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Wind Path Cantor Helwalker/Skald Cantor build Great crowd control and nuking power with good weapon damage on top. Sprint around the battlefield at high speed, incapacitating and dismantling enemies in groups or one by one. Room for exciting variants to suit personal taste/playstyle. Not intended for solo. Introduction: I LOVE the Cantor multiclass. Firstly because it has such an incredible flavour: real monks do chant as part of religious rituals, so the Monk fantasy and Chanter fantasy blend together seamlessly. When it comes to gameplay mechanics, the Monk’s uniquely achievable INT bonus beefs up everything a Chanter does, and both classes enjoy renewable resources. These basics make the multiclass ripe for fun, interesting builds. The build I’m talking about in this post is extremely fun and very effective at every stage of the game. You’ll have something to look forward to, whether ability or gear, constantly until very late – but you’ll never feel like you’re waiting for the build to be good. The principle here is you have access to 3 types of hard crowd control (CC) targeting different defences, 2+ types of soft crowd control, and spicy nukes, all off of renewable resources. Add powerful weapon attacks to the mix and you have a flexible gameplay loop with a character who almost always has a high-impact action to take. I chose to call it “Wind Path” because it sprints around the field like the wind and is very versatile. The 3 types hard CC I have in mind are: Paralysis: At the Sound of His Voice, the Killers Froze Stiff Stun: Stunning Surge/Raised Torment Charm: The Lover Cried out to the Beloved, "I am Yours!" The soft CC takes the form of summons and Force of Anguish. Your nukes are Her Revenge Swept Across the Land and Seven Nights She Waited While the White Winds Wept. Every Wound a Helwalker has can buff the area of effect of all of your invocation cones, the duration of your hostile effects, and the power of all your damage. It’s hard to overstate how big of an impact this makes. Here’s a gameplay snippet so you can get a sense of how this guy plays (sped up to respect your time; use 0.5 playback speed to approximate gameplay). It's not supposed to be a tough fight or anything - just something to give you a sense of what this guy does. It's just the Cantor, plus Eder drawing some aggro (since the build is meant to play around a tank). Hopefully that looked as enjoyable as it is to play. Let’s dig into the commentary. What I’m going to do is list all the abilities I personally am using at level 20, grouped by power level, and comment on the choices. I’ll also list alternative choices – this is a rich multiclass with lots of tools to try! Note that this is not a levelling guide – levelling Skalds is always weird because you should periodically take a non-offensive invocation here and there to get more max phrases and then respec later to reallocate the points. The stats I used (Berath’s Blessings included): MIG: 20 CON: 10 DEX: 15 (incl. Elf) PER: 20 (incl. Elf+White that Wends) INT: 20 RES: 5 I used Pale Elf, White that Wends, and Mystic backgrounds mostly for fun. Skills aren’t too important either – I used Arcana and roleplay stuff. If you really want to devote everything to combat you can max Survival for Ruata’s Walking Cloak but that won’t make too much difference. Power Level One Thrice was She Wronged, and Thrice Justly Avenged Come, Come, Soft Winds of Death Blessed was Wengridh, Quickest of His Tribe Swift Strikes Force of Anguish I don’t tend to use Blessed was Wengridh much at max level, but its nice to have as optional bonus Stride. Stride is a key stat for this character. It helps you swiftly position yourself so that your invocation cones can have maximum effect, and it keeps you alive through outrunning melee enemies and getting out of dangerous area effects. Anywhere you can squeeze more in is nice. Force of Anguish is useful for times when an enemy manages to engage you. Often you will just Stun/Para/Charm them, but sometimes blowing them back is the best option. (I originally tried to build this character to have high disengagement for those situations, but found that the opportunity cost in gear and perks was high for too little return: on PotD difficulty, you need a LOT of disengagement defence to not get hit. Better to deal with engagement through CC.) Alternative picks: You can certainly replace one of the chants with any other Chanter talent. Hel-Hyraf is always nice and should last a decent time with this character even if it’s not upgraded. The Thunder Rolled is another CC you can use. I had it for a while but just never used it over other options. Certainly the right pick if you decide you don’t want Raised Torment later on, though. Power Level Two Two Weapon Fighting At the Sound of His Voice, the Killers Froze Stiff Dance of Death Clarity of Agony Long Stride After “Thrice was She Wronged”, “At the Sound of His Voice” will be your most used invocation if you play this anything like me. They represent the twin pillars of damage and CC that this character stands on. Dance of Death and its upgrade should be used every fight as you don’t intend to be hit much. Clarity of Agony is so generally good it would take a lot of work to convince me that it shouldn’t be on absolutely every Monk build. I’ve already explained the use of Stride, so the Monk’s special passive bonus here is very attractive. Alternative picks: Not too much wiggle room here. Graceful Retreat will help if you go in for the disengagement shtick, but I don’t recommend that route. White Worms does sweet damage in a good area of effect, but it’s slower than Thrice, dependent on the existence and position of a dead body, and is useless against enemies immune to disease (I thought it was the force that did the damage, not the yuckiness…whatever); it’s not worth the point, in my opinion. Power Level Three