Video Games Thread

[jman]

Started Graveyard Keeper this weekend, another life drain like Stardew Valley, although not as good, it's just too difficult to understand what the fuck you have to do, took about 5 hours to really get a grip on the game, and its finally starting to grow on me now but it's so frustrating because every quest is just a grind fest and most of the time you don't even know what to grind.  The storage system is starting to piss me off too.  Anyway, the wiki page is probably the only reason I'm still going with it

[Late]

Yeah, I heard it described as Stardew for goths, and I think that's about right.
Decent game but feels incomplete. I spent so much time forging complex/advanced glass beakers then destroying them - because forging them gives you blue technology points; but they're not much use and you can't sell them anywhere. The market system is messy - you never know what your can sell, and when you do find something to sell the price quickly plummets.

If you need money get the church and graveyard quality up and do your weekly sermons. It's the best earner.

I'm currently enjoying Mutant Year Zero. Very similar to the xcom games, which I've always been a massive fan of - but without the base building bits.

[jman]

Yep, all the blue points I got by researching all the body parts - I spunked them way too early on tech I really didn't need... so I did resort to making glass beakers for blue points at one point lol.. Writing notes/chapters/books gives way more blue points and is the way to go on that - trying to make some decent prayers so that I can make money because I still haven't got the 20 silver for the trade licence for the merchant, and I have about 4/5 quests that require me to make wine now... and he's the only guy I know who sells grape seeds (although I have found a few seeds in the dungeon - but not enough for the first batch to grow).  One thing I hate is the amount of walking you have to do, ok they have teleportation stones I've seen - but if I can't afford the trade licence, there's no way I'm wasting money on those stones - they should really be craftable at an early stage - I just shudder at the thought of another trek to go and see the astrologer/lighthouse keeper - it takes ages, even with the shortcuts.

Dunno if you worked out how to get alchemy recipes, I just seem to make Goo each time lol... I need a Health Solution, which I've just looked up now (fairly simple) - but how the hell would the player know that, am I jumping too far ahead or is it a simple guessing game?

Stardew is far better, it just flows nicely, theres always a goal in sight, its easy to understand.

[Late]

By the end you're making about 60 silver every time you give a sermon. Church quality dictates the number of worshippers and graveyard quality dictates how much cash they each give. Combined with a gold cash/faith/combo sermon and you're rolling in it. And you need to be. There are a couple of things you need that cost about 10 or 12 gold coins each.

I didn't bother much with alchemy. Mainly just did the things you are required to do to advance the story, and I used a wiki for those instances.

The game world is pretty small, all in all. I never bothered with teleportation stones (I don't think they can be crafted, and I didn't think they were worth the cost). So long as you use the underground tunnels travel to the town is fairly quick.
I'm a little embarrassed at how long it took me to discover the cabin in the woods, and the witch in the swamp, mind. Normally I'm quite the explorer in these games, but I missed both of those for quite a while

Storage and positioning of desks etc was a pain in the arse. I'm sure there just isn't room for everything you want in the church basement. I ended up deleting a few things to make room for others.

Fair warning: the story ending is wank, btw.

All in all I didn't dislike the game. I was just a bit disappointed that it wasn't anywhere near as good as it could've been.

[harv]

Did you REALLY just say you've been spunking on body parts on a public internet forum

Big update for Elite Dangerous tomorrow which has big changes in exploration and mining as well as a nice upgrade to the lighting too. All of the DLC from Frontier this year has been free which is cool, and next year there's going to be a paid DLC. Elite Dangerous DLC is the only DLC that I won't bat an eyelid to pay for because you REALLY get your money's worth and I'm always happy to support them.

They've said that they're going to continue to work on Elite Dangerous for at least 10 years as long as people keep on playing so we could be looking at continued DLCs coming all the way up to December 2024.

I reckon next year we'll either see Space Legs (being able to leave your ship and walk or EVA around) or landing on atmospheric planets. Either one would be awesome but I reckon atmospheric planet landings will be more likely to happen.

I just can't put into words how good Elite Dangerous really is, and that's just playing the game on a flat screen, once you try it in VR it's on a completely different level altogether! I didn't think anything would knock the first Elite off the number one spot in my best games of all time list but Elite Dangerous has done it. It's an amazing game.

