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Voted. Non-committed delegate 2024!

Russia's Sergey Kotov ship damaged / destroyed, perhaps. Let us wait for more information.

Did I really write "paided" in my previous post? Good lord.

I'm on the last of the Legacy missions for Xcom 2. They do a good job of tying the narrative together, and it is fun playing with both Bradford and Shen. I've also been getting my strategy swagger back and enjoying a few flawless missions. They don't let you save scum in these legacy missions. You can restart but you lose points, so it's a good challenge. I did have a sniper bleed out on the last mission. I felt bad, but there was no healer on the squad. It haunts me a little.

I finished Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth clocking in at a svelte 150+ hours; probably a good 50 hours of that was on Dondoko Island. I also defeated the final bosses of both the Yokohama dungeon and the Honolulu dungeon. These are extra hard boss fights above the level of the final boss of the game, your Ruby and Emerald Weapons, if you will. Really great game that builds on the foundation of Yakuza: Like a Dragon. They made positioning in combat more important this time around with a whole array of combo attacks and assists. You have a bond level with each of your companions and at certain thresholds (10, 20, 30, 40 , 50) you gain assists with said companion. With that in mind, it's a good idea to get all your companions' bond levels up to 50 ASAP. Ideally, you get them up to 100 to unlock the 6th and final skill inheritance slot which you can use for Essences, but 50 is the big number because it unlocks the full spectrum of assists. You can set up some crazy chain reactions with assists, the enemies can do it too, the system works both ways, but the AI doesn't exploit the system that often, it mainly occurs by happenstance, whereas I'm constantly purposely setting up these chain reactions. I've one-shot groups of enemies using a standard, single-target physical attack by exploiting this system. Standard physical attacks and some skills have the knockback property, it's exactly what it sounds like, the attack knocks the victim back, sending them flying in a direction. This can knock them back into something in the environment, causing more damage to them, into one (or more) of their allies, damaging the ally(ies) in the process, and/or into one of your characters, triggering a free attack on the poor sod, provided you have a high enough bond level. You can ping pong enemies around the battlefield if you set things up correctly, it's pretty great. Battlefield positioning is also important for lining up enemies for AoE skills which hit enemies in a line or a cone, but that was already present in Y:LaD. The new map, Honolulu, is freakin' awesome. It's definitely RGG's largest map yet, it's significantly larger than Ijincho and absolutely dwarfs both Kamurocho and Sotenbori (no Sotenbori in this game, just Honolulu, Ijincho, and Kamurocho), that said, it's still tiny compared to other games. Honolulu, Ijincho, Kamurocho, and Sotenbori COMBINED would still be much smaller than Night City in Cyberpunk and that's without Dogtown. It's not the size of the map but the quality of its contents, though, and I'm happy to report that Honolulu is just as wonderfully meticulously detailed as all of RGG's previous maps. Back to Morrowind I go.

Finally completed my Solasta: Palace of Ice run. Overall I liked the game very much. The only issue was that because I was using the big UB mod for the game in which I had set allowing the XP cap to go above the game's 16 levels, I ended up being rather over-leveled at the end (level 18), which made the final battles a bit too easy. But that's my bad. The DLC had a very interesting story all the way through to the end, and I actually ended up caring about at least some of the NPCs I interacted with in the game. Now I have to figure out what to play next. I'm still waiting on a good sale price to buy my new gaming computer (with a 14th-gen i9 processor and the RTX 4090 GPU), so I cannot yet buy the "big" games like CP2077 or Starfield. 😧

it's fine if i have to rip the game apart to do it, or if there's a mod out there, i just cannot enjoy this game with out being able to alt tab and still hear the gamesounds, i have to window tab for very small periods of time (this is not something i can avoid currently) and having it mute the game music and the game dialog is just infurating. there's no option for this in game, i've spent a very long time googling this and a lot of people have asked and no one has been answered. is there ANYTHING i can do? i don't see much of a point in even having the option to play a game in windowed mode if you click one pixel off the gamescreen and suddenly it's muted anyway. i'd really appreciate the help, thanks guys

Yeah that's worse than I'd have thought. Mostly I'm just sad about Nintendo both being sue happy IP trolls and bizarrely unwilling to curate their classic titles. I can see doing one or the other, but doing both is just head scratching.

