Ask a Dragoness...

Xylia

Terrarian
Well, I'm no celebrity, but I figure since nearly everybody else has an AMA, I figured I'd do one too.

Who am I, exactly?

Well... I lurk about commenting on peoples' walls when I see something interesting (or I grumble when the person has comments blocked), and I wrote a couple guides that you might be familiar with, if you've ever read/seen those.

Limitations: I will not answer questions about RL gender, RL Location (The best I'll give you is Southwestern PA, USA), or my RL job.

Anything else should be fair game, unless it is simply too personal.
 
I lurk about commenting on peoples' walls when I see something interesting (or I grumble when the person has comments blocked)
Whaaaat? Me, too!

okay well I'll start with generic questions.

Xylia, what is your favourite class (of the main four) and boss?
 
What would your favorite Ys games in the series be?

Then what would your favorite strategy game be?

Along with your favorite Element (Among the main 4 Fire/Water/Wind/Earth)?

Well... I lurk about commenting on peoples' walls when I see something interesting (or I grumble when the person has comments blocked)

Whaaaat? Me, too!

Horray for all of us being like this as well. Lurking is an interesting activity. And it's annoying when you can't comment on profiles. Especially when it's something very good to say.
 
Whaaaat? Me, too!

I know, right!? You see someone post something cool or something you can reply to, and you go to click the Comment button........and the Comment button's missing. ARRRGH.

Xylia, what is your favourite class (of the main four) and boss?

I'm a heavy, heavy melee user in many games, including Terraria. Most of my playthroughs are melee-centered, but I will use certain other weapons (Megashark, Nimbus Rod, etc) depending on situation. Not a huge yo-yo fan, but I do usually keep one around as they can be life-savers.

Favorite boss? Well... I know the Moon Lord is the end to a huge build-up and the team must have put so much work into programming him, but... I'd have to say he's NOT my favorite boss. It just takes too long to kill him and there's too much RNG with his drops.

No, instead... I'd have to say perhaps Skelly Prime or maybe Plantera. Plantera has a cool theme about him, and if you don't go total wuss and make a huge elaborate arena (or cheese him), he can be a fun fight as you never know what kind of terrain you'll be dodging around.

So yeah, Plantera.

Every time you fight him (unless you drag him to an arena) is different, because the terrain is different, which might require different routes, different tactics, and a different philosophy to approaching the fight. The other bosses tend to be same-old, same-old.... Plantera, the terrain mixes it up sometimes. Sometimes you got hallways to dodge the bouncy spiky balls, other times you got a big open area, and you need to dodge the balls yourself rather than hiding in the terrain... and sometimes you gotta parkour around lots of obstacles, other times you get tested on how good you can fly and dodge while attacking.

I always like a good Plantera fight.
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What would your favorite Ys games in the series be?

Oath in Felghana. Easy. Ark of Napishtim is OK, but I find I didn't like certain changes (that stupid dash jump that is SO ridiculous to do), and Origins is 'eh'... Playing as Adol but Not-Adol wasn't as satisfying and I suck as the mage, lol. So yeah, Oath in Felghana is my favorite. I started with YS3 for SNES, so I have a soft spot for Felghana as it is.

Then what would your favorite strategy game be?

Strategy, you mean RTS like Starcraft and the like?

I don't play those all that often... and I certainly don't PvP, lol. I'm not the PvP guy. But, I did have a fondness for Red Alert 2 (and it's expansion, even though some of the new stuff they added was just cheap). Tried Red Alert 3, but didn't really like it much... didn't like some of the rules changes, and didn't like how the game was basically fanservice, where everybody was showing off their breasts or something stupid like that.

Along with your favorite Element (Among the main 4 Fire/Water/Wind/Earth)?

Water/Ice, obviously. *points to Silver scales*

Actually, RL, I almost never wear a coat in the winter. I keep one in the car in case I break down. T-shirt and jeans, even up to -10F!
 
Are you a reptile or mammal? Reptiles cannot have boobs and.... Yeah. I have been meaning to ask for awhile
 
Are you a reptile or mammal? Reptiles cannot have boobs and.... Yeah. I have been meaning to ask for awhile

The OC is a d20-like Silver Dragon.

Silver Dragons in d20 systems (like Dungeons & Dragons) are capable of an ability called Polymorph Self. Said dragons are normally quadreped (having four legs) and are normally huge (100+ feet long from tip of the snout to the rear shoulders). However, Polymorph Self allows said dragon to take the form of any known creature, or to alter their own bodies in many different ways.

