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Hey @Shai Hulud, I'm sorry if we missed your submission I looked up your registered email and based upon that looked it up in our support system. It seems you've been sending us emails but when our folks tried to reply back, we would get this auto-response back from the email system: Whether or not your email is actually full or not, I'm not sure, but for some reason our system seems to think it is and won't send our replies out to you. Regarding The Ultimate, if you want to try emailing my work email, I can send you a DM and contact you that way so we can go through your submission. If that works for you, please let me know. Sorry about the trouble this has all been. P.S. Thanks for the ping @Boeroer

Hubby and I are reaching either our 30th or 31st wedding anniversary. So 50 years married = 2042/2043. Hm. *ponders our poor habits* We might make it.

Finished Solasta. Took me 40 hours. As far as the game itself, while I am not a fan of turned based, it does do turned based combat in the best possible way, like XCOM. The story and quest are fairly simple and straight forward, but not to the detriment of the game, instead the whole package is very lean and focused. There are no uneven parts of the game, the encounters are to the point and don't make the game drag on. For what it is I'm fairly satisfied with what I got for my money. The only thing that I particularly disliked is that it's a low level adventure and as such there is not that much to customize build wise (although that could also be the edition of d&d) and there is a noticeable lack of interesting items. I think there is an expansion/dlc coming that continues the adventure and raises the lvl cap to 16. I will definitely come back to it.

Well, it was one of sorts. On how one can make historians very cross.

Yup. Now I have my own apartment but those who didn't invest in a property in the past 10 years probably have to pay rent for the rest of their lives. Inflation is skyrocketing and internet censorship is at its peak pretty much. I can only use a VPN on my phone. I have to download stuff on my phone and transfer them to my PC...talk about workaround tactics. On the plus side, women don't wear hijab anymore and the government is too scared to fight back on that front. They still use nerve agents on our schools(women) to test it out for Russians. Can you believe this? 'Here is a school full of beautiful 16 year old Iranian school girls...let's use them as guinea pigs for our Russian overlords!!!' Terrifying. What's worse is that the opposition is divided into 3 groups that can't stop fighting each other: -The MEK - Islamic leftist group with Marxist roots. Think Kim Jong Un but with Islam. Pretty much the least popular group. Nobody likes them really. -The Democrats - They are mostly on the American democrats side. Most folks accuse them of being the Islamic republics reformists shedding skin. They(like most democrats) look after their own pockets so a lot of people hate them. -The Pahlavi Dynasty - Now this is the most popular group/person(Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi). They have a reputation for being patriots. They aren't racists and strongly condemn all sorts of discrimination against minority groups. They aren't backed by any specific country or party though, so they might have a long way ahead of them. I don't know how things will proceed but a lot of it will be decided once(hopefully) Putin shoots himself in the head.

What do you mean, Bravehart was not a documentary?

Well, you still have to put something on the table for the Russian people to believe the lie. Even lies need an anchor. The "prize" that Putin was going to serve up to the Russian people was supposed to be Kiev. But he failed (miserably) to deliver on that prize. So Bakhmut has become the consolation prize, something with which Putin gets to justify all of the many, many ways in which the Russian people have paid a heavy price for Putin's stupid war. But, in the process, Bakhmut has also become some sort of 'white whale' for Putin, something he *must* have no matter the cost.

In Canada, the fridges have to be resistant to Moose attacks.

Meanwhile, off the coast of Newfoundland...

Question to guys from US. Having seen the clashes between Republicans and Democrats about aid to Ukraine, how significant is this answer of McCarthy to Russian journalist?

