Token Female Gamer

I woke up this morning with a huge sore throat and simply stayed in bed for as long as I possibly could, abdicating all responsibility. But I couldn’t sleep, mostly because there is a huge Puzzle and Dragons special event going on this week and I HAVE PLANS! Thankfully Puzzle and Dragons is guaranteed to make me better (this statement has not be verified by the FDA). And yes I really am sick.

The event is the super awesome 20k Likes on FaceBook Community Appreciation event. Plus the Scotch Dragon for this week is Lagavulin, which I am totally not prepared for and now all week we have a special dungeon a day. No wonder I played all day. There is so much to do I could probably easily play all week. 120 hour marathon!

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Having recently finished the StarCraft 2 story, I have only one piece of advice, when in doubt choose purple!

I’ve been playing a little bit of Puzzle and Dragons lately. Okay maybe a lot. Its an incredibly easy distraction and though I think of it as a casual game, the hours seem to slip away as I play.

What is my current goal in PnD? I’m glad you asked, since I am rather eager to share my progress. Shocking right?! But first a little lesson, short I promise! PnD is one of those games where progression eventually depends on building specific teams. There are quite a few teams that are considered basic, which is what I have been focusing on.

One of the basic teams is the Ancient Dragon Knight(ADK) paired with four Ripper Dragons. While these monsters are relatively available, they take a while to level up. Each of them has three Evolution tiers and I have finally (FINALLY!!!) reached the max evolution with my ADK and three of the Dragons (Blue, Red, Purple/Dark).

Next step is leveling my account since that will increase my total allowable team cost. Currently I can’t actually use a full ADK/Ripper team since I don’t have enough points. (My white/yellow dragon above is not fully evolved, thus it has a lower team cost.)

Anyway I’m feeling rather legitimate now with an almost complete ADK team. =D

This lead me to try one of the weekly dragon dungeons. Somewhat nerve racking, but I managed, after much grinding, to get the Ardbeg Dragon to drop for me. Very exciting, but the dragon is rather costly to use, so it will be sitting on the bench for a while. =D

In an effort to avoid turning TFG into a Puzzle and Dragons blog, I am confining all my latest PnD stuff to one post. I’ve been saving up, be warned. =D

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I had two more Rare Egg pulls after Venus yesterday for God Fest in Puzzles and Dragons. One resulted in Neptune, which I already had (my only previous god). The last pull I saved for my husband since he enjoys the entire process far more.  I like making him happy, plus he seems to have crazy good luck on my account.

This is what his pull resulted in:

Though I had hoped for Hades, because God of the Underworld is too awesome to not want, the Japanese God Kagutsuchi is even better!

I think these pleasant surprises are part of what I enjoy most about the game, the chance to discover new faces and be impressed by new possibilities. Although right now I do feel a little overwhelmed by the amount of leveling and evolving my monster box has filled up with.

<3

Puzzles and Dragons is celebrating its one year Anniversary with God Fest! For anyone as Puzzle and Dragons obsessed devoted as me, today is the day to spend some of those magic coins and get a few extra pulls on the rare egg machine, because the drop rate on Gods has been increased. But only for today, as God Fest ends on March 1st. Almost makes me want to go buy some magic coins.

My first pull of the day resulted in Venus (love her crazy skill!) —–>

Since I am of the ‘stop while ahead’ mindset, I haven’t tried again. Will probably try again later, once I’m sure my ‘already pulled one God’ karma has worn off. =P

Anyone else pull something fun?

 I swore I wouldn’t play this game. All the months that my husband and friends have been obsessively playing and urging me to hop on the bandwagon, I have held strong. No, I said, I’m already collecting battle pets in World of Warcraft, I said, I didn’t want another distraction on my phone, I said.

But curiosity has this way of creeping in and making me pliable. My husband, sensing weakness, pounced! He pushed the iPad in front of me, game installed and ready for me to register a new account. Just try it, he said, and smiled his most winsome smile, its not on your phone, he said. How could I refuse?

I’ve been playing ever since (I cant stop!!) Come play the crack with us, they said, you will really really like it, they said. Damn them for being right. (I had to take various P&D interludes while writing this blurb, for research, purely research!)

Thankfully, limiting the game to the iPad was really quite brilliant, as it certainly has managed to curtail my tendency to overindulge.

