Keyrock

This is one really worrying aspect of crowdsourcing. The vast majority of the people pledging just want a cool game and are fine with the developer following their vision as they see fit, and may offer constructive criticism, but in a non-pushy manner and with the complete understanding that the developer likely knows better how to make a game. Unfortunately, you get the small loud minority (the loud minority ruins so mauch goodness in the world) of people that feel their $20 pledge means they can hijack the direction of the game. Then you get the unreasonable and misguided backlash to the loud minority, and then this happens. *sigh*

This is a form of athlete exposure I can definitely get behind.

I actually hate imports. The idea that I need to keep my saves is burdensome to me. I hate that to see content in Mass effect 2 or Dragon Age 2, I need to do replays of the original games in ways I'm not really interested in. But you don't need to do replays or keep your saves. The internet will provide you with savegames with every conceivable combination of important choices.

I don't think that shows up when you mouse over weapons. I think you have to swap the weapon and change to the combat tab to look up the crit chance with each weapon. Cleared out The Supreme Temple of Meow. The boss battle with Kilrath took me 2 tries. He hits really hard with melee and does a AoE lightning attack, so make sure you can cast air ward or visit an air ward shrine before you face him. Beyond that, it's a battle where you're constantly healing yourself and protecting yourself. He generally takes down Celestial Armor down in one round, unless you happen to dodge or block, so I found myself casting that almost every round. He's immune to poison and mind attacks, so the best I could do was acid spray him, shatter his armor, and just whittle away at his health. You get a bunch of coin (my party has more money than I know what to do with at this point) as well as some magic items. No relics and nothing too spectacular. It's worth it for the experience you pick up along the way mostly.

I took today off too due to receiving another 5-6" of snow. My wife had training and had no choice but to drive to work...so far shes been on the road for 2h49m and still isn't there. That sucks. I hope she makes it there and back safely. So now you have the rest of the day to gambol about in? Snow angels? Snowball fight? Build cute little snow-rats next to a round of snow-cheese, on the patio? Right now there's sleet and freezing rain coming down, but once it stops, the snow rat and cheese idea sounds good.

But without F2P elements how will they gouge their customers?

I generally turn to Evil Genius for my DK-esque fill these days.

I took advantage of the snow day and did my taxes. One less thing to worry about, plus I get (a meager) sum of money back from Uncle Sam.

Holy cow! Who did Feargus have to sacrifice to Yves Guillemot to be able to escape the clutches of UPlay?

One thing I won't be doing today is going to work. Connecticut is getting pounded by snow and sleet right now. Probably a good day to do my taxes.

Spears are two-handed and do benefit from the two-handed skill. Also, they are awesome. The biggest downside to spears is that you can't train to expert level until Seahaven. Where do you get the relic spear? It's reported now that it only mostly works. Specifically, the Master bonus of 2H does not work. That is, you don't get the bonus 0.1% crit chance per point of Destiny. That sucks. Hopefully they patch it before I hit master (I'm expert now) with my Marauder. Edit: There is a way to fix this bug by simply editing a file. If Limbic doesn't fix this by the time I get master Two-Handed (and I plan to), then I'll fix it myself.

Went up another level and scooped up spear grandmaster for my Marauder, then headed to the Supreme Temple of Meow. So far it's been Elite Shadow Panthers (piece of cake), Elite Rakshasa (relatively easy), and Elite Manticores (slightly dangerous). Nothing really hard so far, the Manticores can do massive damage if the critical on their special attack, but other than that, nothing to really worry about. Not at level 22, anyway. I'm not that deep into it yet, though, so it may well get much harder.

Woot! Got my Hunter upgraded to Marauder. The harpoon ability is what I was mostly eyeing, but dang, the snare ability does pretty crazy damage. It's going to be great against advancing melee enemies.

The pro-Michael Bay argument, in a nutshell.

Spears are two-handed and do benefit from the two-handed skill. Also, they are awesome. The biggest downside to spears is that you can't train to expert level until Seahaven. Where do you get the relic spear?

Yes. They have days corresponding to each of the Dragon Gods.

Hopefully they give me something good, and not just a 5 dollar gift certificate to Seahaven Steakhouse.

Obligatory: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1198892/guarding_sugar/ Also, a reminder that, as hard as it is to believe today, once upon a time, eons ago, The Simpsons was a funny show.

Oops. Shows how much I know about Drakensang Online, which is to say, almost nothing.

It really kind of is. Just in the last 5 years or so: Drakensang, Drakensang: River of Time, Drakensang Online (Browser MMO), Chains of Satinav (PnC), Memoria (PnC), Demonicon, and Blackguards.

Agreed. I'm all for being able to drink a potion before the enemies are upon you, or if you manage to somehow put a good bit of distance between yourself and them. Being able to drink potions while engaged in melee should be either impossible, or come with a steep price (attack of opportunity-a-palooza). As an aside, they need to de-god mode-ify Quen in Twitcher 3. That sign was insanely overpowered in TW2.

Please document your findings thoroughly and report back to us. A video of the experiments would be much appreciated.

I am completely out of the loop when it comes to Wasteland, but what exactly is wrong here? Grid-based inventory? I'm assuming he's referring to the dialogue. Personally I'm fine with the UI. Hopefully you can change the vertical height of the dialogue window. It would be cool if you could change font size also, but that's probably asking too much, especially since its styalized rather than transparent.

I though The Witcher 2 took it maybe a bit too far with not allowing you to drink potions at all during combat, although, from a realism standpoint, would you really be reaching for a flask or vial, even one conveniently strapped to your belt (just waiting to get shattered), while a pack of wolves is jumping at you or some guys are trying to spill your bowels with swords? Anyway, I like that approach better than the absolutely ridiculous Elder Scrolls approach: 3 draugr are relentlessly attacking out intrepid hero. Suddenly, they freeze mid-swing. The hero calmly sets down his weapon and removes his invisible backpack. He sets the pack on the ground and opens it up. After rummaging through the pack he produces 5 flasks, a roasted piece of chicken, a mug of beer, a pepper mill, some cutlery, and a blanket. The hero calmly sets the blanket on the ground, mere inches away from a frozen in time axe, then neatly arranges the food and potions atop it and sits down. 15 minutes later, after finishing his feast, the hero tosses the chicken bones and empty flasks away, packs up the blanket and cutlery, puts the invisible backpack back on, grabs his weapon, then magically the draugr unfreeze and the battle continues. Ideally, you should be able to drink potions during battle, but it should be fairly time consuming and you either can't move while you're performing this action, or your movement rate is severely decreased (try drinking something while running full speed, it doesn't work too well).

Now that I'm somewhere in Act 3, I have to say that Warrior difficulty is not so hard any more. It's not easy, mind you, and it will still punish me if I slack and try to sleepwalk through a battle (with the exception of when I run into some low level beasties I'd missed before that I can crush with one arm tied behind my back), but for the most part, I'm not having too much trouble dispatching waves of baddies. One more level up and I'll grandmaster spear and possibly Earth Magic on my Hunter and Shaman, respectively. More than anything, I want the Ylath blessing so that I can do the Marauder promotion quest and start harpooning fools like Scorpion. Once I do that, I'll go see what this Meow dungeon is all about. As an aside, do you get anything for visiting all the different elemental shrines on the appropriate day and praying to the dragon gods? I think I've done 3 so far.