Cleopatra was Greek, she certainly wasn't sub saharan in the way the documentary writers would like her to be. The Ptolemies were greek, and more inbred than the actual Egyptian pharaohs in their later years. But even before that they married fellow Greeks. You'd need an extremely unusual departure to get any sub saharan ancestory into that. The big irony is that there are at least three queens they could have picked that could be argued to have been nubian, and hence 'black'*. Hatshepsut, Nefertiti/ Nefertuaten (assuming the same person) and at a pinch Ankesa/-namun -paaten (likely never a regnal pharaoh though). Historically Hatshepsut was ruler of a far more important and powerful country than Cleopatra's comparatively pathetic rump Egypt, she just didn't boff any Romans or get written about by Shakespeare. But then these are documentary writers who started off claiming her Seleucid ancestry made her African. If you wanted genuinely and historically 'black' pharaohs there is also the actual Nubian Dynasty, but they had no female pharaohs. There are at least two other female pharaohs though not much is known about them (Sobeknefru(?) at the end of the old kingdom and one other whose name escapes me). Fun fact for the day: Nubia has more pyramids than Egypt- and lasted longer as an independent country. Ultimately there isn't any issue with having a black Cleopatra, the issue is with having her in a documentary. No one (well, I'm sure someone does, but...) really cares about, say, a black Anne Boleyn in a BBC drama or a black Queen Charlotte in Bridgerton because they're dramas, and specifically not documentaries. *they probably weren't either though and it still has the problem that to most writers black --> west african, because that's usually their ultimate origin due to where most US/ Caribbean slaves originated. Nubians looked nothing like Ghanaians/ Nigerians/ Congolese/ Senegalese though. Unsurprising, after all Tamils look nothing like Vietnamese and they're a similar distance apart. If you had Muttiah Muralitharan playing Ho Chi Minh in a doco you'd get some commentary too. Yeah, nah. That's the difference between culture and ethnicity (and to a large extent why it's a load of bunk). Egyptians/ Misr are only culturally arab. They're genetically- and thus 'racially'- very similar to ancient Egyptians, so far as anyone can tell. Which actually is a decent amount here, since they left so many mummies. Replacement Theory is very popular in certain circles because it means that the pyramids and the greatest ancient civilisation for a millenia was built by black africans who all then got killed off by not black enough misr around 660AD- and it's a load of old bollocks as credible and scientific as the pyramids being grain silos, something everyone laughed at Herman Cain for thinking. You can see the same phenomenon with other people. English, named after a german tribe and continually invaded for over 600 years in the first millenium, are still mostly celtic genetically. Not Roman, not Angle/ Saxon, not Danish or other Norseman, not French. And Turks are almost all Greek, Kurd or Anatolian genetically, the proportion of actual capital T Turkic DNA they have is miniscule. That's because areas basically never get properly depopulated and invaders almost always end up just replacing the ruling caste, and in the end they get bred out. Unless they're Ptolemaic and the family tree looks more like a plait.

...so does Sweden...I's absolutely going ta Sweden, Finland, an' Norway before I dies...apparently there's a wee bit o' Norse in me bloodline, not jus' Scottish & Irish...the plan is ta hit 'em all before I's too old & decrepit ta enjoy the trip...so I guess it better be soon!!... ...yup...dunna ferget Polar Bears too...an' there's gotta be room fer the penguins that live in the freezer part...me grandmother always said that we was lettin' the penguins out when our arses were hangin' out o' the fridge too long, lookin' fer me grandfather's chocolate stash... ...WHO LUVS YA, BABY!!...

Braveheart is as historical as Willow.

Beware the Revenge of the Fifth

I agree with this and I think it's often so in many of these cases. Maybe not all of them, but a lot.

When some notes are stuck in your head and you try to remember what they're from, then finally do. Also, this uploader's videos are great (US) top hits memory lane trips (some decades he made two vids). The approx. percent of ones I recognize: --1950's, 40% (1955+ is where it became more common for me) --1960's, 85% --1970's, 90% --1980's, 99.9%

Usually it's Disney that gets an earful for "white washing" their characters... but it's less about race and more about cultural appropriation in general, isn't it? How dare you take something I consider "MY" culture and have it being portrayed by somebody who doesn't appear to be like me. Never mind it wasn't my culture to begin with, but I would like to believe that. Particularly hilarious in this case, because the Egyptians , as I mentioned in my first post, especially around 30BC were not really related to Arabs (which is today is part of the 90% majority of the current population living in Egypt, 10% being Kopts or some such, descendants of the pre-Arab/Greek population. I remember similar conversations, in a somewhat more civilized way, taking place in New Zealand when Pakehas were performing the Haka. A bit of outrage, lots of mocking. Personally I find it worse that Rings of Power portrays Galadriel as a low-brow thug rather than classy Noldor nobility Edit: Not sure if the correct form is Noldor or Noldo when used in this context

Normally it's the cold that makes it shrivel...

