by Stone Marshall | Jan 15, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
The seventh generation of Pokémon games introduced the world to powerful new Fire-type Pokémon.
In Ultra Sun and Moon, players have access to over 20 different Fire-type Pokémon exist in-game. Even with this limited amount the Fire-type Pokémon offered are some of the strongest players can find in Pokémon history.
Having a Fire-type Pokémon in your team became crucial in Sun and Moon because of certain strong Pokémon like Klefki, that could only be beaten by a strong Fire-type.
All Pokémon in this list are catchable in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Moon. Some stronger Fire-type Pokémon, however, can be transferred from another game in the Pokémon series to Pokémon Ultra and Moon through the Pokémon Bank if you want to use something different. Pokémon Bank is available on the Nintendo 3DS eshop for a small yearly rental charge.
Incineroar
Type: Fire/Dark
Players can only get Incineroar by choosing Litten as a starter Pokémon. It evolves from Torracat, the evolution of Torracat, at level 34.
Incineroar's strengths come from it's typing. By being a Fire/Dark type Pokémon, Incineroar can use a lot of effective moves like Knock Off, which knocks off an opponent Pokémon's item. The move Fake Out, which causes the Pokémon to flinch, making it unable to use a move for that turn, is also important as it leaves the opposing Pokémon wide open for attack in Double Battles.
Incineroar's typing also means that it can learn an abundance of moves that can deal with some of the game's most popular Pokémon, such as Klefki and most of the Ultra Beast Pokémon.
Overall, Incineroar does a lot of damage. In Ultra Sun and Moon, Incineroar is able to learn the move Superpower, which is one of the strongest Fire-type moves in-game, making Incineroar vital for competitive players.
Volcarona
Type: Fire/Bug
Players can find a Larvesta in the Lush Jungle. It can then be evolved into a Volcarona from level 59.
Volcarona is a huge damage threat to any opposing team as it is arguably the best Fire-type Pokémon in-game. Due to its unique typing of Bug/Fire, a lot of the weaknesses that both types would have individually are nullified.
One of Volcarona's biggest weaknesses have been Rock-type moves in the past. Competitive players started to put Pokémon in their teams specifically to deal with Volcarona by giving them moves like Rock Slide, which can do four times damage to Volcarona, killing it in an instant.
In order to get around this glaring weakness, players should give their Volcarona the item Choice Scarf during battles. The item increases Volcarona's speed, allowing it to hit an opponent first in order to try and avoid a critical attack from an opposing player's Pokémon.
Talonflame
Type: Fire/Flying
Players can find a Fletchling at Route 8 or Wela Volcano Park. It can then be evolved into a Talonflame from level 35.
Talonflame received a nerf in the Sun and Moon series and is weaker than it was in generation six. Even with the noticeable nerf, it is still one of the strongest Fire-type Pokémon available to find due to its blinding speed and its Flying-type move set.
Talonflame is used best in Ultra Sun and Moon when players attach a Flying Z-Crystal item to it. It can then use the Z-Move Brave Bird which can do a ton of damage to an opponent. It also has a lot of priority flying moves at it's disposal that can hit an opponent fast and hard, giving players a huge advantage.
Blacephalon
Type: Fire/Ghost
Blacephalon is a Pokémon exclusive to Ultra Sun and Moon and was one of a handful of Pokémon to be added to the game. It is only available in Ultra Sun at Poni Grove after completing the main story, meaning Ultra Moon players will need to trade to get it themselves.
Blacephalon is a glass cannon for any player's team. While the Pokémon can deal a lot of damage that could take out multiple Pokémon, it itself is so squishy that any type of powerful move could beat it in one blow.
The Pokémon should be used in your party as a last resort to take down a troublesome opponent that has been causing you grief. The Pokémon is set to rise in popularity in competitive when Pokémon Ultra Sun and Moon becomes the staple competitive Pokémon game in 2018 and will be a solid addition to any party.
Arcanine
Type: Fire
Players can find a Growlithe on Route 2 and then evolve it into an Arcanine by using the item Fire Stone. It's best to evolve a Growlithe at level 33-34 after it has learned a bunch of moves. An Arcanine cannot learn moves by leveling up like normal Pokémon.
Arcanine is best used when it knows the ability Intimidate, which lowers the attack stat of all opposing Pokémon greatly. It should be used against physical attackers to weaken them in battle.
It is one of few Fire-type Pokémon to have access to a large move pool, giving the player tons of options on how they want to build their Arcanine for battle. You can have it be a swift fighter that attacks first for tons of damage or assists your team through other means, allowing you to mix and match the Pokémon to fit any team composition.
