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The Sentimentality of Pokémon X/Y

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The other day I was scrolling through my Pokémon Home account looking at all my old Elite Four teams. I’ve played every generation of Pokémon (though Red was a bit of an oddball run), and almost every member of my final teams survived the various transitions into modern day. My original goal, in my nostalgic boredom, was to choose the most sentimental “companion” mon of each team, the one I bonded most with and remember the quickest and most fondly. And indeed, I was able to identify one pretty much every time. Until I got to Pokémon Y,  a game that… [Continue Reading]

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Deathbringer's Agony, with a yellow sail.
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On Finally Getting A Damn Yellow Ship Set

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I love Sea of Thieves. It’s the only video game that I play lately, outside of Pokemon GO. Admittedly, I’ve kinda gone off gaming in general (hence why this site is no longer updated daily) but pirates are fun and the new content for Reapers is somewhat interesting. I’m also a sucker for buying more and more ships. Most folks just buy a sloop, a brig and maybe a galleon, to have the full set. Me? I buy a new ship as soon as my previous ship has earned a legendary title. One of my more recent ships is Fluffyblade’s… [Continue Reading]

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A ship being blown up. Screenshot courtesy of Bacxaber
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How to Not Join an Alliance in the Sea of Thieves – Part 3

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I’ll be honest, I never thought I’d need to make a Part 3 of this type of article. Somehow, I do. You’d think that alliances would be good fun and even, occasionally, capable of getting you rich. When a ship in an alliance sells loot, everyone else in the alliance gets 50% of the gold earned. But that does require having one thing: an alliance of ships that don’t want to kill each other. Today, we are looking at even more ways to NOT join an alliance, because some people are stupid. Lie that you are a newbie The first… [Continue Reading]

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Bullet-jump everywhere, to heck with the consequences!
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My 5 Favorite Mobility Tools in Gaming

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Way back in 2010, Valve gave Portal away for free and it became the first game I ever owned on Steam. Ever since then, mobility shooters have remained my favorite genre in gaming, from PvE/singleplayer games like Quake and Warframe to PvP games like Loadout, Apex Legends and Rocket Arena. (I even made my own in college!) Also known as ‘arena shooters’ to differentiate them from ‘tactical shooters’ like CS:GO and Red Crucible Reloaded, I love their focus on parkour, explosive jumping, aerial control, and general physics abuse in every way the players can find. I’ve spent hours on empty… [Continue Reading]

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How to Not Die in Call of Cthulhu

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This is a sister article to my previous on mitigating Sanity loss, and equally not-recommended because dying horribly should be the expectation (not the exception) in Call of Cthulhu. The whole point is that your characters are delving into things mankind is neither supposed nor equipped to know, and the system is built to run your party ragged and then spit them out as chewed-up gibbering husks. That’s half the fun! However, I’m not gonna pretend there aren’t ways to spec your character out for a bit more survivability than the average joe. I checked the internet to see if… [Continue Reading]

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Mitigating Sanity Loss in Call of Cthulhu

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If there’s one mechanic most people know about the Call of Cthulhu TTRPG system, it’s that investigators have a tendency to go insane and die from witnessing eldritch horrors and learning horrific truths mankind was never meant to know. It’s practically a selling point, I know that was the primary reason I excitedly leapt into my first ever campaign back in undergrad. If you for whatever reason are worried about your player character dying a horrible premature death before you were done playing them, this sadly is probably not the right system for you. But to those people, I wholeheartedly encourage… [Continue Reading]

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SoT D2 crossover
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A Really, Really Weird Sea of Thieves Collab

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Sea of Thieves has done a few crossovers over the years. Both Pirates of the Caribbean and Monkey Island make sense for crossovers, as they are pirate-themed. There’s a few smaller collabs, like the Halo crossover (which I think was a Microsoft promotional thing) and, as far as I was concerned, Borderlands was probably the weirdest collaboration, even though I’ve never, ever seen anyone use the ship set. I suppose, at least, the Vault Hunters in Borderlands are kinda pirate-like, looking for a vault full of treasure and stuff. It kinda makes some sense. Most of the time though, these… [Continue Reading]

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My First Day in Sea of Thieves

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Sea of Thieves has been on my radar for ages, not just because Retvik’s written multiple articles about the memorable adventures she’s experienced as a member of SPUFer Bacxaber’s crew. I’d also heard great things from multiple sources from very diverse gaming interests, and at least 2-3 different people on my friends list are in-game at any given point across the last 5+ years, which is usually a very good sign regarding the quality of a title. But still, I dragged my feet on wading in myself, and I’m not quite sure why. It might have been how many people… [Continue Reading]

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World of Peacecraft: The Neutral Pandaren Lifestyle

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In both of my previous WoW articles, I claimed to have played only two characters for my entire on-and-off history with the game. This is essentially true, since the druid is Alliance and the warlock is Horde and that means I can interact with every part of the world between the pair. I’ve never really felt any urge to make more characters since leveling is my least-favorite part of the game. The only thing that ever tempted me to make a third character was learning about a specific quirk through which a player could theoretically reach max level without ever… [Continue Reading]

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How to Find the Age of Your World of Warcraft Character

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During a content lull in Final Fantasy XIV, I temporarily reactivated my WoW subscription to try the new War Within expansion. I’ve had a long on-and-off relationship with this game, having first installed it sometime in undergrad after they added the free trial and taking multiple years-long breaks in between sessions. Nonetheless my two toons, a zombie pirate warlock and a werewolf druid, have pretty storied careers since they’re the only ones I ever play, and like most players I’ve developed something of an affinity for my little guys. So it’s always bothered me that I can’t see their age… [Continue Reading]

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