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The problem here is MS having a target of 30% profit for their games. So if Avowed/TOW2 came in at 20% profit, which by any measure would be a success story, the mere mention of them "not meeting sales targets" sets off an avalanche of "the games bombed/were a failure" type of unfair asinine comments which undermines those games and Obsidian's reputation. :(

That's upsetting. These games are very much for me. I don't finish a lot of games, but for some reason, Avowed and OW2 captured my attention and held it until the end. I'm disappointed that they aren't doing better financially. In comparison, while I enjoyed BG3, I never finished it. They did seem to do well critically, so I hope it isn't just unreasonable sales expectations. I don't know, I just hope Obsidian doesn't end up in another hole. They've been remarkably resilient so far.

Necro'ing to say that this build was as fun as advertised. Thanks for the work to build and share it. I completed a BPM Triple Crown - kill all the things - run and the poet carried the group! I swapped out chanter for Fury Shaper barbarian, which was slightly less fast (if my math is correct), but equally fun. I found myself not messing much with the imbues because of expert mode, but it ran on auto-pilot for the most part, which is another kind of bonus. @Aestus and @thelee talk about this in their class tier list conversation, but having a strong build that can run well without much micro, is great in RTWP party play, where there is a finite limit to player micro capacity. Great for Megabosses - somewhat trivializes HoW and Belranga, who can be interrupted.

TL;DW - Moscow still believes that it has the right to dictate the laws, alliances, military size and might, language, and every aspect of Ukrainian society without having to pay for a very costly occupation.

I'm hoping that Avowed 2 shows the same growth as Outer Worlds 2, but I am concerned that the improvements don't seem to be increasing sales. Although in retrospect, I'm the target audience for these games, and I still played them on Gamepass instead of paying full price. So I think the business model is more an issue than the quality or marketability of the game.

And exactly because of what you said about the risks in this industry, expecting every single game to have 30% margin is IMHO damaging, as there are only few games which could boast with such a margin in last 6 years. According to Bloomberg, the average profit margin in the video game industry is 17-22%. Over the past six years, Xbox has hit 10-20%. To put that 30% target into more context, Sony's PlayStation division achieved a 16% profit margin in Q1 FY25. Link to mentioned Bloomberg article behind paywall, if anyone owns access to them: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-23/microsoft-pushes-xbox-studios-to-hit-higher-profit-margins

i'm just waiting for them to kiss

Avowed could never be Elders Scrolls, because one big part of it being so popular still is it's easy moddability. I don't know why they just can't see this. If you put out your game on Unreal, there won't be any mods. The game will be forgotten in a month. This happens all the time with those games. You need mods, to keep people in the loop. Making mods for Bethsoft games is so incredibly easy that anyone can do it. Sure they sell more on consoles than PC yadda-yadda, but mods in the news are what brings people back over and over. Hell, you just have to look at Skyrim or FNV Nexus. The amount of mods for those games is crazy.

The name they wrote also started with a P, so perhaps something got mangled from some AI hallucination, but it was definitely not Pallegina. I felt like I was having a stroke I had to keep rereading this comment to understand what this person was asserting, it was so bizarre and wrong.

Remember this guy. He's got something on his mind. He goes on for an hour and a half, and it's not boring, but you can skip to the final segment if you like.

Yeah, I noticed a few days ago, the internet was awash with end of the world for gold and silver trader messages. Australia's ABC News speculate it because of the uncertainty around the US Feds independence and some have conspiracy theories like this guy... I honestly don't know enough about the big picture to have an opinion of my own

Alone in the Dark original trilogy as a Giveaway on GOG. https://www.gog.com/en/news/alone_in_the_dark_trilogy_giveaway_as_a_celebration_of_what_we_achieved_together

