Fortnite’s Chapter 5 Season 3 Battle Pass has various quests you can finish each week for some sweet XP to unlock new cosmetics with. Week 9’s batch of quests introduces five new challenges for players to complete, each worth 15,000 XP. Those who complete all five quests will be rewarded with 75,000 XP, which can be used to further your progress with this season’s battle pass.
Why Everybody Hates This Dragon’s Dogma 2 NPC
Fortnite’s Chapter 5, Season 3, Week 9 Quests
Give ‘em a big wasteland BOOM! – Eliminate opponents with the Combat Shotgun (5)
Finders keepers! – Outlast players while holding a Medallion (30)
It’s all about staying INSIDE the Storm Circle. Survive Storm Circles (15)
Let’s show ‘em nothing scares us. NOTHING! – Emote at Brawler’s Battleground and Nitrodrome
Mod it up! – Damage opponents using a weapon with an underbarrel mod (1,000)
Give ‘em a big wasteland BOOM!
Screenshot: Epic Games / Kotaku
To complete this quest, you’ll need to grab a Combat Shotgun and eliminate five different opponents. You need to kill players to complete this quest, so we recommend landing at the Nitrodrome, Brutal Beachhead, or the Redline Rig and finding a Combat Shotgun there. Once you’re there, take out five players, and you’ll complete the quest.
Finders keepers!
Screenshot: Epic Games / Kotaku
To complete this quest, you’ll need to outlast a total of 30 players while holding a medallion. This can be a bit tricky. You’ll either need to kill a player or the boss holding them and once you pick it up, your general location is exposed to the entire lobby. We recommend you land at Nitrodrome, Brutal Beachhead, or the Redline Rig and kill the boss immediately. After you do that, use their medallion to unlock their car, and drive around with it until 30 other players die, while you’re holding the medallion. As long as 30 other players die while you’re holding one, it’ll count towards completion.
It’s all about staying INSIDE the Storm Circle
To finish this quest, you’ll need to survive 15 storm circles. This can be done by naturally playing. Of course, you won’t be able to do this in one game, so you’ll need to play a few rounds before completing this one.
Let’s show ‘em nothing scares us. NOTHING!
Screenshot: Epic Games / Kotaku
This is another fairly straightforward quest. To complete this, you’ll need to do it at Brawler’s Battleground and the Nitrodrome. You can complete this all in one go if you’re fast enough, but you can complete this quest across multiple games..
Mod it up!
Screenshot: Epic Games / Kotaku
This quest will require you to inflict a total of 1,000 damage with an underbarrel mod attached to a weapon. Weapons can be modded at bunkers, Which can be spotted all over the map and will open up as the game progresses. We recommend using the Vertical Foregrip because it improves ADS recoil and spread. But you can also complete this quest by picking up a weapon with an underbarrel mod too, So you don’t need to be the one to equip it.
There you go, you’re all done with Week 9’s quest! Enjoy all the XP, and be sure to spend those stars!
Co-op shooter Deep Rock Galactic was first released on the PC back in 2018. It has a dedicated following online, and tons of loyal fans, but this is not a review of the video game. This is a review of the board game with, confusingly, the exact same name.
You and up to three other players take control of space dwarves who are headed into a dark cave to drill for gems. So far, so video game. You then find those caves full of alien bugs that you have to mow down. Again, just like the video game. Then you have to grab those gems and get the hell out of there. You can see where this is going.
Image: MOOD
The difference here, of course, is that in the video game this plays out in a Left 4 Dead-like frenzy, as players rush around in real-time playing a frantic shooter. The board game is much more relaxing, as it shifts to a system where players are able to take turns, and their time, working through the caves.
Deep Rock Galactic looks, and plays, like so many other modern dungeon-crawling games, from Descent to Imperial Assault. Everybody gets action points they can use to move around and interact with stuff (“interacting” includes “shooting insects in the face”), everybody gets unique weapons and powers they can use and, as expected in 2023 for a licensed game, everything—from the dwarves to the bugs even down to the stalagmites—is represented by a set of incredibly detailed, immensely satisfying miniatures.
(NOTE: The game ships in two editions. The standard only has plastic minis for the dwarves, while the pricier deluxe edition, which I played, has minis for everything).
Where this tries to do its own thing, and match the video game’s feel (if not pace) at the same time, is the way enemy actions are triggered. Rather than basing enemy moves off initiative, or having them move after all players have done so, in Deep Rock Galactic every time a dwarf concludes their move they draw an event card, and these almost always trigger an enemy spawn and/or move.
