The Friendly Necromancer

So, as I predicted, once my kids saw me playing Wildstar, they'd be all over it. The big surprise though? My daughter REALLY digs it . . . the art style especially. Here's her:

Combat is a little challenging in this game. It involves a lot of swirling around the target and keeping them in a telegraphed field from your character, which can be interesting also given mob density. It's a lot of button mashing, strafing, and dodging while keeping track of where everything else is around you. It's not the easiest system to master, but it can also be a lot of fun. :)

The hilarious moment from yesterday, was when my daughter was certain there was a giant boss mob she needed to defeat for a quest. I was watching her play while she struggled with the controls, and she finally managed to down it with the help of a higher level player (after being defeated several times--obviously tuned for a small group), but it still didn't complete the quest. I made her click on the quest, which brings up a quest arrow pointing you to the right location. She was determined that it was the right boss, but nope . . . wrong boss. LOL!

I'm just happy to see her enjoy playing a video game again.

~~

So, as you can tell, I didn't get a lot of playtime on Wildstar because everyone in the family was taking turns, but I did manage to make it to level 14 and check out player housing. WOW! I really, really love some of the features of their player housing. It looks like a fun system to play with. More on that some other day.

~~

Side note, I managed to get to Chapter 7 in my new quest to finish Final Fantasy 13. Unfortunately my game started acting really buggy and would actually crash my PS3. Egads. I blew out the dust from the unit, did a system update, and said several nice words to it while petting it softly (I'm sure this helps), but the PS3 refused to cooperate.

I'm going to roll back a few save files and try it again. I don't know . . . part of me thinks maybe I have a corrupted save file, but I have no idea why that would make the game act the way it was acting. Worth a shot I suppose. I did a search on the net, and apparently, this is a bug many people have run into. It's weird though since before I was all the way up to chapter 12/13 area. *shrug* I WILL FIND A WAY! EVEN IF IT REQUIRES BUYING THE PC VERSION!

~~

I hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend! Let me know what's up in the comments below.

Happy Dueling!

Hey all! I hope you had a fantastic weekend! I decided to really give *personal* Twitch streaming a go over the weekend (as opposed to the KI Live Twitch stream) and hosted a couple of play sessions on Friday and Saturday.

If you'd like to see the entire broadcasts, I've marked them both as highlights:

First Wildstar stream
First Pirate101 stream

Out of the two, the Pirate101 stream was probably the most fun and definitely the longest. We streamed on Saturday for about four hours. My boys were dancing around and having fun (and even I got into the dancing), and the people in the chat room really made it a great experience for them.

#KyleisAwesome

If you don't have four hours to watch the entire Pirate101 stream rebroadcast, I did snag a few highlights from the stream:

Monkey Trust Hugs
The Markiplier Story / Ron Perlman hype
Kyle Skystaff Takes Over the Stream

It was a lot of fun to play with everyone, and Vanessa showed the patience of a saint. ;)

It may not seem like much to the outside observer, but this was pretty huge for me. It took a lot of talking to myself to JUST DO IT! I guess I just finally accepted that my house is a recipe for a trainwreck Twitch Stream . . . and that's ok! Hopefully I'll get a chance to practice more and really get "my style" down.

It sounds like I need to get NightBot for my channel.

~~

SUNDAY NIGHT GAME

The crew decided to get back into DC Universe Online for a bit, so I resubbed for the month and got a few upgrades in the new content. A few things have changed with how loot is distributed, and it seems better--you get a choice between a couple of drops now after big bosses.

I thought about streaming the Sunday Night game and then I realized that my dear friends can sometimes have quite the mouth on them, and I want to keep my Twitch stream appropriate for younger audiences . . . so that's out!

Blighted Redeemer and myself decided to try one the easiest of the new duos, and then the rest of the group played a bit in a four person instance while I sat out. I took advantage of this time to clean out my inventory, try out the new daily solo content, and get reacquainted with the controls. (I also PvP'd Spode between their instances to the tune of 5-0 *flex* and took him down a notch despite my lack of CR. That's always a good time!)

Then I tried the new Zamaron duo because I had hit 113 CR. It was tough, but myself and a random 121 CR stranger managed to finish up the instance and take home the loot. I ended up CR 116 for the night, and just like the guys were saying: it looks like grinding that Zamaron Duo a few times is really the way to go if you want to bring your CR up.

So . . . Looks like we're back in DCUO for a bit on Sunday Nights!

~~

Hope you all have a great week and thanks to those who came to my streams to cheer me on! We'll do it again some other time.

Happy Dueling

Heya all!

I just wanted to check in and let you all know what's been going down with TFN. October has already started off super busy, and it doesn't look to be slowing down anytime soon. Who's excited for Halloween!? *raises hand*

Here's what's been going on the past week or two:

REALMSCON

Those who were following along with my Twitter account were able to see a few fun things from the presentation that I tweeted out as it was happening. Of particular interest was this cool concept of Darkmoor weapons that MMO Team Lead Designer, Nathan Sumison, put up on the screen during his presentation about what all went into designing Darkmoor.

As soon as I put out that picture, I had a ton of tweets asking for the bow weapon. ;) I went ahead and interrupted the presentation to let Nathan know . . . THE BOW IS AMAZING!

Jeff and Gary also gave great presentations! I said my two cents as well. ;)

As for Realmscon itself, it was every bit as cool as I remembered from a couple years ago. BobaTom was there. (That's when regular Tom sucks in his stomach and acts like a muscle kid next to Boba Fett.)

