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Avowed Is Much More Than Just Obsidian’s Take on Skyrim

Fired up Farthest Frontier, apparently you can get items that give buffs. Not sure if I like that, but whatever, Caesar had the gods buffing you why is some merchant selling you a magical wreath any different. Game's come a long way since I first played the EA build, lot more stuff at tier 3 and there's even a tier 4 apparently. Soldiers are annoyingly expensive, I kitted out a bunch best I could and a raider camp still killed most.

It's a 82 Metacritic overall -- which makes it barely rank in the top100 for 2024 overall. It's also a game that over 30% of critics apparently don't recommend, as aggregators have adjusted to this score inflation by marking every review under a 7.5 as "mixed". So much for the BIG RETURN OF BIOWARE. This plus there being two games with a score of below 50 is the state of game reviews. It's not merely IGN by the way. That's a red herring. But according to the video's logics, IGN shouldn't use the lower grades for Hollywood movies as well -- which they do. And as argued, nobody reviews amateur and indie movies uploaded to the internet as well. The movies that see coverage and marked as mediocre to stinkers are noteable productions, and not comparable to garage indies publishing their first game on Steam. Germany's biggest (PC) mag is Gamestar. They officially have games scoring in the 70s range as "good" ones, 60s range as "ok" ones, 80s score as "getting the best out of their genre", and 90s as "exceptioinal games anybody should experience". Now I'm a fan of CRPGs -- but pretty much any major one got at least high 80s scores from them, both Pillars games 90s scores, Pathfinder WOTR as well -- and of course BG3. I still think that's rather generous (and I've enjoyed most of those). Meanwhile, in general, take a look at which bigger RPG-likes at all were ranked lowly in many many years. I can tell you two: Fallout 76 (50s Metascore) and Alpha Protocol (60s Metascore). Tellingly two titles that were perceived as having severe issues upon launch. Game reviews are pretty technical in general -- as argued, Michael Bay should consider doing movies. Technically, you can hardly rip him to shreds the way he is by movie critics. Unfortunately, movies as well, aren't but technology. 😄 Meanwhile, games can hardly "fail", unless they're bugged to crap.

7 Days has this rule where zombies can spawn on anything but player crafted blocks, which does not include player crafted terrain-voxel blocks (vs. building blocks). This makes sense since out in the world you need zombies to spawn, well, out in the world. Not to mention, all terrain voxels have, like, 100-200HP, which is useless. A bear could fart in your yard and damage them. But this means your "backyard" and any surrounding perimeter is always going to look like a cobblestone or concrete parking lot. Fences won't keep them from spawning if your yard is any kind of terrain/asphalt. I got fed up/bored with that and copied/created new terrain blocks ("topsoil2, gravel2" etc)/made craft recipes for them, defined that zombies can't spawn on them, and gave them 10K hit points. I seem to have done it correctly and it works just fine - I can finally have a yard that looks like ... a freaking yard. I guess I am happy. But now I'm bored again.

I view it as a cenotaph to Bioware as it was at its peak. Here's hoping it stays for a long, long time so I could come and pay annual respects.

