Page 62 of Level Up
— Review ofThe Stones of Ayor 4by@HadTrash93on Play’N (October 23, 2024)
sixteen
f5 saves lives
The next weekpasses by in a blur of partialStones 4speedruns—the ones I watch to learn from and the ones I practice myself. I’ve even cracked open one of the bazillion notebooks that my mother has gifted me over the years to take notes and plan out my strategy.
And I spend most of this time talking to Damien, although we’ve been keeping our personal strategies secret from each other. Not that I think it matters—neither of us is extremely competitive—but it is sort of fun.
We’ve planned to do our joint stream on Friday; it will start around the time of his usual daily stream and end around the time of my usual Friday night stream, so we’ll hopefully catch some of our regular viewers. And hopefully none of them will give me too much shit. (Hah.)
I’m a bundle of nerves all day on Friday, though. I’m worried I’m going to make a fool of myself and die (in-game) doing something really stupid and easy, or that I’ll take twice as long as Damien and everyone will have left the stream by the time I’m finished.
“It’ll be fine, don’t worry,” he assures me over a last-minute video call as we get set up. He’s already got the camera angled so that most of his face is hidden and it feels strange now, but still very familiar to me.
“What if people start saying awful stuff in the chat?” I ask, skimming over my notes one last time. “I can’t pay attention to the chat if I’m trying to focus on the game.”
“I’m setting Malcolm up as a moderator, he’ll make sure any assholes are dealt with.”
“Cold-blooded murder?”
“Exactly.” The corner of his mouth ticks up. “Also, are you finally going to tell me what build you went with?”
I sigh dramatically. He’s been trying to find out what type of character I’m going to use for my speedrun all week, but I’ve been keeping it secret. Not that I was afraid he would steal my idea, but because I thought he might think it’s ridiculous. At this point, though, it’s not like I have time to change it, since we’re starting the run right after the character creation screen.
“I went for a Glass Elf because they’re the tallest and can run fastest,” I tell him. “And my primary class is Assassin because they have the stealth roll for getting past enemies quickly without engaging them.”
“Solid move,” he says with a nod, but then the lower half of his face splits into a grin. “Wanna guess what I chose?”
“Rock Troll Brute?” I say condescendingly, and he snaps his mouth shut. He’s incredibly predictable sometimes.
“You can be so judgmental,” he says, pretending to be offended. “But yes, that is absolutely what I went for.”
“Trolls are so slow, though.”
“Yeah, but I’m gonna do what that one girl did and recruit Treagan as soon as possible, and he can use spells to boost me.”
“She also knows how to take out three doomstalkers withone hammer toss,” I point out. “She might be a bit more advanced than you.”
“I’ve been practicing,” he boasts, but then sinks back in his chair a little. “Not successfully, but still.”
We talk for a few more minutes before Damien ends the call so he can make sure everything is working properly for the stream. I agreed to let him sort out how to run the joint stream, since I’ve never done that sort of thing before, but I double check that everything is working on my end as well.
I try to push down my nerves as the clock ticks down. I haven’t been this nervous about a stream since I first started out, back when I was still new at this and hardly anyone even watched me then, anyway.
But this is going to be a much larger audience—larger than any I’ve had so far. And I expect it will mostly be Damien’s subscribers watching at first, although I did announce on my community board that I’d be doing a special stream today that starts earlier than usual.
Apparently Helmi saw the notice, because she is the first person to say anything in the chat as soon as we go live.
HeySMR: Audrey, you absolute angel, I am so excited for this speedrun!!
HeySMR: Scones, you are cool too, but I only fangirl for Audrey
“That’s understandable,” Damien says as he fusses with something off-camera.
“Behave yourself, Helmi,” I tell her, looking directly at my webcam for a moment to get my point across. She is absolutely going to say something embarrassing about me during this stream, and I won’t be paying enough attention to the chat to stop her.
HeySMR:
