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Food porn time, lentils for today's lunch: And thanks to you guys talking about sardines, dedicated to Hurlshot, He Who Has No Taste (just kidding (or am I?)), sardine spread for later:

Land O Lakes has removed the Indian woman from their logo Makes sense I guess. Many companies are turning away from using native americans as logos. But, in a funny not funny moment they kept the land... and got rid of the indian!

I know how you feel buddy ! I red here since PC release and waited for the PS4 release. I theory crafted hours and hours for the perfect party and the perfect player character. Red so much about game mechanics, it almost felt like my "old" gamer times By the way big up for thelee and his really great FAQ/game guide. You always remind me how bad my mathematical knowledge is when I look up some stuff. Btt: I started some playthroughs even I wanted to play it only once or one after the other. I'm really happy that you guys try out so much different builds and combinations and that you can even create your own backgrounds and story's for you chars ! Really awesome ! If I'm hones I'm tried this too, it's not that I have no fantasy but that im really bad at RP. I started a playthrough with a custom party, my Hunting party of Woedica. The party was really good and it was fun to play this combination of classes but RP as a judge/inquisitor of Woedica wasn't my piece of cake. I first felt bad after the first 5 minutes of gameplay when I robbed the children of the Dawnstar and killed them afterwards. Oh lord I felt bad so I started again and played like I always and up playing, as myself. Now I'm a Kind Wayfarer/Soulblade and it fits for me. In conversations I answer like I think it's right and like I would do it in real life. Till now everything is fine and I'm enjoying the game with my light hearted companions

Speaking about direction: Don't know if it helps other players, but I feel a lot more motivated if I not only discovered a cool synergy/build recipe but am also able to put it into some thematical perspective and have some sort of idea who this character really is (and was). Just steering a min-maxed robot through the game is not that much fun for me. So for example when I played my first Warlock (Berserker/Wizard) whom I wanted to equip with all the Rekvu gear and Grimore of Vaporous Wizardry (nuking myself with Combusting Wounds and all the other fire spells and also Slicken while tanking foes) I thought about "Why is this guy always injured with a Severe Burn and burns himself willingly all the time?". And when I had some sort of a coherent id and "story" it was a lot easier to pull through - even if the early game is often particularly bad if you are following some weird mechnical synergy that only comes online later in the game. I once even could finish a playthrough just because I saw that a certain gear/race/skin combination looked like a Draugr from Skyrim. So I decided to play a guy who believes that he's an undead vessel. It worked even though it was silly initially. I don't say that you should play that - just that some idea of "who is he?" does immensely help with direction so that you don't get lost in all the possibilities like "is this weapon better or that one?". Usually the generel idea about the char dictates which weapon is better - and I don't mean mechanically. Like that Draugr would have looked stupid with some pristine weapon like the Voulge. It had to be something more shabby or ancient looking. Like Dire Talon or Gladiator Sword + Bronlar's Phalanx or so. I once played a Huana Mataru (Unbroken/Trickster). He wore the Reckless Brigandine, Cadhu Sclath, Kapana Taga and White Witch Mask (looks super-hauana-ish). It was no question which items and abilites he needed. It was also no question which faction I followed and so on. Did the same with a female Mataru but SC Devoted with the same armor but "deserted" and sided with the RCD, killing the queen, taking her headgear, using Toughened Fury and Mob Stance and such. It just helps to not get lost in all the possibilities. It's like restricting yourself but for a good reason. Other ideas for another playthrough then (or a companion, sidekick or hireling). It is a Role Playing Game after all.

