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!