How I make Stardew Valley fun

 

 Welcome back, my beautiful freaks, to Sean's Workshop!

I know it's been a while since I posted here, but that's not intentional. Work and life and all that. But I have a subject to talk about today. I've seen a ton of videos on Youtube on how to make the best of Stardew Valley. Things like how to guides for the Community Center in Year 1, how to make out friendship with all the villagers, how to make money, etc. And while this is a guide, it's not one of those types.

No, this is a type of guide for players like myself, who don't really like farming sims or minecraft like games. Resource gathering, fishing, crafting, etc...none of these interest me, but I really want to see more than the first two weeks of the game, because it is SO good after you get some skills and crafting recipes under your belt. 

Now, full disclosure, I have several mods that help me cheat. I'll list them here and explain why I use them, if they require explanation.

1. CJB Cheats menu. I'm not a fan or the fishing minigame, how slow you move, having to worry about hay for the animals, and a few others things. I use this mod to get around the stuff I don't like.

2. CJB Item Spawner. I don't like resource gathering, which is the biggest reason I couldn't play for more than an hour when I tried out Minecraft. So I spawn in items for stuff I need. However, one restriction I place on myself is that I NEED to get at least one of an item, or more if it's plentiful, before I start spawning them in. 

3. CJB Show Item Sell Prices. This was critical during my Joja run on my Riverland farm, since I needed to know the cash crops in order to unlock the community upgrades fastest.

4. Gift Taste Helper. This saves time on going back and forth between the game and the wiki.

5. NPC Map Locations. Trying to find someone on their birthday can be a pain, so this is why I use this.

6. Babies take after spouse. 

7. Part of the Community. I saw this on Youtube, and I liked the idea that you could get approval from people if you talk to their friends and relatives. Makes Pelican Town more "real".

8. Content Patcher. Several mods require this, like the "babies take after spouse" one, as well as a couple after this.

9. Slime Hutch Winery. Gives me a reason to actually build the Slime Hutch. This mod requires Content Patcher.

10. Spawn Monsters. I really don't like hunting for specific monsters for the sake of the completion, so I just spawn them in on the floors that they'd show up on in order to fight them.

11. Ellie's Ideal Greenhouse. This adds specific places for fruit trees, as well as a few dozen more spots to grow crops.

I also used to use the Seasonal Villager Outfits, but that mod went out of date and when I tried to download it again, the creator took it down to rework it as a SMAPI mod. I tried another mod like it, but I didn't like how it changed the shape of the head, so I'm just waiting on the paradigmnomad rework.

Now, I've also got some tips and tricks I've found that make the game fun for me.

1. Never try to finish the Community Center in Year 1. I know this goes against what a LOT of Youtubers do, but there's an advantage of waiting; Kent. Kent does not show up until Spring 1 in Year 2. So waiting to complete the Bulletin Board bundle gives you a boost to his approval. Between this and how much he loves going to the movies, you should have what you need to cap his friendship before the end of Year 2.

2. Get rabbits for your Coop, and keep them. Rabbits are a great resource. Between the rabbit's foot being a favorite gift of the majority of the villagers (save for Penny.), this is a great resource for your far. 

3. Avoid the sheep. Yes, they give wool 1 day faster (2 days if you're a Shepherd), but that's all they give. Rabbits give both wool and rabbit's feet, so they are a much better resource.

4. If you hate the mines, go with the mushroom cave. I hate spelunking more than I have to, which is why I have both the item spawner and cheat menu, but since I have my "no spawning items until I've collected them naturally at least once" rule, two mushrooms are completely out of reach unless I get lucky. And since fruits can be grown naturally, I need the mushroom cave for the red and purple mushrooms.

5. If you want to try the Riverland map, take the Joja Path, then go for perfection AFTER unlocking Ginger Island. There's very little land on the Riverland map for you to both farm and build, so space is at a premium for crops. If you want animals, fishing ponds, places for the obelisks, sheds, a mill, a silo and a place for the clock, you're eating valuable farming space you could use to grow Community Center crops. But if you focus on cash crops, you've got a LOT more space for them, and that will mean you're getting access to both the Greenhouse and Ginger Island faster. 

