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Gaming Achievements

Unsure if this is that good of an achievement to admit to, but I did manage to beat the veteran difficulty of a good handful of the older call of duty games.

The titles specifically are World at War, 4: Modern Warfare (minus Mile High Club), Modern Warfare 2 (the original), Black Ops 2, and possibly Black Ops and Modern Warfare 3, it has been a couple years or so and frankly I forgot if I did beat those two, but I know I beat the rest, especially World at War as it was among the hardest games I managed to beat that I have played.
 
I got an achievement I never got before in Basketball GM, a free browser game with all the fun of spreadsheet roster construction and financial management, and zero actual basketball playing.

I got it with the smallest market team in the league, on Insane difficulty, on my first season. This challenge has many short- and long-term penalties. Most relevant here, I'm pressured to run a small salary cap, since it's much harder for me to turn a profit, and good financials help me not get fired. Also, player injuries take much longer to heal, on average.

I made this achievement despite running a bottom 10 salary league-wide, managing to turn a league-average total profit despite running the smallest market.

What achievement did I get? Well... uh...

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Adeleine said:
I got an achievement I never got before in Basketball GM, a free browser game with all the fun of spreadsheet roster construction and financial management, and zero actual basketball playing.

I got it with the smallest market team in the league, on Insane difficulty, on my first season. This challenge has many short- and long-term penalties. Most relevant here, I'm pressured to run a small salary cap, since it's much harder for me to turn a profit, and good financials help me not get fired. Also, player injuries take much longer to heal, on average.

I made this achievement despite running a bottom 10 salary league-wide, managing to turn a league-average total profit despite running the smallest market.

What achievement did I get? Well... uh...

View attachment 771292
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OK, I actually won the first season finals with a small market team on Insane this time.
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It was a win for small markets all along. Sacramento and Tampa finals, Cincinnati in the conference finals, and St. Louis and Portland making it to the conference semifinals.

This time, my opponents were the chokers. My star MVP-candidate guard got hurt in the first game, so they won the next three, making it 1-3, but I pulled back to close it out.
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Like the real NBA team based on gold, my Sacramento Gold Rush paired dominating offense with acceptable defense, riding a 61-21 record to the 1 seed. It began the season with a historic 34-2 run.

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Instead of a dominant offensive center, we had the best 3pt % and second-best 2pt %.
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My random starting team was very fortunate. Starting with an MVP candidate is exceptional. I started with the first four players, but the one weakness was the bench (and also too high salary), so the other players were trades / free agents.
(OVR is Estimated Overall (dependent on your scouting quality), and PT is playing time. This is my Finals healthy PT spread. I've omitted prospects.)

Screen Shot 2025-10-05 at 12.30.52 PM.png

Lucas was second in MVP and DPOY voting. The MVP placement was probably more deserved.
Those letters by his name mean the following: 3-point shooter, Athlete, Ball Handler, Interior Defender, Perimeter Defender, Passer, and Volume Shooter. Many "passers" are actually bad because they lack the offensive IQ to utilize their passing mechanics well, but Lucas has a solid estimated 65 offensive IQ, so his assist rate was pretty good.

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Here's a more detailed look at Lucas's estimated (team scouting-dependent) attributes. He came from Wisconsin, my favorite college program :heart:
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My profit was relatively low, but acceptable and clearly positive. For reference, the highest profit was 190M, and the lowest was -40 Million. I was 4th lowest. I managed to sneak under the cap with a league-average payroll, but it would have been very hard to shed more salary without impacting present performance or losing huge prospects.

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It is good I made a playoff run, or else I would have been in the red!
 
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there was this achievement in a game me and my friends all used to play that went something along the lines of "don't play this game for an irl year" and we all would try and sabotage each other by opening the game it was so funny ;-;
 
LeafLace said:
there was this achievement in a game me and my friends all used to play that went something along the lines of "don't play this game for an irl year" and we all would try and sabotage each other by opening the game it was so funny ;-;
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This comment made me realize I got the achievement for not playing The Stanley Parable for 5 years 8 months ago.
 
