Leaderboard

Went to bed at 10. Got up at midnight and put out Santa stuff. Kids woke us up at 2 AM. This is all my fault. I did the same thing to my parents as a kid.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!

Well JWST finally launched. Before Star Citizen too

Merry Christmas to you all

Happy Holidays everyone.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Enjoy your season's best folks.

Finished The Witcher s2. Had some mhm moments for me, but all in all I think it's good. Just this time... I could not remember a single scene from the books. Then again, I can't even remember much from the books either. Always loved the short stories, because they were about Geralt, while the big books were all about politics and whatever, and I just didn't really care. In fact, now I remember that I had to force myself a lot through most of it, so maybe that's why I barely remember anything about it outside of the Falka-stuff.

That's funny.....scaring people with an illusory appearance while invisible.

I was just about to post the link: Webb Telescope away with two major hurdles cleared after flawless launch.

My sister in law snapped this classic photo of Bentley ( the look on his face )one of the Rhodesian Ridgebacks, we brought them down to our beach cottage so they could have Xmas here....its been a bit hectic but worth it so the dogs are with us @Guard Dog I thought you would appreciate this

If any is interested how it all played out: So the phrase bug on PS4 is for real, so its no option for me anymore, but Warcaller wass a pretty cool MC ! Then I wanted to go Tactician/Beguiler and started from scratch but realised soon its not what i have intended. Cipher is pretty good and offers lots off debuffs, buffs and cc but i didnt feel well with it as a multiclass and i think a Beguiler dosnt need a MC 'cause its a caster through and throug. Soulblade was never my piece off cake. So now I went with Tactician/Wizard, somehow Tactician is catching me more than Rogue and I like the fighter class in general. So im able to play the bruiser style I wanted to and even if Im tired of it I can switch to full caster. The rest of my party will be: Eder as a Fighter/Rogue, as my tank what else ? Xoti later Vatnir as a Priest for support and damage later on Serafen/Ydwin as a Cipher, I easily like Ciphers as a SC, would take Beguiler as a custom companion but I like the story here Fassina Wizard/Druid as my ranged nuker, not 100% sure where this route will take me but im flexible with it.

Time Bandits with my nieces. It was just an endless chorus of "WHAT IS HAPPENING"s approximately every thirty to sixty seconds...which to be fair, sometimes I didn't know either, so I can't exactly blame them. They said they liked it but it made no sense...which I can live with just fine. I also forgot about the part where the minotaur gets his head ripped off - they weren't too keen on that part, but I guess it was silly enough because they at least didn't get scared like they usually do for anything even slightly intense. I didn't remember that Ian Holme, Shelley Duvall, Sean Connery, and Jim Broadbent were all in this, so it was weird having them pop into the movie randomly - I started to question my sanity that all of them could somehow be in this movie and I had forgotten them all.

I have an appointment for the booster on 4 Jan, but yeah, Im not down for a shot every few months either. This will probably be my last shot unless things really go sideways.

Watched the new Matrix. Mildly entertaining, hugely meta. Is a sequel while snarking on sequels. Makes a few interesting points on 'what happens after the hero wins and goes off into the sunset'. Has a few poignant moments. No really clear standout action sequences. Most of them are messy hordes of people ones where the detail and focus gets lost. Somehow slides into that enjoyable but sort of forgettable popcorn variety of film, while still being sort of intelligent story. But, mostly well done for all that.

@rjshae I just got reprimanded by my sister in law and mom for talking about this article and the virus on Christmas day even though I consider this is a good news pandemic story because it really suggests the new variant is less lethal as hospitalizations are down and suggests new variants could be the same . I even tried to play the " its not my fault, its an American who posted the story " card Thanks for getting me into trouble, why you posting links like this on Xmas !!! You a very bad boy

Watched The Night Before and Ernest Saves Christmas, two of my favorite Xmas movies.

