Good luck getting the coop finished! I still need to finish the coops and run for our chickens and ducks - they’re currently living in our woodshed at night and free-ranging during the day until those are done. Just a heads up in case you aren’t aware already - if your guinea(s) is/are male, it might start getting aggressive when it hits around a year old, so try to prepare accordingly. Ours got very mean towards any chickens other than the two Brahmas it had bonded with and was actually harming the others. Not a guarantee that it will happen, but it might be good to have a separate space for the sake of your flock if it does. For now though, enjoy the babies; it never gets old having little peepers scrambling around and being chaos!

My week is going well, all things considered. I’m in the New England area and all the surrounding areas are suffering from flooding, but my town is unscathed at the moment. The ducks are pretty happy with all of the rain, the chickens not so much, and I’m annoyed that the shipping container our friends gave us for a duck coop can’t be painted to protect it from the moisture, but I’m overall thankful that the government response has been pretty quick and everyone we know is safe and sound so far.

Congrats on the internet upgrade! I live in a rural area as well, but I (unfortunately) had to cave and get Starlink since the only other option is blazing-fast 5Mbps DSL, which unfortunately won’t cut it for my remote work. There’s a multiple-municipality fiber co-op getting established at the moment though, and I’m hoping that we’ll be connected with them by the end of the year. About the same price, but way faster speeds and way lower latency (and no reliance on Musk), so I’ll be switching as soon as I find out it’s an option!

If you and your partner enjoy RPG’s, I highly recommend Divinity: Original Sin (and Divinity: Original Sin 2, though we haven’t finished that one yet). Very story-driven, the tactical combat is a blast when you get into strategizing and collaborating, and there are all sorts of non-combat shenanigans you can get up to as well (the second even more so than the first).

This picture illustrates the difference between the different dragon and dragon-adjacent creatures! My partner is also pretty adamant about this subject, so I’ve wound up developing the same pedantry.

Completely agree! Beehaw fills the time left open by my dropping Reddit, but it isn’t a replacement for Reddit in my mind. Instead, I see it as it’s own thing, primarily centered around socializing, and that’s reflected in the fact that I’ve already posted here in a couple of weeks than I did in my decade or so of using Reddit. It’s a lot more interaction and active use instead of passive consumption and lurking, and I really like that. Seeing all the people trying to file bug reports for Lemmy/Jerboa and making demands in Beehaw Support bugs me since (as far as I’m concerned) the admins have already gone above and beyond what I think they’re responsible for, and I appreciate every bit of it.

I did a small write-up off my understanding here, but that’s coming from someone that’s only dabbled in both and I may have missed some stuff.

From an admitted non-expert, the way I understand it is this: A roguelike is turn based, procedurally generated to some extent, has some form of time/turn crunch tied to a carried resource (food/hunger is pretty common), and has leveling involved as part of the core gameplay loop. The idea being that you try to balance out luck (with the items/equipment you find, enemies that spawn, how well you’re doing in a particular combat, etc) with skill (knowledge of the game systems, knowing how to build, knowing when to cut your losses and run, when you have enough resources to gain some levels, etc.). There is also perma-death: Once you die, your run is over and you have to start fresh.

A roguelite involves some of these aspects, but plays things much looser. Typically there’s some level of perma-death in that a run is over when you die, but there’s also a meta-currency to allow for progress/power upgrades between runs (like increasing starting health per run by using items that have a chance to drop during a run). They are often not turn-based, and don’t necessarily have the same time crunch. The similarities lie in the fundamental idea: balance luck introduced by randomization/procedural generation and skill from game mastery, and if you fail then you have to start a new run. Different folks will have different criteria for the two terms (I saw a purist say that it’s not a real roguelike if it has anything other than ASCII graphics), but that’s how I summarize them.

I know it’s not what you meant, but I immediately thought of this guy with Trump hair

Hollow Knight is a solid contender for my favorite game, so good choice! I’m going to try to keep things spoiler-free as much as I can since a huge part of the experience is exploring and slowly unraveling things. Here’s a list of (hopefully spoiler-free) tips that I think might help.

Not much will make sense at first.

Hollow Knight follows the Dark Souls school of lore: You don’t get an exposition dump in the beginning giving you the whole background behind what’s going on. It’s perfectly fine to be confused about what you are doing and why. In fact, I’d say that’s an intentional choice that winds up making a ton of sense after a certain point in the game.

Careful looking up info

Because of this fact and how long it’s been out (as well as how popular it is), it’s unfortunately very easy to spoil things. Be careful with that, and make sure to tag on “spoiler free” to any searches you do on the game.

It’s difficult, but fair

You’re likely going to die a lot, that’s true. That being said, there aren’t really any situations that I can think of where I had no way to avoid dying. The nice thing is, the game sort of sets itself up in a way that you (hopefully) learn different techniques over time, and the fact that it’s a metroidvania means you get upgrades drip-fed to you, so you don’t have a million things to try to learn at once. I’m not great at games nowadays, but I did still manage to beat the game. I never completed the boss rush stuff, but that’s more because I’ve never been a huge fan of boss rushes in general.

It’s methodical

You don’t have a time limit during fights. Feel free to take your time learning an enemy’s attacks; there are generally tells you can keep an eye out for so you can prepare to react appropriately. Don’t be afraid to keep your distance as much as you can while in a fight.

Don’t forget your Soul

Soul is the game’s “magic” system, and it’s a pretty big help in keeping you from dying. You recharge it a bit each time you hit an enemy, so as long as you’re able to run in, hit an enemy, and get away without getting hit, you can recharge enough for another use. There are also generally minor enemies in each area that are relatively easy to deal with - these are basically prime candidates for recharging Soul if you’re low.

Be sure to explore

There are going to be quite a few dead ends during your journey. These are usually places you just don’t have the tools to deal with yet, so if it seems like you can’t progress, try somewhere else and come back later! Another thing to keep in mind is you’ll sometimes hear or see weird stuff on your journeys - it can be worth putting in some extra effort to see what the source is. Something that I would say is important for this is the map and quill you can buy in the shop in the first town. It updates when you sit down at a bench, so don’t worry if it doesn’t seem to “work” right away.

If you’re having money troubles…

Grab the “Gathering Swarm” charm from the store in the first town, go sit on a bench, and equip it. It won’t make your money problems disappear, but it’ll help.

Enemy spawn mechanics

Enemies only respawn when you sit on a bench. Yes, that goes for the entire map. Yes, I have cleared a significant number of enemies across multiple zones without sitting on a bench and verified this (it was to help me finish a specific side quest). No, bosses will not respawn.

Hopefully this gives you a decent set of tips to get you started! I hope you enjoy your journey as much as I did when I played the first time!