Mother Gamer Plays Stardew Valley

I know it's odd that I had never played Stardew Valley before, but there are so many games that it takes me time to catch up or choose a game I want to play. A friend suggested I check out Stardew Valley because they knew that I love the Harvest Moon games. I was intrigued so I got Stardew Valley and I started playing. When you start the game you can play as a guy or a girl who has inherited a plot of land with a house from their grandfather in a place called Pelican Town. It looks like a cute 8 bit game and you can pick out the color and style you want your clothes. You then get to choose from five farms the style of farm you want to play the game depending on your style ranging from a beginner farm to a farm with extra foraging. The farm is overrun with boulders, weeds, and tree stumps. You need to clear these out in order to restart the farm and plant crops.

Starting on the beginner farm with a few crops. 

When you are working on your farm you have tools that you can use in your inventory. The controls for the farming aspect of the game are fairly easy to navigate. You can also talk to the villagers and there are twelve possible people that your character can date and then marry. You can give a gift that they like or love, but you can only give them one gift a day and two gifts a week. You have to wait until the week resets usually on Sunday in order to give them gifts again. You also can talk to the other NPC villagers and sometimes they will have requests for items such as crops from your farm or items you can find foraging. 

All the tools you need for farming in your inventory. 

Farming isn't the only thing you can do. It's clear how Harvest Moon inspired Stardew Valley, but Stardew is very much its own game in the best way. You can run around to the forest or to the beach to forage for things such as berries or seashells which you can sell. You can also explore the mines to get stone, ore, and minerals you need for crafting. Be careful though, because there are monsters in the mines and you do have to fight them. This is where the nearby Adventurer's Guild comes in handy because you can buy weapons and accessories to help you battle the monsters. The monsters drop items as well that can be sold and used for various items in your crafting. 

You can go fishing too and fishing is a bit of a challenge. There is definitely a learning curve to fishing and it took me a bit figure out the controls. Fishing is not really my favorite thing in the game because of that steep learning curve, but once I got the hang of it it wasn't so bad. That's the beauty of Stardew Valley. There is no pressure and no time limit to do everything all at once. You can take your time with it, relax, and have fun. 

Trying out fishing in Stardew Valley.

Once you get the hang of everything, you get a rhythm down for all the things you want to do. You can grow different crops in the seasons and when Winter comes you can forage and explore the mines. The mines save your progress every five floors which is pretty nice. You can also get to know your neighbors and you do get some heart events with your love interest at varying points in the game. 

Getting the hang of this farming thing.

You don't have to just plant crops, you can also raise animals such as cows, chickens, goats, and sheep. This gives you more things you can sell like milk, eggs, and wool. There are also festivals you can go to. The calendar for the seasons are twenty eight days with two festival days. The festivals are a lot of fun ranging from a dance festival to a spooky Halloween festival. These are a great way to break up the farming stuff and it gives you a chance to talk to all your neighbors while enjoying yourself. I love Stardew Valley. It is a wonderful game that is fun to play and quite relaxing as well. I can't wait to check out the other farms in other playthroughs. Stardew Valley is a great game that offers a lot of fun, with beautiful music, and a love of gaming. If you love games like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing you will enjoy it. Now, I have more exploring in the mines to do. See you at the next adventure!

Having fun at the Flower Dance festival. 

*Stardew Valley is available to play on the following platforms: PC, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Playstation Vita, iOS, and Android. 

*Come hang out as I stream Stardew Valley and other great games: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer

Assassin's Creed Odyssey: Slightly Different, But Lots Of Fun

I love the Assassin's Creed series as past Mother Gamer blogs have shown. While there were a couple I wasn't so thrilled with, I have always enjoyed the stories and exploration the games have offered. The recent Origins definitely captured my heart with all the incredible ancient Egypt history and lore. When Odyssey was announced I was pretty excited because it was going to be set in ancient Greece and I could not wait to play it.

Odyssey is a bit different from its predecessors. The story is set at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war; an ongoing struggle between Sparta and Athens for dominion over Greece. This opens up a lot of interesting places to explore and dialogue options. At the beginning of the game you can choose which Misthios (mercenary) you want to play as; Alexios or his sister Kassandra. It really doesn't matter who you choose because the story is essentially the same for both so it's just a matter of whether or not you prefer to play as a man or a woman.  For my first playthrough I went with Kassandra.

Kassandra starts her adventure. 

Right from the start, Odyssey hooks you in with an action filled introduction and sets the scene for the story. After that you meet the character you chose; in my case Kassandra and you get a brief tutorial on how the gaming controls work. You also get a mount with this and those controls are pretty easy to navigate. Once you have the hang of it, you can get started on your journey with the main story and the vast amount of side quests.

