionally of import, you can leave your slurry on the machine indefinitely and just pick up your bait when you actually need it. This seems to work fine leaving it here from day to day and there will be certain days where you have a bonus activity that relates to catching things in sea dangling, so worth stockpiling it for then. The same is true for the grinder or the juicifier (whatever it is actually called) machine on the farm.

Talk to Everyone

Make it your goal to talk to everyone each day. Sure you are likely going to miss someone, but this goal will help you out later once you have repaired the sticker machine and these interactions start rewarding stuff. There seems to be an invisible friend meter before the stickers are a thing, because I was further along in the process with a handful of people that I found interesting and talked to organically. Where this comes into play in a major way is each time you earn a new sticker you get some items from the person as well. Later you are going to encounter a quest that requires you to have 10 bean juice, which is 300 gummies if bought outright. However if you get your friendship with Dubble the barista, they will give you a quest to get them wood for a sign which rewards 9 of the 10 needed.

Partially Complete Quests

Once the drop box shows up for a quest you can start dumping materials into it. This is useful because inventory is at a premium and often times you can free up some space by dumping the random bits you have collected into the box while you are still working on the remaining items. For example repairing the Frunbuns clubhouse required a bunch of random shells, which I normally just sell to the seed vendor. So that I did not do this, I dumped the ones I needed into the box knowing that I could safely vendor the rest.

Trespass Daily

I failed at getting a good screenshot of this, because I had already gone around snopping in various homes for the day. However as you are doing this you will encounter various glowing objects. If you interact with these you get something. It could be a handful of gummies, it could be a recipe scrap, it could be some currency that doesn’t seem to have a use yet or it could just be crafting materials outright. Whatever the case it is almost always useful, so it pays to trespass in the various homes and buildings each day.

The Barber Chairs are Different

This is the issue that ultimately drew me to the false conclusion that I could not have facial hair. When you enter the barber shop, my World of Warcraft mindset made me think that all three chairs did the same thing. That is very much not the case, as they each tweak a specific attribute. The top chair is hair/facial hair color, the middle chair is facial hair and the bottom chair is your hair style. It seems as though once you have paid to unlock a hair color, it can be used an unlimited number of times after that.

Seed of the Day Sale

This is another one that is probably obvious to everyone but me, however each day Meed is going to put some seed type of sale. You can tell which one by the Red clearance sign that is stuck in the tray. For example in this picture and on this day it is Muz seed which is normally 5 gummies per and is instead selling for 1 gummy per packet. If you are careful you can judiciously wait out the day that has the seed that you need and then stock up at a significant savings.

Hype Is Real

So when it comes to Dance Battles I have a few simple goals. First I tend to value Hype cards really highly, because each point of hype is going to make every other card that you play that much more effective. So for example in this current hand, I have a hype card that costs 1 beat and one that costs 2 that both reward a single point of hype. That would account for 3 of my 5 beats, but when I play my 2 beat card it is going to have a face value of 8 points. Without playing the Hype I could have ultimately stacked on those same points, but from this point forward EVERY card is going to be stronger so it is well worth constantly valuing hype highly because it quickly steamrolls.

Pace Yourself

The other major tip that I would give you is to remember that Ooblets is in Early Access, which means it is very much not finished. Last night I was attempting to crit path a specific objective that spanned over the course of multiple objectives… and I hit a hard wall where I could not move any further. That wall happens WAY closer in than I would have expected. I have a slew of objectives to complete and things that I ignored while focusing on a single one. I still have plenty to do, but I was able to hit a boundary after a single day of admittedly obsessive play, so you might want to stop and smell the roses a bit. If you enter this game with the sort of mindset that was required to make progress in Animal Crossing… you are probably also going to hit a similar wall at some point.

Any Tips I Missed?

Are you also playing Ooblets? Did I miss anything obvious in my run down of things that I wish I had known earlier? Drop it down in the comments for the folks coming along after I have posted this. So far if they manage to make good progress, this is legitimately game of the year territory for me personally. I like this so much better than either Animal Crossing or Pokemon right now, but I guess at the end of the day it will depend upon how deep the mechanics actually go. The post Ooblets Tips and Commentary appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

It feels like I have been waiting the better part of a decade on this game, but in truth it seems I first wrote about it back during E3 of 2017. Ooblets entered early access yesterday and after spending some time being a post apocalyptic delivery man, I decided to hop into a delightful cartoon world before bed time. Ooblets can best be described as what would happen if you got Stardew Valley and a Card Battling game in your Pokemon. You could also potentially relate some of the things to Animal Crossing, but instead of Animals there are delightfully weird human beings taking their place.

