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Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/02/21 in all areas
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7 points
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And for that dose of light hearted snark...5 points
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4 points
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whenever someone use 'uns' I got flashback to Married with childrens3 points
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Talking about trailers. I actually enjoyed this one. I'll have to give the demo another try.3 points
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I try. But it's really hard not to return to Deadfire. There's always a storyline you want to develop. Or a new build. In the case of my Warlock Nature Godlike Petunia, I am using the "Everything Bad" storyline, which I had never completed before.3 points
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25 years ago on the 18th of August, a jury in New Mexico announced its verdict in one of the most infamous and misunderstood cases in recent memory: Liebeck v. McDonald's, also known as the "hot coffee lawsuit." This case is held up as one of most egregious examples of frivolous lawsuits. The story goes that a woman bought coffee from McDonald's, drove with it between her legs, spilled it on herself, sued McDonald's because it was hot, and took a cool $1 to $5 million (depending on who's telling the story) off of them. "Wait, she sued because coffee was hot? And she was driving with it between her legs? What did she expect? Anyone can sue for anything these days." Guess what? That story is almost completely false. I mean, Stella Liebeck did have hot coffee spill on her. That part is true. But here's what's not. Liebeck wasn't driving. The 79 year old was in the passenger seat of her grandson's car. He pulled into a parking spot, where she was trying to add cream and sugar to her coffee. The car didn't have cupholders, so she put it between her legs, and when she pulled the lid off, it spilled all over her. The spilled coffee wasn't just unpleasant; it was served at nearly 190 degrees, which caused 3rd degree burns over 6% of her body, required multiple skin grafts, necessitated further care after she left the hospital, and left her permanently disfigured. She originally tried to settle with McDonald's and asked for $20,000; they responded with an offer of $800. At that point, she hired an attorney who discovered that 1) McDonald's required franchisees to serve coffee between 180-190 degrees 2) no other coffee in the city was served at more than 160 degrees 3) 190 degree liquid causes third degree burns in less than 3 seconds and would burn the mouth if consumed at that temperature 4) 160 degree liquid takes over 20 seconds to cause third degree burns and 5) McDonald's had been sued over SEVEN HUNDRED times in the prior decade for coffee being too hot and had settled up to $500,000 in cases and been told to lower the temperature. Ultimately, McDonald's refused an arbitrator's suggestion of a $225,000 settlement and the case went to trial, where a jury ultimately awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages, and $2.7 million in punitive damages. "A ha!," you sa, "so she still got millions! That's still frivolous!" Well...no. First, the jury found Liebeck was 20% at fault, so the compensatory damages were reduced by that amount, to $160,000. Then the judge reduced the punitive damages to three times the compensatory, or $480,000, for a total of $640,000. We don't know how much Liebeck got because they eventually settled for less than $600,000, but between medical expenses and legal fees, it's a FAR cry from the millions she got for a slightly warmed leg in the well-known story. So how did this become so legendary? Simple. McDonald's knew the case was going poorly, so it looked to the one thing it had that Liebeck didn't: a bully pulpit. They started a massive PR effort that was basically a smear campaign, painting Liebeck as some irresponsible scofflaw trying to take their hard-earned money. And it worked, to the point that the annual "awards" for frivolous lawsuits are known as "The Stellas." As for Liebeck? The then 81 year old didn't have the money, platform, or desire to fight back, and used the money to pay for a live-in nurse. She watched company after company use her case as an excuse for tort reform, to stop the big bad consumers from hurting the poor, poor multinational billion dollar corporations, before passing in 2004 at age 91.3 points
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3 points
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I prayed to god that we wouldn't get kittens in the park this summer: -the tortoise/chimera cat I used to feed gave birth to three kittens on the roof of another house so I've been throwing chicken fillets on the roof of this house for the past four month -the other cat gave birth to one kitten that lost one of her eyes. Went to the doctor twice and we have to go to the doctor for a third time so they can clean/empty/stitch the eye. I have been giving her food + antibiotics for almost a month now -last week, one of the male cats in the park got one of his legs injured somehow. We only got to take him to a hospital last night. Thankfully, the leg is not broken but it has sustained what appears to be a strong hit to the knee? It hurts and I have to give him painkillers for 3 days. He is resting in my bathroom right now and is very thankful. But MY GOD was it painful to take pictures of the leg. Even after two shots he could still feel pain and we had to hold and stretch his arms and legs at the same time so the doctor could take a pic. I wish I could send a few of these cats to you guys overseas because some of them look so unique. The tortoise cat...one of her kittens looks like a werewolf. I wish I could adopt them but I already have two cats in a tiny apartment.2 points