As I work on a mod to prevent crashes with Mohora Tanga self-proc overflows, I stumbled across something interesting about Heartbeat Drumming and Swift Flurry. At the mechanical level, these two abilities work in different ways, and the difference matters. Swift Flurry simply fires a primary attack 33% of the time on crit as you would imagine it works. Every melee weapon crit can trigger it. Very straight forward. Heartbeat Drumming, on the other hand, works in a different way. When you crit with a melee weapon, 25% of the time it applies a status effect to the target that cannot stack with itself and that status effect then triggers a primary attack from the monk against the target. This extra step is important due to the order in which scripted attacks resolve. In effect, this means that HBD will only trigger once for most weapons that self-proc (such as Mohora Tanga) or for weapons that launch multiple attacks that can proc concurrently (such as Ball and Chain, Sanguine Great Sword, or Sun and Moon), depending on how the attacks these weapons proc are scripted. This is similar to how cleaving stance works under the hood. This means that HBD is much less useful for chain proc builds than Swift Flurry, not just because the chance to proc is lower, but also because it will always only get one bite at the apple for each set of self-procs or set of eligible attacks that proc concurrently. To illustrate, a double crit from Sun and Moon should have .747 probability to proc at least one extra SF/HBD attack if they both worked as I assume the community has always thought that they do. However, since HBD can only proc once on the concurrent attacks, that means the actual probability for at least one extra attack is .663. Mohora Tanga is even crazier - with my mod running that cuts off self-procs of Red Flag Flying at 50 in a row, the full chain will only proc one HBD. Still a meaningful improvement, but less useful, and as you look at the odds to get a respectable chain going, the odds are impacted more and more.

Wasn't it Pascal, the Shield Beaver with the unique Beaver racials and the six fingers feat ?

For the record: While I didn't love The Outer Worlds (1) either, I thought there were decent things in there as well. Overall, I think it's a rather mid title by Obsidian standards though. And one seemingly scared of its own design goals as well. There is "casualization" -- Pentiment, set up as a narrative experience surely isn't a hardcore gamer's game, and that's perfectly fine! It was never conceived as such. And then there is say the aforementioned looting in TOW1 that doesn't even matter as it's this abundant. In a way, it seems Obsidian came out of their crowdfunding stage under the impression that specialization would not be worth it (after Deadfire, see the quote prior about making real money off two PoEs...). Whereas for Warhorse, Larian, Owlcat et all it was the opposite. That said, whilst there were layoffs, Obsidian never cut down solely to the crew doing Pillars 1 back then. IIRC, they were still a studio in the ~100-150 people range at that point.

We updated yesterday to 3.0.1 and noticed that we are unable to sleep. When we activate the lean-to it says unable to sleep attack incoming like if a raid was inbound. After it hits midnight it switches to can sleep, but may be attacked in the morning. You are able to sleep at this point, but a raid is still never triggered and restful bonuses don't apply.

I have the same problem since 5 days. The host can sleep, but slave never can.

Finished Soldiers Live. I don't know, I think I like the original 3 books more. There is a dip afterwards that does get better with the later books but it never quite comes back to the level of the first 3. Saying that I will continue reading the new books as they come out. I started immediately with Lies Weeping. Another thing I would say is that while Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen is pretty heavily inspired by the Black Company he does a better job with his characters. You are way more invested in the non PoV characters of the Malazan world.

That was my reaction to when Deadfire launched -- to nowhere near the buzz as PoE. To be fair, Eternity1, unlike Original Sin, was always big time sold on nostalgia, and eventually, that crave for the good ol' days may be fulfilled. Still, in the case of PoE, it's certainly not the "type of game" at fault -- or Owlcat wouldn't have rolled these things plus DLC plus Enhanced Editions en masse from an Eastern European CRPG factory line. :D In the case of TOW, it's not the type of game either, see Fallout New Vegas. What would have bummed me out (and kinda did) with TOW1 is that it was announced as a sort of Vegas-Like project (see the announcement trailers... "From thy builders of Vegas!"). And then was more like a baby's version of an Obsidian game, of one I've played better versions of before (not talking size, but depth). The entire industry is struggling a bit atm though. And if you ask me, the thing to notice recently has been about specilization -- of picking an experience and going all-in on it rather than watering it down so that everybody may be onboard. A game like Kingdom Come would have never seen the light of day at Bioware, Bethesda and Obsidian -- see how Josh had been hoping to make a historical game since forever, but bosses would go: "Nobody would buy that." And even FromSoft exploded by Elden Ring -- a title likewise that would have never seen the light of day at most of the old Western powerhouses of the industry, as deemed as too "inaccessible". These games were allowed to excel at what they were targeting -- and attracted added people simply by doing so, making them curious what's so "special" and "unique" about them. Warhorse have talked about how many history buffs they got onboard who aren't even hardcore gamers, for instance. As a side-effect, Warhorse are now pretty much the only top dogs on the "historical RPG" block too -- there simply is nobody around making a game like them on the scale of them, zero direct competition. Loot and combat and dwarves and elves and Pip-Boys? Dime a dozen. It's actually not just games. See also music, where there are few omnipresent superstars still left that everybody and their cat owns a record of. And rather, everyone tends to build their own streaming playlists, tailored towards them specifically. The market here too has exploded so much that everybody will eventually find something fit to their tastes. (Over 19,000 games released on Steam alone in 2025). One thing is clear though: Chasing trends with dev cycles of 4-7 years ain't gonna cut it. By that point that trend is long old hat. And everybody else chasing it as well may have already picked up what was left of all the buzz once you're finally ready to ship yourself. :D

