Dota 2 : The International 5 All-Star Match

Hello everyone ! I am really sorry for the lack of updates lately, I have been quite busy with school and other things, especially since finals are coming up in a couple of weeks, which has made it difficult to game in the past week or so. It's sad because it happens to be around the time TI5 is happening :( As I have not played Dota that long, I have not watched many of these annual competitions, and when I actually want to check it out I have exams, so that's kinda sad. I did however, have the awesome opportunity to check out to All-Star match, which was played in a very interesting format, a 10v10 ! It seems that custom lobbies in Dota 2 will now be able to support up to 24 players by next week ! That means that you can potentially have a 12v12, which is definitely something I'm gonna try out. For now though, I shall share my thoughts on the match :D

So due to my limited knowledge of the Doa 2 pro scene, there are very few professional players that I am aware of, yes it is kind of bad that I as an avid fan of Dota is not familiar with most professional players but I play the game for fun and so I don't really keep up. This means that unfortunately, I will not be able to really introduce most of the players pictured below to you. I do know Mushi though, as he is a Malaysian player, and since I am from MY myself, you can guess that I would know at least him.

Team BigDaddy was called Team NoTail though
Image from gosugamers.net

Dendi from Natus Vincere, who has apparently been part of every All-Star match to date, was not invited to this one. That didn't stop him though, as he happened to be selected as one of 5 members of the audience to play on each team due to his impressive cosplay of Pudge. The crowd went nuts when he was unmasked on stage, and I was really suprised myself, as I knew what Dendi looked like and thought, "wow that guy looks like Dendi", before actually realising it was him.

The most tense moment was definitely when Team Chuan pushed all the way into the Radiant base and brought the ancient down to almost 100 hp before Team NoTail came back and destroyed them, leading to them pushing into Team Chuan's base and ultimately securing victory in the most intense comeback ever worthy of Dota 2's first official 10v10. When asked what the biggest problem was for Team Chuan, Coach Chuan replied "Mushi", obviously hinting at the fact that Mushi had purchased a Divine Rapier which was eventually forfeited to the enemy team and played a large part in their victory.

The match was very tense and fun and all around an incredible fight to watch. I recommend everyone check it out on twitch if you missed the livestream to get the full experience as I obviously cannot picture the entire match here in words. It is the weekend now so I hope to catch the last few games tomorrow and maybe write about it here for all or you. That's all for now, I hope you all will or have derived as much fun from the match as I did. :D 

Cat Lady Adventures : Lots of Gifts

Nekoatsume Update Log
20 July 2015

Yo guys ! It has been quite a long time since I posted anything about Nekoatsume. This is because not much has been happening in my game lately. So I thought I would just wait until a few things happened and write about them all at once :D

• Gifts from Daien, Niiro and Farao\

Just a simple update, I've gotten three gifts recently from two normal cats and one special cat. Daien is supposed to be a mix of two Japanese words, "daidai" meaning "orange" and "en" meaning circle. Basically this cats name is 'orange circle'. Yeah it sounds much better in Japanese XD. Daien seems to have given me some candles. It's certainly not my birthday yet nor is it any sort of special occasion to use them, unfortunately. 

Niiro is the words "nii" and "iro" fused, which mean "two" and "color" respectively. So this cats name is "two colors". My naming sense could probably use some work. I had planned to try and name all of my cats Japanese names, but despite my liking for anime and stuff, I am not a pro at Japanese names. Thus I just used google translate to turn cat descriptions into names :D. Niiron appears to have given me some matches, which is interesting seeing how Daien had just given me some candles before. I hope they're not up to something.

