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Right now I'm drinking a cup of coffee and watching the sun set on a pleasantly cool evening. Life is good. Hope ya'll are doing well!

Found out someone implemented a weekend server restart. But apparently forgot the "start" part of the restart . Life is good

I agree that they are all bad but I strongly disagree that they are equally bad. I try to stay out of the weeds of most of this stuff because it's so horribly depressing but Biden, who I also disliked, did not make me question what rights and what country my kids might grow up into.

I have found politics bothers me so much less now that I ignore it completely.

The finished product itself? Yes. However, this does not apply to the unspecified imported resources used to produce the toilet paper, unless they are also exempt from the tariffs. Unless one or more companies in the supply chain accept smaller profit margins (if such a thing is even possible, as large retailers squeeze manufacturers as hard as possible), a rise in prices of imported base materials is still going to affect the price of the toilet paper. It is a problem that companies like CyberPowerPC are facing. They build their computers in the US, but all the components come China in some way. Take mainboards for instance, even if a company like ASRock would build a manufacturing plant for mainboards in the US, modern mainboards consist of hundreds (if not thousands) of parts, almost none of which are manufactured in the United States. They'd be looking at importing all the components (which are tariffed), while also incurring increased transportation*, energy and labor costs, making the finished product potentially more expensive than just having it still manufactured in China and paying the tariff on the finished product when selling in the US. Global supply chains have become too complex to be easily directed by blanket tariffs. Now, it might be that Trump really believes this will work and usher in new prosperity for American workers (which is funny, given the US' employment rate of roughly 4% - even if all those manufacturing plants would magically appear over night there'd not be enough free labor in the US to staff them), insofar as Trump seems to live in his own make belief world, even more so than during his last term. It might be that he was really just trying to stuff his and his advisor's pockets full of cash with insider trading. Stephen Miran might have wanted to lower the US' debt burden by causing a surge in US bond prices, reducing effective interest rates in a year when (IIRC) 10 trillion dollars worth of bonds expire. Trump's dismal performance caused enough investors to nope out to the point where interest rates were rising, instead of falling. Either way, that is generally why you don't want children - or Orange-Utans with the mental capacity of a three year old - playing with the knobs of your country's economy. Well, generally. I'm sure the MAGA crowd is never really going to be tired of all the winning. *Transportation is also going to cost more than before and is going to be slower since the goods need to pass customs and need to wait for all the paperwork to be handled and the tariffs to be paid. You can already see this in place if you order something from Temu as the package will be held by whoever they choose as parcel distributor until the paperwork is done and the tariff paid (in this case directly by the receiver). You can opt to not pay the tariff, but that would lead to the parcel either being returned or destroyed (both on the customer's dime, obviously).

It's never stopped running since 1947. It is currently set to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest it's ever been - though with the recognition that it is slow to update, and certain near-catastrophes such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1983 Soviet nuclear attack false alarm were never represented on the clock (the former because it started and ended before the clock would be updated, the latter because it was unknown to everyone except a small number of Soviets exactly how close we were to nuclear armageddon - both of those events would seem to warrant being 1 second until midnight-level events). It should mainly be seen as an interesting talking point, not really a definitive declaration on the current day-to-day state of the world: if nuclear war was ever to imminently break out, the Doomsday Clock would likely be too slow to appropriately react and provide warning before it did. e: Ninja-ed!

