Death to Hel's Bane in Asgard's Wrath!

 As predicted yesterday, I finished up the fight with Hel's Bane this evening. I did spend a bunch of time this morning upgrading Frodi's gear, which helped pad my health with 100 extra life or so, which really helped my survivability. 

Yesterday I was theorizing that I would shoot this guy in his heart when it was exposed, but what the game had in mind was much much cooler than that.  Once I had him down on his knees with his heart exposed, you run up with your controllers and rip his heart right out of his chest. 

Such a cool way to end a fight, and it was super visceral . . . me likey.

After this an elevator took me down to a lower level where an army was invading into the tower. I was then asked to play a little bit of tower defense with some cannons and blow up the army that was marching toward me.  I wasn't expecting that, but it was a really nice touch.

Manning the control panel that throws cannon fire down on to the invading troops.

In the end, Frodi redeemed himself and defeated the ice giant that was trying to break into Midgard while I pulled out of his body and watched from a distance.  He thanked me and gave me his stone.

I shall chop off your hand foul giant!

As for my thoughts, to be honest, it felt like maybe the Frodi story wasn't as long as I thought it would be once I figured out how to end the boss.

He sucks

I liked it, but it felt like there should have been a bit more. I would have enjoyed running up the ice giant's arms and zapping him in the head, but I'll take slamming a door shut on the ice giant's arm and chopping it off. It's still pretty satisfying.

I'm excited to see what character I get to play with next. 2 down and probably 2 more to go? I love this game so much. I just wish it didn't wear me out haha.

Happy Dueling!

Small Victories, Big Losses -- Back to Asgard's Wrath!

 As I'm typing this to you, my face is covered in sweat.  Sec . . . need to go take care of this facial drench. 

. . . and back. Whew. That's better.  So today has been a crazy day. I woke up in the morning and just decided to go for it. I don't know why I was so blocked on starting back up on Asgard's Wrath, but I was. For the past few months, it's kind of like every time I'd turn on the computer, I'd look over at my Quest 2 headset and think, "Asgard's Wrath, maybe? Naaaaaah!" NOT TODAY!

At first it was definitely weird. My controllers wanted to continually walk in reverse like I had some kind of horrible controller drift. After fighting it for five minutes or so, the drift just kind of went away and I was back in the game.

I'm coming for you Loki . . . gimme some time

The last I played, I had just unlocked Frodi and solved his first god puzzle. I had to learn how to use his staff weapon all over again, but eventually, I got it. I'm not sure I like it yet. It's kind of weird and I'm not quite sure how to use it correctly against enemies. Since parrying is such a huge part of combat, I just haven't figured out how to use it in that way. Instead, I've been opting to use Frodi's short sword.

Today's adventure took me deep inside The Great Column of Midgard. Frodi kept talking about how impressed he was that we had come this far, so I believe him.

That's a nice tower.

Inside the tower, there was another God Puzzle that involved shooting a Bow at some swinging legs of a Bull and making my way through a complex puzzle around the edges of the tower.

Gotta hit the horsey legs with the magic bow!

Also, I unlocked a new companion. She's an owl lady with a crossbow.  I like her.

And whoooo are youuuu? (She's Sigrid)

If you point her at an owl totem, she will reveal hidden secret messages that tell you the order to press runes to open secret doors.

Anyway, when you take 5 months off like me, you forget how taxing the game can be. You're going to work up a sweat and probably die a few times to bosses while you figure it all out. I'm currently stuck on this dude in the Rotund of the tower.

He sucks. 

Basically, you have to get up in his face and dodge his attacks until his eyes light up red, and then you have to parry his sword swing from above.  It's not a perfect science for me yet, and I'm not exactly sure what to do now that I've got him low with his icy heart exposed.

Logic seems to dictate that I would shoot his heart with an arrow or perhaps use my handy dandy soul staff to strike him in the heart. It's just a sweaty arm-swinging fest to get him to that point, and then I usually forget what the heck I'm doing and die.

