September #2

World of Warship

Not going to get Conrad Helfrich: don't have enough festive tokens to get the required collection mosaic tiles. 

Finished the Event Pass and got the Tier VII premium crate reward. Unfortunately I have all the Tier VII premium ships so received 12,750,000 credits as compensation. Surprised I didn't get one of the "new" ships WG is continually foisting on us. 

Only bright spot was finally grabbing the coal ship - Tier IX premium Soviet destroyer Neustrashimy. Hence why I finished the Event Pass sooner than expected (grabbing the coal). 

Goal for the remainder of this month is complete the commander upskill grind. Asymmetric battle mode kicking off soon so that should provide some fun. There's also the new German Early Access cruiser line kicking off tomorrow. 

And the penultimate Dockyard Event mission kicks off as well. I could expend doubloons to finish the Dockyard Event and grab Laffey sooner but prefer to wait given there are still several other major events happening between now and Christmas - Liberty Harbour build event, Christmas snowflakes, etc. 

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Got three of the new German cruiser line - Tier VI Deutschland, Tier VII Admiral Scheer, and Tier IX Manteuffel - using German tokens for the first two, and got a lucky break upon spending dubs from the Grand Voyage event to acquire four sequential bundles and scored the latter upon opening.

Just the Tier VIII Knesebeck left to go. Foregoing getting the Tier X Prinz Aldabert; don't have enough dubs so will wait until the entire line goes out of Early Access.

Manteuffel is fun to play. No problems taking on such OP vessels such as Napoli, Schlieffen, Pommern, Los Andes, Ipiranga without fear. With a secondary build, she's almost as potent as Pommern and Schlieffen. Even gun DDs like Marceau wilt under the relentless secondaries. 

Upskilled Charles-Henri Honore to 21 pt today. Also upskilled remaining two Uniques - Pan-American Lisboa to 20-pt level and European Swirski to 19-pt level.

Another Wishing Well event that I'm avoiding. Another pointless and futile attempt to part you with your money (if you're not already wise to it). New overpriced ships that are just not worth the asking price. 

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Thursday saw the release of the last Dockyard Event mission. Wasn't expecting to finish it in one sitting but I did. The various tasks weren't that difficult apart from earning fifty thousand BASE XP. But managed to do so by jumping into Asymmetric. Struggled initially with the skipper grind ships (Poltava, Prinz E. Frederich, etc) as these ships weren't as good as I had hoped. Multiple defeats. But eventually got it right with the selection in the awesome Tier IX premium Karl XIV Johan, the European battleship. Repeatedly performed to expectation and beyond, and often held the flank many times over. Noticed that despite assurances that you will face two tiers lower, there were games when the difference was sometimes three tiers. Subs and carriers showed up too. 

As a result, playing Asymmetric helped getting BASE XP faster. Eventually I finally got the Dockyard Event reward - the Tier X US destroyer Laffey. As a bonus, I also acquired the Tier VIII German Early Access cruiser Knesebeck. This completes the German cruiser Early Access line from Tier VI to IX. The final ship - Prinz Aldabert - is behind a 20,000 dub paywall so will wait till it's released into the tech tree line in a few months. 

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Friday was a quiet day after my marathon all-day all-night session yesterday. Completed the Knesebeck missions for 100 German tokens then logged out. It will be a quiet weekend as well. Maybe time to get back to some tabletop gaming. We shall see. 

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Four new ships - three carriers and one sub. Used the festive tokens for them to buy a few more Finest Hours crates (a la Conrad Helfrich). Regret now getting the explosive effect instead early on instead of focusing on the Finest Hour collection. Would have Helfrich by now. My fault for not paying attention. 

Having fun playing Asymmetric at the moment; nice break from the commander upskill grind. Karl XIV Johan performs well when not yolo-ing. Ideal tactic is to wait for the enemy to come to you, deal to them, then push. Not ideal: pushing aggressively without support. Depends also on your team mates. Playing a battleship usually means pairing with another ship. Use islands when you can. 

Managed to upskill another commander to 21-pts the other day. Today was supposed to be a quiet grind - a few games, then log out. But it got frustrating because I was distracted a lot. 

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Weekend quiet as far as WOWS goes. Did the minimum five event grind then logged out.

The coupon event was poorly received with many missing out on this Twitch-initiated event. Not sure who was the target group - old hands or newcomers. Anyway, never bothered. Those fortunate enough, and wise enough to how the event was setup, benefited. The rest merely griped.

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Stardew Valley

Having recently discovered the Perfection Achievement, I attempted to repeat with another character. Frustrating because I'm not sure what the f**k I was attempting with this character who happens to have survived fifteen seasons. It was not privy to the recent updates so I had to grind to get back to Ginger Island and complete the attendant tasks. Sitting at 68% on the Perfection scale.

Play Stardew Valley as a decent break from the daily salt mine WOWS grind.  

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