To interact with humans and other demihumans (elves, dwarves, etc), she gives herself a ~6 foot tall bipedal form (two legs), and she also gives herself certain features that make said humans and demihumans more comfortable around her, like her hair (something else dragons do not normally have) and indeed her breasts. They are there for looks to make her gender apparent to those who do not know how to spot gender in a reptile.
 
What is your favorite aspect of Terraria?

I would have to say that it is probably the thing that keeps me doing new playthroughs -- the randomized terrain generation makes sure that no two playthroughs are exactly alike, and they are varied enough that you get near-infinite number of different worlds, terrains, etc. And even the "major" things like combinations of which side the Jungle/Dungeon are on, whether or not there are any pyramids, etc ensure that you get enough variety that each world is going to feel different, especially early in the playthrough when you find yourself navigating these different areas.

And then you have the RNG aspect of it, and/or where you decide to start exploring first. You might find a Cloud-in-a-Bottle in the first 2 minutes because there's a cave entrance next to your spawn that leads straight to a cabin. Or maybe in another playthrough, you couldn't find any cave entrances but yet you found the snow biome and instead found an Ice Blade or an Ice Boomerang and now you start with an uber-powerful weapon (for that point in the game, anyways).

There's just so many possibilities. You can also let the terrain choose your building style (lots of crevasses near the starting location? Maybe I'll build a bunch of hobbit holes... giant tree with all the living wood tools? I'll turn it into a base!) or your playstyle (surface water bolt = magic playthrough! Found a boomstick in the Jungle very early? GUN TIME!).

So, so many possibilities, all thanks to the incredibly complex terrain generation.
 
Do you have any philosophy you live by? What is the thing you like most about people? If you had one wish (with no ability to dupe it or choose something like omnipotence) what would you use it for?
 
Starting to think I should have made separate threads for me and my OC, lol.

@The kamen rider : Dragons have their own physicians and healers, and my OC being a warrior is naturally trained in the arts of first-aid and the use of some basic field medicine.

@Aesir : Uh. The Golden Rule ranks pretty high on the list of things I live by, or at least things I try to live by (nobody's perfect, especially not myself). For those not familiar with it, it is based upon a concept of treating everybody the same or better than you'd like them to treat you. Uh, things I like most about people... well, I don't really know all that many people but it seems like everybody's got unique ideas (though a lot of people don't make their ideas known sadly). There's lots of talent and creativity but a lot of it gets stamped out before it ever materializes into anything you can experience unless it is uncommonly good.

As for my wish, well... I wish the various people in the world would stop doing their evil stuff. Whether it is the violence in the Middle-East, or the immorality found in the West (not saying the West is the only place you find it, it just happens to be more visible!), I wish people would just stop it. The world would be a much better place.
 
What do you think about the use of Elements in games overall?

And if you think they should work like a Pokemon System with everything having strengths and weaknesses, or if it should be a hierarchal system with Elements getting stronger throughout the game until they merge into a "best element" (Such as if Fire turned to Lava, then to Plasma)?

Then what do you enjoy the most about creating and joining discussions about things such as Terraria/Other Games/Other Topics? What I mean is what you enjoy the most from discussing with other people? (Sorry if this question is vague, I'll try to reword it if it is)

Also strange that this hasn't been asked yet, but what got you into Terraria, and then to join TCF in the 1st place?
 
Dragons are mystical beings. Do they have any natural inclination towards magic? If so, what kind of magics do they favor?
 
What do you think about the use of Elements in games overall?

Depends on the game, really. Some games have really neat element systems, other games are rather "blah" and they lack creativity and elements either mean nothing and are only there for show, or it's the usual "element is weak against its opposite" thing that's been done a million times over.

And if you think they should work like a Pokemon System with everything having strengths and weaknesses, or if it should be a hierarchal system with Elements getting stronger throughout the game until they merge into a "best element" (Such as if Fire turned to Lava, then to Plasma)?

I'm not all that familiar with Pokemon, but I think I know the general gist behind it -- each monster family is weak against one, and strong against another and it isn't just "opposites are good against each other", IIRC? A system like that tends to work fairly well.

Final Fantasy XI probably had the "best" element system I've ever seen. In it, you had 8 elements:

Fire, Earth, Water, Wind, Ice, Lightning, Light, Dark.

Each in-game day had an element attached to it. Instead of Monday, Tuesday, etc... you had Fireday, Earthday, etc. The order I listed the elements above is the order that they happen in game. It worked like this:

(> means strong against, < means weak against)

Fire > Ice
Fire < Water
Earth > Lightning
Earth < Wind
Water < Lightning
Wind < Ice

And Light and Dark are the only two "old style" elements that opposed each other.

