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I do not see me doing all that much gaming over the next week, so may as well start looking back at the year now. Obviously the big disappointment was Necromunda. It looks pretty, but not only did they make design choices that went against what the game should be, it was and is a buggy mess with possibly the worst AI in computer gaming history. It is amazing how they managed this. If they had simply reskinned Mordheim, a lot of people would have been happy. The fact that Rogue Factor is now a subsidiary of Cyanide and Cyanide got sold, so Focus didn't care anymore for this title, didn't help. Immortal Realms: Vampire War was another disappointment. One of the "strange" things is that from beta to release, nothing seems to have changed. They called it a beta, but in reality it was a "Play bits of the game as we finish them". Troy - A Total War Saga on the other hand was a very pleasant surprise. It is the first Total War game I ever finished. It treated the mythical setting well and follows the "historical" events while giving players freedom to do as they please. I would call it one of my top purchases of the last couple of years, but it was free. Age of Wonders: Planetfall - Star Kings DLC was also better than I feared. The Empire mode makes skirmish games more involved and may have come a bit as a result of the very negative feedback the single player campaign got. It has its issues - the AI has real trouble handling some of the random planet traits and can become non functional city states. But it is a step in the right direction. Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark 's DLC was also great. The game becomes a little grindy towards the end, but I am glad I got it from the Giveaway thread and people who passed it by were silly Phoenix Point's Year One edition was on the other hand rather meh. It improved a lot over what had been released before, but all of that they could have done a year earlier if they had simply listened to Backer Build feedback. And the DLC so far is pretty bad. Especially the Legacy of the Ancients one is so grindy, it makes asian MMOs feel casual (yeah, a bit of hyperbole, but imagine you'd play XCOM, and to gather resources you'd have to keep the Avenger hovering over the resource site to pick up alien DNA one unit per hour and you needed 150 units for one weapon). It also means I feel that the rest of the DLCs will simply bloat the game and not make it more interesting or fun. Chimera Squad on the other hand I absolutely loved. Well, not some of the characters and their banter, which I found annoying. But the gameplay and direction the game took were very enjoyable and I did finish it three times to explore everything the story had to offer and try different squat compositions. I am looking forward to FiraXCOM3. The best writing this year was easily Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart of the Forest. It would have been great if it was longer and the end felt a bit rushed. On the other hand, the whole story makes sense and is the best introduction to the world of darkness I have seen in a game.

I live alone these days. But I always try to make Christmas something different, something special. Even if it’s just for the critters. My first wife and I made stockings for all of our puppies. I still have three of them and put them up with a little tree every year. Desiree and Tommy of course have been gone for several years. But I still put them up with Sunny’s. I put presents in hers. She will get some scrambled eggs and steak strips added to her breakfast Christmas morning. Me too LOL. I bought the chickens a big bag of Happy Hen dried mealworms. You should see how they go nuts for that! They may not know the difference from Christmas Day and any other but it makes me happy to see them happy. The one thing I miss both this year Thanksgiving and Christmas is dinner at the VFW. A lot of the guys came and brought their families and it was usually a big cheerful party. Obviously we didn’t do that this year. Maybe next. When my first divorce was done I had a really bad time dealing with it. I was extremely depressed, terribly lonely, and completely and totally broke financially speaking. I hate to admit it but there were times during those days I started to wonder if the World would not be better off if I were not in it. For me those feelings amplified between Thanksgiving and Christmas. But there are always good reasons to go on and every low is followed by a high later. You just have to focus on the positive things in your life. And there’s always something in everyone’s life that’s a positive.

Guys, help me, I loaded up Cyberpunk for the first time since the last patch, and something is horribly wrong! ....actually, I watched/lol'd at this video (the creator's narration was hilarious imo), then download his "game." You can actually play it, kind of. I mean, it's a total joke, right, yet it's still crazy what people can do in so short a time these days.

https://www.gog.com/game/brigador_deluxe_edition Brigador Deluxe giveaway, not a terrible game is sort of fun to blow stuff up but gets old quickly, so well worth nothing.

That reminds me, there's a hidden rollercoaster mission in Pacifica.

I started over after about 80 hours. Just going around and clearing everything I can find again and having a blast doing it. I've already found a few things that I missed the first time through.

Never really cared much for Christmas to be honest. Last time I truly celebrated it was when I was 18, last winter before moving out and into my own place. Sort of saying goodbye to a part of my life back then I guess. I have on rare occasion felt compelled to join friends for the Christmas celebrations, but honestly, it was because I couldn't find a plausible way of weaseling out The only thing I've associated with Christmas the last 35 (give or take a year) is... yay! Days off from work (or uni, or whatever). New Years eve is where it happens and where I go out and get get drunk. So not much chance of Christmas blues here. A doctor once said I had bipolar disorder, but what does he know? He wasn't a psychiatrist (and the chances of a down period hitting Christmas is probably low anyway) Getting the hang of getting to bed late and sleeping in late in the mornings again, and it's only 4 days since last work day. I can see where it's leading, come mid January, I'll have to start getting day and night turned around again.

