It's been a huge pleasure having everyone's help with that process and I'm looking forward to beating on the poor Downtown quest the same way. We're coming for you, Downtown!

On a personal note, I'm about halfway through my course of treatment for the blood stuff I alluded to on Patreon (and, you know, with the Halloween theming this year). I'm doing a lot better by comparison, but we'll find out early next year if the treatment has stuck or if I'll need to go straight into the next line of treatment.

Still, there are good days now, so I'll be focusing on smaller stuff until then. Depending on the actual number of good days, that potentially means stuff like the first new unearthly item in quite a while, new routes through early quests, and little crafting packages.

Cheers!
Kinak

The player is "immortal" in some ways, like they can't really be killed. No matter how much damage we take or organs removed, we grow back. There are a few specific people like this in the world, the "Freaks" or "einherjars"(?). The Hammer is one:

"The Vigilante would call us Freaks. They say we're immortal. I'm not so sure… but you seem to stay together better than me. Maybe you're the new model year." He opens his mouth like he's about to start laughing, then winces and closes it again. ^ref

The burner combat on the Exec floor that shows up once we recover from being beaten up a couple times calls us "We found the N's einherjar! Light it up!".

Many of the high-up Midgard execs seem to have some sort of regenerative power too. Janet survives our killing her over and over. Most all of the AVP encounters show up repeatedly.

At some point Kinak mentioned that there's something going on with the spider lady or ladies in the Cellar Door. Not sure if it's one person showing up over and over again or multiple people. EDIT: Kinak confirms: "Those do actually represent multiple people. There is some text that may or may not have been uncovered to explain why the spider ladies are like that."

(Then there's the whole "reset" / slags maelstrom thing, which is obviously related somehow, but different from the above regeneration. We start a new "life" but still remember echoes of previous lives, eg. memories of the monocled man. It's not like every time we get killed we need to start over from day 1.)

Anyway, the part that is not clear to me yet is why you can kill the Executive Interrogation AVP but she doesn't get mad at you for doing so. I kill her once and she still greets me like it's the first time we met. Is this:

• a) Her re-birth process is a complete "reset" and she doesn't remember us killing her?
• b) There's a "backup" copy somewhere that doesn't remember the last few hours before being killed? (Just watched Dollhouse recently - in that show people's memories can be backed up to a hard drive and restored, but they will only remember up to when they were last backed up.)
• c) She has mysterious reasons not to acknowledge the fact that we just killed her so as to hide her own immortality.
• d) There are multiple AVPs who kind of look the same and we keep running into different ones? (I get the impression this is how the Executive Procession works on the Call Center - we are not seeing the same AVP multiple times, we are seeing a number of different ones.) I think the Executive Interrogation AVP is the same person you meet over and over, but there's not specific evidence of that.
• e) Metroplexity is a videogame and there are some things that can't always be coded for.

Janet is the only named AVP you can kill repeatedly, and she did acknowledge once about not being dead after you killed her. So she knows that she has been "killed" by you at least.

Hmmm. Just writing all this out to get my thoughts in order.

There are still some tricks and treats around, but the very end of the Downtown Quest was a bit more than I could fit in with Halloween. I expect that to come out in a separate non-Halloween update (or maybe updates, I decided to ask that on Patreon).

There are also some squirrely lingering issues from the updates I had to do before Halloween. The bug hunt is, unfortunately, quite real in this case. Thank you all for your help reporting and troubleshooting those bugs as they came up, especially during the event.

Cheers!
Kinak

Also, are there any plans for more interaction with the craters in the Slags?

Post your questions here. I'll go through the thread and record a podcast answering them. I know it's been a while, or might be your first podcast thread, but please remember to make your questions as succinct as you can (because I'll be reading them for the first time "on air") and try not to crosstalk or answer each other's questions (because I'll just get confused).

Cheers!
Kinak

Hypothetically, if someone were to return to one's favourite game after, you know, a while, what should one check out?

