Leaderboard

I was an avid reader from a very early age. I think I was around 9 when I found parents copy of War and Peace and managed to read and mostly "get" it (not my fave book tho). Tried to read bro's copy of The Silmarillion at maybe age 10-11. Didn't get it at all, didn't finish. My memory says I then tried his copy of The Hobbit and it was too dull so I put it down. His style annoys me. Even reading LotR as an adult, I enjoy the story and some of his craftmanship (if that makes sense), but the writing style ... is annoying. Edit: interestingly, Guy Gavriel Kay helped edit The Silmarillion ... who is the author of one of my fave stand alone fantasy novels (Tigana).

huh? tactician's brilliant has no duration. of all possible broken entry points tactician is arguably the one that cares the least about SoT. blood mage maybe, but because they don't have to worry about brilliant per se (though all classes are helped by brilliant, even chanters, monks, and ciphers) which goes back to the fundamental issue - there's no world--SoT or no--where brilliant is a balanced tier 3 inspiration. you take virtually any setup, and you toss in brilliant and you can quickly make it degenerate. You tone down brilliant and SoT becomes weaker overnight. On the flip side, you get rid of SoT altogether and brilliant is still a stupidly good inspiration except you've eliminated one entry point to degeneracy. Remove SoT and WoD and brilliant is still stupid good, now it's just ciphers and tacticians who can exploit it.

I do not understand why they are worried. EA will surely turn the switch off on this game very soon and give them a new game, where they can pay completely from scratch again... Edit: and I have just noticed, we have already an eloquent episode about that petition

I do believe in myself like that, I wake up every morning dreading my inevitable collapse.

So someone I know on Facebook posted this crazy theory. They are a school counselor. Granted they are are a school counselor in Florida, but still...

Salvation of Time does not work with Vanishing Strike cause it has to be applied After the effect and with Vanishing Strikes you're immune to everythibg including AoE beneficial effects. EDIT : but apart for this Boeroer's post is good advice.

What did Elric do again? Explain it to me like you would do to a five-year-old. I really liked that Brillant "fix" @Noqn suggested: Brilliant gives more spell uses like Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry. Could be even +2 instead of +1 for all I care. And make Blood Sacrifice cap at x per encounter (maybe 3... or up to 5?), but let it give back +1 spell uses for all tiers simultaniously instead of that random regain we have atm.

Its never been officially released - it was produced so the rights owner so he could keep the rights. He bought the film back from Corman when it was finished and sat on it (supposedly after he made a deal with FOX to make Fantastic Four films, Avi Arad had the prints destroyed, but they've been circulating in bootleg circles for years so that story may be apocryphal).

Removing resource regen is a lazy solution. (That would also turn part of the game into a consumable spamfest, at least for solo play, see poe1) I really like the SoT change @Elric Galad made, if WoD got something similar, infinite loops would be gone.

just to add on to what boeroer says - all this really says is that blood mage is an obscene class. i should've noted it instead of trickster in my older post. let's not forget that tactician already has what i consider a killer ability - successfully interrupting an enemy restores a fighter resource. with mule kick you can literally interrupt-lock enemies for the entire fight - with aoe interrupts it gets even better. the brilliant buff being as good as it is distorts tactician gameplay to maximize that aspect of the tactician. if brilliant gets significantly weaker, then managing flanked status still becomes important so that you're not just constantly shaken and confused, and it becomes a nice buff (still particularly in caster multiclass) if you manage it, but most importantly it no longer makes making tactician all about that brilliant buff. in addition to brilliant being extremely good - as argued extensively here - i think it's understated just how unbalanced it is. for a martial class, a top-level ability might cost 4 resources. it would take 24 seconds of brilliance to get that high level ability back. a caster can get a level 7-9 spell back in 6 seconds. i think it would actually help a lot if brilliance actually had to account for this somehow. if a caster had to wait 24 seconds to get back a powerful high level spell, that would go a long way to balancing brilliance on its own. but that's well past what can be done with modding i assume.

One I always find myself resharing when I stumble across it online... This is what Arnold Schwarzenegger looked like as he was standing in between Wilt Chamberlain and Andre the Giant in 1983 on the set of Conan the Destroyer.

