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I just finished another ultimate run, I wanted to see if it was possible to get the amaliorra scepter & engoliero estoc & use the upgraded watcher ship to reach Ukaizo instead of the ghost ship, it is, I even spared 5 days, sasha scimitar + grave calling + engoliero + skeletons is real fun ( oh also effort is fun with mind blades especially)

Probably not a helpful comment, but from a European perspective the whole issue is indicative of a system so effed up it's not even true. And certainly not funny. To think of the human resources wasted in a system like this is, shall we say, sobering. (The same goes for the lack of universal health care, but there the waste concerns both human resources and anything connected with health, of course.)

The internet tells me they ramge from 4.99-7.54 federally, and 1.29-12.99 privately. That doesn't seem too low. I'd say it should be minimal. 1-2%, enough to cover costs. 90% of the loans are federal, so should the government really profit on young people getting an education?

Imo Psion is the best Cipher subclass for solo as long as you have something to occupy the enemies. So summons (Psion/Chanter), mind-control (Cipher itself), invisibility (Wizard, Rogue, Skaen) and hard CC are your friends. I also had very good results with a single class Psion with a very defensive setup with a small shield (no acc loss but higher deflection and reflex) because it shifts focus away from you towards squishier targets (weak charmed/dominated enemies mostly). It is so good to be able to just generate focus all the time while hiding, recovering, kiting and so on. No other cipher can do it. They all have to hit something with weapon or spell which not only is bad for action economy but also is bad against single tough/high defense foes. Also played Psion/Troubadour and the constant stream of resources is so good - you will never run out of things to do, you have summons, mind control, hard-CC, single-target- and AoE damage and defenses/resistances.

The buff of the familiar stays for the whole fight (except the PL bonus) no matter how it disappears afaik.

If I remember well all dots are considered ranged attacks and are affected by pets with ranged damage bonus (Harley, etc).

No a preview, but an interview with Josh and Hannah:

Yeah, I noticed the very familiar system of picking a class (any class you qualify for) level when leveling up. I did get a second barbarian level though for level 2. Later I might go Rogue for a bit, just for the role playing fun (I need to practice my Austrian accent). That being said, I consider this character "expendable" and it's more of a testing the waters run, to see what to expect later. I.e. how badly is min/maxing needed etc. and how much wiggle room is there for at least some limited experimentation. Once I get the hang of it, I might try what looks like more challenging classes (more "stars"). Maybe even something just for the sake of later gaining those classes you can't get at character creation (like Assassin). But, for now, just left the Mongrel "village" and exploring a maze. Edit: Playing "Normal" difficulty. While I'm a noob at this game, I don't consider myself completely clueless to the mechanics. Also, categorically using turn based combat (I could probably have roflstomped all opposition so far in RTWP, but I think I learn stuff better by taking it one turn at a time and consider what my characters are doing)

I decided to address the one thing I don't like about my Glock (I love everything else, including the square chunky design), the trigger pull. No surprise, Glocks are notorious for their trigger pulls. Originally, I was just going to do the 25¢ trigger job, but I figured, since I'll be taking the gun fully apart anyway, why not replace the trigger connector? While shopping for a 3.5 lbs Zev Pro connector I noticed that a spring kit that included said connector was not much more expensive. Long story short, the 25¢ trigger job turned into a $30.25 trigger job, replacing the trigger connector (lighter), trigger spring (heavier), firing pin spring (lighter), and firing spring safety spring (lighter). I still polished everything as in a 25¢ trigger job. This should definitely lighten the trigger pull a bit, hopefully it also makes it less mushy. I'll find out Saturday.

It's so hard to get a picture of a "base" in one shot, without mega-FoV distortion. It's also funny how I don't like "platformers" yet I will build ground bases where jumping all over the place is required. Go figure. This one is is me refurbishing a tiny 1-story guard house. The streetlight was already there, makes a good front area spotlight. I blocked around it so it wouldn't shine into the base itself cause that was annoying graphically. >.> And it makes a good "bridge". This shows "structure stability". Green is good, red is bad. Although you're always going to get reddish on blocks extending outwards and it doesn't mean it's always fragile in terms of walking on it. Stability just means how many blocks can you extend/add on without a collapse disaster for lack of support. Also shows that the pic above is just the topside. The main base stuff is underground in this one. ....where one goes to relax with a good book after a hard day of mining and looting. That's only one of the "bases" I've built on a single map. Yup, a great time waster indeed.

