If you want some 2D fights with crafting, boss progression and impressive mods, can't suggest this game hard enough.

Procedurally generated adventure game focuses on fights, crafting and mining. Multiple difficulties, with hidden world seeds for extra challenge, tight controls, and tons and tons of content.

The game is quite old, almost 15 years. You might have even already played it before. But if it was long ago - surprise, there's even more content now! Even graphics have improved, and the mods are better than ever.

The base game isn't too long, and I've always felt that it stops right after you start to get into it. Well, fear not, for there are mods that extend the gameplay off the cliff and into the sun.

Mods are installed and played with the TModLoader. If you buy it on Steam, you can one-click install mods from the Workshop. But they don't work when you open Terraria, you have to start the TModLoader.

The most important mod I've played the most is Calamity. Almost tripples the base game content. Definitely don't try before playing through vanilla, as it will feel very overwhelming. But after you know your way around the world, this mod will give you weapons that tear vanilla bosses like wet napkin. And bosses that will give you grief anyway.

Terraria is and always was just $10, right now at 50% discount on Steam. Very low specs required, and I've played almost 500 hours. And I will play through it again.

Gonna post full text here for your convenience as I am the author and copyright holder.

Ode to the Chip U Have

November 26, 2024

Why a Ryzen 3700U

I've been in the process of giving my life a mean shake the past couple of years. That's meant significantly less discretionary income, and in my case, that means I didn't replace my very cheap 2019 Asus VivoBook laptop until just now, because it was still a good typewriter. Recently, this VivoBook has seen significantly more use, since it is a better form factor in tight quarters than my desktop machine and it uses maybe 10% the electricity verses that rig.

I decided to reevaluate the gaming potential of the machine after I had solved a few minor complaints with my Arch Linux install. Switching 'Steam Input' packages around and installing FSR support for all Wine applications resulted in a gaming environment that far surpassed my expectations.

I paid roughly $650 for this machine in 2019. It shipped with 8gb of RAM, half of which was soldered to the board. (Soldering RAM is in most cases a sin against decency and the Machine God; I do not recommend it.) I have since upgraded it to around 20gb, the maximum it supports, an arrangement of memory that reminds me most of a stumbling baby giraffe. 4 by 16, why not, maybe Casandalee forgives. The 3700U sports a Vega 10 iGPU, clocks around 2.3 ~ 4 GHz, and TDP is 15 W. As a X7XXU chip, it has the top offered integrated graphics of its generation, according to AMD's stupid naming conventions. The iGPU runs 10 cores that clock at 1400 MHz. For 2019, the CPU performance was stupidly fast for the price point: the iGPU was more of a value-add. But about a year after the chip was deployed in builds, a couple things happened that changed its service trajectory.

First, the pandemic hit, and suddenly everyone was playing Nintendo Switch. The Switch was already popular, but the synergy of everyone staying antisocial and game devs focusing on an underpowered handheld from 2016 served to stabilize and lower the average system requirements of popular games. Some games even recieved performance oriented rebuilds to take advantage of the system's popularity, including Binding of Isaac and Vampire Survivors. The Nintendo Switch's GPU tops out around 910 MHz to serve a maximum of 1080p gaming, but 1080p gaming is rarer on Switch.

Secondly, Steam Deck's APU was developed on the same RDNA 2 platform as the 3700U's Vega 10 graphics. Not only did this improve developer focus on the platform, it also meant that the Vega 10 benefitted from performance tricks that benefit the Steam Deck. This is where FSR came in. Every laptop with a 3700U deployed in it was shipped with at least a 1080p display. That meant that the APU frequently had a target display a resolution-step beyond what it could comfortably render in DirectX/ Vulkan. While FSR could bring the Steam Deck up to playable performance on games by upscaling 540p to 800p or so, it was great for upscaling 720p to 1080p on the 3700U.

This is how we arrived at the peak performance era of the 3700U a full four years after it shipped. This is an absolutely killer chip, and if you are lucky enough to have one lying around, here are some suggestions for what to do with it.

What's Fun to Run?

Here are some suggestions on what this chip plays well:

• Mortal Kombat 9 (720p medium settings, FSR Quality to 1080p)
• Hollow Knight
• Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together
• Pillars of Eternity (720p medium settings, FSR Quality to 1080p)
• Fallout: New Vegas (720p low settings, FSR Quality to 1080p)
• Persona 4
• DUSK
• Borderlands 2 (720p low settings, FSR Quality to 1080p)
• Dave the Diver

What Else?

Since the 3700U is getting long in the tooth, you might be able to salvage a system you aren't using otherwise by turning it into an HTPC. The 3700U (paired with 16GB RAM) will function wonderfully as a media PC for another five years. I find these PCs are also great Linux systems. I switched my Vivobook to Pop!OS and Manjaro with no real difficulty. If you are on the edge of switching your daily driver to Linux, a 3700U laptop is a great place to try out distros.

First came out in 92 for DOS, so very light on resources. It's been ported to modern systems. Go around and make alien allies against a threat to the galaxy. The sense of adventure and humor is great as is the music.

Rogue likes usually run on a toaster. What're people's favorites?

I have a huge soft spot for Crawl: Stone Soup. Runs in a browser, or probably even lower requirements if you download it. The game's design goals want to minimize tedium and gotchas, so it's pretty respectful of your time. Auto-explore and auto-travel are real nice. So is the global search for when you're like "is there anything in this run with resist poison?"

https://crawl.develz.org/

I've played a little nethack, adom, and angband, but I always go back to crawl.

Still fun.

Most player numbers in euro evening time.

Popular Modes: Insta-CTF, Racing servers, Venice insta

Piped

Lemme know if this doesn't belong here.