I dig up some footage from game files. It’s showcase of 80 active abilities from early development. Most of these abilities were cut from the game. I spent entire day making this video. It’s 42 minutes long. You can see cool ideas with Circle of Protection, Stasis Shell, Spirit Reflection, Vanishing Strikes, Dimensional Seal, Mental Binding, Warding Seal, Whisper of Treason and more. It can take some time to process this video to 4k by youtube. I just uploaded it. Lists of tutorial videos: Barbarian Barbaric Retaliation Barbaric Smash Battle Cry (Barbaric Yell?) Blood Storm Carnage Dragon leap Frenzy Heart of Fury Instrument of Boundless Rage Ram’s Charge (Ram’s Sprint) Wild Sprint Chanter Their Putrid Stench Wafts Across Cipher Detonate Disintegration Mental Binding Phantom Foes (it's hard to tell how it worked in Avowed) Stasis Shell Whisper of Treason Druid Blizzard Firebrand Maelstrom Pollen Patch Returning Storm Tanglefoot Fighter Charge Clear Out Guardian Stance Into the Fray Toughened Fury Monk Lightning Strikes Swift Flurry Whispers of the Wind Paladin Flames of Devotion Lay on Hands Priest Barb of Condemnation Barring Death’s Door Blessing Circle of Protection Consecrated Ground Divine Mark Hand of Wael and Woe Interdiction Revive the Fallen Shining Beacon Warding Seal Ranger Summon Animal Thorny Roots Rogue Deathblows Finishing Blow (or just a finishing blow) Pernicious Cloud Shadowing Beyond Smoke Veil Vanishing Strikes Wizard Alacrity of Motion Arcane Seal Corrosive Siphon Crackling Bolt Delayed Blast Fireball Freezing Pillar Meteor Shower Minor Missiles Missile Salvo Parasitic Staff Pull of Eora Spirit Lance Common abilities Second Wind Stealth Attack New and unclassified abilities Arcane Weapon Deadly Poison Dimensional Seal Endless Energy Essence Battery Into the Beyond Seal of Helplessness Soul Siphon Spirit Reflection Stone Beetle Stone Joint Widowmaker Spider (xaurip placeholder)

Happy to report that Eder, Aloth, Durance, Kana, my Paladin and Cipher are making good progress. Compared to the bruising I received at the Temple of Eothas, things have been quite easy in comparison so far. Kana has been much more useful than I though (basically summoning phantoms, a bit of White Worms as suggested by Boeroer, and off-tanking). Next time I play Pillars 1 on POTD I'll delay doing the temple until a bit later. Those packs of shadows, shades and phantoms are really tough at low level. The 2 Pillars games are so good, and its great that people who know the game so well are still playing it.

Germany has many safeguards for this. It is really hard to ban political parties and can't be done "just so" - even the NPD many years ago, was never banned. In the end, what they did was to stop the funding and the problem solved itself. Just keep that in mind when you read about banning parties.. it's not easy and it can't happen from one day to the next. It's taken extremely serious. That said, ofc I agree that removing the party in itself does not solve the issues that created it in the first place. In the end, it probably will cause the other big parties to once again sit on their asses and not doing anything substantial again. It's quite infuriating.

That is terrifying. Azdeus the sundrinker, watching a cool evening while sat in a pleasant cup of coffee.

Today I wondered whether tentacles would be more envious of eleventacles because they are a higher number or ninetacles because they are before them in numerical order.

we didn't have any doubt. he did the false equivalency stuff from the moment trump took office in jan 2017, embracing far-right talking points and conspiracy theories. gd convinced self that such were ok 'cause he knew in his bones that the libs wanted a state run police force that would take away his guns and round up dissenters in fema camps... if they just got a chance to do so. biden comes to office and just like during obama, none of his nightmares came true... so we get more o' the false equivalency and conspiracy theories; he needed to believe the biden administration were just as bad as trump. we could literal be here all day listing the ways in which trump 1.0 were orders of magnitude more o' a threat to the US Constitutional order than biden's tepid embrace o' wokeism and his, in retrospect, ordinary incompetence. we did so for freaking years... and for f&%$'s sake, how do these people keep with the memory hole nonsense? now, faced with a mere 100 days o' trump violations o' morality and law which somehow managed to be worse than Gromnir's predictions, folks like gd need convince self that kamala woulda' been just as bad, 'cause they are all bad. gd needs to believe such silly 'cause is folks like gd, voting 3rd party or not voting at all, who put us in this situation. am actual less anoyed with the complete disconnected and uneducated folks who voted for trump 'cause they thought he would lower the price of eggs. given the conspiracy theories gd would routine share as proof and defense o' his peculiar brand o' wacky, we were certain he were absorbing questionable sources o' information to fuel his world view. moving to rural wisconsin, a battleground state, so weren't gonna improve the chances o' him having some kinda epiphany. if you literal cannot see a fundamental difference 'tween trump authoritarianism and the biden administration, then... *shrug* yeah, am seeing the black humor in the recognition that now, when many of his worst predictions 'bout they is being realized in real time, gd feels comfortable ignoring politics. that said, we do hope he is doing well in terms o' health. HA! Good Fun! ps (edit): brain fart... had "jan 2016"

best not pretend there are still time and opportunity to handle afd with delicacy and care afd destroy germany first or germany destroy afd first

Sounds like it is holding true to the jRPG tradition of making you feel safe until the final boss gauntlet where you will figure out you played the game wrong and need to start over

Glad to hear it! I'm doing the opposite, well, if it wasn't overcast atleast.

