Leaderboard

Hey hey everyone! We have uploaded the pilot v1.0.0 version of Community Patch on nexus!: https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/335 P.S. If you spot any inexactness, or have any suggestions for the presentation of the mod page, feel free to write it here. P.P.S. I'll be mostly afk tomorrow, and will address them on Monday+

Thank you guys for your incredible work!

It looks fairly linear, which is a good thing. I like open world games as much as the next guy, but Lord knows we have no shortage of those. Sometimes, a deliberately paced, well controlled, mostly linear experience is just what the doctor ordered. If I were the cynical sort, I would say "How will EA **** this up?". And I am, so I'm saying it.

Thanks for all your work, folks!

@Phenomenum - Will try to have a look at those models throughout the week (I'll be at the in-laws all day tomorrow.) Couple changes we discussed that aren't mentioned on the Nexus: Wand proficiency for Kalakoth's Minor Blights and Rotskulls; Weapon Mastery +5 Accuracy. Are those in and undocumented, or were they eventually discarded?

It is priceless to be lectured on the inner workings of discipline and punishment by some schmuck who clearly doesn't give a toss about rules and breaks them simply because he can. The irony is, I dare say, rather sharp.

I came back to visit the Obsidz board for a change... I’ll try to come back a bit more, maybe. Haven’t done much gaming in the past couple of years. Started working out seriously and painting miniatures (mostly Necromunda). I find it’s a lotmore efficient as stress relief. Really busy in real life these days. Can’t pretty much say what I do in any detail I could accidentally dox myself for the Finns. Litigation with a lot of high profile cases, probably at the top of my career.

With the game being released now, I have updated the speed calculator for the current v1.0 version. You can access it here: Attack Speed Calculator version 1.0.3, compliant with Deadfire v1.1.0 Additionally here's the aggregated info on this topic: PART 1: History. And what has changed since PoE1: PART 2: Formula. Or how the speed/time values for attack, recovery and reload phases are actually computed: PART 3: Weapon base values: For v1.1.1: For v2.0.1: PART 4: Action cycle, and phases: For usual weapons action cycle goes like this: For firearms, crossbows and arbalests, recovery phase is substituted with reload phase like this: Reloading is almost the same as recovery. The difference is: - recovery phase is affected by ActionSpeed and RecoveryTime effects. - reload phase is affected by everything that affects recovery; and in addition to that by all effects that specify reloading. - you can start a new action at any time, and reloading will resume when the character has time. While with recovery - you have to recover from previous action first. PART 5: Types of attacks: Weapon attacks can be of 3 types: - Normal (auto-attack) - the character alternates hits with main and off hands. - Primary Attack - the character makes a hit with his main-hand. - Full Attack - if you wield a single weapon, it's the same as Primary Attack; but if you dual-wield you hit with both weapons, in the following succession: The great thing about Full Attacks is that if you dual-wield you can effectively skip the recovery/reload phase of your mainhand completely. And yeap you can chain Full Attacks with something like two pistols, and your mainhand pistol won't require reload. PART 6: Mini FAQ on various related stuff: Q1. How does the math behind Armored Grace work? I don't get how the -25% armor recovery penalty from the tooltip factors in. A: It is a bit convoluted but works in the following way: - the game doesn't operate that much with [recovery_time] penalties for armors; Instead it stores and uses their speed coefficients. - for heavy armors it is: 0.645 (= 1/1.55) - for medium armors it is: 0.741 (= 1/1.35) - for light armors it is: 0.833 (= 1/1.20) Now, Armored Grace increases the armor speed coefficient by +0.1, which becomes: - for heavy armors: 0.745 coef => (1/0.745 = 1.342) => +34% displayed recovery time penalty - for medium armors: 0.841 => (1/0.841 = 1.189) => +19% displayed recovery time penalty - for light armors: 0.933 => (1/0.933 = 1.071) => +7% displayed recovery time penalty P.S. Yeap, tooltip lies. The actual value is 0.1, not 0.25. And it reduces recovery speed penalty, not recovery time penalty. Q2. Is Sure-Handed Ila working as intended for reloading weapons? A: Sure-Handed Ila chant has two components. One that lowers recovery time. And another that lowers reload time. In beta4 all effects that affected recovery now started to affect reload as well. This resulted in both components of Sure-Handed Ila chant to affect reloading time, basically granting you -20% reload_time x2; or in other words +50% reload_speed. [(1/0.8 - 1) + (1/0. - 1) = 0.5 Q3. Feel free to ask. Q4. ... P.S. If you find any bugs or inaccuracies feel free to PM me or post them in this thread.

