Zorua

And once again I keep falling behind. Ah well. Splatfest results! The 2026 SpringFest has come and gone. Team Baby Chicks, Team Li'l Bunnies, and Team Bear Cubs had it out in a battle of fuzzy fluffiness, and the Bear Cubs managed to claw out a victory! I was on Team Li'l Bunnies, but the luck just wasn't in our feet this time. Meanwhile I'm trying to level up my gear. Which would be great. If we were winning. Which we could. If members of my team would actually play, instead of faffing around doing f[TWEET!] all. Quit squid partying and cover turf already! I want my team to hold my casket at my funeral so they can let me down one last time.

New Minecraft news. The Tiny Takeover update, which massively updates the models for every baby mob in the game, will be released on March 24th. After that, the next update, Chaos Cubed, will contain: New Biome: Sulfur Caves, a new cave biome. Always fun finding new stuff underground. Sulfur blocks and Cinnabar blocks, new yellow and red blocks for building. They have full block sets too: regular, brick, and polished variants with slabs, stairs, and walls. I've already heard people calling these the McDonalds blocks. Potent Sulfur, which generates bubbles when underwater. This causes the Nausea effect to players that get in them. That'll make the "How Did We Get Here?" achievement easier to get, I guess. (that's the one where you need to have literally every effect applied at once) The Sulfur Cube, a new mob. Normally it just bounces at you, but if you give it a block, it absorbs that block, stops moving, and now has physics. You can knock it around by hitting it, and its properties change depending on the block. Wool makes it floatier, Iron makes it heavier, Logs make it bouncier, Ice makes it slidier... There's so many minigame possibilities like golf or ice hockey. It looks fun! Back in Splatoon, I wish there was a Salmon Run rotation on the Marooner's Bay stage where the weapons weren't dogsh[TWEET!]. (although I did just get a kill on the hardest King Salmonid with one player disconnected on that map, so... skill issue?)

A bit late (I'm bad at this). I found a solution to my PC's audio problem. While trying to do something that has nothing to do with video games, so...bonus. I tried plugging my headphones into the computer's speaker port, however that port kept recognizing the headphones as a microphone instead. I tried searching the internet, and something somewhere suggested that the monitor might have an audio port? So I checked, and...sure enough, one of my monitors does indeed have an audio port. So now I just have my headphones plugged into my monitor, and it works fine. Hooray! Now I can play games on my PC with audio again! Octopath, Celeste, RuneScape, Portal, No Man's Sky, Minecraft... (downside is I have to rework my monitor setups a bit, but that's minor) In actual video games, I've completed a base-game post-game thing that I honestly should've done a while ago. Finishing it has unlocked 6-star Tera Raids, which have stronger opponents (level 90 and with even larger health bars) but better rewards. It's also unlocked the ability to participate in Nintendo-hosted 7-star Tera Raids, which are level 100 with even more health. I haven't touched either of them. I still have difficulty with 5-star raids. At the moment, there are very few Pokemon I need to complete the Pokedex. Literally just four for the base game, one for the first DLC, and five (well, four plus the bonus mythical) for the second wave. All except three of those (all of which are for DLC wave 2) are exclusive to Pokemon Scarlet. I've been hoping to get them in surprise trades (send something out there, get something back, you have no idea what you're gonna get, it's full of hacked Shiny Pokemon with websites for nicknames), which has borne fruit for most of the version exclusives. The main downside is three of those things are one-per-game: the box legendary plus two exclusive static encounters, so it's unlikely that people are just going to yeet those into the wild. I'll have to...*gulp*...socialize. *dun, dun, DUUUUN* (or just use some room codes the community agreed upon like three years ago and pray someone is still using them). (it also means I'll probably need to nab a second copy of the Violet exclusive static encounters so I don't lose the ones I have) In other news, I think I've become a shiny hunter.

