We’re getting close now to the release time for Hearthstone’s next big expansion, and it seems the time has finally come to focus on the remaining crime family – the Jade Lotus!

This means that we’ve had a lot of reveals in their three classes of Druid, Shaman and Rogue this week (particularly Shaman!) – as well as finding out just what’s up with the Jade Golems and why so many of the Jade Lotus cards want to summon them for you!

Druid

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Priest

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Rogue

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Shaman

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Tri-Class

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Neutral

And as you can see from a great many of the Jade Lotus cards, they summon Jade Golems. Having expressed curiosity last week about what they look like, we finally find out. The more Jade Golems summoned, the more powerful the subsequent Jade Golems are!

Shaman got a lot of cards this week, about time given how long they went without any new cards revealed. The most interesting one for me has to be Devolve, the antithesis of the popular Evolve card among Shaman players who love a little bit of chance. Of course, Devolve also has that same RNG taste to it, but usually you count on 1 Mana less Minions being weaker. At the very least it is another one that upsets the plans your opponent might be plotting at that moment.

Not that many Neutral reveals this week, but Hozen Healer could be a good one if it appears at the right time. Sure, 2 attack isn’t great for 4 Mana, but 6 Health AND a full Minion heal? Pretty good value to me, although we shall obviously have to wait and see what kind of use it receives after Gadgetzan gets a release.

There’s going to be a big livestream tomorrow over on the Hearthstone Twitch channel, so you can bet that we’ll see more cards and probably a release date announcement happening during that stream. Tune in if you want to see how each family plays, because they’ve certainly said they’ll be doing that too!

After a surprise awakening two days ago, Hello Games have posted up the patch notes for the Foundation Update they’re adding the No Man’s Sky.

The patch notes are hosted over on their site, taking up an entire page with big sections devoted to each new ‘big’ addition coming in. For those who heard about the Update and thought it’d be a small, token thing… well, by the looks of it Hello Games really have been hard at work for the last few months. If you look at the patch notes that is. Certainly impressive.

So, to start we know that the Foundation Update is setting up the groundwork for a bigger and better base building mechanic. You should now be able to claim unoccupied bases you come across, and will be able to hire alien researchers to help you develop new technologies for your living arrangements. Or, if you later find a much nicer place to have a base, break it down and reclaim the materials to rebuild it there.

Farming is also going to come to the game, with some new crops being the result of the aforementioned research in that area at least. You will also be able to build automatic resource harvesters to cut out the need for you to constantly go searching for that last thing you need across many planet surfaces.

If you could have lived our lives over the last months, you’d know how meaningful this is.

Here’s update 1.1https://t.co/4TelmFIgsK

— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) November 27, 2016

Off the planet, you can now hire massive freighters to transport big loads of cargo for you. They can also be sent to certain systems to accumulate resources as well.

Other changes include UI tweaks, and the addition of both a Creative Mode for unrestrained building, and a Survival Mode for anyone who wants a challenge.

Hello Games say that this is “the first of many free updates.” So hopefully there might be a chance NMS will become the game it was supposed to be.

That is, if the gaming community can forgive past mistakes…

Recently it was announced that Sega and Creative Assembly were teaming up with Wargaming for a collaboration on Total War Arena, one of their upcoming games. Now an image has been released on the official Facebook which along with e-mails sent out, confirm the date of closed Alpha tests for the game.

The image is of Roman soldier’s pauldron with the roman numerals  XXVI.XI.MMXVI. visible on it. For those of you who get confused with Roman Numerals or just can’t be bothered to decipher it, in numbers we’d recognise more easily it reads 27.11.2016. You might be reading this and realise that it happens to be tomorrow’s date. So we won’t have to wait long for news.

We know that it’s closed alpha as well because the subreddit for Total War Arena is currently filled with players saying that they’ve received alpha keys, and a number of people have screencapped and posted the e-mail that came with the key. Said e-mail suggests that the tests will start from 8am tomorrow, so as long as NDA isn’t put in place you may see the game popping up on Twitch and Youtube Gaming tomorrow.

Of course, the partnership with Wargaming means that the game is not available on Steam and must instead be played through Wargaming Game Center, along with a wipe of any previous tests’ progress. So everyone’s starting from square one which is probably a good thing.

