I spent the first week or two sick in bed, and kept the sore throat for some time after.
Figured that was going to be the end of my rainy season hardships. But then it actually started raining hard in SoCal and everything fell apart again.
Just after finishing my Breath of the Wild post yesterday, I’m pretty sure I was hit with some kind of strange bug. I tried to sleep from 5:00 p.m. or so until this morning and honestly had trouble because I couldn’t warm up and all of my joints hurt.
What made it especially strange was that it seemed entirely confined to one night. By the time I woke up this morning, the sensation had passed.
Really the only effect of that brief, yet intense little cold was the fact that it sapped away all of my sleep. I’m sure you’ve all had those nights where you didn’t get any in spite of losing a number of hours laying in bed.
That was me.
Unfortunately, that lack of sleep came back to bite me in the ass this morning twice over.
First when I had to wake up extra early, around 6:00 a.m. or so, to take out the trash since Thursdays are garbage day and I happened to be so out of it that I forgot to pull it together last night.
Then when I had to re-wake up not much longer after to go to my 10:00 a.m. orthodontist appointment.
A few weeks back the permanent retainer on the back of my top teeth broke. I mentioned it briefly in a post where I was venting about a lot of stuff, It was an issue I meant to resolve much earlier, but that big bout of sickness happened to come about right when I had my first appointment scheduled, so I had to cancel it.
Can’t really justify forcing some poor folks to dig around in my mouth while I’m coughing and probably breathing out all kinds of nasty particulates.
Unfortunately that kindness toward the orthodontists was a double-edged sword. Apparently in the few short weeks since that bracket broke, my two front teeth have already started to drift apart. By this point the gap, as relatively unnoticeable as it is for me, was big enough to warrant not moving forward on repairs today.
Instead I’m going to wear my regular retainer 24/7 to try to bring my teeth back into place so we can seal them in place again.
On the bright side, that meant we didn’t have to pay for anything today because no work was done besides cleaning the cement where the old bracket was.
On the less bright side, wearing that thing so much after admittedly not doing so over the last few years makes for a very uncomfortable sensation in my mouth.
Thus it’s been a few days of joint pain and gum pain. As per the advertised joys of being 21.
Hopefully as the rain starts to fade into the weekend, all will start to feel better. That’s all I can ask for with school starting next week.
While today was a bit strange and didn’t exactly pick up until ~2:00 p.m. or so, when it did pick up it got fairly busy.
I’ve been continuing to schedule things for Gladeo, I got a piece to edit for Boom (which I still have to finish so I’m hoping to not spend a lot of time here <.< ), I continued to try to clean my room (without much progress yet — need to devote a whole day to it), I both dropped off and picked up Alyson from school and then after that we went to the gym together.
First time I’ve gone in a couple of weeks actually, as I was a little hesitant while sick. But I’m happy to say that my routine from before picked up just as well know.
So you know, hopefully that will make it easier to drop whatever weight I must have picked up from the holidays.
After we went to the gym, we decided to take a brief detour to a local Target so I could finally do what I’ve been meaning to do since the new year began:
I bought myself a new calendar.
As you can probably tell from the Featured Image, I downgraded the flair this year. Instead of having adorable puppies to keep me sane in my darkest moment, I decided to get a much more clean, simple business-forward kind of calendar.
Definitely not because we only decided to go to one place and I picked out the cheapest option.
What would make you think that?
Okay, jokes aside, I did pick this particular calendar for a few reasons beside its price tag. Unlike my puppy calendar from 2018, this new one is made of paper rather than some kind of laminated plastic-y material. As a result I can write everything out on it in pencil rather than pen, meaning not only does my writing look better but it also won’t smear before drying.
Which yes, was a problem I actually had pretty often.
With a new calendar also means a fair amount of time spent going through each month and transferring over some important yearly dates. Notably birthdays and major school landmarks like starting and end times. But having the 2019 set also means I can start to fill in events and appointments.
Otherwise I’d probably be pretty lost sometime soon.
Going through last year’s calendar to transfer dates over was pretty fun, actually. It reminded me of all the big events I took part in and made me excited to see more and more of the blank spaces get filled up this year.
Hell, I might even save my 2018 calendar for posterity.
… Though that does make me sound like Brett Kavanaugh. So maybe not.
Whether I do it or not, all I know is that for now my new calendar is put up and ready to take some dates:
So hey, if you want to hang out with me anytime soon, now’s your chance to get on my schedule while it’s fresh and new!
Fun fact — the only other thing I could think to possibly talk about in this post was the experience of wandering Target in a post-gym exhaustion with my sister.
I’m sure most people would agree that 2018 was a maddening political clusterfuck, no matter which side of the aisle or where in the world you sit.
While I can’t help but agree with the hope of moving past that in the new year… At the same time, I sort of disconnected myself from the news-y world in 2018 and focused a lot more on myself.
Overall that wasn’t a bad decision. A lot of nice things came out of the more chill personal year!
Seemingly the most poignant place to start charting out my year is with my health. That feels ironic considering the first week of Winter Break was spent dying in bed, but I’m talking about the grand scheme of things.
A sizable chunk of my 2017 year in review was devoted to finding out about my blood disorder, ITP, and crazy things like the hospital stay that resulted from our early attempts to treat it.
It’s kind of insane to think that we’re more than a year out from that now, especially since so much of my stress at the time was getting better enough to cover Milo Yiannopoulos at Halloween.
Tangent aside, this year I never had a big medical scare. In fact, the whole incident inspired me to be better to myself, as this summer I started regularly going to the gym for the first time.
The summer was also significant to my personal growth this year because I started my Summer 2018 Initiative: Writing something here on my blog every day.
My drive to force myself to become better at my craft each and every day persisted past the summer and into the fall semester. Then my buddy Spencer encouraged me to try to be concise with allof my posts for the sake of practicing, which has definitely helped.
You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve cut an extra 500 words off of these since.
Sure, I may have found out I’m not a fan of drinking, but a whole new world of spending time with people has opened up.
Back to the original point though. Putting more effort into my blog has proven fruitful, because as it turns out posting something every day really drives up that website traffic:
Can’t wait to see how big that bar gets in 2019 when I hopefully get a whole year of pseudo-daily posts out!
Also on the media front, I finally caved and got a few new gizmos to play with this year. Instagram, Paypal, LinkedIn, Discord…
I don’t know that I’d say any of them have significantly impacted my life per-say, but Instagram and LinkedIn have been interesting insights into the world of photo-based and work-based media.
Ah, did I say the dreaded “w” word? Guess I should talk about that too.
2018 was a bizarre transitional period for work. The spring semester had me stepping down as an editor at the Daily Titan so I could focus on writing for the journalism capstone class.
However, I decided not to return to the paper for the fall semester. Gave more priority to my major and minor classes, knowing graduation is slowly rearing its ugly head.
Quicker than I thought it would be at the beginning of 2018, I should say. A really happy part of the year was finally finding a mentor for my Senior Honors Project and working things out with the program director to graduate on-time rather than needing an extra semester!
But otherwise that seems like as much fellating myself as I can handle for one year.
So! Here’s hoping even more great things happen in 2019, where it seems I’m slated to finally move past my schooling days and enter the workforce full-time.
Yikes.
Let me know about some of the great things that happened with you this year, with all the negativity buzzing around on TV I’d absolutely love to hear why 2018 was great for people!
Grants Speed +3. If Sing or Dance is used, grants bonus to target’s Attack, Speed, Defense and Resistance = The highest bonus on the target for one turn.
Grey Waves (Range = 1)
Grants another action to target ally, and if target is an infantry or flying ally, target can move one extra space (that turn only, does not stack).
Blue Duel Flying (A Skill)
Grants Health +5. If unit is five-star and level 40 and its stats total < 170, treats unit’s stats as 170 in modes like the Arena.
Aerobatics (B Skill)
Unit can move to a space adjacent to any infantry, armored or cavalry ally within two spaces.
Attack Tactic (C Skill)
At start of turn, grants Attack +6 to allies within two spaces for one turn. Granted only if number of that ally’s movement type ≤ 2.
At this point I would have expected Intelligent Systems to start pumping out a few Mythic Heroes with the beginning of Book III, but I suppose there’s still a few slots available for legendaries that we needed to fill.
While her design alone is a nice reference, she actually stands out even more as a powerful unit to summon. Kind of a power crept version of last year’s New Year’s Azura as a flying dancer, though with a magical tome rather than an axe.
