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Not much gaming in January until the 29th when I started playing Dwarf Fortress! For a very long time I'd always wanted to get into it but it was sooo ugly so I always rather played something else (Pharaoh, Creatures 2, The Sims, more recently Kenshi...). But the Steam version is pretty cute (actually the dwarves are ugly) and I appreciate not needing to memorise a whole keyboard layout of interface. It's so much fun!

In fact, today I realised I have been neglecting my website (and my writing!!) in favour of playing all those years' worth of Dwarf Fortress kinda condensed into a week. I'm mostly playing the same embark I keep restarting because I decide on a better layout (and I hate how the constructed walls look) or I learn how to clean water or whatever. I've played this one about 15 times now, 5 times from the same save with the same dwarves+wagon, hopefully this time it sticks :)

I learnt about giving my poor dwarves free time. The past two times, the two miners got married pretty soon. This time I was prepared for it and... it didn't happen! They both took up with one of the farmers. One of those was my first lesbian relationship in the game!! I had a gay couple move in a few tries ago... I see a lot of familiar migrant faces but they're yet to show up again ;_; I made them the tavern keeper and main performer :) The straight couple got married but the lesbian couple broke up. And got back together! But broke up again. And the miner took up with the doctor and I was worried about the farmer-cook all by herself... but she married the administrator just now! So of my starting seven, just the carpenter/supposed leader is single... I hope he can meet someone!

That's what inspired me to write this up!!!! And now I am back to the game!!

That fortress kept getting this massive migrant population explosion that made everything weird (literally I went from 19 to 55 the 2nd time...) and also it blew up my water system, I guess the hatch wasn't ice proof?? And so I ended up giving up on that one. I wanted to start a smaller fortress, maybe even trying to stick to the 7 and their kids, or just a few migrants (and maybe any visitors I convince to move in). I want to be able to keep track of them and their stories better! Yesterday, I started a new fort in a new world. A few false starts digging a nice road under a mountain, 'cause I hate channeling. But I got something good and we were away. Except... the dwarves refused to socialise when they were idle! I guess they hated each other! That's no good! I was willing to persevere with them being 6 women and a man too even haha! Today I'm starting again! I think I will pick somewhere with a river... I am tired of managing ponds!

I have done nothing but play Dwarf Fortress for three weeks. Or, just about. It's come to a temporary end not from boredom but crashes, unfortunately. I finally made a fortress I was gonna stick with but it's not behaving well, and I don't want to move to monthly autosave/saving after planning constructions/whatever. I was mad enough when my first babies here, a boy and a girl, were lost to a crash and became two boys (with worse personalities!), but I was gonna press on when I thought the crash was just from having the game open for like... a whole day lmao. But it's still misbehaving today and I'm fed up :(

I never stuck with a fortress before these recent pair of updates, so maybe it's something that broke on those and is going to be fixed? I live in hope, and so do the residents of Catfortunes (on their VOLCANO GLACIER!!! with a CAVE!! it goes down to the caverns, though I haven't been... a giant lived at the top for ~3 years, had killed 4 people prior to embark, killed like 65 cavern things (and seabirds!!! ;_;) before finally being defeated. The cave is called Trashhell lmao. Trashhell the Shitty Cave or something like that. It's great)

A few days ago for some reason I remembered Rebel Galaxy and its cool soundtrack, which I've been adding to my music library (this list really helped!) and then today GOG sent me an email that the prequel? sequel? which I'd apparently added to my wishlist in a trance was on offer for like 3 quid so I just bought it :) The reviews are mixed but I enjoyed the original a lot (which led into my brief time as an Elite Dangerous player, but I never liked the multiplayerness I think...) and anyway, I'm sure I'll like the soundtrack! It's downloading, idk if I'll start it today though. I have valentines plans and I also want to get some writing in!!

I did go back to playing that same fortress but even with some ways to make it more stable it still randomly crashes. Super annoying. Today I still haven't got around to starting Rebel Galaxy Outlaw but I bought two new games, Star Valor and Greedfall.

Star Valor is... confusing? The UI is confusing. The game is super simple, more simple than Rebel Galaxy even... idk what to make of it. I played for half an hour, I have some time to get a refund I guess. (high quality review, I know)

I have super high hopes for Greedfall that I seriously need to temper. It's a new DAO!!!! Yeah yeah I bought the "it's like if Bioware made good games any more!!!" with PoE and look where that got me. (PoE is FINE I guess, and there's another game I need to finish...)

In more hot gaming news I'm not buying the new Pharaoh 'cause it won't run on my OS. I don't think I degraded myself by wishlisting a game I couldn't play, I think they must have dropped W7 support because they are cowards in M$'s pocket OR maybe they just never announced specs back then more likely! It has very mixed reviews so idk how I feel anyway. I mean, global labour pool omg... and the redone soundtrack sounds great from the snippets I heard. But apparently it's pretty buggy and there's some weird maybe-bugs stuff like police don't fight hippos any more and like wtf have they been doing? It's not like they had much designing work! But on the other hand: Pharaoh!!!!!!

Before the Steam xmas sale (or during??) I'd added Desperados 3 to my wishlist. And I'd ummed and ahhed on half price £12.50 and decided I wasn't sure it was my kind of game. Now the fucking price has gone up when I noticed it's on sale for half price £16.something... but whatever, inflation, it sucks but I guess games aren't immune.

I also suddenly noticed it had a demo, so I installed that the other day and finally got around to playing it today. It's FUN!!! So I bought not just it but the whole series bundle. It's my birthday soon so it was an early present hehe :)

I can't believe it's been a week and a half and I still haven't gotten to Greedfall or made my mind up any further about Star Valor. Idk what I've been doing 'cause it ain't been gaming or writing lmao and it hasn't been anything else either. Mystery!! (Actually, I kinda think it was website stuff...)

it's my bday!! And I'm still playing Desperados 3 :D I finally have all the characters. The levels take me like 1h-1h30 on normal difficulty lmao, I have no idea how anyone gets the speed targets. I'm having fun though :D

I did refund Star Valor in the end (on the 3rd!) and I used the money to buy Pathfinder: Kingmaker and its DLCs. I've heard good things about the sequel but it's more than I'm willing to gamble, so I'll try this one first.

Apparently it's "too hard", so I'm curious about how I'll find it. I never really know what people mean by "hard" ("easy"/"casual" on the other hand is simpler - a game you can play without concentrating). The difference between an unpaid job and a fun challenge is going to be a little down to the devs but mostly a matter of taste, so it would be more helpful if people said something like "it's hard because there's too much inventory management" or "because ranged combat is weak and I only like ranged combat" or whatever it is. But, sometimes these things are hard to put a finger on!

I hope it doesn't involve memorising damage types, because the only time I have ever tolerated that was Pokemon.

Idk if I'll start it today. I feel like I should play something that isn't Desperados 3 because I was literally seeing it in the ceiling as I fell asleep last night lmao.

I did go back to Desperados 3. I finished it! The end really got on my tits. It's 6 missions per chapter apart from in the last one?? So I used my fave abilities like Isabelle's mind control before the finale... It was such a pain to complete, but whatever, I did it. It's a bit of a bland ending though. They don't even ride off into the sunset or anything. I guess it's the title screen but... meh.

I will play the DLCs and maybe replay some missions but not before I play something else!

Yesterday I decided to start Icewind Dale, idk why. I haven't played it since I was a little girl and I never finished it. Actually I never properly played it 'cause I sucked at it. I remember how I just wanted to kill the tavernkeeper and it was all I tried to do but... that must have been a different game 'cause it's a woman not a man like I remember, and the inn is laid out differently. I'm so confused!

Anyway, I didn't get very far 'cause my party is weak so I'm gonna start again with hopefully better characters!

I initially couldn't get it to run at all - this is the original non-EE version I downloaded from GOG in 2014 - but I found it runs if you delete ddraw.dll. That dll also caused me horrible treacle-like movement in FO1, but deleting it fucked up the cutscene video colour which I hated but had to live with. But no more! Maybe! Haven't checked FO1 yet but I found this replacement for ddraw.dll and it seems really cool!

My new party is a lot more powerful but this game is so ugly and boring so far. I'm hoping it picks up now I've finally left the village but idk, I want to play something else! But idk what.

