You're going to need a better eye for asset flips. It's too easy to dilute the meaning of the term if you're going to start including the likes of Palworld.
It’s good but as a fan of survival games like Minecraft, Rust, Valheim and Grounded it leaves a lot to be desired in that aspect of the game. It feels really early access (which yeah I guess it is so I’ll concede on that) and feature non-complete. With that being said, I’m still coming back to it and enjoying it.
P.S. I’m also on gamepass and have sunk a few hours into cloud gaming as well and it’s pretty good. As soon as Microsoft start adding something like native upscaling to xbox cloud gaming they’re gonna be on a whole other level of playability.
The gameplay is very good up until level 40 and is definitely one of the more complete early access games.
So far I have not encountered any game breaking bugs, but the game itself does have tons of jank.
Now I am currently level 47, and can say that leveling from 40 to 50 is a hella grind and takes a lot of time and resources. Mainly time, as getting end game pokeballs takes a massive amount of resources that only pals can harvest, process, and then craft.
Also, the end game bosses are quite beefy and hit like a truck.
For what it’s worth, if you customize the difficulty of your game (which you can do at any point, including after reaching the 40s), you can change most things, including resource drop rates and how much effort it takes to mine them, xp rates, Pal encounter rates, capture rates, etc.
I had a similar experience as you; by the time I hit 42 or so, I had the capture power maxed out, and most eggs were not giving me anything interesting, and I had the whole map revealed, so exploring had lost its luster and I was not enjoying the thought of grinding out another 6-8 levels to start being able to tackle some of the harder challenges in the game; I set the XP rate to x4, and doubled the resource rates, and it pretty much solved the problem for me.
Obviously if you’re playing on a server this isn’t an option, but if it’s just your own single player game, consider trying it; you might find some settings that smooth it out for you.
If you build a base on/near a bunch of ore nodes and dedicate it entirely to mining your pals will mine it for you and it respawns daily (passive ore generation ftw!!!)
There is a fairly nice base location near the center of the map that has ~6 coal and ~6 ore nodes, and is on a plateau making it functionally immune to NPC raids. I found it completely accidentally; there’s the 3 wildlife sanctuaries around the outside of the map and they all face inward at different angles, so I was trying to triangulate where they were “pointing” to see if it was leading somewhere. Turns out it was leading to a sweet base location.
This is noteworthy because there’s 4 resources (ore, coal, sulfur and quartz), so you need a base with access to 2 of them if you want to have all 4 generating passively.
For end game, how do you think the spheres feel? Cause I swear to god the ultra and legend spheres have bugged capture rates; no way I am getting the percentages those things advertise.
Lol, I know what you mean. Those legendary spheres say like 80-90% but it feels like a coin flip most of the time. I have had so many fail at like 95%.
I've got a feeling that the legal issues, even if they're in the clear, are going to pose a lot of problems for the longevity of the game. But, I'm really hopeful that this sparks inspiration for other devs to take on the monster collecting genre. Pokemon has dominated that space for so long that they practically define the genre at this point, so it'll be nice to see new monster collectors come out with their own unique styles.
So far Pocketpair has been VERY careful about actually infringing on copyright or trademarks. People smarter than I am are pretty certain that if Nintendo or the Pokemon Company could take legal action against the game as it is, they would have already. The important things to note are that you cannot copyright an art style and you cannot copyright or patent game mechanics. And even if things were touch and go, the gameplay loop of adding survival elements and an emphasis on cooperative guild base management is pretty transformative compared to Pokemon games. So as long as they avoid adding pals that are so close to their Pokemon counterparts that they don’t pass the squint test they will be alright.
While all of that appears to be true, that doesn't mean Nintendo/TPC aren't able to make this small studio's lives a nightmare if they wanted. I have a feeling that the level of scrutiny the studio will be under from now on is going to inhibit any real innovation, as they're already walking a very fine line as it is.
It's also worth noting that they're both Japanese companies, and Japan has different views on IP than the rest of the world. I don't really know enough to go into detail, but it's entirely possible something a company from the US could laugh off is enough to get action taken in Japan.
Agreed, all of the ‘drama’ surrounding this possible copyright case is largely created by youtubers and tiktokers for views.
That said, Nintendo WILL probably sue but as a formality to protect their brand, and will gracefully pay Pocket Pair’s legal fees as a cost of business once the court rules in Pocket Pair’s favor to keep their copyrights from lapsing to generic use. It’s not uncommon.
Not doing that is how Bayer lost the copyright for ‘Asprin’ in the U.S.
Now if a ton of people refer to Pals as Pokemon the same way people refer to all tissues as Kleenex, THEN they might legitimately run the risk of losing their copyright and will pursue aggressively but I don’t see that happening.
There is no legal issue, Nintendo is suing as a formality to protect their existing copyrights. They’ll be ruled against and shrug their shoulders and pay Pocket Pair’s legal fees because that is a much better business decision than risking losing their copyright to their existing creatures.
