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i'll just post it here. it took probably ~15 minutes at a mix of slow and super slow game speed (plus ~8 minutes of very fast speed prebuffing). not too worried about it being public, since i think the ultimate will ultimately come down to execution and time, and between a dayjob and kids and a family, there's no chance i have the time to be first. i think it's best just to be collaborative on the metagaming here. unless i say otherwise, anything i list below is essential. items: gauntlets of greater reliability (can get away with normal reliability if need be); scordeo's edge dual-wielded with a ranged weapon; helm of the white void (for +10 acc on mule kick), marux amanth soulbound to priest (convenience) consumables: deadeye, potion of impediment, scroll of avenging storm (forgot to use it for prebuffing though, used it in the middle of hte fight to some effect), potion of perfect aim race: boreal dwarf abilities: mule kick, confident aim, BDD, salvation of time, shadowing beyond (automatic), escape (automatic), champion's boon, 2w spiritual weapon, halt (convenience), spiritual ally (automatic), minor avatar (automatic, convenience), storm of holy fire (convenience) real life equipment/setup: stop watch; combat speed up and combat speed down bound to keys so you can adjust easily AI script: set up your AI to auto attack as default action, defensive, and create a new AI script that all it does is "always true: cast salvation of time: self" with 1 second cooldown (I tried with a 0 second cooldown in an earlier run and it sometimes causes weird "abandoned casting salvation of time" issues, less so with a 1s cooldown) you absolutely need the combination of boreal dwarf, potion of perfect aim, gauntlets, and the helm also really helps, because otherwise you have no chance to consistently mule kick hauani o whe's first two forms. i had made an earlier attempt without the potion of perfect aim and i missed a real important merge interrupt of two gigantic oozes and the fight basically reset. (at massive ooze and below the fort defense is low enough that it's less of a concern) actual strat: set to AI autoattack run into top left corner and wait for vela to come close. cast halt on vela run close to aggro Hauani O Whe (henceforth HoW), immediately shadowing beyond back to vela you should trigger brilliant because you've already de-aggroed run back to vela summon spiritual ally, whack it with your scordeo's edge until you proc blade cascade (you may have to resummon the ally a few times). you dual-wield scordeo's edge with a ranged weapon not because you care about the ranged weapon, but so you're attacking at 2w speed levels with just scordeo's edge. as soon as you proc blade cascade, slow down time all the way and salvation of time. start buffing with minor avatar, BDD (on vela, too), deadeye, impediment, avenging storm, champion's boon, and any fighter buffs. make sure to intersperse consumables with abilities (so you buy more time for salvation of time to recover from brilliant) and keep spamming salvation of time to keep buffs active. once all your initial buffs are setup, turn on your AI, crank game speed up to max speed, switch to marux amanth, start stop watch for 3 minutes and go get a drink. cast spiritual weapon. start stop watch for 4 minutes and go get a drink. slow game speed down to normal, switch AI script back to autoattack only. start stop watch for 20s. run towards hauani o whe. once vela starts cowering, withdraw her. run all the way to the east side of the map. you might take a few symbiote or solvent cleanses while HoW periodically ranges you while following. once HoW melees you, turn on your AI script, just start unleashing hell. use mule kick any time HoW doesn't have distract. everytime you proc brilliant your character should salvation of time automatically. once HoW hits near death, turn off your AI script. wait two cycles of mule kick (to gaurantee that you have two level 6 casts) and then alternate between manually casting salvation of time and spiritual ally with each mule kick-induced brilliant. the spiritual ally will help DPS down (mostly by eliminating tactician PEN penalty). (edit2: note - you wait for near death because keeping an ally summoned otherwise exposes you to too much corrosive solvent while casting an ally. otherwise, even without avenging storm being up, you can pretty much prevent HoW from doing anything) once HoW splits, have spiritual ally attack one ooze, and then escape or shadowing beyond behind another ooze and lure it away, to the bottom of hte map. if you have symbiote active, you'll have to stop to clear out a few oozes. slow the game speed down to the slowest at this point so you don't miss a merge from here on out. dps down the ooze you have split off, refreshing an ally every 3-5 mule kicks or so. if you're unable to keep them fully apart, it just means you'll have to be a little bit more careful about interrupting merges. notably, for the gigantic oozes, it looks like you only need to mule kick one of them to make them both give up on merge (isn't true for smaller forms). when a greater ooze splits, don't need an ally anymore, so turn back on the AI script. just try to keep mule kick up on everyone and avoid flanked (for some reason even though i had nomad's brigandine equipped i would still periodically get shaken/confused). when a massive ooze is getting to near death, try to mix in a cast of storm of holy fire (though highest priority is interrupting any merge) when split down to greater ooze, mule kick spam and hopefully you have one or two storms of holy fire active to help aoe down the greater and lesser oozes. rinse and repeat with the other massive ooze rinse and repeat with the other gigantic ooze and its splits. (should be much easier - when you're back down to just the one gigantic ooze you basically get 100% salvation of time uptime and can refresh your buffs because the gigantic ooze is really easy to interrupt and mule kick and proc perma-brilliant) the scariest part of this was the fact that after HoW splits into two gigantic oozes, you'll start getting hit by the corrosive solvent, since it becomes much harder to keep both oozes interrupted. at massive and lower they don't have corrosive solvent so once you split one of hte gigantic ooze it becomes easier to just periodically mule kick the gigantic ooze. but you should have enough duration (coupled with ongoing salvation of time spam) to face tank it all without losing any critical buff. (meanwhile vela, after popping out of withdraw, is just terrifying wandering around a spot near the entrance of the map and is out of range of being hit by symbiote) if you're not dumb like me and have avenging storm up for your initial buff, it should be pretty fast and much easier (because you'll be interrupting a lot because the lightning bolts can also proc impediment or deadeye). i started avenging storm halfway through phase 1 when i realized i wasn't seeing any bolts, managed to get the duration up, but it got dropped during the two gigantic oozes from corrosive solvent. with the same 500+s worth of buff as everything else, it should last you the entire fight (which itself will be much shorter). edit - the stop watching timings, waiting for specific mule kicks, etc is to make this strategy wael-proof. wael doesn't appear to block information on an enemy's relative health status (you can still see e.g. "bloodied") and is the only in-game information this strat ends up relying on. though even with expert mode + wael, you'll still see little ability icons appear for the merge cast (which fortunately is a slow cast ability) so you can still interrupt them with mule kick, you just won't have the combat tooltip telling you where in the recovery the oozes are. edit3 - a very similar strat should work for other megabosses and faster, at least in terms of prebuffing. did some paper math and scordeo's edge plus buffs plus spiritual weapon should take out dorudugan in 180s, so 4-5 minutes of prebuffing with spiritual weapon is all you need. you'll need rekvu's helm to avoid getting proned all the time though, and you need spiritual ally uptime for flanked and removing tactician PEN penalty. belranga you need antitode as one of your buffs to prevent paralyze/petrify, but you can even skip any hand mortar/avenging storm and just dps down 150+ spiders and then the burrows until belranga can be trivially mule kicked to death (though hand mortar + storm will probably make this fight super easy and you'll probably just kill belranga by accident while slaughtering hundreds of spiders). all other bosses should be like dorudugan at worst. the only remaining wildcards are a) any fight where you are unable to deaggro (hopefully these don't exist, i have to double check a few) and b) sigilmaster auranic and her cleansing rune.

