u/jeodev

I'm three episodes into the first series, and I'm finding Alice to be a dreadfully boring character. But from what I can surmise, she's going to be around for a while. Does her character change (or her presence diminish), or is this not the programme for me?

I have a couple questions about how archipelago places items in checks, in particular for multiworlds:

1. In some standalone randomizers, their algorithms target a certain length of "logic chain" or steps of progression. Does archipelago have such a target, or are the spheres just a description of the end product? Relatedly, in playing an AP, is there particular utility in prioritizing the newest available checks, or is it equally likely that late-game progression could be in an early check?

2. I've heard it alleged that Progression Balancing is zero-sum between games, i.e., increasing the balance for one game in effect lowers it for all other games. Is this actually the case? It seems plausible that big progression items for multiple games can still be placed early, except in trivial cases where there's extremely few open checks in the early game.

New player here, recently level 60. I know that I can equip a mount now, but I have no idea how they work. As I understand it, there was an update recently to the system, so it's hard to tell if information that I find online is up to date.

Does anyone have a basic "getting started" guide, or just a paragraph overviewing things?

I'm in the mood for a creature collecting game, and I'm looking for suggestions for something similar to DQM, especially the Game Boy ones.

What I liked about them:

• The monster combining. I enjoyed that monsters I collect along the way can be put to use in making more powerful ones instead of just retired to storage. I particularly like the sprawling combination trees of DQM1&2 -- I also tried The Dark Prince, where I was a little disappointed by how rigid and tiered the combining was.
• Dynamic party. Because of the breeding system, your team is constantly changing. You're often bringing a junior monster alongside your veterans which can make a fun little emergent narrative as that junior becomes the new boss of the party. By contrast, in Pokemon it feels like, playing casually, you just jam your starter into 90% of the battles through to the end (note: I haven't played the series in 20 years so that's probably changed to some extent).
• Party size and movesets. I like that you do battle with multiple monsters at the same time and that they can have a variety of moves and roles within the party. I also appreciate that the AI is decent enough to let the generic commands carry fodder battles without having to micro manage those.

I haven't tried too many creature collector games outside of some that I played up to through the 00s. I'm pretty platform agnostic, retro included. I saw Siralim as a potential option. I haven't looked into it fully, though it looks a bit daunting with a 6x party size which might be a bit tedious. Happy to hear thoughts on that or other games!