A $10 MMO? Ok Quinfall, what's this all about?

I was looking around the store and stumbled upon an MMO called Epitome that was soon launching, so I wishlisted it and started reading the comments, when I stumbled upon this:

Hello, Salty MMO player, what's this about Quinfall?

So I looked up Quinfall, and sure enough, it's a $10 MMO that just released. I started looking at it and thought, meh, I've played worse for far more and dropped the 10 bucks for the game. After playing for an afternoon, let me tell you what I've gathered on the game so far.

1- Character Creation -- There's really only one race, human, which is fine. It's pretty impressive how you can tweak your character, given there is really only one race: lots of bone options, tattoos, scars, facepaints, skin colors, etc.

I think I'd like to go for that Mid-life crisis in the Bahamas look . . .

My one big complaint here is that although they give you 6 standard body looks for both male and female, there's no randomization button from what I can tell . . . I mean, that's part of the fun of a character creator, isn't it? I want to click randomize to see what kind of monster creation is possible!

2- The backstory and its voice over -- You can't really listen to this intro movie explaining the back story and think, man, that's some quality voice over. I'm having a hard time placing the accent because the person might also have a lisp? Sorry, personal nitpick.

Basically, there's five biomes on one world (Quinfall) that was created from five worlds embodying the five personality traits of the original, solitary god, who also created other gods who then started messing stuff up. Now it's up to the brave adventurers to try and clean up the riff raff and bring Quinfall back to its peaceful state. 

The solitary god doing his thing in the backstory . . .

3- Playstyle Comparisons -- To me it feels like an amalgamation of Project Gorgon/Runescape-esque Skill System, Rift's community rift raiding, Potions and Pets from Diablo 4, and a type of combat style similar to New World. It feels like there's probably even more borrowed ideas from other MMOs, but I'm only citing what is recognizable to me. As for the graphics, they are giving me something that would be a cross between LOTRO and Valheim so far? I don't know how to describe it . . . it's its own thing.

There are 10 weapon styles that you can level up. Because I liked fighting with a staff in New World, I opted for the same in Quinfall. 

To level up a weapon, just fight with it.  As you do, you unlock your spells and can start leveling them, but only if you can find a skill book to do so. There are also augments you can slot in each spell to give it a little bit more oomph. 

Necromancer is a locked class?

The best way I've found to do combat is to just back up while nuking or strafe in a circle around my target. They like to swing and miss if you're constantly moving around. The only time I really get in trouble is when I stand still. 

Shazam!

There's also a big list of life skills you can level up, and, much like Project Gorgon, you can level them all up as you see fit. you don't have to stick to mining or herbalism . . . just level them all if you'd like.

Oh man . . . there's a lot there . . .

I've only done the rifts solo so far, but these appear to be hot spots where you can have a little open-world co-op to close rifts and earn Rift Scrolls (used in some kind of crafting I don't know about yet) and other loot.  If you like combat, just grinding these could be where it's at for you.

The game gives you a pet and a mount pretty quickly. As expected with a Project Gorgon skills type game, you can tame and level pets and mounts.  

Bee pet and a beginner horse for the win!

It feels like my pet's only purpose right now is to pick up loot off the ground for me and slowly eat acorns. I'm not sure it's fighting for me . . . at least yet.

4- Use of AI -- There is a warning when you buy the game that AI was used to help make UIs for the game.Because this game really feels really indie . . . I don't know . . . it seems to be a forgivable sin if you view that as a sin.

Anyway, I've just begun to explore here. For $10 bucks, it was worth a shot. I'm unsure how much I'll be playing or not, but for now, I'm level 15 with my sights set on level 20. If I end up playing more, I'll be sure to have some follow-on thoughts.

If anyone out there is playing this game as well, give me a shout and let me know what's what.

Happy Dueling! 

Comic Book Store Fantasies and Anime Elves: What I've been streaming

I haven't done a post like this in a while, but I thought I'd talk a bit about the stuff I've been watching on a few streaming services lately. I love me a good nerd show or two. Let's see:

1- Comic Book Men -- Ok, there's this side of me that always wanted to open up a comic book store. I wouldn't really know where to start, actually, but I love the home-grown grittiness of a good strip mall comic book store.

Ahh, my old favorite strip mall comic book store back in Texas

About four or five months ago I was clicking through AMC+ and discovered something I didn't even know was a thing -- a whole, dang reality show based on, not only a comic book store, but a comic book store owned by Kevin Smith of Clerks fame. I binged season one and found myself smiling more than I thought I would at the really bad jokes and staged comic book bargaining negotiations (it is a reality show after all).

