One of the ancients in Clicker Heroes is named Atman and he costs a large number of souls to level up. His impact on your game is he makes it more likely to have primal bosses spawn as you're playing. Primal bosses are one of the two ways to earn more souls so he felt like a pretty good guy to have. Spend some souls now, get more souls later! The problem is not spending those souls makes you do more damage, which means you get to kill more things, which might well generate more souls themselves. Almost certainly I shouldn't have bought him when I did, but that ship has sailed. Now I want to at least figure out how many souls I expect to gain from an additional level in this guy so I can decide if I want to sink more souls into him now or not.
Typically on a soul farming run I'll get to level 145 and then reset. This gains me 8 souls from other sources and then some number of souls from primals I find from 105 to 145. My gut feeling is that's been about 4 extra per run. How does that stand up? Well, by default each boss has a 25% chance to spawn as a primal and is worth some number of souls based on the level. In this level range I have 4 shots at 1 soul, 3 at 2 souls, and 2 at 3 souls. Which actually averages out to 4 per run. Anyway, that also means that adding an extra 1% chance of spawning a primal on each level will gain me a whopping .16 souls per run. I can do a run every half hour, so if I were to spend the 23 souls on the next level I'd expect to make them back after 144 runs. So about three days to break even, assuming I didn't lose any time by giving up 10% of my damage, anyway... Which all seems pretty terrible, actually.
But what if I go deeper? My longest run ever killed the boss of 260 who is actually worth 13 souls. The total of all those souls could total 194. Getting an extra 1% of those would get me almost 2 souls per run, but that run took me a day. That's 11 and a half days to break even, which is worse than the fast run case.
I'm all about long term rewards, but a week and a half to break even on the cost even if it didn't drastically reduce my damage is a bit much. Until I really ramp up my ability to farm for souls I don't think I should be sinking any more souls into leveling Atman up any further.
Friday, October 10, 2014
Thursday, October 09, 2014
Clicker Heroes: Reload
Clicker Heroes has 9 abilities you can learn as the game progresses. Each ability does something and then goes on cooldown for a set length of time before you can use it again. One of those abilities, reload, has an hour long cooldown and reduces the cooldown of your previously used ability by an hour. We were chatting about the game the other day on Skype and were trying to find ways to make good use of this ability.
First of all, 6 of the other abilities all last 30 seconds, have durations ranging from 10 minutes to an hour, and give you a combat relevant buff. It clicks for you, or your clicks are more powerful, or you make more gold when you click... They're all multipliers that stack with each other and the best way to use them is to pop them all for the same 30 second stretch of time. Initially it seemed like the thing to do would be to figure out which ability of those 6 was the best one, reset it, and pop it again in the same window. Unfortunately it turns out that doesn't actually give you a second application of whatever ability you reset. It probably refreshes the duration but it doesn't give you any extra power. And since 2 of these abilities are on an hour long cooldown there's no way to use reload to sync them all up for a different 30 second window.
The next ability is energize which has an hour long cooldown and doubles the power of the next ability you use. It interacts with reload in odd ways. For one, you can never actually reset the cooldown of energize. Reload skips energize and resets the cooldown of the ability used before the energize. Reload can be energized and if you do so it knocks an hour off the cooldown of your previous two abilities used, skipping the energize itself. In an interesting turn of events if reload itself was one of those two abilities it will consume the buff but it won't actually reset the cooldown of reload. This means if we could find two things worth refreshing we could do them both at the same time. I guess you could actually use this to reset the cooldown of both hour long buffs from the previous paragraph to allow you to pop your combo 2 times every hour and a half instead of once an hour. I'm pretty sure just using the energize on the combo itself would be a better thing to do, though.
The last ability is the one that really screams for a reload. Dark ritual has an 8 hour long cooldown and gives you a permanent 5% damage boost. Extra damage is good! If you could target your reload on an ability of your choice things would be easy and you'd just use it on dark ritual. Unfortunately only having it impact your most recently used ability means you need to be careful about your clicking order and it means you can't just spam the reload on dark ritual. If you time things careful you can pull off two reloads per dark ritual, though. Use dark ritual, use reload, and then do nothing else. In an hour come back, use energize, and use reload. This will reload your two most recently used non-energize abilities which happen to be reload and dark ritual. This only works once (try it again and you're reload two reloads) but it does work. Getting to use dark ritual every 6 hours instead of every 8 hours is totally worth it. I don't think there's another relevant use for reload, but this one use is pretty good.
