Gaming on the Cheap, part 3

 A few years have passed since I wrote one of these.  I was probably playing Honkai: Star Rail and Genshin Impact and Seven Knights back then.  Now, it's Solo Leveling: Arise, Where Winds Meet, Wuthering Waves, and Tower of God: New World.

I've spent some money on each, not a lot, but something.

Too often games become like work and I don't want to feel that way about games.  I don't want to put money into something that isn't enjoyable because I'll probably abandon it at some point.  After all, in Honkai: Star Rail, I had maximum level characters and wasn't enjoying it.

I've been playing Solo Leveling: Arise for two years and it takes some work but it's still quick-and-dirty for me.  I can pick it up, play a little, and put it down.

Where Winds Meet is overwhelming.  I'm paying for the minor Battle Pass upgrade, which is helpful.  I wasted way too much time not collecting skills and just wandering.  My character level is 93 (out of 95) right now and I'm three months behind on skills. There is so much going on in the game, and if you don't look at the Improvement Guide under Develop, you'll be like I am.

 Wuthering Waves definitely seems a pay-to-win game.  I've got a few 5-star characters that I can't upgrade past the low levels.  I mess with the game but I'm not sure I want to commit any real money to achieve better results.

Tower of God: New World follows the anime and is an idle, handheld game that requires too much attention.  Then again, I'm playing on Android AND iOS.  I started the iOS version about 1 year after I started the Android version and I'm within just a few floors.  There are so many characters and things to do that it's becoming work.  It's often something I would play while waiting for another game update to finish.  Now, this game's updates are taking hours to finish.

 There are so many gacha games out there now, especially from Chinese publishers that you can play without paying.  When you use up all of the game's energy for the day, switch to another game.

I'm looking forward to Limit Zero Breakers and Ananta when they're released.  However, I've seen a few in preview, and they don't really turn out all that great. 

Solo Leveling: Arise Two Years Anniversary

 Today marks two years since the game went live for everyone.

 

 I didn't pay quite as much attention to the Live Stream because I was playing Tower of God: New World and the original host still can pronounce "Jinwoo" correctly, which is annoying.  He went to Korea for the competition last year and probably annoyed a lot of Koreans there.  Oops.

The character level is now a maximum of 150.  It seems as though I get close and they move it.

 Naturally, there are new characters and a beast of a big boss, plus a new chapter.  Hopefully, that will take more than 15 minutes to complete.

On the Windows version, they've finally been cleaning up bugs from months ago.  Hopefully, they clean up some that happened right after they first released the game, also. 

Update 2026.05.07: What were they thinking?  What was I thinking not paying close attention to the Live Stream?

It feels so different, although some parts are the same.  Something I tried was new and yet, had bugs in it as though it had been planned 1 year ago.  I appreciate that they wanted to refresh it. 

 

I'm up one job category and took a third job change but failed.  I'm not sure why giving me the track suit is a good thing.  In Korea, that's considered a middle-age thing to wear.

I was looking at the Monarch's icon in the lobby.  It shows me to equip 8 artifacts.  I thought "I don't want to find new artifacts." and then, I thought, "What if I disable and enable the same artifacts?"  That worked and I got a load of Hunters and their weapons, along with runes and Sung Jinwoo weapons through 29 different selections. 

 

Update 2026.05.08:  The blue wheel of progress, that we haven't seen since the first year, has returned.

Update 2026.05.10: I have so many level 100 artifacts that I'm re-equipping a bunch of Hunters.  Too many still have level 78 or level 73 equipment and the newer characters have mismatched equipment.  Hopefully, this will help with times in the new gates. 

Solo Leveling: Arise Only one month until two years have passed

 It's odd that May 3, 2026 will be two years since I started playing Solo Leveling: Arise.

It feels as though there hasn't been that much time, but they have advanced the game and still not fixed some bugs.

 Elena Renault will be added and I'm just glad that she wasn't Elena Citroen or Elena Peugeot.  Maybe, later she could be Elena Renault Fuego.

 Of course, there were codes.  I hope that I remember to use them.

 

I've been so busy playing Where Winds Meet that I've not been paying too much attention.  I must be poor.

I also didn't pay much attention to the drivel from the community managers.  Hope things are still good.

 

Update 2026.04.10: Finished the new chapters in Normal mode.  Also, got Sung Jinwoo through one job change that's been waiting a while.  Still need to do the second one, as it was available right away. 

A few other things happened about the same time. 