I had a long response written about this when my cat stepped on my keyboard and quit chrome, lol... Yes SOF is an exploit. I used it in my ultimate run as it makes life easier, but it isn't really necessary. You can just proc blade cascade when you need it and extend it yourself with wall of draining, and/or have party members cast salvation of time on you. It's ultimately best to have a script, there is some initial setup but once you understand them they are pretty easy to make/modify, and I'll share mine and you can use it or modify it if you like. I had long explanations of everything but I'll just link the script and you can ask me about it if you want. The blocks aren't labeled so parts will be confusing unfortunately. In general scripts process thing top down, so you put high priority actions at the top and low priority at the bottom. So generally your block priorities are like this emergency heals (potion of final stand and the like) keep up wall of draining proc specific effects you want (my script procs brilliant from shroud of the phantasm and blade cascade from scordeo's edge, it also procs courageous from outworn buckler because I copied this from another build, hierophant doesn't need courageous due to all the +concentration from killing things) cast fast buffs, generally wizard spells from llengrath's martial mysteries (or celestial grimoire) + arcane veil cast slower wizard buffs, I just have llengrath's safeguard in this category cast cipher debuffs and buffs in roughly the order I have them use soul annihilation at max focus (base game doesn't have a conditional for max focus so instead you use focus > 90 and set a cooldown of 10 to 30 seconds, depending mostly whether you've procced blade cascade) standard attack block And here is my script. Note for it to work as intended, you need equipped shroud of the phantasm and ideally healing hands, a potion of final stand when not brilliant, and scordeo's edge. I also use minoletta's minor missiles to proc brilliant, but it probably isn't worth doing all this in a party except for megaboss fights. Even without these items, the bottom 2/3 or so should be useful, just negate the blood sacrifice blocks at the top because without the shroud and a potion of final stand, *they will kill you*, they blood sacrifice until you have an intelligence inspiration, that's how I detect whether I've procced mind over matter from the shroud. If you aren't trying to proc brilliant you probably want a block with infuse with vital essence among the fast wizard buffs (near the top, to get longer durations). Can't remember if I have one, I either negated the block or removed it when I equipped the shroud. The second half of the script doesn't trigger unless you've summoned a weapon, I believe. There's no conditional to detect blade cascade so when that procs I summon a weapon manually, usually the lance. If you want to examine the script or use it just place it in the customaibehaviors folder here C:\Users\<username>\Saved Games\Pillars of Eternity II\CustomAIBehaviors https://www.mediafire.com/file/5uwvkj80bvy3jnj/Hierophant+Deification+(Cipher+Wizard+Monk)+(439e2d6b-a0e3-4bbc-8049-235cb9344c4c).customai/file

The psychologist can decide if there is a need for punishment. Right now he is in a mental institution and if they decide that he is deranged he will be kept there. Alternatively he will be sent to a correction institution for young children.

Welcome back, Im glad you okay. I was worried because you were quiet for so long

Imagine if it wasn't cold.

May the Fourth be with you all.

Not building around it, no, but once you get Scordeo's Edge your offensive abilities skyrocket should you avail yourself of the sabre. Blade Cascade is a *universal* recovery speed buff (remove it). This applies to every weapon as well as spells. You only need to proc the effect once if you use strand of favor to extend it. Without strand of favor you need to proc it once per battle (possibly less if the battles are close enough together), then extend with wall of draining. I just proc it near the beginning of hard battles. One in twenty isn't that bad, I have a script that casts wall of draining intermittently, casts lesser lay on hands, and drinks a potion of final stand if necessary, I go fast mode and meanwhile I just attack things with scordeo's edge until it procs. This takes up to a couple minutes but rarely more. Then I summon the lance manually (no way for script to tell when you proc blade cascade) and the script uses "has summoned weapon" as a conditional for the rest of the blocks (various buffs/debuffs, attack groups, use soul annihilation, etc.) Build works fine without blade cascade but things are a lot slower. If you want to kill Hauani O Whe in 2 minutes without disintegration you need it You can also stack -recovery time from Scordeo's Trophy opening barrage enchant, which also applies universally but doesn't eliminate recovery, merely reduces it by 5%. Also this recovery reduction never gets to 100, with every stack you get diminishing returns. To get something like 98% recovery reduction takes like 500 shots or something. Not really worth going that far IMO, also because each shot is such a small recovery reduction you really need to use strand of favor if you go this route, which I'm trying to avoid using at the moment. But Scordeo's Trophy is available quite early (steal from Uto in brass citadel) so if you want to supercharge your character early you can shoot companions or crew (they don't seem to mind lol) and extend the effect. Blade Cascade is zero recovery on everything but weapon and grimoire switches which are coded separately. So casts that take a long time up front with shorter recoveries, like summoning spells, go down in value (since you only remove the short recovery), and spells that are fast (2s or less, preferably .5s or less) or have longer recoveries go up in value, when you proc blade cascade. You certainly don't have to use scordeo's edge, but it works especially well with this build because nearly all the casts we use are .5s or less anyway, with "miasma" taking like 1.5s which isn't bad, making the build lightning-fast. Those stats sound fine. The most important thing is maxing INT (old vailia, cauldron shard), then PER IMO. Don't have to dump RES. Do keep in mind though you should have psychovampiric shield up most of the time which gives steadfast, that and rikuhu's blessing with berath mean even if you dump resolve to 3 at character creation, your end resolve is still 12ish before items, and you can wear ring of the solitary wanderer if soling which is equivalent to 8 resolve for hostile effect reduction.

