WuphonsReach Blog

Star Wars: The Old Republic - Space Combat - Fondor Escort mission.The is the very first mission that you'll get when you finish up with questing on Coruscant. It took me a few tries to figure things out, so here are the key tips that you should know. The left-mouse...

Sometimes you see the strangest things in EVE Online. Ice mining is an extremely low interaction activity because the ice harvester lasers only cycle every 4-10 minutes (depending on ship & skills). Naturally, this lends itself to being spiced up in various ways.Such as the Mackinaw conga line.

A section of Knotbone Ruins in the Shivering Isles expansion pack for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. This is the part of the dungeon where the ruins have tilted a good 20 degrees off of horizontal.

This is a custom class design, which should do well for a sneaky character right out of the gate. It's not overly powerful, and avoids some of the early traps (such as making Mysticism or Alteration a major skill - those go up fast).http://linklost.com/occ/Name/Class: Sylveth / BrigandRace/Gender: Wood Elf (Bosmer)...

Introduction area at the very start of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion where you are locked in a dungeon cell. Shows what the game used to look like with the base textures and UI, with no mods installed.(Old video footage from 2007 showing the vanilla version of Oblivion for the PC....

Now for game play tweaks.#1 - I've always despised the built-in game mechanic where all of the monsters level up with you. Which means that regular roadside bandits eventually become super powerful, with high level armor and weapons - rather then just being roadside ruffians.The answer to this dilemma is...

See previous post for basic install using Steam/OBMM/BOSS:ES4O: Digging up Oblivion again (basic setup)This set of mods will focus mostly on making things pretty or sounding better. There won't be too many game play changes here. The assumption here is that you have already installed the unofficial Oblivion patch (UOP)...

Gameplay from a fairly vanilla setup of ES4O without too many mods installed. Low level character at this point with a mishmash of armor and not many skills.

Since Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is out, I've gotten the taste to take a small break from EVE for a weekend and go back and play Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Then, once Skyrim has been out for long enough that I can buy it on the cheap (with all DLCs...

"Revenge" - A Minecraft Parody of Usher's DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love - Crafted Using Noteblocks

This is one of those silly Adobe Flash games, but is also an amusing study of human behavior as the individual players (mice) attempt to get to the cheese and back without falling into the void.Of course, when things don't always go to plan, you can just resort to dancing....

Shows the intro clip from STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl along with the starter area in Cordon. Contains a few small spoilers of crates that can be smashed open to obtain supplies. No combat in the starter area, just exploration and getting used to the controls. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a game from...

Brief excerpt from Sam and Max 101: Culture ShockIf you liked the old Lucas Arts graphical adventures like Monkey's Island, Grim Fandango, this fits right in with that.(Unfortunately, due to the rendering system they use, FRAPS tends to lose lip-sync after a few conversations / mini-cut scenes which were rendered...

This is the current version of the Captain's Quarter (CQ) released by CCP in the Incarna 1.0 patch. Eventually, it's supposed to be a shared environment where you can interact with other pilots. And there are supposed to be different CQ designs for the different types of stations.But mostly, right...

One possible solution to the color space issue when doing conversions on Linux might be the MLT (Media Lovin' Toolkit). One of the recent versions (0.6.0) has added "Y'CbCr colorspace conversion and option to use full luma range".It also has a command line tool called "melt".Documentation is a bit vague....

Dark, watching from the shadows?(Playing around with the character editor and portrait feature in EVE again. My persona there tends towards being the ever-watching eye. A fun hobby is go trawling through the forums and look at the in-game portraits that other people have chosen.)

So, I stumbled across the Bad Company 2 Global Stats page and since it breaks it down by platform, I did a bit of math. I looked at how the various classes interact on the three platforms (PC, PS3, XBox360).The raw numbers:PC: 104,972,281 hours 4,650,763,830 kills 135,260,246 tagsPS3: 117,909,124 hours...

Picked up a copy of Call of Duty - World at War off of Steam this week for cheap. And my first impression is that the developers took the common grenade spam from the old Call of Duty multiplayer matches and taught it to the AI in the CoD:WaW missions....

