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I got you fam. It's worth noting that that quite a few political prisoners in the US were not politicians at the time of their incarceration and the reduction of "jailing/murdering political opposition" to mean only politicians is really flattening things. Eh, I think that those in power (bizness owners and the gubbermint) were more than happy to gliss it over even if they didn't do it personally. Real talk it's all of us. We're grown men who spend an inordinate amount of time on a niche gaming forum arguing about balance, that's not a sample size of people who are going to be particularly stable.

Archmage: a mage arching his back. It's all about posture.

I think the success of BG3 might be the more important determining factor, in the sense that Deadfire was released in 2018 and would therefore represent an "old world" (in computer-gaming terms) despite its long tail. But BG3 would now suggest that there is still a market for games like this. I am almost in complete agreement with you, the only notable exception being that I think PoE began better, storywise: the sense of foreboding in the early moments of the game was superb and not surpassed by anything that came after in either PoE or Deadfire. I also remember my first serious disappointment in PoE: when you get to the castle of that one guy, Lord Raedric I think he was, and enter the final fight, one of his guards is an "archmage". I remember being at lvl 4/5/6 at that point and thinking, how on earth am I going to survive this. Well, easily, that's how. And so my next thought was: well, "archmage" doesn't mean anything in this game. Boy was I disappointed.

Im 76 hours into Deadfire and loving it I decided to change my approach to completing the game, when I got near the end with the journey to Ukaizo and who should I align with around factions for the journey I was only level 15-16. So I decided to complete all the DLC and get my party to level 20 before heading for Ukaizo Great idea and it allowed me some epic end boss battles that demonstrate for me the best part of the game, the strategic nature of tough battles And for most of the DLC I couldn't defeat the end boss but then I came back later on level 20 and I have been successful on every end boss so far I loved all the DLC with my favorite probably being the Crucible arena fights and I really enjoyed the Beast of Winter. Neriscyrlas was my hardest fight and particularly because of Llengrath's Safeguard but once I had access to Arcane Cleanser the battle became much more manageable But my favorite spell is Concelhaut's Crushing Doom, nothing better that seeing enemies getting smashed by the hammer I also have Concelhaut and Nemnok as pets, Nemnoks comments are some of the funniest I have ever heard in any game Now I still need to complete the final battle with Porokoa who I haven't been able to defeat but now Im level 20 I should be victorious and I need some new crocodile skin shoes and a handbag And then I will complete the main quest and the journey to Ukaizo But overall, fantastic and enthralling party based RPG. Obsidian created a gem with this one

