What are you playing right now?

[PopeLinus1]

I feel your pain. At the risk of trapping you even further, have you tried Enderal? It's a total conversion mod for Skyrim. Has a very dark but very satisfying storyline, plus an entire new continent to explore!

*sigh* I wonder if I’ll see the sun this weekend.

[D20ragon]

I thought PoE would suck me in for another month or two, but instead I've been spending all my time on Vermintide 2. Really enjoying it, even more than the first one. Can't decide if Sienna or Salty is my fav, even if neither of them are top tier (though Pyro Sienna at >20 is pretty good hoarde clear).

Just picked this up the other day! I played the first game, though not extensively, and I decided to give Sienna a go since I didn't play her at all in Vermintide 1. Any tips? She does feel a bit underwhelming.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Playing through the remakes of the retro-RPG series Avernum right now. Much as I remembered; not as good as the original Exile games (though prettier), but better than the first edition of the Avernum series through QOL improvements.

Agreed. It might be my nostalgia speaking, of course, but there was a certain je ne sais quois feeling to the original Exile games that has never been recaptured in the remakes. Especially the third one - running around the place on horses made the world feel huge.

I'm looking forward to Surviving Mars - it's been a while since I last played a Caesar-like game that wasn't war-focused.

GW

[Cespenar]

Agreed. It might be my nostalgia speaking, of course, but there was a certain je ne sais quois feeling to the original Exile games that has never been recaptured in the remakes. Especially the third one - running around the place on horses made the world feel huge.

One of the things I missed much in Avernum was the secrets. The hidden doors, magical barriers and all those secrets did much to enforce that open world feel, in my opinion.

[Zombimode]

One of the things I missed much in Avernum was the secrets. The hidden doors, magical barriers and all those secrets did much to enforce that open world feel, in my opinion.

Hm, you have all that in the newest iteration.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Hm, you have all that in the newest iteration.

No, you have pixel hunts for the door latch, which are mightly annoying even when you know there is a door to be found. In good ol' Exile days, all you had to do was try to walk at a likely wall, and it'd open if it was a secret door. It made finding them a lot simpler.

I also remember being less annoyed by magical barriers - I think they were all dispellable, once you had the required spell?

Grey Wolf

[The Glyphstone]

Agreed. It might be my nostalgia speaking, of course, but there was a certain je ne sais quois feeling to the original Exile games that has never been recaptured in the remakes. Especially the third one - running around the place on horses made the world feel huge.

I'm looking forward to Surviving Mars - it's been a while since I last played a Caesar-like game that wasn't war-focused.

GW

The big thing I feel got lost in the transition was the out-of-combat magic. Stuff like Move Mountains, Scrying, Firewalk, or Magic Map that let you find alternate routes through places or uncover extra secrets hidden behind stuff. The Avernum 'blatantly visible secret button on a wall' method of hiding sneaky stuff isn't nearly as satisfying. Even the lowly Light spell is gone, along with any need to be casting it.

I also occasionally get frustrated by the semi-isometric view, where I try to attack someone in the tile directly north of me and end up clicking my own character to skip the turn instead.

And yeah, Force Walls now come in multiple strengths. The lowest level can be dispelled by Piercing Crystals, but higher levels are mage-only. This made my solo non-mage playthrough of A1.2 very frustrating at times.

[Drasius]

Just picked this up the other day! I played the first game, though not extensively, and I decided to give Sienna a go since I didn't play her at all in Vermintide 1. Any tips? She does feel a bit underwhelming.

She's unplayably bad pretty trash until you hit ~15 as Pyro and have the 3 heat reducing talents and she gets much, much more playable at 20 when you get temp helth on crit or kill, since that way you can use the temp heat to vent overcharge without losing green health. I'm halfway to 24 at the moment and can't wait to get the talent that allows flaming skull to clear overcharge.

For staves, any of the ranged ones can work well, they all have their niche, but the flamethrower is far better left for the dwarf since ther are better ways to melt hordes and it can't deal with specials at all and will struggle with elites to an extent while also being pretty trash at bosses. If you can get a orange bolt staff with heat sink as the special and get some crit on your gear, much of your heat issues go away since Pyro builds crit as overcharge advances stages and each bolt can sink 4 heat (which is more than it costs to fire by a fair way - IIRC, you have 50 max heat before you go nova). I'd say bolt or beam staves are the choice at 15+, but before then the fireball staff did a lot of work for me, especially since a fully charged alt fire should stagger trolls/spawn/rat ogre/stormfiend and will pierce smaller stuff easily while it's gonna take a while for your other options to being to pierce a notable amount of targets. Bolt right click or Beam explosion will brutalise specials, elites and bosses though, which should be a big part of your job as Sienna.

