As you progress through the story you may notice Homestead Missions in Frontier, maybe Boston or New York, and the gist of these initial missions are to get people to settle in Homestead bringing their professions and skills to the community.   Once these people settle, there are additional missions that delve into their history, character, personality, etc.  Where the Encyclopedia comes into play is you’re tasked with watching these skilled trade and labourers doing their thing so history will know what life was like in that day and age.  Fantastic!  Except….

This is a tedious and annoying process.  I learned the hard way that completing this task wasn’t as easy as simply watching them.  In some cases the game was glitchy, in other times I simply hadn’t progressed enough to see the tasks completed.  Below are some tips on how to make this process less frustrating and hopefully more enjoyable.

1.  Use Eagle Vision

Characters that are performing a task that will count towards the Encyclopedia are gold, because they’re target objectives.  While the characters may be illuminated gold, it doesn’t mean it’s a new task you haven’t seen, it just simply is letting you know they’re doing something important.  So as you’re running through Homestead working towards something else, Eagle Vision can help here and there.

2.  Do ALL of the Homestead missions before trying for the Encyclopedia

Sweet Christ this was extremely frustrating.  I only had a few tasks left with the Blacksmith, Big Dave, and he was being a royal prick.  All he would do is walk into his shed, come out with an axe, take it to the grindstone, start sharpening it, put the axe back in the shed, get the axe again, repeat.  Sometimes he’d head out back and eat an apple or have a smoke, like what the fuck Big Dave?  Is that all you do?  Turns out after completing the Homestead missions it gives the people better equipment to do their jobs better so there are more tasks for them to do.

Do something else Big Dave, you lazy bastard!

3.  Check your Log Book for missions that are currently in progress

The Log Book is a great resource and sometimes I would forget that I had already started a Homestead mission and didn’t complete it.  So I would watch the Doctor read his book, then pick some flowers, then read his book, then pick some flowers….  It was Big Dave all over again but this time I knew better!  Sure enough I had started a mission but never completed it.  Finished the mission, Doctor did some other things, problem solved.

4.  Fast Travel to reset the characters

There were some times where some of the characters had all of their missions complete but I kept getting invalid target, even though they were doing jobs that should have counted towards the progress.  Simply fast travelling to another Homestead location and returning to the characters seemed to reset their activity to actually apply, and in some cases changed the task they were doing completely.  Yay!

5.  Doing missions changed the time of day

When you’re waiting around for up to ten minutes for a character to complete a task that counts, it can eat up the in-game daylight. Once it becomes night, all the characters either head in for bed or hit up the tavern to get their drink on.  I went and did a mission and as soon as it was completed it was day time.  Before I did this, I was waiting for roughly fifteen to twenty minutes for it to become daylight to continue my progress and this was especially annoying as you’re already investing a few hours into this to begin with.

Hopefully some of these tips help you out.  I’m going to get a good capture device soon (Come on Santa!) to provide some related media to articles for added effect.  Good luck everyone!

The post Assassin’s Creed 3 – Encyclopedia of The Common Man Tips first appeared on GamingRendo - News, Reviews, and Videos of all your favourite games.

The good folks over at BioWare are in the giving spirit early this holiday.  They’re giving away a crap-load of promotional items in Dragon Age and Dragon Age II through the BioWare Social Network.

Just in time for the holidays! Starting today, we’re giving away an assortment of Dragon Age: Origin and Dragon Age II promotional items. These are available to all our fans for free! To grant these items to your account, you must first select your platform and then click the button below.

Enjoy!

Unlockable Items:

This is for the PC/360/PS3 and it doesn’t take that long to gain access to it.  All you need is an Origin and BioWare account that are linked (Same login/ID basically) and you can select your platform and redeem them.  Logging into either game and accessing the In-Game Marketplace lists all this content as free and when you download it and start a new game it all appears in a chest.  Fun!

Here’s the link and have fun!  http://social.bioware.com/da2/dlc_bundle

The post Dragon Age Promotional Items Giveaway first appeared on GamingRendo - News, Reviews, and Videos of all your favourite games.

Last year, EA added the Season Ticket which is ~$25.  You get 3 days early access to all the sports titles, and 20% off on the boosts.  So assuming you get the Season Ticket and buy your boosts, you’re looking at $60+tax for the game, 2000MSP or ~$25 for the Season Ticket and then you can get 12 +5s for ~1500MSP. Now I apologize for making you read things you already likely knew to get to my point, but in the end to stay “competitive” at the beginning of a NHL series launch, you’re almost paying double.  If money isn’t an issue to you, I salute you.  However if you’re looking for an easy way to unlock boosts with only a handful of hours of investment, then continue on.

Each year since they’ve added boosts, I’ve always unlocked all my boosts for my skater using Be A Pro.  A lot of people would say it’s time consuming and it’s cheaper to just use their pay from a few hours of work then to spent a dozen or more to unlock it themselves.  The thing is, it doesn’t even need to take that long to unlock them all.  Last year with NHL 12, I had 95% of all my skater boosts unlocked after two season of Be A Pro.  While that may seem like a lot of time, the trick is knowing how they unlock and using mechanics to your advantage.