It seems that Tricksters can go around scaring people with Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage without breaking invisibility, at least for Enduring Shadows. Note the Backstab here applying after the RRV proc.

the belt is arguable the best choice even if you aren't personal playing a blaster, 'cause then chances are you got either ember or nenio kitted as a blaster. and yeah, the developers appear to wanna convince you to use fire. the treacherous flame gloves are admitted an act v thing, but they kinda feel like overkill with all the other fire boosting gear available in previous acts. were potential even worse before the developers downgraded the mephistopheles gear. fire is our choice for a kinda "best blaster," particular for anybody with arcane trickster levels, although cold remains a serious contender if you is capable o' wielding a shield and can wear armour, but the overabundance o' fire stuff is kinda glaring. am extreme disappointed waterfall doesn't work as one would expect, 'cause 'tween cold versions o' chain lightning getting the benefit o' boosted cold dcs and mass icy prison now working as per the spell description, a cold blaster woulda' been a contender for the top spot, but such is perhaps being greedy as a cold focused arcane trickster/sorcerer is more than capable o' reducing even demon lords to frosty stains at hard level difficulty in two rounds, two rounds if you get bad rolls. we mentioned the sword 'cause it has a unique property which is easily missed. who woulda' thunk that seelah or your pc paladin could add +3d6 unholy damage to radiance by having the short sword in a weapon slot not current being utilized? HA! Good Fun! ps speaking o' items, perhaps atypical for our azata blaster we used the plague of madness staff almost exclusive once we acquired in act iii. the free max and empower on every 3rd cast o' same spell is particular advantageous to a blaster.

Booster omicron protection wanes within 10 weeks It's almost not worth the bother. I've been looking for a month but had no luck, so I think I'll just ride out the Omicron surge and hope for the best.

I've always gone with the belt for Mallander's when I go fire with my blasters, which is almost always. PS fire seems to be the devs favorite with all the things that boost it

This is a great find. It's nice to start combat and buff without the enemy seeing you. But you definitely have to be fast to make it work. I think I'll start a run with Berath's challenge on with a SC bloodmage MC, and four hirelings: SC priest, SC beckoner, tactician/ascendent and darcozzi/troubador (for the quick switchings of the shields for debuting and healing). No need for 2 priests if you have a SC wizard, since the latter can steal Salvation of Time.

I uninstalled Encased. After a very positive first impression, I can't seem to find the energy to bother with a game, where devs try to throw roadblocks into player enjoyment. The abysmal heal on rest is a terrible design decision. Especially as the main story will force the player to get damaged at times. Add the bad luck of getting crit hit by an opponent at one point or the other, and suddenly players end up playing the game at the brink of death, because the game doesn't let them heal. Of course you could just rest for a week with breaks for eating and drinking. Drinking you can do from the toilet too, for free. But that means the rest system doesn't work. If in other games I'd sleep 8 hours and continue playing, but here I have to sleep 80, all I will end up doing is sleeping 80 hours. Might as well have let me be done with 8. And of course nothing has been added to my game experience. At least nothing positive. Not that this dev attitude is unique to Encased. Camping supplies in Pillars of Eternity were just as stupid an idea. Dragon random encounters in Skyrim were even worse. In Skyrim I ended up hitting the console, clicking on opponents and typing "kill". It made the game more bearable by a thousand fold. Even though I already had toggled godmode to be able to ignore the encumbrance system. Devs should really be forced to start actually playing games. Possibly even their own.

Well but it costs 2 and has a cooldown. I don't think it's bad to have 2 mobility tools as long as each one has a purpose. LIon Sprint change proposed above would help Vs high defenses. BPM barbaric blow has 75% Hit to Crit, which helps Vs high armor. Berzekers have Tenacious and Crit Chances. Action speed always help. Probably but it would fix only 1 multiclass and it may lead to unexpected combos. A bit too risky IMHO.

