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England...

I found the most stress-free way to play DA:I was to control a sword&shield warrior tanking everything, and have everyone else be ranged with the AI handling them. Other party compositions are viable, but require more micro management, or specific kind of items to be effective.

https://bagarenochkocken.se/koksredskap/kryddkvarnar/born-in-sweden-pine-salt-pepparkvarn-i-ask-valnotstra/ We're really making it waaay too easy.

The French strike back... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64436973 The AP stylebook Twitter account had recommended writers avoid using "the" in phrases like "the disabled, the poor and the French". It said this could be dehumanising. The French embassy responded by briefly changing its name to the "Embassy of Frenchness in the United States". Way to go French Embassy

Wormie do you realize something, you and I are playing the same game at the same time....thats profound. Are you thinking what I am thinking, its destiny

You had me up until shrimp salad, but Id probably eat it in a drunken pinch.

I guess for Swedes good food is triggering. This is a crime against humanity. What the hell is wrong with the food in your country? Y'all are eating like the Germans are bombing you.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1439-ogl-1-0a-creative-commons

I ended up playing a little indie game you've probably never heard of called Elden Ring. Anyway, it's fantastic and I found myself wondering why I waited so dang long to check it out. I've been a big Soulsborne fan, though maybe I didn't find Sekiro worth finishing. But I enjoyed it so much this has turned into a Dark Souls marathon. Dark Souls 1 down and now I'm in the midst of Dark Souls 2. This is my first experience with Scholar of the First Sin edition and will be my first time with the DLCs. I recall plodding through the original Dark Souls 2 carefully and doing a pretty decent job. This time I feel like I'm getting drowned in fights every couple feet. As a conquence I'm massively overleveling this game. So that's a mixed bag. It's easier because of my levels, but it's tense because I'll go somewhere and fight like 6 tough enemies in a row followed by an NPC invader....

I got through one run of DA:I and I enjoyed it. The repetitious meaningless combat was definitely a pain, and why I doubt I'll ever replay it, but the parts of the game outside of combat including the story I liked quite a bit.

I shoveled the driveway this morning just in time for another ~4" of snow. :doh: Then I took a little nap on the couch and was awoken to the doorbell. Answering it revealed a little girl selling Girl Scout cookies! I almost couldnt believe my eyes, and I didnt buy anything, but I had to respect her hustle going door to door in this weather.

That's a real whiplash. Around here it's warmed up and started raining. Looks like it's going to be up and down for a minute, so no luck getting used to the cold.

You're welcome to drop by sometime, I've got an outdoor hottub too It was amazing, it's only a couple of degrees below, but you can really feel it when you go from 75-80C and ~80% humidity to take a dip in the hole in the ice -17C would be real nice though, at that temperature they don't put salt on the roads, and while my car is technically speaking sandstone metallic, or Brown depending on who you ask, I really prefer the metallic paint to the rust.

Sauna would be lovely, @Azdeus see below Back from Florida-land. It is -17 c (-30 with the wind-chill) and I am taking the hound for a 12k run shortly! #NuttyCanuck

I think it was P.T. Barnum that said "there's a dunderhead born every minute."

I'm playing Control. I actually started playing this a long time ago, only got as far as the end of the intro, then stopped, not because of the game itself, other stuff came up and I just never got back to it until now. My feelings on the game so far very much mirror my overall feelings on Alan Wake, which makes sense given that not only are both games made by Remedy but Control is set in the Alan Wake universe, or Alan Wake is in the Control universe, whichever way you want to think about it. Anyway, the gameplay is... It's okay. It's a pretty bog standard third person shooter, maybe it gets more interesting later on when you unlock more abilities, but so far it's pretty ho-hum. However, I really really like the world and I'm very much invested in not just the story of Jesse Faden and her brother but also this world as a whole. I am happily going out of my way and scouring every nook and cranny for collectibles, not for completionist reasons, I don't care about achievements, but because I'm into the mythos of this world and I will gladly read all the text and listen to any and all audio logs if they help me get a clearer picture of said world. There's very much a SCP Foundation vibe going on and I'm all about that. My investment in the world and interest in the story are easily enough to carry me through mediocre gameplay and also have me excited for Alan Wake 2: The Wakening coming later this year. Edit: I should add that I'm weirdly enjoying the running commentary/narration that Jesse does during the game. It's something that potentially could get really grating really fast, and I suppose it still might, but so far I'm on board with it. Also, the Threshold Kids videos are really creepy and bizarre and I'm absolutely there for them.

Maybe HasStatusEffectType would work? not HasStatusEffectType(This, Concentration)

There is Spoils of Caed Nua

Imagine having 300 Leopards like Greece and not taking Thracia back.

