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Crimson Desert: Taming a pet requires "100 appreciation points" - you can only get 25pts per day (petting it). Dogs generally stay in place so you can return to a spot each day to pet it. The cats, so far, because you have to pick them up and pet while cradling them in arms, then put them down again, do not stay in place (they tend to run off) and if I return to an area I can't ever seem to find it again to pet it again. Hadn't seen a cat I liked much anyway so I was eh. Then I saw --- a sleek black cat! It reminds me of Mr. Black! I must have it! So I picked it up. But if I set it down again, how would I find it again? So ... I never set it down again. Made Kliff stand in place, doing nothing, for 3 "days" while I did other IRL things, petting kitty each day. Until finally: Forget anything else, this game is now a 10/10. Yes.

Youtube Video Guide Disclaimer: This playstyle is not for everyone. This is all about micromanaging every movement your rogue makes. If you don’t like this style of play, you will not have fun with this build. If you leave this character alone for a second, she will die. If this sounds fun to you, read on. In the middle of the night they came. Dark shadows on the wind, almost soundless. Tquintan heard them though. She always did. She was one of them, trained to move without being seen, and strike with furious anger. She was good. Not the best, but good enough to warrant a death sentence. The Orlans of the Deadfire had a cruel sense of justice. Tquintan had challenged a senior in her guild, and won. The others in the guild did not take kindly to this upstart trying to climb the ladder of assassins before she had proved himself. So they did what they do best. Well, they tried. Tquintan got away. With nowhere to go, she went south and joined a caravan headed for Gilded Vale… ======================================================================= This is my take on a classic backstabbing stealthy sneaky glass cannon rogue. I know there are probably ways to optimize it better, but this character was a beast. Did far more damage than any other party member, soloed a dragon, took down Concelhaut without letting him get a spell off, and was a damage dealing machine from level 1 to level 16. She is also squishy. Very squishy. She will die a lot. Hopefully not before she has taken out 3-7 enemies (sometimes more). I beat the game on POTD with all upscaling and injuries on, and she had a grand total of 300K damage, 1045 kills, more crits than hits, and was knocked out 88 times. ;) Race/Stats/Background Hearth Orlan (want those crit bonuses) Deadfire Drifter Might - 17 Con - 3 Dex - 19 Per - 20 Int - 15 Res - 4 Perception and Dex are our most important stats. We want to attack fast, and crit often. Might is next for the damage. Because we are so squishy, we attack many times, crit many times, and kill fast. If you don’t kill them fast and they turn around and target you, you need to get out! Int is also nice as it makes our afflictions last longer, which is broken strong when it gets to sap at level 13. Dump Con and Res to as low as they go. Embrace your inner micromanager, and accept the fear of death at any minute. Skills: Max Stealth, couple points into Athletics for second wind, couple points into Survival for move speed. Important Story Talents Flick of the Wrist: A flat ACC bonus to our weapon of choice Merciless Hand: More Crit Song of the Heavens: More Per Skaens Boon: I just wanted to be evil… Dex doesn't hurt either. Blooded Hunter: More Stealth Dungeon Delver: More Crit and Stealth Blood Pool: Sagini (Itumak too) More Per Gift of the Machine: More MIG is always welcome. Level Progression These are the abilities/talents I took. I respecced so many times testing different things that I couldn’t really tell you the order. I put them in what I think is an optimal order for a full playthrough, but mix and match as you please based on your team composition. 1: Crippling strike (or blinding strike doesn’t matter, though late game crippling strike is better) 2: Backstab (obviously, also why we invest in stealth points) 3: Reckless Assault (this model gives extra melee damage at the cost of defense, but you are wet paper towel anyway so may as well go all in, have it on at all times) 4: Shadowing Beyond (this is where we start getting tricky, though our damage is not quite respectable enough to be taking enemies out in a single swing, but it is damn fun) 5: Escape (now we have a combo! Escape to the backline, crippling strike, go invisible, backstab, if buffed from a priest, should take out casters and ranged units quickly) 6: Two Weapon Fighting (get that attack speed up!) 7: Deathblows (More sneak damage, but now you need two afflictions to proc. So easy to do if you have a priest and wizard or druid in party. 8: Weapon Focus Ruffian (Stilettos and Sabres!) 9: Finishing Blow (This is a good one, make sure to use it against low health enemies. It will not be overpowered at this point in the game, but later…. Your backstab crits will be in the multiples of hundreds) 10: Bloody Slaughter (Crits against weak enemies, combined with deathbows….) 11: Dirty Fighting (more crit damage) 12: Devastating Blow (Mỏre damage for finishing blow) 13: Sap (Ok, this is the most overpowered ability in the game for a rogue. You get 2 uses per encounter, it stuns the enemy, and then you get 7-11 seconds to just wail away on them as they can’t do a damn thing. They are usually dead by the time it wears off. Then, you do it again. I can count on hand the amount of enemies who were immune to stun and this didn’t work. It is how my rogue basically soloed the Adra Dragon. Incredible ability) 14: Vicious Fighting (better dirty fighting) 15: Deep Wounds (Damage over Time DOT) 16: Beast Slayer (Just for dragon killing…) Team Composition There are certain things you need to make this work. My team was Eder, Kana, Aloth, Durance, Hivarias. But almost any composition will work as long as you have…. 