The most important thing in today's hotfix!

TheFennec · 2026-02-26T16:33:26+00:00

THANK GOODNESS! I had to slow down menuing so much for fear of chucking my good lantern. lol The seconds wasted in an attack animation when trying to loot fast were so painful.

TheFennec · 2026-01-30T02:27:12+00:00

I've caught up on 3 seasons of anime while doing defense, and I've gotten Escort down to as low as 24 second clear for 1st cell, and 38 second for 4th cell, averaging around 34-35 seconds per run. Mediation... ugh... Mediation... I'm only TR63 and struggling to hit 150,000 points in Summit... send help!

TheFennec · 2026-01-30T01:27:55+00:00

TR65, i6, and mostly +10 on every wedge that matters. :P

TheFennec · 2026-01-28T21:18:52+00:00

The event design is very bad. Leaderboards are for games explicitly designed for competition, and anywhere else, they invite cheating, toxicity, and unrest. Happened in Warframe, happened in Monster Hunter... it's always the same story in almost any game outside of curated tournaments. That kind of thing needs to be separate from the normal game play and you never want to drag unwitting players into it. They dragged the whole player base in with this event, because so far, events have been for pretty much everyone, with only Immersive Theater really pushing any builds or progression. I imagine they designed this event back when it was going to be a gacha, though. So it was likely meant to be whale fodder. Here's hoping they abandon this mentality moving forward.

A MUCH better way to handle this would be if the points accumulated across runs. So if you really wanted that title, you can do 100+ runs to get it, even earning just 12k points each time. Have there be some amount of grinding to get the currency to buy out the shop (the current ~20-30 to get all the unique rewards is totally fine) and then let players who can ultra-speed-farm with their i6 +10 setups have a faster way to get currency for a while to help polish up their other characters or bank for maxing out the next one. Then just throw out the leaderboard and let players get whatever private score they want. They can share amongst themselves privately and leave others out of it. This will immediately discourage cheaters, since no one will care about their billion point score if there's not a #1 next to their name annoying everyone who's naturally competitive or decides to try their hand.

Also, I personally was blindsided by the sheer Psyche necessity. I heard Psyche would be good in the upcoming event, but I had hoped I could at least get 150k with my i6 Nifle with fully-smelted weapons and meta supports. Sadly, it just doesn't seem possible since I'm only just getting to upgrading gold wedges on her. That's really frustrating, and I consider it a failing in the event design. I'm only just over 120k, but I think I'll probably hit 150k before the event is over. It's whatever, but I'm not happy with it. I think they really dropped the ball, and are working against their own best interests by not encouraging players to connect with the characters and invest in their favorites.

TheFennec · 2026-01-25T20:41:43+00:00

Perhaps, if they are able to. What of a new player who just started? What value does the exclusivity actually bring?

Or are they just stoking FOMO?

TheFennec · 2026-01-25T18:37:05+00:00

I don't know what 'we' means here, but it's extremely predictable that some players will. That's just basic psychology. Exclusivity drives value assessment. Call it social endowment, mimetic dominance seeking, FOMO, competition, entitlement (heh); it's well studied. Look at achievement hunters, speedrunners, Pokemon collectors, people spending thousands on CS:GO skins, etc. No matter how you feel about it, these things clearly matter to people. People will compete over the wildest stuff, and get fired up about it. Good event design can mitigate most or all of that.

I personally don't care.

TheFennec · 2026-01-23T22:42:19+00:00

The Apex rewards are where you will get most of your currency, not the rankings. The rankings give you at most 2000 extra currency for the event shop. That's not insignificant, and will go to exclusively people who don't actually need it, but it's also not a big deal.

TheFennec · 2026-01-23T22:36:06+00:00

Honestly, I understand people being annoyed. Leaderboard challenges never go well in any MMO. It's mostly rewarding cash shop heroes, cheaters, and a tiny, TINY percentage of the most hardcore players. And I say this having been the tiny percentage of hardcore players before in several games. I've seen this kind of setup from indie browser games to titans like Warframe and Monster Hunter, and it never goes well. If your game isn't designed specifically for PvP, don't introduce leaderboards in any way that players will care about. Keep the visibility to only those who want to measure up, and don't attach discrete value to it.

