So I’m pretty new to self hosting as well, but I use Tailscale. They also have the option of working with Mullvad, though I’m not 100% on how that works. Tailscale is a VPN itself, and it’s allowed me to access all of my self hosted stuff everywhere, including on my phone. It’s been really nice, though I understand people might not want to use corporate methods.

Gluetun to my knowledge, when I use it, is just for my qbittorrent stack to access my VPN.

If you don’t want to use something like Tailscale (there’s also a self hosted option called Headscale, and others like Zerotier and I think Netbird?) there’s opening ports and using reverse proxies. I would be really careful about that one, but hopefully I’ve given you some options to look into.

Oh boy my favorite game series!

Admittedly the ones I’ve played the most are 3, 4 and 5, although I’ve tried 2 a couple times a while back. I wouldn’t mind doing it again, I just don’t remember why I kept bouncing off of it.

3 is my favorite, and admittedly I played it at a younger age than I probably should have, as a teenager. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it after getting the ending spoiled to me online, but I always had a fondness for the game and I preordered Reload as soon as I could. I will finish it this time. Mitsuru my love.

4 is my second favorite. Kanji and Naoto in particular really always stood out to me and I used to go by Kanji online for a long time. I made a character who spun into an oc with just traits inspired by him too, who is one of my favorites to write.

5 is fine but my least favorite of the bunch, even though I know a lot of people who only like that one. I felt the pacing was poor and the escalation of the severity of what the adults did wasn’t really going in order. I also didn’t feel any real attachment to the characters, in sharp contrast to the other two games I’ve played.

It still irks me every time a teacher and student romance comes up, or the times the games have been phobic. I wish we had the option to maybe pick between a masc/fem/androgynous looking protag and slap our own pronouns on them and romance who we wanted out of the options regardless of those selections, but I know that’s not ever the game Persona is gonna be. I’m happy they included content warnings at least in Reload.

My english lavender almost died, but I realized in time that it was getting too much water. It’s thinned out some in the center but seems to be growing outwards pretty well and it’s blooming again. I’ll take it as a win.

My aloe and haworthia are still going pretty strong! I’ll have to take a picture of them sometime. The aloe developed a brown center but is still growing and there are more stalks(?) growing out of the center even, so I think it’s okay still?

My mom recently got a tropical hibiscus that I’m not sure I’ve mentioned before. I’m not a big fan of it, because it blooms one day and the next day the blooms are on the ground.

I…went back to Path of Exile.

It was originally just to see how things had changed, but a lot changed and it’s very different. Not that it answered all of my personal issues with it, but I resigned myself to using a build guide. I’ve been enjoying it, surprisingly. Enough that, when I haven’t been out of the house, I usually play it daily.

Progress is going really slow because I’m not that good at the game anymore. But I also made loot filter sounds that spark joy, and I’ve been managing even if I’d like to be at endgame. I’m on act 6 out of 10.

My partner is also playing but doesn’t have a lot of experience. So I’ve been trying to help, which makes it more enjoyable to me because I like to teach.

Not sure if I’m fully going back yet. But I like the league mechanic and am having a good time.

I decided to try Zenless Zone Zero. I’m already a Honkai Star Rail player and I used to play Genshin Impact, although I gave up Genshin because I was irritated with how they handle story and characters. I originally wasn’t going to try ZZZ, but thought it wouldn’t hurt anything. Worst case scenario, I drop it and go back to solely playing HSR.

I’m really enjoying ZZZ’s combat, even if I don’t feel like I’m doing it “right” or optimally yet. The story is nice so far, I love the Persona vibes it gives me, especially Persona 4. Wasn’t expecting that. I got the guaranteed S rank character I wanted (Lycaon!) and I’m skipping the first limited character because… I really don’t like the maid outfit thing. It wasn’t for me on Noelle in Genshin, and it’s not for me here. I love her design otherwise and she’s a shark girl with a shark tail, which is super neat. She has a casual outfit I like a lot. Just. Cannot. Do. The. Maid. Thing.

