- Twelve posts for the #JustOnePercent Project
At least four posts unrelated to the #JustOnePercent Project- Finish leveling three more characters in World of Warcraft (
priest, warrior,demon hunter) Participate in the group review of the October Humble Choice.Play & post about at least one horror game.Play at least four demos from the October 2022 Steam Next Fest.- Read any six books.
Schedule at least four horror movie watch parties.Order the remaining supplies for my 2023 stitching project, and get the floss carded.
October just might be my favorite month of the year, but holy moly it’s full of distractions. Since my Septembers are typically hectic, I almost always need to spend more time on rest in October, and I invariably forget about this in my great desire to use all my spare time on things that bring me joy. Thankfully, one of the things that brings me the most joy in October really isn’t incompatible with extra rest, and that’s watching all manner of horror movies and TV programs, and I did plenty of that over the last several weeks.
But that meant less time for everything else, and I didn’t really account for that when I was setting my goals, but I’ve long since stopped expecting to cross everything off every month.
GAMING
#JustOnePercent
I did not choose my games well (or wisely) this month. I ended up dropping 5 games in total, four because I just couldn’t get into them after several attempts, and another one (Evil Genius 2: World Domination) because I made the exact same mistake as last month – confusing the XBox Game Pass release date with the game’s actual release date. This after dropping the final three titles I had slated for September felt really bad, but I consoled myself with the knowledge that I still had plenty of games that came out before the end of 2021 that I was still going to surpass my goal in the end.
I think the biggest positive surprise for me was At Eve’s Wake – I’m not a huge fan of visual novels, generally speaking, but this one had me hooked. I did end up wandering off before discovering all the endings, because the more I played, the more the rough edges started to show. It was clever, but not quite clever enough to stand up to multiple back-to-back playthroughs. It’s something I probably never would have picked up if it weren’t in a bundle, so I’m very glad to have discovered it.
World of Warcraft
I definitely played more World of Warcraft in October than I did in September. Partially, I can chalk that up to having more time to play, but mostly, I think, it was a result of having firm goals to work towards. I didn’t do as well with leveling as I had hoped, but Blizzard’s decision to split the pre-patch into two separate events and continue the Winds of Wisdom buff for three more weeks took a bit of pressure off there, freeing me up to spend time on other stuff.
The quest for the Jellycat probably took up the most time – not only did we do weekly raids trying to finish it up before 10.0, since none of us were sure if it was going to be available after that, but most weeks, we raided an extra night. Still, had it gone away with the first part of the pre-patch, we would have been out of luck – when the update came on the 28th, we were one solitary boss away from completion. However, we were able to go back in this past Wednesday, and killed the Jailer, awarding about half our regular raid team with their very own ugly green riding kitty.
I also managed to knock out a few other last minute goals. With the help of my husband and another guildmate, we managed to complete four levels of The Jailer’s Gauntlet for a mawrat mount, and then my husband and I tackled a full set of Flawless 12s to get the Mawsworn Charger. I spend entirely too long hanging out in the Endmire day after day, but managed to finally tame Sinrunner Blanchy and free up a handful of bag slots in the bargain.
Lastly, as someone who usually really enjoys the whole questing experience, I was surprised to discover I’d missed just a handful of side quest chains, so I did not have Loremaster of Shadowlands. I knew I wanted to remedy that before moving on from the Shadowlands to the Dragon Isles, so I knocked out the remaining handful of quests in one night. Oddly enough, I had done just about all of it across the characters I had leveled, but in two zones, no one character had done all of it.
Despite not getting to do everything I would have liked to, I am pretty pleased with the progress I made this month.
Other Gaming
Around the middle of the month, Stardeus finally released into Early Access and ended up being my major single-player time suck for the month. Right now, the early game is fantastic, but as you get closer to the endgame, it starts to lose that wow factor for me. The pace of upgrades, research, and new colonists becomes very very slow indeed, and you’re still only one crisis away from a disaster you cannot possibly recover from. Shortly after reaching the slow down the first time, I ended up losing everything. The second time, it went much better, but that also lead to me losing interest. I’ll definitely be back to check in on it as more things are added and tweaked, but I think I’m satisfied with my progress and understanding of the game mechanics for the time being.
I managed to download and play twelve demos during the October 2022 Steam NextFest, which I wrote about in two separate entries [(part one) and (part two)]. I keep on getting excited about some of the new stuff that’s coming out, but I am also perpetually impatient waiting for things I tried out a year or more ago to become a purchasable product. More and more titles on my wishlist are starting to show dates in 2023 or beyond, and while it’s not like I don’t have anything else to keep me occupied, it’s hard to maintain enthusiasm over such a long period.