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2 points
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We lost another one. May your luck hold brave bug finder!2 points
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5 Gig patch just started download. I mean wtf are you patching with 5 gigs? redoing half of the textures?2 points
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Powder Burns will distract you, resulting in -5 accuracy, but Enduring Dance will boost your accuracy, and will help mitigate this while it lasts. As for street fighter soul blade, it would be a lot of fun, I am sure. Soul blade is my favorite cipher subclass. You'll do serious damage with soul annihilation, boosted as it is by rogue damage buffs like sneak attack and death blows. I think that the blunderbuss build would be the easiest to manage, since you could renew powder burns easily whenever needed. But there are other ways to do this, as you know. You can have a chanter summon wisps, and you can have them attack you. If you do this, wear Deltros' Helm (as Boeroer often suggests) to get a lightning lash for awhile. Your spell blade could also cast chill fog over him/herself. If you go with this route, you might want to take svef, to downgrade blinded to disoriented. But you'd still get the recovery time penalty. Not sure if it's worth it.2 points
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Besides, we really should institute Western European Time as the timezone with the best acronym.2 points
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If I ever made a game, I'd use UNIX times for release date. Would look much cooler to see "Play it at 1626980400" at the end of a trailer2 points
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I no longer play games at BST release time. They wanted Brexit? Have 'em take their dumb time zone with them as they leave2 points
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Get some poor minorities, that keeps WASPs away easy. But I did read that paper bags near the feeder will make them believe other wasps are there and stay away.2 points
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There's no reason to apologize for the latter, unless you're part of the body that writes Texas education standards. In which case, . But yeah. Texas education is not very good. When I was younger and angrier I mistakenly blamed the teachers (and I had a few bad ones for sure), but now that I've grown I realize that like many things in Texas the education system is broken systematically with no repair on the horizon and most teachers were really trying their best in a situation that was hell for them.2 points
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am recalling a discussion with a bioware developer a few years after bg2 development concluded. the developer mentioned how previous to bg2 development, bio developers (at least the writers and level designers) were required to replay bg1 entire. the developer in question conceded how playing the game were a painful slog until reaching the city of baldur's gate. 'course for the developer the suffering were less 'bout difficulty spikes than it were the widely spaced repetitive encounters and excessive reliance on mindless fed-ex quests, but even so, perhaps you feel better knowing even biowarians, only a short time removed from the initial release o' bg1, had difficulty playing the game w/o it feeling like a scene from ben hur HA! Good Fun!2 points
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I think most guns used in US crimes are unregistered, so establishing a chain of responsibility would be impossible.2 points
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Tekehu: "Now I'm resistant to Crush... but I have a crush on you, Watcher. Don't hesitate to give me a big sexy hug with your muscular arms. I can take it."2 points
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I suppose the reality is we teach about philosophers and their impact on society, instead of delving deep into their philosophies. But I have a hard time believing they didn't cover Aristotle or the Enlightenment, even in Texas. Edit: I browsed the Texas education standards. Nevermind. I apologize for my assumption and your education. 7th grade is just all Texas History? Yikes.2 points
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2 points
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So for Marine Godlike, I think I'm going to give them (or well him) a : - Keep slog zone and water immunity. These are circonstancial, but still nice to have around - Set the Fire status purge to every 1s (so basically, only the initial tick will apply for any fire effect/dot). Also only purges Hostile Fire status (as Water Immunity only affects Hostile effects...) - Add +3 AR vs crush damages as a new bonus. Godlikes need something a little less circonstancial than the previous effect to compensate for the lack of helmet. AR vs crush fits the "resistant to wave/water pressure" theme, and is quite rare to find. Great synergy with Spiritshift (but even in this case less strong than good old Bear form). It can be completed with Pierce/Slash AR items for an overall resistance to physical damages.2 points