Her Revenge Swept Across the Land Swift Flurry Torment’s Reach Stunning Blow Her Revenge might be the most important talent you pick in the whole build. That upgrade is nuts. Swift Flurry will help make your weapon damage occasionally explosive. Stunning Blow is a key pick – it keeps you safe while you’re beating on someone and makes them easier to crit. It’s awesome upgrade makes it free if you do crit. Torment’s Reach and upgrade form the Monk side of your AoE CC/damage kit. You can use them to let your chants build up while using Wounds instead to put out some AoE punishment. That increases the character’s flexibility and is therefore very nice to have, though not as important as Stunning Blow/Surge. Alternative picks: I purposefully made the “official” version of this build vanilla-friendly, but if you’re into modding, the Deadfire Balance Polishing Mod buffs The Fox from the Farmer to give a -15 Reflex debuff. Very nice even if you’re not trying to disengage since it softens enemies up for Thrice was She Wronged, Seven Nights she Waited, and Raised Torment. Otherwise you may want to go for Reny Daret’s Ghost and upgrade for the long frighten and very valuable all defences debuff (which stacks with debuffs to specific defences), though I find it’s 3-phrase opportunity cost doesn’t stack up well with Killers Froze stiff+upgrade’s 2-phrase cost, especially since that also frightens enemies. Ancient Memory is OK if your party really likes passive healing, but even with 35 Might, its healing is only a trickle. Power Level Four The Long Night’s Drink Birthed the Revenge of the Morning The Lover Cried Out to the Beloved, “I am Yours!” …And their Fear Followed them to the Foothills Duality of Mortal Presence Enduring Dance The Long Night’s Drink is my jam. Seriously powerful chant: Constitution afflictions reduce maximum health, increasing the impact of all damage you do, even after it wears off (as discussed here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/109118-how-good-is-enervating-blows-really/), plus you get a hefty Fortitude debuff, plus reduced healing and a touch less damage output from affected enemies. It just always helps. The Lover Cried Out can be a massive gamechanger in tough fights. In ordinary fights it’s usually not worth casting because you’re better off just bursting down enemies as enemies, but when you’re under pressure, the ability to turn a group of enemies into allies in an instant can turn a desperate situation into an easy win. Duality and Enduring Dance are no-brainers. Alternative picks: The lack of Thunderous Blows here may seem blasphemous, but we’re saving our Might Inspiration slot for Their Companion on the Chanter side. It’s possible you might want to pick this as well for its instant cast time and the fact that it uses Wounds rather than your more precious Phrases resource. Power Level Five Seven Nights She Waited While the White Winds Wept Together they Slew Forth a River of Red Raised Torment Stunning Surge Seven Nights is there for when you need a burst of single-target damage. Get right next to an enemy and position the lines so that three hit them and a cast of this will easily do well over 300 damage. The other lines can also smack other enemies at the same time. For AoE damage, it won’t do as much as two casts of Her Revenge (I compare it to two casts because Her Revenge costs half the Phrases and is much quicker to cast). Together they Slew is a nice +30% buff to your Charmed minions’ auto-attacks (I couldn’t find this information anywhere on the internet so I checked the game data files and it’s a 1.3 modifier). That’s the damage equivalent of +10 Might. Especially helpful if you can get your minions to bully a single enemy, which is where the damage potential of this spell can be seen most clearly. Alternate picks: You can get The Long Pain here as a prerequisite for Instruments of Pain, which is an awesome tool for this build. Basically it means you don’t need as much Stride for safety (though it’s still needed for quickly positioning your cones) or worry about engagement as much, because you’ll be able to use al your melee abilities at a safe distance (and feel like a badass mystical warrior). I played with it for a while but ultimately decided that I prefer the points elsewhere. But there’s definitely nothing wrong with going for Instruments. If you use the Community Patch, you can also use the Dragon Thrashed chant which will passively do good AoE damage over time (DoT). I found that this wasn’t as helpful as The Long Night’s Drink since DoTs work best with other DoTs, while this character does burst damage. Constitution affliction work very well with burst damage. Because this guy casts so many invocations so quickly, he often never uses more than one chant anyway (bit more on that later). Power Level Six Their Champion Braved the Horde Alone Turning Wheel In addition to the extra Might and Penetration, Energized from Their Champion makes you interrupt on every crit you get. That means from weapons, spells and chants. Every offensive action you do now has a CC component – just amazing. Turning Wheel gives you more weapon damage and, in my game, it affects my spells too. I think this might be behaviour from the Community Patch which changed it to affect ranged weapons and perhaps (inadvertently?) caused it to affect ranged spells as well. Worth the pick either way. Alternate picks: Flagellant’s Path would certainly be nice. It fits the mobile nature of the character well and would be yet another escape tool. I just rarely find myself in a situation where I would actually want to use it, so I can’t justify it over another pick. Maybe you can. Biting Winds o’Eld Nary is a great spell and worth considering as an alternative to Seven Nights, especially if you want to go for an Instruments of Pain build that stays far away from enemies. Your single target burst damage potential will suffer, though, and