USED SLOT MACHINES & SLOT MACHINES FOR SALE

I ended up building a computer at the end of 2020 after years of window shopping for prebuilts that I probably would have regretted purchasing. I'm not new to pc gaming as I have a gaming laptop that's approaching 4 or so years old with a little over 1 TB of storage. With the laptop aging and with me wanting a more robust device for music production, VR, and possibly even streaming I decided around July that I probably wanted a desktop that was more capable than my laptop. I knew a little bit about computers but really immersed myself to learn as much as I could. I went from almost seriously considering an Alienware desktop back in July (eww) to taking seriously parts sourcing and looking at builders like VRLA and Redux who seemed to at the very least be transparent about what they were putting into their systems. When I realized there were a few custom things I wanted (massive amounts of storage, Vive wireless vr adapter) I said "f- it" because I was going to have to open up any build I'd purchase from one of these guys to add all the stuff I wanted.
The actual building process was simultaneously less and more involved than I initially thought. It took me 3 days (Dec 25-28) and over 12 hours from opening up my motherboard's box and flashing my BIOS to turning on my computer for the first time. It was also a little stressful since slotting some of my components was more difficult to do than I initially believe. Regardless, despite the somewhat clumsy nature I went about this process, the build worked like a charm and I'm writing this post from the computer. Anyway, I want to go over the highlights to help new builders optimize their process.
Purchasing components
This is an admittedly dumb and stupid mistake but outside of the general research I did to understand building and some rudimentary knowledge of some of this year's newest components PCPartPicker was what I leveraged for information about stock and pricing. This generally isn't a huge deal but with prices being so volatile in 2020 (especially around the last quarter of the year) it means that I overpayed for some things. There were parts, like my 3080 that I was somewhat willing to do this for, but I had no idea how much above MSRP I'd ultimately paid for my Ryzen 5 5600x until it was too late. Here are the the biggest lessons I learned:
Compare across multiple sites. The fact that I didn't know MSRP for my CPU was my fault and honestly if I wasn't using PCPartPicker as my only point of reference I would have known better. And even then, if I'd looked closely at the historical pricing section of the site I'd understand that the prices being given to me at the time weren't necessarily MSRP. This point is more or less also one that is meant to remind everyone to understand the breadth and scope of the tools they're using for research. It didn't help that I was making these decisions in the second and third weeks of December trying to build by Christmas. Last minute decision making can lead to bad decisions.
Give yourself enough time. Kind of bleeding over from the last point, if you have to (or want to) build by a certain deadline, make sure you give yourself enough time. Not only to understand how to build and how computer components work together, but also time to understand price to performance differences between any components you're comparing. And for any of you trying to build soon, I'd caution unless you absolutely need to you just to wait until mid-spring/summer as the selection of parts is set to improve substantially.
Don't get caught up in the hype. With the hype cycle surrounding this year's newest components it was very easy to fall into this. I suppose this was less of an issue for me because my budget had flex room, but all the same no one really seeks to spend as much as they possibly can when building (at least I hope). Initially in my build I'd allotted up to $400 for my CPU and was going to settle on getting a Ryzen 7 3800 with the hope of upgrading down the line. Deep down though, because of the hype surrounding Ryzen 5000 I wasn't satisfied with that, so at the first chance of getting one of these newer chips, I took it without thinking. It was a Ryzen 5600x (with stock cooler) for $445. I thought it was a good deal because a the time I mistakenly believed MSRP was $399. While $445 is cheaper than some CPUs, even Intel gen 10 chips, if I decide to upgrade I'll spend more over the life of my build. And for just a bit more if I'd gone with Intel I could have gotten an i7 or i9 for slightly better performance in gaming.
You'll always learn something that will give you buyers regret. After I paid nearly $300 above MSPR for my 3080 the rumors of 3080TIs became louder. The Ryzen 5000 series will likely be the last of the AM4 chipset so I'm wondering if I should have just gone with Intel anyway. But at the end of the day I take pride in the build I have created and will put my lessons to use if I decide to do another build in the future.
Building: Day 1
I was overprepared in the sense that I had a lot of things I ultimately didn't use. Antistatic gloves, for example, which I ended up ditching pretty quickly because the material kept getting caught on the underside of my mobo which freaked me the hell out. Just purchase an antistatic workspace or an antistatic brace and that'll be enough. I ultimately ended up building on my mobo's box while wearing an antistatic brace grounded to my PSU.
In day one all I really only manged to flash the bios on my MSI X570 Tomahawk with a USB. It took me an hour to realize that although my 24 ATX and cpu power were connected on my mobo that the PSU and mobo wouldn't turn on until I pressed the "flash bios" button with a pen. I initially thought my PSU was defective and wasted a lot of time. After making Christmas dinner I then installed my case fans and rbg halos which also took me over an hour because I apparently didn't understand how fan screws worked... there's not much to say here other than that I'm an idiot (-_-).
Day 2
The bulk of the building took place during day 2. I actually touched the mobo and installed the CPU and other components and put it into the case. One mistake I made early on was installing my CPU before confirming if the heat sink I wanted to use (Cooler Master 212 black) had its own plate. It most definitely did, and so I had to carefully remove the CPU I'd seated and put thermal paste on and place it elsewhere until I was ready to reseat it. The entire process was painful as Cooler Master's instructions were terrible and for about an hour I was under the impression that my motherboard would snap as I struggled to tighten the heatsink. I also struggled to put the cooler fan on the heatsink as the directions for the CPU fan clips were also abysmal. This video really saved me at a point were I thought I'd give up on the build. Nothing else of note happened other than my ram fell out the first time I placed my case upright because I didn't seat it properly.
Day 3
Most of day 3 was mostly installing my graphics card and cables. One thing I learned was since the graphics card was so big and chunky and since it obstructed my view of the slot I was trying to place it in, it's easier to install it while the case is up right. I actually almost nearly scratched my mobo and my M2 drive with my graphics card while trying to align it. I also had to remove my gpu after I'd successfully installed it to clear a path for my exhaust fan cables. It was at this point I'd actually broke the latch in the PCIe slot holding the graphics card because I didn't check if it was still secure. It broke cleanly so I was able to put the latch back into the slot okay.
As for the cabling, that took me over 4 hours because I eagerly began plugging my front panel cables and fans in, only to realize after I installed my PSU that these cables were obstructing where my ATX cables would be coming in.
Once my cables were nearly done, I saw that one of my motherboard screws was missing. A missing screw isn't a big deal, but I couldn't account for where I might have lost it because I distinctly remembered using every mobo screw. I was freaked out because there was a possibility it was in my case, behind my motherboard. But I was so close to finishing that I didn't want to take out my motherboard just for one freaking screw. After 30 mins of retracing my process I resigned myself to removing my mobo out of caution. I undid the cabling I'd started (I was about halfway done). After undoing the 5th screw I started hearing a rattling in my case and after shaking the case the missing screw pops out. I guess loosening my motherboard from some of the standoffs gave the lost screw enough room to roll away. I had no idea it fell in there but I'm glad I caught that before turning my system on.
About an hour later all systems were go. I'm not happy with my cable management but it's good enough. The only other thing that gave me trouble was the RGB in my system. This is mainly because Phanteks isn't very transparent about the types of adapters needed to power its 12V ARGB halos, but after buying their stupid adapter a day later I have glowing fans.
Reflection
One of the biggest things I learned was that it's important to map out the building process step-by-step. I think I ended up redoing things like cabling because while I had a high level understanding of the building process I wasn't really thinking through my next move as I completed each step. But all in all, while I had some difficulties, I'm ultimately proud of myself for doing this and I'm absolutely in love with my machine. I sadly haven't gotten much time to really put my build to the test. I have a few people asking me about temps. Hopefully in the next two weeks I can test that during a dedicated gaming session.
Anyway, while I still don't think building is for everyone, I do recommend that anyone looking for a computer (esp a gaming computer) at least understand computer parts and how they work together so that they actually know what it is they're getting when they go to a builder. To this end, you should probably watch a bunch of computer building videos as if you were going to build and use that knowledge to inform what you buy. Still, regardless of whether or not you go with a builder you shouldn't be afraid of building. As you can probably tell from my story the building process is a lot more forgiving than newbies (myself included) might initially think. You don't have to be a handy person to build. I most certainly am not. I actually struggled to put together the table I built my computer on literally the night before I started building my PC.
For anyone who is on the verge of getting ready to build I've created a YouTube playlist of vids that helped me build as well as my own video featuring my build and my own tips. Let me know if you have any questions.

Old Austin Tales: Forgotten Video Arcades of The 1970s & 80s

In the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was a young teen growing up in far North Austin, it was a popular custom for many boys in the neighborhood to assemble at the local Stop-N-Go after school on a regular basis for some Grand Champion level tournaments in Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. The collective insistence of our mothers and fathers to get out of the house, get some exercise, and refrain from playing NES or Sega on the television only led us to seek out more video games at the convenience store down the road. Much allowance and lunch money was spent as well as hours that should have been devoted to homework among the 8 or 9 regular boys in attendance, often challenging each other to 'Best of 5' matches. I myself played Dhalsim and SubZero, and not very well, so I rarely ever made it to the 5th match. The store workers frequently kicked us out for the day only to have us return when they weren't working the counter anymore if not the next day.
There is something about that which has been lost in the present day. While people can today download the latest games on Steam or PSN or in the app store on your smartphone, you can't just find arcade games in stores and restaurants like you used to be able to. And so the fun of a spontaneous 8 or 10 person multiplayer video game tournament has been confined to places like bars, pool halls, Pinballz or Dave&Busters.
But in truth it was that ubiquity of arcade video games, how you could find them in any old 7-11 or Laundromat, which is what killed the original arcades of the early 1980s before the Great Crash of 1983 when home video game consoles started to catch up to what you saw in the arcade.
I was born in the mid 1970s so I missed out on Pong. I was kindergarten age when the Golden Age of Arcade Games took place in the early 1980s. There used to be a place called Skateworld on Anderson Mill Road that was primarily for roller skating but had a respectable arcade in its own right. It was there that I honed my skills on the original Tron, Pac Man, Galaga, Pole Position, Defender, and so many others. In the 1980s I remember visiting all the same mall arcades as others in my age group. There was Aladdin's Castle in Barton Creek Mall, The Gold Mine in Highland, and another Gold Mine in Northcross which was eventually renamed Tilt. Westgate Mall also had an arcade but being a north austin kid I never went there until later in the mid 1990s. There were also places like Malibu Grand Prix and Showbiz Pizza and Chuck-E-Cheeze, all of which had fairly large arcades for kids which were the secondary attraction.
If you're of a certain age you will remember Einsteins and LeFun on the Drag. They were there for a few decades going back way before the Slacker era. Lesser known is that the UT Student Union basement used to have an arcade that was comparable to either or both of those places. Back in the pre-9/11 days it was much easier to sneak in if you even vaguely looked like you could be a UT student.
But there was another place I was too young to have experienced called Smitty's up further north on 183 at Lake Creek in the early 1980s. I never got to go there but I always heard about it from older kids at the time. It was supposed to have been two stories of wall to wall games with a small snack bar. I guess at the time it served a mostly older teen crowd from Westwood High School and for that reason younger kids my age weren't having birthday parties there. It wasn't around very long, just a few years during the Golden Age of Arcades.
It is with almost-forgotten early arcades like that in mind that I wanted to share with y'all some examples of places from The Golden Age of the Video Arcade in Austin using some old Statesman articles I've found. Maybe someone of a certain age on here will remember them. I was curious what they were like, having missed out by being slightly too young to have experienced most of them first hand. I also wanted to see the original reaction to them in the press. I had a feeling there was some pushback from school/parent/civic groups on these facilities showing up in neighborhood strip malls or next to schools, and I was right to suspect. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First let's list off some places of interest. Be sure to speak up if you remember going to any of these, even if it was just for some other kid's birthday party. Unfortunately some of the only mentions about a place are reports of a crime being committed there, such as our first few examples.
Forgotten Arcade #1
Fun House/Play Time Arcade - 2820 Guadalupe
June 15, 1975

ARCADE ENTHUSIASM
A gang fight involving 20 30 people erupted early Saturday morning in front of an arcade on Guadalupe Street. The owner of the Fun House Arcade at 282J Guadalupe told police pool cues, lug wrenches, fists and a shotgun were displayed during the flurry. Police are unsure what started the fisticuffs, but one witness at the scene said it pitted Chicanos against Anglos. During the fight the owner of the arcade said a green car stopped at the side of the arcade and witnesses reported the barrel of a shotgun sticking out. The crowd wisely scattered and only a 23-year-old man was left lying on the ground. He told police he doesn't know what happened.

March 3, 1976

ARCADE ROBBED
A former employee of Play Time Arcade, 2820 Guadalupe, was charged Tuesday in connection with the Tuesday afternoon robbery of his former business. Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Ronnie Magee, 22, of 1009 Aggie Lane, Apt. 306. Arcade attendant Sam Garner said he had played pool with the suspect an hour before the robbery. He told police the man had been fired from the business two weeks earlier. Police said a man walked in the arcade about 2:45 p m. with a blue steel pistol and took $180. Magee is charged with first degree aggravated robbery. Bond was set on the charge at $15,000.

First it was called Fun House and then renamed Play Time a year later. I'm not sure what kind of arcade games beyond Pong and maybe Asteroids they could have had at this place. The peak of the Pinball craze was supposed to be around 1979, so they might have had a few pinball machines as well. A quick search of youtube will show you a few examples of 1976 video games like Death Race. The location is next to Ken's Donuts where PokeBowl is today where the old Baskin Robbins location was for many years.
Forgotten Arcade #2
Green Goth - 1121 Springdale Road
May 15, 1984

A 23-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday to a January 1983 murder in East Austin and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Jim Crowell Jr. of Austin admitted shooting 17-year-old Anthony Rodriguez in the chest with a shotgun after the two argued outside the Green Goth, a games arcade at 1121 Springdale Road, on Jan. 23, 1983. Crowell had argued with Rodriguez and a friend of Rodriguez at the arcade, police said. Crowell then went to his house, got a shotgun and returned to the arcade, witnesses said. When the two friends left the arcade, Rodriguez was shot Several weeks ago Crowell had reached a plea bargain with prosecutors for an eight-year prison term, but District Judge Bob Perkins would not accept the sentence, saying it was shorter than sentences in similar cases. After further plea bargaining, Crowell accepted the 15-year prison sentence.