I'm in Act II. Got the terrible habit of trying to move the camera in Crusade battles, so I always end up hitting "w" and making my first unit delay its action until the end of the turn. And it is usually the archers. I'm getting the impression that these battles will become very repetitive. Archers seem to cause much more damage, so it is all about keeping them away from the enemies and healing the frontline units. At least for now. Regill is quite an interesting npc. I'll definitely play as a Hellknight/Hellknight Signifier in the future, both for roleplaying and to see everyone's reactions when I praise his decisions. Oh, and now I understand all those memes about Ember. With Camellia and Daeran out of the party

If a Conjurer summon some of these little familiars, well the familiar replace the previous one. But effects still continue to be active, even if the familiar die. Only the PL bonus is removed from the previous familiar. A brilliant Conjurer preparing his fight All bonuses are passives and stack with others, for example with Berath Blessing or every Inspirations. It is very interesting with an Enchanter/ Blood Mage/ Vanilla Wizard — others loose the acces to Conjuration/ Enchanting school — with Minor Grimoire Imprint, to conjure some familiars from level 7 for SC and 10 for MC. It is not a broken thing and against big Bosses, loose a little amount of time at the beginning can be decisive (+12 all defenses, +13 deflection (+10 and +3 from +3resolve), +1pen, +1PL etc)

If you don't mind using mods, Tabletop Tweaks brings in a feat called undersized mount, which allows you to mount your size or smaller. Generally I recommend TT as a good balanced* set of tweaks that makes some things more viable and nerfs (if u want it to) the most broken stuff. *

Youre preaching to the choir here. We need UBI, UHC, UFE and UFH like yesterday!

Yes that do, in the screenshot I made my Conjurer chain-cast the familiars. After, you can summon another fantom or other, the bonus are working for the fight duration!

@abotcompleted the Ultimate I believe with a Psion/troubadour, so it's definitely doable. It would be easier with community patch however, since that changed focus generation interruption from on hit to on crit.

Important to read the study IMO. A lot of the negatives they were describing were talking about the psychological well being and trying to contextualize that. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4154000 (free download) Some of the metrics they assess was that there was no significant difference in people's bank account balances after being on the metric of some time. This reads as bad if you your measure of good is an improvement in bank account balances. It means people spent money. They noticed that people spent the money on food, housing, and things they needed. They ruled that the objective measures were largely null over the time frame, while subjective measures had a slight decline, though could also be largely null. Further, when assessing some of the subjective measures (emphasis mine): "Instead, the data seem most consistent with the notion that the windfall was insufficient to address participants’ needs, which in turn generated feelings of distress. We find that relative to the Control group, cash groups experienced greater stress in deciding how to spend money, were more likely to think about money, and were more aware of both their own needs and those of their friends and family—all of which (partly) mediated the effects of the treatment on the primary survey outcomes." If the needs weren't being met, it doesn't seem surprising to me that the savings accounts would not go up. The authors themselves recognize that the results of their study is actually unusual compared to other studies in the field. This is in part why they were "shocked by the results." They did try to control for this, and some explanations they put forward for this is that the amount of money doesn't go as far in a place like US compared to some more absolute poorer countries, and also that they did their study during the COVID pandemic. The study also is more about looking at Unconditional Cash Transfers rather than UBI. Part of the motivation for the study was analyzing whether the stimulus checks given during the peak of the COVID pandemic were actually effective. The researchers also found that participants that received a cash transfer felt additional stress and pressure to use some of that money to help out friends and family (indeed, one of the bigger objective measures of using the money was transfers). And as even the abstract points out, by having the money made the specific cash needs more salient to them compared to the control group. This doesn't mean the control group doesn't have those needs, and it would come across as callous to suggest that poorer people remain poor because on some way they may be resigned to their economic realities and feel less stress. I'm not sure how the WSJ concluded that this made people work less. It wasn't something I could find in the study and looking for anything that could resemble employment trends they only asked about it at t1 to get a baseline for the economic situation at the start of the study. If you can find it let me know! (Was on holidays and/or work trips, so for necro)