Yesterday was Pokémon Day, and we got a Pokémon-centric Nintendo Direct to celebrate. Here's all the highlights. The overall theme of the 30th Anniversary is "Every Pokémon is Someone's Favorite". A special 30th anniversary logo was made featuring a Pokémon. Which Pokémon? Take your pick. There's one-thousand and twenty five of them. More than that, thanks to regional forms! Give big props to the art team; even if most of it was just moving and recoloring assets, over a thousand images is still a lot of work, and even then it looks like brand new art for all the Pokémon themselves. I think it's neat that the Voltorb lines outright replace the 0 with the Pokémon itself. They had fun with it, for sure. Pokémon music player. It looks like the original Game Boy, and each individual music track is a separate cartridge. That's a big and obvious money grab (at least there's a box set, though), but it also seems kinda neat that they're still making dedicated music player devices instead of just 'put it on the app'. PokémonXP and the Pokémon World Championships will be held at the Chase Center, and it'll be bigger and better than ever. The Pokémon Trading Card Game will... have something. Way to be descriptive, guys. Pokémon GO will have a lot of older Pokémon brought back, and showing up all at once no less. If you still play Pokémon GO, this is a chance to grab a lot of variety you may have missed in the past. Red from Pokémon Red and Green (1996) is coming to Pokémon Masters EX. Florian and Juliana from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet also get new Sync Pairs with Ogerpon and Terapagos, respectively. Pokémon Café Remix will have a roundup of all the Starter Pokémon from each region starting today. Mew Missions in Pokémon Sleep. And possibly a tease at Latias and Latios? Pokémon Unite will get Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres as new playable characters. Meganium, Typhlosion, and Feraligatr are also planned for the future. Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket will get the Paldean Wonders card packs added to its list. So now we can have Gen 9 Pokémon in the mobile card game too. Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness will be added to the Switch 2 Game Cube library. Who doesn't like Shadow Pokémon, canonically stealing Pokémon from other Trainers (for a good cause, I can assure you), and the Miror B. Battle Theme? Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen are now available for purchase on the Nintendo Switch eShop. Experience the wonders of Gen III, predating most of the modern quality-of-life features. You'll eventually be able to transfer Pokémon from them to Pokémon HOME, though you can't send them back. Pokémon Champions, the dedicated Pokémon battling game along the lines of Pokémon Stadium and Pokémon Battle Revolution, will be released this April. All of the new Mega Evolutions in Pokémon Legends Z-A will be compatible. Mega Garchomp Z will be available in Pokémon Legends Z-A. New characters and features for Pokémon Pokopia: Rotom (Stereo Form). This character, named DJ Rotom, can play any music CD given to it. With classics from across the series from the original Kanto Route 3 theme from Red and Green to the music of the Academy in Scarlet and Violet. There's also a cooking mechanic. A Greedent named Chef Dente will teach the protagonist how to make meals. Some dishes even offer powerups. You can visit other players' towns in multiplayer. Up to four players can hang out and even play hide and seek. You can also functionally play Prop Hunt, since you're playing as Ditto. Enjoy! And finally, the big reveal, confirming the leaks. Generation 10 is here! First of all, the game looks gorgeous. The lighting engine, the water physics, just...it looks phenomenal. Nice tropical-looking region. Based on the leaks, it's definitely based on the islands of Southeast Asia, like Indonesia or the Philippines. Huge open-world game. Open-world is always awesome. I like the designs on the protagonists. They have slightly different outfits between each game, and both look like they have a wetsuit underneath. Fitting because... We can go underwater! They wouldn't put that much detail into the underwater and have Pokémon freely swim around like that if there wasn't a mechanic to dive down to see it and get them. The move Dive as an overworld tool hasn't been in the games since the Hoenn remakes, and hasn't been in a new game since Unova. I honestly can't wait to see how it works. Returning Pokémon families: Pikachu, Oddish. Krabby, Tangela, Ledyba, Slugma, Wingull, Taillow, Wailmer, Duskull, Corsola, Mareanie, Sandygast, Tropius, Carnivine, Tympole, Nymble, Sizzlipede, Finneon, Frillish, and Tynamo. Two new Pikachu with outfits show up, nicknamed Mr. Windychu and Ms. Wavychu. They look ready for vacation. I wonder what their importance will be. The new starters! Browt, the Bean Chick Pokémon. A little bird chick where its beak and 'eyebrows' look like a plant sprout. It looks like it came out of Angry Birds, but it's apparently lively yet clumsy. Pombon, the Puppy Pokémon. Immediate favorite. It's an adorable fire Pomeranian doggo! It's so fluffy! Gecqua, the Water Gecko Pokémon. A little aquatic gecko with a bit of a pretentious personality it seems. It will be a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, which will be pricey if I want to play it. But it'll be released in 2027, so they have time to perfect it. Always better to delay a game to finish it than to rush it to meet some arbitrary deadline. Pokémon Winds and Pokémon Waves. I can't wait to see what lies ahead.

