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Added a feature where you can select your grimoire and fixed some small bugs. Having the logic in place means I can just add grimoires to the, ahem, "database" as they are discovered. Would also like to prepare the calculator for the ability point cap being something other than 24, but hopefully this is something we'll find out before release so I won't have to choose between coding and gaming. Judging from PoE2, we might get an extra skill point at levels 5, 10, 15 and 20.

I have to admit that I like Diablo IV's seasons precisely because they have well defined "endings" - there's always a given set of tasks to do, and once you've done them all, you can of course still keep playing to push the boundaries of the endgame content, but for me it's sufficient to have done all the tasks and have gotten all the rewards possible. I have no idea what Path of Exile 2 is going to do for its endgame, but if it is similar to the first game there is going to be a goal to work towards in every season. Plus probably loads of procedurally generated endgame content that really never stops. I tend to not be interested in those unless they offer a sufficiently fun competitive element or they're part of a list of a checklist to tick off. But I can see why. I had a phase where I tried every roguelike I came across and spent a lot of time with them (like the hundreds of hours I have invested in FTL and Dead Cells) and I really burned out on the gameplay elements that are common to them all. ARPGs don't bother me in the same way though, as its just the maps that are generated procedurally in many of them (Grim Dawn didn't even do that). Yeah, I don't see how there's going to be much of an appeal to go through the content every time a new season starts. The gameplay seems deliberately slower even when it is working and the servers aren't dropping your inputs (in addition to button presses not doing anything, in this case they clearly worked because I could see the cooldown on my skill, but it never got cast), and even some of the regular enemies need to be properly prioritized and anything that's more than a regular monster has attack patterns to dodge. While I think soulslike is being applied to way too much nowadays, in this case it's quite correct. It does have a slower gameplay pace, very deliberate casting of skills that lock you into their casting animation and you need to properly read boss attacks and dodge accordingly. It's certainly an interesting choice, and not a game to boot up to faceroll through monster hordes to blow off steam after an annoying day at work.

I think it should not have bonus of the "fire" ring. Only weapon with burn damage should have +10 ACC from the ring. Dragon's Dowry has "only" lash burn damage. So it is right to remove fire keywords from the arquebus. But also @Noqn solution is good because at least make things clear (something like "has it fire keywords? So lets give it all the good and all the bad from fire"); the optional additional solution (adding burn damage and decrease PEN by 1) it's even better. Thus everybody can pick the most pleasant solution for himself/herself Anyway: what a mess with "elementals" (and not only) keywords

Not the propaganda center?

Losing the +10 accuracy from the ring is in no way justified by having the occasional fire immune mob be vulnerable to damage. I can just switch to a different weapon vs those enemies. Like this is not a good trade-off at all. The biggest issue is that the mod doesn't describe this change anywhere in the description. Don't do that.

Trump is discreet as ever

I very well understand what you are talking, but do remember the millions of refugees, with which Assad and Putin flooded Türkiye and Europe to destabilize it. Weaker Russia means safer world in the future. Today even Christians of Damascus are celebrating HTS liberation, that’s how ****ed up was the Assad Putin duo in Syria… https://bsky.app/profile/tendar.bsky.social/post/3lcrsdx6cx22y I just hope it will last them for a long time. And yes, I am playing naive here. And the Kurds, with the exception of the city of Manbij, all of the territories under their “rule” are behind Euphrates river, so unless the HTS and Türkiye starts to use aviation against them, they should be “safe”. And yes, again I am trying to see a little bit brighter picture here than you. Nothing out of it might happen, and Syria can turn into mess again, but hopefully the rebels are also feeling tired from decade long civil war, and their brain will tell them, that more destruction in the country will not be to their benefits. But after today, the global world is a little bit safer again, as Russia has been dealt significant reputation blow, and they will soon loose their gateway port through which they exploit Africa… Edit: for now even Kurdish SDF command is looking forward to what happened to Assads’s regime. For now.

