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Iran is attacking Gulf States that have allowed the US to launch attacks on Iran from their territory. Completely justified position IMO.

Oh I absolutely agree, the Original Pillars of Eternity I know was primarily a single class game when it first came out, and only after the White March were level expanded and "Cross Class" Talents Introduced at all. It wasn't until well into development of Deadfire that Multiple Classes were even an option, and personally I believe those aren't truly so much "dips" like what you can expected in the original Pillars of Eternity but true Split Classes where you share leveling between each class as you progress. Its part of why trying to figure out a fun build from one into the other has been such an interesting exploration on builds and progression as one can contemplate the "rebirth" before Berath from one game to the other as a chance to reforge your character once entering Deadfire. Personally, I loved the idea of being an Island Aumauan Storm Chanter having been trapped in the politics of the Vailian Republics who possibly had somehow been cast out originally during the first game. With all the transpired my character could have been called back (Possibly as a Chanter/Druid?). I'm still playing around with the idea.

Played some more Death Stranding 2. Also listening to the Soundtrack on the off and there's a song where Troy Baker is singing. This made me realize - I'm swooning now - this guy is so cool. He is great in everything I've seen him. First really noticed it in the Indiana Jones game, but it's really wherever I see him pop up. Guy is amazing at his craft.

There is a long history of attacking vulnerable targets if it weakens your opponents economic base. None of those on the receiving end did anything to the attacker other than being part of an economic base. From the razing of farms and complete depopulation (i.e. butchering the villagers) of villages during the hundred years war to "pre-emptive" actions like Mers-el-Kebir to make sure you don't have to fight a potential adversary later. Real-politik has no morals, only objektives.

In general I think your ability and especially your spell choices are fine. Here are some abilities I personally would probably not take: Since you don't use any damaging spells besides Recall Agony and Disintegrate - which both deal raw damage - you can drop Penetrating Visions. Unless you are using the Community Patch, Improved Critical is absolutely not worth the ability point. Uncanny Luck: same as Improved Critical. Okay if Community Patch is active, not worth it if not. Deep Wounds doesn't generate focus. Still a good ability for damage, but maybe it could be skipped on a Mindstalker who's focused on delivering debuffs/afflictions. Combat Focus is not worth it in your case imo. You can get Concentration layers elsewhere or even become immune. Also as a ranged Mindstalker you might not need it in most fights? I personally would pick Crippling Strike over Blinding Strike. Just because Blinding Strike is two times as expensive - which means you can only use it half the times you could use Crippling Strike. Besides the bonus PEN, Crippling Strike also has one more Power Level for scaling which leads to higher base dmg and base PEN than Blinding Strike. I wouldn't even upgrade it and thus spare +1 ability point (compared to Blinding Strike + Confounding Blind). Bear's Fortitude is not worth it that late imo. Might as well use a +3 CON belt and get +6 Fortitude without spending an ability point. What I might take instead: Ciphers usually struggle a bit in tough fights against high defense foes. Empowering an attack or a spell can help. You didn't pick any of the Empower related abilities like Accurate Empower for example, maybe something to consider. They can make a difference in tough fights. An empowered, high accuracy Disintegrate can be pretty brutal. Lasting Empower stacks with Lingering Echoes, giving you very long affliction times on something like an empowered Secret Horrors for example or an empowered Puppet Master. Psychovampiric Shield reduces enemies' Resolve by 10 points. This can be very useful in boss fights against foes that have very high Resolve. Because a giant those all afflictions and other hostile effects (Disintegrate for example) won't stick long. -10 Resolve means an increase of duration of 30%. On top of that you get more Resolve yourself (yay). For a ranged character it's only useful occasionally but maybe something to consider if boss fights are something where Ydwin doesn't perform too well. Keen Mind lets you use a better/higher focus spell (+1 tier) right away at the start of battle which can make a difference in tough battles. Use it in combination with stealth: a stealthed character gets a -80% recovery time bonus for his first action from stealth. If you can cast a better spell from stealth and that have basically now recovery that's an advantage. You can also combine it with Empower. The Complete Self is nice with big AoE spells such as Phantom Foes since it most likely procs. In case of Phantom Foes it cuts down the cost in half. Escape is a cheap but effective mobility tool which also grants you a +50 deflection bonus; it can be pronged with Salvation of Time. In combination with a Priest who benefits from your Ancestor's Memory, you can make yourself a lot more sturdy for very cheap. I find Slippery Mind to be very useful later in the game. If you use Potions and Scrolls then Deep Pockets is great in combination with either The Amazing and Truly Incredible Instant Potion Belt or Spellkeeper (belt). I personally like to pick Fast Runner. It helps to outrun enemies and make them stop chasing you (because they quickly realize they cannot catch up and turn to somebody else. Not needed with Boots of Speed though. Bull's Will stacks with Iron Will. So if you want to invest in a defense passive I would maybe pick those instead of Bear's Fortitude. Snake's Reflex can be combined nicely with Adept Evasion instead of using Bear's Fortitude. If you want more versatility and lose the one trick pony feel a bit you can try to pick one or two support spells besides Ancestor's Memory. Pain Block is very good for example. It's very nice to have a good healing (and bonus AR) spell at hand on a character who normally isn't the party healer. That way you can improve action economy in a pinch when it comes to healing. If you only have one healer in the party you can get into situations where more than one party member would need healing - but the healer cannot cast two spells at the same time and maybe doesn't have a powerful AoE healing left. In those cases it's great to have somebody else be able to deliver the occasional healing effect. If you want to try something completely and utterly different you could check out if the Whispers of the Endless Paths with Offensive Parry combined with Riposte is something you would enjoy with a Mindstalker. I did this with a Streetfighter/Soul Blade recently and had a lot of fun with it. I'm sure it could also work with Ydwin. Give Ydwin all the deflection she can get (items, spells such as Psychovampiric Shield and Borrowed Instincts) and put on Nomad's Brigandine with the enchantment that raises melee deflection and the other that grants immunity to disengagement attacks. Use as Boots of Speed. Boost INT with items. You can then attack enemies from the flanks with a cone - and if they attack you and miss you can harvest focus passively with Offensive Parry and Riposte. The action economy of this is pretty nice because you don't even have to attack to generate focus. In this case Blinding Strike and a blinding spell are great because they lower enemies' accuracy (leads to more misses). Secret Horrors is also great for this. If you get damaged too hard you just run away. Since the armor turns all disengagement attacks into misses you will proc Offensive Parry every time somebody does a disengagement attack against you - and sometimes Riposte will proc, too. In this case Persistent Distraction is good to have of course. If you want to use an occasional backstab and don't have the Community Patch: Run Through (enchantment of Whispers of the Endless Paths) in combination with Backstab (and Sneak Attack + Deathblows) can do absurd single target damage 1/encounter. Secret Horrors to unlock Deathblows, pop a Smoke Veil or Shadowing Beyond, use Run Through and watch a very high danger number float up. ;) This also delivers a lot of focus of course. Cheers!