This is where Odyssey differs a bit. There is more of a role playing aspect to the game with you being able to select different dialogue options while talking to people. You can choose to be cutthroat, a mercenary with a conscience, or ridiculously flirty. Yes, with some of the NPC characters be they men or women Kassandra could have flings with them. Don't worry, nothing overly graphic is shown, but it is definitely heavily implied. Your weapons are different as well. There is no assassin's blade here. You have a precursor artifact weapon in the form of a spear and the options of daggers and swords. You also have a bow and arrows which are quite useful for fighting at a distance.

Have a horse for your travels!

As you level up, you gain ability points which you can use to unlock certain skills to enhance your fighting and stealth from the following three categories in the skills menu: Hunter, Warrior, and Assassin. It is beneficial to unlock these because they are incredibly useful in battles against your enemies. There are also ship battles which bring back memories of Black Flag. The ship battles are challenging, but they are so much fun. You can upgrade your ship to make it a force to be reckoned with. Upgrading the hull is definitely a must so you can ram the heck out of other ships and take little to no damage. You need a crew also of course and Odyssey has an ability where rather than assassinating targets, you can knock them out and recruit them to join your crew. 

Unlock abilities in the skills menu. 

The running theme for your protagonist is all about family. This is where you are introduced to the mysterious villains, The Cult Of Kosmos who have a hand in much of the conflict in Greece all for power. You have to travel all over the world map to find clues about each cult member in order to reveal their true identity and the location of their main hideout. Once you have those, you can find them and take them out. Be wary however, some cult members are heavily guarded and quite the challenge to fight. This is where Odyssey's notoriety system comes in. The more crimes you commit i.e. murder (come on, you know that's what assassination is), the more likely it is that someone will put a bounty on your head. Then you find yourself relentlessly hunted by bounty hunters with very colorful names. The bounty hunters are no joke and if you do not plan out your strategy and tactics, they will end you. There were some who had lions and they would tag team the crap out of me which could be more than a little frustrating, but that's part of the challenge. Two ways around this are offing the person who put the bounty on your head or paying off the bounty. If you have the coin, you can pay the money and the bounty will go away. 

Besides the main story, there are a ton of side quests and conquest missions to do. Sneaking around and taking out guards in a fort can be difficult, but rewarding as you take everyone out and diminish that nation's power. Looting the treasures, burning the supplies, and taking out the captains completes that area and will show you a meter with their power depleting. Once you have completely drained their influence, you get a conquest battle option. You get an epic battle between Spartans and Athenians and you have to take out all the captains during this battle in order to win the conquest. There were times where I totally screwed up and a guard saw me and then I had to brawl my way out among five or six of them. That was a whole other adventure in itself. It definitely raises the stakes when that happens and makes Odyssey feel like a whole new game. 

Getting caught by guards sucks. Time to brawl my way out!

My favorite thing to do in Odyssey was exploring. I loved discovering new areas and hanging out in ancient Greece. Climbing up to the tops of high buildings, cliffs, and statues just to synchronize the map and see the view from a high vantage point was pretty fantastic. No two areas were alike and there was always something new to see. Some of the small side quests were hit or miss at times, but I was never bored at all. There was always something to see or do. 

An eagle's eye view of ancient Greece.

There are a variety of armor and weapons choices in Odyssey. As you progress, you can upgrade to better armor, weapons, and crafting materials. If you have a favorite armor set, when you upgrade you can glamour the armor to look like the favorite set. Again, this adds a role playing aspect where you can actually gather materials and craft weapons and armor in the game. This is also true for your ship. You can choose a variety of sails, ship designs, and even tailor your crew with characters from past Assassin's Creed games as your lieutenants. 

If you're looking for more challenge with your challenge, there are legendary beast and mythological  monster fights you can do. The locations of each legendary beast is marked on your world map. With the monsters, you happen upon some of them doing certain quests. This was how I accidentally discovered the fight with Medusa. These fights are insanely hard and Medusa seemed to be the hardest one of all. I got my ass handed to me quite a few times before I finally won. It is vindicating when you do win because they are so difficult and you have to be constantly thinking about your tactics and theirs. The fights absolutely keep you on your toes, but man what a thrill! 

Medusa fight is crazy! 

When you see the world map, it can be a little overwhelming with how vast it is. Areas you have already explored will be highlighted and areas that are not unlocked are grayed out. The map will also show you what level each area is so you can level grind and plan accordingly. I had fun unlocking the areas and receiving contract quests and bounties which offered lots of drachmae and sometimes item rewards such as armor. 

The world map is huge. Get out there and explore! 

While I loved Odyssey, there were issues with the game. One of the big things was I was one of the unlucky people who got the game breaking bug of the game dropping frames and freezing completely in enemy fort areas. I had wondered if it was just me so I looked up the issue and found that many others had this issue with the game also. The solution Ubisoft offered was to close the game completely and restart the game. That's more than a little irritating. While the voice acting is good, there were strange audio issues with the voices being off sync and delaying at times. In spite of those issues, I still had fun with Odyssey and loved the game. Even after the main crux of the story is finished, there's still so much left to do with legendary hunts and searching for precursor relics and the upcoming DLC. Odyssey is slightly different from the games before it, but it is lots of fun. Now, I'm going to get out there and do more exploring. See you at the next adventure!