Menace - This is the new game from the developers of Battle Brothers. The demo came out awhile ago and it was not great for me. You are managing a team of Space Marines. The demo threw you into the middle of a campaign and it was just overwhelming and not clear. It is now in EA, and you can play from the start, which is a much easier way to learn the systems. I enjoyed my first mission and it seems like a solid tactical game. So it's worth picking up if you liked BB and want to support the developers.

Well, yeah, but Avowed I thought has a bit of "Anthem" syndrome of "is that what have you been working on for 7 years?" There is making a behemoth of a crowdpleaser for 5-7 years, and there is making a 2 years in development game for 7 years with multiple reboots. I know nothing of profit margins, but according to articles 30% is highly unusual, with 20% being more common. As to Avowed - I am a bit surprised as initially I thought the world from Obsidian was that it did about as well critically and commercially as they expected. Perhaps the expectation was for it to have better legs then it did.

Noticable improvements with the mods thank you.

You can use the Community Patch (Basic or all of it) right away. The changes it makes are reasonable, unobstrusive and improve the gameplay and balance. Also I nowadays would hate to level up without the unique icons for passive abilities from the CP - because I 'd have to mouseover every passive ability to check which one it actually is. Some few standard icons get reused for a lot in the vanilla game which is a bit annoying imo. I would also highly recommend the Enhanced UI mod (by Spherical), I wouldn't want to play the game without it. It just adds some additional UI bits for more info and tooltips which is really useful without messing with the game mechanics at all.

Hi, your Scout should work well. As backup weapon you can take a bow at first and then use one of Serafen's mortar blunderbusses or Eccea's Arcane Blaster. If you'd want more sustained damage potential instead of a few high accuracy hits from stealth/invisibility you could swap Assassin with Streetfighter and mainly use dual blunderbusses (AoE and regular) with the Powder Burns modal. This added cone damage also distracts you - but this unlocks the Streetfighter's passive which leads to -50% recovery/reloading times and +50% Sneak Attack damage which leads to pretty crazy DPS output.

It's certainly not an unusual length for RPG-Likes that try to be HUGE ASS 100+ hour GAMES (see Kingdom Come 2, Starfield, BG3....) As said, it's one of Obsidians own main objectives to now cut that down to three, four years. Speaking about MS' profit targets, I'm sure they're calculacting that in, but: Pricing a game, any game at 70-80 bucks whilst making it available on Game Pass isn't promoting that game. It's promoting Game Pass first and foremost. Not sure about you guys, but games at that price point have to REALLY win me over (which increasingly fewer of these risk averse big budget games desperate to cater to everyone and their pet hamster do). Else I'd rather buy 2 great indie games and a glorious Pentiment (and still have money to spare for snacks and drinks on top of it). What Raf Colantonio said. Xbox Game Pass ‘damaging’ the game industry, former Xbox dev says inXile's Clockwork Revolution is likely going to face a battle too.

I´ve been waiting for so long for the new patch to release just to learn that it´s still not possible to get the "all for none" trophy after dissmissing all crew members. It´s a known bug, mentioned more than once in the technical support area. I´ve killed two of the companions in my actual safe to check if there is any progress, but the tracker stucks at 1/6... It can´t be that difficult to fix that guys. I fullfilled every task to get the platinum trophy and I can´t get it. It´s very dissapointing! Playing on PS5.

