Achievement Report - June 29, 2013

This week was not nearly as frightening as last week.  Our team pulled out of the gate pretty strongly, securing a safe position early on.  Still, I had a respectable showing throughout the week.

On another note, I started writing a review for DarkStar One, and I discovered something interesting: I actually have a hard time talking about games I don't like.  I know a lot of people find it easy to rant about bad games and rave about good ones, but it seems like I'm a little lacking the ranting skill. I'll see if I can work on that one.

GTASC
Following last week's progress, my first accomplishment this week was completing DarkStar One.  As I mentioned last week, the achievements are incredibly tedious and generally very boring, so this wasn't a hugely entertaining process.  Now it's done, though, so I'm thankful for that...

The only other game I really played this week was Wednesday's new XBLA release, Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2014.  Being a Magic veteran, I had no problem blowing through the campaigns on the highest difficulty setting, spending only about 10 hours in-game to earn all the achievements.  For players new to the game, I imagine that the learning curve could be pretty high, but I would still think that it wouldn't take more than 15 hours to complete.  Plus it's pretty fun, so I highly recommend it for achievement hunters.

Kingdom of Loathing
I'm chugging through my latest Bad Moon run.  It's going pretty slowly (as expected and by design), but it may start speeding up a bit in the next week, as I've spent a fair amount of time leveling.  Either way, it'll probably be a couple more weeks before I move on to something else.

A leisurely BM run gives a great opportunity to grind some things out.  I spent a bunch of extra turns in A Large Chamber to earn the Evil's Okay in My Book trophy (although I haven't purchased it yet), and I'm using this run to do a 100% Blood-Faced Volleyball run (which I screwed up the last time I tried it).

A trophy quite a bit out of the way of a normal ascension run.

An intentionally slow run is great for accomplishing secondary KoL goals, like tedious trophies or earning swagger for usually non-PvP players (Hardcore runs are great for that - break your Hippy Stone early in the run, then stockpile fights until you hit the limit or approach the end of your run; that way you'll minimize the effect on your play, and because you're in Hardcore, you don't stand to lose anything in defensive fights).

StarCraft II
I played a bunch of StarCraft matches this week, working primarily on two particular achievements:

So. Close.

I've worked towards the 250 Terran wins vs. AI, bringing myself within 30 wins of earning that achievement.  Once that one's done, finishing the wins vs. Elite AI achievement (I need 106 wins for that one) won't be quite as annoying, as I don't hate playing the other races as much as I hate playing Terran...

Chug-chug-chugging away!

When I play big team games (3v3 and 4v4), I tend to play random to make progress on this achievement.  I find that the big games are a little less strategic and a little more cheesy, so I don't think I have nearly the disadvantage that I'd have when off-racing in 2s or 1s.

I'm making good achievement progress in SC2, currently sitting at 5520 achievement points overall.  Of course, there's still a lot to do (I have barely touched 1v1, for example), so I wonder if I'll be able to earn all the achievements, even after Legacy of the Void...

I also signed up for ggtracker to get some detailed analysis of my play over time.  The site requires you to manually upload replays (I haven't seen any obvious options for automatic uploads), but it spits out a number of cool stats and it's prettier than sc2gears (plus more easily shared).  I don't see any point in uploading vs. AI replays, so my profile is a little sparse right now, but it could be a pretty cool tool in the future.  I'm excited about it.

And that does it.  This coming week will be interesting for gaming, as there's a holiday and TrueAchievement's annual Bean Dive phenomenon.  The Bean Dive is an incentive for players to pop an achievement in every game they own but haven't played.  Named for the resulting dip in completion percentage, it's a great opportunity to find really exciting games that might otherwise stay on the shelf for a few more months.  I like it, and it probably means that I'll be playing a wide variety of games before next Saturday.  Until then, tschüss.

Achievement Report - June 22, 2013

Oh boy.  I've been rather busy this week, so I haven't had as much time for gaming, and our team faced elimination going into the final hours of the GTASC.  Fortunately, a couple of us were able to snag several hundred points in the last few hours, so we managed to survive, putting us in the top 50 overall.  Here's what happened:

GTASC
Most of my gaming this week has been focused on DarkStar One: Broken Alliance.  While the basic setup isn't too bad, the game itself is terribly, terribly tedious and repetitive.  The achievement list adds further pain by requiring you to visit several hundred locations (about half of which will great you with a small group of hostile pirates), and you'll engage in the same little skirmish every time an enemy shows up.  It's also setup so that you can't easily run from battles, so you have to go through with every one of the mind-numbing fights.

I've spent a total of about 20 hours on the game, and I'm still probably 5 hours or so away from finishing it up.  It's not hard, just terrible.

In the last couple hours of this week's scoring period, I switched over to Home Run Stars in an effort to maximize my TA Score to time ratio.  A little over half this game's Gamerscore isn't too bad, as you'll get a bunch of it just for completing the game (which can admittedly be pretty challenging near the end).  Earning gold medals and completing all the game's FameStar challenges seem like they'll require some dedication, though, so the second half will be a bit more demanding.  Still, I estimate that a full completion will take fewer than 6-8 hours, so it doesn't seem too bad overall.

Kingdom of Loathing
My original plan was to complete a quick Way of the Surprising Fist run to grab the Good Will Punching trophy, but I overestimated the total value of random crap I'd accumulated for that purpose.  After dumping 300 dense meat stacks, nearly 100 massive gemstones, and a ton of other stuff, I still hadn't earned the trophy.  I ended up spending a couple extra days farming GameInformPowerDailyPro magazines to get it done, but I've now officially earned all the trophies associated with Surprising Fist runs - I probably won't ever do another one.

My six most recent additions.

Given that the next few weeks will likely be hectic for me, I opted to transition into another Bad Moon run (this time as a Turtle Tamer) so that I'm not hurt nearly as much if I miss adventuring for a day or two.  I may use my schedule for the upcoming weeks as an excuse to do a couple of these Bad Moon runs, depending on how things go.

Aside from the above, I haven't done much gaming.  I played a few StarCraft II matches, but no more than five, so they're not really worth describing in any detail.