Off to more adventures! 

*Assassin's Creed Odyssey is available to play on the following platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC

Come hang out with me as I stream games like Odyssey on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer

Adventures In Twitch Affiliate, Learning How To Do Things, And Twitch Etiquette

Fairly recently I started streaming on Twitch with PS4 broadcasts. I found that I love it. As the saying goes, it's not work if you love it. After a bit of time, I got Twitch affiliate and while that may be no big deal to most people, it was a big deal to me. This meant that all the hard work I had been putting in to build a community that is welcoming to everyone where we can talk openly and honestly about mental health brought a lot of good people who appreciated it and followed my stream and continued to stay. I can't even begin to tell people how much that means to me. I have done my best to be kind and welcoming to everyone who pops in and chats in my stream and I'm starting to get regulars now which is a very cool thing.

One of the big things on getting affiliate is being able to have emotes for the people who do a paid subscription to the channel. For affiliates, we get one in three categories: tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3. I immediately thought of my dear friend tifad0esart who is a fellow streamer and does fantastic art streams. I asked her to design the emotes for my channel. I was delighted when she said yes and informed me later that I was actually her first ever commission for Twitch emotes. I am so happy that I got to work with her and the emotes she designed were perfect. I went with a little dragon who is basically the mascot for my twitch channel and we named her Amethyst. Tifa did a fantastic job designing the little dragon emotes and showed me how to upload them to Twitch. So for tier 1 it is Amethyst waving hi, tier 2 is Amethyst sip, and tier 3 is Amethyst with a yarn heart and the knitting needles in the heart like a little arrow.

Tier 1-3 Amethyst emotes look great!

I had to wait for the emotes to be approved. I was lucky that they were approved in a couple of days. Sometimes it takes a little longer if Twitch gets a ton of emotes submitted for approval. A couple of days later, the little dragon emotes were approved and ready to use on the channel. I was happy that so many people loved my little Amethyst dragon emotes. I had also uploaded them to my Discord channel so that people could use them there as well. 

After that, it was time for sub badges to the channel. These are basically cutely designed little badges next to the person's name in chat who have subscribed and after a certain amount of time of them repeatedly subscribing every month, the badge can evolve to a different badge i.e. a leveling up badge if you will, so it goes three months, six months, and a year. Tifa offered up the great idea of my sub badges being cute little dragon eggs that start out as a normal dragon egg and then gradually hatch over time. I loved the idea and Tifa got to work on them. She was fantastic about listening to what I wanted and how I wanted everything to look so the final result when they were finished looked perfect. I was delighted by the response from everyone about them and again, I uploaded these to the Discord so everyone could use them there alongside the Amethyst emotes. 

The lovely sub badges designed by Tifa. 

I have had issues with my stream, mainly technical. Sometimes our internet drops and with a PS4 broadcast when that happens, it ends the broadcast so I have to restart the stream. It's an incredibly frustrating feeling for me when this happens because it means my stream is in two videos. I am grateful to everyone in my community who is understanding about it when it happens and who offer words of support and kindness. I know I need a capture card for streaming from the PS4 and eventually the PC, but capture cards are expensive and I need to save up money until I can afford to buy one.

This means it will have to be straight broadcasts for the most part. The thing is, that issue caused me to look up and learn how to do workarounds with no capture card. One of the things is remote play with the PS4. Ron was very helpful with helping me figure out how exactly to do it. Remote play is not perfect. Essentially it is streaming twice, from the PS4 to my PC, and then to Twitch using OBS. There is a slight delay and some games work better than others depending on how much information is in them. I have streamed a couple of things using remote play; Dragon Quest Builders and Assassin's Creed Odyssey. One of the issues is the capture window is small in remote play so I have had to make adjustments. Another is the encoding overload issue which can cause small lag spikes. I have done my best to make it work, but it's not a perfect fix. It has been a good lesson for me though in learning how to do things and do my best to keep thinking of ways to improve my streams. This was also how Ron and I discovered my PC needs more memory so that's one of the first things that will be upgraded and then the capture card. 

A cute picture of me knitting by Tifa.

