The Music of Mewgenics -- "Chasin' the Rats!"

Part of the fun for me of playing Mewgenics is that my middle child (longtime readers of the blog will know him as Kyle Skystaff), has been playing as well.  We've been sending Discord messages back and forth to each other on the daily just talking about our current status in the game, which classes we've unlocked, and just general thoughts on how our current runs are going. I think Kyle might be a bit more invested in the game than I am . . . that said, we're pretty close to being around the same point in the game with each other.  

Preaching the good word to the Throbbing King

One thing he mentioned to me the other day is how he had tier-ranked his favorite songs he'd unlocked in the game so far. It made me realize I had neglected to mention how cool the Mewgenics music is! Ridiculon (Binding of Isaac fame) put together a soundtrack that is really well done and has some of the catchiest lyrics I've heard in a game. Definitely worthy of a mention.

In fact, the whole family has been singing Eatin' Rats for the past month or so. You can check out a couple dozen of the tracks over on Spotify. But if you REALLY want to get into it, there's a collection of 82 tracks for sale for 10 bucks on Steam.

Cool cats making cool music!

Below is Kyle's tier ranking of the music (he said he couldn't rank any of the songs below a C-tier hehe):

S-Tier

• The Alley (Eatin' Rats): S
• The Bunker (Alone in the Dark): S
• The Crater (Feline Invader): S
• The Moon (So High): S
• The Lab (Endless Misery): S

A-Tier

• The Sewers (Flush): A
• The Junkyard (Chumbucket Kitty): A
• The Caves (Crystalline Dreams): A
• The Core (Down With The Devil): A

B-Tier

•  The Path (Kat Fight): B
• The Boneyard (Them Kitty Bones): B

C-Tier

• The Desert (Lonesome Road): C

If you've been playing and love the music, drop us a line!  You're in good company here.

Happy Dueling!

Infusion Illusion Profusion Confusion -- Real Life Update 10/15/25

Hey Team Tom!

It's been a few weeks, so it's time for another update.

~~

Uno: My CT scan from last week showed continued improvement -- more tumor shrinkage and less inflammation! I've actually managed to go off of hydrocodone. I can finally sleep on my side again. It's so nice. You don't know the value of your favorite sleeping position until you've lost it.

When last we left me, I had rounded out four carboplatin and pemetrexed chemo infusions, and apparently . . . that's it for me. I asked the doctor for more chemo and he said no. The most infusions they'll ever run is six, and the survival stats past four aren't good? It's confusing, but I trust the oncologist. Now I'm simply running immunotherapy every three weeks.

That all said, man, it was so nice not to be poisoned this past Friday. This chemo does some really wild stuff to me mentally. After the fourth dose, I wrote this note down when I was in the throes of it, "There's a weird side effect to this chemo -- it's like having a quasi-hallucination, but more like a kind of a vivid, strange imagination. Just now I was able to clearly picture a girl with fiercely intense blue eyes that looked almost bird like. It's like a vividness to my dreams while I'm awake (or half awake). There's a tingle to the world as you sit here slowly dying. Shutting down. Not caring. Hard to explain. Listlessness. That's what this chemo does to you."

Now that I'm on immunotherapy only, it feels super easy in comparison. Sure, I was a little tired right afterwards, and my arms and scalp are dry and itchy, but that's nothing in comparison to how dark life got on days three-through-six after a carboplatin and pemetrexed infusion.

Apparently if my next CT scan shows even MORE improvement, then they might even consider moving me to a "stable disease" status, which is where they would cut down the amount of office visits and scans. I have to say that feels very weird, and I'm not sure I like it. While the doctor would be happy with "stable," I want "cured." I guess when you have Stage 4 cancer, you get what you get and just be happy you're not dead, dummy.

I'm hoping I'm lucky and immunotherapy doesn't turn on me, and it does the trick. As ChatGPT put it to me, chemo was running a bulldozer through my body, and now immunotherapy is like putting the guard dogs out to attack cancer.

Everyone please keep sending those vibes my way. I don't care if they're prayers, meditations, or even spoken to the universe in your goofiest Count Chocula voice. You send it -- I'll take it. I VaNt YoU tO vE cUrEd, ViStEr PURDOOOO.

Me and Kyle hanging out with Nanamancer

Dos: As you are well aware, the government has shut down. I am a contractor for the Air Force along with a good chunk of our crew at the company I work for. Unfortunately, that means I am furloughed without pay or even the promise of back pay. Government contractors get the worst of deals when this stuff happens.