Mine is "Minmax Anal Fools"

Fighter/Ranger can be neat with Karabörü. Due to the Ranger's high ACC and the Fighter's Disciplined Strikes you can crit frequently which can trigger a cone-shaped AoE attack from Karabörü. Combine with Clear Out! There's also the Great Sword "Effort" which has a raw DoT lash which unlocks Predator's Sense automatically like in PoE. Whispers of the Endless Paths can be good if you combine its Offensive Parry (riposte 100% on enemies' melee misses) with Stalker (+5 deflection, +1 AR), high RES, deflection gear (bracers and cloak), Vigorous Defense, Conquerer Stance, Superior Deflection and Beast's Claw. The cone attack of the sword can get you multiple stacks of Beast's Claw per attack and the increased defenses make it easier to parry (or with other words: let enemies miss).

this isn't a solution, it's a hack. there's no "systematic" rule about why you should be limited to certain casts except under certain game rules. solo mode shouldn't get any special "breaks" just because you're playing solo - solo should just be the same game except, well, solo. solo's supposed to be hard, and as a party-based game there's no real reason to guarantee that solo is infeasible, frankly. i am honestly perplexed and don't get why for others who want to tone down infinite combos there's such a resistance in recognizing that the inspiration that regenerates resources is the problem here. are people just hooked on using brilliant's resource regen and still want it, even if one recognizes that it's broken? edit: brilliant has been broken from day 1 way before anyone discoveed any interactions with other effects. when the developers removed it from the chanter invocation but didn't change brilliant itself, it seemed like they made the same error that some people here are making. it wasn't any related ability that was the problem, it's brilliant itself. only very late did OBS seem to realize just how stupid brilliant was, because weyc's robe (by the time FS came around, near end of development cycle) grants an extremely short brilliant buff - only with super high intellect will you get more than 1 resource regened out of it. but short durations are no protection in a world of WoD and SoT. The only really meaningful solution is to nerf brilliant. Then you could balance brilliant on par with other tier 3 inspirations. put another way - if the only way--in a vacuum--to balance a brilliant effect is to give it an extremely short duration but you can give a much longer duration to swift or energized or robust, it's brilliance that is the problem.

And then Bruce Dickinson screamed at the end.

And for your 90's pop culture references...

By the way: "Sexual Archetype Force" is the name of my new Manowar coverband.

Only Brilliant is affected! I removed the AddResource parameter from INS_Brilliant_SE_AddResources and added references to individual Status Effects for each class. The other classes get their Resource per tick as usual. Brilliant.zip

This is still the best version:

Just you wait 'til Old Engrim comes knocking at your door!

I played single class Trickster Rogue through to mid-late game with the regular companions. A few levels in it becomes quite strong, once you are able to cast some useful spells. The sneak attack scales so damage is good. The issue I had with Trickster was spending too much Guile on non-offensive abilities and some redundancy between MC and Aloth, who I usually like to take along in wizard role. My preferred playstyle in melee role is more suited to barb/fighter/monk but single class trickster offers decent damage, crowd control and has some tricks to help survivability. I ended up playing it a bit like a wizard with sneak attack.

That's because it was never released. It got made so the company could keep the rights to make a FF4 film in the future. Of course, no-one told any of the cast that that was what was happening so they all expected the film to actually go to cinema. It became one of those mythical beasts decades before the Marvel Universe became a thing. I think it finally slipped through the cracks and got a late vhs release. Damn, now my memory is fuzzy on exactly what happened with it.

I do skip one or two or even all DLCs in a playthrough from time to time - once I hit lvl 20 the urge to go further may evaporate because I have proven to myself that character idea X works well - and that's it. So yeah: why not leave them out? I mean if one has already played them before and knows the content there's no big loss (unless you desperately want to use a certain item from the DLCs).

^ I couldn't watch all of Aquaman. Or maybe I just FFWD through most of it. Mostly I just kept laughing at it but there were some decent bits and effects. :D I finally got to see the last Star Wars sequel movie tonight. At this point I don't care at all about any "ruining of Star Wars" but it just wasn't a very good film. Way too many chrs, stuff that goes nowhere, stuff that comes out of the blue, contrived coincidences. That said, Rey and Ren still come out as the best things about that trilogy and the only thing that keeps my interest. I was a little ticked off with the ending because of that but oh well, I suppose can't have cake and eat it too.

