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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.

Also if you use mods: - CP.Extra: Cleansing Flames adds +100% DoT tick rate. I.e. while the target is under effect of CF, DoTs on it tick twice faster - Spoils of Caed Nua: Bartender's Ring: Spirit Bane: +20% dmg against Spirits, Vessel Bane: +20% dmg against Vessels

That dont work for the DoT duration but the invisibility duration (when the icon "assassinate" is activated), so applying some DoT and then turn into invisible form give the +4pen bonus to the current DoT (from the rogue).

Lower their Gard work pretty badassely on DoT .

you can in Conan Exiles, so I don't see why it wouldn't be possible here too

The anger and significance of the Russian bear on the Russian economy

Im about 20 hours into SOD and Im loving it, there has been lots of negative views on this DLC so Im surprised how much Im enjoying it I have just reached the Boareskyr Bridge map and I dont want anyone to ruin the narrative for me about why its a bad expansion but this is what I like about it I like the way I had to recruit my old and new party members Dwarves of Dumathoin was an exciting and interesting quest, who doesnt like defeating liches It looks like I can Romance party members unlike BG1 I am enjoying the side quests like Isabella and Ikros, I killed them and saved the Vampire because it raised an interesting question around morality and the Vampire had ostensibly nothing wrong plus they had stolen one of the Halfling items so I question there own moral compass Caelar Argent is an interesting antagonist and she is clearly being manipulated and I am looking forward to understanding the overall narrative Finally I am enjoying seeing the Hooded Man\Jon Irenicus appearances so I can see how they trying to tie that into BG2 I will do a full update once I have completed SOD but so far its been a great experience

Going to be hard to translate dead and wounded into dollars, so I think the Russians are probably worse off.

Biden near decision on $10,000 student loan cancellation (usatoday.com) The wheels are moving in the right direction! UBI next? I say YES!

Please, share if you find more

DoT, as status effects, are not affected by crit for their damages but their durations. They are affected by Might however. Even if they come from weapon or spell, they are not affected by bonus damage to weapon or spells. Because their damages cant crit, bonus for crit damages are useless too for them. Only generic damage bonus,PL bonus and Pen bonus (see in comments) can work, for exemple : High Harbinger's Robes provide +10% damages (for self's DoT) Thaos' Headdress give +5% damage vs flancked (self) Crucible token , 15% vs designed enemy (self) Xoti's Lantern (Threshing Aura), <20% damage (everyone) Baubles of the Fin, +3% (everyone) Shattered Vengeance (Shards of Woedica) up to 25% taken (multiple effects can be obtain with summon by the way) (the list of items giving some PL bonus is below) Maybe I forgot some other items, and some others are specialized : Dire Talon : Tooth and Claw ( +10 cc and damage against beast) is universal Aamiina Legacy : Slayer of Beasts (+10 Accuracy and damage against Beasts) is universal Wicked Beast : Wild Heart (+15% damage against Beasts) is universal Amaliorra : Ash and Dust (+10 acc against Vessels) is universal Amaliorra : Innevitable Decay (+20% damage against Vessels) is universal Whispers of Yenwood : Soul Cutter (+20% Damage and +15 Acc against Spirits) is universal Bane Spirit (+20% damage against spirits) is universal (from the Spoil of Caed Nua Mod) There are also some abilities and passives that can increase the DoT damages : Takedown Combo (ranger) give +100 damage until a new direct attack that deal damage (for everyone's DoT) Hunter's Fang (ranger) < to 20% vs the enemies race (self) Sworn Enemy (and upgrades, paladin), +20% damage vs designed enemy (self ) Inspired Beacon (paladin), +40% damage (everyone ) Blooded (barbarian), +25% damage when bloodied (self ) Wilder Hunter (barbarian), +25% damage vs wilder (self ) Fighting Spirit (human), +15% damage when bloodied (self) Death's Usher (death godlike), +20% damage vs near death (self) Infamous Captain (Watcher) +5% damage (self) Ascended (Ascendant) +3 cipher PL, +20% damage (self) Resting Bonus : Bloody Mess (The Kraken Eye, if you choose violence for resolve The Better Man) +10% damage (self) Cleansing Flame (SC priest or scrolls) +100% tick rate during the effect All these bonus are working on current and further DoT, and are not anymore effectives when over (Blooded, Fighting Spirit, etc) For PL bonus, there are many way to gain some PL, from subclasses, races (godlikes), weapons, trinckets, ect. Considering only Generic PL, I made previously a topic about this, that take into account the scaling rules : https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/126420-prestige-enchantment-the-scaling-transcendant-suffering-overview/ For Keyworded PL, every bonus stack on top of generic PL but not from two same weapons (2 Sun and Moon allow +2PL, not 4, and 1 Sun and Moon + 1 Magran's Favor allow +4PL). By the same way, Acute and Brilliant from items seems to stack 1 PL with "ordinary" acute and brilliant. I'm not really sure because, when these effects are stacking, in the Character menu the second inspiration mention only the name of the inspiration, not the bonus (like ordinary). Lance of the Midwood Stag (Lord of the Forest) +2PL (generic) while under a plant status effect (self) Wicked Beast (Wild Heart) +2PL for Beast KW The Spine of Thicket Green (empowering Instincts)+3PL for Beast KW or (empowering Lifeblood) +2PL for Plant KW Magran's Favor (Fiery/Blazing Core) +2PL for Fire KW Sun and Moon (Celestial Attunement) +2PL for Fire KW (day) The Weyc's Wand (after empowering something) +3 generic PL Spider Silk Robe (Poison Master) +2 Poison KW PL (require BPM to work) Mask of the Grotto Deep +2Poison KW PL (Require BPM to work) Some pets give +1 Fire KW PL I'm not speacking about other KW PL because I dont see any DoT as Wind, Tempest, Electricity, Ice KW. Alchemy increase the poisons (consumables) effect as well do generic and poison KW PL bonus. Arcana increase the scroll PL as well do generic and correspondant PL bonus.

