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Finished a "regular" playthrough of Encased. It's a very good old skool RPG. I mean let's just call it what it is, it's Fallout 1/2. The weakest part of the game is the combat; it's not terrible, it's just fairly basic and not particularly exciting. The combat is functional, that's the best way I can put it. The good news is that there's as little or as much combat as you want there to be; there are alternate ways, often multiple, to solve or bypass every problem. I'm definitely going to play the game again and do either the low IQ or the ghost run. I may do both at some point.

Hi @Elric Galad, I finally got around tackling this issue... Download: Animal Companion Ability Fixes.zip Instead of editing the Progression Tables directly, I made a BaseProgressionTableAppend object for the Ranger table, as well one for each of the CharacterProgressionTable objects that included any of the abilities (apart from PT_Maia & PT_Maia_Ranger which actually had working conditionals...) With this implementation, I think you should be able to remove the "Highest Load Priority" package altogether and instead include these fixes in the base package Here are the specific abilities appended to the character progression tables: lv8 DefensiveBond lv11 Strengthened Bond lv15 Survival of the Fittest lv17 Superior Camouflage PT_NPC_Ranger_BeastmasterMelee_Antelope PT_NPC_Ranger_BeastmasterMelee_Bear PT_NPC_Ranger_BeastmasterMelee_Boar PT_NPC_Ranger_BeastmasterMelee_Gunhawk PT_NPC_Ranger_BeastmasterMelee_Lion lv8 DefensiveBond lv11 Strengthened Bond lv14 Survival of the Fittest lv17 Superior Camouflage PT_NPC_Ranger_BeastmasterMelee_Stag PT_NPC_Ranger_BeastmasterMelee_Wolf lv15 Survival of the Fittest lv17 Superior Camouflage PT_NPC_Ranger_Balanced_Antelope PT_NPC_Ranger_Balanced_Bear PT_NPC_Ranger_Balanced_Boar PT_NPC_Ranger_Balanced_Gunhawk PT_NPC_Ranger_Balanced_Lion PT_NPC_Ranger_Balanced_Stag PT_NPC_Ranger_Balanced_Wolf PT_NPC_Ranger_Offensive_Stag PT_NPC_Ranger_Offensive_Wolf LAX01_PT_NPC_Ranger_Balanced_Bear_Trinket lv15 Defensive Bond PT_NPC_Ranger_Barbarian_Wolf LAX02_PT_NPC_Ranger_Barbarian_Polar_Bear

The Blood Mage regenerates 1 point of health (base) every 6 secs. Not too low CON (or wearing a Greater Amulet of Health and picking up the Tough passive later on) is advised because Blood Sacrifice may be able to one-shot you with too little health. 10 can be enough imo, but I'm not an avid player of Blood Mages. Watershaper has a really nice spell collection. Besides that Tekehu as SC Watershaper can decide almost all encounters with just one cast of Great Maelstrom. If you're not hitting you are doing something wrong with your buffing & debuffing. If you just start slinging offensive spells with a caster who has no inherent ACC bonuses you will be ineffective. First buff ACC, then debuff enemies defenses with that higher ACC, then deal damage. Takes a bit longer but you won't waste as much spells with misses. The more levels the more spell uses and less often you will run out of spells. If you have a Cipher in the party this problem will go away once you take Ancestor's Memory. The power of the Waterhshaper comes from his powerful foe-only spells (which usually would cause friendly fire). Foe-only Chillfog for example is very good (if your ACC is buffed nicely). As Stormspeaker Tekehu has access to Avenging Storm. Which is great. I played him as Mortar Stormspeaker (Hand Mortar + Blinding Smoke or Fire in the Hole with Chain Shot in the offhand and Sasha's Singing Scimitar in the main hand). Every AoE hit roll will proc a lightning. Blinding Smoke triggers Avenging Storm, too (which is very powerful). I used Sure-Handed Ila to speed up the shooting a lot (-20% reloading time AND -20% recovery time both apply to all reloading weapons). Stacks with the dual wielding and Two-Weapon Style. You can't use Mith Fyr for Tekehu himself because his ocean-godlike's passive will clear all fire effects (hostile or benefical) every few seconds. A neat trick is to use Shash's Singing Scimitar with Refreshing Finale to empower Avenging Storm 1/encounter. Every proc of Avenging Storm counts as empowered spell. Refreshing Finale now grants you 3 phrases for every empowered spell. This means if you shoot with Hand Mortar or Fire in the Hole after empowering Avenging Storm you will get up to 8 phrases with one single shot (and deal big damage, too). More on that here: This means you can unleash so many invocations in no time it's quite insane and only limited to your casting speed, not your phrases. You will swim in phrases. Granted: this comes as late as PL8 - but before that you can still dish out nice shock damage with cheap Dancing Bolts, Her Revenge and whatnot and empower such invocations 1/encounter - which is pretty impactful imo. And even without Avenging Storm the Hand Mortar + Sure Handed Ila still does nice AoE dps in between invocations. You can combine that with the Least Unstable Coil, too. You'll get all 6 tier-3 inspirations because every Avenging Storm proc counts as empowered spell. CHanter's don't need Brilliant so much - but still nice to have all tier-3 inspirations for sure. Stormspeakers have a huge downside though: they cannot use summons. But since you did that already with another character and want to try something else - maybe that's even an advantage for you?

