Dune Awakening -- Onward to the Endgame!

I've now been playing Dune Awakening for a couple of months. As for a gauge of where I am in the journey, I have completed the main story quest as far as I can progress it and crafted a mega-base, complete with an MK5 Assault Ornithopter landing pad.

You just fly down through the old Pentashield rooftop!

Inside ol' Tree Trunks McSkinny's base you'll find all the trappings needed to process Duraluminum. As for processing spice and higher-quality metals, Dylan and I combined forces and located our high-quality refinement machinery over at Skip Legday's base.  It's a relatively short hop over to his house from my place, so no complaints there from me.

Skip's old Dune Buggy Entrance before he widened it a bit.

The real fun in-game now seems to be tempting death in the Deep Desert. The mobs hit harder, and the grind is grindy-er there, which also seems to be slowing our interest in continuing to play this game. There are plenty of side quests and faction quests I could complete still, so I have plenty left to discover.

Speaking of that, I've really enjoyed doing the quests in this game. The storytelling has been fantastic, which is to be expected from a game based on an entire series of books and movies. It doesn't disappoint.

Sounds like a Friendly Necromancer's dream

What I also love about this game is how you can get into a meditative state while grinding away on whatever your next crafting goal is. It's that sweet Zen state where your brain shuts down partially while you mine ores, suck corpses of their blood, dodge worms while gathering spice, and finally craft that full set of sentinel gear you've been collecting.

It's a pretty sweet look. FYI puzzle solution for the Footsteps of the Fremen Quest in case you need it.

Hopefully the team of Skip Legday and Tree Trunks McSkinny can start farming a bit of the Deep Desert together. I'd like to get a set of the best armor in the game at some point, but on the other hand . . . just playing Dune to this stage has given me 137.3 hours of enjoyment. I'm good either way.

Happy Dueling!

Second Chemo -- With love and kindness, WE got this!

OK, y'all! I had my second chemo visit on Friday. My good friend, old coworker, KI Live co-star, and all-around amazing person, Leala Turkey, gave me a super awesome chemo buddy to take with me. I also had a warm blanket with me from my extremely kind high school friends, Alisa and Layne.

So much awesome bundled with this little dude!

While I was there, I had a great talk with my social worker, Sean, and signed up for some music therapy while I was at it. Kudos to Huntsman for putting a kind, human touch on a situation you don't want to find yourself in.

After chemo, I was able to chat with my musical ally, Adam Terry, at his record shop downtown in SLC. Make sure you drop by Fountain Records and support his local business.

Adam and his wife in front of Fountain Records in SLC, UT.

Today I got a great deal and used some birthday money sent to me by family members to purchase a Ghosts and Goblins 1up machine for the Goblin house. I just need to get new sticker art to theme it, and it'll be good to go. MORE GOBLINS FOR THE GOBLIN HOUSE! (Side note: Huh, I don't know if I ever talked about how we came to call our new house the goblin house . . . I may need to post about that)

This will definitely get a reskin.

The birthday biopsy went well ... other than spending 6 hours in the hospital and, unfortunately, losing my wedding band. That said, It was great to go to the spaghetti factory afterwards and keep the new, old birthday tradition alive with the Uber Wife and two of my sons. 

Oh yeah, also, it appears my pain meds are working so well that I didn't double over in pain after passing a kidney stone a week ago. Go figure, I seriously thought it was just a weird bladder infection, but nope ... it was a gross, little rock buddy that needed to evacuate my body.

Like a mutant chicken nugget sitting inside my body

And finally, you can add burning dry eyes and itchy beard and hairline to the list of side effects from this chemo. Eyedrops and drinking more water will help remedy that though.

Anyway, so far so good. Thanks for reading and keeping me and my family in your thoughts and prayers. With all your help and kindness, you know WE got this!

Happy dueling!

My Musical History Part 5 -- Fountain AVM, Synthwave, and Industrial Re-born

Hey all! I know Blaugust is going on, but I took inventory of everything going on in my life and came to the conclusion that I'm not participating this year. That said, there were a few posts I wanted to share. It's been four years since I posted about my musical history, and I have more to talk about now!

