Blink your eyes, lose half a month: Brawl Stars, BG3, and more!

Hi readers! Am I the only one who feels like January is flying by like blink your eyes, lose half a month? This is crazy. Maybe it's just because I've been either hard at work, watching hockey (I have a new fascination with the Utah Hockey Club), or playing either Brawl Stars or Baulder's Gate 3. I feel like I've been ignoring my faithful few readers! Sorry! Let me take a second here and catch you all up.

Brawl Stars

I continue to kind of suck at this game. It's alright though--I'm still having fun.

The Brawl Pass this season is called Starr Force and involves more cartoon-esque character skins. I love the little animations they do on these things. Of all the heroes in this video, my favorite obviously is Berry, who recently got a buff and a beautiful, new hypercharge ability.

I am tempted to buy this one just because I'm feeling the gold pinch lately. 

In other news, Buzz Lightyear is still in the game, still overpowered, and I think people are genuinely over it. Once Buzz is gone, the game can return to normal. It was fun for awhile, but I think we (the collective we of Brawl Stars Players) can move on here soon. Please? It feels like Buzz overstayed his welcome.

The one good, new thing coming out of the Toy Story promotion is the Pizza Planet deals and events that are now running. You can pick up great little prizes in exchange for the pizza slices you earn, including a brand new brawler character named Meeple, who is . . . a meeple made of meeples. A cheating Meeple at that. Check out his video promotion.

This game is absolutely crazy. I love it. All I need is 15 more pizza slices, which I should earn tomorrow, and then I can unlock the new hero. woot!

Baulder's Gate 3

A couple weeks ago, my old buddy Dylan and I both got the bug to play Baulder's Gate 3 together and the hit team of Moonstar and Avantador were back together. We crashed through the end of Act 2 without much trouble and promptly skipped off to the final act.

Bai Myrkul!

The town of Baulder's Gate proper is pretty great. Where else can you take on a quest to find a flying cat that eats delivery pigeons and discover severed body parts of a clown?  Baulder's Gate is the only place to be for wacky side quests.

Bad dad joke clowns are the worst clowns

As for main quests, we just recently took down a lady who liked to wear meat suits (not Lady Gaga unfortunately), and we seem to be on our way to confronting the last "absolute" God before dealing with the Elder Brain situation.

Meat suits for everyone!

Progressing with Dylan also meant that I could play more of my Everquest Beastlord in BG3. It's my second play-through, and I don't want to get ahead of my original play-through. As for the character itself, Volt's gameplay is definitely more "sneaky" than our pretty straightforward Fireball and Moonbeam spell light shows from when Dylan and I are playing Moonstar and Avantador. 

I suppose that's the influence of having Astarion in my party and being a bit squishy as a Ranger/Monk/Cleric hybrid as a main character.  My bear pet needs a serious upgrade to be honest. It's dying in one or two hits these days. Although for all intents and purposes, playing a real beastlord in Everquest felt that way sometimes when you were just one level away from getting a new pet summoning spell.

Other Stuff

Outside of those two games, my old friends in Team Spode are working through the latest expansion in Guild Wars 2, but my interest in that game has been waning lately. 

I have dipped my toes into Marvel Rivals, and it is in fact giving me HUGE overwatch vibes. I need to get back into it again. Playing Dr. Strange with a superhero team in a 6v6 pvp game was a blast.

Man, he was super fun to play

So there you go!  That's about all I've been playing. I still want to write up an article on the remaining two boards of Bounce Arcade and finally get back into playing more Asgard's Wrath, but while my mother-in-law is still in town, it's been difficult to play any VR. (She stole my office space and I'm stuck in the basement.)  

I'll be writing more as I can!

Happy Dueling!

January 2025 Zone of the Month -- Knight's Court

Welcome to 2025 and to another Zone of the Month! Randomness this month has brought us all the way back to Marleybone and one of my favorite TV Show puns from Wizard101.

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Name: Knight's Court

Location: Marleybone -- Once you exit the gate to Marleybone, you head to the left over to Scotland Yard.  Take the elevator to the roof and head straight back past your good friend Watson and on into Knight's Court.

Fashion, Scratching, Trolls, and Black Widows galore!

Description: Knight's Court is a maze of rooftops where you'll encounter the standard fare Marleybone's Prowlers, Scratchers, and Street Sweepers. What makes Knight's Court stand out, however, is the presence of trolls and spiders as well! The main centerpiece of this zone is a large tower with clockwork gears called the Knight's Tower, wherein you're sure to encounter a sneaky scratcher named Jacques.

