It was a busy week of news.

was starting to think that we would have to wait another week or two for another patch. The update from last week on the beta branch of Dwarf Fortress added spitting and abilities.

Also new merchandise drop.

I was starting to think that we would have to wait another week or two for another patch. Last week's update on the beta branch of Dwarf Fortress introduced spitting and abilities. However, on the evening of the 25th, just seven days after the last update, adventure mode gained crafting and butchery. Most of the mechanics necessary for survival are now available in adventure mode. While this is a step towards completing the mode, it still lacks features such as quest logs, encumbrance, smells, tracking, and several other menus I may be forgetting.

Simply put, yes. Its a ways off but it is at the vary least playable now. The next major step for me is making some tutorials for the new features. Basic crafting, Butchery, Basic survival and Necromancy 101. I'll try and get these prepped and ready for upload by Tuesday. The news made me shift my focus from the fort I had been building to adventure mode. I retired fortress Spirithome and started an adventurer that I intend to use as a template for necromancy tutorials. Yes, we are getting quite evil with that play through.

Plans for this blog are starting to come together.

Yesterday I posted my first "Monthly Insights" this will be a free post that I'm looking at feedback for. The monthly insights aims to add more detail to what I'm sending out in these blog posts. Including:

1 - More detailed statistics about the Twitch and Youtube stats. 2 - Games I'm either anticipating or games I should check in with. 3 - Goals and plans for my YT/Blog/Twitch 4 - Ideas I'm seeking feedback on. 5 - Merch announcements and coupons.

My end goal is building a Patreon alternative that I have control over. These monthly insights posts are something I am going to make a Premium members only feature. I am also planning to do unscheduled posts about my hobbies and real life actives. If you have any feedback for these ideas or this blog please let me know in a comment!

Checking in with Songs of Syx

Its been over a year.

Checking in with Songs of Syx

According to my save files I had not played Songs of Syx for 452 days. I had felt for awhile that I should play it again. Part of me wanted to wait for 1.0 but recent patches had looked kind of awesome and I knew I should go back sooner rather than later. Because there had been a bit of a dip between Dwarf Fortress patches I took the opportunity to have a glance into the depths that is SoS.

Since its an early access title the game has had a number of quite large updates since I last played it. Back then I even recorded an interview with the developer Jake. Its worth taking a look at still just to see how much the game has changed. The visual details are largely the same but the UI has been cleaned up a lot. It still feels the same in a lot of ways but its a lot more streamlined and less tedious to work with. The first demo of the game I played was on itch.io and the first time I played it took me 7 hours to even find the tech tree not realizing I had to click the knowledge icon. While a new player might still struggle off the bat finding those hidden UI elements seems a lot easier from my perspective. The over world map now has a fog of war. Only showing areas that you have active relations with. While this is probably for the best long term I do miss the ability to see dozens if not hundreds of little armies and trade wagons moving around the map. The pace of the game seems a bit slow still but the progression makes more sense. If you hit a major hold up in population its often best to just look at the buildings that are available and work towards making them. Its often a small niche need that is the difference between 500 population and 1200.

Overall the game is still great. It does not quite grab me for as long as I'd like. Every time I check in I play obsessively for a few dozen hours and then lose all desire to play for half a year or so. That being said, its easily worth the asking price and the demo is literally the full game but a few versions behind. Totally worth trying if it has grabbed your interest.

Whats the plan for next week?

Also a Merch drop!

I finally got that AmA read along video done. I kept pushing it back as other things kept coming up. While the video itself took me a bit over an hour to make I have been prioritizing myself on my "Days off" Its nice to get a bit of rest in and feel refreshed when I start my streams for the following week.

But for video content? The plan is tutorials. That'll be my focus. I'm trying to decide if there is enough in Adventure mode at this point for me to make a video on survival in Adventure mode. However I will be making guides on Abilities and Crafting. If you have ideas for other things I should do here let me know in the comments. These will likely land in the Quick tutorials series.

For other games I'm still working on that Songs of Syx run. I'm enjoying exploring the changes as mentioned above.

Caves of Qud will likely take a backstage for a bit as the list of things I got to cover is uhh. not small currently and adventure mode is taking a lot of my headspace.

I need need NEED to get back to Soulash II as the recent updates look awesome.

The Doors of Trithius is a game I really need to get back into. Its a game with a solo developer who is making some truly awesome systems in this neat little open world rogue-like. Hopefully I can get to this one sometime in July.

No schedule changes this week we are streaming Tuesday - Friday. Stats this week on YouTube but I also did not have a random 50k view short. We got 70,302 views on YouTube and averaged at 164 viewers. Up by 12 this week yay!

NEW MERCH! Some pins, a mug and a coupon!