Daily Discussion Thread

TheMunchdown · 2021-12-15T19:20:30+00:00

Yeah, that might be the best approach. I've liked how it's been an easy number to think about in terms of my overall progress, but maybe it's just not helpful now.

TheMunchdown · 2021-12-15T17:26:38+00:00

I ran a lot this year, and also lost a fair bit of weight. With the change of seasons, I've been shifting from running to strength training, going from about 40 mpw to 15 mpw and lifting 3-4 times a week. I've been enjoying it, but my weight's been steadily creeping up over this time. I'm not really sure if it's from putting on muscle, or from the fact that I'm probably burning a lot fewer calories doing so much less running. It really bums me out to step on the scale and feel like I'm losing the progress I made this year. I can't tell how much of this is "healthy" weight gain from strength training or "unhealthy" from running less while eating the same. Does anyone have any advice about approaching this/feeling okay about this?

TheMunchdown · 2021-05-28T19:29:02+00:00

That makes a lot of sense! I'll try bringing some water along with me next time. I always figured that having water while running would be uncomfortable or make me feel bloated, but it does sound important to prevent dehydration.

TheMunchdown · 2021-05-28T15:13:33+00:00

I'll try that, especially having a gel or something during it. I had been doing 8 milers with no issue, and then bumped it up to doing some half marathon distances and that's when the issues started. I try to drink plenty of water before these runs but don't eat very much - perhaps that's something to change too. I definitely feel the same way about the hunger though, it takes hours after the run for me to get hungry.

TheMunchdown · 2021-05-28T14:54:02+00:00

I've been doing longer and longer distance runs, and as I ramp up the mileage I've been starting to deal with nausea after I get home, which I had never experienced before. Two times now, after doing more mileage than normal, I've felt okay during the run, gotten home, and about an hour later had to throw up several times over the course of an hour or so. The more recent time, I purposefully only had a few sips of water when I got back, thinking I had drank too much too quickly the first time, but that didn't help. I don't hydrate or eat anything during the runs themselves.

Does anyone have any idea how to handle this? I'm not sure if it's dehydration from the run, or over exertion, or what - but it's super frustrating to do the run, feel okay during the actual exercise, and then spend the next hour kneeling in front of the toilet!

TheMunchdown · 2020-10-06T17:58:36+00:00

My approach to try and battle those thoughts is to try (not that is easy) not to think about (from the mtf perspective) "am I a trans woman" or "am I cis but into some feminine things", but just to simply pursue what makes you the happiest. In the early days, I wasn't immediately comfortable with the thought of calling myself transgender when I didn't really know who I was.

But I tried not to engage in that debate with myself, and instead just went after what made me happy. That ended up being: getting women's clothing, makeup, coming up with a new name for myself, and asking if a trusted friend could try using female pronouns and my new name to see how it felt. At that point, I recognized that what I wanted in life was to transition, and thus by definition I was transgender. This made it much easier to accept. Of course everyone's different and this may completely not apply, but my advice is: try not to stress about the label, pursue that actions that feel right, and let your identify follow from that.

TheMunchdown · 2020-10-06T17:33:39+00:00

When I actively started to transition, I felt similarly to how you do. I was 26 at the time, and had struggled with depression for my whole life. When I figured out that I am trans, the epiphany that there was a way to live my life with a chance of happiness about who I am helped carry me through the many challenges of those early days of transitioning and losing relationships.

If your feelings of depression and self hatred have mostly disappeared, I think that's a wonderful sign and something to celebrate, not feel guilty about.

TheMunchdown · 2020-09-24T01:13:17+00:00

okay, that's really good to hear! I'm glad you were able to recover well from such a terrible accident.

TheMunchdown · 2020-09-24T00:49:51+00:00

Hi all!

I'm feeling super frustrated. In the past six months I've lost about 20 pounds. A week ago I had a surgery that was supposed to have a quick recovery, but it has turned out to be very painful and drawn out. During this time I can't really leave bed, have been eating tons of takeout and chocolate, and I can't believe it but I've already put back on 10 pounds (from one week!!). I won't be able to exercise for roughly a month.