See Legendary Azura’s gimmick, if you hadn’t picked it up already, is that she gives an exceptional amount of buffs through her song after warping to basically any ally easier based on her Aerobatics skill. When she sings for that ally, they gain wide-ranging skill buffs (likely replicated from her Attack Tactic skill) and an extra movement space.
That’s just good. There really isn’t anything else I can say about it.
Honestly if I hadn’t already needlessly wasted a ton of orbs on the Christmas units, I would probably be much more invested in trying to summon Azura here. Especially considering the other units in her banner.
There are a healthy mix of units I don’t have and powerful units I wouldn’t mind having more of in this banner. Marth, Camilla, Nino, Helbindi and Takumi are all missing from my catalog, and I really wouldn’t mind summoning any considering the ones I do have like Hector, Veronica and Tiki are worth having multiple copies of.
So… All things being equal, I don’t have a lot of bad things to say about this banner overall.
If it weren’t for too many other banners happening at the same time (looking at you, New Year’s 2018 banner coming soon), I would spent more time heaving orbs at it.
But hey, at least there’s always Legendary Battle Maps to supply some extra orbs! So maybe I’ll be able to summon her before she disappears.
Alright so I’m going to level with you, I don’t have much of anything to say about the battle map other than “hey free orbs.” I know this entire post feels a bit sparse… And that’s because it kind of is.
Really everything with this Legendary Hero is so good that it’s kind of bland to talk about since I can’t summon too much on the banner. Plus I was hoping to get to it last night until I fell asleep and stayed asleep until very late today because of that sickness I’m still rocking.
So I just wanted to get this out of the way, that way I can focus more on the end-of-year posts coming out the next two days.
Hope you all can forgive me for half-assing this one as a result ❤
And there we have it, another new Legendary Hero!
Always exciting to talk about, especially with that in-depth analysis of the battle map, am I right?
If you had any luck summoning on Azura’s banner, let me know. Also, tell me who you want to see as Legendary Heroes down the line! I know I for one lean away from Fates considering how oversaturated it is in representation so far, though it would be nice to see a Legendary (or even Mythical) Xander to balance out Ryoma’s inclusion earlier.
Guess we’ll just have to see if that happens sometime soon.
Yesterday I mentioned something about saving my “grumpy about Christmas” post for today. But I’ve decided not to bah humbug it up.
It helps that I slept most of the day drugged up on advil and dayquil, so I’m a bit more chill.
Instead, I figured why not talk about movies?
After all, there’s nothing open over Christmas, so my family has had a lot of time to watch movies while I’ve laid about in a sickened stupor. Tonight I wanted to feature what I’d consider the double feature of “movies that are reboots of older things that nobody asked for and shouldn’t exist.”
Starting with the sort-of sequel to the 1964 Disney classic, “Mary Poppins,” and followed up with the Illumination take on Dr. Seuss’s classic, “The Grinch.”
So right off the bat, I think it’s fair to let you all know that I don’t have a hugely nostalgic connection to the original Mary Poppins. I’ve watched it and had the songs engrained in my head, but I didn’t walk into this pseudo-sequel with any inflated expectations.
That being said, I still fully appreciate the original for what was so groundbreaking about it. “Mary Poppins Returns” seems to appreciate it too, but to a fault.
The reason I keep calling the movie a “sequel” conditionally is because this movie essentially isn’t.
Yes, it takes place a few dozen years later and follows the exploits of the children from the first movie, now with families of their own. But the actual content of the movie is essentially just the original with a new coat of paint.
I’m not kidding. All of the musical numbers, from one set in a fantastical 2D world to one featuring the lamp lighters (a proxy for the original chimney sweepers) happened in just about the same sequence.
It even features all the same overarching messages about family and the importance of childhood wonder.
So really, think about “Mary Poppins Returns” as a reboot more than it is a sequel and certain elements about it become much better. But there are also elements that become far worse.
In the prior category: The visuals. All of the magical sequences and music numbers are gorgeous and well-composed. Most of them take on a similar style to their original counterparts and feel classic with updates to not be 50 years outdated.
Special props go to the portion of the film where Mary takes the Banks children into a porcelain bowl. There are little touches like everyone’s feet clinking while they walk that makes the whole sequence outstanding.
