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Tangent: People complain about Dark Souls being too hard, but one thing that's great about it (specifically speaking of Dark Souls 1 here) is that there's a ton of variety in how you can play...at least on NG1. Shield, heavy armor, or rolling? Magic or melee? Do you use bows to snipe enemies before they aggro onto you? A lot of fast and light attacks or fewer but well-timed slow and heavy attacks? Are you an up close sloppy brawler that gets hit a lot but has lots of health and armor so you can always get back up, or are you someone that's always backpedalling trying to figure out what leaves your enemies vulnerable for safe attacks? There's a lot of variation to how one can decide to play, lots of personal flair and style, and the game is forgiving enough that most of them are pretty effective once you get your mechanics, timing, and strategy down somewhat consistently - plus the game gives you plenty of options to change up your approach if what you're doing just isn't working for a particular fight. So what is often frustrating to me with other games, particularly a lot of so-called soulslike games, is that they lack these kinds of options and variety - maybe they present you a few, but the one thing that really ends up working and actually being effective just isn't that fun, and what should be fun just isn't very effective, so it kind of herds players towards doing the same thing over and over for the entire game. Bleh.

Memento (2000). Halfway through the film, I paused it to spend a few minutes to try to figure out what missing piece of the puzzle had set the events of the film in motion, because that was obviously what the film was working towards by presenting events in reverse chronological order. I couldn't rightly figure out the answer, even though in retrospect, the film has really given you everything you need by that point.

I want to replace my modem-router but we're sort of in limbo here with the current connection being VDSL2 (100Mbit down 40 up). My Netgear D7000 drops out more than I'd like, but there are no suitable all-in-one replacements and truthfully I don't know where the problem with it lies, the modem bit or the router bit. Therefore I don't know if running it in modem-only mode and adding a new, modern WiFi 6 router would resolve the problem, or whether it'd just be a huge waste of money. The current government would like to eventually upgrade the infrastructure around here to proper fibre (no modem required), but who knows how many years that'll take. _______________ In the meantime, I've picked up a pair of discontinued LG 27GN880 monitors. These displays are fairly standard 27" 1440p 144Hz IPS monitors and the actual panels have no particular special properties that would make them a better buy than competing products. It may seem a very weird time for me to buy new IPS monitors with the new LG 27" OLEDs about a month away from release (in the US at least), and indeed I thought I was done buying LCD monitors for the rest of my life. But this was never about the displays themselves. So yes, besides the fact that I got them for about 10% less than the generally-accepted entry level for this type of monitor (such as the Gigabyte G27Q), this product's party trick is the LG Ergo stand. I'm in a bit of a spring cleaning mood, despite summer now being upon us, and I figured it would be a great time to declutter my desk. And while I'm only midway through the process, these progress pictures show the improvement. Shame I can't do anything about the huge DIY speaker stands, although I really should have painted them. Note also the rogue cable in the second picture, which is unfortunately because the standard length DisplayPort cables - both the ones I already own and those included with the monitor - are too short if I route them through the monitor pillar as intended. Still a very good design overall and neater looking than if I had bought one of those VESA standard adjustable monitor arms, which would probably also have cost me another $50AUD at least. For context I got these for a little over $350AUD each. A new gaming monitor with separate VESA arm would add up to $450+. In contrast, the MSRP of the new OLED monitors is expected to come to, oh, about $1600AUD. As a result, it was very easy to justify buying two of these and maybe run one OLED in the middle initially. Which brings me to my dilemma: I still have to install the second new monitor. Do I install it in the middle for now, given that it's theoretically a bit better than the existing Asus MG279 pictured? The Asus still a 1440p display and running at 144Hz (it's technically overclocked) but it has annoyingly thick bezels and is just a generally inferior panel, the design being around six years older than the LG. However I would then have to move it aside once I buy the new OLED in 1-12 months time. If I instead install the new monitor on the left, it would be an easy straight swap of the old Asus to the OLED in the future.

The Obsidian forums is the original Roguelike game.

Unrelated: it was weird to see Joe Pantoliano and Carrie Anne-Moss star in the same movie again, even though they never interacted with each other.

