Friday Links Roundup: 11/14-11/18

By Roy | Published: November 18, 2011

Every Friday I make a post containing links to interesting articles I have found throughout the week.  If you already follow me on Twitter, then you will have probably seen most of the following links.  Enjoy!

LOOK

WATCH

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Becky (a Japanese television personality) helps a modern day samurai (or Iaido expert to be precise) cut some balls.

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GROSSLY INCANDESCENT

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If you got the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, you may enjoy this video of a gunslinger who has mastered Ocelot’s gunplay

Episode 13 of My Fair Hunter is live!  I teach Sarah to use my favorite weapon, the hammer, and we take on a Rathian.

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Abusing Skyrim: Accidental Exploits and Impressions

By Roy | Published: November 17, 2011

Last night I went over my friend’s for drinks and merriment, as I do most Wednesdays.  In attendance were two close chums who both transitioned from Dark Souls to Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and they are loving it.  We have this ritual whenever a new game comes out of creating a character just for messing around while we chat and drink.  As I don’t yet own Skyrim, I was given the privilege of creating this just-for-fun character.  What follows is a detailed account of my exploits, but not in any way a review — just food for thought.

Since I was in the company of two big fans of the game I felt obligated to flaunt the fact that I was taking it in no way as seriously as they were.  I was not going to play the way that the game or my friends had hoped.  The intro, for instance, has your unformed character being delivered along with several other prisoners to their imminent demise aboard a wagon.  During this ride, NPCs say dramatic things as they come to terms with their death and various passers-by make comments about you and the other prisoners.  The player can control where their character is looking at this point, so I choose to look at the sky, ignoring all the carefully scripted events happening around me.  Yeah, I’m gangsta.

Whoa, don’t close out of this page yet, I promise it gets better.

Once the dead-man-walking wagon came to a stop and the passengers got off, I was prompted to make my character.  I should take this time to express how impressed I was with character editing in Skyrim.  It’s extremely user friendly and robust.  I went with a female Orc because, well, how many people actually made female Orcs?  Yeah, that’s what I thought.  I loved being able to apply face paint and scars and other small details.  In my haste, however, I regrettably forgot to look at the beard selection, which I am told is ample.

Back to my shenanigans.  During the events that follow character creation, things got chaotic.  It is still abundantly clear that the player must follow a certain NPC, so naturally, I didn’t.  I took to exploring the area around me over my friend’s frustrated requests to proceed.  After dying a few times by attempting to fight a dragon with bound hands, I discovered the first issue.  By running ahead of this NPC and avoiding him, I eventually came to an area where I jumped down from a small step.  Having not engaged the NPC however, he remained where he was, still beckoning me to follow him.  I could not jump over this step, as I expect the developers didn’t want the player to be able to backtrack.  This meant I was at a standstill, unable to speak to the NPC or proceed to the next area.  Thus I threw myself once more in front of the dragon’s fiery hatred and was burnt to a handsome cinder.  It was more entertaining than reloading a hard save.

Someone get this man a beard

At this point my friends were becoming quite frustrated, either from wanting me to venture further into the game or because I was mocking the game for its flaws.  I humored them and proceeded to the point where I could finally equip armor and weapons.  Do you remember that NPC I told you about earlier?  Well, he was still at my side.  I am sure you see where this is going.  Running through some cave, we were attacked by bandits.  Hey, I thought, these bandits just want us to get off their land.  I decided mutiny was the best option.  I would join the bandits in attempting to slay this helpful NPC.  Sadly, I wasn’t able to take him out before he killed the attacking bandits.  Still, he beckoned me onward, possibly writing my attacks off as friendly fire.

The same scenario happened again, and I leveled up.  Suddenly Oblivion’s repetitive action exploits came rushing back to me.  All I need to do is swing my sword at a sack of meat and I level up.  I looked at the friendly NPC, he looked back at me nervously as he realized the dots I had just connected.  He was to become my sack of meat.  The NPC was still on a script though, set to run through a certain path, all the while I wailed on him with my sword gaining levels and proficiency in 1 and 2-handed weaponry.

