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Fat Shady just got a little shadier... "Trump says he has commuted sentence of former US Rep. George Santos in fraud case" They say that people usually get the government they deserve. I suppose we had this coming.

The irony of something like the first two Baldur's Gate games is that they were obviously a product of many, many compromises that the developers probably would've rather not have made if they didn't have to...but some of those compromises were the exact thing that I now realize I want out of a video game. Textual density and voice-acting is just exactly one such thing: the ability to be selective about what is voice-acted versus what is not, making it so that text is generally tight but you can have longer passages when the situation calls for it...and you didn't make the player constantly listen to or make the decision to skip past voice-acting because it's taking way too long when it's really not that good or for anything very important, but contrarily you can have entire conversations voice-acted if it is actually an important story moment or particularly silly or for any other reason you'd like...and it's not like the Baldur's Gate games did any of this perfectly either, there was a lot of room for improvement in many areas that didn't mean either going full book mode OR making every last bit of dialogue voice-acted. I don't want games that are endlessly text-dense (unless it's actually REALLY well-written or intriguing, but the rate of games successfully sinking their claws into you so much that you genuinely want to explore every last nook and cranny, listen to every last character dialogue, go through the full lore descriptions of each item just for the joy of the writing is really low), but I don't want games to be total basic garbage, either. There's a balance to be struck with these things, and it seems like a lot of games really struggle to find that balance and meaningfully carve out their identities within it.

So, New Arc Line has about a dozen hours of content in Early Access. I had hoped for more. I tried a Voodoo Shaman to see the difference between tech and magic. Gameplay wise, tech characters gain abilities through their equipment. Every weapon has the attacks it allows the character to perform. Backpacks and other equipment may give other abilities - boots crafted for Steam Engineers for example give a rocket jump and a charge ability. Mage characters on the other hand craft additional spells and gain their abilities that way. There is a magic corruption system that isn't completely implemented yet. If the spells cast by a mage are more powerful than the regions magic level, the mage slowly gets corrupted and will gain mutations at certain thresholds. It will be interesting to see how that works out. Story wise, some npcs don't like you as much depending on your class. Some quests may have more objectives. During the main quest a mage player gets offered an alternate quest at some stage - it still links back into the next main quest just as if you had done the normal quest, but it offers a choice and that is nice. The game has some potential. All the devs need is for the war to stop so they can develop in peace.

I was going to say there is this product called headphones, but I suppose that wouldn't be great if working/having to keep half an ear on something else at times. But at home/late night. I know in some cases, if one has bad tinnitus (as example), that headphones can be bad, but if it's mild (like hubby's), light over-ear heaphones/low volume still works fine. He uses the small Koss ones I gave him at his desk and loves them. If I like a game's soundtrack well enough, I'll leave it on. Most of the time however, after either a few hours (or for repeat playthrus) I end up turning it off and playing my own music. I do like game sound design noises to be on however, and I become mighty peeved if that's attached to the same volume slider as soundtrack/music, ala games of many many years ago. That was one of the best side advances - sound is no longer just on/off. Gotta have Speech, Music, Game sounds at minimum. 😄

Having played both they're pretty much entirely unconnected, except for having a similar establishing concept/ mechanism. They're both also better Star Trek than most of the recent TV shows despite lacking the licence.

The first one: https://www.gog.com/en/game/starcomnexus

Starcom: Unknown Space - I grabbed this on GoG for cheap and it has been fun. It is lot like Star Control. Less silly, but still has lots of weirdos to meet and planets to explore. It's good. I never played the first one, I guess this is a sequel, but they don't seem too connected.

Wrapped up with Control. Again I got the bug where I couldn't upgrade all my weapons even though I did all the quests, ie. missing one endless potential. Not that it matters as I am not fussed about finding all the secrets, just the interesting ones. Probably going to play Alan Wake 2 next, but I kind of don't want to have epic store...

