Tigranes

Yeah, the 'mist shrine' thing is in one of them. In both of those areas you start up on the cliffs, but you can find those pathways down to the shoreline; I believe that's where you find the cave / ship for the main plot as well, and that marooned ship with the vampire. I pretty much treated the game as BG and looked at every nook and cranny, and I was rewarded mostly. The priest of Bhaal's altar can also be opened up. If you walk in and walk straight until you can't (because of the drop), then you will find a secret catch in the floor that reveals a switch (or was it a key? Whatever). It just gives you some items. My wizard had ~16 dexterity when I tried the herbs, but I crushed them too, so not sure. I assume that they were related with the hermit, though.

For serious academic endeavours, wikipedia is often a good place to get a rough idea of things, if one possesses the mental proficiency to 'tag' all wikipedia information possibly generalised and/or untrue, and upon inquiry of more reliable sources discern a proper depth of understanding.

At the same time, we are free to speculate on the effect of such a technology were it to become viable; as such: alanschu, your point appears to be that in the moment of separation / cloning, there are two bodies but only one conscience; and that upon the destruction of the first body that conscience is eradicated and what is left is a clone, which, presuming that it is not a 'vegetable' and retains cognitive processes and so forth... what conscience has it been given? Does the copying of the physical also copy some sort of link in a dualist sense that means not only the creation of a second body but of a second conscience? And if it does, that conscience would be like a "Save As" function on the computer.. that from that point forth there would be two consciences, though they 'share' the past. If this were to be the case the argument that the original conscience has been killed becomes tenuous. If the conscience was, in fact, 'copied', then there would be absolutely no difference between you prior teleportation adn you after teleportation save a semantic fact of copying. I agree with you that no matter what happens, there is the destruction of a body and a conscience; the question is whether, due to the links of memory, cognitive process and so forth, a complete creation of a conscience - in other words, the artificial creation of a mind - is possible. The body itself? Hell, we do implants and stuff all the time.

Well, if there were any other foreign troops around I'm sure there might have been similar incidents, though I'm not sure if it'd have been as numerous. Not singling American soldiers out for anythin' - but rape in a country you're supposed to be protecting out of your own volition (we WANT you to go, it's the US government that wont leave, as if you would be useful in a war situation..), and the culprits cannot be punished accordingly due to American influence (sort of like how innocent muslims are locked up in American jails indefinitely without given a trial at all), and how all this slips under the reporting media for any country. Nothing to do with Americans; but it's pretty sad to see how many freedoms and morals are being crushed under the boot needlessly to 'protect America'. Did the administration really need to, say, lock up a Muslim moving states to find work and not give him a trial for months? Invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq we have a tenuous logic; how does this kind of stuff 'protect America'? It destroys it.

Kaftan: there's a script you can run for that particular bug (which should have been eliminated with 1.1 patch). It is somewhere around page 5 on this thread. You go to DebugMode through tilde -> DebugMode 1, then something like run dmscript. Again, it's definitely in the thread; I too have had to do this, in my case after going through the radial menu too fast and clicking "remove from party", after which the tank instantly disappeared into thin air. Anyway, I finally got this some days ago and played it with a wizard. I can't say there were any special 'wow' moments in this module, but it is a solid game with an impressively consistent level of polish. The exception was a hidden 'mist shrine' of a sorts... had anybody found it? It is in one of those coastal maps in the mazy sand-paths beneath the cliffs, and you find the key in They tried a little thing similar to the Galatea NPC that was linked around here a couple of days back - hit and miss, of course, and it was certainly rusty, but somehow I liked it a lot. Pity the final battle was rather stupid, and lacked anything special. edit: did anyone else get REALLY pissed off with the fighter henchman's voice? Oh dear God, it was like having Anomen around all over again. Or Xan. All your efforts are in vaaaainnn..

Oh, no. I saw it in the picture above, I too was abbreviating. Point is it shouldnt have "LAWFUL GOOD" there in blazing letters, either. Not that I ever get the CE, but still.

Yeah, one unprovoked aggression should not make way for a second one. That way American soldiers can stay there. Did I tell you about all the rapes and abuses during the entire American military stay in South Korea? Nobody wants Iran in Iraq but nobody wants US there either. There's a pickle right there.

Wait, wait. The boxes actually have "LG" written on them?! Eww.

Nobody gives a crap here if you miss uni lectures, so in the last 3 weeks I've gone to 4. I have 11 classes a week. I just got some midterms back. A, B+, B+. I would care more if a) these papers weren't simply mandatory for the major, and b) anybody cared that in my line of straight As there was a blip or two. I mean, I'm not going for Harvard here. Nevermind. It's 5:50am, I havent eaten since 8pm last night, I don't know why I stayed up and I can't sleep because the soccer match is in 30 minutes. But then, none of that is anything to actually complain about, just feel wheezy.

See, that's when you utilise a nice little thing called a closet. Or some space with a door. You don't know what you're missing until you dig up the doll you had when you were 2, or the diary you wrote when you were 6. Apparently I knew the word 'subsidies' when I was 6.