I can't find anything else on Green Goth except reports about this incident with a murder there. There is at least one other report from 1983 around the time of Crowell's arrest that also refer to it as an arcade but reports the manager said the argument started over a game of pool. It's possible this place might have been more known for pool.
Forgotten Arcades #3 & #4
Games, Etc. - 1302 S. First St
Muther's Arcade - 2532 Guadalupe St
August 23, 1983

Losing the magic touch - Video Arcades have trouble winning the money game
It was going to be so easy for Lawrence Villegas, a video game junkie who thought he could make a fast buck by opening up an arcade where kids could plunk down an endless supply of quarters to play Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids. Villegas got together with a few friends, purchased about 30 video games and opened Games, Etc. at 1302 S. First St in 1980. .,--.... For a while, things, went great Kids waited in line to spend their money to drive race cars, slay dragons and save the universe.
AT THE BEGINNING of 1982, however, the bottom fell out, and Villegas' revenues fell from $400 a week to $25. Today, Games, Etc. is vacant Villegas, 30, who is now working for his parents at Tony's Tortilla Factory, hasn't decided what he'll do with the building. "I was hooked on Asteroids, and I opened the business to get other people hooked, too," Villegas said. "But people started getting bored, and it wasn't worth keeping the place open. In the end, I sold some machines for so little it made me sick."
VILLEGAS ISNT the only video game operator to experience hard times, video game manufacturers and distributors 'It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100 .
Pac-Man's a lost cause. Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Ronnie Roark says. In the past year, business has dropped 25 percent to 65 percent throughout the country, they say. Most predict business will get even worse before the market stabilizes. Video game manufacturers and operators say there are several reasons for the sharp and rapid decline: Many video games can now be played at home on television, so there's no reason to go to an arcade. The novelty of video games has worn off. It has been more than a decade since the first ones hit the market The decline can be traced directly to oversaturation or the market arcade owners say. The number of games in Austin has quadrupled since 1981, and it's not uncommon to see them in coin-operated laundries, convenience stores and restaurants.
WITH SO MANY games to choose from, local operators say, Austinites be came bored. Arcades still take in thousands of dollars each week, but managers and owners say most of the money is going to a select group of newer games, while dozens of others sit idle.
"After awhile, they all seem the same," said Dan Moyed, 22, as he relaxed at Muther's Arcade at 2532 Guadalupe St "You get to know what the game is going to do before it does. You can play without even thinking about it" Arcade owners say that that, in a nutshell, is why the market is stagnating.
IN THE PAST 18 months, Ronnie Roark, owner of the Back Room at 2015 E. Riverside Drive, said his video business has dropped 65 to 75 percent Roark, . who supplied about 160 video games to several Austin bars and arcades, said the instant success of the games is what led to their demise. "The technology is not keeping up with people's demand for change," said Roark, who bought his first video game in 1972. "The average game is popular for two or three months. We're sending back games that are less than five months old."
Roark said the market began dropping in March 1982 and has been declining steadily ever since. "The drop started before University of Texas students left for the summer in 1982," Roark said. "We expected a 25 percent drop in business, and we got that, and more. It's never really picked up since then. - "It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100. 1 was shocked when I looked over my books and saw how much things had dropped."
TO COMBAT THE slump, Roark said, he and some arcade owners last year cut the price of playing. Even that didn't help, he said. Old favorites, such as Pac-Man, which once took in hundreds of dollars each week, he said, now make less than $3 each. "Pac-Man's a lost cause," he said. "Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Hardest hit by the slump are the owners of the machines, who pay $3,500 to $5,000 for new products and split the proceeds with the businesses that house them.
SALEM JOSEPH, owner of Austin Amusement and Vending Co., said his business is off 40 percent in the past year. Worse yet, some of his customers began returning their machines, and he's having a hard time putting them back in service. "Two years ago, a machine would generate enough money to pay for itself in six months,' said Joseph, who supplies about 250 games to arcades. "Now that same machine takes 18 months to pay for itself." As a result, Joseph said, he'll buy fewer than 15 new machines this year, down from the 30 to 50 he used to buy. And about 50 machines are sitting idle in his warehouse.
"I get calls every day from people who want to sell me their machines," Joseph said. "But I can't buy them. The manufacturers won't buy them from me." ARCADE OWNERS and game manufacturers hope the advent of laser disc video games will buoy the market Don Osborne, vice president of marketing for Atari, one of the largest manufacturers of video games, said he expects laser disc games to bring a 25 percent increase in revenues next year. The new games are programmed to give players choices that may affect the outcome of the game, Os borne said. "Like the record and movie industries, the video game industry is dependent on products that stimulate the imagination," Osborne said "One of the reasons we're in a valley is that we weren't coming up with those kinds of products."
THE FIRST of the laser dis games, Dragonslayer and Star Wan hit the market about two months ago. Noel Kerns, assistant manager of The Gold Mine Arcade in Northcross Mall, says the new games are responsible for a $l,000-a-week increase in revenues. Still, Kerns said, the Gold Mine' total sales are down 20 percent iron last summer. However, he remain optimistic about the future of the video game industry. "Where else can you come out of the rain and drive a Formula One race car or save the universe?" hi asked.
Others aren't so optimistic. Roark predicted the slump will force half of all operators out of business and will last two more years. "Right now, we've got a great sup ply and almost no demand," Roark said. "That's going to have to change before things get- significantly better."

Well there is a lot to take from that long article, among other things, that the author confused "Dragonslayer" with "Dragon's Lair". I lol'd.
Anyone who has been to Emo's East, formerly known as The Back Room, knows they have arcade games and pool, but it's mostly closed when there isn't a show. That shouldn't count as an arcade, even though the former owner Ronnie Roark was apparently one of the top suppliers of cabinet games to the area during the Golden Era. Any pool hall probably had a few arcade games at the time, too, but that's not the same as being an arcade.
We also learn from the same article of two forgotten arcades: Muthers at 2522 Guadalupe where today there is a Mediterranean food restaurant, and another called Games, Etc. at 1302 S.First that today is the site of an El Mercado restaurant. But the article is mostly about showing us how bad the effects were from the crash at the end of the Golden Era. It was very hard for the early arcades to survive with increasing competition from home game consoles and personal computers, and the proliferation of the games into stores and restaurants.
Forgotten Arcades #5 #6 & #7
Computer Madness - 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Electronic Encounters - 1701 W Ben White Blvd (Southwood Mall)
The Outer Limits Amusements Center - 1409 W. Oltorf
March 4, 1982

'Quartermania' stalks South Austin
School officials, parents worried about effects of video games
A fear Is haunting the video game business. "We call it 'quartermania.' That's fear of running out of quarters," said Steve Stackable, co-owner of Computer Madness, a video game and foosball arcade at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd. The "quartermania" fear extends to South Austin households and schools, as well. There it's a fear of students running out of lunch money and classes to play the games. Local school officials and Austin police are monitoring the craze. They're concerned that computer hotspots could become undesirable "hangouts" for students, or that truancy could increase because students (high-school age and younger) will skip school to defend their galaxies against The Tempest.
So far police fears have not been substantiated. Department spokesmen say that although more than half the burglaries in the city are committed by juveniles during the daytime, they know of no connection between the break-ins and kids trying to feed their video habit But school and parental worries about misspent time and money continue. The public outcry in September 1980 against proposals to put electronic game arcades near two South Austin schools helped persuade city officials to reject the applications. One proposed location was near Barton Hills Elementary School. The other was South Ridge Plaza at William Cannon Drive and South First Street across from Bedlchek Junior High School.
Bedichek principal B.G. Henry said he spoke against the arcade because "of the potential attraction it had for our kids. I personally feel kids are so drawn to these things, that It might encourage them to leave the school building and play hookey. Those things have so much compulsion, kids are drawn to them like a magnet Kids can get addicted to them and throw away money, maybe their lunch money. I'm not against the video games. They may be beneficial with eye-hand coordination or even with mathematics, but when you mix the video games during school hours and near school buildings, you might be asking for problems you don't need."
A contingent from nearby Pleasant Hill Elementary School joined Bedichek in the fight back in 1980, although principal Kay Beyer said she received her first formal call about the games last Week from a mother complaining that her child was spending lunch money on them. Beyer added that no truancy problems have been related to video game-playing at a nearby 7-11 store. Allen Poehl, amusement game coordinator for Austin's 7-11 stores, said company policy rules out any game-playing by school-age youth during school hours. Fulmore Junior High principal Bill Armentrout said he is working closely with operators of a nearby 7-1 1 store to make sure their policy is enforced.
The convenience store itself, and not necessarily the video games, is a drawing card for older students and drop-outs, Armentrout said. Porter Junior High principal Marjorie Ball said that while video games aren't a big cause of truancy, "the money (spent on the games) is a big factor." Ball said she has made arrangements with nearby businesses to call the school it students are playing the games during school hours. "My concern is that kids are basically unsupervised, especially at the 24-hour grocery stores. That's a late hour for kids to be out. I would like to see them (games) unplugged at 10 p.m.," adds Joslin Elementary principal Wayne Rider.
Several proprietors of video game hot-spots say they sympathize with the concerns of parents and school officials. No one under 18 is admitted without a parent to Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre at 4211 S. Lamar. That rule, says night manager David Dunagan, "keeps it from being a high school hangout. This is a family place." Jerry Zollar, owner of J.J. Subs in West Wood Shopping Center on Bee Cave Road, rewards the A's on the report cards of Eanes school district students with free video games. "It's kind of a community thing we do in a different way. I've heard from both teachers and parents . . . they thought this was a good idea," said Zollar.
Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall last year was renovated into a brightly lit arcade. "We're trying to get away from the dark, barroom-type place. We want this to be a place for family entertainment We won't let kids stay here during school hours without a written note from their parents, and we're pretty strict about that," said manager Kelly Roberts. Joyce Houston, who manages The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf St. along with her husband, said, "I wouldn't let my children go into some of the arcades I've visited. I'm a concerned parent, too. We wanted a place where the whole family could come and enjoy themselves."

Well you can see which way the tone of all these articles is going. There were some crimes committed at some arcades but all of them tended to have a negative reputation for various reasons. Parents and teachers were very skeptical of the arcades being in the neighborhoods to the point of petitioning the City Government to restrict them. Three arcades are mentioned besides Chuck-E-Cheese. Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall, The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf, and Computer Madness, a "video game and foosball arcade" at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Forgotten Arcade #8
Smitty's Galaxy of Games - Lake Creek Parkway
February 25, 1982

Arcades fighting negative image
Video games have swept across America, and Williamson and Travis counties have not been immune. In a two-part series, Neighbor examines the effects the coin-operated machines have had on suburban and small-town life.
Cities have outlawed them, religious leaders have denounced them and distraught mothers have lost countless children to their voracious appetites. And still they march on, stronger and more numerous than before. A new disease? Maybe. A wave of invading aliens from outer space? On occasion. A new type of addiction? Certainly. The culprit? Video games. Although the electronic game explosion has been mushrooming throughout the nation's urban areas for the past few years, its rippling effects have just recently been felt in the suburban fringes of North Austin and Williamson County.
In the past year, at least seven arcades armed with dozens of neon quarter-snatchers have sprung up to lure teens with thundering noises and thousands of flashing seek-and-destroy commands. Critics say arcades are dens of iniquity where children fall prey to the evils of gambling. But arcade owners say something entirely different. "Everybody fights them (arcades), they think they are a haven for drug addicts. It's just not true," said Larry Grant of Austin, who opened Eagle's Nest Fun and Games on North Austin Avenue in Georgetown last September. "These kids are great" Grant said the gameroom "gives teenagers a place to come. Some only play the games and some only talk.
In Georgetown, if you're from the high school, this is it." He said he's had very few disturbances, and asks "undesirables" to leave. "We've had a couple of rowdies. That's why I don't have any pool tables they tend to attract that type of crowd," Grant said.
Providing a place for teens to congregate was also the reason behind Ron and Carol Smith's decision to open Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway at the entrance to Anderson Mill. "We have three teenage sons, and as soon as the oldest could drive, it became immediately apparent that there was no place to go around here," said Ron, an IBM employee who lives in Spicewood at Balcones. "This prompted us to want to open something." The business, which opened in August, has been a huge success with both parents and youngsters. "Hundreds of parents have come to check out our establishment before allowing their children to come, and what they see is a clean, safe environment managed by adults and parents," Ron said. "We've developed an outstanding rapport with the community." Video arcades "have a reputation that we have to fight," said Carol.
Kathy McCoy of Georgetown, who last October opened Krazy Korner on Willis Street in Leander, agrees. "We've got a real good group of kids," she said. "There's no violence, no nothing. Parents can always find their kids at Krazy Korner."
While all the arcade owners contacted reported that business is healthy, if not necessarily lucrative, it's not as easy for video entrepreneurs to turn a profit as one might imagine. A sizeable investment is required. Ron Smith paid between $2,800 and $5,000 for each of the 30 electronic diversions at his gameroom.
Grant said his average video game grosses about $50 a week, and his "absolute worst" game, Armor Attack, only $20 a week. The top machines (Defender and Pac-Man) can suck in an easy $125 a week. That's a lot of quarters, 500 to be exact but the Eagle's Nest and Krazy Korner pass half of them on to Neelley Vending Company of Austin which rents them their machines. "At 25 cents a shot, it takes an awful lot of people to pay the bills," said Tom Hatfield, district manager for Neelley.
He added that an owner's personality and the arcade's location can make or break the venture. The game parlor must be run "by an understanding person, someone with patience," Hatfield said. "They cannot be too demanding on the kids, yet they can't let them run all over them." And they must be located in a spot "with lots of foot traffic," such as a shopping center or near a good restaurant, he said. "And being close to a school really helps." "Video games are going to be here permanently, but we're going to see some operations not going because of the competition," which includes machines in virtually every convenience store and supermarket, Hatfield said.

This article talks about three arcades. One in Georgetown called Eagles Nest, another in Leander called Krazy Korner, and a third called Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway "on the fringes of North Austin". This is the one I remember the older kids talking about when I was a little kid. There was once a movie theater across the street from the Westwood High School football stadium and behind that was Smitty's. Today I think the building was bulldozed long ago and the space is part of the expanded onramp to 183 today. Eventually another unrelated arcade was built next to the theater that became Alamo Lakeline. It was another site of some unrecorded epic Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat tournaments in the 90s.
But the article written before the end of the Golden Era tell us much about the pushback I was talking about earlier. Early arcades were seen as "dirty" places in some circles, and the owners of the arcades in Williamson County had to stress how "clean" their establishments were. This other article from a couple of weeks later tells of how area school officials weren't worried about video games and tells us more arcades in Round Rock and Cedar Park. Apparently the end of the golden age lasted a bit longer than usual in this area.
At some point in the next few years the bubble burst, and places like Smitty's were gone by the late 80s. But the distributors quoted earlier were right that arcade games weren't going completely away. In the mid 1980s LeFun opened up next in the Scientology building at 2200 Guadalupe on the drag. Down a few doors past what used be a coffee shop and a CVS was Einsteins Arcade. Both of those survived into the 21st century. I remember the last time I was at Einsteins I got my ass beat in Tekken by a kid half my age. heheh
That's all for today. There were no Bonus Pics in the UT archive of arcades (other than the classical architectural definition). I wanted to pass on some Bonus newspaper articles (remember to click and zoom in with the buttons on the right to read) about Austin arcades anyway but first a small story.
I mentioned earlier the secret of the UT Student Union. I have no idea what it looks like now but in the 90s there was a sizable arcade in with the bowling alley in the basement. Back in 1994 when I used to sneak in, they featured this bizarre early attempt at virtual reality games. I found an old Michael Barnes Statesman article about it dated February 11, 1994. Some highlights:

Hundreds of students and curiosity-seekers lined up at the University of Texas Union to play three to five minutes of Dactyl Nightmare, Flying Aces or V-Tol, three-dimensional games from Kramer Entertainment. Nasty weather delayed the unloading of four huge trunks containing the machines, which resemble low pulpits. Still, players waited intently for a chance to shoot down a fighter jet, operate a tilt-wing Harrier or tangle with a pterodactyl. Today, tickets will go on sale in the Texas Union lobby at 11:30 a.m. for playing slots between noon and 6 p.m.
Players, fitted with full helmets, throttles and power packs, stood on shiny gray and yellow platforms surrounded by a circular guard rail. Seen behind the helmet's goggles were computer simulated landscapes, not unlike the most sophisticated video games, with controls and enemies viewed in deep space. "You're on a platform waiting to fight a human figure," said Jeff Vaughn, 19, of Dactyl Nightmare. "A pterodactyl swoops down and tries to pick you up. You have to fight it off. You are in the space and can see your own body and all around you. But if you try to walk, you have to use that joy stick to get around."
"I let the pterodactyl carry me away so I could look down and scan the board," said Tom Bowen of the same game. "That was the way I found out where the other player was." "Yeah, it's cool just to stand there and not do anything," Vaughn said. The mostly young, mostly male crowd included the usual gaming fanatics, looking haggard and tense behind glasses and beards. A smattering of women and children also pressed forward in a line that snaked past the lobby and into the Union's retail shops.
"I don't know why more women don't play. Maybe because the games are so violent," said Jennifer Webb, 24, a psychology major whose poor eyesight kept her from becoming a fighter pilot in real life. "If the Air Force won't take me, virtual reality will." "They use stereo optics moving at something like 60 frames a second," said computer science major Alex Aquila, 19. "The images are still pretty blocky. But once you play it, you'll want to play it again and again." With such demand for virtual reality, some gamesters wondered why an Austin video arcade has not invested in at least one machine.