I’ve had this build in draft for years now, but just completed a full playthrough to test it exhaustively. I love the companion and sidekick builds @Ascaloth and others have posted, especially the way they mix mechanical fun with narrative details for each character. This build works great in most parties, but is designed to be paired with a Fassina Sorcerer build that I’m posting as well. This build is a riff on @Boeroer’s Konstanten Build (post) set up to offtank and pair well with Fassina. The lightbulb clicked when I saw Konstanten has the highest base Fortitude of any companion or sidekick. Maybe he had a wizard cousin who liked wearing diving helmets? I’m posting this build so that it’s available for folks who want to bring Konstanten along and are looking for a quick, fool-proof build. I tested this on PotD Upscaled with a typical party (Swash Eder, Herald Pallegina, Priest Xoti, Sorcerer Fassina). I used the Community Patch and Balance Polishing Mod, but the build does not depend on them to work. I’ll do my best to highlight if something is a CP or BPM feature only. (Borrowing @thelee's formatting here, slightly edited) The Pitch: This build drops enemy Fortitude through the floor while dropping Will and AR to boot. It stands in the middle of melee and shrugs off attacks that target Fortitude or deal Corrode damage. Howler - Chanter (Skald), Barbarian (no sub) Mountain Dwarf, The Dyrwood - Drifter (+1 RES, +1 Sleight of Hand, Bluff, Streetwise) Attributes: MIG 15 CON 17 DEX 12 PER 11 INT 10 RES 13 Note: If you are playing this build with a hired adventurer or watcher, you could make these choices to further optimize. Choose any non-godlike race. You could do worse than Mountain Dwarf, as CON Resistance is nice to have out of the box. Choose any Barbarian Subclasses that you fancy, though you need an answer for Berserker’s Confused status. Corpse Eater would fit well with the BPM upgrades, giving you even more survivability in most fights. Make CON, PER and INT your highest scores, followed by MIG and DEX. You could dump RES a little. Skills: Athletics and/or Alchemy and Survival. More explanation below. Abilities: AT1 Come, Come Soft Death (a), The Thunder Rolled (a) // Barbaric Yell (a) And Hel-Hyraf Crashed Upon the Shield Frenzy AT2 Thick Grew Their Tongues // Thick Skinned One Dozen Stood, Two-Handed Style, One-Handed Style [BPM] or Accurate Carnage [BPM] AT3 Reny Daret’s Ghost Spake // One Stands Alone The Shield Cracks Bloody Slaughter AT4 The Long Night’s Drink // Spirit Frenzy Savage Defiance Barbaric Shout AT5 Ben Fidel’s Neck Was Exposed // Bear's Fortitude (AT2) Leap, Tough, or Uncanny Luck AT6 Old Siec Would Not Rest // Brute Force Spell Resistance Oh, But Knock Not (AT4), What Ruo Naka Found, Threatening Presence [BPM], or Interrupting Blows (AT6) AT7 Called to His Bidding or Accurate Empower [BPM] // Spirit Tornado Stalwart Defiance [BPM], or choice of previous Weapon Proficiencies: Battle axe (a), Mace (a) Morning star Club Weapon slots: I: The Willbreaker (Unavoidable Demise, Make Them Flinch) II: Shattered Vengeance or Kapana Taga Essential gear: Helm of the Void Aloth’s Leather Armor Voidward Undying Burden Playstyle: This build focuses on synergistic debuffs to reduce enemy Fortitude, Will, and AR, setting up your party for faster kills, while soaking up enemy attacks. - The real work horse here is the synergy between the chant The Long Night's Drink Birthed the Revenge of Morning and the Barbarian abilities Spirit Frenzy/Spirit Tornado. While frenzied, every attack you make, with any ability, will cause Staggered (-5 MIG, Cannot engage enemies). Because The Long Night’s Drink is an attack, enemies affected by it are not only Weakened, but also Staggered. These two conditions together lower their Fortitude by 20!. For enemies who are resistant or immune to MIG afflictions, The Long Night’s Drink also lowers MIG independent of any affliction, resulting in an only slightly less impactful -14 Fortitude. This would be powerful even if it was a one time use ability, but the attack repeats every 6 or 12 seconds, and synergizes with itself, because it targets Fortitude. Once it hits, it has a much easier time of reapplying again, making it last the entire encounter in most situations. *Note: there is a bug in the vanilla game where Spirit Tornado only applies staggered on weapon attacks. If you’re playing vanilla, do not upgrade to Spirit Tornado. - In addition to Long Night’s Drink and Spirit Frenzy, we can lower an enemy's Fortitude by an additional 25 points with the Morning star modal Body Blows, which targets Deflection. This is often the first wedge to pry open high Fortitude enemies, as it makes The Long Night’s Drink much easier to land. On top of those, we have the upgraded version of Reny Daret’s Ghost Spake (Ben Fidel’s Neck Was Exposed), which targets Will and lowers all defenses by 10 and applies Frightened (-5 Deflection, -10 Will, -3 power levels). Lastly, the invocation And Hel-Hyraf Crashed Upon The Shield lowers AR by 2. With the upgrade, this can be kept up for the entire battle without much effort (especially on any target being focused). The net effect on all of this on enemies who are not affliction resistant or immune is: -2 AR -15 Deflection -55 Fortitude -10 Reflex -20 Will - Spirit Tornado is worth a quick mention here. With BPM, it is very worth snagging, and honestly great for end game even in Vanilla, as many late game enemies have Might affliction resistance anyway. Terrified for 1 Rage in an AoE is very fun. - Choosing higher level invocations increases your max phrases. Your goal is to have at least 5 max so that you can cast Ben Fidel’s Neck and Hel-Hyraf back to back at the start of combat. Non-offensive invocations cost +1, and choosing a high level one will give you the highest possible max phrase count. - Keep your weapon modals on all the time. The damage penalties eat up all of your bonus damage from MIG, but in light or medium armor with frenzy, you still put out some decent damage. I didn’t do any math on this, but my gut is that the modal deals more total damage across the party if at least 1 other party member is attacking Fortitude. Once you have The Willbreaker, it makes more sense to use that 100% of the time and have another character use a club to keep Bewildering Blows up, even when trying to lower enemy Will, because Relentless stacks with those and adds an additional -3 to -15 Will. - With Kosntanten’s health pool being so large (~500 hp with a few points of bonus constitution and frenzy), you don’t have to babysit him. Instead, when you notice he’s getting close to bloodied, or is being focused by a few high damage enemies, you can toss a heal over time on him and/or use Stalwart Defiance. In BPM, Defiance