Leaderboard

This is my experience. Now it may be different nowadays, but I was born and raised a long long time ago in the reddest of redneck states, Florida. Both my parent and extended family were racist in our everyday life to the point that it seemed normal. Like dropping the n-word in casual conversation wasnt at all unusual. It wasnt until I joined the military at 18 and got out of that forsaken state, and actually got to meet and know different races, that I could look back and see the errors of my upbringing. I said it before and Ill say it again; monkey see monkey do. Racism is 100% learned.

The yellow paint is a massive eyesore, and I hope those cutscenes aren't too abundant, the ones that seem to already be there are probably going to drive me bonkers already. And that cat fight was kind of depressing to watch, the cat was way too soaky. Very pretty looking though, but generic. I could tell it was Unreal 5 very quick. I hate Unreal engine. And I reckon we won't have anyone modding the game soon.

Imagine being a ru civ and hoping ua forces arrive fast, so that your own army won't loot your house.

I thought I wasn't in the cinema thread for a bit there... Anyhow, I'm excited for the 'restoration' of Caligula - a film infamously spliced with hard core footage and edited into a nonsensical narrative that made noone happy. Not directly restored to the (competing) visions of either writer Gore Vidal or director Tinto Brass, but somewhere in between trying to put back the narrative and preserve the performances that were lost in Bob Guiccione's version. Famously Malcolm McDowell disagreed with Videl on Caligula's motives and his performance was always alleged to be not only really good (I believe McDowell has said it might be his besr) but altered the interpretation of the story. Other actors saw their performances chopped - none worse than Helen Mirren who was all but edited out of the film.

Well... thing is, tobacco is awful. It's the Adolf Hitler of legal substances available without prescription or (much) other controls. Vaping may be the Idi Amin of legally available substances, or, it may not be. Either way, it's still going to be better than tobacco. That doesn't mean I'm a big fan of the big man from Uganda or his electronic puff pipe equivalent, it's just that if you're looking for things worse than tobacco it's meth, crack, heroin type things which are all illegal. In terms of alcohol, if you assume everyone is going to use that responsibly then you have to assume everyone is going to vape responsibly. In reality, you get alcoholics, you get pregnant women drinking, you get drunk drivers, you get drunken brawls and you get all the other negative stuff- including cancers and the like- as well.

It was the finest aged jank around.

I'd say he's super exclusive. He doesn't care what color your skin is as long as you can feed his ego.

^If its not too personal, what were you scheduled to have operated on the other day?

I think I might have undersold what I did yesterday a little bit, but I was kind of out of it. 😅 I watched the Perseids fall through the aurora.

Thank you very much! I chose Kind Wayfarer/Hellwalker and it's just super. I even defeated Drake on the first island. On other builds that I managed to try (not from your list) I wasn't even close to defeating him.

Second IAEA statement on the ZNPP fire has been released. TLDR; definitely a fire inside the cooling tower with burnt plastic mesh etc, some evidence of structural damage (eg concrete chips) but no evidence so far of cause for either.

Internet has been down most of the day which sucks because we both work from home. Called up the ISP and they were less than helpful and I had to basically prove I was down for them to send someone out in almost 2 weeks. Can't go 2 weeks without working so I'll probably switch back to Comcast tomorrow if the situation doesn't resolve itself overnight. This was my first bad experience with CenturyLink but boy was it a doozy.

The tower itself isn't, but there is plenty of stuff inside it that will cheerfully burn eg fillers. There are UN and IAEA people on the ground, so we'll probably get something out of them beyond their initial statement. (for anyone wondering: it's a cooling tower so the whole idea is to exchange heat rapidly. That needs a high surface area to volume ratio for the water being cooled. They do that with plastic/ synthetics* since concrete is terrible-it's a heat insulator let alone its other physical characteristics- and steel and other metals are expensive, and their reliability goes down massively as they get thinned, ie they corrode more quickly and their structural strength degrades. Normally of course it wouldn't be all that flammable anyway, since it'd be full of water, but it isn't operational. And the cooling tower is when it comes down to it a big chimney designed to draw air up itself. Start a fire and it'll still do its job, of drawing air up... *see here at bottom of page)

The West Coast is significantly better. If I had to rank them: Cabo San Lucas Cancun. This is the hotel we stayed at this time: Riu Palace Kukulkan · Adults Only Hotel in Cancun Playa del Carmen This space reserved. This space reserved. Punta Cana (Dominican Republic).

