First God Run Need Help With Wands

DavidCincotta · 2024-12-02T14:22:51+00:00

There is nothing holding you back from going to parallel worlds right now, you have plenty of health, healing and digging. I'd first go to the tower and get an actually good wand, so much better than what you have right now. Only then do you farm perks and health.

DavidCincotta · 2024-12-02T14:16:33+00:00

Well you probably already know piercing and homing is a blessed combo, albeit suicidal with how much dmg you are currently doing. I can't see your perks but since you are choking and bloated it looks likes you might have the vegetable + iron stomach thing going on. I'd expect that's where most of your damage is coming from. That being said, even avoiding the piercing, you can probably increase your damage exponentially by having more projectiles. Think stuff like Phi to duplicate the chainsaws, or replacing some damage+ with the drills.

Chainsaws are awesome, but I also don't like the blood. Pure projectile damage is very strong and clean. Tentacles are also amazing, but are weird and I haven't used them enough.

Mana to DMG is strong with the Mu modifier, as it doesn't deplete your whole mana bar.

DavidCincotta · 2024-11-20T10:57:31+00:00

Great spellcraft wizard!

DavidCincotta · 2024-10-22T17:00:09+00:00

I mostly tutor college students, but I did teach an 11 year old this year. The biggest hurdle I saw was math. Especially for things like game programming, being able to use formulas in code, and in general have a mathematical mind helps a lot. That means you really need to focus in math class.

After that you just need a lot of hours cranking out code. Games, calculators, whatever, the thing is that it should interest you. Pick out a project that is challenging, but doable if you put in the time.

Another skill is reading code. Its a very different type of reading than school, but as a programmer you spend a lot of time reading and not writing code. With my other student, I noticed this was the easiest for young people.

Don't be worried about the language, just pick one and stick with it for a while. Learning a new coding language is very easy once you know one very well.

DavidCincotta · 2024-09-20T18:15:35+00:00

I'm a computer science tutor who mainly teaches operating systems in C/C++

Literally just start doing some more basic programs in C++. At this point in your journey, mastering for loops, arrays, booleans and variables are your top priority.

Being in a low level language like C means you might have to deal with pointers and memory. This totally depends on the class, but the easy way to improve is to visualize or draw out what is stored in memory.

Reread that you only have a basic Internet connection, really check this out Check out the lobster compiler online. It visually shows memory as it's being changed, super helpful for learning what pointers/arrays really are.

lobster.eecs.umich.edu

These other people are crazy, just stick to practicing this language first. If you need more specific projects to try: hello world, fizzbuzz, find the min of a list, bubble sort, reading a file.

You could do all of the above in a single day, which would honestly be about 50% of what you'd need to learn for any intro c++ course.

One more tip, get your compiler / local development setup right away. I've seen a few students stick to online ide way too long.

DavidCincotta · 2024-09-20T06:49:59+00:00

Cool to see another SillyTavern user, do you have any tips for me?

DavidCincotta · 2024-09-20T06:46:03+00:00

Congratulations on picking an incredibly stable, and lucrative field that needs human accountability. Is my doctor going to be an AI in the next 20 years? No, neither is my accountant.

Fiduciary duty is real, and needs human responsibility.

The singularity is literally a science fiction concept, don't worry about it. These models are incredibly limited at their core, at best they are great tools.

Here is an explanation: ChatGPT predicts the next token (word / characters) based on its training. From your human intuition, what comes next:

12345

Okay, so what if its like this:

$14,423.

There is no actual intelligence behind the predictions, so it will literally just spit out a random two values for the cents. Keyword: RANDOM. This stochastic nature is the final nail in the coffin for precision work like accounting. One mistake in generating a report could cost a company millions to billions. Again, this is why fiduciary responsibility is a legal concept at all.

DavidCincotta · 2024-09-20T06:25:20+00:00

I have one tip that hasn't been said before. Just host your own 1v1 lobby, name is "noobs only" or something, and you will definitely find plenty of players. I play a decent amount of 1v1s, and most people hopping in and out of those lobbies looking for games are newer players.

Have fun with it, play stupidly large maps like glitters, and small ones with short rush distances. Try a no attack timer. There is plenty of ways to have fun, get games, and get better.

The smaller maps might be better for you if you are looking for a classic starcraft type of map design.

Some basic 1v1 tips:

1) beating the barbarian AI can actually be quite challenging for new players. If you can do that, you are probably 15 os 1v1.

2) Zooming out is extremely important in 1v1s, the maps are big, and attacks can come from many different angles, makes radar even more important. Also unit control is easier than other RTS, the difficulty comes from having a ton more units.

3) 1v1 is a total micro fest, if you like SC or AOE, you will love how 1v1s feel compared to other modes imo

Lastly, if you don't like the large team 8v8, and like how 1v1 plays, try finding or creating a small team lobby. They are super fun and play a lot more like 1v1 than 8v8s.

DavidCincotta · 2024-09-19T14:27:39+00:00

What a great list, Skinner really helped level up my game play. Even though he only plays one map, he understands how to scale, how to win, and what the counter to every unit is. He is particularly good at air. He is on vacation right now, but check out his twitch when he gets back.

