Category: Uncategorized

How to Over-Convolute a Video Game Promotion to the Max (Paradox Interactive Style)

‘How can I redeem the free DLC?

To be eligible for receiving Parklife DLC for free on your Steam account, please follow the steps below:

  • Own a base game of Cities: Skylines on Steam.
  • Create a Paradox Account (accounts.paradoxplaza.com).
  • In the Settings tab, sign up for Paradox newsletter.
  • Verify your email (remember to check your spam and promotion folders on your mailbox).
  • Back on your Paradox account Settings, sign up for Cities: Skylines newsletter.
  • Link your Paradox and Steam accounts on the Settings tab.
  • Set your Steam account to “Public” so our team can confirm you own the base game. You can reset your Steam profile to private after you’ve received the giveaway.
  • Wait up to 36 hours for DLC to appear in your Steam library. ‘

[Gardening] A Carrot and a Potato [PHOTO]

Kuva0559.jpg

The carrot was discovered in a dismantled tomato or watermelon box. It had grown surprisingly well despite a shadowed and low-maintenance position.

The potato was something I bought from a store. It never sprouted. Lesson learned: do not buy potatoes for seeding THAT ARE BRUSHED BALD. If it has loose peelings left, it is probably not brushed too hard and could sprout. Just remember that potatoes without tons of sunlight / lighting AND strong fertilizing start to wither wither very soon afterwards. IOW, it needs a GREAT growing spot.

[Gardening] My Current House Garden [PHOTO]

 

I am going to downsize and remodel all this stuff. Tons of dead plants to take care of. I might replant some of them, though no guarantees. I have plenty of seeds for a fresh batch, so there is no real need to preserve anything. All in all, smaller is more fun to manage. I’ll say more than six boxes is about the limit. I have about 20. You cannot genuinely care about all of your children if you have too many of them. 🙂

Ultimate Guide to Making Free High-Quality Gardening Soil from Random Grass and Flowering Plants [Gardening] [Foraging] [PHOTO]

Easy & free soil creation recipe:

  1. Collect tons of grass and flowering plant matter into a cardboard box furnished by a lot of papers such as newspapers.
  2. Keep adding minuscule amounts of water into the plant waste pile to avoid complete dehydration.
  3. Just wait a couple months.
  4. Once the the bottom-most soil turns into a dark clay-type soil, dig it out and pile it on top of the less decomposed top-soil to greatly hasten its decomposing.

The main advantages:

  1. You can be sure that the soil is nutrient-rich by making it from such stuff i.e. grasses and flowering plants, especially dandelions and stinging nettles that specialize in sucking nutrients from the deep soil.
  2. As it is made purely from plant waste, it is all soil without any rocks or gravel that can hinder root development. E.g. carrots are especially sensitive to root restrictions caused by rocks and easily become malformed as a result.
  3. It is free and you can be sure that it is good stuff. For example, if you want to farm tomatoes and do not want to have iron-rich stinging nettle waste there, you can guarantee that arrangement. Also, the available plant waste quantities are nigh-limitless and you only need to collect the waste and let the omnipresent decomposers do their thing. All you need to do is to wait and add some water if the soil starts to get too dry or the time comes for you to bury the top-soil to decompose it. Absolutely no money investing required and everything you need can be picked up from the ground or from trash piles (the cardboard and the papers, also possible plastic bags for carrying the plant waste to the decomposing box).

Butchering Some “Winter” Cucumbers

These are the biggest non-growing cucumbers I found. They stopped developing at one point because my fertilizer water juice ran out of nitrogen and other stuff. The cucumber plant permanently drops the fruit out of the feeding chain if it cannot sustain growing them. So if you want big and fully developed fruit, get some water diluted grass fertilizer tea or better. All you need to do is to get some grass and other soft, dead, leafy plants and mince them good. Just do not source stinging nettle if you are growing tomatoes, they do not like the high iron concentration.

[Cooking] Ultimate Liver Bread-Drying Guide [PHOTO]

Recipe:

  1. Work the liver content into a ground-down mass. Use a blender  if you can — a couple of seconds on low intensity is enough.
  2. Make a batch of dry bread powder i.e. bread stuff minus water (the goal is to rely on the meat juices to speed up the dry-baking process). Ingredients:
  • two cups / 4 dl of wheat flour onto the bottom of the bowl (keep two more cupfuls in reserve for adding on top of the liver)
  • one or two teaspoonfuls of salt (to avoid an inedibly bland AKA cardboard-like bread taste, also: bactericidifies the bread and makes it bit more crystallized, hindering mold growth)
  • spices (marjoram and radish-anything are the best possible meat spices, tarragon AKA estragon and garlic are the second best, green pepper for safe peppering and crushed citrus basil leaves to flavor the bread)
  • optional: a teaspoonful of potato / maize flour to cut down the baking time by 30 to 50 % (makes the dough more dense, pushes the fluids to the surface, leading to faster vaporization AKA baking

3. Mix the dough powder and pour the minced liver contents over it. Mix it a bit by covering all wet spots with the powder, add an extra cup or two of wheat flour on top of the liver-moisturized dough and lightly mix it just enough the wet parts no longer stick to your fingers.

4. Place the semi-mixed liver-bread dough inside your sandwich grill / (plane-top) grilling machine. Do not over-stuff the grilling machine or it will not dry up inside, causing it to grow mold inside out.

5. Let the liver bread bake for at least 30 minutes, depending on the type and the power of the grill. It is ready when the bread does not bend and gets hard and feels like one solid, metal-like bar. Mold roots cannot pierce that and the dryness keeps bacteria from growing on it. It is more efficient and more preserving-friendly, batch-wise faster to bake many thin breads than one thick one. Minimizing the dough left under the crust layer is the key for masterful grill use.

6. Set the baked bread sheet / brick to dry in a well-aired position. Placing it on a wheat-flour-covered baking paper sheet is a decent idea. The mold will form on any surfaces that are blocked from releasing moisture and the proper drying/hardening process is prevented. Avoid hard surfaces and ones without moisture-sucking properties such as wood, plastic and metal. Covering with enough wheat flour can make even those surfaces plausible. Flours generally contain moisture very well and vastly improve the general preservation potential of food items. The final drying process can take a day or two, depending on how much water density the preserved item originally had.

Culinary dosage:

A pinch full (a couple spoonfuls at least, more if your stuff is very doughy i.e. whitish in color) of the bread brick and grind it down or dissolve with some water. Then mix it with your lunch bread dough or a meat stew / soup to prop up the flavor and the nutritional value.

  • The liver can have (can have lots of mold — this dry-breading method kills it and drowns out most of its flavor-presence. Common mold is not toxic, just bad-tasting. If nothing else works, add some oregano — that will drown any other flavor. The baking process eliminates most of the ill-tasting mold compounds, vastly improving the edibility.
  • Mold fungi does not rely on light or air for survival. Using an oven for this is extremely inefficient — it’s not wise to constantly heat up the air next to the food instead of the food directly like the grills do. The grill setting of ovens is not that good. Ovens take much more time and electricity to bake the food than contact-heating grills.
  • Preserve a lot of time. For every two ounces / a kg , you will be grilling for one or two hours. Reserve a ton of time and patience for the job. If you under-cook, mold will take over it from the inside
  • Why liver? Organs are a gold mine for rare nutrients. Most importantly choline, a vital nutrient and an extremely rare DNA preservative. It pretty much has trace amounts of most things you are ever going to need, besides C and some of the B water-soluble vitamins. Do not feast uncontrollably on the concentrated liver content, as it has so much vitamin A content that you risk having vitamin crystals or stones forming inside your fat tissues.
  • A couple spoonfuls of liver bread (less than 50 grams) is often enough to nutritionally spike a full-course meal. The extra stuff will most likely not even benefit you as the body regulation only accepts a certain maximum amount of a specific non-energy-source nutrient (e.g. the blood-cell-vital B12 vitamin) per two hours or so. If you are a body builder and need to take in a lot of stuff to keep getting bigger, you can refuel every couple of hours. Small meals are better anyway to avoid the annoying anabolism symptoms such as drowsiness and sluggishness.
  • You can soften the baked-hard bread bricks later (they sometimes get stone-hard after a couple of days) by cutting of a piece and dunking it into water for a couple of minutes. You can dry the excessive water again by adding some wheat flour.
  • If you cannot consume wheat, you can use the wheat substitutes such as spelt aka dinkel / hulled wheat and buckwheat. They are not as sweet as bread / common wheat. You can always add some sugar. The role of the wheat in the mixture is to stiffen up the dough, making it very challenging  for mold fungi to infest if properly baked dry.
  • My grill is George Foreman Fat-Reducing Grill (GF1884056), made for grilling meats and greens. A flatbread is the only kind of bread you can make with it. Any thick breads (quarter-inch / 0.5 cm or more) will be left raw in the middle. Unlike sandwich grills made for toasting bread that you can stuff almost full without under-baking issues
  • You can tell the amount of liver content by how black the bread is. Low-liver content bread is sheet-white and the high one is all grey with black spots. Cooked liver is black.

Free Wastelands 2 (GOG)

https://www.gog.com/

  1. Find the Wastelands 2 section and claim the game.
  2. Go to https://www.gog.com/account , click on the Wastelands 2 Director’s Cut, click on “More” drop-down-menu link and select “Serial keys”, go to the code URL, pass the captcha check and click continue (to claim the key.) (The claiming is done when Continue button is clicked. This gets you Wasteland[1988], the key expires 10 years later, i.e. in 2029. It is a low-demand ancient game, so you might as well claim it. )

The quick promotion ends 1500 UTC 2019/12/13 (Friday).

[Gardening] Winter Is a Sunless Sky

There are not many clear days during winter and you need to rely on artificial lighting to keep plants alive. That is because most days involve low-pressure i.e. a lot of cloud-creating moisture. Only during the rare high pressure days you can expect a clear sky. For comparison, during late Spring, Summer and Autumn, the skies clear up as soon as the rains drain them out of existence. During Winter, the clouds mostly stay up there doing nothing and only rarely rain snow.

[Gardening] Butchering a Tomato [PHOTO]

 

It is a two-by-two-inch / 5×5 cm undergrown tomato. It is a lopsided and grown in a partial shadow. It has a lot of connective tissue and surprisingly few seeds. The yellowish part has a slightly more fresh and less stinging taste, so eat them as soon as they start turn red if you like minimally demanding tomato taste. Otherwise, it is the same generic tomato smell /taste you can get from smelling the leaves of any tomato plant.