Yes, with console (~) type (note <TAB> means press tab to autocomplete the name of your player) iroll20s <ENTER> RemoveStatusEffect player<TAB> Blessed_Was_Wengridh_MoveBoost_SE <ENTER> RemoveStatusEffect Player<TAB> Blessed_Was_Wengridh_Reflex_SE <ENTER> If it is a companion their names vary, but for instance aloth is c_aloth, you can find them by typing RemoveStatusEffect c_<TAB> and cycling through the various companions If that doesn't work type RemoveStatusEffect and place your mouse over the character in question then press <TAB> to get their exact name, then complete the commands as above.

Strand of Favor wasn't required for the blood mage / soul blade synergy, one can also extend focus quite a lot just using wall of draining (not to ludicrous levels, but pretty high), but the built up focus could go away on long sea voyages without out of combat extension. Still, you don't need the out of combat extension, I have tested the build just using wall of draining like with similar blood mage / x melees and it is extremely powerful. You can reach max focus (200 at l20) in one lance attack versus crowds, so you can literally go attack -> soul annihilation -> attack -> soul annihilation, and since each soul annihilation is applied to every enemy if you hit 5 enemies at 50 damage + 150 raw that's 1000 damage every ~6s (for example, made up these specific values). If you proc Scordeo's you absolutely annihilate things. Kalakoth's minor blights are also excellent for building focus, my 9 might hierophant was gaining 40 to 50 focus per target and the blast effect builds focus just like the lance. The lance has a larger AOE (1.5 base radius vs 1.3) but it is still large enough to hit 3 to 6 foes. I hadn't realized strand of favor was a more recent discovery. I played Deadfire briefly closer to when it came out (like 50 hours maybe) and did a nalpazca where I noticed my drug effects kept going up, and I figured out it was from either the necklace or I might have been wearing cabalist's gambeson, can't remember. At the time I didn't think to extrapolate this to things like weapon and armor procs, however, and I had lost interest in the game to other things anyway. I don't really see the anti-synergy given wizards make some of the best melee characters in the game. Even the level 1 spell Concelhaut's Parasitic Quarterstaff is quite good and can be used behind tanks. And for casting they also make good ranged elemental damage dealers with kalakoth's minor blights. This spell actually goes extremely well with ascendants, you can stay out of the fray and still reach ascended in a couple of attacks. And at high levels they become supreme casters able to extend the ascended effect they can do nothing but cast. That is interesting. A blood mage / psion would be pretty good throughout the game, but you have to keep the caster from getting hit and psion is eventually eclipsed by an ascendant (maybe early even, I haven't tested ascendants at low levels). I guess, but most builds don't really become powerful until L10+ anyway. At L13 you get borrowed instinct as well as citzal's spirit lance (and safeguard, though the defenses don't stack with BI), and these spells give you huge accuracy and defense bonuses, plus enemy debuff, and ability to gain focus rapidly and spam soul annihilation, so there is a huge spike in power at L13. The next huge spike is at L19 when you get wall of draining and can sustain buffs indefinitely. From 14 to 18 you don't really get anything that significant besides some passives like the empty soul. I like to max PER so the cipher spells crit more (+50% duration). The less often you have to cast them the more you can attack things, and with high PER you also crit more. But I guess due to psychovampiric shield and borrowed instinct, miasma, you could get away with low PER if you need to, I just don't consider any of the other stats besides INT all that important. INT is a definite max for both effect duration and lance AOE. MIG is slightly more important than with most builds because soul annihilation's raw damage only scales with power level and might, I like around 12 to 15, but you can get away with less. RES doesn't really matter except for hostile effect reduction. With arcane veil + safeguard + displaced image + psychovampiric shield you eventually have like +85 deflection (95 with hylea's bounty) so you can dump it and be fine, or if you want to be extra tanky can go the other way. CON shouldn't be dumped but doesn't need to be maxed or anything. With 14 base CON I have 458 health with hylea's bounty + tough + fit (infuse) +boons, which is really more than I need, I wouldn't go below 8, so something in that range is good. With 18 CON it's just 496 health so IMO not worth the extra investment. Around 400 health is plenty, you just want to be able to get off a few blood sacrifices without dying, and if you use healing hands you can get off more because it will heal like 10 health per second with 10ish MIG and dawnstar. 