hmmm we found seelah, spec'd sword and board, perfect capable o' tanking most encounters up to hard difficulty. however, for a few boss fights, the paladin were not a viable tank... and the boss fights are kinda the chokepoint for those who might not wanna min-max. seelah, particularly if you made her a mounted combatant (we used wolf most often, but for full tanky seelah, boar is a decent choice... though admitted to do non-horse you gotta multi with oracle or something else,) is gonna be an excellent tank for +90% o' all wotr encounters on difficulties short o' unfair, but is not as if you are able to ignore boss battles which effective undermine her tank worthyness. so the question is why would you build seelah as a tank in the first place? crazycakes camellia is arguable the most effective pure tank 'mongst the companions as is typical better to use a dex build for ac than to try and stack armour bonuses. y'know, the main reason we keep seelah sword and board in all our wotr runs is 'cause there is a holy avenger in the game and 'cause somebody in our party is gonna be equipping the undying love of the hopebringer. more freaking metagamey nonsense, eh? the shield is too useful for most o' our dc and fear-exploitation parties not to have the shield figure into our strategies, so somebody needs equip it and seelah is an obvious candidate. in our estimation, your best wotr tank is a summons or an animal companion. sure, you may build an angel oracle to be nigh invulnerable, but why bother? build a party to max dc and damage output is typical our strategy 'cause an overwhelming offense in wotr is the best defense-- you don't need stellar ac if you kill everything in one or two rounds... which is admitted cheesy. ... pathfinder is subject to munchkiny exploits, and owlcat took a hands-off approach to pathfinder balance... and then they added their own epic silliness which frequent complete breaks the game. this is a problem for casual gamers 'cause to make wotr challenging enough for a game with reload as well as hardcore fans who will make insane powerful trickster, demon and angle builds, owlcat resorted to bloat. well that is fine for the hardcore players who will grumble 'bout bloat as they roll-stomp through the game on any difficulty short o' unfair, but what about the casual player? wotr is designed so hardcore munchkins may nevertheless enjoy the game experience, but such design necessarily is gonna frustrate the casual and sane player who doesn't know every unique wotr exploit and stacking opportunity. nevertheless, if @Gorthis having any difficulties with battles on normal difficulty, we will offer advice, but he should be reassured to hear playing every companion straight vanilla as offered is viable. it is 'course all too ez to choose wrong feats and multi-class options so as to make your party ineffectual. is also disturbing ez to build a party which is highly effective for the first 2/3 o' the game but useless near the end. regardless, is not too difficult to fix any "wrong" choices, so don't hesitate to express frustration and ask for solutions. HA! Good Fun!

well they have to, or they would fall out of window or slip on banana in shower

Yeah. The most blatant example of this that I have seen are the pronouncements made by Russian diplomats concerning the country's relationship with Sweden and Finland, now that Sweden and Finland are heading towards NATO. I mean, Russian diplomats are saying that these two northern countries have suddenly turned against Russia, become very unfriendly towards Russia and essentially ruined decades of good relationships, which is an enormous disappointment and insult to Russians. And in all this, the Russian diplomats make no mention whatsoever of the war in Ukraine. It's as if the Russian diplomats are extremely surprised by this sudden change in how Finland and Sweden view Russia. When dishonesty is taken to these extremes, it's really quite startling to see.

not sure where to put this gem I just found so here it is: you can enable english subs

No I can't read cyrillic that well and less so understand Russian but this is first time I read something in quite negative tone to Russia by Russians. You must understand that media are very state controlled in USS... I mean in Russia so its very propagandist, thats why you got that tone impression from them. They just have to have that spin

I dont think Psion is a good option when soloing the game, beguiler in other side have a great Focus-generating-system that can provide a very good sensation. Psion take the risk to constantly interrupt his focus generating because of incoming crits (or even hits on unmodded game). Haha I remember of this post, the fact was about Seals, Walls and Summons that are not really directely atached to the caster but independant; to cast many of them doesnt break the invisibility (excepted the Wall of Draining that hit the caster when summoned).

Let's see how far it goes. Gorth the Barbarian is now level 3 and made it to the tavern. I feel a bit like I just finished Irenicus' dungeon again Nothing difficult so far... except that "mini boss" at the garrison. I had a suspicion the game was rigged when I used the Inspect function and saw she had 32HD

'Star Trek' Icon Nichelle Nichols' Ashes Going to Deep Space on Vulcan Rocket (tmz.com)

https://www.gamesradar.com/the-great-war-western-front-is-a-new-ww1-strategy-game-from-former-command-and-conquer-devs/ Petroglyph with a new game, WW1 certainly hasn't been done too much

--The thing about WallE and Up is that their start/early sequences are so marvelous that it's all downhill from there. I enjoyed both overall but it's a case where they both end up skating on goodwill from the first 10-20 minutes, or whatever it was. I've said it before but for me the best Disney animated film is still Beauty and the Beast. The original one, not that live action one (which was ok in small parts but overall, meh).

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.

It looks promising, it reminds me of Dishonored and the whole dystopian Victorian theme I will wait for player and gaming website reviews before I decide if its worth buying

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)

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.

They had me until open world survival mmo

And day one on GamePass:

They just have to practice selective annihilation of mayors and government officials.

fyi, for those unaware, today trump chose to invoke 5th amendment protections in a ny civil matter. is a big deal 'cause take 5th in a civil matter means the court/jury may infer trump avoided answering 'cause doing so would have been disadvantageous to his case. ny had trump in a devil and the deep blue sea situation. yeah, trump avoided giving up any info which could be used in a criminal prosecution 'gainst him, but to maintain such protection he all but tanked his chances o' winning his ny civil case, and the civil is representing the possible dissolution o' the bulk o' trump's corporate assets. am mentioning 'cause the few articles we have read today regarding trump and his scheduled civil deposition do a poor job o' explaining what is the practical implications o' taking the fifth vis a vis his civil case. HA! Good Fun!

