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Hehe. I got my master's in aerospace engineering from the University of Tennessee's Space Institute, the institution that was built to piggyback off of those German scientists, including von Braun, who were housed and working nearby.

just lower expectation nekataka are the best main city in rpgs personally played the huana and vailia culture are excellently constructed and expressed it is impossible to exceed for a sequel that are unlikely to have a much higher budget

I actually wholeheartedly agree, but a megacorp doesn't have the right to my spare time for free

We've been making pizzas on the grill for the last couple of nights. My wife's favorite is white pizza with thick slices of fresh mozzarella and a smattering of goat cheese, figs, black garlic, caramelized onion, and drizzled with balsamic vingeger (which I call ball-slamic and it cracks me up to no end). It smells pretty good but I've not dared to try it as I've not been able to eat much solid food for the past couple of weeks.

I have to admit, i don't bother with the Gorecci street now. I just enter from the south and stealth straight to the Illari guy or whatever his name is. Pay him the 40cp and everyone else just walks away no fighting needed, free xp before digsite.

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.

Shock is the best most times

Last I heard the Novella was due in May of 2018. It was supposed to be written by Richard Knaak whom has written a ton in various fantasy IPs. Was looking forward to this as a backer. I'd assume this project is as good as forgotten?

With today being annoyingly hot I went out and had a cold one:

Would have been fun starting with the original skill trees though. Ah, to hear paladins winging about their only role being a blessing of kings buff bot auto-attacking bosses for proccs wearing a combination of leather and cloth because plate didn't come with healer stats. It'll take a while to clear the raids though, even with the trivial mechanics. You'd still need to craft cloaks to kill Nefarian, go through the Onyxia attunement and several lockouts to get the materials, clear Scholomance to craft flasks and all that. Not to mention getting resist gear for AQ40 and the Four Horseman in Naxx needing four well geared tanks to get through reliably.

Classic Ballmer. He always was a good hype man.

You can't go home again

The only MMO I ever played was Lord of Ultima and that will most likely be the last - I just can't do it, I remember being at work with my bosses trying to check the status of our coordinated attacks lol ... and I remember when WoW was released I promised I would never play because it would take over my life, and I still feel the same lol.

I re read this mutliple times and can't decide what accent it's meant to be. Imagining ****ney, but that's a city accent. Possibly a bogan Australian though. ****ney?! You are *ing that. COME ON! OKay, an accept from the east London working classes.

You have finished the game quite a few times, yet you'd say it'd take a lot of goodwill to call the game good, or even decent? That's just astonishing. I like the game rather a lot, at this point, but when I've finished it once (if that happens), I'm pretty sure I'll never play it again. You are not making your argument very well -- I am not saying that there isn't a proper argument in there, only that you are not being very clear. Can you give me two concrete examples of the kind of decisions that you think the game fails in? "Just how should people approach encounters" is too vague, as there are so many kinds of encounters. The game doesn't seem to suffer from any conceptual problems that CRPGs in general wouldn't suffer from.

Numenera's setting is interesting indeed and that's why I eventually finished the game despite of abandoning it several times. Brain kinda erases memories of word vomit, non-entity protagonist, uninteresting story and weird for the sake of being weird but still dishwater dull companions and all that's left are impressions of really cool setting that you kind of want to explore moar. ...guess I'll do that ranking thing afer all. 1. Tyranny. Fantastic setting and the only other recent-ish game that had me this invested in the story is SOMA. Read all the cyclopedia after the first play-through and still remember random lore tidbits, like how ring-shaped jewelry is extremely tasteless because world's currency are rings. And after I got the hang of spell system combat became enjoyable too. 2-2.5. Deadfire/PoE. I like Deadfire better still because of multi-classing and being so very pretty, but PoE was the thing that made insta-preorder Deadfire because I wanted "moaaarrrr of this!". PoE is a place to go when I want some quality grimdark (and difiiculty. Getting thoroughly owned on PoE veteran after getting used to Deadfire veteran). 3. Kingmaker. You'd think I loved P:K to bits, given how many hundreds of hours GOG Galaxy counted. In truth, 30% of those hundreds is slowly crawling from point A to point B and another 30% is putting buffs on (or reloading and putting buffs on), this game is determined to waste your time like a subscription MMO. Still, despite that and oft rolling my eyes at writing I really liked it. Must be some sort of je ne sais quoi charm. 4. Wasteland 2. Nothing too awe inspiring, but post-apo setting (one of my favourite) is v. well developed and consistent, writing's competent and makes sense, shootin' was quite enjoyable and it all coalesces into good and nice sum of all parts (with additional effort to come up with personalities for my party members who initially have none) Somewhere down, down, downhill. Divinity: Original Sin. There's this one dude in "Neverwinter Nights 2", a guard in the mansion of some geezer Charname has to protect, and at some point he says this line in comically exaggerated rural accent, something like "Oi shenshe a fouuuwl shmell oin tha ayr, tha shmell oi. doyn't. loyk!" in D:OS, everyone is like that, and the story & performance are written and directed by the Pegleg Performers. I really like the combat system, I do, sank 20 hours before I just couldn't take it anymore. So mayhap one day. On mute with Rammstein in the background and reading nothing but combat log. (Really got to try those Shadowruns I keep hearing good things about from different people instead of "Deadfire turn-based now, lets make 5 new characters yay!")

