I'm still trying to figure out what the 'house rules' options in Itadaki Street DS are (because they're all in Japanese :(). I have already discovered that the first option changes how the turn order is decided (via the numerical slots or fixed) and the second option is the value a player needs to reach to win the game.

After starting the game with the last option changed to the second setting, I find a lot of empty land (with the SALE sign) in places where there used to be a shop, so that there is one in each area (colour group).

The settings are, from left to right: normal, one empty land block in each area, two empty land blocks in each area and every space becomes empty land.

Contributions on the game's forum board would probably be appreciated, if anyone is reading this who knows what those settings do.

At a TV and film exhibition I visited in the city (Screen World) they had some old games on display. One of them was Super Mario Bros. 3. Unfortunately, after I beat the first level, the game was in an unusable state because it was set up for two players but there wasn't a second controller. So I had to tell someone to come and reset it.

Other games they had were:

• Super Mario 64, but the last person who played it fell off the slide in Cool, Cool Mountain and died,
• Tomb Raider, but someone had screwed with the controls,
• Missile Command, but it's very different from the PC remake I played at primary school (I still got past the red first level into the green second one though),
• Tempest, but the START button was broken,
• Pong, but the whole console was broken.

As I mentioned before, octagoons are rather dangerous to us right now. That is, before I cast Kafuddle on it. Even though it could probably easily have killed us (George was out of MP), it ran away, giving us ample opportunity to flee the grotto and get to the Quester's Rest and... rest.

We challenged Sir Sanquinis to a battle for the first time in our third vocation. (Minstrel, warrior, mage and priest were our first, and mage, minstrel, warrior and thief were our second.) He could do about 100 points of damage in one hit or 60-70 with Multithrust, which kept George and Jasmine busy with healing.

I used one of my Yggdrasil leaves, and found that I only had two left.

I got my coup de grâce. As an armamentalist, my coup de grâce is Voice of Experience, which gives us more experience than normal... assuming we survive the battle. I used it on the last turn I had the oppurtunity to do so because no one else got their coup de grâce, and I got +60% on the wheel. I have never gotten +60% before. I often get +10 or 20%, sometimes +40%. That's a bonus of more than half.

Jasmine got her coup de grâce (Knight Watch) too, which is very useful in boss battles. It blocks all attacks that come her way, including Disruptive Wave. Even after Sanguinis seemed to realise that George, Marcus and I were still there (which was half a turn), we had Jasmine to go in front of us so that we got hit less.

Usually she takes about 60 points of damage from a Multithrust hit, but when she and George used Kabuff to boost her defence, Sanguinis missedher three times in a row with Multithrust. Oh, and did I mention that she blocked both of his critical attacks with her shield?

Eventually we won that battle not long after George and I ran out of MP, thank the goddess. The effect of my coup de grâce gave us 60% extra experience, and Marcus levelled up.

We went to get another Yggdrasil leaf from Pluvi Isle too. I think George forgot to put it in the bag though because I still only had one in the bag. He doesn't really need an Yggdrasil leaf because he has Kazing.

When you try to create or open a PDF embedded in an Office or RTF document with the new Adobe Reader (X), it errors saying that 'AcroExch' is not installed. Two minutes on Google revealed that all you have to do to fix it is to disable the protected mode in Adobe Reader. The menu path for this is Edit → Preferences→ General→ Enable protected mode on startup.

I have just had my new closest 2nd place in Itadaki Street DS. It was me, Mario, Peach and Yoshi on the Mushroom Kingdom board (the one shaped like an M).

I was investing in my shops to make money but I had forgotten that Mario was very close to the goal of 18,000 coins. When I levelled up again both me and Mario had exceeded that goal so it was basically a race back to the bank space. Then Yoshi got the Boo chance card, which teleports everyone to that space, which was 5 spaces away from the bank.

If I had rolled a 5 then, I would have won. I threw the die, and it came up on... one. :(

By some coincidence, my total assets added up to exactly 100 coins less than Mario's.

The new version (1.8 ) of Minecraft is causing problems with my texture pack. I have found out that this can be fixed by copy/pasting some icons with Paint.NET. I have posted on the forum about it here.

Unfortunately I was not able to avoid all encounters with darkonium slimes. I ran into two of them on the second floor of the Platinum Crypt of Bane. I thought about running for it, but if they stopped me then we'd all be in trouble. So I started casting Oomph so as to be able to do more than 20 points of damage each turn.

George was killed several turns in. This is a problem because he's the one who had Kazing. When Marcus died I thought we were all screwed. But Jasmine decided this qualified as an 'extreme situation' and used Kerplunk. Meaning that everyone else returned to life with full HP but she was sacrificed in the process. George was able to Kazing her though.

She then got her coup de grâce. Since she's a paladin, her coup de grâce pretty much stops all the enemy attacks (except for the particle ray), giving us time to reduce the opposing team to one darkonium slime, which was killed a few turns later.

We were lucky to get out of there alive.

It seems that Kerplunk drains all of the brave user's MP. But this can be quickly remedied.

My name is annihilator127.I am an armamentalist. In DQIX I am usually with three friends: George, a sage; Jasmine, a paladin; and Marcus, a luminary. We are at level 46.

For those who don't know, LMS stands for Liquid Metal Slime. Metal slimes are rarer than other monsters, hard to hit and run away a lot. But... they give a lotof experience if you manage to kill one.

We got a new treasure map today. It is labelled 'Platinum Crypt of Bane Lv. 64'. I found the grotto just east of Stornway. (Nice and close to a save point :)) The first thing I see as I enter is an octagoon. Octagoons are actually pretty dangerous to us right now.But two minutes in, I find a great troll, and hiding behind it is... yes, two liquid metal slimes. I was hoping I would find a grotto with metal slimes in it.

Liquid metal slime A saw my team and ran away immediately. Liquid metal slime B tried to hit Jasmine. Mistake. She not only dodged it, but also scored a hit with her spear.

Fighting metal slimes isn't like fighting other monsters. Their excellent resilience means that you can't do more than 2 points of damage per hit before tension or a critical hit. They have only a few HP. (MS about 4, MM about 5, LMS about 8, MKS about 18 ) so you can count hits easily. They cannot be affected by spells.

We got 2 LMS kills today. I'm switching to my falcon blade, which I've found useful when hunting metal slimes because I can do up to 4 points of damage in one turn.