If they don’t aggressively protect their copyright, the JCO might just rule that they have become generic and common use like how Bayer lost the trademarked name ‘Asprin’ in the U.S. when it was considered common use and Bayer did not pursue it aggressively.
But that doesn’t make good youtube poop or memes so you probably think this is some kind of hotly contested hullabaloo because of where you are getting your info from.
I read it was Pokémon like and wrote it off. I’ve tried to but never enjoyed Pokémon. I grew up on jrpg’s so you’d think that was right up my alley. But I disgress…
The comments here paint a more complex story. It honestly still doesn’t seem like my type of game, but my curiosity is piqued. I’ll check it out.
YouTube kept recommending Fallout: New Vegas videos, so I’ve been doing a mostly bee-nice NCR run. Did main quest up to the dam, currently working my way through Honest Hearts (did Old World Blues super early for the implants).
Still trying to finish Pillars of Eternity. The level scaling is all sorts of weird with the White March content. The game's original level cap was 12, I think, and I'm there now, close to 13. Since both your to-hit chance and all of your defense stats are significantly affected by leveling up, some areas are ridiculously easy, and a few areas are ridiculously hard. I can waltz through the majority of combat encounters and then end up in one where all of their magic casters immediately stun/paralyze me or knock me down for about 10 seconds straight, rendering me completely unable to defend myself, and the fight ends poorly in hardly any time at all. And what sucks is that I know it'll be a cakewalk if I come back and do this fight in like 2 levels, because enough of my party will survive the dice rolls that lead to characters being paralyzed for so long, so that I can properly respond and keep my party alive. I hope they adjusted this stuff in the sequel, which I do intend to start right after I finish this game.
I also picked up Tekken 8. I have historically not been a Tekken fan. The movement is weird, and the characters feel like they all do kind of the same thing, which takes a lot of the fun out of a fighting game where you get to select a character. At least it's a full package. I went through the arcade story mode, which is a much-needed tutorial after the complete lack of any such thing in Tekken 7. The cinematic storyline, which I haven't finished yet, seems to have gotten rid of the biggest problem with Tekken 7's story mode, which was that narrator who made the craziest anime nonsense seem boring. And as for the character stuff, the Heat system does add in a pinch of flavor that incentivizes you to do something somewhat unique with your character in order to stay in Heat mode longer; for instance, if I'm playing King, doing his powerful grab moves will extend his Heat meter, which means it's rewarding you for playing him the way he ought to be at his coolest. We'll see how that goes. Unfortunately, the online mode has been a no-go. There's a problem right now where playing the game through Proton just results in a lot of disconnects, so I've hardly been able to finish a match, and I likely won't try again until I see some patch notes acknowledging that they've fixed the issue, either on Bandai-Namco's side or Valve's side or both.
Diablo 3: Season 30 - Already working on the Destroyer chapter.
Alan Wake 2 - I'm trying to be extra careful because I know there's a few extra things in ng+, and I'm starting to have a lot of questions about a couple loose ends that also showed up in the first playthrough. I'm hoping maybe the ng+ ending will explain some of them. I'm only a few chapters away from the end, so I'm hoping I finish it in the next 2 or 3 days.
Diablo 4: Season 3 - Chose a Barbarian for this round. Not sure I like my current build, but I'm hoping once I get some more legendary items I can look into a better one. I like the "story" for this season a lot better than last season's, but that might be because Zoltun Kulle is one of my favorite Diablo 3 characters. My lil construct companion is kinda kickin' ass too. Just wish it would also pick up gold for me lol. As far as the season journey goes, I'm glad they took out the PvP objectives. I actually feel like I might be able to get all of them done this season.
It’s weird that D4 doesn’t have this yet. Not just talking about the season companion, but in general. Maybe they’re still trying to be a more serious game, and having a tiny Butcher running behind you would be too silly. In a few seasons, once they put the Horadric Hamburger in the shop, they’ll hopefully also add vanity pets.
If they are planning to I imagine they're waiting a little bit to introduce them. I try not to compare the two games too much, but iirc it was a few years before D3 even got pets.
If they're not planning on it, at the very least increasing the pickup radius would be nice, since it's fairly small as it stands now.
New Diablo 4 season started, so I'm playing that. I'm a Barbarian this time, level 80, trying out a Thorns build.
The beginning was extremely boring, and I was thinking about stopping altogether or switching characters, but after I got some items, it became less miserable.
As for the new season mechanic, it's kinda whatever. It's not as bad as I thought, but last season was definitely more fun.
Oh man, you may regret that work order. Incoming cliff face of (hopefully) -Well-Crafted- engravings:
So I’m redoing an old project where I turned a volcano into an obsidian caster and casted a 20z level solid obsidian fortress with the lava tube at the center. Reddit ate the original post and I can’t find the original files anywhere.
My original was chef’s kiss perfect embark, 3 biomes haunted forest, mirthful grass, and wild forest, a brook running right by the volcano. This time wasn’t so lucky, it’s just a Mirthful forest but the need for a Haunted biome was covered by the fact that I am in range of a Tower (more later). This embark also has Humans, Elves, and Goblins as neighbors, my original was a super evil world where only goblins and kobolds existed, so I guess that’s an upgrade.
