We’re more than halfway through July which can only mean one thing: Blaugust is right around the corner! In fact, Bel put the Blaugust 2022 introduction post up last week.
If you’ve never heard or Blaugust it’s a month long, community event where bloggers strive to post, on average, one post a day through the month of August. There’s more to it and some extras this time as well. For all those additional details I encourage you to read the introduction post. And if you haven’t already, sign up and join the Blaugust Discord.
If you’re a new blogger or thinking about starting a blog this is an amazing event to jump start your blog. The community is quite active during the event and it’s fun to see so much content flying around. Especially from new bloggers! There are always a number of wonderful mentors who are always willing to help and answer questions.
If you’re an old blogger who hasn’t posted in a while Blaugust is also a great time to jump back in. I find myself coming back year after year for the community and extra helping of motivation.
As always, I’m looking to post all 31 days but from past years I know this isn’t always possible. It’s a fun challenge either way.
It’s always a pleasant surprise when Trove gets a major update. Since it was squired by Gamigo I just assume every update is it’s last and yet here we are in 2022. Last week, Trove released it’s Sunrise update which brings a new class, a new biome, a new difficulty tier, and a new tier of gem to power up your classes. You can read the full patch notes here.
As is tradition, the new class can not be obtained by using a class coin which means the few that have been sitting in my inventory for years will continue to gather dust. Trove has a habit of making each new class difficult to obtain gating them behind large resource grinds unless, of course, you just want to buy it.
The Solarian is a physical damage bow class with a Phoenix companion. I can’t comment on how hard this one is to obtain as I don’t have an interest in crafting it right now. I suppose I could have trialed it but I’m not exactly hurting for classes right now. It does look cool though.
The Sundered Uplands is a new biome that’s been added to Adventure Worlds. This is a multi leveled biome with flying restrictions and slightly tougher enemies. The Flight Suppression Field is an interesting gimmick. It forces you to slow down a bit while running or, more likely, jumping from dungeon to dungeon. If it gent’s too annoying there is a scroll that can be bought at the outposts to turn it off for a bit along with a bunch of other temporary buffs.
Both the new class and the new biome are nice additions but what I was really interested in was the Crystal Gems and the Uber-11 difficulty worlds.
Crystal Gems are a new tier of gem above the old Stellar Gems. These gems can be leveled up to 30 where their predecessors stopped at 25. But fear not, you don’t have to re-level all of your gems. There’s a Crystal Gem Converter in the shop that will convert one max level Stellar Gem to a level 25 Crystal gem.
The catch is that they’re expensive. One converter will run you 15,000 cubits or 1,500 credits ($10 yikes!). If you’re playing everyday without the Patron Pass you can obtain 900 cubits a day. That’s roughly one gem converter every 2 and a half weeks. With 12 gems to convert we’re looking at just shy of 7 months to get all of your gems converted for one class. Good luck if you want to do that for more than one class, I sure don’t. With patron it’s a bit better. You can get 1 gem converter every 8 days and you’re looking at 3 months to get all gems converted.
Or you could pay $120…
You could argue that you might find some nice Crystal Gems along the way and you can level them up yourself. But for those of us who have spent our career in Trove perfecting our gems and getting the stats just so it’s going to be quicker to get the converters than start over from scratch.
I had 45k cubits sitting unused in the store so I was able to get all of my Chaos Gems up to Crystal tier and increase my light on my Shadow Hunter. Which brings us to our last and final addition with this update. Uber-11 world difficulty.
To get in to Uber-11 30,000 PR and 6,000 light are required. Before I converted my Chaos Gems I was sitting around 5.5k light on my Shadow Hunter. I was able to push it over 6k to be able to check out Uber-11.
I learned quickly that the 6k light was a bare minimum. I was expecting a difficulty spike but I wasn’t expecting to do almost zero damage to regular mobs and no damage at all to bosses. Light in Trove is basically armor penetration. You can have all the damage in the world but if you can’t get through their armor it doesn’t matter.
This was a bit frustrating I wanted to be able to do the new content without putting in more work than I already had in old content. Looks like I’ll be needing to go back to delving for Crystal 4 gear if I’m going to be able to kill anything in the new difficulty tier. I guess in a way that’s a good thing as it gives me something to work towards
Sunrise brings a good chunk of content to Trove and I’m glad the game is still seeing updates. I’m personally not interested in playing much at these days but when I do inevitably get back in to it I’ll have plenty to do!
