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These are making it worth watching Picard.

The truth of the Painted Masks was a revelation that shook Aloth to the core. As he continued on his journey with the Watcher of Caed Nua, he found himself questioning his effectiveness of his work regarding the Leaden Key, and doubting in his own ability to see his cause through. But then the Defiant landed on the Black Isle, and the party arrived at the Halls Obscured. Although the Elf was as shocked as anyone else in the party at the horrors witnessed in the Collections, the seed of a whole new scheme was planted in Aloth's mind when he saw the Archives. And by the time they were done with everything they had come to accomplish and were making to leave, that seed germinated and bore fruit. After all, he may have spent much effort to little avail over the last few years trying to track down each and every cell of the Leaden Key... but if there were ever any records on where in all Eora they could be found, would they not be located somewhere in the Central Stacks? On top of that, the Watcher had just so conveniently disposed of the Oracle, the Halls' erstwhile caretaker. Plus, with the passing of Fyonlecg, there was a gap in the leadership of the Hand Occult, and the accoutrements of the Weyc were right there for his taking... With that in mind, Aloth resolved to seize the opportunity which had presented itself. In the aftermath of their encounter with Eothas at Ukaizo, Aloth claimed what he needed for his next task, bade farewell to the Watcher, and chartered a ship to his next destination. So see nothing of Weyc Engferth, for she watches you still. =================================== The Weyc Engferth, Ultimate Edition =================================== Difficulty: PotD v5.0.0.0040 -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Wizard -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Wood Elf -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Aedyr (Gentry) -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats (char creation, no Berath's Blessings): MIG: 12 CON: 10 DEX: 15 PER: 15 INT: 16 RES: 10 -------------------------------------------------------------- Active Skill: Any Passive Skill: Any -------------------------------------------------------------- Weapon Proficiencies: Rapier (a) Scepter (a) Small Shield ® Wand ® Sword ® Battle Axe Quarterstaff -------------------------------------------------------------- Abilities (a=auto, r=recommended, !=important) PL1 Wizard Minoletta's Minor Missiles (a) (!) Thrust of Tattered Veils (!) PL2 Wizard Mirrored Images ® Infuse with Vital Essence Combusting Wounds (!) PL3 Wizard Deleterious Alacrity of Motion Llengrath's Displaced Image Arcane Dampener (!) PL4 Wizard Minor Arcane Reflection ® Flame Shield Pull of Eora ® PL5 Wizard Blast of Frost Ryngrim's Enervating Terror Llengrath's Safeguard ® PL6 Wizard Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst Chain Lightning Common Spell Resistance PL7 Wizard Wall of Draining (!) Tayn's Chaotic Orb Common Penetrating Empower ® Potent Empower ® PL8 Wall of Many Colors ® Kalakoth's Freezing Rake Temporal Cocoon Common Great Soul (!) PL9 Wizard Minoletta's Missile Salvo (!) Petrification Common Prestige (!) --------------------------------------------------------------- Items (*=additional enchantments; !=important, r=recommended): Weapon set 1: The Weyc's Wand (soulbound, Wael's Sight!) (!), The Weyc's Oracular Focus (Strengthened Enlarge Shield, Lasting Channeled Shield ®) Weapon set 2: Magran's Favor (Blazing Core, Enduring Flame), Griffin's Blade (Hound's Courage*®) ® Chest: Robes of the Weyc (soulbound, Mirrored Empower®, Omnipotence!) (!) Helmet: The Mask of the Weyc ® Amulet: The Third Eye ® Grimore/Trinket: Ninagauth's Teachings (!)