More S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly this week. I feel comfortable enough with the gameplay experience I'm starting to think about making some additional number tweaking and starting from scratch with higher difficulty. My current playthrough works well as a tutorial but I feel like things (especially in terms of equipment) progressed a little too smoothly.
I was thinking about making this new playthrough a themed one, with some basic reasons for entering the Zone, in-character journal entries about my adventures and just general focus on role playing. I'm still thinking about some of the details but even in its current form, playthrough like this would be the most involved project I attempted so far and that makes it kind of exciting.

Modding also continues, with the number of addons more than doubling since last week. New additions are mostly gameplay improvements as these are honestly the things that stand out the most for me. I'm used to old graphics and play on an outdated hardware so visuals aren't a priority for me, despite that I did find a few additions which allowed me to improve the graphical presentation with very little effect on performance. Enough to leave me satisfied at least. Here's my current mod list, just like last week:

Updated mod list

• (New) AlifePlus - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on general NPC behaviour.
• (New) AlifeTactics - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on NPC combat tactics.
• (New) AlifeGuard - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on NPC cleanup.
• (New) AlifeBalance - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on NPC respawn management.
• (New) Anomaly Notebook - adds an in-game journal you can use to write your own notes. It's kind of janky to use but it works.
• (New) Anomaly: Real Distant Mutants Sounds - fixes broken mutant noises that suppose to play at certain distance ranges.
• Arti and RavenAscendants Mags Redux - detailed magazine and ammo management.
• (New) Beloved Photo - a simple immersion addon which allows you to use an otherwise junk item to look at it, that's it.
• Blindsides Weapon Reanimation and Rebalance - dependency for other stuff.
• Boomsticks and Sharpsticks - dependency for other mods, improved weapon animations are a nice bonus.
• Dark signal weapon soundscape - dependency for other mods.
• (New) Decreased Bush Hearing Distance - NPCs can't hear you walking through bushes from the other side of the map.
• (New) Dialogue Expanded Expanded - more NPC dialogue (direct, PDA messages etc). Had to do some manual merging with this one due to the conflict with LASS and fix some incorrect characters caused by different encoding, I think? I also left a ton more cause I was too lazy to go through all of the issues.
• Food, drug and drinks animations - should be self explanatory.
• FDDA Enhanced Animations - Food and Drinks - animation improvements for the above.
• He's with me - prevents friendly factions from attacking your companions, even if they are from opposing force. Not sure if I'll stick with this one but it's on for now.
• HTS Bars - hunger and thirst status bars. For whatever reason base Anomaly doesn't show them even though both are tracked and affect gameplay experience (I don't mind the latter but I like to have information about such things).
• (New) HUD icons time - displays remaining time for status effect icons on the HUD.
• (New) Instant Tooltip+ - pretty self explanatory.
• Inventory Anrifreeze - lazy loading for in-game containers, helps with the hitching when opening things with lots of items.
• LASS (check full mod name) - female player character.
• LASS Population Addon - adds female stalkers to the NPC pool.
• (New) Ledge Grabbing / Mantling - adds a simple climbing/mantling system to the game.
• (New) Michikos Weather Revamp Revised - more natural look for all weather conditions (bright and colourful for clear skies, dark and moody for rain etc) and restores moving clouds to some of them. Also comes with an option for dynamic wind behaviour (changes based on the weather and location).
• (New) Modular Miscellaneous Tweaks - Bottled Water Adjusted** - change number of uses for mineral water from 3 to 5, restores the same amount of thirst (just divided by 5).
• (New) Modular Miscellaneous Tweaks - Talk to Everyone** - as the name suggests, it allows you to talk to every NPC instead of just team leaders.
• MSBS Grot - cool gun that doesn't really appear in games often (ARMA 3 and Girls' Fronline are the only titles I can think of right now).
• (New) New Zone Mutants can't see through foliage - pretty self explanatory.
• (New) New Zone NPC's can't see through foliage - pretty self explanatory.
• (New) NPC Weapon Jamming - pretty self explanatory.
• (New) Sickhowl's Grass Tweaks - more lush version of vanilla grass grass and trees with little to no performance impact.
• (New) S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 HoC - Soundscape Overhaul for Anomaly - improved ambiance sounds. I'm a bit mixed on this one - on one hand a lot of the new sounds add quite a bit to the atmosphere, on the other some changes (especially in regards to fake mutant noises) act pretty much as sound pollution, making it harder to react to real threats (in a bad way).
• (New) Sascha's S-40 Sirens - period and region appropriate siren sounds for emissions.
• (New) Simple FPS Monitor - pretty self explanatory, useful for tweaking my graphics settings.
• (New) Stealth - bunch of tweaks to the stealth and detection system.
• Tactical Movement Speed - change movement speed depending on weapon status (holstered, lowered, drawn, aimed).
• (New) Weighted Probability Weather Manager - improvements to the weather selection system.
• (New) xlibs - dependency for other mods.

