Agiel

When I rebought it on Steam and installed the patch, I had zero problems with Steam doing this. Though I do not know if it would if you decided to have it manually check the integrity of the cache file.

There are those who believe the "unofficial" patch (which last time I played it was in its ~version 6.0 iteration) to be too much of a deviation of the developer's original vision and intent, though that didn't bother me and the additional content seemed to mesh quite seamlessly with the rest of the game (coming from someone who played it in its original, bugged out the ass form at launch). Also, if you're a "min-maxing munchkin" like me, I would recommend you do away with any attempt to make a totally balanced character at the start and dump all points in any one category into a single stat or feat since it takes more and more points to level up those stats in the game proper.

Unknown paramilitaries, possibly American, invade Denmark and lay waste to several cities.

I swear, people just throw themselves intentionally off of every cliff they come across. I hopped into the game as soon as the game unlocked. Approached the giant gaping pit in Majula and you'd think that place was like a fire to the moths.

Just entered Brightsone Cove Tseldora. There's a depressing amount of bloodstains on the cliffside with the painfully obvious boulder traps.

Entering the Gutter in Dark Souls 2. Apropos that this was the first message I found in that zone: "This place again?"

I think it's fair to say that Ukrainian alignment with the EU and likely IMF bailouts would be like a root canal or some other medical surgery performed without anesthesia: a process that's long and painful, but the patient would eventually emerge better for it. And I've talked with some actual Ukrainians and they universally understand even if they were to magically join the EU tomorrow night it wouldn't fix things right then and there and that things would stay bad (if not get worse) before they got better. The EU may be undergoing one of its greatest trials and tribulations yet, but its future is brighter than Russia if it stays its current course.

Now putting out feelers for anyone willing to trade a Moonlight Greatsword to me, since me being a From fan and having bought nearly all the Armored Core games I couldn't not get a sword that was called "Moonlight". I could use a Bonfire Ascetic for that boss, but either out of me being OCD and not wanting a portion of the game to be permanently harder than the rest for all subsequent playthroughs, or me being scared I'm not anxious to do that. Surely there's players out there whose characters are too "stoopid" to use it anyways.

Fought the Skeleton Lords. When I first laid eyes upon the Bonewheels that had dropped into the arena I immediately seized up in terror. It was then I took a hit from them and realised that From Software in a brief moment of totally uncharacteristic charity had nerfed them significantly.

Are the soul level experience progression rates about the same as they are in DS1? 238k makes me think a several hundred level character in terms of DS1...30-40k was about the range I got for killing characters 10% within my level in DS1, (SL100). Seems that the exponential rate to level up is a lot less this time around. At around 115 or so it takes about 16,000 to level up one. Also I was lead to believe only people who are either lower level are no more than a little above you were allowed to invade you, which is why there are PvP specific builds.

Was invaded again traversing to the Undead Purgatory. This time I had the Blue Sentinels watching my back and the two of us expunged him from my world. It was then I looked at the bottom right of my screen and saw this number: 237560 I nearly spit out my drink when I saw this. I'm sitting at level 95 at the moment, and now thinking of what to do with all those souls for my Faith/Int/Dex build.

So you don't believe many of us don't cross-check stories across multiple sources, from Reuters to AP, from Al Jazeera to Vice, from Stratfor to the BBC? Because on top of the fact that Russia's own mouthpieces are craving for blood when the above sources have said virtually nothing of the sort in response, I think you have a pretty good idea on why we draw the conclusions that we do. I'll freely admit I'll never read any news-related link with "RT.com" in the URL, but I also extend that courtesy to anything with "Freerepublic" in it.

Oh I totally agree that in Fallout: New Vegas and TES it's plenty fun to mess with the Console Commands. But it goes without saying that what you do online affects other people. I can only imagine that the person who unleashes these Dark Souls trainers upon the community are as psychopathic as the people who use them. More notes from my travels: Got to Sinner's Rise from the Lost Bastille and died on the boss. For whatever odd reason, From Software thought it was a good idea to put a bonfire next to three mobs that immediately aggro on you as soon as you respawn there; not exactly conducive getting summoned to try and become human again. I suppose this is one of those times you're supposed to be glad they don't respawn after you kill them a certain number of times (which I made a point of doing just that once). Also this likely has to do with the hoard of players hopping on at launch, but it's unfortunate that you can't really afford to be choosy on who you summon given that a potential sign is liable to already be taken the moment it appears.

Well that didn't take long. Had my first invasion in my own world in Dark Souls II PC and lo and behold it was a cheater. Landed several good hits on him without doing any damage (saw no numbers, he had no shield and I even landed a backstab on him). If Steam recent players was accurate, hopefully my report was on the right player. Thankfully I got iced near a bonfire while I was waiting to get summoned so no big deal to corpse run to get my souls back. So far as online gaming goes, that's just the lowest of the low.

Man wants his own Tiger tank. Can't get one. Builds his own:

After completing "Forest of the Fallen Giants," I inadvertently went to the "Lost Bastille" without knowing that I was still way underleveled for that zone. Unfortunately, I managed to get to the boss (with the aide of some phantoms) and immediately got curb-stomped. Cue me spending Effigies so that I can summon some help to try to beat the boss so that I could recover my souls several times until finally one run I failed to get to them before I died. Lost something to the order of 30k souls.

Working through Dark Souls 2 at the moment, rolling as a dextrous, agile mage. Beat the Last Giant and then, since I leveled up and had no significant amount of souls to lose, summoned a phantom to beat the Pursuer, pelting him with my magic (which still took a fairly long time). "Easy mode" you say? Yeah, well I guess that's why you need a toon with high intelligence to roll as a mage I have also adopted a policy when it comes to souls to "use them, or lose them," now that enemies won't respawn after a certain amount of times they've been killed (no more farming souls in the Painted World).