So I found something out. Apparently Pokemon you get from Tera Raids can be Shiny, and they have lower odds of being shiny than usual. So the fact that I found two Shiny Pokemon in raids is kind of insane. And makes me wonder if I accidentally chose not to catch Pokemon with barely-noticeable shiny colors in raids before. One fun thing about open world games with a lot of ledges on climbable surfaces is there's constantly that feeling of "Wait, I've never been here before? Neat!" Even over 400 hours into the game, I'm still finding non-regenerating items in places.

I did something I've never done before: intentionally hunt for Shiny Pokemon. "Shiny Hunting" means using an in-game method to boost the odds of a Pokemon generating as a Shiny Pokemon. For Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, this involves making sandwiches with the right ingredients. Sandwich effects always last for 30 minutes after making the sandwich and provide effects such as raised shiny odds, boosted encounter rates for Pokemon of specific types, making eggs hatch faster, and more. Ideally you'd make one that simultaneously boosts Shiny Pokemon for the desired type, but also boosts the encounter rate of that type. The ingredients needed to boost the shiny odds are decidedly late-game, though, presumably as a reward for getting that far. The Pokemon I hunted for was Luxray. I found a location where Luxray was the only Electric-type Pokemon that spawns, then used a sandwich that boosts both shiny odds and encounter rates for Electric types. I ran around for a while and noticed that Shinx, the first stage in Luxray's evolutionary line, also spawned there. I decided that was fine and kept looking. And in less than five minutes after making the sandwich, I found the Luxray. With 25 minutes left, I went to an area I knew Luxio, the middle stage of the Shinx line, spawns. Unfortunately, that location also generates other Electric-types, meaning I wasn't guaranteed to find a Luxio. At about the 15 minute mark, I switched to another area that had a lot of Shinx, but this location also had other Electric-types. This other location also had cliffs, so there was a chance for Pokemon to spawn inside of a wall. Either way, I didn't find a shiny Shinx. I should've stayed in the place I found the Luxray and tried for two more Shinx and just evolved one. Still, I have a shiny Luxray, which is one of the best shinies you could ask for.

Who do you spend the holidays with? Friends, Family, or Solo? Well, the results are in. Team Solo! Way to go, Team Solo! Let's all sit and enjoy our victory in silence. Sadly, I was on Team Family, and we got dead last. So thoroughly dead last, we got third place in all scoring categories and got literally 0 points. And now that I'm done with Splatoon's latest monthly Event, I can get back to other stuff. Like Pokemon. Speaking of, I've found a spot where the terrain wasn't properly visually rendered, leaving what looks like a hole in the wall. Man, Scarlet and Violet. Everybody likes to clown on these games for their performance issues, and it's hard to disagree when I find an actual (visual) hole in the level geometry. (I wonder if it's fixed in the Switch 2 update)

My first file I did the Dragon Tears quest, rushed to catch up and grab the Master Sword, and then did the quest I talked about that puts a tracker on the Master Sword. Second file I did the second quest first and haven't touched the Dragon Tears yet, or the sword. Leaving the sword there with the tracker on is a good way to know where to go to farm materials; without it, you kinda just have to guess about a million times. I've dipped back into Pokemon for a bit. Trying to get some trade evolutions and version exclusives. I just found out you can do Tera Raids with random players, and I got a few Pokemon that way. I've also failed to get a few Pokemon that way, either by not being allowed to join the raid (it filled up too quickly) or by just...losing. I think my main focus in Pokemon is gonna be beating the DLC. The Blueberry Academy Elite Four is no joke. They're type specialists like you'd expect, except they use what I think are competitive-level strategies. Decent coverage moves. Varied secondary types and abilities to counter the usual weaknesses. Off-type Pokemon so you really can't counter their specialties with your own. Setup moves that benefit the whole team. You cannot go into this expecting your usual playthrough teams to handle things. You pretty much have to make a dedicated team for each member. (either that or overlevel everything like crazy, but I'm not using that crutch) Who do you spend the holidays with? Friends, Family, or Solo?

