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Link to the run => Ultimate Run Introduction: I've been trying the ultimate since summer last year. From the release of PoE:II I was infatuated with the ranger class, and it was the first Single Class i beat solo PotD difficulty on and the theory crafting started from there. The main benefit to ranger is also its biggest downside. The pet. So the first thing that had to be solved was how to deal with the downsides. One of them being the stealth sections, where it's not only you who has to stealth through them but your pet has to as well. Another one is that, when your pet dies, you get a nasty debuff wich lowers your accuracy and resolve. There is no argument that other classes, with no pet, are the safer pick for this challenge. And there are many ways to approach any given situation in the game. But the upsides of having a pet far outweighs the downsides of having one, especially when paired with a Soulblade Cipher. Starting Build: Race: Wood Elf Class: Cipher (Soulblade) / Ranger (no subclass) Might: 16 Constitution: 10 Dexterity: 11 Perception: 20 Intellect: 12 Resolve: 9 Culture/background: The White that Wends / Hunter Weapon Proficiency: Club / Medium shield (Heater) Pet: Boar I think this build is possible with any race, but most optimal would be the ones that give you a bonus to perception cause this build relies heavily on accuracy. So either Elf or Orlan, but Orlan has -1 to might. And might being the second biggest focus of the build, i opted for Elf cause i'd rather have a bonus to perception without the penalty to might. We are getting more accuracy buffs throughout the game than might ones. The other race bonuses are verry minor in the long run, cause i tried most of them, and in the end the change was barely noticeable. Same for culture, there we take another +1 perception, again accuracy will be needed. Hunter background provides us with +1 in alchemy/mechanics/survival. This one is mostly picked for the mechanics, there's alot of lockpicking in the first sections of the game. As far as weapon proficiency goes, it doesn't really matter, we are going a monastic build. There is an argument to be made for clubs, wich lowers the targets will, and lets you land your debuffs more reliably. But the switching weapons downtime always felt really clunky to me so i did not really use it. Pet wise i think boar is best suited for the run, cause of the free regen between deaths. The Class combo : Seer (Soulblade/Ranger) It is with this class combo, that the rangers biggest downside, becomes it's strongest asset. Before, you dreaded your pet dying. Now, you want it to die. Alot. The soulblade passive : Gains "Soul Annihilation" ability: A soul enhanced melee strike that consumes the cipher's remaining power pool and converts it into Raw damage on the target. Shred cipher spells cost less Focus. Downing an enemy with a Melee Weapon temporarily grants Concentration and raises Max Focus. So whenever we kill a "target", we grow our focus pool, wich in term means a bigger hit. We already have a target, our pet, we can kill however many times we want. Now we only need to extend the duration of the buff itself, for that we use Cabalist's Gambason and Strand of Favor to prolong the buff, so we can keep our high focus pool and therefore our big burst. There's three points in the run where i buff up by downing the pet. The first time to a 100 stacks, the second time to 1000 stacks, and the third time to 2000 stacks. Wich gets us a starting focus pool of 250, 2500 and 5000 respectively. The dmg is not a 1:1 conversion it's hard to say how it does but i think it does 2/3s of the current focus pool as damage. What also could make it hard to gage how it determines damage, is the fact that when you have 1000+ base focus, when you use Soul Annihilation, it doesn't dump your focus completely as it says in the tooltip but only a -1000. So when you have 250 base focus, you have one big punch, at 2500 you have 3 big punches, and at 5000 you have 5 big punches. Is what it comes down to, that's why damage and accuracy is what the build will focus on most. The way this build approaches fights that have to be fought is to identify the biggest threats, focus them down fast with our big punches, and then just control dps down the rest. And it all comes together with all the ranger and cipher spell kits. Abilities and Passive tree Ranger Abilities: Marked Prey, Heal Companion, Evasive Roll, Concussive shot, Concussive Tranquilizer. Cipher Abilities: Valerous Echoes, Recall Agony, Psychovampiric Shield, Pain Block, Borrowed Instinct, Echoing Shield. Passives: Monastic Unarmed Training, Penetrating Visions, Biting Whip, Hammering Thoughts, The Empty Soul, Resilient Companion, Uncanny Luck, Improved Critical, Tough, Survival of the fittest. Everything revolves around landing your big punches at the start of a fight, most fights not all ( Belranga, and sigilmaster for example). So we have to know wich enemies in the group are major end running threats and focus them down first. And this kit helps you in doing so. We can buff ourselves with Borrowed instinct and Psycho vampiric shield, wich also simultanously debuffs the enemy. We can get extra accuracy on the target by flanking it together with the pet, and Marked prey. We also get a boost from our passives. So the go to strategy is, debuff the target and buff yourself enough so you are sure to land your big hit and you have to, because when you miss you lose that focus. So the fight can go verry wrong if you miss enough times. We can keep our pet alive in the meantime with Pain Block and Heal pet, remove might based stuns with Valerous Echoes. Echoing shield is mostly used to strip enemies from their concentration, wich allows me to interupt them with Concussive Tranquilizer. Evasive Roll is used to position ourselves almost instantaniously close to target to be able to hit them. With this ability you can reliable take out dangerous targets fast even though they are far away from each other. Recall Agony is just icing on the cake with our damage, cause it redeals 30 percent of it, mostly used on big targets, however it is worth noting that when you auto attack a target with recall agony you will gain focus faster. Closing There's alot more to this build than the write up i did. Like what route to take to be on time, wich items to get and where, how to protect vela, etc but this is the core principle of the build for the ultimate. You can see the route and strategies in further detail in the actual run posted up top. 00 comments