6. Have fun. Whether you mod or not, whether you take my advice or not, if you're not having fun, you won't want to play.

I'll post something again when the mood strikes me. This blog is very much a hobby for me, so just keep that in mind and stay beautiful freaks!

Mass Effect Retrospective 12: Legendary Edition thoughts

 Welcome back, my beautiful freaks, to Sean's Workshop!

I've finally Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, so here are my thoughts on what's the same and what's different.

First off, what's the same. The engines for each game is the same, quests are the same, companions are the same, the way the romances work are the same (for better or worse in the case of ME1), and the classes are the same for the game you are playing. It's still Mass Effect as you know it, but better in most cases.

As for the differences, well, some games are more different than others.  I'm going to front load this analysis by saying the graphics are better across the series as you'd expect for a 2021 remaster of a game series that initially came out in 2007. So, full 4k support, better textures, etc. Also, all DLC is available (save for Pinnacle Station, which they lost the source code for) for the full trilogy.  This includes the Extended Cut ending changes in Mass Effect 3, making it the standard way you experience the trilogy's end.  Some of the achievements have been pruned, removing redundant ones and taking away the hardcore and weapon kills achievements in ME1.

First off, Mass Effect 1. The soldier is no longer a required run for your first time through, something I didn't realize until I looked at the achievements and saw that the weapons ones were gone. And the reason for this is something that has been well published; all classes can use all guns with the accuracy of ME2 and 3 from the start. The biggest reason to play the soldier in this one is that you can make ALL your guns better, as opposed to only some better for the infiltrator and vanguard, or at all for the adept, engineer and sentinel. This creates a bit of a disconnect later, which I'll get to.

Also, the grenade button was moved, and a sprint was added for outside combat. So you should familiarize yourself with the controls on the ship or in the early parts of Eden Prime before entering battle.

Second biggest change is the character creator. We are now using the Mass Effect 3 character creator in both 1 and 2, so there will be no surprises when you load your character into 3, bugs aside.  But what comes along with that character creator is the ME3 femshep is now the standard for the whole trilogy.

And the third biggest change to ME1 is the Mako. First off, you no longer lose xp for killing with the Mako, so you're able to fight as intended with the Mako. This is important, since Thresher Maws now work differently. In the Thresher Maw fights, they have those pop up tentacles that you see in the ME2 Grunt loyalty mission boss fight, and when they're low health, they chase you around the arena. This makes the fight much more intense, making them a real threat and, if you're the Sole Survivor, much more scary.

The second major change for the Mako is the maneuverability is better. It is slightly less bouncy, and while it can still "turtle on its back" if you're not careful, it's less likely to happen. In fact, I only turtled once in my first playthrough. 

The Mako also took the boosters from the Andromeda APC, meaning you can go faster when you want to and can get up the sides of cliffs faster.

As for Mass Effect 2 and 3, they remain mostly unchanged, at least according to what I saw in terms of gameplay. They play the same as they did previously, though the disconnect I mentioned previously pops up in ME2. You see, since ME1 originally restricted the sentinel, engineer and adept to pistols and gave the sniper rifle to the infiltrator and shotgun to the vanguard, none of the classes had a rapid fire weapon in ME2 outside the soldier, so they granted the submachine gun to all but the soldier. However, since ME3 removes the weapon restrictions (though they replace it with the weight system), ME2 exists in a strange place in the Legendary Edition trilogy, as its the only one with real weapon restrictions. You can still choose a new proficiency on the Collector Ship, but as was before, that is halfway through the game. Which is why there are mods for the PC version to remove the weapon restrictions, making the trilogy more consistent.

Also beginning in ME2, all the DLC armors and weapons are now purchasable at shops throughout the game. That means that powerful guns like the Eviscerator and geth shotguns, the Phalanx pistol and the Kestral armor set have to be bought before you can use them. This was made to rebalance the game so the difficulty is as its supposed to be.