I think there's several things to unpack. 1. Direction. I used to have this problem a lot. These days I pick a strong "theme" inspired by some other thing I really like (mostly Magic: The Gathering color wheel, but also a bit of Warcraft 3 since I picked up reforged) and that helps me stick to a direction, to a fault (where I hate extraneous party members who don't fit into my theme and am eager to replace them). If something else catches my eye, I just commit to doing it on another play through. 1b. Another thing that helped direction for me is that I created a self-goal of eventually having run a party with every single variation of a priest (preferably as mainchar)--because I enjoy priest classes. So it becomes less "which is the most interesting party I can build"--which can be overwhelming ("paradox of choice" or "prison of freedom" as you say)--and more "what is the most interesting thing I can do with this very specific, narrow constraint", such as "my main PC must be a priest/barbarian of some sort" (in this case I ended up deciding on a skaen/corpse-eater. Wasn't great, wasn't bad either.) For reference, I still have not done a single-class woedica, a thaumaturge, and a universalist. I may never get to universalist or SC-woedica; just not interesting enough. 2. Hoarding. This is hard thing to do, and part of it is influenced by game design; not a lot of games get item usage and consumable usage right. For Adra Ban, it sounds like FOMO. Again, if I miss out on something, I just commit to doing it on another play through. Having a strong theme in #1 helps, because I do a lot of advance planning on the Deadfire wiki unique items list (unique weapons, unique armor) and plan out which items I want the most, and plan to upgrade all the way. 3. Increasing your explicit knowledge. On top of reading high-quality information (not random ****posting about mechanics), probably a lot more experience and lots of q's asked and tests. My gamefaqs guide goes into a lot of details of the mechanics, but I feel like in all situations in life, you actually need to actually put the theory into practice to really internalize it. Even with all the stuff I've written there, and all the stuff forum members have posted here, there's tons of implicit knowledge about stuff and still tons of interactions yet to test. I think just more playthroughs will start giving you a sense of what interactions might be interesting, and what to look out for to test and to mix with. YMMV. I've played Deadfire for 1000+ hours, and still am not sick of it. I think if you're fixated on getting just one run or two right, you may stress out more than if you just plan on playing however much you want to play, but that kind of long-term play commitment isn't for everyone (not even close). Over those 1000+ hours, I've made some parties that stunk and I didn't particularly like, and some that have been really great. Sometimes I've been playing and have already had ideas for three more parties to run. I don't run through all of them (some ideas I get tired of before I get to them), but I'm never too frustrated about doing something wrong or making the wrong choice. Plus, after 1000+ hours, I know most of the mechanics like the back of the hand, but even then I can still get surprised by new interactions just from chatting on the forums; it wasn't until hour like 900 that I tried a barbaric retaliation thanks to @Boeroer. If you also just like cycling through a lot of parties, I don't think it's too big a deal to just do that. A lot of people have restartitis. Maybe eventually you'll find a party you'll take all the way. This was basically me back in the BG2 days - kept starting new parties until eventually I think my first PC that I finished was a random thief character after originally thinking I would want to play a bard or wizard (I ended up liking the thief experience so much I wrote a gamefaqs guide to the thief class). That was a surprise to me because I tend to be a caster person through-and-through, but something about playing a thief just happened to click in my brain that I ended up finishing BG2 with it. Maybe something similar could happen to you.

I dunno about that, sounds like something that could be tackled by a very small gun shooting very small bullets to me.

Native classes have helped quite lot in integration efforts in Finland in comparison offering classes only in Finnish, Swedish and English, as among some refugees there are lots of people especially women who don't know written version of their own language well let alone English (or Finnish or Swedish). Refugee children aren't problem as they learn Finnish quickly usually in couple months, but adults have high risk to become social outsiders because they aren't able to communicate with native Finns.