Obsidian has quite deliberately avoided allowing players to make too earth shattering decisions - those are made by characters who influence our decision (Thaos, Eothas). While allowing player's to make BIG CHOICES can be rewarding in RPGs, in always results in problems in sequels. So far, impact we had as Watcher was mostly localised, so as we move from location to location, in the world full of misinformation, and without printing press, they can write around the little influence that we had. Not that Obsidian already hasn't struggled with reactivity when it comes to returning companions.... Anyway. Lödwyn's presence was known since story trailer - it was confirmed it was her in interviews at the time. If she plays major role, I would assume no reactivity to Deadfire - or maybe Obs will still write around it. Somehow. Woedica likes upholding rules, and breaking them herself. Still, she was such a minor character in Deadfire, I would find it odd if Obs would bring her back, just to break continuity. One would think any other representative of the Steel Garotte would do. Assuming of course, she is present during main events of Avowed, and not some kind of prologue that take place before her departure (and potential demise) to Deadfire. You say, you know there is no save import. Are we sure there won't be one? It would be counterintuitive for a fresh start, but if done discretly, some minor reactivity might be a nice bonus for returning players. In the ending of Valian Faction quest one of the potential leaders end up being exiled to the Living Lands. I doubt that's a coinsidence. I don't expect a save import, mind you, but I also wouldn't be that shocked if there was one.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. The tl;dr: cannot recommend at this time unless you're a hardcore fan. Game is just plain broken, and no, I don't mean all the complaints about performance or crashes (haven't experienced any of that, the game runs just fine for me). It turns out the system that makes The Zone come alive ("A Life 2") is just not functioning properly (as confirmed by the devs), so NPCs just spawn out of thin air, often pretty much on top of the character, rather than organically wandering in and interacting with each-other, and the player. Given that this is the system that makes S.T.A.L.K.E.R., well, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. that's kind of a big deal... (not to mention that a military patrol spawning on top of you is ... not a good time early in the game) There's some other things I'm not too fond of, but nothing that's a deal-breaker, at least that I've found so far. The game very much feels like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. so when they eventually get The Zone working as it should I'm expecting to put in many, many hours.

Ah, well that was my best guess for what could have happened. Not really sure what trigger for the conversation is, maybe it's just a strange edge case that you stumbled into. What I will say from looking at the scripting for the endslides of PoE1, "n_Aloth_ending" = "0" is a valid outcome for the end of the game. To accommodate this the logic for Aloth's endslide also uses the Authority/Autonomy variables I mentioned as a fallback to decided which ending you get for him. The result of this will be the same outcome as if n_Aloth_ending were "2" or "3", which is also the case in Deadfire. Which is what the "Autonomy ≥ Authority" or "Authority > Autonomy" on the endings page of the wiki that Chaospread linked refers to. Likewise Deadfire only needs to use these as a fallback for the n_Aloth_ending = "0" outcome, which is why they aren't included in the Custom Legacy Creation options. If it makes things simpler, from what you've described your responses in PoE1 pushed Aloth towards Autonomy. So "He became dedicated to dismantling the Leaden Key-" is what you should pick to match your PoE1 save. 😁 "0" is the default value of most global variables in these games. His personal quest, and death in PoE1 are tracked by separate variables. Honestly my advice is to save your sanity and just not think too much into the meaning behind these numbers. Speaking from experience divining purpose from variables is a path of madness and mod creation! The logic that determines it is likely something like: "is the number in Eder's Faith axis variable less than 0?" -1 and -5 (both less than 0) are both valid so the statement passes. There is a another statement that is something like: "is the number in Eder's Faith axis 0 or higher?" Which can't pass since the number is in the negative. If you are referring to Edér being both "Anti-Eothasian" and "Pro-Eothasian" that is always the case in Deadfire. Aloth is the only Deadfire companion with that kind of reactivity. Edér still regards Eothasians (worshipers of Eothas) as genuinely good honest people, and dislikes those who would say otherwise. After all he did witness, and endured to some extent, the persecution of worshipers of Eothas after the Saints War. However his opinions on Eothas (the god) isn't represented in his likes and dislikes. I think in Deadfire Edér can still at times come off as being devoted to Eothas even if he's no longer believes that the gods have the best interests of Kith in mind. It could be he's still reluctant reach to admit his god is not infallible without first hearing the big green man out first. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I am inclined here to agree with Zoraptor again. The statement, that “We do not review bad games” does not hold water IMHO. As I can say, that I have played few games, which have been absolutely terrible/boring snorefest, which has got the rating of 7/10 or even above. They do review bad games, but they are afraid to give it proper evaluation. Newest Dragon Age is prime example of that 🤷‍♂️ IGN and Gamespot gave it 9/10 and Eurogamer even 10/10 FFS… If this does not show the current state of quality of game reviews, than I do not know what 🤷‍♂️

