That's including "explorable" water/cloud sea portions for all games, but even if you cut down to just the landmass the XCX map is still around 100 square kilometers.... and that's not counting the parts of the map that have several "layers" like mountains, caves and floating islands.

Found a video of someone who did their best measuring the worlds of the Xenoblade series. They meme a bit about XC2 being the biggest if you include the Cloud Sea, but put the real measurements at the end.

Their results, in square kilometers:

• XC1 28.83
• XC2 21.10
• XC3 40.62
• XCX 355.78

The opposite, it probably still the biggest map in the series.

Transversal is relatively fast because you character is quite speedy even before Skells, but the overall area is massive.

Repair something, Lin’s affinity quest.

Got lucky since I already had the necessary items for that mission, but a friend of mine also complained about being stuck on that one for a while. Not being able to cancel Affinity/Story missions is one of the few annoyances from left the original that I wish had been fixed on the DE.

I am still not sure which probes to place where, currently I am going with the stats of FN, if production is high, I go with mineral, and if revenue is high, go with research, but pretty much every FN in primodia has lower revenue stat than production one.

I focused on building combos when installing my probes and it worked well so far.

So keep investing so that I don’t hit the limit (which I have increased twice by using Storage probes. Any suggestions?

That's a few quests that request Miranium, but other than that I did the same and just kept feeding any I had left spare into the AMs. You get an extra use for it once you unlock mechs since they use if for fuel, but even then there should be plenty.

And can I sell all the low level stuff I have?

Probably? I haven't seen any use for low-lever gear myself and I'm much farther into the game. The only reason I haven't sold mine is because I didn't need to since I have a dumb amount of money piled up from FrontiverNav income.

Playing Xenoblade X!

Finished Chapter 9!

A few days ago I decided to rush to get the Flying Module, and it worked mostly fine, with only the Chapter 9 boss being a roadblock - that one took me a few tries and even made me use some of the healing items I had stashed for the first time. Then I decided to satisfy my OCD and went flying around the world installing every single FrontierNav probe, so I now have the world fully mapped! 🎉

Currently doing a bunch of Affinity Quests that I had pending, will probably balance between these and trying to do at least one Story mission per day. I'd love to use the Easter holiday to finish this game so I can play something else during my trip abroad next week, but not sure if I'll be able to do it.

I am looking for a new board game to play with family. We have Catan, Dominion, Carcassone etc, looking to add something new. Any suggestions?

I love Pandemic (may be a bit hard to play depending on how old your kids are) and Ticket to Ride. There's also versions of the latter with smaller maps if you want faster games.

Exploding Kittens tends to be a big hit with kids in my experience, and it's a also decent game for more casual adult players.

Will probably get Guns of Fury which is a Metal Slug-inspired Metroidvania, I have a couple long (12h+) flights coming next two weeks and I'd like to have a platformer as a side-game. Blasphemous is another option on a deep discount, but given people compare it to Hollow Knight in difficulty it's probably better to leave it for when I'm more relaxed at home. 😅

Also tempted to pick up The Silver Case 2425, it's a pack of two VNs from Suda 51 that I heard good things about.

Yep, it’s just like the Xbox 360 compatibility program.

While I do agree that anyone with a big collection should hold on to their Switch 1 until we get more updates and real-life testing, I don't think this is a fair comparison - even now this looks massively better than anything MS did for backwards compatibility.

There are 462 games made backward compatible out of 989

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games_compatible_with_Xbox_360

There are 632 games that have been made backward compatible out of 2,155

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backward-compatible_games_for_Xbox_One_and_Series_X/S

This comparison with 0079 is really cool. https://bsky.app/profile/yuyucow.bsky.social/post/3lmv6zp2gc226

Though I suspect anyone new to Gundam will be feeling rather confused after this episode.

Also Cyberpunk.

The first half of this episode was amazing.

Ooh, nice, looks like they skipped ahead to get the second part of the plot started.

This is a great choice as that part of the story is IMO far more interesting, and I think they're going do both in parallel which will provide an good balance.