I decided to... install Catz 3 lmao. The official downloads didn't want to install but I found someone extracted them which is sooo much easier anyway. Please tell me if that ever goes down and I'll put them up on here :) It also didn't want to run right without PetzA. BUT! It still crashed after like an hour with that... idk if I just have to close it down more often or what. My catz are fine, but all my lovely decoration got reset ;_;

I forgot/never knew that if you cancel adoption partway you lose the cat forever!! So sad. I decided I wanted a tabby + persian and to get back to, jesus christ, 9 year old vegetablearian's life goal of breeding the kitten off the cover. I was slightly thwarted by rolling a grey persian... but she was so sweet and they got on so well... AND THEN I LOST HER because I was calling her Smoke but then I was like omg no Smokey would be better. ;_; But, I got a white one called Marshmellow instead. She constantly picks fights with Bournville (and licks him??) They are so much more lively than I remembered! Maybe I haven't played since I got my real cats, 10 years ago this year, and now I see so many more lifelike actions they do. :)

Now I'm gonna play something else, ideally start something like Greedfall or Pathfinder or the Age of Decadence demo I downloaded... but... something tells me I'm going to play Dwarf Fortress even though it's so crashy!!! I was looking at Rimworld earlier after seeing Frostpunk was on sale and a review saying it was just a shit Rimworld and I have Rimworld on my wishlist but it's not on offer rn but I already have DF so.....

I went back to Just Cause 2 and finally finished the mission I was stuck on last night. (This game has such an annoying heavy feeling... I feel glued to the floor... the cars all have several bodies in the boots too?) But then today, I met a bug and I'm just done with this game. I uninstalled it and asked for a refund. I don't think I'll get one, but it makes me feel better to ask lmao. But, after submitting the request, apparently I only paid 99p for it lmao? I don't remember it like that but it's probably right, it was all in a big bundle. Now, will I actually get along with Just Cause 3? I hope so, but I'm not installing it today. 1. mad at it 2. it's like 55gb and I have too many games installed! I need to play some!

Last night I downloaded the demo of Star Drift Evolution and gave it a... spin... It's fun, I suck at it though. Neither of the camera angles work for me in all situations, but it has custom camera angles so I guess I can try those! I don't mind sucking at games, but I do kinda mind how EVERY time I lose this first race it's like "you know there's an easy mode babe?" like YES but I want to get good!

It's RPG time today!!! Greedfall or Pathfinder: Kingmaker... or....... I have had Deus Ex: Human Revolution installed for ages, that's an RPG right? OR I can try to get further in PoE or IWD... or I can do some FO4 DLCs... or I can restart FO1 again... I will not start my new FO3 playthrough today though, no no no, I want to play games not set up mods.

God, I've gone and jinxed myself, haven't I? :) But I really want to plaaaay something! Something fun, something that grabs me.

Well, I started Deus Ex: Human Revolution. And decided I couldn't be doing with it. It's only 12 years old but it's uglier than Thief 1 & 2. Why is it so yellow? And the gameplay is clunky compared to Thief, too. Fucking console games! I have to stop buying them... I'm not surprised but I couldn't get a refund for Just Cause 2. Square Enix need to stop making shit pc ports and also I need to play games more promptly so I don't have to pay for them when they suck lmao. Apparently I bought DE:HR nearly 10 years ago! For a whopping £2.24...

I'm gonna try and get a little further in IWD and then idk what! Maybe it will grab me by that point or maybe I have to try something else again...

I haven't been updating: I didn't play a lot of games after the last update until the 19th. On the 15th I bought Starflight 1 + 2 on GOG, but I haven't started them yet.

But on the 19th I finally started playing the Age of Decadence demo and I liked it so much I bought the full game the next day! I also bought Underrail, but I haven't started that yet.

I'm in the 2nd area on my 2nd iteration of my thief character... I don't like the 2nd area so much. I think I don't like the sci-fi+fantasy stuff in a post-apocalyptic setting. I think I'd be more into the game if the abyss (which I just finished exploring) had been either a nuclear bomb or fantasy shit, not both. I'm fine with this stuff when it's not post-apocalypse though.

Anyway, the game is fun! More fun since I decided to cheat a bit to make fights easier lmao (it's really annoying how the game sometimes lets me call on my allies when I don't particularly need or want their help, but then when I do I can't ask - but all my enemies have backup!). I do love the combat though! Assuming I don't hate the end game stuff, I want to play again as a fighter, maybe an assassin. (Maybe even if I do hate the endgame story stuff - I can just play until it starts being annoying!)

I was mostly writing at the end of last month (or, trying to). Then my attention was taken up by the announcement that Steam is stopping support for W7. Literally just after I bought loads of games, too, and only one I could refund and immediately rebuy on GOG. It pisses me off so much! Especially the stuff about ~security~ they added when they realised admitting it was just for their shitty pc-burning chrome shopfront made it sound like they should just, idk, stop (I can't believe they got rid of skins for that shit...). I have their stupid 2fa app, if someone somehow steals my account I'm pretty sure it's actually on them!

So, no more steam games ever for me (and I'm furious that, when I refunded the half of my final £10 purchase that was eligible - that I'd paid 67p towards with my steam credit that had originally come from another refund from my own fucking money - they were like oh yeah I'm sure you wanted to pay for the game you're keeping with a real fiver, here's your credit back though for the other one :) like WTF?? It's a fucking insult). Today I finished porting my wishlist over to GOG. Sooo annoyed that I bought some recents like AoD, Greedfall, Desperados 3 on Steam instead of there! (I was just going by my >1GB rule - the manual installers are a pain to download over that. But, I'll just have to put up with it from now on. Thankfully most of the games I like/they sell are smaller!)

I've been playing more AoD. I'm exploring some 2ndary locations before I go to the 3rd (final?) town. Also, I killed my guildleader so they hate me now so I wonder how that will stack up once I get to the 3rd town (I didn't realise I can go back to the 1st, and they're still cool with me at least, so...? Maybe I will try and join the assassins or something). I didn't actually kill him for his +1 constitution (not least because I have been cheating my arse off), it was because I didn't appreciate his tone with me lmao.

All of a sudden, I started playing TS3 again! And again actually playing, not modding or building or testing. I'm playing the same save I started last time as Simona. Okay, okay, I am kind of testing lmao and I'll build. But, I'd like to work out how to keep some of my changes I've made like Simona's house without having to move her in and out (but if I have to, it's fine) and her cute new outfits and hair/makeup I've done for her (again... I'll do it again). The thing is, I'll do it all again for SIMONA my precious testing sim who has been through so much for Monte Vista, but what if I get really into this and start doing up everyone's homes/wardrobes? So it would be nice to have a plan. In the meantime, if I want to do more future planning stuff, I have some civic buildings left to build/fill.

Mostly I've been playing TS3 here and there, but today I decided to finish AoD. It was underwhelming, like I kind of expected. The gods stuff is just sooo boring and there isn't anything else in act 3 really. It's depressing, because it has so much promise. When it's fun it's really fun. But there's nothing worse than a story that's meant to be so crazy and exciting but is dull as dishwater. This game without the fantasy/sci-fi bullshit is one of my favourite games ever, I can just feel it.

I feel like I should try to knock out some steam games, especially ones I don't intend to rebuy on other platforms (is AoD one? ... probably not... not if I can get it for cheap... I so badly love half of what they were doing). But I kinda wanna start Underrail which I got on GOG. I don't really like starting games though haha. And I have two huge ugly games hanging over me for years, The Witcher 3 and Dragon Age Inquisiton which I feel like I should finish some day but. like. they suck (but I love their 1st games so much, and if I don't finish the 3rd ones, I feel like I slogged through the awful 2nd ones for nothing, you know? And they say the DLCs are the best part and redeem it: but then again, they say these games are good, so...)

Otherwise I might start Greedfall or the Rebel Galaxy 2 whatever it's called. Wow, my life is so hard!

I went back to Fallout 4, trying to finish the DLCs. I want to replay FO3 but this is kinda in my way. Bethesda fallouts are soooo fucking gory. I'm playing Nuka World which is dull so far, but I guess you're meant to side with the serial killers (3 flavours of serial killers? is that the best they can do? Why not 1 serial killers, 1 violent thugs who do what they want, 1 eco-fascists or something... I would probably still kill them all, but at least it would feel like a choice. They have some cute armour though)

Also I just updated this games diary to a cuter format :)

Still in Nuka World. It keeps nearly growing on me. The outer parks have fun designs so far (I have done the sci-fi, the children's and I'm in the western one now!). It's spoilt by the combat. The combat was basically never fun in this game - maybe right at the start when it was hard, not just easy + slow - so it's so fucking irritating. I get into the level design and then take 2 seconds, 3 keypresses to kill some enemies that just spawned or whatever like christ what is the point? So pointless. Also, the navmeshing is awful, Piper's always falling behind and getting stuck.

