Video game lessons learned the hard way

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U:

Smash Tour sucks. HARD.

Imagine having nine characters with you, then a rival teleports near you and challenges you to a duel, then a CPU character sends you a Poison Mushroom and another picks a hammer for the fight. Result? You're the first to be knocked, in the next turn a boss appears and you fail the "have 10 characters with you by the time a boss appears" challenge because of a very shitty luck-based prank.

Worst of all, you need to go through all boards to unlock a stage.

Typical of board games, really. I've had my fill of Mario Party and Armello and Risk already...

Speaking of which, when I used to play Smash, the only reason I even play as Kirby is to borrow+use the Falcon Punch. The hard lesson here is that while fun, it gets me killed 80% of the time.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

The AI's accuracy and overall effectiveness at fighting back seems to receive an upgrade the further you progress into the game. Especially with the mortars, shotguns, and LMGS. Prepare to get knocked down by shotgun rounds over 50 meters away, see mortar rounds quickly zero in on your sniping positions, and LMG fire quickly reduce you to critical health within seconds. And no, the chicken hat doesn't seem to alleviate the problem either!

Raptr/Plays.tv:

• The way game recording works is pointlessly arbitrary.
• The way recording data management works is apparently to delete everything instead of deleting the oldest files.

Crypt of the Necrodancer

• This game is brutal

• You cannot beat Zone 4 with just starting equipment.

• Confusion is a lot more painful than you thought

• Don't bother with Rapiers in Zone 4 (the work oddly vs Blademasters)

• If that wizard/monkey can teleport you to a absolutely horrible position, it will

• Just keep away from every Gargoyle statue

• Don't hit the pixies you fool!

• Ditch the Default dagger when you can. It's rubbish.

• Don't touch that glass jaw. Don't even look at it. Just don't.

• Goo Golems can go fall off a cliff.

• Same with Red Dragons.

• Especially Blue Dragons.

Any connect-the-dots game in general:

• Always think before you act. Your move is always executed if there are at least three tiles traced.
  • If you need to change your mind in the middle of a move, carefully trace the line backwards and do not lift your cursor/finger until you've returned to the starting point.
• Don't go too fast if you're tracing a long chain, or else your move will be used up prematurely.

Dwarf Fortress:

• Just because ya got a breeding pair of elephants, does not mean you'll be set just yet. They take a long time to mature.
• The artificial intelligence planning some creatures' movements may have things like cave dragons diving into magma. The cave dragon'll fry.

edited 7th Oct '15 9:10:29 AM by NESgamer190

Dwarf Fortress: if you want to keep your people alive, put safety railings everywhere and don't militarize them. I lost one of the guys in my natural growth fort because he jumped or fell off the fortress roof and into the dry moat while training.

Xenoblade Chronicles low-level run:

• Make sure and have socketed Agility maxed out as soon as possible and keep it max out. It can make most bosses and monsters much, much easier.
• Don't be afraid to go and grind out a level or two if you are having issues with a boss.
• Reyn is much better as a defensive tank than a damage tank early on. Rage is so much better than Berserker.
• The first Xord fight sucks unless you way over level the fight.

Cities:Skylines

• Roundabouts are much better at directing traffic for an over pass much better than a standard over or underpass.
  • This being the case try to figure out more ways of getting people off the road or finding other solutions if you are having issues with traffic.
• You citizens don't really care about traffic issues except in the case of utility vehicles. If you are having too many garbage, dead body, or crime issues, sick citizens, or burned down buildings than traffic is hindering their ability to get somewhere.
• You do not need to put a utility building near where you need it. It helps, but the utility vehicle will travel as far as it needs to to collect whatever it does.
  • The only utility buildings I would ignore this advice on are Police Stations, Fire Stations, and Medical Centers.
• Tweeter is annoying and throws out useless info most of the time, but can help you pinpoint locations of problems you may have missed.

Mine Craft:

• Skeletons are assholes.

Actually, all the hostile mobs are assholes. I've about decided I'm switching to Peaceful whenever I have to go caving >_<.

That what swords and armor are for. :| Just start with stone and leather. And spam them torches. Cooking charcoal isn't just for hippies.

Also, bones are one of the more useful mob drops.

Fire Emblem: Awakening

• Just because your entire party is now promoted, meaning he won't necessarily XP-thief, does not mean you should make heavy use out of Frederick.
  • However, he makes a great Pair Up partner.
• Promoting your characters to Dark Flier, Dark Knight, or War Cleric is a bad idea.
• Yes, this game does the same "You can fight monsters at any time for experience and gold" thing that people complained about in Sacred Stones. You'll notice that they aren't making the same complaints about the game's difficulty...
• Manaketes and taguel are useless.
• When you reclass someone to a base class from a Level 20 promoted class, they're going to be stuck at their stat caps for a while. Don't bother waiting for Level 20 to promote them again; get them to Level 10 for the class's second skill and then break out the Master Seals.
• Keep the enemy away from your Sages.
• 40% equals 2 out of 5. That's more often than you think.
• Rally skills are useful.
• Physics staves + low-level Clerics = high-level Clerics at low risk to themselves.

