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Venetica is the giveaway game today https://www.gog.com/en/game/venetica

They're thinking too small, should have gone right for cancelling the purchase of Alaska.

I heard some of y'all like meowing/cute kittens.

Oh noes, looks like Keyrock has been abducted by SonicMage, and he started to spam trailers with his account!

Kinda reminds me of this:

Same here With occasional click on Niche Gamer now and then

This is the only site I even visit for gaming news.

I can't help it if the rest of y'all (except @Wormerine)are too lazy to post trailers. I'm doing all the heavy lifting by myself over here.

I think the design was okayish before special KW mod. It wasn't very good, but consistent with many other cases where a melee attack was negated just because carrying a Keyworded secondary effect (Toxic Strike). It was especially disappointing with a couple of double damage type effect such as Sulance. Fire Immune are Immune to Sunlance is ANY case, just because it is Fire Keyworded ("Fire Immune" is Keyword AND damage type immunity) KW mod was a mixbag for me. On one side the result is arguably better, but less consistent with other rules, and now we can see it could be buggy. The bugs can be corrected by introducing these new KW in the effects that lack it. Or I can go with something entirely different, but with new unexcpected consequences, possible downgrading... I and more work overall. I get the idea that dthe decorrelation between KW and damages type lead to strange stuff and it might have been better to have these weapons doing 1 type of damages with the related KW. Then again, the KW rules themsleves are a bit unsatisfying (see the Toxic Strike issue above...)

This one is interesting, but I have found no way for confirming it yet. Also, Russian Duma has got law about abolition of recognition of Lithuania. And Putler is talking in interview, about historical justification for attacking Ukraine, how they "rightfully" seized what was theirs before, despite world recognizing it as Sweden (Estonia in this case).

The initial problem (and why the keyword mod adressed the keywords of some weapons, too) was that weapons which do alternative damage (like shock/pierce but also pierce/slash) might not do any damage against enemies who are immune to one of that dmg types, even if the alternative dmg should work in theory. Problem is that sometimes enemies with immunities against certain damage types have low AR or not especially high AR against that type (see Flame Naga). The game logic first determines the highest dmg type/AR ratio and decides the preferable dmg type, then realizes the enemy is immune only afterwards. Bummer. At least that's what I remember. But it seems the keyword mod only disimproved stuff (in some areas at least). If I'm ot wrong giving Sun and Moon fire/crush or freeze/crush wouldn't really help with the "can't hurt fire immune enemies with crush dmg" issues which occur without the keyword mod. Maybe crush/fire or crush/freeze would be okay in most cases because the first dmg type will get picked if the ARs (or dmgtype/AR ratios) are equal - and in that case it would be crush dmg. But against Flame Nagas for example it would still prefer fire dmg - bc. the fire AR of them is especially low. If Sun & Moon only did singular fire and freeze dmg with the repective head then it would make sense and one wouldn't have this quirky "immunity despite alternative dmg scenario" at least - imo. Just by taking away the alternative dmg type which would avoid all the issues. Same with Dragon's Dowry etc. I personally would prefer another solution (which I don't see atm)... but this seems like the simplest one - and one that shouldn't come with other unforseen problems.

There are plenty of alternative articles that aren't paywalled (eg BBC). Or the OECD report itself, it's only one page. (TLDR is that everyone except Australia and Argentina have had their economic outlook downgraded, and the UK is expected to be the worst effected. The war in Ukraine and response to it is partly responsible)

Drums and bagpipes... what's not to love?

Welcome to the time machine... aka retro tech. When the compact disc was new and revolutionary (1982)