On top of that, I’d say that Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda do pretty good jobs fitting the large shoes left behind by Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke.
Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t give them a whole lot to work with.
My problems: Nothing outside of the visuals are memorable. There isn’t a single song I remembered, which is a shame considering how timeless and integral pieces like “Spoonful of Sugar” were to the original’s longevity.
It also falters from being a “sequel” that basically isn’t. There’s no exposition when Mary Poppins arrives, as it seems assumed that the audience has seen the original. She shows up, the parents remark that they remember her but don’t believe she was actually magic and then simply let her come in and bath their children.
It’s honestly that quick, which makes it clear the movie wanted to get to the whimsey without any of the groundwork.
A more nitpick-y personal gripe is that the movie is very inconstant with its rules. For instance, the parents remark on their disbelief of her magic but do not broach into the issue of her looking exactly the same outside of a quick joke.
Also, when Mary remarks that adults always forget the youthful joy of her magic, that’s quickly contradicted by the appearance of Miranda’s character — apparently one of the child chimney sweeps from the original — who happens to remember her.
I don’t want to harp on it too long at risk of sounding like someone leveling deeply analytical complaints at a children’s movie, but because of the lack of memorable songs and rehashed plot I was so bored by the middle of the film that I couldn’t help but nitpick it.
If you’re looking for a very pretty movie to park your kids in front of (or you adore the original), you’ll get a lot out of Mary Poppins Returns as a visual spectacle.
Outside of that, however, there isn’t a ton there that isn’t done better in the original. I’d say it’s average at best, and I likely won’t remember much of it next month.
Unlike Mary Poppins, I would count myself as an invested Grinch fan thanks to the wonderful 1966 Chuck Jones and Boris Karloff “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” It’s a true family classic that’s near perfect.
So with Illumination taking the helm of a second reboot in what I guess can be called the Dr. Seuss’s Grinch franchise, I was cautiously optimistic. I do like other movies of theirs like “Sing,” but bemoaned the possibility of it being very out-of-touch.
Having seen the movie now, I can pretty easily say it’s somewhere in the middle.
Outside of an unnerving character design for the titular character (those human-like pearly whites never sat well with me), “The Grinch” is a gorgeous movie. The environments especially, with a mix of Seussian winter wonderlands and more modern, opulent town settings.
However, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t cringe almost immediately hearing the rap version of the 1966 Grinch song. The soundtrack was probably the worst part of the movie if you ask me.
Either there was unfitting rap, too many modern day Christmas tunes that made me question just how human the Whos were in this universe, or a few strangely Jesus-heavy songs that made me question whether the Whos had a religious part of their Christmas traditions.
Are there Jewish Whos, in that case?
Outside of musical choices, the rest of the movie was handled was better than I had expected. The hour-and-a-half runtime mostly went quick. Pharrell Williams as the Narrator was… Okay. As was Benedict Cumberbatch as the Grinch.
I actually quite liked the way they handled his interactions with Max. Most of the best scenes in the movie were between the two of them, as it gave a lot of background to why they’re such good friends. More than the 1966 version, in a good way. Ties into the whole family narrative.
I’ll give Illumination props for it.
They also give Cindy-Lou Who a much larger role in the story, which is an idea I appreciate considering she is the crux that changes Grinch’s mind.
However in execution she’s pretty much every ‘I want to catch Santa’ cliché you’ve ever seen, has a design that was uncomfortably close to Edith from “Despicable Me” and has a ‘quirky’ character trait of carrying around a hockey stick for whatever reason.
The way her storyline intersects with The Grinch is predictable, but for a kids movie she serves her purpose well enough.
All-and-all, I’d say “The Grinch” 2018 was fun and well animated. Pretty good for what it was, even if parts of the set dressing were strange and uncomfortable for my tastes.
Though maybe I’m just too old and yelling at the kids on my lawn for their rap musics while lauding the original through rose-colored glasses.
That being said, I think the 1966 version and even (I shutter to admit) the Jim Carrey version did get something right which was almost detrimentally wrong with Illumination’s version.
You know how earlier I mentioned appreciating how cute the stuff between The Grinch and Max were? I do think it’s a nice touch, but it’s emblematic of the fact that the main character is made a little TOO cute, sympathetic and ‘relatable.’ The movie leans hard into his tragic backstory as justification for him acting like a jerk when in all honesty he’s probably the funniest, cutest Grinch we’ve ever seen.