That depends way too much on your class and your choice of weapons. I played a mage and thought the 2-handed playstyle was slow, unresponsive and not fun to play, so I switched to dagger/orb Spellblade and never looked back, stacking burn, shock and arcane bombs while zipping around the battlefield was very satisfying. Rounded the build out with some burst damage attacks, and it was a hoot and a half to play. At least it was for me, but I like high dps glass cannon characters whose only defense is high mobility and good cooldown management. There's a reason I tend to play sorcerers in Diablo IV and used the Stinger in Everspace 2. But yeah, game is definitely too long. The mage's ranged playstyle with the staff and the entire Control tree is probably also a leftover from the days where you were supposed to have actual players keeping the attention of the enemies, instead of semi-braindead AI companions. Probably. You have your home base to upgrade your gear, and the Crossroads were most likely meant as a lobby of sorts where you could pick where you want to go and check for groups. Most likely the entire reason why you have to reach everything through the Crossroads and not have a more connected game world like in the other games. Pretty standard for the live service game they were going for before pivoting to a single player experience. All the level designs - especially the much maligned city maps - are also left from it being supposed to be a co-op crawl through dungeons, rather than exploring traditional RGP areas. Game's pretty decent for its chaotic development. Certainly better than the negativity heaped on it, but also not great by any means.

Dragon Age: Veilguard was added to GamePass so I played it while I wait for Outer Worlds2. I thought it was pretty alright. Easily my favourite of Dragon Age sequels though it is not a high bar to pass. Few complaints, sure. Tonally, it is a bit inconsistant - but that's something I would say about every Dragon Age game, but Origins. The game is probably quite a bit longer than it should have been (again, Dragon Age staple). Combat sucks and gets really boring - again nothing new to DA... though as it tries to pivit a bit more into action-RPG territory it hurts it by how clunky and unresponsive it feels. There is also artificiality around the quests and systems which I found really detracting from the narrative. I don't know if it's because game's origin as liveservice, or just current Bioware team sensibilities, but how game was structured, how quests were presented I felt really made it difficult to feel immersed in the narrative, and therefore care. But it is not all bad. Like Inquisition I think story has more potential than Veilguard takes advantage of - and I do feel they are playing loose with some established lore. But for a very casual and distanced DA player it felt like it actually paid off on many things that previous games were establishing. Companions were alright, and I quite enjoy some of their banter. Finale is pretty alright, if contrived at times. I don't think it is a great game, but frankly best I have seen from Bioware since Mass Effect2 (didnt' play Andromeda nor Anthem though). I enjoyed most of it, but it's overstayed it's welcome and I am glad it is over.

I started over "those who rule" due to FOMO. Turns out one of the people i thought was receuitable was not. I did save him and let him live though, so maybe there will be a call back to it at some point. I am stuck on a level I struggled hard with the first time. If I just wanted to beat the level it would be no problem. It is the side objectives. Main mission is "survive for 12 turns" easy. Side missions: "Save the villagers" this one gets me occasionally but for the most part it's easy to save them unless you get some bad RNG The hard part comes with there being two boss type characters on opposite sides of the map. These boss characters are holding useful items. You don't have to kill them but FOMO. You have to defend a church from waves of enemies coming from two directions. All while pushing forward towards the item holding boss characters. These boss characters are standing behind where the waves of enemies spawn in. Even all this would be doable. But 12 turns makes it very difficult. You essentially have to get close enough by turn 11 to have the boss come out of his spot and attack you. While hoping that does not kill any of your characters. I have gotten close so many times but then an archer comes out and kills one of my characters and I have to restart. The worst part is that you can't skip the enemies turn, so after failing my self imposed mission, I have to watch the rest of their dang turn before restarting. Edit: also the AI is not stupid so they will attack the person closest to death

better combat than morrowind such high praise

Right, well, I'm a customer too, and this customer says "Great job Obsidian for ditching stupid, useless romances in your RPGs." Their developer resources are much better spent on pretty much anything else.

