SteamWorld Quest: The Hand of Gilgamech is the latest game in the SteamWorld series, and it’s out for Nintendo Switch today! It’s a Fantasy Card Battle RPG! I made this guide to help players find all the items, secrets, and handle all the bosses! It’s still slightly a work in progress (the game came out today) but I’ll keep updating it. You can help me finish by helping out with the cards spreadsheet!
If you have any particularly good decks or strategies you like to use, let everyone know in the comments! Also see my Video Content on SteamWorld Quest. Also feel free to stop by my Discord Server.
Updates
2019-06-18: Added a nice searchable, sortable table of weapons and effects. Thanks to everyone who helped with the spreadsheet! Added preliminary card table. Need to tidy it up.
Added some official art to pretty things up. Added secret locations to some of the areas in Walkthrough.
SteamWorld Quest Quick Start Guide
General
You might think grinding wouldn’t matter much for a card battle game, only letting you get new cards. However, cards’ affects are based on your characters’ base stats, which grow significantly each level. If you’re stuck, don’t be afraid to grind, even one level can make a large difference.
Don’t worry about missing things; you can replay chapters later on, getting the opportunity to fully revisit the story, treasure, and enemy formations even if you miss something.
Difficulty can be changed at any time; feel free to adjust it up or down at will!
There’s no real penalty for losing; you’re shot back to the last Gilgamech statue you healed at but you’ll have to try again of course.
Makai Senki Disgaea RPG, the Disgaea mobile game (not to be confused with Makai Wars) has been delayed for an estimated 3 months due to major infrastructure and coding issues rendering the game unplayable.
Players have been having trouble with Disgaea RPG for weeks as noted by the official @Disgaea_App account. Since I made the Makai Wars guide and plenty in my Discord server were (trying to) play Disgaea RPG I thought I’d put up a quick news release on the situation in english.
Announcement of the 3 month delay on their official Twitter:
One of the best resources for good, free games is definitely Itch.io, the Steam for indies. Today I’m introducing my Avant-Garden collectionon Itch.io, a collection of surreal, engrossing, and sometimes just lovably weird games that I love. And most of them are point-blank free!
Free Points is a series of weekly(ish) free game recommendations. The games may range from the most surreal of Alt Games to the most traditional of platformers; the only requirements for a Free Points game is that they’re free (real free, not free to play!) and very much worth your time.
What Is Avant-Garden?
Avant-Garden started out as “Cool Weird Games”, a collection I’d add every…cool, weird game I found into! I frequently use Itch.io to find interesting experiences for my YouTube, and after removing games from my “to review” queue, I liked to add them to another “worth playing” collection for others to see.
After a while I grew a bit tired of the old name, and I’ve noticed some of my favorite game developers don’t appreciate the simplicity of calling their games “weird” in general discourse—though I certainly don’t mean it as a negative myself! It is a bit frustrating to see fantastic, unique games reduced to “look at this weird crap I found!” on various big YouTubers’ channels, after all.
Looking for a better word, I came upon a fun pun and Avant-Garden was born. I find it encapsulates the feeling of a quick, meditative romp that many of these games offer, and matches the experience I have of cultivating and adding to the collection. I adore finding new games to add to my garden.
Not absolutely everything in Avant-Garden is free; many are Pay What You Want, some are premium, but most can be played free of charge. Itch.io collections helpfully list the price if any.
Escaped Chasm is a brand new, Pay What You Want game on itchio by Temmie Chang. You probably know her from Undertale, but this game is an unrelated project by Temmie herself!
I believe this guide is complete (the game’s fairly small), but as always if I missed anything please let me know in the comments! Or just let everyone know what you thought of the game.
Escaped Chasm Mini-Review
Escaped Chasm is a tiny but very engrossing little game. For the price of free and the light time investment of ~20 minutes for a playthrough, it’s very much worth a playthrough.
The game’s heavier and sadder themes may be a surprise to those already familiar with Temmie’s work, which makes the early impact of the game quite the hook.
While short the game makes great use of it’s time and leaves you feeling for our Lonely Protagonist. Some Temmie-Brand bits of humor are dotted throughout,
Gameplay Spoilers
especially in the Developer Room!
While something of a prelude to a more complete game that may or may not happen, Escaped Chasm is a very intriguing romp through a puzzling world. Here’s hoping we’ll eventually see a follow up to answer the many questions the game leaves us with.
Escaped Chasm Walkthrough
Note there’s no save feature, it’s short and meant to be played in one go. Turn off Dash in the options before playing, it causes a bug and does not increase your walking speed.
The game doesn’t have combat or what would normally be considered puzzles, so play at your own pace and figure things out before resorting to the guide. I’ve written the fastest way to finish each day (for replays) and noted extra items to collect here.
You can hold down the Z key to speed up dialog you’ve already seen. Do not press X when at the Diary Menu, it ends the game. If the game crashes when you watch the TV, turn off dashing in the options menu. You can also control with the mouse instead of the keyboard.