9/14/13/18/18/3 is what I went with in a recent test build, but I think I like 14/9/13 better since you get more healing and soul annihilation damage. I generally build it to cast only defensive spells on the wizard side, only spells I'd memorize are wall of draining and maybe pull of eora, can cast the rest out of llengrath's martial mysteries. My melee-focused "soul devourer" build casts a lot of cipher buffs/debuffs but mostly just zergs things with the lance. The wizard spells you need (besides safeguard and lance) are all .4s casts (.2s with buffs) All the cipher spells you need are .5s casts (.3s with buffs), so if you cancel recoveries with blade cascade you can cast borrowed instinct, PVS, phantom foes, secret horrors, and mental binding in 1.5s and they'll typically last about a minute. I scripted most of the behavior, it mostly pokes things with a stick but still 35 blocks long. I didn't use a lot of wizard spells except as openers mostly because they have longer casts, but if you haven't cancelled recoveries there's more incentive to mix in wizard spells like expose vulnerabilities, miasma, etc. Jernaugh's Equalizing Burst is also extremely good with this build, I like it as an opener, does mass weaken/immobilize/frighten/disoriented. Jernaugh + miasma is devastating, with those plus borrowed instinct and empty soul your cipher spells v will are going to crit nearly every time. My favorite as well. Ascendants are interesting as casters but I tend to prefer fighter/mage type builds. Psion looks decent as caster also. Beguiler... I haven't really played beguilers, looks better than vanilla cipher, the decreased damage/focus vs things not subject to sneak attack isn't much of an issue if you just cast phantom foes or secret horrors now and then. Still, the benefit of increased range on deception spells is meh IMO, they all have good range besides WOT / Ringleader, and you gain +14 focus at L20 which is pretty good, but focus generation is really not a problem for hierophants as you can regain all your focus in 1 to 2 attacks with lance or blights. You can cast WOT endlessly I guess. If you used potions of ascension it's 16 refunded. I guess 18 with power level from food, assuming they stack? Seems decent if you want to cast mainly and really like deception spells (they do tend to be the best non-damage spells). Soul blades do get refunds on shred spells but it's a flat -5. Really doesn't fit well either since soul blades don't use shred spells that often. Would have been better if they got mind-keyword refunds but the class is good enough without that. I did some testing, psion is much better if you aren't getting hit. In the time it takes to cast the spells and recover you gain much more focus from soul mind. It's 6 focus per second with +5 cipher power level (what I have at L20). So if it takes about 3s to cast WOT you gain 30 focus back. Even if you proc blade cascade in the 1.6s it takes me to cast I get back about 14 focus, same as beguilers. And unlike beguilers psion works with all spells, plus while you're doing melee or casting wizard spells. Thelee has a point, but at the more casual level I think it's mostly the learning curve. Like you have to be aware of all these inspirations and afflictions, what they do, which things stack, which wizard spells to use, like the casual player is not going to think to cast miasma of dull mindedness -> secret horrors -> mental binding, they'll just cast mental binding. Nor will they likely realize the lance and blights can gain massive focus and distribute soul annihilation, if they're aware of this kind of effect at all they'd probably just use WoTEP. Or that ascended phase can be extended indefinitely. Have to know which spells to use in order to really appreciate the monstrous cipher accuracy (unlike say a ranger). Etc... There is a ton of synergy between the classes but it isn't obvious without some deeper game knowledge Also ciphers in general are a new thing and not all players would be familiar with them like they would be wizards and druids and priests. I don't see loremasters talked about a ton eithe (chanter being another new type of caster). You could do that, though if you proc blade cascade you can also do things like paralyze every enemy on the screen in a couple seconds, unload every cipher buff + debuff, etc. Can also be king of charming things, use puppet master and ringleader to gather an army, then cast disintegrate on the dominated ones (the charmed ones turn hostile). Or you can focus on wizard spell-casting once ascended is up and just cast cipher spells when you feel like it. Disintegrate does a lot of damage but it takes a long time for everyone to die. At L20 my guy is doing 378 raw damage over 38s. In that amount of time I could have beat him to death 10 times over.