One of two planes leaving Damascus yesterday was either shot or landed near Homs, the second one landed in UAE. My guess would be, he was on plane to Dubai. Unless the pilot of the first one decided to hand over Assad to rebels

Lets wait and see, based on everything I have seen on Al-Jazeera from numerous Syrians and commentators there was complete frustration and lack of belief that Assad had any legitimacy especially since the last 5-6 years and how things in Syria have just got worse This is evident not just around the collapse of his army, it is about what the citizens of the country and in exile think If you have access to Al-Jazeera watch it for an hour or so to see what I mean I think you underestimating just how unpopular Assad had become But you right, Syria could become Afghanistan v.2 I am hoping it doesn't and the new government delivers on a better Syria for its citizens Outside of that objective this leadership change is a massive blow mostly to Iran and weakens Russias influence in the ME but thats not my main concern or interest Millions of Syrians are living in refugee camps, I would like them to return home and the country to start being functional again Lots of work to be done

Yes its a terrible and completely unexpected outcome A failed state in the ME propped up by Russia and Iran that didnt deliver on any political or economic reforms to the majority of its citizens despite numerous commitments and promises gets overthrown. What a surprise UNSC resolution 2254 was adopted by UNSC members way back in 2015 I watched an interview on Al-Jazeera last night with Lavrov and he claimed this was the resolution that Russia "supports " and believes in and was the basis for the Astana talks "Within 18 months, free and fair elections would be held under U.N. supervision. The political transition would be Syrian-led. The UN Resolution 2254 was invoked by Iran, Russia and Turkey as the legal basis for the political process required to solve the Syrian conflict, at the first round of the Astana Talks in January 2017 " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_2254 It sounds great to hear Russia talk about supporting this type of UNSC resolution in Syria except when Assad did nothing over the last 5-6 years to create a new inclusive Constitution or have an election within Syria because he doesnt care and his only concern was staying in power And Russia could have and should have much more to pressure Assad to deliver on this resolution. We dont know the future of Syria but Im more than happy to give a new government a chance At the moment anything is better than Assad and the collapse of the Syrian army and popular support for HTS from most Syrians is evidence of this

Yeah, that's my concern at the moment. Could be a week from now it'll all start again. Never know with PC's. And feels like they don't make "parts" like they used to, longevity/toughness wise. I suppose I could get new ram/psu etc but I'll wait and see what happens. If it could just hold on for another year or so, that's ok. lol Anyway, even if the PC was 100% vs. being kind of maybe right now, not even sure if that Indy game will install/compile shaders/run properly for me. Maybe it'll want drivers or Windows upgrades I don't have, who knows. If I buy it and it looks like I'll have to fiddle with it for five hours just to get it working, it's getting refunded.

In similar cases that I've seen, if it ends up being the RAM that has spontaneously become defective (which is a pretty rare occurrence in of itself after years of problem-free service), it often seems to get worse (i.e. it might start happening again even on the lower performance settings) over time, but if it's the motherboard not being able to power the RAM correctly...well, it's a lot easier to replace RAM than it is to replace a motherboard, so hopefully it's the RAM.

Based on some forum posts and user reviews, in terms of the Indy game I think this is mostly going to be dependent on resolution and settings one personally tolerates. Outside of the "needs a rtx capable card", ofc. I mean it sounds like the visual differences with settings aren't super extreme - a trend I've noticed happening over recent years in a lot of games, actually - and one has to remember that while actually playing, most aren't staring at every pixel to notice fine differences, like all these comparison videos emphasize. In terms of upgrading GPU's - I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but it does make one feel like AAA devs/nvidia are working together to force people to buy the top tier cards - eg, gimping the 60/70/80 series re: vram. >.> I've said it before and I'll say it again - it may be "slower" generation but the 11gb of vram in my 2080ti (and sometimes, dlss, of course) is probably what has allowed to me to marginally still run some of these games at 4k at my personal tolerance of 45-60fps/mid-high settings etc. I refuse to do less than dlss-quality tho. I've tried. "Balanced" dlss still looks like crap, imo. I might as well just drop the native resolution to 1440, then.