I was unable to attend last year, but Nathan did, and Realmscon is quickly becoming a yearly trek for our team. Where will we strike next? I was hearing rumors of Wizard World, but it might have just been the crazed ramblings of Jeff Toney. He does that.

THE BEACH

We also took the opportunity to make the Realmscon trip a little family outing for us as well. Port Aransas is simply amazing. Anytime I can put my toes in the water and stare out into the rolling waves, I'm good.

The beaches are clean and the place we stayed at was stellar! (Except for the chilling pool water . . . it was much colder than the surf.)

More like SUNrise and destroy, AMIRITE?!

TWITCH

Well, we had some fun in September, didn't we? I made a few highlights that are probably worth sharing:

I made amends for my cat hating comments by playing some cat games for Paige.
There's the follower song . . . and then there's the country western version of the follower song.
I actually took a Rogue to 20 in Realm of the Mad God. I must be insane.

Vanessa told me she's been playing another character on the side so we can stay on the same page in Pirate101. ;) Hopefully we can play some more Pirate101 this month. I'd also like to stream some Wizard101, DCUO, GW2, and Wildstar.

CALL OF CHAMPIONS

I think I found a MOBA I actually like!! I played a ton of this on our vacation. Call of Champions is by another Austin studio (A couple of original Pirate101 designers work there now btw) called Spacetime Studios.

Then again, I did just suffer a string of four defeats in a row this morning while I was typing this. LOL. At least matches only last five minutes, and I think that's what I like about this MOBA in particular.

I've been playing a lot as the Avalanche character, but I may switch it up . . . that string of defeats is hurting!

And that's all the news that's fit to print for TFN at the moment. I'm super busy at work . . . so that's always a good sign, right? You know it is!

Happy dueling!

Hey all! I got a great question over Twitter yesterday from the one and only Paige Moonshade.

"Which is your favorite monster on Rise and Destroy?"

So, first . . . yes! Rise & Destroy is out there now available for download WORLDWIDE! Today is the official announcement day (as far as the press release is concerned). I'm super psyched for everyone to get to play this now. It's a tough game, but also a lot of fun. Have some patience and determination and I'm sure you'll make it to the end.

Most everyone else at work is farther along than me right now, so the answer is a bit more complicated . . . because out of the monsters that are currently in my inventory (which is only Trevor Wrecks, Frankie Forearms, and Manny Leggs), I would have to go with . . . TREVOR WRECKS!

I think there's a reason they put him as the first monster in the game . . . versatile, all around good T-Rex monster thing, right?! His roar and breath attack are a good combo that gives him some distance. I'm all about ranged attacks. (You just have to do some extra clicking sometimes to turn off his breath attack sooner than it naturally expires.) Overall, Trevor Wrecks is my guy for wrecking the humans!

HOWEVER, being as I am also the dude responsible for creating all the vines of the Monsters you see on Rise and Destroy's Vine page (we have special commands for unlocking all the monsters and levels in a special version of the game), I have had a chance to play all of the monsters. Hmm, I think stylistically, I'm going to give all the awards to SHARBERUS!

A shark poodle that evolves into a three-headed shark poodle? And that hair??! Guys . . . that's the definition of winning for me! I can't wait to get her in the live game.

Anyway, I hope you all have a chance to play Rise and Destroy this week and check it out. It's a great game that's completely different, yet still has that KingsIsle touch. :) Good times are ahead for KingsIsle's mobile team in 2015-2016.

Happy Dueling!

(Tom and the Dings should be my next band name . . .) You blink your eyes and a month has gone by since your last post. HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN?!

I just wanted to catch you up a bit on my gaming life here and let you know I'm all good . . . I didn't die in a turkey explosion over Thanksgiginv. :)

So, let's talk gaming shall we? We shall! First up . . . Star Wars The Old Republic.

Several weeks back someone from the Marketing team said, let's all play Star Wars together! And surprisingly five of us were like . . . I'm in! Well, it didn't work out so good. Half of us subscribed and half of us didn't, and the disparity in levels caused most to fizzle out and stop playing after a couple of weeks.

I kept playing since I had never really given the game a fair handshake. I mean, I had tried the game, got a few quests into the tutorial, sent a child off to his death as a sith, and said . . . nope nope nope . . . I'm done. It disturbed me, and I didn't want anything to do with the game.

This time I played a good guy making good guy choices, and my experience was much different. This here is Pokétom the level 65 (max level) Smuggler (Scoundrel sub-class) and his wookie companion, Bowdaar. He's a rogue with a heart of gold ala Han Solo. ;)

Oh, he's a joy and a pleasure to look at, my friends. *whistles* Strangely enough he's not wearing his banana pants anymore. (Thank you to my friends who showed up to watch me play SWTOR a few weeks ago over Twitch. The joke is in the link. ;))

Now, as with most MMOs, the "real game" starts when you hit max level, but I'm not heavily invested enough and don't really have the time to build my gear profile and raid and all that, so . . . I'm officially unsubscribed.

I enjoyed my time playing Pokétom to max level, and it was an entertaining story. There were plenty of opportunities for me to make light and dark choices, but I'm definitely a light side of the force type of guy. Between my time in SWTOR and rewatching all the old Star Wars, I will be sufficiently hyped for December 18th when the force awakens and all that. YESH!

~~

Next, I have to talk about Rise and Destroy! I beat level 60!

