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Okay, so maybe this should go under the games thread itself, but man, the idea that we could shift to a watermelon based rating system for games...

I dunno, I like utter lunacy and surreal cluster****s such as most of David Lynch's films while you and @Bartimaeus do not. That's pretty much what I got from Evangelion, both the original series + EoE and the Rebuild. I've just accepted that I am a very weird guy and my taste would drive some people insane. To me the biggest weakness of Rebuild is the CGI, it looks awful and the CGI robot battles could have been taken out with insignificant losses. The second biggest is that I don't think there really was a coherent plan and the writing team changed goals every movie. For example I believe that your most hated character, Mari, was initially intended to take the piss out of waifu stuff but ended up changing roles until she became an insert for Anno's real life wife. Which I guess shows us how the waifu is inescapable, none of us are free from the curse of the waifu and we will end up turning our own partners into waifu/husbando inserts. Well that got weird. Anyways I think the Rebuild starts out OK, then dives down to meh then OH MY GOD! territory, and rebounds into something that is back to OK. It's hard for me to call 3.0 + 1.01 good because by god the CGI made me want to send myself to hell in order to kill Ronald Reagan, but I think it's OK and feels authentically Evangelion. If yall want to come ar me then well...

1. Or maybe Powder Burns gets rolled first and takes the Assasinate bonus and the actual bluderbuss shot gets nothing - don't remember how its done. Anyway only one part of the attack will get the bonus, not all of it. A great AoE opener for an Assassin is the special attack "Thunderous Report" from the unique blunderbuss "Kitchen Stove". Also most AoE spells like Fireball etc. will work well (all hit rolls in the AoE will get the bonus).

NOTE: Deflection against Non-Veil Piercing attacks is actually at 232, it doesn't show as it is conditional, same for Divine Purpose adding another +20 defense against MIG, DEX and RES Afflictions. Also the conditional -15 defense of Blood Mage doesn't show here of course. Also of course, all enemies are permanently bathing in several layers of Chill Fogs that Blind and debuff their ACC by -15. Hello, I'm Bobby the Goldpact/Blood Mage and I firmly believe that the best defense is defense. Of course, I also think that the best offense is offense. Anyway, here I am with all my defenses over 220 thanks to a careful mix of item/ability selection, stacking buffs prolonged via Wall of Draining as well as some nice No-Rest goodies. (No Strand of Favor trick involved at all). Having the lowest defenses at 221 means that in order to get 1% chance of Grazing this toon, an enemy needs to have an accuracy of 147 (147+100-221=26 [Graze]). Any ACC below that level cannot breach his defenses with an Attack Roll (of course things like Minoletta's Minor Missiles, Thrust of Tattered Veils or Brand Enemy can still hit since they don't require an Attack Roll). On paper, this should make more than 99% of enemies in the game irrelevant. Not bad! Now, the funny thing about Upscaled PotD is that I can still find non-Megaboss foes that do manage to Graze him from time to time! Even then, with a constant regen of 60HP/3sec and 19+ AR, this toon is pretty safe. The funniest thing is that so far I never had to reload a single fight in the game playing Solo, EXCEPT... fighting Soul Mirrors. Their defenses are too high because they copy my toon AND have Upscaling AND PotD bonuses on top... and they have Blood Mage + Lethandria's Devotion constant regen, plus a ridiculous AR stacking with Stoic Steel... I actually have to switch to unarmed when the mirror is created (i.e. without sword & broad), then switch back to sword & broad if I want a chance to defeat them. Anyway, I thought I'd share for all you min-maxers out there .

Turns Out The Hardest Part of Making a Game Is...Everything Interesting reading. My education and background is electronics engineering. So I have some experience in coding. But the first programming language I learned was Fortran and last (and the only one I was any good at) was C++. Nowhere NEAR as complex at what is used today. People get down on game devs over small bugs and other problems but to tell you the truth I am always amazed games work as well as they do. I sure as heck couldn't do it! Tip the hat to all of the OBS guys & gals and all the others too.

It's particularly effective if you follow up with a Fireball

Big yikes, if that is how Mari came to be... I mean if that was the case she turned out great! It's certainly memorable I'll give it that, then again I would guess Mari is memorable for you and @majestic. Point taken. Although that still doesn't mean they had the complete story outlined or if they did that things didn't change along the way. 3d is simply faster to produce, edit and control. There are people that still do 2d, but it's becoming a dying art.

