Witch Chat - .hack//Gay Undertones

I want Saku to be happy ;_;

Same!

LettuceKitteh

I want Saku to be happy ;_;

I find it very funny that the player literally gets to decide if saku lives or dies

Well that was an extremely productive night of grinding

22:54

I am just about ready to start actually working on the forest of pain

22:54

and I have 10 characters who I will be showing off the Promise ceremony for

22:59

as an aside, now that Alkaid is awake and I raised her affection (this should come as a surprise to no one that she's one of the ten) she's responding to all those emails I sent her in vol 2, before uh...the unpleasentness

23:00

aw she's a nerd

23:01

Alkaaaaaaaid ;_;

also I believe I have moved onto my final wallpaper for the playthrough

Everyone Loves Alkaid

Shaiapouf

I am just about ready to start actually working on the forest of pain

good news, you are ready to graduate from the world of pain to the forest of pain

Mysterious Stranger "Cyouni"

Everyone Loves Alkaid

Alkaid is great mostly because she tends to show up when the plot is at its most dour and actively make a show of trying to lighten the mood because they are the only reasonable person in this whole game

Silabus and Gaspard are also reasonable! ...but fair (edited)

Pi would be reasonable if she wasn’t so thirsty for garbage men

Pi is reasonable but being the only adult in the room is very stressful

But I mean I feel like I really shouldn’t throw stones from this house

yes well

It is ALL glass

whomst amongst us

23:17

FWIW I get the impression that when they aren't totally hung up on their various issues from childhood Yata is a very impressive and competent--not to mention wealthy--man

I have to finish catching up... FOR ALKAID

Simpsons_do_it_for_her_edit.jpg

Happy Maria

I have to finish catching up... FOR ALKAID

Extremely worth it

gonna poke this thread to life for a minute (I am about to start the forest of pain and there should be content from that as I progress throughout the week, I just haven't been able to because larp)

https://tenor.com/view/tomandjerry-gif-4641255

sleepy

and say that I had this song randomly come up on youtube

23:48

and if you ever want to know why I got into .hack from .hack//sign--a show that was mostly about people talking about philosophy in an online game--when I was 12 years old or whatever

23:48

know that they got Yuki Kajiura to do the OST for it

23:48

and that like, Aura's original theme song from the start of the franchise was this absolute banger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=equz4snO7hA

Yuki Kajiura - Topic

aura

23:48

(It's Aura's theme, but honestly I think it's more Morganna's)

I'm reading an explanation of how gears work, come across the letter ω, and immediately think of our old forum pal ω rice

Everyone loves butt-rice

playing some and man Alkaid rules, Waifu of the Year 2007

20:48

Haseo: "'I read books' isn't something someone who only reads 100 books a year should say casually"

also I am reasonably sure that His Dark Knittel is supposed to be His Dark Materials

20:54

which is just very funny as a character trait

21:05

I like how this email gives you the option to reply like this, which no haseo you do not get to pretend you have a healthy relationship with online gaming fuck you

21:05

I'm also having a conversation with Kaede

21:05

sometimes the options that gain and lose you affection are unclear

21:05

sometimes, though...

Haseo no

21:08

Why is alkaid so good

I had the biggest crush when I was a kid

21:10

and yeah it is funny how like, and the skeleton plot level this game is a romance between Haseo and Atoli, but also like...Alkaid's right there. And Haseo has two hands

21:10

anyways

21:10

I am starting the Forest of Pain, finally

21:10

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it's pretty cool, a spooky variation of the normal jungle dungeon with these weird swinging axe traps

21:11

My party for this 100 floor monstrosity (that I am not gonna clear tonight, to be clear) is Zelkovia and Atoli

21:12

Atoli's inclusion is obvious--she's the best healer in the game in a walk. Zelkovia is included for a funny reason though--he has hacked his PC to have infinite money and 99 of the best healing item in the game.

21:12

anyways

21:12

oh you bet she did haseo

21:13

you will laugh when you find out how far into this place I need to go to catch up with her

21:13

anyways, might as well explain how this place works. I have those shoes on that make me invisible to enemies, so I will be fighting a tiny amount of the random encounters here.

