玩Elden Ring的时候一个问题是看不看攻略和怎么看攻略。个人的感觉是攻略是一定要看的，因为这游戏含糊不清的东西太多了。。有兴趣优化的话几乎一定要查攻略来搞清各种武器技能魔法的说明，boss的数值之类的。另外太多支线和物品不看攻略自己找的话都需要太多工夫了。当然看攻略的一个问题是会大大削弱探索感。我试过照着攻略一步一步去打迷宫或者走支线，会觉得自己像是个跑腿的。个人觉得对迷宫比较好的折中方案是自己先打，然后查查攻略看有没有漏掉什么重要的物品。Boss也是，自己先打，搞不定再看攻略。我查攻略90%以上都是在查Elden Ring wiki，推荐两个很有用的页面：Recommended Level by Location， Stats。
Since we got Ark Nova two months ago, we have played over 30 games, including some 2-player games. That’s 1 game every other day on average. Considering each game takes 2+ hours, this clearly shows how popular this game has been in our household.
With 30+ games under the belt, I think I can write an in-depth review of Ark Nova with more strategy thoughts.
It’s All About Timing
Ark Nova is a racing game. One player can abruptly end the game and all other players only have one more action. It means you may not be able to spend all your resources or play all the power moves you planned. It sometimes feels cruel. But it’s a great design. It makes each game 2+ instead of 3+ hours. It also makes each game heated from the midpoint. Everyone needs to pay attention to the progress, as any player may start dashing to the finish line at any time, and everyone else has no other options but to follow.
The peculiar condition that triggers ending (Appeal and Conservation markers cross) also means even as the leading player, you’d want to calculate when exactly to end the game. If you have three power moves planned, e.g. play two strong animals and support two conservation projects, you want to end the game right on the 3rd move. Not before, not after. And you want to make sure these three moves are tight, without too many low-return moves in between. It almost feels like 收官 (“play the endgame”) in Go. You can absolutely lose a game with a great start because you mess up the endgame.
At its core, a racing game is about the efficiency of each move. Every player has the same amount of actions so “action” is the most precious resource. The “Coffee Break” mechanism in this game is a great way to disrupt other players’ plans to make their moves less efficient than yours. This gets us to the next point…
Interaction Under the Hood
An early impression of Ark Nova is usually “lack of interaction”. Everyone is building their own zoo happily. Someone got lucky and won. Is that so?
After playing ~10 games, I realized this game has plenty of interaction. It’s just at a deeper level. Taking the Coffee Break as an example, when you find your opponents are low on cash and you have more cash to spend, you may want to stretch this turn so they have to do a few wasted moves to wait for income. When you have sent your associate and your opponents haven’t, you may want to enter break so they waste the opportunity to use associate for this turn. We found ourselves watching the coffee break token much closer when we get familiar with Ark Nova.
The card display and conservation projects are also huge interaction points. Pay attention to other players’ strategies and snap/draw/dig cards they want. Counting other players’ icons and competing for conservation projects. It’s much less likely to win if you ignore other players after everyone knows how to play.
Luck And Balance
As a card-driven game, Ark Nova inevitably has some luck factor. Several new players scored wins at our place. While considering Gaia Project, which has a very low luck factor and is one of our favorites, it’s nearly impossible to win for new players when playing against experienced players. A few strong cards that combo nicely from the beginning can really boost a player’s chance to win the whole game.
But this game’s luck factor can be mitigated by the 6-card display. Experienced players tend to favor getting known cards instead of getting unknown cards from the deck. And we often say you have to find the strategy based on your cards, not find cards based on your strategy. Overall I think Ark Nova has the right amount of luck to give people hope and excitement, without breaking the game.
So what about balance? Are there game-breaking combos? I think there might be, but not too many. Any two cards are fair combos from what I see. And if someone gets three or four cards that exactly combo together… it can be a bit game-breaking but they’d also be really lucky to get the exact three or four from 200+ cards.
I do feel different strategies have some balance issues. For example, I think focusing on small animals generally pays off better than on large animals, because small animals grant you many more icons so you have an advantage in conservation project competitions, and large animals’ benefits are often highly situational and rely more on getting the right cards at the right time. But it could also be me over-indexing conservation projects. Research icon also feels a rather strong strategy as the combo can get pretty wild.
In summary, Ark Nova is a solid game and worth the hype in my opinion. Get one while you can. And play!
Wind Cave得名于最早发现的自然入口，是地面上的一个岩石开口，不停有风呼呼向外涌，还是很神奇的。我感觉自己是绝对钻不进去这个一尺见方的口的，就算钻进去了估计也会出不来。早期的探洞者就是通过这个口子钻进去探索，用的设备是蜡烛和丝线，想想也是玩命。这个cave之所以是国家公园得益于两点：一是很大，是北美最长的cave系统之一；二是成名很早，20世纪初就有两家人发现了这个洞窟，开始办tour，称其为“great Freak of Nature”…基本上是靠猎奇心理来营销的。后来这两家人还打官司抢所有权，结果谁都没抢到，被联邦政府收去做了国家公园。。
参加完cave tour看完出风的自然入口之后我发现好像就没太多事可做了。去visitor center看了看发现有新开辟的两条土路可以开一下，叫NPS 5 and NPS 6。不想这一趟还挺物有所值。首先看到了大群的野牛和土拨鼠。野牛以前见多了没什么稀奇。土拨鼠聚落我还是第一次见，叫praire dog town因为地下错综复杂连在一起好像一个小城镇。这些土拨鼠在草地上三五成群的或坐或站，见我走就会啾啾叫起来示警，再近一点就会钻进洞穴不知所踪。一时间整个草原上都是此起彼伏的啾啾声。后来开NPS 5的时候路边的土拨鼠更多，一路都是，甚至打洞都已经打到了路面上，俨然是草原我最大的架势。
当晚露营在Cedar Pass Campground。意外的发现有热水可以洗澡，很爽。在公园露营的一大好处是可以顺便听ranger的讲座。当晚讲了一些考古的东西，只记得说Badlands发现了世界上最早的狗的化石。还讲了一些天文，说如果银河系是一个quarter硬币那么大的话，太阳系所在的位置大概就在”In God We Trust”的那个“O”字母中间，而我们肉眼能看到的所有天体，都只是在这个O里面而已。Neat trick.. that gives everyone free existential crisis.