Arcanine was best used in the Sun and Moon competitive scene due to a lack of good Fire-types in the game. While more Fire-type Pokémon have become readily available in Ultra Sun and Moon, it is still a good fighter to grace any party.
These are the top five fire-type Pokémon to use in Ultra Sun and Moon
by Stone Marshall | Jan 14, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
Warning: Major Doki Doki Literature Club spoilers feature below.
Ever since Team Salvato released its horror visual novel Doki Doki Literature Club, fans have been obsessing over the titular club's president, Monika. And a new mod allows players to hang out with just Monika for the rest of their lives.
In one of Doki Doki's most memorable scenes, Monika deletes every single character from the game in an attempt to enter into a relationship with whoever is playing Doki Doki. It's a creepy scene, but because of Monika's obsessiveness and sheer loneliness, she's quickly won the hearts of many fans. And that's where the mod “Monika After Story” comes in, turning dating Monika into a reality.
Image via Monika After Story
In “Monika After Story,” the game's mod team has built a chatbot AI for Monika, which essentially allows her to understand the player's responses and engage in discussions on things like video games and the meaning of life. Players can also listen to music together, challenge Monika to chess, and fantasize about going on dates. New content is regularly added into the mod, and the update's 0.6.3 version even comes with special events for Christmas and New Year's.
If you want to appreciate Monika in all her glory, go ahead and download the latest version here. “Monika After Story” requires Doki Doki Literature Club to play, but the game can be downloaded for free via Steam, itch.io, or the visual novel's official website.
Doki Doki Literature Club receives a ‘Just Monika' mod
by Stone Marshall | Jan 14, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
If you've had troubles trying to access Fortnite: Battle Royale today, you're not alone. Epic Games has confirmed there's a widespread issue.
Earlier in the day, players had reported issues with logging in or even finding a massive queue to connect to the game's servers. Now, Epic has provided detailed reasoning as to what's been going on behind the scenes.
“We wanted to provide a bit more context for the most recent login issues and service instability,” an Epic Games representative said on its forums. “All of our cloud services are affected by updates required to mitigate the Meltdown vulnerability. We heavily rely on cloud services to run our back-end and we may experience further service issues due to ongoing updates.”
The Meltdown vulnerability came to light earlier in the week, and it's some sort of backend issue with certain CPU's. Many people have been affected, and Epic's no different, as its cloud services have brought about the problem at hand.
“Unexpected issues may occur with our services over the next week as the cloud services we use are updated,” the forum post continued. “We are working with our cloud service providers to prevent further issues and will do everything we can to mitigate and resolve any issues that arise as quickly as possible. Thank you all for understanding.”
For now, it appears Fortnite's servers will be something of a wait-and-see situation for the next few days. More information about the Meltdown issue can be found in an in-depth article on SpectreAttack.com.
Fortnite: Battle Royale is experiencing server issues that could progress into next week
by Stone Marshall | Jan 13, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
For many, 2017 may go down in history as the year where esports became firmly etched in the common consciousness. With several multi-million dollar investments from some of the world's most notable brands, and the increasing popularity of esports competitions, the industry is now on a trajectory to finally convince the world at large that esports is a force to be reckoned with.
But that hasn't stopped 2017 from being a strange year. Interpersonal drama remains a fixture of teams in the industry, as some of the strongest rosters in some games withered away after what can best be described as childish tantrums. Fans have taken several liberties at harming rival games through brigading, and some players have seen their careers hampered due to, well, just communicating with the opposite sex.
Our list of the strangest esports moments in 2017, however, starts with possibly the strangest event.
The embarrassing demise of Immortals
Photo via DreamHack
On July 23, the Brazilian Counter-Strike: Global Offensive roster of Immortals appeared to have finally made it into the upper echelon of the game's competitive circuit. After they just barely lost out to Gambit Gaming in the PGL Kraków Major grand finals, it seemed like we'd entered a golden age of Brazilian CS:GO, where the legendary faces of Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo, Fernando “fer” Alvarenga, Marcelo “coldzera” David, and Epitácio “TACO” de Melo on SK Gaming would come to share the title of best Brazilian team.
A little less than two months later, those hopes were dashed.
After reaching the grand finals of DreamHack Denver, Immortals were punished for not showing up to the grand finals on time. Starting the match with a one-map forfeit, Danish squad North made short work of them in the remaining game, ending the series with a 2-0 finish.