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this is pretty close. grimoires run the spectrum depending on how willing you are to use them: one end they are either extremely useless because you just pick whatever spells you need or they are extremely useful because you pick up a bunch of other skills and let grimoire-switching pick up the slack. the latter, however, requires a "heroic amount of metagame knowledge" (per JE Sawyer's own words) and a lot of micromanagement. that being said, grimoires are still useful because there are some truly unique spells that are only available via grimoires. some of the best spells are grimoire-only. two grimoires have truly unique effects (one grants you +1 spellcast per level but self-damage causes interrupts, another gives you a once/rest ability) it's still worth picking up a couple to switch between as a result. it is definitely the case that multiclass wizard is extremely "easy" or versatile because you could just pick up all your spells from wizard, this does require the aforementioned metagame knowledge and micromanagement. It doesn't diminish pure wizard, though. Tier 8 and 9 wizard spells are extremely powerful, and despite obsidian's best efforts at balancing away from this, wizard follows an exponential power curve. (My go-to example is that an empowered tier 9 missile barrage spell will one-shot most encounters--even bosses!--in the game.) It does mean, however, that wizard builds can start feeling samey since so much of the power comes from grimoires that you find versus character choices you make. Subclass restrictions can change things up, but some don't like how restrictve they are. edit: with non-blood mage subclasses, paying attention to grimoires can be useful, because due to the spell restrictions it might become harder to find grimoires that give you a good spread of spells, so you have to do a lot more in-combat swapping and out-of-combat adjustment.2 points
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2 points
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Found this: Which led me to the original: I'm not sure which one I like better. Those kids are awesome tho, either way.2 points
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2 points
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Okay, recycled telephone cords turned into art kind of made me chuckle.2 points
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2 points
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There is a lot of effervescence these days around finding new stuff in the Deadfire! As forum contributors investigate ideas, we are eager to report nice synergies/combos that we didn't know of, or things that aren't working as they should. But we're less keen on reporting on basic failures, i.e. experiments that just didn't work out either way. I thought maybe it would be nice to know of those experiments that didn't yield any meaningful results, if only to spare the trouble for others . So here's my trial at this. Those probably aren't 'new news' to many, but I'll report on 2 recent experiments that just didn't work out. I'll try to add to this thread as I (don't) discover stuff . Don't hesitate if you'd like to post on your own "meh, scrap that" experiments. -I tried if Rot Skulls' potential would benefit from Arcane Archer bonus elemental accuracy: doesn't work. -I tried if Shadow Step's Paralyze effect would spread to multiple targets with an AoE weapon like WotEP: doesn't work.1 point
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Good thing I have the TOS on DVD then. The original ones, not the digitally enhanced ones. Nothing "wrong" with the enhanced backdrops/planets and all that but ... I like having the original versions. Edit: I didn't like the changes to the outside ship view and credits that much tho... Only have season 5, 6 and 7 of TNG on DVD tho (the rest were on VHS, which I probably still have some of but threw most away because too bulky). There's a few episodes here and there from the earlier seasons (Q episodes, Borg episodes, maybe some Data episodes) that I dearly love but I never felt like buying the entire season/s again on DVD just to have them. Note: to this day when I'm feeling kinda down I sometimes rewatch "Spock's Brain" - never fails to make me laugh hysterically.1 point
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Now I have a really strong urge to go check out all the BG1 pics. I think I started with BG2 so I never really spent a lot of time with BG1. Me as I view the pics1 point
