What Did We Play Yesterday?

Was in a Castlevanian mood. My copy of this game came with a "bonus" "genie" outfit that was a straight nope, which was easy since it didn't have great stats anyway.

This game is REALLY castlevania, which is exactly what I wanted, but playing on the Steamdeck the game locks up after the first boss battle and gets stuck on a black screen. Evidently the developer stopped supporting the game and several versions are now broken, including Android, but this instance may be an FPS issue. I was able to get around it by playing through the first level on my PC and copying the save states to my Steamdeck.

This game has crafting and cooking mechanics, and food gives a stat bonus the first time you eat it. Enemies reward you with "shards" which are equippable abilities, a lot like the tactical soul ability in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. There are also quests (so far, kill X monsters) and I appreciate that the monster locations are marked on the map when the quest is active.

I officially beat the game a few days ago, but I started a new game now that I have Improved Skillz and continue to poke at it because I don't have the bandwidth for anything else. You reach a point where you can increase and decrease the probability of card draws, and things started to get really messy and unbalanced for me, so I'm trying to keep this run pretty narrow and focus more on exploring strategies than tinkering with that kind of stuff.

Spending a lot of time micromanaging and overdecorating. Behold, glow pond.

I reached the point where I can construct apparently game-breaking combos.... only to find it's part of the gameplay. After cards are reused a certain number of times per fight, they start to crack. If you continue using them and they break, reapers come for you. This prevents the player from maintaining a small cycled hand, and it's pretty cool that "breaking the game" is part of the process.

The "play duplicate cards free" tarot card is crazy, btw.

I'm starting to better understand what I need to do to prepare for the reaper, and wild cards are making it possible to actually get big HP boosts from hollow heart cards and things like that. So far, I've only lasted for a few seconds, but I'll get there.

Don't mind me just making a glow pond.

I've been tearing down and restructuring most of my farm, and I've found i REALLY like the crop control signs. They light up when the crop is plantable, and it is sooooo easy to breeze down the road and hop into the rows to replant. I will never return to my former way of living.

I'm at level 184 and I think 200 unlocks everything. With boosts, I can usually harvest all my poinsettias and horses and go up a level, but it's kinda tedious. I may check the growth times on carnations and stick a farmhand up there... if not, put one in my sunflower beds. IDK man I just want my cherry trees.

We careful what you wish for dept, lol.

Farm Together 2 has two different ways to manage permissions. The first is a security box which controls the surrounding land specifically, the second is crop signs that can limit what types of crops are planted and when (you can require replanting, which means they can't be harvested unless the crop is in season).

I was experimenting with signs to see if I could control farmhand actions in multi-crop areas when a visitor showed up and, not realizing my organization scheme, messed up a bunch of my color coded rows. By the time they realized, and started replanting correctly, I had some work to do. So I've begun "locking in" crops in certain sections of the farm, both for the sake of farmhands and visitors. I also completely tilled over most of the farm in my starting area, to try to re-organize. Everything was getting too "griddy".

Killing it at the milk factory, working on meta. My ability to chain is greatly improving. Pugnala has a simply ridiculous starting hand, and once you start getting crawler bonuses they just keep stacking, so the draw on yellow ability lasts the whole run. I've tried to avoid strategy tips so I can discover for myself, but I unlocked Poppea and I do know she's a good 'un.

Whenever the reaper comes for me, it hits for 333. If I survive that hit, do I get a chance to fight it? Something to quietly ponder as I go about my day.

Yesterday I realized a recent terrain update allows us to choose what type of ground our animals live on (previously, as far as I knew, it defaulted to mud or mowed lawn). So I promptly ran around giving them all lush golden or green grassy fields, except of course the pigs, which can stay in their mudhole for all I care.

People occasionally visit my farm and leave 30 seconds later, and I think this is because I'm getting to a high-ish farm level and they're expecting some sort of industrial megafarm. This hurt my fees, so I started working on my arrival zone's curbside appeal. More on this as it develops.

I've been killing it with Ramba lately and focusing on getting gold for perma upgrades. I've begun to see more wild cards and I'm getting a bit savvier about using them, and about holding yellow permanent boost cards until I can get a significantly high combo. Which can be challenging sometimes, because a high combo has a higher likelihood of clearing the encounter before you can apply the upgrade.

There's a new event, Sprout Spectacle! This event had some cool flower-themed decorations and a foundtain. I converted a farmhouse area to an event display area, but I'm not sold on it yet and will probably fiddle a bit. I needed a place to stash phlox, which were recently added, so that aspect worked out.