Why does the Keyword mod remove the Ring of Focused Flame accuracy bonus on Dragon's Dowry? This seems like a really dumb nerf to a weapon that wasn't even all that powerful compared to something like The Red Hand. This just means I can't use the Keyword mod anymore which is annoying. Not to mention this is completely undocumented in the mod's description which is really bad form and confusing.

My gog galaxy says I'm only 100 hours into Stalker 2, but that is most definetly a lie, I suspect that the crash I had a few days ago messed up the galaxy logging, I've spent atleast 12 hours a day in the zone on average, so about 150 hours in. Still haven't gone to finish the game or do much of the main story line, I've just been exploring every nook and cranny, parkouring my way into places I really shouldn't be. If GSC Gameworld continues this frenzy of dropped patches, we will be at stalker 2 2.0 in just a few months

Last night in Underrail I had an excellent battle that was the perfect example of what makes this game so engaging and entertaining Underrail combat creates this exciting reality where your different builds and skills have to used in different ways if you going to succeed, you cant just adopt the same approach in every battle Near Rail Crossing there was a side tunnel with 4 Lurker Bandits that included a boss called Flynn the Flayer Initially I tried my normal strategy which is stealth, grenades and Psi abilities but I got killed 3-4 times and there is a sniper with a shield who could one shot me. So I changed my approach I planted 2 x mines in a side tunnel and then used stealth to throw a Molotov to hurt them and draw aggro but I ran away behind my mines Flynn and 2 lurkers chased me and triggered the mines and then I used Psi from a distance to kill Flynn because he is deadly in melee with his special spear Then I was able to kill the sniper who came from the other direction in one on one combat I ended up getting lots of loot and my first shield emitter

I'm working on a feature where you can specify your equipped grimoire. All spells in your equipped grimoire get their rank boosted by 1 (up to their maximum which is always 3), with coloring to indicate your grimoire's effect. Grimoire Mastery will reduce the Essence cost of these spells. A thought occurred to me while doing so. Do you think you can cast level N spells from an equipped grimoire without having level N Grimoire Mastery? Until now, I figured that's just what you needed to learn the spells permanently. But, I have been thinking people could be keeping grimoires around no matter their build and playstyle, just to do things like cast Arcane Seal to regenerate. Might be the only actual use case, since there are spells of each element that require no Grimoire Mastery, which you could use (as well as wands?) if you just need to do some shock damage to solve a puzzle. I'm now leaning towards "you probably need GM4 to cast tier 4 [20] spells", which means the code I just proudly finished needs to be reworked.

They'd turn every European capital to rubble without even crossing their borders.

It'll be ez if you have huge stockpiles of artillery and missiles, I guess. Just gotta be able to keep those meat waves at distance.