The gameplay looked like this.
Bonus Article #1 - "Video fans play for own reasons" (Malibu Grand Prix) - March 11, 1982
Bonus Article #2 - "Pac-Man Cartridge Piques Interest" - April 13, 1982
Bonus Article #3 - "Video Games Fail Consumer" - January 29, 1984
Bonus Article #4 - "Nintendoholics/Modems Unite" - January 25, 1989
Bonus Article #5 and pt 2 "Two girls missing for a night found at arcade" (truly dedicated young gamers) - August 7, 2003

this event made me consider whether to keep playing

This is mostly my reactions and rationalizations to the Brave event and how it's affected me a a player of DMK. I've been playing for nearly a year. I've experienced Onward, Pocahontas, Hercules, two Tower Challenges, the Lock Shock and Barrel Halloween event, Mandalorian, and now Brave.
At first I was okay with not completing things since I just didn't have storyline characters unlocked or leveled up to be of any use. But starting around that second Tower Challenge, the one where they offered Rabbit for a second time in a row, things started feeling off. The Halloween event was brutal. Lock, the premium character, was surprising in that he not only was 500 gems but despite being useful to the point of being necessary for one of the tasks he ended up being not that useful for the rest. Meaning even people who purchased Lock found out they couldn't get Shock unless they got lucky with drops or burned through a ton of elixir buying the needed tokens. Then the Mandalorian came out a few weeks later, and I didn't participate much but I did hear that once again the premium character wasn't as useful as expected. Kuiil needed to be leveled up before he could be properly used, and he had some token conflicts with characters.
And now we are at Brave, where people who had both premium characters and the premium attraction and the parade float and discovered they could not finish the event. They did everything right, and it wasn't enough. The RNG was just too strong - there were too many stages where people got screwed over by RNG or bottle necked by arbitrary cooldown times. Some people even had full Frozen collections to help, and were struggling! I had Fergus, Dingwall, and the Ring of Stones at level 2. Up until the last hour, I had no idea if I would be able to complete the event or if I would come up short.
And I realize it's only going to get harder.
This isn't fun anymore. I've never played a game where I needed to wake myself up repeatedly during the night, to stand a chance at completing it. For days at a time. I've never played a game that made me wonder if I could 'get away' with sneaking my phone into my phone-hating teacher's class because lectures cut into a character's task completion. This is supposed to be a game, not a job.
With Brave, the difficulty is entirely intentional. Gameloft didn't want people completing the event. Gameloft wanted people so frustrated that they caved in and bought a sack of gems. Merida herself was 10USD, and without any tokens her costume was 970 gems. Two 500 gem deals bring her costume to just under 40USD. Let's say you did your best, got all the Glitched Fabric, but still came up short 7 comfy fabrics. That's still 560 gems that Gameloft wants you to spend.
You just busted your ass for the "privilege" of giving Gameloft an additional 24USD of your money. Nice hustle.
And then there's the fact that Gameloft made sure only Frozen characters can get Glitched Fabric. And not just Frozen characters, but you needed Anna and her traveling costume (so 2 legendary chests, minimum) or the Fire Spirit with the Enchanted Forest attraction upgraded to level 1 (another 2 legendary chests).
You could also have it dropped from the Dressing Room if you have it at level 2, but with an 8 hour cooldown most people couldn't collect enough fabric before the event ended and were forced to spend more gems. Some people were lucky enough to have the Dressing Room upgraded all the way to level 5, which requires a total of 475 relic tokens to do. And the odds of getting WIR relic tokens have decreased, now that Gameloft has added Brave relic tokens to the chest pools.
And when an event ends...does it even feel good having those event characters you earned? Thanks to the 75 character limit, you're going to spend the next few weeks leveling them up and then be forced to box them up and send them Home by the time the next event starts. There are so many storyline characters that have so many tasks needed to collect more tokens, but event characters are mostly isolated and very rarely are able to collect tokens for characters not in their collection. So their main purpose becomes slot machine bait: they'll eventually be the next helper collection for a future event (that you'll have to lose sleep, buy all the premiums, and even then burn through more elixir or gems or even real money in order to complete), and anyone who wasn't able to get all the characters can try their luck opening a legendary chest.
I'm not even done with the story. I'm at the brink of my game getting bottle necked because I have over 75 characters which can be out and about doing tasks. But with recent events, they prove it won't matter how far along in the story I am. It won't be enough to complete events.
Now, each new event character feels like it bloats regular chests. All those event character tokens taking up space, all those event relic tokens that you don't need anymore because the relic token system is utterly broken and Gamelot isn't interested in fixing it.
All for what? For shoring up for the next hustle. For making sure you have fewer gems ready for the next event, tempting you to give in and pay cash. And maybe this is because I've only been playing for about a year while others have been playing much longer, but it is discouraging knowing that I'll never be able to complete many collections because it all lies within the slot machine legendary chests. At first I thought Tower Challenges were going to be a chance to make up for it, but I realized Gameloft hardly ever offers Tower Challenges and when they do happen you get...one or two returning characters plus an attraction, common tier. It's been a year and Gameloft has offered a grand total of 5 returning event characters. They have also added 25 event characters.
Free legendary chests are sporadic, sometimes a few will be offered as milestone prizes during events but for the most part we get one, maybe two a month. But not in January though, we get nothing this month. Spending gems is the only way to really complete a collection, but of course you don't want to spend your gems because you need those for the next event, but of course what's the point when the 75 character limit prevents you from really enjoying and showing off your completed collections. DMK operates on FOMO: fear of missing out. If you don't complete a collection during its event, it is extremely difficult to do so after without spending money, and Gameloft ensures that the rate of free offers is outpaced by new events. "If I don't get the comfy, it won't be available again for years. And when they release it again, it will be just as hard to obtain, so I might as well spend money/gems now." That's how they get you. "If I don't get Merida now, she'll be in a Legendary Chest, but she'll only have a base 2% chance to get, so I might as well spend money/gems now." Same thing.
I've come to realize I don't feel like I'm playing a game anymore. I feel more like I'm trying to see how much I can get away with an abuser. This is no longer a fun time waster, but something negatively influencing my life. Between the 75 character limit, the lack of usefulness for premium characters, and the absurd hoops needed to complete an event to screw people over with RNG and tempt them into spending more gems/cash, this isn't a game anymore it's just a chore. I don't see DMK getting better. So, I'm done. Let it go, as a certain Snow Queen would say.
I hope I don't come off as sounding dramatic. I only want to rationalize my decision, and help others understand if they are feeling the same way. I am not demanding that anyone quit or stop spending their own money if they still find enjoyment and satisfaction. I am not angry at anyone, but I will note that the more people spend real money the more it encourages Gameloft to rig things with less and less fairness. If anyone is feeling reluctant to stop playing or reduce playing due to the time and money they have already spent, this is a phenomenon called the sunk cost fallacy. It's harder to walk away from something when you feel you have invested in it. But this is a tapping game, and the only investment is whether you still find it fun and rewarding to play. You're never going to get that money back, there will be no payout at the "end". The only real loss is your money and time if you continue to play a game that is no longer fun.
In case anyone was wondering if I was able to get Merida's comfy costume at the very end, it doesn't matter if I did or not. Because I'm walking away.
I thank everyone here, and hope whatever decisions you make, you base them on your own satisfaction. Stay healthy and happy.
And in case anyone is wondering what else to do for a time waster, I picked up the inexpensive Stardew Valley and have been having a blast with it. Yes, I traded my kingdom for a farm.

Stories from 12 years of Casino Industry

I was asked to make a post about some stories within the Casino grounds so I thought I'd share. I have many so I'll do my best to pick the better ones.
Some back information: I've been a Casino Dealer for 11 years, I've been a supervisor for five years, and I've been a Surveillance Operator for one year. I've worked at three properties, none of which are connected or owned by the same company. I've worked on : Government/Private/Native American owned casinos.

From Hero to Zero.

At my first Casino, I was one of the first group of people who were trained to deal Roulette . After 4 weeks of working 6PM-3AM then doing roulette training from 3AM-8AM (Not paid) , I actually really enjoyed the game and after about six months I became extremely quick at the number game and the pace of the action was steady with very low margin of errors. Young man walks in, cashes in for $500. He buys in for $2 chips and just loads the board. After a few spins and pretty decent hits, he then changes his chips from $2 to 5$ then to $10 and racks his winnings up to $10,000. It was then, five spins in a row, he loaded the board with some pretty gross bets, and every spin I would hit the ONE number with either NO CHIPS on it, or maybe 1 chip , He lost all $10,000 in a matter of minutes. He leaves , and I go on break. After my break I was going back to the same table and wouldn't you know it, the same young man walks in and cashes in another $500. He tells me he just sold his car outside and this is all that he had left. So we do the same deal, buys in for $2 chips, then slowly starts betting $5 chips, $10, $25...and he makes $10,000 AGAIN. Within the next 25 minutes it was straight agony. Every spin, same thing, he would bet $2500 in chips, and win only $250, $400, and after about a half hour he lost it all . Never saw the guy again.
2) Man down
At this property, we are 24 hours for table games. It's currently 5AM , and I'm dealing some $25 Blackjack to this guy. He's probably early thirties , heavy guy. He's sober as can be, but right away I can tell he's been losing. We know how much you've bought in for, how much your down, or up, and I could see he was down $2000+. After about twenty minutes of pure losing, his temper starts to flare.At this point I now have two other guests at my table. Drinking coffee, not saying a word, just losing their money. After losing hand, after hand, this guy looks me straight in the eye, seized up, starts shaking, he can't move. He tries to punch towards me and smashes his stack of chips all over the place and falls backwards to the floor. I call for security, we cannot touch him due to liability . I can't move from my table because, well, liability / casino cash property, all I can do is try to talk to him. As I'm doing so, these other two woman who are sitting at my table just look at me and one says "OK, dealer, cmon lets go " as she taps the table telling me to start dealing and forget about the guy having a stroke on the floor. As security takes him to the ambulance out front, I had to stay behind for a couple minutes and give a statement. I go on break. I come back, and 45 minutes later, he comes right back in with a oxygen tank and keeps gambling for the remainder of the morning.
3) You get a dildo, and YOU get a dildo!
On a late summer Saturday night, we had a large event for these massive muscle guys/strongman competition type thing. After their show, I'm at the roulette table , and five of these boys come over to play. They were absolutely hilarious. They were feeling pretty good, cashed in somewhat large amounts and I could tell this was going to be a fun time. After about a hour of dealing to these guys, it's almost midnight, everybody is pretty hammered , I spin the ball, and all five of these guys take out these god damn (what I can only tell was) two feet purple dildos from inside their pants, and wiping them around in the air. The ladies were just loving it, one of the dildos landed in the roulette wheel and we had to shut the table down to re-calibrate the wheel to make sure nothing had been changed. I just remember that night was so much damn fun, I couldn't believe what I was seeing and I would never forget it.
4) Full Moon
On this day, I was actually training dealers / supervising them on small games like Three Card poker. We opened the table at 10AM, and this older man came and sat down . He played all day. The jackpot was $21,000 and that was pretty high for this table. He played, and played and played. He's one of the players where you know he's wearing a diaper because he's been drinking coffee/pop all day and hasn't moved in eight hours. As the day went on, this man never moved from his chair. Getting closer to midnight, he was aggravated and said "I need to go have a smoke, I'm getting killed in here". He left, and the very next hand, the lady beside him was dealt the jackpot . He didn't say much, but you could just tell he just hated life at that very moment because had he not gotten up, it would of been his hand. The man calmly took his cane , his hat, jacket, coffee, and left. The next morning I found out when he did leave he drove his car straight through his bank and was arrested.
5) Slick Robber
I actually give props to people who can actually pull this off. This story may confuse you so I'll try and explain things as best as possible. A lot of casinos have machines as soon as you walk through the front doors. A man walks up to one of these machines and sticks in HIS $100 bill. He doesn't gamble it, instead he hits the cash out button and gets a $100 TITO ticket where he then takes the ticket to the ATM machine to get his $100. Now remember, his Original $100 is in the slot machine. He then takes the $100 from the ATM and goes back to the same machine, and repeats this process over a hundred times. Essentially he's taking money from the ATM, and loading up the Slot Machine . Now he knows he can't do it too much because if the slot machine gets full of money, the machine will shut down and the slow attendant will have to take all the cash out. So he deposits over $10,000 , then has a small crowbar, he cracks the machine open and makes a run out the front door. To my knowledge he was never caught . But damn, that was pretty smart .
EDIT:
6) Mental Health is a thing.
10PM man walks in to play some high limit BlackJack. This guy knows the game and played well. Dressed nice, drank juice/tea , a little bit of a attitude, cashed in over $10,000. When this man was half way down his buy in, he said something a long the lines of "If I don't win here tonight, I'm going to go set myself on fire." I wasn't sure if he was serious because when people are down, they tend to say a lot of nonsense. I actually left early that night, and from a third party was told he did exactly that in the parking lot. The next day it was clear something terrible had gone wrong in the parking lot .
EDIT:
7) Nothing good happens after midnight
After a busy Saturday night, I was dealing a mix of games, and during this story I was in the middle of Blackjack. I had one young kid (probably 19) sitting in the middle, one older male probably in his later 40's sitting beside him on his right, and I had a really nice couple in their 20's sitting together at the other side. This young kid wasn't playing just sort of watching, and ever time the old man won he would give this young guy some of his winnings. The older man, was a wine drinker, and he had black between all of his teeth, I'll never forget. He's a little drunk but nothing terrible. As the night goes on, the older man goes and uses the washroom, at which point the couple asked the young guy "Oh was that your dad?" and the young guy says "Hah, no I wish!". The couple and I just looked at each other. This old guy, was in complete control over this kid. Absolutely disgusting. The night ends, and I find out the couple called a few of their friends, and they all waited outside by this old mans truck and beat the living hell out of him. 40 years old, sleeping with a 19 year old, completely brain washed . Very weird.
8) That one co-worker where you just wish they would quit.
One of our co-workers, nice guy but had a very big ego and we as employees just sorta left him alone. One day he had enough of the atmosphere and quit. Now usually when you quit, you cannot come back until you paperwork is finalized. How ever, HR was in that day, and he was given the paperwork the very next day. He came in, cashed in $1000, and made $50,000 in about a hour at the Baccarat table. My manager, was extremely annoyed, because now this guy is just mocking the casino and having the time of his life (Thanks for the big tip by the way :) ) and so he decides to call it quits. He wants to ban himself and he wants $50,000 in cash. The casino says Nope, we are going to give you a cheque. Now here's the thing, most business people will take the cheque, how ever you CANT CASH the cheque until the following monday because it's on that day where the funds are available. The casino on the other hand will cash their own check in anytime , because they want you to play. So this guy pretty much said go to hell I want my cash, and he called the police. Police show up, and management promptly gave him the cash.I though it was absolutely hilarious .