2 Tanks: You need two frontliners to take a ton of engagements. If the enemies curl around your tanks and come to the side, where you are standing and target you, you are dead. I used Eder and Kana, they did very well tanking large groups while I killed enemies off to the side. Plus, they are pretty low micro intensive. Affliction Casters: You need afflictions to proc sneak attacks, 2 for uber sneak attacks with deathblows. The best characters to do this are wizards, ciphers, druids, priests. The Priest is the easiest, just get painful interdiction. Wizard also has a huge AOE spell Arkemers something something. Druids can cast insect plague for sickened, relentless storm for stun, etc. Ciphers can do Secret Horrors and Phantom Foes, both of which have massive AOE…. the combinations are endless. The important thing is your backline is inflicting affliction for your rogue, buffing the team. They can throw out damage spells after that. A Priest: Painful Interdiction, some Heals (you will need them!), the occasional Withdrawal for longer fights, resurrection for when you die, and the suite of Priest buffs, Crowns of the faithful, Devotions, Blessings, etc, etc, etc. Durance was responsible for standing in the back and buffing the hell out of everybody. Playstyle Combat starts and one of two scenarios will unfold. a) Your rogue is grouped up with your team, b) your rogue is off the side hiding. Scenario A Your rogue is standing where he needs to be, right next to the priest. Combat starts, the buffing begins, the tanks move forward, the casters throw out some debuffs, your rogue waits in stealth. Once the dance at the frontline is settled your tanks have engaged the enemies, the rogue moves in on the flank side, and begins to stab. She quickly kills a couple, and then uses escape to jump to the backline where is an annoying priest and a ranger. Teleport right beside the priest (he is the most dangerous) and hit him with Sap. Now he is stunned. Stab Stab Stab Stab, dead. Pop hide in shadows and sneak up behind the ranger and backstab him for big damage. He won’t last long. Scenario B Your team is in one place and you are in another. Just stealth up behind the backline and start stabbing. Use Shadow Beyond and escape to move from target to target. Use escape to get our there quickly, use Sap to run and burst. In this scenario though, you don’t have the priest buffs on. You are flying solo so make sure to really carefully babysit. Gear Weapons Dual Stilettos are a fun way to go. You get amazing ACC and they do good damage because you are attacking so fast. They also have innate DR, which is nice. Your backstabs won’t be huge, and you need a wizard or a priest to get some inflictions on enemies. The game has some great Stilettos, one you can buy early in Gilded Vale, and another you can get on the first floor of the endless paths. With those two you can head to Ondra’s Gift, buy some Vithrack brains, and you good two unique Exceptional Stilettos for all of act 2. Later in the game you get some more amazing Stilettos. It is a solidly represented weapon. Some good ones: Azureiths Bleak Fang Oidhreact Miserys End Vent Pick HOWEVER….. If you really want to min max, do an insane amount of damage, make POTD feel easy, and feel like a god, then do this instead. As soon as the White March starts, do it. I mean all of it. From beginning to end. We need Krakens Eyes. Once you finish and get your 2 Kraken Eyes, upgrade the Sabre Bittercut to Legendary. Add a Corrosive lash, Durgan Reinforced, and put it in the Wax Mold and copy it. Now you are dual wielding two legendary sabres with increased attack speed. And you have all of Act 3 and many bosses and bounties and the endless paths to enjoy it with…. You can upgrade something to Legendary once you hit Level 16, but I had a huge chunk of content left after I did this. Honestly though, it was almost too strong…. NOTE: Always have a bow equipped in off slot just in case you get stuck behind tanks and need something to do. Or you get stuck and can’t move) Armor For most of the early and mid game you should use Angio’s Gambeson for the DAOM spell. Of course you could also just go with clothing or robes. Late Game Vengiatta Rugia is best in slot of a sneak attack rogue. And best in style. Scales of the Raven is also a good choice, but it also a late game item. I used Vengiatta Rugia so I could ditch the Glanfathan Stalking Boots and use boots of speed instead. I made it Legendary, and added an +2 Int upgrade. Angio's Gambeson (early) Vengiatta Rugia (Late) Scales of the Raven Blaidh Golan Durance Robe Boots Use the Glanfathan stalking boots until you get Rugia armor late game, and switch to boots of speed. Or use Boots of Speed as soon as you get them. Honestly, it is a huge quality of life boost to move faster during combat! Helmet Maegfolc Skull for the +3 MIG and the style. Neck Mantle of the Excavator: +4 PER cloak Rings Ring of Thorns +3 Dex Ring of +9 Defenses Gloves Gloves of Quickness for the increased attack speed Belt Belt of Mortal Protection (just to save you from crits that might one shot you) Belt of Constitution +3 (more HP) Looped Rope (defences against afflictions) Driving Wave I wore the Looped Rope from the moment I got it. Getting your movement impaired with this build is a death sentence, and 20+ defence on these afflictions is nice.