Eld Nary is rarely as good against a group of enemies as two meaty Her Revenge casts. Power Level Seven Called to His Bidding, the Ancient Instruments of Death Heartbeat Drumming The Dichotomous Soul Here’s the thing: I take Called to His Bidding only so that I will have 7 max Phrases. This is necessary because the Deadfire Balance Polishing mod changes Their Champion to an Offensive invocation specifically to encourage its synergy with Skalds. That’s very nice, but it means my max Phrases at this point would only be 4, while a vanilla counterpart would have 6, based on the more expensive Their Companion. If I were playing this build vanilla, I would choose Her Tears Fell Like Rain instead, and consider using Thunderous Blows in addition to or even instead of Their Companion. Dichotomous Soul is a great way to increase your domination of the battlefield. It’s what tipped the scales against the Instruments of Pain variant for me. I haven’t gotten to gear yet, but since you’re wearing robes, their attacks are very fast, giving them decent damage as they absorb enemy attention. And since you’re wearing Footsteps of the Best, they Hobble enemies around them as they run. Alternate picks: Already pretty much covered this talking about Instruments of Pain, which is a viable option. Her Tears is a sad thing to miss: it’s a good upgrade. I decided Dichotomous Souls is kinda always better since it also adds single target damage, which would be the main point of Her Tears. Gear Head – Helm of the White Void So good for so many builds. With several important affliction abilities and extra effects on crits, +10 accuracy to all of them is just unbeatable. Neck – Strand of Favour Armour – Robes of the Weyc The benefits are very obvious. I used Aloth’s Robes or Effigy’s Husk before getting them. Rings – Kuaru’s Prize and Prosperity’s Fortune Chameleon’s Touch is good as well and you should use it before you’re rich enough for PF. It’ll give +1 to both DEX and INT. Feet – Footsteps of the Beast You’re running around a lot. Why not Hobble everyone for free? Especially useful when you’re trying to get away. You can see some of the enemies in the gameplay clip start hobbling as they try to close in. Anti-synergistic with Instruments of Pain – another reason I didn’t take it in the end. Boots of Speed before you get this. Cloak – Ruata’s Walking Cloak Arms – Mortification Gauntlets Belt – Upright Captain’s Belt No need to take Combat Focus and prevents push and pull abilities from ruining your day. Huana Charm Belt otherwise. Pet – Trixie For Stride and a tiny bit of Hit-Crit with weapons. If you don’t love the speed quite as much as I do, Loki is good for extra AoE plus a little speed (definitely would recommend Loki when using Boots of Speed). Weapons: This is a pretty dynamic part of the character as well. I Run Sasha’s Singing Scimitar and Wand of the Weyc in one weapon set (for obvious reasons, I think), and bare fists in another. The fun thing is that after empowering, the generic +3 power level from the wand pushes you to the same power level as a single class character with prestige. And, since Monk fists scale with power level, that means that you temporarily have fists as strong as those of a single class Monk. Those are (special effects aside) the most powerful weapons in the game. Being able to get them this easily in every fight, as a multiclass, even if it’s only temporary, is a feat unique to Cantors. And the wand’s recovery skip compensates for the extra time you spend switching weapons. Pretty great. I also use Shark Soup so that my Fists are always at least at the power level 8 strength. In my game, this power level stacks with the active bonus from the wand (stacking rules for food are inconsistent/bugged/I don’t know in this game so this might be different for you). The Weyc’s Wand is also an amazing weapon in its own right. That raw damage sigil it can summon on crit pulses for good damage every second (!). And you know what that means – it can crit, so it can interrupt every second (!). It’s worth flinging a few shots with this to get the sigil before you go into melee. Sometimes there’s no reason to switch at all. Before getting the wand, I was using Magistrate’s Cudgel for extra accuracy. You could always just go with Sasha’s +Scordeos which, while not as powerful as the fists (comparable damage but slower speed), have nice effects – and there’s something just nice-looking about dual-wielded sabres. Chanting: Nothing complicated about chanting with this guy for me. I made a thread about weird chant mechanics here: [link] but the bottom line for this guy is that he casts a lot, and casting resets your chant progression, so you mostly only see one chant. (Though after you get Robes of the Weyc you can get to see the second one more often.) That chant is The Long Drink’s Night for me, because it’s awesome and gets extra accuracy from the White Void helmet. I put Come, Come, Soft Winds after because it’s free and is offensive, so it interrupts if it crits and does a bit of damage and healing. Weaknesses: The major weakness of this guy is his squishiness. He has plenty of options to avoid melee enemies, but if ranged enemies get a bead on him there’s little you can do except guzzle a potion of invisibility, use Withdraw, or Barring Death’s Door. Unfortunately you can’t run fast enough to dodge bullets and arrows in this game! But this won’t happen too often if you use your tools – most importantly getting aggro on your tank(s) at the beginning of a fight before unstealthing, as I did in that little clip. Conclusion: Again, the Cantor class is awesome for the synergy in both its flavour and its mechanics. I think this was my most consistently fun playthrough to date. Fast-paced, dynamic, and powerful at every stage. I couldn’t not share it on the forums. Hopefully it inspires some other Cantor playthroughs – and I’m sure some of you will do it even better!