In short, self-grown tomatoes taste the exact same as store-bought ones. Do not waste your money and time on neither “extra fresh/natural tomatoes” or self-growing them. It took six months to produce that one tomato. Guess how many hundred other tomato plants I have that have produced none. Yeah, many. Not worth it, sugarplum.

There is not enough depth in the tomato aroma to create any kind of taste variety. That is also why is works so well as vinegar ketchup ingredient — it is so watery bland itself that it highlights the taste of the vastly-more health-beneficial vinegar.

The tomato legacy will go on as I have a couple of large plant boxes to grow this stuff in. It turns out, you can always count on the green beans and the watermelons to die for no reason. The original cultivar/variety was probably Marmande, though the next generation will be all mine — developmentally challenged and F’d up to the Moon. It shall be known as “Deranged 1.” […Just look at this list {Rutgers NJAES, opens a new tab} and you’ll get it.]

[Gardening] Ripening Tomato #2 [PHOTO]

Kuva0515.jpg

I look up the best time to harvest the fruit and the answer is “as soon as it starts to change color” i.e. as soon as it reaches/passes its greenest point. In short, it is a way beyond ripe already, it simply is not expiring yet.

I am going to pick it pronto and take more pictures of the cross-cut once the green disappears (I want the slightly-aged look). As you should not trust random people, here is a quote I am basing this around:

“Tomatoes are gassy — I mean they emit a gas. Ethylene gas is produced by fully formed mature green tomatoes. Inside the mature green tomato, two growth hormones change and cause the production of the gas, which in turn ages the cells of the fruit, resulting in softening and loss of the green color, turning into a red shade. The ethylene increases the carotenoids (red and yellow colors) and decreases the chlorophyll (green color).

Because of this process, tomatoes are one of the only vegetables, I mean fruit, which can be picked before it is completely ripened. Harvest time for tomatoes should ideally occur when the fruit is a mature green and then allowed to ripen off the vine. This prevents splitting or bruising and allows for a measure of control over the ripening process.”

(Source: https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/tomato/harvest-time-for-tomatoes.htm , even more info there if interested e.g. about how exactly to pick the fruit without turning it into a disorganized pile of fruit meat)

[Gardening] Ripening Tomato #1 [PHOTO]

Kuva0512.jpg

[A green beefsteak-shaped tomato with a sudden orange coloring on one side of it.]

It is ripening i.e. it has stopped growing in size. The ripening is the last and the fastest phase of a fruiting process. That is when the rotting-hastening sugars, and seeds form.

Usually, if you definitely want full seeds and/or you want the fruit to have maximum flavor, it is recommended (by me, not the consensus) to let the fruit age a bit. Not too long or it will be all soft mush i.e. half-ketchup already. Maybe pick it a day or two after it reaches peak redness. Please not that by then, it has already softened significantly.

If you want a crunchy ‘mato, pick it a day BEFORE it is ripe. Either way, the fresh consumption window is within mere days of ripening. That is why most of tomato production goes straight for manufacturing non-spoiling vinegar ketchup.

Those flowers in the background are dried up cucumber flowers. I like growing things wild, entangled and mixed up.

The cultivar AKA variety is most likely Marmande. It mostly affects the shape of the fruit, nothing else. E.g. my Moneymaker and Marmande plants are identical.

This ripening happened in a relatively cool room with no significant indoors heating sources nearby. This means that the common claim about tomatoes being heat sensitive is not very well substantiated. Tomato is considered to be a particularly needy plant.

It is winter outside. Seasons do not matter with indoors gardening. So feel free to express yourself freely with plants all year.

Free Crusader Kings 2 (Steam, Change to F2P)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/203770/Crusader_Kings_II/

Remember to grab all of the few free DLCs to make your DLC-sliced-up game feel slightly less incomplete. Don’t bother paying for DLCs at this point — the sequel just launched and the publisher obviously is not going to maintain two identical DLC cash-ins at the same time. Besides adding overpriced cosmetics as was done to Company of Heroes games. Consider the game abandoned. Do not invest in abandoned products. If you really want the DLC, find some other way.

There are two (2) free celebratory i.e. low-value DLCs:

  1. Songs of Yuletide https://store.steampowered.com/app/226671/Crusader_Kings_II_Songs_of_Yuletide/ and
  2. https://store.steampowered.com/app/592800/Crusader_Kings_II_South_Indian_Portraits_5_Year_Anniversary_Gift/

(3) There is also a temporary (?) free DLC “Old Gods” for subscribing to a newsletter involving the promoted sequel CK3 at https://www.crusaderkings.com/ . Using temporary spam email strongly recommended.

[Gardening] Plant Sparsely or Cell-Dividedly or Outright Single-Plant Deep-Rooted Plants

From my experience with green beans in deep containers, the plants getting most of the lighting will root-outcompete the ones outside intense lighting, especially when artificial lighting is involved. The outcome will always be complete root-suffocation and death of the less-lighted plants. It will always come down to just one plant surviving.

The easiest solution is to have plants in separate solo containers so that they cannot dominate one other. Using the cell-divided containers is recommended if you really need to multi-plant. Have some plastic or metal sheets or bags blocking the competing plants to keep the growing soil tiles separated if have nothing else.

The deeper the container, the quicker the death escalation. E.g. one foot i.e. 0.30 m container will have tons of death though a 4″ one (0.10 m) will have only some death, with the container borders limiting the root expansion and general growth.

If you want to to fill the vacant-looking spots, pick low-maintenance herbs and flowers that both will not get suffocated and do not hinder the main plant. One deep-plant with tons of surface plants is an okay setup.

It really sucks when you grow a plant for months, only it to be suffocated and and withered by a much less productive plant that you planted much later. At least with beans, the victorious plants can capitalize on the nitrogen pockets built by the dead ones.

Star Wolves 3: Civil War Walkthrough

Star Wolves 3: Civil War
GoblinRavisher
v0.1
MiniFAQ for Beating the Star Wolves 3: Civil War for Casual Players: a New Empire Mission Faction Path Walkthrough
—

The Point of This MiniFAQ
—
If you really want to beat that last mediocre Star Wolves title (SW 3: Civil War) and be done with it if not delete it completely for good, here is a simple guide how to make that journey a little more bearable. The game has a plethora of issues: the usual Windows 10 instability issues, blatant show-stopping hang and crash bugs and localization errors. For example, tons of missing audio such as the news reading soundbites and Kalem’s audio being in RUSSIAN while everyone else is silent or cut. That was the GOG version experience. It is challenging to enjoy a mutilated release of already outdated and average game and a clear downgrade from the previous titles. Hopefully you can at least get some understanding about why and how you are getting screwed over in the given moment or even beat the game. Even if the game ends up raping your patience, just remember that it is an abortion. It does not know any better.
—

Logged gameplay hours to compile and complete the guide so far:
—
107 h

(When you have to analyze and summarize all the wooden and outright idiotic gameplay parts and aspects, it becomes hyperconcentrated torture very fast. Making a multipath guide would probably kill the author of the guide. Just getting the last mission with endings was such a glitch fest that no less than three days, a lot of failing effort and tons of sanity was sacrificed to the RNG gods to finish the job at least halfway poorly.)
—

Preparing game settings for maximum sanity
—
1. Disable “Launch fighters at mission start” – it is better to launch only when needed. The volatile fighter AI and RNG can mess a fighter in less than a second without a warning. Minimize headaches by keeping your fighters secure until you need them. The launch only takes a few seconds, so it is a no-brainer.
—

How to activate cheats
—

1. Edit main.ini file and edit it to have a line

DEBUGMODE = 1

under [GAME] section.

2. Press SHIFT + ~ to open console.

3. Type

g_cheats 1

into it.

4. Press I AKA i button to activate Godmode. (Yes, it is the same as the Log menu button. Both of the two commands will happen when you press it once. Godmode lasts until you quit the the game from Main Menu.)

—

Most used keyboard shortcuts
—
TAB – show sector map (used extensively for navigation)
Backspace – show full star map
Space Bar – pauses the game, gives you infinite time to issue orders to the ships
Left mouse button (LMB) – selects objects
Right mouse button (RMB) – attack/escort/approach/dock at the target
[ and ] – speed up and speed down the time flow, used extensively during intra-system travel
Double LMB – focus on the object
< and > – show and hide contacts
+ and – — zoom in and out
E+LMB – escort target
CTRL + RMB – move aggressively or attack
R – missile attack
S – STOP selected ships (useful when positioning for looting)
(held)CTRL +RMB or A+LMB – attack target
W – toggle frames-per-second & performance info on/off
Arrow keys, holding RMB and mouse roll – navigate the camera
F – toggle Free/Follow camera modes
G – cycle camera modes
M – make a short-to-medium range 3D move command: first the direction and the distance with a LMB and then the altitude with another left click
B – open Mothership hangar
L – toggle message log
H – toggle target helpers
I – show log and mail
V – toggle scanner ranges
ENTER – prompt Confirm key
ESC – menu & prompt Reject key
` [next to ESC, 1 and TAB] – select Mothership
1 to 6 – select individual fighters (hold SHIFT to stack or negate selections)
CTRL+A – select ALL vessels
SHIFT + RMB-drag – change the vertical position (mostly for getting in the best position for your deck turrets to fire at the enemies a couple times)
CAPS LOCK – toggle depth difference lines

CTRL + SHIFT + LMB – scan ship weapons and systems

F1 – Help
F5 – Quicksave
F8 – Quickload
F9 – Free camera mode
F10 – Follow ”
F11 – View ”
F12 – Chase ”

—

Star Wolf 3 specialities to the Elite / Wing Commander formula
—

You:
-do not trade goods. You can loot containers for selling, though you can never buy that stuff yourself. This is a mercenary-only game. The titular Star Wolf pilots were mercenaries and this entry does not fall far from that tree.

-are practically a mercenary that mostly kills pirates in the gameplay-time-wise.

-have INFINITE CARGO SPACE.

-you can have constant armor repair systems, never having to worry about fixing your ship.

-your parts never break down unless plot-disabled.

-fight better in the close range as your guns get a significant accuracy boost, even the long-range guns — they still miss in the max range and with “High” accuracy.

-mothership turrets are your biggest firepower against fighters, the Major Caliber front guns are the same against massive ships, asteroid groups and stations.

-get most of your money by doing main quest missions, there are not many optional missions (of which suck at rewarding you) and looting early-to-mid-game enemies is very slow money. Corporations generally pay the best for everything.

-find the best guns at hidden caches (usually a small asteroid with a red light on it) and ships (available in Charon, Gunslinger T [lvl 5] has four heavy gun slots). It is adviced to buy at least four (4) of them when you have the chance. That sector gets blocked by MSF in late game.

