Video game lessons learned the hard way

Library of Ruina:

• Urban Nightmare is where you actually have to deck-build. You can't just skate through the game like you have previously.
• Don't clash Ranged pages with Evade dice. You'll probably roll low and take full damage.
• The description of "Will Make Fine Silk" is incorrect. It puts a Fabulous Fabric in the user's hand, but not anyone else's.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet (The Indigo Disk DLC):

• Pokémon that can float, such as Comfey, Tynamo, Porygon and Reuniclus count as flying Pokémon for the purposes of the "Take a photo of a wild Pokémon in flight!" BBQ.
• When it comes to BBQs that involve battling Pokémon ("Defeat a wild Tera Pokémon!" and the like), it’s the initial encounter that triggers the completion of the BBQ, not the battle itself. Essentially, you can trigger an encounter with a wild Tera Pokémon and get the BP, then run from the Terastallized Pokémon and keep the BP without even having to fight it.

Coral Island

Unlike other farming games, you DO have to water your fruit trees.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: Iron Bundle the Unrivaled will use Aurora Veil at the beginning of the raid. Have someone use Brick Break so it doesn't blunt your damage.

Dicey Dungeons: Save Scumming can’t save you when your moments before inevitable death.

Sakuna Of Rice And Ruin: During the part where your stats are halved you need to put the recovery items in the fertilizer to restore them.

Darkest Dungeon II:

• Do not by any means be afraid to call an expedition off early. It's better to get the Candles now than be wiped out later.
• The Vestal has received a serious Nerf.
• Mastery points don't carry over unless you've got Memories.

APICO:

• The game does not pause when you're looking at the noticeboard, which will mess up your timings for checking for certain bee mutations, butterflies, and solitary bees.
• Position your hives, heaters, and coolers carefully so that you don't accidentally make your bees grumpy for heating/freezing their hives.
• You need to be physically present when your bees restore dying coral. Leaving them offscreen will only make it progress by a few seconds.

Edited by TroperNo9001 on Dec 26th 2023 at 3:03:23 AM

• Fire Emblem: Three Houses: You can only do a class certification on a character once per week. So be sure to properly read what weapons and tools that class has.
• Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure:
  • The game contains no autosaves so if you forget to save full way through the game, you're screwed.
  • Be sure to grind whenever possible and buy healing items as the has Easy Levels, Hard Bosses.

Edited by Ayumi-chan on Dec 28th 2023 at 7:32:55 PM

9 years ago, when replaying the game, I died to a random encounter. It was the only time I died to one in the entire game.

Finally got back to No Umbrellas Allowed after being stuck in trying to get one of the story paths, but my tip isn't about that. Tags associated with signatures almost always take precedence over the tags associated with brands. For example, the Hoverboard Still Alive may be "Unpopular" for being made by FuzzFly, but because it has actor Yeongmi Mo's signature on it, it's actually "Popular Among the Youth".

PowerWash Simulator:

• By the time you get to the Vintage Car job, you'll need the Soap Nozzle and appropriate soaps. The Vintage Car is covered in rust spots, and your choice is either to use the Soap Nozzle to remove them or spends hours using the red nozzle to spot-clean each of them.
• Use the ladder wisely, or else you'll lose a lot of time moving it around.
• Going into the area list and selecting a specific area causes it to glow if it's still dirty, which is useful when you're searching for which, say, Door Handle still needs to be dealt with.

The Turbo (spinning stream) Nozzle on the Urban X2 (medium duty washer) works wonders. Same thing on the Prime Vista 3000 (heavy duty washer) is even better, but you may not have the needed stars to buy that by this job.

Plus, that way you don't need to be juggling soaps... or spending the cash on them that could otherwise be going to better washers and nozzles (or even better, cosmetics).

Tunic:

• Opening the inventory doesn't pause the game (this severely hampers the usefulness of a lot of items).
• Don't let the free movement lull you into a false sense of security: The Magic Orb does consume magic when used on enemies.

I only play single-player, so the only time cosmetics would mean anything is in the montage when I clear a level.

