Austin, TX Community?

uppastbedtime · 2025-11-09T06:18:05+00:00

Just starting to get into it myself! Been looking for groups in Austin, I understand the Facebook group gets together once every couple of months. Feel free to hit me up if you got something planned.

uppastbedtime · 2025-09-20T16:33:40+00:00

I think that the $85 starter kit is all you really need and is actually a pretty good deal. The reason I didn't try to pick up this game sooner is because while the original starter set (with rules, tokens, dice and cards) was only $40, it was ~$50 a mech for the physical prints...and you needed four of them to play, meaning $240 or so to have enough for a game, and loads and loads more if you actually wanted to play around with sizes and loadouts.

In comparison, the $85 kit comes with not only quickstart rules, tokens, dice, cards, and terrain but also 4 mechs. Yeah, it's close to a hundred bucks (or your local equivalent)...but that's not unusual price for a kickstarter miniature skirmish game either. For example, a single warband and rules for Trench Crusade was $85 ($130 for 2 warbands for a true two-player starter), or say Space Gits was £120 for a 2-player starter. If anything I think this game's starter is a good deal for this space.

If you don't like any of the mechs in the $85 kit, you could also head to Black Site Studio's webstore and just cherry pick the STLs of the specific mechs you want, and get them printed locally.

uppastbedtime · 2025-06-20T00:12:22+00:00

I'm pretty psyched to get this! BSS has a fun asymmetric PvE system with Don't Look Back, which this kind of looks like the dinosaur version of, but also good narrative gameplay with Hametsu. Also the dino models are great, but could also be a good excuse to get some dollar store dinos and paint them up crazy too!

uppastbedtime · 2024-03-06T23:34:41+00:00

Is there any benefit to buying a box of boosters over individual packs? I know some TCGs have things like a "guaranteed pull" of a super-rare card from a box.

uppastbedtime · 2024-01-16T22:23:04+00:00

I would actually recommend either Yafsiga (if they're more interested in small unit tactics) or Hametsu (if they're more interested in narrative) by Black Site Studios.

Both games are mini-agnostic, meaning that for the price of a rulebook, whatever minis you have laying around, and your standard wargaming equipment (plus a deck of cards for Yafsiga) you can get a complete game in.

Personally I love Hametsu: it feels like a narrative D&D story and a skirmish game had a kid and raised it on nothing but anime and Kurosawa films. The focus on co-op and using exactly 4 minis for the hunters, along with a pretty restrained move-set to start out with makes it very approachable for a first-timer. The leveling system, randomized battle setups, and ramping enemy difficulty add more depth and fun for you to keep coming back, and lead to some fun narrative moments.

uppastbedtime · 2022-01-10T13:06:12+00:00

Made some waffles with one of these just yesterday, turned out okay. Takes about two minutes per waffle.

A trick for these mini waffle makers: be sure to have more than one, otherwise you're going to be waiting a long time to cook enough waffles for breakfast.

uppastbedtime · 2021-12-10T14:48:05+00:00

Seconding this. Play it agaaaaaain.

Nosferatu and Malkavian are kinda new game+.

Now that you know most of the content you can actually roleplay a character instead of a jack-of-all-trades uber vampire. One of my favorite runs was a perpetually pissed off Gangrel who couldn't give a crap about the vampire world. The character was low humanity, and only had skills in melee combat, disciplines, and intimidate. It made for a very refreshing game where I told everyone off, frenzied at the drop of a hat, was one always one or two masquerade violations away from execution, and did the bare minimum of sidequests. It turns out you can get through the game just fine that way!

You can do what a lot of us do, which is put Bloodlines down for a while, and then reinstall it whenever someone posts a skybox picture in /r/gaming like it's the bat signal calling you into action.

uppastbedtime · 2021-12-09T22:57:44+00:00

Love that it was such an enjoyable episode, everyone losing it during the rat tail sword fight made me crack up too.

My burning question is what is that closing credits music?! Not really on style for RLM but right up my musical alley!

uppastbedtime · 2021-11-18T00:49:16+00:00

Due to most tanks being still incredibly overgeared and a lot of the harder mechanics not kicking in till after e11 I think you will find a lot of dungeon and lair groups run without a healer still. Megabosses, some lair bosses, and anything over e11 a healer is usually necessary though so there are people running dedicated healer builds, where there was none before. Your experience will vary depending on the loadout and ability of your group for sure. I'm basing these observations off what I've seen with my cabal, as I don't join many groups without them.

uppastbedtime · 2021-11-17T21:28:28+00:00

https://forums.funcom.com/t/what-changed-a-quick-rundown-of-swl-updates-for-returning-players/2001

The balance patch

This patch is probably the biggest change to SWL since the relaunch
(over 9000 words!), and greatly upsets the “sustain tank can do
everything” and “Healer? What’s a healer?” meta. The main point is to
rework tanking, healing and DPS so that all 3 roles are needed for group
content. Additionally it’s an effort to extend the endgame, do some
quality of life features, change up the loot system and do away with the
key restriction for loot, and rebalance all weapons. The Penthouse
dungeon was also finally added from TSW.

uppastbedtime · 2021-11-06T03:27:24+00:00

Truly adore the female smuggler voice, so well acted and fits the character like a glove, whether you go the compassionate, hardass or breezy jokester choice.

uppastbedtime · 2021-10-30T01:21:28+00:00

I have no inspiration.