Like last week, I may not have a whole lot of gaming time this next week, but I've already made a good dent in serving my team for the GTASC by continuing DarkStar One.  Still, I hope I'll be able to make significant progress in some of my gaming goals by this time next week.  Until then, tschüss.

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.

Achievement Report - June 8, 2013

My gaming this week was skewed very heavily towards my Xbox...

GTASC
Seeing as the title update achievements in Happy Wars are going to be time consuming, I hope to play a match or two each day to grind it out.  In my first session of the new week, however, I managed to get "The Godlike Swordsman" for 1000 kills as a Warrior, so that was a pretty nice start to this scoring period.

Making good on one of last week's goals, I started Nier, and it instantly dominated my gaming life.  Although it's a beautiful game, the achievements are brutal, with several requiring hours upon hours of grinding.  I still sunk well over 30 hours in the game over the last week, and I'm still pretty far from getting it done.

And that was pretty much it.  I contribute 957 TA Score to my team over the course of the week, so it was reasonably successful (even if not quite up to the goals I set last week).

Kingdom of Loathing
The slow grind to level 30 got to me this week, so I started powerleveling.  It didn't hurt that somebody dropped a little under 500,000 meat in my store, which allowed me to fund some trips to Hamburglaris to take advantage of the scaling monsters and to farm some lunar isotopes (some to sell and some for epic food and booze).

My last two level 30 trophies.

Once hitting level 30, I made my way to Fernswarthy's Basement to get another telescope piece.  I was ultimately successful, and I began a new BIG! challenge path run.  I'm not too impressed by the BIG! path; starting everything at level 15 is a cool idea, but the general lack of new content is disappointing.  I think it would have been a lot cooler if it had a more interesting restriction (like every other challenge path - +ML across the board isn't clever or exciting), but as it stands, I don't think I'll be doing another BIG! run.

My fifth telescope piece!  Only 2 more!

This summer might be a good time to focus on aftercore activities on account of the disappointing challenge path.  I may venture into Hobopolis in the coming months.

The last couple days have been filled with many hours of Magic (which I'll talk about in this week's edition of Monday Magic), which combined with all my time on Nier led to never booting StarCraft or Guild Wars up.  Eh, I had a lot of fun anyway.

I also won't be giving myself concrete goals this week, as I'm planning to grind Nier and Happy Wars quite a bit.  Maybe I'll do something more exciting by the end of next week, but until then, tschüss.

Achievement Report - June 1, 2013

I had a number of specific gaming goals for this week; here's how they turned out:

GTASC
My first order of business this week was to earn another simple achievement in Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (PC) - Down Boy for killing 13 zombie dogs.  It's not much, but it's progress.

I then spent some time working my way through Pid, which is a really cute (and pretty tough) platformer.  Completing a single run through the game isn't too bad, but hard mode is a beast and some of the hidden items can be pretty tricky.  This one's another long-term investment for a full completion.

Rhythm Party was another source of frustration this week, as I struggled to unlock the last few achievements.   I still haven't been able to get a AAA rating on the last song, and I can't manage to maintain constant rhythm tricks throughout a song, so I have some more awkward flailing in my future.

Next I discovered that the title update for Happy Wars introduced several new achievements, so I downloaded that game again and starting grinding towards level 50.  I nabbed one achievement in the process, but it seems like it's going to take a while to complete this game again.

Despite last week's goal of earning 1,500 TA Score for my team in the GTASC, I held off this week because my teammates did an excellent job of keeping us in the top 30 for the week.  We were pretty safe from elimination, so I figured I'd save some achievements for future weeks.

Kingdom of Loathing

I didn't even come close to completing this week's KoL goal, only hitting level 25 this whole week.  Maybe I'll be able to bridge that gap this week...

It wasn't a total failure, though, as I managed to grab the trophy for using 40 4-d cameras.  One more down!

Professional Photographer is now on the shelf!

StarCraft II
I didn't play much StarCraft II this week, only winning enough vs. AI matches to get up to the 100 wins vs. Elite AI achievement.  I really can't wait to be done with the Terran race wins vs. AI, because all these Terran games are really wearing me down...

Playing Terran in every game is getting to me.

Guild Wars
This week saw a big jump in my Hall of Monuments rewards points, as I finally completed the Guardian of Cantha title and I acquired the last piece of Elite Luxon armor for my assassin character (which brings me up to three elite armor sets).  That gives me 24 of the 30 rewards points necessary to get all in-game rewards in Guild Wars 2, so I hope to be able to make that happen sometime reasonably soon.  For now, though, I'll just keep grinding away.

Remaining Guardian and Zaishen title progress.

I also completed the Ruins of Surmia and Nolani Academy missions on my new roleplaying character, thus completing both of my Guild Wars goals for the week.  Check out the VODs here.

New Goals
I found last week's specific goals to be a good correction to my usual aimlessness, so I think I'll continue throwing out an idea or two for each of the major games I'm playing:

GTASC: I've been playing a lot of Arcade games lately, so I think I'd like to mix it up this week and go back to one (or more) of the retail games in my collection.  Here's hoping I can get a completion or two this week.
Kingdom of Loathing: I think this week will sadly be more of the same, as powerleveling is going to be a lot more expensive for an Avatar of Jarlsberg.  Hopefully I can actually get those last five levels this week.
StarCraft II: I really don't want to come back to playing Terran exclusively for a long while, so I'd like to chip away at the 250 wins against AI as Terran - fifteen more wins this week ought to be reasonable.
Guild Wars: My next major goal is to complete the Guardian titles on my main character, so I think completing eight more missions on Hard Mode this week is doable.

So I have some specific directions I'd like to pursue in the next seven days; we'll see where I stand next Saturday.  Until then, tschüss.

Achievement Report - May 25, 2013

Oh boy, this has been an exciting week for gaming.

GTASC
This week started a bit slowly for me, only nabbing a few achievements in Kinect Sports last weekend.  Slow and steady on that one...

As the week progressed, Team Lazy Eye was near the back of the pack, so I went into an unorganized rush to earn achievements.