You performed the correct rituals, tech priest.

An interesting perspective:

This forum software sucks lmao

Fact Check: How Colorado, Georgia Voting Laws Differ Despite Conservatives' Claims I saw some of those claims about CO being just as bad or worse than GA in my news feed and had to post this

Too late. The first Sailor Moon one, that explains why Tuxedo Mask always disappears before the battle is over, actually makes sense... Season 6: Well, Nehellenia didn't give her any other choice. The best Usagi could do was skydive to save Chibiusa. Apparently they stated in the Italian version that the Sailor Star Lights were the female twins of the three guys, that somehow switched places during transformation. I can only imagine how little sense this made to viewers. Btw @majestic, it seems I was not the only one who And you might be right about the fetish gear convention:

Just like Steph- wait nevermind. Somewhat topical, I went through music I listened to when I was in high school and the Blood Brothers had a song titled "You're the Dream Unicorn". Lmao

It's more engaging than the game itself.

The Japanese version had female voice actors for the Three Lights too.

Are you the Fonz? Loose connection seems like the culprit?

That is very hard to believe. Lmao forum software ate my post.

Episode 7, a pile of new people:

I was talking about food stacking (ie stacking multiple food effects), not stacking resting bonuses. Obviously there's nothing wrong about using spells/abilities during a fight in a normal way. However if it's ok for you to exploit the AI to stay out of enemies sight and do damage continuously, then you can't blame those who do the same to increase short buffs to infinite durations using SoT or Wall of Draining. And when you have classes who can abuse these methods you can't blame other classes for using Strand of Favor either. Anyway, it's a single player game and everyone can play it the way he enjoys it - using mods, cheese, exploits, cheats, etc... There's no competition here and judging others it's pointless.