I have learned how to do raids, hosts, and how to make people mods. I have learned how to time people out when they're trolling and how to ban them too. Luckily that has only happened a few times and I'm grateful to my community for having my back. I have learned the Twitch etiquette too and yes, there are etiquette rules. One of the big things of course is to always do your best to be kind. Being awful to people just because you can is not the way to go and many streamers won't put up with it and will let you know right away by either timing you out or banning you. Another is that if you are in a person's stream to not self advertise. It's considered incredibly rude. So how do you get people to your channel? Make friends in the community. No, really. Hang out in other streams, chat with the streamer and other people, hang out, and just have fun. When you build those friendships and are genuine, it makes it a pleasant experience for everyone. This is where hosts and raids come in also. Raids are a nice way to spread the love to other streamers, bringing people from your community to theirs and introducing them to someone new or someone you really like. Sometimes if the streamer raided you really likes you and appreciates you, they will give a shout out to you and invite people from their channel to go follow yours.  Hosts on your channel show that you like this streamer and if people would like to go directly to their channel from yours and check them out, they can. 

One of the best nights I had was just chilling out and playing Dragon Quest Builders. It was a nice night just chatting with everyone and I was just myself. That's a big thing too. Always be yourself. It got a few people to follow and I was truly touched that they liked my community enough to follow my channel. When I was done for the night and we raided my dear friend Makarimorph, a lot of people came with me after I had spoken about how kind he has always been to me and to others, that he is just a lovely person who is about fun and positivity. I was very happy to see that a few of the new people who had followed me and came with me for this raid, followed Makarimorph too. This is how you build a community, being there for each other, and supporting each other. 

Social media is another way for letting people know about your streaming channel. Twitter seems to be the big one. I do use the Mother Gamer twitter for the channel when I am streaming. A lot of streamers also have Instagram, Facebook, and some also do YouTube videos. For example, Gooperatives does a lot of great Let's Play videos on YouTube of games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Makarimorph has a lot of great Warframe Eidolon tutorial videos on YouTube. Of course, having a Discord channel helps as well. This gives your community a chance to hang out with everyone after streams as well as make new friends to play games with like Warframe. 

The rest of the etiquette is pretty much common sense. Don't be hateful to others, don't be a bigot, and don't be racist. It's a good idea to read the Twitch TOS just to get a feel for what is and is not allowed. This also applies to a streamer's channel. Read what the rules are on their About Me panels or check out their chat rules in the chat box settings. Follow the rules and do your best to be kind. 

It's been quite the adventure with streaming and I'm truly enjoying it. Sure it's been a little stressful when things don't work the way I expect them to or my stream has technical issues, but I am lucky that I have a great support system with Ron and with the people within my community. When I stream I am having fun and I am enjoying chatting with everyone whether it's hearing about their day, what they think of the game I'm playing, or talking about favorite books. Doing this and running my knitting shop has been quite an adventure and I'm looking forward to continuing it and celebrating every milestone as it comes. Special thank you to my husband, Ron who has been with me for every step of these adventures cheering me on and here's to many more adventures together. Thank you to my dear friend Tifa for doing such an amazing job on the emotes and sub badges. You are so talented and just an amazing person. Thank you to everyone in my community who has been so supportive and kind while I've been navigating this adventure. I'm still pretty new and learning all the things, but thank you for being here and helping me to build a community that is all about being kind and supportive. It means a lot to me. Thanks for reading everyone. See you at the next adventure! Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates it!

Tifa's designs of the dragon emotes. See you at the next adventure!

Come hang out on my streams here: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer

Check out my dear friend Tifa's art stream channel here: https://www.twitch.tv/tifad0esart

Mother Gamer Plays Maple Story 2

It's been a long time since I played the first Maple Story, but I was ready to try out Maple Story 2. The game is free to play and looks like a super cute anime world complete with all the anime characters. Making my character was pretty easy. There is a lot of customization so you can make your character to your liking. Next of course comes the job classes. There are nine different job classes to choose from. So your options are: assassin, berserker, heavy gunner, knight, priest, archer, runeblade, thief, and wizard. I decided to go with heavy gunner because it looked interesting to me. Also choosing which server you would like to be on comes up. I went with NA East because that has more people on it and a lot of my friends are on that one. After that I was ready to play the game.

My super anime heavy gunner. 

There is a bit of a tutorial showing you how the controls work. I have issues with arthritis in my hands so I use a controller often while playing games on PC. I was thrilled to find that Maple Story 2 is quite compatible with a gaming controller, so that is what I used while playing the game. It was very easy to set up and map the abilities to the controller. The world of Maple Story 2 is huge. There are a ton of main story quests and side quests to do. Exploration is definitely encouraged. Load times for the game are fairly decent so you can get to and from different areas pretty quickly. There are dungeons you need to do for the story quests and these are fun to explore offering experience and rewards for your job class. 

Fighting a boss in a dungeon. 

There are group dungeons and raids as well. While you can solo some of the story dungeons, it goes a lot faster in a group. Raids are much more challenging and having a good group definitely helps. There is a daily reward cap of 10 dungeons and a weekly reward cap of 30 dungeons. Once you hit the cap you don't get any more rewards until it resets weekly on Fridays at midnight UTC. Whichever you like doing, they are a lot of fun. The dungeons and raids are colorful areas with a variety of cute anime style enemies as well as interesting story elements. 