“Look, a bear!” My meat sack warned as he crouched down.  I turned and paused my relentless assault.  Sure enough, there was a bear staring dumbly at a stalagmite or something.  I ran up to it and with my newly honed skills and felled it in two mighty blows.  Back to wailing on Meaty McSack.  I was actually strong enough to kill him at this point, however rather than die, he would crouch down for about 10 seconds and then recover as if nothing happened.  He preceded forward on his rigid script until we exited the cave to the world of Skyrim proper.

Between the moist thudding sound from each swing of my sledgehammer, Meats told me about a town just down the road.  He started making his way there under my constant assault, stopping occasionally to crouch down and recover.  My friend’s frustration had turned to interest.  I was level 7 now, and I hadn’t even killed a single enemy, aside from that bear with ADD.  Then, the unthinkable happened: Meat Sackerton became hostile!  Thankfully I was strong enough from abusing him to put him down before he killed me.  He was still unkillable.  I took advantage of his aggression by kiting him back a ways and repeating until I was bored.

Beware the Frostbite Spider… bears

Next I ran into town with the intention of breaking into the homes of more NPCs and bludgeoning them.  The first house had two innocent women in it, one of which I killed and looted, the other had the same magical properties as Captain M. Sax: the ability to rest momentarily and come back to life.  So now I had two hostile characters who were totally unkillable coming after me.  My means of enjoying Skyrim was quickly becoming unsustainable.

Soon some guard appeared from the ether and wanted to take me to prison.  What a blowhard.  Want me to help you kill a bear?  That’s a hammering.  Want me to fetch you some mountain herbs?  That’s a hammering.  Want to take me to prison?  You better believer that’s a hammering.  After he was put down, I slapped on his armor and ran into the unknown.  At that point I found a man proudly sitting on a horse drawn carriage.  I had taken my anger out on plenty of humans, but not on a horse…yet.  I gave it a strong hammer blow on the nose.  It didn’t even budge. “Hey,” the man shouted, climbing down from his carriage, “that is an expensive horse!”.  He returned to his seat starting off into the distance like a certain bear I once met.  I repeated this until I grew weary of his presumed value of my new meat sack, so he received a healthy hammering.  That was about when I stopped playing.

Conclusions

The game has its exploits, that’s for sure.  I found a bunch in less than 2 hours of playtime.  Part of me hoped that the antiquated emphasis on repetition as a means of leveling was something that would be modernized or done away with.  Maybe I read too much into a more streamlined Fallout-esque system.

Playing as a total lunatic is fun, but clearly not something the game is prepared for in the early stages.  This resulted in seeing a little more back-door scripting than a player should experience.  Obviously the characters that cannot die are important, and delayed or non-existent hostility is just plain unrealistic.  All in all Skyrim is huge and there is ton to do, but it’s clear that the developers didn’t account for three bored and buzzed dudes wasting a Wednesday night.

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These Are a Few Of My Favorite Dark Souls Weapons

By Roy | Published: November 16, 2011

Despite the temptation out there to grow a beard or hit someone with a huge purple dildo, I’ve stayed faithful to one game in the month of November.  She may be a cold, unforgiving game, but something about our relationship is rewarding beyond explanation.  That game is Dark Souls.  Twitter has been my outlet for discussing my favorite items, but I figure putting them all in one place may get them more attention.

I want to start with some facts about weapons, because without the knowledge to wield one you won’t get far in the game.  There are a few different kinds of weapons, each with their own benefits and drawbacks.

  1. Unique Rare Weapons: These are items which can only be had once per playthrough.  They may be forged using the soul of a boss or acquired by cutting a tail — either way, you’re only going to get one if any.  Generally speaking, this category of weapons is helpful in the short term as they have high attack values but poor stat scaling (see the vastly overused Drake Sword), meaning your character’s stats don’t get calculated into the damage you deal.  Finally, these weapons almost always have a unique attack or spell that is cast with R2 but causes its condition to degrade dramatically.  More often than not, this is simply a cool effect but not reason enough to wield one of these weapons.
  2. Rare Weapons: These are dropped from lesser but still challenging bosses in the game, meaning it’s sometimes possible for more than one to be acquired.  They generally suffer the same affliction as the unique rare category: high attack values but poor scaling.  It is rare that the player can choose their upgrade path as it is most likely set.  However, there are some which do offer the same customization as common weapons (see Richard’s Rapier, Barbed Straight Sword, and a few other examples)
  3. Common Weapons: These are basically everywhere: dropped from common enemies and available in chests and shops.  Their raw offense is generally low, and their stat scaling is marginal.  However, with a bit of shine (unlocked as you progress in the story) they become serious competitors with the unique weapons.  This is due to a higher ceiling of customization.  You can slap elements and magic on them, increase their scaling, or just increase their raw attack through upgrades.  If you decide to devote the resources to a certain weapon, be sure first off that you like the moveset.  Next, ensure that ultimately the weapon will have a high stat scale ranking in whatever your highest offensive stat is, be it DEX, STR, INT, or FAITH.  If you don’t want to find out yourself by wasting materials, the Dark Souls wiki is quickly compiling data on all the different upgrades for all the different weapons.