The barricades were those metal bars surrounding the chamber with the shrine so you couldn't just walk/climb/jump to the end, forcing you to find the hidden path. Tears has them too. The surface portions of the labyrinths were made considerably easier in Tears since there's the in-universe lore of a research team getting there first and leaving a trail of bread crumbs to follow through the actual path. The northeast labyrinth also has a fun cheese strategy; there's a cave on the mainland that cuts under the water and leads directly underneath the labyrinth, so using the Ascend ability you get in the starting area can bring you directly to the end pretty easily, though I guess that's the same as finding the path from the top of the labyrinth. There is one thing, however, that ups the danger considerably in that strategy, plus navigating the labyrinths the normal way for the other two. Which is the perfect segue to talk about the new overworld boss that replaced the Guardians in Tears. Gloom Spawn. Gloom is the game's replacement for BotW's Malice, being red discolored patches of floor that lower your maximum number of hearts if you stand in them too long, as opposed to Malice which is a blob on the ground that just damages you. These blocked hearts are restored in sunlight. Certain NPCs, however, will mention seeing the Gloom move. Go to the right places, and you can see a patch of Gloom appear and move around, with five hands on spindly arms sticking out of it. Then the hands notice you. The piercing yellow eyes on the palms. The unholy shriek. The sky darkening into the same red as a Blood Moon, which prevents Gloom-depleted hearts from being restored. They charge forwards like the unholy offspring of the Wallmasters and Dead Hands from Ocarina of Time, dragging the pool of Gloom with them. They grab at you, squeezing the hearts out of you while the other hands wait their turn, easily getting you stuck in a cycle of death if you're not quick. While several of them are out of their way, a few are in easily reachable points of interest. Castle Town. The Spring of Power in the northeast. The trail leading up Mount Lanayru. A cave containing a shrine under a tower. The top of the Akkala Citadel. The underground area in the northeast island labyrinth. The central walkway in the desert labyrinth. The hallway surrounding the central chamber in the snowy labyrinth, the only one of the three that can reach you after you've cleared the labyrinth. Find a ledge to stay out of reach? Certain spots don't have good ledges, and if the slope leading up to your new hiding spot is juuuust barely sloped enough, they can slide right up to your 'safe' spot. Try and build artillery platforms out of Zonai Devices? They despawn Zonai Devices and break Ultra Hand builds apart with their mere presence. Find a very definitively safe ledge they can't climb and wait it out? That might work for some of them, letting them despawn and drop a rare cooking material, but it doesn't work for exactly one on the surface and none in the Depths. Fight them on the ground with the old-fashioned sword and shield and exploiting the game's perfect dodge flurry rush mechanic? Incredibly risky early on and probably something you should wait to do until you have better armor. Shoot them in the eyes, a typical weakness of video game bosses? Arrows do pitiful damage to the hands. You'll empty your quiver before finishing off anything. Bomb Arrows? Better, especially with the splash damage to hit multiple hands at once, but if your supply is low, it might not be enough. Defeat one of the hands? You'd better hope you kill the other four quickly enough, else the surviving hands will respawn the fallen hands. Try to use the Master Sword, which both powers up and does not deplete durability against specific enemies, including this one? Unless you already know where the Master Sword is, you have to go through a quest to be able to track it down. Part of this quest requires you to kill a Gloom Spawn. And if you do manage to successfully defeat all five hands? Heheheh... That's where the real fun begins. In other news, I did a batch of surprise trading in Pokemon Violet and managed to get dex entries for a few Pokemon that are tough to get, as well as get a couple of version-exclusives for myself. I'm somewhat annoyed at all of the obviously hacked Pokemon that end up thrown out into the void as trade fodder--I know Umbreon has a good shiny coloration, but I'm getting tired of seeing one with a website for a nickname--but at least it's good for giving dex entries. Currently leveling up a Deino and an Alolan Vulpix. While Vulpix evolves with an evolution stone, its level-up movepool changes entirely, so I want it to get to level 52 to learn the last of its level-up moves before evolving it. Deino is just a right pain, reaching its final stage at the obscenely high level of sixty-four, the highest in all of Pokemon.

