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Confirms you are not a Russian at least. 😛

Thanks. I'll post a complete build later once youtube has finished processing the videos. Blood mage / soul blade utilizing strand of favor and cabalist's gambeson to stack focus (among many other buffs). Use Citzal's Spirit Lance for 90% of encounters, didn't memorize a single wizard spell for most of the game, eventually memorized pull of eora because it works so well at grouping enemies so the lance can get all of them. Starting stats were like 15/10/14/18/18/3, island amaua for the might resistance though wild orlan is also a good choice. Cipher spells used are mostly psychovampiric shield, borrowed instinct, secret horrors, and soul annihilation. Used minor grimoire imprint to steal various spells. Stole any wizard spell I could but the important ones were priest: (withdraw, escape, halt, and restore) and druid (nature's balm). Important equipment: Magnera's Chain (+10 fort/reflex/will), Effigy's Husk (might immunity), ring of minor protection and prosperity's fortune (later 2x ring of minor protection), protective eothasian charm, giftbearer's cloth, bounding boots or boots of stability depending on encounter, upright captain's belt, cap of the laughingstock, squid's grasp / xoti's lantern normally used in combat before summoned weapon, weapon set 1 and 2 need lethandria's devotion and outworn buckler. This allows you to break any affliction besides dominate/charm by scripting rapid weapon switch (most important for arcane dampener). Shroud of the Phantasm to proc brilliant (though actually not necessary, can just blood sacrifice like every 10 seconds and 3 to 4 times on combat end), outworn buckler can also proc courageous but it isn't super important since we have near infinite concentration. Resounding Call for tenacious (upped later to energized with Slayer's Claw). Amra and Lord Darryn's Voulge for speed buffs. Rannig's Wrath for +10 deflection. Deltro's Cage Helm for Conduit (wearing right equipment this gives +150 to 220 or so % shock damage depending how lucky you are with the roll when chain lightning yourself). Scordeo's Trophy early to reduce recovery, later Scordeo's Edge, though you don't really need it. Sanguine Great Sword for healing. Lots of other minor equipment buffs. I did Belranga pre-SOTP, and Concelhaut, cave grub, watershaper dragon, magma dragon, Dorudugan and HOW pre-Scordeo's Edge (also arkemyr). But I took anything that made me more powerful. This is a build that starts sorta weak but the more things you kill, the more spells you steal, and the more buffs you proc the more powerful it gets, and that applies all the way to the end, so once I got Citzal's I generally ran TOWARDS combat, I did lots of random ship encounters etc., and devoured the souls of kith and monsters everywhere. Grimoires: Llengrath's Martial Mysteries. Aloth's Grimoire (for minor imprint). Sometimes I open with a Ninagauth's Shadowflame or Jernaugh's Equalizing burst but that is really all that's needed. Pets: pes early on (+10% melee dmg, 5% hit to crit), bear cub once you can get him (+8 fort, 5% melee dmg), even later Ooblit (+3 sec duration all beneficial effects). Ooblit isn't really necessary but reduces how often I have to cast certain spells and abilities (escape mostly). It's a no-rest build and I got as many buffs as I could: nature's resolve, alchemic guile/brawn/wits, cauldron shard, konstantens boon, savage cunning, hylea's bounty is best food as you can take it immediately and I think it remains the best for huge health boost, +2 all skills, +10 all defenses. Con and especially resolve are not that important because we have huge passive healing and can enormously buff defenses with borrowed instinct, psychovampiric shield, various stolen spells and various items. Main danger to the build is certain spells like arcane dampener, though that can be cleared in a couple seconds. Form of the Helpless Beast is pretty bad. That could potentially end the run if you're hit when vela pops out of withdraw. Can actually still fight pretty effectively as the pig if she is safe because of the high attack rate, interrupts, and lightning damage. Other afflictions like paralyze don't really matter because they hardly ever hit since we have renewable inspirations up constantly for every stat besides might which is a little harder to proc, and even if you get hit with a 20 second paralyze or something you can clear it in same manner as dampener. It is a very powerful build once it comes together around level 13 to 14. Lot of micromanagement with SOF for max effectiveness, though for party runs it would do fine without any of the SOF buffs. Can rip through bosses and waves of mooks alike. Citzal's Spirit lance procs focus from both the primary target and secondary hits, so you build focus really quickly, and soul annihilation hits everyone the lance hits. If I were running this in a party without SOF micromanagement I would just script the char to use soul annihilation every time focus > 90 and you're threatened by more than 1 enemy, with like a 6 second cooldown. Soul annihilation was one of the things I couldn't script because the game limits the cipher resource cap to 90 in the scripting GUI, so if I want to use soul annihilation if and only if I have 1000+ focus, well, no way to do it except manually, and unfortunately with wael you're guessing at your current focus. I basically just zerged things with SA if they seemed high threat. Unfortunately SA does not generate more concentration or raise the max focus cap so you need to swap killing mooks normally with using SA on more dangerous things. By late game in my parallel, non-iron, non-wael run I had like 15000 max focus, and you start combat with I think 1/3 of that. Or maybe 1/5...IDK, it's a lot I was inspired toward soul blade builds from watching SarcasticSarcophagae's ultimate run where he does a soul blade / ranger, but I didn't really like the ranger aspect. I think this build is stronger but that one is easier to build focus since you can just kill your pet over and over and don't need to seek battles. But I like seeking battles. And I wanted to make a character that felt like an unstoppable kensai/mage from Baldur's Gate (or a kensai/mage/cleric...), and this is as close as I could get with POE2. Also wanted to script as much of the fighting as possible. Most encounters can be handled entirely by the script. It gets confused by things like Sigilmaster Auranic's obelisks, and you have to manually cast withdraw and soul annihilation but it can otherwise autopilot. Hmm. Went into much more detail than I'd intended. Gotta save something for a build thread lol

