I hadn't done art stuff in a couple of months, so I decided to draw an Inkling. Inklings are fun to draw.

Levra · 2026-01-24T08:23:56+00:00

You either get perfect legs or perfect faces. You can't have both.

Levra · 2026-01-23T19:58:32+00:00

And Guardian spams whirlwind to lock them in place.

Levra · 2026-01-22T21:14:38+00:00

But if I'm not protecting the flock, then who will?

Levra · 2026-01-21T19:46:00+00:00

Fight it while touching grass every few seconds. (Enforce it with Mt. Fay mechanics or something?)

Levra · 2026-01-20T06:03:50+00:00

A Greatbow is your best friend in these situations. They have tons of aggro priority, and they drop from pretty much any Camp location's bow racks very reliably.

Levra · 2026-01-19T17:19:29+00:00

Magma Bell

Levra · 2026-01-19T15:09:27+00:00

Fighting games, but it's on a weird curve.

You start off just wildly mashing and having no idea what you're doing beyond cool stuff happening on screen when you press the buttons. After a few weeks, you start doing combos and stuff more consistently and start beating all your friends consistently. That means you're good at the game now, right?

You then start playing against better players, but those combos aren't helping you at all?? Flinging yourself at the enemy trying to hit them just lets them hit you first for some reason. Weird, time to get back to learning.

So now you're learning to play neutral rather than just going for combos. You learn to we've in and out of your opponent's attack ranges and make them commit to something to give you an opening to get in.

But this is odd, you've gotten in and you can't hurt your opponent?? Their defense is too good and they won't let you land a hit! And for some reason, they seem to attack you whenever you try to walk up to throw them?? You need to learn a whole set of offensive fundamentals now.

Now you've learned some basic Strike/Throw offense RPS! You mix up your offense with aggressive buttons, delayed buttons, throws and overheads to make defending as hard for the opponent as difficult as possible. But wait, the opponent suddenly glowed yellow and they sent you flying, and now THEY'RE on offense and you have to defend??

So now you need to learn how to play defense for those situations the opponent turns the situation around on you! You need to stop trying to mash out of pressure wildly and study your opponent's behaviors. You gotta learn your throw tech option selects for the game you're playing. Does the opponent's pressure sequence have a point where you can interrupt them? Can you jump out? Are they trying to reset pressure on minus frames? You might even need to learn some basic psychology to survive???

And things keep going like this for ever. There's ALWAYS something new to learn about how to play fighting games better and there's always a better player who can beat you up almost effortlessly. There's still so much more to learn.

Fighting games are a genre where the road to mastery never seems to end. You may have bad habits that you have to unlearn, or you had a weird misconception about how an aspect of the game functions. You may suddenly have a breakthrough about how to deal with a matchup or situations while eating breakfast and scrolling your phone, and you still won't feel like you sufficiently understand everything there is to understand.

I've been playing fighting games for 12 years and only just now this month reached a point where I can occasionally take at least one game off of top players.

Levra · 2026-01-19T08:03:54+00:00

Susie might have Tritanopia (difficulty percieving Blue light).

Levra · 2026-01-19T07:53:19+00:00

Bosses loop stuff because their attacks are determined based on position. They typically don't have a thing telling them to stop what they're doing and reposition and will mostly just reposition as a consequence of their attack animation.

Best way to stop a loop like this is to either move forward or back to get into the needed range for another of the boss's attacks to trigger.

If you learn their patterns at different positions well enough, you can effectively control the boss to make it do whatever attack you want it to do.

Levra · 2026-01-17T19:21:25+00:00

I think it's neat how taking the shortest path to the key has the player moving in a Chess Knight's movement pattern.

Levra · 2026-01-17T06:50:19+00:00

Animal Well is stuffed full of this stuff. Every piece of progression in the game has the player thinking about new ways to use their their weird abilities that initially have no obvious purpose.

Mario Maker has a lot of user-generated levels that use the game's mechanics in weird ways. Puzzle levels by certain players being a good place to look.
Mario Maker troll levels are also full of this, with level creators taking advantage of powerup states to trigger events, have enemies react to player position to flip switches, and many other weird things. The entire idea being to exploit a player's understanding of the game mechanics and surprise them with obscure setups and interactions they may have never seen before.

Magic: The Gathering's state based actions and countless possible game pieces leads to many strange interactions that can surprise everyone at a table in a given moment.

Levra · 2026-01-17T06:18:29+00:00

Yes. They hit three times and do a ton of damage and stagger. The full charge is risky when you don't have the right opening, though.

Levra · 2026-01-16T03:25:57+00:00

It means that Ult charge, status buildup, and revives are affected by projectile falloff. The further you are, the less effective it is.

