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Well after 96 hours of play, I completed my first game with a Path of Glory ending. I'm like, dang it, that's pretty much a setup for a continuing future DLC. Still, the route there has some nice emotional moments, the making decisions on the rooftop with Silverhand before deciding just what you're going to do was smoothly done.

Because who doesn't need...

Last week I took my younger cat(Ignus/4yo/male) to the vet. For the first time in my life not only did I see him angry, but also furious. He grabbed my feet and teared up my entire body all the way up to my arm. I had to use both of my hands and my entire weight just to keep him away from me until he eventually let go of me(should have yelled instead of wrestling him). I was shocked! I thought it was his teeth for sure because he also stopped eating the way he used to but surprisingly, the vet told us that his teeth look just fine. I dunno, I was never aggressive towards Ignus but he does have a case of PTSD because he was left alone on the streets in the cold of the winter when he was only 3-2 months old. So he always needs cuddles and I guess I ignored the poor fella a bit. I've been playing with him an hour a day ever since and he is doing fine. Let's hope he doesn't tear my face apart when I am asleep because I ain't giving them away.

German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild computed the first exact solution of Einstein's theory of general relativity while serving on the Eastern front during WW1. This led to the derivation of the Schwarzschild radius of a non-rotating black hole. He developed pemphigus while at the front and died of it the following year. What a waste.

"Cyberpunk 2077 Sells 13 Million After Refunds, Sales Disappoint Analysts" Jesus Christ.

In case New Vegas hadn't been praised enough yet:

So my first character in game was monk. Shield monk. I clearly didn't knew what I did but I kinda still like that old bugger. He was stupidly defensive and I quite liked using him as my secondary tank. So I desided today that maybe it worth to post him here. Went in with a bit of tweaking for sake of Fashion of Eternity( Pillars of fashion?) Anyway, here is monk of Sanguine order. =============================================== Karmesin Ordensschwester aka Sister of Pure Crimson ============================================== Difficulty: PotD -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Monk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Wild Orlan -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Background: The White that Wend - Aristocrat -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MIG 18 (16 base -1 Orlan +2 Broad Belt of Power CON 14 DEX 3 PER 12 (9 base +2 Orlan +1 The White that Wend ) INT 19 (15 base + 4 Gwyn's band of Union) RES 20 (17 Base +1 Orlan +2 Broad Belt of Power) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Stealth: 1 (0 Base +1 Monk) Athletics: 3 (2 Base +1 Monk) Lore: 8 (6 Base +2 Aristocrat) Mechanics: 0 Survival: 14 (11 Base +1 Monk +2 Sanguine Plate ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ability: Defiant Resolve (racial) Swift Strikes Turning wheel Clarity of Agony Duality of Mortal Presence - Other Defences Crusible of Suffering Flaggelant Path The Dichotomous Soul Soul Mirror ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Talents: Weapon and Shield Style Cautious attack/Veteran recovery/Weapon focus: Peasant Weapon Focus: Peasant/Lightning Strike Lightning Strike/Scion of Flame Superior Deflection Bear's Fortitude Bull's Will Snake's Reflexes ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Equipment: Head: Sanguine Plate's Helm Body: Sanguine Plate (Legendary, Shock-resistant) Arms: Blood Testament Accessory: Hiro's Mantle Ring1: Ring of Deflection Ring2: Gwyn's Band of Union Belt: Broad Belt of Power Legs: Shod-in-faith ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Weapon slots: Fist + Redfield(Legendary, Durgan-refined) Steadfast + Redfield (legendary, Durgan-Refined)[cloned using mold from adventure for sake of looks] Quick slots: Potion of Flame Shield - it works with turning wheel and we already have retaliation from mantle Scroll of Revival - we stupidly survival, so we have decent chances to stay last if things go south Scroll of Fire Wall - one of best spells in game some defensive scroll according to situation --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nothing too strange here - defensive character focused on breaking through enemy attempts of disabling party, while dealing quite strong strikes with all monk lashes and retaliation At lvl 16 character has 135 Deflection/107 fortitude/106 reflex/121 will with cautious attack on. Additionally harbinger from shield provide +3 deflection against enemies in 2m radius DR stats: 25 Slash / 24 Crush / 28 Pierce / 12 shock / 20 other And in case you are afraid about wound gain: Ogre guard from The Celestial Sapling give you 3 wounds on graze. So no, you are not untouchable. Cautious attack does not stucks with priest buffs, however don't discount fact that you can enter the fight with it, while buffs still needed to be casted. Veteran recovery can be decent replacer for it. Alternatively scion of Flame also useful here as it affects Turning wheel bonus Originally build used little savior and rocked different helmet, but hey, with this setup character is 20% cooler

As we slide into that period of so many seasonal holidays (even if a couple tend to take over), I expect we'll all have a few odds and ends to boost the spirit of the moment....