stacks with Robust, in addition to getting extra base healing, but even without those changes, it’s a pretty great fit for K. - Surviving fights also requires having enough armor for the enemies you’re fighting. At a minimum, enough means that when he’s critically hit, he has enough AR to avoid overpenetration. You can figure out what that target is by using this formula (AR needed to avoid overpen=1+((Enemy PEN * 1.5)/2). With Thick Skinned, he should be fine in most fights with upgraded Light or Medium armor even on PotD. When in doubt, Potions of Spirit Shield last a decently long time and are cheap. Aloth’s Leather Armor is a phenomenal choice, because it has no weaknesses if you upgrade to Structurally Stable (and actually gains extra Corrode AR). The bonus defense against Transmutation and the Overseeing enchantments are also wonderful. Other great choices are Magnera’s Chain, Iridescent Scale, or Saint’s War Armor. The latter two really depend on Woodskin/Delemgan and some +corrode AR to work, but they have great enchantments). If you are facing particularly challenging enemies (e.g. rogues with ranged weapons that prioritize low HP allies), Heavy armor works great, too. Blackened Plate with the damage aura and -AR aura are a natural fit here. Both autohit, so won’t apply Staggered from Spirit Frenzy, but they do stack with everything else in your toolbox. - One very powerful trick that I like using Konstanten for on challenging bosses is putting him into the Kahako Nihi armor from SSS with the Hardened Plates upgrade. With heavy armor, K can take crits easily, and the debuff that it causes lasts the entire encounter. This is especially nice on Megabosses like Dorudugan and Hauani O Whe, where you’re stuck grinding them down. - The biggest downside of K in this build is low accuracy and low Intellect. These aren’t as damning as you might think, though. Gloves of Reliability and Helm of the Void, are a big help early (as of course priest/paladin buffs). Since your biggest single debuff targets deflection, flanking, etc also helps. The other reason it’s not completely damning, is that your main abilities are very cheap (1 Rage, 2 and 3 Phrases). If you whiff one, you can try again at little cost. Similarly, lower duration is not much of an issue. Lastly, as a melee chanter, your chants and invocations easily hit multiple enemies. - Pretty much as soon as you can get K, you can snag Saru-sichr from Arkemyr’s mansion with no violence. If you planned ahead and started with some extra gold from Berath’s Blessings, you should also have Shattered Vengeance. These will keep K in business for most of the game. I’d also recommend doing Beast of Winter as soon as you can (14 is great). Helm of the Void is huge. If you have a wizard with Combusting Wounds, Neriscyrlas is a breeze. K can make sure it lands, and Thick Grew Their Tongues helps you keep that pesky Llengrath’s Safeguard. Sidenote: if you’re running Fassina here, all of her poison spells work on top of Combusting Wounds shenanigans. Very easy once K gets N’s Fortitude under control. - This build works exceptionally well with Fassina and other characters with abilities that target Fortitude and Will. Big K has no problem standing in the hostile AoE spells that Fassina uses. If you use an Antidote, Khapa Tea, or get Purge Toxins from Fassina, you can safely ignore Venombloom, Malignant Cloud, and Noxious Burst. But if you don’t have immunity to poison, your high Fortitude and Voidward will make them completely survivable. Konstanten has the highest base Fortitude of any companion or sidekick.** We take Bear’s Fortitude to increase that even further, and with Frenzy up, he gains an additional +20 Fortitude. If you have an active source of +All Defenses (Circle of Protection, etc.), that’s helpful, but not necessary. I also usually give Konstanten a Cloak of Greater Protection for an additional +10. **For fun, here’s a breakdown of the top 5. Konstanten (Barbarian): 54 (30 class, 10 MIG, 14 CON) Konstanten (Howler): 49 (25 class, 10 MIG, 14 CON) Pallegina (Paladin): 45 (25 class, 4 MIG, 6 CON, 10 Faith & Conviction (+Deep Faith)) Eder (Fighter): 44 (20 class, 12 MIG, 12 CON) Serafen (Barbarian): 42 (30 class, 10 MIG, 2 CON) - I think Alchemy is by far the most useful active skill, especially for the late game where fights can go very long and keeping buffs up is worth quite a bit. That said, there is great synergy with Athletics and Undying Burden, and if your party needs someone with high Athletics, that’s a great fit, also. - As mentioned above, Konstanten works great with a source of consistent Healing over time. A Herald with Ancient Memory and Exalted Endurance is usually plenty to keep him happy (also a great choice to work with Fassina, due to Righteous Soul). Some things that worked for me on Megabosses: Dorudugan: I had K face tank Doru to start the fight until he caught Hardened Plates, then had him wail away with Willbreaker, standing far enough away from the other 2 melee so that a Brutal slash would only ever hit 2 of the 3. BPM savage defiance and some back up heals along with stacked AR meant no overpen with crits, and underpen on regular hits. You have to do some work with a few characters to make a debuff strategy work here, but K is a key piece of the puzzle. BPM Threatening Presence helps quite a bit (immune to engagement when above 75% HP), but you can eat a disengagement crit with this setup with a similar amount of health. I respec to Blood Frenzy/Bloodstorm for this b/c he is resistant to Body Afflictions, and w/ BPM I had basically infinite frenzy (I think BPM Salvation of Time or something else has an odd interaction here, but I couldn’t figure it out). The extra dmg from the dot is not huge, but there’s not much else to spend points on. Hauani O Whe: Similar to Doru, stack AR, stay alive through the crits. I used Disintegrate to shorten the fight tremendously, and K helped that land. If you weren’t doing that, I’d pick up the accuracy boost for The Thunder Rolled and keep oozes stunned (5s base, vs Reflex w/ one attack roll for 2 Phrases) Sigilmaster Auranic: The biggest contribution K makes is the use of his old massage room back the the Wild Mare, but he does fine here smashing on sigils and making Auranic easier to land damage on. Spirit Tornado is fun on Auranic, who can be terrified. Belranga: Pretty happy here with Khapa Tea smashing away. Carnage is nice to speed up spiderling kills. Once you switch over to Belranga, the lowered defenses help speed everything up a bit. BPM Notes: - The Improved Empowered Abilities are great with this build. Accurate is a must, Lasting is great as a second. With Lasting, Ben Fidel’s Neck is probably your best choice to empower at the start of a fight.

