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The Call to Slumber description from the wiki : Causes a group of enemies to momentarily fall asleep, falling Prone until the effect ends or they receive damage. Call to Slumber cannot affect Vessels. Feast of Dreams (Dreamwalker's Tread) can affect them (one of them or whoever, 1/rest). Effect is similare, 10s (base) asleep against Will. But in fact, that is not totally true : it dont break with persistent DoT, and also on new ones from : Soul Ignition, Desintegrate, Combusting Wounds, Insect Swarm, Plague of Insects, and Shining Beacon. DoT from Soft Winds (chanter) dont disturbe the Asleep effect, but the phrase roll will break the effect when it begin. The good thing is Asleep is not an downgradable affliction, and there is not immunitie to counter that. I extended the duration with Dispersed suffering and squelettons ("If their Bones Still Slept Under that Hill, None Can Say", neither the upgrade or the "Many lives" ones, they are not controllable and may break the spell) and I felt like Freddy krueger

A very simple, powerful and fun build is assassin/bloodmage. Nuking from invisibility or backstabbing with Draining Touch never gets old.

Still think melee Geomancer with Morning Star (both Willbreaker as well as Saru Sichr are useful for multiple reasons) was a fun and overall potent build from start to finish (I did a solo run with it). Both defensively as well as offensively quite capable and also versatile. I often used Willbreaker with the Morning Star modal: it lowers enemies' fortitude by 25, making it easier for the Animal Companion to apply Takedown Combo - and it also lowers enemies' Will, making it easier to land Miasma of DUll-Mindedness which lowers Will into the ground and then it's very easy for the Essential Phantom to crit with Concelhaut's Draining Touch (it targets Will instead of Deflection). Draining Touch weakens the enemy which makes it again easier to land Takedown Combo - and so on and so forth. Stalker's passives in combination with Wizard's self buffs make the char very sturdy. One can't use Ghost Heart because it would remove the Phantom. One can also use Saru Sichr on the char and the Phantom. The strong poison DoT stacks completely and unlocks Predator's Sense of the animal companion. Tough enemies aren't very tough anymore once they got hit by a few DoTs from Saru Sichr with Accurate Wounding Shot.

Juggling things back and forth. Had a fairly positive feeling job interview at the start of the week, waiting to hear back from them. Dad got some scans back, and they've decided to give him an extra week of chemo in December, then start radiotherapy in January. All the joys of those side effects to be. Not sure if to take it as a good sign that the specialist did the "possible side effects 10 years after radiotherapy" talk, or if that's something they give everyone. I've been distracting myself from various things by trying to pickup some skills with Blender. Getting back into the CAD aspects and designing my own stuff to 3D print. Spent a few days banging my head against that wall to develop some of those techniques and then turning a Mando bucket from the swirling recesses of my brain onto the computer screen. A few more details to be added, some scale issues to be worked out, then I can find out how well it actually translates into printable designs.

I suspect it may be the same bug that gives you a crapton of phrases from Avenging Storm/Her Tears Fell Like Rain from Refreshing Encore.

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone we got through it without much issue. My family from out of town cancelled the day they were supposed to arrive so it was just the three of us and a couple of friends. The only thing even remotely political that came up was Dave Chappelle and I was able to change the topic pretty easily.

I went with Nomad's Brigandine iirc. But anything with high AR would be good. The Wizard's AR buffs (Spirit Shield or Iron Skin - or even better Llengrath's Safeguard) stack with the Stalker's passive bonus. I picked Nomad's Brigandne because it also leads to +10 melee deflection while having decent AR. The deflection also stacks with the Stalker's passive. And it lets you disengage without regrets.

@crdvis16It takes some time but imo it's not too bad. If you play it with Aloth it's even better because he can get a passive through his quest that reduces the grimoire switching time.