Post your questions here, be they about Halloween, Metroplexity, or other stuff. Remember to keep them concise if you can and try not to cross-talk answering each other's questions.

Cheers!
Kinak

Remember to keep your questions to the point and not answer each other's questions in the thread.

Also, I hope everyone is safe out there. Seattle's already a very different place than last week, so we'll see what life brings before the podcast.

Cheers!
Kinak

We have under 3 weeks to the event, what do we think we need to do?

So it'll take a while to see exactly how that shakes out. I think both activities will still be worthwhile, just require a bit more investment, but I'm open to revisiting their difficulty once things have settled.

Oh, and it's totally possible this change hilariously broke something else down the line. So obviously let me know if I blew something up.

Cheers!
Kinak

As always, post your questions here! Try to keep them short so I can read them smoothly and try not to answer each other's questions, because the cross-talk is confusing when I'm on the air.

Cheers!
Kinak

P.S.: Last time, folks asked about the search function in wikidot. I, and several other admins, raised that with wikidot support and they're apparently looking into it. Hassling will continue until search improves.

Kinak's reply:

I think the main thing you would have noticed in there is pretty subtle. There are some other interactions you've gotten close to (some of which are so long undiscovered even I'd forgotten them).

But there definitely should have been some more in there. Added some new stuff to techniques, including a toxic spear one with hunting spear that you definitely would have discovered. The others aren't directly on that list, so I'll leave them unspoken for now.

So I'm sending up the spade-signal. There's new things to find and also some super obscure old ones, apparently.

http://metroplexity.wikidot.com/local--files/greasemonkey-scripts/chatbeeper.user.js

I've found it super useful over the past few days. Edit the first line of the script if you don't want it to beep at you more than ever x minutes. Let me know if any problems.

• glimmering crystal eye
• living hand

General Methodology:
1) Equip cyberware
2) Try appropriate techniques with the cyberware to learn new techniques. These include punch, brutality, dive for cover, evil eye, light of the eye, kidney punch, single shot (these seem to be associated the most with learning new techniques), among many others.
3) Try killing and talking with NPCs who have said cyberware equipped (if any)
4) Other miscellaneous ideas
5) Tear out cyberware, replace with new hotness

Already tested

• integrated cybergun- tried shooting lots of people with 4 points of sight link, tactical neural mesh, arrayed cybereye, tactical goggles and targeting/optical algorithm.
• arrayed cybereye, tactical neural mesh- results
• OmniBody arms, OmniEyes, Omnibody legs, OmniTech ArtSkin , OmniBody heart- results
• analyzing cybereye, muscular cyberarms, corroded dermal plates (generously donated by Mag) , hooked cyberlegs (generously donated by Mag)- results
• powerful cyberarms, cat eyes, powerful cyberlegs, tiger skin : results
• targeting cybereye, targeting cyberarms, solar wings- (generously donated by Cryptodynamic)- results
• glazed cybereyes, chameleon glands , sludge cyberheart, scaled arm: results
• dark wings, The Claw ((thanks to a generous donation by Mag), demon face , shivering cybereye- results
• goat legs, spidery limbs, fixed eyes, head spikes, elbow spikes: results
• Inteternal blade, cybernetic tattoo , tracer eye (thanks to a generous donation by Al)- results
• wired cyberarms, secret cyberheart, wired cyberlegs, angelic wings : results
• trash cyberheart, ghost skin, transparent arms, transparent legs, blackened eyes, visible organs: results 1results 2
• tiger paw, eye of the earth serpent (thanks to a generous donation by Al), rhythmic cyberlegs, gossamer wings, adrenal pump : results
• tiger skin, tiger paw (repeat): results
• body jewels- (thanks to a generous donation by Al), scaled arm : results

Cyberware not included in investigation

Could not obtain

• commemorative cyberarms
• decorative ears

Absolutely can't get

• sealed cyberblade
• unsealed cyberblade

Assuming nothing to find:

Includes non-combat neuralware, crafting intermediates and defective cyberware from the Metroplex U Cybertechnology Lab:

Assuming "solved"

(already is spaded out heavily):

Unofficial, of course: https://discord.gg/qPZMpXy

It'll be particularly handy for the upcoming Christmas snowman-building competition, too. Hint hint.