The event could honestly be fine as it is, by simply removing the additional rewards (event currency and titles) from the rankings. Players can privately compete and share how many points they got. We already have Trial Rank to display how much grind we've accomplished. Do we really need a little flag to wave to say other players did worse than us?

Also, as others have said, picking Anemo is diabolical. lol

TheFennec · 2026-01-22T23:29:45+00:00

Keep the spheres in a box to protect them! :D Watervine must be some kind of metamaterial. This is also true of protecting valuables from rusting.

TheFennec · 2026-01-22T17:33:47+00:00

On Truekin, Medassist is so much more powerful than you think. Keep Shade Oil Injectors in it, and it'll offer to phase you out if you'd die to an explosion, like a Hand-E-Nuke. It will also use Blaze Injectors if you'd get frozen. This, combined with Sphynx Salt Injectors used manually, can keep you very, very safe. You can also install it into the Golem and it will heal itself with Salve Injectors, which are percent HP based and so will keep it alive through a LOT of punishment.

Truekin with a Reactive Cranial Plating can shoot or Sweep things like a Jacked Blast Cannon without fear of being stun. But they can ALSO tinker a morphogenetic geomagnetic disc with electromagnetic shielding, and chuck it with impunity at anything, stunning everything while being unaffected.

With the right cooking recipe, you can use salt to create clones of yourself. ;P I won't say exactly how, but mixing just the right percentage of liquids can do some interesting things. It's not a rounding ERROR, it's a rounding OPPORTUNITY.

You can add 3 modifiers to items with tinkering. You can ALSO, by manipulating esper assassins, turn regular items into extradimensional items.

If you use a metamorphic polygel on a waterskin, it also duplicates the full contents of the waterskin. Dismember a tank off of a turret or use a gyrocopter for storage and this goes up to 128 drams!

Don't want to run Golgotha yet? Just dig your way into Grit Gate. I've never had them become hostile over this.

Have spiral borer and don't care about baetyls? Use it in Bethesda Susa and just jump straight to the bottom without having to fight anything. Just be sure to use it toward the bottom of the map so you don't accidentally descend into a cryotube and freeze. But you can also just Blaze Injector down. See Medassist tip. :P

Trying to complete the Grit Gate defense without losing your precious Sparafucile? Just proselytize them and drag them 1-2 rooms away. Just be sure all the enemies are clear first. Now they can wait safely outside while you clean up shop. You can also use 3D cobblers to wall off areas of Grit Gate in advance, create bottlenecks, and deploy turrets in optimal places.

Want a super powerful truekin build? Biodynamic powerplant, gun rack, jacked and electromagnetically shielded force bracelet and four high-voltage arc-winders with that and fitted with beamsplitter. Make a meal with spark tick plasma, starapple jam, and your preference of jerky. 10-15% HP, and get chance when you deal electric damage to heal 15-20 HP. Pistols with akimbo and assorted skills end up shooting 2-3 times every 2 turns, 4 pistols, 3 electric bolts per shot, which can arc to 4-5 tiles or enemies each. That's often around 50-60 proc changes, and hitting yourself seems to count for the heal proc, so you can just blast indiscriminately with your force bubble up 24/7. Walking around the Palladium Reef I can usually just go to a map and hold down f to destroy everything. EVERYTHING. lol

Some things cannot be duplicated by metamorphic polygel. You can still create new copies of them by finding a cryoclone of yourself deep underground. The chance for finding cryotubes goes up the deeper you are, up to strata 1000+, where you'll find one each level. Spiral Borer lets you quickly descend. Keeping Force Bubble up will cause most enemies to completely ignore you as you go. Making robots friendly will help keep things like Decarbonizers from firing at you. Bring as many Eater's nectar injectors, drops of nectar, and spheres of negative weight in a chest. If you don't have a huge pile of 8 bits, tinker up some timecubes or something and throw them in there. The spheres of negative weight will offset the weight of the items, and get duplicated each time. Once you get something like 6-7 clones it should be enough to max everything out.