Wootah! I had so much fun playing Rise and Destroy. I'm still playing it to collect gold and power up my monsters. I was more than happy to provide a couple of play through videos for a couple of my Twitter followers. I don't think I'd spoil all the levels for everyone, and there's more than one way to finish a level, but in case you'd like to check the game out . . . here you go:

I pretty much have to play this game on Bluestacks unfortunately. A few people at my work tell me that's cheating, but listen . . . I can't even play the game on my iPhone 4S. This game is optimized for play on larger and more powerful devices, and I don't have one. I would prefer to play this game on a tablet, but Santa has a long wish list from me and I don't think an iPad is in my near future. ;)

As far as cheap tablet emulators go, I've been pretty happy with my Bluestacks experience. Good stuff as far as I'm concerned.

~~

Finally, let's talk Wizard101!

I'm late to the party here, but Polaris has released and that means Thomas Lionblood's progression to level 110 can begin again. Last night, Thomas Lionblood with the assistance of my Russian buddy, Boris the OP Storm wizard (and his Glowbugs), hit level 101 in Wizard101!

Per standard Wizard101 play, I'd blade up Boris, feint the boss a few times . . and BOOM! Zdravstvuyte to the damage, and do svidaniya to the enemies.

I also got a chance to spend some time as our lady Morganthe.

I loved those fights in the Chamber of the Mind! Those were extremely fun, and I loved playing as Morganthe. Gotta say, my ninja pig healing pet was a super star for me in that final fight. :) Go LADY DEXTER!

I'll be joining you all in Polaris as soon as I can. :)

~~

Hope you're all doing well and having fun with what you're doing. Drop me a note in the comments below and let me know what you've been playing lately and how things are going for you.

Happy Dueling!

Yup, that's one dead rat.

OVERKILL . . . and special thanks goes out to Vanessa Mythdust and Katherine Light of the Mercenaries for Hire for sticking it out, sharing the strat, and killing the rat. At the end of the day it's a pretty simple strat, but also a pretty unforgiving one as well. Vanessa tells me she still needs to update the guide after the addition of the Spinysaur hits and the fact you CAN use a healing pet, but if you're looking for a guide, check it out.

And with that, Polaris is done for Thomas Lionblood. MAN, I REALLY LIKED POLARIS! It wasn't too difficult, had a really fun story, and was pretty, uh, chill. (Sorry for that pun.) I'm putting that as one of my favorite worlds of all time.

We met some solid new enemies like Rasputin and this guy . . . Pit Boss Minak, who you get to take down a couple times.

Beware anyone that offers you green crystal implants, Minak . . . it won't end well . . . even if they look amazing under black lights and everyone wants to dance next to you at the club.

I also took the time to grab my new Winged Sorrow Death spell while I was at it -- livestreamed it in fact! Here's the highlight if you'd like to check it out.

Watch live video from Stingite on Twitch

Not too difficult at all. :)

The new camera pans during dialog in Polaris?! I rate them 10/10 amazing.

Now I need to go back and finish up all my side quests on Thomas and maybe grab a few extra pieces of gear from Darkmoor. THAT, sounds like good Twitch fodder for over the holidays.

Happy Dueling

WOW! I've had a pretty active run on YouTube the past few days. It's like I've hit a creative spark over the holidays here. I've been announcing these over Twitter for the most part, but lemme break it down for you (and catalog it for me) over here on my blog.

Wizard101 Let's Play!

I've started up a new walk through of Wizard101 with Morgrim from the Art of the Warlord. I'm playing as a Balance wizard named Tarlac and she's playing as an Ice wizard named Brecken, and together we are the champions of THE BEETLE!

Episode 1 -- The Beetle Chronicles

Episode 2 -- Saving Alexandria

If you don't have time for the full, unedited walkthrough (interruptions from dogs, children, and all), be sure to catch the highlights on The Art of Warlord's channel.

Episode 1 Highlights

Episode 2 Highlights

The hope is that we make it all the way through the game -- that's a lot of work -- wish us luck!

Top Ten Favorite Death Spells

I just wanted to do a fun YouTube in commentator style and talk about my favorite Death spells. :) Hope you enjoy it.

Y U SO MEAN?!

HAHA! I was over on Twitter and decided to take a song request. Gracebear19 put it out there that I should do a Beiber song since the last "big hit" was about Selena. After all the recording was done, Uber Wife said, you know you should have at least had one part where you showed the Selena statue with the words "Y U So Mean" over it.

DANG IT!!! If I could rewind time, I'd do that for sure.

Here's the full lyrics

Why you so mean?

Ohh ohh

When you block friend requests

And say your friends list is full

Why you so mean?

Hey yeah

When you call us all noobs

And stitch that wig to your hat

Why you so mean?

Ohh

Why you so mean?

You watch my sigil countdown

Why you so mean?

Ohh ohh ohh

Why you so mean?

30 seconds just to discard

Why you so mean?

You're so indecisive what I'm saying

Trying to find the feint, Reshuffle cards

Don't know if you're crappy or good player

Don't want the group to end

Where do I start

First you wanna go quest then train Sprite

Wanna Commons all day, have a Darkmoor night

First your up then you're down and doing Cyrus dry clean

Ohh I really want to know...

Why you so mean

Ohh ohh ohh

When you steal a wooden chest

Because my rental mount was slow

Why you so mean?

Hey yeah

When you want me to tank

But you catch the agro

Why you so mean?

Ohh

Why you so mean?

Watch my sigil countdown

Why you so mean?

Ohh ohh ohh

Why you so mean?

30 seconds just to discard

Why you so mean?

I see you casting Satyr just as I’m fleeing

Trying to tower shield but I can't win

You wanna find a boy but you keep begging

You trade me treasure cards, but won't accept

First you wanna go quest then train Sprite

Wanna Commons all day, have a Darkmoor night

First your up then you're down and doing Cyrus dry clean

Ohh I really want to know...

