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I’m going to steal a line from the Game of Thrones TV show. “You must forgive them their flights a fancy. It’s dreary in the north“

Athletes will never be silent again Bah. If I cared about the opinions of someone who chased a ball I'd ask Sunny.

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition 9 years since Mass Effect 3 came out. Hard to believe it's been that long. Only Mass Effect I was willing to give a chance after that was a replay of 2 on PS3. Playing Mass Effect 3 after all this time, with the DLC and the extended ending, I don't hate it anymore. It's good to enjoy the series again. And to be able to enjoy the whole series without issuing conditions on 1 and condemnation on 3. The ending is still dumb. Perhaps the dumbest bit in the series. But it no longer feels like the whole thing is ruined. Just a misstep. I'd be glad to play a 4 of the same quality, assuming they don't pick up the dumbest bits of the ending and run with it.

You must gather your party before venturing forth.

You don't need any IRBMs if you have ICBMs, that's ultimately why the US and Soviets agreed to eliminate them. In any case, they could be (and were, the first test held by the US was literally days after leaving the INF) reinstated almost instantly, and almost certainly as nuclear too since some warheads never seem to have been actually destroyed as they were meant to be, just decommissioned. That was one of the bones of contention- frankly, breaches- of INF with the land based AEGIS anti missile stations Obama built, they used tomahawk launchers so it was trivial not just to refit them for banned conventional weapons but for banned nuclear weapons too. OK, tomahawks aren't ballistic, but there's nothing special about medium range ballistic missiles that renders making them difficult. US tanks are 'old' and require vast amounts of maintenance and resources but are fine otherwise at doing tank stuff- unless, they're export models driven by Saudis. But even then after getting blown up by some shoeless Houthi goatherd amped up on Qat using an antiquated Malyutka or Fagot the crew usually survives the direct consequences of their incompetence thanks to good design.

The vertical cache announcement is interesting since it will allow AMD to greatly increase the amount of cache in future CPUs. They're stacking the cache copper to copper, so there really shouldn't be much, if any, added latency. Some apps, including some games, will gobble up as much cache as is available to them and translate that into tangible performance gains. This sounds like it could be ready for a Zen3+ early next year. If not, it's a fairly safe bet we'll see it in Zen4, whenever that comes out (late 2022 if I had to guess). If nothing else, this shows AMD aren't sitting on their hands while they're ahead.

Alright Buddy. Let’s settle this s—t once and for all!

I saw this on SlashDot. It seems appropriate for here: Autonomous drone attacked soldiers in Libya all on its own To quote Harrison Ford, I've got a bad feeling about this.

Thanks GD. It's been a hectic few years, regardless of the pandemic. Not been gaming as much but I still like to peek in here now and then.

Yes, but I already said that summons are very useful, we totally agree on that point. That's why this discussion is out of context. In the other thread it was about whether bg or poe summons are better and my (maybe poorly worded) point was: The high end summons in BG can keep up or even outshine traditional builds in dmg output. (ofc that game also has a lot of juicy cheese :P) Compared to how good summons are in that game (not the best but much closer to the best than in Poe) the Poe ones would already feel weak even if they scaled properly. But the whole point of the thread was: Not all summons even scale properly in Poe which makes it even worse.

All summons without scaling weapons are very weak, not weak. The high level ones are just damage sponges, while the lower level ones aren't even good as damage sponges. Uncontrollable summons should be equivalent to charmed enemies, while the controllable ones (chanter's summons) equivalent to dominated enemies - that's common sense and balance. Whisper of Treason - lvl 1 spammable cipher spell is stronger than most summoning spells in the game - you can charm stronger enemies than any summon without number limit for nearly the same duration.

AMD's answer to DLSS, coming June 22 and hardware agnostic, should work for 500+ AMD (presumably 400+, since there's zero difference) and 1000 series plus for nVidia.

It's funny that this works out of combat while you are in stealth mode - but not when you're standing still without stealth (out of combat). Anyway: it works and is a great way to start the fight with a lot of AR for the initial onslaught your character will face once combat starts. Also great for party tanks who reveal themselves first.

Yep, but that's a bit the same point : you consider summons weak, not because you compare them to the cheesiest strat of the game, but because you compare them to the second cheesiest strat of the game. Granted that these strats are totally ok for (solo) play, but not to evaluate the power of a given ability. That said, we have different Impression about BG summon Vs PoE summon but that's another story.

