January 2025

 HOPEFULLY BRITANNIA WRITE-UP TBC

2024 retrospective

2024 was slightly better than the very good 2023 (by like 1 point) only because the lows weren’t as low; the highs of 2024 weren’t as high but it was consistently good.

Overview/Timeline

January - birthday battenberg, A, return to ATU for more coding 

February - ‘Triplecon’ Akuma-Itza-Athventurecons attended; visit L in Dublin 

March - voting, was sick, the hunt begins; Theo is 12

April - Japanese Film Festival, K, finished off ATU semester 3 

May - cycled 25 days in May, went to Sweden, then Finland, then Estonia

June - home from Estonia, ran 80 km, went to Amsterdam for a weekend

July - Film Fleadh, cycled 21/31 days, hi M, Westport

August - Hagstravaganza 10 in Sligo, London AEW ALL IN

September - Culture Night, final semester begins

October - musicals, Galway Comedy Festival, jury duty lmao

November - jury duty cancelled; elections, assignments, A

December - assignments, Japanese dinner, Christmas, 31 days of strollin’

Music

46842 minutes on YouTube Premium. Slight increase from last year’s number, but it did say I had about 12000+ minutes listening to podcasts so not sure. An entire 30 days of listening to YouTube? Sounds about right.

Top 5 tracks according to Premium:

1. Stone Cold Steve Austin theme (lol, see Exercise)

2. Cult of Personality

3. China In Your Hand

4. Plush

5. Final Song

My actual top 5 (I think)

1. Just Close Your Eyes

2. Final Song

3. Rather Be

4. Plush

5. Tick Tock

Top track(s) by month:

January - COP, CIYH, the FF3 Field Theme (various) hangovers from 2023

February - Red Wine Supernova (Chappell Roan) L’s fault; the only Roan song I know

March - No Forever (Elaine Mai, MayKay) IYKYK

April - Tick Tock (Mabel) love it

May - Rather Be (Cleanest of Banditos) so good?

June - You’re in Love with a Psycho (Kasabian) fun music video. Slightly cursed

July - Plush (STP) Fab. It’s in GTA:San Andreas but it’s also quite famous

August - Final Song (MØ) Love her voice. Reminds me of Sigrid, Robyn etc Scandies

September - Cry Baby (Paloma Faith) a return from 2017/2018 whenever it was

October - Metalingus (Alter Bridge) Brood vibes

November - Just Close Your Eyes (Story of the Year/Waterproof Blonde) Fantastic

December - When You’re Gone (Cranberries) Mixed up with SOC; fabulous

Movies/TV

So 39 ish things watched? Pretty damn good anyway. I would say my fave movie this year was Conclave, a very late horse in the race to beat Furiosa. Fave tv series has to be either Shogun or Fallout, but Reindeer was good, the Boys etc. lots of good stuff.

Games by month 2024

• January - Ocarina of Time, Fallouts 3,4,NV (Very Hard, Unarmed runs)

• February - FF8 REMASTERED, FF12

• March - FF12, FF7 og

• April - GTA4 100% completion

• May - New Vegas, Civ 4

• June - FFX, Fortnite, DayZ

• July - DayZ

• August - DayZ, FF13, Resident Evil 1

• September - Kingmaker, Outer Worlds (blogged both)

• October - Civ4, Fallouts 3,4,NV (Very Hard, Endurance 1 runs)

• November - Fallout 4, Cod Blops

• December - Counter Strike Source, Civ 6 (still playing this)

More Fallout once again, my comfort video game series at this point. I also did most of my fave Final Fantasy games again, but quit halfway through 13, just too bleh. I blogged about most of the rest of these this year. Civ 6 is my current game and is pretty damn great, so much stuff to do. On 123/320 achievements atm.

Reading

I read the AJ Lee book around the start of the year, and it was very interesting. I also managed to finish ‘Germany Divided’, a history book looking at the pains of unification in 1990. Other than that I didn’t read much, the first two Sandman graphic novels come to mind. Need to go back to those.

