Mamoulian War

Goal number 9/2023 complete After defeating the Ethereal Queen for the first time in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on my PS4, I have decided to go for full clear of the first floor of the Ex Dungeon again, to obtain more Orichalcum for the crafting trophy. But because I have finished it sooner as expected, I have went to challenge the final boss of the game's storyline as well. As expected, due to trying to get all of the Private Actions, I got again Miki's and Relia's Endings, but it has unlocked one more trophy for me as well. For finishing the game on Universe Difficulty. I have also finished every Battle Trophy in the game, with the exception of 1 million hits on enemies. I am still under 250 thousands, so it will probably take a lot more time .

The Ethereal Queen of Star Ocean 5 has been defeated on Universe Difficulty Before attempting her, I have decided to level up a little bit, and got up to average level 240. The fight was much easier to go through as the previous "Shadow Party". It took more than 20 minutes or so, but after the fight I have double facepalmed. Silly me forgot to replace the XP grinding weapons with the real deal on two characters, so they did not made almost any damage to the boss LOL... Anyway, I was unlucky with her drops again, so I got just one Moonstone from the chest behind her. Which was still enough to create the best weapon for Anne. And luckily, she dropped her feather as well, so I was able to create the best female armour in the game as well. It went to Anne right away, so she is outfitted to the max for now. The next goal will be the Orichalcum farming in respawned first floor to slowly fill out the craft book and then the 4 winged versions of the superbosses.

uff, the game looks interesting, but the streamer killed it for me Was not able to watch it more than 2 minutes... I will definitely put it on my radar and hopefully it will be released on GOG as well. (THQ is the publisher, so this seems realistic).

And again, article based on anonymous sources, which according to some people here should be frown upon, as it is a “symptom of shoddy journalism” 😉 But yeah, I bet no one would object their reliability this time 😁 I would like to point out again to the fact, that Russia last year dismissed the theory, that Ukraine was the culprit of the sabotage as laughable 😁 Said by Putin himself 😉 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/15/putin-calls-ukraine-role-in-nord-stream-blasts-sheer-nonsense

Heh, yeah, maybe in wet Putin dreams. He tried to annex 4 oblasts, and he is not able to hold them back, which made him the first Russian leader after hundreds of years who lost Russian soil. What makes it even more ridiculous is, that he lost it to a much smaller country 😉 And if you are thinking the West cannot keep pace with Russia if they start to try, I got a bridge to sell to you as well. Or do you really think, that a country with a pre-war GDP lower than Italy can outperform the whole Western World with 100x bigger economy combined? 🙈 Of course Putin think so, but that’s why everyone sees him as delusional and deranged dictator. Including China

And here you are doing a big mistake of thinking like westerner and not like easterner or russian. I wanted to make a long post for you again, trying to give you more insight on how different world it is here, and why you are discounting implanted nihilism of the east into this, but I have found today a very good explanation on how russia thinks, which does a pretty good job of explaining it. And yes Putin counts on people like Trump, ex-Berlusconi, Fico, Orban to pave his way into challenging NATO and Article 5 after he has done enough to destabilize the western society through useful idiots like Zuckerberg and Musk 🤷‍♂️

Well, did not get the drop 😞 Anyway, the next boss was piece of cake and I was able to get him down easily in few minutes, unfortunately the next encounter was literally a DPS wall. I spent few hours trying to figure it out, how to defeat shadows of my party with ****ton of HP and crazy healing abilities. I had to spent more than 1 hour to grind levels so I could have at least some chance to stay alive. Well, still not enough. The biggest issue for me are the needed drops. And I am not very lucky with it, so I can imagine, that people can get stuck here, if they are even more unlucky than me. I am happy, that I have at least one ultimate weapon for Emerson, else I would not be able to get through this fight. Anyway after a while, I have find out a with a little bit of help on Japanese wiki, a nice Role assignment for the characters, although, it still did not help me to beat them 😁 I had to use Dead Man Walking Role on my tank to be able to get through this encounter. This makes the character immune to damage, but he gradually loses HP. And pretty fast, so you have to watch out for your healer, so he can top him out with heals all the time. Even with this “cheesy” tactics, I still had a lot of trouble to be victorious and had to use few times items to mass resurrect my party. In the end, I won, but again, absolutely ****ty luck with drops. You can get up to 6 moonstones from this encounter. I got none 🤷‍♂️ Two-winged Ethereal Queen (the last superboss of first Maze cycle) will be much harder without more pieces of ultimate weapons. 😩

Back from vacations Cleared two more bosses in the third floor of the Ex Dungeon. Boy-oh-boy, the difficulty spiked up after the second floor. I got nearly wiped out few times by the thrash mobs, but I am slowly leveling up and getting more powerful. The first boss (Bloodthirsty Fiend) was crazy hard, and I was fighting him for more than half an hour, and used up almost all of the Fresh Sages I had to control my healers most of the time, to overheal his damage to my party. The next boss (Transmogrified Alma) was a pushover and all I needed to do, was to fill up my "limit" gauge and use the ultimate move with Emerson on 200%... I got my first Moonstone as well, and now I am thinking what kind of weapon should I synthesize with it. Probably weapon for Emerson, as I have found out, that he is sometimes very useful in fights against the bosses to control, and he can deal that way enormous damage, if he can stay alive. And I have a chance to get the best weapon for MC from the next boss. We'll see 😛