:::

I keep going back and forth on whether I want to use KVMA (mod adding higher quality character models) in my game. On one hand NPCs do look much better with the mod, on the other it only supports handful of female character types and since I play with LASS + female NPCs, that leads to an ugly mix of old and new models. That also includes my character. @Coelacanth@feddit.nu graciously shared a customised mod with additional female models which does help. Unfortunately, even this setup lacks HD alternatives for some of the outfits - including those I tend to lean into, at least in the early game.

I dunno, I'm sure I'll make a decision before starting the new playthrough. I'll just keep toying with both ways until then.

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I don't have much to write about The Elder Scrolls Online honestly. Between modding and playing Anomaly as well as real life activities I didn't really have much time to spend with it. After playing some more I can confirm that bumping up difficulty does make the game feel better but that's about it. It's too early to write more about how much this single fact will improve my overall experience with the game.

I've got two series I want to write about today, both with somewhat interesting ideas and enough issues to hold them back from being great.

The Rebirth of a Tyrannical Empress - main character ends up in a novel as the titular tyrannical empress and she does so a few days before the end of the story, when the original protagonist gets executed for her wicked deeds.
Where to start... I think the premise and the story itself are pretty enjoyable for the most part. There are the usual problems of no meaningful challenges (it's pretty much just "watch how MC and her crew dunk on the opposition") but it's still fun enough to read. Then the twists happened. I'll put them in the spoilers, for obvious reasons, but I'll try to limit myself to a few specific points.

Story spoilers

So, the main point of the initial conflict was how the powerful and fair empress turns into a tyrant. She ends up indulging in alcohol, men and abuse of power to the point that even her closest subordinate joins a rebellion against her. Pretty decent start, right?

Well, shortly after start of the "proper" plot we find out that the reason she became that way was due to one of the other people she trusted using drugs and alcohol to slowly push her towards this state, all so he can use her as a puppet and rule from behind the scenes. It's not a bad concept since it explains how the character like Yulia (the empress) ended up becoming the way she did. It also doesn't remove all of her responsibility for letting things go this far as project like this wouldn't be something that can be pulled off overnight. Going "he duped me" can only get you so far, especially when you're responsible for holding so much power.
Then comes the final stretch of the story and, surprise surprise, Yulia wasn't the one who did all of these bad things! Turns out another character took over her body during that time to destroy Yulia's reputation and use it as a springboard for executing a different plan for a third party! Why?

You literally remove the only negative part of Yulia's character and behaviour just to... what exactly? Make her even more of a goody-two-shoes than she already was? Keep her pure ("it wasn't her who slept with all those guys, I swear!") just so she can build her own personal harem from scratch (I haven't finished yet but that's where things seem to be going)? What was the point?

In the final stretch we also find that she's even more special than she already was so, you know, things start to feel pretty generic at this point. The worst part is that it doesn't feel needed since Yulia was already an extremely powerful character without this revelation.