I tried the Ozymandias demo. I really want to like it, but I hate this kind of childish, large and noisy interface. Plus... I feel like after playing the tutorial I've had all the fun I could with it. It's just a little too boardgamish for me. So I won't buy it, but I recommend trying it out for yourself if you're at all interested.

I also tried the Astro Colony demo. It's just hideous. You have to float around mining asteroids by hand because you need to make a machine to make oxygen. ??? It's nothing like the pictures and description. Tedious and unrealistic is not fun (tedious and realistic can be fun!)

My husband is a big Psychonauts fan and has been trying to get me to play it maybe as long as I've known him :) Today I finally gave in. It's pretty fun so far! But annoying that it was all stretched and nasty until I changed the resolution, and the game doesn't start in a civilised way with a menu, just launches you straight into the opening cutscene (and if you haven't played before, you sit wondering, is it just that it has ugly text? because the characters do have wide faces anyway...)

Just finishing up Nuka World I guess. I got fed up looking for the code stickers so I cheated the last few, I'm about to go into the office with the sociopathic FO3 girl. This game is so bad lmao, such obvious oversights like I can't tell sexy tarzan to have a nice life with his family, I have to mention how the raiders are going to move in... the raiders I killed to the last man... yeah those raiders. They didn't test this and they didn't patch it in all these years. I heard they're going to make a stupid new version like they keep doing with Skyrim, wonder if they'll fix it then? I don't plan to rebuy this game on GOG (oh - they don't even have it!) but, at the same time, I keep seeing stuff and being like "oh next time I play I'll..." ...but I don't really think there will be a next time. Maybe in 20 years out of nostalgia. (Then again, I never thought I'd go back to FNV, and now look at me!)

I think about other games I'm forcing myself to finish like DAI and TW3, series I feel like I love but actually, I just like the first game (well, I like more of Fallout than that). ~2015 was such a fucking dire time for games, so bloaty and so fucking unfun!

I finished Nuka World, fucking underwhelming. No matter how many logs you found about another evil Fallout CEO, you have to be like "omg you poor innocent man" it's so tiresome. I started Far Harbor and did a little more in the top of the map on the way there. Far Harbor was eating my GPU but maybe it's just because my poor computer was overdue an AIRBLASTING. Hopefully it will run cooler now :)

I'm still making my way through Far Harbor. It's mostly fun - it's a lot better than the rest of the game, certainly. But I think the ending is going to piss me off :)

Yesterday I tried the Gobliiins 5 demo. I can't get past the first map lmao. I think I played the first games when I was little - was I any better? Maybe I shouldn't be playing in French :)

Today I started the Colony Ship demo (had to get it on Steam, it's not on GOG, or not yet?) and hmmm. I was captivated at first but the game was about to set my GPU on fire so I turned some settings down and now I don't like it any more lmao. I think it's just not really legible in low res so I'm physically struggling to play (I probably need new glasses!) Well, I'll give it another shot some time.

Well, I finished Far Harbor. I didn't like the ending (why the fuck can't I convince the girl to leave - fuck, why can't I just knock her out and drag her home - and then send in the vertibirds? And why does the sensible synth hater in the town get so mad at me when all I wanted was to send in the pros instead of the villagers...) but whatever, me and Nick closed the case didn't we.

So, I guess I'm done with FO4. After 2 years, and nearly eight solid days of my one and only life. I can't really say I liked it - it pissed me off too much. But some parts are good. Nick, Piper, Ingram (and a lot of the Brotherhood actually - Tuvok was fun of course), the bartender in Diamond City I forget his name. The cats :) The OST is beautiful, really grew on me, Inon Zur is a genius. (The radio station sucks though! No matter what you do with the presenter!!) There are some really beautiful models, textures and settlement/dungeons designs and, here and there, interesting quests... but there's just so much shit to wade through. So, I'm kinda relieved.

I still had the robot DLC to do but that really fucked up the main quest for me with the stupid spawns until I turned it off, so it really soured me on it. I think Far Harbor is as good as that game gets so best to leave on nearly a high.

I started Greedfall and got like an hour in before giving up. It's intensely shit. Like an Assassin's Creed game except you play as a heavy lump. Unfathomable. Every single interaction has like 20 lines of voiced dialogue lmao wtf. Worst tenner I've ever spent on a game. People saying it's oldschool in any way have lost their fucking minds. Pointlessly large maps, MMO click to win combat, awful! Like Dragon Age 2 crossed with The Witcher 3. (Oh, maybe there are kids who think those are oldschool now, is that the problem?)

I started Pathfinder: Kingmaker the next day and omg!! It's GOOD!! A new game I thought would be good is good! I'm not very far in - I've just started all the kingdom management part. And I've accidentally spoilered myself for some things about the end which seem annoying... and my hopes of a new Dragon Age series for me have been dashed by some things I learnt about the sequel... but oh well! I'm enjoying it so far!

It's not as good as Origins (the companion interaction is weird and unnatural, not paced right, and the combat is not as fun) but it's a lot better than sticking BG, IWD and NWN in a blender, which was kind of what I expected. I like it a lot better than PoE - the lore is handled a lot better (maybe they were nervous about how to introduce it when it was all new, but I don't know fuck all about Pathfinder and I'm sure most people playing the game don't either?)

I wondered if Inon Zur was the composer but no, well kind of, he made the title track and maybe 2 others, and all the rest is just a fairly decent ripoff of his work lmao. I like it though :) It's also pretty!! It looks like a Unity game, why do they look like that/anything?? But it's a pretty one. The voice acting is mainly fucking atrocious however, I might turn it off. Also, sometimes when you try and click to scroll through the dialogue it picks whatever's on that line... and when you skip dialogue too sometimes... and it doesn't properly recenter on the responses. You have to scroll through the text the character just said??? This is the worst thing about the game though (so far). I don't really like dnd alignment shit but I like how this game handles it, for example :)

I wrote yesterday's update before playing and I'd forgotten the fuck awful way quests start/update, with 3000 popups and noises. Also the tutorial is really annoying, you can't just have specific features, you have to be like "so party formation is..." too. I turned it all off and I hope I don't regret it. I'm also annoyed at an issue that doesn't apply to me lmao which is that I only can properly engage with the kingdom stuff because I bought a DLC with an additional party member??? That is really hostile game design

On the plus side, I like how this game integrates the missions your advisors do with the things you/your party does a lot better than Dragon Age: Inquisition. I think it's not a totally fair comparison because that game came out a few years before, but anyway, I like it better :)

Still playing Kingmaker. I have some new companions including one I'd christened Nigerian Boone even before I heard him telling the enemies that they can't hide from him :) hehe! I've been romancing the evil tiefling, I prefer her sister but I read that you have to start with her?? I just got the event where they switch in bed but idk if I picked the right options to progress with that.

I got so annoyed at the Linzi quest where my only options are "it's fine if you steal from the treasury" or "I don't want to do your quest" like why can't I execute her. Shit game. I guess it's because, one of the things I spoilered myself on, she can't die because she dies at the end... I'm sick of games trying to force small annoying american bards on me!!

I respecced my character after getting a better feel for the classes and it's sooo annoying lmao you have to redo the whole character creation? And it gets rid of your alignment history... Anyway, I ditched archaelogist and now I'm just like equally sylvan sorcerer and whatever that summoner cleric is called. It seems like a fun combo, idk necessarily how well it plays but it has to be better than all three which is what I'd previously had! I think I will stop leveling cleric fairly early because it has no features but idk I don't want to be a shit cleric... also I don't get the super cool (I am assuming) dryad summoning from sylvan sorcerer this way... (I LOVE DRYADS) I guess I can just respec again if I start feeling weak? Well, I don't want to play full cleric but I have kind of replaced the blonde cleric with Nigerian Boone so I missed having bless and stuff, which I literally don't even have as this kind of cleric lmao. Oh well

I was playing on the 18th but until today I haven't played anything, just been working on HTTWSB. I just did some of the cleric's personal quest and I feel bad 'cause I keep forgetting how this game often works is that if you kill/make flee the boss the underlings give up. I split the party between the toughest one and mopping up the crowd, so only a few got away lmao.

After a long stretch of not playing anything (apart from checking some locations in FNV for HTTWSB) I played some more Kingmaker last night and... I don't like it!! It makes me mad. I really want to like it. But it's just awful. I keep playing because it sucks me in and I'm actually last night telling myself "why do you think you don't love this game?? it's fun!!" and then it's hitting me with another YOUR KINGDOM IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE and like. It's not fun. These things don't mix like the devs seem to think they do. I love isometric rtwp rpg, I love government-strategy-whatever games and they don't mix. Not like this with all the obnoxious timers.

