Ogu and the Secret Forest and Sable

A pair of exploration games!

Ogu and the Secret Forest 

In this silly and happy cartoonish game you play as the baby platypus Ogu who armed with a hat and butterfly net sets out on an adventure on a strange island which has lots of puzzles to solve, friends to make (who you can call to help pass obstacles) and enemies to beat up...? Yeah this turned out to be a much bigger game than I first thought with plenty of places to go and things to do. There's a bit of a clash between the cutesy animal art style and activities such as dancing, fishing and drawing versus beating up the dangerous enemies (you can turn on god mode as an option because they can get pretty mean) but its all rather fun with very simple controls. Will especially be of interest to explorers, collectors and those that enjoy RPG Maker type games. 

Sable

The visuals are so different, its great!

This is an amazingly drawn exploration and puzzle jumping game with a very simple story that actually has no bad guy. Indeed I don't think you can even die in it which makes it quite relaxing. Good controls and the ability to climb, glide and ride your customizable hover bike across the large map make it fun to explore, with very hard to find collectable stuff for those who seek to do so. The many optional side missions are quite cute and are the actual "meat" of the game. Apart from the optional fishing mini-game (which as usual I don't have the patience for) I really enjoyed this one. 

Gris

Unlocking the rainbow. 

In this beautiful puzzle platformer game you play a woman going through some severe sadness, and while I'm not too keen on the art for the main character herself - the rest of the game is super beautiful and gets more so as you progress through it. This is because her world starts out very empty and as you progress you unlock more and more colors to fill the palette fully. 

Awesome art.

It helps that there's some good music too and that the actual game itself isn't in the "too hard" category with simple controls and a gradual unlocking of movement abilities. It's actually easier than (non-challenge mode) Celeste especially as you can't actually die. Thumbs up!

Undying, Turmoil and Neko Ghost Jump

A trio of Epic freebies.

Undying

This zombie crafting survival game features a twist in that you play a mother already bitten in the intro, who must teach her young (and annoyingly useless) son how to survive in this apocalypse. Show him how to dismantle difficult machinery and defeat zombies, sure... but also show him how to get water from a fountain into a plastic bottle, how to water plants, and how to scavenge? He also whines A LOT.

While the game play is kind of ok but the stylistic character art is poor and it becomes readily evident that your main enemy in this game aren't the zombies - it's your own backpack and the lack of space there in. If you aren't keen on inventory management then this is not a game for you. Or me.

Turmoil

This 2D oil barony "almost" idle game is one with simple controls and simple decisions: after winning your desired plot of land from your competitors you send forth your hired dowsers to give you a hint of where to dig, then build the oil pumps to (hopefully) get the oil out and hire wagons to transport said oil to sell to the shops (where the price constantly fluctuates) or store in your own warehouse while waiting for prices to be more favorable.

Most of the action is automated, which lets you focus on how many things you have, where to place new things and if/where to selling to. Excess funds can be used to upgrade pretty much everything and that's the game loop. Surprisingly fun but gets repetitive fast.

Neko Ghost Jump

In this super silly platform game you play a cat on the cat planet trying to rescue his cat bride from scurvy space dogs. The main gimmick is that you must switch from 2D and 3D platforming because there might be tunnels you can only access in 3D view and then impossible diagonal jumps that become easy in 2D view.

I assume there's also some ghost mechanic as hinted by the title and intro cinematic but I never got that far as the game crashed on tutorial level 3. Not recommended.

Behind the Frame and Them's Fightin' Herds

Games with excellent animation.

Behind the Frame

This very short and relaxed game is all about painting and puzzle solving. Despite the "painting by numbers" portions that let you brush paint everywhere, the art is really good with its anime style. Thankfully the puzzles are pretty easy to let you focus on the excellent story which will put a knife in your feels I enjoyed very much. Highly recommended, if you enjoy something that is more of a narrative than mechanics.