On co-op game night, we managed to wring a few last bits of fun out of Card Hunter, before moving on to Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos, which is far more entertaining than the Steam reviews had lead me to believe. It probably wasn’t anything either of us were going to drop full price on, but we somehow managed to both end up with it from bundles or giveaways, and decided it was worth an evening to try out. It’s been quite awhile since I laughed that hard playing a video game. It’s more than a bit grindy, but since our least favorite part of co-op night is deciding what to play next, that’s not necessarily a bad thing unless it gets overly tedious.
Lastly, I managed to try out two of the games in the October Humble Choice Bundle, and give my first impressions of them. Unfortunately, I wasn’t crazy about either game this month, but considering they only end up being around $2 each, it wasn’t a great disappointment.
Gaming Related Spending
The only non-subscription item I spent money on as far as gaming was concerned was picking up Stardeus on release. Add that to my World of Warcraft subscription, Game Pass subscription, and Humble Choice subscription, and my total game related spending for October was only $60.
OTHER NERDSTUFF
Reading
After almost two months of not having the attention span to read or listen to any books, I may not have made my goal, but I feel like I’m getting back into the groove. Although I listened to The Team while stitching, I read the other two on my tablet. I’d gotten away from print for most of the year due to my tremendously irritating quirk of being unwilling to do just one thing at a time.
However, I’ve fallen into some really bad pre-bedtime habits, so I’ve made the decision to get back into the routine of reading right before I want to be asleep. My goal is to be in bed an hour before the time I’d ideally be asleep for the night, and use that hour to read. Sure, it might backfire occasionally if I’m at an exciting part of a good book, but at least I’ll be staying up too late doing something I actually want to be doing, rather than scrolling Instagram mindlessly, or playing one more level of a matching game on my phone.
Stitchcraft
When I decided to get back to stitching, I really dove in, and for the first time in a long time, managed to both start and finish a project in the same month! Having a whole bunch of movies to re-watch really helped me along, and the fact that the project was only 6 colors and around 3000 stitches didn’t hurt either.
I also got in my (nearly) final floss order in for the mega-project I’m planning to start in the New Year. Somehow, despite having a spreadsheet with everything I needed, and rechecking the order twice before placing it, I managed to miss a single skein of thread when I was shopping. Since I’m not interested in paying for shipping for a single skein of embroidery floss, I figure I’ll put it in with my next order, as I’m likely to need something to break up that 500K stitch monstrosity.
So, every color I need for the project – save for that one – is carded and ready to go. Organized floss boxes are so very satisfying to me.
Watching
I feel like I watched all the things this month. All five titles in the Final Destination series. The first seven movies in the Saw series. I binged the entire sixth season of American Horror Story over three days. I saw Halloweentown for the first time. We watched five different movies during Monday night watch parties. I re-watched the first Puppet Master movie, and the IT miniseries from the early 90s. My husband’s best friend came over one night, and I watched the 1982 version of The Thing for the first time. I binged a couple of seasons of Tales from the Crypt, as well as the feature length Demon Knight. We even watched a few episodes of The Halloween Cookie Challenge on Discovery+.
Somehow, I still found enough time to dive deep into the archives, and do a triple feature of horror movies about video games (as opposed to video game adapations). None of these movies are particularly good, mind you, but this year, every one of them seemed to hit the spot.
Even with everything I’ve listed out, I know I’ve forgotten some things. It was a horror filled month, and it made me wonder why I feel like I need to ravenously consume all of this each October, and then barely indulge during the remainder of the year.
Krikket’s Clubhouse
Just click on the header if you’d like to join in the shenanigans!
Monday nights in October were for the weird, the scary, and the absolutely ridiculous. For the first three weeks, we watched movies I watch pretty much every year. I branched out a little bit for the last two, although Cabin in the Woods I revisit from time to time, it’s not an every October movie for me. Attendance was somewhat spotty, but it’s clear we have enough folks that are into watching a flick on a Monday night that I may try to make this a weekly occurrence. Worst case scenario, it means that I’ll at least watch a handful of movies per month.
The only other seasonal event was The Haunting of Emmie Jenkins online escape room from Masters of Mystery. Although the four of us who played enjoyed it overall, I felt slightly mislead by the game’s description. I expected that – in the course of escaping – we’d uncover the answer to the mystery that the game started with. Instead, it was just a lure to get us into the house and the puzzles throughout had almost nothing to do with the murders or the ransom note for a child who didn’t seem to exist.
I would be absolutely open to getting another online escape room to play, but I think I’d possibly try a different source next time. Both the lack of resolution and the fact that once you play the game, you lose access to it irked me a little bit.
For most of the night, I was sure we weren’t going to make it in the hour time limit (although the game stated that you could play beyond the timer, you just wouldn’t “win”). But we did, with six entire seconds to spare.
Oddly enough, my monthly “In Review” posts probably take longer to organize and write than anything else I do for this blog. Fortunately, they’re actually probably my favorite part of blogging, and the posts I’m most likely to go back and reread!
Nerd Girl Thoughts 