Update 2026.05.02: I got the D-5 at login yesterday.  We're almost to the two years' mark, even though I thought we started on 3 May.

They already gave me Gina and Seorin and their weapons.  That's amazing since other games can be so cheap.  For all the money Hoyoverse collected, Honkai: Star Rail and Genshin Impact weren't generous games.  Then again, I didn't spend any money on those and I spent a little money on SLA. 

Solo Leveing Arise: Two Months until Two Years

 Actually, it will be around the 3rd of May when the first open day of play happened.  It's difficult to believe that it has been two years.

  

I play too many games and it's always good to have an alternative while servers are down.  I was playing Tower of God: New World while the livestream was going.  It's a handheld Netmarble game.  I'm also playing Where Winds Meet, Wuthering Waves, and a bunch of old games, and a few racing games.

 There is a little bit new with Solo Leveling: Arise.  If you didn't read previously, there is a US$40 version on Steam.  I haven't spent much money but I've probably spent more than that in two years.  I'd rather have the PC version, although a Mac/iPad version would be really good now.

 I still haven't tried to play Cyberpunk 2077 on my Mac, but I play Wuthering Waves on it.  Now, that my M1 MacBook Air was released in 2020, I'm surprised that it does so well.  My ASUS ZenBook Pro running Win11 Pro with a Ryzen 7 5800H and NVIDIA RTX 3050 Ti seem strained on SLA while other games seem fine.  Where Winds Meet doesn't complain. 

I'm currently at Character Level 130 and have more than 40 Hunters.  Still don't have weapons or skills finalized but I'm doing well enough.  I won't be going to South Korea to compete.

Is the MacBook Neo shaking up the computer industry?

 I've seen a few reports about the MacBook Neo coming as a shock to computer makers.

Is it because it's only a little more expensive than the rest of the industry charges for mediocre laptop computers? 

The MacBook Neo is a decent entry level laptop computer.  There are a lot of savings leading to compromises versus typical MacBook Air or MacBook Pro computers.

Are there people who want e-mail and web browsing machines that don't do much else because of hardware limitations?  I remember thinking that was why there were Linux distributions, and 20 years later, I'm still wondering why Linux hasn't taken that place.

 When I see Google Chromebooks, I see Intel Pentium-related processors.  It's surprising how they're still "alive".  Weren't Chromebooks supposed to go away, replaced with Android for the desktop?

Windows 11 is so fat that they need a slimmed-down version to fit on low-end machines.  My ASUS machine has a Ryzen 7 5800H and Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti (notebook edition), and with every Windows 11 Pro update, it seems to become more feeble.

The MacBook Neo benchmarks seem quite good, faster than my M1 MacBook Air in some cases. 

 With the MacBook Neo, will Apple somehow dominate in the low-end market for laptop computers, especially using a System-on-a-Chip (A18 Pro) that comes from a phone? 

Update 2026.03.14: I watched a video comparing a Microsoft Surface laptop computer using a mobile SoC and a Neo and the real problem was that Microsoft put little effort into making Windows on ARM great.  It couldn't run a lot of applications, including games, which is a point Microsoft always made against Macs.

 Since macOS has components for running iPadOS-modified games seamlessly, it goes a long way toward showing developers that their games can run on a Mac. 

Update 2026.03.23: I was at Target and got to see the Neo.  It feels much more expensive than anything that has Windows running on it for a similar price.  While the SoC is from a phone, it's quite powerful, exceeding my M1.  I was recently trying to help a friend find a powerful but economical laptop computer for university and they were close to the prices for the Neo.  Would you buy plastic or aluminium? 

Update 2026.05.07: Apparently, sales are great.  They need more A18 Pro SoCs to keep up with demand and to keep the A17 Pro and Pro Max going. 

They might ditch the lower model.  It didn't make sense to me to offer it.  They're talking about adding more colors.  They've noticed that certain colors have better demand than others from the Orange that was selling on the phones. 

Switching from M1 MacBook Air to M5 MacBook Air?

 The new M5 MacBook Air models have been introduced.

 I'm still running on a refurbished MacBook Air that I bought in 2022.  It's still reliable but games and graphics software are less smooth than they should be.  Plus, 1TB of storage is not exactly enough.  How anyone is okay with 256 GB or 512 GB and doing more than browsing and e-mail is beyond me. 