For melee, I like the longsword sine it's the only thing that gives reliable area clear when you're surrounded early and can't pewpew your way out. The charged swing is a nice horizontal sweep and has knockdown and cleave on smaller rats and a small amount of armour piercing for stormvermin or chaos warriors in a pinch. The dagger is also good since it's so fast. Some people like the mace for the better damage, but I find it doesn't get the horde clear that I need. The flame sword is just bad IMHO.

If you haven't found 'em already, go up the stairs on the left from where you spawn in the keep to find the combat dummies and check out the various benefits of each weapon on both the unarmoured one and the armoured ones up the top. Some of the choice will come down to personal preference, some down to what you want her to focus on doing for the team, and the remainder is, if you play in/with a regular group, what they need covered.

If there's one tip I could go back and give myself though, it'd be not to go nuts on pewpewing small isolated trash, they can/should easily be taken care of either by your melee or your team with very little risk. This means you'll have a fair amount of meter left to burn (pun unintended) when a horde/patrol/boss shows up and you really need to cut loose and make a difference. Once you ding lvl20 and get temp health though, then you throw caution to the wind and just vent on temp health and go back to safely pewpewing everything you see ... until you get to Champ/Leg where friendly fire is a thing and you need to be careful again.

Having played a bit of every character now, I'd have to say that Sienna easily gets the biggest boost from talents. Everyone else just gets nice to have stuff, she goes from trash to extremely useful once she dings 20, even though every character has roughly the same lvl 20/25 traits. Each of her 3 -ve heat traits at 5/10/15 are noticable too, but 20 makes her good.

Her Pyromancer special is one of the quickest to recharge at 40 seconds base and will stun bosses and deals high damage and knockdown to chaos warriors. Very handy against the spawn in particular when he starts munching on a team member to heal, you can stun him out of it. Also note that it does more hits the higher in the heat gauge you go, getting 2 more hits every stage. Also super handy vs specials like gutter runner or hook rat who can easily incapacitate people out of LoS. Pretty good vs blighstormer too since it'll track him desite his rediculous teleport shenanigans and can be fired around corners if you're pinned down by a ratling gunner. All in all, it's a great little ult on an already great class, to the point where battle wizard is just outshone everywhere and Unchained can be a liability on later levels where you can either take a hit or use a staff but not both.

[Cespenar]

No, you have pixel hunts for the door latch, which are mightly annoying even when you know there is a door to be found. In good ol' Exile days, all you had to do was try to walk at a likely wall, and it'd open if it was a secret door. It made finding them a lot simpler.

I also remember being less annoyed by magical barriers - I think they were all dispellable, once you had the required spell?

Grey Wolf

True. I think too that they were all dispellable, and that there were different trap/barrier spells in place sometimes?

It's a while I played Avernum, but wasn't finding secrets tied to your Perception skill or whatever? I liked Exile's method a lot better, trying to walk into the odd wall because the design looked sketchy to you.

Not that they are huge issues, but still.

[The Glyphstone]

nah, you always know a secret is there. some are locked behind switches with a Tool Use minimum. others in the overworld have a Cave Lore minimum to gain the rewards.

[Zombimode]

No, you have pixel hunts for the door latch, which are mightly annoying even when you know there is a door to be found. In good ol' Exile days, all you had to do was try to walk at a likely wall, and it'd open if it was a secret door. It made finding them a lot simpler.

I also remember being less annoyed by magical barriers - I think they were all dispellable, once you had the required spell?

Grey Wolf

Maybe it's an eysight issue, but I found the "hidden" switches in all of the modern Spiderweb Games I've played (the first Avadon: The Black Fortress, Avernum: Escape from the Pit, Avernum 2: Crystal Souls) always incredible obvious.

All magical barriers can be brought down by a dispell barrier spell of sufficient power. Special Vahnatai plot barriers are the exception, but those only appear in the second Avernum at very few (like one or two) plot-central Points in the game.

Overworld "secret" doors are found by Walking into said wall. They are secret in name only as they are always rather obviously marked.

[Cespenar]

I'm fairly certain that the first Avernums had the walk-in secret doors, and the reboots are now using buttons and skill limits.

I admit, the naming of the series makes it somewhat confusing.

Anyway, not that it's an important issue.

Edit: Also a random factoid/blast from the past about the original Exile that it held the monster pictures as bitmap files in the folder. So you could actually go and mod the visuals to your heart's content.

[Zombimode]

I'm fairly certain that the first Avernums had the walk-in secret doors, and the reboots are now using buttons and skill limits.

Like I said: secret doors are opned by switches in "dungeon" mode, and by walk-in in "exploration" mode.
To my knowledge no secret door is locked behind a skill. Tool Use opnes locked doors and Cave Lore lets you find and open "hidden" stashes.

[Ardentex]

Right now I'm playing Bloodborne for the first time (it's an experience, to say the least) in my free time, while trying to plan out a marathon of the Kingdom Hearts remakes I finally picked up. I'm trying to juggle those with the games I'm actively recording for my channel, which is Pokemon FireRed & LeafGreen.