-spend most of your time managing your ships during battle and moving from sector to sector in a painstaking fashion.

-should not expect a deep or original plot, though the characters are somewhat interesting, switch WC Kilrathi with Aliens/Precursors and Berserks and you have it. “Destroy-bad-people-abrupt-game-end” is the name of the game here.
—

General tips
—

-Save often AND have multiple minisaves. 1. The game features rare-but-regular random crashes. For example, there is about 1% chance of the game hanging during any time you move to another system. Save regularly. Have multiple saves if you have not completed the particular quest before. Have two-three saves at least. 2. Your ships can abruptly get destroyed. Additional temporary saves help with that. You can save every second if you want. Frequent saving reduces the amount of lost progress when forced to load after something goes wrong, adding to the fun factor of the game. The saving is fast, so there is no excuse for not doing it often.

-Any fight against bigger crowds of enemies can get your fighters destroyed from 100 to 0 in a flash. The game is very RNG aka randomized when it comes to outcomes and the outcome variation is anything between your mothership getting one sidedly destroyed to you not taking a single hit. SAVE OFTEN AND BEFORE ANY ENGAGEMENTS. The fighters do not last long and you simply cannot afford to rebuy those ships. It is much more practical to load a save and keep a huge amount of cash for a time you need to buy something.

-Ignore special offers. Traders like to trick you by selling you useless stuff at inflated prices. Do not take any special offers or give them money for intel. They will screw you and anything they can give you, you can get from other places for cheaper.

-Lasers rule. They can hit things even at long range at least semi-consistently. Do not invest much in “Low” accuracy stuff as you will not hit much with them and will probably end up destroyed often because of bad hitting RNG.

-Prioritize biggest and most damaging targets, such as high pilot level ships, missile launchers and automated platforms. Usually your death is a result of ignoring big targets with big damage.

-Get passive fighter flare systems and mothership anti-missile systems. Missiles are your biggest threat. Put in a decent, 30+ system and your vessels will be missile proof. Squal for ships is common loot, no excuse for not having it installed.

-Fill your vacant system slots with shield generators. That should be your default choice after one flare/anti-missile system.

-Look around in the space view every now and then. Otherwise you might miss big piles of valuable space junk to sell or to equip. Especially around portals in pirate infested systems — a lot of destroyed Tug cargo can be found near portals semi-frequently.

-Once your main character is a 1st Grade Pilot, buy the perks FTU Warehouse Access and Intuition under Sixth Sense 1 branch. Warehouse tabs sell vastly better items than usual stores and Intuition is required for the optimal dialogue options, including the one that decides the outcome of the NESF story path.
—

Optimal Ship Items
—
Fighters:
Gen 4 or 5 Heavy Fighters with at least two Heavy Gun slots with Helios laser guns equipped
*ideal: Wyvern Mk 2, about 300k+ each at FTU warehouse tab sales extremely rarely, basic Wyvern is equally good if you play it safe with them, Gen 5 Dragon has more guns, is probably a Triada mission path exclusive and has much less durability with more cannons
**passable in late game: Gen 4 Heavy Fighters i.e. Gunslingers (budget wyverns), Pumas and Panthers
1 Cyclone (rating 40) flare systems (anti-missile)
1 Shield Prototype (500 SP + regen, even a Gen 5 fighter without a shield system goes 100 to 0 almost instantly with bad-enough RNG and piloting AI)
(with 3rd slot) Prototype ? (cannon cooling system, the higher the percentage the better)
missiles do not matter, beware of potential friendly fire with them

Mothership / Capital Ship / “Base”:
1-2 Falconet (Major Caliber cannnon, 1200 dmg, 125 range)
1 Tungten (repair system)
3-4 Helios or Rage cannons (normal cannons, both ~180 damage per 20 speed units w/o cooling effect)
1 Prototype X (cannon cooling system, +60% faster cannons)
1 either Kali shield generator or Diamond (?) advanced anti-laser system w/ -80% laser damage

—

The simplified walkthrough
—
Early setup

1. Pick Easy difficulty. The last mission will gut your casual butt with extra damage if you don’t.

2. Name your character (‘Ubercasual’) and pick the specialization “Gunner.” Otherwise you will be giving the enemies extra time to destroy you.

3. Spend 10 points to activate perk “Swift Learner” (to boost experience accumulation)
–

Scenario 1 (Corrino the starting system):

0. You start with a Tug ship. It is outright garbage. Keep doing missions and running away unless safe until you get your Mastiff. The early ships simply do not not have enough armor on them to be useful. Do not worry, you will get your Mastiff in no time. Tug’s 300 hp is gone and your game is over in a about ten seconds of firefighting. (BTW, the “Scenario” chaptering is added to improve readability and to keep track of your progress. It is nowhere in the game, just in this guide.)

The point of this first system is to introduce the civil war elements i.e. corps and security forces cutthroating and fighting one other in one gigantic free-for-all. But only during scripted events. Most systems are populated by only one faction and different factions do not generally fight one other. Whole game is vastly more about fighting pirate fighters than any of the civil war factions.

1. Wait until a MSF ship dialogues you and tap 1 until the threatfest is over.

2. Wait for a Triada group to convince you into hauling stuff for them. Wait a bit more to see them get crushed by MSF forces. Lie to MSF about not knowing about Triada’s business.

3. Starting hauling the Triada goons towards “MSF Headquarters, Aquarius Sector.” by pressing TAB and right-mouse-buttoning the MSF HQ. You will be interrupted by local pirates acting on Triada’s behalf. Turncoat again to them and follow them to the “neutral station” (Taihon Station) to receive your 10k. You can hasten the time flow by using the bracket keys.

4. Offer Triada to fetch the lost corporate papers and set course for the Triada wreck. Your new pirate pals Hank and Paul will cover you during this task.

5. Collect the two document items, set coordinates back to Taihon Station and tell the interrupting MSF officer that you transport office supplies. He will let you pass.

6. Return to the station to collect your 2k reward.

7. Get to the Aurora portal (to follow some dude named Alex). A MSF fighter will stop you and try to fleece 0.5k out of you. If you do not pay, NOTHING will happen. NESF fighters will attack that fighters and destroy it slowly. I suggest moving on as the Tie-Fly will not drop anything valuable. [A Blackjack worth maybe 0.1k creds.] Save before entering to counter a possible system-change crash.
–

Scenario 2 (Aurora, Gredos):

1. Get to the Placid Rocks station. Dock the station and undock it.

2. Go to Gredos portal.

3. Get to Prometheus Station and finish mashing 1.

4. Get to Typhoon Station and finish conversing.

5. Get to Falcon Station and do the 1. Ray will give you your second ship Heavy Transport, finally with some guns i.e. two low-accuracy turrets, and almost tripled hp at 1100. (To ruin your party, you still cannot challenge even weak pirates without rigorous save-loading, so remain careful.)

6. Start going towards Copernicus Station. You will be interrupted by a side quest asking you to deliver some document for a guy. (It is a pirate setup. Save departing.)

7. Go to ‘Illumino yacht.’ Kill the pirates you encounter. (You might die here even on Easy. Welcome to Star Wolves 3’s enemy AI RNG).¨On the way, a pilot offers to escort you for 1k. (The game seems to intend for you to take it since it is pretty cheap at 1k, though you are free to decline. Expect to get heavily damaged by the two pirate ships ambushing you.)

8. Go to the Intrasystem portal.¨Converse with the pirates trying to bilk 1k out of you but never actually do it.

9. Go to Copernicus Station and mash 1. You will receive 30k for your shipping troubles.

10. Return to Falcon Station. (You can use the Intrasystem portal without pirates attacking.) A MSF squadron will interrupt your docking attempt with a a space battle with NESF. (MSF is hostile and will kill you with ease if you do not get out of there fast.)

11. Go to the Aurora portal. (Falcon Station gets deleted from the map on your way there.)
–

Scenario 3 (Aurora, Achilles):

1. Go to Placid Docks Station. Deny a worthless offer from a Trader on your way there.

2. Go to Argon portal

3. Dock to Golden Credit Trade Center and buy a Chrome repair module for about 65k. Install it into one of your “System” slots by drag-and-dropping in the Mothership tab. It will now repair any armor damage you will accrue. It is worth dumping most of your current earnings (76k) into. (This way you do not have to rely on non-free, limited availability Maintenance stations.

4. Go to Achilles portal.

5. Start going to Achilles Station. You will be plot-ambushed by pirates. Your future pilot Ternie will kill them for you with his/her Excalibur fighter. Go to Ternie rendezvous [French for ‘gathering’] point. A heretic will tell you to not deliver the parts. Agree to it (as turncoating is super profitable in this game).

6. Go to the Heretic’s transport. Pirates will ambush you and try to kill your heretical friend. Kill the pirates by (CTRL+LMB them even before they turn hostile).

7. Choose the money reward i.e. 25k as the two Berserk lasers are only worth bellow 10k in total. Go to Wild Cats base.

8. Go to Ternie rendezvous point.

9. Return to Wild Cats base. Follow the points to the ambush zone.

10. Go to Wild Dogs base. Fight the couple left-over Wild Cats traitors and collect the loot. You now have a Mastiff, the first ship that can destroy entire pirate squadrons with ease.

11. Go to Achilles Station to equip your Mastiff with Chrome repair system, Hawk sensory system and Buffalo strap-on engine. Also, the Excalibur fighters into the fighter bays and add the pilots to them by drag-and-dropping the character icons. Equip the Excaliburs with at least flare systems and Vulcans heavy guns. Missiles if you care about using them, though prepare to be super stingy with them.

12. Go to Argon portal.
–

Scenario 4 (Argon):

1. Go to Aurora portal.

2. Go towards the middle of the map until “Inaccessibility point” appears, then go there. (If you try to fight the enemies, a Stone Arrow capitol ship will appear and turn your ships into scrap with a couple of laser shots. Skip fighting to avoid that.) The simplest approach is to break through the net.

3. Be prepared to get your fighters out, save, and go to the breakthrough point. As soon as you enter, pause and prepare to destroy “scavengers” i.e. pirate brigands. Kill them very fast or you will lose the side mission. (They probably escape, though it matters not with the lack of a mission reward. To catch them all, launch the fighters early and fly a little north from the breakthrough point. They will appear yellow, so fly as close to the position bellow them to enable your Scorcher lasers to quickly kill them before they can free. Chase the last one with fighters and missiles if one tries to get away. Call back your fighters when done.)

