As long as it’s your turn and you control an Army, Grond is an
artifact creature.
We were faced with two different scenarios last night, both I think are related. In both scenarios I have Grond, and control a 2/2 Orc Army and no other creatures. Attackers have been declared, and Grond is attacking.
Scenario 1: Opponent destroys the Orc Army with an instant before blockers are declared. As Grond is now no longer a vehicle, is he still attacking as a 5/5? Or is he removed from combat?
Scenario 2: Opponent blocks Grond with a grizzly bears equiped with Barrow-Blade. Grond loses all abilities. Presumably, Grond is now "just" an uncrewed vehicle and is removed from combat?
My guess is both scenarios are essentially the same and Grond is removed from combat. But, wanting confirmation. No rulings on Grond around this issue.
Crystal of Atlan is the new free-to-play MMORPG that just launched globally, and everyone’s already busy learning the ropes of each class and getting to the endgame. Of course, being free-to-play doesn’t mean the game doesn’t expect you to swipe your card every now and then. Since you are reading this, chances are you are considering buying something in the game but aren’t sure if it’s worth it. We know the feeling, and that’s exactly why we made this what to buy in Crystal of Atlan guide.
What Can You Buy in Crystal of Atlan
Screenshot by The Escapist
Here’s everything you’re able to buy with real money in Crystal of Atlan:
Vouchers
Opals
Phantasium Passes
Vouchers are used to buy different packs and can even be exchanged for the Phantasium Pass. With Vouchers, you’re usually aiming to buy more than one thing at once. Vouchers range from $0.99 all the way to $999
Opal is something of a default premium currency in Crystal of Atlan, and it’s used for buying individual items and other currencies. A lot of the stuff you can buy with Opals, you can get from Voucher packs. This is also the main currency you’ll use to buy Gacha pulls. There is also a non-premium version of Opal called Prismadium (it’s the same as Opal, only earned by playing the game). Again, the amount of Opals you buy ranges from $0.99 all the way up to $999.
Prismadium Pass is the game’s non-recurring monthly subscription. You can buy the 15 ($2.69) or the 30-day ($4.69) pass. You can also buy Vouchers and redeem them for either pass while in the game.
What Not to Buy in Crystal of Atlan
Screenshot by The Escapist
Here are the things we think aren’t worth buying in Crystal of Atlan using any of the currencies above:
Batteries – Batteries restore your character and account stamina. You get these from random item loot boxes but, honestly, even if you could buy them in bulks, they just wouldn’t be worth it.
Revival Capsules – The game hands these out quite often, and it’s better to save them, than use them. Most of the time, it’s better to just die and restart a mission if you’re struggling. The game is easy enough, so you likely won’t start dying until you reach end-game, and even when you do, it’s better just not to spend Opals or Prismadiums on these items.
Maltz’s Special Injection – Like with Revive Capsules, the game will hand them out often. Save them for really tough end-game bosses and even then use them sparingly.
Rank A Outfits – In the Outfit section, you’ll have a few Rank A Outfits that don’t cost a lot of money. Avoid these, unless you really like the cosmetic look. Outfits do actually improve your stats, and since you’ll want the best one, there’s no need to buy A rank outfits when S rank are available too.
Buying Opals for Gacha pulls – Crystal of Atlan gives you plenty of ways to earn Gacha pulls and Prismadium. Because of this, there isn’t a real need to spend money for extra pulls, when you can just use what you earn by playing to get them. So, just play the game a bit more, and you should earn more than enough non-premium currency for the Gachas.
Things Worth Buying in Crystal of Atlan
Screenshot by The Escapist
Prismadium Pass – This non-recurring subscription is absolutely worth it if you’re planning to play the game for a good while. Firstly, it immediately gives you 150 or 300 Opal, depending on how many days you bought. Secondly, it gives you so many daily benefits such as: daily chests and daily Prismadium, an increases your daily energy cap, free Double Potions, free Abyss Runs, the ability to acquire skills faster, faster EXP gain, lower fees when using the Trading House, extra Gold gain, and additional Trading House listing Slots. The value is amazing, but only if you’re planning to play Crystal of Atlan daily.
Resource Packs – The Resource packs usually give you more value than the individual items are worth. The only problem is, you are usually limited to buying one of each packs. These aren’t super valuable like the Prismadium Pass, but are great if you were planning to spend a bit more money anyway.
Premium Adventurer’s Manual – This is Crystal of Atlan’s Battle Pass. As you complete daily, weekly, and seasonal quests you’ll unlock both free and premium rewards. This is worth getting if you are planning to play the game on a daily basis. We definitely recommend the regular Adventurer’s Manual. The Collector’s one is only worth it if you REALLY want the extra cosmetics.