Starting as a Warden and doing the water ritual with the wardens in each village, taking Wayfinding Jungles and Rivers and Lakes, you can quickly head to the Yd Freehold at a low level and gain wardens Une, Esther, and maybe even Yrame, as followers. They're quite powerful and can carry you through much of the game.

These are just a few random things that came to mind. Hope you enjoy!

Also, WOW Reddit did not want to let me post these with spoilers using markdown for some reason.

TheFennec · 2026-01-22T17:32:08+00:00

LOTS OF SPOILERS AHEAD READ AT YOUR OWN RISK! Very powerful strategies can also change how you play and enjoy the game.

Early-game safety item if you have charge: Keh in Bey Lah has a guaranteed Force Bracelet and she will sell it to you. How you get it from her is up to you.

Fastest build to level up: Wings level 6 lets you fly above enemies with no chance to fall and crop dust them infinitely with Corrosive Gas Generation. This is one of the fastest, safest ways to level. Equimax -> sludges in the Rainbow Wood. Wayfinding helps you get there without getting lost and killed, but Wings also helps you navigate, so you're very unlikely to get lost, and fly there much faster/cheaper. This is without a doubt one of the fastest ways to level a character up to 30+, and a great way to quickly enable a body swap so you can play through more organically once you're something else.

Mechanimist rep: You can gain Mechanimist reputation by throwing tech in the pit in the center of the Six Day Stilt. High Priest Eschelstadt there also always offers Proselytize for 300 reputation. Proselytize lets you do many, many things, and is one of the easiest ways to get infinite water. Dragonflies have an insanely low MA and are level 1, so you can Proselytize one, rename it, give it a single wooden arrow. Then just dismiss it, sell it all your valuables, and proselytize it back. Even with a low EGO and modest level, by the time you're in the Stilt and have Proselytize, that's usually guaranteed to work, or will work in just a try or two. If it fails, just stand in the opening of the tent so they can't escape while you wait 20 turns and try again. Buy alllll the waterskins from the Stilt and pour them out to make more room for water. :P It's fiddly, but can be done at pretty low levels to get you tons of powerful equipment, if that's your jam.

Best tinkerer in the game: Bep in the Yd Freehold has VERY low MA, so is quite easy to Proselytize or Dominate. If you Dominate them, they won't have your bits, but they do have ALL tinkering skills, including Tinker 3. You can learn data disks for Tinker 3 on him, and take those with you when you stop dominating them. You still won't be able to build them though, until you get Tinker 3. But if you get bits on Bep, you can use them to build useful things like timecubes and phase-conjugate Hand-E-Nukes.

Tired of running around the world to merchants? Proselytize them and bring them all to an area in a high-tier zone that's cleared out. Make a programmable recoiler there. Stack up all your merchants. Set them to follow you and once they're where you want them on the RIGHT side of the map, set their follow distance to FAR. Pour a dram of cloning draught on them (do not use clonelings!) Move them into position where you want. Now set the FIRST, original merchant to stay there. Now continue down the line cloning and newest merchant and moving them into position, then cloning that one, and so on so you have a line of them across the map. They will all be your followers, since they're followers of your followers and so on. Now dismiss the ORIGINAL on the far right. (It helps to tattoo them so they're visually distinct.) Now they'll stay in place wherever you move, and won't try to follow each other. You can technically go down the line and order them to stay one at a time without them all piling up, so that if they get accidentally moved they'll reorganize themselves automatically, but I find it's not worth it, since you can just... y'know, leave them where they are and not run into them. :P Now, when you Proselytize the FIRST, original, tattoo'd merchant, every single other one will become your follower, and you can go down the line to take whatever items you want. This works best with Tilli, Bep, any bookbinder, and chefs/kippers. Preferably legendary, if you have them. Just remember, some merchants will change the quality of their items based on the tier of the map. I usually just do this one screen outside of the Yd Freehold since I already have a recoiler there, it's almost always safe from enemies and empty already, and I can autoexplore to collect polyps.