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You can always go back in HK and top the completion up. That's about the only reason why I actually started. I'm 20 or so minutes in and pretty far already. Actual speedrunners need like 33 minutes for the any% run, which is pretty impressive. Not bad, as far as deflections go. Pretty nice Sailor Moon gifs. Makes me want to rewatch. I wonder where the discs are, I should probably make sure nobody finds them. I did find one of our student films though, talk about embarrassing. Colleague of ours went to film school after high school. There's a scene in a bar, and it's so clearly just someone's cellar where they keep their booze. Digital effects were pretty much top tier Best of the Worst stuff! And yeah, that's... just a Video CD. I have no idea where the original "master" file is, but it's not really any better. Hm. Heh. edit: Hah, I also found 24 year old backup disc, one has a folder named "Sailor Moon", and there are like promotional pictures from ancient web sites, and some really terrible quality poster scans. Hm. Look at Minako here: edit: I put the disc away before deciding to upload Minako's picture, just before someone comes along and tells me there were no PNGs in 1997. I know that. It's a screenshot. edit: I found a copy of Legend of Lemnear as an actual Video CD. That's slightly less embarrassing than knowing where my copy of LBG is, but only slightly. That is from an official distributor, but I have no idea if it's really licensed. Original Japanese with English subtitles. Pretty much unwatchable. I mean, image quality wise. The OVA itself is, uhm... from what I recall it has well animated action scenes, well animated jiggly boobies (but nothing too explicit) and a hackneyed good vs. evil fantasy plot. No one ever claimed 80ies shonen/seinen was any better than today's, content wise, right? It sure looked a lot better though. Like, a hell lot better, even.1 point
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My first character in BG1 was also a Bard, and yes it was completely useless character, which either performed or was doing anything else. You were not able to do both things at once, like in later D&D video games.1 point
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I was really scared for a while when it seemed like The Boss was a set, premade character (#NotMyBoss), but toward the end of the video they suggested you can still design your own character. Hopefully they still have at least 3 male and 3 female voices to choose from, like before.I suppose it would be too much to ask for the Spicy Latina voice from SR2 to make a return?1 point
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That sentence makes you stop wondering if the devs have no clue what Saint's Row was about - after that line you know that for a fact.1 point
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Also for the slightly weird and wacky semi-political... Ladbible - Celebrity billionaire Chinese actress Zhao Wei disappeared from history Fortune - Beijing scrubbed one of China's most famous actors from the internet1 point
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If you buy a fake vaccine card you should probably proofread it first Woman Arrested Trying to Enter Hawaii With 'Maderna' Covid-19 Vaccine Card The free vaccine seems like a better investment of time and money1 point
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You can also have your companions put on the robe and lie to the imps and talk to Arkemyr. They each have their own lines, Aloth does a pretty good impression when talking to the upstairs imp.1 point
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Wait wait wait, Encased is a non-party based isometric RPG? I think I'm sold.1 point
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yeah, there's a few nice reactive touches with items/gear that pop up like that. another example is: (minor-spoilers) if you have concelhaut as a pet equipped while doing Forgotten Sanctum DLC, you get some extra interactions between Concelhaut and the other archmages.1 point
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I guess by Berserker you mean Barbarian. Because there's no Berserker in PoE1 - but there is one in Deadfire as a Barbarian subclass. Streetfighter with blunderbuss is very straightforward. If you want to use Hand Mortar and Fire in the Hole (which I would recommend unless you want to build a Mortar Monk in the same party as well) then you want max INT because of the AoE of both weapons. If you want to use "regular" blunderbusses you don't need that much INT. With regular blunderbusses there's a small problem: you need backup weapons with non-pierce dmg because there's quite some pierce-resistant or even -immune enemies. But that's all basically. For a damage dealer you want high PER and DEX and also usually MIG - a Streetfigter can do with less MIG though because he already gets a ton of dmg bonuses so that a little chunk from MIG isn't really noticable. DEX (being a multiplicative dps influence rather than MIG which is additive only) is more important. PER, too because not only do blunderbusses have an ACC malus but also Powder Burns will cost you 5 PER because of the distraction it will put on you. As second class: you can use Barbarian or even Berserker. Berserker is nice because of the added PEN, but besides that it's also very dangerous because the self damage is high and you can't see you health. On the other hand you can get yourself to bloodied (50% health) in no time and then you're not only "On the Edge" (where your Streetfigter gets a lot of bonus crit damage) but also profit from Blooded of the Barbarian. Combined with Bloody Slaughter and Barbaric Smash you can do a lot of damage in a very short time and even get a Rage refund if you use it as killing blow (way better then Finishing Blow imo). Some additional cool stuff with