This post today isn’t actually about Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning. Mostly.
This post is, how can I talk about Kingdoms of Amalur — and going forward, other things I might play?
There’s a few things that are stopping me from being a content creator. For one, I have a slow internet connection. And according to the Twitch app, my video card is of poor quality, even though it’s of the current generation (though not a 3080). I don’t have a webcam any more, I often leave the keyboard to deal with RL stuff, I don’t feel like doing hair and makeup and I don’t like the way my voice sounds on video.
A streamer is not me.
With KoA:RR in particular, I don’t like having to curate all the best bits of the game and always have my finger on the record button. Usually the best visuals in KoA are happening when you’re least able to take your hands off the controller.
Last night, I set up the Twitch app on both my normal computer and my gaming computer. Since KoA is on Steam, I can stream from the gaming computer to the normal computer and get the advantage of the gaming computer’s nicer graphics as well as all my regular apps.
I did a short stream of my favorite casual game, Townscaper, using this arrangement while monitoring the stream on my phone. All went well.
After dinner and dishes, I sat down to stream it for real. The result is up above.
This morning I explored the mechanism to get that stream into my YouTube channel — it worked really well. It’s pretty clear from watching both videos that the stream is choppy and nothing like the high resolution, professionally produced streams real streamers make. But while I am stuck with a DSL connection, that’s the best I’ll be able to do — and at least if anyone is wondering what the whole Kingdoms of Amalur stuff is about, you can skip around and see exactly what’s up. Unfiltered, unprocessed, not just the cool bits.
Why is the text in German?
The audio is in English. I might swap it so the audio is in German and the text is in English, because honestly, my German is not great. However.
I was watching the Netflix series “Away”. In one scene, a Chinese mission controller is telling her taikonaut friend how she learned English so well: She sang karaoke at a country and western bar. That immersion taught her what English sounds like and got her used to speaking it.
I’ve been trying that same sort of immersion in my own sort of way. I’ve set up Siri on my phone to speak and understand only German, so I’ve got to learn how to ask for what I want in that language in order to use the AI on my phone. I’ve set my browser at work to German, so a lot of my work apps that are on the browser (Rally, Jenkins, uDeploy, etc) are entirely or mostly in German. Combined with Duolingo, it’s working in its own slow way.
One of the advantages of learning a language through a game is that a lot of words come up again and again, enough so that I can learn them from context. “Schaden” — that’s damage. “Körper” — physical. “Körperschaden” — physical damage. I got this. (Google Translate translates it to “bodily harm”).
Are you using a controller?
I don’t remember if I used a controller on my previous play-throughs. I tend to doubt it. Just going by my muscle memory, I didn’t expect to have to do controller tricks to drink a health potion, but now I do.
I’ve gotten really used to using a controller these days. I’ve played DCUO with a controller from the start. If a game can use a controller, I’m probably using a controller to play it. Neverwinter Online was all controller.
I’m not picky about the controller, either. I swap between the XBox, PS4 and Switch controllers without a problem. I’m truly controller-agnostic.
Is Blacksmithing really the über skill?
It really is. For some reason, I got a lot of purple low-level junk in a chest in the first village. I wore that for awhile until I started getting upgrades from the game, but the biggest boost I got was from smithing my own gear.
There are two kinds of skills you learn as you level; combat skills and non-combat skills. A lot of the non-combat skills would really help with your character build — in my case, better stealth or lockpicking. I ignored all those seemingly-useful abilities to focus on smithing. As such, I could make some truly broken gear with no apologies.
With smithing maxed until I reach the next tier, I am now focusing on gems to augment all this cool gear. And then, maybe alchemy…
Is KoA still super easy?
I am playing on the normal mode, not the easiest mode. I’ve learned a dagger move that lets me continually crit if I just time my hits correctly. This has let me take down all the bosses I’ve met so far in just a few seconds. It knocks them down and then I tear out their hearts.
It’s glorious. Using the avatar state just makes even the deadliest fights ridiculous. It’s not a hard game and never has been.
I’m probably going to up the difficulty a little bit and see how that feels.
By this time in my last playthrough, I’d already started with the multiclassing so that I could fight with the cool chakrams instead of a bow. I’ve decide to go with the straight rogue build this time. I’m eschewing poisons as DoTs take too long have an impact, time I could be using to just kill them dead. At higher levels, I may rethink this. Thankfully, respecing is easy.
I’m still far from where I stopped the last time. I don’t know exactly where I stopped — I think I had just entered the last area — but I’ll know it when I get there.
Click Like and Subscribe and smash that bell.
Now that I’m a big time streamer, I can say that, right?