Vaccines do prevent getting corona, they just don't stop it in all people*. They also do prevent the spreading of the virus in most people, and greatly reduce it in almost everyone since there's significant symptom reduction (which includes main vectors like, well, coughing or sneezing). The flu vaccine also doesn't stop people getting flu and doesn't stop spreading that virus either, and it's in every single metric worse than even the worst approved coronavirus vaccine; it's efficiency varies year to year but is typically in the 45% range. No vaccine works with 100% efficiency, even the ones people think as being 100% effective are only that because enough people get vaccinated. There is also statistically far too much improvement in mortality rates when vaccinated for it not to be preventing deaths. *It's notoriously difficult to vaccinate effectively for respiratory diseases. Most 'lining' tissues such as found in the throat and lungs use a different antibody (IgA) from the 'general' body (IgG), and vaccines tend to not stimulate IgA as effectively, and not for as long as they do IgG. So you can get high viral loads in the upper respiratory tract even if vaccinated because there isn't much covid specific IgA there at the start of infection. But, the immune system is still primed, and you do get rapid production of specific IgA when stimulated so you seldom get infection reaching the lungs (--> pneumonia) nor moving into other organs (--> myocarditis, 'long covid' etc) as you'd get if not vaccinated and relying on the generalised immune response (--> inflammation, fevers; correspondingly, if you get infected when vaccinated it will probably be asymptomatic with no fever or inflammation). That's why you can still get infected and be infectious after a vaccine, but also why the symptoms are much reduced and you're a lot less likely to infect others. [I'm pretty sure that that's also why there's so much interest in aerosolising vaccines for covid, as that directly targets the relevant cells rather than being injected intermuscularly]

I've rewatched this several times and it gets funnier to me every time. William Shatner's self-aware straight-faced humor/trolling (or whatever you want to call it) always cracks me up. I can't believe he's 90. Live long(er) and (continue to) prosper, dude.

Hi guys, over the past couple of months I've been working on a few mods for Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire. Now that I've completed them, it's time to share: My Custom Catalogue mod adds enchantments and upgrades to some of the unique items in game that don't do anything except look pretty. It also adds a few new unique items including Xoti's hood and Mirke's tricorn. My Subclasses & Abilities Reworked mod looks to provide new options by adjusting certain subclasses and abilities to make them more appealing. For example, all of the wizard subclasses no longer lock you out of two schools. Instead, specialized wizards have longer recovery times. Some higher tier abilities are also changed to make it more appealing to go single-class. Finally, my Multiclass Names Redux mod simply changes a large number of the multiclass names into better sounding ones.

you naughty but ma- [insert barrage of sanity destroying nonsense] I'm going to give it at least five episodes. It is very weird so far.