On Friday, I finished up the last season and watched in awe as the crew was immortalized as Pop Figures, and then it all suddenly ended. Crazy. 

I'm so glad I got to watch this series. It let me fulfill that weird comic book store fantasy without any of the actual risk and hardship of running one. Thank you, Kevin Smith, Walt Flanagan, Bryan Johnson, Mike Zapcic, Ming Chen . . . and even you, Jason Mewes, and (RIP) Rob Bruce. 

2- Frieren -- A coworker of mine turned me on to this anime, and it was fantastic. Have you ever been watching something and you just get that cozy warmth vibe while at the same time getting that Dungeons and Dragons fix you so desperately need?  If not, watch Frieren.

Silly Frieren can't resist a good mimic

It's a great show that begins at the end, well for the short-lived humans of the party at least. The elven mage (Frieren) on the other hand, has a few lifetimes left to live if she can survive long enough.

I started watching this one alone and then brought in my kids because I knew they'd love it. By the end of season 2, I had watched it all through a couple of times because I couldn't help myself from watching ahead.

The first two seasons are fully dubbed in English on Netflix, but Season 3 has already begun on Crunchyroll.  My guess it isn't dubbed yet (only subbed), but I haven't investigated it enough yet.

3- Wonder Man -- Meanwhile, over on Disney+, the Uber Wife and I stumbled upon this new Marvel series, and binged it all last week.

It was a good one for sure and especially since it brings back that easily forgotten character of The Mandarin and a new-to-us hero of Wonder Man, an actor who happens to have superpowers and can't help himself from blowing up every once in a while.

My official review is that it's easy to watch and too short for its own good.

4- My Hero Academia -- I've been watching this one on and off for several years, ever since my fellow game designer, Andrew Riehm (Of KingsIsle fame), introduced me to a quirky little show about super hero quirks.

Knowing that Friren was on its third season on Crunchyroll was the tipping point, and I got a subscription . . . and while I'm here, I started getting back into the last two seasons of My Hero Academia that I never finished watching.

Image from IGN

Remember when I was playing the MMO for a while? Man, good times!

5- Solo Leveling -- I had heard good things about this one and ended up watching the first six episodes tonight. It was pretty cheesy at first, but I think my oldest and I are now into it enough that we'll finish watching what's available to us.

I'm a sucker for a good fantasy anime, and the fact that it treats the whole process as a gacha MMO-like Tower of Fantasy game helps a lot. I'm excited to watch more . . . probably more than I am to finish out the last two seasons of My Hero Academia.

~~

Anyway, those are the kinds of shows I've been watching when I haven't been catching a local hockey game. If you have any good shows in a similar vein that you'd think I'd like, let me know in the comments.

Happy Dueling!

D4, Project Gorgon, and Riding the Road to Redemption

Team . . . I just haven't had the will to blog!  Like at ALL!  What is going on with me?

Well, since you didn't ask:

1- Diablo IV!! -- Dylan and I have been playing the new Paladin class in the most recent season. Now, we've had some great themes before like The Southern Gentlemen and the half-muscled twins, Skip Legday and Tree Trunks McSkinny.  So in that vein, I present to you MonteCarlo and GranTorino, our 70's Cars in Hell!

Riding the Road to Redemption!

The new paladin class is pretty cool and currently it feels really good to play. Dylan made a type of character where really he just walks around and things die in his presence. I opted for the Hammerkuna Shako variant of the Blessed Hammer build up on MOBAlytics. Basically, I hold down right-click and hammers swirl out from me in a whirlwind of death.

Since half of the fun is dressing your character in an outfit, I opted to model myself after a light blue trim Gran Torino.

Blue Metal Power, Baby

Also Blue Metal Power, Baby

As for Monte Carlo . . . he just kind runs around with no shirt, economy-class style. It didn't take us too long to get ourselves up to Torment 4 and equipped with a few pieces of Mythic armor.  At this point we're just finishing out the season journey and working up to 250 skill points. (I think I left this morning at around 217?) It's a good time.

~~

2- Some Project Gorgon news -- YO! Did you hear that Project Gorgon officially launched?! What the heck!  Yup, that quirky MMO I put a thousand plus hours into back in 2020 finally did it, they moved out of Beta like a boss. So proud of that game! 

Part of the launch was to implement improved character models, so when you launch the game now, you can update the look of your dude to something a bit sexier.  The Human Models look pretty deluxe tbh.

What a freakin' model . . .