Jacques the Scratcher in Action

Cost: 1,200 Crowns -- this is the only zone you'll receive for your purchase.

Zeke Item: Marleybone is all about Stray Cats, and you'll find one in Knight's Court just hiding off to the side of the grand Knight's Tower.

He's got cat class and he's got cat style!

Chests: While I haven't found any silver chests, you certainly can find a wooden chest or two in Knight's Court. Final Bastion also notes you can find the new Multiplayer Cantrip Chests there as well.

Lots of chests in far away places 

Secrets:  Possibly the best secret found in Knight's Court comes from a book inside Knight's Tower. Henry Wellingbrook gives a wonderful quest that helps you unravel the history of Marleybone. A juicy piece of lore comes from this book, which reveals that a Marleybonian by the name of Herold Digmoore read a line of ancient magical text that transported him to Wizard City and led to the discovery that Marleybone was actually a part of the Spiral.

Secret-y Secrets Revealed!

Reagents: Any old-school Wizard101 player can tell you that Marleybone is the best place to find random Scrap Metal for your crafting projects! Knight's Court is a great place for that and all your standard stone block and mistwood needs.

Fishing: Unfortunately you won't find any fishing holes on top of the rooftops in Knight's Court. You will find a few fish bones lying around as scenery though! I bet those scratchers would love for you to bring them a catfish or two.

Teleporters: OF COURSE there are teleporters!  Marleybone is one of the birthplaces of those handy zone teleporters after all. You can find the hub near the Knight Tower and it's connections take you to Beeman's Warehouse, Brick's Warehouse, Amy Brooks' Place, and back to Scotland Yard.

The Teleporter hub in Knight's Court!

What's the 4-1-1? Watson has a hot lead while on your quest to find Meowiarty. A nefarious criminal by the name of Jacques the Scratcher has been scratching up the citizens of Knight's Court. Watson sends you to talk to Sergeant Steeg who directs you to help Linda Milltop, a recent victim of the scratcher's scratching. 

While in Knight's Court, you'll fight Jacques twice and uncover clues about this mysterious scratcher.: a black bag, a glove. Can you uncover Jacques's identity and stop these horrible scratchings? Of course you can! Go make Steeg and Watson proud!

Jacques awaits you inside!

Who's that Boss? In addition to Jacques, you'll also be able to fight Mickey the Brick, the Black Widow, and even a Daily Quest boss named Jordyn Malniz! Farming Mickey may yield up a couple of rarer housing items such as the Square Metal Platform and Silver Chest. Farming the Black Widow can get you a set of Widow's armor or even a black widow pet. Farming Jacques could get you some of his special armor or maybe one of those cool-looking frog street sweepers as a pet.

Nothing worse than a missing purse!

Don't Miss this Sidequest! There are a couple great sidequests in Knight's Court. One involves chatting up all the ladies in the zone who are busy getting ready for the big Policeman's Ball. For completing this questline you'll receive a cool airship photo housing item as a reward. The other quest involves messing with trolls and eventually confronting the Black Widow boss, a farmable boss with some interesting loot. Both are a lot of fun!

A troll for a stroll under Marleybone's beauty untold

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Thanks for reading! I hope you take a chance to visit an old favorite again this new year.

Happy Dueling!

Chilling Out and Bouncing Around in Slime Rancher VR

So, the other day I was talking with my Discord VR buddy (/waves at NV) about a VR game I want to make. While I was discussing it with him, he noted that in some way what I was describing sounded a lot like the game Slime Rancher. 

Slime Rancher is one of those games that I had always heard mention of, but never really looked at. This is a six- or seven-year-old game at this point, and honestly, I can't believe I never checked it out to be honest. So, because my buddy mentioned it, I absolutely had to go check this game out.

Caging up the Big ol Pink Rock Slimes

My kids were equally shocked I had never played Slime Rancher when I talked to them about it. In their words, it's just a chill tycoon game that's easy to play. 

Although chilling with Slime Rancher sounded pretty good, I was more excited to try the VR playground version of the game that you get for free when you purchase the base game . . . despite the warnings from Goldtail the Steam reviewer.

If you launch with Steam VR, you'll get a smoother graphical presentation, but from the get-go you're greeted with a control scheme using Vive controllers.