For some quick Gamerscore, I grabbed a couple of downloadable games that were discounted this week: Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond and Rhythm Party.  Neither really blew me away, but they both allowed me to get several achievements pretty quickly, so I was happy to get a few extra points for the team.  I'll comment on these games in a bit more detail after I've spent more time on them.

I also revisited Microsoft's microtransation behemoth - Game Room.  I mostly worked on earning some additional Time Spender medals while trying to improve my Point Buster and Survivalist medals on a couple tricky games.  In the process, I reached level 11 and a total of 48 medals, adding a few hundred TA Score to my total.

I screwed around in Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, too, starting to work towards the S+ ranks on each stage.  I have been running through the campaign on Professional getting that high rank, earning the achievement for getting an S rank in the process.

My collection contains a few games I've never played, so I took our team's perilous position as an excuse to delve into a few new titles for a few minutes.  The XBLA games All Zombies Must Die! and Home Run Stars and the retail Tomb Raider: Legend all seem like they'll be a lot of fun, while Zombie Wranglers seems like it'll just be tedious.  The real highlight was Pid, which seems like it'll be a charming, beautiful game.  I'll definitely be coming back to that one soon.

And, in desperation, I went back to a game that is covered in years of dust: Zuma (I don't know why I decided it was worth paying for that game...), although I was only able to pop one very easy achievement before I got too frustrated with it to continue.

Still, we survived another week.  Here's hoping we can keep that momentum going!

Kingdom of Loathing
As mentioned last week, my adventures through the Kingdom are going to be much more casual, at least until I hit level 30 with Avatar of Jarlsberg and descend into the Basement for another telescope piece.

That said, I am pretty disappointed with a big discovery this week.  I didn't realize that an Avatar of Jarlsberg is prohibited from adventuring in the Sea, where I thought I'd be exploring some new content while slowly leveling my character.  So instead of diving to the Sea Floor, I have focused my efforts on collecting filthy lucre and fat loot tokens, as well as little time-consuming trophies.  I've already knocked out two of those trophies (for adventuring in the bathroom with the autoplunger and for killing Dungeons of Doom monsters a bunch of times), so I'm well on my way.

Mmm, trophies...

It's very slow going, but that's the point.  KoL isn't taking up nearly as much of my time these days, but I'm still pushing forward, so it's all good.

StarCraft II
My StarCrafting this week was limited to a few vs. AI matches.  While I didn't earn any achievements in the process (working slowly towards 250 wins vs. Elite AI), I did finally hit level 30 with Terran.

About time!

I guess there's really not much more to say there.

Guild Wars
Unfortunately, I never got around to progressing my new roleplaying mesmer this week, so there aren't any new VODs.

I did, however, do a lot of work towards earning titles on my main character.  I primarily focused on the Guardian titles (completing all missions on Hard Mode), and have very nearly finished the Cantha guardian - all I have left to do are the Kurzik missions, which are easily my least favorite missions in the Factions campaign.

Also pictured: My Party Animal track. Woo-Hoo!

For this next week, I have some specific goals:

In Guild Wars, I want to complete those Factions missions and move my roleplaying character a bit further into the Prophecies campaign.

In StarCraft, I just want to get the achievement for 100 wins vs. Elite AI (less than 10 wins to go), and I might go after some of the remaining Mastery achievements in the Heart of the Swarm campaign.

In the Kingdom of Loathing, I hope to be able to hit level 30, but I probably won't be able to get a telescope piece before the end of the week.

As for my achievement hunting, I hope to be able to contribute at least 1,500 TA Score to the team (I gave a little over 1,200 this week), possibly more depending on our ranking as the week wears on.

There's a lot to do, so here's hoping I can get it all done.  Until then, tschüss.

Achievement Report - May 18, 2013

Another week down!

GTASC
The first game I started playing in this scoring period was starting and completing Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon.  The full completion took less than six-and-a-half hours, so it's pretty quick and painless.  Check out my full review here.

Later in the week, I managed to find a few people willing to play a 2v2 in Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, which allowed me to mop up the last remaining achievement in that game.  Clash of Heroes brings me up to 181 completed games, which I'd say is a decent feat.

After that, I noticed that the rest of my team had done amazingly well early in the week, putting us solidly in the middle of the pack for the GTASC.  I took that as an opportunity to focus my efforts elsewhere, as it seemed like we would be pretty safe this week.

Kingdom of Loathing
I decided this week to take KoL a bit more casually.  With the end of the Avatar of Jarlsberg challenge path, I've started a softcore AoJ run to work towards the level 30 trophy, which I'll use to transition into another basement run and possibly to explore the new Sea content.  This change in pace will mean that I won't get as many ascension rewards, but it'll also give me an opportunity to do some of the slower stuff, like bounties for the Hound and the Bounty-Hunting Rig, eating Black Puddings and drinking Around the Worlds for the related trophies, or maybe even my first excursions into Hobopolis in the clan dungeon.

I have a long way to go to level 30...

I guess I'll have to see how I feel once I drop the AoJ restrictions after hitting level 30.

StarCraft II
I diversified my StarCrafting this week, playing a number of Team and vs. AI games as usual, but also jumping back into the Heart of the Swarm campaign to grab some more of those achievements.  In the process, I got some achievements all around.  Here are the highlights:

In the HotS campaign, I earned all of the "regular" achievements, as well as a number of Mastery achievements.  I still have some Mastery achievements to go, but they aren't proving to be too difficult, so I might be able to complete the HotS campaign sometime in the next couple weeks.

I also played a fair number of multiplayer matches, making the most significant progress towards the vs. AI achievements.  I've gotten to the point where I just need to get a bunch (~100) Terran wins vs. AI, which gets terribly boring for a Zerg player, so I can't really stand to do too many of those matches at a time.

Guild Wars
I finally got around to finishing the Fort Ranik mission on my new roleplaying character, and I've continued grinding towards filling out my Hall of Monuments.  I've discovered a few more scenarios that overwhelm my 7-hero build, but it's generally working quite well.  I think that just means that for certain dungeons or elite missions I'll need to swap some heroes out for something more appropriate.  The VODs for those activities are available on twitch.

Some of my current title progress.

