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I, too, was playing a game someone else in this thread is. Luckily for me, I'm already done. I am talking about Dreck Souls 2: Scholar of the First Suck Edition. Joseph Anderson, in one of his videos, came up with the concept of Gary, a fictional game developer responsible for everything in a game that is only designed to waste the players time. A prominent member of the German World of Warcraft community did the same earlier, he called the developer Malte. Since Malte is a much worse name than Gary, I'll be using Malte in this post. Steam says that I have played the game for 149 hours, with a lot of that time spent on dealing with Malte's contribution to the game. And I mean a lot. Brave Undead, but why didst thou adventure on this much? Well, because I cannot help myself, and I wanted to finish the game before ranting about it. I know that it Dreck Souls 2 considered to be the black sheep of the family and that it is slightly disliked even in the toxic wasteland that the FromSoftware fandumb is, but with them being how they are, one is better safe than sorry. But seriously, screw this game, I am never going to touch it again. From what I have gathered, Scholar of the First Suck is like a Kaizo variant of the original Dark Souls 2, which apparently has much better enemy placement, and also features a lot less enemies. Alas, as that is only one minor part of the whirlwind of misery that playing Dreck Souls 2 is, I cannot see the original being much improved - eh, or rather, the Kaizo edition much worsened - by throwing more enemies at you. But, luckily, not all was bad. I appreciated the intro sequence that explained a bit about the lore of Drangleic and gives your character a personal stake in proceeding, something which the first Dark Souls sorely lacked. I never found it in myself to give a rat's ass about the Undead Pilgrimage in the first game and still enjoyed the game based solely on the combat and other gameplay elements, as well as the level and world design. It could have been better, because the game opens with the promise of a cure for the Undead Curse, which simply does not exist, and never will exist - cannot exist, considering what the curse is implied to be - and as a recurring player your character's motivation is suspect right from the start. However, well, at least your character cannot know that, so, well, there is that. Sadly, that is about the only thing that is better than the original Dark Souls. Do not mistake that for thinking that the storyline of the game is good, because it is not. It is a retread of Dark Souls, with the exception of adding a character that acts almost as a villain in the form of Nashandra, Queen of Drangleic, the woman at the heart of many of Drangleic's woes (because it is always them wimmin who corrupt the pure hearts of men ). Like in many such games, I bemoan the fact that I could not give her what she wanted. Having the Abyss corrupt the last embers of the First Flame would have elevated the ending of the game to a point where I would have liked it. Alas. I would be remiss to mention that it gave me one of the heartiest laughs this year in the form of Aldia's dialogue. Indeed. As your character has zero agency in anything that transpires and is basically just a puppet for whoever comes along and needs something, it was rather funny that Aldia would be so blunt. Instead of writing an essay about an old game where everything has been said already, my biggest problems with the game are the systems Malte designed, which seem to be all of them. The changed controls from the first game (turning feels much stranger, locked on attacking in different directions, the frequent misses in combat when an enemy is between the seemingly eight ways your characters can face), the encounter and enemy moveset design where there is basically only one difference between the enemy types, which boilts down to dragons and everything else. Just look at the bosses and regular enemies. They all have the exact same moveset, with slightly different animations. The most prevalent of which are the double swing with an optional third attack and the forward lunge. Whether it is the Pursuer, the Smelter Demon, Fume Knight, Aava or Vendrick, really, that is not one of the dragon bosses in the game (and the Royal Rat Authority which plays like a dragon encounter, just without the breath attacks). The only standouts here are the otherwise ludicrously easy Covetous Demon encounters and in part the Duke's Dear Freja, although even that is more often than not a two attack combination with her legs, and a forward lunge. Some enemies shoot projectiles or beams at you, but that is it for variety. It meant that I was able to defeat most boss fights first try (I played NG without summons, as evidenced by Lucatiel's and Benhart's achievements being almost the last ones to unlock, outside of the spells sold at Drangleic Castle in NG++), the longest of which took like five, which was, funnily enough, the blue Smelter Demon. It went down after I switched my equipment, which, ah, well, is something that I do not like to do in these type of games. Continuing with the worst issues is that with the reworked stamina, and the silly adaptability changes (Malte's brilliant idea to make the base dodge roll in the game have less i-frames than the fat roll in the original game unless one invests in adaptibiity was a fantastic change, *chef's kiss*), the game turned into a third person action adventure game with turn based combat. Bait enemy attack, dogde, parry of tank with shield, hit back while you can. Rinse, wash, and repeat. The turning controls seem to have gotten worse, locking onto enemies makes it sometimes impossible to hit them as your character appears to able to face only in eight directions. Being locked on, one has to let go of the thumbstick to get a somewhat tracking attack out of it, or manually aim in the direction the enemy is standing, for no real reason. If you want to create some distance between you and the enemy, it is necessary to let go from the stick long enough, otherwise your character will just whack in whatever direction you were going. Maybe that's the reason why the dodge roll with lower equipment loads is so long. To make sure you're far enough away from the enemy to have to step back, so you can hit. Only Malte knows. The controls are floaty and sluggish, and felt much better in Dark Souls, which I played on the Switch (and that has only 30fps, compared to DS2's 60). Then the game has no built-in offline mode, which is just baffling, and the scripted invasion encounters are ridiculous to the point where I just began carrying a great club to repeatedly stun lock them with the heavy two-handed attack. I guess it would be possible to approach those like actual pvp against cheaters (as they all have unlimited stamina, spell casts and equipment load), but why bother if you can just stunlock them dead. Weapon balance is also something that seems to be a lot worse, but perhaps I never noticed these issues in the original games. But when your oversized ultra greatsword +10 takes five seconds to wind up an attack, eats up half your stamina bar and then deals 20% more damage than the one second attack animation of a rapier (at a much, much lower stamina cost) then something's seriously wrong. I played most of the game with the uchigatana sold by McDuff, which was a nice weapon to use, with a decent balance between speed and damage, and a rapier. I wanted to like (ultra)greatswords, or great axes, or anything large, but... wrestling with Malte's gameplay decisions is bad enough without gimping yourself. Good riddance, Dreck Souls 2. I shan't be installing you again. Upgrade a great club to +10 (you can infuse it, if you want, but it is not necessary). Unlock the Brightstone Cove Tseldora campsite bonfire and join the Covenant of Champions. Equip the Symbol of Avarice (Jester's Cap if you don't have the Symbol), the Gold Covetous Ring +2, the Sanctum Knight Leggings, the Watchdragon Parma and the Prisoner's Tatters. Start from the bonfire, go to the right and behind the tent in front of it, enter the first tent of the enemy camp. There's an enemy standing inside. Walk up to him, back"stab" with your great club, which should kill him. Another one comes running into the tent, smash him with the heavy attack until he's dead. Leave the tent the way you came in, go right to the fire where an enemy is standing. Backstab that one too, and one other comes running. That is four enemies killed in the span of a minute or so. Go back to the bonfire. Once you're comfortable doing that and can pull it off without dying, pop a rusted coin every five minutes. Grind until you have your 30 sunlight medals, which will take a long while. Do not attack the enemy by the fire first, the one from the tent will come running. Enemy aggro is weird in this game. That route avoids all the archers, and at worst you might pull a pig, which just dies all the same, and you're never in danger of dying, as long as your heavy two-handed attacks connect. It is so not worth trying to set up the archers in a way that you can kill them too. They'll be dealing silly amounts of damage and can shoot through tents. Sell excess Falconer armors to Gavlan at leisure, or just throw them away. Worst grind in the game, really, the Mad Warriors were farmed much faster in comparison (with the Unveil miracle).