Still bad at typing on here in a timely manner. Ah well. I found the most fun thing ever in Tears of the Kingdom. So, in Breath of the Wild, there were three big labyrinths in different spots on the map. You had to navigate through them in order to get to the shrine in the middle (there were barricades keeping you from just skipping directly to the end). Tears of the Kingdom took those labyrinths and made them only one part of a three part labyrinth: the one on the surface, a new one in the sky, and a third deep underground in the depths (which ended up more of a miniboss arena than a labyrinth). The one in the sky has you travel through the labyrinth to find four terminals in different places. Activating all of them would reveal a new terminal on top that would open passage to the depths labyrinth. The thing about the sky labyrinth, though, is that it has no floor as well as a constant updraft. The way I did them all on my first playthrough was gliding through the labyrinth using the paraglider, finding places to land here and there as using the paraglider consumes stamina. However. Tears of the Kingdom has an armor set called the Glide Armor. It is, functionally, a wingsuit that increases your horizontal movement speed while skydiving. And skydiving does not consume stamina. So if you take the time to get all three pieces of the Glide Armor set before doing any of the labyrinths, you get the opportunity to catch the updrafts and fly around like Superman. It's awesome!

Literally just encountered a probable hacker in Splatoon. We were in Rainmaker mode, they had the thing, they refused to take damage, they somehow ended up levitating and flying back to our team's spawn. Very much looked like a hacker. In Minecraft news the 1.21.11 Mounts of Mayhem drop will come out on December 9th, adding the Zombie Horse to survival mode and adding the Camel Husk, the Parched, the Nautilus and Zombie Nautilus, Nautilus Armor, the new Breath of the Nautilus effect, Netherite Horse Armor, the Spear, and the Lunge enchantment. They also made it so you don't dismount horses when crossing water, a much welcome change. Also about Minecraft, I have created what I call The Book of Shame. This is a book showing all the times I switched my main Survival Mode world to Creative Mode, which is something I don't want to do on principal but have to do if I mess up in a particularly irrevocable way. The first time I did that was to place a Budding Amethyst block that I'd accidentally broken; you can't craft those or obtain them in Survival and have to work with them where they're placed. The second and third times were basically one right after another. I tried my "Whoosh! Grab! Whoosh!" strategy on a Bastion to try and get some rare loot I wanted. I had hoped to block off any pathways that the Piglin Brutes that spawn in Bastions could get to me, but I didn't do so in time and got killed. Dropping my Elytra and a number of other things in either the middle of the Bastion or into the lava. I switched to Creative Mode to get my stuff back, then switched back to Survival to raid it properly: sneaking my way down the sides and blocking off the path with Cobblestone. I made it to a different chest that also had loot I wanted, but I didn't notice the stairs leading right to that spot, allowing a different Piglin Brute to waltz right up and kill me. Switch to Creative again to get my stuff back and then back to Survival to loot the first chest in a much smarter way this time. Then I got back and made The Book of Shame. The first Bastion I raided, I was much more careful, blocking off my path as I went so nothing could touch me. I don't know why I decided to throw caution to the wind this time.

