Oops. I won V Rising, What Comes Next? Covid?

A couple weeks ago, the server settings on the Team Spode V Rising server somehow got set to easy mode and I didn't know it.  All I knew is that suddenly I felt like an uncontrollable superhero in game. My scythe was mowing down mobs like a butter knife going through soft butter. In my mind I was thinking, what did I just upgrade in my kit, this is amazing!

So, because I was feeling so amazing, I was like, man, I bet I could try taking on one of those final three bosses. 2 hours later I had beaten the game.

Man, I bet that's tough when the server isn't on easy mode

Then I started thinking . . . hmmm . . . that seemed too easy, and then I looked at the server settings. Yeah, I was at 10x damage and .1x damage received. I alerted Tipa and she hit the reset the settings button, but I already had the pylons sitting safely in my castle.

They give awesome buffs!

Whoops.

Team Spode has still been playing on Sundays, but my motivation to log in and play outside of that has been minimal. I've got my full Bloodmoon set, sanguine reaper, and blood key, so I'm kind of done. I could find a random server to join and give it another go, but I'm not feeling that passionate about playing it again just yet.

. . . . and then I got COVID. For the past three weeks my family had been hosting visitors and treating ourselves to fun things to do around the greater Austin area. I think we narrowed it down to when we went to the Snake Farm Zoo and a lady there was sneezing and coughing a bunch, and we had dropped our guard by not wearing our masks. Yeah, that was probably when it happened. And if not then, we certainly spread it around to each other in the Escape room.

That Star Trek Discovery Escape Room was really tough!

The past week has really been about recovering and just sitting around watching TV. The Iron Chef Iron Legend series was great! Allez Cuisine! Needless to say, after all that, I'm feeling hungry . . . for a game to play! To those ends, I have a HUGE backlog of VR games that I want to play, but being sick and playing VR don't go together. No one wants to strap on a VR headset in that state.

I also noticed my buddy Lessah Ismorah was playing a lot of Planet Crafter on her Youtube channel and she talked me in to buying it. It was only 20 bucks. That's also when I saw, my old wish list, Legend of Keepers was on sale for 8 bucks. A checkout screen later, I had both.

Bringing back life to a dead planet . . . why am I here again?

Time to kill some adventurers!

Dear readers of The Friendly Necromancer. I'm on the mend, and I have a lot of games to write about here in the future. Expect more posts in the future.

Happy Dueling!

Legend of Keepers: Who's the Dungeon Master Now?

Recently I've been craving a good dungeon-maker game. My first thoughts turned to old hits like Dungeon Keeper and the now defunct Dungeon Empires (too bad it's no longer around, I really liked that game), but in hunting for those games, I stumbled upon a little steam game called Legend of Keepers. This particular demo or "prologue" is of a game in development and was pretty fun!

It feels like you should be fighting Voltron, doesn't it? I call false advertisement!

In essence, you've been hired to engineer dungeon room encounters to keep adventurers at bay. It plays a bit like the card game Boss Monster without the complexity.

Play inside your dungeon goes a bit like this:

1. You place monsters in your dungeon. 
2. You place traps in your dungeon. 
3. Adventurers proceed through your dungeon.
4. Trap rooms activate and do damage or reduce morale of adventurers.
5. Monster combat is turn-based and you play back and forth until the adventurers die (or run away in fear) or your monsters die.
6. If the adventurers make it to the final room, they fight the boss of the dungeon and do damage.
7. Choose from 3 random rewards and complete the week.  

I really liked the Ulazra's Quagmire ability. 

Think of your boss at the end of the dungeon as a tower in a tower defense game. If he takes damage from one group of adventurers, he'll still have the damage applied to him when the next group of adventurers attack him in the coming weeks.

Your boss is pretty tough, but can he make it through to the end? No problem!

Ultimately you'll be playing through 52 weeks of the dungeon's life cycle. In a way, the progression feels a little like another game I've talked about, Slay the Spire, but without the mystery and unknown of a branching path and definitely in reverse . . . you're the villain of the story here. After combat, you'll have a few weeks of random encounters, merchants, and monster therapist visits before the next group of adventurer's enters your dungeon.

It's tough work . . . your monsters are gonna need some quality time to get through it.

You use these "off weeks" as time to heal monsters, resurrect them from the dead, improve your traps, and buy new nefarious surprises for your dungeon.

The Circular Saw trap is also one of my favorites. Bzzzzzt! DIE ADVENTURERS!

There can be a bit of strategy here. For instance, you can get an artifact that improves skeleton statistics and focus on skeletons in one room, which could lead to extra bonuses depending on your monster passive abilities.

If you enjoy the thought of making your own dungeon, this is definitely worth the free download, but if you REALLY enjoy the game you can go one step further and get the "supporter's edition" of the game for 5 bucks and unlock a new dungeon boss and dungeon theme.

I'll be looking forward to a full release of the game in the future. Consider yourself added to my watchlist, Legend of Keepers! GG!

Happy Dueling