On each element day, that element was 10% more powerful and the element that is weak against that element was 10% less powerful (Ice was 10% weaker on Fireday).

So that's the coolest element system I've seen. They had it ridiculously well-defined, to the point that nearly every single monster and spell in the game had an element attached to it (Silence is a Wind Spell and would rarely work on an Ice Elemental for example IIRC).

Then what do you enjoy the most about creating and joining discussions about things such as Terraria/Other Games/Other Topics? What I mean is what you enjoy the most from discussing with other people? (Sorry if this question is vague, I'll try to reword it if it is)

I suppose I'm just bored a lot of times... I've gotten kind of bored of most games, and I get lots of free time on my hands, and I don't really know anybody RL beyond coworkers who I almost never see outside of work so it gets boring and I don't really have much of anywhere else to talk to people, so... here and Chucklefish forums are the only two real places to talk to peeps at.

Also strange that this hasn't been asked yet, but what got you into Terraria, and then to join TCF in the 1st place?

It's hard to remember exactly how I got into Terraria... IIRC... I saw it on Sale one day on Steam (this was Pre-1.2, it was somewhere in the 1.1 days though I can't remember exactly when I bought it (seems there's no way to find that out on Steam unless you stop playing a game for months). Anyways, I saw it on sale, I never heard of it before, looked at the videos and I rather liked the pixel art style... it was pixel art, but yet not 4-bit pixel art like you'd see on an Atari 2600 like some "Pixel Art" games on Steam can be at times. It, to me, looked like a SNES game, only it looked more complex and I was like "hey I'll try it, it's only like $5."

Well, it took me forever to learn how to do anything, and it was back when we had no map feature, etc. I constantly got lost, the mech bosses are nearly impossible due to the unavailability of weapons in hardmode, pre-mechs (IIRC, just about everything required mech souls in 1.1).

Well, I started looking stuff up on Wiki, and I bounced around in Easymode quite a bit until 1.2 came out then I started actually having fun with hardmode once I found weapons that could actually kill the mechs.

As for how I got onto TCF, well I floated around TO shortly before TCF came to be, and that's how I heard about TCF starting up... as to how I got onto TO, I probably got led there from wiki or I had a question that I couldn't find the answer to on wiki or something, I don't recall exactly.... oh wait.

Yes... I do remember. The thought actually came to me while I was typing that, lol.

Remember this?

I remember after 1.2 came out, I thought about all the struggles I had as a newbie, not knowing how to do hardly anything in the game, and feeling hopelessly lost and I figured that there surely had to be other people who picked up Terraria, tried it, and went "meh, I can't figure out how to do Anything in this game..." and stopped playing it which is a sad thing indeed, considering how much awesome is packed in that $5-10.

Well, I wanted to write such a guide for wiki, but as I started writing it I figured it was just too large to dump on the wiki, so I did a search for forums and found TO.

I wrote that for TO originally, and then right after I finally "finished" it (without screenshots) the news of TCF hit, and I came over here, and re-published it over here. (And of course, I wrote the 1.3.0 version after 1.3.0 came out which I think turned out a bit better).

And of course, along with writing the guide I naturally engaged in other conversations, etc. Now it's a daily thing where I get on, check messages, etc.

Dragons are mystical beings. Do they have any natural inclination towards magic? If so, what kind of magics do they favor?

Dragons are... something you find in many different places, and there are many many different kind. My particular kind, they normally do, though my OC is actually incapable of casting magic (long, long story) even though her family is made up of rather powerful mages. And the type of magic? Ever played a d20 system (D&D, Pathfinder, etc)? That kind of arcane magic.

My OC is actually loosely based on d20 silvers with some homebrew thrown in.
 
Not sure if you still watch this thread, but if you do....

If you could to turn into 3 different creatures, what would you turn into, and why? You would be able to switch between them and your normal form at will.
 
Wow, can't believe this old old thread got replies lol.

So, uh...

@TechionPrime34 🌳 : Mmh. I wonder if the humanoid form counts as one? Other than that, well... can't say I've felt the need to take any other form, to be honest.

@HandsomeSquirrel🐿️ : In Terraria, eh. Been awhile since I've played (been wanting to, but feel there's not much point until the update), favorite NPCs... you mean aesthetics or functionality? I'm usually a more functionality type, so the obvious ones would be merchant, goblin, and I'd have to say the guide because I'm too lazy to alt-tab to wiki when I can't remember what the recipe for something is. As for their quotes, I can't really remember very many of them.
 
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