Bartimaeus

So...one mage? Now I'm kind of curious how hard it'd be to beat the game without even one - feel like it'd be pretty impossible without at least using scrolls in some manner...I guess that'd be assuming I'm still using SCS - you could probably get away with no mages in the vanilla game due to no enemy pre-buffing, which is a good portion of what makes SCS spellcasters so tough. If you say so! If you can't end the game with more than 500 credits in the bank, though, then PC controls are still superior.

Yeah, there's no way I could play Papers, Please! with a touch-screen. The controls are frustrating enough when you're playing on PC...

Before they took down the auction for a bit, some individuals had literally tens of billions of gems. And people complain about USD inflation...

Maybe it's because I've played the game so many times, but all the companion characters seem so danged annoying and clingy to me nowadays. Drives me crazy. Which is why I like to roll my own parties, I guess. Which reminds me...my party in BG2 is super overpowered. I beat Ascension & Sword Coast Stratagems-improved Demogorgon on my first try. Timestop, Improved Alacrity, Lower Resistance, Lower Resistance, Lower Resistance, Comet, Dragon's Breath, a few Fingers of Death and Disintegrate (Spell Revisions, so it still does some damage even if he saves vs spell/death), aaand he's dead within like two minutes. Next playthrough, it's gonna be 66% or 50% quest and creature XP, not just 75%...

I hate to, er, rain on your already decidedly downcast looking parade, but...that's actually not all that good - in fact, it's rather bad for an SSD of that calibre. I saw a Crucial MX100 500GB being sold for as low as $140 pre-Black Friday - I got a Samsung 840 Evo the day before Black Friday for...I think it was either $180 or $190, (I actually wanted the Crucial MX100, but I was a day late...and even with the Evo's old-file performance problem, it's still a better drive, so oh well). I also saw a Sandisk Extreme II at around $170-$180 a few days ago. All of those are much better drives than the gimped Kingston V300, haha. Honestly, people should be able to get refunds for what they did - although I think it's been long enough now that people should know.

Bah. Oh well. I got it for cheap though, so there's atleast that. What'd you get it for, out of curiosity?

Regarding the Kingston V300: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7763/an-update-to-kingston-ssdnow-v300-a-switch-to-slower-micron-nand

The Mako bits are literally so much better with Cheat Engine's speedhack hotkeys. There's also the internal console speedhack command, which I used when I first played it, but Cheat Engine is more convenient and less trouble to setup.

The thought of bleeding from your arches really freaks me out for some reason. Toes? No big deal. Heel? Ha! The callused "pad" or whatever you want to call it, below your toes? Again...nothing. Arches? Makes me physically squirm. It's like...bleeding from in between the spaces between your fingers by the knuckles - there's just something unwholesome about it! Heal up soon, Woldan, and good luck with your business!

I don't really like either the Dolphins or the Jets, but the fact that they had a better jersey color and they were the underdog made me want them to win last night. So why should I hate them?

Right. My point, similarly, was that the port DOES support x16 - it's just not working at x16 either because the CPU was not configured for it, (because it's a 28 lane CPU, as you said), or because the motherboard is dumb and has an arbitrary restriction.