A key tenet in Russian (military) thinking is that life has no value. Neither the life of your enemies nor the lives of your own. It is a nihilistic culture. A historial case in point: when the Germans and the Soviets exchanged POWs after the war, the liberated Soviet POWs were immediately transported to prison camps in Siberia because they had, in the eyes of Stalin, committed treason by ending up as prisoners. So, you WILL be killed as soon as you have worn out your utility. You are always expendable. You are amazed because you approach this question from a completely different paradigm, i.e. one where life has value.

gamefaqs is busted so failing a guide update i'll put some of my findings here. Basically, I think it's safe to say that one-handed style is avoided by a bunch of players. I've called it a borderline trap build based on how much of a drop in DPS it is compared to dual-wielding or even 2h (which also is a drop from dual-wielding but makes up for it with extra PEN and/or reach). Basically it only existed in my mind as a setup that desperately wants crits on PotD (where even the much higher number of attacks from 2w might not make up for the fact that you have 0% chance to crit, if you rely on those crits), but there's not really that many builds that care *that* much about crits. But one place where single-weapon style starts competing well with dual-weapon style is on characters that are already very fast. Yes, Action Speed is Linear Returns. But if you have multiple dimensions that feed into damage and a fixed amount you can put into those dimension, you maximize your outcome by balancing those dimensions (the area of a square is larger than the area of a rectangle, if their perimeters are equal). So for very fast characters, you start doing better if you make each of those weapon attacks ''better'' instead of making yourself even faster by dual-wielding. Keep in mind you have to be very fast or effectively very fast for the trade-off to make sense - you just get so much action speed for "free" by dual-wielding. It takes a lot for the single-weapon case to be noticable versus the consistent returns on increasing action speed. You need high dexterity (20+), with action bonuses ('''Deleterious Alacrity of Motion''', '''Frenzy''', '''Swift Strikes''', ''Cat Flurry', or consumables), with minimal armor encumbrance (at most comparable to light armor, even better if it's a piece of light armor with a recovery time bonus, cloth, or light armor with a pet or passive that reduces armor recovery penalty). On top of that, it helps to be a swashbuckler with a -50% recovery time bonus, or a monk that gets a bunch of free attacks from '''Swift Flurry''', or some other class that can abnormally boost your effective attack rate--even the barbarian's barbaric retaliation would help. At that point, the fact that you aren't getting as many attacks as a dual-wielder is made up for the fact that your attacks are doing more damage overall and critting more often. Aside from this, even with "conventionally" fast characters, single-weapon style is great for when you're expected to underpenetrate the enemy. In such a situation, even a more normal single-weapon user can overperform a dual-wielder who has to flip on a weapon modal that grants +2 PEN for +50% recovery time penalty. This is all because of the fact that crits get a 1.5x multiplier to your PEN, so getting more crits from both +12 accuracy and a hit->crit rate is a huge win over time, even if on any given individual hit it seems like the +2 PEN on a dual-wielder with a weapon modal would do better than a single-weapon attacker without a weapon modal. For a martial character with spare weapon slots (like a Blackjacket or someone equipped with Fleshmender) it might even be more worth investing a point into single-weapon style and reserving one weapon slot for single-weapon-wielding, even if that's not your main focus, for precisely these PEN-related reasons. This PEN effect also has the implication that if you like using weapons like daggers, flails, and hatchets, which don't have a +2 PEN modal, you may want to consider a partial single-weapon style setup over pure dual-wielding setup for precisely the underpenetration cases. (This is much more of an issue on Veteran/PotD than on lower difficulties) I ended up making single-weapon style work pretty decently on a SC barbarian wearing basically cloth (actually, the changeling's mantel with the -10% recovery time bonus and Nalvi) and who would get a Quick buff from a chanter. Aside from the calculations, it definitely "felt" ok, too, and it was a huge difference between cloth/fast light armor and even medium armor - with normal medium armor it still "felt" bad compared to dual-wielding. (Though in the end, spamming Driving Roar is what really ended up mattering )