I'm thinking tomorrow I'll have him dead.  If not, I'll be raging all the way to YouTube to see if there's a strat video to help me.

Happy Dueling!

Happy St. Patrick's Day 2025 -- home green edition

 Yay, it's St. Patrick's Day!  I'm home sick from work!  Stomach bug.

A lot has kind of been rolling through my brain lately. Been thinking about this blog and video games, but not doing a whole lot of writing or playing video games. I really have been in a bad way lately, between sore shoulders, fevering, and stomach bugs, I've been a bit of a green-in-the-stomach mess this St. Patrick's Day.

~~

1- It was Everquest's 26th anniversary yesterday. I actually logged in . . . only to the launch screen, mind you, and then common sense prevailed and I realized that I couldn't stomach it . . . because of my stomach.

That said, man, there is something about this game. They're still making content, and they've released one major content expansion every year the last decade. The thought of resubscribing, doing the whole rent-an-NPC, and doing dailies doesn't really seem awesome.

In 2017, I was two-boxing and managed to get my beastlord up to level 96. In 2021, I dinged level 100 on my Beastlord and never logged in really past that. The level cap in 2025 is 125 and you can buy a level boost up to level 100. The newest expansion is something called The Outer Brood and if you were all in when it launched, you could have bought the premium edition for $139. (I mean, if it's really your one and only game for 26 years, you're probably still in the green for gaming expenses.)

If I resubscribed and played both Everquest and DCUO on my accounts, then yeah, I'd probably give the game at least 5 more levels on my beastlord, but I'm not there yet mentally.

Aha! A screenshot from as recent as 2023!

2- I managed to dump Coin Master, but I'm still playing Brawl Stars pretty consistently. To give you the quick and dirty on that game, we're on Season 36 of the Brawl Pass (called Dark Sands) currently with 16 days left to reach the end of the battle pass.

Possibly the biggest news for Brawl Stars right now is the new presentation of Ranked PvP and a second "ranked pass" you can buy for A LOT of money for Brawl Stars ($25), but runs for 4 months -- so there's value there if you're into buying premium battle passes.

As for me personally, I keep leveling characters that have a hypercharge. My latest two are Poco and Cordelius. Cordelius would actually be my very first legendary character raised to max. I still need to get all his buff slots though. That'll take me another 5,000 gold, so I'll be grinding that for a while.

Poison mushroom assassin boi! That might be what's causing the stomach bug.

3- VR. What to do about VR? Man, I really like VR, but Meta is over here trying to drive me away with really weird choices about Horizons and their premium store. If you read one article about VR News this year, may I be so bold as to point you to this article from Henry Stockdale on UploadVR. 

Anyway, I still want to play VR, it's just this past month my shoulder pain has been stopping me. I'm half way through my planned one-month stint of thrice weekly Chiropractor visits, and things have gotten a touch better, but I'm not there yet.

I might be able to get away with some minigolf. In fact, that's exactly what I'm going to do today! I'm not quite sure if I'll get the new Mount Olympus course yet, but I'm itching to do something . . . calmly fun yet immersive? Look . . . I just don't want my shoulder to hurt.

It just came out like 11 days ago!

4- My kid bought me two random PS3 games for Christmas. You know, it's funny because do these two games look like something I'd be into?

Fracture and Brink . . . I know nothing of these games.

I'm gonna play them though!  I really am!

~~

So, there you go, that's me. I've got a stomach bug over St. Patrick's Day post for you. I'm trying to be non-productively productive while taking the time off. Hopefully, you enjoyed reading my random thoughts as much as I enjoyed typing them out.

Happy Dueling!

Y'all ever play Coin Master?

Back when I was in the vidjagame industry, Coin Master was one of those games the mobile game team would look at and go . . . dang . . . such a simple concept, yet shockingly well executed and successful.  We'd be over here trying to build some complex town builder match-3 cross-over and then look at this simple slot machine town builder that made us collectively throw our arms up in the air.