And for Mass Effect 3, you get a lot of the same; all DLC available, DLC gear has to be bought, etc. But the two biggest changes are the removal of the multiplayer (which was done to make a superior single player experience), and a change to Galactic Readiness. Since a lack of playing multiplayer removes the need for the Effective Military Strength (EMS) due to not playing multiplayer halving the strength of war assets, Legendary Edition simply makes all war assets worth their full rating all the time. And while this could be considered worrisome to returning players, if you play the game as intended, you'll have more then enough assets to get access to all three endings.

So yeah, the Mass Effect Shepard Saga is very much improved. If you're playing it for the first time, you'll definitely enjoy yourself. And if you're a returning player like myself, you'll enjoy it as well.

So for now, stay beautiful freaks!

Dark Souls Remastered Rain the Deprived final build

 Welcome back, my beautiful freaks, to Sean's Workshop!

So I've calculated what the closest thing to a final build for my DS Remastered character, Rain the Deprived, would be. Thanks to the build character over at https://mugenmonkey.com/, I've figured out how to allocate my stats for my new game end game character. I'm still working toward that end, but here's her stats. This is mostly so I've got something online to keep me to a specific build as I move through the game.

SL 133 Deprived

Vitality: 50
Attunement: 16
Endurance: 40
Strength: 40
Dexterity: 18
Resistance: 11
Intelligence: 20
Faith: 20

RH1: Greatsword of Artorias (Requires a +10 broken straight sword or straight sword hilt and Soul of Sif to make)
RH2: Black Bow of Pharis
LH1: Grass Crest Shield
LH2: Ascended Flame +5

Armor:
Elite Knight Helm
Elite Knight Armor
Elite Knight Gauntlets
Elite Knight Leggings

Rings:
Ring of Favor and Protection
Cloranthy Ring

Spells:
Great Fireball
Fire Whip
Firestorm
Great Combustion
 

These won't be her final stats, as I play offline, so I'll go higher and higher with her strength, dexterity and resistance so I can cakewalk the ending the best I can(still paying attention to what I'm doing, since you know, this IS Dark Souls, and you can't truly out level your enemies without the skill to back it up.) My intelligence and faith are at 20 for the sake of the Greatsword of Artorias.

Okay, that's it for now. I'll post the final pictures for this build on both here and Deviantart. Until then, stay beautiful freaks!

Dark Souls Remastered: Why the Deprived is the best class for new players

 Welcome back, my beautiful freaks, to Sean's Workshop!

Once again, I know I'm late to the party, but I've been really into Dark Souls Remastered, and since there are people like me who are still picking up the game even now, I'm going to give my two cents on this. 

The Deprived is the best class for new players, in spite of what experienced players say. And there are a ton of good reasons for why this is true.  In fact, some of those reasons are why other players say this class is a "challenge for experienced players".

You cannot rely on armor.  Armor in Dark Souls Remastered is different than armor in the two games that come after. Yes, you gain defenses to physical, elemental and magical damage, but you're still going to take a lot of damage from anybody. The biggest thing about armor is poise, a stat that makes it less likely you're going to get staggered from enemy attacks. But on a first character, during the first 2-8 hours of the game (depending on how much you're dying), you don't want to rely on poise. You want to know how to block and roll, and the deprived offers opportunities to learn how to do both, since you have to do both.

Shields are important, but not all shields are created equal. The Deprived starts with the plank shield, a small shield. It has pretty good resistances to physical, ranged, elemental and magic damage, but it doesn't have 100% physical damage resistance, meaning you're going to take chip damage from oncoming melee hits from enemies. And even though you get a better shield in the Undead Burg early, you learn all you need to know about shields in a relatively safe environment, where you have abundant bonfires and estus available.

Weapons have wind up. The club is a good starting weapon; it has the third highest damage output for a starter weapon, with only the mace and battle ax doing more. And while it is relatively quick in attack, the club has start up lag that you need to account for. There are weapons faster than the club and there are weapons that are slower than the club, but the club give you what you need to make the decision of what kind of weapons you want in the future.

