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Wyrmrest Accord
21

We have been besieged by a nearby human civilization so I need to bolster my army. So a recent recruit who we shall now call Norman has been given the position of militia captain!

His character sheet tells me his favorite animal is the raven and that he likes “the sound of the Festive Pregnancy-Admiration”. I find that a little alarming but I’m sure he will be an excellent captain all the same

https://i.imgur.com/txlalSA.png

As with Juspion he has been outfitted with a nice home with a statue of his favorite animal, right across the street from Juspion in what I guess is the Wyrmrest Accord neighborhood.

https://i.imgur.com/JtvVyLR.png

2 Likes
22

I am sobbing internally cause I am making a post for a Neutral RP event

but it’s been so long since I’ve actually run them that I feel like the Patrick Star meme with the board nailed to my head.

1 Like
23

i’ve been really bad about doing rp stuff lately in general. not just wow, but my non-wow RPs too.

maybe i should check out an event this weekend.

24

I’m going to make a neutral event where we fight bitterly along faction lines.

25

Well, sorry if this was a bit quick, but I have some bad news about dwarf Norman

https://i.imgur.com/KJgmZiE.jpg

My fortress was attacked by a “plains titan”, procedurally generated giant creatures which can really mess you up.

The titan in question was “Lema”, an enormous winged web-spitting leech.

https://i.imgur.com/NYXEePk.png

The “web-spitting” is the most important bit, because the ability to shoot webs makes creatures almost invincible in melee combat… they can tangle up anything that gets close in webs and squish them while they’re defenseless. As you can see in the images, webs are everywhere on the surface because of this thing. It was an amazingly prolific killer, having over a hundred victims in the game’s history and killing huge numbers of people when it arrived at my site (fortunately for me many of my citizens got inside, but there were foreign merchants and visitors at the trade depot who were summarily annihilated)

https://i.imgur.com/7tr9aSo.jpg

Here is another view of the webby destruction:

https://i.imgur.com/FknpfOU.jpg

my usually featureless tundra home, marred by a bunch of webs and body parts

https://i.imgur.com/cDgEECP.jpg

I only know of one way to deal with a web-spitting creature–you need to build a checkerboard-like battlefield to confront it, so that its webs are constantly blocked by pillars and your melee dwarves are capable of getting close. I set the miners (including now combat-engineer-miner Juspion, who is still in good health!) to work on it, and I thought it looked promising:

https://i.imgur.com/HW1nLIx.png

And I ordered the military into the area, hoping to lure the beast into the trap.

Unfortunately, the opposite happened at first. The beast slunk around outside the trap and coaxed a squad of warriors out into the open, including poor Norman.

Norman was quickly webbed and, according to the combat log, was bitten on the head an shaken around like a dog with a toy until his skull collapsed.

https://i.imgur.com/gq0YrM3.png

His sacrifice was not in vain, and my fortress didn’t fall to this giant leech–after slaughtering one squad it got overconfident, and charged into the checkerboard trap, where it was slain.

To honor his sacrifice I built him a golden tomb, moved his raven statue there, and commissioned another statue depicting his battle with Lema.

https://i.imgur.com/45XvdSA.png

Thus ends the brief yet heroic saga of Norman the dwarf.

4 Likes
26

Only if Enekie has a wholesome visit with trolls of the same family tree as her.

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27

I’ve enjoyed the raids and keys with guild members. Pugs, not so much.

WoW’s story is always the narrative equivalent of a bad pug where most of the group has no idea what they’re doing and there’s no good banter, either.

Aside from WoW, everything is incredible.

28

I’ve very recently been cultivating my interest in my Dracthyr characters, though I can’t quite figure out why. I thought they were mildly interesting since the beginning, but until now I couldn’t maintain the enthusiasm to try portraying one, despite making a bare bones profile for my first. Various limitations, namely those with the Visage form and Soar, certainly didn’t help, but I guess I’m over those…for now.