It gets even better once you unlock some ancients! One of the ancients permanently reduces the cooldowns of all your abilities. At max rank (where I have him) he takes a full 75% off of the cooldown for every ability. This means my dark ritual only has a 2 hour cooldown and my reload only has a 15 minute cooldown. I can use an energized dark ritual every 30 minutes! (Energize, dark ritual, reload... energize, reload... Repeat.) I can even use my other abilities as bookends right before the first energize and right after the second reload. It's pretty sweet. I was trying to figure out a way to do better than that, but the problem really is that you need to use the second energize on reload or there's no way to get the dark ritual cooldown under an hour. So you can do one 10% buff each hour while using your full combo 3 times in the hour or you can do two 10% buffs each hour and never do your full combo. If you really need to use your full combo on a boss you could leave dark ritual unused for an extra 15 minutes and do one 10% buff and one full combo every 45 minutes as a compromise between the two. Or you could just not buff one of the dark rituals I guess... Do a 10% and a 5% each hour. That's better than the last option. So, yeah... Always reload the dark ritual, always energize the second reload, and maybe energize the dark ritual or your combo depending on your current boss killing needs.
First of all, 6 of the other abilities all last 30 seconds, have durations ranging from 10 minutes to an hour, and give you a combat relevant buff. It clicks for you, or your clicks are more powerful, or you make more gold when you click... They're all multipliers that stack with each other and the best way to use them is to pop them all for the same 30 second stretch of time. Initially it seemed like the thing to do would be to figure out which ability of those 6 was the best one, reset it, and pop it again in the same window. Unfortunately it turns out that doesn't actually give you a second application of whatever ability you reset. It probably refreshes the duration but it doesn't give you any extra power. And since 2 of these abilities are on an hour long cooldown there's no way to use reload to sync them all up for a different 30 second window.
The next ability is energize which has an hour long cooldown and doubles the power of the next ability you use. It interacts with reload in odd ways. For one, you can never actually reset the cooldown of energize. Reload skips energize and resets the cooldown of the ability used before the energize. Reload can be energized and if you do so it knocks an hour off the cooldown of your previous two abilities used, skipping the energize itself. In an interesting turn of events if reload itself was one of those two abilities it will consume the buff but it won't actually reset the cooldown of reload. This means if we could find two things worth refreshing we could do them both at the same time. I guess you could actually use this to reset the cooldown of both hour long buffs from the previous paragraph to allow you to pop your combo 2 times every hour and a half instead of once an hour. I'm pretty sure just using the energize on the combo itself would be a better thing to do, though.
The last ability is the one that really screams for a reload. Dark ritual has an 8 hour long cooldown and gives you a permanent 5% damage boost. Extra damage is good! If you could target your reload on an ability of your choice things would be easy and you'd just use it on dark ritual. Unfortunately only having it impact your most recently used ability means you need to be careful about your clicking order and it means you can't just spam the reload on dark ritual. If you time things careful you can pull off two reloads per dark ritual, though. Use dark ritual, use reload, and then do nothing else. In an hour come back, use energize, and use reload. This will reload your two most recently used non-energize abilities which happen to be reload and dark ritual. This only works once (try it again and you're reload two reloads) but it does work. Getting to use dark ritual every 6 hours instead of every 8 hours is totally worth it. I don't think there's another relevant use for reload, but this one use is pretty good.
It gets even better once you unlock some ancients! One of the ancients permanently reduces the cooldowns of all your abilities. At max rank (where I have him) he takes a full 75% off of the cooldown for every ability. This means my dark ritual only has a 2 hour cooldown and my reload only has a 15 minute cooldown. I can use an energized dark ritual every 30 minutes! (Energize, dark ritual, reload... energize, reload... Repeat.) I can even use my other abilities as bookends right before the first energize and right after the second reload. It's pretty sweet. I was trying to figure out a way to do better than that, but the problem really is that you need to use the second energize on reload or there's no way to get the dark ritual cooldown under an hour. So you can do one 10% buff each hour while using your full combo 3 times in the hour or you can do two 10% buffs each hour and never do your full combo. If you really need to use your full combo on a boss you could leave dark ritual unused for an extra 15 minutes and do one 10% buff and one full combo every 45 minutes as a compromise between the two. Or you could just not buff one of the dark rituals I guess... Do a 10% and a 5% each hour. That's better than the last option. So, yeah... Always reload the dark ritual, always energize the second reload, and maybe energize the dark ritual or your combo depending on your current boss killing needs.