Basically, the unique weapons are good to start out, but once your character becomes more focused, enemies get more challenging, and more customization options are unlocked, common weapons catch up and become relevant fast.  So let me discuss some of my favorite weapons out there — the ones you should be on the lookout for:

Moonlight Great Sword

This weapon is designed with magic knights in mind.  It’s a greatsword, however, it does no physical damage, only magic damage.  This means a portion of most attacks will carry through shields and armor.  While its actual magic damage value is modest at best (even fully upgraded) it has an A rank in intelligence stat scaling.  That means users with especially high intelligence will get an added boost to their damage.  The only challenge is getting the sword as it requires cutting a certain boss’s tail.  Check the above link for details, but beware as spoilers surely lie within!

Avelyn

If a golden statue of Zeus made love to a crossbow, this would be the end result.  It’s a large golden crossbow capable of firing three crossbow bolts in fast succession.  The reload time is a little harsh, but if you have a clear shot it can be devastating.  Note that all crossbows lack stat scaling — their boost comes from the type of bolt you load.  The popular strategy with this weapon is to load lightning bolts (purchased in Anor Lando) and upgrade the bow itself to Lightning+5.  That results in a ton of long-range damage that most enemies aren’t prepared for.

Tin Crystallization Catalyst

This is really more of an end-game weapon, but still worth mentioning.  It’s a wand for magic slingers that dramatically boosts magic damage, but halves the amount of spells that can be cast.  In New Game+ or for PvP this weapon is very deadly.  Not so great for those long dungeon crawls when the warmth of a bonfire is far from sight…

Grant

Arguably the sexiest hammer in Dark Souls.  This baby does modest physical and magic damage and has the divine effect to boot, meaning those pesky skeletons in the catacombs will sit down for good — or what’s left of them anyway.  If that weren’t enough, it has great stat scaling for both STR and DEX.  This is basically the be all end all weapon for FAITH-based knights.  Hell, it’s reason enough to make a FAITH-based knight.

Crystal Ring Shield

Well technically, a shield is not a weapon.  Technically.  But this shield is definitely a weapon.  Instead of a parry animation, the L2 trigger sends out a long range attack that is quite devastating.  It appears that the strength of the projectile is based on that of your right hand weapon, meaning the stronger you are, the stronger the shield is.  Sadly, this shield has been deemed worthy of nerf-itude, and that is precisely what From Software will be doing in the upcoming Dark Souls 1.04/1.05 patch.  Enjoy it while you can!

Claymore

The humble claymore is one of my favorite common to rare weapons.  There is only one in the game, but it beautifully accepts any and all upgrades.  You can end up with a strong fire effect, or high INT scaling if enchanted.  But my favorite feature is the sword’s R2 attack, which is powerful and has a long thrusting reach.

Quelaag’s Furysword

Of all the weapons I’ve mentioned so far, this one is the sexiest (Avelyn comes close though, sorry Zeus).  While it may not be the strongest in terms of raw damage, it has a high fire damage value.  Being a chaos weapon, it also scales with the users humanity, meaning you can buff higher than its base stats.  Being one of the first fire weapons available, and having healthy DEX stat scaling make this the weapon of choice for many players.

These are just a few key weapons to watch for.  I absolutely encourage everyone to experiment with the different upgrades and move-sets for as many weapons as you can.  Once you find the perfect combination to suit your character’s stats and your own playstyle, you’ll be kicking hollows and taking souls.

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Of Digital Vanity And Inefficiency

By Roy | Published: November 11, 2011

Oh, simple Sandles, you’re doing it wrong.