Still, I'm inching towards the Guild Wars 2 Rewards Points necessary for all the in-game unlocks.  My next goal is complete the Guardian titles, as that will both earn some gold (for buying elite armors and weapons) and get me four more titles to display.

And that's it for this week.  I'm going to try to hit the GTASC pretty hard for the remainder of the weekend, then I'd like to put some pressure on my StarCraft and Guild Wars achievement hunting.  I hope next week's report will be equally impressive.  Until then, tschüss.

Achievement Report - May 11, 2013

This week was a lot more exciting for me, following up last week's Magic bender with a bunch of gaming and achievements across the board.

GTASC
We had yet another week of Team Lazy Eye success, surviving elimination along with 61 other teams.

My Xboxing this week was limited to two games:

Initially, Kinect Sports struck me as everything a motion-controlled sports game should be.  After playing for a bit, some of the limitations of the Kinect sensor start to pop up, as precise controls are occasionally very difficult to pull off.  I cannot, for example, figure out how to consistently aim a corner kick shot in the soccer game.  Regardless, I've had a fair amount of fun with it.

The achievements, on the other hand, seem like they'll be a monster to take down.  Many are pretty straightforward (simply winning in each type of game will give you several achievements already), but many are going to be very hard (winning a table tennis match against a hard AI opponent without conceding a point sounds impossible), so it'll likely be a difficult completion.

The second game was another that I started this week: the PC version of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City.  I had already played the Xbox version, but I found it to be a little lackluster; I was hoping the mouse/keyboard control scheme would make the game more fun (as I think it usually true for shooters).  Unfortunately, Operation Raccoon City really feels like a crappy port (it was released on PC a bit after the console release), so I'm kind of disappointed with it all around.

As for achievements, the PC version seems like it'll be as tough as the console version - the difficulty related achievements will certainly be a challenge, and the multiplayer is totally dead, so those achievements will require boosting of some sort.  It's overall a disappointing entry into the Resident Evil franchise...

Kingdom of Loathing
KoL has been taking a bit of a backseat for me lately.  Although I still love everything about the game, I'm not finding enough time to give it the proper attention each day (I'm also experiencing huge spikes of lag, which makes everything that much harder).

Even so, I managed to hit an unexpected milestone this week: I completed a 5-day, <1000 turn Hardcore Avatar of Jarlsberg ascension!  It's awesome that I was able pass that threshold before the end of the AoJ season (which will end next week) but a bit of a disappointment as I haven't really been able to capitalize on the extra karma for quicker ascensions.

Still one day behind my shortest ascension ever...

Either way, AoJ is coming to a close soon, so I'm really looking forward to what the next challenge path will bring.

StarCraft II
My biggest StarCraft news is that my regular 2v2 partner is available again, so we rocked some twos this week.  As a team, we're getting pretty good at holding off silly cheeses, successfully navigating bunker rushes, early pool pressure, and proxy gateways, so I think we're emerging from the cheese-dominated lower tier.  To push any higher, I think we're just going to develop better mechanics for longer macro games because the games we lose tend to be ones that seem close for a long while.

As I tend to play random in big team games and vs. AI, I've been getting a good amount of practice with each of the races.  I still can't quite settle on a comfortable Terran strategy, though - I tend to prefer being super aggressive, so lots of ling pressure into mutas or blink stalkers fit my playstyle quite nicely.  I've tried strong reaper openings, but I can't maintain that kind of aggressive pressure through the late game, mainly because reapers can't shoot up (so void rays or mutas will wreck my day).  I just can't get my mind around Terran play, it seems...

So... close...

Still, I'm drawing closer to the maximum level with all three races, needing only a few more levels with Terran to get there.  Huzzah!

Guild Wars
And to round out the week, I spent a number of hours chugging away at Guild Wars.  My new mesmer character made it up to Fort Ranik, but failed miserably in his first attempt to complete the mission (which you can watch in the twitch VODs).

I then tested and (slightly) refined a hero setup for solo + hero runs through late-game Guild Wars content.  Although I've been adapting a build designed for an elementalist, I have worked towards adapting it to my main character (dervish).  These VODs are also available on twitch.  I hope to be able to use this build to max out my Hall of Monuments (or at least build up enough Guild Wars 2 Rewards Points to get all the in-game rewards for Guild Wars 2), which I'll be slowly working out over the next months.

I've also launched a youtube channel.  Granted, I'm probably just going to upload videos from my stream, but it's another way to watch my gaming endeavors.  So that's pretty cool.

Anyhow, I have a lot on my gaming plate for the next week, so I'd better get to it.  Until then, tschüss.

Achievement Report - May 4, 2013

Another very slow week, I wasn't able to game nearly as much as I would've liked.  Fortunately the rest of my team carried us in the GTASC, so we've survived to another week (only 64 teams left!).

GTASC
I earned exactly one achievement this week: "Learner" in Dark Messiah: Might and Magic Elements, another game that's been in my library for about a year now.  It doesn't seem like a horrible game, but it's definitely on the bad side of average.  I still haven't played enough of it to get a feel for how difficult/annoying the achievement list is, so I'll hold off on those sorts of comments for now.

Kingdom of Loathing
I had a similarly lackluster week in the Kingdom because I wasn't able to play every day this week.  As a result, my only accomplishment was finishing another run several days behind schedule.

Moving forward: If I can get back on track and manage 6-day Avatar of Jarlsberg runs, I should be able to complete two more before the end of the challenge season.  That would give me enough bonus karma to be able to make the remaining primary class skills hardcore permanent (there are only four that I don't already have) plus the remaining sea skills and a couple others.  I'm drawing ever closer to marking all the game's skills hardcore permanent, although it'll still probably take another year to get enough karma for everything.  At least I'm almost done with everything except special skills.

Once the next challenge path is released, I think I'll go for one more AoJ run to grab the trophy for hitting level 30, which I'll also use as an excuse to get one of the other level 30 trophies and to complete another Basement run for my fifth telescope piece.  After that, giving the new challenge path a whirl should finish out the month.

