Arkhive
- 0 Posts
- 11 Comments
I never managed to fully get into the first game, I think mostly because I only had it on mobile and there was some jank with the touch controls. The sequel feels MUUUCCHHH more refined and I’m loving the multiplayer. I’ve been trying to stop playing MTGA because the decks you go against online are just zero fun to play against, so this has been very refreshing as a PvE alternative.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/CMF+Phone+2+Pro+Screen+Replacment/195778
Might be able to just get the phone back in working order.
And a retailer for the screen assembly for good measure.
https://www.vopmart.com/nothing-cmf-phone-2-pro-lcd-screen-digitizer-assembly.html
There’s a slew of mods you can install to really change stuff, but I think the best starting point would be an alternate start mod. There’s two approaches to these, a short questionnaire that is part of character creation which gives your character a bit of background and spawns you in a corresponding location. To start the main quest you simply visit Helgan at any time.
The other approach is basically just random starting locations. This is often used for higher difficulty mods packs aimed for a rouge like experience.
I didn’t love the idea of the Proton basket for all my eggs. Besides I already self host alternatives to the whole g-suite, so I didn’t have the need for a drop in replacement. So I went with Fastmail. I am a huge fan of the alias and masked email options, and beyond those it works as expected for an email service. The mobile apps are decent, and I was able to get them on a de-googled android device. No complaints.
I’ve recently gotten into putting together sort of silly “party” mod packs for my friend group. Things that are meant to be played as a “one shot” with everyone online. Things like full loot randomizers, or shared health and inventory. Just silly and chaotic mods to shift the focus from exploration and sandbox-y things, to “let’s try to beat the ender dragon under very adverse conditions”. So far I’ve only gotten one friend to bite, but we’ve been doing one run a night for the last week or so. Takes between 20 to 60 minutes, maybe more if we really get into it.
Could also look into mods/modpacks that add quest books. That helps take the edge off the “open world, figure it out” paralysis and give some concrete things to work towards.
I’ve posted about this somewhere else too, maybe a different account idk.
But for games to play with people that aren’t really “gamers” I actually prefer single player games with light amounts of fast paced action or none at all. The “coop” comes from taking turns with the controller.
This works well with puzzle or logic games with generous reaction time requirements (again, or none at all), as well as story based games with light action. A lot of these games also come with natural pauses in the story that provide opportunities to either swap who is driving or put the game down for the day.
I’ve had a lot of success playing through many of these titles with partners. I’m sorting these roughly by category and then how strongly I recommend them. Some of these games I haven’t actually played yet, but I know them to fit the overall vibe.
Puzzle/Logic - no reaction time required
- Chants of Sennaar (HIGHLY recommend, requires decent notes and map making, so the person not using the controller still has a job)
- Strange Horticulture (HIGHLY recommend, also requires some light note taking to make life easier)
- Strange Antiquities (sequel to above, have not played yet, high expectations)
- Return of the Obra Din (have not played yet, high expectations)
- The Case of the Golden Idol + DLCs (STRONGLY recommend, got a bit burnt out by the end, but very fun, also light note taking)
- The Rise of the Golden Idol (sequel to above, have not played yet, moderate to high expectations)
- Baba is You (HIGHLY recommend, nice learning curve but becomes brutally difficult towards the end of the game)
- Myst (HUGE game, very good, but daunting and little to no hand holding, detailed notes required)
Kind of a category within a category, haven’t played these, but they’ve been referred to as 1.5 player games.