I cast self buffs (when necessary), then Draining Touch, then the Phantom right behind the enemy who I will attack as well while the Animal Companion also attacks that foe. Enemy will def. be flanked then. When I hit with Draining Touch it disappears and I start hitting with Willbreaker and may cast a Miasma oDM in between (if the enemy's Will is too high for my Phantom's Draining Touch). As soon as the enemy dies: off to the next one. I usually let the phantom pick the next enemy and then place myself and the AC accordingly. If you are wearing the Helm of the White Void then the Phantom does, too. It gets +12 ACC from one handed attacks and +10 from the Helm (Rymrgand's Influence) because Draining Touch also applies weakened and the whole attack gets +10 ACC because of that. That way the Phantom has pretty cool accuracy with its attacks. And when you bring down Will enough it will crit a lot. Combined with some Takedown Combos the Phantom will deal superb damage (for a Phantom). Or I switch to a defensive setup (for example hatchet & large shield), summon the phantom and send it and the AC to block and tank - while I switch back to another weapon or summon Spirit Lance and cast spells or attack from behind them. As a Geomancer you are pretty versatile. Some spells are quite nice in combination with Takedown Combo (+100% dmg for the next attack). For example Necrotic Lance or Killing Bolt. Those two can also be very nice. Recently played with an SC Wizard Aloth who focused on bows. Also here a phantom is nice because it gets the same bow as you and in some cases that's pretty cool (e.g. Frostseeker or Essence Interrupter). And then at PL 8 you get Caedebald's Blackbow which is very strong because its arrow jumps over 12 meters and terrifies with every hit (targets Fortitude though - but here Helm of the White Void helps, too). With a Phantom you get two of those bows in the field which has serious impact. Cast some Rymrgand spell here and there on top... And of course SC Wizards are super versatile because they have access to so many grimoire spells from the full 9 power levels. I often wear Fleshmender and Giftbearer's Cloth just to get two additional quick slot items for grimoires. Then I don't even learn that many spells but mostly take passives because my spell portfolio is to vast from all the grimoires. Requires a bit of sorting and administration though...

Yes it's one of those things.... and yet another reason why grimoire of vaporous wizardry is great If you like this kind of stuff, did you know that Wall of Flame cast out of combat doesn't make neutral NPCs go hostile? That is, until one dies from the effect. You can kill a blue circle tough cookie without triggering hostility.

Haha! Killing them in their sleep - great find!

Yeah, that was pretty wack reading that right after I wrote it. Lmao, who in their right mind would ever think I would've tolerated that? ...Not you, as it turns out. Yeah, I'm definitely not ever learning Japanese. Not that I would ever have a reason to...

That just made me laugh really hard because I JUST posted about The Exorcist in the TV thread. And yeah, I get that (also regarding your family history, of course). Especially DUIs, what's wrong with people, they can't drive properly even when sober, and with even further impaired judgement? Ugh. Okarin sexually assaulting Ruka (whom you didn't even get to meet, I think), Mayuri doing someting similar, Daru the walking hentai moron who wants Kurisu and Mayuri to randomly start having hot lesbian sex to watch, Feris who is the worst maid café nyan character in the history of ever, all the times everyone makes fun of Kurisu for being a tsundere, the way Okarin treats Kurisu and Mayuri (and both take it for no real reason, Kurisu at least complains about it in tsundere fashion but still sticks around). Oh, right, and Moeka, the woman who only talks through writing text messages even when people are standing right in front of her. It's a baffling cornucopia of terrible until it randomly decides to be good. You know, it's exactly how Love Live! is, and what a coincidence, both were written by the same writer... Hiragan has 46 characters too. Functionally the two syllabaries are the same. The problem is that now you have two different characters for exactly the same sounds to memorize. I'm already halfway through the 46 characters, so that's not really an issue of being able to memorize them. It's a little tiresome, is all.

I could see myself faling asleep if Pastor Hill and Bev ever have an extensive talk, but I don't think that's what the "where my aaaakshuun at?" camp means by that. We'll see soon enough.

It was especially poignant for me, given my family history of alcohol abuse and consequent hatred of irresponsible users of alcohol. It's kind of an inverted situation, though, because by deliberately starting out that way, you're supposed to at least gain an initial distaste for that main character right off the bat.... And I didn't even get to the bad parts, you say...truly, I was spared a terrible fate. Wikipedia tells me that's a "mere" 46 characters... Good luck!

Maybe. I was reminded a bit of this thread and this particular talk when I watched the first episode of Midnight Mass, because Prisoner Riley also doesn't exactly start at a good place, does he? The really sad part is that when it's good, Steins;Gate is really good. It's just not, most of the time, and some of the time it's unbearably terrible, and you didn't even get to the really bad parts. The anime has a weird tonal problem where every character is a walking anime stereotype, but it never does anything wortwhile with it. It's not over the top enough to be actual satire, it's not funny enough to be a parody and when it's serious - which it often is - then the characters' quirks and adherance to the worst sort of anime tropes is in the way of truly enjoying it. It only breaks through the problems with the setup every now and then, and that as a whole isn't really enough. Speaking of letters, now that Hiragana is done and over with, it's time to learn the other syllabary (mostly used for loan words): カタカナ (katakana). I wonder what sort of drug they were on when they decided on which symbol represents which sound. Perhaps it makes sense to Japanese natives, but from this がいじん's perspective, uhm... nope.