I've mostly been massing around in Minecraft lately, largely exploring new places to get some loot. Version 1.18 changed how the game generates terrain, which makes for some interesting changes in terrain generation when you go from old terrain generated pre-1.18 to new terrain. One of the changes in my world is around my Mushroom Fields biome. Before I updated the world to a post-1.18 version, I used a program on some browser to check the terrain generation and find specific biomes, one of which is a Mushroom Fields biome. The fun benefits of that biome is that hostile mobs don't generate there (except Phantoms, but if you sleep, that isn't a problem), making it great for setting up passive farms or having builds that can play with darker light levels without worry of accidentally creating a hostile mob spawning hotspot in the middle of your build. So I wanted to keep one. So I opened up a Nether portal and hopped through into the biome. After updating the world, however, it turns out that the new terrain generation would've put a Wooded Badlands biome in that spot (basically a mesa full of red sand, terracotta, and coarse dirt), so now my Mushroom Fields biome is surrounded on all sides by the American Southwest basically. But in the newly lowered bottom of the world terrain, the cave biome there is the Deep Dark. Which also doesn't generate mobs. A Mushroom Fields biome directly above a Deep Dark means that basically nothing spawns except Phantoms and the Mushroom Fields' local passive mob that can be ignored. But the Deep Dark can also generate the Ancient City. Home of the Warden. And, as of the 1.20 update, home of some unique loot: a pair of cosmetic armor trims. I want to collect all of the armor trims, so I went looking for more Ancient Cities than the one I looted in the previous thread since, after all, I'd already looted that one and thus it didn't have the new armor trims. In a copy of my world, I not only found one, but two Ancient Cities generating so close to each other that they were actively overlapping. Really impressive! And a short distance away (if you can count a kilometer a 'short distance') was a third one! (In my main world, I got one of the armor trims from the third and ignored the double city entirely). But then on a whim I decided to go to my Mushroom Fields biome in that copy of the world, and I found the Deep Dark underneath and THREE ANCIENT CITIES not too far away from each other. One of which had surface access! Just on the edge of the shift from old terrain to new terrain was a surface opening to a rather massive and impressive cave that would let me fly directly to the city. Hardest structure in the game, forcing you to play stealth rather than combat. Whoosh. Grab. Whoosh. Done. Okay, I did kinda play stealth since the Sculk Shriekers that summon the Warden give you the Blindness effect for a brief moment, which is a bad thing when you're flying in any situation but especially when you're underground and need to land in a specific location and the cave also has lava in it. But still. Whoosh!

Which would be the best friend? Zombie, Skeleton, or Ghost? The results are in, and the winner is... Team Zombie! Way to go, zombies! No matter how often you went down, you kept getting back up. I was on Team Ghost, though, and we got second place. I thought we were a boo-in to come out on top, but here we are... Mostly because I didn't even see Team Zombie in a match except for like three times, literally. Most of the matches were mirror matches or Team Skeleton. Minecraft. So. I managed to successfully clear out an Ocean Monument. Drained it entirely of water, inside and out. Now there are no spots for Guardians to spawn. Now I just need to build a spot for Guardians to spawn. And funnel them into a kill chamber, of course. I'm not sure if I should completely delete the monument and just leave the blank floor to work with, empty the interior but leave the exterior, or leave the structure as-is. I am thinking about deleting the water further out from the monument's borders, though. They've added two new mobs: the Camel Husk, and the Parched. The Camel Husk is a desert zombie version of a camel. When they spawn, a Husk (desert zombie) wielding a spear sits on top of it, as well as a Parched. The Parched is a desert Skeleton. They don't burn in sunlight, just like the Husk, and they shoot arrows that inflict the weakness effect on whatever it hits. Sounds like fun, huh?

