Leaderboard

Negotiations for our new collective agreement are done. This one was pretty good, a 7% salary increase across the board, a 600€ one time payment, a 3.2% increase in overtime payment and the best part - a much needed work time reduction. Decent deal, all in all, particularily for me. Granted, I guess some workers are going to be unhappy with the so called "10% package" as the reduction in work time amounts to roughly 3% less work time for the same amount of money, but for me, as someone who is paid well above the collective agreement wage, well... a 7% increase on the amount isn't much, but I negotiated for a separate increase. So, all in all, pretty good. Funny to see the companies insist on the work time reduction in the face of our lobbyist-friendly government telling us that a general work time reduction is impossible. Yeah, we're really living in the end-times when even the lobbies lose touch with the wishes of their clientel.

This is newsworthy: For the first time in 2 years my GOG Galaxy client managed to update itself and did not force me to download the new version from scratch. Are the GOG people learning to code? Only time will tell.

Had a Dr. appt on Wednesday. Some good news and some not as good. But nothing unexpected. I've been feeling pretty good recently so I'll take that. I made some business moves and I am officially semi-retired. Still on the insurance plan for six months but after that I'll look for an alternative. In other news B is graduating from college next month. G & I are going to buy her a new car as a gift. We're getting her a new Nissan Rogue. I'm so happy for her. She has a very bright future. Also looking at buying this: 2023 Jayco Jay Flight 284BHS #1556 | Interstate RV Sales & Service, Inc. It took a while for G to warm up to the idea spending a few years traveling the US & Canada but she seems to be all in now. There is just too much of North America we haven't seen yet.

Before @thelee chimes in: I think you need to account for the changing base, i.e. being faster by 1 second from initially 2 seconds makes you attack far more often than being faster by 1 second from initially 5 seconds. Hence, if you calculate the relative increase in speed, for example from 10->20 and from 20->30 you'd see: (4.7-3.6)/4.7=0.234 and (3.6-2.9)/3.6=0.194. So increasing dex is still worth it and at this stage the difference could also be partially explained by deadfire's rounding of seconds. If you'd log-transform your y-axis (Attack Speed) you would see probably a rather linear relationship in your plot.

Regarding mods, @Elric Galad's Balanced Polishing Mod is quite popular. You can read about it at length here. It contains two mods, buffs and nerfs. You can just install the former if you just want to supercharge your game, or both to make it truly more balanced. As for other mods, such as those that change class or subclass abilities, that's really more a matter of personal preference. After playing for awhile I added a mod that raised the level cap, just to have more fun with MC builds while playing on PotD with the level scaling on. My favorite ranged build was @Not So Clever Hound's "Soul sniper" mindstalker build, but that's a gun build. For bows, one of the classic favorites is the Ascendant/Arcane archer wielding Frostseeker. There are lots of discussions of this build online; see for example this post. As for Berath's Blessings, I always take Bonus Attributes, Bonus Skills, Unique Item Vendor, Infamous Past, Loaded Pockets and Mythical Discovery. Loaded Pockets is really great if you have a character with high stealth and decent sleight of hand, as it gives you a chance to get extra loot when pickpocketing, including magical items (which is great early game) and gems, including high level gems once you reach about 10th level, including the rare Adra Ban and Sapphires, which are very scarce resources in the game. It's thus a skill which is always worth using.

Stoltenberg's done that at least twice in the last week or so and he's been told no agreement has been made by multiple countries, including the US. May have gone rogue, more likely some sort of good cop/ bad copesque schtick. Annual debunking of Bruce's entirely inaccurate analysis of Assange Follows: Reminder that Julian Assange was told that he was fine to leave Sweden and would not be facing charges. Then a new prosecutor reinstated them, leaked massive amounts of information including victim statements, for which there were no prosecutions. Reminder that Assange was sentenced to 50 weeks by Britain, in 2019. So he's now in his 3rd year of extra detention explicitly due to the US charges. Oh yes, and because Bruce is big on The International Law or only when it suits him? he's being held under Arbitrary Detention per the UN since... 2015.

That will be the heaviest load I've towed. But I had a small pop up trailer a little while back. Used it quite a bit. My truck is a 2017 GMC Sierra so it's up to it. I have a 10 kw portable gen from the old house. It's stored down in Dyersburg with the rest of my stuff from the house. I really need to do something with all that. I don't want it to end up on storage wars one day.

