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The Outer Worlds. (Some parts were written during the week/before I finished the game for the third time). It has occurred to me that there is a lot of flexibility in the narrative structure - the player can reach a lot of quests from different points. Some, such as the power generator in Edgewater, are quite straightforward, but they still support the player being murderous. Reed Tobson is the bottleneck which the player unavoidably faces. He starts his dialogue right when you exit the elevator, giving you the information to proceed to the other settlement and the powerplant. Unless he is shot at before entering his office. In which case, the information can be taken from his body and the terminal. On the other hand, there are cases where the quest NPC do not appear before the relevant quest has been taken, such as the bounties from the sheriff in Edgewater. This particular quest chain can lead to lonely targets sitting among corpses, should the player visit the camps in advance. I can’t quite recall where I got the NavKey for the Groundbreaker, but I do remember Welles calling. For Monarch, the next large location, there are MSI and the Iconoclasts. For Sanjar, the items can be obtained before meeting him. For Gresham, the first NPC, Catarina does not appear before the Iconoclasts send the player there. It is explained by Catarina delivering supplies on request, not having a store set up. Consequentially, the next quest requires the items obtained from her, thus, the progression is linear. Unless, of course, one just kills the Iconoclast leadership, successfully completing the main part of the story on Monarch. At this point, the lines come together as the UDL gunship crashes onto the surface. The requirements for the ship to appear is to deal with MSI and the Iconoclasts in any manner. Additionally, if the information broker is approached before these quests are completed, he will just inform the player that he cannot transfer the intel required to Welles. I am yet to break into Byzantium, but I assume that the flexibility comes from the main quest giver there - Welles or Akande. I might be mistaken, since I have not followed the Board quest line. If my blog goes live today, I have just noticed that the civilians in Byzantium do take cover when combat starts. --- I have finished my low-int playthrough without crashing into the sun/central star of the system. By going only for the main objectives and companion quests and trying to limit looting (I kept running out of ammo in Edgewater, then I just kept running away from the enemies, so it got better), it took 8 hours. The previous run took 32 hours. I can't say that the ending was worse (I skipped the Iconoclasts' quest line by killing Graham and Zora). Having low Stealth and Dialogue skills was somehow less satisfying than having low combat skills - fewer choices in quests, more combat. But I did defeat RAM in open battle (well, I kited the boss into the first room and kept it knocked down with companions' abilities), so that's something. --- On Dark Souls 2. I consider it to be the best in the series: it is very comfortable to play with keyboard and mouse there are several paths to choose from (all semi-mandatory, but still) rolling requires stat investment to be viable the bosses can be revived on the same NG cycle teleportation to any bonfire is available (would prefer to have a more interconnected world, but with several quite linear paths, it is good enough) there are some light differences between NG cycles there is poise and the game's speed/required reaction time is generally adequate (it became much worse in DS3 and later games) I can't quite recall the foes' exact movesets, but the hitboxes attached were quite different, so it was good. Regarding the weapons, the appeal of the 2H weapons was in the ability to break poise. I used mostly katanas or long swords, so cannot tell how effective it was. I do hope that it is clear that the points above are very subjective. I also have no intention to try to get all achievements due to the farming required.

Ok first of all I'm ridiculously excited that someone is using the User Script feature Your post has made me realize the API is severely lacking some features (like adding new GameDataObjects, editing/accessing StringTable text...) Besides that, I've started working on setting up User Scripts with an external editor, which I think would help tremendously: I'll make sure to write a new Wiki page for User Scripts as well, and instructions to configure VS Code properly for this. YES Thanks I'm genuinely happy about the name, I liked how Fallout's G.E.C.K. modding kit was named after an in-universe thing and wanted something similar.

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).