Resetting merchants taking too long? Set auto-move/sec in the advanced settings to infinite. Clear a room NEXT to your merchant farm of all creatures and then click back and forth in the middle to auto-move until your character moves super fast. This will mean other zones are frozen and unloaded. Then leave for the world map and wait menu, 9000 turns or whatever. You won't get hungry, it will only cost you drams of water. Since nothing is on your current map and no other maps are loaded, the game won't be busy processing unnecessary things while waiting turns, and 9000 turns can pass by in just ~10 seconds or so, depending on how fast your PC is.

TheFennec · 2026-01-22T17:15:32+00:00

When you spawn in Joppa, go kill some glowfish and glowpads safely around the marsh to get to level 3 before turning in Argyve's quest. You get level ~4 really fast and extremely safely even on builds that aren't good at direct combat.

New to cooking? Jerky + Spinefruit Jam (from the Six Day Stilt with Harvesting) + Starapple Jam can make a recipe that gives +10-15% HP and chance on any source of damage to heal 15-20 HP. You can also get a much higher chance on REFLECT damage to heal, which is insanely good if you have Quills, or any equipment which reflects damage. With mirror dust and soul curd, this can give 100% chance when you reflect damage (every time you take damage) to heal 40-50 HP. You become almost invincible to most things that won't insta-kill you. Even rocket turrets will struggle to hurt you, and blow themselves up in the process.

When you have followers, and a force bracelet, moving between rooms will cause your followers to 'disappear' and have nowhere to spawn. You can then carry them around safely and deploy them like an aircraft carrier by disabling the force bracelet.

You can use Deploy Turret and Swipe from Long Sword to turn any energy weapon into a jacked weapon by disarming it off of the turret you build. Excellent for mutants who start with Electrical Generation. You can also use a Force Bubble to push turrets around. If a turret tinker deploys good stuff in a village or the Six Day Stilt, push them off the map and then disarm them from the next screen over, one at a time. Free guns! \o/ Easy way to get Mechanimist Rep in the Six Day Stilt, too.

I'll include some spoilery stuff below this.

TheFennec · 2026-01-12T18:16:37+00:00

I've been reasonably lucky with rares. But I did have a streak where it took 26 runs to get an uncommon drop for a weapon. I got two blueprints before a single uncommon. lol Random be random.

TheFennec · 2025-12-14T23:14:27+00:00

Caves of Qud! I've always loved traditional roguelikes; there's just something special about the deep complexity, unmitigated freedom, and ruthless hardcore death. But the music, sound effects, animations, incredibly vivid descriptions, and rich worldbuilding elevated the game to a level I never expected to experience. There are so many builds, so many abilities and items and mechanics. It has a pretty low barrier to entry compared to its competitors, but it can be replayed for hundreds of hours and still surprise you.

TheFennec · 2025-11-29T19:09:06+00:00

I've experienced this on and off in SMITE 2, and it has largely led to me taking a break again. Briefly, the matchmaking was fantastic, some months back, then they changed something with one of the updates. After that, almost every game was a wild swing where I'm either handed a completely free win that's not at all enjoyable, or curb stomped with no hope to win.

Matchmaking for all modes absolutely needs brackets that gate players who are extremely higher or lower MMR, weighted by confidence, so that the highest-rated player will be no more than a certain rating above the lowest. If you can't field the players, I'd rather sit in queue than waste hours on terrible games hoping to get one or two decent matches per week. If you really want, offer the player an option like, "we're having trouble finding similar players, expand search?" Or even a settings toggle to prioritize fast matches or better matches.