Them's Fightin' Herds

It's is like Streetfighter for My Little Pony, but the smooth animation and cute critters are very well done! There's also a story mode that plays a bit like an RPG Maker game interspersed with both jumping puzzle and (many) combat segments which is pretty cool, but the difficulty ramps up rather quickly and boss fights become a chore. It's a different one, that's for sure.

Deliver Us Mars and Invincible Presents: Atom Eve (PC Game)

Girls getting it done.

Deliver Us Mars

This puzzle and platforming game has you playing as a young woman who dreams of going to space and jumps at the opportunity to do so when it arises. Of course, its not all space unicorns and star dust out there as many things go wrong and after playing this you'll be wondering why more astronauts don't carry a pair of climbing axes by default. Good voice acting and decent graphics, controls and story make this an enjoyable experience - though one caveat with that is that I hated all the flash backs that kept interrupting (even though that's where you learn a lot of the basic puzzle solving stuff). The puzzle solving itself is of a medium difficulty at max (for me that is, so that probably means easy for everyone else), with very few harder exceptions but not enough for me to stop / not finish the game. Recommended!

Invincible Presents: Atom Eve

Definitely for fans of the "Invincible" TV show / comics, this game lets you play as one the titular high-school super hero Atom Eve as she faces her many problems despite possibly being one of the most OP superheroes to exist. The comic art is sharp and your choices can branch the narrative, though combat wise I think as long as you remember to level up it doesn't matter how you expand your skill tree - you'll always have something to tackle the ever more dangerous enemies you fight in turn based mode. The fighting system is decent and will make you think on how to win, but it's actually the weakest part of the game for me. However it's important to note that this covers a lot of the events in the show and comic so be warned. As good a story telling medium this game is, you're still better off watching the first season of the series if you've not yet seen it.

Doom Eternal

Doomguy exalted.

This FPS follows on from all the previous Doom titles and like those continues the trend of you fighting horrible demons in violent encounters while exploring a map for secret passages and power ups. As you are able to climb and swing off things there is an added jumping puzzle element here but that's very minor. The biggest difference is in the combat, as based on what you do to your enemies you might be generating ammo (chainsaw), health (melee gory kill), or armor (set them on fire then hurt them) or all the above.

As most major combats take place in arenas now you need to get really good at doing all the above (which by default means you can't be too far away) while under pressure. Enemies have their own weak spots too: the shoulder launchers for revenants, arm cannons of mancubi, tail for pinkies etc - just to keep you on your toes as you fight a more and more mixed bag of enemies with your ridiculously large arsenal of weapons, most of which have two modes of fire which you can switch mid battle as well as upgrade! All up a very solid entry to the Doom franchise.

Out of Line Forest Quartet Soulstice

A trio of games that were free from Epic.

Out of Line

This cutesy platform puzzler involves being able to throw a javelin that can come back to you, which is handy as you can stand on in to make large gaps jumpable or high ledges climbable, to use as a lever, and to jam gears as needed. It's a nice gimmick but not really an interesting one. Not recommended.

Forest Quartet

In this exploration puzzler you are a ghost in the forest who needs to activate random machines to give her band mates inspiration to continue to play. It is just so strange, especially since the generators are just so out of place and alien. Also since you're a ghost nothing can really kill you... other than the boredom of playing this game I guess. Not recommended.

Soulstice

This hack and slash game is much in the same vein as Devil May Cry, except instead of playing a cool dude with a big sword and devil powers you are a crazy knightess with a big sword and ghost powers - which come from your deceased sister who is attached to you and handles most of the defense and parrying. Ok, you're a chimera. Anyway, that means there are two main forms of currency to collect which can unlock skills for each sister as you battle your way through a pretty grim city.