Lastly, there's romance. I really don't care for it. It doesn't show up out of nowhere and it does makes sense from a story standpoint but I really can't bring myself to care about any of it. At least it seems to be heading towards a harem ending so there's a bit of a difference compared to all the other series I read in this genre.

I dunno. This story was pretty fun (I still have about 20 chapters left) but my interest ended up fizzling out as I kept reading. I feel like all of the additions in the second half of the plot serve more as a hindrance to the plot rather than worthwhile additions.
On a more positive note, I really love the art style. Characters, especially Yulia, are drawn in a specific way that makes them pop up and looks somewhat unique. I especially like how they draw Yulia as she ends up looking smug vast majority of the time, even if she's not trying to be. It's my favourite part of this manhwa.

Edit: I finished the remaining chapters, it was about what I expected with additional twist I wasn't a fan of. Oh well, at least I'm done.

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Surviving as a Maid - MC wakes up as queen's maid in a Boys Love novel where the king is gay, prefers his lover over his wife and regularly does things that disrespect her, undermine her authority and/or make things more difficult for the staff.

Decent premise but the story isn't anything special to be honest. It has some interesting aspects like the fact that MC might act out her role to avoid suspicion but never gets to the point of feeling that she IS the character she took over. This leads to her living with a never ending feeling of body dysphoria, to the point she's thinking about self-harm as a way of dealing with the thoughts that cause this state of affairs. She never actually goes through with it (another character gives her a way to helps her deal with a bit better) but it's a plot point that never really goes away (at least as far as I've read anyway).
It's also a plot point that doesn't happen particularly often in similar titles since MCs end up accustomed to their new role and bodies pretty quickly most of the time.

Unfortunately for me this is pretty much the extent of interesting stuff in the story. There are some cool ideas here and there, sure, but for the most part things are rather boring (and not in a "slow burn" kind of way). I've read about 50 chapters and I think that will be it for me - there's just nothing here to keep me hooked enough to care.

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The Rebirth of a Tyrannical Empress is honestly the bigger let down of the two. I really like Yulia, I love the art style and I think there could be a lot of interesting things you could do with the premise. Despite that, author decided to take an easy way out, sanding off rougher elements and leaning more and more on "happy good heroes save the day". It's not terrible but it is way less interesting.

Surviving as a Maid was the definition of "fine" from the start so I didn't have enough expectations to be disappointed with it. I'm sure someone out there will enjoy it more than I did.

Dunno about the mod but special edition is currently 75% off on GOG. As long as the mod is available on NexusMods or somewhere besides Steam Workshop there should be no problem, I believe.

I'd love to be able to approach the topic from a more neutral or even positive stance (I really like the idea of AI on a conceptual level) but I simply hate how it came to be and how it functions nowadays. Existence of open source models does help but it's not easy to change my mind on this with all the other stuff surrounding the tech. Well, that and I don't have the hardware to run local models anyway.

Yeah, it's mostly a mix of "I don't trust them to act I as I want" and "I don't like feeling responsible for AI". It's not really a Stalker thing either, I just like wandering on my own in games. I'll most likely give them a shot here just to test things out but that's about as far as my plans go for companionship at the moment.

I'm always wary when it comes to gen-AI powered NPCs. On one hand I can appreciate the idea and the dream of having truly unique virtual characters, on the other I have rather... strong feelings towards gen-AI (for multiple reasons) and don't really want to interact with it or support it in any way. At least TALKER has Ollama support so that's something.

Yeah, by collection I meant all of the modules, including Alife+. According to the description it's more of an extension to the vanilla system rather than an override so it should be compatible with at least some of the stuff you mentioned (probably, we'll see). Thanks for the links, as always.

I don't really care for playing with companions to be honest, not at the moment anyway. The only reason I downloaded "He Is With Me" was to test it with a specific situation during a rescue quest. That said, I'll keep those mods in mind if I start longing for a party.