A new post about the next game from Failbetter has just gone up at their site, giving us some insight into what we can expect in the way of locations from Sunless Skies, the follow-up to their popular Sunless Seas game. Basically, unlike the last game there will be more than one major port to visit.

It’s hoped that this will break up the journey of floating about space for long periods of time, and Failbetter have said that they want to make the journeys “shorter and more varied” this time around.

“We want to keep this core loop, but reduce the amount of time spent traversing explored territories. The tension created by having to struggle back to a major port will still be there, and the threat of overreaching and dying in the cold, uncaring vastness of space will be just as present as it was in Sunless Sea.” wrote Liam Weston, director of game development on the website.

Just like Sunless Seas you can expect those major ports to stay in their fixed positions across subsequent playthroughs, but the minor ports and settlements will move around between playthroughs and will shift around which will add some mystery to your trips into the High Wilderness.

Sunless Skies is currently in pre-production after it was announced at EGX this year. It’s currently set for a Steam Early Access release next year, provided nothing happens between now and then to delay it.

There’s no disputing that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was a massive hit. Those of us that played it when it originally released can swap stories about quests, random NPC stupidity or the odd dragon crash landing on you out of nowhere in the middle of the mountains. The game was epic, the world amazingly realized and the gameplay was just absurdly fun. With Bethesda bringing the game back to the fore of our minds with the release of Skyrim Special Edition for PC, PS4 and Xbox One, I thought it was time to see how the new version stacked up against the original in one very important regard: modding.

Modding is a huge part of PC gaming in general, and Skyrim in particular. Don’t believe me? Thats my current list of mods, and there are at least 40 more I’m still trying to find Special Edition compatible versions of.

While there are a few mods that don’t work right now, I have faith that they will be updated soon. But, some of you may be confused. So, for the uninitiated, lets talk Skyrim mods, shall we?

Many of the most popular mods for the game are centered on improving the graphics. Adding dynamic lighting, dust effects, depth of field, lens flare, more grass, better trees, insanely high resolution textures. You name it, and you can add it to Skyrim. As an example, lets take a look at these two screenshots. 

The shot on the left is from the vanilla remastered version, running with no mods. The one on the right is running a variety of graphics enhancing mods. Of course, upping the texture resolution isn’t the only thing you can do. Lighting also plays a huge part in making a game more immersive, as seen below.

Again, the shot on the left is from the vanilla version. Among the other mods that are quite popular are weather mods that improve fog and weather effects, more realistic water and enhanced blood textures. Just in case the gore was too unrealistic for you…

And of course, lets not forget about the plethora of other mods, most of which I won’t post shots of here. There’s the mod that turns all of the dragons into the engines from Thomas The Tank Engine. There’s the giant rabbit mod, the skimpy anime style battle armor mod. There are mods that put in more realistic armor, add helpful roadsigns to the main routes in Skyrim. There’s even a mod that adds BIRDS to the game, just for the sake of immersion. Basically, if you can dream it, theres probably a mod for it. On PC at least.

Having tested the in game mod manager that Bethesda has bundled with the game, I have to say it’s pretty anemic. The interface is fiddly, obtuse and generally an utter pain in the ass to use. In fact, it reminds me strongly of the menus system in the game and in Fallout 4. Someone should really fire whatever alien makes the GUI on Bethesda games and hire a real human. Or at least do some focus testing. (Hint: When the test subjects gouge out their own eyes, it’s a bad design.) But I digress. The in game system is serviceable at best. If you want to add a few mods here and there just to try out, it will get the job done. Just don’t expect navigating to the mods you want, downloading and then activating them to be a pleasant or hassle free process.

The PC on the other hand, has multiple ways to install and use mods. Most people will opt for the Nexus Mod Manager, at least until someone updates the Skyrim Script Extender to be compatible with the Special Edition of the game. Until then, NMM works just fine, allowing you to download, install and activate or deactivate mods in a simple window, as seen at the top of this article. And while the process may be frustrating sometimes, at least console owners finally have access to mods. And there are a lot of them in the Bethesda curated offerings. Still, the only way to get some of the more interesting ones remains the PC. 

Whatever your platform of choice though, MOD AWAY! Oh…and just because it’s remastered, doesn’t mean the bugs have been totally squashed…