9) No good deed goes un punished
I was dealing Three Card Poker, and the jackpot was around $17,000. This old man (a regular) was sitting there all day grinding it out. Super nice guy, always a pleasure to deal to. Well, after hours of playing, he stands up and says "Hey john!, can you come here for a minute?" so his buddy John comes over. He says to John "I need to go take a piss real quick, can you play my card until I get back?" John agrees . John takes the chips and I stop him and explain he can't play his friends chips, he needs to cash in and play his own. And he does. Welp, second hand out and bam, doesn't he win it. The old man comes back and is so happy, he can't believe it. John, took his $17,000, didn't say a word to his "buddy" and walked away. I never felt so much hatred in all my life. Didn't give him a dollar, not a thank you, nothing. The old man sits back down again, the progressive resets to $2500, and he sat there grinding away again.
10) The Top Knot
I had this player , young guy, who was born into a fortune. One of his relatives passed away and left him a pretty big sizable amount of money, so he played poker every single day for the rest of his days. I will add, he IS a good player. I did not enjoy his company just because of the "Know-it-All" attitude, but he was good. We'll call him John. John is 5'10, and well build, with muscle. John also decided today was the day to show off his Top Knot. (google top knot if you're not sure what I mean) So he sits down, and he's absolutely KILLING the table. Every hand, after hand, after hand. And because he's in such a good mood, he's playing any two cards, calling any $500 bet, and he's just dominating. This one guy at the table decided he had enough. He got up, without saying a word and left. A moment later, he comes back in, walks behind John, and takes a pair of scissors , and cuts off his Top Knot. I for one couldn't believe it, dying laughing inside, and it just turned into one big brawl. That was a good day.
11) That one bad seed
One of my best friends who I haven't seen in YEARS ended up being part of the crew. Was kind of nice to catch up. We never really got along as we grew up because he has a very high picture of himself . He wanted that 10/10 woman. A mansion, and a new Corvette. So every month or so we would all go up to the other casino to play. I myself would bring no more than $500, but I couldn't understand how this guy (we'll call him Kyle) was spending THOUSANDS of dollars at the tables. So this wen on for a few months. Well, one day, as we're closing the casino, he and I are in the High Limit room and we're getting ready to close the tables. We are told to take the chips out, count them, put them back, sign this piece of paper and that's it. Well as the supervisor was locking the tray, the piece of paper fell to the floor, so she asked Kyle to grab the piece of paper. As he bends over, a great big $500 chip falls right out of his sock. Kyle was fired immediately , but it all made sense. They offered Kyle a deal where if he replaced all the stolen chips they would not make it public. Not sure how that turned out.
12) If I ever decide to write a book, this will be the last chapter: <3
After working at my first Casino for five years, I met a Indian woman who was visiting from another part of the country. During this time I was explaining a game to her, which honestly I don't think she even cared. She explained she was visiting and sight seeing , and that was that.Well, two years later I ended up moving to the other side of the country and transferred casinos, and low and behold she worked there as a Dealer. We got married , and it's been 5 years.
13) The Tip
One of our tables that we've had for a couple years had a progressive jackpot that had reached $100,000. The dealer at the table was sitting pretty lonely. Nobody really played the game because people knew it was extremely difficult to win the jackpot. My memory is a tad foggy, but you somehow needed to flop the royal flush. This young guy sits down and says to the dealer, we'll call him John. "John, if you pay me that jackpot, I will tip you $10,000" Well John started dealing, and about a half hour into his shift, he F*cking did it. He dealt him the royal. And you know something?This young lad, kept his word, and he made sure there was a audience, and he tipped exactly $10,000. That was a moment right there. That pay cheque was real nice. I think we all got about $500 more than usual. The moment that jackpot was awarded they got rid of the table because the money it was making was not near what the casino wanted. I'm sure there have been bigger tips at other casinos, but that was something special .
14) The Lawsuit
Now this story I'm going to have to beat around the bush a bit due to the nature of what happened. I can't won't answer any questions that you may have on this topic other than what I have to say because it had a lot of publicity . The waitresses at this casino had to wear very thin sexy clothes. Not borderline legal, but it was noticed. One day they called all the waitresses to come in and explained they were changing their outfit to something even more sexier. Now these new dresses were very very borderline legal . The staff said No way. We're not wearing that.So , friday night comes, and the staff work their whole shift, then at the end of their shift were called into a meeting and were all fired. Welp, one of those ladies father was a pretty big time lawyer. Brough the casino to court and won. They won big. Good for them. We had no waitresses for a couple days haha.
Thanks for reading along, I have many more I can add as the day goes on, those were just some off the top of my head. Feel free to ask any questions of the Casino industry. I don't really have many stories about the surveillance department because that's the one area where I can't really say a whole lot due to its privacy and contracts I was and still am under.

After all the celebrations, Sherb drama, and eating too many bday cupcakes, I need a power nap before the after-party! Dream of Jennovia, as the Dream Scavenger Hunt is happening now!! :)

Review of installing the Mr. Shades PID on my Gaggia Classic 2019

I just installed a Mr. Shades PID on my new Gaggia Classic and got it running. I’ve seen a couple of reviews like this recently, but when I was trying to figure out what machine (and then what PID) to get, I looked around for reviews and wished there were more. So, I thought I’d post my own.
A similar (slightly more optimistic) post is here: https://www.reddit.com/gaggiaclassic/comments/l8ms5b/my_experience_fitting_mr_shades_pid_to_gaggia/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

TL;DR: Approach this with the right mindset, and you will be happy. Expect a real DIY experience if you get this; do not expect it to be easy. Plan to spend 8–10 hours on it. If you are very efficient, exceptional at reading manuals, and don’t make mistakes, it can be much faster, but unless you have done this before, it will almost certainly longer than the 2–3 hours advertised (probably regardless of which PID kit you buy and from which company).

Pros:

Major kudos to Mr. Shades for making & supporting these kits. I recognize that it would be a pretty tough challenge! Gaggia changes their designs in little ways on a regular basis (e.g. lid structure, wiring colors, etc) and seems to have some inconsistencies in build (e.g. which wire goes in which slot for switches), and this throws off the instructions. It would be impossible for Mr. Shades to stay ahead of that or fully account for it in static instructions, but it seems like he figures things out and provides pretty reliable support for folks to get the kit working.
The support email was very responsive and helpful. I got help on two main things: 1) I wasn’t getting power to the PID device, and 2) the Gaggia lid wasn’t closing after install, due to a change in the lid design between 2018 & 2019 models. They got back to me quickly with a solution to both problems within a few hours, and then explained another couple of questions I had about power connections.
It seems to now be working, and it is a relatively good-looking package. I worried a lot (probably too much) about whether to get this PID or the smaller-enclosure version from Auber. Obviously, I went with this one, but it really doesn’t have wasted space, so it feels like a good sizing.
I feel like I know my Gaggia better now, and it feels more like a tool I really own and can maintain myself, rather than just another piece of technology that is beyond my ability to understand or repair.

Cons:

Despite my feeling of understanding for the Gaggia, my understanding of the PID is still pretty lacking, and that feels a piece of tech that is beyond my ability to fix. If it breaks, I will probably have to replace it or reverse the install completely.
This was a genuinely frustrating experience. Most of the connections in the Gaggia require both finesse and strength to undo. There is very little space to move for many of them, and things are really stuck in place. A long flathead screwdriver is definitely essential for prying apart the power connections. A good magnetic screwdriver is helpful, though I wish I had a stronger magnet in mine.
Honestly, I feel kind of cheated by the marketing of the installation process. The sales page says, “Installation usually takes most people around 2-3hrs and requires only basic tools.” I understand that this metric probably has to be stated in order to compete with Auber, who makes a similar claim but probably doesn’t provide much of a different installation experience. I tracked my time, and it took me a bit over 9 hours. The Reddit post linked about says they had no problems, but it took about 5 hours, and they hadn’t yet gotten the lid to close correctly (dealing with this issue took me over an hour). A YouTube channel I enjoy says that it took them 10 hours. I suspect that to finish this in 2–3 hours, you would have to be very familiar with the process already. Like ... now could probably do it in 3 hours, if I had to.
The support is good, but if the manual were better ... the support maybe wouldn’t be as necessary? I know that making the perfect manual is easier wished for than done, though.
The PID takes a bit of configuration, post-installation. It’s not that bad (much more pleasant than the physical installation process, and better documented), but it adds probably 30–45 minutes of extra time to the overall process, and I didn’t realize that it wouldn’t come pre-configured.
As the install took a lot longer than expected, I ended up wondering whether I should have just gotten a different machine, with a PID pre-installed. A reason I got a Gaggia is that I like the design, and with a PID, it seems to be a machine that is as good as things that cost around $1000. But, the machine is $450, and then (with shipping to the US) this PID is about $175. Not counting the accessories (because those are needed for any machine), that’s a minimum of $625. But then, I spent 9–10 hours installing the PID, and now I’m left uncertain whether it will really operate as expected for the long term, or whether it could somehow malfunction and cause bigger problems. It would certainly be possible to mess up this install partway through – and then be stuck either reversing things or buying a replacement kit to try again. I’m currently very uncertain whether I made the right decision (going with the Gaggia + PID), and I don’t think I’d make the same choice if I were to start from scratch.

More on install time
I am fairly competent at technical things: In the past, I’ve done a bit of soldering for keyboard projects, I’ve done some basic woodworking, I’ve replaced an iPhone battery, and I am intermediate at programming in Python & coding websites with HTML, CSS, and JS frameworks. I’m nothing special, but I can generally follow instructions and figure things out. Then again, a lot of what I do allows me to experiment and Google any problems that arise. This install is a bit of a different beast.
It’s hard to say how much of the difficulty would really be possible to solve in the manual versus how much is innately part of assembling a DIY electronics project. I did skim the contents first to get a sense of how the process was structured, but it is pretty hard for me to fully understand technical things without working along with the process. So, it was partly on me, but I had multiple times where a critical detail was under-emphasized or pointed out too late in the manual.
There are two main reasons the install takes a long time:

As stated above, Mr. Shades does not have a simple task in providing the kit + manual + support, with changes and variability from Gaggia. Added to this, the Gaggia itself just has lots of fiddly bits that are difficult to work with.
The manual is out of date or out of sync in small but meaningful ways. It is quite good in many ways, but this is a complex process, and the instructions leave parts out and gloss over others. Probably over half the time this install took was due to things that I nearly completed, only to have to reverse and redo. Lots of things need to be done in a certain order, and it’s not always clear what that is until you’ve gone (much) too far. For most of them, proper photos and better ordering of instructions probably would have prevented the mistakes. It sounds like they are updating it, but I’m still kind of salty that they sold me a device with an outdated manual.

Tips

Don’t attempt this without the proper tools. It would be very, very difficult to do with something like a bike multitool (I tried this before getting out a full assortment of tools). For me, a flathead screwdriver was essential, even though it’s labeled as optional.
Approach this as the serious project it is. Have patience and take this on as a doable but relatively involved DIY electronics project. Also, set up at a good workspace – try to have good daytime lighting, no distractions, and hopefully good sitting/standing options. I spent a silly amount of time on this at a dining table before moving to my proper desk. Like anything else, a better workspace makes the work better.
A very helpful thing for me was having a couple of rolls of tape: some strong blue painter’s tape to hold things in place while working on them, and some light masking/washi tape to write labels on when having to undo and redo things.
Specific tips that will save you a lot of time:
- The PID enclosure splits apart, which is helpful so it can be assembled over top of the PID even after things are connected. But, the front and back plate were much simpler to accurately screw on after taping the enclosure together on the sides, in alignment. Use tape!
- Make sure to put the cables through not only the grommet but also the enclosure backplate before attaching them to the PID. Otherwise, you will have to undo the connections and string it through. Also make sure you have it facing the right way (with screw countersinks facing outward), or again, you will have to disconnect things and string them through again.
- There is a yellow & green grounding cable, with a fork on one end and loop on the other. Make sure the fork goes inside the Gaggia, and the loop is left to use in the PID enclosure. This is not made clear in the manual, and seems to not matter almost until the very end of the installation process – but then it does.
- Probably, try to read fully through each section before working through them. Read it through and visually plan it out before actually disconnecting or connecting things. I am not very good at this, but I would have tried harder had I realized quite how essential it was. Moving slowly at this process probably saves time in the end.
- It is very tempting to put together the casing before you have done all the steps, but really, don’t do this until you are quite sure that things are working. Stick very closely to the ordering of the manual’s sections, or you will have to backtrack.
- If you are just about to install the device, realize that the manual (as of February 2021) recommends a position for the Brew SSR that will not allow the Gaggia lid to close. If the manual you read says to place the SSR above the power plug, it is outdated – email support for a corrected set of photos.
- When you are installing the thermostat in the boiler, just unscrew and remove the entire steam wand. You don’t even have to unclip this – it will literally come all the way out through the top, and it’s easy to put back in. It will help give you a very necessary extra bit of room to work.

Initial PID experience & current thoughts
Even after the “auto-tune” process and with a warmed-up machine, the display does seem to quickly jump around within maybe +0.5 to +3°C of the target. This probably isn’t such a bad thing, and I suspect it’s just very accurately reporting the temperatures as it is reading & responding to them. As an initial experience, though, it isn’t as smooth or reassuring as I had expected it to be. But, I’m guessing that, once I get used to it, I will appreciate the deep configurability and clarity of the device. It feels like kind of an “expert” tool, rather than a dumbed-down kitchen appliance. That is pretty cool, provided it works in the long run.
Now that I have actually installed this, I am pretty excited about making espresso with it, and I hope that it saves me time on temperature surfing while getting more consistent results. I am quite excited to have more machine capabilities to experiment with! The first 5 or so shots I’ve pulled with it have been consistent and really nice.
Would I recommend it to most people? Not really. Will I be glad I did it, a month or a year from now? I’m pretty optimistic about that. Fingers crossed!