The American intro song isn't quite as good as Moonlight Legend, but otherwise I thought it was more or less a faithful adaptation.

while it's true that pathfinder is a bigger IP, the other piece of the puzzle is that tyranny outsold poe2 over like a 1 year time frame (i don't know how well the long tail of sells for tyranny has been), almost like 2x. Tyranny is basically 0 IP, whereas Deadfire at least had PoE to lean on. Even name-recognition of franchise can't adequately explain it.

With high Res, Clarity of Agony, and some other bonus for reducing hostile effects, no dex immunity or resistance, no Soul Mirror (or Finality's Claim), and a wizard as allie, it is possible to have 1 wound per sec! Ninagauth' Bitter Mooring provide a very short (3s) immobilized effect each 1s (vs fortitude), and it is not really hard to decrease the Affliction duration under the 1s cap. Of course, if the wizard is too strong, the FF healing process may not be efficient, but with an average-might wizard, because of the 8-10 base damage of the spell, the FF healing become a nice per-1s regeneration. Two FF monks (at less one as MC wizard) with Soul Mirror and Finality's Claim sharing this spell are a little bit crazy, generating beams between them and healing them by the way, in a Bitter Mooring Ping-Pong. The short Immobilized affliction doesnt influe very much, they can move but with some breaks. An inconvenient is if the wizard / FF-wizard is energized, of course.

And another case where the health advice of veterinarians was ignored Head of occupation authorities of Mykhailivka town of Zaporizhzhia region Ivan Sushko was killed in car explosion. EDIT: added the source

Speaking of costs. According to reports published in our todays news, Russia lost in 6 months in Ukraine more tanks, than they have manufactured since 1992…

An NZDF soldier killed in Ukraine sort of demonstrates that "people from all over the world" have rushed to aid Ukraine. Not in great numbers, of course, but they have. (And yes, I know, it happens in other conflicts, as well. The funniest instance I know is the young Dracula, I mean Christopher Lee, going to Finland to help in the Winter War. He was turned back quite quickly. He tells about this in his autobiography, Lord of Misrule.)

A serving NZDF soldier has been announced as killed in Ukraine, though there are no further details to hand so far (except that they were meant to be 'on leave' rather than active duty).