This isn't as funny in a laugh out loud way as Valhalleluja or And Then I Noticed That She Was A Gargoyle but it's the most spot on (power/true) metal parody of them so far. Fire in the sky!

When you woke up this morning, I bet you didn't think "I want to see an otter munching on ice cubes." Well, here it is anyway:

Actually, they'll probably make a series about it. Looks like everyone else is getting one anyway.

The benefits of not being an early adopter. I'm taking the same approach with Cyberpunk 2077, I'll buy it when version 1.20 (or higher) releases.

Honestly, as a BYU speech, the link above probably has much more in common with the New Vegas: Honest Hearts DLC than anything Pillars.

Warning, bad language (and more bad language)! That said ... omg. Dunno if this short series will be good or not, but this trailer is gold.

People are really all over the place on tipping when it comes to Instacart. My base pay for a job is about $7, although it can be increased by the weight of items. Then the default tip amount on the app seems to be about $2. Now some people are great, and realize that is really low, and bump it up to $5, $10, or even $20. I get tipping only a couple bucks if you want me to grab a few things and drop them off at your house which is close to the store. But if you want me to scour the store for 20+ items that are all over the place, and then drop them off to your mansion on top of a mountain, maybe bump up that tip a bit? Ain't nobody going to spend an hour+ shopping for you for $9.

Well for him its not "plays" like monk, so well. Its more about his idea of monk in rpg. Just like some people find it strange that INT is not a dump stat for barbarian or MIG not a dump stat for wizard/druid/rogue/priest But it is decent "this game does not screw around on hard" mark.

Pretty much just went through unplayed things in my library Surviving Mars - this was great fun, although I have a game breaking bug they've supposedly fixed. Even playing as lazy I was was rewarding, there's more micro to do to squeeze efficiency out. Arma 3 - enjoyed the SP campaign, although got lazy and cheated my way to resolve the story. Probably a much better experience than people who played on release given the amount of years and patches. Offworld Trading Company - Another one I enjoyed but didn't hold my time too well, but might just be me. Economic warfare is a nice idea and change though. Deponia series - This was so so, hateful protagonist but the story was not too stupid, didn't laugh once in all the three games I played but the puzzles were acceptable. Disco Elysium - Maybe game I had the most fun in all year, didn't think it would catch me but was a happy surprise. Planet Coaster - Not much to say on this, I guess I just find it okay. I have no eye for designing pretty parks so I end up making stuff that meets mission requirements Cyberpunk 2077 - Only new game I've played I believe, found this enjoyable, at least enough to hit an acceptable dollars spent to hours played ratio. Do feel the draw to play it after I've done the story, so the game can't be too bad. Either that or WoW has trained me to like Skinner boxes... Shadowlands - This has been enjoyable, Cyberpunk's sort of jarred my progress through the story so I am a bit behind the curve which is a bit annoying. Torghast was not a good idea on their part, most chore like experience in the whole expansion or the entire game recently.

Just some history bits... "Yule or Jol (pronunciation: Yoh-l) was the time between the Winter Solstice and the "Yule sacrifice" Jolablot. So this celebration was likely to last from the Winter Solstice to the 12th day of January. Generally, this celebration included drinking feasting, songs, games, banquets, and sacrifices for the gods and the ancestor spirits. There are similarities between the Viking Yule Celebration and the modern Christmast celebration The Vikings had their Yule tree which inspired the later Christmas tree. The green tree was often decorated with small statues of their Norse gods, food, and clothes. They attempted to call for the spirit of the forests." Merry Yuletide

Sadly I lack the intelligence to properly appreciate Rick and Morty.

On another note did anybody watch the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn last night? I tried to get a picture of it through binoculars. Didn’t turn out so well. Was not as bright as I was expecting it to be.

For a while I thought the problem might be in the fact that English is not his first language. But actually, this does not appear to be the case: English is his first language, he's just really bad at it. I could be wrong, of course, but the errors he keeps making don't look like the kind of errors people make in their second or third languages. (English is not my first language, either, so I'm willing to be quite forgiving as long as people get their point across, but when someone's being as obnoxious as this person constantly is, it doesn't actually provoke kindness in me.)

Played Bard's Tale 4 over the summer. Great game, though buggy and it has no replay value.

