I may still be alive

[ysobel]

but I'm not quite sure. so here, have some updates.

beading with respect to crochet: works a lot better with a) appropriately sized beads, and b) dental floss. (seriously. Oral B has a "superfloss" thing that is basically pieces of floss with a stiff segment at the tip, which is theoretically designed for braces but works quite well for getting beads onto yarn.) finished the fingerless gloves (rav link) and am in limbo about what to tackle next.

computer argh: iTunes is being stupid and insisting that I only have fifteen tracks (all stuff purchased through itunes), zero playlists, four movies, one app (none of the paid ones though), etc. Am running a recovery thing to get the stuff off my iPad; at the moment the playlists that have transfered over are oddly stunted and out of order, no clue if they will stay that way.

body stuff: pain sucks. so do digestive issues (seriously, poop-of-doom for three days straight? for no apparent reason?) and lack-of-spoon issues and depression issues and woe etc.

new obsession: puzzles & dragons (iOS/android game). bejeweled + pokemon, basically. I still haven't totally figured out how the power-ups and evolves work, and a lot of the info out there is in Japanese, and stuff, but it is addicting. and free (though you can of course buy gems for stuff) but not in the obnoxious way that facebook/g+ games tend to be (spam all your friends! you cannot progress unless you do!)

writing: zilch. my muse seems to be on extended holiday or something. :(

religiosity: easter is a-coming, which is giving me thinky thoughts, but I don't know if I can really articulate them (and don't know if anyone would care even if I did, or if it would be just "lol let me shove the dominant religion in your face")

to sum up: hhhngggg. /clings to flist/

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

I'm a total blank slate when it comes to knitting/crocheting, but I have a decade or so experience with beads. I wondered: couldn't you use the same yarn, thread the beads on it, and sew it on the work? Surface embellishment as opposed to integrating it with the thread?

As you've discovered, integral needles are lovely. One can purchase silk thread which has been woven onto very thing needles, but it's quite short and quite expensive:
http://www.beadaholique.com/p-10805-griffin-silk-beading-cord-needle-size-0-white.aspx

But the COOL thing I discovered is you can create a needle on the end of any thread/cord using glue! I've mainly worked with leather or hemp cord, and never w/ acryclic. I use the discarded plastic top from a countainer, plop a good pool of white glue on it, don a plastic/nitrile glove. Pick up the cord in the gloved hand, drag the end through the glue so it's good and soaked. Then squeeze out extra, roll the cord in between thumb and first finger to sharpen it, and let it hang over something to dry. When it's good and hard, use something real sharp to make a point.

to sum up: LOTS OF STUFF.

[ysobel]

Threading the beads onto the yarn is the hard part -- once they're there, working them in is fairly easy. (and it helps if you use beads that are big enough to slide around on the yarn, heh.)

And duuuudr, hadn't thought about using glue. That is kind of awesome. /files away for future reference/

[sineala]

Can I answer any of your Puzzle & Dragons questions? :)

[ysobel]

Maaaybe?

I just. Well. Part of it is that I don't grok evolve fusion at all, what it does or when to use it. I also have only a basic understanding of power up fusion -- give monsters xp by feeding them other monsters -- but not which things are good to feed what, and I have no concept of when to expand vs sell vs fuse.

Part of it is that my current team (lvl 14 turan, lvl 12 big bubblie, lvl 3 emerald carbuncle, lvl 4 harpie devil, lvl 10 blk fighter) is getting its ass kicked in the current dungeon (tower of giants) and I have no clue how to make it better. I do have a small handful of useful-in-the-future guys -- Odin, Freyja, Keeper of Rainbows -- but can't use them yet, because I have max team cost of 32 and the UITF ones are 25 and 30, and a one or two monster team is silly, and sigh.

[sineala]

Okay.

Evolve fusion basically makes a monster a more awesome version of itself. Successive versions will have increased maximum levels (25 to 70 to 99 is a pretty common pattern), and higher levels mean better stats, which means dying less. But you also want to evolve for access to better skills. Say you've got a Mermaid. By itself a Mermaid is okay, but she's worth it for what she ends up finally evolving into, which is Siren the Enchanter. A basic Mermaid (as well as the next one up, Siren) has a heal skill that auto-heals you as many HP as the Mermaid/Siren's RCV stat, every round. Pretty good, but Siren the Enchanter will auto-heal for three times the RCV, which is clearly superior and part of what makes her the second-best healer in the game. (The best is Amaterasu Ookami but she's rare egg only.)