26 Capital Corp (ADERU) is a new at-NAV SPAC with world-leading online gambling expertise - worth a bet

EDIT - one week after i posted this, Britain's most successful hedge fund manager Michael Platt has taken a 6.5% stake
tl;dr
At-NAV new SPAC with world-leading expertise in online gambling. Worth a bet on potential to be next DKNG on the hype train

+++++++
Hi all - have had a lot of great tips from this sub. Hopefully this pays some of you back. I have been watching and researching this since 23 December when it first filed S1, awaiting the units to be listed - they are available today trading as ADERU
Positions - 500 units @ 10.42 to start. Will be monitoring and building position below $15, especially if attention starts to build ahead of units and warrants splitting and shares coming available to Robinhood.
(My other SPAC positions are OPEN, IPO-E-F, PSTH, FUSE, PIPP, ACTC, CCIV and DMYD, 100 to 1000 shares each mostly around NAV and numerous warrants and options around these.)
As ever, this is not investment advice and do your own research
+++++++

26 Capital Acquisition Corp or ADER
is a 240m SPAC with usual terms - 10$ units, 1/2 warrants. Seeking a merger in "gaming and gaming technology, branded consumer, lodging and entertainment, and Internet commerce sectors".
I think this is highly worth a play on the online gambling hype if you can get in at near NAV, based entirely on the management which is unbeatable in its knowledge of the gambling industry

CEO Jason Ader
has held director level positions at Las Vegas Sands Corp. ($42bn one of biggest casino groups in world), IGT (£3.72bn multinational gambling firm specialised in software and slot machines) and Playtech (£1.4bn multinational gambling software firm)
Before starting his own fund in 2013 he was regularly ranked Wall Street's top analyst on the gambling and leisure sector
His fund, Spring Owl Capital, is a small activist fund focused on gambling and leisure. They are probably most famous for ousting the CEO of Viacom in 2016 and a crusade against Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer in 2015.
Ader knows the gambling - and online gambling - industry inside out. He drove bWin to a £1.1bn takeover by gambling giant GVC (now Entain) in 2016, and has been driving similar change and demands for improvement at board level at Playtech
The fund mostly manages money for a select group of wealthy families, which could be a positive sign for the SPAC (although I don't know how much skin in the SPAC the fund has, if any)
Here is a video of Ader from November talking about how he's excited about SPACs. He talks about how he has been advising certain States about legalising sports betting and how to maximise value and liquidity by linking up with European companies in the space (Playtech e.g.??).
Ader is extremely bullish on US legalising online casino and more sports betting options, accelerated by need for revenue because of pandemic

Rafi Ashkenazi
One of the most highly respected names in the online gambling world, including COO and CEO positions at major online gambling firms such as Playtech and Stars Group (a world leader in online poker and casino). At Stars he led the $4.7bn takeover of Sky Betting to create the world's largest publicly listed online betting firm in 2018. Most recently he led the £10bn merger between Flutter (biggest gambling company in world by revenue, market cap £26bn), and Stars Group (Ader also involved). Also has connections into the booming Israel tech space which is interesting

Joseph Kaminkow
Special Advisor to the Chief Product Officer at Aristocrat, a leading gambling software provider and games publisher, previously Vice President of Game Design at Zynga Inc. This guy is a former video game / pinball designer who is credited with revolutionising the slots industry after moving into gambling software from video games in 1999. Regarded as a "legend" and "hall of famer" in this niche. At Zynga he designed so-called 'social casino games' which don't involve real-money gambling but are otherwise basically gambling apps (revenue from microtransactions etc). 130 patents on gambling/gaming design inventions

Greg Lyss
This is a very interesting but extremely low profile person. He was Bill Ackman a.k.a SPACman's right hand man at Gotham Capital. Ackman respected him so much that when Ackman set up a personal hedge fund to invest the Ackman family's money, he put Lyss in charge of it. To repeat - Bill Ackman thinks this guy is such a good investor and trustworthy that he put him in charge of investing his family's money. Don't know anything more about him, but I like this association with Ackman, which suggests to me some integrity around management of this SPAC, especially as the gambling world can be very murky.
The other member of the team is the CFO of SpringOwl with 20+ years' hedge fund experience and not notable (although clearly competent)

Thesis / potential targets
Based on the above experience and many public comments by Ader over the past year, I would be very surprised if ADER is not looking to merge with an online gambling technology provider / existing online betting website / social casino app / possibly a supporting technology provider
They are activist inventors, and specifically say in the IPO prospectus that they could look for businesses that can benefit from turnaround or are not being run well. I speculate that their deep knowledge of the European / global online gambling industry means they have a target in mind that they think would benefit from their expertise and US liberalisation of gambling legislation.

1) Ader believes the listing of UK-listed gambling companies in US is immediately big in terms of market cap because of the premium on online gambling stocks in US. He has pitched DraftKings to takeover Playtech and called on Playtech to spin off non-core business. This makes me wonder if he would spin off some element of Playtech to list in US to cash in on gambling hype.
This might be Finalto.com / TradeTech which is an online financial platform owned by Playtech. Playtech has been trying to sell this for 200 - 240m since August so it fits. This company provides liquidity and trading to brokerages and runs markets.com a trading site. I wouldn't be that excited although apparently the business has been booming during COVID and there could be a decent pop just on fintech hype.

2) This could be a 'picks and shovel' type data/B2B betting software play a la DMYD, or something like e.g. Israel based CRM software Optimove which works with some of biggest online gambling cos and has links to Ashkenazi. This would be interesting but probably not a huge pop

3) Possibly - given Ader's links to Sands - an online gambling tie-up with one of the big Vegas casinos who are desperate to get into the online betting space (see MGM's attempt to buy Entain for $8bn last week). Interestingly, Sands' owner Sheldon Adelson, previously a major opponent of online betting, has just died. Ader predicted a few months ago that Sands would be moving in this direction.

“There’s no stopping online gaming,” Ader said [before Adelson's death]. “(Las Vegas Sands’) initiatives to stop online gaming, at this stage, are largely historic. There hasn’t been a lot of spending recently to do that, especially post-pandemic.”
“I think the company will see the value created by DraftKings and FanDuel and Penn (National) Gaming and others. They’re not foolish,” Ader added. source

4) Ader is very confident that Macau will legalise online gambling in next year or two. Sands is big in Macau, the biggest gambling market in the world. A SaaS-type product positioned to capitalise on Asian gambling would be MASSIVE - at present however, China's attitude to gambling and local regulations mean this is unlikely

5) I also wonder if they might try to take legitimate one of the offshore bookmakers with big customer databases and brand recognition but which have been grey-area/illegal under US gaming legislation. For example, Five Dimes recently announced a settlement with the FBI to attempt to transition into newly legalised US markets. This might have the most hype potential

Potential upside
This is entirely a play on management experience and the meme factor / hype around online gambling in the US. I think if they pick a good target - which given their experience and connections seems likely - and get the right publicity and attention from retail investors looking for the next DKNG this could easily 3x and maybe 5-6x if on DKNG-type hype levels.
There is currently little spotlight on this and it is a good time to get in at NAV

Potential Downside

Ader has been vocal that he thinks US online betting is overvalued and in a bubble - why is he starting his own SPAC in the space then? Does he just want to cash in while the hype is at all-time high or does he have a legitimate business goal?
If he just wants to dump a part of Playtech which he does not like onto retail investors, this is a bad deal.
Other targets could be e.g. hotel industry or other leisure sector which would be zero sexiness to retail. Given Ashkenazi and Kaminkow's background this seems unlikely though
Usual SPAC caveats apply about potential difficulty finding a target, locking up your money for unspecified period of time, and the fact I may have completely misread the potential and my above thesis might be totally wrong

Why I chose DOGE...

Wall of text warning... I posted the other day and have had many good discussions about how Doge works in the real world. I thought it would be interesting to talk to other small business owners that are or are considering implementing doge into their small businesses. Seriously though don't base any business decisions on something some dude from the internet said. Only you know whats best and feasible for your own businesses. I am not here to offer financial advise only to show some insight into how it was put into place in my business and my decision making process.

I have been involved in cryptos for about 3 years. I was serving and my manager at the time was pushing me hard about buying some TRX. So I did some research and hit a NANO/XRP/XLM pop and I was off to the races. I lost and gained and mostly lost but I was viewing the market as a slot machine. Bet on X and hope it hits. Bet on Y and hope it hits. Depending on your bets and what hits it can lull you into thinking you are a genius/idiot. I finally realized its not about quick money but is a long term investment and changed my strategy accordingly. After that I saw some modest gains. I also stopped trying to catch falling knives which helped alot. I had to cash out to help get me to where I am but I'm good with the trade off. I say all that to let you know that you need to, at the very least, know how to navigate the crypto marketplace. Just as in every decision you make for your business you need to have a basic knowledge of anything you are integrating into your business. That is the only reason I was able to throw it together so quickly.
Full disclosure I do have a small holding in Doge that has returned a nice profit and I personally would love to see it hit the moon. However I try to set aside those biases when making business related decisions.
I own a small business. I employ 7 people. I make food and as of last week I accept Dogecoin as payment for my goods. I know that Doge is a very controversial topic right now. Depending on who you are talking to it could be the best or worst thing in the world. Those things are fun to talk about but don't provide any help when making choices that have real world ramifications in regards to my income. That is why I wanted to talk about this. As a business owner it is hard to find information about doge that isn't memes or people bashing it. Below is my reasoning and I hope we can have a conversation about the pros and cons of doge in real world applications. I will never be too old to learn and I know many of you have much more knowledge about this topic than I do and I would love to hear it.

The biggest reasoning behind doing this is cost of entry. It literally cost me nothing. (Before you start yelling about capital gains wait till the end and I will address that.) I didn't have to buy any equipment to accept it. I don't have processing fees aside from transfer costs which compared to credit card fees are a non factor. And I have no large companies I have to setup accounts with or sign long term contracts. I was able to throw together a way to accept payment with a basic knowledge of the crypto market. That's it. If I never do a single transaction in doge I will be out zero dollars just to offer it.
Risk. I know it is risky to accept doge as a payment method but being in the food service industry is much riskier than that. For real, anyone that understands the margins in this industry knows its teetering on a cliff at all times. That being said there is inherent risk in everything and every situation needs to be judged on its own merits. In my situation the risk is very minimal. Even if doge drops to pre-pump levels I could at least recoup my food costs. Regardless of the USD price of doge that will not change the USD amount I will receive in doge per transaction. If today a pizza cost 200 doge and tomorrow it cost 500 then at the time of purchase I am receiving the same USD equivalent at the time of purchase. Which I can then take (weekly, daily, or even every transaction) and after a couple clicks I have those funds in a more stable currency like USD or even Tether. I know capital gains and all of the taxes involved could eat into profits. Yes that is true but even in the most aggressive models I imagine I will do sub 1% gross sales in doge in the near future. At this point I'm willing to accept the loss of profit but that may need to be reevaluated in the future.
It is so much more accessible than bitcoin. Coming from someone that deals with a demographic that is very under educated in regards to crypto, bitcoin can be intimidating. It's scary for beginners to jump into something that they will probably never amass one of. When talking about small retail purchases bitcoin is simply too out of scale. If real world implementation is what crypto is going for IN MY OPINION any coin valued over $500 will make most of the general public very hesitant to use in their everyday life. If I accepted Bitcoin a pizza would cost around 0.00047btc. Anyone that is not knowledgeable about crypto looks at that very strangely. We are not accustomed to seeing anything greater than a hundredth of a decimal in regards to currency. The market cap being what it is for doge is a positive in my opinion. Would it be great if it went to $40000 per doge? Absolutely but it's counter productive to smaller retail purchases. It benefits smaller sized establishments for doge to be in levels we work in. Doge is the training wheels that will get people to a point of keeping non-investment funds in a crypto for day to day spending use. Which brings me to my final point.
It makes me smile. I am almost 32. I grew up with the internet as it grew up. I've watched as the internet meta went from one thing to another and eventually became integrated into the everyday lives of people young and old. I struggle with the constant pressures of everyday responsibility and general crap that comes with being an adult. I miss the days of not having to worry about bills and the future. When I had everything setup to accept doge it made me laugh like I was a kid again. It actually made me giggle. Like a uncontrollable giggle. It took me back to the days of calling a restaurant and asking for Semore Butts. It is in essence the most childish thing I can do in my professional life and I love it. Doge, to me, isn't about being over or under valued. It's about the meme. It's about bringing a little joy, not only back into my life, but into my professional life at that.

That is why I did it. It has been a long pandemic for every small business. I have struggled with mental and physical health from the constant worry. The day in day out monotony of will I be able to pay my bills. That is why I believe in doge. It is a way for everyone to collectively laugh together at the pure outrageousness that was 2020. Look around at everything that is happening. We live in a time that has a pandemic killing thousands daily, riots and civil unrest at every turn, and a world that is seemingly on fire everywhere we look. Who's to say I can't accept a meme right next to cash or credit? No offense to all of the technical analysis and DD everyone does but I think we can sometimes get too focused on the hard numbers and forget to include the human element of it. Doge is a way for everyone to connect and has a very easy barrier of entry to overcome. It doesn't have a specific industry or field application behind it. It's about Doing Only Good Everyday.
If you have made it this far I would love to hear your feedback and to have a discussion about crypto and real world application in general.
This is simply me telling you how I implemented Dogecoin into my current business with zero disruption and zero negatives. I'm not betting the house on doge. I'm not altering my business model or strategy. I'm not trying to become a billionaire. I'm just trying to have a little fun in a world that is not very fun right now.

And because I'm really excited about it. I already made my first sale with DOGE. u/NoGuts007 has donated 20 pizzas for my local healthcare workers. I'll be delivering them tomorrow. If nothing else comes from this at least I was able to do some good in this world as the result.

Tower climbing tips & equipment guide (Part 2)