My first task was to strip the volcano of trees and bushes, and setup my temporary fort where everyone will live til the casting is complete, and underneath that began digging out my water reservoir. The process is ridiculously water intensive and brook tiles refill so slowly that I’m going to need to literally just let it run while I sleep so the reservoir refills.
My next steps (tomorrow night) is to complete the reservoir and start filling it while I build a giant 4 lane water pump stack and build a huge faucet emptying in the middle of the lava tube. This will turn the middle blocks to obsidian and drop them down to the destructive surface at the bottom of the magma tube, draining it. I have to be careful on this, too much water will plug the tube and that is a MAJOR pain to clean out. Once I’ve drained the lava tube down below the level of the 1st cavern, I will build 2 double magma pumpstack and 2 double water pumpstack columns running up the middle of the fort.
The idea is to provide both RED HOT MAGMA and water to every floor without taking up the main floorspace.
Once that is complete, with the lava tube still drained, I will dig out the mountain leaving pillars at every level and hollow out belowground the radius of my fort down to 1 Z above cavern layer 1 and that will be the first floor of my obsidian casting.
As I’ve (hopefully) improved my casting process, my previous limited size (the limiting factor was that drawbridges are max 10x10 and need at least 1 anchor) of about 18x18 walls around a 38x38 lava tube should no longer be an issue and I BELIEVE that with my new style of caster that I can make arbitrarily large obsidian slabs.
My original caster had 2 levels of drawbridges surrounding the lava tube, the bottom filled with lava spilling out from the Z level of the volcano top (volcanoes in DF are weird), and the top drawbridge structure held water pumped up from a reservoir below.
Each level looked like the top of a crenelated tower, I don’t have the pics anymore so it’s hard to explain. It was cool but very very small.
My new caster is the above mockup, delivering 4x lava and water stacks straight into the casting area and allowed to spread out, unlike my original model which was filled then dropped all at once. This is how I am hoping to make larger slabs as the water pours out over a sea of 5-6 high lava at the casting floor. It may not work, this is experimental and I may have to go in after each cast and manually fill in a few gaps but the benefit of making very large slabs is worth the extra annoyance.
Once I’ve casted enough levels to about 20z above ground, I disassemble the mould used to hold in the lava and start digging my lava moat. In my original version the moat just drained off the map above 3z deep, and was a risk for lava-safe intruders so now it’s all going to be recycled through the pumpstack system leaving just enough lava in the moat to deal with sieges.
When it is all said and done, this fort should be a lava defended obsidian monolith where every surface is carved with the story of my people. It will be my greatest work to date and I can’t wait to see what I learn building it.
The Need for Necromancers
It is critical to my fort to have a pit of undead butchered animal parts for my archers to practice on, and in my original fort the animation force was the part of my fort in the Haunted biome, and it worked so much better than trying to convince militadwarfs to train archery. Nowadays we have necromancers, so I plan on capturing a necro from a raid and walling him in to a little booth where I can lift a lever and let him see the corpse target pile, reanimate them, then get shuttered again till my crossbowdwarfs finish the random pile of torsos and intestines wobbling about.
Lol don’t call it ☼Masterful☼ till it works! I could be very mistaken about lava flows here though I hope to post my updates to lemmy so we can all see how it goes together.
My inspiration was, in a roundabout way,: how to find a FUN way to dispose of kings who keep making insane crafting requests like weapons made out of soap. I envisioned a room suspended over a lava tube with a hanging pillar holding it up and drawbridges providing access. If the king got silly I could pop the pillar and drop his whole royal suite into the tube.
And of course I had to keep his subjects near him so I built the fort into the volcano side but I was annoyed about how irregular the floor size and mineral patterns were. I had just learned about obsidian casting in industrial quantities (the reason for the initial volcano embark) so as I was playing the thought kept coming back: 'Well, obsidian is a really valuable mineral when carved, and obsidian mechanisms are an amazing trade good, so… what if I made a whole fort out of obsidian?
So I tried that with that existing fort, not a fancy fort with a lava tube, more like just a giant cube of solid obsidian cast off to the side from the volcano.
It worked magnificently! The rooms were all lavish with just bare stones engraved, and I had unlimited material for stonework and mechanisms.
Smiling in satisfaction I said “This is cool… but it could be cooler.”
And that’s when I came up with my ‘volcano base with a live active lava tube in the middle’.
The original took about three months of damn near every moment I wasn’t working or sleeping, hopefully my experience since then will cut that time down a bit.
I’m really excited to see how this goes, and can’t wait to share my updates.
Fun Fact: If you dig out each floor and drop them all at once, the game registers the internal hollowed out tube as being ‘outside’, meaning even after you cast the obsidian tower, all internal areas are considered in sunlight, so your dwarves never get sunlight sickness when defending raids and you can grow aboveground crops in the safety of your mountain home.
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