The build quality on this game is impressive. Each player card is full of recessed slots for your ammo and tokens, always a welcome (and premium) move by publishers.Photo: Luke Plunkett
Having them appear on the board so often, and moving before all players have had a chance to react, may sound unfair but it does a fantastic job of feeling just like the video game, in that you’re being constantly swarmed by stuff crawling out of the walls. And it’s rarely unfair anyway, because each dwarf is loaded with very cool (and powerful) weapons that satisfying blow huge chunks in any insect hordes making it close enough to you.
The key consideration of the board game, again like the video game, is to balance your need to mine a certain quantity of resources versus your need to keep blasting enemies to stay alive. Lean too far towards one of those approaches and you’ll fail the mission, either because you didn’t mine the goods in time (each level has a time limit) or because…you’re all dead.
I like the video game and I like dungeon crawlers, and so for the most part I really loved playing Deep Rock Galactic. The tension between the game’s two imperatives is constant and perfectly-balanced throughout, and its combat—a combination of your powerful weapons and hordes of huge plastic miniatures you get to move around and throw off the board when dead—is some of the most fun I’ve had in ages with a game of this type.
Plus, and I know people (myself included!) are getting tired of every game shipping with a ton of minis, in this instance they’re very welcome, not just because they’re so detailed and solid but because the game also includes a MULE that you drop your little gems into, a tactile experience so wonderful it was maybe the highlight of the entire game for me.
Nothing is more enjoyable in this game than dropping gems into your MULE and popping the lid closed. Photo: Luke Plunkett
One thing to note though is that, despite its pricepoint and genre, Deep Rock isn’t the kind of long-term tabletop experience you might be expecting. While the idea of a miniatures-heavy dungeon crawler may conjure expectations of a days-long campaign, Deep Rock Galactic is actually just a collection of standalone missions that can be tackled in an hour or so depending on how many players are taking part (another cool feature of the “bad guys go at the end of every player’s turn” system is that it scales perfectly to the number of humans at the table).
While there is technically a campaign—just a brief to do all the missions in order without dying—and it’s not a game built around narrative, it’s still a bit weird pulling out such a huge box and setting it up for what’s essentially a mid-length session game.
That’s not a problem, just something to note ahead of time if you were thinking of picking this up or playing it. You should also know that, despite being a very literal adaptation of a video game license, this requires absolutely no familiarity with the digital version of Deep Rock Galactic whatsoever. So long as you know you’re a space dwarf drilling and gems while also shooting bugs, you’re good to go.
About my only real criticism of the game is that it’s documentation is some of the most frustrating I’ve encountered in a while, lacking in a proper quick start guide and splitting its important information between separate rules and mission books, which made our first mission a very slow slog. Indeed it took us forever to find out how the enemy system even worked (pretty important info!), so if you’re playing this and have the time I’d 100% recommend watching an online rules explainer beforehand.
Here is a very strange warning: these are the sharpest minis I have ever encountered. Photo: Luke Plunkett
There’s nothing revolutionary about Deep Rock Galactic. As I’ve alluded to above it’s another dungeon crawler, another licensed adaptation and another game that (version depending) has a ton of minis. But fans of the video game will find a tabletop conversion that faithfully converts the co-op experience into one more conducive to drinking beer and being in the room at the same time, while everyone else will just find a solid night’s gaming blowing up space bugs and looting some treasure.
Earlier today Wizards of the Coast made an announcement that a lot of people have been waiting a long time for: Dungeons & Dragons is going to stop using the word “race” in the rulebook for One D&D (the upcoming major revision of the game), and would instead prefer to use the term “species” instead.
It’s understandable why the word was used in the first place. It was the 1970s, times were different, and the game had been made by some guys, not a team of qualified anthropologists. But as the decades have gone on, and the game has grown more popular and been exposed to the winds of time, that word—race—has become increasingly anachronistic.
For starters, it’s not even accurate! Race, as it’s most commonly defined, is a term humans have used to categorise ourselves based mostly on common physical traits, like skin colour. A black and white human, then, are from different races. A human and an orc are not. They are from different species.
More importantly, though, it has allowed the series to perpetuate long-standing stereotypes that are, essentially, racist. In 2020, for example, the D&D team wrote about how the way the game assigns traits based on a character’s genetics was “painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated. That’s just not right, and it’s not something we believe in.”