StarCraft II
I actually spent the more time playing StarCraft than anything else this week.  The only major milestone was nabbing the 3v3 Versus AI Coverage: Elite, which means I can move on the 2v2 vs Elite AI achievements.  I'm getting close to finishing all the versus AI achievements, which I find really exciting as it means I'll be able to focus entirely on the competitive ladder.

And that's basically it.  I hope to get a lot more gaming done in the next week.  Until then, tschüss.

Achievement Report - April 27, 2013

This week was pretty hectic for me, so my gaming was a lot less focused than it usually is.  I ended up starting a bunch of new games without completing any along the way, so there's a lot to mention but not too much to discuss.

GTASC
I took this schizophrenic week as an opportunity to grab a few new XBLA games and start working through my download queue.

The first one I started was Exit.  It's a nice little puzzle game, but it's marred by terribly clunky controls.  The achievements are definitely going to be time-consuming because, even with a guide showing all the solutions, small mistakes can ruin your score due to the really viscous control scheme.  Taken in small bits, it's probably reasonable, but I still expect it to take upwards of 30-40 hours to complete.  Yikes...

The next one is beautiful: Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams.  A fantastic platformer with gorgeous art direction, this one is a ton of fun.  It'll also be a pretty nasty completion; although the adventure mode is pretty easy (there are checkpoints everywhere), completing the game again on Hardcore mode (no checkpoints) is going to require a lot of practice and patience.  At least I'll be having fun while I'm working on it.

I also started SEGA Superstars Tennis, a game I picked up in a sale last summer.  I've always preferred over-the-top sports games to more realistic ones (I think Mario Strikers Charged is my all-time favorite, followed closely by the original NBA Jam), so I think I'll have some fun with this one.  It's a bit too early to comment on the achievement list, but it seems like it's going to take a pretty hefty investment to complete it.

Kingdom of Loathing
In the Kingdom this week, I had a couple nice accomplishments: I finally earned the Gender Bender trophy (for 30 sex changes in the Sleazy Back Alley) and I managed a 6-day Avatar of Jarlsberg ascension.

The final row of my trophies. From left to right: Scourge of Seals (level 30 Seal Clubber),  The Butler Did It (using Wizard of Ego reward 30 times), Melon Baller, Shot Caller (discovering 100 cooking recipes), Fantastic Voyager (all microplushies in Display Case), and Gender Bender.

The trophy isn't really too impressive, except that I've been slowly working on it for a while now, so it's nice to be done.

I'm a bit more excited about the 6-day run.  Since I've been able to get Lunch Like a King on day one and fill up on Omega Sundaes, I've basically hit my limit of turngen (Nightcap on day one will add a little bit, but it won't be too significant); the next big jump will happen when I'm able to eat the EPIC foods and run Gristlesphere from day one.  At that point, I don't think there are any other major improvements available, just minor optimization tweaks here and there.  That should happen in one of my next couple runs, so I'm quickly approaching my best AoJ ascensions.

StarCraft II
As tends to be the case, I played a few StarCraft matches this week, too, but nothing terribly noteworthy happened there.  Chipping away at Team Random and vs. AI achievements as always.

Guild Wars
And finally, I played about an hour of Guild Wars, too (the VODs are available on twitch).  I completed the bonus objective in the Great Northern Wall mission and completed a few quests.  I'll try to pick up the pace a bit so I can finish the campaigns sometime in the next decade, so hopefully we'll see a couple more installments in the next week.

I'm also thinking about working towards filling my Hall of Monuments with my main character (a Dervish) so I can burst into Guild Wars 2 at some point.  I may start working on that this week, too, which might be cool.

Anyway, this week wasn't as extensive as some, but I still made a fair amount of progress; I'm rather satisfied with my performance this week.  I hope I can keep this train rolling into next week.  Until then, tschüss.

Achievement Report - April 20, 2013

Another week down, another week that Team Lazy Eye has avoided elimination in the GTASC.

GTASC

One of the first things I did in this scoring period was complete Retro City Rampage (and wrote my review).  The full completion only took me about 8 hours in-game.  I used a guide to help me find the last few collectibles, but other than that, it just took a little trial and error and some patience.  Quick and easy.

I then started Realms of Ancient Wars, which is a pretty simple hack n' slash game.  It's not terribly hard, but it's also pretty repetitive, so I'm not having a whole lot of fun with it.  All but one of the achievements can be earned in a single playthrough, but the last one requires three playthroughs total; I'm really not looking forward to that grind...

I got a bunch of achievements in Kinect Party, too.  This game is one of several that I downloaded ages ago, but I only recently busted it out because I knew it would give me some quick achievements for more of a GTASC buffer.  Most of the Gamerscore is easy to obtain, but there are a couple that require multiple people (or multiple people-like proxies to trick Kinect), and a few that require you to share photos on Facebook.  Yeah, I'm not doing that unless I create a fake Facebook account for that purpose specifically...

As my final Xbox game for the week, I started Bomberman: Act Zero.  The game has a terrible reputation, and my initial impressions were pretty bad, but as I played it, I realized it's not the worst thing I could be playing.  I was even having some fun with it.  Now, earning all the achievements will be one hell of a grind, requiring something like 18 days of game time, but taken in small chunks, it doesn't seem like it'll be any worse than any other time consuming achievements.

Kingdom of Loathing

In the Kingdom of Loathing, I've kept going at about the same pace.  I finished another 7-day Jarlsberg run. I think I could've finished that one in 6-days, but I wasn't able to play much on day 6, so I took care of my diet for the day and waited until the next to get it done.

My last few AoJ runs.

I'm getting into a pretty stable holding pattern for required turns (~1100), but I think I can shave another day off because getting Lunch Like a King and eating two Omega Sundaes on day one will give me a sizable boost in turn generation.  I'd like to drop below a 1000-turn run as well, if possible, but I don't see any obvious ways to speed up my runs at this point.

Basically, my KoL accomplishments this week have been more of the same.

StarCraft

In StarCraft II, I've been focusing more on knocking out the Elite AI achievements than anything else.  I've continued chipping away at the random 3v3 ladder, but the biggest highlight is that I managed to get the achievement for a 15 win streak against Elite AI in 3v3.  I've very nearly earned the 3v3 coverage achievement (beating Elite AI with each of the possible race combinations), missing only 3 Zerg, so that's decent progress on the AI front.

