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Yesterday, I had my very first surprise party and it was Star Trek themed. My cousin and aunt drove up from AZ and are staying through Christmas. I enjoyed it but I can definitely say I'd be happy never having another one because seeing everything Star Trek and family that isn't supposed to be there is how I imagine it'll be when I finally lose my last marble.

Met up with Pidesco yesterday and had a nice fika

Camouflage 100 Speaking of which, my cats are black/brown/white calicos, and in the dark, they are nearly invisible. Their reflective retinas are the only thing that gives them away.

Hi folks, Apologies if this is already well known, but definitely not by me. If your game is RTwP, approaching enemies from stealth and very quickly unstealthing/stealthing with the Alt key starts combat but keeps you stealthed. So more or less the same thing as the "trap trick" used by some in The Ultimate, but without any hassle. So if you're a Troubadour/Psion/Nalpazca or whatever, you will automatically start generating resources, if you're an Assassin/Something you will have access to combat-only openers while keeping Assassinate. If you want to summon while staying out of enemies' sight (e.g. Psion/Troubadour with summons + pain link) you can keep the fight going without ever going out of stealth - as with the trap trick. Of course, it's even better with Berath's Challenge on (combat doesn't end). In the video I posted below, it's even a bit more weird (I didn't have Berath Challenge on): I approach enemies > unstealth/stealth with the Alt key > combat starts while I'm stealthed > I wait until having 7 phrases to cast Animated Weapons > just at this time the encounter resets and summons disappear > encounter starts again while I'm still stealthed and back at 6 phrases > at 7 phrases I cast Animated Weapons and this time the fight goes on > I just walk away still stealthed > animated weapons wreak havoc until duration ends > encounter stops > of course i'm still stealthed so I can rinse & repeat.

I met a boar that was apparently the reincarnation of Moses.

I saw Spider-Man and it gives Spiderverse a real run for its money in the 'best Spider-Movie' stakes. Recommended.

I'm headed down to southern Florida for roughly a week for maximum Omicron exposure.

huh, i actually did not know this. i think it's quite a bit of setup for a tier 8 spell, but locking out an enemy with hard CC and high-power DoTs does sound like it can be fun to pull off.

Yeah, Wizardry 7 is one of my favorite games of all time, but I don't think I ever got close to finishing it. I always got lost in the forest area, and since it didn't have a map (until Wizardry Gold) I just ended up giving up. I can't tell you how many times I started that game over (I was crushed when we got a better computer and the game just wouldn't run because apparently it didn't play nice with the new CPU somehow...) and I think it's the only game I've ever bought 3 times (the original version, the Gold version and I've got Wizardry 6-8 on Steam.)

I just watched Witcher S2E1 and it was really good!

Yeah, we can still get the #1 seed mathematically, but realistically it ain't gonna happen. Seeds #2 thru #4 are effectively identical, not different enough to make it worth tryharding for the #2 seed if you have banged up players, which is every NFL team at this point of the season.

I finished book 1 and quit somewhere around 1/3 of the second book, I quit at almost the same point in the TV show. This series made me understand that I dislike low/dirt fantasy. As for why I watched the TV show, I couldn't tell you. I guess I knew how popular the book series was and thought that I would maybe like it more in this format.

2.371 Metric Imagination Units (MIUs)

Something I've been working on and Owlcat just opened up a WotR Meme contest, so it has become my entry. As one reviewer put it, Ember is the most powerful being in all Golarion after the Commander of the Fifth Crusade. A fact of which her archetype and build are only partly to do with it

I agree, that is a very well find! Using "simply" the alt key insteed of items-abuse, it is "simply" brilliant !

I do not think that was known - I never read about this before. Cool!

Ah it's interesting. For example you could start encounter, cast e.g. Tactical Barrage, then switch to e.g. Duskfall with Drawing Parry (+15 Deflection at fight start), which would only start then and last longer because of INT and PL buff (vs. having it already in your hands at the start of the fight).

She shows up every now and then and is basically only there to dutifully cover the club’s arse whenever Ritsu did a Minako and forgot to properly organize something for the club, and because… it would have been weird for Yui to not have a friend prior to meeting the other girls. She eventually is turned into a BFINO like Naru (BF in name only just in case it wasn’t obvious ;)). It does the next best thing though, but admittedly I ended up liking Mugi’s attempts to be more like regular girls charming. The only downside is that she doesn’t work on her own. There is an episode or two in season two that tries but it ends up being a try and nothing more. Ritsu imagining Yui studying in the same way she would was hilarious and she’ll get Mio-slapped an awful lot. Not gonna lie though, season one keeps being rough at times (especially after Sawako shows up to mentor the club) but thankfully it’s short. The Christmas episode is probably the worst and you could just skip it (in theory), even though it shows that Yui sees more in her sister than just a way to have everything done for her. Just saying this because it looks like you’re giving this more of a chance or trying harder than usual to not hate it. Your reaction to the first three episodes kind of mirrored my own. I don’t know, the voice acting was okayish, except when it wasn’t. If Yui is an Usagi type then Ritsu is a Minako. Sort of. There both is and isn’t a big difference between the two.

