LadyCrimson

I played Anno 1404 a bit. It was pretty fun. Does 2070 still have that always-on 'net connection requirement? At the moment...playing nothing. Liked Skyrim a lot but then got distracted by health and pc issues so I've been taking a break from gaming. Should be ready to dive back in (at least a little bit) soon. Might wait for that first Skyrim patch tho....it'd be nice if it'd address some pc performance issues (not bugs, performance/optimization). I haven't been too impressed w/Skyrim in that regard.

Hubby uses that same wireless xbox controller so he can lie on the recliner couch. The cats sit in his lap of course.

Fighting constant fatigue. Wrestling with PC storage solutions & low batteries & other such annoying tech stuff. Rolling around on the floor with kitties, tossing sticks and crinkly balls and getting wet nose kisses. I didn't miss the cat litter or the cat hair, but I sure did miss the kitty hugs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV_KpO8khOI

I keep getting locked in the house (yes, locked in) because the front doorknob thingie refuses to turn to unlock. So hubs leaves for work and turns that thing as he goes, then I try to leave later and I can't unlock it. You can still key-open it from the outside, but bah. I leave via the garage door, open the backgate, unlock the front door, walk back through the house and re-lock the gate/garage door. Maybe hubs is trying to make sure I don't run away. Haha. Time to fix 'em tho. Need new door locks all over anyway.

I can't stand curry. My whole family loves it...which is probably one reason I stopped going to most of the family dinners etc. They all started making/eating all these dishes I dislike. But I do love kimchi...and sauerkraut. The Korean exchange my parents had many years ago used to make kimchi, and when she visited the States now and then over the years, she'd make/bring over a huge glass jar of it. She likes using root vegies vs. cabbage sometimes, not sure what it is, kind of radish like. It's good too.

Harry Potter, the last one. It was .... ok. A bit anti-climatic imo. Mostly I ordered it because I've seen all the others and can't not see the last one, right? The wand-saber duels are old hat by now, but Ralph Fiennes hamming it up always makes me smile.

There is in my game. It's down at the bottom left of the screen when you're in the controls menu. Altho, it might be tied to the default Sprint key, because it changed to match what I remapped 'Sprint' to be. If it's not showing up for you, must be a bug from remapping Sprint to something it didn't like I guess.

Lvl 10 now. I like how you don't have to spend the Perk points right away, so if you can't decide now you can decide later. I'm finding it interesting how "easy" most of the combat is, until you reach the last guy in a ruin or something - I guess they're like the mini-bosses in other games. But I'm cruising through thinking "this ruin is a piece of cake" and suddenly the last room has some dude that makes me feel as if my sword or battle axe has suddenly turned into a rubber needle. Those are some long (and oft re-loaded) fights, at least if I don't want to leave and come back later.

@Bokishi - hey, you got it working now. Looks good! Can't Run From Me Deer in the woods, morning. (click for fullsize etc)

Seeing as the trend has gone towards shorter and shorter, I'm just happy that some studios are going in the opposite direction. I don't think Baldur's Gate would've been as epic had it only been 20 hours long. Oh I agree in principle. You just have to understand that my playstyle is very slow. All the ppl these days who say "Rage/Borderlands/Diablo/pick a game name" is a 20 hour game, I have to double or even triple that time (for the first run thru at least). I spent maybe a total of 600+ hours on FNV, but that was two complete runs and many many many partial runs. .... I have a feeling if I did that with Skyrim, my hours would stack up to maybe 2000 and that's too much for me. But I know many love that.

This is pretty much how I'm feeling at the moment. Love the explore, love the 1st-time seeing/doing, but not getting any sense of wanting to roll 6 characters or whatever to replay it over and over with different builds. For me tho, I just think games like these become almost too big, so after I've done it once I don't want to do it all over again. There has to more incentive than "try a pure thief instead of a mage" for me to replay something of this scope/time investment, and I'm not feeling it. But this doesn't detract from it's core value, either, since even a once-thru is going to take a long time, and I'm enjoying it. I'm one of those that doesn't mind the overall UI all that much, but ... yes, all of that is very true. Thing I'm disliking the most at the moment is no indication of what buffs I have on/how much longer they'll last while in-game itself. I know there's the "Effects" menu, but I want to know while in combat that I'm about out of time on my resist fire potion, not have to repeatedly pause the game and check some menu. Is there a way to do that that I'm missing?

There's almost no damage resistance in FNV...it's all that "damage threshold" instead. So they have a DT of about 15 IIRC. They just have a lot of hit points (500+). I don't recall them having any specific resistance buffs, their "perks" just upped their damage and perception I think. Maybe their high Perception enables them to avoid some trap damage or something? Never used traps much, not sure. And yeah, there's some cliffside points where you can snipe them from afar.

I know someone who finished the main plot at lvl 21. But in terms of the whole game...yeah...it's like these games are designed to never be finished. heh Btw, there seems to be a bug for some people where their save games suddenly vanish. I remember a bug like that in FNV too. So might be a good idea to back up saves now and then.