I was also re-reading Rise and Fall again on and off but generally didn’t make much time for reading. Will have to re-learn the habit. I've fallen far from my almost nightly ritual of reading in bed from 2015-2020. I was also pretty consistent most of my childhood and teens.

Exercise

Walking

I didn’t walk all that much this year until the very end when I did an arbitrary ‘walk 31 days of December’ personal challenge. Mostly I would just be walking home from the cinema/pub on Thursday nights or if out on a Friday or Saturday. Did a lot of walking into town for nights out as well to save on taxis. So I started walking a lot more in December, also because my hips and knees are turning to dust. Hard to tell any progress so far but feeling fine and have even worn a 20 kg weighted vest to spice things up. Stay tuned.

Cycle

I cycled a bit more often in 2023 but still managed to do almost as many cycles in 2024 and more distance. Traffic and cars are just such a pain. By the end of the year I was only cycling on weekends. Will probably continue this trend into 2025, I usually only cycle on weekdays more in the summertime (May-August) as there are less students in town.

Running

I ran 48 times this year, with only 346 km done. 12 of those runs were in June when I did the Laura Lynn 80km challenge. I peaked around there, my legs started to fall apart later in the year and I stopped in late October.

Lifting

Chest/bb - still doing 2 chest and triceps a week and 2 back and biceps. I reduced a lot of the weight as it's just not working for me, will try something different again in January.

I used to plank to a few different 3 minute tracks, 1 minute plank, 1 minute rest, then 1 minute plank, but I largely settled on the original Stone Cold Steve Austin theme ‘Hell Froze Over’ and with 612 listens, 2 planks per listen, means 1224 planks (by late November). That’s almost twice what I did the year before, so that’s good.

Travel

Dublin - February 

I got to stay very near the Spire, visit the Gin Palace, hang out with L.

Sweden-Finland-Estonia May/June

I hadn't been to Sweden, Sverige, since 2012. Finland, 2019 and same for Estonia, 2019. The latter two are dear to my heart. I think I blogged about them elsewhere but was a good trip.

Amsterdam June

I didn't really budget for this but went to see L again while they were on this continent. Amsterdam is always a good time so was not a stretch.

Mayo July

Always a good time with the fam! Climbed Croagh Patrick once again.

Sligo August

Hagstravaganza 10! A nice trip and got to stay the night in nice accommodation with 4 friends.

UK London August

Myself and my cousin got to see AEDubya All IN 2. Was fun but a lighting quick trip.

Work/College

I didn't work at all in 2024. College was fine, 2 modules in Semester 3 and 3 in Semester 4. I think leaving a year between Java was my undoing; though I'm still doing the final Java OOP assignment as of writing, it will decide whether I get a 2:1 or 1:1; I don't really deserve the latter so we shall see.

Writing

I passed on writing during NaNoWriMo 2024; I did it at last during 2023 and the whole organisation is just too cursed. I'll write at my own leisure... one day it will all see life.

Wrestling

I didn't really watch much wrestling this year, other than obviously AEW All In in August. Oh I watched Wrestlemania 40 and it largely went the way I thought it would. Though I still follow the backstage gossip via podcasts I have chilled out a lot on my following.

D&D/board gaming

I recently updated here on my 5e game, other than that I played very few, if any, board games. I will correct this in 2025, tbc.

My own weird shit

Personal challenges per month (cycling, running, walking, post per x etc) I ran 346km in 48 runs (not great) 108 cycles for 1217km (little less than last year) and walked 200km in December anyway.

Necut? It still does be developed. It is at the point now where it has a life of its own. I decide something and organically, of its own accord, it defies me. Tbc.

If I refer to you/ye in some way, it's cause I like ya.

The blog itself

2 post per month

Terrible idea but admirable. Will revert to 1 a month in 2025.

Plans for 2025

Stay alive and thrive!

December post #1 Civilization VI "initial thoughts"

 I picked up Civ 6 within the last year or so plus some of the DLC. It was just sitting there, unused, as I was still trying to clear Civ 5 of all achievements. I only have 7 achievements left for Civ 5 but they are all the absolute hardest ones.