Remember how the right wingers were sobbing, crying, and ****ting themselves when others made fun of Charlie Kirk's death.

Perfect Blue (1997). Speaking of Madhouse productions, it's been...six, seven years since I first saw it? One of the very first anime movies I'd ever seen...I THINK possibly the first non-Ghibli period. Boy, time flies by, doesn't it? I watched the new 4K restoration, which is actually a real restoration and not a fake upscale (AI or otherwise) like Millennium Actress or Paprika or... It was a bit of a different kind of atmosphere watching it this time, as the reason I was re-watching it was because a friend wanted to watch it for her first time...and then we also had another four other people watching with us. Yep, just six totally normal people watching Perfect Blue, a cute little idol anime movie, together. Probably the funniest thing that happened (at least to me) was my friend calling me out by making this observation...: more stuff, spoilers All in all...it lived up to my Horrible, No Good, Very Bad memories of it. Great movie, little odd to re-watch it for the first time in forever with a bunch of other people for their first time and who don't watch pre-digital anime, but it went well!!

Democrat wins Florida state seat containing Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate

I thought this was rather cute... hotel guest starting a challenge with the hotel staff

Whatever cookie policy gg.deals uses is probably the same one used by the Obsidian forums. 🤐

Look mom, it didn't explode! 😀 I don't know why, but somehow I imagine the end of the world being, not going out with a bang, but the wooshing sound of a plunger in a kitchen sink.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-toughens-negotiating-stance-amid-mediation-efforts-sources-say-2026-03-24/ "In any talks with the U.S., Iran would not only demand an end to the war but concessions that are likely red lines for U.S. President Donald Trump - guarantees against future military action, compensation for wartime losses and formal control of the Strait of Hormuz, the sources said." Compensation for losses would be hilarious to see.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/woman-says-bill-cosby-drugged-182950365.html A long waited but appreciated legal verdict around the Bill Cosby story for one of his victims " A woman who claims Bill Cosby drugged and raped her in 1972 won a $59.25 million jury award on Monday, decades after first stepping forward as Jane Doe Number 8 in the 2005 lawsuit filed by former Temple University athletics director Andrea Constand against the disgraced comedian. Jurors found Cosby liable for the sexual assault of an intoxicated woman as well as sexual battery. They awarded plaintiff Donna Motsinger $17.5 million for past mental suffering and $1.75 million for future suffering in their initial verdict Monday morning. Later in the day, they added another $40 million in punitive damages after finding that Cosby acted with “malice, oppression, or fraud.”

Iran is attacking Gulf States that have allowed the US to launch attacks on Iran from their territory. Completely justified position IMO.

