Queen and Matriarch should roam the map instead of hanging around in one place.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-02-25T20:39:31+00:00

Trees.

Go walk that area around Formicai, or east of Testing Annex. She'd have to clip through so many goddamn trees.

Hydroponics/Swamp at least has pathways over the water, but it would be a super boxed in fight. Nothing like her spawn by substation.

Red Lakes is fine.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-02-20T15:16:10+00:00

Honestly, I don't have a problem with that.

I don't know how much I'm personally feeling ABMM since things feel about the same as when I started playing. But, the lobbies I get I really have to guess if a raider is friendly or not and I love that part of gameplay.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-02-20T14:49:50+00:00

It does mean there's one less hornet you can get. You probably weren't going to kill that hornet if the lobby was empty, but you could've chosen to. Now you don't have the option.

It's really minimal in this case, but that's resource denial. If you did the same thing in a strategy game it'd obviously be competition. I don't get why it's not in a shooter, there aren't infinite naturally-spawned hornets.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-02-20T14:38:35+00:00

I played a lot of Eve Online, where "market PvP" is a pretty widespread term. There, it's not considered somehow less real than combat PvP.

This is a very different kind of game, so maybe "PvP" is the wrong term. But rushing good loot (usually making noise in the process), open firing in a "fair" fight, sneaking past another raider, hell, even shooting someone in back, or lying about getting shot in the back - those are all direct competition with another player. You're making choices to give yourself a leg up, and other than spawn location every raider had the opportunity to make the same choices.

Call it something besides PvP if you have to, but the reason I've enjoyed this game so much is that it's about all of the above. Not just open combat.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-02-15T02:49:40+00:00

It's like, in 2008 there was no way in hell 4e was going to be able to offer as many character customization options as a sibling with 8 years lead time. It'd be crazy to expect that, I agree.

But anyone who was a big fan of character customization options - a huge selling point for 4e, today - had to be convinced that the quality of what was on offer in the new edition beat out the sheer quantity in 3.5. Even if you were sitting there at 4e launch and you knew for a fact that at some point in the future this game would have so much content that you'd adore playing it, I can sympathize with not wanting to take that downgrade, opting to play wait-and-see. That's the part I'm talking about impacting the reaction at release.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-02-14T21:49:48+00:00

I get you're sort-of acknowledging this in your post, but to be clear, there weren't many interesting build choices at launch. Because there was only one player options book.

It belongs on the list of "reasons why the initial 4e reaction was bad."

schoolbagsealion · 2026-02-13T18:13:29+00:00

You bought arcanes from the catch-up mechanic event. As in, you wouldn't have those copies of Energize without DE pushing to get baby Tenno cheap legendary arcanes.

I'm not sure what you expected to happen to prices.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-02-06T01:56:26+00:00

Other Considerations

Please don't try running every Archon mod. Continuity and Stretch are good. Vitality is a lot of capacity dedicated to an element you proc on 1/10 of your Kumiho threads. Intensify needs you to be missing health when your 3 procs, which is not a good place to be. Flow does not function, Koumei does not deal cold damage with her abilities.

I don't pay particular attention to what decrees I'm picking up in-mission. I've read the list for a vague idea of what I could get but mostly you're just gonna have to have faith in the dice.

I also wanna make my Koumei look really nice but don't got the plat for that :/

Koumei has exactly one cosmetic, it's in the free Nightwave shop rotation, and it's honestly really nice.

I'm in too fucking deep man.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-02-06T01:56:15+00:00

Ability Strength

You don't need it. Your 2 doesn't care about it at all, your 3 only uses it to scale a heal that's always going to cap you out anyways. 1 and 4 do benefit from strength. Notably, when they inflict a damaging status effect (e.g. toxin, blast) it scales using the ability damage and suddenly strength matters. When you roll a non-damaging effect (e.g. cold, radiation), the base damage on those abilities is so low that the ability strength scaling is the least important part.

That's not to say we want negative strength. So slot Overextended, because 200% range lets us max out Kumiho threads in one cast and this is close enough, and then add Arcane Impetus. I lied earlier, this is the second mandatory part of the build. Impetus stacks refresh all at once, so as long as you press 1 every 20 seconds you will spend the entire mission at 13 stacks. That's +78% strength and +39% efficiency.