It was great.

I am sorry, if I didn't notice it in your "review". But from what I understood, some of the guys who had the "luck" to play it, has told me, that the loot was boring. How did you enjoyed this reward aspect of the game?

Yes! This is exactly what I learned to do as well! The AI does a pretty decent job handling ranged characters, be they bows or spellcasting, but rather poorly with melee characters. I've done okay with my character being a duel-wielder too.

Almost everyone was, even Emma Watson. Not sure if all of them did something illegal tho. You're right. That's why we should let russia rape and pillage the country. That's much better.

Zelensky was in Panama Papers. When is he going to purge himself? If/when the RUssians are gone, all those western weaponry will be used against the people of Ukraine deemed "undesirable".

Went to sleep at around 2am and woke up at 2pm. Not as planned. Atleast I woke up before 16 so that I can meet up with a friend of mine for some sauna..

So, a YouTube channel I made the mistake of watching a video or two of (it happens) just announced that laptops with Ada Lovelace are basically dead on arrival because "European manufacturer XMG" confirmed to him that their RTX 4090 based laptops will cost over 4000€, and nobody's going to buy them in this market. Perhaps, but it betrays a certain lack of knowledge. XMG is a premium manufacturer where you get built to order computers (it's where I got mine). They only let you select from a handful of carefully picked components, and there's no compromise on quality (except perhaps on desktop AIB cards where they generally allow you to pick whatever is available at the moment, but that was not always the case), their products are assembled to order (each of them has a two to three weeks delivery time if components are readily available at the time of ordering) and go through rigorous QC (tested twice by different employees), and they come with a three year warranty for desktops and a two year warranty for laptops, and if indeed something goes wrong, then they offer top notch service. In other words, whoever wants an XMG notebook with an RTX 4090 in it will pay that premium because they want to. That might just be a very small, select clientel, but that's their business model. Heck, they offer calibrated 4K IPS 100% AdobeRGB LCD panels in some configurations, that panel alone costs more than some lower end laptops as a whole. Of course, tech companies are in for reduced revenue, and Nvidia's pricing is by far and large to dump existing Ampere stock, which by all accounts works pretty well, and it is entirely possible that nobody's going to buy mass manufactured notebooks with 40-series GPUs, but basing an estimation of future sales for products that aren't even available yet on what amounts to premium, assembled-to-order notebook models is perhaps not the best of ideas. By the way, their website offers a decent clue as to why RTX 4070 Tis are selling pretty well in Central Yurop, in case you've seen the tweet from one of the German retailers and wondered what the hell is going on: Pick a system that comes with an RTX 3080 as base configuration and make it cheaper by adding a faster and more power efficient card? Gee, makes you wonder how that happens that such cards sell well. You'd have to be one ginormous dunderhead to order a 3080.

Thats a good way of describing it, " repetitious meaningless combat" especially with creatures endlessly spawning in certain maps. The consolation is there is some fun and more engaging combat especially at more complex battles like closing rifts

So much pain this thread. Tongue in cheek part: First: please, for the love of god, keep ketchup away from pasta. I love me my good ketchup, really, but noodles? What savage puts ketchup on noodles? But, well, let's never say that Scandinavians know anything about good food. Second: putting ketchup on eggs isn't any better. That is, at best, an acceptable side effect of eating pan-fried or grilled knacker (kinda like baloney) with sunny side ups. Third: Eating mayo with fries is borderline criminal, but something I sometimes induldge in too. Mixing it with ketchup, or even buying one of those dreadful pre-mixed disgusting sludges that are sometimes sold is a crime against humanity and should be prosecuted accordingly. Yuck. Fourth: Käsespätzle > Mac'n'Cheese, but it is close. Lastly: Milk is perfectly fine for making savory dishes and that goodly bechamel sauce, but it's not fine to insult the god of sausages by throwing milk on them after cookng them in a pan. Real talk: For @Keyrock (image repost): We've given up on making our rouladen into rouladen shape. Why? Because we just make a beef "pouch" to hold as many pickles, mustard and onions as you can possibly stuff into it. Yeah, it's that good. For the record, I also don't have any issue with cream based sauces or gravy. They should just not be put on beautiful, crispy meatballs. It is acceptable to eat condiments with them, perhaps even decent ketchup (which means not Heinz). I also stand by them having to be properly deep fried in clarified butter. For anything else? Just make meatloaf.