I’ve had this build in draft for years now, but just completed a full playthrough to test it exhaustively. I love the companion and sidekick builds @Ascaloth and others have posted, especially the way they mix mechanical fun with narrative details for each character. This build works great in most parties, but is designed to be paired with a Konstanten Howler build that I’m posting as well. This is in no way unique insight or creativity on my part, but mostly a very basic build that focuses on fun synergies. I’m posting so that it’s available for folks who want to bring Fassina along and are looking for a quick, fool-proof build. I tested this on PotD Upscaled with a typical party (Swash Eder, Herald Pallegina, Priest Xoti, Howler Konstanten). I used the Community Patch and Balance Polishing Mod, but the build does not depend on them to work. I’ll do my best to highlight if something is a CP or BPM feature only. (Borrowing @thelee's format here w/ some slight edits) The Pitch: Stack gross amounts of +PL and clear the battlefield with layers of AoE DoT, Pulse, and direct corrode and raw damage. Sorcerer - Wizard (Conjurer), Druid (Animist) Human (Ocean Folk), Vailian Republics - Arcane Apprentice (+1 INT, +2 Arcana) Attributes: MIG 13 CON 11 DEX 12 PER 12 INT 16 RES 14 Note: If you are playing this build with a hired adventurer or watcher you could make these choices to further optimize. Choose Nature Godlike (trade +1 Poison PL and +2 INT for +1 universal PL) Choose Ancient Druid instead of Animist (additional stacking +1 PL for plant and beast spells). Make PER and INT your highest scores, followed by MIG and DEX. You could dump RES and CON as much as you are comfortable. Skills: Alchemy (or Arcana) and Metaphysics. More explanation below. Abilities: AT1 Concelhaut’s Parasitic Staff (a), Conjure Familiar (a) // Talon’s Reach (a), Sunbeam (a), Spiritshift Wolf (a) Slicken Choice of: Touch of Rot, Tanglefoot, Vile Thorns, Nature’s Mark AT2 Infuse with Vital Essence // Insect Swarm, The Moon’s Light (a) Necrotic Lance Autumn’s Decay or Binding Web AT3 Deleterious Alacrity of Motion // Infestation of Maggots, Returning Storm (a) Combat Focus Purge of Toxins [BPM] AT4 Spirit of Decay // Form of the Delemgan, Conjure Blight (a) Wicked Briars or Wall of Flame Spell Shaping AT5 Rapid Casting // Wall of Thorns, Plague of Insects (a) Farcasting Embrace of the Earth Talon or (Uncanny Luck, Heart of the Storm, or Scion of Flame) AT6 Arkemyr’s Capricious Hex or Ninaguath’s Freezing Pillar // Venombloom, Sunlance (a) Choice of: Quick Summoning, Garden of Life, Spell Resistance [BPM], or an optoin from a previous tier AT7 Tayn’s Chaotic Orb or Wall of Draining // Accurate Empower [BPM] or Call to the Primordials, Lashing Vine (a) Potent Empower [BPM] or an option from a previous tier Weapon Proficiencies: Dagger (a), Rod (a) Staff or/and Pike Hunting Bow Arquebus Scepter Weapon slots: I: The Spine of Thicket Green (Empowering Instinct, Grove’s Respite) or Lance of the Midwood Stag (Lord of the Forest) II: Essence Interrupter or Blightheart or Amaliorra Note: Spine vs. Lance. Both are available immediately for “free”; I used the Spine for my playthrough, but on reflection, Lance is likely better in every case except vs Vessels. Both work great, though. You could always juggle them to maximize PL for plant/beast spells, but that is more micro than it’s worth for me, plus I prefer to have my second weapon set for an alternative ranged option. Essential gear: Spider Silk Robe (Spider Blooded, Poison Master) Mask of the Grotto Deep Serpentskin Grimoire Fassina’s Grimoire Battle-worn Grimoire Playstyle: This build focuses on maximizing a few strong spells with synergistic keywords (Poison, Plant, Beast, Acid, Decay, Conjuration) to stack up staggering amounts of damage, but stays flexible with tried and true utility spells for every situation. Universal +1/+3: (Summon Familiar/Lance of the Midwood Stag) Poison +3 (Mask of Grotto Deep & Spider Silk Robe) Conjuration +2 (Conjurer subclass) Plant +3 (Spine of Thicket Green) Beast +3 (Spine of Thicket Green) +PL by Spell: +8 Malignant Cloud (Conjuration, Poison) +6 (+7 w/ Spine) Plague of Insects (Beast, Poison [BPM]) Venombloom (Plant, Poison) Wall of Thorns (Plant, Poison [BPM]) Vile Thorns (Plant, Poison) +6 Noxious Burst (Poison) +5 Necrotic Lance (Conjuration) Binding Web (Conjuration) Death Ring (Conjuration) All Wizard Wall spells (Conjuration) +3 (+4 w/ Spine) Insect Swarm Talon’s Reach Tanglefoot Wicked Briars Form of the Delemgan Lashing Vine Call to the Primordials The basic flow is standard stuff: buff > DoT spells > direct damage spells w/ debuffs and utility spells as needed. Buffs: Infuse w/ Vital Essence Deleterious Alacrity of Motion Summon Familiar Form of the Delemgan Core DoTs: Plague of Insects Infestation of Maggots Venombloom Malignant Cloud Insect Swarm - Keep the staff modal on most of the time. Pike modal is a great debuff if you aren’t using Nature’s Mark or similar active effects that reduce Deflection. You should be able to stay in robes the whole game, but if you are concerned about getting focused fired, Cabalist Gambeson is great b/c Woodskin and Delemgan cover the AR gaps perfectly (always a fan of flaunting the haul from Arkemyr’s Vault, too). Ironskin is also great and is in the Snakeskin Grimoire. - Form of the Delemgan is easily the strongest spell in your entire repertoire. It single-handedly makes many encounters go from deadly to average with the Dexterity Affliction immunity and bonus AR. For your tankier party members, it makes Scale armor and Brigandine amazing by shoring up their pierce AR gap. Note that bonus AR is one place where specific does not stack with general. If you have both Spirit Shield and Form of the Delemgan, it will choose the higher of