Which brings us to today’s announcement, which says (emphasis mine):
Dungeons & Dragons has a history of evolving to meet the needs of our players and foster an inviting space for everyone.
With that in mind, we understand “race” is a problematic term that has had prejudiced links between real world people and the fantasy peoples of D&D worlds. The usage of the term across D&D and other popular IP has evolved over time. Now it’s time for the next evolution.
Since the release of the fifth edition of D&D in 2014, we have made the conscious decision to reduce usage of the term “race” to only apply to the game mechanic. We took this a step further with the release of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything in 2020 when we presented an alternative to character creation that untangled ability score improvements from your choice of playable people. We have also evolved the lore of the peoples throughout the D&D multiverse to be more diligent in extracting past prejudices, stereotypes, and unconscious biases.
One D&D (the codename for the next generation of D&D) gives us an opportunity to go deeper into every component of Dungeons & Dragons. The immense interest and level of feedback across the first few playtest material releases shows us the value in having an open dialogue with our community about everything related to the game.
In the next Unearthed Arcana containing playtest materials for One D&D, we are presenting a replacement for the term “race.” That new term is “species.”
We know this is an important change to D&D—one that requires an open conversation with our community. And we want to be clear about a few things as we playtest the new term.
– We have made the decision to move on from using the term “race” everywhere in One D&D, and we do not intend to return to that term.
– The term “species” was chosen in close coordination with multiple outside cultural consultants.
– In the survey for this Unearthed Arcana playtest, which will go live on December 21, players will be able to give feedback on the term “species” along with everything else present in the playtest materials.
Having an open conversation around the term “race” is both important and challenging. That is why it’s vital we foster a positive, open, and understanding dialogue with one another. We welcome your constructive feedback on this evolution and the many more evolutions to One D&D that make this game exciting, open, and accessible to everyone. Dragons and elves belong in our world, and so do you.
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While they go to great lengths to say this is a process, one that will involve dialogue with the fanbase, this also seems like an absolute no-brainer? They’re simply swapping out an inaccurate term for an accurate one, and in doing so also removing from its flanks one of the series’ biggest, most long-standing cultural thorns.
If the news here is that they’re definitely ditching “race”, and need to replace it with something else, then “species” is about as perfect a word as they’re going to get!
In 2022, though, it’s time for some changes. For one, the game is no longer called V-Commandos. Legal wrangling with the owners of the Commandos series of video games has made sure of that. The game, and its expansions, are now known as V-Sabotage.
More importantly, 2022 is also the year the game finally got a much-deserved glow-up. See, for all the joys to be found in playing the game—and I really cannot stress enough how good it is—its presentation was always a little basic, with simple art and tokens that were functional, but also a bit drab, and hard to make out from across the table.
Now, thanks to some upgrade packs, the game has a ton of excellent plastic miniatures representing each character, enemy, and even select pieces of equipment, in exquisite detail. It also has new player cards, featuring new art that gives each of the game’s heroes a stylistic refresh.
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Having finally taken these miniature upgrades for a spin last week, one of my main takeaways is that this doesn’t change how the game plays one bit. What it does do is make a huge improvement to the overall experience, as well as your quality-of-life while taking on a mission. Aside from looking fantastic, having each player and enemy (and alarm, door, machine gun nest, remote-control tank and barrel of poison gas) represented in 3D makes scanning the table and planning strategies much easier. Previously, you’d have to scan the whole thing repeatedly just to remember what was where. It also got easy to miss certain things on bigger missions when everything, from humans to items, was represented by a flat little cardboard token.
Also as anyone who has been around Kickstarter for the last five years will know, plastic miniatures are just more fun to use. Whether it’s because it harks back to our childhoods, or because they’re tangible, scaled, realistic versions of the things we’re supposed to be actually using in the game (or both!), it is usually better to be playing a game with miniatures than without.
The negative consequences of this love for miniatures on game design, production and shipping costs is another story for another time, of course, though some of those impacts can still be felt here; the miniature expansion for the core game costs more than the core game itself, and if you’ve got or want V-Sabotage’s expansions, and then their miniatures as well, then the cost blowout is going to be enormous.
Is that going to be worth it for someone looking at getting into the game now? I don’t know, that depends on how much money you make, how long you’re going to play the game, and all kinds of other factors that are reminding me while I type this as to why our reviews never mention the concept of “value”!
