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Finally we can forget about all those quirky minor sports again for four years.

They always said they'd be back

A while ago I lose most of my crew after sinking a lot of ships, not knowing why. Turns out when they're downed in combat, even though Berath's challenge doesn't apply, they get injured like party members (not ship combat injuries), and they get cured when consuming food and drink everyday. Thank god they don't need I do a rest. Because of how weak most of them are, fighting multiple ships in a short time can get them a lot of injuries and potentially killed.

Hmm, imbued ammunition should get PL scaling for auto-attack, losing to Thundercrack and Spearcaster is unexpected, especially the latter, since they have similar damage but pistol should be significantly faster. Are the base rolls more like 8-12, or 12-18 when you tested? I disabled mods then consoled a new one to try, and still got the PL scaling, so I guess it's not because of mod difference. Hunting bows are so sick!

As an update, I now own a Ukrainian flag.

You could try the following straightforward "easy" builds that don't require a lot of actions once the combat starts (but can add more stuff if needed): Kind Wayfarer/Helwalker: dual wielding or weapon (includes fists but also other weapons) + bashing shield (spec. Tuotilo's Palm). Eternal Devotion, Turning Wheel, Lightning Strikes, Torment's Reach etc. Your Flames of Devotion not only heal you but also the party members (INT bonus from Turning Wheel gives you a very big AoE size, Helwalker's MIG bonus makes your healing more powerful) around you, you can get very high armor and defenses (see Paladin's passives and Helwalker's MIG bonus that raises fortitude, Crucible of Suffering gets triggered by Sacred Immolation's self damage wearing off and so on) - it's easy to play, has good damage output against single targets as well as in an AoE, is sturdy, can do terrific support with healing and other stuff. Goldpact Knight/Shifter Druid: pick all the armor passives of the Paladin and Sworn Rival, Wildstrike stuff from the Druid side (whatever element you like), Eternal Devotion etc. Sworn Rival + the Goldpacts special ability "Gilded Enmity" also works when shifted. When you shift into the Bear form + Gilded Enmity you will have very high AR while having null recovery penalty. You can dish out nice melee damage while being very durable (also Lay on Hands works while shifted). You can shift multiple times, so when your Bear Form wears off you can shift into a Boar and so on. The AR will be a bit less than with the Bear but still impressively high. Complement with Blunting Belt and so on. It works right off the bat with shifting, no spellcasting needed. However in tough encounters you can cast powerful (AoE) spells before/between shifts. You can also use Sacred Immolation while shifted and combine it with Nature's Terror for example (cast Nature's Terror, shift, cast Sacred Immolation, go to town... very good AoE damage with just one spellcast and two quick ability activations). Devoted/Streetfighter: large shield (like Bronlar's Phalanx), Gladiator's Sword (+1 PEN enchantment, +2 PEN from Devoted), deflection gear. Not really AoE, but capable of being the main tank while dishing out great melee damage at the same time. Not pure damage sponge but a great hybrid of good defense and good offense. Required almost no micromanagement after some levels. You'll have very high PEN for slash and pierce damage (sword) - should you need crush damage you can use your fist + Monastic Unarmed Training with no drawback from the Devoted side. Furyshaper/Unbroken: maxed MIG (at least 20 with gear, 25 would be optimal), Battle Axe "Amra", enchantment Riven Gore. Use Bleeding Cuts (the battle axe modal) and Frenzy, your Carnage AoE and the Axe's AoE on crit (with 25+ MIG, Riven Gore) will stack. Great synergy between Riven Gore, Blood Thirst + Cleaving/Mob Stance. Devastating against mobs. if you pick Furyshaper Barb: Use a Fear Ward summon to terrify enemies who will then leave your engagement, triggering disengagement attacks form you. The Unbroken fighter has great bonuses on disengagement attacks. When things get tough switch to a 1h-Battle Axe + shield. The Unbroken will then grant you +1 AR and make you extra sturdy. Also good with other Barb/Fighter subclasses, for example vanilla Barb/Fighter. Then without fear/disengagment stuff. Mage Slayer/Skald: use the unique Morning Star Saru Sichr. It has two attack rolls instead of one (one more chance to crit which makes the Skald gain phrases). Use Spirit Frenzy (staggers with chants as well) and sing the phrase "The Long Night's Drink". Use the Morning Star's modal "Body Blows" which lowers enemies' fortitude by 25 points. Spirit Frenzy will latch onto you chant and both will lower enemies' fortitude (Spirit Frenzy by 10, Long Night's Drink by 14). This is a great debuffing character which needs almost no action besides triggering Frenzy. You can then attack with the Morning Star. The second hit roll from it is a poison DoT which targets fortitude. Once the enemies' fortitude is so much debuffed (25 from Body Blows + 24 from Spirit Frenzy+chant) the second hit roll of the Morning Star will crit a lot, giving you phrases quickly. Once yout get Brute Force all attacks will target fortitude if it's lower than deflection. Crits en masse. Also the double roll of the Morning Star applies the Mage Slayer's casting debuff twice. So you only need to hit a caster twice and he/she cannot cast spells anymore (100% debuff). Cast nasty offensive invocations when you wish. They are supercheap for a Skald and get refilled quickly with crits. Choose good disables such as "Killers Froze Stiff", nice debuff such as "Ben Fidel's Neck" or pure damage such as "Her Revenge Swept Across". Stalker (Bear Companion)/Darcozzi Paladini: use Blade of the Endless Paths (with "Marking"), Ring of Focused Flames + Flames of Devotion and also Accurate Wounding Shot, Greater Lay on Hands, Reviving Exhortation, Zealous Focus, Marked for the Hunt, Stalker's Link, Resilient Companion... The goal is to crit a single enemy often. This is easy with FoD + Ring (+20 accuracy, same with Accurate Wounding Shot) + Stalker's Link and Marked Prey and the aura - and the Blade's help which gains accuracy every few seconds, too. A crit will put a debuff on the enemy, lowering their deflection up to -20, collapsing their deflection and making it easy at some point for you and all party members to hit/crit them. At the same time you can be very sturdy (Paladin passives + Stalker passive) and your Bear, too. It gains +1AR form the Stalker passive, +2 from Resilient Companion, +2 from being a Bear and also +2 from your Greater Lay on Hands. If it goes down you can use Reviving Exhortation or the Ranger's revive. For ehaling you can use Lay on Hands or the Ranger's heal. The deflection debuff doesn't need any setup. You just put out Mared Prey and attack with Flames of Devotion/Accurate Wound Shot and drop the enemies' defelction into the ground on the fly. AoE can get added with Sacred Immolation later. There's a lot more builds that are sturdy yet have decent damage output and can start into combat without much preparation quickly and easily. There are just a few that came to my mind while I was typing.

