Video game lessons learned the hard way

Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate:

• Iron Pickaxes can break just like Old Pickaxes. When doing a mining mission, bring several.
• Clear out your surroundings before you try to harvest.
• Do not ignore the giant insects.
• When using a Sword and Shield, you can't run with your weapon drawn.

"I just wanted to know the truth!"

Prowlers have perma-equipped infinite use pickaxes and nets, and don't need to bring along any consumables. Consider using them for any gathering type missions where you don't expect combat... and if you're good with them, any mission where you expect combat.

Will the transhumanist future have catgirls? Does Japan still exist? Well, there is your answer. — Unknown

Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate

• Your starting armor simply isn't going to cut it against the Great Maccao. Make something better.
• The game warned you outright that the Great Maccao is a Wolfpack Boss. Be prepared to hack through a lot of its children.

Fallout: New Vegas

• The bridge between Primm and the NCR camp is mined.
• The Primm sheriff candidate in the Correctional Facility is in the Visitors Center. You don't have to go further in.
  • Nominal Importance applies - the guy with a name in the Visitors Center is the one you came here to rescue.

"I just wanted to know the truth!"

Dyson Sphere Program: it is okay and encouraged to overproduce base products. It is better to have storage units full of things you don't need right now rather than needing 400 fusion cells and needing to create the infrastructure for it completely from scratch.

Also, using more than one smelter or assembler on the output from a mining unit is fine and won't actually cause any problems, which might help the game not be incredibly fucking slow.

Edited by Zendervai on Jan 28th 2021 at 12:15:26 PM

Not Three Laws compliant.

Fallout: New Vegas:

• You can expose Orris's scheme by taking a potshot at his "attackers", but they're heavily armed and outnumber you six-to-one.
• Don't set foot on the second floor of Harland's room without getting his permission. You may have a Stealth Boy active, but he already knows you're there.
• Don't underestimate the value of the Barter skill.

Hyrule Warriors (Wii U version; I have yet to get the Definitive Edition)

• Starting a new save file means sitting through five minutes of "You've unlocked X!" if you have all the DLC.

"I just wanted to know the truth!"

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

• The fact that Magnamon haves no type doesn't mean that it's the same for Rapidmon Armor too, so don't be shocked when it one-shots your Beelzemon Blast Mode with a single Saint Knuckle, it's only because it's a Vaccine type using a Light move on a Dark Virus.
• Training-based stat boosts are between parentheses and have a + before them, but that doesn't mean that you have to sum them with the main stat numbers. It just means how much of the main stat points are due to the training.
• There is no MaloMyotismon in this game. See that silhouette in the second slot of possible Mega levels for Myotismon? That's GranDracmon. Sorry.

The best character is always the one-shot disguise.

Addendum:

• During the postgame subquests where you have to fight all the Royal Knights, in the final battle KILL OMNIMON BEFORE ALPHAMON. Otherwise he will get inane boosts and start oneshotting all your team with a constant spam of Transcendent Sword.

The best character is always the one-shot disguise.

Nioh

• This is a Soulslike. If you're bad at FROM Software games, you're not going to have a good time here.
• Don't fight the guys in armor toe-to-toe. Their job is to teach you to bait attacks and then counter.
• Stop trying to do Dynasty Warriors-style attack chains, that's not how the combat system works here.

"I just wanted to know the truth!"

Dragalia Lost: In the Alberian Battle Royale, don’t let your skill pickup inventory fill up without at least one heal pickup.

SoundCloud

Super Mario Bros. 35

• In Warp Zones, it's the leftmost pipe that sends you the furthest ahead in the level queue. Not the rightmost one. Y'know, just like in the original game.
• God help you if someone sends a Lakitu somewhere, at best everyone's going to deal with a lot of Spinies but at worst that one Lakitu is going to multiply until everyone has to deal with ten simultaneous Lakitus.
• Yes, Hammer Bros. still chase you if you slip past them. Bowser does too.
• Know when to start spending your coin horde- if the timer's ticking at max speed and under 100 seconds, nothing short of a well-timed POW Block is going to save you.

🏳️‍⚧️she/her | Vio Rhyse Alberia

Trails Of Cold Steel 1: The "cure all ailments" spell is your friend.

Nach jeder Ebbe kommt die Flut.

Nioh

• There is no such thing as being cheap.
• Elixirs drop too rarely for you to afford to be hit.

Fire Emblem Heroes

• When level-grinding a low-star character so you can use them for Inherit Skill, expect a lot of empty levels.

"I just wanted to know the truth!"

I thought, when using a character for Inheritance, they could pass on any skill they could learn, even if they didn't already know it.

Nach jeder Ebbe kommt die Flut.

Only the ones for their current rarity level. That means if you have a 3-star character with a useful skill that they can't use until they're promoted to 5 stars, you can only inherit the weaker 3-star version of that skill, even if the fodder unit themselves hasn't learned it yet.

I hope you get tiny bits of eggshell in all your omelettes for the rest of your life!

Civilization V

• Returning to 4X games after a long time away and a computer change is not like riding a bicycle. For example, Optics will get you onto the coastal waters, but you need Astronomy to get into the open ocean.
• Even on lower difficulties, the AI is smart enough to realize that your siege engines are the most dangerous targets when you're attacking their cities.
• Keep your combat units ready even after the war is over. Barbarians can spawn anywhere you don't have sight.

General:

• Check the graphics settings before you launch a game for the first time. Sometimes they assume your computer is far less powerful than it actually is and set everything at minimum.