If you've been keeping up with my blog ever since 2021, you'll already be familiar with most of this information. If not, please enjoy these previous Music History posts I made. (Side note: I edited part 4 a bit, because I felt like some of it really belonged more here in Part 5.)

• Part 1 -- The school years
• Part 2 -- The industrial era
• Part 3-- The early dad years
• Part 4 -- Wizard101 and beyond

Music History Part 5 -- Quarantine, Adam Terry, Synthwave, and Industrial Re-born

The world smacked me upside the head, and my music bug was about ready for a rebirth . . . COVID and a quarantined reality solidly hit everyone in 2020. I was staying home and with extra time on my hands. My buddy at work had a group named Bueno Sueno and they had just released a song called Lost in the Shine. I convinced him to send me the stems and flexed my remixing muscles with a mix I called the Tom Purdue Shimmer Mix. 

That remix set off a bug in me, and I started remixing or remaking some deep cut songs that were meaningful to me in one way or another. Before I knew it, I had a whole playlist of remixes and remakes on YouTube:

• Cetu Javu's Fight Without a Reason (Lifestyle Remix)
• Morrissey's Now My Heart is Full (Bunny Love Remix)
• Cabaret Voltaire's Code (Wah Guitar Mix)
• The Cure's Night Like This (Deeper Still Mix)
• Decussion Council's (yes, my old high school band) Don't Stop (Everyone Hang On Mix)
• Tom Purdue's Bit by Bit (2020 Mix)

I wrote about all of them in this blog post from June 2020. As mentioned in that blog post, I formulated a plan to release a lathe print vinyl record with a very small print run . . . 4-5 copies through a company called American Vinyl. When I got the records back, I thought they sounded horrible. I hadn't mixed the songs considering volume levels and how they would actually play on a record player. I threw them in the garbage can in disgust.

My wife, on the other hand, who is much smarter than me, saved them out of the garbage can and instead stashed them in a secret spot that I would only find later when we were moving from Texas back to Utah. (which . . . is a story all unto itself.) Turns out it was mostly the fault of our bad record player at the time. There were a few sub-bass hits on the Don't Stop mix that were just too low and distorted a bit, but that's it. The record sounds great.

Not the white album, it's a Quarantined Mix Record from Tom Purdue!

For real though, the life as a rock star wannabe had become nothing more than a dusty, distant 30-year-old memory up until 2021 when a great guy named Adam Terry contacted me over Instagram holding both my Darkest America and Freeze tapes from back in 1990. "Are you this Purdue?" 

Now THAT's a rare sight you don't see . . . ever!

It's like everything from back then unlocked all over again, and we had a great conversation about the good old days. With Adam's help, the hope of actually releasing some old music of mine on his label, FountainAVM, was now a possibility! He asked to hear more of my stuff and I flooded his Dropbox with hours upon hours of old music I had recorded on tape.

Adam was fantastic! I've never had anyone dump so many hours of their life just dedicated to listening to my music. Honestly, the real help from Adam has been feeling like someone actually cared about me as an artist enough to reach out and help me dust off the old tapes. While there may be a lot of sadness and regret from the past, his simple act of reaching out kind of unplugged so many things that I had bottled up over the years. That alone was appreciated.

From all that, Adam curated two albums of music.  The first was just released last year. As discussed in this post:

"My new "old" album was released today by FOUNTAINavm. This album titled "An Ant Survives A Rainstorm" is a curated collection of music and sound experiments from 1987-1992. 

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/48BCYYiga5NhXQazkiEfFg
• YouTube Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXLA48sh7Gc&list=OLAK5uy_mdH2ddwRDk234I3YRfrAGNFCq4f9BCbLk

Back in the late 80's and early 90's, I was writing hundreds of songs on my old Ensoniq EPS, Peavey DPM, and Kurzweil K2000S keyboard synths. A few years ago, I came in contact with Adam Terry from FOUNTAINavm, and he asked if he could listen to my collection of nine, 60-minute-long old audio tapes I had made of unreleased music from my youth.

Adam selected several songs from the collection, and I poured through my old floppy disks to find these tracks and re-record them for this project . . . MOST of them. A couple songs had been lost to time, and we just made do with the old recordings we had. 

Adam curated an interesting selection that's different from my usual sound. I'm happy with the result. I've enjoyed riding around in my car late at night listening to An Ant Survives A Rainstorm and hope you would too.