True, I do save atleast 5$ every day, I can't deny that. I'll have to drink a quite hefty amount of coffee to reach the 250$ the owe me..

Recieved my paycheck. Got paid for 4.5h out of 10h overtime I worked. To be honest though it should be 30min each and every day because I can't have my mandatory break, can't even go and take a dump because someone might sneak in.

While I have plenty of nostalgia for it, I don't think it's something I would enjoy today. If I'm subscribed when it launches I might try to recreate my original character and tool around a bit, but somehow I doubt I'd even get to double-digit levels. Even if I theoretically got through the slog to level 60, I doubt the old endgame structures would organically return in any way resembling how it was. Raids might be mechanically identical to how they were, but everything around them will be unrecognisable - guild structures, the PUG scene, the gearing process, etc.

I'll be playing it. People over-lionize vanilla, pretending that it required great intellect or some form of Internet Sisu to succeed in it. I may go on a PvE server, I spent 12-13 years in a PvP nightmare so I've paid my dues I'd be ok to use you all to get me raid gear - I mean play with you guys in a guild.

I don't know what phone you're using but on my S7 you can disable that by clicking on the gear icon when the keyboard is visible, under Smart Typing. They call it Predictive Text. The red underline for misspelled words still exists. To answer your actual post question - no, I'm not interested. I did like the original WoW (played it off and on until the release of Wrath). I always played it solo (I ignored dungeons, mostly) and actually enjoyed marching the empty huge lands by myself, even if the travel took forever. Eventually I just became a miner/gold-hound with the market trading as a mini-game. :) But when I didn't it play it for a couple years or something I canceled the sub and will never go back. I didn't even know they let you fast travel these days. heh.

Funny thing happened at work today. We were talking about the Apollo Moon landings and the hazards of it. One of my colleagues was talking about the Van Allen belts only he called he called it the Van Halen belts. Nobody caught it but me. I almost choked on my coffee. I excused myself and walked away singing "Panama". About a minute later he realized what I was doing and busted out laughing.

Could you name some of these balancing issues or difficulty spikes? I haven't noticed any. As for where I am in the game: I just went after a certain character who appeared to have betrayed me, and next I'm going to go after a certain barbarian, who did not. I see nothing laughable in calling the game great, although I am not sure yet whether I would do so. I would not call either PoE or Deadfire great, although they were definitely both good, and I enjoyed them a lot. (Two games that I would call great: Baldur's Gate II, NetHack. Ultima V for its era, too, but that era has long since passed.)

If nothing else, we got some good memes out of Diablo Immortal.

I don't care if a new game or series is created as something I'm not interested in but I do get disappointed when a series I enjoy is changed into something I have no interest in. That's not to say I dwell over it and write one man plays and do interperative dance or whatever I was into last year to share my feels with the world.

I thoroughly enjoyed both PoE and Deadfire. I certainly hope we haven't seen the last of that IP. It was a RPG for RPG fans. A love letter to days and games gone by. Even if something like that does not have a future it was well worth the time and money spent.