I’ve had this build in draft for years now, but just completed a full playthrough to test it exhaustively. I love the companion and sidekick builds @Ascaloth and others have posted, especially the way they mix mechanical fun with narrative details for each character. This build works great in most parties, but is designed to be paired with a Konstanten Howler build that I’m posting as well. This is in no way unique insight or creativity on my part, but mostly a very basic build that focuses on fun synergies. I’m posting so that it’s available for folks who want to bring Fassina along and are looking for a quick, fool-proof build. I tested this on PotD Upscaled with a typical party (Swash Eder, Herald Pallegina, Priest Xoti, Howler Konstanten). I used the Community Patch and Balance Polishing Mod, but the build does not depend on them to work. I’ll do my best to highlight if something is a CP or BPM feature only. (Borrowing @thelee's format here w/ some slight edits) The Pitch: Stack gross amounts of +PL and clear the battlefield with layers of AoE DoT, Pulse, and direct corrode and raw damage. Sorcerer - Wizard (Conjurer), Druid (Animist) Human (Ocean Folk), Vailian Republics - Arcane Apprentice (+1 INT, +2 Arcana) Attributes: MIG 13 CON 11 DEX 12 PER 12 INT 16 RES 14 Note: If you are playing this build with a hired adventurer or watcher you could make these choices to further optimize. Choose Nature Godlike (trade +1 Poison PL and +2 INT for +1 universal PL) Choose Ancient Druid instead of Animist (additional stacking +1 PL for plant and beast spells). Make PER and INT your highest scores, followed by MIG and DEX. You could dump RES and CON as much as you are comfortable. Skills: Alchemy (or Arcana) and Metaphysics. More explanation below. Abilities: AT1 Concelhaut’s Parasitic Staff (a), Conjure Familiar (a) // Talon’s Reach (a), Sunbeam (a), Spiritshift Wolf (a) Slicken Choice of: Touch of Rot, Tanglefoot, Vile Thorns, Nature’s Mark AT2 Infuse with Vital Essence // Insect Swarm, The Moon’s Light (a) Necrotic Lance Autumn’s Decay or Binding Web AT3 Deleterious Alacrity of Motion // Infestation of Maggots, Returning Storm (a) Combat Focus Purge of Toxins [BPM] AT4 Spirit of Decay // Form of the Delemgan, Conjure Blight (a) Wicked Briars or Wall of Flame Spell Shaping AT5 Rapid Casting // Wall of Thorns, Plague of Insects (a) Farcasting Embrace of the Earth Talon or (Uncanny Luck, Heart of the Storm, or Scion of Flame) AT6 Arkemyr’s Capricious Hex or Ninaguath’s Freezing Pillar // Venombloom, Sunlance (a) Choice of: Quick Summoning, Garden of Life, Spell Resistance [BPM], or an optoin from a previous tier AT7 Tayn’s Chaotic Orb or Wall of Draining // Accurate Empower [BPM] or Call to the Primordials, Lashing Vine (a) Potent Empower [BPM] or an option from a previous tier Weapon Proficiencies: Dagger (a), Rod (a) Staff or/and Pike Hunting Bow Arquebus Scepter Weapon slots: I: The Spine of Thicket Green (Empowering Instinct, Grove’s Respite) or Lance of the Midwood Stag (Lord of the Forest) II: Essence Interrupter or Blightheart or Amaliorra Note: Spine vs. Lance. Both are available immediately for “free”; I used the Spine for my playthrough, but on reflection, Lance is likely better in every case except vs Vessels. Both work great, though. You could always juggle them to maximize PL for plant/beast spells, but that is more micro than it’s worth for me, plus I prefer to have my second weapon set for an alternative ranged option. Essential gear: Spider Silk Robe (Spider Blooded, Poison Master) Mask of the Grotto Deep Serpentskin Grimoire Fassina’s Grimoire Battle-worn Grimoire Playstyle: This build focuses on maximizing a few strong spells with synergistic keywords (Poison, Plant, Beast, Acid, Decay, Conjuration) to stack up staggering amounts of damage, but stays flexible with tried and true utility spells for every situation. Universal +1/+3: (Summon Familiar/Lance of the Midwood Stag) Poison +3 (Mask of Grotto Deep & Spider Silk Robe) Conjuration +2 (Conjurer subclass) Plant +3 (Spine of Thicket Green) Beast +3 (Spine of Thicket Green) +PL by Spell: +8 Malignant Cloud (Conjuration, Poison) +6 (+7 w/ Spine) Plague of Insects (Beast, Poison [BPM]) Venombloom (Plant, Poison) Wall of Thorns (Plant, Poison [BPM]) Vile Thorns (Plant, Poison) +6 Noxious Burst (Poison) +5 Necrotic Lance (Conjuration) Binding Web (Conjuration) Death Ring (Conjuration) All Wizard Wall spells (Conjuration) +3 (+4 w/ Spine) Insect Swarm Talon’s Reach Tanglefoot Wicked Briars Form of the Delemgan Lashing Vine Call to the Primordials The basic flow is standard stuff: buff > DoT spells > direct damage spells w/ debuffs and utility spells as needed. Buffs: Infuse w/ Vital Essence Deleterious Alacrity of Motion Summon Familiar Form of the Delemgan Core DoTs: Plague of Insects Infestation of Maggots Venombloom Malignant Cloud Insect Swarm - Keep the staff modal on most of the time. Pike modal is a great debuff if you aren’t using Nature’s Mark or similar active effects that reduce Deflection. You should be able to stay in robes the whole game, but if you are concerned about getting focused fired, Cabalist Gambeson is great b/c Woodskin and Delemgan cover the AR gaps perfectly (always a fan of flaunting the haul from Arkemyr’s Vault, too). Ironskin is also great and is in the Snakeskin Grimoire. - Form of the Delemgan is easily the strongest spell in your entire repertoire. It single-handedly makes many encounters go from deadly to average with the Dexterity Affliction immunity and bonus AR. For your tankier party members, it makes Scale armor and Brigandine amazing by shoring up their pierce AR gap. Note that bonus AR is one place where specific does not stack with general. If you have both Spirit Shield and Form of the Delemgan, it will choose the higher of