Currently I'm burning my own PTO (and someone's generous gift of PTO hours -- THANK YOU) to get me through the past two weeks. It's a forced vacation. The biggest problem with that is that I'm a stupid cancer patient as well. If a CT scan comes up on a random day of the week when we all go back to work, I can't just, uh, not go because I don't have the PTO hours.

By the end of this all, things will be tight for a bit unless I can get some more gifted PTO. The people I work with are amazing, so my chances are pretty good! I also hear unemployment pay is an option if I run out of PTO, and thankfully I have family to fall back onto if it gets really rough.

FIGURE IT OUT, GOVERNMENT PEOPLE!

~~

Tres: I've been writing some music here and there on my forced vacation. I actually wrote the title track for Cosmic Radiation and Bad Luck. It's sounding great! A little weird, but that's my style anyway. It's like Muse meets Arctic Monkeys meets Dave Matthew's Band meets my style? I don't know. It's my cancer story in a nutshell though.

. . . also worked on some weird, experimental sound stuff that mixes an MRI with the sounds of the ocean since that's what I chose to listen to while I had my brain scan.

. . .also worked on an acoustic cover of an old song of mine from 1993 with my music therapist. She's pretty cool. I like what she did with the song structure to change it from my xylophone and muted distant trumpets thing to a folksy blues song.

. . . also playing a lot of Dune Awakening with Dylan. My friend Dylan is great by the way. He took me to lunch the other day, and I took him to see Tron Ares -- fun show! I liked it!

FREE MAZE! I'll have to do a blog post about that

Quatro: I've been living the single dad life over here with the Uber Wife training in Vegas . . . only Nana is here as well. So what would that be like? Single dad life but I also get to live with my mother-in-law at the same time? There's a sitcom in there somewhere. Nana has cleaned our kitchen, our fridge, our sink, our dishes, our kitchen floors, and done a bunch of other busy work . . . um, the laundry. If you're one of her friends from around here, she'd probably love to hear from you. I imagine hanging out with old friends would be WAY more fun than cleaning our house. She's great though! Happy to be here.

Uber Wife has been having a lot of fun in Vegas on the weekends! She's been sending along fantastic pictures. We'll get out there together one of these days soon. (So jealous she's been to the Sphere and to Omega Mart -- glad she got to have some fun over her birthday.)

We're Meow Wolf fans around here.

Diapermancer (now 16) is still rocking the mellophone in marching band. They've got a pretty cool show this year, and he's doing a great job. I'm proud of that dude. The whole band has put in a crazy number of hours practicing this year.

Amber Deathsong is consumed with work and school. They miss their spouse horribly.

Kyle Skystaff twisted his ankle and hasn't been working much. He's on the mend though. I'm sure he'll be working again soon.

So, there you have it. I'm on forced vacation from Government Shutdown. I'm no longer chemo poisoned. CT scans are doing pretty good. I'm writing some music and doing my thing. Everybody is busy with real life but me and Kyle!

Thanks for reading and keep being awesome, Team Tom!

Happy Dueling!

Gaming with the . . . kids these days!

As some of you might know, I have three kids. On this blog I've referred to them by three names:

- Amber DeathSong (now 17 years old)

- Kyle SkyStaff (now 14 years old)

- Diapermancer (now 9 years old)

We might as well keep those names going, and it's been a while since I've talked about this amazing trio, so I snapped a few pictures yesterday as they were playing games and thought I'd talk for a bit about what they've been playing lately.

Amber DeathSong

It's all about the SPLATOON! Lately she's been playing Splatoon 2 (Octo Expansion) on the Switch.

There isn't a day that goes by lately where she doesn't comment to me about how much she loves playing Splatoon and listening to the Splatoon soundtrack. I'm all about that awesomeness.

Outside of Splatoon, she's also knee deep in a D&D campaign, a Starfinder campaign, and I don't even know how many GURPS games she's embroiled in currently, but I hear tales of her roleplaying a character named "Gef Dalby," a paranoid mongoose who's "really good at computers." Her gaming group is made up of artists like her, so they draw each other's characters, like this!

Kyle SkyStaff

Kyle has been playing a metric ton of Katamari Forever lately. I'm not sure why, but it's back in a big way. I was digging for a trailer for the game and found one, but you have to see this other (but related) trailer's intro for "Touch My Katamari" for the PS Vita.

Amazing. No other words can describe that.

This ball of goop has been rolling around on our TV for days!