Thanks to FOUNTAINavm for releasing this music and thanks for listening!"

While discussing old music with Adam, we also started discussing new music (well new music to me), and he turned me on to the Minimalist Wave Tapes project, so I started listening to it plus some old formative, meaningful music to me from the 70's - 90's like Kraftwerk, Boards of Canada, Yaz, Thompson Twins, and the Psychedelic Furs. After baptizing myself in all this music and having recently remade Bit by Bit for my Quarantined Mixes, I realized I could make a synthwave album of my own.

The end result was Red Pinto Hatchback, released in 2021. I actually made two posts about this one. One about the making of the cover art, and one about the album release itself. As I stated in that post:

". . . So many formative "musical" hours were spent driving around in my old Red Pinto Hatchback in the late 80's, listening to music, that it felt very apropos to immortalize it as my spacecraft in comic book form.

A futuristic blast from my musical past

I paid for the distribution of this album through Distrokid, so you can find it on all kinds of sites now, including YouTube, iTunes, Apple Music, Amazon, Tik Tok, and more. That's right, you can make a Tik Toks using my music. CRAZY!

. . . The reactions I've been getting from friends and family have been pretty fun to watch. One of the first people to contact me was my old musical ally, Sean. He played guitar on both of my Industrial albums and I played drums on a few of his tracks.  I hadn't really heard much from him for years and he hit me up in DMs to let me know how fun it was to hear my music again and that it brought back a lot of great memories.

Even my sister-in-law was doing the good work and being proud of me, sharing the music around to her friends, and I have to say . . . promoting music is the hardest part of the process, and probably the part I tiptoe around the most. I know people get tired of hearing artists hype up their latest works because I also get tired of it when I see it myself. Making the music is challenging and fun but promoting it and not being annoying at the same time is a delicate balance that I'm trying to swing."

After a couple years, my music interests had successfully reignited, and I was trying my hand at collaborating and failing at it a bit, save for one special collaboration. Talks with Adam about making Beat Tapes on old school audio tape gave me a great idea for making a collection of songs. As stated in my post about about Rotted Leisure Rooms:

"Over the past year and a half I started amassing a small collection of grooves that needed a wider audience than myself. I had three songs that came out of creative suggestions from my oldest child. Two more that spawned from discussions with old friends. Another that came from chatting with an old underground musical idol of mine from when I was in high school. And a handful of others that were just collecting digital dust. Out of all this comes my latest release titled "Rotted Leisure Rooms."  

Rotted Leisure Rooms is available online for you to listen to and download, but I also went old school and made a handful of audio tapes on beautiful, dungeon-brown-colored cassette. Truly, if you have a Walkman, I'd love to get my music in there for you to enjoy on your new walk down old memory lane.

No school like the old school

I have to talk a bit about the title track to Rotted Leisure Rooms. It's a gritty industrial piece that features the synth work of David Kane. Back in 1988 I was watching 120 minutes on MTV when a song called Baby Doe Rules by David Kane's Decay of the Western Civilization came on, and I recorded it on VHS tape. I asked every record shop I could find in Utah if they had it so I could listen to more, and no one knew what I was talking about. 

Eventually I transferred the song off of VHS tape to audio tape so I could listen to it in my car. It was a rare track that no one knew. I think they played Baby Doe Rules only a handful of times late at night on MTV, but there was something about the raw sampled, industrial goodness of this track that in a way gave me permission to do the same. It was truly an inspirational track for me.

Just a year and a half ago, I found David Kane's website while remembering how influential this song was to me, and I reached out to tell him how much I enjoyed it. We traded several e-mails back and forth and somehow I convinced him to collaborate with me on this track. I've enjoyed our chats and getting to know him better. Truly the best thing to come out of me making this music has already happened, and that was getting to collab with David."

So . . . that catches us up to August 2025 and there's been a lot holding me back once again: Losing my job, moving back to Utah, learning a new career, and being diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer. I have lots of ideas for music, but haven't pursued them. I'm stuck once again.

I'll snap out of it soon though. Adam Terry has been chatting me up again about releasing another collection of music -- he's just been busy running a local record shop in Salt Lake and pouring his whole life into it.  If you're in Salt Lake, go checkout Fountain Records. It's a great shop. Support local folks like Adam and his wife, who are both simply awesome. It's a cool scene in there for sure.

