The Queue: The Long Dark

I wrote this Queue during the longest night of the longest year of all our lives, so it seemed fitting to take the opportunity to go play my favorite non-Blizzard game. Even more appropriately, one of the main dangers in The Long Dark is a literal blizzard. However, unfortunately, the game actively discourages me from making friends with bears.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions and we’re grateful you do, because we can stay warm by the light of our monitors while we answer.

Even though he kind of ominously said that Tyrande’s just reuniting him with Sylvanas, I’d be cool with that just being his death. His whole role was to be a purring, scenery-chewing villain. Though it would be somewhat satisfying to have some random chained NPC in the Maw crying that he was supposed to be a king consort at Sylvanas’ side, unless there’s a new heel turn waiting, I don’t really want to spend time wallowing in his misery.

I will say that though killing him isn’t enough closure or retribution for Tyrande or Teldrassil, I do think it’s enough to say, “ok, that guy died, moving on.” There are so many characters and plotlines and loose ends and mechanisms to raise people from the dead in a variety of forms at this point that I’d be cool with just letting this one go. Besides, this is a great way to headcanon him into the Heroes of the Storm universe — they said the Raven Lord was an original character, but it also seems a likely way for a certain ranger lord to reinvent himself after being untethered to his mortal form. He did say he was going to meet Sylvanas again, after all.

Maldraxxus definitely smells badly, but cut it a little slack — it doesn’t have a nose.

The tl;dr is, your placement of your adventurers really matters, and they all have varied abilities, attack, and healing types. You can see this easiest with the attack formation, but it goes for healing and buffs too. For instance one of mine, Guardian Kota, attacks in a cone, so if I place him in the center, he attacks one opponent in the front row, and then the three behind that opponent (the one directly behind it, and the two on either side). If I place Kota on the side, he clips part of the cone so he misses out on DPS on that target, so it’s best to place him in the middle if I can.

Most of your adventurers work like that, where you need to figure out where they’re attacking or healing as you place them. A few of the units are more simple — I just throw in the Night Fae DPS troops where ever, because they just attack everything. For healing, there will be a little green plus sign above the units being healed, and your healers won’t heal other units. That’s the whole difference between the traditional mission table and this one, and why comparisons are being made to an auto-battler.

I will say that having played it, I don’t really like that comparison. Auto-battlers have near-instant feedback, which can help you realize how and where you went wrong. With the mission table version I do take the time to set up my adventurers as deliberately as possible, but by the time they come back — succeed or fail — I don’t fully remember why I put who where, so even if I do sit through all those animations it doesn’t help me succeed on my next go.