Progress towards your boosts only occur if you’re playing in the NHL, so you’ll want to get into the NHL as soon as possible.  What I do first, is adjust the sliders of the game in my favour.  What I mean by this is putting the gameplay sliders for humans to the maximum/minimum levels to benefit me.  Wrist Shot/Slap Shot power and accuracy all maxed, maximum fatigue recovery, minimum fatigue effect, maximum acceleration, etc.  Then I do the opposite for the AI, adjusting the sliders to penalize them.  Make them slower, more penalty prone, etc.

I start in the CHL, setup so I’m in my draft year.  You can either simulate the entire year, or play a few games here and there, especially if you’re going after some of the achievements, then simulate the rest.  There are a few boosts involving playing in the CHL, like getting drafted in the first 2 rounds, but they’re mostly +1s.  The reason I do this for a season is to get the extra experience to put into my skater.  You can simply skip the CHL and go right into the NHL, but your player overall has lower attributes.  Personal preference really.

Once you’re in the NHL here’s where it becomes easy.  Simulated games do not count towards your progress, you need to get all the statistics yourself.  What you can do is start a game, play for a few minutes, get a few points, then exit the game.  The rest of the game is simulated, and you keep all the points you obtained yourself.  Some of the boosts involve playing 40 games in a season and doing X statistics.  This makes it very easy.  So you play a partial period then quit having the rest of the game simulated, then simulate the next game.  With the adjusted sliders, scoring goals is very easy, and getting around the defense is a non-issue.  Overall the process of playing and quitting takes maybe 2-5 minutes.  Break that down for an entire season and the playoffs and you’re looking at ~1-3 hours for a season, do that twice and you’ll have unlocked 95% of your skater boosts.

Currently I’m halfway through my first NHL season and I have nearly all my +3s unlocked and a few +5s.  After the first season I should have all my +3s and a bunch of +5s.  While this works great for skater boosts, and it could work for goalies, it’ll be a lot harder.  Goalie boosts generally require having so many shots and saves and because you’re quitting out of games to simulate the rest, you’ll only have a handful of each.  It’s better to just play EASHL Club games.  As you’re progressing towards your Legend card, you’ll get most of the +3 and +5s you’ll need doing that.

Hopefully this will help a bunch of people out and save yourself the additional $40-$45 in costs to stay competitive in the EASHL and in Online 6v6 Leagues, like the GamingRendo Hockey League for Xbox 360

The post NHL 13 – Easy Way To Unlock Skater Boosts Using Be A Pro first appeared on GamingRendo - News, Reviews, and Videos of all your favourite games.

Hey everyone,

There has been a lot of good discussion about the EASHL recently so let’s keep that up. I recently realized that I forgot to mention that we did a few small tweaks to the EASHL Pro regarding player types and how you can spend your XP. NHL is always tuned using NHL players and teams and we do not have separate gameplay for EASHL specifically. This year we have decided that you can no longer be better than an NHL player in any stats for EASHL, that way we don’t see 99 wrist shot accuracy and power being able to blow shots past goalies as easily. You will no longer be able to have 99 of any stat. We tuned the values based on real life NHL players within their respective player types. For example, for snipers, we have a hard cap at 95 for wrist shot accuracy. The cap depends on the player type and what they “Should” be good and bad at. A Playmaker for example, would be able to get up to a 95 passing, but not up to a 90 rating shooting. We feel that by adding a cap for each stat based on player type does remove some of the freedoms you once had, but also forces people to choose a player type that more or less suites their style of play. We want NHL 13 to feel different with the new skating system, and we do not want people to have unbalanced players by being able to have 99 speed and agility for example.

You will also notice the player overall ratings will be much lower. This is somewhat of an unwanted result of the offline player rating separation that happened, but really the EASHL Pro’s overall rating doesn’t mean anything. The individual stats are the most important.

Also note that these caps were set while using the Boost Slots applied so we ensured that even while using boosts you could not go over an unwanted level. This will result in some people thinking some of the caps are set too low, but you must factor in the +8 boost you would apply to your pro.

This is an absolutely fantastic change.  For those of you who play Online Team Play, EASHL, or online 6v6 Leagues this will help bring some balance to player builds.  With the present system, there are “broken” builds.  Stacking certain attributes to 99 in conjunction with some A button and dangling skill, a lot of players could magically avoid body and stick checks, stick lifts would be ineffective, it made playing the game frustrating and not enjoyable.

Whenever I play offline or versus, which uses NHL players with realistic attributes, the gameplay better emulates realism opposed to the arcade-like nonsense most people experience.  Bringing this to EASHL, OTP, and the 6v6 Leagues that exist will greatly improve gameplay and make the experience that much more enjoyable.

Typically, I’ve been very critical of EA on how the NHL Series ends up.  There’s always gameplay breaking issues/exploits, glitch goals, server issues, et al.  I’ve got to give a lot of credit to EA for actually addressing a major issue that existed in NHL 12, though I still remain skeptical that the game will be without at least one major issue.  Here’s hoping I’m wrong, and here’s to actually looking forward to NHL 13, a welcome change from my annual gamer angst.

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