An old vidcap from Call of Duty: United Offensive showing the Base Assault (BAS) gameplay. Shows a lot of the bits and pieces of CoD:UO, such as capturing tanks, destroying bunkers, some of the town interior. You'll also see a lot of newbie mistakes as I really wasn't sure what...

Ray Machowski, "Silence the Sneak" - Ray is not happy with McAffrey who just squealed and turned State's Evidence. Flush him out of hiding, then hunt him down. Since you'll be getting a 2-star wanted level as soon as you flush him out, take something where you can survive police...

(This is not a complete collection of the missions on the first island of Portland.)Luigi Goterelli, Drive Misty for Me - Luigi wants you to take care of business. Not a difficult mission and is basically a drive from A to B to C. It introduces you to Joey and...

Feh, I'm old and slow and pissed off. If you can't stand the "spend 20 minutes, fail" style of GTA3 (who has time unless they're a kid?), then you'll have to use Sanny Builder and make some tweaks to the scripts.0) Make a backup of your "main.scm" file1) Install Sanny...

One of the easy ways to earn money early on is towork on some of the unique stunt bonuses. The first unique stunt pays $5000, the 2nd completed pays $10,000, then $15,000, $20,000 etc and there are 8 unique jumps on the island of Portland where you start. You'll want...

The Steam store ran a special on the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series a while back and I picked up GTA, GTA2, GTA3, GTA3:VC (Vice City), GTA3:SA (San Andreas), GTA4 and GTA:EfLC (Episodes from Liberty City). So, in order to blow off some steam during what looks like it will...

Just some misc video clips from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (released back around 2007). The graphics are a bit dated, but it's still worth playing.Warning: Clips do contain strong language.Cleaning the HoodWrong Side of the Tracks Are You Going to San FierroPS. The clips might be a bit dark...

So, after failing miserably with the first two entrance designs in Dwarf Fortress, I went back to the drawing board. When starting out a new embark (a.k.a new game or expedition), you need to accomplish a few things right off the bat:Assign dwarfs to tasks: 2/7 (two of seven) dwarfs...

File this one under:- Too much rock hauling- Not enough militia training- Bad corridor design- Lack of focusWell, in the summer of year 561, the reaper came in the form of an ambush party that resulted in a complete disaster.So many bad mistakes here.Too slow raising the left drawbridges. Tried...

Getting started with Dwarf Fortress can be a bit daunting. After you generate your world, you are faced with the tasks of deciding where to plant your plucky little pack of seven dwarfs. So I'll start with a few brief notes:- A single world can be used for dozens and...

One of the raid add-ons that I like to use is BigWigs which provides warnings of special attacks by raid bosses, proximity warnings, and phase changes in the fight where you need to start doing something different.Up until this month, the old BigWigs proximity warning was nothing more then a...

I've started mucking around with Dwarf Fortress, which looks like a rather interesting RTS style game with a lot of hidden complexity. It's a difficult game to initially learn, so you'll probably want to read a tutorial about Dwarf Fortress.To give you an idea of the world complexity, here's a...

Shows how to find Elder Splitrock down in the Maraudon dungeon in World of Warcraft during the Lunar Festival. The Maraudon dungeon can be a bit tricky to navigate.The basic instructions are:- Enter the entrance in Desolace (Kalimdor continent).- Look for the wooden cage, followed by the two flights of...

Four fights from Halls of Origination in World of Warcraft (run in normal mode with a druid bear tank). The four pulls shown here are:- The very first pull in the instance- Temple Guardian Anhuur (01:55)- The sand beetle ambush after elevator (04:40)- Earthrager Ptah (05:35)Add-ons in use are: VuhDo...

So, I got stuck tanking tonight in Throne of the Tides. I had initially queued up as feral kitty DPS and that's what I went in with after a 40 minute wait for the random dungeon at 81. The initial party composition was:Warrior TankPaladin HealerShadow PriestMageMe (kitty DPS)The warrior... just...

- I have about 55% dodge (in humanoid form) at level 80, by the time I hit 85 that will be down in the 18-20% range. The magic number for tanking at 85 is probably 18% for normals, 19% for the harder normals and 20% for the starting level heroics...

Specifically looking for reputation grinds:Leather armor sold by vendors (not PvP)Exalted with Wildhammer Clan gives you a nice set of purple 85/359 gloves (Stormbolt Gloves). Alternately purchase the blue Sticky Fingers which is 85/345 for 1650 JP.85/346 Quicksand Belt - Revered with Ramkahen83/333 Sly Fox Jerkin - Honored with Guardians...

Links:Bear ThreatLacerate vs. Pulverize threatwiseBasically, Mangle is huge. Around 5000 threat (or double that if it crits). It should be kept on cooldown on boss fights or when you need to smack something really hard to make it pay attention to you.Fury Swipes is a close 2nd place in terms...

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, Blizzard has added a mini-game version of "Plants vs Zombies" by Popcap as a series of 5 quests. To reach the quest vendor, go to Brazie Farmstead in Hillsbrad Foothills (northwest of the ruined town of Southshore).The first quest is called "Basic Botany" and is...

One bear's opinion on how to gear up from 81-85 in Cataclysm.Reference links:Ah! Bears! Cataclysm Tanking (v4.0.3a)Definitive Cat DPS FAQ (4.0.x) Stat priority:This early in the expansion, it's hard to say whether time-to-live (stamina stacking) is better then AGI stacking (more dodge, crit, attack power) or whether you'll want more...

So, after over a year, my druid has finally made it to Northrend this week. For the longest time, I was stuck in the 30s/40s levels and just couldn't find the desire to level up in the old world zones. Cataclysm has changed that and all the new quests and...

So, I'm still mostly happy with the UI. Here's what my UI used to look like:There's still a few things that need work, but it's holding up well after a few months of use.Death Knight:Druid:Warlock:

A brief explanation first. I'm still learning how to be a feral druid and a lot of my key-bindings may or may not be optimal. One is at level 56, the other is at level 67. So what works for me, may not make sense for you and vice-versa. My...

The "Squirrely Clean" quest has you go out and wash squirrels in Felwood. Dem night elf lasses are crazy!These are "Arcane Rollers". During the "In Pursuit of Shades" quest you will see these rolling down a frozen river/glacier in Winterspring. You're supposed to dodge them, but the inner kitten says...

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, all of the old-world zones have been reworked, which means that quests have changed. There are a lot more "bread-crumb" type quests now that lead you from one area to another after you finish up the quests in a particular location."We're Here to Do One...

I've been leveling up a horde druid in World of Warcraft over the holidays and tanking has been a bit rough. Doable, but really uneven and messy now that Swipe has been nerfed into the ground in the 4.0.3a patch. Swipe used to be spammable, but now it's on a...

World of Warcraft Cataclysm is here and so are some amusing bugs. In Felwood, there's a quest called "Do the Imp-Possible" where you have to go capture Impsy and stuff him in a sack. Which is all well and good, except that your character then has a sack hanging off...

Prior to World of Warcraft's Cataclysm, I was leveling up a druid alt in Feralas. One thing that I had never noticed before was that the sea giants (wave striders) periodically have issues with gas and blow bubbles out of their nether regions. It's a rare animation and you sometimes...

Things are a bit topsy-turvy in the world of Azeroth this week as a new phase of the pre-Cataclysm launch event starts up. The four major cities of Stormwind, Ironforge, Thunder Bluff, and Ogrimmar are under attack every few hours by large numbers of elementals. The players need to come...

I'm going to change my planned 2nd play build a bit. I've learned some things about how Fallout New Vegas works compared to Fallout 3 that have changed my opinion on a few stats. Skill points are simply a lot less available in New Vegas, more then I expected, so...

An annoying feature in Fallout 3 (and Fallout New Vegas) is that "take all" from a container is mapped to the same key as the "ok" button on the select quantity screen. By default, both are assigned to the letter "A" on the PC. This means you end doing things...