I am happy to see this. So hopefully we might see PoE3 before my retirement (or at least before Star Citizen release). 🤷‍♂️

Colony Ship just got out of Early Access. https://www.gog.com/en/news/release_colony_ship_a_postearth_role_playing_game_with_a_25_launch_discount

Nope, not with Trump around, he had already a lot of negative remarks about what happens (or more like what will not happen) when Russia hits Baltics. And do you really think, that the Russia would change the scorched earth tactics, when attacking Eastern Europe? How many towns would be razed to the ground before first Wave of defense would be created? Putin needs a war for survival of his regime. And from Russia’s political point of view, they are already in war with NATO, because they want to end the current world order. Only some politicians and people in the west are still living in the lie, that this is not affecting their future because it is only Ukraine’s war. 🤷‍♂️ Russian army might be currently a big ****show, but Russian way of conquest is scorching everything to the ground to make everyone else life as miserable as their own, and then rule over the smoking pile of rubble… And for that you need only some fresh mindless meat willing do get grinded for his overlord. And Russia has enough of it. Putin started destabilizing Europe long time ago, first he creates millions of refugees by bombing Syria to oblivion, and then he start funneling billions of dollars to fund populist anti-immigration parties in EU. If you think, that current incompetent army stops him from pursuing his goals as soon as people like Trump stop funding the defense of Ukraine, I got pretty big bridge to sell you…

And again, I help myself with the video of the Danish guy. Although he is from the West and not East, he is spot on, what is really going on in Eastern Europe, and how the rational people are seeing the conflict here.

@xzar_monty I have found another article describing the state of attrition warfare in the conflict. And if it is plausible, it does not look overly bright for Russia. https://www.wsj.com/world/russia-turns-to-longtime-arms-customers-to-boost-war-arsenal-5111bac4?page=1

It might be laughable to you, and it might be over the top, but Ukraine is also defending my country, from getting even deeper under Russian influence. I would say, the same goes for Baltics, Moldova, Kazakhstan and Georgia. And I am very grateful to them, as I do not want to go through same pro-russian secret police harassment as my family ever again…

Not to mention, that 81% of Ukrainian citizens, according to the latest polls, agree that it is not a good time to hold elections right now. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/10/30/7426321/

So an Anthem “killer” in ME universe? Another DoA live service in the making? 🙈

Well of course West nor Russia were prepared for such a war, which is currently at play in UA. Why else would be Putin begging Kim for artillery shells, and why would still be West struggling to fulfill the promised number of shells to supply UA? Also, most of the drones currently supplied to the battlefield are made in UA and not in the West. Only thing which the west can provide enough to fulfill the needs is the mentioned GMLRS, which the UA started to use as a counter battery weapons for few months, and USA still have them enough for few years to use it that way.

Well… There’s never enough stuff to not **** up, if you are getting to desperate and your only chance for “decisive” victory is Trump in the office 🤷‍♂️

another look at the Zaluzhny’s assays, which in short blasts the economist and other outlets for shoddy clickbait journalism which took out of a single mention of Stalemate out of his articles to the headlines 🤷‍♂️

TBH not much surprising for us, who got some experience with “Russian World” (read occupation). I always took the word “exhaustion” in connection with Russian army from people like Girkin as “running out of bodies” and not as getting tired in combat in before rotation 🤷‍♂️

@xzar_monty we were discussing some articles about the sustainability of the attrition warfare for the the manpower of both countries, and Yesterday Girkin has posted his view, and what is happening last few monts. And he also stated, that UA has currently manpower advantage. And expects some breakthrough soon, as RU is getting exhausted more and more due to the illogical RU offensives. He praises UA for their ability to hammer the RU deep behind their lines. Most of his predictions were spot on, despite I consider his as to big of a doomsayer. So it would be interesting to see how his predictions will fare this time… https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/11/7/7427549/

Here is the video of three missiles at final approach to the target.

Second Ex Dungeon superboss defeated. Two-winged Gabriel Celeste. The fight looked pretty easy and straightforward, but around 20-30% of HP, he started to use super AoE, which have few times almost wiped out my whole party. 4 times only one character survived 😄 Thankfully, I had prepared 5 Resurrection Mists from Synthesis for this fight alone, but my oh my, only one left at the end of battle. I will have to prepare up to 20 for next superboss and I have to level up a lot my party as well. I have also finished 100% of quests again, and I will be slowly getting to 100% bestiary, I will need to defeat 5 more superbosses 😓 for that. The hardest Trophy will be the collection of 100% items, because I am unlucky with Orichalcum and Moonstone drops 😒

An interesting analysis of Zaluzhniy’s interview.

I would not be so sure about this. This is not the first case, and in one going about 4 billions USD to UA oil company from Crimea, even Lavrov was very reluctant on not complying with that court order 🤷‍♂️ And from the orders like this, it seems like, if the losing side is not willing to pay, the winning side can enforce the sale of losers assets in other countries as well, and they have to comply. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/23/7408149/ And there is another fat arbitration against Russia going on again (not connected to UA). https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-01/russia-must-face-60-billion-uk-trial-over-yukos-oil-arbitration-award#xj4y7vzkg