The rest is up to you. We hope our recommendation gives you a better idea on what you should and shouldn’t buy if you’re planning to play Crystal of Atlan. Have fun and if you haven’t decided on your class yet, check out our Ultimate Crystal of Atlan Class Tier List.
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But, Sigil didn’t start with me. It wasn’t my brain child, and while I helped tighten the game up around the edges, the design fully belongs to Andy Voellmer.
15 Years in the Making
If you were near Montreal’s Parc LaFontaine in summer 2009, you might have seen a couple of college aged kids playing a game with maple leaf pennies.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of those first plays – and I’m not sure that those first iterations would even be recognizable to someone introduced to the game as it stands today. The rules were a bit different, spells weren’t even modular, and that’s not even getting into how the game looks.
But, the spark of it was there.
That spark stayed with Andy through a PHD, from Canada to California, and to New York City where we met.
While I don’t have pictures of those first plays, I do have a picture of one of my early plays with Andy.
If there’s one thing us folks who love a good RPG can never have enough of, it’s quests. Oblivion Remastered has plenty in its base form – The Elder Scrolls 4 not being short on stuff to do – but of course modders were always going to add to that.
We’re still at a pretty early stage in terms of folks digging underneath the Unreal Engine second skin Virtuos has cocooned the classic game in and seeing what they can accomplish by pushing the boundaries. However, there’ve been plenty of mods that have already come out and had everyone going full Uriel Septim ‘I’ve seen you in my dreams’ mode.
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The latest of these, in my case, had been modder ColdTyrant’s “Infinitum” series, a bunch of mods released in rapid succession that overhaul Oblivion’s already pretty stellar faction questlines by adding in new infinitely accessible radiant quests and systems. They offer nice rewards in return for your character doing more of the job they signed up for – be it assassin, warrior, thief, gladiator, or mage – in a way that’s perfect for roleplaying.
So, having also been intrigued by his earliest works that made it possible to join the Mythic Dawn and become a necromancer in Oblivion Remastered, I decided earlier this week to reach out to ColdTyrant. We chatted about how the quest mods he’s created so far came together, what the next steps in Oblivion Remastered modding might require, and what his future modding plans are. Here’s that conversation:
VG247: What drew you to modding Oblivion Remastered, and has your previous modding experience come in handy when getting up to speed with it?
ColdTyrant: I’ve been playing Oblivion since I was a kid, in 2007 on the PS3. At that age I was absolutely astounded that I could do whatever I wanted, go wherever I wanted, fight, kill, or help whoever I wanted – the game absolutely blew me away and had a fundamental effect on myself and my creativity. I’ve been modding Bethesda games ever since my dad first let me play on his PC, and I was able to download the Construction Set for Oblivion and start poking around to see how things work and what I could make.
I had been following the rumors of an ‘Oblivion Remake’ since January of this year leading up to its eventual shadow drop, and was absolutely floored by the incredible visuals and gameplay overhauls made by the extremely talented team at Virtuos. They breathed new life into one of my all-time favorite video games, and it’s been so exciting to see everyone playing and talking about Oblivion again just like when I was a kid.
Naturally, after I’d already sunken about 100 or so hours into Remaster, I started feeling that itch to get back into the Construction Set. People were (and still are) pumping out mods, tweaks, and tools for Oblivion Remastered like crazy, and I really wanted to sort of get on that wave and see if I could contribute my own content to help enrich players’ experiences further.
Being back in Cyrodiil can do that to a guy. | Image credit: Bethesda/VG247
VG247: How did you go about creating your first couple of quest/faction expansion mods, Mythic Dawn Rising and Dark Path of The Necromancer? Was it a case of wanting more evil options and finding out what was possible, or did you go in with a set vision?
ColdTyrant: When I decided it was time to start modding Remastered, I really wasn’t sure where to start. I’ve always been fascinated with the villains Bethesda has created, and I know many players (including myself) have a desire to explore the idea – what if *I* was the bad guy?
I started re-learning Oblivion’s scripting and quest system, and ultimately decided I wanted to create an alternate path to the Main Quest, where the player could decide to explore what it would be like to actually be a member of Mehrunes Dagon’s Mythic Dawn cult. This mod was sort of a test of what I could get away with mechanically – a proof of concept to myself, and it’s a bit light on content and needs a big update (I’m working on this!).
After I released Mythic Dawn Rising, I just kept playing around with scripts and variables and seeing what could be done. When I discovered the different types of systems I’d be able to create with what I’d discovered, my ideas really began to run wild.
Dark Path of the Necromancer started as just a mod that would add an alternative way for players to create Black Soul Gems, but as I’d finish one feature I’d think of another, then get to work on it – then another, then another. It quickly sort of snowballed into this big project with multiple necromantic-centered systems, and I really love how it turned out. Sort of accidentally, I’d wound up creating another mod that allowed the player to explore membership with another previously forbidden faction.
