This week is more Borderlands 2.
I’ve been trying to get overpower levels for the past few days. But, progress has been slow and I’m just farming for deferent equipment in hopes of something working better than what I currently have.
I’m hoping by next week I’ll ether get the remaining levels and move on to Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, or I’ll end up playing the Sims 4, we’ll see.
What’s everyone else doing?
This is a Star Wars: The Old Republic post for two reasons: one is the continued home improvement, which is going well. No pics, at least not for now…you don’t want to look at my bathroom renovation and I don’t particularly want to share it. I reserve the right to change my mind; as I started out thinking “sure, I can do plumbing repair and replacement, right?” to having accomplished “most” of the repairs and replacements over the past week. There is certainly a difference between knowing how to do something in your mind and actually having the experience of doing it. The biggest challenge remains: I need to replace the bathtub/shower handle and valve, which will require shutting off the water supply to the house. I actually wasn’t too worried about it until I tested, or tried to test, the new shower head and faucet. The connection to the valve for the faucet leaked horribly. Like, spraying water. I don’t know if it was leaking already; I don’t think so. I am guessing I damaged it during the installation of the new faucet. And now I’m worried the connection is actually damaged. I should find out tomorrow.
I spent the entire week in Tropico experimenting with strategies to increase my citizen’s happiness level as I grow my population. In my previous scenario successes, the average happiness of my Tropicans usually wound up between 35 and 40. If you remember, there was one training scenario that required you to finish with an average “Housing” happiness of 60. The solution there was to build a large amount of luxury Housing and Condominiums. As there was only one completion requirement, the moment you reached 60 the scenario was finished. You could hyper-focus on meeting that criteria at the expense of everything else. (NOTE: only to an extent. Even in the training scenarios, if you go into debt over $10,000, you will be get a College-educated wage cap. If you stay $10,000 in debt for another year, you will receive a High School-educated wage cap. If you stay in debt for ANOTHER year, you will receive a global wage cap. And if you STILL don’t fix it, you will be kicked off your island. So, you know, you can’t *completely* ignore your economy.)
But back in the present, the “Born Again” scenario requires both 300 Tropicans *and* an average overall (not just housing) happiness of 300. Last week I determined this would require learning a new strategy. As of Saturday, I can reliably reach 200+ citizens with 50 overall happiness. This should indicate I am on the right path and just need to optimize my building order and timing. Each play-through of the scenario reaches new experimental ground, which also introduces some new error in my thinking. I thought I had the problems licked yesterday, but once I hit 54 happiness I found myself scrambling to get the last 50 immigrants on my island while maintaining happiness. To address this, I have two possibilities to explore: I have been using an immigration office to help boost…well, immigration. I use this early on to get some skilled workers specifically, but I also noticed I’m not attracting many people to my high school. I will still use the immigration office to increase overall immigration, but I’m going to try a Presidential Edict I’ve never used before: the Contraception Ban. This will hopefully increase home-grown (heh) Tropicans, and also increase home-EDUCATED Tropicans.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “So When You Say “Dailies”… (SWTOR, Tropico, Plumbing)”
This week I’ve gotten an ear infection, so I’ll keep this one short.
Still playing Borderlands 2. Done the Headhunter DLCs, just reached level 80, and broke out of the map and had a bit of a wander around.
What are you guys up to?
After a full month of 100+ degree temperatures and failing air conditioners (literally; two window units broke during the heat wave), we had a little over a week of cool temperatures. While we’re back into the 90’s off and on now, you can see all around us the signs of impending Autumn. The pets have started begging for more food. The cash crops (I live in an agricultural area) have started what they call “cutting out,” the process of dropping any fruit that isn’t developed sufficiently to mature off the existing nutrients. As part of this process, the leaves start shriveling-up and falling off, as the plant itself no longer needs to grow or synthesize energy from sunlight. It’s not a full die-off yet, that will come most likely naturally with the first night of freezing temperatures or, unfortunately, artificially through chemical applications. With the cooler temperatures now, it’s time to start the repairs beyond the emergencies that have been put off. We have ongoing house improvements, with more planned before we move sometime in the next year to 18 months. I also had to clean and/or replace the cabin air filters in two cars, both of which have been experiencing air conditioner problems as well. Unfortunately, only one of them had a cabin air filter so dirty it probably was affecting performance.
In the computing world, I found something very interesting in Linux, I proceeded further in Star Wars: The Old Republic Galactic Seasons 7, and I have progressed in Tropico scenarios. I have a LOT more to say about the difficulty labels, which continue to be confounding.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Last Gasps of Summer Means More Home Repair and Tropico Funstration”
This week is more Borderlands.
I finished up the first Borderlands with Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution, and reaching the max of level 69 (nice). The DLC was fun and I liked seeing all of the previous antagonists Claptrap themed.
I didn’t finish the quest to collect Claptrap parts for Tannis due too not wanting to spend an hour farming Claptraps. Also, last week I said The Secret Armory of General Knoxx was the last DLC released. I apparently did not look at the dates very closely and in fact the Claptrap DLC was the last one released.
But anyway, I’m now playing Borderlands 2! As of writing this I am level 44 and seeing how high of a level I am willing to get.
So far the main differences that I have noticed are, Borderlands 2 is a lot more colorful, it opens with a very bright icy tundra which contrasts heavily with the fist games brown deserts and junkyards, enemies seem to drop more loot but it’s also a fair bit more sparing about good chests, and all of the weapons are a way more stylized and distinct between manufacturers.
I haven’t gotten around to any of the DLC yet, but I probably will next week.
So what is everyone else doing this week?
As someone who loves Tolkein lore and despises silly MMO quests, this game left me deeply conflicted.
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.
A game about the ghost of an underwater football player who travels through time to save the world from a tick that controls kaiju satan. Really.
Is it real? Is PC gaming returning to its former glory? Sort of. It's complicated.
How did this niche racing game make a gameworld so massive, and why is that a big deal?
I scoured the Steam database to figure out what words were the most commonly used in game titles.
No, game prices don't "need" to go up. That's not how supply and demand works. Instead, the publishers need to be smarter about where they spend their money.
There's a wonderful way to balance difficulty in RPGs, and designers try to prevent it. For some reason.
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
T w e n t y S i d e d