Only every f-----g day.

Little random thing from Neil Gaiman:

I'm pretty well recovered from my Ironman. The sunburn is still bad, but I'm feeling good and should be up for some activity this weekend. It's funny, but about halfway through that race and well into the next day or two, I was thinking there is no way I would do another one of those. But now that I've had a few days to look at my time and think about my performance, I know I could do better and think I should try it again in a couple years. I don't have too much downtime though, as I'm doing the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon on June 9th. We jump off the boat and swim across the bay, then bike and run in San Francisco. I'm feeling good about it, it is a much shorter event. The craziest part is the swim, which is 1.5 miles and will be cold. I need to go get a training swim in the ocean before then, but I feel ready fitness wise.

it reminded me more of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin (luring an army of rats fits the small but many summon theme of the Beckoner)

Indeed you do. So far, my two first characters have only eaten insects and eggs.

fuuuuu- man, that scordeo's edge is totally the trick. thanks so much dunehunter! i could've done it even faster, but i forgot to buff avenging storm before hand. oh well. mule kick still was super relevant because even with lots of interrupts per second, i still needed it to do so to trigger brilliant and interrupt merges (searing seal ended up being way too slow and inaccurate). aside from me not having wael's on, this was as close to the real thing as possible, and all the items i used should be obtainable through a quick crit path. i've got a few more bosses to try out (mostly to make sure i have enough room to deaggro in all situations, I'm actually sorta concerned about FS Oracle that you get teleported into/dropped into), but i think we've got a real contender here with a tactician+skaen.