Pressing onward in Gamedec, the skill system is a bit weird, finding it hard to get the red points I need. Some of the professions are amusing, at least the Infotainer one where you are just someone with a large Twitter following. Odd to use that to intimidate a drug dealer Pretty sure I did the wrong deductions in one mission after breaking drones that would have given me evidence as I didn't go about figuring out the hacking puzzle first, maybe will save scum and re-do that. Still, is pretty fun, there's a lot to read as well although the in game Codex is broken in some places but is good for world building. Note - increase the text size.

Some folks are just incapable of reading past the headline.

Nice ! I think I can trust you, you even pointed that Maia's auto-tables were working correctly, which I was not aware (but can be explainted from the game files). I will add this to next version. Better to avoid a cumbersome additional mod component with specific loading rules indeed !

Alternative Silmarillion Titles...

I am correctly converting the pagoda into an 4 tiered base. I am encountering weird issues that your suggestions would be helpful with. As the pagoda itself is a octagonal structure this cause a mismatch between the walls and floors even if you look at parallel sides it causes issues with wall mapping. It's odd that you cannot place within the connection range of the buildings but other times you can build over the same section. Such as your triangle floor will not complete a square but I can connect to catheti of the shape and it allows construction even thou to places are occupied at the same time

It looks like any other X-Com clone from the past few years. Yet another Jagged Alliance game that isn't Jagged Alliance, this crap sure ain't funny no more. Guess it's the last straw, as this is the first time they seriously call it "3" and not make it seem like a spin-off. Honestly, I'm already pissed off now.

1. I noticed that you cannot put two triangular floors into a square as one block the placement of the other. The same is true for clover roof corner: you cannot build two with the top beam adjacent to each other. Can the dev please allow these? It would provide more freedom to building shape and floor pattern. 2. When a building cannot be placed due to obstruction, Is it possible to give visual hints on what is blocking the placement? A lot of times it is not straightforward and as a stingy person, I am often reluctant to experiment by demolishing nearby structures one by one. 3. I posted this before, but I hope there can be a mode for placing blueprints similar to the free-cam mode. I often get frustrated at the default snap choices when trying to let the buildings snap at weird places. (They still snap after prolonged wiggling of my character.)

Muh Boys won, Iggles lost, Jameis threw picks; it's been a great day of football.

They did some neat things, looking forward to playing it myself. Although I dislike that they severed some of the mythic paths from the true ending, especially the legend path (I wanted to play that one)... although I guess it kind of makes sense.

Damming with faint praise I see. 55 DC is insane. For laughs I looked up CR 30 creatures from PnP (who typically have mythic stuff already) and a lot of them couldn't even make those saves. You'd have to munchkin to a crazy degree or outright cheat to be able to reliably survive that.

Man I'm glad I'm waiting at least six months before giving this a go.

It takes some time to gets to its best. But it is well worth it.

No. CP makes it so that Blinding Smoke hits don't proc Avenging Storm anymore. Blinding Smoke is a cone attack. Every attack roll from the Hand Mortar's AoE that crits will create a Blinding Smoke cone attack. Removing those additional hit rolls from the cones from Avenging Storm makes a big difference - especially once you shoot into tight groups of enemies. It may even be that Blinding Smoke can proc itself because I often get way more hit rolls that I should. I couldn't fully determine that but I suspect it is so. Anyway: Blinding Smok NOT triggering Avenging Storm makes big difference as soon as you can hit multiple enemies at once. You can use CP anyway and just rename or remove the file that changes Avenging Storm. But maybe CP didn't even change the Stormspeaker's version of Avenging Storm but only the original Druid spell (didn't check).

