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Thanks for the wisdom, Mr. G. I think we should elect that guy, he's clearly aware of the dangers of authoritarianism! Oh...that Joseph G. Well, maybe not.

Hi, while I was trying to do something different with Xoti this time (SC Priest all the time becomes boring at some point as does Whispers of the Wind for the umpteenth time) I experimented with Inner Death some more, combined with Empowered Strikes of course. Main reason was initially that Xoti's Lantern gives +1 Mortification (and +1 Wound) per kill. That's the only way besides Brilliant to regain Mortification - and it also means that Inner Death is kind of cheap (-3+1 =2 ) if it kills (which it often does with Empowered Strikes to ensure a crit). Now I tried to max the damage per empored crit with abilities and items so that the impact of one Inner Death punch is really, really impactful - so at first I went with Lightning Strikes instead of Swift Flurry because a +15% lash is a multiplicative damage bonus and is a great thing to have for such a high-dmg/single use combo. With the help of Lightning Strikes, Turning Wheel, Thunderous Blows and some items that add dmg bonuses and lashes I could often crit for ~500-700 dmg - which is pretty dope. If you have to take out an annoying enemy NOW I'd say that this is a very useful tool. But then, since I would will crit almost always with that combo anyway, I thought I'd give Swift Flurry and HBD a short try. I knew that Empowered Strikes (+100 ACC and +100 PEN on empowered attacks) does NOT influence the additional attacks of SF/HBD, but I thought I'd try how it feels anyway. I used Mohora Tanga to maximize the chance for procs and then I also put on Boltcatchers - because they work very well with Mohora Tanga*. It is not guaranteed that Inner Death will trigger SF/HBD! It is a melee attack and it can trigger them, but it doesn't use your weapon - so any special sauce the weapon has that could help you with SF/HBD procs will only trigger as soon as Inner Death did trigger SF/HBD which then executed a weapon (in this canse spear-) attack**. After a few tries I managed to trigger a crit cascade (for testing purposes it's helpful that the additonal attacks wil get executed and displayed BEFORE Inner Death impacts the target) - and I saw that the +300% crit damage bonus of Inner Death does apply TO ALL attacks that are done in the scope of the attack. So all damage rolls from SF/HBD and Boltcatchers got that sweet dmg bonus. Whoopsi! Boltcatcher proc: Heartbeat Drumming proc: I mean this is still a gamble. It's much more reliable to just pick Lightning Strikes of course - especially if you want to kill the tough foes with an empowered Inner Death asap. Tough foes with high defenses usually make crit chains a lot less likely. But with Swift Furry it's pretty awesome nontheless when it happens. I one-shot Concelhaut and Menzago instantly - but with other bosses I tested I didn't have as much luck. But of course Inner Death - even without a juiced up SF/HBD crit chain - is still a very hard punch. Anyway: thought I should share this info. Maybe somebody has better or just more fun ideas what to do with this. Cheers! --- )* Mohora Tanga's enchantment Red Flag Flying counts as melee weapon attack and can thus proc itself for and endless cycle as long as it crits. It can proc melee-related special attacks from other items such as Boltchatchers. It also procs Swift Flurry/HBD attacks that are then executed with the normal spear attack again - wich itself can proc Red Falg Flying again on crit and so on. This increases tha chance for crit chains happening a whole lot. )** Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming are always executed with the main hand weapon, no matter how they got triggered in the first place.

A little bit more of DS2 again. Two more bosses down and then The Gutter. My oh my… I do not remember it, to be so ****ing ridiculous in vanilla. The hollows do not deaggro at all, so bloodstain runs have been almost impossible. After I got gifted with a surprise gangbang by the hollows, I rather stopped to run completely. The pinnacle of futility in this area was, that I have missed one sconce for summoning the Gutter Denizen Invader. So I had to rerun it again… and wiped few times again All of that in conjunction with a headache I have today The bosses, which I’ve defeated were Mytha and Belfry Gargoyles. While clearing their areas on the way to them, I had only 3 wipes, on the way through The Gutter, which took me almost 2 hours, I died 10 times (Or 11) I have forgot the deathcounter, at which I have started the Area. Next in line either Black Gulch or Shaded Wood, as I have already rescued the petrified Pyromancer, which unblocked the road. But I feel a little bit down after The Gutter experience…

I liked it from the start, but that I think is mostly down to me treating it like a Looking Glass type sneaky game. For that approach, the massive 2.0 mechanical overhaul really had minimal impact. The random generic loot? Doesn't matter. The unbalanced combat? No impact. Indeed the biggest change probably came in an earlier patch, when they made throwing knives non-consumable. So yeah, it's very good at that. In terms of its other qualities, I rate it as a mediocre RPG, and as a spectacle shooter ...I don't care because I hate that kind of gameplay, as evidenced by my recent rant about Phantom Liberty. The game is at its worst when it funnels you into their grandiose set pieces.

