Love/Hate #44 Pathfinder: Kingmaker on Steam PC

 I am out of the gaming drought that occupied much of the summer. I got back from the States in early September and had to keep going so after many thoughts on role-playing games and wanting to play Baldur’s Gate 3 I opted for a compromise - my copy of Kingmaker which I’ve had the last few months. A friend recommended them to me a while back in 2022-2023 but as usual I bought both it and Wrath of the Righteous and then never played them. Fast forward to the latter half of 2023 and everyone is talking about BG3 for various reasons. I had to get in on this somehow but I ain’t paying 60 euro right now. Cue Pathfinder.

Pathfinder & Me

I had only played a couple of games of Pathfinder in real life - one a failed campaign that died after two sessions run by my brother which I had been looking forward to playing as a rogue for the first time. The other was a one-off convention game in Cork sometime around 2016-2017, a Pathfinder Society game to boot. I enjoyed myself both times despite the brevity. Why? It’s just D&D 3.5 baby! Only a little more refined. No wonder they called it D&D 3.75. I kind of missed the whole ‘4th edition sucks’ period - I missed all of 4th edition I’ve never played it - but played loads of 3.5 and of course now 5th edition. So I enjoy Pathfinder/3.75 to an extent but it is not without its problems. Enemies having (potentially) insanely high ACs turning combat into miss-fests is one.

Starting out

Pathfinder:Kingmaker is a CRPG. Computer RPG. I had dabbled in this genre before, my brief experience of Fallout 1 apparently is one time. I had played Neverwinter Nights before but couldn’t get into it. It’s a genre I could not get into. I’m not a huge fan of isometric views unless it’s some good old-fashioned Age of Empires of Civilization. Or the Sims. Anyway, I wasn’t sure how much I was going to enjoy playing it but I booted it up anyway mid-September and launched into the first chapter.

I made a human paladin, mainly because apparently there is no paladin companion unlocked later, and being Lawful Good and charismatic would be an alleged benefit to the ‘kingdom management’ which was a core part of the game later on. The first chapter was OK. It sort of pulled me in when I was lied about and placed under suspicion by my host for the attack on the mansion I just survived and helped repel. I would have to set out into the wilderness to clear my good name and in a race against the guy who lied about me being responsible for the attack. I had amassed a party of seven but lost three of them as the liar and two others went with him to the wilderness. I kept the friendly (if annoying) halfling bard Linzi, the savage barbarian lady Amiri and the valiant fighter shieldmaiden named Valerie. Our task? Go to the wilderness and defeat the Stag Lord and establish a kingdom in the Stolen Lands. No big.

I quite enjoyed this first chapter overall, I wasn’t sure how long I could keep going at that pace but I had cleared it in a couple of hours and had largely swept through the encounters. My party had even levelled up by the time I was through it and yes, it’s very pure 3.75 Pathfinder rules in managing that. You can assign feats, increase the six D&D attributes and various skills tied to them and select abilities and spells. You can also multiclass to your hearts’ content. I set out for the wilderness, confident that with myself, Amiri the barbarian and Valerie the shieldmaiden in front and Linzi buffing us with spells from behind we would have a glorious adventure.

Difficulty

Oh no. The difficulty in this game is insane. I had set it to ‘Normal’ at the start, which is the 4th of 7 possible options. 3 harder, insane difficulties which I ignored plus Easy, Story and Custom. It was like… I would have a couple of smooth encounters wherein my melee trio would slaughter foes and all would be well then every third encounter would just be a party wipe. This was not even a case of D&D using up your resources and just having gone a bridge too far - I wasn’t using any abilities outside of Bless, Channel Life, bard songs from Linzi, rage for Amiri and shield mode for Valerie. There were a number of times I would enter a location and it was just party wipe after party wipe and I would have to reload and go somewhere else. Fair, this happens in Final Fantasy and any RPG - you enter an area before you are supposed to, you generally die. But yeah I just found that I was whiffing all my hits, even with shield mode turned off, and combat was swingy. Either I would clear the enemy without a sweat or be wiped rapidly. Once one melee fighter went down it was usually the end for the other two. This kept up for a while, I managed to clear up as far as the Stag Lord and defeat him but afterwards when trolls swept my lands I opened up the customisable difficulty.

