Why I'll never stop buying GME, and why you probably should
When I turned 18, there was a casino about 2 hours away on a reservation that I could get into. We'd get paid on Friday night, head to the gas station near us that would cash a paycheck, pile into my crappy little Ford, then make the drive. We'd get there a little before midnight and everyone had their own game. The second time we went, one of my friends was hypnotized by the craps table. There were 16 players standing around this sea of green, and every minute or so, you could hear them screaming at the top of their lungs like they just won a million dollars. On the way home that night, I taught him everything I learned from books I'd read about the different bets. "Smart" bets where the house edge was only 1.4%, all the way down to the risky ones where the house edge was over 10% (meaning that for every $100 wagered, you should expect to lose $10). The next time we went, we hung around the table, trying to figure out the right way to bet. It seemed a little complicated, so we tried other games. At the end of the night, I had the last $10 and he asked if he could borrow it to go place a bet. I handed it over, then went to the bathroom in preparation for the ride home. When I finally found him again, he had a stack of chips in front of him. He had been gone for about 5 minutes and already turned $10 into a few hundred. Well, if you can turn 10 into 100, you can turn 100 into 1,000 just as easily. We left empty handed that night, but I'll never forget the rush. I loved blackjack. I learned how to play at an early age from my uncle, who would always cheat and take my money. He'd say "I just taught you a very valuable lesson." He actually taught me two: 1) if you play against a casino, you may have a good night and win thousands of dollars, but if you keep going back, you'll eventually have nothing left. 2) My uncle was a scumbag who continually cheated and took my money, then told the family I was a poor sport and they couldn't understand why I hated doing anything with him. One of my earliest memories at the casino was running $100 at the blackjack table into $3000, which is more than I made in a month of bussing tables. I went home, paid my rent and blew the rest on useless things I can't even remember. What does any of this have to do with $GME? Well I'm still chasing the same high as I was when I was 18. I don't go to the casino anymore, but I've got something even better on my computer. I bought $2k worth of weeklies on Jan 25. Before everything crashed, they were worth over $100k, more than enough to fix most of the problems I've caused in my life. BUT, I was still standing around that craps table. The roller had just made his 30th point in a row, $GME was on fire and couldn't possibly roll a 7! I put my 2k back in my pocket and shoved the rest on the pass line. A few minutes later, the croupier inevitably yells "7 out!" and just like that, I'm back to nothing. Now I do what every moron around the table does. You reach back into your pocket, pull out the 2k and make a deal with your maker. "Just let it happen one more time. I won't be greedy THIS time and I'll stop when I hit 50k." I stop looking at the smart bets and start eyeing the center of the table, where hard ways are paying 10:1. Yeah, that'll be how I get back to 50k. A couple of those in a row and I can put a down payment on a house. 5 minutes later, I'm on my way out to the car and I feel like I've been punched in the gut. Again. Every one of you in this subreddit is another person sitting at the casino. Everyone has their game. The people holding $GME stonks right now? You're playing baccarat. If you've never heard of it, it's what James Bond plays in the old movies. It's about the most boring thing you can do. Two hands are dealt and you're betting on which one wins before anything happens. There's no actual skill and it's the same thing as betting heads or tails, while losing 1% of your bet every time. The people who cashed out and picked something else like $AMC or $BB? Those are the slot players. You had a big hit and now you're going to switch machines because the other ones are "due". You're looking for the exact same magic, thinking there was something smart in your play, when it was really just dumb luck in timing. The people saying "If Daddy Elon or Cowboy Cuban gets in, we can trigger a squeeze!" You're the guy who spent too much money in the first 20 minutes of the trip and now you're begging everyone else for a loan. Tldr: Nothing is happening with $GME. Stop saying "tomorrow is the day." Billionaires are not coming to bail you out. If institutional investors come in, they're waiting for this constant downhill slide to end at where the stock belongs, probably around $20. You can't trigger shit by holding. The HFs will outlast you. Edit: Screenshots from the worst 40 minutes of my financial life https://imgur.com/a/MlTRJmx Edit 2: JFC, some of you are takin WSB way too seriously. You should not be using reddit for DD. Also, this is not financial advice. Don't take financial advice from someone who tells you stories about chasing highs at casinos. Edit 3: This is WSB, my dudes. I'm glad most of you were entertained by my story. For the few of you who got that worked up by a random stranger on the internet telling you that he's a degenerate, you may actually have a problem. https://www.ncpgambling.org/help-treatment/
Source: https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/50040 This week at Bungie, we introduce Seasonal Challenges. Welcome to the second-to-last TWAB of Season of the Hunt. Many of you have been navigating the secrets of the Harbinger mission, uncovering randomly rolled Hawkmoons and earning the Radiant Accipiter Exotic ship. Content-wise, we’re coming to a close for the Season, and we’re incredibly excited for what’s to come in just a few short weeks. We’ve been covering some upcoming quality of life changes to Destiny 2, like the return of Umbral Engrams, but it’s almost time to take a peek at fresh content. Season of the [REDACTED] trailer goes live on February 2, 2021. Before we get there, we have a new feature to cover, Seasonal Challenges, and a round of weapon-focused sandbox changes to walk through. As a warning, this is a pretty large amount of information in a small space. We've joked about "meaty" TWAB's before, but this one may feel a bit overwhelming if you rush through it. Let's take it slow, step by step, and get through it together in one piece.
Introducing: Seasonal Challenges
Over the last year, we’ve been looking at ways in which we can reduce the amount of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) in Destiny 2. We’ve recently made some changes to Seasons and how Seasonal content is available throughout a given year of Destiny 2. This week, we’re looking to bounties and Bright Dust, introducing a new system not only to remove FOMO, but give fresh ways to earn XP and alternate rewards. To walk us through the ins and outs of Seasonal Challenges, we pass the mic to the Development team.
Dev team: During production of Beyond Light, we started looking at the problems of bounty fatigue and FOMO, as well as Seasonal legibility (i.e., “What is in a Season?” and “How to I engage with it when I log in?”). We created a few goals which we believe will improve the experience:
Provide a guide to new, returning, and veteran players for what to do today/this week.
Guide the player through the Seasonal content, week-over-week.
Encourage players to engage with complexities and nuances of the Seasonal activity and rituals.
Reduce the penalties on XP and Bright Dust for missing a given week.
To solve these goals, we are introducing a new pursuit type for players – Seasonal Challenges. The Seasonal Challenges live on their own page, are accessed through the Quest Log or Season Pass, and are separated by week. Image Linkimgur Here’s a quick breakdown of how this feature works:
Every week, for the first 10 weeks of a Season, between 3 and 10 new Challenges appear automatically for players.
Some of the Challenges deal with the Seasonal content.
Others push players to complete strikes, Gambit, and the Crucible, or to focus on non-activity focused Destiny rituals, like gaining Power, unlocking Seasonal Artifact mods, or improving guns and armor.
These Challenges can only be completed once per account, but once they become available, these Challenges can be completed at any time before the end of the Season, and do not need to be started or picked up from a vendor.
As an example, if a player doesn’t play for weeks 2 through 4, they can return on week 5 and have all of those Challenges waiting for them!
Completing each Challenge awards XP, contributing to your Season Pass ranks.
Other rewards could be Bright Dust, Seasonal currency, or other interesting items!
In moving away from weekly bounties, which were restricted to broad objectives tied to ritual activities, we have taken more leeway with creating some interesting or more difficult Challenges. These may be things you are already doing, or things that test your ability. Some examples include:
Defeating Primeval Envoys in Gambit
Defeating enemies in Nightfall: The Ordeal with Seasonal weapons
Gaining Infamy or Valor ranks
Acquiring the ritual weapon and its cosmetic ornaments
Winning rounds in Trials of Osiris
Completing a Grandmaster Nightfall
Not all the Challenges will require that level of accomplishment, but the harder or longer the Challenge is, the more experience it rewards. Challenges that focus on the Seasonal activity and ritual mostly need the Season Pass to complete, but most of the ritual focused Challenges can be completed without the Season Pass. Overall, roughly 60% of the Seasonal Challenges do not require the Season Pass. With the changes above, we are removing weekly bounties from the three ritual vendors (Zavala, Shaxx, and Drifter), Banshee-44, and the Seasonal vendor. These vendors will still have daily bounties which reward XP, and the three ritual vendors will still have repeatable bounties for those of you who want to pursue additional XP and Bright Dust. Lastly – most of the Challenges disappear after the Season they were introduced, and anything that isn’t claimed will be lost. We don’t add any new Challenges after Week 10 – which should give everyone a few weeks to clean up any Challenges they didn’t finish. Any Challenge that rewards unique or Seasonal items (currencies, lore books, Seasonal weapons, etc.) – can be completed as long as the Seasonal activity is in the game, but XP awarded for completing the challenge will only be available during the season it was introduced. Let’s Talk Bright Dust Back before Beyond Light launched, we discussed some of the goals around the changes to Bright Dust. As a refresher, we wanted to change the way you earn Bright Dust and move more towards account-specific paths to give players with only one character significantly more Bright Dust than they've been earning over the last year. In Season 13, we’ll be continuing to move toward these goals by adding Bright Dust onto Seasonal Challenges. Since you no longer have to purchase weekly ritual bounties, each of the strike, Crucible, and Gambit Seasonal Challenges will award between 75 and 300 Bright Dust. We are also introducing an end-of-Season Bright Dust bonus – if you complete (nearly) all of the Seasonal Challenges, we are awarding a single 4,000 Bright Dust pile. Additionally, each ritual vendor challenge (“Complete 8 bounties”) awards 120 Bright Dust for each character who completes it each week. And because this is prompted by the removal of weekly bounties, the only Seasonal Challenges that will be awarding Bright Dust are the ones that both Season Pass owners and free players can complete. Here’s a quick breakdown of how much Bright Dust you should expect to earn over the course of Season 13.
120 Bright Dust per ritual vendor, per character, per week
14,040 total if completing all required weekly Challenges over the course of Season 13
Additionally, we still plan to offer weekly and repeatable Bright Dust bounties for Seasonal events, giving you a bit more Bright Dust towards desired rewards. As a final note, please be sure to claim all Seasonal Challenges that award Bright Dust prior to the end of a Season. Once a Season ends, associated Challenges and their Bright Dust rewards will expire and can no longer be claimed.
It’s always exciting when we bring a new feature online for Destiny 2. We hope that the changes detailed above make it easier to create goals to complete each week. As always, we’re eager to hear your feedback once you start finishing your first Seasonal Challenges, so please sound off with your thoughts!
Back to the Sandbox
Image Linkimgur Every Season, we have a collection of changes to the Destiny 2 sandbox to spice things up a bit. This Season, we’re making some targeted changes to weapon archetypes that need some love as well as beginning some preparations for crossplay.
Dev team: In preparation for crossplay, coming later this year, we’re making some changes to the Recoil stat. Currently, several weapon archetypes have their Recoil reduced by around 40% (dependent on archetype) when using mouse and keyboard. This results in an issue where players on mouse and keyboard are able to largely ignore the stability weapon stat, creating unintended discrepancies in weapon performance between controllers and mouse and keyboard. The following weapon archetypes will have their mouse and keyboard Recoil adjusted closer to controller (reduced the difference from ~40% to ~20%).
Auto Rifle
Scout Rifle
Pulse Rifle
Submachine Gun
Hand Cannon
Machine Gun
In the case of Pulse Rifle, Submachine Gun, and Machine Gun, we will also be introducing some buffs. In some cases, these weapons will have less Recoil across both Controller and mouse and keyboard input methods compared to what’s in the game today.
Submachine Guns are largely outclassed by Auto Rifles at medium range, and by Sidearms at short range, with player feedback often mentioning how hard they are to control. To address this feedback, we’re introducing the following change:
Reduced camera movement from firing a Submachine Gun by 24%.
Pulse Rifles with the mouse and keyboard changes were kicking a little too much.
Reduced camera movement from firing a Pulse Rifle by 7%.
Machine Guns with the mouse and keyboard changes were kicking a little too much.
Reduced camera movement from firing a Machine Gun by 9.5%.
We will pay close attention to how these changes play out when they go live, and plan to revisit individual archetypes in a future update as needed. Outside of Recoil adjustments, we will also be tuning a few weapon archetypes in Season 13. Looking through backend data and community feedback, we landed on the following: Buffs
Rocket Launchers have fallen behind other Heavy weapons in most measures of effectiveness, we’re pushing them more into a burst damage role.
Increased Rocket Launcher damage by 30%.
Exotic Rocket Launchers have been adjusted individually and are affected by this change to different degrees.
Paired with the buffs to reserves from last Season, we’re hoping you’ll explode many more things in Season 13!
Fusion Rifle usage is very low, and they feel like an unreliable choice in Crucible compared to Shotguns.
Increased Fusion Rifle damage falloff start distance based on Range stat. (6% with 0 Range, 16% with 100 Range)
Reduced camera movement from firing a Fusion Rifle by 9.5%.
Breech Grenade Launcher usage is very low (outside of Mountaintop). We believe part of the reason is that the loop of "hold the trigger to arm, then release to detonate” is challenging to execute, particularly since projectiles can bounce off targets if the trigger is held
Breech Grenade Launcher projectiles will now detonate on impact with a character, even if holding the trigger.
Nerfs
While Sniper Rifle usage has dropped in Crucible, we’ve observed that it’s hard to challenge someone with a Sniper Rifle – even if you get the first shot on an enemy, they can often respond and win the fight.
Increased ADS flinch to Snipers when taking damage from other players
Swords are extremely dominant in PvE. At this time, 65% of players are using Swords for the majority of gameplay encounters in Destiny 2. While we are introducing a buff to Rocket Launchers to make them a bit more enticing, we feel that Swords do too much damage compared to other options.
Reduced Sword damage by 15%.
Exotic Changes and Bug Fixes
Some Exotic weapons lose their buffs when you switch weapons, which is intended. They would also lose their buffs when pulling out your Ghost Shell, which is not intended. Fixed that issue on these weapons:
Ace of Spades
Tarrabah
Hawkmoon
Borealis and Hard Light now have a custom (quite short) animation for switching damage type.
Duality
Increased damage falloff distance by 1.25m (while both firing from the hip and aiming down sights).
Reduced maximum buff stacks from 7 to 5, each stack now grants more of a damage bonus, extended buff duration slightly.