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
Final Fantasy X-2: Round One Done!
Today I went and took my new catnip item out for a spin on the hard boss in the desert, Angra Mainyu. Rikku wasted some time berserk attacking the arm that was immune to physical damage but when she went after the actual boss she did silly damage to him. Yuna was able to use the dark knight ability darkness to keep the arms mostly dead which cleared the path for Rikku to obliterate the boss. Paine made herself invincible and stood ready to throw a phoenix down at Rikku if she died. I wouldn't say the fight was trivial but it was definitely easy. Catnip may have been nerfed but it's still pretty darn good.
With that boss down I figured it was a fine time to go finish the game. The end boss was actually a joke thanks to the catnip. It's a series of fights that presumably have hard components to them but since Rikku goes first and attacks for 19998 before the enemy can react... Splitting the fight up into lots of small fights where she gets to strike first over and over again bodes very poorly for the enemies.
I got a completion score of 55%, which is far short of 100%. It turns out I did a pretty terrible job of avoiding the plot which is what you need to do to get 100% in one playthrough. You have to do every side quest possible and often doing some of the plot will advance the state of the world such that you miss something. Assuming my wrist holds up I may try to burn through a second playthrough focusing on sidequests and see where that gets me. I'll still have that catnip so actual encounters won't take too long I wouldn't think.
With that boss down I figured it was a fine time to go finish the game. The end boss was actually a joke thanks to the catnip. It's a series of fights that presumably have hard components to them but since Rikku goes first and attacks for 19998 before the enemy can react... Splitting the fight up into lots of small fights where she gets to strike first over and over again bodes very poorly for the enemies.
I got a completion score of 55%, which is far short of 100%. It turns out I did a pretty terrible job of avoiding the plot which is what you need to do to get 100% in one playthrough. You have to do every side quest possible and often doing some of the plot will advance the state of the world such that you miss something. Assuming my wrist holds up I may try to burn through a second playthrough focusing on sidequests and see where that gets me. I'll still have that catnip so actual encounters won't take too long I wouldn't think.
Tuesday, October 07, 2014
Heroes of the Swarm
I loaded up the Battle.Net launcher today to see if there was any news in there about the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion. There was a 5th game listed in the launcher, one that I certainly hadn't purchased: Heroes of the Swarm. It vaguely rang a bell and I figured that if it was a free to play game in a genre I love by Blizzard I owed it to the game to check it out.
My wrist has been feeling a little better and I figured I should give it some work to keep it from losing too much strength. It didn't hurt while playing which was good, but I also took breaks to cool it off. The numbness thing is still around, but whatever.
Anyway, Heroes of the Swarm is still in alpha so it's not a finished product but what they have seems pretty good. It has a good tutorial, mediocre AI bots to play against, and it uses heroes from different Blizzard franchises (Diablo, StarCraft, Warcraft...) so there's all kinds of cool nostalgia moments. Plenty of different map twists too to shake up the basic game.
The basic game is a very, very 'dumbed down' version of a DotA or a League of Legends. It's like Blizzard is trying to make a moba game for the masses who find LoL too complicated. If there's actually a market for such a thing this game could really take off. Here are some of the things they changes to make things simpler...
- You earn experience for killing minions and champions same as always, but your team shares an experience bar. Everyone gains a level at the exact same time. There's no jockeying for who gets to have a solo lane to get extra experience. There's no falling behind and becoming useless compared to your teammates. If one lane does badly and another lane does well then your whole team will remain balanced. On the flip side if one lane does badly and everyone else goes even then your whole team falls behind.
- There is no gold. There are no items to buy. There is no concept of last hitting a minion as a result. There's no yelling at people for buying terrible items. There's no needing to know a huge list of items to have a chance at playing decently.
- You start with (almost) all of your skills at level 1, and you don't get to put more points into them to make them better in your own choice of skill order.