Personally speaking, though, as someone who has played this game countless times with friends over a five-year timeframe—enough times that it’s now one of their favourite games as well–the addition of miniatures has really elevated the whole experience for me. I’m normally pretty dismissive of the current frenzy for plastic minis in board games (see my points above!), but this is a rare case where, having played the game first without them, I can say it’s definitely better with them.
Which sounds…superficial, but then isn’t half the reason people prefer to play board games in 2022 these kind of tactile delights?
The detail is fantastic considering…there are a LOT of miniatures in the box
Venturing off the path of the main quest in Cyberpunk can feel a little…perhaps ludonarrative dissonant? Sure, V’s got a lot on their plate, but there’s a whole city out there filled with quests and objectives. Not all are made equally though. If you want to experience one of the best side diversions this dystopian futurescape has to offer, however, it’s time to get reacquainted with an AI taxi service you met in Act One. Turns out they’ve got a bit of a staff problem; good thing you’re in need of eddies and have time to spare.
Act Two opens with such a heavy narrative premise that it’s easy to get immersed in the main story. Who has time for fetch quests when the clock is ticking on impending doom? This is especially the case when much of the game can feel like a GTA-wannabe at worst. But the quest chain that follows “Tune Up” is filled with such personality and offers such a classic sci-fi AI premise that you shouldn’t miss it. In fact, it should be top of your list of quests to grab once you wrap up “The Heist” main job.
You need to be in Act Two to access this quest. Act Two follows the trying events of “The Heist” main job, so we’re gonna be in spoiler territory here. Also, as a content warning, this quest does deal with themes of self harm and suicide. Make sure you have an Intelligence score of at least 10 in order to access all outcomes at the quest’s conclusion.) It’s worth pausing the main storyline for this one.
It all starts with the “Tune Up” side job, which will take you a little by surprise before you’ll be on your way to hunt down individual objectives scattered around the city. You have two choices for how you want to tackle this quest: Either knock all of the seven objectives out one-by-one, or, dip in and out of them as you progress through the main story or other quests. Some of the shootouts can get a little rough if you’re not leveled up appropriately, specifically the one that takes place in Pacifica.
Let’s dig in.
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How to start the Delamain side quest
Your choom is dead, a cigarette-smoking rebellious rockstar is stuck in your head, and a stolen piece of hardware from Arosaka is slowly overriding your consciousness. Isn’t the future grand? Act Two arrives after one hell of a turn of events and all you might care about after waking up is where the hell your car is.
Lucky you: If you check your journal or map, you’ll come across the “Tune Up” side job, where the first objective is to retrieve your vehicle from your apartment’s parking garage.
After the very impolite car smashes into you and wrecks your ride, you’ll be wheel-less for a spell. Don’t worry, you can either grab one of the purchasable vehicles as a temporary replacement (yes, you’ll get your wheels back).
Alternatively, if you’re looking for a free set of wheels and don’t mind a quick trip out to the desert, you can score a Colby CX410 Butte for literally free at the following location:
Screenshot: CD Projekt Red / Kotaku
It’s not the fastest car by any means, and the acceleration is rather slow, but what do you want for nothing?
Finish up the remainder of “Human Nature’s” tasks and you’ll be able to access the “Tune Up” side job. This one will take you down to Delamain HQ, where you’ll understand a bit about what just happened.
After chatting with Delamain a bit, you’ll come to find out that a number of his cars have gone rogue. It’ll be up to you to track them down.
Finding the rogue Delamain car locations (and how to drive in first-person without crashing)
Time for a seven-step fetch quest! Don’t close the browser, trust me, this one’s worth it. For the best experience, however, I really recommend driving in first-person mode. To avoid smashing into things left and right while driving in first-person perspective, make sure your map is on and use it as a kind of peripheral vision.
Once Delamain gives you the rundown of what’s going on, you’ll have access to the seven-step “Epistrophy” side job. You can go to each location as you wish, knocking them out one-by-one, or choosing to grab them when they seem appropriate. If you want to leave this quest as something you’ll return to on and off, you don’t need to worry about tracking it too often. Delamain will call you whenever you are near the vicinity of one of the rogue vehicles. It will take a little while to find some of them depending on their location. Stay within the highlighted area in your minimapuntil you find the car and stick close to them once you’ve found their location. They can be found in the following places:
Wellsprings
Northside
North Oak
Rancho Coronado
Badlands
The Glen
Coastview
Some of the more notable parts of this quest include the Rancho Coronado, Wellsprings, and North Oak locations. In North Oak, you’ll need to drive the rogue cab back yourself, except this AI is particularly nervous about the city. Keep the car under 50 to not spook him too much.