Which would be the best friend? Zombie, Skeleton, or Ghost? So instead of forcing myself to get good with a roller, brush, or charger, I decided to just stick with what I already knew. I picked up one of the other kits for the Splatana Wiper and Undercover Brella to just have fun. That's the whole point of video games: fun. Not forcing yourself out of your comfort zone to fill a quota or something. The Splatana Wiper Deco is the second kit for the Splatana Wiper. As a reminder, it's a sword that fires a 'beam' of ink in front of it and also does melee damage, plus it has a charged attack that both deals more damage with the ranged attack and ups the melee to a one-hit kill if it hits; the charge attack also can lunge forwards slightly to suddenly get in close, but the distance isn't that great. The Deco kit has the Squid Beakon as its sub weapon. I've mentioned super jumping before, where you can suddenly jump to an ally. The Squid Beakon is a placeable jump point. It has two uses before it pops, though anyone who has a Beakon as their sub weapon breaks it instantly regardless of how many jumps it has left. In addition, the Beakon only breaks when the second jump actually lands on it; if more people jump to it before it breaks, you could theoretically get five uses out of one Beakon. Another drawback to Beakons is they're visible to everyone on the map, even the enemy team. Beakons are great for getting people back into the match quickly; since other players are likely to be in the fray, jumping to them is a risk since you might land and instantly get splatted. Beakons are ideally placed in protected areas around corners or behind cover, spots that are hard to hit unless the enemy is making a very strong push into your turf, at which point just spawn normally. A fun thing to do is to zip behind enemy lines and put Beakons in their turf, so you can get allies behind the enemy to flank them. The special is the Tenta Missiles. This special creates a big targeting circle that highlights opponents inside of it. Activating the special while enemies are highlighted will fire off a ton of missiles at them. If only one player is targeted, they get all ten missiles. If two players are highlighted, they get five each. If three or more are targeted, they get four each. This is great to use if you're in the back inking the base while the rest of the team moves up, so you can spam missiles at them from complete safety. In the fray, it might work as a panic button, but it does take a few frames for the first missile to actually fire so you could theoretically get splatted first. All things considered, the Splatana Wiper is kind of a front-line weapon, being fast and having a fairly good fire rate, working as team support with the Beakons, while having the missiles in the back pocket for later. It's overall pretty fun. I mentioned sticking with the vanilla Undercover Brella before switching to the Patternz Undercover Brella. Well, I've picked up the vanilla again. As a reminder, Brellas fire shotgun blasts. Normally holding the fire button fires one shot and then opens the umbrella canopy to act as a shield, then holding it further detaches the canopy so it moves forwards as mobile cover. Brellas are normally tap-fire weapons. The Undercover Brella breaks the rules by not detaching the canopy and being a hold-fire weapon, letting you shoot continuously with a shield. The trade-off is the canopy has the least health of all Brella shields and the shots do the least damage. The vanilla kit's sub weapon is Ink Mine. I've talked about this before. Placing a land mine that doesn't instant kill but deals okay damage and places a tracker on nearby opponents, usually the one that triggered it. It's great for information, since you'd want to place this in chokepoints or common walkways so you know if opponents are approaching from that direction. If you're near the mine when the enemy triggers it, that means they might've taken damage but there's also now a big ink splatter near them, limiting their movement options, making it easier to hit them. The special is the Reefslider. This one has you hop on a big shark-shaped pool toy that moves forwards some distance before exploding, taking out anyone nearby. You can also explode it early. It can be used for surprising people with an instant-kill explosion, forcing them to either take it and respawn or run the heck away, scattering their formations. The Reefslider also insta-kills if it runs someone over on its way to exploding. Using the Reefslider also inks the path forward that it will take, which could help to trap opponents and obstruct movement. It's also great for running away; that rapid movement into their formation can just as easily be used as an escape pod. You also have a few invincibility frames after the explosion. The trade-off is that you're largely a sitting duck for a few frames after the explosion, so keep in mind where the surviving enemies are if you charged in. Plus, much like with Crab, you are sitting on the back of the thing completely exposed, so if they're good at aiming, they could just shut you down completely. I think this is the most 'spy gadget' of all the Undercovers. The classic umbrella gun, the land mine, and the tricked-out car. A strong special to go with a low-power main weapon and support-focused sub weapon. I've had some recent fun with both of these. One thing I haven't mentioned is that Splatoon weapons have weight classes. Lightweight, Midweight, Heavyweight, and Super Heavyweight (which is exclusive to the Rainmaker). Heavy and Super Heavy weapons slow down your movement speed, while Lightweight weapons unsurprisingly increase your moment speed. Lightweight weapons tend to be weaker, so the mobility buffs help with their survivability, letting them dodge easier. Heavyweight weapons meanwhile are very powerful and have slower movement as a drawback. Of all my picks, the Tri-Slosher, Undercover Brella, N-ZAP, and Splatana Wiper are all lightweight weapons, and I've used a few other lightweight weapons I haven't mentioned yet. Part of what makes them fun is being able to get in quickly and bother opponents, set up support things like Beakons or Ink Mines, or just sneak into enemy turf before they can stop me and cover their base. I might just use more lightweight weapons.