Hello! I've been playing Grounded since it first launched, and really love the game. With the latest updates and expansion, I'm enjoying it even more, exploring all the new bugs, areas, recipes, and other secrets of the game. However I do have a few suggestions for quality-of-life improvements, general feedback, or other wish-list items for future updates. Some of these were in my original post from 2020, but many of the things suggested there have since been implemented, which is awesome, so thank you to the Devs for continuously listening to player feedback! Quality of Life: Please make items assigned to the Hotpouch not take up Backpack space. Not only would this inherently expand desperately needed personal storage for supply runs, but mimic the equipped armor setting. You can still have it that if you die those items aren't available until you pick your backpack up again. This also would help with cycling tools/weapons and trying to maintain sorting in your backpack as equipped items would go back to their pouch and not the first empty spot in the backpack storage. Add sort functions/options to storage such as by item type/class, tier, vertical/horizontal space, etc., and the ability to move all like items in existing nearby storage via "auto-sort" or transfer (either directly from the backpack or at least individually for each chest) when in the base with chests and such. Hotpouch Control/Radial - change to "Tap LB" to quick cycle through the Hotpouch items (like Minecraft), and "Hold LB" to open Hotpouch radial menu as currently done Adding a basic compass marker to SCA.B HUD/UI = can be a purchasable upgrade Adding a "dodge" function, perhaps by double-tapping the crouch button, while moving/strafing to give alternative ways to engage enemies and avoid being hit. Including an option to slide by holding crouch while sprinting. Feedback: Tier II weapons/armor don't seem to scale as well as they did in the past, even when upgraded with the Anvil. Overall, the transition from T2 feels much weaker and therefore progression much slower than past updates. Either damage doesn't scale as much, or bugs are more durable/hit harder, or a combination of those things, but progression really stalls for a long time when you are tyring to explore the labs and move up the ranks, especially with how much larger and diverse the world is now. Flying insects are a bit too powerful for current gear/mauneverability. As most flying insects (Bees, Mosquitos, Fireflies) are highly mobile and do a lot of damage, stay out of melee ranged for the most part, and blocking/dodging isn't as effective as it needs to be based on damage output (even with T2 weapons and armor, see above). This makes farming certain instects, like bees that are needed for a lot of the late game items, a wicked slog because you can only engage a couple before needing to restock (arrows, bandages, smooties, armor repairs, etc.) and heal. Some of the recipies seem a bit "unbalanced" for the parts/resources needed based on availability, ease of access/farming, and manufacturing. The basic cycle to obtain is great, but late tier upgrades and items, while supposed to be difficult, are severly impacted by the limited manufacturing process and spawn rates/locations of items versus quantities and types needed. This is common in other similar games of this genre but they typically have a better manufacturing process that makes it easier and not feel so overbearing at times. Wish-List: Continued diversity of insects, parts, and recipes, especially for unique items, weapons, and armors - i.e. a Grasshopper that gives legs which can be used for... (see next items) Grasshopper Boots = increases jump height and reduces fall damage Slingshot = uses Pebblets, Pollen, or bombs (Brat/Splatburst) as a ranged weapon Grappleshot = alternative way to scale/climb the environment then always needing to build structures Additional "[new]burst" bomb variants that create AOE effects (Fresh, Gas, Glue etc.) and that can also be fired from a slingshot (see above) Healing Ointment = for immediate health recovery instead of recovery-over-time like the Bandage Dynamic weather, such as rain (I know everyone has been asking for this) Refridgerator/Cooler = new base structure/chest type that prevents food from spoiling (too fast) I'm sure I will have more to add as I continue to play, but thanks for reading and to the Devs for making such an amazing game so far!

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) A ways back when I posted the teaser for this film, I expected it to be a whole lot of things. Fun, stupid, over the top. Nicolas Cage playing himself, what else could it be. Apparently he turned down the role three or four times before taking it. I don't know if that means he should be given the credit I wanted to give him for being able to make fun of himself or not, but that's besides the point. I expected this to be the most fun I had with a film in a while. A longer ways back, my expectations of a film were wildly subverted. The difference is, with The Last Jedi, I expected a bad Empire remake, and I got a movie that made me think Attack Of The Clones was a good idea, and nothing ever should make anyone feel like that. Here I expected good things in a certain way, and expectations were once again subverted. Except in a good way. Out of all the things I expected of this film, it being a legitimately good movie was definitely not among them. Funny that, but somehow, it is. It's well executed, the actors are all delightfully into and great in their roles, particularily Pedro Pascal who is just the best. Hell, there's a digitally de-aged, super creepy Nicolas Cage appearing every now and then who is giving his hammiest performance, and as a bonus, Cage actually says "not the bees" in the film. The film just works in every way. As a silly comedy, as a Nicolas Cage action film, and as an adult character drama. Yes, this is partially a meta joke, but not entirely. It really is all that, in a nice package that's good looking, and it certainly deserved more than not even making its budget back at the box office. Looks like Nicolas Cage's handler was right in the film. There simply is no place for adult character dramas without mass appeal any more. I guess the action at the end was too little, too late, or the film was too much of everything and delightfully meta at the same time for most. I don't know. All I know is that I expected this to be the most fun I had with a live action film in a while, and that was true - and it was also a good deal more. If anyone of you liked 7 Psychopaths, give this a try.