I'm 3 hours into Callisto Protocol. Playing the medium difficulty and I've got my nitpicks. 1) The combat is overtuned. That's my fancy way of saying it's too hard while trying not to sound like an old fogie. But seriously, I think the combat is overdesigned for attack->counterattack loops. And the second I try to put my own spice on it I get bashed. Especially in scripted encounters where they are transparently programmed to keep you in combat with two enemies simultaneously. It's weird how it keeps popping up. Find two guys, take one down. Take another down and it gets an immediate replacement too. I die in those encounters a lot. Because someone got behind me, I wanted to try something out, I thought there was a reason to use GRP in combat and there really wasn't (despite this encounter teaching me about GRP), or I'm just getting frustrated at repeating this one encounter and I do something to try and speed it up. And then I see an animation of my face getting bashed in. Loading screen. Back to where I was. I need to learn to just stick to dodging left and right and then using standard attacks when it's safe. There's no room for personal style. 2) The level design needs work. Too often I'll come across two unlocked doors. Go down one until I hit what looks like an area transition, run all the way back to the other one, and check it out. Sometimes this leads to a back and forth as the area transition wasn't really the area transition. But the other one definitely is and you can't go back. It needs some better signposting of what areas you can't return from. And to build up trust that you'll get to go back to the fork pressing forward. It doesn't have that.

Finished God of War Ragnarok main story, have to beat the rest of the optional hard bosses and I will be 100%. What can I say other than that they knocked it out of the park. The story was great and this was a worthy sequel and maybe a better game overall. The only think I can mark it down for is that the game seemed less polished, but I pretty much played the previous one on the last patch, so it could be the case that they will iron it out through patches. There weren't any (big) bugs or things like that, but some cut scenes and talking parts had rough animation, and some new characters were very close to being uncanny valley (although they had very few appearances). Wish I could have played it on PC (hate controllers) and that I bought an ssd for the PS4.

Yeah those games likely don't play very nice anymore, interface and controls included. What I'm missing is that they're offering scenarios that have since almost completely disappeared from RPGs and crawlers. Makes me sad. And it's kinda puzzling as well -- it's not as if horror-themed settings ever have went out of style elsewhere. There's a few Ravenloft user campaigns for NWN 2 though.

Some RPGs still looke awesome. Lands of Lore 1 is still georgeous in this day and age, but 2 and three looks like manmade product after eating yoghurt with sausage, melon juice, mustard and canned fish...

It happened to me once. Soon only Stand users will be able to post here.

Tis the season...

Probably nothing really new, but I just tried this in SSS vs. Trial of the Naga challenge. It's very funny to set the FF attack condition to Farthest Target/Allow Disengagement. With a fast-moving character and widespread targets, it's a festival of disengagement attacks and "missed: out of range" for the enemy. The hostile AI doesn't know what to do with you as you run around picking the furthest targets 1 by 1. But, your own AI does get scrambled when you're surrounded and can't move, then it's stuck... HOWEVER, you can set-up 2 copies of the same behavior and pick "random order" but one behavior has FF set on "closest target" and the other one has it set on "farthest target/allow disengagement". That way, the AI always finds a way to unf*ck itself, and it is very funny to watch as you never know what your immortal toon is going to do. Thanks for starting this thread, I'm enjoying myself because of it! I didn't use a proper SG/FF but my Autopilot Unbroken Fist little toon. SG/FF would be even stronger.

Is "locked thread ate my post" the new "dog ate my homework"?🤔

I mean, it's not how you play the game, it's how you place the blame. And in this instance, the blame lies with Gorth.

There's a mod that un-nerfs WotEP, if you're interested in trying it out with its original stats.

Yes that’s what I was talking about re. riposte abuse. With Steel Garrote/FF to get lots of heals, try and set the AI to run around and hit the furthest enemy, you might trigger lots of disengagement attacks while hitting with FF and healing through forbidden curse and heal-hitting foes under enfeebled or dazed (WotEP). And wreak havoc on enemy AI because you’re running around so much.

Yeah, I've had the "locked thread ate my post" thing happen too. It's funny, irreversibly losing even just a couple of paragraphs of text makes it feel like a pretty herculean task to write up the rough equivalent again, and it always makes me wonder how I had the energy or inclination to do it in the first place, because I certainly don't anymore. If I do lose a post, I ain't redoing it, so I guess I better always remember to CTRL+A+C. The original thread could still possibly have a draft of your post saved, but the only way to see would be to unlock it.

Hey, I wasn't gonna say nothing...but I did need to actually mention the character, .

For f*cks sake, the ONE time I type up a semi-long reply and don't CTRL + A; CTRL + C it just to make sure you go and lock the old thread in between, and that post is gone, sacrificed to the forum gods. Such irony, the post talked about me making things harder on myself by accident, in both Sekiro and Dark Souls.

Top secret B-21 Raider stealth bomber finally revealed in high-powered ceremony - Breaking Defense

I should probably look up the character names next time I talk about a film I've watched like 15+ years ago. Indeed, that's Jankis and not Jenkins. Oh my. Leeeeeeeeroy!

For what its worth, Memento is one of the few films where the conclusion - or, well, the beginning in this special case - came as an actual surprise without feeling contrived or simply impossible to figure out by having no prior setup and thus coming out of the blue.

That's interesting, I'm playing through Dead Space 1-2 right now and I can't stop being happy about the breadcrumb system helping me with exploration.