Well in PS3 version of DS2, I got almost 1500 deaths, and IIRC, in Demon’s Souls I got around 750, no clue, how many Deaths I Had in DS1, and almost 500 in DSR. So I am slowly getting there 😂

Turn on subtitles for English translation.

"I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy, he's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life." - Donald Trump Look, it's obvious to anyone who doesn't have **** for brains that Trump is an awful guy who believes awful **** and has done awful ****. Why bother trying to engage in good faith with those who have none? Just call Trump a pedo and spam the above quote with one of the many pics of him and his good buddy Jeff. Will save much time and frustration.

Just got back from a week in Cancun. Now I need a vacation from my vacation. 😴

i think this is kind of the limits of some types of theorycrafting. i think we're trying to come with "average" cases and coming up with different things, but what that average means really constitutes a lot of wild variance. for example, when i was thinking of EAB, my main mental model was against bosses and megabosses where penetration is a huge concern and consistent crits out of the realm of possibility. so having steady raw damage (extra raw damage from extra bullets and extra generous damage even on grazes from imbued bullets; i don't know what the pen on the imbued bullets are, but istr that i was doing full damage against dorudugan, so it's clearly generous or at least has generous scaling) is very good. obviously it seems that depending on the setup EAB doesn't perform as obviously good (even mediocre). maybe we should try to break down into more specific scenarios and talk about that? e.g. low defense/AR situations, high AR situations, 1v1, 1vmany? (in a truly min-max situation, instead of picking one weapon, we'd switch weapons depending on the situation)

Your goal is to reach a 40.000 death count and turn your play through into Warhammer performance fan art?

More DS2 again This time, just some small time grinding and then to finish up the session, another encounter with Royal Rat Authority. And this time it was a successful one. It was big help, that I had a chance to purchase full Forlorn Armour Set, which has a nice upgrade for Poison Resistance compared to my old gear. This helped a lot. But TBH I still have not a clue, how have I survived the fight 😄 The 4 adds jumped all around the place, and the boss hits like a truck. I almost got obliterated by a gang bang right in the beginning, but somehow, I cleared all the adds, and later had a chance to pop an Estus. This pretty much saved my attempt. On the other hand the boss has very low HP compared to most, which I have fought, so even though he hit hard, I was able to get him down in few minutes. The biggest problem in the fight, was that if I locked him, the Lance always missed, and when I fought him without locking in, my clumsiness has shown in full glory 😄 Still down on first try in this session and on third in total. Unfortunately, during the grinding session, I accumulated 5 more wipes 😛 Deathcounter 150.

Tango Gameworks and Hi-Fi rush IP has been resurrected after being unceremoniously put down by Microsoft. This is thanks to Kafton, a Korean company, who acquired the defunct studio and its big profile IP. We will see if the spell cast was True Resurrection, or just Raise Dead. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/pubg-owner-krafton-have-acquired-tango-gameworks-and-the-hi-fi-rush-ip

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.

Works: If you get critically hit by a fire attck and you wear the Ring Ibis, the resulting debuff will trigger CoS when it wears off. This even works if you use Rekvu's Scroched Cloak which turns fire damage into healing (when injured). So you can blast yourself with friendly fire² spells, catch a critical hit but get healed ibnstead of damaged in the process - you will also get the Ibis' hostile effect. When it wears off you trigger CoS. Without the cloak you could use the self-induced fire damage for wound generation I guess. But it's risky with most spells (like Fireball) or it's very hard to crit with the non-risky one (Wall of Flame). It's not that easy to crit yourself with fire spells reliably though. You can pile up some ACC while raising your defenses no too much maybe. Don't know if this is worth it, most likely not - because why would you focus so much attention towards CoS and then lower your defenses on purpose just to get it? But maybe on top of something else - as a little tiny CoS bonus chance - the ring could be okay.