Palia:

• You can press X from the map to fast travel to your housing plot, just know that it has a thirty-minute cooldown.
• If you're going to fish with bait, make sure you have it selected first.
• Seeds given to you as quest rewards do not benefit from crop bonuses (Harvest Boost, Retain Water, etc.).
• Sermak will not go down in one hit with Makeshift arrows alone. Make sure you're quick to take one out before it runs away.
• Once you get Standard quality or higher gear, you'll have to start repairing your tools semi-regularly.
• If you have a question, feel free to ask fellow players on your server. Palia actually has one of the nicest communities out of any online game I've played so far.

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince: Using Scrolls to teach talent trees won't reset spent talent points. :(

Dead Space (Remake):

• Sell the oxygen vials if you get any. Any environment that shoves you in vacuum/toxic gases has the game lavishly place oxygen dispensers, so you're unlikely to need them.
• A good pair of headphones are recommended. Not just for atmosphere (which this game does amazingly well), but necros have a tendency to flank you. Relatedly...
• Abuse stasis. The game absolutely lavishes stasis recharges at you, not even counting stasis recharge stations which recharge for free wherever using it is critical. Freezing enemies in place and then repositioning as quickly as possible is a great way to avoid ambushes in tighter corridors, and pretty much the only way to deal with brutes.
• Abuse kinesis on higher difficulties and/or if low on ammo. The Ishimura abounds in glowing rods on walls that you can use to basically one-shot lower-level necros.

Lies of P:

• After a point you essentially just want to be scaling capacity rather than health or stamina for heavier stuff.
• If you are even moderately good at Souls games summoning the phantom will essentially finish off most of the boss for you. Not even for the damage the thing does - more for it drawing heat away from you means you have the space to get off your super heavies. This is good if you're annoyed by a boss and just want it over with, but not if you feel like it is defeatable with a few more tries.
• I was told that Fable Arts can cause an enemy with a glowing health bar to stagger. Either I am doing it wrong (only with specific enemies/weapons?) or that was a goddamn lie.
• If your charged heavy attack includes multiple swings, you need to connect with the FINAL swing to make a glowing-health-bar enemy stagger; the first one will not do it.
• Be prepared to rage at the fucking part in the Cathedral where you're supposed to walk on thin planks with enemies often targeting you with knockback-causing attacks.
• Heavier is (usually) better, in my opinion. As much fun as a rapier can be, you're much better speccing into MOT, especially for bosses.
• Running is a surprisingly useful solution.

Potion Permit:

• Opening your bag does not pause the game. You can still get injured in the middle of eating something.
• Do not sell your potions after 5PM because they will be all wasted the following day.

Edited by TroperNo9001 on Jan 19th 2024 at 1:15:50 AM

Elden Ring:

• Do your research on weapon affinities and plan out which one you want. This run vs. my first run is a world of difference.
  • Guardian Swordspear is a beating with Keen Affinity.
• Stormcaller deserved way more of a look.
• Bloodflame Blade is stupid good.
• Yes, You Can Get To +25 before Mountaintops.

More Potion Permit: Upgrade your HP as soon as you can because the monsters at the Barren Wasteland can and will hit you hard. Dean had a good reason to stop Helene from venturing out there to collect artifacts, after all.

Edited by TroperNo9001 on Jan 9th 2024 at 3:31:29 AM

Neon Abyss:

• Use bombs wisely. There are a lot of rocks to blow up and, unless you luck out and get an explosive weapon, not enough bombs to remove them all.
• Don't rely on your pets. They're fragile.
• Wisdom and Violence rooms are only accessible once per run, and only one of the two each time.
• Because you're only told what an item does after you pick it up, it's best to memorize what they do for future runs.

I completed all 20 floors of Luck be a Landlord without ever using an Item Capsule, because the entire time, I confused it with the Tedium Capsule. The former gives you a random common item^note a power-up that sits on either side of the slot machine while the latter guarantees one of the symbols^note the icons in the slot machine that give coins you choose after a spin to be common.

The Imperial Gatekeeper (adults-only Papers, Please knockoff)

• Don't play this without the restoration patch. Not just for the lewd content, but because without the "Pat Down" mechanic it's actually impossible to play properly, at least if you're like me and don't like arbitrary penalties.

Pikmin 4: Your Pikmin are not immune to your bombs.