Various Thoughts

Nostalgia hit out of nowhere a day or two ago and made me reinstall some old games. The main focus of this urge was on Dinotopia, an adventure game that I never got around to beating. I had advanced to some tar pit like place once, but upgraded my CPU shortly after and could never again manage to get past the sound puzzle in Waterfall City. Thinking back, I may have only passed it the first time on sheer coincidental luck.

Hopefully, things will turn out better this time.

EDIT: Well.. they sort of did. I got past that first sound puzzle via some well played luck after just clicking around for awhile… but now I’m stuck on the sound puzzle in the Savannah place… which is where I got irreconcilably stuck before as well. Checked a FAQ, but all it says is to use the same music sequence used at Waterfall City… and that doesn’t work (and how the hell would anyone know that? They never mention the music sequence or that you even have to open the goddamned door). Looks like I’ll have to abandon it again.

EDITx2: Found a slightly more advanced version of the earlier FAQ which actually listed the music sequence. Ended up beating the game and did not enjoy it one bit. Nostalgia fails to live up to nostalgia once again.

The Game Guides have been added, and the Guide page has been updated.

I think I may attempt to watch K-On! before adding the Game Mods. Maybe, maybe not.

Condensing the pages to make room for the new pages that are needed following the Homepage Implosion. Pay no attention to the rediculously long post below, or the various Game Mod/Guide posts that will eventually follow.

Joomla aggravates me.

Delete a little mainmenu module and the entire system comes crashing down. Sure, you can make a new mainmenu module, but the system doesn’t give two shits; it’s come crashing down and it will be damned if it’ll get back up.

I’ll rebuild the homepage eventually… I guess… but I don’t see the rush since WordPress works just fine with or without Joomla sitting on top of it. Maybe I’ll just have the Homepage link here, and add all the Mod and Guide descriptions as WordPress articles instead.

I ended up ordering NWN Diamond in a fit of nostalgia two weeks or so ago. I had bought the game shortly after it was first released, but decided that buying the compilation would be a good idea since I had never owned the expansions or played the premium modules before. I didn’t like the OC or SoU when I first played them (and don’t really like them all that much now either) due to the fact they were thinly disguised MP modules with just a token plot and characters… though I did like HotU quite a bit. Even so, I felt like replaying it after the various references in NWN2 eventually got to me.

I’m roughly 3/5ths of the way through Chapter Three right now and have noticed something about the gameplay. While in NWN2 the focus is on extremely high AC to avoid attacks, in NWN the focus is on extremely high DR to negate attacks. This goes for both PCs and NPCs. The difficulty of NWN’s OC is drastically reduced once you save up 30k gold to buy your first Greater Belt. The game seems to be balanced for this event though, as you’ll run into enemies in Chapter Two and Three that don’t seem tough at first, but will utterly destroy you if you don’t have the appropriate belt (and you aren’t an epic tank). The Bears and Dire Bears come to mind.

I’ve also recently realized that this focus on DR has a notable side effect; magic appears to be far more deadly than it otherwise would be. Even the lowly Magic Missile becomes dangerous since it cuts right through your 20/X DR. This is noticeably different from NWN2′s gameplay, where Magic is often seen as weaker than melee (since DR is extremely rare) and lower-level spells are often cast once or twice and then never used again. What’s somewhat baffling though is the way my level 14 Ranger/Arcane Archer in NWN, wearing a 20/DR belt, can still easily die to various single or paired enemies’ physical damage while a similar character in NWN2 (who lacks a 20 DR belt) will only be at risk of dieing if completely surrounded by foes. I suspect that NWN’s enemies have artificially beefed up attack bonuses, but have not gotten around to looking at the back-end.

Another noticeable difference between the two is how viable a Dex-based melee class is as a damage-dealer. Take the above Ranger for example; planning on being an Arcane Archer I focused on Dexterity (18) while still not slouching on Strength (14), yet the character’s melee damage output using a Rapier and Short Sword is atrocious. Doing ten points of damage is a good roll, so all five attacks might come out to about fifty… but it usually ends up more around thirty. Meanwhile, Grimgnaw is doing a solid twenty damage a hit, ranging up to around forty-five on a critical. The damage is certainly better when using a longbow (thanks to the AA bonuses), but still doesn’t match Grim’s except on criticals (or when using extremely expensive elemental arrows). The problem, of course, is in the weaponry. NWN2 has an extensive crafting system that allows you to make the average weapons you find far better suited to your character. Low base damage? Add some elemental damage effects. NWN’s OC has nothing similar. That Ranger is basically stuck with the Namara +2 and Courtesan Blade for melee combat, and while the status effects are nice, they really aren’t a substitute for decent damage output.