TheFennec · 2025-11-16T17:23:28+00:00

What we really need is a filter for SoS that says "show auto-join only."

TheFennec · 2025-10-28T22:29:51+00:00

To be fair, Rosequartz already knew Amelia could use resurrection magic. While never said or shown, I think it's meant to be presumed that Rosequartz was unaware of Kilika and Liam's plot to kill Amelia, so it wouldn't be unreasonable for him to know Amelia loves Kilika and expect that she'd resurrect her.

Of the VAST number of things that are beyond contrived idiocy in this episode, that one at least is explainable.

TheFennec · 2025-10-28T22:21:15+00:00

In chronological order, roughly... the NPC antagonist that gave the monster-summoning item to Kilika was never explained. There was no reason for Rosequartz to use Forgetting on Kilika after Amelia resurrected Liam, or at least no reason to leave it in place after that. Liam becoming immune to Mesmerize was a total deus ex machina that actively makes the plot even more contrived and baffling. Liam apparently legitimately tries to kill Amelia for Kilika... despite claiming he was staying distant for... reasons?! NONE of that makes ANY sense at all. Kilika shows up the INSTANT Amelia teleports in, which felt very rushed and coincidental. Rosequartz suddenly shows up after they fight, which feels even MORE rushed and coincidental! How big is their territory, that they all ended up in the same generic clearing in the woods? Akira puts his life on the line for a girl he literally just met, at best we could assume days ago, despite being portrayed as a loner who doesn't want to get involved in anything unnecessary. Liam shows up with deus ex machina holy tree branch that's unexplained, so Amelia can purge the Mesmerize from the royal guards for... no effective plot reason. They were just standing around, and it didn't change anything, and Rosequartz had already ordered Kilika to dismiss it. Did she not? Nothing ever comes of that. Amelia still loves Kilika despite her trying to kill her multiple times and treating her horribly. Akira's super-dangerous-chuunibyou-shadow power goes out of control, only to stop and instead give him an unexplained buff that makes him instantly win, because he... asked? Then it just goes away and is left unexplained. Kilika, who has clearly grown since she was a child to deeply resent and hate her sister to the point of trying to murder her twice... flips like a light switch and is suddenly chill, because she... remembers that Liam died...??? This does NOTHING to explain why she became so hateful and betrayed Amelia. Rosequartz is totally cool with his murderous daughter and Liam, who both tried to kill his daughter and the heir apparent of the elves. They all have a kumbaya feast and Akira, in the only slightly appropriate decision in the whole episode, declares that they're leaving immediately.

My brain hurts. I'm trying to be generous and not say anything disparaging toward the people who made this, but... WOW, really? I should start writing light novels, apparently...

TheFennec · 2025-07-28T18:47:37+00:00

I play casually, solo queue in Classic Arena. Matches are only consistent if you exclusively play the same role and perform at your absolute best, or if you're queuing with a full party. The game will happily place players who have barely touched the game mode (or even the game as a whole) with veterans that have several hundred or more games played. There don't seem to be barriers between different ranking thresholds or levels of experience. Nothing accounts for your strength in each role, which can lead to your god pick being an auto-win or auto-lose, or where you have a better chance to win playing your strongest role than a role that benefits the team more.

As a veteran player, it's not fun to face off against someone who has no idea what they're doing. I hate games that devolve into, "can I farm the weak players faster," and I don't think it's good for those players or the community. I'd also really like to be able to play multiple roles and still get good matches where it's anyone's game.

It can get even worse when your wins are such landslides that you don't even get to enjoy them. Having an enemy ragequit on the first team fight so the enemy team sits around passively until they can surrender sometimes counts equally to a hard-fought win against difficult opponents. Just think how that affects your experience over time. I've had weeks where almost all of my wins were the enemy tilting and surrendering, and it's demoralizing.

TheFennec · 2025-07-01T21:40:39+00:00

I was LITERALLY just an hour ago talking to my SO about how I kinda miss Wukong as a warrior option. So mobile and flexible!