There are lots of colorful dungeons like this one. 

If you need a break from running around dungeons, there are also tons of fun mini games. The game will give a notification of a mini game happening like Dance Dance Stop and you can click on it and you will be whisked away to the event. Participating in these mini games gives you experience on your character and if you win you receive rewards such as a Kay coin which can be used to spin the Kay's Event Wheel for a chance to win accessories and consumables. The mini games are a lot of fun and a nice break from grinding. 

Everyone having fun playing Dance Dance Stop.

There are mounts in the game for getting around that great big world. Some you get as a reward for completing certain quests and others can be bought with varying currencies such as merets. Each mount varies in speed, riding options, and unique run cycles. Certain mounts can only be used on land or sea. There's a variety to choose from and getting them is half the fun. 

I can ride around on a giant duck mount!

An adventurer needs a place to hang their hat so you do get a little starter home in Maple Story 2. You get a tutorial on how to decorate your home, how to build things in it, and how to place items. You can customize your house however you like and some people have even expanded their houses. The creativity is endless and it's very cool to see how many different housing styles there are. You can also buy a plot in various areas and build a house. If you have the funds you can set up your pad and make it great. 

Exploring my starter home. 

That's not to say that Maple Story 2 doesn't have problems. The biggest thing are all the bots. Bots seem to be the bane of every MMO's existence. Unfortunately the bots are rampant in the game. They are on every map and now some of them are invading the dungeons. It can be incredibly frustrating seeing the constant spam from gold sellers as well as how obvious they make themselves when running dungeons. Nexon has made a statement that they are aware of the issue, that their GMs ban them as soon as they are noticed and have an automated system. They have admitted that the problem is the bots create a weird combination and generate accounts too fast. They stated that because of this they are working on ways to combat the bots abusing their system. Hopefully they will have a fix for it soon. The other issue is some of the elitist players. That's not to say that everyone is like that, but there are some players in the game that feel that just because they're behind a screen they have a right to be rude to others. This is what the block button is for and it should be used accordingly. You can report harassment as well, but that should really only be used for extreme cases. Having friends to play with in the game definitely makes it better. 

Overall, Maple Story 2 is a lot of fun to play. There is so much to see and do that it can be a little overwhelming, but luckily it's a game that allows you to be as casual or hardcore as you want to be. I love that I can hop on the game and play for an hour or two and hop off. Maple Story 2 is great for playing by yourself, but more fun with your friends. It's a big colorful world with lots of fun to be had. Get out there and explore! See you at the next adventure!

See you at the next adventure!

*Maple Story 2 is available to play on the following platforms: PC

Come follow me on Twitch and hang out for some gaming streams: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer

The Adventures Of Pirotess: Buying A House

One thing you can do in Final Fantasy XIV is buy a house. You can either buy a house with your Free Company or buy your own personal house.The requirements for buying your house are that you need a character to be level 50 in one of the adventure classes, second lieutenant in one of the Grand Companies for personal housing, and rank 6 or higher for Free Company Housing. The big thing is finding land that is for sale in the residential areas which are, The Mist, Lavender Beds, The Goblet, and Shirogane. The second thing is making sure you have enough gil to purchase the land. Prices vary depending on who is selling it and the size of it. Small, medium, and large plots are what is available and this affects what size house you can place on the land.  Once that happens you can choose the kind of house you want depending on the size of the land. I got my personal house in The Goblet pretty close to my Free Company and a few friends. I was pretty excited about my new small cottage.

Pirotess gets a housing permit.

What comes next once you buy the land for your new house? You need to buy a housing permit from the NPC vendor which is usually close by in the residential area in order to build a house on the plot. The prices for the houses are as follows: Small house - 450,000 gil Medium house - 1,000,000 and Large House - 3,000,000 gil. What comes next after you have everything you need? Customizing your house outside and inside of course. You can decide where you want to place your house on your land and then customize the colors. You can also write a custom message on the placard in front of your house.

Pirotess has a new house!

What comes next once you have your new house set up? Decorating it of course! You can craft or buy furniture and decorations for outside your house and inside. You can also craft food dishes on your Culinarian to put inside your house and yes, your characters can eat them. Each dish has a certain number of servings so people who visit your house can be treated to a snack. Many of my wonderful friends in the game gifted me furniture that they crafted for me as a house warming gift. I love each piece they gave me because it was thoughtful and they crafted some pretty amazing things. One thing that I loved was the bench and table that I had in my little garden outside my house because it looked like the summons Carbuncle. 

Pirotess enjoys outside with her new furniture. 

It's fun decorating the inside of your house because you can make it however you like it. There are a ton of choices when it comes to choosing flooring and wallpaper for each room. Creating or buying each furniture item for your house lets you get creative with how you want it to look and show off your own personal style. For my small house I had an upstairs and a downstairs so I had my choice of two rooms to decorate. For my first floor, I have a pretty nice pastoral theme I like and it's nice and simple with a few furniture pieces. 

Pirotess hangs out in her living room. 

For downstairs, I made it a little different. I chose a little more blue for the walls and had a jacuzzi on one side for a relaxing corner. A bed for Pirotess and a little table spread out with foods I had crafted on my Culinarian made a cozy little spot for resting and snacks. I love both rooms in my little house, but I'm pretty fond of the downstairs one because it turned so nice and relaxing. 

Pirotess enjoys some snacks and the jacuzzi downstairs. 

Having a house in the game is pretty nice and it's been so much fun decorating it. You can always redecorate it too for a change or even for the different holidays. You do need to log in to keep your house though, not every day, but enough to keep it. If there has not been 30-35 days of activity on your account, you will get an email informing you that your house will be demolished if you don't log in. All you have to do is log into your account and walk into your house so the game server counts the activity and you are no longer considered inactive. After 45 days of inactivity your house will be demolished and the plot of land will be put up for sale, so make sure you log in so you don't lose your house. Is it worth it to buy yourself a personal house in the game? I think so. I have had a great experience with it having a place to unwind after adventures, decorating it, and inviting friends to come hang out and have fun. Getting your own house is pretty easy, you just need the gil and the permit to do it. Once you have it, go nuts and show off your style and have a great time! Thanks for reading, everyone. See you at the next adventure! 

See you at the next adventure!

*Final Fantasy XIV is available to play on the following platforms: PC and Playstation 4

Come hang out for fun gaming streams and follow me on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer

Mother Gamer Plays Okami HD

Okami is one of my personal favorite games. When it came out on the PS2 I played it often. When I saw that Okami HD was available for PS4, I got it immediately. I was thrilled to play one of my favorite games again. This was also a game I chose to stream on my Twitch channel. The things I loved about Okami were still here in the HD remastered version. The art style was as beautiful as ever and the music was great. The story and the characters that I remembered brought a smile to my face. Playing as the white wolf god Amaterasu with her little Poncle pal Issun was so much fun. Exploring everywhere is half the fun because each area is so different from the next.

Amaterasu exploring. 

The story is very much about helping nature as Amaterasu is a god and referred to as the mother of all. The goal is to find her celestial brush techniques and use them on your adventure as needed. For example a technique called Bloom, has you putting the celestial brush on a dead tree and when you do it, there is a beautiful cutscene that shows the tree blooming with cherry blossoms. When you do it with the guardian trees, an even prettier cutscene happens that rids the land of the curse and everything blooms and there are cute animals too. 

Using the celestial brush to use the bloom technique.

Since Amaterasu is a god, she needs praise in order to level up her skills and health. There are several ways to do this. One way is by feeding the animals throughout the lands. You can buy food for the animals from the merchants in the towns. When you feed the animals the food they like you earn praise. The biggest one of course is healing all the guardian trees and healing the trees throughout the different areas. You can also do all the side quests and help the people you meet and you earn praise from helping them. When you have enough praise for various things such as increasing your ink pots or your health, you can upgrade them with all the praise you have earned.

There are also digging mini games where Amaterasu uses her digging abilities and celestial brush skills to help people find things. The digging mini game can be a little frustrating because it does not give you a lot of time and you have to look for blossoms with timer orbs and use bloom on them to add extra time. When you use your brush skills, the timer is still counting down so you have to be as fast as you can. If you run out of time, you have to start over again. This is why it can be a little frustrating, but the game is still fun.

The digging mini game in action. Be fast!

There are all kinds of demons to fight and you earn experience points, yen, and extra ink when you beat them. For the story there are several boss demons you need to fight. There are different strategies for each boss and you need to use your celestial brush skills in order to defeat them. This is where the art style of Okami really shines as no two bosses are alike and using the skills is a creative way to handle them. However, I did have a huge issue with the final boss fight. It was over the top and ridiculous. While I understand that it was meant to be a challenge, this fight had everything but the kitchen sink. There were at least five different things I had to avoid, dodge, or not get crushed under. This also caused frustration with my streaming because from the beginning Okami had been very stream friendly and everyone was enjoying it. When I got to the final boss however, it blocked the scenes. If it was just the cutscenes I could understand that, but it blocked the entire final boss fight and the closing credits. I get that they want to avoid spoilers too, but at this point if a person is watching the streaming and people have been watching since the beginning, there is no point in blocking the final scenes. I know I am fairly new to streaming and currently I am streaming from my PS4 until I get the equipment I need, but this was definitely incredibly infuriating. I did finish the game, but I felt I had to apologize to my viewers for this happening and I did. Luckily, they were all very supportive and understanding about the whole thing. 

One of the boss battles in Okami. 

In spite of that frustration I did enjoy the game. Okami is still a game that is dear to my heart because of the story, the art style, the characters, and wonderful music. It is fun to play and overall I did enjoy streaming it because I got to share a game I loved with everyone. It is a game that celebrates friendship, love, and doing your best to be kind and help others which is something I talk about often. A game that is not only fun to play, but offers such a wonderful story with those ideals is a pretty fantastic thing. After the game is done, you can play a new game plus with all the items and upgrades you have earned. You can also get any side quests you missed. Okami was so much fun to play again and I'm happy that we got to go on that adventure together. Thanks for reading, everyone. See you at the next adventure!

Amaterasu and Issun in a village of wind. 

*Okami HD is available to play on the following platforms: PC, Playstation4, and XboxOne

If you would like to stop by and check out my Twitch channel visit: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes Of An Elusive Age, Great Adventure

I have loved the Dragon Quest games since I was a kid and have played many of them. I was quite thrilled that a new Dragon Quest game was coming out so as soon as I got my hands on Dragon Quest XI: Echoes Of An Elusive Age, I started playing immediately. Right from the start the game starts off with a fantastic introduction with music played by the Tokyo Symphonic Orchestra and beautiful scenes from the game. The story starts with an interesting beginning showing the hero who is known as the Luminary a hero of light who is the only one that can fight the powers of darkness and a villain known as Mordegon.

Once the initial introduction is done, this is where Dragon Quest really gets going. You have a few side quests that give you a tutorial on how the battle system works and there is a small bit of exploration in the hero's home village.

The hero exploring a cave in his village. 

Exploration is very much encouraged in Dragon Quest without being overwhelming. Dungeons are fairly linear so there's no confusion about where to go. The battle system has been revamped a bit with the ability to have the AI on your party members set to specific things such as focusing on healing or fighting wisely. The way I had mine set up was that I had control of the hero with the follow orders setting and had the party members set to certain AI controls like having designated healers and melee fighters. 

Another part of fighting in these turn based battles is something called pep powers. Basically after party members take a certain amount of damage from enemies they gain the power of pep. Each pep power is different and you unlock more for your hero and party members as you level up. These pep powers allow the hero and his friends to team up during battles to unleash epic attacks or heal everyone depending on what the situation calls for. Pep powers do not last forever however and if you don't use them right away they can wear off. A trick around this is to have the party member who is pepped up swap places with a party member who isn't. This is where the tactics and line up option in the battle menu comes in handy. It allows you to swap members in and out as needed until everyone has their pep powers ready to go. 

Use the pep powers to defeat enemies in battle.

There are tons of side quests in Dragon Quest where you help villagers find items, defeat monsters for them, or just wear the right outfit and you get rewarded with not just experience but items for crafting, healing items, or gear for your party members. There are also some mini games like horse racing and a casino where you can exchange tokens for things like costumes and crafting recipes. 

Horse racing is just one of the mini games you can play in the game.

Crafting is a big part of Dragon Quest XI. When you are at campfires, you can use the fun sized forge to craft weapons, armor, and accessories for your hero and his friends. I enjoyed this part of the game a lot because there are a variety of items you can make and if you make them well you get some pretty good stats on them. As you level up, you unlock abilities that can enhance your forging skills and increase your chances of successfully crafting items. If you screw up a crafting session you can always go back and rework the item if you have the right number of perfectionist's pearls. Some of the side quests require you to craft specific items so this is where the fun sized forge comes in handy. It's a nice break from level grinding and adventuring and you can save your game progress at the campfire as well. 

Craft a variety of items with the fun sized forge. 

Another fun aspect of the game is the variety of costumes you can get for your hero and party members. Some do offer pretty great defense stats and some are just for fun like Jade's bunny costume. There are a few side quests that offer costumes as rewards and some of the costumes you can craft with the forge. Running around getting all the costumes is a lot of fun and each one looks great and goes well with the party member it's for. 

Just one of the many costumes you can get in the game. 

Does Dragon Quest XI have flaws? In a word, yes. While I loved running around exploring everywhere, enjoyed the story, and didn't mind the level grinding there are serious issues with many of the boss battles in the game. My biggest one is that the old fashioned way of not being able to see a boss battle's HP bar does not work. There are times where a battle will drag on a little too long and there is no way to tell if you are even doing any damage at all or if the boss is close to being defeated. Fighting and hoping for the best just does not work. 

Another factor is just how much level grinding is needed in order to win against certain bosses. I love Dragon Quest and while I don't mind challenging having to run around for long periods of time to level grind just to win a boss fight is incredibly tedious which brings me to the next major issue with the game. Towards the end of the game there is a final boss that is the biggest pain in the ass to fight. To add to the frustration in this final area there is only one save point and it's at the beginning of the dungeon. There is no warning about the final boss coming up, no save point before it, and it just throws you into the fray. I did not win the first time or even the second because the boss fight was in two parts and the second part had an outrageous difficulty spike to the point of being so frustrating that I had to take a break from the game. 