Long time lurker here. For whatever reason still playing this game in current year - thankfully with some great mods like Elric's which dramatically improve the balance and experience of the game. I just got finished up with my latest run, using BPM + Community Patch and All Upscaling (Upwards only). Used the following party (Note that I used mods to change the character classes and attributes around so that I could effectively have a full custom party without missing dialogue) Me: Crusader (Devoted / Bleakwalker) Eder: Crusader (Devoted / Bleakwalker) Xoti: SC Beguiler Custom Char: SC Priest of Wael Tekehu: SC Skald The party was the most effective of any that I had ever done. The two crusaders used a Greatsword + Morningstar (Willbreaker w/ Modal always on) and were the primary front-liners. Once past the early game, they would have enough engagement slots and survivability to survive nearly anything. Triumph of the crusaders (Strong AOE for ~100+ seconds + full heal on kill) made it so the action economy of the priest was incredible. Almost zero reason to ever use healing spells other than in emergencies. The crusaders would use the Acc + Crit auras and the Heal/Armor ones. Because the Acc aura doesn't fully stack with the acc stance, I would make both of them use the upgraded cleaving stance. This would obliterate packs with FoD spam, hitting 200+ regularly on the greatsword character. The Skald would usually open with an empowered Eld Nary or summoned weapons w/ the unique sabre and then switch back to using a pike w/ the deflection reduction modal. The beguiler was incredibly strong and almost never needed to attack. The debuffs from the willbreaker (usually -10 or more Will + -25 fort), the Ngati Tusk w/ Hunter of Hunter, and nearly every affliction under the sun would debuff the enemies to the point where almost any skill would land and have a high crit rate. I think I killed the Magran Teeth dragon in under 20 seconds because the party just did so much damage (Eld Nary carrying big time). Maybe mortar monk does more damage, but this party has been the strongest in the 10+ variations of potd upscaled runs I had done. Haven't tried megabosses yet but I will soon Not sure why I made this post, but just wanted to give a big shoutout to Boerer, Thelee, and Elric for all the useful posts, mod contributions, etc. After playing so many different CRPGs over the years I just really appreciate how good the systems and depth are in deadfire. Rogue Trader, BG3, DOS2, are all great games but none of them have had me constantly lurking forums like a madman quite like deadfire has.

Just passing by and seeing this thread warms my heart 😀

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-cuts-contact-with-polish-parliament-speaker-over-trump-insults-2026-02-05/ MAGA sure are thin skinned.

Not only Feargus.... Apparently Chris Parker et all were pushing for it too. That had carried over for far longer though. Avowed wasn't supposed to just channel Obsidian's inner The Elder Scrolls -- it was supposed to do that AND be multiplayer on top of it. If dev cycles and processes wouldn't be an issue, they wouldn't be talking now about trying to shorten them to three or four years as one of the main commitments. From Bloomberg: A few successes later, Urquhart and his co-founders were in talks to sell the business to the company that had almost killed it. During the negotiations with Microsoft, Obsidian’s executives assembled a slideshow presentation for the concept that would become AVOWED, pitched as an ambitious cross between megahits The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Destiny that would allow players to battle monsters together in a massive fantasy world. It was an impressive if unlikely proposition. “My thought when I first saw it was, ‘I don’t think there’s a team on the planet that could execute on this,’” says Josh Sawyer, Obsidian’s studio design director. Two years later, Obsidian stripped out the multiplayer feature, and a year after that it assigned a new director to the project. By the time AVOWED came out, it had been in the works for nearly seven years. Also pretty curious how Feargus now wishes that MS would allow for risky and/or smaller projects to be made still, when it was Josh Sawyer who had to once again (see Project Eternity) battle hard with Feargus to get Pentiment off the ground. He even considered to leave had it fallen through. Credits where credits are due: Back at Interplay, when Feargus suggested to a then little known company called Bioware that they better make their next project a D&D game, he struck Gold. No less as no decent big D&D game had come out in many years before. Otherwise, he really doesn't strike me as somebody that should get too deeply involved on the creative side of things (the other founders aren't as regularly "visible" with wonky decisions, as Feargus is pretty much the public face of Obsidian, but who knows...) You know who should be in charge of all things creative? Whoever came up with the initial idea for say Grounded. Not only does that game cater to a specific niche rather than trying to be a little bit of everything for everyone: "It's ELDER SCROLLS MEETS OBSIDIAN MEETS DESTINY!" (Scope issues aside: A game made for everyone is a game made for no one). Grounded, unlike most recent Obsidian games, also has a distinct hook that nobody else on the market has: "Oh LOOK! It's Honey I Shrunk The Kids -- THE GAME!"

judge biery opinion and order (edit: the opinion length is ~500 words) for those unaware o' the liam conejo ramos story. HA! Good Fun!