When the power came flooding back into my world this past weekend, I sat down to play Dark Souls with a newfound lucidity.  I become distinctly aware of an issue I have when playing any game in which I control a lone digital avatar: an inefficient focus on appearance.  By inefficient, I mean that by focusing on my character’s appearance, I actually increase the game’s difficulty for myself.  My vain accomplishments span several titles, and now, I will share them with you so you may gawk into them dumbly like a vagrant gazing into the sun.

Dark Souls

This is easily the most recent example, therefore the most relevant.  In Dark Souls there are several factors to consider when choosing what armor to wear.  What kind of defense does it provide?  There is magical damage, elemental damage, and even status effects, all of which can be altered by your armor.  How much does it weight?  A suit of plate mail is obviously going to weight you down more than some light, breezy thief’s gear.  Depending on your equip-load and Endurance, heavy clothing can actually begin to have an effect on your character’s movement.  And finally, how does it look.  Does it make you look like a chewed up hollow, or a cunning witch?  Obviously, the last feature is the most important.

This leads to my story.  You see, there was this helmet I wanted badly, called the Fang Boar Helm.  It offers incredible defenses at a rather hefty weight.  It also looks badass, essentially giving your character a gleaming metal boar mask.  Here’s the kicker: the drop rate is shit, and it’s only dropped from a boss (which does NOT respawn) encountered relatively early in the game.  In the process of wrapping my mind around Dark Souls I probably made around ten characters, all of which slayed said boss.  Not a single Fang Boar Helm was dropped.  But I wanted it.  I wanted it bad.  So what did I do?  I preceded to repeat the process of racing to the boss, killing it, and deleting the file if I didn’t get the helm.  I don’t know how many times I did this, but finally, bless that boss’s enormous black heart, he dropped that fucking helm.  It was a good feeling, and 40 hours in, I still revolve my outfit and weaponry around that helm.

Monster Hunter

There was a time when I wasn’t the Monster Hunting expert I am today.  I was a noobie, just like we’ve all been at one time or another.  In the early stages of Monster Hunter Tri my grasp on the armor skill system was flimsy, so I saw no issue in simply wearing a mish-mash of whatever armor was on hand.  I took to arranging armor and trying to coordinate them to make my character look how I wanted.  Despite being a female avatar, I hated armor sets that had a huge, bell-shaped dress look.  So I generally dismantled those in favor of belts or some kind of chaps.

Finally, a seasoned veteran of the series took me aside via Twitter and explained that this was a noobie mistake.  You see, armor sets should consist entirely from the same monster so that each piece’s armor skill points can accumulate, unlocking extremely beneficial skills for the player.  I was taken aback by this.  Playing dress-up was a huge draw for me, but now it was something I needed to avoid.  Still, I played on and eventually learned to combine my love of Monster Hunter dress-up with the game’s armor skills system.  The end result was several armor sets that not only were stylish, but had beneficial armor skills for certain situations.  This accomplishment would probably never have come to fruition without a thorough web-based armor generator and a collection of videos showing off what each set looks like.

Fallout: New Vegas

To say I was inordinately excited for Fallout: New Vegas is easily an understatement.  I went to the midnight launch, was one of the first in line, and stayed up to make my character before going to bed.  That is all on the schedule of a full time employed, 9-5 wage slave, mind you.  It took me at least an hour or so to adjust all the various sliders to make my character’s face acceptable by my standards.  Then, I was set free on the Mojave wasteland.

This brings us to, what I like to call,  the helm dilemma.  You’ve all experienced it I’m sure in numerous other games.  What it basically entails is that by beginning a game you are prompted to create a character, which you slave over to get just right.  Once you are let go in your sandbox of a world, the best armor you can wear as a headpiece covers up your face essentially negating your efforts.  This was, for the most part, the case in Fallout: New Vegas.  However, I did fall in love with one particular piece of headgear which, while offering very little protection, looked comfortable to don under the Mojave sun.  It was a simple light scarf wrapped around the head.

Now you may notice there are two varieties of the same item if you followed that link.  I am not concerned with the one that resembles, for lack of a better term, a doo-rag — I’m talking about the one that looks like a scarf.  If you look at locations where they can be found, you may also notice that either type isn’t guaranteed to show up anywhere, meaning a bit of luck is required when the game randomly generates which type is on which corpse/soon-to-be-corpse.  But with each character I created, I would make my runs scouring the desert for one of these humble scarves.  I would often wear them beyond the point of repair as I never needed to remove them.