Diapermancer

So . . . Diapermancer really only has one game of choice, and that's Roblox. This kid is a die hard Roblox player -- he's played it for . . . as long as I can remember . . . and I understand why. The variety of experiences and games you can find on Roblox is pretty intense, plus it's online, and as we all know here on The Friendly Necromancer, multiplayer online experiences is where it's at! He's a kid after his own father's heart.

Can you believe he's grown so much? And to think this kid's birth was announced on the Wizard101 launcher back on the day.  Wild.

He's invited me to play Roblox with him a few times, and I always have fun playing with him. Cops and Robbers is good one we've played together. 

~~

Anyway, these three have always had interesting game choices (outside of Roblox). Honestly though, I'm just waiting for the time that Paper Mario 1000-Year Door comes back into all of our lives. :) You know it will! It always does!

Happy Dueling

Bailey, Thomas, Kyle, and Iridian finish Zafaria

I was actually going to bring this up on the last Check This Out post, but I forgot to mention it. WHOOPS!

Yup, mark four transcended wizards down for Team Friendly as we finished up Zafaria last Sunday.


There we all are sitting in front of the weird box thingy at the end of Zafaria. Wierd box thingy is awesome.

It took us a while to make our way through the world, simply because Bailey and I wanted to experience Zafaria together. Coordinating our schedules while juggling the three kids and their needs and own wishes to play on the computer can be a tricky thing, but we were lucky enough to get some nice stretches of game time over a few weekends, and the rest is history.

Here's the obligatory Morganthe screenshot. :)


Here's the other obligatory screenshot of team friendly in elephant illusion. :) :)


There were a lot of great moments in Zafaria (like visiting the zoo), but more than that, it was fun chatting with our friends lists while playing through Zafaria and spending some time playing together. That was fun, and thank you all for making it an easy ride for us with all the support.

Next up for us would probably be taking another team through . . . I'll let you know when we plan it all out. It'd be great to play my ice wizard again, and I think Bailey has a Myth wizard burning in her pocket. The lure of the basilisk is strong. :)

In the meantime, Thomas is busy crafting his Spiritcaller Drums. Just one more Conga Drum and a few black pearls, and I'm ready to finish that crafting quest up!

Happy Dueling

Legendary Lionbloods

There we go! The family collectively now has one legendary wizard for each class.



Pictured from Left to Right: Myrna (Ice), Kyle (Storm), Amber (Life), Thomas (Death), Bailey (Fire), Iridian (Balance), and Rowan (Myth). All Level 60.

Thanks for all your help and support.

:-)

Happy Dueling

Amber and Kyle Get their Level 58 Spells!

Well, yesterday wasn't all bad. Yeah, I spent most of the day sleeping after going to the doctor and getting a prescription for this head cold. It's nasty. This was me yesterday:


But, something to turn my frown upside down was that uber wife had plans to finish off Amber's level 58 spell quest. After switching out a deck with some converts and a dracon polymorph or two in it and after escaping out a couple times until she was going first in the battle (simple genius there, right?), she finally was undergoing her fight with Gristletusk, a 13k hitpoint life boss.

Note that previously we had completed this fight with a group because it *was* the only level 58 spell quest that could be done with a group. That all seems to have changed now as we couldn't port the other Boom Kids (Kyle and Myrna) to help Amber out.

After a few rounds of fire attacks and a prismed Centaur spell, Gristletusk fell in defeat.


WOOT amber!

After that it was just a quick run over to Mooshu and Amber was soon hanging out with her own personally wookie.


GRRGRRGRROOOWWWMWMWMWMWMMMFFF!

Late last night I finally woke up and muddled around the house, but Uber wife pretty much demanded that I give Kyle's spell quest a go, so I did.

Kyle was up against Khai Tengri, a 7k fire boss with a 2k life minion. Easy, right? Dang, took me three tries! I should have used more strategy with my deck the first time through, but my I care button was broken due to being sick.


What finally won it for me was a series of storm minions until I could take out the life minion and then a Triton followed by a charged up Tempest. Here's a video of the last half and kyle getting his Leviathan spell.



WTG Boom Kids! All that's left is for Myrna to eek out another half a level and finish that level 58 spell quest. POWA!

Happy Dueling!

BOOM KIDS in Stormriven

That's right the trio of boom is now hanging out in Stormriven. Check 'em out here with Leland, gettin' their quest on.


(Totally the cover of their first CD release.)