I've never liked the 'bad games do not get reviewed' explanation for review inflation because sure it's usually cheap/ unknown games don't get reviewed, but it's also cheap/ unknown movies that don't get reviewed. Not like movie critics regularly watch and review the film equivalent of a steam Asset Flip game either. Ultimately the problem is that if you go by game reviews there has basically never been a bad big budget/ hyped/ important game, their scale starts at 7. For the less fortunate, it starts at maybe 5. That is not the case for film, they're far more likely to use the full scale, and to do so even if it's a big title. Also rather like the original games in the series. SoC and CS had, uh, one or two bugs at launch, it's fair to say, and CoP was not that much better. Indeed, the non modded experience for them has some... quirks to this day.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is releasing in a short while, 30 minutes if I recall, lots of bugs according to the reviews. Ofcourse a day one patch is coming, but we'll see how much that fixes. I preordered as soon as they opened it up, so I'll be playing regardless, I've a high tolerance for jank and bugs, and I was very lucky with Cyberpunk 2077 on release. My one complaint would be that the main character isn't trans as a giant **** you to Russians, but oh well 😄 Here's the release trailer, not going to post any of the reviews because everyone has their own favourites

They should hire Ricky Gervais to host those award shows… might be worth watching then

Who summoned me? DoTs and what we know about them: - they deal damage over time. duh - first tick deals damage immediately on 0s. - attack resolution is checked only once (when the DoT was being applied); but enemy DR is checked on each tick. - they do not benefit from elemental talents, like: Scion of Flame, Spirit of Decay, etc. - they do not benefit from creature talents, like: Beast Slayer, Ghost Hunter, etc. - their ticks do not trigger Combusting Wounds. (checked in v3.05) - dots should not be confused with spells that deal periodic damage (like Sacred Immolation, Storm of Holy Fire or Symbol of <Deity>) .- dots' description always specifies that they deal a set x amount of damage over y duration.. There are two types of DoTs (by tick-rate): - hazard DoTs have a tick rate interval of 1s (but afaik there are no hazard DoTs in the game; so forget it) - regular DoTs have a tick rate interval of 3s, e.g: .- if DoT deals damage over 12s, it means it will apply tick damage at: 0s, 3s, 6s, 9s, 12s .- if DoT deals damage over 11s, it means it will apply tick damage at: 0s, 3s, 6s, 9s, 11s; but the last tick will deal less damage. - notes: Cleansing Flames doubles tick rate of all applied DoTs, for the duration of it's effect. Meaning that DoTs will tick every 1.5s, yet they do retain their total duration. There are two types of DoTs (by the way they scale with Int) - regular (like Shining Beacon, Disintegration, Soul Ignition) - their duration is increased by Int, and so is total damage. - fixed (like Wounding Shot, Wounding) - their duration is increased by Int, but total damage remains the same. I.e. higher Int reduces dps. How the total (pre-DR) damage is calculated? - total_damage (regular DoT)(before DR) = base_damage * (1 + might_coef + deatblows_coef + fighting_spirit_coef + ...) * (1 + intellect_coef) * hit_quality_modifier - total_damage (fixed DoT)(before DR) = base_damage * (1 + might_coef + ?) - notes: .- we know that wounding DoT does benefit from might twice. First it amplifies the weapon hit, from which the 25% is taken. And second it applifies the DoT damage itself. Maybe deathblows affect it in similar manner, but I haven't tested, and tbh doubt it. How duration is calculated? - total_duration = base_duration * (1 + intellect_coef) * hit_quality_modifier - hit_quality_modifier = 0.5 (graze) - hit_quality_modifier = 1.0 (hit) - hit_quality_modifier = 1.5 (crit) - afaik stuff like bonus damage on crit (e.g. The Merciless Hand) does not affect duration in any way. How the tick damage is pre-calculated? - let's say we have Shining Beacon that deals 80 base damage over 9s of default duration - a character with 10 mig / 16 int, would deal 104 damage over 11.7s - the system first calculates the amount of ticks: count = (total_duration + 3) / 3 - in our case count equals 4.9. This means there will be: .- 4 full ticks for 21.22 damage (104/4.9) .- 1 incomplete tick for 19.10 damage (21.22 * (4.9 - 4)) How is DoT damage affected by DR? - each tick of non-raw DoT goes against 0.25 of target's current DR (checked at each tick; not when DoT is applied). - there is no MIN going through, meaning that a tick can be eaten completely. Fun facts: - although on first sight it might appear that hit quality does affect only total_damage but not the dps; for non-raw DoTs it's not completely true, because of ticks dealing lower damage, and thus more being blocked by DR. E.g. a character with 10 might and 10 int casts a Shining Beacon: .- hit : 80.00 damage over 9.00s | 8.888 pre-DR dps | 4 ticks of 20 .- graze: 40.00 damage over 4.50s | 8.888 pre-DR dps | 2 ticks of 16.00 damage plus 1 tick of 8 .- crit : 120.00 damage over 13.50s | 8.888 pre-DR dps | 5 ticks of 21.81 damage plus 1 tick of 10.9 - stacking seems to follow no specific rules: .- stuff like Dragon Thrashed, Wounding, Shining Beacon - does stack completely. .- stuff like Disintegration, Deep Wounds, Soul Ignition - uses an override mechanism. Afaik it is: if the new instance has duration greater than remaining_duration of existing DoT, new appliance will override the older one; otherwise not. But feel free to correct me on that. .- imho, there should be clear rules for stacking in PoE2.