Sturm will once again reload any equipped Special slot weapon on kill provided the Special weapon's clip isn't full already and there's available reserve ammo.
Fixed an issue that was preventing Merciless from increasing its charge rate on non-lethal hits.
Ah, and before we go – we are planning to take a quick tuning pass on Arbalest. This won’t be ready in time for February 9, but we are expecting to have this touched later in Season 13!
Now, we know it can be difficult to understand the scale of buffs and nerfs without having these changes in your hands. Not to mention, there will be some new perks for you to hunt as you start navigating content in Season of the [REDACTED]. As always, we’re excited to see these changes out in the wild on February 9, and will be eager to hear your feedback.
Crimson Days
Each year, we look to February as a time to celebrate bonds of friendship throughout the community. Guardians have come to know this celebration as Crimson Days. It was one of our first “Seasonal” events in Destiny 1, a tradition that we carried to Destiny 2. While there was great enjoyment of Crimson Days, we feel that it’s been missing the mark in terms of quality over the last few years. As such, we have made the decision to discontinue Crimson Days moving forward. While we’ll miss the event, this move will allow us to maintain focus for alternate Seasonal offerings, ranging from quests to activities and more. We have quite a bit planned for Season of the [REDACTED] and our hope is that we’ve maintained, or even improved, the quality you’ve come to expect from this upcoming release. Some of you may be asking about the fate of Crimson Doubles, our once-a-year Crimson Days playlist. This mode is currently being shifted to the Destiny Content Vault but may return in the future. Many thanks to every Guardian who has joined us over the years for this event. Crimson decorations may not be hung in the Tower, but we have no doubts that you’ll continue to form Crimson Bonds over the years to come.
BugTrax
Image Linkimgur For those who may be new to the TWAB, welcome to the Player Support Report. This section is dedicated to known issues, active investigations, and pending updates for Destiny 2. Our Player Support team navigates the Help forum daily, collecting info on new issues and dishing out help articles. This is their report on the most frequently reported issues of the last week.
CRUCIBLE TOKENS AND FRAGMENT QUESTS Due to the updates to the vendor progression system, Crucible Tokens and Crucible Token Gifts are no longer needed and will be deprecated into Junk that will delete as a full stack starting in Season 13. Additionally, current Stasis Fragment Quests will be deprecated at the end of Season of the Hunt. Players are advised to turn in all Crucible Tokens and Crucible Token Gifts and finish all available Stasis Fragment Quests before Season 13 starts. KNOWN ISSUES While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help forum:
Stasis abilities can be difficult to distinguish between enemy and friendly for colorblind players.
The Double Trouble Triumph is unobtainable.
In the Deep Stone Crypt raid, the augment lockout timer occasionally resets during the final encounter against Taniks.
During the final fight against the Sanctified Mind in the Garden of Salvation raid, sometimes a shielded tether box can become tethered instead of the correct glowing tether box.
Hunter legs clip through the Ten-Grasp Sword Sparrow.
In the Last Wish raid, the Shuro Chi puzzle room plates don't work if a Titan bubble or Warlock well are placed on them.
The Titan Phenotype Plasticity Helm eye clusters no longer glow red.
Weekly and daily elemental kill bounties have stopped rotating off of Void.
When overcharging grenades while using the Voidwalker top tree subclass as a Warlock, Super energy stops charging.
For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.
[Bird Noises Intensify]
Image Linkimgur It’s been fun watching Hawkmoon clips and montages throughout the Season. With recently introduced random rolls, players have been pushing the limits of this Exotic, taking on 1v1 encounters in the Crucible that they may have otherwise avoided. This week, our top pick not only got a sweet roll on perks, but a killer roll on audio, too! Movie of the Week: Ting Ting Ting Ting Video Link Movie of the Week: Deep Stone Lullaby Violin/Piano Cover Video Link Movie of the Week: …That’s a lot of Hawkmoon Video Link As always, if you'd like to submit your creation to be featured in a future TWAB, make sure to create a post on the Community Creations portal of Bungie.net.
Credit Where It’s Due
Image Linkimgur Every day, we take a moment to scroll through various social media apps to take a look at community artwork. We’re always awestruck by the talents that many of you possess, and eager to share your works with a wider audience. Here’s a quick roundup of some sweet art, and direct links to their authors. Give them a follow if you want to see more of their stuff! Art of the Week: Art Sharing
Cheers, and make sure to tag your content with some form of #Destiny2Art so we can find you easily! That’s it for this week, folks. Season of the [REDACTED] is almost here. We’ll have some patch previews to cover in the TWAB next week, so stop by if you’re interested!
If this gets 7 likes we'll add a new LZ on Europa next Season. — Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) January 27, 2021
We’ll see you again next week, bright and early on Tuesday morning. Cheers, dmg04
Learn from my mistakes. I got a job, but it took me a year, 1100+ applications, and failing 11 final interviews. Here is what you don't do while job searching.
Sure, there are plenty of posts from people who applied to a job and got an offer 30 seconds later. Good for them. But if you're on this sub, you're probably running into more difficulty. I did. Job hunting these days is inherently pretty hard, but there are plenty of things I did wrong during my job hunt that could have saved me time and trouble. I'm a 35 year old in product marketing in the bay area, so this advice may or may not apply to you. Most of this advice is not new, you may have seen it elsewhere. Well, HEED MY WORDS! You should take that advice. Here are my don'ts of job hunting: e: Here's the real #1 piece of advice because someone brought it up in the comments: Don't Not Have A Network. The main reason I had such a hard time was I moved to a new city where I didn't have a professional relationship with ANYONE. I think if you're applying without a friend on the inside, it reduces your odds by 80-90%, based on random factoids we've all seen that say 80% of jobs are never posted publicly. I went to networking events and coffee meetups and blah blah blah, but COVID put a stop to that before I could make much progress. The biggest piece of advice (by far) is just to have a friend who can get you a job. But if you're reading this, you would have done that already if you could have. Don't try to get by without doing the standard "best practice" stuff. I spent a while thinking I could get away without making a customized resume for different jobs. I also thought I would probably have the right keywords naturally, and that I didn't have to worry about that either. WRONG. I wasted many weeks submitting poorly optimized resumes and getting few interviews. What you should do is have at least one version of your resume customized for each job title you're applying to. That means if you're applying for Sr. Widget Fiddler and Director of Widget Fiddling, you need 2 versions. Keyword optimize each resume version by copy-pasting 50+ job descriptions for that job's title into a tool like Voyant Tools, which will spit out all the most common words and phrases. Find the most frequent ones that seem important and relevant, and work them into your resume, even if it seems weird to refer to yourself as a "team player" or "entrepreneurial". Don't be bad at interviewing, not even a little bit bad. Being a good interviewee is a skill. Most of us aren't born with that skill, and most of us are rusty when it comes time to look for a job. I knew I wasn't great at interviewing, but I really didn't want to go through awkward practice interviews with friends, so I told myself people would understand why I was all nervous, and realize I was still super talented and experienced despite my 'rough edges'. WRONG. I blew it on a lot of interviews before admitting that I had to practice, a lot. I did a bunch of practice interviews, got feedback, and I even talked to an interview coach. The latter was expensive, but I think the dose of outside perspective really helped. YMMV. I practiced enough that I started getting to final rounds instead of washing out in the first couple rounds. It made a huge difference. Practice. Don't wing it during the interview. For 'behavioral' questions (i.e. "tell me about a time when..." questions) everyone says you need to have multiple answers memorized for every major category of question. Ugh! So much work. Greatest weakness. Success story. Failure story. Conflict story. Collaboration story. YAWN. I thought I could come up with good answers on the spot. It's "supposed to be a conversation", right? WRONG. I blew it on a couple interviews before realizing I was coming across as both unprepared AND inexperienced. Sit down and work out your bullet points for every answer, BEFORE you land an interview. Pain in the butt? Yes. But not as big a pain as getting an interview, blowing it, then ending up doing the work anyway. Don't apply to old job listings. If it's still up, they're still hiring, right? WRONG. I have found that job listings are good for about as long as fresh bread. You mostly want to apply the day they're posted, 2-3 days is OK, 5 days is pushing it, beyond that, it's literal trash. I started out applying to anything relevant that was less than a month old, and my app-to-interview yield was around 1%. Started applying to new listings exclusively, and my yield went to more like 3%. YMMV. Don't apply to listings that aren't on the employer's own site. It's become disturbingly common for 3rd-party sites to steal and re-post job listings they have nothing to do with. You click on a link on LinkedIn or Indeed, and you end up on Neuvoo or some random BS. Don't submit any of your info on those sites. Very often the jobs are expired already, but these 3rd-party scammers are still re-posting them to steal your info. Even if they're not expired, there's no reason to think they actually send your application to the employer. If you land somewhere unexpected, go to the employer's actual careers section on their site and find the listing yourself. Otherwise you're just giving your info to someone to sell, and the employer probably never sees it. Please report these listings as you go. Don't be too picky with job titles. Unless your resume precisely "fits the profile" employers are looking for, you're going to have to apply a lot. I had to apply a lot. At first, I was exclusively applying to one title, because although I didn't "fit the profile" I didn't want to compromise. I ended up getting a really solid job with a different title, after I loosened my criteria JUST a tad. Have a serious talk with yourself about how many months you're willing to apply before broadening your search, and don't talk yourself out of good jobs because they have the "wrong" title. Don't be too loose with companies you apply to. At a couple points in the process, I ended up with interviews at companies that I seriously didn't want to work for. I was playing the numbers game and I would apply to anything with the right title, even if I hadn't heard of the company. I figured if I got an interview, I would worry about the company later. Difficulty: If you are on unemployment, this can lead to a sticky situation - if you turn down an offer, you legally can't collect unemployment anymore in many places. It's also pretty hard to justify to yourself turning down ANY interview if you actually need the money. Have a loose idea of who the company is before applying, to avoid those awkward moments. Don't stop applying until the ink is dry on your offer letter. My advice is to apply to every suitable listing as soon as it's posted, which could be as many as 10-30 per day depending on your field and geography. If things are going well, you'll also have interviews going on during any given week, which also put heavy demands on your mental energy and prep time. It is tempting to stop applying for jobs if you are doing multiple interviews and they seem to be going well. You need the time, and one of them has to work out, right? WRONG. It happened to me multiple times - I'd get further along in an interview process, I'd be focusing on prep, and I'd let my application routine slip. Bad idea. If your application pipeline runs dry, it can be another 2-6 weeks before the interviews start flowing again. ABA - always be applying. Don't get your hopes up. (maybe the most important tip.) Your mental resilience to rejection and your self-regard are finite resources. They are resources you need to conserve to maintain your overall mental health and good job-hunting habits. Job hunting can burn through these resources like Joe Exotic through a bag of meth. Don't be like me and get emotionally invested in any given job before you get an offer. Don't start picking out all the stuff you're going to buy with the new salary. Don't start thinking of what doors are going to open up for you with this step in your career. Don't mentally pick out outfits for your new commute. Just don't. I consider myself a mentally tough person, so I should be able to handle the repeated rejection, right? WRONG. If you allow yourself to start caring about a job before you GET the job, you WILL be crushed to bits. Maybe not the first time, but after the 5th, or the 10th, it becomes hard to take. To some of the newer job hunters I've seen on this sub: Caring about a job from the day you APPLY? Sheer lunacy. You shouldn't even remember where you applied by the time you go to bed that day. Keep in mind: It's a numbers game. It's not personal. You WILL get the right job eventually, if you keep going. You have to maintain faith in yourself, but hold no hope for any particular job. In emotional terms, treat it less like a poker game, (where any hand can be a big deal) more like a slot machine (where you care zero until you finally win). No matter how tough you think you are, take care to maintain your mental state, especially during COVID where so many aspects of life are also wearing down our mental health. Don't be afraid to be a try-hard. The role I finally got was based largely on a "take home project" used to demonstrate my working style. It was paid, also really long, the minimum suggested time was 10 hours. Usually I put 70% effort into trial projects, because I don't want to bust my ass for a throwaway, and I don't want to look desperate. My thinking is "Well, we're all professionals, so as long as I mention a few of the right things, they'll know we're on the same level, right?" WRONG. On this one, I decided to go HAM on the project. All or nothing. I ended up putting over 20 hours into it, (the max time they suggested was 20) and came up with a total overkill amount of material, it was probably 20 pages worth, if not more. To give some idea, I spent like 4 hours just doing addressable market sizing, which everyone including me acknowledges is fairly pointless. Part of the project was also to see how we communicate about our work - they put me on their company slack, so I logged onto it pretty much every day to update them on my progress. It was firmly in try-hard weirdo territory. But it worked! So I guess my lesson from this is, if you're going to bother with these projects, be the one who turns in the blue ribbon material. NB: Be aware of "free work" scams where they try to get you to do the actual job without hiring you for the job. If it's pertinent to the actual job and it's more than an hour or two of work, it should be paid. Unpaid trial projects that don't relate to the actual business are OK, but you'll have to decide for yourself how much time you're willing to put in for free. Don't assume ***anything*** until it's final. In 3 instances, I got much further than I expected in a hiring process, and in one I was blindsided by a rejection where I thought I was a shoo-in. #1, they interviewed me for the role (up to the final round) even though the job called for an actual engineer and I have zero engineering experience. In #2, I blew an interview and got rejected. I knew exactly how I blew it, I got the yips and did poorly. So I sent an email reply explaining what I SHOULD have said, and that I really believed in the company's mission, and that I realize I was a poor interviewee, but I was working on it - they actually gave me another shot and I made it to the final round. In the last unexpected twist story, they actually scheduled a final interview, then CANCELLED IT. I have been rejected for about a million jobs, but I've never been cancelled on. They said that instead of an interview, they would just review my trial project. I couldn't imagine cancelling an interview with someone you intend to hire, so I assumed this 'review' was just a consolation prize and the job was going to someone else. On the day the cancelled interview was meant to take place, they offered me the job. Huh???? Later that day I rode to heck on a flying pig and bought a snowcone there. But I also got a job. On the other side of things, I was told directly I was the top candidate for a role, the only one who was really qualified, but because of COVID they were putting the role on hold. OK cool, I figured I was a shoo-in once they actually hired for it. Well, they re-listed the job about 45 days later. They didn't reach out to me. I messaged them. They told me I wasn't even going to get a phone screen for it. WTF? They lied to my face for no reason whatsoever? Yep. They did. The lesson: Do not assume anything! ANYTHING!
https://steam.cryotank.net/wp-content/gallery/slaythespire/Slay-the-Spire-01-HD.png Slay the Spire (StS) has finally arrived to Android! For two years many of us dreamed for this legendary game to be accessible on their mobile devices, and finally the day has come. No need to talk about how awesome this game is, how it basically started a new genre of card-based dungeon crawlers (UPD: or roguelike deck-builders, if you prefer the term), and even about how well or poor it works on Android hardware in its current state (there will be lots of these posts during the days to come). What I wanted to talk about is the impact this game had on (specifically) mobile industry and how other developers were able to utilize this innovative formula in their own products. Personally, I am somewhat glad that StS release was delayed that much. This allowed a lot of "clones" to be spawned, many of which I enjoyed playing. Some of them appear to be straight rip-offs, but others introduced many fresh ideas of their own, some even surpassing the predecessor's greatness. What the heck am I talking about and how is this even possible will be revealed to you, should you decide to stay on a bit and read through the article below.