I switched enemies from ‘Slightly Easier enemies’ to ‘Moderately Easier enemies’ (from 3rd lowest to 2nd lowest difficulty setting in that dropdown menu) and reduced damage from enemies from 0.8 to 0.4, but I slightly regret that. I think the first thing fixed it for sure, difficulty became ‘Custom’ but that’s all I changed and suddenly the game became playable again. The debate over the difficulty of this game had already raged back in 2018 when it came out and the two camps seemed to be ‘git gud’ and ‘just lower it for your sanity’. I don’t want to switch to turn-based combat (the endless misses would kill me) and I’m fairly happy with the largely passive abilities and feats/teamwork feats I’ve chosen, allowing me to just supervise with the bard and the cleric in the back row while the various melee attackers just whale on the enemy. I can still be wiped if I’m not careful and big fights still need lots of potions, scrolls and abilities to buff me but that feels more balanced, not like an endless series of brick walls for me to bang my head off and walk away bloodied until I find the smoothest path to travel. What really set me over the edge was I was ambushed by like 10 Manticores at one stage and just sat back and laughed as my party was completely outflanked and slowly ripped to pieces. I approached that ambush thinking I’ll buff my way out of this and we’ll persevere, maybe with a few lasting injuries and lessons learned but nope. If this were 5e, I could rely on the ‘bounded accuracy’ to reliably hit the enemies balanced for my level a majority of the time. This is Pathfinder/3rd edition where ACs and stats go way beyond 30 all the time.

Mid-way through the second chapter I could see myself playing through this allegedly really long game and finishing it. I was tempted to give up on it out of lack of fun prior to this but with the difficulty where I wanted it I could see myself forging on. This was almost a ‘hate’ review.

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By the end of the game difficulty crept up again, I went to absolute lowest difficulty for the House at the Edge of Time because good lord. Perhaps I should have turned off experience sharing, wherein I got less experience as it was split 12 ways between all my party members whether they were in the current party or not. I never used 5-6 people so could have afforded to do so. I was level 17 entering the House (the final chapters) so maybe could have done with being closer to 20. Also I did use some guides to select my character advancements but got lazy in some cases. Also I did not manage my spellbooks well.

Kingdom management

Probably one of the most interesting and occasionally frustrating features of this game was the Kingdom Management. Throughout your reign as baron (and later, king) you would be confronted with an endless series of 'cards' - some were projects to be completed over time, others were opportunities you could ignore or invest time in and see if you get a good result (or a bad one). Expanding your kingdom could be done after completing the main questline AND satisfying certain conditions (I was all about that). You could also spend time ranking up your various advisors. Advisors handled most of the above situations on their own in time and had a certain success rate but sometimes you needed to assign your leader and an advisor to a taks and you would be busy for the allotted time. Very dangerous sometimes to just lose 7-14 days instantly as your leader was busy and you can't do anything if a problem suddenly arises and isn't dealt with in time.

The party

My party was almost always Myself, Valerie, Amiri, her Smilodon, Nok Nok, then Tristian and Linzi bringing up the rear. My guy would occasionally throw down a couple of Peridot Wyverns to add to our numbers.

Future playthroughs: I like the idea of an evil party, headed by my guy as maybe an absolutely cheesed build alongside all the best characters like Nok Nok (starts with over 20 Dexterity and 10 levels in Rogue). Also the idea of having several party members with animal companions to create a small army.

Stuff I like: Pathfinder class rules, less spells, addictive loot and clear; sense of progress with kingmaking and quests

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Stuff I dislike: some of the dialogue, alignment; difficulty; music earworms; Kingmaking tasks missable etc; BPs; reliance on guides

Dialogue is cheesy af at times; I was partially invested in it but when the party got bigger and the stakes higher somehow I felt less like I was piloting my paladin and he was just this bland nameless guy who everyone turned to do the baronial stuff

Alignment - I read somewhere that being Lawful Good is the best for kingdom management reasons and general sanity. That made sense, I assumed a Chaotic Evil land would just be endless civil strife and backstabbing. Turns out it just gives a slight buff to your initial stats for your land and is just a good incentive to stay on a straight and narrow path. I was often turned to as the baron to make decisions which were more often that not Chaotic Good (CG), which I recall as the pure, nice good alignment if that makes sense as opposed to righteous and just and noble or whatever like Lawful Good (LG). These often meant sparing peoples’ lives but interestingly some LG decisions were of the biological determinist ilk. Goblins and Orcs and such that transgressed could be safely put to death as an LG solution or otherwise attacked with impunity. Chaotic Evil (CE) choices would appear here and there and were usually of the ‘kill them all’ flavour. Neutral Evil (NE) choices would appear as ‘rob them first then maybe kill them’ and so on. I thought these might be locked out completely but they would often appear near the bottom of my screen as an option. Very, Fallout 3 kind of vibes here. Anyway, some of the LG decisions I was offered bordered on the infamous ‘Lawful Stupid’ type of paladin you encounter here and there wherein you must adhere to the law even to detrimental effect. I managed to weasel my way away from some of these but there wasn’t always a CG, neutral or unflavoured answer to pick from instead.