I mean, there is no shame in taking a break. I've bought Elden Ring on release, played it for like a month straight and then stopped. A year later I picked it up again, played for a while, stopped again. Middle of last year I finally completed it, then went into the DLC... and after like half of it took a break again to finally finish it last week. This game is so big and it can get very tedious with the continuous attempts on bosses etc.. getting burnt out feels like a natural part of it at this point.

I upgraded AM4 one last time from an older Ryzen 3 a while ago. Back then, the 5700X3D was still around (for ~200 EUR). As I'm never looking for a higher end experience, this was a no-brainer decision: The 5700X3D thus cost twice as much as the 5600, but is nowhere close to providing twice the performance. X3Ds are great chips if you want the extra performance. But I'm actually surprised that they are so popular. They're clearly sold as enthusiast chips -- and as any enthusiast hardware (RTX 4090/5090 etc.), you're also PAYING extra. Guess that people are figuring that they still have much lower price tags then the best GPUs (true) and just go: "Ah, who cares!" :D And naturally, on AM4, they're now forever the fastest gaming chips around, driving up demand all by itself.

Yeah, there are only few titles for which CPU is a bottleneck (Cyberpunk being one of them). I wish Ryzen would resurrect m4 3d chips, but I am good as it is. A friend of mine convinced me to double down on my irresponsible spendings and swap my 27inch 1440p IPS for 32inch 4k QD-OLED. Visual gains vary from game to game - games with a lot of dark and contrast benefit the most from OLEDs true darks. One thing which surprised me is how little performance gap there is between 2k and 4k thanks to DLSS - In 1440p anything below quality preset would be noticeable and even quality sometimes showed some ugly bits. With 4k though, I can easily use balanced and have a better image quality then I did in 1440p, and on performance it seems to be more or less on par with quality in 1440p. I was a bit disappointed with the performance I was getting with my 5070 Ti when I turn raytracing on in Cyberpunk and Alan Wake2. I mean it is mostly playable now, but still seems like mostly novelty feature for high end GPUs. To compare I resubscribed for a month to GamePass to try the mandatory Raytracing games: Indiana Jones and new Doom. Both look stunning and run like butter. Unless I turn on Pathtracing - Pathtracing cuts my framerate by 2/3rds. Eh, I will see with time if it was a wise investments or if the RAM panic will blow over and I have overspend for an unpgrade I didn’t need just yet. The screen is nice though. Probably will enhance my experience more overall than the GPU.

Hi, single class Shifter isn't super appealing imo because the PL 8 and 9 abilities for Spiritshift aren't that great. In my experience the Shifter is more enjoyable when multiclassed. Here there a a lot of options which all work well and are fun to play, usually it's a combo of Shifter+martial class because of the spellcasting restriction when shifted: Shifter/Goldpact Knight - great AR with zero recovery penalty because of Paladin passives + Gilded Enmity (which is kind of free if you combine with Sworn Rival) + natural armor (especially Bear form). Eternal Flames stacks with Wildstrike lashes, Ring of Focused Flames gives extra +10 acc, Sacred Immolation + Nature's Terror is fantastic late game AoE dmg while in melee. Also nice with Steel Garotte but needs afflictions on enemies then to unlock life drain. So cast some affliction stuff before going in (Relentless Storm or Tanglefoot etc.). Shifter/Helwalker - higher speed and shocking lash from Lightning Strikes, burning lash from Turning Wheel, both stack with Wildstrike, +10 INT prolongs Spiritshift, +15 MIG (Helwalker's passive + Thunderous Blows) boost dmg and self-heal (pets, inter-shift), +10 INT/+15 MIG are fantastic for the Boar form because the shifter variant of the board form has a Wounding DoT lash that has the base duration of the spiritshift, not the usual one. Also great for any spellcasting between/before shifts (Relentless Storm or Plague of Insects and especially Moonwell - or whatever). Stunning Surge is a great attack ability and so are Efficient Anguish or Torment's Reach. Shifter/Trickster or Streetfighter - simple synergies due to high dmg bonuses from Sneak Attack etc. combined with Wildstrike lashes, no e Full Attack strikes sich as Crippling Strike and so on and nice mobility bc. of Escape. Streetfighter has a lot of potential with dmg (but has to be flanked AND blooded to unlock fully, pick human race to profit even more), Trickster with defense. Shifter/Furyshaper or Berserker - fast attack speed, some melee dmg bonuses (Blooded, One Stands Alone), added engagement via Barbaric Shout, added DoT with Blood Frenzy or terrify with Spirit Tornado, AR bonus (Thick Skinned), nice finisher Full Attack (Barbaric Smash), awesome mobility with Wild Sprint and especially when Leap becomes available. Berserker has higher dmg potential but also self dmg (use human race and Blooded to profit) and Furyshaper has nasty CC (Fear Ward). Shifter/Stalker - very high accuracy, added defense and AR, Boar form unlocks Predator's Sense of the Animal Companion automatically, nice Full Attack abilities (Wounding Shot but also the Hunter's Claw stuff) and of course an additional body on the battlefield which you can use to always flank enemies and thus apply -10 deflection and -1 AR to them (as well as Stalker's Link). During or before shifts you can use the awesome single target dmg combo Takedown Combo (+100% dmg for the next attack) + Sunlance. Shifter/Bloodmage - despite the spell casting restriction this works nicely in the early and mid game where you cast lots of the fast self-buffs with the Wizard, then shift and do melee. Late in the game it's extremely good because you can combine Wall of Draining (prolongs Spiritshift and all buffs and benefical effects, including healing over time and stuff like damaging aura spells - so you don't have to pause shift ever) with Zandethu's Draconic Fury (use Blood Sacrifice to get back the highest tier spell uses) and Citzal's Martial Power at last (cannot cast while shifted anyway). For lulz you can also use the Transmuter subclass and trade a bit of power for an additional shift form: into an Ogre. :)