A new build in the year of our lord 2024? Sure why not. Thought i'd post this build that i have for a merc in my current run, as an illustration of the fun you can have with a blackjacket, and charbuilds don't have to be OMNIPOWERFUL SOLO-CAPABLE BEASTS to be a lot of fun. This is a pure support character with lots of flexibility to slot into your party. Warden - blackjacket, animist (cat form) hearth orlan, stats: 9might, 10con, 15dex, 20perception +1 from bg, 17int, 6resolve skills: alchemy : stealth in a 2:1 ratio, prefer investing in stealth at first abilities: Disciplined Barrage, Winter Wind [get Sunbeam for free] Tanglefoot Fast Runner Fighter Stances (use Adventurer stance), Conjure Lesser Blight* [get The Moon's Light for free] Into the Fray Determination** Tactical Barrage, Spreading Plague [get Returning Storm for free] Snake Reflexes Arms Bearer Out of the Fire, Boiling Spray [get Conjure Blight for free] Quick Switch Unstoppable OR Secret of Rime if you have a source of dex resistance from gear Conquerer Stance, Cleansing Wind [get Plague of Insects for free] Rapid Casting Armored Grace Clear Out, Conjure Greater Blight [get Sunlance for free] Quick Summoning Reaping the Whirlwind Uncanny Luck, Weather the Storm [get Lashing Vine for free] Accurate Empower *: respec out of Conjure Lesser Blight once you have two castings of Conjure Blight (so level 13). Choose Determination or Woodskin, whichever one you still need considering the below point. **: respec out of Determination to Woodskin once you get Lance of the Midwood Stag enchanted with Lord of the Forest Weapon slots: I: The Red Hand, enchanted to push II: Lance of the Midwood Stag early to mid to mid-late game (enchanted with Lord of the Forest), Street Sweeper late game or for special fights, or a Morningstar III: Fire in the Hole main hand, Sungrazer or Keeper of the Flame or Sun and Moon IV: Flail or Club mainhand (depends on party), Lethandria's Devotion offhand shield Suggested gear: Helm of the White Void Swift Hunter's Garb enchanted with dex resistance, or Spider Silk Robe Playstyle: basically you fill all sorts of roles, and you are costantly switching weapon slots as the party needs it. basically impossible to AI script effectively, so you better love micromanaging . i highly recomend that you have an easy-to-remember hotkey for switching weapon sets. - You do some disruption and damage by either using Spreading Plague or Tanglefoot in combination with your various push effects (early on it's a handful of spells). Gives you some a minor amount of survivability assist by disrupting melee enemies, extremely effective if you can pair with a party member who can also hobble or immobilize (frees up your spell casts for more push). Use your Red Hand similarly so when you run out of spells. Clear Out also fills this push job in very well late game. - Use Woodskin and Lance for +2 PL uptime whenever you're casting. Make sure you have uptime on Tactical Barrage as well. With blackjacket it's extremely painless to switch out of Lance if you need to shoot someone or if you need to provide some sustain with Lethandria's Devotion or need to debuff enemies with modals, and switch back to Lance for more spellcasts. - use Out of the Fire to save party members from danger, you can also target yourself to escape enemy engagement. Generally not worth the 2 resources to try it on an enemy until your accuracy is really high vs enemy reflex (missing on this feels real bad, very expensive and you probably needed this to save someone's skin) - switch to your shield weapon slot if you need to stop an enemy from engaging a squishier party member. after you lock an enemy down you can generally switch away and they'll stay on you, i like switching to the Red Hand (when the enemy isn't about to make an attack) so I can then push them repeatedly. - The Moon's Light and Cleansing Wind are good heal spells. Make sure you have +PL (tactical barrage, probably lance). Cleansing Wind is a little ornery around altitude changes and obstacles, so be warned. Supplement by switching to your shield slot if you need more sustain. - Higher level, switch to your blunderbuss weapon slot to do Clear Out, yet another push source (make sure blunderbuss modal is on). Sometimes you'll just wreck enemies if enemy density is high enough. Easy to spam if needed. Switch away to a different eapon slot once enemy density is low. I pair with either Sungrazer or Keeper of the Falme for extra aoe impact, but an alternate is Sun and Moon for bonus PL when you get rid of Lance (see below). - Late game, I give the Lance to another caster (they can still get PL from Woodskin) and I switch to Street Sweeper because of increasing need to clear enemy buffs. Also provides nice deflection bonus you can switch in and out of easily (again, Blackjacket is fun here). Depending on party need, you can instead use a morningstar here for switching into fortitude debuffs. - With your shield prefer a flail or club depending on party need. My party makes great use of a flail because i have a cipher who loves beams, so I use a flail. - conjure blight is a bit underrated (community patch makes them more generally usable if you're up for modding). early game the lesser and normal blights are a good way to waste enemy resources and time (toss the blights next to casters or rogue archers to soak up their spells or blinding/finishing blow attacks) and can also help run interference for squishy foes. greater blight later game actually comes with some handy abilities (most of the time) - e.g. sand blights can blind, ice blights can debuff enemy action speed by -40% in a huge part-friendly area, storm blights can swift your entire party while sickening enemies. greater blights are useful enough that even when you get lashing vine, i don't recommend respeccing out of greater blights. - free druid spells work great when other stuff doesn't work, and is why i pick an animist despite lack of other bonuses. against sickness-immune, replace spreading plague w/ returning storm casts. if you don't need the healing, you can drop a plague of insects. if you already have a summon up, drop some sunlances. against frost/push-immunes or dense enemy packs drop a sunbeam. - early game cat form is a nice way to assist with dps. mid-late game i just use cat form for when i need the action speed boost, your normal weapon capability will be a lot stronger for when you need it (most of the time). - i choose stealth as an early skill because stayin stealthed while you buff up and summon blights and then open with a spell cast works real well. significant diminishing returns, hence why i don't go all the way with stealth (and you can't be stealthed for scripted or other fights). - i choose alchemy because this character doesn't need more demands on action economy and with alchemy you can shift some of the action economy needs to outside of combat. Coral drugs for bonus action speed, or Taru Taru Chew for some bonus action speed (+3 dex) but also better healing/offense (+3 might). Early on I use some other potions at the start of a fight (being stealthed makes it easier to do this), later on once alchemy score gets higher and you have conqueror stance i instead supplement drug use with poison. Poison is easier to use when you get two shots/reload from Red Hand, have +20 acc to the weapon attack from arquebus, Conqueror Stance gives you +10 acc to the poison, and Tactical Barrage gives you +1 PL to poison (ordinarily very hard to scale up). Spider Silk Robe suggested as a possible gear choice as a late game way to boost poisons. I always stock a poison that targets will and another that targets fortitude and pay attention to the defenses of whatever target i'm attacking, which is generally either a caster that no one else can effectively dps down yet, or a really bullet-spongey guy in front that will actually be around long enough to suffer the effects of poison or needs to be hit with a powerful poison effect (like stone poison, or storm toxin). having a morningstar or a club can help with poison use, just make sure you don't apply the poison to your morningstar or club. interestingly, i used to stock heal potions on this character, but it turned out i never used them. even with the blackjacket's weaker fighter recovery, by not being a melee tank or not even a full-time off tank (just an occasional one), that drip of healing tends to be wildly sufficient for most purposes, and you can always switch to your shield slot for more defense and sustain. (even without weapon and shield style, lethandria's devotion being a medium shield gives you quite a bit of resilience against especially weapon-based enemies) anyway, this build isn't going to go solo any fights, but has turned out to be a real effective glue for a party. blackjackets are an extremely fun class to try to squeeze into a party or multiclass. having no cost to switch weapon sets enables a lot of neat tricks (not mentioned here: an incredible cheese opportunity with lethandria's devotion, which i'm deliberately not using)