One does need eyes to see, unless they're going where Doctor Weir went.

It doesn't really mean much yet, but it could help in banning the party at some point down the line.

The second anglophone election since Trump's 2nd inauguration has gone much the same as the first- previously unexpected swing towards the incumbent left (well, 'left'). Though Australia's Albanese never had the horrific polling of Canada's Trudeau he managed to increase Labor's vote share and it looks like a 2:1 landslide, with the opposition leader losing his seat same as Canada. Extremely funny given how many people on the right thought Trump winning would usher in similar governments elsewhere.

having now read the case a few times, am less optimistic. from the start, we assumed if this reached scotus, the political question doctrine might be the sticking point. as some might be aware, the US President don't have Constitutional power to declare war. Congress declares war. Congress has granted the President the capacity to respond quickly to emergency situations, including invasions... and tariffs, but that is a different issue... sorta. the point is that Congress is the Constitutional authority on war. if there is a question as to whether or not we are functional at war with tren de aragua, Congress likely gets the final say-so as 'posed to the Court, though paradoxical, the Court gets the final say-so on whether Congress in this case gets final say-so... which probable seems a bit confusing. there is two functional ways for trump to get around what looks on its face to be a smackdown from a trump appointed district judge in texas: 1) the Court demurs. scotus may simple says that whether or not the US is at war with tren de aragua is a political question not suitable for judicial review. Congress has options to declare that trump is exceeding his authority and it is up to that branch o' government to exercise their Constitutional authority, if they wish to do so. silence by Congress would functional = acquiescence. if scotus says the issue is a political question and not a legal one, then trump wins. 2) trump follows the sneaky advice of the district court. the district court appeared to criticize trump, but it also told him how to cure the defect in his invocation o' the AEA. ... lie to me such were the practical advice o' the judge. the judge observed that the executive needed to provide legal sufficient facts supporting AEA invocation, but that in his capacity he could not challenge the veracity of trump's provided facts. as such, trump needs to provide facts which support the claim that tren de aragua is a foreign invader (e.g. describe forces on the ground in aurora or wherever, directed by a foreign power to undermine the US national government,) but the judge will not question the validity o' such facts provided. the court will assume the facts provided is true and decide if such provided facts is legal sufficient to justify the use of the AEA. trump lies = trump wins. another example o' being beat to death with the three wise monkeys? with any other administration one might assume it would be political impossible to get away with outright fabrication o' lies made in Court which claim a gang, at the behest o' a foreign power, is murdering US citizens and holding american soil as part o' a plan to undermine the national sovereignty o' the United States of America. now go ahead and convince self that such would be a bridge too far for trump. we dare you. HA! Good Fun!

The doomsday clock never went away. It is now 89 seconds to midnight

This is hard to mod because achieving fine control of the underlying 3d models seems to be tricky. Iirc you can hide certain parts of 3d models (for example the chicken wings on the Aldris Blade of Captain Crow), but adding stuff seems to be way harder. I certainly don't know how to do that. I suspect it might be easier to just put male head models onto female bodies. From isometric view it wouldn't be noticable that it's a male head anyway, especially with all the godlike features obscuring parts of the head/face. You can test how that would look with the in-game console: build a female godlike, use the console command to switch to male and pick a male head shape in the char sheet, then switch back to female. You should have a female body with a male head now. Now you can run around a bit with that to see if it looks wonky from the isometric view.

HA! Good Fun!

