The Queue: It’s Queuesday

Most of the time I can’t resist a good pun. Most of the time. A good pun.

Anyway,

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us questions and we give you the answers.

The thing I found most unexpected was that a lot of stuff on my list just wasn’t on sale. Part of that is because I’ve done my research, and I’m not looking for a generic thing — I don’t want to buy just A Thing, but this specific model or specific service from this specific company. I was planning on getting my nephew, who is seriously considering a travel abroad program in Germany, a Duolingo subscription, but they didn’t offer a discount on any of those. I’ve had my eye on phone-based mics for my youtube channel for a while, and none of the ones on my list were on sale. My daughter is at a point in her art classes and interest where a drawing tablet would be a great fit for her, but none of those had discounts except for the existing ones for refurbs. I’ve had my eye on science-y kits that involve small explosions or electricity for kids (my son is suddenly into Mythbusters, and I could not be prouder or more concerned about the status of my home insurance) but none of those were on sale, either.

Most of the stuff I purchased on sale was either pre-planned well in advance (clothes, cosmetics, some electronics) or else is hideously boring. I stocked up on stuff I use frequently, and planned to do so, but I didn’t know which things it would be beforehand (laundry soap, dish cloths, shampoo, bins). Ooh, Tide is 20% off! Being an adult is the worst sometimes.

I always feel like the odd lad out when I say stuff like I’m about to, but I usually just visit on whatever character I’m mostly actively playing, and then skip it on everyone else. Heck, half the time I forget, or skip it altogether. I’m just not interested in being all min-maxy anymore, and while the Faire does let me be a little lazy for free — especially for trade skills — eh, I’m just not that into it.

I have a feeling, though, that my tune is going to change drastically when they add in weird little eyeball decor items for my player house.

The big one is a sort-of: The Long Dark just released the last bit of what they called “seasonal DLC.” It was somewhere between WoW expansion patch cycles and a real DLC, where you paid up front, and then they released smallish bits of content along the way for what was projected to be a year, but ended up being two. I fell off during this, because many of the additions in later patches involved using ingredients which are necessarily limited in this setting, like cans of peaches left behind before the whole Long Dark thing happened, so I wanted to wait to make sure I maximize resources in my long-term save. I also tend to have a couple maps that I visit ASAP, strip for resources, and then hopefully leave forever, and the DLC had me going back over and over. Bleh.

Anyway, yesterday they released the very last bit of this, which includes the ability to customize the interiors of several locations. Some of this is functional junk, like workbenches, but I’m mostly excited to remove broken old junk that just litters the floor in some of my favorite locales. And of course, adding art to the walls and maybe moving around the beds and maybe making new fireplaces and making a library of all the books I find in the world, and…

In terms of new games, Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop and Mythwrecked, which are both out in a couple days. Uncle Chop’s is a spaceship fixing roguelike with cute animals as characters — somewhere between a puzzle game and a standard roguelike, but also very strange and a little edgy. Mythwrecked looks like a pretty standard modern story-driven RPG with mythology elements — not a revolutionary concept or anything, but very fun and thoughtful. I have several other games still listed as “Q4 2024” but it doesn’t seem likely they’ll release in the next couple weeks with zero lead time, so.