Farao is a self-explanatory name. It is literal pronunciation for the English word "Pharaoh". Farao is a special cat that only appears when you purchase and place the Pyramid Tent-looking thingy, It looks like he's given me some weird staff thingamajigy. I don't really know what to do with this, but thanks anyway :D

Well, that's all for now. The Nekoatsume world has been pretty quiet recently. Leave a comment below about what kind of gifts you've received when playing this game :D

Modded MC : Attaesta - The Magical Side of Things (16 July Part 2)

Minecraft
Attaesta Mod Pack
Current Progress Log (16 July 2015)
Part 2

Like I promised, here is the more magical side of the Attaesta mod pack that we have explored so far. Obviously, this post is a bit late, and I suppose I must apologise for that. As it has been a while, we have achieved more in magic than before, but I will touch those later as it may be too much. For now, I shall just elaborate on what we achieved a few days ago when I wrote the first part of this post.

Thaumcraft

Thaumcraft is a very in-depth magical mod that adds all sorts of things to the game. It is a bit complicated for me, which is why I stuck to my roots and pursued ProjectE, formerly called Equivalent Exchange in Tekkit, and was one of my favorite mods then. My brother and cousin decided to follow the Thaumcraft side of this mod pack though, my brother because he has always liked Thaumcraft, and my cousin because he thought it looked cool after being introduced by my brother.

The Harry Potter Lab

They started Thaumcraft in a little lab under the stairs in our basement, which my brother called the "Harry Potter Lab", because it was under the stairs. Eventually though, they moved out into a newly constructed building, the Wizard Tower.

The Wizard Tower

They outfitted the tower with all sorts of Thaumcraft machinery which I cannot even understand and made some very interesting stuff.

This is actually how it looks now

The photo above shows my brother posing in his brand new Thaumaturge robes, in his new lab, located at the top of the Wizard Tower. As you can see, they have a research table in a bookcase and a bunch of weird machines and jars containing magical elements and materials. One of their creations were golems, small little helpers that can perform tasks like carry items, farm, fight and so on. After creating some simple straw and wooden golems, they created a troupe of Flesh Golems and outfitted them with weaponry and armor to act as a base defense. The little dudes are still surviving and protecting the base to this day.

Ready for battle

ProjectE

ProjectE, or Equivalent Exchange, as it used to be called, is an alchemy mod that emphasis greatly on the concept of transmuting items of equal value. Almost every item and block in game has an EMC value which is utilised in this mod. I created a Energy Condenser, one of my favorite items in any mod ever, quite early on even when we were still on the isolated island at the beginning despite its cost of about 5-6 diamonds. What the condenser does is it allows us to use the EMC value of items and convert it into other items. After moving to our current base, I started creating what is known by the community as a "Power Flower". Basically it involves surrounding the condenser with relays and Energy Collectors, which collect energy from sunlight and convert it directly into EMC. These things are incredibly expensive, but worth it, as they have been slowly creating resources and building up our riches.

This picture shows the Power Flower layout I had 4 days ago during the first post. The condenser is attached to three Mark 2 Energy Collectors, each generating 12 EMC per second. For comparison, a diamond is 8192 EMC. This means that the layout we had 4 days ago was producing 1 diamond every 4 minutes or so. You may think this is quite fast, but to one who has reached endgame ProjectE items, this is nothing. It helped however, to achieve what we have now.

It is a bit difficult to see, but the condenser is now attached to two relays, which have 10 Mark 3 Energy Collectors connected to them, each producing 40 EMC per second. Meaning that now, we are producing 1 diamond every 20 seconds. Which is totally nuts. I plan to expand this Power Flower even more in the future so that I can create some of the most powerful ProjectE items ever and rule over all :D

That shall be all for now. Leave a comment about what you think and if you've ever used any of these mods.

(Obligatory disclaimer : I felt I had to do this since it's been a while since the last. Minecraft does not belong to me nor do any of the mods pictured above.) :D

Modded MC : Attaesta - Lots of New Progress ! (16 July Part 1)

Minecraft
Attaesta Mod Pack
Current Progress Log (16 July 2015)
Part 1

So this is what the base looks like now

Yo everyone ! Sorry I haven't been updating the blog the last couple days. I have been quite busy with not only schoolwork, but also enjoying the Attaesta mod pack. The problem now is that since it has been so long, we have achieved a lot more in the server and there is a lot to talk about. So I will be splitting this into two parts and talking slowly about each thing we've been doing :D

This is the storage facility. There's not much I need to say about this building because it is purely just a building with a bunch of chests for storing the many items in this mod pack.