So far the worst "day" in DS2 😄 23 wipes at Dragon Shrine and Giant Memories 😢 I have forgotten about the difficulty spike between Dragon Aerie and Dragon Shrine, so I have changed my covenant to Company of Champions, and the got repeatedly obliterated by the second Dragonkeeper Guard with mace. I was simply not able to avoid his attacks, and he hit like a truck on steroids for my current level. So I had to shamelessly change the covenant back to something, which I can survive, and moved slowly up the stairs. Noticing, that if I summon phantom/shade, all mobs in the next room will run towards you and attack you. Which pulled like 12 or so mobs at once on the final stairs. I never run so fast towards the bonfire 😄 After that "incident" I run back to the Ancient Dragon, and talked to him for the Ashen Mist Heart, skipping the fight for now. Probably until I clear all DLCs. After that, I went into the Giant Memories, and man-o-man... I did sucked a lot at the first one. I missed few jumps, then I was pierced by archers, which I have not noticed, and then I got destroyed by mob firing the ballista, which cost me around 60k Souls 😄 Ok. I tried to refocus a little bit on what am I doing, and then with just a few more hickups, I arrived at the Giant Lord fight and won on the first attempt with the help of Bernhart of Jugo, for his questline. I have also picked up the Drangleic Helm, and finalized the armour set. Now, I am just thinking about where to go. Either moving to the first DLC, or Darklurker, or grind a little bit for the covenants. Deathcounter: 145

Works: With enough RES and Clarity of Agony (and not too much INT) there's Berserker's Confusion when you use Frenzy (the Confusion is managed seperately from the speed and self damage aspects) and Sacred Immolation's self damage (not tied to the fire damage part). They will be fairly short then. Sacred Immolation + Clarity of Agony + Crucible of Suffering is a nice combo imo. Removes the hefty self damage, so your Sacred Immolation has no drawbacks AND gives you bonus defenses on top. If you combine with Effort's Hemorrhaging (see below) the Sacred Immolation can also trigger Hylea's Talons' DoT on yourself and the enemy. If you use Enlightened Agony (smart) you can cancel out the Confusion directly (because smart couters confusion) and trigger Crucible oS instantly. A Priest or Paladin could also give the smart inspiration and remove the Confusion right away, triggering CoS. --- Does not work: Any character can get flanked, but when the flanking ends CoS will not trigger. A Tactician gets confused when getting flanked. You will get flanked (1. effect) and confused (2. effect) and both end if you disengage. This also doesn't trigger Crusible of Suffering Edit: as one might expect also Cowardice from Debonaire doesn't trigger CoS (like running away from allies to trigger Cowardice and then move back to cancel it). --- Does not work: Deletrious Alacrity of Motion's self damage is tied to the benefical effect and is not a separate hostile effect. Doesn't trigger CoS at all. --- Works: When you use Confusion (from Berserker or Tactician) and don't want to raise RES like crazy and use Clarity of Agony you can use Footsteps of the Beast and step into your own hobbling traps (usually foe only - with confusion it also hits you while walking). The hobble effect is very short. But you have to make sure it wears off properly (so stop walking around for a few secs). If you keep stepping into your own frost traps then the duration of the effect will get refreshed all the time and the effect will not wear off = no CoS. It's an old trick for Forbidden Fist/Berserkers to gain a lot of wounds+healing on the fly and it also keeps up Crucible of Suffering ifyou do it right. It's becomes more difficult to hit yourself with the hobbling traps if your defense is superhigh (like in general and then on top with Crucible oS). But every now and then it should still graze you because the traps drop so frequently (with every step you take - as fast as Arterial Strike causes dmg when you move). It can work out in a way that you don't even have to stop moving because most traps will miss - and if a new one grazes, the effect of a previous trap might have already worn off. But of course you can always stop moving to make sure. --- Works: Hylea's Talon can be triggered with spells if you use the great sword Effort with the enchantment Hmorrhaging. If you land a crit with anything you will trigger Hemorrhaging which counts as melee attack - which can then trigger Hylea's Talons' DoT on the enemy or yourself. --- Does not work: The Thundercrack trick doesn't trigger Crucible of Suffering. The pistol doesn't put the nagative effect on the wearer anyway - so it needs to be carried by a party member. But even that doesn't work. You will get the effect - and if your buddies switches weapons the effect goes away... but nothing happens for the Monk. --- That's all that comes to mind atm. Maybe I will remember more later.

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.

Step in and out of AOE's that repeatedly apply afflictions, Druid has quite a few of these.

