I Created These Tables to Help Me Play Video Games (and Yes, This Is a Cry for Help)
Hades II introduces a new mechanic called Forget-Me-Not, which allows players to pin recipes for which they do not have enough crafting reagents. While they are in the world, the path to these resources will be highlighted, making it easier to keep track of what you need. I love this feature, in no small part because I’ve been creating my own version of it for other games for years. This is just one of the many ways I use spreadsheets to improve my games.
To be clear, I’m not recommending that you follow in my footsteps and create tables for every game you play. I am deeply ill, the world is on fire, and by creating little charts and tables I am trying to gain some semblance of control over a chaotic world. Plus, not every game needs a spreadsheet.
However, in some games it is more useful to have your own objective tracker. Especially in sandbox games where quest markers are just the beginning of what you can do. For my purposes, I’ll either use a regular Google Sheet, or if I really want to, I’ll move to something like Notion for more flexible tools . Here are just a few examples of what I do.
Tracking upgrades for the “Tears of the Kingdom” armor
There are a lot of armor sets in Tears of the Kingdom , and tracking down each item is very rewarding, both in terms of exploration and the abilities you get from the different sets. It’s less useful to update the ones you already have. You need to visit Great Fairies with the right amount of ingredients, some of which are very rare or only drop from certain enemies. Some of them you might pass by if you didn’t know you needed them. (Looking at you, Lizalfos tails.)
That’s why I made this armor upgrade tracker . I gave myself sections to note which sets I’m most interested in collecting, how many pieces I still have left to pick up, what upgrade level each one is currently at, and whether there’s a set bonus I haven’t unlocked yet. Most of this information is technically visible in the UI, but this way I don’t have to dig through menus to see if I’ve finished upgrading Froggy’s armor before going off to collect a bunch of sticky lizards.
I also gave myself space to write down what ingredients I needed for the upgrade, which for me is the most helpful part. Almost everything in Tears of the Kingdom is used to upgrade one armor set or another, but I don’t always remember which ones I care about. And the only way in the game to find out what ingredients are needed to upgrade is to directly visit the Great Fairy.
This has saved me a lot of wasted effort because when I go on a trip, I can quickly look through my notes to see if I still need an item when I come across it. Not only is this handy as a reference, but it also saves me the trouble of later going on a farm run to pick up the five Thunderwing butterflies I passed by a few hours ago.
Managing an empire of outposts in Starfield
I have my gripes with Starfield , but that didn’t stop me from spending dozens of hours building outposts to farm as many resources as possible. Does this make sense? Not really. Most of the resources you need in Starfield can be easily purchased or farmed. But I like to build my own mini-economy. The only problem is that the game is not designed to control dozens of outposts.
Enter my concept table. To do this, I gave myself a quick guide to the resources that each planet has, which of those resources are available at my outpost, and which ones I’m currently collecting. Since you get a bonus when you fully explore a planet, I also noted whether I completed exploration of that planet. (Note: I couldn’t easily turn this into a template, so you’ll have to create your own version from scratch. This Notion page will help you understand the basics, but there are plenty of other YouTube tutorials you can check out if you need more guidance.)
Of course, this is my personal Sisyphean boulder, since the only reason to spend so much effort organizing Starfield outposts is the joy(?) of organizing outposts. However, I’ve done similar things for games like Stardew Valley , which are a little more goal-oriented.
I used Notion for this because I liked its approach to databases a little better than Google Sheets. You can create a complete database with records for all the data you need, but then create alternative views that focus only on some of the data you create. For example, I also kept track of what flora and fauna grew on each planet, but since I didn’t need that when running my outposts, I decided to create a species that didn’t include that.
Counting the time spent in Overwatch 2
Of all the tables I’ve made for the games I play, few have brought me as much pain as this one. Overwatch 2 has switched to a Battle Pass system whose rewards will disappear if you don’t earn them before the end of the season. I already play this game a lot, but I wanted to know how long it would take to get certain rewards.
So, I made myself a small calculator . I started by tracking the average time it took to complete the game and the amount of experience I gained from each game. I then gave myself some boxes that calculated how long it would take to reach a certain reward level based on how much experience I had earned so far. I got it to the point where I only had to complete three blocks (highlighted in blue on the sheet) to see how much more time I planned to spend in the game for a cosmetic reward that I wouldn’t even use.
Now I don’t need to be told to play Overwatch 2 . I enjoy playing it with friends and will gravitate towards it no matter how bad it treats me. The real value here is that sometimes this table discourages me from playing. If the game says: “Only 50,000 XP left until you receive your reward!” this might seem like a good idea. At the end of the day, the game wants you to keep playing. Instead, my table says: “To reach this level, you will have to play 41 more hours of this game. So I sigh and close the game.
It actually helped me break the “One More Game” habit that is so easy to fall into. These days, every online game has a variety of rewards, points, cues, and cues designed to give you a little dopamine every time you decide to continue playing. My calculator wasn’t designed to save me time, but it ended up being more honest than Blizzard ever would have been.
Other Spreadsheet Ideas
These are just a few of the many examples I have made over the years. I’ve created spreadsheets that calculate how much my Stardew Valley harvest will yield over time, taking the guesswork out of purchasing at Pierre’s. (I’m far from the first with this idea either.) I’ve also made sheets similar to my Tears of the Kingdom tracker for upgrades in games from Skyrim to Horizon Forbidden West .
Even if you don’t like making your own, chances are some enterprising gamer has put together cryptic tables like how much armor boosts affect your favorite hero . Every time I want to do some math that a game can’t handle, or resource requirements that I’m tired of Googling over and over again, I turn to my trusty spreadsheets—and now you can (should?) too.