June started with the delivery of my Steam Deck. I tried a whole bunch of games on it but eventually settled in to playing Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles. I thought I would be using the Steam Deck as a stand alone device for certain games but mostly I’ve been using it as an extension of my PC. I’ve been getting the maximum use out of the Steam Cloud Save feature which isn’t something I can say I’ve ever thought of as a feature of Steam.
I did finish Yonder this month and even stuck around long enough to get 100% of the Steam achievements done.
This quarters Steam Next Fest took place earlier this month. I had written a post about the demos I was excited to try but never got around to writing about them. I did try a whole bunch but only a few made it to the wish list with the expectation that they would probably “launch” in early access. So I’m sure I won’t see them popping up in my wish list for quite some time. My favorite demo this time around was Glitched.
Top 5 Games of June 2022
Yonder
Melvor Idle
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge
Trove
Summer In Mara
No surprise here, Yonder took the majority of my gaming time this month. Manic Time clocked 13 hours in total but that doesn’t account for the several hours I spent playing on the Deck. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a good app that I can install on the Deck to track activity. I found ActivityWatch, which is an open source alternative to Manic Time with a Linux version. The only problem is installing on the Steam Deck is a pretty involved process and with the nature of Steam OS it’ll get wiped every time there’s an update. I suppose I could track my time manually but I’m more likely to guesstimate the hours.
We ended up playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge a few times this month. The first play through I completed with Greg. We ended up playing it again with the whole squad later that week. That time we took advantage of Remote play to get the other guys in who didn’t buy the game. There was a little lag but it wasn’t unplayable. 4 players was hectic enough, I can only image no one knows what’s going on when there’s 6 people playing!
Trove actually had a fairly big update at the end of the month. I spent some time checking out the new difficulty and biome and will probably put together a post about it soon.
July Gaming Goals
I’ve been considering doing away with the goals section of this post. I find myself playing less games where I feel like I can set long term goals. We’ll see how July shakes out but this may be the last of the goals for a while.
Play my turn in the Xcom Succession game: It’s over to me to step back in to the role as commander and hopefully not kill anyone…I’ll for sure be knocking this one out soon to keep the game moving!
Continue playing Cozy Grove daily: I picked this one up in the Steam Summer sale and it’s been the perfect game to play for a short bit in the morning before work. Time passes in the game in real time like Animal Crossing. So once all the quests are completed for the day I can put it away until the next day. Right now I’m 11 days in and each of my sessions has taken an hour or less.
Write 6 posts: I had a lot to write about in June and would like to continue that momentum in to July.
The end of the story in Yonder came rather quickly. I didn’t quite feel finished with the game once the credits rolled. There were some leftover quests I hadn’t done yet, spirits I hadn’t found, and a pesky murk or two left on the map.
The end of the main story does unlock some post game quest lines. There is the Master Crafter quest line that opens up the Master Crafter Crafting recipes. These are a lot of shampoos and backpacks. All of the shampoos I had found along the way but the backpacks are unique crafted items.
Then there was a quest line to bring peace to Gemea. This involves getting each region to 95% happiness. I had this mostly completed already as I made it a priority to complete as many quests and clear the as much murk in each zone as I could before moving on. In the zones that I was missing, setting up a farm with a few animals seemed to add a ton of happiness to the region. Once all of the regions were happy I was able to find the last animal in my journal: The mythical Kirin.
With these completed, I still wanted to keep playing so I took a look at the achievements I had yet to complete. I’m not typically an achievement chaser. Steam says I have 6 perfect games and 4 of those are games that give you all the achievemnets by the time you reach the end. But I only had six to finish ad none of them looked all that hard:
A Spritely Adventure – All Sprites Found
By the time I had reached the end of the game I had found 24 out of 26 sprites. The two I missed were both in the Radiant Sands. The first needed an offering of 3 sunglasses before they would come out and join me. The second was hiding in a breakable rock in the northwest corner of the zone. It took me a couple passes of the entire zone before I found it.
I’m Board – Complete 10 Quest Board Missions
Board missions have you gather certain goods and turn them in to a person for 1 old kingdom coin. The reward isn’t great. There are tons of other ways to earn or find Old Kingdom coins. The shops you can spend Old Kingdom coins in have very few items that can’t be aquired another way. It’s no wonder why only 3.1% of people have this achievement.
This llama has to be bribed with warm milk to follow me.
Critter Crazy – Adopt every type of animal in the game.
This is one of those achievements that made me engage in a system I hadn’t spent much time on. I had adopted a couple animals on my first farm but didn’t pursue it much on the others. Animals produce trade goods that range from high value (Groffle Mil) to very low value (rocks).Planting berries turned out to be the better option economically and used less materials to craft than the animal shelters and food stations.
The hardest part of this achievement was getting animals on farms that lived in regions without farms. Each animal has something it preffers to eat and once fed will follow you for a little bit. They are basically escort quests where the NPC your escorting gets bored with you and wanders off.
The problem becomes, when there are long distances between habitat and farm I needed multiple items to keep them interested. This wasn’t so bad for animals who ate simple resources like fodder but was an issue for animals eating complex crafting recipes like Poutine. There is also the matter of animals migrating throughout the season. Some animals disapear completely during certain seasons or move around the zone. So it could be a challenge to track down the one I was looking for before they moved again.
Cat-tastic – Completed The Cat Lady and Her 55 Cats
This is the achievement for finishing the quest “the Cat Lady and her 55 Cats” in which you scour the island looking for lost cats. As it turns out, there are more than 55 cats around Gemea but she only wants 55 of them back. The rest of them must be someone elses who hasn’t put up a quest yet. The cats are sorted into category? Breed? Species? one of those. So it’s easy to see which ones you still need once the quest is activated.
By the time I got to the end of the game I had about half of these cats. They make a very distinct meow when you’re close to one. Even so, there were some that I hadn’t found any or very few of like the Snowy Milk or Summer Longtail.
I ended up using the Yonder wiki to track them down and it’s a good thing I did. Certain cats only appear in certain seasons. The Summer Longtail appears only in summer and the Snowy Milk only appear in the winter.
This lead me to go after other achievements while waiting for the seasons to change. Once the correct season came I would hike back to the correct zone to find the cats.
I wish I was able to catch this jellyfish!
A Fishy Collection – Catch all types of fish.
This was another achievement I wiki’d my way through. I had about half of the fishing journal completed by the time I finished the story.
The Trader in Mocha Bay sells just about all of the fish except the Gigalev Fish. So really all I needed to do was keep trying my luck on the Gigalev and check back at the Trader everyday to see if a fish I hadn’t caught was in stock.
By far the hardest to catch was the Gigalev. The wiki says that it can be caught in the ocean in Crestfall Coast, Hearthwind Vale, Radiant Sands, and Shivering Plains in any season. Well I fished in Crestfall Cove through summer and fall and didn’t find one. Once winter came, I was spotting them every other cast. The Gigalev is giant, it takes up most of the fishing area which means it’s hard to see all the other fish. A few times I thought I had it on the line only to watch it swim away as a smaller fish took the bait.
I’m Your #1 Fan! – Violet Finds her Epic Joke
Violet is an NPC who appears in each town. Every time you talk to her she has a joke to tell. Once you talk to her in every town. I tried to find her in between waiting for the correct season for fishing and collecting lost cats.
Chasing after the achievements added a whopping 10 extra hours on to the game. By the time I caught my last fish I felt ready to put this one away. Not because I was sick of it but because my save reads 100% and I don’t think I have anything else to do!
I was expecting to write more posts about Yonder than I have. I had so much fun playing it that by the time I got around to writing about it it was over. Quite suddenly, I might add. The main quest actually isn’t that long consisting of only 5 or 6 quests that need completed. It’s gated a bit by the number of Sprites found but overall, if I was just doing the main quest, I bet I could finish it in two or three hours.The rest of my time in Yonder was spent doing side quests, finding sprites, clearing murk, occasionaly picking up lost cats.
I bought Yonder in 2017 on release and put about 8 hours in to it before bouncing. I don’t remember why I stopped but it was probably because something new and shiny came along. But it’s a good example of why I don’t get buyers remorse for games I buy and play for only a little bit. Eventually there will be a time and a place where I want to come back and play said game.
Yonder is the game I needed right now. It’s an colorful exploration game with no combat, no real lose conditions, and repetitive but satisfying content. It’s a game I was able to play in short bursts or for long periods when time allowed. It was also a great game to throw on a podcast and wander around or fish. There’s nothing ground breaking here but it is a nice little world to explore and if you really like doing fetch quests this is the game for you.