The fighting is a bit repetitive unfortunately, as enemies simply pop out of portals when you reach a combat space - which is made worse when particular enemies can only be damaged if they are within a colored aura that the ghost sister can create, and there's more than one color which seems to just be arbitrarily annoying. Just like the fixed camera angles during exploration and jumping puzzles. The camera is free to move in combat so... why force it to be fixed when out of it? Still an enjoyable enough game I suppose, but there are definitely better ones out there.

Decluttering Day 6 : 4-6 pairs of women's footwear. Yeah, these are my wife's efforts but we're a team so I'm going to let it count - especially since she seems to be more into this than I am after I mentioned it to her! ;)

Guacamelee and Grime

GG... or are they?

Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition and Guacamelee! 2

This Mexican themed action platformer has the player take role of a regular Jose who becomes a mighty luchador to take on the forces of lucha-evil, which are primarily skeletons it seems. I appreciate the good comic style art and a decent sense of humor but the combat is either a bit off, or it didn't gel well with me which is quite possibly because "this game recommends a controller".

Sigh. Why do I bother trying these on my PC? As such the platforming sections (still in the tutorial) were already not do-able for me. Guacamelee 2 humorously starts with what I believe is the final fight of the first game, but this one has some pretty bad stuttering effects where everything freezes for a few seconds a few times a minute. That's just unplayable.

Grime

In this side scrolling platform adventure which smells heavily of the Dark Souls influence, you are a humanoid stone creature with a black hole for a head which you can use to parry/consume other predominantly stone based enemies to make yourself better. You also get weapons that are attuned to strength, dexterity or resonance and perform better the better you are in those categories.

While this game seems to play fine without a controller, it is quite hard for me to get into as you are literally dropped into this alien landscape with no clues of what to do, no quest hook outside the tutorial instructions, and very little story (at the start at least). As such it failed not only to retain my attention but to even grab it in the fist place, and is now uninstalled. If you can't get me to invest in what's happening, then it's not a good game. Not recommended.

Waiting for Duviri: The Frightening Fifth

After all that fighting it's horror time!

Slain - Back from Hell

This pixel platformer beat em up is basically the same plot of Altered Beast, but with a more metal backing track and less impressive graphics and game play. That's kinda sad as Altered Beast was released in 1988.

Rising Hell

Another pixel platformer with a very vertical slant as you need to escape from hell by going UP while taking souls on the way. Interestingly you get a power up shop to spend said souls almost every 30 seconds which is awesome and goes a long way in breaking the tedium of doing the same thing over and over. Now you get to do the same thing over and over... with breaks!

Darkwood

A top down horror survival where you must scavenge for gear and can only see active threats the direction your character is looking. This means checking your pack and crafting lets you see NOTHING. The lack of color is certainly a stylistic choice, but one that makes the game very bland to look at. That said if you like skulking around dangerous places and having to board up your doors and windows at night (because that's when they come for you) and don't mind a non-intuitive interface and clunky combat this might be for you.

Hell is Others

In this top down horror shooter (which has the same visibility constraint as Darkwood), you need to feed your bonsai with blood while doing a bunch of fetch quests in the horrifying city streets prowled by monsters and "others" (other people: because PvP is easier content to create). Luckily bullets grow on plants because you'll need them... if the matchmaking ever finishes loading. LOL. Should be renamed, Hell is Matchmaking.

Doom64

Ever miss the days in a FPS where you didn't need to reload guns that were smart enough to shoot up and down without you looking up or down, where pistol ammo was the same as chaingun ammo, and where pushing on every wall was the way to open secret passages? If so this nostalgia trip is for you. It's just Doom, with new maps.

Ring of Pain

This is a strange game that displays your encounters as a ring of cards and you can either deal with or try skip a card on the left, or a card on the right which rotates the entire ring. Finding the exit card brings you to the next ring and so forth, provided you are still alive by then as the monsters get very dangerous quickly - and you'll probably only be wielding a bent spoon and have rainbow socks for armor when you meet them. Props for a different idea and art style but not one that could hold my interest for long.