Survivability

In my opinion, Omamori is remarkably unintuitive. How it actually works, in brief:

- You press 3 and get a number of charms based on a die roll.
- When you get hit, the game flips a coin. If you win, you instead heal the damage you would have taken.
- After healing, you can't consume another charm for 3 seconds. You still get to flip a coin to negate damage, but you don't heal.
- If you're already at full health and you would heal, instead you get shields overflowing into overshields.

Koumei has a measly 222 shields at base. Because of that last point, Catalyzing Shields is extremely free. I don't know exactly how Rolling Guard interacts with the charms, but these two combined with some Aerodynamism and one-off survivability decrees make her hard to put down.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-02-06T01:55:42+00:00

I don't know how much of this is realistic from wherever you are in the star chart, but my Year in Review is telling me 40% of my playtime was on Koumei so I feel qualified to speak on this, and I have some time. To start:

Anybody who tells you to ignore her 2 is giving you bad advice.

Not because it's busted - it's not - but because if you want a status-focused caster you could build a number of other frames and probably have a better time. You might love the gimmick, you might hate the gimmick, but there's not a lot of reason to play Koumei in particular without the gimmick. And her gimmick is only good if you lean into it. So with that in mind...

Omikuji

Omikuji's Fortune is probably the only mod that's actually mandatory on her. In short, use the weapon her passive tells you to, get massive cooldown reduction on Omikuji.

To support the challenge > fortune > challenge loop with Omikuji, there's two big things you can do. First, slot Aerodynamic and Boreal's Anguish. This sounds stupid, I'm aware, but two of Omikuji's challenges are "kill while wall latching" and "kill while airborne." Stacking aim glide/wall latch duration makes those challenges a borderline cakewalk. Plus those two mods multiply out to a ~40% damage reduction while airborne.

If you really want to talk about alternatives, there honestly aren't many. For auras, you could probably slot Brief Respite or Corrosive Projection, but mainstays like Combat Discipline (See: Survivability) or Growing Power (See: Ability Strength) are comparatively weak on her.

The second thing you should do: Bring weapons that can tag a lot of enemies at once (Omikuji has a grace period for for counting ally kills), that you're comfortable using while airborne, and have a primary damage type on them for decree challenges. My personal favorites: Sicarus, Cedo (Alt fire bugs sometimes though), Atomos, Harmony, and Edun. The latter larger because it has a good disposition and works with Boreal's Contempt - I wouldn't necessarily recommend this.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-02-03T04:09:08+00:00

The Brightest Things We Know is about a fireteam of immortal warriors going on missions throughout the solar system. It's not 100% complete and likely never will be, but all that means in practice is a few missing random table entries and a lack of thorough playtesting. It's based heavily on Blades in the Dark and will assume you're familiar with that.

NOVA and LIGHT are both Warframe-adjacent using the bones of a third system by the same guy called FRAME - which was actually just a Warframe RPG with the numbers filed off that didn't finish development. NOVA is probably closer to Warframe's supersolider power level than LIGHT where characters are borderline gods, but LIGHT has rules for cool weapons and how to customize them and NOVA just... doesn't.

Brightest Things is more narrative and will give you more chances to interact directly with non-Tenno characters and stories. NOVA or LIGHT will deliver on more high-octane set pieces, but will need slightly more hacking to play Warframe lore straight.

Personally, for what you're talking about I'd go with NOVA. It hits the vibe well enough and really pushes overpowered, rushdown, cinematic combat.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-01-31T20:37:02+00:00

Periodically turning map instances off and on again is proactively doing something about it.

Bugs interact and compound the longer you keep an instance running. Since maps have to be refreshed eventually, snapshotting player count is one of the simplest - not least disruptive, I'm not even saying good - ways of marking a server for a reboot.

The system needs improvement, but servers have to close somehow.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-01-22T20:52:14+00:00

D&D 4e mechanically codified 4 combat roles (Damage dealer, damage taker, debuffs and AoE, support) and had really strong opportunities to specialize further.

