Hex!!

One project I have been looking forward to since the kickstarter was announced is Hex, the upcoming MMOTCG!

True confession: TCG's were my first nerddom with magic the gathering. It was the first thing I was allowed to geek out over in my super strict upbringing where girls didn't do boy things. And Cryptozoic found a way to merge them with MMO's? Oh my goodness! That's it, I'm going to miss my family for a while. (or rather they are going to miss me as I plan to dive head first into this thing!)

The game is still in early alpha with kickstarter participants (and very likely friends and family) being among those lucky few who can play. And I just got my invite!

I haven't had a chance to play much unfortunately as a huge wave of invites sent out at once, part of the alpha testing is to slam their servers it seems, but I am in there and I am playing! So far I am totally in love with the fuzzy bunny deck, critters abound and new cards, but I am also still getting to know the cards and working out mechanics between the premades.

After a series of restarts today and maintainance, I can't wait to see if I can play tonight! But wait! I have raid!



Okay after raid, but then it's totally on!

Alludra's World of Warcraft Pet Battle class rationalizations!

It occurred to me yesterday that I haven't ever had my 'pet class rationalizations' put all in one place. (You may remember these from the early days of Pet Battles!) Lots of people commented on them, but I was content to leave them in the old shows until yesterday. I realized no one wants to sift through old beta news for all this fun stuff!

So without further ado: Alludra's World of Warcraft Pet Battle class rationalizations!

Aquatic - Take more damage from flying abilities, but undead hardly phase them.

Most birds eat small fish and the like, so it's a predator/prey thing. Undead beasts historically avoid water for its cleansing properties and thus the fish are strong against them.

Beasts - Take more damage from  Mechanicals, but Huminoids have a hard time with them.

Beasts are predators from the natural world, while Mechanicals are man-made constructs like guns and lasers. Claws are no match for that! Meanwhile the predators of Azeroth have found ways to kill and eat Humans (which is why they invented guns in the first place!)

Critters - Get eaten alive by Beasts, but take less damage from Elementals.

Critters are the prey, like rabbits and mice. Of course the predators (Beasts) are going to kill them more easily. But these critters live underground and in trees and thus know how to deal with the elements.

Dragonkin - Take more damage from Humanoids, but take less damage from flying.

Knights kill dragons! But the much smaller birds are at a sky disadvantage, Dragon armor protects from tiny beaks.

Elemental - Take more damage from aquatic, and less damage from mechanicals.

Keep in mind electricity for this one. Water amplifies it to craaazy levels, while Mechanicals use it for power.

Flying - Take more damage from magic, and less damage from beasts.

Magic zipps through the air, sometimes unseen. Sorry birds. But these same birds can just fly away from beasts. Yup, just like that! The larger birds of prey even sometimes eat some predators (Beasts) like snakes.

Humanoids - Take more damage from undead, while taking less damage from critters.

Basically, zombies eat humans, but the humans have found ways to get rid of small pests.

Magic  - Dragonkin hurt them more, Aquatic hurts it less.

Dragons are very magical beings, so it makes sense they would absorb the magic. But Water is a strong part of magic (as seen with the Undead aversion) and thus can absorb some of the magical harm thrown at them.

Mechanical - Takes more damage from elemental, and less from Magic.

Remember that super dangerous electricity? Well it fried the mechs. Sorry guys! But magic is the opposite of a mechanical (science) pet, and so their blows are ineffective past each other.

Undead - take more damage from critters, and less damage from dragons.

Critters cause plagues, thus giving the undead their abilities, but at a terrible cost. Meanwhile, a dragon doesn't want to eat rotten meat. 

And there you have it! Trust me it took everything in me to not ramble on the topics even more! Hopefully all this will help you remember these class differences as much as it helps me! 

Can't sleep, don't starve!

So I can't sleep, so I decided to play a round of don't starve. Nights in game are kinda long so why not blog about it?

Day one: New game, playing wolfgang because he's the coolest. Adventure time! Tons of flint and got an axe right away. Huzzah! Found a wormhole, but avoided it. Found another a few yards away. Oh, I guess they connect? Lame. Gathered tons of stuff that will be helpful if I find some rocks. Oooh a Ring thing.

Day two: Went wondering around the edges of the forest, and made a fluffy flower hat. Decided to see if wormhole 1 ended up being as anticlimactic as I assumed. Nope! In a bog! I hate bogs, ported back immediately. Night falls and it's raining. Great.

Day three: After using up most of my pine cones during last night's tsunami, I came across a rock farm! It even had a foggy area with tomb stones. A friendly skeleton  in residence gave me a pickaxe! Thank you friendly dead dude! Also found another ax by a lonely pig shack. I have decided to name lonely pig Joe. He didn't mind me taking his ax. He also had a crank thing.