Okay, so I see lots of posts about Berath's Blessings, lots of questions, some with good info, most with nothing. I decided to actually look into it and put together a full comprehensive list of what Berath's Blessings is, how it works, and what the options are as a result. That way all the info is in one thread, not 52 random scattered ones. First up, what is Berath's Blessings? Berath's Blessings are points that are awarded to you for getting achievements in the game. For example creating a custom adventurer will give you 1 Berath's Blessing. Berath's Blessings can be used to buy perks when you start a new game with a new character, it is NOT a new game + system. Also it is only perks, there are no penalties you can buy. How many Blessings can you actually earn? As of Patch 2.0 with Beast of Winter installed the answer is... 83. The points required to purchase all Blessings is 82, so this means you will be able to purchase all existing blessings in the game if you get all Achievements and have the expansions installed. Note, there are multiple 1 point Achievements, so you could in theory get all Blessings without "Platinuming" the game. This information will be continuously updated as the game is patched and/or new achievements or Blessings are added. Key fact! Berath's Blessings is 100% optional. You do not have to use it, so if you don't want to take advantage of it, you don't have to. To even access the menu you must click the Berath's Blessing icon in the New Game menu, so it is fully possible to build a new game without ever even looking at it. So, what are these Perk's anyway? Below is a full list of all the perks available at this time via Berath's Blessing. I am going to break it down by point cost, then the in game "name" of the Blessing, and lastly a description of what it actually does because some of them are very vague and unclear. 3 points - +5000 Starting Money: Begin the game with 5200 copper, remember you always have 200 copper at the start, if both money perks are taken you can start with 55,200 copper. 3 points - Bonus Skills: Gain +2 to all skills from your Class such as Mechanics or Arcana, it also applies to all characters that join your party. Bear in mind, it is class only, background skills get no bonus. I say +2 specifically, because multiclass characters can potentially have only 1 point in a Class skill, which if doubled like the toop tip says implies you get 1 bonus point, but you will get 2. Obsidian has not said if it was meant to be Watcher only but I assume this is by design, since the Stats perk specifically says Player Only. 4 points - Experienced Ship Captain: Start as an Expert rank Captain. Captain rank determines turn order in ship to ship combat, but has no other impact. 5 points - Fine Equipment: The wardrobe at the beginning of the game will contain a set of Fine armors (Brigandine, Robes, Leather, and Breastplate), and a set of Fine weapons based on your proficiency/class choices. 5 points - Unique Item Vendor: A unique Vendor appears in Port Maje, see below for an item and cost list. 8 points - Upgraded Ship Sails: Begin the game with two Ship upgrades, Stormwind Sails which give +15% combat speed and +15% travel speed, and Improved Warship Reinforcements which give +15 hull health. Both items work like any other ship upgrade and can be removed from the starter ship, additionally they can be purchased from in game vendors. 12 points - Start at Level 4: Begin the game at level 4 instead of level 1. 12 points - Explored World Map: Begin the game with the World Map fully exposed with no "fog". 15 points - +50,000 Starting Money: Begin the game with 50,200 copper, remember you always have 200 copper at the start, if both money perks are taken you can start with 55,200 copper. 15 points - Bonus Attributes (Player Only): Begin the game with a +2 bonus to all stats, these bonus points cannot be seen or modified in character creation, and as stated only apply to the Watcher. So about that item Vendor, he appears in Port Maje right in front of the Market area. He is standing at one of the carpets, can't miss him. Another added bit of trivia, he is also unique in that he is the only character in game you can initiate a real conversation with (dialog window) that has no water color portrait (or at least he was, until this was fixed in the 1.2.2.0033 patch I believe!). But what does he sell? Credit goes to Lunattic for putting this list together. While I don't personally think it is a spoiler, I will spoiler flag it anyway just to be safe. I do also want to add one thing, all of the items this vendor sells can either be found as loot, or in many cases, purchased from other vendors in the game. However, he will sell them for significantly less than the normal in game vendors will. So for those concerned a "unique" item may be hidden on the Unique vendor, don't be. I hope someone finds this info useful, it was a pain putting it together but I feel like it was worth it.

