The Queue: Good Riddance

One hobby that I’ve been kind of falling back on lately is playing the ukulele. As such, I’m always on the hunt for new songs to learn that fit my general demeanor, my vocal range, and my beginner-level strumming skill set. One of the songs I’ve really been eager to learn is “Good Riddance” from Hades, for a number of reasons. Vocally, it’s really satisfying because of the intertwined harmony, the chords aren’t too much of a stretch, and it gives me a chance to work on finger picking.

However, because of this, YouTube has been recommending tons of Hadestown videos to me as a result, and I’m just not prepared for that amount of emotional devastation, especially since Annapurna Interactive has a new title coming out later this week. I’ve gotta save my spoons, man.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions and we promise to stop being insufferable theater kids long enough to answer, as long as you wait for me, I’m comin’ too.

Wait. Frick.

In general, a frankenmachine is your best bet. It’s way less complicated than you think to build yourself. It may be intimidating, but it’s actually pretty hard to mess it up, as long as you don’t do something like frisbee your CPU out a window — though of course, you may be tempted in the course of building your own computer.

It also tends to be far more cost-effective overall for a number of reasons. If there’s one component that needs an upgrade, you can just upgrade that single component, or you can set up alerts and scour the internet for a new video card, replacing the rest of your hardware in the meantime, not that that’s something I personally have done recently.

You can do stuff like adding extra USB ports, too, if you need them. Also, who doesn’t like more sticks of RAM?

Worcestershire sauce is a fermented fish sauce. I’d guess that at minimum, the cost is based on time — the longer a fish sauce is allowed to ferment, the more mellow it is, and the more well-rounded it is. If you just take it out of the barrel after a month, you’ll be able to turn over more product at a decreased cost as opposed to if you let it ferment longer.

Also, it’s a name brand. It’s basically Burberry but old anchovies.

I like the idea of a Souls catch up in theory, but in practice that kinda sounds like a whole lot of people running around the maw on alts grabbing them all as they spawn, kind of like the pack of Druids roaming around Bastion for herbs. If you’re just really casual — or even if you’re somebody on an alt yourself — that sounds like a recipe for disaster.

I’d think about adding a catch up similar to how they do Renown — where it comes from alternate sources you can earn just by traipsing around doing wizard chores — might be a good one, but in that case it would obviously need to be tuned a bit lower than Renown. Also, it might seem odd to get Renown and Souls and Anima and Gold in addition to an actual quest reward.

If it’s on PTR by September I’ll be shocked. Heck, I’d give them props if it’s up before October — and wow, you guys, I just checked the calendar and I still can’t believe it’s any later than May 2020.

Pandemic time, huh.

But seriously, despite a general feeling that they need to be pushing content from the playerbase right now, because the droughts are real, but at the same time, I really come down on the side of giving the people at the company some grace. This whole situation, from in-company trash to real-world garbage is just… unimaginably heavy in so many ways. I completely understand and identify with wanting more, especially as far as continuing the story beats. But even as a lowly reporter and editor, I just have a hard enough time getting out of bed these days myself to fret too much about their current development timelines and delays.

Life is life, and it’s real heavy right now, y’all. I know this is our escape, and wanting it to better suit that purpose is at the core of most critique here, but please be kind.