The other half of the guide I've been writing. This half focuses entirely on the various weapons, armors, and decals that stand above the rest. This is specifically for Tengoku climbing. After a lot of thought I decided that TDM meta is different enough that I should just make that it's own thread. Some weapons that are good for TDM are excluded here due to problems that hurt their potential for climbing, and some weapons that are listed here are not good in TDM.
-------------------
Notable Weapons:
Weapon Scaling: Weapon damage scales based off of STR and DEX. If a weapon has 30% STR scaling and 70% DEX scaling then 30% of your STR will be used in calculating damage while 70% of your DEX will be used to calculate the rest of the damage. Don't use weapons on fighter classes with stats that don't suit their scaling or you'll end up dealing some pretty pathetic damage.
Kamas-RE: This thing makes getting to F100 basically free if you're playing a ShooteAttackeAllrounder and it's at +7 or higher. Just get it. 100% DEX scaling.
Pickaxe: The Pickaxe's alt attack that throws sand has deceptively long range and causes a fairly long lasting stun effect. Use the pocket sand to stun a guy, then charge up a hit and obliterate them. This weapon is exceptionally powerful in 1v1 fights and that's exactly how many people you should be aiming to fight at any given time. The stamina equip requirement unfortunately prevents Attackers from using this weapon. 100% STR scaling.
Static Massager: Solid weapon with a huge ammo pool and decent damage. Many people have done loads of their early Tengoku climbing with this thing due to its good general usability and exceptional power for cleaning out screamer pits until you get real high up. Its expensive but lasts plenty long enough to justify the price and easier to build than many things on this list. 40% ST60% DEX scaling.
Flamethrower: The flamethrower is a weapon with exceptionally high DPS, massive ammo pool, solid rage move, and complete disbelief in the concept of blocking. Its only downsides being its fairly short range and need for frequent reloading. Use the Juggler decal to negate its reload downside. You can pair the Flamethrower with the Nail Gun to suppress an enemy while you advance to spray them with flames. This combo does take two weapon slots but it easily shuts down haters with dangerous weapons like the Kamas. I may not have personally used this weapon but I've seen plenty of evidence presented to me from reliable sources for me to believe its power. Unfortunately it's a stamina requirement weapon so Attacker can't touch it. 100% DEX scaling.
Magnum: This thing hits hard, can't be blocked, and has a forced stagger on every shot. The only downsides being its terrible accuracy (some people claim that there is a way to aim it to always land shots, yet never once have they provided any proof to support this claim) and small mag size. The Juggler decal can get rid of the issues cause by the mag size, and is more reliable overall than Billy the Kid for this weapon. The accuracy issue can be bypassed by just shooting from close range. This weapon is also one of the few in the game with an excellent set bonus decal. 30% ST70% DEX scaling.
M2G: This is by far the best weapon in the game but also the hardest to use. If you practice and get good with it you can take it basically anywhere. Even if you suck with it it still provides a massive amount of utility with firework lures and carefully aimed knife snipes. Just remember the priority of what ammo types are best to fire; 1.) Knife, 2.) Shotgun & Rifle, 3.) Firework, 4.) Grenade, 5.) Not even firing the weapon at all, 6.) Rocket. 70% ST30% DEX scaling.
Spear: Stabby stick kills man good. The basic pokes do good damage and have decent tracking, the heavy thrust does huge damage but it's a bit slow, and the rage move is a 100% knockdown. The only problem here is that it's a stamina requirement weapon so it's off limits for Attacker. 100% STR scaling.
Flail: The second best weapon in the game. Hits like a truck, has massive damage resistance for a short time while attacking, and the alt attack has some pretty good range (https://www.reddit.com/LetItDie/comments/ieco8b/why_flail_alt_attack_is_good/). If you buy any weapon from Hernia, it should be this one. 80% ST20% DEX scaling.
Flame Wand: I've never used this personally but its power is obvious. The ammo pool for this weapon is absolutely massive at uncap just like its damage. Its ideal range is similar to the flamethrower so it wouldn't be wrong to think of it as an alternative that trades the suppression capabilities for burst damage and the ability to create flame puddles to cook with. Remember that the flame puddles can't hurt you if you have at least 5% fire res. 10% ST90% DEX scaling.
Medusa Head: Personally I believe Medusa to be the 3rd best weapon in the game. While it lacks the raw power that the M2G & Flail have it has a lot more technical use that far surpasses every other in the game. Thanks to its homing and ability to be sped up with a second input while in the middle of any other animation, it's fairly easy to abuse the hit stun from the Medusa Head to hold a hater in place momentarily while you catch them in a combo with some other 1-handed weapon. 100% STR scaling.
Vajra of Light: My favorite weapon. Has some serious usability issues caused by its stamina equip requirement and its scaling being extremely problematic. Due to these issues, this weapon should never be upgraded beyond +7 as its full potential is lost forever (stam req too high for Attacker to equip it) if you go any further. Thankfully if you take the time to set it up for optimal usage it is in fact quite good. A basic combo that's easy to catch haters in paired with a powerful guard break alt attack that can be chained into after all but the last attack in its 4 hit combo. 50% ST50% DEX scaling.
Saber: The Saber is a very fast weapon with decent damage. If you can get a hater in a corner this weapon can infinitely stunlock them with its alt attack, which always electrocutes and goes through guards. 70% ST30% DEX scaling.
Pitching Machine: This is what you use as a Shooter to do any damage to Crowley at all. Also has a surprisingly powerful melee attack that uses very little durability. You can use the rage move to stagger Coen out of the roar at the start of the fight but this isn't a particularly good option for doing that since you need to use it before entering the fight which will kinda waste the rage if the boss was actually U10. It has let me down a lot of the time I've used it for any given purpose and for that reason I don't really recommend it unless you're playing a Shooter and don't have any other option for blunt damage. Even if you don't play Shooter build it anyway to farm Red Napalm and get the Blunt funshot from it. 20% ST80% DEX scaling.
Boxing Glove: Attack =/= Damage. The number on the weapon card is more of a vague suggestion of the kind of damage a weapon will be dealing per hit. That said, this weapon's damage isn't what makes it stand out. The Boxing Glove has rather good range for a melee weapon, some of the best stunlock potential in the game, and has a notoriously easy time knocking haters into the groggy state compared to any other weapon. This is like a sort of "get this guy out of my face" button you can use if something is being a big problem and your best solution to the problem is trying for a goretastic. I sure had a few moments like that on my climb to 351. THANKS 404. This weapon only gets more useful the further up you go and due to its ridiculous durability you can even use a T1 version if you're only using it for inducing groggy. 80% ST20% DEX scaling.
Bowling Ball: The first two hits of its combo are pretty decent but you use this for the rage move. So long as the ground is flat and clean (no plants or stuff like that) you send the rage off quite far and still nuke a dude with it, perfect for the long tightly packed hallways found in some of the floor layouts Tengoku uses. The rage also does absolutely massive damage to bosses while being fairly quick and long ranged making it the safest way to take chunks out of Jackson, Jin Die, and Crowley. This should be considered one of your highest priorities for success. 100% STR scaling.
Motorcycle: The main reasons to use this weapon are that a fully charged attack will always cause a knockdown, and its rage move is rather powerful for pit fights. While charged attacks can be chained indefinitely to stunlock a hater to death it's not the easiest thing in the world to land one on a hater that hasn't already been knocked down. Use the flail or something to knock them down initially then use the Motorcycle from there. Keep in mind the charged attack has exceptionally good forward movement which allows it to very easily catch haters attempting to roll away from you, or you can angle it a bit against a corner you're hiding behind as an enemy walks closer to suddenly jet out and knock that fool down. The rage move is decent but it can't hit the same enemy more than once, so it's a little lackluster unless you're using the tengoku variant of the Motorcycle that has fire damage, the Emperor. 100% STR scaling.
Bow: The second hardest weapon to use in the game. Thankfully it has such a hilariously high headshot multiplier (13x last I heard) that not only is it absolutely worth learning how to use and the 2nd weapon that should be bought from Hernia after the Flail, but it's even worth using on Striker despite its scaling cutting its damage in half on them. Oh and the rage move makes you invisible for about 3 seconds. You can use it to get out of a bad situation if you alert a particularly dangerous hater. 40% ST60% DEX scaling.
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Notable Armors:
Unlike the weapons section almost all of what's said here will apply to TDM as well, but a few pieces of armor will be left out as they are only good for TDM and not climbing. Helmets provide a very small portion of your defense compared to the rest of your armor and the differences in defense between helmets is small enough that you generally shouldn't care about the defense. It's the stat boosts that really matter here.
"What does Mixed Offenses mean?": You are using a mixed offense build if you are using weapons with damage scaling that favors having high Dex & STR instead of just one stat. If you're using the Kamas (100% DEX) and the Bowling Crusher (100% STR), then you are using a mixed build and will benefit from a helmet that boosts STR & DEX.
Night Scout chest & legs: This is the overall best permanently available armor set in the game. One of the highest defense totals paired with very good resistances. Just be careful fighting slash or electric weapons and you'll be just fine. The helmet is alright too, but it's nothing special and you'd get more out of using a different one from this list. Defense at +5 is 3850 for the chest & 2650 for the legs. Resists per piece are -9% Slash, +5% Blunt, +9% Pierce, +5% Fire, -9% Electric, & +5% Poison.
Iron Eagle RE full set: This set is weaker overall defensively than the Night Scout set but it does have a few reasons you may want to use it instead. The two main ones being a lack of any negative resistances and the fact that all pieces of this set have 50% higher durability than normal armor. I'll have some numbers below this section to better show how big of a boost that is. This version of the set is strictly easier to upgrade than the base Iron Eagle so it's a better investment if you can build up the 3M recycle points needed to buy it from Hernia's recycle shop. The helmet is by far the highest priority to get as it is the best DEX boosting helmet in the game. Defense at +5 is 993 for the helmet, 3536 for the chest, & 2441 for the legs. Helmet boosts are +9% HP & +16% DEX. Resists per piece are +9% Pierce, +5% Fire, & +9% Poison. Helmet durability at +5: 3250 compared to the usual 2500 Helmet durability at +19: 4288 compared to the usual 3298 Chest durability at +5: 5688 compared to the usual 4375 Chest durability at +19: 7505 compared to the usual 5772 Legs durability at +5: 4466 compared to the usual 3435 Legs durability at +19: 5892 compared to the usual 4532
Silent Sniper helmet: This helmet has the overall best stat boosts of any mixed offense helmet and solid defense. The chest & legs are direct downgrades to Night Scout though so there's no reason to use those. This helmet belongs to the War Ensemble faction which means it can be used with Night Scout, Iron Eagle RE, or Exo-armor on builds requiring matching faction armor. Defense at +5 is 1054. Boosts are -5% HP, +9% STR, +9% DEX, & +5% VIT.
Red Napalm legs: These get worse the further you upgrade any other pants since they gain very little from upgrades above +5. Their massive durability, excellent degradation rate of 5%, and extreme pierce resistance make them a solid option for someone with less upgraded equipment. The chest piece loses too much defense to really be worth it compared to Night Scout chest. Just be sure to avoid blunt damage at all costs, and of course, enjoy the view :^) . Defense at +5 is 2452, defense at +19 is 2818. Resists are -21% Blunt, +16% Pierce, +9% Fire, -20% Electric, & +9% Poison.
Warrior helmet: This helmet has the highest STR boost you'll get from any helmet (with one exception, but that helmet isn't ideal for climbing) as well as extremely high defense. This helmet reduces max HP but that isn't exclusively a bad thing. It's not great to have less HP but keep in mind it also makes your rage gain higher. This helmet also belongs to the Candle Wolf faction which means it can be used with Sword Dancer on builds requiring matching faction armor. Also it looks cool as fuck. Don't use the chest & legs from this set as they have terrible resists that make it weaker than Night Scout overall despite having slightly higher defense. Defense at +5 is 1114. Boosts are -9% HP, +14% STR, & +5% VIT.
Sword Dancer full set: This is the overall best armor set in the game. Unfortunately this was a lost bag set so it can only be gotten by buying the blueprints from Hernia for 24 DMs a piece. The helmet provides good mixed offense boosts, the chest & legs are the only pieces of armor that resist all 3 physical damage types, and it has the highest defense in the game apart from ZX Knight (which is not a good armor set due to horrible resists). The only reason you may not want to use this set is that its garish color scheme makes you look like a meth clown. Personally I enjoy making my characters look ridiculous so that's another upside for me. Defense at +5 is 1126 for the helmet, 4010 for the chest, & 2752 for the legs. Helmet boosts are +5% HP, +12% STR, +5% DEX, -10% VIT. Resists per piece are +5% Slash, +9% Blunt, +5% Pierce, +13% Fire, -13% Electric, & -13% Poison.
Exo-armor full set: This is an alternative to Sword Dancer that trades resistance to Slash & Fire for a large boost in Pierce res, reduced weakness to Electric, and a new resistance to Poison. This set was in lost bags and must be bought for DMs like Sword Dancer. The helmet is a direct upgrade to Night Scout with higher defense and the same stats except for an extra +8% VIT. Despite this upgrade there are still better options for running a DEX centric build. Defense is identical to Sword Dancer. Helmet boosts are -5% STR, +12% DEX, & +8% VIT. Resists per piece are -9% Slash, +9% Blunt, +13% Pierce, -9% Fire, -9% Electric, & +5% Poison.
Violent Grinder chest & legs: This is another alternative to Sword Dancer that trades its Pierce res and some of its Fire res for a resistance to Electric and a reduced weakness to poison. This set was in lost bags and must be bought for DMs like Sword Dancer. The helmet is not worth using for climbing as its boosts are purely negative for offensive stats. Defense is identical to Sword Dancer. Resists per piece are +5% Slash, +9% Blunt, +9% Fire, +9% Electric, & -9% Poison.
Reaper full set: THIS SET IS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO GET THE BLUEPRINTS FOR AND BUILD. With that warning out of the way, this set is really weird and has a handful of various positives and negatives compared to normal armor sets so lets go over those. This is the only armor set in the game with completely different resists on the chest and legs, +13% to everything split evenly between the two. This set has 2 different helmets that can be used to complete it, which are earned by completing the 41-50 stamp rally. The one for getting the stamps at all boosts STR, the one for perfecting every stamp boosts DEX. Both helmets grant innate headshot damage immunity while worn. Yes I'm serious. All pieces of this set have higher durability than normal armors (Dura comparison at the end of the section for this set). This set's pieces also have a degradation rate of around 5% so they stay at high defense for a very long time. This set does not have a faction which means it cannot be used with any of the "full set" decals like Professional Cosplayer. The chestpiece blueprint is earned by completing a quest to make it to F100 while the legs blueprint is available to purchase in Hernia's Bloodnium shop for 66666 Bloodnium. It'll be a long time before you can get those legs but it's fine since you probably still won't have the materials to actually get the damn set to a decent level by the time you get all that blood. Defense at +5 is 946 for the helmets, 3405 for the chest, & 2270 for the legs. The blue helmet boost is +12% STR and is actually not a bad choice for STR centered builds at all. The red helmet boost is +12% DEX, and while the boosts are weaker than other DEX boosting helmets you could do fine using this if you really want the headshot immunity and higher durability that bad. The chest resists are +13% Pierce, +13% Fire, & +13% Electric. The legs resists are +13% Slash, +13% Blunt, & +13% Poison. Blue/Red X-Ray Glasses durability at +5: 3000 compared to the usual 2500 Blue/Red X-Ray Glasses durability at +19: 3958 compared to the usual 3298 Chest durability at +5: 5250 compared to the usual 4375 Chest durability at +19: 6927 compared to the usual 5772 Legs durability at +5: 4122 compared to the usual 3435 Legs durability at +19: 5438 compared to the usual 4532
