Today's game playing was Frustrating and I am remembering why I do not like the Shadow World in the DLC.
I am trying for a specific achievement so I know I have made it harder than it has to be, but also, I dropped the difficulty down to Casual to try and figure out where to go and what to do and it is still kicking my arse.

Everyone needs to have Death Ward on, but they aren't high enough level to do that for everyone at once, let alone keep doing it long enough to get through.
So then there's a lamp that mitigates some of that problem, but, also kicks off fights that mean you can't do that one achievement.
And you still get your butt kicked by soul eaters if you don't got Death Ward.

I can't find a map that shows you anything useful or instructions that are remotely helpful
and I just replayed the same few minutes Many times while people got dead a lot.

This is not a style of play I am enjoying.

Pathfinder is so much more difficult if you don't get enough money. And the more difficult it is the more you'll have spent all your money on healing potions so you're just very behind on gear.

Very much makes you aware why people would follow the Knight Commander. They are doing so much better than these guys.

Relistened some 7th Doctor Big Finish today.
7 & Ace in Assassination Game I realised I had put on my relist because it mentions The Light, who also turn up in a Torchwood audio and arguably are referenced in a Torchwood book. Except in Torchwood they are not much like this. So probably it's more like when you get two secret societies called Watchers, because no one is trademarking their secret society. Someone wants to claim to be a major concept like Light, that's up to them. ( Read more... )
Other than that it was a lot of politics and mind control and running around. Didn't hate it. Didn't like its ideas though.

In Torchwood it's simpler, the Light introduces itself as Hell. Extradimensional conspiracy to get in. Still creepy infiltration and mind control stuff but without the mind controlled babies.


Actually all three of today's listens involved mind control stuff, which always seems to me a lazy shortcut. Persuade us someone could be persuaded or go home. But they did okay on that in the Dalek one.

7 and Mel in
We Are the Daleks
and
The Warehouse.

We Are The Daleks was released in 2015 and set in the 80s. ( Read more... )

So there were good bits and not so good bits. Reacting to the Daleks as if they're just another trading block and deciding to oppose them on the same grounds they decided to oppose the EU is funny and an interesting angle. But mind control takes the pressure off the problem from the story title. It makes it a dumb sci fi problem solved by moving the transmitter, instead of a lot of moral choices.
But that does make it solvable in the space of one adventure, so, can see what they were going for there.



The Warehouse was one of those that takes ordinary words like Delivery and respins the story around them not meaning quite the same thing there as here. Deliverance and religion get attached to a big warehouse for fulfilling online orders. ( Read more... )
After relistening this one I went back to my existing listing in my catalog and gave it an extra star. It's still not maximum stars but I think I must have been in a bad mood listening the first time. Liked it.



Liked today pretty well.
Sunday tasks achieved. Lots of nice foods to choose between. Plenty of quiet time to listen.
Pretty good day.

Today I played WotR on Core difficulty from waking up at Defenders Heart through to actually defending it, because then I could do Prelate's Nemesis, which I missed on my other Core plays.
It only pinged after I quit and loaded it again, but I figured it would.

Defender's Heart takes like 42 rounds. And most of them are boring, because once you have web grease pit cast on the gate nothing gets in, and Camellia can Entangle the streets all around so nothing much climbs in and when it does it stands there waiting for your arrows. ... this leads to a certain amount of entangle web greasing your own team. Today it went extra wrong because Nenio who cast half the spells got caught in them so she couldn't cancel them. Lots of running around to fix that. Still, everyone on my team and at least the vast majority of the defenders survived the fight.
The Nabasu fight goes great if Ulbrig Grabs them and goes very very poorly if he does not. So it took a couple of tries. Worked though.

Core remains more frustrating than fun. A sensible me would stop chasing achievements and go back to playing the difficulty I actually like.

... a sensible me would play far fewer hours in one day.

... unlikely...

https://seanharry.com/home/flux/
if I was a person who left the house any more I would so want to go to this one
13, 9, Yaz, Toshiko, Ianto, and Rhys
and more spaces left TBA on the Guests pictures.

Today I relistened to The Doomsday Quatrain, a 7th Doctor audio, because I was feeling too something to sit and read. But then I was feeling too fiddly to sit and listen so I started playing Wrath of the Righteous again, because there's an Achievement I skipped on Core and I'll have to replay past defending Defenders Heart to have another go at it. But then the audio finished and I didn't start another one and I got stuck playing Wrath on a difficulty I do not find fun replaying the bit I have done So Many Times so I was actually bored. And then it was morning.

Somewhere in there I formed the impression that The Doomsday Quatrain doesn't have much going on except The Twist, and that the elements of the story do not support each other, so it's kind of three things in a sack. Okay, the racism and violence parts from the two sets of aliens fit together. I just never did see why the guy on the cover was in it. Maybe I missed the good bits by replaying the game. But mostly I was not fascinated.

I'm also rereading the Murderbot series. It's action with an unusual and surprising protagonist with a lot of the usual signifiers of Hero who actively refuses a lot of the other parts. It gets blown up a lot, thinks it is bad at its job, and considers its fighting style to be Throw Self At Other SecUnits and see which one is repairable after. It keeps saying it would rather watch media but doing complicated corporate espionage and client retrieval. It's about asserting personhood in societies where slavery is normalised and the well meaning neighbours are often clueless. There's a lot going on there. Good to read. Shall go see if I read more this morning.