Keep on rolling. The Deprived is a class where you have to roll to survive, at least until you bet a better shield and some armor. Luckily, since its equip load is so low, the Deprived has the fastest roll in the game. This will get you through the Undead Asylum and part way through the Undead Burg until get your hands on the Hollow armor pieces. And if you return to the Undead Merchant (male) in the early areas of the Burg, you can buy some chain mail armor, both of which drop you down to a mid roll, which is the roll the game is built around. And if you're getting a fat roll, you need to either buff your endurance or take off heavy bits of armor, because a fat roll can get you killed.

Stats are for upgrades. And the biggest thing I like about the Deprived is that you are lacking in nothing. With 11s in all your stats at the start, you have access to 1 attunement slot and the intelligence and faith to use basic sorceries and miracles. You also have some good stats to start out with for strength, dexterity or quality builds, and a good amount of stamina and health to build upon. And resistances, the one stat nobody builds on, starts at a good level too. 

So yeah, the game starts out tougher for the Deprived, but before long, that difficult start doesn't matter for anything. My Deprived character, Rain, is about to head into Blight Town after finishing off the Depths, and I've built her into a low level quality/sorcery build. She's using a claymore, a long bow, and some weapon buffing sorceries as I build up her intelligence for higher tier stuff.

Rain the Deprived

Now, obviously I'm not an expert. But thanks to both walkthroughs and the lessons I've learned from playing Rain, I've gotten farther as the Deprived class than I've gotten with any other.

But for now, stay beautiful freaks, and don't you dare go Hollow!

Dark Souls Remastered: Why I like it despite not liking the hardest modes in games

 

Welcome back, my beautiful freaks, to Sean's Workshop!

Okay, so I know I'm late to the party. To quote CircletoonsHD, "I'm so late that it seems like I never got an invite to the party, showing up to Dark Souls' house a decade later with a party platter." But, as explained previously, I didn't have the hardware nor funds to play it.

But now that I've played it, I get the appeal. And unlike early adopters, I have access to a decade of information in the form of wikis and youtube walkthroughs and build ideas so I won't get lost and so I understand what to do and where to go.

Which is why I'm doing this entry and one major mission statement; Dark Souls Remastered is great and fair. Let me explain.

Dark Souls isn't hard. The rules of Dark Souls are different than most games. There's no such things as "invincibility frames", so things like rolling aren't used to avoid damage at the last second that games like Wind Waker and Devil May Cry allow. The combat is slow paced and everybody follows the same rules. Everyone has the same rules regarding wind up and attack, from the player character to the common enemies to all the bosses, everybody has the rules. You can parry, and you can be parried. You can backstab, and enemies can backstab. 

Dark Souls is built around its difficulty. There's no damage sponges in Dark Souls. Yes, bosses have greater health than you, as to higher "level" enemies. But everybody plays by the same rules regarding attacks and dodging. Even the most difficult bosses require you to fight the same way; blocking, dodging and striking, and then getting out of the way when they get ready to attack.

Dark Souls tells you how to play through the gameplay. Yes, there are a few tutorials in the early game that teach you the controls, as you'd expect from a modern game, but all the battles, all the boss fights, how to navigate the world, all taught through gameplay. For example, the Undead Asylum teach you how to fight human sized enemies and how to handle boss fights with the Asylum Demon. The Undead Burg teaches how to handle the ambushes and how to use items in battle, and the gargoyles teach you to handle fighting two bosses at once. Blight Town teaches you how to handle poison and toxic damage, and you're rounded out with a skill check with Ornstein and Smough. And if you can beat Ornstein and Smough, you're capable to handling the rest of the game. 

Dark Souls is robust in how it handles classes/builds. Now, yes, you have classes that determine how you start the game. The Warrior is a different experience than the Sorceror or Pyromancer in the beginning, but as you level up, you can build anything you want. Want a giant weapon wielding magic user? Go ahead. A katana wielding cleric? Done. The possibilities are endless.

That said, I ended up creating and abandoning several characters before I settled on the one for my first playthrough; a bandit with the master key that I intend to make a Giant Dad(yes, I'm going for the meme. Sue me, it looks fun!)

