Happy New Year - 2018!

I hope everyone has had a wonderful (and safe) New Years Eve! I did, killing time till the stroke of midnight playing a great round of Zombicide: Black Plague where my uncle (first time player) was the MVP! :)

I'm trying resolutions again this year, because I did absolutely terribly on them last time! :P

1. Relearn my old compositions (5 songs - I do have recordings to work of)
2. Complete chapter 1 of my web comic (harder than it sounds, given my track record)
3. End the Year with less weight than I started (Carefully worded so I have a chance!)
4. Finish a board game prototype that I'm happy with (good luck me!)

Are any of you doing any resolutions? Or is everyone else smart enough to stay away from them?

Lastly, here are the current blog survivor stats of my "one post every three weeks" rule.

I have been slack adding new bridges though.

Today I Smiled: Christmas time is here again!

The house is all decorated and the gifts are under the tree, the relatives are on their way for a day of wondrous glee! Definitely looking forward to the organized chaos that happens each year, and from a small breather from work. Thank you to everyone who has been reading this blog, I know it's been heavy on story-mode as of late and that's mainly due to my hectic work schedule. Still, I hope you are enjoying my Dark Souls adventure story which will no doubt flow on into the New Year.

Also the Nameless story will hopefully revive (and conclude) in 2017... it's been taking a back seat since screenshots are so much faster to generate than hand drawn images. Yep, the story is actually mostly written out now - I just need the art components to go with it. It should come as no surprise the the Skyrim tales will also continue, though I will be endeavoring to be more concise with its format moving forward.

Speaking of things on the back burner, my quest of making a board game also has been bubbling along slowly. My not yet titled "Game 13" plans seem to hold promise but we'll see when I actually get around to play testing. Regardless I doubt that will be ready anytime next year, especially since I want to return to doing Flash stuff too, which is a pretty big ask. Since this is turning more into a Ney Year's Resolution thing I suppose I'll add I'd like to lose 20kg too. Yeah. Good luck to me. :P

How will I actually find the time to do all of this? No idea, maybe Santa can gift me extra hours every day? We'll just have to wait and see. For now I'll leave you with Chewbacca's rendition of Silent Night. Merry Christmas all! :)

Today I Smiled: The Finisher

So this is what happens when Neverwinter Online refuses to let me play. I simply go finish other games like Gauntlet, Forced, Deathtrap, Torchlight 2, Off-Peak, Escape the Game, Blameless and Disturbed. Strange that after all the endless grind, having things that reach completion actually feels very rewarding!

Also ended is my Skyrim story for now with the Dark Souls "Tales at the Bonfire" taking center stage for awhile on this blog. Status wise the number of links (to blogs that post at least every three weeks) is pretty low these days. I'll be refilling that sometime during the Christmas and New Years break, so we'll see how many are still "alive" then.

Insert the regular "blogging is dying?" title here!

Other than that I've learned that lemmings aren't suicidal, eagles easily slay drones, and that fart collecting backpacks for cows exist. I'll finish off with two happy videos - one of a dog getting a life size Gumby and one of another dog being reunited with her pups. Have a good day everyone! :)

Vindictus: Pirates of the Graveyard

[This is part of my Vindictus tutorials.]

Happy New Year all! Decided I'm not making another resolution list this year (because we know how the previous one went), so I'm just going to keep trucking on with my regular posts! :)

More Vindictus tips today but these are more for a Kai/ranged type.

After that somewhat tough jungle, you'll be happy to learn that the Ship Graveyard is a cakewalk for Kais. Half the bosses are sirens and they are all stupid, easily read and shouldn't be a problem for any Kai who knows to keep at range at this point. The giant crab would give you more issues (not a lot), so that leaves the pirates.

Barnacle Bill Simmons likes to spit poison on the ground but otherwise is slow with his cutlass. Just watch your step and you will be fine. Mad Willy Flint seems to be the captain and apart from some slash waves and thrown, slow seeking swords, he too is easily strafed. You just have to be a bit careful avoiding all the stuff he sends your way. Just strafe the slashes. Dodge the flying swords.

I defeated him with holy farts. Lol.

Longboot Matty is the most dangerous for me. He fights in a slightly submerged section of a broken ship and has a regular "shoot gun" combo that is painful, but easily strafed or blocked by the mast in the middle. He does have two troublesome moves though: One being that he vomits into the water making all of it poisoned, forcing people to go up onto one of the small box areas and second, he sends out invulnerable wisps that paralyze anyone they touch - long enough for him to pull a full gun combo on them. That mast becomes a life saver at those times so use it!

Quests Failed!

Blergh, I know I'm a few days early but I'm going to call this now. I knew there's a reason I don't like writing up New Year's Resolutions. I'm one of those people that obviously just doesn't get them done! So let's take a quick look at that list from the start of this year...

Lose 12 kgs. That's just 1 kg per month!
Fail! I lost just as much as I gained and am back where I started. >.<

Start writing out the guild history, one chapter per 2 months would be good.
*Watches the tumbleweed*

Complete 10 quests for NWO.
7/10.

Make a silly game of my own.
I actually did this! Twice in boardgame form. They weren't any good though.

Continue the Today I Smiled series with 2 per month.
Definitely didn't do 2 per month, but still posted 24+ during the year so I'll give this one a pass.

Finish composing another song.
Neglected. Which is annoying since I had half a new song already...

Score: 2 out of 6.

Retry next year? In theory it should be easier now that I have more XP right? For the most part yes, but we'll see if I'm in a mood to put up another list later! :P

Lastly I am sad to report that I am down to 50 links to other blogs. That might sound like a big number until I remind you that I was on around 150+ at one stage after the previous Newbie Blogger Initiative. Sticking to my rule of "must have new content within 4 weeks (eg. one post a month)" apparently was too much to ask for around two thirds of the population. Is this a sign that blogs are dying? No, probably not. Just that I'm either too harsh on my criteria or I'm simply linking the wrong people.

New Year's Resolution

Happy New Year! I thought that for a change I -would- list out stuff I wanted to accomplish this year, and to give you a heads up of what you may be able to expect on this blog in the future! :)

Next year I'd like to:

• Lose 12 kgs. That's just 1 kg per month! Maybe we should all try do this? :P
• Start writing out the guild history, one chapter per 2 months would be good.
• Complete 10 quests for NWO.
• Make a silly game of my own.
• Continue the Today I Smiled series with 2 per month.
• Finish composing another song.

Coming up in January (see here for previous list):

• The Darklands story will be coming to an end / pause (done)
• Review of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare (done)
• Review of Redshirt (done)
• Review of Descent: Journeys in the Dark (done)
• Today I smiled x2 (2/2)
• Top 10 Reasons Why I Stop Playing Games (done)
• Review Brothers: A tale of two sons (done)
• Lose 1 kg. (lost 3kg!)

And sometime in the Future:

• Review of Hearthstone (beta) (done)
• Review Forced (done)
• Review Damned (alpha) (done)
• Review Lost Planet 2 (done)
• Review of Police Precinct (done)
• Diary of a Marked One may continue with Far Cry 3 (done)
• Dead Island Diary may continue with Dead Island: Riptide (done)