Can’t say I’ve been too crazy about Dragonflight’s story myself. I don’t entirely think it’s the lack of familiar conflicts between the factions and such, rather I think it’s a version of the same or a similar lack of familiarity as felt previously in Shadowlands. The Flights, and to some extent their initial problems, are relatively familiar, but not enough for me to care much; and the villains are, overall, pretty much brand new with little to no real build up to make me care more. I’ve pretty much just been idling, hoping the new story developments don’t get too offensive to disrupt the rp community overmuch. That is more or less the only reason I have an active sub again.

…Also I bought an air fryer. I don’t have any food to use it on yet.

Addendum:

I’ve been playing Forza Horizon 4 lately. I bought it a few months ago, or maybe last year, because it’s one of the only two games in that series on Steam and I wanted to try a game from that series, but only just recently downloaded it because I was under the impression that it’s actually the start of the supposed downward spiral the series and Forza in general has been taking.

Overall, I find it rather enjoyable…except for the bloody weather effects! Whoever had the galaxy brained idea to make them non-adjustable and tied to an unavoidable weekly rotation needs their car keyed. I’m also mildly annoyed the game classifies two of the Vipers in it as Muscle Cars.

Incidentally I also recently pirated Forza Horizon 3, which I’ve concluded is the alleged peak of the series, though I’ve been reluctant to do anything with it as last game I did this with was much simpler and the unpacking process for this one makes me wary of malware.

I’ve also grown somewhat obsessed with Car-PGs over the month, due in part to watching a bunch of videos about Racing Lagoon, but this tangent about virtual hunks of metal and rubber going fast is already kinda long.

1 Like
29

At least he died a heroic webby death and sacrificed himself for the greater good.

I was more invested in this story than the whole of Shadowlands.

I am tempted to pick up this game now.

2 Likes
30

I discovered Inscryption the other day and wow what a fun game. I’ve beaten the first part of it and was just kind of blown away by how the game reacts to you reaching that milestone.

Aside from that, I finally no longer have to farm Dazar’alor because I got the G.M.O.D.

I feel very lucky. Normally those big ticket mounts don’t drop for me - I don’t have any of the end boss mounts like invincible, the black rock kodo guy, mims head, felsteel annihilator, etc. I decided the GMOD would be mine and I leveled up an army of alts specifically to farm that raid. So, now I need to figure out to do with all these extra characters. I guess I could go farm something else.

Through this exercise I learned a few things, too. How classes handle a big number of lesser foes is apparently important to me, and I was a little put off on how more complicated it was to solo these old raids when playing as some kind of caster. Assassination and Sub rogues are a little tricky too. Outlaw is now by far my favorite rogue spec.

Dazar’alor has a few different mechanics you need to do to see it to the end. To clarify, I’m talking about the LFR version and only the last three bosses (Mekkatorque, sea elemental guy, and Jaina.)

  1. Mekkatorque needs to be kited around and brought down as soon as possible, otherwise you have a bunch of stunning bots chasing you around.
  2. Sea elemental guy has a few “gotchas.” First, you need to kill one of the casters really quick, otherwise a mob shows up and charms you, and then you jump off the ship, where you have no hope and then die.
  • Assuming you kill the first guy quick, you then need to interrupt the second lady and kill her. She has less of a time constraint, though after a while she’ll start channeling again, and if they channel too long, the big boss goes ballistic and explodes and wipes you.
  • If you kick the second lady and then kill her fast, you need to then fly back to the main platform and interrupt the main boss again. This was tricky on my casters because they either didn’t have an interrupt or had one on a very long CD. Overall, it’s doable, just something to be cognizant of.
  1. Jaina is pretty easy, you just have to make sure to explode some barrels so you don’t freeze to death.

None of these are particularly hard, though it isn’t a gimme on a fresh 70 who I didn’t really know how to play yet.