Amnesia: Rebirth

It's time to forget again! After Dark Descent and A Machine for Pigs, this new protagonist suffers the same memory loss as the previous ones but her story has much better graphics, much better dynamic lighting and ... much more boring!? What? Yep, a stupid protagonist and way too much walking to make space for narrated exposition doesn't help - to the point that I lost interest in it entirely. If you are looking for short and sharp horror, this isn't it - instead go for the original game with the Justine DLC which remains my favorite, proving again that simple and elegant will always beat something fattened with filler.

Platform Fever 2: Stick to the Ascendant Cave Story

Ascendant

A relaxing rogue-like?

This action platformer sees you fight through randomly rooms of enemies and bosses until you finally ascend. Thankfully it plays pretty quickly and has a very handy map to help you out as any death means restarting from scratch.

Fortunately, the tutorial is really good and lets you practice the numerous abilities available to you. The knock back mechanic is the best though, as it lets you whack enemies into each other or into deadly spikes!

During the course of a run you will also be picking up currency and upgrades to help you out. Despite lacking in depth it is definitely fun and well animated, and worth a look if you are into this sort of thing. I give it two flies out of five.

Insight: Despite having less life to begin with, Theseus is the better choice of the initial two characters.

Stick it to the Man!

That's one way to get super powers...

What starts as an ordinary day in paper town all changes after getting you get hit on the head, waking to find a spaghetti arm that has the ability to grapple onto pins, read minds and influence people with stickers!

Just what stuff in there using your third hand...

I wasn't taken by the art style in this platform puzzler to start with but the well written and well voiced humor got me hooked right away. Nothing in it is overly challenging, though you might need some lateral thinking to solve some bits. I'm surprised I liked it as much as I did - highly recommended, I give it two and a half scary ghost girls out of five.

Insight: Always use green pins as soon as you find them to open up fast travel options.

Cave Story+

Has a pretty good story!

This fun adventure platformer is fantastic and easy for even platforming newbies to enjoy (provided you pick the correct difficulty) and spins a wonderful tale with complete world building. I found myself stuck an entire afternoon simply because I wanted to see how it ended, and like any decent game - there are multiple variations of that.

Some cute characters and some surprising plot!

Game design is also well done in that it introduces you to basic enemies who then slowly gain more abilities as you advance through the areas, and it helps that most are cutesy critters. Boss fights also use mechanics that you actually are being trained for from the mooks prior to their chambers. Definitely a must play, I give this five Curly Braces out of five.

Insight: If you jump and shoot down with a leveled up machine gun, it can act as an additional "booster" to keep you air borne longer.

Lifeless Planet

Lifeless at first glance anyway.

As an astronaut who crash lands on some barren planet you have no choice but to move forward through the more or less one-way path given to you in order to solve a lot of jumping puzzles, evade a few traps, and figure out what the hell is going on.

You aren't the most agile of people in that suit.

While the graphics and story are... ok, the controls are quite frustrating - especially in the latter jump sequences as your character can't pivot on the spot. Worse than this though, is a common complaint my regular readers would see here: a lot of space with nothing to do. Yes, we get it. It's a big planet. Do I really have to run across miles of emptiness in the earlier levels for you to get that point across?

Expect to die a few times - maybe once from surprise but then the next dozen from the poor handling of being in a space suit. Not really a good game but at least its easy to progress through, I give it 1.5 boulders out of 5. That ending also kinda sucks. :P

Insight: In one section where you must pass through a narrow entry that has a death trap waiting for you, you need to get close and drop a rock on it so it triggers for the rock and not for yourself. This is the only part in the game where you need to do this, and it is really annoying.

Hue

A nice idea with bad execution.

In this platform world of grayscale, Hue (you) the protagonist is on a quest to complete a "magic" color ring. Each color you acquire can be set to become the background color, making any foreground item of the same color "invisible". Need to walk through those blue rocks? Set a blue back ground! Need to push the purple box through the orange wall? Orange background!

