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Just another bad JA game... Wait, they have Ian Currie? Am I feeling a glimmer of hope? Ian Currie is a game changer. He created JA2. After Sir-Tech closed down, he ended up going over to Turbine and worked on Lord of the Rings Online for over a decade. Those are the two games I consistently go back to over the years. So maybe this new JA has a chance of being great.

Maybe they can have paid membership tiers, free users can only post X times per day.

had a solar contractor come out and do estimate + a projection on our anticipated twenty-year savings. the honesty were refreshing and unexpected. if we go with every bell and whistle, in twenty-years we will recoup a bit less than 1/2 our costs. our savings ain't improving if we go with a less expensive install. explanation we got for lack o' returns is am already using considerable less power than whatever constitutes similar households and we do have our redwoods which cut down on a bit o' sunshine our roof might otherwise be receiving, but we nevertheless expected at least twenty year break-even. house faces south and is two stories with roof space upper, lower and garage. redwoods shade mostly back and east sides of house, so we get good exposure during afternoons. am moderate disappointed. we may nevertheless go with solar 'cause o' some small but real tree-hugger reflex. regardless, given our recent experience with contractors, we were surprised by the absence o' an effort to sell us more than we need. this year we also have plans to rip out our lawn and replace with a more water conscious alternative... maybe replace the three decades old insulation too. the thing is we were serious considering downsizing, so every dollar invested is representing a functional loss o' some % 'cause you don't recoup costs o' home improvement unless is relative cheap and having immediate aesthetic appeal; planting flowers or a fresh coat o' paint is a better investment than a kitchen remodel if you are selling. HA! Good Fun!

Wish they offered a jet black coffee mug with just the Obsidian Entertainment logo. No such luck: Obsidian Entertainment – Xbox Gear Shop

No I'm not buying Obsidian gear.

I recently noticed seeing an add banner on the top of the page. It doesn't look very good and I thought I was somewhere else to be honest.

Corrode isn't a Keyword, it is a damage type (Same difference with Burn damages and Fire - there is even a Water Keyworded Burn damages spell) But what I've self-ruled so far is that all spells with Corrode damages should either have either Acid or Decay KW. Decay is specific to Druid and White Worms spell. All the other spells should have Acid. (But BPM did not change Spirit of Decay itself.) So I will add Corrode damage type to all the ability and attack that miss it. For Walls, I suspect that is because they are coded as a hazard zone and not a direct attack. It is most likely impossible to change. I might be considering buffing a bit Fire Wall to compensate (for this and missing Scion of Flame and Fire KW beneifits). Wall of Many Colors does not require buff.

Noted, should be addressed for next version. I see no valid reason for Wall of Many Colors to be an exception (of course, each individual talent has less value here).

Strange, but thanks for explaining. BTW, small bug, probably a bug in vanilla too to be fair, just noticed Concelhaut's Draining Touch does not benefit from spirit of decay. The spell itself is keyworded acid, but it summons a Concelhaut's Draining Touch weapon that has no keywords but does corrode damage and the penetration is not affected, which I'm pretty sure this time is actually unintentional since description says "+1 penetration with decay/acid/corrode weapon attacks" Huh. Just checked and Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon doesn't benefit either. Neither does Kalakoth's Minor Blights - Corrode. I have Spirit of Flame also and the flame blight gets 9 penetration and the corrode blight 8 penetration, so it definitely seems like a general problem with spirit of decay. Hmm. I'll pull up another save with more and higher level spells to see if it is universal. Okay I checked all the spells I had Necrotic Lance gets +1 Noxious Burst gets +1 Minoletta's Missile Salvo gets +1 Death Ring gets +1 Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon does not get +1 Concelhaut's Draining Touch does not get +1 Kalakoth's Minor Blights - corrode does not get +1 Concelhaut's Corrosive Skin does get +1 And I checked the other elemental spells that I had, and they all seemed to get their respective penetration bonuses besides corrode. Except Wall of Many Colors where none of the spells get bonus penetration, but perhaps that is intentional. I'll compare with vanilla now... yep the same spells are affected in vanilla, so it's a universal bug I guess.

For memory, it would lead to a fixed amount of (10 + 2 x character level) x (1 + Might bonus) for blood sacrifice. So 50hp at max level at 10 MIG. The idea is to cut healing entirely and it is what it does. A -100% penalty always negates every bonus. It's a double inversion thingy and quite complicated to explain, although there might be another topic where it is explained. Basically penalties act multiplicatively with bonus up to a point where they compensate each other. -25% negates 33% bonus -50% negates 100% bonus -75% negates 300% bonus -100% negates every bonus So if you have 150% bonus and -50% malus, the malus negates 100% bonus and you end up with a 50% bonus.

