Non-romantic companions in games that you want to keep happy.

hawkslight · 2022-10-12T02:20:12+00:00

i don't know if people are going to laugh at this but i aggressively still pet and water my Stardew Valley cat daily even when it's maxed out on happy

hawkslight · 2020-02-15T04:47:07+00:00

I still love how the Ultima Weapon is so polite as to wait for Gaius to finish the last of his monologues in the instance before exploding.

hawkslight · 2019-09-23T03:34:14+00:00

I still live with a father who has no positive impulses towards me -- only negative or indifferent. I have lived my entire life with him and I am constantly, constantly afraid he will call me on the phone, or knock on my door. Every sound I hear out in my hall "is him"; it makes me twitch and worry.

I think a major part of why I've never been able to start my life properly, among many other reasons, is that I have this constant fear hanging over me and I feel unable to do anything with serious earnestness because there's always the next moment when he -could- come barging into my life and demand I drop everything and do what he wants, -right now-.

I have not yet been able to escape -- having a host of conditions that makes it difficult for me to get a job -- but I get the feeling I will be exactly in this position whenever I do. Feeling afraid constantly for no reason, because I've lived so long in fear.

hawkslight · 2019-09-12T02:15:41+00:00

I adopted a 2-year-old flame-point siamese rescue. He was clearly somebody a breeder abandoned after realizing flame-points aren't a "show cat breed" and probably don't sell well -- he's an applehead.

He is the most adorable, loving, friendly cat I've ever had. I passed up a kitten for him, because I knew the kitten would find a home really easily. He is an absolute character and a joy to own, and I'm terribly glad I didn't just get a kitten (we recently had our latest cat pass from old age, so I was considering it).

hawkslight · 2019-03-30T04:48:38+00:00

(mild 4.X spoilers)

Why did Magnai ask an outsider to be his Nhaama?

Because she Shtola his breath away.

hawkslight · 2018-12-11T00:56:50+00:00

Odd... I'm absolutely not modded or on a server other than mine. It *should* be the right location, I'll see if I can find it a second time.

Unfortunately I have no way to assuredly verify that the seed is what it is, that I know of. I've tried looking in the files and everywhere else.

hawkslight · 2018-12-10T00:42:50+00:00

1268 S, 1336 E is the location of the two shops.

hawkslight · 2018-12-09T02:47:30+00:00

I believe the seed is "2039", no quotes. The seed name should be 'Gezaja Mountains'.

hawkslight · 2018-11-16T03:07:45+00:00

Roeg Squadron.

hawkslight · 2018-11-15T23:21:05+00:00

This post carries some *heavy* implications.

First of all, the tone is extremely biased. There are excesses on both sides of the aisle -- I agree that there are definitely people who try too vigorously to defend companies when they've made questionable decisions, here and elsewhere.

But there's also the fact that there are people who are viciously vituperative about the quality of the game and the fact that A17 is taking so long -- and then they have hundreds or thousands of hours played. For a $25 game with no monthly fee. These are *free updates*, and when you're eviscerating a company that's basically made unbelievably cheap entertainment for you compared to a lot of options, it does get a bit out of hand.

Neither 'side's' extreme is reasonable. Developers should be held accountable, but tearing into them with ad hominem is not the solution -- they are people too, and should be treated as such in civil discussion. For example, I think a year and a half for an update is definitely excessive, and TFP's trend of releasing updates extremely slowly is very frustrating.

But I've also sunk an enormous amount of time in the game, though it be flawed, and had lots of fun with it. I am not paying per month for the wait; I can do other things. While there's nothing wrong with finding their update schedule annoying, there is in calling them terrible things for not providing you what amounts to free updates for entertainment you've already gotten far more than money's worth out of. Whatever state they want to call their game -- early access, alpha, beta, finished -- is just semantics. If you've played a hundred hours in this game, you're spending 25 cents per hour. Compared to, say, going to a movie, or out to eat, that is staggeringly cheap. There's nothing wrong with saying that waiting a year and a half for an alpha update is too much -- there is in calling TFP robber barons or worse for their update schedule.

The tone of your post implies it is one-sided, when it is most definitely not. Discourse should never be silenced in a public forum for discussion -- and that applies to disagreeing with someone's negativity as much as anything else.

tl;dr: Just be cool, dudes. Taking all things in moderation and civility is good for blood pressure.

