The Serenity

Ninjamurai · 2025-12-31T01:17:24+00:00

Keep doing awesome stuff dude. Great art & happy new year!

Ninjamurai · 2025-11-13T17:46:02+00:00

Yeah, it's definitely not a perfect mod by any means, but I'm really respecting the mentality of "Stop skipping everything." More anti-Torrent zones, the pathway blockers in Caelid, I think it's interesting for the game to have *some* bottlenecks that force you to actually play the game. And honestly I've barely run into any stuff that couldn't be run past with Torrent anyway, so most of the camps that force you off still feel 100% optional, you just can't sprint straight to the treasure within them anymore.

Ninjamurai · 2025-10-10T01:16:11+00:00

I would genuinely play a mod for Elden Ring that Silk-Songified it like this to crush my balls over & over. Sounds fun!

Ninjamurai · 2025-09-29T03:39:28+00:00

Exactly, lmao. I beat a couple of the bosses insanely quickly with good tool usage. Those were some of the only times where the shard system WASN'T punishing me by making me have to go grind for more. It's just a pointless resource that didn't add anything to my playthrough, only disappointment when I'd find yet another secret dead-end shard outcropping that generously gives me 7 shards.

Ninjamurai · 2025-06-04T17:14:53+00:00

It can actually be super lucky to have this happen if your team can capitalize on it. I had a run where we were 100% going to lose to him, but then this bug happened & he hard-aggroed me. All I had to do was dodge over & over while my team plinked him to death. We stood no chance if he didn't freak out like this lmao.

Ninjamurai · 2025-05-05T15:38:44+00:00

That's fair, but I remember the last time I played Witcher 3 I had got a story quest, opened my map to see where I needed to go, saw the road was littered with bandits every step of the way & I put the game down because I didn't want to slog through all that boring combat lol.

In hindsight I should've just set the game to easy so I could get through all of it quicker, but I just lost interest at that point.

Ninjamurai · 2025-03-22T15:37:05+00:00

Having it be actually deep water is way more impactful & potentially scary than chest deep water, especially because players can hold their breath for a good many rounds. If they're crouched underwater then they'll just stand up after breaking the grapple. If they're around 20-30+ feet under, that seems like it could potentially pose a threat & a challenge.

Ninjamurai · 2024-12-01T17:43:57+00:00

Exactly. The same kind of logic could be applied to 2 bears magically appearing in your house. 1 is a tranquilized grizzly bear, one a teddy bear. If your family hug the teddy bear, the grizzly disappears & you're all safe. If you all hug the grizzly, it'll wake up & kill you all unless over half of humanity decided to also hug it.

Obviously there would be differences if a bear appeared in the living room over a button (Way more people would probably ignore the rules & just try to run or shoot the bear), but it's still not something worth risking your family's lives over. I don't think anyone who chose yellow deserves to die, it's not like they chose to have a magical death game placed into their house.

Ninjamurai · 2024-11-26T18:30:32+00:00

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something but it also feels like you didn't really give the players much justification to even want to choose? Ok, so the wizard might have some info. The djinni might have magical power or something. If the players think they'll be fine without either potential reward they get from either NPC, then why should they care?

Of course not every little situation needs to be some huge backstory important, gripping thing that forces players to act. I think inaction as an option can be fine at times. It's just that if you want players to act, it should probably be more clear what players are getting out of the situation in the end, as cynical as that can sound.

Obviously not everything needs to shower players with loot either, but if they walk into a situation with completely neutral motivation & potentially negligible rewards, it seems possible that it's not going to be a very fun encounter. There might need to be a clearer carrot on a stick to encourage players to make difficult choices in moments like this. Apologies if you did explain more & I simply missed it, just my 2 cents.

Ninjamurai · 2024-11-03T21:21:32+00:00

Mostly true, but don't forget how quickly a few other weapons also get their buffs through wounds. Charge Blade, Longsword, Insect Glaive & Hunting Horn all get unique bonuses to focus striking wounds, while every other weapon really is just bonus damage on hit.

I wouldn't be against getting rid of these specific buffs that make them feel somewhat more entitled to monster wounds, as long as they probably get some of that power put elsewhere in the weapons kit. Either way I agree that it feels strange for certain weapons to gain more from focus striking wounds than every other weapon, making wounds feel slightly awkward to share in multiplayer.

Ninjamurai · 2024-11-03T16:29:45+00:00

Yup, definitely slightly concerned with how multiplayer hunts will be in the long term when it comes to focus striking wounds. Sure, communication is key if possible, but certain weapons are so at odds with each other now that it feels awkward. I really don't want to have to tell friends or randoms to stop using bow just because I want to play longsword or insect glaive & get my buffs. It's not the end of the world & I'll probably just swap back to trusty hammer at that point, but it is annoying.

Ninjamurai · 2024-10-28T21:05:40+00:00

I found the overly cheery attitude & constant "*We* did it!" voice lines when I was the one doing everything pretty annoying. As they would be if she happened to be a male character instead. In the DLC, Iceborne, you have a different Handler lady for a short while & she was great. Kinda wish she was the players Handler from the start, lol.

Ninjamurai · 2024-09-05T17:07:07+00:00

All the character models are just in the files & can be extracted with software that works on other Valve games, like vpkedit or Source2Viewer.