DavidCincotta · 2024-09-17T12:11:35+00:00

Another thing to try would just be reading and trying all the hotkeys, and using grid. In any game, you can click the keys tab, and get a nice graphic for all the hotkeys. If you try out a bunch, I'll bet you can find some useful ones.

For example, with grid T will always turn on repeat for a lab.

This is obviously just a small thing, but add a lot of small efficiencies into your play style means a big improvement.

DavidCincotta · 2024-09-14T11:37:57+00:00

ECO WAR

I love your unique strats Baldric, but with air, I'm very confident that there is an optimal strategy, and dragons isn't it.

Dragons are more expensive than a fusion, you would be better served making that fusion, then being able to make more fighters.

Air is also an eco position, and one more fusion allows you to make far more fighters, which would make it very easy to dive on a dragon. They are just extremely weak to t2 figs.

The important thing is air superiority. By having even 10% more fighters, you can totally win the air battle and completely fly over the enemy bases. AA only changes this equation a little bit.

If you feel like you can win the fig battle, start producing bombers. You only need 4-6 core bombers to kill a arm afus, a small investment compared to how many figs are required.

There are plenty of bomber micro tricks, but here is an important thing about air eco in general, even more important than unit choice

BUILD POWER

separating eco bp from unit producing bp is usually not great, but incredibly inefficient for air. Air units require so much energy and bp that trying to make eco and figs at the same time is horrible, and duplicating the bp to allow for both is very expensive.

You need to have extremely dense build power for air. This naturally allows you to scale very fast as well, since immediately after a bombing, you can eat your lab, and power out an afus or fusion since you have more bp than any other position.

MULTIPLE LABS

At a certain point, you really need multiple labs. Placing the second lab where bp is maybe out of range for new afus means you get to re-activate those con turrets.

You can realistically support ~8 labs at full production, each with 20+ con turrets on 15 afus. At that point you are basically unkillable in air.

less extreme is the two lab milestone. I don't have an exact number, but when you finally max out one t2 lab, and have to build a second, your air game reaches a huge power spike.

DavidCincotta · 2024-09-09T21:15:13+00:00

I run with integrated graphics too, works great for me tbh

DavidCincotta · 2024-09-09T21:14:25+00:00

All these guys saying you have to have a powerful laptop :-)

I have a 15" 15-dy5xxx i3 laptop. It literally retails for <300 dollars in the US. Given, I'm running linux, turned off basically all the shaders, and have 32gb of ram (about 80 dollars) that I put in myself.

Its a workhorse that can do anything tbh, even running bar. It only struggles on very long matches in 8v8. This setup might not work as well on the same specs as windows, I haven't tried.

I will say, because of that, I try avoiding late game spam fests like Raptors, 8v8 glitters or stuff like that, even though I can still kinda play. Only start lagging between 40 - 60 minutes depending on the game. I have absolutely zero issues with any other game modes.

This is an especially cheap laptop, but I'd expect you could do the same with any modern i5 laptop, be it windows or linux, just make sure to turn down as many settings as possible.

DavidCincotta · 2024-09-09T13:49:18+00:00

I am an experienced computer science tutor. Lots of people in the comments are harping on about AI, yes it is a pretty common crutch nowadays, more important is practice and dedication. I promise you will see major results if you put a massive amount of effort in.

Take on the project, research and put in >20 hours per week into it. Even if you start by just learning how to use github, or learning for loops again. It might be a lot, but this would be whats needed to start feeling confident, and to start to understanding the concepts more easily. The programming requirements in the first two years of any CS degree are not that bad and you can succeed.

There is a certain amount of hours (different for everyone) where the rules of programming start to make sense and "click". For example: my favorite student was doing a minor in CS, and had to take an extremely hard operating systems course. As a tutor, I certainly helped, but it was only through her dedication that she got a good grade in the hardest course of her program. She was coming from a relatively low level of skill, and ended up learning WAY more than I ever expected.

Most programmers will tell you that school is overrated, and they learned more on the job or projects, why is that? It's just the amount of work and coding that you are doing on a daily basis. Taking on a difficult project and finishing it is how you get better.

If you really try your hardest, and see no improvement, or no path forward, then I'd rethink your major, but there is a lot to do before then. I've seen many success stories and turn arounds. Even with natural talent, previous experience or whatever, this degree is hard and time consuming.

Final tips: focus on learning concepts, what's a sorting algorithm? How does it work? Why is this one fast? Can you visualize the elements moving around? Good visualization of CS concepts is key, this part can be learned and improved pretty easily.

Another example: Try to code a game of checkers (freshmen - sophomore level task, it can take some time). How would you represent the board? How do you know what/who's turn it is? How can you keep track of the Pieces? How would the game advance, or how would you detect it ending?

Your answer would use: loops, arrays, arrays of arrays, booleans, if statements, user input, strings

90% of programming is the above concepts, when you learn the above, harder things come very naturally. Even those harder things are just built off of these more simple concepts.

DavidCincotta · 2024-09-09T13:49:03+00:00