Tigranes

Oh, Thief. Will you ever come back to me?

I don't know how you survive with such low damage - I have a 950 DPS weapon and, with sharpshooter, go up to about 30k dps. I guess you have much higher defensive / survivabilty stats... I have about 450-500 res, 30-something% dodge and ~17.5k life. Seems to be OK, though it's pretty fragile for Inferno.

I've been doing Diablo Hell runs with Nephalem Valor, if I have decent party-mates it's challenging but decently fast, we mow down Diablo pretty well, and I usually get nearly ten rares in each run including all the mobs - not bad. Of course, I still haven't seen any sets or legendaries, and most of what I wear is bought on AH for 50k or less - if this keeps up I'm going to lose interest. Have not had a single instance where I've been positively thrilled by an amazing drop, and now you don't have rune drops and gems suck, there's not even that aspect of collecting.

*shrug* sounds really cool, but we already knew Brian Fargo's vision in this sense. What remains is the delivery. It is nice to produce this for everyone, all contributors and all potential buyers, though.

Let me know, I'm not on much this week and next week as I'm in Paris but still log in every once in a while.

313 damage one-handed morning star, Monty? I haven't checked level req or other stats, and it's not very good, but just in case.

I'm pretty settled on (1) Impale w/ Overpenetration as the good damage straight line, (2) Vault w/ tumble, (3) the short-range knives ability with super high damage, (4) shadow lines for extreme life steal, (Left) the basic arrow ability with piercing, (Right) Multishot. That means I have offensive abilities that go in a straight line, get everything around me, or get everythingi n an arc in front, or hit single enemies. Ironically, when low on health, my best bet is to (2) Tumble into a group of blues or a boss, (4) Shadow lines, then (3) for great damage and a full health orb - unless there's lag, in which case, death. I can also switch (1) Impale rune for bosses for stun, though not so much on hell. I always try and get something going where I'm moving and dealing damage non-stop,which is why I was a bit bored with, and crap at, the monk.

There are certain difficulty spike points that are interesting - in Hell, Act 3 first half is very different from the Bridge of Korsikk and beyond, and then it gets pretty murderous in the Heart of Sin areas. My 53 Demon Hunter has already surpassed my 58 Wizard in every metric of power/efficiency, and is more fun besides, so will be my main for a while. Currently at Belial Hell. . We definitely should. Tell me what your definition is of high DPS - 300+? More? And I should have something for you soon.

~75 hours of Diablo 3 and no legendaries / sets. I don't care if they're crap, I'd like to see one. Will try tomorrow or whenever if I have time - wonder how the lag is from France.

http://www.prioritypass.com/ Thanks, good site. I was close to buying a day pass, but by all accounts, and from what little I saw, the lounges in Pudong are just as useless as the rest of the terminal. Might consider a membership in this, though, as it looks like I'll be on at least a couple of globe-hopping flights a year. Now in Paris, looked around La Defense area a bit, ate mucho bread, time to shake off the jetlag with a power sleep.

You mean.... like to the East coast, then take a ship to Japan? I have no personal experience of such a trip, but that must mean you'd be landing in Incheon, the northwestern tip of South Korea, then traveling to Pusan, the southeastern tip or nearby - the only location from which a ferry of that sort would generally depart. You can do that in two ways: KTX, the TGV-style high velocity train, which runs without transfers from the middle of Seoul to middle of Pusan for I think just under 50USD, in about 3 hours. You could take a plane, which is about an hour and ~75USD from memory, though I think you take that from Gimpo Airport, the older one within Seoul. In any case, not too onerous. I'd have to assume you're touring through Korea as you do that, though, or you're missing out on a pretty good opportunity to not only see Seoul, but other great places. (Kyungju/Gyeongju, near Pusan, is an obvious one, a treasure-trove of older Korean dynasties.) Generally in terms of infrastructure, English signage and services, I think you'll be OK, especially if you've ever traveled in non-English speaking countries. Korean workers are generally friendly and helpful and we have some excellent infrastructure. If you need to find some specific things out or have some phrases/words translated I can help you - but I haven't lived in Korea for years so not as much on other things. When would you be doing this?

4 hours into my 6 1/2-hour layover in Pudong Airport, Shanghai. Currently camping at a 'cafe' with laptop plugged in and running Football Manager, but alas, the seats are leather and my posterior is on fire. An awful airport, probably on par with every American airport save JFK that I've been on. (Philadelphia, Atlanta, Knoxville, Detroit, LA.)