A summary of current situation in Kursk from PoV of one Z-blogger.

That sucks mate, yeah, the GAMMA mod is even more punishing in several ways so it'd probably be really hard for you. Unless someone makes a mod to link something like a Tobii eyetracker to it. I remember playing some Ghost Recon game with that thing, and all I had to do was look in the general direction of an enemy, right click and fine adjust to get perfect headshots all the time

I've put like twenty hours into Fallout: New Vegas over the last few weeks after finding a few popular mods that changed how the accuracy of weapons work to make it...uhh, not dumb basically, and have actually been having a pretty good time, especially because I mostly play a stealthy shoot people in the head and/or backstab them type of player (which is pretty necessary given how clunky and bad the combat in this engine is). This approach has been working well, except for when I run into enemies who don't want to die and I get brutally murdered because my weapons are junk outside of stealth...which has happened a lot with mutants/monsters. But the worst part of the game is my own fault, which is the obsessive compulsive kleptomania that afflicts me whenever I play a game like this. I must...steal...all the things. I have a bunch of organized containers in the game's first town's gas station where I'm slowly but surely getting every single type of item into pristine condition by finding other copies of them and repairing them. I know it's just a pool cue and I'm never actually going to use it as a weapon, but I want to have a perfect copy of it. Please send help.

far right violence just trying to massacre a few thousand people environmentalist want to reduce megacorp profitability a far more terrifying crime

Apologies for a very belated reply, but may I suggest that you drop the "wow" and then say the rest of it in your best Gandalf voice.