But maybe that’s just a personal problem for me. After all, who am I to argue with a fun-loving misunderstood cool guy of a Grinch who uses lots of sweet gadgets in an (admittedly pretty great) Christmas-stealing montage.
It’s definitely not the worst version of the story you could show off.
Sorry about the second short break from blogging I took the last few days. The cold I tried to pretend I wasn’t developing during finals week hit me extra hard once the high stress of exam season began to dissipate, and for two days all I could do was sleep and cough my head off.
However, if there was any benefit to take away from sidling the edge of death, it was that I have seen the face of Armageddon and am prepared for our inevitable, collective demise.
An Armageddon that is: Armagetron.
Welcome to a game that I had basically forgotten about until my Macintosh Desktop rescue. The original file had not been opened since 2009, when I discovered it during that sprite animation camp I talked about in my Smash Bros. wallpaper post.
But unlike a lot of the other relics of oughts Jasoncana, Armagetron Advanced is totally rad. After all, it’s a simulator experience based on the light cycle races from 1982’s TRON.
I had this whole plan set out after replaying the game to record footage so I could show off my sweet Armagetron skills, maybe even gif a few seconds of me dunking on computers.
Except turns out I don’t exactly have good screen capture software that doesn’t make the footage come out like this on the other end. Forewarning, this video is very choppy and kind of nauseating.
Was not going to be able to get the high-octane action that I originally wanted out of showing this game off.
Luckily Armagetron isn’t complicated to explain, even if there’s a nice amount of depth under the hood for things like customization. If you’ve seen the race sequence from the original TRON, you know exactly what you’re getting.
You move around a digital grid leaving trails that immediately destroy (or derez) opponents. The aim of the game is to be the last man standing, with points earned for killing opponents and lost for ramming into other light trails or “committing suicide” against arena walls.
On top of customizing the color of your light cycle, Armagetron allows you to set up matches with as many AI (or people given a decent lan party) in as many parties as you want. Everything from the AI’s intellect to the size of the battlefield and the amount of time light trails last can be altered.
For the most part, each trip to the grid feels unique because of the timeless style Tron imbued on its light cycle sequences. It makes for cinematic experiences even in a fairly basic simulation.
Yeah, the wall popping in after you seems like a graphical issue… But boy is it cool in practice.
It helps that on top a great general style, the game features really crunchy sound effects for the racers speed, doppler echoes as opponents move past and — of course — digital explosions.
Lots and lots of explosions.
Particularly your own.
Where I would argue Armagetron thrives the most is in its simplicity breeding implicit storytelling. A lot of computer players are named after applications like “word” or “excel,” so it feels as though you’re duking it out with your own computer’s software out for revenge after yet another 2,000 word essay.
Plus, I’m a fan of situations where I need to time my turns and thread the needle:
Always exhilerating.
Or, like you can see in the featured image, those moments when you’re boxed in and have to survive as long as possible driving in a square on the off-chance the AI dies before you run out of room.
Extra graphical touches like sparks when you grind as close to a wall or light trail as possible without killing yourself really sell these scenes:
The amount of times I died just trying to get that feeling of barely evading death are uncountable.
But of course that feeling of narrowly avoiding death is only superseded by the thrill of a well-won victory after pulling off death-defying tricks.
This basic victory screen is far more satisfying than it has any right to be.
While there isn’t a whole lot to say about Armagetron Advanced past the basics, it still earns my high recommendation. If you want to feel like Jeff Bridges, this isn’t a bad place to start.
I haven’t tried it the most recent update since I’m still stuck in the nostalgia trip of my beloved 2009 version, but from screenshots I know there are plenty of different game modes and graphical styles to choose from now.
This fan project stretches all the way back to the original Armagetron in 2004, so there’s a ton of love put into it. Even if it’s not getting much in the way of development recently, I’d still say you should all go support it.
Armagetron Advanced is something that shouldn’t just be derezzed into obscurity.
As of ~7:00 p.m. tonight, when I finally returned home, I was officially finished with the fall 2018 semester.