The worst was I had to go to certain area on a Monday. And it doesn't fucking tell you the day of the week on the map or in the quest log!!!!

And I still get so angry at all the fucking popups when anything happens (and if you like, use these? to read a letter for example? it doesn't register as a quest stage!!) it's like malware simulator. fuck these devs genuinely. Now I don't have to buy the sequel. #moneysaving

Why am I using hashtags. It's really hot here actually. Anyway, I'm going to finish Kingmaker probably. But angrily.

I guess part of the problem is I'd like to continue with Psychonauts, Thief 1; start Arcanum, Rebel Galaxy 2, Dungeon Rats... but I feel compelled to finish up my steam games before the end of the year! (Actually I want to play Fallout 3 or Kenshi and these are doubly verboten because I already rebought Kenshi on GOG and I'll probably rebuy FO3 too). I was going to call it a hell of my own making but it's a hell of gaben's making actually so fuck you (he reads this)

^ look how in sunny mild May I'm feeling sorry for enemy NPCs and now it's like 27 or something and constantly threatening to storm I'm effing and jeffing all over the shop.

So I played a lot more Kingmaker and I was mostly enjoying it despite all the problems but now I have a bug. I can't follow Tristian at the temple. I get an error. This was "fixed" shortly after launch where it would just load like treacle and you had to let it... but I can't do that. Because it errors. I tried an earlier save. The same. So fuck this game and fuck Owlcat the incompetents! If you're going to make the world's longest game you could at least test it!

I tried The Secret of Darkwoods. It's boring. Sorry to the bloke who put his heart and soul into it but I gave up after 5 mins.

I tried to play Assassin's Creed 3 but it won't load? I guess this new ubisoft launcher doesn't work on my pc? Well... that's another one ticked off...

I went back to PoE. It's been more than half a year and I'd forgotten what I was doing/who the bad guy was lmao. I think, how I'd stopped, I'd intended to join the Crucible Knights. But I decided to join the Dozens instead. And now I'm going to City 2 except I can't work out how, but that will be later/tomorrow!

Didn't I say I gave up on Starbound? I changed my mind. I love that game. I've been sorting out some new story-cancelling mods and also just sorting through all the ones I had. I'm making it GOG-proof. Renaming workshop files really helps you narrow down which ones you actually care about. I think I have a nice little setup now (with a Floran "virus" I made for my Glitch ship... hehe). And now after like half an hour of testing, I want to play!

I got to nearly the end of PoE yesterday. I have a few bounties and some of the castle quest but I'm basically done? So I think I will do the expansion, those quests and then yeah... if I don't get fully sidetracked with Starbound, maybe I'll finish today! (I have no idea how long the expansion is though actually haha)

I'm still mourning Kingmaker 'cause I miss Nok Nok. I liked some of the other companions too (very some: just Ekun, Tristian, Amiri and Valerie) but he was my favourite and I was only just starting with his quest to be a goblin hero... Nok Nok you deserved to be a in a better game that was actually playable ♥

I struggled to work out how on earth to start the PoE expansion and then I realised I don't have it. Hehe. So I will finish today after all, I think!

Omg I can't beat the adra dragon. I even made them all eat pies. I hate making them eat, it's so annoying (can't split stacks 1 by 1, can't just say "hey guys we are eating pie now okay"...) So it's staying there. My castle is all nice and upgraded though so I think when she notices she'll be friendly about it. Now I need to go and lose the fight to the baby-eaters I was putting off. I'm at level cap on all of them now so it ain't getting easier!

I finished it! The ending slides are so slow and annoying lmao why do americans talk so slow. Anyway, I guess I enjoyed the game overall! I don't know if I'll ever replay it. I liked it better than BG (1 - I never played 2 because the intro just offends me, why am I in a cafe, why do I have to save my most annoying party member...). I probably liked it about as much as NWN (1 and 2). I don't remember those games very well though, I think I played them about 10 years ago now. I don't know if it's just my mood today but it was all so melancholy. I got good endings and everything (well, not for Durance but I never liked him!)

It's a pretty game and it has a pretty soundtrack. I guess that's what I'll remember most. (And sexy farmboy.) Frankly the whole "souls that are different people" thing makes no sense to me and bored me the whole way through, which is obviously a problem when that's what the game's about! I don't think I'll play the sequel (or the Skyrim ripoff they're making now haha)

I played some of the Desperados 3 DLC but it's kind of annoying. I don't want to kill other people who are robbing the same dead bad guy we are robbing... but it's tough! I killed one and feel bad about it...

I finished the first DLC mission! I just gave up and killed some, even the DOG I don't think I killed a dog in the whole main game.

I thought the 2nd mission seemed weirdly short, like most of the map was optional... I only just got the real mission hehe :) But now I'm taking a break before I see viewcones everywhere.

I finished the DLC! Well... the maps were fun, but the story?? wtf?? The main game ending was anti-climatic but this one just sucked! I can't believe Hector would do that to Cooper! I heard it was bad but I still couldn't see it coming, it just seemed out of character (the terrible plans were fine though haha)

I'd like to experiment with taking different characters in the maps but not today. But maybe I will start the first game?

Okay, I tried the first game and I hate it lmao. I can't work out how to increase mouse sensitivity. It keeps telling me I can use hotkeys and doesn't say what they are anywhere. If there's a manual, it's not included on steam apparently.

Okay I fixed the mouse sensitivity but I still can't get through the tutorial! He won't do anything with the building. Well, whatever! I also tried to play the 2nd one and it literally won't load.

And the "third" one which is just not good. Well, that knocks 3 games off the steam execution list :)

I badly want to play FNV. I'm waiting for the price to be -75% again on GOG like it was last xmas. Maybe this summer sale? Rn it's -67%. It's a difference of 70p or so for one of my favourite games ever, but it's just the principle of buying it twice lmao. (I want to do it before xmas because with the steam deadline being then, I don't want to have to be doing any kind of cross-checking troubleshooting or whatever when I'm busy with actual xmas) I want to try again with my legion/energy weapons/luck playthrough!! (It got bogged down in fic photography last time)

I've been playing more Desperados 3 here and there, but today I started Arcanum! It's fun - pretty frustrating, too. Lots of improvements from Fallout, but so much that's just as bad, and the game isn't quite as charming... still, I'm enjoying it :) (Now I just need to work out where I can sell this enchanted platemail...)

I don't know how much I actually like Arcanum. Moving around is such a chore and the story hasn't really grabbed me. I think I'll put it aside for now and see if I want to get back to it. But then, what to play in the meantime?

This week, I spent some time changing some FNV mods, including finalising my little clothing frankenmod, and I decided it was as good a time as any to switch to a GOG installation. Because the Data folder was all nice and tidy. And when you uninstall games on steam, they leave all the contents of the game folder even if it's dumb (like, a log or something). Except not this time!! I had all my mods in a separate installer folder of course but it was a pain to do everything again. On the plus side, I finally got them properly organised. I just realised I haven't actually started a new game to test, but it loads and that's the first step, eh?

Today I started Dungeon Rats! It's fun. I'm playing on the normal ie evil difficulty lmao. I got as far as the caves and I'm starting to struggle. I need to get more to grips with the positioning in this game. I trained myself out of it with AoD because it didn't really matter. I think I can beat that centipede and not lose my actually useful companions so long as I use my healing salves first. That's something else I trained myself out of in AoD!

Yesterday I got ready to start a new Fallout 3 game. But I didn't. Today I installed Oni :) I still have it on CD, but it wouldn't work. This replacement dll and this replacement exe fixed it! And I just got past the first fight with the big ugly bloke. God, it's been so long since I played this game, but it's so funny - I apparently played it so much I memorised every cutscene. It all came back to me when each one played. (And I seem to remember where all the extra health/ammo is, too.) I have some awful screentearing I haven't yet been able to fix (I have never really understood my GPU software) but I'm having fun!