My current levels with each race.

And, because I'm playing Heart of the Swarm, I'm getting closer to the maximum level with each race.  It shouldn't be too long before I get all three up to level 30!

Guild Wars

This week also brought a new endeavor: I plan to play through all of the Guild Wars campaigns on my stream.  I've only completed one session so far, but I'm having a blast with it - check out my stream or watch the VODs for some old-school MMORPG action.

My newly-created character demands it!

So, that's what I've been up to this week.  I hope I can keep juggling all these things into the next few weeks.  Until then, tschüss.

Achievement Report - April 13, 2013

This week has been another random cleanup week for achievement hunting.  Things were looking pretty grim for Team Lazy Eye in the final hours of this week's scoring period.  Despite racking up another thousand TA score with an hour to spare, we're not in the clear yet - due to problems with Xbox Live, the organizers have delayed this week's elimination.  Now six teams will be eliminated next weekend, and scores won't be reset today, so we still need to dig out of this hole...

Here's what I've done this week, though:

I continued to work on the Tomb Raider multiplayer, trying to reach level 60 and be done with it.  Unfortunately, I ran into a series of weird glitches (including, among other things, unlocking the Shopaholic achievement well before I had really earned it), and the next day all my multiplayer progress had been reset.  Now I'll have to grind up to level 60 from scratch.  That probably won't happen for quite some time...

I also continued the slow process of crafting better armor and weapons in Terraria this week.  I grabbed a couple achievements, including one for defeating my first hard mode boss, and I managed to get a full set of Adamantite Armor, which is the best armor I can currently make.  I also nabbed one of the pets (there are apparently five total), so I'm slowly making all kinds of progress.  I figure I'm probably still a few dozen hours from full completion, but it's still an entertaining ride, so I'm not complaining.

For a new game, I've been playing Toy Soldiers.  I've been a sucker for tower defenses since playing Wintermaul in Warcraft III, and Toy Soldiers definitely satisfies that desire.  It's not a bad game, and most of the achievements seem pretty straightforward (a lot are story-related), and those that aren't straightforward look to be easily obtained (there's a level select screen).  The biggest problem I'm facing with this game is that it's not really fun for long stretches, only in really short bursts, so it's hard to power through all the achievements.

Today, I started up another new one: Retro City Rampage.  After only 6-7 hours of playtime, I've finished the story and have almost wiped up all the achievements.  So, from an achievement point of view, Retro City Rampage is easy-peasy, doable in under 10 hours of game time.

In non-GTASC gaming, I barely scraped another 7-day Avatar of Jarlsberg ascension in KoL this week.  After going into day 7 in fantastic position (I was about 25 turns away from the end of the war at the end of day 6), I nearly lost it when it took over 80 adventures to get a disease to pass the tower, and another 20 to get powdered organs.  Still, I finished with 17 turns to spare, so I've started yet another AoJ run.  I'm hoping to finish this one in 6 days, but that's obviously going to depend on some RNG love.  We'll see...

Oh, I also forgot to mention last week that I managed to get third place in the Hyrule clan ascension contest with my 19-day 100% Black Cat run in Bad Moon.  My prize was a shiny (?) Rock Lobster, which runs about 900k in the mall.  Sweet!

My newest baby.

As usual, I have played a number of StarCraft II matches as well, getting a couple dozen more Team Random wins.  I played a few vs. AI games, too, trying to finish the Race Command achievements, and managed to snag some wins against Elite AI.  It wasn't nearly as bad as I'd expected (either Elite is softer than the Very Hard AI used to be, or I really have gotten a lot better at the game over the last few years), so the vs AI Elite achievements may not be totally out of reach.  I'll keep giving it a shot in the next few weeks and see what happens.

I also hit 250 Team Protoss wins.  I still need about 400 more Random wins, then I'll have to clean up the specific race achievements.  Terran's going to be nasty...  Slow and steady, but I'm definitely getting there.

Also a measure of my relative skill with the three races...

And that's it for this week.  I have some big plans for the next week, so hopefully I'll have something exciting to report come this time next Saturday.  Until then, tschüss.

Weekly Achievement Report - April 6, 2013

Coming up on the last 24 hours of this week's scoring period for the GTASC, our team was in dead last - by over 1,300 points.  That deficit was largely my fault, as TA Ratios tend to be terribly inflated immediately after a game's release (most people haven't had enough time to play through the game, so it takes a while for the ratios to equilibrate).  In a desperate attempt to avoid elimination and placing 79th in the contest, I whipped out some of my big boosters.  It was a Gamerscore blitz, and it helped save Team Lazy Eye from eliimination this week.  Here's what I played (as well as everything else I played this week):

I finally finished PowerUp Heroes.  It's a surprisingly decent game, and most of the achievements can be earned in a couple of hours.  The last one for reaching level 10, however, takes several hours of grinding.  The game can still probably be finished in 7 or 8 hours, but those last few hours are painfully tedious.  It was worth a whopping 788 TA Score, though, so that did a lot to pull us out of the hole.

I also worked on X-Blades, getting all but the achievement for 10,000 kills.  Some of the in-game cheats don't disable achievements, which makes this otherwise clunky game a lot more manageable.  At some point I'd like to go back and play through it all legitimately, just to see how it plays out, but it gave a nice 1,400 TA Score in a rather short time, so it was a huge success in saving Team Lazy Eye.

I started Fruit Ninja Kinect, which, while simple, is both surprisingly fun and an impressive workout.  I'll definitely be coming back to this one soon.  And the achievements come pretty easily, without needing to do much more than just play the game and get high scores.  They're not really "achievements" because they're so easy, but it was a big help in avoiding elimination.

As in the last few weeks, I've been slowly chipping away at some of the other time-consuming achievements.  Tomb Raider multiplayer matches and working towards defeating Terraria bosses (by slowing mining and forging better items) have therefore taken up some of my time.

I completed another Avatar of Jarlsberg ascension in KoL, too.  That one clocked in at 7 days, 1,053 turns. I think that the next few runs will be comparable; the next quantum leap will happen when I'm able to get Lunch Like a King early in the run.

My last few ascensions, including my lifetime stats.

As it stands, my skill-path strategy is to start with Breakfast, getting The Most Important Meal (turn gen), Egg Man (+item), and up to Fry (food and combat skills), then jumping to Dinner, going up to Grill (that lets me make Perfect Breakfasts for a good diet) and grabbing Never Late for Dinner along the way.  I then work my way down Dessert so I can get Chocolatesphere (-combat is pretty darned useful).  With the extra few skill points I get, I've been investing in Coffeesphere (helps with the lighthouse war quest), Best Served Cold (bonus damage is always nice), and Food Coma (rests that recover all MP allow me to summon several extra resolutions each day).

In a couple more runs, I'll ignore Best Served Cold and Food Coma in favor of the Path of Lunch for the extra stomach capacity. I'll approach my limit when I can get both Lunch Like a King and Nightcap on day 1; hopefully that'll put me in the 5-day ascension range.  It's just a couple more weeks to find out.

And, of course, I've been playing some StarCraft II throughout the week.  I still haven't gone back to the Swarm campaign to mop up the Mastery achievements, but I've been inching ever closer to the achievements for 1,000 wins with each race.  Plus I'm increasing my Swarm race levels: I'm up to 13 Terran, 17 Zerg, and 14 Protoss.  You can tell which is my best and which is my worst...

Hopefully next week will be a bit smoother...  See you then!

Weekly Achievement Report - March 30, 2013

This week's gaming was similar to last week's, where I was primarily focused on a small number of games.

Tuesday's big release, BioShock Infinite (review forthcoming), took up most of my gaming time this week.  I completed the campaign on Hard, earning the related difficulty achievements.  Many of the non-collectible achievements come pretty easily, so long as you take note of them: The weapon-specific achievements aren't bad if you stop using a particular weapon once you've gotten enough kills, and the Vigor achievements are similar.  Getting 20 kills with possessed machines was tough on Hard, but I think that is mainly because the enemies are able to destroy the machines before any of them die; it'll probably be easier to farm on easier difficulties.  I had similar difficulties with the Sky-Line related achievements, so I think those will be easier to farm on easier settings, too.  The collectibles aren't too bad, particularly considering that there are already a number of collectible guides floating around the 'net.

All-in-all, I think the achievements in BioShock Infinite are pretty straightforward with one exception: completing the game on 1999 Mode without purchasing anything from a Dollar Bill machine.  The Dollar Bill machines sell ammo and healing items, and 1999 Mode is quite a bit harder than even Hard; I'm expecting the big battle near the end of the game to be a serious pain to complete.

With some careful planning, you can probably earn all the achievements in BioShock Infinite in a single playthrough (you can apparently unlock 1999 Mode from the main menu, so you'd only need one run to get that), although two is probably a safer, more comfortable bet, and two-and-a-half might be even better, giving you a nice chance to farm kills on lower difficulty settings.  With a campaign that takes somewhere around 15 hours to complete, a full game completion seems reasonable in about 30 hours.

I also picked up Wednesday's new XBLA title, Terraria.  It's an amazingly addictive game, but the achievement list is brutal - defeating all the bosses and collecting all the armor is going to take a lot of time.  As I haven't made a whole lot of progress on the achievements (after about 15 hours), I'll refrain from any more comments, but it's clear at this point that it's definitely worth the purchase and the achievements truly are achievements.

I managed to complete my next Avatar of Jarlsberg ascension in the Kingdom of Loathing, too.  Nabbed that one right before rollover last night (which is part of the reason this post was so delayed), and even with the distraction of Arrrbor Day, it was an 8-day run.  I think that puts me pretty solidly in the under-a-week region, so I should be able to start churning out AoJ ascensions in the coming weeks.  I'm excited for that.

Aside from the above, I haven't done much gaming in the last week.  I played a few multiplayer matches in Tomb Raider and StarCraft II, but there hasn't been anything really noteworthy there.  I don't think there are any really exciting releases on the horizon, so I'm hoping this next few weeks will be pretty epic in terms of both achievement completion (I'm going to keep working on Tomb Raider, BioShock Infinite, and Terraria) and in raw numbers (so I can overcome the deficit that will come with decaying TA Ratios for newly-released games).  Hopefully Team Lazy Eye can keep from getting eliminated this week...

Weekly Achievement Report - March 23, 2013

My achievement hunting this week has been limited to three games:

The recent Tomb Raider reboot (review forthcoming) has taken up most of my time.  I still have several time-consuming multiplayer achievements to mop up, plus a couple story mode things that I missed, necessitating another playthrough.  Most of the story mode achievements are pretty straightforward, but the multiplayer is quite a grind, requiring many matches to reach the necessary rank.  I'll try to clean it up in the next couple weeks, but I think the multiplayer is going to take a long time to finish...

I've also been playing a lot of StarCraft II, although that one doesn't help my team with the Great TrueAchievement Score Challenge.  I'm slowly approaching the elusive 1000 wins achievements (one for each race option in both solo and team multiplayer matches), and I'm inching towards the maximum level for each race in Heart of the Swarm.

Also, in the Kingdom of Loathing, I finished my second Avatar of Jarlsberg run and started my third.  It's going quite well, now, with that second run down to 9 days.  The next should be better, as I've had access to  a much better diet since day 1.  I'm hoping for something in the realm of 6-7 days, so we'll see.

Not really a whole lot of achievement progress this week, but enough to be (somewhat) respectable.

See you next time.

What's New in the Kingdom - Avatar of Jarlsberg

Last night saw the introduction of the spring 2013 challenge path in the Kingdom, the Avatar of Jarlsberg.  Following in Boris’ footsteps, the avatar of the patron god of pastamancers and saucerors excels with the overlap of food and magic, baking enemies and summoning potatoes.  AoJ is the first of the special challenge classes to focus on mysticality, so it promises to give a great new Kingdom-dominating experience.