Day four: Joe the pig has become the guardian of my first science machine. he seems unimpressed as I try to press on him the importance of his new duty. Unfazed I explore on, finding another friendly skeleton, this time with lots of beard hair, a badly scuffed up grass suit and a never used fire wand. I am starting to wonder why the skeletons around these parts are so friendly.

Day five: What are these shadows?? I have wondered far and away from Joe and I am realizing, he's not so bad. Oh sure, not the best protector of science, or the best smelling guy, but all in all I could do worse, especially with shadow things chasing me! I kind of miss him but I have put several biomes between us, it is too late to go back and apologize. I doubt he is following me to do the same.

Day six: As I am lamenting finding anything worthwhile and wondering if Joe the pig is the best chance I have for I come across it! Pigtropolous! about 15 pig huts within the same localized area! forget you Joe! These pigmen look upon my new science machine in awe, and have a king nearby whom I can bribe! I may just settle in here and build a base.

Day eight: My fluffy flower hat, the manliest of hats fell off my head today as I was chopping down trees! I can hardly believe it, and neither can the good denizens of Pigtropolous! they Run in fear at the sight of me, no doubt unable to recognize me! Sadly the area around pigtropolous is populated only by trees and spiders! I must quest to get my headgear back!

Day ten: went grave digging today. If the skeletons can be helpful, why can't the graves I figure. Bad idea. ghosts spawned at almost every grave I dug. I got some gems out of it though so I made my way back to pigtropolous. Sadly in spite of my dwindling sanity and awesome replacement head gear, the pig king wanted none of my gems! defeated I made my way back to town, wondering about his new eye foliage around his throne. I know they weren't there a moment ago. Now I sit by my fire, dejected in a way that my fluffy flower hat cannot console, as the eyes in the night mock me.

Day eleven: I am seeing the pitfalls of Pigtropolous, but the surrounding biome is a peninsula, with the pig men deep enough inside that anything else is half a day's walk away. But so far I have not seen a single beefalo and my food supplies are dwindling. In desperation I ate a green mushroom. Raw. Biggest single mistake of all gameplay! My sanity is at an all time low, new shadows are after me, all because I didn't take the time out too cook my mushroomy friends.

Day thirteen: In a bid for more food and different types of construction materials, I decided to burn down part of spooky spider forest. The pigmen were unfazed, but unfortunately I was caught in the middle of the back-draft. Sadly, I did not make it. My friendly skeleton will be surrounded by amazing things to give to the next unwary traveler.

You get what you pay for! The dramas of free hosting and feed services

If anyone has been following me on twitter, you have been following my month long mini rants against my hosting and feeds. If not let me fill you in!

For the entire month of March (and perhaps as far back as into February) none of my podcasts have been posting properly. I wasn't aware of the problem as from my end, everything looked like it was going up fine. It was only when a listener asked where the shows were that I discovered that neither iTunes nor Sticher had been getting the shows from the feeds properly. Three shows total were impacted and looked like they didn't exist. (Battle Pets with Alludra and Kephas episodes 17-19)

This is, to say the least, problematic. You see, I work hard to make sure these shows are out regularly, and to find that some were a month behind on updating, well that's just embarrassing! All my hard work to edit and post the shows on a regular time table has been disrupted due to a problem with either my feeds or my hosting.

The providers in question are Feedburner and Archive.org. First Feedburner wasn't posting any posts, and I spent a lot of time troubleshooting and working on it, figuring it to be the worst culprit as the future of Feedburner seems uncertain. I straightened all that out and went along my happy way, seeing the feeds post properly to my Twitter once more.

But it turns out Archive.org is the true culprit in this case. For some reason the hosting I did from there was no longer allowing iTunes or Stitcher to pull the show off the feeds. While Alludra's pets may be properly hosted (with a lot of work and fixing!), for some reason Battle Pets would never show up. After weeks of working with it, (and seeing the shows finally show up weeks later, in one case I show I hadn't yet tried to edit to make more compliant) I decided to move battle pets to a new home. This of course is a big challenge as I am still unemployed in spite of my best efforts.

Lesson learned! Updates will now be going up normally and on time, and a lot of the month-long stress this has caused me is dealt with!

Since Alludra's pets posts more regularly from Archive.org, I have decided to leave that podcast where it is, at least until I can find employment. I have just discovered that nothing has posted from episode 66-current, so I know what I am doing this weekend.

If this has caused problems, you have my apologies. This is a learning experience for me as well.