I was interested in the crafting of epic loot until I realized the potential special stats on such crafts would be ... random based. I get enough of that from Diablo2, Diablo-likes and Borderlands loot. Yes I'm sure you find as drops or treasure some nice gear (also random stats I think) without having to craft. I'm just saying, as a mechanic, randomized crafting stats is something I'm burnt out on. Edit: possibly because I get too "ocd" and save-scummy re: trying to get what I want - also, hope I didn't say that before. I'm starting to lose track of what I've said where. ...btw, I haven't ever actually tried, because I largely was using the bat and hardly used any ammo, but can you craft more ammo and thus carry more than the seeming limit? Not necessarily have more available in reload-stack, per se, but at least have it on you so when one "box" runs out, it'll use the next one? Because it seemed if my ammo is full, when I picked up ammo loot, it would disappear/pick up but nothing was added to inventory.

Parody metal is better than metal these days

2020 d20

Been home from work for two weeks because of my back, but I've got that sorted out. Though I've gotten sniffles and a cough, so I had to see a doctor to get sick leave. So now I'm in quarantine for a week. Yay. Oh, shineypunk!

Of course: Carnage is really nice with weapons that proc something on hit or crit. But still: the Barb is a good pick if you want to use Novice's Suffering to begin with. Until lvl 10 (without Accurate Carnage) the accuracy of a Barb is not good compared to other martial classes like Rogue, Fighter, Monk and Ranger - and therefore Novice's Suffering works quite well for him - on top come attack speed buffs like Frenzy and Bloodlust that work very well with NS - as well as the hgith MIG of Greater Frenzy (one of the few cases where I would pick Greater Frenzy). Soul Whip is an additive dmg bonus like Sneak Attack. Therefore Cipher is not an obvious pick for Novice's Suffering. I did a buildwith Novice's Suffering on ciphers and it works, but it's more like a theme-build that tries to emulate a cipher/monk multiclass.

BBC - How should you talk to friends and relatives who believe in Conspiracy Theories

You always know they're out there. The difference is the 'net makes us more aware of it/shoves it in our face. I did like Rutger Hauer. To me he was the best thing about that movie.

@Ethics Gradient

Yes, there are several builds that are good with Novice's Suffering. The weird mechanics of those "special fists" make it so: You will keep the teeny-weeny base damage of your fists (5-8 iirc). But you will gain a huge flat dmg bonus on top. This flat dmg bonus doesn't get influenced by any dmg modifications except Might. Since that flat damage bonus is quite big the impact that might has is substantial. That means that grazes, hits and crits will nearly do the same damage which makes this weapon dish out very consistent damage. Since crits will not do a lot of additional damage and grazes will not do a lot less it's possible to have good dmg output even with rel. bad accuracy. It also means that additive dmg bonuses like Sneak Attack and so on don't so that much because they only get applied to the teeny fists damage, not the flat bonus dmg. Barb is indeed a good pick because: first of all he has access to higher MIG (Frenzy/Greater Frenzy) and also because his starting base ACC and starting Carnage accuracy are both rel. bad. Carnage's ACC does scale with level but it will take you 10 levels (without Accurate Carnage) to reach the Barb's base accuracy which isn't too great to begin with. Another good pick is Priest (who would have guessed?): a Priest can reach very high MIG with Minor Avatar/Champion's Boon + Aggrandizing Radiance (stacks with everything). So besides casting his usual stuff he can also run around and punch enemies really hard. A Chanter can use Mith Fyr to gain a burning lash for his fists. Lashes are multiplicative dmg bonuses and do work with all the damage you roll (including the flat bonus) so that's good, too. They also can raise their (and others') MIG via invocation. Basically all builds that can reach high MIG but don't want to invest into accuracy and damage bonuses too much are good picks. High attack speed is good for Novice's Suffering, too (e.g. Barb's Frenzy, Ranger's Swift Aim and such). I even did a Wizard with Novice's Suffering focused on touch spells like Jolting Touch, Draining Touch and so on and it worked well enough ("I cast 'Fist'!" ) Unfortunately Novice's Suffering stacking with Druids' Spiritshift weapons was patched out (was too good). But Novice's Suffering can be a good backup for Druids when their Spiritshift runs out and they don't want to put effort into upgrading a normal backup weapon. Another bonus of Novice's Suffering is that it costs nothing to scale it up. This frees up resources for you part members' gear. Enchanting is expensive and needs rare resources sometimes. The cons are: no lash enchantment, no durgan steel.

the duration doesn't change, but you will get reduced healing and such. PL-scaling for duration appears to be fixed at cast.

they absolutely scale to legendary. they do so at the same rate as single-classed. this is firebrand scaling to legendary on a multiclass theurge:

This cracked me up.

