Video game lessons learned the hard way

Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations, "Sakhalin or Karafuto" scenario, Japanese side! (Russian game ended with me successfully reenacting the Dance of the Vampires scene from Red Storm Rising on the Japanese convoy. Two Aegis cruisers aren't enough to deal with 90+ supersonic SSMs from multiple directions.)

• The Russians have more Su-27s than you have F-15s, and not all F-15s have long-range AAM-4Bs. Sparrow-armed F-15s versus Su-27s are an even match (translation, the Russian will win).
• You have a lot more F-2s than the Russians have Su-27s. F-2s only have short-ranged missiles, but with the Su-27s at the edge of their fuel range, they can still do some damage.
• If you're ever forced to take down your E-2 Hawkeye patrols because the Sukhois are getting too close, keep in mind that the position update for the Russian fleet will be out of date, and that there's no point in launching AShMs at their last reported position instead of their actual position.

Civilization 5:

Next time, be sure to check if you set production to queuing rather than individual production. I didn't and ended up wasting one turn producing wealth rather that last spaceship part that I needed. That one turn costed me the game to India's culture victory. I literally lost by one turn.

Oh well, I can always play a different game. Anyone heard of Global Thermalnuclear War?

Final Fantasy VI

It's better to take only one or two characters when grinding in order to save time. Also, when you first get Gaul you should grind for rages in order to save more time.

After the events of Zozo, Keep Edgar, Sabin, Locke, and Celeste in your party for now as they will be useful for a while.

on the Floating Continent, ALWAYS wait for Shadow if you want him back when you're escaping the place

edited 3rd Apr '16 8:22:48 AM by AlphaVII

Code Name STEAM:

• "Merciless" difficulty starts living up to it's name past the first few missions.
• Over Watch can sometimes be really picky;
  • After you hit an enemy with an Over Watch and they aren't stunned or dead, your units let them move a space or two before attacking again. This means Over Watch is not all that safe to abuse against enemies with lots of HP, Steam Recovery, or both. Unless they've been softened up first. Or have abysmal attack range.
• The Fire Emblem amiibo feel incredibly strong at first, but once you get better boilers and weapons, they become more niche.
  • Ike gets hit by this the hardest, but Marth also suffers from it.
  • Robin and Lucina manage to still stay useful throughout.

Minecraft: Hubris (again)

• Ethereal blooms will clean up every biome to its original glory.
• The fibrous taint will not last long outside of tainted land biomes.
• Animals will spawn within non-tainted land biomes.
• No need to be so giddy to cash in the rewards for the quests now!
• If you are lacking in inventory space when you go to cash in a quest, do not panic. The quest merely rejects the submission due to full inventory.
  • However, if you have some of the item the reward will give you, it will not stack, annoyingly enough.
• Exhaust monsters stink, as do vengence, storm, and alchemist monsters. Heaven help you if a monster has these four together.
• The loot bags may as well be opened. Aspect for aspect, you will gain with opening the bags.
• Can't find the Not Enough Items stuff? Try pressing o while in the inventory. (Took me some time to find it.)

edited 5th Apr '16 11:19:36 AM by NESgamer190

Pokemon X/Gen 6 in general:

• Considering the amount of people asking for Mew, Meloetta and other events on the GTS, it is safe to say that they are still not aware that these cannot be traded.
• Plain Rotoms trade worse on the GTS than if you turned them into appliances, even if anyone can just transform them at will. They just don't know it. Viewers are morons sometimes.
• You can have an appliance Rotom without a signature move (like Hydro Pump for Rotom-Wash). Don't use the Move Deleter. Just overwrite the signature move with another move and it should stay in appliance form.
• Many of the Sky Trainers are metagamers. They know you are likely to only bring flying units, so they pack things like Emolgas and Aerodactyls just to screw you over. (The players that actually had a non-flying Levitate Pokemon in their X&Y in-game teams are probably very few. And Gengar does not count.)