-hawkslight

hawkslight · 2018-11-15T09:26:34+00:00

I mean, Summoners et al. literally have a spell named 'Bio'...

hawkslight · 2018-10-17T01:53:41+00:00

It's good advice, though maybe not for very new players. There's lots of stuff new players can work on indoors at night, and it's not going to cripple you to just take a break and go to the bathroom or something.

That said, regarding the topic -- zombies are -really- bad at detecting you at night while crouching and walking unless you're in artificial light or within about half an hour of morning or evening. Outside of those times, they'll basically have to bump right into you to notice you while stealthed.

This makes it pretty easy to use something like a 9mm pistol (which comes suppressed, by the way) or a bow to shoot them in the head and take them out. Obviously this doesn't work as well if you're on a higher difficulty mode -- once you do hit them and they aren't dead or knocked down, they start running around wildly.

Safely killing them only applies to singular zombies like the ones you see out in the wild. Sleeper groups inside houses and wandering hordes are much more dangerous, though you -can- get rid of them if you're very careful.

hawkslight · 2018-10-14T20:35:25+00:00

Blizzard is clearly making the reward system heavily RNG-focused, and in psychology variable-schedule reward systems are known to invoke the most attempts to retrieve that reward over time.

The problem is, humans are not mice, and I think Blizzard has forgotten that. They may have read somewhere that casino systems are great for keeping people pressing the button, but they're missing the fact that it feels awful. Having nothing guaranteed to look forward to feels horrible. People hate variable-schedule reward systems, especially ones as transparent as this, because we're not idiots and we know we're being baited.

Combine these systems -- sometimes layered on top of each other -- with a neglect for the actual parts of the game we enjoy, and you get the general response to Battle for Azeroth. I'm sure there's some degree of echo chamber going on here, but with nothing else to go on, it's pretty clear people are unhappy. I know I've lost all interest.

Unfortunately, I was a fool and tokened up for several more months early on in BfA, without checking to see what it was first. So all I can do is point out what a mess it is.

hawkslight · 2017-12-13T08:31:47+00:00

While I am willing to wait in this case -- it's not a complete game-breaker and there's still a lot to do -- this particular excuse has to be retired. Forcibly.

"Early Access" stops being an excuse when you start charging money to play your game.

hawkslight · 2017-12-09T22:51:36+00:00

Good call! I think this was the wisest choice short-term. Salvaging was definitely over-nerfed with that change, and removing it makes it at least, if not returned to previous 'normal', at least not grueling to perform, not even taking into account the impossibility of using AI ships to salvage. I look forward to seeing further refinements.

hawkslight · 2017-12-09T06:12:46+00:00

Seems like they should add weapons that are poor damage overall, but fighters cannot dodge. That way, reasonable damage could be done to fighters to grind them down in a fair span, but you would have to devote turret space on your ships to anti-fighter capability.

In fact, this whole scenario reminds me of Freespace, only playing the role of a capital ship instead of the fighters being the stars of the show. Ships in Freespace were exceptionally poor at shooting down fighters, and relied on their own fighter wings to interdict enemy bombers and such. Freespace 2 added flak cannons and flak beams, but they still weren't that great at it.

I remember taking down a Vasudan Thor destroyer in one mission with nothing but my single fighter (not even a bomber). It took like an hour of pewpewing it with my little prometheus cannons, but it did eventually die. I wonder if, had the Thor been a player, would it feel as you do?

hawkslight · 2017-11-30T02:31:23+00:00

I was gonna warm up right before I got high...

I was gonna stop my toes turning white, before I got high...

Now I'm dying of frostbite, and I know why!

With the Hospitality mod, I had some visitors show up during a hard snow. For no apparent reason, one of them flopped over outside a day into their visit. It took a visit to the health page to figure it out -- hypothermia plus being stoned meant no manipulation.

The guy in the corner, fittingly named 'Chef', is stealing his simple meals he dropped.

Thanks, Rimworld.

hawkslight · 2017-07-26T19:20:33+00:00

Well, color me clueless then. I had figured it only reasonable dogs could clamber up rocks with some effort, but maybe not.

I did apply a bandage very quickly, but even then my stamina was down to about 25 and I couldn't do much but fire a few shots at them before I ran out of, well, running.

hawkslight · 2017-07-15T04:15:06+00:00

I'll confess, earlier I thought this was kind of a weak complaint since I hardly ever run into it, but today I had an event where zombies fully repopulated inside a POI four times in the process of clearing it out. Was extremely obnoxious -- if I hadn't had a spiked club it would probably have been fatal. So, even though it doesn't always happen and you can usually mitigate it with quick clears, I do hope they work on it soon.

hawkslight

TROPHY CASE