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My wife did a pass yesterday at doing the watercolors on this orlan portrait on artstation after I complained about a lack of good orlan/halfling art in games, and I'm pleased with the results, happy to share.

Utena 28 the new old guy returns. Some guy comes in and marries Juri's unrequited love, only to end up getting a divorce. What a whirlwind romance. So umm... how has Utena not noticed something is up with Akio? I mean, the car(s) that are delivering her duel opponents to her have "Ohtori" written on them. I guess she failed English. Overall I think I'm enjoying this more because it stepped up the villains. I did not give a single **** about Professor Black Rose but the Incest Kings have a magnificent bastard energy to them that makes me enjoy their scenes instead of being bored. On another note, what is probably the last chapter of Berserk has dropped and it is magnificent.

Wait, Jupiter Ascending was wonderful? Oh...I see what you did there.

And the party reactions to the plot twist were fun. The writers threw it at you as the super important revelation that defines the whole game, and the majority of npcs in your party had the exact opposite reaction, so it prevented the scene from becoming cringy like so many super hero stories "Oh, wow the bad guy is your step brother who hates you because you got more attention blah blah". It was one of those games where the writers weren't trying too hard to be super serious writers and just ran with it. I think it is what makes it Bioware's best game.

Neketaka can be overwhelming at first. Are you a new player looking for advice because you are lost, or a returning player just looking for optimization? You don't have to full clear Neketaka the moment you get there. Personally I think the best quest routing is queens birth -> watershaper district -> palace -> stairs -> Brass citadel -> gullet. If you are a new player, DO NOT - enter the elevator in the gullet. My first character went there super early and I spent literally an entire day of playing the game getting out of there alive.

Yes, Clear the Path is pretty cool. Sundering Blow also isn't bad (but maybe a bit too weak or PL9). The rest of the lot is way too expensive. Especially because you can't get Discipline back easily (except Tactician maybe). I tried to make Take the Hit (with Furrante's Breastplate, Voidward, Cadhu Scalth, Death's Maw and all shenanigans) and Toughened Fury (with deliberately lowered deflection via low RED, Cap of the Laughingstock, Sandals of the Water Lily etc.) work though - and still they are not worth going SC imo. If Toughened Fury gave you Discipline for every - or every second - crit you receive: maybe. Take the Hit: if the damage received would be a bit lower than which is done to allies it would be worth it maybe. And the AoE needs to be way bigger to be useful. I understand that it sounds a bit weird to "take a hit" for somebody who's meters away from you - but hey: it's some sort of essence-induced fighter magic so let's just roll with it. For Chopping Wood to be good it needed a duration or a counter. For example: after empowering an ability your attacks will have the effects for the next 15 secs or whatnot.

My expectations for a new Matrix movie are tempered by the abject failures that Reloaded and Revolutions were, and how wonderful Jupiter Ascending turned out to be. At this point, the Wachowskis' track record puts them in the same league as David S. Goyer, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.