Truly a momentous occasion! It’s been a rough one all things being equal, so I’m lucky to finally have made it to the other side of the storm. After all, there’s just one more remaining until I finally get that piece of paper. So it all comes down to this, and there’s something as exciting as it is terrifying about the idea.
… Unfortunately, as the title here suggests, not all is sunshine and rainbows despite how uplifting this freedom is.
Finals themselves were rough to get through because I’ve definitely caught the family cold, which has resulted in consuming cough drops at a rate of far-too-many per hour to deal with a scratchy throat and a cough.
It has also left me kind of lethargic, which will make it very fun to get up at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow and interview someone on the east coast.
I just wanted to make sure I got a post in, even if it just amounts to me venting about… Everything.
Probably won’t widely publicize this one to be honest.
Arguably the worst final to have to struggle through with a cold was my Sensation and Perception test yesterday. That’s the one I’ve been dreading for some time because it was cumulative and non-curved.
Yeah, it actually did suck.
Mostly because there were topics on it that he did not tell us were going to be on it in his ‘study guide.’
Then he doubled down on the frustration by handing back our final essay drafts (graded in just one week, while the rough drafts took 3 months I might add). He gave me a point less than I got on the rough draft for a number of corrections previously unmentioned, which feels pretty disingenuous.
Especially considering he also gave me an extra point for making the original corrections. So I wound up with the exact same score.
Boy I’m glad I never have to see that man again.
Luckily today was much less stressful, as all I had to do was present the findings of my Evolution and Creation essay to the class in a casual round-table. Then afterward I went out to dinner with my friend Mimi to celebrate the end of a long semester.
It was fun!
… Up until the point where my permanent retainer broke. So now I’m missing a wire behind my front teeth, and there’s just a bit of poking if I move my tongue just right.
Couldn’t get a sit-down with my orthodontist until Friday, too. It’ll be fun to deal with that for a while.
But then to add insult to injury, after my two-and-a-half hour drive home, I got an email letting me know that I did not get the internship with the Boston Globe I applied for. Much like I feared in this post from a little while back.
I know lots of people apply for these things and I’m not super upset about it, that just happened to be the cherry on the suck Sundae of today.
At least I can still relish the idea of finally sending all of these books back to Chegg.
Good riddance.
Considering I’ll never write anything better than ‘suck Sundae of today’ in my life, I’ll leave things off there. Hopefully you didn’t find this vent post too obnoxious, I swear tomorrow I’ll go back to writing about something more fun.
For now, however… I need some sleep. After all, I’ll have to be up again in a hurry.
Yesterday I slept for about 17 hours. Was real sick when I woke up, enough so that I wasn’t able to make it out to the SPJ Long Beach Post tour. Or write a blog post at all.
Which was worth watching, but probably a subject for another day.
While I’m feeling better today, I’m still not feeling better enough to go spend a whole bunch of hours at the Finals competition for the RUHS band. So I’m going to have to neg on that promise I made last week. Sorry Aly.
Thus, between bouts of sleeping and tending to a nosebleed, I figured I would finally do something fun and show you all what an obsessive freak I’ve become about Monster Hunter armor planning.
Armor planning in Generations Ultimate fills a very similar niche to Pokémon team creation for me in that it extends a game’s lifespan through a strategic planning task.
There are dozens of skills a hunter can utilize in battle against titanic beasties, each applied by a combination of a base armor piece’s skills, a talisman that can be equipped and all of a set’s supplemental skill decorations.
Building the full armor set for a specific monster yields skills matching their play style. For instance, the ephemeral electric unicorn Kirin’s armor applies Divine Blessing (to occasionally reduce damage) and Elemental attack damage buffs.
So if a monster matches the play style you like, or works well with one of the game’s 14 weapon types (like the hammer-tailed Duramboros armor works with a hammer weapon), it’s an easy build.
However, if you’re someone like me that enjoys a challenge and wants to build armor with varied skills for a specific task, mixed sets are the way to go.
As a Hunting Horn main, I made it my goal to create a separate set of armor for every element and status type. The actual in-game armor forge isn’t very conducive for planning, so I turned to armor listings on Kiranico and my phone to generate ideas before wasting the materials.
Here’s my written plan for the horn that would apply a sleep element:
Some key details to note. There are five armor pieces, one weapon and one talisman for each set. The armor pieces have pre-determined skills:
As seen in the ‘Skill Tree’ box above.