Those are similar concerns I have for DOS1, actually, which is a bit disappointing. I wouldn't have expected them to drop that items themselves have levels, and as such are that powerful; e.g. a dagger from Level 2-3ish does like twice-ish the damage than its level 1 counterpart. However, perhaps in terms of exploration I would have them expected to do a bit more open. It's the same in DOS1 really, as you can see from These level maps. If damage/items scale this hard, it's no wonder that the game plays like it does. Possible spoiler inside: https://imgur.com/a/uK4zS#KEJXSrE I'd like DOS1 probably better as a tactical combat experience akin to Blackguards. No less as the inventory management and looting is perhaps the most tedious I have ever seen in an RPG, personally -- and this includes pre-Infinity Era 1990s games. Each char has ist own inventory (being a co-op game) plus you are constantly going through all that stuff as your gear eventually breaks or is being outlevelled. I'd like to see a timer of how much minutes an average player spends on the inventory screen and compare that to your average RPG. I'm betting all I have it would go through the roof. Good thing is that they seemed to have improved on their world building, that unlike the first part the freedom isn't as much about how you tackle combat due to reworked dialogue and quest systems -- and honestly, their presentations of it all in terms of "pen&paper like freedom" (which is their end goal) are amazing. All that praise they've received for the 2nd game in particular has to come from somewhere, which why I'm still interested (and have serious hopes for BG3). DOS1 was a make or break game developed on a budget; on BG3 they can go all-in now (plus have to stick to WOTC's rules).

I think we can quickly agree, Nato is a relic of the past. Like all obsolete things, it's struggling with it's own identity crisis. Europe would be better off with their own military superstructure. Would also mean getting Turkey out of the club. Edit: Since Australia is already part of the Eurovision Song Contest, I can't see why they couldn't join a European military alliance too

I've just deleted some posts. If you can't post without calling someone an idiot, or being generally uncivil then you are doing it wrong.

It's only annoying You because its more dialogue options than You'd have in real life or there is a catch somewhere? Sorry couldn't help myself :D:D

We shouldn't go down this path - not fixing one broken thing because it would highlight other flaws But despite the above I think it should be prio to fix mechanics that are usable for the whole game and worry about optional content for 0.1% of playerbase afterwards. (Not to mentiont that if You have content for 0.1% of playerbase then its already some sort of fail itself but I'm not sure about this one, could we wrong) I got a feeling tho that a lot of us here focus on solo aspect of the game despite that Deadfire was designed and balanced for party play. In that regard I think we shouldn't really defend mechanics that open up / allow solo play as it simply wasn't the goal, like, ever. Mega bosses aren't really that big of a deal without broken resource regen / immortality combos if you play as party (as the game was designed to be played). I'd get rid of whole resource regen mechanics what so ever and instead implement more items that give +X casts of spells of lvl X or range of X-Y and make it possible to change items in fight triggering recovery, this way you'd need to actually have knowledge about game and equip accordingly to have enough resources that you know you need for the fight and think about tradeoff aka "Do I rather equip items that give me few more SoT uses or I need to keep my immunity X ring - heck lets go for few more SoT and hope for reflex save this time". -As for brilliant I'd change it into some pure powerful casting steroid -for bloodmage i'd change his active to make % spell damage heal for duration -wall of draining - i'd stick to its name and steal buffs from enemy (probably longer intervals to make it useful) / drain hp / stats

Well, in both PoE1 and PoE2 DLCs make for some of the finest content in the game, from both a narrative and gameplay perspective so those are the parts I am usually looking forward to the most. I do agree that DLC in PoE1 doesn't integrate well, though I am shocked how it can be compared negatively to Endless Paths - I found the latter to be too lengthy and too padded mostly consisting of the same encounters you would fight on the surface. White March on the other hand, has varied enviroments, best social hub in the entire game, stellar atmosphere, mostly interesting encounters and some of the best dungeons in the game - Durgan Battery has perhaps a bit too many samey encounters but the Abbey of the Fallen Moon still stands as my favourite bit in the whole series. I would actually wish for White March to be stand alone, as I would happily replay it every once in a while - more so then the base game. I am also pretty sure WM adds stuff level wise. no? A pretty big incentive to keep it if you ask me. DLCs in Deadfire are well integrated. They have proper hooks in the main story and they all contribute to the overall picture. They all add necessary value to the playthrough to me - BoW fleshes out Eothas' motivations and sets up for the events at the end of the game, SSS explains more about Gods, and delivers some challenging encounters to put my character to a test, and FS is just a really really fun late game dungeon - something the game needed IMO. Not to mention the bunch of cool items which would be lost if the DLCs were removed. That said, I don't do back-to-back playthrough. I did a total of three playthroughs and did DLCs for all of them (aside from BoW for my 2nd playthrough as it got bugged). I am having this itch to install "Deadly Deadfire" and do another playthrough, but I would prefer to be able to run the game better performance wise for that.

Hmm...there should be a water bottle holder that looks like a holster. That might help curtail this stuff. I could also have a tire pump that looks like a shotgun hanging off my bike. This might be an untapped market.