I watched Double Down. It was every bit as baffling as Fateful Findings, perhaps more. There's a lot less acting in this movie, which, given the quality of said acting, is probably for the best. There's a ton of B roll with narration over it. This movie has 3 commonalities with Fateful Findings: A special (magic?) rock. So many laptops, none of which are functional. Neil Breen's character, Aaron in this case, is the greatest hacker. I'm curious to see if those same things pop up in his other movies. There's a lot of Neil running around in the desert and so many cans of tuna. There are attempts here at mystical, spiritual, and religious imagery that I'm sure have profound meaning in Neil Breen's mind but are perplexing, more than anything else, to the me. I went ahead and ordered Pass Thru; I should have the movie by the time I get back home next time in 3 to 4 weeks. /rubs hands together

I tried to cut my hair once. By the end of it I was sweating like I had been wrestling a mule, and my hair looked like the mule had been armed with particularly dull set of hedge-clippers...

In this case, I'm the worst category of extremist. I don't use it myself and in addition I've disabled it for the upcoming version of my mod (SoF & Oooblit & Gambeson won't apply anymore their extension effect to already active buff). More seriously, I don't play Solo and my mod isn't balanced for it, granted that solo play is a lot about using cheese and the mod is basically hunting down the cheese. I'm not even sure one can complete Solo without cheesing (SoT...) or without using the most broken subclasses (Bloodmage and Tactician, I'm looking at you). I would presume Solo is much harder with the nerf component of my mod (even with Potion of Enlightment https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/501 which was designed to allow long fight for non-infinite ressources classes). I don't like cheese, because they are not as epic as regular synergies. But Solo play is special in that one has basically to survive in order to get the levels/equipement that allows to break the game just enough to move to the next step of the run. It sounds like a survival where meta is paramount (especially of one want to go with some of the God Challenge). Not my cup of tea but I see why cheesing could be "legit" in this context. That's why it's normal to tell other about it (and @Raven Darkholmedescribed it as a cheese in the thread). My only grip about SoF is maybe when @Raven Darkholme tells me that summons are weak. Huh ? Compared to what ? Brilliant + SoT + BDD + Blade Cascade ? SoF abuse ? Then for sure, but I don't consider these legit (and I've modded out all of these). So when evaluating the power of a specific build, SoF should probably not be used as a metric.

This topic is reoccurring enough that we as a community could try to solve nicely and diplomatically at some point, maybe provide some kind of commonly agreed recos on how to use or not SoF for the best gaming experience? I think there is more common ground than we'd think for a baseline. We have three camps: Camp in favor of repeatedly equipping/unequipping SoF to prolong effects: Pros: Deadfire only gives the tools to beat everything in the game to certain classes. SoF levels the playing field as an Anti-Nerf Bat, enabling more classes to be PotD/Upscaled/Solo/The Ultimate viable, and that is for the better. No big deal, it's a single player game, you can use whatever you want that is in the game. Cons: with SoF, everything boils down to hoarding prolongable effects and extending them by equipping/unequipping SoF. Certain class/ability choices become meaningless. Also, why use any other class than SC Assassin then: gamebreaking invulnerability with one ability. Camp in favor of not using SoF: Pros: Keep class specifics and certain unique, rich combinations relatively superior (or vastly over-powered in certain cases). SoF trick is too much of an abuse vs other commonly accepted cheesy combos. Cons: without SoF, only a handful of classes arbitrarily have some "game-breaking" tools to deal with all high-level content in the highest difficulty levels. If you focus on full completion and/or Solo stuff, you have to have certain classes to be able to win. Even the best player with the most balanced party archetype may lose to Megabosses if they don't have certain "trick" classes. That's frustrating. Everybody else: Pros: I don't know about it, but i sounds super strong and game-breaking. Cons: I don't know about it, but i sounds super strong and game-breaking.

Active abilities usually are on the left side of your level up screen. So just for an "easy" example let's stay with spirit shield. Even tho you play monk (I'll get to that in a second) lets take paladin as an example because they have an active and passive for AR. Exalted Endurance is on the left side and an active, it will not stack with potion of spirit shield or even Gilded Enmity from Goldpacts. Stoic Steel is on the right and will stack with anything. Now the problem with deadfire, that to all rules there are exceptions, for example I don't remember 100% if the monk's modal for AR, Iron Wheel, actually counts as an active or not, I do think it does not stack but I don't 100% remember, and this is the case for many modals, unique abilities granted by items (which are named after abilities but do stack with abilities....). You almost always have to test if something stacks or not, which isn't always reccommended on a TCS save (keep in mind, that in pillars games you can ignore TCS by simply loading a completely different save, this will not give you an exitsave, I would still just create a console toon for testing, its much more practical :P) Brilliant recovers all resources including wounds (yes its cheesy) I don't have community patch, but if you use a sc monk you "need" strand of favour for brilliant anyway, as the cloak doesn't last long enough without SoT or WoD. So you should just use brillant from the gods and strand it, however a FF really doesn't need brilliant, you can either use hyleas talons or blunderbuss modal for resource regen. Both merchants in Periki sell ingredients, there is also a gem merchant in Serpent's which you need for some recipes. As to gearbefor Scordeo's sabre, I would just go for the pistol (pickpocket the key if you don't have enough mechanics for chest, lure merchant away from chest with spark cracker (just don't actually hit anyone with the cracker or they will turn hostile :P). You can either wield the pistol in your offhand and with the right upgrades it will give you recovery stacking) or you can cheese it and just use out of combat with strand for infinite duration. (not really necessary) At level 17 you should be able to just kill fire dragon tho, don't you have resonant touch already? All there is to the fight, keep dragon at distance with Dichtosmth Soul clones and hit the dragon with a blunderbuss for resonance stacks, once it has enough resonance to die just explode it. Probably best if you practice this with a non tcs console exported clone of your char. After dragon you unlock scordeo's sabre quite quickly, doesn't take much longer than 5 minutes.