-----Preface----- Yes, indeed. It is another blunderbuss build (Not really, see the following). But this time, on Forbidden Fist. Forbidden Fist seeks Powder Burns, like ash seeks embers. When the self-inflicted Distracted expires, Forbidden Fist heals and Wounds generated. Only, in truth... this attack rotation makes Forbidden Fist invulnerable and impervious. And so it is, Forbidden Fist will conquer and the Deadfire will tremble... <Deck Salts III> -----Part 1 : Build Base----- Version: 5.0 Build Name: Destitute is Virtue Description: This build relies heavily on the Forbidden Fist (the ability). By pushing your Resolve (and thus your hostile effect duration reduction) to the threshold, each Powder Burns attack heals up to 50 hp and Forbidden Fist becomes spammable. So you can keep stunning/interrupting/enfeebling enemies while retaining self-rejuvenating ability. Class: Wanderer (Forbidden Fist + Ghost Heart) Forbidden Fist is our foundation. Ghost Heart will make some boss fights much more easier (especially Hauani O Whe and Belranga, see the bosses part for details). Also, your ghost companion can be used as decoy to separate enemies or help you safely retreat and de-aggro. However... you will lose Resonant Touch, making this build almost impotent to Dorudugan (Actually you can deal with Dorudugan by exploiting some Hunter's Claw glitches, I wont argue if you call it a failure). Anyway, apart from Dorudugan, you are the true God of Eora, you can simply AI Script almost every other fight. Race: Human or Hearth Orlan Background: Ixamitl Plains Difficulty: Triple Crown Well, initially i was planning for a single class Forbidden Fist Ultimate run, but Vela the All Mighty kept crushing me because of the shortage of Withdraw scrolls. So, when i finally realized that the Ultimate was too much for a noob like me, i lowered the difficulty and picked up blunderbusses. Darn it, another bitter failure... Solo: Yes You wont get Fire in the Hole if play on solo under Magran's Fires. For Hand Mortar however, it is an... ethical problem. I didnt do it, really... 15 Required Bosses: Partially Yes This build is viable for...emm.. 0.01 Dorudugan and all other 14 (see the bosses part for details)...without Galawain's Challenge PoE1 Set Up: Sorry, but you need to sacrifice either Pallegina or Grieving Mother (preferable Pallegina). I apologize if it makes you feel uncomfortable Stats: MIG: Preferable max, healing and dmg bonus all together are so good for this build. CON: Low to mediocre. You need to face tank lots of Fortitude attacks. DEX: Mediocre (see Part 4 for details). PER: Preferable max. You need crits to boost penetration and dmg. INT: Low to mediocre (see Part 4 for details). RES: MAX and stack it to 35 (see Part 4 for details). (18 Base + 1 Race +1 Ixamitl Plains + 2 Blessing + 5 Cloak + 1 Ring + 2 Necklace + 2 Pet + 1 Brew + 1 Effigy + 1 Boots) My Game: iirc, 18/8/8/18/8/18 (You may need to increase DEX a little) -----Part 2: Equipment----- Head: Acina's Tricorn /Helm of the White Void (Helm of the White Void adds valuable 10 ACC to Forbidden Fist) Cloak: Cloak of Poverty (Keep your money LESS THAN 1000 please.... no?) Armor: Gipon Prudensco (Bear in mind that this armor only provides 8 Pierce AR, which is dangerous when fighting some bosses...) Necklace: Token of Faith Gloves: Firethrower's Gloves Belt: (Depends on your AR requirement) Boots: Boots of the Stone/ Boots of the Whiter Ring1: Ring of the Solitary Wanderer Ring2: Ring of the Marksman (Optional) Pet: Eviee ---Weapon Set 1--- Main : Xefa's Empirical Explication Off: Kitchen Stove (For Blunderbuss attacks ofc) ---Weapon Set 2--- Main : Kapana Taga Off: Cadhu Scalth (When abusing Forbidden Fist, mostly late to end game boss fights. Kapana Taga for its +1 AR and +4 Deflection effect) -----Part 3 : Abilities----- Level 1: Swift Strikes, Marked Prey, Companion: Bear Level 2: Resilient Companion (+2AR to protect the bear from.... your friendly fire mostly) Level 3: Fast Runner Level 4: Clarity of Agony, Protective Companion (Clarity of Agony will likely refund 1+ Wound, and you can use it as healing ability) (Use Protective Companion to stop enemies when they rush towards you) Level 5: Two Weapon Style(*) (Switch to Weapon and Shield Style when fighting end game bosses, except for Hauani O Whe) Level 6: Gunner(*) Level 7: Lightening Strikes, Marked for the Hunt(*) Level 8: Stunning Blow(*) Level 9: Evasive Roll(*) Level 10: Thunderous Blows, Stalker's Link (Thunderous Blows is sooo good, blunderbuss starves for that +2 Pen and +5 MIG bonus) (Also it has no recovery time and wont break your attack rotation, i.e. your healing chain, that is crucial in some dire situations) Level 11: Hunter's Claw (It's okay to leave it to Kith or Vessel in early game) Level 12: Duality of Mortal Presence (Mind mostly, switch to Body if you desperately need Fortitude) Level 13: Stunning Surge(*) (Now you can begin to spam Stunning attacks) Level 14: Driving Flight(*) (Your life saver when facing Hauani O Whe, praise the sun!) Level 15: Practiced Healer (More healing power!!) Level 16: Turning Wheel(*), Survival of the Fittest (Switch to Iron Wheel when bosses overpen you, namely Belranga, Dorudugan and Guardian of Ukaizo) Level 17: Hunter's Fang(*) (Switch to Beast's Claw if necessary) Level 18: Improved Critical Level 19: The dichotomous Soul, Uncanny Luck Level 20: Crucible of Suffering (*): Replace these abilities with Tough/Bear's Fortitude/ Snake's Reflexes/Long Stride etc. when facing certain bosses -----Part 4 : Some Numbers----- Stats Attunement If my observations are correct, when Powder Burns inflicts Distracted, it will simply RESET the last Distracted duration instead of replacing it, i.e. it wont proc healing or generate Wound. Basically, you have to shorten the Distracted effect as much as possible, and make sure it expires right before next Powder Burns attack. So, we can reach a criteria like below and yes, there are some...delicate calculations involved. (RES Effect - INT Effect) < max(DEX Effect - Armor Effect, Reload Animation) As a self-inflicted debuff, Distracted is affected by your INT ,which is extremely annoying. Lowering INT to minimum barely affect the duration because of the double inversion algorithm given maximum RES, and on the contrary, you need INT to keep up Ghost Companion, Tenacious and Clarity of Agony (Turning Wheel will increase INT anyway). In conclusion, assuming 20 INT (8 Base + 2 Blessing + 10 Turning Wheel, +50% Duration) , 35 RES (-75% Duration), -35% Duration from the ring and -50% Duration (Active) from Clarity of Agony, Powder Burns will last for 1.98s which is enough to support 12 DEX attacks wearing Gipon Prudensco. (First Inversion: 0.5 INT - 1 Clarity of Agony - 0.538 Ring - 3 RES = -4.04 Double Inversion: 10 Base Sec * (1/(1+4.04)) = 1.98 Sec) So, to my life easier, i simply went with 8 INT/8 DEX/18 RES (20 INT/12 DEX/35 RES in game), hopefully someone can come up with an accurate combination. -----Part 5 : Bosses----- **Spoiler Alert** Here presents some tricky boss fights and provides some suggestions. I uploaded a pic fighting Guardian of Ukaizo with 3 stacks of The Final Mega Boss as kind of proof, since only 500KB attachment is allowed... 1. Hauani O Whe (Primordial) 2. Sigilmaster Auranic (Kith) 3. Belranga (Beast) 4. Dorudugan (Vessel) 5. Guardian of Ukaizo (With 3 stacks only)