The reason for Immortals' tardiness appeared to be the toil of an extensive night of partying, as several of the players allegedly slept through their alarms after taking a nap. CLG in-game leader Pujan “FNS” Mehta joked about the state of the Immortals players, something AWPer Vito “kNg” Giuseppe didn't respond kindly to. Rather than seeing the comedic side of the situation, the Immortals player instead resorted to threaten FNS with direct violence. KNg refused to apologize for this indiscretion, and instead doubled down on his threat—and was reportedly seen searching the lobby of the player's hotel for FNS. Whether or not violence was ultimately on his mind, a clear line had been crossed. And the Immortals organization knew it.
So kNg was temporarily suspended, and Immortals launched an internal investigation to get to the bottom of the situation. Happy ending, right? Nope. Instead of biding his time on the bench, kNg elected to compete in an online match, despite being suspended. According to a statement on his Facebook page, kNg entered the match following an invitation from Immortals' Henrique “HEN1” Teles and Lucas “LUCAS1” Teles, in a seeming act of defiance against Immortals' decision.
Immortals promptly dropped kNg after the match. But following his dismissal, both LUCAS1 and HEN1 requested to be removed from the organization, as they stood in solidarity with kNg.
With kNg gone, and LUCAS1 and HEN1 placed firmly on the bench, it was clear that the trio, seemingly intentionally, held Immortals' legend spot on the Valve Major circuit hostage. A legend slot ensures that the majority of a team's roster won't have to qualify for an upcoming Valve Major and will automatically receive compensation in the form of sticker money.
Worst of all, the two remaining players on the roster, Lucas “steel” Lopes and Ricardo “boltz” Prass, were ultimately the only people, along with Immortals, who were punished. The trio proceeded to find a new home in 100 Thieves, steel joined ranks with Team Liquid, and boltz found himself returning to FalleN on SK Gaming.
Immortals, however, found its legend status at the Valve Major revoked, and despite its attempts at qualifying for the event with a makeshift roster, it fell far from making the cut. From reaching the grand finals of a Valve Major, to not even appearing at the next iteration is almost certainly a first, and the circumstances surrounding it make this situation even more absurd.
Lunatic Hai and the case of the fangirls
Screengrab via OGN Global/YouTube
Historically, South Korean pro gamers have been subject to the most spartan and restrictive of lifestyles. Stories from the glory days of Starcraft: Brood War often spoke of what amounted to forced seclusion from the outside world, as young men would slave away at their keyboards for hours on end, often for little-to-no return due to the fierce level of competition.
In 2017, things seem to have changed quite a bit—but not to a degree most western fans would be used to. This became most obvious when South Korean Overwatch sensation Lunatic-Hai benched two of its players after they had been found exchanging conversations and pictures with female fans.
According to the organization's response, “both players have done something they should not be doing as esports professionals.” The organization also wrote that it had “taken steps to prevent recurrence,” in an effort to teach future players proper competitive and social values. The two players, Geum “dean” Dong-geun and Lee “Leetaejun” Tae-jun, were subsequently dismissed from the roster—despite apologizing profusely for their actions. Leetaejun even went as far as to write that he “knows he cannot be forgiven for all the trouble he caused for his fans and [Lunatic-Hai] members.”
Both players now no longer compete in Overwatch as a result of their interactions with the opposite sex. Dean decided to retire from esports altogether, while Leetaejun was welcomed back to Lunatic-Hai, and competes under its Playerunknown's Battlegrounds roster.
Dota 2 got Diretide'd
The Dota 2 community isn't a stranger to a good bit of classic internet outrage. Most famously, fans of Valve's MOBA title entered into a fervent state of revolt in November 2013, after it turned out that cherished Halloween game-mode Diretide would not be an annual event as it was initially advertised.
Fans subsequently began bombarding the official Dota 2 page on Steam with poor reviews, and after a short while, cries of “give Diretide” spread across the internet. After a few days of this internet-based torch burning, the usually silent Valve went as far as to issue an apology to its community.
But in 2017, the Dota 2 community and Valve found itself under siege from another fanbase. On Aug. 25, the former main writer for Valve's Half-Life franchise, Mark Ladilaw, posted what could be accurately described as a conclusion of the franchise's penultimate game, Half-Life 2: Episode 2. Fans had spent the past decade eagerly awaiting the continuation of Half-Life's dramatic storyline—but with Ladilaw's loving and tender letter, titled “Epistle 3,” it became clear that this was the only conclusion fans would receive. One of gaming's most celebrated franchises ended up being a blog post.