When I was but a tween, addicted to the original Neverwinter Nights on our crappy family computer that could hardly run it, I refused to play anything but the Shifter prestige class. The idea of shapeshifting into different creatures to face my enemies was too exciting to even consider abandoning. Now that I’m much older and only very slightly less single-minded (sadly my computer can run Deadfire only slightly better than the old junker could run NWN), I’ve imported my love of shapeshifting to this game, resolving from the beginning to make the most of the Shifter Druid subclass. At this time, I believe I have some insights that are worth sharing for others who may be interested in this subclass. This post will be a bit long and unusual, because I will provide a brief analysis of the strengths of Shifters in general as well as my favourite class build to illustrate my points (it’s a Tempest build, so Barbarian fans, stick around). I hope that the post encourages others to give the Shifter subclass a shot, whether in the form of my Tempest build or otherwise. Let’s jump in. First Principles The biggest pitfall one may succumb to when planning a Shifter build is to think of the Shifter as an entirely martial subclass. Spiritshift has the benefit of two strong single-handed weapons in combination with armour as strong as superb Heavy Armor (when fully scaled) without any recovery penalty, and with no vulnerabilities (i.e. the armour has the same rating for all damage types unlike regular armours, which have weaknesses). This is a solid foundation to build on, but it is not equivalent to the martial benefits of an entire martial subclass like Fighter or Rogue. Shifters are still Druids, and Druids are spellcasters. Now let’s take a step back and ask what makes Druids special. What is their niche? I would provide two answers to this: healing and versatility. If there is one single thing a Druid can do better than any other class, it’s keeping a team healed. But that’s far from the whole story. Druids can also do significant damage, valuable crowd control, have some good summons, and a few very useful party buffs. And, of course, they have bursts of martial power from Spiritshift. No other class packs such diverse value in a single team slot, even though other classes will be better at most specific aspects. Druid subclasses leverage this versatility by offering specialization in one of the dimensions of the Druid kit, usually compromising another. This might lead one to think that a Druid subclass should be built to focus on that one specialist dimension and no other, but this is simply the general form of the pitfall that I mentioned at the beginning of this section. Versatility remains a core strength of the Druid class in each of its subclasses. The subclasses emphasize a dimension of the class – they do not invalidate all others. Your Lifegiver can still drop strong damage spells. Your Fury can still summon and do plant/beast DPS. Forgoing such versatility will always just make your Druid worse than they could be. This class is not supposed to just do one thing. Our first principle of building a Shifter follows easily: spellcasting must be respected as a core part of the character. Shifters are Druids, not furry warriors. And because Shifters lose their spellcasting when they shift, each battle must be divided between casting and martial phases if we want to benefit from all the character’s strengths. These are the parameters within which we will be thinking in what follows. Single Class vs. Multiclass I admit that I’ve never played a SC Shifter (I’ve had 3 Shifter playthroughs; a man only has so much time) but theorycrafting it is pretty straightforward. It would be decent. The main Shifter-specific benefits from SC would be Avenging Storm and Wildstrike Frenzy. Shifters will have good melee attack speed (especially cat form) and relatively low deflection, so AS is liable to put in some decent work (though nothing at the level of what can be metagamed with hand mortars, blunderbusses, Frostseeker, etc.). The Wildstrike Frenzy passives ought to be the #1 draw, but they are unfortunately lacklustre. Their effects only proc on kill with a shifted animal-weapon attack, not on spell kills (thanks to Boeroer for testing this). As we established in our first principle, good Shifter will be doing a lot of damage with spells, and Shifters will emphasize spells that do continuous damage while they are transformed. This means Wildstrike Frenzy will do nothing when the final blow comes from Avenging Storm, Nature’s Terror, Plague of Insects, Relentless Storm, or several other DPS spells you may have cast. Now, ‘on kill’ is an inherently weak trigger condition: the goal of combat is to kill enemies, therefore on-kill effects reward you for having already been successful and can’t help when you are struggling to get kills. On kill effects can still be very good for momentum (see the build below), but they need to be reliable with a trigger with such an inherent drawback. SC Shifters will be doing most of their damage from spells since they lack martial passives to help with melee, get higher level spells, and benefit from high power level (shifting doesn’t benefit from PL). That Frenzy doesn’t work with spell kills is therefore a major disappointment. A great thing about SC Shifter is that Shifters don’t lose access to any Druid spells (before they shift), meaning that you can enjoy the complete Druid spell list with the added benefit of sustained martial abilities. I would recommend SC Shifter to a player who primarily wants to play a caster but likes the idea of having a respectable melee presence without much fuss (i.e. no relying on buff chains or specific gear). Multiclassing is where we can get a bit more creative in drawing out a Shifter’s strengths, most obviously by giving our Shifter access to martial passives that will help their melee power. But if there is one thing you take from this post, let it be this: try to pick a second class that synergizes with the Shifter’s spellcasting as well as its melee ability. You’re going to be spending a significant amount of time casting spells and relying on spell damage so, ideally, you don’t want your second class to be irrelevant to that dynamic. A shifter has two major dimensions, two combat “phases” – you want to build for both. The class build below demonstrates what this looks like. Beast Tempest Shifter/Fury Shaper Dive into your enemies’ midst and thrash them to pieces with spells, claws, and teeth. Game version: 5.0 Difficulty: POTD (upscaled) Solo: Untested Overview: Perhaps most importantly from a synergistic point of view, Barbarians are most effective in melee when going after groups of weakened enemies. That’s because they get damage spikes against low-health enemies and massive action speed benefits on kill (see writeup on Blood Thirst below). This means that their damage per second increases significantly when they can crush multiple low-health enemies, back-to-back. Accordingly, compared to other possible martial multiclasses, you get significantly more value out of your Druid spell damage-over-time effects that you will have casted earlier in the fight. Making every enemy weaker before you start your melee phase therefore has a direct and noticeable effect on Barbarian power. This alleviates the inherent martial-caster action time tension whereby spell damage and melee damage compete with each other since time spent doing one is time not spent doing the other. With a Tempest, time spent casting damage feeds into your melee power directly. Note well that, unlike Wildstrike Frenzy, Barbarian on-kill buffs (Bloodlust and Blood Thirst) do indeed trigger on spell kills, so no need to worry about what gets the final blow (except for when a spell steals your Barbaric Smash kill and you lose resources), and you’ll find that when you have multiple spells going on against a large group of enemies, these buffs will pop up regularly when you didn’t even notice you got a kill. Finally, the action speed and Might benefits from Frenzy obviously help in your spellcasting phase. Furthermore, Barbarians have some tension in their design: with very low deflection, very high health, an armour passive, and more, they are meant to take hits. This screams, “get the highest armour value possible!” They also have multiple ways to increase action speed, so you want to build them them to swing fast. Unfortunately, heavy armour comes with a hefty recovery speed penalty, so if you try to maximize your armour, you action speed bonuses get eaten up compensating for it. You’ll recall, though, that Spiritshift armour has a high rating and no action speed penalty whatsoever. Therefore, while shifted you will fully leverage a Barbarian’s tankiness and action speed perhaps unlike any other context in the game. You can see that though Barbarian is traditionally a “martial” subclass, it benefits from the characteristically Druid form of spell casting (damage over time across a wide area) and it powers up spell casting as well. Add this to Spiritshift’s inherent speed and armour benefits and you’ve got yourself a beautiful set of synergies. I chose Fury Shaper because access to Fear Ward is worth the Will penalty, especially on a caster Barbarian because you can leverage Captain’s Banquet, which gives you immunity to most of the most dangerous stuff that targets Will. No subclass would work fine too, as the wards aren’t essential to the build. Mage Slayer is out because you’ll resist your own Druid stuff, and I find Corpse-Eaters looks pretty