Okami

That makes a lot more sense now. Thank you. I know where to look for troubleshooting next time I play.

I was not counting mana cost, no. So it’ll just drop modifiers if it doesn’t have enough mana, and still cast the base spell? That does explain some of the behavior I was seeing. I figured it would fail to cast entirely if I didn’t have enough mana for the full block.

One theory I had, if you can confirm, is that shuffle doesn’t just shuffle spells, it shuffles all spell nodes.

So if I have a 4-slot shuffle wand with: PPMP (P = Projectile Spell, M = Modifier)

I was thinking the cast table could either be:

P1 - 33%

P2 - 33%

MP3 - 33%

Or

P1 - 25%

P2 - 25%

MP3 - 25%

P3 - 25%

Depending on whether the modifier block was a valid place for the shuffle to land.

I was planning to try to build some wand experiments to differentiate which of these scenarios is true. Good to know that mana can be a confounding variable.

Edit: Also, is shuffle fully random or does it draw without replacement like a deck of cards until all stored spells are cast and it can recharge? Just thought of this and realized I hadn’t tested for it.

The issue I’ve been trying to work out is getting modifiers to work consistently. My understanding is that modifiers are supposed to stack and affect the next projectile spell to the right, but they either don’t apply at all or will apply sporadically, and I haven’t figured out what rule I’m missing.

I assume some modifiers just don’t work with some projectiles, but the game doesn’t seem to communicate whether this is the case. I also suspect it has something to do with shuffle, as you warned against, but I haven’t been getting any non-shuffle wands for experimentation, and my starter wand doesn’t have much mana to work with.

It doesn’t help that I can only experiment with builds in the airlock chambers between levels.

The specific issue I remember having last night was that I couldn’t get the pentagon shot modifier to apply to any of my projectile spells no matter what I did.

I did get the flametrail modifier working consistently, so I’m doing something right, but I’m not sure what was different between that and the pentagon spread modifier I was trying.

I’ll back up that Civ 4 has been the best entry in the series so far.

Civ 5 is when they dropped unit stacking, which made combat much slower and more finicky since you couldn’t just build up a massive deathball and tear across the map, and Civ 6 doubled down on that design space by tying city upgrades to individual tiles as well. They’re not bad changes, and they do add more strategic depth to the combat and city-building, but they do make an already slow game substantially slower, since combats that used to be done in a turn or two now require several turns of rotating and repositioning units to get them in and out of the fight.

Civ 4 was the last “pure” civ experience, building off and adding to the previous games without sweeping mechanical changes to shake up the meta.

I’ve started and bounced off Noita a couple of times already. It’s been fun but I do need time to dig in and wrap my head around the mechanics.

I’m stuck on wand building at the moment. I’ve watched a couple video guides explaining how it works, but something still isn’t clicking. None of the wands I’m making have worked the way I expect them to, and I’m not sure what I’m not understanding.

I just finished both Borderlands 3 and God of War (2018) so I’m in gaming limbo again.

Leaning toward Stardew Valley, Noita, or finally buckling down to finish Far Cry 3.

I like the smell of ammonia. I use ammonia based cleaners almost exclusively. Bleach smells like nothing to me, like if TV static was a smell.

I dislike strong perfumes, and I hated doing laundry for a long time and would put it off as long as I could before my grandma introduced me to scentless detergent. I don’t use scented dryer sheets either. I shouldn’t be able to smell my clothes after a wash. It’s gag-inducing.

Nope. I can’t even tell the difference between 30Hz and 60Hz unless they’re actually running side by side.

Void Stranger, Chip’s Challenge, and BABA IS YOU are all Sokoban style puzzle games with minimal performance requirements and no need for a mouse.

Siralim Ultimate is a creature collector RPG that will run on a potato and provide endless grinding, if you’re into that.

The Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters of the first six games are all excellent if you’re into JRPGs.

Dungeons of Dredmor if you like rogue-likes, or you could go old-school and pick up NetHack or ADOM.

How much time have you spent being single?

Most of my life. I’ve had two serious relationships and one complicated one, none lasting more than six months. My last relationship ended in late 2019, so it’s been 4.5 years. I’m 33 this year, and have been single for about 31 years total.

If you’re currently single: is it by choice or circumstance?

Bit of both. I choose not to invest my time, money, and energy into pursuing a relationship, but sometimes that choice feels forced because I don’t have enough time, money, or energy to spare for pursuing a relationship. If it happens, it happens, but I’m not proactive about it because I’m focusing on work and my hobbies. If I ever find myself financially stable without working full time I might have time to actively pursue a relationship, but that’s not in the cards right now for my autistic ass. I spend almost all my free time recovering so I can go back to work.

I joined a LARP community and I go to board game and DnD meetups specifically to meet people and keep my social muscles healthy. Hopefully I’ll find a partner in those circles someday, but no luck so far. The unfortunate reality is that every girl I meet is already in a relationship. I have made a lot of friends, so mission accomplished as far as that goes, but the folks who say that joining hobby groups and hanging out with people who share your interests is the best way to find a partner are full of shit.