I was playing a bit of Oni until I got to the bit with the green goop and managed to die 4 times (only twice from falling in it) oh my GOD why is that section so long. I need to go back to it. ;_;

Yesterday I was filled with the desire to play what's widely considered the worst Fallout game ever, Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. It took me hours and I broke my pc at one point but I finally got it running on an emulator. Now I need to either map up some good keyboard keys or try the old xbox controller we have for some reason (I almost swear I used to play FO3 on it?? No, that's mental... but then what? I found out recently I used to play something on it, but idk what and I can't find the file now). The intro is fun and the song is basically what convinced me to play it. It's cute :) (Based on this one.) I've seen lots of awful screenshots and writeups, too :D

I started Tactics again in the meantime! Last year, I didn't like the real time so I switched to turn based and didn't like that either. This time I must have picked better settings, or maybe it's just 'cause I didn't come straight from FO1/FO2, because I like the turn based now. I got back to the bunker, I remember buying bad equipment last time so I'll be careful this time!

So I've had a bunch of useless TW3 updates in my Steam queue for years or whatever. I last played in March 2020. I never really liked this game. I started installing 50gb of updates (how is it more than the game itself lmao) and then wondered if I could actually just play it outside Steam seeing as how it probably doesn't use Steam as DRM. Yeah, it works. But then... I realised I don't like this game. I don't like how it controls, the story bores me... I don't like anything about it. I am in the middle of a quest where I have to use a magic lantern. I couldn't work out what key that was three years later and after firing my crossbow into a fireplace a few times I realised I am simply not bothered. I only wanted to play this game because people said it was good. I only liked the first one. I persevered through the second because the third is ~amazing~ and I literally never liked it. I won't make myself finish this one. No sense throwing good time after bad money.

I want to love Tactics so bad but it's so bad!! The squad formation shit is horrendous, the pathfinding is nonexistent, omg. I think I need to play with a smaller squad but that's annoying. I think this is the real reason I gave up on it last time...

I haven't played a lot of games since the last update, but I was playing some more Desperados 3. I am replaying and trying to get some of the badges :) It's fun. I am not good at the timed ones. I can't recall if I've even managed the easiest one, the first one yet... I don't know if I want to try those otherwise at all, I find the controls a little too frustrating for that (not being able to pause to set commands in hardcore is bad enough)

I've been playing lots of DF since last Thursday but I've given up again today. It's just too fucking crashy. I can't take it! I'm sick of retracing what I did and hoping it sticks. Never mind that so much of what happens is random and I want to keep it! I actually don't believe people play this game for years like they claim. I can only get as far as about the fifth year before it crashes multiple times a season and becomes unplayable. This game would be so fun if it fucking worked!

... the very next day, I went back to DF lmao. I read that windowed mode is more stable and it seems to be! I've gotten to year 11 :) Sooo many of my poor dwarves died in attacks from the caverns and it's just pretty much taken over by mostly-invisible rat people now who immediately kill every forgotten beast (we killed the first one in the tavern and made soap and gloves from it lmao). So they are walled off. I managed to get a well from the caverns working. That was stressful and took some saving and reloading when some bloke (a human - my fortress is about half humans, an elf and a cheetah person!) and his 4 pet sheep wandered into the caverns after installing the screw pump (like, 2-3 years after the first attempt) and TOOK A NAP. A nap in the caverns. Why! I didn't want to see what happened, I reloaded. Also when a cat got stuck down there and died. I've had so many kids and animals and helpless bards killed, I just couldn't take any more!

I worked out that I can add human mercenaries to a squad, so we have a squad now. I only have 9 adult dwarves left from 12-14 (I capped migrants at 14 and I think I got some kids? Maybe? Or some residents pushed us past the cap) and it's not enough for a military. They are all getting good with their picks/axes though, and I make lots of leather clothes, so they aren't totally defenceless. Same for the bards who join up nowadays, well they have picks and I'm slowly replacing their clothes! (I also set a weak/frail/something one I'm fond of to man a quern because I noticed it made a dwarf "mighty", I hope it can help her!)

Selling food is so overpriced but I have to sell it because I overproduce it (and booze, but that's easier to just turn off, we don't start drowning in ingredients the same way) so we've been a duchy for a few years. It's just an inn really. All built above ground :) I'm slowly removing windows from the outside in expectation of surface attacks by building destroyers. I'm also moving the kitchens downstairs from behind the "bar" so I can put the duke's quarters there and the barracks where he was, on the main floor and near the cavern stairs (right now it's on the upstairs balcony).

Especially since sealing the caverns I've been slaughtering animals a lot (I need meat for my cheetah person!) but also selling them to caravans. I've been experimenting with cage traps and training, too. Never did either before. We had some boars that always got into the pasture and caused all the livestock to flee (even though they don't attack) and I was trying to train some, trained them a bit, sold most of them, kept one but she died of old age... I think I can't actually tame them though, they would have needed to be born to her when trained to be tame? I didn't particularly want tame boars, I was just glad to find a way to stop them annoying us without killing them!

But I've gone from my starting cats and 4 poultry types (my usual peafowl, and I tried ducks, geese and chickens) and 2 mares to being overrun with horses until I sold most, I'm presently overrun with sheep, I think I'm gonna give up on chickens and maybe on ducks and geese until I can pen them in a pond or something that would be cute?? and I have also laying an ostrich, a kakapo... I have some reindeer cows and normal cows... At one point I had a leopard and a black bear and I liked them but they fought the boars a lot which I didn't want. Same with the dogs I tried, even though I chained them! So I sold them all again (actually I think one dog got herself killed). Maybe now the boars seem to have gone I could try again? Or just keep them in the tavern itself, not like they need the grass :)

I randomly rolled a fortress once that was called Catfortunes and I loved it and reused it a lot. I switched it up for this one, it's Catmarsh. 'Cause it's in a swampy area, the brook-y head of a river that I guess leads to the nearby sea. My 3 starting cats, a tom and two queens, all died to monsters... the cats roaming Catmarsh right now are all from caravan cats. Most of the cats (the kittens and their moms) are locked in the barn lmao. I also have my typical thing of the one tom + a neutered friend for him locked in a small room. It's one of the two rooms off the barn I built for hatching eggs :) So maybe I will let more of them roam later or maybe not. I don't want to lose all my cats again! Just a few loose seems to be enough to keep pests out of the stores.

I have a dwarf who has lots of traits like basically indestructible lmao, he started off slightly strong and slow to tire I think? He's a real trooper, since one of the last cavern attacks he has been badly injured, he still has a head infection??? But the big problem is he can't breathe!! He's constantly having these suffocation attacks, but he just keeps pushing on. He's one of the original seven and married to the chief medical dwarf, also one of the originals (and the one who eventually taught the whole fortress first aid through the doctors guild!) They have 9 kids so far, the 8th was the first and only son. The two eldest daughters were killed :( But they still have 7 kids, so that's nice for them right? And they're one of the few with their own bedroom (I always make an office and bedroom off the hospital for the chief medic, I don't think they use the office but it just seems necessary somehow) Okay, I found his description right now: "He is absolutely inexhaustible, basically unbreakable, quite quick to heal and agile." And he made an artifact but I forgot what it was. I thought it was the blinged-out splint someone made, but no. Oh, he has a pet donkey :) (His wife has pet horses. This is clearly what brought them together, even before either of them actually had pets)

Our first manager-bookkeeper was a really nice bloke ("values harmony, quick to love, musical, creative, good focus, leisurely") and he had 2 kids with his wife (also original dwarf). He was killed pretty early on, maybe in the first attack where we had losses. The only of my seven dwarves who didn't couple up with each other - or anyone - was the expedition leader, now the duke. Well, recently he and the first manager's wife are lovers :) I hope they get married!

I'm excited for the kids to start growing up (doesn't help that most of the oldest ones were killed lmao). I also need to keep an eye on the humans. Most are related (and related to the ones in our catacombs...). I think the only married couple who live here are the lesbian dancer-lasher pair. I think some are single and might get together maybe? It would be fun to have some human children too!

One of the chief medical dwarf's daughters died in a tree of dehydration and I don't know why! I went back 3 days to the season autosave to try to save her but she was already dead. I don't know why she was up there at all, there weren't any jobs out there for her :(

I played solidly until the 24th with maybe the third iteration of Catmarsh (this one had different migrants because I forgot to change civ at the start). The new one is built of green glass :) It's cute. But now I am writing HTTWSB again and games don't exist any more. Bye! (I seriously at one point had steam telling me I'd played more than 100 hours in the past fortnight... and that was before I stopped... I've a sinking feeling that after installing DFHack, the hours were only counted there, but there's no way I played 75 hours a week, right?!)

I haven't been updating this, but I've been playing a frankly unseemly amount of Dwarf Fortress. I think at one point steam was claiming 100 hours a week. Ah, I think technically it's claiming that now, but it's often wrong (I remember once something like: last played 3 weeks ago, 20 hours in past fortnight. like okay?). The past entry is a little baffling to me because my writing spreadsheet indicates I'd gone back to HTTWSB on the 24th at least partially and fully on the 26th. What a mystery.

