Dragonheir: You need an Army

[Part of the Cursed story line.] 

When I'm not training up heroes, I'm pushing further into the Underdark past the territories of the deep gnomes and their mining issues as well as the thieving rat folk whose leader needs help bringing his son into line, which happens to be a level 130 fight! We finally reach the drow city of Unyielding Silk, where nobles and paupers squabble over the broken "holy river" that no longer cures people of the rot disease.  After arresting many criminals we find that the river is actually plagued from some ruins it passes through inhabited by monsters that look like Zhar'loth - it turns out this is the result of full blown rot transformation on a deep elf.

Fights here now require 3 full teams so I'm adding a bunch of under trained people to the line up that I'm not too familiar with. However there is a stand out: Iola the lightning mage. Now Iola's not a legendary ranked hero, but her AoE stuns are freaking useful! After defeating a death knight boss who we helped be un-transformed from a turtle (damn my goody two shoes nature) the river is restored, the sick can be healed again, and the bridge leading to Terminus is reopened.

Alas this comes too late for the drow queen (150) who succumbs to the rot just in time to give us a boss fight. Note, all the heroes can only go up to level 100. Your choice of gear and strategy has to make up the difference against the ever increasing level of the enemies. It's a challenge sometimes, especially when fights demand multiple teams. 

I've also unlocked deeper levels of the Fey Meander and two similar "endless fight" modes, but all these feature the same thing: less and less choice of characters to field. Sometimes, you can't put legendaries. Sometimes you can't field the full five. Sometimes it asks for specific element types. Ugh. You know what that means? I need at least SIX full teams (one per element - necrosis, radiance, lightning, poison, fire and ice) of max level, fully geared heroes - each with a decent team structure (healer/tank/dps etc). LOL!

There's also this boss plant lady shows up every few levels
to check your gear score...

Elden Ring: Let there be suffering

[Part of my Elden Ring journal]

Finally reaching the forge of the giants, Melina self immolates to burn the giant tree that's blocking the way and somehow I am transported to a crumbling island floating in the air via violent tornadoes. This place is home to big ratmen, dragons, horrible worm headfolk, and comparatively "safer to fight" knights. Alas it is also home to the Godskin Duo twin boss (guess I didn't kill that apostle well enough) who are freaking tough, even with the help of my mimic and Volcano Knight Bernahl. Ornstein and Smough is that you?

I decide to re-explore elsewhere first, discovering Melina's sacrifice didn't work / is really slow to burn those thorns so I return to Volcano Manor which is now inhabited by extendy snake folk and find Lady Tanith eating the corpse of Rykard to become the next god-snake. Nope, I club her to death which summons... Crucible Knight again? Unfortunately for him, my parrying has much improved and I win this duel.

Afterwards I clear a small keep of fire cultists and a fat candle man, defeat an assassin, a surprise were-lion and a space ant-lion on the outskirts of the capital as well as give Millicent a prosthetic arm I found laying around, and exploring deep paths in the sewer beneath the capital where I fight rats and giant hands to ultimately come across and free a prisoner called Dung Eater who in turns aids me in defeating blood priest Mogh in a temple even further below. Then just for fun, the downward path continues in a pit littered with bards(?) but this fatal jumping puzzle is way too challenging (and has now killed me more than any enemy) so I opt to skip it for now.

It's one of the creepier parts of the game that's for sure!

Gloomhaven: Jekserah's Corruption

[Part of the Party Time journal] 

After we learn that donating to the temple not only grants us temporary blessings but also increases Gloomhaven's prosperity it has become a common practice for each of us to drop 10 coins in there (the maximum after each mission) and are informed by the clergy about a wise seer in the mountains who can divine the locations of anyone or anything so we pay him a visit, only for him to test us against his guardian golems, spirits, drakes and bears!

Luckily Juris' new insta-kill (non-elite) is on hand to deal with the harder hitters while I backstab majority of the ranged foes by getting into their room and hiding in there while the rest clog up the singular bottleneck doorway. Victorious, we ask the seer the location of Jekserah and pay her a visit in the mausoleum she's hiding in. She's definitely leveled up her necromancy as almost every single round she summons new zombies but carefully thrown daggers from Juris ends her and her minions for good!

The local guard congratulate us on this feat by means of offering more work. Mentioning dragon sign to the North and a horrible corruption from below the city. We opt to try the sewers first as there are no "travel encounters" for such a short trip. Inside are snakes, vermlings and self-replicating (but also suicidal, because replicating hurts themselves) oozes. DL gets hammered in the second room here but it is Juris who goes down first. Not to worry though as Jim and his spiderbot make it through unscathed while testing out his new disintegration beam. :O

Almost every time you open a door there's an army waiting on the other side...