Its a puzzle of rainbows.

Pretty cool right? Unfortunately this gets terribly repetitive as the puzzles seem to simply repeat, only with more complexity as you have access to more colors. What really killed me though is the game somehow tied the color wheel button to the ESC / Menu key, meaning I could no longer access the game menu. The plus the repetitive nature of the tasks (which feels just like "busy work", you're moving boxes half the time) means I only give this 1 gradient out of 5. Not worth playing.

Insight: You can only swap colors if you are standing in a color neutral space, so leave gaps when you are moving boxes around to do so.

Horace

The robot who could.

This pixel platformer does an incredible job of not just telling an interesting story, but constantly teaches and tests the player while doing so. It also has some really good use of classical music!

I also appreciate the one second "death" cut scene on failure, as it works as a hand wave to keep you playing and to try again. Unfortunately, this hand wave still sets you back at the start of each area, which is a real pain in the larger zones especially when you are forced to start back tracking.

The back tracking begins!

The only time back tracking should be implemented is if it's fun. Unfortunately, in this game (like in most other platformers) it is not. It also gets very dizzying very quickly. An interesting one to try out for sure, and certainly one for platform players. I give Horace 2.5 pieces of junk out of 5.

Insight: Once you have the grav-boots, always remember to try jump to the roof above you if you get stuck.

The Messenger

Intentionally annoying.

In this old-school pixel platformer, you are given some vague directions to deliver a scroll "to the East" and must use your ninja skills to get past all the demons in the way. The game actually has a low difficulty at the start, but as you gain more skills (literally given to you slowly by someone you meet near the start because it doesn't occur to them to give them ALL to the "CHOSEN ONE" ASAP), it eventually stops becoming an option to use them and more of a required mastery to progress.

You "could have" powered up from the start of the game.
Just one of many annoyances.

Checkpoints also get farther and farther apart and the gimmick that revives you from death loves to belittle and mock your skill as a player. After a fair bit of this, the game suddenly becomes a platform explorer - where you need do back track (a lot) to recover key items. At that exact flip-the-script moment did my patience run out for this game as yes, you'll need to go back through all those hard parts. In reverse. That must have saved some design budget huh?

It's a shame this game breaks the number one rule of game making - IT HAS TO BE FUN. Getting players angry and annoyed at your game results in the opposite of that. Thus, I give the Messenger 1 turtle demon out of 5. If you are looking for a platform game, I recommend getting the more encouraging Celeste instead, as it has a better plot, better player encouragement, and all the really hard stuff is optional.

Insight: Against bosses with large hit box targets turn left and right when you attack as a single swing counts as double, ending a fight much faster than usual.

Inside

A game about control.

From the makers of Limbo comes another 2.5D platformer which has better graphics, game play and story. There's also a decent Easter egg hunt throughout the this very messed up place and the ending doesn't really fill one with "achievement" but it is better that Limbo's abrupt one.

Well, that can't be hygienic...

Don't let that stop you from trying it though, as there are lots of great bits on the journey there. Scary bits. The underwater sections and blast chamber come to mind. Even if you aren't a platformer player, the puzzles here aren't too hard as your protagonist has a relatively small move set - and using them fully will get you through everything. I give it three and a half water girls out of five.

Insight: Keep an eye open for those yellow cables!

MMO Design: Enemies should be like Plants

If we're farming we may as well be gardening.

I hate weeds. If left alone they grow and expand and become a lot tougher to remove. It does feel better removing a huge cluster than a single tiny sprig though. Now imagine if we translate that into MMOs. Lots of spawn points on the map but they all start out as weak critters with little loot. Much like there are different types of weed, these don't need to all be the same type though.

Areas that are frequently farmed or tended will spawn more of those weak critters again. Those less frequented will have mobs "grow" into stronger versions. Maybe a lizard becomes a small dinosaur or a spider becomes a bigger spider, and the loot becomes better. Maybe you can't get dragon scales until a lizard evolves that far.