A great deal of people complain about the grind but if anything it's actually TOO EASY to earn credits in this game. There are various exploits, there are these things called Community Goals which are VERY lucrative and you can also join the armed services of one of the factions to get a decent wage.

Back in the 80s things were MUCH harder. No mission boards, no exploits, no Community Goals and no wages from the armed services. All you could do to earn money was trade, pirate, bounty hunt and mine the odd asteroid you came across. You had to put in a ridiculous amount of time before you could get yourself an Anaconda 

For me the game isn't grindy ENOUGH, so I'm playing the game old school.

Can't wait for this update to go live tomorrow, slapping seismic charges on asteroids and blowing the fuckers up is going to be AWESOME 

[jman]

Yeah I built a combo sermon as soon as possible - I'm pulling in about 10 Faith and 5-6 silver each go at the moment - finally upgraded the church last night.. and they want 200 skulls to improve it further.. I nearly spat out my drink when he initially said 800 - LOL - fuck this game!!  I'm on about 80 skulls and 45 crosses at the moment and just got the recipe to build the comfy seats.  I'm guessing there is another upgrade after the cathedral though

I only found the Cabin in the Woods last night - but I've done a few stupid things.. saved up resources for blueprints (like the church workbench).. finally got them and build it to discover I've already built the fucking thing elsewhere.. I've done that twice now lol. 

Finally done enough for the merchant to buy the grape seeds - just after I realised that I can just buy wine from the tavern.  I'm just going to focus on money now, fuck the quests - they are pissing me off.  I've unlocked both sides of the graveyard - so I'm just going to concentrate on building headstones and fences tonight - no doubt at some point I'll have to replace most of them.. but fuck it.

[harv]

Not the Comfy Chair!!!

https://i.imgur.com/CAOuC1u.mp4

 

I'm going to jump into Elite Dangerous later on tonight and blow some asteroids up I think. A bit of mining today and then I'll venture outside the Human Bubble maybe on the weekend and do some exploring now that exploring has had a revamp.

Now that we can blow asteroids up I'll have to switch from my usual chilled out sounds like Donald Fagen and Steely Dan to some progressive rock or heavy metal. Rush in particular would be a good fit I reckon.

[harv]

Bah! Server issues! I'll wait another couple of hours and try again.

[Late]

There's no upgrade after the cathedral, but you can replace the confessional and candles with higher quality ones, and put in stained glass (f*cking expensive, though, unless you are mining your own gold and have a jewelry desk).

You can make decent money mining coal (at the cabin in the woods) and selling it to the blacksmith.

It's a little frustrating to fill the graves knowing you'll end up digging lots of the bodies up later but it's worth it. Eventually you'll likely have every grave ranked 6-10.

It's worth having the grapes - gold quality if possible, as the gold and silver wines sell for a decent price and are great for topping up your energy.

[jman]

I upgraded to the Cathedral last night, took me about 5 hours to grind those fucking marble statues out... need aristocrat papers now - this is where the money starts getting stupid... I've got about 210 skulls in the GY - but only filled in half of it.. every grave is ranked about 5 mainly because I haven't unlocked many tiers of the surgery tech tree and I can't be arsed.. also I just forget to fill up the carrots all the time.. the fact its limited to 10 at a time is just stupid.  I'm close to being able to get a gold-starred prayer though - I'm hoping that will bring in a lot more money compared to my bronze one as I'm bored of burying people now.. and I just can't be bothered to cremate - don't see the point.  I have unlocked the gold mining as I was planning to make the gold jewellery - but haven't unlocked the jewellery desk yet.. and I don't know where to mine the gold either.. so that's proving a bit of a problem that - I only just worked out where the iron ore mine is yesterday because I ran out of deposits lol.

I do feel the map could have been at least half the size it is.. I'm SO BORED of walking to the same locations constantly.  I'm also considering creating more than one axe/shovel/sword/pickaxe.. just so I can leave that at different locations so I don't have to fill up half my inventory with them.. its stupid that you can create tons of stuff.. but you can't upgrade your inventory spaces - I've already built 4 trunks at the house, 3 in the garden, they are all full up with shit lol - I just don't want to walk to town and sell anything because I can't be bothered trying to work out who buys what and I hate that walk!!