Frenzy will not only give you a bit more damage and speed, it also boosts your fortitude by 16 points (even 24 with Greater Frenzy). That's a hidden gem. Who cares for -10 deflection. Bloodlust stacks with Frenzy, so it's not too bad - especially with a two hander. It speeds up any action, not just autoattacking. Blood Thirst also triggers when you kill with spells or retaliation. 0 recovery spell casting with AoE spells is pretty nice in hard encounters. Nobody else can do that. I killed Darzir's Gang with scrolls of Fan of Flames when I was soloing with a barb. Both are good when you have HoF: after HoF both will be on - you will be able to add an attack right after HoF (Blood Thirst) - like Barbaric Blow - and then continue with +20% speed for the rest of the fight. Fun fact: when you use Spelltongue with HoF you will not only have 15% attack speed from Spelltongue for a looong time, but also Bloodlust and Frenzy will have huge durations and will last until the rest of the fight - as well as the normally very short damage bonus of HoF (+20%) which gets prolonged a lot because of the man many hits you generate with HoF. All other things like Savage/Stalwart Defiance will also have ridiculous durations after HoF with Spelltongue. Blooded is nice when you want to have <=50% endurance or lower anyways. Like when you are a Fire Godlike and want to stack retaliations or when you want to abuse Vengeful Defeat. Blooded works with everything, also spells and leaps and shouts. Same as One Stands Alone, which is also good. Both stack. I don't use it if I don't plan to hit 50% endurance frequently. I think Thick Skinned is not too bad when you take it early and later retrain for something else. With a Blunting Belt and Thick Skinned you can easily do with a much thinner armor at the beginning of the game. Later on it becomes less powerful. DR can't keep up with the damage output of enemies so it doesn't matter that much towards the end of the game. Eye of the Dragon: I think it's one of the most useless abilites in the whole game if you have a party. I can imagine it's nice for soloing: You will be of higher level than most monsters most of the time and thus will have free movement and will suffer no disengangement attacks. Echoing Shout works with Blooded and Blood Thirst and also triggers Bloodlust - it can be seen as a powerful spell - especially because it's range is so huge and it bounces. In close quarters it can be really devastating. It's also nice to have with a barb with high move speed, kiting a bit so that enemies follow you in a straight line and then turn around and shout. Dragon Leap is great in combo with HoF. I love it! edit: man, never got ninja'd so hard.