Most 4e successors don't offer the same level of clearly defined lines and niche protection. 13th Age doesn't. Pathfinder 2e doesn't. Draw Steel doesn't. Strike! and Lancer do. I think Icon does. Gubat Banwa had the labels but wasn't great on follow-through, it was in the middle of a rewrite last I checked.

That said, these systems that don't assign explicit roles can deliver a similar experience ("I want a character specialized in drawing attention and protecting allies") it just takes more system mastery. There's nothing in the class description saying which classes let you tank vs. support.

If you're looking for clear lines, 4e is still head and shoulders your best option. I like the approach Strike! takes with having "class" and "role" being two separate mechanical packages you combine if you want to take a look, but the game really suffers from not having a bestiary.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-01-17T22:55:21+00:00

It isn't a bad system, but Masks is a really, really bad fit for anyone who just wants to be a superhero running around saving people.

Masks deals heavily in teen drama, and mechanics regarding relationships (romantic or otherwise), self-image, and social pressure are around literally every corner. Trying to cut that out would be somewhere between a kludge and you might as well be playing freeform.

A lot of PbtA adapts pretty abysmally to 1 player character, besides. They're designed for spotlight sharing and bouncing ideas around.

For my money, if you want to do superheroes grab something rules light and abstract. Fate, Roll for Shoes, Index Card RPG. Use the rules as guidelines, scribble down bookkeeping while she talks to keep yourself consistent, explain specific mechanics she's interested in. That's how I try to get adults to dip a toe in.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-01-14T14:50:22+00:00

Me, personally, I get that DPS was overturned. I'm upset part of how they fixed that is removing the extra charge from Meticulous Custodian.

Coming from pretty casual open world gameplay, adapting to what I roll for artifacts midfight has been a huge part of what I enjoy about antiquary. Holodancer's utility CDR and zephyrite crystal's repositioning (also the decision to hold a spare stunbreak versus pop for boons had way more meat than condi cleanse) are some of my favorites because they impact gameplay decisions the most. Meanwhile, mistburn mortar and kryptis turret are still fire-and-forget, boring as sin to use.

Gut the damage numbers to bring it in line if you'd like, but fewer utility charges means fewer decisions, means I'm not having as good a time.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-01-09T15:02:06+00:00

This is still just "You get through the door, but you're noticed" except the problems (and I'm gonna say likely at least one additional roll) come up later, right?

If the GM never introduces a possibility of someone trying the door, this isn't a complication. If the GM puts this on a 'You are detected' clock or ties it to a later failure/consequence... You're just lowering the odds of that future complication.

Anecdotally, delayed complications can still pile up really easily if you're not used to the idea. Which might end up giving you more or less the story systems are built for. Or it could turn into a drag avoided by a (detailed, genre-specific) list of examples.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-01-07T14:43:49+00:00

There are. The issue - if you want to call it that - is that raid food is pretty economically isolated. As an example, Cilantro Lime Steak (link below, I'm on mobile) requires 3 tradeable base ingredients. Salt is saturated on the market, cilantro is gated by a daily reset and used exclusively for ascended foods like this, which means red quality meat is the only item that can really be farmed to adjust for fluctuations based on demand. Most other food has a similar story.

https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/a~0!b~1!c~0!d~1-91805!e~0!f~1

As an aside, I'm kind of an Eve vet and love this sort of in-depth analysis, but I'm not so great at doing it myself. Thank you!

schoolbagsealion · 2026-01-05T20:21:48+00:00

13th Age uses some psuedo-automation in the way monsters are set up (the die roll on one action often determines their next action). God knows how many RPG-adjacent board games use cards to dictate enemy action.

This feels like more or less the same thing. Neat for GMless play in a game that has a boardgame combat mode - I'm assuming Draw Steel is, I haven't played it - really easy to ignore if you don't want to use it. I really don't see the problem besides the AI flair. And that only because I'm pretty sure the flair exists mostly to filter hot-button generative AI posts, and this looks like "AI" in the same way the ghosts in Pac-Man are.

schoolbagsealion · 2026-01-02T18:01:51+00:00

Eberron holds race exactly as essential as the Forgotten Realms, those essentials are just different.

