Keyrock

I feel for you. We went through 2+ weeks of brutal heat wave over here and just finally got to comfortable temperatures in the last couple days. Barring temps dropping below freezing during the next couple days (considering what this year has been like I wouldn't be that surprised), this will be the hottest July on record for my area, and by some 3 degrees Fahrenheit.

As long as you can look in the mirror and you don't have any black eyes or missing teeth, and you won't have to pay child support starting in about 9 months, you did fine.

Fools' Crown of Neverwinter

Well, I finally got the Fools' Crown of Neverwinter. Sadly it comes character bound, so I can't sell it on the AH, and it's not a fashion item, as I had hoped, but head 'armor' with no stat bonuses, like that cat cloak, so it's useless. It does look pretty cool, though, so I'll likely hold onto it and wear it in the Protector's Enclave. Picture in appropriate thread. Also, is it just me or does 'Tymora's Gift' sound like a euphemism for a venereal disease?

I wonder if this is a publicity stunt.

I never finished that game for that very reason. If I recall, aside from the stupidity of in general, I believe it also negated the entire way my character was built (I think I did a stealth build, which meant every single skill my character had built up was useless at that point). Every single skill anyone built up was useless at that point (for shooting at the dragon anyhow), and, as Drudanae pointed out, fire resistance potions were also completely useless. Two Worlds 2 was definitely a disappointment, though I guess it shouldn't have been, considering how piss poor the first game was (though it did have a weird "good gravy this is bad" charm to it). Two Worlds 2 started out really bad, the starter island was a horrifically boring and tedious slog, got better during the middle, becoming nearly decent with some semi-interesting side quests and fairly sprawling open spaces to explore (the Asian themed island was the high water mark in my opinion), then the game took a turn for the worse in the swamp area, got horrifically linear, boring, and tedious in the final act, and then capped it off with the aforementioned abortion of a final boss fight. It saddens me how often developers fall into the routine of just tossing a metric ****ton of fights at you in the final act. There are ways to have an exciting finish without resorting to fight after fight after fight after fight after...

Even more shocking, the US is no longer the fattest nation in the world. Damn Mexicans are taking everything from us, first our jobs, now the title of fattest country on earth.

Yeah, it took me a bit to figure that part out too.

Most poisons wear off over time. Have you gotten to the save point yet? Once you reach it you'll get an item that allows you to teleport back there any time (it's an unlimited use item) and you can get fully healed for free and save your game there. It's conveniently located right next to the fast travel hub. Is that the one where you're shooting arrows from some sort of catapult/gun turret at a flying dragon? Yep. What better way to finish off an RPG than with a shooter, and a really crappy one at that.

Awesome, sound like a great time. I had the same idea and did a nice long ride. 26 miles (about 42 km) in about an hour and 35 minutes, which gives me an average speed of about 16.5 mph (about 26.5 kmh). Not too shabby with all the climbing involved. I live in the hills, around my parts flat roads are a myth. It was a perfect day for riding, low 80s, still air, fairly low humidity. Tomorrow looks like a potential wash out, but at least I got a good ride in today.

Just in time for the Misery 2.0 Mod for CoP.

The ridiculously cookie cutter lather, rise, repeat combat is what killed DA2 for me more than anything. I could get past the disjointed uninspiring story and the shameless recycling of dungeons, but the fact that literally every single battle in the entire game was nearly identical drained most of the enjoyment out of the game. The horrendous Act 3 took any shred of good will and enjoyment I might have had with the game and ground it into dust. Still, it's not the worst final act in a game I've played, that dubious honor belongs to Two Worlds 2, whose final act is a soul crushingly boring and tedious grind of battle after battle after battle after battle, only to be capped off by one of the absolute worst final boss fights I have ever had the displeasure of playing. In BioWare's defense, I've enjoyed pretty much their entire catalogue, NWN included (mostly for HotU and the community made stuff), right up until DA2 and the final 10-15% of ME3. Note: That excludes ToR since I've never played it.

Damn, that's harsh.

Shadowrun Returns. There is so much either wrong or could have been done better with this game, yet I'm loving every single second that I've been playing it. While it's a very different game, I feel kind of like how I feel when playing Piranha Bytes games: There are plenty of completely legitimate gripes to have with the game, yet I love the **** out of it and have tons of fun. In the end, all the technical details don't mean anything if they don't add up to fun and while the technical stuff definitely doesn't add up for Shadowrun Returns, somehow I'm constantly having tons of fun. In the end, fun is the point of any game I play. It's too early to be calling out GotY, but I honestly can't think of any 2013 game I've had more fun with so far. Just sayin'.

LadyC, if you need a dragon egg, I can mail you one. I've gotten 3 of them from this event already. Those boxes drop like crazy in the laboratory. My theory is that they drop more often from "champion" type enemies and the laboratory is filled with Thoon Hulks and Mindflayer Masterminds, which are pretty much the beefiest enemies short of bosses in the game (still a cakewalk for my GWF). I've still yet to get one of those crowns, though.

I'm not sure jokes count as news. It might confuse people. If someone gets confused by that poor attempt at a joke then they deserve to get confused.

I certainly don't advocate piracy, but in the case of a game I legally bought being unplayable because of DRM, I would feel absolutely zero guilt about swiping a cracked executable off the interwebz. That's what I had to do with Jade Empire. It wouldn't play because of some ridiculous Steam check. I searched the web for answers (a plethora of people had the same or similar problem), tried a bunch of proposed solutions, none of them worked, then said "**** it" and downloaded a cracked executable. Now the game works flawlessly and I don't even have to turn on Steam to play it. In defense of Steam, or just to put it into context, that's the only issue I've had with Steam in the last 3 years+.

I'm convinced HL3 will release with the launch of the SteamBox, whenever that is. Nothing but GabeN himself saying otherwise will convince me of anything else.

You're likely right.

Please use spoiler tag if you answer this question. I have gotten that far and I have a theory, but I don't know for sure yet. The theory:

Please use spoiler tag if you answer this question. I have gotten that far and I have a theory, but I don't know for sure yet. The theory:

A shaman gotta eat.

I didn't even know about the event. I haven't as much been playing the game lately as playing Neverwinter Gateway. I'll have to pop into the game proper when I can tear myself away from Shadowrun Returns. When did this event start and how long does it last? It sort of doesn't matter though. Without purple tools there's practically no chance to make a slotted item and purple tools are ridiculously hard/expensive to acquire. Even with max purple tools, the chance to make the tier 3 item is, what, maybe 25%, if that?

They just released some obscure title called Doda or Tota or something. Apparently it's some niche type of game that very few people play.

I quite like the art style in Shadowrun Returns. Up close, the character models are kind of ugly, but in the standard isometric view I think they work well with the environments. I like the colorful, yet drab look of the environments. Cartoonish, but not so much that it clobbers you in the face with how cartoonish it is.