Pike was a bright spot in Disco but I think they've said that it's going to be be some of the same Picard and STD writers so I can't say that I'm looking forward to it in any way. I'm probably just done with Trek now or at least until it changes hands again, Fek'lhr willing.

Some people are just ****. Crotch rockets and douche cars as coping mechanisms for mid life crises just tend to accentuate that. I've always been told to run against traffic if possible, though. And we won't get automated cars until the factories are running again, just saying...

Yes. It is wrong. I mean what were you thinking? It's obviously wrong... so so wrong... There are no transgender characters in Deadfire. Did you confuse "bisexual" and "transgender"? There's an early option to tell him that you are not interested. Pick it and he will stop to hit on you immediately and will never try again. Maybe there was too much curiosity on your part so you missed it? Lets do a test: Let's imagine Tekehu was a pretty girl, let's name her Brunhilde. Brunhilde: "Hey ekt0! Are you dating anyone?" etk0: "Uh yes, I'm dating Peggy from accounting." Brunhilde: "Oh too bad - I wish I had met you earlier, tehehe." *wink-wink" Would you imply that this is sexual harassment? If your answer is "no" then you are applying double standards. If your answer is "yes" then I'm asking myself how you want to achieve any sexual intercourse with another person without the help of Tinder... in addition maybe have a talk to somebody who actually got harassed - to put things in proper perpective. PS: I know: don't feed the troll. But I can't help it: I will take every opportunity to post some gifs of The Rock.

This phenomenon is an extremely important factor for both success and lack of it. It's unfortunate and unfair, but there's essentially nothing you can do about it. If something starts selling well, its sales tend to increase, and there's even a point of critical mass somewhere in the sense that once something is successful enough, the fact of its success alone is enough to make it even more successful (in popular music, think of Dark Side of the Moon or Metallica's so-called black album, both of which have had an incredibly long tail and just continue to sell and sell and sell). Conversely, if something fails to get going, sales-wise, it is extremely difficult to get the circle going.

I proposed to remove the resource replenishment of Brilliant quite early and instead simply raise the PL bonus. Acute has +1, Brilliant could have get +3. Or increase AoE and durations by 50% (without any further INT bonus). Anything that's not obviously destroying the resource economy. I thought they got it when they started to nerf the Chanter invocation which originally applied Brilliant and now only adds +1 resources instantly (can't prolong that) - but Ancestor's Memory and other sources of Brilliant are still in, so...

Mods are so prevalent as loot I never saw the need to buy any. I do agree that fighting mobs at or slightly above the level you find them is more rewarding then coming back when you are way overpowered to handle them.

I'd sooner have them reuse the Outer Worlds engine to make Descent to Undermountain 2.

