DocHoff

I'm also going to do a speedrun through a game called Scorn. The first time around, I faced a nasty death at the end of Act 1 next to the....uhh....meat tree...., I want to see if I can avoid that. There's probably all types of strategy guides, but I refuse to do any research with this game. In my eyes, what's the point of buying a puzzle game if you're just going to Youtube your way through the whole thing?

It does take a lot of time. Luckily, my kids know by now that pets aren't like those in Minecraft and Sims 4; pets are a labor of love, be they finned, furred, scaled or feathered.

My day: I've had a little adventure lately. The TL;DR version is I now have two aquariums; one for Tetra and one for several types of catfish. The longer version: I learned that my youngest is in charge of feeding the classroom fish and loves it; these are the types of things I like to know! These are the things I want to hear when I ask "how was your day?" The deal with Connor is that he has too much pride to let me know that he really likes something, and I have no clue why; he lives in a house where joy and silliness and creativity are encouraged; much different than the household I grew up in. Anyway, we got a little five gallon tank with two red eye Tetra (Jethro and Merle), one black skirt Tetra (Bubba) and one long-fin black skirt Tetra (Cletus). Their names are a little joke between my wife and I, bc she said that the last name I came up with for a family pet was a little redneck. My retort was "Redneck? Baby doll, you forget where I grew up, you ain't seen Nothing yet!" So, Bubba, Cletus, Merle and Jethro became new members of the family. Bubba was bigger than everyone else, and knew darn well that he was alpha fish; that happens, I've seen that before. But Bubba went way above and beyond; swimming in the middle of the tank and pushing everyone else in their own little sections. He very much reminded me of one of those old men who yell at the kids to stay off his grass. I upgraded to a ten gallon, thinking that more space would alleviate the problem. However, it made Bubba a bigger butt, he darn well ensured that everyone stayed in their own designated areas. He never hurt anyone; I accidentally killed Merle. I know you're supposed to give fish only what they can eat in a two minute span, but do you know how much Tetras can eat? Every meal was like a feeding frenzy; I'm not used to that. I used to have some mollies; gentle, calm, docile little guys. So; Merle ended up eating way too much, got swim bladder disease, and died. That majorly bummed poor little Jethro out. I didn't know that fish got upset when their buddies died. Cletus also died; I have no clue why. One day, he was swimming just fine, the next day he was stuck to the filter. So, Jethro sat at his end of the tank, and Bubba stayed on his side, for months. The family decided that it was too depressing watching two fish just stare at each other. I had the kids do research and call fish stores, because I knew darn well that they'd get the max number of fish that a ten gallon tank could comfortably hold. So, they got a new buddy for Jethro (Slim), two bloodfin Tetra (Beavis and butthead) two Bronze Corydora (Unnamed bc they're too young to tell their gender), and two still-unnamed otocinclus. This was kind of a life lesson for me. Bubba couldn't keep everyone in line anymore. Now that Jethro got a new buddy, he got bolder and stood his ground when Bubba chased him. The bloodfins wouldn't tolerate being bullied and would Chase Bubba if he even got close. No one really messed with the Oto, I'm not sure why. And those two tiny little Corydora? It's impossible to chase something when it constantly stops to play and forage; those Cory are a hoot. So, having lost control, Bubba stressed out and died. When I removed him, every one of those fish started playing. I had no clue that Oto even played; I thought they just kind of stuck to glass most of the time. But this was a lesson for me. At 44, I'm not old enough to be the old man of the tank yet, but when my time comes, I do NOT want to be the grumpy old guy in slippers yelling at the neighborhood kids, the guy who everyone lets out a sigh of relief when he passes so everyone can start playing again. Dad says it's inevitable, but I'm going to do my absolute best to struggle against that. The wife has permission to give me a swift kick to the nethers if I ever get too persnickety. I also learned that I'm a big ole softie, which is why we now have two tanks. I was the only one who liked Bubba; he'd come up and get eye to eye with me when he saw me. However, the kids took that opportunity to get two juvenile Panda Corydora; Dean and Patty. I was a little worried about Patty; she just didn't have the energy that Corydora generally do. I got a phone call; the kids found Patty dead and poor Dean's dorsal fin was shredded. So, I watched the tank. Beavis and Butthead turned nastier than Bubba ever was, and encouraged Jethro and Slim to be nasty, too. Others might flush problem fish, but I can't. I bought a stand wide and sturdy enough to handle two tanks, and my four Tetras can all be butts together without hurting any of the gentle guys. Of course heaven help a spot be vacant in our house, so I come home to find two new Panda Cory and one long-finned Panda. I can't yell, because it did make me smile to see Dean so excited that he has new playmates. But that's it! 8 catfish in a tank is plenty, and no one new is going in the Tetra tank. So, that's my story of how a five gallon tank of four Tetra turned into a ten gallon tank of tetra and an additional ten gallon tank of our catfish nation.