Sure, steal Mio's strawberry, will you. KOTOR 2 sound effects of course not present in the original. The second season is definitely a lot better than the first, but the first one has really funny moments too. Just some of those "What the hell?" things that seem to have originated in the manga. It fits the band. The song, I mean, it's... kind of perfect in that way. The best parts are the ones that are missing from the video... the banter in between the music. The actual music is fine, mostly. Didn't make me want to pierce my eardrums at least. Oh, and yeah, Love Live! looks pretty bad, and it has a lot more CGI too. CGI dancing, plus pop idol songs and fanservice = a taaaaad off-putting. Now that I'm done with K-On!, what should I continue with? Reservoir Chronicle, Magic User's Club or Love Live!? As a whole, the film didn't have as many funny moments per runtime as some of the regular episodes had, but it was a really nice film. It also wasn't meant to be watched in chronological order. While it begins some time after episode 22 or something the end runs parallel to episode 24.

Ok take your time. We're not in a hurry.

Agh, noticed one thing. Strengthened Bond (but not Defensive Bond) seems to already apply correctly to NPCs in vanilla (it only checks for Defensive Bond & Character LV). We could add only Defensive_Bond_Pet without its Strengthened_Bond_Pet counterpart, but then Defensive_Bond_Pet wouldn't be removed by the vanilla table... I'll test a version which adds Defensive_Bond_Pet, and a corresponding table entry which removes Defensive_Bond_Pet without adding a new ability.

Yep! We bring each other stuff if we think the other person would like it.

Steins;Gate 1 They microwaved bananas. This show is gonna be something else.

A great discovery!

One of my friends apparently got engaged in a discussion on this and was told that he "needed to learn a bit more about Christianity". My friend's response was ""I was raised Evangelical for 20 years and I have a degree in Religious Studies and Theology. Is that enough?" "And yes, I've been waiting to be able to mic drop that for yeeears."

Man, this movie. Girls randomly stumble into a sushi bar after their flight and the owner expects a Japanese band he hired for some promotion. Yui just says yes to everything the owner asks, and they end up playing. Reminds me a little of that time when Usagi compared general relativity to a pudding, and Mamoru's English speaking friends thought it was something profound.

I've already seen the other two and I'd say the same about them. Berserk isn't as good as the manga, but it is a very good adaptation of the Golden Age and next to Madoka probably has one of the most misleading intros. And JoJo is just JoJo, I'm pretty sure if I tried describing it to someone honestly they'd think I was lying. Anyways @InsaneCommander seems to like Steins;Gate so I'll give that a go. I'm working on it but

Selfish because the vaccine by far and large prevents hospitalization and death. Why be a bother when it's easily avoided?

It's a great anime, very unique, Steins;Gate I mean.

You know, I was always under the impression that Steins;Gate was massively lengthy, but I just looked and there's the original 24 episodes season and then another 23 episode sequel (or was it prequel?) season as well as a movie. That's not that crazy. And then I looked at the "games", "books", and "music" section and then I go "ah, that's why I thought it was so humongous". Japan has a real problem with basically just making endless shovelware of every kind in every possible medium for flagship franchises.

2 years wow... so yeah I really like the map and songs when you're on the boat. I hate levelling up, holy **** that music grates.

Surprised you needed to spell that out, heh

I really appreciate all that you've been done! Thank you for keeping it up.

Version 1.4.9 is live. Include a bit of revamp to SC ressources giving abilities, Wildstrike Frenzy bug correction and bashing shield tweaking up.

Sort of funny that the protagonist in Gamedec owns a lot of ships in the ersatz Star Citizen game Also got to blow some teenager's head off, so good stuff. Had to redownload the game due to GOG somehow seeing my copy as invalid. Haven't encountered too many bugs. Did have one character speak to me in Polish and one puzzle seems to have glitched out but I solved it by fluke, looking back at it.