4. Start going to the marked waypoint. You are told to blow up an autocannon installation. (Otherwise it will shoot you in the back and destroy you if you don’t.) Keep going until you see one about in the center of your course line. Get close enough so that your guns do any damage and 8x time it until it is completely gone. Once done, your Mothership will probably start shooting another close installation a little to the south. That will destroy you if not taken care of. Destroy it. Continue to the map waypoint. (Ignore most other installations to save time if you can.)

5. Go to Elio portal. You will be confronted by Scavengers. Help the trader and kill the cutthroats. (As a general rule, helping traders and getting stuff transported usually ups your rewards significantly.) Take the quest from the trader. (Quests = easy money) Collect the pirate junk and enter the portal.
–

Scenario 5 (Elio):

1. Launch your fighters and set all ships to escort (E) the first Walrus ship. (It is slow so use 8x time)

2. Kill Curtis’ crew. Keep your fighters (w/ flare systems equiped) escorting the Walrus so that it does not get wrecked too hard.

3. Soon after the ambush, a lone NESF Tie-Fly will attack you. Be careful as it has superior weapons. Kill it fast.

4. Escort the ship to Hope Mine. Then proceed to Grid Station (to advance to the next plot point). Around this point, you get paid 25k.

5. Dock to the station. Re-equip your Mothership stuff as it was just remodeled by Carl Hander.

6. In the dialogue with Ternie, choose to go the Hephaestus-Argon route. The other route has enforcers blackmailing you toll fees.

7. Go to the waypointed Hephaestus portal and enter it.

8. Progress along the left edge of the system map (as there are tons of installations in the middle) to the bottom left corner and then B-line to Argon portal & enter.

9. Go to Aurora portal & enter.

10. Approach Placid Docks Station. You will get 5k. Agree to pursue Ternie’s stash.

11. Go to Argon portal and enter it.

12. Go to Achilles -||-

13. Go to Pegasus -||-

14. Go to the waypointed station.

15. Go to stash point.

16. Defeat the ambush.

17. Go back to the station and defeat more fighters. (The blowing up station will not harm you.)

18. Go towards the upper left corner until you find Bursar’s fleet. Destroy the transports and kill the fighters escorting Bursar and then B’s Trident. That’s it.

19. Go to Hippodrome-3 Transshipment Warehouse and let it dock. Get the second learning perk (Express Learner) for your main guy and spend rest of the points on the leftmost
piloting tier perks. (You need the perks to be able to fly those fighters with the given character.)

20. Go to Achilles portal and enter it.
–

Scenario 6 (Achilles et al):

1. Go to Argon portal & enter. (The dialogue with Ternie will give you your next objectives, e.g. the Beta Lethera one.)

2. Save two FTU ships from a sizeable pirate attack. Accept their profitable escorting deal (Promised 100k, it will grow to a 1M payout if you follow this guide. USS rewards its benefactors well. Do not worry about escorting the FTU Walruses as they will follow you pretty well to wherever you go.) Go to Aurora portal & enter.

3. Clear the pirates coming your way and loot any space junk.

4. Do your thing with Corrino portal.

5. MSF will tell you that you are late. No pirate presence here. Insert yourself into Tira portal.

6. -> New Jerusalem 1 portal.

7. You will be confronted by a “USS agent.” You are now in the most devious part of the whole game. That agent has the right security codes, though his actual goal is to make your convoy go BOOM. (*cough a pirate cough*) To get 1M instead of 0.5M, you need to bait this dude into attacking you. Agree to recon first AND choose to require that your convoy ships stay with you at all times and to advance together. (The recon option is a bit of a time-waster and leaving the ships at his care will plot-explode them and fail the escort mission). This will make him attack – a couple minutes of work for that 0.5M. (ËASIEST MONEY IN THE GAME.) You are left with the task of reporting him to the convoy staff and USS. (Did I mention USS pays handsomely for escorting its assets and reporting its traitors? There are plenty of USS ships there. Follow the money.) You should be waypointed towards the convoy gathering point at New Jerusalem 2. -> New Jerusalem 2 portal.

8. -> Telle Avi Station (Gotta love Russian typos.) -> New Jerusalem 3 portal.

9. -> Prien portal.

10. Opt to defend the convoy. Get your fighters out with CTRL+Z and put them to escort. Maintain a position a little in front of the rest of the convoy. Expect a big pirate attack, so do not wander off too far. Your goal here is to take the fire and to tank damage for the much worse equipped convoy ships. (By staying somewhat close to the convoy ships you can count on them to take advantage of your tanking and to destroy some pirate scum for you. If you position yourself right, you will have teams of three (3) lvl 2 fighters such as Hammerheads spawn very clos around you and you will draw their fire. Some Stormcrows spawn close to the transports, so I suggest going to dispose those things before you do anything else. USS and MSF enforcers will help you, so it is not a hard fight.) Collect the space junk and go to Cadi portal. (That will plot-jump you straight to Al-Ariash).

11. Save and go to Al-Ariash Main Trade Station and see what USS thinks about you protecting its assets. Dock to the station to once again up your pilots’ Pilot Grades. It is recommended to not waste on any upgrades as the money is most useful at buying end-game Gunslinger T’s in Charon.
(There will be two two-pirate teams confronting you on your way to the station. Give them the usual viking burial. Very soon after leaving the station, a massive plot-jump comes available that you definitely do not want to miss. Otherwise you will be adding upwards hours of repetitious portal jumping and pirate fighting to your game time.)

12. Agree to the plot-jump to get to Jerusalem 3.
–

Scenario 7 (New Jerusalem 3):

1. -> Herzlia Station. Agree to pay the Watchmaker to get it for free. (Otherwise you will not get it and will have harder time dealing with MSF.)

2. -> Beta Lethera 1 (the quest waypoint). Ignore the MSF message about entering a restricted area.

3. Convo with MSF. Unless you have Watchmaker’s favor, there might be a fight here.

4. (Save if you want to try different approaches.) Go to the waypoint (Triada Base Debris). You will get your third, permanent crew member named Greyhair along with his ship and you also get to decide what to do next. (If you opt to go without consulting MSF, their ships will turn hostile to you. You might want to take advantage of this as they are the best story mission loot sources so far.) Remember to equip Greyhair and his fighter (Raptor, gen 2), along with the fighter equipment. (You can use common-loot Mace light guns (4), two (2) shield generators (Citadel or better) and a flare system.)

5. Go to the ship position waypoint and save. (Once you go to the nearby correct waypoint, you will have a cutscene, followed by a moderate assault by 2+3 Scavenger pirates, with missiles, no less. You your Mastiff can probably take it without even losing shields, so worry not.) Defeat and loot the “Scabs.”

6. Ternie tells you that MSF is going to come end you and that you need to hurry to New Jerusalem 3 portal before that happens.

(You can try to go for it or to move south, wait for the hostile MSFs to gather at the convoy wreck point and disperse soon afterwards and THEN go for the Jerusalem 3 portal. You can also hunt the MSF fleets one by one for loot and experience points. If you do, use this strategy:

Put each of the fighters to target different fighters, specifically the Tiger [that will wreck your mothership] and the Cleaners [that will wreck your fighters in a second if let unattended]. The forth ship, Tie-Fly, is just a harmless recon you can waste in your sleep. Keeping the enemy fighters attacked will keep them from attacking as they will be stuck doing evasive maneuvres instead. Focus mothership guns on Cleaners as they have very little armor and shields despite the high firepower.

An extra tip: do not assault the Beta Lethera waypoint hostiles. The map is scripted so that if you try to go near the portals with any of your ships, your mothership explodes. So do not even bother. You had better get used to the game strong-arming you with lethal force into a specific path.)

7. -> New Jerusalem 3 portal.
–

Scenario 8 (New Jerusalem 3, XB-17):

1. You are attacked by four (4) MSF fighters upon entry to the system. Kill them. You can either be sane and go for the nearest station (Herzlia) or be a madman and try to kill and loot the assaulting forces.

(You will need a ton of RNG luck and a lot of running away antics to kill them. There are tons of Tigers and some Cleaners, though about a half of the forces are somewhat harmless Tie-Flies and Stormcrows. As usual, kill the Cleaners and whittle down the Tigers. Keep Stormcrows away from the Mothership as their missiles will hurt it a lot.)

2. Once you have destroyed alone or with the help of Patrol ships, SAVE the game, dock Greyhair’s fighter to let him do his ID change thing. Greyhair suggests you to take a quest involving the acquiring of Astarte capital ship. TAKE IT. You are offered a plot system jump. TAKE IT. You will be jumped into XB-17.

(Astarte, especially with decent repair and shield systems, is an unbelievable tank that the pirates have no chance against. Your current Mastiff is a two-second-kill in comparison.)

3. Upon entry, launch your fighters pronto. (It is not advisable to agree to pay for the ship when you can both save your money AND harvest some loot and XP.) The two three-fighter squadrons will tear your Mastiff fast unless you can distract them with fighters. Biggest threats are Cleaners and Machetes i.e. low-HP ones. Kill them. (Do not worry about rushing tone, there is no urgency in this map. Feel free to let your capital ship repair and investigate the system.)

4. Go along the bottom edge of of the map to the left corner, destroying mercenary squadrons along the way, and then going towards the upper left corner where Astarte is.

5. Go near the marked waypoint, stop and SAVE. You will be attacked by at least one squadron of mercs. (Another is near, you had better not move and instead try to take the first one out separately.) Deal with any extra squadrons you come across carefully before moving on.

6. (Save frequently before you reach the upper left corner) it as bad RNG can easily demolish your flimsy ships. There is a major ambush there with multiple squadrons of mercs, so destroying the mercs along the way is practically mandatory, otherwise you will not survive.

(The best strategy is to go beyond the left edge of the map and to slowly approach the ambush until the fighters start coming for you. Occupy Cleaners and Stormcrows to keep your capital ship and fighters from ‘sploding. Make a ton of frequent extra saves to capitalize on the favorable RNG and to avoid losing too much effort when your ships die. Attacking/shooting the firing ships is a good way to get them off the tail and to keep your fighters and cap alive.)

7. Destroy the ambush and you will switch to piloting Astarte. (Do not worry about the Mastiff exploding, the splash does zero damage to nearby ships.)

8. Go to the nearby Trade Station to re-equip your new, naked mothership. Upgrade Greyhair’s Instructor perks, then everyone’s pilot perks.
(Try to save XP as you will relatively soon get a chance to procure Gen 5 ships. You need quite a lot of money, too, for that. 1.8 million for to be exact.)