Hello community, So I'm looking to start up a new playthrough that will hopefully take me through the entirety of Pillars of Eternity, White March I & II, and then after all of that, push me through to Pillars of Eternity Deadfire. I've easily clocked in countless hours into the game goofing around with a variety of different builds but I haven't really committed to a "marathon" build to do EVERYTHING with. I know this is fairly subjective but was curious what the rest of the community, you all, did to decide on a character concept to carry through such a play through. Typically for myself I like to focus on Lore-heavy builds, and for this I don't plan on doing anything heavy handed as far as difficulty. What has worked for you all when making up a character for such playthroughs for those who have done it? Cheers!

Oh I absolutely agree, the Original Pillars of Eternity I know was primarily a single class game when it first came out, and only after the White March were level expanded and "Cross Class" Talents Introduced at all. It wasn't until well into development of Deadfire that Multiple Classes were even an option, and personally I believe those aren't truly so much "dips" like what you can expected in the original Pillars of Eternity but true Split Classes where you share leveling between each class as you progress. Its part of why trying to figure out a fun build from one into the other has been such an interesting exploration on builds and progression as one can contemplate the "rebirth" before Berath from one game to the other as a chance to reforge your character once entering Deadfire. Personally, I loved the idea of being an Island Aumauan Storm Chanter having been trapped in the politics of the Vailian Republics who possibly had somehow been cast out originally during the first game. With all the transpired my character could have been called back (Possibly as a Chanter/Druid?). I'm still playing around with the idea.

In general I think your ability and especially your spell choices are fine. Here are some abilities I personally would probably not take: Since you don't use any damaging spells besides Recall Agony and Disintegrate - which both deal raw damage - you can drop Penetrating Visions. Unless you are using the Community Patch, Improved Critical is absolutely not worth the ability point. Uncanny Luck: same as Improved Critical. Okay if Community Patch is active, not worth it if not. Deep Wounds doesn't generate focus. Still a good ability for damage, but maybe it could be skipped on a Mindstalker who's focused on delivering debuffs/afflictions. Combat Focus is not worth it in your case imo. You can get Concentration layers elsewhere or even become immune. Also as a ranged Mindstalker you might not need it in most fights? I personally would pick Crippling Strike over Blinding Strike. Just because Blinding Strike is two times as expensive - which means you can only use it half the times you could use Crippling Strike. Besides the bonus PEN, Crippling Strike also has one more Power Level for scaling which leads to higher base dmg and base PEN than Blinding Strike. I wouldn't even upgrade it and thus spare +1 ability point (compared to Blinding Strike + Confounding Blind). Bear's Fortitude is not worth it that late imo. Might as well use a +3 CON belt and get +6 Fortitude without spending an ability point. What I might take instead: Ciphers usually struggle a bit in tough fights against high defense foes. Empowering an attack or a spell can help. You didn't pick any of the Empower related abilities like Accurate Empower for example, maybe something to consider. They can make a difference in tough fights. An empowered, high accuracy Disintegrate can be pretty brutal. Lasting Empower stacks with Lingering Echoes, giving you very long affliction times on something like an empowered Secret Horrors for example or an empowered Puppet Master. Psychovampiric Shield reduces enemies' Resolve by 10 points. This can be very useful in boss fights against foes that have very high Resolve. Because a giant those all afflictions and other hostile effects (Disintegrate for example) won't stick long. -10 Resolve means an increase of duration of 30%. On top of that you get more Resolve yourself (yay). For a ranged character it's only useful occasionally but maybe something to consider if boss fights are something where Ydwin doesn't perform too well. Keen Mind lets you use a better/higher focus spell (+1 tier) right away at the start of battle which can make a difference in tough battles. Use it in combination with stealth: a stealthed character gets a -80% recovery time bonus for his first action from stealth. If you can cast a better spell from stealth and that have basically now recovery that's an advantage. You can also combine it with Empower. The Complete Self is nice with big AoE spells such as Phantom Foes since it most likely procs. In case of Phantom Foes it cuts down the cost in half. Escape is a cheap but effective mobility tool which also grants you a +50 deflection bonus; it can be pronged with Salvation of Time. In combination with a Priest who benefits from your Ancestor's Memory, you can make yourself a lot more sturdy for very cheap. I find Slippery Mind to be very useful later in the game. If you use Potions and Scrolls then Deep Pockets is great in combination with either The Amazing and Truly Incredible Instant Potion Belt or Spellkeeper (belt). I personally like to pick Fast Runner. It helps to outrun enemies and make them stop chasing you (because they quickly realize they cannot catch up and turn to somebody else. Not needed with Boots of Speed though. Bull's Will stacks with Iron Will. So if you want to invest in a defense passive I would maybe pick those instead of Bear's Fortitude. Snake's Reflex can be combined nicely with Adept Evasion instead of using Bear's Fortitude. If you want more versatility and lose the one trick pony feel a bit you can try to pick one or two support spells besides Ancestor's Memory. Pain Block is very good for example. It's very nice to have a good healing (and bonus AR) spell at hand on a character who normally isn't the party healer. That way you can improve action economy in a pinch when it comes to healing. If you only have one healer in the party you can get into situations where more than one party member would need healing - but the healer cannot cast two spells at the same time and maybe doesn't have a powerful AoE healing left. In those cases it's great to have somebody else be able to deliver the occasional healing effect. If you want to try something completely and utterly different you could check out if the Whispers of the Endless Paths with Offensive Parry combined with Riposte is something you would enjoy with a Mindstalker. I did this with a Streetfighter/Soul Blade recently and had a lot of fun with it. I'm sure it could also work with Ydwin. Give Ydwin all the deflection she can get (items, spells such as Psychovampiric Shield and Borrowed Instincts) and put on Nomad's Brigandine with the enchantment that raises melee deflection and the other that grants immunity to disengagement attacks. Use as Boots of Speed. Boost INT with items. You can then attack enemies from the flanks with a cone - and if they attack you and miss you can harvest focus passively with Offensive Parry and Riposte. The action economy of this is pretty nice because you don't even have to attack to generate focus. In this case Blinding Strike and a blinding spell are great because they lower enemies' accuracy (leads to more misses). Secret Horrors is also great for this. If you get damaged too hard you just run away. Since the armor turns all disengagement attacks into misses you will proc Offensive Parry every time somebody does a disengagement attack against you - and sometimes Riposte will proc, too. In this case Persistent Distraction is good to have of course. If you want to use an occasional backstab and don't have the Community Patch: Run Through (enchantment of Whispers of the Endless Paths) in combination with Backstab (and Sneak Attack + Deathblows) can do absurd single target damage 1/encounter. Secret Horrors to unlock Deathblows, pop a Smoke Veil or Shadowing Beyond, use Run Through and watch a very high danger number float up. ;) This also delivers a lot of focus of course. Cheers!