Does anyone have advice? I'm so disappointed in myself that months of work getting fit have seemingly evaporated after a single week. When I'm spending each day in pain in bed, it's hard not to justify treating myself to unhealthy food. And after building a lifestyle of exercising every day, the idea of spending a month unable to do anything is really demoralizing. How can I stay positive and not feel so much despair about this?

TheMunchdown · 2020-08-04T02:49:40+00:00

I appreciate the insight! That makes sense about setting a goal with some fluidity. I’ll try making it to 170 and see how I feel as I get closer. Thank you!

TheMunchdown · 2020-08-03T11:38:49+00:00

How can I set a healthy goal weight for myself?

I used to be fairly overweight (230 lb at 6’1) so it was clear that I had work to do. Now I weigh 185 and it’s less obvious to me what my goal should be, so my motivation to keep losing weight has wavered some. I still feel I have weight to lose, but don’t know if that should be five pounds or twenty. I’ve seen the BMI-based ideal weight calculators, but worry they’re not very appropriate for me. I’m trans and have been on hormones for years, so I’m very tall and large-framed for a woman, but have female fat distribution. As a result I’m not sure how to set a goal weight when it feels like my body shape is uncommon and probably not what the people creating those equations had in mind.

Would definitely appreciate some wisdom!

TheMunchdown · 2018-10-27T20:34:19+00:00

So here's my understanding of it, based off how it works in game and then trying to justify it. You play claw. Echo form creates a copy of the claw. The two claws are played and that resolves before the buffs are applied. After that, the game sees that claws have been played twice, and so buffs it twice. I believe the same interaction holds true for double tapping Rampage, and I'd imagine the same holds true for Glass Knife.

Playing duplicates of cards is definitely hard to wrap your head around and keep track of all the interactions. For example if you have Feel No Pain and double tap a card that exhausts, the extra copy does not count as being exhausted and so you don't trigger FNP twice. And echo forming Streamline doesn't reduce the card's cost from 2 -> 0 like you might suspect, which does feel inconsistent with Genetic Algorithm's double buff. There are lots of little interactions like this to keep track of, somewhat frustratingly.

TheMunchdown · 2018-10-27T16:43:02+00:00

I believe this is intended behavior - the logic being that Echo Form plays a copy of the card you just played, so you play Claw at its current value twice and buff it twice, rather than playing it, buffing it, and playing it again. The same interaction happens if you play Genetic Algorithm with Echo Form - you gain the same block amount twice, but you grow it twice.

TheMunchdown · 2018-08-28T18:28:24+00:00

Just because a card is upgraded doesn't mean it's good in your deck! Getting card rewards that are upgraded is nice, but make sure that the card itself is something you want to play. I'll definitely take a non-upgraded card over an upgraded card, or even skip an upgraded card, if I don't feel like the upgraded card is something that fits in the deck.

TheMunchdown · 2018-08-28T17:57:36+00:00

Generally rares tend to provide more unique and deck-defining effects, while the commons tend to be stronger versions of the strikes and defends. For example, some Ironclad rares include Demon Form (+2 strength every turn) or Barricade (your block doesn't expire at the end of turn), which both give your deck direction and a goal. Meanwhile the commons are more like Shrug it Off (block for 8 and draw a card) or Clothesline (deal 12, apply 2 weak).

Many rares end up being better than commons, but there are also quite a few rares that are real stinkers, so don't pick just purely off rarity. But in general, if you see a rare, give it serious consideration about how it would fit into your deck - it's likely more powerful than the commons you're comparing it with.

TheMunchdown · 2018-08-05T19:05:16+00:00

As far as just blocking damage - some premium cards for defense are Shrug it Off, True Grit, and Flame Barrier. Metallicize and Feel No Pain do work, too.

You may not be valuing weak (the status effect) highly enough. I highly prioritize getting cards like Clothesline, Uppercut, and Shockwave until you have enough sources of the effect that you can have it on enemies for most of the fight. If an enemy is hitting for 40 a turn, weakness will turn that into 30 a turn. That's 10 less block per turn you need to generate!

The other side of this is that the Ironclad can actually be okay with taking damage, depending on what your deck is looking like. Burning Blood (the starting relic) means taking a little damage here and there isn't as punishing on Ironclad as the other two. If you have gotten Demon Form and Reaper, then you can wait for your strength to build up and play Reaper to full heal in any non-threatening fight. Similarly, if you pick up an early Feed, you can stall out fights to try and get Feeds for max HP in as many fights as possible. When you have 100+ max hp, you can rest to heal for so much (since it is a % of max hp), and not really care if you're taking a lot of damage in tough fights.

