Hey guys, here’s my summary of important life events in 2018. Here we go…
• Scotland had the snowiest winter in about a decade. I was stranded at my parents’ house and built a huge snow fortress with my mum.
• Me and Ronja visited London for the EGX Rezzed expo, collected stickers, caught up with developer friends, and met a lot of new ones. The Imperial War and Modern Art museums were also cool. London’s so big that we can see new stuff every time we visit.
• Phyrnna visited Scotland, and we did a bunch of sight-seeing together, including a tour of the Tennent’s brewery. This was actually the first time we’ve met, and I think it went very well.
• I worked really hard on EBF5. At the start of the year, I was still working on dialogue and map objects, and the game was roughly 80% finished. The last 10% definitely took a long time, and I was getting very bored of working on it by now.
• I did arts classes in ceramics, mosaics and fused glass, with my mum and my brother. It was fun to do some creative stuff that wasn’t work, and to meet regular people who are just trying out new hobbies. I’m most proud of the glass cats I made.
• My first Dungeons and Dragons campaign concluded. My character Salazar Ratkin started a cult, created a race of rat-men, and eventually became their God. It was good fun but not something I’d like to do regularly, as it’s very time consuming.
• Me and Ronja’s house-hunt continued, and we were gradually looking at and bidding on nicer ones than when we started. It was a tough market for buyers.
• Dealing with solicitors, mortgages, and home-sellers caused a lot of stress. Everyone points fingers and blames someone else for delays. Paperwork sucks. Had to change solicitors because the first one seemed dishonest.
• But I finally bought a big comfy house in the Summer!
• Did a thorough cleaning of our old flat, and I gained a lot of experience there. I did a really good job on the oven.
• Me and Ronja exhibited EBF5 at the Play Expo in Glasgow. We got a free table, I prepared a simple battle demo, printed off some posters and cards, and brought my computer. It was a great experience and we met a huge variety of people – old and young. The game never crashed once!
• Scotland had the warmest summer in about a decade, with record-breaking temperatures. It was quite nice.
• We spent a lot of the summer working on the garden. Landscaping, extending the driveway, planting stuff, looking for new furniture, collecting tools, etc. Friends and family came over to help out. Using a pick-axe is a lot of fun, and a good workout.
• Lots of car problems this year. My break pipes, wheels, and car frame are all rusting away into oblivion. She’ll be an adult soon.
• Me and Ronja painted the attic. The low, cramped ceiling made it a challenge, but it looks much better now.
• My Patreon, Discord and YouTube all grew a lot this year. I’ve been having fun with these platforms, but managing so many people can be tricky, especially on Discord!
• In terms of news, everyone’s still talking about Trump and Brexit, and fun is being removed from the internet, with the EU banning memes, and content platforms discouraging anything that’s not safe for advertisers. Newgrounds is starting to make a comeback though.
• I sorted all of my Lego and have a big cupboard for it. I made a lot of pixel-art mosaics and other stuff.
• We lived quite cheaply this year, mostly just spending money on new furniture. I didn’t play much games, read less than last year, and watched very little TV. I’ll try to make room for more leisure time next year. This whole year was mostly focused on work and moving.
• My diet’s still improving, I’m eating very few snacks, and I’m gradually learning to make new types of food. Considering how long I spend in front of a desk, I’m quite happy with my health. Unhealthy days are now an occasional treat, as they should be.
• We decorated heavily for Halloween, with a lot of pumpkin carving. Almost 50 kids showed up at our house. Had a Halloween party two days later, with lots of pumpkin cooking.
• Bonfire night was also great, with many nearby households putting on huge firework shows – sometimes without much safety considerations.
• Tried out bingo, slot machines, and arcades for the first time, during a friend’s birthday night out. I can definitely see the appeal of gambling (for fun).
• I spent months on debugging and balancing EBF5, and set myself a 3-year deadline to finish it. Adding totally new languages was quite exciting, and while we did translations much more efficiently than on previous games, it was still a huge task. The weeks leading up to the launch were some of the most stressful in my life. Ronja helped out a lot with testing and customer support.
• The launch of EBF5 was incredibly successful. Most of the major bugs were fixed over the first two weeks, and the game sold well for the entire month of December. It’s already paid off its development costs. Success comes with responsibilities though, and it looks like I’ll be making updates, doing paperwork, and dealing with customers for a long time before I can completely relax.
• I don’t binge drink often, but this year I’ve had some of my heaviest drinking sessions ever. Being an independent adult gives you the freedom to drink til 5am, and hangover days are actually quite nice when you’re self employed and have no schedule.
• I got PS VR and spent much of the Christmas holidays trying it out with my family. Everyone likes it so far, and even my ancient dad is addicted to Astro Bot (great game btw). Ronja’s mum visited from Finland, and we feasted for 5 days straight.
I guess that about sums it up. My hope for 2019 is simply to work less, and to use the internet less. The rest of life is much more wholesome.
Happy new year in advance!
Now that you have PS VR, have you tried Beat Saber yet? Or can you not get it yet (because, at least on Steam, it was sill in Early Access in 2029)?