Yeah, I usually don't like jRPGs and I really liked this one. From what I remember stats are most relevant to weapon scaling - as to effectiveness of individual stats - meh, the harder the game gets the more dominant player's ability to dodge and parry becomes.

Hi! I like to have a character that has a thematic and also a class consistency throughout both games. For example in PoE1 I would pick a Nature Godlike Monk with druidic vibes, give him the cross class talent Aspirant's Mark, pick up (and level up) the Greenstone Staff and use several items with Druid spells (spell binding items) such as Rotfinger Gloves for example. And maybe some fitting scrolls, too. In Deadfire I then build a Nature Godlike Helwalker/Ancient and continued the journey with the Spine of Thicket Green (quarterstaff) and so on. Or I would use a Chanter in PoE 1 with Sure Handed Ila and Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr, pick up One-Eyed Molina's Spike Flinger (soulbound arbalest) and Runner's Wounding Shot as cross class talent - and then in Deadfire I build a Troubadour/Arcane Archer with Spearcaster (also arbalest). I wrote a build description for that one because it turned out to be very effective and fun to play: Chanter with focus on invocations, using short phrases to get phrase points quickly and using the cross class talent Enigma's Charm and several charm/dominate items (Munacra Arret, Spirit Spiral, Ring of Changing Heart) in PoE -> turn into a Troubadour/Psion in Deadfire: Also playing as a plain Priest of Eothas over both games was enjoyable. In PoE there's quite some fitting unique gear for a Priest (of generally a follower) of Eothas: unique flail, unique helmet, unique mail armor and so on - which is kind of rewarding. Priest of Eothas also fits both games' themes and storylines well. Sometimes it's a bit weird that the game doesn't react/recognize this class choice more though. Priest of Berath with Tidefall in PoE -> Priest of Berath/Helwalker with the summoned Spiritual Great Sword. My most beloved Monk build from PoE (Witch Doctor) who used the Long Pain primary (so a ranged Monk) turned into the Mortar Monk in Desdfire. But some builds that I have enjoyed playing very much in one of the games don't work well (or were not much fun to play for me) in the other. For example the combo Helwaker/Berserker with a Morning Star is one of my favorite builds in Deadfire, but when I went back to PoE and wanted to do a whole playthrough from PoE to Deadfire with this build in mind I couldn't make it work in PoE. I mean a PoE Monk with a Morning Star and Outlander's Frenzy would work for sure, but there's not too much synergy, some stuff just suppresses each other (like Swift Strikes and Outlander's Frenzy) and it wasn't much fun to play. The other way round - Barbarian with Monk features - doesn't really work because the cross class talent Novice's Suffering is kind of useless of you plan to use a Morning Star. Sometimes it needs a bit of playtesting to be sure it holds up in both games. Cheers to you, too. :)

