I want to thank people who were talking about Blue Prince because I was able to recommend it to a friend who loves puzzles. she’s enjoying it a lot.

I’ve been doing stuff in both Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero, but on the non-gacha front, I’ve started Disco Elysium. I haven’t gotten very far but I’m really enjoying it even if not knowing how bad I’m messing up makes me a bit anxious. I picked Inland Empire as my main skill(?) too.

otherwise, I’m planning on playing more Fields of Mistria, now that they’ve updated again. I love that game with a passion, and I can’t wait to see what more they add to it. I thought Stardew Valley was as good as it got, and while Fields of Mistria doesn’t have multiplayer (and that’s okay!) it ticks so many boxes for me, like for example, the shoujo laughs from Juniper spark so much joy. I don’t enjoy the mines in SDV, but in FoM, I definitely do!

So I’m pretty new to self hosting as well, but I use Tailscale. They also have the option of working with Mullvad, though I’m not 100% on how that works. Tailscale is a VPN itself, and it’s allowed me to access all of my self hosted stuff everywhere, including on my phone. It’s been really nice, though I understand people might not want to use corporate methods.

Gluetun to my knowledge, when I use it, is just for my qbittorrent stack to access my VPN.

If you don’t want to use something like Tailscale (there’s also a self hosted option called Headscale, and others like Zerotier and I think Netbird?) there’s opening ports and using reverse proxies. I would be really careful about that one, but hopefully I’ve given you some options to look into.

Oh boy my favorite game series!

Admittedly the ones I’ve played the most are 3, 4 and 5, although I’ve tried 2 a couple times a while back. I wouldn’t mind doing it again, I just don’t remember why I kept bouncing off of it.

3 is my favorite, and admittedly I played it at a younger age than I probably should have, as a teenager. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it after getting the ending spoiled to me online, but I always had a fondness for the game and I preordered Reload as soon as I could. I will finish it this time. Mitsuru my love.

4 is my second favorite. Kanji and Naoto in particular really always stood out to me and I used to go by Kanji online for a long time. I made a character who spun into an oc with just traits inspired by him too, who is one of my favorites to write.

5 is fine but my least favorite of the bunch, even though I know a lot of people who only like that one. I felt the pacing was poor and the escalation of the severity of what the adults did wasn’t really going in order. I also didn’t feel any real attachment to the characters, in sharp contrast to the other two games I’ve played.

It still irks me every time a teacher and student romance comes up, or the times the games have been phobic. I wish we had the option to maybe pick between a masc/fem/androgynous looking protag and slap our own pronouns on them and romance who we wanted out of the options regardless of those selections, but I know that’s not ever the game Persona is gonna be. I’m happy they included content warnings at least in Reload.

Man, I love her music so much! Thank you for reminding me of it, I’m gonna go give her a listen again.

The Tetris cover is one of my favorites. I also have a soft spot for the Pokemon and Super Mario Bros one.

I…went back to Path of Exile.

It was originally just to see how things had changed, but a lot changed and it’s very different. Not that it answered all of my personal issues with it, but I resigned myself to using a build guide. I’ve been enjoying it, surprisingly. Enough that, when I haven’t been out of the house, I usually play it daily.

Progress is going really slow because I’m not that good at the game anymore. But I also made loot filter sounds that spark joy, and I’ve been managing even if I’d like to be at endgame. I’m on act 6 out of 10.

My partner is also playing but doesn’t have a lot of experience. So I’ve been trying to help, which makes it more enjoyable to me because I like to teach.

Not sure if I’m fully going back yet. But I like the league mechanic and am having a good time.

I decided to try Zenless Zone Zero. I’m already a Honkai Star Rail player and I used to play Genshin Impact, although I gave up Genshin because I was irritated with how they handle story and characters. I originally wasn’t going to try ZZZ, but thought it wouldn’t hurt anything. Worst case scenario, I drop it and go back to solely playing HSR.

I’m really enjoying ZZZ’s combat, even if I don’t feel like I’m doing it “right” or optimally yet. The story is nice so far, I love the Persona vibes it gives me, especially Persona 4. Wasn’t expecting that. I got the guaranteed S rank character I wanted (Lycaon!) and I’m skipping the first limited character because… I really don’t like the maid outfit thing. It wasn’t for me on Noelle in Genshin, and it’s not for me here. I love her design otherwise and she’s a shark girl with a shark tail, which is super neat. She has a casual outfit I like a lot. Just. Cannot. Do. The. Maid. Thing.

I might pull on the second half banner. But I haven’t met the character yet so I have no idea if I want her either. It’s a bit frustrating waiting, because my teams are kinda a mess due to lack of characters. But it’s okay. The story comes first and that has my interest so far.

I watched a friend play Sea of Stars and really enjoyed it! I hope it’s a good adventure for you the rest of the way.

Something to note if you’re in it for combat, the difficulty plateaus a bit towards the middle/end. And if you like this one, their other game, The Messenger, is tied to it lore wise, although it’s a different genre.

Also the music slaps.