I know it isn’t really funny, but I found it hard not to chuckle when you get a form in the airplane to fill out (when transiting through a US airport) declaring if you intend to perform acts of terrorism in the US. I never had the guts to answer yes just to see what happens

I'd say it's a great weapon in general because it doesn't require any resources to get to superb. For any character who doesn't rely on shooting 100% of times (Rangers, Scouts ;)) it's very nice to have a weapon that doesn't drain your enchantment resources. But because other arquebuses work even better for Scouts' and Rangers' single target damage output (the aforementioned Red Hand and Dragon's Dowry) - and that's why you bring Rangers or Scouts in the first place (most of times) I also tend to give Blightheart to Wizards and Chanters. The +1 phrase on kill (which works with any kill, no matter if ally or enemy, no matter if shot or spell or whatever) of Blightheart for chanters is an especially intriguing feature to me. I recently played a "plague" themed Skald/Ancient and let my summons (first Ancient Brittle Bones, then Many Lives) run into my own Wicked Briars - and that gave me a big influx of phrases all the time I would use to spam the skald-made-it-cheap White Worms (it can target skeleton corpses because Ancient Brittle Bones and Many Lives will leave skeleton corpses). Such tricks are only doable with Blightheart and that's why I really like it. But I'd still not use it for a Ranger- unless Red Hand and Dragon's Dowry (and also Spearcaster, Forstseeker and several more "better" ranged weapons for Scouts and Rangers) are not available for whatever reason. Exception of course if it's a Rogue or Ranger multiclass with Wizard or Chanter. Streetfighter/Troubadour with Aefyllath + Sure-Handed Ila with the help of upgraded Wisps to become flanked + Blightheart for more phrases and instant healing from the Wisps attacks for example is pretty great.

Well, it works for Disturbed

As much as I like Beast in Black, it feels like this is the tenth time they released the same single. 's not a whole lot of variation in their music, for better or worse.

Yeah your mistakes began with "iPhone".

I do not follow. What's the exact reasoning? Adding GenderNeutralText tags to an XML file and adding Turn Based Mode to PoE is a hint for PoE3?

Im not sure i like the new way of learning magic for Wizards in POE2. Are the spells in Aloths Grimoire permanent? Or can i change them? Thanks

I don't like this, I think pillars had it better. No one swapped spell books in PoE1, seems like some designer got annoyed that no one but him thought this was great and forced his view through that it would be cool to swap spell books. So instead of having spells that you can change as needed you now have to use a "different" spell book... and the number of spells you can cast has been reduced just to force you to swap books.

There were numerous debates on this forum leading up to release regarding the drop of Vancian (per rest) spell casting for per encounter casting. I assume such debates were held internally by the designers as well. It is relatively clear that you cannot have both - it is either or. Having a single class with mostly per rest abilities change the entire pacing and balance lf the game. In the end, it was a design decision (of which the pros and cons can be argued endlessly) which is here to stay. IIRC it was done on order to improve on the rest system - so that it isnt necessary to rest too frequently in order to replenish spells. With the new rest/food mechanic, you can last for a long time on a given rare food/inn bonus if you keep your party members from being knocked out. Previously, even the best players would eventually run out of per-rest recources and would be forced to rest only to replenish. In the same vein, giving a single class access (whether through loot or upon lvl) to all their spells AND a per-encounter based system would mean that class becomes a diversity machine monster, and as a result the spells for that class would probably have to be toned down to prevent an auto include in each party. It is the same reason why druids and priests lost access to all of their spells and have to choose as wizards do. In fact, in the new system, wizards are fulfilling their role as the most diverse spell caster by gaining access to other spells through grimoires. Finally, I would argue that having to carefully choose spells is a required prerequisite for having (mostly) balanced multiclassing. If you could easily learn all spells for a class, multiclassing becomes massively OP since you can build (effectively) a fully loaded fighter with full access to all wizard spells. Other systems (like DnD) balanced this by artificial limitations, such as allowable armour or greatly reduced health pools. In PoE2, a wizard/fighter have to carefully select their spells and abilities based on the role they wish to fulfill. Imo, the limited spell availibility to all spell casters carries a number of additional benefits: I) Increases value of grimoire loot, as stated previously in this thread II) Promotes potion, drug and scroll usage + associated skill investment + loot and merhant value III) Promotes planning, and upon complete party knock-out, rewards a different grimoire load out. IV) Promotes wizard specialization and variability.