But Amazon is not even making a LotR series, they are making a GoT ripoff with LotR branding because that's what they own the rights to. And if you check on the legal part of it, what Amazon owns are the rights to the 3 main books. They don't own the right to the Hobbit nor the Silmarillion nor any other Tolkien property and they are trying to make a series set in the 2nd age that can only contain characters that appear in the 3 books (and who's stories are already well established in the books Amazon can't use). Its like trying to make a new story within the time frame of "A New Hope" while only having the right to use R2D2 and Chewbaka.

It's 102F/38.88889C

I really need to quit "power" "metal"

Come now, it gave us this moment

Shouldn't Avatar have millions in that case?

Julee Cruise https://www.avclub.com/r-i-p-julee-cruise-obit-1849045079

22 different in game currencies and three different battle passes. Skip to 41:19 for Too Long Didn't Watch. Diablo Immortal Also Has Hidden Caps Preventing Grinding For Free

That they included that as part of Doom's power...

To be honest I would love that. I firmly believe that when war is inevitable, it is better to fight that war sooner rather than later (or more specifically, on our terms rather than on the other side's terms).

hmmm. kinda a misleading read. this case is 'bout suing feds for torts committed during scope o' their duties. facts o' the case involved a property literal straddling the border which were noteworthy for the majority as it raised (specious in our opinion given the facts) national security issues. could the courts somehow read the opinion so it applies to any 4th amendment TORT claims made in the 100 mile zone? maybe. is a perilously slippery slope being conjured, but am admitted discouraged by the curiously extreme narrow reading o' bivens and the hand wave to ziglar by the majority. regardless, the referenced decision is offering no implied freedom to violate the 4th amendment save to note the monetary damages one may recover for such violations as set forth in bivens has been seriously limited. HA! Good Fun!

Perfect description of all the strategies and overview of the topic - as always Boeroer

new update/patch am increasing confident a few turn-based mounted combat bugs will never be addressed. am similar dubious the quirk o' animal companions loosing the tandem trip feat if chosen at leveled and not conveyed via sacred huntsmaster or hunter ability will be addressed. is getting to the point where the base game mechanics is as fixed as they is gonna be and only content busted by new dlc is addressed with noteworthy probability. 6/9/22 wotr is hardly optimal, but am once again recognizing the title is more stable (far more) than we expected given our experiences with kingmaker and acknowledging all the additional archetypes and epic content o' owlcat's second (last?) pathfinder ap. am debating whether to wait for the enhanced edition before tackling inevitable excess. HA! Good Fun!

I think an acorn pulley system in grounded would be a really good addition to the game. It could be made using acorns shells/tops, sap, crude rope, and silk rope and would ultimately act as a system to pull grass floors(and other variants) up to high points of your builds. This could allow you to place plank pallets onto builds that are higher up. To balance this out the higher you go could determine how much silk rope is needed and you would need a foundation for the system to work. ultimately i think this would unlock a lot of possibility without ruining the games feel.

Game over man, GAME OVER!

Looks like the character creator will still let you make a weird and/or hideous boss, which is good. More importantly, are they bringing back the best mini game ever, Insurance Fraud?

Marvel Midnight Suns has gone up for pre-order at 59.99

You can use the half floor and set it at the midpoint of a wall, effectively creating a shelf which then allows you to place chests (and other things) on it.

I agree. An elevator of some sort would be awesome

It had absolute garbage, worst of the worst, piss-horrible end boss fight ever. Like, after immune-to-everything potions, anvil tornado spells and summoned death knight armies I have to do a Realistic Ballista Simulator, angle calculation and adjustment to ****ing wind and everything while being set on immunity-bypass fire by the blasted flying lizard? Well screw you, game, gimme you cheat console. I did like the rest though. And the piratey DLC. It had a ghost spider buddy who thought the MC was an idiot and since I was of the same opinion I took instant liking to him.

Jax's album is coming along: I guess that killing blow damage = force for the ragdoll of the corpse because enemies and their weapons have a tendency to go flying, sometimes 50+ yards, when I kill them, now that I hit for a lot of damage. On the down side, it makes it a pain to collect loot. On the up side, sometimes the weapon winds up in a hilarious location: I spent about 15 minutes save scumming (refurnishing costs 5000 elexit) while deciding what style to refurnish my house at The Bastion. I wound up going with Alb furnishings, on account of them looking the most comfortable: Berserker furnishings were very barebones. Cleric furnishings were cool but instead of couches and chairs they had uncomfortable looking benches and stools. Morkon furnishings look cool, on account of the spikes and skulls, but the bed looked like a soiled mattress on top of a pallet. Outlaw furnishing were just disgusting looking.