So with Civ 7 on the horizon (Feb 2025) and spotting that Civ 6 was on sale for 6 euro on Steam a few days ago, I bought a copy for Cathy as a 'Christmas present' and we played our first game ever.

I went for Peter of Russia because in this version he is the leader/civ with extra added border expansion upon founding a city. Build a city, start with extra territory. Love that. The Shoshone in Civ 5 were my faves because they could do that. Cathy went for Catherine de Medici of France.

It was OK, some initial confusion on both our parts but we managed to push through as far as the renaissance or just before the industrial era, I can't recall exactly.

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I played another couple games after that by myself, one as Russia and one as the Netherlands on an islands map.

I won the second game and my first ever victory by Diplomacy somehow? I had launched the spaceship and was waiting for it to land and then randomly I had acquired enough Diplomatic votes or whatever to win. None of the drama of Civ 4 where it's a binary choice for Diplomatic Victory and you can see the votes tallied afterward, or the very clear tomfoolery of Civ 5 with city-states inflating your votes. It just sort of happens. The Congress in 6 is worse than 5 for sure.

I won my second game (barely) by score; Archipelago, Standard, Quick, Netherlands (randomly chosen). It's an islands game so no one was anywhere near productive enough for space. There were less than 50 turns left and I spotted I was maybe 100 points or so behind Genghis Khan who had settled all over the map. I just settled 3-4 towns on random scraggly islands to inflate my score and destroyed a bunch of districts to build Wonders and took the lead.

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Warfare is difficult, not that it's hard to do but units last way longer, cities are almost impossible to reduce health/have shields now because of walls and stuff. I fired a nuke at someone after my Diplomatic Victory and I spotted it reduced health and shields to 0 so that was good I guess. I also fired a nuke at a volcano near St. Petersburg for the craic, damn thing kept going off.

Natural disasters kind of suck, I think they're cool it's pretty ominous when the game suddenly zooms in on them happening but I find the penalties seem to outweigh the benefits. In that Russia game I had a volcano next to my capital and had 4 cities around it and built my Campus districts around it so every time it rumbled it would blow them up. My science rate didn't suffer that badly as I could rebuild them quickly but was tedious.

I LOVE Eurekas. Adds a lot of incentive to try and do a whole load of different things in order to speed up a discovery of a tech or civic.

Districts and governors are kind of cool but after a while it all boils down to my main takeaway from 2 and a half games played:

It's just like Civ 5, but not as good (so far). I'll keep at it for a while but I'm not blown away.

November post #2 Even more Fallout 3,4,NV: Endurance 1 'challenges'

So I had only played them all in January 2024 but here we go again.

Who in Brazil is looking at this horseshit?

 

Fallout: New Vegas No companions no uniques Endurance 1 Very Hard/Hardcore Mode

 

In January all I did was have no companions as well as the rest of the titled info BUT this time I started a character with Endurance 1, I think, to challenge myself by not being able to buy all of the implants. But then I realised Endurance 1 in of itself was challenging, as I started with very little HP and it’s Very Hard mode so enemies are tougher and Hardcore mode so my limbs would be broken a lot.

 

I made it to level 50 this time, plus all my skills were 100 long before that. I also completed every DLC and did almost every quest I possibly could before siding with Yes Man.

 

Fallout 3 Very Hard Endurance 1

 

This was kind of fun to return to but also not.

 

I was Very Evil for the craic, was a lot of fun and just shows how much we

 

I only did Operation Anchorage

 

I got bored eventually as enemies became bullet sponges and every cell of the map had a Deathclaw or high-level enemy in it.

 

Fallout 4 Endurance 1 Survival Mode

 

No real restrictions here, just play through as much as I want.

 

I hate the companions in Fallout 4, they just get in the way. I usually recruit the Dog for a short period but usually fire him when I get my bearings.

 

I spent 50+ levels and about 44 hours of gametime so far and I have not entered Diamond City. Mostly just conquering various settlements!

 

 

 

 

November post #1 sequel to YouTube 'Shuffleall' playlist, a history of my musical tastes 2006-2015; - 2016-2023

 I had previously documented my musical tastes from 2006-2015, I will now attempt something similar by analysing the Shuffleall playlist from 2015-2023 that I have. A lot of songs have been deleted by YouTube it seems like, also I stopped updating the playlist as much around 2023ish.

2016 - lots of Iggy Pop Post Rock Depression followed by classics, I think I was re-watching Reeling in the Years a lot again here

2017 - I started working in a tiny factory and the radio was always set to TodayFM so finally I would be up to date music-wise. Lorde, Harry Styles, Kygo, Kasabian, Picture This, Liam Gallagher, Alice Merton, Sigrid... tons more.

2018 - we started putting on Classic Hits more here at work so it's a lot of ELO, Paul Hardcastle got in here, Sheryl Crow, Eric Clapton, on and on classics.

2019 - I was the de facto supervisor of evening shift in late 2019 for a few months so I would command my 'chef' to change the radio right before N*all B*ylan would come on. So we'd get to listen to classics for the first half of the shift then current stuff. Ava Max, Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, more Sigrid, Freya Ridings, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish...

2020 - global panini! Westlife managed to return here, SZA, Alan Walker, Doja Cat, Halsey, Gavin James, Glass Animals, BENEE... all featured here. I was on night shift so some fuckig weird shit would play at 4am.

2021 - this is where my records start to fall off. Little Mix? Coldplay? They had stuff out this year. 2021 sucked for me so I wasn't paying much attention. Olivia Rodrigo too.

2022 - I quit work in July so thus ended my exposure to whatever the top of the pops was. Gayle I guess before I left?

2023 - I don't know  

2024 - The only new song I'm aware of is Red Wine Supernova... and it was released in 2023 oops.

October 2024 post #2 notes on my current 5e campaign

I finished my last game in 2022 and in 2023 I ran a few random bits and pieces but I started a new 5e campaign in January 2024.

 

I elected to only have 2 players this time around so that a quorum could be easily established. If one person drops out, the game is off. Easy.

 

The party

 

Royce is playing a Lizard Rogue. He elected to have the standard subclass Thief. So far he has made great use of Steady Aim and Sneak Attack. As he usually plays Barbarians or at least front line attackers, this has been a nice change for him. He has also dealt tons of damage with Sneak Attack.

 

Cian was playing an Aasimar Paladin. He chose Devotion as his subclass. He is super hard to hit with his armour and shield on and likes to cast Shield O’Faith. He doesn’t bother with smiting for some reason so his damage output has been less but he has been a reliable tank.

 

They have been assisted at various points by a Warforged Cleric of Life who functioned as a heal bot. Also they have hired a variety of mercenaries at various points.

 

Mainly to reduce the amount of time I would spend managing the various NPCs and monsters I had them create secondary PCs who would help them and be tied to their XP levels. Royce chose a Barbarian Dwarf and Cian a Aarakocra Warlock. This was at level 9.

 

The campaign

 

I had always wanted to run The Enemy Within campaign. I had briefly ran it before for Cathy and Royce in Warhammer 1st edition and we got as far as the end of Book 2 Shadows over Bogenhafen. That was in 2016 I think. So 8 years later I got past that point, through book 3 as far as the final book, 5, skipping book 4 and 4a (Power Behind the Throne, Kislev).

 

Intro

 

They started separetly but were taken into slavery. They were made to fight in a gladiatorial arena but managed to escape.

 

1. Mistaken Identity

 

An exact, dead clone of one of the PCs was found on a route they were travelling on. Afterwards they were being pursued by some sort of bounty hunter who seemed to want the PC who resembled the clone dead.

 

2. Shadows Over Bogenhafen

 

Bogenhafen! They briefly attended the festival only to be forced to find the escaped three-legged goblin. In the sewers they encountered some sort of mythical demon guarding an altar. The city watch and council seemed terribly uninterested.

After further investigation and being made scapegoats for a murder, they managed to track down the site of the ritual being conducted to open a Chaos gate. As usual, failure in WFRP is encouraged so they were unable to stop the ritual occurring and demons sacked the town, complete with Tzeentch itself gobbling the fleeing crowds.