You can't get your gold back in the 'Completed' screen? I'm seeing a *lot* of 200-300 DPS weapons of all sorts, both in AH for under 25k and as drops - though I think over half of them would have 50+ level requirement. I'll try and see what I find... though I don't know when I'll play next. Suffering through a 7 hour layover in Pudong Airport (truly, a hole in the ground if there ever was one) on my way to Paris.

They better have a gigantic marketing budget for that to make sense.

As is usually the case for me, every skill I choose and every equipment I get goes into higher attack, faster movement and magic find, nothing else. So I'm always a glass cannon. (My wizard has the passive skill, Glass Cannon.) And yes, AH was pretty much a necessity even before 1.03 - as I said above, 35k spent at the AH and I doubled my DPS. If I waited for a crossbow I found in my own travels, I would still be at 10k DPS or so.

Something to do with the staff of herding you craft, and the crafting mentions several (5?) ingredients - some are found only in purple bosses that sometimes show up in a side dungeon that sometimes shows up in a specific area; others are themselves crafted through dropped recipes, I believe. My DH is now 53, and with a new weapon, jumped from 7k DPS to 15k DPS. Currently one-shotting everything through hell act 1, though still so fragile a second of lag can kill. Edit: That's a pretty good belt, sell it to me! I'll... save up money.

EU2 is excellent, and certainly as good as EU3 in a different way. I should reinstall it - it plays out quite differently from EU3 despite so many similarities. I think you'll like it Gorth. I think EU3 In Nomine was very good - Paradox titles take a few patches to work things out and IN made some notable headway. I do remain ambivalent about HTTT and DW (xpacks 3 and 4), which I think dumbed things down a bit. (In HTTT you could use the 10-to-1 mechanic + succession % feedback for anything.) My favourite is probably EU2 modded up, or EU3 IN + MM.

Magna Mundi does add significantly do the game, at least in its latest version for the game with expansions. I can't imagine playing EU3 without it now - there are so many more events, the game is so much more difficult, and in general it's no longer a question of blobbing and blobbing further carried on by your own momentum. I guess that's only the case if you've played EU quite a bit, but yeah, when you're pretty good at it, your empires start to behave more like an incarnation of Capitalism in its relentless expansionism unless you give yourself artificial house rules and checks. Anyway, Crusader Kings 2 is awesome, but EU3 unmodded is probably best to start off on.

Depends, if you count every dungeon and plains area there are dozens and dozens, surely over 50. I'm not sure what standard by which you would divide between them. There is a good deal of variety, though not overwhelmingly so.

I'm far from a good Civ player - I usually cant get beyond the first 3-4 difficulty levels - but unlike other games, I like going at it with no prior meditation or research on optimal builds and strategies, just seeing how I go and working out my own wonky solutions. (That, and choosing leaders for how cool they are.) Europa Universalis 3, indeed, is probably the best strategy game we're likely to have for a long time, with or without Magna Mundi mod (though they're working on a commercial version of Magna Mundi). But it is definitely more complex. If you just like the paper-scissors-rock dynamics and Civ's DIsney style history, it has enough things to keep you busy for a long time; but if you feel like you actually want to play a historical game or build a realistic ejmpire of any sort, Civ doesn't work at all - go to EU3.

Yes, Civ 4 Bundle. Let us know how you go!

Watchdogs - I hate Ubisoft, but that is a really, really impressive pitch trailer. Apart from Dishonoured I haven't seen a marketing pitch this good from a game for years. Certainly nothing 'original' in terms of fears, concepts, and the real life trends they identify, but immediately feels both fresh and also like something that fits like a glove into our times. Oh, and teh gameplay looks good too. Art/graphics has its ups and downs, but they really are making good headway on 'lively city' stuff now. Pity they still have the 'cutscene knockdown', and Follow The Quest Marker seems strong, too. Will depend on how they balance nonlinearity with scripted 'OH SNAP's.

It does look pretty cool.

Metacritic is retarded, is my thought. Act 3 Hell is grindy for my character right now, and don't have the numbers for 4-player mow throughs which might be more productive.

My 52 wiz had 2k dps, then I realised I could buy a level 60 weapon with lower weapon requirements. Result = 7k dps with ~22k crits. So I imagine if you save up half amillion or something, or get some crazy inferno drops...