I haven't been this happy with a product since I bought the Pain Remains album. For Lorna Shore fans, I hadn't heard of them until last year. Like around November, my younger brother (who hates black metal) called me up "You like wild and heavy music. On LiquidMetal, I just heard this trilogy of songs called "Pain Remains 1-111"; it'll change ya". And I thought "Yeah, suuuuurrrrreee". I'm 44, and a total music nut, "it'll change ya" is a big claim; I remember the first time I heard "Freebird", "I Stay Away", "Con Te Partiro", "Fade To Black"......... music can definitely change you, but I've heard this so-called "symphonic metal" before, and wasn't really moved. But I bought Pain Remains, and darned if my brother wasn't right. I played that whole album and afterwards sat in silent awe for like 20 minutes. And that was kind of like how D4 made me feel; sitting in silent awe. For those of us that look at the above paragraph and just see total gibberish, I can break it down in gamer terms. D4 has brought me out of action rpg retirement. I mean, I spent over thirty years in the belly of the beast; I've climbed the highest peaks, descended into the lowest levels of Hell, and have fought against and alongside every type of angel, demon, cyborg, and alien nightmare I could possibly imagine. I was done, burned out. I retired to No Man's Sky; I was happy sailing through the heavens, cataloging different rocks and critters and junk. Yesterday, before school, my kid told me that there was a new Diablo, and it was in open beta for a few days. I thought "ehhh, I'll try it for like an hour". I was able to log in at around 12:30, and the next thing I know, the kids are in my den "It's 6, dude". Lol, and that's a serious ordeal in my house; with a handful of hungry teens, at 6, there'd better be either dinner on the table or a delivery guy en route, lest neighborhood critters start to go missing. So...... into the flood again.....

Sorry for late response; I've been doing a lot of reading and experimenting. I wasn't even fully sure that this was a result of Covid at first. During Covid, I couldn't smell or taste anything, then it seemed that everything returned to normal after it passed. It wasn't until April that I noticed that my taste and smell had been altered. At first, I just thought that it was due to tobacco cessation or the fact that part of my enamel had fallen off one of my teeth recently. Since then, I've come to the realization that it's not that everything tastes and smells like vegetable oil, it's that I can't taste and smell.... I guess you could call it.... in layers? Like, if I have sour cream and onion potato chips, sometimes I can only taste the sour cream, other times I can only taste the onion, other times I can only taste the vegetable oil that they were cooked in. I've tried a bunch of different stuff, and I can't tell you what does/doesn't work because every day is different. This crap really panicked me at first, and then I thought "you know what? Just one day at a time, it'll return, just take it day by day". It could be far worse. Some folks I know didn't even make it through Covid, and they were a lot younger than me (not that 42 is old). Some folks made it, but racked up hella medical bills, while I made it through with just fever medicine and a lot of binge-watching iZombie. All my brother can detect is a coppery, blood type of smell and taste. My wife's coworker can detect a fecal matter type of smell. Now that would suck. Can you imagine? When you brush your teeth, fecal matter. First cup of coffee in the morning; fecal matter.

I figured this belongs here, since it deals with food. After Covid, I couldn't smell or taste anything for a good chunk of time. When it returned, everything smelled and tasted like vegetable glycerin. So, I thought it was somehow related to smoking, right? So I stopped. And then, I went to vaping, and nothing changed. I switched devices and vape brands, and nothing changed. So, I stopped in February, and it got worse. Everything smelled and tasted like vegetable glycerin, even my deodorant and shampoo. Well, I'm not sure how those taste, but they stink of vegetable glycerin. So, when I realized that something's actually up, I went online, and did all that crap. The zinc stuff, vitamin c stuff, the elderberry stuff, using essential oils and peppermint, even eating burned popcorn. All that crap, and nothing worked. The whole darn world smells of vegetable glycerin, and everything I put in my mouth tastes like it. But I discovered one trick, after five sucky months. Lol, kind of sounds like an ad, but I promise this isn't a plug for anything. Before I chew or swallow anything, I let it rest on my tongue and take several deep breaths in through my mouth. Of course I probably look like a giant dork doing that, but it's either that or taste vegetable glycerin. It's a slight pain in the butt with liquids; it means I can only take tiny sips at a time. I wish I would have known this months ago, because I threw out a whole fridge-worth of gourmet meat, cheese and wines because I thought my fridge had gone bad. A friend had made me this charcuterie board type of deal, which I also pitched bc I thought my fridge ruined it. So, because I'm so elated to actually be able to taste things again, I thought I'd share this tip with you, in case somebody needed it.