- There is some customization. Every so many levels you earn a talent point which you spend by making a choice from a small list of options. I was playing as Jim Raynor (a ranged assassin) and at level 4 I have to choose between having a longer attack range, or getting life leech on my attacks, or doing extra damage on my attacks, or getting extra cooldown reduction when something I recently attacked dies. So I certainly have a choice to make! I've mostly been going with extra attack range because I like to kite in fights but I could see the argument for other choices. But maybe if you had a team full of people healing you and stunning the enemies you'd just want to take the point that makes you do more damage. If you're just fast pushing a lane then the cooldown reduction for killing minions could be game winning. And extra healing on attacks is always good...
- There are jungle camps to kill, but the reason to kill them is you get to spawn versions of them to attack the enemy base. Running off to summon up some powerful siege monsters felt really good when it worked.
- You get a mount. So basically everyone always has boots of mobility.
Now, I've spent a lot of time playing LoL, and I've gotten pretty good at all the annoying fiddly things. I can last hit to earn more gold than many people earn. I know all the items. I know what order to take the skills. Also LoL is an actual finished game. So for me, LoL really feels like the game to play if I want to be playing a moba game. But if someone was starting fresh? They probably want to play HotS. And that bodes very well for this game in the long run I would think...
My wrist has been feeling a little better and I figured I should give it some work to keep it from losing too much strength. It didn't hurt while playing which was good, but I also took breaks to cool it off. The numbness thing is still around, but whatever.
Anyway, Heroes of the Swarm is still in alpha so it's not a finished product but what they have seems pretty good. It has a good tutorial, mediocre AI bots to play against, and it uses heroes from different Blizzard franchises (Diablo, StarCraft, Warcraft...) so there's all kinds of cool nostalgia moments. Plenty of different map twists too to shake up the basic game.
The basic game is a very, very 'dumbed down' version of a DotA or a League of Legends. It's like Blizzard is trying to make a moba game for the masses who find LoL too complicated. If there's actually a market for such a thing this game could really take off. Here are some of the things they changes to make things simpler...
- You earn experience for killing minions and champions same as always, but your team shares an experience bar. Everyone gains a level at the exact same time. There's no jockeying for who gets to have a solo lane to get extra experience. There's no falling behind and becoming useless compared to your teammates. If one lane does badly and another lane does well then your whole team will remain balanced. On the flip side if one lane does badly and everyone else goes even then your whole team falls behind.
- There is no gold. There are no items to buy. There is no concept of last hitting a minion as a result. There's no yelling at people for buying terrible items. There's no needing to know a huge list of items to have a chance at playing decently.
- You start with (almost) all of your skills at level 1, and you don't get to put more points into them to make them better in your own choice of skill order.
- There is some customization. Every so many levels you earn a talent point which you spend by making a choice from a small list of options. I was playing as Jim Raynor (a ranged assassin) and at level 4 I have to choose between having a longer attack range, or getting life leech on my attacks, or doing extra damage on my attacks, or getting extra cooldown reduction when something I recently attacked dies. So I certainly have a choice to make! I've mostly been going with extra attack range because I like to kite in fights but I could see the argument for other choices. But maybe if you had a team full of people healing you and stunning the enemies you'd just want to take the point that makes you do more damage. If you're just fast pushing a lane then the cooldown reduction for killing minions could be game winning. And extra healing on attacks is always good...
- There are jungle camps to kill, but the reason to kill them is you get to spawn versions of them to attack the enemy base. Running off to summon up some powerful siege monsters felt really good when it worked.
- You get a mount. So basically everyone always has boots of mobility.
Now, I've spent a lot of time playing LoL, and I've gotten pretty good at all the annoying fiddly things. I can last hit to earn more gold than many people earn. I know all the items. I know what order to take the skills. Also LoL is an actual finished game. So for me, LoL really feels like the game to play if I want to be playing a moba game. But if someone was starting fresh? They probably want to play HotS. And that bodes very well for this game in the long run I would think...
Monday, October 06, 2014
Death Roulette
I stumbled across an interesting tool someone wrote to encourage interaction between the people watching a stream and the person streaming a roguelike game. The website is a wrapper around a standard Twitch stream that lets the people watching bet fake currency on where and how the streamer is going to die. (Roguelike games are ALL about dying with permanent death!) When the streamer dies they go to the website and enter in the details of the death and the website pays out to the people who guessed correctly a split of all the currency bet across all options.
