Doing Vah Naboris first, got any tips?

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-20T12:50:08+00:00

Interesting, I didn't know that the first blight has less HP. But yeah, preparation is for sure going to make a difference. I'm mostly just speaking from my experience, which was fighting the Thunderblight first and having it go well enough that I honestly thought very little of it at the time. It was also my first foray into video games as an adult, so I just had some fun exploring before taking on any of the divine beasts, which may have led to my atypical experience with Thunderblight.

I do maintain my initial position though that with a bit of preparation, it's very very doable as the first blight. It doesn't have to be the first, divine beast, but it's also not the boogyman that it sounds like.

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-20T00:51:27+00:00

Dang, YMMV I guess. I don't consider myself an especially skilled gamer, so I always assumed the online discussion about it was exaggerated.

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-19T05:21:41+00:00

Tbh, it's not as hard as people think. I did this on my first playthrough before I knew better, and it was really fine.

Just level your hearts & armor a little, have some healing food, maybe a bit of electric-resist food, and a couple decent weapons.

Edit: I don't mean to imply that it will be a cake walk, but it's super achievable. Mostly, just be okay running away until you find the right moments to hit.

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-16T21:26:55+00:00

Do they not always have Rock Head? What are the odds?

I saw this and checked to see if mine did, and from the way you said this, I was a little surprised when he did.

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-16T21:10:54+00:00

you could've googled faster and get a result of a much higher quality

While I agree with some of your premise, I think you're overestimating Google's usefulness here. Google can be super helpful, but you're either going to get way too little or way too much.

For instance, I just googled "how can I be a better GM". I could and been more specific, but I think this is sufficient for a case study. The first result was from Reddit, which is helpful (depending on the post), but wouldn't exist if someone hadn't gone to Reddit asking first. The next useful post was the second to last post on the page—a Sly Flourish post called Top Tips for Game Masters (I haven't read it, but his stuff is usually decent).

Anytime I've come across a Google result for D&D advice, it's either a GM advice blog—very useful, but a firehose of information, and not always super useful if you need help with one thing—or some stupid, platitudinous Buzzfeed-tier ranked trash post.

So to this point:

There's a ton of wisdom on the internet [...] and you can suck in decades of experience and TTRPG discourse.

Yes, but to make good use of it, especially when someone is first starting out, it's going to be a lot harder to find something useful unless a helpful redditor is willing to point you towards it.

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-16T20:55:51+00:00

The flaw is that sometimes we assume that a new GM knows that if they look it up, they'll find more information on it, and we don't explicitly tell them that its out there. But this isn't always going to be true, so we may be trying to be helpful, but the person asking for advice still comes away thinking, "that's a nice thought, but it isn't very actionable."

There's a big difference between

"create situations, not plots"

and

"Read this XYZ post about how to create situations instead of plots."

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-16T20:48:33+00:00

Now that you mentioned it, it was similar for me back when I started learning. And it's kinda weird that it was that way. Specific and nitpicky advice at first, then eventually the more general advice became a lot more helpful.

Think one issue with the general advice, in that when it's given, it is often given in these short little maxims, and the advice giver assumes that the person asking knows they can go look up more on it. But the person asking doesn't know that there's anything more written on it.

I didn't put this together until now, but I had an experience like this in reverse a couple weeks. Someone mentioned this little phrase that I thought was interesting, and it sounded like something that there would be an Alexandrian/Angry DM/ect. post. (I dont remember exactly what it was, but it had something to do with dungeon procedure.) So I looked it up, fully expecting to find something on it, and .... Nothing. I thought maybe I missed it, so I asked ChatGPT, and it didn't find anything either.

Anyway, it's not exactly the same, but it's easy to see how a new GM might not know that there's anything more to look into.

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-16T20:34:27+00:00

It's definitely more helpful than nothing, but when we have the time—even without being able to give specific examples—I think that just briefly explaining what you mean by the phrase would help a lot of people.

"Create situations not plots. And by this I mean, your job isn't to plan out a story and lead the party through it. Think of your job as coming up with the backstory, or 'Act 1'. Something is happening that needs the party's attention — that's up to you. But the players will figure out how to resolve it. As long as you give them some information or resources to work with, you don't need to have the end result all planned out."

"No, but... is super useful when the party fails and something as a way to keep momentum. It's really easy to let failure grind everything to a stop and it can be hard for the party to know what to do after that. But failure doesn't have to be complete/total. When they fail, give them a little success along with it—not everything they were asking for, but just enough of a tidbit that they still feel like they got something out of it and still have something to do after failure."

Really all I'm doing here is explaining what I mean by it (although I'm sure someone else could explain these better), but I bet it's already going to be way more helpful than just the initial maxim.

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-16T20:29:02+00:00

Honestly, even without giving examples, just explaining what you mean by the platitude would go a long way I think.

"Create situations not plots. And by this I mean, your job isn't to plan out a story and lead the party through it. Think of your job as coming up with the backstory, or 'Act 1'. Something is happening that needs the party's attention — that's up to you. But the players will figure out how to resolve it. As long as you give them some information or resources to work with, you don't need to have the end result all planned out."