I'm getting more and more frustrated with the game as it goes on to be honest - I can see why you didn't bother with the full 100% achievements

[harv]

Looks like Oculus have released ANOTHER wonky update lol. My Rift is now a paperweight AGAIN. Oh well, I'll look forward to getting the inevitable Oculus Store Credit again so it's not all bad lol 

[Late]

Pfft, when do I ever 100% a game? 😋

You can put as many carrots in the box as your want, bud. The 10 limit is just "at a time". Feel free to whack the button a few times and stick a couple hundred carrots in the box.
I used less than half of the crop garden - mainly carrots and wheat (I was baking a LOT of bread before I had access to wine).

If memory serves, you can mine gold in a few spots in the lower levels of the dungeon (only once per, though, not infinite) and I think you get some when you're mining one of the main resources.

I usually had about five good-quality pickaxes at the cabin in the woods. Annoyingly I don't think you can have a grindstone there to repair them, but I don't mind going home to repair them if I'm taking a few at a time.

I definitely wasn't a fan of mining thousands of coal/stone/iron. (Shudder - I recall my brief foray into RuneScape.) Useful to have crates full of the stuff though.

And don't get me started on chopping down the trees... 😡

[jman]

LOL at the carrots, cant believe i didnt realise that, tbh, i only just realised you could sleep at the cabin in the woods..FFS, this game doesn't really hold your hand at all.

I invested in a teleportation stone in the end, it definitely helps speed up stuff.  I literally can't do anything else now until I get those aristocrat papers though and 12g is going to be a slow fucking grind!!  Up to around 290 skulls and 61 crosses, just tempted to lawn the rest of the GY so I don't have to deal with any more bodies.

Apparently selling veggies is the way to go for gold grinding... ugh.

[jman]

And.. I'm done.. well I finished it yesterday.. you're right, the ending is shite - I was grinding for ages for that 12G, but finally got there... then found out I missed a gold mine AND a diamond mine on level 15 of the mine.. which instantly would have saved me about 4G worth of grinding   I finished it in 352 game days.

Annoyingly I still have 1 achievement left on the list - catch 200 fish.. bah... its gonna take a hour or two because fishing was not really part of the game in any way whatsoever.. you could just buy the fish you needed for the 1 or 2 quests you needed them for... I think it says I'm about 39% through.. so I need another 122.. I dunno if I can be bothered.



My 5 top tips for anyone else that ever wants to play this game - as its such a dogshit game in terms of how its laid out to you - if you knew this stuff upfront, you'd save a lot of time.
1.  Concentrate more on the graveyard - not on the quests - money counts for a lot in the game and most quest items can be bought - don't bother buying expensive stuff early on unless you really need it.
2.  Research all the body parts/graves to get an early boost in the blue tech stack.
3.  When doing tech research - try and go for the graveyard additions as early as possible (so you go back to tip 2 to earn more blues) - obviously if you can't mine marble, no point unlocking the marble stuff.  If you've messed up, the astrologer sells books to boost red/green/blues.
4.  Buy a teleportion stone as early as possible.  Find the swamp and buy as many speed potions as soon as possible - this game sucks in the amount of time you walk around - these two things will make it less hassle.
5.  When going through the mine, all the silver/gold/diamonds you earn, don't use them at all, you'll want to sell them to the merchant later on to skip the 12G grind for aristocrat papers

[harv]

I'm really liking what Frontier have done with the mining now. They've added Void Opals to the mineable materials and when a system's financial, security and political status is in the right combination these Opals sell for a ridiculous amount of money, 1.6m credits per tonne in some systems

This is creating a California Gold Rush situation, and because these things are a finite resource you see the same sort of frenzy from miners and pirates that you saw in the Wild West in the late 1800s.

It's also made mining ice rings more popular too, before these changes the only type of rings worth mining were metallic ones. You used to get Low Temperature Diamonds here and there but they were difficult to find.

I'm going to do a few days mining and then go exploring some time after Christmas.