(The other reason Siren is awesome is that her other skill converts red gems to hearts, for if you want even more healing. And it is possible -- there's a small percentage chance -- for a skill to Skill Up when you feed a monster something with the same skill, and Marine Goblins have Siren's skill and are decently easy to find. There aren't a lot of monsters where this is an easy thing to do -- like, you can pretty much only feed Freyja to Freyja to up that skill -- so it's a fun thing here. Increasing skill rank means that you have to wait fewer turns for the skill to cool down so you can use it again. With a max-skill Siren, you can change red to heart every 5 turns rather than every 11.)

So you will naturally want to evolve everything you use a lot or are planning on using. You can tell by going into the evolve menu and tapping a monster whether it can actually evolve at all. You can only evolve something if it's at max level, which means you have to feed it up first. You will also need however many coins it says it takes, and the 1-5 required evo materials, which you can see at the bottom of the evolve screen. The material is question-marked if you've never seen it in the game, grayed-out if you've seen it but don't have any now, and normal if you've got it. If you want to know what they actually are, check the database. :)

Power-up fusion: if possible, try to feed monsters of the same color to each other. You get a 1.5x bonus to XP versus fusing different colors. At your level, the best things to fuse are the enhance-material "jewel" dragons. At various times of day (the database will tell you when they are each day; it also depends what "group" you're in which is determined by your ID number) the game will open up those Emerald Dragon or Sapphire Dragon or Metal Dragon or whatever dungeons, and the dragons that drop there (or any similar dragons you've collected) give a fair amount of same-color XP. The biggest dragons give a completely obscene amount. Basically, if it's listed as "enhance material," feed it, that's what it's there for! (I had a bunch of little gold dragons clogging up my boxes until I figured this out.)

To save on money, feed a bunch of little things to something like a carbuncle, and then feed the carbuncle to something else later.

(When you get to trying to level things that are past level 30 or 40, you will want to switch to feeding them the evolved versions of pengdras, which are these penguin things that drop in the technical dungeons, which is a dungeon series that unlocks after you beat Castle of Satan. Pengdras take two of the littlest jewel dragons -- remember, you're still doing the jewel dungeons -- and a Dragon Plant to evolve into a penguin thing that gives 45,000 same-color XP. Good deal. Also the technical dungeons are currently tormenting me, because there the enemies get special skills too.)

Expand vs sell vs fuse: You should probably keep rare things. Unless they're jewel dragons; eat those. :) Sell only if you're hurting for money/space (and if you're hurting for money, the weekend special dungeon drops coins only). Expand when it starts getting really annoying that you're running out of room. Probably don't sell anything from the Rare Egg Machine. You don't necessarily need to keep every evo material you find if you're running out of room; you can always trim it back to the ones you're trying to evolve next. Oh, and don't bother pulling rare eggs unless they've got heightened rates for something you actually want.

Preventing getting your ass kicked: I had this problem a lot for a while, for the same reason (team cost of awesome team too high), then it straightened out, and I'm currently having it again (because my monsters need to evolve to compete and I don't have enough to feed them). :( Make friends with people with healers that auto-heal. Take the hardest dungeon you can comfortably do and run it again and again until you gain a few levels. The most efficient leveling you can do stamina-wise is run Dragons of the Tower (in Tower of Giants) on the weekends when it's at half-stamina, but IDK if you can survive that one yet; you didn't say where you were.

Monsters you should pick up, when you find them: A Siren would be nice, but you aren't at the Sea Cave Mercury level where she occasionally drops. You really want to get a set of the five "resist dragons" as the forum calls them (sometimes "ripper dragons"). They drop from the Pal Egg machine as "Lil' x Dragon" (where x = color). You have to evolve them four times, but their final forms have a skill that does 20,000 damage and a leader skill that blocks 50% damage of their color. (This is highly relevant when you start getting into single color dungeons.) I am still working on mine. You'll also want to keep an eye out for a poisoner like Succubus/Lilith or something else that does defense-ignoring damage or lowers enemy defenses, because these things have lots of defense.

There are also strategies like "zombie" whereby you make your leader an ogre with Resolve (which lets you survive a fatal hit as long as your HP is above 50%), go in with a bunch of high attack low HP monsters and an auto-healer friend, take a hit, get resurrected, have the healer heal you back to above 50% (this is why you keep your HP low), and keep going. The only flaw is that you can only survive one hit per round so if two enemies are on the same timer, you're toast.

Let me know if you want me to run any monster as leader for you when you're around and playing: I have Siren, Orochi (lets you do the zombie thing), most of the resist dragons, Echidna, Shiva...

Um. Apparently I have feelings.

[shoaling_souls]

I'm interested in thinky thoughts. My annoyance that stores close down for days on end and not being able to eat perishables is separate from being interested in my friends' thoughts.