This build was created for a collaboration with @Aestus who runs the Youtube channel Aestus_RPG. Here's the video where we talk about this and other builds. This is build 1 of 5 from that collaboration. ----------------------------------------- This build is mainly meant for inspiration. You don't need to follow it in detail to have fun. If you understand the key features - the basic idea what makes this build special - you can usually deviate from my non-core attribute-, skill-, gear- and ability selection and form the build to your own likings and ideas. I do not try to produce the most powerful uberbuilds (often those are the most boring to play in he long run) but to focus on having fun while playing. Usually that means the build is powerful - but it's not the main focus. If you like to read about my personal requirements for "fun to play" builds, you can jump to a list below this post ----------------------------------------- rancfre Ghostoo Cullywoot was born in Rauatai to human parents: a Berserker mom named Clawsine and a Helwalker Monk dad named Auamensh - who didn't really have the most healthy relationship as you can imagine... she losing her temper all the time while he enjoyed blows tis body and all that kerfuffle. But they tried for the kid's sake and somehow managed to raise Wrancfre. He learned the way of the Berserker as well as the path of the Helwalkers. Is parents drummed it into him (with swift flurries often) that one never couldn't cross those streams. At the age of 16 Wranfcfe still hadn't decided whose footsteps to follow. Everybody and their pets, animal companions and even conjured familiars told him he could not do both - because it is known that this foolishness would mean instant suicide. So he crossed the streams... "The power of pain So hard to sustain Cleaning my soul Frenzy on, very noisin' Love with spikes of pois'n Purge the soul Make wounds your gooooal!" - Wrancfre while bodyblowing some c0cky wizards - =================================== The Fountain of Woe =================================== Difficulty: PotD -------------------------------------------------------------- Solo: untested -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Ravager - Berserker/Helwalker -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Human (any subrace) -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Rauatai (or any) - Laborer (or any) -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats (w/o Berath's Blessings, ★=recommendation) MIG: 10 (do not go higher - so with +2 from BB and +1 from Human pick 7 base) CON: 19 (18 + 1 Rauatai) ★★ DEX: 14 PER: 18 ★ INT: 14 RES: 04 (3 + 1 Human) -------------------------------------------------------------- the unique icons for all passive abilities are part of the Community Patch mod Abilities | Skills | Proficiencies - (!=important, r=recommended) 01. Frenzy (!) + Force of Anguish (!) | Morning Star (!) + Pollaxe 02. Swift Strikes (!) | +1 Athletics (->4), +1 Intimidate (->2) 03. Blooded | +1 Athletics (->5), +1 Survival (->3) 04. Thick Skinned + Two-Handed Style | +1 Athletics (->6), +1 Intimidate (->3) | Pike 05. Barbaric Blow (r) | +1 Athletics (->7), +1 Insight (->2) 06. Long Stride | +1 Athletics (->8), +1 Insight (->3) 07. Bloodlust + Swift Flurry (!) | +1 Athletics (->9), +1 Intimidate (->4) 08. Efficient Anguish | +1 Athletics (->10), +1 Survival (->4) | Battle Axe 09. One Stands Alone | +1 Athletics (->11 ), +1 Bluff (->1) 10. Spirit Frenzy (!) + Duality of Mortal Presence (r) | +1 Athletics (->12), +1 Bluff (->2) 11. Bloody Slaughter | +1 Athletics (->13), +1 Bluff (->3) 12. Rooting Pain | +1 Athletics (-> 14), +1 Intimidate (->5) | Rod 13. Tough + Enervating Blows (!) | +1 Athletics (->15), +1 Survival (->5) 14. Leap | +1 Athletics (->16), +1 Insight (->4) 15. Barbaric Smash (r) | +1 Athletics (->17), +1 Bluff (->4) 16. Brute Force (!) + Turning Wheel (r) | +1 Athletics (->18), +1 Intimidate (->6) | Quarterstaff 17. Savage Defiance | +1 Athletics (->19), +1 Intimidate (->7) 18. Interrupting Blows | +1 Athletics (->20), +1 Survival (->6) 19. Blood Thirst (!) + Heartbeat Drumming (!) | +1 Athletics (->21), +1 Intimidate (->8) 20. Stalwart Defiance | +1 Athletics (->22), +1 Survival (->7) | Estoc --------------------------------------------------------------- Items (!=important, r=recommended) Weapon Set 1: Saru Sichr (! - +Paralytic, +Legendary) Weapon Set 2: Lord Darryn's Voulge Head: Death's Maw (r - for self-damage resistance) Back: Cloak of Greater Protection Neck: Amulet of Greater Health (r - or a +1 CON amulet like Cipher's Shackles) Armor: Devil of Caroc Breastplate (! +Legendary (a), +Devil's Due (r) - regaining health on crit, +Mechnical Mind (!) - remove Berserker Confusion) Waist: The Undying Burden (r - for self- damage resistance and more CON->health) Hands: Gauntlets of Greater Reliability (r - helps to graze enemies with very high defenses with Body Blows) Rings: Voidward (! - greater self-damage resistance), Ring of Prosperity's Fortune (helps with crits when rich) or Chamaeleon's Touch (+1 CON & +1 DEX) Boots: Boots of the Stone Pet: Abraham (not only speed but also +10 health on kill) or Socrates (+20 health on kill - recommended if Edér uses Abraham -> +30 health on kill) --------------------------------------------------------------- What is this build about: gaining wounds incredibly fast from Frenzy‘s self damage, paired with the Helwalker‘s rising MIG bonus (+1 per Wound) and the increased damage to self (+5% per Wound). together with the self damage you're not only gaining wounds faster than you can spend them but you also profit from Blooded (+25% dmg) as well as Fighting Spirit (humans’ passive ability, +7 ACC, +15% dmg) lowering enemies‘ fortitude defense a LOT on the fly with: Morning Star‘s modal „Body Blows“: -25 Spirit Frenzy (staggers): -10 (-5 MIG) Enervating Blows (weakens): -10 (-5 CON) targeting enemies' lowered Fortitude: first with special abilites like Force of Anguish/Efficient Anguish later with Brute Force: target Fortitude with