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hey datrix! isn't it more of an achievement to have... i dunno... all keeper marks?
to answer your question. yes. but if you play any keeper at all (or really any isaac at all) you will know this is a feat because I'm missing the mandated fix they made for the char in rep (3 coin hearts when you beat hush)
god keeper is miserable to play
thank god t keeper exists
unthank god I got all of his marks
 
phoopes said:
Update: Hitman is out on Switch 2 and you don’t have to run the shitty Cloud version. Thus, you can get results like this:
View attachment 746085

Now that I broke the minute barrier I think I’m done with this level lol. Back to trying to silent assassin every mission in the main campaigns

EDIT: I was not done with the level
View attachment 746095
Two shots at the beginning. One shot is doable but I don’t want to introduce that kind of variance/reset

Key difference (and the idea I had that made me try this) is not doing the coin toss in the kitchen. Cut it out completely. You have barely enough time to grab the knife and the fire extinguisher before running out the door, which now remains open without you needing to do it manually.

Finally, approach the guard from the side-ish to get the faster knockout animation. Approaching directly from the front gives the longer animation.

NOW I can safely say I’m happy with this and am moving on.
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for some reason I decided to come back to this level

IMG_2034.jpeg

I am fairly confident that that is the absolute minimum time I can squeeze out with my current route. The difference from before is that I think I took a better line at the beginning of the level and also had a slightly faster knife/extinguisher grab. I’m now #1 on the Switch leaderboard by 18 seconds. Woo!

CC: Let's go shuckles
 
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well, this took too long. got to max depth exclusively solo queueing, mix of both before and after the dlc. builds below
Wylder's Earring - Double Balancer Relics - Dormant Great Hammers - rest in Fire Attack
Bring to: Gnoster, Caligo

Cranial Vessel Candlestand merchant. You fish for that and just stack as much skill/fire damage as possible; if you're fortunate to get multiple Skill Attack boosts and/or Fire Scorpion Charm then you can just completely obliterate the boss, usually too fast to actually have your ult back in time to cancel Everdark Caligo's second ice storm. IMO only Dormant Great Hammers works for this; Katana (Rivers of Blood) and Curved Greatswords (Magma Wyrm's Scalesword, Morgott's Cursed Sword) are a little more forgivable against Gnoster, but the damage is squarely worse, the non-Fire options are worse when uninvested, and you're not any more likely to find them than Cranial.
Hoarfrost Stomp - Double Balancer Relics - Restage Invincibility - rest in Affinity Attack
Bring to: Gladius, Maris, Heolstor, Straghess

Not at all surprised that as soon as I put this setup together, I started climbing from the Depth 5 border. The goal with this is just to spam any skills you get and stack as many Skill Attack boosts as you can, using Restage and the improved dodging to be as aggressive as possible. This doesn't have a Dormant Power because I just don't have a good eg. Reaper relic (nor do I have a Hoarfrost + Night Invader relic), but daggers are generally good enough to use. Basically just fish for Black Knife / Blade of Calling and bring into Holy-weak bosses.
Bone-Like Stone - Night Invader, Terra Magica - Magic +2, Crystalian, Lightning Pots - rest in Magic Attack
Bring to: Adel, Libra, Fulghor

Damage cannon. Adel and Fulghor have simple enough sequences to where you can just pick anything that vomits damage and be fine. Bring to Libra specifically for the Gravity Bomb cocktail to make the NPC summons a complete non-factor, sacrificing a passive to keep a source of Lightning damage if necessary. You aren't realistically having the relics to make a single-sorcery build (eg. multiple Crystalian Sorcery boosts) so it's generally always best to spec into general damage amp with school boosts as an additional amenity.
Glass Necklace - +1 Character Skill - Night Invader - Dormant Curved Swords - Poison Character Skill - rest in Physical Attack
Bring to: basically anyone except Balancers, if randoms both instalock damage dealers and the boss isn't free