General info
First and foremost, let's clarify the important thing: card based dungeon crawlers are not Collectible Card Games (CCGs). Even though they share the same ideas, and some of them (StS included) even have a feature to permanently improve starting cards, or a mode to play with pre-constructed decks, this is not the case for the genre in general. There is no place for multiplayer and PvP battles here: a turn-down for the most, but an undeniable advantage for the rest - only though-out puzzle-like single-player experience which we can pause at any moment and continue when the time is appropriate. Thus, there will never be troubles with downtime, matchmaking, ratings, overpowered builds and other PvP stuff, as there will never be a satisfaction of crushing your opponents with the power of your mighty intellect... The fun of discovering interesting synergies between various card combinations is still present, though. With this being said, let's quickly look through the core features of the genre, which will be relevant for almost every game we review below: - we must explore a dungeon, which (usually, but not necessarily) consists of three floors with increasing difficulty; - we have limited control over the order in which to face the challenges; - there is a powerful boss in the end of each floor; - we battle using deck of cards, usually drawing new cards from deck to hand each turn; - there is a limitation on how many cards we can play during our turn; - we start with a weak basic deck, but get new cards as rewards for fighting enemies; - there is a possibility to permanently remove (weak) cards from the deck; - successful gameplay strategies revolve around utilizing the synergies between different cards; - there are several character classes, each with their own cards and tactics; - there are often additional items to acquire in the dungeon, providing bonuses and emphasizing specific types of play; Before Slay the Spire (StS) came out, there was another card-based dungeon crawler called Dream Quest (DQ), which considered by many to be the first game of the genre (at least the first one to make a significant impact). Not sure if the former drew inspiration from the latter, but certain parallels can easily be drawn: in fact, all of the features mentioned in the list above are valid for DQ the same way as it is for StS. The rich plethora of card based dungeon crawlers (both PC/Console and mobile) originated from some combination of the two. StS, however, can not be considered a clone of DQ, as it introduced a lot of original ideas and spawned its own line of descendants. It is always interesting to analyze each new title to see which of two games was the biggest inspiration, and to group them accordingly. For me the main criteria lies in the core difference in battle system: - in StS, enemies (usually multiple) show their intentions at the beginning of each turn, so we know what to expect and what to play against; - in DQ, the enemy (usually single) draws and plays cards the same way as we do, often using the same abilities and synergies we ourselves can use. Introductions aside, let's finally get to the interesting part - the games! (Note: Games are listed in alphabetical order to not give any privileges to one over another. For my personal preferences see the comment section).
Dream Quest clones
Call of Lophis takes us on a grim journey through infested lands full of deadly monsters, dangerous traps, and one of the most ridiculous card art I have ever seen. It's surprising to see how dark fantasy elements combine with the humor and gags this game presents. From the gameplay point of view, there is enough card variety and interesting synergies, but it will take a long time to reach the interesting parts. Really: this game just does not know when to end, forcing new and new dungeon locations onto us with basically the same monsters and same approaches to dealing with them over and over. Its the boss battles which crank the difficulty up to over 9000, and if we don't have the right deck by the time we reach them, there is nothing we can do to pull it off. Plus there is some shady business going on with monetization schemes, where even paid version of the game makes us spend money to unlock additional classes and grind a lot to buy permanent improvements. Only truly dedicated players will be interested in dealing with all this nonsense. [...] UPD: Haven't checked on it for a long time - maybe the situation improved somehow. Crimson Deep is still in early alpha and was not updated for a long time. But the development hasn't stopped, and there is a new major release approaching in the nearest future. It makes no sense to talk about the game till then: the version in the store is too raw to provide any significant gameplay experience, but it would be interesting to see where it goes in the end. Dimension of Dream is probably the only game that has the same grid-based dungeon layout as DQ itself. This time with full 3D and a possibility to fight only limited set of enemies before facing the final boss (which allows to moderate difficulty as we go, either defeating tougher enemies with better rewards, or to save HP and fight only the easy ones). This game has one of the most interesting battle systems and 6 truly unique classes with deep complex strategies unlike anything we have ever seen (not only the cards themselves, but the order in which we play them greatly affects the outcome). Unfortunately, the English version was pulled from Google Play, leaving only Chinese version for Asian people to enjoy. UPD: Apparently, the game was re-released under different publisher with the title Dreaming Dimension, so there you have it. [...] Meteorfall: Journeys offers the streamlined approach to dungeon crawling, where all our decisions boil down to Reigns-like "swipe left / swipe right" operation: picking the path, encounter resolutions, and even battles are simplified to utilize this binary choice mechanic. But don't worry: these specifics do not affect the gameplay, still providing enough strategic depth to appeal even to hardcore players. Add here a neat visual style, lots of character classes and their variations, cool card combos, and you get a true masterpiece, which is Meteorfall. [...] Night of the Full Moon offers a fresh take on a fairy tale of Red Riding Hood, but adding darker elements to it (including werewolves, zombies, mad scientists and cursed cultists). It demonstrates an amazing production quality with top-tier art, beautiful audio support, and intriguing storytelling. Gameplay wise, we have the closest thing to DQ, safe for the grid-based dungeon maps, which were changed to just picking the encounter out of available three. Some people may argue that the game does not offer enough strategic variety, only suggesting a single best build for each class, but you will still get different runs due to the randomness of card and power-up drops. Another argument of it being too easy is completely nullified on higher difficulty levels. Wish the story would develop in a different direction, though. [...] Spellsword Cards: Origins provides the gameplay similar to the Night of the Full moon, but focuses more on role-playing character development part. Aside from choosing a class, we also get to pick race with unique traits, and a school of magic, greatly affecting which cards will be available to us during the run. The problem here, though, is that monster encounters do not demonstrate a lot of variety, forcing us to fight the same enemies over and over, and the difficulty is rather high, with starting cards doing almost nothing and enemies quickly run out of hand with their devastating attacks, whereas good cards are hard to come by, and even then you will still be devastated on later stages. [...] UPD: Or maybe I am just bad at this game (welcome to comment section for valid strategy suggestions).
Slay the Spire clones
Blood Card offers a unique possibility to construct the dungeon ourselves, providing a pool of encounters of different types: regular monsters, elite monsters, events and shops. We pick a desired encounter from the pool, deal with it and then move on to the next one. Another interesting feature is that our health is defined by the number of cards in draw pile, which limits our tactical possibilities, but is compensated by the fact that we get multiple copies of cards as rewards for fighting enemies. There are a lot of interesting mechanics related to moving cards between various piles, as well as other neat features (like: the Death inevitably arrives in three turns and starts whacking everyone on the field with increasing persistence), but I'll leave them for you to discover on your own. Card Crusade seemed like a cool idea of mixing classic "roguelike" dungeon crawling with its "deck-based" counterpart, where we explore the dungeon the same way as we do it in Hack, Angband, Pixel Dungeon and other similar games, but use cards to fight actual enemies. In reality though, this implementation just adds a useless abstraction, as the adventuring does not provide any tactical benefits and is only there to inter-connect battle sequences (heck, even breaking pots and chests does not give us any coin, of which developers themselves warn us at the very beginning!). The cards are not very interesting, with next to none cool synergies, and new classes (which should be unlocked by performing specific actions on previous runs) do not provide any major difference. [...] Card Quest takes us on an epic journey through fantasy lands, where we will perform great deeds as one of the classic RPG hero classes (fighter, wizard, rogue, ranger), each with their own equipment and fighting disciplines. The interesting part is that the cards we use during runs are defined by said equipment, and if we find some new pieces during our adventure, we get to keep them for further runs. Also worth noting that defense cards are played not during our turn, but during enemy turn, which requires us to plan ahead a bit. This being said, the game is extremely hard - it will take a lot of unsuccessful tries to finally reach the end. But the variety of dungeons and possible builds will keep us occupied for long. Dungeon Tales for a long time was the closest, yet simplified copy of StS mechanics (up to similar cards and gaming strategies), but without certain elaborate features, like upgrading cards or using potions. The basics are left intact though: we still build our deck along the way and face the powerful boss in the end. There are only two characters available yet, but each has a couple of viable builds, so it can keep us invested for quite some time. [...] Endless Abyss is a close StS clone with very similar character classes (only two so far) and a lot of cards with exactly the same effects. Graphically the game looks very good, but angry monetization, lots of grinding, and forced ads make it almost impossible to fully enjoy. [...] Heroes of Abyss is a predecessor to Endless Abyss with basically the same core gameplay, but very simplified dungeon crawling part. There is no floor map with choosing our path, nor there are elaborate adventure events: just a series of battles with the boss in the end. The spoils we get after each battle go into improving our starting deck and unlocking new difficulty modes with higher rewards. What makes the game unusual, is that we chose the preferred build right from the beginning with appropriate set of starting cards, without the need to rely on the randomness of card drops. It may be interesting to unlock and compare all the 6 available builds, but once the task is done, there is almost no reason to play the game further. Heroes Journey provides a different setting for a change: this time we will play as space explorers, who crash landed on an alien planet. Thus, instead of familiar swords and bows, we will be wielding blasters and energy shields: the rest remains the same, up to the majority of cards straight up copied from StS. Unfortunately, this innovative idea was completely ruined by repetitive grinding and angry monetization, forcing player to make dozens of identical runs with the same small card pool, until something adequate is unlocked. Oh, and the game is long abandoned by the developers. Pirates Outlaws is an amazing rework of original StS ideas in a pirate setting with some changes to gameplay mechanics, such as introducing persistent charges needed to play certain cards, and different buff/debuff statuses that replace each other. There are also some questionable features, such as ship stamina that deteriorates over the course of the journey and leads to game over if not repaired in time, or a quest system, where quests can not be completed in parallel, but instead picking the new quest resets your progress in the current one. Some may also argue that new classes take long to grind for, or expensive to pay for, but with permanent booster pack this should not be a problem. Anyway, the game is highly recommended for any StS fan. [...] Rogue Adventure offers a twist to usual mechanic: our hand is limited by 4 cards, but each time we use one of them, a new card is immediately drawn to its place, thus we never run out of cards to play. Non-starting cards are common for all classes, but are grouped by type (or race), giving huge synergies depending on how many similar cards we have. Aside from this, the game offers diverse gameplay by providing a lot of different classes, each with its own unique strategies and dynamics, and some interesting items to work around. The developers constantly provide updates with bug fixes and new content, but be warned that new mechanics may break what you are already accustomed for. Royal Booty Quest started as a straight rip-off from StS with the same classes and abilities, and even cards having the same names. And absolutely atrocious pixelated visuals, which were not possible to look at without eyes bleeding out. Over time, though, it developed its own unique mechanics and interesting card combinations, but the art style did not get any better. However, if this is not a problem, the game is enjoyable to an extent, but since it was not updated for a long time, I doubt it will keeps anyone's interest for long. [...] Tavern Rumble adds an unusual strategic element - a 3x3 grid, on each units and enemies are placed. The core gameplay remains the same (we still see what opponents are planning to do each turn and adjust our own strategy accordingly), but the addition of the grid introduces another tactical layer: not only we should maximize the damage output, but also plan the layout for our troops to provide the effective delivery of said output, while at the same time establish enough defense to minimize the damage to ourselves. There are a lot of cards and classes to play around, different play modes and a lot of features that are still being constantly added to the game. Some may argue about simplistic pixel graphics or long repetitive grinding, but it is easy to unlock everything within reasonable amount of time, even without paying. [...]
Other Games
Of course, my criteria does not work 100% of the time, as some games are way too different from anything else to confidently enroll them into one of the categories. They either demonstrate traits of both, or implement entirely unique mechanics of their own (which I like the most), while still maintaining the basic dungeon crawling ideas (so a lot of the games you might think of will not end up in the list). What I have in mind is the following: Dungeon Reels removes the cards from card-based dungeon crawler - why bother, right? Instead, it provides some kind of a slot machine, where each turn three rows spin independently to pick available actions based on what slots we have in our reel. Winning battles awards us with new, better slots to add, each with their own specifics and synergies. Enemies also randomize their moves with slots of their own, but the most satisfying mechanic is the possibility to spin a jackpot with three identical slots for some powerful effect. It is interesting to see this concept developed further, but the game has not been updated for a long time. Iris and the Giant takes us on journey through imaginary world, inspired by Ancient Greek mythology. Each battle takes place on a grid, where various enemies advance in huge numbers. We play a card from our hand, usually dealing damage to nearest enemy, and then everyone who is still standing and can reach us deals damage in return. There are cards that target multiple enemies at once, as well as ways to play more than one card during our turn, so most of the time we will be deciding which card to play at which moment. The deck has limited size, and if it becomes empty we lose, so new cards should be constantly acquired. There are a lot of interesting mechanics to discover, but the game is very hard and luck based, requiring a lot of trial-and-error to finally reach the end. [...] Phantom Rose Scarlet has the same basic core, but with completely innovative battle system, not seen in any other game. On each turn there are four positions for cards to be played in strict order, where two of them are randomly filled with opponent's cards, and the remaining two are left for us to fill. Instead of drawing the hand, we have our entire deck available right away, but playing cards puts them on a cooldown, which does not reset between battles, so we constantly face the strategic choice of playing our best cards right away or keep them for later. The game is in active development, providing new mechanics and further developing the story, which is quite captivating here. [...] Void Tyrant is a bit of a stretch, but still a "card based dungeon crawler", in which we basically play BlackJack against our enemies by dealing card with numbers from 1 to 6 one-by-one from our deck until we stand or bust. Whoever has the highest value wins and deals damage to the loser. There are various supporting cards on top of this mechanic, allowing us to either jinx the outcome in our favor, or to perform various other metagame manipulations. The only downside of the game is the lack of content, as it quickly runs out of interesting things, and since it was not updated for a long time, it is unlikely that anything new will be added in the future. [...]