/Iron-clasped Grimoire (!) Cloak: Shroud of the Phantasm (!) Gloves: Firethrower's Gloves ® Ring: Kuaru's Prize ® Ring: Ring of Boundless Stars Belt: Least Unstable Coil (!) Boots: Vithrack Silk Slippers ® ----------------------------------------------------------------- When I theorycraft in Deadfire, I usually prefer to work on multi-class builds. That's because I enjoy finding synergies between the skills of both classes, and putting together something that works better than the sum of its parts. But Aloth is the only exception to that rule to date, because the Wizard's PL8 and PL9 spells are just that good, and I've yet to figure out any synergies that can match their power in either of his multiclass options. On top of that, Aloth is the only one amongst the Companions and Sidekicks who can be a single-class pure Wizard (Fassina doesn't count). Because of this, I had to search for synergies that work with him through equipment, and I eventually found that the Weyc set from the Forgotten Sanctum DLC offers a truly powerful synergy with Aloth like nothing else I've seen so far. Therefore, while Aloth is always an asset to the party throughout (because Wizard), he becomes practically indispensable after FS, especially for the toughest encounters in the entire game. (Note on “Ultimate Edition” builds: With the release of the Ultimate Edition on PS4 and XBox, there will be many first-time players of Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire who will be searching for builds online, only to find that most available builds were created for earlier versions of the game. While many of those are still viable even in the final version of Deadfire, this would not be apparent to new players; thus, builds such as this will be tagged as “Ultimate Edition” to indicate that they’ve been tested for version 5.0.0 of Deadfire, including all DLCs.) The Wrath of the Weyc And it all stems from a couple of simple interactions; when soulbound to a Wizard like Aloth, The Weyc's Wand offers the Wael's Sight enchantment, which converts 100% of Misses into Grazes on an Empowered attack. Which doesn't sound all that powerful, to be sure. But here's the thing; it applies to every single missile that's produced by the PL9 Wizard spell Minoletta's Missile Salvo. That means it doesn't matter how high an enemy's defenses are, Aloth... Just... Can't... ****ing... ...Miss. Of course, Aloth can only pull this off once per encounter, so even that isn't enough to take out the Megabosses by itself. But while the sheer damage that a laser-guided Missile Salvo can do is spectacular in its own right, the true value lies in its synergy with the Least Unstable Coil; the Empowered Being enchantment that's also activated with the Empowerment of Minoletta's Missile Salvo gives a random Tier 3 Inspiration with every hit scored by a spell. And apparently not only do Grazes count for proccing it, but Empowered Being activates for every single laser-guided missile produced by the Salvo. This means that after the Wael-Empowered Minoletta's Missile Salvo hits, Aloth will achieve demigod mode with all six Tier 3 Inspirations active on his person. And giving Aloth the Robes of the Weyc means his Empowerment of Minoletta's Missile Salvo also activates the Omnipotence enchantment on the armor, which gives the Brilliant Inspiration to all nearby party members as well. So keep a Priest nearby Aloth when he fires it off, and you can spam Salvation of Time to extend Aloth's demigod-hood until the end of the encounter, no matter how long it lasts. At this point, the only question left is; how well can you make use of all that power while it lasts? 😉 Final Thoughts Pros: Empowerment gives a single use of Minoletta's Missile Salvo that can bypass all defenses, even that of the Megabosses. It also gives Aloth Energized, Robust, Swift, Intuitive, Brilliant, and Courageous in one go. It even gives nearby allies Brilliant as well, so a Priest can keep all his Inspirations going with Salvation of Time spam. For the cherry on the cake, this build can be replicated by any Watcher or hireling Wizard with better-optimised Races and Attributes. Cons: Cannot be replicated with Wizard multiclasses (no access to PL9 Wizard spells), Conjurors and Transmuters (no access to Evocation), or Blood Mages (no access to Empowerment). Doesn't do anything to help with the stick up Aloth's arse, unfortunately.