Please do something about the travel sooner than summer.

Finished Shadow of the Erdtree. Radhan was such a bitch that I decided to cheese him in the end. I don't feel bad about it, this phase two is worse than Orphan of Kos in Bloodborne. That one at least felt fair. Game is still beautiful, also really damn long. Probably the longest Souls game there is so far. The DLC map was a bit of a mixed bag. While looking great everywhere, it had some areas that felt incredibly rich in detail and then there were some areas that have been nothing but looks. Barely any consumables even. Not sure if they were running out of time for those areas, or if they exist to add more "depth" to the world. A bit like in a heroes journey, you know, where you don't just fight and loot all the time, you also travel and have slow downs. It's ok, I guess. Just noticed that those places showed up quite often in mid- and late-game. Thinking of going into NG+ but not sure yet... I kinda want to... but it for sure will take a couple years then to unlock everything again.

Started playing Songs of Conquest, and now I just want to go replay Wrath of the Righteous.

Ah well, it was long shot. Probably your best bet would be: https://support.obsidian.net/#contact If the widget doesn't show up click "Contact" at the top of the page.

we have the same issue with our multiplayer game whoever hosts can sleep, the other players have incoming raid that never arrives. we all have to stay up to midnight

A single class Priest can absolutely fight in melee. It's just so that his damage output with a weapon would be better if he multiclassed with a class which added some melee prowess. But in general you can stand in the front line and swing a great sword. I place Xoit as SC Priest at the front line all the time - often with a Morning Star - and it works fine. Will she be tanking many enemies? No - but that's not her role. But she can stand her ground against an enemy or two for long enough. In Deadfire, a Priest of Berath can summon a spiritual great sword for himself which has a nice corrosive lash that grows if your reputation matches your god's dispositions. It can become quite powerful. That way even a single class Priest can contribute with weapon damage. If you are okay with giving up the highest tier spells you can multiclass with not much regret. I personally love to multiclass a Priest with the Helwalker Monk because this has two main kinds of synergies: better melee output: with stuff such as Lightning Strikes + Turning Wheel and some attack abilities such as Force of Anguish or Torment's Reach you can do some serious damage, especially when paired with the spiritual great sword (resulting in a shocking lash, a burning lash and a corrosive lash on the sword). Also the high MIG of the Helwalker leads to more weapon damage. the Helwalker can offer +15 MIG (+1 MIG per wound and +5 from Thunderous Blows) and +10 INT (Turning Wheel) which are both fantastic buffs for casting: INT enlargens the AoEs and prolongs all durations, MIG raises damage and healing power(!). Spells like Shining Beacon profit a lot from +15 MIG (higher dmg per tick) and +10 INT (a lot more ticks) and so does healing over time such as Consecrated Ground. Aso you can be a bit faster (Lightning Strikes add +5 DEX and +15% action speed) and get some other goodies. The Monk is a great multiclass choice for a lot of classes, Priest is no exception.