This weaponry issue not only contributes toward making Magic appear deadlier than it otherwise would, but seriously limits your henchmen options. If you are not a Strength-based melee character, you don’t really have any choice other than to take Grimgnaw or Daelen since you need a consistent damage dealer to hack through the tons of cannon fodder thrown at you before they overwhelm you. I tried taking the Cleric for a while, but she doesn’t do much damage and is easily overwhelmed on the front-lines, especially if you end up getting wounded (she’ll try to heal you and get hit with tons of free attacks that will almost certainly always hit since AC is so worthless). Tomi is good as melee support, where his Sneak Attack will increase his damage output, but terrible as a primary where he’ll do less than ten damage a hit. I haven’t tried the Bard, but I strongly suspect she’d have the same troubles as the Cleric… probably more so since she lacks a shield. And the Sorcerer is out of the question for obvious reasons. Being limited to only one henchmen really sucks when the game essentially forces all non-Strength based characters into a support role.

Completely changing gears now, let me ramble on a bit about Storm of Zehir. I meant to write something regarding this expansion shortly after finishing my first playthrough some time ago, but obviously never got around to it. I both like and dislike SoZ. It reminds me of the first Baldur’s Gate in the way you can stumble into battles that you just simply cannot win. The game doesn’t level itself to you, you have to level yourself to it. This is the source of my divided opinion. I like this behavior because it’s logical and makes the world seem more real and self-sufficient, but I don’t like it because running into a situation you cannot handle under any circumstances is incredibly inconvenient. I keep having all these semi-interesting party ideas, but end up continually scrapping them on the drawing board after remembering what happened in my first playthrough. The first party I took through was a ‘fun’ party. It was just a collection of builds that seemed like they might be interesting to try out all at the same time, and were quite clearly not ‘power-builds’.

Well, things went more or less smoothly (a bit of trouble getting the Serpent Temple artifact for Volo) through the game right up until the end… when the Herald completely destroyed the party. Utter devastation. The only possible way for that party to have beaten the Herald was to head out into the jungle, grind out two to four levels, and then abuse the unlimited gold and crafting system to death. So, after sitting around in shock for several days, I pulled myself together and browsed for forum topics on the final battle and made a much more power-gaming focused party to try a second playthrough. That party had not a single problem… as you would expect from a team of four power-builds. But that method leaves a lot to be desired since SoZ’s main strength is the way you it allows you to create any type of party, and using only optimal builds seriously stifles the system’s otherwise inherent creativity.

I’m still trying to come up with a workable solution to the ‘ winning the game with a non-powergaming party that doesn’t abuse the unlimited gold’ problem, but the expansion is definitely fun to run through a couple of times with a powergaming party.

Nothing much (or anything really) in the way of ‘updates’ thanks to being somewhat engrossed in modding while playing Neverwinter Nights 2. I may try to kick-start a few of these Anime series that have been sitting on my watch list for… like a year now… but I don’t have high hopes for that working out.

Completely unrelated to that, I read an article in GQ relatively recently that was talking about how the best diet is to simply go hungry and only drink water. Not get all fancy with food-type specification. I’ve always wondered why this wasn’t more apparent to more people. I mean seriously; three meals a day? Who needs three meals a day? Not only is it needlessly time-consuming, but needlessly complicated as well. Eat once a day and just drink liquids the rest. Personally, I’ve almost never been able to drink and eat at the same sitting since I consider both to be ‘food’ and always wondered how everyone else could not only do both at the same time, but several times per day.

Ignore all these recent ‘oWoD’ posts cluttering the front page. I have no idea how to create a post without it popping up on the front page, so that’s why they’re here.

WordPress stopped letting me edit the original list because formatting it apparently took longer than thirty seconds, so I had to break it down into smaller portions. It turned out I had forgotten to add Shaitan, the Baali Methuselah. I also made the Appendix part of it a bit easier to read while adding him; namely in the Blood Magic and Morality Path sections.

Been busy with NWN2, MotB, and SoZ lately. I may get around to watching the second Tokyo Majin season either tonight or tomorrow morning though. Xam’d really killed me; it reminded me too much of Eureka 7 and Wings of Rean . In the meantime, here’s a stream-of-consciousness treatise I wrote a bit earlier:

Many think words and actions are different, but they are not. Words are actions. An attack with words can mirror or even replace a physical attack, and both can provoke the same reaction. So to with compliments and rewards. Some say that nature abhors a vacuum, but such is incorrect. A vacuum abhors a vacuum. It is empty, hollow, and must do everything in its power to fill itself. Unlike its apathetic brother the void. The void is empty as well, but it doesn’t care. All humans are insane. If they were not, why would they procreate? No sane being would deliberately create more of a creature that does nothing but destroy all that surrounds it. Humanity provides nothing for the planet or its other inhabitants, and takes everything. Going so far as to burn the alchemical essence of past dead to provide its forward momentum toward oblivion. It is a race surrounded by the miasma of the dead; it emanates from their fuel and is a major part of their plastics. They wrap their food in crenelated corpses. Humanity has never produced anything beneficial to anything other than itself.