Who wouldn’t want to join a group of folks who can cast armour illusions this cool? | Image credit: Bethesda/VG247
VG247: I’ve noticed that in both of those mods’ descriptions you note that you’re hoping to add more to them once more advanced Oblivion Remastered modding tools are out there. What kinds of tools are you most keen to see emerge going forwards and can you paint me a picture of what the ‘ideal versions’ of those mods might look like?
ColdTyrant: So, with modding the original Oblivion, it’s a lot simpler – anything you put into the game world will just be there when you load up the mod. No requirements, no difficult installation instructions, just plug and play. If I dropped a new NPC named Bob the Mage into Anvil, he’d just be there!
Oblivion Remastered is a bit more complicated. Virtuos has created an incredibly remarkable hybrid engine that combines both Gamebryo (an earlier version of Creation Engine) and Unreal Engine 5. Gamebryo handles the scripts, quests, and gameplay mechanics, while Unreal Engine 5 handles all rendering – meshes, textures, menus, lighting, shadows, effects, lines of text, pretty much anything and everything the player sees on their screen.
What this means in layman’s terms is that if I dropped Bob the Mage into Anvil in Remastered using the Gamebryo Oblivion Construction Set, well… that’s not enough to make him show up. At best, a visit to Anvil will result in him being completely invisible, and at worst, a game crash. This is because Gamebryo no longer handles rendering.
Unreal Engine needs to be told by Gamebryo via strings what actually exists and what to render into the game. Everything needs a table string entry that connects back to Unreal, or you’ll have problems.
Fortunately, some incredibly talented modders (I like referring to them as engineers) have created tools like TesSyncMapInjector or the Fix & Port Script for xEdit that do this job for us – so Bob the Mage can exist in Oblivion Remastered.
Ok, so this particular mage isn’t called Bob, but you get the picture. | Image credit: Bethesda/VG247
However, this means players will be required to install these tools on their end to experience mods that add new items and systems to Oblivion Remastered, and it can be frustrating for new people that want to get into modding their games, but feel intimidated by all these requirements and specific installation instructions.
So ideally, we’ll get to a point where either Bethesda/Virtuos release official modding tools for the remaster or talented mod engineers are able to create tool(s) that make mods fully compatible with Unreal, without the end user needing to install extra requirements. For the ‘Oldblivion’ versions of my mods, they are all plug and play – no requirements. But for Remastered – for now – you’ll always need UE4SS and TesSyncMapInjector.
VG247: What inspired you to take on your Infinitum series, how was it putting together each of the radiant quest systems and deciding on the unique twists you were going to give each faction’s system? One of the things I found most interesting about the Dark Brotherhood one was the gacha-style Dark Token reward system, so how did the idea for that specifically come about?
ColdTyrant: The ‘radiant quest system’ I’ve designed was actually initially a side feature in another currently unnamed mod project regarding the Blackwood Company, as my original intention was to continue the ‘join and play evil factions’ genre of mods I’d released so far.
When I discovered during testing how much fun I was having just doing infinite quests, I thought to myself – I need to adapt this to the main factions. From there, once again, my ideas started to kind of run wild.
I ‘extracted’ the radiant quest system from my Blackwood project, ported it into a new project, and reworked it for the Dark Brotherhood. I think a lot of people feel this way, but Oblivion’s Dark Brotherhood is by far my favorite questline in the game, and I say that while really loving all of the major factions. I wanted to be able to take contracts to assassinate people forever, and I hoped others would too. In the end, Dark Brotherhood – Infinitum was born, and the series kicked off.
Creeper, gacha master of the Dark Brotherhood. | Image credit: Bethesda/ColdTyrant
As far as the ‘gacha reward system’, I wanted to create a unique way for the player to get random rewards, but also be able to choose what type of reward they’re interested in. Creating a gacha that may or may not give the player something good for their Dark Tokens I thought would be a fantastic way to motivate the player to keep doing infinite contracts besides just the fun of sneak killing and gold.
If the popularity of certain gacha games is any indicator, people really love being able to take their chances and roll for rewards, even if the odds are stacked against them. Fortunately, however, Creeper does NOT charge the player any real-world money!
Some players complained that Creeper being in the Cheydinhal Sanctuary is not immersive (hence my ‘No Creeper’ optional version), and I totally get it – but I love Morrowind just as much as Oblivion and Skyrim, and I’m sure any Morrowind player is aware of the “meme” of selling Creeper hundreds of sets of Dark Brotherhood armor. Why wouldn’t he show up? He wants more of that stuff! It was just a fun reference in the end, and I was hoping people would get a kick out of it!
VG247: What are your personal plans and general hopes for Oblivion Remastered modding going forwards, especially when it comes to quest mods – are there any complex ideas you’ve not tried yet that you’re keen to give a go once the tech’s there and do you think there’s a high ceiling in terms of what people might eventually pull off?