Berserker + mortar blunderbusses: you can either apply Spirit Frenzy's staggered in an AoE with every shot or Blood Frenzy's raw DoT which stacks with Deep Wounds etc. With Blood Storm + mortars you will land crits so frequently that your Frenzy will stay on forever without recast, too. But so will the self damage (so beware). There's one other problem with Berserker Frenzy. It confuses you. That means with mortars the AoE will get smaller and you will hit your friends with the AoE. That last part may not be as bad as it sounds because you will hit friends with Powder Burns already so you want to make sure nobody friendly is where you are aiming your blunderbusses. You can get rid of confusion by using Svef, eating special food at rest (like Luminous Lobster) or using items (like the Devil of Caroc Breastplate which can be enchanted with a resistance which makes you basically immune to Confusion. It's a great armor for a Rogue/Barb anyway so I would aim for that). There are other problems with Barb/Berserker: Blood Thirst doesn't work with reloading weapons - you will still have the reloading time. It's one of the best passives of a Barbarian so that's a shame. Berserker Frenzy has a really good crit conversion. But it only works in melee. There are other passives that don't work with ranged weapons, like Interrupting Blows. So... it's fun but it's tricky. Since it's a bit difficult to monitor your health you will def. go down in combat from time to time. High CON and a fat health pool with passives like "Tough" and at the beginning an Amulet of (Greater) Health can help. A healer, too of course. So with a Berserker high(ish) CON isn't the worst idea. Like... don't dump it. Stalwart Defiance and the Voidward Ring are two things (among others) that may save you a lot of headache. If you have a Priest in the party you can use Barring Death's Door + Salvation of Time on your Streetfighter/Berserker which gives him god mode basically. Besides Barbarian/Berserker there are other classes that fit nicely: Ranger has high accuracy and the other obvious ranged abilities like Gunner and so on but also Driving Flight (especially awesome with mortars since the AoE also jumps). If you don't like animal companions there's the Ghost Heart subclass. With mortars and Driving Flights there will be mayhem. If you use stuff like Blinding Strike with that setup it's like a guarantee that you will always hit all enemies because there's so many attack rolls. Fire in the Hole has a build-in jump. It stacks with Driving Flights. If you pick an Arcane Archer: his Imbue shots release their effect with every jump. Fire in the Hole in the main hand with Driving Flight and Imbue:Eora will drop three(!) Pulls of Eora with enormous accuracy which will pull everything together. Now hitting with AoE stuff becomes so easy - while it's also a great CC effect obviously. If you combine it with Imbue:Web you will have locked those clumped enemies in place, too (3 parallel instances of binding web stop anything that isn't resistant/immune). Monk is very good as second class, too. Especially with mortars. Monks have Duality of Mortal Presence which can give you +10 INT. It leads to very big AoE sizes for your mortars. Also Monks have Stunning Surge which is excellent with mortars, too. Basically it's a free AoE stun without costs most of times in this combo. The Helwalker subclass even adds up to +10 MIG which is cool - but it also makes you more squishy (but nowhere as bad as Berserker). And also Monks can use Thunderous Blows ti get that sweet +2 PEN that the Berserker comes with, only later. Enduring Dance adds not only wounds to fuel your abilites but also let you gain up to 12 ACC which is good. Finally Lightning Strikes make you even faster and add a sweet shocking lash. Also with the Long Pain the Monk later gets an excellent backup for blunderbusses should you need crush dmg at range or simply want to finish off single enemies with good single target damage (mortars are not that good then). Chanter is also a good second class, especially Troubadour because he has an easy time to keep up two parallel phrases at once. When you combine Mith Fyr + Sure Handed Ila you (and the party) will be having a nice burning lash and incredibly fast shooting speed (because Sure Handed Ila has this effect with reloading weapons that it applies both the recovery bonus AND the reloading bonus to your blunderbusses - stacked with your Streetfighter recovery bonus from "Heating Up"). And besides the shooting you'd also have plenty of cool invocations to choose from. For example summons that will help to keep enemies away from you. Black Jacket Fighter would allow you to switch weapon sets without any recovery. You could basically fire blunderbusses as soon as you want to heat up, then switch to something else and use the lightning speed with those weapons instead. Plenty of options. I personally consider Streetfigter/Arcane Archer and Streetfigter/Helwalker with dual mortars (Hand Mortar + Fire in the Hole) to be most fun - but that's my subjective opinion. I like strong "on the fly" CC in combination with damage and both have plenty. Berserker/Streetfighter is brute force. Lots of dmg and speed but little CC. And risky - but that can be fun, too. Troubadour/Streetfighter is strong and very versatile - but it requires to do more diverse stuff, not just shooting. Which might not be what you're looking for (?).1 point