Day 1
All you have to do to finish this day is check on Melody (her snake) and read your diary, then you can go to bed.
This is a guide for Tap Tap Fish – AbyssRium, with only the April Spring Tea Party Event (2019) information. See the main guide for other events and general game information. Feel free to add any of my guides to your homescreen for easy access, and offline loading of guides you’ve used (on supported devices)!
Note with this update, there’s 10 more Fusion Fish in the main tank (some required for the event!). The Christmas, Freshwater, and Halloween Tanks all had their (terrible) level caps removed as well!
This is a guide for Tap Tap Fish – AbyssRium, with only the May Wonderland Event (2019) information. See the main guide for other events and general game information. Feel free to add any of my guides to your homescreen for easy access, and offline loading of guides you’ve used (on supported devices)!
Updated 2019-05-03: May Wonderland Event is live. Video Guide. Note that cheating the clock doesn’t work for almost anything anymore including ads.
This is a guide for Tap Tap Fish – AbyssRium, with only the March Circus Event Wonderland Event (2019) information. See the main guide for other events and general game information. Feel free to add any of my guides to your homescreen for easy access, and offline loading of guides you’ve used (on supported devices)!
This event comes to the Abyss Tank along with 10 new Fusion Fish. It’s on a slow rollout like all events, so it may take up to a week to arrive on your device. Just wait. It also comes with 10 new fusion fish, see the main guide for how to unlock those.
APK. If you don’t know what this means, don’t install it.
Total Cost: Very High (375,000 candy)
Costumes
Close the main menu and tap the Painter’s Palette icon to access these, like every other event.
Clown Costume
1000 Candy
Required for a fish
Circus Stage Dye
200 Candy
Required for the Hermit Crab, buy this immediately
Today it looks like YouTube is rolling out the long-awaited Copyright Match tool, which will let normal Creators deal with video-stealers. In the past it’s mostly just been larger companies that have been privy to Content ID and other more exclusive tools.
The tool was announced a while ago but (at least for me) just released and was added to the YouTube Studio Beta, where it can be found in the new Copyright section.
How Copyright Match Works
You’ll get an email when you have access to Copyright Match in the new Studio Beta dashboard. It’s not presently in the old Creator Studio.
You’ll be shown something like below, assuming you have any matches. It lists the videos, some metadata on them, and includes links to the video to see it. You should check the video manually to see the exact context it’s used in, though as you can see in the below images, my matches were all 100% direct rips with not so much as a commentary track or video edit of any kind.
Pokecord shut down very suddenly today on 2020-05-30. It sounds like it won’t be back, sorry. This guide will be left as it was for reference/history. This guide may or may not apply to off-brand Pokecord clones like Pokecord 2.0 that many people are using.
You can support me and my guides monthly on Patreon (and score some rewards like cute cat pictures)! The more I earn the more time I can spend on improving guides like this. My PayPal is a thing too if you can’t do monthly subscriptions.
2020-05-30: Pokecord suddenly shut down. F in the chat.
2020-03-19: Pokecord bot settings were moved into p!config so I updated that section
2020-02-18: Tidied up some information, made it more clear how spawns work
2019-05-13: Found an Evolution Spreadsheet since many pokemon have non-standard evolutions in Pokecord.
2019-05-08: Thanks to @DocSigma for pointing out the undocumented p!shrink command! Added it to the list
2019-05-03: Pokecord now has a “real” pokedex and a 50 credit reward for pokemon caught after this update. Use p!collection to see the “old” pokedex. Updated the command list.
How Pokecord works is it pulls Pokemon data from Bulbapedia. Each pokemon has base stats, IVs, a Nature, Moves, and can potentially be Shiny (presumably at the standard astronomically low rate).
Pokemon can be traded and fought (1 v 1), and there’s no penalty for losing a fight and no reason not to catch or trade anything. There’s no winning or losing the game, so you can play as casually or intensely as you like.
Pokecord isn’t a perfect Pokemon clone however. Some important points to note: Pokemon do not have teams or abilities in Pokecord (right now). Your ability to earn money is limited to dueling (a pittance), voting for Pokecord daily on Discord Bots (kinda…icky), or selling pokemon on the ingame market (which is pretty weird).
Where To Play Pokecord
You can play on any Discord server that has Pokecord enabled. You can either invite the bot to your own server or join the official pokecord server (expect catching spawns to be incredibly competitive).
Spawns seem to be a combination function of time and how many messages posted, meaning a more active server means more pokemon—but also more competition to catch those pokemon. On fast, popular servers, mobile users have a pretty strong disadvantage compared to keyboard users.
Quickstart
Once the bot is in your server, pokemon will start to spawn based on time and number of posts. Type p!start to get started, then p!pick (starter name) to select a starter.