Jackal D full sets: These are extreme endgame armor sets and are far more ridiculous to get the blueprints for and build than even the Reaper set. I'm actually not going to talk about them because due to terrible durability and obscene shop prices, they're really not ideal for climbing and I made this section specifically to tell people not to go for them. They're amazing for TDM but there's no point if you're just trying to climb unless you're some god gamer like Khuron and basically never take hits to begin with (Obligatory Khuron plug https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClR3-fdqAT3qbd-x2kXTCRQ ). If you want to know about these then you're gonna have to wait for the TDM version of this thread ~~or use the wiki~~.
Dishonorable mention, Barret Punisher: Despite Barret Punisher having the same defense as Night Scout I can't justify recommending it due to it lacking the Blunt resistance of Night Scout and being a giant pain in the ass to upgrade to uncap in comparison. Whoever decided this set should take carbon fiber & purple metals at T4 was a dickhole and ruined the potential of this otherwise decent and usable set. It's really not worth the effort but if you use any set that didn't make the cut for this list this is probably the best one.
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Notable Decals:
Utility vs. Damage: There's a few really good utility decals out there but you can't expect to make a build with no damage boosts and have it still kill easily. Try not to have more than 2 utility decals on a build for the best performance.
Decal stacking: Some damage boosting decals stack additively and some stack multiplicatively. Additive stacking is worse. The general rule is that anything with the same requirements to activate its effect will stack additively. Barbell & Golden Gym will stack additively, but Barbell and Professional Cosplayer would stack multiplicatively. Another example would be Barbarian + Professional Cosplayer. Barbarian x2 would be 1.2 + 1.2 = 1.4, Barbarian + Professional Cosplayer would be 1.2 x 1.2 = 1.44.
Treasure HunteSpy: I've written enough earlier on to justify its use already but you can also use this decal to check where enemies are and where they're facing from a safe place. You can buy this decal from the skillshroom shop after clearing F40. Spy is just Treasure Hunter but with 40% stamina use reduction for rolling and running. Spy is the best utility decal in the game and Treasure Hunter is only a little worse. This is a priority 1 choice for your utility slots.
Vampire: Vampire is the training wheels we all use to keep us alive until we have things figured out well enough that we don't need it anymore. It's always at least a decent choice for pure melee builds though. Vampire is a priority 3 Utility decal, priority 1.5 on pure melee.
5 Leaf Clove6 Leaf Clover: 5LC isn't too hard to get a premium of but even if you can't get it you can easily buy it from the shop for a few skillshrooms. Critical hits do 1.5x damage so you can consider the +20% crit chance from 5LC as a sort of +10% average damage increase. The more decals you have boosting crit damage the stronger crit chance boosts become. However, I strongly advise against going all in on crit decals because the crit damage ones are worse the more of them you have and you're just making your build fall apart even harder when you run into someone with Conqueror's Seal. 6 Leaf Clover is the same as 5LC but it's 30% instead of 20%.
Bull/Raging Bull: These are actually the best damage boost you can get out of any build without a 5 star decal. They're a bit scary to use since you have so little health to work with and because you can't eat beasts whenever you see them to restore hunger your stamina will eventually become a problem. I have a hard time suggesting the use of these for anything beyond destroying the first 3 forcemen.
Serial Killer: If you're using the Kamas or M2G as one of your main weapons this decal is a massive damage boost so long as you play smart and carefully. I wouldn't advise using it if you're only using melee. A common misconception about this decal is that the +100% Attack means you're doing double damage. In a vacuum that would be correct, but this leaves out the fact that Defense exists. An enemy's defense doesn't magically become higher when your attack increases so your damage is calculating a significantly higher number against that same defense. Serial Killer is more than double damage in practice. Not important to know since everyone's dying anyway but I wanted to explain that.
Marathon RunneUltra Marathon Man: 50% reduced sprint stamina use is an amazing quality of life effect for climbing. You can get through floors so much faster when you can just sprint almost the whole time. UMM is the same as Marathon Runner but with 80% reduction instead. This is a priority 2 utility decal.
Professional Gymnast/Legendary Gymnast: This is decent for a very different reason than Marathon Runner. If you're running a pure melee build then Kamas haters become a pain to deal with. Thankfully, Kamas is completely incapable of damaging anyone while they're in the middle of a roll animation. This will greatly increase the amount of rolls you can perform without exhausting your fighter making it much easier to waste their bullets. Legendary Gymnast is the same as Pro Gymnast but significantly better. This is a priority 2 decal on pure melee builds, and a priority don't-equip-this-shit on anything else.
Barbell/JokeGolden Gym: Barbell is very basic but it has no restrictions and it's not that unlikely you'll have gotten a copy of it somehow by the time you've made it to Tengoku. If you aren't swimming in 5 star decals Barbell is probably a prime choice for you. Joker is Barbell but with Tank, Silver Heart, Wolf, and 150% of an Emerald mixed in too. Joker is a very solid quality of life decal and the closest anything comes to a direct competition with the best decal in the game, UFR. Golden Gym is Barbell but twice as strong.
One Shot One Kill: OSOK is a massive damage boost for a single slot but is only viable on a very small selection of weapons (Kamas, Sniper Rifle, M2G, and Bow). Personally I don't care for this decal at all since relying on it for your damage sets you up for a bad time against haters with Super Helmet or Super Helmet 2, but if your collection isn't that great you've gotta use what you have.
Barbarian: This decal is stronger than Barbell if you're only using 2 handed weapons. If your build uses a good mix of 2 handed & 1 handed weapons I'd say just go with Barbell instead. That said, Barbarian is much easier to get from stews or by trading some skillshrooms for a non-premium copy.
Addict decals: If you have the addict decal for your main weapon it's probably a good idea to use it. Using addicts hurts your diversity but it's not a big deal if it's something like the Kamas or Flail that can cover a wide variety of situations.
Juggler: This decal's usefulness ranges wildly from weapon to weapon. Some don't care about it much at all while it's best in slot for others. I'm just going to go over the various weapons affected by this decal and explain why exactly it's a good or bad choice for them. Stun Gun - Stun Gun's reload is time delayed and that isn't changed by any reload speed decals so it's completely useless. M2G - Juggler only affects the speed of a small part of the animation. It is faster but the difference is so tiny it'll basically never matter. Sniper Rifle, Rocket Launcher - The problem these guns face is horrible fire rate, being locked in place for a long time after firing, and very small spare ammo pools. Their reload speeds mean nothing in light of these crippling downsides and I genuinely can't think of any situation where Juggler would matter at all. Welding Gun - The real problem is the charge time before firing and the short effective range. This weapon doesn't really work unless you're using it in situations where reloading it wouldn't be a problem in the first place, so Juggler isn't a good choice. Static Massager - The mag size is too big for this to be realistically worth it. Firework Launcher - While a shorter reload is nice the delay after firing is very long and the mag size is very large for how slow firing this weapon is. It's not a great choice even if it's not completely useless. Pitching Machine - This weapon benefits a good bit from faster reloads but due to the slow initial fire rate you usually need to jump through some hoops to keep a situation where the reload speed mattered in your favor anyway, so it doesn't feel too great. Shotgun, Kamas, Crossbow - All of these weapons appreciate the utility of drastically shorter reloads but don't necessarily need it more than another damage boost. Try it out and see if it's right for you. Nailgun - The only good use case for this thing is to clear screamers sub-F40 or as a tool to hold haters in place while you get closer to use the Flamethrower. Because of this, there is no reason to ever not use Juggler with this weapon. Flamethrower, Magnum - These two weapons lose their only real times of vulnerability by using Juggler and become significantly better at what they do as a result. If either of these weapons is one of the main ones in your build, you're a fool for not using Juggler if you have it. I would choose Juggler over almost any damage decal for them.
Billy the Kid: This gives half the reload speed bonus of Juggler but comes with some extra damage. Some weapons prefer Billy over Juggler while others should just stick with Juggler. Stun Gun, M2G, Welding Gun, Sniper Rifle, Rocket Launcher - Billy is a better choice than Juggler for these weapons due to the damage boost but still isn't particularly useful. Pitching Machine - This weapon does Blunt damage so Billy doesn't even work on it. Don't use it. Flamethrower, Magnum - Billy's speed bonus isn't fast enough to eliminate the vulnerability periods entirely so these weapons should just use Juggler instead. Nail Gun - The use cases for this weapon don't change so Billy is worse than Juggler. Static Massager, Firework Launcher - Billy is a much better choice than Juggler and doesn't feel that bad to use with these. Shotgun, Crossbow - You can use either one really, but the damage bonus of Billy will probably be better in a lot of cases. Kamas - Billy's speed is good enough and it will outperform Juggler in almost every situation thanks to the extra damage.
Mad BombeVampire Queen: Use with the M2G to lure a group to one spot, the kill one guy with a knife and watch as Mad Bomber kills the rest of the group. Also great for screamer pits in Tengoku. Vampire Queen is the same thing but with Vampire mixed in. Don't use Vampire & Vampire Queen together, the lifesteal effect doesn't stack. While this is a damage decal it should be considered a Utility decal. With that in mind, they're both priority 1.
Critical Attack/Below the Belt: There's a common misconception about these decals regarding what exactly they do. People often think that the 30% extra damage is added to the crit multiplier, resulting in crits dealing 1.8x damage. This is incorrect. The 30% extra damage is applied after the crit multiplier, resulting in 1.5 x 1.3 = 1.95x damage. With that said these decals are obviously really damn good but I'd advise against using them if your total crit chance is any lower than 50%. I'd also advise not using CA & BtB together if you can make a good build without one of them since relying too much on crits for your damage sets you up for a bad time against any haters with Pro Tip: Conqueror's Seal.
Trigger Happy: Equip Kamas & Assault Force armor, turn off brain, kill many men. This decal is extremely powerful for farming and takes basically no skill whatsoever to use. If you have it I'd advise using it until you can make a good build without it. I can't stand this bullshit but I'm not about to fault anyone for using a great farming tool. I'd rather people succeed with stuff that annoys me than fail with stuff that doesn't.
Food Fighter: This seems like a dumb meme at first glance but there's actually a lot of potential here. This makes eating something like 4x faster which has a variety of uses. You can near instantly use a Guardshroom if you suddenly find yourself in a situation you'd definitely die in without it, or you can eat a barbmeat and heal to full HP near instantly on demand. Try it out. Priority 2 utility decal.
Vigilante: One of the very few set bonus decals that's actually great. The Magnum is a very good weapon and its best used at close range whether you're using this decal or not so Vigilante just makes it better at what it would do anyway. The existence of the Iron Eagle RE armor set and Lethal Weapon (the Tengoku variant Magnum with fire damage) also help push this decal's power even further. Try it out.
Warrior Monk: One of the top 5 strongest decals in the game. 30% extra Slash & Blunt damage is amazing enough but the extra 20% pierce resistance makes it a prime choice for almost any build. Also happens to be one of the 2 decals that stacks multiplicatively with everything without being an Addict or set bonus decal. If your build uses a strong Slash/Blunt weapon as one of the main weapons then you'll benefit greatly from equipping this. #1 decal for any pure melee build.
Niten Ichi-ryu: The restriction is a problem but the damage boost is massive. The 50% reduced roll stamina cost is a big help against the many ranged weapons of F40+ and makes pure melee drastically easier to manage. If you can work well with a 1-handed weapon in most situations I strongly advise using this.
Lion Man: Bootleg Critical Attack. The critical damage bonus applies to both hands so long as you have the Lion Knuckles in one of them so you can easily use this to push your damage a little further if your collection is missing some of the stronger decals. The Lion Knuckles aren't a bad weapon either, but they're better in TDM than the tower.
Final Hero: I don't consider Legendary Hero to be a good decal due to it only being equal to a regular Bull and having nothing else going for it. Final Hero is a bit stronger and has the HP regen that'll often help you top off your health after taking a little bit of chip damage from something like a lizard biting you or a weaker weapon like the nailgun landing a hit on you. It's an alternative to Serial Killer that trades a big chunk of power for some slow (but still useful) passive healing and a big damage reduction on the first hit you take while the effect is active (while you're at full HP). If you're bad at keeping Serial Killer active (like me) then this might work out better for you. It's also way better on Attacker than any other class for high climbs since Attacker tends to die if they get hit at F250+ anyway. I think a lot of people underestimated this decal when it came out because of how unreliable the other Hero decals are. Try it out for a while before saying it's bad. I'm not the only person that's taken it to F300+ afterall, and I have a feeling I won't be the last.
Ultimate Fighter's Return: Best decal in the game. No matter what you're doing, you're doing it 20% better if you have this decal equipped. There is no situation in which this decal isn't a premium choice. Prioritize over ALL other decals if you have it.
Professional CosplayeSylvia Christel: This decal is extremely powerful but a bit restrictive. There's no reason not to use it if you have it and it should always be prioritized over any other decal in the game due to its sheer power. The restriction of needing to wear a full set is misleading as you only need to wear armor from the same faction, not the same set. This also means you can't use this decal with factionless armor like the Reaper & Jackal sets. Sylvia is basically a slightly weaker Pro Cosplayer from the last crossover event 2 years back. If you don't already have Sylvia you never will. Just use 6 Leaf Clover in place of Sylvia if you don't have it. The difference isn't that big.
Pro Tip: Conqueror's Seal: Don't climb with this decal I'm only listing it here so people know what it does. Anyone wearing this decal will never be critically hit by any attacks. This effect is extremely powerful defensively since it completely destroys any crit builds.