it depends on your current clvl progression - it's lower for multiclass, potentially higher for SC (up to 11). beckoner gets 2x polearms. they don't last as long, but that's a ton of knockdown. i've literally made a macro on my gaming keyboard just to easily automate queue-ing up tons of knockdown just to exploit the infinite free knockdowns a chanter gets, beckoner or no.

As your own links say "Two sources told Reuters that German gas importers have been told by Berlin they can open ruble accounts to pay for Russian gas without violating sanctions, as long as the payments they make to Gazprombank are not in the Russian currency." "In its written guidance, the EU said companies can buy Russian gas without breaching sanctions if they pay in the currency of their existing contracts – and declare that doing so fulfils their contractual obligations." Those companies currently play grey area buying that can cost them billions in fines if they in some point fail to follow "and declare that doing so fulfils their contractual obligations." guidance.

Currently no energy/gas company in EU is buying gas from Russia with rubles (EU countries themselves don't buy gas from Russia)

https://briefly.co.za/world/europe/127972-putin-engages-talks-german-french-leaders-ukraine-demands-sanctions-end/ The audacity and arrogance of Putin never ceases to amaze me. The Russian navy is blockading Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea and preventing millions of tons of wheat from getting to mostly third world and impoverished countries But Putin wants Western sanctions dropped before he will allow the wheat to leave Ukraine. I thought Western sanctions didnt matter and Russia was going to create a " new world economic order " ?

Ok. First up I believe that this blog post by Josh Sawyer gives a great introduction to the general concepts of Deadfire Conversations: https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/175082312536/im-curious-as-to-what-the-conversation-editor Basically, Conversations are flow charts. They contain Nodes, where each Node represent e.g. a player dialogue option or an NPC line. All Nodes have a unique ID, and they contain a list of Links pointing to the IDs "descending" Nodes. Now, here's the WIP documentation on these data formats, I hope it's not too much of a mess: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jv8GvSuWlunC_nElQsPBM9nqEt8iCOoOP5PlBVAT1Bc/edit?usp=sharing Most properties and values are somewhat self-explanatory, I've tried to describe the ones that aren't. (The major remaining ones are the concepts of Ghost Links and Question Nodes.)

Well, in my experience, +1 or +2 Acc per PL is really spell dependant. Interestingly, in the gamedata files, every time they had to manually set a PL scaling, the put a +2 Acc / PL, which explains why it could happen to various spells. I believe that they did not remember the actual +1 Acc per PL rule when they did that, and/or it changed at some point during the design. Or whatever. Honnestly, I classified this in the minor obscure stuff that I don't want to dig. Not getting any Acc bonus per PL is annoying and I corrected a lot of abilities which had this issue (by putting a +1/PL, with few exception such as Fire Godlike racial fire shield which I put to +2 so it scales well). But getting a little too much isn't concerning. I would consider it as a minor advantage for certain spells that get a little more benefit from PL this way. So basically, there are no exact rules. Most abilities get +1, a few get +2.

Greyhawk was the original default setting of DnD so that might explain why it feels interchangeable with Forgotten Realms.

Thanks for sharing this, @thelee. I'm sorry to hear that you're unable to update your FAQ on Gamefaqs.

Ooh I like prognosticating, so a decade from now, Ill throw my hat in the ring for fusion power. Overnight the worlds energy problems will evaporate, fossil fuels will disappear, wars will cease to be fought and the Earth will return to its pre-industrial age climate. Unless a Russian hypersonic missile veers off course and destroys the prototype reactor.