You know. We should use this post as a TL:DR I’m gonna try to document some of SoF cheese and we can use this as the opener. tbh though, the Ultimate is so hard that you could die even with the Assassin cheese. There’s a lotta levels between 1-19. Getting ur ship sunk, running into too many storms, getting too many ship events, accidentally exiting the water shaper guild. I’m thinking Vela is still vulnerable too. So you’re still subject to quite a bit of RNG here no? Unless u manage to find lots of scrolls of withdraw

I'm sure many people have heard the horror stories about how the US tested nuclear weapons on their own "volunteer" soldiers, to see if their WW II steel helmets would protect against nuclear blasts or some similar nonsense, just to see how close to ground zero troops could survive. But they weren't the only ones. The French tested it almost exclusively on Polynesians (with a guest appearance of nukes in Algeria), no doubt the Soviets did similar back home in Mother Russia and while the UK didn't have the decency to test their nukes on some remote Yorkshire farm, they had other options. Send all their **** to Australia (just like they did a century before) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-57157476 "When David Purse was sent to Australia, he thought it would be a "wild adventure" in a little-explored place. However, the RAF flight lieutenant's posting to a remote area called Maralinga was to test atomic weapons. Son Steve, 47, from Prestatyn in Denbighshire, puts his own "unique" condition down to "a rare genetic mutation" caused by radiation The Ministry of Defence said three large studies found no link between the tests and ill health." Yeah, right "In all, about 40,000 British personnel took part in the testing of atomic and hydrogen bombs in the 1950s and 1960s. Most were in the Pacific - the biggest being Operation Grapple, where about 22,000 people oversaw the exploding of bombs in 1957. Maralinga, in South Australia, saw the first test launches of atomic weapons from aircraft in 1962. "He was told at short notice and was looking forward to visiting a warm country, a relatively unexplained place, and having a wild adventure," Steve said of his father. However, he was "close enough to ground zero to see sand to turn to glass" during tests, with no protective equipment."

This is very interesting, Not So Clever Hound. Where does Elric Galad discuss this? Is the idea that you sneak near the enemies, stand still, waiting for them to see you so that the battle begins without further movement on your part?

Trying to play baldurs gate again. The character movement is so slow it drives me a little crazy. Gives me time to do chores as they move from one end of the map to the other end. Is everyone except fightersand rangers supposed to feel useless early on?

And here I thought we already discussed this to death.

And still none where you can romance the Mako

SOLASTA: Crown of the Magister is now out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096530/Solasta_Crown_of_the_Magister/

Those treacherous Danes... never trust them any farther than you can throw them ! https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57302806 "Denmark's secret service helped the US spy on European politicians including German Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2012 to 2014, Danish media report. The Defence Intelligence Service (FE) collaborated with the US National Security Agency (NSA) to gather information, according to a report by Danish broadcaster Danmarks Radio. Intelligence was collected on other officials from Germany, France, Sweden and Norway, according to the report. Similar allegations emerged in 2013."

darker hairs

I will update this later. I can do a better job I think (especially with the face detail and whisker highlights).

Nature godlike maybe? Still think I can do better with colour layers and translucency. I'm done today because stenciling this in inkscape was a nightmare. Artwork = Hayla by Vuogle

Here's one I'm very fond of. lg sm convo si

This is amazing! I thought it was a wasted opportunity that Pike and Scanlan weren't orlans and Grog wasn't an aumaua. I thought the same too! they should have made a version of the characters that fit the races of Pillars. Tried to make an Aumaua Grog.

Artwork = Agnes by Tira-Owl

Thought I'd give this one a shot:

Looks like someone here is a Black Sails fan. I like you.

Thanks! I think Lady Maria from Bloodborne makes for some nice looking human portraits since her tricorn hat matches the Deadfire style. Here you go, I made three of them (the fourth one has already been done). She does have a pretty neat hat!

Ok, tried it myself now... as I said, colorblind, so I'm not quite sure how it turned out. Here is the original thread: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/96828-portraits-ii/?p=2019412

Here you go!

New Durance Portrait

My modified versions of portraits.