It seems somebody has been personally involved in vaccination fraud. He even faked his own information, to nobody's surprise. Brazilian police raid former President Bolsonaro’s home, arrest former aide

But it gave us the never overused Lux Aeterna.

Should have cast Ed Sheeran as Feyd.

Lately it’s been a thing again. We have quite a few contenders for a worse PC port of the year. It’s so good for Jedi: Survivor that Redfall released right after . I don’t mind as long as they fix it - it makes waiting for a decent discount so much easier.

Welcome back... How's life up there in the far North, still tumultuous?

Katphood reporting here... We are doing good.

Runs without any problems for me, on a pc that struggles with some other modern games.

age of wonder 4 look nice pc are loud as old broken ac when trying to play crashed in 3 turn may need to wait for this fixed

I really like the idea of jumping spiders! I had a very similar thought.

=================================== The Valkyrie of Gaun, Ultimate Edition =================================== Difficulty: PotD v5.0.0.0040 -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Contemplative (Harvester of Gaun + Sister of the Reaping Moon) -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Meadow-Savannah Human -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Readceras (Farmer) -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats (char creation, no Berath's Blessings): MIG: 11 CON: 12 DEX: 15 PER: 12 INT: 14 RES: 11 -------------------------------------------------------------- Active Skill: Athletics (!) Passive Skill: Religion (!) -------------------------------------------------------------- Weapon Proficiencies: Small Shield (a) Dagger (a) Hatchet (a) Crossbow (a) Quarterstaff War Bow ® Greatsword ® Flail Arbalest -------------------------------------------------------------- Abilities (a=auto, r=recommended, !=important) PL1 Priest Blessed Harvest (a) Restoration (a) Suppress Affliction Monk Swift Strikes (a) Force of Anguish PL2 Priest Withdraw (a) Spiritual Weapon Monk Clarity of Agony Common Two Handed Style ® Weapon and Shield Style PL3 Priest Vile Thorns (a) Consecrated Ground ® Dire Blessing (!) Monk Swift Flurry (!) Efficient Anguish PL4 Priest Circle of Protection (a) Devotions for the Faithful (!) Monk Thunderous Blows ® Duality of Mortal Presence (!) Rooting Pain (!) PL5 Priest Wicked Briars (a) Revive the Fallen ® Barring Death’s Door (!) Practiced Healer ® Monk Enervating Blows PL6 Priest Minor Intercession (a) Salvation of Time (!) Monk Turning Wheel (!) Iron Wheel (!) Common Improved Critical ® PL7 Priest Wall of Thorns (a) Resurrection (!) Cleansing Flame Monk Heartbeat Drumming (!) --------------------------------------------------------------- Items (*=additional enchantments; !=important, r=recommended): Weapon set 1: The Twin Eels (Renewal*!) (!) Weapon set 2: Saint Omaku’s Mercy (Sacrifice of Saints*!, Galawain’s Harry*) (!) Chest: Furrante’s Breastplate (Love of Life*!, Intervention*!) Helmet: Helm of the Falcon ® Amulet: Bone Setter’s Torc (!) Trinket: Waidwen's Sundial Cloak: Nemnok’s Cloak (!) Gloves: Hylea’s Talons ® Ring: Halgot’s Warmth (!) Ring: Voidward ® Belt: The Undying Burden (!) Boots: Footprints of Ahu Taka (!) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Xoti is one of the most maligned Companions in the game for many reasons, not least of which concerns her role in the party. As a Harvester of Gaun, she’s a variation on the Priest of Eothas that doesn’t offer that much of interest compared to Priests of Skaen or Wael; as a Sister of the Reaping Moon, her starting lantern and sickle doesn’t give her enough DPS to take advantage of her subclass’s ability to gain Wounds on kill, and is crippled even further by the increased Wound cost for her Monk abilities. And as a Contemplative, she loses access both to the useful Tier VIII and IX Priest spells, as well as 2 PLs on her Monk fists; with no apparent synergy, a multiclass Xoti can seem to combine the worst parts of both her subclasses. Small wonder then, that most would recommend keeping her either a single-class Priest or Monk. That said, there is a way to make a multiclass Xoti not only viable, but also more effective as a combat support specialist. With this build, Xoti can keep her party members topped up on health while contributing to damage at the same time, generate plenty of Wounds to feed her increased ability costs, and make her party that much tougher simply by being there; in short, she’ll truly fulfill her role as Gaun’s Chooser of the Slain. (Note on “Ultimate Edition” builds: With the release of the Ultimate Edition on PS4 and XBox, there will be many first-time players of Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire who will be searching for builds online, only to find that most available builds were created for earlier versions of the game. While many of those are still viable even in the final version of Deadfire, this would not be apparent to new players; thus, builds such as this will be tagged as “Ultimate Edition” to indicate that they’ve been tested for version 5.0.0 of Deadfire, including all DLCs.) Xoti, the Reaping Most people who note the ability of Xoti’s Monk subclass to gain Wounds on Kill seem to think that she has to be built as a DPS to make use of it, and thus are left disappointed when Xoti’s Sickle inevitably fails to make the cut as a weapon capable of dealing sufficient damage. And while letting her rely on her Monk fists lets her do decent DPS, it only works best for her as a single-class Monk; making her a Contemplative makes her Monk fists less effective due to the loss of PL. That’s why her sickle as well as Xoti’s Lantern are usually seen as trap choices for Xoti DPS builds; it would be a different story if her lantern could be used as a bashing shield, and both it and the sickle scaled with Monk levels like Tuotilo’s Palm, but there’s no accounting for the dev’s design choices. That said, I feel that’s the wrong way to look at it. To make use of her Wound gain on kill ability, I don’t think Xoti has to be a DPS. She doesn’t have to deliver that much damage, nor throw as many attacks as Monks tend to do. All she needs to do is throw one good hit. Specifically, the last one. With that in mind, the sickle and lantern still isn’t