the two values for each damage type, rather than stacking. - Early/mid game you’re going to want to pay attention to enemy defenses and armor and cast the best spell you have for those defenses/AR, regardless of bonus PL. Sunbeam, Returning Storm, Slicken, Chill Fog, and Combusting Wounds are almost always useful. When all else fails, switch over to your ranged weapon and plug away (or bonk w staff or pike). - Poison immune enemies are not that scary or troublesome. Just lean on your non-poison options. Unless you wait till very late, you won’t have many poison spells for Hanging Sepulchers. The rest of your early game kit works great. Same for Poko Kohara Ruins/Engwithan Waystation. Splintered Reef is an interesting case, as the Fampyrs are not immune to poison and many have lowish Fortitude. It’s worth blasting them with everything you’ve got and not worrying about the immune skeletons and guls. Speaking of, Guls and Alguls are weak to fire, so blast away. The fights in SSS with constructs, skeletons, and naga are all manageable, as well. Essence interrupter w/ Essential Phantom works great for the constructs. For the Naga you have less options, but Chill Fog, Slicken, Wicked Briars, Tayn’s Chaotic Orb, Lashing Vine are all helpful. - I recommend rushing the Kraken (lvl 10/11) and Splintered Reef (lvl 15/16) to maximize the time you have with your full equipment set. The Kraken has high Fortitude, but is not immune to Poison, and is weak to freeze and corrode. See above for Splintered Reef. When I did Splintered Reef Menzaggo died from AoE DoTs before I ever targeted him with anything else. While it doesn’t have much we really need for Fassina, rushing Beast of Winter is quite easy, too. Fassina eats Neriscyrlas up (Combusting Wounds, Wall of Flame, Insects to strip Concentration, Wall of Thorns - RIP). - This build works exceptionally well with a Howler like Konstanten built to lower enemy Fortitude and take the occasional hit from hostile AoEs. See my companion build, The Bodyworker for a version of this kind of build. It’s particularly helpful to crack open big enemies with high Fortitude via Morningstar Modal and -all Defense debuffs. Anything that lowers Fortitude in an AoE is awesome. Especially awesome are debuffs for Fortitude that target a different defense. For example, vs. Will:. Devotions of the Faithful, Secret Horrors, Interdiction, Mind Plague, Reny Daret's Ghost Spake w/ Upgrade, and Shining Beacon. - Other fun combinations include: watch a big boss’s HP bar fall through the floor by stacking up all of your DoTs and have a priest cast Cleansing Flame (this might depend on BPM fixes). watch all of your DoT and debuff durations fly through the roof when a boss is hit with Enfeebled from a Forbidden Fist monk - Paladins with Righteous Soul and melee characters with Khapa Tea make your life much simpler once you have Malignant Cloud and Venombloom. You can gather up all of the melee enemies and then plop your spells right on top without worry. - I like the idea of stacking Alchemy all the way and using poisons to take advantage of the +PL. This sort of works with Blightheart and the Arquebus modal (which gives a much needed +20 accuracy to the poison). The fact is, though, it adds significant micro and not much versatility. Arcana is the clear best choice, not the least of which, because Fassina gets a special background with +2. Being able to cast all those evocation spells, along with some of the best from Priest, is so valuable at the end of the game. - Accuracy is not Fassina’s strength, so look for all the ways you can improve that. Aware from Priests or Ciphers, +Accuracy from Priests or Paladins or Deadeye. Potion of Perfect Aim is wonderful and should be used for every difficult fight. Some things that worked for me on Megabosses: Dorudugan: Equip Essence Interrupter and keep an Essential Phantom up. Keep Form of the Delemgan up on anyone in melee. Respec to grab heals - Moonwell counters a few spells, which can really help survivability. Embrace of the Earth Talon is great if you use Amaliorra and every possible debuff / accuracy boost. Hauani O Whe: Not poison immune, but the highest Fortitude defense of any enemy in the whole game. For simplicity sake, I used Disintegrate to cut the fight in half, but her DoTs would shred through some smaller oozes. For big HOW, I landed a combusting wounds and then dropped every wall spell I had on ‘em. Wall of Thorns, Flames, Force from Fassina. Watch his health plummet. Venombloom is great, too. Sigilmaster Auranic: Nice addition with Arcane Reflection self-cast. Essence Interrupter and Phantom for the Sigils. Form of Delemgan is a life saver vs. all the Petrify and Paralyze. Venombloom and all the rest aren’t too hard to land here, once you clear the sigils. Probably some other tricks you could do, but this one is relatively easy. Belranga: Form of the Delemgan majorly trivializes a key mechanic by eliminating all of the paralyze/petrify. DoTs clear up the spiders with ease. Once you get Belranga into territory where you can land spells, any of your tricks work great. Stack up the DoTs and watch her fall. BPM Notes: - Wildstrike Corrode seems like an easy fit in this build, but it’s actually not as useful for us, because when you are Spiritshifted, your carried weapons are replaced by the Spiritshift ones. This means you are always trading away more applicable +PL for the narrower Wildstrike bonus. That said, there are other reasons to spiritshift, and if you want to have more to do while shifted, by all means. - The Improved Empowered Abilities are great with this build. Accurate is a must, Potent & Lasting are great as a second/third. Venombloom is probably your best choice to empower, so kick things off with a bang and then toss out the rest of your spells.