Why you so mean?

Ohh ohh

When you block friend requests

And say your friends list is full

Why you so mean?

Hey yeah

When you don't want me to blade

But you break all of my traps

Why you so mean?

Ohh

Why you so mean?

You watch my sigil countdown

Why you so mean?

If the creative spark continues, you should be seeing even more YouTube from me! Hit that subscribe button on my channel if you'd like to see more.

Thanks for your time!

Happy Dueling

Hello all! Just going to catch you up on my gaming and whatnot. It's been a couple weeks now, and I hope you're all enjoying 2016!

~~

Wizard101

Brecken and Tarlac! Tarlac and Brecken! We're like peanut butter and jelly these days in Wizard101, friends!

Every five to seven days we've been putting up a new episode of our Wizard101 Let's Play. Which reminds me. I've been getting stuck on whether to call these videos a "walk through", "play through", or "Let's Play."

According to this forum post, it seems I should be calling them Let's Plays? Um, what do you think?

Regardless . . . here are Episodes 3, 4, and 5:

And if you're behind and want to just catch the highlights, The Art of Warlord has you covered!

Episode 3 highlights
Episode 4 highlights
Episode 5 highlights

Hope you're enjoying the series.

~~

DOTA 2

Said what?! DOTA 2?! DOTA 2!

That's right, I've been getting my butt kicked in a legit MOBA, and it's pretty freaking fun. A neighbor of mine invited me over for a LAN party, and he talked me through playing the game. I'm not very good at it, but against medium and hard bots, I'm on the positive side for wins. When I first started playing I was drawn to one particular hero and stuck with him through several matches:

Beastmaster.

Yup, I liked the double thrown axes nuke and the somewhat survivable wolf pet coupled with a pretty nice stun.

I think it was good to stick with one character for a number of matches. Now I feel like I've upgraded from Beastmaster to this guy.

Lycan.

I've always been drawn to "pet class" types of characters, and this -- like beastmaster -- is pretty awesome. For me, it's better because I never used the hawk to spy on other characters like I should have, and I think the trade off for Lycan is that he feels just a bit tougher. He's a jungler as well, so I can take trips through the woods between lanes to get gold and spread out the wealth from killing creeps.

Anyway, it's kind of strange legitamately trying to play a MOBA after years of taking a pass.

~~

Mytheon

I CANNOT believe this game is back from the dead. I was stunned to see it up on Steam for 10 bucks, and I couldn't help myself . . . not after all that Friendly Warcrafter business.

My Warcrafter is level 11 and making his way slowly -- slowly -- through the game. It's been on the back burner, but I gotta play this one a bit.

I still own my shirt after all.

~~

Minecraft

The kids and I have been kicking it on local area servers lately. It was a little heartbreaking on one of them since we managed to somehow get all the way up to the part of the game where we want to the nether, farmed for blaze rods, and then were in the process of collecting eyes of ender -- had a pretty awesome village built too -- when BOOM . . . the file was somehow corrupted. I read through all the guides of how to try to save it, but I couldn't make it happen. Oh well.

We started over a couple times, and we're back at it like pros.

~~

DC Universe Online

My Sunday night group continues to play DCUO . . . honestly can't believe we haven't given up on this game . . .

I'll have to write more on this later! I'm out of time for writing this morning. ;)

~~

. . . and aside from a new quest to get that valentine-themed card back in Hearthstone, that's all the news fit to print!

It'd be nice to stream some Pirate101 again here in 2016, and I'd love to see the chat room jumping again.

Happy Dueling!

Hey all! Let's talk games! (Just a quick catch up post for this morning!)

~~

Minecraft

It happened again!

I destroyed that big bad Ender Dragon in Minecraft again, and . . . it'll probably happen at least one more time.

My youngest son was asleep when I defeated this dragon, and I didn't think much of it at the time. Unfortunately when I told him about it after he woke up, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. "WHY DO I ALWAYS MISS THE COOL STUFF WHEN IT HAPPENS!" Yeah, apparently this is the second time he's missed my defeat of the Ender Dragon.

*claps hands together* AGAIN!

It's ok . . . I know what to do, and THIS time when I fight him, I'm going in STRONG!

(Hehe, you just know I'm going to end up losing all my gear and using ladders and death after death to punch those stupid tower gems.)

NO! This time, it's going to be epic.

Question. Would anyone be interested in watching a Twitch stream of me playing a game of Minecraft from beginning to "The end"? I haven't Twitch streamed in quite a while, but it could be fun?

~~

Wizard101

Brecken (aka Morgrim aka The Art of Warlord) returned from her long bout of Internet outage and is back for the attack. Here are episodes 6 and 7 of our Let's Play for your viewing entertainment.

(Episode 8 is to release shortly and Episode 9 is in the wings. :))

~~

Pirate101

Yup! This guy as talked about on this thread.

. . . nuff said.

~~

DC Universe Online

Team Spode continues to fight the bad guys of DC Universe Online -- it's what we do. There was a brand new duo added with some great gear in Episode 21 that is all the rage now with the team. It'd be a good one for me to do a YouTube on. Stay tuned.

~~

DOTA 2

I've once again been playing DOTA 2 on and off with my significant other and a neighbor. I seem to have moved away from The Beastmaster and Lycan . . . these days I'm favoring Phoenix and (strangely enough) Medusa, who apparently is a very hard "carry" to play. Honestly, I play her more like a strong support. /shrug . . . you know me . . . I'm kind of a MOBA newb.

~~

Hearthstone

I got the Valentine's Day Back! woot!