You probably already noticed that, but I have no mouth and I must scream is available for free on GOG for the next few hours https://www.gog.com/news/grab_your_copy_of_i_have_no_mouth_and_i_must_scream

What the Republicans used to be (kind of)

Wheel of Time Episode 8 Omg, where should I start? Maybe with a gif, like @Zoraptor? Consider yourself, the viewer, as Hol Horse, the guy with the hat: I said before that I expected many changes and I didn't mind or at least understood some of them. But this episode went too far. It basically killed my interest in season 2. Rafe's answer in @Sarex's post above doesn't help. Compared to the end of the first book, this was GARBAGE. Too many unnecessary changes and nothing epic happened. Note: I wrote this before reading Zoraptor’s post. Yes, they may be preparing another GoT S8.

The war on Christmas will continue until it ends its illegal occupation of November!

When it comes to imagination, it's all subjective, but rule of thumb was always that there should be immersion, not realism. One of points to have characters looking realistic is that you can customize them after your liking, if there's no customization, but realism in looks, then you want movie quality game. And you don't play a movie, movie plays for you, which is reason why realistic looking games never appeal to me, but popularity is clear with those. I would simply chose a game where I can get immersive feeling, like Ghost of a Tale over Call of Duty, but obviously movie type of games made the most money.

The celebration of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. I have a lot of problems with you people! On a serious note, Merry Christmas or whatever you celebrate, everyone. I'm technically Christian, but I'm not going to preach nor push a Bible in anyone's face. I just like spending time with family at this time of year. I'll leave you with the best Christmas song ever:

Xmas is and always has been my favorite holiday and you right. After the last horrendous 2 years of the pandemic the opportunity to spend time with family and friends is more appreciated than ever

pretty sure i saw that trick (unstealthed/stealthed) in one of the ultimate runs

Interesting. I'm not particularly skilled but so far it's been 100% reliable once I got the hang of it. But I play with saves/reloads allowed so sure there's less pressure. I'm also playing at max game speed, maybe it matters somehow for the reliability/timing of the Alt key move..? Dunno. Yes, that's nice. For encounters that are supposed to start with a talk (i.e. enemies are not yet red circles), the Delayed Fireball is also a very easy way to skip dialogue, make everyone hostile and deal a bit of damage while still being stealthy away from enemies - and with the Tier 7 spell refunded by the time the encounter begins. Yes, it's interesting how the mind works. Also, I guess Deadfire has deep enough mechanics (sometimes a little weird) to remain a potential for mistery and epiphanies among veterans even to this day .

Something funny I just experimented with based on @Constentin Lévine's finding and the one above. I had an Ascendant/Tactician, 2 priests (SC or MC doesn't matter) and a SC Wizard, with Berath Challenge on. 1) While everybody is stealthed, have the Ascendant alone approach the enemy and quickly unstealth/stealth. Combat starts, because he's still stealthed Tactician triggers Brilliant, i.e. automatic focus generation. 2) While his focus slowly fills to the max, have him go back to the group still all stealthed. 3) As soon as he reaches Ascended thanks to Brilliant, go through a full routine of Ancestor's Memory + BDD + SoT chain-casting for the entire party. 4) The Wizard then also casts Temporal Cocoon on everyone, which beneficial effect gets prolonged by the chain casting of SoT (this is why you need 2 priests, so they can each prolong Cocoon for the other). 5) Just leave them continue to cast SoT on each other like weirdos for as long as you like (why not a few hours) until you're ready to go actually do the fight. It won't last long: you'll have tens of thousands of seconds of untargetability by the enemy, cannot-die, brilliant for everyone and ascended for the Psyblade. 6) Once the fight is over, Ancestor's Memory and BDD will go away, but not Temporal Cocoon... your entire party is now permanently untargetable by any enemy. This is probably the easiest/safest way to achieve Party God Mode purely within the confines of the base game mechanics and without using Strand of Favor at all .

Just thought i would share with you guys a really cool synergy that i found Use an melee weapon like whispers of the endless paths or the pollaxe (forgot name) to apply artieriel strike then use the the push back effect of rams sprint so you keep blasting everyone back Cool thing is rams sprint costs only one rage so you can keep doing it

I am sorry, but Christmas here was already this evening, you are to late, no more presents by Dedo Mráz left for you