The character creation screen is very limited, and is doesn’t involve gender selection. You choose a hair style, a skin tone and the sort of outfit you want to wear. This is going to be a game where I don’t likely get a beard but I am largely okay with this as I think a lot more options open up once you start exploring. I found a barber shop and there are already hair options that were showing up that did not appear during the initial character creation system. Additionally there is a clothing shop that reminds me a lot of the Able Sisters from Animal Crossing. You collect a currency called Gummies and that seems to be what is spent on everything cosmetic. I just don’t really have many of those yet nor do I have any clue how to get a large quantify more so I am rolling with this basic look for now.

The game starts with you arriving by boat from an island to this seaside town. You come from a place where Ooblets did not exist, and you are immediately thrust into a situation where you are given a horrible farm house that you will need to fix up, and a job acting as the assistant of the mayor. Since you arrive without an Ooblet of your own you are presented with the choice between four clubs that dominate the town. This feels very much like a Hogwarts House sort of mechanic, but it truth I just went with the house that had the Ooblet that I wanted to use the most. Your choices are:

• Frunbuns – They like cute stuff
• Peaksnubs – They like success and competition
• Mimpins – The science kids and the socially awkward
• Mossprouts – Outdoorsy club that loves a good adventure

By the natures I probably should have chosen Mimpins, but I mostly just wanted to start with Shrumbo which is an adorable mushroom ooblet, rather than Sidekey a robot ooblet.

Combat in the game plays out in the form of dance battles, where instead of just choosing abilities and spending power on them, you are given a deck of move cards. You start with 3 beats you can spend per round, which are effectively the equivalent of “mana” in a Magic the Gathering style system. Certain cards can be played that give you addition beats per round that seem to last for the entire battle. There are also cards that give you Hype, which effectively buff all of your dance moves, again seemingly permanent until the end of the current dance. The goal is to hit some number before the other team, in the case of a group battle it seems to be 30, in single dances it seems to be 20.

As your Ooblet levels up it will learn new special move cards that go in your deck. I have no clue if this pushes normal moves out or not, but in my experience the special moves are seemingly the ones you want to be playing whenever given the chance. Sashy for example above only costs 1 beat to play it and gives you 4 points, whereas a similar base move Gavotte Trot shown in the image before that is 2 beats to play for the same 4 points return. Where you run into problems is when you are in a dance and one of your Ooblets is disabled for some reason… you still keep getting their cards which ultimately sit rotting in your hand since you can’t play them without that given Ooblet active.

One simple touch that I like, is that when you do defeat an Ooblet, your character tells them that they did a really good job and you have the option of collecting a seed from them. This seed literally can be planted in your farm to grow your very own new friend from that Ooblet family. This seems to take a few days to grow a new Ooblet, pending you water it every morning when you first get up. There is a day/night cycle like Animal Crossing but the days move much faster so it doesn’t feel anywhere near as real world gated.

The tasks you are given by the Mayor all seem to involve collecting various resources. However the big challenge right now is I don’t exactly know how to make those resources appear. For example I am really close to finishing repairs on my farm house, but I seem to still be missing some cloth… which occasionally appears as a random flower that I can pick. Your actions take energy, which is restored by sleeping for the night or eating food. I feel like right now I only have the most vague of understandings how all of these pieces fit together. There doesn’t appear to be anything similar to the tall grass where you can just randomly encounter Ooblets, but instead they show up in town and want you to give them resources in order to have them dance with you.

It is a super cute game in early access, and I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of how it actually works. So for now I am going to close things up as I have only played a few hours. I did however walk to talk about it a bit, because I have a feeling it is going to be right down the alley of several of my readers. I like the whole Pokemon but a card Battler aspect of it, because I never really did like combat in Pokemon that much. I also like the Animal Crossing/Stardew Valley aspect of the game, but I feel like there is a mountain of knowledge I am missing much like when I first tried playing Animal Crossing New Horizon. Right now it is somewhat hard to decide of things are intentionally obtuse at times, or if this is just an artifact of it being early access. The post Growing Friends in Ooblets appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.