For what it's worth, I won. I mean, survived until the very end. Not a single Last Christmas this year. But that's fairly easy when you're stuck at home and only going outside when you can't help it.

Personally, when playing games, having fun is my priority first time through. Difficulty challenges are best left for subsequent runs. Marilith Demon Yxunomei is a tough fight.

Smoking cigars and drinking cognac with my dad.

Some multiclass i really loved : 1) Soulblade / Trickster . Build evolve around Wotep (offensive parry) + riposte. Use cipher's spell to buff your accuracy/deviation and debuff ennemy + trickster mirror image and kill them passively while casting spells/do whatever you want. Be carefull of arcane dampener, it will ruin you. 2) Berseker / Druid (ancient or shifter, depend of your taste). Build evolve around spreading Dot and using Wotep AOE to chomp ennemy in (many) pieces at lightning speed (recovery on kill, even from dot). Use taste of the hunt for fun. You need something to counter confusion or you will chomp both ennemy and allies. You can play it with wotep, shifted druid or firebrand (bonus point if you go fire godlike with firebrand for style). 3) Tactician / Skald. Build evolve around crits and brilliant. Infinite ressource + phrases stacking really fast. Bring a cipher for phantom foe. You can replace tactician by a berseker, they have good crit generation too (but no ressource recovery). Use the community patch to cast "the dragon trashed..." and the concentration removal chants. 4) Fury druid / stormspeaker (need a mod) : RP favor for an elemental conjurer. 5) Psion / bloodmage : RP favor by using mostly decay/dot spells & CC. 6) Debonnaire / beguiler : charm, crit, charm, crit, charm, crit.. while standing in the shadows....

"the most offensive song"... evar? warning: seriously merry christmas obsidian made a south park game, so, let's not be hypocrites, eh? HA! Good Fun!

I really enjoy my sorcerer : — conjurer / fury nature godlike with the lance of the midwood stag , generic +4PL all the time (upon casting the conjurer familiar, fleet feets, and Woodskin or form of the demelgan), great CC build dammaging in the same time ; — forbidden first / skald with aldris blade and tuotilos palm, very fast tanker able to great dammages and control

/raises hand

Happy Saturnalia everyone!

Some fun combos: ghost heart/monk with Frostseeker and Helm of the White Void spamming Stunning Surge soulblade/rogue with Sun and Moon & Tuotilo's Palm or Whispers of the Endless Paths spamming Soul Annihilation devoted/berserker with Lord Darryn's Voulge using Clear Out troubadour/priest with Sasha's Singing Scimitar, Least Unstable Coil, Weyc's robes and wand spamming invocations paladin/nalpazka using Sacred Immolation with Sun and Moon and Magran's Favor helwalker/streetfighter with mortars and Helm of the White Void spamming Stunning Surge devoted/monk with Whispers of the Endless Paths using Clear Out steel garrote/rogue with Modwyr and Watcher's Blade

I'll summon @Aarik D for you.