Tales of Arise: Reached the point where I get a third party member, so still fairly early I think. Still overall/casually enjoying the game. Couple "not seriously negative but not overly positive" observations: ---at first I liked the skits. But there are so many of them and I keep playing them thinking I might miss something "good." (some you cannot choose when to play, they are triggered by events instead) More and more they feel a little like info-dumps vs.interesting convo's with campy vitality. So now I read quickly and click thru faster, not waiting for the VA's. It's not that I dislike them - it's just there's too many/too long winded for me. ---on Normal difficulty, early combat becomes too easy too fast. You don't even have to bother with dodging/evading. Which doesn't really bother me in my "old age" ways, but it makes me feel like I'm still in tutorial mode and thus I'm afraid to up the difficulty, certain that the next "act boss" is going to 3 second whomp me without warning as a "here's the REAL combat, don't you wish you'd spent time mastering that dodging/evading!" taunt. To balance that out: ---I have yet to feel a need to "grind" for anything, just to keep going/do the few early weapon upgrades, so that's nice such doesn't feel required. Seems well balanced in that regard. ---I really do like the graphical look (well, most of the time). It's not cutting-edge super high fidelity but that sorta cell-shading or watercolor softness or whatever it is, is pleasing. ---the owls, man, the owls. Must...find...all the owls.

Just showing some scenery. Also, you can switch "party leader" at any time, meaning that's the one you control/skillset you use in combat and will see while running around. eg, you don't always have to be staring at only one character's behind outfit.

People ask me if I sleep late. I wake up at 7:30 in Skyrim, so I am up before the kids wake up at 8:00...