The PCs managed to escape anyway.

 

3. Death on the Reik

 

The boat! They acquired a boat after the events in Bogenhafen. They used it to trade goods for a little while and briefly a 3rd player character joined the campaign only to leave again.

Once again they clashed with various cultists and after much back and forth via the rivers of the Empire they acquired all the keys needed to find otu more about the mystery.

Castle Wittgenstein became their final destination - they sided with the outlaws and agreed to assault the cursed castle. They spared the life of the twisted (but affable) master of the castle but slew the true enemy, his mad necromancer daughter and her creation.

A skirmish with the cultists and the ratmen followed underneath the castle, which resulted in almost everyone dying and the warpstone being seized by the Skaven. Cian's character was brought back via Reincarnation, the only spell available to the Archdruid leading the outlaws. He came back as a Dwarf! The cleric GMPC came back as a human lady.

 

4. (Not-Middenheim)

 

I went back and forth on running Power Behind the Throne. It was such a change from the usual fighting of a 5e game that I decided eventually not to run it. Considering we only play virtually and with mics only a social game is much harder to run. I would be interested in returning to this as a mini campaign or whatever in future. There’s just so much content. Also I’ve never played Kislev so that was probably never going to happen anyway.

 

5. Empire in Flames

 

While we briefly started a sandbox dungeon/players-as-rulers simulation I quickly decided I wanted to wrap up the Enemy Within campaign first.

They got as far as the Crown Prince turning into a demon at the start of October 2024. Soon they will need to go and find the eponymous Warhammer of Warhammer Fantasy and discover the true heir to the throne.

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The monsters

 

I ran pretty much every Fiend/Demon enemy I could in the 2020-2022 campaign plus many types of Giant, Construct, Elementals plus some Celestials, Beasts and Abominations.

 

This time around it was like a return to my old 3e games circa 2010 - lots of humanoid enemies! This was in part due to the Warhammer setting.

 

Stuff I learned

 

In-person games needed

 

I love combat and have neglected roleplay

 

Notes on Roll20, D&D Beyond, Beyond20 etc

 

Roll20 pro/plus membership etc; space issues, terrible inner search engine

 

Beyond - shafted by sub; technical bugs here and there

 

Beyond20 is still great but occasional hiccup

 

For the future

 

I’d like to run Power Behind the Throne (in person) and maybe a Kislev/all the other Warhammer 1e scenarios/campaigns like the Grapes of Wrath, Lichemaster etc.

 

I’d spent hours coding/figuring out the rules of Space Crusade and making it playable on Roll20. I need to run at least one game to make sure it was worth it.

 

Other than that, it would be cool to run Call of Cthulhu, maybe Delta Green. I had an idea for a scenario years ago that I could dig up. My main issue with running CoC or World of Darkness of anything is my inability/unwillingness to read up on the lore of these settings. They’re just too dense. I’d rather use real life stuff or my own creations.

Other than that I have a few board games and whatnot I would like to run sometime soon.

 

Love/Hate #49 The Outer Worlds 45/68 achievements

My eyes were bleeding after Pathfinder so I took a break then played Outer Worlds for the first time ever.

Then 2 days later I finished it! 23 hours and 45 of the 68 achievements got.

I ran a melee character for simplicity and on the easiest difficulty and it was fine, a little bit boring a playstyle.

Within minutes of playing it, it reminded me of Fallout 4. Sure enough it's that engine but with the writers of New Vegas.

Within a couple of hours it was clear the writing was way better than Fallout 4. FO4 plays better but Outer Worlds is better written.

Starting out

You are one of a small number of people frozen IN SPACE and are rescued by a mad scientist who wants to free the rest of them for reasons.

It's cool because you can choose the background of your character to an extent, all of the jobs have an influence on what skills you possess. I chose Sous Chef as it directly affected 1 handed weaponry.

Oh YES I saw a resemblance to Sister Sage so I made her hair pink and went from there, only later to find out one of the companions you get looks exactly the same. Oops! Oh well.