Here's to the future!

Thanks for reading along with my musical history. There's still a lot of blanks here and things I missed, but I'd need to pen an actual autobiography instead of 5 blog posts to really get it all down. 

Happy Dueling!

First Chemo -- I got this!

It's been a few weeks since my last update, so how am I doing?

First up, I've now had my first chemo infusion, which happened on Friday, 18 July -- the first couple days were a breeze, especially since I had steroids helping me feel good.  After that, things started to decline. Sunday started the fatigue and then Monday and Tuesday were about rock bottom. By Wednesday, it felt like I was starting to bounce back, but I was still a bit fatigued. Thursday, I felt more like myself. 

Let's do this!

This week, I feel fine, I'm just in what they call the nadir period. That means my white blood cell count is low and I'm prone to getting sick. Luckily, I've only had to go to my physical work location a couple of times as they were cool enough to let me work from home.  I'm playing it safe and thankfully all of my family members seem to be healthy.

The chemo process itself is pretty wild. You go in and they verify your identity with every chemical that enters your body. Something else I didn't know, they mix your flavor of poison (that would be carboplatin and pemetrexed for me) up fresh right there in the pharmacy. Because of that, there's some waiting around to be done.

Bring it, Chemo!

I had a couple cool nurses though. Both were named Charly. Well, one was named Charlee (Charl E squared) and Charly. Of course, when I left a review for them, I called them my Charly's Angels. OF COURSE I DID. Charl E squared spent a lot of time just listening to me ramble about my story, which I appreciated. She was busy, but she took time to hang with me. She was actually shocked that I didn't have any other signs like shortness of breath before I had back pain. (I felt validated in the weirdness of the whole situation.)

Speaking of back pain, the worst part was an increase in shoulder pain that first week after chemo. I asked the doctor about it, and it may just be that the pain will get worse before it gets better as cells die off and sluff into the fluid around my lungs.  It's a theory we're running with. 

For that first week, there was also a weird taste in my mouth (very metallic or gluey) that kind of messed with the taste of food. Some sweet stuff tasted bitter, and my favorite taco time soft flour tacos tasted bland and gluey. I really couldn't stomach the hot sauce either. 

Besides that, I don't know, that first week was just like living through a little dismal, down-swing period. I remember thinking that I felt a bit like a zombie from the walking dead, just kind of disassociating between reality and craving human flesh, ok no craving human flesh . . . yet. My eyesight also seemed to be a little off, which was an odd side effect I wasn't expecting? 

This second week, though, everything seems back to normal -- like I said earlier, I just need to play it safe.

My home office buddy

From what I understand, the first infusion isn't horrible, but perhaps they get worse as you go on? I guess I'll have to wait and see? They happen every three weeks, so another one is quickly approaching.

Oh yeah . . . also (sigh), unfortunately biopsy two didn't yield any results. They found cancer sure enough, but they didn't get enough of it to get any genetic markers. Because of that they'll be knocking me out YET AGAIN. This time on . . . you guessed it . . . my birthday! It's a happy birthday third biopsy on August 4th y'all! This time they'll be going in through the back to try and get a better shot at one of the masses.

My best George Costanza Model Pose at my 2nd Biopsy

On the positive side, I appreciate that they're being very cautious about not puncturing my lungs, and I really hope that the birthday present I get from the Huntsman Institute is a genetic marker with a good immunotherapy -- all gift wrapped with some Keytruda and ready to go.

Thank you so much to those who have reached out in one way or another. I love you guys! I really appreciate the show of support and the very kind words and gifts. It's humbling to know so many have been doing what they can in the best ways they know how. Truly. Thank you. 

Time for the real boss fight: Lung Cancer

You might have noticed I've been a bit distant lately. I've talked a bit about my wonderful distractions like Hogwarts Legacy and Dune, but really, they are just distractions from what's really going on with me. Unfortunately, it's because I have an actual health issue that's hard for me to talk about. I've been putting it off because who wants to talk about cancer?! Ugh. Is there any good time to talk about cancer? probably not. Here we go.

