Re: Blue Prince, after reaching room 46 on day 13, I did about another 45 days figuring out nearly all of the extended stuff, and finally burned out a bit by around day 58. It’s only now, at what I think is finally really really close to having uncovered everything there is to uncover, that I find myself unwilling to do the things that I think are left to do.
Or maybe I’ll go back it sometime.
There’s definitely a lot more to it than just reaching room 46, but the process of getting to room 46 is perhaps the best bit, unless you really love puzzles.
I still have not found a strategy that alleviates the RNG leading me into deadends, missing keys or gems or not having found a lever to pull before getting even close to the antechamber.
My favorite so far is getting quite far to the top, having deactivated the security doors early on, then finding the keycard but never finding the Security Room to set the doors to unlock and not having enough steps to go back to reactivate the doors.
There are certainly some runs before you unlock some things that’ll just dead-end, but I think there are also strategies to easily improve your odds towards a 1 in 4(?) chance of doing a key step even without any unlocks, as a guess. Maybe 1 in 10 chance of just straight up getting to 46 on day 1, but not without knowing everything in advance.
But most people will be expected to just gradually keep on making things permanently easier until just about any run is guaranteed to get to 46, I guess.
Went back to Baldur’s Gate 3 because I never finished it. Made Minsc an arcane archer fighter and he absolutely rocks. (Had been trying him as a 2h sword Hunter and it wasn’t that good).
Hadn’t done the Raphael fight before. Benefits of playing a circle of the land Druid with Moon Druid Jaheira and archer Minsc: I’ll tell you what Raphael doesn’t like, and that’s two Owlbears, an earth elemental and an Arcane Archer absolutely ruining his day while Abjuration Wiz Gale deals with the rest of the room.
Playing a bit of the new Doom (The Dark Ages). Got it on game pass. Retail price seems a bit steep at 120 AUD. For a game that I’m told you can complete in 15 hours. Not even a multiplayer or co-op too get a bit more play out of it. And it only runs on gpus that can do raytracing.
Are you playing tactician or honour? I haven’t tried tactician, but vanilla pretty much anything passes, I think. For honour mode I had to make some really broken builds.
No, I did a load of reading and saw the same 5-10 honour builds everywhere as the only ones that worked (gloomstalker swords bard etc) and I wasn’t interested in playing those, so just finished off the Balanced run I’d started with my first character.
Having said that, the extra hp you get for druid animal forms has to be good at every difficulty. Although I was doing a roleplaying run just to meet Jaheira and Minsc for BG2 nostalgia purposes, having two druids in the party was strong.
After my first one I actually wanted to do a MORE complete run, get all the items etc.
But even a quick playthrough of only Act 1 has a lot of different decisions if you’re playing evil - taking different sides, romance evil characters, choosing the selfish options for power.
Or in my case playing a straight-up Necromancer Wizard with a Spore Druid in the team and drowning the enemy in Many Zombies.
I should say however, that I have a horrible case of ALT-itis, and must make all the different D&D parties.
Ranged specialist party (shoot everything down before it gets close)
Nature themed party
4x clerics (absolutely rocks)
4x barbarians (is hilarious. Barbarians get unique dialogue options and they’re mostly allcaps)
Defensive party (Abjuation Wiz, Ancients Paladin, Bear Barbarian, heavy armour Cleric)
Dark Urge playthrough
Etc
I have that “issue” with Battletech. The game released in 2018, and I have approximately 1,200 hours in it.
I have allied with every major house. There are still two minor houses (Taurians and Canopus), but that will be this or next playthrough.
Started with all tanks.
Started with only power armour.
Started with Periphery mechs…
I love Baldur’s Gate 3, but the level 12 (edit: sorry, I forgot it was 12, not 20… even worse!) cap keeps me from going back. Act 3 is just too much of a grind without the ability to gain more power.
Battletech is so good, haven’t played it in years, but looked at the DLCs once in a while. Just didn’t hear super good things about them. But didn’t they include an open career mode?
I am a huge fan of Battletech Advanced 3062, but it’s also the only one I have tried (I think I tried Roguetech once?). I also have all the DLC, but the community mod BTA:3062 is sublime. Adds hundreds of mechs, tanks, VTOL, power armour, and the like (from across the Inner Sphere and Clans!), as well as about a dozen new mission types. No new maps, but the DLCs add another 5-6 total so there are about 30 maps to play with.
Oh, and you can run 2 squads of up to 6 mechs/vehicles each, plus up to 4 squads of power armour (but you will usually stop once you are in the 45-tonne-average range, because infantry gets stomped by big boys… Elementals are still terrifying, but they always die eventually, so they’re great as OpFor but you don’t want to pay all those funeral costs…). And, with upgrades, up to 1,200 drop tonnage.
One of the DLCs is very good (adds a new campaign, which is quite strong), the other two are fine. All three are incorporated in BTA:3062.
The Open Career Mode is what I play now. The whole Inner Sphere is available, hundreds of worlds and lots of additional factions (Word of Blake, Comstar, Rasalhague, St. Ives… and of course a dozen Clans).
My usual plan is to slowly make my way to Clan Space, punch Jade Falcons in the face until I have a few Timber Wolves and Gargoyles, and then rampage through the Inner Sphere like a child at the controls of a steamroller.