All these clan reveals so far are cool, but no Malkavians no care.

I've killed that thing on the island in your picture... by heroically climbing up on a rock outcropping where it couldn't reach me and putting nearly 100 snake arrows into it (my man has a TON of HP). Some more exploring. I went on quite the trek into unexplored areas of the map, almost died several times, but somehow I made it through alive. My armor choice was not the greatest in the jungle and desert regions, but when I reached this area, I was really glad I was wearing it:

Ahh, and here I was about to ask about The Purge, since the meter's almost at the first marker for me (my megalomaniac building tendencies might have something to do with that...) So yeah, now that I have some thralls, some decent armour and have sacrificed countless unbelievers (probably some believers as well, they should feel honoured) I felt powerful enough to do away with subtlety... I built a massive mess-hall/throne room next to my temple and added guard towers and a gate (I've since added stairs to the entryway): I like to think the view from the terrace isn't half bad: The area with the campfire at the bottom of the cliff is where I got killed the first time: View on my base from the humble cliffside housing I started off with: I've been exploring, mostly east, trying to find some good Thralls (archers to man my walls or craftsmen, mostly, especially looking for an armourer), but I ran into this sleeping...thing, and noped the hell outta there... I also ran into a boss croc (which promptly murdered the hell out of me) and a boss hyena (which I promptly ran away from) and I killed a boss turtle-thing by kiting it to my walls where my archers did their thing (need to figure out a way to keep mobs from getting right up to my walls, because that seems to confuse the AI) I also switched to medium armour for combat situations, still using the light for resource runs though. EDIT fwiw I play on normal and the only changes I made (so far) were halving crafting resource requirements and halving the time it takes to "break" Thralls. Interested to see what The Purge will bring...

In pure numbers, sure, but the military doesn't actual function like that. In other news, isidewith.com has been updated

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.

Exactly. Because he didn't know what is Allepo.

Out of curiousity, and if you have played Mass Effect, how much Lost would the ending of ME3 have then?

i didn't have a chance to test xoti, but if you look at my screenshot, my test character has a 25% lash (with some rounding/partial damage), so the neutral case should be working (they have no disposition because i cheated her from vilario's rest to hauani o whe). if you're seeing actual 20% (ignoring PEN variance) then it's a bug with xoti's spiritual weapon. i'm pretty sure, though, that xoti has 25% and you might have seen less because you were up against an enemy that had better fire AR than the pierce/slash AR.

You sound like Jimmy Carter, GD. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/15/713495558/president-trump-called-former-president-jimmy-carter-to-talk-about-china

PM me the strategy? Are you with the Hand Occult or something?

Alabama being Alabama, I thought they'd only ban the abortion of white babies.

I am not sure if you ever watched The Strain, its about Vampires and was entertaining. The main Vampire, called " The Master " also talks about knowing and watching humanity for thousands of years but the difference is he wants to destroy all mankind or turn them into Vampire food

I haven't watched the 4th season on Netflix yet but the first 3 seasons were "alright", imo. Not to spoil anything, but I eventually was having a harder and harder time reconciling that Lucifer was so goddamn stupid about understanding humanity when hes literally been around since BEFORE humanity.

I loved lost all the way up through season 5. It was season 6 that really disappointed. Though some characters at least had satisfying endings, Hurley, Desmond, Rose & her husband. The final shot (not scene) of the show was super powerful to me. Sayyid and Claire were among the worst characters that last season. Yeesh.

Makes sense then)

Yessir, it gives you more focus back with Deception spells. It's awesome. YOu can cast Whisper of Treason etc. for free. Actually I think it even gives you more focus back as it costs even though it's just single target (iirc, after some PLs). Cheap spells with huge AoE like Phantom Foes will give you huge focus refill - the more enemies you hit the better. That's why I like SC Beguiler so much: Shared Nightmare with Beguiler is just... I can't...

