The Rock Cocks, Page 1042 (Patreon)

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Let me know if you're also in line to end Seth, I'll bring you some snacks from the vendors hall.

Sorry, no Friday the 13th progress this week if you were looking forward to that. Instead, today I gave myself a day off, which is actually something I haven't really had in a while I realized. I still helped color this page and did my usual Slipshine stuff, but. You know.

Anyways, I'm big into Splatoon 3. And this week, Salmon Run (it's four-play team survival mode, if you're unfamiliar), had a rare GOLD WEAPON day. Essentially, every person on the team gets a random rare weapon for each round, and these weapons are extremely fun and overpowered versions of normal weapons. With this weapon selection, I thought I could go for one of the hardest achievements in the game - MAX HAZARD CLEAR. To summarize, there are numerous ranks you can level up through in Salmon Run, starting at Apprentice and ending at Eggsecutive VP. Despite VP being the highest, it can actually go higher, starting at VP +40 and going all the way to VP +999. To achieve MAX HAZARD CLEAR, everybody on your team needs a ludicrously high VP+ number and clear the round once your teammates have triggered MAX HAZARD LEVEL, which is a hazard level of 333%. But the catch is that your VP number resets down to 40 every couple days, so to get to that number, you have to grind. That VP number only goes up 20 with each victory. If you don't have a single loss, it would take roughly 50 straight wins to get to VP+999, just about 5 hours of playtime, and it all has to be within this short window.

This is, however, extremely difficult. This a team-based game, so you are reliant on other players. Still, despite the odds, I thought I could do it with this rare weapon loadout. So I spent my day off grinding, and grinding, and grinding. Roughly 12 hours of gametime. Extreme highs, devastating lows. I played to the best of my skill, with the best weapons in the game available to me. I was a boneless ink machine.

In the even, I only made it to VP+ 650. Even with my other teammates' numbers, we only made it to 295% hazard level. The window has closed, my day off is over, and I have been humbled. Even with the best weapons in the game, I could not do it. Perhaps I never could. The window, it's too short. My skill, it's too lacking. My patience, it's worn thin. I could have done anything else with those 12 hours. I could have read a book. I could have enjoyed a nice walk in the park with Leslie. I could even have played Like a Dragon Gaiden instead. But no. I instead drowned in a salmon stream, choking on noxious green ink. Never will I swim in these shores again... at least to this degree.

tl;dr, I've wasted my life.

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