@majestic I definitely need to rewatch the original series and the movies. I seem to have forgotten a lot of things. I couple of years ago (maybe 5 or more...) I gave Puella Magi Madoka Magica a go and stopped watching it either on the first episode or on the second. I don't remember my opinion on it at the time, but for a while I kept it on my hdd to give it a go again, but I seem to have since deleted it. I think that Asuka was referencing the second movie, I have rewatched the scene and while you are right and he did not want to hurt her, he really didn't do anything other than get strangled. Perhaps she wanted him to do something more, or perhaps she wanted him to be the one who stopped her and not an automated robot (Asuka is not the most rational character), or the most probable reason that she is angry with him is that he would have let her kill him. Re:Mari Do me a favor, I know you hate the movies, but give the last 5 seconds of the second movie a listen (end of the preview for some evangelion movie in an alternate reality...) there is something there about fanservice. I don't really know what to say about the character other then she really didn't bother me at all. As can be seen from the previews, they either changed their minds about the direction of the movies (which I'm 99% sure is the case) or possibly the previews happened between the movies, but let's focus on the 99%. When the whole rebuild has a somewhat disjointed story it's not a surprise that the characters are also like that, so when that is the case I have some understanding for the character. Let me just say that I agree with both you and @Bartimaeus that she sticks out in the movies, but it's just that it doesn't bother me. By the end of the 4th movie, she had her place. She was never going to save Shinji, she could just show him that he can be happy, he still needed to get that place on his own. I don't know why you guys hate Anno's wife, what has she ever done to you. Re: Imortality I think a lot of stuff was left unanswered. Looking at the previews it looks like there were going to be at least two more movies. That was all relegated to being mentioned by a couple of characters as past event. Re: Characters I think you are putting too much stock in what Asuka said to Rei, I think she was just trying to be hurtful. If there really were any modifications like she said, how was she able to transcend human limitations in the end. Re: Spears As I said, I need to rewatch it all at some point. I am misremembering a lot of things, even from the previous movies. I'll laugh my ass off when after all of this he does something else with Evangelion, even though I don't see how he could after all of this. Re: Ending The difference is that in one ending we get "Disgusting" and in the other we get a resolution, character growth and an uplifting note. @Bartimaeus I like your optimism in thinking that the original series was thought out from start to finish. I personally do not share that opinion and I think that is crux of it, how I see it and how you see it is different. If I fooled you with anything I said I apologize, but it's simply how I experienced the movies. I'll repeat what I said above, I think Mari is the casualty of the how the story was told. Either there are some missing movies, or the story was changed and her character suffered for it. Overall I was ok with her character and the movies as a whole, especially after seeing the ending.

After the “Things @Boeroerlikes”, lest go with the Things @Not So Clever Hound Likes: Wall of Draining