bad, but do your thing if you really want to be a man-eating werewolf. Berserker could do a lot of damage but Confused is particularly bad for a Druid with their dependence on Intellect and powerful foe-only AOEs, so you’ll have to constantly make sure you’re managing that. Also, this build uses high Might, which increases Berserker self-damage, making you significantly squishier. Attributes: I’m not going to give numbers because they depend on whether there are Berath’s Blessings, the player’s comfort with stat dumping, role-playing, and so on. Instead, I’ll give priorities. MGT: High DEX: Medium CON: Medium PER: High INT: High RES: Low Druids rely on a lot of damage and healing over time, so MGT is better than DEX for both (DEX helps you move through your casting phase faster, but it’s not going to make your spells tick faster; this is unlike burst damage/healing or buffs where getting a spell off a little faster can significantly change the flow of the fight). In addition, you’re getting a lot of action speed buffs as a Barb, so it’s better to give more weight to each swing than try to be the Flash. PER is a priority for anything that needs to hit enemies, and Barbarians have some nice on-crit benefits. INT is critical for all your many AOE radii and (de)buff durations (including Spiritshift). You want as much of this as possible. DEX and CON are good but should only be invested into when the priority three are maxed out. Having some RES can be nice so hostile effects don’t keep you down, and you don’t get crit against deflection to a ridiculous degree (crits give bonus penetration, potentially bypassing your high AR), but if you want to dump a stat this should be it (as per usual). Skills: I like a split between Athletics and Stealth. Athletics for some heals and Stealth so you can more reliably get a cast off while sneaking for the reduced recovery. Not super important. For non-active skills pick what you want. Abilities: I’m going to give brief writeups on key abilities so the reader can get a good sense of how this plays. The “no brainer” passives are Combat Focus, Blooded, Two Weapon Style, Wildstrike and upgrade, Thick Skinned, Unflinching, One Stands Alone, and Brute Force. Along with what is detailed below you will have a couple free points. Use them where you like. Frenzy: Blood or Spirit? – The Spirit line has great synergy here: spell hits cause Staggered as well as melee hits, and Might afflictions are valuable for lowering Fortitude, which synergizes with Brute Force and many strong spells. The AOE terrify can also be clutch in buying yourself casting time when surrounded. However, you may be using lots of Might Afflictions elsewhere on your team (I nearly always run Serafen spamming Dazing Shout) and find that you’re not getting much mileage out of Staggered, and would prefer the resource-saving Blood Storm over Spirit Tornado’s short terrify (especially if you’re packing Fear Ward anyway), in which case the Blood line works just fine. I personally find the Spirit line generally better because of the reliable Staggered, and Terrified lasts for about 10secs, which can save your skin and help you to cast in a pinch. I don’t think you’ll usually benefit that much from Blood Frenzy’s extra crit damage because melee targets don’t usually last long enough to experience all the DoT. Barbaric Roar: Your only command interrupt; always good to have. Especially nice as a quick-cast, foe-only, ranged attack. More valuable than the alternative upgrade – you’re not a main tank. Leap: Jump right in. Just do it, you'll be fine (usually). My playstyle usually involves tanks taking the initiative and diving at enemies to start combat, which effectively takes a lot of pressure away from the backline. This character isn't a main tank, but can and should certainly be right up in the thick of things with the tank. You want Leap to get around with no fuss and Daze enemies while you cast. You can take Wild Sprint as well as sometimes that's all you need and it's cheaper, but it's no replacement for Leap. Barbaric Smash + Bloody Slaughter: You can get some big damage numbers with these. A bunch of crit conversion, up to +100% crit damage, and increased base damage can save you a few attack resolutions (plus your animal form gives a little roar with each swing that sounds cool). Depending on the enemy, casting this around 40-30% usually reliably picks up the kill for no Rage cost, allowing you to continue your rampage. Don’t overlook the bonus penetration. Blood Thirst: better than I originally thought. Turns out not only does this cancel the recovery of your killing blow, but it also cancels the recovery of the next action you make within the buff’s duration. That means that after you kill an enemy, not only do you not have to recover, but your first attack against the next enemy doesn’t impose recovery either. I kept wondering why I seemed to be getting random Full Attacks in combat until I realized this. Remember, it triggers whenever spell damage gets a kill, too. Moonwell/Garden of Life: This character can be a primary healer. Insect Swarm/Plague of Insects/Infestation of Maggots: Core spell damage, and you get two for free! Stack these on enemies and watch them wither away. Do note that Plague does not affect Poison-immune enemies (and there are quite a few), but Swarm and Infestation do. Plague of Insects is absolute gold because apart from its good damage and stripping Concentration, the Sickened affliction increases your accuracy via Brute Force and lowers enemies’ max health (all the better for smashing). Nature’s Terror: A fantastic spell for this build. You want to be standing in the middle of enemies anyway. Having damage from this constantly wearing them away along with Carnage is great, and the Frightened affliction can block dangerous abilities and make them easier to hit (if you’re using Spirit Frenzy, it debuffs both Deflection and Fortitude). It’s friend-or-foe, so watch your step, but don’t let that make you afraid to use it. Having teammates with resolve affliction resistance can help (Wild Orlans like Serafen come with it, Fighters have a perk, etc.). This spell also seems bugged in that randomly it will sometimes do like 5 ticks of damage to a single enemy instantly. Not sure what causes it. Most important of all, the spell looks really cool (Tempest indeed). Relentless Storm: Of course. Depending on your needs for the fight you can and should cast any two of this, Plague, and Nature’s Terror. Cast all three if you get resources back. Venombloom: Must-have for any Druid, in my opinion. Does nothing against Poison-immune enemies but is devastating to anything else. And with Brute Force it will hit the lower of Deflection and Fortitude. Gear: Weapon: Spine of Thicket Green - unfortunately, your damage bonus on Beast/Plant spells will go away when you shift, but the duration and initial accuracy bonuses from power level are done deals at the time of casting. There's very little reason to use any other weapon. The crush damage and extra effectiveness against Vessels (who are often pierce immune or resistant and tend to be more vulnerable to crush damage) also means this is very occasionally worth using over shifting. Head: Helm of the White Void or Survivor’s Tusks – HotWV gives +10 to every attack roll involved in affliction-causing attacks (i.e. not just the roll for applying the affliction but also for dealing damage, etc.). For this build that means Barbaric Roar, Spirit Tornado, Plague of Insects, Nature’s Terror, Relentless Storm, and Venombloom (Fear Ward, being its own “creature” does not benefit). If you want to use this on another character, Survivor’s Tusks can give you survivability, though the Spiritshift upgrade is less valuable on this build because you will usually have Strong from Frenzy anyway. Neck: Strand of Favor – more INT and beneficial effect duration means longer shifts, etc. Armour: Garari Cuirass – any light armour can work here but I like this one because it gives you as much AR as light armour can so you can take hits before you shift. See also Miscreant’s Leather for the recovery bonus and Cabalist’s Gambeson for the extra effect durations, but remember your normal armour gets replaced when you shift. Feet: Rakhan Field Boots – always nice to dash around and get another interrupt. Footsteps of the Beast can be nice too since you tend to run around a bit. Cloak: Greater Protection Hands: Woedica’s Strangling Grasp – extra Might and AR Rings: Kuaru’s Prize + whatever you like Pet: Giftwrapper or Abraham – Abraham speeds your casting up but Giftwrapper gives you free AR when you get her. Both offer a bit of healing. Food: Captain’s Banquet – Immunity to half of the affliction types, including those which most often target your debuffed Will, is huge in itself. Extra spell damage is fantastic on top. Unfortunately, the action speed buff gets overridden by Frenzy, but with this you don’t need to cast Frenzy at the beginning of your casting phase just for the speed. Being able to wait without much drawback let’s you use Spirit Tornado when it’s most impactful. Closing comments: Embrace a Shifter’s versatility and you’ll be rewarded for it, in both power and fun. The build I’ve detailed has been my favourite to play in the game and is no slouch in power. I hope this post encourages more people to consider playing a Shifter and to play around with getting the most from the subclass. I can confirm that Ascetic builds are great, and I bet interesting things could be done with Wizard, Priest, or Paladin. Thanks for reading.