For those of you who will heed my warning, for this is certainly a cautionary tale, be strong! Puzzles and Dragons will eat your soul!

To the rest, here is my friend ID (tfgamer is the account name). Friend me up and send me a note to let me know your account name so I can be sure to add you! =D

Oh and here are some really good websites to get great information.
http://ggftw.com/forum/game-discussion/118764-iphone-android-puzzle-dragons.html#post1783761
http://zh.pad.wikia.com/wiki/Category:%E5%AE%A0%E7%89%A9 (in Chinese!)
http://www.puzzledragonx.com/
http://puzzleanddragonsforum.com/index.php
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/puzzle-dragons-english/id563474464?mt=8 (official itunes page)

Come build super dungeon squashing power teams with me! =D

~sigh~

Clearly, I’m in a full fledged writing slump. Not that I’m very surprised by my apparent apathy. The end of thirty days of posting seems to have this effect on me. Pair that with holiday hangover and I can barely manage to drag myself out of bed, much less scrape together the brain power to write something worth reading. (I’m seriously trying here!)

But its time to get back in gear, lest what little skill I do have atrophy, so I’m going the least brain power required route with the Kickstarter update!

Yup, Kickstarter sucked me back in and roped me into supporting two new computer games. I still can’t decide if I’m just being overly optimistic or totally wasting money, I mean computer games are notorious for running late and over budget. Frankly I’m still baffled by how little money all these developers are asking for. Yeah, sure, its millions of dollars, but lets just remember that SWToR cost over $250 million to make. This perspective makes me wonder if these games will ever even see the light of day. Okay, totally rambling. Onward!

Godus is a new God Game from Peter Molyneux at 22cans. The description makes the game sound like a reinvention of Populous with the ability to shape terrain and influence your followers. The main point being that you get to be a god and lead your followers to glory. This wasn’t really an instant sell for me. Curiosity is what finally convinced me to sign up; Peter Molyneux has been making various version of god games for a long time, which speaks to his experience with the genre, but it also makes me wonder what he is trying to achieve. Maybe this version will be the One.

I am actually far more excited about War of the Overworld, which is to be a reinvention of Dungeon Keeper (ironically also a Peter Molyneux game). I was a huge fan of Dungeon Keeper back in the day, so anything even remotely related sounds interesting to me. My only (small) concern is that the developer is a new studio. I really hope this not only gets released, but that they do justice to the fun that was Dungeon Keeper.

Though both of these projects have already been funded, they are offering lots of post-kickstarter ways to still help contribute financially.

Lastly, another one of the projects I funded, Education Abroad: a Korean Drama, has completed and is now airing their shows on the youtubes. =D

These are all games that I have played in the past, games that I find not only historically significant, but that have also made a huge positive impact on me as a gamer.

Some of you might notice that my list actually consists of twenty games, not ten. Well, I’m really bad at picking favorites and they all seemed so important, plus I really wanted a diverse selection

Tetris, Super Mario Bros 3, Final Fantasy 8, Tomb Raider 2, Diablo1+2, Starcraft, Myst, Journey, Zelda windwaker, Animal Crossing, Civ 3, Pokemon, mortal kombat, quake, Baldurs Gate 2, gauntlet, Heroes of Might and Magic, Overlord, Professor Layton and The Curious Village, Portal.

Sometimes being evil is just plain fun, especially if it’s packaged with humor and limited to mild evil intent. To date my favorite excuse to be (mildly) dastardly has been the game Overlord.

Just like the title suggests, the main playable figure is an evil overlord who commands a hard of goblins to do his bidding. Having lots of sacrificial minions to do all the fighting and heavy lifting is of course one of the big reasons I love this game.

Even though minions get used up and replaced like tissue paper, the burning and pillaging of the nearby town is optional. Which means its possible to be a slightly benevolent evil overlord. Though the humorous goblin sidekick will frown upon showing too much compassion.

Overlord is an incredibly fun game that makes being evil funny and quite entertaining, while not requiring true depravity. This also means that when I did have a few minor slip ups, like accidentally burning a farm to the ground, I didn’t feel too badly about it.

My two runners up are ‘Dungeon Keeper’ and ‘Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles My Life as a Darklord’. Both are tower defense type games that let you play as the evil dungeon master. Build up your dungeon with traps and minions to defend against intruding heroes.