I went on a whole little mental journey with this one. In the end, I decided that if I'm going to roleplay, I'm going to stick w what I know: beer. So, I waited for my beer to ferment, thinking of what I could call it. Hoffweiser? Or maybe Hoffeweizen? Before I could think of a fun name for it, I discovered that alcohol in Vintage Story sucks. One little sip and you go from stone sober to stumbling drunk. There's no glass of Scotch on the patio while contemplating life, or even taking a six pack with you while aimlessly wandering (one of my fav things to do in the real world). With a whole world to explore, I don't think my character would like being crashed out on the kitchen floor at 18:30 just because he had a sip of something with dinner. That's cool, though, I can still use my fruit press to make juice. Hey, there's no shame in my character having fruit punch in his travel flask

Wow! My lunch usually consists of lunch meat, slapped on wheat bread and squirted with condiments.

Sorry for the late reply. Absolutely we can distill; ale, wine, brandy, mead, sake, whiskey, vodka. There's also a variety of juices. Mind you, the game's not just about what you can do in the kitchen. But while you're in the kitchen, why not enjoy yourself?

Thank you, Delta, that does help

I have a quick question. In Vintage Story, I've finally reached the ability to distill all types of alcohol. So, brandy caught my eye because it's one of the types of alcohol that never rots. However, I've never had brandy, so I'm curious what a person would pair it with. It doesn't exactly matter, but it's a roleplaying game, so if I can roleplay it, then I'm gunna do that stuff up right, ya know? Sit in my kitchen, watch the sunset, have a glass, I just need to know what to pair it with. Internet says..... all types of stuff; some say that you pair it with a dessert, others say you don't pair it with anything. That second group is one I'm a little skeptical about; I mean come on, I found a chart about which types of beer pair best with different types of jerky. So, the reason why I'm asking here instead of the Vintage Story forum is because I see posts from chefs, foodies, and folks that just enjoy a glass or two at dinner. So, to you kind folks: what pairs well with a brandy?

Awesome, good lookin out, thank you

Hi I know that sounds dubious; I'm not a scammer or a hacker or anything malicious. Here's the deal with me: I don't do Facebook or Twitter or Discord or things of that nature; there was a little too much drama on there. Besides, we have the glorious inventions of texting, phone calls, etc, right? But since lockdown, most of my crew have become bitter, bitter pills. They've said, to summarize, "When you first came home from the service, you used to be fun You used to be all edgy and get fired up about stuff. Now, ........ you're like a gummi bear." Yeah, things like marriage, parenthood, and domestication have softened my edges. I like me! I don't want to be on edge like when I first came home, and I enjoy being peaceful. But I don't think it's me, nothing's recently changed. I've been home for 20 years, man, been married for a decade, been a parent for close to ten years. What I think is my group of friends lost the fine art of small talk, of social pleasantries, or "fluff", if you will. For example: Me: " I was listening to a band called Excel the other day, ya ever hear of these guys? It's like a cross between Metallica and ska. Metalli-ska, lol. I like the Metallica feel, but I'm not sure about the ska part." Friend #1 "Yeah, I got Sirius XM. Are you trying to be Tommy London or something?" Well, excuse me for finding something new to me and wanting to share it. Or: Me: "Hey, I was looking at the Steam store. I know you like to play games with your kids on rainy days; I think a fun for the whole family type of deal would be The Ranchers; is that something up your ally?" Friend #2 "Yeah, I can access the Steam store, thanks." Well, excuse me, man! Things slip under my radar all the freaking time. I love fluff, I'd love a "hey, you know Pepsi came out with their own vape?" Mind you, I don't like being bombarded all day long. But when the wife's at work, my kids are at school, and I'm home, small talk is what's missing from my life. I'll tell ya what, folks get downright crappy when ya add them on Steam! "Who the heck are You?!" Just some guy, I liked your profile, you seemed fun to chat with "Are you stupid or something?! I don't just add rando people to my friends list! But feel free to donate to my Patreon fund !" Wow, so that's how it's going to be? Get the heck out of here, but feel free to leave money on your way out? Naw, man, and my friends are wrong, stuff never used to be like this, people never used to be this snide before. We've reached like rudeness level ten over here, lol. So, that's what I'm after; just rando friendly small talk fluff, that's why I was curious if I can attach my Steam Profile here. Maybe profile is the wrong word. Profile name? User name, I think you know what I mean. If not, I harbor no ill-will, I just figured "what's the harm in asking?"