Skyrim like Pillars game wouldn't be a Pillars game though, it'd be Elder Scroll game <_<

i think we are getting really old for this crap. I will never get that appeal of those 'battle royale' games anyway, I would rather play Unreal Tournament than any of the new crap

If we talk about the main campaigns, yes - but you're missing out if you haven't yet played Mask of the Betrayer, to me that's the best Obsidian's done so far, as Obsidian anyhow. I'd also say that it's true of Neverwinter Nights and worse so as well, for me anyhow, but not true of Neverwinter Nights 2 whose side content is both quite measured in scope and generally quite varied and interesting as well. Regardless, as I said in that other post I believe, I don't think that the writing is bad because it's pulpy or campy, I think that's where the game's intentions lie after all. To me the writing falters more often than not in many of the specifics, of the strange shifts in tone or disparity between what is written and what is intended (see the whole matter with alignment for this especially), of very dry and on-the-nose dialogue, and so on. Even whilst being quite campy and pulpy there's a degree of wit or colour to the Baldur's Gate games that only occasionally shines through in Kingmaker - more notably through the goblins and Nok-Nok particular, which I reckon is all Avellone's doing.

I don't see what makes two of those any more or less sensible than the other two...? Anyways, I've said my part on this comparison a few times already. There's good things about Kingmaker and I appreciate that it's around but it's a game that is often ruined by small design decisions and implementations that always seem left enough to make the experience just a bit more frustrating. Comparing the two, the combat is night and day as well: in Deadfire it's both extremely enjoyable and flexible, and measured in its sheer amount; meanwhile in Kingmaker it's ubiquitous, tedious and very rigid. I wrote a bit more about it here: Regardless, some of the story arcs were very nice, some of the companions proved to be hugely likable, and as sheer standard fantasy comfort food I do think it's worth a playthrough at least.

When I open the game on steam I get an "Oops! The game crashed. The crash report folder named ... next to game executable. It would be great if you'd send it to the developer of the game" I've attached the crash logs. I've tried reinstalling the game and restarting my computer but the game keeps crashing on startup. Please help, I really want to play this game more and Ive only put in 6 hours so far!! crash.dmp error.log output_log.txt

This strikes me as a load of bull, not necessarily because it's factually wrong - I cannot claim to know the backgrounds of every sci-fi and fantasy writer I read, or most of them for that matter, though at the same time I would find it particularly odd if this remained true at closer inspection (as far as I'm aware it's not really the case of Michael Moor**** or Philip K. **** for example, or EM Forster or Aldous Huxley who've dabbled in science fiction as well) - but because it assumes that the "shift" would inevitably lead to a degradation in the quality of storytelling. I'm from Argentina so I'll name a few of the biggest writers from here: Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Leopoldo Marechal, Adolfo Bioy Casares, H.G. Oesterheld, all dealt with various kinds of speculative fiction and all number amidst some of the finest authors of the 20th century globally. At least three of these would wipe the floor with your Tolkiens and Clarkes to boot, and yet they all had formations in literature or journalism specifically, and in the case of Cortázar for example not even a terciary degree of any sort. For all intents and purposes Cortázar would be as qualified or even less so than some "creative writing graduate", and yet he's produced some of the most revered short story collections with End of the Game and Bestiary for example, not to mention the behemoth that is Hopscotch. I've seen this notion before that you are somehow less capable as a writer if you had an education in literature or writing of any sort opposite to any other field, and that to me seems absurd: sure, someone who's studied mechanical engineering might be able to bring that side of his knowledge into the work he writes, but that would seem a very secondary and minor advantage to have relative to knowledge and education on narrative artforms, nor would it preclude other authors from investigating the topic before writing about it when concerning that specific area.