the two values for each damage type, rather than stacking. - Early/mid game you’re going to want to pay attention to enemy defenses and armor and cast the best spell you have for those defenses/AR, regardless of bonus PL. Sunbeam, Returning Storm, Slicken, Chill Fog, and Combusting Wounds are almost always useful. When all else fails, switch over to your ranged weapon and plug away (or bonk w staff or pike). - Poison immune enemies are not that scary or troublesome. Just lean on your non-poison options. Unless you wait till very late, you won’t have many poison spells for Hanging Sepulchers. The rest of your early game kit works great. Same for Poko Kohara Ruins/Engwithan Waystation. Splintered Reef is an interesting case, as the Fampyrs are not immune to poison and many have lowish Fortitude. It’s worth blasting them with everything you’ve got and not worrying about the immune skeletons and guls. Speaking of, Guls and Alguls are weak to fire, so blast away. The fights in SSS with constructs, skeletons, and naga are all manageable, as well. Essence interrupter w/ Essential Phantom works great for the constructs. For the Naga you have less options, but Chill Fog, Slicken, Wicked Briars, Tayn’s Chaotic Orb, Lashing Vine are all helpful. - I recommend rushing the Kraken (lvl 10/11) and Splintered Reef (lvl 15/16) to maximize the time you have with your full equipment set. The Kraken has high Fortitude, but is not immune to Poison, and is weak to freeze and corrode. See above for Splintered Reef. When I did Splintered Reef Menzaggo died from AoE DoTs before I ever targeted him with anything else. While it doesn’t have much we really need for Fassina, rushing Beast of Winter is quite easy, too. Fassina eats Neriscyrlas up (Combusting Wounds, Wall of Flame, Insects to strip Concentration, Wall of Thorns - RIP). - This build works exceptionally well with a Howler like Konstanten built to lower enemy Fortitude and take the occasional hit from hostile AoEs. See my companion build, The Bodyworker for a version of this kind of build. It’s particularly helpful to crack open big enemies with high Fortitude via Morningstar Modal and -all Defense debuffs. Anything that lowers Fortitude in an AoE is awesome. Especially awesome are debuffs for Fortitude that target a different defense. For example, vs. Will:. Devotions of the Faithful, Secret Horrors, Interdiction, Mind Plague, Reny Daret's Ghost Spake w/ Upgrade, and Shining Beacon. - Other fun combinations include: watch a big boss’s HP bar fall through the floor by stacking up all of your DoTs and have a priest cast Cleansing Flame (this might depend on BPM fixes). watch all of your DoT and debuff durations fly through the roof when a boss is hit with Enfeebled from a Forbidden Fist monk - Paladins with Righteous Soul and melee characters with Khapa Tea make your life much simpler once you have Malignant Cloud and Venombloom. You can gather up all of the melee enemies and then plop your spells right on top without worry. - I like the idea of stacking Alchemy all the way and using poisons to take advantage of the +PL. This sort of works with Blightheart and the Arquebus modal (which gives a much needed +20 accuracy to the poison). The fact is, though, it adds significant micro and not much versatility. Arcana is the clear best choice, not the least of which, because Fassina gets a special background with +2. Being able to cast all those evocation spells, along with some of the best from Priest, is so valuable at the end of the game. - Accuracy is not Fassina’s strength, so look for all the ways you can improve that. Aware from Priests or Ciphers, +Accuracy from Priests or Paladins or Deadeye. Potion of Perfect Aim is wonderful and should be used for every difficult fight. Some things that worked for me on Megabosses: Dorudugan: Equip Essence Interrupter and keep an Essential Phantom up. Keep Form of the Delemgan up on anyone in melee. Respec to grab heals - Moonwell counters a few spells, which can really help survivability. Embrace of the Earth Talon is great if you use Amaliorra and every possible debuff / accuracy boost. Hauani O Whe: Not poison immune, but the highest Fortitude defense of any enemy in the whole game. For simplicity sake, I used Disintegrate to cut the fight in half, but her DoTs would shred through some smaller oozes. For big HOW, I landed a combusting wounds and then dropped every wall spell I had on ‘em. Wall of Thorns, Flames, Force from Fassina. Watch his health plummet. Venombloom is great, too. Sigilmaster Auranic: Nice addition with Arcane Reflection self-cast. Essence Interrupter and Phantom for the Sigils. Form of Delemgan is a life saver vs. all the Petrify and Paralyze. Venombloom and all the rest aren’t too hard to land here, once you clear the sigils. Probably some other tricks you could do, but this one is relatively easy. Belranga: Form of the Delemgan majorly trivializes a key mechanic by eliminating all of the paralyze/petrify. DoTs clear up the spiders with ease. Once you get Belranga into territory where you can land spells, any of your tricks work great. Stack up the DoTs and watch her fall. BPM Notes: - Wildstrike Corrode seems like an easy fit in this build, but it’s actually not as useful for us, because when you are Spiritshifted, your carried weapons are replaced by the Spiritshift ones. This means you are always trading away more applicable +PL for the narrower Wildstrike bonus. That said, there are other reasons to spiritshift, and if you want to have more to do while shifted, by all means. - The Improved Empowered Abilities are great with this build. Accurate is a must, Potent & Lasting are great as a second/third. Venombloom is probably your best choice to empower, so kick things off with a bang and then toss out the rest of your spells.