Ok, after lot of trial and error, I have not solved this one but found what follows: 1. Changing Flanked_SE_deflection "ApplicationBehavior" parameter to: "StackWithAllSimilarEffects" doesn't work, possibly because it's overwritten by general rules of stacking (regarding passive and active effects) 2. Changing Confounding blind's "StackingRuleOverride" to "Always" does make it stack with -10 Def from stunned but that would make it stack also with eg. Arduous Delay of Motion extremaly increasing enemy recovery time and therefore cannot be considered a clean fix Also, while testing, for the first time I've witnessed a decrease in enemy deflection in increments of -3 (Comunity Patch not installed). What happened was: with or without CP installed, after the initial -10 Def from flanked(blinded), to see a further change in Def I still had to hit the enemy 5/4 times (with/without CP), meaning that the malus didn't stack and had to be overcome as it always was. That only changed when the ability's stacking rules were overriden to allow for instant stack. Furthermore, with CP total decrese in Def only amouted to -24 Def as it simply overmatche deflection malus from flanked (CP changed the value and amouts of stacks of CB to be 12 stacks of -2, hence -24 total as it didn't stack with flanked, 49 Def dummy reduced to 25 Def and no further). Showing that CP's solution to CB issue was not actually solved. 3. Status Effect enties do not have a "StackingRuleOverride" entry point and adding one has no effect. I do not have in depth knowledge of Assemby-CSharp or entry points in Unity engine but testing showed no effect whatsoever. Unfortunately. That could mean that while you can change if the effect stacks with other passive efefcts or itself, there is now way of choosing a specific effect to stack with everything or another active effect except for making the whole ability (and all of it's components) stack with everything and that is very prone to being way OP. That's it, for now it seems I've hit a brick wall, and seems I might just be easier to add another effect that kicks in when one is both flanked and stunned. This is indeed very frustrating. Anyone that could critique my findings or testing results, or maybe propose some idea for solution would be most welcome.

I'm thinking about a semi random generator of NPC. For example, this tool would generate a random subclass, class, race, background, and maybe a couple attributes. You can choose a multiclass (or not) and the rest of attributes. It would be like half way between Companions and 100% free hirelings. For example, what are you going to do with an Ilusionist with 16 Resolve and 8 Intellect ?

Thank you for your testing ! I was trying to tease someone's curiosity. The fix is extremely easy but require to cut some content (replace second priest by a copy of the first : they were supposed to have different abilities). Still very annoying that such a bug made it to 5.0. Some abilities get so few love that people don't even complain about them ! Wael's Incarnate is technically a Greater Storm Blight (armor and weapon) with Medium Storm Blight Abilities and a bit inflated attributes. Its defenses aren't much inflated though. And Storm Blight summons aren't specially great as Tier IV- VI druid abilities. And you can't even control it ! And indeed PL malus. For my modding, I applied the same treatment as Blights (scaling weapon and armor), I added a fair amount of CON (still the frailest Incarnate, but a bit less) and added even more PER and DEX (reflex defense is extremely high now). PL malus has been flattened for all incarnate (only -1PL but lasts longer, also get duration reduced as an Hostile Effect). I feel it is a satisfying auto-turret now, although probably worse than other Incarnate.

I got me a Split Cobra Frigate: I freakin' love this ship. It ****s all over my Ospreys as a medium size war vessel. The Ospreys have their use, I will modify their cargo holds as much as I can and use them as heavily armed freighters that can venture into dangerous territory without the need of a fighter escort (though I may give them a fighter escort anyway), but as warships, they are just much too slow and cumbersome. The Cobra, on the other hand, is ludicrously fast and maneuverable. It can straight up dogfight with fighters. It's still going to get hit a lot, because for all of its maneuverability, it's still a big ship that presents the proverbial broad side of a barn as a target, but it's also way more durable than any fighter, in fact, it's shockingly durable for a Split ship. Its hull is only a little weaker than that of the Osprey, but it only has 2 shield slots as opposed to the Osprey's 3 However, I can compensate for that by withdrawing from battle momentarily, something the Osprey straight up can't, it's too slow. Shields have a delay before they start recharging and the delay gets reset any time you get hit, so you need to not get hit for a decent chunk of time before the shields start to recharge. Most larger ships don't have that option because they can't get away from fighters long enough for shields to recharge and they present too large a target to dodge all fire long enough, something that is difficult even in a fighter, but straight up impossible in a frigate. The Cobra, however, can withdraw from battle, let its shields recharge, then go back in. Even unmodified, this ship is so ridiculously fast that it can outrun most fighters. After the engine modification I installed (thanks Boso Ta) I'm nearly untouchable in terms of speed. I can get away from or run down nearly any ship and I have way more firepower than any fighter and most other medium size warships (gunships, corvettes, frigates), and I haven't even hit my final form yet. Eventually I'm going to install 2 forward firing mk 2 Boson Lances on the ship (they are absurdly expensive, 2.6 million a piece). These are the Split's most OP weapons, essentially SUPER railguns. They have a slow rate of fire, take a couple seconds to charge, but when they fire the projectiles travel so fast they are essentially hitscan weapons and they do UNGODLY amounts of damage. Think of them as mini Death Star Lasers. In other news, this game can be really breathtaking at times. Case in point, this neutron star in the process of gobbling up another star:

And half of those are good (though statistically less likely) outcomes.