This here be Swedish too: Heh.

Abba and Ace of Base disagree with you 😝 Edit: Edit2: How could I forget these.... Army of Lovers 😂

我的儿子非常喜欢《禁闭求生》这款游戏，希望公司可以开发出更多有趣优秀的游戏作品！祝公司所有人元旦快乐！

act iii and beyond is 30-days for the fort conquest. however, your general and class level suggest that one of your first army battles were taking the vilareth ford fort. unless owlcat addressed the issue, a win at vilareth will activate the fort conquest timer so be aware. the gargoyles is tough and we always face 'em as a level seven party. also, we got a much different pov regarding heighten compared to @majestic am thinking heighten is kinda essential on every caster we got. our nenio, for example, has phantasmal killer occupying multiple levels in her spellbook thanks to heighten. is a whole lotta spells in the game and many/most is useless. there will be spell levels which is relative bad and yeah, heighten means you may upgrade any spell by one or more levels to fill relative spell dead zones. also, if am using ember as an enchanter and blaster, then to get same dcs by raising glitterdust to level seven or eight with heighten, then we need take multiple conjuration boosting feats-- one v. multiple is not a hard choice to make on a feat starved character like ember. also, unlike empower and bolster, heighten applies to every spell, so is more potential uses; yet another situation where more utility is better, yes? btw, there is a whole lotta rods in the game, so is less reason to choose metamagic feats other than heighten, though admitted, selective is gonna be one feat which on higher difficulties you want early in the game and you don't have access to selective rods in act one or two. 'course is a fail to ignore the reality you got multiple party members. if you got nenio in your party, your main character is a caster, or you hire a merc, then whether or not to add selective to ember (or any character) becomes a strategic concern. aside, much o' this reflection should be moot if spells were implemented according to pnp rules. selective is so not supposed to work with spells which last more than an instant; blame owlcat for the exploit o' spells such as grease and scirocco. admitted, the fact it is a busted arse mechanic don't stop us from spamming selective sciroccos late in the game. btw, all the observations 'bout heighten doesn't mean our pov is correct. our unique pov is why we have lann taking divine hunter levels and is the reason we played an enchanter skald in our most recent run. HA! Good Fun!

That's just what a Russian would do to trick you.

only correct day of Christmas is 24th.. barbarians...