You’re not wrong Interlade Troll….
Things I Liked:
Map markers every where!
World Exploration: This game’s world map takes inspiration from recent Ubisoft open world games. The map is littered with icons and question marks pointing out Points of Interest. Most of the quests have big markers on the map and mini map of exactly where you need to go. In case, that’s not enough, there’s also a big blue line you can summon to point you in the right direction. Now this might all sound like a negative but when you’re looking for a game where you can turn your brain off it’s a big ol’ positive.
It also helps that the world is easy to get around on foot and it looks great! There were only a few instances where I couldn’t figure out how to get somewhere right away.
The Halloween event in Bobbintoff.
Changes with the Seasons: There are seasons in Yonder and things actually change when the seasons change. And I don’t mean just the weather. Animals migrate to a different area or leave Gemea entirely for the season. There is a Halloween event in Bobbintoff at night in the Fall. Even the lost cats only appear in certain regions in certain seasons.
One of the night time teleports. Not so active in the day.
The Fast Travel System: The more hours I put in tothe game the more I appreciated the “fast travel” system. I put that in quotes because it isn’t all that fast but I think it was done well.
There are Sage Stones in every region that lead to a central hub where other Sage stones can be accessed. Sometimes the stones are conveniently placed near a town but most of the time they’re in the middle of nowhere in the region. There are teleports scattered throughout that are portals from one particular spot to another. Some of the teleports are only active at night and some are only active during the day. I didn’t use these too much, I would go in them just to see where they led.
By far the best system was the farm teleports. Once a farm in a region is unlocked, a Traveler’s Knot can be crafted out of vine and stone that will teleport you to that farm. The farms are usually in pretty convenient places to access towns, crafting houses, and regions without farms. I used these the most.
But traveling through Gemea on foot isn’t all that bad. It helps that the total map size isn’t all that large. I found it big enough to find the fast travel methods useful but not so big it was a slog to go on foot. Traveling on foot also has the added benefit of finding treasure chests, tree planting plots, and cats I may have missed the last time I traveled through the region. Traveling in general never feels like a chore.
When’s the last time you saw blogging mentioned in a game?
Things That Could Have Been Better:
Here’s a handful of berries for your manufactured goods.
The Barter System: I see what the intention here is and it is a unique system. You aren’t able to offload extra items in exchange for currency so wealth can’t be horded as easily. Inventory can fill up quickly if you’re adverse to outright destroying an item. Each town’s trader carries different stock, usually related to the Guild in that town and the stock is refreshed and items rotate every day. These traders are also want some items more than others and will pay more for items they need and less for ones they have.
The problem is, nothing is so expensive it can’t be bought with a few stacks of fodder or sticks. Items that are picked up relatively often while traveling. As I got further in the game and needed some more big ticket items to craft, I upgraded to trading berries since no matter where I went, except Mocha Bay with the Chef’s Guild, they were worth 50 value. My farm produced them like crazy so I was never strapped for cash.
Sure, I could have engaged with the system the way it was meant to be but I didn’t find crafting enjoyable enough to make items just to trade for slightly more than a couple berries.
Or maybe food is just scarce on the island.
My feeling exactly…
Crafting: The crafting system is your standard collect materials to make a thing, craft more materials, and use those materials to craft a bigger item. I don’t mind that as a crafting system as it’s really common. The thing that made that particular crafting less enjoyable was not being able to pin materials needed for one of the bigger crafting items as check list. Instead, I found myself constantly having to craft a couple smaller parts and check the big ticket item continuously until I made enough to make the big item.
Now maybe I just have a bad memory for these things and this isn’t a big deal to most. But in a game where everything else has a checklist, it would have been nice to have one for crafting recipes.
How Does it Run on the Steam Deck?
It run’s great! The whole reason I started playing Yonder is because it was one of the first Steam Deck Verified titles that caught my eye in my library. Out of the box everything ran smoothly, all of the cut-scenes played. I didn’t limit the frame rate at all or make any performance tweaks. As a result, the battery usually only lasted two to two and a half hours. Plenty of time for me when it comes to playing on the Deck.