BG2. Beat Kangaxx. Holy garbage, was that an intense fight. He absolutely ruined my level 14/15 party a half-dozen times. Couldn't figure out why I couldn't do any damage to the bugger after multiple Ruby Rays of Reversals and Breaches - bloody demi-liches are only vulnerable to +4 weapons and better, and I only have the Flail of Ages +4 on my Mage/Cleric who doesn't really use it too much at the moment, (I am thinking of shuffling around my proficiencies a little to make better use of major weapons...), and Foebane +4 on my Ranger who kept getting imprisoned, (as well as the Short Sword of Mask +4 that I'm currently not using in favor of...uh...Usuno's Blade, I think, which is only +3 in Item Revisions). My Mage/Cleric was level drained to level freaking three by the end of that fight by the demi-lich level-drain/imprisonment combo - don't know how he managed to keep resisting the imprisonment bit, but hey, not having to get a dumb Freedom scroll is fine by me. My sorceress has really been my saving grace for all these fights - don't understand why the class gets so much hate, to be honest. There's no way I'd have the endurance to take these guys on at this level without her. I need at least two to three Ruby Rays of Reversal to take down these guys' magical defenses, another two to three Secret Words or Pierce Magics, and a whole bunch of Breaches if I want to keep them on their toes, unable to cast any truly damaging spells on my relatively low-level and very vulnerable party. The damage these super arcane spellcasters can do when they're not too busy casting physical protection spells to defend against my front-line fighters is too great to weather. Next stop...Twisted Rune. I'm pretty sure I will not be able to do it, but I've surprised myself with this party composition a lot already, so why not? My advantage with all of these other normally "a lot later" fights, though, have been that they're single-foe encounters - where I can make great use of having two arcane spell-casters to bring down spell defenses rapidly, unable to get an inch edge-wise. Twisted Rune, though...there's...what, at least three major spellcasters? Yeah, I'm gonna get wrecked.

Yeah, was a bit tired and forgot to include the link. But it's when you pinch someone in the bottom. Haha, nice! I would've thought it was a common saying. Might be more of an american thing maybe? As an American who has also only heard it (from what I can remember) from the WoT books...I don't think so. It sounds like it could be British...or maybe deep South American? Not sure!

Good work on not explaining it for the rest of us ignorant and lazy people.

BG2. Just destroyed the Shadow Dragon at around 1.6 million experience, (level 14, about). Killed Firkraag right after, then the Shade Lich, then the Sewers Mindflayer cell, (which I was only able to do by summoning a bunch of crap and then drawing them to me, since their mind devouring abilities are just too strong to take them head on). I think I'll try the Elemental Lich and then maybe Kangaxx next. Elemental Lich should be easy enough, but I'm pretty sure Kangaxx will annihilate me. If I *do* defeat Kangaxx, though, I'll try the Twisted Rune after that. (edit) Haha, was looking at my characters' "most powerful kills" stats: my main character, the sorceress, has the Unseeing Eye as theirs - alright, not bad. The ranger has the Shadow Dragon - similarly, my thief-fighter has Firkraag. My mage/cleric, on the other hand, has just a bloody mindflayer as theirs, and my thief-cleric has "Giant Snake". I don't know when I fought a giant snake, but they must've been a tough foe to be on there!

Oh, yeah, I have Rogue Rebalancing, too - but it's a comparatively minor mod to the others, I think. Yeah, the bug of Breach not affecting Liches has been fixed, thankfully. I'm like two levels higher than I was before, and I'm not finding liches *too* difficult anymore - and I'm trying to use zero cheesy tactics. The biggest hump I had to get over with this party was stupid Spell Trap - a level nine spell protection not affected by either Secret Word or Pierce Magic which made Liches effectively invulnerable because it absorbs Breach... I *just* got Ruby Ray of Reversal...or was it Khelben's Warding Whip? Can't ever remember which one it is - whatever dispells an up to level 9 spell protection - and slew the City Gates lich without too much trouble, and I have to go back down to the Temple Sewers to see if I can handle the Lich guarding one of Kangaxx's body pieces. I want to beat the Sewers' mindflayer cell, too, but dang, SCSs' improved mindflayers (and I'm using the option with enhanced physical resistances and they can see through invisibility) are just too hard. I'm also gonna try my hand against ths Shadow Dragon, maybe even Firkraag before I leave for Spellhold - we'll see!

I like your wiring job.

Interesting: fairly different from the previous attempt, where I missed half of the questions and didn't specify importance of the answers for any of them.

(edit) Retaking the "isidewith" quiz, since Opera didn't render it right and I missed a big section of the quiz.

http://i.imgur.com/JRjWt3m.png Well, it made me realize I don't have very strong political beliefs one way or another...except for imperialism. No, but seriously, a lot of these questions were just too extreme that I couldn't really answer yes or no.