Landing on a nearby world your accidentally kill your contact there and thus become de facto captain of the (Un)Reliable. After a bit of a tutorial.

The Unreliable is EXACTLY like the Serenity from Firefly. Well, pretty damn close. I loved that anyway.

Upon becoming a space faring captain you do get impounded at your next destination, the giant ship called the Groundbreaker but after some wrangling you are free to travel around a bit.

Later you unlock more destinations. I kind of liked the semi-linear nature of the game for the first half, then later it becomes more like a run of New Vegas or Skyrim where you fast travel around a lot.

I spent a long time trying to get a particular achievement to pop, killing 50 enemies with a blockball stick or whatever. Turns out I had already unlocked it without me realising and was just beating enemies to death with the equivalent of a metal cricket bat/croquet mallet.

The companions

Parvati - I thought she was cute and a nice addition to the party but painfully awkward. Dragging her around the galaxy to get her date sorted was a chore but rewarding.

Vicar Max - I credit him with making me think this game was worth playing. A holy man with a dark past, I found his 'companion move' one of the coolest. The moment I started to like this game was when I brought him the book he wanted before he joined the party and it's in French and he's furious. I lol'd.

Felix - a kind of forgettable anarchist of sorts, I made sure to do all his quests before I sided with the evil all-powerful Board. His dropkick move is hilarious.

Ellie - a noble pirate doctor. Hell of a combination. Did not use her much but she often quizzed me on my choices, why was I supporting the Board and such. Made me nervous when she did that, thought she would betray me or something.

Nyoka - this total badass was a lot of fun to have around. I did quite enjoy her companion move even if every single time she has to throw down a glass bottle and go AHHHHH. Did a ton of damage though so she was cool.

SAM - I got this dude last and I loved that had A) No companion quest B) no cut in dialogue C) was in some sort of situation with Ada D) fired double ACID launchers E) had a cool special move and F) was very strong and durable in the field.

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There is an achievement for acquiring a companion (almost impossible to miss unless you tell them all to fuck off). There is an achievement for getting all 6 of them. There are achievements for completing one companion's quest line and for completing all of their questlines. Upon doing so for each one you can power them up somewhat. 

I generally found the companions superflous but they were fun to have around for a while. Again, story mode difficulty makes companions less necessary but there is probably a sweet spot in the higher difficulty levels. They can be killed forever in the hardest difficulty so who knows.

This game also did a pretty good job of making the companions cut in during dialogue between you and various NPCs. In Fallout 4, they just arbitarily comment 'you tell 'em Blue' or some shite but here they can actually engage important NPCs in unique dialogue, depending on who you bring along. I often had Vicar Max with me who was happy enough with what I was up to. Parvati would nervously wonder if what we were doing was right but that was all.

Music and Maps

I really liked the OST. It starts off suitably grand sci fi and becomes more ominous as you explore the various worlds.

The planets you go to are so pretty.

I probably spent the most time on Monarch.

The mining asteroid world was gorgeous.

You must go back to the Serenity Unreliable in order to travel between worlds but once there (milliseconds) you can fast travel to any region you have found on the planet. Different worlds might have multiple regions with various settlements and points of interest.

Oh hi!

Finishing the game

After fucking around for a bit with various quests, it was time to end it.

On Monarch, Stellar Bay and the Iconoclasts can either go to war or make peace. 

I was following a (very light) guide that told me to get all related achievements I should make peace first, then reload and fight my way to the end with one side, then proceed. It did not say which way was better and the chatter online seemed mixed.

I was going to power on with one side wiped out (MSI) but reloaded and makde peace again. I'd rather that than the somewhat boring of Stellar Bay and having one side rule all.

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Same with Edgewater on the first planet. You can decided to keep it safe or destroy it with robots. Keeping it safe was easy for me as I had done all the quests so it was a mere dialogue choice not to destroy it. 

But reloading and opting to destroy it was a pain, especially as you then have to go and clear the town of robots anyway?