That's fine, I'm not sure if you have read the thread back when we all watched Puella Magi Madoka Magica, but we had similar disagreements about the anime, except that I liked it. We had some interesting talks about it, so feel free to disagree as much as you want and post about it. This isn't the politics thread where the only winning move is not to play with the regulars. It might not look like it, but Rebuild being different is not what bothered me, it's being different in ways that are inexcplicable and, at least in a direct comparison to the original, worse. Much as I made fun of the idea that the script for Thrice Upon A Time was a first draft that was simply filmed as is - or animated, in this case - the problems that it actually has seem to come from too much retooling as much as not properly cutting it down to a managable size. It has all the extended runtime the other three didn't have but needed, and when @KP the meanie zucchini says that he thinks Mari may have been intended as something completely different from what she ended up being, then I can see how that could be true. Let's look at one particular point in the talks between Shinji and Asuka, and that's when Shinji says Asuka wanted to beat him up over not being able to decide whether to rescue her or kill her. When did that happen? The last time the two had any contact with each other before Asuka almost broke through a wall of apparently really solid glas to beat him was when she was piloting Unit-03, which was corrupted and turned into an angel. Shinji refused to attack her and wanted to save her, and they turned on the dummy plug system. There was no indecision in Shinji there, he refused to hurt Asuka. if Asuka wanted to beat him up for not doing his job in spite of her being in Unit-03, then that would be fair. As it stands, it just looks like something that should have been caught in a script revision. Perhaps it refers to something else, although I wouldn't know what (outside of directly referencing an alternate reality or timeline). Asuka doesn't work in this retelling at all, or in order to make her work, you need to use your meta knowledge of having seen the original show to fill in the gaps. I can only answer that one from my point of view, but Mari is a mostly unneeded addition of a character that in design and behaviour does not fit into Neon Genesis Evangelion's overall world building. Hence all the jokes about her being an alien in disguise. That she then has some of the most cringeworthy dialogue and is framed in what little time she has in the first three movies as nothing but fanservice didn't help her. It might be wrong calling her an alien in disguise, she's a fanfiction insertion character that serves as a narrative band aid to make the second movie work in spite of Asuka having to control Unit-03, much like the Vatican Treaty is needed to explain why Unit-02 is being dectivated. It's all really just there so Mari can end up in Unit-02 and Asuka gets hurt by the Dummy Plug system. In the original, there were other characters to chose from, and Toji was the poor victim, right around the time when he was tentatively starting his romance with Hikari. When you start thinking about her place in the narrative, it becomes even more problematic, because in addition to feeling like a fanfiction addition to the NGE universe, her role in the narrative is also simply superimposed over an existing plot, curiously part of it and separate from it at the same time. Mari always shows up whenever she is needed to do something, does that, and is then gone from the film again, unless it's time for her to talk about her big boobs or wiggle her ass in the camera. She initially tells Shinji to not tell anyone she's there, then she is suddenly inside NERV HQ without anyone mentioning it, and eventually she's part of WILLE even it seems as if nobody outside of Shinji and Asuka ever talks to her. In fact, with the chaotic way the second movie went, you could have cut her out and nothing would change, it's almost as if she was inserted into the film after it was already almost finished. In the new X-Files seasons that were made recently, there's an episode where the showrunners decided to retroactively insert a third agent into the narrative. It was one of the funniest, strangest and best episodes of the show, even in spite of the declining quality of the alter seasons and the abject failure of the new season's story arc. But it was played as a joke, while Mari feels like the same, but played for serious. In reality she was probably, like @KP the meanie zucchini speculated, meant to do something else, but in the end turned into a stand-in for Anno's wife, because he is to Shinji what Yui was to Gendo, someone to help him overcome his depression. Assuming for a moment that is what happened to Mr. Anno in real life. I know he often suffers from depression, I don't know if meeting his wife helped him overcome it. If that was her function though, she pretty much failed, because she only does that at the end, after Shinji self-actualized on his own. Zarathustra would have been proud of him, rejecting expectations and simply choosing for himself, like the Übermensch is supposed to. Hence the comparison to Neo when he changes from simply being the Chosen One to choosing to be the Chosen One at the end of The Matrix: Revolutions. These things might look like a joke on my part, but they're fairly deliberate. It migt not have looked like that, but that didn't bother me that much. It's a throwaway thing that may or may not have come about by the time Mr. Anno decided that every pilot except Mari was to be a construct of a sort, in some manner (whether or not that is true for Shinji is something else). Whether by design or simply as a side effect, the pilots not growing old isn't that bad. It has to be a side effect of piloting the EVAs, by the way, otherwise Mari wouldn't stay the same over the course of the almost 30 years since the Second Impact. Like @Bartimaeus said, maybe it's the contact with the LCL goop. It's part of Mari's problems though, as a character that was alive prior to EVAs being built, she was clearly not designed to be a pilot, or changed accordingly, but yet she's clearly also capable of abandoning her humanity