This thread's missing a little something, something... The sandstorm stays impressive... Been mostly just hammering away at the pyramid, of and on. Now that thralls level up I should probably start training some and take on that new dungeon...

I hear you man. I never use consumables (well, rarely), never upgrade items unless I'm 100% sure. It's been ruined by games having you feel bad by not holding onto a once only weapon you only had at the start of the game to be able to turn it into the most powerful thing ever. Or items you used, you find out later you can not create or ever find again. Rare things that are impossible to replicate and have a single use, but aren't available in high enough quantity to cater to everything you need make you hold onto them for way too long. With the consumables thing. I play every game that way. Every RPG I play I don't use consumables. Only in very rare circumstances will I use them, or if I know I can get plenty more. It's also one of the reasons I do not enjoy playing Nalpazca. I hate playing that because it forces me to use consumables and I don't want to. In Deadfire summons from items for instance have a per rest activation limit and a limited use. This means I will never ever use them. Like ever. Am I gimping myself? Sure, but I don't want to use them. Period.

Now I'm picturing a house with big beefy swole arms

You forgot the picture

Why? It arguably is a better love story than D:OS.

Steel Garrote/Bloodmage is very good if played with Whisopers of the Endless Paths and Offensive Parry (enchantment). oYou can reach very high deflection via Paladin passives and Wizard buffs which leads to a lot of misses in melee. Every miss will trigger Offensive Parry. Offensive Parry causes daze on hit which not only leads to severe underpenetration from enemies but also immediately unlocks the draining for Steel Garrote. Such an Arcane Knight can tank and dish out melee damage while healing and casting at the same time. The auto-healing part is good to counter Blood Sacrifice. It's also not correct that a Paladin can't enhance casting capabilities: he can raise ACC with Zealous Focus (although I think Exalted Endurance is better) but nore importantly he can add a 10% burning lash to all his damaging spells via Eternal Devotion which works with spells as well. Inspired Beacon can be used to increase some high-dmg spells like Piercing Burst for example. Such an Arcane Knight is hard to kill (since he's draining health while parrying) and can cast non-stop at the same time. With Inspired Beacon his parries also do significant damage. Here's a high-level Steel Garrote/Bloodmage: HOWEVER: While Offensive Parry is very good in RTwP mode it is bad in Turn Based mode. That's because in Turn Based mode there's only a very little chance to miss. And Offensive parry only triggers on misses. But you can play a Steel Garrote with other weapon setups - for example use the grimoire switching trick to keep Concehaut's Draining Touch for the whole fight and use it with a shield. It will drain health by itself but because it also weakens it will also unlock the Stell Garrote's draining: double drain and very high dmg. Even better if instead of a shield you use a club + modal which lowers Will by 25. That's because Draining Touch targets WIll and not Deflection. You can take Scion of Flame and Spirit of Decay and get +2 PEN for Flames of Devotion if used with Draining Touch and raise your ACC with FoD by 10 with Rig of Focused Flames. So if your club hits and lowers Will by 25, then you cast a Miasma and lower it further by 40 and then use Draining TOuch you attsck with the equivalent of +85 accuracy which leads to a lot of crits. You could also use Spirit Lance - but that's indeed better with a Battlemage, for example Devoted/Bloodmage or so. Mostly because of Clear Out + Spirit Lance.