I think Death Note is kinda dumb and that Kira is probably among the worst edgy protagonists.

Oh no. What a travesty.

As FF you don't need many additional attack abilities (except as SC Monk you should always go for Whispers of the Wind. I would either take Enervating Blows or Stunning Surge (because you can use it with Mortification even if at 0 wounds). Enervating Blows seems like a waste because FF already enfeebled - but the weakening auto-hit lowers fortitude before FF rolls against fortitude to enfeeble, making it more likely to actually land the enfeeblement. Stunning Surge stuns (surprise ;)) which is a hard CC, enfeebled is not. But enfeebled prolongs the stunning effect on the enemy by 50% which stacks with Duality (+10 INT, also 50%), giving you enormously long stuns. Also the stun + enfeeble effects lower enemies' Fortitude by 20 points. I personally would pick Stunning Surge I guess.

Shieldbearer is good. Besides the healing of Lay in Hands you also prevent k.o. - that's nice. +1 Engagement is good if you want to tank - especially if you don't multiclass with Fighter, Stalker or Barbarian who could bring more engagement. Paladin's don't have engagement abilities so the auto+1 of Shieldbearer is nice. Besides the "don't leave or I'll hit you" effect engagement also automatically stops movement and clears the original command where to move. Against enemies than run on AI this often means they abandon reaching the backline because their movement command was cleared and they had to stop. You can turn that off in the game options but I wouldn't recommend that.

yeah no, i agree with your assessment. white flames is really nice dual-wielded but if you are dumping perception then shieldbearer is the way to go.

Yeah, even as someone who does not like Star Wars at all, I liked KoTOR and its successors well enough. Sure it was during the early days where going full 3D meant heavy compromises, but mechanically it was functional, and I liked the heavy focus on dialogue, as silly as the few canned lines of alien speech endlessly repeating was. Besides, it's not like we had any other option back then for a spiritual successor to the IE games - frankly I would have played whatever BioWare released regardless of the setting at the time.

Huh. I was hooked on the story and didn't see the twist coming at all. It probably helped that it came out at a time when I wasn't really plugged into the internet. It was also back in the day when I could sit down and play a game for an entire weekend. Plus it was a more engaging Star Wars story than the prequels. I went my entire childhood without any real SW content other than the toys and the original movies, and then we get these mediocre movies. Then we suddenly get this fairly cutting edge RPG set in the universe. It was pretty awesome at the time.

engagement here is more so that certain characters can prevent other characters from running away. it's meant to limit kiting/mobility and give tanks/melee-ers battlefield control options. flanking is an orthogonal mechanism.