Mages being limited to 2H staves and gaining no class bonus beyond staff attacks makes them very niche, and punishes diversity. Compare that to Rogue armour which boosts any weapon with 3-hit combos, or Ranger armour which boosts all weakpoint damage. Mages need options that allow more diversity in gameplay, with room to mix and match styles more. Change Mage armour bonus to something more broadly useful, like increased elemental damage or reduced stamina cost for all weapons (Imagine a Sword-Mage with a Spicy Coaltana) Add 1H options (like a wand), so Mages can use shields/torches if they want. Add 1-2 Mage-themed off hand item categories, like lanterns and scepters. This lets other classes add a bit of magic too. Off-hand lanterns could consume candy/resources as fuel, give off moderate light, but empower elemental effects in its radius (or grant other bonuses) Off-hand scepters could give special parry effects (but without as much damage reduction as a shield) and grant AoE buffs under certain conditions. Maybe add gloves for a dual-wield weapon option to add in other styles of magic attack (channel beams or cones of energy etc) Consider adding more "elements" in mage weapons, like Pollen for AoE stun and airborne targeting, Water for clearing enemy AoE effects (and maybe minor healing?), sap for slowing etc. This would add more tactical choices for other class builds to use

Strange as it may seem oil may not actually be the biggest potential target or threat. Most of its infrastructure is fixable in weeks to months, some of it quicker. Qatari gas with a years long estimate is an outlier. OTOH, some of the Gulf countries have 90%+ drinking water from desalinisation. It's high for Israel as well. You simply don't have weeks or months to fix that, and having 7 million people in Riyadh without water would collapse Confidence almost instantly because there would be no chance of things going back to how they were. Absolutely a war crime to target it, but it's not like either side cares about that- given destroying power plants without a good military reason to do so would also be a war crime.

That combination of Armor helmet cloak looks really good, with that greatsword....looks nice, planned to go with druid but this is tempting (Oh hey, both this character and Dergano Ploi are from Aedyr, what a nice coincidence :) Might play him in poe1 and switch to this in poe2)

Playing CO:E33. I wanted to try it just so I can say I tried it, but tbh I am surprised by how much I am enjoying the game so far. Is there any point in pumping any other stat apart from luck?

That floating shield & weapons are triggering me.

I feel like the easiest thing is to split the issue in three parts: Allow a way to apply a different appearance to any piece of armour (Spend bug parts/resources to make X piece look like Y, but retain all stats and effects) Make the Tier be a separate path to upgrade. Upgrading the Tier could just use set resources regardless of armour (or resources specific to the class type or whatever), and improve the base stats of the equipment. Allow a permanent one-way "Link" upgrade to make a piece of armour from Set X count as being from Set Y for activating the set bonus. It shouldn't be cheap, but doesn't need to be crazy expensive either.

Another Legend gone. RIP Mr. Norris, thanks for all the fun action (and sometimes goofy) entertainment.

If you see reviews/gameplays of Crimson Desert and they go on a small rant about UI/interface control setup, it's true. It sucks. Can you get used to it and eventually "memorize" enough for it to work. Sure. But they suck, to the point where you wonder if the UI/interface designer should be fired. It's bad enough that the first few hours feels like learning how to not hate the Ui. I did try controller for a bit but it's not much better. And apparently you can't remap controller layout at all, unless some 3rd party app can force it. I got stuck on that arm wrestling bit (you have to do it re: main questline) because I couldn't do the QTE mash timing, even after 30 tries, no idea why I usually can do those things fine. I finally realized I could spam both the general key on KB and controller at the same time and that bypassed even needing the QTE press timing. Which seems like an oversight but whatever. The world outside is quite pretty even with lowered settings - but lower settings can turn candles/lights/fires into murky/artifact-y low res bloomy lighting making it hard to see in caves and/or at night occasionally. Camera inside tighter areas is annoying. Actual gameplay - it's fine. Exploration motivation is there. Early area combat is super easy (I'm sure it's not forever). The controls/UI is just klunky, time-wasteful/tons of extra clicks and button holds to do anything etc. Cats/dogs to pet everywhere. Little quests, random occasional bandit surprise in early/training area. Many early sidequests you may want to skip, you can't really, because rewards are often inventory increase bags. Early summation: seems like one of those games where if you can get past the bad UI, is one of those "it gets good after 15-20+ hours!" types.