Not all. I can't imagine how this happened. Though i already fixed it (using backup gamedatabundle file), i'll keep investigating what happens. Only subclasses were missing and not all subclasses. Weird thing.

I guess the technical answer has to be no; it's the guy who played Jerome/ Jeremiah/ (Mr) J/ etc instead since they weren't allowed to use the name 'Joker' officially. Which was kind of hilarious when DC's licensing was so disorganised they had two Joker films in simultaneous development with two different actors playing the role... Did Jedi Academy have it on by default? I know JK2 had it, but you had to set a flag/ use a console command to turn it on.

Today I cut the grass, raked out the chicken pen, put new hay in the hen house, turned the garden, washed the truck all while listening to the Rays beat the Red Sox. Tonight the pups are getting a bath and I'm catching the other half of the Rays/Red Sox double header on the radio. All while enjoying several glasses of Kentucky's finest.

Can someone watercolor these one please?

@MaxQuest watch your PM

Better teams than Toronto have blown 3-1 leads in the NBA Finals.

Well, yes. It is Cameron Monaghan.

@Boeroer I checked Blood Thirst and found it works like I thought it did. You don't recover from the killing blow and you still get the Blood Thirst buff which will remove your next recovery as well. Here's a shabby demonstration gif. No, that's not Crushing Blow.

Took pictures of the actors taking pictures of my blackmail letter

except you have now undercut the faith current and potential trade deal partners have in the US to maintain obligations. regardless, am thinking once trump saw the growing revolt in his own party, including core supporters, he had to cave on tariffs, but he needed some kinda token to show he won... something. wh has declared victory. let's wait a month and see how dramatic the illegal immigration numbers drop before hanging out kudos. ... admitted, with trump lies, am gonna be dubious if immigration numbers sudden do drop. is the problem with constant lying-- nobody believes you even when you tell the truth. well, nobody save for sharp one, wherever he may be, and the ~30% o' undereducated folks from america's heartland who don't realize their hero screwed 'em with taxes, tariffs and deregulation o' commercial farms. HA! Good Fun!

Wow. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. You do have a point that it did happen. I graduated HS in 1989 and there were shotguns and rifles on racks in cars driven by students. We went shooting after school more than once. But you cannot even draw a straight line between the two times through any one cause.