Simon Ostrovsky released after being held for more than 48 hours. Great news to say the least even if he is a bit worse for wear after the ordeal. Though after two close calls I don't think anyone would think less of him if he called it quits now. His latest video, albeit some time before his captivity and relating more to the shootout a few days ago attributed by pro-Russian elements to Right Sector:

Simon Ostrovsky of Vice News, famous for his reports from Ukraine called Russian Roulette, has been held since Monday by Pro-Russian militias after covering a press conference by the new self-styled mayor of Sloviansk. His last Tweet, dated April 21st, is (worryingly) as follows:

Continuing from last time, may as well call this portion the "Red Storm Rising 2014" hour: 3b. The question is does the Russian navy have an aircraft carrier? The answer: Depends on what day of the week it is. When the navy has to puff its chest, saying that it is a truly blue-water capable force, the Admiral Kuznetsov is one. When it has to do things like going through the Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits to get back to its home port (the Montreux Convention terms prohibit vessels with tonnage larger than a cruiser from going through the Turkish straits) then it "totally isn't one, it's an aircraft carrying missile cruiser." Then again, it isn't terribly good at being an aircraft carrier in any case: The years haven't been kind for Russian naval aviation and the few Su-33 navalised Flankers in service are on the verge of falling apart before the Navy's very eyes. To add to this, this aircraft has absolutely no ground attack capabilities, the Kuznetsov can only carry twelve of them, and can only feasibly launch two at a time, so it can hardly use its airpower in the same way a Nimitz Carrier and its carrier air wing does. Hell, the Russians have even looked to foreign defense contractors for their foreign force projection. So for naval force projection, that leaves two options: Maritime bombers and submarines. We’ll tackle the bombers first. The most modern and primary maritime bomber of the Russian armed forces, as had been the case since the late Cold War for the USSR, was the Tu-22M Backfire, of which there are currently 58 in service with the Navy. Their primary anti-shipping weapon is the AS-4/Kh-22 “Kitchen,” a sea-skimming supersonic missile. On paper, it’s an extremely capable weapon, outperforming the western AGM-84 Harpoon in respects of range and speed (though not in VLO-capabilities; the Kitchen has twice as large a radar cross section as the Harpoon on the frontal profile). Against lightly-escorted merchant shipping it certainly could do, to say the least quite a lot of damage.However the Tu-22M can only feasibly carry two (theoretically it can carry three, though a third missile would impose serious reductions in range and speed on the launching aircraft). Against something heavier, like an American CVBG which has a multi-layered defense network escorting a merchant convoy, the math doesn’t quite add up in its favour and I find all the doom and gloom about how it renders surface navies (or even carriers) totally obsolete a totally dubious claim (I feel the explanation goes beyond the scope of this topic, though if I'm prodded to post it or PM it I might; I was already 3/4 of the way through it before I decided against it). Then there's submarines. The Russian navy currently has fifteen fast attack boats, most of them Akula class SSNs, roughly comparable to the 688(i) Los Angeles Class boats, as well as several Oscar class SSGNs, and for my money are the most viable naval projection force that the Russians have at their disposal. However even then in any potential conventional shooting war they are heavily outgunned by the many ASW frigates and aircraft at the disposal of NATO fleets and would be restricted to more defensive roles rather than attacking North Atlantic convoys for a prospective Third Battle of the Atlantic, to say nothing of the US Hunter-Killer submarine fleet that heavily outnumbers it (it's often said the best way to hunt a submarine is another submarine).

Finding out the Imperial Officer who briefs you before missions in TIE Fighter was Guy Siner (Leutnant Hubert Gruber), decided to do an "'Allo! 'Allo!" marathon. After having that knowledge, I find myself looking forward more to Gruber's scenes than Herr Flick's this time around.

You never wondered why there was an F-15C painted to look like a Su-27 on the main menu screen? :D Yup, these "Aggressors" are pilots who are perhaps among the most talented fighter jocks out there, and are allowed to interview former "OPFOR" pilots (some of them defectors during the Cold War, though after the collapse of the USSR there were plenty of former Eastern Bloc pilots to offer insight into potential OPFOR tactics and doctrine) as well as given access otherwise top secret NSA intercepts for the purpose of figuring out how the "bad guys" think and fly and preparing allied pilots to face them. One I read about went so far as to listen to the Soviet National Anthem to pump himself up before every time he went up.

An F/A-18C with an NSAWC "Aggressors" paint scheme I see.

I do not know if an image with Herr Starr's head in full view is entirely appropriate for this forum

That is to underestimate the contributions Lend Lease made towards the Soviet Union's industrial and warfighting capabilities in World War II. To be sure they had built more T-34s than the US made M4s, but this capacity was impossible without shipments of advanced machining tools and steel when they hastily moved production from Kharkiv to the Urals. Then there's the stuff the Soviets didn't make in great numbers: Radios, reconnaissance vehicles, personnel carriers, medical supplies, and trucks (the favoured chariot of the famous Katyusha rocket artillery launchers were American-made Studebakers), to say nothing of the P-39 Airacobras that ensured the Germans did not have total air supremacy after the Soviet Air Force had been decimated in the opening stages of Barbarossa, then there's aircraft carriers, submarines, long-range strategic bombers, and high altitude, long-endurance fighters. Could the Soviets still have won without all of that? Maybe, though I doubt they would have been the ones to raise a flag over the Reichstag.