OK, semi-scratch some of the above. For some reason, for me, it looks better on DLSS-Ultra-Performance vs. Balanced. >.> Post-Processing Quality seems to hit fps fairly hard and so far doesn't seem to lose much looks if you have it Low. I might even like it better, since stuff like chromatic aberration/other seems tied to it. Ray Tracing (global illumination) vs. non-RT global seems to have little fps effect on/off so I left it on. Anyway, I got it where it looks pretty good/better on the big TV at 50-55fps. I'll post a vista scenic SS in the pic thread. Don't judge graphics vs performance too much in the tutorial section, wait to you get to the first town/world proper (won't take too long). There's a simple PhotoMode. Kliff still feels like a brick. Flavor NPC's say the same things over and over and over. Voice acting is ok but nothing distinctive. Horse riding is fine. There seems to be an auto-loot chest available but you cannot (?) put anything into it, it's only for "rescuing" dropped loot that you missed/didn't see. I picked up a bird and Kliff just held it in his hand I've gone over refund time, so I guess I'm keeping it. :P

Sap really is just an incredible ability. I can count the enemies on one hand that immune to it, and it never misses. Once a character is stunned for 9 seconds standing next to a rogue with sneak attacks and fast dual wield attacks, there is nothing they can do about it. Not even Concelhaut.

Crimson Desert -- initial setting/performance evaluation etc Spent 70 minutes trying to find performance that fits me. I will say that if you're a 1080/1440 type, the game looks decent, whether native or a bit of upscaling. You can have a lot of things on High/Ultra and it may still get you 60fps, which is good re: older systems. With 4k as the starting resolution, it's a bit tougher on my old rig. I can get the usual mostly 60 if I fiddle a lot, but the game has the usual modern day problem where dropping a lot of settings doesn't really do tons for FPS until you go so low it's awful - and if you go below High on lighting, post-processing, shadows etc it start to look like poo ( especially if using DLSS 4, Quality or Balanced), like more and more artifacting and blurriness. Motion Blur, btw, is under Accessibility. oh, if you have it don't use ray reconstructuring, it appears to dramatically tank fps at the moment. EDITEDIT: so for me it's not that I can't get ok FPS, it's that upscaling doesn't seem to work very well/doesn't look as good as DLSS usually does. Like the way they optimized graphics = less pixels for DLSS to work with and the result is kind of a mess. My main issue in this early time is that Kliff moves like a brick. I feel like if I'm walking and want to get him to turn, he's a 3ton brick. Stiff, slow to respond. It's driving me crazy, can't get used to it yet. This is using KB/Mouse, haven't tried a controller. KB/Mouse can be remapped - somewhat. But there are so many actions that require two or more button inputs, and many actions that use the same key, that it's difficult. I typically want to move anything tied to CNTRL and ALT elsewhere, to the right, and it's tough in this game. And I think WASD cannot be remapped, if you're left-handed or other preference. I am undecided. I guess I have 30-40 more minutes to figure out if refunding/trying later would be better. :P

Finally had to upgrade to iOS 26 - iOS 26 compatible devices don't get the iOS 18 updates with the current security fixes needed to fully stop DarkSword. Needless to say I hate every change Apple made to the UI. President Trump, it's not the hard working, illegal Mexican immigrants that you should lock away in CECOT. It's people who think changing user interfaces for the sake of changing them is a good idea, and round and lock up everyone who was involved in creating Liquid Glass as well.

So, apparently DLSS 5 is the fusion of 3D graphics and Artificial intelligence (at molecular-genetic level). Artists at Obsidian: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I think I have base 15 Int and I usually eat a fish before a fight. This rogue has eaten a lot of fish....

ah ship CTD bug report jumpscare NEW RELEASE!! I realized now that the right description would be "non-ghost child nodes", oh well...

