Raithe

Hm. I might have to take a break from Kingmaker for a bit now, ran into a bug in the Twice-Born Warlord quest. Amiri leaves the party to do something, but for some reason once that's done and dusted she's not re-joining the party. Just lurking there running an old conversation over and over. So rather than play on, then have to replay it all later when the bug gets fixed, I think I'll just pause for a bit and see when it gets sorted.

Oh the memories....

For Ranger's favoured enemies, there's a fine mix depending on where the story is. But Giant Humanoids, Monstrous Humanoids, Undead, Fey, and Magical Beasts all tend to crop up at different stages so far...

You can only upgrade buildings if you've improved the settlement - from Village to Town, from Town to City. You need three villages before you can upgrade one to a town. Then you can upgrade the buildings in the Town. It all follows on from there. Not really sure what to make of Nok-Nok. He seems very much a gimmick Companion regardless of how well written his story might end up being. I mean, regardless of whether you're a good, neutral, or evil player... He's a goblin who thinks he's a seer of Lamashtu (ie, Evil Goddess of all the Foul Monsters that is outlawed in every country in the woooorld.) Especially since he's a Rogue specialist in knife-fighting, and he's pretty much the last companion you encounter and pick up. Also of note, there's that Season of the Bloom story arc that will leave you with a decision choice to make which could end up with one of two NPC's of your court being killed. You can actually get around it if you want though...

Also, quote for the day when in conversation with the Priestess of Lamashtu and you have Valerie and Octavia along : "Could we please bypass the theological debates about which cult has better orgies?"

I've really only encountered one outright bug so far, and that's a side-quest one - Bokken and the alchemical formula. He goes a little mad from testing potions and you have to wrestle him down, but in my game I reduce him to zero health but he just keeps getting back up and fighting on and on. Pretty much leave it for half an hour and it doesn't do anything. If I walk away from him, I get the green tick box saying it's been done...but he's still agressively mad enemy and no quest followup happens. So I just re-loaded and skipped around it for the moment rather then proceed with it. The rest of it seems to be going fairly smoothly.

I have to admit, some of the alignment links to conversation options can surprise me some. Sympathising with a man over his dead wife and kids gets labelled as "lawful good"...

It was basically designed for all those folks that wanted to go into the Duelist prestige class but preferred using scimitars or the like to pointy-stabby rapiers.

Dex adds to AC, Initiative, ranged attack roles and melee attack roles if you have Weapon Finesse - Note, all Rogues automatically get Weapon Finesse at 1st level. There are several feats / class abilities that allow you to apply Dex bonus to melee weapons. Notablly the Rogue's Finesse training, and off the top of my head there is the Slashing Grace feat (which allows you to select any one slashing weapon of suitable size). Also, not as reliable and requires you to find them, there are weapons with the Agile enchantment which does the same.

Stock up on the Alchemist's Fire. Give every pc 3 of them and you might make it through.... But I do have to say, that its interesting that the quests and errands don't exactly hold your hands on where you have to go or what you have to do to achieve results. And don't always update the journal when you've met a task in the process...

I just made it into the 2nd Chapter and you get the Kingdom management aspects going. On the one hand, it seems nicely set up for the majority of it... For the other, I have just found myself incredibly frustrated because I set my companions to do some basic kingdom project / event stuff.. then a week later I get emergency projects jump up that have to be handled RIGHT NOW!.... But I have no companions to do them, because they're busy and you can't cancel projects... So unless I reload a save from way earlier and lose a couple of hours of gameplay, I get automatic failure and/or massive penalties from not handling those emergencies.

He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy.

How many of you have tried reading the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander? Disney based on animated film on The Black Cauldron back in the 80's... Sure, it followed a few of the tropes of the high fantasy genre, but it based itself more on Welsh mythology rather than pure Tolkien. I always felt it was a very good look at that one persons growth and journey from childhood to adult responsibility as told in a fantasy series.

I first tried getting to grips with reading Dracula when I was about 8. The entries about Harker's descent into madness freaked me right out and I couldn't get past that. Took a couple more years before I was able to read the whole thing.

Amazon is still proceeding with the tv adaption. The main screenwriter they have working on it keeps tweeting pictures of the scripts as he's making progress. The other week one of the things that came up was commentary on the difficulty on casting the various elements of WoT with specific ethnic groups so it's not all some blended mass, that the Sheinarans will be different from the Domani who will be different from the Andorans who will be different from the.... I guess we'll have to see how it all turns out in the end...

Eh, to be fair, I've known a few folks in the States who have developed long-term illnesses, and then get caught around the FMLA bureaucracy, loss of work, loss of medical insurance, increasing debts due to that, and the spiral it can induce. I just don't have the knack for eloquently writing it up and quoting the exact issues. So when something can catch the spirit of what they've gone through without me needing to struggle to describe it.. eh, I'll use it.

Well, this could have gone in politics but.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4sA_EwNPmY

Responses are pretty much exactly as expected We watched Ocean's 8 last night and it was better than I expected but my expectations were so low that it would have been hard not to meet them. That's not to say it was a good movie or anything either as it's probably the worst of the Ocean's movies. I can't believe it could be worse than Ocean's 12.