Thor, Ninja Pigs, and Gold . . . only the best things in life

If you've never played the game, basically, you get spins on a slot machine. Your spins refresh around once or twice a day and you spend the gold from your slot machine wins to build a "village."  There are typically 5 objects to a village. For instance, I'm currently building Village 75, the "unicorn" village, and the five objects I'm building in that world are: a unicorn, a Cupid, a marble column gazebo, a pink floofy tree, and a satyr.  Each of those objects has five stages where they start small and stunted and end up large and fully fleshed out. You build your village and advance to the next one. Wash, rinse, repeat ad infinitum. 

Building a unicorn paradise

Now, if that was the only core loop, it'd be pretty meh.  What makes the game more interesting are the social aspects of the slot machine wheel. If you get 3 thor hammers in a row, you get to attack either a random or someone on your friends list.  Basically, you call down a lightning bolt on one of your friend's objects.  You can protect from this if you get 3 shields in a row, which will give you a shield or three to protect yourself from your friends' attacks.  If you get 3 pigs in a row, you get to steal gold from either a random player or a random person in your friend list.

He attac, I protek

Then, to top it off, there's always a number of events running simultaneously like a tournament to see who can steal the most gold, a PvP battle based on the number of attacks you've done, a quest to send you through a forest scene, etc. etc. etc.

The first time I saw Coin Master, I immediately went, why hasn't anyone done this with an RPG style instead of a town scene builder?  And of course, someone had.  There are plenty of Coin Master clones out there: Island King, Spin Voyage, Piggy Boom, yada yada yada.

I really wish I could remember the name of this stupid Coin Master RPG game I found, but alas, it's lost to time. I actually played it to the end. Sigh. I think it might have been a prototype that was put out there just to see if anyone would want to play it.  To be honest, I think I might have been the only person that wanted to play it.

ANYWAY, fast forward several years (Coin Master was released like 10 years ago), my wife just two weeks ago sent me an invite to play Coin Master. I'm like, no way. She's like, way. I then logged on and found I had some solid progress and a ton of spins. Since she was my only friend, I then proceeded to destroy her town and steal her coins . . . and she was out. I can't help it if the game wants me to destroy my friends!

. . . and even though she was out, I've still been logging in and playing. I'm not sure why . . . probably nostalgia at this point. As far as slot games go, this one is the most tame of them all. It's not like Game of Thrones Slots by Zynga, which, by the way, I have played. When I was without a job I interviewed for a Marketing Producer job at Zynga, and if I had got the job, that would have been one of my games I would have been responsible for.

Sorry about all that . . . I just felt the need to ramble a bit about Coin Master.  Maybe talking about it will help me stop playing it. LOL. Stupid, addicting mobile games.

Happy Dueling!

Catching up with Friendly -- March 2025 Edition

Hey readers!

Just thought I'd take a second to let you know what's up with me since life's been a little weird. I've got a few thoughts, and I like making lists, so here we go:

~~

1- I'm in pain -- I'm going to the chiropractor tomorrow to see if I can get this left shoulder of mine worked on. I've never been to the chiropractor before, but after a month of pain, I think I'm ready to try it out.  I think it might have something to do with when I went Hatchet throwing.

wow, blogger's video upload quality leaves a lot to desire

2- We went to Colorado over the weekend -- It was to celebrate the life and mourn the death of my wife's half-brother. 

I supported however I could, whether it was helping with flower arrangements or lifting boxes and examining old computers and things or just giving a shoulder to cry on.

He was a great guy! He loved the music of Morrissey and the Cure, which played throughout the chapel. I can't get Everyday is Like Sunday out of my head now. 

Always great to see my extended family. They warmly hosted us in the midst of their mourning. I've got a full heart and hope their family finds peace and abundance. They've had to say goodbye to 4 of their kids now. Truly heartbreaking. 

I'm feeling pretty humbled and grateful I still have the ones I love around me. I can't imagine the pain of losing a child. My heart goes out to those of you who have experienced that unique type of sadness.