Not too much to talk about. I've mostly been sticking to familiar weapons in Splatoon and trying to level up my gear. Minecraft, I decided to hop back into and built a little playroom for my Minecraft cats. No plan going forward; just build a cat house. I later decided to build a Resin farm. Punching the Creaking causes resin to appear on blocks next to the Creaking Heart they're tied to, and using the right mechanism to automatically move those blocks, you can make them drop, thus allowing more resin to form on them. Automatic farms are all the rage in Minecraft. I did build it at the tippy-top of the world height, which was tricky to actually get to when I realized I didn't have enough resources and had to go back down and back up again and back down and back up... After this I decided to tackle the Trial Chambers. I dug my way down to one and set up a little base of operations. Then I went through and immediately noticed that the very first Trial Spawners I ran into spawned the Bogged. You know, skeleton archers that shoot poison arrows. And there were three of these things right next to each other, constantly spawning wave after wave of them. I was able to clear them and block them off, and did so with every other Trial Spawner I ran into in there. Got a bunch of loot. I kept hoping to get an Ominous Bottle, and really I ended up hanging around the spawners more than I probably should've in order to farm loot. Once things were properly blocked off, all the spawners didn't really give me any challenge...except for the Breeze spawners, since those things are annoyingly mobile, immune to arrows, and use attacks with heavy knockback pushing me out of melee range. Still, I did eventually manage to get Ominous Bottles, switching the spawners to Ominous Trial Spawners, and got enough Ominous Trial Keys to get all the good loot. One thing that the updates did at some point is break my experience farms. I mentioned that the changes to Zombified Piglin loot tables means that my gold farm that uses entity cramming no longer drops golden swords. It also doesn't drop experience, meaning I can't just stand there and get a buhmillion experience points. But at some point, another tweak was done that renders my other experience farm useless for that purpose. My Enderman farm doesn't work anymore. They die on impact with the ground, sure. But they don't drop experience if they don't die to a player's actions, meaning I can't get experience from that. I have to raise the platform up by one block in order to get it to work. One Block. It's a lot harder than it sounds because there's redstone mechanisms to remove the platform so Endermen don't accumulate there and lag everything with too many entities. So I have work to do. Oh, there's the snapshots for the next big update. Presumably 1.21.11 because 1.21.10 came and went and just fixed up some bugs in the code. Anyway: Spear. A new weapon, with variants at every material type. It functions more like a lance, where holding the attack button and moving around with it deals damage to anything you pass, though you can also just tap the attack button to hit people with it. It has more reach than a sword and deals more damage the faster you're going, which makes it great for fighting on horseback or divebombing someone while flying with an elytra...provided you don't miss, of course. Lunge, a new enchantment for the Spear. Using melee attacks causes it to move you lunge forwards, which works like a dash attack of sorts. Zombie Horse. This mob has existed in the game's code forever, but it's now finally available in survival. Zombie Horsemen. Zombies can spawn riding Zombie Horses. And hold spears. While riding Zombie Horses. The undead hordes now have a proper cavalry. Oh god. Nautilus. A new mob that lives underwater. They can be tamed and bred using pufferfish. If tamed, you can put a saddle on them and ride them around. While doing so, you cannot drown. This is great for building underwater since it makes underwater movement so much easier. They also have a dash movement option. Breath of the Nautilus. A new effect that stops your oxygen meter from depleting. Only applies while riding a Nautilus. Zombie Nautilus. There is a 50% chance that a naturally-spawned Drowned that wields a Trident will be riding a zombified version of a Nautilus. As if trident-wielding Drowned weren't bad enough. Zombie Nautilus function the same as regular ones, except they burn in sunlight if removed from the water and can't be bred to make more. Nautilus Armor. Armor for your Nautilus to help them survive longer. Comes in every armor material type. /stopwatch. This command creates an in-game stopwatch. Could be useful for commands, like if you're building a sports area or some timed minigame or something. Alright, so I need to boot my world in the new snapshot to get a librarian villager to trade the Lunge enchantment. This is always a concern since there's an update to villager trades on the horizon and I want to lock in all the trades I can before then.