Conclusion
As you see, there is a lot to play besides StS, so even if you are not hyped by its long-awaited Android release, but appreciate a good intellectual dungeon crawler, you will find something to suit your needs. I hope, even with StS release, new games of the genre will continue appearing on mobile phones, and I will gladly review them and add to the list. If you know any hidden gems (or even trash) that was not highlighted in this article, please share the names and/or links in the comments. I am also open to any discussions on the topic, as I am obviously able to talk a lot about my favorite genre. Good luck to everyone in all your endeavors. P.S. I am well aware of games like Dungeon Cards, Card Adventure, Dungeon Faster, Meteorfall: Krumitz Tale, Card Thief, Maze Machina, Cube Card, Card Hog, Fisherman, Relics of the Fallen and other "grid-based puzzles", but do not consider them to be a part of the "family".
Unpopular opinion: Karma Cut is not a problem, it is a solution.
Almost all top decks have either protection from destruction or a way to recover from it at little to no cost. In a world where destruction effects actually destroy and dead monsters stay dead, KC's cousin Raigeki Break would be much superior due to its ability to get rid of face-down monsters and backrow as well. But that simply isn't the case in vast majority of matchups one will be having, and disruption is only good if it actually disrupts your opponent. Let's take a look over some of the top decks and how destruction affects them: Noble Knights: Noble Arms of Destiny is a searchable card that provides a once-per-turn protection as long as it's equipped. Furthermore, trying to destroy the equip card itself and then beating over the equipped monster is pointless as it can also recycle itself once per turn. You need non-destruction removal here. Desperado: I think at this point everyone knows what happens if you try to destroy a DARK MAchine monster on Sartorius' side of the field. Blue Eyes: Destroyed dragons will simply get returned to hand via the effect of Stone and likely be used as fuel for Ultimate Dragons skill next turn. As for destroying the Stone if they try to synchro with it, see Desperado above. Invoked Neos: Destroying Alistair is pointless since Invoked player can still use him as fusion material from the graveyard. Destroying Purgatrio is pointless unless you can win the next turn, since both Alistair and Invocation recover themselves and he'll just be used as FIRE fodder for the next Purgatrio. Brave Neos is, again, protected from destruction by the fusion spell in the graveyard. Since destruction is woefully ineffective against most decks people will be facing, to actually disrupt them you need banish or bounce effects. Latter is usually confined to specific archetypes (Six Sams, Painters, Yosenju, etc.), while former actually has a generic card in Karma Cut you can put in tech slots of almost any deck. So obviously you will use it if you can, but not because its broken but because the alternatives simply aren't cutting (pun intended) it.
The Great Single Class Thief Compendium: how to be a non-Fighter fighting Thief, why Alchemy is underrated, a list of items to abuse with UAI, and a (complete?) list of Time Trap/Stop and backstab immune enemies. Among other shennanigans!
EDIT: Since I already wrote about it in the comments, I added a section about thieving skills point distribution. EDIT2: added some more thoughts about how much more damage we can do with a Time Trap vs a Spike Trap due to how probability works with the Spike Trap's 20d6 vs our maxed damage strategy for benefitting from Time Trap. First things first, this is the Enhanced Edition. It's what most people are playing and for good reason, so feel free to stop reading if that bothers you. Second, aside from convenience stuff (like tweaks anthology's bottomless bag of holding mod), the only mod I use is SCS with pretty much everything maxed except without the "Tactical Challenges" (cause I just find them tactics-narrowing and, consequently, boring. I like the original SCS philosophy which is to just enhance the game's AI with few actual statistical/ability changes). If you like that option, ok, good for you. I did a few playthroughs with them back in the day, but didn't care for it too much. Third, I just finished a playthrough of Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal (didn't feel like playing BG1/SoD this time around) with a Half-Orc Assassin, so that's what I'm gonna be focusing on, especially cause most people's complaints of single class thieves pertain to Throne of Bhaal. With that said, let's get to it (feel free to skip certain sections, of course, it's a huge post): THIEVING SKILLS POINT DISTRIBUTION (just copy and pasted it from my comment below, I didn't talk about it before cause it's too basic, but maybe some newbies might be reading this) -There are several potions/equipment that increase your thieving skills, so you don't need to max out pickpocket, open locks or find traps. Plus, every point in dexterity increases every thieving skill except detect illusions by 5 points and you can increase dex permanently (eg tome) and temporarily (eg draw upon holy might). -95 is enough to open every lock and find every trap in the trilogy. But if you can reach 25 str temporarily that gets you the equivalent of 85 open lock through bashing. -You don't need much pickpocket unless you wanna steal from shops often, cause otherwise you can just buff it temporarily whenever you need it. -Hide and move silently max out at 200 each, but 100 on one of them is reasonable enough to just hide outside of combat (remember you can use quick load to speed up your hide attempts outside of combat). 100 in both is enough to max out in dark areas (lighter areas and being outside during the day give you penalties). If you wanna run+hide constantly put more into it earlier. Or, if you're playing a shadowdancer you need as much of this as possible right away. -Detect illusions can't be buffed so get it to 100, but you don't need it too much in bg1 cause there aren't many invisible/hidden enemies. -Set traps should be at 100 for convenience, but you can live with a lower number if you only trap outside of combat and don't mind reloading. It's absolutely essential to max out if you wanna trap during combat (by running away first ofc otherwise you can't use it). All in all, I just get some good hide/set traps/detect illusion early in soa and then start to minmax. Bg1 is really kit/strategy dependent but I ignore open lock/find traps for most of it (unlocking/disabling doesn't even get you much xp in bg1, why bother? Just take traps and bash locks unless doing no reload). KITS -Assassin: fantastic kit. Poison is a great buff (especially vs spellcasters, but not just that) with decent duration (5 rounds) that you can reapply a ton of times. That +1 to hit comes in super handy for thieves (who get worse thac0 progression than a cleric) and the +1 to damage actually makes a substantial difference when you consider it factors into backstabs. Every +1 damage (that factors into the backstab formula, so no Strength bonuses) means 7 extra damage on a single backstab or 63 extra damage in a single round of Assassination with 9 Attacks per Round (APR). And, of course, we get that sweet sweet x7 backstab, meaning Assassination can do MONSTROUS damage (easily over ~1000+ in a single round with 9APR). -Bounty Hunter: also great, though it's been a while since I've played a solo one to judge it properly. Being able to throw the special traps and have them explode in a fireball-sized area is great and the Maze traps are underrated (they ignore magic resistance and there's no save!), cause anything with under 18 Intelligence (most enemies, pretty much) and not immune to maze (again, the vast majority of enemies, even dragons/demons are vulnerable) gets caught up for at least 2d4 (probably more) leaving you with a great opportunity to place traps for when they come back. Plus, the smarter folks come back sooner, meaning spellcasters will probably be left alone and take the brunt of the traps (whose damage can pretty much only be stopped by the exact physical/elemental-damage resistance). -Swashbuckler: unnecessarily fighter-like IMO. As we'll see later, thieves can be quite the fighters if geared properly and it's rare that they're lacking either thac0 or AC. But since Swashbucklers get ridiculous amounts of thac0/AC by the end of the game it means you can get a little bit more creative with your gearing and access to Whirlwind is nice, I suppose. Not getting backstabs/access to Assassination is a huge bummer though. Shadowdancer: super fun kit, but they miss out on some of the best parts of thieves: high level abilities (HLAs). Shadow Form (essentially a stronger, but short-lasting Hardiness+Improved Invisibility) is great, Shadow Twin is simply unnecessary (it's a Simulacrum, cool, but there are already two other sources of Simulacrum...) and their Shadow Maze is crappy compared to the Bounty Hunter's maze trap cause it doesn't ignore magic resistance, there's a save (at -4, admittedly) AND it only affects a single opponent, not an area. But the worst part is that they don't get the amazing thief traps and their Assassination is super nerfed with that x4 multiplier. So why are they still good? Because they still get Use Any Item (UAI), shadowstep lets you dispel illusions comfortably in the chaos of battle and give you time for your hide cooldown to reset, but, most importantly, hide-in-plain-sight allows for a cheeky combo: Invisibility (not hiding) -> Backstab -> Insta-cast ability (eg use a wand if you're a single class SD or use a 0 casting time spell if you're a dual SD/Mage or Cleric) -> Hide (that's not on cooldown cause we weren't hidden to begin with, we were invisible before). That means you can constantly do a backstab + use a wand or cast a spell (or a triggesequencer!) and hide before the enemy can do anything. So the more sources of invisibility you have, the more you can do in combat without ever being engaged! If the enemy doesn't just straight up ignore invisibility you can pretty much play without armor if you want (if your hide/move silently are good, ofc). RACES Human: good for dualing, of course. Swashbucklers and Shadowdancers are the best duals IMO, unless you're willing to dual crazy late for the x7 Assassin backstab (you can do it if you're playing solo, but I wouldn't recommend it in a full party with six-way shared XP). Elf: -1 con makes no difference, but the +1 to dex is nice, cause we can easily get to 21 DEX (with 2 out of the 3 sources of +1 dex: BG1 Tome, the Machine of Lum and the Deck of Many Things) for that extra -1 AC and each point in dex gives us +5 to thieving skills (except Detect Illusions), but none of that is necessary cause we can still reach 21 DEX starting with 18 DEX and by the end of the game we'll have all the skills pretty much maxed out anyway. 90% charm immunity is nice though, I guess. Half-Orc: my preferred choice. Why? Thieves need more thac0, especially against late-late game bosses that are immune to Time Traps/Time Stop (meaning we can't just auto-hit them) and having more thac0 when you're a class with poor thac0 progression is always nice. Plus, you get more damage. In BG1 alone it's a huge difference cause jumping from 18 to 19 STR means -2 bonus to thac0 and +7 to damage. By the end of the game we can have natural 23 Strength, which is more than any girdle can give us. Other races: shorties are cool for saving throws, but thieves already get enough with all the saving throw-enhancing gear that UAI lets them use and with Greater Evasion that lowers them by a further 3 points. And we miss out on, again, what we need the most: thac0! The difference between maxing out at 22 and 23 is another extra point! GEAR Use Any Item is one of the main strengths of thieves, so, yes, talking about items is also talking about thieves. You can't ignore this. -Weapons: "easy, you're an assassin, just get the Celestial Fury or the Staff of the Ram for great backstab damage!" Sure, if all you want to do a single powerful backstab to one-shot a single powerful enemy that's fine, go for those. But after getting HLAs what you want is Assassination potential and those weapons, surprisingly, aren't the best for that. Plus, you probably want a thief that can actually fight well in battles even after backstabbing and without needing to go away to hide again or whatever (though that's an option, of course). So what's the big bad weapon combo? How do we turn out non-Fighter Thief into a fighting Thief? We need more APR. Belm+Kundane then? That'll get 1 base attack, 1 offhand attack, plus 2 main hand attacks. Double that if you're Improved Hasted, so 8 APR. Cool, but we can do a lot better than that. Both Belm and Kundane are +2 weapons, meaning a bunch of powerful enemies will be immune to them. +3 is the real deal (only Demiliches, the Lesser Demon Lord from the eggs main quest, the Ravager, the Fallen Solar at the final battle and Watcher's Keep's Aurumach Rilmani are immune to +3 weapons). Besides, Kundane only has 1d6 base damage, meaning it weakens our Assassination potential. The answer? Throwing daggers, motherf****! That's right! Throwing daggers ain't just for throwing!! Both the Boomerang Dagger +2 (which you can easily pickpocket right at the start of SoA) and the Firetooth +3 (available in Ust Nasha) give you an extra attack! It's just that you can't use them in the offhand, but that doesn't matter cause they're both great! Both do a respectable 2d4 damage (better than a long sword's 1d8!) and the Firetooh is a +3, plus it does 1d2 extra fire damage for some convenient troll killing and stoneskin harassing! So you use either of those in the main hand and Belm in the offhand, but if the enemy is immune to backstabs or immune to +2 weapons you switch Belm out to the Scarlet Ninja-to +3 (available in Joluv's shop at the Copper Coronet and useable by thieves with UAI!). Dope! 8 APR with a great +3 main hand weapon! As for the 9 APR... Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization, which you can use after getting UAI. That's an extra 1/2 APR normally, but a full 1 extra APR with Improved Haste. Other great weapons you should keep in mind are the usual (Mace of Disruption/Daystar against undead, that one staff that instakills golems you get in Ust Nasha... But there's more that people don't often talk about, like: -The Blackmist Halberd you get from giving the eggs to the Lesser Demon Lord in Ust Nasha, which is great in a secondary weapon slot cause it lets us cast area blindness (blindness is one of the best spells in the game) once per day. -The Sling of Arvoreen that stuns in an area for 3 rounds (auto-hits for our 9APR thief!). -The Darkfire Bow available in ToB for its long-lasting (23 rounds) improved haste cast. -The Answerer in ToB if you really want to worse the enemy's AC (I didn't need to resort to it once in my playthrough, but you can use it if you want). EDIT: as mentioned by semiticgod, "The Staff of the Magi can royally screw with Sendai in ToB. Unlike some other ToB enemies, the drow cannot see through invisibility, though SCS Sendai and company will use divination spells (the Cloak of Non Detection can preserve the staff's invisibility despite those spells)". I totally forgot to fight the Twisted Rune before going to ToB, so I screwed myself there. -+4 weapons for the few +3 immune enemies (which I only used to finish off the Aurumach Rilmani in Watcher's Keep and kill Demiliches, I'll talk about how to handle the Ravager later). ArmoAccessories: -Wands, you know them, you love them, you can backstab (or just attack) and then immediately cast them. I barely used them in my playthrough, but they're excellent, of course, especially the wands of paralyzation and spell striking. -Invisibility stuff. Obvious use. -Like I said before, Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization (SoA) to get to 9APR. -Headband of the Devout (ToB): blesses you (-1 thac0 and +1 backstab-effective damage!) and lets you cast Righteous Magic (+3 Strength and MAXED OUT DAMAGE) once per day lasting 1 turn aka 10 rounds!!! GET THIS!! Normally only monks can use it and it's available in Rasaad's quest, along with two other nice items (a cloak that gets you -2 stackable AC and Protection from Magical Energy and Boots with 3x/day Shadow Door). -Improved Haste (IH) gear: a) (SoA) Early on you can use the Ring of Gaxx to get 1 round of undispellable (hardly necessary, but I just thought I'd let people know about this if they didn't) IH 3x/day, it technically amounts to 5 rounds, not 3, cause each of the 3 casts lasts for 10 secs (a round is 6 secs), so you might end up doing more than 1 round's worth of attacks (it's hard to tell). b) (SoA) Bracers of Blinding Strike in the Underdark for 20 secs (a little over 3 rounds) of IH. You can equip it, cast it and equip something else. c) (SoA) Scrolls of Improved Haste, if you really want to have a longer lasting IH in SoA. There are quite a few and you won't need them in ToB, so use them freely. If you want, you can even waste a scroll of wish for it... d) (modded SoA or ToB) If you're using the mod (was it Tweaks Anthology?) that lets Cromwell forge the ToB recipes