I thi I think the great part about this game is you can play it in so many ways and there is no optimal way. I play a very aggressive style of combat. I don't use escape or shadowing beyond to get my rogue out of trouble, I use it to get her into trouble. Escape right into the middle of a pack of enemies, stun, hack away, get surrounded, but take down 4-5 before I go. I find it really fun to play like that!

Cowardly because the war is between the US and Israel vs Iran But Iran is attacking Gulf States who have not attacked it because they have weaker defenses. Its well documented the responses from all the Gulf States. Qatar has actually gone out its way to help and negotiate with Iran in the past but they still getting attacked Its not about the type of weapons you use or whether you invade a country. Its about attacking countries that are not at war with you because your objective becomes about economic chaos. Like I said I cant recall any war in the history of wars that has been fought like this, maybe someone can think of something similar? Iran is perfectly justified to attack any and every Israeli or US target but threatening, for example, to destroy Saudi Arabias oil fields is cowardly even if it an understandable Iranian strategy

So taking bets on them invading Kharg after COB on Friday ?

this war should accelerate renewable energy greatly if one couldn't profit from insider trading invest in renewable seem like the logical choice

Trump administration to pay French company $1B to walk away from US offshore wind leases Redacted is still tilting at windmills, I see.

Hi. I have been using Ydwing as a ranged mindstalker on veteran upscaled through the beast of winter and now the seeker, slayer survivor dlc but she feels a bit underwhelming. She feels an one trick pony, that's basically single target damage but even that doesn't feel very satisfying and when opponents are resistant to mental attacks it only auto attacks. This is the build that i have for her now at level 20: Penetrating visions Lingering echoes Drain whip Dirty fighting Phantom foes Blinding Strike Puppet master Confounding blind Hammering Thoughts Secret horrors Greater focus Two handed style Recall Agony Combat focus Borrowed instinct Deep wounds Rapid Casting Uncanny Luck Disintegration Improved critical The empty soul Far casting Ancestors memory Deathblows Bears Fortitude Is there a way to improve this?