Those controls translated over to Quest controllers, however, took a lot of getting used to. I'm not sure why the joystick wasn't used to just move you around . . . instead you needed to point yourself in a direction and use the squeeze trigger on the left controller to move you forward. To rotate your head you have to downclick to the side with the joystick to tilt 15 degrees. Once I figured that out though, it was really no problem navigating the environments.

(Important to note, you can launch the game with Oculus VR from Steam, but I got a lot of graphical stuttering when I did . . . controls weren't much better tbh.)

Rubber Ducks and tons of toys in the base for you to play with

The playground comes with a home base and three world environments: a glowing mushroom swamp, the standard desert mountains, and zelda-esque ancient ruins.

pink slimes and meow slimes playing together in VR

You can use your suction gun much like you do in the base game of slime rancher to suck up slimes, goodies, and plorts. On the quest controllers you'll need to click down on the right joystick to shoot those objects out.

All in all, there's really no game here to play aside from feeding slimes food and putting them in cages to make them combine. Really, this is just to see the world of Slime Rancher all around you in VR fashion, which is pretty fun. Getting in a cage full of bouncing slimes is kind of fun. You'll get knocked around and feel surrounded by happy little slimes.

Magical Green Goobers of fun!

I take that back, there is "one" game-like element that I found. In the desert mountains environment, you can find a basketball hoop that once you shoot a slime into it, queues some new music and floats up and down while you try to make baskets into the hoop with your captured slimes. (side note: it's not that easy to do -- those slimes are slippery!)

Shooting baskets with slimy bois

If you're looking for a fun environment to run around in and own a copy of Slime Rancher, jump on in and check it out. Once in a while you can find Slime Rancher on super discount. I actually bought it for an astounding $2 in November during the autumn sale, but typically when it goes on sale, it's $5, which still ain't bad.

Happy Dueling!

Recent Brawl Pass Updates and the impossibility of Mythic rank

GAHHH! I'm so frustrated right now!  I don't think I'll ever hit Mythic rank in Brawl Stars. I'm not that good at the game and don't have a good, solid PvP team to play with. I went on the worst losing streak today from mid-Diamond 2 all the way down to the bottom of Diamond 1. So frustrating.

GRRRRRR! I SUCK AT THIS GAME!

The highest I've ever reached is Diamond 3 and the creep up the ladder to Mythic seems like an impossibility for me. It's that same level of rage I used to get when I was playing competitive Overwatch and not being able to get out of the Gold ranks.

Ok, now that my rage is out of the way . . . a lot has happened in Brawl Stars since the last time I posted about it. Let's take a couple deep breaths and talk about it.

(calmly breathing -- a zen beach scene emerges in the distance -- ok, let's talk)

First up, we had the whole Angels vs. Demons Brawl Pass season. It was a really cool and well-done season that involved a lot of really great skins, some neat game modes, and, yes, the angel and demon books played a part in it all. Basically, you'd fill out your power books and select which power you wanted to bring into a match. There were some interesting powers you could choose from like siphoning life off your enemies, resurrecting after defeat, and even spawning enemies when you killed another player.  Great stuff.

EMZ's skin was my favorite from the event.

Next, I finished maxing out Squeak, Bull, and Angelo with all of their hypercharge powers and everything. It was a lot of work, but I got it done. I'm now sitting on 19 Max-level characters -- 11 of which also have their hypercharge powers. (Just to put that in perspective, there are a total of 87 characters and I only own 67 of those . . . it's an infinite grind)

Next up to max will be Pearl thanks to this hypercharge acquisition

After Angels vs. Demons, the new season that happened involved a cadre of cartoon styles mashed into one Brawl Pass Season named "Starr Toon Studios 2." There are some super great skins involved in this season. I've actually been tempted to buy this pass a few times, but I'm staying strong. I kind of feel like I've already spent enough on this stupid game . . . ESPECIALLY WHEN I CAN'T RANK UP TO MYTHIC RAWR!

(calmly breathing -- a zen forest scene envelops me -- ok, let's continue talking)

Also, the holidays happened and clubs everywhere were cracking open a ton of presents for the season. The club I'm in managed to get 14 presents, and on Christmas Day they gave every player a few more. It was a present opening extravaganza in Brawl Stars! Two of the gifts I received were hypercharges: One for Colt (who I already had at max) and also for Jackie. Yay! Free hypercharges are the best gift of them all!

Legendary Christmas presents are the best presents!