Necroing this a bit but just wanna say I've been playing this on my Watcher (slightly different as I'm a Nature Godlike instead of Orlan as I imported from poe1 but otherwise the same build) and having a good time with it. The combination of push + entangle is surprisingly useful. I just did the Woedican Temple which is normally a pain in the butt fighting that mass of humanity in there but with the combination of push + entangle I was able to buy myself time to get buffs up and get Eder into a good enough position to start soaking up a bunch of engagements on the enemy. I especially like pushing enemies and then having Xoti hit them with a halt when they try to come back into range or have Serafen knock them down with his shouts. And against enemies where that tactic is less useful sunbeam tends to do a lot of work, or blights, or healing. Spreading Plague also helps quite a bit to enable other effects for the party. This character is also great at protecting the backline. You can sit back there with the Red Hand pushing enemies away that try to target your backline and if the enemy is being really annoying you can just swap to shield and engage them and let them try to beat on you for a bit. You're tanky enough that they won't really be able to take you down. I've had a lot of success just bullying enemies that try to troll my backline. The build is tanky enough to ruin the day of any flankers that try to do that - especially with its push effects. But even if the pushes fail it has fallback options and can tank. Anyways not super far with this yet (level...10ish I'd say?) but it's pretty fun so far! Kudos on a good build. I've done other Druid multiclasses before but never done a Fighter variant