all attacks that would target deflection instead (if Fortitude is lower) because of this, extreme accuracy is not required to deliver lots of critical hits (but of course it would still help, so please send buffs ) Force of Aguish pushes enemies into your Carnage AoE. Usually the initial target of your hits doesn't get affected by Carnage. With Force of Anguish it does! You push the enemy into Carnage Area before Carnage dmg get rolled - so Carnage treats the enemy like any other who's in the AoE: raw dmg. This means that Force of Anguish with Carnage does extra raw damage to single targets which is great. using a multihit weapon and pair it with Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming. A weapon such as the Morning Star Saru Sichr: it has 2 attack rolls, the normal physical pierce/crush roll and "Poison-Dipped", a DoT effect that rolls against Fortitude (what a nice coincidende). They both count as „proper“ melee attacks and they can both trigger Swift Flurry and HBD when they critically hit! The great thing about such multihit weapons (there are others such as the flail Sun & Moon or the Pike Wicked Beast) is: no matter which attack roll crits and triggers SF or HBD, those additional attacks roll twice again: the physical and the additonal one. Those can crit again and trigger another SF/HBD attacks and so on and so forth, creating a loop. This is a huge advantage over single hit weapons and raises the chance to cause a deadly loop of crits that can kill an enemy on the spot. Works best against low fortitude foes obviously. in addition to the Swift Flurry stuff the DoT of Saru Sichr is very powerful: the DoT stacks with itself - and every time you reapply the DoT you trigger a tick immediately which leads to a significant increase of dps (same as with Bleeding Cuts from Battle Axes or Deep Wounds). it also interrupts very reliably with not only Force of Anguish, but also Rooting Pain. Since you gain wounds so frequently you also trigger Rooting Pain frequently which interrupts bystanders (and damages them a bit) pair all that with Blood Thirst at the latest levels… essentially it is a debuffing+CC+damage-dealing build, best used for hunting down squishy but dangerous enemies. But is also very helpful against bosses due to the fast and reliable debuffing of Fortitude, which helps most party members to land spells a lot more easily etc. Issues: the self damage which gives you a lot of wounds also kills you quickly the self damage of Berserker’s Frenzy scales steeply with Power Level (unusual +2 per PL base dmg). This base damage gets boosted by MIG, the Helwalker’s increased self dmg percentage (remember +5% per wound), Blooded (+25%) and effects of items (such as Baubles of the Fin or a pet like Harley etc.). That's the main resaon to not raise your base MIG over 10. You will gain +15 MIG already from Frenzy and the Helwalker passive - you don't need more and you don't want more because it makes you go down more quickly. to avoid killing yourself you should def. raise CON, pick up items with CON and/or health bonuses. In addition pick “Tough” and wear an amulet of Greater Health. This makes the build surprisingly sturdy at the early levels bc. the self dmg is still low. also use items that give you resitance to damage (Undying Burden, Death's Maw, Voidward!) - they work very well to soften the self damage and make it manageable. This, together with the high health, balaces out the self damage at higher levels very well. unintuitively picking Iron Wheel is not a good solution. Even though it raises CON and AR and sounds lie a good idea: it doesn’t stack with Berserker’s Hardy (+5 CON and +2 AR) - so a lot of its effects would be wasted. Better to pick Turniung Wheel for more dmg and longer duration of buffs (such as Swift Flurry). get items that heal you up: Abraham (+10 health per kill) or Socrates (+20 health per kill) and the Devil of Caroc Breastplate (healing over time on crit - also useful against Confusion) This build profits a lot from a good healer in the party obviously. But raising Athletics like there's nothing else also helps. It heals you a great deal at 20+. Savage Defiance is better than going down in a pinch, too. Berserker’s Confusion is annoying and cannot be exploited with this build - so you want to get rid of it asap. You could do that with Enlightened Agony - but that’s wasting 2 ability points. Better to get Devil of Caroc Breastplate and enchant it. Or use food like Luminous Lobster. But since the Breastplate also heals on crit it’s the best pick imo. as long as you have to deal with Confusion do NOT pick Rooting Pain! It will interrupt yourself. Only pick Rooting Pain when you have enchanted the Breastplate properly (or got rid of Confusion otherwise) the DoT "Poison Dipped" of Saru-Sichr which produces that double-hit effect for SF/HBD does not work against poison-immune foes. Why is it fun? always wounds to spend and buff you up - alsmost never has to use auto-attacks right from the start. hits very well right away: Body Blows + Force of Enguish alone carry the build through early game alone - because Boy Blows is a "free" and big defense debuff/ACC buff right away. good weapon damage even without exploiting critical hits nice CC early on - especially satisfying when using it against casters an other annoying enemies later becomes even stronger with Spirit Frenzy and Enervating Blows, debuffing Fortitude even more with the introduction of SF and then Brute Force it makes another leap finalizing the fun ability collection with Heartbeat Drumming and Blood Thirst, who doesn't like crit chains + Blood Thirst, right? so it’s just works well from start to finish - which makes it enjoyable when a crit loop happens (and that's often if you focus on the right enemies) it’s just jawdropping I personally enjoy the challenge to keep it alive lots of crits, paired with the right voice (noble for me) results in lots of contagious laughter during battle - which is just so fun and is lightening my mood Hope you enjoy! Cheers!

