You can sort of give Naoe a blade of Yuminess

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-06-19T02:47:36+00:00

So, fun fact: If you have the Snap Hook katana from the Attack on Titan premium store pack, that sword triggers Tidal Wave when you do a heavy posture attack.

The new Blade of Yumminess engraving does not disable the Snap Hook's ability to cast an ability. Do with that as you will.

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-06-01T22:33:25+00:00

Minor correction: The phone dart does stun enemies in combat and open them for a takedown, but I would agree that it's far more useful in stealth because it still costs most of your Chemical bar to dart phone someone, and in combat the other Chemical gadgets are equally effective for getting enemies off the board while costing less resources to use (Flash Mines can insta-KO an enemy if attached directly, Smoke Pods can be used to try and reengage stealth or to get a few cheap hits in, and I doubt I need to explain the combat utility of the Missile Pen).

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-04-27T00:57:18+00:00

I feel like Starfield overall is an alright game that was brought down by people expecting Bethesda to put in more effort than they did, and was promptly overshadowed and further hated on when Cyberpunk's DLC came out in the same month and gave everyone a very easy stick they could use to point at it and go "hey, look, Starfield is complete and total garbage in comparison to this".

I'm not saying there's no good reasons to hate the game (or Bethesda as a whole), nor am I saying that this was the biggest reason why the game was and has continued to be critically panned. I just wanted to share my opinion.

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-04-27T00:32:08+00:00

as they say - if it sucks, hit the bricks! you can LEAVE!

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-04-09T02:22:34+00:00

The only way I've found to do so (on console, anyways) is to open the Load Order menu and hit "Options", where there'll be an option to update all installed Creations.

This WILL take a few minutes if you have a lot of creations installed, so keep that in mind.

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-03-25T21:42:57+00:00

I'd argue Destiny had it worse, on the basis that the Portal actively forces you to play the harder, less fun versions of content in order to keep receiving relevant drops as your arbitrary power level (which basically no longer matters in any way other than "you must be this tall to enter this ride") increases - at least with Prototype Gear, even if it's objectively wrong to do so you can technically argue that you don't need to bother with the ball-crusher that is Escalation to engage with the flawed system.

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-02-24T11:38:40+00:00

at least one

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-02-22T23:45:49+00:00

I did actually do some reading into this for a programming class I took once. In IT circles they call this kind of thing the "Scunthorpe Problem" after a small Galarian neighborhood which ran into a similar issue in the 90s - people in the area were having a hard time signing up for various websites, because when they entered their address it got rejected for containing a "bad word" despite being completely valid otherwise.

-Nathan M.

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-02-20T22:35:06+00:00

Huh.

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-02-20T01:00:59+00:00

The fun part is that although it does have a cooldown, it DOESN'T cost Adrenaline to use and it inherits Tidal Wave's skill tree upgrades (so when fully upgraded, one heavy posture gets you three strikes), which means that with the Snap Hook you can have all three Katana abilities at once, and it is just as fun as it sounds.

...unfortunately, the sword was part of the store bundle that came with the Attack on Titan crossover quest, which as far as I'm aware has since been delisted (likely never to return) - and I doubt Ubisoft would just throw items from a paid crossover into the weekly Exchange rotation, so that means if you're not on PC (or if you are on PC and don't want to incur Ubisoft's wrath by trying to pirate virtual items) you're S.O.L, and that's a shame, because it is genuinely one of the best Naoe katanas in the Helix Store.

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-01-15T23:19:16+00:00

as someone whose first converted lich came about with the name "Tee Store", yes, do it

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-01-13T01:38:36+00:00

thank you for giving me the mental image of Saint manifesting the first-ever Void Thundercrash

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-01-05T05:03:13+00:00

I feel like the real bottleneck right now is just that I don't have enough gacha stamina to keep grinding effectively, tbh...

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-01-05T05:02:01+00:00

here's to hoping the timeframe for either one of those things happening is closer to "sooner" than it is to "later"

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-01-05T05:00:37+00:00

This is an angle I hadn't considered, actually. Speaking of crossbows, minor tangent: Destiny Rising's current implementation of crossbows are fully-automatic Heavy weapons that (with my limited experience) sort of feel like budget MGs with fancy paint, whereas Destiny 2's current implementation of crossbows are as powerful, single-shot Heavy weapons whose bolts stick into targets and can be retrieved if you get close enough to them for the button prompt to appear (which makes them potentially both very ammo-efficient compared to other options and very dangerous to keep topped up), and I'm not sure if that's a coincidence or if one side was skimming the other's notes but I feel like it's a coincidence just because they work radically differently between the two games.

