Gaming

I struggle to play turn-based strategy things (I remember getting frustrated with Homeworld many years ago) but I'm still grabbing the free stuff!

Elsewhere epic seem to be teasing some Batman games for next week...

Yesterday it told me it had some cthulhu type horror story game thingy for free. I didn't bother, though.
Why should I when I can die repeatedly anyway? Earlier today I accepted a quest of retrieving some things with the aid of a land rover type vehicle... Turned out I had 5 minutes to do it and the first thing I did was to fall into a hole in the ground with it...

Later (well, pretty much all evening) I accepted a quest to fight off some "sentinels" that had sniffed out my base. It's very confusing really. My hired staff keeps telling me to do things to keep them away, then to lure them out, then to get rid of them... Anyway, I'm supposed to kill 8. So far I've managed at most 4 before they get me. And every time I die, the count starts over. Every time I enter a building, the count starts over. So all in all, I think I killed about 12-13 of them, but according to the quest log I'm at 0... *sigh*

Well, tomorrow's a new day to die.

Hmm, I can see you're trying to block that door but I think I might just be able to sneak around the side...



OK, then, this one's a bit more challenging. If I keep pushing then I might just make it and hopefully there may be a bigger gap when I come back this way....



Aaaargh! Now there's two of them!



Never change, Morrowind! Never change.

Charlotte wrote: Yesterday it told me it had some cthulhu type horror story game thingy for free...

Yeah, I passed on that one too. But the "coming soon" was definitely the Bat fellow. It looked like maybe a Lego game and one more. Hopefully Arkham City? *fingers crossed* But it'll probably be the one I already have.

I decided to rebuild my base, but since I keep running out of power I decided I needed to get an upgrade that'd let me find a better and more permanent (than solar panels which don't work at night, obviously) power source. Took me most of the day to find the components needed for the upgrade. Then the rest of the evening to find a good place for the new power source (I forget what they call it) and then a few minutes to realise that it's too far from my base to build, yet too close for me to build a second base before demolishing the first. So I had to go back to see if I could pack things up and demolish the base... only to get the "inventory full" glitch. (Nope, it's not full, not at all. Also I was trying to open a storage unit I'm 99.99 % certain is empty anyway...)

I find this game more glitchy than Subnautica Below Zero, which is still not finished and openly proclaimed as "full of bugs". Most glitches don't stick if you close and restart the game, though. I guess that's something.

I haven't experienced many in Skyrim even though "the internet" famously jokes about Bethesda bugs. I did once get stuck between a rock and a plank while investigating a vacant beehive but I'm happy to accept that I was partly to blame for that. And Arissa's inventory went a bit glitchy the other day when I tried to get her to carry something but a quick reload solved everything.

Meanwhile my ongoing fact-finding mission to work out what happened on my missing drunken night led me to this charming creature that I apparently almost married!



And all the while I could hear a dragon screeching above as it circled round....



...which was scary.
I did try to sneak away without it seeing me but eventually... Moonlit dragon fight is the best dragon fight!



And it was so exciting that I pressed the wrong button and whistled for my horse in the middle of the battle. Not now, Lightwind. Go away.

I spoke too soon with regards to some of those glitches...
anyway, I proceeded to scrap my old base and start a new one (needless? to say the function that would save all materials from the old base did NOT save ALL materials), but the famous "incorrect position" makes building quite a chore. I started by trying to place my greenhouses on a large flat area. They could not be placed in a straight line. The middle (first) ended up dead on the center of nine base squares/slabs. Next one insisted on being one slab closer to the "building" (which doesn't quite exist yet). Fine I can place them in a semi-circle by also placing the one on the other side one step closer, right? Nope. It wanted to be one step further away. When I finally accepted this, I noticed that they're so far down into the base slabs that I can't plant anything inside of them. Remove everything, try the foundation type slabs. Nope, same issue. Remove everything, rebuild the initial slabs, add a small wall (1/4 of a regular wall height) and build a new floor - build the greenhouse and remove the floor (and wall) again. (Except for one piece I can't access anymore.)
Tadaa!
But now the greenhouse doors are too high to walk into. So I have to add the ramps made for those doors, right? Wrong. They're too short. The wedge shapes are too high, and the staircases are way too high. *sigh* Oh and no, they still couldn't be placed in a straight line but at least now they're symmetrically placed and all the doors face the same direction... I guess I have to use my booster back pack to fly into my greenhouses...

Right about there I gave up and went to bed (around 2 am)

That sounds less like a game and much more like "work"!

I still don't have a proper house despite searching through all those mods. I feel like I could definitely use a place to dump all the heavy dragon bones and scales I keep getting. I can't use them for armour (you need to max out some stats to be able to make them) and it's hard to sell them all because the merchants only have so much money. So for the time being I stole another horse to carry some more stuff for me.
Actually it wasn't REALLY stealing, I was "rescuing" it from the bandits that attacked me.

I'm sure those meanies were mistreating the poor horsie!

Meanwhile I pretty much rebuilt my base. I could definitely use more storage space, though... one can only build 10 storage units and each can hold five different types of item (though several of each, luckily...) There's storage in ships, exocraft, exosuit and freighter as well, but those spaces tend to be crowded with the stuff you're gathering when you're out and about plus all the techie upgrades that go in the same slots. I'm sure there are cheat mods that give you more storage, but I don't like cheating. I prefer it when mods just enhance the experience, not when it makes everything super easy...

I'm sure I've unlocked the blueprint for support struts but I can't find them when building. Some areas look like they could use them... and I haven't bothered with colors yet.

I like the way you can park your little buggy at the bottom of the steps.

Yes, I'm also determined not to use mods that feel a bit too cheaty. There's one Skyrim "home" that's a magic bag that you just carry around with you, which is a fun idea, but if I used it I'd feel worse than I do when I switch to easy mode.

EDIT: Oh, and that last dragon was guarding another word wall.
"Fo"
Frost breath apparently. It's like I've been chewing some cool minty gum.

That would have been useful during the heatwave earlier!