As I’m sure you can imagine from the last life update I did, things have been a little chaotic here in our household over the last little while. Between the situation, schedule changes, and my own inability to handle it when I mess with my sleep schedule, it’s been a lot.
Usually, when chaos hits me, I have a really hard time finding the energy or motivation to play video games. It has to do with my mental and emotional capacity; I end up feeling overloaded, which often ends with me being just completely unable to do anything at all.
Sidebar, I heard it explained once as the spoon theory. Humans have a very hard limit on their emotional capacity, which for the purpose of the theory, is a little collection of spoons that you give away every time you use your emotional capacity. When you run out, you’ve got no more spoons to give, and you have to recharge (or in my case, crash completely) to get them back.
This time, though, spoons have not been an issue at all.
In fact, it almost feels like I’ve got more of them than usual. I’ve actually had the energy to branch out into different games, try different things, even get myself away from my usual obsession of Final Fantasy XIV and my design obsessions, and have started to feel my creative spark come back.
So in that spirit, I thought today I’d share a few of the games I’ve been super into lately, and what I’ve been up to!
League of Legends
This is a game that I mention in passing every now and again and for good reason. Although I really enjoy it and love learning new champions, I try to keep myself from getting heavily invested in competitive games primarily because I do have a nasty competitive streak and can get pretty badly influenced by it sometimes.
Lately, though, I’ve been on this journey of trying to get better at the things I enjoy. And so far, with League, that’s translated into applying some of my theorycrafting skills—the same ones I use to munchkin D&D characters—to my favourite champions.
So far, it’s turned into some failed experiments on Swain (ironic, especially given the new champion insight for Briar) and a very weird build for Lux that has set up a lot of very unexpected wins.
Raft
Raft hasn’t historically been a big topic on my blog, but it’s one of those games that I love to turn to when I’m not feeling particularly ambitious and just want to goof around.
I had actually fallen off with it for a while, but as part of Shane’s new stream project, he wanted to set aside one day every week for us to play what he calls derpy games—a low-stakes, relaxing game where we can just enjoy our time before I have to go back to work.
Raft has been a mainstay for that so far, and it’s reignited my obsession with figuring out how to build the weirdest, most fun rafts that I can.
My current vibe for it?
An attempt to build the biggest raft I can with just one engine, which has challenged me to find ways to build without actually building too many foundation squares.
V Rising
This fun little vampire survival game is the other go-to for our relaxing Sunday gaming sessions, and actually only rejoined the roster this past Sunday. I’d forgotten about it a while back in my perpetual frustration over castle-building and its annoying limitations.
Now that the game is done and fully published, though, it means I can build the messy, multi-storey castles of my Ravenloft-meets-Hogwarts dreams, and I’ve been having a blast learning all the tricks, nuances, and techniques for building in the game.
And, you know, being a not-really-scary vampire has its perks, too.
Baldur’s Gate 3
I won’t lie, I wasn’t super excited for Baldur’s Gate 3 when it officially released. And it all comes down to one reason: The beta.
We pre-ordered it back in 2020, around the same time as we moved into our house, and were very excited to play the beta for the game. That is, until it dragged on for three years, limiting us to the same storyline and the same level-four cap for that entire time period. It got me a little jaded for the official release, and I don’t think that’s unfair.
However, it recently proved itself to me and I take back my reluctance, all thanks to one of the warlock’s invocations. The armour of shadows invocation, to be specific.
See, at second level, the warlock can choose the ability to cast Mage Armour on themselves at will without using a spell slot. The game applies that bonus to your character by default if you choose it, but the caveat is that you can’t be wearing armour if you want to use it.
If you take off your starter armour, you end up with an AC higher than you had with it on—except now, your character is also nude. Or, in my female half-elf’s case, dressed in some incredibly racy undergarments.
It’s the literal embodiment of plot armour and I love it because it’s one of those things that you look at and think, “Of course they put this in the game.”
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