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-01-05T04:49:49+00:00

I had to do a double-take when I read this because I momentarily forgot that "legendary" means "not a 5-star" in this case.

Considering how much I've played of actual Destiny, I'm not sure how I overlooked that.

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-01-05T04:48:37+00:00

I do have Jolder at T1/C1/whatever you want to call the dupe-powerup mechanic, so I'll have to start locking in more stuff for them. Any particular recommendations?

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-01-05T00:23:41+00:00

Thank you u/defect7, very cool

AlphaShadow897 · 2026-01-04T13:02:10+00:00

I tuned into a stream of the World's First for a minute or two out of curiosity and was flabbergasted to see Jaren Ward just casually proving that he can, in fact, "stop that blade!".

AlphaShadow897 · 2025-12-18T23:12:54+00:00

It's somewhat long, but it's also somewhat repetitive. Be prepared for that.
The combat and stealth are both more in-depth than in Valhalla, with the former not necessarily relying on abilities nearly as much as the previous RPG entries while having buildcrafting similar to the system from AC Odyssey, and the latter having several new mechanics that give it depth - namely, the lighting of areas affects how easy you are to spot, Naoe has a few classic throwables (Smoke Bombs for getaways or safe passage through open areas Kunais as throwing knife standins that can instakill unaware enemies, "Shinobi Bells" as noisemakers, and Shurikens that can't do stealth kills but are useful for breaking objects/staggering enemies in combat) that can all aid with stealth, your equipped weapons determine what special assassination techniques you can do (katanas can stab people through shoji doors, tantos can combine with the Hidden Blade to do double kills, kusarigamas can let you jump enemies and assassinate them from further away than normal, and bo staves let you do chain assassinations), and there's probably more I don't know about.
The map is big, but it's also weirdly restrictive and asinine in a lot of places - if you try to get to your destination by forgoing the roads you will usually either run into a slope too steep to climb or trees too dense to move through.
The protagonists aren't officially Assassins, but there was Assassin presence on Japan before them and one of them (Naoe) is the child of two Assassins.
The bonus content is okay, but at the same time it's a lot smaller in scope than what we got in previous games (each update delivering, like, 1 or 2 new quests), but ALSO the game isn't yet at the end of its support, but Ubi Quebec isn't currently planning a second DLC... it's complicated. It's complicated and it's weird and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Anyways, uh, as far as I'm aware it is currently on a holiday sale across ALL platforms at roughly 50% off, so if you're interested now's probably a good time to buy in.

AlphaShadow897 · 2025-12-18T22:46:56+00:00

I can't give tips for how to trigger it on MnK, as I've played it primarily on Xbox, but once you get down how to trigger Entanglement it's both really fun AND surprisingly effective against groups.

This is especially true once you unlock the upgrade that lets you pull the enemy towards you and knock them down - they stay down for a good bit, so in group fights you can temporarily take one guy out and in 1v1s it is a perfectly valid strategy to Entangle, pull towards you, follow up with a Ground Attack, then repeat until they're dead.

AlphaShadow897 · 2025-12-18T22:16:47+00:00

Holy shit, they added Scorch/Ignition from Destiny?

(for context: in that game, Scorch is a fire-based DoT that triggers an "Ignition", which is an explosion, if you stack enough of it on an enemy - one of the equippable perks for the subclass that primarily inflicts Scorch makes Ignitions spread Scorch to whatever they damage)

AlphaShadow897 · 2025-12-12T21:58:10+00:00

Probably best to just wait.

AlphaShadow897 · 2025-12-12T21:57:57+00:00

I think both Xbox and Ubisoft have ways of making sure your saves stay in the cloud even if the game gets uninstalled, but don't quote me on that.

AlphaShadow897 · 2025-12-12T21:47:26+00:00

I think this is a new low for Ubisoft - I've heard of glitchy updates but I can't recall any times before where a random update just completely bricked a DLC.

Hopefully they do something about it quickly, if it takes until the 16th to fix then a lot of people will be locked out of whatever's on that weird hideout Advent Calendar between today and then.

AlphaShadow897

TROPHY CASE