So here is one of the newer structures I have built. It is the Bluepower facility ! This is the building that I do research and building on items from the Bluepower mod. This mod adds a bunch of machines and alloys, and the main reason I started researching this mod was because I needed to create a sorting system for the storage facility as it would be very difficult to find items if they were scattered in multiple chests and too troublesome to manually sort them seeing how many items 100+ mods will add to the game.

What a mess

It took a lot of effort, but I managed to create the sorting system. How it works is that people can just put all their items into a chest in the storage facility and then the items are sucked out into the system I built under the facility, pictured above. Each of the machines then sort items and send items into the correct chests so that we don't have to. It is a lot messier than it needed to be because I'm not really good at this stuff, but it works fairly well, so it's fine :D

I also made a jetpack that allows me to fly around freely and it is how I managed to get the bird's eye view of our base as pictured in the first screenshot of this post. In part 2, I will talk about the magical side of things that me and my friends have been exploring.

Leave a comment about what you think, and maybe you can tell me what other mod packs you guys have played before :D See you !

Modded MC : Attaesta (Current Progress)

Minecraft
Attaesta Mod Pack
Current Progress Log (12 July 2015)

Alright, as I promised in the last post, I shall give a small story on what we have achieved so far in our first ever Attaesta world !

At first, since the others had issues, it was just me and CaptainEistein (creator of mod pack, 'leader' of EiSG) playing the mod pack. When we started, we took over a small hut that we found and started making some machinery with resources we collected. As it was a naturally spawned structure, the hut was very small, and thus became very crowded very quickly. Upon inspection of our surroundings, we found that we had actually spawned on a isolated island which lacked resources to grow and explore all the mods in the pack.

Thus, the two of us made up our minds to collect as many resources the island had to offer, and then search for a new area where we could actually find sufficient resources to feed our ambitions. At this point however, we had already collected a lot of resources and created a few simple machines and thus 'moving islands' would be difficult on normal, vanilla Minecraft boats. For this reason, we made use of a mod called Archimedes' Ships, which allows us to turn normally static structures into boats and airships where we could store large amounts of items.

Our trusty vessel, the Not-so-Titanic

After sailing a while, we finally found an ideal location to build our compound. It was a plains, meaning it was fairly flat and didn't need much terraforming, there was a village nearby where we collected various naturally spawned resources, and it was surrounded by multiple volcanoes, which we believed could be very valuable as a source of energy, as we had been relying on inefficient fossil fuels like coal. We transferred our storage of items into chests on the coast, where it still remains because I've yet to create appropriate structures to house them.

Very tidy

After arriving on the island, some of our other friends managed to solve their game issues and joined us in Attaesta. These were my cousin (Vladcyka), his friend (ScentTreeDown) and my brother (Darksin31). While CaptainEinstein continued to focus on building machines and solar panels, I took up the job as the builder to construct a home for us as I am considered one of the better, if not the best builder of the group. Just for clarification, I am not boasting. ScentTreeDown became our farmer while Darksin collected resources and Vladcyka became our chef.

My creation, and our Attaesta home

Downstairs : Living room / Kitchen

Upstairs : Bedroom

I successfully built a two-storey house with a nice front lawn that my friends helped decorate with flowers. After this, I decided I would build another structure for my brother to explore another mod that he enjoys using, Tinker's Construct.

He had stated that he wanted the structure built from stone brick, so I obliged and created this weird stone structure with a dome roof. Let me tell you, in a game where everything is square, making a dome is a ridiculously hard task and I had to spend 2-3 in-game days and use google image search just to figure out how to make it look right. I think I managed to do so though, so I am satisfied.