that you can already get in SoA then you can get the Improved Cloak of Protection +2 for those sweet 23 rounds of IH. e) (ToB) Amulet of Cheetah Speed, also 23 rounds of IH. -Cloak of Unerring Strikes (SoA) and later Montolio's Cloak (ToB) for extra offhand thac0 and, in Montolio's case also -1 save and AC bonus. -White Dragon Scale (SoA): best base AC out of any armor in game, available early in SoA, doesn't interfere with thieving skills, lets you cast Cone of Cold, protects from Cold (great for Melissan battle along with the Boots of the North)... The only problem is that it won't let you use the Improved Cloak of Protection +2, so when you get it switch to the Robe of the Apprenti (AC3) until you get another source of long-lasting IH. Or switch it out to cast IH with the cloak before battle and then put it back on. -Thieves' Hood (SoA): you're a thief, backstabs can hurt a lot in ToB, this makes you immune. Poison immunity is great too, but you got the Ring of Gaxx (which I'll cover with other regen gear) for that. -Paws of the Cheetah (SoA): along with (improved) haste this lets you run and hide or, better yet, run and place a Time Trap or Spike Trap! Essential!! -Helm of Balduran: we need that thac0 early on, boys and girls. Some HP and AC is nice too. -The Visage (SoA, from Dorn's quest): -1 bonus to saves and thac0, protects against crits (I just noticed this lol), can dominate once and has an acid breath attack and a big ol' list of immunities (fear, charm, feeblemind, confusion). What's not to love? It just takes a while to get cause you gotta finish Dorn's quest. It's dope, but after your saves get really low (naturally protecting you against those status as well) you get better stuff. -Book of Infinite Spells (SoA): Spell Turning! Underrated item and spell. You don't get a lot of spell protections as a non-spellcaster, especially the rechargeable kind, so this is one of the best. -Vhailor's Helm: more traps! More Assassinations! I actually forgot about using this until the literal final battle lol, but it's great. -Heart of the Mountain (SoA): available in Spellhold and normally only useable by Shamans, this gets you -2 AC and stacks with enchanted armorings! Excellent before ToB. -Amulet of the Master Harper (ToB): -3 bonus to AC, even better! Silence immunity and thieving skill bonuses aren't bad either. -Blessed Bracers (modded SoA Cromwell or ToB): resurrection heals you completely (at least until 2.6 comes! Though the text says it fully heals, so maybe it'll still after 2.6?) and there's some Cure Wounds too if you want. You're better off using a Rod of Resurrection cause it casts faster, but sometimes you just don't feel like using non-rechargeable item charges. Put it on, use it and switch out. -Nymph Cloak: cheesyyyyy, so cheeeeesy, but it's the kind of cheese I love. I tried not using it too much though, I just used it against a few Rakshasa early on and against Aesgareth's party. -Regen gear (I'll explain why this is great for thieves next): Ring of Regeneration, Ring of Gaxx (-2 AC and poison/disease immunity is great too ofc), Wong Fei's Ioun Stone (which also nets you some HP and -1 AC). REGENERATION "What? Why are you talking about regeneration? What does that have to do with thieves?" Alchemy = unlimited Potions of Regeneration that stack with all of the regen geaspells (all sources of regen stack INCLUDING DRINKING MULTIPLE POTIONS OF REGENERATION and I just discovered this last part after finishing the game). And Potions of Regeneration heal 2HP/round and last for 3 turns aka 30 rounds! Although Potions of Regen aren't super rare, they're also not available in ample supply, especially if you don't know where to find them all to begin with. But high level thieves can spam them freely cause they can always get more with Alchemy. So, if you're not a believe in regeneration like I am, let's explain how good it can be (this is the calculation without abusing potion of regen stacking, so only using one): -Ring of Regen 1HP/round (aka 1HP/6 seconds) -Ring of Gaxx 2/round -Wong Fei's Ioun Stone 1HP/Round -Potion of Regeneration 2HP/round = 6HP/round (aka 1HP/sec) x2 (cause Haste doubles it) 12HP/round (aka 2HP/sec) That's already pretty damn nice and it "reduces damage" a lot better than AC in ToB where some enemies still tear through -20 AC (plus, you can easily get to the AC cap and still wear all of those items and you've still got a cloak slot to spare and it doesn't force you into using regen weapons) But if you want some more quick regen as you run around you can use the Cloak of the Sewers' troll form to get you an extra 1HP/sec or 2 with haste, netting you 4HP/sec or 24HP/round which is almost a free Potion of Extra Healing (heals 27HP) every round. Hexxat makes this even better cause she's got "natural" (it's actually from her amulet) 1HP/round regen. And, of course, that's all without abusing the Potion of Regeneration stacking that can up as much as you can (though, again, you don't need it and I didn't use it cause I only discovered it now, after finishing the game), as long as you can be bothered to produce a ton of potions with Alchemy and resting (though they're temporary, so as you're drinking more you're wasting the duration of the previous ones, but it CAN get pretty ridiculous quickly and, hey, mages get crazy 8HP/sec WITHOUT HASTE regen from Shapechange -> Greater Wolfwere, so it's fair!). TRAPS Regular Traps: they eventually do 3d8+5 missile damage and 20 Poison damage with no save, Slays target if a Save vs. Death with a +4 bonus is failed. Pretty neat, especially if you stack a bunch, but not world-shattering. Spike Traps: everybody knows how good Spike Traps are, so I won't waste much time on them. They do 20d6 magic damage, so 20-120 (average 70). Magic damage is rarely (and I mean rarely) resisted, which makes them top tier and they can crush even Demogorgon and the final boss easily. I generally get 7 of them so I have the max stackable (was this a thing in vanilla or is this limit SCS-only? I don't remember) whenever I want without simulacrums etc.. Time Traps: bonkers. Amazing. Insanely underrated. Let's do some ToB-stage calculations (this is just the damage I was doing at some point in ToB with IH+Righteous Magic, it's not 100% minmax'd): Righteous Magic (max damage and 25 STR)+Improved Haste (9APR)+Time Trap (auto-hit) without backstabs/Assassination: Firetooth +3 -> 29 * 7 attacks (main hand) = 203 damage Belm +2 -> 28 * 2 attacks (offhand) = 56 damage = 1 trap spent, 1 round = 259 non-variable (without taking into account potential resistances to pierce/slash) damage. Plus, this is damage you can divide among multiple enemies. Same thing, but with Assassination: Firetooth +3 -> 147 * 7 attacks (main hand) = 1029 damage Belm +2 -> 112 * 2 attacks (offhand) = 224 damage = 1 trap spent, 1 round = 1253 non-variable (without taking into account potential resistances to pierce/slash) damage. Plus, this is damage you can divide among multiple enemies (eg backstabs for everyone aaaaand fall) and you can still do a lot of damage without Time Traps, it's just that auto-hit is great to make sure every attack hits. All in all, Time Traps often (not always, ofc) provide more value per use than Spike Traps, especially cause you can divide the damage among several enemies. With a properly geared Assassin, in most fights even without Righteous Magic IH+Assasination+Time Trap = 9 dead enemies in 1 round, so you can start doing this in SoA easily. EDIT: also, when you think about probabilities, even though Spike Trap does 20d6 and technically that's 20-120 damage, in reality there's a ~83% chance to roll in the 60-80 range or ~53% to roll in the 65-75 range, so their damage is largely inferior to what it may seem at first, meanwhile, out Time Trap strategy rolls max damage always due to Righteous Magic! And, supposedly, another trap exists... Hmmm... Don't bother, folks. OTHER HIGH-LEVEL ABILITIES Greater Evasion: dope! -6 bonus to AC, -3 bonus to saving throws, movement rate +2 and immunity to normal missiles. Lasts 5 rounds. I get 2 just in case, but it's rarely needed tbh. You got access to a lot of AC reducing gear with a thief (this is without Greater Evasion or any buffs and I could still get -2 if I used the Ring of Earth Control and the Cloak of the Dark Moon, but I'd rather keep my regen and thac0 stuff). Scribe Scrolls: unfortunately pointless. The only half-decent spells you can easily get from other items (wands, White Dragon Scale etc.). Do not invest! Avoid Death: -5 bonus to Save vs. Death, immunity to instant death effects, and +20 Hit Points. Lasts 5 rounds. It's aight. I get 2 later in the game just in case, but I rarely use it (good against Planetars so you don't get vorpal'd, would be good against Balors' vorpal effect too, but you can just Assassinate them). THE GREAT LIST OF BACKSTAB-IMMUNE ENEMIES! OH, THE DESPAIR! "Thieves are useless, there are too many backstab immune enemies!". Is that really the case? I mean, I know it's subjective (what you think are "too many", I mean), but too me the list is pretty short. The only thing that bothers me is ToB bosses being immune to it, but you can still handily deal with them as I'll show later. I think people think a lot of enemies are immune to backstab just cause they see past invisibility (like Demons do), but Assassination still works on them. So... Here's the list: SoA/ToB backstab-immune enemies: General enemy types: -Barbarians (fun fact: there are almost no Barbarians in SoA/ToB and the majority of them are specific measly Orcs/Orogs/Minotaurs) -Beholders (all types) <- Trap, even regular traps do it most of the time. -Demiliches (NOT Liches in general) <- Use Spell Immunity from a scroll or Protection from Undead if you're low level. -Devas/Planetars <-You should kill mage/clerics before they can summon them, but if you can't just Time Trap or Spike Trap. -Dragons <- Time Trap handles them easily or just use a scroll of disintegration. -Golems -Slimes/Oozes -A lot of mists/wraiths (I can't tell whether it's all of them or not, so I listed them below) Specific enemies: -3 out of the 6 enemies in the Heart Key fight in Watcher's Keep Final Seal level (The Huntress, the Hive Mother and Ameralis are immune, so Nalmissra, Xei Win Toh and even Y'Tossi are vulnerable) -Aesgareth and his party -Bone fiends (Bone Golem-looking demons) -Specific demons in fight 2-5 of the Black Pits II (for some reason... Even the Lesser Demon Lord in the Underdark is vulnerable, so why make these ones invulnerable?) -Garock/Rock (the two minotaurs at the Machine of Lum level of Watcher's Keep) -Guardian spirit (don't even remember who this is) -Kiser (dude causing some mischief in Saradush) -Liches, only two of them (Azamantes, the Spike Trap-able, along with his flaming skulls and Vongoethe in Amkethran) -Mists/Wraiths: Mist/Swamp/Wandering Horrors, Vampiric Wraiths/Mists, Spellhaunts, Slave Wraiths and Demon Wraith (Watcher's Keep maze level) -Velithuu (the ice salamander-looking demons in the Watcher's Keep Maze level) Bosses (ie enemies you have to fight finish the game, plus Demogorgon cause he's the "boss" of Watcher's Keep): -The Bhaalspawns (Balthazar, Gromnir, Illasera, Sendai, Yaga-Shura and his Lieutenants) -Demogorgon -Melissan -Nyalee (technically a boss lol) -Ravager and its Bone Blades Everything else can be backstabbed! Including: -Bodhi -Irenicus -The Slayer -Pretty much every Demon (even the Lesser Demon Lord in the Underdark) -Almost every Lich (even Kangaxx and Shangalar) -Greater Werewolves/Wolfweres -Mind Flayers (even their Master Brain) -The Watcher's Keep statues -Rakshasa -Fire Giants -Drow and so on (what else worries people?) If they see past invisibility, just pop that assassination, brother! And for those that can't be backstabbed we always have Time Traps! 9APR of auto-hit max damage is no joke. And takes us to... ENEMIES IMMUNE TO TIME TRAP/STOP They are just a few: -Demogorgon -Melissan -Ravager -Abazigal -Aurumach/Ferrumach Rilmani -Balthazar (only while in Lunar Stance) -Guardian Spirit (who???) Not that many and, really, the only ones who are a big deal in the non-tactical challenge SCS Insane game are Melissan and Ravager (which I'll cover later). Aurumach is also immune to +3 weapons and under, but he's too squishy to be a bother and can partially be hurt by normal traps (he's immune to magical damage, so Spike Traps don't work and the poison part of normal traps also doesn't work). ENEMIES THAT REQUIRE +4 WEAPONS Also not too many: Ravager Aurumach Rilmani <- mentioned it before, too squishy to be a bother. Fallen Solar (NOT Fallen Planetar, it's the one from the Melissan battle) <- lure and 2-3 spike traps handles it Demiliches <- usual cheese Lesser Demon Lord <- vulnerable to Time Trap and backstabs SO HOW DO WE DEAL WITH THEM TOB BOSSES? Demogorgon: Spike Traps. Bye. Yaga-Shura: Time Trap, hit him. Then deal with Lieutenants until you find him and then Time Trap him again. Sendai:actually one of the most annoying fights in the game for single class solo thieves, because there are sooooo many enemies to handle it's a big bother. The important part is to Spike Trap her clones that cast magic before they spawn and to put a Time Trap at the left of the arena before killing that last clone (who's pretty weak, thankfully, so you can take your time to set things up), that way the reinforcements will trigger the Time Trap along with the real Sendai spawning and you can just hit her until she dies and she can't do anything. Remember that you have a million different sources of Improved Haste at this point, so you can re-buff. EDIT: Read about the Staff of the Magi on the weapons section. I fucked up and didn't have it cause I forgot to get it before moving on to ToB. Abazigal: pre-fight 1 Time Trap to kill his human form in 1 round, 6 Spike Traps somewhere else -> Dragon (Time Trap immune), get him to trigger the 6 Spike Traps, then run and Spike Trap one or two times more. Dead. In vanilla it would be way easier cause dragons don't get the x3 SCS buff to HP. Balthazar: one Time Trap. Done. Yeaaaah, he's too easy for pretty much every party, I should re-install the improved version of his fight at least. Ravager: Time Trap AND backstab immunity! What a meanie! Besides the usual buffs (improved haste+righteous magic) and prioritizing thac0 boosting equipment, I used Black Blade of Disaster + 3 scrolls of Protection from Magical Weapons + 1 of Absolute Immunity. Harder to think of what to do than to actually do it. You gotta get a little lucky so that PfMW doesn't run out as he hits you and does the stun (sleep?) stuff on you or that you don't get dispelled too soon. Not too bad once you know what to do. Melissan: again Time Trap and backstab immunity. The first phase is the whole fight, pretty much. Usual buffs (improved haste+righteous magic) + BBD + Spell Immunity: Abjuration (to prevent dispel) can end it fast before it gets outta control. After that it's just a matter of abusing Spike Trap (4 traps for each phase) by using Simulacrums (scrolls or Vhailor's), Project Images and/or Rest Wishes (stop hoarding scrolls, it's the final fight!). RANDOM STATS Total scrolls I used in the whole playthrough: -3 Disintegrations for dragons (Firkraag/Thaxll'ssillyia/Saladrex). I coulda Time Trapped and hit them for a few times but this is easier. -2 Black Blades of Disaster (Ravager + Melissan's first phase). -2 Simulacrums (Melissan trap shennanigans). -3 Protection from Magical Weapons (Ravager). -1 Absolute Immunity, which coulda been another PfMW (Ravager). -1 Protection from Undead (to kill Kangaxx's Demilich form early on). Basically, feel free to use more scrolls than I did, cause you rarely need them. Wands I used: -1 charge of a wand of spellstriking to Breach Melissan at the start of her first phase. -3 charges of a wand of cloudkill on random enemies after getting UAI, then I forgot about it. Coulda used a lot more wands (especially spellstriking, but with regen and stuff I just waited til PfMWs ran out on some mages and so on), but I was too busy having fun with Time Trap Assassinations trying to kill as many enemies before they fell to the ground. How many times I used the super cheesy Nymph Cloak that I love but avoided using to focus on thief-related strats: -A few times against Rakshasa very early in the game (Watcher's Keep rakshasa can destroy a good deal of the second level on its own). -Once to charm the mage in the Aesgareth fight very early in the game to rush the +1 STR (Machine of Lum) and +2 DEX (Lum + Deck of Many Things). FINAL VERDICT Tons of fun. It's actually been a while since I last bothered to really finish Throne of Bhaal all the way through, but I was having so much fun with my Assassin that I did it. And it's boooooooooooooooooooooooooooonkers to think that some people think they're underpowered. Bonkers! They're almost fightemage/thieves on their own. And even if you don't like positioning for backstabs... You barely need it. I pretty much only did that before I got Assassination (and even then I didn't need to rely on it too much cause I already had 8APR and so on), afterwards it's Assassination-a-palooza. Too bad you only get 1 so you have to rest a bunch though, but you can still do plenty of damage with just Time Traps if you don't wanna abuse resting.