This should clear it up (the underlying mechanics of "speed vs. time" haven't changed since release): Especiallly this example about speed vs. time from that thread: "For example: I am going with a car at 100kmph. And at that speed going from A to B will take 60 minutes. a). if I am asked to lower my speed by 25%, I would slowdown to 75kmph. [the speed is 25% lower, the trip duration is 33% longer] b). if I am asked to increase the time it takes to arrive there by 25%, I would slowdown to 80kmph. [the speed is 20% lower, the trip duration is 25% longer]" It's simply a mathematical "problem". If you increase your speed by 25% that's not he same as reducing the time by 25%. But since Obsidian uses attack speed bonuses but finally shows their effect on the attack/recovery times they have to transform the numbers like in the example above.

Age of Barbarian is surprisingly fun, despite the cringe worthy writing, the oversexualisation, and the sometimes iffy controls. In a way it is nostalgia pure: bad writing, bad gameplay, and bad morals - how more early 90s can you get? It has two things going for it: well done atmosphere, and devs who truly care to fix anything they break.

It would absolutely fantastic if someone could work some watercolor magic on these two; there are so few godlike portraits out there

I loved Lost and after its finale I started measuring suckitude of finales in Losts. The ending of KOTOR2, the ghastly thing that made me go and whine to my RL non-gamer friends, would be, like, about 8 miliLosts. That's how awful Lost's ending was.

That was good. Too bad they can't get that pacing down when they made the movie.

Uh, no, that's not how that works. Recovery time in real-time means that some units attack more frequently than others. This is not the case in turn-based mode, meaning that any units who would previously have had a high recovery time that would've permitted the other side to attack multiple times before they attacked once is put onto an even playing field with units that previously outspeeded them by a significant margin. This is common sense dude, it's not hard to figure out. In turn-based, as compared to real-time, slow characters are essentially getting attacks for free because they are always guaranteed an action and an attack. Thus whenever you face enemy groups that are composed of fast enemies, they are essentially attacking fewer times, and thus you are being attacked fewer times than you would have been in real-time before they die (and the same is true the other way around). This is particularly the case for spells by the way. They are much easier to avoid in TBM, especially because even with min dex you can probably escape the AOE (another problem with how insignificant the difference in stride is from dumping). I never said it wasn't, I said it's worse, because it is. And there's certainly no point in maxing it, you just need to high enough to meet the break point in order to extend your effects another round. The upper points you invest don't actually do anything as far as duration is concerned, and don't do anything at all if you are using a character that does not rely on area of effect attacks. Dude I barely know what I'm talking about when it comes to this game's mechanics and even I know this. The fact that we're arguing at all over things that are so incredibly basic even when you probably have a better understanding of this game's mechanics than I do is real proof of how dark those glasses you're wearing are. PS: Because there are so many dump stats (and hell, even on casters, you can go min dex and still go pretty early in most fights using light armor), it makes the act of maxing any given stat much less meaningful as far as communicating the stats value. Of course you're prone to max an even partially useful attribute when you just basically got like 15 free points from dumping Dex, Resolve, and maybe even another 8 or so from dumping Constitution. Where else are you gonna put them? lol Fair point, but you're also ignoring that Medium Armor is also fairly useful on front-line characters that don't take lots of attacks, but still need the protection for when they do. Or at least that's always been my impression as a casual player. Meanwhile the Heavy Armor issue is so bad that even some rando on reddit that's probably only played the game for a few hours has caught onto the fact that Heavy Armor is the objectively correct choice on literally everyone that isn't casting spells. Then you're really bad at debate, you mostly only responded to points where you could be proven factually incorrect, lol Of course I think you're just playing at aloof and don't have a real argument with which to respond to most of my points, or are otherwise just too fed up to continue the conversation. I think what I wrote is worth something a lot more substantive than the silly one-liners you've decided to respond with, and I'm the one who isn't going to continue the conversation past this point because you're being incredibly disrespectful and also because you're far too down the rabbit hole to listen to reason.