You'd have a point if this was Larian's first game, not their eight. They just don't know how to write.

D:OS2 engine and scale is amazing. I just wish they would do something more structured for BG3. I found D:OS2 to be too free-form - you can do anything, anywhere with vague objectives meaning I didn’t care or remember about anything I did. Apparently there are about 350 people working on BG3. It shows. In many ways that’s a kind of game I wished for Bioware to pursue - invest in systems and interactions, rather then presentation. What I didn’t wish was for it to be so multiplayer focused.

"Is Chaos Theory As Good As I Remember?" You bet your sweet ass it is.

Please. I play with spreadsheets.

Oi! Watch how you talk about Fallout!

My takeaways: Graphics are gorgeous, and I think this is the first game that really convinces me the isometric angle can look good without doing pre-rendered scenes. Love the verticality I like how rolling checks works. Art direction looks incredibly much like Dragon's Age Origins. Which is good and bad. TB combat looks a lot better than Divinity, looks almost like they took clues from Deadfire's TB mode. The game will have the advantage of being balanced around TB from the start. Love that huge action bar, that's properly treating someone to a nice time.

UPD. Finished with Carnage highlight. @Boeroer i think i'll be able to add highlight to Clear Out and Whirling Strikes by adding another fake AOE attack.

If you can read Cyrillic, then that probably summoned Cthulhu

Meanwhile in parallel Universes:

I'd disagree, but it doesn't really matter if it is or isn't anyway. Obviously a lot of people enjoy it, and if they enjoy it that's fine with me whatever I think of its quality. But even though it wasn't me making the original comparison I'd say that a comparison of obsessive Twilight fans to obsessive Bioware fans is certainly a comparison that has merit, because a lot of those fans get the same type of enjoyment out of both. There was a fair bit of crazy around before ME2, though that is definitely the high water mark and the time at which it became the (stereotypical) Bioware fan's distinctive trait. It's very much a result of Bioware's development system of NPCs up to ME2 which culminated in a game which was, essentially, NPC recruitment and loyalty missions stitched together by a haphazard main plot which ended up with you fighting a ludicrous Terminator Reaper hybrid made of soylent greened people. There wasn't much crazy at all for BG1 because the NPCs were very basic cyphers with a dozen lines each, a bit for BG2 as the NPCs developed more and so on as the system progressed and especially as the idea of romances progressed. They're not so much nerd porn as variable quality relationship simulator porn. Bioware definitely played for this, indeed they actively developed character archetypes that were the same through multiple games because of it- the Anomen (Carth/ Sky/ notAshley) archetype of whiny damaged love interest, the Korgan (Canderous/ Black Whirlwind/ Wrex) amoral mercenary, the vulnerable love interest, the tough love interest etc etc. I liked DAO a lot, but there was definitely some obsessive behaviour around Morrigan/ Leliana/ Alastair even though they'd toned down the biostereotypes a bit. OTOH, Inquisition and Andromeda both came across as if they'd written their characters based on a list of traits written on a whiteboard that they thought would appeal to different subsets of fans instead of writing them as 'real' people.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/pillars-of-eternity-dev-says-deadfire-sales-were-l/1100-6471333/ Well ain't that a kick in the coconuts. This is why we can't have nice things, people. There is no excuse for Deadfire to not sell as well as the original.

Because in other games the pre-made characters you do not choose, die in a blimp crash, after a Molochean Hand orc flies his ornithopter into it to kill the Living One. And inadvertently getting the whole prophecy rolling.

Yeah. Different kinds of games. War in the East in real time? Get outta here. On the other hand, Hearts of Iron is real time, even if the pace can be so slow as to make the distinction merely technical. Spellforce is a tactics game in real time and BATTLETECH is a tactics game that is turn-based -- but I failed far more often in the latter. I also reached my highest APM playing a dps in SWTOR, not in strategy games. And improving my max APM it didn't make me better at Wargame: AirLand Battle, sadly. ****ing ATGMs, man.

I have never let that stop me.

Murder Mittens!

It's especially dumb because even a simple weather balloon would have been more effective.

There are two actually. One is unnamed and scheduled for a 2028 launch. That one will include a rover or, possibly, a submersible. To prepare to that is the Europa Clipper launching in 2025: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper/

And here it comes...

Imagine my surprise when I was told that stress relief balls are for squeezing and not throwing at people that stress me out 😯

Damn...

Totally

Picard - I think my wife is pretty much done with the show and TNG Picard is her favorite Trek captain of all time. When she asked me how I felt I had to be honest and went on like a 20 minute rant. We're going to try to still watch it but as something stupid that you turn your brain off and drink to.

Don't bother. As of episode two it went full Kurtzman. That was... terrible. In every way. This Romulan plotline makes the first season of Discovery appear sane by comparison.

It's so stupid, no doubt. Star Trek that you actively try not to think too deeply about is something I can't believe exists today but it's what we got. Not sure why these are the types of Trek shows we're getting. This stuff is not art it's just a product meant to sell subscriptions so why not make just one show that appeals more to the Trek fans they already have and appeal to new fans that may want something smarter. They can keep doing the shows they feel like making as well since they've stated that they always want something Star Trek on but just give us something. Read a rumor that Seth McFarlane and NBC were and maybe still are looking to buy Star Trek. Hopefully that's true even though the rumor also said CBS was so puffed up on initial Picard reviews that they were asking way too much. I like to include the Seinfeld finale on lists of best final episodes to see if people call me out on it. Don't think it has happened yet.

i made a little house for the stray kitten in my yard. just a cardboard box with a plastic bag to keep it dry and a piece of an old blanket but she seems quite happy with it. she wont come out for any reason except food

"Create"? Riggggggght. Bet they were hiking in the desert at Roswell when the idea just came to them. 😉

The husky-hop.

Oh yeah, right there, that's the spot

Poor little fat rat... story with a happy ending ☺️ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47370291