Selective Grease trivializes this fight, and more than a handful of others too. There's a bunch of spells that work very well far beyond what their level would suggest, like Glitterdust and Web, in addition to Grease. If you have feat left over for Heigthen Spell, you can use that to increase the spells' DCs, but I'm personally not a fan outside of playing a Lich with merged spellbook, where Heighten Spell helps fill otherwise dead spell levels with great Lich spells. It's - in my opinion, at least - generally better to boost DCs through Spell Foci on more control focused casters due to the way expanded arsenal works. Selective Spell already adds a level anyway and adding Greater Spell Focus: Conjuration benefits whatever you're Extended Arsenal'ing. In a perfect world there'd be enough feats to go around, but there just aren't, and if you're making a damage focused caster, like when you turn sweet little Ember into a Hellfire Ray spamming whirlwind of death, Empower and Bolster increase Hellfire Ray's level too - and they add more damage. That all said, taking Heightened Spell on a control focused Ember isn't going to brick her, I'd just argue that eventually boosting all of her Enchantmen DCs by +4 with Expanded Arsenal beats pushing a Selective Glitterdust from level three to six. Heighten Spell is probably most useful on a Cleric like Sosiel, or casters that have prepared spell lists, as they get access to higher spell levels earlier, especially with merged spell books. There's also one other thing to consider, Heighten Spell is easy to use and doesn't require pre-planning builds or metagaming the proper levels to take feats and Mythic Abilities.

Yes, there are some other circumstances that can lead to the described issues. I've only run into it with parantheses. If anyone runs into the issue on a post without them, post a screenshot please, although I'm hoping someone will get around to fixing the issues soon. Problematic time for the posting function to break, this close to christmas.

Got my new airbrush set up, hooked up the compressor and ready to go. Took some old miniatures that I had bought on ebay a decade ago to use as test subjects. They came originally with a horrible paint job and were scheduled for an acetone bath (paint stripping). A quick and dirty job with a spray can, putting some primer on them and then off to practise, just some simple exercises, trying to adjust the psi and learn the best distance, amount of paint to let through the double action trigger etc. Good thing they were practise models 😂 After adding a bit of paint on top of a white primer, time to try it out on a black primer (the majority of my miniatures). After that, they can go take a swim in the acetone tub 😛

🤣 I know I already posted a song from this concert previously ("I am Australian"), but YouTube has a long memory when it comes to suggestions, so here is another one from The Seekers (sadly Judith died shortly after). Not bad for a 79 year old! edit: Just for comparison, the song from 1967. I think the sound is the studio recording that year, but the video used was from their live concert at the Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne (also in 1967), where they broke a few local records. The Bowl was supposed to accommodate 20000 people, at 200000 they gave up counting

in case it is not known: if you put Outworn Buckler in weapon set 1 and the copy of the Outworn Buckler in the 2nd weapon set (and then switch between 1 and 2) you can clear hostile effects with half the switches - compared to a setup where the Buckler is in 1 and something else in 2. Maybe that's useful when you can't pause and want to keep the switching jitters to a minimum. This also works with Lethandria's Devotion. Switching from original to copy and back gives you health each time you switch, reducing the needed switches to heal a certain amount by half. I don't mean a second instance of the item via export/import or so, I mean the convenient copy function for weapons when you want to create different weapon sets but with the same item (e.g. sabre + shield and mace with the same shield).

I don't remember act ii, but as @Gromnir said, thirty days is the grace period you get after capturing a fort before something bad is supposed to happen. One of the three tower icons on top of the HUD turns yellow after said thirty days in act iii and act v. I didn't leave them in that state for long though, so I don't know the practical implications of it. The only this was a concern was during the end game, as I forgot to space the conquests out a bit and I had all towers under my control with nothing left to take. I suppose I could have left a tower under enemy siege to its own devices and go re-conquer it. But the moral changes may end up being a net negative if doing it that way 🤔

I do not work for Obsidian, but... That is beautiful! ♥️ Happy New Year to you too

@majestic identified one set of circumstances regarding parentheses that causes it to happen, but I had it happen with another post recently that didn't have any and couldn't figure out what was causing it, and it was too late at night to want to bother to diagnose it so I just deleted a big chunk of the post instead and it finally went through.

