Video game lessons learned the hard way

• Europa Universalis IV: No, you don't get to pick which Idea in the Idea Group you get next. Yes, you have to unlock them all in order.

Prey (About a week after I beat it :/)

• X is not reload. X is grenade.
• Y'know how the game tells you that everything has an alt fire, so you should experiment? Even the grenades have an alt fire, but you have to switch over to them to use it.
• If you can't find where to go, check the ceiling; there may be a gravity switch.
  • If there's nothing on the ceiling, try Spirit Walk.
• Prey saves the puzzle bosses for last. If it looks like you can't do anything, try everything, and keep your eyes peeled for changes that you make.

i care but i'm restless, i'm here but i'm really gone, i'm wrong and i'm sorry, baby

Faster Than Light:

• Never fuzzing give up! Even if that hull's at one point, and a quest is your next jump, you just might be able to get a full patch-up.
• For the Mantis C, the lockdown and stun bombs aren't particularly practical. Run into an automated ship? All you can do is run.

Dwarf Fortress:

• Not expecting to hit a cave in early spring? If the Z-level number's low on the surface, you can bank on hitting the cave if ya dig straight down.
• Brooks aren't too bad of a spot to start in.
• Watch out when ya cut down the enlarged trees... Your dwarf might be clumsy enough to knock himself into the water and drown horribly.
• Channel down into a layer of soil if ya want a surface farm. Trust me, the spots of rock and boulders will cause you problems otherwise.
• Hitting the highest cave isn't necessarily required. Hitting the caves below those are really recommended. (All ya get on cave 1 are tower cap and fungiwood, along with spores for any cave ya hit.)

"If you have any beefs with Santa, do remember to SETTLE IT IN SMASH!" Quote by Edveed

Dwarf Fortress

Burrows and meeting halls are critical in the newest release. People can climb trees now. And they WILL climb trees. And then fall out of them. Into ponds . . .

I had someone drown on my recent no-points embark this way.

edited 15th Jul '14 12:38:37 PM by Journeyman

Harvest Moon: A New Beginning:

- Disable Animal Help/Chicken Help for your pets during snowy days. They don't understand the difference between sunny days and snowy days.

- For future's sake, be happy when you get mithril/platinum AND DO NOT SELL THEM IF YOU HAVEN'T REACHED TOWN RESTORATION #5. You will need a boatload of them if you want to build the last two houses!

GO AHEAD .... MR. JOEHSTUR .......

Shadowrun Returns:

• Plan your cyberware out ahead of time. Not everything can be upgraded, and you can't undo anything.
• If someone gets hurt, heal them ASAP, unless the scene is soon over. Even if it's just Scratch Damage.
• When considering what kind of magic to buy and use, remember that most kind of debuffs will either help you kill the enemies faster or hinder them from killing you, but straight out killing them is often the most efficient way of solving the problem. This also applies to the Matrix.
• However, stopping enemies from acting at all is an excellent way of safely buying time if you can't kill them quickly.
• Runners you hire come with items free for your personal use. You're not wasting anything by using them. At the same time, don't let a runner pick up an item you're not planning on using on that mission.
• Specialise in one weapon, if you're using weapons. More is a waste of karma, and any single weapon type will do the job. One high is better than two mediocre. Master of None is in full force here. There is one exception: When you prepare for the last run, you may want to spend a few points into shotguns if you haven't.
• Keep the Aegis Launcher fully loaded at all times.

Check out my fanfiction!

Banjo-Kazooie

• Don't try and aim the Beak Bomb from far away, lest you want to become a kamikaze bear bashing his head into rocks and hazardous liquids.
  • Don't aim it an an angle, either. Always aim STRAIGHT AHEAD at LEVEL TARGETS, when your are EXTREMELY CLOSE to them.
• The walls of Mad Monster Mansion have thorns on top of them.
• Yes, fall damage increases the higher up you fall from.
  • Related: To safely get down from the rafters in Mad Monster Mansion's church, go back to the top of the organ. Idiot.
• If you can't figure out how to hurt an enemy, remember that the Wonderwing exists. Seriously, why have you never used it up until this point?

edited 19th Jul '14 9:20:26 PM by NesClassic

🏳️‍⚧️she/her | Vio Rhyse Alberia

Haha, gold feathers were always Too Awesome to Use. I would just keep a mental list of everything that strictly required Wonderwing and forget about the move the rest of the time. There were probably some enemies that could be killed by eggs that I never did because I was hoarding those, too! (Or I got used to them being used for "Drop three eggs into the bucket" "puzzles" instead.)

But not too close, or Kazooie might find some excuse to fly straight past your target then.

Fire Emblem Path Of Radiance:

• Chapter 10 is a bitch if you want that mass of BEXP for getting out undetected.
• BEXP is great for rigging levelups, but it won't do jack shit for your weapon levels. And Tellius doesn't have Arenas for you to grind in, either. Possible solution: primarily use higher-ranked weapons that you can equip. If Boyd has D Axes, have him primarily use Steel instead of Iron.
• Speaking of Boyd. When the 20/3 promoted Warrior is only marginally stronger than the 20/3 promoted Swordmaster (Mia), and she outclasses him in every way except for around 15 HP and a few DEF, consider dropping that Warrior to see if you can't get another decent Axe user. Titania is an obvious option, of course, but I'd rather not abuse her too much. Hrm.... seems like Kieran is the next best option.

Xenoblade

If you're aiming at completing almost every quest available, don't stop to fight every enemy that you find along the way. You will be overleveled thanks to the generous Non-Combat EXP.