I would guess that Greyhawk will be one of the two more settings to be brought back next year. D&D is now such a huge cash-cow for WotC and Hasbro and, since setting books and guides and gaming modules are all mainly being released in digital form and not physical form, they can go nuts pushing out a lot of new stuff. The demand is certainly there.

https://qz.com/india/2171314/the-us-overtakes-china-as-indias-top-trade-partner/?utm_source=YPL&yptr=yahoo The US is now India's biggest trade partner. @Darkpriest Another blow in the new Russian economic world order? But the good news is Russia still has countries like Syria, Venezuela, NK, Eretria and Cuba as allies in this exciting new union of prosperity and trade

You don't see booth-babes at Comic-Con these days as such. However, there were an awful lot of Anime maids and schoolgirl pleated dresses and skirts. Some worn by very cute girls. Some worn by 40+, bearded, overweight guys. Also :

Well I spent the Fri-Sun stewarding at MCM Comic-Con at the ExCel in London. Interesting to see the flip side of a Con. I'll likely be doing that again in the future. Hm, and then of course I get home, crash out, do the slight stave-off of post-Con-Ick... and get the news that Star Wars Celebration is coming to London in 2023. In the ExCel. And.. within 24 hours of that news, all hotels in the nearby vicinity have been booked over those dates...

I did see an editorial talking about how there's a chunk of the anti-Amber Heard crowd on social media isn't there to support Depp or actually anti-Heard, but to make sure the #MeToo movement is pulled into things, or at least take a lot of shots at women coming forward about abuse. Of course, then there's the crowd who have gone around collecting "The Day After pics" of Amber Heard that she (or her friends) posted of them having fun on the day after various of Heard's claims of having suffered "severe" abuse from Depp. At the end of the day, there really isn't going to be a lot of good coming out of this trial regardless of the outcome.

You still have a couple of months of waiting As for Russia, it is dwfinately not sunshine amd rosses, but I do not recall them defaulting, even though PIMCO would really like those CDS they bought just before the war. You still have EU countries pying for Russian gas, now in rubbles, and Germany saying that there will not be sanctions on gas discussed. It seems EU is hoping that tanker based Oil can be replaced easier, they forget that it is not so easy to have OPEC increase their output. Meanwhile Russian oil (cheaper) will be shipped to India and China We still did not hit the food prices crisis in its full swing, so lets wait fpr Autumn. Components for batteries and semiconductors are already suffering. I believe construction materials as well. There is a reason why Biden called Powell to the Oval office for today.

An example of the consequences of persistent outright lying: Lavrov has strongly denied that Putin has health problems (https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-vladimir-putin-health-rumor-sergey-lavrov-deny-ill/). So the immediate conclusion is that since Lavrov puts it like that, Putin must be very seriously ill. (Obviously we have no idea. But that's how you've come to read Lavrov, given his recent past.)

Not sure, where to ask this as it is a bit of a side of politics and has more to do with courts, but what do you think of court cases, that are high public profile to be televised in the same way like the AH vs JD? I read some more 'radical' side, and i think there is a point, where such high profile cases, if closed, tend to be misrepresented to broader public. https://pjmedia.com/culture/megan-fox/2022/05/29/why-we-cant-let-amber-heards-melodramatic-whining-about-internet-abuse-close-american-courtrooms-n1601939

The Ultimate run i did, prefered not to go stalker cause you only get the benefit of the AC and deflection for you and your pet when you are within 4m. And i was during most fights far away from my pet. Stalker also makes you suffer from bonded grief when you are further then 7m away from your pet, so i would suffer a big debuff of acc might and resolve. That is why i chose no subclasss.

Getting data on conversation file formats would be fantastic.

possible wotr related... but likely not btw, paizo has confirmed it is not HA! Good Fun!

Oh yeah now that you mention it, script hooks could total work for this couldn't they! I do wonder though, would there potentially be some impact on performance with a lot of scripts checking if their conditions are met on level load? Awesome!

Devoted has a +2 pen bonus, not +1. If you compare the different weapon types you'll see that +2 pen is "equivalent" to a +20% base damage bonus. Dealing a multiplicative 20% more damage is pretty huge.

Oh wow, that's an awesome discovery! Yeah, maybe also script hooks to trigger convos on entering specific locations. Actually, I've been working on a thorough documentation of the conversation and quest formats. I'll clean up and post tomorrow.

I do sometimes wonder if “The Great Sage” isn’t somewhat more than just a smug encyclopaedia

This is what happens with me as well. Hits my motivation to keep playing very hard.