Supporting Grandma and Grandpa through these difficult times

3- I want to make a game -- I do! I feel like that Game Designer part of me has been sleeping for a year, and because of that, I just really want to try something crazy. I have two things I would love to drop. I have a game jam demo from my old company where they gave me permissions to release it, and I have a unique game idea that only the friendly necromancer would love. lol.

4- My friend Dylan soft-dumped me -- I mean, we're still friends and he's going to plan a D&D campaign that I will totally jump in on, but he surrendered his computer to his son, and thus, the dream team of Montgomery and Leufroy is on hiatus.  The last thing we did together was play a little Path of Exile 2, which to be honest, didn't really light my flames.  I need to give it another shot.

PoE II did light some weird boss's flames though!

5- Oops No Zone of the Month -- Dangit, I was on a roll there for a couple of months with those Zones of the Month, but life got really busy (see above), and I've dropped the ball. Maybe I'll get to one mid-month.

6- What's a VR? -- MAN, I really lost my fire lately with VR games. I think part of it has to do with playing a bunch of games with Dylan. I would like to get back into the original Asgard's Wrath and try to actually finish that game up.  I'd expect that to happen.

7- What's an MMO? -- I need to find an MMO that I'm passionate about again. It's so much fun to get sucked into a game and take screenshots and meet new people. Again, I've really lost my fire to this genre. It'd be fun to get back into it . . . MMOs are definitely The Friendly Necromancer's jam.

8- I want to write music -- I swear I do, but for some reason, I just haven't. The most interesting music thing that's happened to me lately is this: So most of you who follow me know we recently moved back to Utah. So far the biggest surprise finds from moving was this: four copies of a lathe-cut vinyl record I had made during Quarantine. I called it the "Quarantine Mixes," which featured six songs I remade during lockdown. 

The white album?

1- Cetu Javu's "Fight Without a Reason"

2- Morrissey's "Now My Heart is Full"

3- Cabaret Voltaire's "Code"

4- The Cure's "Night Like This"

5- A song from my teens I remade called "Bit by Bit"

6- A remade song from Decussion Council (My high school band) called "Don't Stop"

I listened to it on my kid's cheap record player and thought that the record mix came out so bad it was knocking the needle off the record player. I thought I had thrown them all away in disgust, but actually, my wife had saved them. I'm so glad she did! Kind of a quirky cool record. There's a low bass drum kick on Don't Stop that turned out weird in one part, but other than that, it sounds pretty good.

~~

Ok, that's probably enough ranting and raving for now. I just wanted to get a blog post out here and let you know what's what.

Happy Dueling!

The Friendly Necromancer and Baldur's Gate 3

Ok, it's done.

It didn't go to plan. It wasn't very pretty, but I beat my third playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3--this time playing as Thomas Lionblood, the Friendly Necromancer himself.

I have the whole two-hour-long final battle uploaded to YouTube if you really want to put yourself through that.

I don't know what happened to my mind here. I mean, this morning I went to work for a couple of hours, got a haircut, and then came home to play some BG3. Somewhere while logging out two nights ago right at the entrance to the fight and this morning, it feels like I just forgot how to be a necromancer.

I ran in with 7 undead and they all were instantly wiped out by the Dominated Red Dragon and his thrall buddies. After that, I just kind of hobbled along, getting counter-spelled and beat up.  At one point it started looking kind of bleak for me then I remembered . . . Oh . . . my . . . freaking . . . gosh . . . dang. I have allies to call forth to help me fight, what am I even doing?!

Calling the thrall

Anyway, eventually I got up to the brain's battle area. I laid down a cloud kill, cast a couple clouds of daggers, threw out a couple disintegrate scroll spells, and won the day in just a couple rounds. I'll take it. 

Everything's Fine . . .

Playing as a necromancer was not bad. I read the Necromancy of Thay book. I trained a lot of necromantic spells. I played as nicely as a necromancer could. If this was Wizard101, you could say the school of Ice was my secondary school. There's really nothing much of note here other than I wish I would have had a bit of a better performance in the finale, but hey, a win is a win!