And in the future it might not be 20s Microsoft anymore. I am not terribly worried about next couple years, but after that - who knows. What will Microsoft become once aggresive expansion ends and they will have to find a new way to increase income for investors?

One final thing I forgot about ordering chants. My play style means that in the opening moments of combat I’m staying back and letting enemies approach while I buff or keep parts of my party hidden. So I don’t put offensive chants first and favor defensive chants first in my all-purpose songs. It might not seem like it matters a lot but on PotD things can snowball and spiral out of control from the opening moments of a fight, so just having the right first chant can be relevant.

i have to add that over time i've grown really fond of the chanter in deadfire (i've started bringing one along in some shape or from pretty regularly). i used to stan for priests back in the day and while i'm still pretty big on priests, i think chanters just have a lot of interesting potential especially with how you can complement your party in different ways, and there are enough oddball chants and invocations to give you a lot of fun possibilities for how to take your character. for a psion/troubadour you might want to give extra consideration to "thick grew their tongues" and "long night's" chants. thick will make sure enemies will always be vulnerable to your soul whip interrupts, and long night will soften enemies up for the cipher's fortitude powers, of which the cipher has a lot and sometimes they are very hard hitting (like disintegrate or soul ignition) edit: oops forgot to add that for a troubadour in particular, brisk recitation + the damage shield chant or the skeleton chant are aces. a troubadour with the damage shield chant and brisk recitation can carry a party against Hauane O Whe, for example.

i always do a lot of ahead-planning with chanters, because it's easy to go "bad" on the chants IMO. if you have too many it's hard to make good use of them all. chant mechanics are also significantly different from poe1, just as a reminder. (everything is a flat 6s on, 3s linger [except for troubadour stuff], whereas in poe1 it varied based on character level and chant level) to your questions: i love all the resistance chants. in order of usefulness, i would go "one dozen" (resolve/con resistance), "fampyr's gaze" (int/perception resistance), and then "hit the deck" (might/dex). one dozen because i always do megabosses so a chanter is an easy way to fight auranic, plus i find frightened and sickened/weakened awful common for how annoying they are. int/perception because charm/dominate is super annoying in fights where it has, and perception resistance is super useful especially in fights where enemies have persistent distraction. because they're so niche, it helps avoid the "too many chants" problem because i create one or two songs that just focus on the resistance chants and switch to them only if needed. i always start with the one dozen chant in any "resistance" song, because especially when sickened/weakened/enfeebled kick in i want to dispel it asap so i can heal. literally every chanter i ever have these days (and in like the past 500-600 hours of gameplay) picks up one dozen, that's how much i love having it around. really punches above its weight for being just a tier-two chant. i used to love thick grew their tongue a lot in the earlier days, but i have a lot more ways to deal with concentration and am more deliberate about interrupts so it's a little bit less important. everything else is more situational on what my party/chanter are like and what my design goal is. i'd say ancient memory is a pretty safe choice for all setups because of its great utility. sometimes ordering can help, especially when you consider that when you use an invocation or you switch songs you immediately jump back to your first chant, so effects that can double up or benefit from being refreshed faster or are offensive and need attack rolls so having multiple checks are good. like the skeleton summoning chant, or the damage shield chant, or the anti-concentration chant. it might not sounds like it comes up a lot, but in practice with the most obvious indication (the skeleton summoning chant) i would end up with a lot of extra skeletons just from having it as the first song. there are also a couple minor synergies, like having mercy mercy (+50% heal) or one dozen before an ancient memory chant, to boost the healing effectiveness. in general though i would argue against having more than three songs in a chant. the math changes a bit with a troubadour's better linger (up to four maybe), but typically beyond three you're not really adding more power and you're just adding more variability: with any choice in a game, there's always a "best" choice, a "second best" choice, etc. when you fill up chants in a song, what you're really doing is selecting a "best" chant, a "second best" chant, etc. after a certain point, each additional chant you add to a song lowers the average quality of that song. ideally you don't exceed two chants in a song, because with proper intellect you have 100% uptime on your two best chants. but in practice i find it a worthwhile to add a third to add a little bit more flexibility (especially if it's adding something like ancient memory where even a little goes a long way) even at the cost of uptime of your other arguably better chants. this is different than in poe1 where the different chant durations and the reduced active chant time as you level up means there's some interesting math and strategizing about mixing in shorter chants with longer chants that have huge linger.