If you feel the showrunner and folks working on the WoT have no regard, care or understanding of the books...

The three people I personally know, as well as myself, that have played and beat Sekiro all had a "it's different from Dark Souls but it's great" reaction to the first 5-10 hours. May that continue to be true for you for the rest of the game...

Pro tip for MechWarrior 5: don't step on the loot.

Yeah, check the phrase count too. There have been reports about multiple attack (not counting pulsating spells) spell refound 3 phrases more than once.

Don't know why it works for anything else but invocations but I found out that indeed Her Revenge will refund +1 Empower Points per spell instance. Like with the Least Unstable Coil some spells/invocations are implemented in a way that every attack roll counts as a separate spell. Her Revenge is one of them. Tekehu's Avenging Storm will most likely work the same. This is pretty cool since it means you can play as sombody who uses Empower with one class in every fight (e.g. Wizard/Chanter empowering some nasty Wizard spells) and then get it all back in another fight using Her Revenge... wild... That this wasn't discovered before...? At least I never read about it. I guess most players who use Sasha's Singing Scimitar only ever empowered invocations?

Based on the glowing recommendations I've watched the first episode of Midnight Mass. I don't really have an opinion on it yet, what with the pacing and all, but a few stray observations: First of all, it's very recognizably Mike Flanagan in the same way a Nolan film looks and feels like Nolan. Or French movies are really, like, French. I also went and checked if this is based on a Stephen King story, and it apparently isn't, but just from the setup, it might as well be. It features all of the classic Stephen King pieces and character types (and dead cats, ugh, horrible flashback to Sleepwalkers), although what does that really say after like half a thousand books. I enjoyed the episode, but I'm already tentatively disliking the religious nutjob setup, and I hate Bev and all the tropes she stands for. But hey, apparently this goes places (I avoided all the spoilers, which is a first for me), maybe the character will take a different turn. If she does though, then why set her up like that in the first place? The best part of the episode was Riley and Erin talking. I'd watch an entire series with just that. I'm also up for watching Annabeth Gish on screen at any time. It feels like she's always just Annabeth Gish in a role, but that's fine. Monica Reyes was the only decent part of the latter X-Files seasons (of the original run, not the two new ones). That just might be nostalgia though.

@Boeroer that is enough, I have now officially reported you to the International League for the Humane Preservation of Rotghast, Skeletons and other Endangered Vessels.

Shameless autopromotion if you'd like to play SC Wizard: This was a ton of fun too, shapeshifting Sorcerer:

Samurai Champloo 22: The Mushroom episode. Probably the 2nd weakest in the series, only the clip show ranks lower for me. I thought it was ok, but I can see how a lot of people may not like it. Right now it's an issue with pacing, other than Najimi no other character besides Komi and Tadano have been allowed to hit more than one note. And the dog girl really annoys me for some reason, more than the yandere stalker.

If you want to continue with Tank wizard then Battlemage with Illusionist/Unbroken as the subclasses is fun. The idea is to use the 2 Illusion wizard spells that Terrify (Ryngrim) while engaging a bunch of enemies. The terrify causes them to break engagement and give you free disengagement attacks (Unbroken improves disengagement attacks).

I guess the devs didn't think about this and accidentially implemented a refund to max instead just +1? Edit: I tried with a Ranger/Troubadour and first empowered a Ranger ability (3 empower points to 2) and then empowered an invocation in the next fight which got me down to 1 and back up to 2. So I couldn't reproduce it with that character. Maybe it's a special Forbidden-Fist glitch? Or it's a problem with specific invocations maybe. Or one of the enchantments causes this. Or maybe one of the passives that boost empower (do you have one?).

Archibald Troubafist—that's funny! I've been playing a FF/skald lately and am about to get SSS. I'll see if I can replicate this. Will report back when I try.