The clans all have dedicated pages in case yous peeps didn't know https://www.bloodlines2.com/en/thinblood Yeah, they all seem pretty awesome. This may be one hell of a game. Immsims are my favorite genre, so I'm super ****ing stocked whenever one comes around.

@PsyCoil Certainly

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...

Bolton's hardon for war when he ducked Vietnam really makes him far more reprehensible.

I just found yet another benefit of being a Setite in Conan Exiles. In addition to the ridiculously OP snake arrows and the sweet Setite garb, followers of Set can also make antidote potions. Previously, I had mainly used these potions to counter the poisoning I got from being bit by a snake or spider, or being stung by a scorpion, and it works wonderfully for that. But the Set Antidote removes ALL kinds of poisoning. Recently, I acquired the feat to brew and distill my own alcohol (My wild parties and orgies just got even better. Join Team Keyrock today. Membership has its privileges!). Consuming alcohol, especially in large amounts, confers some pretty dang strong buffs on the imbiber. Unfortunately, drinking a lot of alcohol also gives you alcohol poisoning, which super sucks. Remember how I wrote that Set Antidote removes ALL kinds of poisoning? That's right, it removes alcohol poisoning, and food poisoning, for that matter. Now I can get all the excellent buffs from getting super drunk with none of the drawbacks. The blasphemers would have you believe that The Serpent God is evil. Pfft, they just don't know Father Set the way I do. Glory to The Old Serpent!

Pondering on the job future. The Project Head, a consultant brought in to run this thing, seems overly focused on the High level view, with absolutely no understanding of the lower level and what it actually entails. He keeps making the asusmption that it's all "we just grab x and y and they'll fit together perfectly" and thus, making plans and estimates for like, 2 weeks work. Work that we keep telling him is actually about 3 months mapping before we even talk about cleansing. But he keeps just referring to us as "the cleansing team" in emails, and we have no idea what he thinks we actually do, or what the system provider and integrators will be doing. Of course, that's another thing. Going by the project plan they were meant to have signed all the contracts and started a month ago. But.. no. Still in discussions, and going back to the Project board to increase the budget to get the contracts signed. This does make one wonder just how things will shake out....

"You only have 3 days, 26 hours to finish Port Maje. You have 25 days to complete Hasongo. You have 26 days to complete Ashen Maw, and a similar amount of time to get to Ukaizo. This essentially limits your ability to explore, and really discourages you from searching abandoned settlements or burial grounds out on the world map. The time constraint is tight for the first act, but a little looser for successive acts (though not loose enough to go off and do all the DLC, at least until the final act). You can save some time and level up a bit by frontloading all the Nekataka quests in Act II (before going to Hasongo) since it only costs you a couple hours to go from district to district (versus days to travel on the map). This challenge also has the effect of requiring you to be much more deliberate about resting." i might have gotten this slightly wrong in my guide - in all my recent runs I have 27 days to complete Hasongo. I must've measured from getting the boat instead of from getting Oderisi's notes, because act 2 timer starts in the latter, even though you have no options to do anything other than go get your boat. do note that in practice the mandatory sailing just to get to crit path quest points eats up a good chunk of the time for all acts (one should try to invest in making their ship real fast). my discussion of all the challenges (except for the most recent one, the ultimate): https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/magrans-fires

Every main quest stage's got its own time limit. First stage before you get to the Adra stone is 4 days.

if you de-aggro all the enemies in a fight, and you don't have a perception affliction/aren't flanked, that fulfills tactician's requirements to be brilliant: no one in your party is flanked, and all enemies are flanked (except there are no enemies, so this last part doesn't matter).

I decided to make the trip to Sepermeru. It's a long way from my base, but I was well armed and prepared I had to go past the Unnamed City to get there. I've been inside there before, briefly. It's pretty scary. I decided to go around the edge of the ruined city rather than through it. Finally I reached the gates of Sepermeru: I decided to dance with some of the locals: Target practice: Sepermeru at night: There are some people to talk to in Sepermeru that will fill in the story for you a bit, including Conan:

Opt out of beta, into normal release. 5.0 wasn't released as beta, it's on the main branch.

Woke up this morning to find that Warcraft 1&2 have been released on GOG! Warcraft 1 was probably the first ever PC game I played, so I'm super psyched for a walk down memory lane!

I think all is simplier... + =