​ ​Maybe, but they sort of threw the baby out with the bathwater, and made the class not nearly as fun because of it. ​ ​I think they could have made grimoires more "special" to find just by having more spells that were only found on grimoires you found in interest places or on difficult opponents, but couldn't learn via the level-up mechanic. But let me learn them, so I can select the set of spells I find most appropriate for what I expect to encounter, and form my own dynamic strategies via synergies between the ones I pick. ​ ​

I've started with a potd wizard, and I'm really tempted to start over with a different class for that reason. ​ ​I do not have any complaints about the effectiveness of the wizard. It's doing fine. Merely the fun of the wizard. It's maddeningly stifling not being able to pick your own spell combinations, rather than be limited to the few you learn + what the grimoire has picked for you, minus any overlap. It's destroyed one of the primary enjoyments of the class, a tradition going all the way back to pen and paper. Long term thinking is gone too, due to the instant replenishing of spells after each combat, "action" style. Instant gratification central. ​ ​Don't get me wrong: the Deadfire world looks amazing, the art is unreasonably beautiful, the game is immersive, and the writing, humor, and voice acting are top tier. But oh man am I not happy with wizards. Probably going to restart with a different class and hope for an eventual fix or community mod. ​This would be easy to fix: the core mechanics are mostly alright. It's just the bits 'round the edge. People who don't want to edit the grimoires certainly would not have to do so. Just allow their editing as in POE1, and provide an "ironman" type game mode to turn off the infuriating Diablo auto-regeneration of health and spells, and I'm a happy Deadfire player. You don't even have to rebalance anything: I can pick an easier difficulty if potd is too hard with those restrictions. These two things are really sapping my enjoyment at the moment. Everything else seems wonderful so far. ​ They could just create a special vendor who edits your grimoire and adds the spells you want for a cost.

​ ​ I've started with a potd wizard, and I'm really tempted to start over with a different class for that reason. ​ ​I do not have any complaints about the effectiveness of the wizard. It's doing fine. Merely the fun of the wizard. It's maddeningly stifling not being able to pick your own spell combinations, rather than be limited to the few you learn + what the grimoire has picked for you, minus any overlap. It's destroyed one of the primary enjoyments of the class, a tradition going all the way back to pen and paper. Long term thinking is gone too, due to the instant replenishing of spells after each combat, "action" style. Instant gratification central. ​ ​Don't get me wrong: the Deadfire world looks amazing, the art is unreasonably beautiful, the game is immersive, and the writing, humor, and voice acting are top tier. But oh man am I not happy with wizards. Probably going to restart with a different class and hope for an eventual fix or community mod. ​This would be easy to fix: the core mechanics are mostly alright. It's just the bits 'round the edge. People who don't want to edit the grimoires certainly would not have to do so. Just allow their editing as in POE1, and provide an "ironman" type game mode to turn off the infuriating Diablo auto-regeneration of health and spells, and I'm a happy Deadfire player. You don't even have to rebalance anything: I can pick an easier difficulty if potd is too hard with those restrictions. These two things are really sapping my enjoyment at the moment. Everything else seems wonderful so far. ​

Yeah I'm gonna pass on that. I'm just not going to use Aloth or wizards. Such a really bad concept. Now I end up with friendly fire AOE spells that I'd never of picked given the chance being used by Aloth as he's set to auto-attack.

Wow that's sad. Such a bad new change. Hopefully they will change it somehow in the future

Unless it changed, they're permanent. Now instead of swapping spells around grimoires, you swap grimoires themselves. I very much agree, I do not like this either. I'm possibly not even going to make a single wizard playthrough just because of that

Soulframe (pre-alpha: Prelude 9) Lots of animal saving

It was done to make wizards more specialised in POE you can learn every spell by copying it into your grimoire making all other grimoires useless once you had copied any spells you didn't already have. You still get to pick 2-3 spells per power level. Learn the ones you are going to use the most and if you need a specific spell or spells only for a specific situation use a grimoire with that spell/those spells. Wizards are still very powerful.