I don't agree with some of your opinions (I love Tekehu and hate Maia), but your take on Aloth is spot on. He's accompanied the Watcher in both 1 and 2 in the most sordid scenes of violence and squalor, he's traveled to many places, suffered physical and psychological abuse, faced the reality of having been involved in something destructive, lost control of his own body on many occasions, lived a lie more than once, experienced many things and read more, and yet he's a whiny, shallow wussy bitching about other companions' proximity in quarters. Even if someone was like that initially, the many baptisms of dirt and horror would eventually change them. I'm probably going to regret this, but here goes: My dad was a drunken abuser who screamed and beat at me a lot when I was a little kid, much like Aloth. I was also neuro-atypical (Aspergers) attending nice WASP schools, and was pushed to hide it and "pass" as "normal" by my overbearing but distant mom and sister, much like how Aloth has an atypical soul and was pushed to hide it to pass as normal so he'd have a good future. (Though his case was obviously more extreme than mine.) I was also rebuked a lot over every little mistake, was bullied mercilessly for years, I'm also just naturally a quiet, solitary introvert. And I can say from experience that childhood traumas don't just go away after a while. And studies have confirmed that it's common for adults who were abused as kids to become conflict-averse when they're older. It's common for kids who felt they had little control growing up (like abusive or troubled homes) try to gain control in some aspect of their lives when they're older. My high school teachers confirmed when I had to leave crying from a rowdy, chaotic classroom that it's common for kids from abusive or unstable households to feel anxious or fearful in chaotic environments when they're older. PoE1 implies, and the Aloth short story confirms, that Aloth often felt like he had little to no control over his life growing up. Obviously when he was a kid he felt helpless and powerless before his father's explosive temper and savage beatings. And having his thoughts invaded and his body usurped by Iselmyr all the time made him feel like he wasn't even in control of his own body. So he tried to make up for this by exerting as much control as he could over himself, his conduct, his dress, and his immediate environment. (As an aside, tbh it always pisses me off how Iselmyr and Eder mock Aloth for being a "fussy" neat freak because it's obviously a coping mechanism from his horrific childhood abuse. If his dad beat him half to death over something as minor as less than perfect grades, you could bet your buttons he probably also knocked him sideways for things like tracking mud in the house, or leaving his shirt lying on the floor. No wonder he tries to stay quiet and out of the way.) And you can argue that Aloth should "logically" understand that since he's been through Hell and back and lived to tell about it, obviously he should realize how strong he is and get over his childhood abuse, right? Hollywood Psychology has taught us that if you've been in a bad situation before, you should just confront that situation and symbolically defeat it. You were bullied? Just fight the bully in that Third Act fight and everything's better! You had an abusive parent or guardian? Just stand up to your abuser and tell them "I'm not afraid of you anymore" and boom! Trauma cured! Sexual trauma? Just find The Right Man and have mind-blowing sex, and all that sexual trauma will be gone. Got beaten black and blue growing up? Just become a strong wizard and defeat dragons, monsters, and undead, and you'll feel confident and in control of your life! But it rarely, if ever, works that way. Most childhood scars and traumas stay with you no matter how much time has passed, or no matter how much you know "logically" that that same situation doesn't apply anymore. People who've experienced what it's like to be truly hungry and live to tell about it often end up being even more food-obsessed or food-hoarding when they're older than people who've never been hungry a day in their lives. People who were told they're ugly and worthless when they were young can still think they're ugly when they're older, even if they become world-famous models with their faces in several high fashion magazines. People who were told they're stupid and worthless when they were young can still think of themselves as unintelligent even if they get a PhD, become respected voices at academic or scientific fields, and/or teach at top universities. And likewise, a child beaten senseless during their early years can still feel nervous entering a fight, or hesitant to pick a fight with people who can hit hard; no matter how powerful a wizard or spellblade they becomes. Part of Aloth will always be that scared little boy cowering before his father's savage blows. To be honest, I think it's a miracle he's as brave and functional as he is after all he's been through. I don't begrudge him for being nervous getting into unnecessary fights or being a neat freak. It's just... kind of like Eder's love of animals getting way more attention in Deadfire than it did in PoE1, it's too bad Aloth's fussiness and conflict-aversion got way more attention here. I agree that Aloth's approval system was implemented very poorly. One thing I loved about Aloth in the first game and short story is that, for how fussy and formal he could be, he still had a good heart under it all. Even if he was preoccupied with details, he could still see the bigger picture. Even if he didn't agree with your views on animancy, for example, he could still see the wisdom and logic in your decision to support it (provided you don't just cow him into submission). Even if he did crinkle his nose at uncouth jokes, if you were overall benevolent or aiding Dyrwood (or stopping Thaos/the Hollowborn Crisis, if nothing else), he could see that was more important than his own delicate sensibilities. In this game... He really doesn't come off well with the "death by a thousand paper cuts" approval system. I like that being overall benevolent raises his approval this game since it follows the Aloth I know who cared about people even if he acted aloof and detached. In his short story he felt so guilt-ridden possibly causing his bully to go into a drooling vegetable that he alone (among a group of students who tried to sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened) turned himself in even knowing it could mean losing everything; and was so horrified by what he discovered the Leaden Key was capable of that he confessed his involvement and pledged himself to help you stop them even though he still wasn't sure about animancy, and even though it risked you rejecting him. So it's really too bad that in the devs' desire to implement the "good in theory" aspects of "Aloth values these individual traits (duty, autonomy, whatever), so if you display them he likes you a little more and if you don't he likes you a little less," which adds up over time, can make you lose so much approval so quickly for displaying... ultimately frivolous traits in harmless settings. I'd like to think that while Aloth might feel annoyed and roll his eyes at the Watcher trading colorful jokes with Tekehu, he'd never be so petty or short-sighted as to let that affect his overall opinion of the Watcher. That he can still recognize, you know... "This is my friend who's been kind, loyal, and supportive to me for ages; who stood by mehelped me find direction five years ago when I was scared and alone... who helps the helpless everywhere s/he goes, who CAN be rational and diplomatic when it matters (even if s/he doesn't always, or doesn't feel like it now), who does [whatever], even if I wish s/he didn't encourage Tekehu." But, you know... shallow video game approval system.

Shadowrun: Dragonfall