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peacekeeping and nation building effort success is in large part a matter o' will. the wh, pre-iraq, were getting estimates that 500,000 troops would be needed to maintain peace in iraq for the first years following successful liberation. 500k. US knew how costly it would be in terms o' manpower and dollars to rebuild iraq. japan saw 350k us troops. germany, a bit misleading, had a peak 1.6 million us troops in country. history suggests twenty troops per thousand population is threshold needed for initial post liberation peacekeeping. no doubt skill o' occupier will make adjustments possible, but twenty per thousand appears to be target. during 2007 surge, us had 20k troops in iraq. will. gotta be willing to commit troops and spend money. US did neither in afghanistan nor iraq and results were predictable. iran, by the way, is more than three times more populous than iraq were at start of the invasion . 1.6 million US troops is the anticipated baseline for successful post war peacekeeping efforts. am not seeing how the wh could hope to generate the support for a 1.6 million peacekeeping troop investment. is not terribad, but terricheap. US has recent been unwilling to commit necessary resources to achieve successful nation building. is 'bout will more than skill, and am not seeing how the American people has the will to make such a contribution o' massive capital and literal blood to bring 'bout anything other than another post war disaster. again, 1.6 million US troops would be needed for initial post war peace keeping in iran. communicate such info truthful to the US people and am expecting most support for war with iran would evaporate. HA! Good Fun!

Ok, all subclasses' icons done - at least the first iteration: Feel free to comment. Next step is to create the last missing general passives (Quick Summoning and such) and then to incorporate the feedback I get/got from you. Some changes I already implemented, but not too many of them. I will compile a list with the feedback so far.

am gonna bump this. at the moment, the obsidians ain't particular active with developing or posting, but is nevertheless annoying when threads is misidentified as having obsidian contribution. new patch for deadfire is released and predictable the offering spawns numerous questions directed at obsidian. if a mod replies in the thread, the thread gets the obs tag, which is resulting in functional clickbait. amentep seems like a swell guy, so am hoping this is fixed 'cause am developing an almost pavlovian disappointment when seeing his posts. HA! Good Fun!

A game by developers of Grimrock has been released today on GOG. Druidstone: the secret of the menhir forest https://www.gog.com/news/release_druidstone_the_secret_of_the_menhir_forest

Right now I been playing A Plague Tale Innocence and also Rage 2, but I have been enjoying A Plague Tale Innocence a lot more (I guess this has a lot to do with where the game takes place and whats going on at the time, France and The Black Death).

Here you go! Okay, may try again, not getting the lines right on the face ...

This fixed it, yes. Saw this response. Updated my system to 10.14.5. Loaded a save in the under city. All graphics issues resolved. Clearly some glitch with handling the particular type of overlay was introduced in 10.14.4 and resolved in 10.14.5. That's the answer.

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe where the PoE games happen in Yezuha, someone is asking "are the Vailians paladins?"

Well, the copycat in me got the better of me again. I've begun my own Conan Exiles quest, and what I've done is turned off all in-game helper markers, and I haven't watched any video or read any tutorial. I'm going in blind. And my only Conan knowledge is the ancient first Arnold movie from decades ago. I declined Battleye, and I'm playing solo on a server, pretending it's a mix of hardcore Minecraft and The Long Dark. I picked a Khitan sorceress with Ymir as her god, in a desert, heh. I love that contrast! Here are a few of my total noob pics. I've died 3 times so far, twice of thirst by the way (until I learned that I just could dive in a body of water and get my thirst quenched), and I suspect there will be heaps and heaps more of bizarre deaths coming my way: My first night. Moments later, some weird zombie imp killed me in the dark. Pretty scary stuff. Here's me boxing another imp to death until I learned a weapon recipe and had the right amount of components. The mood and atmosphere is pretty neat in this game, although some animations lock up, with frozen baddies for a sec or two, and my loong pony tail has bad model clipping. It goes straight through her chest when she's squatting. I managed to hit this imp with my primitive sword so hard that it fell off this cliff, and it worked like a charm. Stiff falling imp animation, though. Crashing down a huge stone hammer has a nice oomph to it, and you do pay a price gravity-wise after a huge right-click swing. Here's the moment when I realized that I could drink water by diving into this little pool. Neat fish by the way, but they seem to be saltwater fish, and yet I drank that water, no problems.

More exploring: A Set temple. If anyone is here they should welcome me with open arms: Well, this place doesn't look ominous at all. I'm sure there are no gigantic spider or other beasts looking to horribly murder me in there: Just as I thought, not scary at all. There's zero chance there's anything to harm me down there...