The Raksasha on the other hand . . . mmm . . . I'll get used to it.

Those teeth though . . .

Anyway, it was great to earn my Beta Tester Badge, log in, and play a couple games of match 3 in the casino. Looks like whatever guild I was in has disbanded, and it felt a bit like a thing of the past for me. it's almost like I'd have to start over and play from the starter island again to get a feel for it.

~~

3- Real Life -- Honestly, it's a good thing these days when I don't have to mention something.  I've just been living, and that's pretty amazing. I'm vertical, and it feels good. We've shifted CAT Scan reviews to every 9 weeks from every 6 weeks because I've shown a lot of improvement. Let's just hope that holds, right? 2026 is going to be amazing!

One of my new favorite pictures of 2026 is me giving my older sister a hug. She came for a quick visit as we had a celebration of life party to celebrate what would have been my mom's 93rd birthday.

My sisters are amazing!

It was a great way to start off the new year. I hope it's only up from here. I'm continuing to connect with old friends and get more used to my new normal.  I can't believe it's almost been 2 years since moving back to Utah.

Speaking of Utah . . . Go Mammoth!  Cheering for the newest NHL Hockey Team has been consuming a lot of time. I even started collecting a few Hockey Cards because of it. Who woulda thunk I'd ever get all sport ball about something . . . I actually am starting to understand how the game works LOL. If a Mammoth game is on, Uber Wife and I are usually watching it.

From Coyotes to Utah Hockey Club to Mammoth. Let's go, Team!

Happy Dueling!

Trying to make 2026 awesome: Dune, BG3, and Quest 3S

Hey all, welcome to 2026! I've had a really hard time writing on my blog lately. I don't know what it is . . . I guess after Dune and all my cancer nonsense of last year, I just fizzled out a bit. If you don't mind (I'm sure you don't), Imma just journal a bit here and catch up to the present. M'kay? M'kay!

1- Real Life -- Couple things to note here. Mom died. It's ok. She lived a good, long life. I officiated the funeral for the family, and my company granted me a week of bereavement leave. I wrote up her obituary and went with my sister to decide on the casket, flowers, and etc. It was painful, but necessary and important family work.

My kids were very respectful pallbearers

At the same time, I got hit with the Flu that's been going around. It's like 2025 was trying to give me a final punch in the gut.  Can 2026 just be a bit more awesome please?  Luckily Tamiflu knocked it out of me in time for the funeral.

As for cancer, well, I'm still doing immunotherapy infusions every three weeks.  It's my new normal.  Hopefully, my upcoming CT Scan shows continued improvement.

2- Dune -- yeah, I haven't really logged on to do anything on Dune more than just refilling my base's (and Dylan's bases') power supplies. It's dry gameplay that just isn't that fun.

Oh, you know, just spending an hour collecting fuel cells to power the bases . . .

On the upside, everybody on our server's sietch is jumping ship to a different sietch and changing over to a new guild, so that might actually get me logged on to do the same.  I don't know. When a game becomes nothing more than chores you have to do, it feels a bit . . . dead.  The third DLC is supposed to be dropping sometime early this year though, so if that happens, I'll for sure be joining in to play through more of the story.

3- Baldur's Gate 3 -- I should probably dedicate an entire blog post to my recent playthrough of BG3, and actually, yeah, I think I'll do that at some point. The short story of this playthrough is that my son started DM'ing a game that takes place in the Feywild, and I'm playing a clown-based Mischief cleric named Dandy Goofus.  I was so excited about this character that I made him over in Baldur's Gate 3 to see how he plays.

Clown makeup secured!

The original goal was simply to get him to Act 3 so I could get him the clown makeup from the circus, but I ended up really going crazy on Act 3 and doing everything I just kind of skipped through in the past.  That means I actually helped Shadowheart with her Mother Superior problem. That means I helped Asterion become a Vampire lord. That even means I saved Minsc, fought Raphael, destroyed the steel watcher factory, and got Orpheus's hammer.

BG's newest vampire lord in the house!

Really, all that's left in this play through is to get the last Dribbles the Clown body part (this is just some clown-to-clown good deed stuff I need to do), finish up the Orin fight, and take the final fight to the brain. I'm near the end, and I kind of don't want it to end. :(

4- Quest 3S -- I got TWO Quest 3S's for Christmas: one for me and one for my youngest. They were on sale for $200 at Costco during the holidays, and I couldn't resist.