Thank you to everyone for the help. Have a nice weekend...

one thing i learned from taking doing physics and stats classes is that it's very important to be clear what your target units of measurement or that you are accurately selecting the correct metric. everything else will flow from that. the correct metric: the RETURNS you get from investing in dex or attack speed is how much effective damage you do over time (generally per second, since DPS is the normal way gamers talk about this stuff). Not recovery time. Tracking recovery time will give you a curve, because it's the denominator. it's not the metric, just a part of the metric. the correct units of measurement: what you should do is invert your attack speed, essentially, because that converts "seconds per attack" into "attacks per second" (which then is a straight-forward shot to "damage per second"). the original relationship is inverted (1/x), and an inversion will look somewhat loggy or polynomial, but it's neither, which is why neither a log transform or polynomial fit will work. there's a graph part way down this page which is a perfect line: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/action-speed-is-linear-returns edit: what bosmer said about relative differences is right, i'm speaking more generally about how those relative differences end up manifesting, mathematically, such that it becomes basically indisputable that action speed has linear returns.

@xzar_monty I applaud the mainstream media for not complying with the feds and releasing that information back then. I wish the mainstream media still had integrity and the cojones to do that today. Thank God there are still independent journalists out in the world that still do their jobs. On the subject of Edward Snowden, the man is a hero in my eyes. I'm pro whistleblower. I'm thankful there are people out there exposing the crimes that people in power are committing abroad and/or to their own constituents. The US government likes to portray themselves as a beacon of fairness, like we're so evolved beyond the barbaric practices of the tyrants of yesteryear. Hilarious. The feds condemn other nations for the mistreatment of journalists while they bully and intimidate our own and they've held Julian Assange for over 4 years without a conviction, heck, he hasn't even been formally charged with anything. The US government conducts imperialist operations around the globe assassinating people, staging coups, installing puppet governments, all the same stuff the Romans did 2000 years ago. They do it under the guise of "spreading democracy" and in some cases that may actually be true, but other times it's not. All of this is nothing new. This is all standard operating procedure for sociopaths in power. I'm thankful there are people out there around the globe willing to risk their livelihoods and in some cases their very lives to wipe away the holier than thou veneer.

I'm too tired to think about this clearly. The log transform does look *more* linear, though I'm not sure exactly what this means. And yes that is a good point about relative increases being more relevant. Not really following your relative increase calculations at the moment. I mean they seem to indicate that the attack cycle drops by 23.4% from 10 to 20 and only 19.4% from 20 to 30, right? Hmm... I did check the link and as far as I can tell it had the same values I came up with. What do you mean you can see the results in frames?

Alec Frey (producer) and Matt Hansen (art director) already stated some time ago that they would be on board. Fingers crossed!