ColdTyrant: Similar to what I mentioned earlier, the ideal situation for Oblivion Remastered modding will be the release of official modding tools to ‘grease the wheels’ on the mod development process – but given the complexity of the hybrid engine, I’m not sure if this will happen. It would be really nice, though, so our friends playing on console can hop on the hype wave of Remastered modding too.
As far as my plans – the next (and final, for the major factions) mod in the Infinitum series will be Mages Guild – Infinitum. This mod will feature an endless Creature Research system, a brand new Elixir-crafting system separate from regular Alchemy, and radiant quests to deliver those Elixirs to the various Mages Guild Halls. Additionally there will be an endlessly-available staff-crafting system.
Since we had our chat, ColdTyrant’s released his Mages Guild mod, so you can try it right after you’re done reading. | Image credit: Bethesda/ColdTyrant
Since the Mages Guild is a bit different, and focused more on scholarly endeavors and magical power, I’m hoping people really enjoy it!
Once the main Infinitum Series is complete, I’ll likely shift my focus to a big Mythic Dawn Rising update, and a secret project I’ve been writing up, that I think people will really love!
As far as whether or not I’ve tried certain ideas due to current limitations (I consider Remastered modding to currently be in its infancy), there are certainly a few. I try not to lean *too* heavily into NPC dialogue, for example, since we can’t use custom voice files yet, or have an elegant solution like ‘Elys Universal Silent Voice’ which exists for Oldblivion.
I think there is a high ceiling for learning and getting into more complex scripting if you’ve never done it before, but really, the sky is the limit when it comes to Bethesda modding – there are hundreds and hundreds of mod authors far more talented than myself that have created incredible content for all of Bethesda’s single-player masterpieces.
As time marches on, I’m really excited to see the things people continue to pump out for Oblivion Remastered. It’s really exciting to see what people can come up with!
I’m looking for the combo using the fewest cards from the start of the game that allows you to generate unlimited mana using Historic-legal cards. It doesn’t have to be viable or practical, but I have two restrictions:
No using Codie, Vociferous Codex, because I need to cast permanent spells for what I’m trying to pull off and Codie doesn’t allow that.
The opening hand may be assumed. If a solution requires more than 7 cards, you may assume perfect results from random events. If it requires 7 or fewer cards it must be deterministic.
I devised a method using 11 cards over 4 turns, requiring you to be on the draw and draw perfectly.
Even if you’ve never touched a Nier game, I’d wager that you know exactly who 2B is. The iconic android has made myriad appearances in other games since Platinum released Nier: Automata in 2017, and the studio is showing absolutely no signs of slowing down. She’s already in Final Fantasy 14, Fall Guys, PUBG, Rainbow Six Siege, and a rhythm game excellently titled D4DJ Groovy Mix. Now, 2B is coming to The First Descendant.
I’ll admit, I’m not entirely surprised to know that 2B is on her way to The First Descendant. Nier: Automata is the perfect fit for Nexon’s live-service looter shooter – it felt like it was just a matter of time. Still, the free Steam game has quite an event on the way, as Nexon details at TFD’s Pax East panel.
“The community has been requesting this IP continuously, and we believe that it will match well with The First Descendant,” TFD producer Beomjun Lee says. “Although we’ve only shown some key images today, we will be sharing more details with a trailer showcasing our collaboration.”
“Unfortunately, the Nier: Automata collaboration will focus on decorations as we are in the process of solidifying the substance of our game. We decided to invest more in the content of Season 3 rather than other content related to the collaboration. However, in addition to the 2B and A2 outfits, we have prepared a damaged version of 2B with no skirt, with other motions and decorations as well.”
Lee assures that it’ll be just a few months before the Nier: Automata collaboration comes to The First Descendant, even if Season 3 is more of a priority. As for The First Descendant’s next major overhaul, director Minseok Joo recently admitted in an open letter that “there’s not much to do” in the game right now.
Nexon does have a plan for the game’s future, though. Instead of focusing on smaller updates, the team is putting almost all of its effort into Season 3, to make it “stronger and more complete.”
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I was really into pokemon cards when I was little, not so much playing the game (Mostly because I didn’t know how) but collecting them. But that was years ago. I’ve recently decided to whip them out again and am trying to create a 60 card playing deck. I have more than enough, but I can’t figure out how to properly make it. I actually have already created one, however, I got it completely wrong. As in, 15 Pokemon, 10 Trainer, and 35 Energy cards type wrong. I understand this isn’t how a deck should be made, however, there doesn’t seem to be anything on how to balance the card types out correctly.
What should the ‘ratio’ be? (For lack of better words).
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Published: May 28, 2025 12:31 pm