As stated in the article, because of the Venezuela decapitation. Why would a US attorney general be the target of Iran?

I was rude so didn't manage to sleep with Odessa in the end

I dont understand the tie to Iran. 3 were moved in Oct 2025 over concerns for their safety from US citizens: Top Trump Officials Are Moving Onto Military Bases - The Atlantic Bondi was moved over concerns from "cartels": Bondi moved to heavily guarded military base amid cartel threats So where are you getting your information? Link?

Hey been running into an crash lately when trying to re-parent nodes in the Conversation and Quest editors. Steps to recreate: Child a node to another node. Delete the non-child version. CRASH.

Thanks, I'll do just that 👍

Not the example I used above, but it's mostly energy costs and loss of big c Confidence that are the approaching needle. Though really, AI is an absolutely awful idea economically on base principle (simplistically, replace jobs with AI and who is going to buy the stuff that makes the actual economy run? AI?).

I use gg.deals

nVidia is an AI company now, you'll accept it or else. While most people have been using Seymore Skinner's "am I out of touch? No, it's the kid's who are wrong" for nVidia/ Jensen's reaction at least as appropriate is Kang's (or maybe Kodos'?) "what are you going to do, vote 3rd party buy AMD?". Though they'd probably be as bad, if they were in the dominant position. Hmm, pretty sure they've always had a microsoft 365/ John Deere option since near the start, if not the start, it's just the perpetual license option is now gone. Certainly there's been a tendency to remove denuvo after one or two years, and given that that costs money itself and corporations are hardly charities doing so out of the goodness of their hearts seems... out of character.

A good reminder for folks to check https://isthereanydeal.com/. I just heard of it.

Nslopia 🤷‍♂️

Yes, there's some questionable elements to Kent's background. But his actions seems to be consistent with a pol. who had bought into redacted's prior stance against foreign entanglements. Is redacted's sudden switch an example of how susceptible he is to the right kind of influencers?

One hit wonder from back in the day

What I think is more annoying is that you don't have one companion that is loyal to the Empire. So if I play a character that is loyal to the empire, I will necesseraly be at odds with my companions.

There's a better chance of them adding in a transmog machine to let you just make one set of armor look like anything else. With the 'founders packs' that override a cosmetics look they can just implement a system where you put into a machine one set of armor that holds the image then wear whatever you want and your look wont change. That's how Abiotic Factor solved it so they could have Tiers of armor while still letting the players look however they wanted to. I also anticipate them selling other ones in the future too. It's easy money for companies to make now.

Spellblade is a fun class to try. Wizard gives you good AOE weapons (arguably better than any gear) to use the debuffing Rogue abilities. For example an AOE Confounding Blind is very powerful and quite hard to find an alternative from other classes. The only downside is it doesn't need a lot of optimizing, so Aloth as spellblade is almost as good as the watcher. Barbarian for PoE and a barbarian multiclass for Deadfire makes sense in terms of both consistency and metagaming. In PoE you get a barbarian really late, yet it's a very strong class, so playing as one yourself is ideal. Barbarian in Deadfire can use some optimizations, so playing as the watcher, who you have total control and can potentially get much higher stats is much better than a companion barbarian. Single class barbarian is kind of meh until lv19, so I recommend multiclass. But if you don't mind the power curve, single class barbarian is still a solid choice. For single class barbarian, Furyshaper is the "base barbarian plus", Blood Ward is very useful. For multiclass, choose either base class or Berserker. The two wards Furyshaper get doesn't scale very well into late game. Corpse-Eater and Mage Slayer are basically downgrades if you don't use mods. Since in Deadfire Carnage doesn't synergize with many things, a monk who can massively improve your action speed, MIG and INT is one of the better multiclass options. Check @Boeroer's guide here. If you feel it's too risky, you can replace either side, or even both, with base classes, and it still works very well.

I think the biggest threat to the world economy, and thus to the US, would be for Iran to attack the major oil production and storage facilities in the Persian Gulf. Doing so could potentially disrupt the flow of oil for several years; redacted will be in office for (at least) three more years, so the timing matches. Does Iran still have the capability to do that? They may see it as an appropriate response for damaging their own economy.

All the fbi's budget got blown on flying Kash to his gfs concerts and cocaine.