August 2, 2008

Rapid Fire Ramblings: IoTMs, Digital Devil Saga, Shut Up and Explode, Sparklewhispers, the DnD Product Line, Expensive Electronics

Let’s start with IoTMs, shall we? First off, the KoL item, the Cotton Candy Carnie. Now, when I read what this did, Potato + Whelp, I was very excited just by that! Could it be? My two favorite familiar effects in one? There was no hesitation snapping it up. I was kinda sad when it was a Carnie, though. It makes sense, however. I just finished a run and started a 100% Hardcore Disco Bandit (For Advanced Cocktailcrafting) with him, and already I think he could easily be one of my favorite familiars. He potatoes, as advertised. He gives HP and MP at the end of battle, Whelp-style, as advertised. However, when you’re mostly full on HP and MP, he instead gives you healing items to use later, which is an awesome little tweak to make him even more awesome. He’s currently named Homespun, but I’m looking for a better name… it is kinda growing on me, though… anyway, I’m real excited to see how he plays out over the course of this run. I’m also looking forward to hopefully having a few less turns to play this run, due to the Hardcore nature. I’m feeling kinda burnt out, especially since I want to play Digital Devil Saga (which I’ll get to later).
I also want to make a quick note about my 100% Star Starfish run I just finished. I see why he’s one of the best non-IoTM familiars. I was overflowing with MP the whole run.

Over in Twilight Heroes, the IoTM is Wolly’s Index. This is… not a very exciting IoTM. No in-game content, just a really powerful effect. I normally pass up IoTMs like this, because I’m not interested in pure power. However, I picked this one up. Why? Well, because I have, over the past months, become a dedicated farmer. If that’s really what I’m going to do until new content hits, I might as well work to be the best at it I possibly can be. And that means picking up all relevant farming gear. +20% Item Drops is insanely relevant, since the highest accessory other than it is only +10%. (Well, and the Hero’s Cape, but me getting one of those isn’t happening, unless I can go back in time and convince earlier me to buy one.) So I picked one up, and I’m going to do my best to get one for investment, too, cause it will eventually be in high demand. I’m also kind of pleased that this sort of… well, I might be reading too much into it, but this sort of suggests that Ryme is dedicated to giving a Hero’s Cape equivalent to the playerbase every year (Well, with weaker effects than the MP regen, but that’s perfectly fine) which I kinda agree with. (though I was admittedly hoping for a permanent cape-type something in the Wok of Stars. Everyone wants a cape, right? Even if it’s not as badass as the Hero’s Cape?) It gives two benefits, one being that the Hero’s Cape is, by far, the most powerful IoTM, and it keeps everyone on a near level playing field while not forcing him to come up with something else that might surpass it. The other is that it had to be crazy easy on Ryme to make this IoTM. Especially after all the programming that had to be done on the plaid couch, I’m glad he could take a break and still please people. I think 1 month of break out of the year is a good idea. Don’t want him getting burned out!

So I’ve been playing Digital Devil Saga, since I picked it up from Rei since he’s, I dunno, liquidating everything he owns to get to PAX. Talking Time and Persona 3 also have gotten me all… in love with MegaTen, so I’m kinda slowly but surely picking up what I missed during the PS2 era. This game is a decent bit different from other MegaTen games, because there’s no recruiting demons and fusing them. Instead, each character is a demon, and then can take on “Mantras,” which correspond to various easily recognizable MegaTen demons stuff, and teach them their skills. Then each character has a growing number of slots to equip moves, and passive bonuses, and stuff that they learn from these Mantras Final Fantasy Fiveishly. (Though instead of equipping two categories of movies, you equip a certain number of moves total) It’s been a lot of fun, and I’ve been enjoying it, and am going to play more of it after I finish this long overdue huge-ass blogpost. I hope I beat it. It seems shorter than other games in the series (which I consider a benefit) which seems to be because there’s a “Digital Devil Saga Part 2” out there, which I may pick up if I beat this one. Anyway, it’s something to keep me happily distracted until the more awesome DS games come out in September. This and the upcoming cornucopia of awesome XBLA releases should keep me happy.

So Talking Time was talking about this anime called Xam’d: Lost Memories. They then linked to the opening, which I watched. The music was awesome and it looked interesting! So I grabbed the first couple of episodes and tried them… and really didn’t like it. But man, that song was awesome. So I looked up the band, which is called Boom Boom Satellites. They’re a JRock band with one album, and honestly, the whole thing is listen-able to me, which is very rare. There’s much better music out there? They’re not going to become one of my favorite bands? But they’re pretty good. Feel free to try them.

Last night, we had out first session of Essner’s campaign. Impressions! He did quite well for his first time, I think. HIs encounters were a little weak, but I think everyone but Jonathan wasn’t expecting “Sten the Potent” to fucking murder everyone with his trusty knife, The Stabernackle, quite as much as he did. I enjoyed playing Warlord, as I expected. It’s a pretty great class! Commander’s Strike is just a lot of fun, and I still get to heal with Inspiring Word (and now, Aid the Injured, my level 2 Utility power) and… yeah. I really like the class. I think we are going to have a crazy amount of healing, though, since Spaeth is making a Healing-focued Pally while multi-classing Cleric. If I had to make some comments, I’d make the comment that Essner was railroading us quite a bit. Do I do that? I don’t know. I try to come up with situations where they can’t help but get into my battles, but I don’t like… tell them to do this or that… but who knows, I probably do. I felt very railroaded. It didn’t really impact the fun for me, though, until he didn’t let Rachael yell at the asshole at the end and give her a piece of her mind… but eh, even then it wasn’t too much of a big deal, and I can only assume he’ll take what he learned into his next session. I’m eager to play again. Of course, that means I need to do more scheduling. Ugh. Worst part of this, let me tell you.

Before the DnD session the other day, though, we went to Champions Games, (Man, I think that’s the name. I’m doubting myself now. Something like that.) the game store run by a cool guy I used to work with named Shane. I really hope he manages to make the store work, cause it’s much closer to what a game store should be than the bleh places that always fail around here… but Cape is just incapable of keeping a game store going, so who knows. But we went in there and bought more little DnD miniatures, because they’re pretty neat and because I’m much more comfortable getting them in the little theme bags for decent prices he has them in. I got a bag of Soldiers, mostly because there were these two bad-ass guys with tower shields, and this long-haired maybe -female letting out a battle cry and holding a flag, which I thought was very badass, and I wanted to represent Rachael Sparklewhisper. I also got the bag of Lycanthropes for Essner. Essner got a random box (cause he’s weird and likes random better. There were a ton of miniatures in the box! But it cost more than my two focused bags of stuff, so I’m not planning on ever getting one) and a bag of goblins, cause we fought some goblins last night and wanted them to use. Anyway, they’re all cool, but I do think we’re quickly approaching the like… threshold of how many we’d ever need. Which makes me wonder what I’d buy when I go in there after that. Cause I want to buy things and help Shane out, but if I don’t need anything? Who knows.
Anyway, while I was there, he had all these little sheets to preorder various roleplaying books that were coming out, and I noticed a DnD 4th Edition supplement I didn’t know was coming, which is Martial Power. More ability, feat, and path options? Yes please. I might actually physically pick up a copy of that. (Whereas some other supplements coming I am interested in, but will probably use various… dishonest methods to acquire, such as this upcoming Adventurer’s Vault.) That makes, um, two DnD books I see me buying in the future (The other being the Player’s Handbook 2, for all the other classes, such as Bard, which I want… though I don’t see it on the 2008 release list, which annoys me. Oh well, it says March. Maybe for my birthday) along with the screen thingy, cause it’s not too expensive and I’d rather look at helpful information instead of Dragon Strike information (we’ve been using the Dragon Strike screen. Heh.)

I continue to have strong urges to buy expensive electronics. I was thinking about getting an iPod Touch for awhile, and now I’m all serious about buying an MSI Wind. Mmm… I should probably resist, but… it’s been awhile since I bought a new toy like that. Hmmm… eh, I’ll probably keep resisting. Who knows.

Whew, that was a fucking long one, wasn’t it? And now I’m done, and can play Digital Devil Saga. Huzzah!

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