9. Save and -> XB-15 portal.
–

Scenario 9 (XB-15, XT-54):

1. You will be offered quests. Pick the one about Alex. (It is very, very profitable and relatively easy.) DO NOT Agree to the XT-54 plot jump. Instead, go to a nearby system XB-19 to mine some end-game weapon caches. Your game will get much easier if you RNG at least two Falconets for yourself. (Save before blowing up the asteroid with blinking lights and reload if you do not get what you need. You need those Major Caliber weapons for taking down corvettes, capital ships and space stations.)

(Whenever you locate a cache asteroid with blinking red lights. SAVE. If you do not get Wyvern Mk 2, reload or exit and re-enter the portal. Re-entering is a required measure if you are getting lower level fighters than desired, e.g. worthless Tridents. Re-entering changes the loot quality random seed value. NOTE: DO NOT ENTER Danstag system. It has automatic defenses that will kill you in seconds. Take the long detour through X-something systems around it.

Solncevka (5,-4) [the 5. square from right, the 4. down, at low depth]

Charon (3,3)

XB-19 (3,3) [DANGER HEAVY SCRIPTED PIRATE AMBUSH, fixed fighter loot {1 Gunslinger and 1 Wyvern}, leave the system if Pirates enter before USS Enforcers or it will be a one-sided slaughter of your fleet, get decent ships and cannons before you try this one]

Fronn (8,6)

X220 (5,7)

Vaudille (-9,-2) [Ship Hull] & (9,-3) [red-blinking tiny Asteroid], USS automatic defense installations at the portal entry to kill you in case you are hostile to them )

[Cleaned up, improved and checked the position hints from Trucidation’s GameFAQs guide. Never would have found the stuff on my own.]

(You may not utilize Tarrot cache until the InoCo Automated Turrets and the fighter ambush are removed.)

2. Launch the fighters and go to “Alex’s convoy” wp in XT-54. (Expects some pushover pirate squadrons.)

3. Go near Atoll Trade Station to trigger the next part of the quest. Refuse the offer to buy some scanner equipment. (It is expensive, overpriced and will not even help you. You might already have the equipment the guy is selling (Parallax?).

4. Approach the XT-52 portal and defeat the ambush. Focus on Butcher (“corvette”) and pray for a victory from RNG gods. (This is super-difficult if you do not have any major caliber guns to quickly take down the Butcher. Other weapons do tiny damage against it. The key is to get to the tail of the B with your fighters and keep it there for the long time needed to take it down without Major Caliber mothership guns. Use the mothership to kill the fighters, prioritizing the Cleaner and the Raptors.)

5. After the ambush, wait for Alex’s convoy to reach the portal and enter it.

6. You are given a decent sub-quest to save a trader. Without a waypoint, go to system map position (8,6). (8 squares right, six squares up, from the bottom left corner of the map. You have a hurry as the AI starts blasting the Tug right after you get this message, so the quest is time-limited.) Kill the pirates, convo with the trader and return to the convoy. (They will get destroyed if you do not.) Three Hammerheads will cross convoy’s path, so they need to be cleaned. A couple additional squadrons later the coast is cleared.

7. -> XT-45 portal. (Jump into any other portal and you will be greeted with a mission failed convo. Accept the profitable plot railroad by not doing that.)

8. Launch fighters and proceed towards the waypointed portal. As soon as you see enemies, stop. (The curveball here is that pirates, starting with a fleet of Hammerheads, attack your convoy from behind and various other directions.) Stay close to the convoy and defeat the incoming pirate squadrons. (Putting your ship in front of a Heavy Transport makes it less likely to draw fire. Send one of your fighters to at least stall the Stormcrow coming circling to your rear to attack your transports.) When your convoy reaches (6,8), an enemy squadron will be spawned at (6,7) — deal with it.

9. -> XT-93 portal.

10. Launch the fighters. Choose the recon option. (Prepare for a massive fleet fight.) Move towards “Pirate ambush” waypoint and let your dudes engage with the two teams of pirates on your way there. A big in-fighting will take place, enabling you to score some easy loot and kills in the process, especially if you stay out of the Butcher range.

11. Tell the traders to join your convoy and escort it to the XT-41 portal. (Sometimes MSF Viper appears at the portal and forces you into plot jumping out of there. You will still get rewarded the same.) Jump in it.

12. SAVE now and kill some pirates until Alex reaches the station and gives you 1.5 million credits. (You should have about 2.5 mil now — enough to start equipping end-game fighters and equipment.

13. You will be offered another quest and a courtesy plot jump. You are left with the main quest line options. (This guide takes the NESF path. Other ) Take the one involving the strange ship you found at Beta Lethera 1 and mercenaries. (It is Greybeard’s quest.)
–

Scenario 10 (Cassily):

1. Help some mercs and destroy pirates on your way to Mercenary base Sherwood.

2. Go to Avalon portal and jump in. (You will be interrupted by Phantom, a space scientist. He is involved with an end-game quest explaining the end-and-origins of Precursors and aliens.)

3. -> Gideon portal.

4. After a convo, a NESF fleet will arrive for another convo. Follow the waypointed point. (Let us just say taking a shortcut will be be unhealthy.) At the last one. You will have another conversation. AGREE to become NESF’s office boys. Follow the new waypoint path. At the second last one, a Brotherhood AKA Grey Gunslinger will attack you. (Definitely take the loot.)

5. -> Solpugae portal.

6. -> Endoria 1 portal.

(Now it is a good time to salvage caches at Solncevka, XB-17, etc. Skip if you already have the stuff.)

7. Get to Torr system’s Oxygen station, take the mission and return to Endor 1. There you can choose to help some traders for some extra experience points. (If you have end game guns and fighters, you can take out even the massive reinforcement fleet of Gen 2&3 fighters. The cache the smuggler activates is one mid-tier item, nothing to be worry about.) Get to the Endoria 2 portal when you are done murdering MSF.

8. Follow the Endoria 2 – Elio – Gredos – Aurora.

9. You are faced with a ton of MSF in Aurora. Kill them and go to the market waypoint. Tell Greyhair to go do business with Ternie. Two squadrons of MSF will attack. Once they are deleted, the two will return to report a successful mission.

10. -> Gredos – Elio . Get through the convo and get to Grid Station.

11. -> Agree to the mission and escort the embarking trade ships to Endoria 2 portal and enter it.
–

Scenario 11 (Endoria 2):

1. Escort the ships to Dionysus system and get to Destroyed station. (Save before you arrive to the station.)

2. You are informed about pirate ambushes. Make a choice about how to take out the pirate fleets. Pilot Che will join you at least if you choose to destroy the pirates.

(You should have decent Major Caliber guns for taking out Butcher corvettes and Gen 5 fighters and the other good stuff. Equip Che’s Jaguar with a shield generator and better Heavy Guns. The enemies prioritize lower Generation ships, so try to keep him close to Mothership so that you can laser anyone trying to tail him.)

3. Go to the Endoria 2 portal. There will be a pirate ambush halfway there. Another one will be at the portal. (Expect multiple Butchers.) After done looting, get back to the station and get through the convo. You are given assumedly the “fire ship” fighters i.e. a Tie-Fly, a Hrimthurs and a Stiletto.

4. Go to the radium convoy rendezvous point and escort the Walruses to Endoria 2 portal and follow them in it.

5. You will be met by a lone MSF squadron. It will try to extort 50k out of you. Considering you can blast his team to pieces in 30 seconds or so, decline and loot his junk.

6. Escort the convoy to Elio portal, defending them from pirate attacks. Enter the portal.

7. Your NESF boss Alexandra greets you and hands you 3.75 million credits for a completed mission. (Her intel is summarized by “Greys are a stealth army.”)
–

Scenario 12 (Elio, X203):

1. You have no mission for a while, so go to Grid station to sell all your garbage items and buy some guns.

(Grid Station has RNG potential for getting end-game items. Just keep re-entering the station to refresh the items. Things to do at the station: buying Helios combat lasers, Cyclone flare systems, Tung[s]ten repair system [20 HP/s repair rate is insane], attributing Che’s experience to enable him to fly Gen 4 fighters such as Gunslinger or Panther heavy fighter. Going heavy on Helios lasers is never a bad idea. With just two, you can already one-shot a lot fighters and take out Gen 4’s with ease. Buy some extra heavy guns for the two [2] extra pilots you will be having quite soon.)

2. Once you have made two (2) portal jumps, you are given a new mission convo. Accept the plot jump to X297. (Make a temporary save immediately after entering the system and launching your fighters. You will be in a massive missile attack and fighting a major capital ship Chimaera very soon.)

3. Launch the fighters and set them to escort, then go towards X203 portal, prepared for a fight.

4. Destroy the Berserkers, deal with the convo and then focus on defeating the fleet led by a massive Chimaera ship. (Once again, for best results, first focus on taking down the big ship. Having your fighters providing missile baits is crucial to your Mothership’s survival.)

5. Once Chimaera is brown bread, a whole fleet of in-system militia forces appear to mop up the last foes. Get through the chat. You are nodded towards Joseph’s side quest, which you definitely should do for its brevity and Joseph’s antics.

(You will get to converse with the “Experienced Pilot” Zurab Adjani, a dude who will help you again once Greys aka Brotherhood attacks you and kidnaps Ternie in this same sector on your way out. You will be reminded to equip Ternie with some crappy gear when the time comes to avoid losing a good fighter and stuff.)

6. Get to X203. There, go recruit Joseph at his hermit station. Then go meet the heretic who agrees to go to X220 to play with a portal. Go to X220.

(Notice that you need to keep Heretic alive as a mission condition. If you let Heretic die early in the game, the professor will be here instead and Joseph might not be available for recruiting. Do not bother equipping Joseph’s garbage-tier Dark Stormcrow, he will not be a permanent addition. Note that Heretic has a very rare fighter model Stiletto Mk 2.)

7. In X220, launch your fighters and proceed to the given waypoint. Delete Chimaera et company there. Enter the Precursor portal. (Totally not from Star Control.)

8. In Precursor System, prepare for a series of very difficult, outright over-powered encounters. Go to the first waypoint to loot some Precursor artifacts and then go to a ship hull to get assaulted by multiple squadrons of really tough alien fighters.

(Pray hard to your RNG gods. Just be happy that they did not force you to fight an Alien Dreadnaught. You should have end-game guns such as Helios lasers here. Otherwise you need to have your things super ready and be prepared to make a ton of temporary saves during the combat when necessary. The game does not really you how towards the end it already is. Only a couple long missions left before you hit the credits roll. Just a couple of hours of stuff if you already have the end-game equipment and do not need to spend time hunting for them.)