I intend to build more structures to fulfill different functions in the future, such as a building for ore processing, for energy collection and storage and so on. For now, we haven't exactly made it too far into the world of mods we face in this mod pack, but it shall be something to look forward to :D

Leave a comment on what you think about what we've accomplished so far and what else you think  we might be able to do. For now, see you later and keep a lookout for more updates :D

Bye-bye from my couch

(Like I said in a previous post, Minecraft and the mods mentioned are not owned by me and are the property of their respective owners :D )

Modded MC : Attaesta

I am sure that we are all quite well acquainted with the record-smashing survival sandbox game by Mojang, Minecraft. I have played Minecraft for a few years on and off with my brother, as well as my cousin and his group of friends. Generally, we start up a new vanilla server and just try to build up and play normally. That usually does not end well, though, because there are often many skirmishes and conflicts that just lead to everyone's structures being destroyed and everyone losing the mood to play. :(

Recently, one of my cousin's friends decided to try and make his own modpack for us to try and play. We had already had experience playing official mod packs like Tekkit, Voltz and so on, but we had never really played a mod pack that we ourselves created. (By we though, I mean one person XD )

Oh, and before I mention anything further, I should say that the group of us who play Minecraft and many other games together is known as EiSG, a.k.a. Einstein Gaming, named after our supposed 'leader', who goes by the in-game name (IGN) CaptainEinstein. He is the one who put this mod pack together. He named it Attaesta, and when I inquired as to how he came up with the name, he simply said that it was a result of him pressing random buttons on the keyboard. This is not strange to me, as my own name, Sdafhaa, was attained through the exact same method. XD

Attaesta is a huge mod pack as CaptainEinstein decided that he would try to make it by adding every single mod that we had ever used in other mod packs and many others that he deemed would be useful and interesting to play with. As a result, the mod pack consists of over 100 mods.

Ta-da

We have been playing this mod pack for 2-3 days now. Unfortunately I forgot to take the chance to update my blog with this informaton on Day 1 because of the excitement of playing Minecraft again after so long, so I hope you can forgive me for that. I shall post updates as we continue playing the mod pack so I hope you will all look forward to it :D. My next post shall be about our current progress and will come out very very soon (I will literally work on it after finishing this post).

For now, leave a comment below on what mod packs you have played in Minecraft and what you've accomplished with them :D I hope you all look forward to my next post !

(Obligatory disclaimer : The game Minecraft does not belong to me, obviously. And all the mods that I will mention in the following posts were not my creation and not owned by me or CaptainEinstein, he only put them together in a pack for our group to play together. Mod owners do not worry, we do not plan on distributing this pack to the public)

Wow, that disclaimer was longer than I thought it would be.

Cat Lady Adventures : Gifts and Cafe

Nekoatsume Update Log
7 July 2015

• Gifts from Fuyu & Hanahige

I got gifts from both Fuyu and Hanahige today ! Of course, I am obligated to explain that Fuyu means winter, a name I gave this cat for its greyish-white fur, and Hanahige means moustache, and I don't think I need to explain why I gave him that name.

Fuyu appears to have given me a little bell whereas Hanahige, true to his musketeer, puss in boots-type appearance, has given me a feather hat. It's always nice to get gifts from your cats, even more so when you get a gift from a special cat because their very appearance is rare in itself, so getting a gift means that they like you enough and have visited enough times to want to give you something, which is nice :D

• Cat Cafe

I figured I would just make a small update in that I have purchased a Cat Cafe, worth 50 gold fish (ouch). After getting the Chef Cat, I figured I would try going for another special cat. Therefore, I purchased the cafe because I heard that there was a special cat that will visit when the cafe is present. I also think it is a pretty cute decoration for my humble homestead and I think seeing cats inside it would be really cute. Unfortunately the first visitor decided to sit on the roof. Oh well.

If you have checked out the game already, have you gotten any gifts from special cats ? Comment below if you have and feel free to ask me anything about the game if you're interested. Thats all for today :D

Dafhaa Dota Diaries : Gamemodes

The new DoTA 2 Reborn User Interface shows the gamemode selection screen in a very sleek manner.