Rancho Coronado will have you engage in some amusing property damage to satisfy an AI who’s very upset about some pink flamingos. Meanwhile, the AI in Wellsprings has a bit of an attitude. It might feel clunky, but I recommend sticking to first-person during the car battle here as, given the camera perspective, an impromptu 1v1 demo derby in the middle of a city is quite fun and poses a bit of a challenge.
If you’re heading to Pacifica for the Coastview location, however, come leveled up and stocked on ammo. After an amusing easter egg, you’re gonna get jumped by a bunch of gonks. I recommend staying under the bridge during this shootout, as there are two groups of hostile enemies outside of the bridge who can easily get roped into the shooting spree. Fighting one group of fools is much more manageable than taking on three.
As a note, “The Glen” location involves a conversation about depression and self harm.
Final Delamain quest: “Don’t Lose Your Mind”
Once you gather all of the rogue AI’s and send them back to Delamain HQ, you’ll have to wait a couple of days to receive a suspicious call from Delamain. This call usually triggers by visiting Corpo Plaza. Turns out, Delamain has found the source of the problem: A virus has hit the AI and you’re being called on to help.
As you’ll quickly learn, entry into Delamain HQ isn’t as straightforward as it was before. Once you find a way in around the back, you’ll move through some abandoned offices. Take the time to sift through the computer emails for a bit of dystopian backstory about what happened to the human staff. This is one of the game’s quests that earns time spent sifting through in-world documents. You’ll also need to dig through the emails for the code to the main office computer (it’s a super secure one too: 1 2 3 4). If you have an Intelligence of 8, you won’t need the password.
Once you get access to the garage, you’ll have to deal with some hostile drones and an electrified floor. The drones don’t put up too much of a fight, but the floor will kill you fast. (The Inductor Immune System implant will make you immune to the electricity).
Take the door to your left when you enter the garage and see Johnny. You’ll need to hop on to the car that’s being raised and lowered and parkour your way over to an open vent. You’ll then have to navigate through some narrow corridors behind the cars to make it to the control room and Delamain’s core. Once inside, things get interesting.
Johnny will appear and will instantly give you a piece of his mind about what you ought to do. You’ll have three options: Restore Delamain and kill the rogue AI offshoots, merge the AI offshoots with Delamain (requires an Intelligence score of 10), or pull out a gun and destroy the core, liberating the AI offshoots but killing Delamain.
Do the AI offshoots have a right to live? Are they just an error that needs to be corrected? Should (or can) they peacefully coexist with the primary consciousness that gave birth to them? SPOILERS FOLLOW:
Johnny will appear to encourage you to destroy the core or merge all of the AIs into one. He isn’t without a point, implying that Delamain is hardly living a free life as both a taxi driver and dispatcher. Delamain admits early on in the quest that he maintains a control room strictly for the need to mirror humans, saying that such a space is an “infrastructure” he inherited, much like the visualized face he speaks through. Narratively, this is an opportunity for V to decide whether or not he’ll continue simply serving humans by sending out and driving taxis.
You are free to reset the core to purge the errant AI offshoots, which identify as Delamain’s children and seem to be fragments of his own personality. If you do this, Johnny won’t be happy and will call you out. If you lack the Intelligence score to merge the AIs, your only option then is to pull out a weapon and destroy the core.
If you have a high enough Intelligence score (10), you can access what is arguably the “good ending” for the Delamain quest guide. Once all AI personalities are merged, Delamain will express the need to leave Night City to go on to a better place. Regardless of which ending you choose, however, you will get a taxi cab of your own to drive.
Though merging the AIs seems to be the best way to go, none of these seem to scream “good/bad ending.” Instead, you’ll be left with a nice riddle about the nature of consciousness and what it means to be free. What’s more cyberpunk than that?
Delamain’s quest is easily one of Cyberpunk 2077’s most memorable sidequests. There’s some great gameplay, a ton of great dialog and narration, and it will have you traveling to different areas of the city. It’s easily the first side job to pick up once you’re out of the first Act.