I only use the Community Patch (with two or three minor adjustments) and the Enhanced UI mod. But I try to recommend stuff based on the vanilla game as a baseline. My favorite ranged character is an Arcane Archer/Troubadour with an Arbalest (Spearcaster). It is the most overall useful ranged character I had in any full party run by far (excluding mortar monk - but I consider that to be more of a hybrid build and not really ranged) because it can do so many things very well. But it doesn't use a bow obviously. From a DPS perspective the best bows are hunting bows (both Essence Interrupter and Amiina's Legacy are great) and Frostseeker with a more specialized build. Arcane Archer/Ascendant is very strong with Frostseeker because the Accuracy is the highest in the game. It's great even if you just keep shooting and never spend focus for spells other than self buffs (because Ascendant's Soul Whip doesn't turn off when focus is full but instead gives extra dmg). For the early game a Berserker/Streetfighter with Essence Interrupter (or later Amiina's Legacy) and the hunting bow modal is ridiculously fast (if you get bloodied from Berserker Frenzy that will trigger the Streetfighter passive). Frenzy, Bloodlust, bow modal and "Heating Up" will all stack and let you shoot incredibly fast, with very high dmg bonuses but not too good accuracy. But this is redeemed a bit with the +5 acc the hunting bows have naturally and the conversions the Barb and Streetfighter abilities can offer. Also stuff like Gauntlets of Greater Reliability do help and of course taking a human (being bloodied gives extra acc and dmg). This build can help a LOT with the erlarly struggles of Gorecci Str. and the digsite and will just gatlin-gun down most enemies. Even if you miss several shots: they do come in to fast and then with such high dmg per hit (Sneak Attack + Streetfighter Sneak Attack Bonus + Blooded + Fighting Spirit) that even higher level enemies get overwhelmed quickly. It is risky though because you will have to deal with the steeply scaling self damage of the Berserker which is used to get to the bloodied state quickly. You don't want to get attacked too much - unless you invest in higher CON, but that significantly prolongs the time it takes to become bloodied and profit from the Streetfighter passive. For the patient player there is the kind of counterintuitive way to play a single class wizard - maybe even Conjurer - who uses a hunting bow like Essence Interrupter first and uses his Phantom to help with the ranged DPS (also Phantom's crits also cause enemies to turn into summons after death) and later switches to Caedebald's Blackbow. Wizard + Phantom, optimized with items for bow use (Ring of the Marksman and so on) are devastating on the battlefield when they use the Blackbow. Its projectiles jump once up to 12m in all direction and target fortitude instead of deflection, the dmg is corrosion (Spirit of Decay does +1 PEN) and it causes terrify on every hit. This also makes the Helm of the White Void an excellent choice for headgear because every shot of the bow contains an affliction which means every shot from the Blackbow gets +10 ACC. That way the Wizard can achieve very high ACC (also see Citzals Martial Power) and the Phantom isn't far behind. A party member with a Morning Star and some fortitude debuffs (CON and/or MIG afflictions) dies also help a lot. Besides that the Wizard can cause those debuffs with spells, too (see Ryngrim's spells for example). I find this to be fun and worthwhile the wait, but of course in the beginning it's not really an optimized build for bow use. Feels rewarding later though, so maybe it's interesting.

The Nando ad is very clever and raises how everyone is SA, except for SAN\Khoi, are " foreigners" . Dont you love the white people buying drugs from the Nigerian And the KFC ad is about that tire burnouts which is an unofficial activity in parts of SA, quite common but technically illegal But I still think the Colonialism ad is the cleverest because its such a funny reversal and parody of the history, Jan Van Riebeeck arrived in SA in 1651. So this has the black guy arriving in Netherlands in 1651 and the Dutch are still working out geography and then he names the place " Europe " based on the rope he sees. So he colonizes Europe But at the time the outrage and claiming to be offended was mostly because some people said it was racist towards black people. But its not racist at all, if anything its mocking towards white people.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/owlcatgames/pathfinder-wrath-of-the-righteous/posts/3789445?ref=ksr_email_backer_project_update_registered_users They produced items in Russia.

Thank you. I think I found 1 bed I could sleep in, the rest were either non-interactive or I could not rest there because there were hostiles in the location. Thank you for the suggestion - those are status effects. The green one means that I am recovering from fatigue by passing out on the floor (-2 fatigue every 3 seconds in real-time), the red means that there are stat penalties from the fatigue. Encased. Got the perk which should decrease fatigue after teleportation, but I had not know that teleportation required not only the device but also the corresponding ability. The fog of war on the world map seems interesting enough - I do not think that there are large bodies of water or canyons (the thing in the middle of the map does not count), so just checking the map square by square should be possible. Explored 2 small locations and realised that I need some non-lethal reusable weapon. While stealth is viable in general, in a side quest I was asked specifically to incapacitate the foes without killing them and the consumable items I had were single-use. Edit. Found a safe bed in Junktown, an ability that deals 200-400 fatigue damage, and 3 companions. Had to knocked out one of them at the Arena and now she's got stuck in the floor KO'ed and I cannot initiate dialogue to recruit her. Edit 2. I gave Fox some coffee and was able to recruit her. Did not expect the item to work on an NPC before joining the party.