9. Go to the portal waypoint. Kill the assaulting Aliens and go follow the waypoint trail. Kill the aliens and get into Mobile Alien Portal. (Expect some minor alien capital ships aka Alien Frigates at the end. They are a way tougher than Chimaeras. Save beforehand. With end-game gear, it might not be that difficult. It is best to not give the RNG gods a sliver of a chance.)

10. In Dyson Sphere, get through the convo and back into Alien Portal. (There is nothing to do in that place. You can save and try how out-classed these aliens have you. E.g. a single Dreadnought has about a dozen heavy laser cannons and will fry your capitol ship in a second.)

11. SAVE. -> Precursor portal. (There will be a major Berserk ambush with two Chimaeras next to the portal.)

12. As soon as the X220 system loads, pause the game. Get your fighters out. Make them attack the flimsy berserk squadrons to prevent them from frying your MoShi while it is busy executing Chimaeras. Save when done killing and looting. -> X203.

13. Now, dump Ternie’s ship into the MoShi inventory and replace it with some super-weak ship, such as an old Excalibur fighter. (Keep her by the MoShi. She should be plot destroyed after Zurab offers her support.) -> X297. (That is where she will get napped.)

14. In X297, launch your fighters. About two squares-widths in, your team gets attacked by Greys. Soon after Zurab joins to help, Ternie’s ship suddenly explodes and she is nowhere to be found. In its wake, both Joseph and Heretic depart from your company, leaving you with just three (3) pilots. (Now you are on the quest to get the best mothership in the game.)

15. -> Al-Ariash portal.

Scenario 13 (Al-Ariash):

1. Travel Hanoi-Cadi and go to Trade station (located near the portal exit) to meet Alexandra. Accept to get plot-jumped into Al Trabon.

2. Immediately, there will be portal ambush by MSF. Launch everyone except Alexandra. (Launching her will get you a “Mission Failed.”) Deal with the thick-skulls. Get into Al Zed portal.

3. In Al Zed, get through the convo and go to Amman Trade Station -> Jordan Warehouses. After Liners have appeared, -> Al Trabon portal. (They will follow you quite well.)

4. Without stopping to loot, clear the way and escort Liners Al Trabon -> XT-81 -> XT-41 -> XT-93. (If you wait too long, the ships will plot-die and you will get game-overed.)

(At the end of XT-81 before jumping into XT-81 portal, there is a non-timed spot for regenerating your ships’ armor and shields. Use it if you need it. One functional strategy is to assign each one of your fighters for a role: 1 to escort MoShi, 1 to escort the Liners and 1 to scout ahead and demolish the ambushes waiting for you near the path to the next portal. There will be a massive ambush at the end of XT-41. You should send your fighters deal with it, prioritizing Cleaners, Tigers and Stormcrows.)

5. At XT-93, you will have some chat, lose Alexandra and get 1.25 mil. (You should already have god-tier stuff, so money and stuff mean nothing to you at this point.)
–

Scenario 14 (XT-93):

(Che is probably accumulated enough experience to an Ace pilot. Get him “promoted” and equiped with a Wyvern pronto.)

1. Travel XT- 26 – 23 – 24. (There will be pirate attacks.) Launch the fighters and defend until told to move on.

2. Approach Old MSF base. Beat the Greys and you will get a convo and a waypoint to the pirate base.

3. Go blast the pirates at the pirate base. You will get three (3) new crew members (Ternie, Alexandra and Kalem) and a new Mothership (MSS-19, based on the original Star Wolf). Go equip your new crew and ships at Foggy Station. (You are about to begin the last long mission.)

4. Go to XT-23 portal. You will be attacked by a lot of fighters. Go through the chat involving Ternie and -> XT-23.

5. Defeat the Crayer the Grey high-up soon after entering XT-23. (He reveals in his villain monologue to the protagonist that the Beta Lethera 1 massacre happened to cover up evidence about the presence of Greys. Yup, you still know nothing about Greys despite already fighting their higher-ups.)

6. -> XT-26 and immediately return to XT-23 portal (to utilize the hyperspace jump catapult plot device). You will reappear in XT-86.
–

Scenario 15 (XT-86):

1. SAVE. Go to the Docks waypoint and circle through the waypoint path in a counter-clockwise fashion. (Take slight detours to the sides to avoid the patrols. No cloaking systems are required — the enemy patrols are half blind, probably because of the dust etc. in the system.)

2. Go to the rendezvous point. Agree to help Trump. Fire a few Major Caliber shots at the big enemy ship to crush the whole fleet. Loot, wait for Trump’s Lion Mk 2 to appear and enter XT-81 portal. (Your goal is now to go to Eridan with Trump’s fleet in tow. Do not count on Trump helping you when pirates attack. Trump is no one’s wingman.)

3. Travel Al Trabon – Jerusalem 1 (Ignore the chat.) – Tira – Shula – Eridan.

4. Go NESF Headquarters, Centaur Sector. (The ones present there in this NESF faction path include Corsair, Trump, Aja of Triada Corp and SAM AI of InoCo.) Get through the convo. (Summary: Greys = FTU AKA Free Traders Union. It would be cool if it was not lame. If that made sense, Greys would have wasted the protagonist long before the game storyline took place for taking part in shipping evidence harming their cause. It is established that they have plenty of political influence to pull it off.)

5. SAVE. Go to Treasure Island Station. Finish Corsair’s convo. (You can buy everything on sale for 0 credits.) Buy everything that seems useful to you, especially missiles. Level up your dudes’ perks and equip your ships for the last time for the last mission. As soon as you undock, you will be catapulted into New Kyoto system to spearhead an assault on Greys.

6. In New Kyoto, get through the convo. (BTW, ‘coign of vantage’ means ‘advantageous position.’) Launch the fighters and approach the FTU base.

(You will be intercepted by Alex. There will be a huge amount of plot exposition, e.g. how Greys are simply substitues for underfitted Patrol security forces. The reason Greys became a galactic threat was that Cayer, the dude you probably wrecked in two seconds, was a the faction leader of the bad Greys. No bad leader, no more Grey attacks. At the very end after SAM appears, you are given three [3] options: 1 : screw over yourself and have everyone turn against you, 2 : screw over Alex or 3 : screw over SAM the Berserk [recommended and you can beat the game fastest that way]. )

7. With Intuition, you should pick option 3, that turns the whole fleet against SAM. Launch fighters and make them go all-in on SAM. (If you do not, SAM will keep spawning Super Chimaeras and getting away. Give the traitor some lasers and stuff. If you chose anything else, you are on your own. Good luck with that. NOT RECOMMENDED. Again, for the love of SAM clones, please pick Choice 3.)

(Okay. Here is the list of successful NESF endings depending on your various choices:

Choice 1 : Opt to kill Alex, then destroy his station. You are required to make a second choice:

* 1: You turn against SAM. Kill SAM to end the game. (Super-glitchy. If SAM dies before his ship turns red and his dialogues play out, your game bugged and you need to reload and try again. Godmode greatly recommended here, mostly to keep SAM alive long enough to die late enough.) The ending is NESF and FTU win, but end up defeated by Imu and pirates. Practically the same as Ending 2. Technically a bad ending.

* 2: You opt to side with SAM (“enough bloodshed”) and go to Llanowar 1 portal. The ending: some drivel about SAM creating Symbiont to take over the sectors and stuff with no unique information. A bad ending.

Choice 2: Go to FTU base to get your Lion Mk 2 MoShi. Go equip it at the trade station. SAM that you need to try to kill is where you started the level i.e. the bottom left corner of the system. Damage him about 90% and he will warp away. Ending: FTU sucked at maintaining order and pirates, Min Imu and Azar ruled the sectors. A bad ending and also pretty similar to Ending 1.1.

Choice 3: kill SAM. You get a happy ending leading to a scene of Symbiont ships vaporizing a trade ship convoy. (The overall best ending and the easiest to attain with minimum effort.)

In all cases, Symbionts i.e. technologically advanced Berkerkers are set up as the Star Wolves 4 threat. Maybe if SW3 turned out a tiny bit better, that game would have been made. (They claim SW3 was made with strong community support. It is unbelievable that any game community would ask for a title with almost nothing to do in and no explorative value much unlike most games in the Wing Commander Privateer / Elite-like game type. Most likely the devs ran out of time to add that content.)

—
PP: goblinravisher at gmail dot com

[I tried submitting a guide to gamefaqs, though I think they deleted the submission for no reason or will sit on the disappeared submission for a month or more as usual. F* those guys, here is my Star Wolves 3 NESF Mercenary path (?) walkthrough. Never gonna submit anything there again. The corrupt CBS and Gamespot as owners can SUCC it. Hopefully this manages to help at least one person. That game explains nothing.]

[Gardening] Tomato Fruit [PHOTO]

Kuva0502.jpgThe mid-tier tomato plants are starting to flower while the big ones are fighting with cucumbers for the sunshine superiority and making tons of leaves. That grass tea fertilizer clearly made the difference. Plants, especially big ones, suck the nitrogen out of the ground very fast and adding it back to the ground enables a ton of otherwise restricted, new growth. Fertilizing should never be overlooked as a gardening aspect. Even tiny herbs benefit from the fresh flow of nutrition.

[Gardening] Light Competition

In short, it is most preferable to plant sparsely and over-light singular plants than planting many and having no guarantee of anything growing at a steady pace.

Herbs, flowers and other simple non-fruiting plants can be planted densely and still be quite easy to light adequately. Anything from small bean plants is already creating constant shadowing and over-growing issues that require extremely sparse planting to be avoided. It is understandably tempting to plant a ton of small-looking plants such as radish and turnip that remain quite small for a long time. Ultimately, they those plants will become a major and a recurring problem later down the line.

The compromise with planting “big” plants yet wanting to not “waste” the space between the sprouts, is to plant small flowers and herbs in the space between them. E.g. chives and dill are very unlikely to cause any shadowing issues. You can also consume those herbs and use them as spices if they somehow manage to overgrow, making the situation a win-win in any case.

[Gardening] Night of the Living Dead Bean [PHOTO]

Kuva0501.jpgThree (3) main points of observation:

  1. the green bottom part with live leaves,
  2. the stem mucus buildup at the end of the green part, and
  3. the absolutely brown-dead top of the plant.

The stem was cracked early on in this plant’s life cycle, though it still operates as nothing happened, creating the nutritive fluids that no one is going to utilize before the whole planet is dead and decomposing. This is a decent analogue for how any amount of resourcefulness and durability is wasted if the grand picture is lost. This is a grotesque piece of live existence.