You can experience as much or as little of the story as possible. Dark Souls has a massive amount of lore, but very little of it is necessary to see. You get a goal at the beginning, to ring the bells of awakening and then go link the fire, but beyond that, all the story is in the item descriptions. You don't need to talk to anyone. But if you do? Well, there are entire youtube channels dedicated to the lore. My favorites are Vaatividya, The Ashen Hollow and the Silver Mont. 

And finally, a personal note; 

Dark Souls is a good allegory for living with depression.

This videos what actually made me interested in Dark Souls in the first place. Without rehashing the entire video, Dark Souls shows you how the whole world is against you and is dead set on destroying you. And speaking from experience with living with Bipolar Depression, I know how that feels like. Every failure feels like a quiet death, setting you back to where you started. 

And yet, you keep getting back up. You keep trying again, and again and again. You push forward, heading to the next bonfire, which is a small victory in and of itself, all so you can spend your souls and move forward stronger. You only go hollow if you give up. You build upon those who came before you, learn from their mistakes as well as yours, and gain strength from them lifting you up.

But we see those who succumb due to losing their purpose, their reason for going on. The Crestfallen Warrior, once you ring both bells of awakening, lost his purpose in mocking any undead who come through Firelink Shrine. Siegmeyer of Catarina loses his purpose when you save his life again and again, and goes hollow in Ash Lake, to be slain by his daughter. Vince and Nico of Thorolund go hollow when their ward, Reah, is trapped. Reah herself goes hollow when she teaches you all her miracles. Laurentius of the Great Swamp goes hollow if you show him Izalith Pyromancies and he can't find Quelana. 

All of these people show that, if you lose hope, lose your purpose, you lose yourself and die a little death. But if you don't lose hope in yourself, if you don't give up, you can succeed where others have failed. 

And that's what battling depression is; you keep fighting, or you lose a bit of yourself to darkness. And if you give up entirely, you "go hollow", not enjoying anything you did before, and even possibly contemplating taking your life. 

I've been hollow; I've had days in the past when I didn't know why I got up in the morning, when I just floated through my day, just going through the motions. But I did just that; I kept getting up. Kept moving through the day, looking for a purpose. Many of these blog entries were written when I was hollow, trying to find something, anything to make me feel whole again.

I still don't have a purpose today. But thanks to people carrying me when I was down and the efforts of my doctors, I'm no longer hollow. I've regained my humanity, as is the mechanic in Dark Souls. And like the mechanic where, the more humanity you have, the easier it is to find items, I see more opportunities ahead of me. I live knowing that sometimes, the quest for meaning is the quest to keep a man going.

So yeah, I love Dark Souls. It kicks my ass every time I boot it up, but does so in a way that is not cheap, and that every time I take damage, it's my fault. Just as a difficult game should be.

But for now, goodbye and stay beautiful freaks!

Changes with stories

 Welcome back, my beautiful freaks, to Sean's Workshop!

Okay, so here's an update of what's going on with my stories and blog. First off, after months of problems with getting SWTOR to work on my new computer and a lack of help from both Bioware and EA on getting it to work, I've decided to cancel my subscription and abandon the game, at least for now. 

This means that my SWTOR story-summaries are on indefinite hiatus. 

But I'm not done with fanfiction. I've gotten back into Dragon Ball Xenoverse, as both my deviantart and this blog have noted, and I've created a new story, Dragon Ball Xenoverse - Legend of Peparia. This is the story of my Xenoverse 1 import character, Peparia, the Ancient Saiyan, last survivor of Universe 7's Sadala. Currently sitting at just a prologue, this will be the story of the rise, fall and rise again of the last survivor of the destroyed Sadala and ancestor to Vegeta. There will be multiple time skips, somethings one chapter right after the other, some after several chapters, before finally landing on being summoned by Trunks by Shenron to be the Time Patroller of Xenoverse 1.

Most of the stories for the Legend of Peparia have been floating around in my head for a long time, mostly of stuff that happened on Sadala. Followers of this blog will know of Peparia's tale of how she lost her first child, married the man who killed her decades later and the existence of her second child as she neared the end of her reproductive viability. This is one of several stories that happened to Peparia on Sadala before she reached the age of 50, when she was summoned to Toki Toki City.  There will also be the story of her first Great Ape transformation, her rivalry/future friendship with another girl Lottus, the fame she got with her daughter Celes, as well as Celes' death and her transformation into a Super Saiyan. 