About 4-5 months ago, I started having some pretty strong shoulder and back pain. At the time I thought I had done something to my shoulder while going axe throwing with my church group. What followed was a month of going to the chiropractor to no avail. After a couple trips to the regular doctor and two x-rays later, my doctor recommended I get a CT scan since I had some fluid on my lungs and things looked "worse."

After the CT scan review, the doctor let me know I had about five masses in my left lung, and one of them looked cancerous. We scheduled a PET scan and sure enough, my left lung lit up like a Christmas tree.

Next up typically would be a biopsy, but I managed to fast track a fluid drain from my lungs at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake, which verified, yes, this is non-small cell Adenocarcinoma in my lungs. Between that fluid analysis and my PET Scan, my oncology team let me know I've been classified with Stage 4 Lung Cancer. 

No one knows how I got it. Yes, I smoked for a few years back in my early 20's, but it's been so long ago (30 years) that the doctors say it can't be blamed on that. I loved what the doctor said it *could* be blamed on, however: "cosmic radiation and bad luck." That's gotta be the name of my next album. (One of the tracks will have to be an experimental noise track featuring ocean waves mixed with the sound of an MRI since that's what I chose to listen to while they were scanning my brain.)

Brain MRI to fear? Worry not, underdog is here!

As for how long I've had cancer . . . I asked one of the specialists, and she guessed, "six months? a year? hard to say." One thing I remember is back when I had a kidney stone a year and a half ago, the radiologist in the emergency room said they noticed some scarring on my lungs. And that was it. Not, "YO, go get that checked out!" Not, "Hey! This could be cancer!" Nothing. There's really no screening for a thing like this unless you're "at risk," which I wouldn't have been. It's a mystery.

Anyway, the Stage 4 diagnosis has been difficult to process and definitely life altering. Surgery is out as far as options go, it's too deep into the lymph nodes and lining of my lung. Average life expectancy is five years with this cancer (some get less, some get more). You can see something different in my face since the news. I almost immediately lost 15-20 pounds (probably due to stress).

The worst part of this so far has been the pleurisy-like pain. I can no longer put my head on a pillow or lay on my side. Instead, I have to just lay flat on my back and take a bunch of pain meds to get to sleep. If I sneeze, it feels like I've torn a back muscle. I guess the next worse part has simply been considering my mortality and what will happen with my wife and kids if I die. I figured I had 20 more years of work in me and some golden years with my wife. 

Always playing the support role!

I am hopeful, of course! That could still happen! We're still trying to see if there are any genetic markers with my lung cancer that there are known therapies for. A genetic marker like ALK would mean I would have a pill available to me that could extend my life by years. YEARS! I also believe in miracles. I saw so many in just getting me from Texas back to Utah. I can't deny my faith. I also have other success stories I can look to. It's been my pleasure to trade texts with a local stage 4 colon cancer survivor that was on the brink of death and came back for the win. 

All of that has led me to today . . . besides what was mentioned above, I've now had two biopsies (since the first didn't yield results). Yesterday I started chemotherapy. On the upside, the brain MRI was clean, so it hasn't spread there. The Second CT scan showed it hasn't grown much in the past couple months. So, here goes nothing! I'm going to fight it with all I've got because even though I shouldn't expect a cure with Stage 4 cancer of any kind, it's not unheard of to fight cancer and win . . . at least temporarily. They're making advances all the time. (and as many of my friends have told me, there are holistic medicine choices to consider). It's just . . . a lot. Especially right now since it's new. 

Sending a message to my cancer.

I know some will see this post and think, how can I help? I'm not sure yet, and I'm not accustomed to asking for help. For now, just being there, cheering me on, and letting me know you're in my corner is enough. In the future, I may actually need some help, but for now I'm still working and doing my thing, just with this newly added, cancerous wrinkle.

TFN, Amber Deathsong, Kyle Skystaff, and the diapermancer.

Thankfully I have a very supportive and loving family. The kids have been so loving and incredibly supportive. The Uber Wife has been amazing and by my side the whole way. We've had sleepless nights. We've had long talks. She's held me close when I was close to losing it. She's amazing, She's my everything. I don't know what I'd do without her.

I'm incredibly thankful for my family and friends who have been there for me through all my text messages and phone calls. Thank you for your prayers and thoughts. Thank you for the visits and all the offers of help. I really do appreciate it. I'm humbled by your generosity.