Maybe I'll provide some examples. I don't consider Wall of Draining a potion of Final Stand (or other effects for that matter) a cheat. Cheesy AF, but, well, gotta win somehow. And that's within the game rules. Same with using Gouging Strike / Paladin mark and vanishing to hide in a corner. Or forcing an elemental spawn and using a wall to trigger Brilliant off it. Food/rest bonuses stacking... yeah... that's... kinda borderline already. But continuously equipping and unequipping items to stack ridiculous duration extensions on usually very short lived buffs? That's exploiting a very clear game bug to me - cheating.

Does anyone remember @Prosper's modeling madness from years back? You know, this stuff: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64924-sorry-i-was-gone-so-long-2/?tab=comments#comment-1405156 https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64924-sorry-i-was-gone-so-long-2/?tab=comments#comment-1408877 I'm pretty sure I found an EarthBound-esque RPG that was actually made by him or someone as similarly demented as him.

Hey, maybe that's why Michiru was trying to set up Rei with Usagi, . Episode 6:

Six episodes of Sailor Stars, 11-16 I think.

@majestic : I hate to tell you, but whatever PM you sent me was eaten by the forum software, . Any time I write a lot for an online post, I almost always CTRL+A CTRL+C all of it just in case...it's saved my hide a number of times over the years. Glad you loved the show, even though things did get a little wacky. I'd like to note for anyone else considering this show that majestic watched literally 3 seasons of this show in about 4 days - it wasn't perfect all the way through (not at all!), but boy, that is some positively fiendish show-binging, . SU mega-spoiler: lmao wow, speaking of the forum eating stuff, the forum literally actually just ate this entire giant post for me, but I actually practiced what I preached and made a copy right before trying to hit submit, thank goodness. I wonder if greater length ever plays a part into what is or isn't eaten...

I know I started this, but for the love of god, please, stop it. I think you'd to well not to touch any other comic strips on the site. That's one of the more harmless ones, really.

Nexusmods user SirDun recently noticed that one of my mods caused the game to stutter: https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/481?tab=posts In the latest update, I had added a game.globalvariablesbundle file with a single new variable to the mod. Apparently, this is what caused the game to periodically stutter. It's very noticable and happens every 13 seconds at 60fps, with even shorter intervals on higher framerates. It is luckily very unusual that mods actually implement new variables, but I remember it having been discussed here before. Nevertheless, I want to warn everyone that adding new global variables should be avoided entirely.

Wait, seriously? I'm an absolute idiot.

Warms my heart to know Prosper (may be) prospering!

Oh **** things are about to get very weird for you.

Speaking of JoJo's: Yay, I corrupted someone. How much did you read, or just the other Sailor Moon one?

The long-lost Lord of the Rings adaptation from Soviet Russia is a glorious fever dream

I know it was used to reference poor whites in the south ("corn-crackers"). It's this use that Gary Cooper's character refers to Mari Aldon' character as a cracker in the 'Eastern' film DISTANT DRUMS (which, for film trivia buffs is also the source of the 'Wilhelm Scream') It was also applied to anyone who used a whip in their job, which is how it became associated with slave overseers. The use for Atlanta's minor league team is unclear, but they were the Atlanta Firecrackers in 1892, 3 years before they became the Atlanta Crackers. So it's possible it's a derivation of that, or it's a multilevel meaning. Also meant Atlanta had a team called the Atlanta Black Crackers...

"so, what was it like to coach ray bourque?" again, 'cause fred were good natured it were hard for us to be sarcastic 'round him. however, on more than one occasion when fred would reminisce 'bout ye good olde days, we would throw in the above query. the bruins gm, hard as it may be to believe today, didn't want to draft ray bourque. fred kinda pushed for ray and then when things turned sour 'tween fred and harry sinden, fred made mistake o' reminding sinden 'bout how fred saved sinden from passing on bourque. that were the end o' fred's bruin tenure. go figure. HA! Good Fun!