Almost near the end in Andromeda, sort of disappointed finding one ark is in a side mission but oh well. Some of the banter is a bit funny, like asking why we're whispering after a stealth mission has gone **** up already. Understand the gripes about open world syndrome - dumb grindy quests and wandering all over the place. Really is best to handle it like a single player MMORPG (reminds me of playing TOR, somewhat). I should have played a melee or shotgun/melee character, seems like it'd be fun to be an assault marine type with this combat system. Definitely not going to replay this for quite some time, heh. Characters don't really seem like anything worse than we got in the main series to be honest, either. At least considering it's one game vs three. After this, think I'll waste my bonus money on Farthest Frontier

So... I put Tyranny on hold for a bit (The Scarlett Chorus can wait a few weeks). Started up a game of Pathfinder. I didn't want one of the pre-created characters, so looked long and hard at the classes to select from. In the end, I figured simplicity might be good for a start. I can always go back and start a new game with a different character after all. Went for "Gorth the Barbarian" with a bit of stealth and other potentially useful thievery skills. Very much based on Conan the Barbarian as he's portrayed in the 80's movie (sans the great music). Nothing like sneaking up on your enemies and backstab them with your greatsword!!! Did the intro town and getting towards what I think is the end of the first underground map (the tunnels). Met the tieflings, read all the basic game tutorials etc. Swearing and cursing at the Options screen because it completely ignores my choice of keys for rotating camera left and right (I wanted to swap Q and E, because the default reversing of the X axis is just too confusing to me). But, despite swapping the the keys in the keybinding options, Q is still right and E left Other than that, lots of fun so far (which is like less than 30 minutes in). Edit: The movie version of Conan was sort of a Barbarian/Thief multiclass, but that might be an option in this game (I don't know yet)

neverending story indeed... ppl are free to gripe or have their pet issues about the games, but the main line of questioning in this thread is why poe2 sold so poorly. if you really think lengthy text in poe1 was the killer for sales of poe2, uh ok you do you i guess, i don't think wall of text is even a controversial opinion (i thought durance and GM were interesting the first time around, but now they're just exhausting click-throughs so i can complete their companion quests) but i don't see how on earth that would translate to a massive dropoff in sales. personally speaking, having played both deadfire and wotr in german while trying to learn german, I think WOTR has massively more walls of text in practice. it manifests in my general level of exhaustion while trying to play. deadfire i can generally keep going, where as WOTR I frequently start hitting a point where I want to give up on reading and just skip through all the dialogue and story book and just make choices solely based on the dialogue options or alignment annotation. (there's also just tons more fluff) this is to say i don't think wall of text is going to be the explainer since WOTR sold like hotcakes. (also see boeroer's comment on critical/user reviews). same thing with performance. you think deadfire has bad performance? on my beefy gaming PC i literally had no idea what was going on in the final fight in WOTR and had to turn on turn-based mode because the game would drop frames like crazy during certain spell casts (and even then i still had no idea what was going on, just that suddenly half of my party is dead). hasn't hurt WOTR sales by comparison.

I know I've said this before, but Funcom has earned a blank check from me for Conan Exiles, so I'm pretty excited for Dune. There is already a ton of stuff in the Conan game that would directly cross over and work in a Dune setting. Sandstorms? Crafting? Climbing? They've got a winning strategy already, so I have some confidence. I'm really curious if fans of the novels will dig the lore of the game. I'm a big Robert Howard fan, so all the little touches in Conan speak to me, but I never got past the first Frank Herbert book. Maybe the game will get me into them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/saints-row-2022-review https://www.eurogamer.net/saints-row-2022-review-a-snappy-but-slightly-uneven-reboot https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/saints-row-2022 https://www.destructoid.com/reviews/review-saints-row-xbox-series-x-2022/ https://www.ign.com/articles/saints-row-2022-review Not bad, more the "it's just fine rather than anything new." Some complaints on the shallowness of some of the characters and lack of time to the main story.

Not a game per se, but this might be of interest to a few people:

I wouldn't call it a wave... but most of my friends and colleagues have caught covid the last 6 months. Since nobody dies from it anymore, nobody makes a fuss about it. I still have great respect for Long Covid though. I can think of a lot of interesting and hilarious ways to die, several of them worthy of jokes, anecdotes and song. Your brain withering away, coughing up your longs doesn't fit the bill. So far, I've stayed clear of Covid through a combination of vaccine and good practices. I would like to keep it that way for a while yet.

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.

"Group Therapy..."

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