I recently liked to play the following (which go a bit in OP's direction regarding class choice) : Psion/Troubadour nonstop casting use empower per encounter (Sasha's Singing Scimitar) endless resource pool (passively regain focus and phrases) very versatile (dmg, CC, summons, support, healing) zero need for weapon usage Steel Garrote/Bloodmage Whispers of the EP with Offensive Parry tanky via self buffs nd paladin passives offensive parries will daze enemies and then heal you while you cast at the same time can usually cast all the time (only interrupted by the use of Blood Sacrifice) not a melee build per se - the weapon is there for draining life passively mostly while casting Bloodmage/Helwalker Concelhaut's Draining Touch: very high base dmg, targets Will defense, drains life, causes weakened. You can keep it in encounters if you cast it from a grimoire (e.g. Blood-Soaked Grimoire) and switch to another grimoire (without Draining TOuch in it) after summoning it (also never learn it at level up). Miasma of Dull Mindedness: lowers Will by 40 points Kapana Taga + modal in the offhand: gives +2 engagement and lowers WIll by 25 points Swift Flurry/Hearbeat Drumming: chain crits because Will is at -65 points Reckless Brigandine: +1 engagement, good AR boost when low on health Essential Phantom: gets +3 engagement from club and brigandine Rmygrgand's spells (terrify enemies): enemies flee and this will trigger Disengagment attacks from you and the Phantom. Disengagment attacks get huge dmg bonus which works exremely well with Draining Touch. Beguiler/Beckoner or Troubadour call forth some summons to buy some time Use Whisper of Treason/Ring Leader/Puppet Master etc. to mind control enemies until only one enemy is still hostile gang up on that one enemy (mind controled and AI summons like Many Lives Skeletons will automatically do that, the rest simply select all and attack) rinse and repeat very easy in the early game - still great later on still very versatile (dmg, CC, healing is all still possible) SC Arcane Archer Driving Flight single handed Hand Mortar with Blinding Smoke in one setup, Fire in the Hole with Chain Shot in the other Use Fire in the Hole for imbue shots, especially Imbue:Web after luring enemies to a spot and later also Imbue:Eora in order to pull enemies together to a very tight group. use Hand Mortar for Twinned Shots max Arcana --> craft scroll of Avenging Storm and/or use Heaven's Cacopohony Avenging Storm + Twinned Shot with Hand Mortar will produce a ridiculous amount of hitt rolls (! like hundreds or even mor than thousand) rolls on the tightly packed targets. Blinding Smoke triggers Avenging Storm although Blinding Smoke does not deal damage itself --> unbelievable amount of AoE dmg with one Twinned Shot Not especially wow in the early game though you can keep the pet out of it (just use it as occasional body guard). With Firebrand it's better to just use the scroll and not pick the Druid class - but it also works with a Druid. The "problem" is that the Druid class itself isn't particularly great when looking for non-shifted melee fighting with Firebrand (except Scion of Flame and Taste of the Hunt). You can use healing, buffing and CC though. Maybe I would go for Druid/Rogue or Druid/Helwalker instead of Devoted.

I’ve had a lot of fun with a melee Ghost Heart / Ascendant build (even though this multiclass combination is more commonly played ranged with Frostseeker.) It can be crazy from a number crunching perspective as well, reaching Accuracy peaks of 192 (!!) with 18 Pen when using an estoc. Devoted / Ascendant, which I’m playing now, sacrifices some Accuracy in exchange for slightly better speed and 20 Pen with estocs. Next up will be Streetfighter / Ascendant, which should be the fastest of the three, with the highest damage numbers (Accuracy similar to Devoted / Ascendant; same Pen as Ghost Heart / Ascendant) One of the perks of playing a Cipher yourself is that you don’t need to take Ydwin or Serafen for the ride in order to do Ancestor’s Memory / SoT shenanigans (which I do in every playthrough without fail.)

Considering how little the impact the different beginnings had on the story I doubt the different endings will matter too much in the end.

Eh, sorry, I forgot the word "often". Some things do indeed scale. Some things even scale very well (Spiritshift weapons, Animal Companion, Battle Forged...). Still Veteran's Recovery doesn't make such a big difference in the late game as it makes one in the early. Other stuff like Prestidigitator's Missiles or Enigma's Charm etc. don't scale at all which is too bad. Deadfire's Power Level mechanic is a big step forward in that regard. 3 INT is indeed strange for a Chanter. His linger time will be very short - and if you don't really want to use phrases and invocations I don't know what you pick a Chanter for. But if it works:

Just a minimalist gathering this year. We've all been extra careful in the days leading up the event.

Played this out of nostalgia again and had one level 10 (almost 11) barbarian lying around, Spelltongue still works even on enemies without buffs the duration extend is quite short, but even before level 11 i was able to sustain buffs thru fights. Then I leveled to 11, got HoF and it just doubles all durations right at the start of a fight, so the build works and is really fun.

Business as usual for me. My family don't buy all this nonsense fearmongering and we have our Christmas Eve celebrated as always 40+ family members in my parents country house. Used to be my grandparents house but they passed a couple years back so now my folks organize. It's always nice to meet all those guys at once.

If the shrimp want to survive they should simply stop being eaten and move to an area that isn't in danger of pollution.

So the Taxpayer has no interest in the long term survival of their food supply? So no jobs will be continued by the study? Not the scientists, treadmillmakers, zoologist caring for the animals in the experiment...?

Yeah makes sense.