Yeah, the biggest specific issues stem from divergence from the books. Which is inevitable, the series is fundamentally unfilmable as is even if they got the extra 2 episodes per season. Trying to shoehorn literally chapters of world building with internal monologue and observation into a visual medium is difficult, but has too often been unnecessary or overly blatant. Don't even know if it could have been done better, but that's largely irrelevant to whether you enjoy the end product. Which I largely am, but it's certainly got a lot of rough edges and it's easy to understand people who aren't enjoying it. OTOH I'd say that their biggest general problem is budget, and how cheap it looks- or at least how inconsistent it looks. The CGI is mostly fine, the locations are uniformly good and I at least don't have (many) issues with the costuming- even the tinkers were closer to what they 'should' have been in ep4. But each episode there's been at least one thing where it looks like they ran out of money, and the end effect of that is like buying a silk shirt and finding that one sleeve is polyester. Doesn't matter how good the rest is, you really notice the cheap part even if you wouldn't mind wearing a straight polyester shirt. So specifically for ep4 (really mild spoilers, but for safety)

kinda like the idea o' casting her as the illusive man. HA! Good Fun!

I mean, if it's an Urban Mech, it was just a joke anyways.

Nemnok's Cloak: Just don't forget to take it off after it saves a life, until you've rested. A Whale of a Wand: The charm effect has saved me from a wipe more than once. Thundercrack Pistol: One shot will cause a delayed barrel explosion, which can be useful. Scourge of Bezzello: 3 projectiles mean that every shot is almost guaranteed to interrupt.

löl... I just discovered that if your phantom reached 5 stacks you can simply resummon one and open yet another stack of 5 ... and so on. Works with Willbreaker's will debuff, too. Why didn't I think of this before?

I've never built on it, but what do you guys think about Blade of the Endless Path ? The speed and accuracy bonus are solid, but the selling point should be this -4 Def malus on Crit for 45s and that stacks up to 5 times. All the party should benefit from such a cute effect. This sounds very appealing against everything that isn't immune to pierce or have enormous Deflection and Resolve.

Yeah, that was a pretty good episode. There's still issues with the approach taken but they're far more background niggle level and nitpicking now, and the pacing is just so much better post ep1. Don't think that's quite as much as a cultural phenomenon as that reviewer had it being, but certainly a lot closer than anything before. But then there's one thing that really drags the episode down massively...

Hi MrSeriouscat, Yeah, it is totally worth it but it also comes down to personal choices and gameplay style. The video below explains everything you need to know about the Forged Upgrades and to what 12 top creatures are vulnerable.

Yeah, thankfully they got this one right. Their actions were utterly indefensible. Im curious if any of those charges reflect a "hate crime" conviction? It sounds like "malice murder" is higher/different than "felony murder". *casts summon: @Gromnir*

My wife ordered some traditional Russian plates and my dog ate several of the packing peanuts before we could catch her. That was very weird of her to do since he's never done anything like that before but she's a weird dog so I didn't think too much about it. I was about to take her to the animal hospital when my wife figured out they weren't the normal packing peanuts but some plant based alternative that basically dissolved into nothingness. Crisis averted and it also explained why my dog was trying to eat them in the first place.

Loan words in Japanese are a riot. Anyone up for guessing what a クイズ (kuizu) is? Helpful hint: It's an English word.

Be careful what you wish for.

If you enjoy the quality and quantity of dialogue, that should be enough to at least enjoy the rest of the show...I think. The general reception seems to either be "I would have loved EVEN MORE dialogue" or "I'm falling asleep because there's too much dialogue". I was, obviously, in the former camp. Not really spoilers, more thoughts on you vs. me approaching the show:

Yeah, that sounds like it would have been a better way to start off the series: doing something normal instead of getting smashed with character exposition, . Yeah, that one was more InsaneCommander's fault, IIRC, since he said "I'm going to post spoilery gifs until you watch it!", so I just figured screw it, just on the off-hand chance I even sort of like it, I guess I should try one episode to get it over with. Samurai Champloo, episode 17. Not sure why Fuu screamed so incredibly loudly at a barely seen shadow, given everything else she's seen by this point. What did she think she saw that would warrant that? Otherwise, pretty good episode (although the way the Okuru scene ended was a little...much). Episode 18. "Being able to read one [Japanese letter] is more than enough." @majestic would beg to differ, I think. As would the teacher beating the crap out of Mugen every time he reads something wrong. That's one way to motivate someone to learn Japanese. Episode 19. This guy feels like he came out of JoJo's.

The side characters do start out one dimensional, but as time moves on they do get some character growth, especially later on.