Who said anything about making the dough? I either order the pizza or if I want to make pizza thingies at home I'll use sourdough bread slices. Quick & easy & tastes good. But since ordering out doesn't fit the topic, if I understand right, I'll add this: That's about as "recipe" as I get...and even that came from just winging it with stuff that was in the cupboard, combined with the memory of my mother doing something similar with red snapper. All that liquid piles up in the pan & the chicken comes out mildly flavored & juicy. And chicken is still cheap if you're not buying the pre-boned, pre-skinned convenience packs. Rice & broccoli on the side. Mostly tho, I'll just go with a big cross rib beef roast because I can toss it in the oven for 6-8 hours & not have to think about it until it's done. Not the cheapest I know but eh...still loads cheaper than eating out a lot.

Path of Exile's new beta changes equal a much improved arpg game. I like it quite a bit better. Still has issues of course, but much better. The skill tree is still very intimidating. lol So I'm bouncing between PoE & Skyrim a bit. Still not much in the mood for long gaming sessions so it's going slow for both. But I'm having fun.

There's a nice mod that makes the horses look more colorful/varied. I haven't used it but the screens are nice. I think I'll wait a while before I use mods tho. I figure by the time lots of good ones come out, it'll be time to replay the game.

Not that anyone here probably cares, and maybe some already know, but if you don't like the lack of detail in the very distant view, you can change the skyrim.ini (not skyrimprefs.ini) with these lines under "display": uExterior Cell Buffer=36 (put to 72 instead of 36) ugridstoload=x (x=a number between 6-9, or higher if your system can handle it) Be aware it causes a huge fps drop and it gets saved into your save game file...that is, if you remove it from the ini later, any saves that used it won't load. So I wouldn't advise using this method for general gameplay/saves. It is kinda nifty to see more detail way far off tho. ... I'm such a sucker for these little tweaks. Default: http://crimsonkeep.com/wallpapers/data/med...assdraw7000.jpg With the changes (I used 9): http://crimsonkeep.com/wallpapers/data/med...im-drawdist.jpg

Path of Exile's new beta version came out yesterday, so I just checked it out for a few minutes. Holy Carp, the new skill tree is ginormous!! It was big and spider-webby before, but now...it's like 2, 2.5 times as big. It's totally nuts. Nodes within nodes that shoot to new nodes within nodes. It's so huge it's almost too intimidating to even bother trying to figure out. Jeez...just jeez... I'm one of those who liked (but didn't worship) Morrwind and did not like Oblvion at all...but now I'm liking Skyrim. Not that I'm far in, but Skyrim isn't, imo, as entertaining (to me) as MW was, but it's a vast improvement over Oblivion. Kind of depends what you like/want out of such a game tho. I'm not finding the story or characters very interesting, for example. They're not bad or anything, just not feeling it. But ES games for me are almost too big to ever be that involving character wise. The size tends to leave me in a state of disconnect that way. Still, it's a fun game.

I'm finding the Expert difficulty about right for me at low levels at least, using Light Armor/magic w/occasional 1h weapon. Especially when you still just have the Dunmer starting Destruction spells. My skills/abilities are not what you'd call good at the moment. My Sneak is good enough it helps me out some but those Bears, they kick my arse. I'm finding the level of explore+things I can kill+things I have to run away from/sneak around, quite satisfactory early on. I've been to a lot of places and seen a lot (not combat) without feeling very restricted about at least being able to travel to/thru an area, even if I can't take on all the baddies there yet.

The last one (#1) had me ROFL... Got to lvl 8. Ran away from a bear, saw some Elves, let them kill him. One Elf died, I got golden light armor. Pretty.

Mr. Black kitty was finicky, but I finally found this one dry food he likes/will eat (it's very low-carb/no corn meal/no rice), but Mr. Grey kitty wants nothing but the wet food. He's losing weight because he waits for me to dish it out, which I only do once a day, splitting one small can between them, as a treat. I keep hoping that Mr. Grey will eventually realize he's not going to get wet food 2-3 times a day and will eat some of the dry, but if he doesn't start eating more soon he's gonna be a stick. Cats!

So, I played an hour or so and I managed to: --kill a bunny and some wolves. --slide down a waterfall a few times for giggles --ran around & found salt piles in barrels --saw a small cluster of giants and a mammoth near Whiterun --caught dragonflies & killed a few mudcrabs --was spotted by some bandit camp and ran away since I figured I'd just die (I'm lvl3 'cause I look more than fight) --spied on some guy near a cliff who kept muttering about the bounty on his head and wishing he could poison someone ....and that's it. All within a fairly small radius of area near Whiterun's walls. My original intention was to enter Whiterun and start a few quests there. But I veered to the left a bit and...then an hour was gone, and I'd hardly done a thing. Yeah, at the rate I play lately (an hour or two at a time), this game is going to take me a year. lol Also...who made the decision to program shadows on a cyclic move schedule? It just looks bizarre/is distracting. My ground tree shadows don't do that, they behave more normally, but I saw a vid where his ground tree shadows moved in that long cyclic process...so while everyone seems to hate/have issues w/shadows, it's inconsistent. Plus, AFIK, you can't turn them completely off via the options menu, which is lame. ...but I still love the game. It's huge & vast, looks good, and I love that I get so lost in exploring/poking around that it takes forever.