"Yeah, it's a shame. Here we are in an underground cave with all these lasers, and instead of having a rave we're using it for evil."

Borderlands:

• The zombies? Fun to punch, and usually easy to punch apart! The tankensteins? Not so much.
• Those drums that some of the zombies throw? They're capable of eating all of your shields and a good chunk of health.
• Just because a weapon has a very high chance of triggering its element, does not mean it will.

"If you have any beefs with Santa, do remember to SETTLE IT IN SMASH!" Quote by Edveed

M.U.G.E.N (as a character creator)

• Don't ever be an Attention Whore in the community. You'll mostly receive negative attention.
• Take constructive feedback seriously when making/updating your characters.
• Don't expect everybody to like your characters, even if your characters are "balanced" and well-made. What may be balanced today may be considered overpowered tomorrow.

• Save your character under the "chars" folder, in a folder. If the character comes in their own folder under the zip file then leave it.
  • The character folder name must be the same as the .def (Export Definition) file. So in your case, if it's dio.def, the folder must be named dio, if it's diobrando.def, the folder must be diobrando.
• Open the "data" folder and open select.def with notepad or wordpad
• Put your character inside the select.def as (foldername), stages/kfm.def. So in your case it would be something like "dio, stages/kfm.def"

edited 21st Jul '14 11:13:23 PM by ironcommando

...eheh

Speaking of Mugen how the piss do you even add characters? I desparately tried adding Dio Brando to my game but I still have only Kung Fu Man

And then there was silence

Something like what I mentioned above. Here's a rough image◊ of the character's folder and select.def file.

...eheh

Nyah, balls. I ain't got Wordpad OR Notepad :/.

And then there was silence

...Are you on an Apple computer or something? Notepad comes with Windows (Wordpad too), and it'd be ridiculously surprising if there wasn't something to mess with all the same file types on any given Linux OS.

Left 4 Dead:

NEVER TRY TO JUMP AWAY FROM A TANK'S FIST. You will be sent flying towards the nearest Elevator shaft at 'Holy S***!" miles per hour and will not even explode when you hit the ground.

"Marth likes just the tip, Lucina likes the whole thing."

Borderlands:

• Those maniacs with the axes? You know how they can lob 'em? They can blow up barrels with that!

"If you have any beefs with Santa, do remember to SETTLE IT IN SMASH!" Quote by Edveed

nyurk, was late when i posted that and did not know what anything was

And then there was silence

Gheb FE: Vanessa is probably the only combat unit in early chapters who doesn't have to worry about getting doubled, due to having a high base SPD and enough Con to use Javelins and Iron Lances without losing much of it.

Matthew's Nightmare: I am not hardcore enough to make a serious attempt at this game, much less beat it.

I should note, I am getting better at this game. Got a Ninja Mono/Ironmode/Stealth or two under my belt now.

Audiosurf

• Always watch the track ahead. Plan accordingly.
• Don't be too erratic with the mouse or you'll twitch into a grey.
• Reset the mouse to where you'd expect it to be now and again. Trust me, it helps.
• Don't Panic! If you see a lot of greys coming, analyse them.

edited 23rd Jul '14 12:37:16 PM by Plumbum

Curse the ill fortune that led you to me.

Xenoblade Chronicles

• Levels are an amazing indicator of how well you'll do against a monster! Assuming you can read them properly, that is. For example, if your party is the same level as a Unique Monster... you won't do so hot without some serious planning, and probably want to wait until you're a few levels higher.

🏳️‍⚧️she/her | Vio Rhyse Alberia

Lots of 360 games:

• You can never count on X doing anything you're used to it doing. Do not learn to use X to reload, or to attack quickly, because when it does something else, which is frequent, that something else will more than likely fuck you up.
  • X isn't reload in TF 2; it's taunt, i.e. stand still and make a big target of yourself for six seconds or so.
  • X isn't reload in Prey; it's throw a grenade, or more likely, bounce it off the cover you just got behind because you needed to reload.
  • X isn't quick attack in Dark Souls; it's use item, which will A: waste one of whatever item you have equipped, and B: make you stand still and make a big target of yourself for two seconds or so.

edited 23rd Jul '14 1:32:25 PM by Knowlessman

i care but i'm restless, i'm here but i'm really gone, i'm wrong and i'm sorry, baby

Adding to that, in Tales Of Vesperia, X is is for defending.

BTW, is your confusion based on the letter X itself^note as in a prompt telling you to "press X" forcing you to think a second as the X button is in 4 different places depending on the system, or button placement?^note in a sort of Damn You, Muscle Memory! way, where the "confirm" action is usually the lower button under the right thumb (A for X Box, X for Playstation), but for that one game it's a diffirent one (like if an X Box game suddenly used B to confirm, or a Playstation game using circle.)

edited 23rd Jul '14 2:23:49 PM by Kurgy

No, the X button on the 360 just does different things in different games. I've been playing XBox games for years; I'm used to where all the buttons are.

I don't even get, well, I don't get incredibly confused by the X button on the Playstation (which I do not frequently play, neither owning one nor often visiting anybody with one); I couldn't tell you which of the square and circle buttons was on the left and which was on the right, though. :/

EDIT: In Lego Star Wars and lots of third-person hack-and-slash games (on XBox), X is quick attack, and in Black Ops and lots of other shooters, X is reload.

edited 23rd Jul '14 2:25:31 PM by Knowlessman

i care but i'm restless, i'm here but i'm really gone, i'm wrong and i'm sorry, baby