Possibly the best character creator yet. Which Saints Row already was know for, so it being an improvement over the previous, kinda makes it the best by default. The prosthetics were a great addition. I briefly considered restarting the game and making a young boss with flawless skin, and after each Insurance Fraud side hustle, adding bruises and eventually prosthetics, to reflect the results of the mini game.

new patch officer got nerfed bigley. most notable-- Bring It Down! can no longer be applied to the same ally more than once per round; Officers no longer generate Momentum multiple times a turn by giving bonus turns to their allies; edit: possible the most significant officer nerf is the finest hour iv change-- all non-attack powhaz o' the character targeted by finest hour now cost one less ap. previous, each kill resulted in a refund o' one ap and one mp (capped by the officer's fel bonus.) ... am so back to the drawing board on a few o' our builds. on the up side, lasting impression works after being patched and revel in slaughter provides described stacking bonuses. is an area of effect damage adjustment based on intelligence, but soldiers can take a talent which allows 'em to replace intelligence with their demolitions score for the aoe damage. luckily our melta guy went with demolitions, but... HA! Good Fun!

You've definitely not alone. For me it's specifically DoW2: Retribution because you can play the campaign as xenos. Playing as orks is the best,even if the campaign is purposely vague so as to be applicable to many different factions.

My sister visited the USSR back in the early 80's and has told me the same story as @Gorth, jeans were like gold, they would try to buy them off her body.

I think I am one of the rare few who liked DoW2 more than first one.

I really hope Obsidian looks at the significance of post release sales numbers and decides to make PoE3, I can understand choices made on initial revenue sales because thats just how future decisions on all products work But if post release sales numbers are consistent and worthwhile then an investment in PoE3 makes financial sense I know Avowed is set in the PoE world and I will definitely play it but its FP and not party based so it doesnt have the same interest as PoE3

According to reports, RU lost 47k soldiers since October at Avdiivka front. The most casualties have been incurred on them during first and last month. This averages to 300 casualties per day. According to general staff, the casualty ratio was 1:7 in favour to UA. According to documented OSINT, the equipment destruction was 1:12 - 1:25 ratio in favour of UA. depending on type of equipment- the worst for RU were manpower transporting vehicles, which goes in line with high casualty rate of RU army. Some russian soldiers from this frontlines are saying, that up to 70% of their brigade manpower is gone. Avdiivka had pre war population of 32000 people. As being said above, the biggest issue for the defense were non-existent fortifications behind the initial lines made in 2014. someone made a calculation, that if Russia would like to conquer whole Ukraine, with this casualty rate, they would need 8 billion soldiers

There was some talk a few weeks back of PoE2 having a very long tail sales wise, and PoE 3 being a possibility again because of it- and because of BG3's success. (PoE2 was far superior to 1 in every respect, imo)

At the time I had a sense that the game suffered a lot of criticism on release and didn't sell as well as expected. That may be why we didn't see a sequel. However, the responses seem better these days so perhaps there will be growing nostalgia?

we spent almost a whole year in barcelona, so france were an easy side trip. we made it to marseille at least a half dozen times and we even did a touristy stop in paris. we enjoyed france and am certain we woulda' liked it a whole lot more if it weren't for all the french people living there. HA! Good Fun!

I haven't watched the three most recent Delicious in Dungeon episodes because Netflix finally noticed that I don't leave with my parents. There hasn't been much of interest to me on Netflix, so I'll let my parents keep it and I'll catch on when I visit. Frieren 23 Frieren and Fern started another test, to explore a dungeon and reach its bottom. What could possibly go wrong? Denken managed to gather the few people who understood they were not competing anymore. They fight together against some magic clones of themselves. But then they meet the final boss: R.I.P.

Elder Scrolls Online. I recently made a new character: argonian warden. This quest was in Hammerfell where apparently they have racing lizards and this lady sells them.