I reloaded AGAIN and chose via dialogue to keep Edgewater safe. There are good and bad endings for the game and various companions and factions are affected too but it is not that important (ie, no achievements are affected).

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Eventually you acquire the ship full of frozen ubermensch. You can choose to skip it across the galaxy with the help of your AI (advised) or try to do it yourself.

There is a special, unique, auto-fail ending wherein you are too stupid to do it correctly and fly the spaceship directly into the sun. I had made myself average intelligence at the start of the game (3/5) but with drug withdrawals I could get that to below average (2/5). This was NOT enough for the 'Dumb' option however. 

So, I was prepared to give up and do that another time but figured out through various Reddit posts and whatnot that if you suffer multiple concussions you can acquire a flaw that reduces your mental stats by 1, getting me to the requisite (1/5).

HOWEVER, I had all 3 Flaws acquired and thus could not get it. BUT I figured out that if you increase the difficulty to Hard, you can acquire more flaws. So I did that then spent a few minutes standing next to explosions and voila. I switched the difficulty back down to nothing and then flew the spaceship into the sun. The things I do for achievements.

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This brings you to the point of no return which is just one big level, some sort of intergalactic prison. I may have ceased to pay attention to the plot at this point. I decided to side with the Board and made the mad scientist the enemy. Bit of an anticlimax boss.

I became ruler of the galaxy and was treated to an ending slideshow, classic Obsidian. Most of the endings seemed to be OK?

20 hours to complete the game (some of that time was reloading to do alternate stuff) and another 3 hours afterward to get various achievements.

Achievement round-up

After completing the game I immediately set about clearing various achievements. Some of them involved me re-speccing my skills for a small fee inside the spaceship. So I abandoned my 100 points in 1 handed weapons for example for more shooty stuff.

I had NEVER used a gun prior to this, even for a second. So as soon as the game ended I fired my first projectile weapon.

On two separate occasions I had to slaughter all of Monarch's settlements. This was enough the second time to get the '3 factions hate you' achievement.

I think the other time was 'kill 100 enemies with plasma damage' which I achieved by a burning sword and flamethrower.

Killing 20 enemies with n-rays was very fun. I just did it to a bunch of villagers and guards.

Killing an enemy affected by all 5 damage types was very hard. I eventually found an enemy tanky enough for it but it was tough.

Kill an enemy with a science weapon was kind of difficult, it was fun trying to find all 5 of these for starters but then simply shot an old lady.

I also never used time dilation or whatever its called during the main quest, it's more important for shooting I think?

'Improve gear 30 times' refused to pop when I was using mods alone but it finally did when I spammed a bunch of 'tinkering' as well. This was not essential in any way on piss easy difficulty but it will be when I eventually do the harder modes.

Kill an enemy under the influence of 4 science weapons - again, very difficult to pull off in a sense but eventually managed it with the help of 2 allies armed with them as well. I ad almost soft-locked myself from getting one of them, it was in a lab full of poisonous gas I may have released.

Kill 30 automechanicals with shock damage - I had been taking care to whack robots with shock weapons but did not seem to do any damage. Maybe the weapons I was using were weak/underlevelled. After finishing the game, a shock gun helped a lot. Plus the city Byzantium had loads of robots for me to kill...

Use medical inhaler 300 times - apparently this counts across multiple runs and I'd probably used mine <50 times BUT I decided to simply buy 100~ from various shops and simply stood and inhaled all 100 or so, then reloaded and did it again until it popped.

Hit 30 enemies in the groin during time dilation - silly but possible in a regular playthrough? I went to my friendly local town guards and shot them all repeatedly in the nuts, while in slow mo.

Next time

The only achievements I have left are:

Kill 50 enemies with sneak attacks (I will run a shooty character next time)

Complete game on Hard difficulty (doable)

Complete game on Supernova difficulty (difficult but doable, the Hard one also unlocks if you get this)

Collect all achievements (need all other achievements first)

19 more achievements that are tied to the DLCs which I don't have yet.

Conclusion

Good game, not brilliant but a nice new addition to my gaming history. I look forward to playing it again sometime next year.

Time to move onto something else!