I don't think I would remove the healing cut or recovery time, but I've been thinking about 2 actually unfair traits of Blood Sacrifice (that are hidden by its OPness in vanilla) : - The raw damages do have a PL scaling and a level scaling, making it quaadratic and making PL bonus kind of detrimemtal. I'm thinking about cutting the PL scaling. - Encapsulated randomness. When you finally get the major version of Blood Sacrifice (up to tier 9) and loose the most hp, you might end up regenerating a tier 1 spell anyway. Health loss should be IMHO either proportional to the actually regenerated tier (technically impossible to mod) or fixed. So I'm leaning to set health loss to always average, making it predictable AND FREAKING DISPLAYED (godd side effect). Both changes would be fair and a slight compensation for my nerfs I think.

Don't be like that, if we can all agree on something being good the apocalypse will come and save us all from the hell timeline CERN got us into. I have a different interpretation. Get prepared to be DESTROYED by FACTS and LOGIC. It's great, even if you can't relate to the characters or don't find it funny, shots of the landscape are beautiful enough to justify watching it.

Epistory, the current free game on Epic. For those of you who don't know, it is a typing action adventure game, and that really is all there is to it. Words pop up on your screen, and you type them in to make them disappear. It features an adaptive difficulty, whatever that means. I suppose that means people who type less quickly will not be getting the really hard to type 'big' words to contend with. It does feature some more mechanics, you can and at times have to change the elements of your typed words, which has added special effects. Fire burns the next word after a while, ice freezes enemies, wind blows them away and lightning does area of effect damage, making the use of lightning whenever it is possible a slight no-brainer. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis showing up? Well, zap the enemy next to it reading BUT, that's quicker. Okay, granted, Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis shows up as a solo enemy and you have to type that in before it kills you, but you get the general idea. Also, yes, Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is totally a word in the game that shows up. Not joking. Hilariously enough, for English speaking folk, the game has two difficulty modes. American and British English, so pick if you want extra vowels in your words or not. Anyway, doesn't really matter, as long as you're an avery typer you're not going to break any sweat. The words per minute calculation of the game is a little wonky, but it is a game, not a typing simulator, so there's downtime between words, some spawns are easier than others, and some go much faster down than others too, depending on your character upgrades and available elements. All in all it was a fun experience. Took me six hours to complete, and that's with running around the island several times to make sure I did not miss anything and looking for all the treasure, which was really pointless because there's a hard level cap you can easily reach without finding all overworld treasure chests. Game is perhaps a little bit to long for what it offers. It looks nice enough, and it's hard to argue with the price Epic's asking.

Legal Eagles take on the OGL 1.1 for anyone interested; Even if you're not particularly interested, it's eyecandy

My familys house is of "cultural significance" because it's old, so I'm not allowed to put up solar panels. Or triple glass windows. And they would really like us to dismount the heat pumps. And preferably also remove the stairway to the upper floor, because it wasn't there 120 years ago. One of the windows broke a few years ago, and we can't find any "wavy glass" that the municipality requires us to get, so we stapled some building plastic and then screwed a plywood piece ontop of it. Least drafty "window" in the house

I haven't watched The Banshees... yet, despite my stated intention to do so. I think some of the reason is that my track record with most media these days makes me "afraid" to be disappointed with it, so maybe I'm waiting for any emotional over-expectations of mine to die down a bit. >.> My main reason for interest in the first place is mostly Brendan Gleeson. I've seen him in lots of things, all the way back to Braveheart, to 28 Days, small roles, larger roles, and I love him every time. I did love (mostly) In Bruges, as well as The Guard. Colin Farrell can be good, but most of the films he's been in, I haven't liked overmuch - that said he certainly paired well with Gleeson in Bruges so hoping for similar chemistry to strike twice, in The Banshees.

Also blood mage doesn't really need to take (m)any spells so you often have too many abilities and not enough good choices. I'd take Great Soul. Don't think it is that confusing. Someone who made it to L20 with a blood mage probably understands they can't empower since it says so at character creation and they've made it to L20 without empowering, plus the description doesn't say it lets you empower, just increases max empower points. Similar to the adratic glow buff which is still worth getting as a blood mage IMO, even though no empower. Display would be no more confusing than half the abilities in this game IMO, but I don't know how hard it is to implement and there are likely higher priorities for you

I kinda disagree with that, an extra (or a few extra) free AT 1&2 spells fully scaled at PL10+ can be really good. But fair enough.

Well, at least they're being spared from American cheese.

Now as the great philosopher once wrote "Schools serve the same social functions as prisons and mental institutions", in this essay I will demonstrate....