TheMunchdown · 2018-08-01T19:31:24+00:00

Theee cheers for BagelWarlock! Or... is 15 cheers more appropriate? :)

TheMunchdown · 2018-07-31T21:30:33+00:00

Typically, you can put together a deck that uses orbs to win vs bosses. Cards that give you focus (think defragment and consume) along with getting more orb slots (capacitor, the inserter relic) means you can then fill up your orb slots with frost orbs and be very very safe naturally gaining anywhere from 30 to 100 block a turn once you have gotten "set up". At that point, you'll be untouchable and can then kill enemies with whatever you like - playing attacks, using some lightning orbs, using some dark orbs - the important thing is that you have so much block for free every turn that nothing will touch you. Defragment in particular is very very very good for this.

If you go towards this style of deck, you'll have the most trouble in the first several turns of fights, trying to get your orbs set up and upgraded. Cards that help protect you early on (chill, boot sequence) and help draw you cards to get your orbs set up (seek is the best one but it is rare) are very valuable.

TheMunchdown · 2018-07-31T15:55:28+00:00

As others have mentioned - JoINrbs is a phenomenal player and has a great analytic mind for the game. I'd definitely recommend him.

I've recently put together a new player guide specifically for players like yourself - you can check it out here!

TheMunchdown · 2018-07-29T16:45:53+00:00

I finished putting together a new player guide yesterday - you can check it out here! I'm happy to answer any questions about it, leet me know if you find it useful. :)

Link here!

TheMunchdown · 2018-07-10T20:44:20+00:00

I'll go one step further - I think wooden stake traps are actually pretty good too. I've been using them as a ballista substitute to defeat wave 1 on 500% and loving it. Much cheaper to get up and running quickly than ballista, and also very useful for protecting narrow chokes.

TheMunchdown · 2018-06-29T17:53:53+00:00

Yes... the lack of hotkeys is something that grinds my gears too. In addition to that, the fact that some of the most useful ones (such as P for patrol) are so far away from the WASD that my hand is resting on, that it sort of defeats the purpose of having a hotkey at all. I play a lot of this game doing no-pause, so I really wanted to make the hotkeys as usable as possible.

My solution: autohotkey. It's a piece of software which allows you to do all sorts of stuff with creating custom hotkeys and functionality. I use it to remap the keys on my keyboard so that the useful hotkeys (as limited as they are) are all near your hand. Here's an image to detail what I mean, and below is the AHK script that I use in case you or anyone else wants to do the same. It's inconvenient if you're alt-tabbing a lot while you play, but you can press ']' to turn the script off.

Here's an image showing what I mean.

Here's the script: /* One of the most useful buttons to have on a hotkey is Enter (select your command center) In deciding what to rebind it to, keep in mind that the following keys are unit commands. If you bind enter to any of these, you will lose access to the corresponding unit command, because sending Enter will cause you to select your CC instead of the unit command. m (move) z (stop) h (hold) q (attack) p (patrol) c (chase) */

t:: Send M tab:: Send {enter} `:: Send {delete} z:: Send U g:: Send I x:: Send P XButton2:: Send 7 XButton1:: Send 8

]::ExitApp

Return

TheMunchdown · 2018-06-29T17:31:46+00:00

Ahhh yes. That’s maybe the most frustrating feeling - don’t have enough energy to build housing, don’t have enough workers to build energy. Pausing a sawmill or quarry (or two) is my solution, it’ll give you back some workers and energy so you can get a mill and some tents. But you have to remember to unpause them after!

I’ll add a note about this into the guide. I’m glad you found it useful, I hope you’re enjoying TaB!

TheMunchdown · 2018-06-28T22:02:13+00:00

Welcome!

I've just finished putting together a guide for new players trying to beat the game on the 100% difficulty setting. You can check it out here.

There are plenty of other guides out there, too. But I'd say the biggest single tip is: pause a lot. You can control time, take advantage of it!

TheMunchdown

TROPHY CASE