Evil Genius

• Don't be afraid to build big rooms. You have more space than you think.
• Money runs out fast. Keep stealing things.
• Check the World Domination screen a lot, or you'll lose minions.

edited 9th Apr '16 3:20:20 PM by TooManyIdeas

Undertale: don't kill anyone EVER

Star Ruler 2:

Stargates passively drain your FTL generation. If you're going to use them, keep an eye on your generation amount and prioritize which worlds really need a quick response force.

Rules of mastering any fighting game that is not Smash:

Practice the special moves of you favorite character on both sides of the screen.

Halo 3: Don't always assume that just because you have power armor, that's means you're invincible

Skyrim: When you're travelling alone, always be cautious of your surroundings. You'll never know when you will encounter wolves, bears, saber cats, bandits, or dragons. Never think that just because things are peaceful, they're going to stay that way.

Fallout: Always put your points into skills that will help you in the long run.

Wolfenstein: The New Order: Always be strategic in your battles. Don't run guns blazing.

Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon: Take a Ban Seed into every expedition.

Metal Gear Solid V: You're pretty much screwed if the FOB's owner ever shows up during an inflitration attempt.

Oh, and sneaking your way without triggering an alert through any of the FO Bs with UAV patrols is almost impossible. If you destroy them, they bring attention, if you ignore them, they'll probably spot you from behind. Really no reasonable in-between option for that issue.

Civilization Beyond Earth: Rising Tide

• Don't play the expansion pack with any difficulty above Gemini unless you are real good at this game (and have the nerve of steel to handle the frustration), or else the A.Is will never run out of reason to berate you. While themselves are *cough* only better because they *cough* receive bonuses from difficulty level. Get used to the A.I declaring wars on you because your satelites are not as cool as theirs
• Never make alliance with two factions that are at odd with each other. When they declare war upon on le another, you will automatically break alliances, because you can't wage war against both at the same time. This is apparently patched though

Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations, "Operation Brass Drum" scenario. (Zumwalt surface group makes an opposed transit of a blockaded Strait of Hormuz, supported by Ford carrier group and America amphibious group.)

• If you intend to use your Aegis ships as SAM traps, set them to fire manually and to keep their radars off, and let the Hawkeye spot.
• Keep your Growlers on the same axis as the opposing fighters and your fighters, and you will consistently be able to get off the first shot and have it impact too before the opposition can burn through the jamming.
  • The advantage is nearly unfair if you handle the Growlers correctly. "Contact report: HOSTILE: emitters detected: AN/AWG-9"? Bring it.
• F-35s aren't particularly good shooters, but they're fantastic scouts, able to get closer to enemy radar emitters than your other craft and possessed of some insanely good passive sensors.
• Airfields are inherently tough bastards to put out of commission; use the entire alpha strike to crater the runways and runway access points.
• Double-check when assigning munitions that the F-18s are using their JDAMs and not their 20mm cannon, or you will lose aircraft to utterly stupid causes for no gain.
• Just because your Fire Scout can't see those dug-in AAA and short-ranged SAMs doesn't mean they're not there.
  • Use the Zumwalt's 155s to clear out enemy air defense when possible.

Kingdom Hearts Unchained chi:

• To have a good starting roll, you can do the Puzzle and Dragons-style save scumming (delete app and/or save file to restart), but this time, these guys made the Forced Tutorial unnecessarily and painfully long plus have a huge data download at the start just to discourage this even more.
  • Fortunately, having a good starting roll is not imperative unlike Puzzle and Dragons. You can easily get by with four three-star medals (one from the tutorial roll three from your first daily deal) anyway and you'll get the opportunity to upgrade them later.
• If you intend to play with friends, decide what faction you will be joining. You can only party up with people of the same faction.
• Join a party ASAP if you're a lone wolf player. Find an "unlocked" one that doesn't require permissions to get in, it fills up easily with recruits. You can easily leave anytime you want once you need a more advanced raiding party.
• Every time you get a new clothing item, you don't need to spend all your Avatar Points on it unless you like it.
  • For all new items that is unlocked in the avatar store, always unlock enough until you get the AP +1 bonus.
• The "Use 2 special attacks" objective can be finnicky, sometimes using it twice on the boss will not count for some odd reason. So to be safe, use a special attack at least one time on the mobs.
• You can do normal attacks in quick succession to save time, but AOE attacks and specials, you gotta pause between each attack.
• Early on, "raid bosses" can be easily soloed. But, if you want, you can calculate your attacks so that you'll leave a few HP on it and get yourself killed, so you can give some bonuses to a party member who will help out on the boss.
• Always remember to SHARE your most powerful medal. I still see a ton of people stuck with sharing their default bronze Donald Duck medal.
• Sell all Moogle Medals. They are only taking up space and also sell for a ton of cash.
• Finally, try to always spend your excess AP before you level up because it is restored. The best AP dumps are helping on Raid Bosses, and day-of-the-week special quests like Mythril Madness.