I've told a few people who read this blog already, but I'll repeat myself here: I don't think I realized how devastated I really was when I had to return my Quest 3 engineering model to Meta when WIMO folded. It felt like a larger metaphor in my life for some reason (as weird as that may seem). I put that thing on after opening up my Christmas present and played Smash Drums until the battery ran out. It felt really good. It felt really cathartic.

Smash those drums!

I've played a few other games on my Quest 3S since Christmas, and that means, if I can get to it, I've got more fuel for the blog post dumpster fire in me!

~~

Anyway, that should catch you up on the holidays and the start of 2026. Thanks for reading, and let me know your thoughts. I love hearing from readers and old friends. I appreciate it and hope your holidays went well and that your 2026 is starting off right.

Happy Dueling!

Team Tom Update -- Kick Cancer's KRAS

Hey Team Tom,

Just taking a moment to put out a real-life update. Things are mostly good here, but there is also a touch of bad as well.

The bad:

Mom's not doing so hot. We think she may have had a stroke a couple days ago, and this could be the beginning of the end. She's lived a good, long life. We'll have to see what happens next. We were able to gather around her as a family yesterday and let her know how much she is loved and appreciated.

The good:

The big news is that my doctor was able to send the remains of my last biopsy to a genetic sequencing company and actually find my best cancer mutation match. So, we throw out the RET and FANCG results, and now I have KRAS G12A and TP53 results. What does that mean to the common human? That means, we continue doing what we're doing since the treatment I'm on currently is working; however, if things ever go south again, then we have new options.  There are three clinical trials that I would be a good candidate for.  So, no change in treatment, but at least the mystery is over.

I wrapped up another session of music therapy on Friday, which was fantastic. I was able to play a bit of floor tom along with my therapist and her intern. It was a groovy little jam with a guitar and a synth organ. Overall, it just felt very happy and carefree. I'll take happy and carefree, and playing along with a couple of talented musicians is always great. I miss jamming. It left me with a smile on my face during the infusion that happened afterward.

Reppin' ninja pigs in the infusion center!

To those ends, last Friday was my fifth immunotherapy infusion of what is sure to be something I lose track of eventually as this now becomes my new normal. I'll be getting one of these infusions from now until, idk, forever? I'm not complaining though. As long as the tumors are shrinking or stable, I'm happy, and my tumors ARE shrinking or stable, so, I'm happy!

In other news, Government shutdown woes are well past us, and I've been back at work trying to adjust schedules and catch up to where we left off. I guess we'll see if this happens again in February? And . . . Thanksgiving was great, and I was happy to blend my family with my sister's family and have a quality celebration. My sister cooked an amazing turkey and we brought some stuffing, cauliflower Mac n Cheese, fresh Cranberry sauce, and a pie to share. We also managed to play a fun game of Poetry for Neanderthals. ME LIKE GAME NO USE LONG WORD OR GET BONK ON HEAD WITH TOY CLUB.

AND FINALLY, I haven't cut my hair since, like, February and wrapped up my "no shave November" look.  I feel less like an actual neanderthal now.

That took off a couple pounds and about 10 years

Happy Dueling!

Ding 200 -- Max Level in Dune Awakening

I've had a lot of time on my hands with the Government shutdown.  Now that it's all set to end, I suppose it's fitting that yesterday I finished off my leveling in Dune Awakening.

Ding 200 -- Don't mind me, just getting stabbed while taking a screenshot

I started out the week with a level and a half left to go, and previous to this, I wasn't really in a rush to max out good old Tree Trunks McSkinny, but the writing was on the wall that my goofing off during the daytimes on Dune Awakening was soon coming to an end. 

What does an old MMO player do best . . . GRIND. I reran the infamous Secret Lab in Station 163 over and over. It was my favorite instance of the latest DLC, and as it turns out, the exp there is pretty great! If you really want to you can just sit in that end room and grind wave after wave of one boss and four enemies at a pace of one wave a minute.

Grinding Station 163 Secret Lab Boss Room

This is what Dune has become for me, just killing time and trying to complete a few Tom-goals, like . . . "Hmm. I want to build my own carrier and spice crawler and do a solo spicing run." OK! DONE! I even have an hour-long unedited video of it. (11:30 mark is a fun close call . . . 44 minute mark is another.)

If you actually watch that video (I don't expect you to), you'll see me using my awesome thanksgiving turkey base I built for the holidays.

You enter through the legs. It's genius.

Before that was my pumpkin base for Halloween.

Happy Halloween from my goofy base!

. . . and of course, we shall never forget the FREE MAZE, but these are the types of Tom Goals I'm talking about -- self-created ones.

