Video game lessons learned the hard way

Luigi's Mansion 3

• Don't spend your money on the gem detectors early on. If you end up taking a look around a room and clear it out as you go, you should easily find most gems as you go, and your money is better spent on Golden Bones and the other collectables detector as you can't find those collectables without them. If you absolutely need to, spend your money on gem detectors during late game clean up if you are going for 100%.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses: When they say "Don't attack the Death Knight", DON'T ATTACK THE DEATH KNIGHT. Seriously. If you try to attack him and don't bring him down in a single turn (and you probably won't), he'll stop standing still and chase after your army, picking them off one by one. If you really want those rare Dark Seals, better just Steal them from him just before you finish the chapter.

You pursued Lu Bu and it cost you.

*sips beer* Ayup. I was just testing it out to see what would happen, knowing it was a dumb idea.

Hotline Miami and Velvet Assassin taught me something that is really found in other games:

Unless you want to die immediately and surrounded like a German in 1945, patience is key as well as where and when you'll strike; the enemy is at.

CTR:NF once again: Don't expect to be able to get 700,000 points in a Ring Rally on Hot Air Skyway. It's out of your league, as is getting Oxide's ghost on Dragon Mines. Just keep doing the daily, quick and weekly challenges.

Etrian Odyssey Nexus:

Camo Dogs still suck. Their roars still halve your HP cap. They still hit hard. They still cause extra trouble when grouped with other enemies. I still hate them. The otherwise enjoyable Mini-Dungeon Forest of the End is made a lot less enjoyable because of these literal bitches.

Blasphemous: What you can and cannot dodge/parry/block is not always immediately apparent. You also generally cannot dodge through non-attacking bosses, as Warden of the Silent Sorrow will be happy to demonstrate.

More FE3H "Things I Already Know But I'll Pretend I Wish I Knew for the Sake of This Topic":

Yes, you can still earn support points with Hilda on a Black Eagles run (but you can't directly give her gifts or recover lost items until you side against Edelgard at the end of Chapter 11). No, you still can't take her with you if you're doing a Crimson Flower run. She has a very good reason not to want to follow Edelgard.

Edited by WillyFourEyes on Mar 23rd 2020 at 10:01:10 AM

Minecraft: Survival mode is nuts if you're a first-time player. Important things to note:

• Make sure your house is A. roofed and B. big enough to set a bed down.
• Always make sure you have food with you.
• Night time is for sleeping, not for adventuring/mining. (and cue "not with that attitude" from veteran Minecrafters; sorry for not wanting to die, jeez)
• Again, and this bears repeating, GIVE YOUR HOUSE A ROOF. Spiders can climb walls.
• You will need to make multiple chests. One isn't enough for everything you may want to store.

Spiders can't actually climb walls, but they can jump about a block's height.

Did they change that? They definitely used to climb walls.

I've been playing since 1.7.9, and I don't remember that ever being a thing. Granted, I prefer playing Survival on Peaceful because I'm a coward, so there's gotta be something I didn't know about.

I only play Peaceful cause first-person monster surprises scare me.

Update: Apparently that behavior has always been a thing and I've never noticed that was them actually climbing, I always thought that they just spawn weirdly.

I learned something!

Etrian Odyssey Nexus:

Get rid of Blót's Afterimages ASAP. Your life depends on that. Do it, fellow explorer. He becomes a dick when just two of them are on the battlefield. And yes, trying to debuff, ail or bind him will prompt him to use Clear Mind and recover health, but it's honestly not worth playing cautiously. Just bring your best and attack attack attack attack attack attack attack until the bastard dies. If you let him live for too long, you'll be toast.

Shovel Knight: King of Cards: Joustus Edition

• Filling your entire deck with Slam cards is not a good idea.
• Since the Slam effect treats it as if the card you placed pushed the adjacent cards, Slam cards with bomb arrows will destroy cards instead of merely moving them around.
• The description says Cascade cards will make anything they push change teams "temporarily" but don't be fooled- it only means that in the sense that the cards revert to their original colors when the match ends.
• Also, Cascade will flip the colors on any card it pushes- this includes converting your own cards to the enemy side.

FYI, spiders can climb vertical surfaces, but not ceilings. So if the top of the wall has a one-block overhand jutting outwards, the spider can't get on top of it.

That being said, having a roof is still useful if you plan on doing stuff overnight because Phantoms only spawn if you're standing directly under the open sky at night.

CTR:NF yet again: Treat Gingerbread Joyride's Oxide ghost like a Blue Fire All The Way challenge. Otherwise you will get your ass kicked.

When taking on a challenging Spirit battle in The World of Light or Spirit Board always have the right spirits to help you.

They don't care about the power of whatever you have that's not spirit ability oriented. They only care if you are properly equipped with the said spirits abilities.

Edited by Wheatleyfangirl on Dec 22nd 2019 at 5:56:10 AM

Fallout New Vegas: Invest in Speech. I got the worst possible outcome on Someone To Watch Over Me because I couldn't pass a Speech check.

Astral Chain

• You can not chain bind the game's Metal Slime.
• You are not invulnerable during a chain jump.
• Chain jumps are fickle and tend to get snagged on terrain, especially in the Astral Plane where you'll take damage for falling into the abyss.
• As a Stylish Action game you're expected to incorporate a ton of spice into your fighting style; that is to say doing the majority of a fight using only the Gun will result in a low score and a D rank.
• Related to the above: if you feel like you did good on a fight, it's a D rank. If you feel like you absolutely flubbed it, you'll get a B or A rank.
• It's weird to get used to, but turns out the game actually mapped "attack" to a shoulder button for a reason! It makes it easier to adjust the camera while using your Legion's attack skills, or to use the abilities you equipped them with. I changed it so you use the face buttons to attack instead and I'm in too deep to unlearn that setup now.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate:

• When using the Piranha Plant's Final Smash, make sure you look where you're going when you're trying to move Petey toward someone so you don't walk straight into a walk-off blast zone.

When your console starts acting up, consult the maker's support site. It may just save you from having to get it repaired or replaced.

On a totally unrelated note^*  by which I mean it's 100% related, Nintendo's support site does actually contain useful information. Like how to get a Switch that won't wake up from sleep mode to work again.

Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon: Pichu is very, very squishy. Even Com Mons ~3-5 levels below it can give it a hard time, especially if one or more of its defensive IVs isn't great. It doesn't even get an attacking move other than Thunder Shock until it evolves or you reach the Move Tutors. Gosh dangit, I wanted a challenge, not a dice roll.