Finally got my deck last week and put on all the heavy hitters like Elden Ring and Cyberpunk, and older games like F.E.A.R and Oblivion. Even put in a 1tb Sandisk Extreme SD to expand the storage to 1.5tb. The speed on the SD is pretty much the same as the nvme, and I'm baffled at that. Aside from some glitches here and there, I think Steam OS wins as a gaming platform due to its efficiency in handling big titles in a low power form factor, its really well optimized. Being able to play games fully maxed out and modded compared to low vanilla settings on the Switch counterparts is a big plus as well. Now all it needs is an oled screen like the Switch has...

Now I know what inspired Hideaki Anno to create Neon Genesis Evangelion.

nice to see analysis of pen and ar system in lower difficulty it work most of the time the extra 2 on higher difficulty really hold the system back maybe the system would fit better if it was less punishing for under pen

The full story for Cyberpunk 2077's expansion was apparently leaked. Haven't looked at it myself (and I won't), and won't link it for obvious reasons, but apparently it's set in Pacifica, which is...meh, I guess? Certainly if it turns out there really will be only the one expansion. After setting up all the endings (well, except for *that* one, well, and *that* one too, duh ) as semi-cliffhangers, so they can basically continue from them it would seem the story of V is going to get dropped on the floor after all. Big bummer. Furthermore it would appear there is some serious unhappiness about how things are going at CDPR given that this got leaked. The ship, it it taking on water...

New ultrathin “honeycomb” solar panels achieve record efficiency If a ever buy another house (sort of a sore subject right now) I am definitely building another solar power system. It made a big difference in my utility bills

There’s no medicine like a dog’: Ex-soldier who trains shelter dogs to become veterans’ companions to be honored on Memorial Day

Nathan's hot dogs were on sale at a steep discout at my local Food Lion so I bought 2 packages of bun length. For maximum authenticity I decided to make dirty water dogs. I don't usually cook hot dogs this way, but maybe I should do so more often. Anyway, I am topping them 2 ways: 1) Sauerkraut 2) Tomato, pickle, and onion Both delicious.

Well, Ravenloft was already back. And recently we had the announcement of the return of Spelljammer and Dragonlance this year. Here's all the recent D&D-related news, including title and release date for the D&D movie: https://www.geekwire.com/2022/wizards-of-the-coast-reveals-upcoming-projects-for-dungeons-dragons/ https://www.polygon.com/23034058/dungeons-dragons-dnd-direct-movie-release-date-cast https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2022/02/dd-on-track-to-deliver-one-digital-release-a-year-starting-in-2023.html

Sorry for deflating your excitement. But for what it's worth, Spelljammer is one of the old D&D settings that is coming back, and according to the CEO of WotC they are planning on making video games in all of the active D&D settings. So at some point in the future you should get a Spelljammer game.

Sad people and people who cut chains they are not attached to.

i did some testing to confirm some of my suspicions. here's what i've found: ranged movement recovery penalty only applies while moving (correction of earlier thing i said) ranged movement recovery penalty is +100% recovery time shot on the run does benefit from inversions and will completely cancel the recovery penalty suffered while moving (edit: so, makes no difference whether you stand still or move as a ranger with this. could be pretty handy for kiting) reload time is not affected by ranged movement-recovery penalty, instead it's paused your reload progress is saved if you interrupt it, so if you run around for a while, your remaining reload time should pick up back from where it left off however, in normal circumstances it appears there is a minimum reload time of what appears to be ~2.5s for most weapons, but arquebus appears to have a slightly faster minimum reload time of ~2s. so, as i mentioned in an earlier post, if you perpetually interrupt your reload, then you'll never be able to fire again since the animation needs to fully complete. however with firearms, there's a moment during the reload animation when you **** the gun (you can hear a very slight 'click' when this happens) and if you interrupt the reload at this point and then resume attack you bypass the entirety of the reload time (including the remainder of the reload time that you should've seen) and go straight to attack. [edit: lol erroneous forum censorship strikes again! "when you c.o.c.k the gun"] if Deadfire was somehow more of a twitch-y game like DotA or a fighting game, this means there's actually a "reload cancel" optimization you could do. in practice, i don't think this is worth the micromanagement since it's like tenths of a second in savings which, while possibly a substantial % increase, is extremely annoying to keep track of over an entire fight. i say "normal circumstances" b.c. if your natural reload time is shorter than the minimum reload time, then it uses your natural reload time (possible with dual-wielding, high dex, pistol modal) i know there's a further absolute minimum reload time (it's why one of the enchantments on a gun that clears recovery doesn't work) but with some simple testing with a console i wasn't able to find what that was (i got down to 1.5s and still obeyed the 1.5s recovery time instead of being capped)