So in this post, I shall explain the various gamemodes that DoTA 2 provides to players. Note that these gamemodes are not custom games made by the community, but actual gamemodes made by Valve in the original game. This means that DoTA 2 is not a one-gamemode MOBA like many others, and with the addition of official support for custom gamemodes, this is going to be even more evident as time goes on. I will also rank each gamemode in what I believe is their noob-friendly level and fun level. So let us look through what each gamemode has to offer ! 

1) All Pick

Pretty sure there's no need for explaining this one. It is the basic DoTA 2 gamemode where each player picks the hero they want to play and just gets on with it. That's it. Moving on :D

Noob Friendly : 7/10

Fun : 5/10 (Neutral because it's the basic mode)

2) Single Draft

One of my favourite gamemodes, Single Draft is a gamemode where you are only provided with 3 random heroes, each with a different main attribute. So during hero selection, your only choices will be 3 heroes, consisting of one strength, one agility and one intelligence hero. I like this mode because it puts everyone out of their comfort zones and lets you experience a hero you wouldn't normally play.

Noob Friendly : 4/10

Fun : 7/10

3) Captains Mode

I have never played Captains Mode, so I may be wrong about some things, but I believe this is a gamemode often used in official tournaments. What happens is one player from each team becomes the team 'captain'. This captain is then responsible for picking the heroes that all his teammates play, as well as banning heroes from the pool so the enemy cannot take them. This mode is usually best played as a 5-man team so hero choices can be coordinated. The captain also needs to be smart and have knowledge and ideas of how heroes work together and what needs to be banned so it won't cause his team a problem in the game. It is a very tricky gamemode.

Noob Friendly : 1/10 (Seriously, new players DO NOT play this mode)

Fun : 4/10 (I don't really like it, it's too serious for my tastes. Others probably do though)

4) Random Draft

I have never really played Random Draft much either, but how it works is that the hero selection pool is a shared pool by both teams consisting of 20 randomly selected heroes. This means that out of the 100+ available heroes, 20 are randomly selected and for that game, you can only play one of those 20. Another catch is the heroes are selected by the players taking turns, so you better hope you're going early because you don't want your favourite hero to be taken by someone else now, would you ?

Noob Friendly : 4/10 

Fun : 4/10 (I don't really like it because I will always feel the enemy gets the better end of the stick XD )

5) Ability Draft

Ooh, now this one is a hoot. Ability Draft is a vastly different gamemode from the typical All Pick. What happens in this mode is that you are given a random hero,but then you are every other player is given a UI with a whole bunch of different hero skills. You must now take turns choosing skills and creating your very own custom hero. This gamemode is really fun because it is something different, but it is difficult because you need to have good knowledge on what every skill does and what heroes can effectively utilise what skill. I like playing this with friends from time to time because you can get some really ridiculous skills combos.

Noob Friendly : -5/10 (If you're a new player and want to WIN games, just don't play this one)

Fun : 9.9/10

The Ability Draft Skill Selection User Interface
(Photo from Jimo's Guide on the Steam Community. He has a guide on gamemodes too which is probably more
expansive than mine so if you want a more skillful impression, check his guide out :Jimo's Guide)

6) Least Played

This is like normal All Pick, but everyone will only be allowed to choose from their least played heroes, which is defined by the game. I personally don't like playing this mode because there will be people who constantly play harder heroes and have better skills than most of us playing and can choose the really easy to play heroes and completely own the rest of us who are trying out hard heroes. It can be unfair when this happens so I tend to stay away from this mode. But at the same time, it can be very beneficial for newer players who want to try new heroes on a more equal setting since everyone is playing heroes they don't normally touch.

Noob Friendly : 8/10 (When everyone chooses harder heroes)
Fun : 5/10 (This kinda depends on whether you like it, I personally don't much so I left it midway)

7) All Random
This gamemode is literally what the title entails, everyone is given a random hero. It's like a normal All Pick game where everyone chose to random. Like when you random in All Pick, you get 825 gold instead of 625, and you can repick if you really don't like the hero you were given but it is a risk because when you repick you're just given a new random hero. I really like this mode because everyone really is on equal footing and trying new heroes when the situation is fair always appeals to me.

