Sunday, October 29, 2017

Whaddaya mean, no Amazon?!?

So, totally a first-world-problems rant here... a rewards credit card that I've had for over a decade (yeah, I'm old, but you might have guessed that by the fact you're reading this on a random blog instead of on the latest social media whositz) decided, at some point in the past year, to stop offering Amazon gift cards in exchange for their reward points.  I honestly never expected that to happen, at least as long as gift cards were an option.  Let's just say that I found the other options... lacking, by comparison (Domino's?  Hell, I'm not the healthiest soul around, but I can't see that much cheap pizza being good for anybody that's not in charge of post-game feeding of peewee sports league players).  Finally settled on a Barnes and Noble gift card.... some books, maybe a game, should be nice distractions, pity about the extra clutter though (since I'm quite certain I don't need yet another e-reader to add to my collection).

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 10

Another short game, thanks to the new unlock happening as expected, but I managed to not get left in the dust too badly.  As for the unlock itself, well, it's something special... I remember, back when I first got the game, minutely examining the game box for clues as to what might be coming, and noticed one of those "mandatory safety warnings" about the contents including batteries.  I considered a number of possibilities for what that could mean, but it turns out I didn't come even close.

So, the unlock itself... discovering the next-to-last island with the prerequisite chart brings up an island with a tomb that never closes (rank 12, so it's not a total cakewalk), a colony with a massive temple (rank 10 raid to take it out), more cards, including a lot of milestones, and the Light of Truth.  See, the new island is the home base of a secret society, and the Light (a blacklight diode or similar) lets you see hidden info on some of the cards, including some pre-unlock advisors... they've been working for the Society all along, trying to let you all advance while trying to temper your lust for glory, lest we all meet the same fate as the Ancients from times past.

The biggest game-mechanic change here is the addition of Inquisition to the activation of advisors... if you so choose, you can use the Light on your freshly-activated advisor to see whatever they might be hiding (members show a number that represents their rank, and also shows a Captain's Booke entry to read)... and, if nobody has submitted them to Inquisition yet, doing so is also worth a point of glory on its own.  Given the number of cheap advisors from early-game times that otherwise see little action, this is a fine mechanism to get them into circulation once more, at least briefly (buy the Convict for a gold, and get a glory for it?  Sold!).  Of course, the way you mark somebody as having been submitted to the Inquisition is to put one of your enmity stickers on them, which increases their cost to you by a gold thenceforth, but that didn't stop us from reaping cheap glory from all manner of advisors this game.

Of course, cheap glory is all fine and well, but there's another reason to pursue this... three of the milestones deal with "discovering the secret of the (x) statue", which we're pretty sure has something to do with the secrets the Society is keeping, and possibly with some of the maps/charts floating around in the research stack.  Long story short, when you reach this point, everybody should expect to need to take notes, since there's going to be some entertaining stuff to figure out.