Lighting is currently very limited, with only handful of viable options and very few QoL features. I propose a handful of solutions, starting with the easiest to implement: Make most light options have the same max brightness and range as the Plant Stand light or Sap Sconce (bigger or more costly lamps should be brighter than small or cheap lamps etc). Add a slider for light intensity falloff. This would let us lower the brightness without affecting the range that the lamp lights up (fewer bright spots), or increase the brightness for a small area only (feature/style lighting) Add a "Group" slot to each light's customisation menu. If a group is selected, then all lights of that type in the same group will copy the adjustments (so, all Sap Sconces in Group A will update their settings if you edit any of them, but Ant Candles in Group A must be changed separately etc). Add toggle options for day/night cycle, or even have adjustable time settings (on at 7PM, off at 10AM etc) Add options for "shake to wake", where a light will turn on for X amount of time when the screen shakes (rub a stuffed bug, or Orb Buggy mount roar). Could also add an item to do it (bell or gong?) or add an option to wake when a player or bug is nearby. Add more variants for different placement options, like a chandelier of glow mold stalks for ceiling-mounted lighting. Make a sort of universal chandelier and light pole that just snaps most small light neatly to it so you don't need them on walls. Fairy lights made of glow goo and silk rope that you can link between walls or light poles up to a certain distance

At this point I'm going through enemies that oneshot me by parrying. Still pumping luck.

The current system for weapons/armour and their upgrades is very restricted. Low tier gear often has useful unique abilities, but doesn't fit into higher tier gameplay very well. There is also virtually no ability to customise appearance, which is a widely sought-after feature. I propose a few changes to the underlying system to give players more options without having to keep adding more and more new content. Allow a way to apply a different appearance to any piece of armour (Spend bug parts/resources to make X piece look like Y, but retain all stats and effects). This could apply to weapons too, but only for weapons of the same type (can't reskin a 2H hammer as a 2H sword, to avoid confusion). Allow a permanent one-way "Link" upgrade to make a piece of armour from Set X count as being from Set Y for activating the set bonus. It shouldn't be cheap, but doesn't need to be crazy expensive either. By being a one-way upgrade, if you want Item X to work with Set Y and Set Z, you would need to make two copies of Item X and link them separately. Make shields upgradeable, like weapons. Allow certain armour bonus effects to be swapped at a Smithing Station, like swapping the Gas Guard effect of the Mantis helmet for the same buff the Chest/Boots give. Add a handful of other buffs that are available to all armour of that archetype. That way, if you don't like a certain bonus effect, you could swap it for something else. Sleek effects could be swapped out in the same way, if desired. Make the Tier of an item be a separate upgrade path (1), or be part of the normal upgrade path (2). For a separate upgrade path, each tier would require resources specific to each weapon category or armour archetype, based on the tier (Like, all T1 Ranger armour takes the same materials to upgrade to T2). This would just bring the base stats of the item in line with being a higher tier. But, it runs the risk of being confusing since it would be a bit ambiguous. For the normal upgrade path, lower Tier items would need extra levels to upgrade, but every 3 levels would upgrade the Tier of the item as a general rule. This means a T1 helmet might need Brittle Marble to upgrade from levels 1-3, then it would use Brittle Plating to upgrade, but be T2 from levels 4-6. Then when you get to Sturdy Plating it becomes T3 from levels 7-9. However, this means that items that are already Tier 3 start off needing Sturdy Plating (or the weapon equivalents). The stat improvements would need to be shifted accordingly, since there would only be 3 levels per tier rather than 5.

'Cowardly' usually means you don't like the person/ group involved, and nothing more. Sitting in the Nevada desert or the Negev with a PS5 controller blowing up people thousands of km away on a video screen knowing you'll never face any consequences is hardly the height of bravery in any conventional sense yet people tend to label that as 'sensible tactics' and 'not giving a sucker an even break' instead. At this point I'm just assuming anything positive that comes out of Trump's mouth means he's doing market manipulation again. Whether the markets are really really dumb or just want him to be telling the truth so much that they still believe him who knows. (I wouldn't be overly surprised if someone is telling Trump they're talking as a way to at least delay him doing something monumentally stupid until his allies have some time to prepare)

Yeah, I usually don't like jRPGs and I really liked this one. From what I remember stats are most relevant to weapon scaling - as to effectiveness of individual stats - meh, the harder the game gets the more dominant player's ability to dodge and parry becomes.

I'm curious to know what you define as a cowardly response? Do they need to physically invade their neighbors for it not to be considered "cowardly"? How does that differ from the US/Israeli aerial bombardment that has killed many civilians?

Craniopagus parasiticus

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-threatens-retaliate-against-gulf-energy-water-after-trump-ultimatum-2026-03-23/ I still haven't learnt my lesson about Trump, stop believing certain things he says But its hard to distinguish between him saying something for impact and the truth especially in the middle of attacking Iran in the first place "TEL AVIV/JERUSALEM/WASHINGTON, March 23 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he had given orders to postpone any military strikes against Iranian power plants for five days, hours ahead of a deadline that threatened further escalation in the conflict now in its fourth week. Trump added in a post on his Truth Social platform that the U.S. and Iran had had "VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE" conversations over the past two ‌days about a "COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST".