I only encountered on issue while playing on the Deck. I loaded up the game one day and it would start but immediately freeze once I got in to the game. I only had one save at this point and was panicing a little bit. Luckily, when I booted up the game on my PC everything worked fine. I immediately made 2 other save files and didn’t run into the issue again.
It’s always nice when a game that I’m looking forward to comes out unexpectedly. I’m not sure how long ago I put this one on my wish list but it has been a while for sure. Every few months I would see it on the list, click on the store page, and see that it still didn’t have a release date. Eventually, I just forgot about the whole thing. Until Thursday when I got a email from Steam that it was finally out. Which I found a bit odd as most things seem to release on Tuesdays.
As a child of the late 90s and early 2000s, I will always have a ton of nostalgia for the Turtles. It was one of my absolute favorite Saturday morning shows. Right up there with Power Rangers and Pokemon. Surprisingly, I don’t remember actually playing a TMNT game until I played Turtles in Time with Greg a few years ago on the SNES. There have been quite a few over the years but recently the IP has been used to either make mobile games or cameos in other games.
Things I Liked:
The Arcade Style: My cumulative experience with arcades and arcade cabinets come from the following places: Chuck E. Cheese, Mini Golf/ Go Kart Places, the occasional bowling alley, and those trendy Retro Gaming bars that are so crowded you can’t play anything. If you stuck this game in a cabinet with a CRT TV it would be right at home in any of those places. And probably in an actual arcade as well. This game knows exactly what it is and executes perfectly on it. Gameplay, Music, and graphics come together in one nostalgia fueled arcade dream.
The story mode may be short but it is perfectly paced. Any longer than the two and a half hours it took ups to beat and I’d say the game was overstaying it’s welcome.
The OST: Speaking of the music, this game boasts a fantastic soundtrack. You can listen to it in it’s entirety on Spotify and other music streaming services. Again, everything about it fits the style of the game perfectly from the stage music to the original songs. Some of my favorites include Mutants over Boradway!, We Ain’t Came to Lose, and Outworld Stamgeoids!
Multiplayer: It just works. Anytime I don’t have to fight with in game invites and google how to troubleshoot multiplayer issues is amazing. This was just a simple Steam invite and go situation. While I only played with Greg, I am curious to see if you can run a local multiplayer game and invite online friends in as well. I’m thinking this could be perfect for friends who don’t have the game to Parsec in and play with us.
Controls: Simple yet satisfying. There aren’t a lot of fancy combos to memorize and the inputs are very responsive. There is enough complexity to not feel like it’s just button mashing without the controls getting in the way of having fun. The few characters I’ve played feel different enough from each other that they feel unique even with the simple controls.
Replayability: We played through story mode on the easiest difficulty and it took us about two and a half hours to complete. That sounds short for a $22 game but any longer and I think the game would have outstayed it’s welcome. There’s also an Arcade mode with limited lives and continues that we haven’t gotten the chance to play through yet. Plus there are extra collectables to find in each level that we didn’t go out of our way for. I have a feeling this won’t be a one and done title for me.
It’s also on Gamepass if you find it too short to own.
At the end of these, I usually have a Things that could have been better section. I find myself unable to come up with anything this time. It was a perfect experience for me from beginning to end. I only wish I had 4 more friends to play it with and take full advantage of the 6 person multiplayer!
*I played story mode on the easiest difficulty with one other person. The Story mode may take longer on higher difficulties.
Ah yes, way back in February. Well then, it’s time to wade our way through another virtual bazaar teeming with demos. Complete with live streams that follow you around, hawking their wares, form page to page!
I guess I know what I’ll be writing about this week.
This time around, I had more of an idea of games I was looking for. I’ve been in the mood for more relaxed and colorful games as of late. Probably because I’ve been playing a lot of Yonder over the last week or two. Lucky for me there is a Colorful filter by which to sort out games.
I was also on the hunt for demos I could try out on the Steam Deck. Being new demos, most of them are labeled as Untested for the Deck. Still, I was on the lookout for games that looked like they would be fun to play on a handheld if they worked. Plus, I figure I can probably get another blog post out of it….
After an hour of searching I ended up with 17 demos. Probably way more than I’ll have time to play in the coming week. I’d rather download them now and have them sit on my desktop where I can see them rather than sticking them on my wish list.
Still, there are demos I am making a priority to check out this week. There’s 5 of them so that seems reasonable.
Some games break the fourth wall. We simply forgot to put one in ours.
