Dragon Quest Xi Savvy Sapphire

[Ling Kliment]

Savvysapphire is used as a material for crafting weapons and shields. It can be purchased from a material shop for 1,200 gold each, received as a quest reward, found in treasure chests, or dropped by various monsters such as Tundrackies, Rumble bees, Jailcats, Goodybags, Restless armours, Demon-at-arms, Bloodbonnets, and Warhogs.

Savvy sapphires can be purchased from the shop at L'Acadmie de Notre Maitre des Mdailles for 2,000 gold each, picked up from sparkly spots at Insula Algarum*, the Sniflheim - Whale Way Station, the Battleground, the Fortress of Fear, the Path to Trial Isle, and the Citadel of Spite. Some can be found in treasure chests at Sniflheim Castle and the First Forest, as well as being dropped by Bloodbonnets, Vicious gloomy grublins, Masqueraiders, Malicious flythons, and Abyssal octopots.

Savvy sapphire is used as a material for improving various accessories or sold for 300 gold. It can be dropped by Demon-at-arms, Knight errants, Mandrake majors, and Goodybags, received in exchange for 3 Mini medals, or picked up from sparkly spots in the Darkwood.

Savvy sapphire appears as a material for ranking up units, particularly monsters of the Slime, Dragon, and Nature families. There are various ways to acquire it, including being able to purchase it up to 20 times daily at the gold shop for 100 gold each, received as a reward from the Savvy Sapphire: Beginner or Intermediate levels, the Slime, Dragon, and Nature Family rank up levels, or redeemed from various event swap shops.

One of three nephews to the money-loving Scrooge McDuck, Huey is part of a collection of Lorcana cards featuring characters from the animated Ducktails series. Huey, Savvy Nephew is a card costing two ink that is best played alongside his two brother cards Dewey, Showy Nephew and Louie, Chill Nephew.

Considering the relatively low ink cost of all three Ducktails nephew cards, getting this ability rolling early on in a Lorcana game is entirely plausible, as well as being excellent gameplay-wise thanks to the advantage that additional card draw can get you. More cards means having more options when it comes to inking and playing, so getting this Huey, Louie and Dewey combo going will pay off quickly.

Add on the inclusion of the Support keyword to Huey, Savvy Nephew - which means that whenever the card quests you can add its willpower to another character in play - and getting these three nephew cards into your next sapphire deck is a great approach.

A three-cost card, Mama Odie, Mystical Maven is a good card primarily because of its cheap cost and ability: This Going to be Good. With this ability, whenever you play a song card, you will be able to put the top card of your deck into your inkwell, facedown and exerted. This means that players are able to gain additional inkwell power, whilst also benefiting from the effects of the song card they played in the first place.

Gettin Mama Odie, Mystical Maven out there early - which should be doable thanks to the cheap cost of the card - alongside a handful of songs, will very quickly put you into a position wherein you can play a lot more cards per turn or a much more expensive, and more powerful, card a lot earlier than your opponent.

The eponymous queen from Snow White sure does love a good mirror, especially if she can perform nefarious magic with it. The Queen, Mirror Seeker is a four-cost card that has some pretty good stats: with its two willpower and five health making it surprisingly beefy for its relatively low ink cost.

Scrooge McDuck, uncle to his three plucky duck nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie, is perhaps best known for his undying love of money. This characteristic is rather accurately portrayed in the Lorcana card Scrooge McDuck, Richest Duck in the World - which depicts the character standing atop literal piles of gold, jewels and treasures.

Sapphire has some great items, including several new cards in the next set such as Aurelian Gyrosensor and Lucky Dime, and Scrooge McDuck, Richest Duck in the World can allow you to play these without paying a single ink.

Whilst this card has the useful Ward keyword - meaning that it cannot be targeted by anything but a challenge - what makes it really shine is its ability: Spare Parts. This ability means that whenever Audrey Ramirez, The Engineer quests, players are able to ready one of their exhausted items. Doing this will not only get players two lore from questing but also enable them to use an item more than once a turn.

Audrey Ramirez, The Engineer is one of several cards featured in Into the Inklands that proves that the sapphire cards in this set are perfect for players who want to take full advantage of item cards.

For a two willpower and five health card that gets three lore every time it quests, three ink is an incredibly good deal. Most Lorcana cards with these kinds of stats usually cost at least five ink to be played, so being able to play this for just three ink is definitely a bargain worth taking advantage of.