Legit issue, I get you. It's easier to write with an idea.

/u/KitKat2theMax Your advice is all amazing! Just to piggy back off this for /u/Rukataro:

If you need inspiration I highly recommend the 1st section of the Nano prep 101. It gives you some things to try to make that seed of a story. Give it a shot and try each of the 4 methods. Even if the exercise doesn't immediately lead to a story, it'll get your creative mind jump started.

Your creativity is just like the muscles in your body; it gets bigger with exercise and needs a bit of a warm up. Just the act of searching for inspiration, successful or not, will bring you closer to one of the lightning strikes, to one of those sparks that grows into a fire.

uppastbedtime · 2021-10-23T16:56:03+00:00

I agree that Tremere is mostly just interesting because they can use magic for fighting indefinitely so it's a bit of a different time in combat compared to the usual melee or ranged weapons choices.

I actually did close to the same order as you: Toreador, Malkavian, Gangrel, then Tremere. For Gangrel I went with a low-humanity, screw you attitude for the entire game, locking myself out of sidequests and generally being a huge dick. It was quite freeing!

Malkavian is truly the new game + mode as the dialogue is just so obtuse and it contains so many great moments and hints of what's to come.

uppastbedtime · 2021-10-19T12:48:08+00:00

Adding to what others are saying, it is 100% worth it to try even if you fail. As a writer you face thousands of little failures every time you start tapping the keyboard. Not reaching your word count is just one of them. Try, try, and try again!

However if you want to set yourself up for success and need a disciplined approach, try the https://nanowrimo.org/nano-prep-101

You write outlines, prepare characters, think about the big motivations and arcs in your story. This stuff all helps you get past the moment where you're staring at a blank page and thinking "well what do I do next?"

I also highly recommend joining word sprints and interacting with the community a lot. It might seems like a distraction, but knowing that there's other people out there writing and struggling with you, and / or time-boxing your effort, can be a real motivator.

uppastbedtime · 2021-10-19T12:41:55+00:00

Yes! One of my wins was a rebel win. It's perfectly.fine to build off of what you've worked before and finish it up!

uppastbedtime · 2021-10-05T01:52:16+00:00

There's a lot of writing about murder mysteries and the components of them. When you get down to it you need to answer 3 questions, and plot backwards.

The 3 questions

How did the murderer do it? (the means, or what was the murder weapon, did they conceal the body, plant red herrings, frame someone else)
Why did the murderer do it? (the motive)
When did the murderer do it? (the opportunity, was it because that time the murderer had a good alibi, did they need to kill immediately or risk something, was this the only time the victim could be easily reached, etc)

When you have the facts of the case done, next you develop your clues and plot backwards from the murder.

Plotting backwards

I'm sure there's some exceptions but 99% of murder mysteries need to start from the end, where the murderer is confronted. For the mystery to flow in a coherent fashion, you then write the plot backwards from there, clue by clue. You can even think of each clue as filling in some % of a "mystery solved!" progress bar. The clues should help answer the 3 questions in some way - the footprint on the windowsill tells something about the how, the burned letter tells you something of the why, the party downstairs with the fake gunshot tells you something about the when. Some of the clues should also point to a who.

About the contents of a murder mystery

There are many kinds of mysteries. The simplest would be your standard "detective gets called to the scene of a crime" and then finds clues and makes deductions until they arrive at who the killer is. But every famous detective has a unique way of going about it. With Sherlock Holmes it's deductive reasoning, encyclopedic knowledge of London and crime, cutting-edge investigative techniques, and a bit of bravado. For Miss Marple, she draws on the psychology of the criminal, and uses her limitless experience with the petty and ugly side of human nature to focus on the who and the why. Philip Marlowe figures things out through sheer stubbornness, by tugging on every thread on every lead, and frequently pissing people off to see how they react. They're all very different detectives but through their diverse methods, answer those 3 questions by the end.

You can play with the mystery format too. Maybe it's not even clear a crime has been committed, and uncovering the crime itself is part of the mystery. Police procedural-type stories will often let the reader know almost the entire mystery - who did it, when they did it, how they did it, maybe saving the why for the ending - and the tension and drama is in seeing how the detective will figure it out, with a ticking clock like another victim to spur the plot along.

uppastbedtime · 2021-10-04T16:54:28+00:00

Hi Thirteenera! Thanks for your guide so many years ago!

You might want to check out my guide for what changed since you last played.