Kinda bummed I took a break from the game and missed out on a few the past couple of months, but I've only been playing a few short matches a day lately to keep up . . . anyway, there's still plenty of fun to be had in Hearthstone.

~~

And that's all I've got this morning, but I wanted to take some time and resurface here on the blog to say hello and give you a brief overview of what I've been up to. Feel free to say hello in the comments and let me know what you've been up to as well.

Also . . . if you have any game or topic you'd like me to hit on, let me know as well!

(p.s. I don't have any Galvanic Hammer Codes to give out. Sorry!)

Happy Dueling!

Hey all! I have a Wizard101 question here from Roxie:

"Where can I sell no auction treasure cards? I am overloaded with them and if they cant be sold what can be done with them?"

~~

I hear ya, Roxie. I currently have 999/999 treasure cards myself. I really need to offload some of them. Here's a few things you can do.

1- I hate to even recommend this, but if you have a second account, several players will create new level one players just to hold treasure cards on. They just trade them over and when the crafting bug comes calling, they'll dig up whichever character was holding whichever treasure card and trade it back to themselves.

2- Trade them to a lowbie . . . just to be awesome. There's nothing cooler than going into an MMO and someone dumps a game changing item on you. This has only ever happened to me a couple times, but I have to say . . . random acts of kindness rock.

3- Use them. If you can't actually use them in battle, go find someone you can help out with that "one weird treasure card" that's just not right for your class. . . . and what if this is a GARDENING treasure card you're talking about? Well, you really should be doing some gardening!! It's great!

4- Delete them. How? Just right click on the treasure card you want to dump and say YES.

It's as easy as that . . . and, again, what if it's a GARDENING Treasure card? Same thing, only from a different location.

You go into your gardening spells, select the treasure card there, and right click. POOF! It's gone.

5- Hope for something better in the future? I know it's been discussed and discussed, but there's always time to bring it up again . . . never forget you can make requests for new features and conveniences on the Wizard101.com official message boards right here: click me!

Best of luck and thanks for the question. If anyone has additional thoughts, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Happy Dueling!

Heya! I've got a question here from Nick:

"I've been farming a boss for 2 days now for a pet called Zombie it looks like Grubb but umm
Is it confirmed to be dropped?

Thanks for sending a message, Nick. Yes, the zombie pet is confirmed to be dropped by a boss named Grendel Madlings.

A good way to know something is verified as dropped is by checking out the player-made wiki for the item: Zombie Pet. Knowing KingsIsle as I do, there really would be no reason we'd ever remove this pet from a loot table . . . on purpose. And to be honest, I highly doubt anyone has modified or even thought about the Grendel Madlings boss in years, so I'd give it a 99% assurance that it still drops. Also, taking a look at that player-made wiki page, it also looks like it drops from the Purreau's Plentiful Pet Provisions Pack. That should make it quite a bit more available out in the wild.

To be honest, your best bet is probably signing up to a site like Wizard101 Central and asking if someone has one to hatch with you, like this person did back in 2014. Wizard101 Central has a super active pet hatching group and I'm also about 99% sure someone there would hatch with you if you post in the Pet Mixing Meetups forum. Or alternatively try using the #W101 hashtag on Twitter to see if anyone could help.

Hope that helps and best of luck with your pet hunt!

Happy Dueling!

Hey! I got a question submitted to me by Paul:

"What is the movement called where all men go across the board in one turn? Vicious charge is only for the main character."

Cool! I do believe this might be the first Pirate mechanics question to ever hit my inbox. I like it! Thanks for the question Paul.

I'm going to make this short and sweet: Highland Charge is the skill you're most likely looking for.

From what I understand, it's very popular in PvP where you can throw on your valor's fort skills and then charge your whole team across the board . . . watch out for that purge though!

I've yet to use this skill in PvE on my Bucc, but I suppose coupling this with the Pirate ability would give you a pretty good advantage if you could use it in time (or when on a very large battle board)

If you have any tips for using Highland Charge, feel free to leave them below.

Happy Dueling!

Hello all! I received a challenge from the one and only Emy Anemsalok . . . Community Manager extraordinaire . . . to join in the #oneweekdailyblogging challenge that she and her cohorts dreamed up. Whew, it can be tough to blog these days for me, but I always enjoy a challenge (and I really loved Blaughust last year, so consider this my warm up I guess lol).

With that, my friends, why don't I catch you up on all things Tom.

1- YouTube! If you didn't know, I have a (kinda) weekly playthrough of Wizard101 going with my buddy Morgrim aka The Art of Warlord. We're deep into Mooshu now and in a couple of episodes I predict we'll be in Dragonspyre.

2- Work! Work has been incredibly taxing lately. I lost my cohorts Leala and Julia :( and I've been scrambling a bit ever since, but I'm starting to find a new groove that I hope carries on to bigger and better things . . . like maybe a new KI Live next week?

3- Book 15! What the what? I thought for sure "Where's Book 15 of Pirate101?" would be etched on my tombstone, but you know what . . . the team pulled it off and I can't wait to really get my feet wet in the content. I will be taking Thomas (my witchdoctor) and Pedro (my Privateer) through a 2-boxed adventure into Valencia 2. woot!

4-Other gaming! I know it's hard to believe that I play other games than Wizard101 and Pirate101, but I do. I've preached it before, but it's good to be a well-rounded gamer.

Just recently I've been playing Legend of Zelda Windwaker. Said what? That old game?! Yup! It's one of the only Legend of Zelda games I've never really played much of, so I decided to give it some time. I was sailing around this morning placing pearls from the first three dungeons.

I've also been playing a lot of Dungeons and Dragons Online.