Kind spirit guide to Moana, Gramma Tala features twice in Into the Inklands - though both cards are good, this one is absolutely the better of the two. Gramma Tala, Spirit of the Ocean is a seven-cost card that has excellent stats: with four willpower, a whopping eight health and the option to quest for two lore.

Understanding this reality helps explain why every era gets at least one or two notable social satires wrestling with the tension between Black art and commerce (also known as "selling out"). Cord Jefferson's thought-provoking directorial debut American Fiction is the latest iteration. It's based on Percival Everett's savvy novel Erasure, which was first published more than two decades ago, but naturally feels as relevant as ever, what with the pervasiveness of racial tropes and all the accompanying discourse.

There's no need to squint to see Monk's frustrated forebears: aspiring actor Bobby Taylor in Hollywood Shuffle, the fictional hip-hop group in CB4, TV writer Pierre Delacroix in Bamboozled, and many more. There are also direct and indirect references in American Fiction to Tyler Perry and the novel Push by Sapphire, about a pregnant and impoverished teenager, that inspired the movie Precious (which, it's probably worth noting, Perry co-produced).

In this specific brand of satire, there usually comes a point when the protagonist, led astray by the allure of fame and fortune, finally reaches a breaking point and attempts to buy back their soul with something resembling dignity. It doesn't quite work that way in American Fiction.

The last several minutes of the movie take a sharp turn into an absurdist meta realm that's only hinted at in earlier parts of the film. Several vastly different fates are imagined for Monk, none of them pat.

At the awards ceremony, F*** is announced as the big winner, though the audience isn't sure if the book's mysterious and unseen author will finally reveal himself. After some hesitation, Monk makes his way to the podium to the confusion of everyone. But before he can say anything, the scene cuts to black to reveal Monk on a set with a smarmy and clueless movie producer named Wiley, played by Adam Brody.

Monk's second proposed conclusion is for his character to rush out of the ceremony to reconcile with Coraline (Erika Alexander), the girlfriend he pushed away while stressing over his big Stagg lie. Basically, it's a rom-com ending, with Monk rushing to her doorstep to apologize: "I haven't been myself lately."

The final proposed idea is the most dramatic and overwrought: Monk standing at the podium to accept the award, only to get gunned down by federal agents in a hail of bullets; remember, Stagg R. Leigh is a wanted fugitive. (For what, exactly? That's not the point.)

Of course, Wiley loves this ending, and an irritated but resigned Monk saunters off to meet his brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown), who's waiting outside for him on the studio lot in a convertible. Right before they drive off into the Hollywood sun, Monk makes eye contact with a Black actor outfitted in an enslaved person's costume. The actor throws up a peace sign, Monk nods. The [actual] end.

Everett's 2001 book is far more idiosyncratic than its movie version, as is more possible in novel form, switching between literary modes and voices constantly. At one point Monk's narrative digresses to immerse the reader in 10 uninterrupted chapters of F***, just so you can fully grasp its deeply ignorant contents, the kind white people trip over to praise as representing an "authentic" Black experience. It's playful and scathing, balancing Monk's personal life and self-loathing with glimpses of how the public responds to F*** via rave reviews and press interviews.

In contrast, American Fiction draws more heavily on Erasure's intimate family drama, spending much of its runtime within Monk's messy personal life. His motivation to keep the Stagg ruse going is in part driven by his dysfunctional family's finances; his mother Agnes (Leslie Uggams) is sick, and when his sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) dies unexpectedly, the responsibilities for the bills and caretaking fall to him.

I found myself wondering what are the reactions to F*** from the rest of the fictional public, beyond the money-grubbing white publishers and Hollywood producers? Is Black Twitter destroying it on social media? Are students debating its merits on college campuses? Do right-wing commentators prop it up as further proof of the "scourge" of "black-on-black crime"? American Fiction isn't particularly interested in these questions, though stereotypes about deadbeat dads and welfare queens aren't the only bug-a-boos Black people have to contend with these days. (Being seen as a "woke mob" or "affirmative action hires" is its own kind of hell.)

And yet, even if American Fiction doesn't quite innovate the grand tradition of satirizing Black sell-outs, its beats are well-crafted and buoyed by excellent performances, especially by Wright, who makes the cantankerous, self-obsessed Monk such a delight to spend a couple of hours with.

3a8082e126