Q: And for some other long term stuff… Of all the mysteries we've not yet managed to solve since the game started, can you tell us anything about your favorite?

A: There is a, obviously quite a few refereces to Matsuo the Demonslayer. There's a bit more to that than just callbacks to a cool show, and I think people will be very pleased when they find that.

Rather than look into what brought me back, I've got the bug to take yet another crack at some now 10 year old mysteries. Here goes nuthin'.

We know from TV that one of Matsuo's many opponents is "his own dark reflection". So my basic idea is to see if anything cool happens if you fight an appropriately Matsuo-y clone in pvp while all Matsuo-y yourself. Some thoughts on what might matter:

• Having the Channeling Matsuo effect active seems like a must
• Being Etheric would probably help make weird stuff happen
• The techniques you can learn from Channeling Matsuo are Swordplay, Parry, Power Strike, and Leaping Dodge, so that's probably a good deck to be using
• As to equipment, one possibility would be for both fighters to wield the replica sword
• Since it looks like Kinak was working on the pvp revamp that included the Matsuo finale at about the same time as the Ghost Ship stuff, a more elaborate possibility that goes all-out on the "dark reflection" thing would be for the clone to use the black silver blade and maybe also a black silver visor, blackened vest or nightmarish gang jacket, and a shadowy heart while the attacker uses a shining blade shining mask, shining vest or shining gang jacket, and a hidden heart. Going one step even farther would be to actually have the Undead Scourge and Mercy Killer skills, respectively.

I got a Sea Lord's crown ages ago for spading something-or-other that I no longer remember, so I can't help with the very last idea (at least, not anytime soon), but I'd like to try everything up until that if anybody else is up for it.

Ask your questions and you shall receive answers. Possibly spoOOOooky answers. We'll see.

As always, try to keep your questions brief and don't answer other people's questions.

Cheers!
Kinak

Why?
There are a few reasons behind that. One is that people have asked a few times for Patreon as an option so they don't miss unearthly items. Another is that I've been looking for a good way to do quick polls for feedback on where to head next.

And finances aren't bad, but they're not really good either. That's largely on me, but I've fallen several times into a cycle of missing an unearthly item, needing to pick up freelance work to make ends meet, then not having time to do an unearthly item. Enough of a stream from Patreon should get me out of that and prevent it from falling into that cycle again, which would be pretty great.

So I did a lot of financial math and figured out what actual targets look like. So the tier numbers are a bit weird, because I'd rather be transparent about the numbers than have them be round.

Should I Panic?
If you're not interested in being a patron, that's totally cool. You'll still get the content they're helping produce and unearthly items will still show up in Zack's like always. But, if you'd like to chip in, it'll help the game out a lot in the long run and you'll get some cool rewards.

How will I get rewards?
I will get your Patreon email address, so I can get rewards to the right accounts based on that. If your Metroplexity email address doesn't match your Patreon one, send me an in-game message with the Patreon address and I can make sure things are tied together properly.

The unearthly items and avatars should kick in the next month, so Patreon can handle everything on the 1st. So if you sign up for the $10 tier now, the first avatar will show up sometime in October. If I release an item in October, everyone who was a patron on October 1st will get it automatically. And so on.

If people would rather that kick in immediately, that's an option, but I think this serves a bit of a different role from the normal donations. So… I guess let me know if you have strong opinions.

As for stuff like polls, there's already one up to kick things off.

What about?
I'm new to this, so I've probably missed some things. Hit me up with any questions here or over on Patreon.

Cheers!
Kinak

As always, try to keep your questions concise (so I can read them on air) and try not to answer each other's questions (so I don't get confused while I'm doing so).

Cheers!
Kinak

Remember to keep your individual questions short and not try to answer each other's questions.

Cheers!
Kinak