The gate has been breached.

The concept of “the zone” isn’t a new one. It’s been used in professional sports for some time.  For most people, the closest we get is when we roll 2 Yathzees in the same game.  Something in the air just lines up perfect and boom, things are going your way.  I’ve had sequences in D&D where the rolls were just non-stop crits (off-setting the times where I couldn’t hit a barn).

The seems to be more common in games with an element of chance.  For multiplayer games, this chance is the other people playing with/against you.  Maybe they all line up for a group headshot.  Maybe your team sequences their special attacks to put up a wall of invincibility & death.  A pre-made group has better odds of this, as you’re reducing the number of chances for negative outcomes and more of the positive.  I get the adrenaline rush of this, and counter, I understand why the toxic side comes out when random is random.

But single player games… woo.  The game number crunching is where you need to fit.  In some places it’s about learning the timing (Ninja Gaiden), in others it’s about the stars aligning with the pebbles on the beach (most open world games).  We’ve all seen some of the Zelda/Switch videos… where the open world allows for tremendous experimentation and super fast runs.  Awesome Games Done Quick is an event that celebrates speed runs, and is predicated on every second being in the zone.

But for mortal folk, we pray to the gaming gods for that one event, that one single run where everything goes perfect and you are more of a passenger than a participant.

T-Rex Attack

I upgraded a few bits and went back in with some bombs. I took it a bit slower once I found him, hoping to surprise him.  Which did work out.

There’s a particular move set that only occurs when you are above your prey.  You jump on their back/head and go saiyan. I managed to do that.  I was riding a T-Rex like a bucking horse.   It was glorious.

After he finally threw me off, he decided to run away.  I tried coaxing him back for the same type of attack but that wasn’t in the cards.  I did end up hitting him a few more times in the legs, enough for him to run off.

Right into a Rathalos.  A giant flying, fire breathing, poison striking beast of an enemy.  He picked up the T-Rex like he was a doll, then threw him on the ground (cue music).  Great.

He ran away, I jumped on his head once more and then he was limping off.  I had not realized where he kept his lair in the past.  Always too dead to make way there.  Anyhow, he ends up in the large tree area, where there are multiple floors, each acting like a trampoline.

For some reason he decides to take a nap.  Great time to lay out some bomb barrels.  A few explosions and he’s in the death throws.  Now, a few-ton T-Rex moving on a trampoline means that I am not moving.  It took another 5 minutes before I could find solid footing.  And once I did, a single hit to the back of the leg was what took him down.

Now, I’m not saying every dice roll was a natural 20.  But I am saying that I didn’t roll a single 0, and that once I did roll those 20s, it was glorious.

Now onto collecting some bugs.