The Recluse Report - May 2026 Part 1

16 May, 2026. 1,175 words.

A quick half-month has already passed, and I haven’t written very much. It’s been a pretty low energy month for me so far.

Gaming

Final Fantasy XIV Coldplay

Or was it Everlong. No, it was Evercold. That’s the new expansion, apparently slated for January 2027.

This reminds me that I’m still about an expansion and a half behind, since I’m not yet done with Endwalker. So I have six or seven months to catch up. Easily doable, if I actually log in and play, which I haven’t done for a while.

Looks like there’s a lot of new mechanics in this expansion aimed at getting people to keep logging in daily even after they’re effectively finished. Which I assume is the whole reason that “seasons” exist.

It probably isn’t going to work on me. It’s not normal to expect people to play one game for the rest of their lives.

Wartales

While I was looking at other tactical RPGs, I broke out Wartales again. My little group of 6, created three or four years ago, are still wandering around, fighting boars and hoodlums, barely surviving, never having enough gold. At my last camp I didn’t even have enough food for the whole group.

Battle Brothers

Then I fell down a deep Battle Brothers rabbit hole.

On returning to the game after a million years, I confidently took my mercenary group of about a dozen people into a fight with four wolf-mounted goblins and died to the last man in humiliating fashion. That’s when I remembered two things: Combat is hard in Battle Brothers, and I had started that game on “iron man” mode all those years ago, and thus that old game came to an abrupt end in one swift stroke.

Needless to say, I forgot how combat worked. It’s really, really complicated in Battle Brothers (or at least, really specific to Battle Brothers), and the AI is relentless and ruthless. The wolfriders stayed out of range until they pounced on unprotected people at the edges with roughly double my movement speed, and they somehow had like fourteen attacks per round. I guess goblins are much more formidable in Battle Brothers than they are in Dungeons & Dragons.

I started a new game and got deeply invested in building my bros. (And saying “bros” a lot.) I managed to get a pretty good company of 8 together through about Day 50. Then things started to fall apart by the time I reached Day 100 because the game continued to scale up in difficulty around me, while I had failed to adequately build up my bros, and I found myself suddenly losing every battle with an undergeared company that was too small.

I had gotten back to 12 bros, then I got absolutely demolished to the last man by just two giants. Then I ran into an undead horde of Wiedergangers, Ancient Auxiliaries, and two Necrosavants while trying to escort a caravan. Again, killed to the last man, and the caravan destroyed. Other examples abound. At that point I figured there was no way to proceed.

So I started another new game, this time starting with Anatomists (from a DLC), who get their strength drinking mutation potions. I’ve only gotten to about day 25 with them.

If nothing else, it’s got deeply engrossing tactical turn-based combat.

The same folks have an XCOM-style game called Menace. I haven’t seen it but I imagine the tactical combat is top notch.

Wartales and Battle Brothers are good games for when I don’t feel like talking, because they aren’t that good for recording. Only the battles themselves are worth recording. The stuff in between the battles isn’t that entertaining.

Media Production

I’ve recorded just a handful of representative battles from Battle Brothers. They’ll go into the hopper to get uploaded some months from now. The current queue contains 133 video files remaining to upload, at 2 per day.

Media Consumption

Taskmaster Season 21

I mean if you haven’t caught on to the Taskmaster phenomenon after 21 seasons or series or whatever, then I really can’t help you.

I kind of miss the old days, though, when the tasks were simpler and more open-ended. That’s the downside of success.

What?

I saw an ad for an Amazon show called Spider-Noir starring Nick Cage. I think we need to start dividing nerds who look forward to a show like that from regular nerds. I’m not saying gatekeeping is a net positive for the community, but we really can’t have Nick Cage swinging around on webs in a trenchcoat, can we? Billionaires cannot be allowed to make that mainstream, or it might as well be the same as worldwide nuclear annihilation.

Day Job

I don’t know about any other software developers out there, but where I work, we are expected to use AI every single day to “increase productivity.” (Honestly I think the emphasis is mostly on getting older engineers to embrace it, because the youngs are into it already.)

I personally find it a very boring way to work. While it is certainly possible to write code by describing it to Claude, and guiding it step-by-step, and the code will turn out perfectly fine, it’s not what I would call an exciting to work that way.

Basically you type a prompt, then you wait five minutes, then you type another prompt, then you wait five minutes, and on and on it goes, until you have the code you want.

Can anyone do that, even people who have no idea how to write code? Probably.

But can anyone apply my decades of experience in guiding Claude to a superior product that’s easily readable and maintainable without tons of technical debt? Probably not.

So in the hands of an experienced developer, it’s a great tool. In the hands of a young developer or a non-developer who is taught that immediate results are more important than long-term maintenance, your mileage may vary.

Not that it matters. We’re dumping tons of AI-generated code into production and running full speed with it. Luckily AI can debug bad AI code just as easily as bad human code.

Home Life

In continuing efforts to simplify my life, I bought a walk-behind string trimmer. Also known as a trimmer mower. It’s basically a weedeater on wheels that you push around like a push mower, so you don’t have to carry it. It’s cool.

Cancer Corner

Recovery from my 15th infusion was much better than the 14th infusion. Mainly just felt tired and congested over the weekend. (For some reason, my sinuses seem to take the brunt of the reaction for a 4-5 day period afterward.) It was a marked improvement over the last one.

Next up, for the 16th infusion, coming soon, I’ll get the bone strengthener again. Here’s hoping it wasn’t the cause of the catastrophic 14th infusion reaction. (All the doctors said it shouldn’t have been.)

World Context

Has there ever been a sovereign country in history that came back from massive unchecked government corruption? Honest question.

Bye!