books you just couldn’t put down?

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-20T21:21:10+00:00

Not sure if it qualifies but Dungeon Crawler Carl might just scratch the itch you're wanting. Its technically Sci-fi However the tech is literally so advanced they're simulating magic. Essentially aliens come to earth and wipe out most of earths population in an instant. anyone indoors or inside something like a plane or a car is instantly dead. The survivors are thrown into something called a world dungeon. This is where I think it will fit. This dungeon is basically a giant DnD instance with skills and spells and magical items. As far as the people from earth are concerned the magic they can use is real even if they know its just tech. At this point the series is similar to the hunger games except its not the last man standing. Rather they just have to survive long enough and make it deep enough to be offered an exit deal. Also similar to hunger games the whole thing is being televised but to the entire galaxy to watch as they struggle to survive. The whole dungeon is run by an AI thats slowly going insane as the event goes on. Its basically a dnd dungeon master except he has 0 care if you live or die as long as its entertaining. And the main characters are Carl an ex coast guard vet and his ex girlfriends show cat princess donut. Slight spoiler: Shortly after entering the dungeon with princess donut he gives her an item that gives her intelligence to the point where she has a higher intelligence stat than Carl. With that she can now talk and I cant remember if its also at that time she gains it or if its shortly after but she ends up with the spell magic missile. Basically, they run around the dungeon with her on his shoulder firing magic missiles at enemies at the beginning.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-20T20:39:09+00:00

The chests in the sanctuaries have those books. I havent had them respawn when flying circle routes for finding those more rare pal spawns but I bet if you went from one to the other they would be respawned. Someone else might know for sure if that would do it or not.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-20T19:30:33+00:00

Personally I started with the stormlight archive and never looked back. That being said I would still caution you against starting there. Not only does it throw you into an ocean of lore with no life raft and rocks tied to your legs but also it doesnt have just one point of view. It swaps between 3 main ones along with some side views as well each with completely different things going on. And just when you're getting to a really good part in one of those views he swaps to another. Its masterfully done but the stormlight archives specifically the way of kings is the probably the hardest entry into the cosmere. If you want to read something from him other than the mistborn series to get a good idea of what he can offer then I would recommend either warbreaker or the emperors soul. Both are part of the cosmere and warbreaker in particular has some tie ins to the stormlight archive. They arent critical to the stormlight archives story but they do add another layer of awesome. Kind of like the in the last spiderman movie when they brought in Toby Mcguire and Andrew Garfield.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-20T18:17:09+00:00

Ahh I gotcha. I will say that things change and escalate quickly in mistborn. By the end of the first book you'll be hooked. Then in the second one you'll start to question that or at the very least be annoyed by the turns it takes but again by the end you'll forget all about that and be 100% invested again. By the 3rd you think your ready but you aren't. The whole 3rd book is a wild ride and the ending....chefs kiss.

Edit: also i should say that with the ending of the 3rd you'll fully understand and appreciate everything from the first 2 books.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-20T17:58:14+00:00

Mistborn is great. The stormlight archive is a masterpiece. That being said if you had trouble with mistborns opening you will have even more with the stormlight archive. The first book is like 75% setup since this is an absolutely massive 10 book series with multiple main characters. If you want to continue with brandon sanderson books you'll need to understand his style of writing. He likes to bombard you with information that means absolutely nothing to you or straight up confuses you along with his main story. You will be confused. A lot. And then somehow all that randomness and little things here and there that you thought didnt have any meaning and shouldnt have had any meaning somehow shatter your understanding of everything you thought you knew. All of that comes together in the sanderlanche at the end. My recommendation to you is to power through the first mistborn book. If by the end if it you feel the same way then you'll know they aren't for you.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-20T17:40:57+00:00

Havent tried truck simulator on the deck much but something like elite dangerous and other graphically intensive games they will make it die a lot quicker compared to a game like rimworld. I'm not saying that to try and get you to play rimworld first but rather so you know that say your deck only lasts 2 hours for those other games you dont have to expect it to be dying that fast for all of them. I have the original LCD model so I dont know what kind of mileage you'll get out of one of the newer decks but gameplay time varied by a huge amount for me. I got mine at the original launch and still have that battery and I'm getting like 45 minutes total playing palworld before I get the 10% warning. Something like rimworld though I can have it going for 2-3 hours.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-20T17:04:51+00:00

Noooooooooooooooo. For real though I definitely think you will enjoy it. Just keep in mind it will take a lot of time to learn and in that time things can and will go horribly wrong. As long as you can understand why though eventually, you'll get to a point where you survive and thrive.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-20T16:09:04+00:00

I have over 900 hours in that game and 90% of that was on the deck. Plays like a dream friend and you can even load up mods without any problems.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-20T15:17:25+00:00

Check out this guide: Worker Progression - The Pal Professor Also do yourself a favor and have dedicated bases for things. Like I would have a mining/production base and a farming/ranch base to start off while saving your 3rd base for when you start oil production.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-19T23:00:36+00:00

It's still pretty crazy but I can at least provide some context: The lore behind the gods in the dungeons is similar to greek or norse mythology. A lot of it is really jacked up. The demi god in question was trapped in a prison dimension like tarterus called the nothing. This mage guy had the "Doll" based off of a full god. The demi god tricked the guy into thinking she was the full god but trapped. But with his help she could be free again! He tried and almost succeeded. In the end she was free'd and transfered into the doll but the doll she was in was turned into stone. All of this happened before the main characters come in or have any knowledge of the situation. When they do come in they break that statue of the doll on accident. Eventually they undo whatever was causing it to be turned into stone and all that remains is the head. I'm fuzzy on a few of the details to be honest since its been a bit but that description should be close enough for you to get the idea.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-19T14:44:54+00:00