Phantom Brave

This example may be somewhat of a mold breaker as you arguably don’t control one character in Phantom Brave (Changebook, haters, look it up).  However, this being NIS’s second attempt at revolutionizing SRPGs, a massive number of features were customizable.  One feature I loved was how you could attach different titles to your characters which would adjust their stats and, best of all, sprite color.  By the end game you can actually jump into the world of a title (similar to the Item World in Disgaea) and increase the stat benefits of a title up to 200%.

Now I have a habit in SRPGs of imagining backstories for my characters.  My Amazonian in particular I decided was a loud, obnoxious alcoholic.  She would bully my Saber Kitty and then pass out on the island under only the shade of a mountain of empty bottles.  Imagine then my astonishment to discover there actually was a “drunk” title.  The only catch was that the drunk title was a hindering one, meaning it actually significantly lowered all stats.  However, and this is a testament to the customization in Phantom Brave, I could enter the item world for the title and boost it up to 200%.  It would just take twice as long.  And it did.  But I got my Drunk Amazon.

So now you know the extent of my digital vanity, or at least a few examples.  I will work harder, and longer, and less efficiently all for the sake of an acceptable digital extension of myself.  Does this need come from a refined sense of style?  Or perhaps it’s an inferiority complex — is a big sword the new red convertible?  That’s probably a topic for another day.  All I know is whatever game I’m playing, I look good.

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Power Is Back

By Roy | Published: November 8, 2011

Last week was a long week.  That is what I tell everyone who asks about the outage I experienced in casual conversation.  I’m generally a laid back guy, but even I was struggling with anger that I desperately wanted to direct at someone.  ”This has to be someone’s fault. Other people have power, why don’t I”, and other statements either raced through my head or hissed between my teeth.

I will attempt to explain to you the 5 stages one goes through when without power for nearly 168 hours.

  • Stage 1: Excitement: This is that stage where you are having fun breaking out candles, flashlights, and blankets.  ”We’re roughing it!” you say.  You are totally fucking clueless at this stage.
  • Stage 2: What Now: It’s been more than 24 hours now, and life outside of your power-less street keeps right on’ a rollin’.  It’s becoming clear you somehow need to still do things like go to work, feed and bathe yourself, wash clothes.  Things that hinge on power.  Annoyance is setting in.
  • Stage 3:  I’m Tired: Going on 48+ hours now.  Any quaintness you appreciated about your new lifestyle has dried up.  It has been replaced with exhaustion.  You’ve thrown away everything in your fridge but you still gag from the smell when you open it.  You eat at diners or anywhere that has power and is open.  Soon your skin smells like deep-frying-diner oil.  You feel fucking gross. All. The. Time.
  • Stage 4: Vagrancy: Like a moth, you move to where there is light: malls, hotels, anywhere civilization still clings.  When you have access to the internet at cafes or restaurants you look up YouTube videos of other people playing video games.  Maybe you can escape the cold and the dark…
  • Stage 5: Hollow: No, you can’t escape it.  You charge your phone and laptop at work.  They know you at the diner down the street.  You wake up and put on as many layers as you can, often the same as you did yesterday.  Sometimes, you just stare. At nothing.  You don’t know what do with yourself and you anger easily.  You are convinced that this is how you will die.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up: the 5 stages of a week without electricity, heat, or hot water.  To make this post a little happier, I will explain the stages you go through once power returns:

  • Stage 1: ELATION: The man who smokes cigarettes outside the apartment complex told me the power came back.  I never wanted to kiss another man on the mouth so hard in my life.
  • Stage 2: THE THINGS ARE BACK: Hot water!  I can wash my hands without turning them to icicles!  I can go to the bathroom without a flashlight!  I can take a shower!  I can wash clothes!  I can cook my own food!
  • Stage 3: Rebuilding: Everything is back where it belongs, you’ve taken a shower and vacuumed — hell the apartment looks better than it did before.  Time to crawl back into your routine with a new found appreciation for damn near everything.

So there you have it.  That is the extremely truncated cycle of what I went through.  I hope you never have to do the same, because… it was a long week.

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