Top Gun

Yeah, I saw you on last night myself, but I was derping through the first one or two T1 or T2 levels looking for tokens, and considering how dull it was, I didn't feel it would be a good idea to subject anyone else to it. Negima, I know there are probably better ways to go about things in terms of overall preparedness, but I think I'm going to stick with getting my current stuff to 5-star before working on anything else. The only other armor/helms I have are back at 2-star, and while I do have a few 3-star recipes, it'd still take a long time to get a new set to 4-star, even. Since I already have the Azure Guardian recipes, and I only need about 1200 more CE to craft them, it's definitely the fastest way to go, especially if I want to keep working through missions. I do plan on working on a few different sets in the long-term, so I'll get to leveling something else up eventually. And while I agree that the Wolver line does have some pretty nice end products, the main reason I never did much with them before is because I thought most of the line looked pretty damn ugly. Besides, that, everyone and their mother seems to wear them, and I wanted to stick out a bit. (Obviously this isn't as big of a deal with costume slots, but still.)

It's not, just the plain old Cobalt set, for better or worse. It was the only armor I had up to 4-star in the first place, plus the missions gave free recipes for the 5-star variants of the whole "standard" weapon/armor set, so that's definitely what I'm working on first. After that, I'll get going on something more specialized. I really do love the missions system as a whole, though, even as someone who'd been playing the game for a long time before it was implemented. It's nice not having to commit to a full 8- or 9-level run when I want to play; a mission with two or three levels takes a half-hour at most, so it's a nice bite-sized portion of gameplay.

I just went through a whole T1 run with six Tunnels missions, and only managed to find the cake dudes once, which is a bummer. I'll take another crack at just running one mission repeatedly tonight, to see if that produces better results. The slightly-frustrating thing for me at this point is that I can't continue to progress through the remaining missions, since I'm stuck at the full 5-star loadout requirement. I've had my Levi Blade for a while, and I managed to craft an Aegis recently, so now I just need to hoard up some CE and grind out the armor and helm requirements. I did pull my first FSC run with a few benevolent strangers the other day, though I didn't have the equipment to attempt Vanaduke.

This is just...wow. I wasn't exactly sure of what the sound would be when reading the write-up, but my jaw just about dropped when it started playing. This goes in my instant classic book.

loooooooooolwut

I kind of guessed as much based on when I've seen you on, and that kind of bums me out. I enjoy playing the game with you, and I didn't really want there to be a situation where you feel like you aren't welcome to play with the OCR group just because you're now involved with another server. I know the Reddit server's your main hangout, but don't be a stranger with us too. In the end, I personally don't really care who's running what, so long as we have a reasonably-stable place to play. If it comes down to donations, I can probably chip in a bit here and there, and definitely more regularly if I can manage to find a full-time job.

Well...damn.

I've seen some of the usual suspects playing in random Valve servers, but that doesn't usually float my boat. If someone on my friends list hops in there, I'll almost always join if I'm able.

Are there still any brands out there that just register as a removable drive in Windows by default? I'm still using an ancient HDD-based Creative Zen Neeon, which I think has the worst control scheme ever devised by man, but the one thing I've always loved about it is that it doesn't need a shred of external software to operate. You plug it in, Windows picks it up the same as any drive, you create your own folders and copypasta your files, and voila, done. You couldn't pay me enough money to put iTunes on my system, and the thought of using any other proprietary software isn't much better, so if I do get a new device, I'd definitely prefer the simplest option.

I've played a few times over the last few weeks myself, but I definitely want to play a bit more. I did see that some of you guys were in a Highlander match recently; how did that turn out?

Hee, that good ol' bug. I think I've won more rounds than I've lost because of it.

I really do need to get in there and get a claim set up myself after the awesome tour you gave. I have way too much on my gaming plate already, and that plate is already sucking too much productivity from my actual life, so I'm kind of scared what joining another server might do.

Huh...I wonder if we could always sell off bound stuff to a vendor. Either way, it's good to have, since it does mean ditching all of that clutter. Speaking of, if anyone's interested in collecting all of the dinky weapons, all of those UV versions of the starter weapons that we couldn't get from the first round of missions are now in the Featured tab at the Auction House, for all of 250 crowns each. I went ahead and bought the missions pack. I've never spent a dime on this game, so I figured hell, I can at least throw in $4 for some new content.

Yeesh...I see what you mean about clutter, Thylacine. Apparently you can still sell those goofy "bound" duplicate recipes back to a vendor to get rid of them, though I got all of a single crown for the 1-star one I had. I figure even that is better than having them take up space. The duplicate weapons are another matter, though; even the 1-star and above ones would require an exorbitant amount of CE just to ditch, and like you said, we can't get rid of 0-star stuff at all. I'm thinking about making a thread on their official forums asking about the possible ability to delete bound items. I understand having to pay CE if you want to sell something off, but you should be able to toss out extra copies like we're getting now without needing to shell out anything. I am enjoying the missions concept as a whole, though, even if what we have so far is definitely slanted towards new players. There's not a whole lot of plot there, but it's a nice change from the usual "dive through Clockworks levels for no reason" repetition, and there's quite a bit of potential for future additions. I finally did craft my Leviathan Blade, but I think I might hold off for a little while on buying any more 5-star recipes for the default set, since they might wind up as rewards for future Tier 3 missions. I'm just glad that this new stuff has rekindled my interest in the game. If you happen to see me on, drop me a line and we can team up on a run.

Haa, I figured (hoped?) that they'd start cycling through older Stranges again; the Knife is one that I wanted, too. Hopefully a few of the higher-priced ones show up again too, so they don't cost two arms and three legs.

I haven't logged in for a few weeks, so I didn't even know this was coming. I'll make sure to check it out.

Very much so. And as much as I (ab)used the hell out of dropping the Sandvich, I'm kind of glad that nerf went through. I don't think it was every really meant as an insta-medkit for the Heavy himself, since that made the eating mechanic generally unused. It also has the side effect of making the GRU less unbalanced, since the Heavy just can't run across the whole map non-stop now.

Dammit, Steam got me again. I know some of you guys play/have played Killing Floor, and it's all of $3 today to celebrate the game selling a million copies. It's scary how well those minuscule price points work.

I keep seeing this pop up for $5 in Steam sales, and I'm always a bit tempted, but then I figure that said $5 would probably be better spent on a cheeseburger.

Well that seems incredibly stupid. Why should the defending team be put at a disadvantage when they're backed up to their final point?

If you need a backup/sub player for the Highlander thing, I'd be interested in giving it a shot. I'm kind of a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to classes, though I'm probably most decent at Hoovy/Medic.

Oracle of Ages was the first Zelda game I played, and I loved the hell out of it. (I had no idea at the time how much of its roots came from previous titles.) I also enjoyed Seasons, but I think Ages wound up being the stronger title. You really do have to play them together to get the full experience, though.

The Sandvich thing does upset me a bit, but Powerlord's right. I can't remember the last time I stopped to eat it normally, because getting that 150 health in an instant is so easy.

One fairly-recent title missing from that list is Time of Eve, a six-part ONA later compiled into a movie that added a few more scenes. It's a fantastic little look at a near-future setting with androids that can pass as humans, and contains a boat-load of references to Asimov and the Three Laws.

It's more that Japanese television doesn't really do the whole "season breaks" thing that the US does, so shows literally have to do whatever they can to keep airing in their time slot, lest they lose it entirely. For long-running shounen series, this invariably means filler episodes whenever the anime comes close to catching up to the original manga. It's a really crappy model, but them's the breaks. A lot of more recent series have started splitting into 13-episode "seasons" by default, presumably to get around this. And I can't speak for Naruto, but Bleach is far from "great" in any of its forms. Tite Kubo may be an awesome character/fashion designer, but he can't structure a story or properly utilize characters to save his life. The reason the anime is seemingly always in filler is because his chapters are so devoid of actual content; I've seen many instances of two-page spreads that are pretty much blank. One Piece, however, is shounen done about as well as it's possible to do.