At one point I spent an entire day just trying to generate a nice world. I think part of the problem was (apart from I kept getting shitty muddy caverns) I didn't know dfhack sandbox makes trees. I thought because the actual like, tree command is not supported rn, I couldn't make a tree in my underground greenhouse (in this case, a cherry tree) so I thought I'd have to do it legit. But yeah, sandbox does it :) I also mastered tiletypes to bring some soil down to cavern level which is where I like to build recently. My newest Cathalls is going well: I mean, everyone seems to worship gods of death and other dodgy stuff, the (small) world is very very gobliny, my count keeps pissing me off and I keep putting him in the caverns when he tantrums lmao, but otherwise it's nice. I got serious about matchmaking and I have some successful couples and some to keep working on. And I have for the first time ever human and elven children from it :D It's fun. But, I haven't played for a few days... it's just that my site seems neglected! But I will go back to Cathalls soon I'm sure :) (It has a beautiful cavern tavern!!!)

I'm itching and craving to play FO3 or FNV...

Can I play things that aren't Something 3? Can I remember to update this? :)

I was playing TS3 more at the start of the month. I've been playing Desperados 3 here and there, seeing if I can get more badges. I love how the levels are all pretty mucn 40mins-1h which is a fun length of time to play for.

I started my much threatened FO3 replay on the 29th. I'm having fun, mostly. Some of the quests in this game are so stupid (it's evil not to side with cannibal thugs???). Also, I'm a lot braver about Fallout in general (maybe also just in general general) compared to when I first played 10 years ago so I've been playing with the radio off. (Half of it sucks, half of it is good, and half of it also sounds like Dragon Age haha) And the game is soo different like this? I loooved Three Dog and was excited to meet him again but this time I can't see why my LW wouldn't hate him for being like I have to run a radio show so I won't tell you where your dad is. If you don't listen to the radio and just hear it faintly in passing, his behaviour seems truly awful! Well, she's a high charisma character with decent speech and could just twist his arm but I didn't want to give in to him that much lmao. So I headed off into the Terrifying Metro and made it to Rivet City all by myself and that's where I am.

I remembered liking the android quest and thinking they really fumbled it all with FO4 but I don't know why I felt that way. I literally got harassed by some railroad woman in Megaton for listening to holotapes she was stupid enough to leave lying around... See, my Sole Survivor has reasons both to side with the Brotherhood and to hate synths by herself but my Lone Wanderer so far mostly hates the Brotherhood (I think the encounter with Sarah Lyons glitched a bit because what happened was I saw and killed some super mutants, and as the last one fell a Brotherhood member shot uselessly over its head, and when I failed to fall on my knees and thank them for this she got all pissy...) but this railroad woman is on my last nerve. Oh yeah, she was hanging out around Megaton for ages too and constantly up in my face about THE SYNTH COMPONENT I have killed her and reloaded soooo many times by now. I did actually get away with punching her outside Rivet City when she had a go at me for looking at the locked marketplace door (this is such an annoying FO3 mechanic that I completely forgot about lmao).

But! Despite all this! I am having fun!

I've been playing lots of Fallout 3 and mostly enjoying it! Some things are so annoying. The glitchy Big Town quest is the worst. I had to make my own mod that disables at least most of them being script-killed when it refuses to complete properly... I'm exploring the map because I think I never really did before. So I kinda stumbled across the Voyager episode my dad is trapped in but I just kept walking because I wanted to keep walking up that road. :) I'll get back to that at some point, maybe today - or maybe I'll just keep exploring. Right now, me and Charon are completely laden down with radscorpion parts which is soooo FO1 and annoys me slightly less for that reason.

I bought Skyrim SE on GOG today. I'm going to need to change all my mods for the AE patch level. It's gotten me thinking about what I actually want. Even though it's not a SKSE mod and doesn't really matter, I don't think I want the multiple adoptions mod any more, for example. I will just go back to adopting Lucia and Sofie. I mean, why not? The orphanage is fine for the others. But I also might not kill the twins' dad for example. She's getting magic lessons there after all. Just weird to think about when I normally aim to adopt all these kids :)

I need a good mod for Windstad Manor, my favourite house, but I'm going to have to make it. I still have Shezrie's kitchen and greenhouse mods but I'd like to make my own version. Something that winds me up is that redoing the house like this ends up with a north-facing greenhouse which is just ridiculous! I was thinking maybe I can make it more magical? Shezrie's idea of putting a kitchen in that weird central room behind the hearth is so good, though. I found a newer mod that does similar but they fumbled it by not making it a big central chimney like Shezrie's one. I'm definitely going to copy that. But also, I can make a nice vegetarian kitchen this way :) I'm gonna do trophy room > greenhouse because I think that roof against the Sea of Ghosts seems practical! And the default greenhouse has the sloped roof, anyway, so I can mostly just copy.

I finished the FO3 MQ and so far 2 of the DLCs: Operation Anchorage and the BoS vs Enclave Round 2 (3...) at Adams AFB. So next it's The Pitt which I never played and the swampy whatever which is what ended my first playthrough lmao. Is that all or am I missing one??? I don't know, well whatever. I haven't been playing for a week...

Since the 29th, I've been playing Kenshi again :) And like usual it's me, Ruka and our dog - slightly less usual, I got Ruka before the dog; it's usually the other way around. Also, I was a HN terrorist before I got either - not sure I've ever done that. Very unusually, instead of quickly settling for Ice or getting bogged down in Miu and then ofc Hamut and then someone to protect the two of them on the base we'll set up and... I just resolved not to get anyone else. We were exploring a lot - I did that in my last playthrough, too. But this time I've explored places I've never been. And along the way I found a woman abusing her mute slave, and offered to buy him... so we have Ray! He's not my first hiver - I had Beep on one of those "omg too many squad member" playthroughs before - but I love him. He also doesn't like, not talk... he tells fish sellers he loves fish lmao so I always buy some for him. Let's pretend he just looks very excited about it.

We've been exploring the coasts... I saw some leviathans! We met crab people and managed to befriend them. We're also fabulously wealthy and I don't really know how. We turned in some bounties like Flying Bull, the Preacher... but it doesn't account for all these cats. Neither do the ancient ruins. But, I guess they do! Not sure where we're headed now - maybe back to civilisation, such as it is. We should check in on our other allies the Flotsam Ninjas and the... thief ninjas... Shinobi Thieves?? Those two are always my allies, but the Crab Raiders are new :) But maybe we will just keep messing around and see what we find. Btw, we are all martial artists. Sometimes I cave and let Ruka keep the big swords 'cause she looks so cool with them. But I hate the ones that are too big to unequip (with just inventory+small backpack). So, she has a Desert Sabre in her bag - that's fun. It's like an anti-spider sword and I hate spiders!! I miss Miu... I had to like flat out blank her to not recruit her lmao

I think we bought Ruka's sword from the armour shop we found on a detour through a river trying to avoid HNers, level up swimming and do a little sightseeing :) Got some cool armour there too (for Ray and Ruka - dustcoats aren't big boob friendly lmao so I stuck with my Ninja Rags, but I upgraded to whatever those light armour black leather longshorts are from my karate trousers, so now we all match) which means getting enslaved is sooo annoying. I have never let them get so far as stripping us (not without savescumming haha, but omg these reavers are brutal!) but ofc they won't just put shackles on Ray, they drop his dustcoat. So I'm waiting until someone comes to and can crawl and get it. And we have to make sure someone can carry Doggy, and... Omg! I couldn't handle a bigger squad.

This squad is now strong enough to deal with at least 2 security spiders... I'm proud of that and it comes in bloody useful when some of these outposts they're guarding have extremely old rations + beds :) For a while now I've been strong enough to punch off limbs, which Doggy really loves bless her even though she's an elder now, and Ruka and Ray are catching me up. They literally caught me up a while ago, now Doggy is the slowest at a measly 20mph lmao. Kenshi is so funny. I love Kenshi and I'm gonna go and play it again right now :)

So much for keeping a small squad! I forgot that Beep approaches you in Mongrel, and I can't say no - and I got my first ever skeleton exploring the floodlands. Hmm... Rina, Ruka, Ray... Beep, Burn... I thought I should have given Doggy an R-name, but now it looks like she should have had a B-name :)

I visited Armour King again to kit Beep out, but he had like nothing in stock. Nothing good anyway. So that was a bust. Just lucky the first time, I guess? Well, Beep looks cool enough for now in the assassin rags and drifter trousers I bought for him from the thieves in Mongrel. I considered a black turban from AK because it looks kinda fun with the assassin rags, like it's all one (even though it's darker), but I just like his silly little hiver head too much to cover it for now.