I fixed it yet, but thank you

So I did what any sane person would have done and I opened an Excel sheet with parameters. I tried various combinations of Damages bonus, crit damages bonus and accuracy malus (I had the intuition that a bigger acc malus would make the modal more defined) And I found -15 Acc +66% bonus damages to be quite interesting balance (no crit bonus damages, this only works for very high acc and could lead to degenerate builds with high Hit to Crit chances). Hypothesis similar to yours, except crit damages only regular +25% vs def +25 : x0.91 damages vs equal def : x1.08 damages (but you get less hit, which is detrimental to various hit based effects, worth a +15% damages talent) vs -25 def : x1.12 damages (worth a +25% damages talent) vs -50 def : x1.22 damages (not that impressive but Proficiencies come for free) Basically you deal ~10% multiplicative damages if you acc is slightly better than foe defense, the bigger the difference, the bigger the benefit. Turn off when you want to hit something with an affliction applying attack, vs high defense target (+10+ higher def, you still do same damages vs a couple of def points), and if underPEN. Turn on if blinded of course. Hit to Crit and Miss to Graze will help you immensely (BPM Citzal Tier IX Greatsword has Unstoppable Force mod granting 100% Miss to Graze ) I think it is perfectly understandable and usable this way. Funnily enough BPM Pistol and Hunting Bow modal do -15 Acc +66% recovery speed, although not perfectly comparable since +100% speed bonus is rare, I think it worth mentionning.