Edit: These are great! Thanks to all contributors,past and future. From a couple posts in today “Free talk Friday” post, I had an idea. It may be fun... Following the format from this comment from u/elliewinks30, what are your thoughts? *Law of Rare Items* - rare items will inevitably appear on the board with 2 seconds left and no hope of collecting before the round ends *Corollary* - itemt drops fine, but then stops on the second to the bottom row and then there are no more matches right there for the rest of the game and so it remains uncollectable. *Law of Rare items addendum* - should also include 2x items in events. Seems like I can play the last 25 seconds of a game with nary an item in sight, then boom, a 2x item with 2 seconds to go. *Another corollary to the law of rare items* - After a long and arduous effort to get the last of a rare item, within seconds of collecting it one or two more will pop up on the screen. Doubly so if you're not using a lucky emoji. *Law of common items* - when you only need one more common item you will receive 50 of the ones you have completed first *Law of Bonus time* - when finishing up bonus time after the round ends, the power ups remaining on the board will automatically swipe in the opposite direction of where you need them to. *Law of Creating Stars* - Just as you trigger an emoji's power that removes emojis from the board, you notice where you could have made a star. You get to watch as the emoji's power blasts off the emojis, thus removing the possibility of a star. *Law of Rainbow Falls* - Getting a Level 5 score at Level 1 and a Level 1 score at Level 5. *Law of ‘Just one more game’* - When you can barely keep your eyes open any more, and suddenly win a 5 lives prize. *Law of Missions* - Only after clearly the Daily Challenges or spinning the Prize Wheel will missions appear requiring these *Law of “that one character”* - regardless of the type of mission, rest assured when the rng comes up it will be your worse emoji for that type of thing and all in one game to boot exaggerated example “score 70 million in one game with level one Jack Sparrow” or “use 9 stars+suns in one game with Mickey Mouse” *Law of the Prize Wheel* - You will spin the wheel four times. Of those four times, you will land on 300 coins three. *Law of star combinations* - When you need to make a staother, you will get 4 stars on the board, and you will not be able to get an item or other power-up next to said star, without destroying said star from maneuvering the board to get them next to each other in the first place. *Law of unforeseeable cascades* - if you need an item/star, you will get 4 stars on the board. You will carefully make swaps so that if an item falls, it will be in the same column as one of your star. You will make a swap which sets off a cascade from new emoji drops, and an item will fall at least a column away from all four stars. *Law of Item Sandwiches* - When you need a stastar combo, an item will inevitable sandwich itself between them. *Law of Balloons* - you will never, ever remember to pop balloons on the screen the first time that mission comes up. You're lucky if you remember the 10th. *Law of “House always wins”* - Las Vegas style slot machine. Where the odds are so greatly locked against you. *Law of Spectacular Repeat* - every time you do something spectacular out of pure luck that you have no chance of repeating in this lifetime, the same feat will spawn as a mission immediately after. *Law of multi-map events* - you struggle to get items or clears all the way up to the last box when you finally need only 2 to end the map. And you get 17. *Laws of arbitrary color emoji* - Example: Score 10000000 with a yellow emoji. Okay, I just happened to use Gonzo for another mission and he counted, but I use King Candy, who has significantly MORE yellow and he doesn't count? *Law of Missions* - You will instantly forget which mission you are trying to clear as soon as you hit play. Was it horizontal or vertical swaps? What were the combo items? Was it blitz mode or regular? Who knows?? *Second Law of Missions, corollary to law of balloons* - Despite specifically checking what the missions are before starting, you will often forget the details during the game. Was is just matching suns or only during blitz, horizontal or vertical, etc.? Every time this happens, you wish you could see the mission details if you pause and get annoyed that you can't. *Law of the 3 Live Spin* - you will rack up 6-9 more lives when you don’t have time to keep playing but when you have zero lives and nothing to do you you’ll spin no lives *Law of Lowering Proficiency* - on your 25th game a continuous cascade resulting in 3 rainbow stars, a sun and a score of 300,000 happens *Law of frozen screen or glitch* - this only happens when you are having the game of your life. You’ll finish the combo mission, get the 3 items you’ve been needing and the game will freeze or never end, forcing you to quit, lose a life and have to start over. *Law of being one short* - most commonly happens on a daily challenge. You’ll have under 5 to go, usually only 1 in order to complete a mission *Law of conflicting emojis* - 1 to 3 of your missions will require different emojis, not allowing any multitasking. Most commonly happens during an event adding another element of conflict *Law of spending diamonds* - You spend diamonds on a box hoping for a specific character and fail. Then you get the character you wanted for free when you complete an event map. *Law of Villain Events* - You will collect an item before the Villain’s power triggers, but it won’t be credited in time and the villain will attack anyways. *Law of Event Switching* - when you switch to a non-event emoji to complete a mission, when you switch back to an event emoji you will forget to turn the event back on and you will waste a life.
[Mobile Gaming] How the Nyan Cat led to the death knell for a popular mobile game- the downfall of RWBY Amity Arena.
Note: Many of the links are to the Amity Arena Library, a website devoted to the game which includes tracking the history of it through patchnotes and a running history of what cards entered and left the meta. Their website was a valuable resource for this post.
Mobile gaming has taken off like a wildfire since the advent of the smartphone boosted the average processing power a phone could carry. Initially it took the form of crossing over older, more easily runnable games onto the mobile market to... mixed success, but in recent years we've seen both the West and East use mobile gaming to replace the old fashioned movie tie in game. It's easily accessable, has a much wider reach than consoles or PC, you can take it on the go and standards are inherently lower for mobile games than they are a full 60 dollar game. Since the 2010s, mobile gaming has shifted to what's called the "Freemium" module. The game itself is free to download and start playing, but is insideously designed with obnoxious paywalls or artificial limiters put in place to limit how much you can play each day. If the game is part of a pre-existing franchise, additional money can be made through a premium currency or a chance to obtain high-powered units by rolling a slot machine random chance mechanic. And thus, gacha gaming was born. This sub has had several threads in the past on high profile gacha games, such as the monolithic Fate Grand/Order, Pokemon Go or Genshin Impact. One of the more popular things to roll for in gachas as a consequence is wallpapers for your homescreen, especially for high-grade units as they're usually animated to move a little bit on the homescreen. Today we're looking a low to mid-tier gacha game that rose and fell with the advent of one catgirl. Let's talk RWBY. RWBY is an online web anime made by Rooster Teeth focusing on four prospective monster hunters who get embroiled in a world-spanning shadow war. It's of debatable quality in matters of animation, combat, voice acting, story, worldbuilding, romance, and it's kind of a little racist if I'm being honest, but one of the major positives of RWBY is that the series tends to have good character design. Series creator Monty Oum set in the guidelines for the show while making it that most if not every design should be made to be cosplay friendly, hence why most of the outfits have things most costume designers haven't heard of like... pockets. And Rooster Teeth, above all else, likes making money. So they know people like RWBY's character designs, enough so that in 2017 plans were made to release a gacha game themed around RWBY called Amity Arena, which would be developed by Korean company NHN Entertainment. Amity Arena is a PvP tower defense game. Each player controls two turrets and a tower and has three minutes to use units themed from the show to destroy the other player's structures. Whoever took out more wins, destroying a tower is an instant victory. When the game launched, it had three tiers for units- Common (generally held for mooks or low-tier characters in the show), Rare (roughly protagonist-level or elite mooks go here) and Epic (High tier characters usually with an active ability that did lots of damage or stopped enemies in their tracks). The game launched in October 2018 to generally positive reviews from both mobile game players and RWBY fans alike. Fans were happy to get a lot of new official art for the characters in the game and the base gameplay loop was fun. Criticism at the time was largely themed around the lack of content besides PVP matches and some issues with the meta but overall, the launch went well. Each month, the developers would add new units, including popular characters like Neopolitian, Cinder Fall, Zwei the dog, and more. But everything changed with February 20th 2019, which introduced Neon Katt, the titular catgirl (RWBY characters are themed around fairytales, except for Neon, who is themed around Nyan Cat, and her partner Flynt Coal, who is themed off a potentially racist joke made by Rooster Teeth). Neon is a character from RWBY Volume 3 who's part of a team that RWBY face during a tournament arc. Her partner, Flynt Coal, was part of the game at launch, and Neon would join him a few months later. Neon in the show is a cocky fighter who taunts the heroes and zips around on rollarskates, which in-game is represented by Neon skating towards the nearest enemy structure to her and hitting it, while all units within a radius of Neon are taunted and provoked into attacking her above all other targets unless they-selves are coded to hit structures. On its own, not a bad idea for a unit, but Neon came with four big caveats:
Neon was the fourth corner of the square that became known as the Artillery Arena meta, which saw Neon, Cinder (who had an AOE ability she could use which was wide enough to hit a turret and tower and single-handedly killed the entire launch meta of using fragile swarm units), Zwei (an on-summon high damage AOE on any part of the map) and Penny (another AOE ability that instead did chip damage and locked a location down) turn the game's meta into a chip game. Every player ran at least one of the above cards, if only to counter the others. Neon was the universal counter in being anti-swarm and the hardest to stop, especially at launch where her taunt range was so large, it could grab units from the other lane.
Neon launched with a unit weight of "Heavy", which meant that if she was behind a unit she could push it on her way to the turret. This launched a sub-meta where Neon was placed behind a larger unit such as the Ursa (which like Neon was a unit that focused on structures but was made slow to cover its tankiness), to push them towards the turret faster. This was called Disco Bear. They eventually patched this so Neon phased through units by making her a lightweight.
Neon couldn't die. She was invincible until she hit a structure, which combined with her taunt meant that Neon was very annoying to fight and could lock down an entire lane of the battlefield by being placed well and taunting enemies to let you prepare a counter.
Neon was a very cheap unit to summon. Amity Arena uses a mechanic called "Aura" where all units cost a certain amount and it recharges over the match- for instance, protagonist Ruby Rose has a Rare card that costs four Aura to summon, while Weiss Schnee has two rares that cost three and five. Neo only cost two Aura, which made her one of the cheapest units of the game and thus disproportionately powerful for her cost and easy to cycle through your deck so you could spam her.