Talismans have random skills when you find them, so planning out an armor set is partially about luck.
Also, note the asterisks near each piece’s skill listing. Those indicate the number of available decoration slots. Each piece can have up to three slots, and I’ve indicated what decor I’m putting in the slots though the subsection.
Most skills are applied when they reach 10 points on your overall armor, with a stronger version at 15 or 20.
Here’s how the fruits of that planning labor translated in-game:
Sleeping and bombing at a quick pace!
In Generations Ultimate, a feature called armor transmog was added that allows hunters to put a decorative armor on top of the armor they’re wearing.
That way you can have your cake and eat it too: Make an armor with fantastic skills that also doesn’t look super ugly.
Yikes.
Sometimes the armor planning process isn’t so simple. Multiple different monsters can give the same skills, and it’s important to balance that with the defense statistic, elemental resistances and the slot count.
For instance, when I recently pivoted to try out the Lance, I tried to build up an armor set that had the Guard and Guard Up skills applied. Thanks to having a few useful talismans, I wound up comparing three potential armors:
Obviously the one I wound up with had the most work put into it, as everything just fell into place.
Between those guard skills and Divine Blessing, I aimed to be more defensive for the Lance play style. Plus a status attack buff, considering all of the lances I wanted utilized those statuses: Sleep, Poison, Paralysis and Blast.
Even if Blast does not technically count as a status attack anymore and is only buffed by Bomb Boost. But I still put them together.
Here’s how the final armor came out:
This one I transmogrified using G-Rank Basarios armor. Its bulky-looking stone armor appeared aesthetically perfect for a defensive set.
Because in Monster Hunter, aesthetics are just as important as powerful skill sets.
Out of all the builds I’ve planned so far, this Status Lance set is probably one of my most immediately gratifying and successful. Having never used the weapon before, coming in with a well-designed set made the learning process pretty painless.
Especially when it allowed me to discover the best killing blow in the game:
That’s a satisfying hunt right there. Even if my MicroSD card wasn’t pulling the video off properly.
I’ll figure that out eventually.
While I’ve built plenty of armor sets going from Low-to-G-Rank status, I still have plenty more planned out that I’m continuing to work on.
Especially with friends around to help, I should be able to keep the train going for a long time. Unless a game like Pokémon Let’s Go or Smash Ultimate kills my current Monster Hunter addiction.
But I don’t have either yet, so no worries!
Hopefully this pseudo-instructional post on armor pre-planning has been helpful — or at least interesting.
If you did think this was cool, let me know. I’m thinking about also doing a post showing off a bunch of cool armor sets I’ve created that might make an excellent companion piece.
Just not right now. Because I think it’s about time I go back to bed and nurse this cold some more.
Once again I’m a bit under the weather. Likely a side effect of the shot I received from the doctor yesterday.
So I don’t have a whole lot of energy to muster up for this blog post, and I won’t be writing too much as a result. Just consider this one of those filler pieces I like to write once in a while to keep myself writing.
That said, my not writing a lot actually strikes me as something thematically appropriate for the subject of the post that I have in mind.
Last night I spent some time over at a bar in Santa Ana as part of a celebratory good bye party for the man who was Editor in Chief of the Daily Titan when I first got there a few years ago, Rudy. He just recently got a new position at NBC working in Philadelphia, so a bunch of people from his time at the Titan threw him a surprise party.
Pretty appreciative that I got looped into the whole thing, considering a big chunk of my journalism career would not have been possible without him and Liz, the Managing Editor at the time, hiring me.
I know that’s a lot to unpack, namely the fact that I was out being social at a bar. Because it’s still kind of a lot to unpack for me as well.
Such a strange sensation to be old enough for social drinking…
If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t drink beyond a few sips of one beer — and that was mostly out of social obligation. Would’ve been rude if I didn’t touch the drink that Spencer got for me.
I was driving however, so I mostly did avoid it.
Spencer actually plays more of a role in this than just the guy who bought me a beer. He was the News Editor that first semester I jumped on the Titan, and I actually attribute a lot of my early college tutelage and growth to the guy. We’ve kept up a good amount since than as well, as he often liked to visit the newsroom whenever he was local reporting on something like City Council.