We had two skeleton limbs before our actual skeleton! I lost an arm during a daring plan to save ourselves from being eaten by like 100 fishmen who, in retrospect, we could have taken... Well, I didn't want to either bring them to a crab settlement just in case, or waste time looking for a roaming squad. My first thought was to take them to the police stations - I had taken the contents of one on a fun adventure that culminated in a us vs police vs skeleton bandits vs reavers in front of and inside a reaver camp. That was an adventure! At one point we snuck into a reaver house for a nap lmao.

But I just couldn't get the fishmen to follow me to it. It's like we were slightly too fast on that terrain. And I can't get my squad to wait and keep running (reliably), they are determined to fight given the slightest opportunity. So, next best: the spider tower I opened once and promptly reloaded :) You can see where this is going, right? Anyway, it worked. Bloodbath... killed most of the spiders, so maybe we'll run into the survivors some time. But I lost my arm - I was the only one who actually went trick-or-treating, but the others managed to sustain some spider swipes, too! And I was dying nearly the whole way to... wherever we escaped to. A waystation? Flats Lagoon? Black Scratch? What do you think it was? Nearest TH kinda place. It involved swimming. Just swimming (really fast), one arm, "dying". Okay! Well, I'm super tough so I'm fine now. :) (What does negative blood mean in Kenshi? Is 0 more like, risk of dying than actually "0ml" haha, it must be...)

I wanted to find a better arm so I looked up I should go to Black Desert City. And I looked for it in the Black Desert... all over... I had like 50% acid resistance lmao. And that was after stealing Ruka's hat! (I bought my own, too, but I just prefer my square goggles...) But I found it eventually and got some kind of sick industrial lifting arm. It's only specialist not masterwork though... We went back to get an arm for Ray and he got a masterwork one (opposite side) but still none for me!

Ray lost his arm to a beak thing! We were a bit low on cash ("only" 100k+) and we'd been hanging around my science lab in the Hub (I like sending Ruka, Ray and the dog out on errands whilst I wiggle my arms over some equipment) so I came up with the great idea to buy as much weed from the swamps as we could carry (and fill the gaps with fish, less to sell, more 'cause Ray loves 'em...) and take it to Flats Lagoon. Totally uneventful trip last time - this time, those beak things killed us before I reloaded and ran screaming towards some nomads. We healed their animals (they never bother...?) and carried some unconscious goats behind them until they woke up as a thank you. (Well, Ray couldn't carry any, bless him, haha!)

But that was all yesterday, when there were just 4 of us. Now with Beep (so weak...) and a veteran skeleton explorer (not much better...) we wiped out a really funny cannibal den. They had left a trail of food and medicine up to their lair lmao. I love killing cannibals!! Now we just went back to World's End to sell all the things we looted from them and the few none-empty none-spidery things in the floodlands(? where Burn is). On the way we found some Flotsam safehouses and helped some kill some more cannibals :)

My saves are getting crazy big (newest is 115mb), but I don't want to import. I already had to once from a glitch a few days ago... so annoying!

We stayed in World's End a bit whilst I set up some hydroponic hemp farms, now I finally had the research. We really multitasked with letting the construction trader restock in between abortive raids on Okran's Fist. Or just getting wrecked by one of the patrols in the valley :) Sometimes saved or 'saved' by hungry bandits or cannibals... And we hung around Flotsam Village for a day or two, roasting meat and munching on cannibal legs, to make use of its hemp farm for starter seed once the machinery was up and running. Then I thought we should hire that woman there who killed her dad to run the farm but we got Okraned on the way down the mountain - Beep lost a leg! Well, we got him a decent replacement - a mid/high quality running leg, he goes 31 fucking mph now!! Beep... or... meep meep roadrunner :) So it's just going to be some more of that today I guess. Those crossbowmen on the walls are fucking me up! The most heavily-armoured of us is Burn in the armoured rags set, mostly 'cause it was all that was for sale, but now I kinda like him in it (I guess you don't really worry about how warm and sand-protective clothes are on a skeleton haha) But even he doesn't have a helmet... We are always renting the skeleton bed nextdoor in World's End for an eye-watering 800 a pop. I mean we make the most of it - Burn sits on a bench and watches us all snooze in camp beds on our roof, and when we're all mostly healed he gets on the bed to regen and then all of us with robot limbs take a quick turn, all on the same charge. But even so! I don't know how to build one so maybe it's back to the Hub to learn. WE doesn't have a lot of (reliable) electric - I have tried to help by whacking some battery packs on my main house's roof (we are growing weed in the shack on the opposite side of town, just has room for 3 beds, weed machine and the two boxes)

So yeah, two squads now! A little worrying 'cause she can do it all herself (mostly - she's understaffed) but I need to remember to check in on her to feed her (she can sell weed to the bar for food). I hope it will flash me up or warn me if she starves when I'm adventuring! We are in the process of setting up some riceweed and veg beds. Need the starter seeds though - they have literally every other crop in WE than the ones I want to grow lmao. With another person or two (I am really thinking Hamut and Miu at this point...) they can hopefully feed themselves with delicious gohan (what I would eat in Kenshi) and sell sake and hash to the bars! That sounds fun right? I don't know if I'm right in thinking 2 rice farms + 1 veg farm is okay for rice+greenfruit gohan + sake... maybe not, but we'll see. I might also get a mod that lets you "drink" (eat) alcohol! And also look into brewing rum from buying cactus the bars sell, I wonder if it's profitable? But this all waits for getting poor Digna some backup. That's today's mission! (I would love to get Ice too but idk how I am going to sneak into Stack and get her...)

Selling weed in WE is not very lucrative, so I can just change 2 of the beds to rice and/or greenfruit if I need to, I guess :) Shame I can't keep the fucking materials though! We are only changing the crop...

Omg, so much has happened. I did sneak into Stack and get Ice, and we did all pick up Hamut and Miu from the swamps, and I also got (I think) all the Flotsam uniques. And at first I made all of those be farmers in World's End with Digna, but basically all of the ladies bar Digna and Miu want to be out there sticking it to the slavers, and Hamut does too, and you can't separate Hamut and Miu, so... So I have a totally unwieldly squad now and I kind of hate it but whatever. Oh, even with just the small squad, we officially wiped out Okran's Fist, so that's fun :) We still get our arse handed to us by an inquisitor... though maybe not now there's like 73 of us. Okay, who is there. Let's see if I can even name them. So there's the real squad of (me) Rina, Ruka, Doggy, Ray, Beep and Burn. And now... now... now... I know their names honest... Ice, Hamut, Miu, Reva, Knife and somebody else. There's fucking somebody else. Up in WE there's just three now and they've got it all in hand: Digna, Pia (the Flotsam runner) and....... Soman from the fishing village!

Maybe there isn't someone else in the Lucky Squad. Well there is: Espher. Yeah we hit up Tengu's Vault. Didn't expect to find it, assumed it was more in that main UC desert part, just thought that part of the skimmer sands looked like there should be something there and there was lmao. It was a disaster, I tried all things, tried with disguises, whatever. In the end, just sent Rina in totally nude lmao ("Ruka darling can you hold my backpack?") and kept the others at a distance, wishing there was like "fucking stay there BUT ALSO defend each other from getting ate by skimmers and patch each other up" which 'hold' really isn't. I got Espher and carried him out - reloaded so many times so he'd only get beat back into the cage and not fucking killed - and did recruit him! Yay! And then I was like, wait he was the only real one in there right? Then I realised the Luquin was the one from the books... so I went to an earlier save and tried to get both (he had died in the main one...) but it glitched bad and I couldn't recruit either. So I decided to just stick with Espher. Sorry Luquin, but at least he died free! It was all helped by some kind of invasion from skimmer army which distracted most of the guards...