It's probably only worth either building into either a Poison bow + damage on Poisoned enemies build, or a Glass Necklace build with a dormant melee weapon (as bows don't activate successive attack boosts at all). Curved Swords, Straight Swords, and Twinblades are all fair here, though I picked CS because they're unreasonably good at stacking successive attacks (two jump L1's maxes the Necklace boost). The Glass Necklace is here because it's fun and so you can deal actual damage, but it'll still be lower than your teammates, so be prepared to be the buff lackey.
The reason I didn't put a "Bring to: Balancers" option is frankly because I don't have a perfect recommendation. The problem with this fight is when you lack enough burst damage, meaning if you're doing the run away strat you're more than likely going to fail to kill one before it does a big AOE -> depth 5 so too risky to challenge it -> by the time it's done there's 4 balancers attacking at once. The simplest solution, albeit risky and not guaranteed to work, is to sack off damage negation altogether and go all into damage dealt in order to try one-shot or put into fast projectile range. Things i've seen work:
  • Morgott's Cursed Sword (cheat code, fast and usually instakills, doesn't need excessive buffing)
  • Siluria's Tree (ranged and quite easy to get collats later in the fight, but need to line up with whoever's being charged at + might have trouble getting the instakill)
  • Royal Greatsword (only two Purple Colossal Swords so easy to find, micro-staggers both hits, deals more magic dmg than physical so actually benefits from Affinity Attack drops)
  • Carian Piercer (hard to get but surprisingly effective, and worst case you build around Carian Sword sorceries and pivot to Slicer)
  • Shattering Crystal (shotgun + probably easiest thing to hit range with, but need to be point-blank + no micro-stagger) lol
  • Beast Claw (100% guaranteed with the Revenant effect + can stack Bestial Incant boosts, though hard to fit enough "Improved Bestial Incantations" effects to secure instakill)
While there are two weapon skills and two casts listed here, weapon skills are generally more buffable, so if you don't hit an instakill setup these'll probably get you closer (and are generally better at micro-staggering).

i have since been playing depth 5 and found what i think is the actual best option: bloody helice on executor. scales very well on executor, dodge lines all three hits up, second hit of the skill micro-staggers allowing for a free r1 or two afterward (which should always bleed), all-physical so it's easy to get large buffs in few inventory slots, sometimes gets a random counterhit (hits 1 and 3 of the skill do pierce damage), only purple HTS. damage threshold is about 3k in trios and this comfortably gets there with non-generational buffs.
 
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after a long while i am done with dark souls achievements. i functionally went backwards through the fromsoft lineup (ER -> sekiro -> ds3 -> ds2 -> ds1) so getting accustomed to the clunk of these games was part of the experience. i'd say they're all great games, but after some of the painful grinds (mainly in 3, hence the much higher hours, but also in 1) i'm not really itching to play them again anytime soon.

here are my overall thoughts on the games:
it's a relic. the remaster fundementally didn't change anything so this is a game from 2011 and it really shows, primarily with the late-game and some archaic mechanics such as blacksmiths only doing some upgrades each, medium rolls feeling terrible, flask heals being determined by the particular bonfire you sit at (even when it costs literally nothing except your time to warp to a bonfire that has more available and warp back), and instant ng+ when you defeat the final boss (i fell for this and had to scrounge upgrade mats as a result). this also shows in the boss design, whereby bosses only have like three moves with only one ever being threatening (eg. ornstein's charge, seath's explosion; usually only due to being frametraps or to other clunk like the hitboxes of the boss itself), and with the game being as old as it is, you probably know some of the progression path / big bosses even if you haven't played the game, so otherwise-interesting effects like how the game world (mostly) all links back to firelink is dulled in impact a bit. probably my least favourite of the three.