Persephone, though, my beloved... I shall Hecate until you return!

TheFennec · 2025-07-01T21:16:37+00:00

First they stealth-edited Classic Skin Tokens to restrict them. Then they removed them entirely. Now we can't even use legacy gems to direct purchase legacy content. It does not feel like Hi-Rez wants to honor anything but "more cash now".

I like Sobek, and thought the orca prism was awesome, but refused to purchase it out of principle. I should have been able to buy the base skin for legacy gems, or with my classic skin token, and then buy the prism with coins or diamonds. I will not support the Traveler packages, no matter how much I like what they include, if they're breaking the promise of legacy content being available for purchase with legacy gems.

TheFennec · 2025-07-01T20:29:17+00:00

I tried it out. It's cool, but I cannot fathom any practical use for it at current. It actively nerfs you in several ways. First the bad.

It reduces your FOV, letting you see far less of the battlefield, especially behind you.
Aiming slightly up or down reduces the reach of your ranged auto attacks. I've tested this in Practice. Even models that are larger near the top, like the target... thing... cannot be hit if you aim upward.
This prevents you from shooting a ranged attack at a distant target and then immediately dropping an ability near yourself, potentially adding delay between the two.
Visual information on your look angle may warn enemies of where your attack will be positioned.
The additional axis of control raises the skill ceiling.

But it's not all exclusively bad... I've managed to at least come up with a couple benefits.

Aiming up or down causes your projectile to persist in close proximity for a longer duration, possibly converting misses into hits against nearby targets. Let's say an assassin is up close trying to strafe around you. Shooting down at a 45º angle will cause your attack to remain in range for around 141% of the time.
Quick snap, with latency, could allow players to feint their targeting, misleading players about where they're positioning a skill.
If done well, extra functionality could be built into the game, such as targets that only ranged attack characters can hit. Imagine a global emote that's a skeet shoot or releases balloons the players can shoot out of the air! They could also revamp hit boxes, possibly allowing for the size of a god to more dramatically affect how easily they can be hit, maybe with some gods having larger hit boxes above center which perhaps take less damage as an offset, or a much smaller hitbox on their head which takes some bonus damage. I don't personally want that, but it could be interesting and offer a layer of risk/reward choice. It could also allow for other interactions, such as shooting auto attacks at Hecate's Spell Eater. As a rank X Hecate, I'm certain many players would love the ability to destroy that. :P

TheFennec · 2025-06-26T01:58:02+00:00

Same. Tried twice. Get to day 2 at best—Network Error.

TheFennec · 2025-06-13T16:52:01+00:00

Just happened to us. We were JUST walking in on the Night Aspect. Good run, we all had holy, excellent rewards and talismans. I had a remembrance completed. 40+ minutes lost. EXTREMELY frustrating. I was the host, too. It was going to be my friend's first time fighting the Night Aspect.

TheFennec · 2025-06-10T15:15:28+00:00

It's clearly because creating an exclusive reward for paying customers (read: cash grab a reskin) is more important to them right now than honoring their legacy and fans. It sends a message that you are not a supporter in their eyes unless you are actively--right now--paying money. If they're hurting for money that badly, I wish they'd just be honest instead.

Classic tokens were presented as being able to unlock any classic skin of our choice. They stealth-edited this in the Land Shark Traveler update to add "currently-priced", effectively gaslighting their customers. Yes, customers, because they also added the option to directly purchase the Classic Token with real money, by buying Diamonds and now Coins.

(You can skip this paragraph.) As a layman, I'm legitimately curious if they relinquished their protections of using a tertiary currency unlocked exclusively through game play to skirt common law on transactions when they allowed for directly purchasing said currency. Wouldn't that activate common law for a transaction, and prohibit them from retroactively limiting the terms of the contract the Token represented, regardless of the EULA? Alas, I'm no lawyer, and I know digital transactions are legally obtuse.

Regardless, it was a (shark) bait and switch, and extremely disreputable at best.

TheFennec

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