I played 3 walktrough with solo barbarians, these are my thoughts : Some highlights: - never go low with constitution (keep it at 10 or more) - always go for 16+ int (so with food you reach 18, wich is a value that permits you to reliably hit ALL enemies AROUND you [yes, also behind] ) - you can go dual wield, 2 h or sword and shield, every version is very powerful but need a different build. There are already some builds around. - the Spelltongue trick: that sword is able to prolong to all the duration of the fight your active buffs (frenzy, stalwart defence, potions, ecc). A very good weapon for dual wield. - learn the art of good positioning + Heart of fury, you will be surpried - when soloing "one stand alone" is mandatory - The best races to play barb are humans, moon godlike and fire godlike (need high constitution though) or amaua for the + 30 res vs prone or stun - My main now is a Tidefall barbarian, max STR, 16 int, 18 dex, min resolve. Tidefall, sanguine plate. Frenzy, stalwart defence, hearth of fury, 2h style, weapon specialization, thick skinned, bloodlust... He's awesome (i) Frenzy : Very powerful. If you take dual wield talent and use no armour you can reach 0 recovery from lvl 2 (but wear an armor is more important anyway at this stage). Anyway is a good ability, boost greatly your dps and don't forget it adds a total of +16 to fortitude too, very useful. A must take imho, also if you will not use anymore after you get sanguine plate (ii) Barbaric Yell vs. Barbaric Shout: Terrify in that massive AoE is very strong, i try to take it always if i have a free slot. The shout is pretty garbage unless you play some kind of defensive barbarian (sword&shield, fear/terrigy shouts, glittering gauntlets, ecc) (iii) Blooded : is strong if you put some points in constitution. I had a fire godlike with dumped dex& res, max str & con (& int), with his massive hitpoints you can stay below half life without any fear to die, while killing most enemies with fire retaliation from godlike racial and having good dmg from blooded. But if i had to play with a 10 con barb other skills are better. (iv) Savage Defiance : totally OP healing. While active it keeps you alive even in solo potd, unless you get completely surrounded. Use it when you are at about 1/3 of your life, so you eventually get the bonus for be lower that 50% life for more time. The talent to boost it is useful but i always found better picks. (v) Bloodlust and Blood Thirst: the 0 recovery "lust" is a obligatory pick if you use a 2h barbarian, and is anyway very strong. Is also fun if you want to use scroll, since after the 3 or 4 fan of flames or fireball someone will die and you have 0 recovery for the next scroll. And so on. If instaed you are playing some kind of dual wielder low armor barbarian you will be very near to 0 recovery anyway, so the +20% speed on kill becomes more useful (you use it to stay in the 0-recovery area when frenzy finish, or you can go for a better armour). If you use only 2h weapon you can also pick both. (vi) Is Thick-Skinned worth it : usually yes, + 3 to all "non elemental" dmg type is pretty strong. If you go for knights talent too is a +5, which is huge. (vii) Is Eye of the Storm : i thinks is worthless, much better the dragon leap, which you can use both as engage tool or "oh ****" button (viii) Finally, with the changes to Echoing Shout, is it now considered good? : good in closed spaces, but other abilities you get at that lvl or slightly before are far more useful (barbaric retaliation, dragon leap, thick skinned)