What being would create such a race? Was it all just a cosmic accident? Did it never suspect that the bodies of the dead would be transmuted in such a way? Or perhaps humanity is just an experiment to answer the question of whether a race can be so selfishly devoted to itself that it brings about its own destruction. If such is the case, this being most certainly already has its answer. A race that thinks of itself as the masters of the planet it inhabits. Pathetic. Being able to kill something does not make you its master, you must be able to control it as well. They most certainly cannot control it. Can the tides be altered at will? Tectonic plates shifted? Weather patterns changed or even fully understood? No to all. A mass-delusion. But then, mass-delusions are commonplace. How else to explain nightmares? Nightmares are the truth of the world. When one awakes from a nightmare, one has re-entered the dreamstate so many spend the entirety of their waking life in. The nightmare strips clear the delusions and shows the mind the true face of the world. Most cannot handle it, and so awake screaming with little to no memory of the event. Going back to their safe delusion. Those that already see the truth of the world do not have nightmares. Nor do they truly dream. The dreams will mirror reality, and show what is to come… or what has passed before and may again.

Everything has been done. Will be done again as well. This does not mean that things are the same though. With each repetition comes the inclusion of distortions. Certain minor differences will provoke minor alterations. Over the eons these will cause events to repeat out of order. Endlessly out of order, and yet preordained. When you look in the mirror do you see yourself? Is that mirror image the same? Of course not; it’s mirrored. Its left is your right. You and it are not the same, though you may be similar. Such is the case with events past and present. What looks like one thing may in fact be another, and vis-versa. When you drop a pen, does it fall due to gravity? No. It falls because it falls . ‘Gravity’ is merely a label given to that behavior. Labels only have as much meaning as one is willing to give them. Is a King a King if no one acknowledges his country? Of course not. He may exist, and he may rule similarly to a King, but without acknowledgment and consensus he is not a King . Such is the power of words; they are worthless.

So empty. Devoid of meaning. When will it end? Why does it continue? If you are empty inside, but could fill yourself with the excretions of others… would you? Or would you instead choose emptiness. Embrace the curse. What would be the purpose one way or the other? Do both paths have the same end, or even, the same meaning? There is no way to know, no way to test, no way to experiment. Not objectively. And without objectivity, there can be no understanding. No answers gained. Not accurate answers in any case. Hate and love. Life and death. Words and actions. Dreams and reality. Belief and skepticism. All are the same in some ways and different in others. Perspective is key. The key. But, again, how can one expect a race devoted only to itself to think beyond itself? One cannot. Not and be sane that is.

A few days back, I wandered into the local Blockbuster on a time-wasting whim. After wandering around for a while, and noting the rather insane prices for Blu-Ray discs, I started searching through the Used 3/$20 rack.

I kind-of wanted to see if they had Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, but I instead stumbled across Species: The Awakening. Having not known that there was a fourth movie in the series, I grabbed that as well as Species III and the special edition of Species. Sadly, there was no Species II there. Also hidden in the rack were two movies I had never heard of before; Shoot ‘Em Up and Skinwalkers. Since they looked mildly interesting, I grabbed them as well as Resident Evil: Extinction.

Out of the above, I had already seen (and liked) Species, Species III, and Extinction. I just got around to watching Shoot ‘Em Up now, and can safely say that it is both utter crap and a complete waste of $6.50. I’ve since heard some rather bad things about Skinwalkers, so I don’t have much hope of that being good, but hopefully Awakening will make the trip semi-worthwhile.

I never seem to have any time any more. It’s either being overscheduled at work, or overscheduled at home. How can I be overscheduled at home? Why, by taking on yet another Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines related project. This one is quite a bit larger than my last foray, which produced the P&P Combat Mod.

What makes it all the worse is that I hate this game oh-so-very much. It did nothing but massacre VtM‘s Disciplines and mash an RPG into a Alpha version of the Source engine… which was not built for RPGs.

I did, however, manage to squeeze in some reading. I finished up the last two books in the first Black Company trilogy (Shadows Linger and The White Rose), and while they were good, I didn’t really find myself liking them all that much. The whole ‘True Name’ bit at the end of White Rose was particularly annoying. I also re-bought and re-read Gehenna, which was just as good as I remembered it, and most recently finished up the newest entry to the House of Night series… which seemed rather short, and didn’t really bring anything new to the table.

Hopefully this Bloodlines project will be more-or-less finished by the end of the week, so I can do something about this massive quantity of Anime (~20 complete series) sitting around waiting to be watched.