Meaning of Gemstones Part 1

It's been a while since I lost posted. Having a full-time job really impacts the time I can spend on my research, blog posts, and everything. Thus I have to make major changes but don't worry. If I'm not posting anything check out the "Other Content" on the right side menu. There's always something I'll be doing and I'm active in some kind of way every week.

Gemstone Magic

Many types of magic exist. Today I'm going to go into the topic of gemstone magic. So what is gemstone magic? The basic idea behind this is to use gems, stones or gemstones for different rituals. To do this we figure out what role each gem has or is said to have. Again this depends all on what the common belief is as well as the way they impact you.

Without further ado let's get into the first few gemstones.

List of Gemstones

Without having the post to get too big again I'm gonna go into ten gemstones for this and probably all the following posts. So the gems I'm going to talk about will be these in the given order.

• Berg Crystal
• Rose Quartz
• Amethyst
• Jaspis
• Hematite
• Jade
• Shungite
• Pyrit
• Salt Crystal
• Tiger Eye

Berg Crystal by GreenyNeko

Berg Crystal

The Berg Crystal acts as an energy converter as well as a container to save energy. It is said that Berg Crystals contain up to the 1000-year-old information about the world. It is most effective on the crown chakra. Since it stands for clearness and cleanness it can be used for bringing back order, for things to make sense. It can also be used to convert energy or store information and energy. It makes sense to use a Berg Crystal when trying to learn something or trying to remember something but also to meditate or solve a mystery or problem you can't figure out.

Rose Quartz

Rose Quartz by GreenyNeko

Rose Quartz represents affinity and peace. They're strongest on the heart chakra. They act on the layer of feelings, harmonizing and feeling good. As such they're often used to improve the atmosphere in a room. They can be used to solve issues in relations or to calm oneself or others down.

Amethyst by GreenyNeko

Amethyst

The purple gemstone is said to be connected with clairvoyance and the communication with higher forces, however, it's also known as the stone of peace and as such acts calming. It is most effective on the crown chakra. With all these attributes it can be used the best for meditation.

Jasper

Three Jasper types by GreenyNeko

Jasper is a stone that brings protection and grounding. They act as an energizer, strengthening while still grounding. The red Jaspis has the best effects on the root chakra. These stones can be used if you don't feel well at the start of illness for example or if you want to protect yourself from something stronger than you.

Hematite by GreenyNeko

Hematite

When working with gemstones you usually practice discharge and charging them. Especially if you get a new stone. Hematite is said to be good for discharging. So make sure not to let it lie next to a charged object you want to use. If you have too much energy, yin, yang or anything else you want to discharge this stone works most effectively on the root chakra.

Jade

Jade by GreenyNeko

As I already mentioned this in my Chinese new year post, Jade is often used for protection against bad luck, bad energies or generally to protect, but it is also said to bring and attract good luck, success and prosperity. Like this it can be used as a go lucky charm for your life and work. The green jade works most efficiently on the heart chakra. For this, a necklace would do great, especially when carried below the clothes. The yellow jade is more effective on the solar plexus chakra.

Natural and modified Shungite
by GreenyNeko

Shungite

This black crystal is believed to have similar attributes to obsidian. It protects generally but also against bad energies like demons and attracts wealth and prosperity just like Jade. It can be used by placing it around the house or by wearing it as an accessory. It is also said to convert unhealthy energy, radiation or waves from radios and modern technology. It acts the strongest on the root chakra.

Pyrit

Pyrit by GreenyNeko

This silver cube is said to help to overcome fears and can be used for cleaning. It cleanses itself and is healthy for both the liver and the gall bladder. Its effects are the strongest when used on the root chakra. Thanks to these properties it can be used when attempting to clean the body or to get over your phobias like arachnophobia, acrophobia and more. it's February currently, how about cleaning your body regime?

Salt crystal lamp by GreenyNeko

Salt Crystal

Salt Crystals act as cleaners, magically and not. It's strongest effects are on the sacral chakra. Do you remember the last time you stood at the beach or near the sea smelling the salty fresh air? Or do you remember those nose sprays that say they use saltwater? There's a reason for this. Having a salt crystal or salt stone in your room or house allows it to magically clean the air but clean the air keeping it fresh as well. Though this might not work to keep the air fresh against smelly gases.

Tiger eye

Tiger Eye by GreenyNeko

Our last gem on this list is the tiger eye. This stone is associated with a strong will strong abilities and concentration. It is also believed to improve your courage. Thanks to these attributes it can be used to strengthen yourself as well as your courage when standing in front of a challenge. It doesn't matter if that challenge is a new job, traveling to a foreign place or going to an exam. Especially thanks to it supporting your concentration it is very good when having a new project or an exam standing in front of the door. It also helps when doing meditation. The associated chakra is the solar plexus chakra.

Conclusion

As you can see each of the stones has properties given to them throughout history or thanks to their association with certain things. We can use these to understand how to best use them for our rituals and it really depends on what we want to achieve or do.

Well, that's it for today's post. I'm sorry I can't keep up with a post every day anymore but I still hope to provide as much content as I can and feel well doing so. 

Guild Wars 2: Danger Level at Desmina's Platform - Part 1

If you didn't know, I have a Youtube channel. If you also didn't know I store my streams on it. Additionally, if you didn't know I have several Guild Wars 2 Desmina or Soulless Horror boss tries and kills on this channel.

Progressing Soulless Horror

A few weeks ago, or a month or.. I don't actually remember. Either way back when we were progressing soulless horror we often heard rumors about the big walls appearing when the soulless horror, the boss, is pulled out of the middle. Actually watching this behavior and having the tanks play around with it I can say with 70% certainty, myth busted. 

With this myth busted the next question is how it actually works. What's the chance of a wall forming in a certain constellation? Is there a safe or safer spot on the platform?