How much does the game change with Skells?

A lot. It's a drastic improvement in exploration speed and ease .

• Faster movement speed, which also means you can escape easily from those annoying high-level enemies that chase you.
• Huge jumps that let you climb mountains quickly. And this game has a lot of verticality.
• Larger enemies go down more quickly since some Skell weapons do a ton of damage.
• Visiblity is better since you have a larger POV.

I was having a good time before, but the game certainly became a lot more fun after I got them.

Should I try to hurry to the point where I get skell, or just enjoy the exploration and quests until I naturally reach that point?

I don't think you can rush too much since there's exploration requirements in some of the story missions, and one of the "tests" to get the skell requires you to have a good amount of FrontierNav spots (you need to get it up to 15k credits per return).

But if you're close to Chapter 6 I'd say yes, rush a bit and get your mech now, it's worth it.

Looks similar to the "Irish Rose" which I like a lot.

• 60ml blended scotch
• 15ml lemon or lime juice
• 10ml simple syrup
• 7.5ml grenadine
• 15ml soda water

Add everything except the soda water, shake+double strain, add the soda water.

And my wife loves smokey drinks so it’s way up high on her list as well.

Adding a small update based on this: Maybe she'll like a Homely Smoke.

I’ll try diluting more

The recipe mentions "a few dashes" of water but I usually go higher using ~10ml for mine, maybe try something like this?

I probably won’t use sugar cubes moving forward (simple syrup instead).

Yeah, making the angostura-saturated sugar is a fun thing to do a couple times, but syrup is way faster and more practical. I use ~5ml when making mine.

The Teresa was a great suggestion for me! Crazy how close it is to a Negroni even though it kinda comes from a different direction

This is a problem I feel with Campari drinks - its flavor is very overpowering so at least for my tastes most drinks using it end up a bit similar.

Speaking of which, I remembered another one of these - the Americano is a "lighter" Negroni with less booze. I recommend adding way more than "a few dashes" of Soda Water though, I tend to go with 30ml or each ingredient in mine, pretty much like a traditional Negroni.

I definitely recommend a second try at an Old Fashioned, our tastes seem to have quite a bit of overlap and it's by far the drink I make the most - just start with the the IBA recipe since most you find around the web add way too much sugar. Also, you may want to test different types of whisky, I prefer mine with Scotch instead of Bourbon, and I also suggest adding a couple drops of Orange Bitters if you have them.

Since you mentioned Sazerac I imagine you already have some Absinthe, so maybe try a Monkey Gland? It's by far my favorite Gin drink, the balance between sweet (from the Grenadine) and sour/herbal (from the Absinthe) is fantastic.

A friend of mine who is a huge fan of Negroni also loves the Teresa. It's an interesting one to taste since it feels very sweet at first due to the Cassis... but then the Campari hits and overpowers that with its sour flavor.

Playing Xenoblade X!

Finished Chapter 6.

Got two Skells so far, the one that you get for free after getting the pilot license, and another from the "New Skell on the Block" mission... but that's only because I need to get to Level 30 before I can buy more of them. I've got something like 3.5M sitting in the bank due to all the passive income from FrontierNav so I'm ready to spend big bucks into buying+upgrading mechs once I get there.

Have been focusing mostly on Primordia and Oblivia, though I also got some reasonable progress exploring the goddamn labyrinth called Noctilum. I took a quick trip to Sylvalum and Cauldros but only unlocked a fast travel point on each to make life easier, haven't really started exploring those yet.

Currently doing sidequests and leveling up, will probably move on with the story once I get everyone past 30. Might try to unlock a few more characters too, I there's 2 or 3 available and just waiting for me to do their recruitment mission.

Not OP, but dropping my $0.02: In terms of map design and gameplay Engage is Top Tier in the franchise. Story is mediocre, though I did enjoy the cast way more than I expected.

I think the only FE game I've played that I rank higher on gameplay is Fates: Conquest.

I played it earlier this year. It's Persona with a fantasy setting and the SMT battle system.