I always knew he was destined for greatness.

I'm an equal opportunity assassin, I don't discriminate: My stats through 2 completed missions:

parents o' fred's daughter in-law live two doors down from us and they are nice too but they is also the most obtuse trumpers you are ever likely to meet. mrs. ___________ has/had cancer and her husband has chf, so we help 'em out in little ways such as taking their garbage cans to the curb on wednesday mornings and other little chores. the thing is, they refuse to get vaccinated. no point since the pandemic were never real. no surprise as they had a 12' wide banner attached to their fence facing the golf course to which their property backs. "trump 2020." the couple gets miffed when Gromnir and others, who has not yet been vaccinated, refuse invitations to spend face-to-face time with mrs. ____________. she is in her 80s for gawd's sake and again, she has had cancer recent enough that you never see her w/o her wig. you can't help people who won't help themselves. as an aside, have been obsessive checking for covid vaccination appointments in our area since april 1 when our age group became eligible. we got some health issues, so our doctor offered to get us vaccinated a while ago, but as am retired and not needing get w/i six feet o' people save extreme rare occasions, we decided to be patient and wait our turn, so to speak. more fool us. https://www.mhealthappointments.com/covidappt have been refreshing every thirty minutes for thirty mile radius from our zip code since april 1, and each time we get a "limited supply available" notification for a site, by the time we try and actual make an appointment, the supply is actual 0. oh well. first world problems we s'pose. much o' the rest o' the world won't be vaccinated for a long time and Gromnir is complaining 'bout an extra week or two. HA! Good Fun! ps fred's nose, which were improbable, made obvious he were either a boxer or a hockey player during his younger years, and his accent made clear hockey were the anticipated culprit. serious though, most generous and friendly guy you were ever likely to meet.

You haven't learned Joesph Joestar's secret technique.

I made the mistake of browsing through YouTube comments on the video of Sailor Moon I've linked in the spoiler post about Steven Universe. Why do I do that? Why do I keep doing that? How is it that I can't learn from past mistakes? Why? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

Really? **** netflix.

As far as crackers that’s not the definition I’ve always understood it to mean. The definition I got from a book I read on the minor leagues is the term was a slang for a slave overseer.

It'd be glorious, could count on Newsmax or something at least to have some article "LIBERALS name beloved baseball team after WAR CRIMINAL Sherman who comitted GENOCIDE"

It sounds like the Atlanta Braves are also re-branding. They want to remove the racist imagery so now they will just be called Braves. Oh c'mon. It was funny when it was the Washington Bullets and it's funny now. In all seriousness it sounds like that is in the works. If they choose any other name other than Hammers they are doing it wrong. A tip of the cap to Hank Aaron. Cleveland has had a ton of names before Indians. They could go with any of those.

That's my thought.

Was starting my usual morning routine, cup of tea, turn on the PC to check things... And the PC wouldn't power on. Checked it a few times, opened it up, ran through the usual suspects. Flick the power switch on back, mouse and keyboard light up, but absolutely no reaction when the main on/off switch was pressed. Couldn't go in-depth since I had to start work. Then several hours later I walk past, pat the top of the PC pondering on what to check when lunch arrives... And the PC turned itself on.

In this special case (Troubadour/Psion) I almost only use Brisk Recitation because the big base idea is (imo) to reload phrases while you spend focus - and vice versa. It's all about spamming invocations/cipher powers and less about chant support. Because of this I don't use buffing phrases like Mith Fyr. I'll use offensive phrases because often those are not influenced be the no-linger of BrRec. Once they hit an enemy they will apply an effect and it doesn't really matter that the linger is gone. Also, once you get Their Champion invocation you might want to use offensive chants only because you will have the chance to interrupt enemies in the chant AoE every 3 secs. I'll use stuff like Thick Grew Their Tongues + The long Night's Drink (depending on enemies' defenses). Or I'll switch to Many Lives Pass By because - let's be honest - it's bonkers with Brisk Recitation. You'll send a skeleton into battle every 3 secs while loading up your phrase counter which is awesome. Especially if you have a SC Paladin in the party (nobody has, just saying ;)) you want that. Because Divine Retribution + Many Lives... *chef's kiss* With other class combos that might be different. For example a ranged Troubadour/Streefighter I played never used Brisk Recitation but wanted to uphold Sure Handed Ila + Mith Fyr all the time.