I liked Durance too.

My IQ must be potatoes I like Durance a lot lmao I didn’t realize this was a Weiderganger thread dang

I have mixed feelings on the characters in PoE1 vs Deadfire. On the one hand, I agree that diving into their personal history can be very deep and narratively powerful - I was surprised the first time I convinced Durance about Magran. On the other hand, I really stopped caring after a replay, and it was extremely annoying to just be rapidly mashing dialogue responses to get to the point - in hindsight it seems overwrought and over-written. I think I generally value expansive reactivity more than miles-long dialogue trees, given a choice of finite writer's time. PoE1 I remember being pretty quiet when you're wandering around, whereas Deadfire seems more like you have a party, and it was a treat to get new reactivity with new DLC and also get Vela reactivity.

I also loved Durance. He was a lot more believable to me as a character than xoti, and his conversations were more fleshed out than any other character in the series by like a mile. He was kind of a gloomy jerk (most of the time, sometimes funny), but he was a priest of magran who helped kill a god, what do people expect? He was also extremely perceptive, IIRC he is the only one who really gets what's going on if someone dies at the blood pool in Dyrwood Ruins. Also with the right actions you can convince him Magran was complicit with woedica which just breaks him. It's one of the most memorable moments of the series for me, seeing how everyone reacts to the revelation but mostly Durance. Deadfire characters in general are not nearly as good as Durance (or Eder/Aloth, maybe even Sagani). Their conversation trees are basically just their personal quests, they don't seem to have a lot to say about the main quest. Also I don't understand why some of them happen to be in the Deadfire (like Aloth) except that that's where you are, besides Serafen and Tekehu their presence seems rather circumstantial. Xoti just seems kind of daft, and I don't think her quest makes a lot of sense except for the dark version where she is collecting the souls basically because she wants to, because she's compelled to. I think Gaun is just an excuse at that point. All this is why in POE1 I prefer playing with a party, whereas in Deadfire I don't really care after the first couple times.

I don't mind a Wiedergänger thread. I just wouldn't expect the addressed users to actually respond if their quoted post is like four years old.

I dunno, I kinda prefer necro threads to creating new and short-lived microthreads. It shows that the necromancer bothered to read quite a bit instead of just plopping a lazy question, and reading is good.

Perhaps, perhaps not - I liked Durance, too. What's really off though is your timing. ...

I had a room in Novac where I had one of each cooking ingredient in the fridge. Meat like skewers etc and a pilot light in the oven. One of each clothing/armour in the wardrobe. One of each weapon in a box. Crafting material in a different container. Books, and household junk in the dresser... I do not see a problem. Then again, I sneak skill books into the chest in my children's bedroom in skyrim, to get them reading.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has become very difficult for me to play, unfortunately - it's always been too demanding on my ravaged hands/wrists, and trying to use a controller to play those games is way too frustrating. The last time I played any S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was a couple of years ago when I finally gave the cut-down and rebalanced Lost Alpha mod a proper go, and I think I got about ten to maybe fifteen hours into it over a few weeks before the pain became too much and too constant to the point of affecting the rest of my life on a daily basis, so I uninstalled it and kind of consciously made the decision there that I just would not be able to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for the rest of my life. It's just too much. In contrast, I've been able to handle New Vegas in moderation without too much ill-effect so far, though I've been making great use of aiming/iron sights being bound to ALT instead of right-click, which helps a lot.

It's just funny how France ended up in the other side of the bracket from the main threat for a bunch of competitions. Overall I agree that team USA was the stronger team and that we needed to hit the shots in the last quarter, but the judges helped pushed the momentum the other way.

One thing I do appreciate about the garbage can man (aka Kevin Durant) is that he has consistently shown up for the Olympics over his career. And I don't just mean that he played well, but rather that he actually committed to playing for the team, which is something that a lot of our stars have often declined to do. Though LeBron claims MVP of the tournament, Durant has been instrumental in leading team USA to 4 straight gold medals, which is actually a pretty rare feat for Olympic athletes. I think Serbia was the second best team, but it's always been the case that the two best teams can meet earlier in a playoff tourney than right at the end, it's just sometimes how it works out.