Sunday, August 21, 2011

Dungeon Siege III Boss Fight: Palefang (White Spider) on Pc on Hardcore Using Katarina

After you speak to Odo and gain access to the Mournweald and East Forest, you can complete the side quest obtained in the town earlier by rescuing the merchant, whose lovely and concerned wife asks you to rescue him. Since letting him die and opportunistically comforting her on the rebound is not an option (heheh) then you might as well pick up some extra XP and loot. This is a tough boss fight with some hilarious dialogue leading in, so make sure you don't skip through it.

For players who choose Katarina, you're going to find a lot of boss fights difficult due to the high abounts of damage sustained from individual attacks. This means a lot of evasive tactics and utilizing vampiric (life-stealing) capabilities on your weapons and jewelry heavily. Unless you have an been focusing heavily on the block attribute stats, you probably dont have a high enough block setting to simply shrug off the damage.

For this boss fight remember to keep moving, avoid the spider's charged up melee attack (you can see it coming ahead of time) and make sure to switch to your short range weapons (which ideally at this point have some life-stealing capability) to feed off of those easy kills to regenerate. Then after evading and killing the babies, switch over and damage Palefang when they're cleared out. Use the rifle for higher criticals.

Your only companion character at this point (unless you're in a multiplayer situation) is going to be Anjali, who will do some decent damage and give you a periodic healing boost (with the right abilities) and draw Palefang's attention at times allowing you to do some rifle damage with specials.

As with many of the boss fights playing as Katarina, patience is a key. On hardcore difficulty a single slip-up which causes you to dake a direct attack could mean instant death unless your health is very high at the moment. Use your recharges and lifestealing effectively. Below is a video walkthrough:

Saturday, August 20, 2011

VIDEO: Gold Sellers and the Inflation Dynamic Explained Through MMO's

Here is a short video outlining the dynamics of inflation as shown through the practice of gold selling and farming in a typical Massively-Multiplayer Online Game. Yes, I know this analogy isn't perfect because the gold sellers actually have to farm the gold through in-game efforts, whereas fiat currencies are just printed effortlessly by the governments or corporatist ventures given the power. Just go with me on it, it's close enough and the buying of gold in these games does indeed inflate prices.


Video Games As a Vehicle for Education

This blog is going to a much more personal forum for me than my more formal undertaking, "Liberty In Focus"

I'm hoping it will give me an outlet to discuss some less formal areas of my own interests, as well as an outlet for me to speak them. A lot of people criticize internet blogging as a silly exercise in self-involvement and indulgence. That's probably true to a great extent, but for me it's also an outlet for my thinking that is theraputic, spares my family the dead-horse beating of what they already know that I think, and most importantly it forces me to organize and actually record things. The other nice thing about using an internet blog for an outlet like this is that only those who actually have a desire need continue reading or listening :) There's no social barrier to simply leaving the page.

Economics provides a unique perspective on video games, whether it is the manegerial, control architecture presumed by the typical real-time strategy game like "Civilization" or the insights to inflation that can be drawn from the economy of a typical massively-multiplayer online game. These are things I can't help noticing in my gaming endeavors, so yes I will write about them.

Video games provide a subject matter that is intensely interesting to a large percentage of the demographics that are critical to influence for substantive change. I want liberty, in the fullest and realest sense possible meaning FULL control of my own life, time, labor and the fruits thereof. Before this can happen I must influence the people who are hulled up in their basements gringing away for a level 29 armor upgrade in world of warcraft, or gunning down friends in Call of Duty: Black Ops.

The good news is that the very games we enjoy, provide an emotionally neutral environment within which someone like myself can explain and apply the workings of rational principles and do so without the emotional baggage and threats to personal beliefs that are ever-present in the politically charged "real world."

This is why I like to write about philosophy and principles such as natural rights, economic exchange (yes, this is philosophical, not just economics) etc in these contexts. It takes the emotional charge out of the equation and allows people to think things through without anticipating a threat to a party, system or individual in which they have a high level of emotional investment. Plus, I like to play them so it's a nice fit.