I've been refining a Soul Blade/Skald build and decided to test an assortment of weapon and shields that have retaliation, counter-attacks, or AoE damage procs to see which of these can generate Focus for Ciphers or Phrases for Skalds (50% chance to generate a Phrase with melee critical hits). Here are some of the results: Grave Calling – Chilling Grave generates Focus and Phrases Akola's Apex Ward – Shark Teeth Counter does not generate Focus or Phrases Tuotilo's Palm – Outward Spikes generates Focus and Phrases Wintertide Bulkwark – Frostbitten Palisades does not generate Focus or Phrases Magran's Blessing – Fire Shield generates Focus and Phrases (only when the Fire Shield is active, of course) Eager Blade – Bounding Strikes + Kaul's Retort generate Focus but do not appear to generate Phrases. I only saw a Phrase generated if the initial weapon hit that procced Bounding Strikes also crit, and I never saw Kaul's Retort generate a Phrase after proccing a couple dozen crits with it. May require more testing or code delving. Engoliero do Espirs – Cruel Blade generates Focus but does not appear to generate Phrases. Again, I only saw it generate a Phrase if the weapon hit that procced Ghost Blades also crit. Whispers of the Endless Path – Offensive Parry generates Focus and Phrases Voidwheel – Necrotic Heart generates Focus. It may or may not generate Phrases since the Necrotic Lance is conditional on a weapon crit anyway. Karaboru – Bloody Momentum generates Focus. It may or may not generate Phrases since Bloody Momentum is conditional on a weapon crit anyway. Chromoprismatic Quarterstaff – Soul Storm generates Focus and Phrases St. Drogga's Skull – Flames of Retribution generates Focus. It does not appear to generate Phrases – the only time I saw a Phrase generated was if the initial weapon hit also crit. Keeper of the Flame – Magran's Wrath does not generate Focus. It does not appear to generate Phrases – the only time I saw a Phrase generated was if the initial weapon hit also crit. Some more observations: It appears there is a hardcoded limit of only 1 Phrase that can be gained per attack with the Skald subclass bonus. Even when critting multiple targets with an AoE auto-attacking weapon like Whispers of the Endless Path or layering multiple Chillfogs with Grave Calling, I never saw the Phrase count jump up by more than 1 Phrase at a time. For testing methodology, I turned off chanting entirely on my Skald/Soul Blade test character so the only way to generate Phrases was through weapon critical hits during testing. It was really hard to determine whether weapons that procced AoE damage from crits provided any Skald Phrase generation because I wasn't sure if the initial weapon crit was what created the Phrase and not crits with the AoE. If they do count, they may assist with providing more hit rolls for Skald's 50% chance to trigger. With the 1 Phrase hard limit and the conditional based on weapon crits, I can't say definitively, just based on observation, whether the weapon AoEs trigger Skald phrases.

Yes, applying elemental lashes to attacks doesn't give them any keyword. Turning Wheel, Lighting Strikes, Shared Flames, Wildstrike etc. don't work like that. They don't alter the keywords of the underlying attack but only add an additional layer of elemental damage. Mith Fyr's lash also doesn't do this. So even if a confused Chanter could apply Mith Fyr to enemies their attack would still not be keyworded with fire. Instead, Mith Fyr acts as "benefical effect" on the enemy and that effect has the keyword. And because the enemy would carry that keyword and gets hit by a water or frost attack (properly keyworded) they won't get harmed (as it happened with your skeletons vs. Grave Calling). But the nature of their attacks against you won't have changed at all. I don't know any way how you could put a blanket keyword over all enemies' attacks in order to achieve what you described above. You cannot do it with your party's attacks either. There's no way to alter the keywords of your party's attacks during an encounter. At least I cannot see one. You are right that with some of the elementally themed weapons such as Dragon's Dowry, Essence Interrupter, Frostseeker and so on the attacks themselves are keyworded "manually" (no matter which damagve type is actually used). Some abilities are also keyworded explicitly with an element (or more than one). Spells are most obvious, but also stuff like Flames of Devotion (fire - Bleak Walkers' version also get the addititonal corrode keyword because of Black Flames). In case of fire those will get countered by stuff like Moonwell. Fun fact: Tekehu is immune to fire - that also means that if he gets buffed with Mith Fyr his immunity will remove that buff. So: no Mith Fyr lash for Tekehu.