I did finish the game eventually, but that part of the game alone and the odd spikes in difficulty in various boss fights shows that Dragon Quest needs to modernize a bit and get with the times. It does not need to do anything drastic, but it at least needs to make some changes that are more friendly to the people playing their game such as showing an enemy's HP gauge and not have such a steep learning curve for important boss battles. 

Other than those things, I enjoyed Dragon Quest XI a lot. It has an interesting story, wonderful characters, and is a great adventure overall. There is a lot to see and do, the mini games are fun, and the voice acting in the game is very well done. The artwork in the game is terrific and you definitely notice Akira Toriyama's unique art style. The music for the game is great also. When you finish the game, there are things you can do afterwards such as collecting all the crafting recipes and finishing some level 60 side quests. If you are a fan of the series, it is one that you will enjoy playing because it is a great addition to the Dragon Quest universe. 

Adventuring post game. Fun times!

*Dragon Quest XI: Echoes Of An Elusive Age is available to play on the following platforms: Playstation4, Nintendo 3DS, PC, and soon the Nintendo Switch

The Adventures Of Pirotess: How To Choose A Good Free Company And Fun With Treasure Hunts

When you're brand new in a game like Final Fantasy XIV, it can be overwhelming trying to find a good free company. Basically a free company is a guild full of fellow adventurers that you can play the game with. Choosing a good one does not have to be a daunting task. Think about what you want to do in the game. Are you interested in just the story? Are you all about doing epic raids? Do you like running around in PVP, are you all about the great events, or do you want to do all those things? These are just a few of the things to think about. The other things you need to think about is how much time do you have to play? Many people have limited schedules due to work, school, or family. When looking to join a free company you need to consider these factors in order to find a free company that's the right fit for you.

In choosing my first Free Company I was very lucky, that a friend I knew was in it and invited me. Flames Of Paradise was a great start for a newbie like me because they understood that I was not on a lot due to my work, but when I was able to play they were incredibly friendly and helpful. I got a lot of story dungeons and raids done because of them. When I switched servers, again they were very nice about it. I do have an alt character on the original server I started and am still with them because all of them are great people and were my first home in the game.

Fashion show event with Flames Of Paradise. 

The only reason I switched servers was for my dear friend Sekilini. She had been one of my dearest friends for a very long time. She was one of the first friends I ever made playing Final Fantasy XI. She has been a friend to me and my husband, Ron since Final Fantasy XI. We all played together, so Sekilini really wanted us to come join her and some of our old friends from Final Fantasy XI  who were all playing Final Fantasy XIV together. I did ask questions about the free company. Sekilini was more than happy to tell me all about them. They were very much my speed with focusing on having fun and not worrying about being the best ever at the game. That was how I joined Shortbus. 

Shortbus is all about having fun together and if we fail a boss fight or a dungeon, we just get up and try again. There's lots of joking around, laughing, and a fun time. I have enjoyed the game more because of them.

Hanging out with Shortbus for an event.

Last week, all of us in Shortbus decided it would be fun to use some treasure maps to go on a treasure hunt. This is an event where the person who has the treasure map goes to the specific location marked on the map. Everyone works together to fight the monsters that appear and then a portal opens to the treasure dungeon. 

Portal to the treasure dungeon opens.

Once you're in the treasure dungeon you need to fight the monsters that appear. This is where it gets tricky because once you defeat the monsters you have to guess which door is the correct one. If you guess right, you get to move to the next floor. If you guess wrong warning lights flash, an alarm sounds, and you get booted from the area back outside. 

Fighting all the evil sheep in the treasure dungeon. 

It was just eight of us in the treasure dungeon, but everyone had such a good time. There was a lot of joking around, exploring, and everybody just enjoying the company and having fun playing the game together. Some of the dungeons were hit or miss as we got the incorrect door a couple of times, but we didn't care because it was all about having fun. We did get to the end of one or two which was also very cool. 

All of us having fun on a treasure hunt. 

Everyone is different, but this is what entails a good free company. People who are friendly, welcoming, and understand that it's only a game and games are meant to be fun. You also want them to be flexible about your schedule and understand if you can't play the game for a few days or have to take a break due to real life happening. A good free company will understand that real life comes first. It's okay to take your time in order to find the right free company for you. When you do find it, you make great friends in the game and have fun playing together which is a pretty fantastic thing. Thank you to Flames Of Paradise and Shortbus for being amazing people. I appreciate all of you. See you at the next adventure, everyone! 

We're ready for another adventure!

*Final Fantasy XIV is available to play on the following platforms: PC and Playstation 4