going to cut it; she needs a weapon that can help her killsteal her own party members as reliably as possible. Ideally, the weapon would; - Have high base damage so Xoti can land the one good hit for the kill; that pretty much means a 2H weapon. - Has enchantments that helps with maximising the damage per hit as much as possible, and - Comes with an on-kill effect to further incentivise Xoti making the kill. Now, if you’re anything like me, you probably max’d out Xoti’s Religion passive skill as a reflection of her… evangelistic tendencies. That said, doing so makes one weapon in particular hit all three points above; specifically, The Twin Eels Greatsword. The offensive potential of The Twin Eels lies in its Death’s Embrace enchantment, a Hit-to-Crit percentage that scales with Religion; in other words, perfect for Xoti who’s likely to have the most Religion in the party. This can be boosted with an additional Hit-to-Crit roll from the Bone Setter’s Torc Amulet, increased attack speed thanks to the Helm of the Falcon, and complemented with the Swift Flurry-Heartbeat Drumming Monk combo. And the fact that Xoti can gain Wounds for each kill means that she can access a synergy specific to her alone; it turns Rooting Pain from a retaliatory passive into an offensive one, since Xoti earning 3 Wounds per kill also means she gets 3 rolls of the dice to activate it on enemies unlucky enough to be in the vicinity. And when all of this comes together, it can look like this; Also, there are a number of weapons with on-kill effects in the game, but only The Twin Eels has a Heal-on-kill that also scales with Xoti’s Religion skill. With max Religion, plus healing boosts from the Love of Life enchantment on Furrante's Breastplate, Bone Setter’s Torc, Footprints of Ahu Taka and Practiced Healer, the Health that Xoti can heal with each killsteal can add up to a pretty decent amount indeed; With this setup, Xoti is best played not as a DPS per se, but positioned just behind the frontline doing Priest things such as healing and buffing… until her party members have reduced an enemy to Near Death, at which point she becomes an opportunistic killstealer charging in to deliver the final blow, gaining Wounds and healing her party members when she lands it. This let's Xoti contribute to the fight while not neglecting her healing duties, making the best of both her subclasses. Xoti, the Sacrificing With Furrante’s Breastplate, Xoti makes her party members that much tougher thanks to the Bodyguard enchantment, which makes them take 10% less damage as long as she sticks close to them. This comes with the flipside that Xoti herself takes 15% more damage from all sources, making her squishier than usual. This would be bad in most cases, but as a Monk, it also helps to fuel her Wound generation as well, making it a win-win proposition. She can double down on that with the Intervention enchantment, which gives her access to the Take the Hit ability usually reserved for single-classed Fighters. This makes her party members even tougher for a short period of time, at the cost of causing more damage to Xoti herself… fueling her Wound generation even further. And at times when a party member is close to dying and desperately needs a burst heal, Xoti can provide with the Sacrifice of Saints enchantment from the Saint Omaku’s Mercy Warbow; With max Religion, Xoti can heal any party member from dying up to near full Health once per Rest, which comes at the cost of Xoti herself eating Raw damage… which again fuels her Wound generation. Along with Priest staples such as Restoration, Consecrated Ground, Revive the Fallen, Barring Death’s Door and Resurrection, Xoti can thus keep her party alive that much longer simply by being there. However, all this utility comes at a cost of making her pretty damn fragile. So, how do I keep Xoti alive in the face of all this? Xoti, the Undying I do it by giving her The Undying Burden Belt, which reduces the incoming weapon damage Xoti suffers by up to 30% as she loses Health (it also gives her a second use of Second Wind, which is why I recommended Athletics as her active Skill). On top of it, I also gave her the Voidward Ring, which reduces the Raw damage she takes by 25%; very useful for minimising the damage taken from Sacrifice of Saints and Take the Hit in particular. But the key piece of gear that really helps keep Xoti on her feet is Nemnok’s Cloak; while it makes Xoti even more squishy by making her take an additional 15% damage, it also gives her Spirit Shield and Ironskin when she falls below half Health. Together with Iron Wheel, Xoti can go up to 22 AR; It certainly doesn’t hurt that the Cloak also gives Xoti a free Barring Death’s Door when she’s… well, at death’s door. And should all these defenses still not suffice to keep her from falling to 0 HP, the Renewal enchantment from The Twin Eels (which also scales Health regained with Religion) lets Xoti automatically revive for free once per Rest, letting her stand up to get right back it again; This means that Xoti is capable of saving lost fights single-handedly, bringing her fallen party members back to their feet in turn. All these means that despite taking more damage than the rest of the party, this build makes Xoti a tough cookie in her own right, and capable of filling in as an off-tank in a pinch. Final Thoughts Pros: - Contributes to party DPS and Health at the same time by killstealing for fun and profit. - Makes her party members tougher just by existing, and is capable of pulling them back from near death. - Is unexpectedly tough in her own right, and can save seemingly-lost fights by her own hand. Cons: - Several key pieces of equipment are late-game gear (Furrante’s Breastplate, Nemnok’s Cloak), which means this build will not be fully realized until rather late in the game. - Tier VIII and IX Priest and Monk abilities are some of the most powerful in Deadfire, which means the Valkyrie build, despite its effectiveness, still involves trade-offs. - As effective as the Valkyrie of Gaun is, it doesn’t do anything to mitigate Xoti’s zealous and sometimes-annoying personality. Last but not least, see the attached file for the AI script I created for Xoti as the Valkyrie of Gaun. Xoti Custom (Contemplative) (Druid Monk Priest) (e38db4a0-68b9-4f2c-ac8a-5bd58d0a69e3).customai