Kaftan, nobody plays MMOs because they want to roleplay. Those who are actually immersed in the game are either: 1/ Conditioned to be satisfied with the drubbery of a Tolkien cardboard fantasy gloss (i.e. the Warcraft generation) 2/ Not 1/, but in the pursuit of gameplay (i.e. goals and new events) find themselves suitably immersed and able to treat what we see as glaring immersion breakers as 'necessary evils of the medium'.

Teleportation via this method would only be viable, and widely accepted / used, when the physical link between the physical and the spiritual has been sufficiently discovered and analysed. There is no guarantee otherwise on the singularity of the soul and the continuity of that being. Although if human experiments had 'succeeded' i can see people taking the risk. Also, wouldn't the machine double as a cloning machine, by not destroying the original? Who wants to give out that kind of information?

Longbows are lovelay. Though historically speaking, I can't understand why if you, say, conquer the British Isles and have had them under your firm hand for over half a century, why an ambitious King could not adopt the longbowmen himself. Probably balance issues, but still. At least the problem is minimised through mercenaries.

Yeah, 'em Greeks do believe in Protestanism! What the crapper is "Eastern"? Does that mean the Far East? Because that's, well, stupid.

Yep. Hopefully that is tied in with their responsive events system; so that if you are progressing well in your assimilation of particular provinces and they are well buffered, such a random event could trigger - though, of course, not consistently. Soon after starting EU2 I had seen fit to make the jump to that big mod, AGCEEP, I think it was called. Kind of scary when you begin as Byzantines with a single province (Thrace), surrounded by and vassalised by the Ottoman Empire. Then the historical event asks you whether to use a fleeing pretender to the Ottoman throne as a catalyst for rebellion. What? It hurts my game-pride to pick "return the pretender and receive money for your subordinate activities".

I remember when I fecked around with sidequests too long and I entered Kvatch at level 12 or something. There were what, six clannfear or something and I was a magic-based high-elf carrying a bow. So far I had had no trouble with the difficulty slider nearly on the far right, and pride (and gaming consistency) meant I spent the next hour or so trying out a various combination of jumping around, running back, potions and fiery death. Summoned creatures don't help much if they get killed by 12 claws in the blink of an eye. Eventually, there was one reload where my area-of-effect spells caught every clannfear every time, and with a few lucky lateral-jumps and frantic dagger slashing I was down to the last 2 clannfear, both under half-health. Of course, I myself was about two clannfear-hits from death, out of mana/mp potions, and slow recharge. Now, in an enclosed colonnade, you can't run back infinitely. What you can do, is step forward, make a quick swing with the sword, then jump back out of range. Then you do it again. And again. And again.

Hey, hey. I have played EU2, you know. A lot. That was more of a sly comment. I am, of course, not versed in Scandinavian history, but the dynamic starting date makes me suspect that there may be room for, if not Finland, then a regional group based in the area that is independent of Sweden and Russia. Besides, out of that 250, nearly a hundred will probably go to the wider European region.

I didn't mention BG anywhere, because my love for its gameplay gives me bias. BG could not exist in this univarse and JE's dialogue would still be crap. In fact, JE would still have crap dialogue if I was Jamaican and couldn't read English. It's just bad.

Orphanage Quest was good. So what? That girl companion you find early on. All her dialogue was crap. All of the master's dialogue was crap. Most of your companions' dialogue were crap, unless you like that crazy Ho guy. All of the 'mundane' dialogue was crap. Etc, etc, etc...

So they're hiring?

Well, I was. Then something imploded. As I said, if one had played previous Bioware games, it was painfully obvious from the first Master conversation that he was going to be either the main villain of the game, or something along those lines - definitely not a kindly old mentor that dies soon after, or continues to give you stupid advice that is rarely useful. Also the Good/Evil choices (Open Palm, yeah right) were painfully textbook; I cringed numerous times because the choice I WANTED to make, say, to help the beggar, was written in such a sickening and unattractive way that I would actually hesitate. The hesitation didn't last long, of course, because ht eother dialogue options were written just as bad. This wasn't the case all across the game, but the dialogue quality frequently ranged between mediocre and unbearable crap. edit: Let it be said, though, that I would not have finished the game if I didn't think it had any merit at all. It was another solid modern-Bioware production in that it was generally well polished, rounded things up nicely, had a moderately interesting combat and generally gave just enough to keep it going until the end, which if it came any later would have been repetitive. I certainly didn't like the "afterworld" sequences because they were 1/ ridiculous, 2/ not stylish and 3/ by now the combat was getting boring.

No, we're not doing your arithmetic for you, nick.

No word on release date, right? Can't wait till Byzantines, and my second pick tends to be France. In most games I like playing the 'minnows' and building them up, but I like my TW games to have the vaguest relation to history... none of these Polish ruling Europe things. Just breaks my suspension of disbelief, if you will.

Wahey, a reply. Absolutely. And that's why, as I said, it's a pity - probably more for me than most other consumers - that ME is taking this approach. I really really like reading all the dialogue options and considering each one of them - although I admit that with NWN and JE I didn't have patience to spend more than 2 seconds on each choice due to its horrible writing. (All my opinion, disclaimer, disclaimer, yada yada). Still, I am just as fond of visual, cinematic delivery (hell, I played FF when I was a kid), so we shall not lose all hope.