Obviously the map design and available travel modes will play a big part in this setup. On a flat plain with teleporters equally spaced out among the spawns it's likely the player population will simply murder everything fast enough so that nothing will ever "grow" (though the "growth" stages only need to be a matter of minutes in between). In maps like in Guildwars 2 that has secret zones, jumping puzzles, bridges and gates that are only open when set conditions are met, this system might be better as it will force people to venture out and/or to return to zones already done in search of "big game".

Do you think such a system would be good in your (or any) MMO?

[Added to the Design Folder.]

Limbo

Appropriately named for the wrong reason.

This is stylistic/minimalistic(?) black and white puzzle platformer is pretty nifty and despite being on the short side of things has some good head scratching sections, especially if you are aiming to get all the extra easter eggs. For something that doesn't use any text or speech, it starts out pretty decent at teaching the player of their limitations and what things are fatal to your character: pretty much everything. :P

It also does a great job of imbuing dread and fear in the earlier stages, something that is unfortunately lost as you progress where things begin relying more on either prior knowledge or excellent gamer ability. The achievement of making it through with less than five deaths is almost certainly unattainable for a first time player as that method of teaching then practice quickly evaporates later on.

Pretty cool for something just in shades of gray.

I feel that the best bits of it are at the beginning. For some reason it seems to have the most care taken design wise. Towards the end when you are avoiding laser guided bullets and playing with gravity altering buttons it feels more and more like a slower Super Meat Boy experience. Doesn't help that the final bit required me to switch to windowed mode to avoid a game breaking crash and that the actual end is quite sudden. I guess much like the title, it's own spirit was lost in Limbo. Still a fun game but not a great game in my book, and it easily could have been. I give it three terrifying giant spiders out of five.

Skyrim: Teaching them a Lesson

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

The underground cavern was massive, and far below I could see a small fort guarded by a handful of patrolling Thalmor. The bridges leading down had broken and were replaced instead by... lit floating torches? *Sigh* Someone likes jumping puzzles. A few hops, skips and jumps down and I was sniping the clueless guards. One shot, one kill.

Jumping puzzle with invisible platforms. Thanks crazy Thalmor!

The interior wasn't much better defended, and I managed to catch the guard captain and his "adventuring team" sitting at dinner. Shot him in the head and rushed the rest. Half of them were dead before they could even stand and draw weapons. The other half didn't fare much better. In their cheese filled basement below I did the Thalmor a favor by exploding their skeever infestation, then proceeded up stairs and stumbled upon a magic class.

Ultimate stealth: Casting destructive ritual magic in the center of an enemy magic class and not being detected.

After dealing with them and some fire eles, I made my way to the top of the tower to deal with the head honcho only to find, he wasn't there. A note and key suggested he went into the crypts below, and so after a lot of looking I finally found a passage behind one of the many tapestries that led even deeper underground... People just love digging too deep.

Neverwinter Online: Spinward Rise Vigilance Guide

[Part of my Neverwinter Online: Vigilance Quest Guide.]

Welcome to the final zone of Elemental Evil! It is actually more travel friendly than all the previous zones as you unlock each island, however it can also be brutal in the way of combat, especially on the last island. Like before, be careful of pure melee groups of enemies. While it is easy to tell if a bunch of cultists are skirmishers, it is a little less obvious for air archons. Simply count the number of bows / blades they carry to know what to expect.

The repeating quest here is "Howling Hatred". Don't go out of your way to complete that until you reach the second island. There are also jumping puzzles (yay!) which are the easiest tasks to complete on each island. Basically you just have to find the correct jump point and then press and hold space bar while moving forward. If those big chunks of rock can fly through the air, why can't you?

Once at the top, you can either jump back the way you came or simply "fall" down. If you dodge just before hitting the ground, all your vertical momentum is halted and you take zero falling damage. Neat trick huh?