I am not really a build specialist, as I have a tendancy to pick the stats I like for RP purposes and make the build work with it, but I'd say Per++ Int++ Might+ Dex+ Con= Res- Active abilities pick whatever you feel like, it will not affect the build (except alchemy that gives you better consumables). Dual wielding will give you more damage overall, but it will not make or break the build. Try both during the first couple of levels and you can decide what you like best. And you can always respec I invite you to read the great answers I got from forum regulars when I was myself trying to figure out what to do with my bellower Have fun! https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/109064-a-few-chanter-bellower-related-questions/

They could have hired the actual GoT creator I guess, though I doubt Martin would have been available. On the evidence of GoT Benioff and Weiss would be near perfect for adapting someone else's works- KOTOR, the 1st Zahn trilogy, whatever- but yeah, can't have much confidence if they're doing an original movie series after their post book work on GoT.

Going to the Supreme Court is maybe the point if some of the talking heads are correct. It's possible they think they have a good chance to overturn or weaken Roe v Wade with the new court and it also allows everyone a chance to see where the new guys will actually stand on this issue. As far as putting together a force of at least 1.6 million, it's not going to happen as it would require a draft or a large multinational peacekeeping force and the will isn't there for either of those options so we'd be left with just more of the same.

Another option could be Sure Handed Ila. It's a very powerful chant, much more efficient for weapon DPS than Aefyllath, but also more conditional and can't usually be applied to all party members. If your chanter goes firearms/crossbow and you have another shooter close to him, it's enough to justify Sure Handed and the chant range won't be detrimental at all. I think Bellower/Rogue or something like this could be a good combo.

Ah, screw it. I'm getting my summer bonus next month, might as well tap out the credit card.

Huh, Druidstone seems to check a lot of boxes for me.

I wouldn't worry much about this Iran stuff. Unless they do something stupid like actually attack a US ship nothing will come of it. Just some saber rattling and two rooster strutting on opposite sides of a fence.

I wouldn't call a +PL a waste of a phrase, especially on the ones that have bounces. In the case of Thrice it is very ok to hoard phrases a bit and wait for a more favorable timing with 2 or 3 more phrases than the minimum required for that +6PL. It is true however that you loose some flexibility. That's the premise of Bellower, you will cast less but much more powerful invocations, and can auto-attack and chant in the downtime. I would argue that Skald has an indirect side effect chant penalty though. Since you end up casting more of your cheap offensive invocations (and even more due to crit generated phrases), you spend (much) more time in invocation recovery, and therefore not chanting. Bellower diminushed radius is really not that punishing, especially when you go melee.

With max INT I was pleasantly surprised at how forgiving the Bellower chant radius still was. On a Cantor I don't think it would be very noticeable because of Duality (mine hasn't even gotten to that point yet). The annoyance of "wasting" phrases is there, though.

Doesn't the rest of the world realize that they merely have to purchase the Chinese CARRIER KILLER and the US will never be able to leave its shores again. That reminds me of the bogeyman antiship missile of my era, the fearsome sea skimming, unstoppable Exocet.

Bellower lacks a bit of adaptability for my own taste due to almost wasting additional phrases. You have to time your invocation with the right number of phrases. Skald doesn't have penalty to chant which makes him better at fullfilling a part of traditionnal Chanter duties. However, I'm realizing I have no idea how Thrice she was wronged actually work and how many bounces are caused by its upgrade and PL.

Multiclassing with Helwalker Monk is a quick hack for creating bonkers casters because the bonus might and intellect have incredible impact on spell power. I recently started a Bellower/Helwalker Cantor with a mind to maximize invocation power. As soon as he got the upgrade to Thrice he got a power spike beyond any other character I've had at that level. Thrice just one-shots small groups of mobs easily. Using Sasha's Singing Scimitar you can empower one and then follow up with another - suddenly about half your enemies have been deleted (this is on POTD-upscaled). The secret sauce is that power level, being a boost to an ability's base power, stacks beautifully with extremely high might and intellect. Power level also increases the number of bounces on spells (Thrice bounces on upgrade). This means that though you won't throw out invocations as quickly as a Scald, they will be significantly more powerful. And the smart metagamer will realize that sustained damage is not as important as burst damage provided that the burst damage passes a threshold in which it kills enemies in fewer casts. Something some people fail to grasp (based on an experience I've had in this forum) is that the object of the game is not to have maximum average damage over an extended period of time, but to kill enemies. Obviously these are closely related, but they are not identical. It might be the case that a Scald can cast so many more spells within, say, 10 mins than a Bellower, that the Scald ends up putting out more damage despite having weaker spells. However, if the Scald needs to cast Thrice twice to kill a mob when the Bellower needs to cast it only once, or the Scald's Eld Nary needs to hit a mob twice or three times to kill where the Bellower's only has to hit once or twice, the Bellower is going to kill enemies more effectively in practice. Now I don't actually know how these balance in the actual game. It was just the reasoning I used to go with the Bellower instead of Scald (justifying my general preference for explosiveness) so I thought it might help you. Main issue I'm having with my Cantor is that there are so many abilities I think would be cool to have and I don't have space for them