Look at me! I am not super late for the party for once! I enjoyed Pathfinder: Kingmaker quite a lot - but as I was late for the CRPG party in general, I missed out on the legendary bug launch of it. I even pre-purchased Wrath of the Righteous (WotR) as I like Owlcat as a studio. Here's my small (wall of text...) take on WotR (with as little spoilers as possible!) primarily compared to PoE (1+2), but might include other titles as well for the sake of it. :] Here goes! Small background: So before starting anyone who actually bothers reading should know just a little bit of my history to understand my perspective and priorities. I am still pretty new to CRPGs (started fall 2020) and I have been playing all of the big (and some small) titles since then. DoS2 was my first CRPG game, and PoE1 followed shortly after completion and PoE(1) has been my favorite game ever since. I play CRPGs the way most people watch series or read a book (with the small detail of being able to design the main character yourself), and hence my priorities goes as following: 1) A lot of role-playing options and great immersion. 2) The general story setting and main story arc. 3) Companions, and how well they function with the game. 4) Character freedom - I am very fond of the PnP-style where my character is assumed with as little background as possible to not snare my character design. Anything else - be it combat, the actual appearance of the game or voiced (or non-voiced) NPCs/companions/PCs - I can make do. Also, I like owls, a lot. :] Alright, let's go! General Story Arc - I have never been fond of the story arcs that are driven by a chase of divinity - it just doesn't suit my most typical main character. This is one of the things that I did not appreciate about DoS2, and similarly - it is one of the things that I am not too fond of when it comes to WotR (granted that it can be mostly avoided with certain paths). As most PoE(1) fans could guess, this was one of the major points that I *ADORED* about PoE(1) - my character was not necessarily chasing after godly powers - the connection to divinity (that primarily came with PoE:D) is just the way the cookie crumbled when the PC wanted answers to their condition. I still get goosebumps thinking about the PoE story. Anyways - in general, I am kind of neutral with Owlcat's story arc writing in WotR. Similarly to in Kingmaker, I feel like the character that I have designed is an ill fit for the obviously very righteous path that they are pursuing (I felt the same way about "having to" my own Kingdom in Kingmaker), but that is kind of the point of the game so I'll just roll with it. RP will find a way! The WotR story has an INSANE lot of flavor driven primarily by your mythic path choices, and I guarantee that the different paths will feel VERY different, even those close in alignment. Combat - I am not a RtwP player. Infact, PoE(1) is the only game where I've played with RtwP without struggling big time. Thus, when presented the option - I will more often than not prefer turn-based. Same goes for WotR - however, some fights are just a complete mess for a TB-player. This is however a minor setback as I am well aware of that the game is designed for RtwP, and as such I am just happy the TB option is available and reasonably clean. Anyways, regarding the combat scaling, Pathfinder (at least from Owlcats) is well known for being merciless at times and I have read a lot of complaints about how many encounters are too difficult. However, in general I'd say that even on "normal"/"standard" (I forgot the exact term that they use) difficulty, the battles are more than fair and you are always free to adjust the difficulty if it is necessary. If you play on core or above, then you're asking for a challenge - so don't be upset when you get one. :'] Builds - Just like Kingmaker, WotR has an insane amount of builds available. It feels similar to the PoE:Deadfire in how one can multi-class, but in WotR you can do so with even more freedom than PoE:D (for the better or worse). :] Graphics - It is for sure an upgrade from Pathfinder Kingmaker when it comes to the actual game character designs, but you'll definitely recognize the style if you played Kingmaker. Loads of gorgeous portraits for both NPCs, companions and, of course, for player options (unless you wanna import your own :] ). Time for my favorite subject! Companions: Personality / Writing - It is no secret on any forum that I absolutely adore many (*cough* all *cough*) companions from PoE(1). They remain my favorites to this day! That said, I can appreciate good companion writing when I see it (well, in my opinion at least :] ). Many of the companions from WotR fill certain stereotypes, but imo they do so in a very good way. Even some of the evil companions are *mostly* bearable for a good aligned character, thanks to good writing and good character motivations. I'd imagine vice versa might be true as well. I personally feel like the romance options are a bit of a lackluster (for both genres, regardless of sexuality), so I'll be passing on the romance run - however, from what I've read the actual romances seem to be very well written, so if any of the romancable options fall into your (character's) taste, then do try it! I bet you'll be pleasantly surprised! And just as in KM, your interactions with your companions matter for their development. Without going into too much detail (and spoilers), I'll just put it out there that Ember (our elven child-minded witch) can respond very poorly if you continuously push her away from her character drive to help people. Companions: Interactions - As expected from Owlcat, the companion banter is superb and there is A LOT of interesting dialogues that open up depending on which companion you bring when speaking to certain NPCs. This is similar to the companion commentary that I've been so fond of ever since PoE(1) and DA:O, so I am delighted to see more games doing more of this (Larian, please take notes , _ , )! Unfortunately, similar to Kingmaker (and both PoE games), WotR puts much more focus on quality rather than quantity when it comes to actual companion dialogues (between the player and the companion). The times when you get to properly interact with a companion (often accompanied with them approaching you regarding some matter) are very few and often far between, and that is especially painful when the interactions often are so well-written. :'[ Truly the very same problem that I had with PoE:D! However, the companion commentary is, also similarly to PoE(1) + PoE:D, very well written and occurs often. They will often have comments about the situation that you're in, and sometimes about the decisions you do - however these comments are (more often than not) not something that the PC can respond to, however it still adds sooo much to the companion's character and this was one of my favorite things about PoE(1)! In short: Companion banter, check. Companion commentary, double check. Companion dialogues, mmmh... Half-checked with a question-mark. It is also worth noting that companions often react to each others commentary. If one companion has a comment, then another companion might respond to that particular comment. :] And that is it, folks! At least for tonight's wall of text. :'] In short, I'd say that Pathfinder WotR definitely is worth playing, at least for most PoE fans! I think Owlcat and Obsidian Entertainment have the same priorities in many important factors regarding cRPGs - and that makes me very happy! Of course, PoE remains my favorite by far and the series exceed both Pathfinder games in most ways - but Owlcat did, imo, a pretty good job with WotR. Fair warning though, if you're afraid of bugs (huehuehue), then I'd suggest waiting a little bit just in case. Owlcats have been very quick with the bug fixing so you probably won't have to wait for long though!

No way! And Outcast wasn't janky! You're janky!

Well, that's unexpectedly good news, even if the trailer is 90% random dance party for some reason. Some may say that Elex is the most jank of eurojank games, but Outcast was in a class of its own. And it had the best soundtrack of all time.

At least you own Titan Quest 4. Nobody else does.

WotR writing is awesome, in the same way that Neil Breen's movies are. The evil dialogue choices being something like "[ATTACK] I don't like you. DIE! (EVIL)" is absolutely hilarious.

I make sure to give everyone at least 1 in Athletics for Second Wind. I'll have someone with a ton of it for scripted events as well.