[Jama7301]

Been slowly trucking through my first playthrough of Super Metroid, plus refamiliarizing myself with some Super Mario World speedrun strats. I also play a bit of Dragon Ball FighterZ when I need something a bit more high energy. Also working on Final Fantasy X HD with my girlfriend, as she had never finished the game.

[Avilan the Grey]

XCOM 2 War of the Chosen
Fallout 4
Crusader Kings 2
Divine Divinity Original Sin 2.

For once I'm trying not to burn out on a game and actually jump back and forth a bit.

[Triaxx]

I keep getting the urge to play new XCom, and then realize how bad I am at it.

[The Glyphstone]

Like I said: secret doors are opned by switches in "dungeon" mode, and by walk-in in "exploration" mode.
To my knowledge no secret door is locked behind a skill. Tool Use opnes locked doors and Cave Lore lets you find and open "hidden" stashes.

Some switches will only respond to high Tool Use. You can see them, but the game says 'you dont know how to operate this mechanism' when clicked on.

[Yora]

Been slowly trucking through my first playthrough of Super Metroid

It's amazing how compelling this game is even when you never played anything of that kind back when it was made. I am still pretty much binging through Settler II, a game almost as old.

[GloatingSwine]

while trying to plan out a marathon of the Kingdom Hearts remakes I finally picked up.

Have you got the pinboard, red string, and marker pens to do the whole conspiracy board thing to try and understand the plot?

[Velaryon]

Still working my way through Secret of Mana. I've just found Flammie the dragon and left him in the care of King Truffle before moving on to the desert area. I'm getting desensitized to the awful voice acting, but I've had a new problem: the game has crashed on me several times. Thankfully it doesn't take too long to get through most areas, so it isn't like I'm going hours between saves.

I've had this weird mix of nostalgia and anticipation for this game for a very long time, because of the fact that I played it some and enjoyed it back in the day, but was never able to spend a whole lot of time on the game or get my hands on my own copy. So now that I am able to own it, the excitement of finally being able to play all the way through is kind of at war with the fact that this game just isn't as impressive to mid 30's Velaryon as it was to preteen Velaryon.

Ah well. I'm still having some fun with it at least.

[Cespenar]

I keep getting the urge to play new XCom, and then realize how bad I am at it.

If it's timer issues, there's a mod to extend the time limits which is almost a mandatory mod for anyone who wishes to maintain their sanity while playing the game.

[Avilan the Grey]

If it's timer issues, there's a mod to extend the time limits which is almost a mandatory mod for anyone who wishes to maintain their sanity while playing the game.

XCOM 2: War of the Choosen has those built in.
Also I would SERIOUSLY recommend that if you don't have the budget for more than one game, go XCOM 2 instead of 1. Or even better get the bundle with XCOM 2 and War of the Chosen.
Second best is the XCOM 1 and Enemy Within bundle. Both DLCs SERIOUSLY improves the base game, but XCOM 2 is just better over all IMHO.

[Cespenar]

XCOM 2: War of the Choosen has those built in.

Wow, that's pretty progressive of them. I know they did similar stuff before, but it never ceases to amaze me especially when in comparison with the market default right now.

[Triaxx]

It's not the time limits, but rather the terror management. Whoever decided three missions at once and only allowing you to go on one with the other two incurring huge panic penalties wasn't thinking clearly. Either that or I'm supremely unlucky with the RNG.

[Drasius]

It's not the time limits, but rather the terror management. Whoever decided three missions at once and only allowing you to go on one with the other two incurring huge panic penalties wasn't thinking clearly. Either that or I'm supremely unlucky with the RNG.

I think it's more that you're missing the *FUN aspect of what makes Xcom, well, Xcom.

[Iruka]

I started playing Jagged Alliance 2 again, but on my Win8 Laptop it stutters horribly. All solutions to that seem to need more mucking about in game files than I am in the mood for. Maybe I will try to find my old Stalker savegames instead.

[rooster707]

Just finished Dark Souls II. Unexpectedly, I ended up liking it just as much, if not more, than the first game.

Also started Prey (the new one). I’m not nearly far in enough to say if it’s good or not, but it reminds me a lot of several games that I love, which is a good sign.

[Jama7301]

Finished Super Metroid, and man, is the room containing the final boss just utter trash. Enjoyable enough game though.

Moved over a couple spots on the SNES Classic to work on Yoshi's Island, since I haven't beaten that one on a console, nor have I beaten it in over 10 years. Super Mario World is always there, tempting me to go back to speedrunning it though.

[Rynjin]

Have you got the pinboard, red string, and marker pens to do the whole conspiracy board thing to try and understand the plot?

The plot of Kingdom Hearts is very simple once you understand one important fact: everyone is Xehanort.



Except the people who are Sora.