They're all 55+ now and headed toward Legendary at a good pace. These silly Celestians don't stand a chance against the boom kids.


(Totally the remix cover of their first CD release.)

And to ensure the boom kids live up to their name, Uber wife crafted all their crit gear post haste!

BOOM!

KIDS!

Sing us out Spongebob!



Happy Dueling!

Insect Tablet and Status on Amber and Kyle

Heya Super Friends,

So Thomas got his Insect Tablet!


. . . not by farming mind you, although the extra 30-40k worth of loot from trying was nice. No, Destiny Mistshard played benefactor for me and had me snipe one from her reserves. THANK YOU MOTHER MISTSHARD!

Now my Prickly Bear Cactus should zoom with three likes (and hopefully four likes if one of those will get a pixie--all the others went elder).


~~~~~~~~~~

So we've been getting a number of questions about the status of Amber and Kyle's characters in Celestia. Sigh, see, as a gaming parent you want to give your kids ample opportunity to level their characters on their own if they want to, and we have, but they just seem far too caught up in other stuff right now to want to level their characters.

Amber was kind of like, yeah . . . just go ahead and level mine for me *skips away*

It seems like Kyle kind of doesn't even consider Kyle his main character anymore. If he plays Wizard101 he'd rather just level Sean Ogrehead, his ice character. It's still his character though.

On the other hand, we've got a healer and a storm character right there just waiting to be leveled. ;)

So Bailey and I are going to be leveling Kyle and Amber for a bit and then once again, turning the keys to the car back over to the REAL Kyle and Amber when they're leveled. (And then borrowing them whenever we need DPS or heals hehe!)


Long story short . . . Amber and Kyle (and Myrna too) are currently hanging out in The Grotto. Expect to hear more about those characters leveling up to Legendary in the near future.

Happy Dueling!

Princess Ben, FATEZILLA!

There's another hybrid pet in the Friendly Necromancer Family! It's Princess Ben the fatezilla!


So awesome looking. Uber Wife had Kyle's stormzilla combine with Destiny Mistshard's Hydra and bing bang boom, hybrid! (Both Kyle and Destiny got hybrids from what I understand . . . gratz, Destiny!)


Since Kyle doesn't really have a use for "yet another" hybrid, we put that in the bank.


And now it's property of one Rowan Ravenshard!


I can't wait to see Princess Ben in action! WOOT!

Happy Dueling!

Giant Cats attack!

There is a rumor that if you unlock both the Cat Herder and Blood of the Giants badges that you will open a doorway in Marleybone's Reagent Square where you are attacked by a giant kitten boss.

So I decided this morning to unlock this mystery.

I found the best spot for farming giants was right here:



This spot is great. With the Thomas and Kyle combo, I can line 'em up and knock 'em down in one or two rounds, three at a time.



My blood of the giants badge was earned EASILY this morning.


They just made me hungry for more.



Cats were next:


Knight's court near the entrance was perfect for farming these guys, and yes . . . once again, they fell before the mighty thomas and kyle combo:


Badge earned!

All that was left was to go herd up this Blood of the Giants Cat . . . /gulp


And I was never heard of ever again . . .

The end.

It's all about the Kyle loot!

Last night and this morning it was all about Kyle's gear my friends.

So, what is this picture saying to you? hmmm?


Yup, Kyle GOT HIS MALISTAIRE CLOAK! Look at that thing.


So awesome. The real Kyle was at my side when it dropped for me and he got so excited about it! LOL. "Is that mine, daddy?" and "oh thank you daddy!" haha. It does a dad good to make his kids happy with the phat loots.

But wait! That is not all, look at this VERY INTERESTING piece of gear that dropped from the fire helephant boss in malistaire's lair.



Your eyes do not deceive you. Those are the Dragonspyre crown gear shoes. It's not old school crown gear, but it's crown gear nonetheless. Now THAT has got to be a rare find. I had heard rumor that Malistaire was dropping crown clothes . . . very interesting. Now if only they were old school crown clothes . . .

Happy Dueling!

The Torment of Malistaire (entry to comic contest)

Speaking of Amber Stargem . . . Amber and Kyle went for a quick run at Malistaire yesterday evening. Here is our story.


(You'll probably want to click on that . . . it's a big graphic)

As a side note, this is August 13th . . . the last day to enter Defenders of the Spiral's comic contest! Or maybe not as his blog indicates.

At any rate, Isaiah, that's my entry right there!

Thanks!

Happy Dueling!

Kyle and Amber! /click

Hey! Cassandra took a picture of Kyle and Amber to celebrate their grandmaster rank!