My Steam "favorites" list currently/for a while has seven games that are in blue text, stating "update required/paused." To which I say - not right now/not ready, and then go Offline again when I'm done doing whatever I went "online" for. Tainted Grail: I liked the original release quite well, but the DLC didn't appeal - I bought it because it was a King Arthur-legend type game, not an undersea/cthulhu (or whatever) legends game. Oh I'm sure the Arthur lore is in there somewhere. But you know what I mean. But I keep it installed in case I ever want to replay the older/non-patched vanilla version I have backed up. I'm still waiting for a Stray 2. :P

Kind of rage quiet Octopath Traveler. Got to the very end, and find that not only do I have to grind through 8 mini-bosses (takes about 30min?) to get a go at the final boss, I can't save so presumably if I fail I'll have to start all over again, and I suddenly need all 8 of my characters which I haven't so far at any point of the game. Bah. Maybe I'll get back to it at some point, dunno.

battletech extended (BEX) have been playing battletech advanced and rogutech since those mods were released, but never played BEX. am shocked by how much we enjoy bex. is more stable compared to bta and roguetech. the bex mech lab offers fewer options, and initiative and evasion is handled more like the base game than the other mods mentioned, but am near completing a full merc career and am just about to start fighting the clans; start year for our career is 3047. am likely gonna play until am able to field as many dire wolves and warhawks as we please, although am disappointed the bex omnimechs is nevertheless having hardpoints. one thing we especial miss from roguetech is the inability to be able to choose where am dropping on a map. bex frequent drops us in the middle o' multiple enemy lances with the back o' our out-of-cover stalkers typical pointed at least a half dozen mechs with better initiative. whatever. point is that am having more fun than expected. admission: other than fritz (chess,) is few computer games am having invested more hours into than battletech. sux that hairbrained weren't able to do a sequel. HA! Good Fun!

I think I'm actually leaning more towards caster classes tbh. I get a bit bored with the melee types and they make me play bad. (That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it 😆)

Quest Mechanical Matriarch is bugged. The hidden door in the Automech Production Facility won’t open. I don’t get an ‘open hidden door’ option. I’m playing on PS5. The quest seems to be bugged and I can’t progress. Anyone else with the same problem? I found someone on Reddit with the same issue but no workaround yet I guess. Would be nice if this could get fixed

@thelee After some code debugging, I think this parameter cause the weirdness of Shadowing Beyond, "ClearWhenAttacks": "true", found in statuseffects.gamedatabundle "Shadowing_Beyond_SEInvisible". For "Smoke_Veil_SE_Invisible" this is set to false.

If you take a Tactician/Assassin and do fights solo you can trigger Brilliant via Brillant Tactician nearly every time you go invisible. You don't need Devoted so bad since you already get +4 PEN from Assassinate. The additinal crit damage is nice but not stellar anyway. Yes, but that's only one half. The other one is piling up lashes (from weapon, Hylea's Talons, Belt of Magran's Chosen etc.). Bleeding Cuts is also nice - but the DoT can take some time to kill an enemy and that might be the time he needs to strike you down before the Slippers kick in or you can cast Smoke Veil etc. Fortunately stealth provides you with a 80% recovery bonus that almost nullifies the high recovery from Bleeding Cuts. It's still noticable though. An Assassin should always try to strike and then go invisible (via kill-->slippers or Shadowing Beyond or Smoke Veil) in order to end the encounter so that his resources refill. Then it can be very powerful and fun (if you like the sneaky "Thief™" playstyle). As Tactician/Assassin you can skip the "end combat" thing often enough though and still get Guile back. The best assassination weapon is Dragon's Dowry because of the combo of high base dmg + highest lashes. And also because guns don't have recovery. You can shoot twice (stealth reload bonus of 80%, shoot again) and then vanish. It's a bit frustrating that the best weapons for Assassins are the biggest guns - used a point blank - in general. Spearcaster with the lash enchantment is also good. If it has to be a melee weapon then Chromoprismatic Quarterstaff is also decent because of its lashes and because it has the additional advantage that you don't need to go into engagement once unstealthed (reach weapon). Oathbreaker's End does good dmg with Bleeding Cuts. Effort with Maiming isn't too bad either (raw dmg doesn't stack like Bleedig Cuts though). Engoliero do Espirs: also nice. Less base dmg but if you manage to kill with the opening backstab you'll send out Ghost Blades with all the dmg bonuses of the weapon. Basically just use a two hander with lashes on it (I'll count Bleeding Cuts as a lash since its also a multiplicative dmg boost like elemental lashes are). A suprisingly good assasination weapon is Whispers of the Endless Paths with the Run-Through enchantment. It has very high base damage. But of course you can't combine that with Power Strike because it's its own ability (but you can use it with Takedown Combo if you play an Assassin/Ranger). After a lot of testing with an Assassin some time ago I think I came to the conclusion that the best melee backstab weapon is Concelhaut's Draining Touch (of course only usable by a Spellblade) followed by Chromoprismatic Staff and then Oathbreaker's End (+ Bleeding Cuts) - iirc. If you find it stupid that Backstab favors heavy weapons you can check out the Community Patch in my signature: it changes Backstab from a additive dmg bonus to a flat raw dmg bonus (same numbers for all weapons) which scales with Rogue's Power Level and will generally be a tad higher than a vanilla Backstab with a two handed melee weapon after some PLs (but less than with Dragon's Dowry).