Two of my companions crossed me early on and completely got away with it. One of them robbed from the barony’s funds, while the other concealed that they were connected to a group of cultists actively destroying my land from the inside out and was assisting them indirectly. Both got off scot free, as there was no option to punish them in any way. It was weirdly out of character for the former one, protected as she is by a literal plot armour ring, as up to that point she is super open and honest about everything. Valerie would never betray me and thus I crowned her early on as best, if you’ll forgive me, waifu (possibly my first use of that term in this blog) while Amiri is just happy I let her kill stuff. I’m personally not too miffed about being deceived by a clump of pixels and code but I can see how others might be and it just reeks of poor writing or something. Had she asked and I had refused and later on she stole the funds, sure, that might have won me over. The other traitor went through hell and back so I forgave him multiple times.

Re-speccing

I initially planned to power through the whole game as everyone being a pure class, whatever they started in all the way, yay! That might have worked but then I got Octavia with her levels in rogue and wizard, boo. I powered on until around level 8 or 9 I realised I was hurting my chances and needed to re-spec.

I kept my main guy Zachariah as a Paladin, which suits everybody and everything. Valerie gets to stay as a Fighter with levels in Stalwart Defender. I will give her some levels in Rogue apparently to make her more powerful. I was using Harrim as my cleric but he kind of sucks overall so switched to Tristian after a long time as my pure cleric/healer. Linzi I also kept as a Bard but am giving her levels in Rogue so she can be a better shot in the background when not buffing everybody. Amiri was the main re-spec; she was a pure barbarian initially but something about her felt fragile. I had briefly used the ranger Ekun during the trolls quests and his animal companion was a fantastic ‘7th’ character slot in my melee frontline and action economy so I found a build for Amiri which makes her some sort of DPS barbarian turned ranger turned Inquisitor. She got a big animal companion as my 7th slot and suddenly became more valuable as a DPS next to the Valerie-Zachariah shield wall. Finally there is Nok-Nok; the last party member I got and with his insane 24 Dexterity to start with he became the other DPS with his two swords. A few pieces of magical equipment and his Armour Class was not quite as high as Valerie or my guy but nicely in the mid-20’s. With this renewed party build replete with teamwork feats like Outflank we are slaughtering our way through the First World.

If I do a second run at some stage in the future (quite likely, but maybe after a significant cooldown period) I would probably run an ‘evil’ group headed by my MC who would probably be second row mage/rogue/bard of some description and use the characters I am not using now to an extent, all heavily re-specced of course. This game has some weird things in it like the uber tanky Valerie having a high Charisma score and a lower than average (for a fighter) Strength. I adore Valerie though she’s the least annoying character after 20+ hours. I really liked Octavia initially but the horniness of herself and Regongar is bordering on cringe now. I am envisioning myself, Amiri, Jaethal, Regongar, Nok Nok and Kalikke (DLC) slaughtering all the enemies. Maybe a third, neutral run with anyone I didn’t use a lot the previous two runs. It's a good thing if I’m thinking of future runs but gods this game is long.

Music

I like the music but my gods is it endless and repetitive at times. I literally have it playing in my ears right now as I type this, and I have no actual music playing. I was able to reliably mute it completely a few times and listen to podcasts instead so it gets a thumbs up.

The companions and quests

I was annoyed that I missed out on resolving Jaethal’s companion quest early on. She (and the game) warned me I was not following up on her quest arc but I must have missed my timing, preoccupied with keeping a whole barony afloat that I missed it and it failed. I don’t really like her undead character (for this good run anyway) and don’t plan on using her this time so it’s no big loss but that’s an achievement locked out for now.

Harrim is kind of a bad cleric and a general misery-guts. I still dragged him out for his various companion quests.

Linzi has plot armour but is a good bard and I pretty much always had her in my party.