From the word go, Neon is an unpopular unit; she's clearly overbalanced and elements such as the Disco Bear glitch have players thinking she'll have to get knocked down in a nerf- she'll either be made slower, more expensive, or able to die pre-hitting a structure, right? Neon doesn't show up in the next patch. Instead, before she's fixed, an entire new class of units called Legendaries are introduced, and this is where the game goes full gacha. Legendaries were meant to represent the highest tier characters in the game, the ones who were either the most popular characters or the highest-tier fighters in the show. Or in some cases, the popular ships such as combo cards for White Rose (Ruby/Weiss), Bumblebee (Blake/Yang) and Flower Power (Ren/Nora). Legendaries, representing their value, were impossibly rare and had an infinitely small chance of actually appearing (The most reliable method was to buy the premium chests and hope you'd roll a Legendary, which often cost tons of money), and if you did get one, there was no way to guess which Legendary you'd actually get. Some such as White Rose and Adam were high tier units, others like Hazel or Checkmate were... kinda broken at launch. The playerbase isn't happy at this, especially as free to play players are left out in the cold and reliant on the game giving them high tier units effectively out of pity. Neon would get a small nerf in the April patch which lessened her taunt range and killed the Disco Bear meta, but her invincibility would be left untouched, even as players submitted feedback regarding how to make it more efficient. The official Amity Arena discord has a weekly feedback section on Tuesdays where players could submit up to four suggestions on how to nerf/buff units and general requests for quality of life such as "Can this character get a new skin from this part of the show," or "Can we have an option to lower music volume that's not just muting all music?" (they never did add that second request) Neon would then remain in this state until the November patch, despite constant weekly requests for a Neon rework, and all it would do is make Neon functionally mortal, in that she had a flat shield bar of 20 that would be lowered by one for each attack before the next hit would kill her. Neon could now die... but your chances of actually doing enough damage to stop her were slim, and regardless, you were now at a serious Aura defecit. It took seven months for this one unit to get a substantial nerf, all while the game added new units every week and the number of units being affected by patches each month began to gradually sink. To round up some of the major issues people had with Amity that developed throughout 2019 alongside Neon's general existance making life hell:
Common units were meant to be chump fodder, but could level up the most amount of times with a level cap at 13. This meant longer-term units that had a long time to level such as the Xiong Family card, the AK-130s the Beowolf Pack, or the White Fang gunners, could become shockingly strong if players grinded the money up to reach max level.
A pre-existing divide between free players and players willing to burn money IRL to get access to premium currencies led to a huge disparity in play. Free players have long complained about how hard it is to scrounge money together to level up units at higher costs as even the basic currency of Lien is hard to get large quantities of (you get a certain amount every match win but otherwise you need to burn the Schnee Premium Dust currency for the highest payouts, but SPD is also needed for shop resets, buying crates or unlocking cosmetics). The developers used to do frequent double weekends where all gains were doubled for a weekend, but these became less and less frequent as time went on. Legendaries only added to the divide, as their rarity was bad enough for players willing to spend money (one player, known as one of the largest whales in the community, in trying to get Sienna Khan, reported burning nearly nine hundred dollars on her, while taking nearly six hundred to get the Ice Flower card).
One actual counter was born to fight Neon in the Argus Shield, a stationary unit that existed solely to stall units and take damage. At 2 Aura, it was the first structure to counter Neon, which allevated one of the primary problems with Neon in that no way to counter her was cost-efficient for an enemy player. They buffed the Wall to 3 Aura eventually which killed that hope, and all this happened before Neon's November nerf.
The Summer of 2019 saw a large number of defensive units released; alongside the Argus Shield, several different units were released themed around turrets for the technological kingdom of Atlas, such as the Beam Turret. The Atlesian Burrow Gun was the straw that broke the camel's back and made for a miserable meta as the Burrow Gun would only appear (and be available to take damage) when a unit entered its range. These three units together were all very overpowered on launch and led to a large exodus of players sick of defensive and chip-based metas, especially as what few offensive units that were good enough to counter these metas (such as Professor Port and Adam Taurus) were often nerfed into the ground within a month of release.
Also around this time it became apparent that the developers were unable to meet the quotas that Rooster Teeth was forcing on them. The social media team admitted that a certain number of units needed to be in the game in time for Winter 2019 when Volume 7 was set to start, and as the year went on more and more game-breaking bugs were being found in units, or they were at best horrifically undertuned or overpowered. The Apathy was perhaps the largest case of this, as an unfound bug pre-release meant that the Apathy (who have a passive ability that let them self-duplicate) had no cap on their power, meaning that they could immediately overwhelm defenses and in the case of some phones, be such a resource hog the phone would crash. Many Legendary units were especially guilty of being under-tuned due to low Legendary availability meaning they were simply weren't powerful enough to compare with high-levelled units. Checkmate's ability simply didn't work at launch, and Neon made several more such as Hazel Rainart a joke. May Marigold's invisibility bubble would have been an interesting game changer... were it not for a bug that made it that units placed in the bubble still played their sound lines, meaning players knew what to expect. Things were so bad that when Flower Power launched and wasn't broken or needed an emergency patch, the playerbase were shocked.
Unfortunately, the Novemember patch did little to stop the problems with Neon, and a new problem would rear its head for Christmas: Jinn. This unit embodied many of the problems players had: She was a Legendary so it would be hard for free players to get her, and only added to the sheer number of Legendaries that were out there. She was another structure card, and she was horrifically broken. Stopping time for seven seconds in an area around any friendly units, Jinn broke the game overnight, with players horrified at how little playtesting she'd clearly had. Most chip units now couldn't damage structures as Jinn simply could stop time and freeze the turret for the duration of the attack. And to make matters worse? She cost two Aura, meaning it was very easy to cycle a deck and start Jinn spamming. And yet at two aura she was still one of the only cost-efficient Neon counters... until they patched her to be worth three Aura instead. Talking of the feline menace, January saw Neon get a HP nerf that set her shield at 14. Finally, Neon could be realistically be taken out, still at an Aura defecit but at least it can be countered and now they just have to raise her Aura- why are you buffing her game? Less than a month later, Neon got, of all things, a buff. Her HP shield was set at 20, and her attacks now did double damage. This is around the point where a lot of players begin to suspect the developers aren't listening to feedback and more long-term players dip out or drop the game. Neon got touched one more time in April, which slowed her down (which itself was a problem as Neon's lessened speed on spawn simply made her better at generating aggro), she dealt 10% less damage and made it somewhat easier to hit her enough to kill her, but a new problem was on the horizon. Because Neon was now no longer the game's White Whale for patches. Meet the White Fang Gunner Barracks. Added in September 2019, the Barracks fell under many player's radar simply because they were horrifically undertuned. Their gimmick was that every few seconds, a White Fang Gunner would spawn, with three spawning on death. In April, as Neon got her last appearance in the patches, the Barracks got a huge buff and became the centerpiece of the meta; they now spawned two Gunners, which made them immensely valuable for just five Aura. You could overwhelm many anti-swarm units before they had a chance, and shred your way through turrets. The Barracks would then go six months before this overtuning was rectified, barring one nerf in August that lowered their health to try and stem the tide of units. To sum up every other thing that went wrong during the year meta-wise:
The playercount was getting so low that players were able to make lists of the AI bots the developers had in place so lower-level players had a challenge (Amity breaks up players by a trophy system where you gain trophies with every win, and by this point most of the active players were in the 2500 to 3500 range. This also meant new players steamrolled through the lower levels only to hit a brick wall in the 3000 range, with the only reliable solution being to willingly lose matches until you were in your optimal range and grind victories until you reached a certain level.
The patches became more and more threadbare, going from 8+ units getting changed each month in early 2019 to three units at most getting changed in 2020 patches outside of the anniversary patch going back to the golden days of eight. The only area where they didn't get more threadbare was in the cosmetics and emotes that the developers were cranking out, all of which were only available through hours of grinding or premium currencies. This was despite the fact that the units were being released slower, going from once a week to once a fortnite.
The majority of units added in 2020 were Epic or Legendary tier, which were the hardest to get for free players unless they got lucky and they were added to the store (and if they had the lien as a Legendary in the store costs a flat 40,000 Lien). One Common and four Epics were released compared to twelve Epics and seven Legendaries. The release of Moonslice Adam especially was annoying for this regard, as Adam already had a Legendary released (at least for Team RWBY, each of them headlined a Legendary when it came to the team attack cards), and this was clearly done to pander to Adam's fans again as his first unit saw a spike in interest in the game. The math was done and showed how artifically scarce Legendaries were made.
The undeovertuning was still in play. Colossus is seen as one of the worst cards in the entire game because of its gimmick. I have literally never seen anyone play it. Flynt became overtuned and now he's a staple thanks to his trumpet's AOE attack being able to hurt turrets and shred most units. Launcher Nora was an especially overtuned unit thanks to her high-damage constant AOE barrage and long range meaning she could annhilate most anything if given enough cover. Even after patches she's still dangerous. September saw the White Fang Dropship Formation added, which was widely seen as a terrible unit and done as an emergency addition because the planned unit for September in the Grimm Seer had to be cut last minute for technical reasons.
The game has barely had significant content added since launch, with the primary gameplay still just being PVP. Barring Battle of Beacon (a mode where you can play as Ruby and Weiss and fend off Grimm which most players just use to grind chests, and no, they still haven't added Blake or Yang) and Plaza (a lobby where you can dress up as a character and run around Beacon), the game has added no new features and quality of life content players have requested since launch (rerolling in the shop, Superior Crates having guaranteed Legendary spawn rates) have been released at a snail's pace (you still can't reroll Legendaries if you're looking for a specific unit). Academies where players can unite to trade units and chat still lacks features that have been requested for years such as the ability to delete messages. And Plaza immediately went to hell because players were doing erotic role play in the chats and after people came forward with proof that minors were being sexually harassed in the Plaza or being coerced into side-channels, the dev response was to... just turn off the chat entirely instead of banning the accounts or implementing moderation. This also removed the chatlog which deleted a lot of the evidence of said harassment.
As OctobeNovember comes in, the players are getting more and more furious. The weekly feedback includes a near constant demand for an acknowledgement from the developers given how often it feels like the feedback is being ignored. The social media team get caught several times hyping up how the coming patch would address player concerns, only for said patch to lack those units. The meta has been locked down to the Xiong Family, Flynt, Launcher Nora, Spider-Mines and the hell-cat herself in Neon. Everyone runs at least one of these, people run meta decks not because they want to, but because it's the only way to have a chance of victory. And then in December, things implode. The patch for the month was set to launch on December 10th with the monthly event missions. But when the clock rolls around, the event missions (which usually take about two weeks to do if you're doing as many as you can a day)... has a six day timer. And the update doesn't come out. The art team doesn't release new unit art. The shop has no special timed bundles. There's no patch notes. And then the Twitter team who've been hard carrying the game through... actually talking to the players and acknowledging the grievances they have... admitted that they don't know what's going on either. The best guess is that the devs have come down with Covid, but no statements to confirm or deny this leave it as guesswork. The timer eventually got reset and people could do the event, but then on Christmas itself, another issue. Ruby has appeared in the plaza on Halloween (her canonical birthday) and Christmas, and if you go talk to her you get free stuff. But on Christmas people, people discovered that Ruby was talking as if you'd already talked to her. Because they hadn't updated Ruby yet for 2020. She still thought it was 2019 so if you'd talked to her then for goodies, she had none now. They patched it eventually but a lot of people didn't see this fix before the timer ran out to get the free stuff. Some have resorted to memes to cope with the fact that the game just seems to have died out of the blue. Others have been trying to desperately rally the players and find a way to save it. Some resorted to friendly mockery of the whales who'd spent thousands on a game that seems to be dying (seriously though gacha games need to curb this shit but they won't because whales are godsends for their bank balances). If the game doesn't get an update in January then two months without new content will mark the end, and the already significant playercount drops will only increase. And it's hard to say if any one thing could have turned Amity Arena's fate around beyond just "Have a better balancing team who can respond better to feedback." Neon began the time of death, but by the time December rolled around the meta was in a horrifically toxic place where if you wanted to make any progession, you had to get down and dirty with the pigs. The team just constantly failed to balance problem units outside of their emergency hotfixes of Jinn, and more often then not they went after units and buffed or nerfed them at random going off playcounts to determine what needed fixing instead of the actual written feedback they were getting. It's clear from the references to the show and some of the attempts to reach out to the community that at least one person in the team genuinely wanted to make the good appealing to RWBY fans, but somewhere during the game's lifespan, they lost their way. Less focus needed to be put on how to milk the players, and instead focusing on making a game sustainable and enjoyable enough to warrant the cosmetics and emotes. The game's failure ultimately isn't on the playerbase. It's on the people who were actually making the game who chose to slack off because they thought it acceptable to do so. Thanks for reading. EDIT: HOT OFF THE PRESSES, I JUMPED THE GUN Had I waited one more day, my story would have had a far more sudden ending, as the game just announced its shutdown for January. RIP.