Well that is certainly a list of games, what kind of a list I have no clue.

Hey Elric, noticed the output_log is displaying an issue with "gn.encounter_scaling_fix.gamedatabundle" and "gn.sepulcher_scaling_fix.gamedatabundle" from the BalancePolishingModBuffs. Seems an extra {"GameDataObjects":[]} accidently got into those files.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/one-of-the-most-strange-and-cruel-survival-sandboxes-ive-played-has-sold-23-million-copies/ Because Im about to play Kenshi I found this interesting sales update It reached 2.3 million sales by April, great success for a small company

Yeah I was talking about Eliminating Blow. Sap doesn't really need any more change I guess.

After few grinding sessions, I have started NG+ in DS2:SotFS. I went right away into the Heide's Tower and defeated Old Dragonslayer and later Dragonrider as well. Both on first try. This time, without phantoms. The plans is to not use them if possible. We'll see how far I will be able to get before I get into first trouble. For now, I am again enjoying the game, as I have mostly forgotten the placing of Red Phantoms, which pretty much kick my ass now and then It makes the experience fresh, and make me do hilarious things as soon, as I get surprised by few of them Anyway, sooner or later, I will have to go back to grind again, at the Falconers for their medals. The plan is to clear the Lost Bastille for Gold Covetous Ring+2 and then go back to them, to see, if they can drop anything for me.

Fishing? Well it's cool and all, and gives one more to "achieve." I often like fishing. But one can't deny at this point that essentially, Hello Games seems to now just be testing mechanics/tech re: Light No Fire using No Man's Sky. Maybe to gauge what players think of such. Which isn't a complaint, just an observation. Makes sense really. And perhaps in the end they'll add so much I won't feel like I "have" to play a MP-focus LNF.

I don't know that I'll be able to offer much in the way of assistance here I'm afraid. assetbundle files are something I have tried tinkering with in both games to the result of either corrupting the file or with nothing at all changing. This and other factors mean that PoE1 modding isn't something I have really done much looking into as a result. One tool that might possibly be useful for looking through data in game is the Runtime Unity Editor: https://github.com/ManlyMarco/RuntimeUnityEditor will say, from my limited use of it, it's not the most intuitive interface to use. For one it doesn't seem to filter out duplicate information so searching through scripts and gamedata ends up being pretty labyrinthine. But it at least allow for poking around objects in the scenes and examining their contents. And supposedly it has functionality that allows editing Unity games in realtime. Though I haven't really had the time to really delve into figuring out how that works, or this feature extends to PoE1/Deadfire.

If you haven't recruited them yet: If you have already recruited them: Konstanten (Energetic), Ydwin (Erudite), and Rekke (Average) are all a little fiddly to change if they are already in your party. By default they use player personalities instead of personalities dedicated to them. Currently trying to figure out a workaround that keeps the personalities intact for the player character to use. Hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions.

played with my ranger save a bit more, suddenly realized that if the attacker has a huge advantage of accuracy, they can affored to DW and use Rushed Reload at the same time for EAB, since it doesn't lose much on grazes. Also BPM nerfed hunting bow and pistol modals a little, so my numbers on them might be on the lower end.