A self-aware parody of beloved MMORPG legends like (insert huge MMORPG franchise that our lawyers won’t let us mention here), manifested in the form of the world’s most committed meme, Genfanad doesn’t take itself too seriously.
In fact, it doesn’t take itself seriously at all. The one thing we are serious about? Giant rats.
It caught my eye because it looked like a Runescape parody. Upon further investigation, it is a Runescape parody. That’s more than enough reason for me to check it out.
The Courier is an open world game about running a mail delivery business on a mysterious island. The more letters you deliver, the more you uncover the island’s secrets.
I don’t think I’ve ever played a game delivering mail was the focus. I’m also down to uncover secrets of a mysterious island in the process! I was also drawn to the colorful visuals and the stylized graphics. There’s also some mention of dark secrets of the island and I’m a sucker for things that look happy turning dark. I’m not sure what that says about me
When a glitch appears in the video game world of Soren, an NPC named Gus becomes aware of you- the player. Travel together to solve the mystery of the glitch and save Gus’s friends, hometown, and digital world. As the story unfolds, Gus might start to question what role you play in his world.
This is one of those games that looked like it would be fun to play on the Steam deck. We shall see if it actually runs. Also, and NPC gaining self awareness sounds like an interesting plot hook.
Play as a wandering soul in this cozy sandbox RPG adventure and discover a mini pixelated open world!
Explore the realm of Hubbington, collect crafting materials and resources, save the citizens of Hubb Burg so they can help you in return, defeat Evil spawns and eventually face the Lord Of All That Horrible Evil… at your own pace!
Ah I see what you did there with the title. This is another one that looks like a good Deck candidate. Interested to see what this one plays like.
Honarable mention to the other icons on my desktop. These are the “get to them if I have time” demos.
This is a fact I have to remind myself from time to time. This isn’t to say I don’t like a challenge in my video games but that I don’t like when difficulty is a core feature of a game. One or two difficult bosses in a game is a challenge. The game only having difficult bosses is tiresome.
What happens with the “difficulty as feature” games is that they start off harder than your average game and they get harder from there. At the start I might die a lot. The game is suppose to be hard so it’s expected. But then the mechanics click for me and I’m able to progress a bit. That feels good so I keep going. There are a few bumpy parts, some times it takes longer to do something but eventually I succeed.
But in all of these games there comes a point where I don’t have the mechanical skill and/or I don’t have the motivation to put in the effort to improve to continue. Not to mention, as time goes on the feeling of accomplishment from “overcoming” an obstacle fades and what’s left is just fatigue.
Which leads to even less motivation to overcome it. With all that said you think I would know when to hang it up. But by this point I’ve invested so much time it’s hard to walk away. Until I step back and realize I’m not having fun and probably haven’t been for a while.
In my defense, I didn’t know Valfariswas a game that wanted me to “git gud”. I didn’t even know I owned it until it showed up in my Steam Deck Verified collection. Admittedly, I should have realized what kind of game it was going to be when I not only died in the tutorial but received an achievement called “Get Used to It”. Yeah, ok that should have tipped me off.
Originally, this post was going to be about how the short distances between checkpoints made Valfaris’s difficulty a fun rather than frustrating challenge. It’s something I could pick up and play for a level/checkpoint or two and put down which makes it an ideal game for the Steam Deck and it looks really good on the Deck too. Playing in small sessions mitigated the frustration I usually feel when playing games like this.
Or so I thought.
7 and a half hours in I had to bow out. As things got more difficult, I found myself dead more often than not. By the time I got to a boss called the Bloodroot Demon and died a handful of times I was done. By that point I spent more time feeling frustrated and angry than anything remotely resembling fun.
This is by no means unique to this game. Probably against my better judgement I bought Elden Ring on day one.
But Kluwes, you haven’t played a Souls game since Demon Souls….
That’s true, but it’s been a while, I’m ready to try that style of game again!
You do recall the only way you beat Demon Souls was by getting each boss stuck on a piece of scenery and picking them off with a bow?
Ok fine…but this is Elden Ring, the most accessible Souls game yet! I’ll be fine, I know what I’m getting in to even though I probably won’t be able to pull that trick again.
Some things never change.
And it was fine until it wasn’t.