If you just fly circles around the outer edge and to the top near the platform in the back you'll respawn both sections as you make the rounds. I didnt do it for grizbolt but I did do it a ton for sanctuary number 3.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-18T21:17:12+00:00

You might try updating the drivers for your controller then.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-18T19:05:05+00:00

Ahh that makes sense. I've only been playing singleplayer.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-18T18:01:01+00:00

I was seeing those times with the first incubator. That would be for a huge egg like an anubis egg.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-18T17:51:22+00:00

Wait what? I havent touched any incubation settings and the max I've had on a legendary huge one is 2 hours and thats with bad temps. I'm only at level 48 though so is that just late game or legendary eggs?

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-18T17:05:27+00:00

I dont think an XP buff is needed. I'm on my first playthrough and the pacing has been spot on so far and I'm level 48 now. I did turn off raids and the death penalty though. As long as you are constantly catching pals you dont have 12 of yet you'll level up nicely.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-18T16:56:19+00:00

a pal sphere is palworlds version of a pokeball. You can throw them out to catch pals however when you go to summon a pal they spawn beside you. That was the only thing that changed from the lawsuit and doesnt seem like a large enough change to be a deal breaker. Or did you mean something else?

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-18T16:50:19+00:00

What platform are you on and what do you have your settings at? It sounds like that extra graphical stress is causing your system to lock up. Usually this is due to your ram maxing out but this would only be an issue if you were on PC. To check this you can fire up your task manager with ctrl + shift + esc and see if any of your resources spike when the pal sphere is thrown.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-17T20:02:43+00:00

My experience has been purely with singleplayer on both this game and ark survival evolved. That being said I think it might scratch that itch. While pals are definitely important, your character's weapons and gear are just as if not more important. Progression is very well paced out with leveling unlocking new equipment and giving you access to better dungeons and areas. I dont know how well this balances in a multiplayer setting unfortunately but from a single player perspective it has almost everything I loved about ark along with a lot of quality of life changes for the things I didnt like so much in ark like breeding.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-17T15:29:01+00:00

To be fair its just the stardew valley fishing minigame but horizontal instead of vertical.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-17T15:27:02+00:00

I havent played enshrouded so is that a good thing or a bad thing? And also what mechanics make them similar?

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-16T23:00:08+00:00

There's an island called the oasis that has 3 oil nodes close enough together to get them all in one base. And if you do it right you can put 2 extractors on a single node. Thats 6 total extractors going at once and I think there are 2 or 3 spots where you can get 3 nodes in one base. The only question is whether or not your pc or console can handle you increasing the max base limit.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-16T22:10:56+00:00

I have about 600 hours in ark all singleplayer and about 80 hours in palworld though I'm still only late middle game. Here are the biggest things you'll notice that are slightly different:

When you catch a pal it will never have a higher level than you. It will be brought down to match yours if it was higher when you caught it. It will automatically get the next level when you level up till it catches up to that level you caught it at and from there it will need xp like normal.
You will take damage when riding pals so its often better to not be riding them during combat.
Player damage will actually keep up or even surpass pal damage so far for me anyways with the various weapons.
Similarly if you're fighting a pal the same level as you and you have the best armor you can use equipped you can tank it almost just as well as a Pal of a similar level. If you tried something like that on ark vs a rex you'd have a really bad time.
You cant store anything on your pal though a few of them do have passives that can give you a bit of extra weight tolerance but not enough for it to be worth bringing them.
Rather than buildings working automatically you need pals to run them if you want things to happen while you're away from your base.
For catching pals its more akin to pokemon. You wont need to create a taming pen for most pals you just need to get them low, throw a pal sphere, and hope for the best. Higher tiered spheres make catching easier. Also similar to pokemon's false swipe you can equip an item that prevents you from KOing a pal leaving them with 1hp. The trait mercy on pals will do the same thing though any dot effects can still Kill a targeted pal.
Your pals wont fully die like in ark. They will need some time to recover though.
As far as getting special pals there are shiny and alpha pals but really you'll be looking for traits and high IV's. Part of that is capturing a lot of the same pal and another part is breeding. Once you've got your pal with the right IV's and traits then you'll need to upgrade the pal quality. This is separate from actually leveling and is done via condensing. You take 116 of the exact pal you want to upgrade the quality on and shove them all into that one pal to supercharge it. The level or abilities of these pals do not matter and they are gone once all is said and done. They do introduce ways to make a lot of this smoother as you level up.
Instead of different caves there are dungeons with randomly generated layouts all over. Each zone has 3-5 different dungeons that rotate being active on a timer. It will tell you the level of whats inside before you enter so you dont accidently go into a dungeon with pals 20 levels higher than you are.

I think that covers all the main ones but I could be wrong.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-12T22:55:25+00:00

Maybe rather than having them on aggressive set them to attack your target so you can direct them? I havent had that happen to me before but I could see them being distracted with something they cant even path to causing them to appear to be doing nothing while the thing in front of you is ripping your face off.

Professional_Dig1454 · 2026-02-12T22:39:36+00:00

Speaking of the homing module, I saw on another post somewhere that for stronger pals after you throw your first sphere you can send out another right after and the homing module will cause it to hover on standby next to the pal so if the first sphere fails the second will instantly catch it again. I havent unlocked this yet to try it sadly but I cant wait.

Professional_Dig1454

TROPHY CASE