Finally, you may have thought the Spongebob Crossover was crazy, but get this . . . Brawl Stars is crossing over with Toy Story right now! That's right, you can play as a super overpowered Buzz Lightyear in regular game modes (not competitive thank goodness). He's a temporary character, but really fun to play. In addition to Buzz, you can unlock new Toy Story-themed skins for Colt (Woody skin), Bibi (Bo Peep skin), and Jessie (Jessie Jessie skin lol).

So cool you can play Buzz three different ways!

Brawl Stars continues to be an incredibly fascinating mobile game for me with a ton of adrenaline-inducing fun . . . even if it makes me rage a bit when I'm playing the competitive ranked games. In my eyes, Brawl Stars is now officially the Fortnight of competitive mobile gaming.

I don't know if I have the patience and skill to move the needle on ranked games until it all comes to an end. This current season will end in a little over 5 days from now and Ranked will do the same in 4 days.  Oh well. The good news is that new fun will be here to ring in the new year of Brawl Stars soon!

Happy Dueling!

Christmas Redux 2024

Hey all! I hope you had a very merry Christmas as we head into the new year. 2024 was a year of big changes and struggles for me and my family, but I'm happy to report that our Christmas was just as great as ever!

With our new house comes a little smaller family room space. Because of that we opted for a skinnier tree that was still very beautiful with presents around it on Christmas Eve.

Santa always lines up the kids' presents and stockings on the couch for them to open in the morning. 

The theme for matching pajamas this year was Kirby. The kids were comfy cozy and ready to have some Christmas fun.

A big theme for this year's gift-giving was warm clothing since we've moved to Utah from Texas. It got cold in Texas occasionally, but not like it is here. New coats and boots were warmly received! 

The family got me a lot of great dad gifts this year, including some of the missing New Mutant comics I don't have in my collection and a few old-school Wacky Packages. 

Also, the great thing about this Christmas was that it snowed just a bit here. I shoveled our walks and snapped pictures of our yard out in the cold for fun.

So there you go! I had a great Christmas with the family!  We got a lot of winter clothes, season passes to a local amusement park, and a bunch of other fun odds and ends. Most of all, we just enjoyed being with each other. 

I hope you also had an amazing holiday season!

Happy Dueling!

Blowing up Asteroids in Bounce Arcade

I'm continuing to play a little Bounce Arcade here and there, and lately it seems to be my go-to, just messing around VR pinball experience. It's pretty light and super easy to get into when I just want to play and not think too much. 

Since the last time I posted about the game, I've been putting up some great scores on all the game modes. Since I mostly talked about Gunpowder Gulch before, I thought I'd talk a little about the next step up in difficulty, Asteroid Outpost.

Time to play pinball in space!

As of this posting, I managed to barely slip myself into the top 10 for the leaderboards.

Diamond Rank, baby! Yeah!

In Asteroid Outpost, your playing field is very much inside the engine room of a spaceship.  In phase one of the board, your objective is to hit the objects lit by crackling electricity and then shoot them down into the engine core to charge it up.  After you completely charge the engine, a secondary objective appears.

The four secondary objectives are as follows:

- Shoot the cannons -- basically target one of the cannons and then shoot the ball between cannons until you've hit them all and shoot it down a nearby tube.  This is by far the easiest of the secondary objectives.

- Target the side chamber -- When the side chamber opens up, it's a bouncy mad-house of point generation. Once you hit all the bumpers inside the side chamber, shoot the lit up tube nearby and you're done.

- Charge up the spinners -- At the top right and top left of the playing field are two spinners. As you shoot the spinners, they charge the left and right sides of the top of the engine. Once you've charged both of them up, shoot the lit up tube to complete the secondary objective.

- Light all the arrows -- Arrows run from the corners of the playing field. Sometimes these arrows are pointing toward the center, and sometimes these arrows are pointing away from the center.  Run the ball down all three arrows in a row, and they'll light green to indicate success. Once you've lit up all the arrows, shoot the ball into the engine and you'll be done with the secondary objective.

After you finish a secondary objective, the hull of the ship peels back and three large asteroids float out in space. You need to use your pinball (and other power-up balls) to destroy these asteroids and reveal the golden nuggets inside them. 

Time to play Asteroids! (Just not on the 2600)

Shoot the golden nuggets into the collection tubes while keeping your ball in play and eventually, you'll win the third objective and light up a part of the engine. Do this four times and your ship will jump to lightspeed so you complete the entire game loop.

To make things more difficult, enemy laser cubes will activate and target your game paddles with lasers each time you enter the asteroid field. If a laser hits your game paddle, it'll deactivate for a few seconds leaving you extremely vulnerable to losing your ball.