Well, foreign policy remaining relatively static under previous administrations doesn't really reflect Trump's policy, if you can really call it as such. I mean, if you want more Russian and less US/Western influence, and I know some people who do*, then it's good for you but really Trump is too mercurial to have a policy beyond deferring to Russia and only caring about what you can do for him. *MiL has friends who want Russia to control Eastern Europe so they can LARP the good old days of the USSR

I completed Deadfire, it gets a solid 80/100 on the globally popular " BruceVC game rating system" and I know people are thinking " thats a very high score for this highly respected game rating system " and I will summarize why But I had a surprising end to the game, I was expecting an epic and final battle at Ukaizo like with Thaos and PoE1 and as I mentioned I prepared for this by getting my party to level 20. But because I had released the Water Dragon in a previous quest the Ukaizo guardian was automatically defeated by the Water Dragon....so no final epic battle, I was disappointed But in summary what I loved about the game and some of this I have already mentioned in previous posts Obsidian successfully created a new IP with lore and mechanics that works, this is a feat in itself and it should be recognized if you think about the popularity of D&D or Elder Scrolls The strategic nature of combat for hard battles is fantastic, its one of the main reasons why I play party based RPG The overall narrative and lore of the world is very thought provoking and you really end up thinking about who you should align with and what will the outcome be. But I cannot stress enough how important the Enhanced User Interface mod is so you become familiar with the lore and understand it. I used it a lot Deadfire is as close to open world as you can get with this type of game. You can sail to almost any island you want, explore any dungeon you want and face the consequences...brilliant risk vs reward outcomes and you feel motivated to explore and find new islands I enjoyed the crafting and how you can customize your character build and especially the abilities and spells at higher levels, they make a significant difference in combat Deadfire also provided some uncommon but appreciated features like the sailing mechanic and how naval combat works. I ended up just doing normal combat on the decks of the ships but there was the other option So excellent game and Im really disappointed there wont be a PoE3

Flatout on giveaway for a couple more days.

Speaking of mega length videos, here's one where my interest-meter was enough to make me click on it. He spends maybe 2-5 minutes describing a game a little, steam user reaction if any, release/ea status if any, etc. So it was easy to spam the spacebar arrow keys to skip over any titles I wasn't immediately intrigued by - thus for me it was a 30 minute video, hardehar. The actual more city-builder focused (vs. train sims, life sims, factory/shop/tycoon more rts sims, god games etc) starts around 2 (hrs):28(min) I think. I saw a few new ones to put in the Wishlist. lol. Seems to be several indie Spore-like games being made, too.

Ooph, that's a pain. The auto-update worked off a backup I had of a previous version though. Everything has extracted quickly and correctly this time. Also gave making edits to a few of the localized StringTables a test, all changes are saving and loading correctly. Great work!

On my first PotD run ever I just defeated the Adra Dragon without gettin even a scratch ... I just want to thank everybody in this thread for all the help. Already thinking about re-playing with triple crown difficulties once i'm done!

Omg, thanks and sorry... I've fixed it and the release pipeline is running now, the patch should be available in ~10 minutes.

So what you're saying is that insanity needs to be........balanced???????

xkcd.com

I finished the Dondoko Island "mini-game" in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. I'm going to go back to it eventually and redesign the entire island now that all sections of it are open and I have access to the vast majority of crafting blueprints. There's nothing story-wise left, but I can play it as effectively a city builder/management type game and it generates money for the main game, not that I need it. The reward for completing Dondoko Island is an Essence skill that's not tied to any job, Ichiban has it no matter what job he's using without having to use up the Essence skill inheritance slot. Also, it an orbital laser. It's more or less the same orbital laser from Y:LaD, just themed for the current game. Needless to say it's LUDICROUSLY powerful, but it costs 100 mana to cast, so it's a good idea to have Ichiban wind up in a high mana job, hence why I'm likely ultimately going Host. Anyway, back to the main game. I'm in chapter 12 and thoroughly overleveled. I'm likely at end-game strength with probably 3 to 5 chapters to go.

I can confirm that too, same thing happened to my father. They pretty much wanted to buy everything he was wearing. It's all a spectrum. But it does matter where you fall on it.

It's also my favorite of the series though I do pretend like 3 never happened.

I'd probably just equate them to the people here in the States who also believe we had a glorious past that they want to return to rather than believing they are true ideologues. My mother-in-law is still friends with them and she says it's a rosy retrospective type scenario.

I fully agree about the first part. I'm not sure how likely that is, though. It's like the situation with the young woman who was apprehended by the police and social services when she was about to jump off a bridge and kill herself. "You think you came here just in time but you're twenty years too late" is a fairly devastating point to make. (And as this is an internet forum, I feel compelled to point out that this is not a general statement: not every dire situation is such that someone else is fully or partly responsible for it and should have acted earlier.)

This is a great tip, since that will stack and lasts the whole encounter. I did not realize it applied via spells. I completely agree here. If I were creating this build with a hireling or watcher, I would likely choose At the Sight (assuming no other chanters in the party). Because it's a sidekick, that choice is already made for you.

It prevents bots, since you are a new poster. It goes away after you get a few approved. You are free to hurt people's feelings, but no one here made the game.