My final team consisted of Halsin the Druid, Karlach the Barbarian, The Friendly Necromancer himself, and Brianna Brightsong the Bard.

A druid, a barbarian, a necromancer, and a bard walk on to a boat . . .

I know I know. I'm hearing you say it already in my mind, "Brianna Brightsong the Bard? I thought you were going to recruit Alfira?!" 

Somehow I misunderstood that I would have to download a mod to recruit her and even at that, she'd be a substandard companion. To those ends, I opted to see what my old buddy Withers had as far as hirelings and subbed in a cute little halfling bard in her stead.

Little in the middle!

She was a pretty cool character in the end, wearing plate armor and singing her way from the College of Swords, a subclass of bard I had never played before. Her biggest drawback was simply those stubby little legs. The best thing about her however was that D10 bardic inspiration. With that I was able to replace Asterion for most lockpicking needs. It felt like there was a lot of versatility with the character for sure though since she could cast, heal, tank, and inspire. She was not a bad character to run with at all.

... And without a question, Halsin was a fantastic addition to the group. He could heal, he could dps, and he had incredible survivability.  At the end of the day, druids are just super OP. 

Nothing better than turning into a dinosaur that gets 3 attack rolls.

. . . with that, I'm officially tired of playing BG3 for now. Hopefully I can get back to some other games and simply enjoy the fact that I put 267 hours on the game by playing a friendly necromancer, an everquest beastlord, and my old OC Avantador, the Dragonborn bard.

Happy Dueling!

Baldur's Gate Act 2 complete for Thomas Lionblood

Thomas Lionblood has now finished Act 2 of Baldur's Gate and destroyed the evil Kethric Thorn. 

The Friendly Necromancer says "Bai Felicia" to the Evil Necromancer

I've been playing gobs of BG3 lately (an unhealthy amount of gob to be honest). Playing a "friendly" non-lethal necromancer has proven challenging, but I always seem to find corpses lying around that I can harvest undead from. Now at level 8 (just turned 9) I'm able to summon some pretty amazing thralls of undead to follow me around.  I can't wait to see what it's like at level 12!

Me and THIS army, that's who!

Along the way I've managed to encounter a few things I've never run into before on my previous 2 play-throughs.  A friend at work told me there was a way I could become "The god of the fish people" in their words.  I was like, "Wait, are you talking about the Sahuagin? Because I ran into those at a temple in Baldur's Gate."  And she was like, "No, I'm talking about the Kuotoa."  And I was like, "WHAT?! There's Kuotoa in this game?" Badda bing badda boom . . . I'm now the god of the fish people.

My first commandment should have been to get rid of the fish smell.

Also while stumbling around in the Underdark looking for Kuotoa, I managed to run into a Spectator and have a horribly difficult fight.  Thank goodness for small damage magic missiles to wake up people from their paralyzation.

Not an easy fight at that level.

I've also swapped out Wyll for Halsin after successfully thwarting a gigantic gang of ne'er-do-wells that was hellbent on destroying his portal to another dimension. I had failed that once before on another playthrough, so I kind of knew what was coming and was able to prepare for it.

Halsin is the best!

Halsin is fun to play with his shapeshifting abilities. He has a wild plethora of wild shapes he can morph into; although, for some reason, those animal shapes really get in the way of the dialog camera sometimes. Just sayin'. 

Anyway, next up will be to try my hand at getting Alfira the bard to come and join up with me in Baldur's Gate since I've never done that before. It's going to be hard to swap out Asterion for Alfira, but a friendly necromancer gotta do what a friendly necromancer gotta do.  Sorry, Asterion.

I'll just have to make sure she's good at unlocking doors and chests I suppose.

With any luck, I'll be done with this play-through in another week and I can move on to Path of Exile 2.  (I'm through Act 1 in PoE2, but BG3 is totally all-consuming right now).

Happy Dueling!