UA confirmed that it has been sunk, and released a video of the attack.

Yes, another Russian ship damaged or sunk by the usage of drones https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-sea-drones-a316215f5d9fc88a488ef2d99eb828c9

I'd be more sad about it if there hadn't already been a competing Nintendo Switch emulator, Ryujinx, that was doing alright itself. They haven't been doing all the stupid pre-release/leak stuff, they don't have official instructions for how to circumvent the Switch's cryptography and DRM, their Patreon doesn't sell/gate features behind payment, and they don't run an official Discord that is basically in a constant state of "WHAT GAMES ARE WE GOING TO PIRATE NEXT?" like Yuzu did. I think emulation and preservation of the Nintendo Switch will be just fine. Now Nintendo 3DS emulation, where the only emulator (Citra) was made by the Yuzu team which also got taken down as a result of this lawsuit...well, the emulator was not being updated very much anymore and it was more or less feature-complete, I'm sure someone will host the latest version somewhere. As to why Yuzu was doing all that stuff...complacency and dollar signs is my guess. A small dev team was getting paided $30-40k a month, and they'd gotten away with every potentially legally problematic thing they'd done before, so what's one more? Whoops.

Knowing nothing about this I have to say it sounds incredibly dumb on the part of Yuzu. We all know Nintendo can be extremely litigious and to test them by trying to scalp them on their biggest release in years is asking to get your ass buried in lawyer drama. That said Nintendo's track record of preservation is atrocious and it's sad that what was one avenue for preserving a rich catalog has effectively been demolished. I'm thinking back to the N64, GameCube, and even Wii games that will likely never be able to be played legally without hunting down old consoles and physical media.

I would add The Waylanders, though it is not exactly the best of the genre. The wishlist shows Sovereign Syndicate, but I can't tell if it is turn-based or not. The Way of Wrath, Worldstone Chronicles, New Arc Line seem fine? That is to say, there are few high-quality* party-based CRPGs in a fantasy setting at the moment. *have a professional writer and functional gameplay systems --- https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/that-189gb-epic-games-hack-may-have-been-a-scam-aimed-at-other-hackers Well, I still have changed my password.

I don't know if it's luck or what (I mean, it's not as if I've flown dozens of times over there), but it seems to me that flying around those areas is always turbulent.

I'd also love Germany to send way more weapons and ammunition. After all, it cannot be denied that one fairly big factor behind the war was that Germany and Russia had once again Made Plans for Europe Together (gas, etc.). The fact or "problem" (depending on one's point of view) remains, though, that Germany isn't all that dependable in matters such as this. During the Cold War era, there was a saying that if you wanted the Kremlin to get to know something, all you needed to do was to tell it to West Germany. That's probably a generalization as generalizations go, i.e. it's a bit unfair but also not completely untrue.

Watched Dune 2 and it was boring. For a first entire hour, Brian Paul not-the-Messiah was trying not to be Messiah in the land of noble savages while having the most sterile romance this side of Anakin (was it because of sand? I keep hearing it can really ruin them romances) with absolutely nothing of interest happening save for cool new machinery getting exploded. Then Feyd-Rautha is introduced in black and white sequence for some reason, gets hyped out of proportions like a triple A corporate-manufactured video game and, later, fizzles out with a tiny fart just like as one, Brian drinks blue epiphany liquid, goes "F†ck yeah, lets be Messiah, dunno why I resisted for that first hour anyway", starts seeing all the futures and picks one where he wins, unfortunately it's the same one where everyone acts like idiots in order to let him win. Also Josh Brolin shows up outta nowhere mid-movie and contributes nothing. And ending's open, because of course it is. First movie at least was pretty with a great soundtrack.