As for the not self-created goals, I have 90 percent completion on the Dune Steam Achievements with my most recent being crafting a Lasgun, which was pretty fun to use when I was grinding experience, but I highly doubt I'll ever break it out to rip apart a base in DD.  I guess you never know though.

Melting away the golden AI guys worth 3 exp each

All that's left for achievements are:

• Kill 50 snipers with a spit dart sniper (doable, but time consuming)
• Release a suspensor blast 25 times (easy, just need to respec)
• Use a hunter seeker 25 times (again, easy, just need to respec)
• Mine 10,000 of each resource type by hand (hard! There's no way to track what you're missing)
• Eliminate 500 Harkonens (would just need to grind Row A shipwrecks in DD)
• Cook up 100 Muad'Dib meatball sandwiches (just need to find and kill the little mice and craft up like 10 more)

So there you go. I'm level 200 and still doing my thing in Dune. Yes, it would be kind of fun to 100 percent this game, but I'm back to work (most likely today or tomorrow) so who knows what's next?!

Happy Dueling!

Team Tom Update Nov 2025 -- Thank you and humbled

Well, I just had another infusion, so I guess it’s time for another Team Tom update!  

Here’s where we’re sitting:  

• Chemo (Done! No more!) 
• Immuno (Just had my fourth **flexes for the crowd) 
• CT Scan (Number four is coming up in a couple of weeks – hoping all still looks good) 
• Holistic (yup, still doing it) 
• Body Check (gained back some weight – general takeaways from labs are everything looks stable, and several key markers are either normalizing or have stayed in the normal range for a while. There are a few mild, chronic lows [like red cell counts] and immune shifts, but nothing alarming or drastically changing.) 

The weird thing that happened: 

The company that did my genetic sequencing on my cancer came back, now over two months later, and basically said, “Hi peoples. Um, just kidding you from whatever we gave you a while back . . . we didn’t get enough cancer from the sample to give you a solid genetic analysis. I don’t know what we were thinking. #dealwithit ” My oncologist was pretty floored. He hasn’t EVER seen that happen. He’s going to dig in deeper to that and find out what’s up. At some point I may need a fourth biopsy, but the treatment has pretty much worked so far and there’s nothing really urgent that needs to happen from that . . . it’s just . . . weird. 

Still not as weird as Timmy . . .

The fun thing that happened: 

The fam and I went to Lagoon a couple times. I thought I had wasted my season pass because I was too sick from Chemo to go. We were able to go the last two weekends in a row! Super fun. I love the new Primordial ride. Also, I’m so happy I was able to ride JetStar2 one last time before it got taken down forever. Good times with the fam for sure. 

Once more around the ol' JetStar2!

The surprising things that happened: 

MOM . . . mom came through with some money to help us during government shutdown. It was unexpected and incredibly kind. You can tell she loves our family and is willing to help us when times are tight. Thank you, mom! 

KINGSISLE . . . I got a package from my old company . . . all my old friends. There was a super nice get-well card (featuring my old avatars of Dworgyn and One-Eyed Jack) from the whole team. Inside the package was a Ninja Pig T-shirt, a slew of stickers, and more plushies than I can hold in my arms at one time. Thank you, friends! 

Thank you, old friends!

JT4 . . . The fine people at JT4 pooled together and got me a metric ton of donated leave. I thought I was going to be on unemployment at this point, but my amazing coworkers (You know who you are) have made me feel valued. Thank you, coworkers! Now let’s just hope this shutdown nonsense ends soon.

MUTC . . . I joined the Man Up to Cancer group and met some really nice folks there. They sent me a backpack and some supplies. The Wolves, as they call themselves, seem like a good bunch and welcomed me warmly. Thank you, Wolves, and thank you to the social workers at the Huntsman Cancer Institute for turning me on to them. 

MORE Thank-yous that need to happen: 

Man, I’ve been feeling super unworthy of the love and gifts I’ve been getting from you all, but I’m so happy to have you on my side. I just mentioned MUTC, MOM, KINGSISLE and JT4 above, but just in case I haven’t said it: 

NEIGHBORS, FRIENDS, and FAMILY . . . y’all have been there with incredibly supportive messages, gifts, advice, books, plushies, food, patience, and time. Thank you each and every one of you. Back when this nonsense started I said that some of you may be wondering how to help and I didn’t have a good answer. Kudos to you for just jumping in. I have a hard time asking for help (or even knowing what I need) and you made it effortless by just doing what you do, whether it's an uber eats card or just leaving me a note. Thank you!

Happy Dueling!