Nok Nok is absolutely fabulous. I had him mostly as a rogue and prtety much always in the party as DPS. Endless sneak attacks for high damage, he would often be the only one doing any damage. Some levels in Alchemist and Slayer too for dropping bombs and damage.

Amiri is kind of a meh barbarian but after seeing how good animal companions are I got her a couple of levels in Ranger and she got a Smilodon and just more useful. They were pretty much always in the party but I messed up her last companion quest, oops.

Valerie was always in the party too at the front of the line. I got her AC to 40+ but apparently it an get as high as 60+ somehow. Must note that for future playthroughs. I gave her levels in Rogue for some reason and Stalwart Defender prestige. Her quests earned her a rad scar which I set about fixing. My character would ultimately romance and marry Valerie.

Tristian was a much better cleric and replaced Harrim. Just kept him as a pure cleric healbot. His quests were harrowing, poor bastard. I kept him on side all the way through.

Jubilost I never used but maybe in a future playthrough. I had Nok Nok throwing bombs instead. His wacky gnome-related quests I completed but barely kept an eye on them.

Ekun was a pretty good ranger and I got him some levels in Rogue but I didn't really use him much. Sorted his quests and used him at the House at the Edge of Time.

Octavia I used a bit early on and she was good at flinging Acid Splash at the trolls, finishing them off. She could potentially be very good but I opted for a Tristian-Linzi backline instead.

Regongar I did not see the appeal in, he seemed very flimsy to me but he could probably be re-specced.

Advisors

Regent - Octavia, then Valerie - not really sure how exactly to define this but Octavia had the best stats for this at the time so I plugged her in there. Valerie subbed in later when Octavia went Arcane.

Councilor - Tristian - again, he had the best stats for this (Loyalty?) so he went. I’m taking ‘best’ as 5+ in the initial stat.

General - Kassil Aldori, then Reg - I acquired this guy at the very start of my barony and he represents some faraway land. He’s been an OK general so far. He left abruptly so Regongar took over and his Strength value was much more suited to generalship.

Treasurer - Jubilost - I had no candidates for this position initially and it seems to come up all the time. It's unreal, 1 in 3 jobs seem to be for the Treasurer. Considering the length of time these tasks take it doesn’t seem right to have him tied up most of the time with other stuff. Anyway I googled it and he was in a wrecked caravan very close to my capital. Go figure.

High Priest - initially Jhod, now Harrim. Jhod was there from the start and seemed OK but he regularly failed at his tasks. I fired him as High Priest and put the slightly better at Wisdom stuff Harrim in there. As I had ditched him as a not quite as good cleric it was fitting to put him to work here.

Warden - Ekundayo - this is the first of the ‘secondary’ roles that opened up and Ekun had the best stats it seemed for the job so I threw him in there. I think I just like having him and his beastie in the hall with me.

Culture - The Storyteller - some sort of ancient blind elf who resides in my court for free so I figured better put him to work. As an aside, he did give me gold on a number of occasions in return for ancient, useless trinkets I found on my adventures but he keeps only taking like two at a time. I need that gold, old elf.

Arcane - Octavia - best stat for the job, Intelligence.

Espionage - Jaethal - she had decent stats for the job and like all of them you can pump up the relevant stat - in this case Dexterity - by equipping magic items and levelling up.

Tasks, BPS, regions, events, opportunities, building

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On feats, skills, upgrading

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Camping and travelling

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Love/Hate #43 DayZ

 Not sure where to start with this - I first heard of this way back in 2012 when Yahtzee reviewed it on Zero Punctuation. I think. I recall possibly trying to install or acquire it around that time apparently and not having any luck. I bought it on Steam in October 2020 apparently. Huh.

Anyway, I was sitting around recently in a funk as I wanted to play something but not sure what. I sat down and ‘hid’ loads of games and expansions (70+) in my Library I would never play or had already played and then looked at what was left. I looked at Red Dead Redemption 2, GTA4 and other games I would like to play eventually but they were 100GB+ and I didn’t want to go through an in-game tutorial. I despise arbitrary in-game forced tutorials, perhaps most infamously in my case Assassin’s Creed 2 and Just Cause 2. So that narrowed it down to ‘games with no plot’ and DayZ jumped out at me.

It took a bit to install but after a determined wait I booted it up and managed to sneak around the coast and avoid the zombies. Not too long into it I bumped into like 4 zombies and 2 people! One of them died in the skirmish but the other gave me food/medicine and walked with me for a bit but then after another skirmish my leg was fractured and they punched me to death!

So that was a rush. I was thoroughly amused that I kept at it. I resolved to spend as little time on the coast as possible and rush inland and what began were not one but two epic sagas as the game went from Walking Dead crossed with Battle Royale to Into the Wild (2007) wherein the protagonist dies alone, cold and starving in a bus in the former Russian territory of Alaska.

The game is so Russian - granted it’s made by a Czech studio and the map is a combination of Eastern European themes but I was wondering why it reminded me so much of Finland running around the map. The trees, the housing, the colour gradients - it all reminded me of my times in Finland. Which is right next to Russia so it would make sense that the foliage is similar and indeed I was in Russia for 3 days in 2012 so there’s that too. There is a distinct feel to it, the countryside, the road signs, the buildings and ruined cars. It’s not a lazy stereotype - it is an excellent replica of Eastern Europe, Russia specifically. Also, canned food is god, which is true in real life, Russia and in this game. On the conclusion of our 3 day trip to St. Petersburg and Pushkin in May 2012, our group of 5 were presented with a can of condensed milk each (I am not joking) -  the 4 girls from Germany, Canada and Croatia were NOT ecstatic, they would have rather gone home with nothing, while I was delighted!

But yeah - run inland, to avoid the murderers prowling the coastline, both survivor and infected. Blindly thrash through the forests and hills until you hit a ‘vein’ or breadcrumb trail. That’s what I think of when I stumble upon a series of farmhouses and outright settlements where I can find some gear. I still have my starting clothes (always a t-shirt and hiking pants) so we gotta get warmer. Nice insulated jacket, any pants, hopefully a bag. I’ll take anything, even a kids school bag, but a proper one is best. Sling a couple of things over my shoulder, maybe a damaged and empty rifle or shotgun and a melee weapon, anything from a crowbar to a sledgehammer or axe. Make sure to hotkey some of that shit. You can play for hours (and I had) without encountering any survivors and if you play your cards right the infected ain’t much of a factor either.

I was primarily playing on the EU/DE(Germany I presume) servers with good ping and late at night/early in the morning so the ‘population’ of the server was usually ranked medium to high. No idea what that means but I seldom encountered anyone, outside of the first two people I met. But you remember almost all of them:

The first two people, one died and one beat me to death after treating me.

Shipping containers - spotted a guy using Q or E to peek around the corner at me and he proceeded to kill me with a blunt instrument. I may have initiated the fight by trying to stab him (got one stab in) but he just approached me at right angles and killed me. I’ve noticed players/survivors tend to charge at right angles and it seems somewhat effective - we’re afraid to get bashed by their weapons/fists but want to get our own shot in.

Suicide guy - I was playing again super late, had just respawned and it was late in the night and near the shipping containers I spot a guy climbing a crane or viewing platform thing. He is climbing the whole time and I am moving around trying to find stuff nearby and suddenly he just hops the rail to his death. I was able to sprint and be within a few feet of him when he died instantly. Surreal.

‘Negan’ - a baseball bat wielding psycho who prowled the docks where I was spawning. Killed me one time and dodged him a second time completely. Spent a long time worrying about him.

Stab guy - I was just starting out again when I came across some hardened looking dude but he was probably not that much further ahead of me in terms of loot. He made his herky jerky way up to me and managed to stab me like 3-4 times. I just crouched and waited, hoping he was satisfied but he awkwardly circles back and stabs me to death. I hadn’t made any aggressive motions but learned my lesson!

Draw girl - I was in a farm near the starting coastline hills and I spotted a girl mooching in and out of the houses I had just raided. I hid in the back garden of one and she managed to spot me observing her. We squared off, me with my knife and her with her fists but after failing to make contact and with the infected getting in the way I waved her off. I used the wave command and backed away but she started to come closer again so I just backed off and she got the message. She continued up the trail where I hadn't been yet while I went back the way I came, which is disastrous as I had already looted that area. Starvation would ensue.

Double KO - two dudes got in a fistfight near the starting area and had knocked each other out. I had observed this and was somewhat geared up but ran up and beat both of them to death while they were unconscious! Got one fresh fruit off them and plenty of bandages which lasted ages.

Repeater failed - I was near death, like, so low on health the slightest breeze would have killed me and I saw some survivalist snooping around a farmstead so I decided to take my repeater rifle I found and stake him out. He spots me and rushes towards me and of course my guy is near death so can barely move so I manage to fire off a round - completely missing him - plus I didn’t realise you had to manually operate the bolt action or lever or whatever and he closes the distance and one shots me with his fist or blunt instrument. 

Crowbar guy - I has just respawned and some guy was nipping around in the shipping containers so I said ‘fuck it’ and charged him and must have stunlocked him with punches as I managed to kill him. However I had been knocked out, so when I finally came to all I could see was his dead body next to me. Free crowbar! 

Motorbike helmet guy - was running up the coast road and passed this guy carrying firewood? He was the first person I had encountered who was using voice chat. He just kept saying ‘hello’ over and over. I was so taken aback I just stared and kept running. Nice guy!

German girl? - I was minding my own business running around a military base in the rain when I spotted this girl behind a truck near me. She starts saying ‘hello’ as well and I say ‘hello’ back. I immediately ran away into the forested hills, though she wasn’t overtly hostile. I was trying to gather firewood at the time and had a decent haul of ammo and guns on me. I dithered for a bit then decided I should have staked my claim better and ran back with my ‘Kolt 1911’ and 3 bullets to take her out! Could not find her afterwards. Again I was so shocked by a friendly I didn’t just tap my hotkey and attempt to gun her down when I met her.

Shipping container insanity - I had spawned and gathered a small number of things and I started to stalk some guy. We exchanged hits with crowbars and whatnot and backed away from each other and I decided to whip out my smoke grenade. I hadn’t used one before so it literally just trails smoke everywhere, like a real one - I don’t know what I expected. I could hear someone taking potshots at us as well! I hid in a shipping container and dropped the grenade outside. I closed it and started to patch myself up and someone else came in and beat me to death with a sledgehammer! I managed to sprint back here after spawning and collect some of the loot from both myself and the first guy. This is also where I discovered you can make your own belts from rope, after not having a real one for ages. Nifty game.

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I’m happy if I can find some sort of sharp metal implement and ideally a gun with a handful of bullets. Not that I’ve had any success shooting players but have shot numerous infected with silenced weapons in the head and loud guns too. Really not advised unless you want the whole neighbourhood after you. I’ve also fired the occasional shot in the air just to spice things up. There is nothing more ominous than hearing a shot in the distance. I am more afraid of other players than zombies, by far. I’ve had little success hitting players with sticks (unless they’re unconscious) nor shooting them but fists are always a solid option. The game seems to have some sort of stunlocking going on so if you get a punch in you can win most fights. Despite this, there is nothing more satisfying than acquiring a selection of firearms and sharp objects which you become increasingly less likely to use unless in an emergency. I keep meaning to go for a hike, gather a good load of guns and ammo and then make my way back to the spawning coast. Wreak some havoc.

So anyway what else is there to talk about? I like that weapons are kind of hard to find but food is really hard to find, especially when starving. As I mentioned above you stumble across a trail of goodies and can play a good hour or two and just collect shit. The game for me really becomes living from can of food to can of food. Canned goods don’t give you any issues as far as I can tell but eating raw food is almost always death or more accurately, sickness. Which is kind of annoying - I was absolutely starving one time and managed to chase down and murder a ewe with a knife, chopped it to pieces and ate some of the raw meat and entrails and a minute later I had a sickness. Fair enough, accurate but goddamn. Also, despite all my sprinting I find water less annoying to keep sated (I think it is partially restored via eating). I got the achievement for cooking a steak on a stick over a fire (a human steak by the way) and ate it but still got sick. It may be because I found the body of a guy in a shed in the middle of nowhere - flies were around him - and proceeded to chop him to pieces. I made the fire a short distance away but then got scared that everyone would see the fire in the night. There is an achievement for starting a fire with a road flare, a matchbox and a hand drill so I will need to get all those items. Turns out I had them all at one or two points but didn’t know how to do it. There is also one for gutting a deer - I did bump into a deer once and had a gun but no sharp implements. I will go deer hunting at some point again soon. That’s another thing - animal noises can be heard at all hours in the forest and are terrifying in a way. Apparently there are wolves as well? I have yet to encounter them, or bears.

There are cars scattered around and you can repair them to the point of being driveable but have not bothered going in that direction. There is no achievement for it (but there probably should be) but might try it at some point for the craic.

There is also a way to build stuff, like fences and doors and whatnot. Apparently you can craft all kinds of things but I certainly don’t have the time or desire. Also it’s such a crapsack world and the servers restart every few hours or whenever so what’s the point. I did come across someones’ locked fence door or something in an apartment building but lacked the means to do anything with it.

The Zombies - ‘infected’ are mainly a nuisance, a barrier, whatever. Sometimes they can be avoided completely, as is the case with large industrial yards and such. I’ve had bad luck on one or two occasions, coming across military barricades and blockades with tougher soldier zombies. I was usually desperate for some sort of resource when I would encounter these roads and tried to navigate them - almost always a mistake. At least after being beaten up by the infected you tend to pass out and they back off, but they are never too far away. After a quick bit of patching up and gathering your dropped weapon/items you can wrangle an escape. But you might still be dying somehow. If you are unlucky enough to die, you might be lucky and run back and get your stuff from your corpse, as shown below.

Human players - ‘survivors’ - have a distinct movement pattern. It reminds me of another game I can’t think of right now, perhaps many games, where players just have a different movement animation than the infected. Nightfire! I’m thinking of Nightfire where players glide along. Survivors tend to sprint everywhere in lines and zig zags while the infected just stand and stumble around and then charge when they see you. I stop and assess whenever I see infected milling around but players? I have seen almost every single human player before they have seen me (so far) because they stand out instantly. It’s terrifying and the initial thought to hide and let them pass tends to subside for me and the urge to challenge and try to kill rises. Note this has mostly not worked out for me, I am currently 3 wins, 5 losses and 1 draw in what I would term fights started by me or another player. There is an achievement for imprisoning 10 players with manacles, I haven’t found any manacles yet nor have had the opportunity. Maybe when I saw that double KO. There is one for killing 15 players with melee weapons and that remains the 2 I got from the double KO, murdering them both with a crowbar I think. There is also one for shooting a player at 300 metres but IDK.

Wet and cold are my main enemies at the moment. If it starts raining it lasts a considerable amount of time, now it’s like I’d rather switch servers or just log off completely. Rain makes your clothes damp, soaked or drenched gradually and will inevitably give your character a chill and sickness. Which is just annoying and debilitating. Cold is a bit more manageable but it can be annoying if you get unlucky and fail to find good, warm clothes and get sick that way. These alone are annoying but combine with starvation and blood loss and it’s almost always a game over. Blood loss was my old enemy, you can lose too much from scrapping with zombies (or players!) or just self-inflicted injuries and accidents. A black and white vision is your reward and if you’re really low on blood and health, passing out frequently. Food, drink and ‘rest’ can restore you to a somewhat passable condition and now that I know that I can get past the point of passing out frequently. It was so annoying I would just feed myself to the zombies. There are fun extra things like multivitamins, antibacterial handwash and herbal/alcoholic tinctures that can prevent bad health and even chlorine pills to treat bad water.

Update: managed to get the firestarter achievement (with road flare etc) before dying because I took my shoes off and cut my foot on something and my health deteriorated. My gal wore bandage wraps as shoes for a bit but her health was severely affected by all this, it was incredible to see. She died not long after in a store versus the infected who were all over here - she was my first character to have a scoped rifle, I was hoping to get the deer hunting achievement with her but oh well. She was a cool character, I started in a coastal village and hit upon a trail of goodies instantly. I pretty much had free reign to put together my gear and then start messing around with fireplace setups. I was only missing the road flare and hand drill parts of the achievement so set up two fires and made that happen. It was also good because I had spent the previous hour running around in the rain so I was dry quickly (I think) but I made the mistake of putting my shoes >in< the fire not just being in its presence and hey presto no shoes. Cut my foot like a second later walking into the nearby house on the floor and her health vanished. Limped to the next set of buildings but the infected were super riled up and I was getting careless with the Sporter rifle shots. Death.

I got the deer hunting achievement after chasing a pack of three deer back and forth over a set of hills maybe 3 times. I definitely shot one of them once at one point but had no magazine so was one bullet at a time. I stumbled across someones’ stash and got a magazine and a ton of ammo so was able to parlay that into a successful deer hunt. Gutted the thing and got the achievement. I continued playing for a bit but was quite sick and I died while AFK - I’m not sure if it was a wound infection or did some player stumble across me in the medical facility I was in and murdered me, I’ll never know. Maybe it was the owner of the stash! That was my first genuine stash I got and it was tremendous but there was only so much I could take with me, in the end I was quite conservative and even had to go back like twice to fiddle with what I really wanted - magazine, ammo, bandages and food, of which there was very little. They had a pumpkin patch planted as well near their tent and two submachine guns but again not a whole lot of space on me.