I read that repeatedly but it's not correct. The amount of engagment slots you have doesn't change how many enemies are needed to flank you. Maybe it was different in PoE, I don't really remember - but two enemies at (mostly) opposing sites are always enough to flank anybody (unless there's One Stands Alone or Slippers of the Assassin or something like that involved that specifially changes how many enemies are needed). Look here at my dude Edér who has 8 engagement slots in this situation (Kapana Taga +2, Shield +1, Guardian Stance +3, Blackened Plate Helmet +1 and Reckless Brigandine +1) but still gets flanked from two dummies (who don't even have engagement):

Yes, it is. It's basically Barring Death's Door with another name. Say hello Monk/Shieldbearer with +10 INT, eh? It can also be prolonged with Salvation of Time and Wall of Draining (by the guy who gets the effect).

I just finished the standalone SF3 Fallen God campaign with my friend. I got the supposed good ending, but it was more bittersweet... if not downright cruel. They really did a great job on the narrative front, developing characters, even secondary ones, and giving them fleshed out personalities. The game does still have a hefty amount of ME WILL SMASH YOUR FACE, but motivations and subplots are more involved and I enjoyed the focus on the tribal and mystical aspects of troll society. This one is more of a role-playing game than the other SF3 titles, being the only one where your choices determine which ending you get. This is to the detriment of the RTS facet, with less RTS missions overall and those not being very interesting. Generally you can just crush everything with your hero party if they are correctly specced and don't really need an army to do so. I'm assuming the experience would drastically change in higher difficulty levels. Visuals, voice acting and the score are great like in the other two. Such an underrated franchise.

Utena 29-31 Jury duels, Akio puts the moves on Utena, and Nanami runs away. So Jury's part was nice, we learn that Akio has at least tried to **** every female character except for Jury and (maybe) Nanami, and Nanami is less interested in her onii-sama when she finds out they're (probably) not related. Okie dokie, 8 episodes to go. Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious that she encountered Touga and Saionji when they were kids and that her prince is actually Akio. Given how those characters all have black silhouettes instead of features, I think there is something about the academy that causes people to forget their lives outside of it.

MIT Physicists Just Majorly Advanced The Quest Towards Actual Fusion Power.

My two big issues with Skyrim now are: 1) who to marry, since I'd like the children to have two parents and not be left so much time with housecarl nannies. 2) how to split my holdings between them fairly. The house in Solitude is probably the most important property, being as it is in Solitude, near the Blue Palace and next door to the emperor's cousin. Windhelm has symbolic value and is also a port and the link to Solstheim and the manor there. Whiterun is strategically placed. Riften is a port. Markarth has the mines. Then there are the three homesteads which should grow into villages by the time the girls inherit them... Doh client showed up. Have to interrupt the important musings for work.

This might be useful for those who build their bases near mob spawning points. Things to do in the morning: drink a dew drop, eat a roast and one shot those mosquitos with an awesome catapult.

"Not nearly as bad as Utena" is what I'm hearing, which sounds like a resounding recommendation even if it does sound a little tempered by some disappointment, . Yeah, I actually wasn't sure whether I should interpret the events of those two episodes as being racist (on the part of the show's creators) or not, because it's starting to kind of feel that way with the way it's all tying into Nadia's core beliefs and upbringing while insistently making her look as stupid and mean as possible. I don't know what they were thinking. I guess it'll depend on where we go from here. Good thing I played Warcraft III for many years so I can still remember that exact line in my head perfectly, . Couldn't be me, I would never do that, especially not about literally everything, . Are kidding me? How could you put the Power Puff Girls in even the same category as Phineas and Ferb? Powerpuff Girls is a totally classic cartoon aesthetic. Phineas and Ferb looks like it was by professional baby-killing assassins who never learned to draw good but decided to make a children's cartoon instead of continuing to kill babies anyways. How are they even remotely on the same level?! I have like literally about 20 different magical/shoujo shows from the ~90s bookmarked because I once sent out a feeler with a Cardcaptor Sakura community about other older shows like it from around the same time period (late 80s to early 2000s) and got swamped with a number of at least promising-looking suggestions...but I'm not gonna get to them anytime soon with everything else I have to get to first. Undoubtedly, none of them will match up to Sakura (and almost definitely not even Sailor Moon), but hey, at least there's a possibility!

I don't get the feel from this trailer, but I know there was speculation that the real world was a Matrix as well. So theoretically they could go that direction as well.

Actually, yes I did forget all about Revolutions. Like all I said all I recall is Bellucci's cleavage! 😛 But that does sound like a plausible take on it, wonder what is with the guy at the end talking about "The Matrix" is though.