I found it very interesting. I didn't know much about the game being played (Crypt of the NecroDancer, a roguelike where you need to enter your commands to the rhythm of the background music) but it was extra fun to watch the stream because I was betting on the outcomes. I got it right once when I bet that he'd die to a red dragon. Woo! (I bet on the red dragon every time... It only came home once, but at least it did come home once.)
I'm constantly amazed at extensions to let viewers participate in a stream. This is no Twitch Plays Pokemon, but it's still pretty cool.
I found it very interesting. I didn't know much about the game being played (Crypt of the NecroDancer, a roguelike where you need to enter your commands to the rhythm of the background music) but it was extra fun to watch the stream because I was betting on the outcomes. I got it right once when I bet that he'd die to a red dragon. Woo! (I bet on the red dragon every time... It only came home once, but at least it did come home once.)
I'm constantly amazed at extensions to let viewers participate in a stream. This is no Twitch Plays Pokemon, but it's still pretty cool.
Sunday, October 05, 2014
Bridge Match 3 - Board 17
Board 17 - Dealer North - None Vul
Opponents convention card: Dutch Doubleton
Opponents playing strength: Advanced
My hand: ♠ J T ♥ A Q J 9 8 ♦ A T 2 ♣ T 7 6
Partner opens a weak NT. I also have a weak NT so we might well have a game here. I'm not playing transfers so I can't transfer to hearts and then invite to game. I could start with stayman I guess? Or maybe I should bid 3 hearts as an invite with hearts? But that's still forcing to at least the 3 level which sucks. My heart suit is really, really good so I may just want to bid 4 hearts. Well, let's start with stayman. I bid 2 clubs. Partner responds 3 spades. I don't know what that means. I assume 5 spades and a maximum. So game should be fine, but I am worried about the minors now. So let's just play 4 hearts. Partner pulls to 4 spades. Ok, you're the boss man partner. Looking at the alerts after the hand my 4 heart bid was interpreted as control in hearts for spades. How in the world is that possible? Stayman doesn't promise both majors! I could easily have 0 spades and 5 hearts! Wow... Partner's lucky I have 2 of them.
East leads the 3 of diamonds.
I have 4 hearts, a club, a diamond, and 3 spades for sure. I have finesses to earn extra tricks in every suit. As far as losers I should lose a trick in each minor for sure and might well lose one in each major along with an extra club loser. So there's a lot of work here. Can I afford to duck the diamond? I'm guaranteed an extra diamond trick if I do, and I have a diamond loser for sure if I hop. Ducking is scary if they play clubs back through my strong holding? But if West has the K of diamonds they get to use it as an entry to his hand later anyway. So I duck. 3-2-K-9. West fires back a diamond. 8-Q-6-T. I now have a diamond set up to pitch a round card, except all my late round cards are high so who cares.
I'm missing 6 spades so I don't know that I can afford to finesse. I may well set up their 9 if I do. I'm also in the wrong hand to finesse and I don't know that I want to play hearts right now. On the down side it's obvious where they can get tricks so if West has the Q of spades I'm letting him in to lead a club. The other option is to let him in with the heart K if he has it which doesn't appeal much either. Playing hearts is bad when there's a 4-1 split and I let them start ruffing. I don't think I really have a good play, so I'm going to hope East has the Q of spades and just play low now. 4-2-J-Q. West fires back trump. 6-5-3-T.
Ok, now I don't have an entry back to hand in order to finesse hearts or draw trump. Unless I ruff my A of diamonds. I'm down if West has the K of hearts so I guess I should just assert he doesn't have it and take my only line to make. I ruff my A of diamonds, draw 2 rounds of trump, lead the T of hearts and cross my fingers. It holds! I play another heart to the Q. It wins too! My A of hearts drops the K and I win all the tricks except the A of clubs at the end. Making 4.
Four tables played 4 spades and made. 3 tables played 4 hearts with 1 going up 1, 1 making, and 1 going down 1. And then one pair went crazy and made it to 6 hearts, down 1. So we get 8 MPs.
Jack disagrees with my 2 club bid. He doesn't think it's good for Stayman and just wants me to start with 3 hearts. I guess that makes sense. I will point out that when I click on my 2 clubs bid one of the potential hands it lists is '11+ points, 5 hearts'... He then disagrees with my 4 heart bid, obviously because I meant it to play and he meant it as a cuebid. I really don't understand how it could be a cuebid. Anyway, he wants me to bid 3NT instead. Finally he doesn't want me to draw trump while playing the hand. He wants me to just bite the bullet and finesse hearts. It does let me finesse spades back when they both work, though since West had Q9xx it wouldn't have saved a trick.
Ranking after board 17/60: 4/16 with 55.04%
Opponents convention card: Dutch Doubleton
Opponents playing strength: Advanced
My hand: ♠ J T ♥ A Q J 9 8 ♦ A T 2 ♣ T 7 6
Partner opens a weak NT. I also have a weak NT so we might well have a game here. I'm not playing transfers so I can't transfer to hearts and then invite to game. I could start with stayman I guess? Or maybe I should bid 3 hearts as an invite with hearts? But that's still forcing to at least the 3 level which sucks. My heart suit is really, really good so I may just want to bid 4 hearts. Well, let's start with stayman. I bid 2 clubs. Partner responds 3 spades. I don't know what that means. I assume 5 spades and a maximum. So game should be fine, but I am worried about the minors now. So let's just play 4 hearts. Partner pulls to 4 spades. Ok, you're the boss man partner. Looking at the alerts after the hand my 4 heart bid was interpreted as control in hearts for spades. How in the world is that possible? Stayman doesn't promise both majors! I could easily have 0 spades and 5 hearts! Wow... Partner's lucky I have 2 of them.
East leads the 3 of diamonds.
| NORTH ♠ A K 8 5 4 ♥ T 4 3 ♦ Q 9 ♣ K J 2 | ||
| EAST ♦ 3 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ J T ♥ A Q J 9 8 ♦ A T 2 ♣ T 7 6 |
| West | North | East | South |
| 1NT | Pass | 2♣1 | |
| Pass | 3♠2 | Pass | 4♥3 |
| Pass | 4♠ | Pass | Pass |
| Pass | |||
| 1Stayman | |||
| 2Five card, maximum | |||
| 3Control in hearts for spades | |||
I have 4 hearts, a club, a diamond, and 3 spades for sure. I have finesses to earn extra tricks in every suit. As far as losers I should lose a trick in each minor for sure and might well lose one in each major along with an extra club loser. So there's a lot of work here. Can I afford to duck the diamond? I'm guaranteed an extra diamond trick if I do, and I have a diamond loser for sure if I hop. Ducking is scary if they play clubs back through my strong holding? But if West has the K of diamonds they get to use it as an entry to his hand later anyway. So I duck. 3-2-K-9. West fires back a diamond. 8-Q-6-T. I now have a diamond set up to pitch a round card, except all my late round cards are high so who cares.
I'm missing 6 spades so I don't know that I can afford to finesse. I may well set up their 9 if I do. I'm also in the wrong hand to finesse and I don't know that I want to play hearts right now. On the down side it's obvious where they can get tricks so if West has the Q of spades I'm letting him in to lead a club. The other option is to let him in with the heart K if he has it which doesn't appeal much either. Playing hearts is bad when there's a 4-1 split and I let them start ruffing. I don't think I really have a good play, so I'm going to hope East has the Q of spades and just play low now. 4-2-J-Q. West fires back trump. 6-5-3-T.
Ok, now I don't have an entry back to hand in order to finesse hearts or draw trump. Unless I ruff my A of diamonds. I'm down if West has the K of hearts so I guess I should just assert he doesn't have it and take my only line to make. I ruff my A of diamonds, draw 2 rounds of trump, lead the T of hearts and cross my fingers. It holds! I play another heart to the Q. It wins too! My A of hearts drops the K and I win all the tricks except the A of clubs at the end. Making 4.
| NORTH ♠ A K 8 5 4 ♥ T 4 3 ♦ Q 9 ♣ K J 2 | ||
| WEST ♠ Q 9 7 6 ♥ 7 2 ♦ K 8 4 ♣ Q 9 8 5 | EAST ♠ 3 2 ♥ K 6 5 ♦ J 7 6 5 3 ♣ A 4 3 | |
| SOUTH ♠ J T ♥ A Q J 9 8 ♦ A T 2 ♣ T 7 6 |
Jack disagrees with my 2 club bid. He doesn't think it's good for Stayman and just wants me to start with 3 hearts. I guess that makes sense. I will point out that when I click on my 2 clubs bid one of the potential hands it lists is '11+ points, 5 hearts'... He then disagrees with my 4 heart bid, obviously because I meant it to play and he meant it as a cuebid. I really don't understand how it could be a cuebid. Anyway, he wants me to bid 3NT instead. Finally he doesn't want me to draw trump while playing the hand. He wants me to just bite the bullet and finesse hearts. It does let me finesse spades back when they both work, though since West had Q9xx it wouldn't have saved a trick.