2019* *facepalm*
Well, I seriously HOPE the game would be long since officially released by 2029!! :stars:
YAY I bought EBF5! :stars:
YEAR *clap* REVIEW *Clap* :shades:
A late happy new year!
I wonder how Phyrnna looks like. Big fan of her, but she is like a mystery to me.
How am I now just realizing the similarities between Epic Battle Fantasy 5 and PERSONA 5…?
Plot, or gameplay mechanics (don’t spoil me the plot of Persona 5, I’ve only played the beginning)?
This reminds me that I’ve had a few MODDING ideas for rebalancing EBF5 to work more like a(n) SMT/Persona game. Some of the most important of these would include reducing weaknesses on enemies and making it so hitting a weakness grants Haste status and gives Stun (or a similar status, may need to be custom…?) to the target.
I think you’ve written more here for this year than I’ve forgotten. Here’s to another great year for ya Matt.
I’m glad that some good things happened this year, but I hope next year will be less stressful for everyone!
Am i supposed not to be able to enter the dungeons in newgame plus?
This sometimes happens in NG+ and can be fixed by restarting the game and re-entering the area.
It is also fixed in version 1.4 which you can access by opting in for the 1.4 beta on Steam. To opt-in go to Steam Client > EBF5 > Properties > Beta > Select the other version. When it updates you should be on 1.4.
Oh man, if I think about how 2018 did start and how it does end i’d like to die. However, nth. to worry about. Gotta hope 2019 has some good surprises prepared for you. So from me too, a Happy New Year, Matt. And hopefully you get enough support to do more of such things you mentioned above in 2019, remembering you to do enough breaks to relax.
Happy New Year, oh God(cat) I dunno how you’d even go about doing those bosses on Epic, i’m so scared to try as I just beat the game on Normal, accidentally saved over my last normal file that was near the end and was hoping to finish the boss rush stuff…so yeah, not excited to do Epic :bleh: but Happy New Year to all! :hurray:
*raises a glass* all the best in the new year, Matt. Here’s to more friends and new memories but more importantly food, plants and lego. :shades:
happy new year, one question can you tell me how I can beat Neon Valhalla on epic, I wanna know how to do enough damage cause it heals about 200,000+ health each turn which sucks cause I can’t survive long enough, maybe we could ease him up a bit
as well as Snowflake unless you can show us the proper resistances or defenses to use against him
and of course the final boss and God
I might be a wimp but who knows, I might not be the only one
Either wet/thunder or heavy/earth combo deals with NV just fine. Use elder’s wisdom to enchant for free double damage. (Yeah, use physical. Magical won’t work.) Stack curse for another double damage. Should be more than enough to hit it with enough damage even without buffs. (In case you needs it just Ragnarok with your physical attackers in front.) Buff defense and resist bomb to not die. Don’t let any nuke set off. Either get rid of them or syphon them. Leave the harpoons alone if you can trick them into not reversing your buffs. Otherwise syphon/berserk them.
Snowflake is a joke. It’s vulnerable to most statuses so stack as many as you can. (You may struggle to survive the first few rounds but once the debuffs get to 50 it should be easy.) Just bless your party to not get inflicted with some incurable statuses. Get full capture gear and good luck. Stack every statuses possible. You can end the fight at half health.
God isn’t much harder than snowflake. Generally the same. Except this time don’t stack too much statuses. You can try to see how he reacts to different statuses and try to manipulate his actions. But if you are not sure, try to just survive. (Constant maintain autolife on all of your party member.) And slowly deal damage with whatever method you have. Keep in mind he’s not immune to syphon. And syphon helps capture greatly. Also get confuse, stun, dispel resist. Yes it’s possible to get all these while wearing full capture gear.
Final boss is meant to be that hard. Important resists are bomb, fire, dispel, burn/scorch, confuse and maybe earth, bio. Can’t help much since I have yet to master that thing. Get Angel Mirror and Stumpy Gloop. Maybe Viking Monolith as well. Improvise. (If you are stuck at round one then I’m afraid I can’t help.)
Apparently the top players are finding this game too easy so I can assure you it will only get harder. Better try and deal with these now in case something happens and making these bosses much harder for some reason.
Invisible+Target is good for round 1 of that battle, at least while certain equips still give the user Invisible when Defending). But be careful attacking if the counterattack is Enchant, since it cancels Invisibility…
If you needed invisitanking for round one you are not going to beat this boss tbh.
Well the game itself is not hard if you know what to use (although it took me 1 hour to realize i can deal 4 million damage to god with giga drill).
Yeah Giga Drill is amazing against God, I just struggle with getting him to defend rather than eating bacon 😡
bacon is life :bacon: :bacon: :bacon: :bacon: :bacon: :bacon: :stars: :stars: :stars: :stars: :bacon: :bacon: :bacon:
Y’know… if you think about it. New years is just the universe’s birthday!
Happy Birthday Universe!!! :yay: :yay:
To be accurate December 31/January 01 is the date of Jesus Christ’s birth, not the creation of universe, at some places new year doesn’t start this time. It’s not that I want to argue or something I just don’t think it’s good to believe in false information. It sounds pretty cool tho :smirk:
I thought December 25 was Jesus’s birthday
well in the underground it seems their time is 6 days further