No Monica Bellucci - 0/10 Would not watch

Imo Helwalker is the best pick for such a Monk.

Thanks for the response! I've read that most of the bugs appear to be in the later parts of the game so maybe I'll go ahead and get it now. It will most likely take me a few months to get to that point due to my limited game time, so by then maybe most of the issues should be resolved. I could also wait for a discount but I don't mind paying full price to help support the developers so that they can continue making these types of CRPG's in the future.

Yeah, you could theoretically go to Who's Online, click Full List and filter it by Members. Then for example you'd get Bruce reading the Food thread 6 minutes ago (as I see while I am posting). So if anyone has been looking at a thread you are about to lock in the last couple of minutes they could theoretically be posting. But with a long reply that could be longer, so there isn't too much point checking. How many minutes would a moderator have to then wait to have given people a reasonable time to post? Because this tiny post took 7 minutes. On the other hand, since the "locking this" post comes first, and whoever is typing at the time should get a notification that a new post has appeared in the discussion they are posting in, they could be given a small window (30 seconds? Dunno, someone else do the haggling) to see that post and copy whatever they have been typing. Eh, hasn't happened to me in ages, and when it does it gives me something to tease the moderators with.

Yes on the first few accounts, kind of on the last one. Memory is a fickle thing in the academy. People disappear without anyone noticing or remembering, after all. They do remember some of their lives before coming there, though. Utena came because of her memory of the prince. Touga knows he's adopted, along with Nanami, and just refuses to tell her. Miki and Kozue have their family life they remember. Nanami remembers drowning a kitten. All very specific events, though, nothing much about the rest of their lives. Curious. Touga will drop a pretty big hint soon, if he hasn't already. Jury's Akio Ohtori arc duel is probably one of the highlights of the entire show, and a pretty important episode as well, in hindisight...

Yeah, that's a common occurrence in RPGs in general, and Bioware games in particular. I guess making compelling and credible evil options is difficult, because it boils down to either egoism (i.e. walk away and get no XP or loot) or zealotry which is often a poor fit for player characters. Games tend to go for the thug playstyle instead, and that's just boring. Tyranny I think managed to present consistently interesting "evil" options that made sense for the player, but I can't remember many other games that did. Tyranny is also a special case in the sense that the story sets the player up as an official and enforcer of an all-powerful tyrant.

I replayed Kotor. Never replayed Kotor2. I found it to be trying too hard to be profound.

Might, but could also be that they do plan on doing KotOR2 and want to seed references to it in the first game to overall tighten the links between the two as well. I'm willing to wait and see.

Martyrs (2008). Uh. Yeah. So...let's never watch French psychological horror about ever again, mkay? I had to watch approximately half of the movie with either my eyes closed or my hands over my ears, and sometimes both. I'm going to go back to the anime thread where everything is smiles and rainbows now, thank you very much.

I'm pretty sure she's incapable of noticing anything at all, really. I watched an episode of a show called Mob Psycho 100, which is about psychics and wacky demons/spirits. Eh...a bit too crazy for me - that, and it's difficult for me to ever really get into the more hyperactive and irreverent style of a show like this. But if you're into that sort of thing, it didn't seem too bad otherwise...maybe something more up KP's alley. ... I watched about half of an episode of a show called Bloom Into You, which is something someone else recommended to me for who the heck knows why. I didn't have a good feeling about it going into it, and then it was immediately that kind of "permanently over-dramatic for no good reason" show that I instantly notice and want to turn off because that's literally never going to be any fun, and that's more or less what I did after suffering through half of that episode and then starting to skip through it to see if it ever changes. Some kind of girly romance show, but it doesn't matter because the style of it is miles away from anything I'd ever like. As far as anyone else will ever know, I never tried this show, and I never will. ... I watched about ten seconds of an episode of a show called Death Note that someone else also recommended to me, which had the most horrendously awful opening song and animation that I turned it off immediately. Someone who's already watched this please tell me that the rest of the show is better than the intro so I can gather up the courage to at least watch the first episode.

Given muh Boys were playing the champs on the road, I chalked up this one as an L before it even started. We put up a pretty good fight and Dak looked good, so overall I'm fairly happy.

Steins;Gate 0, 23 Beta and episodes 1-4: So, basically this starts with an alternate version of the first series’ episode 23. The only difference is at the end. This looks very different from the other series. Apparently no time travel, but AIs and a bunch of new characters.