Being one of those whose gateway kdrama was stuff like Boys Over Flowers, I grew to expect larger than life, anime-like comedy expressions/physicality, working class vs. rich elite, birth secrets, amnesia, fatal disease crisis, generally very little skinship, and noble idiocy. Especially if it's heavily romance-relationship focused, but also in general. They toned it way down since maybe 2018 as they aim for more worldwide appeal - which is fine/welcome - but yeah, down to earth isn't something they often seem to want for TV dramas (movies are a little different). Could change as generations change ofc. I mean, US TV once was dominated by squeaky clean/wholesome and often quite dramatic stage-like acting styles etc, but now it's almost fully in the other direction. Takes time, times change. And yes, at this point I'm familiar enough with kdrama patterns (crime/thriller to period to general drama to rom-com) to get bored quicker. I still often like it more than most US TV series tho. Also:

These are just two simple potion blocks from my blood mage / helwalker script. You can use a conditional like "heatlh: self - health below 50%" if you want, which makes sense for healing potions, but for other potions I usually just use "always true" which is the default and it's always processed when the script reaches the block. I just put one potion of the type to be consumed in the quick slot so the script doesn't consume a whole stack of potions of final stand. If you don't have wall of draining or salvation of time and want to keep up a potion buff you could put a stack and then in the cooldown put the duration (it's alchemy dependent, usually like 60 to 120). Or if it's a healing potion just something like health: self - health below 25%, action potion of miraculous healing, cooldown 0. So the first screenshot just has me casting wall of draining with cooldown 23, then I cast spirit shield or arcane veil if I don't have concentration to ensure the potion of final stand isn't wasted, then I drink the potion. The second screenshot is less important potions or other consumables I may sometimes use, if I intend to use it during a combat I just place one in the quick slots. This block is much lower in the script because in between I have some more complicated blocks that proc brilliant, blade cascade, then various wizard buffs and clarity of agony. There's also a 3 second delay between drinking potions in case I have more than one which makes it less likely I'm interrupted, because the script will drink one potion, then go on to the other blocks, then come back after 3 seconds to the second potion on the list, etc. Just put what you want in the quick slots and script it under action -> consumables If you want the full script you can download it here (I hope I'm allowed to link to files), it's sort of complex and specific for blood mage / monk but I label everything so it isn't completely inscrutable, it may be instructive, just move it to C:\Users\<username>\Saved Games\Pillars of Eternity II\CustomAIBehaviors -----edit- some of the blocks may seem bizarre, like block 7, which I have turned off but can be used to clear hostile afflictions by rapidly swapping weapons with outworn buckler (and scordeo's edge) in slot 1. Also in some of the targeting blocks at the bottom I have it set not to target spirits, this is so I can proc the fire blight and use it proc brilliant while wall of draining it without killing it Also scripts are processed top down, so emergency actions like healing potions / spells (or potions of final stand) should go near the top, in the middle I have buffs I try to sustain, then I have longer casts (summoned weapons, llengrath's safeguard), then finally attack abilities (stunning surge, skyward kick) and a standard attack block at the very bottom.----- https://filebin.net/2zrxk2d596ftjtyl

Huh, so pretty much they failed to deliver a good show by itself, but managed to make the landing with nostalgia bombs? Sounds like a marked upgrade from the standard. Maybe I'll just watch this one episode and pretend it was a one-off to get all the old cast back on their health insurance. I would probably watch it (at least one episode) if they got anyone more competent or interesting than the current writers. By now I have least seen one (combined) episode of NuTrek from all the cries of anguish and a RLM video, so I can authoritatively claim that the writing is bad and dumb. Star Wars: The Force Awakens already did.

Yes, it used to do that. You could stack Disoriented without a hard limit (only the duration made sure that the stacks woudn't get too high). Then it got nerfed so that the "Disorienting" debuff doesn't stack anymore (not even from different weapons who apply the same effect). I suspect one of my posts where I showed how to prolong the duration of Disoriented so that you could debuff most enemies to negative defenses was the trigger for this nerf. Edit: Ha, found a screenshot that I used in that thread but couldn't find the thread anymore:

Hey im very happy to see an Absolutly Important Assistent and QOL Feature but please add it in Survival to, There many Players like me, who play in Survival Mode, and like Building and searching all the Stuff to gain the 100% Archivment, but unfortunaly when it comes to Building then this would really an helping Hand im dont want to create different games only for one Feature when i am want to enjoy the Game. Whit all the new Stuff whats coming in the Game in Future i hope there will be an Handy Gnat in Survival Mode to, maybe made is an an default Feature for every Gamemodes i dont see any Point why it should not be in there. Thx. keep the good work.