I feel you. I dislike most of the pyro characters honestly! and also, oof, Thoma requires ascension materials from a special huge questline island in Inazuma. he’s kind of a pain to level. the pyro four star I like the most is a tie between Gaming and Yanfei. Yoimiya is my favorite 5 star one, and she works well with Thoma, actually.

you can probably guess who some of my favorites are based on profile pic and banner (eventually, anyway, they’re both in Inazuma.)

who do you have your eyes on that you want, anyone besides Diluc and Shenhe? I don’t know what the banners are currently.

yep! here it is on the steam workshop and I hope it helps you out! if you want the video series too, I can shoot that your way, it doesn’t really spoil anything and I didn’t know 95% of the mechanics even existed.

live and drink friend!

genshin is surprisingly good (I was also wow’d when I started playing), but ultimately I found the story lacking in a lot of key places for me (justice for Inazuma’s story especially!) which ultimately led me to quit for now. I played for two years, and have a pretty well established account. however, I have really bad fatigue issues and wasn’t able to keep up as well with the adventuring requirements, such as having to unlock chests for free primogems.

I think playing it until you’re tired of the grating parts is a totally valid way to experience it. especially because it’s free!

like the other comment, I tried Honkai: Star Rail and honestly I love it so much more. it is turn-based combat, but I feel like the writing is better, and they treat their characters better storywise (in contrast to genshin, which imho the hangouts for four stars are not comparable to the story quests some four stars get.) it’s my gacha game of choice, and while I’ve had my nitpicks, I have those with every game I play pretty much. I also agree it’s more f2p friendly.

these are all just my opinion tho! I hope you enjoy your time with the game and that you get the characters you want. may your pulls be blessed!

I’m absolutely going to do my best to understand and not copy/paste without doing that. I don’t like doing things to my computer that I don’t know what is happening, so that makes sense to me! I already ran into that issue plenty of times with my servers, so I’m trying to go all in now.

thank you!

thank you for the resources! I think I have VeronicaExplains noted down already, but the other ones are new to me. I’ll give them a look!

thank you for this!

I too have brain fog and memory issues in general. I’m glad to hear that systems seem simple to understand but have the high ceiling, I love that kind of thing. I just need to push on I think and try LE again, when I get my desktop back.

what is your class of choice in LE?

story is usually an important part for me! it’s one part of PoE that never impressed me. I might still check out Diablo 4, and I’m glad you laid out a lot of things for me. most of the stuff I could find online was still harping on previous issues that I now know some have been addressed.

funnily enough, I used to love running “lab” (I believe it’s short for “labyrinth” but my memory is shot and it’s been a long time) in Path of Exile, which was running through traps to rush to a boss. they nerfed that route shortly before I quit, too. but you got a lot of rewards at the end that had the potential to be good, and a blessing on existing equipment that you picked. a shame that boss farming in Diablo 4 isn’t as fun, but it’s something I’ll keep in mind when a sale rolls around.

sorting was probably one of the things I disliked the most in PoE, I could never grasp what was worth using or selling that well. goes hand-in-hand with my inability to roll with theorycrafting builds, so to hear Diablo 4 eases that some is nice.

this looks amazing, thank you!

hey, sorry this is coming late! thank you for this. I was already looking at their documentation (I have a few times, as well as read their discourse forum) and joined their discord in preparation.

I think this is a super good tip because I have been trying to parse what all I’d need to get familiar with before I touch anything install wise. I knew about the pinning a deployment thing, but I didn’t fully understand how, so thank you for laying it out for me!

ayyy new thread new game!

well kind of. I’m actually playing Caves of Qud a bit, now that I understand it more (I did end up installing the tutorial mod, thank you for that! and I did watch a small non-spoilery tutorial series as well) and I’m having a really good time. I started out with a character the tutorial recommended and have been fighting fish to level up. planning on taking on the first big quest tho!

sadly I’m stuck on an old gaming laptop that doesn’t really like to play games, so I can’t jump into all the games I want to. even my gacha game I play is pushing it, although I still login every day and do my required stuff. the laptop just gets extraordinarily hot. it handles Caves of Qud, because ascii, but I was wanting to jump in to Elden Ring at some point (I don’t have the DLC, does it make new runs more exciting at the beginning or is it a later thing?) and realized it’s not an option I think due to my laptop’s specs and general grumpiness.

so I’ve been wrestling with Borderlands 3 to get it to work, and my partner and I have been playing that for a bit. I love the BL series, although 2 was imho the best for writing. the humor still annoys me sometimes but I started playing the series with the first one when it came out, as a kid, so it has a special place in my heart. my partner hasn’t really ever played first person shooter games, so Destiny 2 (when we played) and Borderlands was their introduction.

unfortunately I am in it for the grinding, progression and crafting a build (usually something off the wall when I get confident.)

that said, I do love Hades! I’ve been wanting to get the second one despite it being in early access so hopefully that’ll be in my library soon.

I don’t think I was very good at the start at making my own builds in PoE, I think the tectonic slam build magically functioned somehow despite that, hahaha. I do miss the game, I played for a really long time. but it’s not for me anymore.

I’m glad to hear that Last Epoch is still going strong with new stuff. I backed in on Kickstarter long ago because I wanted more PoE-like games, so I’m glad it’s succeeding. I’m hoping that giving it another go will make it stick, because it being the “in-between” sounds like it’ll be just right.

honestly I wasn’t going to watch these and then I started to and now I have to watch all of them. Jauwn is genuinely entertaining and that’s always a nice find for me.

thank you for sharing!