Anyway, look forward to chapters of the Legend of Peparia on fanfiction.net, and check me out on twitter for more updates. Until then, stay beautiful freaks!

Stardew Valley: A Game I'd Never Thought I'd Love

 

Stardew Valley is a game where you play as a person who is beaten down by city life at the Joja mega corporation, taking up your grandfather's farm in Stardew Valley, a region on the southern part of the Ferngill Republic, bordered by the Gem Sea, north of the Gotoro Empire. You gather resources for your farm, plant crops, raise animals, get to know the townspeople and potentially marry one of the eligible bachelors/bachelorettes, and enter the mines to fight monsters. 

But even though Strardew Valley is sunshine and rainbows for your character doesn't mean it is that way for the town. The most obvious is Kent, the veteran who returns to Pelican Town in Year 2, was a Prisoner of War with the Gotoro Empire and suffers severe PTSD. His wife Jodi? She got married young and is unhappy that she's got nothing but her children to show for it, despite deeply loving her family. Shane and Jas lost Jas' parents in a car accident and were forced to move in with Marnie, and Shane has fallen so deep into depression that he's suicidal. He, as well as Pam, are alcoholics who destroy themselves at the local Saloon thanks to how much they hate themselves. Even Marnie isn't in the best place, having a physical relationship with Mayor Lewis, but she wants more, and Lewis not only doesn't, but actively tries to hide their relationship. (This bothers people so much that there are mods force them to confront this!)

I could go on and on about the hidden pain for all the townsfolk, like how Pierre and the Wizard both suspecting that Abigail isn't Pierre's daughter, or Leah and Elliot's desires to get away from past lives and reinvent themselves in Stardew Valley, or the pain and loss of new NPC Leo, but that's part of what makes Stardew Valley fun; getting to know these people and bonding with them. They're people, living their lives the best they can until you come along, carrying all the baggage that real people would have.

As for how I look at Stardew Valley, on paper, it's a game I shouldn't like; I'm not into doing completionist runs of games, and I'm certainly not into resource gathering games. I mean, back when Minecraft had an in-browser demo on their official website, I played that for an hour because I got bored with the resource gathering before giving up on it. And that fishing mini game is why I have cheats. In fact, the only part of Stardew Valley that I should enjoy is the dungeon crawling and combat, which, while still enjoyable, is my second least favorite part of the game!

So, why do I love Stardew Valley, despite the entire game being something that, on paper, would be a game I'd hate? Because of the charm. Stardew Valley is more than the sum of its parts, something I saw WAY back when Allochii of the Gaijin Gamers streamed a few episodes of the game for their channel! It was so sweet and charming, and that wasn't even counting the fact that Allochii was the one playing the game, as her voice made it all so much more so.

Now, I won't lie; I mod the game and use cheats. The fishing mini game is why I use cheats; much Sans fight in Undertale, I just can't get a hand on it. And on all but my completionist farm, I use the CJB Cheats menu and CJB Item Spawner to get what I need for the community center bundles/projects for the town, but I have rules for that, too. For example, I can't spawn in something in until I've collected at least one of, I have to craft at least one of something to be allowed to spawn it in, and when new content comes to the game, I have to complete it naturally without cheating before I can spawn that stuff in. 

Which brings me to the 1.5 update. This one is the reason I now have a completionist farm. There is a tangible reward for it, where we finally get access to the cliff that has been jumbled in the code since release, as well as the new statue and an extra scene with your spouse.

Yes, Leah, we have.

I really enjoy Stardew Valley, FAR more than I ever thought I would when I first heard about it. I never realized a game like this would be in my wheelhouse, but here it is. And I wouldn't change it for the world.

So come on down to Stardew Valley, get to know the people, and stay beautiful freaks!

Xenoverse characters on Deviantart

 So, I've been using my deviantart a lot recently for Xenoverse pictures. You can find the ones I've created for Xenoverse 1 and 2 on PC here.