I refuse to buy from non-woke businesses

two reasons, both related: one - the game tries to preserve the current % of health whenever max health is adjusted (e.g. from CON changing up and down from afflictions and inspirations). two - more intuitively, if you somehow permanently reduce an enemy's CON, then you objectively need to do less damage to kill it. effectively, you've given yourself a damage boost. an extreme example is if you somehow reduced an enemy's health from 1000 to 200. You only need to do 200 damage to kill it. You've effectively 5x-ed your damage, because you effectively did 1000 damage compared to before the health reduction. the first point I mentioned above is relevant because this would all be for nothing if, when a con adjustment wears off, the enemy gains back the entirety of the missing health. instead, the game continues to try to preserve the relative share of health. So if you somehow reduced an enemy's health from 1000 to 200, but only managed 100, when the con effect wears off, the game puts the enemy's current health back to 500 health (goes from 100/200 to 500/1000), not 900 (i.e. 100/200 and then +800 current health when their max health goes back to 1000). the specific 12.8% multiplicative damage bonus number was derived from the specific numbers you shared from dorudugan's health pool above (vanilla numbers). edit: like i said and you've noticed, there's some weirdness going on with dorudugan's numbers specifically for some unknown reason. but for more reasonable fights (even against enemies with ~1000+ health), any error should be overwhelmed by the general advantage of doing more damage (a ~1% difference in current health only becomes noticable at dorudugan's massive ~16000 hp health pool), and the effect is more powerful the lower the enemy's starting CON is.

This is probably one of the most cogent and well explained economic summaries of the current state of the Russian economy and the strength of the Ruble and why its been impacted and influenced by Russian sanctions. Its 30 minutes long but well worth it @Gorth @Mamoulian War you will appreciate it

You can sleep in beds

All he had to do was take off the wrap around his third eye and say 'hey, look at this!' 😂 edit: some of us are old enough to remember how the Horus Heresy came about in the time after Rogue Trader. GW needed some kind of justification for why there were 6 identical plastic titans in the Titan Legion box, 3 bad guys, 3 good guys, but other than the colour of the plastic, being the same model. Hence, a random comment about a civil war named The Horus Heresy was mention in passing. It was a cost cutting measure because they couldn't afford the tooling required (plastic is cheap, making the injection molds is very expensive) to put two different models in the box. Thus the heresy came about. Don't get me started on the primarch names (which came about when the GW guys met in a pub and started noting down names while slapping their knees in laughter in a drunken stupor... mind you I love the lore to bits, but half of those names are just cringe worthy (and that is me being nice) 😝

...jus' had ta RMA me second Western Digital Black 4TB hdd in the last 4 years...still 'ave an almost-13 year old 1TB WD Black that works fine; quality o' everythin' these days be crapola compared ta what theys was...🤬 ...yeah, I's gettin' old an' cranky...er...🤣 ...WHO LUVS YA, BABY!!...

Just saw the A's bought land for a stadium in Las Vegas. Looks like they are leaving CA.

Picard 3.10 Some satisfactory moments and the traditional plot holes of nuTrek. Time to copy Star Wars: a New Hope. If you managed to stand it until the post credits scene, then you know that may actually happen. I mean, not with the people you mentioned, of course.

Star Trek Picard, season three, finale. Not going to lie, there were some very, very enjoyable scenes in this episode, the problem is, they have absolutely nothing to do with the guano-insane plot or the "awesome" action in this episode, and everything with plucking the old nostalgia-afflicted heartstrings in just the right way. It was a good way to end the season and the series on a high note for former fans, but it leaves a rather bitter aftertaste insofar as it then feels like wool, pulled over the watcher's weary eyes. It almost makes one forget the torture this episode by far and large was. At this point I am convinced that the CIA has substituted waterboarding as torture method of choice by breaking people through nuTrek. Akiva Goldsman and Alex Kurtzman run the 21st century version of MK ULTRA. However, at the end, I can say one thing: I would gladly watch a Star Trek series with Seven of Nine as the captain of the Enterprise, provided the people from Paramount prostrate themselves before Robert Hewitt Wolfe and Ira Steven Behr and beg them to run it. Alas, as that is never really going to happen, well, I am looking forward to the final season of Discovery, if only to dance on the grave of that horrible TV/streaming travesty, and to the next season of Strange New Worlds, where we hopefully get an answer to the question whether Ensign La'an Noonien-Singh is coming back or not.

Will this be the first JA game since 2 that will not suck? I have some hope, but got disappointed so often already in the past.