Ranking after board 17/60: 4/16 with 55.04%
Friday, October 03, 2014
Clicker Heroes
Possibly the worst thing you could do with a hand injured through repetitive strain would be to start playing one of the browser clicker games. Well, I'm pretty stupid, so I started playing Clicker Heroes as soon as Sthenno posted about it. But I'm not playing with my right hand, so it's actually not such a terrible idea as it could be. It's also a game where playing without clicking seems pretty reasonable. My left hand is starting to get pretty good with a mouse, but it's sure not super fast at clicking, so that's a good thing.
Normally these clicker games have you click to earn something (like a cookie) and then you start spending that something on things that make more somethings. Numbers getting bigger, woo! In this game you click not to generate a resource directly but to do damage to a monster. Do enough damage to the monster and it explodes in a shower of gold. You can spend the gold to make your clicking do more damage or to do passive damage over time. Sure, the end result is you're spending gold to earn more gold but adding that extra step in the middle makes things novel and fun.
I really want there to exist a game that combines something like Progress Quest with Cookie Clicker. This isn't quite there since it's missing random (and I mean RANDOM) loot drops but it's a step in the right direction. Maybe it's a step that will convince me to work on one of my own? I doubt it, but it is something to mull over some more.
I'm enjoying this game, anyway. If you like browser clicker games you should check this one out.
Normally these clicker games have you click to earn something (like a cookie) and then you start spending that something on things that make more somethings. Numbers getting bigger, woo! In this game you click not to generate a resource directly but to do damage to a monster. Do enough damage to the monster and it explodes in a shower of gold. You can spend the gold to make your clicking do more damage or to do passive damage over time. Sure, the end result is you're spending gold to earn more gold but adding that extra step in the middle makes things novel and fun.
I really want there to exist a game that combines something like Progress Quest with Cookie Clicker. This isn't quite there since it's missing random (and I mean RANDOM) loot drops but it's a step in the right direction. Maybe it's a step that will convince me to work on one of my own? I doubt it, but it is something to mull over some more.
I'm enjoying this game, anyway. If you like browser clicker games you should check this one out.
Thursday, October 02, 2014
Final Fantasy X-2: Catnip
I'm still not feeling like I can use a mouse in my right hand but I decided to give using a PS3 controller a shot for a while this afternoon. My right hand doesn't make a lot of moves when playing FFX-2... I'm mostly just mashing the attack button. I was able to play for a reasonable amount of time before needing to take a break. I needed that break because both my hands were going numb instead of my right hand being in pain which is a strange turn of events.
Anyway, it's been a while since I'd played FFX-2 because of Path of Exile and then being hurt. When I last played I was diving down into the dungeon under Bevelle. Today I got down to the 40th floor, killed the boss on that floor in two tries, and earned the most broken item in the game: catnip! This is an accessory that gives you the 'SOS: ??????' effect. The SOS part means it only works when you're low on health. What do the question marks mean? Well, any time you would deal damage or heal someone the amount is set to 9999 instead of whatever it would be. Considering Rikku is often attacking for 500 or so, that's quite a significant boost. Consider that you can use attacks that hit more than once... Each hit will then be for 9999! Gunners can attack something like 15 times in an action (the damage is normally drastically reduced and the attack is mostly used for getting a big chain multiplier running) and each of those attacks will be for 9999. It's absurdly powerful and is the way I remember beating all of the hard fights when I played this game back in the day. I hooked Rikku up and switched her to a gunner and went off to murder things...
It turns out that the HD remake has some changes from the original game and one of the things changed was catnip. Similar to how quick attack in FFX was nerfed in the HD remake I guess Square decided things were unbalanced as initially released and fixed things up. Anyway, the change to catnip is that in addition to making all your hits do 9999 you also get slowed and berserked. The berserk part is a real problem because it negates the ability to use any of the abilities that hit a silly number of times. Being slowed sucks too. I had a ribbon on but it didn't prevent them, which made me sad.