There a number of interesting Great Sword models in game which can be used: Item name: Animated_Great_Sword_Summon Asset: prefabs/items/appearance/weapons/great_sword/great_sword03_summon.asset Item name: Great_Sword (i think this is @AndreaColombo mentioned) Asset: prefabs/items/appearance/weapons/great_sword/great_sword01.asset VFX: prefabs/effects/abilities/priest/fx_spiritual_weapon_berath.prefab Item name: Great_Sword_PallidKnight (Or this) Asset: prefabs/items/appearance/weapons/great_sword/great_sword_pallidknight.asset Item name: Citzals_Enchanted_Armory_Great_Sword_Weapon Asset: prefabs/items/appearance/weapons/great_sword/great_sword01_citzal.asset Item name: Priest_Spiritual_Weapon_Berath_Greatsword Asset: prefabs/items/appearance/weapons/great_sword/great_sword01_berath.asset Item name: Animated_Great_Sword_Summon Model: prefabs/items/appearance/weapons/great_sword/great_sword03_summon.asset

@ Boeroer You are lucky the flail model is divided in separate parts, which makes it very easy to deactivate the ball. But you will probably have to reinstall, patch and reapply the mod every time a new game patch comes out. ball and chain unballed.rar

@Boeroer This one’s tricky because it’s called just “great sword”; I used Unity Console to give myself all items called “Great Sword” in order to get it.

You're right

@ AndreaColombo I hope it is to your liking. I only change his eye color the menu screen since the ingame model is far too small to even see it. This way the mod alone should be also more compatible with game patches since there haven't been any changes to the affected assetbundle since at least poe2 v3. PS: I guaranty you it is definitely a deliberate change. For anything to be tintable in this game, one need a tint map file, that tells the game what and where the tint should be applied. This was also the reason godlikes were not tintable. They didn't have those tint map files. I had to create several for each godlike. Without those files you see only the main predefined texture for the object. For Tekehu's eyes it is the dark eyeball with a turquoise iris. A change of those predefined textures can only be deliberate. tekehu eye ungreen.rar

When entering the fungus-infested wing of the library in Forgotten Sanctum, your party sees huge bookshelves ruined by the infestation, and Vatnir has some ambient dialogue. I'm going to paraphrase it from memory: "Scribes toiled for countless years to create these tomes. Now look at them. Fools." This really stuck with me because it was a rare example of a character in the game expressing a religious point of view in a way that was neither abstract nor directly about a deity. We hear plenty of talk about Rymrgand being the god of entropy, impermanence, final endings, etc., and we see plenty of people talk about their devotion to him and other gods. But it is rare to see a character's religious views influence their attitude towards the mundane in a way that's not entirely on the nose. It would have been nice to see more of this in the game. Have characters' religiosity come out in how they respond to actual situations, not just in abstract pontificating and declarations of devotion. Does anyone have more examples?

A punishment is effective if the one receiving it perceives it as something to be avoided. The problem with corporal punishment is if you are using it with sufficient force to injure a kid it IS abuse. And if it is not hard enough to injure then the kid will figure out real quick (as I did) that it is preferable to other forms of punishment. So ultimately it is self defeating. You can make the argument that prior to a certain age it might be effective but there will definitely be diminishing returns. The other problem is kids need to understand WHY they are being punished. Otherwise the entire exercise is pointless. If they are young enough for corporal punishment to be effective are they mature enough to know why you are using it? I don't know the answer... never had kids. Just posing the question. I will tell you to never use it on dogs because they definitely won't know why you are hitting them. That is certainly self defeating. If you didn't catch your dog doing whatever it was that pissed you off just let it go. Ten seconds after the fact they have forgotten they even did it.

They are the only ones with AoE party inspirations that not only can buff but also remove afflictions. I think they are in a good spot balance-wise. The only gripe I have with them is the limited spell choice (if you are looking for effectiveness). And they have nothing to balance that out (trinkets were dropped during development because Full VO and Ship Combat took away too many resources - I think it's safe to say that after Josh's post mortem talk).

Guacamelee 2 Somehow depressing. So subtle attempt to sell DLC. Not exactly immersion-breaking (as there's very little immersion to begin with), but somehow disappointing. Is the cat a reference to anything?

wasn't today, exactly -- and while we don't feel smarter or less certain imposter syndrome won't take effect, we did make small gains in maturity, wisdom and gratitude surviving a trio of committee interviews for a non-instruction position at a local college ... turns out a stable job that offers retirement is an instant cure for anxious emotional dithering

I just noticed I spent the better part of two hours typing up posts. I seriously need to re-evaluate my priorities here. I think I'm out for now. Especially since this is the third time since TLJ came out that we're having the exact same debate, and I'm pretty sure it will have the exact same outcome as the last two times. Seems pretty close doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. Erm...