Hover is definitely a Blaster's good friend once you get used to it. Lurking just above melee reach and remembering to move around as you snipe and blast them down. And for the amusement, here we go with the fashion display: (And not in Squid form but...) While on the villain side of it I have: and

This is bullcrap. You can play as an aristocrat from Aedyr of any race in POE 1&2. This isn't an 'immersion' decision. The reason is 'cause they don't want to have to program the game to work with characters of different heights. This is one of the most contradictory designed games I've ever seen. "We don't have classes 'cause although they make sense in the world, players should be able to play as they want." but simultaneously, "We don't have more playable races 'cause they don't make sense in the world despite they're want players want." Maybe I'm just old school. I prefer the Tim Cain approach of give the players all the tools and let them make sense of it if they want to roleplay.

You know you can play Skyrim in third person? Bethesda games famously allow for both first and third person control. All that’s been said and shown about Avowed so far point to it being first-person only, like Outer Worlds was.

I think tehre are some in the build list that mention that they are good with AI, but I don't remember a specific one. But for example: Edér as tank is very straightforward and easy to set up with AI. If you build Aloth into an "Blast-Wizard" with an implement (wand/rod/scepter) and the Blast talent (and other implement-related abilities and talents) and let him use auto-attacks with the summoned weapon "Kalakoth Minor Blights" mostly he will also be quite easy to manage with AI. Same can be true if you skill him to be a melee wizard from the second row with a Pike, the goal would be to get Citzal's Spirit Lance at some point and use melee attacks with that mostly. That way you can turn a normally very micro-heavy class into a relatively low-maintenace class which runs well with the AI. Once can do the same with Druid (see Hiravias) if you focus on the Spiritshift instead of spellcasting. That way those classes can be useful and yet low-maintenance in not-so-difficult fights - but when you need the full arsenal of spells you can still switch to direct control and have more impact when you need it.

I read through the other thread and created this account to post in there but I guess here is fine too. Going by the announcement thread I think I am in the big minority here in the fact that I am a primarily console gamer as opposed to a PC one. I also have pretty much been an Xbox fan since the first console launched in 2001. That being said, I follow the console landscape pretty closely and would like to share my take on what is going on with Xbox and Obsidian (and Inexile). First, I don't think a lot of you realize that there are a lot of Obsidian fans on console too. I have enjoyed them since KOTOR II and on console they have also release New Vegas (my favorite fallout), and Alpha Protocol (An underrated game I loved). As a guy who plays Xbox (and Playstation) I am super excited that they have gotten a great talent like Obsidian under their umbrella. Pretty much a dream acquisition if I had to go out and think about where I would like to see the Xbox brand grow from a gaming content perspective. Now there are lots of concerns and I think most are quite valid. In the industry we have often seen these types of deals go sour. Xbox/Microsoft themselves have obviously had issues and closed down talented studios before. There was an entire, frustrating and devastating period where several Xbox studios were creating kinect games and it was just horrible. Talent squandered on lesser products, like that Fable kinect game.... ugh. With that said I really do think this will be different (yea very cliche but at least hear me out). Microsoft has really pivoted the Xbox brand and approach. In the early days of Xbox, that division was a huge under dog. They were scrappy, they tried a lot of things and found some success, I had some grand times on the OG Xbox and it was largely seen as a joke. The 360 pretty much blew up for them and did extremely well but they stopped doing so many of the things that got them there, mainy they stopped investing in making games/software. By the time the Xbox One came on the scene they were bereft of in house talent and Sony was ready to fire on all cylinders, Nintendo too. Since Phil Spencer took over a few years ago they have changed course. I believe the future they are steering towards is one that revolves around streaming game and subscription services. Basically the "Netflix of gaming." They have already made strides here with gamepass, which is on Xbox and cost 10 bucks a month. You get a library of roughly 100 games to download and play its a really nice bang for the buck. I believe gamepass is their first foray into this netflix of gaming goal they are trying to achieve and if you want to be netflix you need to have compelling original content to earn people's subs. That's where their huge interest in first party software comes from now. They know they cant make this work if they don't have a lot of exclusive games to offer. Its no longer simply about trying to sell as many consoles as possible, its about trying to get as many gamers to subscribe to their platform as possible. That's also why they are integrating the Xbox and PC platforms. Their ultimate goal is to get any gamers to buy in whether they are on a PC, some kind of Xbox, phone, tablet, etc. They want anyone to be able to consume Xbox games. I think this bodes really well for Obsidian and Inexile because they aren't expected to make huge AAA hallmark titles to move systems. They are simply expected to produce quality games that Microsoft can release on a constant basis (along with their other studios) that hit a wide variety of interest and get people signing up for game pass or whatever it becomes down the line. They basically need reliable, game studios who have a track record of making solid games and getting them out. What Obsidian and Inexile have managed to do with modest crowd funded projects is an impressive feat and something seen as very attractive to Microsoft. I believe them when they essentially say they will let these studios make the games they want while providing support. They bought them to continue doing what they are doing because games like that make the platform (Xbox/Game Pass) more attractive. Now if you are worried about the games not being on Linux or being locked behind Windows 10, that's valid, I do think its likely that will happen. What I wouldn't be worried about right now is that Obsidian is going to be gutted and destroyed or forced into some horrible situation that kills them. Agai I am just a big Xbox fan and this is just how I see it but I think it makes a lot of sense if you try to read the tea leaves. Sorry for the long post, I just get really interested in stuff like this and can talk about it for days lol. End of the day I hope all of Obsidian fans can see some awesome products come out of this and be happy. I for one am very excited and I will be extremely disappointed if does go pear shaped.