Pokemon XY

• Dazzling Gleam is a Fairy-type attack.
• Fairy is super-effective against Dark.
• Gyarados is surprisingly fast.
• Talonflame is broken, but it's still a Fire/Flying, with the weaknesses thereof.
• Victory Road requires Strength and Surf.
• Furfrou is more useless than Bidoof. (At least Bidoof can learn Cut.)
• Goodra is a Dragon-type.
• Know how your Pokemon evolve.
• Don't trust Wonder Trade. Sometimes you get Torchic. Sometimes Luvdisc.

Galeforcing female Robin begs to differ. Dark Knight is also a class with high Move, tome access and good caps.

Taguel as a class is bad, yes, but Panne and her kin will have good cap modifiers and growths. Manakete are also far from useless. They have tier 2 caps with tier 1 rate of EXP gain, resulting in a class that can easily get way ahead of the enemy stat curve in the same way that Robin does. Nowi, in particular, can even laugh her way through vanilla Lunatic. The funny thing is, if Taguel wasn't locked to 1 range and poor caps, it might have been able to do similarly.

If we're talking crit rate/Dual procs/skill procs, then yes. If it's Hit, then it actually is lower than displayed because the game lies. Everything from Binding Blade onward uses a 2 RN system where it takes the average and compares it to the hit rate. This results in a bell curve where things get skewed as they get farther out from 50% in any direction. For example, that 40 displayed Hit is actually 32.40%.

Everyone talks about Galeforce, but I don't have it, and I don't care. Also, my Robin is male, so what use is it to me? What's important, as far as I'm concerned, is that the classes in question promote from classes for whom the extra weapon granted is useless.

And manaketes... Talk to me again when Nowi does better than 2 damage.

Galeforce can still be useful to Sumia or Cordelia, although they have to be much more careful with it than Robin. Sure, the additional weapons can end up not being useful for a non-Robin, but there's still caps, growths and skills to account for. And Galeforce is generally strong enough that it's worth just running the class with a single weapon type, anyway. It's even worth it with Dark Knight (which has a weaker skillset), because 8 Move tomes are a very powerful combination.

This just means that your Nowi is horribly underleveled. Any character who ends up EXP deprived will suffer from that same problem. If you wish, I can provide a video of a Nowi from a no-grind Lunatic run embarrassing 1/3 of Priam's army.

Also, passing Galeforce on to the male kids is godly.

Dark Fliers are the best class in the game aside from maybe Tactician. Unrestricted 8 move, double almost everything with great speed, dodge more often than not, murder enemies easily with magic, can switch to lances if they need to for some reason, transports slower classes across maps in a cinch if you need them there, and Galeforce.

Manaketes are alright for the main game. They hit from afar, have pretty good defense, and get exp fast.

I'm also not sure what your problem is with Frederick.

Fred can be problematic in a no-grind or minimal grind setting, since he needs a lot of help to catch up to the other characters' stat potential. He's great at softening things up for others to finish off, though.

And yes, Galeforce with Warriors, in particular, is absurdly powerful. It's the kind of thing that makes even Lunatic+ cry with sad.

@Man Called True: Wonder Trade usually nets you stuff like Scatterbug, Magikarp, Zigzagoon or Bunnelby.

Yeah, Wonder Trade can be a mess. I've sent some high-end Pokemon into it only to get a Wurmple in return.

There were those two odd times that I got Entei and Cobalion in the Wonder Trade, though. I couldn't believe it. It's always great when that happens because you get a free Legendary that you probably already have to trade for another one you don't already have.

Child of Light: Party members that leave almost always come back. Make sure you have their oculi set waiting for them when they do.

edited 11th Oct '15 9:10:00 AM by KylerThatch

Civilization Beyond Earth Rising Tide: Leashed colossal aliens will still auto-pillage your tile improvements by moving through them. They will not, however, do the same to friendly civs, so you'll need to come up with some other way to troll the competition.

• Aquatic cities have growth issues to begin with, so if you use krakens for conquest, all those pillaged farms might lead to starvation-induced population loss.
• INTEGR's discount on diplomatic agreements means that you will also get less for accepting them.
• The PAC's new wonder-spam bonus is not as OP as it sounds. Useful, but not OP.
• If you're going artifact-hunting, hold off on pillaging alien nests if doing so means your explorers can't safely approach expedition sites.
• Don't waste your progenitor artifacts on cross-category combos.
• Melee units on land can capture adjacent aquatic cities.
• There is no such thing as, "enough firaxite."
• Neutral aliens may let you do a lot of things unmolested, but trade vessels are apparently their favorite food. Get that ultrasonic fence built!

edited 11th Oct '15 6:54:13 PM by ABNDT

Re: Awakening Fred's stats tend to be garbage compared to promo'd units. In my casual (and not low grind) runs, what I did is get him to level 5 to get Luna, then reclass him to a lower class, and once he's through that, he usually can hold his own again.

I'm still sour about that certain party member to which that advice doesn't apply.

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team:

• This game WILL chew you up and spit you out if your timing is just the least bit off, leaving you to have to restrain yourself from screaming a series of Cluster F Bombs if you get hit by one of that @!$&)#%&!*&#&!#@# stone-y mammoth's cheap shots because you hit the button a split second too late.