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Tyranny. Siding with The Scarlet Chorus (I think, I might change my mind later). My second most favourite Obsidian game after Fallout New Vegas

An already knew way to trigger the Stun from Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak with Effort (Hemmorraging) is to cast some CC spells under the effect of Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure. The effect is over when Hemmorraging dont crit or the wizard deal damage (and clear the Invisible effect). Withdraw provide a weird invisible status that dont trigger Assassinate bonus but Ajamuut's stunning effect and Shadow Fang (Mask of the Grotto Deep) on Hemmorraging attack. With pulsating spells which are working when the caster is under the effect of Withdraw, every enemies are stunned and take raw DoT. Of course, that work with Avenging Storm, but it is also a cool alternative.

It's worth noting for Forbidden Fist in particular, Suppress Affliction makes it so that you effectively have 0 stacks of the curse during the affliction, i.e. you can spam Forbidden Fist for free while it is active, though with a much smaller damage bonus due to the curse stacks being suppressed. However, you will continue to accrue curse stacks, so if you push it too hard you will die instantly as soon as the suppression wears off. But obviously you can use BDD to avoid dying. Can have some fun interactions with the SSS axe which suspends hostile effects on Paladins on kill -- a Votary will not only have their Thundering Blows inspiration upgraded to Energized, but can also infinitely spam Forbidden Fist as long as they keep killing.

I only ever finished BG1 twice. Once -- years ago -- did Sarevok in by cheating. Second time -- many years and experience in RPGs later -- buffed up to the gills, ready to kite him through all the traps I laid beforehand...and then as soon as I split him from his posse the wand of paralysis connects and alas, poor Sarevok. My level was higher, I think, in eights or nines. I also liked Dragonspear much more than BG1, so, yeah. Gimme those tomatoes.

lololol. gonna have to make sure my parties always pair a druid or wizard with a priest from now on

Me too, I've finished Dragonspear a few times but was never able to finish BG1 even once. It didn't help that I played the second game first.

"Youre on your own d**kheads", that slayed me

Baiting his party one by one helped. SoD is quite similar to ToB in terms of design, I think. Both feature more points of no-return than the main games, though SoD has more cut-scenes, which in general I strongly detest - unless the PC/the party is/are literally bound, the game must not rob me of control (and the ability to throw fireballs into the fog of war).

In Russia, the FSB security service found alleged assassins of Nazi propagandist Dugina in less than 2 days. Yet, the FSB are searching for killers of politician Nemtsov for 2 733, of civic activist Estemirova for 4 786, and of journalist Politkovskaya for 5 798 days. Of course this can happen even if everything is done as properly as possible: each murder is its own case, and some are more difficult than others. But still.

I agree that Avellone is fairly poor, as a writer, and for pretty much the reasons you describe. There's an aesthetic used by some bad writers: they want to "make it literary" by being long-winded and using vocabulary that is fancier than necessary. It really hurts when it goes wrong, and in my view it often does with Avellone. However, I also agree with Boeroer in that Durance is enjoyable. The Grieving Mother is overly complex, and doesn't reward the complexity. Boeroer's other point (about reviews) is also easy to agree with.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/pathfinder_wrath_of_the_righteous 50% off at the moment

JuiceMedia normally deal with Australian politics with a rare guest appearance of US politics. This time... it's their take on UK politics. Just for you @BruceVC

Older footage of Russian warcrime - 9M22S attack against a town at the outskirts of Donetsk…

9 out of 10 veterinarians indicate, that being a Putin’s bitch can have serious consequences to your health. EDIT: a more credible source.