It isn't entire objective, of course. The movies so far have all looked good. The prequel trilogy's CGI looks terribly dated by now but that's normal. It's not entirely what I was talking about, but I would also say that it is a bold claim to state the prequel trilogy was competently acted. I'm sure everyone did their best given the material the got, but some party are really, really, REALLY awful. Take any random scene with both Anakin and Padme in it. I've seen better acted porn. Better written porn too, for that matter. There are things we can look at when it comes to screenwriting and characterization. How much a given story element makes sense in its universe, for instance, or how understandable character motivations are, whether the characters drive the plot or vice versa, if the movie runs into pacing problems or feels messy or disorganized. The points at which issues with these become a problem for the watcher are subjective, of course, but in general the prequel trilogy in particular did a spectacular job of failing there. The Last Jedi's structure resembles a comedy more than a sci-fi adventure film (i.e. things happen because everyone who isn't Kylo or Rey is an incompetent schmuck, including ALL the leaders on BOTH sides of the conflict). The new Disney era films also have a huge problem with working inside established rules for Star Wars - and it's not like there are many. For me that is a huge issue with my suspension of disbelief, but where that beings to break is subjective. Objectively these are issues that could easily have been avoided so they don't - subjectively - become an issue. Also, you don't ever. Ever. EVER allow FTL bombing like the one shown in TLJ in a sci-fi setting. A few years ago I would have said that being fair to Lucas isn't, well, necessary. These days though, yeah. Although I've seen and read interviews that clearly said that Lucas' first rough cut of the original Star Wars movie was horribly boring and that a collective effort salvaged it. Especially when it comes to pacing, strange cross cuts and destroying the Death Star without the Empire knowing where the rebel base actually is (which is apparently why all dialogue in the rebel HQ comes from off-camera - these scenes were slapped together after prinicpal shooting had long ended).

I just hope it will be a single-player focused game with RTwP combat and without randomized color-coded loot or Larian's writing style. I didn't finish either D:OS, but completed and liked both BG games and their expansions (including SoD). They are focused on completely different aspects of RP and I don't see how a game developed by Larian can be anyhow close to what BG is.

Got the great honour of working 5 hours overtime since my boss gave two yard jockeys vacation at the same time without checking for a replacement first, so today I've been a yard jockey/dispatcher/gateguard while teaching two new people the art of driving backwards with trailers. Terrible timing though since today I recieved a visit from a Canadian relative, didn't get more than a couple of hours to speak to her today. Got to love well organized vacationplanning... Good luck on Sunday Hurlshot!

I wonder if Swen might be pursuing some new type of combat system for this game, something that is a cross between RTwP and TB. Something like that I might very grudgingly be willing to accept. But if it is a typical TB system, especially something like the utterly crappy combat system of the D:OS games, I'll be - very angrily and very bitterly - passing on this game.

It's called Descent into Avernus, due out this November.

No, I meant the unreleased one (due out October) Swen referred to in the interview and which is the reason he won't say more about the story at this point. You missed one, fledgling.

I know Star Wars fans like to deify everything in the old movies and make a big stink about the new ones, but claiming Ackbar is a special part of the franchise is a joke.

A game with no endowment slider:

Well, we will have to wait for more details to be revealed. I am a bit worried how much Baldur's Gate will be in Baldur's Gate III. I am interested to see what Larian can do with DnD, but will it be Baldur's Gate III? I don't mind if it is turn based, but it would be a change. I like that it is not a direct continuation. I wish coop wouldn't be a big focus, but I doubt that will be the case. So unless they really double down on narrative and characters this time around... does it have anything to do with Baldur's Gates aside from the setting? If it is not story continuation, nor gameplay continuation, or even type of RPG continuation, why is it using the IP? Time will tell I suppse.