Anyways, if anyone else wants the GMOD, you have two chances of it dropping because it drops on both Mekkatorque and Jaina in the LFR version.

2 Likes
31

I’m currently sitting unsubbed for a while, because I really want to like Dragonflight but it’s just not exciting enough for me to want to spend time on it right now.

I feel like the DF story isn’t bad, it’s just… I don’t know exactly what. Teasing, I guess? It raises a lot of plots that really catch my attention, make me excited to learn more, and then… barely addresses them.

What convinced the Primalists to join up? Their NPCs keep giving tantalizing hints that we should join them instead, but stubbornly die instead of telling us why. Well, I want to know why. The Primalists include so many recently-discovered races (vulpera, nightborne, etc) that they must be a new faction, not just old Twilight’s Hammer jumping for a new apocalyptic cause or something.

Vyranoth’s relationship with Alexstrasza and what made her join us. That first cinematic with Vyra talking to Alex was cool, hinting at a past betrayal… that never gets clarified, even a little bit, in-game. (Yay, another “buy this book to learn what the game’s plot is about”, and this time, the book wasn’t even available until months later :angry: ) And then Vyra flies in for the grand team-switching scene - will we finally get to her her explain why she did what she did, to get the players to accept her? Nope, she goes to talk to Alex in private, the players aren’t allowed to hear anything, and then she’s suddenly an ally in her next appearance. I wanted at least a nice long dialogue tree, some bit of a characterization and lore dive.

Or earlier, one of my favorite scenes was in Waking Shores, where Wrathion saves Alex and immediately uses that to ask her for aid in retaking his stronghold, but she refuses. Oooh, some inter-flight politicking? I can’t wait to see- oh, and it’s over. But now there’s a power struggle over who will be the next Aspect of the Black Dragonflight! I can’t wait to see Wrathion and Sabellian each try to sway each other’s followers- oh, and they just make a single paragraph of arguments to the player, snark at each other, and give up.

It frustrates me because the DF cinematics are wonderful with all the new model rigging that conveys character emotions and interactions - The facial expressions, the eye movements, the new hug animations that don’t look like two action figures clipping through each other. There’s so much emotion getting expressed so beautifully… and yet so little development conveyed with it. :cry:

This makes it very hard for me to care about the story - because the game tells me that I shouldn’t, that players can - or should - just skim over motivations to get to the next pretty cinematic that maybe probably means something but don’t worry if you’re not paying attention.

I’m all for making the story understandable to players who don’t want to deep-dive into the past lore or character arcs or anything, but there should still be something substantial for those players who do.

2 Likes
32

I’m maining an Evoker for PvE stuff, had a whole quest to unlock an entire specialization, got an Evoker-only Legendary… and I STILL feel disconnected from the narrative.

I think one issue the creators of this game have is tying your character to the expac’s major storyline.

Especially for RPers, it feels hollow and forgettable because it is; we’re not meant to be spitballing ways to save the world with our leaders, dragons, literal demigods etc.

The false dichotomy is that you’re a nameless hero traversing the story or you’re The Maw Walker. On the one side, the character is disconnected from the tale. On the other, they’re a main character. The former making the game feel less epic for people on normal servers, the latter being something we need to waive on RP servers.

I think the balance lies in connecting the player to the WORLD. A great example from WoW was levelling a Belf, getting to Hellfire, and a Belf NPC saying something like “Sef?! What are you doing in this crap hole – we have a proper Sin’Dorei outpost!”

All of the sudden you were part of the world, you were experiencing that haughty Elf culture, all of that, and it had nothing to do with joining faction leaders in the plot to kill Illidan.

It’s been said here a lot but it seems like there are 4 tiers of NPC missing from this game.

TLDR: Even as an Evoker with all the shinies, I can’t really get snagged into the narrative.