THQ Nordic is the owner of the IP, so I dont know If you will be giving money to the dev team or the publisher. I am glad you enjoyed it though, I loved both of their recent titles. Luckily for you, Mimimi will be self-publishing their next title, so it will be an excellent occasion to show them your support. EDIT. As you mentioned you are new to the genre I think the first Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive is well worth giving a go, if you don’t mind a little retro-playing. It’s been patched up to work smoothly on modern systems, and it controls surprisingly well for a game from around 2000. It is a wee bit less elegant then Mimimi’s modern design, but it still has plenty going for it.

reminded us HA! Good Fun!

I will give you my proper feedback, without ruining anything, once I have completed it But I am thoroughly enjoying it now, similar to Divinity 2 part of that enjoyment is about 100% understanding the combat and that makes a huge difference as the narrative unfolds So well done for backing it, it was worth it

So i did some testing and results are surprising 1. I made custom monk/debonaire with total Acc, when weapon equiped - lower than 49 (dummys deflection), to prevent regular crits on dummy 2. Added Heartbeat Drumming by console command. Swift Flurry was off to not disturb the tests 3. Charm Dummy with Chanter Invocation, so only first hit can be critical - no HBD chains 4. Hit dummy 5. Profit! 1 - Chanters Charm 2 - initial frost head missed 3 - HBD triggered frost head hit 4 - HBD triggered flame head hit 5 - initial flame head hit->crit by Debonaire ability (this one initiate HBD) Here I was wrong - it does launches two hits Edit: I did some more tests, to confirm repeatability, and it seems like frost hit roll is counted as first and fire as second. Frost get converted to crit even if both head hits, but fire head, only when frost missed. Both can be converted to crits by One-Handed Style talent and both can trigger HBD. The order in the fight log looks like this: 1a. Frost hit roll from HBD 2a. Fire hit roll from HBD 3a. Initial frost hit roll 1b. Frost hit roll from HBD 2b. Fire hit roll from HBD 3b. Initial fire hit roll So all HBD procs are typed above the hit roll that launched them

It's worth it for the memes.