Intro: (I want to start by saying I was inspired to do this by u/quixotikdylusion) What a year 2020 was for this team, it had plenty of bad but there was a lot of good and a lot of progress that was made. I think the biggest thing is that we have a good coaching staff, especially on defense, that can cover up some of the flaws on this team. Besides that, we have a good core and some good depth as well. However, there are still areas that need to be addressed and fixed for this team to take the next step. Offense: First, the most important position: the QB position. When it comes to QB I view it as either you have a top 12 QB or you have no QB. This is why losing out on Stafford changes things. In my opinion, the only guys left that are worth going for are Dak, Carr, and Watson. I would much rather start the year with Heinicke and Allen than:
Trade a first or second for Mariota/ Wentz/Darnold (if you want a reclamation project you already have two in Heinicke and Allen and you don't have to give up any high picks for them)
Overdraft Jones/Trask (there are too many good players at 19 and you have too many holes besides QB)
If we can't get one of those guys I would rather go into the year with Heinicke, Allen, Montez, and a veteran QB. If Heinicke turns into a star you have your QB of the future, if he burns out then Second, this team needs WR help. Terry McLaurin is a star and is a great X receiver but besides him, there is no one on this team that scares you. This team could use a Z receiver and a Slot receiver. Cam Sims was the Z last year but I view him as a WR4 rather than a WR2. Steven Sims was the Slot last year and I would be annoyed if he's the starting Slot in 2021; I would either cut him or have him as a WR6 behind Harmon and Cam Sims. Third, this team needs a TE #2. Logan Thomas had a good year and looked to be a good starting TE option for the next couple of years. However, there is no depth at the position. Jeremy Sprinkle is a terrible TE and every time he is on the field bad things happen, Baugh and Hemingway would be out of the league if WFT didn't pick them up. This team desperately needs someone to backup Thomas. Lastly, the team could use some depth at OL and RB. At OL, we could use a backup guard because Wes Martin is terrible. At the tackle spots, we could pick up a developmental player since both Moses and Lucas are going into their age 30 seasons next year. At RB you don't really need anyone but I would look to upgrade over Peyton Barber and to do so I would add a young bowling ball style power back who can help you in those short-yardage situations. Defense: On defense, the priority should be to bring in two new LBs. In the 4-3, you need three LBs (WILL, MIKE, and SAM) and right now you only have one in Cole Holcomb. Holcomb is more of a WILL backer but because of how poorly the others played he was asked to play the SAM. This offseason you need to get a MIKE and preferably a SAM because Bostic and KPL are not good enough. The second priority should be to add a true centerfielder FS. Del Rio likes to run cover 1 and cover 3 and in both of those coverages, you need to have a deep middle safety. Apke last year was the first one who played this role and he was terrible at it, Reaves was next and he played better but you can still upgrade the position. Lastly, you can get depth at positions like CB and Edge. If you let Darby go you have a real need at corner and it becomes your main priority but he likes the staff and the staff likes him so he probably gets resigned. However you still need depth at the position, Moreau is not going to get resigned and Stroman/Johnson as your CB 4 and 5 is a recipe for disaster if a starter gets hurt. When it comes to Edge you need replacements for Kerrigan and Anderson. To replace Kerrigan, you should bring in a rotational pass rusher. When it comes to Anderson, the loss might be shrugged off as who cares but it’s lowkey a bigger deal because you lose a rotational run defender and the guys on this team that are supposed to replace him, like Toohill, are not good enough. Offseason I used OverTheCap for Free Agency and The Draft Network for the Draft Before Free Agency Cut Alex Smith: It was a great story and is an inspiration but you cannot pay $23 Mil for below-average QB play. I hope he retires and we don't have to cut him but he probably won't retire so I would cut him and save $14.7 Mil. Free Agency Each player will be listed in this format: Name, Position, Contract Length Full Salary (includes signing bonus), Signing Bonus, Total Guarantees 2021: Cap Hit, Guaranteed Money for that season. 2022: Cap Hit, Guaranteed Money for that season. (So on if applicable) Description about the signing. Resigned Brandon Scherff, OG, 4 years $60 Mil, $15 Mil, $35 Mil 2021: $12.75 Mil, $8.75 Mil. 2022: $14.75 Mil, Fully Guaranteed. 2023: $14.75, $7.75 Mil. 2024 $17.75 Mil, $3.75 Mil This is a really tough decision because Scherff is often injured and he is a guard. However, this team has been devoid of top talent so when you have a guy that's as talented as Scherff you should look to keep him. Also, he did just make 1st team all pro and this OL looked way better when he was in the lineup. So all in all I think you have to pay him and this contract is a 3 year deal with an out in 2024 and that isn’t a bad deal for either side. Ronald Darby, CB, 4 Years $40 Mil, $10 Mil, $20 Mil 2021: $9.5 Mil, $7.5 Mil. 2022: $8.5 Mil, $7.5 Mil. 2023: $10.5 Mil, $2.5 Mil. 2024 $11.5 Mil, $2.5 Mil Darby played solid last year and so he gets rewarded with a new contract. Good corners are really hard to find so if you find one it's best practice to keep them in town. This contract is about the same as the Kendall Fuller contract and I think that is what Darby’s market value will be. Now there are injury concerns with Darby and so that's why this deal is structured to give you an out in 2023, so if he regresses/gets injured all the time you can easily cut him. Taylor Heinicke, QB, 2 Years $13 Mil, $2 Mil, $6 Mil 2021: $5 Mil, Fully Guaranteed. 2022: $7 Mil, $1 Mil. The legend of Heinicke is coming back. As I said above, in my opinion, the best realistic option is to bring back Heinicke and see if he's the real deal or not. If he is, you just got yourself a franchise QB but if he is not you move on after this year. This contract is structured to give you 3 options:
If he is good, you have your QB and a bonus is that you don't have to pay him a lot in 2022, that is important because A. That buys you time to negotiate the deal so you don't have to do a Kirk Cousins 2.0 with the franchise tag B. Gives you plenty of flexibility to make a splash in Free Agency
If he is decent but not good enough to be the starter, you can still keep him around since the contract is relatively cheap for a backup QB. (Go after Dak)
If he is terrible, you can easily release him and save $6 mil. Then either you draft a QB or you go after Dak Prescott who would inevitably be coming off the second franchise tag
(Edit: As I was writing this, Taylor got signed by the team for 2 years $8.75 Mil. However, I will still be counting the contract I gave him instead of his IRL contract when it comes to the salary cap) Nick Sundberg, LS, 4 years $5.57 Mil, $1 Mil, $1 Mil 2021: $1.325 Mil, $250k. 2022: $1.370 Mil, $250k. 2023: $1.415 Mil, $250k. 2024: $1.460 Mil, $250k Yeah, Sundberg is not leaving Ashburn. He has been great on the field and off the field in the community. (Should've won WPMOY last year) He gets a nice pay raise and the team is set at LS for the next 4 years. Dustin Hopkins, K, 1 year $1.07 Mil, $0 Mil, $500k This is a one year prove-it deal for Hopkins. He was terrible last year and cost the team many wins so I thought about letting him walk. However, it was just one year, and he’s been good every other year so I would try and see if he can get back to old Hop. That being said there is no chance I would pay him more than $1 mil, if he wants anything more I am happy letting him walk out of the building Kevin Pierre Louis, 1 year $2 Mil, $500k, $1 Mil KPL is coming back but in a reduced role. I don't think you should be actively starting him but he is an above-average backup and I would bring him back at $2 Mil. Cam Sims, WR, 1 year $2.24 Mil RFA Tender, 0, $2.24 mil Kyle Allen, QB, 1 year $850k RFA Tender, 0, $850k I would pick up both options, both are cheap and both are above average for a WR4 and a QB2. Free Agency Corey Davis, WR, 4 years $47 Mil, $12 Mil, $25 Mil 2021: $11 Mil, Fully Guaranteed. 2022: $11.5 Mil, $8 Mil. 2023: $12 Mil, $3 Mil. 2024 $12.5 Mil, $3 Mil. The big splash in Free Agency is to bring in the former Titans receiver. Davis is a former top 5 pick who had a breakout year in 2020 and is just entering his prime (he is 26 years old). I think Davis is a great option in free agency cause I think you are getting a guy who is going to get even better over the next couple of years for relatively cheap. He also is a guy who fits the profile of what you need at WR, this team desperately needs a big body Z receiver and Davis fits that since he A. played the Z in Tennessee and B. is 6’3. Now if Davis doesn't live up to expectations, you can cut him at the end of 2022. Denzel Perryman, ILB, 2 years $13 Mil, $4 Mil, $6 Mil 2021: $6.5 Mil, $4 Mil. 2022: $6.5 Mil, $2 Mil. At times last year, this team's run defense was poor and that was mainly because of how bad the LBs were in run defense. Enter Denzel Perryman to change that. Perryman got an 86.3 grade against the run by PFF, now PFF isn't always the greatest site but the grade shows that he is really good against the run. Perryman is also a true MIKE and that is also something this team desperately needs. You cannot have Jon Bostic be your MIKE if you want to have a good LB core. The best part about this deal is that Perryman fills the needs of this team at a cheap price. Trey Burton, TE, 2 years $8 Mil, $2 Mil, $4 Mil 2021: $4 Mil, $3 Mil. 2022: $4 Mil, $1 Mil. As I talked about above, you needed to get depth at TE and that's exactly what you get in Trey Burton. Immediate upgrade at the TE 2 spot and a guy who can do everything you want from a TE 2. Burton was graded as the best blocking TE in 2018 by PFF and in 2020 he was an above average blocker. Burton can also be a decent pass-catching option if you need to start him. Demarcus Walker, Edge, 2 years $5 Mil, $2 Mil, $3.5 Mil 2021: $2.5 Mil, $2 Mil. 2022: $2.5 Mil, $1.5 Mil. Demarcus Walker came into the league as a second-round Edge rusher who was picked by the Broncos, but he did not live up to expectations in Denver. However, that is because he was playing as a 3-4 outside LB and that was not his natural position. Once the Broncos moved him down from outside LB to the DL he started producing. In Washington, he could be a good rotational Edge rusher in the 4-3. He is still a guy with untapped potential so some growth could happen. Jourdan Lewis, CB, 1 year $2 Mil, $500k, $1 Mil This team needs depth at CB, especially NCB, and Lewis gives you depth. Lewis gives you depth because of his versatility, he can play both slot and boundary corner. Lewis is coming off of a really bad year but it is only 1 year and from 2017 to 2019, he was a solid corner. Because of this I would be willing to take a chance on Lewis, after all, he would be your CB4 at best and it's only a 1-year deal. Blake Bortles, QB, 1 Year $1.075 Mil, 0, $500k Backup QB who should be your QB 3 at best. I decided to bring Blake in instead of a guy like Alex Smith because Bortles doesn't have the injury concerns Smith has. Bortles is a decent option if both Heinicke and Allen get injured. Alex Redmond, OG, 1 year $1.090 Mil, $0, $900k Starting OG for the Bengals who wasn't anything special so you bring him in on a cheap deal to be a backup guard. He is better than Wes Martin and that's all that matters when it comes to this signing. NFL Draft Each player will be listed in this format: Name, Position, College, Height, and Weight Description about player Round 1:Zaven Collins, LB, Tulsa, 6’4 260 lbs The Bronko Nagurski Trophy winner is coming to DC. Zaven Collins is a great pick in many ways. First, as a player he is instinctive and that allows him to be good in both run and pass defense. In run defense, he will fill gaps nicely and in pass defense, he has great ball skills that allow him to cover most running back/tight ends. Second, he fills a position of need since he is a SAM LB and this team does not have one, right now Holcomb plays the SAM but this move allows him to move to his natural WILL position. The main concern with Collins is that he has mediocre speed, however, he has other tools that can make up for his speed and besides speed, he has good athleticism. Round 2:Alex Leatherwood, OT, Alabama, 6’5 312 lbs As discussed above, you have two good tackles on this team but they are both turning 30. So here in the second round, you take a good tackle prospect who with development could turn into your franchise LT. Alex Leatherwood is a tackle who is good against first moves in pass protection and he is also good as a run blocker. His main weakness is that he tends to get beat when guys use counter moves on him in pass pro. The good news is that good coaching can clean that up. This is a pick that may not help you this year but will help you in a couple of years. Round 3:Andre Cisco, S, Syracuse, 6’0 203 lbs This team desperately needs a center fielder FS and that's the guy you're getting in Andre Cisco. I talked about how JDR likes to call cover 1 and cover 3 and how there is no one on this team to play that deep center safety role, well Cisco thrives in the deep center role. Cisco is a ballhawk who plays really good coverage. Now you might be wondering how he fell, well he fell for two reasons: 1. He is a bad tackler and 2. He freelances sometimes. Now problem number one isn't a big deal for this team, you have 10 other guys who are good tacklers especially if you bring in Zaven Collins and Denzel Perryman. Number two is concerning but I trust JDR to reel him in and teach him how to play within the confines of the defense. While there are some problems to his game, the talent is there and it is just too good to pass up. Round 3:Brevin Jordan, TE, Miami, 6’3 245 lbs Now I know I have the team signing Trey Burton in free agency and I know that this team doesn't need 3 TEs but Brevin Jordan is just too good to pass up. Jordan is a player that can play all over the field and is a dynamic weapon that can be used creatively on this team. Jordan is an athletic player with good size and speed. He has good ball skills and hands as well. When it comes to route running, he is solid but still needs some development. The same can be said about his blocking. Sitting behind both Logan Thomas and Trey Burton would be beneficial for a guy who in the (near) future could become your TE1. Round 4:Dazz Newsome, WR, North Carolina, 5’11 190 lbs Dazz Newsome, starting slot receiver for the Washington Football Team in 2021. You finally find a good slot receiver. Newsome is the final piece to this top 10 receiver core of Mclaurin, Davis, and Newsome. Newsome is fast and shifty, when it comes to route running he runs crisp routes, and most importantly he has good hands. Newsome could add more routes to his game but besides that, there are no major weaknesses in his game. Newsome is also a punt returner so next year you don't have to worry about Steven Sims muffing any punts. Round 5:Rashad Weaver, Edge, Pittsburg, 6’4 265 lbs This may seem strange to take an edge rusher but you do need a couple of guys there to make up for the loss of Kerrigan and Anderson. The Kerrigan replacement was signed and Rashad Weaver is your Anderson replacement. Weaver is a good run stuffer and is a guy that you could rotate in on 1st and 2nd down. When it comes to pass rush, Weaver has all the rushes and tools in the bag but he lacks the bend and athleticism that you need. Weaver may not have the upside when it comes to pass rush but that's not what you are drafting him for, you're drafting him so that he can occasionally stop the run and that is something he can do. Round 7:Thomas Graham Jr, CB, Oregon, 5’11 197 lbs You always need depth at corner and that is what this pick is about. Thomas Graham Jr can come in and be a decent CB5 on this team. Graham Jr is a guy that has good technique, good timing, and good ball skills but he is not fast or agile. His athleticism lowers his ceiling but his traits raise his floor. A high floor player is what you should look for in a CB5 and Graham Jr offers you that. Round 7:Spencer Brown, RB, UAB, 6’0 235 lbs This man is built like a bowling ball and that's exactly why I am drafting him. Brown isn’t athletic and he can't catch. However, he has good vision, he is big and he can run between the tackles. Brown sounds exactly like a prototypical short-yardage back because he is one. Brown would be a younger, bigger version of Peyton Barber in this offense. Post Draft Cuts: Geron Christian, Peyton Barber, Jon Bostic, and Wes Martin were cut to save $2 mil. These players were expendable because replacements for them were either signed or drafted. Plus, $2 mil was needed to sign draft picks and leave some money over for UDFAs. Final Salary Cap Numbers (Before signing draft picks and UDFAs but after all the cuts) 2021: $9,422,545 2022: $72,777,075 2023: $138,468,706 2024: $181,130,000 That concludes my offseason. Thank you for reading this post, I really appreciate it. TL;DR (Main guys) Resigned: Scherff, Darby and Heinicke Signed: Corey Davis and Denzel Perryman Drafted: Zaven Collins, Alex Leatherwood, and Brevin Jordan
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