There is great synergy in a steel garrote/bloodmage build. While it is probably one of the best builds for solo runs, you can have fun with it in a party too. I'd recommend that you focus on spells that cause afflictions, such as Chill Fog; you cast spells, and then strike out in melee to the afflicted foes, and drain health from them. It's a lot of fun. Generally I'd recommend that you mainly take Paladin talents, since you can get all the spells you need from grimoires. You can buff up at the start of battle with Llengrath's Martial Masteries and then switch to other grimoires, like Ironclasped, as needed. You can also cast Concelhaut's Draining Touch from a grimoire, and then immediately switch grimoires. If you do this, you can attack with Concelhaut's Draining Touch for the rest of the battle, weakening them and draining health from them. It's a fun build, if not the most optimal, DPS wise, for party play. But there is great synergy between the two classes. Steel garrote compensates for the weaknesses of the bloodmage, through boosted defenses and constant healing. Also, Flames of Devotion (FoD) is one of the best attack skills, since it scales nicely as you gain power levels, and can be also boosted by items or pets that give you bonuses to fire abilities, like Otto star cat, Magran's favor and Sun & Moon. Or you can go with two handed weapons, and use Weapons like the Whispers of the Endless Paths, which when upgraded will retaliate when missed and daze the opponent, setting them up for health draining, And later you can summon Citzal's Lance. Here it's great to cast Pull of Eora, web & chill fog on a group of foes, and then hit them FoD strikes that will devastate them and heal you massively. One of my biggest quandaries with this build is whether it's best to go the dual wield or two-handed route. The latter seems much stronger with FoD, since it's a full attack, but once you get Citzal's you'll want to stick with two-handed. Be prepared for an evil play through. You'll need to avoid the "nice" dialogue options to maximize the Deep Faith defensive bonus.

Yeaaaaa. I'm a few weeks into teaching through Google Meets, and it's pretty much the worst experience ever. I have 30+ kids in a grid, most with the camera off, and I'm trying to figure out how to teach anything that way. It's horrible. At least I have a relationship with these kids though, I can't imagine starting a brand new year with kids I don't know and have expectations for already.

Ah, then it's ok. -6 or -7 seem fine.

Maybe, maybe. I don't know that it'd necessarily be making the cultural isolation problem worse if they would be better able to become more fluent in Swedish and being easier for native Swedes to communicate with and thus according to the study being able to get a better paid job so that they can support themselves. Yes? We're talking about possibly making it easier for them to adapt, not adapting to their ways.

No. This is

If you move to a different country you should adapt not the other way around. But, I get it, this is the anti West prejudice showing usually from Western peons. This reminds me of a westerner who gets int trouble with some bogus law in some 3d world **** hole. The westerner is blamed for not knowing better and not following the law as written. But, when a foreigner comes to the West and runs afoul of the law (usually but not always more legit) the West is blamed for not adapting the law to suit the newcomer. Western citizens are told to follow the law no matter what. Others are often given a pass. Talk about bigotry and law expectations.

There's no single answer since all 3 games in the series are fairly different from one another. Loot 'em up (Diablo-esque) would be the label I would go with if forced to at gunpoint, but it doesn't really fit for any of the 3 games.

I would say so, the evidence they have supports it. And yeah, I do think it'd be a good idea to use their native language to help them get a proper career and learn Swedish. Overall though, I think that we'd have an overall better successrate if we were to actually distribute people throughout the country and not dump them all in the same areas in Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm. Humans are tribal and like hanging out with "out own people", so if you put them all in the same general areas they have no reason to take any steps towards integration and instead become more insular. Municipalities should be penalized for in any way refusing to accept immigrants.

Funny that you mentioned those, because you could actually import characters from both of those games. It is pretty much a German clone of those, but a bretty atmospheric one on A500's with 1megs RAM due to the environmental audio (wind, thunder, owls at night,...).

Well, I wouldn't go that far. Flanked did stack with everything in PoE1 for some reasons (it was the only status to do so), but I think it's may be complicated to do for PoE2. Flanked should either always stack or never stack IMHO. I don't really care about which one. Yes, I know, but is there any other Passive Ability that apply Flanked ? Or is an "actual Flanking" is considered as a passive source of flanking ? If Persistent Distraction is the only exception, I would tend to remove flanking from it to clarify the rules. I guess it might not be what you want. There are plenty of case of "different causes" that do not stack.

lololol probably the worst i've ever felt in an RPG was in Fallout New Vegas - I created a character that picked up a perk that let you terrify NPCs in dialogue, and also one that let you eat corpses. I figured I was some sort of psychopathic maniac. Early on, after I used the terrify option on some random innocent stranger, and then shot him, and then ate his body, I felt so bad about that I abandoned that playthrough.