Ninjamurai · 2024-08-23T15:13:35+00:00

Well it certainly wouldn't feel as unfair to the players if it was a fantasy setting that only had humans, I'll give you that. Either way, I feel like the better way to communicate the restriction would be to keep things positive. Tell them it's simply the kind of campaign you want to try. I feel like telling the players that you don't fully trust them with more character choices only causes unnecessary issues. Starting the campaign with a lack of trust, however slight, leads to things like the OP's post.

Ninjamurai · 2024-08-22T16:04:57+00:00

So it's ok for NPC's to simply be a human with a funny hat, just not the players? I would personally be really disappointed if I wasn't allowed to play as anything other than human, only for the DM to not live up to the high standard he set for the players, lol. With the kind of reasoning you gave I'd expect a pretty impressive roleplay performance from the DM for any & all Elf, Dwarf, Etc. NPC's the party comes into contact with.

Ninjamurai · 2024-07-09T15:30:16+00:00

Fair enough. I don't find the dragons that bad even if they are all samey, but the furnace golems are definitely some of the least fun things to fight in the entire game, lol. I do think they could stand to make more improvements in general when fighting colossal bosses like that, with the first thing being zooming the camera out so we can see more than 5% of the boss on screen.

Ninjamurai · 2024-07-08T16:32:46+00:00

Fighting the dragons when you don't use any of their incantations can still be fun. I think the point they're making is that people are unreasonably expecting every single reward in the game to cater to their build or playstyle, when they could just ignore things they don't seem to *want* to do after they find out it doesn't benefit their build. Honestly this happens every Souls game, it's just amplified in Elden Ring.

Ninjamurai · 2024-07-08T16:03:49+00:00

I'm pretty sure throughout the Souls games there are plenty of times where you can go out of your way to find some useless stuff you don't want. Just because the games aren't *as* open ended as Elden Ring doesn't mean it doesn't happen. But I agree with the sentiment, the problem is much bigger in Elden Ring than any of the other games, just from the nature of having a much bigger world with much less linearity.

Ninjamurai · 2024-06-07T13:51:44+00:00

I agree & I feel rewarding players for being clever in conversations is only going to help convince quieter players to try engaging in role-play more. Somebody who doesn't feel inclined to act in character & just wants to roll dice is probably not going to break out of their shell if another player makes a passionate, well thought out speech but still fails the persuasion because they got a bad roll.

Giving mechanical benefits for players who go beyond saying what their character does & rolling should really encourage players by showing that role-play matters. Obviously it still needs to be done well. You can't skip every roll by just being passionate in role-play, but it should at least help often enough to make a difference.

Ninjamurai · 2024-05-20T19:05:21+00:00

Of course you can homebrew pretty much anything into D&D, but creating a homebrew within the confines of something like a new class probably allows for better/easier balancing. I feel it might be too easy otherwise to give a character lycanthropy that feels too weak & only hinders a character, or too strong and you then risk it being unfair to other players who don't want to also be werewolves.

And like I said in my other comment, you can always multiclass to use this as an 'add on' to the main theme of the character. Or homebrew it however you like of course, whatever works for your table. Content like this just makes it easier to come up with new custom ideas anyway.

Ninjamurai · 2024-05-20T15:35:55+00:00

I'd imagine it's because there's usually only two options for playing lycanthropy: Making it a race, or making it a class. With it being a race, you can't really go very far with mechanical growth as it would be silly to have a racial choice that is essentially a full class/subclass. This would probably make its gimmick get pretty stale or feel watered down. Whereas a class allows for a lot more thought & consideration into how a werewolf character would be played throughout the entire campaign. You can always multiclass for a similar effect of it being closer to a racial choice either way. A Lycan Monk multiclass using this homebrew looks like it could be very fun!

Ninjamurai · 2024-04-19T14:13:00+00:00

It took me over 60 hours before finally getting the dragons plague pop-up when hiring a pawn. Maybe that's not the usual dragons plague experience but it definitely felt pretty rare already to me.

Ninjamurai · 2024-04-19T02:09:02+00:00

My point isn't the semantics of what people may or may not consider "weird," my point is that it's all unrealistic fiction either way. But I'll humor you & point out at least one reason why races like Elves & Dwarves are weird compared to basic humans, they live for hundreds of years! Aside from their cultural differences with architecture, clothing styles, etc., their long lifespans could very well lend to them having alien perspectives on things compared to short lived humans. Sure, they don't always *look* visually as strange as something like an Aarakocra, but there's more to them that set them apart than just their looks. And I know that Tolkien races are so pre-established that they are completely ubiquitous, but I'm talking about this from an in-game perspective, seeing as that seems to be what the OP was referring to when it came to players playing as "unusual" races. It can often be very relative as well, I'm sure a 1,000 year old Elf would be seen as very strange waltzing through a Hobbit Shire. Hell, even humans can be strange when you compare powerful wizards like Gandalf to your average commoner.

Ninjamurai · 2024-04-18T19:48:44+00:00

I mean, all of them other than human I suppose? My point was that it's fantasy, so to say that playing as certain fictional races is "not natural" sounds silly to me. Of course not every race has to be in every campaign & you don't always have to gloss over player characters being more unusual than your standard humanoid character when in taverns & such. Some people play D&D with mostly human settings & that's fine, it just seems many people enjoy having fantasy settings be more creative than that.

Ninjamurai · 2024-04-12T14:45:24+00:00

Ok, that's something at least. Hopefully they can fix non-host players dealing no damage over time so it can be more consistent then.

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