Nah bro, the environmental disasters will catch up to us first, you don't have to worry about WW3. Also I've learned to never quote Hoonding again. I found a picture of Gromnir from back in his Moscow days:

If the 1:7 death ratio is real, the math says, that Russia will run out of manpower sooner than Ukraine, unless Putin borrows DPRK army as well. Not to mention, that Russia could sustain the equipment losses, which they currently have for maximum 2 years. In some equipment it is projected just about 1 year. So less equipment will mean more meat assaults which would mean more favourable KD ratio for Ukraine. But first, the EU and US should finally wake the **** up their factories, and the NATO have to allow strikes in Belgorod, and other bordering areas in Russia, which does not allow UA to perform at full capacity

Since you are using crush damages at principal, you can give to Fassina (or other caster that attack the same enemies than Konstanten do) Sungrazer : the -1 crush AR penalty from Blunt Rock work on any critical hit, including spells, and stack with everything. Other think about your chant choice, at pl1, At the Sight (+10 fortitude and will) in really better than Come Soft Wind, in my opinion : at melee damage dealer most of the enemies are going to try to stop you at distance and all your defenses should be targeted, especially fortitude and will.

Split off to it's own thread, as it's not really related to the original topic posted in. I suspect it's armored warfare related? If so, you may have to visit the armored warfare developers (link to their forum is further down the list of forum sections)

I was weak... had to know how the Frieren story continues, so found a Youtube channel that covered the next two major story arcs in the manga, "El Dorado" and "The Goddess's Monument". Together at least as big as the entirety of season 1 and then some. Crossing fingers and hoping season 1 did well enough for season 2 to be made.

Replaying Dawn of War 2, finding Captain very difficult for me, although I beat it at that level of difficulty back in 2012. Now, the answer is they patched the game to be harder or I just suck. The answer is obviously the former.

Could you please share what game it is? --- Sands of Aura. Found and killed Patches. Any verticality and this camera angle work odd together. Got stuck in an infinite fall. "You Need a Smith to Continue". Then who is that at the forge? A merchant. Edit. And the MC's default and only name is "Player".

More Vampire Redemption. To quote the Clash: I fought the UI And the UI won I tried to click things But clicked none I fought the UI The UI won

Saints Row 2 things that should have been advertised more and the reason why I will purchase it on sale on Steam (got for free on EGS; would love to get it on GOG, though). The character creator is amazing and is better than it used to be in the previous games (and already was very impressive back then). (Was going to post a screenshot with the prosthetics more visible, but the MC was also significantly less dressed).

Itorah The MC's facial expressions are excellent. Ending spoilers.

Guild Saga: Vanished Worlds demo: Turn-based tactical RPG with 16-bit-ish Pixel graphics. Really nicely made, though, a lot of attention to detail. The camera zooms in and focuses on a person when you talk to them and it's very smooth and slick. The animations are nice and there's all types of idle animations; capes fluttering, people shifting their weight, that sort of stuff. It's not only turn-based but also grid-based. That will be a turn off (no pun intended) to some, but I'm a big fan. I like how in grid-based you can give specific shapes or directions to spells and abilities, like the movement of chess pieces. It makes positioning even more important. What surprised me is that it's always grid-based, not just in combat. This doesn't bother me, but it might you.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth While it's not pushing any graphical boundaries, it is a good looking game. It runs like a champ too. Even without any upscaling tech, I can get a playable framerate at 4K at max settings, minus motion blur, but that's not for performance reasons, motion blur is the first thing I turn off in any game. This is my first time trying out FSR3 Frame Generation and it's quite impressive. At quality setting (the highest besides native) I've never seen the game dip below my TV's 120 MHz max. In fact, it's generally in the 140s according to the Steam FPS display. I don't have DLSS3 Frame Generation to compare to, but I'm super happy with the performance and image quality. I don't have a Steam Deck, but I assume this would run buttery smooth on a Steam Deck. Right now I'm still in the familiar confines of Isezaki Ijincho, I guess the real test will be when I get to Honolulu. What would a Yakuza... Err, Like a Dragon game be without the UFO Catcher? Aww yeah, I got me a black Oinklet. I stashed the Oinklet in my item box, I don't know if I will lose the possessions I have on me when I go to Honolulu. I'm also curious whether the item box will be shared between both parties, the one in Honolulu and the one in Japan. I'm guessing yes. Right now I'm still in the mostly on-rails tutorial/prologue. I don't know when I'm going to get transported to Honolulu so I'm taking my sweet ass time exploring everything that's not invisible walled off, looking for secrets and such. I guess the party in Japan will be able to come back here, but I'm not taking any chances.

I ran across a skeleton on the road next to a dead body. I got my mace ready, but then the skeleton didn't attack me as I approached, so I cautiously went up to it and, lo and behold, it spoke. Turns out it was a mage trying out a new illusion spell and things went sideways. It turned his clothes, skin, and organs invisible, but the skeleton stayed visible, and worse yet the spell is not wearing off. The dead body was some poor sod he tried to wave down for help that had a heart attack when he saw a talking skeleton waving and coming at him. I decided to help the guy out and he asked me to first get him a shovel so that he could properly bury the guy. When I returned with a shovel a pair of Hlaalu guards were there. Luckily, I managed to talk them down. There's more to the quest but I'll leave it at that.