Brought to you by the department of a few weeks ago, and also this morning

Been staying with a partner who has gone back to playing World of Warcraft and all this exposure to the game has been getting me twitchy for relatively free-form adventuring around some sort of big, open world. But I don't at this time want to re-open my subscription to that game because I'm not sure I can afford that ongoing expenditure and if I can there are other things I'd rather put the money toward. So I'd need to be better off than I think I am by a couple of times over.

Instead I tried the next best thing and fired up the Guild Wars 2 installation that's been sitting on my desktop for the past year. Unfortunately for some reason Guild Wars 2 sets the fans on my laptop spinning wildly and loudly so I felt a need to quit playing relatively quickly. I postponed continuing to play until I were back home in an environment where the fan noise would not disturb others, but now I am there and have continued postponing play in favour of school work.

Have also been thinking to go back to playing World of Warcraft itself since some others from the old group have resumed playing and I would love to do that socially, maybe get to attempt some dungeons again. The presence of a group to play with shifts the value I hope to get out of the cost enough to reconsider. But I am also postponing that until I am not-behind on my schoolwork.

Also have been playing a bit of Legends of Yore to pass time on planes and other modes of transport (also floors). This time around only yet have played Warrior and Archer. In neither game did I leave the starting town, preferring to complete its dungeons before heading out even after meeting the level requirement. Had permadeath turned on because the only reason I'm playing the game is it being listed as a roguelike.

The first dungeon I attempted was the farm cellar while playing as the warrior. That place was filled with fawns and felt a bit too easy. No diagonal movement and single-space wide doors made it simple to control the approach of foes so I was only ever facing one at a time. Got more interesting when dark fawn started showing up as those have a ranged attack.

But since as a warrior I had no ranged attack, the game then became almost too hard. The way line of fire works meant only in exceptional circumstances could I get close without taking multiple hits, often having to fight a couple of melee escorts or else let them attack me while I ran for the dark fawn. The main trouble is that healing drops were no longer keeping pace with the damage being taken, although I can probably stand to change habits and purchase more consumables from merchants.

That run ended at the bottom of the cellar when I stumbled across the boss while exploring - could not drink health potions fast enough to keep up with the damage.

Second run playing as the archer, and doing quests in order which sent me to the graveyard first. Much, much easier with infinite arrows and unlike the warrior's rage which needs constant combat to be filled up, archer zen can be refilled by tapping the wait button a few times between fights. There is no time limit or food clock that I'm aware of in this game, so no reason not to fill zen whenever the opportunity is present. Being a primarily ranged character made most melee foes trivial and removed a lot of the frustration from dealing with ranged enemies.

Healing still felt in short supply, and suspect I only managed the graveyard boss thanks to running to a healing NPC who happened to have been generated on that level.

Last time I played, I'd just been given the quest to clear out the cellars (I did not even acquire the quest with my previous warrior character) so we will see if this archer handles it better.