The "problem" with the thrusting swords in Dreck Souls 2 is that the the Stone Ring adds flat additional poise damage per attack. Sure, any ultra greatsword has 50 poise damage, and a rapier for instance deals only 10. But the rapier can hit 5 times while not expending much of your stamina in the time span it takes to swing your sword, for the 50 poise damage alone, never mind the additional 150 poise damage from the ring. Only weapons that can knock down enemies are more useful in shutting them down (i.e. great hammers). Then there's the flat bonus of the Ring of Blades per hit and the Leo Ring's increased counter attack damage. It's silly that a rapier does 500+ damage per hit on a boss without having the time commitment problem that come with the slower attacks of larger weapons, meaning you can be more aggressive, can get way more hits in, and the attacks barely cost any stamina. For some extra fun you can use a poison infused Black Scorpion Stinger with Sanctum Knight Gauntlet and the Rat Crest Ring. It's enough to poison anything that is not poison immune in four hits. One-handed you can get your enemies poisoned in a second and a half. It also does good overall damage. Lastly, there's a reason most invaders you still see active in the game carry buffed Ice Rapiers. Although I have no idea how people could possibly enjoy pvp in these games, but apparently they do.

I don't know. But at some point, after stacking many -% recovery/reloading time bonuses, there was no noticable difference anymore - and when I switched on the modal (+50% reloading time) the reloading time went up less than it should have. So I assumed I must have hit the cap before. Edit: or maybe it was with a somewhat similar party setup but on a Streetfighter/Arc.Ar. and a Troubadour as party member where I had that experience. I tested a lot of arbalest+modal characters that day and finally settled on AA/Troubadour. But yes: I guess unless you use DW pistols you won't "accidentally" hit the cap.

From Pillars to Avowed tl;dw edition.

BG3 back in the Steam top 3 top sellers. KCD II being close to the top ten also, despite being half a year away still. If a properly scaled and smoothly produced Bloodlines 2 were around, it could have completed a trilogy of possible big budget RPG incline. But you know... Meanwhile, Veilguard is somewhere sandwiched in between Roboquest and Tavern Manager Simulator. And Avowed, well... that doesn't have the brand recognition, being based in that universe of that pirate CRPG noboy's played but me. That's but Steam but hear me out. I wonder if analysts are gonna realize that these action-adventure-RPG type of power fantasies may all compete for roughly the same audience. After all, every other action/adventure type of game has been incorporating RPG elements since forever. Upgrading, looting and leveling has proven to be quite addictive, after all. And even Brian Bloody Fargo has been on record of saying that Red Dead Redemption 2 had been his favourite RPG of the past a thousand years or so. And Veilguard doesn't even seem to sport much in terms of dialogue options and expression (certainly not in what was shown). Unlike Avowed, it's a Dragon Age game though, so that's something. Else, if it wouldn't be, I'd take the guess this would turn limited heads. Both Avowed and Veilguard draw finite buzz outside of their respective fanbases as is. Due to the lack of major marketing effort else, a German podcast run by a former Gamestar editor even speculated that EA may have internally downgraded Veilguard. In the sense of: "Better not blow any more major money on this, or else we may never recoup / make a good chunk of profit." The game wasn't even present at Gamescom, after all. I'm sure it'll do reasonably. Avowed I'm not so sure yet. Both look pretty "mid" to me so far (really liked Pentiment, but obviously completely different type of project). Still, KCD II. Already released to positive reviews (so heavily inspired by MImimi, they promoted it themselves on their social media).

I doubt so. I've never changed the files and I presume it worked. I'm not the author of this specific part though.