Rogue cable? My first (and only) reaction was: wireless 'ergonomic' multi button mouse? No thanks. I can relate, the display port cable is the only rogue cable on my desk too. Those things really are too short. That is a relatively new development as I cleaned out my desk with the new computer and threw out the old Dolby Digital speaker setup, that instantly removed 13 cables and a gigantic power adapter that never fit anywhere, plus I never truly had the space for proper speaker placement anyway. Still plenty of cable chaos under the desk, but who gives a damn about that. Anyway, I'm using this mouse: And I actually bought a couple just in case, because they're out of stock almost everywhere, and buying stuff on eBay, dunno... going to have to try the Logitech M110 eventually to see if that works for me too, but they're a bit longer than the LS1. Ah, to not be so limited with preferences would be nice. Alas.

Metaverse is just Second Life all over again. Remember when every company had their own plot of land and some person employed to idle there all day long? Hilarious.

Wasn't Wheel of Time only 3 episodes in the first week? So I guess lots of people checked it out ... but how many kept watching it? I didn't.

Aside from that, I've only just bothered to check what that shield on some avatars means, and realise now we have triple redundancy in the space of, oh, about 10 square centimetres? EDIT: 😛

You mean someone actually showed up?!

One of my favorite combos is a FF/SB mindstalker. Once you buff out (with Borrowed Instinct, etc.) you can pretty much alternate the FF and SA attacks. By mid game you'll do so much damage with the former that the latter will land very hard as well. You just have to max RES to keep the FF curse short enough (under 3 seconds) so that you can just spam this combo. You'll one hit mobs, and tougher (non-boss) foes will often go down after the second SA hit. But TBH it's so good it gets a tad boring.

About UA hitting the Russia and ATACMS. Here is a little bit different theory, why they are not supplied. TL; DW, 1 ATACMS costs as 10 smaller MLRS missiles, and is much larger. There is a possibility, that Russia is able to intercept such huge rockets with their S300/400, which on another hand are unable to hit small diameter MLRS missiles. So “not escalating” rhetorics is just an excuse and a scapegoat to look reasonable in public and Russian eyes. In other words, they are getting literally much more bang for the same money with the sorter distance missiles provided, than they could ever achieve with ATACMS. We’ll see how the new Boeing/Saab gliders will fare soon. Also, Few months ago, there was some lady close to the White House speaking, that ATACMS could not be delivered before all technical ”shortcommings” are solved. Interview with her was even linked few dozens of pages ago in one of the previous threads. Can’t find it now, but maybe someone else remembers the article 😛

What I have been told by people who enjoyed Raiders but hated Crusade is that they simply did not like the shift towards having (more) comedic moments, whereas Raiders was a more serious and gritty adventure film than the others. Sure thing, Adolf. I would not go that far as I prefer Last Crusade over Temple of Doom, but I understand the sentiment. Having watched all three films at an age that was probably not appropriate, Temple of Doom was funnier and quirkier than Raiders but overall less charming than Crusade.

It's a vodka from Canada's favorite conspiracy theorist Dan Aykroyd.

Also Realms of Arkana. Still love how it looks and stuff. Played it a lot back then.

Running some quick tests of my own, I think they just didn't QA the PC well enough. Whatever's going on with the asset streaming or shader caching seems like a one-time issue. I watched the intro for the first time and the game stuttered every time the camera angle changed suddenly or an effect went off. I did it a second time, even after a full exit, and the problem is resolved. For that one scene. So if it's compiling shaders on the fly and that compilation causes the issue, then once they're compiled it's technically resolved. My limited time working QA, we weren't regularly diligent about doing clean wipes of our machines to test on either. Then again it was over a decade ago and issues like this may be more common now.

I have a baffling love for Temple of Doom. If I look at the movies objectively and remove my own feelings from the equation, both Raiders and Last Crusade are better movies. However, if I was on a 2 1/2 hour flight and was given the choice to watch any Indiana Jones movie, I would pick Temple of Doom without a second thought. I really enjoy that movie. I am forever confused by the hate Kate Capshaw got for the Willie Scott character. People kept telling me that she was annoying and I thoroughly liked Willie. There is no debate to be had about Short Round. Short Round is the best and that is a factual and objective statement. Period. Full stop. I like the monkey brains scene, I liked it then and I still like it now. If that makes me a terrible racist and literally Hitler then so be it. I can get cancelled or whatever. I love the mine cart chase, it's freakin' awesome. I think the Kali Ma, Shakti De scene is the most iconic scene in the series. Yes, more iconic than the Raiders face melt. Sure, Temple of Doom has some really stupid stuff, but nothing even remotely as stupid as Indy surviving a nuclear blast in a refrigerator or Shia Labeouf swinging with monkeys.

