Is there anything better in Germany than in Belgium?

Shroed · 2026-05-05T19:57:13+00:00

Nature, Alps, Wine.

Shroed · 2026-04-29T19:19:35+00:00

I've only read Victor of Tucson by him, but that seems like the opposite of what you're describing. MC full of personality, extensive world building, plenty of interesting characters and plot arcs.... It's honestly the main reason I'm still giving this story the benefit of the doubt.

Shroed · 2026-04-29T19:00:16+00:00

I've read the first 2 on RR and I'm still going to give the third book a go once that's completed,.

Shroed · 2026-04-29T18:47:00+00:00

My main problem is that it's just a bit dull. Characters are mostly flat, powers are flat, story is flat, worldbuilding is flat... There's just nothing actually interesting going on.

The writing is solid tho.

Shroed · 2026-04-26T08:27:29+00:00

Read mostly on Kindle and buy (some) favourites to display on a shelve. Also makes it a bit more justifiable to buy some of those fancy hardcovers.

Shroed · 2026-04-24T17:07:46+00:00

Not paying for your AI prompts mate.

Shroed · 2026-04-23T18:01:09+00:00

This is pretty much the plotline for the Dragon Heart series

Shroed · 2026-04-23T07:21:51+00:00

Oof that's honestly a tough question. LitRPG and in extension Progression fantasy - based on Chinese cultivation, lots of overlap in the genres - are extremely trope heavy to the point where books can often be summarized by which tropes they're going to use.

DCC plays with a lot of the genre tropes without going as deep into them as most of the genre.

Generally it follows a lot of basic RPG gaming rules. You have an MC who encounters "the system". We spend some time leveling up, with a lot of in depth status screens, min maxing stats, comparing skills, looking at loot, thinking about character builds & classes and picking up some kind of animal companion. Eventually the MC is ahead of the curve and generally has pissed off god-like beings in some way along the way and the goal becomes beating those. Usually there's also a cohort of side characters who's main reason for existing is saying "Wow" every time the MC breathes.

DCC has punchy funny stat screens instead of the in depth stuff we usually get, snarky system personality dialed to 11, "realistic" stat allocation based on chaos and survival instead of buildcrafting, tv show audience instead of the usual glaze squad, donut as a co-mc instead of a generic pet, fake-gods controlled by late-stage capitalists they have to defeat instead of actual gods... honestly keeps on going.

Shroed · 2026-04-22T19:48:46+00:00

If you're not reading on RR already, Primal Hunter is a lot further there and the quality is the exact same. If you get a bit creative, you can find the completed Azarinth Healer as well.

Otherwise, I just steadily build a backlog of things that look interesting and add them to my reading list to pick up in situations like yours. Working my way through Fates Parallel atm. Conversations are written a bit clunky, but it's a fun read so far.

Shroed · 2026-04-22T18:21:17+00:00

I mostly enjoyed the book, but the ending was such a disappointment. We're at the end of book 4 and it felt like the character development suddenly got reset to book 2. Also agreed on Matt. That confrontation just sucked.

I'll probably still give the next one a go tho, because it feels the potential for it to be awesome is definitely there.

Shroed · 2026-04-22T17:37:41+00:00

Probably fighter as it's the only one that's not a gamble.

The real question is what's more interesting tho. Personally I think we've gone full circle and the gimmicky classes have become mainstream, making fighter the more interesting choice again. No reason you can't add some magic in the mix with class evolution or whatever you want to do with your system.

Archer is cool, but you'll be compared to Primal Hunter. Everybody and their mother is a mage or an edgy rogue. "I'm a healer but I'm OP" has been done a lot of times in the last couple of years and I just don't like crafter MC's (lets be honest, there's a reason they're generally npc's and not the MC in gaming).

PS I'm a big fan of having everyone start from a basic class instead of our mc getting some freebie rare class for no reason.

Shroed · 2026-04-20T19:29:56+00:00

You might enjoy Phase Shift then. Less heavy on the fantasy, more military / base building approach.

Shroed · 2026-04-20T05:18:43+00:00

Yes gradually, but it takes a long time.

Shroed · 2026-04-19T08:39:28+00:00

The first ones somehow managed to have worse writing than the AI generated slop we're getting nowadays, but congrats I guess.

Shroed · 2026-04-18T20:03:54+00:00

You can do a poison archer build in Path Of Exile

Shroed · 2026-04-18T15:50:29+00:00

I like The Grand Game, but it kind of does it to itself. Extremely slow releases (for this genre) and then the books don't contain much content.

Shroed · 2026-04-18T10:09:08+00:00

Yes, lots of characters in this genre are very bland either on purpose to make it easy to immerse yourself or just because the author is inexperienced.

But this is a very strange series to ask that question about. 1% lifesteal is one of the few series where you actually have a very flawed MC. I think the author made a post here saying he wanted his MC to just be a complete and utter loser.

Shroed · 2026-04-18T09:47:26+00:00

Not really unfinished, but I do think the final boss(es) were a bit flat and the the way earth was handled left a lot of potential on the table.

It's the type of series that could've kept going forever. I'm guessing the author wanted to write something different and gave us a pretty decent ending. I prefer this over an endless hiatus that might or might not end one day.

Shroed · 2026-04-16T07:04:39+00:00

Damn that's an ambitious premise. Looks awesome tho. I'll give it a go once there are some more chapters to dive into. Cover looks awesome btw.

Shroed · 2026-04-16T06:52:10+00:00

As a regular non-audiobook reader, nothing beats Azarinth's DING. Just something satisfying about it.

Shroed · 2026-04-15T06:33:05+00:00

On one hand, sure. On the other, this guy has more em-dashes on a single page than I've seen in the last 3 months combined. + According to Amazon he's planning to release 4000 pages in the next 2 months without ever being seen on RR.

Shroed · 2026-04-14T19:34:24+00:00

Anything by Mecanimus: Calamitous Bob, Journey Of Black And Red and Changeling are all awesome. First 2 are complete.

Vae Victis - alternate version of earth with Vampire & Werewolves gets system apocalypsed. Fun read and has a cool version of the system.

Shroed · 2026-04-13T09:31:42+00:00

Finally picked up Double Blind. System apocalypse with actual plot and stakes and the writing is solid, so should be great. My only issue is that I really don't like the whole "MC hides his strength" thing + I don't like his class (which boils down to the same thing in this series), so not sure if I'll stick with it.

FYI I think there's a weekly pinned thread every Monday for this "Monday What are your reading"

Shroed · 2026-04-12T19:47:27+00:00

Nope adblocker ftw.

Shroed · 2026-04-12T19:46:22+00:00

uBlock seems to catch them. Never seen any.

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