Scordeo's Edge is not only great because of Blade Cascade but also because of Adaptive. It stacks with every other ACC buff since it's from an item Speaking about Avenging Storm: against mobs Hand Mortar is still the most awesome way to use it. Especially if you can crit a lot with Adaptive (+20 ACC) or even Strategic Shot (+30 ACC). As said earlier Blinding Smoke triggers Avenging Storm and every AoE attack roll from the mortar has the potential to trigger the AoE cone of Blinding Smoke. In addition to the Disorient. So Tactician/something sounds like a good idea. If you combine it with Pull of Eora & Clear Out you generate (AoE_targets_Clear_Out * AoE_targets_Hand Mortar * AoE_targets_Blinding_Smoke) hits which all trigger Avenging Storm. And against single targets I would presume that Scordeo's Edge + Xefa's Empirical Explication should be very nice as well once Blade Cascade triggers. Or doesn't it remove reload time as well? Always used it with another melee weapon...

No threat of soviet union to keep people in line this time. Being the lesser evil helps enormously.

Not a chore per say, you can just spam Thrice... whenever you get the phrases for it. It is not as encounter-wiping as Eld Nary, but it is definitely on par with the damage output of the rest of the party at that level. Especially if you account that chanter has the only non-conditionally regenerating ressource, which is a huge deal early game. And you still have the chants that are, due to their mostly non-scaling nature, relatively better early game.

Well, theres two major differences though, one is that we never tried to occupy Japan (well, the main islands at least), and two, Germany and the rest of Europe had the Marshall Plan, I don't think we ever did any sort of comprehensive Marshall Plan-like thing for Iraq. It may have been partially dumb luck, but there are lots of differences between those situations and the ME.

i haven't tested it again recently, but since they introduced the revised lash it's always listed a fixed +20% lash, and it's never actually done that. companions use your watcher's dispositions but obsidian-created npcs don't have any favored or disfavored dispositions (same with pallegina and vatnir) so that they can go into any party and be equally mediocre. also when you're computing lash % you have to pay attention to rounding and penetration. lashes do their own PEN check, so be absolutely sure there are no confounding variables. (xoti should have a 25% lash) edit - i've never actually tested xoti's spiritual weapon (i've used all PC-available spiritual weapon, but not xoti or vatnir, go figure), so it's also possible that xoti's spiritual is buggy and might not have any disposition scaling (not even the neutral +5% base bonus). edit 2 - if i have some time i'll do some tests tonight, in a separate game. (can't do it in my cheatyface run because magran's makes it impossible to evaluate combat log)

OK, tomorrow Dark Future (that car combat game I posted screenshots a while ago) is releasing. The devs had offered testers discount coupons on Steam. But Steam didn't fork out the coupons for some reason, so it will go on sale right away so people can get the promised discount. Dark Future - tomorrow 25% off.

Definitely upgrade Thrice-- the bounce is a worthwhile boost to damage, and it makes the AoE a little more forgiving, as the bounces can tag enemies outside the original cone. Thunder Rolled is useful more for the Stun than the damage, but having a Stun that targets REF can be great against some opponents. (It's a way to use a weak REF defense to debuff FORT.) Seven Nights is situationally OK, although it can be a tactical challenge to get the most out of it-- it's best when you're surrounded. Haven't experimented with Boil Their Flesh much. The Phrase cap (and thus the number of "free" phrases you start combat with) is equal to whatever your most expensive invocation costs. Invocation cost = [(Ability Level)/2] +2, rounded up, after which subclass-based adjustments are made (e.g., a Skald's -1 to Offensive and +1 to Non-Offensive). Ability level is the base-ability's level-- upgrading doesn't increase the cost. So, if you want to be spamming low-level invocations (like a Skald's 2-cost Thrice, Hel Hyraf, Thunder, and Killers) you still need to invest in an invocation at the top tier. As for single v. dual weapons, it depends somewhat on what other sources you may have for ACC and hit-to-crit. With a multiclass and/or some party buffs, I think dual weapons is a stronger path-- faster attacks means more rolls that can crit, even if your chance of critting on any one is lower. Plus, the damage you produce will be stronger even if the crits aren't coming. I haven't tried Myrtillo's Bellower idea, but it sounds like it would be effective to me. I wasn't a fan of the subclass when they introduced it, but if I were to run one, it would probably be along those lines. I suspect that the levels before you get Eld Nary would be a bit of a chore, though.

I just think that Iraq and Afghanistan provide better insights into a conflict with Iran than a flawed war game does. I don't think anyone doubts that the US would steamroll Iran's military but the big problem is what comes next. Occupation Peacekeeping and nation-building is where we start ****ting the bed.