The fanbase, as a result, took its frustration out on Valve. Half-Life fans brigaded Dota 2's user-rating on Steam, which artificially changed the game's overall user-rating on the platform. Valve responded by implementing an entirely new way in which user reviews were counted, in order to counteract so called “review brigades.”
It's fascinating how Valve has cultivated such passionate fanbases. But let's always remember that there are far better things we could spend our time doing than waging pointless flame-fests on the internet.
Activision was granted a patent that could incentivize users towards using microtransactions
Despite gaming's continued growth into a multi-billion industry, the proliferation of in-game microtransactions has become one of the most criticized developments within the space over the past few years.
But things took a dramatic shift after it was discovered that Activision, one of the overall largest game companies in the world, had been granted a patent for a system that could figuratively alter the gameplay experience of players based solely on whether or not they had recently spent money in one of its games. For the first time, that flame-decal you recently bought could actually make you a better player, as the system could hypothetically place you in a match with lower ranked opponents due to you spending money in the game.
The hypothetical uses of this system gives an entirely new meaning to the term “pay to win,” as cosmetic items in games tend to be just that—a cool new sheen to a weapon for those who want to customize their character or loadout, not anything that actually affects gameplay. Now the actual enjoyment that should be derived from one's skill at the game could be affected if one doesn't buy in-game items, and buyers' sense of achievement could turn out to be hollow—as an algorithm placed you into an easier match, providing you with a loaded set of dice.
As Triple-A gaming studios proceed to include more purchasable in-game items, it now seems as if they are more comfortable with the notion of encouraging already-paying customers to part with even more of their income, no matter how dubious the means.
Waka Flocka Flame talks Dota 2
Known for its strange on-air production, which on occasion features mariachi bands and giant chickens, the LAN finals of the seventh season of DreamLeague saw the most unlikely of cameos.
Waka Flocka Flame, trap rapper extraordinaire, joined the on-air broadcast team after a performance at DreamHack Atlanta on July 12. The Atlanta native took part in a brief conversation among the panelists, in which he dropped a considerable number of gems. Discussing topics ranging between his love for Zelda, the lack of actual rapping in modern rap, and teaching the panelists the basics of his craft, his appearence was capped off with a failed fistbump.
This was a suitable end to what could only be described as the strangest few minutes in either of the panelists' lives.
Russian League of Legends fan-favorite ends up being banned for whistle-blowing
Photo via Riot Games
For the majority of 2017, League of Legends developer Riot Games stayed out of any massive controversy. The events the company put on throughout the year all went off without a hitch, and following the conclusion of the 2017 League World Championship, it looked as if Riot would smoothly sail into 2018.
But then, in the middle of the offseason, Russian fan-favorite Kirill “Likkrit” Malofeyev told his stream audience about rampant mismanagement within the Russian-speaking League of Legends Continental League. During these few moments on his stream, the 22-year-old revealed that his previous team, Albus NoX Luna, failed to pay out his salary for an extended period of time, effectively scamming him.
Likkrit also talked about the overall state of League esports in the CIS region, claiming that the game “is practically dead here.” This turned out to be a tad too much for Riot Games' Russian division, which quickly slapped the fan-favorite with a six-month competitive ban for “statements that offend the League of Legends gaming community in the CIS, discrediting the business reputation of the company Riot Games, and posing a threat to the image of League of Legends and the Continental League.”
The decision to place him under suspension for such a considerable amount of time reeks of pettiness, to say the least—especially because he was targeting one of the most powerful organizations in the region.
As a result of the ban, Likkrit chose to end his career as a professional player, although he claims he intended to retire anyway—but due to the ban, Riot simply made the decision for him.
Don't shoot the messenger, as the old adage goes.
The strangest esports moments of 2017
by Stone Marshall | Jan 13, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
The world's most beloved speedrunning marathon kicks off today (Jan. 7) at 11:30am ET on Twitch.
Games Done Quick (GDQ) is a speedrunning event that only happens twice per year. Thousands of viewers watch their favorite speedrunners destroy some of their beloved games and, in turn, donate millions of dollars to charity. The runners come from all corners of the globe, and it's easily the world's biggest speedrunning event.
This year, AGDQ will be benefiting the Prevent Cancer Foundation, an organization that helps to detect and prevent cancer before it spreads.
JHobz is kicking off the event this year with the popular speedgame Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy. The event will then continue for the next seven days without any stops as speedrunners attempt to complete 155 games as fast as possible.
Fans can also support AGDQ this year by buying merchandise from either Fangamer or TheYetee. A percentage of all sales will go towards the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
Now that AGDQ is here, it's time to rally the speedrunning community to help a great cause.
AGDQ 2018 kicks off today