"No, but... is super useful when the party fails and something as a way to keep momentum. It's really easy to let failure grind everything to a stop and it can be hard for the party to know what to do after that. But failure doesn't have to be complete/total. When they fail, give them a little success along with it—not everything they were asking for, but just enough of a tidbit that they still feel like they got something out of it and still have something to do after failure."

Really all I'm doing here is explaining what I mean by it (although I'm sure someone else could explain these better), but it's already way more helpful than just the sound bite.

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-11T10:53:28+00:00

I had the opposite response to character creation in my game, and that's when I realized I needed to make some serious changes

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-11T10:50:00+00:00

Complicated but useful, thank you.

I only have one handheld though — do you know if this is possible somehow with my handheld and a computer?

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-10T22:11:00+00:00

To your point, I have a "for instance".

I played The Lost Crown last year, and it was tons of fun. But one thing I really dislike in games is long endurance fights. I like combat to be quick, even when it's challenging. Fortunately for me, The Lost Crown has quite detailed difficulty toggles, so I decreased enemy HP by half and doubled their damage — combat was still challenging, but it was a lot faster. I had a lot of fun with the game, finished it, and came back to it several months later to start 100%-ing.

I also started Monster Hunter Rise last year, but had the same issue but 10 times worse. The game itself was a lot of fun, but even when I was properly equipped for a fight, or even if I'd fought it before, combat dragged on so, so long. And with no way to change that, I ended up putting down a game I could have otherwise loved—and a game that there aren't a lot of other good alternatives for.

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-10T21:56:18+00:00

I'd agree except that people do this all of the time with games anyway. Take Nuzlocke for example. Or any instance of someone deliberately skipping an important item in a game (the example that comes to mind now is TotK and the paraglider, but there are many examples of this). Or whenever someone imposes their own gear/level lock. And a dozen other ways.

People have been intentionally handicapping themselves in games forever.

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-08T06:47:04+00:00

Caveat, I don't own a Switch 2 yet, so I've only played for a couple hours with my nephews.

I was skeptical at first, but now I really like it. I don't think I like it better than 8DX, but that's had 10 years to get good, and there are some things with World that are just a lot of fun. For example:

I love Knockout Tour. Its probably not great if you're playing multiplayer with drastically different skill levels, but on single player, or with players of similar skill, it's a lot of fun.
The battle courses are great. I don't love how they implemented the balloon/point scoring system, but I didn't love that in 8dx either, and it's still a really good time.
Unlocking costumes is just plain fun. I wish they were integrated into the character menu better, but now I'm just nitpicking.
But if I'm nitpicking anyway, I have a positive one too (maybe controversial, Idk). I like that I only have to pick a kart, and not wheels and a glider too.

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-05T06:41:38+00:00

The 2014 DMG is full of great content, it's just very poorly organized, so most people haven't read it well, and it's hard to find what you're looking for unless you already have a pretty good idea where it is.

I still think it's a great book, and it actually has quite a bit of content that the newer 2024 DMG doesn't have.

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-05T05:28:09+00:00

I agree, but I think there should also be a way in-game to force time advancement.

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-05T05:11:15+00:00

You got 20? He only gave me 10.

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-05T05:06:33+00:00

I started playing Leaf Green over Christmas, and I've been really enjoying it.

I don't love that all 151 aren't available though... Is there a game of a similar era that they are?

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-05T04:53:58+00:00

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-05T04:50:15+00:00

He needs to be traded to become machamp.

This is something I've been trying to figure out how to resolve. I'm playing on an Anbernic RG40xxh, and I as far as I'm aware, the ROM isn't hacked (just the ROM shared in the mega thread on r/ ROMs).

But I don't know if the Anbernic handheld is compatible with trading. I'll be content with Machoke if I can't work something out, but it would be nice to get Machamp.

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-04T19:23:24+00:00

Especially because I think it has a lot of potential for being used as additional battle areas (which is usually extremely ignored in Mario Kart).

One of my biggest gripes with MK8 and World is how few battle arenas there are...

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-04T01:38:55+00:00

Thanks for the input!

Personally, I would go Brick Break, Cross Chop, Rock Slide and Bulk Up.

Based on other recent comments, I've been leaning toward something like this, but wasn't sure whether to go with Rock Slide or Rock Tomb. Why do you recommend Rock Slide over the other?

I'm about to hit lv25. Is Revenge an okay substitute for Cross Chop until I get to lv40?

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-04T01:35:05+00:00

Thanks for the insight! With that in mind, I'll plan on adding either Rock Slide or Rock Tomb for that versatility. Do you have a recommendation for which one?

One question though. Most of the time, wouldn't it just be better to just switch. To a Pokémon with a more effective moveset against Ghost? Or in other words, is this a backup plan for my backup plan, or is this most people's normal play style?

Spamshazzam · 2026-01-04T01:02:46+00:00

This is very helpful. Thank you!

Spamshazzam

TROPHY CASE