and becoming an "angel" - or rather, specifically, one based on Adam, because the way the movies are set up Adam's offsprings are primal vitality with only instinctual intelligence, while Lilith's offsprings (life on Earth as a whole, that is) are intelligent. That Rei's ascended form is different lies in her origin as a partial Yui/Lilith hybrid. So when, how or why did Mari get enough "Adam" in her to be able to transform into an unthinking beast mode "angel" when it's needed? Shouldn't she be different altogether, like Shinji? Shinji just transcends his humanity to become something else, apparently. By the way, that's one of the things that made sense about needing Rei and Asuka to pilot Unit-13 for the Another Impact. The impacts (except the first one, that was Lilith's landing on Earth) were always the result of contact between Adam and Lilith, a combiation of both Seeds of Life that was never meant to happen. Rei was derived from Lilith, so Asuka's form being an Adam beast mode is fine (if you don't find the idea that Asuka was designed in some way to be terrible, like I do), both are in the same EVA, and as such the impact begins. At least until it is stopped - by humanity having transcended the need for Gods, in the form of Yui, Shinji and Ritsuko's newly created Spear of Destiny. The basic premise isn't that bad, which is more or less why I said that the anti-universe stuff was fine. It's the NGE equivalent of Sheridan telling the Vorlons and the Shadows to get out of their way. Not quite, but similar enough. The execution would have required some more setup. They had two movies in 2.22 and 3.33 to set up construction of a new Spear, and didn't. They had those two movies to make Mari an actual character, and didn't, and then she's suddenly both pivotal and useless for the plot of the final one. Asuka has good reasons for acting like she does though, as do Shinji and Misato. They're all living in the same appartment because they're all variations of the same problem - or maybe, better put, demonstrate different coping mechanisms as a result of the same underlying psychological problem. I'm not sure I agree that Misato is the capable and fearless leader type. She mostly winges it, often takes a course of action against all rhyme and reason and drowns her sorrows. Asuka is attracted to Shinji, but Shinji is the way he is, and Asuka is the way she is, so she's aggressive towards him to keep him at arm's length while still pining to be close to him, both emotionally and physically. That's an apparent contradiction that I can tell you from personal experience does exist like that in real life too. She misundertands Shinji's apparent attachment to Misato so she's trying to emulate her, and she later misinterprets Shinji's emotional attachment to Rei, and she fails as a pilot when she sees her fears confirmed by Shinji rescuing Rei, but not her. That... among other things, was the emotional core of the original series, and almost all of it is gone in the new films. Rei was, for a moment in 2.22, exhibiting real character growth with her plans for a dinner with Shinji and Gendo. It was one of the few moments I really liked, and that's part of the reason why hearing Asuka say that the pilots were designed like that made me almost angry enough to turn the film off and never go back, and that does take some doing. In the original NGE, Rei was a clone of Yui and part Lilith. It was both an attempt at recreating Yui and a way to create a vessel for the Third Impact and/or Gendo's attempt to rejoin his wife. That she needed constant medical supervision plays into Rei simply gooping it up in Thrice Upon A Time. She becomes the focal point of the Third Impact when she absorbs Adam, creating - well, here we are, again - a Lilith/Adam hybrid. Lilith's spear was lost on impact with Earth, either destroyed or otherwise unfindable, and therefore Adam deactivated himself with the Spear of Longinus. That, at least, was the official backstory of the original series. It's not exactly out of the question for NERV to have found the Spear of Cassius somewhere. I don't have a problem with them coming up with a new Spear made by humanity, not the precursor race that created the Seeds of Life, just not as a last minute solution. Setup, then payoff. I mean, with the way the movie ended it was, I think, pretty clear that this was the intention, aside from Mr. Anno finally telling everyone that he doesn't want to do any more NGE, what with having Shinji simply erasing NGE from existence and then eloping with Mari into the real world. That part of his life is now well and truly behind him, by the looks of it. I'm going to disagree here, the ending of the series was unsatisfying because it wasn't an ending, even if it made sense in the context of it (again, parallels to Lost's ending). It was not a resolution to the series at all, an unending if you will. The End of Evangelion I thought was sufficient in explaining what was going on and the ending was satisfying enough. Actually I don't see the different between Thrice Upon A Time's ending and that of End of Evangelion's. In both the impact is averted, humanity continues on - in EoE should they choose to, taking a silly detour into solipsism, in Thrice Upon A Time simply because the impact didn't get far enough to get to that point. In both the characters manage to transcend their problems and continue, in EoE it was Shinji and Asuka on the beach, where Asuka indeed really "grows up" faster than Shinji, and in TUAT it was Shinji with Mari and Asuka with Kensuke (presumably, at least). However, and that's the disclaimer I have to make here, I also found the Revolutionary Girl Utena movie to be a satisfactory ending to the show that complementend and explained a few things that were left open, and it did so by having the main character being dragged into a carwash and exit as a car, complete with a highway chase scene to follow. That's something you could attempt to watch if you want a really inexplicable show mired in allegory and metaphor to the point of being almost impenetrable because it also contains stylistic and artistic elements that you're meant to disregard, in addition to an entire character with plotlines that are simply there for insanity's sake.

