As I’m writing this, It is the day of NYE. I’ve been mixing up my days for the last few, but I think today is the last day of 2022? *Checks clock*. Yup. It’s December 31st, 2022. I have told both Kathleen and Ian that 2022 was a placeholder for better years. 2021 was a shithshow in so many ways. There was the backdrop of the pandemic plus my personal hell–my medical crisis. (Link to yesterday’s post.)
The beginning of 2022 was me getting back to normal and adjusting to still being alive. Every day, I woke up and marveled at the miracle. I truly looked out the window every morning and counted every blessing. It was astonishing to me that the world was so vibrant and I was around to appreciate it.
Then, it was Febriary. If you know me at all, you know that means Elden Ring. The specs for the PC version were dropped 10 days before the game was released, which meant I had to buy a PC that would run the game in less than two weeks. I wanted to play the game as soon as I could, so I got to work.
This was one way in which my thinking had been changed. Before, I got the cheapest machine possible. I skimped on everything to get something that served my basic needs. That’s not a bad thing, by the way. There is nothing wrong with being thrifty. But there is a point where it’s counter-productive. When I bought my last laptop (my current laptop that I am typing on right now), I got the bare minimum needed to run the machine.
I will say that I had the insight to an SSD, which has been a game-changer. I will never have a machine without it again because it makes everything so much faster. One of the reasons I stopped using my old desktop is because it took forever to start up without an SSD.
Then, I would add to the machine because it would chug along. I had to add memory and storage and more. When it was time to buy a machine to play Elden Ring (and, yes, I am extremely privileged that I was able to do this), I decided to splash out and get the best I could. First, I had to decide if i wanted a desktop or a laptop. I had been thinking about getting a desktop because I wanted a work station.
Side note: That’s actually on my list of things to do in 2023–get a decent work station. I want a sit/stand desk and a better chair. I have an ergonomic chair, but it’s decades old. I want to be able to stream from my set-up and to do videos, too. In other words, I want to set myself up for success.
I decided on a desktop and decided to goose it good. I wanted it to be something I could use for a decade, not just for a year or two. I got a desktop with a graphics card that could easily support Elden Ring, along with a terabyte of storage and plenty of memory. And, of course, an SSD. When Elden Ring was released, the PC port was busted as fuck. Many people could not play it or it would stutter and stagger. I was fortunate enough that I had microstutters and it hard-crashed once on the first day I played it for hours, but that was it. Now, it plays like butter and I don’t notice any issues.
Elden Ring. That is all. That was most of my 2021, and I was so happy that I was alive to play it. I spent the first month or so just grateful that I got to play it at all. It’s funny beacuse in videos of the best games of 2022, so many of them say about Elden Ring, “What can be said about Elden Ring that hasn’t been already said?” I have been writing about the lesser-known and appreciated aspects of the game such as the map and Torrent, but most people talk about how great the open world aspect is. And the incredible abundance of the content available–most of it quality.
I was one of those who was worried about how the Dark Souls exeprience was going to translate into an open world game. I should have had more faith in FromSoft. They kept the legacy dungeons, but also gave us open world realness. And not AssCreed open world blandness, but a world in which it actually felt alive. You never knew what you would run into in any given situation, and I was eager to explore in every corner.
Oh, another thing that people don’t talk about much is the fact that there are enemies that only come out at night (woah, here she comes!). The one that most people probably know about is the Night’s Cavalry in the Weeping Peninsula. There are others, though, and they each give you something different. The one very late in the game (in which there are two!) gives you the siiiiiick armor.
There are also the Death Rite Birds and the Deathbirds dotted around the map. There are three of each, and, yes, they also become increasingly difficult dependent upon where they are. I think less people know about these than they do about the Night’s Cavalry.
The one that I think many people missed is the Bell Bearing Hunter. The first one I found was in the same church as the Turtle Pope, but at night. I went there at night to talk to the Turtle Pope, and he was gone. And it was ominous. And then the Bell Bearing Hunter came in and kicked my ass. Repeatedly. He is fucking hard. I cheesed him. I will admit it. I abused his boundaries to attack him from a safe distance. And, I found out there were three others of him. You get ball bearings from him that you can take back to the Twin Husks for consumables.
You pass time at a Site of Grace, and I bet many people don’t know about these enemies. I stumbled upon one of each organically, but I had to look up where they all were. I would encourage people to fight them because they’re really hard fights. But you get good drops from them, and it fed my sense of completion.
So. For the month of January, my goal is to get my computer station set up. Including a sit/stand desk and ergonomic chair, microphone, and lights. And camera. I want to have an actual office situation going on.
I also want to hear that there will be Elden Ring DLC. I would be so stoked by this. More Ranni? I wouldn’t say no to it, but I would also like to learn more about Blaidd. We could also do some D DLC. His life was cut short too early. RIP, D. My best guess, though, is that they will go back to the time of the Shattering, which would be fine with me as well. I’m down for more Elden Ring, no matter what. Except the colosseums. That is not my thing at all.
I want to make the switch to video because I know that writing is dead. This is my biggest goal for the next year. It hits me in all my vulnerable parts, which is how I know I need to push on. I’m hoping 2023 will be a better year than 2022–for me as well as for everyone.