 The base M5  MacBook Air comes with 512 GB of storage, 16 GB of RAM, 10 CPU cores, and 8 GPU cores for US$1099.  My current M1 MacBook Air has 1 TB, 16 GB of RAM, 8 CPU cores, and 8 GPU cores.  I paid US$1359 for a refurbished machine.  If there is any doubt, I'm using a 13.3 inch machine and looking at a 13.6 inch machine.

I wanted to configure a MacBook Air with more storage and more RAM.  My current 1 TB seems to be under 100 GB regularly, and I've moved games to a separate 16 TB drive that seems really slow.  It's actually a HDD.

 

Given that you cannot change the storage or RAM with Apple Silicon machines, it's important to buy everything at once.  Windows machines are somewhat more flexible, but my ASUS ZenBook Pro has some soldered RAM.  Apple makes configuring a lot of upgraded RAM and/or storage expensive.  That hasn't changed.  However, with AI processing pushing up prices, Apple seems to be holding the line. 

Is US$1899 outrageous in 2026?  Is it worse than US$1359 for a refurbished M1 MacBook Air in 2022?  I tried a similar configuration of the 14 inch MacBook Pro and it was US$400 more.  Is one fan and a better display worth that much?

I'm not sure that the 24 GB of RAM is enough, especially with so many extra cores.  I use graphic design software and play games, so 32 GB of RAM might be more appropriate.

My M1 MacBook Air will have trade-in value.  It was at US$300+ the other day.

If I was making money with my equipment, would there be a question.   I'd still wait until they were available, but the last time I jumped to buy a machine was the 1998 Wall Street G3 laptop computers.  I regretted that one so much, I gave it to someone else.  That was US$2659, as I recall for a 233 MHz, passive graphics display, and a 66 MHz bus.   Then again, there was the IBM L40SX with Intel 486SX CPU.  I got that for 25% of the original US$6000.  It lasted a few months and the mouse port broke and the extended warranty company told me that the motherboard cost more than the price of the computer.  I settled with them and bought my first Mac.  It's amazing that you can go to a store like Costco or Sam's Club and buy a US$500 machine that's more impressive than most of what we used to have.

Let's see what happens.  Will there be a new MacBook Air here this month? 

Update 2026.03.04: The MacBook Neo looks good, but not for me.  If someone was using an Intel-based MacBook Air, they'd be happy.  It's much more powerful.  It's slightly more powerful than the M1 MacBook Air supposedly.  Those people who were looking for a 12 inch MacBook replacement may be happy.  Oh, and the US$100 price bump for Touch ID and more would be worth it.  I'm still confused about the USB ports on the Neo.  One operates at USB 3.0 speed and the other operates at USB 2.0 speed.  Supposedly, there is a speed warning when you use a device on the slower port.

Update 2026.03.16: I posted a comment about going to the M5 MacBook Air on a YouTube video and someone told me to wait for the M6.  I replied that, in a year, he would have me waiting for the M7, and so on, and I'd be on the M1 until I die.

 I just need to wait for enough cash to buy it outright and wait for the trade-in money to return.   I'd like to get it as soon as possible, but paying rent, etc., and eating are important. 

Is Yelp relevant in 2026?

 After my adoptive mum died in 2011, I joined Yelp and started contributing.  I made such a splash that the Community Manager bumped me up to Elite status.

 I've spent time making truthful reviews.  I don't like surprises the first time I visit a restaurant or store, so I would rather avoid places that have a negative experience attached.

 A few times when I've written a review, I've been threatened.  It's a little surprising because I didn't cause the business to treat me poorly or serve me bad food.  It happened for whatever reason, and I was just telling about my experience.

Yelp had some heavy-handed tactics about advertising and I found that when I moved to my current location.  The furniture store where I bought some furniture was marked Closed.  My review suggested that they were quite open.  My spending a few hundred dollars confirmed that.

The other day, some local friends, an elderly couple and I went to an Italian restaurant.  I've been wanting Italian food since I left Philadelphia, where there are probably 150 mom-and-pop Italian restaurants.  It didn't quite work out.

 

 I wrote my review and tried my best to be nice.  The restaurant got 8202 views since my review, and 2659 views since my three photos were uploaded.  How did I have that much of an impact?  I have a handful of Yelp friends and a few more Followers but none in the thousands.   Only one of my Yelp friends even noticed it enough to respond.

 I have around 1800 reviews all over the country and around 2300 photos, none of which has gotten more than a few responses.  Maybe, it's a calculation error, 10 times what really happened.

I'll continue to write reviews.  Who knows what will happen?