Cancer sucks. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. It would be great to add Stage 4 Cancer Survivor to my list of accomplishments.

Happy Dueling!

Cowabunga, it's spicing time!

It's been a few weeks, and I've been playing a lot (for me at least) of Dune Awakening. The dynamic duo of TreeTrunks McSkinny and Skip Legday just completed the Fourth Trial and have been busy building our skills, filling out our bases, completing contracts (quests), and making new stuff to drive around the desert in.

Skip and I are ready to tackle some mining expeditions!

We've landed on a combat style that includes me running up and going ham on enemies getting agro while Mr. Legday snipes them all from a distance. That means I've augmented my Mentat abilities with a little swordsman to boot. It's not a bad combo so far.

Dead bodies everywhere and the friendly necromancer go hand in hand.

I like to think of us as the bad boys of the private server with our despicable Harkonnen ways. I believe everyone else chose to go with House Arrakis. NOT US! TreeTrunks and Skip always do things the hard way, which probably means we'll miss out on some server-wide bonuses at some point.  Meh.

In this survival game, however, the one thing you can be sure of is death -- it's always around the next corner. Whether it's being swallowed by a sand worm, killed by a mob of slavers, or just drying up in the sun -- death is ever present. Luckily, you have the power of respawn! In a lot of ways, Dune Awakening is much like ye' olde EverQuest in that if you die somewhere, you have to go back to the spot and collect your items you lost.  It's not quite as punishing, though, because at least you don't have to run back naked and afraid.  You at least keep your equipped gear on.

Stupid CHOAM Heavy and his stupid Heavy Darts . . .

What I think I enjoy most about this game are the small details. Occasionally, large zone-wide sandstorms will kick up and damage anyone who isn't sheltered. The other day I was hiding in a little nook of a stone wall to shelter from a storm and turned the camera to look behind me. You could see sand particles sweeping across the rock plateau. What a cool touch! Little, beautiful touches like this are everywhere.

The combat is surprisingly fun when you have a mix of gunplay and melee. Trying to make a slow dagger strike through armor is so satisfying. In addition, it all just makes sense within the context of the movies (I'd say books, but I haven't read them).

Overall, I've just really enjoyed my experience in Dune Awakening so far. Up next for me is probably relocating my base closer to a station and pressing on into the fifth spice dream vision.

As the Ninja Turtles would say, "Cowabunga, it's spicing time!"

Happy Dueling!

Tree Trunks McSkinny and Skip Legday in Dune Awakening

Dune Awakening launched back during the first week of June, and it's the new hot thing right now. We all had our fun in Valheim -- it was great. We all vamped it up in V Rising, but now we're going full on Muad'Dib and filling ourselves with spice dreams. 

I hear what you're saying . . .

Dylan and I are there for it, and our characters are the ultimate duo: Tree Trunks McSkinny and Skip Legday. Basically, Dylan put the slider all the way skinny on his legs, and I put the slider all the way skinny on my arms.  We balance each other out like that. 

Tree Trunks and Skip on top of the world

It isn't quite as extreme as it was in Ark where you could make your characters look absolutely crazy, and once you throw on your gear, it hides all the body stuff anyway.

Once we managed to sync up on the right server and start playing together, life was great! We were building stuff and off'ing the desert bandits.  

Dead Bandits, a great source of blood water and scrap

Water conservation, bandages, knives, and dart guns! What more do you need in this world! Come to find out, you need a lot . . . and there's always more to craft . . . .

Hide from the evil eyes!

Last night we made it past our first trial, but we've been invited to a private server now where we won't have to deal with gatekeeping guilds and PvP nonsense.  So now . . . WE DO IT ALL AGAIN!

Happy Dueling!

Dobble Dungeon is Adorables!

Somehow, I stumbled upon this super cute game demo called Dobble Dungeon this morning on Steam, quickly downloaded it, and then added it to my wishlist. I can't remember if they were featuring it, or it just happened to show up in my recommended games.

You got it, clay explorer!

Dobble dungeon is a pretty basic turn-based RPG, but it's absolutely oozing with that claymation charm. In addition it's also a dice game where each character in your party rolls the dice and expends them on extra movement, attack, or buffs.