Hm. 1*1.15=1.15; 1.15*0.85=0.9775. Nice: a little more than 2% off the original price! wottadeal

There's a component in the mod aTweaks called "Unbiased Rewards" that levels the playing field somewhat for a few particular quests for evil paths. I've always felt the game was too lenient in giving out huge XP rewards - if you do the majority of the game's content - so I currently play with a to-75% creature and quest XP reduction in a very vanilla mod install.

Just to be clear, I didn't mean the retail/release prices, I meant how which games are decided to be up for sale, during these mass sales or any sale. Does Steam send out blanket "sale promotion, do you want to be on it" letters that devs/publishers can opt in/out of etc.? Because sometimes I see sales on games that feel like odd choices for devs/publishers to want to have on sale. I mean, I get that sometimes cheap prices=enough extra short term sales to make more and that's the incentive, but dunno...just feels odd at times. When Valve was doing the Halloween sale, I recall hearing about them sending out some sort of mass message - not sure if it was an email or what - to all developers/publishers, asking for submissions for being featured in the Halloween sale. They stated that submissions had to at least be tangentially related to the "darker" themes of Halloween in order to be featured. Again, just what I remember hearing.

Yeah...I've noticed it on others before too. I often wonder what Steam uses as a sale barometer. Time? Popularity? Sales figures? Who knows. It doesn't, I don't believe. From all I've ever heard, (as well as screenshots I've seen), prices are completely set by the developer/publisher, not Valve - Valve only provides suggestions based on what they've seen work best, though they do have certain restrictions, (e.g. no releases on weekends).

Baldur's Gate II, with a variety of mods, including TobEx, Sword Coast Stratagems, 1PP, aTweaks, Spell Revisions, my own edited version of Item Revisions for proper compatibility with 1PP - I can't play with vanilla's default helmet animations... Additionally, using a creature and quest XP reducer mod; it's currently set to 75%, but I'm thinking of using maybe 66% or even 50% next time...as I still feel like I'm getting too powerful too fast. I'll see how that turns out by the end of SoA, though - maybe the first half is just kind of easy in general, even with my difficulty-enhancing mods. Rolled my own party a few times, trying to get a "good" blend. Currently, it's composed of a half-elf sorceress focused almost entirely on dispel, disable, and damage spells, (what else would a sorceress do?), an elf cleric/mage for utility spells, a human dual-class swashbucker (level eight) -> cleric for combat (the Swashbuckler THAC0 boost and proficiency specialization really comes in handy) and additional divine spellcasting support (as well as lockpicking, trap-finding, and illusion-detecting), a half-elf stalker (not sure if this kit is really worth it...) for archery and melee, and a dwarf dual-class thief (5) -> fighter for pure fighting (and backstabbing and pickpocketing). The weakest character seems to be the cleric-mage; maybe I should make them just a full-on mage instead, since I certainly don't need more divine spellcasting, but I really do need the additional arcane spells my sorceress can't cast, and additional arcane prowess is useful in almost any situation anyways. The only real issue in that is it would break the weapon-type system I have going, where I'm covering pretty much all of the good weapon types...which I don't really like the idea of. Spellcasters are really beating the crap out of me every time I come across a major one: the Guarded Compound in the Temple District was...very hard, to say the least, at around level 11. The mage in there - Sion, I think - was casting Timestops and Horrid Wiltings and summoning crap like crazy. Finally beat them, but it took a bit of effort and many re-tries. Ran into two liches in the Temple Ruins by the Umar Hills - without my sorceress, there's no way I'd have even close to enough endurance to take these guys down at this level. Need to use like 4-5 Secret Words and Pierce Magics per battle...then another few Breaches to get down their combat defenses while I pray to Jesus that they don't summon a Pit Fiend or Balor or something...