Finished Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Purgatory It has a "Bash the Fash" achievement, so it gets a 100% rating from me just for being openly and unapologetic antifa. Which works well for the Werewolf setting, as that has always in a way been the left-leaning part of the World Of Darkness with its theme of eco terrorism and thus anti corporate greed. As a sequel, it loosely ties into the story from Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart Of The Forest. The main character and some npcs from that game appear in this as well, and part of the game takes place in the same forest. You do not need to have played the previous game though, as this is an independent story from that. The story features two divergent branches as your character chooses what matter to investigate. I have only played one branch, but I expect both do lead to the same finale. What sets this WOD visual novel apart from Coteries/Shadows of New York - its otherwise closest kin - is that, while you play a set person, you choose your skills, tribe, and auspice (class). These don't affect the story in a major way, but allow for an s experience slightly more tailored to the player's preference.

The Eurodance section at the end before the floating horse went on way too long. But since it meant more triggering of anti-woke reactionary crybabies, guess that was a win as well.

I noticed berserker's version of Blood Storm still says "kills increase duration", is the description wrong, or it didn't get the change with the normal version? Edit: it's working correctly, just the description didn't get updated.

Heh, the internet is full of it. Finally showing his true colours and why Putin and Xi are his idols... finally doing away with that pesky democracy is going to be what his supporters are voting for. Showing his true lack of class with his "taking a bullet for democracy" statement. Besides lacking class, also lacking in truth. The only one who took a bullet for "democracy" was the maga cultist that got killed, all trump did was finally getting within earshot of a disagreeing Republican.

I already know that SF-hbd are also emporered when they proc from empowered attack (and so profit from Empowered Strikes on Whispers of the Wind chain) but with Inner Death it is monstruous too! What about, added to SF- Mohora's cascade, does Crushing Blow, Accurate Wounding Shot, Hunter's Fang and of course Concussive Tranquilizer? Some other abilities, if the effects also work on Red Flags attacks, should be interesting too : Confounding Blow, Devastating Blow, Flame of Devotion (Kind Wayfarers especially) etc.

Dark Matter Solves The Mystery of How Supermassive Black Holes Exist An intriguing clue as to the nature of dark matter.

elden ring does have a lot of classic jrpg problem weird so few player even notice maybe because few player play older jrpg cyberpunk can be visually too busy sometime atmosphere of the city is amazing

It seems people warmed up a lot to Cyberpunk. In my personal opinion the 2.0 update made it a much, much better game. I think it makes for a fine narrative shooter. Though, it wouldn't made into my list of favourite anything, and definitely not as an RPG.

Edlen Ring finally got around to playing it ... very great game but very much typical of a JRPG: grinding, oversized weird looking weapons ... and the side quests omg please save me from them lol. If they threw a flying ship in there we would close the loop. And very much suffers from what I hate most about action games and why I don't really play them anymore, having to do that jump from one ledge to the other that takes way to long to perfect. Otherwise fantastic and fun, beautiful too, great lore, great exploration, great combat, and damn if it doesn't have me sitting on the edge of my seat ... Also, just gonna mentioned played Cyberpunk 2077 ... around Xmas of 2023 - it might be my favorite crpg of all time, not sure if that is controversial or not, but the story and quests, rpg elements, graphics, combat, progression ... that game really surprised me with how good it was considering all the controversy. EDIT: Cyberpunk2 is definitely my most anticipated sequel that I am waiting for right now.