Have to take out the tent so it'll stop spawning bad guys!

Some abilities rely on certain dice rolls to activate them, such as the fireball ability from Amber the Pyromancer. At first, you'll need to roll two dice that have the same number to cast it, but eventually you can upgrade the ability so doubles aren't needed.

She's a devilishly cute caster of fiery death!

The upgrading system seems very similar to what you'd see in Diablo IV so far.  Basically, your party gets skill-ups, and you spend them on your characters to advance their skills.  This also means you could really heavily upgrade one character over another from what I can tell. Might be fun to do a run in the demo where you only invest in one character!

So noble! So clay-like!

This all feels and looks like an indie darling game that pays homage to Fire Emblem in the best of ways while doubling down on the cute charm of claymation.  It's the kind of stuff that I might throw money at, so I'll be keeping an eye on my wishlist. To be fair, the game feels like it's going to need just a bit extra to keep me hooked, but the free demo seemed worth my time.

If you get a chance to download and play it, let me know your thoughts!  Looks pretty fun.

Happy Dueling!

Did I just beat Hogwarts Legacy? I think I did?

 So, readers of the Friendly Necromancer, I beat this game, but apparently I didn't really beat this game?

You did it . . . but wait . . . there's more!

The final couple of fights were pretty fun! I think I failed each fight maybe once before beating it on the second go around. That's some pretty great balance, and my hat's off to the designers! I couldn't have been happier with the challenge level and boss mechanics.

IT BURNS!

I have to say that my time so far in Hogwart's Legacy has been charming and fun. It scratched all the right itches: a little exploration itch, a little storyline itch, a little combat itch, a little collecting itch, a little decorating itch, a little gardening itch, and a lot of questing itches. It's everything you'd expect from an AAA itch and scratch experience!

smash spacebar NOW!

I guess my only complaint is that they waited so long to give me this amazing graphorn mount! I was only a couple quests away from beating the game when finally they gave me this gigantic mind-flayer-dinosaur-thing to rampage the countryside with.

I know I just cast Crucio on you and almost burned you to death, but . . . friends?!

Apparently, all that's left for me to do now is prepare for my O.W.L.s, which means I need to finish out my entire field guide, and I don't know how fun that actually is. I've only filled out 39% of it so far, so it'll be a lot of running around casting REVELIO! everywhere trying to find the magic hidden quill and paper in front of interesting locations.

As a bonus, you get cool fashions for collecting all those pages!

I am glad I had the time to play this game and write a little bit about it. Thank you so much for reading along with my Hogwarts Legacy series. I had a great time with it.

Happy Dueling!

Baggage-Claimed Beasts and Haunted Shops in Hogwarts Legacy

Hogwarts Legacy continues to be my go-to game lately.  Since the last time I posted, I've grown several levels and completed a ton of content, including a lot of surprising amount of side content that could be completely skippable, which is amazing to me.

I mean, yes, the mainline quest is full of great moments as you complete challenges from your four ancient magic predecessors. I was completely awe-struck by the Aha-Take-On-Me-Storybook-Art-Filter during the challenge to find the dead body of an old headmaster inside a book.

Seeing the world in sketchy black and white was such a treat and completely unexpected. 

Anyway, at this point I'm 37 hours in and my main quest is titled "Prepare for your search for the final keeper." So, I might be close to mid-end game?  I'm almost level 26, and I know level 40 is the game's level cap, so I'm not there yet, but getting there.

As far as the "building your wizard skills" metagame goes, I've been focusing a lot on bagging beasts and taking them back to my player housing.  At some point, Deek, my house-elf friend, asked me if I could take pity on some beasts since I'd been learning a bit of beast care in school. This led to me getting my own magic handbag for nabbing and taming animals and also a special room or three in my player housing to keep them stored and happy.

Great for nabbing beasts, not so great as a fashion accessory.

There's a nice loop for capturing beasts where you feed them and groom them, and then they offer up a crafting reagent that you can use for improving your gear.  So far I've caught unicorns, griffons, giant toads, little random fur babies that I don't know what they're called, a couple birds, and even the mythical thestral!

gotta catch 'em all! Hogwartsmon!