Noob Friendly : 2/10
Fun : 9.9/10 (Love this mode :D )

8) Limited Heroes
The literal noob-friendly gamemode. Limited Heroes is just like normal All Pick but the hero pool is limited to only heroes that are suitable and easy to pick up for newer players. If you want to start playing DoTA 2 and don't know what hero to pick in All Pick, then this gamemode is perfect for you.

Noob Friendly : 10/10
Fun : 5/10 (I never play this mode so I don't know how fun it is, so I leave this midway too)

9) Captains Draft
Captains Mode on increased difficulty. This gamemode is exactly the same as Captains Mode with one difference. The hero pool is now limited and a random pool of heroes is chosen for selection and banning rather than access to all heroes.

Noob Friendly : -3/10 (Captains mode was hard enough, do not go for this mode if you're new)
Fun : 3/10

10) All Random Deathmatch
Probably my all-time favourite gamemode to go to when I'm looking for some fun. It is like a normal game of DoTA, but every player is assigned a random hero. Whenever a player dies, their hero is swapped and they respawn as another random hero. Each team has 40 respawns and if the game hasn't ended by the time one team has used them all up, it is game over for that team. This mode is super fun and it is really nice to wonder what hero you get next after dying. You really have to modify your builds because if you start as a carry and respawn as a support, suddenly your items don't fit your role. This gamemode is not for noobs if they want to play seriously, as if you plan to go for the win, you need good knowledge of every hero and all the items so you can plan an all-around item build. I love playing this mode because it can get really ridiculous and you can see supports with carry items everywhere.

Noob Friendly : 0/10
Fun : 10/10 (Love this mode :D )


So that's all the gamemodes of DoTA 2, excluding custom games of course, but there's no way I can list all of those. Comment below on what you thought of my explanations. Did you think I explained each mode well ? Or was there something missing ? Do you agree with my rankings ? Go ahead and share with us what your favourite DoTA 2 gamemode is :D

Cat Lady Adventures : Gift from Kutsu and Welcome Ryori

Nekoatsume Update Log
3 July 2015

• Gift from Kutsu

Forgive me for not getting the actual photo of you giving
them to me Kutsu. Hontou ni Gomenasai

Just a small update here, one of my other cats, named Kutsu, which is the short form for the Japanese word "kutsushita", meaning "socks", gave me some gloves. Yay ! I kind of wonder where these cats are getting this stuff. Someone somewhere is missing their baking gloves and is likely very disappointed because now they can't bake. I would be sad too from losing such nice looking paw-printed baking gloves. I would give them back but then that would make Kutsu sad so I am keeping them. If you know the owner, don't tell them. Arigato~

My current collection of cat gifts :D

• Welcome Ryori !

IT IS HERE ! FINALLY IT IS HERE ! Yay the Chef Cat finally makes an appearance on my humble homestead. As you can see, it is very obviously a Chef Cat and no explanation is really necessary here about why I think so. It also appears that it comes with a pizza to cook on the cooker, heater, watchamathingy. I have named it Ryori, which apparently means "cooking" in Japanese. Well, with Ryori cataloged now, I can move on with my journey of getting all the special cats :D Onward !

Welcome :D

Cat Lady Adventures : Hunt for the Chef Cat

Nekoatsume Update Log
1 July 2015

• Hunt for the Chef Cat

The cooker thingy or whatever it is

So this will be a slightly shorter update for Nekoatsume. As most of you already, there are many special cats in the game which will only come visit under specific conditions, usually when a certain item they are associated with is present. Recently, I fixated my sights on a Chef Cat, which from what I have heard, is a cat that i obviously supposed to be a chef as he appears to be cooking, and is wearing a chef hat and garments. The item required for this specific cat, is a weird cooker, heater, whatever it is, so I purchased it and waited.

It was only after a few days that my friend told me that you also needed to have high-quality food set out for the Chef Cat to come to your home. This obviously made me feel stupid as I had already been waiting for a few days for this cat to come with no avail.