Huntsman Copse has shown again, why I hate that area. The way to Skeleton Lords was not that bad, but I have made some stupid and ridiculous mistakes as well. Moving slowly helped out though. What I liked the most, was that they moved the key for the locked bonfire closer to it, which IMHO saved me from more wipes. So after a hour of slow grind, I have finally entered the Lords arena, with a help of single summon. They also changed this fight. The first Lord spawned 8 small skeletons, and while I was slowly fighting them and trying not to die, my summon finished off the second Lord. Thankfully after that he joined the clearing of adds, but still I had my hands full with trying to stay alive, especially due to Armored Skeleton adds, which have been jumping out of reach of my mace, when I have swung with it. I somehow survived, and started to fight the last Lord. This one spawned only two Bonewheel Skeletons, which made the last seconds of fight much more manageable than trying to outrun 4 of them in vanilla DS2. After that I had to decide where to go. As the way to Executioner’s Chariot is for me as awful part of game as Shrine of Amana, I went towards Covetous Demon. They changed this area little bit as well, but it was still manageable, although trying to outrun and defeat the ambush of fat Artificial Undeads with melee only, would be worthy addition to Benny Hill Show iconic chase scenes I ended up alive to my surprise After that I had again few comedy wipes, but all in all, getting to Covetous Demon seemed to me little bit easier with melee guy, than with caster. He was defeated on first try with no summon at hand. Then, there came the most painful experience in my current run, the gauntlet before the bridge to Executioner’s Chariot. Even the shade I have summoned few time’s did not helped me. The guys up there have some stupid aggro mechanic or something, as there have been attempts, when I had no problem to pull them one by one, by entering into their aggro range and then there were the attempts, when they have attacked me all at once I was not able to find any pattern, why was that happening, and how to be 100% sure, that it will not happen. All in all, the sum of the wipes on these guys, before I have made my final attempt at Chariot, was more than 50k souls, which is pretty serious amount of souls at my current stage of game. The Chariot itself, was not that bad, the only issue was, that I had a lack of sleep due to my arm injury, and I was getting extremely tired at the end of my gaming session, but my stubbornness outplayed me, and “forced” me to stay behind my PS4, until I defeated the boss. Of course, that cost me few more wipes, due to my reflexes being even worse than usually. Not to mention, that I had a “brilliant” idea to attempt the bossfight, until the trash mobs drop me the Lizard Staff. And yes, in my state of tiredness it was really as stupid idea as it sounds Thankfully I was so tired in the end, that even my stubbornness gave up, and I have defeated him after few tries, when I was able to survive the previous gauntlet. Summary of today: 3 more bosses down, with deathcounter stopping at 41. (16 for today)

Maybe they could get together and form some sort of gathering of developers.

I had little bit of time today again, so I have continued to play DS2 again. Spent whole time at the Bastille and moved slowly to Ruin Sentinels. But before that, I had few comedy deaths. 6 in total today. I have also encountered the Forlorn Invader for the first time, and emerged victorious To my surprise, this one spawns even if you are in Hollow Form. During picking up all of the items around the area, I have encountered 3 mob Pursuers. Two of them I have defeated on the first try, but the one, near the crossbowmen on wooden constructions was pain in the ass, and died there few of the times, while trying to avoid the fire bolts and dogs trying to bite my ass off. I have also rescued Straid, but I do not have required attributes for any of his spells yet Anyway, after wandering a little bit around, I went for the Ruin Sentinels. This fight kicked my ass in vanilla DS2, so I have decided to summon both the summons, to have relaxing time today and were victorious after first try. Next in line Huntsman Copse. Which trash mobs I hate almost as much as Shrine of Amana. I planned to visit Gargoyles, but I have used all of my Pharos Stones, so they will have to wait a little bit for our encounter.