I can think of a few current and former heads of state, whose deaths would at the very least please me. Not to the point of celebrating it though... Seems like there is no way to avoid the subject of Covid its entanglement with politics. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58273322 "In May, US president Joe Biden ordered a 90-day probe into whether the Covid-19 virus came from a lab accident or emerged from human contact with an infected animal. Until then, the "Wuhan lab leak" theory had been dismissed by most scientists as a fringe conspiracy theory. But now as the report is due to be released, China has gone on the offensive. In the past few weeks, Chinese sources have been amplifying a baseless claim that Covid-19 was made in the US. Using everything from rap music to fake Facebook posts, experts say the propaganda efforts have been successful at convincing the domestic Chinese audience to cast scepticism on international criticism of the country's role in the Covid-19 pandemic. But, experts say, it has done little to legitimise China to the outside world." I.e. standard politics by the text book. If you're worried about what the competition is going to do to you, do it to them first and go on the offensive. Truth was never part of the equation as long as you can make people believe your message.

Yes, that's why I don't acknowledge a guy like Valentine as a person, and instead keep it more distant. Like I said to Guard Dog, Valentine is just a few half-formed ideas attached to a name in my brain, empathy's not even really possible when you know and feel so little about someone. But for the same reason that I can't be empathetic towards him, I also can't empathetically feel that I'm glad that that he the person is dead. Hatred is a form of passion, and I can't muster up that kind of passion for such a vague idea of a person that I really know nothing about. This dude may have been a fantastic dad, a loving husband, gone to great lengths to take care of his parents when they were terminally ill, had a tough upbringing, given money and time to local animal shelters or orphanages or other worthwhile charitable passion projects...you never know the entire make-up of a person at just a glance. But that's the thing: I don't know anything of any kind of substance about him, which is why he's not really a person to me, so all I can really do is be like "glad they won't be doing (x thing that I think is bad) anymore", which is not really at all the same as lighting up fireworks and being truly happy about someone dying - it's really quite worlds apart even if the sentiment may sound similar on the surface. Rush Limbaugh's death is exactly whom I was thinking of when we last had this discussion, where I previously made more or less this exact argument in the same manner: if you feel the world has become a net better place after someone who was a rotten, miserly bastard that sowed hatred and division (and who has actually had a meaningful hand in negatively impacting many lives*) has departed from it, I certainly can't blame you if you're glad about it. I wouldn't be giving out high-fives or holding parties for it (and I'd think it'd be in terrible taste for anyone else to do so), but I'd totally get it. *Personal responsibility not just for your actions, but also for your words, . I'm always hearing so much about personal responsibility...I think we should always stress the importance of personal responsibility, don't you? If you wish intolerance, hatred, and death upon others...is it any surprise others wish the same upon you? No: I reserve my general tolerance and respect for those who give general respect and tolerance to others - no more, no less.

Don't think they found anything untoward in hubby's endoscopy. All these tests say he's perfectly healthy. Which means at this point they're probably going to tell him it's stress or all in his head. At least he's not feeling like it's getting worse. Maybe a little better, he can eat more, he's trying different things on his own. For myself ...I thought my fasting glucose had maybe plateaued, but I guess it just takes a while to purge the system. This week it suddenly started dropping to 80-85, vs. 100-110. Pulse rate no longer spikes like crazy at moderate activity anymore either like it has all the past year (this despite not increasing/still being lazy with exercise). I can dance all day again without even panting, all of a sudden. So, yay? Still waiting to do the lab tests tho, I want the A1C to reflect more current vs. 3-4 months ago...

LOL I can attest from personal experience

Fix'd

I tested it, and the passive works well against spell damage! It seems fine enough to use, especially via combining with some DoT-like spells such as Beam/Wall Types. I'm playing the enhanced Fire-Godlike (from BPM) Paladin so that he can easily active the ability very often with Wall of Flame with little risk.

I initially didn't like Asuka. Before she showed up, I didn't hate Shinji, which is I think the best that can happen for him. I really liked Misato, not only for her voice performance but because she's exactly the sort of broken person that I usually end up being friends with should I run into them. Misato stayed my favorite throughout, but not only for that reason. Rei I talked enough about, I think. Rei #6 in The Matrix 3.0 + 1.01 just reinforced that some more with her doing her Violet spiel. Asuka eventually stopped telling Shinji to man up, and I started to like her, and the juxtaposition with Rei. Asuka is canonically half Japanese, but she certainly is 100% gaijin, while Rei is the ultimate, perfect and traditional Japanese woman. It was a little painful to see Asuka trying to fight against that, even though there never was any real reason to. See, that's discussions you can have about the characters from the show, because love and care went into crafting them, even if they are, at times, extremely unsympathetic. Eh, it's gotten pretty late, and I'll sleep on it a bit.

