Achievement Report - June 15, 2013

I diversified my gaming a bit this week (at least compared to last week), with one notable completion.

GTASC
This week's GTASC offerings started with some relatively simple achievements in both Nier and Rhythm Party.  I spent a fair amount of time grinding for crafting materials in Nier (as well as working towards growing a White Moonflower), but I still have a fair ways to go on both of those achievements.

I played a few matches of Happy Wars, too, but that title update is proving to be really slow going.  I think I'll be happy if I can get it done by the end of the year...

The big highlight in this week's Xbox gaming was last week's State of Decay (review forthcoming).  I managed to snag all the achievements in a little under 25 hours of play time, so it's not an excessive time investment.  None of the achievements are too difficult, and it's a pretty fun game, so it's a pretty low-stress completion.  State of Decay is a good choice for achievement hunters.

Kingdom of Loathing
Although I missed a couple days in the Kingdom this week, I did manage to complete my first BIG! run.  As an added bonus, I made it a 100% Baby Gravy Fairy, bringing my 100% familiar run count to a whopping 17.

9-day BIG! run.  Far from optimal, but I'm glad to be done with it.

I really disliked the BIG! challenge because it ended up displaying the concerns I expressed last week.  On the bright side, it'll be easier to do 100% runs (because stat gains aren't important) and it's a good starting point for excursions into the Sea or telescope runs, as it puts you at a pretty high level once you're done.  As such, I'll probably end up doing a few more BIG! runs while they're in season, but I definitely won't like it.

My next step, though, is is another Way of the Surprising Fist run (softcore) to get the Good Will Punching trophy.  I underestimated how slow the beginning of the run would be (it's the first semi-normal run I've done in ages), and I totally forgot to prepare pulls for the first couple days, so this run is going to take a while.  I'm trying to make it another 100% run (this time with a Sleazy Gravy Fairy).  I certainly hope that I can move on to bigger and better things by the end of the week; we're probably looking at a Sea run to start working towards the new equipment that the recent Sea updates introduced.

StarCraft II
I actually played a bunch of games this week, playing my 1v1 placement matches (for the first time in a few seasons) and several arranged 3v3 games.

I ended up being placed in the Gold League for 1v1, having only lost one of my placement matches. My loss was a ZvZ, which I hate anyway, but I got screwed by early banelings and no good way to defend against them.  My wins were two ZvZs, and one each of ZvT and ZvP.  I didn't feel really pressured in any of those games, so I think I can probably move up to Platinum pretty easily with some additional practice.

The 3v3s were the kind of crazy that's characteristic of large team games.  We were boosted up to Diamond, which is nice, but I don't think there's a whole lot of strategizing that will help us get better - at this point, I think we each need to develop better mechanics and be better able to respond to scouting information.  I would love if we could get up to Masters, though.

And that does it for this week.  I don't think I'll be doing anything too crazy in the next week, as I have a lot of work that needs to be done this week, but I guess we'll see.  Until then, tschüss.