I know you've heard me talk about this game before, and if you didn't know, I have a blog dedicated to this game called the Stormreach Sentinel. I debated killing that blog and just blogging about my adventures over here on TFN, but IDK, I kind of like how everything is neatly compartmentalized to one game over there.

In fact, I've made 16 blog posts on my Stormreach Sentinel blog since March. I'm playing a necromancer (of course) and have been having a blast. You know what stopped me in my tracks though?

5- Physical Therapy! I've been going to physical therapy about twice a week to work on my leg muscles. That left leg of mine really atrophied after being held straight for 3 months and I've got a lot of work to get it back into shape. I've been doing a hour or so of exercises every day, and it really kind of killed a lot of my extra blogging time in the mornings.

All of that, coupled with a fantastic trip to Disney World / Universal Studios last week has kind of taken a lot of my attention away from my old TFN blog here.

Hopefully this daily blogging gig this week will help kick start me a bit.

Happy Dueling!

(Continuing on with the #OneWeekDailyBlogging event from Emy . . . )

I played some Pirate101 last night with my Witchdoctor / Privateer dream team and did pretty well! I lost some companions, but I was never personally defeated. I’m not sure if people understand . . . a win is a win y’all . . . we have really deep companion pools, and we need to use them wisely in new content. You may not always want to rush in with you’re A-team of companions on new content, especially instanced content where you know things get progressively harder. Expect a few companions to be defeated and you’ll be doing a lot better. Your mileage may vary, but I’m digging the strategy bump in Valencia 2 a lot. :)

Now, all that aside, I was noticing last night that my witchdoctor companions were just tearing mobs up in Valencia like pros, and I wasn’t even using Old Scratch. Granted, I was buffing Will, Crits, and Dodge/Accuracy with the amazing Witchdoctor/Privateer buff combo, but my witchdoctor companions like Carcarius and Eep Opp Ork Ah Ah did some super heavy lifting last night, and I loved it.

As for the enemies we were facing off against, there were some deadly combos involving Second Chance, Relentless, and Bladestorm. I had some unfortunate chains that a few mobs used against me, and I did indeed lose a few buddies to the wounded task. THIS IS TO BE EXPECTED! On the other hand, Kan Po loved those Second Chance epic misses . . . it just meant he’d be making more Riposte attacks.

I also made a couple dumb mistakes . . . I got excited and forgot to check my enemies for things like Flanking and Repel Boarders and lost a companion or two to that. Always check your opponents, Tom. Yup! NOTED! Anyway, that’s also part of why I like my Witchdoctors, they just stand in one place and throw hit after hit: Jobu’s Ruse, Mojo Echo, etc. I freaking love the jobu’s and mojo’s!

My stopping point last night was where I leveled up and gained Contessa as a new companion.

I took some time to put some epics on her and called it a night, but I’m having so much fun with my Witchdoctor companions that I don’t even know if I’ll use her right away!

See you in Pirate101 friends!

Happy Dueling

(Continuing along with the #OneWeekDailyBlogging Event from Emy . . .)

Hey all! I hope everyone had a great Father's Day yesterday! I know my family really went out of their way to make it a great one for me, and I appreciate them so much. I wasn't even expecting the day to be as cool as it was! Here's what happened:

I woke up. ;) Ok, let's start at the exciting stuff . . . donuts!

I don't know if I've ever talked about this before on this blog, but our family likes to do something called "Saturday Morning Donut Adventure." My wife took it upon herself to drive us an hour away to a completely ordinary donut shop in Marble Falls, TX. Because, while it's important to enjoy a good donut, it's also very important to take an adventure along your way there. We have visited several donut shops in Austin, TX, but we've never been out this way, and it a very beautiful and winding drive through some pretty country.

The Colorado river runs right through the heart of this town and a large park rests right off of Highway 281 called Lakeside Park. They had little picnic table areas where the tables were made of what appeared to be solid Marble. We were more interested in all the spiders we found in the picnic area. I couldn't get a good shot of all the varieties of spiders hanging above our table, and we didn't stay long enough to disturb them too much.

The river/lake was beautiful though and the day was perfect. I managed to snap a picture of a couple of balloons floating into the air that some people nearby released.

It makes you wonder if they were releasing them for their father's. That's kind of a cool way to say I miss you, right?

After we got home, I sat down again to play some more Pirate101.

I helped Desdemona find her love, which was no small task . . . Those sneeple in Aquila were none too happy to see us again! Too make a long story short . . . Bad Pedro and Friendly Thomas both leveled up, and it felt like a natural stopping point for the day.

One of the gifts I got for Father's Day was a DVD copy of Zootopia, so we sat down as a family to watch it . . . and promptly lost the kids (who had other things to watch lol) . . . but the adults had a great time watching it! I loved the scene where, aptly enough, there was another "donut adventure" of sorts.

The day rounded out with a steak dinner with Pablano Pepper rice. It was amazing . . . even more amazing, I didn't have to cook it.

It was a great Father's Day, and I love my family for making it so special for me.

Happy Dueling!

(Continuing along with the #OneWeekDailyBlogging challenge from Emy . . .)

Hey all, so I had a wicked long bout of sleep last night. I'm not even kidding . . . 10-11 hours of sleep. I think the sleep deprivation finally caught up with me and I just crashed. I normally would have played a few games last night and then had something to write about, but the only thing I really played yesterday was Miitomo.

Yup, Miitomo . . . it's still a thing, well at least it is for me, and I haven't spent a dime and I kind of feel bad about that. I figure if I've played a free app for any significant amount of time, I should probably ante up at some point to tell 'em thanks for all the fun. I don't feel the pull to get all the outfits I see and change them out 20 times a day or anything like that so the monetization pull doesn't really work on me.

Miitomo for me is simply 20-30 minutes a day chatting with new friends and my family, although, I can tell our interests are all waning a bit. My son hasn't logged on in a long time, but can I just say his answers on Miitomo were the sweetest, cutest thing in the entire world?

Let me give you a few of his answers:

What current event has grabbed your interest? My hard working spirit.
What does friendship mean to you? Kindness.
What's something funny that's happened to you recently? Nothing really other than my dad making kermit the frog jokes.

Man I love that kid! :)

I used to post a bunch of pictures from Miitomo on my Twitter timeline, but I felt like it was starting to get a bit spammy. Although, I think I kind of liked the question posts more than the straight up outfit change posts if I was to do more.

That would be this.

vs. this.

Do you have the app? Hate the app? Ever bought anything on the app? Lemme know what you think in the comments below.

Happy Dueling!

(continuing along with the #OneWeekDailyBlogging challenge from Emy . . .)

Yesterday I stumbled upon a blog that was linked to by the former Creative Director of Roblox, John Shedletsky.

My jaw dropped.

A blog . . . about wood grain . . . in Roblox? Sure enough, I followed the links and visited the site, and this is a real thing! I present to you, Wood Reviewer Roblox.

Now now . . . it may seem incredulous at first I admit, but before you simply push Wood Reviewer Roblox into the meta-joke categorization of having blogs on the Internet about very esoteric topics, like odd QR code placement, Awkward Stock photos, and old people posting on Facebook . . . KNOW THIS!

He's serious, and I love it.

I've written about Roblox before and my youngest son right now plays this game a whole heck of a lot. He loves Roblox with a passion, and we've spent more money on Roblox for him than I'm willing to admit. In other words, I'm writing this as being someone highly invested in the product of Roblox.

My son doesn't care about wood grain direction in Roblox . . .
Probably 99 percent of the people who play Roblox don't care about the wood grain direction in Roblox . . .
. . . but Wood Reviewer is invested like a Dev, and I dig that. These are the types of details that artists at video game companies are passionate about, and in a game like Roblox where people of all ages are learning to build worlds and think like Devs . . . YES . . . this topic is exactly what's needed.

I took it to an Internet search and found a great thread about Wood Reviewer on Reddit . . . what is up with the wood grain memes? I, for one, hardheartedly agree with poster IWantGoreinPF: "ssshh... WoodReviewer is our hero... that we don't need. Let us praise his efforts"

I raise my morning glass of water to you, Wood Reviewer! I shall never look at Wood Texture the same in Roblox. Job well done.

Now . . . dear reader . . . ask yourself this question . . . if you were to write an entire esoteric blog about something that bugs you in a video game, what would it be?

Happy Dueling!

(continuing along with the #OneWeekDailyBlogging challenge from Emy . . .)

My wife the other day asked me to help her load up Neverwinter on the computer, which is strange.

Because here's the deal. Back in 2014 I was on a crusade to get my family playing Neverwinter. I even managed to coordinate a moment where my daughter, Uber Wife, and I were playing in the same group. This, like, never happens anymore. After that one experience, my family dumped the game. *cries*

Oh well, I'm sure one of Uber Wife's Internet buddies convinced her to download it, and as it turns out the game was crashing on her during mid-load with a nasty "graphicalclient.exe error." Basically I had to run the launcher in Safe-Mode and then everything seemed to work.

I even logged in for a second and checked out my super sexy cleric, Dr. PhilGood. Don't remember him?

Now you do!

Of course the first thing I wanted to do when I was back online was revisit my dungeon that I spent all that time crafting in the Foundry system, because . . . 1- I missed it and 2- let's be honest, Neverwinter has the best UGC (User Generated Content) system out there, right?! Honestly it was my favorite thing about the game.

. . . "was" my favorite thing about the game. The foundry system and all the quests that went with it were nowhere to be found. *GASP*

And apparently I was late to the party to know about this as I took to an Internet search:

The Foundry wiki states it "disappeared from the game" several months ago.
The Neverwinter uncensored blog had a quote from a Dev that said they were looking at several frustrating bugs with the foundry system, but also gave a very telling couple of sentences: ". . . the more power you give authors in creating user generated content, the more likely some are going to abuse that power. But the less power you give authors, the less the foundry can serve its purpose of being a true sandbox environment."
And finally, Reddit, takes us to the land of truth . . . people were abusing the system to create maps specifically for farming exp and astral diamonds.

I guess it's human nature . . . someone builds a game and someone else tries to break it. It's just too bad we can't have nice things, and that's a shame.

One things for sure, I'm glad I did screenshots of my Labyrinth tribute dungeon and captured it in this post so I could remember it though! Screenshots or it didn't happen! (now if only I would have made a YouTube video of it . . . ahh well.)

Happy Dueling!

(continuing along with the #OneWeekDailyBlogging challenge from Emy . . .)

Hello dungeons delvers!

I've played a bit of D&D before in my life and especially when I was a kid. When I close my eyes and think about playing D&D in the past I remember three locations.

- A guy's kitchen that was about two blocks from my best friend's house
- A guy's basement bedroom that was across the street from my best friend's house
- In the room of the brother of a friend's house.

We were such nerds about D&D, and I'm sure those rooms smelled of sweaty socks and Doritos. I think this was right around the time that Atari was taking off, but besides Atari, this was the LIFE! The smell didn't even matter y'all . . . we were gettin' our fantasy fix and slaying hordes of orcs and other crazy things. YARRR! *insert the sound of rolling dice*

Eventually, I stopped playing D&D, and I talk about that in another post I wrote when Dave Arneson died. I'll quote from it:

"Eventually when I was in my early 20's I was without a job living in the upstairs apartment of a guitarist that I use to play drums for. It was kind of a sad and very poor time in my life. Well, I traded all my early editions of my D&D books to him in exchange for rent for a month. That was the Monster Manual, the Dungeon Master's Guide, The Players Handbook, Dieties and Demi-Gods, the Monster Manual II, and a really super rare book of traps. By that time I hadn't played the game for a few years, so they didn't really matter to me. But now . . . now . . . I kind of wish I had them again just to take a look at them and laugh a bit at a few memories I had with my friends as we played that game."

A few years ago, I picked up the Red Box basic D&D set again (edition 4 apparently) because my daughter was wanting to play, so I got the box and gave it a shot. It was a struggle for us and my DM skills were incredibly rusty. I continually had to stop gameplay and check rules and scratch my head. I think the experience turned her off to the game . . . but she wanted to go crazy anyway with making a character that was half unicorn and shot rainbows of death out of its butt or something like that, and I just wasn't prepared to bend the rules because I didn't even know the rules to begin with. It was a struggle.

Now, people at work play pen and paper D&D on lunch break all the time at KingsIsle, but I never really got involved much until . . . something I can't talk about . . . sorry, the first rule about D&D Fight Club is that there is no D&D Fight Club. Now who's the rule breaker?!

D&D fight club is DM'd by the one and only Jeff Toney! Basically two people go against each other, you start at level 3, and when one player wins, they advance to the next level in one fell swoop. If you lose . . . well, it used to be permadeath for your character, but it felt a bit punishing when you'd get up to 4th or 5th level and then have to start all over. Now the rules are that when you die, you lose one item to the other player, get 200 gold and keep your level. Currently, my druid is a nice stepping stone to pass better players on to 6th level where you can purchase magic items and start the potion meta-game. I figure I have enough gold built up from defeat I might be able to buy something amazing, which will probably be stolen by another player . . .

Let me cut to the chase by saying IT'S FUN! It's fun and it's gotten me back into D&D a bit. Jeff is even DM'ing a game for me, my kids, and his daughter on the side every other week or so, and it's been pretty awesome. I can safely blame Jeff for getting me back into D&D.

At work I'm now playing a game where on Thursdays at lunch, Blind Mew himself is the DM guiding a group of us through an adventure! (And can I just say it was pretty awesome to be part of a jail break in yesterday's session?)

Tomorrow is another Jeff Toney hosted D&D session for my family, and I can't wait to continue on our journey. Seeing as my kids are involved, it's a bit crazy and Jeff is more than prepared to handle my kids' creative minds. Hopefully when they look back at their D&D experience, they'll find it has a better smell to it than sweaty socks and Doritos . . . it's been upgraded to scented room fresheners and usually pizza, cookies, and sodas . . . complete with colorful characters hand-drawn by Jeff Toney himself.

I'm the Dragonborn bard in the middle. :)

Happy Dueling!

Thank you all for joining me with a week of blogging. I finished up my week's worth of blog posts yesterday, and I'm quite happy I joined in Emy's fun!

Please read her full recap here: *click me*

Included in that recap is a challenge to participate in another week of blogging sometime in the December 2016 time frame . . . I'm game! (Emy, you will certainly need to remind me of this and chastise me if I say I can't join in when you do this again.)

I think my favorite moment of this challenge was not the daily activity of thinking, "what's on my mind today, and can I smoosh that out into a meaningful blog post," (that was a close second), but actually spending some time getting lost into Emy's YouTube channel in the process. Watching her translate her adorable dog's barks was hilarious, and the Christmas videos were very heartwarming.

Emy, if you're reading . . . you really should do more videos. You've got a knack at that. :)

Hopefully the benefit for you all was catching up with me and seeing where my brain is at when I'm not thinking about KingsIsle all the time. (Ok, let's be honest . . . I really am thinking about KingsIsle 90 percent of the time . . . it's hard not to get sucked in when you're checking forums and getting pinged on Twitter every day about something.)

Consider this an invitation to join in for anyone that reads this blog . . . with any luck we'll have a little more warning next time to plan, and if that's the case, I'll be making a post to declare my intentions to POST POST AND POST SOME MORE during that week!

Along those lines . . . I don't know if Belghast has intentions to run another Blaugust this year, but if he does . . . you should all consider joining in that as well. A week of blogging is fun, but a whole month of blogging is truly an exercise and could be rewarding too. Last year I won a copy of Terraria for participating (which reminds me . . . I still need to write about that game hehe)

Happy Dueling

Wildstar Weekend and a Final Fantasy 13 bug

Of Twitch and Sunday Night Games

Realmsconite, Beachite, Twitchite, Stingite

Favorite Monster in Rise and Destroy?

Tom and The Dings!

Ding 110 - the rat is dead

The YouTubes, You, and Me Too!

Game Redux -- Walk through, Play through, or Let's Play?

Ender Dragon . . . again . . .

No Auction Treasure Cards -- What to do?

Zombie Pet?

All Charge Across the Board in Pirate101?

Daily Blogging this week? Why not!? Let's catch up...

It's all about the Witchdoctors Companions!

Father's Day 2016 Redux!

Miitomo and Me

A blog about wood grain in Roblox . . . I love life

Neverwinter Foundry System . . . removed?

D&D yesterday, today, and tomorrow

#OneWeekDailyBlogging Wrap up -- Bonus Day!