I remember an argument in the VFW two years ago. I was almost asked to leave LOL. It was another member who I am actually friends with who is wearing a hat with a picture of a AR 15 in the words come and take it. He was also wearing a back the blue T-shirt. I couldn’t help myself. I asked him if he was still “back the blue when they came to take it?”

"Happy he is dead" and "Relief that a toxic individual is no longer spewing toxicity" are two slightly different things, I suppose.

To repeat myself about Limbaugh : And also: And also: "I'm sorry he's dead. I understand he was suffering." To state that someone is happy that Limbaugh died because they didn't like his radio show is incredibly disingenuous. It's akin to saying that some people were happy Ted Bundy died because they disliked his murder weapons.

Helwalker/Ascendant is very strong.

It is indeed a build that really comes to fruition once you get a few more levels under your belt (level 13: relentless storm is to me where the build flips to god mode in many fights). Then a few more levels, Freezing Pillar and of course WoD. Well, if you briefly swap Grimoires you can cast Concelhaut's Crushing Doom, which is one of the best single target ability in the game - and incidently very useful against Neriscyrlas. IIRC I did her the same way I did with my SC Blood Mage playthroughs. Used the pledged souls bonuses, also used a lot of interrupts to prevent annoying casts like Lllengrath Safeguard - again, Crushing Doom is great, you also have Thrust of Tattered Veils for autointerrupt, Expose Vulnerabilities is also nice with Crushing Doom - and it will also interrupt on hit. Relentless Storm will help too of course, then of course all the ticking spells that can still overwhelm at some point such a huge health pool. I might have stayed in Kith form if her will was too high for WoD, or I might have briefly used a grimoire with Miasma of Dull Mindedness to drop her will and get plenty of nice WoD hits. But it's also true that WoD isn't great against single target fights, high Will or not. But single targets can be owned in other ways!

Hello again! Always annoyed that Berserkers go down so easily? And the Berserker really should hit much faster with two handed weapons anyway 'cause it's cooler? Easy: just have Carnage with friendly fire (or in other words: be confused af) and "accidentially" kill your own skeletons (or whatever summons - Many Lives is very convenient) with Twin Eels. Its healing effect also triggers from Carnage-kills (actually it heals from any kills, no matter how you achievend them). So every time a skeleton falls from your Carnage you'll heal your surroudings (including yourself), trigger Bloodlust and Blood Thirst which lets you attack with 0 recovery which leads to more ded skeletons which leads to more healing and so on and so forth... A bit like a Kind Wayfarer on speed with unlimited healing. Of course you could also do that with a Berserker/anything (hello Berserker/Paladin with Sacred Immolation?) and let somebody else summon creatures. But that's less cool imo. Before getting Twin Eels and stuff you will still be a Howler with all the goodies. Howlers rock anyway. Quick vid: --- Then, take the same character basically (Berserker/Skald is best though) but instead of Twin Eels give him Blightheart. Summon some Ancient Brittle Skellies, frenzy up and use Her Revenge. You will kill several skeletons accidantially and trigger Bloodlust, Blood Thirst and get phrases from the kill(s) which lets you cast another Her Revenge right away and so on and so forth. No healing but unlimited casting and brutal casting speed. Just don't let party members stand where you cast... Quick vid:

Akka the phylactery trick DON'T DESTROY THIS BARREL, IT IS THE SOURCE OF MY POWERS !

Yes, of course Chilling Grave with skeletons is bonkers. Ghost Blades also take their (GPU) toll, but they only have one single visual effect so you don't get hundrets of overlapping pulses that fry your GPU (or maybe it's the CPU which suffers most). I only see a few very short stutters, not the fps drop (or even crash) I see with Grave Calling. Recntly I also had a few crashes from WotW with mortars + Powder Burns if gunpowder barrels were involved. With Avenging Storm on top: nearly 50% of times.

ran into this issue today. Build is: 5.0.0.0040 EDIT: I still had a savefile from before the cutscene started where eccea leaves the group. I waited until she sat down - she dropped the blaster this time. So maybe you have to wait until she is sitting down. At least I've got the item now, just wanted to let you know.