I'm playing a Barbarian currently, so I'll share my thoughts: (i) Frenzy is fine to take early, so long as you don't so something weird like dump Con so you're super fragile. The natural huge health and endurance of Barbarians means they can take a beating, so if you stick them in heavy armor and take Savage Defiance (which heals a ton and is per encounter) you shouldn't really have survivability issues. My Barbarian is Resolve 3 and I'm playing solo on PotD, so they have about the worst Deflection you can get, but they managed just fine - even being interrupted with that low Resolve isn't as much an issue as you'd imagine (I still haven't had to take a Spirit Shield potion and I've got to WM part I). (ii) It's hard to say, it depends what you're looking for. An idea I came up with was to have a shield Barbarian so their Deflection would be much better (which sounds to be pretty much what you're looking for), then when you think about Frightened and Terrified they both debuff accuracy which in a way more or less makes them a 25 Deflection base class minimum with these effects (as well as assisting your entire party), especially when you add in the Daze from Dragon Leap. However if you're not looking to have high defences, you don't necessarily need either. Boeroer is currently developing the idea further, so hopefully you'll see a class build of it soon (Threatening Presence and the Executioner's Hood is another great way to keep enemies frightened, so you could always respec these out when you get that). (iii) I much prefer One Stands Alone, it's much more consistent and pretty much entirely stops you being flanked. However, if you're trying for Vengeful Defeat, you're kind of looking to get low health anyway - so it really depends. There's many ways to build a Barbarian, so how much mileage you get from a particular ability varies. (iv) I think pretty much all of them should take it. Even if you do a Vengeful Defeat build, you can use something like Second Chance to revive them and then get pretty much all your endurance back with Savage Defiance - or if you're going pure DPS it keeps you alive long enough to do heavy damage (it's pretty much instant cast). (v) I've taken both, but honestly I think you could forgo Bloodlust and just use Deleterious Alacrity of Motion Potions or strap on the Sanguine Plate. Blood Thirst on the other hand I would say is one of the best Barbarian abilities - it literally makes encounters a blood bath. Most mobs consist of a few tougher guys and loads of weaker ones - if you concentrate on the tougher one the weaker ones will die from Carnage. Once you pick off the first weak enemy, you instantly attack again, making it very likely you'll pick off another weak enemy in the process (seeing as all the weak guys have similar health), and then another - before long you've landed about 6 consecutive hits on the tough enemy and all the little guys are dead. If you take one ability other than Heart of Fury, make it this one. (vi) I wouldn't say so as Raven mentioned, Barbarians have high enough endurance that you don't really need to try and optimise their DR (though you are correct, it is now +3). Stick them in decent armour if you want DR, as mentioned with Blood Thirst you can often produce an extremely rapid succession of hits regardless of what armour you are in - so long as you are taking on a group. (vii) It's not something I've ever taken, however Boeroer has mentioned previously it's a great means to get right to a caster as you don't get any disengagement attacks. Personally, I'd just use something like Dragon Leap to get there instead. (viii) I guess you can take it if you need the extra CC, and the damage is good, but it is only 1 per encounter and you've got to wonder whether just taking talents to up damage has more worth at the level you can finally take it. It's pretty decent, but not exceptional. I hope that was some help, and good luck with your Barb!

Other than style points Two Handed Weapons get the short end of the stick. Sabres doing almost the same damage just makes it worse. Factor in that Sabres have some of the better uniques and are packaged in a great weapon focus group that includes pistols, blunderbuss and stilettos and it is hard from a pure numbers stand point to not go with sabre instead of Two Hander. A Two Handed Weapon also uses twice as much enchanting material and Durgan Steel. Two handers are plenty viable, the game is easy enough on PotD that you'll do just fine but your inner powergamer will be whispering "should have gone with Sabres"

When you have four of them you should really search for that Lagufaeth companion who can wield them all at once.

Our power finally came back on after being out for two and a half days. That cyclone knocked out power over a big area of our county. Normally I'm used to a few hours outage during a winter storm, but this is the longest in my memory. My sleep schedule is all messed up now, but at least I can finally have a warm shower. I hope this type of storm doesn't become a regular thing, what with climate change and all.

https://www.eurogamer.net/after-three-hours-avowed-still-shows-no-sign-of-a-killer-hook-to-call-its-own-but-this-fizzy-rpg-****tail-is-plenty-enjoyable-all-the-same I think it looks better than I expected. The Pillars universe never really interested me, but the video convinced me to at least keep my eyes out for this. I don't particularly like the zone-split world (like in the Outer Worlds) but I can probably live with that as long as the zones are split in a clever way (like the planets in Outer Worlds).

Looks like a mobile game