21:14

however, I do get bonuses for trying to do stuff in the floors so I don't just speed run it

21:14

for this first branch it's pretty simple, just do a 25 hit combo

Shaiapouf

which is just very funny as a character trait

I, too, grew up on literature that made me want to attack and dethrone god

21:16

Can Shino be in your party

yes! She got added postgame

21:17

along with a bunch of other characters

Can Haseo roll up places and be like “what up I am rolling deep in shroom-hat ladies”

21:17

Tight

yes you can, though I am not sure if that is wise persay

“Drowning in these Toad-ass bitches”

21:18

I mean imagine being literally anyone and signing up to be the third wheel on Haseo and Atoli’s “post-game”

21:18

But it would be much worse for Kind Of Fucked Up Adult Shino

alkaid is the only one who can make it work, hth

Because she’s so good

21:19

Incredible waifu tbh

Her vibe is specifically "The only one who can stand to be around both haseo and atoli at the same time" bless her heart.

21:23

you can skip most fights, but every 5 floors you have to do a boss fight, and you get your phase bonus if you did the task. I got 20 healing potions for the simple task, which is nice and useful

21:26

after beating the boss, you get a check point and a save point, so you can teleport right back here at the start if you leave to go back to town. While the save points remain, the "return to town" option vanishes in the last 50 floors of this

21:26

so that will be fun

Oooof

21:34

Super Dungeons

hence why it will be a while until I can get to the plot stuff at the very end

Shaiapouf

Her vibe is specifically "The only one who can stand to be around both haseo and atoli at the same time" bless her heart.

chanting quietly ot3 ot3

right there with you

chanting loudly ot3 ot3

on the 30th floor, rather than a boss we find a teleporter

22:43

time for NPCs to go on an evil conversation

22:43

22:44

okay time to fight, uh...is that Silver Chariot?

22:44

I think it is yes

22:44

yeah no that's silver chariot

22:45

anyways I am pretty sure this is in fact a re-fight against Vol 1's super boss

22:45

I say "pretty sure" because uh I never actually did it lol

22:48

anyway he eats shit

22:48

and falls into the pond where endrance hung out in an ice crystal to feel sad. Good times, good times.

22:48

heh

22:49

anyways, that's floor 30. 70 to go. I'll call it there tonight.

on the 50th floor, something happens

20:13

20:14

That's right. Half way into the dungeon, we finally catch up to Tabby.

20:14

who introduces the one thing this MMO game really needed to be believable. A catgirl.

20:15

20:16

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20:20

so that was a nice little closer on a thread I'm sure no one here actually cared about or knew it existed

I like her but her emoticon needed to be :3

Tabby, I suppose, is the version of Haseo who just was able to walk away from everything, and is probably better for it, in her own way

I mean, it must have been surreal as hell to open an email from Shino that was "our online friend saved me from a coma"

funny enough, Tabby and Haseo met IRL once, when they were both visiting Shino at the same time

oh! That's nice.

On the flip side, one can't help but feel that tabby abandoning haseo to his quest probably didn't help matters. But then again, that's not something that can really be asked of her and lord only knows how that would have gone down, given how haseo was acting by the time this game starts

20:23

She's honestly a very interesting character

20:24

and it's an interesting little story about the kinds of relationship dynamics that exist in the online space

20:24

not that the games themselves do much with her

20:24

still, a little bit more texture to the world and haseo is always welcome

Tabby also tried connecting with Haseo for months after Shino fell into a coma. She kept trying to stay close to him in Roots but well, he's Haseo

well, friends. I'm going to leave The Forest of Pain for the first and only time, to check the e-mail tabby sent. I will not get another chance to leave until we're done

It feels really surprisingly grounded, how these kids react to this online tragedy, you know?

.hack loves to swerve wildly between the insanely unrealistic and the remarkably grounded

20:27

it's part of its charm tbh

20:28

Sakaki's character is both a very realistic depiction of online grooming and also a 10 year old who becomes employed as a mod by a billion dollar company

sticks fingers in ears his little brother hijacked his account it's fine

Tabby's email to us is very sweet

Aww.

Tabby's Final Day In The World, of course, will last as long as we continue to play Vol 3.

20:30

and will be our final recruit for this game

Haseo: Tabby we're finishing this dungeon. Come on.

what a sweet kid

20:31

amusingly she starts at the very bottom of character affection

Tabby: "Today is my last day in The World" Also Tabby: still a party member in Vol 4

even bordeaux starts higher

20:32

and shino only a little above that

Dang

that dang could be about a lot of things lol

Yeah

20:55

It is lol

Well my comp crashed which caused me to lose a couple of floors, so I'm gonna call it done at floor 60 for tonight

21:46

Maybe I can finish next time, and we can move towards finishing this game up and moving to vol 4

21:46

(I've mostly just been watching YouTube videos for the past couple hours lol)

your friends are not very friendly