Analyzing and Assumption

From a game developer perspective and taking into consideration that it can't be scripted as it's too random. Additionally, walls form using pieces. The fight starts out with two pieces. Once the platform shrinks the first time the wall increases by one piece having three now. Once the soulless horror reaches 30% health the platform shrinks again and now the wall consists of up to four pieces. Additionally, the walls can only cover a certain row or column of the field. Another thing you might have noticed is that the walls snap.

Using all this information we can assume that the walls spawn in a grid. Further analyzing this assumption we notice that the grid has a size of five times five. In this grid, the walls spawn either horizontally or vertically and run down to the opposite side of their spawn point.

Combinations

So in the first phase, the walls consist of two pieces filling out five fields on four different sides.

This allows there to be 2 out of 5 possibilities for four sides with a maximum of two waves being active at the same time. This allows there to be C(5, 2) = 10 possibilities for each side. So that should be 10 * 4 = 40 possible spawn combinations.

However, as I already mentioned before the amount of wall pieces increases. For the most time of the fight, it will be three pieces. With three pieces we have C(5, 3) = 10 possibilities. Okay yeah, times four get 40 okay.

At the end of the fight, it will be four pieces.  So now it's C(5, 4) * 4 = 5 * 4 = 20 possible spawns.

Worst Case Scenario

The worst-case scenario would be a big wall spawning in the middle. If we map the spawns on the grid to numbers from one to five our worst case would be two-three and three-four in the first case. These are two cases and can happen on all four sides. So 8 cases that would.. suck. So 8 out of 40 possibilities would be unfortunate in the first phase. This means it has a chance of 8 / 40 = 0.2 or 20% if we assume each possible combination has the same spawn chance.

Moving on in the second phase the absolute worst case would be two, three and four. So there are 4 in 40 chances to get a wall through the whole middle. The chance on an evenly distributed system would be 4 / 40 = 0.1 or 10%.

Last but not least with four pieces our worst-case scenarios would be any combination that contains two three and four. We have two of these for each side. So that's 2 * 4 = 8 worst-case scenarios. Again with even chances that would be an 8 / 20 = 0.4 or 40% encounter rate.

Cover Chances Concept 

We don't know if it's evenly distributed though. So it leads to the following research. We have a 5x5 grid like the following table.

Now we do this. We look at any footage we can find, in my case my past streams on Youtube. We'll use the mini-map with the fixed option - which means north will stay north regardless of how our character or our camera changes - and check where the walls spawn. Each time the walls spawn we're gonna count each field that will or has been covered by these wall pieces. We're going to continue this until we've summed up all cases.

For example, this might be the table after the first wall spawn.

	1	1
	1	1
	1	1
	1	1
	1	1

And this after the second wall spawn so you should get the idea now.

	1	1
	1	1
1	2	2	1	1
	1	1
1	2	2	1	1

By doing this procedure for every case we get the following result.

	1	1
	1	1
1	2	2	1	1
	1	1
1	2	2	1	1

Great! A five times five grid with numbers in it and now? The concept behind this is simple. In the end, we get a heat map with the highest numbers showing the most dangerous positions and the smallest numbers showing the least dangerous positions. At the same time counting the number of waves we can divide each field number through the total amount of death walls to get the chance of the wall moving over this field rendering it more dangerous.

To Be Continued...

This is enough for today. I have to work tomorrow. So meanwhile I'm gonna use what time I have to analyze the wall spawns in my videos in the next days. So wait for the next post in the next weeks. Yeah, sorry it takes a whole week... but with me losing a lot of my spare time due to work and everything I can't afford to spend as much time on theorycrafting and blog writing anymore. :(

WildStar: Most Advanced Housing I've Seen

As I already hinted at it in my previous post. WildStars housing is its own thing.

Other Games

I've seen and heard about housing in several games. Though I must admit I'm not such a housing freak as other people may be. Yet I still enjoy one or two projects doing some remakes. So back when people heard about housing being customization in Guild Wars 2 the hype was great. Equally great - at least in amount - was the disappointment when the customization provided consisted of fixed nodes you get resources from as well as chests and some special non-playable-characters.

Of course, if you hear customization you imagine being able to place things wherever you want. Well, at least their guild halls implemented that feature. It's like Minecraft, but without snapping. You can do enough with it. Though you're stuck with the size and the rotation of the objects, which really limits one in their capability to let their creativity flow.

This is the same in Minecraft, though even worse. Of course, you can combine different blocks to make them look like something and there are mods out there to allow you to do much more you're yet still limited heavily. The blocks snap and building something huge would require a lot of time setting miniature blocks via an add on. I guess there's copy and paste for that?

Kudos, Carbine, Kudos

WildStar did it. I don't know how many games implement such an item but WildStar gives you enough tools to do your thing. You're fully able to change the x, y, z coordinates of the position, rotation and size. This allows you to freely customize your housing without restrictions like snapping or only being capable of placing objects next to a solid object. The funny part is it's not even limited to the UI objects you have. Entering your own numbers gives you even more options like making objects smaller than one or greater than whatever the cap was which I forgot. Of course, it's still limited as you can't place many animated or objects to interact with and yet it's enough for nearly anything.

It's amazing what people have made. From mosaic-like 3D statues to actual adventure like housings, jumping puzzles, labyrinths, etc. etc.. Or maybe the obligatory level remake from another game like Whomp King's Fortress from Super Mario 64 (yup, that's one of my projects check out my twink Whomp King to see it).

Next Level Housing

So if you ever come across an engine like housing system or.. let's call it housing engine you know what's coming upon you housing freaks. Besides a level editor in an MMORPG? I think that's something totally new and innovative no one has come up yet. Though how much work must it be?

But honestly.. it might just be worth it.