Hey folks! I am a Youtuber who posted a thread a while back asking for peer review for an upcoming class tier list video I was making for Deadfire. The video is complete and I am linking it below for anyone interested in following up. Thelee from these forums makes a guest appearance at the end to discuss the finer details of the rankings. Here is the link:

Nice video. First of all your voice is pleasant and well suited for this - which is really the exception rather than the rule with (not so big) channels. Great! I also like your explanations regarding your thought procress on every class. I do not agree on several things - but I'm able to relate to the decision making. 👍 I also enjoyed hearing @thelee's voice for the first time, yay! 😊 --- Edit: as I said before somewhere during the initial discussion I would very much like to see a list (or maybe simply a presentation) of the most enjoyable (multi)classes. Like "what makes Deadfire builds fun to play (for you)?" And then maybe assume and speculate what might be fun for other potential players and give arguments why some stuff might be boring (yet powerful) and other stuff might be fun (even if not OP). Maybe that could be a topic that's helpful to new players (especially the ones who don't want to play several runs but prefer to have the most fun with just one playthrough). I mean if the thought processes and reasons "why" would be equally well explained as in this video above it should be nice content, right? It's all subjective of course - but maybe entertaining and helpful nonetheless. Examples: I agree that Barbarians are pretty niche in general - but it also happens to be that Berserker/Helwalker is one of the most enjoyable combos I always come back to for a fun little playthrough. It can be very powerful and especially carries the character very well in the early and mid game, yet is def. not overpowered, it has very effective synergies while it still poses a challange with its downsides. It just makes me hoot and holler when you go against weaker enemies while it's still viable against the bigger ones. Or how a certain Arcane Archer/Chanter can be so incredibly enjoyable and great against single targets and mobs alike - despite having a class like the Ranger in it which usually focuses on the niche of "AC vs. single targets". Yet there's also the very powerful stuff that's still very enjoyable (at least to me) which is the Mortar Monk for example (thought about it when you spoke about Resonant Touch). It's great during he mid game (INT bonus working with the mortars' AoE, Stunning Surge being awesome with mortars etc.) while it's not breaking the game in an unfun way - and when you get the really gamebreaking stuff like Whipers of the Wind + Resonant Touch + mortars' multi AoE... well it's the endgame and I think one can be allowed a little OP for the last few hours. Or the Psion/Troubadour which combines two very powerful classes into a very fun and powerful enough experience (when you focus on spamming different CC and damage options without pause) or into a potentially boring one which is gamebreakingly good (focus on summons and mind control). You already adressed it in the video above: that using very powerful stuff can be boring... but I think this topic deserves its own video. Because it's a very complex topic and highly subjective - and because a lot of people enjoy different things. I think this could lead to good engagement with viewers and also fruitful discussions. I also think this point rarely gets the attention it deserves. After all it's a game and is usually played for fun. So imo the most enjoyable characters are the most "powerful" when it comes to serving the purpose of a game so to speak. Anyway, excuse my ramblings: again - nice video.

Worse, it's usually completely quiet. The reason is that most of my gaming takes place while working and/or when everyone in my house is asleep.

So I have been looking at the task manager while playing New Arc Line. On average the game is around 2.600-4.100MB memory usage. When it loads a map it goes just above 11.000MB. That seems like a lot...