Since this is a "history" post, I'll start with the oldest stuff first and work my way towards the current time, here and now on the Obsidian boards I often deny having owned a gaming console and that is technically correct. But... long unrelated story, I grew up with relatives who were "junkies" (heroin addicts) and they would often rob stores and homes for things to sell for mere pittances at times to finance their addiction. One day, the oldest showed up at my parents place (my mother, for reasons, had become their legal guardian) with a Pong gaming console they had stolen somewhere and no fence would take it off their hands. The original Pong console was among my first video gaming experience in the mid 70's. It was my parents though, not mine. (I would have loved to put an image of the console here, but I honestly do not remember what it looked like 50 years ago) Other sources of video gaming at the time was the arcade machines a various convenience stores and grill bars. Some were electronic, some were part mechanical, part electronic. I particularly remember a "Duck Hunt" game, where several layers of glass were used to create the sense of depth and a single glass plate was used to reflect a flying duck from a TV screen hidden out of sight. The shotgun was mounted to a stick that was effectively a big joystick. No fancy electronics at all. Other places had more modern games like Galaxy Invaders... I spent a fortune in coins on those machines. Jump forwards almost a decade, 1983 I was convinced I was going to end up studying biology after high school... until my dad came home with three page advertising pamphlet for the Commodore 64. It was so colourful and impressive looking. It used an elephant to symbolize the humongous memory it had (even though only 38k turned out to be available to the user in the end). I managed to raise the money for my machine of dreams as well as the associated tape recorder and two games. A game on tape called "Beach Head" and a cartridge called "International Soccer". First two games I ever bought with my own money. Never mind that programming the C64 got me hooked on software development and an impromptu career change, the games changed my life too, spending much of my free time playing games on the old "Bread Box" (Danish nick name for the C64). US Gold was a major publisher int he 80's and the football game? It took almost 10 years before a better game of its kind came out. Another decade later I raised the money for a Commodore Amiga 4000 and a hard drive. Gaming now became almost an art form. Bear in mind, in the early 90's, the Amiga completely outperformed contemporary desktop PC's, with the latters CGA graphics and built in tweeter for sound. Never mind the operating system, where MS only caught up with Windows 8 or thereabouts. But the games... sooo many, soo good. On the C64, I developed a love for strategy games and role playing games. SSI gold games, the Ultimas etc. were not just nostalgia, they were state of the art as each individual title came out. So many strategy games too, it was like paradise for a gamer like me. The Amiga added better graphics and real music to many titles. And they just kept coming for the next decade. This is where I almost get to the point... (skipping a list featuring literally a decade and hundreds of Amiga games here) Some of the newer PC games in the late 1990’s looked interesting and I could run them on a PC Emulator. One title in particular stunned with its atmosphere (because I'm a child of the Cold War and the end of the worlds was always present), the demo for a game called "Fallout" had me completely hooked. I bought the full game and... it didn't want to run on my PC emulator (even though the official demo did). Life as a PC gamer Building myself a PC, my first gaming experiences on it was Interplay’s Fallout. More games followed and Fallout together with the first Tomb Raider were my standout memories from the late 90's. Then I ran into a game from the now established Black Isle Studio called Baldurs Gate 2 (yes, I missed the first one) and I spent the next 12 months, day and night playing the heck out of that game, to the detriment of the rest of my life pretty much. Fallout 2 happened, I ended up buying Baldurs Gate 1 too, completing it a few times, nothing like the time I invested in BG2 though. Still, I took note of the name Bioware as well as Black Isle. That thing called Obsidian I was active on the internet too at the time, but I had little interest in this thing called "Forums" (some newfangled sofware that was probably going to die out in a year or two, so why bother?). Usenet was where things happened and many discussion groups (especially the alt groups like alt.games.interplay) were completely unmoderated. Calling it the wild west is being nice to it. Usenet died the slow death of entropy and forums stayed. By the time I had convinced myself to join the Interplay forums, Interplay de facto folded. At least, it ceased to exist as the Interplay I knew. That's when I heard about this "successor company" called Obsidian Entertainment which had plans for opening up a forum. Still not the fastest tool in the shed, it took me a fortnight to sign up. Despite being somewhat of a troll at times and getting into fistfights at times, I ended up as a moderator. Much to my own surprise honestly. I suppose the thinking at the time was something along the lines of using a troll to catch a troll. The discussion subject at the time was "Project Delaware", resulting on all sorts of crazy speculations and wishful thinking (and doom saying). Knights of the Old Republic 2 arrived and... good game with awful ending is the best way I can summarize it. An understatement of course, as the ending was completely missing for various reason... Neverwinter Nights 2 followed and was slightly less buggy the Kotor2 had been, but not flawless. The DLC's however... Mask of the Betrayer in particular brings back fond memories of a game I might not otherwise remember. The Sequel Maker Obsidian was developing a reputation of making buggy sequels to Bioware games that were all 132% perfect... at least if you were to believe the most critical voices. Of course, there is a lot more to how such thing happen, but gamers are a weird bunch, often prone to tunnel vision and confirmation bias, congregating towards echo chambers. Especially when it comes to likes and dislikes of games. Fallout New Vegas managed the impossible, convince a lot of people that Obsidian could actually make great games, that weren't necessarily direct sequels to existing games. It is probably also the only Obsidian game I feel like coming back to again and again, despite it's age. I know Outer Worlds offers a lot corporate humour and a feeling of living in dystopia, but something about the post nuclear setting just strikes a nerve because of my age (growing up during the cold war, expecting the end of the world every day). Playing through scenarios where humanity survives said war feels good I suppose? Still here Obsidian is no longer known in the business as the "buggy sequel" maker, but as a world builder, story creator and the maker of interesting characters. Like Obsidian, I’m still here. Still enjoying video games 40+ years later, still having a preference for crpg's and turn based strategy games. There are many more Obsidian games I could mention (take a look at the forum!) and would have loved to spend time on, but those are the ones that stuck out for me... -Gorth

My father passed away today around 630. I've had to make all the calls letting folks know he's gone and am now finally trying to process things. Back in March, my dad was given at best a few weeks to live. He stuck it out for over four months and fought like hell to stay around for his family, even on death's door cared more about my mom and I than he did himself. I'm gonna miss him but seeing how hard it was for him near the end.....I don't know, it was a tough way to live and I think he would be relieved to not have struggle anymore. Regardless it's going to be a **** week.