Now I have a hiver soldier, worker and prince :) Beep and Espher both follow Ray 'cause he's the one who knows what he's doing. Seriously he is soooo tough. Well he trained to be as tough as Rina and Ruka who are still the like, real fighters lmao, but I think maybe Ray is finally on their level because he's always surprising me lately with how late he is to go down, how often he gets back up... Beep is a disaster who has already lost two limbs (the leg I wrote about, and now an arm). Cyber Beep indeed! Espher has all his arms and legs but it's early days for him

More lost limbs: Ice and Knife both lost an arm. Ice lost hers in a raid on Okran's Fist and was very brave and carried it home for a treat for Doggy. Knife... I have a feeling it was to a dust boss in the Hub. We were just chilling doing research and I was like yeah sure the newbies can take these dust bandits, good training for them. Reva ended up glitching through a wall and then the floor once knocked out! Good job she came to (the surface...) because she was not first-aidable down there. Knife was out cold for like 7 years, what a drama queen, she still had most of her blood and everything. But that's how long all my battery capacity research took too, so... (And me and Espher's UC slave status...)

All these recruitment fees, kitting out, robot limbs, batteries: we're pretty low on cash! And that's with my book-generating mods...! It's nice though that Digna can sell some weed and sake to one of the dozen neighbouring bars in WE and we can receive that instantly to our bank account in Black Desert City. Kenshi is so backwards in some respects but then in others totally surpasses our levels of civilisation and technology eh :)

In our WE base I've been having fun with storage boxes, the medical one and the food one - really helps for combining stolen half-used/eaten things! It's nice to be so close to a well-stocked construction shop. Also nice they have such a high budget to buy all the other stuff from our raids :) I have to try to remember though: the bars don't share an inventory but they do share a budget! But I don't really need it between the construction shop and the travel/robotics shop being 24/7.

Rn we are in a library in the arse end of western hive territory (stopping at every village really fast to buy lanterns for everyone before the trader starts shrieking about hiveless). It was kind of funny. Surrounded by spiders, and some inside, or maybe they just glitched inside. Like Miu. Can you believe it? Miu glitched into a heavy-locked library with a spider in there with her. Luckily it was injured. So I thought she could take it, rather than trying futiley to break the door down, but it got her. Started eating her!!! And then... stopped. When she immediately woke up. And they just kinda were in there glaring at each other (I made her sit on a stool) until we finished fighting outside. Hamut went nuts trying to break down the door to get to her, too... idk if it's because I set him to bodyguard her or what :) Anyway, I made him stop so I could pick it. I need lockpicking practice since I got my robot arm 'cause I meet locks I'm 0% on again. This one was like 8% or maybe even just 2%. We're all just holed up in there, upstairs on our thousand sleeping bags (such a pain to set them all up, seriously not buying Kenshi 2 unless they've put in a 'camp' button!) watching beak thing heads walking past, listening to them eating gorillos (who had come to eat the spiders, isn't nature beautiful?). We also rescued an escaped holy servant. Or should I say "kidnapped" 'cause that's what it was for untasty Burn to rush out there and save her from being eaten alive. Whatever!

I wonder if Miu will stop being so scared of spiders. Or if this will have finally broken her :)

I don't know where we're going to go, but we can build a skeleton bed finally when we get back to WE. Or, Digna and the girls can build it :) I guess when Burn is tired of adventuring he can retire up there. Lots of skeleton friends too! (Just like Beep!)

So just to add to Miu's spider trauma/exposure therapy/new leaf I was like it's totally bugmaster time. This was a terrible mistake but it worked out okay. I even set us up a permanent camp in between Last Stand for us to come back to after getting slightly wiped by the 2nd band of skin spiders we ran into. But then, we got to the tower nearly incident-free. And after several times watching pretty tough and brave but not enough Hamut get literally just killed, and Reva got ate, and so on (btw yeah I did get all their names, I am a good squad leader and they deservedly follow me into certain limb loss) I worked out a way to get us up there in reasonable health and then take on the spiders in a few batches by leading some on a benny hill chase. TACTICS!! And then to heal up just a little, healthy ones take on the few curious spiders who come up, and then 4 toughest (Rina, Ruka, Ray and their dog) go to fight, and nearly but omg down, but the others are like "omg..." and these weaklings (2 were out cold still!) actually pull it off! Well, these weaklings and Burn, who isn't weak. And Beep, well, he goes down like a sack of potatoes in a strong breeze doesn't he bless him, but he can hit fairly hard by now. So yeah! They got him! Then Burn is holding him, and Ray (who got up in fairly good health too) can fastly and poor limping Beep can slowly move us all upstairs and hopefully out of scent/sight/whatever of spiders. And yeah! It worked! Only like 2-3 came up and they could take care of it, especially after Burn put matey in one of his own cages.

This was all so exciting that I didn't even loot the chest he'd been watching until we were nearly ready to go. I'd been disappointed by most "treasure" so far but this one was really hyped up. I'm glad I didn't know what was in the chest - it made me laugh!

We just took him to Admag and are becoming super duper shek allies with yet another squad member. I feel like it glitched - when Beep finally handed him over, Bayan was like, "omg well from the great hero Beep how could I even be surprised..." which I'm sure Beep loved (which was half of why I let him carry him - other half is how fucking fast he is with his new leg lmao) but hmm weird yeah. Oh well! 100k and a new shek up!

Whilst they were healing up - slowly, without the beds that were in our camp lmao - I sent Burn for takeaway. It was funny to watch him running along the lakebed. It's also funny to have a skeleton ordering food at all... well I'm easily amused haha!

I've only been playing like, every other day for the past week :)

New squaddies: Cat in the Dust King tower. Never found him before! I don't know what to do with him, well apart from turn him into an elite martial artist obviously. Seto as I mentioned last time, gosh she's weak, especially compared to my beloved Ruka... And also because I happened to run into him, Silvershade! So we have 4 hivers now and they're all soooo pretty and cute. I love hivers so much.

I've been considering making a real base, somewhere near Flotsam, but I realised I never bothered to research walls :) So we headed back to the Hub and my research house there. But I underestimated how slow all these losers are and we got rather severely HNed. Poor Ice lost a leg (and was elongated "dying" like when I lost my arm...), Beep lost his other leg... We kept getting so hammered by high paladin patrols after that 2nd one with an inquisitor (I hate them!!! it went down easy this time but all the high pallies wiped us out eventually...) that our best bet seriously looked like the fog islands. When the fog islands are your best bet... well, you're probably escaping from the HN :) We actually stopped on the way to wipe out a holy mine. I don't know why I thought this was a good idea - Seto was out like a rock and poor Ice and Beep were just wiggling around like little worms. But it was a good idea 'cause we cleared it! And we could rest up a little bit there. And we got the 4 prisoners there to join us so I was like oh great more babysitting. Well they've cost me thousands already 'cause of course I couldn't simply offload them in Mongrel, I needed to feed and kit them out properly.

We did fun fog adventures after buying some legs (god bless my poor squaddies seriously), made more than we spent I expect with fog prince heads (not like my sweet Espher and Silvershade ♥... actually, I think we didn't have Silvershade yet, I actually made Ruka recruit him on a supply run to the BZ waystation for parts for a skellie bed). I've left those newbies (who I gave back their hair and named things like Bob and Sally lmao) in Mongrel, maybe next time we're stalling I can make them do some fog adventures of their own! Otherwise I'm sorry to say they're going to be somewhat disposable raid defence whenever we get actually set up :)

I guess when it's properly up and going I'll get the WE girlies to decamp there. They do so well when WE has power, and until all those useless tech hunters deplete my 3000 batteries, but in between? Yeah they're wasted up there. I think I might stick with hydroponics because it's fun and compact :) I want to try to build with buildings in the wall. I like the idea of 3 of the bananahouses pointing inwards with a wall piece/gate piece to join them!! I guess a similar bigger one, with a nice enough flat area, could be to literally just double the walls. Though... that would be skewiff for the gate... so I guess 1 or 3 :) At that point, might as well use something else in the big walls... I like the watchtowers? Are they 1 wall wide, though? Maybe I will find out today :)

Well, I gave up on that Kenshi save and started again. I wanted to take out some mods and also make my own research mod (no cost for anything but tech levels - I will upload it when I've had a chance to test). So far it's just me Ruka and the dog again. This time she's called Ruby :)

Today I was thinking about all the steam games I need to finish so I started playing Dragon Age: Inquisiton again on Origin :) I'm just picking up where I left off, in the Winter Palace, overexcited about meeting Morrigan. I stopped playing on the 27/11/21. This is supposed to be my last attempt to actually finish this game I don't even like very much. I actually beat the MQ the first time but this time I'm going to do the DLCs, too. Why did I stop the first time? I really don't know!

I tried to load a bunch of games and uninstalled them if they didn't load/annoyed me in any way. I played a little bit of World of Goo. It seems to have lost my save at some point. I still like it but why is this game so loud?? It's annoying to have to lower the volume outside of the game. DAI is opposite, too quiet so I have to turn up my speakers!