this was the quickest 100% time-wise since nothing in the dlc is required and the game itself is pretty short with few intense grinds. you need two copies of every boss soul except one of priscilla and three of sif, but farming weapon drops goes quite quick so as long as you plan (remember tailcuts, titanite slab pickups, and failable quests like reah) you should be fine.
i went into this game a bit biased against it just from everything i'd read online, and i did initially drop the game after getting to bastille, but i was pleasantly surprised by the end. it's definitely the easiest of the three thanks to lifegems and most bosses being very strafable; much of the difficulty comes in boss runbacks (eg. ancient dragon, smelter demons) and being stunlocked by groups. the exploration in this is actually quite good, since the map extensively reaches in 4 directions from majula (5 technically, but heide's tower and forest of fallen giants both converge to bastille) all with a lord soul at the end. similar to ds1 there definitely is clunk that lets it down; hollowing (dying reduces your max HP) sucks, the constant invasions suck (even when trivialized with something like the dragon tooth r2), i thought adp was fine but worth bringing up as a possible issue.

this is far and away the "best" 100%. bonfire ascetics allow you to advance the area around you by one ng+ cycle, allowing you to obtain the requisite duplicates of boss souls, farm easy money, and fulfil the two "summon me for bosses three times" quests without having to run through the whole game again. soul memory allows the requisite ng+1 and +2 playthroughs (three spells are exclusive to ng+2 and cannot be skipped to via ascetics) to go much quicker, as you can just farm the rotten and skip the whole first half of the game. the list of grind items is incredibly short, limited to just hidden weapon and sunlight spear iirc, and the "obtain everything"-type achievements are almost all earned through regular gameplay. the dlc sorceries, pyromancies, miracles, and hexes are required for the achievements on SOTFS edition so even though the ng+ runs are faster than ds1, you'll likely still be in the game for a longer total time.
i don't think it's really a debate that this is the best one overall. it controls the best, it's the fastest, it has the best bosses, and
playing it as functionally an elden ring tourist it was the easiest jump into more dark souls-specific mechanics (eg. runbacks, less heals, no jump button, weaker status) while still feeling responsive enough to not be pained by clunk. the exploration is quite linear, most similar to ds1 but without entire nothing areas (eg. ash lake, pre-lordvessel demon ruins), though i don't really mind it here because of how fast a lot of enemies attack in this game, meaning you really want some HP leeway from being appropriately levelled to get dodge timings down.

the 100% grind for this can fuck off however. this is the only game where obtaining every ring is a requirement in addition to the regular sorceries/pyromancies/etc.. every dark souls game forces you into ng+2 in some way (sif's three boss weapons, chancellor wellager, +2 ring variants), but ds1 and 2 at least have the common decency to let you only need to play half of ng+2 (ds1 can end as soon as you get to the giant blacksmith in anor londo, ds2 only needs you to enter the first room of drangleic castle). ds3 forces you to play basically the entirety of ng+2, as the gold serpent +2 is in the area after nameless king, life +2 is in untended graves, and dragoncrest +2 is in lothric castle on the same straight path as the second-last boss (all of these are completely separate paths btw, with serpent/life being after 2/1 otherwise-optional bosses too).

^ that's arguably the easy bit because this is a fast game. in all dark souls games, covenants require you to earn specific items to rank up and earn rewards required for the 100%. of the six functional covenants in base-game ds3 (dlc is a separate purchase and thus isn't required), four require covenant level 2 (30 covenant items) and two require level 1 (10 covenant items) to get this 100%. these items are easily the worst grind you will probably ever do in a game should you try; we're talking two of the 30-required being 1% (unadjusted) drop rates from enemies you maybe get three of per minute, three others being at best 2%, and only one (a 10-required) being a 5% drop. these items alone took me multiple days of grinding to get, all while completely dull and not overlapping with any other aspect of the 100%.
 
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