Besides that, stuff like Consecrated Ground scales its duration and healing per tick with Power Level (5% base each). That means double multiplicate scaling for the healing since it not only scales the healing per tick but also adds more ticks. This makes it a lot better at higher Power Levels than Restore which only scales its healing but has no duration (to scale). So... you can't judge several spells just by looking at the description at lvl 1. I mean you can, but then your judgement is false. You have to take into account how they scale. @Gromnir is right though: The problem that priests have is that they tend to have 1 or max 2 very good spells at every Power Level - and the rest is situational or simply weaker. That leads to a kind of "railroad" effect where most priest builds look the same - when it comes to spell choice. There are some spells that would be nice to have in certain encounters, but they players don't want to spend and ability point for something they might need 5 times in a whole playthrough. Better go with consumables then... As a Priest you can't "equip temporary spells" for certain encounters. Due to the mechanics of level-up you have a fixed spell portfolio that can only be changed via retraining. Druids suffer the same basic problem - but it's not that obvious since they have more spells and also a better balaced collection to pick from. e.g. It's hard to pick between Plague of Insects, Relentless Storm and Nature's Terror. Also it doesn't make your character a lot stronger if you pick a ton of spells at level up. It only makes him/her more flexible. This might not be desired. All ex-per-rest casters (Wizards, Priests, Druids) don't have enough alternative passive abilities. This is very obvious once you play single class builds. Yet, Wizards don't suffer that "spell railroading" - why is that? It's because of grimoires. Those let you equip (and switch to) certain spells that you didn't pick at level up. And since you can swap them (you can equip up to 7! of them via 6 Quick Item slots + Trinket slot) you can basically build a Wizard or Wizard/whatever who wouldn't need to choose a single spell at level up (if that would be possible) but only passives and/or abilites of the second class and would still be able to cast spells from his grimoires left and right as if he picked them at level up. Many players didn't and still don't understand what an immense advantage this is. They equip one single grimoire like Vaporous Wizardry and then never switch. But even this single one already adds 14 to 18 spells to the Wizard's active portfolio that he don't need to pick during level up anymore. So - even if you don't swap grimoires you get 12 bonus spells for free. But for certain encounters - let's say against creatuires vulnerable to fire, you can still switch the grimoire so you get more fire spells. Priests and Druids get 7 to 9 bonus spells "only", and those are fixed. This is not balanced. One could argue that if the spells themselves would be more powerful on average than it would balance this issue out - but they are not. So what Priests desperately need (and Druids as well, just not as desperately) are trinkets which contain spells and which you can swap. Of copurse they shouldn't contain as many spells as grimoires. Priests/Druids already get 1 bonus spell per PL after all. But those trinkets (think of prayerbooks, written sermons, bulla, holy symbols, relics...) can contain some spells that work like grimoires' - preferably thos situational spells that nobody picks. For example Prayer/Litany for the Mind/Body. So imagine a Prayerbook with those 4 spells which you could swap with a sermon that contains three punishment spells per Power Level. Suddenly your priest wouldn't need to pick those punishment spells at lvl-up - nor would he need to pick the prayers. But during a playthrough he could still switch to the prayerbook, cast a prayer if needed and switch back to a good old Shining Beacon. Of course one must be careful not to add too many trinkets with too many spells. The spel collection of priests is a lot more narrow than that of wizards. You maybe don't want to make all priest spells accessible via grimoire. We are also adding some unique spells that you can't get at level-up. Just to make the collection of spells a little wider. This would open up a lot more paths for priest builds (und druid builds) that don't go the well-trodden paths of former priests. Fortunately some forum dudes (including @Phenomenum, @MaxQuest, several others and me, @Boeroer) work on a collection of mods we call the "Community Patch". Mainly it's about bugfixes and polishing/balancing abilites as well as fixing typos, fixing incorrect keyword distribution and so on. But it's also about unique icons for every passive abuility in the game (currently they all share a few generic ones) and about trinkets for Priests and Druids! The "patch" will get released as seperate small mods as I said. So you can pick which changes you want and which not. First will be "Basic" - it contains all alterations and fixes that are quite conservative and found big agreement in the poll we did before. Then comes "Extra" which includes further balancing and polishing which was also based on the poll, but those received a bit less applause (still the majority was for it). Both are alredy finished. Then we'll have Passive Icons (also finished) and later trinkets (am currently working on that). In a few days @Phenomenum will release the first version of those (not trinkets since not finished yet). You can follow the development discussions here: Concerning the "weakness" of Priests and their spells in general: there is a reason why all "The Ultimate" attempts so far were tried with a priest/something (afaik)... Some of their spells are gamebreakingly good, first of all Salvation of Time and Barring Death's Door. Because of that we didn't buf a single Priest spell I think. Only thing Phenomenum did was rearraning the keywords so thy fit the spells properly. For example "Protection" should only be applied to spells that raise defenses or prevent damage etc. "Inspiration" should be given to spells that well... grant you an inspiration. But OBS gave keywords rather randomly. Prayers, which give you an inspirationy were keyworded with "Protection" (and nothing else) and so on. Phenomenum tried to apply the general keywording rule to all spells and succeeded. This leads to a situation wher Priest spells in particular have more keywords than before (on average). So they can be buffed more if you can combine Power Level bonuses for more than one keyword (think about Triumph of the Crusaders which only had "Restoration" but now has "Restoration" and "Inspiration" since it not only heals but also makes the party "Strong"). So if you have a PL bonus from items for Restoration and Inspiration this spell would gain from both. WHich is kind of an indirect buff of certain spells. But we didn't directly buff Priest spells since nobody thought they were weak - generally.

Try further east.

Installed some mods to avoid going crazy from some of the building limitations, so figured I might as well go over my (short) mod list and explain what they do: Pippi : mod to manage servers, allows setting up teleports etc. Only reason I have it is because it allows you to edit your character without starting over, picked this one because it's popular enough that it won't go away anytime soon. SP_Boss_HP: knocks boss HP down to sane levels for single player, only touches boss hp, so they'll still hurt like before Pythagoras Support Beams: ran into a whole lot of issues with stability that could have been solved by the vanilla support beams if the devs hadn't removed their stability transfer. This mod has the ability to be game breaking though as it transfers 100% of the stability. So I try to avoid it unless there really are no other options, well, besides starting over from scratch (the beams also aren't particularly pretty, so there's that too) Less Building Placement Restrictions - No NPC Camps (I switch between the normal and the Overlaps Edition): fixes a whole slew of issues with the building system, where the game wouldn't let you put stuff for no reason (eg. if you do it in a different order it does work). Doesn't fix everything, but god is this thing a QoL improvement. The overlaps edition also allows you to put stuff on top of each other, this is a godsend if you want to replace things (say you have a floor under a carefully positioned Wheel of Pain you'd like to be a foundation instead. The game will let you remove the floor just fine without destroying the Wheel, but it won't let you place the foundation (or, for that matter, re-place the floor) without removing and re-placing the Wheel, this mod allows you to do just that. And it allows for stuff like this for which there otherwise is no solution: While waiting for materials to be done I went exploring and found this fancy room: Wonder if this room's empty... My tower is nearing completion (at least the outside), if The Architect sounds like a Matrix reference there might be spoiler in the following screenshots. Put on the final roofing and took screenshot from the direction of the Aqueduct (but not from the Aqueduct because draw distance meant none of the lights were visible) Other angles, going around clockwise:

Crafting Hall mid-construction: Shrine of Set: Shrine of Derketo: I'm using a mod that replaces the standard Derketo priest(ess) praying animation with a seductive laying down animation that seems more appropriate to the Goddess of Passion and Death. I also replaced the priestess' skirt with Derketo panties since wonky physics made the skirt look all types of weird in the laying down position.

Here's my effort:

Yes MaxQuest, send Amentep a PM so this gets pinned! Please.

This should be a sticky.