Last thing of note is a personal one here. I didn't go into -any- instanced dungeon as I felt there was enough to do top side so I can't give you any tips for those this time (other than don't go alone). At least it makes it exciting for you right? ;P

No point in changing the color coding now:

Green - Easy and/or fast.
Pink - If there's nothing else to do.
Red - Better to take a break than do these solo.

AVIA LANDING

The first island introduces you to Kenku, Axebeaks, Owlbears and jumping puzzles! Unlike the cramped confines of the Fiery Pit, it's pretty safe to wander around here. There are two entries to the cult barracks, and the Western one next to the Kenku camp is less defended. You can also go in with style by jumping in from a glider tower.

*Harper Evandriel

• Tome of Air - Jumping Puzzle! Starts at the tall western glider tower.
• Learning to Fly - Collect 12 "flight" supplies from Glider towers (drops and pickup), kill 40 cultists
• Air Cult Assault - HE Encounter Silver - self completes sometimes. Odds of getting help to complete is high.
• Elemental Assault - HE Encounter Silver - self completes sometimes. Odds of getting help to complete is medium.
• Air Supply  - Sabotage supplies 6 then 6 airships. Lots of Fighting.
• Twin Breezes - Raid air cult barracks instance

*Skreel Swiftwing

• Birds of a Feather - Rescue 6 kenku eggs. All guarded. Pickup.
• Shiny Metal - collect 10 weapons from kenku (pickup from camp barrels and drop), kill 30
• Kenku - defeat 40 kenku (goes well with two above)
• Fight the Wind - defeat air archons in barracks instance

*Pirri The Swift

• Target - Blackfeather - miniboss kenku. Kill fast as a kenku spawn lives right outside his cave.
• Target - North Wind - miniboss hurricaine cultist. Kill fast he appears next to a large group of cultists.

*Brokar Ironshod

• Flightless Fury - kill 15 axebeaks, 5 owlbears (doesn't mix well with any other quest)
• Lesser Air Runes - Available after your first 16 tasks, mandatory to open teleporter to next island.

WINDCALL TEMPLE

The second island is home to the rather safe cultist binding workshops, and the more dangerous air elemental summoning portals and altar of Yan-C-Bin. The encounters are a little stacked at Yan-C-Bin's place so expect multiple groups during combat there. Fortunately you should only need to do that a few times.

*Harper Evandriel

• Greater Tome of Air - jumping puzzle! Starts from the only glider tower near the workshops!
• Clearing the Air - add incense to 5 shrines at Yan-C-Bin's altar
• Air Cult Assault - HE Silver - self completes sometimes. Low chance for players to assist.
• Elemental Assault - HE Silver - self completes sometimes. Low chance for players to assist. 
• Slaad Summoner - Kill the summoner in the Howling Maw instance

*Skreel Swiftwing

• Order out of Chaos - Gather 15 Slaad control gems from cultists (drops). Can get them from Avia landing - easier fights = faster
• Fiends of Limbo - Kill 40 Slaad at the pool of chaos. Slow to kill, doesn't even count if not in pool. Stupid.
• Feeding the Slaadi - free sacrificial victims in Howling maw instance

*Pirri the Swift

• Target - Windshear - Miniboss air archon - spawns near campfire. Kill fast to avoid archon respawn.
• Target - Glark the Rancid - miniboss death slaad. Tough fight: Hardest of these mini boss assassinations. Expect to continuously evade moving AoE "monster" while fighting him.

*Druid Okobo

• Unbound Anger - release 5 air eles. Easy, you only have to fight cultists to do so.
• Windbreaker - disrupt 5 air ele portals. All guarded.
• Archon Anarchy - kill 35 air archons (goes well with above)

*Brokar Ironshod

• Greater Wind Runes - Available after you finish 16 of this set to unlock teleporter to the final island.

