Keyrock

Yeah, the tutorial/intro mission is you tailing another detective who owes money and the guy is a gambling addict who bets on horse races.

Judgment

EA is the "just the tip" of video game publishers.

I just pre-ordered Judgment, sort of breaking my own "No Pre-Order" rule. However, my "No Pre-Order" rule is mainly about impulse buying games months or years in advance when there's no way of truly knowing if it's any good and reviews for Judgment are already out in the wild, so I can make an informed decision. Furthermore, by pre-ordering just before release, I get to play it earlier, namely in less than 2 hours. Think of it as early access, except the game is actually finished. Most reviews agree on the biggest criticism of the game being that it's not detective enough and too Yakuza. When the biggest criticism of a game is "it's too Yakuza"(Yakuza is fantastic, in case that was in question) color me sold.

Judgment comes out in the west this Tuesday. Stay calm everybody, no need to overreact...

We need a begrudgingly chuckling emoji.

Lakers mortgaged the farm to get The Brow. I understand why they did it, but they paid a steep price.

I mean, for a superstar of his caliber, it's worth the risk. Sad as it is, it's the most Knicks thing ever for them to be rumored to be on the brink of acquiring a legit franchise superstar still in his prime and have the guy have a devastating injury less than a week before the season ends.

KD should go visit Kobe's doctor in Germany. Outside of that, I don't think he's doing much of anything on a basketball court next year.

On the positive side, you can be fairly confident that this is honest to goodness genuine gameplay and not a cutscene with someone pretending to "play" it, because no one would make a cutscene with gameplay that incompetent.

The Black Keep: This place is a bit of a labyrinth. Plus it's filled with Silent Legion skeletal soldiers. These guys are the worst. I got much better at fighting them as I went along and I got lucky since a couple of them dropped a ton of spiced haunches, which is a very strong heal (what skeletons are doing with cooked, spiced meat is beyond me), but even so, every time they hit you you gain corruption, which you can see as the purple starting to take over my health and stamina bars. I finally made it to the boss fight, The Kinscourge: He killed me the first time. It was a learning experience where I figured out his attack tells and patterns. He's quite slow, but he hits like a truck and has some attacks that cover a ton of distance. Luckily, I had dropped a bedroll right outside the entrance to the Black Keep, so I was able to quickly return and try again, especially since I now knew the layout. I got him on my second try, though it was a very lengthy, tough battle where I burned through almost all my healing, and I had a ton going in.

Apropos armor, you get diminishing returns at the extreme high end. A full set of Silent Legion armor translates to something along the lines of 900ish armor, whereas a full set of Epic Flawless Stygian Soldier armor, for example, might be in the 750 range, which sounds like a decently large difference, but actually translates to Silent Legion armor set giving 78% damage resistance while Epic Flawless Stygian set gives 75% damage resistance, which is fairly negligible. Those numbers might not be completely correct, I'm pulling them out of thin air, but that's the general idea. Hopefully the heat resistance on the Silent Legion armor didn't get nerfed, because I'm going to need it inside that volcano. You overheat SUPER fast in there.

So I went deep into the volcano in Conan Exiles. I wore Lemurian Warrior armor, which provides some heat resistance, and made sure to bring plenty of water and ice to cool down... It was not enough. I died of heatstroke. After a bit of research I found out that

Trudging across the tundra: Finally made it: Mining the forums for content : I managed to reach the Black Keep: However, at this point I was running out of water to drink and I was at my weight limit before becoming overencumbered, so it was time to head back. Since I have drop loot on death disabled, I decided to find out if lava merely damages you or insta-kills you, for science.

^ Some T4s have set locations, most are random, but not anywhere random. What I mean is that they have a chance to spawn in 6 or 7 different camps, not just anywhere. Skeletons are the worst enemies. Not only are they immune to poison and bleeding (possibly all status effects), but they also don't stagger when you hit them with attacks. I hate them so much. Also on the list of enemies I despise is a variety of sand reaper that spits a steady stream of poison and if that hits you it applies an insta-10 stack of poison. Even if you're quick with the Set antidote, it still deals a metric ****ton of damage.

I scooped up X4: Foundations Collector's Edition during the GOG Summer Sale.

I fought the Witch Queen in Conan Exiles. That was a really cool boss fight and I came super close to dying, but in the end I prevailed (through a lot of kiting) and I walked away with the spoils. There's only room form one queen in these lands. I now have I'm pretty sure it only gets harder from here on out. I think I'm going to attempt reaching the volcano soon. I'm going to bring a whole bunch of alcohol and food and hopefully that will be enough to keep me from freezing to death while I cross the frozen tundra. Once I reach the volcano, I suspect freezing will no longer be an issue, though I fully expect to encounter some brutal enemies.

Naturally.

Finished the first of several guard towers and started work on the wall: