Did the Bank Headquarters main mission today. There was a plot twist in that mission that totally caught me off guard. I had to rescue a VIP, one who is very important to the game’s story. What a mission that was!
I did the whole mission using a Police M4 assault rifle as my primary weapon, with a Military Mk17 as my secondary weapon. The Mk17 with the ACOG scope on it was special. Good amount of damage per shot and seems plenty accurate even when shooting out of scope.
I have noticed that the Control Point supply rooms are a treasure trove of loot. The big box doesn’t restock, but the rest of the boxes always do. You are almost guaranteed to get a weapon, or armor, or both from just visiting the different Control Point supply rooms in the game.
I’m up to level 19 now, so 11 more levels to go before I reach max level.
I redid the Jefferson Plaza mission hoping that it will unlock the greyed-out Castle Settlement, it did not work.
The Striker Drone has been really useful in helping take down elite (gold) enemies. It serves as a distraction and allows me to unload a whole mag into the enemy without even drawing their attention. It can also save my life in those “oh sh!t i’m about to be surrounded” moments by working like an ally on the battlefield.
I used to be totally dependent on the Stinger Hive skill, and to be fair, it has saved my bacon multiple times in the past. But the Striker Drone has a couple of advantages over it:
It is mobile and can chase around targets, as opposed to the Hive which is stuck in one spot once deployed.
You can manually target a specific enemy with the Striker Drone, which means you could have better control in the heat of battle. Like you could have it take out enemies trying to flank you. Or you could use it to soften up armored enemies so you can shoot them down faster. With the Hive, you are basically hoping that an enemy will run into it.
I have actually stopped using the Stinger Hive skill and replaced it with Striker Drone. I also try to only take it out once an elite enemy is on the battlefield. Otherwise I try to save it for those times when I’m getting overwhelmed by enemies.
After reading through the list of Fallout 4 terminal entries, I guess it was unavoidable that I would get the urge to play it again. I picked up where I left off, trying to finish the Silver Shroud quest line.
I now remember why I stopped playing this game; I was trying to save Kent but I kept failing. I decided that for this play-through, I would just accept that I cannot save him and move on.
To fully complete the quest line, you have to talk to Hancock at the end. If you've already had the conversation where Hancock wants to be your companion, you might have a hard time triggering the talk to finish the Silver Shroud quest. What worked was to have Hancock be my travel companion, then talk to him.
Today Fane proved himself to be a valuable member of the party by disarming traps that were located inside a poison cloud. As mentioned previously, Fane being an Undead character, gets healed when he gets hit with poison. It was super easy to disarm the traps by just having Fane walk to them.
The lure them to a “choke point” strategy I mentioned previously definitely works. I've used it 3 times already and it has made a difference in battles. Also, make sure your melee fighter or tank has the “Opportunist” talent. This enables that character to make “Attacks of Opportunity” if any enemy tries to slip past them while they are guarding the choke point. Screenshots below show one battle where I used this strategy.
In the screenshot above you can see my party's formation. I have Ifan, my tank up front by the door. Just behind him are Lohse and Fane who are basically support characters. Then all the way back is my Ranger.
I did the DC-62 Lab Quarantine Side mission today. An interesting mechanic in this mission is having to shoot a door's access panel to unlock the door. I don't remember any mission requiring that before.
Anyway in the final part of the mission where you are asked to “Download the research archives”, the server containing the archive is located inside a room with a locked door. It looks like you can simply hop over the window, but the game doesn't allow you to do that. To open the door, you have to shoot the yellow access panel that is viewable through the window. In the screenshot below, it is located by the white spark near the center the of the screenshot. (Unfortunately I did not get to take a screenshot before I figured out what to do, so as you can see in the screenshot, the door is already open. What you want to be looking for is a yellow access panel. Generally, in this game yellow signifies something that you can interact with. There are yellow locks that can be shot to open a fence, yellow tarps that signify the ability to climb over a ledge and in this mission, yellow access panels that can unlock a door.)
So here's what I've learned so far with regards to Divinity: Original Sin 2 and Pro Evolution Soccer 2019.
Divinity: Original Sin 2
This game is hard. Like really hard. I'm only playing in “Classic mode”, which if I understand correctly, is the normal difficulty level. Fights are hard. I've seen the “Game Over” screen more times than I care to remember.
Goios is one of the strikers in the original Master League lineup in Pro Evolution Soccer 2019. He has been so good that I have not had to replace him as a starter in my lineup yet. He is a goal scoring machine and here are two of his best goals from my first season playing Master League in PES2019.
This mid-air heel flick goal is insane! I couldn't believe it when I saw it happen. I can't even imagine how much coordination you need to have, to score a goal like this in real life.
So I've played 3 hours of Divinity: Original Sin 2 – Definitive Edition on the Xbox One and here's what I've learned so far:
You only get to create 1 character at the start of the game. I was not expecting that, but it is what it is. This is not like Icewind Dale then in that regard.
Was playing some more Pro Evolution Soccer 2019 today and I was just reminded of an age old gaming adage, save your game.
I was in the second Transfer Window of the current season in Master League. The Sports Director was saying that I should renew some of the contracts of my players to avoid excessive salary demands in the future. Makes sense. So I went ahead and tried renewing their contracts. For some reason, renewing the contracts for some players did not give the option of extending the number of years in their contracts. I thought it was odd, but went ahead with it anyway. I guess I sort of just expected the contract years to automatically extend. Nope, didn't happen. So now I ended up increasing my player's salaries while their contracts would still expire in the same amount of time as before. What a waste of the team's salary budget!
I have a five game winning streak now, playing Pro Evolution Soccer’s Master League mode. I’m now up to 9th in the standings, where previously my team was always around 16th to 18th in the standings. It seems like the team is coming together now. I’m also starting to feel comfortable with the game.
I used to play the game in a rush. I was rushing to get the ball to the other side, rushing to pass, rushing to shoot, rushing to clear the ball off the opposing player. All that made my team vulnerable to counter attacks from the opposing team. So after a streak of games where the best I could manage was a draw, I took a step back to evaluate what I was doing wrong. Sort of like investigating an application that is performing poorly, as far as programming goes.
In the screenshot above you can see my party's formation. I have Ifan, my tank up front by the door. Just behind him are Lohse and Fane who are basically support characters. Then all the way back is my Ranger.