Hidden deep wasn't quite what I thought it was, but that's ok. I'm feeling like heading back into Conan: Exiles

https://store.steampowered.com/app/976890/Hidden_Deep/ Waiting patiently for this to release

I have one additional thought. I have a lot of these open world survivalcraft types of games; Conan, Creativerse, Subsistence, Minecraft, Dragon Quest Builders 2, Empyrion, etc, and there's very few of them that I can't recommend. They all have their own little spin on crafting and survival, they have their own flair. In 7 Days to Die, when nightfall approaches, I caught myself holding my breath, as if zombies could hear not just my character, but me, as well. Lol, that's the only game I've really experienced that in. In Dragon Quest Builders 2, I watched my folks gleefully zip around to plow fields and rebuild that tree thing (can't remember quite what it was called. So, I've enjoyed all of them. But out of all of them, Vintage Story's still on the very top of my recommend pile. The reason isn't the crafting or farming or any of that, even though this is the most detailed crafting and farming game that I've played. It's not the building, though I love it. The game is not Minecraft though building looks so similar that I often look at Minecraft homes when I'm stumped about what I want to build. Anyway, what makes this game so special to me, the reason why it's at the very top of my recommends, is the feeling of peace I get by just being in the world. In most of these games, I dash around, collecting ingredients, like a hummingbird that drank too much espresso. You know what I'm talking about; "gotta collect this thing from this biome, this other thing over there", etc. In Vintage Story, well, If you'll stick with me for one more paragraph, I'll tell you about my new character. So, in the real world, I have an acute sense of smell. In the game, I like compact bases; house in the center, surrounded by fields, animal pens,etc. I usually tan leather next to my bedroom, distill alcohol in my basement, etc. But not long ago, it dawned on me: "Can you imagine how bad my base smells?" I haven't done quite all of these processes in the real world, like distill alcohol or tan leather, and while some of them might not smell that bad, I couldn't imagine waking up to all of those smells right in my face. And not only smells; I know smelting releases toxins and whatnot into the air. I'm not quite sure how harmful they are, but I don't want my smelters right next to my crops and animals. So, I space all of that stuff out, the world's like a million blocks wide and long, after all. So, my point is that the walk to all of these different stations is just as fun as the activities I do at the stations. There's always baby animals zipping about, causing little antics, butterflies flying about. So, my point is the walk to different biomes, being in different regions is just as fun for me as anything I can do in those regions, which is a first for me. For the first time, playing a game actually gives me a sense of peace, that's why I recommend it so much.

Happy New Years, everyone :) I meant to come back sooner, but I developed Covid symptoms on the day before Christmas Eve, and just today am I feeling back to my old self. Anyway, I'm watching a few games: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1118520/Paralives/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1501310/The_Ranchers/ Vintage Story got a huge update, the rifts are my favorite part. Well, the ability to turn them off is my favorite part. I like a little danger; I just don't want danger spawning every night in my home. The rifts were cool, I just had to have my home lit up like a Christmas tree to avoid them spawning in my home. So, turning them off means I can still have temporal storms, still have subsurface drifters, and finally build the types of homes I want. I love modern contemporary homes bc they utilize natural lighting, but it kind of defeats the purpose when you have your home lit up like a Christmas tree. I tried another one over the holidays: https://store.steampowered.com/app/602960/Barotrauma/ This one can totally be played solo, but it's a lot more fun with friends. But playing solo was cool; the A.I did a darn good job of maintaining the sub. I don't know how the A.I handles the Captain role yet; I have too much fun as the Captain. I also haven't done any of the cave exploration much; tried it once, got lost, and drowned. I'm hoping the devs make a tutorial for that part, because I was terrible at it.