Except that you say things like "the bonus only triggers on a crit" and rhetorically asking whether a single attack PEN bonus is better than the Streetfighter bonuses. Rather seems like you *are* forgetting some bits there. And similarly, when you start suggesting things like the Assassinate ability being underwhelming and the class being subpar, it rather seems like you're talking about the class and its abilities as a whole, not just melee Assassin builds. Which then raises the question what those statements are actually based on, given that the thrust of your arguments do seem to be specifically about the viability of a melee build. If that's all you're talking about, indeed my Evoker Assassin is not relevant; but then your claims about the class in general are irrelevant as well, so why make them? As for pontificating about your playstyle... yeah, I think I will actually. It seems relevant. You seem to be quite adamant about what is necessary for a melee assassin build. You *have* to go for a 1H crit build, you *have* to heavily invest in MIG/PER/DEX only, you *have* to turn it into a one-trick pony (never mind consumables and multi-classing), quickly blow through your Guile, start uselessly (?) auto-attacking and die. It remains a bit misty exactly why that would be the only or optimal way though; perfectly reasoned, I think not. And it does rather suggest that this may be informed more by your particular preferences in playstyle than you think. And apparently the video you're referencing doesn't agree, if it suggests using a Great Sword instead. So kindly do get of your high horse, would you? I have also at no point claimed that it is illegitimate to compare builds within a class. What's more, you can even compare them across classes as well! Possibilities are endless. It's not necessarily a very useful comparison if the different builds don't aim to fill roughly the same role though, which was my point. I can make a high DPS Fighter build and compare this to a dedicated tank Fighter build, to see which has the higher DPS; the results of such a comparison will be as predictable as they are pointless. Similarly, perhaps the point of a particular Assassin build is for example to quickly take out individual, possibly hard to reach targets. I would think it's quite reasonable to judge a build in relation to its intended role, an apparently very bizarre thought in your world. Good luck with 'generating positive discourse' though. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it some day. Given that I selectively referenced assassinate's PEN, accuracy, and damage bonuses seperately throughout my posts, basic reading between the lines would tell you that I was being reductionist (my bad) rather than ignorant about an ability that I just told you I've tested through multiple builds (which obviously include multiple playstyles and roles). You can keep using it as an excuse to be relentlessly ascerbic, but I've made it pretty clear that the crux of my argument isn't just the specific bonuses but the limited opportunities to benefit from them and their relative weakness as a result. As for "criticizing the class as a whole" rather than just melee builds, you can stop rewriting history right there – I explicitly used the word 'martial' at every opportunity to make clear the context of my argument. Again, it seems like you're more interested in cherry picking to criticize/demean than actually responding to the points being raised (actual efficacy of martial assassin builds vs other martial rogue builds, widely acknowledged problems with weapon style balancing re: full attacks, the frequency trade off between the assassin's bonus and malus, etc). You won't actually bother to look at a video that illustrates my point (he doesn't ''suggest" a great sword, he illustrates how constantly switching one in and out is basically the only way to make melee assassins compete) but you're more than happy to grab onto the one element of my description you can use to justify a blanket dismissal. You won't actually *try* a melee assassin to see how it plays vs other martial rogues, you've already made up your mind that if anybody has a negative experience with a subclass you happen to like then it must be on them rather than a possible shortcoming that could be improved. If you can't have a friendly conversation with someone you disagree with, then move on. There is zero need to be this confrontational over a disagreement about game mechanics.