The Outer Worlds I expected to see a low-int option here. Though, landing on Cascadia is much faster than going through Roseway. I had just enough Stealth skill to pickpocket the armour. End-game spoilers

It seems -accuracy +damage means it's always going to be a win more situation. Did some quick calculations if adding +30% crit damage on top: If acc-defense = 25, weapon_modifier = 100%: no modal: 182.5% per hit modal: 191% if acc-defense = 50, weapon_modifier = 100%: no modal: 215% modal: 244% looking at the results, I think it's still "don't bother" territory. 100% total weapon modifier is not hard to reach with legendary weapons, and having accuracy be 50 higher than defense is quite situational. I guess a ranger against Guardian of Ukaizo is the example here, but would you be using a greatsword in that fight to begin with? I think if you intend to keep the +damage design, the numbers need to be much higher. Like resulting in a 1.3* overall damage when acc-defense = 50. It's kind of wierd that they got a pretty niche but accurate idea about longsword's half-swording, but greatsword is back to this stereotypical berserking meathead weapon.

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

https://www.eurogamer.net/the-eurogamer-100

Sigh. I doubt my PC will carry No Man's Sky on pretty settings anymore. Plus Avowed some time in future, BG3 got the last patch so Goatee edition soonish...oh well. One more tooth implant and I can start thinking about a new rig.

I had a little bit of time today again before the sleep, so I have run inside No-Man’s Wharf and cleared the area, including the Flexile Sentry boss. I needed 3 attempts, as the NG+ adds joined the fight almost imediately, so my first attempt ended after 5 seconds (In PS3 vanilla, there as enough time to shoot one Shadow Assassin down with a spell after entering the fog gate). Almost got him on 2nd try, but I started to be to greedy, when the water level started to rise up to my hips, so I have run out of stamina in moddle of his combo.

At first I only read this part of the post and wasn't sure if I was reading the What are you Playing Now thread or the What You've Done Today thread.

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.

I tried the free demo for We Harvest Shadows via Steam. It's a 1st person "farming horror allegory". It has a day to day chores/mission form, although one can take as long as you want I think to finish the daily chores (finishing such chores advances the story/missions). You're out on a farm in self-isolation, and maybe you're a little (or a lot) mentally unstable. Or maybe it's actually haunted. Or maybe ... I farmed a few tomatoes/chopped logs for money. Built a chicken coop to sell eggs for more money. Bought blueprints, and axe, planted more tomatoes. Took in a stray cat, feed it every day. Explored an old barn and was chased by wolves. Didn't go to bed early enough because I was trying to finish the daily "chores" assigned, and the farm/house began to make creepy noises, whispers and shadows until it became too creepy so I scuttled back to the room to get my sleep.....I like the concept and the artstyle was ok. And the cat was cute. It's probably going to be early access ofc. But I wishlisted it. We'll see.

I'm surprised they didn't get the Shadowrun licence renewed, I thought the last three games were well recieved? I guess the publisher wants to go bigger or something and make the next Cyberpunk. Their loss.

The game has a bunch of containers with magical items in them. Exactly which item depends on the day of month you loot them... and who the party leader is? Rather than resigning ourselves to what Countess Circumstance (I don't want to say Lady Luck here) has decided we'll get, some of us endeavor to wait until specific days to loot these containers, or just ignore them and console in the item we want. I would like to solve this with a mod. My idea is that these containers will instead hold a Capricious Cache. There will be many such CCs, each with a loot table corresponding to the container in which it was found. You can put the CC in a quick item slot, and activating it will cause you to launch into a dialogue with yourself. You will get a list of items matching what could have been in the container, as well as options to pick the "item of the day" and the most valuable item. The Capricious Cache will then be destroyed. I have some plans to make this all feel immersive, but my main concern is, are these mechanics achievable through modding? I need to: Create a bunch of custom items Make the containers hold these custom items instead of the random loot Make it so that the custom item can trigger a dialogue (like the Deck of Many Things from Watcher's Keep) Make it so that the dialogue destroys the item and gives you a reward based on what you chose in the dialogue (Bonus: Make the dialogue use some form of global variable so you don't get the full introduction to the Capricious Cache every time you use one) The Garodh's Chorus items trigger dialogue when looted, so I can probably steal mechanics from those (although it'd be a bonus if you could take the CC with you and postpone the decision).

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.

I have defeated Ancient Dragon and Vendrick today. Ancient dragon was interesting. I have postponed to go and fight against him for a very long time, as he was definitely the hardest boss for me in Vanilla game. I spent more than 150 attempts in total in all encounters with him O.o To my surprise, I have defeated him today on my first try O.o I still can't believe it. TBH I have to say, the Fire Resistance items from DLCs definitely helped me to survive his dragon breath. Vendrick on the other had, I have thought, would be easier form these two. But of course I got few time completely destroyed, before I have relearned his moves and attacks. Then, on my 4th or 5th try, I have defeated him without being hit The funniest thing about it was, that the previous attempt, I was not able even to touch him, as he destroyed me in less than 5 seconds after entering the fog gate, as I have forgotten, that his attacks drain like whole stamina when blocking, and I was stunned with his first attack, and then promptly finished with two more swings Next in line, before entering the NG+, just a little bit of grinding for missing items.

Harebrained Schemes are working on Survival Horror RPG. On their FB Page few days ago, they have also mentioned, that they were not able to secure Shadowrun, nor Battletech licences for the foreseeable future.

Back at the end of May Wolcen Studios announced that come September, they will shut down the multiplayer functionality for Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem, citing unsolvable issues with their current technology and codebase as a reason that they cannot keep supporting the game. That, and probably also because they never added any microtransactions to the game, meaning there never really was a steady stream of income from the multiplayer part, and the game costs 25€ on Steam. They have extended that deadline to September 17th now. Dawn's Healing is an achievement yout get for reviving a fallen party member. They're actually still working on finding a replacement for the achievement so players can complete them all even when multiplayer no longer exists. I'm pretty sure they're honest about the reasons for the shutdown being more a technical quagmire than a financial one. First of all Wolcen Studios is a tiny developer, small enough to be called an indie studio, and they financed the development through Kickstarter. I backed the game at a tier that allowed me to play the early versions, which were incredibly different from the final product (also used to be called Umbra, not Wolcen). The game used to have this enormous open world to run around in, just without much content, and the final release version had much smaller corridor-style levels, more akin to what Diablo 2 did in its third act. Still, those early versions had a fun charm to them that was lost with the more professional official release. Right at the end of the tutorial area before accessing the open world in the alpha builds you found a spell that shoots lightning, called "Unlimited Power" - it was just hilarious. Anyway, what I want to say is that from that development alone it seems like they ran into issues with their intended game design and changed it. It also took them so long to develop that the neat ideas they had for the then somewhat lacking ARGP genre were just, you know, not that novel any more when it finally came out. it is also a game that I think really shows the pitfalls of Kickstarted campaigns taking off and being more successful than initially planned. They raised double the amount of money they wanted for their original vision, and, just like the Pillars of Eternity campaign, they scrambled to come up with stretch goals, one of them being the multiplayer part. I am convinced that it was that stretch goal that ultimately killed the open world aspect of the game they promised. So what they eventually released was a decent ARPG for a small studio, with some fun mechanics and okay gameplay. I should probably replay the game now that the final story elements are out. I played it for a while, but the final chapter of the campaign released sometime afterwards.

You should ask Eldar, do you really think it is a coincidence that he resurfaced and even wrote a blog post right after Gromnir disappeared?