Only the most expensive for random,
apparently mutated stray cats

To ensure a good catch and as per the suggestion of my friend, I decided to purchase the most expensive cat food available, requiring 12 gold fish for a single serving. For those who don't know, the game has two forms of currency, normal fish and gold fish. Gold fish is infinitely more valuable than normal fish as the store offers a trade of 500 normal fish for only 10 gold fish. Obviously, this shows that I have splurged quite a bit on a single serving of food to try and get this cat to visit.

So I set the food down right next to the cooker, heater, whatever, and waited for the elusive Chef Cat.

Delicious

That's all for today. Comment below on what special cats you've gotten so far. If you haven't received visits from any, don't worry, they'll come soon; if you haven't gotten the game, what are you doing man ? In any case, wish me luck and I shall post an update soon if I manage to catch my prey. :D

Seems the 12-gold fish food is popular.
Not exactly the cats I'm looking for.

Dota 2 Reborn Beta

So I am probably a bit late to the party, but the DoTA 2 Reborn Beta recently came out, bringing with it large changes to the game's user interface and functions. It took me a while, but I finally managed to download the huge 7GB update that is DoTA 2 Reborn. It may be similar to most of the other update news on various game sites across the Internet, but I would like to show all of you what's new with the game.

Old DoTA 2 User Interface

New DoTA 2 Reborn User Interface

The first thing we see upon starting the game is obviously the new, more sleek and modern looking main menu design. Dota news appear to be displayed as boxes rather than on a scroll-able newsletter. This makes it easier to navigate and see all the newest updates and information about the game without having to scroll through a large number of updates first. 

There is a new section in the main menu under your profile called friend feed which appears to provide much more information about your friends' activities than what the friend list in the older interface displayed. I didn't show mine for the privacy of my friends, of course, but some of the stuff I saw included friends opening gifts and occurrences in-game, such as a friend obtaining the Aegis of the Immortal in his current game. I think this is a very interesting change and makes the DoTA experience much more interesting as you can really see what your friends are up to.

The next tab that you can check out is the heroes tab. This appears to be where you can check new items as well as what items your heroes have equipped. There are three different ways of viewing this page, it seems, the first being a full body view of 3 selected sets, which on the left, belong to Templar Assassin, Drow Ranger and Shadow Fiend.

The second display interface is reminiscent of the alternate hero selection screen where each and every hero's portrait is shown and classified by its main attribute. The various hero roles are shown at the bottom of the screen and selecting them will blur out all heroes that don't fit the criteria. This is very different from the old library tab, and there are certain improvements as selecting hero roles no longer requires the use of a drop-down list.

The new armory interface

The third display interface is a life-size display of the selected hero. All of the sets you own for that hero and every other set available is displayed in the bottom left. The hero's information like skills, lore, attributes and so on which used to be shown after selecting a hero on the library tab are also displayed on this screen. I feel this is a very sleek design as they have combined part of the armory with the library and I think it makes navigation much simpler.

For those who are wondering if there is still an armory tab, yes there is, with considerable changes. All your items are now classified and separated by hero and placed in alphabetical order. Rather than the old design which had all your items placed in the order you received them, this new system allows you to find items belonging to a specific hero very easily and makes searching through your inventory a much simpler chore.

The new Learn tab

DoTA stated that it wanted to make learning the game more friendly more new players and this new tab seems to prove that. There is now a significant tab in the game meant purely for training and learning the game. I think this is an interesting change as it means that more people would be able to learn the game easier and maybe overcome the problem DoTA always had, which was a lack of a gradual learning curve. I don't really know if this will really make a difference, but it's nice to see the people behind the game try to attract more players to an older game.

CUSTOM GAMESSSSSSSS

This is most likely the most significant change DoTA 2 Reborn is bringing to the plate. In the old design, custom games had an undeveloped and unfriendly interface, which has obviously been changed in Reborn as there is a new tab purely for custom games with just as much effort put into its design as the rest of the interface. It is now easier than ever for people to find and try out new custom games and there is a matchmaking system, meaning that there is no longer a need to find friends or create custom lobbies to play a community created gamemode. This shows that Valve does seem to care about their community (as if that wasn't obvious) and has shown support for the community's creations. I look forward to really trying this out, as anyone would eventually get bored of playing the same gamemode over and over.