I might pull on the second half banner. But I haven’t met the character yet so I have no idea if I want her either. It’s a bit frustrating waiting, because my teams are kinda a mess due to lack of characters. But it’s okay. The story comes first and that has my interest so far.

I watched a friend play Sea of Stars and really enjoyed it! I hope it’s a good adventure for you the rest of the way.

Something to note if you’re in it for combat, the difficulty plateaus a bit towards the middle/end. And if you like this one, their other game, The Messenger, is tied to it lore wise, although it’s a different genre.

Also the music slaps.

it’s been really hot here, but I’ve gotten into watering all of the outside plants every day (I water my aloe and haworthia once a week) and they seem to be doing pretty well! even the tropical hibiscus, somehow.

I’m especially happy about my lavender and the roses, I’ve mentioned previously I think that roses are special to me because of my grandmother (my grandfather would grow them in the backyard in these huge rose bushes for her and bring them in) and these are the first ones to ever grow and thrive. they’re not purely red roses, but I do really like the pattern on them.

uploading images keeps erroring out and I’m not sure how to put an image in here from imgur, so here’s a link to the picture of the lavender and roses instead.

I feel you. I dislike most of the pyro characters honestly! and also, oof, Thoma requires ascension materials from a special huge questline island in Inazuma. he’s kind of a pain to level. the pyro four star I like the most is a tie between Gaming and Yanfei. Yoimiya is my favorite 5 star one, and she works well with Thoma, actually.

you can probably guess who some of my favorites are based on profile pic and banner (eventually, anyway, they’re both in Inazuma.)

who do you have your eyes on that you want, anyone besides Diluc and Shenhe? I don’t know what the banners are currently.

yep! here it is on the steam workshop and I hope it helps you out! if you want the video series too, I can shoot that your way, it doesn’t really spoil anything and I didn’t know 95% of the mechanics even existed.

live and drink friend!

genshin is surprisingly good (I was also wow’d when I started playing), but ultimately I found the story lacking in a lot of key places for me (justice for Inazuma’s story especially!) which ultimately led me to quit for now. I played for two years, and have a pretty well established account. however, I have really bad fatigue issues and wasn’t able to keep up as well with the adventuring requirements, such as having to unlock chests for free primogems.

I think playing it until you’re tired of the grating parts is a totally valid way to experience it. especially because it’s free!

like the other comment, I tried Honkai: Star Rail and honestly I love it so much more. it is turn-based combat, but I feel like the writing is better, and they treat their characters better storywise (in contrast to genshin, which imho the hangouts for four stars are not comparable to the story quests some four stars get.) it’s my gacha game of choice, and while I’ve had my nitpicks, I have those with every game I play pretty much. I also agree it’s more f2p friendly.

these are all just my opinion tho! I hope you enjoy your time with the game and that you get the characters you want. may your pulls be blessed!

thank you for this!

I too have brain fog and memory issues in general. I’m glad to hear that systems seem simple to understand but have the high ceiling, I love that kind of thing. I just need to push on I think and try LE again, when I get my desktop back.

what is your class of choice in LE?

story is usually an important part for me! it’s one part of PoE that never impressed me. I might still check out Diablo 4, and I’m glad you laid out a lot of things for me. most of the stuff I could find online was still harping on previous issues that I now know some have been addressed.

funnily enough, I used to love running “lab” (I believe it’s short for “labyrinth” but my memory is shot and it’s been a long time) in Path of Exile, which was running through traps to rush to a boss. they nerfed that route shortly before I quit, too. but you got a lot of rewards at the end that had the potential to be good, and a blessing on existing equipment that you picked. a shame that boss farming in Diablo 4 isn’t as fun, but it’s something I’ll keep in mind when a sale rolls around.

sorting was probably one of the things I disliked the most in PoE, I could never grasp what was worth using or selling that well. goes hand-in-hand with my inability to roll with theorycrafting builds, so to hear Diablo 4 eases that some is nice.

ayyy new thread new game!

well kind of. I’m actually playing Caves of Qud a bit, now that I understand it more (I did end up installing the tutorial mod, thank you for that! and I did watch a small non-spoilery tutorial series as well) and I’m having a really good time. I started out with a character the tutorial recommended and have been fighting fish to level up. planning on taking on the first big quest tho!

sadly I’m stuck on an old gaming laptop that doesn’t really like to play games, so I can’t jump into all the games I want to. even my gacha game I play is pushing it, although I still login every day and do my required stuff. the laptop just gets extraordinarily hot. it handles Caves of Qud, because ascii, but I was wanting to jump in to Elden Ring at some point (I don’t have the DLC, does it make new runs more exciting at the beginning or is it a later thing?) and realized it’s not an option I think due to my laptop’s specs and general grumpiness.

so I’ve been wrestling with Borderlands 3 to get it to work, and my partner and I have been playing that for a bit. I love the BL series, although 2 was imho the best for writing. the humor still annoys me sometimes but I started playing the series with the first one when it came out, as a kid, so it has a special place in my heart. my partner hasn’t really ever played first person shooter games, so Destiny 2 (when we played) and Borderlands was their introduction.

unfortunately I am in it for the grinding, progression and crafting a build (usually something off the wall when I get confident.)

that said, I do love Hades! I’ve been wanting to get the second one despite it being in early access so hopefully that’ll be in my library soon.

I don’t think I was very good at the start at making my own builds in PoE, I think the tectonic slam build magically functioned somehow despite that, hahaha. I do miss the game, I played for a really long time. but it’s not for me anymore.

I’m glad to hear that Last Epoch is still going strong with new stuff. I backed in on Kickstarter long ago because I wanted more PoE-like games, so I’m glad it’s succeeding. I’m hoping that giving it another go will make it stick, because it being the “in-between” sounds like it’ll be just right.

honestly I wasn’t going to watch these and then I started to and now I have to watch all of them. Jauwn is genuinely entertaining and that’s always a nice find for me.

thank you for sharing!

I love the game, but I like extremely slow progress, so I use mods and modify the wealth multiplier(?) as well in the vanilla to make it more challenging. I also really love mods that add content, and there are quite a few out there! it’s annoying to always update mods manually (as compared to the steam workshop) but I did really enjoy when I was playing with my partner and we had 30+ mods!

a family member who I’m close to who also plays Stardew Valley likes to refer to me playing “Dark Souls Stardew Valley” which I thought was funny, especially because I’m terrible at Dark Souls.

overall I really like the game on it’s own. it helps that ConcernedApe has kept adding to it even though he absolutely doesn’t have to (it’s a big game as it is!) and I appreciate him for that. I do get a tiny bit stressed about the timer on days (notably when I’m playing with someone else and they’re really stretching the time thin) but it’s a very, very small thing. I had never played Harvest Moon or any other farming sim games before SDV, so I have no point to compare, but I just really appreciate the game being chill and a change of pace from games I’d usually play, that are almost entirely based on combat.

I didn’t particularly like the layout styling in Pop!_OS and being so new to linux, I didn’t know how much I could change aesthetics wise. KDE looks more appealing to me, I don’t know if it’s because it looks like windows, but that might be a factor? it’s the default on the distro I wanna give a try (Bazzite) which also has nudged me in that direction.

I wasn’t expecting so many people to have used Debian for things other than servers. I have it on a server myself, but I decided I needed something more set up for gaming already on my desktop. what led you to Debian specifically? the stability?

thank you for the tip!! I didn’t even notice it had a steam workshop, hahaha. I got the mod, so hopefully things go a little smoother next time. I have to play on controller currently which is a bit weird but I’m hoping I get used to it.

this is actually what I’m going to be giving a go! I have very little experience (I have servers that run Debian and DietPi, but I get help with those) with linux but I’m really excited to give the KDE version a try. and I’ve been trying to learn, too, because also my partner is going to be moving to a dual boot setup as well. been watching a lot of videos and reading a lot too, especially while my desktop is out of commission.

do you find that anything is missing in Bazzite for you?