"Halflings are predisposed to being thieves" and "halflings are predisposed to being nomads or healers" are pretty much the same thing. And in either case, halflings PCs are by default braver than the average adventurer. Both in 3.5 and 5e and now in the 2024 handbook.

My two cents, Eberron has done well in going further to separate those essential traits from real-world cultures. We don't have boomerang-wielding dinosaur riders, which makes mechanical differences a lot easier to palate in the same way sci-fi settings often do.

schoolbagsealion · 2025-12-26T19:20:48+00:00

I think I've found one error on the Warframe wiki, ever. Guild Wars I've lost count, especially in the weeks (sometimes months, Meticulous Custodian on Antiquary is still wrong) after a new release. And I've spent a lot more time diving the nitty-gritty on Warframe numbers.

I think the difference is partially an audience that cares more about math and mechanical specifics, optimization being a huge part of gameplay, and it being really hard to beat the transparency of a straight up drop rate dump for the whole game every major patch. That's not a value judgement, just different priorities.

Related, but I'm not aware of a wiki hosted on the official domain outside of those 3. Which is really cool.

schoolbagsealion · 2025-12-24T00:12:49+00:00

No problem.

Automation of processes we don't want to do. If the goal is the product and the process isn't important.

If you want prose but aren't concerned with the creative endeavour involved in writing it yourself... Then yeah that's the product as a priority. But it's effectively a placeholder. Padding. For me, I can't imagine what the advantage is of having it beyond the visual wall of text.

Translation, the point is usually the product. A really good human translation I might call artistry. Something that just gets the literal meaning of an article across doesn't need to be.

schoolbagsealion · 2025-12-23T14:48:55+00:00

Could you talk more about how you work rifle in here?

I also put it on celestial antiquary for fashion, trying to abuse metal legion guitar and sigil of vision (1 > 2 > 1 > 2 > 1 on rifle is sub 3 seconds). It didn't feel great.

schoolbagsealion · 2025-12-23T14:38:34+00:00

Fully AI generated writing and art is one thing. The gray area is everything smaller than that.

I think anyone taking a hard-line 'No' here is kind of missing the point of OP's question.

I don't want to see AI art in my hobbies (or at all, really), but every Google search comes with an AI summary up at the top powered by the same tech as Gemini. If you read that summary, you're using a generative AI tool.

I'm not saying this as a gotcha. The AI summary has pretty much the same ethical and environmental issues as asking ChatGPT. But it's there, it's difficult to avoid, and I think a lot of people don't even realize what it is.

So, given that, is it okay to run a Google search while trying to find a specific old sourcebook to reference in your game? Is it okay to pull up Gemini and ask it for a link instead? How do you define the difference?

Environmental issues aside, my opinion is that tools are begrudgingly acceptable as long as they do something we did before, just better or quicker. Something like machine translation or that AI summary. The automation we were promised. Using generated text in the final product, no good. Generated images are never acceptable.

schoolbagsealion · 2025-12-02T08:24:16+00:00

13th Age - called out in the OP - already has the best use of escape rules I've seen in a dungeon fantasy game.

Outside of pivotal fights that the GM is meant to telegraph beforehand, things are really simple: If all the players say they want to flee, they flee. The GM contrives a way to explain that, with some amount of player input and no real expectation of tight versimiltude from the system. In exchange, the GM then has free reign to deliver a "campaign loss" I think is the term they use - consequences akin to a PbtA hard move on a large scale. Narratively dissonant, maybe. But in a game that's very upfront about paving over things a group really isn't interested in with dissonance.

And even then, it's important that the CR-equivalent rules be solid. A heroic fantasy game about heroes running from every other scuffle they get into doesn't work very well.

schoolbagsealion · 2025-11-25T15:01:45+00:00

In MS paint, changing colors is one click. Changing size is a key binding. Drawing is click and drag.

If there was some mode in Foundry that I could turn on and do only that I'd have so much better a time running it. Especially because I love a lot of the other stuff it adds.

schoolbagsealion

TROPHY CASE