I decided I still wanted to use the item if I could and went looking for ways to use it. Rikku had been leveling thief and they attack twice when they auto-attack. Seemed like I should give that a spin. I also got an accessory that granted auto-haste from the same boss fight. Let's try auto-haste with auto-slow and see what happens! Turns out haste wins, which is amazing. It also turns out Rikku had learned the ability to always go first when she's a thief. And because she's berserked I don't have to mash any buttons to input an attack command. So now she goes first and hits for 19998 damage. And then is hasted so she probably gets to attack a second time before I can input commands to Yuna and Paine.
It remains to be seen if the catnip is still viable for boss fights. Permanently losing control of 1/3rd of my party is a real danger. I guess if I ever heal Rikku out of SOS status she loses the berserk and I can probably make use of that. My other two characters get to wear ribbons now, so I do have that advantage in boss fights. And I have 99 phoenix downs, which bring Rikku back to life at low health... She may be able to get in there for 19998 damage before the boss gets a chance to kill her again?
Even if it isn't good for boss fights it's awesome for random encounters. I don't even need to hit buttons anymore. Now, when I'm happy that I get to ignore a major part of the game it does send up some warning flags... But it is what it is. It's not like I get to make meaningful decisions in most random encounters anyway.
I'm not sure if I want to finish off the rest of this dungeon now or if I want to finish the game and then restart with my items and pick up all the stuff I missed on new game+. Hopefully I can spend more time playing without losing feeling in my hands soon!
Anyway, it's been a while since I'd played FFX-2 because of Path of Exile and then being hurt. When I last played I was diving down into the dungeon under Bevelle. Today I got down to the 40th floor, killed the boss on that floor in two tries, and earned the most broken item in the game: catnip! This is an accessory that gives you the 'SOS: ??????' effect. The SOS part means it only works when you're low on health. What do the question marks mean? Well, any time you would deal damage or heal someone the amount is set to 9999 instead of whatever it would be. Considering Rikku is often attacking for 500 or so, that's quite a significant boost. Consider that you can use attacks that hit more than once... Each hit will then be for 9999! Gunners can attack something like 15 times in an action (the damage is normally drastically reduced and the attack is mostly used for getting a big chain multiplier running) and each of those attacks will be for 9999. It's absurdly powerful and is the way I remember beating all of the hard fights when I played this game back in the day. I hooked Rikku up and switched her to a gunner and went off to murder things...
It turns out that the HD remake has some changes from the original game and one of the things changed was catnip. Similar to how quick attack in FFX was nerfed in the HD remake I guess Square decided things were unbalanced as initially released and fixed things up. Anyway, the change to catnip is that in addition to making all your hits do 9999 you also get slowed and berserked. The berserk part is a real problem because it negates the ability to use any of the abilities that hit a silly number of times. Being slowed sucks too. I had a ribbon on but it didn't prevent them, which made me sad.
I decided I still wanted to use the item if I could and went looking for ways to use it. Rikku had been leveling thief and they attack twice when they auto-attack. Seemed like I should give that a spin. I also got an accessory that granted auto-haste from the same boss fight. Let's try auto-haste with auto-slow and see what happens! Turns out haste wins, which is amazing. It also turns out Rikku had learned the ability to always go first when she's a thief. And because she's berserked I don't have to mash any buttons to input an attack command. So now she goes first and hits for 19998 damage. And then is hasted so she probably gets to attack a second time before I can input commands to Yuna and Paine.
It remains to be seen if the catnip is still viable for boss fights. Permanently losing control of 1/3rd of my party is a real danger. I guess if I ever heal Rikku out of SOS status she loses the berserk and I can probably make use of that. My other two characters get to wear ribbons now, so I do have that advantage in boss fights. And I have 99 phoenix downs, which bring Rikku back to life at low health... She may be able to get in there for 19998 damage before the boss gets a chance to kill her again?
Even if it isn't good for boss fights it's awesome for random encounters. I don't even need to hit buttons anymore. Now, when I'm happy that I get to ignore a major part of the game it does send up some warning flags... But it is what it is. It's not like I get to make meaningful decisions in most random encounters anyway.
I'm not sure if I want to finish off the rest of this dungeon now or if I want to finish the game and then restart with my items and pick up all the stuff I missed on new game+. Hopefully I can spend more time playing without losing feeling in my hands soon!
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