Worms Revolution Gold Edition giveaway on GOG.

The Albanians want complete control and to expel the Serbian population from the north like they did everywhere else. The Serbian population in the north wants autonomy. There was an agreement reached (Brussels agreement) where the EU was the guarantor and since then the Serbian side has honored all points in it while the Albanian side refused to honor any of their obligation, this causes a lot of friction since the Albanians want more and the Serbs don't want to budge until they get their part of the agreement. There is always that, going back to the Ottoman empire and the First and Second WW and to the more resent history. Ignoring any of the information you would get from either side, you can take a look at the demographic map before 1990 and after 2000. That should tell you how straight forward it is...

Kosovo needs ATACMS

if there is any quest on a timer in act two, am unaware. however, am personal having never waited all that long to do the couple quests which have narrative if not mechanical urgency. that said, am also unable to recall any such complaints. HA! Good Fun!

This is probably the worst thing I've ever posted in this thread, but YouTube put this in my suggestions, so you shall suffer too: I lack the words to properly describe how offensive this is.

Organizing, doing a lot of those little things that need doing, hubby with a long week off, shopping for household items/small furniture, sister/brother-in-laws, cousin-in-laws, low lying fog, wind, lots of rain, movies/convos and recliners. etc. Been a nice past week or two. If I'm not around again before then, Happy New Year to everyone.

I'll agree. His run style/scenes is one of his biggest action "trademarks" by this point. Although in his earlier days, another one who was somewhat close was Mel Gibson, but his arm motion was a bit more expansive/wilder (Gallipoli, Lethal Weapon, others).

hah, serves me right for being a smart arse while not checking. To be finicky, not much Ukrainian Orthodox presence at Christmas time, in Russia, though. Both the Ukrainian Orthodox churches still use Gregorian, at the moment. UOC allows services on Dec 25th though, as of this year.

Just finished my ultimate run. Nearly wiped in Ukaizo of all places because I forgot about the auto-rest and rushed into battle, quickly got smacked with some nasty debuffs and injuries, etc. Lost my resolve inspiration despite wearing Cap of the Laughingstock + Mirror Image up, also... Will be a while before youtube finishes processing the videos. Also don't know if anyone cares about ultimate runs anymore, but I just recently got into this game and I wanted to do it and I did it.