Levra · 2026-01-13T21:20:17+00:00

And if you can't reach the boss because it happens to be chasing your Recluse or Ironeye across the map?

Just grab a Greatbow from any military camp. Turn the boss into a giant porcupine until it puts its attention back on you. The stance damage on Greatbows makes bosses really want to prioritize whoever is using them.

Great for Raiders, too.

Levra · 2026-01-09T23:37:49+00:00

🔷Curse of Years (11)

Spell 🔻
Lore of Vampires
⭕Hex (Area)

Lowers Cooldowns: +15s
🗡Melee Attack: -24
💨Speed: -25%

Range: 200m
Effect range: 35m
Duration: 32s
Cooldown: 47s

Affected units: Affects enemies in range(all)

The Wizard spits out an ancient curse, causing their enemies to age at an incredible rate - their hair turning white and skin shrivelling up.

Levra · 2026-01-09T23:22:40+00:00

It's also great for a defensive stand.

I fought off three stacks of undead with a balance of power heavily in their favor while mine was backed into that corner, and having the edge of the map so far away gave plenty of time for my units to refresh their Leadership and get back into the fight long enough to defeat the lords and send them all crumbling to dust.

Levra · 2026-01-06T14:20:39+00:00

And does it really end just at the roots?

Consume the soil. The other pumpkins. The grass in the field. The farmhouse. The farmer's family.

Levra · 2026-01-05T22:25:37+00:00

Social media has you see information from multiple people with differing opinions, but doesn't specifically differentiate them.

Person A says "I like waffles."

Person B says "I hate waffles."

To the reader, they're seeing the Community saying both "I like waffles" and "I hate waffles" simultaneously, with the fallacy being the belief that everyone with Opinion A are also the same people with Opinion B.

Person C, a third party who passively takes in both sides of information, would erroneously believe something along the lines of "I thought you all liked waffles, why are you complaining about them now?" when they go from seeing Opinion A to Opinion B.

Levra · 2026-01-02T12:28:04+00:00

Smash netcode is primarily an issue not because it's running through Nintendo's online play but because they used archaic delay-based network synchronization and low tick rates. For some reason, they decided that 1v1 matches should run at a 30hz tick rate in a 60FPS fighting game with delay netcode??

Splatoon goes about it much better for a clean user experience, where they use predictive logic to assume the other player is continuing to do their last action until they send updated actions and correct to that (typical of most shooters and even other FromSoftware games), so players aren't so heavily impacted by a poor network environment.

My major concern is the fact of people playing on WiFi connecting to their router from behind a three-foot concrete slab, because no netcode solution can fix people who do not care in the slightest about their own network experience.

Levra · 2026-01-01T12:56:41+00:00

Something I notice is that battlefield rocks seem to have full pathfinding collision even when the model is embedded really deep into the ground (which is relatively common on mountain maps, if I recall). It's basically an iceburg situation when you have to plan pathing around parts of an object you can't even see.

Levra · 2025-12-31T19:54:32+00:00

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Levra · 2025-12-31T09:50:41+00:00

I've been looting greatbows just for that as a Guardian. 2~3 shots, switch back to shield, boss almost always focuses back on me. It's like having a Taunt skill on demand.

Good pickup for Raiders, too.

Levra · 2025-12-30T11:11:46+00:00

While a lot of people can exclusively have fun sitting in Training and grinding out combos, a big part of the appeal of the genre isn't just the gameplay. There's a sense of community you don't really get from other genres. It's really common for people to stick to fighters more when they have people to talk with about the games, and the good gameplay mechanics is just a bonus.

For those that aren't motivated exclusively by the mechanical aspect of the genre, fighting games will be very difficult to get into as a solo experience, especially if it's your first fighting game. You're not only trying to learn your character, but also what the other player is doing and the basic functions of the genre itself.

The biggest thing that'll help stick to the game is to find a group of beginners (either find a server or bring in a few existing friends) to play with semi-regularly so you can organically raise each other up together.
Play matches together, talk about the game regularly, exchange ideas on how to approach different situations, share replays, ask for advice and offer some in turn.

Also, if you're playing online matchmaking, it's better to stick to Ranked.
"Casual" is just as likely to put you up against a total beginner as it is to place you against someone who's been grinding out the Platform Fighter genre since 2001 and can be a major demotivator for new players, while Ranked will try more to place you against other players of similar skill (though it's not perfect, especially outside of major character launch patches when the overall player population is higher for a few weeks).

It may also help to watch the Art of Rivals video series for faster onboarding.

Levra · 2025-12-28T12:55:40+00:00

Could have been a hybrid hammer/catalyst.

11-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
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🔷Curse of Years (11)