After playing it for 40 hours, I found myself more and more frustrated when I was playing but more importantly irritable and on edge when I wasn’t. There was no way I was going to put another 40+ more hours in to it. When a game start effecting you emotionally when you’re not playing is a sure sign that you should step away
It wasn’t you Elden Ring, it was me.
Fighting this guy with a boat anchor just felt right at the time
At least in Elden Rings case, this can be eleviated by playing with a very skilled buddy. The game and it’s encounters are certainly not balanced for co-op but it sure is a lot more fun that way. Other times, you end up with games like GTFO which seems hell bent on ending your friendships by the time you fail your missions a few times.
But again, that’s a me thing and not the fault of the games that want to implement such difficulty.
I think my tolerance for difficulty maxes out at Monster Hunter levels of hard and goes down from there. It can be difficult at times but there are so many ways to mitigate damage, get heals in, and get out of the way that it’s never frustrating.There’s also the allure of crafting weapons and armor out of my enemies that leads to a certain kind of satisfaction when things get tough.
Valfaris has a lot of good things going for it. It’s sitting at Very Positive reviews on Steam, it’s got a rockin’ metal soundtrack, it’s got great art, and interesting environments. I’m just not skilled enough, nor am I interested in becoming skilled enough to go any farther. But if you like difficult side scrolling shooters it may just be for you.
I have one more quest to complete in the Grasslands area. A sailor is looking for his missing crew and he’s given me some hints as to where they could be. Surprisingly, they are not marked on the mini map or glowing off in the distance brighter than the sun so it appears I’ll actually have to look for them. I’ve run around the area a few times and come to the conclusion that they aren’t in the Grasslands and I’ll need to venture out to a new zone.
Yonder has quite a few boxes to tick for each zone. The main ones tracked on the map are mist cleared, farm progress, Sprites found, quests completed, and trees planted which increase the happiness of the region. The happier the region the more bonuses for that region. Every region seems to have the same bonuses: 1.5x harvest, 1.5x animal sightings, and 1.5x faster farm production. I’m already past the 75% happiness for the last bonus in the Grasslands so it’s probably time to move on anyways.
But where to go? I intended to follow the main story and I did for a time. I ended up in the town of Wimblewick where Rex, the Ferryman was looking for some help to fix his ferry. He sent me to the Carpenters Guild to get some supplies for the repairs. Instead of pointing me in the right direction for materials Agatha Woodgrain inducted me in to the Carpenters Guild with quite a few wood related puns. Then told me to go make the materials myself. Lucky for me, I had most of the raw materials I needed and any extra bits were all readily available at the trader close by. Like I mentioned last time, I had to do one quest to go from novice Carpenter to Master Carpenter so now I’m an expert. Materials in hand, I made my way back to Rex to fix the boat.
With the ferry fixed, Rex can take me across the way to the Old Kingdom in the Radiant Sands. This is where the next step of the main quest line lies. But I somehow ended up wandering down south to the Hearthwind Vale and doing some exploring instead.
Oh is it now?
I arrived in the town of Bobbintoff, which is just a fantastic name for a town, as the sun was setting. Upon entering, Kit, one of my collected Sprites who looks like a stylized Baby Yoda, let me know that it was Halloween. It’s currently Fall on the Island so this seems to be a seasonal event of some sort. I had a choice to make: dress as up as a Witch or a Vampire Butler (seems oddly specific. I had to go with the Vampire Butler to see what that was about.
Nothing says Vampire Butler like a bowler hat.
Once I donned the costume, I went to each door to trick or treat. Some of the residents were confused, some gave me mysterious candy, and some just weren’t home to celebrate. There were also some green jack-o-lanterns that gave out mysterious candy as well. Having knocked on every door and found every jack-o-lantern I had around 50 mysterious candy rattling around in my backpack. I found a vendor in town who trades candy for some spooky accessories. 50 it seems was not enough to purchase everything so it looks like I’ll need to stop in Bobbintoff next Fall to collect the rest.
I’m getting the feeling some of the spookier residents don’t know it’s Halloween
During the day, Bobbintoff is home to the Tailors Guild. I became a novice Tailor by inquiring with the Guildmaster. It looks like these recipes will be a bit harder to make since they require different color dyes. The trader in town sells only one of each dye so I’ll have to stop back when their inventory refreshes. Whenever that might be. I put all of my collected resources into crafting Tailor’s Kits and Leather Straps which put me around 700 Value, I’m holding out for buying more dye so I can craft some more fashion items. If I’m going to be a Master Tailor after this I have to look good after all.