Alas, in the end these just turned out to be regular sewer denizens as the source of the corruption seems to be coming from further below.

Warhammer: Vermintide 2

Because vermins are resistant to eradication!

The Skaven are back, this time with the forces of Chaos backing them up and it's up to the same five heroes as last time to cooperatively thwart them in a 10 mission campaign.

The devs basically took everything that was good in the first game and just expanded on it without actually changing the basics which is awesome. There are more types of foes now with bosses, new skill trees per character, and a new keep/base that expands as you level up.

It's great when you can line them up.

If you only play for the story you'll be done over a weekend, but if you are a completionist and don't mind some grind then this will keep you busy much longer. I recommend this good co-op game and give it four ratling gunners out of five.

Hand of Fate

An adventure card game with the Batman: Arkham Series combat style!

This one took me a bit by surprise, having received it as a gift for Christmas. After a huge dose of WTF is going on right at the start, it wasn't long before I got into the swing of taking another "step" onto a card and hoping it would be something good.

Adventuring takes place on encounter cards.

Yes, exploration is done by flipping over cards and successfully completing encounters unlocks more cards which I found to be a neat way of having mini stories. These encounters are not necessarily combat, which plays much like the Batman: Arkham Asylum series except you're not Batman and the fights quickly go from being super easy to requiring some gamer skill.

The main goal is to beat each member of the courts of various suits: Dust (bandits), Plague (ratmen), Skulls (skelies), and Scales (lizardmen) and finally the very well voice acted Dealer who acts as the antagonist in the game.

Pretty cool for a Unity made game!

My favorite parts about it are you can customize your adventure deck with cards you have unlocked, tailoring what you can and what you won't run into on a quest - or have everything included in Endless mode. The way it is structure also allows you to progress despite dying/losing a game which is great design. Also, the final fight is very cool. Make sure you get to it. :)

This is definitely one I can recommend, and give it 4.5 minotaur tracks out of 5.

Warhammer: Vermintide

Hexen mixed with Left 4 Dead.

The end of the world comes at the hands of ... the Skaven? Hmm. I guess if they carry the bubonic plague or something. Anyway, in this first person Warhammer game you can pick out of five playable characters: a soldier, elf, dwarf, mage and witch hunter; though only four will be present on any one mission (three played by bots if need be). The banter between them is pretty cool, letting the player learn about them as they too learn about each other. I believe this changes per mission, per difficulty level of which there are five.

Gameplay wise, it is very much L4D with swarms of enemies who have a few special units that show up from time to time - one that pounces, one that strangles, a really beefy one and so on. While thematically you might be sounding the alarm or finding food it also follows the same get from point A to point B on a big map that the zombie game uses. Still, that doesn't make it any less fun.

Just a few of the tools to kill the vermin with...

While ammo is pretty limited, all the characters are pretty competent in melee wherein you can use light or heavy attacks, parry and push which gains aggro. Obviously the weapons you decide to bring will dictate how you play too. Guns make more noise than bows and a rapier cuts faster but lighter than a two handed sword for example.

There is also a crafting component available at the inn hub, wherein you sacrifice five items to gain one better, similar item while crossing your fingers that the RNG gods give you something nice.  All up I quite like the game, give it three and a half emperors out of five,and recommend it to people who would be interested in a semi-dark ages L4D type game with no zombies. :P

Vindictus: Sewer Sniping

[This is part of my Vindictus tutorials.]

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

The sewers are both an excellent and a horrible place for a Kai. Apart from being tight quarters and home to some agile lizardmen assassins (who are perhaps the only trash melee mob that manage to get up and damage me in a combo), it features very few types of boss chambers. The first is little more than a slightly larger than average square room. This type sucks, and you will have to fight fairly against the usually spry (ratman kung fu dude) or cheating boss within (I'm looking at you Shadow Shaman Ingkara - who summons shadows of other bosses to help him)!

Fortunately the other type of boss room is much more favourable, and is connected by a few passages to a portion that looks like this:

The bosses in those chambers can be lured back here, and then by simply standing on a different level you can snipe them at your leisure. Only the lizard assassin boss I think has means to chase you up and down, but even then it isn't consistent, giving you ample time to displace and snipe him from
elsewhere.

There's also one boss, Warrior Chuilin, who has a cliff. You have to be a bit speedy to make sure he is downstairs while you are up, but if you stand at this spot his AI breaks and again you can snipe the otherwise dangerous boss to death.

Owned.

Lastly, the raid boss Thor - a giant electric frog, is pretty easy for a Kai player in a group. Stay away from the frog. Stay out of the water. Fire at will. Easy peasy.