Hi Hi Amazing work with Apotheosis, even the name is wonderfully chosen! I have been having a blast putting in more AI conditionals and stuff like that However as I am just an amateur at programming I'm not sure how to acces the names / string names of certain fields in the User scripts. For example I know I need string number 253, but idk how to get the localized name for this string. I am trying to see if I can add all spell buffs as a CustomAIConditionalScriptSet. This so I can realize my grand master plan AI first for my own party, then for mobs :D I know how to do it manually but doing it in an automated way sounds cool to try But first things first, making the spell CustomAIConditionalCategory for each class. However I am lost with the stringindextable and stuff like that, I can't solve an easy thing like the following: Where I just want to make an extra category for each existing class SetGameDataPath("ai.gamedatabundle"); foreach (var POEClass in Components<CharacterClassComponent>()) { CustomAIConditionalCategoryComponent test = new CustomAIConditionalCategoryComponent { CategoryName = POEClass.DisplayName }; } Sincerely lalolalo9

I've started by trying to alter the loot of a container. In PillarsOfEternity_Data there are a bunch of level and sharedassets files. level116 (no extension) seems to be the Encampment map; the very first area of the game. Viewing this with Unity Asset Bundle Extractor, there is a GameObject called Container_2D_Cloth_Dissapointer_H, which sounds like it should contain a certain pistol. Now, which variable says so? The GameObject contains an array of 12 ComponentPairs. Position 0 seems to be dealing with the visual representation of the container, and position 9 with the sound effect of looting it. The remaining 10 are all mysteries to me, all of them having this structure: The View asset of the m_GameObject simply selects the GameObject Base at the top of the hierarchy; it seems to reference the container I'm already viewing. If I click the View asset at the bottom, I get an error message saying Unable to resolve the target asset. Since I had no guesses here, I started thinking that perhaps the pairing between containers and contents happens elsewhere. After all, the GameObject has a name, so it would be simple to map it. But, looking at the dependencies of this level, we see sharedassets88.assets. This generally refers to Endless Paths level 15 loot, which probably not coincidentally is where The Disappointer ends up if you don't find it while doing the starting area. Since the level depends on this asset, it's probably because it references The Disappointer in some way. And indeed, opening this sharedasset, we find a GameObject called Pistol_BACKER_The_Disappointer. Mind you, the item itself (stats etc) seems to be defined in PillarsOfEternity_Data\assetbundles\prefabs\objectbundle\pistol_backer_the_disappointer. So as my last idea, I thought that perhaps these m_FileID and m_PathID would refer to the GameObject in another file. For starters, the sharedassets88 dependency is 18th on the dependency list in UABE. The list also doesn't use zero-index. All these mysterious array positions refer to FileID 0 or 1. So, clearly they are not referencing the same list. What about the PathID then? Pistol_BACKER_The_Disappointer has PathID 89 in sharedassets88.assets, but none of the array positions reference this value. There is also a shareadassets88.assets.resS file large enough to be significant, but UABE cannot read it. I'm out of guesses. @Kvellen and @Noqn, my trusty Deadfire Modding Mentors, any chance you know anything about this too?

The last couple minutes or so, was basically how my 14y.o self+friends sounded during end of landline phone convos. Except a much more polite, calm, and robotic version.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) I enjoyed it. I think that I would have preferred it if it was more like other Mad Max films taking place during a single conflict instead of an origin story, but preferences aside the film was solid enough. The cgi means that visually it can be lacking but for me at least it wasn't as grating as superhero trash. I hope if they do another Mad Max there's a big twist reveal that the rest of the world is still normal but only Australia has descended into chaos. Drive-Away Dolls (2024) Not gonna lie, serious contender for movie of the year. Ethan Cohen still has the Fargo juice and really pumped it to make this.

Right using these should allow for simple changing of the poses of Rekke, Ydwin and Konstanten. This avoids the issue of removing pose options from the player, simply by creating an extra copy that the player character and adventurers use. Though if the player character or adventurer is currently using the Average (The Default Pose), Energetic, or Erudite poses you'll have to reselect it though the ingame customisation menu for the correct idle animation to play. Konstanten: KonstantenWorkAround.gamedatabundle Ywdwin: YdwinWorkAround.gamedatabundle Rekke: RekkeWorkAround.gamedatabundle Rekke's has a lot more code as there are several characters who use the Average pose. All I've done is change the "PersonalityID" of these characters, which should work since none of them are (from what I can tell) stored on the savefile.