Finally, both of my serious relationships ended on good terms because my partner felt I did not communicate enough with them, while I felt the amount of communication they were expecting was too much for me to maintain, which made the relationship a source of stress and anxiety for me. We broke it off, and I’m still good friends with one of them. This is a problem with me that I’m not sure how to fix, and it’s very much not conducive to a healthy relationship. I hope I can find a partner who’s comfortable with that some day, but it’s made me leery of jumping into new relationships.

Do you / did you enjoy single life?

No, but I don’t enjoy dating life, either. Life in general is an unending stream of demands, and I never get enough time to stop, breath, and reset. That’s true while I’m single, and it was true while I was dating.

What are / were the pros and cons?

Pros:

• My living space is my own. Everything stays exactly where I left it, and I can decorate as I please.
• I eat when and what I want. I can cook or eat out as I choose. Meals don’t need to be a production, and if I want to stock up and eat the same thing for weeks on end there’s no one to complain about it.
• My time is my own. I can schedule things whenever and I don’t need to coordinate calendars. If I need to travel for work I can drop everything and just go.
• No fucking kids. My niece, nephew, and soon to be 2nd nephew are plenty.

Cons:

• I’m so lonely. So very lonely.
• Porn addiction. I have a high sex drive, no healthy outlet for it, and it’s an easy dopamine hit for stress and anxiety relief.
• Financial stress. I’m barely getting by on a single income.
• Constantly questioning my identity. I think I’m some flavor of aromantic sex-positive asexual, and I suspect I’m bi and/or trans, but I’ve got no partner to explore my own gender and sexuality with. It’s hard to tell how much is real and how much is my mind spinning off the rails with nothing to latch on to.

Is / was partnership a goal of yours?

Yes. I’d like to settle down with a fellow introvert so we can be alone together.

Bunch of games on my Steam wishlist I’m mildly interested in but not willing to pay more than about $10 for, since they’d just wind up sitting in my backlog until I have time to play them. Waiting for a steep sale.

Some of the highlights:

• Cassette Beasts
• Sonic Frontiers
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Dark Souls III

Edit: Didn’t see the “year ago or older” caveat in the title.

I was a child with extensive free time and limited game options. I spent hours mowing grass to grind shells for the machine.

That wasn’t even the worst part. Combing through every NPC looking for the last few kinstone fusions if you missed one was way more annoying.

Minish Cap was my first Zelda. I remember using my allowance to buy the strategy guide back in the day so I could 100% it. Lots of nostalgia there.

I remember having the Batman Forever and Batman Knightfall audio books on cassette back when I was a kid.

I listened to them so many times the voice and cadence of the narrator is permanently burned into my subconscious. I still quote them from time to time without really thinking about it.

The price.

Bought a used '96 Mazda Protégé off a coworker for $700. Ran it into the ground. Scrapped it for $300 when I could finally afford a better car. Definitely got my money’s worth.

I got to learn what driving without power steering felt like after the compressor locked up and the drive belt shredded. Ended up replacing it with a smaller belt just for the power steering since I couldn’t afford to replace the A/C. Drove with the windows down for a few months. Good times.

Nintendo DS. Loved how it felt in my hands.

The DS Lite was too sharp and felt fragile. The 3DS was a gimmick, and the 2DS was the best 3DS version, but lacking folding hurt how portable it was. It never felt right having the screens exposed in my pocket. Losing GBA compatibility was also a deal breaker.

The OG DS was a perfect evolution of the GBA and I will take both of mine to my grave.

Yes. I check the organ donor box when I renew my driver’s license. If I’m in an accident then I don’t need 'em anymore. Let someone else use 'em.

But there’s no sense crying after every mistake.

You just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake.

CHLOE YES!

My last foray into Linux gaming was back in the early-2010s, and I was mostly just trying to get EVE Online to run unsuccessfully. I was running a laptop that was top if the line (in 2009) and my PCs were cobbled together from old Dells and HPs donated by family and friends or retired and given away by my company IT team.

Steam on Linux was nice, and would show you which games in your library had Linux native versions to install. I held out on that and browser gamed for a while. Played a lot of Runescape and Minecraft. Taught myself to code a bit, but didn’t really get anywhere with that.

Eventually I had money and time to put together a “proper” gaming PC, and of course I put Windows on it since I wanted to get an NVidia graphics card as I’d had so much trouble with the AMD drivers on my laptop.

Ran Windows for gaming and kept Linux on the laptop since then. First PC ran Win7, which i loved. Next one ran Win 8, which I hated. Current one was running Win 10, which was meh, and I’ve only soured on it over time. Made the switch back to Linux last week after I got tired of M$ constantly asking me if I want to try Copilot on /both/ my work and personal PCs.

Proton is fucking great. Never going back. The old laptop is still running strong after 15 years. It’s got BunsenLabs installed at the moment.