All spells and abilities with a duration can be Refreshed by a newest cast of them. For most of them, that doesnt really matter at first view. It is important mainly because the effects can be suspended. Counfonding Blow deflection malus is preserved when the affliction is refreshed, and in the other side, Beetle Shell when refreshed dont restore the shield part, only the duration. It is the same for Wizard's Double, Ironskin and Dance of Death, and all other spells/abilities like that. The refreshed duration depend of the initial duration, so a Troubadour who chant in first time in regular modal and after that, switch to Brisk Recitation, is going to refresh the chant duration for the initial longer (with the same chant in loop). That was find by Boeroer. * Suppress Affliction (or Liberating Exhortation and Stelgaer's Restraint (Slayer's Claw) for paladin) for hostile effects and Arcane Dampener (or Shattering (Glacierbane)) for beneficials, suspend (of course) the effects for a duration. All Afflictions/Inspirations suspended are refreshed instead of overwriting the Suspended effect ; that mean, when hit by Chillfog and Blinded, casting Supress Affliction prevent for his whole duration to be hit by the pulsating blind effect. These suspending spells/abilities follow the same rule, a newer instance of them when they currently work will refresh them (and so not suspend all new effects since the first cast). * Another exemple is against Fampyr, if they want to dominate a character. The first Dominate effect can be suspended, then every Dominate Attack they perform during Supress Affliction (that can be prolonged) have no effect. By the way there is another strategy against them, to Dominate by self ally with the lesser Will. The character is always under control, and even if the Dominate Attack from the Fampyr do another Dominate effect, the character is still playable (at less during the Friendly Dominate timer). Amaliora is nice for that, the Dominate ability is not enemy only and not combat restricted. That is possible because only the first dominate effect is take into account. Some weird things can happen when an effect have two components (one hostile, one beneficial) : a berserker's Frenzy have the confuse effect as hostile, other inspirations and raw DoT are Beneficial. If the berserker suspend this part (confused) and refresh the Frenzy, then all the effects are going to be listed in Hotile effects. He cant prolonge them with SoT and a new Suppress Affliction (when the other is done) suspend all the Frenzy parts. Certainly that can be used at advantage. That can work also with Hostile effects that have a beneficial component, but with Arcane Dampener/Shattering, to turn they into Beneficial effects (and making them extendable with SoT/WoD). I dont see any example for the moment.. Edit : based on the same model that the Supress Affliction work on frenzy, with Shattering (Glacierbane) it is possible to turn as Beneficial the Confused affliction : when berserker frenzy is activated, suspending Beneficial effects on scoring a crit with Glacierbane on the barbarian suspend all frenzy parts except Confused. At this momnt, refreshing Frenzy adjust the effect for the game itself. When the Shattering effect fade, all parts of berserker's Frenzy are Beneficials, including Confused. Now that can be extended by regular way. This topic is the sequel of the topic about the Unlimited effect for Least Unstable Coil without SoT.

Can you play a Harkonnen? More specifically, can you play as Sting wearing a glorious codpiece? If I can play as Codpiece Sting I'm in.

If not for the sun, smoking, and stormy seas, I imagine the war is remarkably inexpensive for Russia.

Hm... that should mean that a Berserker/Paladin with Slayer's Claw could fry a friendly Troubadour's Many-Lives skeletons (together with real enemies) with his Sacred Immolation and not suffer any self damage from it? A shucks - the confusion would also be suppressed, dammit!

The beacon system is great; it just needs one small improvement: The ability to label beacons like chests. The icons are just not enough sometimes! Where is the compass? It's a real pain to have to open my map interface just to see which way I'm facing. Please just put a compass on the main screen! Why does my super awesome wristwatch not have a CLOCK on it??? Again, I have to open the map/inventory just to check if I have enough time for one more run before nightfall. The map is severely lacking in geographical features. It has 'biome' boundaries, I guess, but those are of almost no use to the player; they really only matter from a game designer's perspective , and are currently more confusing than helpful. What is really missing is things like rock walls (on the right side near the hedge; I know the ones on the left are shown), the wood log wall and (especially!) gorges! These canyons are one of the most difficult and dangerous elements in the game to navigate (I'm constantly falling into them in the dark) and are not noted at all! What gives? I know that you may want for the player to have to discover some things, and that's fine; do 'fog of war' until these areas are explored. But once I've been to an area, I should have a notation of where the pits of death are located. Landmark discovery is super random. I have been inside some field stations and other features several times, and then one time I approach it from a different angle and I suddenly get the notification that I've 'discovered' it. Oh, really? Amazing. And the red anthill; no matter how many times I've been inside it, it still doesn't appear on the map as a landmark. Also, when doing a resource scan from a field station, scrolling the resource list also scrolls the map. Goofy. Feature request: Please add ziplines to the map when they're created. Not just the endpoints, but draw the line. It would be super helpful. Even better would be a directional arrow. But everything above is more important. On a related note, it sure would be nice to get the WHOLE rope back when I try a location and it doesn't work, instead of just getting back HALF the rope, like when other buildings are recycled. Thanks. P.S. I'm playing the beta release, "The Bugs Strike Back" on PC.