Here is your regularly scheduled tagline ... "Bah humbug." ...but yeah, no plans. That's just how hubby and I roll. 25 years ago there were family xmas dinners but eh not for years and we probably wouldn't go even there were.

@Wormerine Wormie I took your advice and started on Bioshock 1 last weekend, 45 hours in and I am thoroughly enjoying the game design and mechanics and overall experience Its very different to Infinite and vastly superior, as you mentioned the weapon variety and ammunition selection is just one example of how its more complex and better than Infinite

Even without the hard CC spells part, as long as the Entropy last, you constantly interrupt on "hit" with chant or whatever else, with the Energized condition.

Oh dear, oh dear. The second season opens with that chipmunk hyper song and I now everything makes more sense including you finding the voice direction not irksome. Hahaha. I never liked the chipmunk song. It was the first intro I liked. And the rice one that you’re a good deal less likely to see as it was meant to. Ah, well… uhm… So much for the bright side. The bad side is if your reaction to season two was lukewarm then uh… uh… this will not end well, will it? Ok season two opens with the expectation that you know the characters already and all (and ideally like them) and that can’t have made a whole lot of sense. On the other hand you now know it’ll not stay a brain peeler…

Anyway, version 1.5.3 released with only a couple of changes. Tweaks to Shadowed Hunters and Distracting Training as discussed above and a change to Summon Familiar that mitigates an issue found there : https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/114591-mechanics-the-summoners-tables/page/2/#comment-2298754 Link to the mod : https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/438?tab=description

You never want to hear sand when it comes to strippers.

I guess I did pick the right portrait.

Finished Sekiro. And just in time for December gaming break.

This guy has more cheese than the number of days in a year.

Just started on the second season of Witcher and on episode 3 and its excellent as I was hoping More monsters and real integration of the Wild Hunt and some interesting character history, a worthy season

Yep, if you've got channelers it's never going to be an out and out medieval equivalent. In some ways the books are also quasimodern- doesn't seem to be much if any illiteracy for example, when maybe 5% of a renaissance society would be literate. But, in most ways and for most people there was very little difference between medieval and renaissance anyway- more or less subsistence agriculture, horse power, horse or water transport, very low education etc. I guess, technically, it's most accurately described as a post apocalyptic society and if you want to get really technical, post apoc twice over. Yeah, it misses the feel except at very occasional points. It also doesn't feel consistent in what it does do- as simple as each person from the same small isolated village having a different accent. I'm sure half the complaints about it looking like cosplay is because of the lack of consistency in anything else, so far as I can tell the costuming is objectively fine. There's no sense of scale. Things are rushed, other things have too much time spent on them. And there's just enough good stuff there (put an example into the spoilers) to make me more disappointed with the stuff that doesn't work.

To be fair, Jordan consistently said he really disliked people associated WoT with "Medieval" settings. To his mind it was always "The Renaissance if gunpowder hadn't been around earlier."

Diamond is Unbreakable 14-17 Koichi and a creepy guy meet a manga artist, Jotaro takes Josuke hunting, and JoJo now has ghosts. **** it, this anime is amazing.

WoT Ep7 TLDR; it was alright. Main problem, like much of the show, is that it should be better than it is and it's very uneven. Expanse s6e02 TLDR; another perfectly decent episode. Only criticism is that it does feel rushed and a bit linear, but with only 6 episodes I can't see how that's avoidable. Guess the positive alternative take is that they're culling the fat.

This is really nice because anyone (in particular casters) can very easily get an extendable Strong from Frenzy (Lover's Quarel) on Lover's Embrace, right at the beginning of a fight. Then do a couple weapon switches and you're instantly Energized! And all your pulsing AoEs will interrupt on crit, on top of getting +2 PEN. This is amazing.

Episode 7 of WoT was pretty damn good. A great cold open showing the Blood Snow. Apart from the inherent awkwardness of the Mat issue - You have to give them some inherent wriggle room over that. The show got paused for Covid lockdown during the finale of episode 6, when they came back to episode 7 the actor playing Mat being out and having completely shut down all his social media suggests something cropped up seriously. So they had to re-jigger things to work the story around that before a new actor replaces him in season 2. The main thing I had issue with was the bizareely CW style "love triangle" discussion, but eh, that might have been stress fallout post Machin Shin. Still, when you combine the cold open of Blood Snow with the Rand flashbacks, Tam's fever during Winternight, and that other.. perspective shots of things that have happened previously, rather well done.

Don't feed them after midnight and don't let them get near any water...

All of the recent screenshots you folks have posted basically look like spruced up spreadsheets. Is this a math forum?

Looks sort of Romancing the Stone-esque.

and one more. HA! Good Fun!

Cat that has trained an entire apt. complex to do its bidding.

While a true third person view is unlikely to be added in The Outer Worlds 1, I do appreciate the devs adding a quick option for the idle camera in the pause menu. However, the camera in this mode is at a fairly awkward angle, pointing down at your character. It's difficult to get a decent look at your character or take any screenshots. My suggestion is to allow the camera in this mode to be rotatable using the right stick or mouse. Currently so much as touching the right stick puts you back in first person. This makes sense for when the game is truly left idle, but I'd imagine the reason people choose idle camera from the menu is to get a good look at their character. It would be great if we had more options to see our character and take screenshots.