You can find a dog and keep it. It is quite buggy. As you noticed, it can mess with combat. Before you adopt it, if the dog event coincides with a dragon, the dog can insta kill the dragon. If you have children, a child may randomly ask if they can keep the dog. Then the dog will hang out at your home but there is a bug and it might despawn. Children can bring other animals home, for example a fox. These aren't buggy, but as they follow the child around, if you live in one of the homesteads, as those can spawn attacks (or rats in the basement), the pet may get killed.

I have a small request: Adratic Glow gives "+1 Casts with Level 1 Chanter/Cipher spells" to them , which doesn't seem to do anything. Do you think it should be changed to match other classes, like your Great Soul change but weaker?

Two more bosses down in Dark Souls 2: SotFS. Both on second try. Velstadt and Guardian Dragon. The Undear Crypt changed just a little bit to vanilla, so I had not much trouble, even at the graveyard part with Pharos Lockstone room, where there are a lot of tombstones, which summon caster mobs. They definitely made that room easier in the SotFS. The other change, which was for a change more challenging, are 11 red phantoms, which are being summoned after the "candle-maiden" statue is being lit. This was a trouble, but in the end I was able to survive them as well, and slowly moved to the bossfight. Velstadt is much easier, while having summoned phantoms for help, but despite that, I died once, as I became to greedy at the end, and he just hit me with one of his wide reach swings On the second try, I misstimed one move against him as well, and nearly died again at the end of the fight, but luckily, I had enough HP to absorb that hit On the other hand, Aldia's Keep has become much much difficult area, as you can get one of the keys only after defeating 4 Forlorn red phantoms, which have very large HP pool and love to outroll you as soon as your backstab animation starts 😄 So I had to train a little bit how to properly fight them, which cost me few wipes, due to my clumsiness and less than stellar patience 😄 The second change was the gauntlet before the boss fog gate, this was made a little bit easier than in vanilla version. I was able to get through it with now again acquired patience from the phantom fights 😄 So no wipe for in there 😄 The locked Aldia's lab was fine as well, although it was a little bit more packed compared to vanilla, IIRC. Then I have decided to go and visit the boss, but, as always, I have forgotten, that there are two Ogres guarding two gates, so I went there like for a promenade, which promptly ended my suffering 😄 . This of course led to 59000 souls lost, as I was to annoyed, that after almost perfect run through the gauntlet, I got asskicked due to my memory not serving well 😄 So I made another clear, went to summon a phantom close-by, and entered the boss arena. This was my first ever melee attempt on this boss. And it needed much much more patience, than with a caster. So I needed a little bit more practice, to re-learn his moves. Still at 30% or so of his HP, he still managed to surprise me, and due to me messing up one roll, I got caught into his volley of fire, while landed on the floor, which ended my first attempt. Another gauntlet clearing was in order... *sighs* Now I went for the boss much better prepared for all of his moves, so I started of, with launching all of my lightning bolts at him, and then, slowly starting to run around him and hitting him again, and again, and again, and again, while trying to avoid all of his fire moves. This time, no major mistake happened on my side, so after a few minutes, I got a fresh Guardian Dragon Soul, and entered Dragon Aerie, after 11 wipes in total. Deathcounter 122. For now 😄

Pumpkin Jack Quite a few of objectives were "Find N of X". The battle ended at the same time I died. The cut-scene still played. An easter egg, I assume. The most irritating mini-game. The final boss. The Outer Worlds Edgewater. The Roseway area has a few quests where the NPC tell the directions somewhat clearly. In this case, there were no road to the storage facility, but it technically was to the left from the old lab when heading out through the south gate.

Well, after reading this interview with russian ex-officer, especially the last few paragraphs, they will be happy if, they get only looted. 🤷‍♂️ It sums pretty much, how twisted is Russian thinking 🤷‍♂️ As for the local civilians, the former officer believes they will be written off by the Russian authorities. 17/ "Since this is Russia, we won’t give a **** about the civilians left there. It’s already clear that the locals have been abandoned to fend for themselves — people there are on their own. 18/ "They’ll level everything with artillery and aviation: after all, what is Kursk Oblast compared to Russia?”

Rest in peace, X-Ray Engine. You were a load of janked garbage that never worked, but you were my load of janked garbage that never worked.

Well that sucks.

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.