- Spiritfarer
- Chicory
- Child of Light
Puzzle/Logic - aim and reaction time needed
- Portal 1
- Portal 2 (and its coop if you have 2 devices)
- Portal Reloaded (community mod adding a portal through time with some seriously mind bending puzzles)
- Portal Revolutions (another mod, haven’t played yet but looks fun)
- Viewfinder (HIGHLY recommend, spiritual successor to Portal IMO and a very, very good game)
- Superliminal (HIGHLY recommend, a “Portal-like” that uses perspective as the core mechanic)
Story Based - some action sequences requiring aim and reaction time and some puzzling
- Stray (just a cute good time with some spooky, heart rate spiking moments where you really don’t want your kitty to get hurt)
- Alien Isolation (if you’re horror movie people at all this is like an interactive movie)
- Shadows of a Doubt (might be a miss for a lot of people, immersive detective sim)
- Firewatch (played this a long time ago, might not hold up)
- Dredge (spooky but cute fishing sim with good story)
- Summertime Madness (not much reaction time needed, but still some aim or speed based puzzles)
All of these that I’ve played were on either Arch (custom), Arch (Garuda), or NixOS based systems under Proton. Two of those systems were installed from scratch and they performed flawlessly, so if you’re on a system that handles all the audio and video driver installation for you things should be very smooth. The Garuda machine is a laptop from 2016 that is plugged into my TV and actually saw the most play time for these titles. It held up perfectly. The other two systems were back to back installs on my fairly beefy desktop, but installation and running the games was smooth after the initial effort to get the systems fully functional with drivers and controller support.
Oof. Some 60 hours late or something. Life got…hectic, for a bit there.
TL:DR tinker with the world settings a lot, maybe check out some mods, and plant flax immediately.
Firstly if you didn’t get a good foothold before summer of year one I would probably restart. Basically if you don’t get a decent flax farm underway quickly the save if going to get REALLY hard come winter. Playing multiplayer can smooth that curve a lot by allowing delegating of jobs. Basically you should always have someone foraging for seeds and small supplies of flax and veggies and then someone else working on the tech progression.
I totally agree with the other comment that mentioned using the map. Being able to quickly navigate to various ore deposits and resources like clay is very important. Also learning proper 3 point navigation can be a huge help. Even though the map has a pip for your character it can help a lot to just begin to memorize the greater area around your settlement. Being able to triangulate based just on surroundings without much need for the map also makes longer expeditions easier and less disorienting.
The other big learning curve for me was the prospectors pick. Learning the approximate size of ore deposits can help a lot. Having sort of learned triangulation without numbers for navigation, now we will be getting numeric feedback to help us. When making a mine after doing area search, periodically mine in node search to scan for your desired ore. Once detected pick an axis to mine along until the node search result changes, check every couple blocks. Step back one block and mine a few holes in the walls of the tunnel in node search mode to see which direction along the opposite axis the deposit is. Now you have the approximate angle to mine to go right through the middle of the whole area and intersect the node perfectly.
Finally I’ll add this. VS has vast vast vast customization options. Sure you can argue the “intended” way to play is the default difficulty setting, but also screw that. Play your way. I personally have tuned the water settings to have slightly more distinct continents that are separated by decent sized oceans, and I’ve extended both the day length and matched up the numbers of days per month to the actual calendar. This makes for a slightly less punishing experience for solo play, while still giving some big challenges when it comes to crossing those oceans just for a resource your continent might not have. This means huge prep time to big expositions, and the need to really amass a base supply of resources to be able to quickly establish other camps and shelters that you will stay while getting what you came for and getting supplies for the return trip. I’d also honestly encourage browsing the mods. The community is very active and has a lot of great options, but if I had to suggest just one (well technically more), it would be a wind mod and a small collection of boat mods. Then really pump the water settings and turn those gathering missions into massive, multi day crossings were you might be in open ocean for 1 even 2 whole in game days.
This doesn’t eat too much of your time because of the extended day and calendar settings, while also still leaning into the sort of “make you feel small” effect the game sort of goes for. It also gives your crops time to grow. Plus having to manage the sailing, even with a very rudimentary implementation, keeps me quite engaged.
The game in my mind, feels really good when I’ve set up a bunch of multi day processes (growing crops, tanning leather, preserving food for example) and also prepped for a trip then run off while all my stuff is working with a new resource for a new age.
As far as multiplayer goes it makes the game a lot easier. Purely from being able to multithread tasks. But it’s also very fun especially if everyone takes a unique class and really leans into building a village with cottage industry specific workshop/home combo builds. It’s just naturally emerges as both the best for quickly walking between each others workshops and a cute village.
That’s a lot of my thoughts on the game. Maybe should just turn that into a post somewhere, but here ya go.