On our weekly call they ae discussing a study to eliminate our office at Ft. Pillow and make us all virtual. It turns out there has been an improvement in productivity since the office closed. Small wonder. Most of these guys just chit-chat all day long.

Ah yes, I should get back to Mordheim too. The drawback of already WFH fulltime prior to this pandemic is that it didn't get me any extra free time Hmm, I think you stopped playing around the time the Warmaker's dungeon was released, so off the top of my head: Warmaker's Sanctum The brewery dungeon (haven't done that one myself yet) Thrall rework (they level up now, old thralls are stuck though) Combat rework (worse for single player, imho, but ymmv) Mounts & mounted combat were added New pets (like Yetis etc) bunch of new legendary weapons and crafting tools and new bosses A lot of the major enemy bases were also overhauled, the two that come to mind are the two big pirate bases (the ship and the coastal one) Various bugfixes and stuff and a few DLC (but that's mostly armor and building pieces). They also added some references to YouTubers (eg. Neebs gaming)

Same.

Is this realistic? I mean everybody keeps on doing console ports, so they must be some profitable. But did they really lift things to another level for Pillars Of Eternity before? As to the exact sales, the 110k estimate came forward roughly half a year past release. Pillars 1 had shipped ~500k in the first 7 months. We're now two years after the release of Deadfire, so some higher Steamspy estimates may naturally make some sense, in particular after several discounts. In Josh Sawyer's post mortem from June 2019 he talked about that Things had "worked out pretty well anyway." Suggesting that things in the end hadn't been a total desaster. In the context of that line he may have still meant something else rather than sales though. One thing is for sure, before they haven't analyzed why there was such a drop between PoE1 and 2, they may not move Forward with a possible 3rd game. Either that, or they wait until BG3 hits and becomes like the hottest thing, upon which they take an even closer look at the Larian approach.

As I said I didn't dive into it. We can never know the figures unless somebody confirms them. In the end it doesn't really matter how many copies were sold. You could give away 500k copies for free and gain nothing. The game has to make money. And I think there's no doubt that it didn't perform well since that was indeed confirmed several times. As to the question "why?": even Josh and Obsidian are unsure why - with all the telemetry and tools they have. They can only speculate as we do. But maybe the console sales will lift it into realms where another sequel would make sense. Also because of game pass etc. Let's hope so.

We're up to.. "Ah yes, most certainly. When I mentioned we could put them on the priority list for PPE, they were so willing it was almost pathetic." or maybe "Why contain it? Let it spill over into the schools and churches. Let the bodies pile up in the streets. In the end, they'll beg us to save them." ..in the Deus Ex opening cinematic, I think. Which is probably closer to documentary than satire at this point, about the only thing he seems to be doing at the moment is stealing everyone else's PPE orders for some sort of massive federal stockpile.

But that's not a Mordheim pic.

It probably goes without saying but don't forget the restored content mod. And, eh, skip the droid planet. Really. Just... don't bother.

Installing KOTOR2 for the first time in over a decade

Replaying Icewind Dale with imported characters who already finished the game. Hilarious how many undead the cleric blew up in Kresslack tomb

Been playing Generation Zero for a while now. I know, I know, the game was blasted by reviewers and players for being repetitive, empty and dull. And it kinda is. But I bought it on the recommendation of one of my cousins and it didn't click for me for a year or so (I only tried it a handful of times). But recently I decided to start it up again and it has grown on me. It's still repetitive and empty, but for some reason I'm having fun with it. It's more a walking simulator than a shooter though. Anyhow, I just thought the views in this game can be kinda pretty. It's a good representation of Sweden in the eighties.

Jason Statham confirmed for a movie "loosely based on" the Saints Row franchise, pre-production slated for 2022.

^Still looks better than Mass Effect 3 or Andromeda.

A whole week without posting Rammstein videos!