[Cooking] Cold Instant Oatmeal Porridge Mix Recipe w/ Optional Cacao, Coffee and Jam

In brief, take a bowl half-full of oat flakes and make it soggy with added water. That is the core dish. Now, I recommend that you add some of the following things:

  • a little table salt (very health-beneficial if you exercise, RECOMMENDED)
  • some sugar (makes it easier to go down, do not add much if you do not exercise much)
  • vanilla sugar or equivalent (adds some premium flavor)
  • cinnamon & other spices (white pepper is my personal favorite for some extra kick)
  • cacao (the dark one, avoid the milk chocolate with added peanut butter — it is super unhealthy for you and makes indigestion much more likely)
  • coffee powder (chew it thoroughly to enjoy the texture and the contained flavor and to not have it scrape your colon on the way out)
  • jam (adds some vitamins, e.g. vitamin C, the safest variety is strawberry jam — works with almost everything and adds deep flavor)
  • discount ketchup (adds some veggie flavor and, best of all, indigestion-cleansing vinegar  to the dish)
  • table scraps and leftovers (eating is the best form of food recycling)
  • sunflower seeds, nuts and legumes (terrific vitamin and mineral sources, especially the metabolism-anabolism-boosting vitamin B’s
  • dried stinging nettle leaves (a huge stockpile of rare nutrients there, RECOMMENDED)

Most importantly, do not heat up the mix. Most of the vitamins get destroyed under extensive heating conditions and the absorption rate of the remaining, intact ones could be reduced. Oats do not contain animal disease pathogens, so heat-sterilizing it is wasted time and energy AT BEST. Eat it raw like the animal you are.

 

[Gardening] Flowering Fertilized Tomatoes [Photo]

Two of my oldest and biggest tomato vines are making flowers, mostly because of increased lighting, watering frequency and fertilization strength. BTW, you know that your fertilizing tea AKA water solution is GREAT for the plants when it smells terribl– of ammonia, you know, like piss aka urine. I am disappointed only about the fact that it is JUST ANOTHER F-ING YELLOW FLOWE–

Okay, I am calm now. Tons of extra lighting lamps and really smelly NH3 fertilizer as a watering solution is how you can perform miracles even indoor farming. So stock up with boxfuls of fertilizing-ready grass, plant and other organic waste for the winter while you still can. Buy  some lamps and compatible LED bulbs for them, too.  Just try to keep the plantation area small enough as ventilating that plant-emitted irrigation water gets vastly more difficult in winter, as you and some plants might not like cold air constantly brushing against them.  A couple square meters is always fine, bigger apartments might be able to handle a little more.

[Gardening] DYI or Store-Bought, Fertilizing Is Mandatory for Everything Besides Smallest Legumes

A ton of my plants stopped growing for a week or two a couple weeks ago. My radishes stopped making leaves and my potato died. Once I added some super dense grass solution tea, the surviving ones started growing and leafing again. Also, the cabbage loopers came back, which is strange. I guess they are attracted by the smell of a GROWING plant (read: not a nutrition-starved one). The radish box was massive, proving how even the largest growing pot can get depleted.

The fertilization should continue for the entire growth cycle to make sure the land is maximally utilized. That is probably why experienced farmers/gardeners use animal feces as they release nutrition for a long time, reducing the need for weekly fertilizing. You can collect random green or dried up plant trash such as grass trims and solve them in a bucket of water, though you need to get fresh and new plant waste every few weeks or so, depending on how much grass you stuff into the bucket at once.

Legumes such as green beans seem to grow well even without massive fertilizing, probably because of the nitrogen-releasing bacteria pockets on their roots. They basically produce their own nitrogen, so they show much less nitrogen-deficiency-related symptoms such as the stopped growth. The ground tends to get really low on plant-useful nitrogen after just one batch of major cropping plant cycle. After the demanding ones such as maize/corn or potato, you should outright replace the soil. There is little use in fertilizing soil like that, that can barely grow grass.

[Gardening] Extra Waterings + Extra Fertilizing + Plenty of Lighting = Rapid Growth

After switching to more frequent watering and fresher fertilizer tea, the tomato plant growth has been stellar. It could also mean that I am over-supplying nitrogen, though let us ignore that. One of the branches grew at least half a foot in just a couple of days, breaking its under-supported  stem. The big observation here is that tomato is particularly slow at growing, so this is nothing normal. I am going to expand the enhanced watering to other plants besides tomatoes and cucumbers too.

Also, I am going to stockpile grass and grassy plants to be used for fertilizing. I basically need more two-gallon buckets, bigger ones if I can find some. I need to dunk the grass straight into a water-filled container to not have to deal with the undesired bugs that live in it, most specifically ticks that can become a major nuisance. Spiders and beetles can do whatever they want if they escape drowning. I saw one flower spider bungee-roping and eating some aphid while on a tomato plant.

It would be helpful to downsize the farm for the winter and some fertilizing might help accomplish just that. My gist is the desire to thoroughly depleting the soil nutrients before I dump it. I have been somewhat successful with beans, though they seem to start slow-growing in the late-cropping stage when their gigantic root networks start hitting one other or the limits of the container, leading to gradual withering or a growth stop. I have a good reason to try out fertilizing them to see if that will either restart the fast development or at least wither them faster and relieve the soil for the surviving bean plants.

My overall soil depletion plan (based on zero research) is this: beans / peas + something basic to eat the nitrogen pockets left by beans + finish the soil wreck with some herbs and flowers. Some guide advised to plant tomatoes into nitrogen-rich soil. I might do that with the ex-bean plantations. I do have some ‘matoes in undersized boxes suitable for that. Into the initial tomato plantation soils, I could put some beans + herbs and peppers to finish them off as they are most likely low on nitrogen in the wake of hungry tomatoes.

Basically, I need to fertilize and irrigate more and more often and to produce more fertilizing tea. I’ll get some extra buckets, a big, thickly-news-papered box to store the excessive dunked-and-debugged fertilizer feed for drying. Personally, I go insanely consumeristic on things I have a lot of, so with that being nutritious fertilizer, plants are going to like it a lot.

Expect some tomato documentary with photos semi-soon. I have a feeling I will have enough time (and boredom) to pull that off. To be honest, there is this one huge mess of a leafy bush of tomato-cucumber-watermelon that I really want to create an insightful narrative about. Currently is purely bizarre and monstrous. It is impossible to keep the other two out of the shots because of how much of a fused abomination it is. There are at least a cubic meter of space semi-full of living plant matter and easily hundreds of leaves. Complex things like that are quite intriquing. Even simple things such as watering and ripping out dried up leaves from blocking the lighting, become tricky with the size.

I will work something out and try some more casual fertilizing.

P.S. ‘Tea’ or ‘stew’ is a watery plant-part solution made of water and dead/dying plants in an OPEN container. In comparison, ‘tar’ or some other thicker substance is created with an air-sealed container.

The tar is more dense, though it is probably more dangerous to handle and accidentally inhale as the botulinum bacteria likes low-oxygen watery places like air-tight closed containers. That is why you do not generally eat expired tins of foodstuff, as that might be your last meal. The botulinum toxin is lethal. That is why I do not even bother with anything beyond teas.

Also, the non-aired fertilizing creates horrendous odors and definitely should not be done indoors — the smell might never come off. Just a little tip. You can get the nutrients by tea-ing, it will just take a few weeks longer. After a few weeks, the tea is so low on nutrients that it needs fresh organic matter or mincing to maintain its fertilizing ability of giving off nutrients.

[Gardening] Deep Indoor Lighting, Green Beans under Intense Lighting and a Alpine Strawberry Mini-Jungle + Some Plans Involving Tomatoes

[ 1. I tried multi-directional AND lower-plane ground level lighting, the growth seems to have increased in general and some of the long-obsoleted lowest leaves dried up and died, though only the ones that the plants clearly did not want to develop further.

 2. The initial leaves of the green bean (bush-variety) became super wide and dark green after being exposed to direct low-wattage, high Ra valued aka sun-like light and the subsequent leaves were much smaller and the plant height dwarf-like. Good lighting = more compact and healthier plants.

3. Alpine strawberries finally got super leafy by the window sill. They have been producing quite a lot of big berries. All of them taste like wild strawberries, which is to be expected from a variant of wild strawberry. I have not managed to get any of the berry seeds to sprout. Lightly dirt-covered, open seed or berry-flesh-covered, nothing so far. The small seed ones are almost difficult. Do not trust the germination percentages with them. E.g. less than 10 % of my 85% germination rate strawberries sprouted. It is probably soil-related. My blackish clay soil is not ideal, unlike the sandy one. Then again, I do tend to overestimate the passing of short time spans. The cultivation time of alpine strawberry is especially long, at 14 to 21 days. ]

Not much posting recently. I am studying the lighting magic to get some evidence-backed experience about how to best utilize lighting. After all, light is the most important variable to take care in space and soil abundant situations. I am considering buying even more lights to test out some multiple-lights-per-plant-box solutions. I have a six-foot-tall tomato around, after all.

Another thing I want to understand is how to reliably grow turnips. Turnips are the suicidal, almost identical brothers of radishes. Their problem is the lower initial sturdiness — weak rooting, weak stems and the tendency to fall and get eaten by the ground i.e. to decompose. I have lost a handful of big plant boxes full of those plants to the falling down.

In short, I am applying cell / matrix growing now with the turnip sprouts. Most likely the issue is lighting related as it is almost impossible to properly light at most inch tall (small-seeded) sprouts as it is very difficult to reliably get the light that low. The falling is caused by over-extending towards the light. Now my method is to grow a couple, really strong turnip sprouts for transplanting under ideal lighting and soil conditions.

Mostly I am waiting for my oldest plants to start flowering and the other end-of-life-cycle stuff. The cucumbers are doing that just fine, though could be fruit-growing faster, maybe I should water them more. The tomatoes are damn impossible cases. There are a lot of articles about non-blooming tomatoes. The suggestions involve the temperature, the soil, the root condition, the usual guess work. Someone suggested shaking the stem lightly. That is quite funny. The most credible idea is to up the fertilizers, probably the  K(alium) ones. I guess I am going to harvest some wild grass and flowering plants for some really thick tomato fertilizer. Another good idea: MORE WATER.

The soil is not a major issue when the plants are still growing while not showing any withering signs besides some out-of-the-light lower leaves. Similarly, as demonstrated by the growth of cucumbers, the flowering is not about water as much as kalium (K) aka potassium. Maybe the big plants like to stock up stuff before they go all out flowering, as demonstrated by one of my radishes with an inch-thick surface-root and not a single flower.

