[FFRK] Nightmare Demon Wall

I really wish that I had something more insightful to say about this encounter but to be honest, I had effectively brute forced Demon Wall down with Shout boosted SSB spam towards the end of the fight. I had somehow managed to master this fight despite entering phase 3 and losing all but Pecil and Lightning. As it turns out however, he is neither that beefy nor does he have all that much health. If you have enough physical gear with synergy and can in some way deal with his damage output, you can just burn him down.

[wpdatatable id=9] Roaming Warrior: Ramza (Shout)
Notable Soul Breaks: Sentinel’s Grimoire, Blade Beam, Crushing Blow

I did have a native wall (SG), but ended up leaving both Shout and Medica out for the sake of full party synergy. Draw Fire really wasn’t all that useful in any sense. I would probably have been better off swapping it out with another healing spell.

The one and only thing that I did read about this encounter was to place your highest damaging party member dead in the middle. The main gimmick of the counter has something to do with Royal Tomb, which will target 3 consecutive party members at a time (the top 3, the middle 3, or the bottom 3).

I am pretty sure that the trick is to make sure that only the party members targeted by Royal Tomb are the ones who are attacking. Everyone else should either be on standby, healing, or support. Since the party member in the center will always be targetted, s/he should stack as much DPS as possible.

Phase 1 of the fight is a straight burn. Ignore mitigation, get Shout up ASAP and burst him down to phase 2. If you take too long (like I did during my first attempt), he will Gravija your entire party and you will lose the mastery condition.

Black Desert Online Impressions

It was raining the other Sunday so for lack of any other indoor activity that I felt compelled to partake in, I purchased Black Desert Online on a whim. I have been hearing about this title on-and-off of the past month or so. Aside from screenshots, I didn’t actually know that much about it. Ultimately, it was both curiosity as well as the fact that it was only $30 with no monthly fee that pushed it over the edge of temptation.

BDO’s character creation is probably the most robust system out of any that I have seen in any recent MMO. That said, I really wish someone would make a character creator that is similar to Create-a-Sim from The Sims 4. I find that being able to click and drag on various facial features to move them, make them longer, etc is way easier than using slidebars.

As a sidenote, there is a distinct aesthetic that all Korean and Japanese MMO’s seem to have. I think it is that the characters look like 3Dified anime characters maybe? That is not to say that it is a bad thing, just something that I have noticed.

Combat is very fluid and action RPGish with a sufficient amount of ability combos. Though technically you could fight in a typical MMO keyboard binding manner, it is more fun to treat it like a 3rd party action game.

New game + fairly automatable (autopath to everything) = my new half watch Hulu and half play a game activity. That said, the fact that a number of things can be automated and minimized to the tray and that questing can be reduced to hitting ‘T’ to autorun to a giant glowing circle on the map makes me frown a bit and wonder if we are all not better off just ‘playing’ Progress Quest or something.

I don’t think that I am going to stick with BDO (or really any MMO) in the long run, but it is sufficiently interesting to hold my attention until Overwatch is released.

Odds and Ends: April 2016

My new personal project for April and onward is to consistently run and/or lift at least 5 days a week instead of sporadically jumping on the treadmill once or twice a week. I am considering moving the HTPC into the spare room so that I can watch Hulu/Netflix on a screen larger than the iPad/my phone while I run. Still no Overwatch beta invite though at this point it is not that far from release I guess.

FFRK: RNGesus be Praised
I went into SSBfest and the FFT challenge event expecting bupkis and came out of it with everything that I and really wanted and then some. In any case, I am almost certain that I have permanently exhausted my luck reservoir but now that I have both SG and Shout, I think I am okay with that. First World Problem: Since most of my Roaming Warriors were either Sentinel’s Grimoire or Stone Skin II, I now need to redo my entire list. What a pain in the ass.

FFRKlolRNG

Stardew Valley
This game is such a time sink; I don’t in any sense mean that in a negative manner. I am currently at the end of Fall during my first year. The farm, though rather small is mostly automated; Growth seems to be dictated by how many sprinklers I am able to craft. Alex, my chosen marriage candidate has recently accepted my bouquet. I actually haven’t picked Stardew Valley up in a few weeks. I feel as if it is one of those games that I will cycle in and out of as personal interest dictates.

My Plants
I am very pleased to see that the small sad looking lithop leaf double spawned. It was shriveled for quite some time, so I was pretty sure that it was going to die. I guess it just took longer to split for whatever reason. Unfortunately, I haven’t done a very good job of taking my plants in from the rain so I suspect that a few of them have gotten a bit too much water. The soil that they are in does seem to drain and dry out pretty fast so they should be okay.
06 - 9Iw5ufz

Black Desert Online
I caved and scratched a very faint but present itch. More posts to come.