I don't understand why but my spirit of decay is functioning correctly now except for Corrosive Skin and Wall of Many Colors. I exited the game to desktop and reloaded. Spirit of Decay still wasn't working on those spells I listed. I loaded a level 4 save, consoled up to 20 with all the element abilities. Casting the spell Minoletta's Minor Missiles from grimoire still didn't give +1 pen so I reloaded, consoled up, and this time memorized all the corrode ones. Suddenly they worked, not only in this save but in all saves, from grimoire or memorized. Doesn't make any sense to me but I guess whatever bug I was encountering somehow disappeared. Thanks @Not So Clever Houndfor helping me to troubleshoot this, and thanks @Elric Galadfor all your work in continuing to improve the game and personally responding to my disappearing bug.

Space Dandy 19 Dr. Gel kidnaps Honey to set a trap for Dandy. It took long enough for the bad guys to get a little creative. Scarlet goes on a date. This one was another great episode. In the end, Honey saves herself and Scarlet is abandoned by Dandy and her date. Space Dandy 20 Dandy and the leader of the Jaicro Empire form a band. Dr. Gel not appearing in this episode is truly a crime. Dandy became so obsessed with the band that actually ignored Honey most of the time.

You're certainly right, but then why would Walls benefit from the Ring of Focused Flames... anyway. Walls are weird. Thanks Eric! Still doesn't explain why Shai Hulud is not getting the Spirit of Decay when I'm getting it but IDK... The one spell where neither of us were getting the bonus Pen is Corrosive Skin.

No worries, I'm interested in getting to the bottom of this as well. I have more or less the same mods loadout order as you have. I only have NoRest mod from Noqn on top, my own personal Screaming Soul Fix Mod from Elric and the most important mod in the game: Wahai Poraga Fix by Boeroer. Kidding aside, nothing that I have and that you don't have should interfere with keywords. But anyway I deactivated all mods and checked Minor Missiles and Corrosive Siphon - combat log correctly shows Spirit of Decay adding Pen for both..

This is weird. The tooltip says the base pen is 0, +1.5 ability level, +1 scion of flame. But it actually has base pen 7 and does not apply scion of flame. Why would my installation be different? My game was completely vanilla until recently and it's always had the wall of flame tooltip for Scion of Flame. And have you checked your other corrode spells? Corrosive Siphon is far from the only one that doesn't get Spirit of Decay...I just cast MInoletta's Minor Missiles on Vela after adding the talent and there is no Spirit of Decay bonus. I then cast Necrotic Lance on Vela and that one does have Spirit of Decay bonus. Haven't tested in-combat all the ones I listed, I'm going mostly by their tooltips, but Draining Touch and Kalakoth's Minor Blights definitely do not apply Spirit of Decay in addition to Corrosive Siphon and Minoletta's Minor Missiles. The higher level spells I didn't test in combat besides Wall of Many Colors. So far the tooltips are consistent except for Wall of Flame...

I would have thought more American's would have had respect for the Goose since Canada is so close...

Me too! This is so weird. I just tested Draining Touch again and I do benefit from Spirit of Decay - another discrepancy vs. your game. Base Pen = usually 7 or 9 depending on the spell, it is the same as the PEN you see if you look at the spell in your character ability sheet. Ability level = Ability level-dependent PEN scaling of 0.5pen per ability level above 1. so Siphon gets .5 as 1 level above level 1, Wall of flame gets 1.5 as 3 levels above. This is the scaling that makes higher-level abilities hit harder than low level ones. Wizard Power level = Wizard power level-dependent PEN scaling of .25 per wizard power level above the ability tier level. At level 8, you have a power level of 4 (IV), which is 2 power levels above the ability tier of Corrosive Siphon (II) so you get 2*0.25=0.5 extra PEN, that will increase as you gain more power levels. This scaling is meant to keep lower level abilities relevant in the late game, even if because of Ability-level scaling, higher level abilities will often hit harder.

At least muh Boys won a game in the playoffs this year, granted in was against a putrid Bucs team and at least we showed up for the divisional round and made the game competitive, unlike the Giants who completely no-showed on Saturday. Still sucks to lose, though, even if it is to the LEGENDARY BIG BROCK. It could be worse, we could be held hostage by our 39 year old no longer elite QB (again) while he melodramatically decides whether he's coming back next season. Maybe some Ayahuasca will help him make up his mind?

Yeah you are right about Wall of Many Colors...I was thinking since I couldn't find any other bugged fire/frost/electric spells (only checked wizard though) that maybe it was intentional. Also thought maybe hazard spells were treated differently but I checked Wall of Flames and it gets +1, so logically Wall of Many Colors elemental damage should get bonus penetration also.

