I wake up at 3AM. Do 50 pull-ups on a halberd wedged in the door frame. Do 50 push-ups on the cold stone floor. A servant hands me my protein mead and a wine frappamachiato. I violently double fist the two beverages. I don't eat breakfast, because food that isn't flavourless cup gruel is the enemy of productivity. Then, I'm dressed in my robes for the commute to the throne room. The magic starts. It's 5AM in Crusader Kings 3 and I'm on my medieval monarch grindset.

I pull out Paradox's latest dev diary. Oh, look at that, they're working with a mystery modder on bringing exactly the sort of big number tables to the strategy game that I need to tell at a glance whether I'm out-grinding my inbred wealth-creating cousins who rule other nations across the world.

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Crusader Kings 3 developer Paradox Black is in the midst of working on a big 'spring cleaning' update, and it's turned to modders for some assistance. Riad Deneche, QA manager at the Crusader Kings 3 studio, explains that the focus of its upcoming patch is "tackling bugs that have been haunting our backlog, and introducing a set of changes and smaller features that we believe will meaningfully enhance the CK3 experience." In service of this, it's calling upon one mysterious, upstanding member of the community to help - and Deneche says the team was "genuinely shocked" by their list of proposed fixes.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Paradox recruits a mystery modder to improve Crusader Kings 3, and is "genuinely shocked" by how big their wishlist is

Saturdays are for putting your hand in a bucket of ice, swallowing a mouthful of honey and lemon, and breathing a sigh of relief. All that practice you put into your welcome handshake and 'Here comes trouble!' paid off. Almost every member of the treehouse has been successfully greeted home.

All bar one. But I'll get him. I'll get him good.

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