As others have stated, in veteran pretty much anything (that isn't completely stupid) can work decently well. From the playstyle you describe, I would suggest a single class bellower and gear him/her for melee. Being melee, the smaller chant radius is less punishing. Your invocations will be doing heavy damage (due to the huge increase in power level from bellower), and you have long lasting powerful self buff. Cast Far From Defeated, just do (Energized) auto-attacks for 12 seconds to have 5 phrases, cast (empowered) Eld Nary. This will wipe 2/3 of encounters in Veteran. Then you can use your (still Energized) autoattacks on whatever ennemy is still standing while you replenish phrases for a final heavy nuke (can be thrice/boil their felsh for variety etc.) In short, you constantly alternate between autoattacks in Energized state (so +5 might+2pen, interrupts on crit), and extremely strong invocations (+PL from bellower and energized).

A Melee-focused Skald works great as Enoch pointed out. You may want to use "... And the Killer frooze stiff" to support your party and get even more phrases and use "Thrice.." to clean up the rest.

A multiclass Skald who takes 1 Tier VII non-offensive invocation to maximize the Phrase cap can spam the heck out of Thrice Was She Wronged. It's pretty neat. Particularly if you add in an Empower and the Singing Scimitar with the "Encore" enchantment. You'll just need to do some work at the outset to get the enemies clustered within the smallish AoE. So Singt Biting Winds is also a nice Chanter nuke. Use it while chanting Long Night's Drink to debuff FORT.

They do. That doesn't matter much on Veteran though as resistances and mob HP are relatively low compared to upscaled PotD. If you want more power levels on your spells, use the Chromoprismatic Quarterstaff or Sun&Moon.

Freaking. Awesome. Both of them. **** dude, my Watcher just got a whole lot more bad-ass.

Sounds like bad design. Although, it could be one of those cases where they made secrets intentionally obscure to sell strategy guides. I believe that used to be a thing. Anyways! I got Sekiro last night. Time to see what all the hype is about...

vela will also stealth, but it's moot because enemies don't care (or even check) for her stealth level. enemies don't even care about her existence unless you have aggro-ed them, really (which is how the withdraw + shadowing beyond + tactician combo works so well). in my earlier posted youtube video starting at 35:20 (embedded again here directly to that time) you can see me sneaking past the enemies with 5 stealth with vela in tow

Additionally, the save games also had shown graphic noise in their preview screens, - now all of this has been eliminated also. Apple comes through again...

GOOD NEWS for Mac users! I just installed the latest OS 10.14.5 update and all graphics "issues" at sea and within certain other areas have disappeared! Everything is back to the normal, beautifully rendered scenes, my money is on Obsidian talking with Apple and knowing that the "fix" was already in the works... it was a "system" issue. This was tested in TB mode only. I will test more but so far 100% elimination of error... Even the players have stopped moving erratically.... no more slick as snot stairs with players running in place, no more freezing of players, no more sending your player to a specific spot and seeing him/her running in the opposite direction or, in circles... these issues are eliminated for us mac users, all of it!

Here is the same phenomenon in the other old city locations. Again notice the darkened, roughly circular areas on the map that seem to correspond to the whited out areas in everyone's OSX 10.14.4 playthroughs

- starting to look like it's a "system" effect... Great work, I just cannot reload back to an earlier version without risking a lot of data... So earlier version (non retina?) seemed to have minimal damaged gfx effect... thanks for trying this! I am not an Apple dev, otherwise I would bring this up with them... It is a "layer thing" ???

Above, the overlook, note the dark in the bottom right corner. It's not letting post the others right now due to size restrictions.

Switched to a new mac a couple days ago. First os update only moved it to 10.14.1, and I turned off updating so that I could revisit the Old City areas in the game. Sure enough the problem is gone. Interestingly, I noticed an overlap between the whited out areas and an effect on the map on this OS version where a circle shaped area gets darkened in a little. It would seem that whatever was causing that effect is what is now glitching in OSX 10.14.4. Will attach screenshots below, possibly in multiple replies because of the size.

21 to go. Here's what I've done so far:

I came today looking for answers to this very question. Seeing it in Delver's Row, the Old City, the Old City Overlook, and in the Old City Ruins. Made finding MODWYR very difficult and two really interesting fights where I couldn't see the enemies or the terrain. I had to hold the Tab key down the whole time just to know what I was fighting. This isn't my first time through the game. I was trying out different character styles. But this is making some of the Old City nearly impossible to search. I'm not even going to try to get by the spirits and the sigils to find that guy stuck in the corner yet. That whole area is white out. I'm running on a 2017 iMac 21.5 inch. Stock model with the 4K Retina display and Radeon Pro 560 graphics with 4GB. OS is 10.14.4.

I keep getting thrown off by all the mod posts marking the threads with Obs responses. Pretty sure before only dev group folks did that.