Along with a new path come two excitingly detailed features.  First is a more complex set of skill trees than any we've seen before.  Four skill trees, each with eight skills and a few branches, give the Avatar of Jarlsberg more skills and more options than any class that came before it.  The effects of most of the skills are pretty standard (elemental resistances, increased or decreased combat frequency, increased monster level, and combat skills), but a few are pretty sexy (like summoning food items, or turning those food items into familiar-replacing companions), so there’s a lot of potential.

AoJ also presents a new food-crafting system.  Instead of acquiring food in the usual way (“Jarlsberg didn't trust food he didn't make himself”), the Avatar gets access to Jarlsberg’s Cosmic Kitchen, complete with a cookbook showing how to combine summoned foods with combat skills to make consummate foodstuffs.  There are additional instructions, too, allowing for immaculate or even sublime consumables.  The interplay between the skill trees and diet provide for a new, thrilling perspective on the Kingdom’s normal diet mechanics.

It’s a bit too early to see if there are significant changes to the game’s story (although there’s almost certainly a new final boss), but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the main Council quests have interesting twists for the Avatar.

All-in-all, I’m eager to experience all the ins and outs of the new challenge path, so I'm going to get to it.

Zombie Slayer Optimization - Step 1: Setting the Baseline

Between Bad Moon runs, I’m going to try optimizing the other types of ascensions I may attempt.  In each of the different challenge paths, my best runs are mostly between 4 and 7 days, but all of those runs were completed before the recent revamp of the Level 8 and 9 quests.  The Level 9 quest in particular seems like a massive barrier to the modern speedrunner, so I want to do a few runs to try to figure out the best way to handle those new quests.  I’m hoping to achieve 4-day runs across the board, so a lot of modifications will likely need to be made, assuming it’s even possible.

What follows is a day-by-day commentary on my recently completed Hardcore Zombie Slayer run.  The goal is to look at what happens each day and isolate some improvement that can be made.  I'll only mention the major milestones; once I have a more-or-less optimal run strategy down, I'll describe everything in a lot more detail. 

For the record, my relevant Items of the Month are the Reagnimated Gnome (familiar that increases item drops), Bear Arms (a vital item, these occupy my main and offhand slots throughout the entirety of my runs), and a VIP Key (vital for the Fax Machine and buffs from the Pool Table and Swimming Pool).  I have also completed enough Zombie Slayer runs to start with 30 skill points, allowing me access to every skill from turn one, and I have an Astral Belt, which I wear continuously until I hit level 13.

Day 1:

Hit level 8, completed all council quests up to 7

Received Stomach of Steel

Pretty well optimized:

Hovering Sombrero to start, fax lobsterfrogman on turn 1

Hovering Skull until level 6

Switch to Sombrero and rush to Stomach

Complete quests as possible

Notable ideas:

Run Reagnimated Gnome during Friars to increase chances of Hot Wings; will that reduce stat gains too significantly?

Day 2:

Halfway to level 10, completed all available council quests

Unlocked Hidden Temple (with spare Stone Wool), Haunted Ballroom, and Pirate’s Cove

Prepped GMoB

Completed Daily Dungeon run

Sad optimization:

Hovering Sombrero unless actively looking for item drops (like in the eXtreme Slope and Orc Chasm)

Hit the Shore when the timer expires to get all the Tower items and unlock Island

Complete Daily Dungeon run

Spend adventures between council quests by prepping for future – unlocking Hidden Temple, unlocking parts of the Manor, prepping GMoB, unlocking Poop Deck, gathering pixels, gathering and identifying DoD potions

Notable Suggestions:

Improve Orc Chasm quest –

Make the bridge more quickly?

Survive A-Boo Peak Map for an extra round?

Increase +ML above 100 to speed up Oil Peak?

Better/easier stench resistance for Twin Peak?

Thoughts:

Can’t see a good way to get enough +ML to push above 100, so that may have to stay.

A-Boo Peak might benefit from waiting until level 11 and Black Market – Can of Black Paint gives extra elemental resistance, and extra HP may allow to survive one more round

Stench resist for Twin Peak benefits similarly

Idea:

Build bridge and complete Oil Peak at level 9, wait until level 11 to finish quest


Day 3:
Just hit level 11, started Macguffin quest
Finished Giant's Castle
Got everything I needed from the Hole in the Sky
Made a Digital Key
Collected and identified all the Dungeons of Doom potions
Unlocked Haunted Gallery, Belowdecks, Hidden City, and Spookyraven Cellar
Completed Daily Dungeon run

Acceptable optimization:
Stubbornly ran the Sombrero for most of the day
Spent adventures between Council quests cleaning up future necessities (mainly unlocking areas)
Completed Council quests as they became available
Completed a bounty at the Airship - Score!
This day was mostly about preparing for the future and hitting level 11; not a whole lot to be improved there.

Notable Suggestions:
Run the Gnome any time that I need a drops (pixels, potions, Giant's Castle, Hole in the Sky, etc.)
Powerlevel after completing all future preparations


Day 4:
Finished the Macguffin quest
Finished the war, completing 4 sidequests, with just 3 adventures remaining

Excellent optimization:
Used Gnome while in Spookyraven Cellar, Palindome, and Oasis
Picked up a mojo filter in Oasis, allowing a second Astral Energy Drink
Hit the Gallery to reach level 12
Took nearly 20 adventures to get GMoB, but other sidequests went quickly
Finished the war 9 Muscle away from level 13

Notable Suggestions:
None, this day went about as well as possible, save for the RNG


Day 5:
Finished the run 50 adventures into day 5

Optimization:
The lair was just the lair, standard fare



So, I missed the 4-day goal by 50 adventures.  I think this run was representative of most, as the RNG wasn't particularly bad or good overall.

For the next run (which won't happen for a while, as the next challenge path should appear tomorrow), I should be able to shave a few turns off by using the Gnome more vigorously at various points (when going for the Friar's quest, Dungeons of Doom potions, and the Giant's Castle, most notably).  The place with most room for improvement is definitely the level 9 quest - my plan is to construct the bridge and complete Oil Peak at level 9, but then wait until level 11 to complete the other parts.  That way I'll have access to a Can of Black Paint for extra elemental resistance to make the other peaks easier.

There's definitely some room for improvement, but I'm still pretty proud of my 967-turn HC ZM run (my best one yet!).