To make things EVEN MORE DIFFICULT, after you complete the game loop once, you'll be given a multiball in the asteroid field and have to keep them ALL in play or you'll have to restart. It gets to be a crazy frantic mess of balls, powerups, golden nuggets, and laser cubes you have to keep track of.

So there you go, that's the Asteroid Outpost game in Bounce Arcade. To be honest, of all the game modes (excluding the tutorial), the Asteroid Outpost is my least favorite playing field. Its mini-games just aren't as exciting as the other three modes, and the game loop is a little monotonous. 

It feels like there's a missed opportunity to bring more sci-fi flair into the playing field! There should be more to the vastness of space than just asteroid mining. Right?! I mean, can I please have some kind of alien contact, ship repair, or planetary landing moments mixed into the asteroid mining? It really does feel like there could have been just a bit more sci-fi fun included. Even just one alien crawling around inside the hull of the ship would have been enough.

That all said, it's not a horrible board . . . just not my favorite. Happy to be in the top ten for now!

Happy Dueling!

Tea Times Two with Thomas Lionblood

Man, I've been wanting to post a thing or two on my blog for a week now, and I just haven't had the time or motivation. I've either been busy with holiday stuff or sick, but as long as I'm here typing, let's just see what I can do to dump out all my thoughts RIGHT NOW! 

Let's start with the Wizard Tea. Bazaar Sniping, a thing that's been in the game since the beginning, is now (from what I hear) a thing of the past. I haven't tried bazaar sniping since I was actively working on crafting.  We always used it to transfer metal scraps and random reagents back and forth between me and Bailey.

I remember asking Professor Greyrose about it once waaaaay back and she noted that it wasn't an intended thing for players to do, but because everyone liked it, they just kept it in the game.

Fast forward to today, players several years ago realized that Empower treasure cards were a stable drop in the game economy that could be traded back and forth in exchange for other things. Think of it like a player invented monetizing system.  In Everquest, they have Krono (which happens to be company controlled and monetized btw -- KingsIsle, if you're reading, look into it . . . I'm pretty sure you could monetize trading with something similar -- players would hate it and call you money-grubbing, but they do that anyway). In Wizard101, they have Empower Treasure Cards.

Anyway, they finally fixed the sniping bug and as expected, people went nuts.

At first I didn't even remember the Empower Treasure Card facet of Bazaar sniping, but @Karlicai broke it down for me.

WHEW! Man, everything KingsIsle was trying to avoid with allowing player trading in the first place was circumvented by players in a super ingenious way. By allowing this to exist for 16 years, players created a discord channel for trading and a whole sub-economy using Bazaar sniping as a method to trade valuable items and bank gold. People going to do people things I suppose.

One of the major problems to the above method is the presence of bots in the bazaar. It defeats the whole system. You want to trade something with someone and bam, a bot snipes before you can snipe. The new system they implemented was that after you deposit an item in the bazaar, there's now a time delay and you can't predictably snipe anymore. In fact, players are saying the new system favors bots now.  Whoops. Not the best fix.

A lot of players seem pretty upset by this, and I get it. KingsIsle will work it out somehow. I have faith. Ultimately, they're trying to avoid gold sellers and spammers in zone chat. If you've played any other MMO, you'll know what they are. They're annoying.

So there you go.  That's the T in Wizard101 lately.

We used to track time in Community Management by what the recent drama was. We seem to be in the Post-Hawkules/Sparck-tell-all and entering into the season of bazaar-sniping-fix. All in all, still not as glorious as the age of Glowing Mushroom Exploit. 

AAAANNNNYYWWWAAYYYY . . . I finished all my quests for the Selenopolis trees and got my new cool blade.

Woot!

Also spent a bunch of Crowns trying to get the full outfit from the new Christmas pack. It's not a bad pack, I might actually stitch this new robe on to my outfit.  The Krampus banner is pretty great as well.

I like that Krampus banner!

I didn't keep going to see if I could get the new mount. It's a little weird and I already have far too many mounts to even think about wanting a new one. Still debating about this new pet. I kinda like it.

Smelly Gracie seems neat, but nothing will ever top my precious Lady Dexter.

Anyway, hope you all are enjoying Wizard101 and the holidays. I need to find some time to log on and finish up a few more of the quests in Selenopolis and hopefully convince my wife to play again. I WILL FINISH KARAMELLE!

Happy Dueling!