Kind of bummed though because it appears you have to buy the DLC to actually ride a thestral. Ahh well. I'm currently on a quest to capture a phoenix. OH!  I almost failed to mention that as a part of these beast quests you actually give a dragon back her dragon egg that was poached from a dragon fighting arena.  You can't make this stuff up!

I'm shocked we weren't swallowed first tbh.

It is surprising how much this game really feels like solo playing an MMO. I've got player housing, mounts, levels, quests, and I've even got my own bazaar-style shop now in Hogsmeade, which I chose to be called Vesters &  Venum. Sounded pretty good for a Slytherin shop.

Surprisingly, we don't sell Venum.

That one actually surprised me. I couldn't believe the attention to detail with this easy-to-miss sidequest in Hogsmeade. I was wandering around Hogsmeade when suddenly I saw a female house elf standing outside a run-down shop. She directed me to a questionable witch who gave me the shop. I then went about cleaning up the shop until I found a trunk. 

After opening the trunk, I found a ladder leading down into the most diabolical haunted maze filled with evil mannequins and mind-bending maze pathways.

Wigging out over the specter

As it turns out, the place is haunted by a specter that just LOVES to play games with people . . . the types of games that kill people that is. After besting him and his giant junk monster, you head back up and give some clothing to your house elf and free her. THAT'S RIGHT!! YOU GET TO FREE AN ELF!  But, really, all she wants to do is be your shopkeeper. Thus, Vespers and Venum was born!

Wish granted!

So there you have it. I'm still playing Hogwarts Legacy and having a really great time doing so. Now, can someone please come up with a Wizard101 mod for the game? Thanks.

Me and the witches playing a Wizard101 card game in Hogwarts.

Happy Dueling!

Racing in / Quidditch out -- Flying High in Hogwarts Legacy

I've been playing more Hogwarts Legacy, and I'm actually having a really good time. Last time I posted, I had a couple of comments about flying and Quidditch, so I kind of focused in on that feature of the game the past few play sessions.  As it turns out,. . . Hey! I'm not terrible at flying in this game! . . . And in a way it all reminds me a bit of all my time spent flying around in DC Universe Online.

Mastering the Basics of Broom Flying

In fact, in my small circle of friends, I used to be the go-to guy to help people earn their racing skill points in DCUO. Because of that background experience, I hereby declare that the mouse and keyboard controls for flying around in Hogwarts Legacy ain't too horrible . . . for me at least. *ducks behind podium* Did someone throw something at me? Anyway, yeah, I could see how this would be easier with a controller for sure.

First adhere your glasses to your face with sticky magic

The racing courses in this game are exactly what you'd expect: a timed trial where you ride your broom through rings in the sky, where you can grab power-up bubbles to make you go faster. It appears as if at the end of the course, you'll have either made the leaderboards or not at all.  I came in second both times on my first attempt.

Down the river and through the rings to grandmother's house we go

Between visiting racing courses, you'll also be doing quests for your professor to pop-the-ballon that have been placed around the map for you at various locations. Now, I don't know whose job it is to fill these balloons with helium and confetti and place them perfectly in the sky, but if it's a poor house elf, then I feel really bad.  (It's probably just conjuring magic though . . .) 

Playing pop-the-balloon after midnight

During the midst of it all, I did go buy my own broom, however.  I opted for the most expensive broom I could buy and bankrupted myself for a bit, but the purple lightning coming out of it was pretty sweet.  The proprietor, one Albie Weekes, even gave me some side quests to open up a special speed boost I could buy.  From what I can tell, there are two more boosts I could open up.

. . . and worth every gold piece! 

I asked my friend at work who plays the game (and to be honest, was the tipping point for me purchasing the game) if there was any actual Quidditch I could play eventually . . . and the answer was no.  Well great.  She did drop a pretty tasty rumor, though, and said (and I quote) "There are rumors that the game people are making a separate game just for Quidditch, but idk."  I'll take it!

Sorry Quidditch, you've been cancelled

She also noted that I really needed to work up my animal taming skills because I could end up riding a hippogriff or a thestral instead of a broom if I played my cards right. I don't know though . . . I don't have to brush and feed my broom . . . it just works. A thestral would be pretty cool to ride as a Slytherin, just sayin.

Happy Dueling!