That's a good question about the wiki, but maybe a strategy guide, or someone else read the game files--and the wiki actually numbers the things as if they were taken from one of the files, so that's my suspicion. However, I stumbled across a Reddit user by the name of monkeydew123 who also claimed to trigger it. And not only that, but he/she's responded to me already and has offered to send me over not one, but three save files POE1 before the Nest, POE1 after the Nest, and POE2 with the Wurmling (which is a bit less super exciting than it sounds, explained later). He too found some oddities and this is what he said to me "I have made an... interesting discovery. I found the file, and I double checked the Pillars 2 save I imported it into and verified I had the sky dragon wurm. An... issue arose though. The quest log says I let the dragon stay in pillars 1. I checked on my pillars 2 file and sure enough, console commands were not enabled. I can provide both the pillars 2 file and pillars 1 file. I have 2 saves around the time of the quest, one right before I enter the temple and one after that where I'm about to start chapter 4. I also remember the exact context of me sparing the dragon. I tried to talk it down initially, but it attacked and I said screw it, but then it suddenly begged for it's life so I let it go." If he's willing, I also have a good few questions for him. But this is honestly so much more helpful in terms of narrowing things down than you might think. Even one throw away line reliably refines our search by magnitudes--when he says he tried to talk her down. Failing this at any stage points off to one conversation box (the 'ruffles feather' one) before she goes hostile. So if there is any conversation related trigger, its at worst 1/4 options to get there, and at best, you simply have to fail to talk her down. I'll even go so far as to say that it more likely than not isn't conversation related at all, because someone else who claimed to have triggered it simultaneously claimed they were a brutal 'you're dead, dragon' type of character by design--suggesting they didn't try and talk her down at all. Because brevity isn't my strength apparently, I'm going to really try and condense what little I found in the assetbundles so far. I don't have any solid conclusions, really more just questions, and I'm sorry if this thread is turning into long rants that all amount to a lot of 'nothing solved'. First off: in V1. there was no support for the dragon, and nothing in the game files for it. Secondly: there was no scaling for the dragon (which was later added into the dragon's loaded creature file within the level 101 assetbundle). Third: the failsafe repeatedly catches my eye even if its probably not what we're looking for. Even in V1 it seems to forcibly update the quest if the dragon dies before the wurmling. And yet, there is also a conditional check to see if the flag it updates is actually present in conjunction with the other two--maybe this is just a way to make sure its doing its job, maybe I'm not reading it right. Fourth: The assetbundle at release has dependencies (according to UABE) to shared assetbundles that the present game doesn't, and less overall. But they're remarkably different--not just one or two out of place, but many. It's like the whole game was rewired at some point, and I can't even substitute the v1.02 level file into the modern game without it hanging (and keep in mind that this is after I learned that you can remove significant numbers of game files, even relating to the level you're on sometimes, and the game will still boot. It's been more tolerant than most programs I've run in to.) This is of course assuming that UABE isn't fooling me, which is a possibility. Fifth: There are internal paths in the files sometimes, references to grabbing an asset somewhere, listed through a chain of folders that doesn't actually exist on the user side of things. Some of these are similar enough to what we get, and you can see exactly where they're stored. Some of them are entirely non-existent, and yet they are actually grabbing real things from somewhere. For example, there's an entire prefab folder for assets that you or I can look at, and its large. And yet, in the files they also reach out and grab prefab assets that aren't at all in that folder, and seem to exist nowhere. My guess is that they exist in the magical land that the specific code for objects (ie. timers, triggers) lives; all obliviously singing and dancing in joyful unison, protected by their bubble of "I don't exist, even though I do." ... Okay so I might have run a bit far with that one, but as much as I'm a rube and am sure there are things that I'm just not seeing properly, I am sure there are things that just don't seem to exist, even though they do. My best guess is they are packed into the sharedassets somewhere, but even that theory has its pitfalls... It may be a program issue, maybe the viewers are just not able to see the stuff I'm looking for. But this hopefully speaks to your question Mortim. Obviously, there is a lot to keep me busy here for a while to come. I'm hoping monkeydew comes through, because even learning the date of his save files will point us to a patch version--and with how similar 1.02 and the present build are, I've begun wondering if it was a patch that restored functionality. There is some merit to this idea, given the strange bugs people had after certain patches, that then were fixed. Maybe the quest was broken at release, was fixed but caused issues, and was removed again? Who knows, this is rabbit hole stuff, but its an avenue I might look briefly at without getting too deep in the weeds. I know as well you might be thinking that if monkeydew's file says he only let them stay, then maybe its not the right one, and I admit, its very strange given the game does have flags and proper markers for the mercy path. But I'm going to assume people aren't collectively crazy here, and its important we trust what others say is the case in their own expertise. He knows this is the file, so it's the file. Which means that either a) something about the quest has been buggy for a very long time, or b) it was retroactively changed. Now this speaks to the wurmling pet. There are people who claim they received it in Deadfire just by letting the dragon stay in POE1, but only on save game imports. It doesn't work that way upon making a new character, where you must select that you let her go. People have assumed it to be a bug, but I can't help but wonder if it was intentional for some reason, especially if monkeydew let her go and yet it only displays having let her stay. Between this, and the last post's findings, I'm strongly beginning to wonder if the quest_state flag(s) (ie, the functions also involved in how you get the quest and related to bugs in other quests that I've been talking about) ire heavily involved, or even the culprit here. Cheers,

Finally a use for all that heat CPUs & GPUs generate.

Good questions, I was actually very certain, but I slightly start to question my memory as well. And it was so long ago, that I might be falsely remembering it. However if actually nobody got it, then I wonder how it did end up in the Wiki? To my knowledge the Wiki is filled by fans, not the developer, so how would anyone know about it if, it didn't trigger for anybody? Regarding the new lines, yes those seem to be related to general new functionality or maybe even changes to the game system. Of course they could have an impact but I think are too general to be helpful. So the question is, lies the issue somewhere else? And if yes, somewhere we can reach?

Don't forget the basic Saturnalia aspect..

So, umm, this is a thing that happened...

Hi Boeroer and sorry for my late reply -- RL is the mortal enemy of consequent power gaming. The Cauterizer is an amazing build, but the Belt of RDC goes this time to my well trusted friend Eder as the Universal Misanthrope. So my PC will be The Leech (still viable is good enough) because of sort of elegance and 10 res for role playing issues. From chapter 2 on i'll go with the Sword of Daenerys Daenysis and later on Sura's Supper Plate. Aloth -- Hurtstacker; Mercenary -- Fire Priest (I hate that chatty Durance); Kana Rua -- The Drake Ambassador and Pallegina -- Fire General. Think that is overpowered enough on hard difficulty. Thx & have a good day, A.