Just in case Cap of the Laughing Stock only worked with summons or duplicates, I altered my script to keep up mirror image at all times. I STILL lost my courageous inspiration in the fight with Guardian of Ukaizo. Pretty sure wasn't from the auto rest because brilliant/energized were still up and in general time-based buffs I've extended to near infinity through cheese survive rests. Also in the video I cast psychovampiric shield but "steadfast" didn't pop up, meaning another buff was already up when cast. Think it was an attack called "Corrosive Strike" which happens at 1:26:15 and also kills Energized and Aware. I didn't see the red --Courageous-- but the next time I cast psychovampiric shield at 1:26:39 it did say "steadfast" so I had no resolve up and never saw a red --steadfast-- either. The script I wrote also keeps up psychovampiric shield at all times. I screwed up that battle pretty badly. Closest I came in the run to dying. Only did that fight once before, because on the parallel run I forgot I had "no forced rests" mod up and the battle seemed easy, so I didn't bother practicing it. So I started with my stats lower than they were normally, no dawnstar's blessing etc or any other rest buff (didn't realize I'd been forced to rest until already started the fight), decided to let the script handle the fight and it focused mostly on the adra animats and just let the guardian attack me. Normally my defenses and healing are so high it doesn't really matter. Also should have worn Effigy's Husk. Wore Magnera's Chain which is my default because of the +10 fort/will (and reflex, but who cares about reflex). So losing Energized was bad for multiple reasons, no longer interrupted the Guardian and lost the +2 pen so was underpenetrating. Had no source of might in my hands. The "Obliterate Essence" attack apparently hits several times, and although one missed and I resisted one I still got maimed (and proned, I think). Anyway. I eventually prevailed. Got hit with an arcane dampener during trivial fight with RDC though. Only one that hit me the whole run I think lol. My script cleared it pretty fast so was fine. Have lethandria's devotion in slot 1, outworn buckler in slot 2, squid's grasp and xoti's lantern in slot 3, script auto shuffles slot 1 and slot 2 if I lose all my inspirations at once and have no summoned weapon (which generally only happens from arcane dampener). Would have been pretty nasty to lose an ultimate run on Ukaizo... Pretty long run by comparison to most, 47 hours and 75 in-game days. I went out of my way to kill things and do quests I didn't have to, didn't take the best pathing etc. Youtube still processing videos. Guess I'll submit it to Obsidian when that finishes (assuming they still veryify ultimate runs), then post a build guide. Will be my first, you've done what, like 100? lol. Was pretty fun but kinda stressful. The worst part about an ultimate run is probably having to video everything. Worst Magran's fire challenge is Wael. Definitely Wael. I mean not the hardest but the most annoying. Can't tell how much money you have, your defenses etc., makes combat log very hard to read doing ? damage and combined with Magran almost impossible. Hardest trial is Hylea, though after you get used to taking care of Vela it isn't that bad. Woedica/Eothas combination also pretty bad, and combined with Hylea really limits class selection. EDIT: Figured out where I lost courageous, was in the Fonferrus encounter. Lucia Rivan has some kind of aura that isn't shown in the combat log but when she walked toward me I saw the red --courageous--. I didn't notice it at the time because I was busy casting withdraw on Vela. I didn't have mirror image up yet. Lucia immediately charged me. My buff routine is pretty fast (.2 second casts, like third cast) but wasn't fast enough here. So pretty sure Cap of the Laughingstock does not apply the deflection debuff or resolve immunity unless you have some kind of duplicate up (which includes mirror image). Should maybe move mirror image to be first thing to cast, before deleterious. At least for that encounter. Alternatively if I could figure out how to script casting withdraw on vela this wouldn't happen either, but I have to do it manually which is not very efficient. I've tried casting withdraw on ally but she isn't considered an ally apparently... AND the reason I didn't see STEADFAST when I cast psychovampiric shield in the Guardian encounter was because it missed, which is rather rare, but I had just lost nature's resolve, konstanten's boon, alchemic guile, etc.. I tried casting psychovampiric shield any time I don't have a resolve inspiration with no cooldown but sometimes it targets destructibles repeatedly and other weird behavior, plus rapidly draining focus (not that this matters this late in the game), so I put in a delay between casts. Oh well, one mystery solved. Still pretty sure Effigy's Husk does not always work but it didn't fail me in this run.

I played the 3 purely raytraced games, which are Minecraft, Quake 2, and Portal.

Back to work tomorrow. Checked my email and team clicked on for a week without me around. Guess I am redundant

The price of Ural is already long time under the price cap. And China and India will definitely not pay more, just because of Putins beautiful eyes 🤷‍♂️

Also, for further random interest:

U.S. Dept. of Energy Plasma Discovery Unravels Odd Solar Phenomenon, Offers Clues to Cosmic Mysteries - The Debrief

If I remember correctely what I understood about HoW, destroy effects dont prevent them to split (every effects that destroy on near death dont prevent splits) but Disintegrate is not a Destroy effect but a Self-Destroy effect applied on any kill including from destroy effects, I'm not sure I'm clear but in this sense, spells like Detonate on near death HoW previously hit by Distintegrate is basically a "25% of full Huani's HP" attack

Okay. I believe I have solved it. Right, so using enter for linebreaks means everything past that linebreak gets removed. I can see it as I submit the post, how the rest just disappears. But, shift+enter is fine. Worked both for editing a post and making a new one. I attached an image that might be relevant.

Orthodox Christmas is now the evil one.

Would have done it on the first try had I not been going for the flawless victory...Those stairs are the worst, I cannot believe they didn't fix them after this long.