WRUP: It’s the weekend and Blizzard Watch is grateful for an extra hour of anything

I am not going to make the obvious November 5 joke here — but I am going to make the obvious time-change joke! That’s right, it’s officially November, and this weekend is the start or end (I never know or care to learn which) of Daylight Saving Time for many of us.

How are we celebrating this? Great question! Stick around as Team Blizzard Watch breaks down their weekend plans here on WRUP — A.K.A., What aRe yoU Playing? Matthew Rossi leads us off this week with A Mood™.

Matthew Rossi: Darkness.

Its fall, inevitable. The land shrouded. The air, teeth of ice bared, waiting. The sun runs afeared through the firmament, hunted by loping shapes. Fimbulwinter, its full fury slowly waking, inches closer and closer to drag the sky into grey oblivion.

November crouches over the world, dry bones cracking in its jaws.

So I’m gonna play Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

Elizabeth Harper: I unlocked a vodka-powered gatling gun in Outer Worlds. That’s my gameplay achievement for the week. I haven’t gotten a chance to use it on anyone, though, so I guess I need to keep playing.

Andrew Powers: Friday is the new update and DLC for Animal Crossing. Also, it’s time for Animaniacs, season 2 on Hulu. And there is D&D. Sunday is the table read for Deb’s screenplay, Angel Eyes, so when it is made into a motion picture, I can be included as a special thanks. It’s a busy weekend. Unlike the previous one…. in which I binge watched Inside Job on Netflix, it appears to be heavily inspired by Rick and Morty and Futurama. It’s… ok, has some funny lines, worth a watch if there is nothing else to do.

Mitch “Mitch” Mitchell: This weekend I’m actually doing something super cool and seeing Patton Oswalt on Saturday! The rest of the weekend will be relaxation and more Horizon Zero Dawn. I’m not sure how far into the game I am — I feel like I’m pretty far, but I also feel like there’s a lot more to go. And I’m also sure I’m way over-leveled.

Deb Montague: This weekend. Well, running Sanctum with my guild. My Tuesday mount run was productive this week. I got the Clutch of Ji-Kun off Ji-Kun in Throne of Thunder. It was a great run because we had a warrior with us who hadn’t done much TOT and so much plate dropped. As a hard-core Tmog guild, we’re always excited when someone can use stuff which drops. Now I have to decide what to replace Ji-Kun with or do I want to continue running her.

I never saw the Horseman’s mount. One guild member ran all his eligible toons through HH for the full time of the holiday and got 62 brooms, 28 sinister squashlings, and over 1000 pumpkins. (He has the mount but wanted to see what kind of totals he’d get. He got the mount on an alt.) He got 10 helmets and 7 swords on characters which can’t equip them. If we’re talking quality of life, please make all this stuff vendor trash for 1 copper. I extremely dislike having to type “Delete” over and over again. There’s no market for the squashlings, as an example. I need to check out the solo Island Expeditions, as there are quite a few mounts and pets from those I don’t have.

Sportsball on Saturday. I’m rereading “Foundations in Screenwriting” by Syd Field and working through “How to Tell Fate from Destiny,” which is a book about using the proper word for what you’re describing. Friends are doing a table read of a script on Sunday. I’m excited to hear my words read.

Fall has arrived in Chicagoland so I have to finish pulling things off the deck and putting them away. And I started Christmas shopping. Don’t laugh. With the issues of supply, if you don’t make an effort, you’ll not be able to get what you want come December 1st.

Anna Bell: This weekend I’m hoping to finish out the story of the sequel to Subnautica — though, as we all know, you never really truly “finish” a game with a building element, so I’ll mostly be constructing myself a really killer seabase. Beyond that, it’s the time of year when all I want to do is make and eat soup, so I’m planning on prepping a bunch this weekend. Minestrone and tomato basil are first, because I want to get them done before my basil freezes.

Ted Atchley: This weekend, I’ve got my dad’s seventy-fifth birthday party on Friday, then I’m seeing Eternals on Saturday, and of course, sportsball cheering on Sunday. Keep Pounding! I should be home from the birthday party in time for the Candlekeep D&D game with my fellow Blizzard Watch writers. My poor Warforged Artificer is having something of a crisis of confidence after failing to fix a broken mechanism (I rolled three 9s in a row!).

If I can work in any gaming time this weekend, I’ll poke my head back into SWTOR. They have an expansion releasing next month that looks quite ambitious. It’s going to redefine how they handle classes in that game. Last night, I ran a Flashpoint (dungeon) with a friend. SWTOR has a way where you can run one with any party size from solo up to a full party of five or anything in between. It was just me, my friend and our two companions (NPC followers). Neither of us had played in a while, but we put it on Story mode which is quite forgiving. We ran all over this huge ship (Spirit of Vengeance if you play SWTOR) helping the good Mandalorians take it back from a group of bad Mandalorians. All the while on voice chat catching up with my friend. I had an absolute blast.

Phil Xavier: I’m trying not to start anything new, as I need to go full speed ahead on Shin Megami Tensei V when it releases next week (November 11!). But that hasn’t been very hard to do, since WoW patch 9.1.5 is out and I think it’s a fantastic patch. I’m honestly very enamored with the game right now.

Liz Patt: Nope, this totally didn’t sit open in my browser for over a day. Nope nope nope!

Darkness is slowly starting to encroach on the world (or at least the Northern Hemisphere) again, so I’m resisting my annual desire to hibernate. Instead, I’ll be joining my fellow BW writers in our Candlekeep D&D game Friday night. The rest of my weekend will hopefully be consumed with more D2R, the D3 PTR, WoW’s patch 9.1.5 alt adventures, and the brand new 2.0 update to Animal Crossing: New Horizons. You can add a cafe, y’all. A CAFE.

Outside of the gaming world, I will (sigh) be starting my annual efforts with my partner on this year’s handmade gift. Every year, we combine purchased items with something (hopefully) useful that we make. Last year, everyone local got a jar of apple butter. This year, it will be candles.

Joe Perez: More Metroid Dread, and now some Guardians of the Galaxy. The soundtrack is pretty damn killer and, thankfully, it’s nothing like the avengers game! Good amounts of humor and nostalgia. Plays similar (at least to me) like almost a more actiony Mass Effect 1, revolves around squad combat. Add in some decision making for branching events and I think I’ll be pretty content this week. Also diving back into WoW going after all the transmog I haven’t gotten yet and hopefully finding a normal mode Sylvanas kill for my hunter so I can try to get the bow. I really, really want that bow.

Rob Flanagan: This weekend, I will be putting on 30 lbs. of orange fur and dressing up as a sports mascot in a 5k run to supporting local cancer charities.

Christian Thoma: With Metroid Dread in the rearview mirror and FFXIV: Endwalker still a couple weeks out, I’m going to focus on finishing games like Hoa, Spirit of the North, and Behind the Frame. I also need a new desk chair so I’m researching options, so if anyone has recommendations leave them below.

Outside of gaming, the big deal for me this weekend is Eternals — got my tickets for the Saturday matinee.

Anna Washenko: I haven’t really known what to do with myself now that my Fire Emblem Three Houses saga is done. I think I’m going to dip into a couple indie games over the next few weeks for a change of pace after that 90+ hour epic, which means I’m going to finally start Chicory. I really vibed Wandersong, and this seems like a similarly charming and heart-warming follow-up. Plus anything with Lena Raine music is an insta-buy.

That closes us out for this week! I hope you all have a lovely weekend and the time change (if it affects you) doesn’t sting too much. At the very least, we’re getting an extra hour this go-around. Why not let us know how you plan to use that extra hour? In the meantime, see you next week!