[2015] What happened this year to Rayque?

As the always recurring tradition on my blog, it's the 31st of December - that means it's time for another summary! This is the fifth annual summary on this blog, which also means I've been blogging for quite a while by now.

While it's relatively still early today - but at least "with a few hours left", I (and the rest of the Rayque3 Staff) wish you
a great 2016. 2015 has been a very interesting year for me - I dare to say it had one of the largest ups and downs in my life, with a lot of game changing events. This year has been a very important foundation for the next two years.

[Lego] My LEGO® Collection has been archived at Brickset

Hi guys! About 7 hours later, a lot of digging through parts and about 30 kilograms of paper, I've managed to archive about 80 to 90 percent of my LEGO® collection on Brickset.
You can find it here!

The reason why my LEGO® collection archive will never be fully complete, is because a lot of LEGO® sets I own have been donated or purchased in bulk. About 25%. While I know more or less what I have in my supply, it's sometimes a bit too hard to find out what smaller sets were included with said donation/bulk.
Some of them are also incomplete, especially on the baseplates.
At least the larger ones are archived!

I've also only archived sets I know for 100% that I own them. So for a few particular ones I may have doubts which one I actually own - but those might probably be corrected in the future.
There's a lot of small(er) sets that aren't listed yet.

You can also find the URL to the Brickset archive on the right menu of my blog, under "My LEGO® Projects".
It's named [Archive] My LEGO® Collection, similar to how I've archived the Sets under Black light blogposts that
I've made in the past.

By the way, between the pile of LEGO® manuals, I've also managed to find a Nintendo 64 catalogue.
Not a Japanese one to my surprise, consider about everything of the N64 was purchased when I used to live
in Tokyo. It was a Dutch one. It mentions the upcoming release of games like Conker, Donkey Kong World,
Ghouls 'n Ghosts 64, Kirby's Air Ride, Tales of Phantasia 2, Mega Man 64, Superman: The Animated Series, and some others. Well, we all know how some of them ended up. There's no time to waste!

That's it for today guys - I'll see you again next post!

[YT] About damn time.

Took you long enough. If you want to do things properly, try to get it right the first time.
Some other small orders are still on the way, especially two Amiibo's (imported Famicon R.O.B. and a back ordered Meta Knight). Next year I'm going for LEGO® City Undercover and Dimensions, together with a fourth GameCube controller.

Image was taken at the start of this month, in case you wonder - the Wii U bundle was pre-ordered somewhere between September and November.

That's it for today! I'll see you guys agai-

"Wait a second. Didn't you mention you wouldn't go for a Wii U, mentioned in this post?"
Well, you're right. But if you read carefully; I used the word "probably". At first, there were no plans for getting this console - but that was about two years ago. Having no plans to get something doesn't equal actually wanting one -
the Wii U is pretty awesome and that has been my opinion for a long while. It's such a shame that most people rate it as trash just because it sold poorly.

Despite I've been wanting to play LEGO® City Undercover since its release, just getting a console for a single game wouldn't justify the price for just the sake of playing the game - even though I'd love to try that game out. After a while that "single game" has expanded to a total of four - Xenoblade Chronicles X, Super Smash Bros for Wii U,
LEGO® City Undercover and LEGO® Dimensions, and that did feel like a lot of (replay) value to offer.

Happy holidays from the Rayque3 Staff!

[EMS] First Pink Bean solo!

Woah, I didn't expect me to *actually* be able to solo Pink Bean! I thought I was nowhere near the required damage... but apparently I was. A few friends encouraged me to try Pink Bean for a few months by now, so I bit the bullet and gave it a try. But man, that first try was tense!

I might have not been to Pink Bean before, but with my general knowledge about the boss I had since before the
Big Bang update, I didn't go entirely blind. I already knew about the invisible border that would activate Damage Reflect, and that I could survive one if I'd ever messed up my response time.

So yeah, this was pretty much my first attempt without doing any runs in the past (solo or party), despite you'd expect me to have tried it due to the fact that I haven't quitted or substituted my Hero in the past 8 years. There's a lot of bosses I have never faced before in this game, surprisingly.

The largest surprise to me for the run is that I've been able to defeat it without dying at all. Perhaps it was a lucky shot,
and I'm pretty sure there was a high risk to do Pink Bean as a Hero (consider my class is relatively frail).

Earlier this year I've also faced Chaos Zakum for the first time, similar to Pink Bean - without any experience prior,
only certain knowledge and research when it was initially released before Big Bang. Actually I did die twice before I managed to successfully solo one (there's no respawning at Chaos Zakum), because the flame pillars dish out 36k damage on me, despite having 85% Damage Reduction active at the time. Well, Heroes do play different than most classes, after all. Unless those pillars are 50% HP and thus fixed, which I actually genuinely hope that's the case (please correct me in the comments if that's true) because in context, 36k damage with 85% reduction sucks.

I haven't tried Chaos Horntail yet, but I know I already have enough damage output to beat it. It's more that
I'm careful and I feel not ready for it yet. Which is kind of ironic because I've spend over 11.000 hours on this Hero and have achieved a lot of other things that most Heroes wouldn't. Then again, success at first try. But damn, Pink Bean is surely a milestone to many players - so I'm happy that I can check this one off the list to my (probably) never-ending career on EMS.

In case you wonder, I'm still at 33%-STR and 120 DEX Base. The latter won't change, but it's still impressive if
you think about it... Having only 39% Boss Damage, relatively low %-STR, certain Skill Links at Level 1 and a character that's just barely halfway scrolled. Proves that my custom build does work, I guess.

That's it for today! I'll see you guys again next post!