Rant 538 / As Bass Volume Approaches Infinity, So Does The Quality Of The Song

I thought he was saying, "Hit it! Hit it! Sony yeah!"



The two "Will you marry me" scenes were very funny.


Okay so the two videos above weren't that good. Whatever. The best Indian music video on Youtube is still Benny Lava anyway.














I didn't know they still make these two handed great swords today!

Kind of useless but probably fun to chop chickens with. The swords aren't cheap though. Their Japanese swords (including katanas) are going for 375 to 800USD apiece, but come with their own sheaths.

The great swords, according to their catalog, are 3.1kg each, 1.4m long. Since you wield the sword at the handle, there should be quite a bit of downward momentum on the blade's end.

Interestingly, the "Chinese War Sword" is also available. Although it should be called a "knife" since that's what it's called in Chinese (刀), I can understand why they wouldn't call it that. The "Gim Sword" on the other hand is a real Chinese sword. FYI "gim" is Cantonese for "sword" (剑). This sword is not usually called that but I think it's obvious where they got their translator from.

When I saw the name "Shamshir" I knew I've heard it before but I just can't remember when and where. Anyway it's a Persian sword.










The following part of this rant is going to be repeatedly interrupted by unrelated screenshots and captions as part of an ongoing experiment on the psychology of blog-reading. Feedback is not welcomed.

Mount and Blade reminds me of the old drug-seller and pimping games I used to play on my TI-83 Graphical Calculator. Honestly, this game is just a humongous version of those games with some hack-and-slash combat thrown in. Okay, the combat is mostly optional and doesn't have to be hack-and-slash. You can choose to be a pro archer, crossbowman, javelin thrower or even a hardcore stone-flinger a la David-and-Goliath style, it doesn't matter how you enter the battles/fights. If you lose, you either get carried away by your companions or captured by enemy nobles who will eventually exchange you for money or prisoners. I haven't died once even after quite a few losses.

(Max zoom out)

Combat can be completely avoided if you want to but it takes a lot of precautions like only entering cities in the day (you can get robbed at night, in which case you have to fight alone against 3-4 bandits) and having an army to deter wandering raiders and bandits.

(Max zoom in)

But to go into politics, combat is a must. Honour and Renown points can only be won by fighting and with those, you can become recognized among higher social circles. Lords will eventually like you and then support you. I haven't gone far enough to become famous but there are already conversation options asking to speak with the lords privately. That most likely means you can create a conspiracy to overthrow the ruler of your chosen faction.

(I feel like I'm Hannibal. No, not the brain-eating one. I'm referring to the Carthaginian general. My army is like his, a mix of all sorts of troops from many places.)

Another interesting feature is that you can back the claims of pretenders of foreign factions (once you have chosen one to be a native of) to their thrones. I imagine you will have to fight in their battles if you do that.

(For new traders, Flax Bundle is one option that you can buy at below 90 denars each. 43 is a very low price only available in a few cities like Sargoth as shown.)


(127 denars mean a 84-denar profit on the first piece because the price rises and drops upon each item bought and sold. 84 denars would be 200% profit. Sell all now? No. I'm only here in Halmar to restock my food supplies.)


(Sell it in Ahmerrad. This is a good price, not 127, because it's almost 500% profit here. Muahahaha!)


(Once you're done selling them all in Ahmerrad, buy Iron. Anything below 150 is cheap. Less than 100 and it's very cheap. Some places buy them at over 300 denars apiece. Go find them yourself.)

For now, I'm still more interested in joining battles already close to ending in order to gain Renown and Honour and allies' favour for helping them despite the fact that I only enter the scene for some sight-seeing (I ordered my troops to follow me, then hid some distance away from the battle, finally ordering them to CHAAAAAAARGE!! only when the fight is halfway through). Surprisingly, the following set of screenshots are actually related to this paragraph. What a coincidence!

(You may see merely a list of soldiers but I see opportunities.)


(Charge them of course! I need to be there to tell them to stay behind my allies! Even if it's 163 versus 65! 163 is the combined forces between me and my ally.)


(My allies ahead, with white symbols above their head to symbolise their emir's banner. They will be taking the brunt of the enemies' charge and arrows.)

(My small army spread out behind me, a safe distance from the ensuing arrow barrage.)

(Taking potshots is becoming a hobby of mine. It does little damage but who cares? I've got 68 arrows to spend!)


(Victory! Only 4 killed and 6 disabled, and none of my companions died. Just as planned!)