8 Likes
33

I just extrapolated why a Vulpera would join the primalists as a result of everything in BFA. Sargeras, a Titan, stabbed Silithus and threw Azeroth into snowballing chaos. Uldir, a horrifying experimentation facility on their continent was created by Titans. The Sethrak look eerily like new titan constructs found on the Dragon Isles, which almost certainly means that the source of vulpera slavery and suffering was made by Titans.

Once you’ve seen a few examples of Titan tomfoolery, you start to see more, and more, and more. Convincing someone that ridding the world of Titan influence is a good idea is just a hop, skip, and a jump away.

34

I came into DF with a much different viewpoint than, I think, most everyone else.

Ailindah has had a deep hatred of dragons for a very long time; gameplay-wise due to Vanilla zones like Ashenvale and Wetlands where you could very easily walk face-first into max level elite dragons with little to no warning at all. Add in the 4 Green world boss dragons, Azuregoes, Ony, BWL… Aili moved on from Vanilla with a deep hatred of dragons. RP-wise there is a whole story built over the years based on a few quest and PvE encounters that soured her.

Coming in to Dragonflight with this history with dragons was very interesting from an RP perspective and made the story a lot of fun for me. Earning the “Ally of Dragons” title actually had Aili mad for a few days :rofl: Even now, I only dragon ride when absolutely necessary preferring to stick to flight form as it feels more in character for me–I’ve gotten gold on most of the races so the dragon riding itself is not an issue for me, just doesn’t feel right for my character to do it.

1 Like
35

And I have an update on Juspion the Miner as well.

It is autumn, in the year 332, and my fortress of “Nisgakzuden” is under siege by humans once again. Frankly, I am a much bigger fan of Goblins than Humans at this point. Yeah, Goblins are supposed to be the natural opponent of dwarves, but they barely ever bother to attack me, and when they do it is in an endearingly pathetic fashion where they send poorly-equipped troops directly into my traps. Not so with humans–they come well armed, and carefully scout out traps and avoid them.

My troops are holding the line against humans on the surface, sort of–I built a complicated ice corridor for the humans to march through while getting fired upon by marksdwarves, but it isn’t working that well. Mostly the crossbow bolts seem to be making the humans barf (the green smears), not die (getting injured in dwarf fortress often makes things nauseous)

https://i.imgur.com/Sne09rj.png

But so far humans haven’t broken through on the surface. So the main town down below should be ok, right? Well uh, this is what it looked like:

https://i.imgur.com/RqrFLMc.jpg

Yeah my lovely town is currently a pit of gore and battle, but not because of humans–right as the humans started attacking, the local blacksmith started throwing a “tantrum”. For anyone unfamiliar with dwarf fortress, dwarves throw tantrums when they have been sad for a long time–sometimes they start throwing punches, sometimes they just break stuff. In this case, he started attacking people, and people started attacking him back, and then started fighting each other… a small fight can spiral into a giant brawl in a tight area, and many dwarves were clustered in the town since I had ordered them off the surface.

Note in the top of that image the little smiley face icons–I had 71 angry dwarves, indicated by the red angry face, so everyone was so miserable that they were spoiling for a fight. The fort’s mental health was in a wretched state after some recent battles.

Anyway, what about Juspion? Well, I get the notification that he has “gone missing”, which is the game’s way of saying that he is dead, but the body has not been found. I scour the fort, but I can’t find his body anywhere. My best guess is, in the midst of the brawl, he got mortally wounded and fell into some hard-to-reach hole or something? According to Legends mode, the game’s historical chronicle, he was killed by a citizen named Doren Tallanced, who in turn was killed in the same brawl by a resident goblin bard.

https://i.imgur.com/usdk2bh.png

All told over two dozen dwarves died, most of the gravestones on the right here are memorializing deaths from this brawl. It was the deadliest event my fort has experienced yet, and it was all because one sad boy decided to throw a tantrum.

https://i.imgur.com/cnCWVL5.png

The good news is that Juspion died not long after I had completed building a snow pyramid on the surface (a random project I started to use up some ice I had lying around), so I used it as a cool burial spot for him.