First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 363 (Memoirs)

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A Great Herd Main Battle Tank Type XIX. IXTB-38A8r4. One hundred fifty tons of armor, molecular circuitry, guns, and hoverfans. Designed 638 thousand years ago and never having needed a single upgrade. A 180mm main gun that fires an eight pound plasma shell. Two rows of 80mm vertical launch systems capable of delivering a variety of variable fuzed munitions. A driver's, tank commander's, communication's officer's, and an electronic warfare officer's external 18mm quad barreled plasma machinegun that could be controlled inside or manually by partially exiting the appropriate hatch. Capable of reaching a top speed of nearly forty miles an hour. The crew can survive inside the compartment for up to 11 hours without discomfort. Single layer medium grade battlescreens often used on light frigate naval vessels. Waterproof, soundproof, able to be piloted and operated even in vacuum thanks to sixteen antigravity pods, although at a much slower speed and slower response.
The mighty armored fist of the Unified Military Council, in support of the Unified Civilized Council.
According to my trainers, the last time a single tank had been damaged to the point that it could not fight, excluding operator error or sabotage, was nearly 23 thousand years prior to my introduction to my first tank.
I was excited as I inprocessed. I was to be assigned to one of the most modern tank designs around, military war machine made manifest. Perfection achieved and domination assured. I was almost eager the day I was allowed to enter the motorpool and taken to where the tank I would be a crew member of was parked.
It was love at first sight.
My fellow crewbeings thought I was a bit insane, to be honest. I worked on my tank, learning everything about it that I could from the neo-sapient mechanics. The driver was happy I could start it up for maintenance, meaning he could continue on with his long running alcohol related binge.
Within a month I could tear apart my gunner's sight, even the firing mechanism, and rebuild it from spare parts found in the motor pool supply shed. I even knew workarounds and field repairs that existed only in esoteric manuals and passed down in whispers between mechanics.
I earned my "gunner's bite" at my first live-fire range, where I learned that it was best if I let my helmet push back a little instead of pushing it against the padded sight. Pushing my face against the padding, using only my forward eyes, concentrating on putting each shot right where I wanted it.
Everyone took notice when I scored a perfect 1,200 points.
Some were happy for me, considered what I'd done proof of the Great Herd's might.
Others were jealous, starting whisper campaigns that I had somehow rigged my software to give me an illegal edge during live fire gunnery practice.
My fellow gunners led the campaign to have my accomplishment gone over with a fine toothed comb, many of them accusing me, to my face, of cheating.
My gunner's station was pulled apart, each block of circuitry examined, each byte of firmware and software gone over, even the gearing examined closely to see if I had somehow pulled off the shroud at the base of the barrel and adjusted the microgears that did the minute changes to barrel angle and elevation.
In the end, my score would have been stricken from the record, since my gunner's sight had gotten early maintenance, the neo-sapient maintenance crew replacing it twenty years before necessary. I would have been sent to do manual labor as punishment, or perhaps worse.
There was even talk of a court martial to put me in my place.
Mil-Sec officers had arrived in our motor pool to place me under arrest when the sirens began to wail. Everyone looked around confused, even the Mil-Sec officers, at the tone of the siren.
It came over my implant at the same time as everyone's else, my lockout being lifted.
ATTACK IMMINENT -- PRECURSOR VESSELS IN SYSTEM IN FORCE
My platoon Most High began rearing up and down, screaming at all of us to get into ranks for inspection. The platoon Second Most High began galloping in circles, shrieking that we were all going to die.
He was wrong.
Only most of us were going to die.
--Excerpt From: We Were the Lanaktallan of the Atomic Hooves, a Memoir.
"I hate landing into an ongoing fight," General No'Drak said, staring at the various holotanks. He had been in the same place for six hours, watching everything take place. The counter-attack, the first in the five days since Confederate forces had arrived, was moving in fits and jerks.
"It's a mess out there," General Moffeta said, watching a map of the megacontinent where her air support assets were spread around widely.
"Are you concerned, Most High?" Grand Most High Ge'ermo'o asked.
"Always when even a single one of my men are engaged in combat," No'Drak admitted, tapping a cigarette against the railing he was leaning against. "There are a million ways this can all go sideways on us."
"Sir, signal from Space Force!" came the cry from below.
"Throw it up here," General No'Drak snapped, bringing up a secure holo-port.
The twinkling cone resolved into a tired looking Rigellian female with admiral's pips on the brow of her armored vac-suit. She had bags under her eyes from stress and her eyes were bloodshot. Static kept rippling across the hologram and General No'Drak knew it was from phased wave plasma motion guns and C+ cannons firing.
"General No'Drak here, can you hear me, Admiral?" the Treana'ad said, slowly and distinctly.
She spoke for a second, obviously to someone outside of view, then looked forward. "Admiral HawGawk here, General," the rippling went over the hologram and she waited a second. "We've got a status change out here."
"Go for sitrep," No'Drak said.
Ge'ermo'o watched interestedly. He had seen how his fellow Lanaktallan reacted to a changing situation obviously getting worse and was curious as to how the lemurs would react.
"Eighty plus point sources just came in at the Hellspace limit. The stellar stabilizers and the Hellspace interdiction craft from the Crusade of Wrath helped. We have eighty plus Harvester Class, including what look like mostly new classes, out near the far gas giant," the Admiral said.
"I repeat back, Eighty plus Harvesters at the far gas giant, primarily Type-III," No'Drak said.
The Admiral nodded. "At least three hundred are coming straight at you. I've detached two Battlecruiser Groups to defend the planet, but the heavy hitters have to stop those Harvesters from spamming ancillary vehicles and swarming you under," she said. The lights around her flashed and she rocked slightly to the side. "We were right not to break up into hunter killer groups to go after the last of them, looks like the initial wave was simply to pull us out of position."
No'Drak nodded. "So, whatever gets through, we're on our own," he said gravely.
Ge'ermo'o felt a little bit of fear at that.
"Sorry, General. Space Force has its hands full up here," she said. "We've already sent out a distress beacon. The Crusade ships have sent out a call for reinforcements, but with the Case Omaha on TerraSol, options are limited for them."
"Understood. Have you tactical forward what they can. Good luck, Admiral, and Fight the Ship," No'Drak said.
"Pound the Ground, General," the Admiral said, and then she was gone.
No'Drak tapped the cigarette a few times against his bladearms and Ge'ermo'o could smell the scent of freshly cut grain. The Treana'ad stared at the holotanks down below as he slowly put the cigarette into his mouth and brought out the lighter.
Ge'ermo'o was slowly learning Confederate map symbols, he could see how the soldiers of V Corps were spread all over the planet, fighting the landing Precursors and their forces.
General No'Drak unfolded his lighter with a snap of his fingers, spinning the striker in the same motion and bringing up a yellow flame. He slowly lit the cigarette, staring down. He puffed on it for a moment and exhaled the smoke around his footpads as he put the lighter away.
"The Precursors have adjusted their tactics," he said softly. "Never count on the enemy staying stupid."
"How many of the next wave do you think will reach the planet?" Ge'ermo'o asked. In his opinion, the planet was lost and there was nothing anyone could do about it. But if the lemurs were willing to fight, he would stand right here next to them.
He'd come to like them.
"Just a little over a third. Sixty or so units," No'Drak said. He brought up the map. "We got lucky they didn't catch us out of position. We knew there were still Googly-Eyes in the Oort Cloud, which meant either they were going to come back in again or we'd missed something."
"Harvester-Twenty-Nine is breaking up," Someone called out from the floor below. "Harvester Thirty-Eight has dropped out of formation, looks like someone got a piece of his engines."
No'Drak nodded.
The icons for the lighter units, the Dreadnoughts and below, were burning brightly. Space Force was concentrating most of their firepower on the massive Harvester Class units that had been forced to drop out further from the gravity well of the stellar mass burning brightly at the center of the system.
The Treana'ad officer knew that every kill counted with the big Harvesters. They'd sit out there and keep producing lesser units until the sun burned out if given the chance.
He had ordered the BOLO units to switched targets, ordering them to engage the incoming planetary assault units, leaving the already planet-side units to the ground forces.
It was a calculated risk, and General No'Drak was an excellent mathematician.
General Moffeta's units were hitting the Precursors as soon as they made atmosphere, pushing through the leading wave of fire to attack the Precursors during the short time their battlescreens were down. The interference from entering the atmosphere was scrambling the Precursor's sensors, putting their point defense offline. That let General Moffeta's units take long strafing runs at the massive machines.
No'Drak winced when one of the incoming Jotuns broke up at 15,000 meters up, the huge chunks tumbling to the ground.
The planet was taking a pounding.
General No'Drak made a motion, bringing up the communications section. The PFC who answered was a Terran had oversized eyes and whiskers.
"Is the hypercom still functional?" he asked before she could speak.
"Yes, sir," she said.
"Contact the Telkan system. Tell them we're going to need a full elven court here," No'Drak said. He sighed. "Tell them we're going to have massive Precursor wreckage as well as..." he paused, took a deep drag and exhaled it.
Ge'ermo'o noticed that it was pushing back the smell of freshly cut grain.
"We're going atom smasher. We've got over two billion civilians in shelters. Put out a request for evac ships, even on the junker channels," he said.
"Yes, sir," the female Terran said. Ge'ermo'o wondered why her eyes were so big. If they helped with her job, if her parents had possessed big eyes in their DNA, or if she just had liked them.
No'Drak cut the link and looked at the surrounding officers. "I'd give my mandibles to have Tik-Tak here."
That got chuckles.
No'Drak knew that the elven queens could repair the damage he was about to order his troops to commit to.
But if his men couldn't get it under control, couldn't smash the Precursor threat, there wouldn't be a planet to fix. He could see that the Precursors had arrived to strip mine the planet, probably down to gravel.
Part of him wondered why they wanted the planet so bad. The asteroid belts had been mined to nothing over the last twenty thousand years. Most of the easily accessible minerals were gone.
Then he remembered that elements of Third Armor were engaged with mining machines.
He looked at the icons for the Treana'ad Infantry Hordes and Air Mobile Clouds and a small part of him wished he was a Lieutenant again, charging across the ground in armor with his heavy weapons on the top of his abdomen.
After a moment he made a decision.
"Order all personnel on planet into armor and to draw weapons from the armory," he said. He turned to the two Lanaktallan. "Gentlebeings, I'd advise you to prepare yourselves."
"You think we will be attacked here?" Ge'ermo'o asked.
"Can't discount it at this time," No'Drak said. "The reinforcements were a high probability and it looks like our cards weren't as good as we hoped."
"Surely you won't be defeated," Ge'ermo'o said. "You won't withdraw!"
No'Drak shook his head. "No. There's too many people in shelters, too many people in hiding. We'll fight to the last."
"The Confederacy doesn't leave civilians behind to die," General Pulgrak said. He stretched, his shoulders popping. "Glad I qualified on my armor and weapons two months ago."
General Vandu licked her lips, looking around, her eyes moving back and forth. "Are we staying here?"
General No'Drak put away his cigarette. "Yes. We will still coordinate the battle, but we must be ready to join the ever put upon lower enlisted and junior officers should the Precursors assault our command and control area."
General Vandu nodded, her lips twitching in a smile. "Just standard body armor, or can we..." she started to ask.
"Put on power armor?" No'Drak asked. He gave the equivalent of a shrug. "There are several companies of power armor troops here to defend this base, you know that. If you wish to lead them from the front, you have my blessing."
General Vandu hurried off.
"She will see if the taste of combat is as sweet as the fantasy of combat awards," No'Drak said softly. He turned to his aide. "Let's suit up."
The Colonel nodded. "This way to the armory, General."
A Terran captain next to Ge'ermo'o touched his lower right elbow. When Ge'ermo'o looked at him, he noted how grave the Terran looked.
"If you Lanaktallan gentlemen will follow me, we should have time to fab and fit you with armor."
Ge'ermo'o was proud of himself for how calm he knew he looked as he nodded.
----------------
Trucker dropped down into his tank, slamming the hatch shut over him.
He'd waited till almost the last second. The tank shuddered as the lead of the debris wave hit his tank. The wave was thick dust, formerly ferrocrete and asphalt, all ripped up by the massive Precursor combat machine going nose first into the suburbs beyond the city and scraping the bedrock for nearly eight miles before it had lost momentum and slammed down into the channel it had carved.
"Can't see shit, sir," his driver said.
"Tell all units to hold position, give the air a minute to clear," Trucker ordered. He heard his radioman passing the orders and looked at his sensor tech. "How many?"
"I saw four entering atmosphere before that big monster hit," he said. "Maybe more. The sky's on fire."
"331, how's it look in there?" Trucker asked.
--rough shape-- the Mantid Engineer Team Leader admitted. --try not to let them hit you--
"We're a tank. We're a little obvious," Trucker chuckled. He tapped his software and tossed a meme at the Mantid team of his tank, with great big googly eyes, trying to hide behind a tree, with meters of hull and an eye on each side of the tree. The caption "I R HIDYN!" at the bottom.
That got back giggling emojis.
"All Regimental Commanders, check in," Trucker said. He scooped out his dip and slung it into the can. He repacked it while he waited for his commo tech to get in touch with the different regiments.
"Trucker wants a sit-rep," Colonel Dremsal heard faintly over the roar of his quad-barrel.
"TELL HIM I'M BUSY!" Dremsal yelled back. As soon as they'd moved in between the two massive Precursors their air support had come out to play.
The sky above him was a whirling gnashing death snarl, with 19th Air Cavalry Regiment fighting six times their numbers with seemingly infinite reinforcements. So far they'd only lost three strikers, but each casualty counted.
"Told him you were still alive and we've still got tanks even if we're rolling coal," his commo tech said. He put his hand to his ear. "Most High A'armo'o wants to talk to you."
"Put him through," Dremsal said. He let go of the quad-barrel and ducked back into the tank, pulling the hatch shut. The last thing he wanted is some Precursor machine getting past the battlescreens, reaching down into the tank, and snatching his head off.
"Dremsal here, go ahead," he said.
"We're coming up on your rear. We've got 15th Sustainment inside our ranks. We had to drop back from the river, large machines were making landfall," A'armo'o said.
Dremsal closed his eyes, bringing up how his vehicles were arranged. He gave the orders and shot A'armo'o his plan.
"You keep 15th covered, we'll drop back to get refit," Dremsal said.
"What, may I ask, is our target?" A'armo'o asked. He glanced back at the half dozen Telkan Marines on the back deck of his tank. A quick glance showed his second in command had several Terrans on the back and it looked like they were doing something important.
"Juggernaut. It looks like it almost broke up, but if they get the auto-factories running we'll be in a lot of trouble if we let it just sit there without busting up its plans," Dremsal said. "We'll knock out the supply lines, get close, and open fire on it."
"What about the Great Gobbler back there?" A'armo'o asked.
"He can watch from behind us. He won't be able to catch up to us," Dremsal said. "We'll keep ahead of it close enough to keep its attention, keep it from diving, but we won't let it get close."
"I understand. Your warplan is loaded, my men are moving up," A'armo'o said.
The tanks of the Great Herd slowed for a moment as the Terran tanks widened the wedge they were in, giving room for A'armo'o to bring his brigade up tight to the formation and slot into the middle. Once the manuever was finished, the Lanaktallan tanks formed another layer of protection for the lightly armored and lightly shielded (for Terran vehicles) vehicles of 15th Sustainment.
A'armo'o looked through his laser designator ranger at the big vehicle behind him that his men were still 'teasing' with random shots. He frowned and dialed up the magnification.
Was that... people on top of it?
-------------------
Vuxten stared down at the grinders below him, kneeling down on the ten foot thick protective housing right above them. He stared right into a massive glowing eye that looked back.
"Howdy, sailor," he heard a female's voice over the radio. "Buy a girl a drink?"
Vuxten chuckled. "We thought you were dead," he said honestly.
"I'm stuck. I came up from under me, I got caught on the cables and conveyors, then sucked into the grinder," Glory said. She wiggled her fingers. "I'm OK, probably scuffed up real bad, but I'm definitely stuck."
The gears tried to reverse, jammed, then tried to pull the massive skull and shoulder in.
"My feet and shins are outside the grinders, but they're hung up on my hips and shoulder," Glory said.
"Gonna have some greenies check it out, see if we can help you out," Vuxten said.
--hopefully no fall whirr blarg dead-- 471 said.
"Can you move your arms?" Plunex asked.
Glory shifted slightly and the grinders howled, showering sparks everywhere. "Nope. My arms are at bad positions, I've got no leverage."
"Lemme look," Casey said. He grabbed onto the edge of the housing and swung down.
"Wait..." Plunex said.
Casey dropped down, landing agilely on Glory's face.
"Aw man, first date and you try to do me right in the face?" Glory laughed.
"Don't kinkshame me," Casey said, moving slowly and carefully. Vuxten could see his feet had the bluish purple of active graviton generators around them.
"Really? Graviton? Wow," Glory said. "Do you have any idea what it feels like to have you walk on my face with grav-stickied boots?"
"Don't kinkshame me," Casey said again, his voice slightly distant.
"Kinkshaming is my kink," Glory laughed. The grinders whined, clattered, and bucked. "Ow, it's starting to pinch."
"Enough leverage and pressure and they'll bend the warsteel," Casey knelt down, looking at the gears.
"What do you see, Sergeant?" Sergeant Addox asked.
"Drive shaft is exposed on two of them. Look about three to four meters of endosteel," he said.
"What..." Plunex started.
"Shh," Vuxten said, watching the Terran. "Listen and learn."
"Looks like she shattered one of the grinders and when it tried to bring up a new one it hung up on her shoulder armor," Casey said.
To Vuxten it just looked like a whirring nightmare of massive toothed screws. He started tracing the lines, looking at them. A small window in the upper right of his vision showed 471 was zooming in on sections.
--stress points here here here here-- 471 said, tossing the red dots. --bearing housing covers here here here here--
"Casey, my greenie's ID'd a bunch of stress points and stuff," Vuxten said.
"Pass it to me," Casey said.
"What if it sucks you inside?" Vuxten asked Glory.
"My arm's at a bad angle. It might rip it off," she answered. "Beyond that, I'll probably be inside a massive area where ore and rock are pulverized and I'd like to avoid that."
Vuxten remembered the First Telkan War. "How's your coolant?"
"Good. All my lobes are intact," she answered.
"All right. We can get her out," Casey said. He jumped up and grabbed the lip of the top of the housing and pulled himself up with the hiss of loading frame hydraulics. Vuxten noticed his eyes weren't amber any longer. "I'll mark the areas, in order. Those armor defeating missiles you Telkan's use should do the trick."
"Sergeant Canton, I need ten men," Plunex sent out. "All with rocket launchers."
"Roger that, sir," the section sergeant radioed back.
"We're going to free your right arm first. Once we do that, I want you to pull it out, brace yourself, and we're going to blow the driveshaft on the one on your left shoulder, then the one pressing against your chest," Casey said.
"With missiles?" Glory asked.
"Your warsteel hull could take a direct hit from them. They're forged up for Precursor armor," Vuxten said.
"Units on top of Precursor mega-structure mining vessel, fire green star cluster flare if friendly," came a voice across the command channel. It was staticy and full of pops and clicks.
"I read you," Vuxten said. He ordered the round in his grenade launcher to reconfigure to the right munition, aimed it straight up, and chugged out three, slightly spread apart.
"We validate three green star clusters. Mark with single red," the voice said. "No voice commo, IU say again, we are not receiving you."
Vuxten fired a single red flare into the sky. "This is first platoon, HHC, First Telkan Marine Division," he said.
"We read one single red flare. Signal with red white red star cluster flares. I say again, red, white, red star clusters, when in need of assistance," the voice continued. "One green flare if under operation."
Vuxten fired another green.
"We read green. Will designate spotter to overwatch. Pop orange smoke or two green star cluster if in need of assistance at later time," the voice said. "Dremsal out."
"Telkan out," Vuxten said.
Dremsal looked back at the massive vehicle. He could see the Telkan Marines plainly, and they were involved with something on the massive vehicle's port side, but the huge scoop wheels blocked whatever it was they were looking at.
"Can we even hurt that thing?" He asked. "Without killing them?"
His gunner shook his head. "Negative, sir. That thing's shields could match a BOLO."
Dremsal frowned.
Where the hell had it come from?
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