like some others here i mostly use antidotes early on (xaurip skirmishers and spiders are an absolute pain if they land a paralyze, dank spores with dominate) and then my use of them goes down significantly until around SSS (a few bad fights) and belranga. just to clear up some confusion - the sporelings have something called "dominating spores" or some such that can be cured/prevented by antidote. this doesn't actually dominate. it reduces your will, per stack. Dank Spores and other some such can just dominate/charm straight-up, but this can also be prevented with antidote. I used to think the former had something to do with the latter, but really the former just softens you up so that characters with lots of the former are more likely to get hit hard by the latter. there's also an incentive to use antidote pre-emptively (e.g. before you get poisoned). The game appears to treat the poison immunity of being buffed with antidote and the poison-cancellation of consuming antidote very differently. So in fights where you expect poison to get tossed around (fungus, xaurips, spiders, some SSS challenges, belranga) periodic antidote usage can give you complete immunity to certain effects, whereas taking antidote after the fact will only clear the specific effect that can be countered by antidote. (My go to example is Plague of Insects; if you use antidote before a naga or delemgan casts it, you are completely immune. If you use it after its already hit you, it only clears the sickened affliction, but does not get rid of the DoT)

This month's Humble Choice is so bad I'm wondering if not unlocking it allows me to skip a month on my payment plan.

After having completed the first real mission of Sniper Ghost Warrior: Contracts (6/6 objectives, 2/6 challenges) and started the second, here are my first impressions: The comparisons to HITMAN are fair. The basic framework of the game is quite similar; you are dropped into a fair sized open-ish area, similar in size and number of different paths to a typical HITMAN level, and you have a number of objectives to complete, ranging from eliminating targets to gathering intel to planting explosives and so on. Not all of the objectives are necessarily required to be completed to successfully finish the mission. There are also challenges like no alarms were sounded, get 20 headshots, kill the main target and his 2 bodyguards within 10 seconds of each other, etc. The biggest deficiency, when compared to HITMAN, is the absence of the fun creative kills, like locking someone in a sauna, overriding the safety shutoff, and boiling them inside, or electrocuting a rocker with a faulty microphone. The kills in this game are generally weapon kills or explosions. The biggest advantage this game has over HITMAN is superior gunplay. Obviously, the sniper rifles feel great, it's a sniper game, they damn well better. However, the secondary weapons (mainly assault rifles and shotguns) also feel quite good, varied, and appropriately punchy. The sidearms are also pretty good, as well as the gadgets (grenades, throwing knives, mines, gas bombs, etc.) Stealth works fairly well, though the distance and time to getting spotted is still too long for my liking, even on deadeye difficulty, which makes me wonder if there is an even harder difficulty to unlock. The story is fine, your standard military fare and I can smell the future "shocking" plot twist coming from 1000 miles away. The dialogue is too edgelord for my liking, but that's expected from a smaller developer that's obviously trying to lure some of the CoD crowd. Overall, I'm having fun with the game so far. The level of polish and quality isn't quite up to AAA standards, but it's a budget title, I didn't expect AAA quality. Still, outside of slightly sorta wonky first person platforming to climb cliffs and jump over ravines, it plays fairly well. I do wish the game had manual saves, I hate relying only on autosaves.

As I play the tutorial a bit, I feel like something is missing. Then it hit me: in the original games, when peasants dropped food off into the granary, or lumber onto the stockpile, there were these sound effects. A patterned sound. Plus other activity sounds. In Stronghold:Warlords, there is almost nothing but silence. Is this important? No. But "game personality" is lost.

Trailer's VO seems to reference Woedica, and banners support it. If I remember engravings on the swords were translated to something very Woedica-like as well (Oathbinder?) While it might be pointing toward us starting as a more defined character (battlemage in service of Aedyr?) it might as well be not be as defined. Having the choice of all races would certainly be welcome though it does bring a set of exciting, but possible problematic design issues (like character height). But as you said it's all speculation. We know nothing of Avowed, except it being in works.

Make it a part of the SCA.B even

I may or may not have discovered photo mode: