January 26 - February 1, 2025
So no new graphics card for me unfortunately. I got in line at 6:15am but everyone rushed the entrance at 7:30 so the line was meaningless. There weren’t enough cards to go around anyway so it is what it is. I’ve signed up for a couple Discord stock alerts and I’ll try my luck at Microcenter this week when there are hopefully more cards in and less people trying to buy them. Oh well, my current PC will have to do for a while longer. Hopefully I’m able to make the upgrade before the tariffs hit.
On a positive note, I went to a live music bar to support my musician friend and it was a really good time. The vibes were super chill and the pizza I had delivered was delicious. 10/10, would do again. It was nice to get out of the house and just hang out with friends. Anyway, let’s get back to the games.
Game Acquisitions
A comparatively light week this week, and every game was free! Can’t beat that. It’d be nice if every week was like this.
# of Games: 5
Total Money Spent: $0
Price/Game: $0
Game Recaps
Unfortunately, the light week also extended into my game time as well. I only had one two-hour session on Monday and a few hours on Saturday. On top of the music bar and failed GPU launch mentioned earlier, I also spent some time experimenting with a mic setup for future let’s play recordings. Long story short, I only have an old Guitar Hero mic from the Wii back in high school propped up in the middle of the couch not very close to me, so the sound quality leaves a lot to be desired. I’ve been trying to use Nvidia Broadcast + OBS settings to get it to sound passable and it’s kinda there but I guess we’ll see. Also, no Fall of Porcupine this week as mentioned last week. You’re stuck with just the Final Profit recap. Speaking of…
After the information dump that was the intro to the capital, it was time to start exploring. Immediately after choosing to keep the Representative on my payroll, I talked to the first person I saw and had this odd interaction.
OK, interesting start. I see the people in the capital are rich and self-absorbed. Normally this is a terrible combination, but as a successful business owner, Biz can exploit this for profit I’m sure. After wandering around for a little while, I stumbled into a bar where I ran into a familiar face, as well as a business proposition.
So the offer is to substitute my mana regen for ale. I didn’t see the need for ale at the time, so I rejected the offer. I did run into an NPC later who will trade +2 passive income for every 100 ale provided so maybe it’ll be worth it after all. I’ll have to find the bar again to accept the deal. In the same bar, I also came across this guy who needs to repair the oil pipeline to get the goods flowing again.
I had no idea how to obtain rare metal at the time I talked to this guy, so I wasn’t able to help him. I found out shortly after that the market buys and sells rare metals for a fairly high price. Speaking of the market:
Yay, more responsibility! I’m still not entirely sure how the market works yet. I definitely need to spend some time there figuring it out. I know you can buy limited goods and sell back for a much lower price but I’m not sure why I would do that. There’s probably something I’m missing. After wandering around the capital for a bit longer and solving the floor puzzle in the museum, I got the notification that my post stock dividends were full, so I found the horse dimension portal to get back to the other parts of the world. I discovered that I could buy almost any property I’ve come across in the game now for some passive income, so I bought some of the smaller places to start out. I wanted to head back to Faeona to continue the quests there before diving into the capital stuff. I came across the mysterious cave that is blocked by level requirements and realized I haven’t been there for a while and have leveled up quite a bit. I went inside and unlocked the level 60 area and was treated to some story bits and a decent accessory.
I’ll take any passive income I can get at this point. With that out of the way, I entered the forest outside Faeona, got my first seed bag upgrade, and finally confronted the police officer that’s been hanging out there.
Mr. Four has some explaining to do when I see him again. With the police officer out of the way, I head into the area he was blocking and find none other than the bar tender who runs every bar in the world apparently. He says he’s mapping out the area for historical purposes and Biz lets him be. I’m not sure if that will come up later or if it’s just worldbuilding. Close to him though is a new type of Pix creature with an interesting ability.
I can trigger all my passive abilities at once in exchange for some XP and 50,000 coin. This seems like a huge price to pay, and I don’t see the benefits of this yet, so I’ll leave it alone for now. I head back into town and secure the rest of the votes to be reinstated on the Fae council.
Biz decides that her daughter should remain queen but accepts the role of treasurer. This seems like a natural next step for her. Let’s see what being a treasurer is all about.
Faeona is 10 million coin in debt to the Bureau 😠As if my original debt wasn’t bad enough. There’s 200,000 coin in the treasury, and I can add my own coin too if I want, but I’m not ready to take such drastic measures yet. This will need to wait until later. I found the skeleton that has been pawning cursed accessories off on me and got stuck with something that removed my passive income. I need to get that fixed ASAP but the witch wants 640,000 coin to remove it! This will be by far my most expensive purchase, but it has to be done. I return to my shop in the city and run it for a while to get the coin needed. Along the way, I received another upgrade for the art commodity.
Ohhh, so that’s why there was that mysterious shot of the prince outside the apartment building at the end of the last art upgrade. It wasn’t for something nefarious; he was in love! How cute. I’ll take the price increase on art too. When I left the store to meet the artist, I also got this cutscene about the museum I mentioned earlier:
It seems innocent enough, but I don’t like the sound of Bureau experiments. I don’t trust them. Anyway, I work at my shop long enough to raise the money and head over to the witch to get the curse removed.
So now I’m totally broke, and I don’t even have a cool accessory to show for it 😠I know the mug is needed for endgame stuff, but I was hoping for something more useful now. Oh well, time to head back to the capital and continue the main quest. I start by going to the power plant and having a little chat with Mr. Four about the kidnapped fae.
He agrees to let them go if I can double their mana generation. I’m happy to do so and free all the ones I can see before moving on. I can’t help but notice the number on the board is only halfway through, I wonder what that means. I meet up with Odina and explore Dr. Three’s gem lab.
Odina and Dr. Three clearly don’t get along. On my way out, I ran into Mx. Two.
They don’t seem too happy about bringing up the past. I fill in Odina on the plan to get rid of the Lords of Business by stripping them of their wealth. Afterwards, Mr. Four stops by to reveal his own plans to usurp Dr. Three.
It’ll be nice having a clerk around. After being super confused by how stocks work in the capital, I decide to stop by Mr. Tony’s HQ to see about getting the ability to buy franchises. What follows is a convoluted series of quests to get the items they ask for.
With those side quests out of the way, I head to the train to check on Lady Plenty’s progress on getting the train operational.
I’m not running a charity, but don’t want to seem greedy either. I set the ticket price to generate a small profit. Next on Lady Plenty’s list is cleansing the water supply.
I side with her obviously, but it’s going to take a while to raise enough coin to certify the deal. I’ll have to come back to that later. Stumbling around the capital some more, I found out how to start buying and selling one of the stocks in a rather humorous way.
Oh Biz, you troll. After some more stumbling around, I decide to head back to another city when I run into a random quest in the horse dimension.
I was hoping it would be super simple and the little boy in the village was hiding the horse. But alas, that didn’t seem to be the case. After even more stumbling around, I remember that I’ve found quite a few apples since my last trip to the apple labyrinth, so I decide to head back there. What’s that creature that’s known in mythology to guard labyrinths?
This was probably the most action-heavy sequence so far in this game. I’m not sure how the Mat of Tribute works since I couldn’t find it in the inventory, but it sounds useful. Heading out of the first town, I finally found a path to the cave below and ran into none other than the Owl Lich again. It needs more life energy to help hatch its eggs.
I spent a good amount of time and health here. The health required kept increasing, but the rewards got progressively better as well. I got a few decorations, a good chunk of max health increases, and a few hundred thousand coin. Not bad! I was also able to solve the Plant Pix’s puzzle and obtain the apple chest with the seed bag upgrade. Now I’m up to 3,000 carrying capacity on those, even though I rarely go over 100. Now that my max health is over 80, I can head to the big tree in the restaurant in the city.
A bit underwhelming of a reward. Oh well. With all of these distractions out of the way and a ton of money given to me by the Owl Lich, I finally have enough to buy Dr. Three’s properties to continue the plan. Prepare for yet again the longest clip I’ve made so far. There was a ton of story here.
Wow, two birds with one stone! I ran Dr. Three out of town and One killed Mr. Four. Crazy stuff. Heading back to the power plant, I’m tasked with bringing the capital’s energy crisis to the fae council to figure out next steps. I also find out that all the fae I rescued earlier contribute to my passive income. It almost doubled! Next time, I’ll head to the council. The story in this game has really picked up!
TV/Movie Recaps
Here is everything I watched this week:
· Serenity
· American Dad Season 21 Episode 14 (all caught up, show ongoing)
· Gun Gale Online Season 2 (completed)
· Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Episode 1
· Barefoot Gen 2
It looks like I watched quite a bit this week. I ended up watching Serenity hours after my last post went up. It had a much higher production value than Firefly and answered some lingering questions I had from the show. The explanations were still a tad disappointing, but I felt it was a better finale than the actual finale and I enjoyed both the show and the movie quite a bit. I also watched all of Gun Gale Online Season 2, the spinoff anime of Sword Art Online. I didn’t expect a Season 2 since Season 1 premiered way back in 2021. I figured it would just be a one-off show and I’m happy to be wrong. There wasn’t really much in the way of story here, but it was fun nonetheless. Barefoot Gen 2 was good but didn’t get close to the first movie in my opinion. I’m still early in Skeleton Crew but I’m liking it so far. It definitely has a more down-to-earth vibe than anything else Star Wars related I’ve seen. It’s a weird change of pace from The Acolyte which is the last Star Wars thing I watched. It looks like there won’t be any more Star Wars until Andor Season 2 in April, so I’ve got a little bit of a wait. I know people are tired of how much Disney is milking the Star Wars property but I’m still mostly enjoying what I’m seeing. Episode IX was definitely not good though. Now I’m rambling. ANYWAY…
Conclusion/Upcoming
As always, I plan on playing more Final Profit this week. I really want to wrap my head around all the monetization opportunities in the capital, as well as get into my new treasurer role in Faeona. I’m hoping my hangout schedule normalizes this week and my friend and I can get back into Fall of Porcupine. We’ve gotta be getting close to the end of that game, right? The next movie on my watchlist is The Boy and the Heron, the latest anime film from Studio Ghibli. I’m really looking forward to that one. I suspect I’ll finish Skeleton Crew this week and start the Skull Island animated series from a few years ago. I plan on stopping by Microcenter again on Thursday in hopes of getting my graphics card, but I expect to be disappointed. I may just have to wait it out until supply picks up. I hope everyone here has a wonderful week, thank you for enduring two back-to-back posts of mine 😅 Happy gaming!
Backlog total: 3,061 (+2)