While we talked at the party, he mentioned reading these posts once in a while (which still frankly shocks me whenever I hear someone I know irl reading these, despite the fact that I literally post them on Twitter and Facebook for that exact reason).
One of his suggestions was trying to be a bit more concise with my blog posts.
It’s something I’ve thought about a bit since I first started up this project, but I usually usher those thoughts away considering it’s a personal blog and I approach it with the mindset of a repository for my thoughts and long-form writing BS.
But maybe it isn’t such a bad idea to try and keep things cleaner around here. That way it’s less of a random dumping place and more of a legitimate writing practice.
So I’m going to be trying that from here on, as best I can. Spencer suggested going for 1,000-1,200 words max, and that seems like a good benchmark.
Granted, I might not hit it with some stuff like my Fire Emblem posts, where a couple hundred words are dedicated to copying their skills out anyway, but we’ll see. Seems like that’s a good place to take this blog next to make it more professional.
That or redesigning it one of these days. Another thing I’ve been putting off for literal years now.
But anyway, thanks a bunch for reading this stuff Spencer, and for having my back. I had a great time catching up with you and a bunch of other folks last night, and I’m glad that I can take a little bit of it forward with stuff like this!
I would post some of the photos of the group that we took last night, but it might be weird for people I don’t talk to very much. So my apologies for the lack of photography accompanying my ramblings today.
I didn’t exactly have any grandiose plans for a blog post today in the first place, but I wouldn’t expect this one to be super long or involved anymore if I were you.
See, I spent most of the day at home today, but a lot of it was while indisposed. Cleaning the house and sleeping primarily.
Sleeping a lot. I mentioned starting to be sick during my Nintendo Direct post the other day, and since then it hasn’t exactly gone away. If anything it’s shifted from being more of a stomach bug to a head cold, and I’ve been laying around coughing with a sore throat for hours.
Fun stuff.
As a result, earlier I laid down to take a two, maybe two-and-a-half hour nap. Wound up sleeping closer to five hours.
Lost a hell of a lot of time to that, which is why I’m just kind of making it up as I go along now.
Figured if I was going to talk about anything, it would be the only not sick-related thing I did: Playing some Monster Hunter.
Because what else do you do when you’re laying down but not sleeping yet.
I’ve been having a blast with the game so far, and having to play it around school starting up actually made it more feasible to spread the content around. There’s a whole lot of it, and I’m maybe just finishing up the first third of the game — if you split it between low-rank, high-rank and G-rank hunting.
In celebration of finally breaking into high-rank, I figure why not share this cool new armor set I finished? In part because I honestly don’t use my Switch photo taking ability enough.
This cool ninja outfit is the “Yukumo Sky” armor. Named after the Yukumo Region and made with hardwood from the nearby Misty Peak, this sweet gear has been outfitted with a number of decorations so that wearing it grants me ~40 percent higher critical hit chance and longer invulnerability periods when dodge rolling.
Paired with the Hidden Harmonic, a Hunting Horn made from the elusive Nargacuga, I have 70 percent higher critical hit rates and songs that provide Attack, Defense and Health buffs to my allies.
It’s one of my favorite combinations so far, a straight upgrade from the critical hit-boosting Shogun Ceanataur armor I used this horn with previously.
This kind of equipment set construction is arguably my favorite part of Monster Hunter, because it’s so much fun to beat down an increasingly large collection of complex monsters to see what sort of cool stuff can be done with their armor pieces.
However, another one of my favorite things in Generations Ultimate is just how darn pretty it looks, especially coming off of the 3DS generation.
I take some glamour shots once in a while, check some of them out:
Here’s my Ceanataur armor, by the way. Crab boi.
There’s so many opportunities to do this and I love it.
Really I love this game a lot so far. After pouring so many hours into Generations on the 3DS, it’s cool seeing all of the new stuff that has been added into this version. I’m about three weeks in and still unlocking new locales.
It’s just sweet.
But that’s honestly about all I can think to write right now, because I’m still dying. Honestly I just wanted to get something out on my blog today.
So hopefully you enjoyed this goofy little thing. Maybe I’ll eventually come around to making more professional equipment set display posts one of these days.
If so, you can thank this post for being a trendsetter.
Jason's Blog - Work in Progress 