Another $3B in aid from US today. Don't think anything sexy in it. Massaro probably upset they are not donating a Nimitz class.

Stands to reason. After all, the Moskva sank in a storm that must have been extraordinarily heavy but small, because no one else noticed it -- and there are plenty of satellites and such observing that sea.

It is assumed, that the target of the attack was Igor Telegin.

Looks like, another cunning enemy of Russia has appeared few days ago. Or Zelenskyi started has learned witchcraft “Ammunition exploding near Timonovo village of Belgorod region due to hot weather” https://t.me/zhest_belgorod/15369 feel free to put the text into google translate. Edit: The heat must be really extraordinary, as there are reported more explosions today

Hmm, I have finished BG1 twice, as a complete DnD noob, and I really do not remember any issues with Sarevok. The only issue I ever had with BG, was BG2 Demilich encounter, which I spent more than two hours to find out a tactic how to defeat it

This has been an issue from day one. I have posed about it on here and on other forums. I have not ever seen the developers mention anything about fixes or work arounds for players attempting to plan LAN or from the same internet connection. It's pretty sad really. In my household we have 5 copies of this game, and we are unable to play it together because of the lag and terrible performance when trying to do so, from the same internet connection.

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous was on a 45% sale on GOG. Got that and some Ashes DLC (which was on a less impressive sale, but nevermind). Now I just need to find the time to play it (since I got myself into a game of Tyranny the other day) Edit: Core game was 50% off, DLC was 20something% off, somehow the total was calculated as 45% as some kind of average

Stasis on giveaway at GoG: GOG.com

I just finished a spicy chicken sandwich. Well a hot chicken slider from Dave's, but it's a sandwich and the chicken was spicy so I'm counting it as one. Very good, chicken is juicy (and halal if that matters to you) and the kale slaw helps with the heat.

I made tacos and a huge batch of salsa for dinner last night. My wife doesn't normally like when I do ground meat tacos (I like it because it's fast and easy) but the Krogers here does a pork and beef blend that she's a huge fan of. Right now I'm craving a spicy chicken sandwich

I have to agree with you here that *some* of the writing in PoE1 was needlessly excessive. But for me that was specific to Chris Avellone's writing. He is the one who tended to throw up walls of text everywhere, and for some strange reason people seem to be taken up by this as representing *awesome* writing. I find Avellone's writing pedantic, pompous, and boring. Remove Avellone's writing from PoE1 and the problem goes away (effectively what we had in PoE2).

I don't see anything dumb on that picture. ;D

Easiest way to finish the Sarevok fight is Potion of Invisibility + Protection From Magic scroll = standing on the trap that fires infinte Skull Traps until everything is dead. Not sure if any mod or the EE patched that out though.

Smashed burger. Nothing new to report, I just thought the burger was quite photogenic.

Settled all the planets in Andromeda. Must have settings wrong but the game blinds me a lot - go to menu and come back to sunlit scene, white out. Disappointed to find a giant worm in the desert and just have it be background scenery though.

its not cheating, its what game allows you to do

we made boogaloo wonderland sandwiches we got a recipe which approximates a decent version o' the sauce. atk also has a recipe which is probable more accurate than what Gromnir does. our knock-off has near same ingredients as atk with a bit more vinegar and we replace the brown sugar with dark molasses. am reducing the molasses volume 'cause while is maybe less authentic, we prefer the sauce to be more smokey and less sweet. we use also abandon the chili powder and replace with ancho chile powder. regardless, is more fun to say, "boogaloo wonderland," than to say "sloppy joes with cheese"... minus the green bell pepper but with more onions. admission: we prefer jalapeño in our sloppy joes instead o' green bell pepper, and if we weren't making the boogaloo wonderland for somebody who had never previous tasted, we woulda' added jalapeño. HA! Good Fun!