(My AI ally lost 19. Aw... Whatever. The enemy lost his entire army, with 1 coward deserting. 19 + 4 = 23 = not a lot compared to the 64 we downed and one we scared off.)

(Nooooooo! He ran! A noble could have fetched a couple thousand denars in ransom money! The last one I caught was exchanged for 3300!)

Sure I gain less experience because I don't get many kills, but I don't need those battles to gain experience. These are trained soldiers I'm fighting against and I had placed most of my attribute points in Leadership, Persuasion and such!


(I'm a leader/trader, not a warrior!)

Keeping my money between 10-20k denars isn't that easy either now that I'm in the Sarranid Sultanate. War means I cannot enter the enemy cities and if I pass through their lands I may get chased down by huge armies of veteran soldiers. I got chased down twice, once in a foreign land and once in a village of my faction.

(My fief, a tiny frontier village. It's poor; I neglect it and my villagers neglect me. )

I was lucky in both because in the first, the Boyar's forces sucked even though he outnumbered me by around 10-20 soldiers. In the other I got help by 20 villagers who worked really well as shock troops as I sniped the enemies with my Nomad Bow behind the pitchfork-wielding meat shields.

(Once you have found some prisoners like I did as shown at the bottom of the list in the 3rd screenshot, find this guy. He appears at random taverns and buys prisoners who aren't of noble blood.)

This game isn't just all about trading and fighting. It is also important to court female nobles in order to gain status through marriage. I haven't reached that stage yet because I'm not famous enough. Everytime I introduce myself I get the reply, "Hybrido? I haven't heard of you. Now if you will excuse me..."

T.T

At least I finally got invited to the Sultan's feast.

(Too bad for the prisoners. No one forced them to pick the other side of the battle.)

This game, just like those calculator games, is great for multitasking. It takes some time to travel in the field and it automatically pauses when you're idling outside of combat. This makes it very convenient for players to do other things while playing, like browse Youtube, watch Bleach or take screenshots.

(Bad boys, bad boys! What you gonna do? What you gonna do when I come for you?)

One thing I find strange is how some food rot quickly while others never do. Food is necessary for maintaining your army because soldiers need to be well-fed. Buying different types of food also raises their morale. Apparently variety makes your men happy, which I understand because I wouldn't want to eat cheese and dried meat everyday.

(To capture prisoners, you need to disable them with a blunt weapon like this mace. The Swing damage is 37b, where "b" means "blunt". Blunt weapons generally do less damage than sharp weapons.)

Why do grapes and beef rot within a few days, but butter never goes rancid? Do the ancients have a way of preserving it that I'm not aware of? After scanning the Wiki article on butter, I see that they did!

(A city under siege could be entered by anyone. I don't see the sense in that. Doesn't this free access for everyone beat the point of having a siege? They could have just call it "loitering" instead of a "siege".)

It was made into ghee by partial dehydration, kind of like canned soup, and stored in air-tight jars. This form can be stored long enough to be widely traded in the medieval ages when the fastest form of transport was the horse.

If you don't know what ghee is, it's what you get when a person with a lisp says," Glee."

Haha..

Hehe..

Hm...




The other way was pretty strange but not exactly surprising. In northern Europe they would bury barrels of it in their swamps aka bogs.

Firkins of such buried butter are a common archaeological find in Ireland; the Irish National Museum has some containing "a grayish cheese-like substance, partially hardened, not much like butter, and quite free from putrefaction."

It's "grey" and "cheese-like" but not rotten. Don't know about you but I find that hard to imagine. Then again, I've never seen any food turn grey without decomposing. Guess that's what hundred-year-old butter is like. The Irish sure eat strange food.


But what about cabbage and bread? Both don't have long shelf lives inherently as far as I know. Those expensive loaves of bread I buy from neighbourhood confectioneries always go mouldy within 4 days. As for cabbage, it's called "cabbage" and not "sauerkraut".



Even after scanning Wikipedia I found no special way of preserving them. Well, cabbage can be preserved but sauerkraut is sauerkraut. As for bread, since it wasn't sold in slices back then, you could probably just remove the crust after buying mouldy bread. I don't know, this is just a guess.














How did this video get 49 million views, beating Rickroll by 15 million??

¡No sé!

Hablo un poco de español, but not enough to understand the song. Not even close.

It's a nice song, just not 49-million-views nice.























This is going to be soooooooo true. If it actually turns out to be this extreme of a sandbox game, I'll cry in joy and buy multiple legit copies. Probably never stop playing too. Serious.

Not my work but I thought this MSPaint comic was pretty original and humorous for something found in 4chan.