Fallout 4: Wasteland Workshop:

• Concrete shipments are now available from almost all general merchants. This is good, because a decent fortress requires a lot of concrete.
• Most species of tamed creatures don't like each other, and you can't make them. That Yao Guai/Radscorpion mixed defense force ain't happening.
• If you're collecting Mythic Deathclaws and want to reorganize your power supply, get the new generator hooked up to the beta wave emitter before you take the old one offline.
• Trappable dogs are the feral type, not the make-good-pets type.
• Your settlers aren't smart enough to walk around pressure plate traps.

Kingdom Hearts Unchained χ

• ALWAYS check how many special gauges are filled on a Keyblade before going into a mission. This is doubly true if you're going to fight a Raid Boss.
• The Medal currently shown actually dictates the attack strength and attack type of your next Keyblade swing. It isn't just there for the sole purpose of special attacks.
• Chances are something with more than one health bar can't be defeated in one turn, at least without a lot of preparation.
• Pick your battles carefully. Sure, you defeated that Invisible, but does that even matter if you don't have any special gauges to cast Cura with during the target battle?
• Raid bosses WILL one-shot you if you don't stun them.

Darkest Dungeon

• Don't summon the Shambler unless you are absolutely certain you can kill it.
• Make sure every member of the party can attack up-close. There will come a time where the party member you put in the back rank is forced to fight from the front.
• Work around quirks. Curing them is largely a waste of gold. The only time it's vital to remove a negative quirk is when, combined with others, it makes it impossible to remove the character's stress.
• Abominations are Awesome, but Impractical - unless you don't need two of the better damage-dealers and the best healer.

Super Mario Maker

• Don't give up. Remember: a course cannot be uploaded unless its creator can clear it. This means that, no matter how hard a course is, it's never impossible.

Well, what if the course creator is a speedrunning god/dess and I've got carpal tunnel?

There are exceptions to every case, of course. Take the levels they played at AGDQ, for instance.

True, but in most hard levels we probably would look for invisible blocks that skip to the ending first.

edited 17th Apr '16 2:43:13 AM by Malco

Armored Warfare:

• The fanbase doesn't read the PvE mission briefing texts. This is especially important to note, because whenever a new map that rarely goes into the random map circulation comes in, they're assume it's probably just the typical "defend this objective" and completely ignore how short the mission timer is, all the while hunting down enemies to kill in random directions.
• You've realized this several times before, Sgt Ricko, but realize it once again: the game doesn't handle latency well, nor does it translate it well onto what you're seeing on the screen. So be ready to die the occasional inexplicable death out of nowhere due to your high ping.

Freedom Wars:

• Light blades are the only melee weapon that can sever Abductor parts.
• You can get sniped off Abductors while severing.
• Stay near your Accessory.
• The other players in multiplayer are only interested in endgame missions. On the downside, this means they're well above what you're prepared to do. On the upside, this means a single online mission can knock almost 10,000 years off your sentence (due to how many resources you're forced to donate).

Pokémon X and Y

• Zorua's/Zoroark's Illusion is an A.I. Breaker. You know, Olympia, you have other moves than Psychic to hit my "Ivysaur."