In general I found "Party vs party" encounters in BG1 to be very challenging. I really liked that - a nice balance of fairly straightforward moster slaying, and real test when you face a party of hostile adventurers like yourself. I completed BG1 on "core rules" many times. I definitely cheesed couple of times - abusing AI luring enemies one by one couple of times. If I remember correctly, Sarevok's fight got buffed if you own Tales of the Sword Coast to compensate, but I never played without it so I am not sure. It's definitely a fight in which one has to pull all stops. I much prefer that, to underwhelming BG2 finale. It's sacrilegious but honestly not that bad - could have been much worse. I didn't hate it, but am unlikely to ever boot it again, or include it in my BG Saga playthroughs. I thought it did a poor job connecting BG1&2, which it claimed to be it's purpose and like Beamdogs addition to BG1, it feels very modern in design. Not in a good way - it just felt very off to me. Its stakes are also strangely high for a game set before BG2. In a way it reminded me a lot of Throne of Bhaal - an original piece of content that I mostly dislike. If ToB is Return of the Jedi, being mostly bad but wrapping up the saga nice, then Dragonspear is... Han Solo? Disposable, forgettable, and cringy from time to time, explaining things that didn't need an explanation, but not entirely unpleasant.

7 is about the max you can get in the game, no matter what tricks you use. Depending on your class, of course. I've beaten him on the highest difficulty, Legacy of Bhaal, but I have no memory of what I did. Probably a lot of potions and reloads. But yeah, that fight is significantly harder than most of the game, discounting maybe the final boss of Durlag's Tower, which is a save-or-die fest. Luckily you only need to kill Sarevok.

I completed BG1 last night, it was a great game and highly recommended and gets a solid 72/100 on the globally respected " BruceVC game rating system " But the final battle with Sarevok was almost impossible, I spent about 4-5 hours trying different strategies and combinations and I could only finally defeat him by dropping the difficulty to easy. Then I used my invisible mage to go to right of the screen and used AOE spells to weaken him, without drawing aggro, and his companions and then when they attacked me I used a combination of my 2x fighters has potions of cloud giant strength I used arrows of dispelling and biting I used potions of magic resistance I cant believe people defeated him on the harder difficulty but my party was level 6 and 7? What level were you on when you fought Sarevok and what strategy did you use in the final battle? I am now playing Siege of Dragonspear, I hear its not that good but I am going to play it anyway because it starts straight away and Im in a " BG " mood for gaming

A lot of skimming through .gamedatabundle files for modding! For the longest time I just thought the Vox Machina character data in SSS files was somekind of buried Easter egg. Like maybe the characters were in the spectators stands. (Very well armed spectators!) I finally tracked down an encounter with the DebugName of "lax01_arena_duel_vox_machina", I figured maybe it could be unlocked by playing through some combination of SSS fights. Only to find out even if you were to meet the conditions to show it (one of which being a boolean that's always set to "False"), it isn't even on the list of available arena encounters.

0.14.0 Public Test - 3824 to 3829 Changes Shared Worlds -Creating a Shared World copy from a save you have only played offline and then hosting it will properly load your character's data. -Fixed issue that could occur with new saves or making standard/shared world copies after hosting a Shared World and quitting to main menu. -The Shared World owner is the only player who can swap a Shared World from a non-custom to custom game from the Custom Game Settings window. -The number of friends a Shared World has given access to is now shown next to the Owner name in the Save / Load window. Other -Fixed crash that could happen randomly with ants looting bugs. -Helmet textures no longer become corrupted after wearing a Bubble Helmet"

Flaki

0.14.0 Public Test - 3813 to 3816 Changes Updated art of the Cool Fashion Nugget and Rad Fashion Nugget to not use the same mesh as the regular Fashion Nugget. Firefly legs no longer randomly stretch super long. The Pause Menu can no longer be triggered in between level loads by spamming ESC / Start. Hosts no longer get two notifications when taming a pet. Fixed Mutation icon quality being very low on Xbox One. Lab chest loot added to the Haze and Pond labs. Achievements no longer unlock after loading a custom or a creative mode game. Spider webs spawned by spiders no longer grant negative faction rep when killed. ARC.R shooting has updated audio. Fixed small memory leaks. Relocating an armor dummy and customizing it no longer puts the camera back to the old location. Fixed issue with Xbox and Windows Store builds where you could constantly keep getting a syncing data popping up from the Xbox OS while playing the game.