Hello there Yes, Vintage Story started out as the VintageCraft mod for Minecraft. My disclaimer, though, is that even though Vintage Story might look like Minecraft (it is a voxel game, after all), I would not purchase it with the expectation of it feeling like a tweaked Minecraft. Vintage story has it's own verve, it's own flavor. I've received mostly positive feedback from the folks I've recommended it to. Negative feedback has mostly been from folks that didn't properly listen to me. I can't fault them too much for that; when I get excited about something, I sometimes get verbose. I've heard things like "my crops are taking forever to grow!" "It says that due to heat/cold, my crops are stunted by 50%"; that type of stuff. Vintage Story isn't quite as casual as Minecraft; different crops have different tolerances to temperature, just as they like different minerals. Your fields aren't just an infinite resource; you've got to replenish the mineral levels. The awesome thing is that the game does an amazing job of telling you everything you need to know. It doesn't have tutorials, but absolutely everything has a guide; all ya gotta do is hit "h". Or, I get things like "It's too hard to find certain ore". This game was made by geology enthusiasts, but you don't have to have even a tiny bit of geological knowledge; once again, everything is explained in the help menu. Now, how I ended up playing the Sacred series? Research, my good man There's whole worlds of info right at our fingertips, and I'm a research-lover. Absolutely everything I can think of. Just the other day, I put a bottle of Mountain Dew in the freezer, just for a few minutes. I didn't want it frozen, just nice and chilled. It wasn't frozen when I took it out, but it had that nice opaque quality that Mountain Dew gets when it's cold. But when I opened it, some of it turned slushie. Not much, mind you, because it hadn't been in that long, but that's still just cause for research. I found quite an interesting video at science alert. For some reason, I'm not allowed to share the link. But now, the important thing; why am I here? I came here a few years ago, as I thought Sacred 3 was an April Fool's joke. When I discovered that it wasn't, I slunk away for a while. I'm back because you seem to be my type of folks. I love to discuss, but I'm not the type to turn toxic when people have a difference than mine. Vintage Story, for example, it certainly isn't for everyone, and some folks might absolutely hate it. I personally love it, and thought "hey, what's the harm in sharing Vintage Story with these folks; they seem pretty chill."

https://www.vintagestory.at/ I love roleplaying games, I've been playing them since the mid-80s, every shape and form I can imagine. Slaying dragons, rescuing damsels, breathing new life into a dying realm, shiny loot, deadly weapons, mystic runes; we know em, we love em, heck, that's why we're all here. But sometimes, I find it nice to take a break and have my own Walden, my own Man Vs Nature type deal. The Youtube video on the site I linked gives a pretty good idea of what the game's like, but I can give an example of what a typical day's like for me, if you'd like Yesterday, it was November 5th in my game. I've built my homestead in a warm region. Every region has it's own perks and drawbacks. The good part about this region is there's just tons of limestone and limestone sand. I like to sift sand for ore (the video showed that), and I like limestone for my kitchen flooring. The bad part; there's only low-grade soil, so I've spent a good chunk of time hauling in better soil for my gardens. But that's done, and being Fall, my currant bushes will bloom, which means I'll be making currant berry pies. But not that day, that particular day was for daydreaming, since I was sitting pretty. I was watching butterflies play. I wanted to play with my animals, but they're not tame yet. But I'm sitting pretty there, too; I have a whole barn full of grains and seeds. So, animals are fed, I'm fed; life is good. Mind you, the game isn't always some type of Andy Griffith whistle a jaunty tune while strolling through the countryside type of game, it's taken me three ingame years to get to this point. And there's still a ton of stuff I can do; the world's a million blocks long and a million blocks wide; there's tons of adventures to have. I'm also only up to bronze-age weaponry and leather armor, but what's the rush? In fact, there's a ton of stuff I could do, but what's the rush? It's starting to be about 1700; nightfall. That's when these zombie-like creatures come out. Generally, I don't fight them unless I'm in caves or a temporal storm hits (the video showed that, too). But during a normal setting like this, why dull/break my weapons? So, I ate dinner and swam for a while. What's the purpose of an indoor pool if you don't use it once in a while? Vintage Story doesn't have XP; it's not like Morrowind where you can level up your running, swimming, etc, but there's a mod for xp, if that's up your alley. Building's another area where this game shines. Castle, cottage, cabin; anything you want. You can also chisel blocks for that vaulted ceiling look. Me; I ascribe to the modernist principles: flat white walls (makes the colors of your furniture and flooring really pop), open-flow floor plan (for that breezy feel), a lot of glass (because I love watching shadows dance across the floor), asymmetrical (because we don't have that here, my town looks like a giant laid his/her shoe boxes all over); you get the deal. But here's the thing, especially with an open floor plan where the only indoor doors I have are to my bedroom, you better have enough lighting (torches, lanterns, etc) because drifters spawn in darkness, so they will spawn in your home and catch you unaware if your home isn't properly lit. However, if you've got enough light, you're still sitting pretty..... unless a temporal storm happens...... ..........which happened to me, not paying attention, swimming in my pool. Temporal storms happen every ten to twenty days. During those, drifters can teleport into your home, regardless of lighting. The severity of the storm determines the type and frequency of the drifters. However, you're given ample warnings; "A (light, medium, or heavy) storm is approaching", "A (light, medium, or heavy) storm is imminent". Unless you're like me, who's too busy swimming to pay attention to the warnings. That wasn't an easy battle, armed with just a spear, swimming in just my breeches. Anyway, that's what I've been doing recently.