Here it is from above

https://i.imgur.com/wwZK4w0.png

And this is the interior burial chamber, with tombstone and (empty) casket since his body was never found. I had his prized llama statue moved into the tomb, and, since his favorite food was great white shark and I felt a little bad that I never managed to feed him that (they’re hard to find on the tundra), I made him a shark statue too

https://i.imgur.com/SuXCVPL.png

Anyway at the end of the day the humans were driven off on the surface while the townsfolk down below beat each other to death or unconsciousness. Once things had calmed down I realized I had to deal with the fort’s mental health crisis, so I drafted all the sad dwarves into militia squads and sent these “bad vibes brigades” off to conquer other sites, just so they would be somewhere else instead of causing civil wars at home. Somewhat surprisingly, these squads of untrained, unarmored, extremely sad dwarves were all successful, and I captured several towns. So I hope they manage to cheer up a bit as the overlords of human and elf villages, but in the meantime, I’m just happy to have them gone.

https://i.imgur.com/3zaP2dQ.png

So that’s it for Juspion the miner. Not quite as heroic as Norman’s webby last stand, but dying in a chaotic brawl is all any dwarf can ask for. Usually my miners die because I accidentally ask them to mine into magma so this one surprised me.

3 Likes
36

Ah, the same process that historically led to the Varangian Guard, or the sailors sent out (to drown) with Columbus.

…I wonder if this is how the faction leaders view peaceful WoW expansion breadcrumb quests? “Uhhh… look, adventurer! A new shiny faraway place to go murderhobo! (Oh no, they’re coming back- oh, they jut want to use the auction house. That’s acceptable.)”

4 Likes
37

I liked the Primalists better when they were the Twilight Hammer.

5 Likes
38

Oh, air fryers are great. There’s a lot of things you can make in them. I especially like doing chicken wings.

1 Like
39

Omg.

I’m still learning my way threw the game. My second settlement is still kickin and surprised it’s lasted this long despite me not knowing what the heck I’m doing.

I am terribly defenseless and decided to start dabbling in building my first militia squad which I named Miko’s Roughnecks.

I worked on (trying to) outfit my militia but then it kept saying I had no gear when I just made a bunch. Turns out it got stored in bins they wouldn’t access to equip themselves so I spent forever trying to figure out the storage system.

Which caused me to lose track of food storage and all my guys started to starve to death. I still had food production going, just slow and had to focus on figuring that all out.

Fortunately it worked itself out because half the settlement dying to starvation meant there was enough food stocks and production to feed to remaining population lolololol.

Anyway, still very defenseless.

1 Like
41

Military uniforms are like the fiddliest part of this admittedly fiddly-overall game. I haven’t had problems with bins but I have run into a bug/quirk where my dwarves try to claim “named” weapons that other, more experienced dwarf warriors have named as their personal item. The new dwarf recruit says “ok, my uniform says I need a sword? I choose dwarfcalibur, the mightiest sword held by the greatest fighter”, and the owner of dwarfcalibur isn’t interested in giving it up to some noob, so the noob just doesn’t have a weapon.

Idk how to fix it other than telling them to just use a different kind of weapon altogether but dwarves are surprisingly effective at fighting with their teeth and fists if they do wind up unarmed. And combat between unarmed combatants can result in some amusingly strange improvised weapons as they pick up random items to fight with. I’ve had battles come down to fighters smacking each other to death with shoes and, in one case, a giantess whipping a duchess with a pair of alpaca wool pants until she collapsed from exhaustion

https://i.imgur.com/fNWsl7Y.png

Anyway sorry to Enekie for filling her dragonflight story themed thread with dwarf stuff, so here is a dragonflight take: I liked the katamari damacy quest that was a surprising one for me

https://i.imgur.com/KrGHRe8.jpg