Welcome back, @BruceVC

Ok, I managed to find things in my mail history. My review started after a few days from submission, then validation confirmation after 3 weeks. Then I received the physical letter and badge after about 1 month

Personally, I would leave MIG, CON and RES at 10 and either put DEX, PER and INT at 16, or if playing POTD maybe max PER, then INT, then whatever left in DEX. Frenzy is most probably your first pick on the barb side, then Whispers of Treason probably - Eyestrike is nice too but it rolls against FORT so it won't land as easily early game even with Body Blows. You can pick later if you wish. Then you can be the Survival and Athletics guy, maybe also invest a bit in a social skill since you're the face of the party - Intimidate or Diplo. You're part Cipher so you can also in Mechanics if you wish, or leave that to a Rogue. Before The Willbreaker, you can very early pick Saru Sichr in Arkemyr's Manor and it is a sweet sweet morningstar too.

50 years ago

Nah, I am afraid I just can’t help myself from not finishing games I am starting if they have story. I have been slowly slogging through DA:I for probably over a year. I attempted to give up on it once, but it found it’s way back to my disk in the name of completion.

ME3 is DA:I reskin with moar fun combat, blander companions and equally inane story. Even some monsters had the same behavior pattern as DA:I's titanium-skinned lootless bears that would home in onto you from across the opposite corner of the map, stealth or not. What I remember the most from DA:I was a bug that allowed some fighter subclass be invincible and do, like 300x than supposed to be damage at the same time when doing a roll , so my dragon strat was to roll on'em to death. Also how crafting system allowed for splendiferously glorious garb combining yellow tartan and blue paisley. Good times. These memories sometimes make me nostalgic enough to think of replaying, but then I remember the rest of the game and yeah, nah.

You made the red/black boot covering by hand? Im very impressed!

Had a group "away day" at work. Eh. On other matters, only 70 days till Star Wars celebrations, and the godawful cold weather and rain has delayed my painting timeline still. So I focused on dealing with some other things, and picked up some Chelsea-style safety boots for my Mando, and then started sewing some half-chaps for it. A few things that didn't quite work, but good enough for now I think. Might add a long strip of wide velcro on the front to help support shin-plates... Now I'll just have to do the other one and set it aside for weathering later.

That's the one, so many great moments. Probably my favorite line was Dr. Gel intercepting the transmission from Paul. "Probably some cross over from a melodrama or something. We don't have time to worry about it." Not only was the delivery perfect but...

Annnd 20 minutes after I post that, it changes. The non-animated and darker version of the banner is much more tolerable on the eyes at least, and looks good design-wise. I'll leave this one alone for now. Thanks.

Oh man, it can and will. I look forward to your Andromeda playthrough as it's basically DA:I in spaaaace. A lot of interesting ideas that they bring up and then discard to instead keep on with the same tired stuff. It's not as bad if you skip as much open world stuff as possible just like you did with DA:I.

Outward has me hooked. Last night I managed to travel to a ley line and unlock my ability to do magic. I was ready for bed, so I took a boat back to a beach and looked for a place to camp. There was a fortress nearby, and the guards seemed friendly enough (they didn't try to kill me on site). I asked for shelter, but they knocked me out, took all my stuff, and threw me in a cell. So I guess I will be trying to escape the next time I play. At least I have a couple spells now, so I'm not defenseless. Not having a quicksave or reload option puts you in some strange spots.

Didn't congressional Republicans take aim at the IRS and ethics straight out of the gates?

^Fatcats trying to keep people down.

no sliced cheese what nonsense is this

That's a really good update. On the same note, I don't know how it works so, would it be possible to achieve the same effect with the .asset part? Like if you go to the bottom of a ChangeForm component such as Spiritshift_Cat, the appearance/model that you will look like after spiritshifting is the asset you set there.

Definitely Now I think I'm wrong about this, because what you do would make it a 1 in 1,000,000 chance some string interferes. Displaying the range in the manifest or somewhere would be good though in case a conflict does happen. I'm just used to choosing a block of numbers for my strings and then logging which ones are for what, because string errors are the worst problems I've had aside from visual effects not working. I also think I'm wrong about this slightly, because now I think what happened was my Apotheosis program crashed (because I use Arch Linux) so that's what created the null field as I didn't define it or it didn't have a chance to save it. Knowing how to go in and add your own debug to the data probably isn't too hard for modders but the casuals will be downtrodden if it happens to them. Also just a slight suggestion that if I could scroll down the menu of available StatusEffects faster that would make it faster for me to use Apotheosis than do it myself. It's still distastefully jarring to have to go to the different sections in Apotheosis rather than do all the code in one gamedatabundle sequentially, because I'm so used to it that way. I can't imagine new users will have this problem at all though as it's purely because I'm used to setting up my process according to how I think.

That it does.