THUNDERHEAD REACH

The final and most dangerous island is home to Cloud Giants who are rather adept at defeating adventurers since they never come alone. You'll get a "Scrying the Skies" mandatory quest to look through four telescopes which doesn't count to your Vigilance Quests but does give you a good idea of how the last island is laid out. The instanced dungeon here is Nimbus Tower which is probably where the Air Prophet is, but after hearing it takes 40 minutes to clear solo I opted to just leave it alone.

*Harper Evandriel

• Grand Tome of Air - jumping puzzle! Starts from low broken tower next to two giants.
• Eyes in the Sky - gather 6 intel reports from cultists (Farm at Avia)
• War Chests - recover 12 war chest treasures (pickup, often guarded by cultists)
• Whispers on the Wind - collect 10 messages from cultists. (drops at a low rate. Best farmed at Avia)
• Air Cult Assault - HE Encounter. Very tough.
• Elemental Assault - HE Encounter. Very tough.
• Tempest in a Bottle - stop rituals in the Nimbus tower instance

*Skreel Swiftwing

• Giantslayer - kill 8 cloud giants. Good news: they mostly come in pairs. Bad news: they mostly come in pairs.
• The Cloud Forges - kill 4 cloud giant smiths. Usually come with air archons.

*Druid Okobo

• Archon Anarchy - slay 40 archons at Thunderhead Reach.
• Lofty Ideas - collect 5 air magic scrolls from cloud giants (drops)
• Cloud Magic - collect air magic lore and win Nimbus Tower instance

*Pirri the Swift

• Target - Rastari - kill cloud giant miniboss, the easiest cloud giant to kill since he comes alone!
• Target - Grackel - kill owlbear miniboss, hits hard with no telegraph. Good practice of controlling AI, has no nearby allies.

Once that is done you just need to collect the Seed of Air, which might look like it's guarded by a giant and a bunch of air archons but if you dash along the left side and go all the way to the edge of the cliff they ignore you long enough for you to collect the seed and get out of there. Once that's done, congratulations - you have finished Elemental Evil! Enjoy your new artifact weapon. Don't forget that if you hit level 70, you can get an off hand artifact weapon too. See Sgt. Knox.. :)

Week #9 - Racing the Clock

Part of my Explorer of Tyria journal - you can find the rest here!

The arrival of the Mad King really side-tracked me this week, and while my first attempt to join in was just an uber lagfest last week it was better this time around as more of his zones got unlocked - spreading the population. After killing a Shadow Behemoth in Queensdale who I stumbled into while looking for a "pumpkin" haunted door the very first bit I participated in was also my favourite - the Mad King's Clock tower, a timed jumping puzzle.

For me - Hours of Fun!

Took me over three hours to finally clear it but it was incredibly enjoyable more so because of all the people I met and talked to while running the thing. I was fortunate enough to also be able to assemble the full story behind King Thorn, explore his labyrinth, fight him during his ascent, play a few rounds of Mad King says, and do each of the event themed pvp related activities of which I found costume brawl to be the funniest (and most fun). There was promise in the Inquisition one though, I hope next time they make it a coop event where people are the villagers looking for environmental weapons and possibly have to protect their village against waves of attackers because that would be better for me. I also took the opportunity to spend 10 gold and buy the whole set of Mad King armor and am laughing now when I summon the flocks of ravens against hordes of orrian scum.

Did manage to progress the main plot too again with DL and Thaldir, cleansing an Ossuary then pushing forward through risen giants and princes with Vigil Tanks and chatting to an avatar of Grenth at the Cathedral of Silence. While it is easier to wander the Cursed Shore as a team, it makes slower going since we kill -everything- in the way. Ofcourse that means my charr warrior didn't progress his path at all - however I still made him explore all the cities and clear out hearts in Queensdale, Wayfarer Foothills, Diessa Plateau and the Plains of Ashford. He finishes this week on level 22.