I've tried everything, including caching a copy of each used record in memory instead of using pointers just to make sure I'm not running into some weird compiler bug like the one I mentioned a while back where arrays on the client application and on the server behave radically different (same code, different results, I hope someone rots in hell for this one). Nothing seemed to help. Today I finally found out what is going on. The error message I introduced showed up in the log (actually I added three checks, and it was the last one that was triggered). I re-tried the import and noticed that it failed again. And again. And again. It also failed on the client. Meaning no code issue, no weird compiler error like last time, and all of a sudden it was reproducible. I mean, except for the fact that retrying the steps in our test enrivonment worked perfectly. So I did what every sensible developer in this situation does, screw best practices, time to debug in production. Turns out it was a Layer 8 issue. The automated update messages we're getting take up to 10 minutes to arrive (they're batched to go out every 10 minutes on our customer's end). That's plenty of time for someone to see that there's an order that's been picked and packed by the warehouse, sit down and update manually... in a way that doesn't add the necessary reference numbers. Oh boy. So glad this year is over soon.

Oh yeah, everything hurts in the winter. I now understand why old people usually retire to warmer climates.

Ring of Focused Flame gives stacking +10 Acc to fire part of Sun and Moon . Unfortunately single weapon wielding bonus for Acc works only for fire, not the freeze part, as i remember. Bug or implementation method of weapon with double hit roll?

So, that was the season finale of Discovery. Randomly. Guess it was mostly OK as an episode, as always the alt universe bits were a lot more fun than the real universe ones, and the 'cameo' might be a bit polarising, to some. Otherwise, that was a really random stop point for the main plot- presumably due to covid, but it does just stop abruptly. I presume Georgiou is off to a spin off show now but Discovery will miss her being snarky a fair bit given how tepid and inoffensive the rest of the characters are. The one positive I'll unreservedly give to this season is that it has done more much needed fleshing out of minor characters. The other big positive is that it's been a lot more self aware about its flaws and weaknesses; not an unreserved positive because it would be better if it actually addressed those flaws a bit better rather than just acknowledging that they're there. But, they're doing a decent job of leaving it ambiguous whether Admiral Beard/ Starfleet already knows what the story is with the Kiev/ Burn or not, and had some of the Significant Looks in the alt universe actually end up being Insignificant Looks instead which is more nuanced than it has been. OTOH, the episode plots are still bullet points far too often strung together incoherently and inconsistently and they are still awful at conveying any sort of real emotion, though at least thsi episode's dose of over long schmaltz was for a major character. Somewhat relevant to that, I did rather like that they brought back Aeryom (?) in the alt universe (minus cyborg suit), only to near immediately and unceremoniously kill her off again... Overall- not bad enough for me to drop it, but certainly not enough improvement there to get any sort of recommendation.

Text reads: "If you EVER think Anthony Head is anything less than an angel then you’d best remember that I have always been a huge fan of his and we’ve always had a little contact over the years and he heard I’d come out as Trans and was having a hard time and that I was kind of sad that the photos I had from conventions with him were of me with long hair and no binder and they were all signed to “Sarah” and so he invited me to spend the day with him at his farm and he picked me up from the station and we just hung out and had lunch and he insisted on paying and took loads of photos and had them printed on photo paper the same day so he could sign them to Jay, along with other photos of him as Giles and Uther and he literally spent five hours chatting with me and got all of the pronoun stuff right every time and then he dropped me off at the station, gave me a final massive hug, waved me through the ticket barrier and insisted I message him when I got home so he knew I got back safe."

Hello That's a very good topic here, and if you don't mind, I'd like to add somes ideas: New ressources: Cricket/grasshopper leg Sand and glass Base building: Columns and archs Glass (for windows) Paved road (2 pebblets + 2 pieces of clay) Utilities: windmill (used to power some devices, like the spinning wheel, would need weed stem and clovers) spider web trap (a large piece of spider web, used to catch gnats, mosquitoes...) boat (weed stem (like...a lot) + clovers) sailboard (acorn shell + weed stem + clovers) ballista (a non-moving weapon, made with clay, cricket/grasshopper leg, rubber, ant parts, and the ammo would be a spear): very slow to maneuver, but very deadly. wheelbarrow (to move more than 8 stems/planks, would need stems and acorn top) cart (a chest you could move from one location to another, would need the chest components, plus 2 acorn top). bike (made with ant parts, acorn top, crude rope, it would allow you to move faster, but you couldn't carry stems/planks). Gear/weapons: shield (acorn or ladybug part) feather armor (with the crow's feathers). grappling hook stilts (made with grasshopper/cricket legs, would allow you to jump higher, and take less damage from a fall). Decoration bath/shower (acorn shells or pebblets) chandelier targets (if one wants to train with the bow and arrows). It seems we can't use the chairs, one good upgrade would be to allow us to use them. New events: Lens hour: there is a magnifying glass in the garden. Every day, at noon, if you deposit sand (max. 10 pieces of sand) at the right spot, it would transform it into glass. Weather event (rain, wind ...) New food: acorn bread sandwiches (would need oven...) Thank you for reading my post (please be indulgent, english is not my first language). (If this message needs to be moved/deleted, I would understand. I think this could be a good idea to have one topic for all the suggestions). Have a nice day/night everyone.