There are noticeable differences when the game starts as well, but those seem to be more discrete and thus are a bit difficult to truly show and explain here. I suggest you try downloading the Reborn update and trying it out for yourself. It is still in beta, so there is some lag, but it seems fairly stable otherwise. Comment below on what you think of these new changes and if you play DoTA 2 as well, add me :D

IGN : Sdafhaa

(Obligatory disclaimer : None of the images above belong to me and are the product of the hard work and effort of Valve. Thanks guys ! :D )

From Perspectives to Adventures

Some of you may have noticed that I just changed the name of the blog from Perspectives of a Newb Gamer to Adventures of a Newb Gamer. and I assure you that there is good reason for this. After posting about a few games, I realised that I was focusing more on detailing my experiences in games and introducing games I play now or used to play, rather than really giving the outlook of a newb gamer on certain things. As such, I realised that the tile "Perspectives of a Newb Gamer" was not appropriate for the posts I was creating for this blog. Thus, I decided to change up the title to something more fitting, and I settled on replacing the word "perspectives" with the word "adventures", as I felt that I was talking more about the journeys and experiences as well as my own opinion on games rather than a newb gamer's outlook. I believe this name change will be a good thing for the blog as it will give a better idea of the content that I feature and put up on this blog every so often and maybe give people who were initially confused on what I was trying to do with this blog more clarification and better understanding of what the purpose of this blog is just by looking at the title. 

Thank you for all your support so far and I hope you will continue reading the Adventures of a Newb Gamer !

Mobile Fun : Chain Reaction

I've talked a bit about various PC games now, from video games made by high profile companies like Valve and Blizzard and indie games like Age of War, so now I'd like to introduce a fun little mobile game that you can very easily play with friends and family, called Chain Reaction.

It may not be a very interesting or striking
design, but it is a fun game.

Chain Reaction is a very simple game that can be downloaded from the Play Store or the App Store and it is a arcade strategy game that requires at least 2 people to play competitively.

Up to 8 players !

On the left is the main screen that you are greeted with when you enter the game. It certainly is not a very interesting game interface design, but trust me when I say it is a fun game that can break friendships. XD

The game allows for up to 8 players and your player colours can be modified to make the game a bit more personalised.

When you enter the actual game, you will be greeted with a black screen with a transparent net-looking interface comprised of multiple boxes. Players will play the game by taking turns to place little spheres in these boxes. The spheres can stack on each other to a maximum of three spheres, which looks like a water molecule.

Gets pretty chaotic.

Winning is always nice.

Now this is where the game really starts. When the spheres reach a certain threshold of stacks, they start vibrating and will split into four spheres in all adjacent boxes. If the adjacent box has one of the enemies' spheres, then it will change that sphere into one of your own and add a sphere to it.

As seen on the left, this is what a game of Chain Reaction eventually looks like, and it is even more chaotic when the number of players increases. Players must employ strategy and wit to think of how to effectively take over the opponents' spheres while expanding their territory and attempting to not put themselves in a vulnerable position where a simple tap from the opponent can cause a huge chain reaction leading to them taking over all of your spheres. The game is over when one player has taken over all of the rest and have become the only player that remains.

I believe this is a very fun game to pass the time when you're bored with some friends or family. This game, unlike many others today, does not require any Internet connection or Wi-fi, and with a possible 8 players playing and trying to defeat each other at the same time, you're sure to be in for some fun times. If you want some strategies, I personally always start from the corner, but everyone has their own style of playing, and I am sure you will develop your own winning technique that will show all your friends your strategic prowess.

And if you don't feel like dominating your friends and family, you can always use the game to make some nice patterns XD

Make love, not war

Most likely I have not really explained the game that well. It's very difficult to really explain a game like this and I feel the best teacher would be hands-on experience. So comment below after checking it out to tell me what you think, and maybe even tell me if I missed anything once you get to know it better :D