Think of beguilers like this: Almost by definition, you want to be casting spells more than you want to be attacking-to-generate-focus-to-cast-spells. Because if you'd be better off just attacking, you could do that at any time! The beguiler mechanic works like this: If you are casting a Deception spell, you pay the focus cost normally. But for every target you hit that has an affliction (including grazes, and INCLUDING the affliction you might have just applied with this very spell cast), you get 5+PL points of focus back. If you hit multiple targets with a relatively low-focus-cost spell, you GAIN focus. Even for higher-cost spells, if they hit multiple targets, their focus cost is significantly reduced. The two stars for this: 1) Eyestrike (only costs 10 focus, at max level you gain 2 focus (5+PL 7) only hitting only 1 target, and if you hit 2 or more you rapidly turn a profit). 2) Phantom Foes (costs 20 focus, but affects a MUCH larger area, so it is very easy to rack up a lot of focus if the board is full). Play your cards right, and you should be able to spend most of the fight casting Deception spells without needing to stop and make weapon attacks. This shines in particular in multiclass with casters. Normally that would be a bad choice because spellcasting from the other class doesn't generate you any focus. But if your primary goal is casting Deception spells mostly/exclusively, you don't NEED to generate much if any focus to do that, so you're more or less free to cast either kind of spell without worry. Psion has a very similar friendly-to-caster synergy because they generate focus even while spellcasting, but most people still prefer Beguiler overall for that role. This also can be friendly for tanks, because there are a ton of fast-casting Deception spells which even a tank can safely cast without worry of interrupts, it plays well into the tank's role of board control, and the tank's typical downside of slow action speed and long recovery is mitigated by the generally long-term payoff of long-duration debuffs, which don't need huge throughput to get coverage. On that note, Borrowed Instinct IS a Deception spell, and it is amazeballs-effective for a tank. So what's the downside? The chief downside is that beguilers' focus generation from attacking is poor compared to vanilla ciphers or ascendants. With Draining Whip (the default, and the way you should basically always be thinking about your focus generation), vanilla ciphers get 100% Focus per point of damage, Ascendants get 125% Focus per point of damage, and Beguilers get 75% Focus per point of damage if the target has an affliction, or only 50% if the target does not have an affliction (although if you're in this situation the fight should be well advanced enough that you should at least have Flanked, so it's your own damn fault if the target isn't afflicted). So if you wind up using up your focus, and either don't have enough to cast the Deception spell you want, or if it's late enough in the fight that there's no sufficient cluster of enemies to generate positive returns via your Deception focus mechanic, then you will be regaining focus more slowly than you otherwise would. This is partially mitigated if you're saving up to cast Deception spells, because you will need to still save up the full price, but you'll still be getting some of it back even if you only hit one target.

The trickster class has deceptive description. It states that sneak attack is significantly weaker. This is not the case. It lowers sneak attack by a fixed 10%. So a character that would sneak attack for 60% for instance would sneak attack for 50%. The extra abilities you get by far outweigh the loss of 10%. There's no reason to go normal rogue over trickster.

KOTOR3 being done right became impossible when the actual BioWare got replaced by this doppelganger BioWare that EA has swapped in. Having seen BioWare's latest games, I'm actually glad there is no KOTOR3 (even as one of the franchise's biggest fans) because it would probably be some half-baked shooter with zero story and just a bunch of "pay to upgrade" things attached.

Maybe the Iconians caused the supernova as payback for Empress Sela.. blah blah blah STO stuff

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/tech-firms-can-and-must-put-backdoors-in-encryption-ag-barr-says/

Well, you would, for instance, receive permanent damage way before you have greater restoration and heal spells or have the money to buy those scrolls . Generally speaking, how difficult you find the game often depends on how you play it. Even the hardest encounters are quite tolerable if you know before hand what you are facing. Except often time the only way for you to know is by reloading your save. There is no retreat from combat option. But if reloading is necessary then what's the point with the whole dice roll thing? Once you start reloading saves, you are going to do that with everything whenever you got a cripplingly bad roll, which renders the whole premise of the game into a pointless time sink. Did you finish the game? If not... boy are you in for some surprises with difficulty spikes. With all of these issues, combining with no customizable tactics despite incredibly dumb AI, I'd say it'd take a lot of goodwill to call the game good, or even decent, let alone great.

Creative Assembly’s Next Game Is Potentially a Hero Shooter Hell yeah. Another "hero shooter", just what the doctor ordered! **** immersive single-player experiences. **** non-recurrent spending. **** risk-taking. dO yOu GuYs NoT hAvE pHoNeS??

So, in a nutshell, your 4 points are:

Can one go too old school? Stone Story RPG is here give it's answer.