"I just wanted to know the truth!"

Bloodborne : attempting to make a run following this guide:

-While chain parrying the Blood Starved Beast is a legitimate strategy in a regular run, where visceral ripostes do so much damage you can pretty much 6-shot this thing, in a gun-only run where 6 parries is what you need to get to the phase 2 at all, and you have less levels and therefore less health than usual, turning most of BSB's almost-one-hit kills into guaranteed one-hit-kills, it is NOT WORTH IT to try to challenge and parry the BSB starting from phase 2 onwards. just dodge and hit counter hits while focusing on staying alive. Getting punished instantly poisons you and generally costs you one antidote and two vials, which quickly turn the war of resources to your disadvantage.

Edited by Yumil on Feb 6th 2021 at 2:47:50 PM

"when you stare too long into the abyss, Xehanort takes advantage of the distraction to break into your house and steal all your shit."

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp: Pretty things cost Leaf Tickets. Leaf Tickets more often than not cost money. Money that you need to save. I should not have installed this game.

FC: SW-1445-0294-1719/PSN: TekkenGirl4Lyfe/Currently playing: Fate/Samurai Remnant

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
  • The longer you play during a playthrough session, the more likely you'll get a Blood Moon.
  • Heat Resistance will not protect you from volcanic heat. You need a separate stat called Fire Resistance for that.

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Dragon Quest Tact (pretty neat turn-based strategy mobile game)

• Level 3-3 is the Wake-Up Call Boss.
  • Shoot the Healslime first.
  • The Orc has a lightning attack. Pretty much all of the monsters given to you for free are weak to lightning. This is why the game handed you enough gems to get ten monsters from the gacha for getting through the tutorial.
  • The snipers are just there to annoy you. The Healslime and Orc are the real targets.
  • On the plus side, you not only get the Healslime for free for beating the level, you also get the Orc. So that's nice.
• Special attacks, even if they're physical, can go through obstacles if their reach is longer than one square.

Fire Emblem Heroes

• Having one party member at Level 40 is not enough to carry you through a Grand Hero Battle on Lunatic. Grind everyone else up to that level, apply Dragonflowers, and try again.

"I just wanted to know the truth!"

This is a VERY IMPORTANT LESSON from your pal Aegis P. Get it while its hot!

On Star Ocean Blue Sphere, MAKE SURE that when you start a branch of skill development you not only stick with it until it ends but also very wisely pick which one you are going for first.

Also forget that moronic "Train MP And Int" thing from gamefaqs. Make sure you complete the branch and just focus on that. Its VERY tempting to go off track and level up those specific stats but that will lead to ruin.

Oh and if you want Raise Dead, use the strongest single target spell Rena has available on a dead ally. Isnt that intuitive?

Discord: Waido X 255#1372 If you cant contact me on TV Tropes do it here.

Minecraft: There's a reason bedrock is unbreakable in survival. You break through that shit in creative, you go right out the bottom of the world and into the void.

Edited by ReikoKazama on Feb 11th 2021 at 10:58:35 PM

FC: SW-1445-0294-1719/PSN: TekkenGirl4Lyfe/Currently playing: Fate/Samurai Remnant

Having played the PS 1 version, I'd like to add "Look up where optional party members are ahead of time so you don't miss out." Going in blind I missed every optional member except Precis but somehow got the sequence of events to turn Indaelcio's Limiter Off and made the final boss obscenely hard.

Edited by lalalei2001 on Feb 11th 2021 at 11:16:13 AM

The Protomen enhanced my life.

THAT is also a marvelous lesson! I would just restart in that situation. You lost even CELINE?

Discord: Waido X 255#1372 If you cant contact me on TV Tropes do it here.

I did manage to get Celine, thankfully. I played as Rena, so my final party was Rena, Claude, Celine, Precis, Dias, and Noel. XD I distinctly remember feeling like I discovered a big secret with Precis cause she wasn't in the manual XD

EDIT: Also, don't feed everyone mandrakes to get them out of your inventory. Just....don't.

Edited by lalalei2001 on Feb 12th 2021 at 10:00:27 AM

The Protomen enhanced my life.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: The shrine detector is laughably unreliable. I spent almost two hours trying to reach a shrine that was supposedly located somewhere in the northernmost side of Hebra's mountain. Originally, I thought that signal belonged to the shrine that is in the extreme northwest; but some time later I went through that part again while I was looking for the large Leviathan skeleton of that province and the shrine detector went like crazy again. I was surveying the whole portion, climbed four times the peak to see if it was somewhere up there (the detector stopped shimmering in every case), and when I suspected the shrine would be inside the mountain I was looking through some cave entrance in the same northern border. Two hours and one Blood Moon later, I gave up on that stupid shrine and focused on just finding the skeleton. I managed to discover two hot springs along the way, but when I was strolling across the southern side of the peak (from which you can reach to other, more familiar places like that chilling river or the whole hollow where the icy Talus lies), my detector was once again active. As I examined the surroundings, I discovered a door similar to that from the eastern area of Hebra, and you could likewise open it by hitting it with an incoming snowball. Once inside, I entered the large interior of the peak and found the shrine and the skeleton. The detector was trying to take me there from the wrong direction just because the shrine happened to be close enough to be detectable from that angle.

If TV Tropes still had the Wall Banger pages, I'd go right now there and add this extremely shady case of imprecision on the detector's part as an example.

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