Debonaire + Cipher (especially Beguiler) is a good combo. You can almost guarantee a crit with Soul Ignition or Disintegrate on a charmed target. Best thing is that charmed targets don't flip back if you hit them with Disintegrate (or Soul Ignition). And should you run out of focus for whatever reason (like only few enemies left to hit with Deceptions): a Debonaire can still dish out high dmg Sneak Attacks like every other Rogue. Cipher combos I like: Furyshaper/Beguiler (the Horror): White Witch Make, Willbreaker Morning Star (modal always on), Fear Ward, Phantom Foes, Secret Horrors, Spirit Frenzy, Brute Force, Blood Thirst (among others). Lowers Fortitude and Will on single targets and in an AoE, builds up focus real fast due to Beguiler mechanics, disables lots of foes completely with the Fear Ward (Will debuff of Furyshaper gets balances out by Cipher's high Will). Morning Star and other debuffs make landing stuff like Disintegrate really easy - and once the Blood Thirst gets rolling... Also works well with Ascendant - especially Blood Thirst during Ascension. I just like Beguiler better - also because of thematical reasons. Main focus is debuffing Focus and Will. Forbidden Fist/Beguiler (the Dissolver): Forbidden Fist ability doesn't generate focus, so you need another source, hence Beguiler. With Community Patch (which "fixes" the ability so it generates focus) Forbidden Fist/Ascendant may be even better. Anyway: Forbidden Fist applies Enfeebled which not only lowers Fortitude by 10 (combine with Stunning Surge for another debuff of 10) but also prolongs hostile effects by 50%. Disintegrate is such a hostile effect. If you also crit your Disintegration will have a +100% duration. Ouch. You can make crits with Disintegrate more likely with a Morning Star + modal. But I like fists better in this case. Works with all other afflcitions, too. So if you hit a guy and then cast Whispers of Treason he's charmed for +50% time. Combine with Lingering Echoes and high INT (Turning Wheel) for absolutely absurd durations. Dominated Enemies will fight for you forever (kind of). Also dominating enemies doesn't cost much because Beguiler. I play it with highest RES possible, Tuotilo's Palm and add food and items that shorten hostile durations. Stalker/Soulblade: Takedown Combo + Soul Annihilation or Soul Ignition and Disintegrate. Unlike with direct damage, Disintegrate and Soul Ignition apply "pure" DoTs that don't cancel Takedown Combo. Still Takedown Combo applies its dmg boost to all the ticks of the DoTs, meaning those spells get +100% damage. Which is very good. Disintegrate and also Takedown Combo do target fortitude, so it's good to debuff that first (by party or yourself). I used a Morning Star myself again. Soul Annihilation + Takedown Combo is Overkill in most cases but really packs a punch against the big ones. This should also work very well with a Rapier since you can use it single handed + modal in the early game wich makes not missing with Soul Annihilation really easy. Later maybe add a Dagger or Stiletto for faster focus gain. You can get the Spider's Fang Rapier that is very good with Ciphers. I hear it's also very good on Monk/Ciohers. Hunter's Claw gives you plenty of ACC and more deflection, it's great. Helwalker/Ascendant: self explanatory it seems. Huge AoE, big damage, long Ascension, increased PEN through Thunderous Blows etc. Works brilliantly with mortars as well. Soulblade/Trickster: Offensive Parry from Whispers of the Endless Paths, Riposte Mirrored Images + Borrowed Instincts, max RES, pile up deflection via items and buffs. Blind enemies for reduced Accuracy and to unlock Deathblows. Offensive Parry and Riposte will fill up your focus quickly while you can strike normally, building up focus really fast. Then dump all the focus into a cone with WotEP+Soul Annihilation - Sneak Attack, Deathblows all apply. Rinse and repeat. You can spam Soul Annihilation all the time when fighting lots of weaker enemies who miss you in melee. Against single foes you can always switch to something with better single target damage - like Voidwheel or so. That class combo is also nice with Sun and Moon + shield instead of WotEP. Less parrying, bit the dual heads work very well with Soul Annihilation: first of all you get two chances to hit - and if both hit the first one applies the raw damage while the second already refills focus. Recently I have come to like the Psion more. A Troubadour/Psion for example can cast invocations/cipher spells nonstop. While phrase counter is refilling you can cast from focus and vice versa. Also Wizard/Psion ist pretty hilarious at some point: you make yourself invisible with Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure and prolong it with Wall of Draining, then cast Cipher-CC powers from invisibility which don't break it (as long as no damage). A Priest/Psion can even cast Withdraw on himself; he can then emerge with full focus and health from the Withdraw. Not always useful, but a nice little synergy. Tactician/Psion could be nice because Phantom Foes will flank all enemies and the Psion's interrupt ability will restore Discipline if used wisely. Not so good in melee though since that will stop the focus generation. Go ranged with Penetrating Strikes I guess. Haven tried that one out yet though.