I have been idling along some time doing a NewGame+ run through on Horizon Zero Dawn. Interesting to see how the pacing feels when you know all the story beats in advance. Still think some of those audio and written data-points have some great emotional gut punches in them. Out of curiosity, I picked up Humankind in the sale the other week and gave it a poke. Very much that Civilisation lite type of game, just with the gimmick that every age you can reset your culture to have different goals, bonuses, and specialty building / unit. I think it would flow better if you had a generic name, and then just adopted those bits as part of your culture. As it is you can start Babylonian, turn Greek, then Persian, then French, then Swedish. Just feels a little jarring. It's nice enough as is, and you can spend a weekend filling your hours up growing a civilisation up and such like, but there's nothing gameplay wise that jumps out as that new or fresh. Luxury and Strategic resources discovered as you go up the tech tree, some glitchy diplomacy routines, military units to roam after bandits/barbarians/mercenary units, or engage in warfare with other (AI or not) players. Wonders to build. Influence to spread. Nice enough, but if you've already got a couple of these types of games in your library, there's not much point to adding it in.

The modal alone makes Hunting Bows very good ranged weapons in terms of damage-dealing. Against enekmies withweak deflection the modal raises the dps considerably - and you can turn it off at any time should you meet enemies that hard hard to hit. The alternative damage type of Essence Interrupter makes it very useful and the shoking lash which can be increased up to 10% is nice, too. This all makes it a great choice. The "summoning" part is superannoying unless you go for Soul Diplomacy though. Summoning an Ogre Pirate in the midst of battle can totally mess up your fight. Damage-wise Amiina's Legacy is better though, and the CC aspect is nice, especially for a Dwarf with Driving Flight. But of course this one is only obtainably later when you can take on the Uamoru bounty (who is lvl 16). It makes the early to mid game a lot easier because the exceptional quality (+8 ACC) combined with the modal (-15 ACC) makes it so, so much better than any other ranged weapon at that stage. You'll suffer from a virtual -7 ACC loss copared to a regulat hunting bow but will fire twice as often (roughly speaking). I like to keep Essence Interrupter around even if I did get the Legacy - and if it's only for the aternative dmg type. I also often use it on Wizards and Wizard/something (esp. if they are geared towards using the Blackbow lateron) in combination with the Essential Phantom - because my Wizards tend to have high Metaphysics anyway and two Essence Interrupters (with Soul Diplomacy) on the battlefield can have a huge impact once the enemies start dropping and summoning friendly creatures as decoys.

I tried watching Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre, Netflix. Horror, anthology, might be good. Some episodes have two brief stories, some are single-story. I watched some episodes on the TV, some on my tablet. Note: it wasn't until later, with a Google, that I found out it's based on some famous manga/artist works, unseen by me. --1st episode - "Strange (something) Siblings" - wtf is going on. Also, this is boring. --2nd episode - Something about a tunnel first, then kids + ice cream truck: bit more interesting in a weird way, at least --3rd episode - "Hanging Balloon" - better, I liked most of it, the idea is intriguing at least, the ending felt weak. --more episodes - bored again, ok, kinda interesting, bored again, etc. ...I reached "Tomie-Photo", which was eh. As an anthology it's a real hit and miss for me, with only a few episodes capturing more of my attention. I probably won't watch the few left. ...from reviews it sounds like it totally fails at capturing the feeling of the original artist's drawings and at least from the few images I saw in articles I'd agree. From my know-nothing perspective, the animation is ok/generic but it's simply not very creepy/disturbing, at least if one is used to the genre. Stories also often end abruptly in a way that feels too cut-off, even relative to a short story/no answers or big conclusion type format. Which is simply unsatisfying.

It has been 26 years since the Cowboys made it to the NFCCG...oops, make it 27.

*chuckle* fixed the link and thanks. and am unsurprised by comments re: in bruges = banshees as is same director, same writer and main cast is familiar. HA! Good Fun!

Thanks, Bartimaeus. I have shared this with Admin

Some figures, with caveats, and other interesting details. @kanisatha: From what I have read, Scholz is one of those people who don't take advice and won't bow to external pressure. To what extent this is true, I don't know. (Gerhard Schröder appears to be another, and apparently a certain incapacity to self-reflection is also one of his defining characteristics. The extent of Russia's "hold" on him is an interesting question for future historians. And since @Lexx mentioned Russia and dirt, another extremely interesting historical question is that of Russia's dirt on Trump.)

I'll take your word for it. So if it's not odd as in "so insane KP would like it", in what ways is it odd? I think Dr. Gel works best when he gets caught up in the antics, like joining the wacky races out of nowhere.

This is what happens when you manually quote someone from an audio interview late at night...

Phew Wing Commander complete fully. Got the Medal of Valor for not having Maniac die, never knew he was that bonkers - killed me once with friendly fire. Got the good ending, the Firekka drove off the Kilrathi. The last mission was trivial, apparently if one wave runs away the other waves don't show up.

Please add the ability to teleport pets. Many bases are built with the idea of not allowing bugs inside of them, making pets almost entirely null if you wish to have one. I live in a base I made on the side of the big tree, it would be nice to be able to teleport a weevil or aphid up to my home and keep them safe.