I think my next stop will be popping over to the Radiant Sands and picking the story back up to see where that leads. Hopefully I’ll have enough Sprites to clear out some murk over there and keep the story going. If not, I’m sure I’ll find myself back in Hearthwind Vale before too long!
According to my last and only save file, I last played Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles in 2017. I thought I had written a post about it at some point but when I went back to read it there was no post to be found published, in drafts, or otherwise. I must have not gotten around to it. I do remember I was going to call it something like Fetch Quest: The Game though. That’s what has stuck with me over the years when I think of Yonder. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I remember it being enjoyable actually. Enough to want to give it another shot a few years later.
I didn’t intentionally set out to start another play-through. I was going through my library and looking at Verified games for the Steam Deck. Right there at the bottom of the list was Yonder. I just wanted to see how it would run (it runs great by the way). I started a new game, because there was no way I was picking up a 4 year old save and went through the little tutorial. Then I got to the first area and started to remember a bit more about the game. I did a quest or two, chopped down a few trees and before I knew it an hour had passed and didn’t want to put it down.
Gemea’s Fall Damage Prevention Kit
Yonder is a game about exploration. It has some trading, farming, crafting, and resource gathering in it as well but at it’s heart it’s about exploring the world the world, collecting things, and finding little Sprites scattered aroudn the world.. There is no combat, it’s just you, your tools, and the needy inhabitants of Gemea who can’t be bothered to do things like pick up sticks from the ground or talk to the trader standing next to them. Nope, that’s my job! Happy to do it!
The majority of my time has been running from place to place sucking up every material in sight like a vacuum for these people. . There are a ton of these quests in each zone and the only reward is a little notification about the amount of quests remaining in the zone. That’s good enough I guess.
More often than not these guys are not happy to see me. They do love living in my backpack though.
There’s also a story but I haven’t been progressing it to much yet. A mysterious mist has settled in places around the island and it’s up to me and my spirit friends to dispel it and figure out where it’s coming from. I just have to find the Sprites hidden among the island first. Each mist needs a certain amount of Sprites found to get rid of it. So far I’ve found 7 of these little guys.
Last but not least there is a bunch of things to collect along the way. There are missing cats, treasure chest, clothes, hair styles, fish, crafting recipes and more cats. I was also given a farm not long after my arrival. If I lure animals in to it after feeding them their favorite food I can “adopt” them. And by adopt I mean put them in a pen and have them make trade goods while I’m out and about. I think they can also come on my adventure with me if I so choose. I’ve set up my farm with a large animal house for my Griff, a small animal house for my fox, and a garden for the seeds I’ve been picking up.
I’ll trade you six bundles of sticks, 5 bundles of grass, and a fish for a pickax. Seems fair.
The trade system is based of bartering. Goods have an assigned currency value at the traders but there isn’t any currency. Most raw materials are worth around 1 currency with the crafted goods going for a lot more. Each town has something they need so goods in one town are worth more than another. With all the raw materials I’ve been picking up, I’m usually able to get what I need just trading the grass and sticks I’ve picked up. It’s a good thing my inventory is so large.
There’s a crating system which involves finding the different guilds on the island and asking nicely to join. There isn’t much to it, as long as you have the required materials in inventory you can make the item. So far I have joined the Carpenters Guild and the Tailors Guild. I started out as a novice and was given some basic crafting recipes and a quest to craft enough items to be worth 1000 in value. You might think, like I did, that there would be a couple of the quests to do. Each time increasing your rank, unlocking some more recipes, and having to craft a a greater value of items. But like me, you’d be wrong. As soon as I turned in the quest to the Carpenters Guild I was told I was now a Master Carpenter. I’m assuming the same is true for the rest of the guilds. Though right now I’m having a hard time sourcing materials for the Tailors guild since the trader there seems to only stock one of each item. I’m not sure how often their inventory updates. It’s something I’m still looking in to.
Objective straight ahead!
Yonder is not a challenging game, it’s not a game that you have to use critical thinking skills, it’s a game that literally points out the next objective with a very bright light. It’s a game where boxes are checked, items are discovered, and there is no danger in exploring. It’s a very relaxing game and it’s one that I’m very much in need of right now.
Many Welps 