the problem I have with stuff like that is they're getting up in arms over a 2 minute trailer and because (i'd guess) in it some woman also declares - paraphrasing - "never mind what school says, she was black". Point being, they haven't even seen a single full episode. I saw nothing in that trailer that looked wildly "Afrocentric" (in terms of say costumes, sets) culturally, only that the actress ... is black. At least wait and watch it, to see if it badly disrespects actual culture/historical events.

The British have often been the worst, in any era. Although for a long time, the worst Brits were French.

I'm not too generous with people complaining about such things online. In any case, is this actually a documentary ? I see it referred to as "docudrama" which leads to me believe the overall accuracy will be on par with Braveheart.

Kid had a hit list (10 targets, of which he got 8 according to early reports) and has been planing this for a month, even picked the day because the classes he wanted to go to were in a short order from the entrance of the school. His father was a gun enthusiast and thought the kid how to use them. The guns were in a safe, but the child knew/figured out the code. Early report say that it went bad from the start, he entered the school pull the gun and the security guy tried to stop him. He killed him, then the 3 girls who were monitors that day, then he went to the first classroom. There he killed 5 more before they were able to get the guns away from him. He ran to the schoolyard and called the police and surrendered. Don't know what the background of this is, I guess we will find out in the coming days, but more likely than not it was bullying. The kid is under 14, by a few months, so he cannot be tried, but his parents were arrested.

I don't remember it ever happening in Belgrade. Seems to be 8 children dead and two with leg wounds and a girl with a head wound in surgery. The teacher is alive but critical and the security guy is dead.

A school shooting in Serbia... Two confirmed dead, the security guy and a school teacher. As for the children, the info is all over the place, at best some amount of wounded at worst 6 so far. The shooter (14 years old) was arrested, so maybe we get some info as to why he did it.