I wouldn't call close to half a million people fleeing the HTS for "popular support". It looks like a replay of Taliban taking over Afghanistan with all their promises of respecting human rights, education for women etc. (HTS is nor more no less a terrorist group than Taliban is) Edit: Expect Syria being in some kind of civil war the next 20 years with Turks fighting Kurds, HTS fighting moderate rebels in the south, where they aren't supported in the same way by Turkey, everyone kiling Alawites (just for old times sake) etc.

'Biological female' and 'biological male' are crappy dog whistley terms that also don't give enough information. Use the phrase 'cis women' you sorry excuse for a journalist. Also no actually trans women don't necessarily have levels of elevated testosterone, because most competitions require them to have been on HRT to reduce their testosterone for about two years, which was the case with Lia Thomas. On the Lia Thomas story, no again to that worthless excuse for a journalist, the placing does not tell the whole story. While competing in the men's comp, Lia was undergoing HRT from May 2019 until what appears to be her last swim in the men's comp in January 2020 before taking a year off before competing in the women's comp, as per competition rules. Her pre HRT accolades were pretty good, and included a 6th fastest time in the country in 2017. It's interesting that a lot of the dialogue about her 'rise' from some ridiculously off the pace ranking in the men's comp to 'one of the top-ranked' swimmers in the women's comp seems to have her soaring from a mid 500s ranking. One can only assume that ranking is from when she was on testosterone blockers, because a quick squiz at an archived version of the swimcloud site shows something of a different story. That archived page here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220318183249/https://www.swimcloud.com/swimmer/314430/rankings/ Starts ranked only 84th in the state in 2013-14, rises to 99th out of all high school students in 16-17, and 100th in the country in the 2018-19 season. Her current swimcloud page inconveniently lacks all that, in favour of showing only her 2021-22 ranking, where she apparently rose to 44th in the country. Meanwhile, Cora Dupre, who was 45th in the country that season, was 83rd the season before. So no, actually, Lia Thomas was an elite swimmer when she competed in the men's comp, became merely 'very good' when she was competing against men but taking HRT, and reverted to elite when she was temporarily allowed to actually compete as a woman.