Obsidian is finished.

First of all, thanks to all the skilled gamers taking the time to post all the different builds! I had a lot of fun toying with them! So this is my 4th playthrough on PotD, and i decited to go with some of the builds in the obsidian board's build list. The builds are incredible - maby a bit too incredible Well I haven't posted here before, but have been using the forum for years, so I thought it was time for me to give something back. If some of you are looking for a complete party setup that will get you to storm through PotD, this is what I went with: main: cipher - The Dichotomous Soulbender but Pale Elf and tweeked to use Tall Grass in stead of fists (2nd row action is awesome to build focus out of harms way). Main tank: The Golden Dragon - an awesome and fun to play tank! Off tank: Counselor Ploi - Paladin - acc buffer. Priest: Fire Priest, Moonfire - awesome buffer/healer. Mage: Zeblastian Hurtstacker - Golden Gaze is insane! never used anything but that. low micro mage. Druid: The Thundercat. Now this druid build is a bit too powerfull and one of the reasons for my post. When you shapeshift everything dies! When fighting the Kraken, My druid more or less soloed it in under 5 seconds. It didn't even get to hit him back because of the avenging storm stun lock! I hope it shows on the screenshots, I couldn't quite get the resolution right. well thats it. happy huntin'

Who needs protection if the enemies are proned, stunned, petrified? CC -> Spiritshift -> Victory. Works pretty well in most cases even when naked.

Highly popular Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu was sued by Nintendo last week, and today agreed to fold and pay 2.4 million dollars to Nintendo to settle it, along with some other terms like the dev team never being allowed to work on emulators for the rest of their lives. Although painful for the future of Nintendo Switch emulation and preservation, I think they pretty much deserved what they got: they did the stupidest thing possible, the one thing you absolutely cannot do unless you want to bring the law down upon your head, which is blatantly advertise and monetize leaked/pre-release content. How stupid do you have to be to sell Patreon-only builds (they were earning tens of thousands of dollars a month, by the way!) that can run The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom before the game has even officially released? Any support for pre-release/leaked content is bad enough and will draw the ire of crime investigators and lawyers alike in of itself, but then going so far as to actively monetize it... Woof.

Sorry to disappoint, but this game is vaporware. The devs absconded with the KS funds, and with bankruptcy and a legal war between the two main devs. The project is dead and we won't be getting the finished product. If TB is acceptable, these are the current old-school indie cRPGs I would suggest: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1159090/Zoria_Age_of_Shattering/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1478850/Vendir_Plague_of_Lies/ This one is RTwP, but not quite a cRPG; more a cross between cRPG and ARPG: https://store.steampowered.com/app/945770/Dark_Envoy/

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