After killing a lot of my cucumbers with a tiny amount of table salt, I am not going to touch salts or even sulfates when it comes to gardening. Some suggestions involve “too much nitrogen (N) in the soil” and not enough light.

As my tomatoes are overpacked, I will go with the add-fertilizer route. Since I want more flowering, I need to liquidize some flower trash for them. I sure-as-hell am NOT going to purchase commercial stuff such as granite dust, hardwood ashes or banana peels just to throw them at my plants. WikiHow and the others suck at making original suggestions not fronted by some obvious fertilizer vendors.

[Gardening] Radish Seed Pod

Kuva0479.jpg

Radish grow a tall flowering stalk branches with soft flowering spikes. Radish is dominantly biannual, so this usually happens in the second spring (in spacious conditions) or in autumn (in restricted conditions, e.g. flower pots). Once the flowering phase starts, the leaf growth stops and no amount of sunlight can counteract that effect. That is because the flowering is mostly sustained by depleting the land root and the tuber of the plant. The goal of the plant is to absorb all of the nutrients from that specific spot and to use them to propagate and spread the species to other, non-depleted spots. Radish is a fast root-grower, only second to to big-seeded beans that can fill a 2′ pot in a week. My guess is that once the root advancement is blocked, the plant turns into an annual species. The annualized plants are most likely much smaller than the biannual ones.

[Gardening] Dirt Eats Leaves

Plants, of which leaves get stuck against moist soil, tend to get their dirt leaves decomposed and/or eaten. It does not matter if the plant is living or not, the dirt-touching part simply disappear over time. I suspect that scuttle flies eat them. They usually pose no threat against most plants because they seem to lack the enzymes to break down the plant-oil-coated and acidic leaves. They do eat small leaf stuff such as stem hairs, though not much.

If you want to avoid young sprout leaves from getting eaten by dirt, straighten them a bit. The taffy-like moist soil tends be sticky enough to catch them for good. The plants usually spring up back to their upright positions once the taffy adhesion is gone.

It is often a good idea to gently straighten stiff-stemmed fallen plants. Soft sprout stems such as tomato’s are likely to snap if you try to do that.

Free Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (Ubisoft)

  1. Get Chrome browser and a SetupVPN extension for it
  2. Register and confirm a SetupVPN account
  3. Login to the extension and select Public servers -> South Korea (there are multiple ones).
  4. Go to https://register.ubisoft.com/Assassins-Creed-Brotherhood/en-GB and login to your free-to-get Uplay account when asked to. Change to another North Korea server if yours / your account/login is blocked.
  5. You should land on a page about a game having been added to your account. Mission accomplished.

So yeah, you need to have an IP close to the China market, otherwise the page will tell you that you are not eligible for a giveaway. The VPN gives you the required kind of an external IP. Valid until 2019/08/03 .

[Gardening] How to Build a Non-Shadowing, Palisade Style Trellis Support from Cheap Cocktail Sticks

In short, place sticks angled into the dirt so that they cross one other providing support against collapsing or bending and support any plants nearby. You do not necessarily need to craft support for each sing plant if they plants are bunched up. Vine type and light-starved plants (like some potato species) will try to climb upwards using anything they can grab, which is why the palisade supports are good for helping them with their initial climb towards the light until their stems harden, without shadowing them or potential, shorter companion species (e.g. clover = soluble nitrogen factory). The palisades also support the plants in case they momentarily sway downwards because of wind or irrigation water pressure, keeping them stable enough to prevent early stem-snapping.

The palisade style can be done up until one feet, after which it would probably get too dense and shadowing. You could build sparser safety nets against falling  with some string and sticks here and there around the tops of the plants to block their falling attempts a bit. For long species, you need start making big up-right or slightly angled sticks to give your vines and the like something to grab onto. Species without tendrils such as tomato probably need some string to loosely align them with the support and to stop them from bending their lower stems with their top-growth’s weight. The more angled the up-right vertical stick, more stable the supports i.e. the less likely they are to fall or sway themselves. Some angled  cross sticks are required for stabilizing the up-right sticks, especially if you do not have a higher-altitude point to string-connect them to.

Summary: angled stick palisades are very good at supporting short plants and the vertical support structures.

[Gardening] Do Not Buy Fertilizers for Casual Gardening, Make Your Own Fertilizers from Foraged Plants and a Bucket Almost Full of Water

In short, get some live or dead plants and fill half a bucket with them and fill the rest of the bucket with water ( to dissolve and absorb the plant nutrients ) up to 90% full. Any more water and you will be splashing stain-happy liquid around during the use. Mix it once a day to bubble out the decomposing gasses, to hasten the dissolving process.

The there are many kinds of fertilizers for different uses, based on the selection of the plant waste. The most important fertilizer nutrients are nitrogen (roots), phosphorus (fruit & flowers ) and kalium (leaves and stem), shorthanded as NPK fertilizers. Flowering/fruiting plants benefit from phosphorus fertilizer ( e.g. flower & grass waste ) and the leafy ones benefit from potassium aka kalium and nitrogen (generally very big plants, preferably with roots ). Optionally, you can plant clover to increase the nitrogen in your soil. It is a small plant and will not interfere with your other species, making it a super useful companion plant.

For most leafy plants, there is a really good plant to fertilizer-dissolve: stinging nettle. The caveat with it is that its fertilizers contain too much minerals such as iron for gentle, slow-growing, sensitive species such as tomato. Stinging nettle is an omnipresent species that grows even in sandy wastelands. Stinging nettle fertilizer is extremely potent for any species that can take its nutrients.

You can use the “tea” from your fertilizer bucket as a substitute for your irrigation water. That helps your thirsty annual plants to not run out of minerals before the cropping season ends.

P.S. If you plan to keep gardening and irrigating plants in winter i.e. past october in four-season regions, you should stockpile a couple cube meters of plant waste to keep your irrigation business going.  That should be enough even for a large plantation. Package it with tons of newspapers and/or cardboard to minimize staining and smell issues.

[Gardening] Monster Radish Trunk, Early Green Bush Bean Seeds, etc.

[ 1. The radish land root trunk, very tree-like and rock-hard, 2. green bean seeds from perished plants { they only have single fully-developed seeds because of genetic survival selection for most healthy offspring production } , 3. a late stage, flowering radish starts creating these grabby barbs from both the stem AND LEAVES, yes, leaf barbs, it is super original , 4. some full bloom radish flowers and 5. those very thin, pointy cucumber leaves near the flower bases are a late-stage-only structures, as usually the leaves are more box-like and wide, like maple leaves. ]

[Gardening] Perfect Grow Lights Are Bare Bulbs

I was dead wrong about covering the bulbs with colored paper. That covering pretty much eliminates all the productivity offered by that lamp plant-growth-wise. Just use bare bulbs and remember to slightly increase the water of the enlightened plants as they need more water-borne nutrients to sustain themselves when they grow more. Also, the proximity of the bulb can dry up the soil a bit. I recommend buying a floor lamp or two as they are not limited by the amount of ceiling lamp sockets and you can place them closer to the plants’ height level on the floor.

[Gardening] There Is No Such Thing as Self-Supporting Plants, Always Do at Least Sparse or Token Plant Supporting

I have been dealing with bush beans, a self-supporting variety and many other species from potato to tomato. Every single one besides weeds  and weed-like light flowerers, tend fall and never up. Or, they get dragged down by another supposedly self-supporting and thus stiff plant and the whole plantation goes down. Actually, I’ll post a picture of my bush bean travesty to make the point.

This is especially important in dense and big plantation farming as you cannot take care every single one individually and the plant knots involved in the takedowns get very big and complex. If you try to help fallen down plants afterwards, branch snapping fatalities are guaranteed. Oh yeah.

My recommendation is to at at least some supports such as these simple 1-penny BBQ wood sticks and loosely bind a plant every 10 cm or so. That is token supporting. If you really care, support stick every single plant you do not want risk losing, though you will lose some of them any. Keep the binding string loose to avoid damaging the branch or tensing it up to the snapping point.

With at least some supported plants acting as sentinels for others, one falling plant gets supported by the sentinel chain and actually can become supported itself as its own fall is stopped. That is massive improvement from the everybody-dies scenario. Even pressure-free watering droplets can tilt a non-tree-like plant half the way towards complete fall-down.

Support everything that matters. The sticks cost only a penny, i.e. the cheapest part of home plant farming. You can only lose by skipping it. A pack of 100 barbecue sticks costs only 70 cents here and I can even tape shorter or torn ones together to form as long support sticks as I want. Also, unlike the wooden cross-supports, thin sticks have practically shadowing effect, making  them pretty much issue-free and your number one way to support things. Also, remember to use string. Some times you can support big plants by tying them to big object high up even without support sticks.

What ever you do, never forget supporting your plants, pre-emptively.

[Gardening] How to Make Your Own Cheap-as-Dirt Grow Lights

Steps:

  1. Skip past commercial grow light products that have next to nothing separating them from your every day room lights. Use what cheap bulbs you you have for common room lighting and opt for the maximum energy-efficient LED lights whenever you can, though use up your old ones unless they are those super inefficient 40 W or 60 W tiny bulbs.
  2. Get some floor lamps and place them in the middle or above of the plantation. Try to shade it as little as you can with the shader while not leaving it so open that you get regular eye flash irritation just from accidentally looking at its general direction.
  3. Ceiling lamps, floor lambs, wall lambs, scaffold lambs — use what ever you can to get the light to your light-starved plants. Keep in mind that small 14W LEDs have very small effective radius, so you should get more of them rather than few bigger ones. Big ones are vastly less effective because of the heat dissipation of the LED technology as far as I know.
  4. Keep it cheap. 8h of extra light per day is enough, as plants sleep about 8h and your extra light is probably wasted electricity. Do not expect miracles as sunlight is much more intense and higher quality for the plants than the artificial light. Know your limits and cut corners when it seems reasonable.
  5. Different plants have different light requirements. Light is the biggest single life element for plants, so do not expect understand it completely just from a couple bullet points and experiments on a limited number of species. Stay humble and keep collecting experience.

[Gardening] Preserving Your Sun Shine Vulnerable Windowsill Watermelon Plantations with Red i.e. Flowering & Fruiting Promoting Tissue Paper Transparently Taped onto the Window

Kuva0456

[ Over 90% of the jagged watermelon leaves are already burned, yet the these stunted growth plants keep trying to survive. I finally decided to let them… FIGHT IN SHADE for once. After all, Spartans look strongest with red colour on them. ]