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One time I was collected by 3 European dudes and followed them along the coast for a while. They adopted me and like 4 other people so we had like 8 running around for a while. I got so bored after a while as they had a 'no guns' policy which was fine but I hid a knife on my person and started stabbing one of the other guys when it was time for dinner LMAO. I committed suicide in front of them all. It was cool and I was very respectful and thankful for all they did - the main guy kept handing out food and water - but like, it just became a weird exhibition as they were incredible at shooting while all we could do was cower in their presence. Not that they were intimidating or hostile to us but after sprinting between like 5 different settlements and watching them one shot zombies I was bored to tears and needed to eat. Also there were aspects of it that seemed staged, I can’t put my finger on it, but they offered me someone tied up to kill at one point early on who begged for his life somewhat unconvincingly in an Eastern European accent. Weird. 

So all that’s left for me is to kill 10 more people with melee weapons out of 15, tie up 10 people and treat 20 with bandages. I have no idea how to achieve the latter two but will play a few more rounds to see if I can wrack up melee kills. But my interest has probably peaked for the moment. Honestly, while it’s great to trek across the country and acquire loads of equipment and be on a good ‘run’ so to speak, it's inevitable that I will die from sickness, carelessness re: zombies or someone way better than me will gun me down. While it’s exhilarating in its own way, another playstyle I can start to do now is: spawn, acquire a few bits and then traipse around town hunting other fresh spawns. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose but there is less feeling of having spent hours on a character only for them to die silently in the woods. And don’t get me wrong I love those long playthroughs but often the investment in time and energy yields few rewards, other than the journey itself. Nasty, brutish and short fresh spawn hunting can be just as fun and if I tire of that or am particularly successful I can always migrate inland and do a long playthrough, loot in hand.

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All in all this was a fantastic segue from the usual fare, I will play a few more games like this in future hopefully. It reminded me a lot of Fallout 4 Survival Mode, which I absolutely feasted on the last 3 years. I rarely play multiplayer games but am pleased to say the player base is still very active overall and while most lean on the side of banditry and kill-on-sight there are a few bright lights. A glance at the online community on Reddit and so on it’s mostly people showing off and git-guddery abounds, you can’t have it all but plenty of good advice online as well.

Update: Aaaaaaaand I got 15 melee kills! Apparently the rarest achievement. I now might try to beat up people and restrain them (10 times) to get that achievement as it is possible to KO people and then have the chance to tie them up. The shooting someone at 300 metres and killing them and patching up 20 people with bandages may take way longer to get anywhere near.

Love/hate #42 Holdfast (not yet 100% complete achievement-wise)

This is one of those games I picked up due to online hype and it lived up to the hype for once. I think what hyped me was just funny videos of battles in progress, especially that one video of the loud Scotsman taking the fort.

I first played it in 2021 and for some reason played a ton of naval matches.

First game ever.

You can just aim and fire a cannon whenever you want? Sweet!

First game was a win!

There is a FPS mode but it's not amazing.

You can swim if you're near the coasts!

Played a whole game as a musician.

   There are coastal invasion maps as well but these are tough.

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I picked it up again in June and July 2023 and with the help of my nephew cleared a bunch of the achievements.

^ It takes a while to respawn and often you will be far from the mayhem. But this is part of the charm!

I am missing about 10~ achievements, all somewhat do-able but time is getting away from me.

^ A few guys were camped near or spawn point and would challenge everyone to fist fights!

Green riflemen have the best aim and guns but it's almost like easy mode.

So many neat little things you can do, like help move cannons!

Capture points can be really difficult.

The 'hands up' gesture is so funny I die laughing anytime I see it.

Great place to hold out!

One of my very few decent games.

Bunch of guys held up in this lake. Too funny.

A sweet line.

The bridge of death.

Rockets being fired are so pretty <3

Playing an empty map...

I usually go line infantry - solid all-rounders.

Very briefly on top...

An inspiring speech, but I have voices muted so I don't even know.

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The only game I want to play now is Star Ocean 2-R, but will have to wait until November. I may do a run through some of the Final Fantasy games to warm up for that, plus the usual Fallout run throughs when I get the urge to play 'em in autumn.