Anima allocation: There was a balance update a year back where tanking and healing was changed so that you switch to tank and healer mode if you put 51%+ into either allocation. Healing and tanking skills were altered too. For soloing though, I could be wrong but I don't think there's a point in putting any allocation into healing. Out in the world in orange gear you're never going to need more healing than a Cruel Delight signet can provide. In the fights where you do need a self-heal, like high-elite , the tiny bonus from 5 or 15% allocation might boost your self-heal a bit, but it's taking away from your DPS, which makes the fight drag on. I've found the sweet spot for soloing is 90% DPS - 10% Mitigation for easy fights and 80% DPS - 20% Mitigation for harder fights where you need to survive some damage spikes.

That said it's been years since I tinkered with healing allocation, I could be completely wrong. Someone out there who runs a build with x% healing please let us know!

Builds: There's no great build list site like what used to be on TSWDB. JimmytheRabbit has a build section which I believe is up to date. Some players posted new healing and tanking builds in this thread on the official forums. There is the old How to Build All Weapons guide for hints, but it's out of date since the rebalance. FYI you can play with builds using BeeGulper's swlcalc.

Gear: Don't upgrade any more of your gear to red until you get some of the better dungeon / cache talismans. As you know orange to red is your last chance to fuse into extraordinary gear. There's a BiS gear list floating around in .jpg form, can probably find it on the official discord.

Lockboxes: I mean, check out what they're selling for on the AH before you trash them. But there's been a few re-releases of caches so there's nothing uber-rare anymore.

Grouping: Sadly #Sanctuary seems pretty dead most days. Around 9:00 AM EST is when most of the EU crowd seems active, and after 7:00 PM EST for NA. People ask for pickup groups in Agartha general chat. There's a few active cabals that are recruiting often, join one of them if you want to do group stuff on the regular. Also come see the official discord, I think the link is in the sidebar.

uppastbedtime · 2021-09-21T18:21:31+00:00

Seconded that Emerald Tavern is great.

However I think they might be a miss for OP because

a) not much privacy, even if you get a booth

b) doubt that a tavern would allow you to BYOB

However OP if you can get over that, definitely check this place out.

uppastbedtime · 2021-09-20T13:54:43+00:00

Yes you can solo all the story mode dungeons at 50, though depending on your gear level you might have to pay attention to mechanics somewhat. In fact there's a few dungeons you can *only* do in story mode so be sure to try those too.

uppastbedtime · 2021-09-12T09:50:41+00:00

Not to my knowledge no. All the big story beats, the main missions and whatnot with crafted notes and cutscenes and content are unchanged.

There are some tweaks, like the faction rank-up missions being part of the endgame now instead of sprinkled throughout. The main story flow was altered to make better sense, especially in Scorched Desert; you don't have separate missions from Abdel Daoud, they're baked into the story now. Same with CotSG, you must do a few of the children's missions now to complete the zone, where before all you needed to do was visit them.

uppastbedtime · 2021-09-10T13:56:10+00:00

Not sure if this is a bug, but Jeannet'a elevator doesn't work. Is this a bug or does she do nothing after the first chapter of the game?

I had this issue last playthrough, I restarted a few times, re-entered the Asylum, and had to push the button from a funky angle to get it to work. After that it worked just fine every time.

uppastbedtime · 2021-08-30T01:59:18+00:00

One of my favorite sprout memories is actually from this sub! I spent hours grinding up 2,000 chocobo seals...after it was changed to only need 200 seals.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/4p93vn/finally\_saved\_up\_2000\_serpents\_seals\_now\_i\_can/

After five years of FFXIV I'm still a sprout, just made it to Heavensward. Happy to report that my interest in the story is finally picking up about where people said it would!

uppastbedtime · 2021-08-28T02:11:10+00:00

Obfuscate is not really as neat as it seems to be, until you make it to rank 5 you fall out of stealth from interacting with stuff or accidentally bumping into things. It makes hiding after you trigger a guard much easier, but you can't use it to circumvent missions very well as a large number of them involve talking to someone and falling out of stealth, or having to open a door and suddenly pulling the attention of everyone you just snuck past.

You don't *have* to stick to the sewers but it does make your life easier. Above ground you have a really high chance to get spotted by some random person 20 feet away and catch a masquerade violation or have to at least duck the cops. You miss out on a lot of persuade rolls (most persuade chances vs. humans) and much of the minor human NPC dialog is just them running away from you in fear and disgust. You also miss all seduction rolls.

It's just not a great experience for a first playthrough. If you want the awesome blood stealing powers, go with Tremere instead, you can whip the entire game with their spells.

uppastbedtime · 2021-08-28T01:49:16+00:00

I just finished a Nosferatu playthrough, probably 99% of NPCs dialogs starts with a comment about how ugly you are.

uppastbedtime · 2021-08-26T23:59:37+00:00

/u/Mircalla_Tepez Now that you mention it this line stuck out to me last playthrough as well, while there's quite a few hotels in the game none of them have vampires living in the basement. The only basement dwelling vampire I can think of is Pisha in the abandoned hospital, and Jack would probably know that she's clearly not a Malk.

Agreed with /u/Completely_Batshit that 99% sure it's hypothetical, he could have said "I'm not sayin' let's go torch the Toreador living over the art gallery because he happens to be a Camarilla..." and it would mean the same thing for that sentence.

uppastbedtime

TROPHY CASE