When a pokemon appears, the first to correctly p!catch it gets it. There’s no limit to how many pokemon you can get, so there’s no reason (other than politeness) to not catch a pokemon. In a server with friends, consider letting other players catch pokemon you already have (alternately, catch them and trade them to who wants them for free).
It helps to add all pokemon you’re planning to duel with to your favorites list, so you don’t have to go through the whole pokemon list every time. Pokemon are always referenced by number not name in commands, so this will help you find the numbers quickly.
Pokemon level just by chatting in a server with Pokecord active; only your active pokemon gets experience this way though, so be sure to p!select who you want to raise. Without an Everstone (in p!shop), Pokemon that can evolve via level will automatically evolve at that level with no cancel prompt.
Duels are very buggy but there is no harm in losing, so do them as much as you want. See the Duel Commands section below for pitfalls.
What’s Missing/Different In Pokecord
As far as I can tell these are the major differences/omissions from Pokecord
Teams/battles for more than 1v1 pokemon
Status/stat changing moves do not work at all
Pokemon gender, meaning some evolutions are presumably random? and some moves likely do not work
You can’t cancel evolutions manually, you must buy and hold an everstone
Held items only exist for evolving or preventing evolution
Abilities are also completely omitted
There is no breeding of pokemon
Mega Evolutions work differently and are semi-permanently activated out of battle. Use p!mega to toggle Mega Evolution state rather than having them hold the stone in battle.
Aside from selling pokemon (Team Rocket, anyone?) there’s no effective way to get money at a reasonable scale
Any pokemon can be a random spawn, including baby pokemon, legendary pokemon, starters, and evolved forms that aren’t usually available.
First, there was the Link to the Past Randomizer. Then, the Super Metroid randomizer. And now comes Pozzum’s Axiom Verge randomizer! Since SirTapTap.com basically started out with an Axiom Verge Guide, I definitely had to check it out. (Thanks to the dev for stopping by our Discord too!)
What Is The Axiom Verge Randomizer?
If you’ve never played a Randomizer before, the basic concept is to randomize some major gameplay aspects of a classic video game to enhance replayability and provide a new challenge for players who have already beaten, 100%, or even speedrun the base game.
Randomizers make particularly exciting things to speedrun, livestream, or race due to the unpredictability. I’ve streamed the Link to the Past Randomizer in the past and I’ll be streaming the Axiom randomizer tuesday!
In the case of Pozzum’s randomizer, it’s the item locations that are currently randomized. As a Metroidvania with multiple movement-based upgrades, that means how you get about the existing map can change drastically based on which items you get early (or late!). You can also randomize the enemies, if you enjoy death.
According to Pozzum, the project is briefly on hold while they build a new PC, but it’s still being worked on. Check the Releases page on Github to see the latest changes, and report issues so Pozzum can address them.
What It Does
Basic features of the current version (0.6.1.1):
Creates a separate randomAV.exe file to play without breaking the base game
Randomizes all item locations
Items, especially early on, are placed somewhat to keep the game possible
About 25% of seeds currently are impossible to complete however
Option to remove temporary one-way segments in Zi and Ukkin Na from the base game
This reduces the potential of impossible-to-escape situations
(Base game fun fact: the 1 way Zi fall isn’t actually one0way; if you savewarp you can return, a common speedrun strategy)
Option to randomize enemies too
This could get painful fast
Option to generate a list of spoilers for hints/etc
Optional Practice mode which gives all weapons/upgrades in early rooms to allow you to try out odd combinations to get used to gear you wouldn’t normally use early game
How To Get The Axiom Verge Randomizer
You only need two things: a current Steam copy of Axiom Verge, and the randomizer itself, which is free on Github. Epic Games Store’s version of the game will be supported soon, but doesn’t work currently.
Note the program generates an alternate executable file for AV rather than altering your “clean” copy directly. Your “clean” game and randomizer share save files though, so be careful with them. You can copy and paste your save folder if you need more save slots or want to protect your pre-randomization saves.
If you don’t have Axiom Verge on PC, it’s actually free on Epic Games Store from now until Feb 21st 2019, so grab it quick! As said above, it won’t work yet, but you should be able to get it soon. Use that time to practice the base game.
Step by Step Install
Install Axiom Verge from Steam
Download the randomizer
Extract the randomizer somewhere you can find it (desktop etc)
Run AxiomRandomizer.exe
Let it move it’s files to Appdata when it asks (avoids permissions issues)
The app will ask for your Axiom Verge installation file, you can find it by right clicking Axiom Verge’s entry in Steam, going to properties > Local Files > Browse Local Files… then selecting Axiomverge.exe
Now you’ll get the Randomizer’s main UI and can make a seed!
The first time you run it, you’ll have to manually run “randomAV.exe” within the Axiom Verge folder (find it via step 6) to get it to run, the run button in the randomizer won’t work the first time because of security stuff.
Start a new save file and you’re playing AV Randomized!