Tigranes

I've never taken to the 'ergonomic' split keyboards - I've been touch typing since I was a kid so I think I'm too used to the normal keyboards. Zero wrist pain ever, but I imagine that will change with the coming of years so I've been looking up some alternatives. It's really hard to find something good that's not too expensive (like DAP), though... recently been looking at an Adesso one, whoever they are. Oh, playing? EU3. In Nomine + Magna Mundi.

The sum of which will likely be a fair bit less than you were paying in NZ. Unless you end up in California or New York. In which case just drop your shorts, bend over and grab your ankles. Actually, no - the tax here is nearly identical to the federal tax at that bracket, once you calculate it - and thus cheaper, discounting state/city tax. I don't know what the sales tax in the US is though, NZ's might be higher now at 15%. Hopefully my living costs won't be too much higher there. Currently looking around for phone providers - I'll be in Philadelphia, and apparently Verizon is pretty good? T-mobile is the cheapest but I don't want to get something that dies on me every street corner so I'm still reading up.

I'm sorting out various paperwork for moving to the States. So far I've had to (a) ask if my maternal grandparents died of anything hideous, (b) affirm that no, I have never worked as a prostitute or sold the services of prostitutes, and © realise that Americans pay federal tax, state tax AND city tax. Woo!

Difficulty is tied to your save file - otherwise you might change it in one game and find it carrys over onto another. I'm surprised you never actually tried to change the difficulty, but all's well that ends well, I suppose.

Depends on how you play and the character(s) you have built up. e.g. the Lescanzi mercenary outside the swamps was deadly for my Katarina, piece of cake for my Lucas. And that's how it should be, especially since you can co-op.

Oh, ectoplasm.

Some have reported that putting the ds3 process on Low Priority (through Task Manager) solves the issue.

That particular battle is the most difficult battle in the game, but as with most difficult challenges in games, changing a few things can often drastically improve your fortunes. It took me more than 20 tries the first time, but later I beat her in a couple of minutes rather relaxedly. You can search this forum for several threads talking about good strategies. The good news is that once you get Chakti down, she flees and you can rest and save up for the next encounter (which is nowhere as difficult), so you were actually nearly there. I'm sure people can give you better tips esp. if you give more detail about what you're trying and how your character's built. Up to you, though.

It wouldn't be an XP issue. The graphics card is borderline so the configurations on your other computer just happens to push it over the fence, I guess.

You make her flee by 'killing' her before the other handmaidens. Unless you have an unbelievably strong companion or you're taking a very long time to fight them, it's more than possible to focus your attacks on her. The colour of the circular targeting marker below her indicates her general HP, as well as the other handmaidens.

Anybody tried it? I've been aware of it for a few weeks but still on the fence. The idea of the graphical roguelike is cool and the character development seems awesome, but I'm not convinced on (a) writing, which seems distinctly un-funny, (b) claims that enemy AI is disabled at the moment, © it looks awful, though of course, it's a roguelike, so... Probably end up getting it soonish, it is $5. Perhaps once it's somewhere else I don't have to patronage Steam.

Oh, true. I already have Sanitarium and TLJ, which are both awesome.

If there's one thing DX3 will have done, it's to finally bring up video game marketing a notch. Fifty notches.

None of the summer sales have interested me in the slightest, even though I'm ready and waiting with my money. Bah.

Disagree, but it's easy to see how writing that from the start is over-the-top funny is a hit & miss. Certainly if the main game was like that I'd get sick of it.

My IP gets completely blocked out of escapist magazine since a few years ago, I have no clue why. I never went there anyway, except for Yahtzee. Sounds like it'll be a bit more tolerable then, though I hope they bloody fix the "Do not update" option not sticking. In any case, I'm moving to the states next month, so... how apropos

Yes it does.

I think the more serious parts of Fallout tend to be the best and most memorable bits, but I don't mind some sillyness in the setting, especially in the context of a DLC. Certainly Old World Blues isn't as powerful as Dead Money in impact, at least so far, but yeah, it really is quite funny and as GDM says the lines are made by the voice actors, which is a rare and beautiful thing in video games. I'm liking how it links to the other DLC, especially to Dead Money - the interconnecting little bits of lore are awesome.

The second line makes sense in context, haven't seen the first one. :yawn:

I've had a general look around as well as the big conversation at the start. (1) It's funny. Funniest writing in any of FO3 or FNV. Not particularly creative, but funny. (2) The Big Empty is... big. I really don't want to bother with FNV's combat or gameplay anymore, so almost too big. Exploring is fun, though. (3) Turns out I can ignore the stupid 8gb update. Woohoo!

That would be true if older games had no filler and great pacing. I love older games, but they don't. In many cases they have just as much filler.

Are you bloody kidding me? Now it's 'updating' the entire 8gb. I don't have enough bandwidth for that, I'm in New Zealand. A big, fat, steaming pile of screw you, Steam. I'd pay extra for my games just to shaft your 'service'.

OWB is out for Europe. God, downloading a gigabyte. I assume all the patches I missed.

I'm obviously using DS3 as an example for the discussion. But sometimes, people just need to yell THE GAME SUCKS / THE GAME RULEZ. It was a constant source of surprise for me to find those en-route areas, a passtime of ARPGs, over so quickly. I thought about how long I bloody spent and how many mobs I put down in, say, the jungle areas of Diablo 2 (some of which had no quests whatsoever, and simply randomly generated minibosses and a thousand urns with crap loot), and found that I much preferred it this way. After a while, though, I could see how other people could view it as a disappointment - you certainly do not ever get the feeling of "bloody hell, finally I'm here and I've reached the golden chest with the loot". Partly because DS3 doesn't have a lot of unique loot and it has no perishables economy, but what I'm getting at is that DS3 shows cutting out 'filler' in RPGs is actually a risky design decision, unless you have enough time to just make your entire game chock full of goodness. BG2's model was great - it's funny how such a little thing (i.e. "Need X from each of 4 places" to "Go to up to 4 places, earn enough money") changes the whole dynamic.

Fox News' coverage of the scandal? Look no further: Pretty much, they pull their age old trick of bringing on a PR agent who specializes in corporations' crisis management as an "Expert", who then proceeds to berate us for paying so much attention to NOTW being hacked when it has happened to Citibank and other companies as well. Chinese propaganda ain't got nothin' on Fox. I mean, OK, filthy liberals love to hate on Fox, but this is pretty hard to excuse.