I gave in and bought Death Stranding 2. Was sick the week and couldn't do much else, so there was no distraction for me. Oh well. Anyways. Game feels like a straight continuation after the first game. Even gameplay-wise, a lot of the old features are unlocked quite fast, and then the new combat stuff added on top of that. There's a lot more shooting going on now / feels a lot more like MGS5 than before, and it kinda felt like that already before. Ambience and music and all of that is very nice again, no surprise here, I guess. Visuals are good too, though my PC is blowing steam quite a lot more than in the first game.

slay the spire 2 are indeed very addictive avoid most card game seem like the right choice

Hi! I like to have a character that has a thematic and also a class consistency throughout both games. For example in PoE1 I would pick a Nature Godlike Monk with druidic vibes, give him the cross class talent Aspirant's Mark, pick up (and level up) the Greenstone Staff and use several items with Druid spells (spell binding items) such as Rotfinger Gloves for example. And maybe some fitting scrolls, too. In Deadfire I then build a Nature Godlike Helwalker/Ancient and continued the journey with the Spine of Thicket Green (quarterstaff) and so on. Or I would use a Chanter in PoE 1 with Sure Handed Ila and Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr, pick up One-Eyed Molina's Spike Flinger (soulbound arbalest) and Runner's Wounding Shot as cross class talent - and then in Deadfire I build a Troubadour/Arcane Archer with Spearcaster (also arbalest). I wrote a build description for that one because it turned out to be very effective and fun to play: Chanter with focus on invocations, using short phrases to get phrase points quickly and using the cross class talent Enigma's Charm and several charm/dominate items (Munacra Arret, Spirit Spiral, Ring of Changing Heart) in PoE -> turn into a Troubadour/Psion in Deadfire: Also playing as a plain Priest of Eothas over both games was enjoyable. In PoE there's quite some fitting unique gear for a Priest (of generally a follower) of Eothas: unique flail, unique helmet, unique mail armor and so on - which is kind of rewarding. Priest of Eothas also fits both games' themes and storylines well. Sometimes it's a bit weird that the game doesn't react/recognize this class choice more though. Priest of Berath with Tidefall in PoE -> Priest of Berath/Helwalker with the summoned Spiritual Great Sword. My most beloved Monk build from PoE (Witch Doctor) who used the Long Pain primary (so a ranged Monk) turned into the Mortar Monk in Desdfire. But some builds that I have enjoyed playing very much in one of the games don't work well (or were not much fun to play for me) in the other. For example the combo Helwaker/Berserker with a Morning Star is one of my favorite builds in Deadfire, but when I went back to PoE and wanted to do a whole playthrough from PoE to Deadfire with this build in mind I couldn't make it work in PoE. I mean a PoE Monk with a Morning Star and Outlander's Frenzy would work for sure, but there's not too much synergy, some stuff just suppresses each other (like Swift Strikes and Outlander's Frenzy) and it wasn't much fun to play. The other way round - Barbarian with Monk features - doesn't really work because the cross class talent Novice's Suffering is kind of useless of you plan to use a Morning Star. Sometimes it needs a bit of playtesting to be sure it holds up in both games. Cheers to you, too. :)

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/06/media/israel-iran-war-media-censor-journalism Here is an official link from CNN explaining how censorship in Israel works. Its not quite the level of censorship you suggesting but it exists on certain levels which is common in most countries that are at war Here is a relevant quote from parts of it "There’s no doubt that the Israeli public has posted videos of missile intercepts and more during this war. A quick search of social media and Telegram channels reveals plenty of these videos. But the censor focuses more on the international media, and it has tightened the restrictions since the war began. After the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched thousands of rockets at Israel, there was no problem showing intercepts in the skies over southern and central Israel. Now the censor has prohibited live broadcasts showing the interception of Iranian ballistic missiles, even as the vast majority have been stopped. To be clear, international news networks don’t submit every piece of video to the military censor for review. Far from it. CNN has not submitted any video to the censor for review since the war started on Saturday morning. But the censor does prohibit us from putting out live broadcasts of intercepts that could reveal the accuracy of Iranian ballistic missiles or the location of interceptor missile arrays. "

Yes, that is the possible response Iran's overall response has been a cowardly but predictable one They cant target the US or Israel effectively so they go after the Gulf States which have less defenses and hopefully the economic chaos will end the US attacks which will end the Israeli campaign as well It must be unique in the way countries fight wars and it sets a terrible precedent. But the hardliners in Iran will justify it because they will argue they facing an existential crisis But as I said its not surprising and Iran threatened to do this, if any state is prepared to kill thousands of its own citizens who protest what lengths would they go to in a war where they have an obvious military and resource disadvantage?

isn't the major worry for oli that oil well have to be shut down when storage are full one of the reason iran are attacked now is they look weak due to the protest caused by water crisis no one have a quick magical solution to that even if usa somehow successfully make iran their proxy and it will certainly get worse due to global warming