/wink!

WAIT A SECOND! THEIR LEGS HAVE DISAPPEARED!

(hehe. Thanks Cassandra!)

Happy Dueling!

Kyle and Amber's Gear Profiles

I've been getting a couple requests to post up Kyle and Amber's gear profiles, so here they are:



As you know, Kyle recently hit grandmaster, so he was finally able to don some of his Dragonspyre clothing. I'm torn though, because quite frankly, some of his old crown gear seemed . . . well, arguably better. Take a look here at the differences between the hat and shoes up close.



On the other hand, I simply don't use those hydra cards.

And, yes, Kyle is wearing an old school crown clothes tunic from Marleybone. So, there's a lot of work that needs to be done to catch him up to speed. Basically, I just need to follow the guide.

Amber, on the surface, appears to be every bit if not more embarrassing:



Then again, she is packing a lot of utility for a healer. Her necklace is embarrassing (need to grab that one from Colossus Blvd that gives her a guiding light boost). Her tunic actually makes sense in some ways because she is playing with Kyle and has storm as a secondary. That tunic, which isn't in the game anymore, opens up a locked card for her secondary. Most of Mooshu was defeated by Amber and Kyle by packing a one-two punch with Tempest within the first three rounds. But, it might be time to retire that tunic . . . OH Malistaire!

So, yeah, these are Grandmasters that need some gear work. As I said earlier though, I don't know if I'll be working on that next, or the wife's characters with her or . . . we'll see.

Happy Dueling!

Crazy weekend and Grandmaster-dom /bow

Hey all! Sorry for the lack of updates this weekend; it's been crazy busy, fun, and frustrating all wrapped together as if snuggling into a sleeping bag. Let me explain .. .

First of all, the past two nights, this has been my view when I woke up:



. . . it's the inside of our tent. My kids wanted to sleep outside in the backyard, so we put up the tent and have been "roughing it." This adventure comes complete with smores cooked over our portable fire pit.

So, I usually do my updates to this blog either first thing in the morning before anyone else is awake or last thing at night when everyone is asleep on the weekends. Sleeping in a tent outside just doesn't seem conducive to my schedule.

Next item, note to self, don't attempt to go swimming with your iPhone in your pocket. Also note that the Apple Geniuses don't care to hear your sob story, they just want to take your money for a replacement phone and get you the heck out of their store. Tres note, a 2-year iPhone contract could be very expensive if you're an accident prone person. Quad note, why do they make men's swimsuits with pockets? You don't see women's swimsuits with pockets . . . what gives? This is a total conspiracy against men with too much on their minds. How many soaked iPhones and wallets do we need to present to you swimsuit makers as our evidence. HUH?! HOW MANY?!!! ;-)

And speaking of what's been overpowering my mind . . . DING 50 KYLE AND AMBER!!! WOOT!

Kyle became a grandmaster last night while finishing up the whistle-blower quests in the Crystal Grove.



Amber became a grandmaster this morning while finishing up the Marcel Meow quest in Marleybone.



Thanks to everyone who jumped in and helped with the leveling and have cheered them on from the blog here!

What's next? I'm thinking either gearing up kyle and amber or getting back to Isaiah Taleslinger and The Evil Twin. Hmm, or there's always my wife's new characters to level. /shrug Or I could finally take Thomas Lionblood through Grizzleheim and do the crafting quests. So much to do. I guess we'll just see where the wind of fun blows us!

Happy Dueling!

Getting Closer!

Amazingly enough, my wife actually reads my blog, and so she knows that the current goal here is to get Kyle and Amber to 50th. And on that note, she's been logging them in one at a time (mostly Kyle) and doing a few quests while the baby is napping and I'm at work. LOL! What kind of alternate dimension is this? Oh, and if you've tried to talk to her in game . . . I just barely taught her that if you press "R", you reply to someone talking to you . . .

So, Amber's exp bar is now looking like this:



Almost there! In fact, just a couple more quests in Dragonspyre would probably push that to 50. We've been doing a lot of catch-up work in Marleybone: little side quests I missed. For example, this morning I finished off the "Mugsy" line of quests and earned a fancy ball of yarn for my efforts.



this morning's quests looked a lot like this:


and this:

Then I ran over to Grand Chasm and refilled my mana bar.

The fighting there looked a lot like this:


and this:

Am I sensing a pattern here?

Happy Dueling!