https://dailycaller.com/2022/08/09/anthony-sabatini-florida-fbi-mar-a-lago-donald-trump-department-of-justice/ Little bit more and you'll have conservatives and BLM united in their demands to defund the police.

the kansas abortion numbers is the reverse o' the trump v. biden results from the 2020 election. is not a win issue for republicans. however, given the US tribalism and polarization we see today, am unsure how much meaning we derive from the results in kansas save for as an issue-specific concern. sure, a whole lotta republicans is obvious reluctant to support a few o' the draconian abortion bans we are seeing implemented by republican controlled legislatures in numerous states, which would appear to reveal a disconnect tween the elected and the voters. even so, how many republicans in kansas, texas, ohio, mississippi or elsewhere will now vote for a democrat 'cause o' their personal pro choice stance? the republican party needs the increasing radicalized and angry base to win elections, but moderate republican voters, and many independents, will ignore or accept any gop excess as long as the alternative is voting democrat. HA! Good Fun!

Rumsfeld was chairman of Gilead before he became SecDef under Bush. No idea whether Gilead supplied the drugs for the Bush program though. Ultimately, that's probably a better use for aid than most of them even if some of it went to ~cronyism. Having babies born with HIV because mothers weren't given a prophylactic dose was utterly moronic. I'd be loathe to criticise it even if Rumsfeld got his pockets stuffed with cash.

As has been noted, he got sacked because he refused to work, not because he protested. And while people have a right to peacefully protest, what they choose to protest about can tell you about the kind of person they are, and whether they have the kind of values you'd want in someone teaching children. And so, while we can defend his right to peacefully protest, we can also be quietly happy about the fact that his garbage ideology is out of schools. Additionally, what people have the right to do, legally, doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the rights of their employer. As an extreme example: I have the legal right to publicly criticise my employer, but they then have the right to determine that my continued employment is not in their best interests. Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. Well that's the point, isn't it? If malaria comes in force to the USA or some other overwhelmingly white and rich country, suddenly people will care about it. Not sure what bit this is replying to. Is it the bit where I said that the 'Spanish Flu' was first observed in Kansas, or the bit where I implied that monkeypox has been in Africa for ages but didn't really make the news until it went to other, (richer, whiter) continents? Either way, it doesn't make sense as a response.

As I understand it, yes, it was racist, and Spain probably was a bit annoyed that they were scapegoated for a strain of influenza that was first observed in Kansas. With regards to monkeypox, I have seen it suggested that the actual racist thing about it is that it got very little media attention when it was largely confined to Africa.

In Grandfather Nurgle's eyes, they are all beautiful

The article was light on details, but odds are he was protected by a Union and so they did have to give a reason, and the reason was he didn't show up for work for a year. He says he felt threatened but there is no detail about that. But the idea that you aren't going to come to work until your managers apologize sounds pretty silly. I'm guessing he can go fill a teaching job in Florida though. edit: It's actually pretty hard to lose a job as a teacher after you get tenure. As long as you take attendance and show up most days, the school district is going to struggle to document a real case for removing a teacher. This guy went under review for some pretty serious stuff and he still wasn't fired for it.

A variation of the old "I enjoy participating in gatherings with racists, but I'm actually not a racist" conundrum. A common companion of "how can I be a racist if I have a black friend" and "how can that guy be racist if black people voted for him." I'm sure there were some German dudes at the rally of freedom in 1935 who just really loved freedom.

Not that I really like sharing doom and gloom, but it does look worrying... https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62310355 ...But the contraction, at an annual rate of 0.9% in the three months to July, has drawn widespread attention as worries about the economy grow. Prices for groceries, petrol and other basics are rising at the fastest pace since 1981. As the US central bank raises borrowing costs quickly to try to cool the economy and ease price pressures, fears are rising that a recession is coming - if it has not officially started already. as for the possible reasons: "I think everybody is sort of waiting for the pandemic to blow over, for the war in Ukraine to settle down, but that's not going to resolve any of the inherent systemic flaws," he says, citing high housing costs, student debt and speculative bubbles in sectors like crypto. High housing cost is not a surprise. I've been claiming for years, it's going to be a major contributor to damaging social stability in the western world...

Iberia was 1000 years ago. Even if you push it as far as you can it's still 500+ years. Most of Africa was still colonised well within living memory.

When attempting to launch the PTS, I get roughly 1-1.5 seconds of the black loading screen before immediate crash to desktop. No save game selection or anything. Have completely uninstalled and reinstalled multiple times. I've never had this happen on the live version, and I've had no hardware or software changes since I last played live. Thanks for all you guys do! DxDiag.txt

Neither, I don't get that far. I download the test client, click "Play" on steam, and within 2 seconds the game crashes, but only with the test client. If I revert to live it works fine.