Started a new FM save, using a fictional team, Bielefeld.

@Chairchucker's hot take.

I played a skald a while ago and it was pretty solid until late content. I wonder what's the weapon choice for crits? Sun and Moon and Ring of Focused Flame? I felt it was a win-more build that don't work very well on harder enemies, especially those with 130+ DEF and crits are no longer reliable.

I got my new motorcycle in Cyberpunk: It's not actually any faster than Jackie's ARCH, but it looks badass and reminds me of Kaneda's iconic motorcycle:

WoW is the only Blizzard game I've ever owned. I think it's over though. After playing it to the detriment of everything else from 2005 to 2010, then being on-and-off with it from 2011 to 2018/2019, this is the longest I've been without it, and I still don't feel the itch at all. I have tried Diablo 2 and Starcraft. They did nothing for me, so I never touched the sequels.

I liked StarCraft because it was a nice blend of likeable and interesting characters, had a decent sci-fi story, nice background lore and a fun campaign. StarCraft II came out and assassinated the characters within the first two seconds of the very first cutscene and then proceeded to took a giant dump on the world building and established lore in that afterthought of a campaign that was flashy style over substance coupled to a game designed solely to appeal to RTS e-sports players - and that is without even considering the audacity to sell content worth one game in three separate installments to rake in some more cash. As much as I sometimes complain about Mass Effect 3's ending, for me, SC2 ranks very high amongst the biggest disappointments in gaming. WoW's Cataclysm just sealed the deal in the same year.

Oh, I've got to try all the other treatments first, also I'd never set my foot in Turkey, because they'd likely arrest me for being a terrorist since I've lost count of the amount of times I've protested in support for kurds. That said, if nothing really works I can get "climate treatment" in Teneriffa or Gran Canaria for 10€/day. I'd die from heatstroke, but atleast the psoriasis wouldn't bother me 😄

Heh. Blizz sent me an e-mail going like "the wait is finally over!" just a couple of minutes ago, and I raised and eyebrow and told my phone that I haven't waited for a Blizzard release ever since Wings of Liberty was such a massive disappointment, and then deleted it. It's probably for the best that I am burnt out on the game and online playing in general.

A Succubus, An Aasimar and a Kitsune walk into a brothel. In the Abyss. What happens in the Ten Thousand Delights, stays in the Ten Thousand Delights. For Science!

They stack in a multiplicative manner. Think about it like this: If you have multiple sources of crit conversion they will get rolled one after the other - until a conversion happens or until all sources got rolled. This is basically how it's done in code. You can calculate the overall chance of stacked conversions rel. easily by multiplying the chances NOT to convert (CNC) - and then substract them from 1 like so: Berserker (0.3) + Dirty Fighting (0.1) + One Handed Style (0.15) --> 0.7(CNC)*0.9(CNC)*0.85(CNC) = 0.5355(CNC) --> 1 - 0.5355(CNC) = 0.4645 --> ~46% crit conversion chance overall Afaik there is no suppression when it comes to conversions since the stacking isn't linear and you can't reach 100% via stacking - so no need to limit it.

Useful for anyone who will go for the TCS Achievement when they unlock it. First off, sneaking through the entire first Island is recomended. I recommend minimum stealth 5 before digsite. Hylea's Bounty food will help with this. When u depart from Port Maje island buy 400 Water and 400 Hardtrack and sail around the map collecting the insane amount of exp u get for exploring. I highly recomend u pick beraths blessing for the upgraded sail so that u can outrun anyone who wants to engage your ship. Revealed worldmap is convenient too so u can see enemy ships. I have marked all the locations for the exploring exp on a map for your convenience below: With a decent mechanics skill you can collect loads of exp in a place called "Sandswept Ruins" by disarming traps. Location marked on map below: Sail past Sayuka and pick up the Superb Arqeubus from inside Fleetmaster's Office. It is inside a chest with a lvl 7 lock. There is also a superb warhammer inside the longhouse in a chest with a lvl 13 lock, u can pickpocket the key to the chest with a low sleight of hand check, i got the key with only rank 3 sleight of hand. Tikawara: Dunnage: Fort Deadlight: Neketaka - Queens Berth: Neketaka - Periki's Overlook: Neketaka - Serpent's Crown: Neketaka - Sacred Stairs: Neketaka - The Brass Citadel: Neketaka - The Gullet: I will link a few other useful guides here for convenience: For quick and easy gear: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/102943-guide-strong-early-weapons/ For "no-resting bonuses": https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/101300-guide-permanent-bonuses-approach-for-a-no-rest-run/ For finding resources needed for enchantments among other things: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/103020-limited-resources-locations/?p=2064079 Credit to all helpful Comments below =) I will continue updating this as i gain more knowledge.